2093: Pondering Crowdfunding

I’ve gone back and forth in my opinions on crowdfunding a little, but after seeing a number of people spilling a bunch of salt yesterday over nothing more than a rumour that Square Enix might be looking into the possibility of using it to bring more niche, “unlikely” titles over from Japan to the West, a bit of reflection has convinced me that, on the whole, I’m in favour of it.

It is important to accept, however, that there have been a number of crowdfunding fuckups over the years — and, more importantly, a number of high-profile projects that have so far failed to live up to their potential or deliver what was originally promised. Anita “I Hate Fun” Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women YouTube series (which I seriously regret chipping in even $5 towards, feeling the way I do about the social justice crowd these days) is several years behind schedule; Keiji Inafune’s Mega Man successor Mighty No. 9 has been delayed several times and has had a number of setbacks along the way; Chris Robers’ Star Citizen is in a state where no-one seems to quite know what’s going on with it and if we’re ever going to see it at all, despite it being the most crowdfunded thing in history.

All of these projects still arguably have time to redeem themselves if the finished product comes out worthwhile (fuck Sarkeesian, mind, the joyless hoop-eared twat) but it’s understandable that issues like this have caused some people to view crowdfunding with a certain degree of trepidation.

But then at the other end of the spectrum — and here’s where my overall positive attitude towards it comes in — there are the success stories. Ambitious visual novels that people once believed would never see a Western release are being localised, for example — the Grisaia trilogy saw its first release a few months back, with the second installment’s translation nearing completion; Clannad is coming along soon; and Muv-Luv’s Kickstarter is a hair’s breadth away from its final stretch goal — and crowdfunding has proven to be an effective means for people to demonstrate that yes, they really want to see things like a new 2D Castlevania (in everything but name), a third installment in the Shenmue series, or the return of early ’00s-style isometric role-playing games. Without crowdfunding, none of these things would have happened, because the (understandably) risk-averse games industry as it exists in 2015 would have a tough time convincing shareholders and the like that yes, it really would be a good investment of time and budget to put together something along the same lines as a game released 15 years ago.

One of the most common arguments I see against someone like Square Enix dipping their toes into these waters is that “they have enough money already; why do they need us to give them our money up-front?” Well, for exactly the reasons just mentioned: game companies are, like it or not, a business first and foremost — though they may be staffed by artistic, creative types — and as such, they need to know that any project they undertake is going to be worthwhile for them. Crowdfunding is a means of not only gauging interest in a potential project — with little to no risk if the desired target isn’t reached — but also generating some initial operating funds to get it underway. Some projects run over budget, of course, while others are specifically designed with additional funding sources in mind — Shenmue III springs to mind in this instance, for example — and others still, like Star Citizen and Broken Age, end up with a whole lot more money than they originally expected and have to make some tough decisions on how that money is to be spent. The point stands, though; crowdfunding is an easy way to demonstrate that yes, there is an audience for this sort of thing, here’s a rough estimate of how big that audience is, here’s what we might be able to do for them.

Crowdfunding also taps into an important development in modern society: social media, and the effect this has had on the concept of “word of mouth”. I wrote a while back about how the Kickstarter for Muv-Luv comfortably achieved its initial funding goal entirely through word of “mouth” (with “mouth” in this instance also covering “keyboard fingers”), without a peep from the mainstream press — though Kotaku, to their credit (there’s something you won’t hear me say all that often) did eventually put up a story about it a few days later. We’re no longer in an age where new products are dependent on the press to get noticed and promoted; there are plenty of creative works out there across all media now that don’t have any column inches — be they print or virtual — devoted to them but are still regarded with love by their fans.

So I don’t necessarily think that Square Enix delving into crowdfunding is particularly greedy. They’re a business — and a big one, at that — who need to ensure that they’re going to be able to make money on any projects they undertake, particularly as they’ve become a bit more cautious in the last couple of years after a few big-budget failures. Something like RPG series that have traditionally sold quite poorly in the West (hello, Dragon Quest) don’t represent a particularly good return on investment for them to just do out of the goodness of their hearts, whereas if fans can show their support for such projects financially up-front, Square Enix is more likely to sell more copies and fans are more likely to get things that they previously thought they’d never be able to enjoy if they were leaving things entirely to the Men In Suits.

