Licensed Games I’d Want to Work On – Part 1: Panzer Dragoon0
Matt posted in Licensed Games I'd Want to Work On on December 23rd, 2006

I’m sure everyone owns a licensed game. I own my fair share, and most of them aren’t very good. Certainly there are exceptions (I’ve heard the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was a great game despite the movie was completely over the top), but on the whole they aren’t very good. I think part of this is that the money is spent on the license, not the development of the game, but often a license just doesn’t prove to be very game-y. For example, the Simpsons has spawned more games than most choose to remember (Simpsons Wrestling?), and although there are a few gems (Simpsons: The Arcade Game), most aren’t that great. Some are pretty decent, but they are usually loose usages of the license. When a license follows a movie, it’s difficult to take a lot of liberties. Although I would rather work on original content, if I had to make a licensed game, Panzer Dragoon is my first choice (more  licenses will follow with later posts).

Firstly, I don’t know if this counts as a license since it’s a video game, but getting the rights to do an established video game franchise is very similar to making a licensed game. Sometimes, the company that owns the franchise will be very protective of their IP and will try to prevent you from taking a lot of liberties or moving the series in a direction that they think will damage their IP. Other times, it seems more like a publisher is less concerned about the quality and more concerned about making the game as quickly and as cheaply as possible. That seemed to be the case with Spyro and Crash after Naughty Dog and Insomniac stopped working on them.

At any rate, I love Panzer Dragoon. Panzer Dragoon Saga is one of my very favorite games, if not my favorite. If you couldn’t tell, you might want to read my glowing praise in an earlier post. The Panzer Dragoon games take place in such a unique world that is both beautiful and fascinating. The art direction has always been superb even on the early Saturn games even though due to hardware limitations, it was difficult to tell what the collection of polygons were supposed to be. Panzer Dragoon Saga had amazing cutscenes and is by far the best looking Saturn game technically. It’s graphics are so good, one might even mistake it for a Playstation game! (Although, the video codec leaves much to be desired, which is unfortunate since there’s a lot of pre-rendered video in Panzer Dragoon Saga) I paid over $100 for Panzer Dragoon Saga, and after playing it, I would have paid twice that. The post-apocalyptic world blends all the best things from science fiction and fantasy together to create one of the most immersive worlds out of any video game. (Microsoft, why haven’t you made Panzer Dragoon Orta backwards compatible yet?!?! The last update did include Psychonauts, which is good)

In the Panzer Dragoon Universe, the characters in the game are constantly living in the shadow of a civilization that destroyed itself with various weapons. Great empires have risen up, and they harness the ancients technology to rule and destroy. Dragons, another biological weapon created by the ancients, prove to be the ultimate weapon to fight the oppressive governmental regimes. It was amazing that even with the poor hardware of the Saturn (not to speak ill of the Saturn. It is one of my favorite consoles) that they were able to create such an amazing setting for some wonderful games. Another thing that aids the immersiveness is that all the characters speak a unique language. No, Sega wasn’t just lazy in its localization. All the characters are speaking a completely new language similar to how Tolkien created the Elvish tongue for Lord of the Rings. Panzer Dragoon has one of the most rabid fanbases that it’s amazing Sega hasn’t made Live Arcade versions of the original or Zwei (although they did release the original for Playstation 2, and it was included in Panzer Dragoon Orta). Doing a downloadable version of Saga would definitely be worth it since it’s a fantastic game, and would be pretty easy to port. Sure, it’s on 4 CDs, but if they replaced the terrible compression codec with something reasonable like MPEG 4 or VC1, the game would end up pretty small. Unfortunately, I think the series has slipped off everyone at Sega’s radar, so I doubt any of this will happen. Interestingly, besides Psychonauts, I would say Panzer Dragoon Orta is the most requested game for Xbox 360 backwards compatibility (kotaku, joystiq and IGN all mentioned it) . Microsoft finally delivered on Psychonauts, but why not Panzer Dragoon? (I imagine it’s difficult to emulate since it is very technically impressive, but I think it’s well worth the effort.)

