As wonderful as it was to see Double Fine Adventure succeed, one success does not a movement make. For Kickstarter to mean anything in the grand scheme of things, it has to keep the ball rolling. Further, it can’t simply rely on projects headed by universally beloved developers like Schafer or sequels to cult classics like inXile’s Wasteland 2 or Harebrained Schemes’ Shadowrun Returns. While these franchises are not what publishers would consider mainstream and faced difficulty in finding funding, how much of a movement is it really if all the games being funded are relying on name recognition? As indie game designer Ian Bogost recently tweeted, if that’s the case, they may as well “change Kickstarter’s name to Sequelstarter.”

As it happens, that’s not the case. There are indeed completely original games from lesser known developers that are succeeding on Kickstarter, though you may have missed them in the buzz about the aforementioned Kickstarter campaigns. No, they’re not cracking seven figures, but they’re exceeding their goals and that means they’re getting developed. They’re the foot soldiers of this would be movement, the ones whose success determines whether crowd funded games are going to last two months or two decades and they shouldn’t go unheralded. So today, we’re going take a closer look at three of them – Takedown, FTL: Faster Than Light and The Banner Saga.

Takedown

After the success of the Double Fine Adventure campaign, the game development community looked a little like the kids at a junior high semi-formal, awkwardly looking around to see who else would be brave enough to step onto the dance floor before they tried themselves. Some other campaigns started during that time span, but none had goals anywhere near the bold $400,000 mark that Double Fine had set. Finally, in early March, veteran game designer Christian Allen – the lead designer of Ghost Recon 2 and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter – and Serellan LLC stepped forward with what was then called Crowdsourced Hardcore Tactical Shooter, which had a goal of $200,000.

As with Double Fine Adventure, Takedown is an attempt to revive a genre publishers thought was dead and gone but was near and dear to the hearts of both the developer and niche fans. Allen himself had wanted to make a game like CHTS for “over a decade” but hadn’t found the means to fund it. “I’ve pitched this type of game on and off again for years,” says Allen. “And then when I founded Serellan LLC late last year, first to do some consulting work, I started getting emails from people asking if I was going to make a tactical shooter, even though all I had done was posted up a splash image of the company logo.”

Then along came Kickstarter, and suddenly Takedown seemed closer to reality than ever before. However, Allen knew a game like Takedown couldn’t be funded from Kickstarter funds alone. So instead, he used Kickstarter to not only get the initial funds for the game, but as a way to prove that it would have an audience to secure funding from venture capitalists. “I was talking to a group of VC investors who were questioning how they could be sure there was actually a market for this kind of game,” Allen says. “I had been looking at Kickstarter for a few months, and decided to give it a go.”

However, as the first big campaign after the success of Double Fine Adventure, Allen and Serellan were working without many examples to follow and were taking quite the risk. According to Allen, “It was very possible if the campaign had failed miserably that Takedown would have not seen the light of day.” The eyes of the development community were on Serellan, waiting to see if they would succeed or fail. Did Allen feel at all like the canary in the coal mine, like people were watching Serellan’s campaign to see if someone besides Tim Schafer could pull off such a big coup? “I do think that was the case,” Allen confirms. “A lot of people had negative things to say or predicted our demise […].”

As it happened, those predictions came close to becoming a reality. With only 17 days to go, they were over $150,000 short of their $200,000 goal. The canary had stopped singing, and across the blogosphere they were murmurs of Kickstarter being a dud. “Not everyone is Double Fine,” declared a blog on Gamasutra. Still, Allen and Serellan weren’t about to quietly let go of their ambitions. They were able to separate the constructive criticism from the useless negativity and formulate a plan.

“We realized that our initial presentation just wasn’t up to par, and because we were getting the same questions over and over, we knew that we weren’t getting across the information that people needed to make the decision to support us […],” Allen explains. “With less than two weeks to go, we decided to reboot. We partnered with a production company, Anderson Live Media, who developed the concept of the interrogation and secured a film location in just a few days. We shot the video in a day – a very cold and miserable day for me.  Then we hooked up with Spliced Media to do the editing the next day. We finished the video after the guys worked all night on it, and we posted it up early Monday morning with six days to go.  It was a monumental effort for everyone involved, but I truly believe it made the difference.”