As such, if Square Enix decides to jump into the crowdfunding arena, I say good on them. If it means we get games that we wouldn’t get otherwise, I am all for it. The traditional model is no longer the only way of funding and buying games, and we should embrace new ways of showing our support for the things that we want to see rather than pissing and moaning about the inevitably drab nature of commercially “safe” products. There’s always going to be dull-as-dishwater commercially viable megahits; they’re never going to go away, not with the size of the industry as it is today. But what we do have some control over is the smaller end of the market: the niche interest titles that have the most passionate fans in the world; the games that have enthusiasts who will do anything to play a new installment in their favourite series; the games who have fans that are willing to put their money where their mouth is and show that little projects matter, too.

The end result is a more interesting, colourful and diverse games industry; the alternative is a situation where we’re subjected to nothing but Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Forza Motorsport until the end of time. And while all of those games are good, if that’s all there was to play, I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in and excited by gaming as I am today. So if a way to support alternatives presents itself, I’m going to take it; you should think about it, too.

2075: Where’s the Luv for Muv-Luv?

Yesterday, a new Kickstarter launched. This is nothing unusual in itself, particularly in the video games space, but the subject matter of the Kickstarter was. Specifically, it was a Kickstarter to localise Muv-Luv, a popular Japanese series of visual novels that originally appeared in 2003 and subsequently spawned a number of sequels, manga and anime spinoffs as well as a ton of merchandise.

Since its original release, Muv-Luv in its various incarnations has been extremely well-regarded, and it’s probably not unfair to say the series as a whole is an influential, culturally significant work; some even credit it with the creation of the popular “Moe Military” trend most recently seen in shows like Girls und Panzer and Kantai Collection.

The localisation of Muv-Luv is Kind of a Big Deal, then, particularly as it’s gone un-localised for so long — officially, anyway; fan translations have been around for a while, but the legality of these is always questionable, particularly as enthusiasts sometimes turn to piracy in order to acquire the game in order to patch it, and in some cases the fan-translated version is even illegally distributed with the original game files included. The launch of this Kickstarter is significant in that it aims to bring a well-established, important series to the West officially and with the full cooperation of the original development team.

What’s even more significant about the Kickstarter is that approximately six hours after it launched yesterday, it had already smashed through its initial $250,000 funding goal. At the time of writing, still less than 24 hours since the campaign launched, it’s sitting at $313,571: well on the way to its first stretch goal of new CGs, music and unlockable content at $400,000, and putting Android and Vita ports within reach at $500,000. There are 39 days still to go on the campaign, and the excitement of enthusiasts is palpable.

And yet…

Nothing about this on Kotaku, a gaming site that has “otaku” as part of its name.

Nothing on Gamespot, one of the biggest gaming sites in the world, either; the site’s last use of the word “luv” was for a Nintendo 64 game. That’s three console generations ago.

The only mentions of it on Eurogamer are forum threads about the Japanese charts.

No mention of it at all on USgamer, even with their supposed experts on Japanese games and visual novels in residence.

And nothing on the behemoth that is IGN.

This isn’t to say that Muv-Luv’s Kickstarter success hasn’t been reported anywhere, of course; specialist Japanese sites such as Siliconera, Gematsu and Crunchyroll have all posted stories about the campaign, and social media has been abuzz with talk of the series, too.

But, as we’ve seen above, nothing at all on the biggest, most recognisable sites in the world — even those known to have writers on staff who are interested in Japanese games.

There’s an argument, of course, that Muv-Luv is niche interest and consequently not worth covering on these sites because there wouldn’t be significant interest. To that I would point out that on the front page of Eurogamer there is currently a story about a showering simulator getting banned from Twitch, on Kotaku there is a story about a Steam game called The Flame in the Flood that you probably haven’t heard of… IGN, meanwhile, has a story about a spoon that can take selfies... a story that turns out to be a video, as is so frequently and frustratingly the case these days.

In other words, “niche interest” shouldn’t be a barrier to coverage if that sort of stuff gets written about. And it could be argued without too much difficulty that Muv-Luv is of greater “importance” to the interactive entertainment medium as a whole than some showering simulator. (Seriously?)

Unfortunately, this is pretty much par for the course, it seems. Here’s what, by way of example, Kotaku had to say about previous culturally significant visual novel localisation projects The Fruit of Grisaia ($475,255 raised via Kickstarter, plus subsequent sales on Steam and Denpasoft) and Clannad ($541,161 raised via Kickstarter):

Yep, sweet FA aside from a couple of offhand mentions of their anime adaptations.

