Independent Games Festival .
Think Services (producer of Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, and the Game Developers Conference) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.
We wanted to create a similar event to Sundance for independent game developers - and that's just what we've succeeded in doing with the Independent Games Festival, which has awarded hundred of thousands of dollars in cash prizes (and brought major exposure and a much higher profile) to a multitude of indie and student game developers who enter. There are four main elements to the Festival itself:
- The Independent Games Festival Pavilion
Located on the show floor at Game Developers Conference, and open to any members of the public or game professionals who have bought an Expo Pass to the show or above, the IGF Pavilion showcases every single finalist for that year's Festival in playable form. Members of the development team for each IGF finalist are on hand to discuss and demonstrate the title and talk to top game publishers and distributors attending the show.
- The Independent Games Festival Awards
The IGF Awards take place on the evening of the third day of Game Developers Conference, and are a major celebration of the best in indie gaming, with thousands watching the award presentation before the Game Developer's Choice Awards are presented. The 2009 IGF Awards, including custom interstitials from Mega64, are available for online viewing. All GDC visitors can attend the awards.
- The Independent Games Summit
The Independent Games Summit seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from indie game distribution methods through game design topics, guerrilla marketing concepts, student indie game discussions. The third annual IGS was held March 23rd and 24th 2009, during the first two days of GDC 2009.
- Independent Games Festival Mobile
Now in its third year, IGF Mobile was originally set up in 2008 to promote innovation in portable games, from cellphone and now iPhone games all the way to indie PSP and DS titles. There are plenty of unique mobile-specific possibilities for games, and we're excited to help honor them - prizes for 2010 will again total at least $20,000.
"The Independent Games Festival, for me, stands for a number of things: the celebration and recognition of the achievements of independent developers, the legitimacy of independent gaming, and a high mark that we can all aim for as creative people."
- Derek Yu, Bit-Blot (Aquaria)
- Independent Games Festival Prizes
The main Independent Games Festival competition gives out seven major awards at its ceremony, next to be held in March 2010 at GDC 2010 in San Francisco, as follows:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($20,000)
Excellence In Visual Art ($2,500)
Excellence In Audio ($2,500)
Excellence in Design ($2,500)
Nuovo Award ($2,500)
Technical Excellence ($2,500)
Audience Award ($2,500)
Direct2Drive Award ($10,000)
In addition, the IGF's Student Showcase competition, which is the premiere competition highlighting the top student-created indie games, also gives out the following awards each year:
IGF Student Showcase Winner (Ten winners, $500)
Best Student Game ($2,500)
The Independent Games Festival competitions have a diverse, leading set of judges which include representatives from the mainstream game industry, the press, significant independent gaming websites, and previous winners and finalists, as well as a number of indie veteran judges from the previous IGF judging pool.
"The IGF has captured my attention for quite a few years now (before I really thought about making games myself). It's a couple of things - a showcase of some great games, many of which are novel or experimental in nature, a place for developers to meet each other, and also a competition, which I think is quite motivational! (although maybe that's just stating the obvious). I think it's got the right balance between novel/bizarre games and slightly larger/commercially-successful ones (which might help bring media attention to all indie games)."
- Peter Stock (Armadillo Run)
IGF Success Stories
Since the Independent Games Festival & Summit started, there have been multiple major IGF prizewinners that have gone on to much larger exposure, garnering increased distribution, a bigger profile, and getting lots more gamers playing their art. Here are some of the highlights:
1999 - Vicarious Visions, now a major handheld / console developer, honored for Terminus.
2003 - Super X Studios' Wild Earth, a photographic game based around a worldwide safari, takes multiple prizes and subsequently becomes a motion simulator ride and a Wii title.
2005 - Fan favorite N wins the audience award, and, as N+, releases as a hit XBLA title, as well as notable Nintendo DS and Sony PSP versions.
2005 - Multi award-winner Alien Hominid receives publishing deals in the U.S. (via O3 Publishing) and Europe(via Zoo Digital), much critical acclaim, and even spawns mobile and Xbox Live Arcade versions.
2006 - Grand prize winner Darwinia gets both digital distribution via Valve's Steam system and U.S. retail distribution from new indie label Cinemaware Marquee.
2007 - Design Innovation winner Everyday Shooter is signed by Sony for distribution on the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network, after Sony's John Hight plays the game at the IGF Pavilion during GDC 2007 - Everyday Shooter's Jon Mak also appears at the inaugural Independent Games Summit.
2008 - The team behind IGF Student Showcase finalist Narbacular Drop is hired by Valve. The game is reworked into Portal and goes on to win the coveted Game Developer's Choice "Best Game" award for 2008, as well as numerous game of the year accolades.
2008 - Design Innovation winner Braid debuts on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade to notable success.
2008 - Excellence in Audio winner Audiosurf launches on Valve's Steam distribution service and goes on to become the highest selling game of February, outselling even Valve's own Orange Box (including Team Fortress 2 and Game Developer's Choice "Best Game" winner Portal.)
2009 - Petri Purho's Crayon Physics Deluxe spawns an iPhone version courtesy of Hudson, plus a popular PC downloadable version.
2009 - The Behemoth's follow-up to Alien Hominid, the IGF-winning Castle Crashers, tops XBLA charts to critical acclaim.
