Tax breaks finally hitting the UK games industry

So after years of struggling to get tax breaks for the games industry in this country it looks like it's finally here (or at least, round the corner). George Osborne only lightly touched on the subject on Wednesdays big budget announcement, but did commit to provide tax credits for the video games, animation and high-end television industries. How much and when is not known as of yet, but the rumour mill has already started to churn them out and people are making educated guesses. 

George Osborne may have single handedly saved the games industry 

TIGA, an association representing the games industry produced a report in February (which you can buy/look into here) explaining how tax breaks will positively effect the games industry and set out clear guidelines on how the tax break system should work if one was put into place. Here's a snippet of it : 20% tax relief on production costs for games costing more than £3m to produce and 25% on games costing between £50,000 and £3m. But this will based on UK expenditure, using British staff.

Its about time the UK is getting these tax breaks. The UK (in my eyes) has one of the best creative industries in the world, and that's not just for games. So its sad to hear of all these studio closures with all the talented people losing their jobs because the government wont recognise the games industry as a serious player in the entertainment industry which produces A LOT of money (it currently makes more money then the film industry). Because of this we lose our talented people to other countries which do recognise the importance of the games industry and provide tax breaks (such as Canada). This means business (and job opportunities) is booming, something which is currently lacking in the UK. 

Hopefully by the time these tax breaks hit and start to take effect ill be ready to graduate and land my first job.

What makes a good character

Nearly every game to hit the market is filled with characters, be it the character you will be playing or someone you could be interacting with. So because of this, characters play one of the most important roles in videos games. As people we can relate emotionally more to other people (even if they’re not real, like those in a game or film) than anything else in a game.

Characterisation is something which can really make or break the character. So its important that the character artist can perfect it to make their character the best it can possible be. Characterisation can be how the characters sounds, their attitude, how they walk/move, all of these things build up a believable and interesting character.

Brilliant pose : He's cautious but ready to fight (Right side pose)

Characterisation is something which really sells the character, not how many triangles it has, what type or how many texture maps its using. This is why you can see so many low spec characters which are pleasing to the eye. It is something which can be artistically judge, so all good artist can make decent characters without the use of all the latest and greatest 3d techniques. I have come across work which is technically good (good topology, sharp textures, good use of UV space etc..) but not that artistically good, which in the end makes a pretty boring character. I cant help but think I fall into this category - I’ve used 3d software for a few years and know the next gen workflow well, but I’ve had no form of art education prior to this course and I think that effected the overall quality of my previous work. And now that I am developing my artistic eye and judgement I can see areas I can critique with my older models, and see ways of making better ones in the future. This is something which I have only started to build on throughout this course, so its something I must work hard to improve on over the next 2 years of this course as I aspire to be a character artist.

Brilliant pose, character and art style

Some of the best characters I have come across in video games which give of the most personality is Team Fortress 2. These characters are all very well done stereotypes, their design/characterisation compliments their personality/ role in the game perfectly (for example you have the small skinny cocky American who plays the scout, or the slightly insane German doctor who plays the medic). Their silhouettes are not overly complicated, in fact they are very simple, making them easy to identify at a distant or at a quick glance, something which is very important for a fast paced online FPS. The characters and environment follow a very simple colour scheme ( Red for team 1 and blue for team 2) as well which provides a good contrast between friend and foe, so identify who’s on which side is simple because of this.

TF2 very simple but highly effective colour swatches

The design of characters is not limited to games, the process also applies to films and TV shows. Some of the characters which stick in my head is the 2 main characters from the TV show Peep Show. I think this is because I can see my personality in both of the characters, even though they play totally polar opposite characters. They both have these inner monologues about everyday mundane things which I can relate to so much. On top of how they think they also act like real people (Mark has his boring interest in history and video games, and Jeremy’s a lazy man whore).

So not only are characters one of the hardest 3d objects to do technically, they're also the hardest to do artistically. All aspiring character artist have a long, hard road ahead of them.

Art Direction

The Art Director has the most important role within a game developer. They has just as much responsibility as a film director, just none of the credit that goes along with being a film director. Art directors are responsible for making sure the game has a standard visual style across the board to make for a more believable and immersive game. Characters, buildings and props are just some of the objects they will scrutinise. Even a little brick on the ground would go through the art director to make ensure its up to scratch with the rest of the environment. Is it the right size for the structure? Does the material match the time frame? Would it really crumble into those pieces if a tank went over it? These are just some question an art director will ask himself. If that is some of the questions they’ll ask over a brick imagine what they’ll do to the protagonist or the main level. They go through all of this effort to make all these assets, like foliage, buildings, props and characters as believable to the story and spirit of the game too enhance the overall experience for the player.

