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A conversation about: Kena Bridge of Spirits

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Kena Bridge of Spirits is a new PlayStation IP that has players control the titular character, Kena, a young spirit guide, as as she works to rid an evil corruption from a once-beautiful land & restore balance back to the world.

The game comes from first-time game developer Ember Lab, a creative studio more well-known for its animation and digital content work than video game making.

Thanks to Ember Lab, I got to play Kena Bridge of Spirits and I thought it was a good opportunity to have a chat about it with my gaming colleague Guy (Twitter: @nzBrowncoat), who also had a crack at it.

Here are our thoughts.

Guy: So, Kena Bridge of Spirits. First impressions in a nut shell?

Gerard: I like it. Right of the bat I just want to mention how damn gorgeous it is. It’s got a real Pixar-like visual style about it – and it’s not surprising, really, given that the developer Ember Lab have a background in animation. They’ve managed to really imbide emotion and feeling into her face, which is impressive. Game play wise, look, it’s not reinventing the wheel as it’s uses a lot of the tried-and-true platformer mechanics but a nice twist is the Rot, little spirit creatures that can Kena finds as she explores the world. They help Kena during combat and help solve puzzles around the world. What are your thoughts?

Guy: I am pleased I stuck with it. As after my first 30 minutess I was worried. It seemed very safe. Pretty…but safe but after I ticked over the hour mark I was totally sold. The combat is simple yet fun, the environments a stunning and the “Rots” scream plushy toy cute. Totally agree on Ember Labs, too. If this is their first ever game, man, what will they do next!

Gerard: Oh, yeah, they do. I love that cheeky grin when Kena discovers another Rot. I think safe is a good word there. It’s not trying anything too dramatic but it does things really competently and the game just has a feel good feeling about it. I liked how the backstory of the tormented spirits that Kena has to free is done through cinematic moments. They’re incredibly well done and I could quite happy watch a full length movie of Ember Labs’ animation work.

Guy: I think it takes too long to get to a complexity in both puzzles and combat, so that every encounter/environment is fun. For an eight hour game, I would say the first two hours could have been compacted down but I get that this game is catering for all ages, so younger gamers need a bit more of a slow burn into mechanics. What are your thoughts on the boss fight difficulty spikes?

Gerard: I agree that the combat is definitely a slow burn in that it introduces the enemy types gradually so that it doesn’t overwhelm the player too quickly but it might frustrate seasoned gamers. That said, some of those tougher enemies can really pack a wallop and I was floored a few times by some of the more aggressive ones. The boss fights up the ante, too, so you’ll definitely be challenged the further you progress. What did you think about the puzzle elements? I think it’s just the right mix of not “mind-numbingly easy but not pull-your-hair out hard”. I did like the mechanic where Kena could manipulate glowing rocks using exploding orbs, allowing her to create paths to higher points on the map.

Guy: I liked the puzzles. Chaining the energy to open doors, using the “Rots” to move items to pressure pads felt very Pikman. Sort of anyway LOL.

Gerard: Yeah, it is very Pikman-like. Nicely put.

Guy: I so enjoyed the aesthetic. Friendly, fun, inviting and just nice to be around. Its the same feeling I got playing Sack-Boys Big Adventure. So many games especially in this high-production space, are so dark and brutally violent. It was nice to play something that even for me (a 40yr old gamer) to exclaim aloud, “Ooooooh, man, that it cute right there.” LOL.

Gerard: Yeah, it totally is, right? It’s just got a fantastic feel good vibe about it and Kena is so wholesome and the Rot are amazingly cute. I smiled every time I found another one and it made that cheesy grin. Plus you can buy hats for them. Hats that look like mushrooms. Hats with horns on them. They look super cute. I can’t want to see what Ember Lab come up with next.

Guy: Haha, the hats!! I have two teenage kids who dragged themselves away from Reddit due to the beautiful graphics and ended up very vocal helping me choose and buy the hats for my “Rots”.

Gerard: Any gripes? I sometimes thought the jumping was a little floaty, and perhaps it’s because I’ve got used to having it in other games, but some kind of aim lock when Kena is using the bow and arrow – especially if you’re target shooting – would have been really helpful. I gave up on a few of the target shooting mini-games because it just proved too hard to line up the shots.

