– GT

I have to say it… I was right. Gears of War 2 is an amazing game. It is the most intense gaming experience out there right now.  There are more maps, characters, and guns what’s more the graphics are better than first one (which I didn’t think was possible).  But what really makes Gears Shine are the new multiplayer modes like Execution and Horde (which i am about to praise).

Gears of War 2 is the most exciting thing I have seen from video games since Perfect Dark on the Nintendo64. In Perfect Dark you could set up four player matches against computer controlled opponents. This was endless fun for me and my friends. You can now do the same thing in Gears 2.  Where Epic took it one step further is they created WAVES of enemies, that increase in number and strength over a series of rounds.  This new and inventive game type is called Horde. Horde is a battle in which you can team up with up to 4 of your buddies and take on waves of the enemy set at any difficulty. You can select any of the 17 multiplayer maps to play on. Two of my favorites are Security (because it has a laser protected area and the  big gun that spawns inside) and River.

The waves of the enemy increase in toughness, accuracy, strength, number, and size with each successive round.  What makes Gears awesome is that you have to work as a team.  If one of your team mates goes down, another player can “pick him up” before he gets killed.  Keeping everyone alive really keeps it exciting. It is very cool and scary when you kill off a wave and you only have a few minutes before the next, bigger stronger wave attacks.  This can almost scare the pants off of you as you’re running around the level trying to pick up ammunition or weapons before the new attack begins.

Horde is an ingenious way to get the most value out of a game like Gears.  After you’ve played through the Campaign on every difficulty level (how many times can you watch the same cut scenes?) – Horde provides a never ending series of challenges, and the best part is that the Locust (enemies) come to you.  What’s more, you can start at any of the 50 waves and quit when it gets to hard. It is really fun when you start out easy roaming all over the level, hunting down the Locust but then as the waves increase you find your team pushed back into a tiny corner of the level holding on for dear life. 

My only complaint with the game is that at times the online experience can be laggy.  This causes enemy characters “warp” or pop, and in head to head combat you shoot at where you think an opponent is only to discover the screen didn’t update and they are standing right next to you attacking you.

Thank god there is the GameTruck because there is no lag when playing system linking with your friends!  And that’s why Gears is one of our favorite games for older Birthday parties because the gamers aren’t playing AGAINST each other, they are playing together and man is that fun.

I love this job.

- Matt

A Worthy Goal

And perhaps that’s what it is about a great game.  Of the hundreds of games that have been introduced since the launch of the X-Box 360, only 17 have a composite metacritic score (www.metacritic.com).  The truth is over the life of a platform typically fewer than 25 games ever reach the coveted 90% rating.  And Mass Effect is one of them.  With a score of 91% it is universally acclaimed as a great game.

And the thing about a great game is that it makes you feel like you are accomplishing something worth while.  One of the interesting side effects that crops up in the gaming generation is that they are highly altruistic.  The hero in a video game is almost never after the money.  They need to save the world, or the princess, or in the case of Mass Effect save the Universe.  Money in most games like Mario’s gold coins, Link’s Rupees, or John Shepard’s credits are just another resource to be managed.  They are not an end in themselves but a tool used to mark progress and solve problems.  Money is not even the way that score is kept (unlike how many people view real life).

It’s How You Play the Game

But if these games are not about the money, what makes them so compelling?  For me, it’s that sense of progress.  It’s that ability to have an achievable goal, and through my own efforts see it finished.  I wrote last time about how my kids played Zelda and loved it.  As I look across the spectrum of video games that I’ve made and played – there is common thread.  Great games are often a lesson in micro-project management.  In fact – here’s a curve ball for you – most great games engage in David Allen’s organic project planning.  David uses the example of going out to dinner.  I paraphrase the process he outlined like this:

1. Have a vision.  For example, we want to eat.  We could eat:
   • Italian
   • Chinese
   • Mexican

Let’s say we pick Mexican.

2. Set your standards. How do you want to do this? Do we want to eat:
   • Fast food
   • At home
   • At a sit down restaurant?