Uncharted 3 : Drake's Deception has some of the best art direction i have seen to date in a game

Art direction in games isn’t too different from films, different medium but same principle. Directors in each field both do the same, making sure the visual style is standard across the film/game, be it characters or buildings. As films generally have bigger budgets then games, art directors can go to more lengths to nail down that visual style they're aiming for, like location scouting. Having the ability to go to a real locations to get the correct visual vibe for a scene does wonders for the immersion and believability of the film. But as games are becoming more and more popular, budgets are increasing, which means the art directors from AAA studios can do the same research as their film counterparts, such as location scouting. Art directors and a team of artist will visit a location and take many photographs and videos of the environment (For example) to get the best quality 3d assests. Motorstorm developer “Evolution Studios” went to these length to get life like environments for their race tracks. Taking thousands of hi res pictures and hours upon hours of full HD video. If you want to hear more about this, take a look at this link:

http://www.definitionmagazine.com/journal/2010/5/19/making-of-motorstorm.html

Art directors are really at the top of the artistic food chain. So if anyone wants to peruse that godly like role then they have to do one thing: work, work hard, work so hard on art that they shit art after eating an art sandwich. 

Most art directors, have a somewhat relative art skill and have worked their way up the food chain from a 3D artist to an art director in 10 or so years because of that magic word, work. They need to be on top of their game technically and artistically. If a new piece of software comes out, they are the first ones to get hold of it. A conference is coming up, they’ll be there. They're worst enemy just released a AAA game, they’ll play it. All of these things help art directors become the best at the role. Having strong drawing skills is a most too, as this is how the art director will communicated his ideas to the set team for example.

Being able to quickly get your idea across by drawing is a lot more cost and time effective way of exploring ideas rather than just jumping straight into creating the environment,character etc.. As they might relise half way through building a set and saying 'oh wait, this doesnt actually work, tear it down and start again'.

The role of an art director isn’t just insuring every bit of art flows the same, but its also to manage people and time. Key skills they’ll demonstrate is leadership, they want to lead their team to success, the can only do this if they are good leaders. This is complimented by great communication skills.

Game Design

Before you start making assets for a game, producing the story line or anything else, you start on the game design. This is a mix of different design elements, such as: gameplay, storyline, environments and characters. This usually starts off as a proposal in the pre production phase, where the game designer has had an idea and its then fleshed out to cover the basics of the concept, gameplay, storyline, features, staff and budget estimates. But as the development goes on certain features from the proposal might not be achievable, this might be because of the budget limitations for example, so these features might have to be axed or changed.

Gameplay is the way you, the player, interacts with the game, be that the characters which populate a town or a wooden bucket on the floor which you can throw around.

Even though games have transformed from basic sprites to fully 3d models, the essence of gameplay has pretty much stayed the same- you have a goal and something is going to get in the way of you reaching that goal. PacMan had 4 ghosts, Fear had one scary little girl. Same concept but these game couldnt be further apart, you could also go on to say that even board games following this concept of reaching a goal and something/someone is stopping you. If we look back to arcade games from the 80's the whole reason you put in your hard earned cash was to get a score high enough to get your name in the top 10 (from my experience most people have the name 'Ass', odd that). But if we look at any modern online FPS shooter we dont have that highscore anymore, its pretty much been replaced with experience points and levels. A numerical number still represents your skill, its just done in a slightly different way.

Some of my personal favourite game designs are Peter Molyneux, famous for Populous, Black&White and Fable. But unfortunately has been known to over hype his games, promising amazing features which never make it into the final game ( ala Black&White with its “ground breaking” creature AI, despite this it still remains a personal favourite of mine).

Will Wright deserves an honourable mention for creating the most addicting game series, The Sims, A game with no story or goals, but somehow ended up being the best selling PC game. Making the player do all the hard work by letting them create their own stories, ingenuous!

While these people are the main designers, its not just them, its a team of designers all specialising in their own field such as level design and game mechanics, they work together to bring the whole game to life. Depending on the type of game a team could have more of specific designers than others. For instance the team behind LA Niore which is a very story driven game would have hired more writers, to make the game a more cinematic experience, which goes hand in hand with their facial capture technology. Whereas on the other hand we have games like Far Cry 1 and 2, where the level and environment design are key to the games open world gameplay, having the ability to explore when and where you want just to take in the scenery is visual bliss, complimented by their cutting edge graphics engine.

