Comic-Con Road Trip 2010: Part 3
The Comic-Con chronicles of Mr. Steve Brand and Mr. Ben Talbot representing Rare…
Day 4 – Friday 23rd July 2010
It’s our final day at Comic-Con and this one is set to be the most hectic and exciting yet. Steve, Elena (from Microsoft) and myself have been demoing Kinect Sports to the comic-loving public – and plenty of their mums, dads and young children.
The turnout at the Xbox Experience Lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel has been huge, and the response nothing short of magical. You only have to look at the smiles of wonderment on people’s faces when they pick up our virtual bowling ball, or hear the chuckles when we take on the 110m Hurdles to sense that it’s going down well.
The Hard Rock Hotel is also a fantastic place for a bit of celeb-spotting. Steve catches sight of Simon Pegg, and Lou Ferrigno who played The Hulk in the 70s TV show walks past moments later. Exciting stuff, but not quite as exciting as when we saw Kelly Brook outside our hotel the night before.
We don’t manage to snap any photos before they’re whisked away in SUVs (we’d make rubbish paparazzi), but Steve does manage to get a pic with Danny DeVito. Steve was demoing Sports at SyFy Channel’s late-night party, and he also saw Wesley Snipes, Seth Green and some of the cast of Glee.
Jul 2010
Comic-Con Road Trip 2010: Part 2
The Comic-Con chronicles of Mr. Steve Brand and Mr. Ben Talbot representing Rare…
Day 3 – Thursday 22nd July 2010
Today the convention starts proper, so after a meat-free breakfast (last night’s excesses still weighing heavy on our constitutions) we make the 15-minute walk back down 5th Avenue to the Hard Rock Hotel.
The morning starts pretty slowly, with most punters probably crammed into the convention centre across the road, but after a couple of hours a steady stream of visitors begins showing up in the Xbox lounge. Many weighed down with their oversize bags full of tat. Kinect Sports gets a really good reception all day long. There are a lot of families in attendance, and each of them leave telling us that Kinect and a copy of Sports are now on their shopping list.
We’ve said it times before, but you really can’t underestimate the reaction some people have when stepping in front of the Sensor for the first time. We win the ‘cutest punter of the day’ award when one father turns up with his three-year old daughter to play. After a little adjustment of the Kinect Sensor she’s able to compete in the Hurdles and has a blast doing so… awww.
Aisha Tyler!
After heading back to the hotel around 4:30 and making the mistake of lying down, I wake with a start at 6pm and dive into the shower as I’m meant to be meeting Ben at 6:15 so we can make our way back down to staff an evening Xbox event. I groggily step out of the lift on the wrong floor and walk past Dolph Lundgren on the stairs. Ben sees “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in the lift and is slightly tempted to shout “WHAT?!” before thinking better of it.
Jul 2010
Comic-Con Road Trip 2010: Part 1
The Comic-Con chronicles of Mr. Steve Brand and Mr. Ben Talbot representing Rare…
Day 1 (ish) – Tuesday 20th July 2010
The Kinect Sports road trip continues! After a rather gruelling couple of flights including a two hour stopover in Chicago where it turns out Ben is on standby for the connecting flight, we finally make it to San Diego, approximately 24 hours after leaving our homes. As ever after such a journey, we eat a burger, drink a beer and crash out in readiness for the following day…
Day 2 – Wednesday 21st July 2010
Today’s plan is official setup day, so we head down to the Hard Rock Hotel, which is where all the Kinect titles are going to be shown. The hotel sits across the main road and tram route from the convention centre, so we are hoping there will be a steady stream of punters pushed our way.
It turns out that we’re too keen and the Xbox folks aren’t there, so we head to the convention centre and pick up temporary passes so we can go in and have a look around. Unfortunately we can’t get any photos inside at this stage – suffice to say it’s a scene of calm chaos. Much like E3, all the booths are being put together very much at the last minute in readiness for the preview opening at 5pm this evening.
Jul 2010
Develop 2010 Keynote Video
As you will have read last week, Rare’s Executive Producer of Technology & Communications Nick hosted a keynote speech at this year’s Develop conference, probably the biggest gaming get-together in the UK. Today I come bearing a video that contains the main highlights of said presentation.
