Video Games Information Center

Bigger doesn’t mean better. Developer Ubisoft Montreal disregarded this mantra when creating James Cameron’s Avatar, delivering a mediocre game loaded with unnecessary padding, rather than a tight and enjoyable package that could have gotten players excited about the upcoming film of the same name. In fact, if you’re eagerly anticipating the upcoming Avatar movie, it’s probably best that you avoid this bland and overlong third-person shooter altogether, because there’s nothing fantastical or compelling about its story or characters. That isn’t to say that Avatar is all bad. A branching story featuring two disparate factions makes this a two-games-in-one experience, so if you like wringing the last drop out of your $60, the single-player campaign might keep you busy for 15 hours or so. Unfortunately, while a few of those hours are entertaining, Avatar’s action is too bland and tedious to justify the game’s length, and a variety of bugs and bizarre design elements put a further damper on the fun.

Avatar takes place on the planet Pandora, which the human-controlled Resources Development Administration (RDA) is stripping of its resources–much to the dismay of Pandora’s indigenous population, the blue-skinned Na’vi. Meanwhile, the RDA has established a way of transferring a human’s consciousness into an artificially created human/Na’vi hybrid called an avatar. You play as Ryder, an RDA operative who soon finds himself (or herself, if you choose a female persona) in over his head as he discovers the consequences of the RDA’s destructive presence on Pandora. About an hour into the campaign, you’ll be faced with a choice: side with the RDA, or live as an avatar and take your chances with the Na’vi. Yet no matter which path you meander down, you’ll meet a series of unmemorable characters, played by unexceptional voice actors who deliver their poorly written lines without a trace of enthusiasm or urgency.

Simply saying that online gaming has become popular is a massive understatement. It had been popular for a while, but in the past couple of years its popularity has reached previously unheralded heights. It’s not just the number of gamers that has been increasing either, it’s the number of games and gaming websites too. Type ‘online games’ into Google and you’ll see that there are more than 200 million results!

So, why is online gaming becoming increasing popular? Well, you can put it down to a few things. One is better technology, another is improved graphics, and a third is increased interactability.

It seems like a lifetime ago now that Pong, Pac-Man and Frogger were the leading lights of the gaming world, but in actual fact it was just a decade or two ago. In the world of technology though, that is more than a lifetime, it’s an entirely different era! It’s not that games programmers didn’t have ideas for the types of games that we enjoy playing now, it was rather that they had no way of implementing their ideas. The coding languages that form the basis of current games simply didn’t exist in the past, and the processors in computers just not fast enough to process anything more than simple commands. Now though, technology and programming languages are at a level whereby the imagination is the only limitation, and this has shown itself in the great games that are consistently released.

As for graphics, slow moving, uninspiring blotches that jerked across the screen have been made a thing of the past. Today with the modern technology that is out there, some of the three dimensional games that are being offered online actually more closely resemble a movie than a game. The graphic capability with Flash and Java Scripting and AJAX programming allow a near photo-realism. This is especially true if you are lucky enough to have an extremely high-speed connection like a T1 or a T3 line.

Everyone knows that great graphics don’t always equate to a great game though. The criteria for a great game is that it is interactive and rewarding, and this is where online games have really come into their own. Playing online against real people is, for the vast majority of people, far superior to just playing against a computer. Before, Internet connections were just too slow to allow gamers to properly compete against each other online, but now you can compete simultaneously against 20+ people from around the world with no problems at all. This has greatly extended the amount of time that you can play a game before getting bored of it, and literally every time that you play a game you don’t know what to expect.

So, what about the future of online gaming? You can be sure that all of the points mentioned above will only continue to improve and, as such, the gaming industry as a whole will continue to grow and bring in more and more gamers, which can only be a good thing for those of us already hooked on the world of online gaming.

THQ and Rainbow Studios are preparing for another go in the dirt in the upcoming MX vs. ATV Reflex, the latest in the long-running off-road racing series. The big news this time around: an improved driving engine; bigger, more lush environments to explore; and a new control scheme that will make getting on the bike (or the ATV, or any of the other vehicles in the game), and staying on the bike, more fun than ever. We had a chance to see and play Reflex for the first time at THQ’s pre-E3 press briefing in Los Angeles last week.

First up is the new engine that’s powering Reflex. If you’ve played the MX vs. ATV series before, you’re probably already familiar with Rainbow’s “rhythm racing” style of off-road competition, which is defined by preloading jumps and the huge-air, trick-filled stunts that come as a result. Those same massive jumps are still in place in Reflex, but how the terrain affects (and is affected by) your bike and rider has changed significantly.

Perhaps the most important change is that your rider can now be independently controlled from his vehicle. By moving the right analog stick in any direction, you’ll be able to shift your rider’s weight anywhere on the bike or ATV. You can still preload a jump (by pressing down on the analog stick), but the ability to move left or right gives you more control than ever over your vehicle. Taking a hairpin corner, for example, by leaning into the turn will let you negotiate much tighter than you would be able to otherwise.

