Recently, a friend of mine dropped me a link to some kinetic typography on Youtube.com: a beautiful rendition of the “What Does Marcellus Wallace look like?” Pulp Fiction scene done completely in moving type. Then of course, I went on my pig-hunting-for-internet-truffles mode and discovered a Fight Club’s Space Monkey scene, more Pulp Fiction shooting Marvin in the head, and the supremely beautiful Singing in the Rain Clockwork Orange style.

Immediately after I wasted a few hours, my mind started wandering how can we make a game of speech and typography? More than a game, but a communication method that allows for both hearing and deaf people (who yell by gesturing with exaggerated moves) to combine type and graphics generated by their actions. Combine the texting message of “kthxbai” with waving hand and an image showing a phone hanging up, but only for a full speech.

Think of it as a Crayon Physics meets Guitar Hero meets KidPix where a player’s actions are translated into a graphical art form, translated in real time.

The game modes would be
- A collaborative and competitive Poetry Slam, where mp3s and scripts are translated into graphical typographical art, and each player adds to the display, where movie scenes can be downloaded onto your xBox.
- One person Freespeak, where voice translations between poets/rappers/debaters (if possible) are translated into typography, and their gestures impact their words.
- Great Speeches, where the words of Martin Luther King Jr or John F Kennedy or Malcomb X are translated into artful works through player’s emotive translations.
- ASL Learner - a basic, medium and advanced method to learn American Sign Language (or any other non-verbal language).

There would need to be a bunch of sensors - hands, fingers and maybe feet for dancing. A standardized interface would need to be used to change fonts and colors during the scenes.

Would it sell a million? Probably not. Would it open people up to doing something fun with computers interactively? Yes, I believe so.

[I hate reviewers that do not specify how far they played. I got to Act 3, with a level 22 Engineer, a level 10 Blademaster, and a level 5 Summoner - four days of nearly 25 hours of game time.]

Four days after buying Hellgate: London, I got to act three. I realized I’ve played this game before. Not only have a played this game, but I understood this game once. The game I remember had a better storyline: simple, fun and understandable. It was called Diablo 2. Now, someone has gone into Diablo, replaced the third-person isomorph with FPS/MMO, changed the names around and who writes this shit? I couldn’t figure out what any of the quest givers was saying.

Getting data about the “plot” is very difficult. Every. fucking. sentence. requires. you. to. click. Oh. Fucking. Kill. Me. Now…. hey, look, an ignore-the-boring-tedium button! Tips for game developers/publishers/writers - if you have to create a “skip this bullshit, what’s the quest?” button, YOU FAIL! If you have the same chat interface as every MMO since 1996 Forum/ICQ, YOU FAIL! If your players cant summarize what the hell they doing in a quest… well, you get the drift.

What blows my mind is that millions of dollars was spent on this game - and some serious hype - and all they came up with is Diablo 2 with a twist.

In a post-apocalyptic game like Hellgate, there needs to be some emotion and humor. Grim, passionate or otherwise. All the palladins, er, “Templars”, are just the same pansy-assed shiny twats with no emotion, no passion, and standard fare. The necromancer… er, “Summoners” are evil, manipulative and we’re-just-lucky-to-have-them-on-our-side… yawn. I remember viscerally about the emotional impact of the cut scenes from Diablo 2 - the emotional impact. The humor in the quests were… for the lack of a better term, “crisp.” They made me smile. Hellgate makes me wince at how poorly the humor has been executed.

Other than a few in-jokes (Wart’s leg), some of the names of items and quests (”Silent but Deadly”), that’s the extent of it. Not only did the dev team take Diablo 2 out of the 3D isomorph, but they took the character archetypes, and then didn’t improve one bit.

What is new are the mini-games and change of play, which is what keeps me going. The “Mini-Game” is basically items dropping from the sky once you kill/do/take damage. In a game where it’s all about the loot, this is a great concept. In a game where you’re fighting in the ruins in one of the world most iconographic cities, where you can see the left overs of two decades of slaughter… eh, not so much. The other minigames are difficult - one, you’re an anti-aircraft gun trying to take down a big… er… balloon? whale? Like a greased over-the-age pornstar, it just sits there and takes it, vomiting herpes every once in a while. The only successful change of game play was “The Cleanser” - where you remove street-herpes by liberally applying purple goop - while it was 5 minutes of game play, and extremely easy, it was fun to just slaughter with no risk to yourself.

