Over in the U.S., we’re more used to hearing stories of the government trying to censor video games. So hearing a story about Korea planning to pump billions of dollars into the industry seems like quite a feat, but that’s exactly what they’re planning. In a recent meeting, Culture, Sports and Tourism Minster, Yu In-chon, stated that the game industry had proved itself effectively as a future growth engine by reaching it’s export goal two years in advance. Therefore, the Minister has proposed a US$200 billion fund through 2012 for the games industry in order establish Korea as one of the world’s top video gaming countries, alongside the U.S. and Japan. Korea also hopes to expand its exports in that area to around 5 trillion won (about US$3.3 trillion) per year.

I’m actually surprised it took them this long to see video games were a good market for them to invest in. When your country starts televising Starcraft competitions and literally setting up compounds for gamers to train, that’s probably a sign that you should be paying attention to something.

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The concept of the video game genre is one which is both a blessing and a curse on the medium. Video game genres categorize and describe games, allowing players to easily guess what games they will like and allowing developers to use a successful and proven formula.

That latter aspect, however, is what makes genres a limiting concept. A genre, in this context, is really just a collection of game design elements: a perspective, a mode of interaction, a game structure, and so on. An individual game might benefit from most of the elements in a genre, but be better suited by a different choice of perspective or gameplay style. However, a designer who blindly follows a genre will miss that fact, and shoehorn her game into a genre just for the sake of fitting the template.

Few games utterly ignore genre. There is, however, a long-standing tradition of genre fusion: taking two or more established genres and combining them into a game that is neither one nor the other. ActRaiser, Sacrifice, and System Shock 2 are among the many excellent games that take this approach.

This allows developers to pick and choose from the design elements of multiple genres without abandoning the benefits of easy recognition by players. Marketing can refer to a game as a "FPS/RPG" and appeal to the fans of both genres. Especially well-done instances of genre fusion can spawn genres themselves; The Legend of Zelda was originally an action/RPG hybrid, but it's now regarded as one of the first examples of the action-adventure genre.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is an excellent example of a game that mixes genres well. Created by Infinite Interactive in 2007, Puzzle Quest combines the color-matching puzzle genre with the RPG genre. As a pure concept, it's appealing: a strategic roleplaying game where battles are fought through a Bejeweled-like puzzle system.

However, what's remarkable about Puzzle Quest is that it actually works. Beyond being a high-concept novelty, Puzzle Quest is a good game. By looking at how it combined genres, one can get a deeper understanding of how to effectively create a genre-bending game.

Rune of Mastery

Part of Puzzle Quest's success is due to the skilled execution of both of its genres. The two game modes are sharply divided, with the exploration, questing, and roleplaying aspects serving as the high-level game mode and the puzzle game restricted to the battle system. There's never a point where the player is engaging in both game modes at once, so the experience is never confusing or unfamiliar. Remarkably, each game mode is a solid example of its respective genre.

The RPG mode presents a competent storyline involving the strange surge of undead in the world of Etheria. It helps that the game is set in the established Warlords fantasy universe. The player gains experience, levels up, gains spells and skills, and recruits companions. There's even a strategic aspect of this mode that allows the player to improve citadels and gain benefits from city upgrades. The quest structure is as compelling as many traditional RPGs, with plenty of side quests and optional objectives to pursue.

With the complexity of the RPG mode, it would have been easy to make the puzzle mode nothing more than a copy of Bejeweled match-3 gameplay. However, while the basic concept remains the same, Puzzle Quest adds an additional layer by assigning significance to the different kinds of game tiles. The basic goal is still to make rows of three or more by swapping adjacent tiles, but each type of tile yields a different benefit when matched. The overarching goal for each puzzle battle is to reduce the opponent's hit points to zero before they do the same to the player character, but the mana meters and special tiles mean that there is a strong element of strategy to which tiles the player should match in a given situation.

It's clear from Puzzle Quest's two well-executed game modes that the developers paid close attention to each genre. Instead of focusing on one game style and letting the other suffer, the developers made sure that each game mode is a solid example of its style of gameplay. This is a trap that is easy to fall into when blending game genres; even the classic Deus Ex has a weak FPS aspect to it. Running and shooting in Deus Ex is nowhere near as compelling as it is in, say, Half-Life 2, but both of Puzzle Quest's modes could hold their own against single-genre games.

A Perfect Match

The true cleverness of Puzzle Quest's design is how well the two game modes interact. The two modes are separate, but the player's actions in one mode affect the other. In the high-level RPG mode, the player collects equipment, skills, and allies which provide benefits and extra options in the low-level puzzle mode. In puzzle mode, the gold and experience tiles provide no immediate benefit, but they allow the player to buy equipment and level up in RPG mode. This interaction between the two modes is what makes the game a truly dual-genre title, instead of just an RPG bolted to a puzzle game.