Guy: The aiming thing on the bow… the camera sensitivity is wrong. I almost doubled it from ‘default’ and it was waaaaay better. Then when I unlocked slow-mo the mini games were a breeze. Gripes? I would say the combat is not tuned enough for the punishment it dolls out. That window for ‘parry’ felt a tad inconsistent, so risking a missed parry was, too, well risky. So I tended to roll in bash-bash, and roll away. That would be my only gripe. What are your thoughts on the characters and voice work?

Gerard: Oh, yeah, the slow-mo. That works really nice in combat when you have a few foes or you want to got for a sensitive point on one of the larger enemies. In terms of voice work and characters, I thought it was well done but I would have loved to have learned more about her backstory. Overall I thought it was an amazing first effort from Ember Lab.

Guy: Overall very hard to find fault. Awesome price for the production level and level of polish on offer. Very “done-before” in terms of actual Nuts and Bolts game play mechanics and skill trees…like I said “safe”. But I loved it. It was a joy to play, the “Rots” are cute as hell and it was a perfect length for a weekend game. Nicely done Ember Labs.

Gerard: Looks like we both had a blast and highly recommend this to anyone after a nice chill-out PlayStation game (it’s on PS4 and PS5).

Kena Bridge of Spirits is out now for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

NZ video game development industry on the up and up

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Looks like things are on the up and up for the New Zealand video games development industry, with the sector earning $203.4 million dollars during the 2019 financial year – double the $99.9m earned only two years earlier in 2017.

The figures come from the annual NZ Game Developers Industry Survey conducted by independent researcher Tim Thorpe and is for the financial year ending 31 March 2019. It canvassed 39 interactive, gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality and edTech companies. The 10 largest studios earned 93% of the industry revenue, employed 77% of the workforce and are now 10 years old on average.

New Zealand Game Developers Association Chairperson Cassandra Gray says the results are the “fruits of the last generation of New Zealand interactive studios’ hard work”.

“Our opportunity is to support the next generation of creative tech companies to join them,” she says.

Fifty nine per cent of studios expect significant growth (greater than 10%) in the coming year. In the last year, eight New Zealand-made apps debuted the new Apple Arcade service, NinjaKiwi’s Bloons TD6 topped Apple’s paid games charts, Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile was one of the top ten played PC games in the world, RocketWerkz opened a second studio in Auckland, and Valleys Between by Little Lost Fox won the Best Feel Good Game at the International Mobile Gaming Awards.

The companies involved in the survey employ 683 creative and hi-tech workers, an increase of 133 new jobs this year. A Creative NZ and NZ On Air study, A Profile of Creative Professionals 2019, found that game development was one of the best paid creative occupations in the country and 31% of the roles in the industry are programmers, 29% are artists, 24% for game designers or producers, 12% for management or marketing.

Nearly half of the studios (47%) said that skills shortages were limiting the growth of their business – and this had intensified since last year. Gender diversity remains a concern for the sector, with 21% of employees identifying as female or non-binary, and attracting early stage development funding and attracting investment for expansion continue to be the biggest growth challenges to the industry.

The educational benefits of simulations and interactive training continues to be recognised, with 24% of New Zealand interactive studios having made games or apps for businesses clients or government departments and 20% have made games for educational institutions.

The surveyed developers make interactive media for a range of devices and global markets, with 63% making mobile apps, 53% producing PC games, 38% concentrating on console games, 22% making augmented reality apps and 19% making virtual reality games.

When I used to write full-time for a living (a few years ago now), I had a wee bit to do with several NZ game developers and was impressed with what I saw, especially from studios like Flightless, based in Mt Maunganui (RTS game Element, Doomsday Vault & Bee Leader) and Sidhe (now called Pik Pok),  and I had a tour of the Grinding Gears studio a few years back. Here’s to a strong future to all Kiwi game developers.

Edifier G4 gaming headset review: You can hear a pin drop

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Sometimes, in the heat of battle, knowing where an opponent is can mean the difference between life and death. The difference between victory and defeat.

When you’re gaming and don’t want to upset your partner, a good set of gaming headphones can be worth their weight in loot crates/prize chests/gold/virtual currency, and give that extra advantage, letting you hearing approaching footprints from behind or that crucial moment when an enemy reloads a weapon. Let me introduce the Edifier G4 gaming headset.

The control box.

The retractable boom microphone.

