Category: News

Trion Worlds has acquired the assets of Gazillion Entertainment, picking up ownership of the studio’s licenses, trademarks, patents, domains, and game library for an undisclosed sum.

The asset acquisition comes roughly half a year after Disney decided to sever ties with Gazillion Entertainment, causing the studio to end support for its Marvel Heroes game and, later, to shut down entirely.

For Trion, the move comes as the MMO developer and publisher looks to expand its publishing reach. Speaking to VentureBeat, Trion Worlds CEO Scot Hartsman explained that the studio plans to strengthen its ability to publish games created outside its own studio, and says that the tech and infrastructure gained through the Gazillion acquisition will help better support devs that sign on with Trion Worlds. 

“We want ourselves and other developers be able to make games and succeed and have sustainable life cycles,” Hartsman told VentureBeat. “Crunch and burn and lay off is unhealthy. We have tried to do things about it and we want to be a good member of the gaming ecology. We keep trying to do things to help other developers.”

The perennially popular game of pinball has appeared in video games in all sorts of forms, from Pinball for the NES in 1983 and the classic Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball in 1993 to Zen Studios’ modern Pinball FX series.

Thing is, both these and the many iterations that followed were somewhat straightforward adaptations of the classic pinball board to a digital format.

By contrast, Yoku’s Island Express, developed by Villa Gorilla using their own engine and released last month, mixes the game of pinball up within a colorful platformer and finishes it with a splash of Metroidvania. 

Players take control of Yoku, a dung beetle attached to a ball by a string, and explore a massive map of interconnected “tables”, solving puzzles and meeting the townsfolk by delivering their mail as the new postmaster.

In the beginning, the game was envisioned as a project that would primarily rely on its art style. “Because of the team constellation when starting off, we wanted to make a game that could focus on beautiful art without relying too heavily on animation. So, we began with a ball, and pinball followed that quite naturally,” says level designer and writer Linus Larsson.

But the team knew they had to stand out from other digital pinball games in some way. During prototyping, it didn’t take long to realize that beautiful tables weren’t enough to make an interesting game. Now, the ball needed to be introduced as a character, and Villa Gorilla wanted a lot more room than what traditional pinball tables would afford them.

“This led to tables that were attached to connecting areas and the inclusion of Yoku the dung beetle to push the ball around them”, adds Larsson. “[That] was the state of the project for a while, but we soon realized that those in-between areas were where the game really felt unique. Because of this we made a major direction change: stepping away from pinball levels and transition areas and going for an open world Metroidvania design instead.”

As the initial design closely resembled traditional pinball, there were a lot of “pure” mechanics that needed to be adjusted: a score system, combos and extra balls that represented lives were scrapped and replaced by bigger exploration areas, more NPCs and secrets to uncover all around Mokumana Island.

A dev-provided clip of the journey from concept to functional pinball-platforming level

“With our shift in focus towards a more adventure- [and] exploration-driven game we also started to see that our game was at its best when it was relaxed and chill,” explains Larsson. “This was in direct conflict with the stress of pinball, so many of the traditional elements had to be dropped.”

“Somewhere in all this we stopped thinking of our fruits as score and instead as a currency that could interact with our gameworld,” he adds. In Yoku’s Island Express, fruit is now found laying on the ground, hidden in chests or boxes, and as rewards for many of the player’s actions, from hitting certain bumpers to making progress in either a ‘table’ or throughout the story.

“The initial design for this was a ‘skill tree-esque’ system that contained a large portion of the game rewards called ‘The Fruit Altar’.” Larsson continues. “The feature was a lot of fun, but it cannibalized elements from the exploration part of the game.”

A prototype version of the Fruit Altar

The problem was that most of the rewards would be available to unlock in the Altar, leaving very little to be found on the island itself. The team also struggled in narrowing the design down in a way where the Fruit Altar would fit into the world, scrambling to come up with a meaningful reason for its location and purpose in the story.

Ultimately, Larsson says the team concluded that it needed to be cut in favor of scattering more rewards throughout the levels. “In the end we went with the system you see in game today: where fruits are spent to unlock flippers and rewards are scattered around the island in chests for you to find.”

Of course, mixing those levels and exploration-based rewards up with the elements of pinball was no easy task. To manage it, Villa Gorilla initially considered doing two separate game modes: in Flipper Mode you would control the ball and the flippers, and in Adventure you would play solely as Yoku.

 

An early prototype of the “Adventure Mode”, which was eventually scrapped

“Areas needed to be built with transitions between the two modes in mind and it ended up feeling very disconnected,” admits Larsson. “The solution might sound simple but we never really considered it an option until we tried it: We decided the player should be able to control Yoku and the flippers at the same time.”

