Category: News

Microsoft has pulled back the curtain on its work-in-progress game streaming technology, Project xCloud.

The ‘state-of-the-art’ tech will let users stream games on whatever device they choose, with Microsoft explaining the future of video games is one where players aren’t locked to specific hardware. 

“Ultimately, Project xCloud is about providing gamers — whether they prefer console or PC — new choices in when and where they play, while giving mobile-only players access to worlds, characters and  immersive stories they haven’t been able to experience before,” reads a post on the Microsoft blog. 

The company wants to make it easy for developers to bring their content over to Project xCloud, letting creators deploy and scale access to their titles across multiple devices without the need for any additional work. 

To that end, the console maker has already enabled compatibility with existing and future Xbox games by building out custom hardware for its Azure datacenters and creating a tailor-made blade that can host the component parts of multiple Xbox One consoles. 

While a lot of work has already gone into the project, the technology is still in its infancy, and Microsoft is predicting a “multi-year journey” before it’s ready for consumers. 

The first step along that path will be a public trial in 2019, which will complement the internal tests Microsoft is conducting on mobile devices (phones and tablets) right now. 

When it’s finally ready, Microsoft claims Project xCloud will have the capability to make game streaming possible on 4G networks, while also dynamically scaling to push against the outer limits of what’s possible on 5G networks.

“The future of gaming is a world where you are empowered to play the games you want, with the people you want, whenever you want, wherever you are, and on any device of your choosing,” continues the blog. “Our vision for the evolution of gaming is similar to music and movies — entertainment should be available on demand and accessible from any screen.”

You can find out more about the work being done on Project xCloud by checking out the full write-up on the Microsoft blog.

Epic Games has acquired video game security and player services company Kamu for an undisclosed fee. 

Based in Helsinki, Kamu offers a suite of services focusing on game security, game telemetry, and game management, while its Easy Anti-Cheat system is used by over 100 million PC players around the world.

Epic, meanwhile, is the company behind the Unreal Engine, as well as games including Gears of War, Shadow Complex, and popular battle royale shooter Fortnite. 

A variety of Kamu’s tools have actually been used to balance out and manage Fortnite’s multiplayer experience, making it fair for players across the board. 

Moving forward, the Kamu team will continue to expand its service line-up, while Epic hopes its new presence in Helsinki will help it recruit technology, engine, and online service developers in Finland.

This month, Insomniac Games and Sony released Marvel’s Spider-Man, a fluid, polished, and surprisingly grounded take on the web-slinging hero that’s drawn wide praise and sold millions of copies.

And while it’s easy to credit the wall-crawler’s worldwide fame as a big part of that success, the work Insomniac Games has done polishing every minute of Spider-Man’s adventure is worth remembering as well. 

Recently, we were lucky enough to be joined by Insomniac Games game director Ryan Smith to talk about the development of Marvel’s Spider-Man, and learn more about the process in making Spidey feel like a genuine superhero. 

Whether it’s the incredibly dynamic wall-crawling or building a New York in need of a champion, we wanted to know what Insomniac did to fuel their Spider-Man with great powers, and an even greater responsibility. 

The swing is the thing

Smith’s perspective on Marvel’s Spider-Man starts from the fact that, no matter where the story goes or what villains Spidey squares off with, players will spend most of their time in this game doing one activity: swinging. Spider-Man’s unique traversal system has long been a draw in the various Spider-Man games made over the years, but for Smith and his colleagues, this pendulum-like movement would be the root of all their work. 

Smith starts our conversation by explaining that the pendulum movement came first and foremost. As players hold down the right trigger, Spidey looks for an object nearby to shoot a web at, then swings down, then up to continue his forward movement. Right away, Smith says this flow creates visual and spatial differences that set the game apart from Insomniac’s last open-world title Sunset Overdrive. 

“There’s also a difference in feel in terms of the speed that this character moves, the grand motions you make when you swing,” says Smith. “So you actually look at the city in a very different way: you’re looking at it a little further off in the distance.” 

Insomniac Games’ Sunset Overdrive, released in 2014

“Sunset Overdrive, [the player sees] very rapid-fire changes. This one, we had a smoother motion that you’re looking at and you’re looking at bigger picture city changes.”