Another amazing thing about Panzer Dragoon is the music. Think back to a time where most games were created with simple bleeps and blips. Panzer Dragoon’s orchestral scores were a great addition to the game made possible by the CD medium. It really gave you that epic feeling as you flew on the back of a dragon destroying all sorts of mutant creatures that fought you. If you listen closely, you can tell that it was sequenced from samples and not actually a live orchestra, but the music still holds up to this day as some of the best game soundtracks.

I was really planning on focusing on what would make working on the game cool, but instead I went on a fanboy rant about how great the games were without doing a good job at conveying anything about the game other than how awesome I thought it was. So, I guess I’ll take a step back and try and get you up to speed. The first two games as well as the last (Orta for the Xbox) were rail shooters. They have the standard firing mechanism in a lot of Sega games where you drag your cursor over a bunch of targets and release to fire a barrage of lasers at all the targets. You have limited control over the dragon, so you can avoid obstacles. The enemies come at you from 360 degrees, so you press the shoulder buttons to rotate all around the dragon. The shooter games were flawlessly executed. The action was fast paced, the controls were fluid, the bosses were huge, and the action was frenetic. This on top of all of my other glowing praise made some really amazing games.

Panzer Dragoon Saga was an epic RPG that is possibly the most under appreciated game ever made. It’s hard to say whether this or Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game, but although they are both epic RPGs, they are very different. Firstly, Panzer Dragoon Saga is short. Yes, it’s on four discs, but unlike Final Fantasy VII, you can fully complete the game in 15-20 hours. I’m not complaining about that. There’s no grinding, there’s no waiting – it’s 20 hours of pure gaming bliss. My only complaint is that there aren’t too many different moves to learn, weapons or items, but everything is balanced fantastically and the game is super fun, so it’s a minor one. Panzer Dragoon Saga has walking around segments, but a lot of the game is exploring on the back of a dragon, which is a lot more interesting to play (in my opinion) than just walking around. Panzer Dragoon Saga’s strong point (besides the wonderful world in which it takes place) is the battle system. I’ve enjoyed the battle systems in many RPGs (especially Final Fantasy VII), but Panzer Dragon Saga is by far my favorite. It is simple, maybe a little too simple (because of the aforementioned lack of weapons and moves), but it is extremely exciting. The way it works is there are three bars that can charge. You can bring up a menu at any time in order to execute moves. Each move uses up a certain number of bars, so if you want to use your special attack you have to wait for all three of your bars to charge up. Now, you’re probably wondering how just waiting for bars can be an exciting combat system. Well, while you are waiting, you can move into one of four positions (ahead, behind, left and right) around the characters you are fighting. One of the positions usually has the enemy’s weakpoint that you can attack for massive damage. One of them is where their attacks are particularly potent. Other directions can be safe for your character. So, while you are waiting for your meters to charge, you and the enemy are trying to adjust positions in order to put the other combatant at a disadvantage. When you are shifting, your meters are no longer charging, so it’s important that you don’t just keep circling the enemy to avoid all of its fire. It’s hard to explain why this works out so well, but it really creates extremely exciting combat. No longer are you just staring at bars or menus, but you are constantly jostling for position with the enemy. Although that may not sound all that engaging, Team Andromeda’s execution works phenomenally well. You’ll have to play it for yourself to fully understand what an excellent system this is.

So, I’ll stop waxing poetic about the wonders of Panzer Dragoon in order to get to the intent of this article. Why would this be my first choice of a license to work on? (Although, I may be stretching the definition of a license) It should be painfully apparent that I am an enormous fan of Panzer Dragoon, and it’s always good to work on something that you are excited about. At Heavy Iron, I was glad that I was working on The Incredibles games rather than Spongebob Squarepants. I’m not really a fan of Spongebob, but I really love The Incredibles movie, so that was much more exciting to me. One of the reasons I wanted to work for High Impact besides that they had an amazing team was that they were making a Ratchet game, and I love Ratchet and thought this would be my only chance to work on Ratchet. (I wasn’t aware at the time that Insomniac was going to continue making Ratchet games) Unlike many other licenses, Panzer Dragoon is a license that lends itself well to making a game. (Did anyone play Toys the game based on the Robin Williams movie for Super Nintendo?) That may be obvious since it already was a game, but I think too often people neglect that when choosing a license. THQ made a poorly received game based on the Polar Express (I enjoyed IGN’s review because they mentioned that it made The Incredibles look “golden by comparison”), and although the movie may have been a good license from a financial standpoint (it had a lot of marketing budget behind it), it doesn’t really lend itself well to the interactive entertainment medium. Sure, maybe someone could have made a better game with the license, but I certainly didn’t envy the developers when I found out they were working on that game. Licenses can give you many advantages, which is why they are so popular. The main benefit is cross promotion and mindshare from the movie’s marketing, since the movie industry spends more money on marketing than games because despite what people say, the movie industry still is much larger than the games industry. It also can give you a fan base and a story or characters that are already well developed, so you save time and effort there. But, if you choose the wrong license, it makes the design of the game much more difficult. So, Panzer Dragoon has been proven with each iteration that it makes a great game.