A screenshot from Takedown's second Kickstarter promo

The game was also given a proper name and logo, something that Double Fine had been able to do without, and suddenly new life flowed into the Kickstarter campaign. When it finished on April 1^st, it had raised $221,833 – ten percent above its proposed goal. Takedown was in business, and the Kickstarter floodgates had officially opened. For Allen, success was sweet.

“The excitement generated by Takedown has spread to the team, and especially the support we’ve gotten from other developers, both in the industry and indies, offering their time and support to make this project a reality,” Allen says. “It really is motivating to see something that you have wanted to do for years start off with such a bang.”

FTL: Faster Than Light

When Takedown succeeded, it helped prove that a new era had started on Kickstarter. Games with high funding goals could get funded during the pre-production phase, allowing games that publishers were wary of to still get the green light. However, in the days before Takedown and Double Fine Adventure, games being funded on Kickstarter had a different modus operandi. Video games with successful campaigns were typically ones that were nearly finished, and only needed a small boost to get pushed to completion and distributed. FTL: Faster Than Light started its Kickstarter campaign under this older model. It was the brainchild of two former 2K Games employees, Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, who had quit their jobs at 2K Games last year to work on FTL. After earning an honorable mention at the 2012 Independent Gaming Festival at GDC and getting a preview in PC Gamer, the pair decided to start a Kickstarter campaign.

“We had been getting a lot of positive press out of our participation in the IGF,” they said in a joint email correspondence. “It appeared that the project had the potential to be a success, so we wanted to get the funds we needed to be able to finish the game.”

Initially, their goal was set at $10,000. In the pre-Double Fine Adventure days, this was considered a reasonable sum, and so their expectations were well tempered. “We really had no idea how difficult it would be to reach that goal,” say Ma and Davis. “Having good previews in IGF and PC Gamer did give us some confidence that it would be feasible, but we were never fully confident. The number was chosen with the mindset of ‘how much do we need to finish the game?’ rather than stress too much about how much we could potentially raise.” It turns out they needn’t have worried. “The campaign exploded nearly as soon as we put it up. Within 12 hours we had passed our $10,000 goal and we were blown away. Within a day it was already considerably larger than we were expecting. Even just days away from the end, 2000% seemed unrealistic.” Yet that’s exactly where they finished. The final total was $200,542, over twenty times their initial goal.

A screenshot from the current version of FTL: Faster Than Light

Like Takedown, the story of FTL provided a sign that the Kickstarter movement was real. While Takedown was proving that the new Kickstarter model could work, FTL proved that even games that started campaigns under the old model were being swept up in the moment. Was the momentum from the craze that Double Fine started part of the reason that FTL was so successful? “Definitely,” agree Davis and Ma. “The Double Fine Adventure campaign brought a lot of publicity to Kickstarter and helped legitimize the concept of crowd funding for a lot of people.” They admit that their success at IGF and the PC Gamer mention certainly helped as well and their effect can’t be ignored. That said, if Takedown proved that the Kickstarter movement had direction, FTL proved that it had legs.

Such unexpected success does not come without side effects, of course. With an enormously successful Kickstarter campaign comes the burden of fan expectations. “There wasn’t too much pressure before the Kickstarter campaign. We were making a game that we thought would be cool, but did not stress too much about the financial viability of it as a product,” say Ma and Davis. “Now that the Kickstarter campaign is over, there is definitely a new and different type of pressure. There are a lot of people that are excited about the game and have trusted us with their funds, which is amazing, but it brings a lot of pressure with it to make FTL the best it can be. We’re working very hard to live up to those expectations.” As part of that, they’re being careful not to stretch their newfound funding too far and staying focused on their mission, a sentiment Christian Allen had also shared when discussing Takedown. “Our goal is still to make the game we’ve wanted from the beginning,” they confirm. What’s exciting to us is what comes after the initial game is complete.  FTL’s success means that we will be able to continue working on FTL and future games, which is of course the ultimate ambition of any independent developer.”

The Banner Saga

As the campaigns for FTL and Takedown were getting started, the developers at Stoic watched with interest. Stoic is a development power trio composed of Arnie Jorgensen, a veteran artist with tours of duty at DC and Image Comics before working at Retro Studios and Ion Storm, John Watson, who started as a programmer at NASA before jumping into the games industry at Sony, and Alex Thomas, the trio’s only lifetime game developer who began his career at Wolfpack Studios before they changed their name to Kingisle in 2005. The three met at BioWare, where they worked on The Old Republic together. Jorgenson and Thomas also worked on several side projects with BioWare’s blessing, including an iOS children’s book called DinoBoy. After The Old Republic shipped, they recruited Watson and they soon left BioWare began work on The Banner Saga. The timing couldn’t have been better. By coincidence, The Old Republic launched last December, and Double Fine’s Kickstarter campaign started shortly afterwards in early February.