OK, I like the game. Sorta. Am I getting my money’s worth? I don’t feel it, emotionally, but I’m still playing… waiting for it to be worth my 50 bucks. I always feel it’s going to get better once I turn around this corner and see… oh, it’s still shit. It’s my own private Hellgate.

There’s something to be said about games that aren’t too ambitious - Psychonauts was a game that was hurt by it’s own ambition, Civ III, a bunch of others, they tried to cram a complex ideal into a game and it just didn’t quite fit. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Psychonauts. The problem I had with Psychonauts is the opposite problem I have Overlord.

Overlord starts out with a simple premise and sticks to it. It’s simple - you’re bad, you got to kill these other bad guys, and you can decide to be VERY bad, or just a little bad. Most of the characterization is great - especially when sheeps are running around. I laughed more than once during the non-stop slaughter of fluffy creatures.

As Overlord, you have a bunch of minions of different types - red, green, brown and blue. Each type has it’s strengths and weaknesses - and as a strategy in the game, I’d recommend you learn greens, they seem to do the most damage.

As much as I love Civ games, I miss two of them sorely: Master of Orion and Master of Magic. Both of these old Microprose games were the dog’s bollocks. After years of games, nothing’s come close to being a good game and I believe it’s for the same reason. In the old days, you had restrictions on programming that caused the developer to cut out ALL extraneous bullshit.

In Master of Orion, you control a civilization race and attempt to take over the galaxy. The limitation was that the more powerful you got, the more likely an evil race of alien creatures would come and annihilate your colonies, eventually leading to a big confrontation.

Every game since then that has tried to inherit the title has been mired in the depth of reality, not realizing this is a game. Galactic Civilizations over at Stardock is the closest inheritor to Master of Orion, but even so it’s got a 1 ticket to win strategy that many civ games have.

[Hint: throw all the race configuration points into Morale and tax the fuck out of your peeps until money’s coming out your ears. While growing your culture, tech-invest in Planetary Defense and troops. If you break the tech curve, it’s over for the AI races.]

Master of Magic is Civ with mages. Very powerful mages. Sorta like the CCG game only less expensive to win at. Might and Magic is the worse, palest imitator.

Now, with the RTS imitator, there’s no game that will follow behind it. So many players are about the agressive win vs. the long term sandbox, lost in meandering thought games. The market has died.

Sad, sad, sad….

Is it’s name. I pronounce it Tiggers, not Tigers, not Tigris. Tigger.

The Independent Game Rating System is an inevitable thing. With all the republicrats running around screaming “What about the children? What about the baaaabies?”, and with all the concepts of classifying the damage to kids’ poor tormented psyches that video games do, someone had to step up and try to appease both sides.

You know, sometimes confrontation is a good thing and sometimes capitulation… excuse me, compromise is bad. TIGRS is an effort to appease the jerks, and it’s a good faith effort. I don’t know Daniel Kinney, but this seems to be a genuine good attempt. At least the designs LOOK cool.

With a rating system, as a business owner, I reduce the level of risk to my business by posting. So without further adieu, here’s the TIGRS for That Cult Game.

Mild Language Intense Cartoon Violence Animated Bloodshed Suggestive Themes Crass Humor Drug Use

Not Bad, huh? Personally, I think it’s sad that parents can’t get it through their heads: If you BREED, YOU’RE the one responsible. Not society, not the neighbors, and not the police. Do your best, but don’t blame others for your or your kids’ failures. Do your very best, because the kid deserves no less, and if the kid turns out to be a brainless monster, deal with the monster. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, people are broken.

But don’t blame a GAME DEVELOPER for it. That’s just weak thinking.

Gah. Lawyers. Accountants. All I want to do is play a game that will allow me to subvert weak minds to my will and conquer the rest of them. Is that such a difficult request?

So, here’s what I’ve learned recently:

1) Do not sign away Intellectual Property. Nope. No can do. No 3rd party will investigate a partnership (like a publisher) if your IP is in contention. If you are paying for IP and if you have the right contract, keep ahold of the IP, otherwise you’ll never be able to create derivative works from it.

2) Don’t listen to lawyers too much, otherwise you’re a dick. A lot of the contractors I’m working for NEED the recognition. Lawyers don’t want to offer up any liability - they are doing their job, but the bottom line is, if a contractor is doing an excellent job, you need to be able to recognize them for their efforts.

