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IAN NI-LEWIS: --get it.
DAN GALPIN: All right.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Welcome to The Friday Review of Games.
DAN GALPIN: Wait, what shot are we on?
I'm only on screen.
You're not even on screen, Ian.
Wait.
Now it's a black screen.
Hold on.
We can do this.
MALE SPEAKER: There's this one.
DAN GALPIN: All right.
Yeah, there we are.
Oh, cool.
All right.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Excellent.
All right.
DAN GALPIN: Welcome to The Friday Review of Games.
As always, I'm Dan Galpin, and with me is Ian Ni-Lewis.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Exactly.
DAN GALPIN: And we're going to have a nice, casual
conversation with our game now behind us using the advanced
green screen technology we have here in the studio.
And the game behind us, by the way, is "Greedy Spiders 2,"
just to give a call out to it.
But more importantly, let's find out what
we're drinking today.
Well, Ian's drinking Mountain Dew.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh yeah.
Dude, I was up all night.
You know what I was up all night doing?
Making an intro video.
DAN GALPIN: Oh yeah, the one that didn't get played.
That's all right.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Actually, it's a different one.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, it's a different one.
I know.
I know.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That was for the App Planet, [? yeah. ?]
I don't know, man.
Sometimes I wonder.
So producer Daniel Pham is not with us today.
He is off on a whirlwind tour of New York and London.
Because as you know, it's Fashion Week.
He's got a lot of couture houses to visit.
Pretty much everyone in Europe who does fauxhawks will be at
the London Fauxhawk Convention.
DAN GALPIN: I think it's exciting for him to get to
meet a bunch of his peers this way.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Exactly.
So we wish you the best, Daniel.
Keep on truckin', and we still totally believe that you have
a girlfriend, even though we never met her.
DAN GALPIN: He doesn't want her to meet us, actually.
I think he know that's pretty much the end.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Really can't blame him.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, exactly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: 'Cause isn't he pretty young?
I bet his girlfriend is about mid-20s.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, probably.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, he doesn't want her to meet you.
All right, so we've got some games today.
DAN GALPIN: We do.
We have some games.
We have some beer.
Let's start drinking now please.
All right, do we have an opener?
That's the most important thing.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Of course we do.
So today we're drinking Rogue Dead Guy ale.
We're going back to a classic.
DAN GALPIN: This is for people who've stayed up till 4:00 in
the morning.
Actually, both Ian and I stayed up to all hours of the
night last night.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Such a bad idea.
DAN GALPIN: So we're both feeling like dead guys.
Raa--
brains--
this should be zombie edition, actually, of the show because
that's kind of how I feel like right now.
IAN NI-LEWIS: All right.
So this is a new studio setup for us, and we actually have
real-time statistics.
But I can just barely read it.
It looks like-- what is that-- two people are watching?
DAN GALPIN: Some like that.
Yeah.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So two people are watching.
Awesome.
Thanks to both of us-- both of you.
DAN GALPIN: Wait, one of those is the producer, isn't it?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Ooh, damn it.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, well.
Anyways, thanks to you, man.
We appreciate it.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Exactly.
All right, so anyway, we love you guys.
And as always--
DAN GALPIN: There's more than that slightly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So producer Louis is monitoring the
YouTube chat channel.
So if you guys want to have some conversations, just say
something, maybe spark us off on another wild
goose chase, awesome.
DAN GALPIN: Absolutely.
We are here to be casual.
Once again, it is a casual Friday review.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Absolutely.
We're going to look at a couple of games.
But we also want to use this as a jumping-off point just to
talk about Android gaming and how you program and sell games
on Android in general.
DAN GALPIN: And this has been a big week, too, for Google.
We announced the new Chromebook, which I'm really
excited about.
And I think a lot of people don't recognize, but that
Chromebook has some serious potential for games.
And it's really the first one that I think actually has a
GPU that's more powerful, potentially, than the CPU.
And so I think we're going to see some really, really cool
stuff about it.
And so I'm excited.
It's using the Exynos 5, and it's a very low-resolution
device for that Exynos 6.
So it's going to be a really nice game machine.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Exynos 5, that's an exciting chip.
DAN GALPIN: It is an exciting chip.
So the Chromebook actually earned the distinction of
being the first device to ship with an RMA-15.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's some good stuff.
That's an out-of-order part, isn't it?
DAN GALPIN: It is.
It is.
It's got a really long pipeline, so you do have to be
a little more careful, I think, in terms of you stall
the pipeline--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right.
But an out of order pipe is going to be a
lot harder to stall.
DAN GALPIN: Exactly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: And this is actually is
probably a good thing.
DAN GALPIN: Actually, it's speculative out-of-order.
A9 is also out-of-order.
A15 is also speculative execution, I believe.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, OK.
Is there a first speculative part?
DAN GALPIN: I don't remember.
I can't remember, actually, the difference--
I know the pipeline is longer, and beyond that--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, I hope it doesn't crash.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, exactly.
But I'm really excited about that.
I think the price point is great, and the track pad feels
really, really good.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, I know that was kind of a problem
earlier, wasn't it?
DAN GALPIN: Well, the original, original
Chromebooks--
I think people underestimated that.
And now, I think they've made that a really, really good job
of getting good parts, getting good sensors, and
integrating it well.
So I think it's a great little machine.
I'm excited.
I'm excited to see what people do with games on it.
That's a little bit far off from Android, but I thought
I'd do a shout out to--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, I was gonna say.
Yeah, do you want to talk about the new Windows machine
next, dude?
DAN GALPIN: The new Windows machine, dude, it uses a T30.
That's old news, man.
I mean, come on.
That's the part from six months ago.
IAN NI-LEWIS: All right, my Mountain Dew is finished.
It's time for beer.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So yeah, it's been a good week.
We've had some up and down.
I'm definitely, again, just working through a lot of test
suites with different game developers, trying to figure
out what it is.
So here's something that surfaced--
DAN GALPIN: No pun intended.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right--
that I think is really important just recently.
And I think this actually may apply to the Exynos 5--
is we saw some game developers with either incorrect results
in the fragment shader or basically
massively incorrect Z results.
DAN GALPIN: And what's interesting about it, we're
moving towards devices--
all the next generation of GPUs, whether that be the T604
that's in the Exynos 5 or the Adreno 320, these are all
unified shader models.
And so they're designed to be both compute monsters and the
GPU as well as graphics monsters.
And so what we're seeing there--
is your head in the display there, man?
I think it is.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Louis, you promised, dude.
DAN GALPIN: Also the corner of the monitor's in the display.
That's kind of cool.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Actually, you know what?
Mom!
Oh yeah, yeah.
Dude, you need to move that, seriously.
DAN GALPIN: Can you lower that monitor just a little bit?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, just lower the monitor.
DAN GALPIN: One more.
There we are.
All right.
IAN NI-LEWIS: If you could just maybe stop having a head,
that would be good.
DAN GALPIN: Hunched, he's gonna be like
Quasimodo after this.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, I guess we could pan up a little bit.
DAN GALPIN: We totally could.
But anyway, so what that means, when you get into
devices that are designed for compute is now they actually
have a unified shader model.
And so now we're seeing things where before, a lot of times,
they would sort of fudge in vertex shaders in terms of
whether you have medium-precision or
low-precision, it might not actually have a true
medium-precision.