The G4’s cable, at 2.5m in length and plugs in via USB (so, no, you can’t use these on your smartphone), was long enough to plug into my console in the entertainment unit and I could still sit on the couch and play Shadow of the Colossus & Monster Hunter World. The on-cable control box is a little bulky but doesn’t get in the way, which is good. The retractable boom mic cleverly disappears into the left ear cup, which means if you don’t need to use it, you don’t have to worry about smacking your face with it (it also has an illuminated LED at the tip, which is a small but nice touch).

The ear cups have plenty of foam to cushion your ears.

My review G4’s were bright green and black in colour, and the ear cups illuminated a brilliant green when they were turned on. The ear cups are big and roomy with a good amount of padding so should accommodate any size of ear and the exterior of the ear cup has a mesh grill, covering the 40mm neodymium driver. They look super smart.

While sleek, the black plastic is a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

Aimed at the budget gamer, The G4s are a mix of shiny and flat plastics and I noticed that the shiny plastic that made up the body of the headphones was something of a fingerprint magnet: Keep a soft cloth handy if smudges annoy you! The headset felt comfortable on my head and the ear cups cushioned my ears nicely.

There’s software that you can download to tweak sound settings but it seemed overly complicated, to be honest, so I didn’t rely on it much.

OK, so how did the G4s sound, though? It’s not bad. Not bad at all.

The G4’s have a built-in sound card virtual 7.1 channel audio and have really good high and mid range notes and even to my old man ears, the sound was great, with ambient noises and sounds popping thanks to the G4s.

Game soundtracks and ambient effects sounded clear and crisp, although I thought at times the G4 lacked a really deep, thumping bass but then, to confuse things, it depending on what game I was playing. In Shadow of the Colossus, for example, when a colossi was defeated and tumbled to the ground, the bass vibrated nicely as it hit the ground.

And the price? This is probably the really surprising thing about the G4s. You can pick them up in NZ for around $120 (I saw one site selling them for $109). That’s multiple dollars less than my much-loved Sol Republic bluetooth headphones that my children bought me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and my son reckons the G4’s delivered better sound, too. I think I agree with him.

For a budget priced gaming headset, I was impressed with Edifier’s G4s. They do the job, look the part, and, importantly if you’re budget conscious, they won’t break the bank.

Thimbleweed Park is the game I’ve been waiting years for

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Two years ago, I backed Ron Gilbert & Gary Winick’s Kickstarter fund the princely sum of $US20 for the point-and-click adventure game they wanted to make.

It was a no brainer for me, to be honest. I loved played the classic Lucasarts point-and-click games like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle. Games that both Gilbert and Winnick were involved it. Those readers that have been reading my blog for a while will know that I’ve already waxed lyrically about Grim Fandango and Full Throttle, games that I still own today on disc.

I paid the money, the game got funded and I sort of forgot about it and let Winick and Gilbert get on with it. There were updates during the two years from the duo about how things were going and late last week, an email arrived that lifted my heart: Thimbleweed Park was finished and ready to play. My heart jumped for joy.

“Thimbleweed Park has been set free. Thimbleweed Park has been released into the wild. Thimbleweed Park has been kicked out of the house, told to get a job,” the email opened. It was the news I’d been waiting for. It was time to be transported back to my gaming heydays …

My teenage son, who is 17, can’t understand why I like games like Thimbleweed Park and the whole point-and-click adventure series. I told him it’s because I just love games that make me think rather than just move from point A to B shooting everything that moves. He doesn’t get it but it’s not his fault: He’s a gamer of the 2000s, a decade when point-and-click adventure games are all but forgotten by most gamers apart from those my age probably.

Thimbleweed Park follows the conventions of the classic games that went before it: Solve  mysteries using the items you find in the game world, combining objects to complete tasks. In the game you eventually get to control five actors (FBI agents Reyes and Ray, wannabe video game programmer Delores, Ransome the Insult Clown, and Franklin Edmund, Delores’ father), swapping between them at the click of a button. It looks like a game from 1987, which it’s pixellated graphics and cheesy music, but I love it.

I’m about six and a half hours in so far and playing it on PC with mouse and keyboard (point-and-click adventure games don’t feel right to me using a controller) and none of the puzzles have stumped me greatly, although some will really make you think about what you have to combine to create the end product. I haven’t come across as anything as mind-bendingly hard as some of those in Monkey Island but there’s still time and some items that you’ll need are hard to find (particularly a chainsaw that I needed later in the game …)

With games like this, if you pay attention to what characters say and think logically, you’ll solve most puzzles easily enough. The story is engaging and the dialogue is snappy, and I haven’t come across any game-breaking bugs yet. If I had any criticism, it’s that I think at times the game mentions past adventure games a little too much. It kind of breaks the fourth wall a little too much for my liking at times.

