This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

A mindbending, mesh-distending life sim set in some vast alien abyss, Nowhere is awesome in the way Spore once was before it mutated into an existential Happy Meal. No such danger with this game, though, the husband-and-wife team of Leonard and Sylvia Ritter [together known as Duangle] now deep into a project that’s content, much like its shape-shifting ‘Nowherians’, to evolve naturally. Quite how it manages to map Maslow’s hierarchy of needs onto a universe full of amoeba people is just one of countless irresistible unknowns.

It’s a weird ecosystem, though, this modern crowdfunding. Almost every aspect of Nowhere’s development is exposed to its potential players – not least its developers who have to adapt to the demand for public alpha builds; competitive promo art; and their unique brand of trippy, nervy video newsletters. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

Somewhere in the region of the demoscene and modern game jam is Noctuelles, home of mysterious New Zealander Orihaus and the ‘strange places’ he calls ‘games’. Ghostly ‘megastructures’ of stark, sometimes procedurally generated geometry, his Unity-powered projects can seem a million light years from purported genres including flight sim and survival horror. Then you get Xaxi, “a virtual memory palace of sorts, designed to teach Aliceffekt’s Conlang Traumae, and examine the possibilities of learning and memory in interactive virtual environments.”

All of which begs the question: is Orihaus really happy making places for their own sake? We, of course, are getting comfortable with the idea, funding and exploring worlds and ideas that often far outstretch any explicit gameplay – and why not? But what does the future hold for Noctuelles, and what are we supposed to think of it in the meantime? Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

Not only can I straightfacedly say that I enjoyed playing APB, I even have this document to prove it. Being what felt like a voice in the wilderness back then wasn’t what was frustrating, though, it was knowing that the trolls so vocal in the game’s own chat channels weren’t wrong. Such were this MMO shooter’s problems – the anarchy not just of game, you felt, but production – that no amount of charity was going to save it from the bloodlust of gloating critics.

As someone who loves a good character editor and was floored by APB’s ambition, I had a hard time dealing with the bait-and-switch of the game’s customisation modes. (What you built in the editor looked next to nothing like who you played in the game.) Clearly the game couldn’t deal with it, either, which is why much of its landscape is wallpapered in the work of a concept art dream team assembled by Webzen and Realtime Worlds. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

With the galaxy’s biggest sci-fi movies using ever more effects houses and artists, it can be hard to pinpoint today’s Ralph McQuarries and Ron Cobbs. They’re out there, though, often known more by work than name. At the top of the pile is Stephan Martiniere, one of those illustrators and art directors whose work is so envied by just about any sci-fi project going that’s he levelled up to ‘Visionary’. Put simply, people want the stuff in his head on their books, in their movies, at their theme parks, and, as luck would have it, in their games.

Examples? In movies, Martiniere’s applied his signature style (eye-popping ‘Golden Age’ snapshots of civilisations in overdrive) to the worlds of I, Robot, Tron: Legacy, Star Wars Episodes II and III, Star Trek, The Fifth Element, the Total Recall remake, 300: Rise Of An Empire, Guardians Of The Galaxy and The Avengers: Age Of Ultron. *and breathe…* Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest in a series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

An irony of Chernarus, the fictional-yet-you-can-somehow-cosplay-there home of DayZ, is that the older the game gets, the younger the map should grow. The awesome ArmA machines for which it was built – planes, helicopters, tanks, boats, guns, the Lada – will fall into disrepair. Some survivors might have the specialist tools to fix them, but more will have the skills to steal them. Those bandits maybe won’t fix them, and this post-Soviet state will suddenly start to look very pre-Soviet indeed. Though this natural outcome seems unlikely for a mere computer game, it’s what’s so exciting about DayZ being Early Access. We get to watch its apocalypse unfold.

This must be a rather strange prospect for Ivan Buchta, the Bohemia Interactive designer who grew up in the northern area of the Czech Republic the map so closely resembles. To the current DayZ Standalone team he’s the “Ambassador Of The Republic Of Chernarus”, which makes plotting the death of his birthplace an unlikely part of his job description. But then that’s the other thing about DayZ going Early Access: it’s a job he seems to share with just about everyone, from his workmates to the players who think they should ratify the game’s every move. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest in a series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

An occupational risk of Christmas is that the great mead (Jaffa Cakes) hall of my in-laws’ living room will inspire me to reinstall Skyrim, post a few fancy screenshots, and sure enough get a few emails asking for some mythical mod guide. Then comes the abuse: “He doesn’t want anyone to have his secret sauce!” Or: “His Skyrim doesn’t look like that – *snort* – those are Photoshopped.” Only they don’t capitalise Photoshop because they didn’t have to sit through that publishing meeting, lucky old them.

They’re almost right about one thing: my Skyrim doesn’t look like that. Likewise, when someone asks me what English weather is like, I don’t answer: ‘It’s like that evening drive between Dorset and Wiltshire when a torrential downpour gave way to just the best sunshine that lit up the faces of distant historic buildings and cast painterly shadows across dale and field.’ What I tell them is that, nine times out of ten, ‘it’s shit.’ Read the rest of this entry »