Another reason is that the universe is something I’d like to explore creatively. I love the universe so much, I’d like to immerse myself in it only to expand it, to create it, to shape it in a way that I choose. I feel that I could do something that would do Team Andromeda proud, and if not, I don’t think anyone else could do better since Team Andromeda was abolished as was Smilebit (the developers of Panzer Dragoon Orta, which had several members from the original Team Andromeda). The gameplay featured in both the rail shooter and the RPG was really solid and leaves me as well as others wanting more. It certainly doesn’t seem like Sega has another Panzer Dragoon title in the works, so I would love to fill that Panzer Dragoon shaped hole in my own as well as others lives. Plus, you know what they say – if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I’m not sure if any development team would do it justice. Unfortunately, a number of classic Sega franchises have been disappointments recently. Did anyone play Virtual On Marz? How about Shadow the Hedgehog? When the new Sonic game came out, I died a little inside. To be fair, I haven’t gotten a chance to play the released version, but the demo was really rough, and I heard not much changed for the released game. (I may write an article about what I’d want to do if I had the Sonic license) I’m very nervous about what may happen to Golden Axe, another one of my personal favorites that I would love to work on. (Secret Level, a recent Sega acquisition, is making a next-gen sequel called Golden Axe Riders, but little is known outside a few pictures.)

Well, I could go on, but all this talk of Panzer Dragoon really makes me want to hook up my Xbox and my Saturn and play all the games over again.

Rest In Peace, Dan Johnson12
Matt posted in The Industry on December 16th, 2006

It is very unfortunate, but High Impact has lost one of our most outstanding employees, Dan Johnson. Dan was an amazing person, and he had a positive impact on everyone he worked with and knew. The games industry has lost one of the best character artists, and everyone at High Impact have lost more than just a co-worker – we’ve lost a friend, a mentor, a true virtuoso, a hilarious comedian and an all around wonderful person. At his memorial on Monday, many people spoke about what a great influence he was in their lives. Now I only knew him for a year and didn’t work that closely with him, but I’ll never forget him. Many people who knew him better have written some touching stuff, like Michael John and Jon Mayfield, which is definitely worth reading. Although it’s tragic that he has passed away, I’m sure he’s gone to a better place.

Now, if you are not familiar with Dan, I’m sure you’re familiar with his work. He worked on every Insomiac game except  Ratchet & Clank and Spyro. In fact, he is in many of those games in one form or another. In the Spyro games, the coins were textured with Dan’s face. In the original Ratchet & Clank, he’s on one of the monitors on Planet Orxon, a starfish on Pokitaru, and a mushroom on Eudora. There’s a Snow Dan that appeared in both Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. I’m sure there are plenty of Dan references that I’m missing, but he’s all over the Insomniac games, and Ted Price said at his memorial service that they will continue to put him in their games.

Gamers and game developers alike should mourn because we lost one of the industry’s brightest stars.

The Future of Trailers1
Matt posted in Games, Playstation 3, The Industry, Xbox 360 on December 10th, 2006

The big news this week was the Halo 3 trailer came out. Now, I don’t like FPSes on consoles (I find the controls frustrating), so I was never really into Halo. I played through about half of the single player campaign in the first game and got bored. After seeing the trailer, I was really excited about Halo 3. I started reading about the plot of the Halo saga and the Halo universe, and it actually seems quite interesting. I never thought I’d pick up Halo again, but now I’m tempted (although I probably won’t have time… I have a HUGE backlog of games). That seems like really effective advertising if it can get someone with no interest in a game more excited. Another example is the Gears of War trailer with the version of Mad World used in Donnie Darko that many people are talking about. I was already quite excited about Gears of War when it came out, but that was a really well done trailer. (David Fincher, director of Fight Club, was a consultant on the trailer. Many sites erroneously credit him with directing it, but that’s not the case.)