But now that we're actually having these that are designed
to deal with compute, medium-precision may actually
mean something.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, part of the problem is that for a long
time, in a lot of parts--
so the problem is these things are defined as low is less
than or equal to medium is less than or equal to high.
DAN GALPIN: You're guaranteed 16 bits with
medium is the problem.
But it could be more.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But it could be more.
DAN GALPIN: And it often is.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, it usually is, actually.
So what we were seeing is there are some parts-- and I
believe the Exynos 5 is one of them-- that uses 16 bits for
medium-P. So if you were using medium-P and getting by with
24 bits of precision, now you get swashed down to 16, we're
seeing these bizarre Z-fighting issues.
DAN GALPIN: And again, we're talking about
vertex shader precision.
Most the time, pixel shader precision,
actually, is unchanged.
They were already crazily optimizing pixel shaders in a
lot of these devices.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, the artifacts you're going to get
are not nearly--
you'll get banding.
DAN GALPIN: But when you have vertex shader, you'll have
geometry that suddenly is fighting with other geometry.
And if you draw it on one order on these devices, it's
just going to overlap.
And so it's kind of terrifying.
So one thing to note is that when you're actually using a
vertex shader and you're using medium-precision, you're
really only guaranteed 16 bits.
And unfortunately, it's not easy to necessarily test that
in terms of just having a GPU that's a reference design.
But it is something you should consider.
And it's actually worthwhile to put some exceptions in your
code and actually try to check those things and debug them.
Because you can actually test for those, it's just that you
may not have a GPU sample that yet exposes it.
So it's an interesting device.
Again, all of the new devices are not necessarily going to
have that issue, but they are going to definitely have
issues because we're moving towards unified models here in
mobile-- which is exciting.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, it is really cool.
I mean, I don't know if I'd characterize it as being
because of unified shaders.
I think it just happened to come along with that.
It's a little cold in here.
OK, actually I just wanted to cover up my man ***.
DAN GALPIN: No, I totally, totally get that.
[INAUDIBLE].
So let's talk a little bit about the game behind us.
Because it is here, and the people are sort of wanting--
so this is "Greedy Spiders 2."
IAN NI-LEWIS: So I remember-- "Greedy Spiders," didn't we
play that and it was sort of a puzzle game, right?
DAN GALPIN: It is a puzzle game.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You had to move your flies or
something like that.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, so the goal with this one is to--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, this is cute.
DAN GALPIN: --is to free your flies from the spiders.
And it's actually fairly tricky to do that.
The spider will always follow the path towards the nearest
bug in terms of the numbers of segments.
And so you can use that against him.
So as you see here, the goal is now to isolate him from all
of the other bugs as quickly as possible.
And that's how we get the best score.
And then once he's isolate, the bugs will get to go free.
And there's all sorts of stuff the game starts throwing at
you in addition.
So the first one is cutting, you can freeze them.
There's also other stuff you can do to the spider in order
to prevent it from eating the bugs.
And I think it's a really clever game.
The puzzles get really, really
challenging as it goes through.
This is an example of a game that's done very, very well.
The back key, you see, does not do anything here, which is
unfortunate.
It actually should technically do something--
but nothing.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You're watching the confidence monitor, right,
so you have an idea of what people can and can't see?
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, so I'm pushing the back key here.
You can actually see the outline of the tablet here.
IAN NI-LEWIS: No, no it's OK.
It's OK.
Here, I'll show you how we do this.
DAN GALPIN: Oh yeah?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, we just move your chair.
As you can see--
DAN GALPIN: As you can see--
IAN NI-LEWIS: --there are stars in this game.
DAN GALPIN: Yes.
This is great, actually.
One of us can actually play the role of the letter turner,
the Vanna White role.
IAN NI-LEWIS: No, you know what?
I'll tell you exactly why I wanted to set up this way.
Because I'm just *** sick of talking about the back key.
Plus actually, there was that hater.
DAN GALPIN: Was there a hater?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, not on our show, but on
me and Reto's show.
The guy went off, he's like, man don't
listen to those guys.
They probably work for Apple.
They're trying to ruin Android.
DAN GALPIN: Dude, really?
Look, no one from Apple would wear this hat.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, I guess that's true.
Well, you know what was actually really hilarious,
though, was one of the things he said was, I can't believe
you're telling people not to have an exit dialogue before
you back out of the application because every
application should have that.
What if it takes a long time to reload?
And I'm like, that's a really good point.
But really, the only apps that get a pass on that are games
because yes, games can take a while to reload on earlier
systems or if you're under tremendous memory pressure.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah.
In general, if you really want to throw a dialogue up because
of loading, it's OK but in general, it's better to just
not do it at all.
I'm still of the mindset that user will
figure out fairly quickly--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, now that you don't lose your context
when you lose focus, then I think that
that's absolutely right.
Because the user is either going to go right back to the
game, in which case you should still have your context and
you should still have everything.
Basically you should pause and then just let them resume.
Or the user doesn't care anymore and your game will get
killed off.
And as long as you handle the notifications correctly,
you're probably going to be fine.
DAN GALPIN: Well, you know, we're so happy.
This game actually does not have a menu key.
It's doing a lot of things right.
But I'm sitting here and I have to--
OK, first of all, this is something
weird about these games.
I have the bricks, and the bricks say I'm actually going
back to this other menu that looks like bricks.
And then we've got an on-screen back key here.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Wait, wait.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
DAN GALPIN: But that back key does work.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's a little unfortunate.
Can you swipe?
DAN GALPIN: You can.
You can swipe.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, it's a different--
DAN GALPIN: It's not a proper swiping motion, but it is--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, that's one thing, by the way, that I've
noticed on a couple of games.
They'll implement a swipe, but they won't
implement it with physics.
And as you get on to bigger devices, it's really annoying
because you have to drag your whole finger all the way
across the devices.
DAN GALPIN: It's particularly nice if you can use the
physics that's built into Android in
terms of gesture detector.
It makes the game feel like an Android game, and it makes it
feel a little bit customized for that device.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, yeah.
Exactly.
Because the gesture detector and the flywheel physics will
in general do the right thing as far as the
momentum of your swipe.
And people are going to be used to that.
Because all these other apps use it.
So if you tune it so that you really, really like it and
it's different from the system default, you might want to
just ask yourself why you did that.
DAN GALPIN: Well, it is really funny because there's a lot of
games that actually have tried to tune this.
And you really notice it.
It's a visceral quality.
The game feels thick or sticky.
And what we find is that our physics are a little looser
than some other touch-based operating systems, especially
in the newer versions.
We really wanted to have this very active and alive and
elastic feel to the user interface.
And so when you have a game that's using it, it feels
like, ugh, I'm going through this sludge trying to get
through the UI.
So in general, I think it's a great idea.
IAN NI-LEWIS: There is one really bad
thing about it, though.
And actually, look it up in the ViewPager code.
There is a fudge factor that we apply to our own physics,
like a factor of four.
DAN GALPIN: It's true.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Because we suck.
But whatever.
If there's a fudge factor, great.
Grab it out of the source.
It's a constant factor.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah.
All right, so anyways I really love this game.
Honestly, it's an incredibly well-designed game.
