Category: News

Nintendo has altered its cancellation policy to let consumers opt-out of digital pre-orders up to one week before launch. 

Nintendo would previously charge shoppers as soon as they’d placed a pre-order on the Nintendo eShop, irrespective of when their chosen game was launching. 

As highlighted by NintendoLife, however, the company has now quietly tweaked that policy to ensure eShop customers won’t be charged any sooner than seven days before launch, and will also let them “cancel pre-orders up until time of payment.”

“The expected payment date [for pre-orders] is no sooner than seven days before the product is released,” reads the amended policy. “You may cancel your pre’orders up until time of payment.

“You can cancel pre-orders by selecting Shop Menu in your Nintendo Account settings then selecting Your Pre-orders, or by selecting Your Pre-orders in Account Information on Nintendo eShop on your device.”

It’s a small but notable change that gives consumers more freedom when shopping digitally, and one that’s timely as digital sales at Nintendo continue to rise.

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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read the full article at my blog if you want

One thing I always love to see in an RTS is when its game maps, or at least portions of them, are able to evolve over time in reaction to the actions players take. To a lesser extent, I also enjoy seeing maps which change over time without player input, to force players to adapt to changing situations and threat profiles, but I feel that has less of a solid case in competitive games.

In many RTS games, especially many of the the classic franchises, game maps are largely static. They may become denuded of resources (like trees) over time, which opens up new movement options to target enemy holdings, but in most cases this is not a major tactical consideration across most competitive matches in those games.

There are tactics and strategy games, however, where the map itself is able to be modified by players in a variety of ways: opening up new attack paths or closing them off, changing which areas of the map players care about and want to contest, or removing options from players in specific geographic areas. 

A screenshot from the Steam version of Z which shows what cliffs look like. The blue tank at the top of the image is shooting cliffs to destroy them so that it can pass through. 

The oldest game where I remember seeing what I’m calling a ‘dynamic map’ is Z, the retro tactical robot game by Bitmap Brothers. In that game, there are cliffs which block traversal by units (see screenshot above). Infantry can take down the cliffs by throwing grenades at them, which of course depletes the limited supply of those valuable pick-ups. Tanks can also fire on cliffs to destroy them. The presence of destructible cliffs might not have had an outsized impact on the game’s design, but it certainly did on my imagination as a kid.

Some Additional Examples
Relic’s RTS games are more recent examples of games with dynamic map elements. In Dawn of War 2 and Company of Heroes 2, some higher tier units are capable of crushing terrain and cover underfoot or under tread, and some weapons hit hard enough to create craters that can themselves provide cover. Additionally, in these games, when vehicles die they remain behind on the map and can be used as cover or destroyed entirely. Over time in these games, the map devolves into something else, devoid of cover for infantry, covered in craters and the smoking wrecks of tanks and halftracks.

Large units, like the Carnifex, are able to crush map elements by walking through them 

While not seen ranked multiplayer any more, Company of Heroes 2 also launched with weather effects on the game map, where at irregular intervals blizzards would occur, freezing water, creating snow drifts which would slow down infantry, and creating hostile environments where infantry would die without access to a heat source. Some weapons, such as flamethrowers, could melt the snow. This wasn’t so much driven by player action, but did force interesting reactions from players in terms of preparing for the blizzards and how the game worked during and even after them. Clearly it wasn’t a widely popular system, since it ended up being removed from the multiplayer experience. 

Additionally in Company of Heroes 2, explosives and some weapons are able to destroy ice under troops and tanks, instantly killing them by submerging them in the frigid water underneath. This occasionally has a dramatic effect in winter maps, in addition to changing how units are forced to move while on ice (to avoid holes in the ice). I believe during blizzards, ice could re-freeze as well, creating a cadence of changes as ice was destroyed and re-frozen.

Tanks breaking through the ice in Company of Heroes 2 is one of my favorite examples of dynamic map interactions 

Supreme Commander has a slightly different take on this: In SupCom, when units die, they leave behind a wreck that can be salvaged for resources, seeding the sites of battles with valuable income for whomever reclaims it. This doesn’t change the map itself as much, but does change how players interact with the map and which parts of it might be the most valuable to hold or contest.

