the search for the perfect combat arena

#01Also in this issue: how noir Is noire World War II Monopoly the heist Indie Darlings Videogame board Games Gaming Science house rules

Sample Issue

$free

002 _ WELCOME

WELCOME TO CONTINUE

Just as all good games come with a demo, so we feel the first issue of a magazine about gaming should follow suit. Our

aim with Continue is to try something a little different to the usual games magazine template. Most notably, we don’t carry reviews. Our job isn’t to tell you what and what not to buy. The days of magazines acting as glorified buyer’s guides are on the wane. Each Call of Duty, Madden, Mass Effect or Uncharted sequel is going to sell by the millions regardless of what the critics say. Just as the more niche titles – the European Trucking Simulators, the XBLA indie platformers, the Match 3 ‘adventures’ and the iOS social games – are all going to find audiences in spite of mocking reviewers. Every game has a community and Continue is about exploring the entire culture of gaming rather than trying to set our own biased agendas.

Hence our focus is on bringing you interesting features from across the gaming spectrum. Note, that’s all gaming: videogames, board games, card games, social games, etc. For example, issue one contains stories on what makes the perfect multiplayer warzone, how Monopoly helped one soldier survive in a World War II prison camp, interviews with leading indie game developers, the history of board games based on videogame franchises, an analysis of L.A. Noire’s film noir credentials and a first-hand account of a real-life

gaming ‘heist’. You can read edited, cut-down extracts of all these here. The full issue will have their full-length counterparts.

On top of that, we have experts in the various fields that make up what we’ve termed ‘the gaming sciences’ giving their unique insights into the state of game creation today. Our columnists cover everything from nostalgia, to alternative ways to play, to the ins and outs of running a game development studio.

Finally, given our quarterly publication schedule, we can’t ever hope to be on top of breaking news stories. Instead, our news section provides a more reflective look back over the past three months of gaming news. A day-by-day breakdown of everything of importance that happened alongside more in-depth reporting from the best journalists in the business.

This sample issue should give you a taste of what you’ll find when the full issue launches. We really hope you enjoy it and welcome any feedback you’d like to offer. Find us on Facebook, on Twitter (@Continuemag) or just send us an email to info@continuemag.com.

If you like what you see here, please spread the word and just hopefully we’ll be able to provide the global gaming community with the kind of magazine we’ve always felt it deserves.

PAUL PRESLEY, EDITORpaul@continuemag.com

003

The internet, it seems, is not enough. You can build vast online communities, but for

a focal point – and the opportunity to show off a little – there’s nothing quite like meeting up in the flesh. Blizzard has BlizzCon, id has QuakeCon and, as of this year, Activision stamped a military boot on an arid Californian air-strip to kick-start Call of Duty XP.

The fast food outlet built to look like Modern Warfare 2’s Burger Town, the paintballing in a recreation of Scrapyard and the Juggernaut Sumo wrestling were remarkable fan service – but what else does XP tell us about the state of gaming’s most monolithic franchise? First and foremost, for its big announcements Call of Duty no longer has to rub shoulders with other (lesser?) games. It doesn’t need to make a big splash at E3 or Gamescom; like Blizzard it has the numbers to eschew the usual treadmill. COD’s Creative Strategist Robert Bowling will tot up the air-miles showing the game off, for sure, but COD’s dominance means that it can rely on the world’s media to appear at its beck and call for its marketing milestones. If, that is, the live-streamed announcements don’t ultimately make them redundant...

For a journalist attending XP there is a two-pronged assault on the sensibilities. The first is the strangely

clearly feel a huge degree of privilege for attending you lose all your cynicism. Call of Duty is so routinely accused of being built without a heart that you forget its players aren’t automatons, but very real and very passionate gamers. XP underlines this more fervently than ever.

For Activision, however, despite the grass roots fervour, the role of XP must also be about pushing Call of Duty further away from being marked out purely and simply as ‘a game’. It’s so ingrained in

predictable one: being squirrelled away in a VIP area where you can watch Activision CEO Bobby Kotick engage in polite banter with Teri Hatcher while crowds of beautiful LA models cling to the walls. The second, oddly enough, is in the reaction to game itself – the sheer passion that its aficionados hold for it.

It’s easy to sneer at a market-leader, and with all its daft bluster Call of Duty has been remiss in providing its critics with ammunition, but when stood in a crowd of hooting fans who

ANSWERING THE CALLActivision’s long-running battle for hearts and minds becomes flesh and bloodBY WILL PORTER

Phot

ogra

ph ©

2011

Ric

k K

im

004 _ NEWS

OC

TOB

ERSATURDAY 1ST

●According to figures released by a combination of UKIE/Chart-Track and Intent Media, game sales brought in a rather large £27.7 million in the United Kingdom alone last week, mostly thanks to the release of Gears of War 3 and F1 2011. ●Cambridge Games Factory launches the Glory To Rome Beautification Project on Kickstarter. It ends up raising over US$73,000, over $50,000 more than its target.