From there, the gameplay team needed to determine what would happen with each point in the parabolic arc where players could release the rope. “We looked at, on the swing, not just how does it feel to be on the line, but where are those right points to let yourself off the line and how can we make that a little bit of a game mechanic?” explains Smith.

This led to a decision to give players more decisions to make in traversal. Pressing jump at the end of a swing can launch them forward, but choosing to release earlier in the swing can send the player’s vector downward, changing direction toward street level. 

Next, Smith pointed out the importance of “speed cues” in this crafting process. Examples include the motion blur from a straight dive down, or the slow-moving buildings in the distance while players zip through the foreground. 

All the while, these movement systems (which include a handful of non-swinging moves like zip-lines and leaping systems), are fueled by hand-crafted interactions in the Insomniac Engine. To Smith, game physics are useful for collision tests, but when Spidey takes wing, it’s more important that “custom hero states” drive the swinging and moves.

An Empire State of Mind

The open world of Marvel’s Spider-Man might be better described as an open metropolis. It’s a scaled-down version of New York City that mushes together notable landmarks like Wall Street and Trinity Church (which is detailed so finely you can swing by the grave of Alexander Hamilton, as seen below). Unlike a lot of recent open-world adventures, Marvel’s Spider-Man doesn’t confine its hero to specific zones and then shuffle them along into new areas as the story progresses.

Instead, it keeps the city open, and uses a district system not only to organize its quests and activities, but also unique flavors of gameplay that keep the swinging from becoming stale. 

“Also if things are always consistently—‘I can just press one button and just drive through the whole city,’ then that takes away some of that player engagement and that sense of flow and involvement,” Smith says. He compares three of the game’s districts and their architecture next. “The Financial District has really tall skyscrapers, Hell’s Kitchen is maybe a little bit lower…we looked at real spaces, actually Central Park is a great example.”

To build on Smith’s point, a quick spin through the city of Marvel’s Spider-Man shows the kind of detail he’s talking about. In the Financial District, it’s easier to get a higher altitude and make wide, sweeping swings between skyscrapers over the smaller buildings below. But when heading into Hell’s Kitchen, the player is now caught more in the local grid of the city. When making navigational changes, they either need to follow that grid’s path, or hoof it over the buildings and use more lateral traversal moves to move in the desired direction.

And when it comes to Central Park, it’s a wonder Spider-Man can even swing through there at all. But Smith says getting New York’s biggest natural landmark down was a big priority for Insomniac Games. 

“You actually can swing through Central Park but we looked at those sections of the game that aren’t as natural as swinging off skyscrapers,” says Smith.” And we asked ourselves what feels right? Central Park, its central right? It defines the overall size of the island, it relates very directly to the whole shape and feel of it.”

“We did multiple tests with like a smaller Central Park, a bigger Central Park, and so we wanted to know both that if I’m swinging along side of it, what’s the right size, what’s the right distance where it feels like what’s the right size, what’s the right distance where it feels like ‘Wow, that is a Big Central Park, it feels right.’ But at the same time how can we find those opportunities in the middle to let you swing off the trees or the lamp posts that are in there?” 

If this be Insomniac’s destiny

During our discussion with Smith, one surprising caveat to our conversation was how much of Spider-Man’s feel comes from all the games the company’s produced in the past, along with its proprietary Insomniac Engine. 

Smith points to two specific titles whose DNA can be felt in Marvel’s Spider-Man in particular. The first is Sunset Overdrive, which is where Smith says the company learned about open-world traversal and shaping cities to improve gameplay. The second though, is the Ratchet and Clank series that Insomniac was previously most famous for. 

In particular, Smith discussed how the myriad weapons and gadgets that players touted in Ratchet and Clank drove the gadgets and powers that players pick up during the course of Marvel’s Spider-Man. “That was something where we were able to leverage the experience we had building [Ratchet and Clank] weapons and awesome gadgets in previous games to integrate that into combat.” 

“We knew that was a way that we could have players could express themselves and they’re gonna be still hopefully discovering different ways gadgets combined together and different strategies for taking guys down.”

Smith describes working with the company’s proprietary engine as “part of the Insomniac DNA,” and says using the engine helps his team set audacious goals for the game’s streaming budget and graphics. He adds that it also affords his team the ability to create custom workflows and tools that best fit their workflow. 

