Warp Zoned Presents
Author: Josh Griffiths
Pulling Back the Curtain: The Importance of the Double Fine Adventure Documentary
Recently, 2 Player Productions wrapped production on Double Fine Adventure, a documentary series that followed the development of Broken Age. It was revolutionary in the gaming scene, being the only documentary to ever follow a studio developing a game from its conceptualization through its release and aftermath. Before it, the average game player had only ever seen brief snippets of development from single-person games or small indie teams. Double Fine was the first developer to pull back that curtain on game development, a feat arguably more important than its rocketing of Kickstarter into the mainstream, and unquestionably having a bigger impact on the industry and the community than Broken Age itself. If we’re being honest, Double Fine completely mismanaged their Kickstarter funds, and Broken Age isn’t great. But by “showing how the sausage gets made,” as studio founder Tim Schafer put it, Double Fine made their campaign more than worth it, and left a long-lasting contribution to the industry.
Until DFA came out, game development was a mystical secret that no one outside the industry could begin to comprehend. So much of it was mysterious that many who wanted to be in the industry viewed it with rose-tinted glasses: a dream job where they could play all day. All we knew about game development beforehand were the two extremes. There were the developers that talked in interviews about how great it was, coming to work and hanging out with cool people, getting to create great games that everybody loves. We also read the headlines about developers losing their jobs, and studios being shut down. That or it was about developers going mad in “crunch time” having to work 80 hour weeks. In fact, Double Fine gives us a good example with the Tim Schafter episode of G4’s Icons, when he took us briefly behind the scenes of production on Psychonauts.
We never knew what it was really like, not until Double Fine showed us. (more…)
Studio 4℃ is asking for more money for the Red Ash anime
Although the Kickstarter campaign for Red Ash: The Indelible Legend failed, the Red Ash anime campaign (Red Ash: Magicicada) actually succeeded, reaching its goal with a day to spare, and ultimately pulling in $162,882.
Well, that just wasn’t good enough for Studio 4℃, who have now set up their own crowdfunding page to squeeze more money from fans secure more money to extend the run time of the anime film. The new campaign is asking for $127,118 and, unlike on Kickstarter, Studio 4℃ will be getting all the money donated whether or not they hit that goal.
This new campaign begins several weeks after the Red Ash video game had to be bailed out by Chinese publisher Fuze. Comcept’s first game, Mighty No. 9, has also suffered its own problems in recent days as it was quietly delayed.
People can spend their money on whatever they like, but I am not happy with the way Comcept and Studio 4℃ have handled Red Ash: The Indelible Legend and Red Ash: Magicicada. I’m sure many others agree with me.
Posted in Etcetera, News
Tagged Red Ash: The Indelible Legend
Extreme Fallout: New Vegas “You Only Live Once” run comes to an end
On September 7, 2014, YouTuber “Many A True Nerd” posted the first video of a Fallout: New Vegas run that he referred to as “You Only Live Once.” Yesterday, nearly a year later, the series finally came to an end.
The name of the game is simple, or rather, the rule set is simple. “Many A True Nerd” wanted to beat Fallout: New Vegas, and all of its expansions, with a single health bar. “Many A True Nerd,” real name Jon, wasn’t allowed to heal his character’s wounds or radiation once in the entire series. If he took any damage, it would be a permanent strike on his health bar. His character’s name, Please Don’t Shoot, seemed rather apt.
In the final video, Jon reminiscences about the series and how it’s helped him and his YouTube channel, which grew from 10,000 subscribers to nearly 100,000. He beat the base game in February of this year and spent the last six months completing the game’s downloadable content, starting with Honest Hearts.
Jon admitted to making several mistakes over the course of the series, including underestimating certain enemies and walking into several traps including a bear trap and tripwire rigged shotgun. But he was able to beat the first three expansions, and entered Lonesome Road with less than 100 hit points. Coming into the final battle, he had all of 23 hit points to survive, and was on the verge of getting radiation poisoning, which would have dropped him down to three hit points. After coming so far, will Jon see it through to the end? You’ll have to watch the video yourself, embedded above, to see.
As for what’s next for Many A True Nerd, he wasted no time telling us how much more difficult the next challenge will be… An “You Only Live Once” run through Fallout 3. But hven he’s convinced he won’t get far.
The game where it’s absolutely, definitely, flipping impossible. There are only about 12 weeks left until Fallout 4 […] Honestly if I can get more than 12 or 13 parts through Fallout 3 “You Only Live Once” I will have surprised myself.