2009 - IGF multi-award winner World Of Goo launches as one of the best-selling, best-reviewed WiiWare titles of all time, alongside a popular PC version.
"I've never been around a group of more passionate, creative, intelligent, funny, and thoughtful people in my entire life as I was at the Independent Games Summit. IGS for me is all about people. The panels are very informative, but the best thing I took out of it were my discussions with indie game fans and developers, both in and out of the conference rooms. It was like being wrapped in a warm unicorn rainbow of brotherhood (and sisterhood)."
- Derek Yu, Bit-Blot (Aquaria)
Monday, June 1, 2009
Audio Surf 6
Road To The IGF: Audiosurf Making Waves With Music.
Continuing Gamasutra’s ‘Road to the IGF’ feature, we talk to Invisible Handlebar's Dylan Fitterer about the developer's IGF 2008 Seumas McNally Grand Prize finalist Audiosurf, born from a fascination with merging music visualizers and gameplay to create an emotional response. Audiosurf is also a finalist in the Technical Excellence and Excellence in Audio categories.
What kind of background do you have in the game industry or in making games?
I've been building hobby games for about 10 years now. Early on my goal was to make the Best Game Ever! I then found out that goal was a bit lofty, and I wasn't ending up with a finished product. So I went another route, producing lots of my own small games at a rapid pace just to get good ideas playable quickly. Audiosurf is a mix of these approaches - it grew out of one of my rapidly-prototyped games, but has been polished by years of work.
In addition to working on Audiosurf, I do contract work on serious games and web games.
What motivated you to create a game like Audiosurf?
I'm hooked on the combination of technical and creative work involved in game development and basically can't stop. I can't pinpoint an exact moment I was inspired to create Audiosurf, but it came from my fascination with music visualizers. I wanted to merge a visualizer with gameplay to get more invested in it and sharpen my emotional response. Such a game could offer players limitless variety too.
Where did you draw inspiration from in its design and implementation?
My biggest inspiration was the game Rez - the way it blended music and gameplay into a unified whole completely blew me away. I loved Rez, and thought it would be great to play something in that vein with my own songs. There was also a music visualizer from WildTangent with a ship flying above morphing terrain that sucked me in. That got me thinking about the potential of a 3D, perspective-view music visualizer.
Music is a constant inspiration to me too - I can hardly work without it. During development I kept coming back to songs that slowly build to explosion while thinking about how to heighten the resulting rush.
What sort of development tools are used by the team?
I use VC++ for performance-critical stuff and library integrations. Rapid gameplay iterations are crucial to me, so I use Quest3D for everything else.
It's easy for me to talk about Audiosurf at a high level now that it's nearly done, but that's not how I work. I follow my intuition and rapidly build almost every idea into a prototype. Tons of code gets tossed in the wastebin while the remaining bits are winners.
What do you think the most interesting element of your game is?
The music processing engine is the single most interesting part of Audiosurf. It analyzes the entire song before play begins so the gameplay pacing and procedural geometry can be synchronized ahead of time. This way, Audiosurf can arrange geometry for a feeling similar to the Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar video. Most importantly, this allows players to be able to select any piece of music to play within the game, not just pre-set choices: Audiosurf calculates how to accurately visualize any song you choose.
Audiosurf enhances the player's emotional reaction to music, and also enhances the player's anticipation. You can literally see the music coming at you.
What makes me really happy is how well the player's color-matching goal enhances the visualizer. Making players an active part of the visualization (with a goal) focuses their awareness on the song's upcoming changes and increases their immersion in the music. Because it's a game, it's a better visualizer, and because it's a visualizer it's a better game.
Roughly how many people have been working on Audiosurf, and what has the development process been like?
Audiosurf came to life several years ago as a mp3-reactive FPS set on a morphing disco floor called Orchestrated Assault. That code eventually collapsed on itself. I hadn't ever finished a game and I was inspired by the Indie Game Jam to try and do one quickly. That led to launching BestGameEver.com, where I released a new game every Friday for about 6 months. My favorite of these 7-day games was Tune Racer, and I ended up working with it until it became the Audiosurf of today.
Tune Racer went through many variations (and names) during this time. Different ideas included shooting enemies and racing through a forest at the speed of your music. I eventually came to the idea of pre-processing the player's song and renamed it Audiosurf.
Once Audiosurf's puzzle gameplay and the different character modes finally stabilized, I sought help with graphics, built-in music choices, and usability. It took a lot of searching, but talented people came on board and helped bring Audiosurf to the next level.
I couldn't be happier with my wife Elizabeth's user experience work, Paladin Studio's 3D models, Goran Delic's illustrations, Pedro Camacho's musical score, and Albert Park and Flynn Joffray's graphic design. I've integrated many great game ideas from the team including ideas from our core testers (Erik Fitterer and Kevin Egan) and our beta testers.
If the team had to rewind to the very start of the project, is there anything that you'd do differently?
Knowing now what the finished Audiosurf is like, it could be built in much less time. Without hindsight though, I'm not sure it could have been created any other way.
What are your thoughts on the state of independent game development, and are any other independent games out now that you admire?
It seems that every year lately is the best year ever for indie gaming. There's tons of great tools, tons of bright people, tons of compelling games, and most recently, tons of distribution options. Some games that have really impressed me are: Kingdom Elemental: Tactics, Pax Galaxia, Counterclockwise, Echoes, Mount & Blade, and Gunroar.