So, there’s no way for me to actually enforce the recognition of my contractors unless I (I the business, not I the individual) make it part of any agreement that I sign. Thus enters into the language “reasonable good faith effort”, a term which is technically unenforcible.

Contractors Stand Up!
If you’re a contractor, what’s your rights? Officially, all you have to do is send an email informing the game developer like so:

Hello {company}
For my {writing, artwork, development} work done on your game, SuperFigureActionFightersFoo, please credit me as {Bob Kelly, or appropriate name}.
Sincerely,
{Your name}


CC the email to yourself and save, save, save it away.

Does this enforce that they give you credit? No. Does this give you the ability to put it on your resume and CLAIM credit? Does this protect you if they say “No, you didn’t do that credit” - yes, it does because if they don’t respond to you, the email is a document that can be used in legal battle if absolutely necessary. Yes. Does this give you more rights to renegotiate extra payments? No.

Why does this matter to me right now?
I’ve been done good by two of my contractors - over delivered both of them. I have no desire to screw them over, but the IP issue something that means a lot. So, how do you be extra nice to your partners? I can’t sell them part of the game, but I can give them TOP BILLING. That’s right, I’ll be loudly announcing my Artwork and Sound design people and give them some excellent real estate to make sure

Also, if you’re in need of an artist, I’ve got dibs, but I’ll share. She’s looking for work.

Hopefully next week I’ll be able to post and announce the That Cult Game’s Official Title!

How to Play:

Every player chooses a frequent emailer employee on an Email Alias that receives Business Traffic, for instance _helpdesk. The players keep score over a day. At the end of the day, the points are tallied and the player who had the least amount of points gets first choice the next day.

Scoring:
If the employee sends an email with extra superfluous punctuation (?!?!?!), you score
1 for each exclamation point “!”,
1 for each extra question mark “?” following a question (the first question mark doesn’t count)
1 for each extra question mark OR exclamation point in the Subject
2 for every misspelling of a question mark or exclamation point “!!!11!” or “??/?”
4 for ALL CAPS preceding an exclamation point or question mark
8 for the words “LOGICAL”, “BUSINESS”, “NEED” or “PROFITABILITY” in ALL CAPS

Winning:
At the end of the week, the winner gets bragging rights, and if the others are nice, a free beer.

Sometimes we stand beside greatness. Nicole Bradford, the Global Director of Strategic Growth for Vivendi Games appears to be one of those great souls who knows the value of commitment, and how to sell a good idea.

On Wednesday, Ms. Bradford announced an initiative that game developers need to help students. In her eyes, an mine, it’s a match made in heaven: Good developers needs practical knowledge of Math, Science, Communication, and Art. Our schools need mentors from community members - role models - to help students learn practical skills.

But this is also self serving, and not just in the “We get smart students.” There’s a political battle going on, and just like when politicians point at Booze, or Drugs, or Iraqis, saying “America is under attack”. This battle frequently involves GAMES. We’re too violent. Or corrupting the youth. Or just plain not good for kids, because we all know that our children should play innocent games like Ring Around the Rosie, or Chess, or Cowboys and Indians.

Now, I know *I* may have a problem when I volunteer to present Heresy.com games to children, but others in our industry don’t. I can offer my services to the more enlightened teachers and schools, maybe academies or colleges.

Bottomline, Ms. Bradford rocks, and deserves our support. I encourage all of you to offer her your assistance.

So, wow, where did I go for 3 days?

Most recent memories first - The flight home I met some awesomely cool developers, primarily because the Security at Oakland didn’t recognize what a Nintendo DS is. “I’m going to open your backpack, ok?” She already opened it without my consent. “What is this?!?” “It’s my DS.” “What’s a DEEE-ESSSS?!?!” Me and a whole bunch of people looked at each other and smiled.

What I wanted to say: “Listen you low rent, white trash, toothless bitch, get your meaty hands off my tech, and please return to smoking meth in your mobile home because that’s obviously where you came from.”

What I really said, “You play games on it. Like a Gameboy.” I lifted both hands and waggled my thumbs in mock combat.

“Oh!” She threw it back in, and turned to another highly competent, security enforcing meth addict, “Yeah, he should’ve put that through alone.”

I’ve got real confidence in these people keeping our airways safe. I really do. Look at it: it’s got screens, buttons and an on/off switch. You don’t go through this for every MP3 player, and you didn’t need to do this for a DS.

