E3 Wrap Up

Click the jump for my impressions of E3 and what the "big three" had to offer.

Bitmob: Gamer Tourism

When people reference Texas’ video game industry, Austin is typically touted as the ‘toast of the town’. Rarely do you hear publishers touting the importance of Dallas, or hear them refer to it as being a “Mecca” for gaming culture. They might be right when you compare it to LA or the Bay Area, but I feel Dallas is becoming more “gamer friendly” everyday. Below is a list of why Dallas is great for people who love to design games and those who love to play them.

Gaming Outdoors - Screw Attack Gaming Convention

That's right! ScrewAttack is hosting another convention here in Dallas, TX on July 4th weekend. So bring the pain and compete in the Iron Man Contest. Or come to the Uwe Boll panel and ask him how it feels to be a total douche bag! More details to come when the schedule is up, but for now you can register here. General Information after jump:

Gaming Outdoors: GDC Austin 2009

Living in DFW is not exactly what one would consider the epicenter of video game culture. Hell, we can barely keep the businesses alive up here, but Austin on the other hand is thriving. Mostly due to the rising popularity of MMO's, Austin has become home to 46 Developers, Publishers and industry related businesses. For a guy looking to get a job in gaming, I figured I could take a quick trip down to the Austin Game Developers Conference. *Note, that figure above came from http://www.gamedevmap.com/, a must stop on the internets if your looking to get a job in gaming. How was the conference though? Not so great honestly. First off, I am not looking for a job in design and I know that this conference is specifically about design (oops!). It is a place where various artists, programmers, and companies come together and share ideas for the benefit of the industry. So going into this, a Graduate student looking for a job in Marketing or PR is a little out of place. Still I paid my $100 and was gonna hit some panels and the show floor, try to take advantage of the opportunity. Altogether the panels were interesting, I went to the Friday morning keynote, took in a panel on building a resume and website for getting a job in gaming, along with a few others. So far everything was going well, but the show floor kind of killed it for me. No one was taking resumes, especially for my position. It seems everyone has wised up and taken the online route, rather than trying to roll out of a convention with 20 lbs. of paper. Then, there were only 2 Publishers there, Bethesda and Sony. So, I threw a few business cards around, made a few contacts, but little progress. I think that if I was in design, it may have been a more fruitful experience, but I probably won't do it again. One thing I learned in the resume panel, I have a much better chance at getting a job in the industry if I can make this blog successful, so everybody follow me!

Screw Attack Wrap Up!

Ahh, that fresh convention odor, there really is nothing like it.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the ScrewAttack Gaming Convention in Dallas, TX. I had attended conventions like Akon or AllCon in the past, but this was to be a first for me and video game conventions. I was stoked. Getting there was easy, since it was only about 30 minutes from my house and I already knew the hotel since I attended a beer festival there last year. First thing I did once I got there was walk straight into the 7,000 square foot gaming room and played some Capcom Vs. SNK 2. It was perfect.Too bad I couldn't get a pic inside the room, my iPhone does not respond well to the dark. Anyway, scanning the room there were about 40 or so consoles out and most were rocking a cornucopia of fighting games, competitive FPS’, retro games and even some Beatmania (think Japanese DJ game). I was fairly impressed, but in retrospect, I had wished for too much.I was a little disappointed not to see more rare games; maybe a review copy of KOF12 or the FF13 demo. But there is probably a bunch of red tape for something like that. Although… they did have some Blaz Blue, which was nice. Also, spent a fair amount of time in the Gameworks sponsored arcade room. Gameworks has been on my shit list for years, having pulled almost every "classic" (featuring a joystick and buttons) arcade game out, and replacing it with generic racing games and rail shooters. But ScrewAttack did bring some nostalgia to the convention with a Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 cabinet, X-men the arcade game, Killer Instinct and even a Rainbow Edition of Street Fighter 2 just to name a few.