Company of Heroes games, and now Iron Harvest, have a similar idea in that when units die they drop either the weapon they’re crewing, or a weapon they’re carrying that then any other infantry squad can appropriate. This allows for both tactical flexibility (since players are able to gain squad types on the fly) and a transfer of resources from one player to the other, since the weapons all cost resources and a player can gain a tool paid for by their opponent at no cost. Actually, C&C 3 does this as well with some vehicles dropping wrecks that can be re-crewed by engineers for quick access to a new unit. 

Company of Heroes 2 goes farther with this than any other game I can think of (including C&C3) with de-crewed tanks having the ability to be captured by other players. Since tanks are so powerful and expensive, scoring one off of an opponent is a major gain. 
I consider these dropped weapons and crew weapons and tanks to be ‘dynamic map elements’ in exactly the same way that I consider dead units in Supreme Commander to be such: they’re free resources that occur in locations on the map that are the result of combat between players, that can advantage either player/team and cause those areas of the map to become temporarily tactically or strategically important, to say nothing of dead vehicles becoming cover for infantry in these games. 

I actually really like Supreme Commander’s approach, and have implemented a similar system in my personal game project: SCRAP mod. In SCRAP, when units die, they decay into resources after spending 3 minutes as a burning wreck, giving players time to jockey for control of those resources before actually being able to mine them.

When units like the Aeon Illuminate’s Czar die, they create obstacles to unit movement that are also valuable sources of income for either player, creating an area of high value on the map that didn’t previously exist 

Even StarCraft 2 and Grey Goo have dipped their toe a bit into maps that can evolve over time with the addition of rocks that block certain map access points; and, in StarCraft 2’s case, pillars which can be destroyed to block off access to areas of the map with debris that can itself be destroyed to open up the path again. 

Going into Detail about ‘Terrain’ 
In most cases, implementations of dynamic map elements are mainly focused on how units traverse the game space. Destructible bridges are a good example of this – in several of the Command and Conquer games, Engineers are capable of re-building bridges by entering a designated structure at either end of the bridge.

Also in most cases, the majority of actions players can take is to remove said dynamic map elements from the game. There’s a lot of crushing and burning and demolishing that goes on, and not a lot of growing or shoring up.

Builder units in Earth 2150 can modify map terrain to make bridges, walls, ditches, and more. 

I need to be careful here: I’m specifically using the term “dynamic map elements” instead of “dynamic terrain” because in almost no case is the actual terrain of the map able to be modified. If there’s an impassable cliff, it remains a cliff for the duration of a match. By contrast, a ‘dynamic map element’ is in some ways similar to a player-produced structure: it’s something that cannot move, that can be destroyed, but in the case of a dynamic map element it also serves some tactical purpose in the game but can be utilized by either/any player. Alternately, such ‘map elements’ might be an indirect (to me, it’s important that the reaction be indirect!) result of player action: a dead vehicle turning into a wreck, or a heavy attack leaving a crater, that sort of thing.

Why is it important to me that dynamic map elements be created as the result of indirect action? That’s a really good question. I think, ultimately, it’s because at that point both/all players must react to the changing battlefield as opposed to having the players prepare a changing battlefield to force their opponent to react in order to deal with. I wrote a while ago about categories of action in strategy gaming, and I feel that strategy games have tended to have a sufficient amount of preparatory actions in them (e.g. actions that players build up over time in order to give themselves an eventual leg up in the game) and game maps in particular remain pretty static over the course of any competitive multiplayer match, unless dynamic map elements are present. Adding reactive elements to the map, to me, is a positive thing. Gotta keep players on their toes.

Some games, such as Earth 2150 and, more recently, Zero-K, do allow for a more free-form modification of terrain itself: making mountains, bridging chasms, digging ditches, that sort of thing.

In Zero-K, terrain manipulation can be a pretty big deal 

While really fascinating, I’m not fully convinced that competitive strategy games are always made better by providing players with unlimited freedom to modify the terrain of a map. In Earth 2150, for instance, I rarely if ever made use of the terrain modification tools for any reason.

