The Pensive Gamer

Posted 01/08/2009 @ 10:30:00 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Community Games , Games , Media , Xbox 360

Christmas was a bit crazier this year. Normally we travel to the Great White North (aka Canada), but this year we stayed in Palo Alto and had my wife’s family stay with us. This meant having a lot more people in the house than bedrooms. But I loved it. I love having people over and it was great to see the kids playing together.

I still find it amazing (and fantastic) how consoles are playing such a predominate role in entertaining a holiday crowd. Last year we played a ton of Guitar Hero. This year it was Scene It?: Best of Show. In fact, Scene It? was the nightly pre-bed ritual for four us.

The surprising Holiday habit, however, belonged to my sister-in-law’s husband. He isn’t a hard-core gamer but he does enjoy racing and sandbox games. So what was surprising? He was completely addicted to CarneyVale Showtime, the 400 MS Points Community Game. 

Rob doesn’t care about Indie developers or small versus large games. He cares about being entertained, and CarneyVale was something that very clearly kept him entertained. In fact, while we nearly finished the game during his visit he purchased it when he got home.

While most of the family left prior to the New Year, my father-in-law remained and has helped us with the move to the Seattle area. He isn’t a gamer (and no goading will change that) but the 360 did become a nightly video rental machine.

As for me, I didn’t have a lot of time to game over the Holidays but I did manage to play a few other Community Games and finish Gears of War 2. I also received a couple games as presents; first on my list to play is Fallout 3 … once I have at least 60 to 80 hours available.

So that’s how my consoles were used this past Holiday. I hope everyone had some restful time-off and have had a great start to the new year.

Posted 12/04/2008 @ 12:40:10 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Community Games , Games , Indie , Xbox 360 , XNA

In recent years I haven’t played much in the way of Indie games other than what is on Xbox Live Arcade. I’m essentially a console gamer yet a large portion of Indie games are Windows applications.

I’ve stayed away from running/installing games on a PC because I’ve had issues:

• Dealing with hardware/drivers that caused problems in games
• Trusting .EXE’s found on the ‘Net

So now that Xbox 360 Community Games are available to the public I’ve found myself once again revisiting the Indie scene.

I’ve mentioned my fondness for Blow, Bloc and Colosseum, but there are plenty of other great titles including Weapon of Choice, Biology Battle and Word Soup. Microsoft is also continually expanding the countries that are able to submit into the Community Games. As they do, many additional games, including those that were part of the Dream Build Play and Imagine Cup competitions, should be coming our way.

On top of that there are plenty of developers making games using XNA on Windows. I would love to see these on the 360. Have a look at the two examples below and then contact the developers and see if you can help me convince them to get the games onto Community Games.

Ultimately what I’m saying is that I’m super excited to see that Indie Game developers can tout their wares from a venue that is not only dedicated to their cause but also trustworthy for those wishing to play the games.

And if you can, support these developers with not only words of encouragement but the purchase of their games.

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Blueberry Garden

Game Details: http://eriksvedang.wordpress.com/blueberrygarden/
Developer: Erik Svedäng

 

Carrion Re-animating

Game Details: http://www.zombie-cow.com/?page_id=375
Developer: Zombie Cow Studios and Lemmy&Binky

Posted 12/01/2008 @ 04:00:00 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Community Games , Games , Xbox 360 , XNA

So the American Thanksgiving weekend has come and past. It was an enjoyable time where thirteen people consumed too much food, had too much merriment and are now well positioned, after some rest, to dive deep into the Holiday season.

Of course, for a group consisting of many video game enthusiasts, consoles played an active role entertaining the crowd. When the boys separated from the girls, gaming included Aegis Wing and the investigation of Community Games such as Blow, Bloc and Colosseum  (all of which I highly recommend). Unfortunately, Paulo’s motion sickness kept games like Gears of War 2 out of the equation. When the boys mixed with the girls gaming included Lips, Scene It! Box Office Smash, and a non-video game called Banagrams.

One of the weekend highlights was the mid-Friday visit to downtown Palo Alto’s audio-visual store. While the store was fairly busy, no one was playing the Rock Band setup. We fixed that. My pre-school daughter wailed on drums, Paulo tore through guitar and I screeched out vocals. We attracted a crowd, gained an additional participant and eventually even store employees swapped in to entertain the crowd.

Oh, and I finally understand why people want a browser on their consoles. There was a desire to social-browse, particularly through YouTube. Laptop screens and iPod Touchs are not ideal for group settings and sat in sharp contrast to the ease of watching The Guild through the 360.

I want to thank Dan, linda, Paulo, Gill, Pete, Todd and the Corbett crew for coming by. Without you it would have been just an ordinary, albeit turkey-saturated, long weekend.

Posted 10/30/2008 @ 07:01:39 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Games , Xbox 360 , XNA

Tonight I was in San Francisco at the XNA Community Games Party. I had a great time meeting various folks including games developers and designers, the media, and the team who made XNA Game Studio happen within Microsoft.

