After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The big winner was Rock Band from Harmonix, which won three awards: Best of Show, Best Hardware/Peripheral and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle. We emailed some questions to Alex Rigopulos, CEO and co-founder of Harmonix. Here's what he wrote back:

What was your reaction to winning Best of Show, Best Hardware/Peripheral and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle?

As you can imagine, the team here was absolutely thrilled. When we got the news, we immediately and vigorously polished off several crates of champagne-which was a welcome relief from the stress of beta.

Now that we've sobered up again, there's this small matter of finishing the game...

A rhythm game has never won Best of Show from the Game Critics Association. Were you surprised to win given the history and your competition? What do you think this means for the music game category?

Yes, honestly, it was hard to believe, given the history, and also given the other incredible games that were nominated. I think it's a sign that music games have finally "arrived" in the U.S. and have taken their place as a major, mainstream category of games.

How close is Rock Band to completion, and what major things remain to be done?

All of the major systems are complete. As is normally the case in beta, there's plenty of bug-fixing to be done, finishing off of various details, and lots of play-testing, polishing and tuning. We're dying to cross the finish line and get this thing out into the world!

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Original Game was LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule. We emailed some questions to Alex Evans, technical director for Media Molecule. Here's what he had to say:

What was your reaction to winning Best Original Game?

Actually when we got the nominations it was another mad moment of disbelief & happiness that all the people we met at E3 understood the game vision so well. Our policy of basically trying to be as open as possible and show large amounts of the game hands-on, even really early in dev, is unusual but it's really paid off for us! So to actually win Best Original Game from the back of that--well, I don't think it's really sunk in fully yet. Especially against such a strong field this year. It's all awesome, and yet surreal.... :-) The team are totally stoked, and it gives us all new impetus to push forward and make LBP as fine a game as we can!

What was more special to you and why: the audience reaction at the 2007 Game Developers Conference, or the response from individual journalists at E3 2007 as they were playing the game?

They were extremely different. At GDC, it was a special moment just because that was when we burst into view, and the reaction was so wonderful and unexpectedly positive. But at E3 I felt we tackled a much harder and more interesting challenge--letting people (especially critical and knowledgeable gamers!) play the game, see if they had fun--and showing the create tools off for the first time. In a way that was revealing the most ambitious part of our project in a detailed hands-on way, so it's really great that everyone who has played seems to ‘get it'.

How far along is the game, and what are the major things left to be completed before it ships?

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game was Mass Effect from BioWare. We emailed some questions to BioWare president Greg Zeschuk and chief executive officer Ray Muzyka. Here's what they told us:

What was your reaction to winning both Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game for Mass Effect?

Zeschuk: We are really thrilled and honored that we won both the Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game awards; there were some really stunning games at E3 this year and for Mass Effect to be on the top of the list tells us our team’s hard work is paying off. Going into the show is always a little daunting as the competition is extremely fierce, but Mass Effect being recognized by the key industry press really gives us a lot of confidence that we’re doing things right. We believe that Mass Effect will settle the “are games art?” argument once and for all… :-)

Mass Effect has gotten a lot of praise for its interactive dialogue and performances. What have been the biggest challenges in perfecting the games dialogue system?

Muzyka: Truly capturing deep, emotional engagement with the characters and the story in Mass Effect was the biggest challenge we faced while building the game at BioWare, but it was also one of the areas we focused on from the very beginning of development. We really started building toward this goal in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic where we did full voice over and lip sync combined with a great storyline in the game, and we extended it further with Jade Empire where we started adding emotional states in characters during dialogue. In Mass Effect we are not only giving players our best storyline yet, combined with the option of how they want to respond in real time during a conversation, but we’re also adding in an incredible level of subtlety and craft in how characters respond to your actions. As a result, the conversations look and sound incredibly real, so that no matter what dialogue choice a player makes, it feels entirely authentic, and exploration transitions to conversations and combat entirely seamlessly.

One of the things we heard after the E3 presentations and press playthroughs was that not only was it incredibly fun to play the game, but it was even fun to sit back and simply watch it being played. Mass Effect really feels like an interactive blockbuster movie where you, the player, are both the director and the lead actor in the story--and you also get to explore the galaxy in your own spaceship--need we say more?

How close is the game to completion, and what are the major things left to be finished before it ships?

Zeschuk: We’re getting very close to the end as we are committed to shipping in November; we are focusing on polishing the game to an extremely high standard. BioWare is known for quality, and we believe Mass Effect could be our best game yet. It is certainly the most amazing game we’ve ever made! Something that never seems to shock us is that we’re always discovering new things as we play it. We’d love to spoil it for you, but we want everyone to experience the amazing surprises in the game first-hand!

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best PC Game was Crysis from Crytek. We emailed some questions to Crytek president Cevat Yerli. Here's his reply:

What was your reaction to winning Best PC Game?

We were very, very happy. We understood what challenges we have and what concerns people express when talking about Crysis in regards to fidelity vs. [system] requirements. But I am glad that the level we showed from the game spoke volumes enough to help us win the award. It's a great reward and we'll use this as a stepping stone towards finishing Crysis. We are very happy with this on our shoulders now.

The game has always looked great, but what kind of specs will people need in order to run Crysis so that it looks as good as what you've shown publicly?

We are still working on finalizing our specifications; in fact, optimization is one of the things we're focusing on right now.  We still expect to meet our goal to make sure gamers will be able to get a great experience playing Crysis on gaming rigs 2-3 years old from the time we ship.  At the same time, we're thinking about the future and also making sure the Crysis still looks great 2-3 years from now, just like Far Cry, which still looks great on current state of the art hardware.