I know exactly why this is, of course: Muv-Luv, Clannad and The Fruit of Grisaia are all seen as “too small” to be of interest to the broad, general audience of a site like Kotaku or Gamespot, and perhaps there’s a point there: Muv-Luv has reportedly sold approximately half a million copies to date in Japan (plus over three million pieces of merchandise), which is small fry compared to today’s heavy-hitters. And yet there’s a bit of a paradox here: these sites have the reach and influence to make more people aware of these works — which are well-established as being of particularly high quality as well as culturally significant on their home turf — but instead they choose to focus on other things, be it predictable clickbait articles about whichever big-budget game has come out this week, or pieces about whatever the current indie gaming flavour of the month is.

Even so, and even taking into account the limited amount of time a games journalist has to report on the news each day — something which I know about first-hand, remember — it’s kind of a shame that the impressive success of this campaign and others like it haven’t even been acknowledged by the bigger, more mainstream sites. And yet they’ll take the time to complain about the Sorceress’ tits in Dragon’s Crown, or how Omega Labyrinth only appeals to kiddy-fiddlers, or how Senran Kagura is a game about nothing but breasts.

It’s little wonder that fans of Japanese games — and many gamers in general, for that matter — are turning their back on the games press of today.

2006: Interstellaria

I’d made a promise to myself not to get suckered into trying any more endearingly retro-styled 2D pixel-art exploration-centric games, because the last few I’ve tried (Terraria and Starbound spring immediately to mind) ended up being enormously disappointing and pretty boring to me. (I’m not necessarily saying they’re bad, mind, more that the Minecraft model of “here’s a world, do stuff in it” just doesn’t really appeal to me any more.)

However, I happened to see Interstellaria on Steam earlier today, and for just £7 I felt I had to take a look at it. And, for once — so far, anyway — I wasn’t disappointed.

Interstellaria is perhaps best described as a successor to the old late-’80s/early-’90s space exploration games like Starflight, Star Control II and Space Rogue. You get a ship, you recruit a crew, you upgrade your ship, you explore the galaxy, you fight things, you discover treasures, you uncover a galaxy-spanning mystery and (perhaps) save the universe in the process.

Interstellaria throws you straight in to its world from the outset. Thrown out of your erstwhile home by your flatmate who is no longer content to have a scrounging, unemployed wastrel living rent-free under their roof, you take to the streets in search of gainful employment. After dismantling a robot for the nice man who lives just over the road from you, you find yourself recruited into the slightly shady-seeming crew of a starship that is about to take off. The starship begins its grand adventure and fends off a pirate attack in a thinly-veiled combat tutorial, then is ripped to pieces by an unknown enemy craft, but not before your former captain runs away, leaving you in charge of the crash landing from which you are ultimately the only survivor.

Fortunately, it seems, you’ve crash landed on a planet where there’s another starship that’s almost in working order. You come across a fellow survivor and team up to get the elderly ship back into space again, and from there it’s up to you to start discovering the truth behind the mystery of the “Abductors”, a race of aliens who appear to be giving the galaxy a certain degree of grief.

From here on, you have freedom to explore and do stuff around the galaxy, though you’re nudged pretty strongly in the direction of following the plot. Gameplay is split into a few different areas: managing your ship, space combat and planetary exploration.

Managing your ship is a little like FTL: Faster Than Light in that you have to assign crew members to stations according to their skills (which develop over time). You also have to take care of your crew’s needs — hunger, boredom and fatigue — by providing them with facilities to relieve these issues whenever necessary. The ship you start with has both limited space to include modules — there’s pretty much room for basic navigation, sensors, engineering and tactical stations and one of each of the “needs” modules and not much else — and power to devote to them, so you have to juggle power around according to your ship’s needs at any given moment.

Get into combat and you’d better hope you remembered to put some power into the weapons systems and charge them up, because you’ll need them. Unfolding on a small tactical display (which provides more information if you have someone manning the sensors) you can move your ship around in real time as well as see incoming missiles, cannon fire and other projectiles. In this way, you can dodge and avoid enemy fire while attacking your foe; it’s an interesting, slow-paced take on “bullet hell” in some ways, and it’s a nicely unconventional take on space combat that is in keeping with the 2D pixel art aesthetic.

