5 Ways that games are bringing realism ever closer

With the latest videos and announcements from GDC ( Game Developers Conference) of EA's next stunning shooter Battlefield 3 due out later this I thought it would be good to touch on the various ways that developers are looking to blur the lines between videogame and real life.
Patrick Bach, a senior game developer at EA's DICE studio in Sweden has been wowing specialist games press journalists with Battlefields incredible visuals emphasising that the game would go a long way towards conveying the feel of battle, the potential pain of a shot fired and the impact of soldiers at war. On top of that it would demonstrate DICE's zeal to present "next gen tech" on a "current gen platform.

Above: A impressive screenshot from Battlefield 3 showing a US Marine standing guard in an Iraqi town

Below: Real Life - A US Army soldier in Agfhanistan

1. Realism: providing players with an immersive experience that delivers true to life visuals, environments, emotions and NPC's that help take the whole experience to another level.

2. Sound Design - For Battlefiled DICE studios joined with the Medal of Honor team to record weapon sounds with the Swedish army when they were out on manoeuvres, allowing them to record the games sound with 84 microphones set up at different points.

3. Character - having a central protagonist that is utterly believable, someone that the player can empathize with at every level, making them almost human in way that these characters live within your game.

4. Story - current events and conflicts provide rich pickings for story and script writers to bring home a truly believable story that sets the scene perfectly.

5. Attention to detail - Architecture, vehicles, weapons, human emotional responses, lighting, physics and artificial intelligence are just some of the elements increasing in complexity as game technology evolves  to bring a level of detail never seen before.

The Photobook is Dead Longlive the Photobook...

What next for the photo book, those eye candy tomes we all love to flick through on the proverbial coffee table?The natural progression seems to point to digital if everything else is taken into consideration, comics, magazines and books have all seen a move to digital formats although not quite in the mainstream way that their paper counterparts have enjoyed so far but I'm betting that in the next five years we'll see a massive increase in the way digital  platforms provide the means to view traditional published media.
I grew up reading comics and I have to admit I'm reluctant to give in to an entirely digital model, the same for Photobooks, I love being able to pick up a decent sized coffee table book packed with photos to paw over and the thought of flipping pages on a digital tablet leaves me slightly cold.

Currently the way of the electronic paperback, Kindle, Smashwords and other ebook publishing formats have helped break down the restrictive barriers for indie authors and amateurs to realise their own book. However the route for photobooks has been somewhat slower because in order to fully maximize formats like the ipad  a small degree of Html coding is required in order to template the book before you put it out there which I think is restricting a large degree of the audience. Making money from traditional glamorous paper photo books however or using Blurb.com as a platform to make money is extremely difficult and the larger the book, the larger the retail and production cost, some of the higher paginated photo books on Blurb.com are priced at over $100 per book, some even higher, a trip to Amazon underlines the stark reality of pricing when you can buy books by professional photographers such as David Notons Photography Essentials waiting for the light which is 192 pages (24 X 26 cm) of full colour photographs and advice for around £16.

So where does that leave Photobook pricing for your digital project for an i-pad version? since you've effectively removed the cost for print and manufacture which is where the majority of where companise like Blurb.com costs are tied up you can price the book at a much lower retail price. To remain competitive you have to look at the content and pricing of other book projects, what you offer as value for money is important, remember that with platforms like i-Tunes you're going to come away with 70% of the profit less whatever taxes you have to pay but its a much healthier chunk. A price in the region of $5 would certainly provide a good motivational price incentive to buy and for a digital format its far more realistic than pricing it the same as its paper counterpart, the chances are you have the potential to make more money taking a 70% i-Tunes royalty than you do with a traditional print model royalty so you shouldn't look at a price of $5 as de-valuing your photographic work. With the vast range of Tablets being made available through 2011 and 2012 the formats are emerging to make good revenue from the digital book side, the downside is that the photobook is no longer a physical entity to have in your library or have sitting on your coffee table, instead it lives and breathes inside the digital shell of whatever reading device you're using.

