Rough Sea Games

“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has undergone more makeovers than Madonna”

… and I am the reason for it!
Let me explain: Last year I was asked to redraw a comic cover another artist did for the Female Force comic book series (Publisher Bluewater Productions: “The Female Force comic book series showcases influential women who are making and shaping modern history”). U.S. comic publisher Bluewater Productions asked me to redraw the other artist’s cover, because his first version wasn’t what they had in mind for the book and the number of the stripes in the American flag was wrong. So I drew my version of the cover and everyone was happy… everyone except for Hillary Clinton:

“…Clinton disliked the cover, which had her sporting a blue suit whose buttons were straining over a chunky hourglass figure. Think more Lara Croft and less America’s top diplomat.”

Now my cover will be the back cover for the book. I feel a little bit bad about this, but my game artist’s heart is pumping faster because of the comparision with Lara Croft… hehehe.
Oh… and the story isn’t finished yet…

“Bluewater asked artist Vinnie Tartamella to create a new, less-sexy cover”

So this means my canned cover is the sexy Lara Croft style version! … NOT BAD!

You can read the whole news at www.rollcall.com. You can see here the different cover versions for the book:

First Female Force Cover (with too many stripes on the flag)
Second Female Force Cover (this is my version!)
Third Female Force Cover (final Tartamella cover)

Chris

Popularity: 8% [?]

Using a vocabulary of only 25 words, I have written a simple random generator that generates disturbingly plausible computer game names. Here are some samples:

• Eternal Shadow
• Shattered Empires
• Star Masters
• Blood Knight
• Silent Commander
• World of Eternal Blood
• Hero of the Shattered Throne
• Silent Worlds
• Knights of Legend
• Blood Empire
• Star Wars
• Dawn Commanders
• Time Ninja
• Lost Swords
• Stellar Throne
• Heroes of Legend
• Forgotten Realm
• Time of the Unknown Master
• Legend of Legendary Legends

Except for the last one¹, these could easily be real titles — and not of embarrassing B-list products, either. What does this tell game developers? It tells us that game settings choose to live in a ghetto. It tells us that what we consider mainstream is  a sideline in other media. It reminds us that the “niche market” isn’t casual gamers, but ourselves.

…

Or maybe I’m reading too much into this and really just wanted an excuse to write that name generator.

…

Anyone up for a game of Time Ninja?

¹ Actually, since there is a real game called “Divine Divinity”, “Legend of Legendary Legends” should get greenlighted no problem.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I recently finished reading the book Masters of Doom by American author David Kushner for the second time. It tells the whole story of id software, from the first meeting of Romero and Carmack to their break up and beyond, and how they ultimately created a gaming empire and transformed pop culture. I had a good laugh with this very entertaining and informative book and I am sure it will give you some very nostalgic feelings now and then if you grew up with video games like we did.

The information contained in the book is based on a lot of computer magazine and press releases research and over a hundred interviews which Kushner conducted over the period of about six years!

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in one, some, or all of the following:
id-software,their games (especially doom), Arcades, retro-games, Apple II and DOS programming, pizza and diet coke, coding ’till 6 a.m. and of course general nerd stuff.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Today’s blog post is a little bit off topic.
It is game related but not directly connected to anything we are developing here at Rough Sea Games.
I just finished writing an art workshop for the German Game Developer magazine Making Games. You should know that I write these workshops in my spare time, and they are a good opportunity to keep my hand in for styles of game-related art I don’t currently do on a daily basis. This workshop starts a new art ‘Making Of’ series in the magazine, which will show how to create low-poly 3D game characters. In Part One you will see the making of the 2D character design which a later 3D model will be based on.
By clicking the image to the right you can see a bigger version.

Chris

Popularity: 39% [?]

Teachers often feel that books are better for children than film or television, because books “exercise the imagination” whereas visual media do the work for you. Similarly, I used to think that playing games was morally superior to reading or watching, since players interact actively with a game rather than passively absorbing a static work¹. They “exercise” problem solving skills, analytic creativity, and hand-eye coordination… but most importantly, they create a sense of agency! They teach you that you can make a difference — write your own story, rather than accepting the canon.

Actually, the reverse is true: The pseudo-agency that games cultivate is false and dangerous, weakening creativity and dissipating drive that could be turned to better ends.

As I mentioned in my last post, games offer an easy sense of accomplishment. They are deliberately balanced: the best are challenging enough that they require you to focus intently, but not so hard that you become frustrated. This creates flow, which feels good and makes time fly. The real world, on the other hand, doesn’t care if we’re bored or if we fail. Clearly, if the pursuit of pleasure (or selling games) is your only goal, games are superior to life: you insert your quarter and get your quantum of happiness.

