Mark Cooke’s G-Mixer

Just a quick heads-up that I will be presenting at Pecha Kucha Night in Tokyo this week. Specifically Wednesday night, 5/27/2009.

The topic of my presentation is “10 games in 10 hours”. I built 10 games in less than 10 hours to see if it could be done and to record what lessons I learned from this attempt at extreme prototyping. Admittedly, most of the games, if you can even call them that, are rubbish. One or two interesting ideas came out of it though and I did learn how some lessons on how to optimize prototyping speed from the experience.

Don’t know what the event is? I’ll let their site explain it:

What is Pecha Kucha Night?

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

I’ll post info about the games on G-Mixer after the presentation. Thanks go to Jean Snow for the alert of the speaking opportunity.

An iPhone application I recently worked on for a client has been released. It is called “Indicator Maniacs” and it has all the sauce needed to wet your otaku whistle. It’s basically a Star Trek “tricorder” that you run on your phone and it shows various meters and numbers. There are six indicators to choose from and the user can select three of them at a time, set their layout, and tint them to a variety of colors. I did all of the engineering.

The information website in Japanese is here.

You can check it out in English or Japanese on the iTunes store.

The indicator types are:

1. Analogue clock – crazy elliptical clock
2. Digital clock – 3 more ways to represent seconds than are necessary
3. Memory – see your available disk space, memory, and what processes are running
4. Microphone – live feed of the mic and a history of its activity
5. Motion – reads the accelerometers and shows phone orientation and motion activity
6. Warp switch – hold it down for three seconds for a mind blowing warp effect!

In the screen shot above you can see the digital clock, memory and microphone indicators.

If you are into really geeky stuff like this or use your iPhone in a dock as a clock be sure to give it a look.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that in recent years (as of 2009) violent videogames have a hard time getting released Japan. When I say “released” I mean mainstream retail distribution. Personally, I was surprised and have seen overseas developers frustrated by it so I spoke with some local Japanese developers about the issue.

The common Western view is that other media in Japan – comics and anime cartoons in particular – are often extremely violent. So why can’t violent games be released? The last violent big budget game I shipped, Conan, did receive a Japanese release but with huge concessions and changes from the US release. The core gameplay feature was the combat system and a big part of the reward system built into it for the player was seeing Conan dispose of his enemies in an over the top way. We had to tone down the violence significantly right at the end of development to appease the Japanese game rating board, CERO, to receive an unrestricted release.

Of course I understand each country has a different culture and what is acceptable to one is off limits in another. The take away lesson for me, and what hurt the game, was that this was changed fairly late in development after the violence was already a key feature. Focusing on over the top gore and violence rewards in a game you intend to release in Japan (and Germany) is not a good focus of resources as those features will have to be reduced or cut hurting the core functionality of the game in the process.

When I asked the local developers about the issue they said that the restrictions have been slowly becoming more and more strict from around 1999 onward. Slowly and surely the criteria for getting rated CERO Z (restricted release, 18 and up only) are growing wider and wider. Publishers often wont bother releasing a game if it is expected to receive a Z rating. It is not quite the kiss of death that getting an Adults Only rating in the US is, which basically guarantees not being carried by any retail stores, but understandably publishers want games to reach the widest market possible for the highest sales potential.

But still – why the disparity between games and other media? The local developers think it has to do with the scrutiny the different media sources receive. As much as Japan is known for anime, in recent times games are much more in the forefront of day to day life. Nintendo advertises prominently in Harajuku station using an extremely popular fashion model (”Ebi-chan“). I can’t even remember the last time I saw anything anime being advertised in Tokyo outside of Akihabara or during television commercial breaks during the equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons. I see a lot more people playing DS and PSP on the train than I see reading comic books.

If that is the case then it is not surprising. The more public exposure a media generates the more independent parties are interested in it and the more politics enter into the equation. The bottom line is that as developers, if you want to have a prominent and wide release in Japan, focusing on violence as a core feature of your game is illadvised.