Brad's E3 2000 Report (long)
Brad Wardell
a lot longer than last year's report. More originality than last year (still
not a lot) but much better execution. I suspect that this next year and a
half will be much better game wise than the previous year was.
You can see 1999's and 1998's E3 report at:
http://people.mw.mediaone.net/bwardell/history.html
Hope this helps.
E3 2000 report
By Brad Wardell
(bwar...@stardock.com)
Disclaimer:
I work for a software company called Stardock (www.stardock.com). So my
views and opinions might be biased though I will try not to be too biased!
Introduction
This is my third consecutive report on the events at the Electronic
Entertainment Expo (E3). Like last year, it is in Los Angelas CA.
General Trends
The French have invaded. Over the past couple of years those of you who have
followed the game industry have read occasionally about some French company
purchasing a US game publisher. This year, the affects really came home.
Allegedly, the French government has actually be subsidizing French firms to
acquire US "interactive entertainment" firms in an effort for France to
become a major player in mainstream pop culture.
Taking a quick inventory:
Havas, the company that owns Blizzard and Sierra amongst others is a French
company. Infogrames bought out what's left of GT Interactive and Ubisoft has
begun making inroads in the PC game arena. Some of the best games are
coming from these subsidiaries - Diablo 2, Empire Earth, Duke Nukem Forever,
Unreal Tournament, Warcraft 3, etc. Even Stardock's Business Tycoon is
technically being published by Ubisoft.
And of course, on the console side, Japanese giants like Sony, Nintendo, and
Sega dominate.
Should Americans be concerned? I think not as long as they are making good
games. And based on what I saw at E3, this year was the best year since I'
ve been doing for the game industry in terms of cool games but amongst the
worst in originality.
Let's put this in perspective. Some of the coolest new games I saw there
were basically upgrades to existing games. Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Return to
Wolfenstein, Sim Village, Zeus, and the several hundred Star Trek games,
etc. were all just basically sequels or updates to existing games. But boy
do many of these games look great. It's hard not to play Diablo 2 and not
immediately forgive it for being basically a better Diablo 1.
The coolest things I saw in no particular order
Black and White was hands down the most exciting thing I saw at the show.
Peter M. personally demoed it to a frenzied crowd. Personally, I'd probably
like to see him do a finished Power Monger based on his original concept but
Black and White is not only an incredible looking game but also amazingly
original. In it, the player is a god of a particular village. The village
can have up to 5000 people in it. The physical representative of you on the
world is a creature you raise, teach and train. I have some concerns on the
multiplayer aspect of the game and longevity of it for strategy games (it
looks like much of the multiplayer will come down to fighting other creates
in a console style way) but I have great confidence in Peter M's designs.
He's got basically a 100% good game record.
Other cool things I saw I mention now without referring to my notes since
they are therefore cool enough to be remembered are:
Return to Wolfenstein. It's Wolf3D on the Quake 3 engine with incredible
graphics. This will be the first person shooter to beat I suspect when it
arrives. It's being published by Activision. Good enemy AI (the Nazis will
actually run and throw the grenade you lobbed at them back as you if they
can), and the best graphics I've ever seen in a first person shooter put it
high on my must-play list.
Empire Earth. Sierra has snagged the Age of Empire designer and allowed him
to create the true real time Civilization game. Empire Earth is likely to
come out Christmas 2001 (they say 1Q2001 but let's be realistic). This will
be the strategy game of the year I suspect in 2001 barring something really
messing up. It truly felt a lot like how one would combine Warcraft and
Civilization. From cavemen all the way to mechs in a truly 3D map with 3D
units rendered in real time. It was still early in development but it looks
stunning. Hopefully Galactic Civilizations will be out by then so that I
don't have to choose between playing the two.
