The Iterative Digest #83
Sony's State Of Play, Cyberpunk DLC leaks, narrative designers vs game writers, the art of game design and more!
Hello and welcome to issue #83 of the Digest! This week we discuss Sony’s State Of Play, Cyberpunk’s DLC dialogue leaking, narrative designers vs game writers, and more!
So without further ado, sit back, relax, and enjoy this week’s latest - curated by yours truly! If you like what you see, don’t forget to share and subscribe; your support means a lot to us. Have a great week!
📽 Sony’s State Of Play last week confirmed the existence of a Resident Evil 4 remake with a release date of 24.3.2023 as well as showcasing gameplay from Final Fantasy XVI, The Callisto Protocol, Stray, upcoming PSVR2 titles, and much more.
👷♂️ Game Publisher Tinybuild is introducing paid time off (PTO) across its publishing team and two internal studios with the extra PTO being offered alongside its mandatory two weeks off per year, which takes place the week before New Year and during the Steam Summer Sale.
🥖 France has banned English Gaming Terms like “Streamer” and “Cloud Gaming” as part of its efforts to preserve the purity of the French language. Government officials are banned from the usage of jargon like “pro-gamer,” “streamer,” “esports,” and “cloud gaming.”
🕹️ Blaze Entertainment has introduced the Retro Handheld Evercade Exp, a new version of its handheld retro gaming console! Retail units will come with the IREM Arcade 1 collection which features a selection of six classic titles inside a cartridge and a library with over 300 games.
✍️ It appears Cyberpunk’s first expansion DLC’s dialogue has leaked online. Hundreds of lines have leaked, with files being shared across social media outlining the entire plot of the DLC’s questline.
🏆 Achievement hunters rejoice! With Xbox’s June update you will now be able to easily find secret achievements details through your console. From within a game, open the guide and go to Game activity > Achievements. When you see a secret achievement, you can now reveal details like the title, achievement description, and Gamerscore.
Whether hiring for your team or interested in writing yourself, it’s important to understand the different responsibilities of these writing positions. Like much of the games industry, these roles don’t necessarily have a standard definition across the board, but here are some generalities you can usually expect.
Narrative designers are generally part of the project from the beginning, using their expertise to shape nearly every aspect of the game. We might think of writers as being responsible for backstories and dialogue, but narrative designers do so much more. From the game’s art to it’s music, mechanics, and even interfaces and menus, narrative designers have a hand in everything. (As an example, the Pip-Boy menus in Fallout 3 and 4 were integrated into the game based on the ND’s insistence.) Narrative designers tell stories with so much more than words, instead directing the game’s assets to work cohesively with the story they’ve created at every step.
Game writers on the other hand, can be brought it at any time in the project. Sometimes they work under the ND, sometimes they work alone, but their job is often to take the assets, mechanics, and other gameplay elements your team has already created and craft a meaningful and cohesive story that fits into what you’ve already designed yourself. In either case, a good story can make or break a game (and remember “story” is more than just the words written on the screen or spoken by the characters), so it’s important to use the expertise of writers, whichever kind you need, in order to make your project shine.
June 8th
Mythbusters: The Game lets you feel the scientific madness using the simplest items or complex machines! A first-person adaption of the famous Discovery show, run crazy experiments, manage episodes, and remember don’t try this at home! (Unless it’s through a realistic simulation puzzle sim releasing on Steam).
June 10th
Mario Strikers: Battle League is the latest in the Mario Strikers series set to release on the Nintendo Switch. Strikers favor chaotic, over-the-top gameplay in a five versus five association football/soccer game with no rules. Join online clubs, pummel the pitch with up to 8 players, and play as regular mainstays like Peach, Toad, and Yoshi to score!
June 10th
Set in late summer in the remote forests of upstate New York, The Quarry centers around the teen counselors of Hackett’s Quarry setting one camp for one final night. In this thrilling cinematic tale, you control the fates of all nine camp counselors as their party plans unravel into an unpredictable night of horror. With choices impacting how the story unfolds, the only one left to make is whether you will pick it up on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, or Xbox One.
Kelsey - The Art Of Game Design, Jesse Schell
The Art of Game Design breaks down making games into a series of “lenses,” taking into account everything from psychology to mathematics to film to anthropology, and makes it all clear and accessible for anyone. This detailed look into all aspects of design can be useful for any dev involved in any game-making discipline. What makes most great games so relatable and successful is the way they connect to the players’ experiences and emotions, and this book helps you understand how to connect that human element to every step of the process in order to make a deeper, more relatable, and engaging experience, no matter what type of game you’re designing.
Cameron - Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered
It’s no secret that racing games are a genre that I seem to be unnaturally good at. Whether it be zooming down the highway in Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, getting a ‘victory royale’ in Forza Horizon’s Eliminator mode, or enjoying some Mario Kart with friends, the arcade/live-simulation racing genre feels like home for me. It feels so much like home in fact that when two of my achievement hunting colleagues jumped on to complete Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered I needed to partake!
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit was released in 2010 for the seventh generation of home consoles. The game was received positively, so much in fact that a Remastered version was released just ahead of the game’s tenth anniversary. Set in the fictional Seacrest County, (based on the American states of California, Oregon, and Washington) players can compete in different events as either racers or cops. Both roles have their own career modes and their own strengths. A police vehicle will be much more powerful, with stronger equipment to take down racers who make up for this with a need for speed. Did you laugh? No. Okay moving shift-ly along.
The game features both single-player and multiplayer game modes with up to 8 players and as an option online, players can post their auto-logged times online to compete with friends for the best times. I jumped into a few game modes with friends online, ranging from racing, trying to take racers down as cops in the inceptor mode and vice versa as well as the hot pursuit mode. The catalog of cars features well-known brands such as Ford, Nissan, Lamborgini, McLaren, Porsche, Dodge, and my personal favorite Koenigsegg.
All in all the game is quite simply very enjoyable as I blast down the highway past 200mph collecting bounty (in-game XP) partnered with a podcast as perfect stress relief after a long day. The only criticism I will give the game is the margin of error in some events is incredibly thin and will require multiple attempts in some instances. I enjoyed the game so much in fact that I have moved back to the previous title, Need For Speed Heat to attempt to complete that next.
Like what you’ve been reading so far?
Do subscribe and/or forward this to your friends if you like what you see! Feel free to let us know how we can improve at contact@theiterativeco - Suggestions are welcome!
We are The Iterative Collective - an indie games incubator & publisher! Each week, we shed light on the latest gaming trends for all folks interested in the scene by going through a summary of the latest news from the industry as well as promising upcoming game releases! Click to learn more about us below!