Of course, Earth 2150 is admittedly an example of ‘kitchen sink’ design: players design their own units, the game has a ‘picture in picture’ mode where the player can watch multiple areas of the map simultaneously, there’s a system for digging and moving units around in underground tunnels on a separate layer of the map… the list goes on. Zero-K is probably the RTS that I can think of which takes terrain modification most seriously. There are tactical and strategic elements to the game’s terrain management system that interest me, even if I haven’t played much of the game yet.

I tend to be more in favor (personally) of game systems that are clearly defined and constrained, while still allowing for deep and complex interactions between units. I tend to be a bit wary of more freeform systems, including ‘design your own units’ type systems in games. I find that it’s often easy to find ‘optimal’ builds in those systems that actually have a smaller number of viable builds/strategies than games with pre-defined systems and also that they’re also ultimately too much complexity buying too little depth, with the added risk of that complexity actually damaging emergent gameplay where it’s trying to foster it instead.

I would like to be 1000% clear here: I’m not saying that I’m against full terrain manipulation in RTS games. I’m just saying that I’m skeptical of it and have yet to be convinced either way. I may report back once I get more hours into Zero-K as to the results of that experience.

While admittedly more binary, I tend to prefer things like how bridges work in (most) C&C games. They can be destroyed by units (killing anything on the collapsing bridge) and rebuilt by an Engineer going into the bridge’s associated control tower. This gives both player a lot of say over when, and how, bridges exist on a game map. Something like bridges or destructible buildings/other terrain objects (like cover in DOW2) to me feels a lot more interactive and straightforward to grok to me than something more nebulous like more general terrain manipulation. 
 
I’m a pretty big proponent of clarity in terms of game systems (you might find this hard to believe if you’ve played my personal mod project, but I digress). And, to me, concrete objects on the map like buildings, rock to hide troops behind, trenches… these are things that a player can understand and interpret clearly. The lip of a crater will protect your troops from incoming fire; holing up in a building will do the same. Setting the building alight to prevent the enemy from using it or to destroy a bunch of enemies holed up inside, well… that’s a pretty clear interaction too. 

 
Wrapping it Up
There’s definitely cases that can be made both in favor of, and in opposition to, both what I’m calling “dynamic map elements,” “dynamic terrain,” and traditional static RTS maps. 
Competitive purists: those that mostly play Age of Empires 2 or StarCraft 2, tend to appreciate the relatively limited rough edges that maps provide that get in the way of the expression of their skill and competitive drive. There’s not much in a Brood War map that’s going to mess with a player’s expectations of how different encounters are going to go, for instance, or the parts of the map that are going to matter over the course of a match.

 
In Command and Conquer Remastered, however, the presence of Tiberium on the map can have some impact (this is more true in Tiberian Sun, where Tiberium regenerates faster and can be more lethal). In the older games, players don’t have much option to control where Tiberium is, but as the maps clear out of Tiberium, they become much safer for infantry to traverse, which can have some impact on the progress of an individual match.

So, to me, the biggest con for dynamic map elements is that they might not fit into the game based on the overall design goals. Though again: even StarCraft 2 has managed to find limited expressions of this sort of thing in the form of destructible debris.

Ultimately, I think it’s a great thing to have dynamic elements on the game map, whether it’s as simple as rocks that block paths, which can be destroyed to open them up, or whether it’s more complex like defensive tools that can serve either player, and be destroyed by abilities (like grenades). When the map responds to player action, it creates emergent depth in the game by giving the players new areas of the map to fight over (whether it’s for resources, or for actual weapons of war to steal from their opponent), or creating new ways to react on certain areas of the map by removing or adding defensive options, or new approaches to dealing with their opponents. 

On average, I feel like it would be good for maps in RTS games to feel more like a living place and less like a static game board. They should evolve based on player actions, with crashing helicopters digging up turf, buildings burning down, walls crumbling as shots or vehicles pass through them. I ultimately like this for mechanical/systems reasons, but I imagine it would also be cool visually.