How far along is the game, and what are the major things left to be completed before it ships?

We are in the final stages right now. The Alpha is behind us, and we are about to finish our Beta stage. Some minor balancing, polishing, bugs and optimization are left. We are on track to release on November the 16th, 2007--a very exciting date for us! Cross your fingers please!

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Handheld Game was The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass from Nintendo. We emailed some questions to Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma, manager/producer of Software Development Group No.3 in the company's Entertainment Analysis & Development Division. Here's what he told us:

What was your reaction to winning Best Handheld Game?

I was very grateful to learn that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has received the Best Handheld Game award, a few years after another handheld Zelda, Minish Cap, won the same award. As we were challenged to create something very different this time, I am particularly happy because the award appears to have meant that our challenge was worthwhile.

Why do you think Japanese gamers have responded so much more strongly to The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS than to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii?

The biggest factor must be that, in Japan, the gaming population has already been expanded. The sheer installment base of Nintendo DS is huge, far larger than that of Wii, and so many Japanese, regardless of gender, age and past game experiences, are now playing with Nintendo DS. We really wanted to make software that can be appreciated by the core gamers and casual gamers alike, and the sales so far appear to be showing that many Japanese are enjoying this new handheld Zelda.

What was the most challenging part of designing Link's controls around the stylus?

We wanted to create a new handheld Zelda experience that can be played only by touch pen so that novice players would not be hesitant in trying to play while core Zelda fans can find something very unique and fresh. Once we decided this basic play style, brand new ideas were hit upon by us developers one after another. The only challenge we faced was eliminating any and all ideas which made the gameplay too complicated or uncomfortable. In the end, we believe that we were able to create a brand new Zelda experience that can be very comfortably played only with a touch pen, and we are glad with the outcome. The core Zelda fans appeared to have some hesitation at the beginning, but after they started playing, we believe they understood the reason why we have chosen this new direction this time.

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Racing Game was Burnout Paradise from Electronic Arts' Criterion Studios. We emailed some questions to Alex Ward, creative director of Criterion: Here's what he sent back, along with the exclusive screenshot shown above:

What was your reaction to winning Best Racing Game?

As ever, I speak on behalf on the development team and I can report that they are very pleased to win this award and very proud of the work we've done so far. It certainly hasn't been easy and we went into this E3 not quite knowing what to expect. There were some great titles nominated too, so let's not forget them.

How much of a challenge was it to set a racing game in an open world with increased destructibility and still maintain the Criterion standard of 60 frames per second?

It was enough of a challenge for us as a development team to throw away (or 'bin off' as we say) ALL of our old technology. That was absolutely everything we had. And that tech was FAST, world-class fast and I think everyone knew that.

Paradise has changed everything we've done and challenged us in every way possible. It's the first open world game we know of that runs at sixty [frames per second.] As I said to [Ziff-Davis editorial director] John Davison after the SCEA conference, to achieve this result in time for E3 was like us putting a man on Mars. Everyone else was shooting for the moon. Now there's nothing wrong with the moon, but everyone wants to move to Mars!

As I repeated a lot to people at E3, each Burnout game was a reflection of who we were at that time. And times change, and so do we. Just because we did something before doesn't mean we'll do it the same way again. Each Burnout game stands alone, both in technology and game direction.

With this new game we have to stream about five times as much world than ever before. This required us to totally rethink how we should approach building this world and changed our entire toolchain. I cannot tell you the shockwaves this sent through our team and our company. To just put ANYTHING onscreen meant going right back to square one. Right back. So we didn't want to just try and work smarter, we had to be smarter AND faster. And that's the real trick. We've set out to make a totally new gaming experience, not just an all-new Burnout experience.

In Paradise City, the player can now go anywhere, look in any direction, at any time. This means that we cannot precompute anything or chop anything out to maintain framerate - we don't control or restrict what the player does anymore. This is YOUR Burnout YOUR way. So has it been a challenge? Absolutely, but I'm incredibly proud to work alongside some of the best damn programmers in the world. And they LOVE a challenge.

How close is the game to completion, and what major aspects of the game's development remain?

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of the Special Commendation for Graphics was Killzone 2 from Guerrilla Games. We emailed some questions to Hermen Hulst, managing director of Guerrilla Games: Here's what he wrote back:

What was your reaction to winning the Special Commendation for Graphics?

The Special Commendation is quite an honor as we weren't playable at the show, which I understood to be a requirement. I am particularly pleased that the team nevertheless got the recognition from the jury.

Expectations for and skepticism about Killzone 2 were so high after the E3 2005 trailer. How confident were you going into E3 that your demo would deliver the goods. What was it like watching the reactions of first group of journalists at the Killzone 2 preview event, and when did you realize that you'd gotten them hooked on the demo?

The vision that we set for the game through the E3 2005 trailer was purposefully ambitious yet achievable. But even though we always believed we could live up to our own benchmark, after a while it becomes hard to judge your own stuff. For me it was clear that our game was going to make quite an impact when we demoed the game to [Playstation studio chief] Phil Harrison and some of the marketing folks a few weeks before E3 and their first response was "Wow...what a rush!"

The game looked great at E3. How much work is left to be done before launch, and when can we expect to hear some details about multiplayer?

At E3 we wanted to show that we can live up to the promise of the original trailer. As for the second part of the question, we plan to follow up with more information on the game as additional details become available.

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