L33TgAMING ZINE

L33T

#1

“Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about

rock-n-roll.”- Shigeru Miyamoto

L33T GAMING ZINE #1

Contents

Indie Consoles

Virtual World War

The Real Next Gen

Q&A AJ Lornie

Review: Ready Player One

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p.6

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All content produced by AJ SalisburyIf you have any feedback on this Zine please contact me here:

alex.salisbury@hotmail.co.uk

INDIE CONSOLES:

before the xbox one and playstation 4 hit our shores the U.K. will be

invaded by three consoles with the sole intention of shaking up the

gaming industry.

INDIE CONSOLES:The CROwD SOURCED PROJECTS that are trying TO CHANGE THE

rules of the gaming INDUSTRY

before the xbox one and playstation 4 hit our shores the U.K. will be

invaded by three consoles with the sole intention of shaking up the

gaming industry.

The next generation of home consoles is also seeing a new

type of gaming machine hit the market, these so called “indie consoles” are bringing low cost gaming platforms into your living room. With them comes a swarm of new games made by smaller studios, imagine a console dedicated to playing all those amazing games that were available on XBOX arcade and you’ve basically hit the nail on the head.

These new consoles come in various forms, from established companies dipping their toe into the console market like Valve’s Steam Box, first timers bringing refreshing

ideas to the table like the Ouya or the Gamestick, something that’s taking portable to the extreme, although we are not talking 3DS or Playstation Vita style portable.

Everyone is eager to see these consoles hit the market and many believe this is going to be the big leveller in the games industry. AJ Lornie, head of audio design company Forte Sounds, said: “I really believe the new generation of indie-orientated consoles are something really exciting. From an industrial perspective, they help to further democratise game development & publishing, kicking on from what we’ve seen with mobile games.”

Toby Ellis, one third of Killer Bitz video blog, believes the Ouya has something very special to offer: “It’s one of those things which sounds too good to be true. It reeks of integrity and optimism for the future of gaming in an industry saturated with gritty pessimism. Will it work? No idea. Should it be tried? Absolutely.”

What makes it so special then? Well firstly it doesn’t require a development kit so anyone can produce a game for it which means that it should feature a lot of unique games that would not necessarily see the light of day. On top of this all the games available on the Ouya store are free to try, so if it’s not your cup of tea just don’t buy it.

The Ouya was crowd sourced on Kickstarter, it raised $8.6 million on the site the second-highest amount ever, which means a lot of people are interested in this idea. The only drawback so far is that big developers will need to take a risk if they want to produce something for it, but at only $99 dollars it should be a great buy even if it only supports true indie-developed games.

OUYA

The Game Stick is the indie console to change the way we think of gaming the most. It’s still a console that you plug into the TV but, it literally plugs into a HDMI slot. The console itself is the size of a flash drive, now that’s portable, which has built-in Bluetooth for connecting controllers and Wi-Fi capability so you can access their store.

So far there are 200 android based games available for the Gamestick in their library and this is constantly being expanded upon. Unfortunately the thing that makes this console cool is the thing that might turn people away from it, due to its size it’s the least powerful and if your TV doesn’t support power over HDMI you’ll need an adapter.

When asked about the Gamestick Toby summed it up like this: “It’s an Ouya but less. Twenty bucks less, and because of that it loses a lot of functionality. There’s no touchpad, no clear policy regarding multiplayer and a smaller library of games confirmed. The controller looks cool though, which might put it ahead given that the Ouya’s controller apparently feels cheap.”

We all know Valve for their fantastic Half-Life series of games and their brilliant PC games service Steam but now they are moving in a different direction and attempting to create their first console. But, imagine Steam running through your home TV with an extensive library of new indie titles and PC classics. Desktop gamers often think of themselves as above the console gamer, but maybe this will be something that can unite the gaming community as a whole.

