Category: News

General game developing news and updates.

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Video: The community management behind Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Reaching out and fostering a positive relationship with a community of players has been made easier with the help of social media, but it can often feel impersonal. How can a community manager navigate online spaces to create a unique, working relationship with their community? Ubisoft’s Gabe Graziani recommends turning to the unconventional. 

In this 2015 GDC session, Graziani examines how traditionally counterintuitive practices can help developers define and nurture a passionate community.

The talk goes over the ways Graziani initially interacted with fans during his time working on Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, like taking questions players posted to Ubisoft’s social channels and answering them for a Q&A video which was uploaded to YouTube. “They key thing for these is that we were constantly refining our approach,” explains Graziani. “We wanted to know from our community how we could service them the best.” 

Community managers interested to see if these counterintuitive practices could work for their projects 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.

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Nintendo Labo combines the magic of Nintendo Switch with the fun of DIY creations

Nintendo Labo combines the magic of Nintendo Switch with the fun of DIY creations

Introducing Nintendo Labo, a new line of interactive build-and-play experiences designed to inspire kids and those who are kids-at-heart. Building on the 129-year history of Nintendo, which is rooted in innovative entertainment and game-play experiences, Nintendo Labo continues the company’s mission of putting smiles on people’s faces.

Together with the Nintendo Switch system (sold separately), the Nintendo Labo kits provide the tools and technology to MAKE fun DIY creations, PLAY games with your creations and DISCOVER how the magic of Nintendo Switch technology shapes ideas into reality.

With each Nintendo Labo kit, kids can transform modular sheets of cardboard – specially designed to interact with the Nintendo Switch console and Joy-Con controllers – into creations called Toy-Con. From a piano to a motorbike, a robot and more, each Toy-Con comes to life when combined with Nintendo Switch in different ways. As you build, you will have fun discovering how the technology works, and might even invent new ways to play with each Toy-Con!

For example, you can build a functioning 13-key piano that brings your musical creations to life once the Nintendo Switch console and Right Joy-Con controller are inserted. As you play, the IR Motion Camera in the Right Joy-Con detects which keys are pressed and translates them into unique notes that are heard through the console. You can even take control of your very own motorbike by constructing a functioning set of handlebars, with a Joy-Con inserted in each side and the Nintendo Switch console cradled in the middle. Simply hit the ignition button, turn the right handle to engage the accelerator and watch your adventure unfold on the Nintendo Switch screen, as you race to new destinations.

“Nintendo Labo continues our longstanding mission of making people smile by surprising them with new experiences,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s President and COO. “It is an exciting evolution of the Nintendo Switch platform – one designed to inspire curiosity, creativity and imagination in people of all ages.”

With Nintendo Labo, building is just as much fun as playing. Every Toy-Con creation presents exciting challenges and varying degrees of complexity, making each one a unique experience. Building Toy-Con is especially fun with family and friends, as you collaborate and share each other’s Nintendo Labo experiences. Once built, you can customize your Toy-Con creations with your own markers, stickers and paint to give them a personal touch – the only limit is your imagination!

Nintendo Labo launches on April 20 with two kits: the Variety Kit and the Robot Kit. With the Variety Kit, you can create many different Toy-Con, including two Toy-Con RC Cars, a Toy-Con Fishing Rod, a Toy-Con House, a Toy-Con Motorbike and a Toy-Con Piano. With the Robot Kit, you can build an interactive robot suit with a visor, backpack and straps for your hands and feet, which you can then wear to assume control of a giant in-game robot. Both kits include everything you need to assemble your Toy-Con creations, including the building materials and relevant Nintendo Switch software. The Variety Kit will be available at a suggested retail price of $69.99, and the Robot Kit will be available at a suggested retail price of $79.99. A special Customization Set that includes fun stencils, stickers and colored tape will also be available to purchase on April 20 at a suggested retail price of $9.99.