It's really, really fun.
The graphics are really well done.
It's very cute, and it definitely is a game, looking
around the Halloween season, I think this is one that has
legs that people are going to want to play with.
Even little details--
IAN NI-LEWIS: I see what you did there.
It has legs.
Nice.
DAN GALPIN: I know.
I know.
So I love the fact that his eyes even move here on the
title screen.
It's very, very cute.
You have the little obvious option for music, sound
effects, and off on the radio with the little animations.
You can change the difficulty on it from easy to hard.
You know, whatever.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You can't do that, actually.
Yeah.
DAN GALPIN: I mean, you can actually determine whether or
not they've rated you on Google Play.
So kind of silly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah.
Actually, the truth is--
I hope these developers hear this from us because they will
eventually hear it from the Play guys--
it's against policy to incentivize reviews.
So if the Play team sees that--
DAN GALPIN: Actually, it's borderline because they're not
asking for a good review or a bad review, this is one that
the team finds kind of borderline.
And it's this side of goofball because you can actually tell
whether they've reviewed it.
So what usually happens is, sure, I'll rate
you on Google Play.
And then I go to Google Play and I hang out here for a
little while, and I load--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right, and it never loads.
So they don't come back.
DAN GALPIN: Load the page.
And then I come back.
And it's like, usually the game goes, woo-hoo, rated on
Google Play.
Plus five.
Again, kind of silly, since you can't actually detect it.
But that being said, whether it's helping you or not, I
think the team is OK as long as you're not
asking for a specific.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So check it out.
Look who just walked in.
It's Reto Meier.
DAN GALPIN: No way.
Welcome to the neighborhood, Reto.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Why is Reto Meier slumming in here with
the game guys?
RETO MEIER: When I was watching, it sounded like the
audio from the tablet was coming through online.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Whose fault would that be?
DAN GALPIN: Well, it could be anyone's.
I'm going to mute this tablet just in case.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Good point.
RETO MEIER: Thank you.
DAN GALPIN: You're welcome.
Thank you, Reto.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Reto, representative of the man.
Thanks, Reto.
Appreciate it.
DAN GALPIN: Thank you.
I appreciate that one.
Daniel Pham is off teaching people all over the world how
he does his magical producership in his giant
world tour-- in addition to the fauxhawk convention, which
of course is very important.
So we're all kind of figuring things out.
We realize how much we rely on him here.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yes, we do.
DAN GALPIN: Absolutely.
So we can switch to another title.
So we've actually looked at a lot of the ones here--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Hey, producer Louis, what
happened to our HDMI?
LOUIS: Looks like you lost your tablet.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, I did.
[? LOUIS: You can't ?] move.
DAN GALPIN: No way, really?
LOUIS: Yep.
Now it's back.
DAN GALPIN: All right.
Woo-hoo!
[INAUDIBLE]
All right, so we've looked at a lot of these before, so I'm
not going to go into any detail.
I'm just going to bring them up and be like,
wow, that looks bad.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But why does that look bad?
DAN GALPIN: Well, it's because this game has never been
really tested on a tablet display is what I think.
But I'm not sure.
It could just be it's intended to be squashed like that.
But this is "Greedy Monkey." And also, this game is just
one that has a lot of potential in terms of being a
physics puzzler.
And it just doesn't quite live up to it.
The goal is actually you need to clear away the boards so
that the banana will make it to the monkey.
This is the laziest monkey on earth.
And there's so much that I can say in terms of polish, in
terms of everything from the font.
The graphic style is actually relatively consistent, but you
even see, like there are some things that are outlined and
some things are not.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, the stars have a little bit
of a bevel to them.
It's just really inconsistent.
DAN GALPIN: I love the the background.
I would actually like to see everything take the style of
the background.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You're right.
The background is kind of cool.
DAN GALPIN: I love that style.
I think it also scales really, really well.
What's great about not having distinct outlines is that they
actually scale and look great on every display.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's a good point because if you've got a
black line around, that's going to scale differently,
and it's going to end up actually being invisible on
some devices and too thick on others.
DAN GALPIN: Exactly, and you end up with
these aliasing artifacts.
Like, you can see here on the board on the very, very left,
you can't really make out the outline because of the angle
the board is sitting at.
The outline wasn't there at all, and we actually chose an
art style that was more consistent with the nice
gradient fills of the background.
I think it would look a little bit better.
Don't want to say a lot about this game, it's just there's a
lot of polish that can be done here.
And I think we did look at it a long time ago, but my memory
is such that I don't even know.
"Mibo" is kind of interesting.
The main thing, dude, if you're going to use AndEngine,
don't use the standard AndEngine package, man.
Change the package name.
It's like, really, I was looking at it, and I'm like,
this is com.andengine--
this is not an AndEngine game.
This is a game by an individual.
This is a game that requires accelerometer.
It's definitely retro.
What I'm impressed by is this game is super, super tiny.
I think this game is, like, 800 or 900k, which makes it
one of the smallest games.
And given that, it actually does quite a lot.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Are you just trying to keep these
dudes in the air?
DAN GALPIN: You're trying to keep these guys in the air,
and you eventually get combos, you see, which I can't really
do very well here.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You know what we need for this place?
We need one of those remotes where your phone is the
accelerometer.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, that would be kind of kick-butt.
If only there was a way to actually use my other phone as
a real HID device and there was some sort of remote
framework for dealing with sensors.
That would be kind of cool.
You know, Jeff.
That's you.
Yeah, I'm not going to be able to do this very well on this
tablet, partially because I have it in the dock, which of
course, I do mostly for stability.
But actually, the starry background looks
pretty good with us.
I kind of like that.
IAN NI-LEWIS: How's that stability thing working out
for you, by the way?
DAN GALPIN: I kind of like this starry
background behind us.
I will say, this game makes a better background than others.
it's pretty blurry on the tablet.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's true.
It's not bad, actually.
DAN GALPIN: It's not.
I kind of like--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, if we just had a little bit more depth of
field, I could totally believe that we were just sitting in
front of a video wall or something.
DAN GALPIN: Absolutely.
I tell you, I really want us to be silhouettes, though.
I totally want us to do the "MST3K" thing and have us
really, really tiny in the corner.
Take our shot, instead of just composing it straight,
actually make it smaller and take us and compose us in a
little corner.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh man, you know who could totally make us into
silhouettes?
DAN GALPIN: Daniel Pham.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah.
DAN GALPIN: So maybe next time, we'll do that.
That would be kind of awesome.
And so for next week, by the way--
just to let you know, we'll mention this at the end-- but
I do want people to nominate Halloween-themed games.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That shouldn't be hard.
DAN GALPIN: There are so many out there.
And everyone is throwing Halloween.
IAN NI-LEWIS: It's like, we might actually just do games
on the app clinic too because Reto was like, yeah, we'll do
Halloween apps at the end of October.
I'm like, really?
What's a Halloween app, exactly?
But yeah, Halloween's huge for games.
DAN GALPIN: Well, there are sound boards-- like
Halloween-themed sound boards, there's Halloween live
wallpapers.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, for some reason, I guess the people
aren't too interested in them.
DAN GALPIN: Halloween cards.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I don't know.
DAN GALPIN: [INAUDIBLE].