You can see the rich number of choices, but let’s say my family wants fast service but something that doesn’t feel like fast food. We select Baja Fresh.

3. Brainstorm.  How are we going to get it done?
   • The car needs gas
   • I need to grab my wallet
   • We need to make sure we have Becca’s Car Seat
   • The kids have to gather their Webkinz
   • We need to get everyone in the car
   • We should bring milk for the trip
   • Make sure all the little ones go to the bathroom before we leave

We think of all the things that need to happen but not the order they need to happen in.

Now clearly we can’t (our shouldn’t) do these things in the order I listed them in, but that’s not important. What is important is that we get all the ideas out quickly.

4. Organize. We take our list and we sort it.
   1. Make sure all the little ones go to the bathroom before we leave
   2. I need to grab my wallet
   3. We need to make sure we have Becca’s Car Seat
   4. The kids have to gather their Webkinz
   5. We should bring milk for the trip
   6. We need to get everyone in the car
   7. The car needs gas
5. Execute. Line it up and get it done

Now, different people may apply this process differently, but I really like the 5 simple steps. And what I see in great games is that they have many of the same attributes. Games like Mass Effect, or even a great racing game can feel like a planning simulator. Now I know you’re probably thinking that’s crazy, but it’s true.

Since I started writing about Mass Effect, let’s break it down. I am in control of a player (when I play I am the player), and I am given goals. They appear in my journal. What makes Mass Effect interesting, and games like Fable (or World of Warcraft) is that I can decide HOW I want to achieve those goals. I can choose to be a renegade or a paragon. In a range of many many small choices, I can build up my reputation and effect the outcome of the game in the long run by my standards. The brainstorming part is usually done for us, we are told what next step to take – and if I have one criticism of games it’s that they don’t support this very well.

Of course, the game designers already have an insane amount of work to do.  What’s more, open ended problems can quickly lead to confusion (frustration) and this is entertainment after all.  Heck, even picking a place to eat can be more work than fun sometimes.  So designers limit the confusion and combine steps 3 and 4. As part of the design process they do the brainstorming and organizing.  This let’s them give you the choices in a form that’s mostly organized.  Still, they strive to ofter many choices. How do you want to upgrade your car? For speed, for handling? How about your character? Is he going to be one really tough law keeper, or is he going to be a sly quick witted manipulator of people and technology? Great games always strive to give the player some autonomy. With a goal, and options, you have choices.

And what happens when you follow the plan? When you execute? You get feedback. The feedback isn’t always positive. Sometimes you try real hard and the plot requires that you actually do more harm than good. Unintended consequences are a staple of virtual worlds just like the real one. However, the format is still the same. You have a vision, you choose how you want to do it, and then you follow your plan.

Leverage The Power Of Games
So when you sit back and think about it, whether your working your way through the Grand Tourismo Racing Career, or trying to save the Galaxy. Video games present a model for setting goals and achieving them from personal effort. What games provide that most real world situations lack are:

1. Clear vision. What needs to be done
2. Standards. How do we want to do this
3. An obvious next action or step that can be taken which will help us achieve our goal
4. Clear opportunities for action
5. Feedback.  Are we making progress?

I recently used this sort of thinking to work with my son to help complete his Rocket Derby project quickly and efficiently. We broke it down like a quest in Zelda. With clear direction, I was impressed how engaged and focused he was and now he has a completed Estes Viking Rocket that he can say he built himself.

It Feels Like Progress
And that brings me back to where I started. I think great games give you that feeling of getting stuff done. And we all love to feel like we are accomplishing something, and that is good stuff.  If we can step back and be aware of how video games produce those feelings, how they engage us and make us feel productive perhaps we can apply those techniques in our own lives. At a minimum, if you spent a few minutes and watched your son or daughter play a game (or husband or wife) and try to understand what they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it, you might get some ideas on how to frame projects and goals around the house that make sense to them.