“Truth be told, Kickstarter was part of the plan back at the formation of the company,” says Thomas. “At that time the highest games could make was roughly $30k. Our friends from White Whale – currently working on God of Blades – had a successful run and encouraged us to go for some extra funding since we’re paying for production out of pocket using our own personal savings. Then Double Fine and inXile blew the doors off the Kickstarter thing, which was pretty surreal to watch, knowing that we were working towards the exact same goal. Suddenly we weren’t sure how to approach it. Ultimately it became obvious that the right thing to do was to ask for the real amount that we could use toward making the game the biggest we could while still manageable for three people.”

How did they come to this conclusion? They did their homework. With a handful of campaigns either completed or in full swing, the Stoic trio had enough material to formulate a solid plan. The first part of this plan was to avoid going in cold. “We did a lot of research when we were planning out our campaign but the best advice we got was to talk about the game early and often, pre-launch,” says Thomas. “By the time our page was ready to go we had a lot of people already interested in the game, which got us to our goal quick, in turn generating a lot more media attention and so on and so forth.” They also took special care when it came to the different rewards Kickstarter backers would receive at different levels. “One of the things we’re most happy with is the extra time we took to show all of our prizes at the start of the project,” Thomas elaborates. “As far as I know we were the first to really go all out with [it] and I think people have really connected with that.” Finally, they made sure people would get a preview of the game itself. “Another top priority was to make sure we had an actual game to show and make sure it was an accurate representation of the final product. Without a big name backing us we knew we’d be relying on the quality of the game itself to get people interested and the sincerity of how into it we truly are.”

After doing their due diligence, Stoic’s initial goal for The Banner Saga was set at $100,000. Were they still nervous about a goal like that even after planning so carefully? “Yeah,” confirms Thomas. “So to elaborate on that more, we were pretty nervous about reaching $100k. Unlike [Double Fine Adventure and Wasteland 2] we didn’t have any high-profile names supporting us, just our reputation as leads from BioWare and a game concept. We even considered playing it safe with a lower target with a whole whiteboard full of pros and cons. One of the pros to sticking with $100k was ‘It’s what vikings would do.’” Like the FTL team, their worries were for naught. The Banner Saga currently sits at roughly $570,000 with time still on the clock as of the writing of this article. “To be at over 500% funding now without even asking for future milestones is pretty mind-blowing and encouraging,” summarizes Thomas.

A screenshot from The Banner Saga's announcement video

And what of the factors that come with success? Does Stoic feel like such success in their Kickstarter campaign relieved some pressure, or did it add pressure of a different sort like it did with the FTL team? “That’s an interesting question, we’ve recently been talking about this because you’re absolutely right on both accounts,” Thomas answers when asked about the topic. “When there was no expectation we were planning to market the game as more of a grass-roots effort, like the trend with games to come out in alpha and grow a fanbase over time. With all the attention we’ve gotten recently that’s probably not the right approach anymore. We’ll be keeping fans up to date on our progress but I think there’s a certain expectation now that didn’t exist before. Plus, as we add top shelf talent to the project there’s the pressure of making sure everything meets that high standard.” Still, Thomas has a hard time being picky. “I can’t complain though, it’s the kind of pressure we’re happy to deal with and clearly it’s given us a lot of breathing room to give us a chance to make the game we really want to make, not a compromised version. I think we’re in a better position now than we ever could have hoped for.”

Like both Christian Allen and the FTL team before them, Stoic is also being careful not to overextend itself. “One of our primary objectives throughout this whole thing has been to run the campaign with quality and integrity. Sounds like corporate speak but it’s true,” Thomas says. “We’ve gone out of our way to avoid exaggerations and false promises. Basically, we never set out to make the game bigger than something we could handle with a small team, which has become an interesting problem because our backers are really interested in what we’re going to be doing with all the overflow donations. We’ve decided to keep the scope the same but up the quality everywhere that we can – animations, sound, music, additional programming support, QA, playtesting, writing.” Being level headed and realistic clearly doesn’t exclude being excited, though. Thomas adds, “When we started working on the game we knew it was something we were way into but we couldn’t be sure other gamers agreed. More than the funding. what Kickstarter has done is told us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are a lot of people interested in the game. Nothing could be more inspiring.”