James Dance, owner of London-based games café Loading, feels that Valve will be offering the best service for their customers: “Steam Box is something I’m really eager to see happen just because Valve have a great approach to business set ups. As a commercial Steam member you get any first title free on launch as part of the subscription as well as their back catalogue for example”

One of the interesting aspects of the Steam Box is that Valve will be outsourcing the production of it to other companies; this should mean that there will be various models each with their own specs. So you could picked up a basic model if you just want to play the indie games and some of the older library available on Steam or you could splash out and get the high end version which should be able to run all the latest PC games being released. As with PCs the Steam Box will be upgradeable, so you can buy new graphics cards or CPUs to keep your version up to date.

GAMESTICK

STEAM BOX

VIRTUALWORLD

WAR

WORLDWAR

The first shots have been fired in the next-generations war against reality, where, according to Sony, imagination is the only weapon. The big green X of America and the stealthy black samurai from Japan are at each other’s throats again. Sony and Microsoft have both revealed new consoles to be released this year but which one is going to win this generations battle?

What will the new consoles offer? Will they simply be the greatest gaming system we have ever known or will the 8th generation of home consoles be a more encapsulating experience? If there is a time for evolution in the gaming industry then maybe it’s now. With high speed broadband common place and instantaneousness being an integral piece of modern life how will these consoles adapt?

Above: The world’s press all clamour to get a shot of Microsoft’s latest console the XBOX ONE.

show off our best goals or most unbelievable kills to our friends on Facebook? Instant sharing of your gaming videos to your favourite social networking site, the ability to stream live video on the internet and the ability for friends to watch ‘over your shoulder’ and even take control if necessary were all announced by Sony.

So, social networking is going to be a major part of the new-gen, don’t think that will come as a major surprise to anyone. In Microsoft’s reveal of the XBOX ONE on the 21st May, Don Mattrick, President of Interactive Entertainment Business for Microsoft, summed up in a matter of seconds. “Our console does all that sharing stuff,” said Mattrick nonchalantly.

Sony stepped up to the table first and on the 20th February

revealed the Playstation 4, well they revealed a new Dualshock controller anyway. Although the new console wasn’t featured Mark Cerny, creator of NES classic Marble Madness and Sony’s lead architect for the PS4 explained, in the least subtle dig at Microsoft ever, that Sony ‘haven’t just created a box’.

“The PS4 is the most personalised gaming experience available today and will make the best franchises even better. Nothing will come between the platform and the joy of playing,” added Cerny.

But is this all gamers want now? Do we not want to be able to flaunt our greatness to the wider world,

1: Bungie’s Destiny available on both PS4 and

XBOX ONE

2: Play as vigilante Aiden Pearce in Watchdogs

3: The beautiful, The Witness

4: Each new XBOX ONE will ship with a Kinect 2.0

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2

3

4

At the end of the day there is one reason why people tuned into either of the conferences and that was games. These systems, at the end of the day, are games consoles and gamers are the people that drive sales at the beginning of any consoles life. Apparently Sony got the memo about games but the XBOX ONE’s must have been spam filtered as Microsoft’s conference only revealed a grand total of, drum roll please, seven games.

Seven games?! One was Forza Motorsport 5 that will always attract fans, four of them were the standard EA Sports titles we get

year-in year-out as and the latest rehashing of Call of Duty entitled Ghosts. The only original title revealed, Quantum Break, was a less than convincing part live-action, part videogame that didn’t set any hearts alight. But, let’s give Bill Gates’ posse a chance, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is just over the hill and Phil Spencer, the Corporate VP, announced: “There are fifteen exclusive titles coming to XBOX ONE in the first year and eight of these will be brand new IPs (franchises).”

At Sony’s offering they announced eleven games, none of which were the yearly iterations of Fifa or COD that we are used to. The big news was that Bungie, original developers of Halo, will finally be producing for the Playstation. Their new first person MMO Destiny, which according to the reclusive Jason Jones, co-founder of Bungie, will ‘turn the FPS genre on its head’, will be a launch title

for PS4 and this coupled with impressive games like Watchdogs and Diablo 3, firmly place Sony in the driving seat when it comes to gaming. However, nearly all of these titles are available on the XBOX ONE as well.

