Joystiq http://www.joystiq.com Joystiq http://www.joystiq.com/media/feedlogo.gif Joystiq http://www.joystiq.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Spotted in Silent Hill Homecoming: Pyramid Headhttp://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/17/spotted-in-silent-hill-homecoming-pyramid-head/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/17/spotted-in-silent-hill-homecoming-pyramid-head/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/17/spotted-in-silent-hill-homecoming-pyramid-head/#commentsFiled under: , ,


There are two things we know about Pyramid Head. One, he is a physical manifestation of guilt. Two, he generally causes the physical manifestation of crap in your pants. Oh, actually, there is a third thing we know about Pyramid Head: he makes an appearance in Silent Hill Homecoming. This raises the question: what is protagonist Alex Shepherd guilty of? Our guess is that he feels guilty about the desperate fan service required to keep gamers interested in this series.

Stay tuned for hands on impressions.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

]]>collectivedouble-helixe3e3-2008e308foundation-9konamisilent-hillsilent-hill-homecomingRichard Mitchell2008-07-17T12:30:00+00:00NCsoft, Foundation 9, Atlus also skipping E3, other attendees confirmhttp://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/02/ncsoft-foundation-9-also-skipping-e3-other-attendees-confirm/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/02/ncsoft-foundation-9-also-skipping-e3-other-attendees-confirm/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/02/ncsoft-foundation-9-also-skipping-e3-other-attendees-confirm/#commentsFiled under: ,


The E3 2008 confusion continues. Following the soon-to-be merged Activison and Vivendi Games' departure from the Entertainment Software Association and its E3 press event, we got to wondering who else might not be showing up for the annual game industry showing. The list of attendees on the (password-protected) E3 site leaves out some pretty big names, including MMO-publisher NCsoft who tells Joystiq that, though it's been an ESA member since last year, it will not be attending E3 this year because the timing of the event didn't work out for their upcoming releases. Gamespot reports that Foundation 9 won't be attending, stating, "We just didn't feel like we got enough out of the investment last year in order to justify the expense this year." Atlus also confirmed to Joystiq that, despite attending last year's summit, it too would be skipping out on E3 2008.

Gamespot confirms that other names missing from the list - Bethesda, id Software, Majesco, and D3Publisher - still plan on attending. Kotaku claims that id Software is not attending despite Gamespot's story to the contrary. We've contacted id for clarification. They also assert that Her Interactive (best known for their popular Nancy Drew games) won't be attending, though the publisher didn't attend E3 last year either. We reached out to peripheral manufacturer Nyko who said that, though they aren't listed on the official site, they will nevertheless be attending.

As for a specific reason for the absences, outside of timing and exposure, Kotaku cites several unnamed sources who pin the blame straight on current ESA pres Michael Gallagher's well-tailored lapel. Is Gallagher out of touch with the video game industry?

[Update 4:58pm: Added Atlus and Nyko details.]


Read - Activision/Vivendi leave ESA, skip E3
Read - Five Publishers Drop Out of E3 This Year, Some Blame ESA President
Read - NCsoft, Foundation 9 bypass E3 '08

Permalink | Email this | Comments

]]>ESAFoundation-9id-SoftwareNCsoftChristopher Grant2008-05-02T16:27:00+00:00Harker put on 'indefinite hold'http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/22/harker-put-on-indefinite-hold/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/22/harker-put-on-indefinite-hold/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/22/harker-put-on-indefinite-hold/#commentsFiled under:

Now that we think about it, we haven't heard a peep about The Collective's next-gen vampire-hunting sim Harker (as in Jonathan Harker, protagonist of Bram Stoker's Dracula, the book based on the movie based on the Sega CD game of the same name) in quite a while. We'd assumed things had been put on the backburner since the dev - recently merged with Shiny and rebranded Double Helix - is busy working on Silent Hill Homecoming for Konami, but parent-company Foundation 9 tells Eurogamer the title "has been put on indefinite hold."