The success of The Banner Saga seems like the culmination of the lessons learned during the dawn of the Kickstarter movement, when Takedown and FTL were among the first to follow in the wake of Double Fine Adventure. The lessons on presentation that Serellan learned and implemented during Takedown’s campaign, to the effects of both FTL’s positive press and the surprise pressure and momentum that it gained all seem to ring true. Was the success of The Banner Saga at least partly due  to this? If so, does that mean that it represents the future of this Kickstarter movement, beyond long awaited sequels and campaigns led by big name developers?

What’s Next?

Each of the developers featured over the course of this article were asked what the future of Kickstarter funded games as they related to their own projects. To Serellan’s Christian Allen, what did the future hold? Could traditionally AAA games be somewhere down the line? “I think in the short term, you will continue to see smaller projects or games that have a strong dedicated audience that have not been well served by the traditional publishing model be the ones that are successful,” Allen predicts. “Something along the lines of a GTA or a Fallout still require huge budgets and highly experienced devs to pull off, but I am excited to see the future and how it shapes out.  We are proud to be at the beginning of something that can only grow from here.”

The FTL team were asked how much Kickstarter could help smaller indie developers. They responded, “Kickstarter has massive potential to help out smaller development teams. Independent developers often create really unique and interesting games that have very small markets.  Kickstarter can help connect developers to those fans.”

Asked more generally about the future of Kickstarter, Alex Thomas of Stoic answered in depth. “We’ve been talking about this a lot lately,” Thomas reveals. “The way I see it, Kickstarter is an incredible good-will generator and if you really hit the right note with an audience that feels abandoned by the current games market they won’t hesitate to support you. Interestingly, models that are popular with publishers right now like mobile games, micro-transactions, Facebook titles, MMOs and generally online or social aspects in a game are the kiss of death on Kickstarter. Since Double Fine’s success we’ve also seen a flood of old-school known developers looking for support.” All sound observations, but what does it mean for Kickstarter? Thomas goes on. “It seems to me that Kickstarter’s lasting success is going to depend on holding tight to that good will and making sure that the backers don’t feel betrayed or become cynical or burnt out over time, which is going to be tricky without any real barrier to entry. The second backers become cynical about the process the whole thing falls apart. That’s not to say I’m all doom and gloom about it; on the contrary I’m mostly concerned because it has been so amazing to see all these amazing games coming back from the past that I really, truly hope the whole thing becomes a new staple of the industry that gives some of that buying power back to smaller but passionate groups of gamers.”

Certainly something that’s so positive couldn’t be a prophecy of doom, but Thomas’ point shouldn’t be ignored. The consensus seems to be that Kickstarter has the potential to be a golden goose of sorts, a tool that could allow fans and developers alike to reap rewards they never could have had before. That said, we live in a world where James Bond is getting a twenty-third movie and the spinoff of the thirteenth game in a popular Japanese RPG series is getting new DLC almost monthly. Takedown, FTL and The Banner Saga prove that Kickstarter could be a fantastic resource in the future, as long as we don’t exhaust it in the present.

All of the mainstream gamers play things that have you killing dragons by the dozen to protect little villages that will one day overpopulate the Earth. Well what about the dragons? Why don’t we take their feelings into account for a change? Here is a game you’ve likely never heard of called Hoard put out by Big Sandwich Games, which will give you all of the fiery revenge you’ve ever wanted on those peons in their primitive homes.

This action-strategy game lets you play as whatever color dragon you choose, and gives you free reign over different types of maps. An immediate downer for me was the fact that all the dragons came with the same skill-set. I mean, why not try to toss in some individuality? Anyway, the point of this game is to get as much gold as possible, and bring it back to your hoard. If you couldn’t figure that out from the title, you likely don’t read enough.