In the last year or so gaming on the 360 and PS3 has taken a bit of a backseat. More people now use their home consoles for services such as Netflix or Lovefilm and this is something that Microsoft is attempting to capitalise on. Near the start of their conference Mattrick explained that: “XBOX ONE will be where all your entertainment comes to life in one place, it will be an-all-in one system built for the future.”

Microsoft didn’t disappoint, as well as the usual streaming services they revealed that live TV will be able through your XBOX ONE. Although some were sceptical about how this would work in

Never stop playing, unless you’re updating Fa-cebook, sharing your lastest video or if your friend takes contol and

The new Dualshock 4 controller which features a touch pad in between the analog sticks amonst other improvements.

Europe or Japan, the demo was certainly slick. Using only Kinect 2.0 voice controls Mattrick switched between channels in a flash, opened up the internet in a side window and searched for relevant content for what he was watching.

Add in to this improved Kinect recognition, an almost instantaneous start up time and immediate switching between games and TV and the big green X is looking like it’s aiming at a much broader audience than Sony is. Gaming god Peter Molyneux (Fable, Civilization) said: “Microsoft are not worried about Sony, they are looking at the Amazon’s and the Apple’s of the world. They are trying to transcend gaming.”

With the announcement that Steven Spielberg is on board to produce an XBOX Live exclusive Halo series you can see Mr. Molyneux’s perspective. Microsoft is breaking away from

gaming and turning their sights on the entertainment market, but will Sony follow suit? They don’t have the immense financial backing that the XBOX ONE will have so don’t expect an exclusive Uncharted series appearing on PS4 anytime soon.

Have Microsoft dropped the ball with their announcement featuring so few games? How does Sony respond to the entertainment side of the XBOX ONE? If anything the XBOX reveal has blown the doors wide open on the market and has well and truly divided the opinions of gamers. It has left us with more questions than answers and we all wait with bated breath for the second battle of the war at what promises to be the most anticipated E3 in years.

Messi and co return for another yearly kickabout in a less than surprsing Fifa 14 announcement during the XBOX ONE reveal.

Steven Spielberg is set to produce Microsoft’s big budget venture into TV with the exclusive Halo TV series.

oc•u•lus noun:1. a round or eyelike opening or design, in particular.

2. a circular window

rift noun:a crack, split or break in something

You can basically forget about the PS4 and XBOX ONE, the real next generation of gaming is coming in the form of the Oculus Rift a total immersion 3D headset that transports you into the world of your favourite games. There have been many attempts at virtual reality headsets but the crowd-sourced Rift is the first to really set the industry on fire.

Many designers see the Rift as the next evolution in gaming and it’s creating a massive buzz amongst them for the future. Valve have already adapted Team Fortress 2

for it, the development kit ships with a Rift-ready copy of iD’s Doom3 BFG edition and free-to-play online Mech game, Hawken, has adapted their engine to the work with Oculus’ kit.

Oculus inventor Palmer Luckey was a head mounted display (HMD) designer at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative technologies and earned a reputation as having the world’s largest collection of HMDs. He decided that there needed to be something available for the consumer market and that he was the man to accept the challenge.

The Oculus Rift is a new window onto the games industry, something that could possibly crack the market and open it’s eyes to the next evolution in videogaming.

Palmer explains in a video on the Oculus website: “I was interested in stereoscopic displays and HMDs. The problem was nothing gave me the experience that I wanted; I was looking for something like the Matrix, where I could plug in and actually be in the game. I set out to change that with the Oculus Rift.”

He began developing an immersive unit that would give him that experience and addressed some of the issues that had affected development of 3D HMD’s in the past. Most only had a field of view of around 40 degrees, which made it feel like having a TV strapped to your head. Luckey expanded this

to a massive 100 degrees so the headset would fill in your peripheral vision too. Couple this with ultra-low latency motion tracking and 3D stereoscopic vision and the Rift was ready to set the industry alight.

This was an incredible chance for developers and gamers to

experience something new and Palmer continued to explain that when John Carmack, creator of Doom and Quake, saw his product he reached out to him. When interviewed about it Carmack said: “What I see now, I honestly think, is the best VR demo that the world has ever seen and we are certainly

“Games are something I’m really passionate about, but I’m even more passionate about taking games to the next level” - Palmer Luckey, inventor of the Oculus

going to take this into our future projects.”