Head down onto a planet and you’ll have the option of visiting one or more different landing sites, assuming the planet has a breathable atmosphere. Each landing site is a few screens wide (rather than a never-ending procedurally generated world) and usually features some enemies, some resources to harvest and, occasionally, interesting artifacts, characters and plot-related shenanigans. Controlling each of your crew members independently (or as a group) you can direct them to explore, harvest materials, enter into combat with enemies and interact with the locals. Each planet has a distinctive look, feel and soundtrack (the music is by chiptune artist Chipzel and is really rather good) and manage to feel relatively “organic” without falling back on random procedural generation. (At least I don’t think so.)

The game’s not without its flaws — the interface is a bit clunky in places, the keyboard inputs aren’t as responsive as they could be, camera controls on ground missions are bugged and combat is… lacking in depth, to say the least — but all these issues are more than made up for by the fact that it’s the first game in a very long time that I feel has proven to be an adequate successor to the classic space exploration sims I mentioned earlier. It has a lot of potential to improve over time, and is already an interesting, charming game that is well worth your time, particularly if you’re feeling nostalgic.

1829: Life with the Hunies

I took a gamble a while back and Kickstarted a game that looked potentially interesting. Dubbed HuniePop, it promised a Western take on dating sims combined with an anime-inspired aesthetic, and the team behind it appeared to be taking it seriously as a project. I tossed them my money and watched the development with interest as the team provided regular updates on what was going on and how development was going.

HuniePop finally released this week, and I’ve been playing it a bit. And, although it’s the sort of thing that will make the social justice dickparade froth at the mouth (and indeed already has been, from what I’ve heard) it is, in fact, a whole lot of fun.

This is Kyu, the magic fairy who's going to make you better at talking to girls. — This is Kyu, the magic fairy who’s going to make you better at talking to girls.

Unlike many “dating sims”, which typically go down the visual novel route, HuniePop is a combination of mechanics from Dead or Alive Xtreme and Puzzle and Dragons. In other words, you move from place to place, buy gifts for characters and interact with them in order to build up your relationship values and other stats, then play an enjoyable little match-3 puzzle game to determine how successful your date with the girl you’ve been interacting with was.

It’s a simple idea, but it’s handled quite nicely. There’s not a lot of ongoing plot throughout the game, but the girls have all been given their own distinct personalities, and are all introduced through a short, amusing scene where they interact with one of the other cast members. The “Western” angle comes in when these distinctly anime-esque characters open their mouths: rather than adopting the usual anime tropes seen in this sort of thing (tsundere, imouto, kuudere and so forth) the characters are… well, very Western. And very human. And not necessarily immediately likeable.

Take the character Audrey as an example. Audrey is quickly set up to be the Queen Bitch of the cast when you’re introduced to her by witnessing her yelling at her hairdresser (also one of the game’s dateable girls) with a string of obscenities and frankly rather unreasonable behaviour. Then once you start chatting to her she continually puts you down as some sort of colossal douchebag that won’t get out of her way (largely because, well, you’re pestering her with inane questions, so it’s sort of justified) and threatens to “punch you in the dick” any time she gets too hungry to even think about doing anything else.

HuniePop's characterisation gives its characters some very human, relatable flaws without exaggerating too much. — HuniePop’s writing gives its characters some very human, relatable flaws without exaggerating too much.

The other girls are a little more approachable than the rather abrasive Audrey, but they each have their own interesting quirks, and their personality traits affect the puzzle part of the game to a degree, too. The coloured tiles you’re matching in the puzzle sequences represent different character traits such as sexuality, flirtatiousness, talent and romance, and each girl responds particularly well to one and not particularly well to another, with bonuses to matches made in those colours you’ve spent some “Hunie” (acquired by talking to the girls and saying the “right” things) building up the relevant stats for. Later “dates” with the girls — the ones that have the potential to lead to naughty picture shenanigans — have very difficult target scores to obtain, so you’ll have to take full advantage of these systems to be successful.

HuniePop is charming, cheeky, lewd, rude and a whole lot of fun. It doesn’t give a fuck what people think of it, and I think that’s great — although in a pleasing nod to inclusiveness, you can play the game with your character as either male or female, with the girls becoming homosexual if you choose the latter option. While it may not have the narrative depth or character development of a more visual novel-style approach to the dating game, it’s a solid and enjoyable game in its own right, and I’m glad I Kickstarted it. I can see it providing a good few hours of entertainment yet.

#oneaday Day 970: Shouldn’t This Tell You Something…?