Clearly gamers possess the ability to achieve large and complex goals. What they are doing feels like work and it’s enjoyable and rewarding. To the degree that we can take projects in the real world, and tee them up the way that games do, we may find a whole new bag of tricks for teaching our children and showing them that hard work applied in the real world is also rewarding and worth while. Games are fun and compelling because the great ones make you feel like your just getting so much stuff done. You are making progress. Video games use very sophisticated design and programming to engage us on that level. Why shouldn’t we learn from that to make motivating our kids a little easier?

- Scott

I remember reading a quote where Shigeru Miyamoto, the celebrated game genius at Nintendo said the game nearly killed him.

As I embarked on developing and shipping my first video game with a much much smaller (though no less passionate) team, I could understand what he meant. Half way through the development of our PS2 title, ATV Offroad Fury – Sony cut half the content!. While games like Ocarina got bigger, we were forced to make a smaller game to keep our quality competitive. It nearly killed the team – they were committed to making a game on par and scope with the best the industry had to offer, but Sony wisely kept us focused. They knew there was a difference between shipping a lot of content – badly tuned, and shipping only the best you have to offer.

The team that developed the  Prince of Persia Sands of Time was forced to learn the same lesson. With only 9 months to finish their game for the Holiday season, they had to drop an astonishing 40% of the content they had already built – forget all the things they wanted to add. In the end it was the right call. It is a trend that has continued for nearly 10 years, games getting smaller, more focused, higher quality.

Technology has played no small part in this. When I first got into the video game industry, we had textures, and ambient lighting. You painted a picture, the hardware rendered it onto a polygon and then applied a general lighting pass to it. A single artist could build an entire level and just about everything in it. Today entire teams of artists, animators, texture artists, lighting artists, modelers, designers and engineers are needed to assemble even the smallest levels in a video game. Layers of textures, multipass shaders, complex lighting models, robust animations blended with physics and artificial intelligence make today’s video games compelling, irresistible and unbelievably expensive.

Yet, despite all their allure, I caught my son picking up Zelda, and putting it in the Wii. He found an old GameCube controller (we never throw anything out – I think I still have an old DreamCast laying around here somewhere) and next thing I know he’s picking up heart pieces and battling his way through dungeons. A few hours later, his older brother has pulled out his laptop and is looking up clues online and his younger sister is parked on the couch cheering him on. Suddenly, this isn’t a game, it’s a team effort. It’s a sport. Matt is the player – battling through the levels. Ryan his coach, instructing, cajoling, aiding with timely (and sometimes untimely) advice.  And his sister is his faithful cheer leader, always ready to urge him on. “one more dungeon Matt, one more dungeon.”

That a decade old game can inspire such devotion, such focused effort, and such a sense of community across all our kids is amazing to me. The geometry is angular, the textures flat. The user interface is low resolution, the inventory system simplistic, and the music midi. – yet for all it’s technical short comings – the game 10 years later is still one of the most compelling pieces of entertainment ever created. Watching my kids complete a game that took me nearly a year to finish (off and on), I can understand why Shigeru Miyamoto said it almost killed him. Despite the crudeness of presentation by today’s standards, the control tuning and balance of the game is nothing short of brilliant.   Allegedly he played every mini game, every mission, every dungeon until it was tuned to his tastes. In other words, tuned to perfection. That meant playing them over, and over, and over again. I once heard that Ayn Rand typed her seminal novel the fountain head 17 times on a type writer until she was happy with it.  I’ll be Mr. Miyamoto would have found that task trivial compared to the effort he put into tuning Zelda.

When I started working in video games I got a small taste of the relentless effort it takes to make a great game.  And making games is fun!

On ATV, it felt like we typed the game 17 hundred times. In reality, we played it until it felt right, until it felt fun, until we were sick of it. Then we played it for 6 more months. Can you imagine? Fewer than 20% of people ever finish a game.  We raced around every track 50 to a hundred times.  The lead designer logged thousands of laps, tuning and playing, tuning and playing.  And our game was a tiny fraction of Zelda in scope and scale.   The real tragedy of a game like ZOT is that so few people saw the later levels. I know hard core gamers that love the series and never got past the second dungeon.  It just took too long to play. Yet my kids have been pounding on it – for weeks now.

