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Innovative SpyParty Is Ultimate Mind Game

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SAN FRANCISCO — At last year’s Game Developers Conference, designer Chris Hecker unveiled a prototype of a new game called SpyParty.

This year, he let me play it.

SpyParty is like nothing else I’ve ever played. It’s an asymmetrical multiplayer game: One player mingles among computer-controlled party guests, attempting to perform sly feats of espionage. The other player watches the action from afar through the sight of a sniper rifle, hoping to pick out the human spy from a roomful of robots, then assassinate him.

Chris Hecker is one of the liveliest, most outspoken personalities in the games industry. His yearly “rants” at GDC are the can’t-miss moments of the show. This year, he railed against developers not finishing their game designs. In 2007, he made waves when he called the just-released Wii a “piece of shit.”

Until 2009, Hecker worked at Maxis creating Spore. Now, following Electronic Arts layoffs, he’s a one-man game development team. Showing me and a friend SpyParty at his hotel room at the W, Hecker talked a mile a minute about his new project, which is still in the early prototype stage of development.

“Games are still in the Wild West, design-wise,” he said a followup e-mail. “We really don’t know what we’re doing yet. In movies, sometime around 1900 somebody realized, ‘Hey, we could actually move the camera around while the scene is being filmed,’ and that was a revelation.”

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Review: Stand, Shoot and Slash in Red Steel 2 Wii

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I played Red Steel 2 on my feet, for hours at a stretch. I don’t know if that’s how you’re “supposed” to play this new Wii game, available Tuesday, a first-person shooter in which you don’t do a whole lot of shooting.

What makes this game unique is that your character’s most powerful weapon is his katana, or samurai sword, which you use to slash at enemies by making big, wide swings with the Wii remote (and the MotionPlus accessory, which is required). After about a minute of sitting in a chair swinging my arm around, it just felt wrong: I had to stand up, kick my chair back and play the game while standing. At this point, I’d no more try to play Red Steel 2 seated than I would try to play Wii golf on the couch.

As you might imagine, this was quite a distinctive gaming experience. I’ve never played anything quite like Red Steel 2, which lets you use swords and guns simultaneously, switching back and forth between wild swinging and precise aiming. Much like its predecessor, which was the first FPS on Wii, the game mechanics are original and interesting enough to be fun even if other issues detract from the final product’s quality.

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Nintendo 3DS Will Boast Glasses-Free 3-D, Coming Soon

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Nintendo’s next portable game machine will be called “Nintendo 3DS” and feature 3-D graphics, the company said Tuesday morning.

The Nintendo 3DS is a next-generation portable game machine, a successor to the current line of products. It will feature a 3-D display that does not require the use of glasses. It will be released in Japan before March 2011. Nintendo 3DS will be compatible with Nintendo DS and DSi software, the company said.

Nintendo will reveal more information about 3DS at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles this June.

Glasses-free 3-D technology has been around for a while in computer monitors, laptops and televisions, but hasn’t proven as popular as the kind that uses glasses. That’s because glasses-free 3-D uses a lenticular screen (it’s covered with an array of tiny vertical lenses) to direct different images to each eye. It works, but only if you hold your head in the right position. That’s a serious limitation for couch potatoes staring at a TV across the room, but would be no problem at all for a handheld game console.

The Asahi Shimbun said Tuesday that the screens would be manufactured by Nintendo’s longtime hardware partner Sharp.

The first Nintendo DS was released in 2004. On March 28, Nintendo will release the latest (and apparently last) in the line of original DS players, the DSi XL, in the United States.

Nintendo of America said Tuesday that it could not provide further comment on the Nintendo 3DS. Its Japanese parent company issued a terse English-language press release (.pdf).

Image: Wired.com

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Australian Game Censor Resigns

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Michael Atkinson, South Australian attorney general, resigned from his position on Sunday. Atkinson has long been considered the roadblock to Mature-rated videogames being sold in the country.

Australia is the only Western democracy without a rating similar to our Mature classification. Atkinson came under fire from gamers for refusing to help create an R18+ rating for videogames; such a move would require a unanimous vote from all classification ministers, and Atkinson has long given the rating a thumbs-down.

That has left gamemakers with two options — bowdlerize games until they are suitable for 15-year-olds, or not release their games in Australia.

In a lengthy response to a letter written in November 2009, Atkinson laid out his case for censorship, saying that the issue “has little traction with my constituents who are more concerned with real-life issues than with home entertainment in imaginary worlds.”

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Challenging Freeware Classic Cave Story Makes Wii Debut

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It’s been a long time coming, but the indie platformer Cave Story finally debuted Monday on WiiWare, priced at $12.

The downloadable Cave Story began its life as PC freeware back in 2004. The retro-styled indie game hewed close to the Metroidvania model of side-scrolling action and exploration. The brainchild of a single creator, Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya, Cave Story became something of a legend among game makers because the sprawling, story-rich game was crafted by one man over the course of five years.