A new game-related Kickstarter is not really news any more, but when one gets halfway to a $1.1 million target just a few hours after launching, that’s a clear signal that the public is very much interested in the proposed project.

The project in question this time around is Obsidian Entertainment’s Project Eternity, a new title that promises to resurrect the isometric-perspective, real-time-with-pause combat, incredibly well-written RPG genre as exemplified by the Infinity Engine games of the late ’90s and early ’00s. Many of the key team members behind the quite astonishingly good Planescape: Torment now work at Obsidian, so the prospect of a new game from these creative minds is a very exciting one.

Very few details on the new game are available right now, but what I feel is interesting is the fact that such a huge amount of support has already been pledged to this project. Obsidian’s justification for starting the Kickstarter in the first place was that it was difficult to get funding from major publishers for what they wanted to do — the Men In Suits believe that late ’90s-style isometric-perspective RPGs won’t sell, so the developers don’t get to make them.

Except… “won’t sell”. Is that really true? As I write this, Project Eternity’s Kickstarter page has pledges of $560,885. A few hours ago when I posted a news story on Games Are Evil on the subject, the figure was $238,296. According to Kicktraq, the project, assuming it continues at the current rate (which it probably won’t), will finish at over 1,500% of its original target. Naturally the initial flurry of people will die down and the final total will probably be a little more modest than the currently-predicted $17.1 million, but it’s certainly going to beat its $1.1 million goal comfortably.

This makes me ponder whether the big publishers, constantly chasing the megabucks, are really going about things the right way. Sure, the blockbuster titles most certainly are selling and making astonishing amounts of money, but they also cost a huge amount of money and time to make. Perhaps more importantly, the increasing “annualisation” trend that publishers are inflicting on popular franchises is starting to make longtime gamers resentful of these series. The regular appearance of Call of Duty has become a running joke, regardless of whether or not the latest entry in the series is any good or not. People still buy it, yes, and the games are unquestionably highly-polished experiences with well thought-out user retention and monetisation strategies but, well, is what you really want from a game something that has a well thought-out user retention and monetisation strategy? Or do you want something that is a memorable experience?

The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. But practically speaking, at some point during the development cycle, an important decision has to be made. What is going to be the priority: business, or creativity? Do you make something that will sell, or do something risky that has never been done before? Do you make a shit-ton of people feel satisfied, or do you make a smaller number of people ecstatically happy?

There’s no easy answer, of course. But whatever you may feel about the sudden rise to prominence that Kickstarter has seen over the last year or so, I’m certainly grateful that it gives developers who want to prioritise the risky, creative side of development the opportunity to make something that they want to make — and that their fans want them to make — rather than what a marketing plan put together by someone who quite possibly has never played a game before says they should make.

So yeah. You should go back Project Eternity. (It’s up to $585,632 now, incidentally.)

#oneaday Day 876: Gamers, Men, Everybody… Stop Being a Dick

I have mentioned these issues a couple of times over the past few days but I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re actually making me feel a bit depressed. I know that there’s little point in getting depressed or upset over “the way the world is” and there are far bigger problems in the world, etc. etc. but, I mean, wow. Something really needs to be done.

I am referring primarily to the treatment of Anita Sarkeesian, better known on the Interwebz as Feminist Frequency, the author of a number of feminist perspective critiques on popular culture. Sarkeesian recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her newest piece of research and criticism, dubbed simply “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games”. The proposed series of videos Sarkeesian is intending to produce will deconstruct the most commonly-seen female character tropes in video games, highlighting recurring patterns and discussing them rather than simply pointing the finger and going “LOOK! THIS IS BAD.”

The response to Sarkeesian’s campaign was both good and bad. On the positive side, the campaign was fully funded in the first 24 hours, and since that time a number of “stretch goals” have been smashed, allowing Sarkeesian to produce a much larger amount of content than initially proposed.

On the negative side, this happened. And this happened.

I really shouldn’t be astonished by things that people say on the Internet any more, given that it is widely regarded as a wretched hive of &c &c despite all the lovely and intelligent people who also populate it. But these incidents really bothered me. They happened quickly and relentlessly… and they were clearly organised — likely by noted Internet cesspits 4chan and 9gag. This fabulous piece by Foz Meadows sums up the key aspect of the problem, I think: in attempting to defend themselves against accusations of sexism, misogyny and the promotion of a rape culture, those who deliberately and maliciously harassed Sarkeesian resorted to, you guessed it, sexism, misogyny and the promotion of a rape culture.