I’ve got other games to play at the moment – Zelda Breath of the Wild (Nintendo Switch) and Mass Effect Andromeda (PlayStation 4) – but I’m gravitating to Thimbleweed Park right now. It’s the game I want to play until the end (unlike the other point-and-click adventure game I Kickstarted, Tim Schafer’s Broken Age: I gave up on that one after playing just the first part. I just didn’t like it that much, plus the development process was disjointed).

I’m enjoying the hell out of Thimbleweed Park and I’m glad I backed it. It’s taken me back to an age when games were clever and made you think and gameplay was more important that realistic graphics.

Thank you Ron Gilbert and Gary Winick. Thank you for making Thimbleweed Park. It’s been the best $US20 I’ve even spent.

 

 

Book review: The Art of Deus Ex Universe

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Adam Jensen concepts
Adam Jensen
The Art of Deus Ex Universe

The Art of Deus Ex Universe (Jonathan Jacques-Belletete and Martin Dubeau with Paul Davies. Titan books)

As a teenager, I loved sketching characters like Judge Dredd, Boba Fett and stormtroopers (not together in the  same scene, obviously). I particularly loved drawing Judge Dredd. I guess it was his hard-edge face with what seemed like a permanent scowl that was the attraction.

I always started with the helmet before I added in the respirator and the nose piece – and then it was pretty much just a solid chin with that scowl. Judge Dredd was such an interesting character to draw and it was only natural that my love of drawing pop culture characters (and studying art at high school)  would lead to me being intrigued by the design processes of video games.

I’m incredibly fascinated by how game makers start with a spark, an idea, and flesh it out into a full realised character as we see in a finished video game.

As someone who loves the design concepts and processes that go into video games, and a longtime fan of the Deus Ex series, The Art of Deus Ex is a fascinating 210-page book that delves deeply into the thought processes of the artists, designers and conceptual artists as to  how they settled on the final designs of characters and locations used in Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Deus Ex Human Revolution.

I bought the book from Amazon for about $NZ50 (including delivery) after playing through Deus Ex Mankind Divided, a game that had such a visually impressive art style that just had to have an art book that detailed the design process. I loved the game but I think I love the art book even more than the game.

The game opens with a section on Adam Jensen, the lead character in Mankind Divided and Human Revolution and a character that I actually liked despite many thinking he was a douchebag and it’s interesting that reaching the final visual look was a two-year process, says the book.

In it, Jacques-Belletete says Jensen had to represent “what it meant to have your body augmented way beyond its natural and biological capabilities”. The book shows how Jensen’s character evolved and changed over the design process, eventually settling on the cyberpunk look we see in the final game.

For gamers who want to see the process from ideas to finished project, a book like The Art of Deus Ex Universe is well worth the money. I just love seeing the sketches and concept art of the vision for what they want the game to look like. It’s fascinating seeing the transformations of characters from rough sketches to fleshed out as they look in-game.

The book covers everything from cybernetic implants and augmentations and characters like Frank Pritchard, Jaron Namir (from Human Revolution) and Elias Chikane to locations like Detroit, Prague, Sarif Industries and Hengsha. Fans of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided will be in heaven, as I was.

The Art of Deus Ex Universe is stunning from start to finish chokka block with highly detailled images – hopefully the images accompanying this post will do it justice – for gamers who love the process behind the games they play to pore over.

I’ve got several video game art books and I have to say that this one takes pride of place in my collection.

 

 

Shawn Ashmore interview: Bending time and having fun doing it

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Canadian actor Shawn Ashmore is a man playing with time.

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The digital Shawn Ashmore as Jack Joyce.

OK, Ashmore can’t actually manipulate time in real life but thanks to his starring role as Jack Joyce in the Xbox One game Quantum Break, he’s able to bend time to his will – and he couldn’t be happier about it.

The Canadian actor, who is probably more well-know for playing Iceman in the X-Men movies and appearing in TV show The Following, was brought into Quantum Break a fair way into its development cycle (a game play trailer from E3 2014 shows a different actor playing Joyce) and he said as soon as he heard that Remedy was making the game he jumped at the chance to be involved.

