Category: News

In this 2018 GDC session, Naoto Ohshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara, two of the designers behind the original Sonic the Hedgehog, discuss their perspectives on the creation of the classic game franchise.

Oshima and Yasuhara go into detail about the game’s original design process and art direction, as well as providing some insight into their experiences creating the character of Sonic and the strategies they considered for going up against rival companies. 

Those interested in the history of a classic game like Sonic the Hedgehog can now watch the talk completely free via 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.

Feminist female game developers in South Korea are being targeted by Twitter users in an attempt to push out “anti-social ideology”, with harassers calling for companies to fire them over their social media posts. 

This censorship and bullying of South Korean women has apparently been ongoing in the South Korean game industry as far back as 2016.

Major companies have pressured female devs into removing their posts relating to women’s rights or feminism, choosing not to defend their employees. 

As reported by AFP News Agency (a reputable news agency covering global topics), the harassment began after CEO of Seoul-based IMC Games Kim Hak-kyu launched an investigation into a female employee after complaints about her personal activity on Twitter were raised.

The female developer, Sung Hye-jin, followed several feminist groups on Twitter and retweeted a post which had a slang term for sexist men.

After being called a “cancer-like creature” who “followed a dirty ideology” by male players, Sung apologized for the perceived offense. 

She was able to keep her job after Kim decided her actions were “just a mistake but not a crime”, assuring players she would “remain endlessly vigilant” to prevent a recurrence. 

After the investigation into Sung, Kim issued an apology for his actions after South Korean trade unions called out his decision. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions said that “this misogynistic action… has left many women in shock and fear.” The organization also accused Kim and other studios of policing the actions of female employees. 

Players often monitor female developers online accounts to check whether any of their tweets, retweets or likes involve feminism, and if they do, file complaints to their employers with boycott threats, according to anonymous sources who have approached AFP.

“These gamers relentlessly attack whoever posts anything slightly related to women’s rights issues, and label the person a Megalia supporter who should be sacked immediately,” explained one anonymous source. “Game sales could go down very quickly if we don’t cave in.”

“Games have tried to do interactive dialogue for a very long time, and it’s still something we haven’t perfected yet.“

– Sam Barlow on wanting to take a different approach to interactive dialogue for #WarGames.

In an interview published by PCGamer, creator of Her Story and the recently released #WarGames Sam Barlow discusses the challenges of designing dialogue for games featuring full-motion video. 

When asked about the types of gimmicks and camera angles employed during production of full-motion video game projects, Barlow admits to putting more attention toward implementing interactive dialogue in different ways as opposed to being concerned over the conventions of FMV. 

“There are times when you want to say something and you can’t. Or the reaction you get from someone feels a bit off. Or the pacing of it doesn’t quite work,” he explains. “What I did with Her Story was essentially just ignore all of those problems by saying, I’m not trying to simulate all the dialogue—you’re interacting with a database.”

And looking past the issues associated with writing interactive dialogue worked for Barlow. “The best feedback I got was people saying, because I didn’t worry about all those things, actually, the loop I was in, the feel that I got, from Her Story was that I was in some kind of conversation,” he adds.

However, narrative driven games rely on providing the player with choices, which can start getting tricky to design after a certain point. 

“This is where I start getting stuck—you’re starting to play that game where you’re guessing the author’s intentions,” he notes. “The worst thing in those games is when you pick that choice and the character does something you weren’t expecting, or where you really want to do something specific and there is no option to do that.”

Barlow says that writing interactive dialogue is something that’s still being fine tuned. “It’s a craft and we’ll continue to iterate. What I wanted to do with #WarGames is to go in a different direction.” 

Barlow also dives into the idea behind #WarGames and the concept of games reflecting real world politics, so be sure to check out the full article over on PCGamer’s website.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Located in Chicago’s River North area, Level Ex’s fast-growing game studio is transforming the way physicians hone and refine their skills in our industry-leading mobile, AR, and VR titles.

Our games are built on state-of-the-art graphics and physics tech, and use game mechanics to capture the thrill and challenge of being a physician. These games increase in difficulty as the player progresses, and are carefully crafted through level design, compulsion loops, and refined gameplay balance. Backed with a mature art pipeline and latest-gen engine tech, we’re able to recreate a variety of medical challenges with spectacular realism.

Our engine has earned the trust of the country’s leading physicians; plus we’ve custom-built real-time fluids, tissue shading, and soft-body systems to enable a wide range of realistic new game mechanics. Our team unites award-winning game designers, developers, and artists with industry-leading physicians, all passionate about using game design to empower doctors across the world to improve their skills and better treat their patients.

We’re currently looking for a smart, tools savvy Technical Art Director to join our expanding team.