Personally, I am not a fan of the monster game. The 100 hours of play – or what ever that means. But I continue to be amazed at what video games really are and what they represent. Let’s put it another way. Most people get anxious about speaking in public for 5 minutes. A great professional orator will talk for two hours. Most films – good ways rarely tip over 3 hours. The total show time of Lord of the Rings – even the extended editions account for less than 20 hours of entertainment.  Zelda stands tall at 80 hours. EIGHTY! And despite the tricks they use to extend the experience, there is compelling entertainment throughout. it is an incredible achievement that someone could create that much entertainment, that would still be just as compelling and fun a decade later.

Most video games have a very short shelf life. I used to joke they would go stale faster than a loaf of bread. And Nintendo has certainly published new editions to the Zelda line of games, but that this one game could still capture the imagination of today’s jaded tweens is amazing to me. So I listen to Matt talk about the Goron Sword and how Mulgaria wasn’t really that hard and how lucky he was to get by Bongo-Bongo. Because it’s not just a game he’s talking about, these are accomplishments he’s earned. These are achievements that are meaningful to him, and to me, because you see I did all those things too, and I remember how hard they were.  I remember how much they meant to me and how disappointing it was to not be able to share that feeling of elation with anyone who cared.  So I listen to him, and enjoy the feeling of being an adult who knows a thing or two about the subject he cares so very much about.  And I believe that this will be the legacy of great gaming for this generation.  Parents and children able to share their love of games and what it takes to be good at them.

You see, my son DID those things. He didn’t watch someone do them, he didn’t hear about it on the radio, he did it himself, and he got his brother and sister to help. They worked hard for this and they are proud of it and I can understand that. And I am so very glad, that I could share that experience with him. Because I know, the same skills and determination that helped him achieve his goal in a video game will also help him achieve his goals in life. It’s my job to show him that the success in life can be a thousand times more rewarding than success in a video game. However, for now, keeping him focused on the fact that he can work hard and achieve goals that are important to him is fun and rewarding in it’s own way. And I can do that by taking the time to listen, and share with him my experience. I hope more families get the chance to share a common play experience. The number of cooperative games has never been higher. But even if you all don’t get to hold the controller, there can still be fun rooting each other on, or just listening to the story of their epic battles.

So find a favorite game, and dig in because the chances have never been greater that years from now, you can still enjoy it again… with your kids.

– Scott

Wow has time flown buy.  I’m sure you feel the same way.  I look back over the last several months and I realize we’ve been so busy opening Franchises and building more trailers to meet the GameTruck demand we haven’t kept up with our regular blogging.

Well this past week we had a good reason to cheer.  We came out for the Toys For Tot’s distribution in down town Phoenix.  Despite all the news in the headlines about hard times and the economic downturn, it is amazing how many people reached out with their hearts and wallets to provide toys for those in need.

After nearly 3 years of doing this, and the thousands of parties we have done.  It always amazes me that no matter where we go, no matter what peoples backgrounds, they love to play video games.  We have thrown video game parties for celebreties.  We have done parties for families with garages big enough to park a fleet of GameTrucks.  But we have also done parties – many, many, parties for working class folks who care about their kids and a chance to have them do something they love with their best friends is always a great gift.

But on a day like today, where families who couldn’t afford to buy their children even the most basic of presents stretched around the block – we were proud to donate our time and the gift of play as well.  As they got their presents than ran over to the truck to play, we saw the same looks in their eyes that we see everywhere.  A sense of wonderment, a sense of joy, and a sense that this is something special.

We have been blessed at the GameTruck.  Over the last several months we have enjoyed our best months ever, by every measure.  We are blessed with good friends, great employees, wonderful franchisees, and most important of all – a community of people who care for each other and love to play together.

Scott.

On Saturday August 9 the GameTruck had the pleasure of being invited to participate in the auction benefiting the Breast Cancer 3 Day Susan G. Komen For The Cure trust project.  We donated a GameTruck mobile video game party to the 3 Day, as well as time on site during the day to generate interest in our item and to entertaining the kids that were there during the auction.

