Ian Milham, art director on Dead Space 2, guides us through the process of creating one of the new abominations that Isaac will face in the follow-up to the 2008 horror hit. You’ll see the early designs, find out what didn’t work, and see how the process resulted in what players will eventually see in the game.

Remember that most of these designs are from the conceptualization process, and won’t be appearing in the finished product. Even the “final” version may change, given that there is plenty of time between now and the game’s ambiguous future release date.

“The original Dead Space did a lot of stuff great, but we also had to fall back on some game design standbys. Like kill doors – eliminate all the enemies and they open.

We’re trying to figure out ways to have players slow down and be a part of the world that are organic and logical and not artificial game design. This is an enemy that’s designed to do that. He’s called the Flytrap, and he’s basically half environmental hazard and half enemy. All they told us was that travels along the ceiling and dangles down – lures – to try to snare you. He’s not static – he is a live thing, and he has additional states. First, you’ve got to dismember his lure. That shocks him and gets him on the ground. Then he gets wild, kind of like a fish flopping on the ground, except he’s still dangerous. We’re still playing around with what that means.”

“One of the notions key to Dead Space is that the Necromorphs have an improvised terribleness to them. They’re people that have been broken and twisted into something else, but done so violently and improvisationally. The idea we have is almost like this infection has a plan about what it would like the thing to become, but can’t quite get the body there and makes due with what it is. Instead of teeth, it’ll have bone shards that have broken into teethy things, but they aren’t literally teeth. Instead of wings, it’s stuff that’s been bent backwards and stretched.

Some of the problems with the things early on were that they look too evolved. They look like monsters. We don’t want anything that looks like an evolved organism, because that just blows the whole purpose. Here, we’re starting to feel that a little bit more. The mouth isn’t really the mouth; the spine has been split. There’s something interesting there.”

“There’s a certain pathos here, without being so literal. We loved this sketch. We went from there, and started doing a lot of details on him. Remember this sketch for later; somewhere along the road to final, he turned into a goofy monster, and then we went back to this sketch and brought it forward.”

After over four years in development, including a widely-publicized break with former publisher Sierra-cum-Activision, the game was released by Electronic Arts on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this October.

These excerpts from the December 2009 issue of Game Developerreveal various “What Went Right” and “What Went Wrong” highlights from throughout the creation of the game, revealing how the company used effective management to overcome publishing woes and a “content explosion.”

Scrum

For Brutal Legend, Double Fine adopted agile development, hoping to eradicate the rampant crunching that defined Psychonauts‘ development cycle — and it worked:

“Prior to starting work on Brutal Legend, the Double Fine team had spent the previous 5 years developing Psychonauts — the last two years of which consisted of a giant, grueling crunch wherein the company lost its initial publisher and nearly shut its doors before ultimately releasing the game.

“When the euphoria of having shipped our first title wore off, it was apparent to all of us that Double Fine did not develop games the way other studios did, and that a different system of product development needed to be put in place. The main cause of Psychonauts’ horrifying crunch was due to our continued development of the game features even after the levels were built. With each improvement to the game mechanics came a corresponding rework of all of the levels. Lather, rinse, repeat. Double Fine, and notably Tim, needed to play the game, live it, breathe it, let it steep over time, and iterate continuously on what makes the game fun and funny.

“After research into methodologies, we were drawn to the advantages of agile software development and decided to adopt Scrum. Within the first few months of Brutal Legend development, the team was practicing Scrum, and the initial payoffs were impressive. Scrum’s emphasis on features over systems, on rapid prototyping and iteration, on cross-disciplinary teams, on people over process, and on the creation of a potentially shippable piece of software every sprint/milestone made the game playable at a very early stage in development.

“By month one we had a renderer, terrain, and a playable character (Eddie Riggs), by month two Eddie could drive his hot rod (the Druid Plow) around the terrain, and by month three Eddie could run over endless numbers of headbangers with his Druid Plow around a terrain height field. Hilarity ensued.

“We applied Scrum not only to meta-game creation, but to micro-projects as well. At the very start of the development process, we had no idea how to make an RTS, and had no suitable engine with which to make one. We solved both problems by creating prototypes with an off-the-shelf PC engine and with which a number of our team members had some familiarity: Unreal 2.5.