Anyways, there's a lot of Halloween stuff, so we're
excited about that.
Maybe I won't wear a hat that time.
We'll see.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So you'll go as a crazy old
man with long hair?
DAN GALPIN: That's right.
Actually, I walk down the street and
people hand me stuff.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right?
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, exactly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, you should totally be a hobo.
DAN GALPIN: Like, no, no, I'm not begging.
Please, OK?
This is just the way I dress.
I'm sorry.
I've got holes in my shoes.
So in any case, where are we going with this?
Yeah, the game, it works.
And it's cute.
And it's very small.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You promised me that there was going to be
interesting stuff about each game that we
were looking at today.
You promised me.
DAN GALPIN: I know.
I lied.
So the other two games that we're--
IAN NI-LEWIS: I mean, the fact that it's really small is very
interesting.
That's cool.
DAN GALPIN: It is, actually.
Actually, the only thing I wanted to mention was, please
don't use the default package of anything.
Create your own package name.
That was my primary comment.
The game is actually pretty fun.
It's very simple, but it's fun.
So the other two are "Overkill" and "Zombie
Raiders." I'm pretty sure we've looked at both of them.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I don't remember "Zombie Raiders." I definitely
remember "Overkill." That's a shooting gallery game, right?
DAN GALPIN: Yes. "Overkill's" a shooting gallery game.
I put it on here just because we can take a
quick look at it again.
IAN NI-LEWIS: It has a pretty cool icon.
I don't remember the game looking as good as the intro
in the icon, though.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, the real sad thing about this game is that
it completely lacks animation.
It's sort of like a semi-robotic
shooting gallery with--
but you can take a look.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But this whole beginning stuff.
Just the entire menu system is awesome.
DAN GALPIN: And I love the little bullets.
And then you get to the game and wow, this looks really
well-rendered.
And then you start playing, and you're like, hey, first of
all, this is a dual joystick control despite the fact that
it looks like you might be tapping.
That's actually not how it works.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, that explains a lot about why I
never got any good scores in this game.
It's weird.
It's like, they've got this great
rendering, but they couldn't--
I mean, I've definitely got sympathy for that.
We've got the same problem in the game we're writing.
Because we ran out of money before we got the main
character rigged.
DAN GALPIN: That's true.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So you know what I was thinking we should do is
just give him rocket boots.
Because then we don't have to rig him.
We'll just make the rocket boots swivel.
DAN GALPIN: That could work.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So anyways, you can also swipe.
Actually, you can swipe with two fingers to change guns.
It actually has some nice gesture support.
But kind of--
IAN NI-LEWIS: It's tough, man.
You can definitely compare just what you're seeing right
now on the screen with some of the other games
we've looked at it.
And you know what game you want to play.
You're like, oh my god, that is different.
And it's really, really crisp and beautiful.
And not all of us are born designers.
DAN GALPIN: Back key not working.
IAN NI-LEWIS: It's hard for me to say exactly what
makes this so good.
I think part of it's an attention to color, part of
it's a consistency throughout the design.
I mean, you're looking at this high-res, real world bitmap
and then over the top of it are these things, the font and
the layout is just very crisp.
DAN GALPIN: They did a great job on the menu system.
The game itself, I really want some more
animation in the game.
And I know they were definitely
constrained by size.
But it's not a small game.
It is a game that's actually using AP expansion files.
It clocks in at about 54 megs, I think.
And part of the problem is that in shooting games,
there's some great stuff from Glue, to be honest, that
competes directly with this.
Several of their games are shooting galleries but with
more sophisticated 3D environments.
And so I don't know.
This game is fun.
It is very well done.
I did actually have a chance to play it.
It is difficult to play on a tablet sitting on a
surface like this.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But yeah, and if I had to choose between a
beautiful menu system and a beautiful excellent game play,
of course I'm going to choose gameplay.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, no.
The menu system, though, is awesome.
Honestly, kudos to you guys, man, for making an awesome
menu system here.
The back key still doesn't work.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I told you, man, we spent a year talking about
the back key.
You either know it or you don't.
DAN GALPIN: So "Zombie Raiders" is actually a really
interesting game that takes an incredible amount
of time to get into.
And it's actually kind of an adventure, puzzle, fighting,
shooting game.
So basically, as you can see, you actually have to unlock--
there's a zombie invasion going on.
And what you have to do is actually get to
these various areas.
And you find items you have to use, and you have to figure
out where to use the items.
And it's a detailed, long, involved game.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But this isn't the one where you're flying an
airplane full of zombies, is it?
DAN GALPIN: No.
No, that one I love.
That game's great.
This game, I think, in terms of a mobile game, this one's a
little harder.
It requires a large amount of time investment to really get
into and play this game.
From a graphic prospective, things are--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, that's cool.
You know what this really reminds me--
how long has it been since we've seen just a fun,
top-down isometric?
DAN GALPIN: I still haven't seen one.
But this is top-down and isometric.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right.
I guess that's sort of mutually exclusive.
But yeah, this is isometric.
Well no, it reminds me of "X-COM."
But where's the shadows?
Dude.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, I know.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Shadows on these characters aren't hard.
All you need is a couple of circles.
DAN GALPIN: Not even a fake shadow.
There's even a little shadow underneath that little marker.
It's sort of odd.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, it's weird.
DAN GALPIN: The graphics are really blurry.
I would love to see them be a little higher
res than they are.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's true.
I didn't notice because--
so here's a question to our audience.
We were just talking about this the other day, is if
you're going to run an automated program to detect
issues like this-- so what we're talking about is over on
the right side of the screen, we've got these things that
are almost behind Dan's head.
So these are crisp.
Whereas all of this, it's a little hard to tell because
it's so textured but it is not crisp.
I'd say the density is about--
DAN GALPIN: Actually, it's kind of nice because it
creates depth of feel for us in our shot here.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, yeah.
Good point.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, exactly.
It looks like it's way behind us.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Except we like we're sort of positioned in a
weird netherspace over an isometric field.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, well, I think that's OK.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Anyway, the point is, what would you do to
detect this?
Because to put it in layman's terms, I think we're trying to
detect places where--
there's crisp, but then most of it's blurry.
But the problem is, if you're just measuring frequency or
whatever, some things are going to be a
low-frequency signal.
And especially things like this gameplay, the only places
that you notice it, the only places where it has to be
crisp, are the places that you would expect it to be crisp.
And maybe that's it.
Maybe what we need to do is shrink it down, find the
silhouette edges, and then see how many of the silhouette
edges are actually blurry at higher resolutions.
DAN GALPIN: Well, exactly.
It would also be an interesting example to do just
that-- to actually change the size of the display.
Look at this game at different display sizes and compare how
blurry it gets.
And then we could actually see where it had the highest
amount of information.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, that's true.
If we just characterize the information theoretically, if
the information doesn't go up when the screen size does,
then that's a problem, right?
DAN GALPIN: Exactly.
We'd even take each image and apply a scale
factor, scale it down--
IAN NI-LEWIS: No, you're right.
You're absolutely right.
Because that's the truth.
It doesn't have anything to do with frequency.
It has to do with information.
Because if you're making a bilinear prediction at each
pixel, and the prediction is always right, then there's no
information beyond what the quarter of the
size would have been.
DAN GALPIN: Exactly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Genius.