What do you think about the topic of dynamic map elements? Should maps be more static, like in StarCraft, or should they evolve more like in Relic’s RTS? Is more freeform terrain manipulation like Zero-K or Earth 2150 better, or going too far?

Thanks for reading.

read the full article at my blog if you want

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: Savannah, Georgia

Join SCAD as chair of visual effects and help students become fluent in digital film and entertainment production as they prepare for creative careers in Hollywood and beyond.

The SCAD visual effects program provides a combination of fine arts foundation and professional instruction in a collaborative environment that reflects real-world productions. In this role, you will direct the SCAD Savannah visual effects department, develop curriculum, and teach classes annually as assigned. Responsibilities also include overseeing the department’s budget, working with admission to recruit talented students to SCAD, observing and evaluating professors, and consulting with the dean on the strategic plan for the School of Digital Media.

The ideal candidate should have significant professional experience as a visual effects artist and as a supervisor, facility manager, or lead member of a visual effects production team on-set or on-location. Experience should be in one of the principal areas of visual effects production, including technical direction, modeling, texture mapping, lighting, compositing, matte painting, shader writing, effects animation, and creation of virtual 3D environments.

Candidates should have a passion for leading curriculum development, possess strong communication skills, and work well with students and faculty of diverse backgrounds. Candidates should also be knowledgeable of current trends and technological developments in visual effects image acquisition as well as AR/VR applications of visual effects and other emerging technologies. Familiarity with the comprehensive planning and execution of photographic elements for visual effects is preferred.

Named among the best small cities in the U.S. by Condé Nast Traveler, Savannah offers an inviting climate and a culturally rich downtown, providing a real-world workshop for the study of art and design. The university blends seamlessly into the Savannah landscape and provides students with a dynamically layered learning environment in which to thrive.

Requirements
– Terminal degree or its equivalent in visual effects or a related field
– Proven leadership skills with the ability to motivate students and faculty to think creatively and critically
– University-level administration and/or four years of teaching experience preferred

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.

Koji Kondo became an immutable part of the fabric of the game industry itself when Super Mario Bros. was released in 1985. His tunes, which served as the unforgettable accompaniment to one of the most important games in history, are still cherished today.

Kondo continued to be the sole composer for the Mario games through 1996’s Super Mario 64, as well as the mainline Zelda franchise through Ocarina of Time.

Gamasutra got a rare chance to interview the composer prior to his appearance this past weekend at The Game Awards, where he played classic Mario themes on piano and appeared alongside the band Imagine Dragons.

In this rare (and remarkably humble) interview, he looks back on his oeuvre (he’s currently hard at work on 2015’s 30th anniversary franchise title Mario Maker for the Wii U) and shares his advice to other game composers.

You’re supervising the music for Mario Maker. That means you’re looking back at your career, essentially. What does it mean to be looking back at your older work, and how does it feel?

Koji Kondo: Well, on Mario Maker I’m actually the sound director and the main composer, so I’m having a really, really good time looking back at the themes from the older games and working with those, and creating some new revisions and new remakes for this title.

When you look back at your old work, how do you see it now, after all these years?

KK: I look back, and I really think that each song has its own specific set of memories for me. While I’m working on music that is based on some of those original songs, I kind of hearken back to the days when I was working on that, and revisit the things that I wanted to do at the time I was creating each piece of music.

We had a limited sound palette at that time — the tools that we had definitely had a limited selection of sounds and notes that we could work with. There were maybe some things that we couldn’t express to the full degree that we wanted to. I think we left some stuff on the table.

It’s really nice, using the new tools incorporated in the Wii U and our new hardware to recreate and rearrange some of that stuff. It’s just a heck of a lot of fun. I get to both remember the time that I was creating that music originally, but again, then work with the new tools to flesh it out in some ways, and reimagine it. It’s a lot of fun for me.

[embedded content]
The underground music, first heard in level 1-2.

Can you think of any specific memories that you have encountered about those classic games while working on this project?

