The Line Drive 3/7
The Line Drive is a weekly collection of news, links, and updates that didn’t necessarily warrant their own postings.
- Many are already claiming to have pitched qualifying perfect games for the MLB 2K10 contest, going as far as to post pictures of the code that appears after doing so. 2K Sports will not be revealing the winner until June. Given the number of rules involved there is no way to know whether the $1 million contest is, in essence, already over.
- Much has been made of EA Sports president Peter Moore’s comments about digitizing the Madden consumer. This is nothing new though. DLC has become a staple, feature access through code inserts in new copies has been done for two years now, and Madden Ultimate Team is an example of the type of added content to not only make more money but keep people from parting with their copies.
- IGN has posted a new producer interview that goes over a couple new features in 2010 FIFA World Cup. I’ve also added a few new screenshots to the gallery.
Scribblenauts 2 coming this fall, now with adjectives
Scribblenauts was a neat DS game to watch. The concept raised eyebrows and got the creative folks all excited. Of course with anything involving letting people come up with things on their own, the limitations get pronounced. Still… that didn’t stop the game from selling well. Thus the developer, 5th Cell, not one to buck trends, has revealed through Nintendo Power magazine the development of a sequel. Not-as-typically, it’s coming good and quick: this fall.
While we’re not going to get all the details, we now know a good amount. GoNintendo lists the details as so: 10,000 more words, 120 new and improved levels, adjectives play a big role, improved controls, fleshed out level editor, par system removed, more merits, new hint system.
The improved controls will be a welcome relief, the boat load of new levels should be enough to qualify it with the word “sequel,” and it’s like watching a growing toddler to learn that it’s got 10,000 new words and knowledge of adjectives. Not only can one produce a phone booth, but a happy one! How this gets you through a level… we’ll just see this fall.
Jaffe: ’storytelling not cracked properly yet’
Twisted Metal and God of War designer David Jaffe has given his thoughts on storytelling in today’s videogames. More precisely, why this particular aspect of games is not yet quite where it should or can be.
“It causes grave concern,” Jaffe begun when asked if the idea of using gestures to impact a game’s story inspires or causes concern in him as a designer. “I am very worried.”
“I have concern on the global concept of story-telling merging with interactivity … A lot of games need stories, they need context, they need characters, they need intellectual property that brings people to those titles. If you just played Metal Gear Solid without any of the trappings of that story, it would be significantly less than half the game.”
He continued: “So I’m not suggesting ‘let’s just make everything blocks and circles and pure play mechanics,’ but I am suggesting that I think that once you get into the play mechanics realm, whether it’s grinding to level up your character or whether it’s about trying to solve a spatial relation puzzle in a game like God of War or Tomb Raider or Uncharted 2, your mind goes somewhere else and your brain I believe is active in certain aspects where you’re trying to sort of use resources and inventory and remembering control inputs in order to move forward.”
“And a lot of the story stuff; it’s not like it’s unwanted but I think it’s uneffective. So when you talk about slapping somebody — I know when you pitch it, probably in your mind you’re thinking you’re caught up in a heated moment in Mass Effect 3 or what have you and it’s like ‘ok, I feel like I’m the character’. But to me what’s happening is ‘ok, I failed that interaction three times in a row, let me try a slap now’; it breaks down very quickly to the core mechanics of what you’re doing and the story seems to dissipate. It becomes a means to an end versus living in the moment and experiencing the story.”