Startopia. Haven't heard of this? I hadn't. But it looks and sounded really
cool. Some of the former Bullfrog guys went over and created a new company
and their game is being published by Eidos. Very similar to Dungeon Keeper
but now you run a space station and the game's engine is phenomenal. One
trend I noticed was the level of zoom in many of these games. From very far
away down to seeing a wart on a person's face practically.
Diablo 2. This is going to be the Year 2000 game of the year assuming that
The Sims doesn't qualify. It looks cool but everyone knows about this game
so I won't go on.
Warcraft 3. Okay, I wasn't sure what to make of this. The game world might
technically be 3D, it was only 3D in the same sense that C&C 2 is 3D. It
looked pretty much like 3D units on the Diablo engine. It is possible that
they did this just to have something to show at the show. Either way is fine
with me, I'm personally a little jaded with games that are 3D for the sake
of 3D. I want to play these games, not spend my time adjusting my
perspective which is why WC3 is on my list of super cool games I saw.
Blizzard is good about putting substance over style. This game will
probably be a Christmas 2001 release.
Redstorm's booth had several games in there that overall gave me the
impression that they really have their act together.
Microsoft also seems to have their act together. Love them or hate them, you
have to admit they know a good game when they see one. Mech Warrior 4 looks
to be the true sequel to Mech Warrior 1 in my opinion. It just looked and
felt right, something that Mech 2, and 3 didn't provide.
Those are the gets that particularly stuck out in my mind. Having talked to
other people at the show, games that they thought looked awesome included:
Pool of Radiance, a Baldur's Gate style game. That new Bungie game (name
here). Sim Village, Freelancer (which won best of the show last year and
still hasn't shipped), Sacrifice, one of the few games that really uses the
T&L in the new Geforce cards..
Disappointments
Don't flame me for this as I fully admit that I am probably in the minority
but the Play Station 2 was a huge disappointment for me. I felt a little
deceived. Let me explain. If read my E399 report, I lavished praise on the
Playstation 2 based on their demos. Well, it looks to me now they they ran
their demo at a far higher resolution than TV resolution and as a result,
their racing demo and other demos looked far less pixilated and far crisper
than the reality.
Here's the deal: A gazillion polygons per second have really brought
diminishing returns in what I actually saw in real life games. That's
because at TV resolution (something like 512x384) you don't need a gazillion
polygons per second to achieve pretty cool games. I mean, great, the racing
games now have cars with slightly more detail than the Dreamcast (which is
arguable). But in reality, they just look like pixilated messes to me. They
should have implemented full screen anti-alias, that would have made them
look much better. So as a result, when it comes down to purchasing a new
game system, it will come down to whether you're buying a game machine or a
DVD player. Because right now it looks like Sega's dreamcast is a far better
game machine. The graphical difference to me, as a PC gamer, between the two
is insignificant - they both have great, realistic graphics but are too low
resolution for me to bother with. But the PS2 plays DVD movies so that might
matter to some people. But I've gone from planning to buy a PS2 to not
planning to buy one.
Closed booths or lines to see things. I'm sorry but I'm not willing to wait
in line to see a video game, at least not a very long one. Microsoft had
huge lines to see a video of their upcoming x-Box. I wasn't willing to stand
for 30 minutes to see a video of what is essentially a mock-up. And having
already learned my lesson from last year's PS2 demo, I know that any video
presentation is likely to be a bit unlike reality. So MS showing some super
high resolution robot mimicking the moves of a human would be impressive if
the X-Box was going to run at 1024x768 and higher. But the fact is, when the
time comes it's going to be running at TV resolution which means to a PC
gamer, it's going to look like crap.
Bungie and Interplay also did this. So I can't tell you about Balder's Gate
2 because I didn't see it because it was in a closed room that non press
people couldn't see and I didn't want to wait in line to see a Bungie game
that is at least a year or more away (Halo).
Hyping of vaporware. Last year there was a ton of hype over a Planet of the
Apes game. This year they were back and unlike last year there is actually a
game one can see. It looks pretty cool but it struck me as a Tomb Raider
style game with a Apes license and they said it was still very early (20%
done was the words used). I won't even start on Duke Nukem Forever who's
demo was down when I went by.