In addition to using the right stick to move your rider on your vehicle, you’ll be flicking it to pull off midair tricks during Freestyle events, which looks to be a big improvement from the tedious and sometimes confusing button combinations from previous games. In addition, the right stick will provide you with a way to prevent yourself from wrecking when landing a huge jump, something that happened all too often in previous MX vs. ATV games. In Reflex, if you manage a dangerous landing, a green arrow will appear at one edge of the screen; if you flick the right stick in that direction with the correct timing, you’ll save your bike and be able to keep going. You’ll still lose a bit of momentum, since your rider must once again settle himself into the saddle, but it’s definitely preferable to bailing completely.

The majority of games that are played online are coded in a manner that means they can be played on most computer platforms. As a result, anyone who plays a particular game should have an experience that is pretty much the same as anyone else who plays it, regardless of what type of computer they are using. This means that instead of having many smaller, distinct online gaming communities, we now have a single, much larger one.

The ability to have the same online gaming experience, regardless of the computer hardware that you have, has been made possible through the creation and continued development of Flash and Java Script – which are both programming languages. As these two languages began to get recognition, more and more games began to be made using them, with the result being that gamers were demanding that any new computer they bought had the capabilities to play them.

Before the universal adoption of Flash and Java Script, PC users and Mac users were mostly unable to play against each other in online games. Now, not only can they do so, but they can do on a totally equal playing field, where users of either see, hear and experience exactly what users of the other platform are also seeing, hearing and experiencing.

These new computing languages not only brought online gamers closer together, they are also significantly improved the quality and range of online games. Once implemented, the Internet experience shifted from one that was primarily geared towards data retrieval to one that was leaning towards a well-rounded multimedia experience which incorporated sight and sounds not previously possible.

Progress and developments since then have been fast and furious, and online games as they now were beyond imagination just 10 years ago. It’s really been a snowball effect, that started with the introduction of Flash and Java Script. Those two languages opened up the Internet to lots of new people, and as more people began to use the Internet, the more companies set about improving the online experience in terms of technology and connection speeds, so as to meet the demands of the ever increasing online market.

Such improvements within the industry have unsurprisingly led to an influx of new people to the world of online gaming – which means the market is bigger, there is more money available, and, as a result, game producers create bigger and better games in order to gain a bigger share of it. The result? Even better times for gamers everywhere!

When I was at school I was asked by my careers teacher what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I answered without hesitation, “make video games”.

It was a no brainer. I had been interested in computers, and games, for as long as I could remember. Some of my earliest memories are of playing Qbert and Scramble in the local arcade, or sitting on the floor of our living room, with a Commodore Vic 20 plugged into the old wood-effect paneled television.

At school I chose IT as a GCSE option and aced it, at college I took computer Science and quickly realised that I knew more about the subject than my tutor, and then went on to study computer science and electronic engineering at university. However, as I progressed through my education my love of the subject waned, as I found myself being taught more and more about managerial roles and work flow than about what I really loved – games, and programming.

In fact I dropped my computer science degree after the first year, later graduating in audio and video engineering, and it wasn’t until several years later that I got involved in the games industry. While several of my friends had gone on to work with games development companies, I had gone into web design, and it wasn’t until I started developing Flash games that I eventually found myself doing what I had dreamed about as a child.

The strange thing is, I progressed faster in the games industry than several people I knew who took the more “traditional” route of a university degree. While they were working their way up the ranks, I drew the attention of big clients not because of my education, but because of my experience.

More recently I’ve got to know 2 people who came into the industry via yet another path, and it’s one that simply wasn’t available to me at the time, but I wish it was.

Back in the 1980’s video games were developed by small teams, often with a single person playing the role of designer, programmer, artist and musician, They were simple games, often produced on a very tight budget.

Conversely today’s games often involve massive budgets and large teams. Grand Theft Auto 4 is reported to have a budget of $100 million and with that sort of money at stake, the development studios have to ensure quality assurance. That’s where game testers come in.

If a game goes to market with mistakes, bugs, or bad gameplay it will get bad reviews, bad sales, and lose the studio potentially a lot of money. Therefore it’s in the studio’s interest to invest in testing to ensure that the games they produce are of the highest quality. This has opened up the new job position of “game tester” which is not only a dream job (or certainly would have been for me when leaving college 10 years ago!) but can also act as a gateway position to other jobs in the industry.

Game testing is notoriously difficult to get into, and the reality of the job is certainly a lot less glamorous than the title might suggest, with long hours and very repetitive work. However, game testers have the same advantage I had by developing independent games – industry experience! 2 or 3 years as a game tester will teach you a lot more about game development than the average college degree, and the games companies know this.

The best part about game testing is that it’s possible to do it part time from home. Now, in reality these “teleworking” casual positions don’t pay as well as full time in-house testing jobs, and the experience is nowhere near as good, but again it’s a great gateway and allows you to gain experience while continuing an education – the best of both worlds.

A friend of mine recently asked me whether I would have finished my degree, if I knew then what I know now and had the chance at a games testing position instead. Certainly the game testing job would have given me more experience and probably got me further in the games industry faster. However, my answer was simply that I would have attempted to do both – get casual work as a games tester to build experience, and complete my degree at the same time. With this approach you get the best of both worlds, and massively increase your chances of becoming a successful games developer.