Each Nintendo Labo kit packs plenty of value, with a range of ways to make, play and discover in each kit:

Variety Kit ($69.99MSRP*)

  • Toy-Con RC Car: Insert the Left and Right Joy-Con into your newly built RC Car and control its movement using touch screen controls on the Nintendo Switch console. The HD Rumble feature in the Joy-Con controllers will cause vibrations that move the car in the direction you choose. Materials to construct two RC Cars are included.
  • Toy-Con Fishing Rod: Construct the Fishing Rod with an active, rotating reel that is attached by string to a cradle holding the Nintendo Switch console. Catch one of many exotic fish shown swimming on the Nintendo Switch screen by casting your Fishing Rod and unwinding the reel to lower the hook. Once you feel a vibration from the Joy-Con inserted in the reel, you must tug the Fishing Rod upward and crank the reel quickly to try and complete the catch!
  • Toy-Con House: By inserting various assembled blocks into openings in the sides and bottom of the House, you can interact with, play games with and feed a cute creature on the front-facing Nintendo Switch screen. Each differently shaped block is detected by the IR Motion Camera on the Right Joy-Con inserted on top of the House.
  • Toy-Con Motorbike: Insert each Joy-Con into an assembled set of handlebars to drive a motorbike on the Nintendo Switch screen. Pressing the ignition button starts the engine, while twisting the right handle activates the throttle. Leaning your body or turning the handlebars left and right controls the motorbike.
  • Toy-Con Piano: After assembling a beautifully crafted 13-key piano and inserting the Nintendo Switch console and Joy-Con, you can experiment with your own musical creations by pressing different keys. You can even insert different assembled knobs to create new sound effects and tones!

Robot Kit ($79.99MSRP*)

  • Toy-Con Robot: Create a wearable Robot suit, and insert the Left and Right Joy-Con into the designated slots on the backpack and visor to assume control of the robot, which is shown on the TV when the Nintendo Switch console is docked. Enjoy a variety of fun game-play experiences, including Robot mode, in which you can destroy in-game buildings and UFOs.

For more information about Nintendo Labo, visit https://labo.nintendo.com. You can view a special introductory video about Nintendo Labo here.

*Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price. Actual price may vary.

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It’s Lola Pop vs. Misango in the next Party Crash!

It’s Lola Pop vs. Misango in the next Party Crash!

If you’ve been keeping some of the fighters at arm’s length, now is a good time to try them out! The next Party Crash has been confirmed for the ARMS™ game.

Event Time: Friday, 1/19 [1:00 a.m. PT] – Monday, 1/22 [1:00 a.m. PT]

Featured Fighters: Lola Pop versus Misango!

Party Crash is a limited-time Party Match event with special rules. By playing these matches you can increase your Lab Level, which then grants you in-game cash and special badges. You can also get bonus multipliers by using featured characters and weapons. We hope you give it a try!

If you don’t currently own ARMs you can learn more about the game at the official website.

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Cartoon Violence

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Get a job: Wargaming is hiring a UI Engineer

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

Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore is a growing studio with more than 150 employees.  Our environment is a combination of casual creativity and functional productivity, powered by the studio’s own, proprietary game engine.

Working at Wargaming is a uniquely rewarding experience.  One of the most satisfying aspects of life at Wargaming is seeing your work flourish in the expanding world of Wargaming titles and interacting with the millions of fans around the world who recognize your achievements. 

Responsibilities: 

  • Implement intuitive and exciting User Interfaces.
  • Write, test and debug User Interface code for our games.
  • Rapidly prototype and iterate User Interface element and flows.
  • Liaise with designers, producers, and artists to implement new UI features.
  • Ability to write clear, clean, readable, portable, reliable, and manageable code.

Requirements:

  • B.S. degree in Computer Science, Math, Physics or Engineering.
  • Proven experience architecting and developing rich client applications.
  • Excellent knowledge of architectural patterns.
  • High degree of proficiency writing rich client code with C++ and Actionscript.
  • Experience with Scaleform and FlashStudio.
  • Positive, self-starting, team-oriented attitude.
  • 2+ years of experience.

Desired:

  • Previous experience within games.
  • Prior localization experince.
  • Knowledge of STL.
  • Experience with Lua.
  • Solid vector math background.