When playing a game I love to be engrossed in the world, makes for a much more enjoyable experience. But sadly the last few years ive noticed im not making that emotional connection to games as I used too. Maybe its because iv been doing game art for a good few years so im constantly looking at objects/characters in the world and thinking 'that looks good, I wonder how the artist got the shine just right on that piece of metal' or 'bah, a texture seam in an exposed area, the artist rushed this piece'. I guess its something ive got to live with, and its only going to get worse as I do more and more game art.

Pans labyrinth, a film for the artist

A Film which all aspiring artist need to watch, especially character artists, is Pans Labyrinth.

This 2006 Spanish fantasy film tells a story of a little girl, Ofelia who loves to immerse herself in the world fairy tales. We are led to believe from the opening of the film that she is the princess (or at least the spirit) of the underworld who reached the surface of the world and died shortly after. Her father, the king of the underworld knew she would return one day.

After the fantasy intro we stick to Spain, 1944, during the civil war. Ofelia is then taking into a “safe zone” with her pregnant mothers boyfriend - the general of the Spanish army. This safe zone is actually an army outpost, constantly under attack from the Spanish resistance. Ofelia being the curious girl she is, takes a wonder round the camp and finds a ruined labyrinth. This scene introduces us to one of the brilliant designed characters from the film, The Faun. Taking inspiration from Roman mythology and then using cutting edge CGI to bring it to life. It stands tall on its goat like legs, with its menacing horns twisting round protecting its head. Its desaturated earthy colours blends it into the environment, making him camouflaged which is fitting as the faun is the silent messenger for the king from the underworld, but also reflects the films dark and threatening story.

Ofelia is given task from the faun throughout the film so she can return to the underworld as the princess again.

One of these tasks she has to steal a ceremonial dagger. This task introduce my personal favourite creature, the child-eating Pale Man, who sits silently in front of a large table of bountiful food guarding this dagger. Warned not too, she starts to eat the food, waking the eerie creature up from his slumber. The creature then feels for his eyeballs rolling around on the table, finding them, he then inserts them into his hands (yes hands, thats not a typo). Then he lifts the hands too his face and suddenly opens his palms, revealing an iconic image. He then stands up, showing that hes a towering menacing creature, then proceeds to chase Ofelia, who has a close escape. The way the creature has been designed to have very little facial detail, is frightful. As humans we learn to read peoples faces from an early age to get an idea of their emotions, but when that all gets taken away, especially the eyes, we find it very hard to make a connection with them. And the fact that half of the scene he is silent, sitting at the table with an emotionless expression really adds to the unknown, building a horrible amount of brilliant tension.

The film is all in Spanish with English subtitles, but if you can handle reading while watching I highly recommend you watch this film, if not for the fantasy story then for the amazingly designed creatures.

Battlefield 3 Review

For a long time people have been waiting for the true successor to the amazing game which is Battlefield 2, and its finally here. We had Bad Company and its sequel to keep us busy for a while but its time to move on.

Since the Battlefield series has always been seen as a mulitplayer game ill be concentrating on that aspect of it in this review. Its single player is good, but its nothing to get excited for. While It does have some memorable moments, its the memorable moments you would have had from of all the other big modern FPS's released the last few years. Think of it of like a best of.

Battlefield 3, the adrenalin pumper, as I like to call it. As soon as you jump into the game for the first time you’ll be straight in the fire fight, and most likely the firing line. Bullets whizzing by your head from a hidden sniper in the distance, he missed, your screen is blurred from the suppression. As soon as you can, you leg it, taking covering behind a rock. Your safe from harm. Until a fighter jet plunges into you. This was first experience of the multiplayer. Your first time might be different, but it’ll certainly be fun and it’ll keep you on the edge. This is what the Battlefield series has been to their fans. Battlefield 3 doesn’t change it's award winning formula.

2 RPGs against a tank is better than 1

Dice has done a great job with Battlefield 3's engine – Frostbite 2.0. Its graphics are second to none, quite possible the best looking game this generation. If you’re lucky to own a pc powerful enough to run it on max (and trust me, you will need one). You’ll be double taking, thinking your screen is a window on a real battlefield. The dust kicking up as bullets hit the ground around you, the pores on your team mates face, the blinding light of your enemies tactile attachment are just some of the little elements you’ll enjoy as you immerse yourself with Battlefield 3.

Move out!