You have 30 seconds left to live and you must tell the game business something very important. What is it?
Go for it - try to make the best game ever! But remember to set some shorter goals along the way.
Continuing Gamasutra’s ‘Road to the IGF’ feature, we talk to Invisible Handlebar's Dylan Fitterer about the developer's IGF 2008 Seumas McNally Grand Prize finalist Audiosurf, born from a fascination with merging music visualizers and gameplay to create an emotional response. Audiosurf is also a finalist in the Technical Excellence and Excellence in Audio categories.
What kind of background do you have in the game industry or in making games?
I've been building hobby games for about 10 years now. Early on my goal was to make the Best Game Ever! I then found out that goal was a bit lofty, and I wasn't ending up with a finished product. So I went another route, producing lots of my own small games at a rapid pace just to get good ideas playable quickly. Audiosurf is a mix of these approaches - it grew out of one of my rapidly-prototyped games, but has been polished by years of work.
In addition to working on Audiosurf, I do contract work on serious games and web games.
What motivated you to create a game like Audiosurf?
I'm hooked on the combination of technical and creative work involved in game development and basically can't stop. I can't pinpoint an exact moment I was inspired to create Audiosurf, but it came from my fascination with music visualizers. I wanted to merge a visualizer with gameplay to get more invested in it and sharpen my emotional response. Such a game could offer players limitless variety too.
Where did you draw inspiration from in its design and implementation?
My biggest inspiration was the game Rez - the way it blended music and gameplay into a unified whole completely blew me away. I loved Rez, and thought it would be great to play something in that vein with my own songs. There was also a music visualizer from WildTangent with a ship flying above morphing terrain that sucked me in. That got me thinking about the potential of a 3D, perspective-view music visualizer.
Music is a constant inspiration to me too - I can hardly work without it. During development I kept coming back to songs that slowly build to explosion while thinking about how to heighten the resulting rush.
What sort of development tools are used by the team?
I use VC++ for performance-critical stuff and library integrations. Rapid gameplay iterations are crucial to me, so I use Quest3D for everything else.
It's easy for me to talk about Audiosurf at a high level now that it's nearly done, but that's not how I work. I follow my intuition and rapidly build almost every idea into a prototype. Tons of code gets tossed in the wastebin while the remaining bits are winners.
What do you think the most interesting element of your game is?
The music processing engine is the single most interesting part of Audiosurf. It analyzes the entire song before play begins so the gameplay pacing and procedural geometry can be synchronized ahead of time. This way, Audiosurf can arrange geometry for a feeling similar to the Chemical Brothers' Star Guitar video. Most importantly, this allows players to be able to select any piece of music to play within the game, not just pre-set choices: Audiosurf calculates how to accurately visualize any song you choose.
Audiosurf enhances the player's emotional reaction to music, and also enhances the player's anticipation. You can literally see the music coming at you.
What makes me really happy is how well the player's color-matching goal enhances the visualizer. Making players an active part of the visualization (with a goal) focuses their awareness on the song's upcoming changes and increases their immersion in the music. Because it's a game, it's a better visualizer, and because it's a visualizer it's a better game.
Roughly how many people have been working on Audiosurf, and what has the development process been like?
Audiosurf came to life several years ago as a mp3-reactive FPS set on a morphing disco floor called Orchestrated Assault. That code eventually collapsed on itself. I hadn't ever finished a game and I was inspired by the Indie Game Jam to try and do one quickly. That led to launching BestGameEver.com, where I released a new game every Friday for about 6 months. My favorite of these 7-day games was Tune Racer, and I ended up working with it until it became the Audiosurf of today.
Tune Racer went through many variations (and names) during this time. Different ideas included shooting enemies and racing through a forest at the speed of your music. I eventually came to the idea of pre-processing the player's song and renamed it Audiosurf.
Once Audiosurf's puzzle gameplay and the different character modes finally stabilized, I sought help with graphics, built-in music choices, and usability. It took a lot of searching, but talented people came on board and helped bring Audiosurf to the next level.
I couldn't be happier with my wife Elizabeth's user experience work, Paladin Studio's 3D models, Goran Delic's illustrations, Pedro Camacho's musical score, and Albert Park and Flynn Joffray's graphic design. I've integrated many great game ideas from the team including ideas from our core testers (Erik Fitterer and Kevin Egan) and our beta testers.
If the team had to rewind to the very start of the project, is there anything that you'd do differently?
Knowing now what the finished Audiosurf is like, it could be built in much less time. Without hindsight though, I'm not sure it could have been created any other way.
What are your thoughts on the state of independent game development, and are any other independent games out now that you admire?
It seems that every year lately is the best year ever for indie gaming. There's tons of great tools, tons of bright people, tons of compelling games, and most recently, tons of distribution options. Some games that have really impressed me are: Kingdom Elemental: Tactics, Pax Galaxia, Counterclockwise, Echoes, Mount & Blade, and Gunroar.
You have 30 seconds left to live and you must tell the game business something very important. What is it?
Go for it - try to make the best game ever! But remember to set some shorter goals along the way.
Audio Surf 5
New Music Monday - Suite for AudioSurf.
Some musicians write music that is intended to be experienced on 2 or 6 speakers. I wrote this suite to be experienced in AudioSurf.
AudioSurf is a videogame that generates race tracks based on music. You point the game to one of your music files, and it creates a playable race track that corresponds to the song. For busier sections, the track tends to slope downwards with more traffic. For calmer sections, the track tends upwards with less traffic.
I wrote the five pieces in this suite to generate specific experiences in AudioSurf. It starts off relatively tame, but by track 4, you will be racing downhill at blistering speeds.
Sunrise is based on Bach's first Prelude. I fill it out with some ambient samples, and the final product is the bumpiest track in the bunch. It switches quickly between uphill and downhill sections.
I call the suite HPF Tide and I wrote it in the 10 days after I first got my hands on AudioSurf. It may be the first time that music has been explicitly written to generate the gameplay in a videogame. Even if it isn't the first, it was a fun, challenging experience that really stretched me as a composer.
It also gives me a rather odd title. I could simply call myself a composer, but I kind of prefer the more unique title 'AudioSurf Level Designer'!
Some musicians write music that is intended to be experienced on 2 or 6 speakers. I wrote this suite to be experienced in AudioSurf.
AudioSurf is a videogame that generates race tracks based on music. You point the game to one of your music files, and it creates a playable race track that corresponds to the song. For busier sections, the track tends to slope downwards with more traffic. For calmer sections, the track tends upwards with less traffic.
I wrote the five pieces in this suite to generate specific experiences in AudioSurf. It starts off relatively tame, but by track 4, you will be racing downhill at blistering speeds.
Sunrise is based on Bach's first Prelude. I fill it out with some ambient samples, and the final product is the bumpiest track in the bunch. It switches quickly between uphill and downhill sections.
I call the suite HPF Tide and I wrote it in the 10 days after I first got my hands on AudioSurf. It may be the first time that music has been explicitly written to generate the gameplay in a videogame. Even if it isn't the first, it was a fun, challenging experience that really stretched me as a composer.
It also gives me a rather odd title. I could simply call myself a composer, but I kind of prefer the more unique title 'AudioSurf Level Designer'!
Audio Surf 4
GameStats.
If this is your first time to this site, let us welcome you to what we hope will become your new daily source of gaming information. Instead of adding another voice to an already crowded market of game sites and magazines, GameStats is focused squarely on providing the most objective view on games, both released and unreleased. To do this, GameStats assembles articles from around the web, allows gamers to weigh in with their opinions, and lets you access daily popularity statistics for thousands of games.
The Database
GameStats uses the web's most detailed game database, courtesy of gaming and entertainment network IGN.com. That means information and media for more than 27,000 games is right at your fingertips, including game and company data, release dates, cheats, walkthroughs, screenshots, movies, and more. If you find a game that's not listed, submit it and we'll add it as soon as we can.
The Gaugepopularitygauge.gif
The Popularity Gauge is one of our key features. Every game catalogued on GameStats comes with its own set of statistics, expressed in what we call GPM (Game Popularity Metric). This number shows you how popular a specific title is at this point in time. While quality has a big effect on the staying power of a game, GPMs are not representative of a game's quality -- they express buzz, desire to play the game, awareness, and post-release activity. How is this done? Instead of taking our website's traffic data as the be-all-end-all metric to determine popularity, GameStats uses data gathered from IGN.com's more than 18 million monthly visitors and compiles wishlist and collection list activity, email requests, message board posts, article, faqs, and cheat code pageviews into a number between 0 and 100, then displays everything in form of an easy to read gauge. You can find this gauge on every game summary page. Simply use the search engine, the top game navigation, or the front page links to find the games you're looking for.
Take a look at the sample gauge above. Underneath the graphical gauge, you will find the GPM rating in numerical form along with a trend arrow. This arrow shows whether a game is gaining in popularity or losing it. The color of the number changes from red (80 or above) to blue (20 or below) highlighting what games are hot and cold.
You can also see the game's relative position within the entire database of titles (overall GPM ranking) as well as its position within the platform's lineup. Be sure to click on the buttons to see those rankings.
Finally, the checkbox at the bottom of the gauge element allows you to take advantage of the GameStats on-demand newsletter, powered by IGN. Check off a game and we will send you the updates for that title by email whenever something new gets added. That way, you'll always be able to read the latest reviews and previews for the games you really care about. Don't want to get emails anymore? Just uncheck the box.
The Ratings
rating.gif GameStats tracks all major publications, both online and print. You can see the latest articles we've added on the front page (or on the summary page for the game you're interested in). We take all the ratings, convert them to the industry standard 0-10 scale, and generate an average "press score" which is displayed underneath the game's box art (left column). But gaming is entertainment for the people, so we'd be insane not to weigh in your opinions as well. By rating games and submitting reader reviews, you directly influence the "gamer score", located underneath the press rating. Both scores are then combined to an average GameStats Score (GSS). You can also see the game's relative ranking, according to overall score, within the total GameStats database and the respective platform. Note that due to the size of our database, this number is only calculated once per day. So while we add new reviews and scores all day long, there can be a delay until the ratings box will reflect those changes.
With all the basics out of the way, there's just one more element we should address:
You
GameStats is a new site -- and it will only succeed with your help. If you enjoy our free service, here's what you can do to contribute:
* Submit articles -- To ensure that our ratings and article lists are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, submit reviews and previews from sites and magazines that you notice are missing.
* Contribute opinions -- Write reader reviews and/or rate games for all the games you've played. Your tastes and opinions -- both positive and negative -- can help determine the course of the gaming industry.
* Join our focus group -- By using our wishlist and collection rankings system, you not only get a valuable tool for keeping track of your games, you can also let the world know what games you want, which ones you own and want to keep, and which ones are a waste of time.
* Feedback -- Email us your feedback. Are there specific features you would like to see added?
* Evangelize -- We don't have quadrillions of dollars to waste on Superbowl commercials, so be sure to tell your friends about GameStats. Link to us. Use our ratings.
The GameStats community tools are operated by IGN, meaning your data is stored securely on IGN's servers. If you are already a registered member of the IGN network, you are all set to access any and all of the features on this site. For information on IGN's privacy policy, check here. If you haven't joined yet, sign up now! GameStats membership is free and creating yourself a username only takes a minute.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Complaints? You can reach the editors of GameStats via our GameStats Email Form to let us know what you think of the site and what we can do to improve the service.
Thank you for your support,
The GameStats Team
If this is your first time to this site, let us welcome you to what we hope will become your new daily source of gaming information. Instead of adding another voice to an already crowded market of game sites and magazines, GameStats is focused squarely on providing the most objective view on games, both released and unreleased. To do this, GameStats assembles articles from around the web, allows gamers to weigh in with their opinions, and lets you access daily popularity statistics for thousands of games.
The Database
GameStats uses the web's most detailed game database, courtesy of gaming and entertainment network IGN.com. That means information and media for more than 27,000 games is right at your fingertips, including game and company data, release dates, cheats, walkthroughs, screenshots, movies, and more. If you find a game that's not listed, submit it and we'll add it as soon as we can.
The Gaugepopularitygauge.gif
The Popularity Gauge is one of our key features. Every game catalogued on GameStats comes with its own set of statistics, expressed in what we call GPM (Game Popularity Metric). This number shows you how popular a specific title is at this point in time. While quality has a big effect on the staying power of a game, GPMs are not representative of a game's quality -- they express buzz, desire to play the game, awareness, and post-release activity. How is this done? Instead of taking our website's traffic data as the be-all-end-all metric to determine popularity, GameStats uses data gathered from IGN.com's more than 18 million monthly visitors and compiles wishlist and collection list activity, email requests, message board posts, article, faqs, and cheat code pageviews into a number between 0 and 100, then displays everything in form of an easy to read gauge. You can find this gauge on every game summary page. Simply use the search engine, the top game navigation, or the front page links to find the games you're looking for.
Take a look at the sample gauge above. Underneath the graphical gauge, you will find the GPM rating in numerical form along with a trend arrow. This arrow shows whether a game is gaining in popularity or losing it. The color of the number changes from red (80 or above) to blue (20 or below) highlighting what games are hot and cold.
You can also see the game's relative position within the entire database of titles (overall GPM ranking) as well as its position within the platform's lineup. Be sure to click on the buttons to see those rankings.
Finally, the checkbox at the bottom of the gauge element allows you to take advantage of the GameStats on-demand newsletter, powered by IGN. Check off a game and we will send you the updates for that title by email whenever something new gets added. That way, you'll always be able to read the latest reviews and previews for the games you really care about. Don't want to get emails anymore? Just uncheck the box.
The Ratings
rating.gif GameStats tracks all major publications, both online and print. You can see the latest articles we've added on the front page (or on the summary page for the game you're interested in). We take all the ratings, convert them to the industry standard 0-10 scale, and generate an average "press score" which is displayed underneath the game's box art (left column). But gaming is entertainment for the people, so we'd be insane not to weigh in your opinions as well. By rating games and submitting reader reviews, you directly influence the "gamer score", located underneath the press rating. Both scores are then combined to an average GameStats Score (GSS). You can also see the game's relative ranking, according to overall score, within the total GameStats database and the respective platform. Note that due to the size of our database, this number is only calculated once per day. So while we add new reviews and scores all day long, there can be a delay until the ratings box will reflect those changes.
With all the basics out of the way, there's just one more element we should address:
You
GameStats is a new site -- and it will only succeed with your help. If you enjoy our free service, here's what you can do to contribute:
* Submit articles -- To ensure that our ratings and article lists are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, submit reviews and previews from sites and magazines that you notice are missing.
* Contribute opinions -- Write reader reviews and/or rate games for all the games you've played. Your tastes and opinions -- both positive and negative -- can help determine the course of the gaming industry.
* Join our focus group -- By using our wishlist and collection rankings system, you not only get a valuable tool for keeping track of your games, you can also let the world know what games you want, which ones you own and want to keep, and which ones are a waste of time.
* Feedback -- Email us your feedback. Are there specific features you would like to see added?
* Evangelize -- We don't have quadrillions of dollars to waste on Superbowl commercials, so be sure to tell your friends about GameStats. Link to us. Use our ratings.
The GameStats community tools are operated by IGN, meaning your data is stored securely on IGN's servers. If you are already a registered member of the IGN network, you are all set to access any and all of the features on this site. For information on IGN's privacy policy, check here. If you haven't joined yet, sign up now! GameStats membership is free and creating yourself a username only takes a minute.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Complaints? You can reach the editors of GameStats via our GameStats Email Form to let us know what you think of the site and what we can do to improve the service.
