IGN Live Exposition Anaheim CA Report

“IGN Live brings IGN.Com to Life!” Go hands on to immerse yourself in the full gamer lifestyle featuring an onslaught of video games, live music, action sports, gear, movies and cars.”

From my stomach:

…groan.

If by immerse yourselves in game culture you mean hang out with 13 year old boys, drool over bored booth babes, watch semi-pro wrestling, rock out to bad metal, and shop among the ole generic comic and game themed t-shirts, then HEY! I was immersed.

Or if you don’t think those things are important but wanted to see a few games, yeah, you could do that too.

So anyways, this past weekend I was able to attend the IGN Live Games Expo in Anaheim, California as a representative of my school’s department (I’m a graduate student in USC’s Interactive Media Department). Several companies such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Midway and Nintendo showed off some of their current and upcoming titles including a smidgen for the Xbox 360. Compared to other expositions though this gathering was significantly smaller in size than E3, GDC or the Tokyo Game Show. Yet there was no lack of Booth Babes, annoying spokespeople, ear assaulting generic rock music, and highly priced and terrible tasting convention food. However, IGN Live was one of the first expositions of its kind in the US as it was both open to the public and relatively inexpensive to attend ($15).

Ubisoft was on hand with an Xbox 360 demo of Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of Movie game. Wow. What a mouthful. In the demo you were able to play both as King Kong and Adrian Brody’s character. I didn’t actually get to play but I watched while other’s tried it out. To be honest, the game didn’t look that different from its Xbox counterpart (which was on display a little way’s down from the 360 kiosk). Jack Black’s character model looked nice, but I didn’t have a revelation or a cathartic experience. Still, there was a noticeable difference in the way Kong’s fur moved when comparing it to the regular Xbox version. I was also told that the display panels were not HD and that if they were I would have noticed a difference. Considering that most people I know don’t own HD TV’s, I have a feeling some people may feel a bit gypped when the jump between Xbox and the 360 is made. Yikes.

EA had every sports game you can imagine out on the show floor. I played with Burnout Revenge for a bit and it, like the others in the series, was quite fun. There was a huge line for NFS on their Xbox 360 kiosk so I didn’t bother to wait around and try it out. However, I can say with confidence that it was a very pretty game. Each new console generation is a funny affair for me, in that it’s the racing games that usually show of the graphical abilities of a console. With PS1 it was Ridge Race, with PS2 it was Gran Turisimo 3 and ,based on what I saw first hand, its NFS for Xbox 360. I’m not ruling out PGR3 though- that could easily be the better looking game. Microsoft just didn’t have it on hand for me to base my ideas on.

Vivendi Universal displayed FEAR as well as the dire Crash Tag Team Racing 2 (or whatever the new title is called) on display. Their Fifty-Cent game was nowhere to be seen except for a short video clip projected onto a large screen. My inside connections tell me that it plays similarly to the Punisher except a bit more disappointing. Uh oh. Does that mean Fifty will be shooting up the execs at VUG? I don’t know.

THQ was showing off its latest GC wrestling game: WWE Day of Reckoning 2 along with a host of luchadors doing stunts within a small rink. This was fine and dandy for a minute or so but live pro-wrestling is even more fake than TV pro-wrestling. At least in TV pro-wrestling, they change the camera angles up enough to sort of fool you into thinking there is some connection with the damage being done. In truth, video game wrestling is the closest pro wrestling is going to get to being real. Still, it was a fun game to play.

Midway had Gauntlet Seven Sorrows, Blitz the League and MK: Shaolin Monks on display. I’ve played MK: Shaolin Monks before and its a hoot. A mindless, button mashing, and gore-fest filled hoot but sometimes that can be a good thing. I’ve never been a fan of sports games, but you have to give it to Midway for putting Blitz out there without having access to the NFL license (thanks EA!). It was fun to make a 75-yard pass reception but that is all I can really say about the game. I’m not qualified to compare it to Madden or the NFL 2K series but I can say on a basic level it was fun. Finally, Gauntlet sure looked pretty but felt similar to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath. However, it played well enough and one can only really judge it after they have had more than 5 minutes with it. Maybe 10.

Nintendo showed off a slew of Gamecube and Nintendo DS games but for the most part there was nothing new. Castlevania DS, Battalion Wars, Ultimate Spiderman, Super Mario Baseball, and even oldie Super Smash Brothers Melee were on display. However, a friend and I got a chance to give Super Mario Strikers a try and it was blast. Watching Donkey Kong punch a ball into the goal was quite satisfying. However, I was disappointed that your whole team consisted of only one of the Mario cast with either Koopas or Toads as your back up. But hey, let me tell you, them koopas can do a mean banana kick.

Besides the presence of Nintendo, the conference was sorely lacking in exhibition by Japanese game publishers and developers. Capcom, Konami, Square-Enix and even Sony were nowhere to be found which in turn meant no PS3 or its respective games on display. However, IGN had a few booths labeled “IGN Editors Choice Awards” which included Sony’s Shadow of the Colossus. There were always a few people gathering around its kiosk, which, for me, was a good sign. I played around with it for a bit and was impressed by the sheer scaling in the game. The Colossus is indeed gigantic and trying to climb up onto it feels as it would in real life. The only beef I have with it is the slightly choppy frame rate. However, such occurrences are understandable as the game is pushing the PS2 hardware towards the end of its “emotional spectrum” (here’s looking at you Emotion Engine). Overall, it was quite disappointing to have no Japanese firms on hand.