He’s laughing as he says this. Granted, he and everyone else said that about New Vegas. However, Fallout 3 is a much tougher game. With no gambling to quickly make money, a limited damage resistance system, a lack of different ammo types, more random events, and Fallout 3’s heavier reliance on combat, it will be truly remarkable if he can get through ten parts, much less beat the entire game (and all its expansions).
Starting next week, we’ll all find out together. Good luck, Jon, we have faith in you… somewhat.
English adaptation of 1998’s Metal Gear Solid Audio Drama released
Hey everyone, I made a thing. In addition to being a multi-talented writer here at Warp Zoned, I’m also a connoisseur of the arts. Does that sound good, or is it too pretentious? Either way, I think I’ve outdone myself.
Introducing the first English adaptation of the Metal Gear Audio Drama, which I produced.
In 1998, longtime Metal Gear military adviser Motosada Mori wrote an audio drama for Japanese radio simply called Metal Gear Solid. Konami, together with Nippon Cultural Broadcasting, eventually released the 12 episodes of the show across two CDs. However, the series never left Japan, presumably because we Americans haven’t listened to a radio play after everyone thought War of the Worlds was a real alien invasion.
Actually, there’s some debate as to whether or not that happened, but you get the point.
Despite its name, the Metal Gear Solid audio drama wasn’t an adaptation of the original PSone game, but instead a series of totally original stories. You see, Mori was interested in becoming a writer, so he wrote the radio play to break into the business, and he used the Metal Gear franchise because that’s what he’d been working on and it was popular. He came up with his own plot, three loosely connected adventures actually, and all featuring new Metal Gear stories. As far as I can ascertain, Kojima himself had nothing to do with this series. In fact I can’t even find any evidence of him ever mentioning it.
A lot of care was put into translating the Metal Gear Audio Drama into English. Editing a translation provided by MetalGearSolid.net and mixing the episodes together took several weeks. And my voice actors, many of whom are Metal Gear fans, worked just as long to make sure they got every line right.
The series features the sterling voices of Kristyn Mass (Meryl Silverburgh), Stig Syntangen (Captain), Yui Hisiashi, Jimmy Cooper (Colonel Campbell), Terrance Nicholson, and Cliff Thompson (Solid Snake), as well as many more. Popular YouTuber and Metal Gear fanatic YongYea is also among the ranks of the performers. I even brought on composer Yui Hisaishi to create a brand new music track, which you can hear throughout the series, and briefly in the Animated Showcase Trailer.
You can listen to the series on YouTube for the subtitled version, or you can download individual episodes from Soundcloud. A new episode will be available every Friday for the next few months.
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4 will hit Steam on September 18
Crickey mates! Throw some prawn on the barbie and come on down to the Outback, another Ty the Tasmanian Tiger game is in the works!
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger was just one of many in the large stable of PS2-era 3D platformers… and the bane of editors everywhere for it’s alliteration. Ty 3: Night of the Quinkan was the last in the series, released way back in 2005 for the PS2 and Xbox. Now, more than an entire console generation later, the franchise is coming back with Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4. And it’s set to be released exclusively for the PC (via Steam… sorry console owners. In addition to moving platforms, the new game will shift planes and take place entirely in 2D… sorry 3D platformer fans.
Perhaps the weirdest bit of news, besides the fact that this fourth game exists at all, is that it’s coming out in only a few weeks on September 18. It’s rare for a game to be formally announced this close to its release date, but we’re going to have to give Krome Studios the benefit of the doubt.
If Ty 4 is a success, Krome hopes to bring the three earlier entries in the series to Steam as well. Hopefully, fans of the franchise can make that happen. But first, I’m going to go ahead and write a few million apology notes to everyone in Australia.
Black Holmes is the next game from the developer of Hatoful Boyfriend
Hatoful Boyfriend, a pigeon dating sim, is a real game that exists. It is also genuinely regarded as a pretty good game by contributors to the Metacritic average. And despite being a game about dating pigeons, it eventually even found its way to the PS4 and Vita.
You know a developer has to be good when they make a game about the mating habit of teenage pigeons and people legitimately love it.
That developer, Moa Hato, recently announced Black Holmes, his next romance game… minus the pigeons this time. Black Holmes was revealed through its own new website, which is all in Japanese. However, Warp Zoned’s highly skilled team of translators, lead by Goog L. Tran-Slate (it’s French), were able to gather some facts about the game.
It’s not clear where the name “Black” Holmes comes from, but the star of the game is indeed a detective named Holmes. Rather than Sherlock, the main character is Noah Holmes, and he “loves the crime bad conduct detective.” Don’t we all?
The site doesn’t have much to offer besides that, a few pictures, and the briefest of plot summaries:
1889, London.
