"Ubisoft has matured the Tom Clancy brand" according to Splinter Cell: Conviction Devs

 

Speaking to me as part of an interview for a Red Flag Media publication, members of the Splinter Cell: Conviction development team said "Ubisoft has matured the Tom Clancy brand," claimed the company's current DRM system is vital to business, and explained how the series is now less reliant on trial-and-error gameplay. Do you agree with Steven Masters, lead game designer, and Patrick Redding, game director for co-op? Or do you disagree? Lemme know you beautiful chickadees. 

How vital is the Tom Clancy name to the Splinter Cell series? 

The Tom Clancy brand gave us the platform to redefine the action stealth genre when we created Splinter Cell in 2002. Splinter Cell let the audience incarnate Sam Fisher, an elite secret agent.  Ubisoft has matured the Tom Clancy brand, creating Splinter Cell, EndWar and HAWX.  Altogether, the Tom Clancy titles have sold over 58 million units worldwide. 

In 2008, Ubisoft acquired all rights to the Tom Clancy name for videogames and derivative products.  We continue to work on a series of successful novels which complement our existing Tom Clancy brands and later this year we’ll see a novel for Splinter Cell Conviction and also HAWX. As Ubisoft’s aspirations grow, so will aspirations for the Tom Clancy brand and movie epics based on our properties are the next logical step. 

How are both the single-player and co-op game modes less reliant on trial-and-error stealth gameplay? The stealth genre isn't the same as it was years ago.  

Splinter Cell has a long history and is a great brand because it has always revolved around some core pillars that have a really wide appeal. It’s a series filled with tension, tactics, outwitting your enemies and really delivering on the feeling of being a predator. Of course, what it means to be a stealth game has changed over time, as has Splinter Cell itself. We used to have things like 3 alarms and the mission would be failed, the light and noise meter, and detailed radars and maps. We looked at all of these elements and what they brought to the game, and worked to execute those concepts in a new, faster, more action oriented experience.   

For example, we’ve always had a concept of a last known position, a means of playing cat-and-mouse with the enemies; however, it was a difficult concept to play with since there was a lot of guesswork involved. Now we expose it to you, and it becomes a really powerful tool that you can exploit. Another example is our vision of Light & Shadow; where previously you had to manage a small meter, splitting your attention between the world and this meter, we wanted to make it easy for everyone to understand and powerful for you to exploit. In all, I think we’ve managed to create the same core Splinter Cell experience, but faster, clearer, more personal and with the option to play either in a stealthy or more dynamic way.  

There's nothing like getting disconnected from the internet while playing a single-player stealth game and then having the game automatically pause and possibly close. Will this have the same PC DRM as Assassin's Creed II? And is this DRM vital? 

Yes, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction will include the same DRM as all Ubisoft PC titles.  We consider that protecting our PC games is vital to our business and will allow us to continue investing in the development of creative and innovative games on the PC platform.

With the introduction of new protagonists in the co-op mode, is there any chance of the Splinter Cell series branching into multiple character-driven titles? 

Maybe…  but it is too early to even think about having further adventures with Archer and Kestrel, right now we’re focusing solely on delivering the best game possible.    

How is the upgrade system related to the narrative? 

The upgrade system is not related so much to the narrative, than it is to the gameplay. Since Sam is not working for Third Echelon anymore, he no longer has access to their gadgets. However, he’s got some good underground contacts from his old days as an agent, and those will grant him access to an array of tools – including some old time favourites like Sonar Goggles, and a lot of new ones. When the game will be released, you will have the possibility to use up to 17 weapons ranging from: pistols, machine pistols, sub-machine guns, shotguns and assault rifles. Many upgrades including lasers, red dot sights and silencers to name a few are also available for you to transform your favourite weapon into a killing machine!

Why a greater focus on co-op this time around? Has the industry changed? Have consumers changed?  

Co-op gameplay represents the new centre of gravity for what mass market gamers want. The days of the solitary gamer working through a twelve hour solo campaign are, certainly not over, but maybe marginalized a bit. Why? The newer generation of players still wants a strong sense of narrative in their games and they still want well-crafted moments with high production values. It’s just that they just want to share these things with their friends. The Internet generation has grown up thinking of technology and interactive entertainment as things that help mediate their social connections, rather than keeping them isolated. They won’t accept having to make a choice between deep single-player experiences, or ultra-hardcore competitive multiplayer. They want it all. 

Polish Developer Demonstrates Exemplary Videogame Design, Distribution, and Support.

Online multiplayer games like Diablo 2 and Team Fortress 2 get all the press. Years after release, their developers, Blizzard and Valve, still support the titles – adding patch after patch of ooey gooey delicious fixes and new content. The companies do this despite the diminishing financial returns yielded by improving a progressively dated title. Together, patches and discounts can reinvigorate sales numbers, evenrocket them far above the initial push, but at some point the return on investment skews towards unfavorable.  Next, a sequel or an expansion’s announced. This is the natural lifecycle of titles not built upon a subscription, and/or microtransaction, based foundation.