There was one game that blew my gaming mind away and that was Guitar Hero by Harmonix. If you weren’t poking around every corner of the convention you would not have found their booth. But they were there with Guitar PS2 Controllers in hand. The game plays as sort of a DDR but instead of moving around you press down buttons on the guitar in a chord like manner. In this way you are playing along to the song and with a selection of songs including Black Sabbath, ACDC, the Ramones and ZZ Top- you begin to feel like a guitar god. Sorry DK Bongos, this game is going to become my new party activity. And did I mention Tommy Tallarico, curator of the Video Games Lives Concert Tour, was jamming on the game? More on him, later on in this article.

The exposition hosted several conferences-none of which I went to due to my schedule. However, they were all recorded and are online via IGN’s website.

Despite the lack of games, the campy atmosphere, and the perpetual flood of 15-year-old gamers I enjoyed the exposition. This is mostly because I took the opportunity to get to know some of the exhibitors.

The USC booth was right next to Jon Gibson, who is the curator of the “I am 8-Bit art show that debuted in Los Angeles a month before E3 this past May. He was displaying some of pieces of the collection that he had bought himself as well as some t-shirts and merchandise related to the “I Am 8-Bit” show. For those of you who are not familiar, I am 8-Bit was a collection of works from 30 different artists that focused on themes of growing up in the era of 8-bit video games. More than just drawings of old video game characters, I am 8-Bit strived to tap into the nostalgia, craziness, and fun of growing up in the 1980s. The show was such a success that he is working hard to make it an annual event. Jon and I talked at length about the need for aiming for higher concepts in video game art and one comment that stuck out from our conversation was that on the subject of the Hot Topic style game shirts on sale. This is a paraphrase:

“I mean look at those shirts over there with Megaman or Mario’s face just plastered on them. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those shirts- they’re fun. However, they’re too easy. You just cut and paste the sprite and viola you got a shirt. The shirts (sic: the I am 8-bit shirts) were conceived by the artists and are more challenging to produce for that reason. We had to come up with unique designs that reflected the same spirit we all collectively felt when playing those games.”

I bought two shirts from him. They weren’t cheap but I believe in supporting his cause and now I got another good drinking buddy (as he’s based in LA). If you are interested in the art work from “I Am 8-bit” or in submitting work for the next gallery exhibition visit www.iam8bit.net.

While poking around near Nintendo’s booth, a man dressed up in a giant Alien Hominid costume walked by. I followed him over to Behemoth’s booth (the developer’s of Alien Hominid” and had a lengthy conversation with John Baez-the producer of Alien Hominid. Firstly, I mentioned to him what an inspiration the Behemoth is because they are currently the poster children for independent game development. The company is small- consisting of 8 core people and there collective experience in doing ports aided in developing Alien Hominid for every platform. They are currently working on a new 4-player hack-n-slash game that will be released for consoles in 2006. He also had demos of Alien Hominid for GBA available for play on GB Micros. The game is still as fast paced and difficult as its flash and console counter-parts. I look forward to jamming on it when it releases. John was so friendly, that he will be coming down to speak to my graduate department at one of our weekly seminars! Sweet! I’m beginning to see one of main reasons these conferences go on: networking!

A friend of mine introduced me to Keith Robinson, one of the original programmers at Intellivision, and currently at the company Intellivison Productions. We talked at length about the pre-NES days of gaming and the prevalence of retro game culture going on right now. He was quite open with sharing his thoughts on game design: “Challenge-reward-challenge-reward…” and on his companies project Intellivision for DS. If you recall the original Intellivision controller, it was a like a remote control with a numeric keypad that had about 16 buttons on it. The user would put in a game card that would lie over the keypad. The game card would have specific button sequences depending on what the game required. So in essence, the user had a different control scheme for every game on the Intellivision. Keith was excited because he feels the Nintendo DS is the perfect platform to present Intellivision games on. Utilizing the touch pad the programmers could allow the users to use the bottom screen to display the game card control scheme and the top screen to play the game. Although I didn’t play much Intellivision as a kid, this project sounds interesting because they can utilize the bottom screen for accurate play sessions of Intellivision games. My hope is that they update the graphics and game play and try to make use of the DS’s other feature: microphone and wireless play. Regardless, it was fun to hear about Intellivision history and their company seems to be doing quite well.

Lastly, as I mentioned before, I met Tommy Tallarico while playing Harmonix’s Guitar Hero. He was very approachable, energetic, and enthusiastic. We talked about Video Games Live and how I admired the fact that he is trying to push gamer culture into the mainstream by offering events like Video Games Lives. He was thankful for the comments but regretfully had to inform me that the tour would be put on hold until GDC. There have been many posts about it in the gaming medium so everyone probably knows about that by now. Sadly, the reason was mostly because of poor ticket sales as the cost of running the show is pretty expensive. There are lasers, projections, and lights that are all synced with the ongoing performance-and since Mr. Tallarico is a perfectionist he hires some top-notch film production and audio engineers to make sure the show goes on without a hitch (cough cough- I’m looking at you Final Fantasy Dear Friends Tour-Los Angeles. They had more glitches than an alpha version of World of Warcraft). The man seemed pretty bummed about it but he was focusing his efforts on getting a more grass roots marketing campaign for each city the show was going to be at. So don’t fret, Video Games Live will make it across the US- just over a period of time.

So overall, I left IGN Live feeling quite good. Sure there could have been more emphasis on games than flashiness but gaming culture doesn’t necessarily lie in the games, gear and gadgets that one needs to play games. It lies in being a gamer and talking with gamers and developers about where this medium was going and by the end of the day I felt like I had accomplished that.

Oh, and meeting the Orange Country Star Wars Club was kinda neat too. And scary. But you don’t want to mess with Jedi in groups. No siree.

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