I researched some of the developments of Mirror's Edge and LIMBO and I have to say I'm very shocked with how similar they actually are, from reading my research on Mirror's Edge; DICE were told by one of the lead animators that the game would be a complete failure judging by his quotation repeated by the senior producer Owen O'Brien "It'll not work. You can't do it. It'll be crap."
Therefore Owen O'Brien wanted to prove wrong son they did it they finished and released the game and it struck out to be exactly what the producers aimed it to be and the core mechanic wasn't changed at all the developers stayed on track throughout the whole production.
Similarly LIMBO had the exact problem, Arnt Jenson the man who came up with the original concepts was working independently in 2004 and wanted the program the whole game himself
Sunday 27 February 2011
comparing Activision and Tale of Tales
These 2 companies are very different! To start with Activision are game publishers and Tale of tales are a independent game development company, because of me searching and not finding any games particularly developed games by Activision I'm going to stick by my opinion with this one until I'm proved wrong.
YET TO BE FINISHED!
YET TO BE FINISHED!
LIMBO-indie game production
Originally being in the conceptual stage in 2004, LIMBO also seemed to have the same negative problem of the game not being produce because it took a good 6 years for it to be released on Xbox marketplace arcade. Although I can see why from this game starting off being created by one man, Arnt Jenson.
Jenson being a concept artist at IO interactive and being dissatisfied with the company he decided to take his unique early concepts and go solo to make his idea possible.
LIMBO all started from a "mood image" of a "secret place." so to speak. Jenson generated his ideas from this and finished with similar visuals to the resulted backgrounds in the released product.
Being a independent he tried to program the game in visual basic in 2004 but soon came to notice he needed help to do so. Making a trailer as a means of attracting programmers, instead the project itself became more popular over the internet. This then led to Jenson meeting a man called Dino Patti and he aswell dissatisfied with his job, eventually leading to the creation of playdead studios. Patti helped for a few months with the programming, soon after he realized that the project was becoming to much for them so a business was made and this carried on developing as the game was in production.
Playdead never committed to major publishers, they wanted to retain the complete creative control for the project. This then went to Jenson and Patti-aka Playdead studios choosing to ignore advice given by outside investors and critics while the game was in development. Such as advice like multiplayer, changeable difficultly and long game length were given but Jenson and Patti stuck to there original idea because from their thoughts these additions would ruin the quality of Jenson's first visuals of the game.
Apparently Patti said how they axed 70% of content they had carried out due to it not fitting in with the circumstances of the game, this was between a 2 year period of development.
To get the game finished they had to hire freelancers to help out because of shortage amount of people working on the game at the time depending what stage they were at.
Jenson being a concept artist at IO interactive and being dissatisfied with the company he decided to take his unique early concepts and go solo to make his idea possible.
LIMBO all started from a "mood image" of a "secret place." so to speak. Jenson generated his ideas from this and finished with similar visuals to the resulted backgrounds in the released product.
Being a independent he tried to program the game in visual basic in 2004 but soon came to notice he needed help to do so. Making a trailer as a means of attracting programmers, instead the project itself became more popular over the internet. This then led to Jenson meeting a man called Dino Patti and he aswell dissatisfied with his job, eventually leading to the creation of playdead studios. Patti helped for a few months with the programming, soon after he realized that the project was becoming to much for them so a business was made and this carried on developing as the game was in production.
Playdead never committed to major publishers, they wanted to retain the complete creative control for the project. This then went to Jenson and Patti-aka Playdead studios choosing to ignore advice given by outside investors and critics while the game was in development. Such as advice like multiplayer, changeable difficultly and long game length were given but Jenson and Patti stuck to there original idea because from their thoughts these additions would ruin the quality of Jenson's first visuals of the game.
Apparently Patti said how they axed 70% of content they had carried out due to it not fitting in with the circumstances of the game, this was between a 2 year period of development.
To get the game finished they had to hire freelancers to help out because of shortage amount of people working on the game at the time depending what stage they were at.
AAA game production-Mirror's Edge
I have a assumption from what I've read,
before Mirror's Edge went into production it was said by the lead animator that the game would be a complete failure and wouldn't succeed, a sentence from a review I discovered came to importance, ("Our lead animator, the first time we actually said this to him--what we wanted to do--he said "it'll not work. You can't do it. It'll be crap," Reminisces Mirror's Edge senior producer Owen O'Brien. That confidence disguised as an argument. Its the kind of thing you only hear when things are awesome now-because they were impossible then.) Being a lover of the game I was immediately shocked when I read this on 1up's website.
Finding this out got me thinking that if this game came out of production and was released it must of proved that it was fully functional and the original concept and core mechanic were a success.
Mirror's Edge first started development in July/August 2006 from early concept idea according to producer Tom Farrer.
Mirror's Edge was originally going to be built in the battlefield engine, the engine they used for the battlefield franchise. But the team came to realize there was alot of irritation with the original first person shooter controls and movements inside the world of the game. At first the team experimented with more mechanical actions like ziplines, grappling hooks etc. Not liking this their response was to look at more ways of locomotion within the world.
Working on locomotion and the game also being set in a urban environment DICE developers realized that vehicles had no use in the world because in their words "we needed movement in the vertical plane quite quickly and vehicles don't provide that."