Gold can be obtained from burning down crops, farms, towers, and human opponents. That’s right, knights, robbers, and archers are going to fling themselves into your path of destruction, and you will reap the benefits from their inferior bodies. Kidnapping princesses and destroying magic towers that yield gems will provide extra income, but the towers are simply dreadful to destroy, and the princesses have knights running to your hoard to trying to kill you and rescue the “damsel in distress”. Can we say sexism? Ugh. After you have gained certain amount of gold, you will level up and be given the ability to improve your skills. You start out at a horrifically slow pace, and with little firepower, but can gain speed, armor, gold storage capacity, and fire damage upgrades for every level gained.

Obviously this game has more to it than that, or I wouldn’t be reviewing it now would I? This game is meant to be played in chunks, as some of us have more to do in the world than sit at our desks for hours at a time. Thankfully, there are several different mode and map combinations to choose from so things don’t get immediately boring. You can either play with, or against other dragons, but you will likely only be up against AIs, as this game is only known to a privileged few. The entirety of the game was meant to center around treasure mode, which gives you a ten minute limit to get as much gold as possible, but you likely already knew that. Or at least I should hope so anyway.

You will find this game is available for PS3, PC, Mac (as it should be), and PSP. This game only costs about $10, so there’s no reason for you to not support this Independent developer. Not everyone can work on those AAA titles, and actually need people to buy their games.

In the flurry of finishing up The Journey Down: Over The Edge, I managed to get a hold of Theodor Waern of Skygoblin for an interview. The game still won’t be coming out for about a month or two, but at least we know it’s on the tail end of things. It’s been awesome to watch this game progress over time, and I’m sure the developers will be happy to see the game in its final form.

GamerFront: What inspired you to make this game?

Theodor Waern: There’s no denying that the so called “golden era of point n click” have influenced me quite a lot, but most importantly for my drive to pull this through, has in fact been my will to expand my drawings and characters to something more than just still pictures on the screen. As an artist, seeing my environments and stories come to life in this interactive storytelling way, is an amazing thing.

GF: Why use African themes?

TW: I grew up in a home surrounded by African art and music, my parents have always had a fascination with African culture, and me being brought up in that environment, has definitely bonded me to these forms of art. Also, it’s a culture that is extremely poorly represented in games, I saw this as a good opportunity to try and give it some exposure, and also a good opportunity for me to explore those arts, personally.

GF: What would you say was/is the hardest part of putting The Journey Down together?

TW: Well, the game started out as a hobby project, and was one for nearly five years. The difficult part of this was definitely staying focused and interested. Starting a brand new project in the middle of this one was very, very tempting (and I have in fact started a couple of them during this period) But fortunately I let none of these come before TJD.

On the actual production side of things I wouldn’t say there have been any specific hurdles that were excessively difficult, but some of them were indeed a lot more time consuming than I would have wished. For one thing I had viciously under estimated the amount of work required on character animation. And frankly I’m still not really happy with the animation in my original freeware version of the game. Fortunately we’ve now got Henrik, a real animator on the case. With him on board, all animations are looking gorgeous.

GF: Why did you choose to use voice actors instead of text dialogue?

TW: The voice acting adds a ton of ambiance and really goes a long way in further immersing the player in the story. Fortunately we are blessed with an incredibly talented and fitting voice cast that do a great job enhancing the experience. Now that I’ve played the game with speech, I’d never have it any other way.

GF: How many hours of work would you say have gone in to this game as it stands currently?

TW: Wow. There is no way to estimate this and I’m not sure brooding on it will make anyone any wiser. It is safe to say though that all my free time the past five years, and pretty much all my (and my three colleagues’) work time the past year, have all gone into this production. Not sure how much that adds up to, but it’s a lot of time. Lots of the time has been spent on the following chapters though, so not all of this time has gone into producing chapter one.

GF: How much more work is left before its complete?

TW: We’ve pretty much wrapped up chapter one. There’s still quite a lot of nitpicking and polish left and we are still missing a couple major cinematics, but apart from that and some minor technical snags, we are basically done. On the whole four chapters however, there is A LOT of work left to be done. The whole story and large parts of the script have been written, most locations and characters have been sketched out, and the basics of all puzzles have also been designed. But none of the content has actually started being produced. That’s what takes time.

GF: Is the story going to leave us wanting sequels?

TW: Definitely, in a good way though.

GF: When can we expect an official release date?

TW: We hope to have the game launched on PC and Mac some time during April, and we hope to see our iOS and android ports go live some time during summer. When the actual individual releases take place is actually more up to our digital distribution partners than to our own production though.

If you want to keep up with the development of The Journey Down, head over the to Dev Blog to keep track of things.

This past E3, the new console from Nintendo was announced called the Wii U. Needless to say it was the probably the most exciting news in hardware for the entire event. We were lucky enough to get our hands on one, and got to see what all the fuss was about.

There were several tech demos for us to experience, including Catch Mii, Battle Mii, Shield Pose, Mario, and best of all, Zelda. Each demo gave us a different scenario to play through and different ways to use the Wii U. Each of the demos was shown on a TV displaying in full 1080p. Though we aren’t sure what resolution the touchscreen has just yet.

In Catch Mii, you use the Wii U to have an aerial view of a courtyard in which four other players are trying to hunt you down. The catch is that they only have their peripherals to find you. You had to look at the Wii U screen to see where other players are coming from while using the joystick to move your character wearing a Mario cap out of sight. This was definitely a lot to take in, but was easy to catch on and really fun to play! It added a whole new dimension to split-screen multiplayer games, as you have a distinct advantage over the other players (though they do have you outnumbered) on your private screen.

Battle Mii was likely one of my top two favorite demos. You had to utilize both joysticks, and could aim at opponents by tilting the Wii U forward, back, left or right. This was a whole new way to play as you weren’t just moving the joysticks and staring at a screen. Again, being the player with the Wii U, you have the upper hand, since you can fly around, and the others are stuck on the ground.

Mario was great fun, but didn’t seem to utilize the Wii U in very many new ways. Shaking the screen would make you spin, but much other than that, it was a duplicate screen. I’m not really torn up over this as it is still a tech demo, and essentially just the same Mario game that we saw on the Wii.

Shield Pose was the first demo we got to experience, and it definitely was impressive. A cartoonish skeleton pirate and his ghostly minions are firing plunger arrows at you, but give you a warning. The Wii U was used to see arrows coming from the center ship, left and right ships, and any arrows coming in from the sky. The Wii U was a completely different screen from what you saw on the TV screen, and moved with you, as opposed to having one set screen. If you turned around, you saw what was behind you. There was a full 360-degree view that is going to make for some pretty amazing games in the future.

Last but not least, the best demo (likely because of it’s content) was Zelda. It was not a playable demo, but showed us how a Zelda game might look if it was on the Wii U. There was the option to change camera angles and move the camera in those different angles, the ability to have the map on the Wii U screen, or as a side screen on the TV, and a daytime and nighttime button that will allow you to choose whether you’re looking at day or night modes in-game. The fangirl inside of me had a meltdown as I was looking at Link in HD, and he was full of Hylian manliness.

Seeing the release video for the Wii U tells us that the tech demo games we played through are just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless capabilities for this new console, and I can’t wait to see what is going to come of it.

Microsoft gave us a chance to jump around with the Kinect and several of the new games that we will see coming out soon. As we all know, the Kinect lets you interact with the screen without the need for a controller, but it wasn’t until now that I was really impressed. The game titles I got to demo included Disneyland, Star Wars, Dance Central 2, Kinect Fun Labs, and Sports Season 2.

Disneyland is about as close to bringing the actual Disneyland into your home as you can get. The park has been completely replicated on this game, and you have the ability to go virtually wherever you want. The actors and actresses from the actual park did the voices for these characters as well, so you really are getting the full Disney experience. Walking up to the Disney characters, you wave to start conversation, and can give them a hug. Depending on who it is, their individual personality will show through; Peter Pan will act as any young boy would to a hug, by acting as if you were slathered in cooties. Each mini-game is inspired from an actual ride in Disneyland. Peter Pan’s flight transports you to Never Land and has you soaring through the air. Moving your arms like an airplane, you control your direction left and right, and flapping your arms will take you higher, while crouching down will take you lower.

Star Wars on the Kinect was definitely one of my favorites, as I grew up with the original movies and had dreams of becoming a Jedi. This game not only fulfilled my childhood dreams, but also let me use a lightsaber to hack things up. On screen, you hold the lightsaber in your right hand, and use your left hand to use the force. By leaning forward with your arms behind you, you can force run towards your next victim. You can choose to either have melee combat with opponents, or use the force and destroy them from afar. You must also use the force to lift objects that are in your way when travelling. There is a chance that you’ll get a little drunk with Jedi power, but it’s best to not get too greedy, as we know where that can lead. This is definitely a game worth keeping an eye out for and should make an appearance in Q4 2011.

