Jonathan "Tempest" Phillips

You remember that trailer for dead island. Not the one showing game footage. The one of the family being torn apart but the horrific events of the game. That’s the one. Slow motion, playing backwards, deeply emotional. Well lionsgate have teamed up with the producer of “the mummy” to turn that trailer into a feature length film.

Just to explain why, the trailer in question was viewed over 10 million times within the first 48 hours. The game to date only has sold 2 million copies. People latched onto the style of that trailer far more than the style of the game. But really can you blame them.

“This is exactly the type of property we’re looking to adapt” Lionsgate said “it’s sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love.  It also has built in brand recognition around the world, and franchise potential.”

So I pledged to myself that i would add more blog posts about all my online activities. Well i have hit a major snag with that. In the last week or so I have been associated with 2 different projects. “Awesome” one might say, “I’ll have plenty to blog about” Yeeeaahhhh, Not so much. Both of these projects has something called a shhhhh policy. it means I can’t talk about them until they are made public. I haven’t signed any NDA’s, so i could talk about them if i really wanted to, but due to personal integrity and difficulty to spell some of the details

How ever I have been playing more games other than TF2 the past week. Minecraft updated to 1.8 and added a whole bunch of stuff that put the fun back in it again. That notch guy. Doing good work. Just that fact that there are villages, abandoned mines and strongholds to be found is awesome. it give me more incentive to keep searching the world. Keep up the good work mr notch.

In days gone by, it wasn’t out of place to casually wander into your local gaming store, browse through the shelves and walk out with a moderately priced game. Not an amazing game, just something you would have played three of four times then put on the shelf to collect dust. Now think hard, when was the last time you walked into a game store and picked something up on a whim? It seems when purchasing games now we tend to go for one of two extremes. It’s either the Triple-A title on the day its released or the cheap indie the game that nobody can stop talking about. But that middle section seems to have disappeared from everybody’s vision.

Last week at the GDC (game developers conference) Cliff Bleszinski (maker of Unreal & Gears of War: Pictured below) made a passing statement in the middle of one of his seminars. He said “I believe the middle class game is dead”. A statement that at the time most people didn’t really understand and was brushed over. Over this last week, the more I’ve thought about this statement the more it seems blatantly obvious that the middle class of gaming has suddenly disappeared without anybody noticing. I personally can’t remember the last time I purchased a game that wasn’t either from an independent company or a AAA title

The more I’ve been thinking about it the more I’ve been pitching the blame in two directions The first is that the brick and mortar store seem to be a dying breed in the eyes of gamers. Using digital distribution systems like Steam or Gamersgate is much easier than walking into a store. Then places like Amazon and eBay make it much cheaper than the bus ticket to get to the store. So no longer do you wander up and down rows of games judging each of them by their cover and blurb. It’s all about the online marketing. If your game doesn’t have any, then you have no game.

The second is the financial climate. It’s been awhile since I went into any shop and casually bought anything without prior understanding of the product. Reason why my bank account won’t allow me to, And I know I’m not the only one in this situation. Many other people are feeling the crunch on their wallets and are choosing to only purchase things that they WANT rather than they would LIKE. If this fact is true, then this problem of middle-class gaming being a dying breed, should hopefully disappear as the recession does.

Less than 10 years ago, there were a large quantity of small companies thriving off the middle-class games market. Now it seems those companies are under threat and their employees potentially jobless. What many people don’t seem to understand is that nobody starts at the top in the games industry. Today’s indie developers are tomorrow’s small games developers and today’s small games developers are tomorrow’s AAA developers. But if the middle-class dissapears, then somehow indie developers need to make a giant leap into AAA titles with no understanding of how the industry works.. This will be the same as hiring the manager of your local computer store to run Microsoft’s head office.

With out the middle ground for developers to learn the tricks of the industry as well as the tricks of developing, there is a distinct fear in my head for the future of game developers. Yes franchises will go on, yes technology will advance, but without the people with the passion and desire to create these games and the industry know-how to get them to that point, the future of gaming could be built up on unstable foundations.

Yesterday saw the announcement that portal 2 would be available on both PS3 and the PC if purchased in the PS3 format. Not to mention a huge array of other features such as saved games being uploaded to the steam cloud and be accessed by both the PS3 and the PC. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a console interact directly with a PC. But it doesn’t end there, valve also announced that players of both the PS3 and PC version of the game will be able to directly interact with each other in the new coperative mode.

