Headline RePLAY – 6.21.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The future of gaming in the words of EA’s COO, resumable replays coming to a StarCraft II near you and the father of Mario voices his concern on video game violence.

Free-to-play and microtransactions may be the future of video games in order to avoid the music industry’s fate, says Electronic Art’s Chief Operating Officer.

“We’re going through, as an industry, just an unbelievably difficult transformation,” said EA COO Peter Moore in an extensive interview with Kotaku, “that is not from one business model to another but from one business model to a myriad of different business models.”  

Despite Moore’s belief that the industry is transitioning to a variety of business models, he predicts the F2P/microtransactions model will be in every game.  

“I think, ultimately, those microtransactions will be in every game, but the game itself or the access to the game will be free…,” he said. “The great majority will never pay us a penny which is perfectly fine with us, but they add to the eco-system and the people who do pay money—the whales as they are affectionately referred to—to use a Las Vegas term, love it because to be number one of a game that like 55 million people playing is a big deal.”

Ultimately, Moore believes that the F2P model is inevitable within the next five to 10 years, and compares it to walking into a store.

“I think there’s an inevitability that happens five years from now, 10 years from now, that, let’s call it the client, to use the term, [is free],” said Moore. “It is no different than… it’s free [for] me to walk into The Gap in my local shopping mall. They don’t charge me to walk in there. I can walk into The Gap, enjoy the music, look at the jeans and what have you, but if I want to buy something I have to pay for it.” 

Moore asserts that the transition is necessary, to avoid becoming like the music industry.  

“Music used to make money selling music,” he notes. “Music is now all about going on tour and concerts, go do corporate appearances, sell your merchandise, build your online website, find ways to do it that way, because they don’t make much money after Apple takes its cut, and that’s where most of us get our music.

“We don’t even see ourselves as a traditional publisher anymore. We’re a digital entertainment company.”  

|Source: Kotaku

After the infamous internet drop during the Global StarCraft II League finals in Las Vegas: why is LAN still not available for StarCraft II? In Kotaku’s continuing interview series with StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder answers that very question:

“We got to a point in development where we were trying to deal with creating an online, connected experience for our fans,” Browder explained. “We really wanted everyone to always be hooked up to their buddies all the time. We felt like that would be a way better user experience than just having everybody sort of separated out all the time, hiding out in offline mode.”

Browder says it was a “difficult decision” discussed for years. “We made the decision that since everybody’s connected these days anyway, that it wouldn’t really be too much of an issue.”

Except there was an issue, like the spectacular internet drop in the middle of a major eSports match during the Global StarCraft II League finals that compelled spectators to chant: “We want LAN! We want LAN!” with Browder in attendance.

  

“We have seen in a couple of places, we’ve had some venues who are doing eSport play unable to maintain their Internet connection,” he conceded. “Which was a bit of a surprise for us, but again, it’s not that unreasonable. We’re like, ‘Really you can’t—okay.’”

This prompted Blizzard to implement a “restart from replay” feature, which allows internet dropped players to load up a game file and start exactly where they left off. Resumable replays and other new features are set for release sometime close to StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm’s launch in a free patch that is free and independent from the expansion.

“So if their network gets down… if there’s a brown-out, if somebody’s mouse explodes, you’ll soon have a way to jump right back in and keep playing.”

|Source: Kotaku

Joining the man behind Epic Mickey and Deus Ex, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto voiced his own concern about the violence that permeates today’s video games.

“Sometimes I get worried about the continued reliance on making games that are so centered around guns, and that there are so many of these games,” Miyamoto told IGN. “I have a hard time imagining—particularly for young generations of gamers—how they sit down and play and interact with that.”

Last week, Warren Spector told GamesIndustry International that the “ultraviolence has to stop” and he believes that the industry is “fetishizing violence.”

|Source: IGN

Headline RePLAY – 6.19.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: StarCraft: Ghost isn’t returning from the dead anytime soon, StarCraft II on consoles and Seth Killian announces his departure from Capcom.

Fans that are hanging onto hope that Blizzard will revisit StarCraft: Ghost should consider their odds, as Blizzard says the chances of that happening are as likely as the making of Lost Vikings 3.

“There are no plans,” StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku bluntly. “I’m not saying we won’t ever, but I’ll tell you what I do know: There are no meetings going on. There is no team. No one talks about doing it.”

“It doesn’t mean that in two years from now, we won’t have those meetings, the team won’t be formed,” Browder hedged, “but there is literally nothing happening around that game right now that would indicate that there’s any likelihood that it will happen. It’s just as likely we’ll do that again as Lost Vikings 3 or whatever. There’s just no guarantees one way or the other, but nothing is happening.

“We are super huge fans of consoles. We love console gaming as players. I wasn’t really party to [the decision to put Ghost on hold] but I know it was a difficult decision.”

