Games Convention Asia 2008 @ Suntec - Short Tour

Games Convention Asia 2008 is here! Today I popped by the event during lunch, and spent quite some time on the 4th floor of the Suntec Convention centre. There were a lot of games, covering online MMOs, standalone PC based, consoles (XBox, Wii), handhelds, and even card games.

This year the exhibitors are quite generous with their posters and game disks, and I've collected a pile of these items. Will likely share them around since I would not be interested in playing all of them.

Let me show some of the photos taken today, and perhaps snapshot of those posters / freebies in another post.

Here's the booths of Cheery Credits and MOL. I'm quite glad that these companies exisit to fill the gaps of micro-credits for online games. Their existence will help players, especially those young players with no credits cards. These companies allow for consolidation of game credits that can be used among different games. Essentially, buy 1 card from them (I got a free Cherry Card!), and you can use it among their supported games.

Here's the booths for others, e.g. card games, handhelds (yes, that is a handheld game about SpongeBob). It is useful for gamers to try out these games before deciding if it is worth it to buy. Different games suit different people. More importantly, one could try out the different game consoles (which will determine what are the games one can play) before committing to one.

With all the craze about Formula 1 night racing, of course there are game booths about racing.

For students considering their future education paths, there are also education providers like the polys in this event. Guess the event covers almost all aspects of gaming. Those high level issues of laws, virtual properties, social behaviours ...etc etc are covered in the conference. There were also news articles about games development locally, including one where they mentioned that there are now more female games developers. I guess that explains why there are now more games targeting female players as well?

Related Posts:
- Games Convention Asia 2008 @ Suntec - Free Posters!
- Games Convention Asia 2008 @ Suntec City Convention

Games Convention Asia 2008 @ Suntec City Convention

Games Convention Asia (GCA) 2008 is here! It will be held in Suntec Convention (Singapore) from 18th to 20th Sep 2008. The full schedule can be found here. General public visit to the convention is free, but you will have to pay about S$ 200 plus to attend the conference.

They have also organised a special Students' Day on the 20th Sep, where students get to enjoy a separate conference for free. Topics include 'Free to play MMOs' and 'The future of games', 'GAMBIT Internship', 'Assassin Creed' ... by speakers from Nexon, MIT...etc.

Well, while public visitors can attend the event for free, some folks have given me the pass which I could also use for the event. Wonder if entry to the event via this pass would entitle me to any free goodies? I know last year they gave away some rather cool t-shirts, but any other types of goodies, e.g. free installation disks for MMOs, posters...etc are equally welcome!

Related Posts:
- Games Convention Asia 2008 @ Suntec - Free Posters!
- Games Convention Asia 2008 @ Suntec - Short Tour

Littles Lives, Pencil Farm, & National Day Parade

One of the games developer which I visit occasionally is The Pencil Farm. This developer creates very simple games that are easy to learn and play. The interesting part is that his games have attracted the attention of different national events organisers.

Previously his game was 'referenced' by the Beijing Olympics website, i.e. a somewhat negative development I would say. I covered that story sometime back.

More recently and definitely more positive, was the fact that Singapore's Little Lives engaged The Pencil Farm to develop this Singapore National Day Parade game. Little Lives is a social interaction portal set up for schools, students, and their parents, features include the 'poke' function that we commonly see in facebook. It is not sure what is their definition of students, and whether non-students can also join in.

I think the relative success of The Pencil Farm is a proof point that games' popularity is not necessarily linked to the complexity or sophistication of the game mechanics, and sometimes simple games with good ideas are all that is needed to make the game (and their developers) popular.

Related Posts:
- Beijing Olympics versus The Pencil Farm

Update about Smallworlds

Smallworlds has added more features to their service, which will be released in early September. With the new release, Smallworlds players can (thru the new Arcade Game Widget) design, build and submit their own games. Features of games ratings, high scores ladder and search capabilities will also be added. Those in-world games developers can gain fame and the in-world tokens for these player generated games, and potentially earn real money for these production. This design capability is extended to allow players to design their own missions, i.e. in-world quests / tasks.

Smallworlds players can also add 'spells, potions, stinkbombs...etc as part of their interaction with other players. It should be fun to throw stinkbombs at other players. Take a look at this YouTube for the demos on stinkbombs and rockets.

More interactivities will also be added to enable players to 'fly around', with special wings and gears. Players can also set up portals and doors to lead to different parts / extension of the players' rooms. These doors and portals could be activated via different puzzles like equipments. Players could also embed flash-like widgets to their own websites, including blogs or MySpace. I'm not sure how large (in kilobytes) or how 'smooth' would the interaction be, in the event when the website visitors want to interact with the SmallWorlds widget.