KK: Yeah. I think each one has its own memories, as I mentioned before, but maybe one that I can recall off the top of my head is the underground music that I created for the original NES. It was really concentrated on the space between the notes, and using a few notes to create that feeling of being underground — that sort of creepy atmosphere is something I really focused on. Trying to create a sparse sound environment that would enhance what we see on the game screen. And I think it’s nice to now use the tools that I have to edit that, and hopefully enhance that even further.

The tools you had at the time were so limited that creating a sparse piece of music was to your advantage. Now you can flesh it out. You talked about the sparseness as being a positive, but now you’re not restricted. How do you approach that?

KK: I think if we look back at the NES version of the music, from the imagining of what sort of music I wanted to create to the act of creation, there wasn’t a large time gap between those, because of what we were working with — whereas now, we’re able to create sound in such detail.

The tools that we have allow us to recreate — say, for example, the bassline, the bass part. We really can and need to make it sound like an actual bass, not a computer sound, but an actual bass. But we’re using a computer to do it.

With all of those small details, we’re not making the music any more complex; we’re not using the tools just because they’re there to make the music too overpowering, or whatnot, but we do have a lot of detail that we can flesh out using today’s tools. So it takes quite a bit more time, actually, to create the music than it did back in the day, so to speak.

When you go back to the old music, do you find yourself using ideas that you had at the time that you couldn’t implement for technical reasons, or when you approach them now do you have new ideas that are spurred by this new opportunity?

KK: I think, actually, it’s both. There are some where we’ll take the same themes and I want to try it, maybe, in a different genre, or try it with different instrumentation. Because now I have a different palette to work from, so I’ll take some of those themes and rework them using new instrumentation.

There are obviously some that are obviously just completely original ideas, but there are others that are taking that original music, the same feeling I had when writing those, then using the technology I have today to make variations on that theme. Some are completely brand new and original, and some are reimaginings of those themes, but just using today’s technology.

For this question, you don’t have to stick to Mario. What soundtrack stands out as your favorite that you’ve worked on, and why?

KK: Tough question! I guess I’m going to have to go back to the original Super Mario Bros. theme. It’s just very gratifying for me to see the enduring popularity of the song and that it’s a worldwide phenomenon, it looks like.

If I go onto YouTube I can see so many different people using such different instrumentation to create different versions of this song. I’m just seeing that these people would think of this music as something that they wanted to put their own spin on, and go to all the trouble to reimagine it with their own instrumentation or whatnot, is very gratifying for me. So I think that’s the one I’d have to single out.

[embedded content]
Kondo performing the theme on piano at The Game Awards.

It’s such a catchy song, and it’s not easy to write catchy music. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about writing that music.

KK: I have to say that when I was, of course, working on the music, I wasn’t thinking to myself, “Now, I’ve got to create something that will be very popular with people.” I was really just trying to do create something that I thought would enhance the gameplay.

And the fact that the song is now, some 30 years later, has taken this lasting popularity with people around the world is very pleasing to me and not something that I ever thought. I’ve been very happy to see that’s the way it’s turned out.

From them until now, how collaborative is the music creation process with the game design process at Nintendo? How closely do you work with Mr. Miyamoto or other game designers and creators to match the soundtrack to the games?

KK: As far as my relationship with Mr. Miyamoto, he has final approval on everything, including the music. He works with the game director and the leads of the separate parts, and is in close communication with them. That’s the relationship we have with him. He helps them out and gives them advice, and talks to them about what they’re doing.

We really have a large stable of directors, and each one has his or her own personality. So we have some directors who are, “Here’s the game we’re working on,” and they’ll give us some working prototype or some working version of the game for us to play through and look at, and we’ll, on our own, create music that we think is appropriate for that game.

And we have some directors who are more hands-on in the creation of music, who will come to us and say, “Hey, I’m looking for music that will perform this function” — the genre, or the tempo, or whatever they had in mind. They’ll come to us and say, “This is what I’m looking for,” being a little more specific with their instructions.

This is a very broad question — but what’s the most important thing in your mind when composing music for a game? What’s paramount?

KK: That the game is fun to play — that the music enhances the fun factor in the game. It makes the game more fun.