“The design demands of Brutal Legend were such that trying to develop the game using an existing FPS engine would have proven difficult, but having the initial access to the flexibility of Unreal Script meant we could test some of our early RTS ideas right on our development PCs. This approach allowed our designers and gameplay programmers to be immensely productive right away, while the programming team went to work building our new engine. This very early glimpse at the design challenges we would face during development, and the opportunity to iterate on something quickly with Unreal Script, gave us invaluable direction into how to architect our new engine and critical insight into the mechanics that would come to define Brutal Legend.”

Content Avalanche

Content creation: the bane of HD-era video game development. Double Fine faced a particularly difficult content challenge, as the volume of content unexpectedly increased exponentially nearly overnight:

“Brutal Legend is not a small game. Fortunately, we thought we knew what we were facing and invested heavily in data/build infrastructure. What went horribly awry was that we both underestimated the total content push and, more importantly, didn’t anticipate the huge content spike at the very end of production.

“From the start of the game through the end of 2008, both our rate of data churn and data growth were fairly steady and corresponded roughly to increases in staffing and team productivity. This was expected and planned and supported by the technology. But then, in January 2009, everything exploded. All at once. After three years of development we had accumulated about 2.5 GB of optimized/packed game data. Less than four months later, we’d jumped to over 9 GB.

“The central cause of this was a very large increase in asset delivery from a number of teams simultaneously. For example, we went from 0 localized files to about 100,000 in a matter of weeks. We received the high resolution video assets for the Jack Black intro and all our main menus in one heap. We made a late decision to contract additional audio work, and new ambiences and sound effects were quickly added to the game. And so on.

“This simultaneous significant increase across a number of types of content put a massive burden on our entire infrastructure, in particular our build machine, Perforce server, and network backbone. To exacerbate matters, we started to see cascade effects—where a massive hit to one system (such as a check in of 10,000 .wav files) would bog down Perforce, causing a bottleneck in all of the dependent systems (like our build server and individual check ins) and these bottlenecks would then cause other bottlenecks.

“These large content dumps also put significant strain on our runtime systems. The per-line memory overhead in the voice system was not prepared to handle tens of thousands of lines, causing us to panic about our ability to even fit on a dual layer DVD. Across the board, these unexpected increases in content caused ripple effects throughout our IO, memory, and processing profile. And because the rate of increase was both high and unexpected, the engineers responsible for wrangling these systems were pulled from their assigned work and redirected to emergency firefighting.

“Moving forward, we will be much more cognizant about working with content creators to proactively estimate the total amount of data that they plan to create and to factor these numbers into our technical designs to ensure that we meet the final needs of the product. Additionally, we plan to invest more in scalable data infrastructure in the hopes that we can be better positioned to bring new capacity online quickly should it prove necessary. With those improvements and a little luck, hopefully content avalanche handling will be something we brag about in our future projects.”

Double Fine Gets Served

And, of course, Double Fine had to contend with the infamous three-way conflict between it, new publisher Electronic Arts, and former publisher Activision, which inherited Sierra’s publishing contract before letting the game go:

“In June 2009, Activision Entertainment Holdings, Inc. filed suit against Double Fine, claiming breach of contract and seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the release of the game by Electronic Arts on Rocktober 13. Less than 2 months later, the case settled out of court. I can’t talk about any of that in this article, or any article really. I bring up getting sued as something that went wrong because of the impact the between-publishers transition and subsequent lawsuit had on the development of Brutal Legend.

“Let’s go back a little bit. We had been working collaboratively and successfully with various groups at Vivendi for two years until Vivendi merged with Activision and we lost touch with both publishers while a lawsuit percolated. The merger announcement and subsequent diminution in publisher contact with Vivendi personnel, especially after such a previously harmonious relationship, caused internal unrest and morale dips among the team. Company meetings often included frustrating discussions about what little we knew about the current situation at our publisher, and what the various possible outcomes would mean for Double Fine.

“This demoralizing uncertainty lingered for months, during which time the leads continued to motivate the team to hit their scheduled milestones while watching our coffers run dry in the absence of any publisher payments. We learned Activision was not going to be publishing Brutal Legend through an official press announcement issued by Activision that listed the games they would be shipping, ours conspicuously absent. Again, the team was abuzz with anxiety—and the official hunt for a new publisher began, distracting Tim, myself, and various team leads during an already intense development period.