But this event opened up to one of the best conversations that made the entire plane trip quick and fun. I met 4-6 other developers, some from Rainbow Studios, who were the very friggin’ cool. A big thanks & shout out for Heather and Nathan. Some of us are doing lunch on Monday.

Me and My Big Mouth
q. “So what does Heresy Research Labs do, Bob?”
a. “Independent developer. I’m bootstrapping an independent design studio so I can create casual games with a bite.” Oooh, look, I’ve got a bullet that describes the business.

q. “So what have you done?”
a. “Nothing. I’ve spent 2000 bucks plus on development tools, artwork, and accountants.”
At that time, the “jaded” guys in the industry walk away. I get it. Yes, in YOUR industry, I’ve got no track record. Don’t be so snooty, guys. In my industry, I pulled down 6 figures this year. Blow me.

q. “So what are you working on?”
a. {Internal monologue - *sigh*, here we go again. Do I tell them about That Cult Game? Right now, it’s fucking vaporware if I don’t deliver at all. Oh, well, fuck it.} (Please note that the internal monologue has occurs so fast it now microsecond) “I’m working on a cult simulator. You create your cult, your cult leader and do what you do every night: try to take over the world.”

To say that the reaction to this game has been INCREDIBLY overwhelmingly is an understatement. Everyone has ideas. It’s wonderfully rich to mine right now. Bottomline, the game I’ve got right now, sorta sucks gameplay wise, *I* don’t like it enough to be proud of it.

The CCP White Wolf After Hours party
I don’t know HOW I got this invite. I met a man at lunch. He gave me an invite. I got an invite. Very. Fucking. Cool. He seemed to be wanting to keep under the radar, so I’m not dropping his name here. But a big thank you to John for the invite. Also, the White Wolf’s marketing woman - damn sexy woman.

Academic Research is the Bomb
I’ve got two rules of thumb about GDC. Go to the Developers/Publishers Rant. See every Ian Bogost talk. If you hit those two sessions, everything else is icing.

The rant - yes, I was there for the Wii Is “Two Gamecubes Stuck Together With Duct Tape” by Chris Hecker. Personally, this is a classic example of the meme overshadowing the message.

Rant 1: Wild Tangent CEO Alex St. John. Windows Vista Upgrade was poorly done. I met Alex in another session - he’s the real deal and a good guy. I wish he had the guts to mention DRM, tho.

Rant 2: If you’re gonna be an Indie Developer, be a leader… not a schlep (Richard Hillman from EA)

Rant 3: Nicole Bradford - What the gaming industry can do for kids: Math and Science. By far, Ms. Bradford’s call to action was the best of the best. She gets her own post later today.

Rant 4: Jason Della Roca - Sorry, guy, I didn’t understand your rant. In fact, I’m reading other sites and I don’t think they understood your rant.

Rant 5: Chris Hecker - Nintendo needs to care about ART (not that Wii sucks).

Rant 6: Lee Jacobson - If you’re gonna be an Indie Developer, be a business man

Rant 7: Greg Costikyan - The Indie Publisher is in a lot of trouble, and that causes the Indie Developer more problems.

Game Developers’ Conference 2007 - a bunch of nerds stuck in a large glass building trying to network. It’s funny, actually, because there’s some of us that have good strong social skills. Once you shove those guys out of the way, damn we’re sad.

That’s not true actually - compared to last year, the attendees are extremely social and the freak factor is pretty low. I attended the “Creativity Boot Camp”, which I ducked out of to the Independent Developers Summit. Last year the conference didn’t lock you into a “track” - this year, they seem to be a nazis about it.

More importantly, I refreshed some acquaintances from last year, talked for a while about game philosophy - saw a very good presentation about Puzzle Pirates, which allowed me to feel hope about my development path.

And, like it or not, while my first 1 or 2 games will not be a economically “friendly” as I could make them, I know which way I need to take my company. Best quote of the day, “There’s people out there spraying the street with a fire hose full of money. Go get a garbage bag and get all you can.”

Sounds ruthless, a bit, but for these companies, it’s the difference between game and no game, and if making a pet and charging a couple bucks for it is the difference between making payroll, then that’s the deal.

Also, Jonathan Mak of Everyday Shooter is my new hero. In a room full of developers who have been convinced that if you’re independent, you have to be more innovative - he basically said, “Innovation is a waste of time: focus on the game.”

If you ever get the opportunity to see Kyle Gabler presentation - do it. His presentations never suck, and he’s always got a new view at a problem.