New York Videogame Critics Circle

Of Door Goons, Fan Loons and MLB 2K12’s Million Dollar Contest

May 11, 2012 by nygcc

The coveted prize was a million dollars, probably the richest reward for one videogamer — ever. So yesterday, I traveled to Broadway and 4th Street to watch the MLB 2K12 gaming contest. Overly aggressive door people were there, as if Lady Gaga were inside and I was some simpering fan. After I was allowed to pass, I saw Spike TV was there at the MLB Fan Cave (in what used to be the Tower Records store). They complained that I was in the way of their many cameras. I’m always in the way of something, it seems. So I got out of the way. Supermodel Kate Upton was there in the role one of always-a-pro Geoff Keighley’s co-hosts, making mistakes as she read the teleprompter.

The thing is, I love the tension of gaming events like these. Unlike the SoulCalibur tournament I recently attended in Las Vegas, this contest was generally quiet – but certainly more fast-paced than a real-life game at Yankee Stadium. The two lucky finalists had been chosen from a pool of 900 players who had pitched perfect games in MLB 2K12. Over a million attempts to pitch perfect games were logged by fans, according to Take-Two representatives at the event. The last two standing, well, sitting in front of HDTV monitors, were indeed the elite of the elite.

You didn’t have to be a baseball fan to see the focus in the two finalists’ beady eyes as one player took the field at Comerica Park as the Yankees and the other, the Tigers. Both as pitchers and hitters with controllers in their hands, it was like these two prime competitors were bulls in the ring aiming to injure a matador.

But Christopher Gilmore, who was the kind of 21-year-old game nerd who sweats about the face a bit, was a killer with the controller. There was no denying his eye was better than Charles Bates’, his sad foe. By the 6^th inning, he had blown out Bates by amassing eight runs to the other’s meager one. It only got worse from there.

There was no yelling or screaming or jumping about by Gilmore when he won the million. Perhaps it hadn’t yet sunk in. But, as a Red Sox fan, he immediately asked to take off the Yankee jersey and cap he’d donned as he played. Someone from Spike urged him to keep it on for the cameras. So did some people in the crowd.

“Keep it on, man. That’s how it is in New York!” yelled a guy in a t-shirt.

He kept it on. The silent Gilmore didn’t flinch. And he had the last laugh, however inward that laugh would be. Gilmore knew, deep down, that in order to be shown the money, playing as the the high scoring Yankees was his best bet. After the debacle that was last season, his beloved Sox achieved much lesser stats in the game. Yes, Gilmore probably should have shut up about disliking the Yankees. Yet it was the punkiest, most energetic thing he said all afternoon. Then again, when you’re a millionaire like Gilmore, you probably don’t have to say anything you don’t want to say — to anyone.

-Harold Goldberg

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged baseball, Chris Gilmore, Geoff Keighley, Kate Upton, MLB 2K12, Tigers, Yankees | Leave a Comment »

AMNH’s Wondrous ‘Creatures of Light’ Exhibition Could Have Used A Game

March 30, 2012 by nygcc

This week, I was invited to preview the Creatures of Light exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. The well-researched exhibition, which opens on March 31st, was presaged by a smart and elegant press conference. There we sat, surrounded by the kingly, fossilized dinosaur giants of eons past. Up to the stage stepped Ellen Futter, the renowned museum president; she began a short speech that was perfectly written. Dr. Futter spoke of bioluminescence and fireflies in a way that reminded of the beginning of Capote’s A Tree of Night. Her concise beginning paragraphs were almost literary in tone. Like the opening of the eponymous story in Capote’s short tome, I could immediately see what she was talking about as if a movie were playing before me frame by frame.

Michael Novecek, the museum’s provost of science, was equally articulate as he spoke of bioluminescence in history, dating as far back as Aristotle. Aristotle named 180 species, including a bioluminescent organism as early as 350 B.C. I often enjoy speeches by our finest videogame developers. At that moment, though, I wished their speeches had the rich context and historical perspective of Futter’s and Novacek’s short, sweet remarks.