Now, if you are one of the few gamers who hasn’t seen either of these trailers, you definitely should check them out. The Halo 3 trailer is not in game footage. In fact, it’s not even done by Bungie. It’s done by FX shop Digital Domain, that worked on many movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow” and “X-Men”. Digital Domain is no stranger to commercials. They have quite a few commercials under their belt. When I was at University of Michigan, an employee from Digital Domain came to give a lecture and talked about what the visual effects industry was like. He said that the only reason they did features was to get the name out there and earn a reputation to get more commercials. So I guess if you are going into visual effects, commercials are where the money is at. At any rate, it starts with an apparently live action shot of two kids discussing the possibility of aliens. I say apparently live action because the shot was dark, and I watched it super low res. (I haven’t had a chance to download it off Xbox Live in 720p) Part of the trailer was live action according to Bungie, and this is the only candidate for live action section. Then, there’s a battle scene that was rendered using in game assets, that is really exciting. It didn’t explain anything. It just showed a quick glimpse of fast paced combat that really gets your adrenaline flowing. Well, why don’t you just watch it?

The Gears of War one is really cool because they are even showing it before movies in the theater. As I mentioned, it uses the version of Mad World featured in Donnie Darko (an amazing movie, in my opinion), and really builds on the theme of Destroyed Beauty. Marcus Phoenix, the protagonist of Gears of War, walks through a destroyed town on the planet Sera and looks down at a half destroyed statue in a puddle. One might even say a tear splashes down into the pool of water, but we all know Marcus is so badass he probably cut his own tear ducts out. Soon, Marcus ends up in a firefight with the locust only to find himself completely outnumbered. The end completely implies that if you want to find out what happens, play the game. If you would like to see the trailer for yourself, check it out. I recommend you do so.

Now, neither of these trailers show anything from inside the game. The Gears of War trailer was actually created in the game engine, but isn’t actual game play. Despite the Halo 3 trailer featuring some in game assets, I expect that it looks nicer than the actual game will (the particle count seems a bit high to me). Bungie never fails to push the performance of the hardware, so maybe we’ll actually see that level of visual fidelity, but I doubt it.

So, if these aren’t accurate depictions of the gameplay, are they worth releasing? Are they things gamers should get excited about? I’d say yes. One might say the trailers are dishonest because they are showing things that aren’t actually in the game. That is true, but I wouldn’t say they are dishonest. Although Halo 3 is not out yet, so I have no idea what the game will be like, I think the trailer for Gears of War was more effective at expressing the theme of “destroyed beauty” than any minute of gameplay would. The theme of Gears of War is subtle, but it’s prevalent throughout the game (or at least the sections I’ve played so far). It’s more about the ambiance of the world and the experience, so it’s hard to express that in a minute. Honestly, I think the theme of the game is one of the things that really makes it such a great experience. The beauty of the civilization is juxtaposed against the destruction and violence. That stark contrast really makes you hate the enemy all the more and want to fight them. This emotional investment adds to the immersiveness of the game world and is gripping.

Sometimes, trailers or sizzle reels for games are shown off and the game clearly doesn’t match the prerendered footage’s visual quality. Motorstorm is an example. The sizzle reel shows off the burnout style crashes combined with all the dirt and mud of off-road racing. The visual quality of the game, although good, doesn’t look nearly as good as the prerendered footage. There’s a larger disparity between that footage and the real game than between the Gears of War trailer and the game. (Perhaps Halo will suffer from the same thing) Does this seem dishonest about it? Maybe. It’s pretty sad when people are claiming either the PS3 or the Xbox 360 has more graphical horsepower based on a pre-rendered movie. They both can play video at 1080p (although Blu-ray has a lot more space for it), so that’s a bad comparison. Here’s the question – when a video simulates gameplay similar to Killzone 2 or Final Fantasy XIII, then it becomes more deceptive. It’s easier for game developers to recognize which the video is, but I imagine it can be confusing for people outside the industry. Another example is White Knight Story. A number of people are REALLY excited about it (including Jerry and Mike from Penny Arcade), and the trailer does indeed seem quite cool. Whether it’s indicative of the actual gameplay remains to be seen (in my opinion). It’s a very short trailer and could just be a mock up of what they are actually planning on doing. Yes, I’m definitely interested, and its refreshing to see something that resembles gameplay, but I’m not convinced that is actually a video of gameplay. This generation, it seems wise to remain skeptical of anything that isn’t playable. Hopefully the game will be as exciting as they plan, but I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.