It’s not that simple, right? You talked about the second level music in Super Mario Bros., which is more tense. So is it about underpinning the emotions of the gameplay?

KK: It enhances whatever is inherent in the gameplay. If I put in something that was super upbeat and peppy in the underground, it would ruin the game by not matching what is going on. So that’s not what our goal is, of course.

There’s something about the old music, which is that it was so limited that it forced you to write these amazing melodies. So in a way, was there an advantage to doing it in the old days?

KK: I don’t think so. I don’t feel like my approach has changed at all. I think maybe one thing that makes people feel like maybe some of the older music is catchier or more memorable, is that an older game really has less music, so you’d hear that music more often, I think — or variations on it. That music was played more, so it was in your mind more. It was in your ears more, for sure, when you were playing. Perhaps it just became easier to remember.

I think now, with the increased toolset that we have and the more expansive sound landscapes that we’re able to create, and there’s so much more music in games — maybe that will keep one refrain or melody line from standing out as much as it used to.

As far as myself, my approach to creation of game music hasn’t changed at all, that fundamental goal of making that supports and enhances gameplay hasn’t changed.

[embedded content]
The Super Mario Bros. 3 soundtrack, with distinctive drum sound.

One thing that really stands out to me when I think about Super Mario Bros. 3 and the music of that game is the drums — it has a really specific drum sound. Adding that one thing to the soundtrack defined the sound of the game. Do you agree? I guess at that time, maybe getting one new sound was a victory.

KK: I think, really, for Super Mario Bros. 3, I’d just been researching and researching the abilities of the NES hardware, and at the time that Super Mario Bros. 3 was under development, we were able to increase the size of the game ROM itself. We were able to add percussion as a result of that.

While the sound quality I don’t feel was all that great, we had the three notes from the NES that we were able to use, plus the noise [channel] — which we used for the hi-hat sound. [Kondo mimics the hi-hat drums from the NES.] We were able to add percussion on top of that.

I think relative to what we’d been hearing before, it sounded much fuller, much richer. I don’t know that there was any specific, “this drum is the thing” — it was, “Hey, now we can have percussion. Let’s add percussion!”

It’s not just that; I felt that it worked well with the music. I’m happy that it’s something that makes it distinctive for you. That’s the background story of the drums.

It just sticks with me all these years later. I’ve had conversations about the drums in Super Mario Bros. 3 even as recently as this year. It doesn’t just stick with me; it sticks with people.

KK: Thank you! I’m glad that it’s something that is a good memory for you.

When I was preparing for this interview I was thinking about a bunch of different soundtracks that you’ve worked on, and the one that really sticks out to me is Yoshi’s Island for the SNES. It has really its own mood and its own style. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on what went into that.

KK: In regards to Yoshi’s Island, while obviously it’s a Mario-related game, it’s not Mario, and so I really wanted to have a different feeling to the music. And as I was thinking about the game, I know that it’s this tropical island, and it’s hot, and again, it’s not Mario, so I really started wanting to incorporate an African vibe, so I did a lot of studying of African music and how African music was composed, and looked into a lot of different African instruments, and that was the basis for the music of Yoshi’s Island.

[embedded content]
A track from the Yoshi’s Island soundtrack.

It’s got an interesting atmosphere because it’s a bit relaxed and even at times a bit melancholy, especially for a platformer. That’s what stands out to me.

KK: [laughs] That’s the first time that anyone’s ever said that.

Really? It’s no so strong that it’s really different, but there’s something about it. Maybe “nostalgic” is the word?

KK: Maybe because Baby Mario gets kidnapped? I don’t know!

I think I’ll leave that alone.

KK: Okay. No worries. [laughs]

Do you have any advice that you give to people at Nintendo about how to create music for games?

KK: I think that maybe one conversation that we would have is something along the lines of that game music is different from other genres that you would maybe purchase on a CD to listen to and enjoy yourself, from different genres of popular music, in that game music needs to be interactive.

It needs to change with the gameplay. It needs to enhance what the player’s experiencing on-screen and really just make the game more than it is without the music. It needs to be an addition to what they’re seeing.