Journalists then moved to the exhibit itself. As if in a science-laded haunted forest, pitch black darkness was illuminated by a giant bioluminescent mushroom model. A few crooked steps later and there was a cave you could step inside of. There, the glowworms from the Waitomo Cave in New Zealand held court. They lure prey from what look to be long, lighted fishing lines. There was an homage to the dinoflagellettes from the lagoons in Vieques, Puerto Rico. When you go in the water and move into them, they light up. At the exhibition, you could make a dinoflagellettes follow you and light up as you walked through virtual water. Haunting music from an Emmy award winning composer filled the room. A short movie featuring a deep ocean Loosejaw Dragonfish looped over and over again. IPads were placed at many of the kiosks, adding interactivity and knowledge to the mix.

It reminded me that videogame level designers have been adding bioluminescent themes to their games for a very long time. I’ve certainly seen bioluminescence in Halo and Rayman games. Most recently, the new Xenoblade Chronicles features an area called Satorl Marsh, which is full of the kind of naturally glowing beauty which makes the museum’s show so compellingly resonant.

Every kind of media was represented at the museum – except for one.

The thoughtful exhibit could have benefited from a small game that showed bioluminescence in action. Something casual along the lines of one or two levels that mimicked Angry Birds – but with a bioluminescence theme – would have gone a long way to immerse the exhibit-goer in the sheer beauty of the phenomenon. Or the museum could have designed something like FlOw with a Loosejaw trying to attract and eat a variety of bioluminescent shrimps. What I’m saying is that a few levels that riffed on any the important, popular casual games of the last few years wouldn’t have been expensive to make. And they would have been as memorable – or perhaps more memorable – as any of the awe-inspiring displays in Creatures of Light.

-Harold Goldberg

Posted in The Moment, Transmedia | Tagged american museum of natural history, angry birds, creatures of light, flow, Harold Goldberg, new york videogame critics circle | Leave a Comment »

Adam Rosenberg: Is Free To Play The New Cool?

March 29, 2012 by nygcc

A funny thing happened at GDC this year. I noticed it before even touching down inSan Francisco. As I booked my week-long gauntlet of previews and interviews, a trend emerged: many of the games I was carving out time to check out at were of the free-to-play variety.

“Nuts to that,” I thought at the time. “I’ll make that coverage as short and sweet as possible so I can concentrate on the good stuff.” That’s the funny thing, though. In my final analysis of GDC 2012, I realized that I spent more time covering and getting excited about the free-to-play content I was seeing about than anything else.

In many people’s minds right now, free-to-play is FarmVille or free-to-download “Lite” versions of popular games. It’s fueled by micro-transactions and it’s often ad-supported. These things tend to leave “serious” gamers with a negative impression.

The thing is, developers get that. Or they’re starting to.

Sure, micro-transactions continue to be central to making the concept of free-to-play work as a business. But the people who make these games are starting to understand the nuances of what does and doesn’t fly with an audience. A lot of them already recognize that players don’t want a “pay-to-win” framework where someone can get an in-game advantage simply for having more money.

Ironclad Games is taking an extreme approach with Sins of a Dark Age. By all appearances, this is a current-gen-quality multiplayer real time strategy hybrid. It works sort of like League of Legends on one level, with each player on a team taking command of a single hero unit that can be leveled and geared up over the course of a given match. Each team is also overseen by a commander, who is responsible for big picture resource/troop management and strategic planning.

There are multiple heroes and commanders in Dark Age, and you’ll be able to buy them using earned in-game credits. The thing is, you won’t be able to buy these credits with cash money; you can only get them for playing the game. The only thing in Dark Age that you can actually spend money on is purely cosmetic; Ironclad will be selling a variety of skins for each character. The idea is simple: create an environment that players want to keep coming back to, and they’ll spend money on these cosmetic virtual goods to distinguish themselves from the masses.

Sony Online Entertainment’s PlanetSide 2 takes a wholly different approach. It’s an elaborate PC-only multiplayer shooter that pits three wholly unique factions against one another in objective-based battles. Imagine the class-oriented scope of a Battlefield match, except this is spread across an entire continent, complete with its own weather regions and controllable resources.

Money spent in Planetside 2 can cut down on a player’s time investment as far as unlocking new content goes. But the weapons, vehicles, upgrades and gear that you’ll use have all been designed to support different roles on the field of battle. You can’t spend money on some uber-powerful shotgun that would require others to put in 100+ hours of play to unlock. There’s a cost/benefit ratio attached to any store item and it isn’t purely cosmetic.