Playing Dance Central 2 was definitely a highlight for the Kinect as well. The newest feature for this upcoming game is that you may now play simultaneously with a second player, or with a group of up to four. The first in this series was still a lot of fun, but being able to be beside a friend and play has made this much more appealing. Even if you decide that you want to enter the game after a song has already started, you can jump in without any problem of the Kinect reading your movements. I’m a little sorry to say that my dance moves weren’t the best, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time. This is definitely something I’m going to look forward to, and we will be seeing this game on the shelves in Q4 2011 as well.

Kinect Fun Labs is definitely going to be a hit for anyone who wants scan in special items, or would like a customized avatar. There are many different games such as Bobble Head, where you can create a bobble head of yourself, Googly Eyes, where you can scan in an item, and make it into a googly-eyed monster, Kinect Me, where you can scan in yourself and make a perfect replica of yourself to be used as an avatar, and several others as well. This is already available as it released on June 6^th.

One of the newer games released for the Kinect this year at E3 was Sports Season 2. I cannot say that I’m even remotely fond of sports, but this game was actually pretty fun. It was even informative enough that I learned a little bit in the process of playing the game. The sports that I had the chance to try out were football and golf; neither of which I’m fond of in real life. These virtual versions helped me to understand how these sports work, and were actually pretty entertaining. You don’t have to worry about not knowing what you’re doing, as there are lights and signals that will instruct you along the way. You can expect to see this game come out around the holiday season of this year.

I do have an Xbox at home, but sadly am without a Kinect. It’s looking like I’m going to have to commandeer one from a friend to play these games when they come out. There was no reason for me to like the Kinect before, but I gladly admit that I am not a believer.

The Modern Warfare series has been dominating the FPS scene for the last couple of years. However, while the console versions of these titles have been good, they have been less than satisfying for PC gamers. A lack of dedicated servers and rampant hacking has left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. So what is going to be the next big FPS for PC gamers? If EA and DICE have their way, it’s going to be Battlefield 3.

While we were at E3 we were fortunate enough to get a little bit of hands-on time with the title. We were thrust into Rush Mode, with squads made up of other people at the booth. As such, it was easy to get right into the action, since the mode was already familiar from previous games.

There were four classes to choose from, which are Assault Soldier, Support, Engineer and Recon. These are mostly the same classes that you are already know and love. The biggest change here is that the Assault and Medic have essentially been combined to form the Assault Soldier. What this means is that you’ll be able to chose from either a med pack and paddles or grenade launcher in your arsenal.

I spent much of my time battling my way across a park in search of AA guns to destroy. The fighting would get intense, especially when the wall you were using as cover would suddenly crumble away from a rain of bullets or an explosion.

What was most impressive about this demo was how beautiful the graphics looked. We were fighting it out in a park located in Paris. There were times that I would stop to simply gaze around to take it all in. The Eiffel Tower could be seen off in the distance, rendered in its full glory.

Sadly, our time with the demo was very short, but it was enough to leave us wanting for more. We’ll keep you posted on further updates for the game as they are announced.

At this year’s E3, there were a lot of games shown off, and certainly no shortage of MMO’s. However, the one I had my eye on has remained the same for several years now. I’m of course talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic. Being a huge fan of the Star Wars universe, (as well as a disappointed fan of Star Wars Galaxies) I’ve been looking forward to seeing what BioWare can do in the MMO genre.

I was able to spend a bit of time with a hands-on demo of the game. I took on the role of a higher-level character, so that I could jump straight into the action. My character for the demo was a level 26 human smuggler. She had a companion droid that would help out with cover fire, and could be upgraded to do a bit of healing in the battlefield. You could also converse with the companion, though it wasn’t always up for chatting.

My character was in the midst of a World Quest. If you’re not familiar with the term, these are a chain of quests found on each world, that take you through a complex story, with each lasting several hours. I was on the planet of Tatooine, where I was sent to dispatch a group of Tusken Raiders, who had stolen something rather valuable.

After jumping on my speeder bike, I headed across the desert to the location I was given. As promised, there were a group of the sand people who were more than happy to give me my first taste of combat. The first thing I did was make sure that my companion was out and set to lay down cover fire. Then, I set down my portable cover and prepared my attack.