There is a school of thought, however, that says that pleasure isn’t a sufficient end in itself, or at least that pleasure pursued for its own sake tends not to satisfy in the long run. Ludic accomplishments are to real accomplishments as junk food is to real food: tasty, bite sized, but hard on the stomach in large quantities².  I think most gamers are familiar with the nausea that wells up through the surface layer of fun and satisfaction derived from playing Civilization or Starcraft for three days straight. And the sense of free agency that games provide is illusory, not just because the player is constrained by a designer’s rules, but because the results of her actions are confined to the game and hence meaningless.

If we had no games, our natural ambition would eventually accumulate until it forced us to do something worthwhile, or at least difficult. Games allow us to siphon off that energy harmlessly… and uselessly. Modern children may not have a choice, but if you’re an adult, you should be writing your story on the pages of the world.

¹ Note to lit crit people: please don’t kill me! I know the reader creates the text! I’m just pretending otherwise for rhetorical purposes.

² Note to chess masters and professional athletes: please don’t kill me! I know that your skills are profound and valuable! I’m just pretending otherwise for rhetorical purposes.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Row row rock the boat … gently down the stream ….

And this streams leads to an ocean sooner or later .

Maybe it is time to discover the ocean. Google Earth 5.0 has been released and this gives you the opportunity to discover the ocean, the ground, the whole planet Earth.

Click Here for more information about Google Earth 5.0

Popularity: 4% [?]

I did not use to be much of a hard-core player and I haven’t had the time and the enthusiasm to actually finish a game within the last decade. Ever since I started programming, I have taken more pleasure in creating games than in playing them. So, I half-heartedly played some of the new games when they came out at a friend’s place but it wasn’t much of a thrill. Well, I figured I was not a kid anymore and that’s just the way it goes. Boy, I was so wrong!

A couple of months ago, I saw Fallout 3 … and … well, I don’t know what hit me but I was in love! After all these years! I started to play and I felt like the 13 year old kid again who had to stay up (really) late because he must finish just one more level. There was this huge unknown world for me to explore and I loved every burned tree and radioactive waterhole of it. I finished it and I am now halfway through the second pass (now as the evil guy, of course).

A little while ago I stumbled over Bioshock in a store on sale. Encouraged by my Fallout experience I bought it, hoping for similar fun: Your common protagonist explores a futuristic retro-world filled with fears and dangers. Great concept! But what was that? Bioshock was nothing close to what I expected:

The first thing that really bugged me was the big bunch of technical issues. For one, the DVD I bought is a bit unbalanced. It makes horrible noises and caused most of the screws on my laptop case to become loose during installation. After fixing that I unsuccessfully tried to start the game. Some internet research, software patches and heavy meddling with ini files finally got me to the meat of the game. During this process I had to watch the logos and the intro over and over again, since you cannot skip them. What were they thinking? Tinkering with the desktop shortcut finally got rid of that problem, too. Now, with the game running in DX9-mode with XP-compatibility on my Vista machine with all graphical features turned off in 800×600 resolution I can sort of play the game.

Well, and here we come to the other issue: the game play. It is just another fairly linear first-person shooter. Admittedly, it does have an interesting setting, a really cool background story and a few new ideas but none of these could keep me entertained long enough to suck me in. So, I probably won’t be finishing Bioshock anytime soon. When I have more time at my disposal, I might give it another try. This may be in about 30 or 40 years when I retire. Maybe by then there will be a patch out that makes Bioshock run smoothly on Vista machines with ATI graphic cards, but I wouldn’t count on it.

So, what did I learn out of this? Well, for one I want a game to have a cool and interesting setting. Furthermore, I learned that I really enjoy huge game worlds with a great freedom of choice. I love being able to interact with this world and watch the world reacting to me depending on how I behave.

Having learned this about myself, I now understand why working on our very own game here at Rough Sea is so satisfying for me. Our idea pretty much matches my idea of a good game. If the game comes anywhere close to what we have planned, the chances are really high that this will be the first game I worked on as a professional that I will play in my spare time.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We talked a lot about our company logo over the last few weeks and there were a lot of factors that went into choosing the final design. We took our time, because the company logo is one of the most important early decisions we had to make. The logo will be included in corporate marketing materials, stationary, business cards — and of course in our games — so it is important that everyone who sees it will know what we are doing and remember it. To achieve this my mission was clear: ‘Keep it Simple, Stupid!‘ … and voilà!… here it is…
the final logo for Rough Sea Games:

By clicking the image you can see a bigger version.

Chris

Popularity: 6% [?]