Under this new philosophy Yoku would always be present, able to grab hold of the ball even during pinball sections, removing the unnatural pinball/platforming transitions via a (“quite funny”) rope that keeps the beetle and the ball together at all times.

A clip of the Yoku’s Island Express level design process

Larsson also says that, although working with restrictions and boundaries helps to boost creativity, there were a few frustrating moments where levels had to be re-imagined to work with the pinball mechanics. Most notably, when it came to setting up the cameras in Yoku’s Island Express. According to Larsson, “because of the low amount of control pinball leaves you with compared to other games, stages couldn’t be designed with a challenge that has its solution several screens away.”

Villa Gorilla quickly noticed that unlike most platformers, which afford players time to explore an environment and take it all in, pinball is fast-paced and full of random movement. Playing pinball well demands a lot of the player’s attention, and so both the challenges and solutions usually need to be contained and visible on a single screen in Island Express order to be clear.

 A bird’s-eye view of a full Yoku’s Island Express map filled with interconnected pinball/platforming segments

This then explains why only a few areas in Yoku’s Island Express look like a traditional pinball game. Instead, throughout most of the game players enter wide zones with different sections: there are flippers at the bottom and some hook-shaped paths designed to bring the player back to the zone with ease, fostering opportunities for players to discover new paths and new rewards without bouncing too far afield.

“To be able to use as much of the screen space as possible, the levels needed to be more horizontal than vertical [like traditional pinball tables],” says Larsson. “This proved challenging but ultimately led to some pretty interesting and unique ‘tables’ in-game.”

Ultimately, while each level in Yoku’s Island Express is built on decades-old foundations of pinball and platformer game design, the devs took enough liberties to create accessible and entertaining interconnected “tables” that are unique — and well worth studying if you’re a dev interested in 2D level design.

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.

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Like every year, this is the time for a look at the performance of the many E3 announcements in terms of media coverage.

If this the first time you read about our analysis, you can find out more about the methodology used, and read the blog posts for 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Overall trend

Starting with 2016, I set up a media tracker to measure the media coverage for the E3 itself. It tracks all the articles that mention the event, and is a good indicator of the scale of a particular year’s crop.

As you can see, 2018 was a decline year in terms of total volume of media articles mentioning the event. I am not sure this should be particularly worrying, or even surprising. While there were great games revealed during the week, it was also particularly light on industry-changing announcements.

We are well into the cycle of this generation of consoles, while the rumours on the next gen are growing, there was nothing to feed many articles. The same goes for new technologies, like VR and the impact it had over the past two E3s.

It’s good to note that there has been a decline, and while it is merely a 5.5% drop, for an event of that scale, it could be an indicator of a trend.

Platforms

Looking at the performance of the key brands for the consoles, the downward trend is much more significant. It is the worst year for the PlayStation since we started measuring, and the worst year for Microsoft since 2014.

I have to confess I am surprised that Microsoft’s performance ended being at this level. I felt they had a very good conference, and while their line-up is still behind, they had better announcement than last year. It seems like it wasn’t enough to compensate a hardware communication, like the Xbox One X and the Xbox One S last year.

As for Nintendo, 2018 was their best year, even if, arguably, the volume of articles mentioning them is very close to last year’s.

This validates very much Nintendo’s strategy to not have a traditional press conference. At the very least, it doesn’t seem to prevent them to secure a significant volume of media coverage. Nintendo also benefitted for the first time in a while from the media coverage around 3rd party titles, with their Fortnite announcement being spot on with the current Battle Royale frenzy.

Looking at the specific platforms mention, we find the same ranking in the top 3. What is significant though here is that the platforms outside of these three consoles have ridiculously low coverage numbers compared to previous years.

And in case you were wondering, E3’s fling with VR is mostly over.

Games

This is my read on those numbers:

• Fortnite had so much going for it during the week of E3: Nintendo Switch port, Celebrity Pro Am event, and the controversy around the crossplay restrictions on the PlayStation 4. Add to this that Fortnite has been a very popular game with the media in the past few months, it doesn’t come as a surprise it managed to dominate here.
• Fallout 76 is following in the steps of Fallout 4 when it was first showed at E3 in 2015. It has not dominated the way F4 did then, but it makes sense for the game to be so well covered.
• Cyberpunk 2077 is the real winner for me. While it didn’t get the most coverage, it certainly did very well for an “original” IP, surfing on the media interest for The Witcher series, and the high expectation everyone has for the next CD Project rpg.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the first console-exclusive of that ranking, beating The Last of Us part 2, an upset in my mind.

Looking at the most mentioned games from the three largest studios with a press event, this year’s numbers are lower than last year’s.