Of course conventions aren't all about playing games; they are a celebration of all things gaming. There were panels and discussions all throughout the weekend and I personally enjoyed the one hosted by Matthew White on “How to Get a job in Gaming, Without Being a Developer”.You should check out previous posts regarding the Jack Thompson Debate as well. Don’t forget a movie room showing all sorts of gaming in films, including some episodes of the old Mario Brothers TV show!! Man I loved that show... Then you had the Dealer’s Room, which was a bit of a disappointment, with only three major dealers, the ECA and some Japanese foodstuffs. I would have liked more venders to have come from the local gaming community, maybe some developers showing off what they are doing, selling some t-shirts, etc. There was a lot of Table Top gaming and many tournaments like the Iron Man of Gaming and numerous speedruns. All of which I am not competent enough in to be competitive. >_< OH! And let’s not forget those crazy cosplay kids, which really bring a lot of personality to conventions such as these. Here are just a few pics of the many cosplayers that attended.
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All in all, weekend well spent! I really want to give huge praise to ScrewAttack and everyone that made this convention a success. Best wishes to all for a repeat next year, and with Austin GDC coming up in September, expect much more in the vein of conventions coming to TwoCanPlay blog

Thanks for reading!

I am the Internets

Thanks to Gamepolitics.com, my Twitter was referenced for the live blog of the Jack Thompson, Mike Methenitis Debate. Final impressions of SGC are coming soon, with a special unboxing of a little gift I picked up this weekend. Click the link below for the roundup.

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/07/06/jack-thompson-puts-best-foot-forward-sgc09-debate

Jack Thompson Debate

Going to be running a live blog of the Jack Thompson debate. I guess I will use Twitter and then post it here after the fact. Get excited!

Update 6:15 PM CT: EPIC FAIL! Should have not thought I could do this with twitter. Cannot get it to import in blogger and the timestamps disappear after the hour (doh!) But for the un edited live blog you can go to http://twitter.com/speedracerUNT. It will probably be up for a little while, because I honestly don't tweet too often.
-- Post From My iPhone

E3 2009: Press Conferences

For gamers everywhere, E3 is the convention where publishers and developers come to hype the future of gaming. In the past its infamy had dwindled, but as the ESA promised, E3 is back! Now there is a ton of content to cover from the convention, so I will leave most of that up to the professionals. Since the basic business model for any developer involves a console on which to develop these games; Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony hold some of the most significant press conferences of the show. I am going to run through their conferences double time, and give consensus on my best game and technology picks from the show.

Microsoft



Coming out the gates running, Microsoft brought the Harmonix team and a few Beatles to introduce the new Rockband. The pacing of the show was an interesting point, as Microsoft was the only one of the three to avoid business metrics, sales forecast or those pesky charts which typically slow down the intensity of new releases. The focus on the lineup included titles like Splinter cell: Conviction, Halo 3: ODST and Forza 3 headlining the exclusives for the year. While other 3rd party hits include; Alan Wake, Assassins Creed 2, Tony Hawk Ride, and Metal Gear Solid Rising.




New tech included some updates to the OS which bring facebook and Twitter functionality and of course, Microsoft answer to "waggle", Project Natal. This camera will capture the gamer in a full motion interactive experience that looks to change the way we game. The most prominent example lies in Peter Monyluex's experiment Milo. Check it out, there are some good explanations of Natal's potential at the following sites:

http://kotaku.com/5274539/see-microsofts-project-natal-in-action
http://kotaku.com/5274554/molyneuxs-milo-brings-a-virtual-child-to-the-xbox-360

Nintendo

Moving on through to Nintendo, who also had a slew of exclusives which include New Super Mario Brothers Wii, Wii fit plus, and Wii Sports Resort. All seem to play on the same fundamental Nintendo experience we know and love. They reintroduced the Motion Plus hardware again and also brought out the vitality sensor. What is this mysterious device? Click the link below for an explanation.



http://kotaku.com/5276350/wii-vitality-sensor-gets-smoothly-fingered

Besides any practical life saving applications, it hopes to further integrate one's health into the gaming experience. In my opinion, it has been developed to shed light on the stressed induced lifestyle of the Japanese salaryman, and Nintendo sees that as a potential market, so this may find its niche. Mario Galaxy 2 was also announced in the closing minutes, as was a Metroid reboot called Other M. With the Metroid Trilogy also recently announced, it would seem for Nintendo, this is the year of Metroid and Mario.

Sony

Lastly, was Sony and if not for the leaks, they seemed to bring the most surprises. The exclusive lineup including; God of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, Drakes Fortune 2, M.A.G, and the newly announced Rockstar North game Agent. Along side those exclusives comes a new iteration in the Play. Create. Share. platform called Modnation Racers; which can be best described as Little Big Planet does kart racing. The track builder looked highly intuitive and I was impressed with its potential.

