Happion Labs GameDevBlog

Overlap

It's easy to talk about movies with your friends.  Seems like we've all seen the same movies, more or less. 

Things break down with novels.  In my creative writing workshops and classes, overlap is marginal.  You'll have one Salinger fan, one Cormac McCarthy fan, one Don DeLillo fan, one Jane Smiley fan, Stephen King, Erica Jong, and few of these people like each other's tastes, and yet somehow we're expected to be able to provide useful criticism of each other's work.  You're supposed to analyze the piece on its own terms for what it is trying to be, but what you really get is blind men and elephant syndrome, where each one critiquing has their own idea of what fiction is supposed to be.

I suppose this is because it takes longer to read a novel than watch a movie;  plus,  there are more novels than movies.

There are more movies than videogames, but you still have the time problem.  It takes much longer to play a videogame than to watch a movie. 

Which leads to this kind of conversation at work all the time:

"This feature sucks."
"Really?  It's a lot like a feature in Devil May Cry, God of War, Ninja Gaiden..."
"I haven't played those.  I've played Onimusha, though."
"Er...I haven't played that one."

In fact, the only game that I can almost guarantee everyone's played is GTA - and we've usually played different GTA's. 

So how do we find common ground?  How do we avoid the blind men and the elephant problem; where we all think videogames are something different?

Three Means Enemy Action

Item #1:  Neil Young, in the latest Game Developer magazine, talks about the value of getting all 1000 or whatever of your creative people together so they can cross-pollinate and do great stuff.

Item #2:  Same magazine, they discuss the value of the Collective and Backbone merging to pool talent.

Item #3:  Blizzard North and Blizzard South.  Again, merging.

I, personally, don't think this is a very good idea.  My argument against it is pretty anecdotal, though.  You can read in *The Tipping Point* about the magical number one hundred and fifty and Gore Associates and how one of their keys to success is to only have one hundred and fifty people per plant.  So that's anecdote number one.  Anecdote number two is that Treyarch was never able to sustain growth past one hundred and fifty.  We'd go up to around two hundred...there would be trouble...people would get laid off.  Although I believe we've broken one hundred fifty again and we're still going strong at the moment.  So maybe that anecdote is weak.  Giving me one and a half anecdotes.  Okay, I'll shut up now. 

But if I'm right, then we'll see layoffs and downsizing at EA, Blizzard, and The Collective Backbone in the next few years.  Or maybe they'll split up again.

We're Big Winners

I didn't see it myself but I was told that there was a show on G4 the other day about superhero games where Spider-Man 2 won best superhero game of all time. 

Pretty stoked!

Hollow Moon

Just came across this UT2K4 mod that really impressed me.  The art direction and atmosphere is just great.  The demo only takes an hour or so to play, and it's worth it just for enjoying the ambiance.

Single player mods for UT2K4 are rare - which I guess isn't surprising since it's a tournament game.  But single player mods in general seem pretty rare...ones the creators are willing to show the public, anyway.

Anyhow, that's what I'm looking for.  Single player mods.  This and Thief 2x are the only ones I've found so far that are worth mentioning...but I haven't dug very deeply yet.

Any recommendations for good single player mods?