Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 24

You know what you’re getting with The Franz Kafka Videogame, right?

What I think I like the most about The Franz Kafka Videogame is that it isn’t faffing around. With a title like that you know what you’re gonna get when you play it. An all-singing, all-dancing pixel-art rendition of Franz Kafka’s works? Oh yes, I’ll take that, thank you very much.

But, actually, that isn’t quite what this upcoming point-and-click adventure is. Speaking to the sole creator, Denis Galanin, he told me that he uses “literary works as a basis for [the] realization of [his] own ideas.” Back in 2012, he made a game called Hamlet, which as its description rightly puts it, is a “twisted” version of the Shakespeare play. Galanin told me that Hamlet was a way for him to explore ideas in and around the concept of a parody. It was far from a straight-up videogame adaptation that tried to stay true to its source.

“Kafka’s works integrated with my own ideas”

The same goes for The Franz Kafka Videogame, which is also a vehicle for Galanin’s ideas, but this time appropriately zooms in on surrealism and absurdity. “My game doesn’t use a plot of any one novel of Kafka,” Galanin said. “The game is a mix of various ideas, characters, and situations from Kafka’s works integrated with my own ideas. To show the atmosphere of absurdity and total uncertainty is the most important to me. Therefore The Franz Kafka Videogame is not copying Kafka, but is interpretation and adaptation of Kafka for the videogame.”

That isn’t to say that Galanin hasn’t done his homework. Prep for making The Franz Kafka Videogame included reading almost every novel by Kafka and their adaptations—from animations, to live-action, and theater. It follows a man known only as K. (in keeping with Kafka’s way of naming protagonists) as he gets a sudden offer of employment that changes his life. He has to make a distant voyage for the job and, to his surprise, finds the world beyond his homeland isn’t as normal as he thought it would be.

Galanin told me that while The Franz Kafka Videogame is a point-and-click adventure, it doesn’t feature traditional puzzles, nor does it have standard features like an inventory. “You have to ‘think outside the box’ to solve the majority of puzzles,” Galanin told me. “But puzzles aren’t additional part to the plot of the game. Puzzles are the main and integral part of plot and narrative.”

Galanin has already picked up a couple of awards for The Franz Kafka Videogame at Intel Level Up Game Developer Contest 2015. He’s hoping to release it for PC and iOS in early 2017.

You can find out more about The Franz Kafka Videogame on its website. You can also check out its Steam page.

The post You know what you’re getting with The Franz Kafka Videogame, right? appeared first on Kill Screen.

Overcooked’s next update lets you cook Christmas dinner with friends

A lot of folks associate the holidays with good food and home-cooked meals. For me, that means a vast assortment of cookies and baked goods, as well as surullitos (a Puerto Rican snack) made with much care by my mother.

In the spirit of combining winter festivity with cooking, independent studio Ghost Town Games is releasing Festive Seasoning, a new DLC for their game Overcooked. The original game, released in August, is a chaotic co-op cooking frenzy for up to four players set in the world of the Onion Kingdom.

you can even cook meals with a flamethrower!

Levels are set in unusual kitchens that have unique challenges and moving pieces, so that you’re always responding to the environment. You have to quite literally put out fires as they arise. According to the game’s description on Steam, “there isn’t mushroom for error and the steaks are high in these crazy kitchens!”

With the DLC, eight new levels will be set in the Winter lodge theme, along with an entire new winter world map that can be navigated by snowmobile. And there’s more festivity than that: Festive Seasoning features a snowman chef and a reindeer chef who can dish up two new recipes, a turkey dinner and a stew, while wearing santa hats. With this DLC, you can even cook meals with a flamethrower!

Festive Seasoning will be available for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 free of charge to those who own the game on December 6th.

To learn more about Ghost Town Games, check out their website, and you can download Festive Seasoning assets here.

The post Overcooked’s next update lets you cook Christmas dinner with friends appeared first on Kill Screen.

Balthazar’s Dream reveals what good boys dream of, and it’s ruff

A soft whimper causes you to look up from your work. It’s your dog, who is sleeping peacefully in bed. Is she dreaming? Her legs twitch slightly. Maybe she’s running around in a field, chasing a squirrel. She’s too old to do that now, but you like to think that the tiny mammal stood no chance in the dreamscape. “Wow.” You think to yourself. “She’s doing such a great job laying there.”