While that's certainly good news for virtual 19th century fin de siècle vampires galavanting about eastern Europe, it's bad news for those of us with fond memories of The Collective's earlier 21st century vampire-killing sim, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's also the second time in as many years that a project on the developer's plate has been pulled. Remember the Dirty Harry game? Well, do ya?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

]]>Foundation-9HarkerThe-CollectiveChristopher Grant2008-04-22T11:29:00+00:00Foundation 9 melts together Collective and Shiny into Double Helixhttp://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/27/foundation-9-melts-together-collective-and-shiny-into-double-hel/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/27/foundation-9-melts-together-collective-and-shiny-into-double-hel/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/27/foundation-9-melts-together-collective-and-shiny-into-double-hel/#commentsFiled under: , ,


Whatever last remnants of identity clung to by both Shiny and The Collective were lost today as the duo were merged together by owner Foundation 9, creating a new, wholly unfamiliar entity known as Double Helix. Studio head Michael Saxs Persson calls the new name and logo, which were chosen from a pool of employee submissions, a "perfect" match for the company, adding that "making games is in our DNA."

The founding follows the initial merger, announced last October, and according to Foundation 9 creates a studio "that is now able to build upon its previous experience to gain new heights in quality and efficiency." And all it cost us was our fond memories of a simpler time spent playing the likes of MDK and Earthworm Jim. While the company remains coy regarding what it's up to currently, today's announcement notes that Double Helix is developing a trio of multi-platform licensed games, one of which we assume to be the already announced Silent Hill V.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

]]>collectivedouble-helixdoublehelixearthworm-jimearthwormjimfoundation-9foundation9mdkmergershinysilent-hill-5silent-hill-vsilenthill5silenthillvthe-collectivethecollectiveJason Dobson2008-03-27T21:00:00+00:00SXSW08: The Female Takedown of Casual Gaminghttp://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/09/sxsw08-the-female-takedown-of-casual-gaming/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/09/sxsw08-the-female-takedown-of-casual-gaming/http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/09/sxsw08-the-female-takedown-of-casual-gaming/#commentsFiled under: ,


A panel of game publishers, analysts, and investors met at this SXSW presentation to discuss the numbers and trends involving the female audience for casual games. For this talk, "casual games" comprises mostly web games and downloadable shareware games, and not, say, Wii party games or console downloads.

Parks Associates' Michael Cai began with some charts. According to the data, female gamers heavily prefer computers to consoles: female gamers spend an average of 70% of their gaming time on computers, versus male gamers' 56%. Female gamers make up 62% of the casual game audience, and this group, especially those age 13-17, play more sessions per month. There is less diversity among genres for female gamers as well: across age groups, puzzle and card games are the most popular casual games.
Sharon Wienbar from investing firm Scale Venture Partners led the discussion. John Welch, CEO of PlayFirst, revealed that 90% of the purchasers for his company's Diner Dash are female. Jane Pinckard, business development analyst for Foundation 9 Entertainment, categorized her company as mostly male-targeted, but with an eye toward developing more casual, female-focused games. The final panelist, Kongregate's CEO Jim Greer, said that his site is populated by about 85% male users.

The panelists then discussed the proportion of women in their companies: PlayFirst's 26% female design team (including designers and producers) is "probably 3 times" the norm, while on the other end Foundation 9 is about "90% male" with some women in things like art and UI design, according to Pinckard. An attendee asked if the lack of women in programming positions created a disconnect with the game design. Pinckard didn't see a problem for people on teams, but offered that independent designers with no programming experience may have difficulty due to the lack of simple game-design engines.

The panel then moved on to the issue of differences in play style. Welch said that part of what drives the different game interests is that women tend to want "everyday types of themes." If his wife tried World of Warcraft, he said, she "wouldn't even have a chance to assess the gameplay" before being turned off by the setting.

Collaborative goals are generally preferred over competitive ones. Greer related an anecdote about the audience of a bingo game, who began waiting until everyone in the room qualified before they all declared "bingo" simultaneously and shared the points. Welch described a Pictionary-style game called Inklink at his previous company, Shockwave, in which the players formed such strong relationships that they asked the company to make extra sure not to have any outages on New Years' Eve -- because they were planning to celebrate the New Year together in the game.

The casual game market was expected to continue to grow monetarily, the panel agreed, due to a move toward the in-game item pay model and advertising (instead of actually charging money for the game).

Permalink | Email this | Comments

]]>businessfoundation-9kongregatesxswsxsw08JC Fletcher2008-03-09T15:30:00+00:00