“Even after the game was re-signed with Electronic Arts, we enjoyed only a brief reprieve before the legal communications began among Double Fine and Activision and Electronic Arts. Most of the team was shielded from the drama that unfolded between December 2008 when Electronic Arts announced that they had picked up the game for publication and July 2009 when the lawsuit settled. But Double Fine’s leadership was not, and the distraction and stress took its toll on individuals and on our deliverables.

“The lawsuit was filed just as the game went Alpha, with a stipulation that it be heard prior to Gold Master being submitted—relegating Tim and myself and a cadre of team leaders to the unenviable job of information gathering, declaration writing, lawsuit reading, witness interviewing and all around non-game-making during the crunchiest, most critical time of development. The lawsuit took its toll on the team, on the company, on our product and on our optimism. Wrong, any way you slice it.”

Super Mario Bros. is the most popular game of all-time and as we already know — the first 7 castles that Mario or Luigi go through, the Princess is not there. Instead, we bump into an old friend saying, “Thank You Mario! But our Princes is in another castle!” Really? Is that the way this little bastard mushroom says thank you?

Thanks Bubba541

[source]

How Sony inadvertently helped a competitor and lost position in the videogame market.

Like dynasties rising and falling, videogame systems enjoy periods of ascendancy and popular support, only to be thrust aside by a new and conquering power. First came Magnavox Odyssey (in the 1970s), then Atari consoles, then Nintendo, which dominated the market for the better part of the 1980s. In the early 1990s, Nintendo’s Super NES and Sega Genesis battled each other for supremacy. Each found enough competitive room to lay the groundwork for the modern videogame console, which has become something like a dedicated personal computer.

It was in the mid-1990s that Sony dropped Playstation into the console market — a graphics powerhouse that featured games for adults as well as for kids. Playstation was a huge success, selling more than 100 million units. Its 2000 sequel, the Playstation 2, was an even bigger one.

For the system’s ambitious third iteration, though, Sony wanted an entirely new processing architecture. Most computer processing chips are built on the foundations of the chips that are already in use. Designing a new chip from the ground up is a costly and time-intensive process. So in 2001 Sony partnered with Toshiba and IBM to create the so-called Cell processor — a chip so powerful that it would redefine PC-scale power.

David Shippy, as it happens, was in charge of designing the brains of the Cell, the processing core. In “The Race for a New Game Machine,” he and his co-worker Mickie Phipps tell the story of the whole effort to build the Cell. They also describe how the project went off the rails, ending up with IBM engineers creating the processing chips for two rival videogame consoles and, along the way, delivering to Sony Corp. one of its greatest business failures.

When the companies entered into their partnership in 2001, Sony, Toshiba and IBM committed themselves to spending $400 million over five years to design the Cell, not counting the millions of dollars it would take to build two production facilities for making the chip itself. IBM provided the bulk of the manpower, with the design team headquartered at its Austin, Texas, offices. Sony and Toshiba sent teams of engineers to Austin to live and work with their partners in an effort to have the Cell ready for the Playstation 3′s target launch, Christmas 2005.

But a funny thing happened along the way: A new “partner” entered the picture. In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft’s rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM’s Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony.

All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony’s primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony’s R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBM employees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in the cubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors above the Cell design teams. Mr. Shippy says that he felt “contaminated” as he sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch out their architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlier work on Playstation.

The deal only got worse for Sony. Both designs were delivered on time to IBM’s manufacturing division, but there was a problem with the first chip run. Microsoft had had the foresight to order backup manufacturing capacity from a third party. Sony did not and had to wait another six weeks to get their first chips. So Microsoft actually got the chip that Sony helped design before Sony did. In the end, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 hit its target launch in November 2005, becoming its own success. Because of various delays, the Playstation 3 was pushed back a full year.

Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps view the delivery of the Cell processor and the derivative Xbox chip as victories for both companies. “Both Sony and Microsoft were extremely successful at achieving their goals,” they write. But this is true only in the narrowest sense. The new chips certainly set the standard for technical virtuosity. Yet the current generation of videogame console has been dominated not by Sony or Microsoft but by the Wii, Nintendo’s modest machine that relies on an older, cheaper and less powerful chip. With an input device that allows players physically to interact with games, the Wii has been yet another runaway success, selling almost as many consoles as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 combined.