Sarkeesian’s suffering isn’t in any way the only time this has happened, of course, though it may have been the most high-profile one in recent weeks. The Hitman: Absolution trailer I mentioned a few posts ago stirred up plenty of controversy, and anyone speaking out against it tended to get shouted down by people who couldn’t see the problem with it in the most abusive manner possible. Disagreements and differences in taste; threatening others and calling them abusive names because of those disagreements is not.

Even princess of geekdom Felicia Day wasn’t immune to this bullshit. Her recent video “Gamer Girl, Country Boy”, released as part of her entertaining “Flog” series on Geek & Sundry, attracted a swarm of completely unprovoked hateful comments. The hornets’ nest had already been stirred up, so another target for their ire was just a happy bonus. Whatever you think of Day’s past work, it should be clear to most people that there’s clearly not a malevolent bone in her whole body, and the whole incident clearly upset her very much. I’m not “white knighting” here, it’s a clear and simple fact. Who wouldn’t be upset by an organised campaign to troll and flame something you’d worked hard on?

All of this is just a bit much to take. I’ve always been someone who likes to try and see the best in people — to a fault, really — but to see that some people hiding behind that ever-present veil of anonymity prove themselves to really be complete and utter cunts doesn’t make me feel great. Obviously my own take on the matter pales in comparison to what Sarkeesian, Day and anyone else who has suffered at the hands of these trolls must be feeling about all this, but it’s genuinely upsetting to know that there are people that vile and disgusting out there — people who supposedly share the same passions and hobbies as I do.

It needs to stop. That will only happen with concerted efforts from everyone involved, and it goes back to what school always told you about handling bullies. Be assertive, but not aggressive. Tell the bully that what they are doing is upsetting and unpleasant. And tell someone else. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. Don’t suffer in silence. Because while someone (or, indeed, a thrown-together Internet lynch mob) being a complete arsehole can utterly ruin your day, week, month, year, it’s infinitely worse if you have no-one to turn to for support.

Let’s stamp this odious attitude out. Freedom of speech is one thing; using said freedom to intimidate, harass and silence others is not its intention. I fully support and endorse Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter campaign, and while I won’t insist that you do so too, I would certainly like to encourage you all to stand up to bullying when (not if, sadly) you see it happening — even if it’s not directly involving you. Good Samaritan and all that.

Above all, don’t be a dick. And if it all gets a bit much, then pay this site a visit.

#oneaday Day 852: Carmageddon Reincarnation

I absolutely loved the original Carmageddon. Like, way too much.

I remember discovering it. I was hanging out with my school bud Andrew, and we’d just grabbed the latest PC Zone with its demo disc. Said disc carried a demo of Carmageddon, and we fired it up out of curiosity, as a lot of the press we’d seen about the game (this was pre-Internet for the most part) had been overwhelmingly positive.

The demo in question carried a single level from Carmageddon, time limited to about five minutes in total, if I remember rightly. That may not sound like much, but a single level in Carmageddon was, in fact, a vast open-world environment in which the race circuit with checkpoints was a relatively minor and inconsequential detail. As such, pretty much every playthrough of the demo we had was totally different — though when we discovered that flinging the player car off the top of the tallest building on the map tended to do utterly hilarious things with the game’s damage model, our sessions turned to being races to said building and seeing how many times we could throw ourselves into oblivion before the car became undriveable.

But I’ll back up a moment for those who, for whatever reason, are unaware of Carmageddon.

Carmageddon was a series of PC games (later ported to consoles… badly) that were ostensibly racing games but were, in fact, automotive playgrounds that were absolute joys to tool around in. They were also some of the most unabashedly offensive games of all time, though the whole thing was suffused with such a ridiculous, over the top sense of humour that it was pretty much impossible to be upset by the splattering innards that made a regular appearance. You try not to giggle with glee when your car is pinging around a cramped city block like a pinball (complete with PINGPINGPINGPINGPING noises) and electrocuting passers-by with its “Pedestrian Electro-Bastard Ray”.

Victory in a Carmageddon level could be achieved in three ways. First, you could actually complete the race by going through all the checkpoints in the right order. This was often referred to as “the boring way”, though the later tracks were actually pretty challenging.