This is something that gamers are being wanting for years. The ability to play across multiple platforms. But why has it taking so long to get to this stage? We’ve known for a long long time that the technology has been available. Recently valve has also managed to successfully merged both Mac and PC players interacting on the same playing field. But we’ve known for a long while but the technology is available for this to happen. There is nothing to stop console and PC players interacting on the same servers, especially if using valves source engine. So why is it never been done before?

A while ago Microsoft toyed with the idea, they even went as far as to implement a prototype version of gears of War two where the PC players could directly interact with the console players. But this idea was scrapped very very quickly due to one massive floor in the system. The PC players were better. Now I know you’re about to say, “this is just you saying you’re better than people who play Halo”. Not in the slightest. Microsoft came to the conclusion that no matter how good the console game was they couldn’t beat the precision of a mouse and keyboard combination. This is something that the PC gamers have been ranting about for years. So it came to no surprise that Microsoft came to the same conclusion.

So what makes valve think that they can get away with it in portal 2? What makes them think that they can succeed where Microsoft failed. What makes them think they can successfully integrate PS3 and PC players into the same environment without it being insanely unfair and inbalanced. Well once again, valve did the smart thing by not pitching the two players against each other. The interaction between the PS3 and the PC is only the cooperative level, so the weaknesses and strengths of each system do not directly conflict with each other. Sure there may be a few times where PC player may be waiting for the PS3 player to do something correctly. But hopefully valves level design team working on overdrive, those should be few and far between.

So what will it take them to gaming mediums to finally interact in a competitive and regular basis. Well at this point, nothing short of a miracle. But seeing as valve is pushing it in the right direction maybe, just maybe, we might see console players and PC players directly interacting on a regular basis. For you see….

I have a dream of PS3 and Xbox Players Gaming hand in hand with players on the Mac and PC. I have a dream that one day gamers will rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all gaming mediums are created equal.

Yeah, you heard me. The question needs to be asked. Most gamers will simply say “pfft, of course not, Its cheaper and just as good”, But all of the game developers would say “Of course it is, Look how much money I loose”. who could possibly be right? They both have valid points, but does one outweigh the other? Soon this may not be an issue that people will worry about. Recently the U.S. Court of Appeals defended and upheld the right for Autodesk (creators of the software products AutoCAD and 3Ds MAX) to stop their customers from selling on a piece of software. In lament terms, The US court stopped somebody from selling on a piece of software that had a licence attached to it.

What does that mean for you and me. Well for me living in the UK, Nothing, But for you possibly living in the US, It means that game developers may soon impose a ban on selling their game second hand. Meaning the days of wondering into a games shop and picking a game up just because its cheap and second hand may be soon be a thing of the past.

I must admit, I have always had a bit of an issue with gamestop and such selling games second hand. My main issue is because they keep 100% of the profit. Let me say that again. 100%. Not a single penny goes to the game developer. When you think of the big name brands, like CoD or Halo, who cares, But some game companies live and die by the small number of sales they get in these stores. In my eyes, a Percentage of the profits made should go back to the game developers. doesn’t have to be huge, just 10-20% would be enough. Previously I has seen a game I have wanted to purchase a game, seen it £5 cheaper second hand, but still bought it brand new. If I buy it brand new, the money goes directly to the game developers, who made the product I am paying for. As it stands, Game shops selling second hand game are simply scalpers and nothing more.

On the other hand. I have bought so many games, because they were cheap and second hand, that has lead me to buying sequels for full price the day the come out. Plus I have never heard a single DVD, Music or Book distributor complain about people buying and selling second hand goods. It just makes all the game companies complaining about it, seem petty and childish. When it comes down to it, They are both in the wrong. It is wrong to take 100% of the profits and keep them for yourself, when all you are doing is providing people with a location to swap games. But it is also wrong to stop consumers from legally purchasing a copy of a game that has already been purchased.

Gamestore owners and Big name developers (I’m looking at you Gamestop and Activision) need to sit down and realise, they are both going to tear each other a part with little reward, UNLESS, they agree to give a percentage of profits to the game devs. Its not hard thing guys. You may have heard of it. Its called compromise.