When the Rift was showcased at last year’s E3 gamers were amazed at how ‘real’ games felt. The immersion was so high that people that tested it said it felt weird to be moving with a gamepad instead of your legs, although keep an eye out for omni-directional treadmills that are fast approaching and could solve this issue.

Development kits are already available and many top studios are on board with Oculus’ vision. After receiving 40,000 orders for the Rift through their Kickstarter campaign Palmer is in the process of creating a consumer-based version, named the Rift 2.0, that some are speculating could be available for home use by the end of 2014.

Whether this headset can work with Playstation 4 or XBOX ONE is yet to be seen but if the system works as well as the primary previews are showing then surely Microsoft and Sony would be crazy not to adapt it for their consoles.

But, gaming may not be the only use for the Rift. Imagine a world where we interact online, possibly learning in virtual schools and university where the world’s top academics could take classes consisting of hundreds, or possibly thousands, of students all represented by avatars, or video calling in virtual chat rooms where it is like being right there with your family and friends. The possible applications for this are limitless; could the development of the Oculus Rift lead us forward into a golden age of virtual life? Only time will tell.

We recently met AJ Lornie, head of IGM nominated sound design studio Forte Sounds, to discuss where he is in the business and what the future has in store. The 28-year-old ex-music lecturer has changed careers and is now immersed in something he has always wanted to do.

Forte Sounds is still in its infancy, it’s only 18 months old, but has already been nominated for an industry award for its work. Nestled in the wilds of Cornwall it provides vital services for companies based all over the country and proves that you don’t need to be in a city to have something to offer the industry.

What services does Forte Sounds offer to potential clients?

Music composition, sound design, creating all the in-game effects and implementing them into various types of games engines so they are interactive, any sounds you hear in a game we have to make them from scratch, it’s endless amounts of fun.

How many people comprise the Forte team?

Currently it’s me for 100 days a week and my partner Lucy works a couple of days a week, she deals with some of the marketing and day-to-day admin stuff that take a bit of the load off. Hopefully in the coming months I’m going to be able to take some additional staff on.

Q&A FORTE SOUNDS Ltd.

You have three studios that you work from, where are they based?

They’re all based in Cornwall, we have two in St. Austell and the third is in Perranporth where we outsource work, especially for larger tracks. For example, if we need to record a choir or some really large percussion sections. It’s just a much bigger space to work in, but we don’t use it too much.

Was it a conscious decision to base your studio in Cornwall?

Oh, absolutely. I’m very proud to be Cornish (AJ even holds a GCSE in Cornish Language) and I like to shout about all the good things this county has to offer. One of

the big advantages, from a cold hearted business position, is that it’s massively cheaper down here, so we can offer the same quality services but as a cheaper price than someone in say London. There are a lot of really talented people down here that don’t get the opportunities in the creative industries because they’re based in Cornwall. I’ve been partnering with other industries such as TV production, filmmakers and design companies to try and create a homogenous creative network in the county.

You do a lot of work for mobile games, do you feel that smartphones and their games have added an additional aspect to the industry?

More than anything I think it’s democratised it, the publishers used to rule what the few developers could do. Now that it costs next-to-nothing to produce a pretty cool game that a million people could download. It’s more accessible than ever for people to take their ideas and make them reality and this means there’s more work for people like me.

You were recently nominated for an IGM award for sound design, how did that feel?

It was a massive shock, I didn’t expect it, I was incredibly proud of the sound work I did for SwipeBomb (the game which was nominated), but I didn’t think it was pushing any

boundaries so it was a surprise. But to be held in the same regard as composer and development teams I highly respect and admire was a massive pat on the back. It gives me faith that I’m moving in the right direction.

Finally, where do you see Forte Sounds in five years?

Run by a couple of clones, that’d be good. Seriously though, I would like to take a bit more of a hands off approach. I’d still like to be involved in the projects but have a team of other designers to help do the work. The main plan is to be the go-to place for music and sound design in the industry.