They also made weapons less important as well, I'm guessing because weapons can reduce the speed of movement and movement was one of DICE's key factors while developing the game.
According to Owen O'Brien the game underwent many pitch meetings because of the game being unique and never done before.
"Oh, but couldn't you have it in 3rd person aswell?" or "Couldn't you put more guns in aswell?" or "Couldn't we have vehicles aswell?"
I think O'Brien was good to keep the core mechanic and stop the game from leading off to other aspects, but instead DICE stuck to what they'd set out to accomplish.
The game was released before DICE's Frostbite engine had been completed so instead DICE used Epic's Unreal engine 3. Aswell a light system known as Beast was created specifically for the Unreal engine by illuminate labs who were in association with DICE.
The brand new software would make the unique art style of Mirror's Edge more noticeable by letting colours reflect as well as light sources.
before Mirror's Edge went into production it was said by the lead animator that the game would be a complete failure and wouldn't succeed, a sentence from a review I discovered came to importance, ("Our lead animator, the first time we actually said this to him--what we wanted to do--he said "it'll not work. You can't do it. It'll be crap," Reminisces Mirror's Edge senior producer Owen O'Brien. That confidence disguised as an argument. Its the kind of thing you only hear when things are awesome now-because they were impossible then.) Being a lover of the game I was immediately shocked when I read this on 1up's website.
Finding this out got me thinking that if this game came out of production and was released it must of proved that it was fully functional and the original concept and core mechanic were a success.
Mirror's Edge first started development in July/August 2006 from early concept idea according to producer Tom Farrer.
Mirror's Edge was originally going to be built in the battlefield engine, the engine they used for the battlefield franchise. But the team came to realize there was alot of irritation with the original first person shooter controls and movements inside the world of the game. At first the team experimented with more mechanical actions like ziplines, grappling hooks etc. Not liking this their response was to look at more ways of locomotion within the world.
Working on locomotion and the game also being set in a urban environment DICE developers realized that vehicles had no use in the world because in their words "we needed movement in the vertical plane quite quickly and vehicles don't provide that."
They also made weapons less important as well, I'm guessing because weapons can reduce the speed of movement and movement was one of DICE's key factors while developing the game.
According to Owen O'Brien the game underwent many pitch meetings because of the game being unique and never done before.
"Oh, but couldn't you have it in 3rd person aswell?" or "Couldn't you put more guns in aswell?" or "Couldn't we have vehicles aswell?"
I think O'Brien was good to keep the core mechanic and stop the game from leading off to other aspects, but instead DICE stuck to what they'd set out to accomplish.
The game was released before DICE's Frostbite engine had been completed so instead DICE used Epic's Unreal engine 3. Aswell a light system known as Beast was created specifically for the Unreal engine by illuminate labs who were in association with DICE.
The brand new software would make the unique art style of Mirror's Edge more noticeable by letting colours reflect as well as light sources.
Activision
obviously being a gamer myself Ive had alot of experience with Activision's games but not knowing they come from other development companies.
From what I've read it seems that Activision haven't made any of their own games only published them, so its seems from my point of view Activision are only in it for the business; getting credit for what other companies have accomplished or they have bought out the company because they have the money to do so and this also means they will get credit for the hard work of another company. On the other hand they development companies may like Activision to publish their games for them to maybe sell more copies or to get the development company more noticed because its got Activisions piece of typography on the games case, although most games with Activision printed on them are usually good and well sold games so probably a buyer may look at the game and think if its got their name on it then it has to be good.
I can see two sides to this and I understand them because the games industry is huge in business but to be where Activision are now it must of took alot of work becoming as well known as they are.
tale of tales
When I came across the independent company tale of tales i knew straight away they were directing to new and unique art styles; it was like Id seen something thats never came across to me before, very fresh and different; like Limbo for example it was unexpected.
I liked the games for their different Art styles but wasn't too keen on the gameplay of some of them for example The Graveyard. My opinion on this game was I thought it was very unpleasant because of finding out that if you were to buy the game the only difference is that the old women can die during play and nothing else, I was quite shocked by this and thinking that you are paying for death, the concept of it isn't very nice if you think about it to be honest.
Although the art style is very nice, like for example theres no sense of colour just black and white so this added to the effect of being old fashioned or even lifeless because your set in a graveyard and the atmosphere should be quite lonesome/deserted. So this I thought was quite effective to know just by colour; using it as a visual to also recognize where you are even if the graves do catch your eye first.
Secondly I came across another of tale of tales games which was called The path; which was suppose to be horror but I haven't played the full game only the demo so I don't fully know what the game is like so Im not going to criticize because i don't have the full experience but from my perspective of the demo it was very straight forward: follow the path until you get to a cottage then the demo ends, if you avoid the path and walk into the woods you find and collect little icons but nevertheless if you avoid the path too much you respawn back onto the path but where the demo ends.
Again the art style is really nice. coming to the end of the demo the environment changes colour and turns purple, not expecting this I thought it to be a nice and effective feature and probably giving the atmosphere that something is going to happen but again it being the demo it ends there so maybe its persuasion to wheel in people that have played the demo to buy the full game.
Thursday 3 February 2011
Wednesday 2 February 2011
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