I’ve recently returned from the International Game Developers Association North East Chapter in Newcastle. That’s a mouthful, and unfortunately it doesn’t make an acronym like SHEILD to make it sound more cool or interesting.
Everyone’s familiar with the likes of E3 and Leipzig; these events are huge and usually geared towards press to build hype and spread the word about all the new, wonderful things that are just around the corner. Instead of watching a presentation with some awesome wonderful CG trailer for Awesome Game 4 with a list of all its ‘features’, at IGDA meets I’m told how Awesome Game 4 was made, the design process, the techniques, the problems, the facts… The key word there being ‘facts’, because unfortunately facts become a vague general idea of things-you-might-expect amongst hype.
No one but no one knows if a game is going to be truly decent until you can sit and play the finished product for hours.
So amongst factual friends, from Midway and Eutechnyx, to programmers-to-be from Northumbria University, we analysed the abuse of Spores’ user generated content (you should know what I’m talking about without rude picture assistance), and watched Vin Diesel dancing in a strip club. (We were talking about the lighting, obviously).
Our evening was rounded off with a Buzz! Quiz, starring our very own video game questions which I helped put together.
To my disappointment, my absolute favourite question didn’t pop up during the competition. I was also ashamed no-one knew the upcoming Tomb Raider game was ‘Underworld’, I may forgive them for that, but Kirsten I’m not so sure about… Anyway, here is my favourite question:
To date, how many Final Fantasy games are there?
This includes remakes, on any platform, all the so-called ‘Final’ Fantasy games, every single one, how many are there? (Unfortunately anyone who replies with an answer has the power of the internet, so I have no way of knowing if you could genuinely get it right. However I will giggle to myself if your answer is below 90).
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