MONDAY 3RD ●Days of Wonder reveal Small World Tunnels, a free expansion that allows players to link the original game to the Underground version. It’ll only initially be available to visitors to Essen, then passed to game stores worldwide later in 2011.

TUESDAY 4TH ●A more iconic gaming character than Lara Croft you’ll be unlikely to find, so Square Enix is celebrating her 15th(!) birthday with a showcase of artwork themed around her latest look. The first piece released to the public was by Andy Park, the original Tomb Raider comic book artist. ●Meanwhile, Lara’s PS3 ‘successor’, Nathan Drake, sees his last outing, Uncharted 2, air as a sixteen-part TV series on Japan’s TV Tokyo network. Each of the sixteen segments consists of four minutes of game footage edited for dramatic purposes, and runs until October 27th.

WEDNESDAY 5TH ●Hilmar Pétursson, CEO of CCP, developers of long-serving spaceship-based MMO, EVE Online, pens a heartfelt letter of regret and self-discovery following a major degree of player upset (not to mention exodus). This follows, amongst other things, the introduction of microtransactions in the still subscription-based game. ●EA Sports celebrates the most successful launch in its history as FIFA 12 sells more than 3.2 million copies in less than one week. ●Apple’s Steve Jobs passes away aged 56. His vision for mobile and tablet devices has forever changed the landscape of gaming.

entertainment culture that it goes beyond everything else on the shelves and it needs ceremonies and shrines to demark it as such. It needs Kanye West to sing there and for Hollywood to strut the red carpet because it desperately wants to maintain the Call of Duty brand’s position of dominance within the everyday lives of millions. The whole COD phenomenon rests on more than just the quality of the games themselves.

Then again, it’s the physical yearly product that the empire is founded

upon. Given a sudden drop in the quality of Call of Duty series then all this could pass, and XP would become nothing but the Emperor’s New Clothes. History would suggest that no gaming franchise can assert a permanent dominance, so with this year’s XP event and the Elite social network we can see Activision constructing barricades, securing foundations and renovating the living quarters of their fanbase deep within Fortress Call of Duty. Their victory is assured, but it might not be final.

ANSWERING THE CALL

NEWS STREAM OCTOBER

CALL OF DUTY IS SO ROUTINELY ACCUSED OF BEING BUILT WITHOUT A

HEART THAT YOU FORGET ITS PLAYERS AREN’T AUTOMATONS

005

006 _ NEWS

Back in 1988 a company called Avalon Hill was riding high. After over thirty years in the

business and the publication of a raft of what many gamers now consider classics, things were going well. Sure, there were some minor setbacks in the early years thanks to some poor management decisions but hard work combined with some excellent releases got the company back on a successful path.

One of these releases was Merchant of Venus. Not one of its biggest, admittedly, but certainly one of its most well-loved. Designed by Richard Hamblen (who also created the terrifyingly complex Magic Realm in the late seventies) players take on the roles of space merchants, travelling through star systems and uncovering new alien worlds to trade with.

that deserve a second chance. On the Friday of the Spiel 2011 fair, Stronghold announces that it has been negotiating with Richard Hamblen and will be reprinting Merchant of Venus. Fans of the game are overjoyed; many who have been looking for it for years have turned to making their own versions, but can now own an official copy.

Another jump, not so far this time, just to the evening of that same Friday. Christian Petersen, founder of Fantasy Flight Games, comes to the Stronghold Games booth asking to speak to the company’s representatives. Stephen Buonocore and Kevin Nesbitt, the Managing Directors, are present and are informed that they can’t reprint Merchant of Venus; FFG has already

Ships and weapons can be upgraded, spaceports and factories created... the game offered a freedom not often seen in games from the eighties.

Years passed. The game remained loved by those lucky enough to have a copy, but Avalon Hill fell on hard times. In the summer of 1998 the company was sold to Hasbro who, even now, use the AH name on games that it was never originally involved with such as Axis & Allies. Many of the games from Avalon Hill’s past were seemingly consigned to the dustbin of history... or so we thought.

Jump forward to Essen, Germany, October 2011. Stronghold Games is a relatively new company who has made a name for itself by reprinting long lost games with a level of care and attention that befits these classics

MERCHANT WARFAREA classic game finds itself the center of a twisting, turning tale more complex than its own set of rulesBY MICHAEL FOX

NO

VEM

BER

007

TUESDAY 22ND ●Paizo Publishing, creators of the Pathfinder RPG System, announce that it plans to develop an all-new MMO based on its flagship product. ●Codemasters relaunches one of its oldest series by announcing the development of a new Dizzy game.

WEDNESDAY 23RD ●Following a long trend of John Carmack sharing his work, id Software releases the source code for Doom 3.

