Hell, its about time!

One of my all time favourite game trailers ended with the line “Hell, it’s about time!” a phrase that I have come to rather appreciate. I realise that it has been a while since my last blog post, and this is something which has been playing on my mind for a while now, but it just kind of fell by the wayside as a number of other projects have engrossed me.

Initially this blog was set up to cover my work as a writer, but since embarking on this two and a bit years ago, I have dabbled in a number of different areas, and I struggled about whether to catalogue everything I do on here, or just focus on the writing articles.

Decision time; what do I use this space for? Answer; this is my blog, about my interests, my aspirations and dreams – brought down to earth from time to time with news about what is going on, and other random thoughts.

As such, I now find myself;

- Working as a writer on Vinland. The big news here is that my first full draft of the novel is DONE, I am currently working on editing ready to find a publisher. Leif has successfully traversed the North Atlantic and set foot for the first time in America. I’ve made some copies available to those who are interested in the project. Please do get in touch if you want to help provide feedback.

- Working as a writer / designer at my own company, Zatobo. The PC version of our debut title, Vinland: Arctic Assault was released last year, and we are working on an Android version to be released soon. Actually, its already available, it’s just not working on the google play store for some reason. Stay tuned!

- Working as a writer / designer with American company Gwythdarian on a new browser-based space strategy game called StariumXCV. It’s a really ambitious project, and I am responsible for much of the background lore. I cannot say much on it yet due to an active Non-Disclosure Agreement, however as and when I can, I will release more here.

So you can see things are moving quite quickly at the moment, and that I am involved in a number of different projects at the moment, so this blog is likely to cover articles from writing, to gaming, to design and everything in between.

P.S That trailer was the announcement for Starcraft II, Wings of Liberty. I didn’t actually end up getting the game, partly because it wasn’t available on Steam, and more recently because I’ve taken the painful decision to boycott Blizzard products after their repeated failure to secure my account from hackers. Still a nice piece of video though! You can find the full trailer here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=r7d5XheWiBk. All credit for the awesome video go of course, to Blizzard!

Eurogamer Expo Highlights - The Rest

So it has been a while since my last update, and while I have some rather major news to share, I promised to finish my coverage of the Eurogamer expo first so here goes for that; the other article will have to wait a little longer.

While for me the biggest hit of the Eurogamer expo were the people I met, there were of course the games too! The variety of electronic entertainment on hand was startling, and I have to say I love the policy of Eurogamer where a studio may only showcase their product if customers can actually play it, an important distinction over simply showing off a cinematic trailer or worse just a concept. The games then, were for most of the attendees the most important element, and there was certainly no lack of choice of what to try, though some were near impossible to play because of the outstanding queues leading up to them. Thankfully, I tried most of the games I was interested in early on, knowing from Rezzed that it would really get busy over the weekend.

Now, Eurogamer is big, really big and I do not have the space here to comment on each and every game, so instead I will bring up what were for me, the three highlights. Being primarily a PC gamer, I will concentrate mostly on those and it is here that we start with Company of Heroes II. Ever since it was announced that it was in development, I have been looking forward to having the chance to give it a go, and I was pleased to see it amply represented at Eurogamer. Thankfully it lived up to expectations; a definite sequel to the first (great) game, with upgrades such as the impact of the weather which had such a great impact to the Eastern Front. I even got a T-shirt out of it, though I am not sure just how my American father likes me wandering around with a hammer and sickle on my shirt! Still it is worth remembering that this game seeks to commemorate the many men and women who gave their lives on these far less appreciated battlefields, regardless of ideology.

I think this is actually one of the most important aspects to many of the games that I enjoy; that they are not simply a mindless action-fest (though those are fun), but rather they strive for something deeper. Some try to instil a sense of leadership or provide soft skills such as in Football Manager, while others give a historic overview. My current love of history was not brought through reeling off dates in dry history lessons, but through the little clips that really made Age of Empires alive, or the snippets of colonial background offered in Colonisation. That said, I am well aware that history is often added after the core game play, Sid Meier (Civilisation / Colonisation / Pirates) famously stated that they wrote implemented the history that fit the setting. As such I am not asking games to become the new educational tool, but instead that they can make the user interested enough in a subject to delve more into it themselves. Europa Universalis covers the Reformation very well for instance, and since then I have begun to read up about it because it was an interesting period of history which is only touched on (if at all) in schools.