You rouse yourself from the couch and tiptoe over to the sleeping dog and carefully drop to your knees and place your face mere inches from her nose. She hears you approaching and her eyes, disoriented and cloudy, open. “Hey, girl.” You reach out to boop her nose. She is unamused, and buries her face underneath her paws and sneezes before dozing off once more.

///

An independent game studio formed by Peter Lipert and Sawa Bialczynska, Psilocybe Games is setting out on a quest to create funny and beautiful stories through pixel art. Their latest endeavor focuses on “an uplifting game about a dog’s loyalty.” If you’d like to toss them a bone, there’s an active Kickstarter campaign.

That game is Balthazar’s Dream, a puzzle platformer that takes place within a dog’s dream. You play as the good boy Balthazar, a border collie who is tasked with using their scent of smell to follow their owner Dustin within his subconscious. Like any other child and pet duo, Balthazar and Dustin are inseparable—even after being struck by a careless driver, the loyal dog curls up by his caretaker’s feet on the hospital bed, determined to make sure the boy isn’t taken away.

the loyal dog curls up by his caretaker

Inside Balthazar’s dream is Dustin, who leads you through the world and helps you jump onto couches and tables, which is appropriate given the nature of dogs and their affinity for ruining furniture. Because he’s loyal and good, Balthazar takes it upon himself to save Dustin from the shadowy entity that lurks in the darkness, determined to take the boy away. The set pieces that make up the dream world of Balthazar’s head are what you would expect to see from a dog’s perspective: fire hydrants, bones, the shadowy ghost form of her owner … it’s heartwarming to see the love and dedication the pixelated pooch has for Dustin as he jumps from platform to platform, trying to stay on his scent.

There’s no guarantee that your dog will dream about rescuing you from the inevitable paws of death, but at least they’ll look cute as they sleep.

For more information about Balthazar’s Dream, click here.

The post Balthazar’s Dream reveals what good boys dream of, and it’s ruff appeared first on Kill Screen.

How Overwatch Whipped Up an eSports Frenzy in South Korea

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel .

Professional and amateur players are shifting their focus to a game that’s breathing new life into competitive eSports in South Korea. Earlier this year, for the first time in nearly four years, League of Legends (2009) was not the most popular game in South Korea’s PC bangs. Inside internet cafes or “PC rooms,” Blizzard’s recently released Overwatch was the competitive online game of choice, edging out LoL by as much as 30 percent in June. It’s almost the equivalent of Wimbledon pulling in more viewers than the Super Bowl.

“The FPS (first person shooter) genre is not usually common in Korea, but the variety of variables and characters attract people to Overwatch,” explained Jang “AKaros” Ji Soo, a professional Overwatch player in South Korea whose team was recently acquired by EHOME, one of the longest-standing names in the Asian eSports scene. At age 12, Ji Soo began playing the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (2004) for countless hours at PC bangs. She remembers her parents didn’t approve of her hanging out in a place that attracted so many smokers. Ji Soo persisted regardless and, several years later, she now finds herself at the center of a game-changing eSports community now toggling from LoL to Overwatch. In South Korea, LoL has been a national pastime for years, selling out Seoul’s stadiums more than 45,000 fans annually. The sudden rise of Overwatch could spell big changes for world’s bustling epicenter of eSports.

Jang “AKaros” JiSoo

South Korea is often called the birthplace of eSports. The first time Blizzard took the country by storm was in the 1990s with StarCraft. The game developer worked hand-in-hand with the South Korean government to organize events and establish the infrastructure that led to the country’s eSports dominance that persists today. Now, with new favorite Overwatch battling with LoL for the top spot, new skillsets are being developed and a fresh audience is moving into the limelight.

Because of their easy, affordable access – 50-cents per hour to play – PC bangs remain at the heart of this shift, according to Seth King, an eSports shoutcaster in Seoul. He said these public PC Rooms breed South Korea’s unbeatable “environment for competition and gaming.” PC bangs also level out the playing field by inviting everyone to play, whether student or adult, rich or poor. “Getting access to games you wouldn’t normally be able to play is fairly addictive and when you’re spending money to play them, you’re more likely to take them seriously and try to improve quickly,” King explained.

