Lotsa Little Newsy Bits…
Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 19, 2015
It’s been an interesting week. There’s been a ton of news from E3, of course, but… that’s not all. Some bits that interested me:
Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy VII would have a remake. They also noted that the remake would not necessarily follow the original exactly. As folks over at respawncomic.com suggest, this could potentially be like a giant piñata – destroy the franchise to cash in big time. Won’t happen, but I literally laughed out loud when I saw this. Anyone who played the original without spoilers knows the feeling.
Tonight’s the world premier of Mythica 2: The Darkspore at the FilmQuest Film Festival, and we get to go. Okay, it’s not like frickin’ Lord of the Rings or anything… but ultimately, I had a lot of fun watching the first one. I hate prefacing it with phrases like, “for a low-budget indie movie” or something like that, but going into it with realistic expectations left me pleasantly surprised and fully entertained. I hope my expectations for the sequel haven’t been raised to unrealistic levels. I look forward to just having fun, hopefully being entertained by a fantasy movie, and hanging out with some folks at the after-party.
Rumors have spread for a while that Ouya was for sale, with the latest being that they were in serious negotiations with Razer. It looks like it’s actually a done deal, simply not made “official” via announcements yet. I’m not sure what to make of it yet, though I doubt Razer bought them to kill the competition. Both as a gamer and as a game developer, I want the whole microconsole concept to succeed, but I admit that it’s tough seeing how it can be positioned. If I really wanted a “secondary console” in my house (and I have several already), why’d I choose an Ouya over the PS2 Slim, when they are both approximately equal in capability and cost (new), when the PS2 still has tons of high-quality games that I haven’t already played on my PC or phone? Lately Ouya seems to have repositioned itself as more of a general android game distributor rather than console maker.
I can’t think of much of a segue other than the fact that the Ouya was once a Kickstarter record-breaker, and right now so is Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue 3. The original games were the killer exclusive for the Sega Dreamcast, but with the early death of the platform, so was the case with Shenmue. Apparently it became the fastest game project to ever pass $1 million in funding, doing so in less than two hours. I’ve heard it has some additional backing as well. Bottom line – it looks like the long wished-for conclusion to the proposed trilogy is finally going to see the light of day through a method that was virtually unheard of when the series was current.
Well, cool.
And finally, we have yet another entry into the VR fray – StarVR. Sounds like 2016 – 2017 will be the years of VR hardware becoming the “it” platform. Which sounds good, until you realize the microconsoles like Ouya were anticipated as the “it” platform a couple of years ago. There’s quite the spectrum of possibilities, but as someone who’s been anticipating this for over twenty years, I’m crossing my fingers.
Have fun!
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McTeddy said,
Honestly, I’m rather worried about Shenmue 3 on kickstarter. I love the series, but many developers have messed up games funded there… stretch goals do funny things to plan.
For every Wasteland 2, we get 3 “not Wasteland 2″s. “Our project is going perfectly and on schedule… but uh… you’d better donate to our second half kickstarter where we’re adding more stretch goals that we swear we budgeted for this time.
I hope Shenmue is one of the better ones…but I am worried. Oh, and you know where I stand on the VR 🙂
Anon said,
As much as I like to see a new Shenmue (having played both parts on my Dreamcast) I’m *highly* sceptical a Kickstart campaign is simply raking in enough to keep up the quality.
People then to forget that the Shenmue games were very expensive back then. Any by “very expensive” I mean “100 million bucks”-expensive!
Granted, much of dough was spent on stupid things because Yu Suzuki is as crazy and megalomanical as they can get (he’s kinda the Japanese John Romero except he’s more successful and curses less ;)) but let’s see how many millions they can get via Kickstarter and how many minutes of gameplay and cutscenes this will bring us.
“I paid 29 bucks and all I got was a tiny village in the woods!”
Anon said,
“tend” after “People” in the second sentence, doh!
ogg said,
Just seems to me that VR has too much going against it to be more than a niche or longer than normal fad. As I understand, and feel free to correct me, this is just from videos and discussions.
1.It won’t work to replace a monitor
2. It halves graphical performance due two drawing everything twice.
3. Anything which requires taking your hands of the inputs won’t work well because vision is blocked, so no use for development applications, (ie max, blender, paint tools)
4. Motion sickness in some people, which as I understand is a thing with first person games even without it.
5. Tiring effects after a short while.
I don’t mean to offend, but thats seems to be alot against mainstream adoption.
I hope the FFVII remake and Shenmue III both go very well. The 1st because it will cost an immense ammount to make with “AAA presentation”, I mean more than GTA V by a grand margin. The second because alot of people seem to be looking forward to it. I personally have no interst in either as a player, but best wishes!
Also I think Shenmue III is getting some venture capital to go with their crowdfunding money, Super Bunnyhop on youtube said something about that.
Look forward to Frayed Knights 2!
Rampant Coyote said,
Not sure why I’d be offended. My experience with the DK1 of Oculus Rift was a nausea-inducing experience. I have high hopes, but very similar concerns.
I think that’s a big reason why we haven’t had much going on with it until this point. I wore VR goggles in the mid 90’s, playing Dactyl Nightmare in a (short-lived) VR Arcade, and messing around for a short time with some low-resolution glasses. That was around 20 years ago. My only hope for this stuff is that in 20 years, the tech has improved enough that most of these problems can be solved. I know they are working hard on this, and it sounds like to a degree the solution is proving to NOT do first-person games. Funny, that…
Anyway, we’ll have to see. None of these items are actually set to blow me out of the water. If anything, my concerns about Ouya’s long-term viability have actually gotten worse.
BTW – Mythica 2 was okay, given “realistic” expectations. Not quite the pleasant surprise the first one was (understandable), and it seemed like a bigger (and less focused) story overall. Still had fun watching it though, and looking forward to the third movie.
ogg said,
Okay just wanted to be sure. Interesting the idea to not do first person with a VR headset, guess it would help depth perception. Maybe in 20 years.
Rampant Coyote said,
It really depends. In theory, The Void may work out pretty well (I’ve heard it does). And it may be something you just get accustomed to after a while. The big trick is something that’s hard to fix – your visual center is giving you cues that the rest of your body doesn’t detect, and that disconnect causes motion sickness.
The reason The Void might work is because everything is “augmented reality” – you are really walking, you are really feeling things where they are, and your position and orientation are the same as in real life (or very close). So you don’t have disconnected motion cues.
For me, a big part of it was because the DK1 goggles didn’t have positional sensors, only rotational. You don’t realize how much you move your head around in real life to view things until it doesn’t work (or until you suffer a neck injury,I guess). So I’d try and look down from a window, and my attempt to lean forward totally failed, and so I got broken cues… I looked down but didn’t lean forward. I think that was a big part of the motion sickness.
That part is fixed in the newer models, so that should solve at least half the problem, IMO.
The other part for FPS type games is high-speed movement. Players in video games demand being able to run, spin, and jump at several times ordinary human capability – as instantaneously as possible – but when you have them do that in real life (without actually running spinning, jumping) – then yeah. Just like too many rides on roller coasters (for me), it will induce motion sickness. But a slower, steady pace might work just fine.