 

“We were able to leverage the experience we had building [Ratchet and Clank] weapons and awesome gadgets in previous games to integrate that into combat.”

Unlike the development process for Sunset Overdrive, Smith says that Insomniac Games didn’t rely on internal game jams this time around to prototype dramatic new ideas. But he does say that a lot of the game’s niche features, like a photography mechanic and subway station-based fast travel system, came from a similar instinct of random team members pairing up to implement a unique design idea. 

Per Smith, both systems solved problems that were occupying the design team at other levels. They knew even with a fun traversal system, players would still want to zip around the map, and even though exploring the city was meant to be fun, Smith and his colleagues wanted ways for exploration to feed back into the combat system.

Thanks to team members collaborating together though, both the subway system and the “landmark photo” mechanic were hashed out, letting Insomniac put a Spider-Man-flavored spin on traditional open-world systems. 

“It takes a village,” Smith told us as we closed out a conversation. But if the success of Marvel’s Spider-Man is any indication, it’s helpful when that village has a history, elders, specialists, and a known tool as well. 

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

This week’s highlights include Uri Geller vs. Pokemon, why we need pessimistic games, a look at Ubisoft’s Starlink, & lots more besides.

One fun thing this week is that I’ve started helping out Gamasutra’s editorial staff, by commissioning some ‘straight to the point’ Q&As with smart indies who are being (at least moderately!) successful right now.

So far it’s been Joel Couture & John Harris chatting with the creators of The Universim & the Parkasaurus devs respectively – but there’s lots more to come! And is a good way to highlight games and creators at the same time on VGDC, too.

Until next time…

– Simon, curator.]

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Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (or, Of Movies and Games and Whether the Twain Shall Meet) (Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian – ARTICLE)
“Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game arises from the fact that its designers were adapting from the shooting script rather than the finished movie, which they got to see in the Skywalker Ranch theater only when their own project was in the final stages of bug-swatting and polishing.”

How developers harvest your data to make their games better (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“Barth can see how many players reached every one of the levels in his games, and how many succeeded. He can see how long they took and how many got stuck and never come back. He can see where the difficulty spikes are and do something about them, and he can take what he learns from one game and apply it to the next.”

Years in the Making: The Long Game of Boyfriend Dungeon (Tanya X. Short / Gamasutra Blogs – ARTICLE)
“Overnight successes don’t exist, from what I’ve seen. There’s usually years and years of work behind the scenes and then MAYBE your game blows up, but mostly not. Plenty of people work for years and their game still doesn’t blow up — that’s certainly what happened for our previous games. I guess it’s possible SOME game out there enjoyed overnight success.”

The Mentalist and the Monster: Uri Geller vs. Pokémon (Chris Chapman / YouTube – VIDEO)
“The odd tale of a celebrity, a trading card, a lawsuit, and 20 years of lasting consequences for a beloved franchise.”

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is big, beautiful, and shallow (Daniel Starkey / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“While the series struggled under an accelerated release schedule some years back, Ubisoft’s tentpole franchise is on a more solid pacing again. That means a return to what Assassin’s Creed does best: expounding on and remixing prominent game design ideas and serving them up an aesthetic and conceptual cocktail. Odyssey, much like last year’s Origins, takes ideas from its best contemporaries and reassembles them into a new whole. [SIMON’S NOTE: people generally seem to dig the game – & there are lots of romance FAQs, too.]”

Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs (David Craddock / Shacknews – ARTICLE)
“But stars come before constellations. In 2003, three producers left Black Isle Studios, publishers and developers of the Infinity Engine quintet, to found Obsidian Entertainment. Their sky was dark and blank, save for those five stars: Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, Planescape: Torment, and two romps through Icewind Dale.”

Thumbs down: how the video games industry is battling Brexit (Marijam Didžgalvytė / The Guardian – ARTICLE)
“Brexit and Wetherspoons, Brexit and fashion, Brexit and bananas … It seems as if so much of our everyday lives will be affected by Brexit – and if you play video games, you can certainly expect changes. The British video games industry adds £5bn to the economy and employs more than 12,000 people, 35% of whom are EU citizens.”