Unfairness of Geography. We Americans are so lucky. If Blizzard's or
Ensemble's founders had simply been born in say Korea, we would never have
heard of them. I saw several games from Korean developers that in many
respects matched or surpassed things I saw from the "big guys" except that
these games were created on a fraction of the budget and have no chance of
ever becoming mainstream simply because there's little way for a Korean
developer/publisher to overcome the advantages of developers based in the US
(or publishers based in Europe).
Game development has become a manufacturing process. Once upon a time, great
game designers would come up with a fantastic little game and them and a few
friends would create it on their own and it would be a modest hit. Then the
developers would get a big publishing deal and their second game would be
really great and sell a zillion copies.
Today, you have a great game idea? Tough. You're out of luck unless you've
already done a great game and even then you may not be able to do it. Why
did Brian Reynolds (lead on Civilization 2) leave Firaxis? Why did Lord
British leave Origin, the company he founded? Odds are it's because they
were told that every game they would do forever had to be some conservative
update to what they were already doing. I suspect Lord British didn't want
to spend the rest of his life doing games based on profitability projections
created by bean counters. So these guys end up leaving. Those that choose
not to end up creating a bunch of derivative games based on a slightly
updated engine (no way I'm going to be doing a Business Tycoon sequel any
time soon).
So what happens is that many of the best game ideas never get made now. That
's why all the new games are tending to be formulaic but well executed (in
general) games. I just to buy a dozen or more games per year. But last year
I only bought a few. I still love to play games but the newer games haven't
been appealing enough to me. They're too overblown and too derivative. The
classic development team of 3 developers and a couple artists has gone away
but you can find them wandering the show floor with their prototype looking
for a publisher who is likely to tell them that their neat game concept is
too risky to be funded or not large enough to survive at retail at a AAA
price.
With that said, I want to stress that this particular E3 was the best one I'
ve been to yet. The declining originality has been a pervasive problem but
this time around, there was a considerable amount of originality and those
that are derivatives look to be extremely well executed. And afterall, the
point of a game is to have fun.
What was Stardock doing there?
Before we get to the show floor portion, I should probably explain what the
heck we were even doing there. In a nutshell, we were there to announce two
things: Galactic Civilizations has begun coding development and the
development of a new kind of on-line gaming network called The Drengin
Network (www.drengin.net).
The Galactic Civilizations home page is at
http://www.stardock.com/products/galciv
The Drengin Network is harder to explain. But briefly, as anyone who hangs
out a lot of Usenet knows from talking and listening to others, the game
industry has really consolidated over the past few years. It is not very
difficult to create new and original games because to really make money on a
game, you have to either make a $20 mass market game like Deer Hunter or a
thoroughly massive game that sells at around $50 like Half Life. There are
exceptions such as Roller Coaster Tycoon, an original game that has been a
big hit but usually, high quality original games just aren't made. A great
game like MULE, or Boulderdash or Paradroid or Tetris would never be made
today if the idea were to have been thought of in present times. Many a
great game idea is floating out there but never comes to market because of
the barriers. The classic development team of 2 or 3 developers and 2
artists is long gone, replaced with teams with dozens of people typically.
Worse, once popular genres such as adventure games, war games, political
games, etc. are now considered "niche games". You would be hard pressed to
find a true adventure game (I saw a couple but that was it). And most new
strategy games are just more of the same.
There is also, thanks to the Internet, an opportunity to create episodic
games. When I finished Baldur's Gate, I would have paid real money to
subscribe to BlackIsle.net or something to get a new Chapter a month to
play. But by the time the add-ons for these games come out, I've moved on
to other things.
That's where The Drengin Network comes in. Stardock was at E3 meeting with
small teams of developers who are creating great software but recognize that
their cool idea isn't going to be picked up by an Activision or Hasbro
because their game is too "risky" or a "niche game". I was joking to my
co-worker that if someone had come up with a Balance of Power style game
today they would never be able to get it published by a mainstream
publisher.