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.

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How collaboration brought Horizon Zero Dawn’s writing to life

“There are just some moments in the game where the animators were able to have her face, like the emotion on her face, the emotion on some of the characters, be realized in a way that find to be—I was really stunned.”

– Narrative director John Gonzalez tells Noclip how animators used micro-expressions to enhance both the narrative and the game. 

Noclip has shared an extended cut of one interview from its earlier Horizon Zero Dawn documentary to shed some additional light on some of the challenges faced when writing for a massive, open-world game.

The interview in question features Guerrilla Games’ narrative director John Gonzalez and touches both on his past work with Fallout: New Vegas and, more recently, Horizon Zero Dawn. 

The interview itself features some quality insight from Gonzalez on the often complicated process of creating narratives for open-world games and offers a peek at some of the interesting solutions Guerrilla Games came up with when doing so.

For example, Gonzalez says that he had fought for the game’s main character Aloy to find her ‘Focus’ as an adult rather than stumble across the augmented reality device as a child. While that may have worked from a narrative standpoint, Gonzalez says the idea got a significant level of complaints from other developers who were unhappy that a major mechanic would be locked behind hours of play.

“There was a lot of pushback from design, saying ‘look, that’s basically saying that you want to not have our user interface until like hour three or something like that, are you insane?’ And I really resisted it,” recalls Gonzales. “It’s just one of these examples of how wrong I can be and, really, the importance of collaboration across the disciplines.”

“They really pushed really hard to say like ‘this needs to be something she’s getting at the beginning of the game,” he says. “It was just the right choice.” 

As an added bonus, Gonzalez says that decision to have Aloy stumble across the device as a child allowed an opportunity to show her early emotional response to one of the ancient recordings unlocked by the Focus, in a way meeting the team’s goal of weaving Aloy’s own story with the story of the long gone ‘modern’ world.

Noclip’s full interview with Gonzalez is well worth a watch if you’ve got 45 minutes to spare and aren’t afraid of the odd Horizon Zero Dawn spoiler. That video, and many, many more from the game documentary crew, can be found over on YouTube. 

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Midweek Madness – Little Nightmares, 50% Off

Save 50% on Little Nightmares during this week’s Midweek Madness*!

Immerse yourself in a dark whimsical tale that will confront you with your childhood fears! Help Six escape The Maw – a vast, mysterious vessel inhabited by corrupted souls looking for their next meal. As you progress on your journey, explore the most disturbing dollhouse offering a prison to escape from and a playground full of secrets to discover. Reconnect with your inner child to unleash your imagination and find the way out!

*Offer ends Friday at 10 AM Pacific Time

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Make the most of your Nintendo Switch

Make the most of your Nintendo Switch

You can have fun wherever, whenever with your Nintendo Switch system. Here are a few features that can help you get the most fun possible out of your system!

Easy-peasy digital downloads

The Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch is a one-stop shop for entertainment. You can find games that can be purchased digitally and downloaded directly onto your system, like Super Mario Odyssey™ and ARMS™. The Nintendo eShop is also the place to find free game demos for some of the hottest games for Nintendo Switch, including Pokkén Tournament™ DX, Snipperclips™—Cut it out, together!, and Just Dance 2018.

Free rewards program

You can get an annual birthday discount, reward offers, and more with the My Nintendo rewards program. Earn points when you buy digital games for your Nintendo Switch system, then redeem those points for cool My Nintendo rewards like digital content and discounts. A Nintendo Account is required to start using My Nintendo. For help creating a Nintendo Account, click here. For a list of current available rewards, click here.

In-game extras with amiibo

You can tap compatible amiibo™ figures and cards (sold separately) to score all sorts of in-game perks in compatible games like new characters, game modes, outfits, power-ups, or more. In The Legend of Zelda™: Breath of the Wild game, you can tap a Wolf Link amiibo figure to make Wolf Link appear in the game. Or, you can tap a Zelda 30th Anniversary series amiibo figure to get helpful in-game items…or even a treasure chest! It’s easy to tap amiibo figures and cards with the NFC touchpoint that is built into the right Joy-Con™ controller.