THURSDAY 24TH ●Footballer Lionel Messi signs a deal with EA that will see him become the face of its FIFA franchise. Messi previously featured on the covers of rival Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series.

FRIDAY 25TH ●The beta test for Bioware’s MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic goes live.

SATURDAY 26TH ●The new Irish President Michael Higgins criticises videogames, saying “Many of today’s children no longer fully appreciate the joy of taking refuge in their own imaginations.”

MONDAY 28TH ●The new version of Fantasy Flight Games’ Game of Thrones is released after much demand from the playing public. Long out of print, the new version capitalises on the popularity of the recent TV series.

TUESDAY 29TH ● In an interview with PC Gamer magazine, CD Projekt CEO Marcin Iwinski estimates The Witcher 2 has been illegally downloaded 4.5 million times, vindicating the developer’s decision not to develop DRM software as “DRM does not work.”

WEDNESDAY 30TH ●The Massachusetts Institute of Technology launches a series of podcasts on game design. Hosted by Philip Tan and Jason Begy, it covers a range of genres and analyses the process from beginning to end. ●The 1.2 patch for Skyrim is widely reported to have compromised the game in several ways, including making dragons fly backwards.

procured the license from Hasbro and is ready to print its version of the game within weeks, despite there having been no mention of its intent to do so previously.

This is actually an approach that Fantasy Flight does quite regularly, announcing games that are pretty much ready to go instead of leaving people hanging for a year or more after revealing its plans early like some companies. An information page goes up on the FFG website –

complete with artwork – within hours of the discussion between the two companies’ owners. Both Stronghold and Fantasy Flight assure they bear the other party no ill will while also insisting that they are the true owners of the rights to produce the game.

The question is, of course, which of the two companies are actually in the right? It’s a murky answer. Tracing the lineage of who actually owns the rights to Merchant of Venus and other Avalon Hill games is a terrifying prospect for even the most proficent of lawyers – not that it’ll stop them, of course. The legal minefield of contracts and intellectual property law are tricky at the best of times, but when a company has been pushed from pillar to post like Avalon Hill has, things get even harder. Given that there’s also been a precedent set where ownership of some AH games have indeed reverted back to the original designer, the situation gets deeper still.

Neither Stronghold nor Fantasy Flight are in the wrong here, but someone along the line has made a major error and it’s either someone at Hasbro or Richard Hamblen himself. As gamers, all we can hope for is that a suitable settlement is reached between the companies and the game does actually get released. There’s a possibility that it could get lost in an expensive legal battle and eventually thrown aside as being more trouble than it’s worth – and that’s not the outcome that anyone wants. Merchant of Venus is a game that deserves a second chance at the limelight. Here’s hoping that it hits our tables someday soon, no matter who reprints it.

MERCHANT WARFARE

Illus

trat

ion

©20

11 D

unca

n H

arri

sw

ww

.dea

dend

thri

lls.c

om

CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFAREMAP NAME: CRASHYEAR OF RELEASE: 2007

Is the scale of this spaceship realistic? Is it physically correct if we put three suns in just one sector? Is it possible for a space station to remain in orbit over a

planet this low?Every day when we work on the X space game series,

we are confronted with questions like this. Five games and counting in what is now coming close to 15 years of development, and I am sure that more than a thousand times we’ve had to weigh realism against other things. Things like: Does this make the game harder to play? Does it look beautiful? Will players understand this? The answers are different every single time.

All of us here at Egosoft are physicists at heart. We truly love science. Whenever there is a Livestream of a new launch on NASA’s website, or news about the latest

developments in CERN, you can be sure the guys here are all following it. It would be a dream for us to make the most realistic game ever created, a space simulator in the true meaning of the word.

Unfortunately though, not many people would buy such a product, because no matter how cool it would be, it would no longer deserve the name ‘game’. In reality, we always have to make these ugly little compromises. As much realism as possible, but not where it destroys gameplay. This decision can sometimes go to the core of the gameplay mechanics, like the flight behaviour of ships. Realistic space flight should never limit speeds. Without any air friction, ships can accelerate over an infinite time and would need to decelerate for the same. This flight behaviour can be very pretty to watch, but makes any

> THE GAMING SCIENCES

MODEL UNIVERSESBY BERND LEHAHN, EGOSOFT

This is an edited extract from the full feature. Read all the Gaming Sciences in the full issue of Continue #01.

010 _ GAMING SCIENCE

move significantly enough in relation to a planet that he could see the sphere from a different angle. Already at this early stage of the series there was a small ‘realism’ issue surrounding how fast we could make these planets rotate while still being plausible about what was the rotation of the planet itself and not just the effect of the viewer moving around the planet.