It was readily apparent that the women and men, young and old, involved in this event are all very passionate about finding a cure.  A vast majority have been directly effected by breast cancer.  Once you get a sense of the statistics (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/) then it becomes apparent why so much effort is being put forth.  As we were packing up at the end of the event I tracked down our host and thanked her for letting us participate in such an important cause.  She commented that she would like to have us participate each year until they find a cure.  I immediately agreed but then paused and stated that I hope we don’t see each other next year.  While this may be an unrealistic expectation we both understood without saying anything that this has to be the attitude.

In short, the contribution the GameTruck made was only one of the many products or services local businesses donated to this great cause that will help with breast cancer research, treatment, education and prevention.  Every little bit helps.  If you are interested in participating at some level the 2009 3 Day for Arizona will be held November 13^th-15^th.  More information on how to get involved in this worthwhile cause can be found at www.the3day.org or you can contact our host, Lisa Pazzoni at easyfitnesssolutions@yahoo.com

In the Beginning

I mean it literally started in my garage.  I’ve told the story many times, but I setup in my garage a prototype of the trailer.  I bought sheets of plywood at Home Depot, some carpet and I laid them out in the maximum legal road width for a trailer (about 8 feet) and I bought game chairs, and every kind of TV.  Including LCD’s and DLP’s and projectors and Plasmas.

Notice the vintage x-box on the floor?  The Wii hadn’t even been announced and the X-Box 360 was so new that unit on the floor was an early release model for developers I was able to get through work.

Once we were convinced we should move forward with this it was a long road to develop something cool from scratch.

It took a lot of work to go from the wooden crate that the factory delivered us to the finished truck.  But it was worth it.  Just getting those first few parties was a rush. Entertaining our neighbors and friends. It was neat to see how people responded to the concept. They just loved it.

Flash forward a couple of years

But the big thrill for me came this past January when we had the Harlem Globe Trotters in the GameTruck.  While we were being interviewed by Brad Perry on Channel 3, the Harlem Globe Trotters showed up. Seeing Curly O’Neil and Wildcat Williams in the GameTruck was a real thrill for me personally. I still have their signed autographs at my desk.

As if that weren’t enough this past week at ASU we had Sparky in the House!

We were doing a Campus celebration for the School of Journalism when who should walk in but The Sun Devil Mascot himself.  The college kids were having a great time playing games and while I could not convince Sparky to stick around and play some NCAA Football, I experienced one of those “ooh, ah” moments when I realized that we were the center of  attention.  The GameTruck wasn’t just for kids.  It was for the kid in everyone.  And that is definitely fun stuff.

Monday night at 12am was the official release of Madden 09, this year’s edition of the extremely popular video game football franchise.  Celebrating it’s 20th year, there has been more hype than usual surrounding this title.  It doesn’t hurt that this year’s cover depicted Brett Farve in a Green Bay uniform (which has been changed in second printings to his new Jets uniform).  Gamers all over the country have been waiting anxiously to see what this year’s Madden had in store for them, and with the help of a local Game Stop and The GameTruck, some Gilbert residents got to celebrate the release with a little friendly competition.

Over 30 die-hard Madden fans gathered at the Game Stop on Warner and Val Vista in Gilbert to face off in a Madden 08 single elimination tournament.  Almost everyone showed up in a jersey or shirt supporting their favorite team, and competed in games following the official Madden tournament rules.  The tournament started at 10pm, with 4 games running simultaneously inside one of the GameTruck mobile video  game theaters.  Players that were waiting their turn participated in the traditional tailgate activities, complete with hotdogs, steaks, and tossing a football around.  As the tournament drew on, though, almost everyone was crowded around the GameTruck,trying to catch a glimpse of the action

As the tournament came down to the wire, players that had been eliminated started lining up in anticipation of the midnight release, while the winners stayed in the GameTruck.  The quarter final games got intense, and 3 of them went into overtime.  As it got closer and closer to 12am, the energy grew both inside and out side of the GameTruck.  Gamers were chanting the countdown to the Game Stop doors opening as players were screaming and cheering on their virtual teams. As the semi finals started, the atmosphere was at its most intense, as four hardcore gamers faced off for the grand prize: a Game Stop gift card, Topps trading cards, and most importantly, bragging rights.