Multiplayer fun for friends and family

Gearing up for family game night? You can connect up to eight Joy-Con controllers to one Nintendo Switch system and compatible games, so all four players can play in their preferred play style and get in on the action with games like Mario Kart 8™ Deluxe. The 1-2-Switch™ game gets players off the couch and into a world of wild face-to-face games. Most games in 1-2-Switch have you looking directly at the other player and not at the TV screen! Each game uses different features of the Joy-Con controller, such as motion control, HD Rumble, or the IR Motion Camera. For intense ink-splatting action, you can check out the Splatoon™ 2 game’s local and online* multiplayer modes. Want to organize a serious tournament? Up to 10 docked Nintendo Switch systems can connect via wired LAN (additional accessories required; sold separately).

Top Picks and #Nindies

Not sure which game to play next? Turn to the Game Store on Nintendo.com to explore our curated lists of games, like the Nintendo Switch top pick games of 2017. The #Nindies Hits list puts a spotlight on some of the hottest indie games available on Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo Switch news feed

The world of video games moves fast! Luckily, the Nintendo Switch news feed can keep you in the loop. You can keep up to date on the latest game releases, videos, special offers, and more. In-game events like Splatfest (Splatoon 2) and Party Crash (ARMS) are listed on the news feed as well. If you want to check it out, just click on News from the HOME Menu.

*Nintendo Account required. Online services and features. including online gameplay, are free until the paid Nintendo Switch Online Service launches in 2018.

Additional accessories may be required for multiplayer mode. Games, system, and some accessories sold separately.

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Three classic Nintendo 3DS games are now only $19.99 each

Three classic Nintendo 3DS games are now only $19.99 each

Starting on Feb. 5, Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, two of the most acclaimed Nintendo 3DS games of all time, and Ultimate NES Remix, a wildly fun mashup of classic NES games starring classic Nintendo characters, are joining the Nintendo Selects library and will be available at a suggested retail price of only $19.99 each.

The Nintendo Selects library features a wide variety of games for various Nintendo systems, which can each be purchased for the suggested retail price of only $19.99. In addition to the newly added Super Mario 3D Land, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Ultimate NES Remix games, other games in the library include classics like Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome amiibo, Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. For a full listing of games in the Nintendo Selects library, visit https://www.nintendo.com/nintendo-selects.

“For people that received a Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo 2DS system as a holiday gift, these three games are ideal ways to start their gaming library,” said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “We’re excited to offer these must-have games for a new, low price.”

In Super Mario 3D Land, players run, jump and power up with Mario through multiple colorful worlds. The game is a fun combination of 3D gameplay combined with the more traditional linear designs of classic 2D Super Mario games.

Set in the world of the classic Super NES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds continues the adventure of the legendary hero of Hyrule. In this critically acclaimed tale, Link can transform into a living painting to cross into a dark parallel world, travel along walls and solve challenging puzzles.

Fans who love retro games and the NES Classic Edition system will also love Ultimate NES Remix, which features rapid-fire challenges and mashups from some of the most recognizable games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Players take on creative and nostalgic challenges from classic games like Super Mario Bros. 3, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda and Punch-Out!!

Anyone looking to play these games on a shiny new system can pick up one of the many systems in the Nintendo 3DS family:

  • A white-and-red Nintendo 2DS system pre-loaded with the New Super Mario Bros. 2 game is available at a suggested retail price of $79.99.*
  • A blue-and-black Nintendo 2DS system pre-loaded with the Mario Kart 7 game is available at a suggested retail price of $79.99.
  • A white-and-orange New Nintendo 2DS XL system that plays all Nintendo 3DS games in 2D is available at a suggested retail price of $149.99.
  • A black-and-turquoise New Nintendo 2DS XL system is also available at a suggested retail price of $149.99.
  • The space-themed New Galaxy Style New Nintendo 3DS XL is available at a suggested retail price of $199.99.

