Pioneering a new game genre might sound like an impossible task but the developers behind Alan Wake reckon they have pulled it off. That's a pretty big claim considering video games have been in production for decades but Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment is standing by it.

In an interview with PC World yesterday, Remedy managing director Matias Myllyrinne said Alan Wake relied on "intrigue and mystery" and was best categorised as a mix between an action game and a psychological thriller.

"Horror has been done lots before. Making a psychological thriller is about doing something that's much more cerebral," he said.

Due to be released on Xbox 360 on May 20, Alan Wake puts gamers in the shoes of a fictional best selling author of the same name as he searches for his wife who has gone missing near the small town of Bright Falls. As time goes on, Wake realises the nightmare he is living is straight out of a thriller novel he has written.

Myllyrinne said the game was controlled in the third person view, had a linear storyline and was cinematically rich. However, that didn't come at the expense of gameplay and gamers could still do a lot of exploring and learning about the game's more minor characters if they wanted to.

Remedy was the studio behind the Max Payne series of games that popularised bullet-time -- a slow motion technique gamers could use during combat to warp time and dodge bullets more easily. In Alan Wake, Remedy had tried to revolutionise the use of light in the same way, Myllyrinne said.

"We wanted to use a constant. With the Max Payne games we used time. We thought that light and dark were two things that resonated with all cultures. Light symbolises safety. That comes to us from religion... and it's also built into our DNA.

"Basically light in Alan Wake is a combat tool for the gamer and a source of safety. We use light to burn away enemies and it's always more effective than a firearm. Anything from the headlights of a car to flashlights can be used. We spent a lot of time working with the lighting and making sure it looked really good."

To ensure scenes in the game struck the right emotional chords with gamers, developers had consulted psychologists and put significant effort into effects and audio, Myllyrinne said. For example, playing the sound of a baby crying in a scene where a tornado was heading towards a house could create a strong emotional response in the gamer, he said.

"Something only needs to be slightly off to make it really disturbing for us. There are a lot of things that you don't necessarily pay attention to... We rely on movie realism and doing things like making it feel dark even if it's not dark [on screen]."

Another area where developers had tried to improvise was with the game's difficulty levels. Myllyrinne said Alan Wake included an advanced "dynamic difficulty" system that could alter how aggressive enemies were as players progressed through the game. That meant the game could cater for players of all abilities, including those with "less dexterous thumbs".

For more hardcore gamers the dynamic difficulty would ensure they faced a challenge for the 8 - 10 hours it took to complete the game, he said.

Posted by James Heffield at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

If you thought gaming was the sole preserve of pale teenage guys sitting in dark rooms and staring blankly at PC screens, you'd be wrong. This is 2010, and women, or girl gamers as they are often referred to, are taking up mice and console controllers like never before.

A 2009 study by Australia's Bond University found that a whopping 46% of gamers in Australia were female. By the end of this year, that same Interactive Australia 2009 study projected that the gender split for gamers would reach 50/50. Unfortunately, equivalent figures for New Zealand are hard to come by, but considering gaming studies in the US and UK are coming up with similar numbers, one can only assume that the Kiwi situation is similar.

Interactive Software Association of New Zealand board member and Sony Computer Entertainment marketing director David Hine said the increasing number of female gamers had contributed to the Kiwi gaming industry netting a record $170 million in revenues in the 2009 calendar year. That figure was 12% higher than in 2008 and was expected to continue growing.

"In the past there's been a pre-conception that gaming is the realm of teenage boys sitting in darkened rooms and working on their PlayStation tan, but that's a thing of the past. The types of games and technology available are bringing gaming out into the mass market.

"There has over the past few years been a social gaming phenomenon. SingStar, Buzz, Guitar Hero and Rockstar, and of course games on the Wii, have all been popular. SingStar has well over 150,000 microphones in New Zealand homes and our anecdotal evidence would suggest that the majority of those players would be female."

Although many female gamers enjoyed playing PC games, it was the "interactive and social nature" of gaming on a console that women found most appealing. Hine said it was hard to say exactly what made a game appeal to a girl gamer but in general it was the "family games and puzzle games" that women were buying.

"The PlayStation 3 is no longer just a gaming console... it's an entertainment device that does so much more than gaming and as the recognition of what the console can do becomes more accepted, it will appeal more to the wider market."

One of the best known girl gamers is Sydney 27-year-old Ashley Jenkins, known in gaming circles as Jinx. She now works as a New Zealand and Australia digital site manager for Xbox but was formerly a pro-gamer, being paid a full time wage to play first person shooters with US all-girl team the Frag Dolls.

"For a few years I was a pro-gamer traveling around the US to tournaments. I made enough to live on."

She got into gaming when she was young and says she never really noticed that most other gamers were guys.

"I remember getting a Nintendo for Christmas one year. I grew up in a kind of rural area playing Nintendo with my friends. It wasn't until high school that I realised that gaming was the reason most of my friends were male."

These days, she spends most of her time playing adventure games but enjoys games from all genres.

"I play chiefly on the Xbox now, I'll admit I really like the achievements, but a lot of my favourite games have been on PC. I can't really imagine how many hours I put into Morrowind. I still play it from time to time."

There were plenty of "bloodthirsty girls" that enjoyed first person shooters, and many that played RPGs like World of Warcraft, but the massive increase in female gamers in recent years could be put down to the fact that game makers were specifically targeting females, she said. The popularity of games like Guitar Hero and SingStar were classic examples, although plenty of guys enjoyed them too.

"Singing is something that's familiar to everyone. Who hasn't sung in the shower? SingStar just allows you to get a score for it."

Consoles were generally slightly more appealing to female gamers than PC games, mainly because they simplified the whole experience, Jenkins said.

"When PC games start to become more intimidating is when you have to start patching and getting technical. Consoles do all that for you."

By James Heffield

Posted by James Heffield at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 3 )