Just as the game officially released and everyone grabbed their copies and raced home, the two semi final matches ended, only to reveal that the championship game would be between two brothers that entered the tournament together.  Since it was after midnight, Madden 09 was set up for the championship contest.  However, rather than a heated match up, the two Cowboy fans played one quarter, shook hands, and split the prize money towards their copies of the game.  As anticlimactic as it was, it was good to see the sportsmanship between the two, although I’m sure that they weren’t as diplomatic once they got the game home.

In the brief time we did get to see Madden 09 though, we were blown away, especially after spending about 3 hours with 08’s installment.  With a complete graphical overhaul, everything from the players’ equipment, the crowd, and even the grass looked incredible, especially on The GameTruck’s 50″ plasma screens.  There are a bunch of new features, which we will definitely all get a chance to see in the next few weeks, but the overall impression of Madden 09 was a great new take on one of our favorite franchises.  This game will be a staple for our video game parties for sure, most likely all the way up until we do this again next year.

Last month the Ultimate Video Game Party was taken to a new level.  The GameTruck pulled up to a one-of-a-kind video game themed birthday party, complete with a miniature GameTruck atop the sheet cake.  In the 10 minutes it took to book the event the birthday boy’s mom had also purchased both GameTruck tee-shirts and GameTruck gift bags for the kids in attendance.  Without having to worry about these items she was left to decorate the house with green and orange table covers, string crepe paper around the room and set out the green and orange M&M’s.

After the event her feedback was consistent with the many others who mentioned that the kids had an awesome time and that she was surprised how easy and stress free the party was.  She even passed along a story from one of the mom’s who had twin boys at the party.  She said that her boys were so excited after the event they slept in their GameTruck tee-shirts that evening.  I think we may be seeing those two later in the year.

In the two plus years the GameTruck has conducted mobile video game parties we are acutely aware of the challenge parents face as children move from pre-school through elementary school.  Like weddings and graduation parties, the birthday party ritual remains an important part of the family tradition as well as a means for the adults to connect with old friends and meet new ones.  With the institutionalization of party concepts like Pump-It-Up and Build-A-Bear Workshop, parents and caregivers have come to rely on these turnkey solutions to minimize the time and effort that accompanies such an important event.

However, as our children enter into elementary school something funny begins to happen.  Those of us with kids in this age range know that our children’s pallet is becoming more refined after just a few short years on the party circuit.  It may be the realization that they don’t need another stuffed animal in their room or the thought of another inflatable / pizza arcade party leaves kids wary.  But the challenge remains every year.  How can parents break the rut?

In the same two plus years our experience has taught us that a GameTruck mobile video game party is providing parents a fresh and stress free option for our newly minted kindergartners.  The obvious is that console-based video games are pervasive, such that the mere mention to a kid that he or she can have a video game party is rarely met with resistance.  And being able to play video games with your best friends in such an awesome environment, well, it then becomes a question of how long can the GameTruck stay parked in front of the house  This is in light of their emerging and often critical analysis of the choices we as parents continue to have to make for them.  Boy, whoever expected the level of brain drain experienced when debating with a 7 year old the benefits of those little green things called vegetables. The bottom line is that kids love video games.  Secondly, for a parent or caregiver the service we provide resonates on a number of levels; the value we provide for the price; how we treat our customers; and how we run our operations that are consistent event after event.

So much so that that we have been able to successfully integrate this into a system so our franchisees conducting GameTruck parties outside of the Valley, where the mobile video game party concept was invented, provide the same high level of service.  We’re glad to say the reputation we worked on in the early days precedes us.

We invite you to try a GameTruck mobile video game party the next time you’re scratching your head for something new and exciting.  We would love to show you how we can help you throw an awesome party.

– David