In fact, the Playstation 3 now runs a distant third in sales. (And the trend is downward: On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. sales of the PS3 fell 19% last month from a year earlier, while sales doubled for the Wii console and rose 8% for the Xbox 360.”) For Sony, the Cell processor was such a debacle that two weeks after the Playstation 3 finally appeared in stores, the company fired Ken Kutaragi, the head of its gaming unit, who had championed the Cell and built the Playstation line. The lesson, lost on Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps, is that technical supremacy divorced from sound strategic vision is no virtue. It can even end up in disaster.

[source]

“The team at Ensemble has made invaluable contributions to the games industry with their Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games and with the highly anticipated release of Halo Wars,” the publisher said in a statement. “This decision does not reflect at all on Ensemble’s talent or the quality of Halo Wars–in fact, many people who have had a chance to test drive Halo Wars agree that it is on track to being a fantastic game.”

Though Microsoft will close the studio, Ensemble brass plan to soldier on. As part of today’s statement, Microsoft said that Ensemble’s “leadership team” will form a new development house, and has already entered into an agreement with the publisher to continue supporting Halo Wars post-launch, “as well as work on other projects with Microsoft Game Studios.”

Commenting on the reason for the closure, Microsoft said, “This was a fiscally rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth path. While the decision to dissolve Ensemble was not an easy one, Microsoft is working to place as many Ensemble employees who do not move to the newly formed studio into open positions within Microsoft as possible.”

It is rumored that this move by Microsoft Game Studios is a cleaning of house of sorts in preparation an upcoming purchase and/or exclusive arangement with a large game publisher.

A few years later, you got a slight bit more mature and grew a tad bit bigger. You got smarter and became able to do some pretty cool things. Zelda looked better, Mario could do more things, and Samus had more toys. Those were the good old days, some say the best. I have many good memories playing through those years, but changes were on the wind. A new media for games was on the horizon and you tried to join in. CDs were going to be the next big thing for games. They were cheaper, had more storage, and hell, people just thought they were cool. Too bad you made the wrong choice.

I still stuck by you…for a while. I didn’t care that you still used cartridges while the other systems started using CDs. You still had some great games. All the usual suspects were there, and some new ones too. I spent many, many hours playing Rogue Squadron, my favorite Star Wars game to date. Unfortunately, all was not well. At the time, I was starting a family and had a job that didn’t pay so well, and there in lies the rub. New games for you ended up costing nearly $70. I couldn’t believe it. Why the heck were you so expensive? I know things weren’t going well for you against your former partner, but did you really have to cost so damn much? Were you trying to alienate all your friends? Let me tell you, price gauging is not cool. After that things got worse.

I didn’t even recognize you the next time you hit the spotlight. You went from a cherished family friend to…a toy. That’s what I thought. Sure, Resident Evil looked pretty good, but a cube shape? With a handle? Let’s get one thing straight, you were not a portable system. The handle was just stupid. What really got me was the fact that you didn’t learn your lesson from the last time. Hello, remember the CD fiasco? Anyone? Why the miniature discs? That’s just like a racehorse on the track with a broken leg. You can get some mileage out of it, but it won’t go far. I an not ashamed to admit that I turned my back on you then. I thought you’d be done for sure.

Revolution. Now that was a cool name and it showed that you were going to try something new. I was interested, even though I’d sworn you off the last time. You had some big plans and ideas that really impressed me. But you let me down again. What did you choose instead? Wii. What the hell were you thinking? Underwhelming hardware with a stupid name. Looking back at it now, I’d say you were in it for the money. Go cheap with the hardware and take advantage of everyone with garbage software. Even with the occassional Mario, Zelda, or Metroid game you have still lost me. I know you are making money hand over fist these days, but let’s be honest. How long do you think this can possibly last? I can see it now, death by shovelware. With games like Gingerbread Man, who needs enemies?

Things aren’t over yet, I know you are only half way into your second year and there is still plenty of time to fix things. First, get quality back. Remember the Nintendo Seal of Quality? I took heart knowing that you actually looked at the games that developers were trying to get on your system. Sure, the occassional bad game made it through, but nothing like the old 2600 days. Nothing like an E.T. to be seen. Second, get some games that people like me would actually play. Wii Sports? No. Cooking Mama? Hell no. Ging…Stop right there. You see my point? Remember the old days. Strive for excellent, fun games. Don’t just do it because you can. I know Nintendo could slap the Wii name on a rock and sell millions of them, but it doesn’t mean they should.

Watch the entire event at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, CA.