Remember that Nintendo 3DS family of systems features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about other features, visit https://www.nintendo.com/3ds.

*Nintendo 2DS plays Nintendo 3DS games in 2D only

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Blog: Why your defect count is defunct

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.

We all like metrics as a way to measure performance and measure trends. When it comes to checking the performance of your QA team, or individuals within the team, how do you go about measuring that? I don’t have the answer at hand but in this post I want to discuss why Bugs / Issues / Defects are not an effective way to measure performance of QA.

We don’t compare coding performance on volume of lines wrote, so why do this for quantity of bugs entered?

If you or your team are using bug volumes, quotas, bug scoring then you are not promoting quality as you’re unduly focusing on process / admin. Here is why you should stop monitoring QA teams bug quota output during the development phase and stop using it as a metric to justify the teams output.

Good developers can hide QA ability

Defect finding is a team effort and reflects the combined talents of the developer, the teams pipeline and the skillset of the QA’er. With it being a combined effort, how would you begin to measure a QA’ers performance by bug volume? We don’t compare coding performance on volume of lines wrote, so why do this for quantity of bugs entered? Take for example a talented developer paired up with an talented QA’er. There won’t be a lot of defects found but all things being equal, this would be true if the developer was paired with an inexperienced QAer due to the developer “shielding” them by having solid code. Additionally, an inexperienced developer paired with the inexperienced QA’er might not result in a lot of issues being found during the testing phase but are later realized when it goes live. In these situations, drawing performance parallels is not a useful metric.

Defect Quota’s just drive up Admin

The focus on defect volume can shockingly lead to an expectation to get x amount of bugs per week. A silly aspect to this is that targets don’t tend to adjust downward towards launch when the build should be getting tighter. All this does is stress out your team as they snipe each other for legitimate bugs, dilute catch-all bugs into individual expressions/symptoms of the bug and generate a culture of testers not working collaboratively since they can’t share the credit.

Using defects as a reflection of the performance / quality of the game, rather than the performance of the individual, you move one step closer to having a higher quality product

The QA leadership can weight in and stop the team “gaming” the system but this creates animosity and adds extra admin. This is all time taking away from testing. But, but I hear you shout, “how can I tell that the testers are pulling their weight?” Well, how does any other manager rate colleagues output and contribution? It’s usually a multifaceted approach, so If you’re relying on one single (dubious) number then you need to rethink what you actually value from your QA team members.

Defect scoring pitfalls

Also, quantity is a non starter because some bugs have more value that others, right? Wrong. For those who haven’t experienced bug scoring, it’s where different types of bugs are given points based on what that team holds dear. An example, text bugs might score low but a crash would score highly. These scores would then be calculated to see who has been finding the more “valuable” defects. The problem is that defects reported is not indicative of reporter performance. If there is a crash on the golden path, it’s the fastest fingers whom get it into the database that gets the credit and that doesn’t require any special talent. In contrast, the team member who finally cracks the 100% repro steps on that weird crash bug is a hero however in such as system is rewarded the same as the person who points out the obvious crash. Again, this scoring involves admin, refereeing and a honour system that takes time away from actual testing.

Let’s keep defects to what they are

Defects in the code are just identified issues that need to be fixed. They shouldn’t be coming to developers with an attitude attached or passing judgement. Equally, the volume of assigned / cleared issues isn’t the prime factor in determining how good or bad a developer is. Just like on the reporting side, there are lots of reasons why developers have issues assigned to them and various reasons for the rate of closure and fix rates.

The Positive Case

All throughout this post, I have bemoaned the usage of using defect counts as a primary indicator of performance. Ironically, if you don’t place performance emphasis on defect volumes then the data-set is quite rich as you’ve not poisoned the pool with people attempting to game the system. From there, you can conduct valuable analysis of defect type trends, heatmaps of where issues lie within a product and comparison of missed Live issues vs detected issues. By using defects as a reflection of the performance / quality of the game, rather than the performance of the individual, you move one step closer to having a higher quality product and not a highly strung QA team.