“I got a phone call from my agent who told me that Microsoft Game Studios was developing a new IP. When he pitched the story I thought ‘Wow, this is bold. I’m interested” but when he told me Remedy were making the game, I instantly said: “I’m in”. I felt that the narrative was well suited to my acting style.”

shawn-ashmore-1

The real Shawn Ashmore.

Ashmore said doing motion capture for his character in Quantum Break was a challenging but a “magical” experience but he said realised early on that Remedy were doing something special with the game. He divided his performance between motion capture work in Los Angeles with co-stars The Wire and Game of Thrones Aidan Gillen (who plays Quantum Break’s villain Paul Serene and The Wire’s Lance Reddick) and facial capture work at Remedy’s headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. He said Quantum Break was double the workload for working on a movie or TV show.

“The first few days were quite strange. I was outfitted with a head rig and I felt, at first, a little out of my element but I got used to it. Doing the mo-cap felt very pure, in a sense that you had more time to rehearse scenes, go over scripts. I felt that I was a little freer to work scenes than if shooting on a movie. It wasn’t a constant shoot: Because of the nature of the work, we’d shoot a week in LA doing mo-cap then a month later I’d be in Finland.”

The actor said the biggest challenge with the mo-cap was remaining completely still while capturing his performance. “It was hard, though, as Jack goes through things that are emotional and I had to go through all that emotion while remaining still.”

Ashmore says he loved that Remedy was taking a chance by making Quantum Break,  and that the developer was open to suggestions he had about how to portray Jack Joyce.

Quantum Break_REVIEWS_Screenshot 18“I’ve got a brother [twin brother Aaron Ashmore] so I kind of drew on my relationship with him in how I thought Jack would relate to Will [Jack’s brother, Will, is played by actor Dominic Monaghan]. I tried to bring a part of me into Jack.”

Since finishing the game, Ashmore said he was pleased with the end result. “I’m happy how it played out. It was exactly what I’d wanted.”

His digital likeness in Quantum Break has also had an unexpected effect on his wife, someone who doesn’t normally play video games.

“I played QB with my wife, who’s not a gamer, and I gave her the controller and she wouldn’t give it up. She was so into it. That was a good sign: That someone who wasn’t a hardcore gamer liked it, that the narrative could pull people in.

Ashmore said it was inevitable that a game like Quantum Break, which blurred the lines between video game and TV, was made. “People want to experience things like this. Remedy has taken the best narrative parts of a video game and combined it with the cinematic style of TV. It’s not the type of game that every developer will make, though.”

“I’ve been blown away by the game. I tell people that my inner 10-year-old is jumping up and down! Seeing my likeness in the game was a really emotional experience, especially for my wife, who told me ‘This is something we’re going to be able to show our kids when you’re 60’.”

Quantum Break is out now on Xbox One and PC

** Thanks Xbox’s awesome NZ PR man who, despite me emailing him after business hours on Monday requesting a possible interview with Ashmore if he had time in his schedule, found a time for me to chat to the X-men and Quantum Break star. Big thanks, Gavin!
***  Ashmore also told me that while his QB tour was his first trip to New Zealand he has ties to the Land of the Long White Cloud. “This is only my first visit but my parents lived and worked here before I was born. They still have friends here.”

My most loved games of 2015

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When I wrote for a metropolitan newspaper, I did the obligatory “Games of the Year” write-up, which culminated in my best pick as Game of the Year.

I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m not going to decide from the games I’ve played this year (which hasn’t been as many in past years) which one is the best of the lot. What I’m going to do is tell you which games were my highlight of the year, in no particular order.

Let’s start, shall we?

The cast of Until Dawn: They quite like what I've written about the game they star in, too.

The cast of Until Dawn: They quite like what I’ve written about the game they star in, too.

Until Dawn: Something of a surprise hit to everyone, which is even more surprising as I can’t recall it getting a lot of marketing love from PlayStaiton. It’s also a game that I didn’t actually play until after watching a YouTube walkthrough. Yep, that’s right: I played it after watching a video playthrough. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of horror games and Until Dawn is a horror game, through and through, so I wanted to see how scary it was going to be. It has jump scares but it’s almost like a pick-your-own adventure where you determine the path that the characters take then they do it. Yes, it’s cliche-ridden and holds your hand at times but it’s horror done right.