Piranha Games is taking a similar approach with Mechwarrior Online, a free-to-play PC-only mech-based shooter. You can earn gear for your mech or purchase it using real dollars. But all of it qualifies as what Piranha calls “sidegrades.” For example, you might prefer rapid-fire, low damage rockets for short-range engagements over long-range, high-damage ones. Business models like these cleverly step around the concept of “pay-to-win” by offering gear that isn’t better or worse than anything else. It’s just different.

Will new approaches like these pay off in the long run? Really though, the content speaks for itself. Planetside 2 isn’t just similar to Battlefield in the sense that it offers multi-role first person shooter combat. It also delivers current-gen visuals that, on higher settings, easily match and beat plenty of console titles. Mechwarrior is powered by CryEngine 3, and it certainly looks the part. Dark Age isn’t as visually complex as the shooters, but even that packs plenty of visual punch when you zoom the camera in for closeups.

The good news is that these examples are just scratching the surface. Auto Club Revolution from Eutechnyx looks and feels like a F2P take on Forza Motorsport, bringing some elaborate community features into a car culture-focused racing game. CCP Games goes even further, with the PlayStation 3-exclusive Dust 514 hooking directly into the single-shard MMO universe of EVE Online. Even Crytek is jumping into the F2P arena, with the CryEngine 3-powered multiplayer shooter, Warface.

These are interesting times for gamers. Free-to-play is no longer a facet of the business that applies only to the so-called “casual” market. There are games coming soon that the serious gamer audience will want to play and, more importantly, want to keep playing.

I’m not suggesting that full-priced retail releases are going anywhere anytime soon, but the creators of those experiences really ought to pause and consider the implications of competitors offering similarly high-quality games at no cost. Putting brand/franchise loyalty aside, what are you really getting out of a $60 game that you can’t get out a free game in the same genre? If GDC’s parade of top-shelf free to play titles is any indication, that’s a question we’ll be considering quite a bit more in the coming year.

-Adam Rosenberg

Adam Rosenberg, an avid member of the Circle, writes for G4TV.com and many other outlets. Right now, he’s on a cross country trip with his father. And he’s likely playing games on the trip as well.

Posted in The Moment, Underrated | Tagged adam rosenberg, free to play, mechwarrior online, new york videogame critics circle, planetside 2, Videogames | Leave a Comment »

Music to My Ears? On Warren Spector’s Epic Mickey 2

March 27, 2012 by nygcc

I am walking along one of two creeks that cut through the city of Austin, Texas. The grackle birds are cawing loudly, proudly singing. It is early morning, and some of the homeless people who live along the trail are sleeping or just rising. In the water, which has risen from a heavy rain, is a paperback book. I bend over to fish it out of the six inches of muddy creek water. It is a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, the self help book by evangelist Rick Warren.

Seeing the book makes me think about Warren Spector, the lauded game maker whose new offering I am in Austin to see. Spector is an evangelist for Mickey Mouse, particularly his Epic Mickey videogame franchise. It’s well known among gamers that this obsessive Disney fan has a separate house devoted to Disney memorabilia of all stripes. He loves Disney so much that Spector took a group of game journalists on a tour of Disneyland a couple of years ago. (I did not attend, but I hear it was both engaging and inspiring.)

There was much hope for the first Epic Mickey game, which appeared on the Wii console in 2010. Spector’s team had gone the extra mile with research and his enthusiasm for all things Disney, Mickey and Oswald was evident during interviews. He just seemed so happy to be making the game. That, too, was inspiring. Passion about just about any kind of art form is infectious. You can see it in people’s eyes; they seem uber-alive when they speak.

When Epic Mickey was released, however, the wound it had was a severe one: the so-called camera, the way you see the world Spector and his team led you to, was off – badly, so much so you’d get stuck behind something. Or you’d get downright dizzy.

It was not a failure for Spector. But it was indeed a setback, a mark on the career of a beloved game maker. Could Spector come back from some very negative press?