It is quite notable in the case of EA’s games. There has been a decline in the coverage received for their most covered games compared to last year’s. It might come from the fact the lack of renewal of their franchise, considering their 3 most covered in 2017 were Anthem (same as this year, without the novelty factor), Star Wars Battlefront 2 (another FPS from DICE), and FIFA 18 (yearly cycle doesn’t help standing out).

On the overall coverage mentioning the publishers’ brand, Electronic Arts is still ahead. The notable changes from last year is the relative growth of Bethesda’s presence, taking the second spot away from Ubisoft that saw a drop. Also interesting is the seemingly lack of interest in Activision in this year’s E3, losing its ranking at 6th to SEGA.

Closing Words – A Storm is Brewing

This E3 was very much an intermerdiary year. Despite some very exciting games being revealed, the overall numbers are lower than previous year. It sets up 2019 to be a very exciting edition.

I am also looking forward to the next press conferences from Nintendo and Sony, who have not been shy in keeping bombshell announcements for their non-E3 communications.

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.

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

This week’s highlights include a discussion on ‘asset flips’ and store-bought assets for games, an emotive postmortem of canned arcade game Primal Rage II, and lots more besides.

A few leftover E3 tidbits in this week’s round-up, but largely speaking we’re on to new things – and it’s nice to see some good eSports coverage in here from Maddy Myers & Area5. There are definitely important newer areas of video games – especially free-to-play games & eSports – that are not so well covered journalistically.

But that’s largely because only core fans of that game want to read about them. Yet it’s some of the most fascinating stuff out there! A paradox. So more of it, please…

Until next time,

– Simon, curator.]

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‘It can never be that simple’: Designing the quests of Cyberpunk 2077 (Bryant Francis / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“For CD Projekt Red, that not only means delivering on the promises of freedom made in their E3 marketing push, it also means channeling that freedom into bespoke stories that reward (and prod) the player based on the choices they’ve made. After we checked out the colorful demo last week, quest designer Patrick Mills was able to sit down with Gamasutra and discuss the process of making quests that stick with the player after they’re gone.”

PUBG developer debunks accusation maps are “asset flips” (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“The developer of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has debunked what it calls “misinformation” and “oversimplified tales” about the way the game is developed. The criticism here revolves around the re-use of certain assets across PUBG’s maps, and the buying of pre-made assets from the Unreal marketplace. [SIMON’S NOTE: rare to see store assets in a ‘AAA’ game, but I don’t see why it’s an issue as long as the game is actually, uh, good.]”

E3 2018 Media Coverage Analysis – aka “E3 Battle Royale results” (Thomas Bidaux / ICO Partners – ARTICLE)
“As you can see, 2018 was a decline year in terms of total volume of media articles mentioning the event. I am not sure this should be particularly worrying, or even surprising. While there were great games revealed during the week, it was also particularly light on industry-changing announcements.”

The Classic Adventurer – Issue #2 (Mark Hardisty & friends / Classic Adventurer – PDF ‘BOOKAZINE’)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: you need to pay if you want the physical version (please do!), but there’s two free PDF issues of this excellent UK zine ‘dedicated to the golden era of text adventures’ – lots of good profiles, interviews, and more.]

With Twitch, Amazon Tightens Grip on Live Streams of Video Games (John Herrman / New York Times – ARTICLE)
“Late on a recent night, more than 600,000 people watched one of the most popular video game players, Tyler Blevins, engage in Fortnite Battle Royale with a celebrity guest: Drake. Mr. Blevins streams his near-daily video game sessions live on Twitch, a website acquired by Amazon in 2014 for $1.1 billion.”

If Ubisoft wants to cling on to Clancy, it’s time to talk politics (Edwin Evans-Thirlwell / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“How do you duck a question about the politics of a game which pits a citizen militia against a corrupt government in modern-day Washington DC? Well, you could start by talking about the weather.”

From Fallout to Half-Life, urban planning is crucial for game design (K.G. Orphanides / Wired UK – ARTICLE)
“From the decaying plazas of City 17 to the wide expanses of Hyrule, the virtual spaces we inhabit in games come to feel as familiar as our own neighbourhoods. A new book sets out to map, explore and unearth the history and design details of urban spaces in video games, including Fallout’s New Vegas, Yakuza’s Kamurocho and the fog-shrouded streets of Silent Hill.”

The Tour – Episode #1 (Hearthstone eSports / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Follow tom60229 from his HCT World Championship victory through to casting at HCT Taipei, where he reunited with Asia-Pacific caster Jia. [SIMON’S NOTE: this is a REALLY well done documentary series from the Area5 crew, of Outerlands fame – may even be interesting to those who don’t play Hearthstone!]”

