Author: Scott

My coverage for the Montreal International Game Summit is now officially wrapped up. It’s as good a time as any to look back at the event, and talk about what transpired.

Joystiq-wise: I pseudo-liveblogged the keynotes of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Ken Perlin, and Reggie Fils-Aimé. Considering my normally short attention span, I was surprised by my ability to transcribe the structure of each presentation, while pulling accurate quotes and taking the occasional picture. When it’s liveblogging for reals, I would imagine it gets much, much harder.

I interviewed Chaim Gingold and Chris Hecker my first day, asking questions about Spore, Maxis, and related stuff. The day after, I talked with Elan Lee about 42 Entertainment’s current projects. I feel like both interviews went fairly well, though after listening to each on cassette I realized I could probably stand to improve the substance of my questions. Not “hard-hitting” enough, I suppose. Or something like that.

In between my feature-length coverage, I snuck in posts about the Great Canadian Video Game Competition, my sub-par swag bag, Reggie’s cameo appearance on the show floor, and more. After a long day of studio tours, I was able to take a one-hour tour of the Arcadia Festival, and you better believe I took photos.

Me-wise: Before embarking for the actual event, I had a bit of anxiety about my role at the Montreal summit. I wanted to be there in two capacities: as a journalist for Joystiq, but also as a game designer, and I had some reservations about my own ability to wear those two hats simultaneously. Ultimately, I focused on my Joystiq assignment, and it was only through that coverage that I was able to meet a large number of people. I don’t regret my choice of focus.

The summit took most of our time for the first two days in Montreal, and the third was spent doing studio tours and visiting the Arcadia Festival. We stayed until Sunday morning, and left Saturday open for exploring the city. Unfortunately, Montreal chose that day for its torrential downpours. We did what little exploring we could while fully saturated, caught The Departed at Paramount Cinema on rue Ste. Catherine (c’etait très bon), and called it an early night.

In the overall, I’d have to say the experience far exceeded my expectations. My expectations weren’t low, but I certainly didn’t expect the actual summit to run as smoothly as it did. I do wish we could’ve seen more of the city, but I enjoyed what we saw, even in the rain.

» Images from Heroine Sheik on Flickr, and taken by me.

So I’m thinking about redesigning numberless, in part out of procrastination, and in part because I believe it looks too much like a blog.

What would I like it to look like? Something like (picnic, lightning) would be nice (you know, I only just got the Lolita reference?). The question is, how do I make my site look like his site without stealing his layout? He’s not a WordPress user. Doesn’t that somehow make it okay?

Note to self: No matter how fickle you get, do not change domain names again. Ever.

Almost every time I use Cyberduck these days, I’m confronted with this:

I consider this to be a horrible, horrible thing.

It asks me a “Yes” or “No” question, but only gives me the options of “Don’t Change” and “Change All.” Invariably, I always manage to select the wrong one, resetting all of my passwords and forcing me to reenter them countless times.

I understand this dialog box so little it hurts. I WANT Cyberduck to access the same keychain items as the previous version. I want to click “Yes,” but I can’t! Do I click “Don’t Change,” assuming that Cyberduck will then not change my passwords, retaining the old ones? Or do I click “Change All,” assuming Cyberduck will then change its keychain settings to access the old passwords? WHAT THE HELL DO I DO?

I plan on writing about my impressions of the conference (and the city) once I get through all of my Joystiq coverage. Funny, I thought that would’ve happened by now.

You can find everything I wrote/am writing for the conference here. It’s not a lot, but it feels like a lot.

Yum, yum, blogging by Bonnie on Flickr (even though I took the picture).

Bonnie and I are headed to Montreal, in part to attend the Montreal International Game Summit, and in part just to be in Montreal. I’m very, very excited.

I’ll be covering the event for Joystiq, and my coverage should start appearing on their site on Wednesday. There may be interviews with cool people, there may not be. It’s still a little up in the air at the moment, but whatever happens, happens.

