New Video Games Provide Tools For Remakes By Users

[DudeAsInCool]

Games Made for Remaking

By MICHEL MARRIOTT

RALEIGH, N.C. • December 4, 2003

IMAGINE buying the latest "Lord of the Rings" DVD and

discovering that the cameras, lights, special effects and

editing tools used in its making had been included at no

extra charge. Or finding your favorite CD's crammed with

virtual recording studios, along with implicit

encouragement from the producer to remix the music, record

your own material and post it all on the Internet.

It might seem far-fetched - except to computer game

developers.

For years, players have found ways to hack into the digital

DNA, the primary computer code that operates some of their

favorite games, and alter its rules. Consequently, weapons

can be made more lethal, explosions flashier and more

thunderous. And game characters can acquire godlike

invulnerability or have their steely-eyed glares swapped

for the hapless glaze of, say, a Homer Simpson.

In recent years, players dedicated to modifying

store-bought computer games have morphed into an

underground movement - mod makers, as they often call

themselves. Now they are showing signs of breaking into the

mainstream as game developers are increasingly willing to

give away the very software tools they use to construct the

games, including them on the disc with the game itself.

As a result, working alone or in teams, the mod makers are

spending hundreds of hours tweaking or completely redrawing

popular games to be played on their own terms. The payoff

is fun and bragging rights, and just maybe a career in the

multibillion-dollar electronic game industry.

Those various motivations drew hundreds of mod makers to a

game company's weekend seminar at North Carolina State

University on the finer points of animation and building

virtual worlds, allowing them to compare notes on poly

modeling and the intricacies of static mesh.

"I've been wanting to make video games ever since I was 9

years old," said Dan Jones, 23, who drove 17 hours from

Siloam Springs, Ark., to be here. He said that when his

grade-school classmates were doodling comic-book heroes, he

was sketching side-scrolling video-game environments

inspired by Nintendo's Mario Brothers.

Mr. Jones, a recent graduate of John Brown University in

Siloam Springs, where he majored in digital media, is

working with two friends to build a medieval third-person

action game. His path as a mod maker, Mr. Jones said during

a lunch break, was inevitable: "There are a lot of creative

people who have grown up playing video games and stuff. You

kind of want to make what you already know."

Another mod maker, Maegan Walling, 26, added, "People are

taking the tools that someone else made and using them as

sort of a paintbrush to define their own canvas." Ms.

Walling joined friends and classmates from Full Sail Real

World Education, a multimedia training center in Winter

Park, Fla., for a road trip to Raleigh. "They are really,

really expressing their own creativity and defining the

ideal environment for their own game play. I would go as

far to say that it is an art."

Whether mods are art is debatable. But a group of major

computer-game makers agree that mods are good for the

industry. For one thing, they create a rich secondary

market for aging games being bought for raw materials. And

some designers say that game makers can inspire loyalty,

and sales, by creating games that remain fresh by lending

themselves to modification or even serving as the basis for

entirely different games.One company in particular, Epic

Games - the co-producer of Unreal Tournament, the

best-selling first-person-shooter franchise that is a

favorite among mod makers - is flinging open its doors to

modifications and complete game makeovers called

conversions.

And some mod makers, like Blake Politeski, are making names

for themselves with downloadable hit mods like his

Infection, a horror and survival game that was built out of

Unreal but evokes both the creepiness of the long-running

video-game series Resident Evil and Orson Welles's "War of

the Worlds" radio play.

Another mod that has thousands of people frantically

mouse-clicking is Red Orchestra, a lavishly rendered game

that places players at the Russian front of World War II.

Using Unreal's core 3-D graphics program, which is called a

game engine, the 50 or so mod makers have meticulously

replaced Unreal's futuristic particle-beam rifles and space

stations for period-perfect rifles and the bombed-out towns

of the 1940's.

"The ultimate goal of Red Orchestra is to create something

unique to the average gamer and, at the same time,

something visually delightful and fun," said Jeremy Blum, a

16-year-old from North Castle, N.Y., who is part of the

mod's self-assembled development team.

Web sites like GameSpy's Fileplanet (www.fileplanet.com),

and Planet Unreal (www.planetunreal.com) include mod news,

message boards and free downloads of homemade games like

Infection and Red Orchestra.

And not all mods are games. Some artists and programmers

are using game tools and engines to animate their own

digital movies, known as machinima (mah-SHIN-ee-mah). This

fall the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria,

Queens, held its second annual Machinima Film Festival in

recognition of what the museum terms "an emerging art

form."

