Electron Dance Highlights
Neptune’s Pride Private Match Available
In the comments on Survivorship Bias, Electron Dance reader Todd has advertised a private Neptune's Pride game for any readers willing to join in. Players will start with Level 2 speed and scanning research is expensive.
The game URL is http://neptunespride.appspot.com/detail?game=32236516 and the secret word is ‘aspire’.
I can absolutely 100% cast-iron guarantee that I will not be taking part. As if that was in any doubt...
Update 09 Jan: Five out of nine slots taken!
Update 11 Jan: All slots filled and the game begins!
RoboCaptain, LiberalEurope, Captain Wells, CitiesInDust, Sargent Hatred, Leo2k5, Sirron, Grand Space Lord Al and Blueshift2k5... good hunting.
Update 14 Jan: There's a galactic peace treaty! With signatures!
Update 06 Feb: Game over! Shaun writes up his experiences on Arcadian Rhythms. And Liberal Europe is doing it too.
Seeing Games
![[canary wharf]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/canary-wharf.jpg "canary wharf")
No one is ever going to write a passionate ode to Canary Wharf, a corporate zone that celebrates the impact of grey lines and characterless office blocks. It's a difficult place to make a connection with, the poster child for skyline autism. I have never worked in Canary Wharf and have never wanted to. Yet still a rebellious glimmer of emotion shines through as I glance at the cluster of skyscrapers through the window, across the water. The fog has lifted today.
It’s the second day of Code-Ken 2011, a conference for software developers. Typically, developer conferences are about learning something new to help with the day job, but that kind of model is akin to personalised Google search: you're never confronted with ideas outside of your immediate interest. But Code-Ken 2011 is the reincarnation of a failed conference, StackOverflow DevDays 2011, whose aim was to broaden its audience's horizons and not give them more of the same.
We don't need coffee this morning, because the first presentation of the day is fascinating. Tom Wright, from the Human-Centred Technology (HCT) Group at the University of Sussex, is talking about his research into sensory substitution. This is the science of replacing a lost sense with another, related to - although distinct from - sensory augmentation. We’re not quite discussing Deus Ex: Human Revolution here.
IGDA Writers Panel: Players Versus Characters, 2
This is the second half of an article on the IGDA Writers Panel held at BAFTA, London, on October 26. The first half was published last week.
Last year’s panel was held in a lecture theatre at South Bank University which was spacious and desk-enabled. At BAFTA, the audience were not as lucky. Dinky chairs jammed us into snuggling distances with our neighbours and I had to be careful not to poke out someone's eye with the careless flick of a pen. The panellists got to wave their arms about and express themselves with gusto, but I didn’t have enough room to swing a gnat.
But every crowd has a silver lining – at least I got a free drink.
Just The Player?
The third act of the discussion addressed whether it was just the player alone that defined character. Could genre come into it? Or even the controllers?
IGDA Writers Panel: Players Versus Characters, 1
October 26, 2011. It was time to attend another IGDA writers panel. Last year's panel write-up on Environmental Narrative had been well-received, so I was encouraged to do a repeat performance this year.
The panel's theme this time around was “Players Vs Characters” - the games writer's pocket incarnation of “What happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object?” The four writers, convening at BAFTA, were almost the same as last year's line-up:
- Ed Stern (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Brink)
- Rhianna Pratchett (Overlord, Heavenly Sword, Mirror's Edge)
- James Swallow (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Killzone 2)
- Andrew S. Walsh (Harry Potter, Prince of Persia. Medieval II: Total War)
The panel was run differently too. Last year, each of the big names delivered a short presentation, followed by questions. This time it was a freeform discussion with Walsh chairing.
In another departure from last year's panel, I'm going to pepper the write-up with my own commentary.
What Is Character?
With a picture of David Caruso looking down on us, because that is what Caruso does, Walsh opened with the first question: what is character? This shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer, Walsh said, because character has been around for a long time in other media.
Stern got first dibs and tackled Walsh's implication that there should be much in common with other media, saying he saw games “as more dissimilar than similar”. Things which look like character aren’t because of the issue of interactivity. The cinema-goer is expected to be passive when watching a film, he said, but the gamer gets to play with perspective and pacing all the time.
Expo Man 2011
Here it is! Ten minutes of warm, moist footage taken directly from my wanderings around Eurogamer Expo 2011. And in an Electron Dance first, this video actually features me in person.