“Why should I care about a presentation written for developers?” I hear you cry. Well here’s why:
- More Kinect information than you can shake a Tesco vitamin tube at
- The first (and probably last) ever footage of now-defunct title The Fast and The Furriest
- Exclusive prototype footage of Football (Soccer for you across the pond) from Kinect Sports
- See three people running and jumping (I know it doesn’t sound exciting, but add in a hairy journalist and you’re onto a winner)
- And finally, some shots of Brighton, in particular the burnt-out remains of the once-lovely pier
For your convenience, the video is embedded below and I don’t want to hear any giggling when Nick whips out his controller prototype… it’s just a wand, and no, it doesn’t include rumble.
Jul 2010
Brighton Rocks
People usually go to Brighton for fish and chips, kiss-me-quick hats and staying in posh hotels. However, this is the one time of the year that you don’t have to be a bronzed beauty or a member of the Conservative Party to feel at home. The Develop Conference plays host to speakers from all over the games industry, including our own Executive Producer of Technology & Communications Nick Burton. It’s a forum for everything from voice-acting to content pipelines to motion control, and maybe a little ice cream…
Nick’s Diary: It’s rehearsal time – on the train. My fellow passengers must think I’ve got some kind of mental health issue as I sit there mumbling to myself about Sports, Kinect and 25 years of being at Rare.
So I head over to the Hilton Metropole to see Susan and Andy (the conference organisers) as I want to check out the lecture rooms and pick up my speaker’s pass. The keynote is taking place in this gigantic ballroom, which sounds scary, but it’s OK as I spoke here a few years back about the making of Jetpac Refuelled. The other guys from Rare are still lost on the motorway somewhere.
Ben’s Note: We were supposed to be joining Nick much earlier in the day, but our epic search for a motorway service station with a Burger King was proving fruitless. The closest one had recently burned down and been replaced with a pie-selling gazebo.
Nick’s Diary: Then it’s off to the Pub DuVin for the conference opening drinks where I run into my old boss and good friend Kieran and some other friends from Develop and Sony – I crash dinner with them but I don’t think they mind. The others finally arrive about 11:30pm and head straight for the bar. I join them for a quick drink (Sav has somehow conjured up a foot-long from Subway) and then we all turn in – it’s a big day tomorrow…
Crikey it’s windy, overcast and, oh, raining a bit, so no filming in the sun like Ben wanted to. We end up filming around the hotel and generally getting in people’s way, including Culture Minister Ed Vaizey. I think he thought Ben was press and wanted to film him. Erm, no, sorry Ed, and you wouldn’t let us anyway.
Ben’s Note: The camera equipment was heavy, but to make matters worse it also came in a bright blue rucksack. My friends from the press kept asking if I keep a breegull in there. I suspect they may have been mocking me.
Nick’s Diary: That’s it, I’m on stage and going for it full tilt, well as full tilt as I can. Have some fun getting people from the audience to run about on stage and everyone generally seems to be enjoying the lecture so I finish happy.
Ben’s Note: Nick talked about how Rare has a long history of experimenting with motion control, from the little-known Super Glove Ball for Mattel’s Power Glove controller, to a scrapped prototype game called Soulcatcher (with a comically shaped wand.) He also covered the challenges of recognising the way each person moves slightly differently in a motion-controlled game.
Nick’s Diary: Time is getting on now and Andrew Oliver (Chief Technical Officer at Blitz Games) and I head off to the business centre to go through our next lecture. We’re both really happy with the content and manage to go and find an empty conference room for a full-on dry run. Andrew has his stuff nailed now and I’m pretty happy with my sections too. We get into the conference room and find the stage is tiny – really, really tiny – good job we are old friends then!
We are both in the zone and the lecture is over in a flash. It’s the last session of the day and I keep mentioning we are keeping people from the bar, but no-one actually seems to mind (or they are being polite). We take a few questions, wrap up and are done. Deep breath – and – relax…
Ben’s Note: On the way home, my chips blew away in the wind. Sob.
Jul 2010
Mini-Scribes: July 13, 2010
Back already to answer more letters! What, did you think it would fizzle out after one edition? Yeah, we sort of did too.
Q: Hello, Scribes. I am a huge fan of the Conker series. There has been a debate regarding the Machine used in Castle Von Tedistein. First off, what exactly is the Machine’s function? Is it a Time Machine? Is it a Machine that makes Machine Tediz, or is it a Machine that converts regular Tediz into Machine Tediz? If it is a Time Machine, then my theory of the war timeline will make sense.
Alpheta
A: Conker designer Chris Seavor says: “It’s a portal into the future, through which the future Tediz can come (like The Terminator).”