Stardock's goal is to provide a way for game developers who are interested
in making cool games that aren't "more of the same" a way to get them into
the hands of users. Or for developers who are creating games that might take
2 years to create a way to afford to finish the game by making it episodic
(for instance, Diablo 2 was basically done a year ago but the massive amount
of levels, content, character graphics, etc. had to be created - in other
words, it would have been a great example of an episodic game).
We're going to make Galactic Civilizations part of The Drengin Network so
for thousands of gamers, they'll basically be buying Galactic Civilizations
and getting The Drengin Network as a bonus.
So anyway, that's why we were there. You can find out more about The
Drengin Network at http://www.drengin.net.
So on to the show floor!
The show floor
South Hall
This is where most of the PC games were. As you walked in, Infogrames and
Electronic Arts greeted you. I didn't see too much at Infogrames that
interested me (Duke Nuke Forever from 3D Realms which was part of GT
Interactive that was purchased by InfoGrames was nowhere to be found but I
did see a monitor for it that was down when I went by a few times).
Electronic Arts was showing Black and White from Lionhead. The rest of the
booth was mostly showing their EA Sports stuff which I personally am not
into but it did look much more realistic than in years past.
Microsoft was showing off their Age of Empires II add-on which adds several
new civilizations to the mix. If you liked AOE 2, you'll like this and given
that there aren't realistically going to be very many new RTS games this
year, even if you're not a huge AOE fan, you still might want to pick this
up. Mech Commander 2 was also in the Microsoft booth. It looked a lot
better than the first one which I actually liked quite a bit. They also had
Links golf 2001 which to me looked a lot like Links 2000 which looked a lot
like Links 98. But it's probably more of a diminishing returns thing, it
already looks so incredible that it's hard to improve it further. They also
had the aforementioned Mech Warrior 4, probably the highlight of their booth
but they also had a really cool combat flight simulator called Crimson
skies. I'll probably regret this next year but I think Crimson Skies may be
one of the hot titles for next year. Anyone remember Battle over Britain
from Lucas Arts? This game reminded me a lot of that but in a fantasy
alternative universe time setup. It just looked like a blast to play.
Fox games was showing off their Planet of the Apes game. It was really cool
seeing the gorilla costumes. Gone this year was the scantily clad female
slavelings which I thought was kind of cruel to us - hey I'm from Michigan,
if you've been here, you would understand.
Hasbro had a bunch of games that would take too long to talk about. They
were mostly old arcade games updated to modern age.
The most crowded booth at the show was of course the Havas booth. Havas
houses primarily Blizzard and Sierra. Blizzard has two things going for
them. The first thing is that they make great games. But the second thing
about them is that they are truly very friendly people. They are people who
really like to play games, like to make games and like to show other people
their games. And believe me, their positive attitude about the gaming
industry is not as universal as one might think. Some of the other booths I
attended had developers with a strikingly different view (which I won't get
into since I'm not going to be negative about any company). But you have to
be there to understand really, the Blizzard booth just has this addictive
feeling to it. It's as if the Blizzard folks went out and gathered up a
bunch of cool nice people to work there or something. That said, Diablo 2,
while a derivative of Diablo 1, looks really cool. But the bigger surprise
was Warcraft 3 which looked to me as if they just took the Diablo 2 engine
and stuck what they had done so far for Warcraft 3 on it (the units mainly)
to have something to show for E3. The terrain did not strike me as "3D" in
the most vague sense. This doesn't bother me, btw, but it didn't look
anything like the screenshots I'd seen in the magazines.
Sierra, in the same booth had a really kick butt game called Empire Earth.