Dazzling light prosperity and civilization has brought dropped a well-colored shadow on society, Malicious people in stagnation had undergone a deepening.
Human history and criminal history just like coins of both sides. Crime In response to the evolution of civilization also will increase the diversity.
This is a detective that has been fascinated with the art serving crime that gave birth of humanity, He committed the crime lord of the story.
Judging by the artwork available, Black Holmes will likely have a manga feel to it. We also know it’ll be another visual novel, like Hatoful Boyfriend, and may be released episodically.
As a big fan of visual novels and Sherlock Holmes, this kind of game seems right up my alley. Look forward to more information about the game when we can get our hands on it… and when Goog L. Tran-Slate can be bothered to do his job.
Former BioWare devs shut down Kickstarter campaign for Mooncrest
If the failure of the Red Ash Kickstarter campaign has taught the developers of the world anything, it’s that you should always have something of your game to show besides concept art. Gameplay is ideal, but at least a trailer showcasing the world and it’s characters would be better than nothing.
KnightMayor, the developer behind Mooncrest, did not heed this lesson.
After a week on Kickstarter, the team reached just slightly more than 10% of their intended goal of $400,000. The reason for this slow start is likely because they had nothing but a vague idea, a few pieces of concept art, and one piece of music. According to their latest update, they had a basic pitch video at one point, but took it down because it was “weak.” The entire campaign was halted after this update was posted:
Coming out of the gate things looked great, but a weak project video, coupled with poor messaging, and no in game footage was the death of us.
It seems like the whole campaign was built around the fact the team was composed of several former developers from BioWare, as they proudly boasted in the actual title of their campaign. KnightMayor also seems to have misunderstood where they went wrong, and have promised a more triumphant return to the crowdfunding platform in the future:
Our future plans are to lick our wounds, address all of the criticisms/complaints we received, and move forward with another Kickstarter once we’re ready. Our focus will be on having a pitch video that actually, ya know, pitches the game, having in game footage to show, and just going more in depth on what we have in place to see this game through production and to release.
I appreciate their openness and honesty, but this is a mistake that should never have been made in the first place. It goes to show that despite the fact that they’re proven industry veterans, this is the first time they’re running their own studio, and they’re bound to make mistakes.
Good luck to KnightMayor in the future and we’ll let you know when a refocused Kickstarter campaign for Mooncrest is ready to go.
Leakers have uploaded a video of Fallout 4’s Gamescom demo to Pornhub
The exclusive Fallout 4 demo shown off at Gamescom this year hasn’t yet found its way online through Bethesda’s official channels. This has left fans who weren’t able to attend the show justifiably angry. And they’re so angry that they’re willing to go to the most unlikeliest of places to view some of the footage.
It’s not YouTube or Vimeo or Vine… It’s actually Pornhub, so let’s try to keep this somewhat professional.
The seven-minute video, and yes it really is footage from Fallout 4’s Gamescom demo, is titled “Hidden Camera Shows Audience Teased by Big Butt Man in Tights Live.” It’s not great footage, even as far as leaks go. Befitting its title, the person in the audience is clearly holding up their camera to the screen, trying desperately not to be seen. The video that’s been uploaded is grainy, shaky, and most of the time the camera is positioned between two people seated in front of the cameraman, which obscures most of the screen.
What we can see of the video though is a full, unedited playthrough of what appears to be this game’s version of the Super Duper Mart. We also see the dog in action, as well as the new shooting mechanics.
We also see ghouls for the first time, which have been completely redesigned. They now move and act like zombies. You can shoot off their arms and they’ll lunge forward to bite, or you can shoot off their legs and they’ll still crawl after you. Unfortunately, once they do reach you, it seems they still just stand there and swipe at you until you kill them. I would have liked to have seen close quarters combat become more dynamic, maybe have them latch on to you, like the “Blood Bugs” shown off in the E3 trailer.
Also, for better or worse, the lockpicking and terminal hacking minigames haven’t changed in the slightest. They’re still exactly the same as they were in Fallout 3.
That’s about all I can ascertain from this short leak. Apparently, the demo was longer, and (believe it or not) there weren’t two guys blocking most of the video. But those of us who didn’t get to see the demo firsthand might never find out, as Bethesda still hasn’t officially released Fallout 4’s Quakecon demo either.
Here’s the link to the video…
…but be warned, the site ISN’T SUITABLE IN THE LEAST FOR WORK OR PUBLIC VIEWING. Unless that’s what you’re in to, which is fine. I would have made a porn joke at some point, but I’m afraid it would have sucked.