Overwatch and Ji Soo’s previous Blizzard favorite World of Warcraft share important DNA

In the case of pro Overwatch player Ji Soo, PC bangs fostered her competitive spirit and loyalty to titles by Blizzard. She finds the diverse gameplay, characters and teamwork in Overwatch compelling enough to master a new genre for her: the FPS (first-person shooter). “Overwatch is an FPS that heavily implements similar mechanics from MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games, which speaks to the gamers here in Korea and a reason for it taking off like wildfire,” said King.

Despite vast differences between an FPS like Overwatch and Ji Soo’s previous Blizzard favorite, World of Warcraft, the two share important DNA. Overwatch may focus more on individual matches to WoW’s long-term play style, but the two cater to players who love a strong sense of character. Its focus on unique character and player skill sets means elite WoW players can transfer some of their training over to Overwatch. In fact, Ji Soo’s prowess with her favorite Overwatch character, Genji, even awarded her the nickname “Genjisu” recently. At the Overwatch Festival in BEXCO Busan, a commentator began calling her ‘Gen Ji Soo’ to bring attention to her outstanding plays. Despite her team losing that day, she has a fond memory of the crowd chanting her new nickname.

With the rise of Overwatch comes a desire for better computer performance to handle the fast moving, graphically rich game. While StarCraft could be played in PC bangs filled with older, lower performing PC, Overwatch’s fast moving, rich graphics benefit from more powerful computers. To remain competitive, pros like Ji Soo are turning to more reliable, high-end equipment. “My current PC is built around an Intel i7-6800k CPU (central processing unit), GTX 1070 GPU (graphics processing unit), and an ASUS x99 II motherboard,” she said. “I use it more than 10 hours a day.”

Moving into the pro Overwatch scene even helped her learn more about how superior hardware makes a difference. She said she learned from her team members and coaches about how the right CPU and GPU combo means less drops in frame-rate during matches or while streaming to her fans. Figuring out the tech has been easier than working around another big obstacle facing Ji Soo and pros in South Korea: stigmatization of female players. “It’s even difficult using the voice chat during matches,” she said. “Whenever someone hears a female voice, they start trolling. Sometimes, it’s bad enough that it affects how I play.” Ji Soo and the other female pros remain steadfast. They see Overwatch helping diversify the gaming scene in South Korea and elsewhere. Whether male or female, MOBA, MMO, or FPS fan, Overwatch is welcoming all of South Korea through competitive play.

The post How Overwatch Whipped Up an eSports Frenzy in South Korea appeared first on Kill Screen.

The Irish mythology and music behind watercolor game Scéal

Sandro Magliocco spent his childhood playing around and exploring the medieval coastal town of Carlingford, Ireland. So when his Slovakia-based, multinational team at Joint Custody decided to set its debut title in Ireland, it made sense for him to revisit those early memories and set the game in a place he knew well. But more than that, Magliocco argues that the Cooley Peninsula—where Carlingford is located—lends itself well to a videogame environment for two reasons.

“Firstly, there’s the geographical variety, from the mountain of Slieve Foy looming over Carlingford village, to the forests and hills connecting to the village of Omeath, and the waters of Carlingford Lough. These areas blend seamlessly, making it feel like a larger world than it actually is (which works well for the game, allowing to you to get around quickly),” Magliocco told me. “The second thing is the history in this region, from megalithic tombs to medieval streets and castles, all providing distinct landmarks and settings for us to enrich the world with.”

The Irish town of Carlingford (Source)

The game is called Scéal, which essentially means “story” or “tale,” and follows the spirit of a young girl as she searches for the lost memories of her life. She does this by using a magical storybook as the medium with which to navigate the game’s watercolor world. In the first episode, released on Steam back in October, the idea is to get familiar with the layout and tone of the world, but later episodes will tease out the history of Carlingford. “I find it very interesting when this approach is used with real, historical places (e.g. the Assassin’s Creed franchise), because you’re working with something that has already many, many layers of narrative buried below its cobblestones and ruins,” Magliocco said.