BatmanBatman Arkham Knight: Probably one of the only AA titles that I really, really enjoyed this year. I’ve always liked Rocksteady’s take on Batman and Arkham Knight was no different, even if the Batmobile might have been overused too much and there were too many of those damn tank battles (those who have played it will know what I mean). What I’ve always liked about Rocksteady’s Batman series is the grittiness and the ever presence darkness that Batman is all about. Arkham Knight might not be the best in the trilogy but it’s damn good. [I’m sure someone will exclaim “But you can’t say Arkham Knight was a good game because it was broken on PC!”. Actually, I can say it was a good game because a) I played it on PS4 and had no problems  and b) it’s my list and I can have whatever games on it I like.]

life-is-strange-episode-1-0016Life is Strange: Dontnod’s episodic coming of age story about Arcadia Bay teenager Max Caulfield (with a little bit of super powers thrown in) was a bit of a slow burner for me. I played the first episode months ago, and liked it, but it didn’t capture me right away. May it was the at times cringe-worthy dialogue, but I could see it had promise and Max’s ability to rewind time to change events held all sorts of interesting propositions. For some reason or another, I didn’t start playing the second episode until few weeks ago. I finished it a couple of nights ago and I’m interested again. It was if the writers stepped things up a notch at episode two and it’s not captured my attention. Hopefully, I’ll finish the other episodes before the end of the year.

screenshot0607Everybody’s Going to the Rapture: Yes, The Chinese Room’s latest game could be described as a walking simulator because that’s what you do most of the time but I loved it for the story that it told and the emotional narrative. Set in a quaint English village after an apocalyptic event, the player has to unravel and piece together what has happened to the villagers by tracing the paths left by, I guess, their spirits that are still around the village. The story telling and emotional voice acting is what gripped me from start to finish. I didn’t care that it was slow-paced and measured. It was quite nice not having to shoot anything, either.

rise-of-the-tomb-raider08Rise of the Tomb Raider: The latest game featuring long-time video game adventurer Lara Croft is perhaps one of the best as she once again tries to find a precious artifact that will destroy the world if it falls into the wrong hands. While being an Xbox One exclusive for the time being may harm the sales of the game, Rise of the Tomb Raider is better than Crystal Dynamic’s Tomb Raider reboot because, pure and simple, it features more tombs to explore, and that, for the most part, is why people started playing Tomb Raider games. Rise is a return to form for the series.

What are your favourites for the year?

NZGDA to establish startup programme to foster game development growth

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OK, I’m not usually one for just doing press releases verbatim but I thought I’d do it for one from the NZGDA (New Zealand Game Developers Association) as it looks like industry is doing extremely well in this little country of ours.

The  bottom line is 134 new high-tech creative jobs were created in the last financial year and the NZGDA is going to set up its own startup programme, the KiwiGameStarter, and is calling on the government’s screen visual effects schemes to be changed so internal game development production will come here.

You know what would be nice? If the Government recognised the strength of the game development industry here and pumped funding into it to make it even stronger?

Here’s the release accompanied by a nice graphic.

Jobs in NZ Games Industry Grow 30%

New Zealand’s video game studios created 134 new high-tech creative jobs in the last financial year, according to an independent survey by the New Zealand Game Developers Association.  The sector now employs 568 fulltime employees and earned $78.7m in FY2015, up 3% on the previous year.  82% of revenue came from digital exports.

The survey shows that established game studios continue to do well but the overall sector’s growth has slowed due to a lack of new businesses being established by either local startups or international investors.

In response, the NZ Game Developers Association is running its own startup programme, the KiwiGameStarter, and calling for government screen visual effects schemes to be modernised to attract international video game productions.

“We expect a good year ahead for the established games studios, but we’re concerned that our pipeline of up and coming studios has dried up,” says Game Developers Association Chairperson Stephen Knightly.

Employment of game programmers and artists grew significantly to 568 fulltime jobs as studios invested in new product development.  Recent New Zealand-made game launches include Outsmart’s Bloodgate, Ice Age Avalanche by Gameloft Auckland, Monsters Ate My Metropolis by Pikpok and Path of Exile’s The Awakening expansion.

“Tellingly, every local games business with more than 10 employees is at least six years old.  We haven’t seen another local success scale up in recent years,” says Knightly.