Indie publisher Nicalis took on the commercial release of Cave Story, working closely with Pixel to upgrade the graphics for the Wii and completely overhaul the game’s localization while remaining faithful to the beloved original.

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The Tester, Episode 5: Tinned Pies and Canned Laughter

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Previously on The Tester, the Death Panel voted out Luge for the sin of not having learned how to LARP during her sheltered Brooklyn childhood.

She was cast to the wolves, by which I mean panelists David Jaffe and Katherine De León, who smothered her with honey barbecue sauce and ate her the minute the cameras went off.

As we open on the latest episode of Sony’s downloadable reality show, in which one contestant will “win” an entry-level job “playing” “games” and filling out spreadsheets, the remaining six competitors all share a good cry over their departed companion.

Doc is too sad to even have Cheerios with his beer. “They should have [bleep]ing sent Star home, dude,” he says. “It’s like we’re the sole survivors and the zombies are eating us one at a time.”

Yes, yes. “Zombies.”

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Heavy Rain ‘Taxidermist’ DLC Coming April 1

The “Taxidermist” add-on for Heavy Rain was given away to those who preordered the PlayStation 3 game last month. Sony said Friday that the downloadable content will go up for sale to the unwashed masses on April 1 for $5.

This bit of DLC — apparently the first chapter in an upcoming series of bite-sized bits of Heavy Rain scenarios, takes place before the events of the game. Players follow reporter Madison Paige as she investigates the Origami Killer.

In his review of Heavy Rain, Game|Life editor Chris Kohler called the ambitious murder mystery from developer Quantic Dream “a successful experiment” that pushes games in new directions. “When it’s good,” he said, “it’s good in ways that traditional games rarely touch.”

Check out the trailer (above) to get a taste of the pulse-pounding creepiness this prequel chapter promises. You’d think Madison would have learned in j-school that you never, ever go into the serial killer’s creepy house.

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No More Heroes‘ Suda 51 Mulls Collab With Filmmaker Sono

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Goichi Suda, creator of No More Heroes, hopes to adapt film director Sion Sono’s next movie into a videogame.

In an interview with the My Big Fat Geek Running blog, the iconoclast gamemaker revealed how a dinner with Sono, director of the amazing four-hour geek epic Love Exposure led to the potential collaboration.

“I told him how much he inspired me with his movies,” Suda said of the meeting.

He said Sono responded in kind, offering to let Suda adapt his next film — presumably the serial killer flick Cold Fish. (But how wicked would a Lords of Chaos game be?)

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SXSW Podcast: ‘Power-Ups and Press’

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AUSTIN, Texas — What is the deal with this “videogame journalism” thing?

At South By Southwest on Tuesday, a panel of experts and me convened to discuss this topic in front of a rapt audience. Karen Chu (PlayFirst) moderated the discussion, with me representing the “bloggers,” Matt Chandronait (Area 5) representing video production, Philip Kollar (Game Informer) speaking to podcasts and print magazines, and Carly Klocurek (UT Austin) speaking about her research into game writing.

I tried my best to get into arguments with everyone, but they were having none of it. High-quality soundboard audio of the entire panel, including the Q&A session at the end, has been made available by SXSW.

SXSW: Power-Ups & Press [direct MP3 link, right-click and save]

Photo credit: Chris Kohler, Karen Chu, Matt Chandronait, Philip Kollar, and Carly Kocurek at SXSW (James Merithew/Wired.com)

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SXSW Podcast: BioWare, Zynga on Making MMOs More Social

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AUSTIN, Texas — Big players in the massively multiplayer online games space say they don’t need a World of Warcraft killer, as long as they can keep expanding the audience for MMOs.

On Monday at South By Southwest, a panel composed of top executives from Zynga, BioWare, Nexon and Funcom tackled several questions about the MMO genre, which now encompasses games from the free-to-play Facebook timewaster Mafia Wars all the way to BioWare’s lavish Star Wars: The Old Republic. Much of the discussion centered around incorporating the features of social games like FarmVille into the rest of the genre.

SXSW has posted high-quality audio of the panel.

“I don’t think the market necessarily requires someone to fail in order for another group to succeed,” said BioWare cofounder Ray Muzyka in response to Wired.com’s question toward the end. “When you bring in a new license, like we did with Star Wars… we know there’s millions and millions of potential players that we can bring into the fold just because of that,” he said.

“I don’t mean to be perhaps out of line, but I think I know what Ray’s team needs to do to be successful,” offered Zynga’s Erik Bethke. “I think mastering the viral channels and the social graphs… I think they need to get to the point that 250,000 or 500,000 people a day are downloading (Old Republic) on their own, just coming in from friends, and get there through science-based metrics… you have all the data in the world about why you are currently failing, and you can correct it in real-time.”

SXSW: The Great MMO Hope [direct .mp3 link, right-click and save]

Photo credit: Min Kim, Ray Muzyka, Nicolai Nickelsen and Erik Bethke share a joke during their SXSW panel (James Merithew/Wired.com)

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