Again, like the Blizzard folks, the people on the Empire Earth team really
struck me as really nice guys. People who love to play games and like to
talk to fellow gamers. Empire Earth, for me, looks to me like the game that
might possibly replace Total Annihilation as my RTS game of choice (other
than maybe Galactic Civilizations but that's a biased choice).
Red Storm has been the hot company for a couple of years. Every "Indie"
company I know of secretly roots for these guys because they just came out
of nowhere and have taken chances on their games. Most of their games have
been highly original games. Sure, a few have bombed but not because they
were bad but because they took a chance and it turned out there wasn't
enough of a market for that particular game concept. I won't spend time
talking about their traditional titles, they had two particularly cool new
games that I think a lot of people will like - Bang! Which is basically a
space version of Crimson skies and Freedom based on Anne McCaffrey's novel.
Normally I avoid licensed titles like the plague but this one had a really
nice look and good gameplay together.
At this point, my feet were killing me so I ran over to the Creative Labs
booth where they were showing off the Annihilator 2 (Geforce 2) card (I
bought one) running Sacrifice, a new game that heavily uses T&L. Then I
decided that Creative had the greatest booth in human history. They had a
bunch of really really comfortable couches for watching Sony 2 DVD with
their 3D sound. I don't know what movies they were playing but boy were
those couches good.
About 20 minutes later I checked out the Activision booth. They're still way
into doing the Star Trek games which they had several of but they are doing
the Return to Castle Wolfenstein game which as I mentioned earlier, looks
great. They also had Dark Reign 2 playing. They're kind of taking a risk
with it. It looks great and it's truly 3D but I'm not sure how it will
actually play. There is something to be said about having the RTS be
somewhat simplistic (top down view only for instance). But it does look
really cool.
Ubisoft was showing a lot of console games running on the Playstation 2.
They also had Capitalism 2 (due mid 2001) running on a machine. It looked
really good. Much of the effort is being put into making it more user
friendly. It reminded me of Simcity 3000. It was an early version so it
could change a lot. They were not showing Stardock's upcoming Business
Tycoon since it was deemed too much of a "niche game" (Business Tycoon is a
business strategy game which apparently is a niche smaller than business
simulation, I won't comment any further than that). But Business Tycoon,
which is a game in which you start your own company and must conquer the
world is the sequel to Stardock's popular Entrepreneur strategy game. It is
also probably the only multiplayer business game out there presently. It'll
be available this summer in the US (go to
http://www.stardock.com/products/btycoon to check it out).
While not games per se, I did spend time at the GamesDomain/Happy
Puppy/CDMag booth. There I compared notes with some of the guys there so
that I didn't miss out on anything. I would have missed Pool of Radiance if
they hadn't mentioned it.
There were lots of other booths in the South Hall but they were mostly not
my cup of tea (though I do want to point out that Poptop's Tropico I think
is going to really put this innovative company even further into people's
imagination. I think they were in the Take 2 booth.
West Hall
Okay, the first hall is the PC games mostly. The West hall is where mostly
the console games are (Sega, Sony, Nintendo).
Microsoft's Xbox video was in the East Hall but given that it was just a
video.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the Play Station 2 was a disappointment
graphically. I now know why. Whey they demoed it last year, they were
showing what it was capable of - 1024x768 resolution graphics. Technically,
the machine can do that. However, actual TVs in the US can only do 512x386
so naturally, the actual games, being made for actual people look very
pixilated and grainy. None of the Play Station 2 games struck me as
particularly interesting (of if they did, they had a PC version that had
much better graphics today). And I seriously looked for what I would
consider even a single "killer game". Mario 64 on Nintendo 64's launch was
a killer game. The Sega guys may not have as killer of a hardware platform
but they seemed to have much better games.
As for Nintendo, I didn't spend much time over there. They didn't announce
the Dolphin or have any demos that I could see.
Bungie was in this hall too showing off Oni (which has a Playstation 2
version). Oni looks reasonably cool. Halo was in a closed room requiring one
to wait in line to see it so I skipped that.