Other than the real-world history embedded in the town of Carlington (referred to by the tourist board as an “outdoor museum”), Joint Custody drew from various Irish mythology and the supernatural world for Scéal. The team’s approach to using this folklore is to give the game world a sense that it is unique but not alien. “From festivals such as Halloween, to creatures like the Banshee or Sídhe (faeries or angels), people already have some exposure and familiarity with aspects of Irish culture and mythology,” Magliocco said. “It is, in a sense, a world that becomes more familiar, the deeper you explore into it.”

A specific example of how the mythology is treated in the game can be seen when the player transforms into a Banshee—an Irish ghost, pained by the death of a loved one. How the Banshee is introduced isn’t with reels of text or exposition in any other form, but relies on her appearance and audio cues to give a sense of what she represents. This will be the same approach used to introduce the many other historical and mythological elements in Scéal.

“a feel that sits right at home in the Irish tradition”

Due to this subdued design, the music in Scéal is very important as it helps to create mood, and can even act as the primary storytelling device in the game. Hence it was key for Andrés Valenica, the composer and music producer on Scéal, to establish a conversation with the musicians and constantly tweak the melodies as they grew. Starting with English lyrics and initial “emotional components” such as mood and backstory, Valenica developed the arrangements over the course of a couple of weeks, going back and forth with the singers at first and then working out the melodies for the violin, flute, cello, and harp.

Central to this iterative process was Lorcán MacMathuna, a traditional Irish singer and the lyrics writer on Scéal. “Music is a sort of esoteric language so arriving at a common language or understanding can be difficult but once found, we could readily approach each melody with a clear sense of how to tweak the arrangement and style,” he said. As the vocal melodies guided the rest of the arrangement, it was important to drill down into the exact mood each song was meant to capture—identifying it as “danger” wasn’t enough: Was it tinged with dread? Was the threat unknown? Was there a sense of adventure or hope?

The English lyrics that the musicians started out with were quickly dropped in favor of Irish ones as it sounded more natural, fit the melodies better, and enhanced the distinctive Irish feel of the game. Capturing an Irishness in the music became paramount, especially as the game was imbued with traditional Irish stories and characters, which the music helped to tell—”there is a strong feedback loop between the events that happen in the game and how we expressed this through Irish music,” Valenica said. Vital to this was using the traditional Irish musical idiom within the vocal performances.

“We use ornamentation and modulation that you hear in Sean-Nós singing (the ancient form of indigenous Gaelic singing),” MacMathuna said. “While adhering to arrangements that matched the creative guidelines for specific moods and emotional undercurrents, we kept to styles and a modal idiom that would not be out of place in Irish traditional music. To me it has a feel that sits right at home in the Irish tradition.”

You can purchase Scéal on Steam and find out more on its website.

The post The Irish mythology and music behind watercolor game Scéal appeared first on Kill Screen.

Saddle up: Oblivion is now backwards compatible

Microsoft’s been rolling out a lot of new backwards-compatible games this month, the latest of which is 2006’s beloved The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bethesda tweeted that Oblivion, and all its DLC with the exception of Shivering Isles, was available for download on the Microsoft store. As always, if you still have the original disc, your game will be downloaded free of charge. Oblivion, which has been out for over 10 years, arrives right on the coattails of backwards-compatible versions of Mass Effect 2 (2010) and 3 (2012), which were debuted earlier this month.

Bethesda’s banking on the nostalgia

Though the road to backwards compatibility was tumultuous to say the least, Microsoft seems to be finally making good on their years-old promise of bringing fan favorite games to their next generation consoles. Far and away the most requested game to be brought back to life, Red Dead Redemption (2010), was finally revived in July 2016. Other favorites making a comeback include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007), XCOM: Enemy Unkown (2012), Assassin’s Creed II (2009), and the Gears of War series.

The Oblivion revival is the first backwards-compatible Elder Scrolls game. Previously, Bethesda brought back Fallout: New Vegas (2010), and Fallout 3 (2008) became available the same day as Fallout 4. The Skyrim (2011) remaster released earlier this month was largely a disappointment—offering no new content and graphics that users have been running on PC since 2012. Bethesda fans are largely calling for remasters of older titles like Oblivion and Morrowind (2002), and ports of newer titles like Skyrim—a sensible opinion. As Bethesda rushes in the shadows to bring us Elder Scrolls 6 and beyond, it appears as if they’re banking on nostalgia to bring in quick funding for their future exploits.