Watch Nintendo’s entire press conference from E3 2008 and discover the newest products coming to the Wii and DS.

Kevin Pereira and Adam Sessler report all the highlights of Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference that occurred earlier today.

Joystiq reports that a “trusted source” relayed information on a new detailed “avatar” customization that  Microsoft is readying – they look very much like a cross between the already existing Nintendo Mii and PlayStation Home custom avatars.

Here is the text from the above image which was submitted by X3F reader who took an independent survey by  Intellisponse  for Microsoft-

“Avatars” are digital personas available this holiday for all Xbox LIVE connected members and this spring for all new console owners.  ”Avatars” will be used in place of the gamer picture you have today and give you a much more lifelike, animated, and fully customizable persona for you to reflect who you are online.

In case you missed something from the supposed Intellisponse survey leak (via NeoGAF), here’s what was scavenged.

• ‘Avatars’ to be Microsoft’s answer to Miis and Home
• First video of Silicon Knight’s Crucible: The Evil Within
• Forza 3 to require 2 DVDs, ‘over 400 cars and 100 tracks’
• Guitar Hero 4 priced, new touch-sensitive guitar
• ‘Lips’ is Xbox 360 karaoke with wireless mics, store, DIY tracks
• Powers & Titans – multiplayer superhero game for 360, PS3, PC
• Spider-Man vs. Marvel Zombies creeping to Wii, 360, PS3
• Tony Hawk to get board peripheral on 360, PS3; new Spider-Man to use Wii Fit board
• Ultimate Band coming to 360, PS3, works with Rock Band instruments; new trailer for Wii
• Xbox Live getting massively competitive social games – Jeopardy, Millionaire, etc.

We should expect an official announcement from Microsoft at E3 which begins in one month, July 15th- July 17th at the  Los Angeles Convention Center.

[source]

Around the internet there is a rumor floating around that Microsoft may purchase Sega.

Now this is only a rumor, with no official word from Microsoft this is only speculation at this point.

So it’s no surprise that rumours are once again circulating that Microsoft may be about to make a move for SEGA (now SEGA Sammy Corp). It’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard about such a move – the last mention of it being back in early 2004 when it was speculated upon on many industry sites such as The Register and Gamespot. When you think about it, such a move would make perfect sense.

Microsoft are expected to make a ‘shocking and desperate’ announcement at this years E3 – all we know is that it will be software related and nothing to do with hardware. It’s also no secret that Microsoft has had a very hard time in Japan with the 360 – SEGA might be the very company to help turn that around.

SEGA has a huge back catalogue of titles that could be relied upon to help strengthen the Redmond giant in the land of the rising sun. Titles like Sonic, Daytona, Virtua Fighter, Sega Rally and of course the Panzer Dragoon series all have a serious following over  there and having those exclusive to the Xbox platform would be a sure fire  boost to the Xbox over the next few years.  

SEGA Sammy shares have taken a battering over the last two years, dropping from a high of 2050,40yn down to 1020,00yn this week – that effectively halves the market value of the group making it an ideal takeover target.

]]> http://videogame2play.com/content/industry/company/sega/rumor-microsoft-to-purchase-sega//feed 0 http://videogame2play.com/content/industry/company/microsoft/xbla/wolf-of-the-battlefield-commando-3-super-street-fighter-ii-turbo-hd-remix-beta/ http://videogame2play.com/content/industry/company/microsoft/xbla/wolf-of-the-battlefield-commando-3-super-street-fighter-ii-turbo-hd-remix-beta/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:58:40 +0000 aDub http://videogame2play.com/?p=1447

If you were interested in getting your hands on Capcom’s  Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix  before it officially releases – you can!  Capcom is releasing a beta of the game, but there is a catch, you need to buy  Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 on Xbox LIVE Arcade, 800 Microsoft Points, which will grant you access to the beta for the much anticipated  Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

Sega recently signed developer PlatinumStudios to publish three upcoming titles, made up of many former Clover Studio (Okami,  God Hand, Viewtiful Joe)  designers, their first title will be on Nintendo Wii and is titled ‘Mad World’.  What makes this title so interesting is it’s violent gameplay and stylized black and white graphics.  Mad World is a game that should stand out from the majority of the Wii library, check out the following debut trailer and see for yourself.

Watch the first 10 minutes of gameplay:

‘Theatrical’ Trailer:

Woman plays MGS 4 while cat watches on: