Broken Sword Legend Speaks

JamesO writes to tell us that VideoGamer.com recently had a chance to sit down and talk to Charles Cecil, managing director of Revolution Software and father of Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword series. "when the opportunity to interview the gaming legend presented itself at the launch of Raise the Game, a £450,000 campaign which aims to drive growth and innovation in the UK games industry, we jumped head first at the chance. Read on for news on the next Broken Sword, the possibility of a movie and the state of UK games development. Brace yourself, he pulls no punches ..."

Comments

umm

[nomadic]

Legend? Maybe in the UK, but neither Broken Sword nor Beneath a Steel Sky made that big a splash in the US.

Re:umm

[eddy]

Using that metric, neither are the C64 and the Amiga?

I think I just nailed you with that one sir.

As for the games, the first two were great! The rest seems to have sucked though. I played the demo of the third was almost bored to tears, and completely ignored the fourth due to that.

Re:umm

[nomadic]

Using that metric, neither are the C64 and the Amiga?

Huh? The C64 was big in the US, the Amiga significantly less so.

Re:umm

[Chibi Merrow]

If anything, you made his point.

Though the C64 was a relatively big deal in the US.

Re:umm

[FreeRadicalX]

What! I was a proud Amiga user in both California and New York until mine finally croaked in '99, you insensitive clod!

Re:umm

[electricbern]

Using that metric, neither are the C64 and the Amiga?

That's because the US does not use metric.

Re:umm

[eddy]

I'll have to take your word for it. Possibly we have somewhat different ideas of what something being a legend means.

Re:umm

[christ, jesus H]

Using that metric, neither are the C64 and the Amiga?

That's because the US does not use metric.

Hey, my car gets two rods to the hogs head and thats the way I likes it!

Re:umm

[timster]

Just TWO rods to the hogshead? Gas mileage sure isn't what it was in the days of Grandpa Simpson, who claimed 40.

Re:umm

[dwye]

> > Using that metric, neither are the C64 and the Amiga?
>
> That's because the US does not use metric.

Yes we do. We just haven't made it illegal to use English measurements, unlike England.

Re:umm

[Creepy]

I calculated 40 rods per hogshead at 0.00198 miles per gallon (something like 10.5 feet per gallon) at one point - 2 rods per hogshead is a bit worse ;)

Re:umm

[christ, jesus H]

I just cant fit 40 rods in my wallet!

Re:First?

[Jellybob]

It ain't so...

Re:First?

[dmbasso]

Good boy! Now roll over and play dead...

Before you call them legendary

[elrous0]

Can anyone explain what these games even ARE? Am I the only one who has never even heard of them?

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is your friend. Congratulations, you just had your horizons broadened.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone explain what these games even ARE?

Brits assume anything that's popular in the UK is popular everywhere.

Americans assume the same thing, but they're usually right.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Anonymous Coward]

Brits assume anything that's popular in the UK is popular everywhere.

No. We just recognise that nowhere else matters.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Syrente]

It was a critically aclaimed Point-and-Click adventure - one of the last before the genre croaked its terrible dying curse. Y'know the one, it's the reason Halo is popular.

In all fairness you should try playing it... if you liked the Monkey Island series then you'll like Broken Sword. The main character is also a proper American, too. The clever kind. We Brits don't feel the need to portray every American as dumb at every possible opportunity, you know. (insert suspicious eye movement here)

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Jason Earl]

apt-get install beneath-a-steel-sky

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Anonymous Coward]

obg.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/25/

Re:Before you call them legendary

[gullevek]

Americans assume the same thing, but they're usually right.

Americans thing they are right with things being popular everywhere else, but they wrong about that.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Lost Engineer]

Does that actually work? I'm not on Linux right now.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[servognome]

Americans thing they are right with things being popular everywhere else, but they wrong about that.

Then why is Coca-Cola the 2nd most recognized word in the world, a McDonald's found in over 100 countries, and Baywatch got viewed by 1.1 Billion people a week.... didn't say it was the good stuff that was popular everywhere else.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[Jason Earl]

It does on my Debian stable box. There's actually a couple of scummvm games that are available in Debian (and Ubuntu). Besides "Beneath a Steel Sky" there's also "Flight of the Amazon Queen." I liked "Beneath a Steel Sky" better, but they were both fun.

What I really want is to figure out how to play my old copy of "Sam and Max Hit the Road."