“Although we have a proven track record, skills and the ability to reach global markets digitally, the survey highlights a scarcity of startups on track to become the next generation of sustainable studios.  Since games are global and digital in nature, with a good prototype it is possible to attract crowdfunding, publishing deals or private investment. But a gap in investment at the early stage is preventing small independent developers from even getting that far.”

To address this, the Association and sponsors have created the KiwiGameStarter where one promising games business will receive funding, software, and business mentoring support worth over $25,000.  A second studio will also win $5,000 plus software.

The KiwiGameStarter competition aims to help early-stage games businesses develop prototypes ready for investment or crowdfunding. It is supported by Callaghan Innovation, ISP BigPipe, Microsoft, game development tool makers Autodesk and Unity 3D, Pursuit Public Relations and Hudson Gavin Martin lawyers.

Playable prototypes and business plans for the competition are due on 28 August.  Details are available on NZGDA.com.

Despite international interest, New Zealand is also missing out on international game visual effects productions because they are excluded from the relevant visual effects incentive.

The Postproduction, Digital and Visual Effects scheme offers a 20% rebate on visual effects productions completed in New Zealand.  The government recently announced a reduction in the qualifying expenditure threshold from $1 million to $500,000 to stimulate demand for post-production and smaller visual effects companies.

“Existing programmes could simply be modernised to include comparable games visual effects and generate a greater economic benefit for New Zealand.  Instead of chasing more but smaller visual effects projects, we could attract higher margin, multi-million dollar game projects.  Video game and film visual effects work are comparable and only one criteria needs to be revised to make games eligible,” said Knightly.

27 New Zealand video game developers responded to the survey which was independently conducted by Tim Thorpe Consulting. Figures are for the financial year ending 31 March 2015.

NZGDA

Let’s play Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture

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OK, so I thought I’d test the waters by doing a series of Let’s Plays of Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture, the game that I reviewed here last week.

I haven’t done a tonne of Let’s Plays before because, well, frankly, YouTube is swamped with them and it’s likely that my feeble effort will get overlooked in the masses of more professional looking efforts. It’s a harsh reality but a fact.

My son also thinks that Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture isn’t an ideal game for a Let’s Play video series because it doesn’t have enough action in it to keep the viewer engaged. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

I captured the footage using the PlayStation 4’s built-in game play capture feature (which is surprisingly easy) then edited it using Windows Movie Maker, which may not be the best choice but it seemed to work OK for a first effort, although the intro is lame and not very exciting. I’ll work on that if people want to see more of the videos.

So, without further ado, here is part one of my [second] playthrough of Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture. Comments would be appreciated on a) Whether you’d like to see more of the series, b) Whether you’re interested in Let’s Play videos on the site or not, and c) If you are interested, what other games would you like to see (provided I have them, of course).

As always, I appreciate your viewership/readership. Really, I do.

Xbox at Gamescom 2015

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Gamescom started this week in Germany, and early this morning (2am NZ time) Xbox had its press event, touting the “greatest games line-up” in the history of the brand. And it was pretty impressive, actually.

[As an aside, up until this year I always thought Gamescom was called Gamescon – short for Games Conference. Turns out I’ve been wrong all these years]

Here’s the full briefing if you missed ( it but probably the highlight for me was the gameplay footage of Remedy’s Quantum Break (although, do we really need well-known actors in our video games: can’t they just stick to movies?), a game that ups the ante on Remedy’s time-bending/freezing mechanic from previous games like Alan Wake and Max Payne.

I didn’t watch all of the press event – I was, ridiculously working until 3am this morning (yes, 3am) – but Xbox revealed some Crackdown 3 footage: 

Some Scalebound: 

Some Elite Dangerous (which looks very nic): 

Some Dark Souls III: 

Some Forza Motorsports 6 (driving in the rain, no less): 

Some Halo Wars 2: 

Some Worms: 

And … some of Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick’s Thimbleweed Park (a game I’m more than a little interested in because I backed it on Kickstarter so want to see where my money’s going): 

All in all, it looks like Xbox are putting games to the forefront of its focus (and not a Kinect game to be seen: I think Kinect is pretty much dead in the water). There were plenty of other games shown, like the new Lara Croft game from Crystal Dynamics (I’m not sure how I feel about that one)  but I’ve picked those that stood out for me.

PlayStation won’t be having a press event at Gamescom: I suspect it’s saving its ammunition for the Tokyo Games Show which is in October. It makes sense, too, Sony is a Japanese company, after all.

So what are your thoughts? Any gems in there that have you excited?