The two modes interact so well because of the two specific game genres that the designers chose. The RPG genre already has a convention of a separate battle mode. In an archetypical roleplaying game, the player explores and interacts with characters in one mode, and battles in a separate, turn-based battle mode. RPG battles do not usually allow much freedom of motion or nuance of action, in contract to the often open-ended exploration mode. Because of this, it doesn't feel quite so jarring when the player runs into a skeleton and is suddenly dropped into a puzzle game. Experienced players of RPGs are used to being dropped into a simplified, separate mode of gameplay.

On the other side, puzzle games like Bejeweled often offer a segmented experience, where the gameplay is divided into levels loosely connected by a sequential or narrative structure. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo orders and structures its Tetris-like puzzle bouts as if the player were progressing through a fighting game, and Magical Drop III has a branching story mode. A version of Puzzle Quest without the RPG mode but with the same story concept is easy to imagine; this method of structuring the puzzle progression suits the puzzle game genre.

The Missive

In creating Puzzle Quest, the developers did not just pick two random genres and drop them into a blender. They chose two genres that would interact well together, with the puzzle mode serving as the battle "minigame" for the RPG mode, and the RPG mode serving as the narrative and dividing structure for the puzzle mode. The two genres were then linked so that achievements and actions in one mode affected the player's strengths and options in the other mode.

When creating genre-spanning games, developers should follow Puzzle Quest's example. They should choose genres that can interact well with each other, and look at places where the tropes of one genre can be exploited, as with Puzzle Quest's use of puzzle gameplay as a battle system.

Additionally, developers should not fall into the trap of believing that the novelty of genre fusion will make players forgive a shoddy implementation of the individual genres. An FPS/RPG hybrid need not be the best FPS or the best RPG, but it should present each genre in a way that it could at least hold its own against single-genre games. Combining shoddy implementations of two genres does not lead to a single good game, but a sort of shambling Frankenstein's monster. Puzzle Quest, on the other hand, is a true hybrid, taking two well-executed genre games and combining them into an even better whole.

[Gregory Weir is a writer, game developer, and software programmer. He maintains Ludus Novus, a podcast and accompanying blog dedicated to the art of interaction. He can be reached at Gregory.Weir@gmail.com.]

Continue reading Fortune and failure in real-money trading

Fortune and failure in real-money trading originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The editors of Think Services' Game Developer magazine, a sister publication to Gamasutra, have named the finalists for the 2008 Front Line Awards, the magazine’s tenth annual evaluation of the year’s best game-making tools in the categories of programming, art, audio, game engine, middleware, and books.

Game Developer’s mission for more than ten years has been to provide game developers with information, news, and articles that pertain directly to them. The Front Line Awards are an official way of recognizing one specific aspect of the industry: the tools that developers need to do their jobs.

Each year, Game Developer looks at the powerful lineup of new products and new releases of favorite tools, from game engines to books, and selects the top five in six different categories. Front Line Award finalists represent the most innovative, user-friendly, and useful products from behind the scenes of the world’s best video games.

The finalists for the 2008 Game Developer Front Line Awards by category are as follows:

Art Tools

Photoshop CS3, Adobe
Softimage|XSI 7, Softimage
Autodesk 3ds Max 2009, Autodesk
Modo 302, Luxology
Autodesk Maya 2008, Autodesk

Audio Tools

Vivox Precision Studio v.2, Vivox
Wwise 2008.3, Audiokinetic
Fmod Designer 4.17, Firelight Technologies
Miles Sound System 7.2c, Rad Game Tools
Voice-O-Matic 2.6, Di-O-Matic

Engines

Unity 2.1, Unity Technologies
CryEngine 2, Crytek
Gamebryo 2.5, Emergent Game Technologies
Torque Game Engine 1.5.2, GarageGames
Source Protocol 14, Build 3531, Valve

Middleware

Autodesk Kynapse 5, Autodesk
PathEngine 5.16, PathEngine
Havok Physics, Havok
Euphoria, NaturalMotion
GameSpy SDK, GameSpy

Programming/Production Tools

TestTrack Pro 2008.2, Seapine Software
Perforce 2008.1, Perforce Software
XNA Game Studio 2.0, Microsoft
Subversion 1.5, CollabNet
Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Microsoft

Books

Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games, Matt Barton; AK Peters
Game Production Handbook, 2nd Edition, Heather Maxwell Chandler; Infinity Science Press
Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition, Tomas Akenine-Moller, Eric Haines, Naty Hoffman; AK Peters
The Art of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses, Jesse Schell;
Morgan Kaufmann
Game Programming Gems 7, edited by Scott Jacobs; Charles River Media

For this year’s Front Line Awards, both Game Developer magazine subscribers and Gamasutra.com community members were surveyed to nominate the best game development-related products.