Thank you for your support,
The GameStats Team
Audio Surf 3
Audiosurf's addictive gameplay is a fun new way to experience your music collection.
You'd never know it by the millions of copies that Guitar Hero sells on an annual basis, but just a few years ago rhythm and music games such as Frequency, Amplitude, and Vib Ribbon were part of a fledgling genre that garnered plenty of critical attention but failed to sell very well. Audiosurf, which at the time of this review is available only as a downloadable title via Steam for $9.95, is a game that harks back to those days. You don't so much play the music stored on your computer as you experience it. The gameplay is simple but addictive. And while you'll have the most fun competing with friends for high scores, you can lose yourself in your music for extended periods and have a great time, too.
Audiosurf can best be described as a cross between the futuristic racer Wipeout and Harmonix's first music game, Frequency. Rather than play a simulated instrument, you use either the keyboard or mouse to move a futuristic craft left and right on a moving, floating track. Each track is unique because it's generated by analyzing the music that you've chosen for that particular track. You can pick any MP3, M4A, or WMA file (among a few other formats) that doesn't use digital rights management. Slow parts of songs go uphill and the track moves slowly, while faster song segments go downhill and the track moves extremely fast. There's no doubt that faster songs are the most exciting and the best for points, but part of the fun with Audiosurf is to see what kind of track a particular song will generate, so slow songs still have a place in the game.
The main objective of Audiosurf is to score lots and lots of points, which are earned by running into the different colored blocks that fill the different lanes of the track. As you collect a block, it falls into the 21-block, 3-by-7 board in front of your craft. If three or more of any color blocks that you've collected touch one another they're considered a cluster and disappear. The more blocks you have in a cluster, the more points that cluster is worth. You'll also earn more points for clusters that are made up of "hot" colors such as red and yellow, which are worth more than colors like blue and purple, but are also less plentiful.
The basics of Audiosurf are just that--basic. Once you've watched the included tutorial you'll have little difficulty getting all the way through songs and you might find yourself wondering where the challenge is. The challenge will become apparent to you the first time you see your position on the leaderboards for a popular song. If your score isn't at the bottom it's going to be near the bottom, and you're going to need to employ some strategy to move up the leaderboards. There are a number of ways to do this. For starters, there are 21 different characters that are divided into three classes. Each character/vehicle has its own unique abilities; some can jump blocks, others can grab a block and move it into a different lane. A few can shuffle blocks once you've collected them, and some can make an entire color vanish. There's even a driver that uses two cars, one of which is controlled via the keyboard while the other uses the mouse. Finding the character that best suits your play style is an integral part of improving your scores.
Another key method of earning better scores is using the various power-ups that are sprinkled among the blocks on the tracks. Storm power-ups throw several like-colored blocks onto your board; multiplier power-ups make your next cluster worth several times its normal value; and paint power-ups can turn all of the blocks in your board the same color, which results in huge clusters and higher scores. Another way to earn big points is to finish a song with an empty board. This is known as a clean finish and will net you a 25 percent bonus. At first, it may seem as though you'll never be able to move up the leaderboards; but mastering just a few simple techniques will yield much higher scores.
Audiosurf is a lot of fun, but it does have some problems and areas for improvement. We had a problem where the game didn't recognize that we'd purchased it and insisted it was a locked demo. This was quickly solved with a visit to the game's message board, but it's a well-known issue that should have been fixed by now. The game also generated blank tracks and froze on several occasions. There are a few design issues, too. Audiosurf analyzes your music to generate each track, but the blocks don't always follow the beat very well, so you'll sometimes feel as if you're playing a randomly generated track with a song you like in the background. Audiosurf is also a bit shallow. It's possible to lose yourself in the music for extended periods of time if you're keen on setting high scores, but if you're not a high-score maniac you might feel as if you've experienced everything the game has to offer after just a few hours, as there are no alternate modes of play. Nor is there any multiplayer outside of one character that lets a person control one ship with the keyboard while a second person guides the other ship with a mouse. Though you may eventually tire of the gameplay, there's never any shortage of tracks to play thanks to free weekly downloadable music courtesy of Audiosurf radio and, of course, your own ability to add music to your PC.
You'd never know it by the millions of copies that Guitar Hero sells on an annual basis, but just a few years ago rhythm and music games such as Frequency, Amplitude, and Vib Ribbon were part of a fledgling genre that garnered plenty of critical attention but failed to sell very well. Audiosurf, which at the time of this review is available only as a downloadable title via Steam for $9.95, is a game that harks back to those days. You don't so much play the music stored on your computer as you experience it. The gameplay is simple but addictive. And while you'll have the most fun competing with friends for high scores, you can lose yourself in your music for extended periods and have a great time, too.
Audiosurf can best be described as a cross between the futuristic racer Wipeout and Harmonix's first music game, Frequency. Rather than play a simulated instrument, you use either the keyboard or mouse to move a futuristic craft left and right on a moving, floating track. Each track is unique because it's generated by analyzing the music that you've chosen for that particular track. You can pick any MP3, M4A, or WMA file (among a few other formats) that doesn't use digital rights management. Slow parts of songs go uphill and the track moves slowly, while faster song segments go downhill and the track moves extremely fast. There's no doubt that faster songs are the most exciting and the best for points, but part of the fun with Audiosurf is to see what kind of track a particular song will generate, so slow songs still have a place in the game.
