The Joys of Next-Gen Commentary

Via Joystiq, an article on MTV Games' Overdrive site on commentary tracks in next-generation gaming. The piece looks at the history of game commentary (all the way back on the N64), and discusses what it will take for us to see more of this in future games. From the article: "What will it take to get more game makers to spill like this? The most significant obstacle is time. Movie directors have the luxury of recording commentary for DVDs that arrive months after their film is completed and released in theaters. Game makers, if they want to include commentary with their title, need to record it in the 11th hour of a game's development, right at crunch time. Insomniac Games has included a behind-the-scenes interactive 'museum' in two of the company's four 'Ratchet and Clank' games, but has never provided an audio commentary." Warning: the article is on a flash site, and I'd advise pausing the ad box in the upper right hand corner before the music starts.

Comments

postmortem - gamasutra

[acomj]

Gamasutra has a section called postmortem, with commentary on already written games.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.p hp?category=5

Re:It's not just time.

[Rob T Firefly]

I think giving something unique to the "hard core" fan is the best solution, but it's also a drain on resources, and not just a minor one like people think. It's a pretty major drain to make it working (even if it's just like the museum)

I'd agree for the most part. There are the properties out there that develop the hardcore fans who would go for something like this, and I think it could be worth it to those publishers to put together something extra.

For example, Square had published high-end art books for many of their Final Fantasy games. They have also been known to put behind-the-scenes stuff like interviews into their strategy guides, giving them an edge over players getting free hints off the Internet.

Metal Gear Solid 2 even had "The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2," which was a whole extra playable disc where you could play with the 3D models and environments, watch the game's real-time cutscenes while zooming the camera around anywhere you like, read the entire annotated script (in Japanese,) watch behind-the-scenes videos, and even some new playable bonus missions. It was basically a bonus DVD like movies get, but tailored specifically to gamers, and sold for (IIRC) half the price of the game.

Extras like this can really be worth it for fans of major franchises to grab, and thereby worth it for the studios to produce. And you don't even need to take space on the game disc away from the actual game.

FULL TEXT

[DesireCampbell]

Never mind the game's rave reviews, the beginning of the first-person shooter "Half-Life 2: Episode One" is a problem. That's not what the reviewers wrote. That's what the game's developers say -- and they say it in the game.

The confession is right there in the code, represented as a floating word balloon hovering in the game's opening area, visible to any player giving the game a go with the audio-commentary feature turned on. When clicked, the speech balloon spins and an audio clip plays. One of the game's developers at Valve apologizes for a design choice that has the player discovering that their own character can't make a simple jump that a computer-controlled ally can. It was necessary for the flow of the game, the developer explains, adding, "honestly, we're not especially happy with this crutch."

Released in June, "Half-Life 2: Episode One" includes the option to reveal more than 100 floating speech balloons of audio commentary explaining the whys and hows of some of the game's smallest but most significant details. Players can play the game without ever seeing the balloons or listening to the clips, but if they choose to activate them, they can hear developers chatter away as they blast away the forces plaguing City 17.

Non-gamers might find this completely unremarkable. DVD movies have included commentary since they had shrink wrap. But "Half-Life" joins only a small handful of games released in the last decade that include any commentary tracks at all, one of gaming's most revealing features. (Did you know "Grand Theft Auto" and the war against the Taliban inspired a major "Star Wars" game?) So why are a few proud developers doing it, and what's been keeping everyone else from jumping onboard?

"Over the years we've brought in hundreds of play testers to sit down and play our games while we all watch and take notes," Valve project manager Erik Johnson told MTV News. "What we found was that all of them were interested in why we made the choices we made, and how they had evolved over the course of the game's development. In a lot of ways, this is the kind of conversation we're trying to replicate with the commentary system."

So, yes, players, that is an enhanced refraction shader being used in the opening segment of "Half-Life 2." The commentary says so. And, perhaps more interestingly, player-hero Gordon Freeman's cute female companion Alyx follows rather than leads, because when she used to lead, test players found her annoying. And the pod in the heart of the citadel will play a big role in "Episode Two."

Valve's Web site reports that 15 percent of the people who have played "Episode One" since its June release have activated the game's commentary feature, just under half the number of people who have finished the game. That's enough for Valve. "There isn't really any chance of us leaving it out in our future titles," Johnson said.

The earliest audio commentary in video games may very well be the one in Factor 5's 2000 "Star Wars" starfighter-combat game "Battle for Naboo." Back then, games were on CDs and cartridges, neither of which left a whole lot of room for bonus audio tracks. Factor 5 managed to squeeze a few minutes of commentary for each of the game's levels onto their game's Nintendo 64 cartridge. Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht could not be reached to explain how and why -- nor to say whether the company's next title, the PS3 dragon-combat game "Lair" will be their fourth-straight game with an unlockable commentary track. But the developers' previous efforts make them not just the most prolific commentary-makers in the industry, but also the best advertisement for why they're worthwhile. Where else can gamers listen to developers talking comfortably about their games without the distraction of pesky reporters and without the need to talk in sales-pitch sound bites?

Consider the audio track in Factor 5's "Rogue Leader II: Rebel Strike," a 2003 "Star Wars" game for the GameCube. Eggebrecht and colleagues reveal that thei