Europe's Version of E3

soapy writes "Europe's biggest computer gaming trade show, ECTS, took place in London this week. There's a pretty good show report that summerizes all the games coming out later next year such as Violition's Red Faction by Volition which uses the Quake 3 engine and No One Lives Forever, that James Bond first person shooter. There's also some details on some the console stuff going on such as Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, The Sony PlayStation2 and the PSOne. " If you're got more links, post 'em below.

Comments

Re:Are you completely daft of human nature?

[codemonkey_uk]

Dispite this beeing an obviouse troll, I'd like to retort, Hairy_Potter wrote:

what kind of fascination, wonderful games have come out of the UK, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Crumpets III D, Bow to the King? Face it, just like every other facet of the computer world, American's make the best computer games

X-COM, Magic & Mayhem, Creatures 1,2 & 3. And their just the ones from the companies I've worked for. The UK is also the home of The Bitmap Brothers, Codemasters, Psygnosis, Bullfrog, Rare, SCI, Muckyfoot, Jeff Crammond, and more (my co-workers are realing them off faster than I can type!).

Thad

Red Faction does *not* use the Q3 Engine

[coj]

It uses an all-new engine developed by Volition. One of the major new features of this engine is what they're calling "real-time, arbitrary geometry modification" -- essentially being able to blow anything up. This allows you to do things like bring down a ceiling on your enemies, pop a hole in a wall when the door is locked, etc.

You can get more info on Red Faction here:

http://www.redfaction.com/

-Ed

Oh I see

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not allowed to have our own fscking shows now, they're just clones of yours? What about the fact that most of the PC dev community comes from the UK? Are they just doing 'European versions of Quake'?

You yanks really piss me off some times..

Other sites:

[AbbyNormal]

Official Site: http://ects.oit.net/2001/

ZDnet UK news: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/spec ials/1999/08/ects/

links links

[gedanken]

various write ups and what not...

http://www.gamesdomain.com/news/3036.html

http://video.gamespot.co.uk/ects2000/

http://www.diabloii.net/expansion/ects-2000-1.sh tml

http://www.stomped.com/published/jcal968167198_1 _1.html

http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0,3,0-4710,0 0.html

http://www.mgon.com/articles.phtml?id=31931&lang uage=en

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/r eviews/2272/1/

enjoy :)

Blame publishers, not devlopers

[codemonkey_uk]

I've written this before, quite a while back, and I can't find the link, so I'll repeat myself.

Games developers, and individuals are designing new inovitive games, but publishers won't fund the development of anything that their market drones don't understand. Its simple, unless you can pitch an idea in 30 second "its like X but with Y from Z" style your lost.

Of course, the publishers would blaim the consumers - if they won't buy it we won't sell it. And they might be right. Don't ask why developers arn't making inovitive games, ask why the public aren't buying inovitive games.

Also, there is the factor that an origanal game takes longer to make, and is therefore more expensive, and higher risk. With 10% of the games taking 90% of the sales, thats not a risk many publishers are prepaired to take.

Or perhaps its the magazines faults. Reviewers are afraid to give good reviews to 'different' games, incase they get their reputation tarnished by a flop. Dito vice-versa with mainstream games. Reviewers don't want to pan a game and then see it become a huge hit. How humiliating. Editors want mainstream reviews to sell to joe public. Tell 'em what they wanna here. Quake 7 is great, so go buy it, then we can sell you the walkthrough. (And buy the way, Id, buy some advertising space - We've given you a great review!)

But then weve gone it a circle, and basically, its the publics fault again. So I ask you - when did you last buy an origanal, inovative game?

Thad

Re:Are you completely daft of human nature?

[slim]

By your anti-American slant, I'm assuming you're a Brit. Well, what kind of fascination, wonderful games have come out of the UK, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Crumpets III D, Bow to the King? Face it, just like every other facet of the computer world, American's make the best computer games.

(takes the bait)

Well, it doesn't take a Briton to flame the Americans - Canadians also do a great job of it. But I've just spent a very pleasant month in the USA, so you'll get no Yank-bashing from me today.

In my humble opinion, the very best games come out of Japan. However, since you ask, here's a few games from Britain (many of them from Warwickshire, by the way, they were probably written within 20 miles of the seat I'm typing from right now):

• Tomb Raider
  
• Xenon 2
  
• Micro Machines 1,2,3 and Micro Maniacs
  
• Colin McRea Rally
  
• Black & White
  
• Dungeon Keeper
  
• Republic (if you're out of touch, don't worry, you'll be hearing more about Republic very soon)
  
• Lemmings
  
• Grand Theft Auto
  
• Goldeneye
  
• Banjo Kazooie
  
• Perfect Dark
  
• Speedball 1 and 2
  
• Theme Park
  
• Um, Dizzy
  
• The Pro Pinball series
  
• Metropolis Street Racer
  
• Elite
  
• Revs
  
• ... and many, many more.
  

Seriously, Britain is a hotbed of games development, if only you pop your head out of the tiny world of FPSs for a moment.
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