In a perfectly realistic game all objects would always move in relation to the objects that define their environment. A station has to fly around the planet to be able to stay on a stable orbit level. Once we introduced much lower orbit environments in X3: Reunion and X3: Terran Conflict (or, to describe it from the gamer’s perspective: much bigger planets), this became more obvious. In a true low orbit the planet must rotate very

kind of gameplay mechanic very hard. Ship rendezvouses and dogfights would require a lot of training or artificial speed control systems. Instead, what most space games, including the X series do is to bring a type of flight behaviour into space that is much more similar to the physics of aeroplanes inside an atmosphere.

Another example of a conflict between realistic universe modelling and a pragmatic design that suits our needs is much more ‘visual’: How should we portray rotating planets? Already with our early games, we showed planets in sectors which were true 3D spheres and not just an image in the background. This gave more depth to the environment and meant the player could sometimes even

In a perfectly realistic game all objects would always move in relation

to the objects that define their environment

recognizably. At the International Space Station, for example, which is just about 400km above Earth, the time for a full orbit is only 90 minutes! That means you would see a lot of movement with the bare eye. Not to mention what you would see when using the SETA time acceleration mechanic, but I don’t think that’s available yet on the ISS.

So just like the beautiful planet rotating below the player, the space background including the sun and the light situation should normally also rotate above him, leaving only the nearby stations rotating with him. If we did this, orientation would be extremely hard. Players would never know which direction things are in and would always need highly complex tracking equipment to find things.

So as you can see, although these are two very different problems, one touching more on the visual side of the game, while the other being at the core of the physical game universe, both could only be implemented realistically if our ‘game’ was only playable with the help of specialised instruments. We would have to give up on the idea of an intuitive game universe.

Face it, space is not an intuitive place for homo sapiens. We evolved in a different environment and if we want to make entertaining games, even the most alien battlefields must be compatible with the way we primitive monkeys think. But who knows? Maybe one day we will have the time and budget to make a truly realistic simulation. I’m sure people would enjoy ‘playing around’ with it. Just not for as long and as intensively as they do with the X universe.

011

Gather a bunch of film noir fans in a bar, admittedly not a difficult feat to pull off, and

you’re guaranteed hours of conversation about not only whether a given movie qualifies as noir, but what noir exactly is. For a term with a lot of currency, the meaning remains somewhat loose. When it comes to noir there are plenty of gray areas, which may be the closest we come to a workable definition.

A few parameters are broadly accepted. Film noir is an indigenous American movement spawned by a host of influences, specifically German expressionism and hard-boiled fiction.

PIXELS & SHADOWSThough most attention focused on the technological detail, L.A. Noire offered plenty for the film noir buff to savourBY VINCE KEENAN

012 _ PIXELS & SHADOWS

The classic cycle ran from the 1940s to the 1950s, with Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and Touch of Evil (1958) serving as convenient bookends. The visual elements don’t have to be heightened but the psychological ones must be, with the characters forever in extremis.

Another undeniable fact is that, idiosyncratic spelling aside, L.A. Noire has brought the genre – assuming it is a genre; even that’s open to debate – its greatest exposure in years. For many, the game chronicling the rise of decorated World War II veteran Cole Phelps through the Los Angeles Police Department will serve as both introduction and guide. The question is, how well does it know the territory?

Titles from noir’s golden age loom on theater marquees and appear on film canisters strewn across the game’s landscape. But more clever homages abound. ‘The Set Up’ mirrors the opening shot from the 1949 boxing drama of the same name, and posters tout the upcoming bout featuring Stoker Thompson, the punch-drunk pugilist portrayed by Robert Ryan. The offices of California Fire & Life, where Phelps’ reluctant ally Jack Kelso toils as investigator, duplicate those in Double Indemnity, lacking only the uncredited cameo from the film’s co-writer Raymond Chandler. Being set in the quintessential noir burg helps. Los Angeles is the last stop on the desperation train, and Team Bondi’s Southland simulacra vividly recreates locations highlighted in numerous noir films that take place in the City of Angels, like Union Station and the Angels Flight funicular railway.

This is an edited extract from the full feature. Read the entire story in the full issue of Continue #01.

013

014 _ WAR GAMES

Monopoly got many a soldier

through WWII – here’s what

it taught one of them

BY CHRIS DONLAN

015

A ll games have rules, but Monopoly, right up there with the likes of Poker,

Chess, Go, and the marvellous hick obscurity Farkel, has actual rituals, too. Every nation, real and – increasingly – imagined, thoughtfully redesigns that famous pale green board in its own image; every household in the world seems to have a different way of handling tax collection, Free Parking, or the loathsome and obscure ‘first trip around the circuit with no option to buy’ rule.