One of the people I spoke with was Nathan Fouts, the developer behind Dream Build Play 2008 3rd place winner Weapon of Choice. Nathan used to work for Insomniac Games. You can see why he was a good fit within Insomniac when you see the weapon designs in his XNA game. While I jokingly called him a defector (from Sony), it was clear he was impressed with what Microsoft built, and happy that XNA gave him an easy way to start his own gaming company.

While I didn't get to play all of the games, my two favourites were CarnyVale: Showtime and Battle Tennis. I wasn't surprised to hear these were the 1st and 2nd place winners respectively in Dream Build Play 2008. In fact CarnyVale was a game I saw XNA team members having trouble putting down.

What is abundantly clear is XNA GS is an amazing tool that allows developers to build games that rival and surpass games on Xbox Live Arcade. Congratulations and thank you to the XNA team for bringing this to the public and congratulations to the game developers for building some amazing games. November 19th (the release date of the new Xbox 360 User Interface and XNA Community Games) cannot come soon enough.

Posted 10/25/2008 @ 06:00:00 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Food and Drink , Games , Music , Xbox 360

So looks like Thanksgiving is going to be great this year. I now have confirmation that we will have two couples from Toronto, a family of four from San Jose and a friend from Seattle joining us; that makes 12 total.

I must say, I prefer American Thanksgiving to Canadian Thanksgiving. Maybe it is because it starts a four day weekend so more people are able to get together, or maybe it is because it starts the Holiday season (Canadian Thanksgiving is in early October) ... either way, I love American Thanksgiving. We have been doing these Thanksgiving get togethers for 8 years and I think this will be the largest one.

With that many people and no room for Rock Band or Guitar Hero, I decided to pre-order Lips. It is a singing and quasi-dancing game (has motion sensitive microphones) that allows you to use your own music. The game is actually for my daughter (who loves to sing and dance) and I. I just decided to use a people-filled, party-game wanting Thanksgiving as a good excuse to get the game before Christmas.

I want to thank Dan and linda, and Paulo and Gill for taking the time-off to fly down and of course Pete for flying down too. Better get those singing voices and performance moves in place before heading here.

Posted 03/07/2007 @ 10:30:52 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Games , News Picks , PlayStation 3

Sony's Home

While interesting, I'm a little under whelmed by Sony's Home; this is the problem when leaks occur. I had a preconceived notion of what it could be and unfortunately the real thing didn't live up to those expectations. Next week I'll post a follow-up with what I was hoping for.

What I liked:

• Driving a sense of community in a much more interactive fashion than other platforms.
• Having a private space that I can customize and have others join.
• Social based mini-games.

My questions:

• How much can I truly customize and own? Can I create public or private spaces beyond one house and is money required to do so?
• Is any form of user based scripting accessible?
• Phil mentioned live streaming HD content, but how realistic is that? What are the bandwidth requirements? This seems unfeasible, particular when we are talking 1080p and/or when there are multiple video streams in a single space.
• Can I allow people to enter my private places when I'm not online?
• Are the trophies/achievements only viewable while in Home or can I easily see at least something while in the XMB dashboard.
• Is the Home network international? Can I visit user or public spaces that were designed for or located in different geographic regions?
• Phil mentioned clans. Is there going to be a clan system coming or will I need to individually invite a large group of people?

What I disliked:

• The graphics seemed uninspired particularly after seeing LittleBigPlanet.
• Spaces didn't really appear to be connected; a sense of exploration is missing.
• Home is a separate application which means I'm fully disengaged from my gaming experience. It would be great to see more of a connection than unlocking items.
• It came off more as a means to advertise or make money via company shops, billboards, premium clothing/housing purchases, etc. I suppose I'm not shocked given today's audience of developers and publishers. Just seemed more like a big ad than a place I would want to hang-out.

There is no doubt there is huge potential here but I'm not sure this approach will help sell the PS3 beyond the hardcore gamer, particularly at the console's current price.

The Amazing LittleBigPlanet

This 'game' is absolutely stunning. For those who haven't seen it, I'm not going to use words. Just watch this:

This is an example of what Microsoft and Nintendo should be afraid of. Using flOw and LittleBigPlanet as examples, Sony is willing to take a more avant-garde approach to games.

As seen with Capcom's Clover Studio there is risk that this approach won't prove commercially successful. However, it is great investment; it will paint Sony as a company willing to engage creative people and companies.

I personally believe games like LittleBigPlanet are more likely to help sell the PS3 than Home.

Posted 02/04/2007 @ 10:00:00 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Flashbacks , Games

Between reading the speculation about The Hobbit's new movie director and EA putting White Council on hold I was reminded of the first Lord of the Rings/Hobbit game I ever played.

It was 1985, the same year I got my first computer. I found the game, The Hobbit, in a bookstore during an out-of-town trip with my parents. I had heard great things about the game so the few days I had to wait before we got back home were agonizing.

This is my first distinct memory of being disappointed by a video game; there were too many illogical ways to proceed, it hung my my computer and the graphics were a disappointing distraction. It would have been better as a pure text adventure. I stopped playing it within hours of starting.

To this day I have yet to be satisfied by a game based on J.R.R. Tolkein's works. Hard to believe that such rich material has not resulted in better games.