DAN GALPIN: Well--
thank you-- we're solving all of our problems here on the
Friday Review.
But yeah, so this game is really blurry on tablets.
It's OK on phones.
Honestly, on a Galaxy Nexus, you can see this too.
IAN NI-LEWIS: All right, well, I'm really bored.
Let's take a question from the audience.
Hey, producer Louis?
DAN GALPIN: Are there any questions?
LOUIS: There are questions.
Are there any game genres that you think are underrepresented
on touch-screen phones that would do well if optimized?
IAN NI-LEWIS: RTS, man.
Why aren't there more RTS games out there?
There are a lot of tower defense and stuff like that,
but when I'm playing "StarCraft" it's like, this
seems like it would make sense on a touchscreen.
DAN GALPIN: Totally.
Well, I think in general, I want to see games that take
advantage of the connectivity.
Most of these are like 100% connected devices.
And I'd love to see RTS games, and not only to play against
the computer but actually allow you to play against
other players.
I think that there's really an opportunity for--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, see, I don't feel that way because I
hate other people.
But touch screen--
now, that's something I can get behind.
DAN GALPIN: I mean, I think, I would love to see--
"StarCraft" was a great single-player experience.
But as a multi-player game was where it--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, no question.
But that doesn't feel like it's the core
to the phone, right?
Or are you just saying that in general, we're not seeing
enough multi-player experiences, even though these
things are--
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, even though these things
are connected devices.
Like, I want to see people do a lot of really cool
multi-player stuff.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, I mean part of the problem is I feel
like "StarCraft" would have been a completely different
experience if clicking on a Zerg had cost
me 5/10 of a cent.
DAN GALPIN: No, that's true.
That's true.
IAN NI-LEWIS: And when we're talking about bandwidth caps
and stuff like that, it's really hard--
DAN GALPIN: Oh, I thought you were talking
about in-app purchases.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, that too.
That too.
DAN GALPIN: We're now charging you $0.50 every
single time you click.
That's kind of genius.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, you know what would be great is if you
die three times, then you have to pay $0.25 to continue.
I always wondered why that model didn't come back.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, I know.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Maybe because it sucked.
I don't know.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, probably.
Although it never stopped me from playing
far too much Robotron.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But wasn't it great when nickel arcades came
into being?
DAN GALPIN: Mm--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Did you have a nickel arcade near your house?
DAN GALPIN: No.
No, we did not unfortunately.
We did have arcades that had major, major
token deals, though.
So they had days you'd come to the arcade, and were like, and
now you get quad tokens.
And so we'd come out with giant sacks of tokens.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, there you go.
Yeah, totally.
No, I had a nickel arcade near my house when
I was growing up.
Oh, and when I lived in Salonica, they had a 10
drachma arcade.
Yeah, and drachma are worth about as much as Korean won.
DAN GALPIN: I actually remember when I went to
Prague, actually, I was really excited because the arcade was
less expensive because of the time.
Actually, they're still not using Euro.
IAN NI-LEWIS: In Prague, they're not?
DAN GALPIN: No, no.
They have joined the Eurozone but they are still using their
own currency, as I recall.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I think so.
Anyway, so the arcade was actually
relatively cheap there.
So at that point, I was playing a lot of--
IAN NI-LEWIS: You know what I really miss is that Mickey
game that came out.
And it never hit the States because I think
of licensing deals.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, yeah.
I didn't play that.
I've heard of it, though.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I remember, actually, I don't think I got
much past the first level.
The first level was really fun because you were on the
giant's table from Mickey and the Beanstalk.
And you know, you were jumping on the jello and the cakes and
stuff like that.
It was really cool.
DAN GALPIN: So let's see, anything else coming off the
live stream?
LOUIS: So you guys mentioned AndEngine.
And Jim McLeod said you guys love it.
What do you think about libgdx?
DAN GALPIN: I don't have experience with it.
IAN NI-LEWIS: We haven't tried it.
So as far as loving AndEngine, what I like about AndEngine is
that they've done a really, really good job of building a
usable 2D, sprite/tile gaming framework on top of the
Android APIs.
And I've seen a lot of great games come out of AndEngine,
so I always kind of smile when I see another AndEngine game.
Also, Nicholas really has done a great job.
And it's one of the nice things that Zynga has actually
brought back to the community is that they've contributed a
lot of lines of source since he's been
there back into AndEngine.
So I don't usually get to say kudos to Zynga very often, but
kudos to Zynga for continuing that effort.
LOUIS: And this is not for Ian because he hates people, but
are you disappointed by the limited number of games that
have multi-player?
DAN GALPIN: I would say definitely, yes.
We're starting to see more.
There's been more and more games.
And also--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Let me just answer that, even though
nobody wanted me to.
Yes, you're right, I cannot get enough of racist teenagers
who spend all their time getting better than me at all
games all the time ever.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, no, I would say that there's different
kinds of games too.
There are games that work very, very well with anonymous
matchmaking.
And anonymous is kind of cool.
A lot times there's no
communication between the players.
So I don't even get to find out the way that they feel
about gay people, for example.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, it's true.
I mean, I have a weekly "StarCraft"
match with my buddies.
And we play on one team and we get matched
against some other team.
And usually the conversation is, hey, good luck, have fun.
And sometimes it's them trash-talking, which is always
good because you know when somebody trash-talks in
"StarCraft" they have to do it over text chat.
So obviously their actions permitted are going down.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, exactly.
Exactly, when you have the U-R S-O G-A-E, it's like--
IAN NI-LEWIS: I think the main problem is that a multi-player
game, at least for me, is an appointment.
So when I have an appointment, I have devices that I can be
at at a specific time that are much, much
faster than a phone.
So I don't usually look for a multi-player game on the phone
because I'm probably going to sit down at my desktop
computer, which is 100 times more powerful.
But what I do really enjoy is the idea of being able to do a
synchronous multi-player on the phone.
And I don't think that I would be like this, but I can
totally see a lot of people that would be into the
experience of doing a quick enough LAN session or
something like that.
DAN GALPIN: Well, I love anonymous
matchmaking, actually.
I think that mobile really lends to it.
I've got five minutes here.
I have no time to grab friends.
And that happened all the time, even in "World of
Warcraft." You'd run into a bunch of people-- hey, we're
all about to do this same mission.
Awesome, can I join you?
Yes, let's go to kill the
blah-blah and get the blah-blah.
And so that kind of stuff, I think, lends itself very, very
well to mobile.
An example would be "Dungeon Hunter 3," actually, has a
mode where you say, hey, I've got a room.
Let's find other people.
Let's go attack this.
That works really well, and you don't have to find a whole
bunch of friends to do it.
And you can actually chat.
But it's such a pain to chat on mobile that it leaves the
conversation, actually, relatively short.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, that's really tough.
I don't think that I really got into multi-player gaming
until voice chat became ubiquitous.
Now, theoretically, there wouldn't be anything stopping
somebody from releasing a chat client that could run in the
background and do the stuff.
Again, I'm always astounded by how much amazing computing
power we can carry in our pocket, but we're still
carrying it in our pocket and powering it
by tiny little batteries.
It's nothing compared to something that you
plug into the wall.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, it's true.
And I think that we're going to get there.