Next up was Farcry III, which I had high hopes for having been an avid fan of both the previous titles. I am pleased that it is taking a similar route as Farcry 2, with a large open map that basically invites you to just come in and play. There is some deeper gameplay to it, for instance collecting items and craftables, plus fighting the hostile bandit faction to clear bases for friendly native fighters to move in. I don’t yet know much about how all this works together (I spent far too much time just crashing cars into trees, running from tigers and paragliding around the island), but I have a feeling that it will deliver something special.

Finally was a game which surprised me; Assassins Creed. I’ve spent a little time on the very first game, but not enough to call myself properly attached or even a fan but what I saw of Assassins Creed III was really very cool. Now, it has to be said I have a soft spot for the Colonial era which the game is set in, however it was the detail which went into the demo that I especially appreciated. Basically it was showing off the naval combat element (I know, naval combat in a stealth assassination game! Firing a broadside is hardly the epitome of sneakiness!) but what I saw looked like really good fun. Starting out, you hug the coast in the bright sunshine of the Caribbean, but as you venture out to sea the storm clouds come in as fast as the enemy warships. Now normally this would sound extremely cliché, but actually they pulled the transition off really nicely so that you probably wouldn’t even notice until you lobbed a volley of chain shot into the increasingly sizable waves instead of your enemies’ hull.

The last (but by no means least) paragraph goes for a very honourable mention to the Indie Games Meetup organised by Zero Dependency and others. This was an event for small developers like myself to essentially get together and swap stories, and meet with other people including industry professionals and journalists. It was a really cool experience actually, being able to speak about things that we are passionate about with others who share the same interests. At this event we were allowed to bring along laptops / tablets, etc in order to showcase what we were working on, and Vinland received quite a bit of interest, and I actually ran out of fliers to give to people. 

Image courtesy of; http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/

Eurogamer Expo Highlights - The Personalities

Well that was one of the busiest and most tiring weekends of my life, but what a weekend it was! I had been eagerly anticipating the Eurogamer Expo for a number of weeks now, virtually counting down the days until it happened. Finally though, the moment was upon me and I was on the train up to London, and found myself standing before Earls Court, the majestic blue banner waving in the wind, seemingly welcoming the thousands of eager gamers, developers, and journalists.

I plan to do a series of articles to cover all of my experiences at the Expo, however it is the people I met which stuck out the most, and as such shall be the subject of the first article. Over the course of my adventures at the Expo, I would get to meet all kinds of interesting people, from the gamers themselves to a varied breed of developers (one of whom has earned “Legendary Status”... read on to find out who, and why!), while trying out a large number of interesting games and listening to the best of the business discussing how they make the magic on our screens.

But first, there was a queue. A really, really long queue, and this would unfortunately serve only as a warning for how much waiting one would have to do before the weekend was out. I was one of the lucky ones, with an early entry “Super Pass”, giving me the chance to arrive on the first day (Thursday) and to get in early to the expo (I never did, it takes me about an hour to get there, and I *hate* mornings). It amused me to no end however that the usher was patrolling up and down the line shouting “Ten O’Clock Entry only!” despite it being past eleven before I got even remotely close to the entry.

Eventually, I did get inside however and while I had been prepared for something big (I had been to the London Book Fair held in the same venue), I was not quite steeled for the sheer amount of noise, both from the rat a tat tat of distant machine gun fire, to the continuous chatter of many excited gamers. Writers are after all known for being quite a quiet bunch, gamers... not so much!  

The first booth I visited was Dust514, a game I had been watching despite my dislike of console games, for one primary reason; it had the really interesting concept of merging two separate genres, on two separate platforms, to link players together to work towards a single goal. Basically the console gamers work as the soldiers battling it out on the planets of Eve Online, with the Eve players providing orbital support from above, by bombarding the surface of the planet with targeted strikes, and by shipping in new equipment produced in Eve Online itself. I immediately flagged one of their representatives down, unfortunately he was less than helpful, even rolling his eyes when I asked about the connections between Eve and Dust... this impression would change later however when I re-visited the booth on Friday with a friend.

We got talking another developer who seemed more versed in how Dust and Eve worked together, however when we began asking more queries about the planned scope of the game (would Dust battles take place on space stations, and other scenarios like that), he admitted he didn’t know. Just then, another man ducked into the conversation wearing a very cheeky grin and clasping half a pint of beer in his hand.