What mindset do you use when you approach it, then? How do you insure that the music is additive, rather than music that just happens to be playing?

KK: One thing that I think is different in the approach is that you have to consider that game music is something that you’re going to hear again and again, over a long period of time, throughout the entire time you’re playing the game. That’s something that’s different from pop music or something you’d hear in a movie — because you are in control of what’s going on on-screen.

You’re cueing up the music again and again to replay things, so the music has to be something that’s not going to get on your nerves. You’re not going to get tired of hearing something, but it’s also not just going to make you irritated. You’re not going to get sick of the music because you happen to play a stage over and over, or anything like that.

It really needs to have a catchy melody, it needs to have a lot of variety, and it needs to really enhance and match what’s going on on-screen. That’s one way I think the thinking process is different from what you had mentioned — something that’s just background music.

You mentioned how great it is that we have all these new tools, but if you look at what a lot of independent developers are doing these days, a lot of them are making NES-style games, complete with limitations on the music. I was wondering if you had any advice for people who wanted to make old-style music.

KK: [laughs] Go ahead. You can do whatever it is you want to do — do what you like. That’s great. The important thing is just to use whatever is at your disposal to create new ideas and come up with stuff that’s fresh and new. That’s just the important thing. Rather than trying to recreate something, or go over the same old ground, create new things. That’s the advice I would give.

It’s been over five years since CD Projekt Red launched The Witcher 3, and even still the game remains a key contributor to CD Projekt’s earnings. 

This H1 report is however, barring another delay, the last quarterly check-in CD Projekt Red will release before its ambitious role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077 launches, meaning The Witcher 3‘s reign as CD Projekt’s top earner may very well be nearing its final days. 

Closing out the first half of its 2020 fiscal year, CD Projekt reported 364 million PLN (~$97.2 million) in revenue, up nearly 70 percent year-over-year while its net profit hit 147 million PLN (~$39.3 million) and nearly tripled last year’s net profit of 51.5 million PLN (~$13.8 million).

Much of those increases were, unsurprisingly, driven by sales of The Witcher 3. The game itself received a helpful boost in visibility due to its Nintendo Switch launch late last year, while other properties in The Witcher franchise helped boost H1’s numbers as well.

Namely, Gwent boasted its best H1 in history thanks at least partially to debuts on iOS, Android, and Steam, though, following in Q1’s footsteps, The Witcher spinoff Thronebreaker is also named as a notable contributor.

In a brief earnings highlight, CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz also notes that GOG.com closed out the six month period with its best H1 to date, reporting 109.8 million PLN (~$29.3 million) in revenue and 5.6 million PLN (~$1.5 million) in profit. 

In this 2020 GDC Summer session Avalanche Studios’ Victoria Setian discusses how to increase your female talent pool, nurture your current female developers, and support their growth into leadership roles via research-backed actions and programs.

It was a fantastic talk, packed with practical examples and useful takeaways you can apply to your own work, so take advantage of the fact that you can now watch Setian’s GDC Summer talk for free 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. 

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: Pasadena, California

Join our team’s mission to create robots that help people reach their full potential!

COVID-19 Hiring Update: We’ve transitioned to a work-from-home model and we’re continuing to interview and hire during this time. This role is expected to begin as a remote position. We understand each person’s circumstances may be unique and will work with you to explore possible interim options.

Embodied, Inc.’s mission is to build socially and emotionally intelligent animate companions with believable personality and empathy to enhance our daily lives. We have developed a new platform, SocialXTM, that provides a way to use natural human interaction to engage with technology. The first iteration of this technology is Moxie, an animate companion for children developed to help promote social, emotional and cognitive learning. Moxie has been called “the robot pal you dreamed of as a kid” (Wired Magazine), “the sophisticated robot for the curious child” (Wallpaper Magazine), and “a technically impressive childhood robot” (TechCrunch). You can learn all about Moxie and see how it works: www.embodied.com 

From the heart of Pasadena in sunny Los Angeles, California, our diverse team of engineers, therapists, and designers is led by experts in robotics, AI and machine learning, entertainment, and consumer electronics. We are financially backed by some of the most prominent corporate and institutional investors including Intel Capital, Toyota AI Ventures, Amazon Alexa Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, JAZZ Venture Partners, Calibrate Ventures, Osage University Partners, Grishin Robotics, and Vulcan Capital.