Flash forward to March, 2012. In Austin at an event at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in the Spirit Theater, the lights went down in an auditorium that is most often used to display a multimedia history documentary. During a trailer for Epic Mickey 2: The Power of 2, which includes a playable Oswald The Rabbit, the seats actually shook during an onscreen earthquake. The gathered members of the gaming media saw a rare cartoon from 1928 featuring Oswald as a hobo on a train, one that featured a darker, daring Disney who was less concerned with morality and more concerned with hilarity at any cost. It was said that only a dozen people had seen the newly unearthed animation. As more of the game was unveiled, Spector made it clear that 700 people worked on Epic Mickey 2, and the first issue they dealt with was fixing the camera. In fact, he said there were 1,000 improvements to the camera.

When I played the Wii game, it was evident that the game makers were still perfecting the camera. There were still issues, but the game played better than its predecessor. When I played the PlayStation 3 version, there was far less of a challenge with the camera. However, the game crashed toward the end of my 15 minutes of play. (This happens a fair amount of the time when an unfinished game is demoed.) Epic Mickey 2 won’t be released until the Thanksgiving holiday period, so there is nearly seven months for the developers to make the way you play the game closer to perfection.

What really resonated was the addition of songs to the unplayable scenes in the game. In Epic Mickey 2, there’s no rhythm game to play in these song-rife scenes. But the whole game certainly will be enhanced by these musical numbers.

Spector called Epic Mickey 2 the first videogame musical. Certainly there have been songs in games before this. You can even consider Parappa The Rapper a kind of musical, for instance. What Spector probably meant is that there may never have been original songs of this quality in a musical game, songs that really move the story along, songs that cause earworms by sheer virtue of catchy melodies, songs that warm the heart, songs that are as memorable as those included in a great Disney film.

-Harold Goldberg

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Our Trade: When A Publisher Tries To Scam You

March 13, 2012 by nygcc

Last year at the Game Developer’s Conference, I bumped into one of the best known daily games reporters in the business. Like me, he is also an author. He knew I had a book that was about to hit, and he kindly suggested that I get in touch with a French publishing representative called Jean-Marc Demoly. The writer mentioned that Demoly would be publishing one of his books and that Demoly was looking for compelling tomes about videogames that were first published in the United States. The writer looked happy about the prospects, and had good things to say about the publishing professional he had recently met.

After an introduction via email, I got in touch Jean-Marc, and I suggested that he move quickly. After an excerpt appeared in Vanity Fair online, there was a small buzz surrounding All Your Base Are Belong to Us. In fact, another French publisher had made an offer for French rights. Jean-Marc, however, offered substantially more money. But the other company had a track record of publishing literary books and even had worked with my friend, Nick Tosches.

After reading the book, Jean-Marc seemed the most enthusiastic. To my agents, I said, “Let’s go with the house that knows videogames best.” In other words, “Let’s go with Jean-Marc.” My agent was wary because he’d never heard of MCES Publishing. He suggested that we add a line to the contract that stipulated all money be paid upfront. I agreed since I had never heard of the house, either.

Once Jean-Marc received the contract, his emails to me became less frequent, and soon, non-existent. Then, he wouldn’t respond to my notes, either. Via Facebook, I tried to contact the publisher himself. In a short note, he wrote that he wasn’t involved in the company any longer. And he said he didn’t know where Jean-Marc was.

It was completely frustrating, not only because I’d been scammed, but because this happened in the book industry. One of the things I consider when I think about book publishing as compared to print journalism and online journalism is that the people involved in books have often been more collegial, perhaps because there’s more at stake. A book could and should have a long tail. It should sell for years, not for just one month, one day or one hour.

What I didn’t know is that Jean-Marc did the same thing to my well-known writer friend.

Jean-Marc made him an offer.

And then he disappeared.

Who knows how many other authors have been fooled by this man?

Thankfully, my agents were savvy enough to curry interest again with the respected French publisher. They made a deal which, I’m told, should bring me royalties for years to come.

So what is the takeaway here? If even seasoned journalists can be fooled by a gregarious charlatan, how do you protect yourself when your tome is offered for sale around the world? The only thing to say here is to forget charm and enthusiasm when it comes from an unproven entity. Listen to reasoned arguments from your agents. And stick with the company with the proven track record.