The portable cover system was really interesting, and not something that I have seen in other MMO’s that I’ve played. When I think of a smuggler caught in a shoot-out, I usually picture them hiding around a corner and poking out to make shots that count. This portable cover really added to that part of the experience.

From there, I was able to line up a number of ranged attacks to take down my enemies. A combination of blaster fire and thrown explosives kept the fight interesting, but certainly flowing in my favor. After picking up the item I was looking for, I went on to find a Sith that was hiding out nearby. I found him in a cave, after fighting my way through more of the raiders.

Once found, we discover that the Sith we’re after is on the brink of death. I approached him and began a conversation. Instead of having mouth movements with lines of text, this conversation (like every other in the game) was completely voiced. Also, unlike many other MMO’s, my conversation with this NPC is not straightforward. Instead, I am given a number of choices throughout the conversation, each of which not only leads you down the dark or light path, but also determines what happens after you are finished talking. In this case, I could either slay the sith in anger, or leave him to possibly recover.

What is really interesting is that the choices you make in these conversations don’t just influence what happens immediately after you stop talking, but rather it can impact what happens later on in the game. Since my demo only lasted a limited amount of time, I wasn’t able to see how these choices impacted later gameplay. Also, the choices aren’t just limited to conversations with NPCs. I encountered an item that I could destroy, so as to prevent someone else from reading it. I’ll be interested to see how far they take these choices in the finished product.

Overall, the game did play like many traditional MMO’s. However, the voiced dialogue and the ability to make choices in your conversations really made it a step above others I’ve played in the past. I like knowing that I’m not on a linear path, and that even in small ways, I can make a difference in how the game plays out for me. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the full finished product when it is released.

While at C2E2 a couple of weekends back, we had the pleasure of meeting up with Claudio Sanchez. He is most well-known for his work with Coheed and Cambria, as well as The Amory Wars. Since we try to promote creativity here at GamerFront, it’s nice to chat with someone who has experienced success in their artistic endeavors such as this. Be sure to check out the newest comic, and catch the band when they head out on tour a little later this year.

Inside the heart of every gamer exists the desire to create and produced the very games they love to play – this is very true. Sometimes gamers decide to give criticism as their way to contribute to the industry, and sometimes they jump in head first to put their skills to use in the production role of the gaming world. Some local college students got together and did just that, and that resulted in one of the most phenomenal games around today – Portal.

I was lucky enough to attend a call out meeting for a new club at Indiana University in Bloomingon. The club was aptly titled the “Hoosier Gaming Club,” and their goal was simple:

“Our goal is to be able to provide students here with the chance to create and produce unique, real, and playable video games.”

That was an opening statement handed out by Derrick Fuchs, the co-creator of the Hoosier Gaming Club. Fuchs spoke about his own aspirations as well as those of other gamers and friends he is acquainted with.

After going around the room and exchanging introductions, those who attended explained what they wanted to get out of the club. The members of this newly-found club want to give their all to create the next great video game, and if nothing more than that to gain the knowledge and practice of using the very tools that leading companies use in the industry today.

The meeting was a very welcome and warm experience. Everyone who spoke showed great excitement and willingness to be part of a team, as well as the desire to provide the best they could to create something amazing.

The gaming club intends to meet every week, on Monday, in the Fine Arts building of the IU Bloomington campus. Hopefully this will be the start of another great project, such as Portal.

Fuchs explained that as long as the determination is there, that the power to create something amazing is there. All it takes is the right amount of willpower, skill, and the want to produce a truly amazing game.

I plan on attending these weekly meetings, to provide all I can to help out these amazing idealists, and to become part of a team working toward a common goal that we love.

The gaming industry is huge, and it’s not dissipating. The Hoosier Gaming Club intends on providing student and non-student gamers alike with the opportunity to put their names on the grid, and to create something that will make a mark on the industry.

If you’re in the Bloomington, IN area and want to bring your skills to the table for the gaming industry, then check out the Hoosier Gaming Club. You won’t regret it.

If you guys have been watching our site, then you know that our friends over at IU Gaming were hosting a LAN War. The event took place on Saturday, November 13th at noon and lasted until noon that following Sunday, November 14th. GamerFront was lucky enough to be added on as one of the sponsors of the event, and we got to take a look at what IU Gaming had to offer, which lead to an amazingly fun time at a great event.

More coverage will be up for the event later this week, but for now take a look below at a little introductory video I made while at the event, covering in short what it was like to experience a great atmosphere.