Epic was hardly the first game developer to share its

digital toolbox with consumers. Id Software of Mesquite,

Tex., a pioneer of 3-D game graphics and design, included

software to remake or create wholly new environments in

which the game could be played in its breakthrough Doom and

Quake games of the early 1990's. And Neverwinter Nights, by

the Canadian-based BioWare Corporation, was successful,

some players recall, because of the digital tools that it

included for reworking the game.

Epic's mod-making tools come on the Unreal Tournament 2003

game disc. But company executives say they plan to go much

further when they release the much-awaited 2004 version of

the futuristic combat game in February. Mark Rein, Epic's

vice president, said a special-edition version of the new

game would not only include the popular Unreal Editor tool

package, but an additional DVD would contain hours of

step-by-step video instruction on making mods.

So far, mod makers say, there is no "Mod Making for

Dummies" book.

To further encourage gamers to do more than simply play

games, Epic is co-sponsor of a contest for mod makers in

which winners will receive up to $1 million in cash and

prizes, as well as a lucrative licensing agreement to use

the Unreal game engine. This would permit winners to

actually sell their game mods commercially. Mr. Rein said

the makers of such high-profile games as Half-Life and

Splinter Cell pay as much as $400,000 for the license.

Epic, which is also based in Raleigh, was a prime sponsor

of the two-day mod-making seminar, called Unreal

University.

Zachariah Inks, 25, a computer animation student at Full

Sail, was among those attracted.

"I really like games," Mr. Inks said during a short break

between marathon classes on character modeling and a

software program called UnrealScript. "But a nice end of it

is that you can do cinematic things, making

computer-animated movies."

Most computer games, whether played on PC's or on game

consoles, have introductory movies and intermittent

cinematic narratives called cut scenes. For years, these

scenes were made separately, some filmed in conventional

studios with actors. More recently, game makers have

created the scenes digitally and run them on the game

engine. Epic created its own software, Matinee, to create

and manage these scenes.

Mr. Inks uses various programs, including Matinee, which is

part of Unreal Tournament 2003, to create freestanding

short films - that is, machinima. "It's a nice creative

outlet," he said of his work, which he hopes may attract

the attention of prospective employers. A game developer,

he noted, might have 100 people working on a game, but

working on the "movie side of it" could be more solitary

and satisfying.

Right now, he said, he is using the Epic game engine to

create a showcase of his work to help him land a job when

he completes his two-year degree next year. He said he

wanted either to work in the game industry or to make

movies in an increasingly digital Hollywood, adding that he

saw abundant opportunities for digital animators in both

areas because computer games are becoming more like movies

and movies are becoming more like computer games.

"I see the mod community giving me a sense of what it takes

to succeed professionally and what really goes on," Mr.

Inks said. "When you start in school you are in awe of

everything, but as things go on and you work with it the

magic becomes more theory and practice. You get to see what

actually goes into this stuff."

Cliff Bleszinski, the 28-year-old lead designer for Epic,

said he looked at mod makers as a rich and renewable

resource for future computer game making. When he joined

Epic 11 years ago, he was a struggling amateur game maker.

Now part of his job is to search the Web for what he

considers great mods that the company can purchase to use

in future games. He is also on the lookout, he said, for

new talent.

"This is one of the very few entertainment mediums in which

you see this kind of organic process happen," said Mr.

Bleszinski, whose highlight-streaked, tossed blond hair

gives him a skater-boy aura. "I think this industry is

really kind of grounded a lot closer to its fans, to its

roots, than a lot other businesses."

Perhaps, he continued, it is because "we all started as

fans of this business and we respect our fans, the people

who modify our games and make mods."

Mr. Rein of Epic estimates that nearly one-third of the

company's 22 or so employees began as mod makers.

Tom Swogger, a 23-year-old mod maker who drove from

Arkansas with Dan Jones, said all the game-design classes

were useful. There were other dividends, too.

"It was great to see that all these guys are regular guys

just like us," Mr. Swogger said of people like the Epic

Games founder and president, Tim Sweeney, who milled about

and chatted easily with admirers and colleagues. "They had

to start somewhere, too. It's sort of encouraging."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/technolo...eda8d9cdf11977e

[DudeAsInCool]

I saw a clip this week of the beta for the video game 'Halflife', which is due out in about 4 months. Video games are moving towards motion picture quality and sooner than you think--and now publishers like the one above, are allowing users into the creative process.