Regardless, I’m happy to see an old favorite re-emerge in time for the holidays.

You can purchase Oblivion directly from the Microsoft store — and please, for the love of Akatosh, don’t become a vampire.

The post Saddle up: Oblivion is now backwards compatible appeared first on Kill Screen.

Need a break from the world? Chill out on a virtual island

Don’t you ever wish you could escape to a remote island just to get away from it all, even for five or 10 minutes? If so, check out ROM, a “short experimental experience” created by HTW Berlin students Paul Schnepf, Rainer Windolph, and Friedemann Allmenröder.

Created as part of the Game Design BA curriculum, ROM allows you to explore a desolate island and take control of its environment. Revive its ancient machines to alter the weather and bring the island back to life. Activating one machine causes snow to cover the land; another brings on a sudden driving rainstorm accompanied by flashes of lightning.

bring the island back to life

Giving no clear directions, ROM leaves it up to the player, who takes the form of a beam of glittering light, to uncover how and in what order to awaken the machines.

If, like me, you need a time out from the news, this game’s shifting weather, soothing music, and beautifully rendered graphics amount to the perfect little escape from our stressful reality. Driven wholly by atmosphere, without much in the way of traditional gameplay, this game can be your new happy place … even if just for the few minutes that it takes to play.

Explore ROM’s uninhabited wilderness here .

The post Need a break from the world? Chill out on a virtual island appeared first on Kill Screen.

From small beginnings to Esports stardom

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel .

After church on Sunday, 13-year-old Christine “Potter” Chi followed her brother and his friends to an amateur Counter-Strike tournament at the Mug and Mouse LAN cafe in Dallas, Texas. While sipping boba tea, Potter and her reluctant friends watched as the teams faced off with nothing but pride on the line. “Once I realized they were going versus each other, it sparked my competitive side,” she said.More than a decade and a half later, Potter has five Counter-Strike world championships under her belt and is a reminder of just how far professionalism in eSports has come. Today, players compete for millions of dollars, engaging in grueling training regimens to prepare for matches and purchasing the newest, fastest equipment to stay ahead of their opponents.

Rising from the undisputed birthplace of competitive Counter-Strike in North America, Potter went from sneaking around LAN cafes in Dallas to competing in the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) in Paris six years later. She saw eSports through the basement phase, before beginning her rise to the top during the stadium phase in 2006, only to weather the scene’s crash in 2008-2009.Despite her status as a gaming veteran, Potter said not even she could have imagined what Counter-Strike and eSports as a whole would grow into today. In the past two years, it’s become common to have a $250,000 to $1 million tournament every other weekend. A far cry from the BYOC (bring your own computer) Mug and Mouse LAN cafe tournaments, almost every major event now is played in stadiums usually reserved for Kanye West concerts and NBA games.

This past October, Potter and her team, CLG Red, returned to defend their reign as champions at ESWC. Unlike the first time, she won’t be returning to her parents’ house and day job to await next year’s tournament. Instead, she and her team members will immediately resume their strict training schedule at the designated CLG Red team house near Los Angeles, which comes complete with a team coach, personal trainer for working out and personal chef with pre-planned meals.

As the number of tournaments in eSports tripled over the past five years, the prize pools skyrocketed. Consequently, players’ level of investment, commitment and competition has reached a fever pitch.“In the early days attending events and practice was very much free time, or free time you made, in the same way a local softball team meets and practices,” explained Trevor Schmidt, Senior Manager of ESEA.“Now CS players have full time jobs with 24/7 expectations and million-dollar housing with practice rooms.” CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) players can pick and choose between events, creating an entire ecosystem of big and small prize tournaments. It has allowed players like Potter to create full-time careers around competing.

eSports has grown and transformed

The price of all this opportunity is steep. The level of play increased exponentially along with the professionalization of eSports, but according to Potter, many veteran eSports stars began playing games in their basement because they liked it, not for the fame. “As pro gamers, we’re all learning a lot about work ethic,” she said. “The skill gaps have grown tenfold. People are becoming robots — perfection is everything.” Surprisingly, in this new world of highly professional competitive gaming, the biggest issue facing pro players is burnout. The CLG Red’s coach, Erik Stromberg, now considers enforcing a balance of life outside CS: GO to be key to any team’s success.