Monopoly’s written history is a well-polished tale of ironic origins – the ultimate money-grabbing fantasy began as an interactive means of highlighting the dangers of certain free-market tendencies – blended with capitalist pluck, as Charles Darrow printed the first run of sets himself after all the big league publishers had turned him down. Its unwritten, personal history, however, is where the really good stuff can be found. This is where you’ll discover the squabbles that turned into feuds, the long-burning filial resentments that could only really show themselves around the kitchen table on a Sunday evening, with dinner cleared away and Community Chest and Chance cards stacked in neat little piles. To paraphrase Tolstoy, every family’s relationship with Monopoly is different, whether they’re happy or unhappy. This, then, is how it was for us.

WAR STORIESFor my grandfather, the Second World War lasted four years and 45 minutes. Like a lot of soldiers, he kicked things off with 30 minutes spent sitting around on a boat: a clean half hour of being tossed about by midnight waves while he wondered if he could remember how his gun worked, whether his shoes were done up tight

Imag

es o

f Mon

opol

y ga

me

set

cour

tesy

Sim

on W

intle

� w

ww

.wop

c.co

.uk

016 _ WAR GAMES

find within sabotaging distance was the ancient hulk of metal and cog-work used for turning local pigs into local sausages – and he was afraid of hurting himself on its sharp edges.

So instead he spent the war rolling dice and moving little tokens about. He didn’t jump fences on a motorbike, or bail out of a flaming half-inched Messerschmitt leaving a false leg behind. He selected a tin counter and wandered around the board with it. He passed Go. He collected £200.

CHARLES DARROW PRINTED THE FIRST RUN OF SETS HIMSELF AFTER ALL THE BIG LEAGUE PUBLISHERS HAD TURNED HIM DOWN

enough, and if he would prove to be a hero, a statistic, or both.

On the last point, at least, we know the answer: he would be neither. That’s because, right after his boat trip, he had just ten scary minutes to wander the shores of France, a nervy 20-year-old’s first time in a foreign country, before he was captured. That brings us onto the third stage of his war experience. Being caught in an impromptu pincer movement by the Germans probably took up about five minutes of his time – he always said that the whole thing was both dazzlingly fast, efficient, and strangely undramatic – and then, finally, he finished things off with four years of hanging about in a POW camp in Poland. He learned to knit and he somehow ended up handling the financial matters for a small farm nearby. Mostly, however, he sat with his fellow prisoners in one of the chilly communal areas of the frosty complex where they were being held, playing board games and waiting for somebody to win the much

bigger board game that was going on around them – the board game that rattled the windows at night as dark craft dived and dipped overhead, screaming and roaring and leaving behind bright chunks of smoking wreckage in the morning.

Escape was off the cards. Grandad hated to move quickly even on the best of occasions, and since he still struggled to build convincing sand castles or go-carts by the time he had grand-children to build them for, it’s probably the best for everyone that he never ended up crawling slowly across the dirty floor of a self-made tunnel with a trowel clenched between his teeth and the fate of civilised Europe resting on his shoulders.

Sabotaging the Axis war machine was tricky too, not least because there wasn’t much of the war machine near by for him to get his hands on. He was surrounded by fields and farming folk rather than stylishly lit train tracks and rangy film noir Zeppelin hangars. The only machinery of any kind that he could

This is an edited extract from the full feature. Read the entire story in the full issue of Continue #01.

017

INDIE DARLINGS“AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING CREATIVE ADVENTURE, WHICH RANGES FROM THE MOST EXCITING TO THE DULLEST WORK YOU CAN IMAGINE! IT’S A CHANCE TO MAKE STUFF YOU BELIEVE IN, AND THAT MAKES IT ALL WORTH IT”

PAUL TAYLORMODE 7 GAMES

018 _ INDIE DARLINGS

Indie developers are nothing if not profound and/or sweary. They are passionate, hard-working and ridiculously talented people who have ditched careers,

gambled huge chunks of money, and often gone it alone to make games that we (hopefully) want to play. But what’s it like to be an indie developer? How do you survive in an industry that moves so fast? How do you achieve success?

In talking to the following seven teams, the conclusion is that indie development is hard, sometimes scary, but massively rewarding. The trend seems to be that if you have a good idea and have the opportunity to go for it – then go for it. People will always buy good video games. And it doesn’t matter what your background is – you can be a long-time developer, a gardener, or a cryptographer in the navy. If you want to do it, learn to code and do it. If you dare. Oh, and don’t shove in a load of DRM because it will get you nowhere. And try to avoid living next door to people who like to make bombs. And don’t expect to get paid for a while...

INDIE DARLINGSBY CRAIG LAGER

“INDIE DEVELOPMENT IS FREEDOM. FREEDOM TO WORK HOW AND WHEN YOU WANT. FREEDOM TO EXPLORE YOUR OWN IDEAS AND TAKE RISKS. FREEDOM TO ENJOY GAME DEVELOPMENT!”