I can imagine you are wondering what I’m getting at. Basically, I’m trying to say that showing a video that is not representative of actual gameplay is a double edged sword. On one hand, it can express things that gameplay clips can’t like the theme in Gears of War. On the other hand, it can set up unrealistic expectations about gameplay and visual fidelity. Regardless of whether showing off trailers that aren’t from the actual game is a good idea or not, I suspect we are going to see a lot more of them this generation. The target video or sizzle reel is an effective way to pitch a game to both publishers and the general audience. I heard the “theme” or the new idea that the Assassin’s Creed development team was trying to push was “crowds”. Now, when I heard that the game’s big feature is “crowds” I had trouble visualizing how that could be an entertaining premise for the game. In fact, it sounded kind of silly. But, on seeing the E3 trailer, I started to understand how that would work and the potential for a new style of stealth – blending into crowds.

Now, selling your games to audiences isn’t really important before you sit down and code the gameplay. Getting a game green-lit is very difficult especially with the cost of next gen games. If a pre-rendered movie or sizzle reel can help get a game funded, then it’s worth doing from a developer standpoint. Is it best off for the industry for publishers to expect them? That’s harder to say. As I mentioned, it can demonstrate to a publisher what a game is trying to be. A design document isn’t as effective at communicating the spirit of the game. A picture is worth a thousand words and at 30 pictures per second, a 2 minute sizzle reel has the value of an encyclopedia. Yes, sizzle reels take money and time away from actually developing the game. But, from the publisher’s side of things, they’d rather invest a bit up front to see if the product is something they think they can sell. My guess is that sizzle reels are here to stay.

Game Developer Ethics0
Matt posted in The Industry on December 1st, 2006

In the same edition of blogged out that I mentioned in my last post regarding reviews, there was also something interesting that I wanted to comment on:

“I’ll play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, and argue that game developers only have a responsibility to make games, no matter the value of the content of those games. What right have we to demand that they defend or explain their “artistic intent”?
Perhaps I’m on the wrong track – after all we do want games development to be more intelligent and less exploitative on sensation and controversy – but I feel that more accountability on the part of developers only ends up inhibiting inspiration. I’m not sure we can afford that trade-off.”

I disagree with his assertion that “game developers only have a responsibility to make games”. I am probably in the minority with my opinion, but I feel that as a game developer, I am personally responsible for the content in what I work on. If I spend thousands of hours working on a product, I want it to have a positive impact on the world. When I look back at the many hours I’ve spent slaving away in front of a computer screen, I want it to mean more than just a paycheck. I want to see myself as someone who leaves a positive impact on the world for all my hard work. I would much rather make a financially unsuccessful game that really touches the lives of gamers and improves them than the most successful game ever that has a negative impact on gamers in the long run, even if they enjoy it at the time.

The major problem with my ideal is that it is impossible to accurately assess the worldwide impact a game has. Let’s use the popular example of “Grand Theft Auto”. Although, I don’t play the game because I am disgusted by its content, it is a very popular game series that has brought countless hours of enjoyment to people all over the world. It is also the frequent target of finger pointing for increases in youth violence. Personally, I think the content in the game is pretty awful. Although it may be a fun game, it certainly allows you to do things that are just terrible, like pay money for a woman of ill repute’s accompaniment, and then if you are dissatisfied with her services, you are free to chainsaw her in order to acquire a refund. Now, I think the designers and the development team behind the game were very talented and clearly did a lot of things right in order to make such a hugely successful game. But is it necessary to have objectionable content in it? One of the major features it is praised for is the sandbox style gameplay. Could the same development team have made an equally fun game with less objectionable content? I’d say yes although I imagine many would argue no.