Other developers do this with their titles -applying equivalent love and support long after their little babies depart for new lives at market, but, like I said, Diablo 2 and Team Fortress 2 get all the press (especially recently). They’re media darlings. And rightly so. The former cemented itself as the definitive isometric, single and multiplayer role-playing, loot-obsessed king, and the latter masterfully balances nine radically different player classes across an ever-growing list of diverse maps and modes. Even without the irresistible visuals and sound design, both would’ve probably succeeded.

But this isn’t about those two multi-million selling champions of industry. This is about a developer and publisher from Poland showering a title from a bruised and used property with constant love and attention.

CD Projekt first released The Witcher in the U.S. on October 30, 2007, four days after the European release, and six after the Russian. Critics lauded the title’s dark tone, professional dialog, and consequence-ridden choice system, but criticized the “bulky” interface, stiff character animations, long loading times, and general title instability. Technical issues became the biggest complaint. Still, PC Gamer US called it “…an amazing achievement for first-time Polish developer CD Projekt.” and even awarded the game their prestigious “RPG Game of the Year” award. The title earned similar honors from other sites and publications, and so did its composers and the visual effects team behind the phenomenal pre-rendered seven minute long opening video.

Critics loved The Witcher, and so did gamers. In three months, 600,000 copies of the game were sold worldwide. Nine months later, a full year after release, total copies sold jumped to one million. To some developers, that’s a fraction of their twelve month sales. And to others much more fortunate, one million’s achieved in just a few hours. 24 hours after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launched on November 10, 2009, 4.7 million units of the game were sold, according to publisher Activision. Three weeks later, on December 1, publisher and developer Valve announced consumers purchased more than two million retailed copies of Left 4 Dead 2 in its two weeks at market.

Unlike the aforementioned mass market titans, The Witcher didn’t ride off an established base set by a prequel from the year before, or two years before, it didn’t have the backing of a 25 million dollar ad campaign, and the title onlyappeared on what the uninformed call “a dying platform,” the PC. Michael Kicinski, co-founder of CD Projekt, told Edge one million units “was a very ambitious goal.” “We were not sure if we could make it in the first 12 months,” he continued. “Actually, that was less than a goal, but more of a dream, I would say.”

But wait, if the title cost $11 million, one million more than the gruff, tough, and all that stuff Gears of War (which made oogles and oogles of greenbacks), did Kicinski anticipate losing money on the project? Did he expect to make it back in the long run? Or was there some kind of strange Uwe Boll hole in Polish tax law that he hoped to exploit? AH! My head hurts. For the purpose of this article, let’s just believe everything a high-ranking business official says, and that Santa and the Easter Bunny share a pint of hot chocolate and a plate of crumpets at the holiday bar during their respective offseasons.

Also in the aforementioned article, Kicinski also attributed the game’s success to the established bond between developer and consumer. “We tried to treat people well, and they’ve treated us well,” he claimed, shortly after championing consumer loyalty and the power and importance of word of mouth.

CD Projekt first treated people well by...

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Games of the Year: Osmos

Move, devour smaller creatures, get bigger and devour more. Become the biggest little glob. The lifestyle is one of nature’s most basic, and found all across the globe in jungles, forests, fast food joints, and shopping supercenters across this scale-busting nation. In Hemisphere Games’ Osmos, it’s the fundamental game design.

We’ve seen this type of play many times before, most recently and similarly in Jenova Chen’s excellent senior-thesis turned flash game turned PSN downloadable title, flOw.  But, as a testament to the beauty of creativity and know-how of each title’s creators, these two independently-developed titles share little in common beyond their foundational design.

Jonathan Blow, outspoken industry critic and developer of the intelligent and incomparable Braid, said this about Osmos in a September 7th, 2009 blog entry:

“Those who follow this blog know that I don’t recommend games very often. So you know that when I do, I really mean it.”

“Relatively speaking, a lot of independent game designers are trying to be experimental these days, and the problem I see with most of these games is that they don’t understand their own ideas — after playing, one feels that there was a lot of potential in the ideas that went unexplored, that the game never saw in the first place.”

“Osmos isn’t like that. It starts with an idea that several games have done before: you’re a cell and you eat guys that are smaller than you in order to get bigger. To this it adds the idea that makes the game stand out: This game is going to generally adhere to the nature and feel of physics in space; for example, momentum is conserved, so you need to eject your own mass in order to move. The game then explores the consequences of these ideas and ventures through a rich territory of additions that are all naturally suggested by the game’s premise.”