JAY KYBURTZIRON HELMET

“FUCK THAT SHIT!”ANDY SCHATZ

POCKETWATCH GAMES

019

A fter a relatively small release of Determinance in 2007, Mode 7 (named after graphics tech that “was used to make things seem more impressive

than they actually were”) hit it big last year with Frozen Synapse – a brutal turn-based strategy game that’s received barely anything but praise.

Paul Taylor started work with Mode 7 when Ian Hardingham invited him to do the sound design on Determinance, but they soon realised that they made a good pair so Taylor got more and more involved in development enabling the pair to “make games on our own terms.”

Initially, Mode 7 wasn’t strictly indie. Frozen Synapse is actually the first game that it has published itself. Taylor explains: “We worked with a publisher on Determinance – that experience was enough to put us off! I just don’t think publishers can add sufficient value to be worth working with, in most cases. Sure, there are some areas

MODE 7 GAMES > MODE7GAMES.COM

where they can be beneficial. Also, there are still some interesting publishers out there who we’d consider working with. But ultimately someone has to come and say, ‘Here is the value I am adding; this is what justifies me taking X% of your game and a significant amount of your time and attention.’”

Taylor is openly frustrated with publishers: “You come up against a huge amount of irrationality masquerading as data-driven decision-making, and that’s incredibly tiresome.” But at the same time, he’s discovered, not having one has its own problems. With no secure financial backing, tough choices have to be made and life might not be as comfortable as it could be. Mode 7 has brought people in, for example, only to have to let them go due to a lack of work and funds which was “one of the worst commercial decisions we’ve made, and although it worked out okay for them and us, that was a really hard time.”

020 _ INDIE DARLINGS

For a few years, too, Hardingham and Taylor were on very low salaries, and while they’re better off now with the success of Frozen Synapse, Taylor is quick to point out that they aren’t “raking it in or changing our lifestyles”. What’s important, though, is that Synapse did well, that they’re both happy with how it’s turned out, and that they’re striving to provide the best service possible. “We’re trying really hard to do good customer support,” promises Taylor. “I really genuinely want everyone to be able to play the game hassle-free so we do our best. Aside from being morally the right thing to do, this is sound commercial behaviour – if someone has a problem and you fix it quickly, they will stick with you because they know you care about their experience. I’m not saying we get it right all the time – we don’t – but I think that if we keep doing our absolute best this will pay off in the long term.”

This is an edited extract from the full feature. Read all the profiles in the full issue of Continue #01.

021

Gaming’s level design illuminati on the evolution of modern online conflict…BY WILL PORTER

THE SEARCH FOR

A PERFECT BATTLEFIELD

022 _ A PERFECT BATTLEFIELD

THE SEARCH FOR

A PERFECT BATTLEFIELD

023

These places don’t make sense. No architect would put a door there. No room needs three

entrances, oddly placed skylights and a bay window. Throughout history, in fact, no-one ever felt the need to place two gigantic symmetrical keeps directly opposite each other, with a causeway to link them and two opposing balconies from which knights could moon at each other while pinging arrows back and forth.

None of these facing worlds exist, yet their lines and gradients are traced indelibly in the minds of millions. The maps we live and die within online have become a common ground – a rare touchstone between yourself and strangers milling around you in the street and on public transport. You might not share a common tongue with some of the people you meet, but you both could have a favoured direction to lob a grenade when Nuketown boots up in Black Ops or a preferred route through de_dust.

As multiplayer shooting has evolved, though, how have these violent digital playgrounds changed? In an era that sees the military shooter stamp its dominance on gaming, what goes towards the creation of the perfect battlefield? It’s two decades since Romero and Carmack first directed a rocket launcher at each other’s Doomguys – and since then we’ve tread the length of the Longest Yard, buzzed over Blood Gulch and met a bloody end as soldiers in Lockout, Crash and Rust. So did we nail the template back in the past, only for level designers today to iterate former glories in ever shinier new clothes?

THE OLD DAYS“Well, good level design really hasn’t changed as much as you’d think

from BF1942 to BF3.” explains Lars Gustavsson, the Lead Multiplayer Designer on Battlefield 3, as he recalls past and current glories. “Our basic concept that’s been around from the start involves natural ‘honey pots’ spread over the world, and good cover in combination with room for vehicles to manoeuvre. It may sound like a simple recipe, but getting it just right is an art in itself.”

For the past making its presence felt in modern gaming you don’t have to look much farther than the sixth appearance of U-shaped island and firm fan-favourite Wake Island in BF3’s DLC pack Back to Karkand. To all intents of purpose it’s the self-same map we’ve played multiple times before – albeit bigger and under an ever gloomier sky.

Sometimes the old tunes are the best tunes, but that doesn’t mean that the developer mustn’t play around with their beat to suit modern tastes. In BF3’s case, any classic map that

“I THINK ALL OF BRINK’S MAPS OWE SOMETHING TO GAMES THAT HAVE COME AND GONE”

024 _ A PERFECT BATTLEFIELD

makes a return must be heavily tested to ensure that the Frostbite 2 engine’s destructive capabilities don’t change the intended flow of the map. With this in tow, however, familiar landscapes can become exponentially more exciting.