But currently, in terms of multi-player, I think that
there are certainly fantastic success stories in mobile.
But most of them have been asynchronous multi-player.
Or the other thing that works really, really well that I
like to see are challenges where you actually can play
against the ghost of someone.
Your friend can be like, nyah, nyah, I just got this high
score and et cetera, et cetera.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right, because that's really when I'm gaming
on my phone is because I've got a little
bit of time to grab.
And I need the experience that is going to reward that as
opposed to having to call up my friend.
And of course, it'll say my friend is online, but of
course he's online because he's got his
phone in his pocket.
Everybody always does, right?
DAN GALPIN: Exactly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So it's tough.
I mean, there's definitely challenges that we didn't face
when we were doing the desktop stuff.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, or on the Xbox.
You're on the Xbox, most likely, you're either watching
videos-- in which case, man, don't even try to message me--
or you're playing games, in which case-- well, actually,
don't try to message me most of the time either.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's *** me off.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah.
Can't you see, man?
But at least you're actively at a console where you usually
have a fast internet connection and you're in the
mood to potentially interact with humans,
although not always.
LOUIS: Any concerns about multi-player bandwidth?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Of course.
Although I would say that the bandwidth issue is much less
of a concern than latency.
You can always fix bandwidth.
It's very difficult to fix latency.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, I think we're finally getting into
some networks.
Like, LTE has some actually great latency numbers on a
non-congested network.
And so we're finally getting to the point where some of the
things that were at one point either limited to either LAN
connections--
it's kind of funny.
My friends who were serious about gaming would be like,
all right, I can't have a cable modem because there's
too much latency.
I can't be on Wi-Fi because that adds too much latency to
the DSL line, which is the only thing it provides
[? alone ?]
of latency so that I have a chance of not getting fragged.
And we're not anywhere near that in terms of mobile yet.
But there are certain kinds of twitch experiences that are
starting to work on an actual cellular network.
And I think that's exciting.
LTE is really enabling all that.
So I think we'll see more and more.
But it still is tricky.
And one of the things is, when you're doing matchmaking, you
want to find out, how good are my pings?
Can I get a quality of service?
If the quality of service falls below a certain
threshold, what does that mean in terms of the game?
It does add additional design challenges.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, really, I think, the biggest problem is
that your ping time is extremely unpredictable when
you're own mobile.
Even if you're stationary, it can be very unpredictable
because it's so susceptible to ARP interference.
DAN GALPIN: Our Wi-Fi is actually a
perfect test ground.
If something works on our Wi-Fi here, it probably will
work on a mobile network
IAN NI-LEWIS: That might actually be true, yeah.
But I mean, if you've got a femtocell or a Wi-Fi network,
I think that there's all sorts of things you can do.
The nice thing is that the same games that lend
themselves particularly well to a touch-screen only
interface are the same games that very frequently don't
require incredibly good latency.
So I'm sure there are people who really honestly enjoy
playing FPSs on mobile, I'm not one of them just because I
feel like I have so many better ways to play FPSs.
And I don't have a better way to play, let's say, "Tower
Defense" or, like I said, RTS.
And the nice thing about those games is that while they're
not fully deterministic, it's really, really easy to do
latency hiding in those situations.
Now, one of my favorite multi-player games, as you all
know, is the "Big Win" series by Hot Head.
And they hide latency beautifully just by
pre-computing everything.
But here's the dirty little secret--
you're like, oh, well, yeah, of course it's all
predetermined.
But the truth is that most sports games can do very
similar things.
For instance, "NFL Fever" and "NHL Rivals" from Microsoft
sports, we would basically start an animation sooner on
the originating client and hold it out for more frames.
And this is the same thing as the old "Warcraft" and
"StarCraft." if you click on a peon, and he says, OK, I'm
going to do my thing.
And he is acting lazy, well, that's not laziness on your
peon's part.
That's latency compensation.
Because if you can hold off on actually doing the thing for 5
or 10 frames, which isn't very long, then you can completely
get rid of ping time problems.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah.
And listen, I've played a lot of FPS games
a lot now on mobile.
"Shadowgun" was a great experience.
IAN NI-LEWIS: It always flabbergasts me
that you can do that.
DAN GALPIN: Except for the one level where you have to run
backwards, which made me want to shoot someone.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, was that when the drill
came through the wall?
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, the drill's coming.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, that was terrible.
DAN GALPIN: Just awful.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That was the meat circus of "Shadowgun."
DAN GALPIN: It actually was.
And you just got ground up over and over.
And I made it through.
I actually beat that level twice.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's right.
You had to beat that level because we had to get past it
to show it in Barcelona, right?
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, in Mobile World Congress.
I was like, I'm gonna pass this level.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That was hilarious.
DAN GALPIN: But yeah, I played "Shadowgun," I played "Dead
Trigger," actually I played through "Batman--
The Dark Night." I played through a lot of "Spider-Man."
I love "Mass Effect: Infiltrator."
Did I say that already?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Of course you did.
DAN GALPIN: I played through a lot of that. "Dead Trigger," I
did a lot of.
There's been a lot of really, really
great experiences there.
And it's interesting because there's two different models.
There's ones like "Mass Effect" which really tries to
use swiping and to create a totally different interface--
and sometimes it just drives me crazy--
and then there are the things like "Shadowgun," which are
basically doing joystick simulations.
And it was funny because I actually don't know what I
like more because I totally appreciate the crazy stuff
"Mass Effect: Infiltrator" does.
But the problem is when you're actually playing on a tablet,
you are just reaching all over the place.
You're going up to the corner and dragging stuff and doing
gestures here and there.
And it does get to be a little bit crazy.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, I feel like that's a common problem,
is that people will design a great touch interface, but
they'll design it around a particular form factor.
And that's not the world we live in anymore.
And Android has lots of form factors.
Everybody has at least two.
DAN GALPIN: Well, my favorite is "N.O.V.A. 3." So "N.O.V.A.
3" actually has a mode, you can actually go and drag the
different controls around.
Except you can't actually drag the one that does reload, with
is stuck at the top of the screen.
So you can have everything else right within thumb's
reach, and then you're going, reload.
All right, back, back, back.
Reload.
So again, kudos, I love the concept of having customizable
controls, but they kind of all have to be customizable at
that point.
And again, "N.O.V.A. 3" is great for that kind of game.
But definitely, we're at an era where the hardware can
actually do some really nice FPSs.
We're seeing stuff that rivals, in many ways, actually
is better quality than what we saw on the PS2 and on the
original Xbox.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, you can definitely get past the Xbox 1
and PS2 phase.
For me, I didn't actually get into FPSs until the Xbox 360,
and I'll tell you why.
Part of it was that was the first console--
and you remember, that came out before the PS3.
So it was the first console that had a unified shader.
And it was also the first console that had any real
memory, so it drove really high texel density.
And I just found that the blurry stuff is really hard to
go back to.
DAN GALPIN: And I will say, I played a crap-load of "Halo"
and "Halo 2" on the original Xbox.
And we used to get together for LAN parties and we used to
have Frag-fest.
And that was really fun.
In fact, I love just the fact that we had to put everyone
together in the same room and we had everyone walking around
carrying these gi-normous Xboxes and monitors.
Super-dorky but kind of awesome.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Whatever.