Ubisoft’s ‘Starlink’ Designed For ‘Gamer Kids’ and Their Parents (Brian Crecente / Variety – ARTICLE)
“Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure toys-to-life game “Starlink: Battle for Atlas” is the byproduct of creating for one of the many new sorts of audiences blossoming within the video game space. [SIMON’S NOTE: this game still seems kinda ‘under the radar’ – but maybe it’ll get somewhere with that unique approach?]”

How The Universim’s ‘god game’ twist charmed Early Access players (Joel Couture / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Gamasutra spoke with Alex Koshelkov of Crytivo, developers of The Universim, to talk about making living worlds and beings that react to player decisions rather than directly obey them, and the challenges that have come for the game as it moves through Early Access towards full release.”

We Need More Pessimistic Games (Cameron Kunzelman / Waypoint – ARTICLE)
“The vast majority of our games produce heroes; the heroes have stories fit for heroes; the world changes in response to the player’s tectonic actions. Our blockbuster video games are plagued with the optimism of gameplay.”

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 devs on balancing Blackout battle royale mode (Matt Cox /RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“There’s a new Call Of Duty around the corner. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 is out on October 12th, so I sat down with Treyarch’s studio design director David Vonderhaar and Jason “Director of Zombies” Blundell to quiz them about the game’s new battle royale mode, Blackout, why they’ve left regenerating health behind, and how they handled no longer making a singleplayer campaign mode.”

Queens of the Phone Age: The Narrative Design of Reigns: Her Majesty (Leigh Alexander / GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC talk, writer Leigh Alexander shares her narrative design process around the tricky political tightrope of women’s power, especially when it has to be both violent and funny.”

Occult Space | Cultist Simulator (Sam Zucci / Heterotopias – ARTICLE)
“The real draw of Cultist Simulator is its occult topography. The Mansus—the game’s occult centre—is another name for a feudal unit of land measurement and so expectedly, progress through the Mansus is framed as spatial, as the player moves from The Wood to the White Gate and so on.”

There’s not enough videogames; everyone should be encouraged to make them (or, videogames are just art) (Brendan Keogh / BRKeogh.com – ARTICLE)
“The problem with much of the Indiepocalypse discourse is that it perpetuates the misunderstanding that ‘making videogames’ is first and foremost an economic activity. Of course, for a whole lot of people, making videogames is an economic activity; it’s their job! The thing is, you can make videogames without it being your job.”

The Little Things That Matter A Lot (Ben Brode / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Ben Brode kicks off PAX Dev 2018 with a talk about the little details of game development that can end up having a huge impact on players and developers… Come laugh and hear a few stories from the former Hearthstone game director as he transitions into his new role as chief creative officer of Second Dinner.”

Breaking fences, escaping dinosaurs?! Oh my, it’s Parkasaurus‘ developers (John Harris / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Canadian microstudio Washbear’s new simulation, Parkasaurus, recently released on Steam Early Access to general delight from players, since it’s a lighthearted romp into the world of dino management and theme park wonder with a jovial ‘sim’ bent.”

The state of indie dev and why it will not get easier (Cliffski / Cliffski’s Blog – ARTICLE)
“In practice it seems that indie development is still seen as attractive enough that there is another decade or so of new entrants coming in to replace every developer who drops out when their finances run dry. I really cannot see the ‘number of games released on steam this week’ metric dropping a lot in the medium term.”

The future of GOG: mod support, Steam rivalry and problematic tweets (Robert Purchese / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“Almost 10 years ago to the day, CD Projekt launched the online digital game store Good Old Games. The operation and scope was small – a handful of people salvaging iconic old PC games for modern operating systems – but the prices, customer service and DRM-free message were right, and slowly the service grew. And grew, and grew. And today things are different.”

The Tragic End Of Telltale Games (Megan Farokhmanesh / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“When employees showed up for work on Friday, September 21st, at Telltale Games, there was nothing to suggest the day would be different than any other. The second episode of The Walking Dead’s final season would ship the following week; developers across multiple teams were busy with plans for in-progress titles. But only hours later, 250 people would find themselves with no job, no severance, and health insurance that would be gone by month’s end — just nine days.”

A Brief History of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / Read Only Memory – ARTICLE)
“A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort.”

 

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected] MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]