Iron Man the movie hit the theaters yesterday, and the game hit stores. The PS2, PSP, PC and Wii are the ones I got to produce. The next gen SKUs were done by Sega’s own studio.

Last night we went to the movie, then home with the newly purchased game and I watched Jonathan play. The evening was a very cool ride, a happy culmination to 18 months of hard work.

When I produced Happy Feet, access to assets was complicated by the fact that the movie was being produced in Australia. Nevertheless, the whole team got to see the movie at various stages of its production. I had therefore seen it three times by the time it was released.

With Iron Man, the film crew was extremely open with assets, and we visited the set, witnessed some scenes being shot, met director, cast and crew, saw flight animation tests and the Iron Monger suit in the “flesh”, visited Stark mansion and saw Iron Man suit concept art, but I never read the script or actually saw the movie. Consequently, having been allowed access to some information, without seeing the finished product, just made the whole thing extremely tantalizing.

And last night was the biggest payoff a superhero fan could wish for. The movie is awesome, definitely up there with the first Spider-Man for superhero movies.

Go. And make sure you stay until the end of the credits

A large part of the game Mass Effect involves conversation with other characters. They say something to you, you pick among a choice of replies and they react to what you say. Depending on how charming or intimidating your own character becomes over the course of the game, more extreme dialog options become open to you. Experimenting with how characters will react to different lines is most of the fun of the game for me.

But I knew this could get really good when I was admiring a beautiful view with Kaidan, my male subordinate, and he inadvertently let slip something that suggested he was into me.

Now, it doesn’t matter that poor Kaidan looks like Erik Estrada and is written the way a male game designer thinks I want a man to be (basically a 32-year-old telekinetic virgin). I felt the same fuzziness, the same “whoa, did I just hear that?” feeling in my gut as when a new romantic interest is expressed in real life. I wondered how far it would go, and suddenly all my conversational choices with Kaidan revolved around nurturing the budding flame.

Later in the game, I met Liara, a knockout of a blue-skinned alien chick who’s also a socially awkward scientist. No matter what conversational options you choose, Liara wants you bad and overcomes her geeky shyness to let you know it. Indeed, nothing you say seems to turn her off (written the way a male game designer wants a woman to be?). She wasn’t particular about the fact that I’m a female, either. See, her race, the Asari, only has females (yah). In fact, she’s so easy that the first time I played through the game, I accidentally slept with her. And by trying to be a weeeee bit coy with Kaidan, I ended up crushing him.

So the next time I played it safe, acting all but abusive to Liara (because let’s face it, I felt she’d violated me in the first playthrough) and playing mother hen to Kaidan’s paper-thin male ego, and successfully ended up with him in the end.

In a surprising development, last night the two of them confronted me to make a definitive choice. Oh, the drama. I opted for Kaidan but noticed that I did have the option to ask if I could have them both. Now THAT, my friends, is replayability.

In other situations in the game, I wanted to choose one option to see what would happen, but just couldn’t morally bring myself to do it, or would feel truly sorry for the impact I’d had. I couldn’t abstract away the emotions just to satisfy my game designer’s curiosity. And that’s huge.

Mass Effect doesn’t come close to giving me as powerful or complex emotions as I’ve felt watching great cinema, but it comes closer than any game ever has before, and to me that’s a step forward for the medium. I guess the most important thing it made me feel, then, is hope.

Today, Patrick asks, who’s the most awesomest company you can work for in your field? Which company would be the equivalent of playing for the Montreal Canadiens in the 70s? Which would be like playing for them now?

I thought about it, and one of the first that sprang to mind was BioWare. There’s a company that in a bitch of an industry conditions-wise, manages to crank out top-notch games on their own terms, whilst succeeding in being a recognized leader in the area of quality of life. Of course, being in Edmonton, they could only ever hope to be the Oilers, not the Canadiens, but hey.

However, as you may know, BioWare was bought a couple of weeks ago by EA, arguably one of the most infamous games companies for quality of life issues. To some developers, this is like Luke joining forces with Vader. Yesterday Jonathan, a BioWare stockholder, received papers to sign related to the deal. We joked about his stopping the 860M$ deal by failing to return the signed documents on time, and thus becoming a grass-roots hero of game developers everywhere. We wondered how much of a loss he would be willing to take to nix the symbolism-heavy deal.

But no, BioWare will be absorbed into EA, thus motivating the question, if you define awesome by good conditions and quality products, who’s the awesomest NOW?

I’m working towards first playable these days (basically the first major deliverable of a game, where the first level is usually delivered at near-final quality). This weekend I dreamt that my game’s hero had been replaced by the ball from Metroid in my first playable build.

I know it sounds silly, but it was really scary.

I’m terrified to go to sleep.

Eidos Interactive (Tomb Raider, Hitman) is setting up shop in Montreal in March.

My friend Dr Wank, a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa, holds as his first maxim of human behavior that People are Stupid.

A lot of the history I’ve been reading confirms this, but this morning, a particularly sad example of it popped up in my feeds:

Radio station holds a contest to see who can drink the most water without peeing, for the grand prize of a Wii.
Yes, the obvious puns are made.
DJs make jokes about previous water intoxication deaths and responsibility waivers as contestant has bad symptoms on air.
People call in to warn about water intoxication risk.
Contest continues.
Contestant dies.

Q.E.D.

A couple of weeks ago, the Scotsmontonian and I played all the way through Justice League Heroes in three days. I found the gameplay engaging without being innovative in the least. Think Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance with superheroes. A solid, honest game that does the job, without revolutionizing anything.

Its big plus is the coolness of the heroes you get to play. For superheroes, you just can’t beat the player fantasy of being Wonder Woman, Superman, or Batman. The big minus is that for most of the game you don’t get to choose who you play, and end up having to be Zatanna and the Martian Manhunter at times. Eh. There are seven playable characters in total.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance, on the other hand, has a seemingly endless number of playable characters, including my Marvel favorites Thor, Iron Man, Elektra and Daredevil (though the latter is still locked after about five hours of play). However, in a game where some of the fun comes from upgrading and strengthening your character, do you really want to spread your effort across twenty of them, including some like Spider Woman or Ms. Marvel?

Gameplay in MUA is very similar to JLH, with satisfying melee and ranged fighting mechanics, as well as a decent variety of upgrades. However, MUA suffers from some annoying UI problems, such as the “unpause” button being different from the pause button, and “Accept” being on the circle. Also, the character customization system can only be used by one player at a time, forcing one to wait while the other spends level-up points. AnnOOOOying…

The graphics are much better in MUA than in JLH, and in fact the opening cutscene is probably the best I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the high amount of detail on the characters actually ends up being a disadvantage, as they blend in excessively with the detailed background.

Overall, each game is fun and worth a try, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend playing both, unless you’re a huge superhero fan like I am. In this duel JLH comes out on top, but it’s by no means a crushing victory.

My favorite quote of the Montreal International Games Summit 2006 (roughly paraphrased):

About booth babes being banned from E3: “Remember that video of Wonder Woman getting thrown out of E3 last year? In my opinion that’s the real cause of the show’s downfall. You don’t mess with superpowers”.

- Brenda Brathwaite, during her excellent Sex in Games talk. I almost proposed to her right there.

(other summit impressions to come later)

So you want to make games by yourself. Oops.

I’ve been asked by a video games publisher to recommend someone to attend to a grass roots event in a great city next week, all expenses paid.

You must:
- Be a gamer, preferably a sports gamer
- Have a high-traffic blog
- Be Canadian

Apply within, serious inquiries only please.