I’m also just excited to be at the conference for myself, independent of Joystiq. I finally get to put my pretty new business cards to use, and hopefully meet some nice people with similar interests. We depart tomorrow morning, after we vote.

Kotaku’s Mark Wilson got a chance to go hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. He played nine hours of the game, the first four of which he discusses on the site. But here’s the kicker: according to Mark, “Nintendo claims testers took 70 hours to play through the game the first time.”

Jeezy frickin’ creezy. I suppose this is a good thing for the more “hardcore” gaming audience, but not for me. I was growing mad impatient by the thirtieth hour of Okami. There’s a chance it could be different with Zelda, but the game had better be consistent in terms of its quality, and not stretched out like taffy like some other wolf-based game I know…

» Image from ACLetras on Flickr. Thanks!

Funny that this never occurred to me before, but I’m beginning to wonder if Nintendo’s last big secret regarding the Nintendo Wii has to do with the system’s connectivity with the portable DS.

They’ve been rather tight-lipped about Wii-DS connectivity from the start, which has been surprising considering we’ve all just figured the DS could function as a wireless controller, with extra screens for making hidden moves, or just simply to add real estate for menus, maps and such.

But what if there’s something else?

When used in a “point-and-click” fashion, the Wii and Wii remote resemble a DS and its stylus in terms of their functionality. In fact, games like Trauma Center: Second Opinion are DS control schemes mapped onto the Wii’s unique interface. If the DS can communicate wirelessly with the Wii, who’s to say that the DS can’t be used to control on-screen cursors in Wii games?

It’s most obvious in Trauma Center, but there’s another game which could benefit from this specific kind of connectivity — The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

In Zelda, the fairy cursor is used to lock onto enemies, as well as direct Link’s focus and aim his arrow. What if these movements were moved to the DS? Is it possible that Zelda could become a two-person game, with a DS-equipped second-player acting as the on-screen fairy?

What other games could benefit from this sort of DS-to-Wii functionality?

» Nintendo Wii by Hachimaki on Flickr. Thanks!

curtsey and hold out her hand to both. “yes, she will remain there till christmas.”
–AllysonCuevas@eloyaltyco.com

It’s fun to run around as a god in wolf form, using magic brushes to rid the world of evil and restore its natural beauty… for the first 30 hours. If Okami is candy, then it’s the day after Halloween and my tummy hurts like burning.

» Photo by gvink on Flickr. Thanks!

The Wii is launching in a little more than a month, and for all the system’s polish it features a front-end design which looks juvenile at best.

Nintendo’s choice of interface for the Wii is an expandable page of options called “Wii Channels.” On a gray/silver background, rounded rectangles display different “channels” which the user can move to. These include the standard Wii menu options: Wii/Gamecube Game, Mii, Photos, Wii Shop, Weather, and News. Along the bottom, the menu also displays the date, and icons for accessing mail and system options.

This menu is expandable, however. For each purchase the user makes in the Wii Shop, a new channel will be displayed on the screen, with up to twelve per page. Photos of this interface “show off” what a full page of channels looks like. In addition to the six standard channels listed above, the screen also displays the Internet channel, and five virtual console games. In total, 12 icons fill the cluttered menu screen, with an arrow on the right indicating that there are channels available that are not being displayed.

Given all of the attention paid to the aesthetic appeal of the Wii, it is astonishing that Nintendo could allow the system’s interface to become such a cluttered mess.

Slick, intuitive interface design is only becoming more important in our modern technology, and the upcoming generation of consoles rely on much more than their game discs to win appeal. This lack of sheen is especially surprising, given the attention Nintendo put into the front-ends for both the Gamecube and the DS.

In its current state, the Wii’s front-end menu is far too cluttered, and gives the system the appearance of a hokey “do-all gadget” rather than a confident gaming console. Word on the street is that Nintendo plans on releasing OS firmware updates over their WiiConnect24 service. Here’s hoping an early patch includes a more presentable menu system.

» Wii menu photo from Yahoo Games, UK & Ireland. Thanks!