“We’ve gotten to a professional level where players can focus solely on getting better at Counter-Strike. It lead us to reach new heights,” he explained. “But we need to be able to do things outside the game so that when we play eight or 10 hours a day, we can stay hungry to win.” According to Stromberg, Potter can sustain the hunger through just about anything. She also remains one of the hardest players to convince to take a break. This level of intensity is fairly common given how eSports has grown and transformed into the monolith it is today. Because aside from the sheer surprise of eSports’ professionalization, the speed has also been unprecedented. Most major modern sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, FIFA have taken decades to reach any decent size.

“I can’t think of a single sport that spawned and, in less than 20 years, grew to be this big,” Schmidt said. The reason for this is at once expected and surprising. As with most sports, sponsors lead to growth through tournaments and prize pools. But what is truly unique to eSports is how the biggest sponsors push the technology that makes the sport possible. Historically the biggest sponsor, Intel, had a vested interest in providing the tech and tournaments that would raise the level of play. “You just always need the best technology to play Counter-Strike well,” said Potter, adding that at practice or a tournament, technical hiccups can be dire. “The first thing I notice in my PC experience is FPS (frames per second) and hertz (gigahertz processor speed).”

Consistently high refresh rates on the game and a high performance CPU gives Potter the results she needs. She said that one little kink in the chain, no matter how small, can throw the entire game off. Playing on i7 6700k processor enables her to stay focused on staying on top of the cutthroat competition. Despite her hunger to win and stay competitive, it wasn’t playing for an audience of thousands in stadiums around the world that convinced Potter of her success. She knew she’d made it the day her mom learned to text message to ask what her gaming nickname was.

“She wanted to Google me,” Potter said, “so she could show her friends and brag.”

 

The post From small beginnings to Esports stardom appeared first on Kill Screen.

From small beginnings to Esports Althete

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel .

After church on Sunday, 13-year-old Christine “Potter” Chi followed her brother and his friends to an amateur Counter-Strike tournament at the Mug and Mouse LAN cafe in Dallas, Texas. While sipping boba tea, Potter and her reluctant friends watched as the teams faced off with nothing but pride on the line. “Once I realized they were going versus each other, it sparked my competitive side,” she said.More than a decade and a half later, Potter has five Counter-Strike world championships under her belt and is a reminder of just how far professionalism in eSports has come. Today, players compete for millions of dollars, engaging in grueling training regimens to prepare for matches and purchasing the newest, fastest equipment to stay ahead of their opponents.

Rising from the undisputed birthplace of competitive Counter-Strike in North America, Potter went from sneaking around LAN cafes in Dallas to competing in the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) in Paris six years later. She saw eSports through the basement phase, before beginning her rise to the top during the stadium phase in 2006, only to weather the scene’s crash in 2008-2009.Despite her status as a gaming veteran, Potter said not even she could have imagined what Counter-Strike and eSports as a whole would grow into today. In the past two years, it’s become common to have a $250,000 to $1 million tournament every other weekend. A far cry from the BYOC (bring your own computer) Mug and Mouse LAN cafe tournaments, almost every major event now is played in stadiums usually reserved for Kanye West concerts and NBA games.

This past October, Potter and her team, CLG Red, returned to defend their reign as champions at ESWC. Unlike the first time, she won’t be returning to her parents’ house and day job to await next year’s tournament. Instead, she and her team members will immediately resume their strict training schedule at the designated CLG Red team house near Los Angeles, which comes complete with a team coach, personal trainer for working out and personal chef with pre-planned meals.

As the number of tournaments in eSports tripled over the past five years, the prize pools skyrocketed. Consequently, players’ level of investment, commitment and competition has reached a fever pitch.“In the early days attending events and practice was very much free time, or free time you made, in the same way a local softball team meets and practices,” explained Trevor Schmidt, Senior Manager of ESEA.“Now CS players have full time jobs with 24/7 expectations and million-dollar housing with practice rooms.” CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) players can pick and choose between events, creating an entire ecosystem of big and small prize tournaments. It has allowed players like Potter to create full-time careers around competing.

eSports has grown and transformed

The price of all this opportunity is steep. The level of play increased exponentially along with the professionalization of eSports, but according to Potter, many veteran eSports stars began playing games in their basement because they liked it, not for the fame. “As pro gamers, we’re all learning a lot about work ethic,” she said. “The skill gaps have grown tenfold. People are becoming robots — perfection is everything.” Surprisingly, in this new world of highly professional competitive gaming, the biggest issue facing pro players is burnout. The CLG Red’s coach, Erik Stromberg, now considers enforcing a balance of life outside CS: GO to be key to any team’s success.