Gi-normous Xboxes?
Try carting around your desktop.
DAN GALPIN: Well, we did that too.
But I mean, that's why the Xboxes seemed like, oh, this
is so easy compared to carting around--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right.
Did you see Koh actually has a special Xbox backpack?
It was custom made.
DAN GALPIN: That is because Koh is cooler than either of
us in that that kind of geeky way.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Where is she?
Is she in Korea now again?
DAN GALPIN: I don't know.
Probably.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I love how we do that.
It was like, hey, we need to hire someone for games, and
there's this person who really, really likes games.
And she's got a lot of contacts in the industry.
Awesome.
Oh, hey, is she Asian?
What kind of Asian?
Oh my god, really?
Korean?
Bye.
DAN GALPIN: I know.
Yeah, exactly.
No, I don't think she's actually in Korea now.
I think she had another meeting today, actually.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Of course she did.
DAN GALPIN: Of course she did.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Of course she did.
Anything else on there, Louis?
LOUIS: There's lots of questions around nomination of
games, either to get reviewed here, but also featuring.
The developer of "Greedy Monkey" is watching, one of
those which is on display.
And of course, they want to know, how do they get to the
next step and get behind the featuring committee?
DAN GALPIN: Well, I mean, the truth is, on
a tablet like this--
I haven't had extensive experience on a phone-- but in
terms of something like "Greedy Monkey," you have to
look at the quality of the stuff that's getting featured
now in terms of just the graphical integrity that we're
talking about.
The bar is pretty high.
And the reason is because they're taking this game and
they're putting it in front of millions and millions of
Android users.
We're talking about over a million activations a day of
just new devices, not to mention all the ones that are
sitting out there.
And so the bar has gotten higher.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, there's a few things there.
I mean, in terms of the bar, the minimum bar--
we published it just a few days ago on developer--
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, we have an app quality checklist.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, the app quality checklist, essentially
that's derived from the guidelines that Dan and I
helped write for game featuring quality.
DAN GALPIN: A shout out to our QA team who
did an amazing job.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Ian Armstrong actually put them into words.
He is so much more literate than us when it
comes to test plans.
DAN GALPIN: And it was interesting because what's
great about the quality guidelines is that you can
actually use it as a test plan.
So it actually says, here are the things that we're trying
to test for.
And then it actually says, and here are a bunch of tests you
may use to actually try to test for those things.
So first of all, everyone should look at app quality and
tablet app quality, especially for games, and try to make
sure that it gets there.
And so part of it, they're going to look at graphics in
terms of style, in terms of pixel density.
And "Greedy Monkey," it needs to be taken to the next level
in terms of polish.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, let's see what's featured now.
The other thing that I think is really important for people
to understand is that the featured apps have to be at
least four stars and lots of downloads.
DAN GALPIN: Almost always.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, every now and then, we'll go looking for
diamonds in the rough, for sure.
DAN GALPIN: Well, if there's velocity.
So sometimes what happens is some guy publishes a game
that's awesome.
Except that they didn't test it on anything but one device.
And then there's like, everyone starts
giving it one star.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So occasionally we'll see a game that has what
we call a U-shaped distribution for reviews.
So it'll be like all fives and all ones
and nothing in between.
And that's a really good sign that we should feature this
game as soon as they fix or blacklist devices.
And that's very typical.
But let's take a look--
DAN GALPIN: I haven't played "Death Dome." That looks
pretty cool.
IAN NI-LEWIS: This does look pretty cool.
DAN GALPIN: I haven't played it yet, but I want
to give it one star.
Wait, what is that review?
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, that's an awesome review.
I totally want--
DAN GALPIN: Why?
Because it won't even open and finish downloading the data.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, yeah.
That's a good--
and there's not that many one star reviews on this site.
DAN GALPIN: That's unusual, yeah.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Most people seem to be doing well.
But if you look at these things, it used to be that we
were desperate for games.
I'm talking about a while ago.
DAN GALPIN: Three years ago, if the game played and it
looked OK--
but now, the bar is so high.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, like, "Pirates of the Caribbean,"
that's a Disney game.
You've got Gameloft, Com2uS.
DAN GALPIN: "NFL Pro." "Rayman Jungle Run" is awesome.
"Bard's Tale" is epic.
IAN NI-LEWIS: The truth is that the top five or six
developers put out more games than we
could possibly feature.
DAN GALPIN: Again, look at all the independents here, though.
It's awesome.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But we do.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's the thing.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, if all we wanted to do was
feature great quality games, there are a huge number that
are made by really, really well-funded people.
We don't just want to feature well-funded games or games by
the top five developers.
We really, really want to feature some other things.
But usually what it takes is a very strong recommendation.
Sometimes it will be people that just made it really big
on other platforms.
Like for instance, "Triple Town" was very big on the
original Kindle.
DAN GALPIN: Well, "Triple Town" was just an
incredibly fun game.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Plus we're buddies with that guy.
He's a really good guy.
He used to run Xbox live arcades.
DAN GALPIN: But I think with "Triple Town," it was one of
those that actually got submitted.
So "Triple Town" went through a process-- it got submitted
to a whole bunch of Googlers who were just
randomly looking at games.
And all of them lost so much productivity.
Literally, these people came back to us and said, you can't
recommend this kind of game to us because we just are missing
all of our objectives and key results for the quarter
because of "Triple Town."
IAN NI-LEWIS: But here's really what it comes down to--
a lot of people say, well, how do I get noticed?
And we did for a while run this show as a
crowd-sourcing thing.
We've kind of stopped doing that.
We've kind of stopped thinking of this as being a conduit
into featuring because we just weren't
seeing good enough results.
It turns out that there's a lot of really intriguing indie
stuff by people who are super-low budget.
But for the most part, the really, really good stuff
floats to the top.
So for instance, we look at the Android gamer sites.
We look at the mobile gamer sites.
We talk to developers and say, what are you playing?
So I don't think we're the ones that are going to
discover you is really what it comes down to.
DAN GALPIN: There have been a couple of games that have come
through here that have become featured.
And a couple of ones where they were--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like "Gunman Clive," for instance, we
all loved that game.
We hadn't seen it before.
Absolutely.
And I think that that will still happen.
But you have to understand--
DAN GALPIN: "Word Hero" was another one.
IAN NI-LEWIS: --that the bar is really high.
DAN GALPIN: "Word Hero" here came through here, and we're
like, with some polish, this game has all
of the right bones.
It's going to be a great game.
And I've never seen a developer work so hard to
polish their game and get it ready for tablets and get it
ready for multiple devices and get a much
better feature graphic.
And he did great stuff to make sure that it was
going to pass our--
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's another thing, by the way.
Look at these feature graphics.
They're lush.
They're beautiful.
DAN GALPIN: I mean, "Clouds & Sheep."
IAN NI-LEWIS: They're well made.
DAN GALPIN: HandyGames did a brilliant job with that.
You can see, even "Wild Blood," which is kind of small
and low contrast, you can still read it,
even on this tablet.
And that's an epic game too in terms of its content.
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's true.
You will see a lot of Gameloft games.
You'll see a lot of Com2uS games, a lot of EA games.
There are big studios that are well funded.
So I guess the point is that, I would say, maybe once a
month, a game that we see from our moderator page is good
enough to get featured.