“It rings with that faint and distant sound of truth: because the game is based around laws of physics, it immerses you in these and you learn something about them. Perhaps not anything you didn’t already know in an abstract intellectual way, if you took physics classes in school; but here, you get a feel for them, so they become more real, more tangible. This game can change your perspective.”

Even before I saw Blow’s enthusiastic recommendation...

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PC Version of Batman: Arkham Asylum Offers Significantly Greater Immersion Than Console Counterparts.

“This isn’t one of those in-game pre-rendered movies, is it?” As Batman: Arkham Asylum played on the screen, a Game Night attendee demanded answers. I couldn’t fault him for questioning the graphics’ validity. Videogame companies notoriously employ smoke, mirrors, and feature film-quality 3D animation to mislead consumers into buying a product that can, in no way, live up to such a high visual precedent. In truth, it’s my fault I was caught off guard by the question. I should’ve expected the interrogator’s response. I often ask the same exact question (Thanks, Killzone 2!).

Batman doesn’t need in-game movies. The title immerses the player in the Bat-experience without them. The cinematic encounters aren’t observed, like in some “Final” titles, they’re played. Developer Rocksteady shows players this almost immediately during the lengthy introduction of escorting the Joker into the depths of Arkham.  As many of us know, this kind of medium interactivity isn’t new.

Cutting to a computer-generated or, heaven forbid, full motion video clip during an interactive game can segment the experience. In the world the player inhabits, he or she can move the protagonist around and interact with various objects and people. The boundaries are known, if only somewhat, here, and the objects are, in a way, tangible. But the world the clip inhabits might be entirely different, and potentially occupied by a similar, but bizarro-ish protagonist who possesses the capability to make decisions contradicting, or slightly off, from those made by the player. We assume they’re the same, because continuity and what games have taught us throughout years tell us, but we really don’t know. Think of it this way, you know the properties of an orange when holding it – the pleasant smell of the citrus flavors, the round and sometimes ovular shape, and the smooth but bumpy texture – but if all you know of an orange is what you’ve seen in a picture, then you can only assume. The power of a first-hand experience must never be underestimated.

Since this is a licensed title, it’s more vital than normal that the player feels like Batman (we all expect certain things from the Dark Knight). Through smart, and extremely well-designed gameplay mechanics, Rocksteady achieves this. Next, it’s up to the visuals to do their part (no sense in creating elaborate mechanics for Batsy Watsy if he looks and moves like a black tin can wearing a cape). Spoiler: The art department proved themselves as capable as the gameplay guys (and gals?). Arkham Asylum can hang with the biggest of visual baddies (not including the great emperor Crysis), in lighting, shadows, and raw pixel count. It’s really a beautiful game, and even better looking on the PC, provided you have the necessary setup.

As I said in my other Arkham Asylum-related article, the game includes added support for NVIDIA’s PhysX technology (”a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware software development kit). Since I possess a capable computer, I figured I’d bite, and see what kind of improvements this flaunted technology offered.

The difference is staggering. As the HardOCP folks say in their review of the title, “… there is absolutely a graphical effects payoff in Batman: Arkham Asylum.”

Read the rest of the article at IPR's Multimedia blog.

Cutting costs to make room for PC (not console) gaming.

This economy sucks. Retail sales are down, the stock market’s trying (and mostly failing) to recover from the previous crash, restaurants can no longer afford to remain full-staffed, and, worst of all, the invincible videogame industry is currently experiencing a year to year sales decline! I’d contend a lack of tolerable content impacted the last one more than a stagnant economy, but the belief’s not popular (developers can do no wrong!), and pointing a finger better serves this article.

Whether money’s not coming in like it used to, or interactive entertainment never found a comfortable place to sit in the living room of your monthly budget, rest easy. You can still game. Together we’ll lift your financial exile from the land of videogames.

But before I start, please slam your face directly onto last month’s bank statement. Stay there. The ledger may be riddled with nasty little unnecessary expenses. Find them.

If you need help, consumer empowerment blog The Consumerist can assist. Crushed by massive credit card debt? The editors suggest going without cable television and to stop eating out, among others, in the article “5 Expenses You Can’t Afford If You Have Credit Card Debt.” Spending too much at the local grocery store? Stop buying pre-chopped food, suggests writer Meg Marco in “7 Ways To Save on Groceries Without Using Coupons.” Do you think you’re so smart you don’t need to read these tips? The Consumerist has an article for you. “10 Stupid Ways That Smart People Waste Money” suggests even those privileged with a larger frontal lobe can sometimes forget to pay bills, suffer excessive overdraft and ATM fees, and let food spoil in the fridge.

You may or may not have a bit more room to work with. Either way, there’s only one gaming platform option (if you only have one choice): PC.

No other offers greater return on investment. And the investment itself can be as low as $200 or stratospherically high in the tens of thousands. For this article, we’ll keep our budget under $400. But first, let’s take a look at why the PC’s so effin’ neat.

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