The Photobook is Dead, Longlive the Photobook

Blurb.com project

My latest and greatest project comes to fruition shortly, overall its been a love hate relationship, I love the fact that the project came together like my first book in the series did because it's allowed me to work with and showcase some truly talented people, however I hate the fact that Blurb.coms pricing policy makes it so hard to price photo books over 80 pages competitvely within the publishing retail sector allowing me to promote it to a much wider audience on sites like Amazon.

I've had good results with Blurb.com, the paper and print quality are excellent, its own Booksmart template is a very good tool to build the books and the ease of use is great. My only really gripe is that it would be nice for more page templates to be provided in order to really broaden the design concepts as well as better profit margins for 'book builders' who choose to sell their books online through Blurbs bookstore.

There are other Photo book programs out there from the likes of Lulu, Vistaprint and Photobox among many others so I can't really compare the quality of these against Blurb other than what the forum response has been which points to Blurb as being a leader in the field.
Airsoft Infidels: The very best of Airsoft & Milsim photography Book 2 is the second book I released in this series, I'm contemplating a third and final book but other personal projects, a full time day job, a thriller novel plus a family make it a difficult project to fulfill. I quite like the fact that Airsoft as a sport is still fairly niche, athough trying to explain to various people exactly what it entials takes longer than necessary especially when you start explaining all the kit,weapons etc.
Out of the three books I know that exist for Airsoft Photography I've released two of them and was the first to do so with Airsoft Infidels: The very best of Airsoft & Milsim Photography (Book 1) which I've since updated and am considering re-releasing with a new cover.

The new book (see below) has a website found here
I'm promoting the book on Twitter where you can follow my progress.
You can buy a copy of the book over at Blurb.com shortly.

Dead Island: The best Video Game trailer ever made?

I've worked in the videogame business for nigh on 17 years,seen a huge amount of change,seen a lot of product and hardware come and go, experienced its ups and downs, played amazing product, worked on really bad product and I've promoted a lot of product. I've also been witness to the traditional hype normally associated with the "next big thing in videogames" (sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't). There are of course the Milestone products that come out, the big hitters like Halo which has thrown considerable weight behind the way it reaches out to its audience with its trailers,taking you from the living room and into the firefight like a Hollywood movie  even employing directors like Neil Blomkemp,South African director of District 9 to create its Halo short films.
Gears of War from Epic and its Mad World trailer was sublime, it created mood, it was emotional, it was devoid of all sound effects and instead used the music from Gary Jules to create an incredible contrast that made people talk about the trailer even more.
The only other time I've seen this dynamic brought up in conversation was when Judy Garlands "Somewhere over the Rainbow" was used in a shoot out scene for the movie Face Off with Nic Cage, except it didn't quite work as well as it should or could have.
Which brings me to the announcement trailer for Dead Island which is probably the best videogame trailer I've ever seen,why?

For a new videogame I.P to enter the zombie genre is extremely brave, especially after benchmark titles like Resident Evil, Left for Dead  have established themselves as very popular brands with such a large legion of fans, Dead Island had to find a way to stand out, it needed to create a viral to get people talking about it but also to create something that no one would expect, and they did it brilliantly. Its a heartbreaking trailer, its not pretty to watch but it really brings the emotion of the scene and does so with a with an amazingly haunting soundtrack. Best of all it tells its story in reverse making it truly unique in that it breaks all the common traditions of videogame trailers. I played this trailer for a female colleague at work who  was almost in tears afterwards.The trailer is generating a ton of buzz on the forums as being one of the best ever created.

Dead Island is a first person survival horror game that will be entirely focused on melee combat set within a tropical island setting you can freely roam.

When I watched the trailer Wednesday it had 5,890 views, in two days it has acquired 1,362,679 views as of posting this update. Metro, FHM, Empire and actor Simon Pegg are just some of the channels that picked up on the global phenomenon of the trailers impact within 24 hrs posting updates and tweets about the trailer.

Watch the trailer below...

Defeating the Tabilan with a t-shirt

War, what is it good for, absolutely nothing, well that's not strictly true is it, declare your hate for the Taliban with a fashion statement.If we can't defeat the terrorist with high explosives then lets break the son of a bitch down emotionally. Zazzle is a great way for people to create their own merchandise, it lists billions of items for sale (yes that's billions) so if you've got something current to shout about why not enter the fray.