Something else you’ll found staggering is the sound. While its best enjoyed with 5.1 surround sound, i've had no issues playing it with headphones or a basic 2.1 speaker set up. But with the 5.1 setup you'll hear and feel the thud of the tank next to you as it fires. The crack in front of you then the glass shattering behind you from someone trying to franticly gun you down. Its audible heaven.

Something BF3 does well : Scale

Perks, points and unlocks have become something of a stable diet of recent online FPS's. Battlefield does it well with many unlocks all catering for the 4 different classes (Engineer, Recon, Assault and Soldier) and all the vehicles. Some unlocks will help the more stealthy players out there, who like to creep around the battlefield unseen, picking off his enemies from a distance with his personalised sniper rifle attached with his newly unlocked high zoom scope. To the players who like to go all Rambo, kitted out with the extra ammo perk, gunning down anything and everything. All the weapons, attachments and perks will keep you coming back for more, itching to play one more round so you can unlock that M98B rifle you've always wanted.

Bad Company brought us the endless fun of a physics engine, Battlefield 3 uses that same engine but has been enhanced. So no more can players feel safe hidden from a tank in a small concrete house. One shot from a tank will create a massive hole in the wall, another will complete raze it, with the roof crashing the victim inside. This completely changes how you play the game, making for some interesting tactics.

Mind your head!

A few bugs plague Battlefield but nothing game breaking, unlike the beta. These are mostly aesthetic bugs, such as bodies stuck inside objects, rubble from a collapsed building stuck in mid air, and micro stutters which effect flying a plane (although this could be a server side issue). The biggest bug i've encounter so far is a complete freeze, which comes from nowhere, and sadly, quite often too. Even the good old Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn’t work, a restart is needed. This is annoying having to restart your PC, then find another server, then load the game. But luckily your stats are constantly being saved, not at the end of the round so everything you’ve unlocked up to the freeze will have been saved.

If you’ve got nothing planned for the next 6 months of your life and have a decent PC, pick up Battlefield 3. You wont regret it.

Graphics – 9.5

Sound – 9.5

Gameplay – 9

Score 9/10

Move over old game journalism, a new kids in town now

As the years move on games and gaming is becoming more popular, especially with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii, bringing gaming to the masses, making more people turn to the internet and gaming magazines to find out the latest news. With this spike of gaming popularity the last few years more and more games are being produced, and for every game out there, there is at least 1 review/preview for it. Major AAA titles will see many interviews,hands on, previews and reviews over their development cycle.

So what does this mean for gaming journalists out there?

Work, work and more work. More work to do in less time before they move onto the next AAA title to review, or that first hands on which everyone is looking forward too.

The average gaming magazine today consist of 150 pages of gaming related news. Sound like a lot doesnt it? Well it is, plus they only have 20 days to throw it all together, then do it all again for he next month. So how do they ease the load? They can hire more staff, but that means more money going out of their coffers, which wouldn’t be so bad if we wasn’t in this recession.

So to get more money rolling in they talk about all the little games out there, cutting deals with game publishes to advertise their latest AAA game. Maybe they’ll give it a perfect score if enough money is being passed under the table *wink wink*.

Back in 2007 the gaming website Gamespot.com laid off their editorial director, Jeff Gerstmann. Rumours circulated on the net that he was laid off because he gave the game Kane & Lynch a fairly poor score (which it deserved). While this was going on Eidos Interactive were investing a lot of money into marketing their game on Gamespots website, who received a cut for advertising it. Things didn’t go down well for Jeff after the poor review was released. Since this incident its become difficult for some people to take game reviews seriously, as more people think journalists are getting paid off to 'bump up' a review scores.

From what i've seen the last few years I personally prefer and objective view for anything, I like to hear the truth/facts about games and not to have things sugar coated or glaring mistakes missed out. But I feel there isn’t a place for this view in mainstream game journalism. It seems reviews have to be sugar coated to keep the publisher happy, higher review scores = more sales.

New Game Journalism (NGJ) represent a new way of reviewing games. Kieron Gillen (The author of NGJ) makes a major point that the way journalist would review games would be to list the points of the game design, production, plot, sound and graphics. The writing would not come across as that personal, thus not connecting with the reader/gamer. NGJ changes that. Journalist make sure the writing connects with reader. Making the reader understand what its like to play it, to feel it.

Although in recent years this has backfired. Any average joe can set up a blog, and most of these aren’t competent writers. They seem to mix up personal writing with being strongly opinionated, which does the exactly the opposite of connecting with the player.