What makes Grand Theft Auto fun? Most people will tell you it’s not chainsawing prostitutes, but rather roaming an open world environment and enjoying the emergent gameplay. In college, I watched my housemates play many hours of GTA, and they enjoyed turning on the cheat codes and flying around with the tank. So, would the game be as fun without the assassinations, crime and all that? It’s difficult to determine because one of the things that people enjoy about the game is choice. People like to be able to make choices. A game is more immersive when you are presented in a world where you can play around and experiment rather than just do the things the game designers thought of. (This may explain the decline in adventure games in the past several years)

By removing questionable content, you remove the opportunity to do certain things. One game that handled choice better than Grand Theft Auto is Fable. Now,  most people wouldn’t say that Fable is a better than GTA. In fact, they would probably argue the contrary. But, rather than giving your character ONLY the opportunity to commit terrible crimes, your character can choose to be a hero. Fable had other problems, and I think a sandbox of a fantasy world is less appealing than the real world to the mass market, but  I’m very interested to see how Crackdown turns out. It’s similar to Grand Theft Auto in that it is a free roaming open world game and that it is also being developed by David Jones, the creator of GTA. Besides adding a comic book-y visual flair, in Crackdown, the player is a super hero rather than a criminal. Will this game be as fun as GTA without the objectionable content? I hope so. Although you lose choice in terms of objectionable actions (well, hopefully), you gain choices that you couldn’t do in Grand Theft Auto. You can gain Spiderman’s powers of scaling buildings. You can leap great distances. It seems like it’s a wish fulfillment game for everyone who’s ever read a comic book.

The next question is does the terrible content in Grand Theft Auto have an effect on people? Although it doesn’t really have an effect on adults, I would argue it does on children. Now, Grand Theft Auto is not a kids game. It is very clearly marked mature, and I think that rating is reasonable. The problem is as a recent NIMF report suggests parents aren’t doing their jobs when purchasing video games for their children. So, the fact that Grand Theft Auto gets in the hands of children is the fault of bad parenting, and perhaps irresponsible older siblings. Unfortunately, I cannot do anything to address that. I can’t force negligent or ignorant parents to shape up all over the world. What I do have control over is where I work and what I work on. Even if the responsibility lies with the parent, as I mentioned before, I don’t want to have a negative impact on the world. Sure, GTA provides entertainment, but I feel that Rockstar could have provided that same entertainment without the objectionable content like I mentioned above.

Many argue that it has no effect on kids. I played Mortal Kombat as a child. I even went as Scorpion for Halloween when I was pretty young. Now, I’m not a violent person at all. I’ve never torn someone’s heart out of their chest. I get terrified if an animal runs in front of my car because I don’t want to extinguish a furry critter’s spark of  life. But I think Mortal Kombat (at least the old ones. I haven’t played the later ones, so I can’t comment) is more akin to Tom and Jerry cartoons, which were actually fairly violent. Certainly, I could be wrong about this. Maybe Mortal Kombat has a similarly bad effect on children. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d work on a Mortal Kombat game. But, I KNOW I wouldn’t work on a GTA style game. I think GTA has a negative effect partially because of its realism. Now, although the game may not be photorealistic, it’s in a real world setting and pretty much glorifying a life of crime. The protagonists (if they can even be called that) in Grand Theft Auto are criminals. They do a lot of bad things and rarely have to deal with the consequences of their actions. If you kill a cop and steal his car, you can either escape with absolutely no punishment, or you get busted and rather than sitting out for a length of time in prison, you are able to get right back into the game. There have been numerous studies saying games are effective learning tools, but what lessons might young, impressionable minds learn from Grand Theft Auto? I can only think of negative things.

Now, if you think I am arguing FOR censorship, you are mistaken. Censorship is bad because giving governmental control over our forms of expression is a slippery slope that we should stay as far away from as possible. Rather, I feel like game developers should personally censor their work based on what they think will have a positive impact on the world. I have been asked if I would be willing to work on a game with questionable content. I honestly told my boss that I wouldn’t work on it. If High Impact Games next game were similar in content to GTA, I would quit.