There's also a special appearance at the end from members of Bits 'n' Bytes Gaming and Tap-Repeatedly, meaning the Alliance of Awesome is fully represented. (And the final, touching scene won't make any sense unless you watched the video and read the words from Men of Science last week.)
Here are some more considered thoughts - with links - on the games I spent some time with.
The Indie Games Arcade
The arcade was still a bit small and, for some reason, held in a shoebox flat. A crush of visitors struggled to explore the arcade and something like B.U.T.T.O.N. would have been a disaster this year. Yet there was plenty of space around the indie prison, begging the question why it was built as if space was tight. Another problem was its proximity to the Just Dance 3 demo which belted out music tracks at nightclub volumes all day. "TELL ME ABOUT YOUR GAME." "WHAT? DID YOU SAY IT WAS LAME?"
I didn't get a chance to play everything but I did engage the developers a lot more this year.
Eurogamer Expo 2011 – Live
![[electron dance logos]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ed_electron-dance-badges.jpg "ed ed ed ed")
Okay, so last year I went to the Eurogamer Expo and came away wondering why I went. I made a few observations:
- Make arrangements to meet other people. Co-op is more fun than the singleplayer campaign, as demonstrated in Tuesday's post.
- Play games properly, don't just dabble.
- Keep your notepad handy.
- Don't bother interviewing.
And against my better judgement, I've decided to give it another go. I'm going for the Friday session and will probably make it to the RPS drinks in the evening. Do say HELLO if you're in the vicinity.
Now, I won't be able to tweet from the expo, but I do believe I'll be able to transmit via the medium of Electron Dance comments. I'm going to turn the comments on this page into a sort of live feed from the show floor. I have no idea how this will turn out. You can subscribe to the comments via e-mail or use this page's RSS comments feed. At least I won't spam my Twitter account with inane updates like WOW MET KERRY TURNER SHE IS A WOMAN IT SEEMS.
If all goes well, there'll be a couple of Expo articles next week - I'm not doing the six-days-in-a-row thing I ended up with last year. Sheesh.
IGDA Writing Panel: Environmental Narrative
“Which of you are writers or want to be writers?” Many hands went up, including mine.
“How many of you want to be writers for games only?” Only a few hands survived.
“Don't limit yourselves.”
On November 23, the IGDA London Chapter ran a discussion panel on “Environmental Narrative: Interactive Story Telling for an Interactive Medium” at London South Bank University. I had chosen to attend merely to extend my cyber-stalking of Tom Jubert into the physical world but anything I learnt about games writing would be a clear bonus.
Expo Man VI of VI: Survey Says
Four hours after I'd appeared on the expo floor, I exited via a dusty, decrepit passageway and put the glam behind me.
Desperate for something else to do, I'd even sniffed around the recruitment area, not for a job but just to see what was going on. Considering the ridiculously skewed gender ratio of the games industry, I found it interesting that all of Crytek's reps on Sunday were women. I'll just leave it at that.
My expo was over. I didn't feel energised. No spiritual enlightenment. No freebies. On the way home, I wondered exactly what I was supposed to write about the Eurogamer Expo. My own experience was a bit... unfulfilling. I arrived with a glass half-full but left with one half-empty.
Expo Man V of VI: Enslaved To The Rhythm
I knew nothing of Ninja Theory's Enslaved, because it was built in Console City on the other side of iPhone Forest. I only have one home, these days, a mortgage-free property in Windowston. The neighbours are nice and the picket fences are white.
It was another one of those WTF am I doing here moments; I'm never going to play this as I have no room in my life to flirt with a console. I attended because it appeared on the list of Laura Michet's optimistic non-brown games. As I got my seat, I had a feeling that I should've gone to The Witcher 2 presentation instead. Ninja Theory made Heavenly Sword, the demo of which I'd watched Yahtzee dismantle. Hoo boy.
Expo Man IV of VI: The Floor
Be very, very goddamn wary. Don't join a queue for food assuming the target material will be edible, because you can't see what you're lining up to buy until you've waited ten minutes to get near the head of the queue. By that point, you'll be so hungry you won't want to switch to another ten minute queue for something else.
TOTAL EXPO ROOKIE LOSER MISTAKE: Joining a food queue without checking out the food first.