The main objective of Audiosurf is to score lots and lots of points, which are earned by running into the different colored blocks that fill the different lanes of the track. As you collect a block, it falls into the 21-block, 3-by-7 board in front of your craft. If three or more of any color blocks that you've collected touch one another they're considered a cluster and disappear. The more blocks you have in a cluster, the more points that cluster is worth. You'll also earn more points for clusters that are made up of "hot" colors such as red and yellow, which are worth more than colors like blue and purple, but are also less plentiful.
The basics of Audiosurf are just that--basic. Once you've watched the included tutorial you'll have little difficulty getting all the way through songs and you might find yourself wondering where the challenge is. The challenge will become apparent to you the first time you see your position on the leaderboards for a popular song. If your score isn't at the bottom it's going to be near the bottom, and you're going to need to employ some strategy to move up the leaderboards. There are a number of ways to do this. For starters, there are 21 different characters that are divided into three classes. Each character/vehicle has its own unique abilities; some can jump blocks, others can grab a block and move it into a different lane. A few can shuffle blocks once you've collected them, and some can make an entire color vanish. There's even a driver that uses two cars, one of which is controlled via the keyboard while the other uses the mouse. Finding the character that best suits your play style is an integral part of improving your scores.
Another key method of earning better scores is using the various power-ups that are sprinkled among the blocks on the tracks. Storm power-ups throw several like-colored blocks onto your board; multiplier power-ups make your next cluster worth several times its normal value; and paint power-ups can turn all of the blocks in your board the same color, which results in huge clusters and higher scores. Another way to earn big points is to finish a song with an empty board. This is known as a clean finish and will net you a 25 percent bonus. At first, it may seem as though you'll never be able to move up the leaderboards; but mastering just a few simple techniques will yield much higher scores.
Audiosurf is a lot of fun, but it does have some problems and areas for improvement. We had a problem where the game didn't recognize that we'd purchased it and insisted it was a locked demo. This was quickly solved with a visit to the game's message board, but it's a well-known issue that should have been fixed by now. The game also generated blank tracks and froze on several occasions. There are a few design issues, too. Audiosurf analyzes your music to generate each track, but the blocks don't always follow the beat very well, so you'll sometimes feel as if you're playing a randomly generated track with a song you like in the background. Audiosurf is also a bit shallow. It's possible to lose yourself in the music for extended periods of time if you're keen on setting high scores, but if you're not a high-score maniac you might feel as if you've experienced everything the game has to offer after just a few hours, as there are no alternate modes of play. Nor is there any multiplayer outside of one character that lets a person control one ship with the keyboard while a second person guides the other ship with a mouse. Though you may eventually tire of the gameplay, there's never any shortage of tracks to play thanks to free weekly downloadable music courtesy of Audiosurf radio and, of course, your own ability to add music to your PC.
Audio Surf 2
Valve Announces Left 4 Dead 2.
equel to Best-Selling Co-op Thriller Coming This Holiday
June 1, 2009 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2), the sequel to the best-selling and critically-acclaimed co-operative multiplayer thriller.
Coming exclusively to Xbox 360 and PC, L4D2 promises to set a new benchmark for co-operative action games and become one of 2009's marquee titles.
"A large part of how Left 4 Dead became 2008's top-selling new IP on Xbox 360 and the PC was the custom-tailored gameplay made possible by the AI Director," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "With the knowledge gained from creating the original, new technology, and a passionate team, L4D2 will set a new benchmark for cooperative action games."
Set for release on November 17, the title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and more.
Introducing the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played.
Featuring new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch.
Supported by a $10+ million marketing campaign, Left 4 Dead has sold over 2.5 million retail copies since it was released in November of 2008. Left 4 Dead 2 is targeted for release on Xbox 360 and the PC on November 17, 2009, and will be launched worldwide with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign across TV, Outdoor, and Online.
"Left 4 Dead was backed by our most aggressive advertising campaign to date, and resulted in a top 5 showing on two platforms during holiday 2008," said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. "Left 4 Dead 2 is a larger game and will be supported with even more consumer and retail advertising programs than the original."
Left 4 Dead 2 will be featured as the cover story on PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazines this month.
equel to Best-Selling Co-op Thriller Coming This Holiday
June 1, 2009 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2), the sequel to the best-selling and critically-acclaimed co-operative multiplayer thriller.
Coming exclusively to Xbox 360 and PC, L4D2 promises to set a new benchmark for co-operative action games and become one of 2009's marquee titles.
"A large part of how Left 4 Dead became 2008's top-selling new IP on Xbox 360 and the PC was the custom-tailored gameplay made possible by the AI Director," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "With the knowledge gained from creating the original, new technology, and a passionate team, L4D2 will set a new benchmark for cooperative action games."
Set for release on November 17, the title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaw, frying pan, axe, baseball bat, and more.
Introducing the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played.
Featuring new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch.
Supported by a $10+ million marketing campaign, Left 4 Dead has sold over 2.5 million retail copies since it was released in November of 2008. Left 4 Dead 2 is targeted for release on Xbox 360 and the PC on November 17, 2009, and will be launched worldwide with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign across TV, Outdoor, and Online.