Following consultation with the magazine’s editors, finalists were selected based on criteria such as utility, innovation, value, and ease of use, and professional developers are now voting to decide this year’s ultimate winners.

“This was a year in which tools became even more key to the game industry, with both high-end console game complexity and small-team indie innovation needing high quality products to help get things done swiftly and efficiently,” said Brandon Sheffield, editor-in-chief of Game Developer. “The editors of Game Developer extend our congratulations to all of this year’s Front Line Awards finalists!”

The final winners for the prestigious awards, plus one inductee to the Front Line Awards Hall of Fame chosen for its outstanding contribution to the game development industry for five years or more, will be announced in the January 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, available to subscribers in early January. (The Front Line Awards Hall of Fame inductee is not eligible for consideration for regular awards in its winning year.)

The Daily Grind: Do you think of your avatar in the first person? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Linden Lab misuses Reuters employee credit card

Linden Lab misuses Reuters employee credit card originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Building on the success of its social networking site, Gaia Online is taking a step into the MMO field by opening the zOMG! Beta to the public. ZOMG! is a free to play, flash-based so it doesn’t require downloading a client. The game combines social networking with community activities and streaming music.

Gaia Online has a very well developed community with strong ties. I imagine Gaian’s that have been reading and creating artwork and stories about their world and avatars will find zOMG! a natural step to take into MMOs. Key features for zOMG! follow the break. Players can get into the beta from the Gaia Online zOMG! website.

Key Features:

• Beautiful Worlds to Explore – Unique worlds define the virtual landscape, creating different experiences whether through open grass fields, dense jungles, sandy beaches, ancient ruins, zen gardens, and more.
• Interactive Gameplay – Engage in quests and combat against monsters either by playing alone or by combining forces with other players.
• Collect In-Game Items – As players move through the world, fulfilling tasks and exploring new areas, they will find many treasures and items of value including battle rings and recipes.
• Original Storyline and Characters – Converse with NPCs and combat monsters as the storyline evolves over time.
• Entertaining Activities and Events – Interact with other community members by playing mini-games, meeting at dance halls, watching movies, racing cars, or by just simply exploring the landscape.
• Streaming Music – Enjoy original and licensed music tracks that change over time, providing a fresh and unique in-game experience.
• Accessible to Everyone – Begin playing instantly in an Internet browser as the MMO doesn’t require downloads and is a wholly flash-based game.

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Cartoonish boxing hasn’t be faring so well recently. EA’s Facebreaker flopped harder than a beached whale, failing to ignite any interest in anyone. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t an established cartoon boxing franchise though. People seemed really excited for the new Punch Out on the Wii so I don’t think it’s the cartoony boxers that made the game not sell, but the lack of the game being good. Atari is banking on this as they’ve just announced that the next installment of the popular Ready 2 Rumble series will be coming out in Spring of 2009 for the Wii.

Ready 2 Rumble Revolution will feature 18 boxers based on celebrities from the worlds of entertainment, sports and music and make full use of the Wii’s motion controls, making it kind of like a Fox television show with flailing. Sounds like fans of Wii boxing will get a bit more depth than that game, but hopefully with better timing since MotionPlus will be headed our way by then. New this time around will be a mode that lets players design their own Ready 2 Rumble boxer, which will hopefully look nothing like a Mii. So is anyone actually ready to rumble or are we all just waiting until we can start punching people out?

Santa Monica, CA - December 01, 2008 - Activision announced today the Monsters vs. Aliens movie tie-in. The game will offer gamers a chance to play all monsters from the film while a two player co-op mode will let gamers join another player as Dr. Cockroach. Below is the product description for the game along the first two screenshots taken from the Xbox 360 version of the game:

Based on the upcoming DreamWorks Animation 3D feature film, the Monsters vs. Aliens video game puts the fate of the planet in players’ hands as they lead a dynamic team of five misfit monsters on a mission to save the world…as only they can. The game allows fans to experience the movie’s action and humor while playing as The Missing Link, the macho half-ape, half-fish; the gelatinous, indestructible and always hungry B.O.B.; and Ginormica, the 49-foot-11-inch tall woman and Insectosaurus, the 350-foot tall grub. Players utilize each character’s distinct strengths, sizes and abilities to battle giant alien robots that are wreaking havoc on earth. Friends or family members can join in the excitement at anytime as the world’s most brilliant scientist, Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D., in the unique co-op multiplayer mode.

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