Good times.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[tao]

scummvm has had support for Sam'n'Max for ages. Easiest way to play it is to copy all the files onto your computer and point scummvm at them (start scummvm, select "Add game...", point it at the directory where the samnmax.000 file is located (if I'm not all mistaken, all the files you really need are samnmax.000, samnmax.001, samnmax.c26, and monster.sou). Good luck!

Re:Before you call them legendary

[gullevek]

You fought wars over that :)

Plus who wouldn't want to see some bouncy big titts, have a big mac in your hand swallow the whole shit down with some coke.

Makes sure the whole world will be as fat as America.

Re:Before you call them legendary

[servognome]

Hey that's the American Dream, turn boobs into cash :D

The Mutt's Nuts

[retchdog]

At this point, wouldn't a Broken Sword movie most assuredly end up as just a ripoff of The DaVinci Code?

Now, Beneath a Steel Sky, here we're talking - much like the game itself we would have not a ripoff but an extended homage to great moments in science fiction and sci-fi!

"Who would you like me to weld?"

"You can't go around using your welder on human beings!"

"Says who?"

"Asimov's Law of Robotics."

"Oh, Foster, that's just some stuff someone made up!"

Re:The Mutt's Nuts

[ElaborateCalculator]

At this point, wouldn't a Broken Sword movie most assuredly end up as just a ripoff of The DaVinci Code?

Maybe, but I think the Gabriel Knight games (particularly the third, Blood Of The Sacred Blood Of the Damned) would be closer to the subject matter of the DaVinci Code, what with the bloodline of Christ, etc.

I always preferred the Gabriel Knight games to Broken Sword, but maybe that's just because I played them first. Beneath a Steel Sky rocks though, if only because it plays fine on my crappy work computer, and my boss sits where she can't see my screen :)

Beneath a Steel Sky is Free

[BarneyL]

For those who have never played it Beneath a Steel Sky runs on just about anything through ScummVM.
Even better it is now freeware and you can legally download it from the same site for nothing. Go get it.

Re:Beneath a Steel Sky is Free

[kovach]

Broken Sword 1 & 2 work on ScummVM too. They are not free yet though, but I bet you can buy them both for under 10 bucks. Played them both, they are quite fun and don't look too shabby either.

Pouring millions into game development?

[MiceHead]

Charles Cecil: I think [games are] too expensive. And, while I'll be very unpopular for saying that because the industry is based on it, I think there's going to be seismic shifts. People will only pay for the landmark releases and the hundred million pounds or dollars, you can only afford a few. You look on IMDB and you look at films, I was looking at a film, I'm a BAFTA judge, that costs $50 million to produce and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. It didn't even hit a million dollars at the Box Office. Now film can do that. How it can do that I just do not understand. How can you knowingly produce a film that costs $50 million, earn less than a million dollars at Box Office and then do the same thing again and again?

I'm going to jump onto the bandwagon and agree that this isn't tenable, and it's because we're ridiculously inefficient about content generation. A Gamasutra article from 2001 posits the following imaginary visual arts breakdown for a project with a budget of $1.1m:
.

ART AND GAME DESIGN (24 months)
Producer 10000 x 24 = 240000
Deisgner 3000 x 24 = 96000
3D Artist 3500 x 24 = 84000
Level Designer 3500 x 24 = 84000
Animator 1500 x 24 = 36000
2D Artist 1500 x 24 = 36000

That's over half the game's development budget to create textures, models, and levels, most of which the player will see only once. As it is, the industry's hits subsidize the misses. I think we'll be forced to look for ways to make individual artists more powerful in the next 5 years.

Re:Pouring millions into game development?

[m8nkey]

MiceHead:

That's over half the game's development budget to create textures, models, and levels, most of which the player will see only once.

Nonsense, a games assets are typically broken down into a variety of themes and used extensively throughout an entire game. Sure you have unique features here and there but they certainly are not the majority. I've been playing around with a game engine myself for the last 12 months. I've created over 200mb of custom textures and models (uncompressed) for a single environment and it isn't even complete. Unique and original assets (textures, character and environment models etc) are essential and the most time consuming aspect of game development. These guys certainly deserve their cut of the profit, if not more. Note: I can't format paragraphs for some reason.

Re:Pouring millions into game development?

[MiceHead]

I agree. But I'd also like to make individual artists more powerful (I'm reluctant to use the term "productive"), and hope this mitigates the costs of creating assets that the player only sees once.

The first 2 games were best

[Haoie]

For those that don't know what they are it was The Shadow of the Templars [which was about the Knights of the Templar] and The Smoking Mirror [about the Mayan culture].

Re:First?

[dougisfunny]

NO CARRIER