What You’ll Be Doing with Us  

• Create a suite of art pipeline and art creation tools to support new methods of high-end art content creation
• Architect proprietary asset pipelines that use the latest art and engine tools efficiently
• Identify ways to make 3D and 2D artists more effective and efficient – and make it happen
• Write scripts to automate multi-step art creation, capture, import, and export processes
• Define technical art creation and format standards across our products and pipelines
• Research, integrate, and configure new art-content systems like particle systems, animation systems, etc.
• Work with the art department to generate glorious asset renders for promotional use

Who We Want To Meet

• 5+ years game industry development experience
• Extensive experience building tools and scripts in Unity, including familiarity with the component model and tool-development functionality (2 years minimum)
• A strong portfolio of tools and example effects/assets
• Deep familiarity with industry art pipelines – understanding common problems and solutions for asset creation and flow in games built on a rapidly-moving tech stack
• Experience with rigging, lighting, shading, texturing, both in terms of content creation and in-engine configuration
• Comfortable working in Autodesk Maya for both content and tool-creation, including proficiency in -Python and MEL
• A strong sense of artistic style and control
• Fluent in C#
• Comfortable prototyping and researching new art technology and techniques
• Experience authoring shaders in HLSL, GLSL and/or Cg a major plus
• Technical art experience in creating content for VR, AR, and/or mobile a bonus
• Experience with Substance Designer, Houdini, Z-brush a bonus

How We Make You Happy

• Creating games that actually make a difference in people’s lives
• Competitive salary
• Paid vacation, sick days, and holidays
• Medical, dental and vision benefits
• 401k plan with matching, flex spending account, and commuter benefits
• Unlimited cold brew coffee, beer, and tasty snacks  
• Flexible, reasonable work schedules in a team-focused environment

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

One of 2018’s most unique indie games so far has been Dim Bulb Studios’ Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, a game that not only stands out because it somehow got Sting to voice a key character, but also because of its nouveau storytelling mechanics and unusual team structure. Where many indie games include a group of programmers, artists, and writers, Dim Bulb Games relied on lead developer Johnnemann Nordhagen and a small army of writers to build the game’s content. 

Nordhagen himself has been expressly transparent about the process of making and selling Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, but we’re still excited to be chatting with him today at 3PM EDT over on the Gamsutra Twitch channel. If you’ve got questions about surviving as an indie, or making games about American folklore, you should swing by and ask them! 

And while you’re at it, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more developer interviews, editor roundtables, and gameplay commentary. 

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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This is the first in a series of articles discussing gameworlds I’ve designed and worked on.

Ever since Wizardry and Bard’s Tale I’ve loved discovering and making world maps!  Mafia 3’s New Bordeaux was the biggest world I’ve ever been part of.  I must have gone through several hundred iterations and updates for the city layout and ecologies.

With the help of Petr Záveský and others we were able to create a fantastic top-down render of the city.  The next thing to do was getting 2K Games on board in creating a foldout map for the game.  Paul Pierce was the talented artist who stylized the Road Atlas.  I originally proposed it as a bonus item in the Collector’s Edition.  Then 2K Games took it to the next level and made it available in every game case!  Paul later updated it to include all DLC information too (see below).

• Aerial − a satellite view of the city!
• Stylized − a stylized version of the city!
• Game UI − an updated UI map from the game!

BONUS maps!

• CIA − Before Donovan showed up he grabbed the latest CIA photos of the region.
• Height Map − For developers and hikers, here’s a heightmap.
• Road Atlas − Visiting New Bordeaux? Pull out that map for all your tourist needs!

This 1967 street guide was something I’m real happy with getting into fan’s hands. Paul did a fantastic job making it look authentic.  He went through several styles with publishing’s Art Director Rob Clarke.  Once all DLC was known, an updated version was created for all future copies of the game.

One of the other reasons the Road Atlas is special − it allowed us to showcase a lot of the names and locations that weren’t mentioned or used heavily in the story.  Study the map and you’ll discover lots of new material such as…

Tourist Spots
All those famous landmarks and city areas you visited had names!

Handwritten Notes
Both Lincoln & Donovan scribbled notes on the map, like where all the entrances to the tunnels were. Even though Donovan choose to write his in red, I’ve no idea who’s blood is on the map… 

Special Locations
Did you find the sinking Bayou cemetery? This was made for a scene cut from the start of the game. Other trivia, the row of cabins along Bourbon Digs’ canal was made for a crossfire encounter which was never used.

A fun thing to do with these HUGE world maps… they’re the same scale as the official GTA5 maps.

Mafia Series

And for those curious, here’s all three Mafia game worlds next to one another.  While the first Mafia game looks fairly big, remember the player didn’t get to explore most of the areas outside the city.

Interactive Map

I also experimented with using these like a Google Map to find lost airplanes or secret routes.  It’d be fun to take other gameworlds and add them as layers you can flip through for comparison.

When you look at the huge 3D rendered map, you can see all the hours and talented people who made each cityblock a believable, tangible place for Mafia’s third chapter.  I hope anyone who ventured into New Bordeaux felt it captured the Louisiana heat of 1968.

This post originally appeared on my website at CuriousConstructs.com.

It might’ve launched well over two years ago, but Rainbow Six Siege has just hit 30 million players. 

It’s notable news given how Ubisoft has been talking up the positive performance of its back-catalog titles and ‘player recurring investment’ in recent months. 

It’s also a testament to the French developer-publisher’s focus on creating franchises that “offer long-term visibility,” with the company having managed to triple Siege’s playerbase since November 2016, when it stood at 10 million players. 

Indeed, the last time we checked in December 2017, the tactical shooter had just crossed the 25 million player mark, meaning it’s added another 5 million players in roughly four months. 

Of course, it’s worth nothing that those 30 million players don’t translate directly into sales, and it’s possible that some players could’ve created multiple accounts, but it’s a significant milestone nonetheless.

Thank you to our 30 million players. pic.twitter.com/ffCXkg7fLO

— Rainbow Six Siege (@Rainbow6Game) April 12, 2018