“Maybe I can help?” he offered.

“Err, maybe. Who are you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m Jonathan, the executive producer of Eve Online, I basically run it all...”

This led to a very informative discussion about Eve, about Dust, about CCP and their plans for the Eve Universe in general. During this we also talked about how CCP interacts with the Council of Stellar Management (or CSM for short; a group of players elected by the players to converse directly with the developers to air grievances and to make suggestions);

"We basically fly them out to Iceland and lock ourselves in a room with them for three days and argue like mad men, often throwing insults and swearing at each other. Afterwards we all go to the pub and become best friends again." (slightly paraphrased as I cannot remember the precise wording, it was something like that though.)

So yeah, legendary status awarded!

Anyway, back to the topic! One of the developer talks I had missed at Rezzed was the Creative Assembly talk on Rome Total War II, so I made absolutely sure I got to see it at Eurogamer, and I was not disappointed. Seeing the newly released gameplay trailer displayed on a cinematic screen was incredible, and the speaker was a shining example of how to do one of these sessions, talking first about how the game was made.

This included a run down of all the different roles, and how each interacts with the others and what precisely they contribute to the game. These went from designers (and how they have to think), artists (and a quick time helm being made), animators (showing off the very snazzy motion capture studio), sound creators (and a guy suffering for his art by being belted with a broom while wearing Roman Segmenta armour, and being recorded while they did it).

I deeply regret not staying behind to have a word with him afterwards, but I did immediately make my way down to the Creative Assembly recruitment booth to have a word with their staff there, and found them to be just as engaging as their speaker had been. If you ever have a chance to hear Creative Assembly speak, I very highly recommend attending it.

Still to come is an overview of the different games on offer, and my perception of them, and an article on the Indie Game meet-up that occurred on Saturday evening (and the personalities met there, too many to list in this article too). Stay tuned for more! 

Image courtesy of; http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/

Mixed Media in Vinland

So back in March I began to discuss the background to MixedMedia writing, and how it is currently being used by others in the industry; but then how does this feed into the Vinland world, and my own plans with it?

Well at the moment, there are two sides to my work here, the games and the books. I have big plans for both, as laid out below. Films will (hopefully!) come later, but nothing concrete is planned for that medium just yet.

Books; if you were among the first readers of this blog, then you will be well aware that it all began with an idea for a book. This in time became Vinland: Revelations, a text that I am still labouring diligently away at. It all began with an idea... what if the Vikings survived in America? What in history would have to change for this to happen? To explain this, I applied the Butterfly Effect, where one seemingly minor change in time can cause a dramatic transformation of history. Therefore we need a situation just like the butterfly flapping its wings, and causing a hurricane.

The event I settled on takes place in the early history of Vinlandic exploration and colonisation, and was at the time attributed to the intervention of the gods. But these gods are fickle creatures, and in this telling they chose not to intervene, and rather to let events play themselves out. The result? Well that is up to you to discover.

Revelations was created to explain how the Vikings made it to the New World, it will then spawn a parallel series that will take place sometime later and covers how the Viking people in this alien world have developed and made it their home.

Games; now that the bones of the story have been set, we find that we need something to fill in the gaps or detail, and games happen to be very good at doing this. They allow the player to actually visit and take part in the setting, and to see with their own eyes the wonders seen by the characters, their decisions there can really matter.  

As you will be aware, our first release was Vinland: Arctic Assault, a simple game which traces the journey undertaken by Leif Erikson in Revelations (now released on Desura, please do support this project by following the link below!), however this is more about survival and discovery. Where the book concentrates more on the characters and their personal challenges, the game is more about the dangers faced at sea, and by actually putting the player in the role of the helmsman, makes this nuance all the clearer.

Arctic Assault is certainly not the end of the road for this, we have already begun work on a second game. Although this one is not directly related to the Vinland series, it will use Vinlandic factions, and allow us to build up a little more detail on the different factions in power, and their relationships with each other. The ultimate goal of this game is to provide the technical backdrop for a full on RPG, set in early Vinland, where the player will be able to visit the towns detailed in the books, and using those as a base, evoking and expanding on topics only touched upon briefly in other mediums, thereby allowing us to broaden the Vinland universe. 

Image courtesy of: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/6021580