GameblurgKids Talking About the Future

This month, Game Informer celebrates their top 200 games of all time in unique fashion. The lure to these covers is that they strip away the normal routine of displaying teasers to the inside content and instead, reveal a simplistic showcase of their main focus (In this case, the games that have inspired creativity in the videogaming universe).

There’s no colorful background to disctract readers. No font is plastered along the pictures to minimize its appeal. The only portion of the magazine cover that remains is the featured artwork.

An artist emphasizes minimal design on the cover of items that bears content in an attempt to allow the content (images/words) to impact viewers and the December covers of Game Informer embrace this approach, and succeed with elegant success.

Pretty pictures lie below. Enjoy!
(Via Game Informer)

The good people at Epic Games have decided to release the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for a reasonable price: free. The Unreal Engine 3 is used by videogame development teams worldwide and is considered a standard tool by many veterans inside of the videogaming universe. This gift is a dream come true for modders, students and developers who couldn’t afford the UDK before. So download and enjoy and thank you Epic.

There is a big reason why the competitive fighting game genre has few premier franchises: it’s surprisingly difficult to rewrite what Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken have planted in the minds of players worldwide. How do you put a different touch on a world that other franchises have a stranglehold on?

Fans of fighting games have slim pickings. Compared to the other videogame genres to choose from, fighting gamers have a specific allegiance to franchises that run deep. Who can blame these players? These franchises have been around for a long time for a big reason: they have consistently done the hard things really well.

This may not come as surprise to industry veterans who have succeeded or tried to emulate the magic of a fighting game, but to those who don’t lose sleep over programming woes, the problems of creating a sophisticated fighting game with good balance, unique characters and an enticing culture run deeper than the average eye can tell.

Although the surface of a conventional fighting game is simple (one-on-one battles), its inner workings require much thought. Large rosters are a nice thought but the size of a game’s roster becomes irrelevant when their powers are not balanced.

The problems are rooted deep when approaching the road to solving balancing issues. Imagine in front of your game console of choice and you find yourself inside of the character menu, but your selections are influenced deciding if it’s feasible to endure an uphill battle because of their lack of offense and exploitable defense.

When you create a game with overpowered, or “God”, characters, some characters become invisible because of their uselessness. Why not create a 5 man fighting game if they can overpower the rest of a 25 man “roster”?

A fair physics engine must be in place in order for any player to experience a fair fight using his/her choice of characters. A balanced roster erases unfair advantages and introduces strategy. Now, instead of merely choosing the best characters, the player must rely on his/her own skill in order to pull out the win.

Regardless of a roster’s balance, it must not only be diverse, but full of fun and unique characters. Because of the genre’s conventions, escaping clichéd ninjas and martial artists is imperative to creating a special and distinctive experience. If we dive outside of the realm of customary fighting game characters, we could begin to experiment with new personalities:

Now that we have our working physics and interesting characters to exercise those mechanics with, they all need a fun world to play in, and that’s where the culture lies. From the powers that are at your “deposition” to the atmosphere that you and your opponent do battle, the predominate behaviors, attitudes and design characterize a title.

What characteristics your game presents are an important part in establishing an identity. Take the Mortal Kombat franchise for instance: the game showcases overzealous blood and the dismemberment of body parts in an attempt to pitch the idea of deadly bloodshed.

While a sleek “user-interface” will induce a calming effect, a ragged and grungy arena menu will suggest aggression and intensity. Language, music, art also play vital roles in determining the “feel” that will help a game to survive in past its initial release date.

Creating a new fighting game franchise goes against the heavy hitters 10 years worth of headaches and troubleshooting that an inexperienced team hasn’t began to think about. With a full plate of fixing physics hiccups, constructing a list of characters and cultivating a new environment in a crowded genre is a task only for a determined team to shake and reinvent a tired genre for the better.

Starting a brand new fighting game franchise without a license is like trying to find an alternative for the pencil and pencil: things that are “in place” are hard to replace because we’re so used to them.

But remember, someone started drafting iPods when the world was addicted to CD players.