RTS with a twist!

Achron is a new breed of Real Time Stratigy games that introduces a concept never before seen in any RTS simulator, whether multiplayer or simgle player; time travel.

The whole concept behind this is amazing; the summary given on their main page best tells the story...

You can undo your mistakes, change your strategy after committing to it, preview the future, freeze time to perfectly coordinate attacks, and send entire fleets through time to when they are needed. However, all of your opponents will also be independently moving across time, attempting to rewrite history in their favor...

Needless to say, this will evoke hour-long "time battles" with each player going further back or forward in time to turn the tides of war. The whole concept and possibilities behind this are mind-boggling, and I eagerly anticipate it's release.

Check out some videos:

ART211W - Entry 10

I figured, hey, for my last blog, why not do something that really expresses how I feel about corporations in the game industry.

In The Groove is a game that was developed by Roxor games and released in arcades in late August, 2004. Becoming a hit with hardcore Dance Dance Revolution players, ITG gained steam and a squeal was released in June of the next year. Unfortunately, Konami, the creators of Dance Dance Revolution, took action, and a lawsuit in October of 2006 brought production and work on a third game to a halt.

This brings up a very interesting point. ITG is based on a free, open-source program called Stepmania which has been around for a few years prior to development of the arcade adaptation. Konami has long been aware of this freeware clone and was unable to take action against it, due to it being open source and free. Unfortunately, when the first iteration of ITG was released for arcades, it required a preexisting DDR cabinet to be installed in. Thus, the intellectual property battle began, with arcade owners unwilling to strip off existing decals from their machines, players could easily misinterpret the Roxor product as being a Konami one, and Konami took action with this. Why they waited so long was probably due to their arrogance for owing a monopoly in the industry. From their point of view, it was just another wanna-be dance game.

What they didn't expect, however, was the cult following the game created, with more and more players switching to ITG over DDR due to unique innovations that the DDR series lacked. Songs requiring players to use their hands, perform "rolls" on extended notes, and dodging mines added to the growing stale gameplay of the existing games. This, along with the added expert difficulties, kept players interested enough for the squeal. Konami, seeing a real threat, took action. Players who knew the game well enough knew that these features had existed in the PC ports of Stepmania for years, and were confused as to why Konami was -just now- taking action.

Needless to say, it's the classic "large corporation taking out the smaller guys" scenario. Konami won the suit and immediately halted the series. There have been no games with the In the Groove name since the lawsuit and the acquisition of the rights to the series. Players were horribly upset with the killing of a great alternative and Konami's DDR series continued the stale, boring path it had before. Even with players begging for innovation, they refused to listen.

With the latest release of DDRX, however, elements from the ITG series seem to be making an appearance. "Shock Arrows" are now introduced in some expert difficulties, these are arrows that are not meant to be stepped on. Sounding familiar? Mines from ITG have made an appearance, although a much less visually appearing, and stupidly dumbed down version (they only appeared 4 at a time, never individually or able to be placed creatively enough.) Even with this, though, it seems that the series is still a dull as before, with lacking creativity and promoting the same-old-same-old.

This pulls another key topic. When the rights to something are acquired and content is reused (although rehashed), does the company who now own the rights deserve the credit for this innovation? What is it that makes the existing creators of these techniques be pushed to the side and shoved out of the way by major corporations? Why is it that Konami refuses to have ANY sort of competition in their "music game" industry, wouldn't that help them to make a better product by seeing the competition and how the public responds?

Apparently, Konami's marketing and research department has a LOT to learn.

Associated links:
http://www.konami.co.jp/en/news/topics/050511/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Groove_(series)#Lawsuit

ART211W - Entry 9

Edit: ADFGSDFGSDFG I HATE YOU BLOGSPOT. STOP DELETING MY POSTS.

Edit 2:

Associated Link: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/08/22/

Ah, the good old web comic scene. Here is a priceless Penny Arcade comic depicting another one of life's little indulgences. With gaming becoming more and more competitive, it seems that normal talents appear to be overshadowed. PA takes a fun jab at this by presenting Photoshop Hero.

While this comic takes a fun jab at all the "Hero" styled games, it also presents another fun question about what "talent" truly is. It seems that with these stylized games comes apparent bragging rights. Talent is, already, hard enough to try to pinpoint, but with the added fact that any video game is pushing competition and being able to have bragging rights it's becoming harder and harder to separate the useful skills from the completely pointless, mainly due to whoever is playing seems to take pride in what they're doing. Human nature is, unfortunately, liable to fall to this flaw, taking a simple task of playing a game and pushing that skill, mentally, to the point of being able to call it a "skill"

This is, sadly, the downfall of most modern games. Instead of focusing on gameplay and character-based storylines, we have giant "band simulators" and a plethora of games that are plagued by the requirement of plastic peripherals and only promote bragging rights. Even on the boxes for games, the fact that "learn to rock out for fame, glory, and bragging!" is written right there immediately points out the true intention of playing.