Concourse Hall
Over in this smaller hall were a few cool things but the main thing I would
have been interested in seeing was Interplay's booth but it was closed to
the public. So no Baldur's Gate II impressions. But let's face it, unless
they totally mess it up, it's going to be great.
Kentia Hall
Any would be game developer needs only to step into Kentia Hall to get a
reality check. Every year, tens of thousands of twenty-something game
developers decide that they could magically do a "better than Blizzard"
game. They get their friends together, quit their jobs and prepare to create
a AAA game on their first try. In their mind, all they have to do is create
a great game or game demo and show it to Sierra or Activision or Hasbro and
off they go into the big leagues with a huge booth at E3, cool t-shirts and
the admiration of their peers. Now, Kentia hall brings reality shooting in.
For every Blizzard and every Activision there are a dozen tiny little
publishers you've never heard of. Heck, be honest, how many of you reading
this have heard of Stardock? And we're one of the "Indie success stories".
Each year, thousands of games are released. A hard core gamer might be
familiar with a few hundred of them. The remaining 80% are ones you never
hear about with 3/4ths of them totally dying. The 1/4th that you've never
heard of survives enough to get shown at some booth in Kentia Hall at E3.
If Stardock had its own booth this year, this is where it would have been.
Many of the coolest game concepts done on a shoe string budget are shown
here. Jowood Productions had a number of cool games. Their best known game
is a traffic simulator that has better graphics than Simcity 3000. It is
called "The Traffic Giant". Have you heard of it? No? Well, Jowood was one
of the biggest players in Kentia Hall and their game was a great looking
game with lots of original game ideas. (www.jowood.com).
South Korea had a booth full of some really cool titles including an
impressive golf game that plays on the PocketPC. There was also what amounts
to a Warcraft III clone showing there. Other games were of similar
quality - maybe not terribly original games here but well executed.
Monte Cristo was showing off their new business sim, "Start-up". It looks
pretty cool actually. If you are into this type of game, I suggest visiting
their website (http://www.montecristo-multi.com).
But there were literally thousands and thousands of games in this hall being
sold by small companies from around the world. I did see one game in
particular that looked interesting. It was a stunt car game that had
outstanding graphics. I will try to find out the website of this company for
a follow-up.
I also so a game from HeksPlex Entertainment called "The Boss" that looked
really cool. http://www.heksplex.com/.
Someone finally got true 3D working pretty well. VR Standard
(www.vrstandard.com). Basically, you hook their glasses up to their card
which connects to your video card and your 3D games truly look 3D. I'm not
kidding, it really looked 3D. I was very skeptical but when I tried them on
sure enough, driving games seemed much more realistic and 3D shooters had
some depth to them. If you can picture yourself wearing glasses while
playing, it does improve the gaming experience.
Final Thoughts
This year's E3 was far better than previous years for me. While originality
lacked for the most part, execution on what they were working on has
improved. With game companies becoming better at providing what their
customers want, I think this year will be a better year for gamers.
I was pretty disappointed with E3 '99 and it held out for the rest of the
year with only a few really good games being released. But this year, we
can look forward to Diablo 2 in July (i.e. August) and Black and White in
September (i.e. December) and lots of other cool games in between, it's
going to be a great gaming year.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at
bwar...@stardock.com. You can also visit our news group
news://news.stardock.com/stardock.games. Feel free to repost and reproduce
this material. Just drop me a note that you are using it so that I know
about it.
See you next year!
Brad Wardell
Product Manager
Stardock - http://www.stardock.com
----
About the author.
Brad Wardell is a game player turned developer. In 1994, he designed and
developed Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. Between 1994-1997 Wardell
developed or helped produce several more OS/2 games. In 1998, Wardell's
first Windows game, Entrepreneur, was released. This year, Wardell is
working on Galactic Civilizations for Windows. He is also the Product
Manager of the popular WindowBlinds GUI changing product as well as Object
Desktop which WindowBlinds is part of.