Second, you could wreck all of the other racers. This was rather challenging, especially early in the game when your car was a bit crap and couldn’t hope to stand up to the might of a huge bulldozer. But it was immensely satisfying when you pulled it off — particularly when you successfully recreated David and Goliath with an appropriately ill-matched pair of vehicles.

Thirdly, you could run over every pedestrian wandering around the map. This was no small feat, given that most maps had anywhere between 500 and 1,000 pedestrians shambling around, going about their business. The best thing about taking this approach is that it forced you to explore the map fully to figure out where they were all hiding. Most maps included a powerup that showed where they all were on the map.

It wasn’t just mindless carnage, though. You had to strategise somewhat, since there was a constantly-ticking timer putting paid to your best-laid plans. Doing damage to other racers, mowing down pedestrians and collecting certain powerups extended the timer well beyond its starting value, so an early priority when going for the more challenging victory conditions was getting the timer up to a level where you had a bit of breathing room.

It was, in short, a great game, and one of the earliest “sandbox” games that I can think of. I also have fond memories of the game due to the fact I spent a worthwhile and profitable summer playing it to death and writing a tips book which initially was provided free with an issue of PC Zone, and which was later thrown in for free with Virgin Megastores’ special edition version of the game (that came in an absolutely massive box) one Christmas.

Basically, I would love to play a new, up-to-date version with, say, online multiplayer and all manner of other goodies.

And what do you know? Original developer Stainless Games has acquired the rights to the Carmageddon name and is — hopefully, anyway — going to make a new entry in the series. This is possibly the most exciting gaming news I have heard for years. The prospect of a new Carmageddon game on modern hardware with online play is an immensely enticing one. The original games had multiplayer, sure, but they were released at a time where playing online was something reserved for those who knew what an IPX network was. In other words, they were best played at LAN parties or with workmates in the office. Living out in the sticks at the time, I had precisely zero opportunities to do this, so you can imagine my excitement at the idea of being able to crash, bash and splatter friends over my windscreen.

If you, too, have fond memories of Carmageddon — or would just like an immensely fun, irreverent sandbox driving-and-chaos experience — get thee over to Kickstarter and back the new project. With 18 days to go, the project is already nearly three-quarters funded, and there are some pretty sweet rewards on offer for backers, depending on how much you pledge.

Stainless reckons the new game will be with us around February of next year. In the meantime, they’re apparently looking into what it would take to get the first two games (the third had nothing to do with them) released on services such as GOG.com and Steam.

#oneaday Day 827: You Should Back Republique on Kickstarter if You’re an iOS Gamer — And Perhaps Even if You’re Not

I backed the highly promising-looking project Republique on Kickstarter recently. Despite it looking like a high-quality endeavour from a reputable team (including former Halo 4 creative director Ryan Payton, no less) it’s struggling to reach its goal of $500,000 — as of the time of writing, it’s sitting at $86,477 with 16 days left to go.

For the unfamiliar, Republique is a bold attempt to create a “triple-A” game experience on iOS. The goals that the team hopes to achieve include designing a game specifically for touch-based devices; creating an intense action game without a focus on killing; creating a game with a believable, non-sexualized female lead; exploring “heavy” topics and saying something “meaningful”; and pushing cutting-edge graphics on mobile devices.

All reasonable ambitions, you might think. The thinking behind the game’s design is that “gamers will embrace iOS when more games are made for them.”

That, unfortunately, is where the problem lies — a lot of people are still resistant to the idea that a mobile device can play host to a “proper” game — i.e. one that you play for more than five minutes at a time, that doesn’t feature a three-star rating system on every level and doesn’t offer the possibility of purchasing in-game currency for faster progress. (That said, the ever-greedy EA has been sneaking the latter mechanic into some of its recent games, much to the chagrin of people who hate that sort of thing, particularly when they’ve already spent $60 on the game itself, but that’s beside the point.)

To look at the popular titles on the App Store, you’d be forgiven for thinking that these naysayers had a point. Of the top free iPhone games at the time of writing, pretty much all of them are either casual or social fare, riddled with microtransactions and designed more as a moneymaking “service” than anything with meaningful gameplay. (Yes, even the ridiculously popular Draw Something falls into this category.) Paid apps don’t fare much better, either, with the super-casual (and a bit rubbish) Angry Birds Space topping the charts, closely followed by numerous other lightweight titles.

