playBlog

I don’t know how the game press rolls elsewhere on the planet (nor do I know how magnets work), but out here on the west coast of the US, they appear to be the Terminators of the game editor world.

(Well, if Terminators wrote about games and stuff instead of trying to kill Sarah Connor and learn why humans cry, I mean…)

Mere hours after chatting and demoing and hands-onning the MiBI (note: not as sexy as it sounds), Daemon from IGN and Chris from Wired’s Game|Life blog had posted their initial impressions of the game.

Daemon (no relation) was the first to see the game this morning and he posted a preview of the game this afternoon. We’re thrilled he liked the game, and even happier that he didn’t make too much fun of us for the “casually hardcore” descriptor we hang on the game trying to describe who the game was made for.

It’s really not just a random adjective/adverb pairing– there is a reason we call the game that: it’s easy to pick-up and play, but it has enough depth and complexity to it that it rewards the long-term, hardcore player. Really.

That is to say, we keep the controls and game operation as simple as possible for two reasons: 1) so that people can pick up the game and play it without knowing much about the game at all, and 2) even for hardcore players, the action can get so frantic (especially in multiplayer) that you don’t want to worry about ammunition, weapon inventories, vertical aiming and the like.

So by taking care of that and putting the complexity of the game in other areas (character classes and damage systems, for example), we get to satisfy both sides of the gamercard and provide a fun experience whether you’re playing for the first time or the millionth-and-first time. Okay, maybe the game will get a little tiring after a million plays, but I’d blame thumb-fatigue for that.

We also got to sit down with Chris from

For the next several Mondays, we will bring you up close and/or personal with major features of MiBI. Why? Because the game is very broad and very deep and this is one way we can make sure folks know about all of our features lest they be missed. Today’s kick-ass feature is…Avatar Attack!

To explain Avatar Attack!, I need to give a little history first. We

Yes, I am posting this just to push the horror that is the last shot of the bird’s nest further down the page (sorry, I didn’t realise how scary that thing was…)

Besides, this is eleventy kinds of awesome:

"Some day this war is gonna end"

What follows is an exclusive interview with the Game Release Beard conducted by the playBlog on the flight home from E3. It was intended to run on Father’s Day this year, but has been posted early due to unfortunate circumstances.

R.I.P., you magnificent son of a bitch

playBlog: Hey, Game Release Beard! What up, buddy? Man, you

It’s true. The web is positively filled with smart and sophisticated people who know quality when they see it.

You can see this every day when folks post the absolute best videos of skateboarders faceplanting on the sidewalk or when they do a frame-by-frame deconstruction of the “Where the Wild Things Are” trailer.

But really, as smart as these people are, there is a higher strata of “the smartness” reserved for the press folks we talked to at E3. Yes, they are that smart.

We’ve

One of the more interesting experiences we’ve had making our first game was getting ratings from the various international rating boards.

Basically, we created a 10-minute reel that had to show typical gameplay and highlight elements that the boards should take into account when rating the game (thus our plan of just showing the main menu and credits for 10 minutes was scuttled early).

We’ve always knew we’d have a challenge because we are a hardcore shooter with a goofy edge– we definitely didn’t want to go out as an “M” game, but we also know we’re not a good choice for those who dig The Wiggles (full disclosure: I stopped listening to them when David Lee Roth Sam Moran became lead singer).

Anyway, let it be on record that pre-schoolers should not be shooting other people in the face (either in games or in real life). In fact, we’ll go as far as to take a stand and say “especially in real life”.

So, anyway, we submitted the packages, crossed our fingers and hoped that they would think the images of faces getting shot off was suitable for appropriately-aged children.

Here are the results…

OFLC (Australia) - PG ["mild violence"]

I am actually a little insulted that we’re only getting a “mild violence” from the Aussies. “Mild”? Really? Someone remind me never to get into a sawblade fight in Australia– if this is “mild” to them, then melees there are apparently way more extreme than I would have expected.