So I wouldn't pin all your hopes on it.
But if you do want to be reviewed on this show, the way
to do it is to go to our moderator page, which you'll
have to search for because I don't have the URL handy, but
the Friday Review moderator.
And just nominate it for the date that
you're interested in.
And if it doesn't get picked up that
date, nominate it again.
And if people aren't voting for it, maybe
ask yourself why.
DAN GALPIN: I mean, looking at the five games we have today,
in terms of a combination of graphical polish, gameplay,
all of these different elements--
"Greedy Spiders," we featured the original.
We'll probably feature "Greedy Spiders 2" as well.
IAN NI-LEWIS: It's as good as it was before or better.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, it's as good as it was before or better.
IAN NI-LEWIS: But that's a really polished game.
DAN GALPIN: It's a really, really polished game.
IAN NI-LEWIS: And you've got to remember too, we would
really, really love to believe that featuring is something
that we can just do for games because they're awesome,
because we really want to support indie developers.
It's not.
The featuring process is actually for filling our
storefront and making Google Play a more
attractive place to be.
DAN GALPIN: Well, we want to make sure when people download
something off the store that they're happy with it.
Because that's what gets people going back.
And that's what makes the featuring process work.
We want to make sure that when we do have a great indie title
that comes through that we put it up
there and it does something.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So you know what's really awesome, though,
is what they've started to do with collections.
Because if you go in here--
DAN GALPIN: In, like, a tabletop games.
IAN NI-LEWIS: OK, so Tavares Ford, who's a buddy of ours,
made this collection of tabletop games.
DAN GALPIN: It doesn't even sound like a real name when
you hear his name.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I know, right?
DAN GALPIN: It sounds like a car.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Ford Prefect or something.
DAN GALPIN: Exactly, exactly.
He's actually part of "Hitchhiker's Guide."
IAN NI-LEWIS: I know.
And it's weird too because one of the guys that did WebGL on
Chrome is named Gregg Tavares.
And so it's like, everybody always gets it mixed up.
But there's a few things, like, check this out.
"Neuroshima Hex," we learned about "Neuroshima Hex" from, I
think, one of our old co-workers--
was it Chris?
And we were super-unimpressed at first.
But then they did some updates, and it actually
started getting fun.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, I mean, look, we even have "Rage of
Bahamut" up there.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Well, "Rage of Bahamut," I mean, you gotta
toss in a ringer, I guess.
But the point being, though, that I think this is going to
turn into a channel for more attention.
Because for instance, for the longest time--
DAN GALPIN: I was so excited about the retro site.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Yeah, yeah.
Because remember, for the longest time, we'd get these
great retro games in.
And we're like, OK, but we can't feature very many retro
games because if people come in and they don't know the
retro thing and they don't understand, then they're going
to see this and they're going to think, oh, I guess Android
games are all full of gigantic pixels.
And I mean, maybe that was a reasonable fear.
Maybe it wasn't.
DAN GALPIN: But if you put it in a retro
category, it really helps.
And so I think what's exciting is that we're actually
starting to improve the merchandise and get
more stuff in there.
And I think ultimately, what's even more exciting is you know
what, it's very possible that let's say that a female user
comes in here and the average female-- not to be
completely--
is potentially not interested in "Death Dome" and "Wild
Blood." That might not be appealing to their
demographic.
In fact, what they want to see is "Magic Tree" and "Rayman"
and "Triple Town."
IAN NI-LEWIS: I think everybody wants to see "Magic
Tree." Come on, look at that.
DAN GALPIN: I know, I know.
It's true.
IAN NI-LEWIS: So cute.
DAN GALPIN: So I think that's the one thing that's really--
or "Clouds & Sheep." I love "Clouds & Sheep."
IAN NI-LEWIS: Those guys--
we still need to go and visit them.
DAN GALPIN: We do.
They're awesome.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Where are they at, Norway?
DAN GALPIN: No, they're in Germany.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, they're in Germany.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, they're great.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Oh, I only think he's Norwegian because of his
boss hairstyle.
DAN GALPIN: Well, he looks like a Viking.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Doesn't he?
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, he does.
He does.
We're talking about the CEO.
IAN NI-LEWIS: And they have that game, right?
"Happy Vikings?" God, that was a terrible game.
DAN GALPIN: It was their worst game.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I hated that game so much.
DAN GALPIN: They love that game, though.
IAN NI-LEWIS: They really do.
But it's weird because every one of their other games is
actually pretty awesome.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, they're brilliant.
And "Clouds & Sheep" is--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Maybe you need to get to level three on
"Happy Vikings" or something.
DAN GALPIN: Actually, the other one that they have, just
recently, which I do love-- and I'm now
blanking on the name--
it's "Townsmen" is the other one you should
play from those guys.
IAN NI-LEWIS: OK, look at how over time we are, man.
We're so self-indulgent.
Louis, is there a final question you just want to go
out with a *** on?
LOUIS: I would say that was it.
But if you're really greedy, you can talk about game
controllers.
IAN NI-LEWIS: You know what, game controllers are awesome.
At some point we're going to support them, and life is
going to be sweet.
That's all we have time for everybody.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
We love you guys.
We're really excited to see you next week.
We will do a little bit of gameplay, a little bit of
dishing, a little bit of live questions, and we're going to
drink a lot of beer.
DAN GALPIN: Dead Guy Ale set us up
really well for Halloween.
IAN NI-LEWIS: I can't believe I only bought 12 ounces of
beer to this thing.
DAN GALPIN: I know.
Well, after drinking a Mountain Dew--
IAN NI-LEWIS: That's like bringing
a banana to a gunfight.
DAN GALPIN: You shot a Mountain Dew and then you
drank a beer.
That's like canceling each other out.
That's like not even a start, really.
IAN NI-LEWIS: No, for me, that's Saturday morning.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, OK.
That makes sense.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Anyway, we're going to be back next week.
Don't forget to catch--
DAN GALPIN: Nominate Halloween games.
I'm going to change it so that it actually
says Halloween games.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Nominate them and vote.
And don't do that thing where you get all your friends to
down vote everything.
Because we're totally onto that.
The system doesn't work that way.
DAN GALPIN: Down vote sucks.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Don't be that guy.
Come on.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, that guy--
IAN NI-LEWIS: Get your zombie games and your pumpkin games.
Just don't nominate anything that's like a regular game and
then they stuck a witch hat onto somebody.
That stuff is lame.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, exactly.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Right.
It wouldn't be anything like that.
DAN GALPIN: No.
IAN NI-LEWIS: No, not at all.
DAN GALPIN: Not at all.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Anyway, we will see you next week.
Don't forget to tune in on Tuesday early morning for
Android design in action with Roman Nurik.
On Friday morning, 11:30, Reto Meier and I do the app clinic,
which is now moving in a far more technical direction.
We'll see how long we can keep that up because
now it's real work.
And then we will be drinking beer like a mother every
Friday until they kick us out.
DAN GALPIN: That's right.
I think actually, they are kicking us out now.
IAN NI-LEWIS: Let's get going.
DAN GALPIN: All right.
IAN NI-LEWIS: All right.
See you guys later.
DAN GALPIN: Cheers.
All right, do we have an outro?
Outro!
Woo-hoo!