This isn’t to say there are no “core” titles on iOS. Far from it, in fact — Square Enix, for example, has put out some excellent role-playing titles including Final Fantasy I, II and III, Chrono Trigger, Chaos Rings and Final Fantasy Tactics. Sega has rereleased a number of its old Genesis titles including strategy RPG classic Shining Force. EA has put out mobile adaptations of its popular franchises such as Dead Space, Mass Effect and numerous others. But why do these titles flounder — relatively speaking, anyway — when compared to more casual fare?

It’s a simple numbers game. Not everyone who owns an iOS device is a “core” gamer. Angry Birds et al have their place among those of us who don’t know what RPG, HP, MP or FPS stand for, or who think “bullet hell” refers to driving through a particularly unpleasant part of Manchester in the middle of the night. As it happens, these more casual players probably outnumber the more dedicated “core” types to whom “triple-A” titles such as Republique might be marketed to. As such, they appear to dominate the charts on a regular basis.

Does that mean that “core” developers should give up and not even bother trying to put together something impressive on mobile platforms? Absolutely not, though they should be aware of what they’re getting into and the problems they will have to overcome in the process.

Firstly, one of these “core” titles probably isn’t going to top the charts. The Angry Birds series, for example, has enjoyed well over half a billion downloads in its lifetime and made developer Rovio a worldwide phenomenon in the process. Its simple gameplay and premise mean that anyone can pick it up, play and have fun. (Unless you’re me. I hate that stupid game.) Conversely, a “core” title likely has a barrier of entry — “you must be this familiar with video games to ride”, if you will. Not only that, but its audience must be people willing to sit down with a game for more than a few minutes at a time while they’re waiting for a bus, waiting for the kettle to boil or waiting for their bowels to evacuate.

Secondly, iOS players are curiously resistant to what they see as “high” prices. Square Enix’s titles, for example, have caught frequent flak for being anywhere between $8.99 and $17.99. Compared to a new release on PC, console, Vita or 3DS, however, these prices are still eminently reasonable — but they’re expensive compared to the $.99 you pay for Angry Birds, and the fact that they’re deeper, more impressive, bigger-budget experiences than Rovio’s avian-flinging nonsense isn’t often taken into account.

The problem here is that in order for a “triple-A” iOS title with high production values to be successful, it will need to overcome that particular resistance that players feel to paying more than, say, $5 for a game. The Kickstarter for Republique will provide those who pledge $10 or more with a copy of the full game when it’s released — and going by the pattern of other successful video game Kickstarters, the full version will likely cost more than this “backer’s rate”. We’re likely looking at $15-20 at least, and that’s a price point that takes the game well and truly out of “impulse purchase” territory.

Or does it? Consider Thatgamecompany’s recent PS3 release Journey. This game costs $15 and lasts approximately two hours. People have been willing to part with this much money for what they already know is a two-hour experience simply because other people have said it is good. In many cases, people have done this without a second thought — going into the game with “beginner’s mind” is regarded as an important part of the experience. Does the virtue of the fact that Journey is a game presented on a large television screen make it inherently more valuable than a portable title for a multipurpose mobile device? It’s certainly perceived that way, but why on Earth should that be so?

As the Camouflaj team say on their Kickstarter page for Republique, though, developers need to take more risks if “triple-A” gaming on iOS is to be taken seriously. Lengthy, deep games can and do work on the platform, even if they don’t chart very highly compared to casual and social juggernauts. The most important considerations for any developer thinking about doing this, however, should be designing it specifically for the device. That means building a game around a touch-based interface, not putting in crappy virtual joypads with no tactile feedback. A game with touch controls needn’t be shallow — games such as Undercroft that recreate what would have been the mouse-driven interface of old PC games work well, for example, so there’s plenty of scope there.

From what I know of the team behind Republique, I believe that they have a good idea of what they’re doing. I believe that their game could prove to be an excellent example of what mobile platforms is capable of for “core” gamers. And I simply believe that the project should be supported, not because I want to see an end to the casual titles on mobile — they have their place — but because as a format, mobile devices’ capabilities are more than broad enough to cater to more than a “lowest common denominator” audience. It should be supported because it’s a worthwhile project that, if successful, will benefit mobile gaming in general in the long run — not just iOS. That means you embittered Android types upset that this title doesn’t mention your chosen platform at all should consider throwing a few quid their way, too. Vote with your wallet, as they say.

Check out the Republique Kickstarter and pledge a donation here.