IGF 2001 Preview: Ten Prepared to Win

Putting It All Together

Shattered Galaxy, Nexon, Sunnyvale, CA and Seoul, Korea, http://www.nexon.net/

Many of the best games are actually blends of classic titles. Nexon's Shattered Galaxy is a noble attempt to blend Real Time Strategy, role playing and action into one game. According to Executive Manager Omari Miller, the response to their online title has been very positive.

"The average player is in Shattered Galaxy for more than 20 hours a week," Miller says. "We currently have thousands of completely-addicted Shattered Galaxy beta testers."

The game personalizes many elements in the RTS genre by emphasizing character creation akin to RPGs and quick reflexes common in action games. This may have led to the strong support for Shattered Galaxy, but it also challenged the team; even though it is a hybrid of sorts, the concepts combined make Shattered Galaxy unique.

"The greatest challenge in creating Shattered Galaxy from a game design perspective has been the lack of a precedent," says one team member. "With no successful massive multiplayer real-time strategy game to use as a model, we have had to overcome many game design difficulties through our own intuition, planning, and experimentation. The high degree of innovation required in the development of Shattered Galaxy has been very fulfilling and rewarding, but also resulted in great frustrations at times."

The 20-member team has persevered, though, and is currently beta testing with more than 7000 people while entering the final phase of development. "Our development schedule and beta test are moving along as planned," Miller says. "We continue to allow our body of a few to several thousand testers tell us what would get them even more psyched, and then do our best to put it in the game."

Aside from looking for a publisher, Nexon is also starting to plan a game project to follow Shattered Galaxy. Miller, evidently undeterred from the difficulties in creating Shattered Galaxy, says that Nexon has a simple goal after the IGF.

"We want to continue making believers in Nexon's magic."

Out from the Shadows

Strifeshadow, Ethermoon Entertainment, Carversville, PA, http://www.ethermoon.com/

A scene from Ethermoon's Strifeshadow.

Ethermoon Entertainment is working hard to put the Real Time Strategy genre on its ear with Strifeshadow. The team of six has been focused on creating a unique RTS experience, perhaps more than average developers since the whole team is yet to meet.

"We've taken the notion of a 'virtual office' to an extreme," says President Martin Snyder. "I find it interesting that the IGF will be the first time some of the team members meet each other."

The game itself uses a detailed three-quarter view akin to a medieval cartoon, with graphic details rivaling the latest big-budget projects. Snyder says that the complexity (on a low budget) and superior game design are what got it into the IGF.

"We spent a great deal of time designing and implementing Strifeshadow to create a specific gameplay experience, and it showed - even in the early demos of the product," he says. "We took nebulous ideas like "create more opportunities for combat" and then made them a reality."

One of the experiences the team is trying to avoid is the usual RTS focus on the "final big battle," which, after hours of preparation, only lasts "fifteen or thirty seconds at most." As a result, Strifeshadow has more battles than the average RTS.

Snyder expects the game to be complete very soon. As for now, the team is working towards its next milestone and preparing for the IGF. Afterwards, Snyder and company will take a brief break, which is probably best after the virtual office challenges and game development hurdles.

"I think the biggest challenge has been maintaining focus and stamina required to do something like this. If you look in the credits for any of the games that Strifeshadow is compared to, I guarantee you'll see a lot more than six names," he says. "We're just a bunch of gamers making sacrifices to live a dream."

The Ten-Year War

Takeda, Magitech Corporation, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, http://www.ezgame.com/

The team behind Magitech's Takeda.

It is said that the first step towards achieving a dream is planning like it will come true. Game developers deal with this constantly, whether it be Shigeru Miyamoto waiting for the N64 to do a true Zelda game or Warren Spector planning for Deus Ex years in advance.

Takeda producer Ming-Sheng Lee was in the same boat in 1991. Back then, when Turbo C was the popular language, a detailed, real-time combat game with battles of epic proportions wasn't really practical. It took eight years to get the money and the technology, but in 1999 Magitech Corporation started creating Takeda.

Though the beautiful graphics are a strong highlight, Lee says Takeda's strength is in the gameplay details. The clean design allows for complex strategies. "Our formations, our chain of command based AI and our detailed unit behaviors are not seen in many other games," he says. "With a 2D graphic engine, players can see clearly how a cavalry charge can break into enemy lines or how a battalion of spearman battalion can hold a formation and stop the enemy from getting through."

The game also features numerous small touches, ranging from the facial expression graphic of the combat leader (a la Doom) to random weather, which actually affects gameplay. There are also four levels of AI, utilizing actual historic battle formations.

Magitech's Takeda.

As with any independent developer, even with a good product it is difficult to get in the door of a publishing company. Lee says the IGF nomination has given them a considerable leg up. "Then the IGF finalists are announced, and 'BOOM!' we're rushing to update the demo, putting a rough manual together, burning CD's, and sprinting to FedEx before they close. And during all this time we're getting phone calls and emails from people who want to interview us and watching the hit-counter on our website spin."

Lee encourages others to not give up on their vision, even if it takes some time. "Create the game that you always wanted to play rather than what you believe the market wants."

More Fun than Freshman Year

Virtual U, Enlight Software with Dr. William Massy, Hong Kong, China, http://www.virtual-u.org/

One of the beautiful things about interactive games is how they continually redefine themselves. Using a standard definition, there shouldn't be games based on dancing talk show hosts (Sega's Space Channel 5), rapping paper dolls (Sony's PaRappa the Rapper) or everyday people wandering around (EA's The Sims). But there are, and the creators of Virtual U hope that, like the others, their game will be a hit.

Created by Enlight Software and Dr. William Massy, Virtual U is a simulator built to help actual (and aspiring) faculty and staff manage day-to-day university activities. Like its award winning predecessors Capitalism and the Seven Kingdoms series, Enlight has attempted to blend realism and fun in a successful package.

Enlight Software's Virtual U.

"It's a totally original idea and it's a project that marries public policy and gaming technology," says spokesperson Ben Sawyer. "While we can't be considered the first product to do that, I think the judges nominated us because we presented a polished, independent effort to apply game technology and development skills in a novel way to a very novel audience."

The audience is very broad: it is meant to be entertaining and educational to real college administrators and game players alike. Sawyer says they figured out the secret to making the simulation good.

"We've had a lot of inquiries from other academics and professionals about how they could apply the lessons we learned from this project to ideas of their own. Our first reply, which comes unequivocally from Virtual U Program Director Jesse Ausubel, is to 'hire people skilled in game design and development.' So if we have a message aside from what we've built and why it's great, it's that," he says.

Virtual U is virtually complete, but the team is busy working on other projects, including an open source version of the game which should be available later this year.

Even if Virtual U does well Enlight still plans to break more barriers, as demonstrated with the alternative college sim being done almost ten years after the success of its revolutionary game Capatalism.

"Overall I think we'll continue to push forward with the project and with our message of improving higher-education management," Sawyer says. "We want to push game development and design into new fields."

The Independent Games Festival Awards Ceremony will be on March 23rd, 2001, at the Game Developers' Conference in San Jose, CA. For preliminary information about some of GDC's key speakers, check out Gamasutra's Game Developers Conference 2001 Preview.

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Introduction