“Often introducing destruction in a map from the Battlefield 2 days will only lead to great things.” continues Gustavsson. “An example of this is the new version of Strike at Karkand. Where you previously found certain paths, the battlefield will now suddenly be a multitude of new access points as players start shredding the city to pieces. Do you remember your favourite sniping spot from old times? Well, beware – since a well-placed RPG might reduce your cover to a big gaping hole. In Battlefield 3 you can run, but you can’t hide!”

The top level indications of evolution in multiplayer level design (and the franchises that tower over it) can be succinctly analysed, then, through the dramatic return of fan favourites. A phenomenon that Gustavsson’s arch-nemeses in the halls of Call of Duty are also more than familiar with.

“When people say ‘You should bring so-and-so map back!’ you have to sit down and think.” Explains Infinity Ward’s Creative Strategist Robert Bowling. “That might have been a fantastic map for the original game, but that was because you didn’t have the Extreme Conditioning perk, or the ability to do this or feature that does that. All these can change the dynamic of the map. When we brought Crash back for MW2 we had to change the bullet penetrations and the like to deal with the new weapons.”

HEAT OF BATTLELars Gustavsson, Lead Multiplayer Designer on Battlefield 3, underlines his vision of the perfect BF gun game.

How does the new BF mantra of ‘Play it Your Way’ affect the game?You really can play Battlefield 3 in so many different ways. A tight Team Deathmatch is a totally different experience to all-out vehicle warfare on a large-scale battlefield in Rush or Conquest mode.

‘Play it Your Way’ is present in every detail of the multiplayer game. First, you have the four playable classes that are highly customizable. You can tweak their loadouts and individually configure every main weapon to fit a large number of different combat roles, from long range to close quarters combat.

In Battlefield 3, this also extends to the vehicles where it’s up to you what weaponry and counter measure that you want to take into battle. Are you an aggressive player or the type that plays more defensively? It’s totally up to you this time.

The sandbox gameplay with rock-paper-scissors balancing makes every choice on the battlefield yours. If you’re like me, with twitch skills on the decay, then focus on a setup of kits, weapons and vehicles that allow you to play from a distance instead of going into clinch with the hardcore players at the front. I know I’m doomed to fail if I go there…

Urban combat is a major part of BF3, how do you make sure that city-based maps have that same feeling of the traditional, more open maps that your fans adore?One major aspect of what makes a Battlefield game feel like a Battlefield game is the through the gun experience – the way weapons handle and the way they feel when being used. That will not change whether the map is wide open or urban based. Also, the ebb and flow of, say, capturing bases in Conquest feels much the same in urban Paris as on Caspian Border. The transition from wide open rural landscapes to tight urban combat mostly affects how many different types of vehicles we can supply.

It’s also worth saying that our more urban maps through the years like Stalingrad and Berlin (Battlefield 1942), Strike at Karkand (Battlefield 2) and Arica Harbor (Battlefield: Bad Company 2) have all been loved by the audience – so when we decided to add an even more city-based focus to BF3, it wasn’t a wild guess. We know that people love it!

What are your own favourite Battlefield maps? What sets them apart?If I had to pick a couple from through the years, I would say El Alamein from Battlefield 1942, Sharqi Peninsula from Battlefield 2, and Arica Harbor. They all play well and put me into a context, a believable world where the feeling of a greater war that’s going on around you.

The fact that these levels can provide really cool infantry experiences, surrounded by vehicles that threaten you at any given time... that’s the greatness of Battlefield I think. Strike at Karkand and Wake Island will always be on my list of favourite maps, and they constantly remind me why I love this game.

While making Battlefield 1942, I just sat down at one point and looked at the mayhem going on at Wake Island on a 64-player server. I was amazed by the sight and experience of this all-out-war. Recently, while working on the game for GamesCom, I got that same feeling when the war raged around me on Caspian Border and jets were dogfighting while the ground battle was building up to a crescendo...

This is an edited extract from the full feature. Read the complete article in the full issue of Continue #01.

025

026 _ THE HEIST

As the man opens the door

I prepare my best shit-

eating grin and signal to

my accomplices that I’m going in.

He looks bemused and slightly

suspicious at my appearance; it’s late

on a Saturday night in a rough part

of South London and he has a right

to be wary of opening the door; even

with the police station next door, he’s

on his own here, so any sufficiently

organised crew could overpower him

without alerting anyone and get to

what he’s guarding.

I’m not going to do that of course. I’m

talking my way in. Violence is Plan B.