The PSP GO! seemed to be the biggest not* surprise of the conference. By making the device solely dependent on digital download to provide all forms of media is a bold move for Sony. It is a step towards the future though, and as more and more publishers are learning to embrace this and consumers will eventually come to love the portability of a handheld console with no cartridges. The only real negative point I see is the $250 price tag, which after Apples recent announcement of the iPhone selling for $99 (3G 8gb), the PSP may have a little trouble selling outside the core gamer. Sony also brought their new motion technology and demoed it live. Its mix of peripheral and camera functionality the brings similar game play style of a Wii with more precision. The controller although, while not aesthetically pleasing, does work and has potential to be competitive in the motion control gaming sector. You can see it in action here.

*It was leaked a month before the conference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGcOPwAvPvc

And the winners are...

Best Game: Splinter Cell Conviction

To be honest, before this conference I had written this game off. Since the release of Assassins Creed, Splinter Cell seemed less appeal ling to me. I had play the first two iterations and enjoyed them, but found Double Agent to be kind of broken and never played past the first couple hours. So when they revamped their style and approach to this game I had no expectations. Which in retrospect was good, because the demo blew me away. It is still sporty the same gritty protagonist and fundamental stealth combat, but its presentation is why I am so giddy over this game. First, the mission objectives are taking a prime time TV (a la Fringe) approach to informing the player and explaining the ongoing story elements through a projector like image on the actual environments around you. With that comes a new combat system where the player can assign kill commands to multiple enemies and then execute them seamlessly through a single button press. There seem to be other mechanics which affect stealth, such as playing off the enemy seeing your last position and then moving in the shadows as they stare at the column they think your behind while you take them out. All of this is extremely clean and calculated visually. Hopefully Ubi Soft delivers.

Runner up: Scribblenauts

Has to be the most creative thing at E3. Forget all the motion sensors and vitality monitors. Give me a game with a library of hundreds of thousands of objects or nouns and tell me it isn't a good time. The objective of Scribblenuats is to use your diverse vocabulary to solve puzzles by creating in game objects. To create something you only have to spell it and the results are as gratifying as they are hilarious. Have you ever wondered who would win if you pit God against the Devil against Kthulu? Well check out some videos online and see what some of the attendees came up with as they tried to stump Scribblenauts.

Best Tech: Sony Motion Control

Here is where I will potentially get flamed. Sure Microsoft's Project Natal is great and it has the potential to change the way we play games, but I am not sure I want that. So how is Sony different? They are trying to do everything the Wii promised it would. First, accuracy, which by watching the tech demo of this guy tickle a skeleton rib cage before he sliced of its head shows how precise this device really is. But if Microsoft can do that, why is this better. BUTTONS, we need buttons to interact with the virtual world. How can I play a game like Fable 2 with no buttons? Or Left for Dead? Or Madden 2010? Sure, these might not be the games you would use motion control for, but if you had buttons, I am pretty sure you could. So, for now, the type of gamer I am and the gaming I want to do, I want my buttons. Even if there is a little physical activity involved.

To finish on a lighter note:

**all images are the result of google image search.

E3 2009 Begins

So here comes the content. I have been watching some of the coverage on G4, but have a list of podcasts and blogs already filling my inbox. Just saw Tim Schafer and Jack Black preview Brutal Legend, should be seriously metal! Anyway, like E3, I am trying to bring a plethora of topics to the blog. Some of which I hope to frequent include: Retro Gaming Round Up, Gaming Outdoors, State of the Industry, Recommended Reading, Focus Test, and Play it NOW. So, stay tuned as I will bring impressions from the press conferences by the "Big Three" over the next week and all the coverage in the industry throughout the rest of the year.

Thanks for reading

DFW Gaming Convention Incoming

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ScrewAttack, an online community for gamers which boasts original entertainment and news, has posted the early pre-registration on their website for the gaming convention being held in DFW this year. SGC will take place July 3-5th, 2009 at the Westin Dallas/Fort Worth Airport- only 3 minutes from DFW Airport. Prices are as follows:

Early Pre-Registration (through February 28): $30
Pre-Registration (March 1 - June 19th): $40
On Site Registration: $50 for the entire event or $20 per day

It should be a blast if we can get everyone in the metroplex out for 72 hours of gaming, and with a host of guests being anounced, there is sure to be something for everyone. Hell, just to get my picture taken in front of Ecto-1 is worth the badge. You can check out information about ScrewAttack and their convention through the following websites. Hope to see you there.

http://www.sgconvention.com/

http://www.screwattack.com/

*All images are courtesy of http://www.sgconvention.com/