gamedeveloper200606-dl.pdf

>> PRODUCT REVIEWS:

TECHEXCEL'S DEVTRACK 6.0

JUNE/JULY 2006

THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

>> E3 HIGHLIGHTS

BEST IN SHOW AND

WHAT Wii THINK

>> EDGE OF THE WORLD

STREAMING DATA FOR

CONTINUOUS PLAY

>> STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

IN-GAME ADVERTISING'S

FIERCE COMPETITION

INDIGO

PROPHECY’S

SHIFTING

>> UNBREAKABLE BLOBS

USING PHYSICS FOR

SQUISHY CHARACTERS

VIEWPOINTS

POSTMORTEM:

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Perforce's lock on performance rests firmly on three pillars of design.

A carefully keyed relational database ensures a rapid response time for

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millions of files big. An efficient streaming network protocol minimizes

the effects of latency and maximizes the benefits of bandwidth. And

an intelligent, server-centric data model keeps both the database and

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[Distributed]

It's your call. Do you want to work, or do you want to wait?

Download a free copy of Perforce, no questions asked, from

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All trademarks used herein are either the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Tired of using a software configuration management system that

[

CONTENTS

]

JUNE/JULY 2006

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 6

FEATURES

11 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY:

IN-GAME ADVERTISING

Advertising in games is a burgeoning

way to add revenue to games,

closely tied to licensing, but quickly

growing beyond that age-old

practice. In this industry report, Paul

Hyman discusses the major players

and how they plan to put ads into

your games.

By Paul Hyman

POSTMORTEM

19 EDGE OF THE WORLD:

ESTIMATING AND MAXIMIZING

STREAMING BANDWIDTH

The next generation of consoles all

sport more RAM and better

processing power, but the optical

drives reading your discs may not

keep up as you would expect. In this

technical feature, Neversoft’s Brad

Buckley offers tips and tricks for

streaming your way to a seamless

game world.

By Brad Bulkley

24 INDIGO PROPHECY: THE NIGHTMARE

OF THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT

On paper, pushing for increased emotion, original play concepts, and new

methods of storytelling all in the same game sounds like the ravings of a

madman. I NDIGO P ROPHECY may not have hit all of these points perfectly,

but it has blazed a trail of innovation, and raised the bar for the

integration of story and gameplay. In this postmortem, David Cage

tackles everything from narrative to digital puppetry, and tells us why

changing publishers can save your game.

By David Cage

DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless

Excitement x3

31 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West

[ PROGRAMMING ]

Blob Physics

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY

Best of E3, Wii’s new tools providers, and more.

34 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore

[ ART ]

The Conquest of Space

7 SKUNK WORKS By Dennis Crowley and Bijan Forutanpour

TechExcel’s DevTrack 6.0 and Luke Ahearn’s 3D Game Textures

37 BUSINESS LEVEL By Sean Kauppinen

[ BUSINESS ]

Turning Features Into Coverage

48 A THOUSAND WORDS

Midway’s S TRANGLEHOLD

38 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein

[ DESIGN ]

Better Living Through Gameplay

39 AURAL FIXATION By Jesse Harlin

[ SOUND ]

COVER ART: Quantic Dream

Developers, Meet Your Reviewers

WWW.GDMAG.COM

GAME PLAN

]

www.gdmag.com

CMP Media, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090

EXCITEMENT x3

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Simon Carless scarless@gdmag.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com

FEATURES EDITOR

Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com

ART DIRECTOR

Cliff Scorso cscorso@gdmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jesse Harlin jharlin@gdmag.com

Noah Falstein nfalstein@gdmag.com

Steve Theodore stheodore@gdmag.com

Mick West mwest@gdmag.com

ADVISORY BOARD

Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large

Ellen Guon Beeman Microsoft

Andy Gavin Naughty Dog

Joby Otero Luxoflux

ADVERTISING SALES

DIRECTOR OF SALES

Afton Thatcher e : athatcher@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217

GLOBAL SALES MANAGER, RECRUITMENT & EDUCATION

Aaron Murawski e : amurawski@cmp.com t: 415.947.6227

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, EUROPE & EASTERN CANADA

Ayrien Machiran e : amachiran@cmp.com t: 415.947.6224

ACCOUNT MANAGER, NO. CALIF., NORTHWEST, ASIA & WESTERN CANADA

Nick Geist e : ngeist@cmp.com t: 415.947.6223

ACCOUNT MANAGER, SO. CALIF., SOUTH WEST, CONTRACTORS, &

MARKETPLACE

Jasmin Davé e : jdave@cmp.com t: 415.947.6226

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel

REPRINTS Julie Rapp e : jarapp@cmp.com t: 510.834.4752

CMP GAME GROUP

VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick

VP, STRATEGIC MARKETING Michele Maguire

GROUP DIRECTOR Valerie Pippin

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Ta r a C . G i b b

CONFERENCE DIRECTOR, GDC Jamil Moledina

SENIOR CONFERENCE MANAGER, GDC Meggan Scavio

EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy

EDITOR-IN-CHIE F, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless

FEATURES EDITOR , GAMASUTRA.COM Quang Hong

ASSISTANT EDITOR , GAMASUTRA.COM Frank Cifaldi

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT MANAGER Jessica Ward e: jward@cmp.com

CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Miguel Mendiolaza e : mmendiolaza@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Michael Campbell e : mcampbell@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Andrea Abidor e : aabidor@cmp.com

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES

t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606 e : gamedeveloper@halldata.com

INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION

Mario Salinas

t: 650.513.4234 f: 650.513.4482 e : msalinas@cmp.com

CMP MEDIA MANAGEMENT

PRESIDENT & CEO Steve Weitzner

EXECUTIVE VP & CFO John Day

EXECUTIVE VP, GLOBAL SALES & BRAND DEVELOPMENT Jeff Patterson

SENIOR VP, BUSINESS OPERATIONS Adam Marder

SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz

SENIOR VP, INTERNET BUSINESS Mike Azzara

SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue

SENIOR VP & GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller

SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Meyers

SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Kate Spellman

VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane

PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra

PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe

PRESIDENT, CMP HEALTHCARE MEDIA Vicki Masseria

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, ELECTRONICS &

SOFTWARE GROUPS Paul Miller

SENIOR VP, ENTERPRISE GROUP, GROUP DIRECTOR Fritz Nelson

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS GROUP Stephen Saunders

THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT E3 2006

was that both Sony’s Phil Harrison and Microsoft’s

Peter Moore publicly suggested that either they

themselves or consumers should think about

buying Nintendo’s Wii this holiday season (in

addition to their company’s own console, of

course). The leftfield presentation of Nintendo’s

newest machine, the company’s refusal to even

announce a price at E3, and its deliberate

downplaying of HD capabilities allow both

Microsoft and Sony to not feel threatened by

Satoru Iwata’s mercurial contraption.

But should they be?

First, Xbox Live Arcade is a notable success, and

it is unclear whether Sony will try to compete with

it. Second, Microsoft is holding strong with

benchmark titles such as G EARS OF W AR coming

out exclusively for the Xbox 360. Third, all signs

point to ease of development (and PC conversion)

for 360 game makers.

The only remaining issue is the console’s

performance in Japan, where, quite frankly, it has

already failed. Attempts to prop up the console

with exclusives from Tecmo, for example, did little

to sustain the market. Without Japanese support,

Microsoft’s strategy is always going to be at least

somewhat lopsided, which is unfortunate from a

multitude of angles. Most of all, it means that

Japanese exclusives will be few and far between,

and many of the most delightful crossover hits of

the next generation (think K ATAMARI D AMACY ) are

likely to appear on the PlayStation 3.

Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios

George Sanger Big Fat Inc.

Harvey Smith Midway

Paul Steed Microsoft

WII WANT WONDERMENT

Oddly, many industry folks I talked to in Los

Angeles were impressed by the general idea of the

Wii, but not exactly speechless about all its

current implementations. The tennis game in W II

S PORTS , as demonstrated by Miyamoto, Iwata, and

friends at the Nintendo pre-show press

conference, was generally cited as the most

naturalistic and free-flowing execution. Other

games, such as W ARIO W ARE for Wii, also exemplify

the mainstream party-style interactions that are

possible with the controller, which really does

have the opportunity to open up gaming way

beyond the norm.

However, some of the abstract movements that

players need to perform in order to play games

like Z ELDA : T WILIGHT P RINCESS are so tortuous,

they’re almost confusing. A number of third-party

titles also illustrated how easy it is to make

imprecise control schemes for the machine.

Yet, remember the DS in its early stages. When

one considers the lack of completely fleshed-out

software that used the touchscreen when

Nintendo’s latest handheld launched, and the

strides that have been made since, the Wii

suddenly seems like an incredibly potent tool

again—albeit one that makes the creation of

cross-platform titles spectacularly difficult.

SONY’S MIXED BLESSING

Plenty of suspect buzz at E3, of course, circled

the PlayStation 3’s $499/$599 price tag. There

was an audible hush in the Sony pre-E3 press

conference when the amount was announced,

partly because the Japanese price had been

released first, and the concept of an “open” price

for the 60Gb model, although vaguely sensible in

Japan, made it sound like the console would be

too expensive to even put a concrete figure on it!

An interminably long G RAN T URISMO HD demo didn’t

warm up anyone either.

The conclusion is Sony will probably be OK in

the end—“OK” meaning it will have the biggest

market share in the next console generation,

and “in the end” being after the company has

brought the excessive price down through

economies of scale ... and when it has sorted

out its issues with slow hardware development,

which have caused many third parties to not

receive their development kits until very

recently ... and after Sony has managed to

actually fit all the complex components into the

PlayStation 3 box ... and when the company can

get more games to look like H EAVENLY S WORD

running on the final hardware.

MICROSOFT’S STURDY START

The biggest message from this year’s E3 was that

Microsoft is looking extremely robust, despite its

notable hardware supply problems. A well-staged

press conference showcasing Bill Gates, G RAND

T HEFT A UTO IV, and H ALO 3 set the stage for an

impressive show floor, and from the shouts and

murmurs I heard, the general observation was

how sturdy Microsoft’s overall strategy looks for

at least three reasons.

—Simon Carless, editor-in-chief

Game Developer

is BPA approved

JUNE/JULY 2006 | GAME DEVELOPER

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

[

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

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