Buy the T-shirt in British SA80 Style here: SA80 Taliban Repellent t-shirt
Buy the T-shirt in USA M4 Assault rifle version here: M4 Taliban Repellent t shirt

My next purchase

In a bid to ensure I'm following the right road I've decided to invest in a book to better understand the complexities of creative writing, I figured that so far I've invested two years of my life into the book I'm writing so I may as well get the thing right. I asked myself if it was too late to start reading up on creative writing when I was already 50,000 words into the project but then I figured that after the editor has put his red pen through great swathes of it I don't think it really matters since I'll probably need to rewrite large sections and tighten down dialogue anyway. I was looking for a book about creative writing from an author with a degree of credibility and all fingers point to Mr Jurgen Wolff's book  Your Writing Coach: From Concept to Character, from Pitch to Publication, Jurgen's own credentials seem extremely solid. Jurgen's written scripts for several popular television shows I've seen at one point or another including : Benson, Family Ties, and Relic Hunter. I also like the fact it appears to be a very coach friendly tone to the way in which the book helps you understand writing formula. Review wise it look like it stacks up pretty well against other similar books with a lot of good reviews, particularly on Amazon.

What does the book contain

• Bonus material for each chapter accessible to readers on the http://www.yourwritingcoach.com/ Web site.

• A discussion of the most current Web-based technologies available to you to promote your work online.

• Guides you towards the endless flow of inspiration and ideas available to you and the technique of creating strong charaters,subplot and exposition.

• Develops ways to enhance your writing based on your knowledge, hobbies and interests to get the most from your story or subject matter.

By far the most important factor for me was the quote I saw on a review site about the book from the author himself...
"Once you've read the book, if you still have questions you are welcome to e-mail me ... and I'll do my best to answer them because I'm serious about being your writing coach."

The book is available from Amazon.co.uk in print and kindle format http://tinyurl.com/6fk2rc6

A leap of faith...and a good story

A few years back I started writing a novel, I started writing it based on several unsuccessful movie pitches to Hollywood producer Bob Kosbergs website  moviepitch http://www.moviepitch.com/ . I jotted down a number of ideas and picked the one I thought had the strongest story outline to be a fictional novel and started writing it, a story about female assassins, I did a ton of research and ploughed into it.
I haven't written stories since school, I have no writing accolades to note and I haven't attended creative writing courses or entered any journalism initiatives but I do know a good story when I read one.Then I shelved it, I stopped writing it altogether having been dismayed at the amount of hassle I'd have to go through just to get the novel looked at, a literary agent, editors and so forth, the dream of getting something out into the big bad world seemed a lot further away than when I started it. The biggest mistake I made was to stop writing, I stopped because I wanted to know what the process was for getting the book in front of readers and then the molehill became a mountain and I lost the motivation to write.

Two years ago I decided that I wanted to start something fresh, I'd write a novel and just publish it myself, I'd dabbled with Blurb.com with a photography book called Airsoft Infidels http://www.airsoftinfidels.com/ which was okay, it went bestseller on blurb.com within a couple of weeks but I probably spent more than I made giving out complimentary copies to all the photographers that participated in the project, and while  the pricing model for Blurb books prevents you from making any real headway on profit for books over 40 pages I thought I'd put my energies into a novel instead, buy my own ISBN and see where I could get with it.

That was two years ago and over two years I've chipped away at it here and then with no focus on actually trying to finish it, then Kindle appeared and the barriers to writing and publishing a novel, and making money via an ebook were now very much back in the frame, I don't need a publisher, I don't need a literary agent, I don't need a bookshop, its my book and the reader. So now the challenge is to finish and launch the book I started two years ago  and to do that I set myself a 1000 word a day goal to write the story. So far over the last 15 days I've conquered nearly ten thousand words so something is clearly working!

Last week I opened up the word doc female assassin story from the novel I started several years ago, and to my surprise I discovered I had written 6000 words, even better than that was the story was actually pretty good, so on the basis of that as soon as my current military thriller is finished I'll be finishing that and hopefully someone out there will be reading it!