READY PLAYER

ONE?Teenager Wade Watts is humanity’s only hope against a global conglomerate trying to take the only thing left living for in a dystopian future, the internet. His avatar Parzival may be the only thing left standing between humankinds

rights and a totalitarian future.

How would you describe a super nerd? Someone that drives a Delorean modified

to look like the famous time machine from Back to the Future? A person that has knowledge of the most obscure Japanese TV shows featuring giant robots and bigger monsters? Or somebody that pretty much writes a whole book about a video game?

Well Ernest Cline ticks all three of these boxes and has probably written the greatest sci-fi novel of the last 10 years, Ready Player One. Never heard of him or the book? Didn’t think so, Ernest Cline is a novelist, screenwriter, spoken word artist and a serious gaming freak.

Above: A poster from one of Ernest Cline’s numerous book signingsRight: A selection of cover from the various editions of Ready Player One

Ready Player One is set in a dystopian future where the financial crisis has crippled whole nations and an energy crisis has forced people to live in multi-story caravan parks called Stacks. In this terrible future there is one shining light, the OASIS, or the Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation, which is a virtual reality platform where everybody works, goes to school and spends their free time.

When the reclusive creator of the OASIS, James Halliday, dies he leaves behind a video detailing that his unimaginable fortune will be given to the first person able to complete the game that he has created inside the OASIS. So begins the hunt for Halliday’s Easter egg that will change the future of the OASIS forever.

Step forward Wade Owen Watts an orphan better known as his online alter-ego Parzival (an alternate spelling of Percival the Knight of the Round Table who found the Holy Grail). He, along with fellow egg hunters (gunters) Aech, Art3mis, Daito and Shoto become the forerunners against the evil Nolan Sorrento and the company he works for Innovative Online Industries to find the egg.

The book has an amazingly deep collection of nerdy references, from obscure Japanese TV shows to some of the earliest video games ever created along with classic 80’s pop trivia about music and films. It’s funny, enthralling and keeps you reading to the climactic ending.

Cline has an amazing way with words and each of the characters is well developed and

has their own story to tell. The news that the book has been bought by Warner Brothers to be made into a film fills me with a great expectation of what could be one of the greatest trilogies (when you read the book you’ll understand) ever made.

One of the most interesting aspects about the book though is the OASIS. A virtual reality system that is so encapsulating that you believe you are really in the world. All actions performed in this virtual world are made with the most sensitive controller available, the human body. Gloves enable you to actually feel objects, unique treadmills (which are amazingly already available in real life) mean you can walk, run and jump in game without going anywhere in the real world and scent systems that even produce the smells of the areas you are in.

As featured earlier in this ‘zine the Oculus is the first step toward an OASIS type system and Ernest Cline has even helped with the development of it. He thanks Oculus on their website for ‘helping to bring the OASIS to life’ which is high praise from the literary Halliday who created the OASIS in the first place.

I could talk about this book for days, but

as I’m limited on space all I can say is if

you’re a fan of video games, remember

the 80’s or just love a very well written

adventure story then you absolutely,

positively have to pick up a copy of Ready

Player One immediately.

If you have any feedback or would like to contribute to the next issue of L33T Gaming

Zine please send submissions/feedback to:

alex.salisbury@hotmail.co.uk

Follow me on twitter @ AJ_Salisbury

L33T Gaming ‘Zine

“I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: GAME OVER.”

- Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

L33TgAMING ZINE

#1

In this debut issue of L33T we look at the new technologies coming to the world of gaming. From the new XBOX ONE and Playstation 4, to the new wave of indie consoles and the immersive 3D headset that could be the real game changer in the industry.

As well as this we talk to AJ Lornie, head of Forte Sounds Ltd, about where he sees the industry going next and a review of Ernest Cline’s awesome book Ready Player One, that could describe the dystopian gaming future we all want to avoid.

Switch on, plug in and join the hardcore gaming community of L33T Gaming ‘Zine.

AJ

L33T