Last but not least is the function to buy and sell in-world spaces (i.e. properties), and items. This brings Smallworlds to the same level as other virtual worlds like Second Life. It is not clear whether such sales proceeds could be 'legally' converted back to real world cash subsequently. Smallworlds has a lot of potential due to its browser based concept with enhanced integration with other browser apps / sites (e.g. embedded YouTube), and hopefully they can achieve some level of mainstream recognition.

Related Posts:
- Simple Review of SmallWorlds - New Virtual World
- Smallworlds application in Facebook

Xtrapva.dll Trojan in the Cabal Online folders

I was doing my usual virus scan when the Symantec Antivirus detected a Xtrapva.dll trojan horse. After a simple search on Google, I found out that the trojan horse has been around since June 2007. The trojan has infected a number of files, including one used by Xtrap. Xtrap is used by many online games (e.g. Cabal Online & knights Online) to scan and prevent third party 'unauthorised' software from running, e.g. bots.

Thus it is ironic that such 'prevention' software got infected with a trojan horse. For my case it's Cabal Online's gaming update such that Xtrap got installed.

There are plenty of solutions and discussions about it. Doing a simple virus scan should be able to cure this trojan horse infection. :) Guess it is time for those online gamers out there to do more scheduled virus scan!

Simple Review of Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

Recently I was busy playing this game 'Titan Quest: Immortal Throne'. This is a good game for those busy working adults who can only spare an hour or less to play games during weekdays. The reasons are that the learning curve is short, and the game is relatively simple to play. Those who have played Diablo would have some appreciation of this game. Conversely some players may feel it is another 'Diablo-like' game which is nothing new.

Oh well, different players prefer different things. Nonetheless here's some screenshots I took of three different characters. The following three shots are those of a corsair class player fighting the three gorgons, the dead gorgons, and the story plot of a girl from ancient China talking to the character (who is from ancient Greece). "I used character and player inter-changeably."

Overall the story is quite linear, taking the player from ancient Greece, to Egypt, and to ancient China. The fighting is relatively simple, with mouse clicks and number keys. Not much of a big tactics is involved unless one choose a higher difficulty level of play. The graphics is attractive, with relatively alright background music. Here's a screenshot of ancient Memphis in Egypt.

The game featured many 'classes' to choose from. While one is classless when the game started, the player gets to choose which of the 8 classes he/she wants to be in from level 3. Each level will grant 3 skill points and 2 character points. Classes are either melee or spell caster based. Some spell caster classes (and later for melee classes) can summon 'pets' like the lich king or wolves to assist them.

The character points could be used to upgrade 'Health', "Energy', "Strength', 'Intelligence', or 'Dexterity'. Sufficient combination of Strength, Intelligence, or Dexterity is needed to wear higher level equipments. Equipments could also have skill enhancers / attributes, and there are also 'sets' which give additional bonus for each additional equipment of the same set when worn. Skill points are for different skills (obviously) and the player could put the active skills into the number hotkeys. When the player reaches level 8, he/she can choose another class, and thus get the best of both classes. The 'designation' of the character also changed once the second class is chosen.

There are certain scenes where special effects are present. For example, when the player enter the burning olive farms in Greece, there are special smoke and fire particles effect. Since the graphics is quite good, one could occasionally zoom in to look at the finer graphical details.

Overall it is a good game and quite worth the money spent I think. I'm not sure if I will complete the game though, or if I will be distracted by other new games. Lolz.

Increasing recognition of games as mainstream activity

After a visit to the WCG 08, I unpacked the goodie bag and was somewhat surprised by the number of gaming related magazines available in the market (e.g. Playworks, EGM, DNA MO Times, and T3). These magazines in the goodie bag are but a small segment of what are available, and that speaks volume about the amount of advertising revenues that the industry is willing to pour in, even for a small market like Singapore.

It is true that there is now a much wider variety of games, thanks to the large increase in the number of casual gamers (effect of Nintendo Wii for example) that helped to push up demand for new games. It is a chicken and egg scenario; more gamers lead to more games creation that further attracts more gamers.

With large scale events like WCG 08 and the recent AsiaSoft's gamefest (held in Marina Square), more people are recognising gaming as a mainstream activity. This didn't happen overnight, since we already have a large number of official game launches with huge crowd turnout (example Cabal Online, Granado Espada, WoW's TBC expansion...etc).

What is actually surprising is the amount of money poured in in terms of advertising revenues, and also game prizes. What used to be prizes comprising of electronic gadgets from sponsors, organisers nowadays are willing to pour in actual cash sums.

So I guess we can look forward to more interesting events and game related materials in the days to come. :)