"Left 4 Dead was backed by our most aggressive advertising campaign to date, and resulted in a top 5 showing on two platforms during holiday 2008," said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. "Left 4 Dead 2 is a larger game and will be supported with even more consumer and retail advertising programs than the original."
Left 4 Dead 2 will be featured as the cover story on PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazines this month.
Audio Surf 1
Audiosurf is an award winning[5] puzzle/rhythm hybrid game created by Invisible Handlebar, a personal company created by Dylan Fitterer.[6] Its track-like stages visually mimic the music the player chooses, while the player races across several lanes collecting colored blocks that appear in sync with the music. The game was released on February 15, 2008 over Steam; the full version was for a long time only available for purchase through Steam, but was later released as a retail product in Europe, by Ascaron. Audiosurf is the first game to use Valve's Steamworks technology.
n Audiosurf the player controls a levitating spaceship-like craft similar to those found in Wipeout or F-Zero. The player then maneuvers it down a colorful multi-laned highway, collecting blocks in a manner similar to Klax. The ship is controlled either by a mouse, the arrow keys, the number keys, or a Gamepad. The game also supports the rumble feature of the Xbox 360 controller.
The music used in the game is chosen from the user's own library, from almost any DRM-free format, as well as standard redbook CDs; in addition, Audiosurf includes the entire soundtrack to the Orange Box as part of the download.[1] An "Audiosurf Radio" tab is also included on the "Song Select" screen that allows the user to play the Audiosurf Overture, as well as a shifting selection of songs by featured Independent artists.
Scoring points
The goal of the game is to score points by collecting colored blocks (called 'cars') and forming clusters of 3 or more of the same color. The more blocks one accumulates in a cluster, the more points are scored. In the default color setting of the game, blocks which appear in hot colors such as red and yellow are worth more points, while cool colors such as blue and magenta are worth less. Players are also awarded bonus points at the end of each track based on feats they achieved. These include finishing the song with no blocks left in the grid or collecting all the blocks of a certain color. Each track for each difficulty level has three medals: bronze, silver, and gold. These are awarded upon reaching the point total required for them.
There are also additional game modes in the game where the goal of the game changes. For example, in the "Mono" game mode, players must collect the blocks, regardless of their color, and avoid the grey blocks. If the player can avoid the grey blocks until the finish he/she will gain a 30% bonus in addition to the sum of their points earned.
Upon completing the track, the score is uploaded to the score server together with the track length and form, any feats achieved, and the character used including the ironmode option if this was enabled. Scores are stored per song title, allowing people to compete. The uploaded length and track form make it possible to detect mislabelled or variant versions of songs in the score browser, and an option is provided to report possible fraudulent scores. There are three different high score lists for each song, for casual, pro, and elite characters respectively.
Pedro Macedo Camacho was the person behind the Original Soundtrack and Sound Effects Supervision on Audiosurf. The Audiosurf Overture was a track previously done by Pedro as the main demo track for a virtual synthesizer called Predator from Rob Papen.
The IGF awarded composer stated in his website that "This award would have never been possible to achieve if not coupled with such an amazing game by Dylan Fitterer.
n Audiosurf the player controls a levitating spaceship-like craft similar to those found in Wipeout or F-Zero. The player then maneuvers it down a colorful multi-laned highway, collecting blocks in a manner similar to Klax. The ship is controlled either by a mouse, the arrow keys, the number keys, or a Gamepad. The game also supports the rumble feature of the Xbox 360 controller.
The music used in the game is chosen from the user's own library, from almost any DRM-free format, as well as standard redbook CDs; in addition, Audiosurf includes the entire soundtrack to the Orange Box as part of the download.[1] An "Audiosurf Radio" tab is also included on the "Song Select" screen that allows the user to play the Audiosurf Overture, as well as a shifting selection of songs by featured Independent artists.
Scoring points
The goal of the game is to score points by collecting colored blocks (called 'cars') and forming clusters of 3 or more of the same color. The more blocks one accumulates in a cluster, the more points are scored. In the default color setting of the game, blocks which appear in hot colors such as red and yellow are worth more points, while cool colors such as blue and magenta are worth less. Players are also awarded bonus points at the end of each track based on feats they achieved. These include finishing the song with no blocks left in the grid or collecting all the blocks of a certain color. Each track for each difficulty level has three medals: bronze, silver, and gold. These are awarded upon reaching the point total required for them.
There are also additional game modes in the game where the goal of the game changes. For example, in the "Mono" game mode, players must collect the blocks, regardless of their color, and avoid the grey blocks. If the player can avoid the grey blocks until the finish he/she will gain a 30% bonus in addition to the sum of their points earned.
Upon completing the track, the score is uploaded to the score server together with the track length and form, any feats achieved, and the character used including the ironmode option if this was enabled. Scores are stored per song title, allowing people to compete. The uploaded length and track form make it possible to detect mislabelled or variant versions of songs in the score browser, and an option is provided to report possible fraudulent scores. There are three different high score lists for each song, for casual, pro, and elite characters respectively.
Pedro Macedo Camacho was the person behind the Original Soundtrack and Sound Effects Supervision on Audiosurf. The Audiosurf Overture was a track previously done by Pedro as the main demo track for a virtual synthesizer called Predator from Rob Papen.
The IGF awarded composer stated in his website that "This award would have never been possible to achieve if not coupled with such an amazing game by Dylan Fitterer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)