“We’ve gotten to a professional level where players can focus solely on getting better at Counter-Strike. It lead us to reach new heights,” he explained. “But we need to be able to do things outside the game so that when we play eight or 10 hours a day, we can stay hungry to win.” According to Stromberg, Potter can sustain the hunger through just about anything. She also remains one of the hardest players to convince to take a break. This level of intensity is fairly common given how eSports has grown and transformed into the monolith it is today. Because aside from the sheer surprise of eSports’ professionalization, the speed has also been unprecedented. Most major modern sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, FIFA have taken decades to reach any decent size.

“I can’t think of a single sport that spawned and, in less than 20 years, grew to be this big,” Schmidt said. The reason for this is at once expected and surprising. As with most sports, sponsors lead to growth through tournaments and prize pools. But what is truly unique to eSports is how the biggest sponsors push the technology that makes the sport possible. Historically the biggest sponsor, Intel, had a vested interest in providing the tech and tournaments that would raise the level of play. “You just always need the best technology to play Counter-Strike well,” said Potter, adding that at practice or a tournament, technical hiccups can be dire. “The first thing I notice in my PC experience is FPS (frames per second) and hertz (gigahertz processor speed).”

Consistently high refresh rates on the game and a high performance CPU gives Potter the results she needs. She said that one little kink in the chain, no matter how small, can throw the entire game off. Playing on i7 6700k processor enables her to stay focused on staying on top of the cutthroat competition. Despite her hunger to win and stay competitive, it wasn’t playing for an audience of thousands in stadiums around the world that convinced Potter of her success. She knew she’d made it the day her mom learned to text message to ask what her gaming nickname was.

“She wanted to Google me,” Potter said, “so she could show her friends and brag.”

 

The post From small beginnings to Esports Althete appeared first on Kill Screen.

Making videogames inspired by New York’s musical improv scene

Greg Heffernan (aka Cosmo D) is making videogames unlike anyone else right now. He attributes it to two things: his early efforts to visualize music, and his background among the New York music scene.

The first game he made, Saturn V (2014), turned the track of the same name by Heffernan’s band Archie Pelago into a virtual space. It was meant as a creative experiment: Heffernan said that he always thought of the music he created as a window into his head. By turning “Saturn V” into a 3D space he calcified that idea. Players could wander around a “vertical mix” of that song where their location changed the overall levels of the song’s instruments. Meanwhile, a bunch of odd, seemingly disparate objects could be viewed—a billiards, table, a pot of Pringles, barrels of beer—scattered around the place without much rhyme or reason.

“I attempt to give a nod to that freedom of play”

But not quite. Heffernan’s thought process while constructing the 3D space for Saturn V was guided by “incidental details, references, nods to people and places in my life,” he told me. “Any creative questions that came up, I’d try to answer from personal experience. Any gameplay questions, I’d try to answer from a lifetime of playing a wide variety of games, particularly non-linear immersive sim games where players have freedom to explore.”

In particular, Heffernan looked back to the games released in the ’90s by Looking Glass Studios, who were most famous for the System Shock and Thief series. It was the fact that they were prided on emergent play in open spaces that appealed to Heffernan, which is something that he sought out when composing music—the association between videogames and music was set. “By day I was seeking musical experiences where I could be as creative and free with my cello as possible, then I’d get home and fire up a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Vampire: Bloodlines,” Heffernan told me. “In my own games I attempt to give a nod to that freedom of play.”

But this approach to designing game spaces is actually better understood as being rooted in the New York music scene in which Heffernan is embedded. He studied classical cello at college while also taking jazz cello lessons with Erik Friedlander, who Heffernan describes as “a singular jazz cellist held in high esteem by the musical establishment in New York and beyond.” But it’s Friedlander’s connection to John Zorn that has informed Heffernan’s videogame work the most.

