Pronounced My-Key-On: by Michael Quach

 

I had a blast at GDC and exploring the show floor. I only attended for two days but it was enough to explore what the show floor had to offer.

 

NeuroSky

One of the first products I saw was the NeuroSky monitor headset. They were showing off how it can read your brain waves and did a tech demo on what you could do. The one I tried had me focus my attention on one object making it explode and another had me relaxing to have a ball float up.

 

It was an interesting technology and the company stated that they were looking for developers to use their tech in games. The focus was in rehabilitation for people disabled by injuries as the machine will help the player learn how to control their brain waves. These brain waves could be used in mobility devices so instead of a user physically moving a part of their body, they can just think it and the appliance will move as if it’s part of the body.

www.Neurosky.com

 

 

The screen showing the Brain Waves

Making the Ball Float 

 

 

Me with the headset on

Boryokudan Rue

When I first glimpsed Boryokudan Rue, I immediately thought back to the adventure games of the 90s. The game is built on the Adventure Game Studio engine. What immediately stood out for me was the use of a cover system and gun fights. Adventure games I’ve played were always light in heart, had comedic violence, and no real enemies that could kill you. Just delay you or reset you to an earlier part of the level.

The level being showcased at GDC was the tutorial level and the character you play, Delta Six, is a experimental subject who has lost his memory and the tutorial serves as a way to teach you the basic movements. Once the scene got to the gun tutorial, I was hooked. The player goes into cover and you have to manually choose when to go out of cover and aim. Once you aim there is a quicktime like meter where you have to hit the right range to get the headshot or a regular body shot. I didn’t see what happened after but as I understand, eventually you must figure out how to get the gun and break out of your containment.

 

Below are links to the developer’s twitter and the development thread.

 http://twitter.com/thejburger

http://www.jburger.blogspot.com/

http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=35594.0

 

Monaco

 

Monaco was the gem of the show for me. I got a brief 5 minute play of it but the game, event though it’s 9 months from release, it’s amazing. Monaco is a 4 player coop game where you and your 3 friends must steal a trophy and escape while avoiding guards with guns and bystanders who will report you on sight to the nearest guards. All you need is the movement keys, and your ability key. Interactions with doors, windows, and alarms can be done just by walking into it. Each character has a different ability such as shutting off alarms, instant lock picking, spy cameras, and sedatives for guards.

 

If one character gets killed, another just has to walk over and revive them. This proves tricky however if the dead buddy happens to be in the line of sight of a guard. What the players need to do is either sedate him with the yellow character or distract him by having the guard chase another player. Teamwork is an absolute in order to survive and reach the end in this game. This is one game I’m looking forward to.

 

http://www.facebook.com/MonacoIsMine

http://twitter.com/MonacoIsMine

 

 

3d Games at GDC

The 3d games at GDC did not impress me. For one, the 3d glasses did not fit over my eye glasses. The games didn’t really look special with 3d on and it didn’t really pop out at me. The 3d effects suffer from the small pc monitor sizes and the distance to the monitors. The ones I tried had you 5-6 feet away from the monitor and the 3d was contained within the monitors unlike in the movie theatres. The problem I think likes with the fact that in theatres, the screen fill sup your entire field of view so everything you see is in 3d while on the show floor, you had the environment to contend with.

 

I don’t think 3d games will be big until people get larger screens into their homes to fill up their view. Also, the glasses never sat right on my nose and some of them I had to hold in place in front of my eyeglasses.

 

Overall, GDC was a nice experience. I think I’ll go back again for 2011 and might pay for the higher priced passes so I can attend the summits.

 

Wooyay. Now what?

 

When I started off with Rainbow Six as my first first person shooter on the PC, I had no inkling of this game mechanic called "respawn." When you died in the game, you had to wait until the end of the match. Depending on the map and type of players, it could take one minute to the end or in some cases, 20 minutes. This is where I learned about patience as all the dead players talked amongst themselves and watched as their last teammates get lost within the map and keep passing by each other without noticing. There would be talks about nice shots, tactics, and general everyday life during these afterdeath waiting periods.

As I continued my first person shooting career, I moved onto Delta Force series which introduced me to elements such as medics, spawn camping, and most importantly, the "Press Spacebar to respawn or wait for a medic" popup. I was amazed at the idea of being able to be brought back to life and how it made so much sense to me. The Delta Force series is about large groups of people battling other large groups of people while in Rainbow Six it was just your squad vs another squad with limited numbers on a small contained area and not a battlefield. Essentially, on the battlefield between factions, the leaders would not just send in some small unit, they would send their army to battle it out and continue to send in reinforcements so that the battle can be won.

I continued my FPS career through the years and when I hit Team Fortress 2, that was the first time I came across people complaining about respawning. "Respawns are TOOOOOOOOO LOONNGGG!!!!!," "Valve should balance the game for instant respawns, it makes the game better!" "Respawn timers were put in because Valve is too lazy to make good maps!" were the arguments I heard against timers.

It just doesn’t make any sense for me. Respawn time is there for you to observe your team, learn from their movements and strategy on where to go, what to do, and to celebrate awesome kills that people perform. Respawn time is also the perfect time to get up, stretch, relax, or use the bathroom. In an Arstechnica article I read, (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/02/study-fps-deaths-provide-sweet-relief-to-victims.ars) , there was a study into the effects of killing and dying in the videogame, "James Bond 007: Nightfire," and the study showed that with each kill a person got without dying, their stress increased while being killed gave them relief. I would say this mirrors my response in every shooter I play. When I kill another player, it adds to my kill streak, I become fixated on keeping my kill streak high and staying alive. I become even more paranoid of everyone around me, and I notice this happen to other players as well. As their kill streaks increase, they retreat out of battle faster and faster in fear of losing their awesome streak.

 

I always value each one of my deaths in any multiplayer game. I think back about my actions and how I would have handled it differently instead of staying stuck in the past about what should have or could have happen. I imagine the new scenario and practice it so I can change my timing. One example I would use is with the airblast on the pyro. With the Demo/Soldier update, I have dramatically increased my airblast reflection rates after many deaths and trying to understand when each soldier fires their load off and what is the best time to reflect.

Personally, I hate instant respawn in all first person shooter style games. For one, it doesn’t give me any sense of consequence for doing a foolish action that gets me killed and the game just says “It’s ok, now get back out there and do it again and again. ”I always feel like there is this pressure on me to move as fast as I can as soon as I spawn and I keep my body and senses in the "fight or flight" mode for an extended period of time. The body thinks there’s a threat everywhere, your heart starts beating, chemicals start filling your body and your brain shuts off non-vital processes of your body. Eventually, your body will deteriorate from this heightened state of alert and now things become more serious as video games start having a detrimental effect on your body.

 

To my readers, what kind of respawn mechanics do you like? Instant vs timer?

 

 

Games with one life are also fine