Confessions of a Disk Cracker: the secrets of 4am (Paleotronic – ARTICLE)
“Why did you choose to start aggressively de-protecting, archiving and re-distributing Apple II software? It’s tempting to rewrite history and give myself some noble purpose for starting this hobby, but in this case the truth makes for a better story.”

The Wait For Next-Gen Consoles Started Last Week (Arthur Gies / Variety – ARTICLE)
“If you felt a barely perceptible rumble beneath the surface of this year’s E3, there’s a good reason for it: a new generation is on the way…  taking a closer look, there are other major indications that a new console generation is probably set for 2020 – or, perhaps, even sooner.”

Updating the ACMI Games Lab with a new selection of videogames (Jim Fishwick / Medium – ARTICLE)
“The Games Lab is part of our permanent free exhibition Screen Worlds. It has a selection of fifteen playable videogames from around Australia and the world. The last suite of games was installed in 2016, and while some of them were clear audience and staff favourites (I’m looking at you, Mario Kart and Pro Evolution Soccer), the Games Lab was in need of a refresh. A team reshuffle meant I was given a shot at looking after that refresh.”

How Avalanche and id are working together to build a new Rage (Kris Graft / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“In that interview… Nedfors shed some light on how Avalanche works with id, what the studio has learned about designing interesting open-world games, and why the studio places such a premium on systems-driven, physics-rich game design.”

How a troubled game starring Bruce Willis led to the skateboarding revolution (Daniel Lipscombe / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“In the late 90s, Activision wasn’t the powerhouse it is now. Bobby Kotick’s baby was on unsteady ground; the company wasn’t sure just how successful the console industry would truly be, and having seen success in PC gaming and bought up big-name licences left, right and centre, it looked on at the burgeoning PlayStation and struggling Saturn with concern.”

The Legend Of Nintendo (Felix Gillette / Bloomberg – ARTICLE)
“For anyone who’s ever marveled at Nintendo’s vivid, phantasmagoric, zoologically ornate video games, visiting the company’s understated home in Kyoto, Japan, can be disorienting at first. That such an outpouring of kaleidoscopic products comes from a place so devoid of color can be momentarily hard to fathom.”

How Pro Gamers Live Now: Curfews, Personal Chefs, And All Of It On Camera (Maddy Myers / Kotaku Compete – ARTICLE)
“Every day is Christmas at the Philadelphia Fusion esports mansion. The team’s marketing and content director Hung Tran gestured to the towering decorated pine tree to the right of the front door by way of explaining the joke: the pro gamers who live here get whatever they want and do whatever they want. But Christmas wouldn’t seem as exciting if it happened every day.”

Communities Are Individuals (Raycevick / YouTube – VIDEO)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: some good points here – it’s easy to look at outliers and extrapolate them to suggest a certain ‘fanbase’ thinks a certain thing, but how/why do companies work out what elements to put in games?]

How Do You Make a Game?: A Look at Design Documents Throughout History (Ethan Johnson / The History Of How We Play – ARTICLE)
“Throughout history, game creators have left valuable insights into their inspiration through these pieces that we collectively call ‘design documents’. From visualizations to project planning, from code to creativity, these paper and digital works are an art in and of themselves. Let’s take a look at how games were made through the decades via our scarce, but always fascinating remnants.”

Editor roundtable: What did E3 2018 mean for game developers? (Gamasutra staff / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Every year, without fail, E3 consumes our lives. Even for the Gamasutra staffers not burning in the LA sun, it’s a week of monitoring livestreams, rushing to post important news, and just tangentially participating in the hubbub that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo.”

Primal Rage II from Heartbreak to Resurrection: The Journey After Cancellation (Chris Tang / GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC session, Hitsparks Games’ Chris Tang talks about the death and rebirth of Primal Rage II, an arcade sequel that seemed doomed to obscurity, but found redemption in the hands of dedicated fans.”

Why are game companies so afraid of the politics in their games? (Colin Campbell / Polygon – ARTICLE)
“Game publishers are lathering their productions with the stark imagery of modern political divisions, while at the same time denying any topical intent. Their strategy, according to industry sources ranging from developers to publicists, is to profit from emotive societal divisions, while ducking difficult conversations about what their works might signify.”

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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!]

In this GDC 2018 talk, Freehold Games’ Jason Grinblat goes over the approach he used to generate histories for fantasy RPG roguelike Caves of Qud. 

Grinbalt lays out some commonalities across games that generate histories, demonstrating how he avoided building a full historical simulation by generating historical events and rationalizing them after the fact.

Tying in a discussion about the power of replacement grammars, he explains how to produce rich, convincing histories on a tight scope budget. 

It was an informative talk that’s definitely worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.