Zorn has been a big part of the New York underground jazz community since the 1970s and has his own “roving crew of self-described ‘Downtown’ jazz misfits” according to Heffernan. Zorn’s early free jazz pieces made a direct connection to games through their titles. “Hockey,” “Lacrosse,” and “Cobra” are all pieces of music that “also function as improvisational power struggles between the performers,” Heffernan told me.

“these pieces crackle with uncertainty and surprise”

These pieces are game-like in that they evoke the idea of competition and communication between the instruments, each of them a part of a sonic system, an idea that Zorn has said was inspired by old Avalon Hill boardgames. “There are a strict set of rules for those musicians to follow, guided by the whims of a conductor holding up placards to indicate the direction of where the music could go,” Heffernan said. “Played by sensitive, skilled players (Zorn is good at assembling those), these pieces crackle with uncertainty and surprise.”

Having this music history in his proximity during his student years, and later the DJ world with its playful remixing, inadvertently affected Heffernan’s approach to game design. In both his musical explorations and videogame spaces he puts trust in improvisation, whether from himself or from players. This manifests in his games as non-linearity and the reactivity of the virtual world, which acts as a reward for the player’s curiosity or mischief.

With his second game, Off-Peak (2015), Heffernan moved beyond a mere “sonic clubhouse” and wanted to create a space with a wider canvas—one with a narrative, characters, more than one song, and that was rooted in reality. “I needed subject matter, so I drew upon my own life, my own experience, and tried to be honest with my approach,” Heffernan said. “Music that sticks with me is satisfying and unsettling at at the same time, and Off-Peak was me attempting to ride that balance in my own way, trusting, hoping, that some players would resonate with it.”

Off-Peak will certainly be a challenge for players used to engaging with traditional videogame formats. It has you stuck in a surreal train station trying to gather up the scraps of a ticket for a ride out of there. But keeping in tune with Heffernan’s approach to games, it doesn’t offer you direct guidance, nor does it try to explain its eclectic contents, ranging from avant-garde musicians to steel girders. But for the patient and analytical eye there’s a lot to unpick here; a process that should help tame the nonsense. “Zorn mixed music genres with abandon, but he always grounded his flights of fancy with strong themes and concepts,” Heffernan said. “I aspire for my games to not just be a hodge-podge of ideas, but have an actual thematic grounding, and come from an honest perspective.”

Heffernan’s next game, The Norwood Suite, is him applying those same techniques to an even wider canvas. This time the open-ended location up for exploration is a hotel with lot of nooks, crannies, and hidden pathways. As with Off-Peak, there is a throughline players can follow if they wish to reach an end—the dichotomy of freedom and structure draws from what Heffernan considers to be a good DJ set or jazz performance, “where there’s this wide room to maneuver inside of an intentional arc, however subtle.”

“the gameplay provides a sort of music generation machine”

While there is a lot of “creative riffing” in The Norwood Suite, Heffernan told me that it’s grounded in relatable detail, inspired by the musicians he respects the most who allow their life experience to influence their work no matter how theatrical it gets. “Characters in the game all have believable motivations for being at the hotel,” he said. “Their conversations, with each other and with you, are meant to feel natural. Their reactions to your actions are meant to feel relatable.”

The sound design and its integration with the choreography of the 3D space is an area that Heffernan has being paying particular attention to. He told me that text appears on-screen to correspond with fragments of musical instruments played by character seen in the immediate environment so that it seems diegetic. These small sounds that are fed into the game world by the player’s actions then blend with the in-game music that is blasted around the hotel through visible speakers. “Without realizing it, the gameplay provides a sort of music generation machine,” Heffernan said.

By now, Heffernan has settled into the way he makes games firmly, and lets himself be guided by the joy of discovery, exploring ideas that resonate while he tinkers. It’s fueled him with the kind of confidence and whimsy you’d expect to see from a free jazz musician on stage, but here it’s applied to videogames: “In working on The Norwood Suite, and the games before this, whenever I’ve found myself in this headspace, I’ve felt like ‘yeah, I’m on the right track, here’.”

The Norwood Suite is coming out for Windows and Mac in spring 2017. Check the Cosmo D website for updates.

 

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