See that? An actual response from a first-hand source, with proper, clear-cut information. Cherish it. We’ve never been able to predict the appearance of such anomalies and probably never will.
Q: If I do Mumbo’s rain dance in Kinect Sports, will I win an in-game reward?
Jake Ford
A: No promises, but… well, no. Just generally no. Unless one of the programmers reads this and includes it in an attempt to be ‘funny’.
Q: Yo! You great game making dudes you. Any chance of some Jet Force Gemini news? Is that a JFG image of some kind I see in your games section (currently greyed out)?
Fingers etc. crossed,
Steve
A: No JFG news at the moment. Even ‘background chatter’ would be over-generous. But we can always dig out some authentic JFG discussion from the space year 2000 in our handy Blast from the Past feature! Which honestly requires a lot of work on our part! It does!
Blast from the Past: February 11, 2000
Q: I finally beat the “too long” JFG in 25:99 according to the handy Jet Force clock, and the game has been out long enough, I don’t mind giving this semi-spoiler to ask a question. Why does the ending have _NO_ mention of Floyd?! No memorial, no “oh yeah, the plucky robot saved the planet, let’s go party,” no “Offical Rar! Day.” Not like he made any kind of sacrifice or anything…
ExoByte
A: Here’s the official word from the team. Brace yourself for its harsh logic:
“The original ending was intended to show a tear falling from Floyd’s eye before he was blown into a thousand pieces, and a gold statue was to be put up on Goldwood as a lasting tribute to his sacrifice… then we discovered the designer of Conker could do a fantastic Jimmy Saville impression.”
Got a question for Scribes/Mini-Scribes? Send it here. We reserve the right to answer it wherever, whenever and however we like, or just pretend it never happened. The chances improve in tandem with the not-rubbishness of the question.
Jul 2010
Digbeth Day Afternoon
So yesterday some of us went over for our first look at the new Rare Birmingham facility, part of Fazeley Studios in the Digbeth area of the city. It opened for business a couple of weeks back, and our Flex art department and contract test staff have already moved in. This seemed like a good time to get footage for an eventual video tour of the place and pull together some thoughts from the people running it. So the four of us (Leigh, Mike and Ben from the web/community/publishing side of things plus designer Dale who’s a bit handy with a camera) piled into the big automatic company Volvo and took to the M6.
It turns out that Rare’s suite of units within the impressive Fazeley Studios complex is more or less divided in two, with the artists gathered in one sprawling open-plan room and the Kinect testers in dedicated bays over on the other side. We sneaked a look at plans for slick wall art based on the new branding, got a whistle-stop tour from site manager Lynne and test manager Huw, then went off to storm the city centre for appropriate establishing shots. And burgers. After that, we split into teams in the style of 1980s British TV series Treasure Hunt (Mike was Anneka Rice) and embarked upon the serious business of making people look really uncomfortable in front of a camera.
One whirlwind afternoon later, we’d put away footage of all the Digbeth top brass, testers at work trying to break Kinect Sports and scenic views of Birmingham including the Bullring (note: not a real bull ring) and giant Green Man sculpture a few streets from the studio. The next job is to hammer all that into shape as soon as we can and get it uploaded for those who are interested. Then at some point we’ll have to balance it out by giving our Twycross HQ the same treatment…
Other things discovered or confirmed on the day:
- If you’ve only driven a manual car, prepare to be truly freaked by the absence of clutch in an automatic.
- Fazeley Studios’ main entrance hall is seriously swish. The fancy chairs are beaten only by the elephant sculptures.
- At one point Dale expessed an inclination to carry around an ‘emergency pie’ at all times.
- Rare Birmingham has Old Jamaica ginger beer in the free drinks fridge – where’s ours in Twycross?
- The best photo of the day is often the last one you take (see below right).
Jul 2010
Agent 4 – Reporting for Duty
An Agent’s work is never done. Even once all the freaks and militants in Pacific City have been crushed, there’s still more fighting to be had in Perfect Dark multiplayer.
Unlocking the playable Agent 4 character is pretty straightforward – all you need is a Crackdown 2 save game on your hard disk or memory unit, and he’ll be ready for action in PD’s Battle Simulator. To make things even easier, we’ve created this short video detailing exactly how it all works, plus a glimpse of the menacing metal law-enforcer in action.
Sadly we couldn’t find anyone who could do a good enough impression of the Agency Chief for a tutorial voiceover, but feel free to do that bit yourself when you’re next playing PD on Xbox Live.
Jul 2010
