Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 451

The distant future will be less dystopian if this is what hopscotch looks like

'Hopscotch for Geniuses' by teamLab is an installation that projects the classic game on the ground with interactive shapes.

Ralph Baer recalls the creation of console gaming

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story..."

Square Enix’s confusing crowd-screening platform explained

The Square Enix Collective, the Final Fantasy maker’s, uh, crowd-something platform—launched yesterday, but it’s actually just a screening process for games that will appear on Square’s official Indiegogo page. Confusing, I know, but I can explain. The way it works is that if a game garners enough interest, gauged through page hits and (yes) votes, then it might get the chance to appear in a crowdfunding project blessed by Square. You're competing to compete.

So it’s kind of a crowdsourcing filter for crowdfunding projects that will be endorsed by a big publisher, which seems like three degrees of pointless. The purpose of crowdfunding to begin with was to offer creators direct access to potential audiences without the oversight of unadventurous publishers acting as gatekeepers. This ... does that, but then doesn't. 

One thing this does offer is a degree of protection to consumers, assuring them that the games they fund will get made, be correctly budgeted, and live up to a standard of quality. It's in effect the big publishers taking a puff on a cigar and nefariously coughing as they say, "You missed us, didn't you." 

So what do studios stand to gain by going through Square’s screening process? Well, publicity, of course, but Square is also pledging development support. Also, studios that take advantage of the program are free to make games in the universe of several forgotten Eidos properties. And by that, we’re talking Gex. Right now there are three games gathering yeas and nays, but none of them are Gex. Community of Gex fans, you know what to do!

You cannot win Fort McMoney, but you should still play it

How a harrowing documentary on a Canadian boom town attracted the attention of Will Wright and a couple hundred thousand Europeans.

Nintendo deigns to look into this whole "smart phone" thing

A few weeks ago, after yet another bad quarter, Nintendo announced that it was finally considering experimenting with bringing their games to mobile devices. Last night, we found out what they meant, and it’s less than anyone thought. The dojo of Mario will be releasing demos of their games in an attempt to lure people away from their smartphones and toward Nintendo’s hardware, reports Nikkei, the Japanese newspaper that always seems to break big Nintendo news first.

This is of course the most tepid, non-committal approach to releasing games on phones imaginable. Their unwillingness to accept a mobile marketplace brings to mind old media’s difficulties shifting to digital content after the rise of the Internet, as we saw monolithic institutions like the New York Times stumble before struggling to get back on track in the past few years. In games, we’ve recently seen Sony hedge their bets against a console-less future with their streaming game service PlayStation Now. Xbox One tried to go down that path before, you know, everyone went crazy about it. And both major publishers, along with Ubisoft and Bungie and a bunch of others, are focused on making companion apps work. We love Nintendo, but they look like a dinosaur on this one. 

Strike Vector is lovely and completely terrifying

You will be jostled.

How CD Projekt Red is reinventing the open world in The Witcher 3

Is bigger necessarily better?

Let’s briefly marvel at No Man Sky’s gorgeous retro-future concept art

Back in the 50s, before people had any idea that space was lifeless and blank, sci-fi was marked by fascinating illustrations of exotic alien planets and clunky metal spaceships. That is what I’m reminded of when looking at No Man Sky’s beautiful, utopian, retro-future concept art, which Edge was kind enough to share. Look closely and you’ll see dinosaurs strolling the coast, nodular space domes nestled in a cliff, and ring worlds in the horizon. If the game’s procedurally generated engine manages to live up to this, anyone with an inkling of nostalgia for the space race is in for a hell of a treat. 

Check out all 17 illustrations over at Edge.

The Global Game Jam game that teaches you how to do it, kinda

How Do You Do It? is a quick game about one of those precious formative moments, when as a child, you realized that there was such a thing called sex that people did to each other, and though you were uncertain about the specifics, you undressed two dolls and tried to get them to do it. (Full discclosure: it was made by a team including our former intern, Nina Freeman. Sup, Nina.)

In my case it was He-Man in a loincloth and Ariel from Little Mermaid with her velcro tail taken off. The game character’s dolls look like a traditional Ken and Barbie. Did that too. You’re dolls were likely different. But whatever the case, this is probably the only game about dolls doing it to come out of Global Game Jam 2014, which was held over the weekend and participated in by thousands of jammers from all corners of the globe. I'm willing to wager it has one of the best endings, too. Too cute.

Play it here. I know you're tempted.

Epic bails on Gears of War, hopefully so they can attach chainsaws to new, interesting objects

Microsoft has snapped up the rights to Gears of War from Epic Games and will be continuing the series, the tech goliath made known today. It sounds like we can expect an indefinite amount of masculine men built like slabs of concrete snapping to cover behind, um, slabs of concrete. This is good news, though, as it means Gears won't turn to rust and Epic is freed from the duty of keeping the chainsaw guns polished.

Black Tusk Studios, Microsoft’s mysterious studio who has yet to produce anything, is working on a new Gears game, presumably for Xbox One. Previously, they were said to be creating an all-new franchise that would be as big as Halo, so either plans have been changed, or they’ll be taking on that mammoth project in addition to Gears. The young studio may have the pedigree to pull it off, as they are staffed by former EA employees and have hired Rod Fergusson, the director and producer of the first three Gears games. 

So why did Epic bail on the franchise? Possibility A, which is less interesting, is that this is just business. Possibility B is that they grew weary of pumping out sequels and iterations. This recalls the saga of Bungie, which repeatedly expressed that they were tired of making Halo and wanted to move on to something new, but Microsoft insisted that they make Master Chief bio-epics forever. Eventually, the two split up, with Microsoft retaining Halo, and Bungie moving on to do Destiny, which looks amazing. This wound up being great for Halo fans, who get to keep playing Halo, and for the rest of us, who were itching to see Bungie flex their creativity again.