PEGI (Europe, excluding Germany) - 7+ ["violence and fear"]

I like that we don’t just get a “violence” notice, but we also get “fear”. That’s awesome. Our game begets “FEAR”. Slightly more awesome than that is that “gaming fear” apparently only affects you until you are 6.

Them Europeans, man. They be hard core.

USK (Germany) - 12+

In order to distance themselves from the rest of the continent, the Germans figure they’ll create their own ratings board and just add 5 to the PEGI rating, it would seem.

Or maybe they’re overly sensitive because “Knight Rider” has gone off the air for the second time.

CERO (Japan) - 12+

There is no textual remark on the certificate justifying the rating, just a higlight of one terrifying icon of a severed hand holding a deadly shiv:

Because of this, I give the Japanese Rating Certificate a rating of 16+ ["implied iconic terror"]

GRB (Korea) - 12+

Similar to the Japanese, the Koreans go iconic with their justification:

Huh. I find it odd that they have a special icon for games that are based on Logan’s Run, and perhaps even odder that that’s the one we qualify for.

In retrospect, I wished we qualified for the “praying for transgenders” notice. Maybe next time.

ESRB (North America) - E10+ ["Animated Blood, Fantasy Violence"]

We’ve

Oh sure, we weren’t really at E3, which is to say that although we were physically and (probably) mentally present at the LA Convention Centre, and although we did show off the game to a bunch of press folks, we weren’t officially “exhibiting” at E3.

Our demos mostly consisted of us sitting at a table at the Starbucks showing video of the game on an iPod and yammering on about how awesome our damage system is (hey, it is too interesting…)

Anyway, all of this to say we are proud to take up the moniker of being one of the Top Ten Underdogs of E3, as determined by the cool kids at TrueGameHeadz.

In fact, I’m going to go one step further– we were actually the 10th game out of 10 listed, so I’m here to say we are, in fact, the Underestdog of E3.

So sayeth it is, so areth it be.

More press and info from E3 to come now that we’re catching our breath again…

Yikes, that really escalated quickly. I think Paul killed a guy with a trident.

Oh, not really (at least as far as I saw). From what I know, we pretty much spent our entire time in Los Angeles talking…talking…talking about the game. We did over 20 interviews and demos to press folks and got universal squees of joy and awesomeness from those who saw the game (at least I think they were squees of joy– could have been terrorsqueals from being so close to The Game Release Beard).

In showing the game off, we also got an unexpected bonus from E3: talking to awesome blogs and sites we didn’t even know existed. In doing so and in checking them out after, it’s pretty amazing how deep the gaming world’s subcultures are.

There are sites out there that cater to every gamer, every style of game, even sites dedicated to particular play modes inside of games, and it was a bit eye-opening to meet up with folks who are so passionate about very, very specific things (and I don’t mean the woman who wanted to write Madballs slashfic, which would (of course) be awesome).

Anyway, much more to post in the next few days as we get back into the groove, including some new game details and discussion from some of the folks that we met with…

Day 1 of the E3 is but a happy memory, as we made it through the whole day’s interviews without cursing even once (well, unless “galyvin” is somehow now poopymouth and I was unawares).

We met up with about a half-dozen folks or so for interviews yesterday. A couple of scheduling issues came up and we missed a couple of our slots (no, this does not mean we were delayed because Paul was convicted of assaulting booth babes. Yes, I did emphasise “convicted”). We also had a couple of non-scheduled media pop-ins from folks who heard about the game randomly at the show and wanted to chat to us about it (which is definitely awesome and speaks well of the game itself).

Speaking of the pop-ins, I can safely now say that this will be the only time in my life that a Playboy Playmate will seek me out for any reason whatsoever (well, except for that child-support “mixup” I had with Stacey Sanches in the ’90s).

Anyway. the ones we missed yesterday are moved to today, so we now have about a dozen to slam through here on Day 2, which definitely means the chances of us starting to make up game features just to have something new to talk about in the late afternoon is approximately 30%. Hellllloooo, “Celebrity Face Integration Mode: Facts of Life Edition“.

Anyway, thanks for reminding me to wear pants yesterday. That was helpful.