-Harold Goldberg

Posted in Crap Happens, Industry Idiots, Our Trade | Tagged all your base are belong to us, books, Harold Goldberg, new york videogame critics circle, publishing, Videogames | Leave a Comment »

Is Uncharted: Golden Abyss the Vita’s One Golden Game?

February 23, 2012 by nygcc

By Max Neopikhanov

Just before Indiana Jones cuts a suspended rope bridge in the Temple of Doom, sending his screaming adversaries into the maw of a great river, Short Round, his tenacious little sidekick, delivers one of more memorable lines in the film: “He’s no nuts, he’s crazy!”

Uncharted’s treasure hunter protagonist Nathan Drake is certainly no Indiana Jones, despite the many parallels that can be drawn between the two series. But he’s earned the reputation of being a little nuts due to the many seemingly impossible stunts he’s pulled off in the Uncharted trilogy. By comparison, Drake’s personality is rather tame and undeveloped in Uncharted: Golden Abyss, the newest installment in the series.

Fortunately, the quality of the game’s individual parts makes up for the some lack of originality in plot and characterization. Golden Abyss may not have the explosive, cinematic production values of the PS3 Uncharted games – themselves influenced by films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard and the old penny dreadful books.

Yet it has its compelling moments.

Golden Abyss chronicles one of Nathan Drake’s explosive adventures prior to the main trilogy. The young Drake – voiced again by Nolan North – is recruited by a treasure hunter called Dante. According to Drake, he’s “a friend from the old days” who’ll help find unknown wealth somewhere inCentral America. Within an hour of play, Drake is introduced to Dante’s partner Marisa Chase, and they soon discover clues to a 400 year-old massacre of those unfortunates involved in a Spanish expedition.

As the mystery unfolds, Dante is revealed to be somewhat of a psychopath and the dichotomy between his personality and Drake’s brings their friendship into question. One flaw in the characterization is easily noticeable – Drake constantly derides Dante’s character yet follows him heedlessly, stealing treasure at every possible opportunity. It’s an astounding flaw.

The absence of veteran Uncharted writer Amy Hennig may be noticeable to long time fans of the series, but the Golden Abyss’ sarcastic, cliché dialogue is definitely more tolerable on a five-inch screen and in bite-sized increments than it would be on the PS3 in your living room. To enhance the extremely linear story which includes 34 chapters and a prologue, the developers included a plethora of treasures to collect and photographs to take. It takes a really sharp eye to get all of them and many give insight into both the overlapping historical narrative and the motivations behind some of the characters.

Though the writing may leave you wanting, Golden Abyss’ visual presentation looks nearly as good as any console version of Uncharted. Right away, you notice the beautifully rendered levels as Drake traverses jagged cliffs and swings on lush vines as soldiers and mercenaries try to gun him down. A.I. is fairly – but not completely – adept at reacting to Drake’s movements. The somewhat frantic enemies work in tandem to flush him out with grenades, sniper rifles, and shot gun rush tactics. Like its console brethren, Golden Abyss features third person over-the-shoulder gunplay along with cover mechanics.

One puzzling decision by the developer is this: the player has to use the touch screen to navigate through menus with no given option of using the buttons. One particularly ingenious puzzle, which required that one of the Vita’s cameras be held up against a strong light source to be solved, completely stopped my play session while I traveled on my daily commute on a subway train. For the first time in all my years of gaming, I could not physically solve a video game puzzle because I was unwilling to stand up and hold my Vita against the fluorescent light in a train packed full of people.

In what admittedly may be an isolated incident, I realized that developers of handheld games need to incorporate gameplay and control mechanics that one shouldn’t be embarrassed to perform in public.

After nearly 14 hours of generally engaging platforming and gun-play, the credits rolled. My disappointment at the predictable ending faded as I powered off my system and stepped off the train at my stop. I think I’ll play it again tomorrow and get the all the secrets and trophies I missed.

Max Neopikhanov is a journalist and gamer who lives in New York City. This is Max Neopikhanov’s first story for the Circle. More of Neopikhanov’s work can be found at http://hightechmonster.com . The New York Videogame Critics Circle is committed to giving promising writers a platform for their views. Send us a note with your ideas.