I look up at his cheap soccer beanie,

down at his clod-hopping boots, and

finally at the hi-vis jacket beneath his

gawping face; I choose my tactic. “Hi,

I’m Barry Trott of Trott securities,” as I

give him a firm handshake. I curse that

I’ve accidentally slipped into an nasal

Manchester drawl – and could I have

chosen a worse name? Why the hell

would a Mr Trott curse his son with

the name Barry? “I’m here to fix your

motion sensors – I’ve had reports that

rats or summat were setting them off.”

He hasn’t noticed my accent’s wobbling

all over the place as I’m still vigorously

pumping his hand and he’s staring,

THE HEIST

Hide in the

shadows, crawl

through the

vents, bluff the

guards. Not so

easy when it’s

played for real

BY DAN GRILIOPOULOS

027

hypnotised, at my bizarre Movember Mark Twain moustache. After more blarney, he lets me in, but not before I’ve had to make up a contact ‘Alex’ and expertise “the agency called me in, I just do what I’m told”. Surreptitiously, I wave my team to follow us and prop the door open, while he leads me off into a side room where the first motion sensor is – and where the laptop with the codes on is sitting.

Through my earpiece, I can still hear the rest of the team who are making a move on the back gate – their constant chatter is distracting and I’m wishing we had had more time to establish communication protocols – when to talk, how much to communicate, and so on. I try to warn them that the alarm is going to go off in thirty seconds, but it’s very hard while I’m keeping up the blather on the guard – who’s starting to look suspicious and is moving towards the door. I deliberately trip the motion sensor, but he’s already out –

and I doubt my two back-ups made it through the hall in time.

I make the best of a bad job, and cut the motion sensor wires – we should be able to move in and out of this room with impunity now, which is important as I’ve just spotted the computer with the box codes on it. I don’t get a chance to play with it though, as he’s back through the door, moaning about the alarm. Keeping the banter up, I start talking about how wonderful the architecture of the place (which is dreadful, to be honest, some sort of abandoned police station) and taking photos of it with the big camera slung under my arm (which I’d planned to use to snap the codes. He’s getting obviously impatient now and is getting complaints from what I guess are more guards over his radio about the alarm going off. He talks them down.

I persuade him to show me the other motion sensor, deeper in the complex, and tell him I’m going to set

IT STARTS IN A PUB, WHERE YOUR TEAM IS ASSEMBLED, YOU PLAN YOUR ROUTE, AND ARE INTRODUCED TO THE KIT MADE AVAILABLE TO YOU

028 _ THE HEIST

the night vision and one Nerf gun. I pocket one set of wire cutters, as I’ll be going in through the front door, using an ability to fast talk I didn’t know I had (and still don’t think I have). The guards act with all of the characteristics of videogame artificial intelligence; being obvious and clumsy in some regards, and otherworldly fast in others. It’s one of many ways that the language of traditional computer games informs the feel of the night.

THE STEALTH SECTIONIt’s later, after my repeated ejections from the target. I can’t risk going through the front door again and my team have had to go round the back way. It’s then that I spot the gap...

it off for a test. I’m about to disable it too with the clippers I palmed, when a squawk comes through on his radio – one of his colleagues has just woken up, stunned by a tranquilliser dart, and raises the alarm. I’m ushered out of the front door, protesting and pretending to ring the agency to complain as I come up with increasingly unconvincing excuses, and get increasingly isolated and blunt as I realise subtlety really isn’t working. This is only the first of seven times this evening that any of the three guards will chuck me out of the building.

THE SET-UP‘Heist’ is just one of many Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) springing up – in this case in the UK by a group called Fire Hazard – taking the principles of computer games and live-action roleplaying, and applying them to real world situations. Heist’s premise is

that you’re breaking into a security facility to recover up to ten secure cases; you don’t know what’s in them, you’re told not to open them, so they’re the old-fashioned McGuffin of the Hitchcock movies; a reason to get into the scenario and to roleplay as thieves.

It starts in a pub, where your team is assembled, you plan your route, and are introduced to the kit made available to you; in our case, we’re all issued short-range radios with concealable earpieces to talk to each other, along with a variety of tools to share out; two ‘tranquilliser’ Nerf guns, a single night vision scope, two sets of wire-cutters, and some peanuts (one of the guards has an allergy, we’re informed). Sadly for me, half our team consists of idiot city banker types and I just can’t talk to them, not that they’re interested in talking to me anyway, so in my mind they become Team B. Their job is to get in through the back entrance, stealthily, so we give them

This is an edited extract from the full feature. Read the entire article in the full issue of Continue #01.

047

CONTINUE MAGAZINE

© 2012 MONYO PUBLISHING LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NO PART OF THIS MAGAZINE MAY BE REPRODUCED, TRANSMITTED OR

STORED WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHERS.

FOR ALL ENQUIRIES CONTACT: INFO@CONTINUEMAG.COM

TO BUY THE FULL 102-PAGE ISSUE OFCONTINUE FOR JUST $4.99, CLICK HERE.