We are continuing to build an amazing, high-performance team that works hard to innovate, collaborate, and solve complex challenges in order to serve our company mission and goals. We are bold in our vision, relentless in its pursuit, and excited to be discovering new ways to provide positive impact to the families we serve. We are committed to our mission not because it’s easy but out of a shared boundless optimism that together we will put a dent in the universe. 

At Embodied, our Game Designers are champions for overall quality of experience and creators of innovative activities designed for when children (5-10) are playing with Moxie – a little robot on a big mission to understand humans. This role will ensure that our content modules are engaging, fun, and replayable as well as effective tools for Social Emotional Learning (SEL). The Game Designer will work as part of a collaborative team to create modules that also support a larger creative universe that includes physical materials (Moxie Monthly Mission Packs) as well as a connected kids’ portal. Technical or system’s minded individuals with conversational design experience preferred.

General Responsibilities include:

Creating innovative content that captures the imagination of children of all ages and improves their social development by working collaboratively with:

         -Social development experts to integrate therapeutically enhanced content

         -Roboticists to collaborate on content using sensory input

         -Engineers to implement unique, entertaining activities

         -Solve complex challenges in a new field for creative exploration 

         -Have fun & learning while working at a startup with a great team on an incredible mission

Specific Responsibilities include:

• Design engaging learning modules for Moxie that captivate users and enable them to master key Social Emotional Learning points
• Design modules that contribute to the long term vision of the GRL Creative Universe
• Establish effective design templates that can be iterated upon through multiple modules
• Creatively innovate design features that distinguish Embodied’s unique experiences
• Create modules that take full advantage of the capabilities of an Embodied robot (Moxie), or other connected mediums of learning (physical mailings or the connected kids’ portal)
• Design scoring and feedback systems to enhance learning experiences and provide progress feedback to users and administrators
• Accurately scope upcoming projects, document plans, track progress, report and work with production tools to provide appropriate guidance on design activities and progress
• Work with team members and collaborators to identify learning pain points and identify possible solutions
• Work collaboratively in a team of other designers, producers, writers and artists to realize high impact high quality design goals
• Work with subject matter experts to translate their knowledge and expertise into engaging Social Emotional Learning experiences
• Revise designs as necessary based on feedback from users, team members, and stakeholders
• Pitch ideas internally to team members and stakeholders and champion best practices and user experiences
• Actively test and iterate on all content to achieve highest standards of overall team execution and user experience

Minimum Qualifications:

• Game Design Experience on 2 or more published projects
• The desire and ability to create innovative new play patterns using voice, image recognition and/or gesture controls
•  Strong writing skills for creating original content for children (ages 5-10)
• Excellent organization and communication skills
• Work well within a cross-discipline team: engineering, art, audio, therapy, marketing, etc.
• Familiarity with overseeing content from creation to execution
• Ability to manage priorities
• Understanding of game structure and story and how they can integrate effectively
• Ability to adapt design to match a project’s tone, business requirements, and learning goals
• Ability to design, iterate and revise work under tight deadlines
• Comfortable working scripting tools and other technical production tools

Preferred Qualifications:

• 5 years of progressively responsible experience in the area of Game Design
• Technical and/or background in complex systems design
• Non-linear scripting experience
• Conversational design experience
• Understanding of educational pedagogy and learning theory for kids (5-10)
• Experience working in an agile environment
• Experience of designing games for kids (5-10)
• Experience in the Unity Engine

At Embodied, we support diversity and we are an equal opportunity workplace. We offer a competitive benefits package that includes compensation, health benefits, employee stock options, 401(k) match, flexible PTO, and flexible schedules. We are a dynamic and diverse team that likes to push the status quo. Our work environment is collaborative, flexible, and very supportive of work-life balance. 

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.