StarCraft: Ghost protagonist Nova is making a return in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, however.

|Source: Kotaku

For StarCraft to return to consoles, it would have to be an “awesome experience” and be an entirely new game, says StarCraft II’s lead designer.

“If I can control a cursor on the television with my head on the touchscreen, that might be able to work,” lead designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku. “[But] because of the hotkey scenario, it’s not like players actually play StarCraft with the mouse only—they play with the mouse and keyboard…  We obviously allow new users to play mouse-only and that’s really fun, but when you get serious about the game you do move into the mouse and keyboard space.”

And while there are no teams “exploring” console versions of StarCraft II, Browder confessed to considering the possibilities and described what it would take to make one.

“So [a console StarCraft] would have to be just an awesome experience,” said Browder. “As an alternative, we’d have to redesign the game for that UI which could be something we can do down the road, but that wouldn’t be a port anymore. That would be a much more serious endeavor with lots of design time and lots of work poured into it.”

It would take new interfaces, new units and new controls—likely be a new game.  “Whatever it takes to make it feel really tight, really clean,” said the lead designer.

“We haven’t seen the system that we felt we could easily do it,” he said. “And that’s not to say that someday we won’t make a really special effort to get it done, cause it certainly would be exciting. We’re just not there yet.”

|Source: Kotaku

Seth “S-Kill” Killian, Capcom USA’s strategic marketing director of online and community and co-founder of the annual EVO fighting game championships, announced his departure from Capcom today; his final day is Friday, June 22nd.

Aside from Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono, Killian is known for his involvement with the Capcom fanbase and being the “face” of Capcom’s fighting games.

Killian didn’t reveal where he’s heading next, but did say he has chosen a “new path” which will let him “embrace a new dream.”

|Source: Capcom-Unity

Headline RePLAY – 6.15.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Star Wars: The Old Republic considers free-to-play, Valve hires an economist and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is 99% done.

Signal the naysayers and I-told-you-so trolls, both BioWare and EA are orchestrating a discussion on Star Wars: The Old Republic going free-to-play; seen by many in the MMO community as a death-knell.

Speaking to GamesTM magazine, lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi describes the challenges that BioWare faces over losing 400,000 subscribers and the competition coming from their free-to-play competitors.

“I think it’s more than the free-to-play model—it’s more that there is a lot of competitive offers,” said Lusinchi. “If it was just free-to-play games and they weren’t very good it wouldn’t even be a question but there are definitely good games out there and good games coming out, so of course all of this competition impacts your plan with what you want to do.”

When asked about SWTOR possibly switching to a F2P model, Lusinchi didn’t dismiss the idea. “The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well,” he said. “Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new models and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.”

EA labels boss Frank Gibeau agreed that a shift to a F2P is not out of the realm of possibility, but flexibility and timing is key. “We’re going to be in the business from a long term standpoint so absolutely we’re going to embrace free access, free trial, ultimately some day we can move in and embrace that model, Gibeau told GamesIndustry International. “It’s all a matter of timing and thinking things through. We have a great business right now and we’re not looking to make any abrupt changes.

“The advent of free-to-play is certainly a change in the dynamic of the PC market,” Gibeau continued. “I don’t think subscriptions ever go away, but when you have an IP as broad as Star Wars, we’re definitely going to look at opportunities to grow that business and look at different ways of bringing customers in and serving them.”

|Source: GamesTM 1, 2, GamesIndustry International

Virtual economies are economies too, and what better way to solve problems with an in-game economy than an economist? Valve has recruited Professor Yanis Varoufakis to consult on the issue of “linking economies in tow virtual environments” and the “balance of payments,” comparing it to the Eurozone crisis of Germany and Greece.  

The comparison wasn’t made out of a vacuum: Professor Varoufakis was writing about the economic imbalance between Germany and Greece in a blog, which co-founder Gabe Newell had been reading, and consequently inspired him to reach out to the economist.

Professor Varoufakis isn’t a gamer, but the economist was intrigued by Newell’s proposition on virtual economies and accepted a position at Valve.   

|Source: GamesIndustry International

How close is StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm to being done? So close, I’m shocked that a release date hasn’t been announced yet!

“We’re 99% done,” lead designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku writer Jason Schreier over the phone, “but that last 1% is a bitch.”

Browder says that all the missions are playable, all the units are ready, but the 1% comes down to whether “we like it or not” and lots of “tuning and polish.”

“Like we could do a play-through next week and we’re like, ‘Wow this is really great,’” he said. “Or we could do a play-through and we still have 250 items we wanna fix. You know, historically speaking we’re doing pretty well. We’re getting there. But I don’t know for sure yet when we’ll be done.”

|Source: Kotaku