So what exactly is considered a skill, or better yet, true talent?

ART211W - Entry 8

Associated Link

YouTube has, since it's formation, been a social site where anyone can post videos of whatever they desire. From cats jumping around, to seeing your friend dive headfirst into a pile of bananas, YouTube has become the hot-spot for people to become noticed. However, with any forms of creative expression, some people will take their "creativity" to the extremes.

YouTube "poops", as they've come to be known, are basically created by taking any video that can be found, and either spoofing it, or applying every single effect and distortion possible. Usually, these videos make little to no sense. The video above, however, is a twisted spoof of this random piece, which still makes...almost no sense. More common 'poops' are mashups of footage from, basically, anything. More common, though, are the spoofs of other, seemingly useless videos. A spoof of Vince's ShamWow! commercial has quickly become one of the most popular videos that have spread around the internet.

This brings up an interesting topic, though. With the whole idea of "cultural remixing", when is too much, too much? Is the remixed video property of the person who mashed together the footage, or is it still the original author's work?

ART211W - Entry 7

Associated link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz0PaPpmGa8&fmt=18

The YouTube video above links to an amazing modification of the SNES classic Super Mario world. If you were to read this before linking to the video, you would probably assume someone simply took the game and either hacked sprites in, perhaps some swapping of music, or maybe just modifying the levels slightly. fortunately, the video above is an extreme of all of these traits of any game modification.

Adaptly titled "Automatic Mario", this video has spread vastly since the original posting on the Japanese site "Nico Nico Douga". The audio heard in the background is an original to the site, the "Nico Nico Medly", which is composed of a vast quantity of video game and anime music. Thankfully, to some, one individual took months out of his life to make a modification of Super Mario World to produce tones matching the original video's pitches. In a site that interviewed the creator, he said approx. 7 months went into creating this, and that was putting in about 5 hours per day of work on this, along with other daily work, and school. This brings us to a very interesting topic.

When do games become purely art?

Within the last few topics we have reviewed, gaming has become a persistant topic. We have often mentioned about games blending art and gameplay. The game modification presented has completely removed the gameplay aspect of the original, and replaced it with a purely artistic piece that is watched, rather than played. This takes the whole aspect of modding a game for visual and auditorial enjoyance, rather than physical interraction.

ART211W - Entry 6

Associated link

Edit: Okay, Blogspot just wiped my post... let's try this again...

What is seen above is the result of a very creative and brilliant college student. Mr. Lee has taken the simple concept of having an IR sensor in the Wii-remote and applied to what, hopefully, can be utilized in a new generation of games.

The exact specifications and requirements to set up a similar setup as shown are explained in the video, the basic gist, etc. By wearing a special set of glasses with two, small, IR LED's attached to them, it is possible to track the player's position in 3d space by using cheaply manufactured, and widely available, hardware. This allows for complete motion control by not only the controllers, but player-driven responses as well. Another amazing, and the primary reason for attempting such an interface, is the visual effect of creating a true three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Games can take advantage of this, as a simple example, creating a duck-and-cover system for shooters. Instead of having to press a button, the player simply ducks. If there is a window in the game, the player has the ability to approach the screen and "look over" the ledge to peer below.

This kind of interaction between game and player will, no doubt, become the next "big thing" in gaming. Taking a look at Mr. Lee's other videos reveals other potentially inventive ways to interact with games, including virtual multi-touch interfaces (think Minority Report) and creating virtual whiteboards by, of course, using a simple Wii-remote.

ART211W - Entry 5

(click the face to watch the video this entry is about)

Adventure Time was a one-time short animation for the Nicktoon show "Random Cartoons". In this mini show, we are shown what appears to be random nonsense that a crazy, whacked out writer came up with. Originally planned to be shown on television, the episode leaked out onto the internet over two years before it was originally planned to be aired. Normally, such an act would destroy the show's credibility and uniqueness.

However, the exact opposite happened thanks to the widespread, almost viral, showings of this 7 minute cartoon. Hype for the actual showing was staggering, and thanks to most teens having a crude sense of, shall we say, humor (see, anything on CollegeHumor.com), the show became one of the top viewed shorts during it's runtime. So much, so, that Cartoon Network actually picked up Adventure Time, and it's set for a late 2009 airing (13 episodes, each running 22 minutes).

This shows the power of how the internet and social sites, such as Youtube, can boost the popularity and fame of a seemingly unnoticed show. So much, infact, that it's now a "cult classic", being spread all over the internet, colleges and via friends.