The HG Blog

So Oliver just sent Elpea, Zen, and me his latest version of the HG Main graphical redesign. Needless to say, the base from which he is working is really attractive. This edition is clean and follows a modern aesthetic, which absolutely fits with the progressive direction HeavenGames is headed toward.

However, one aspect of the design I’m not sure about (actually am ambivalent about, not just a nice way of saying I don’t like it) is the color scheme. Obviously, it has the heavenly blues and white. But the biggest difference in the color scheme is the replacement of the HG yellow/orange/tan (what the hell color is that, anyway?) with a pastel red/pink.

It does look nice, but my main concern is: How much do we want to change the HeavenGames brand right now? Color is a major aspect of a brand and changing one of the two most important colors (white has always been peripheral and often replaced by black) to HG’s brand is pretty huge. Then again, maybe we should go for something huge (damn I love parentheses); HG is moving in a new direction, after all. This dilemma - of sticking to the old aspects of HeavenGames to stay close its past greatness while dropping others to allow us to move on to new greatness - is something that’s been on my mind for a long time, and the picture is getting clearer. I’m sure things will turn out well in the end.

That said, the graphical redesign is looking awesome, and I can’t wait until it’s finished so you all can see it!

Oy! It’s been an active week. I met up with Zen about Cloud 9 (formerly HG 2.0), and things are looking most awesome. I’m excited to see what he and the rest of the tech team can come up with in the next several months concerning the software’s design. I’m hoping for a system where a lolcat image appears after every forum post. ADORABLE.

We also announced a hot new column that’s coming at the beginning of next month. The legendary Gordon Farrell - of HeavenGames scenario design, video game development, and professorial fame - will be writing about the art of scenario design in his column, titled Solo. Given his extensive professional and academic experience, I have no doubt it’ll be pure awesome.

What’s coming in the future? More HG main changes and surely some other sweet new stuff. Keep them ole eyes peeled.

See you on the battlefield!

LOMBARD, IL - HeavenGames LLC today announced that award-winning single player campaign designer Gordon Farrell will write a regular column for HGS entitled Solo: Essays and Commentary on the Art of the Single Player Game. The column is slated for a March 1st launch.

Professor Farrell has been designing AAA games since 1999, when he joined the team that created the original Empire Earth. Since then, he has worked on strategy titles such as the expansion pack for Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, Caesar IV, and Children of the Nile. He is currently Lead Writer and a member of the scenario design team for Reverie World Studios’ first game, Dawn of Fantasy, due for release in Fall 2008. He is the author of some of the highest-rated and most popular campaigns and scenarios at HeavenGames Sites, including Age of Empires Heaven, Age of Kings Heaven, Caesar 3 Heaven, and Stronghold 2 Heaven. In addition to his HGS mods, he has popular, highly-rated Civilization 4 mods uploaded at CivFanatics.

Prof. Farrell studied playwriting and screenwriting at Yale University, and began turning his talents toward game design in the late 1990s. Currently, he is on the faculty of New York University, where he teaches narrative theory for video games, theory of screenwriting, and advanced studies in dramatic art. He also lectures at Marymount Manhattan College in video games, script analysis, and theatre history. He has been appointed a Visiting Lecturer at Yale University six times. In 2002, Prima Games published his essay, “The Theory of Scenario Design.”

His extensive professional and academic experience promises an exciting column filled with commentary on the art of games that will be both controversial and thought-provoking.

According to Prof. Farrell, “My first column will be entitled ‘Towards the Art of the Game’ and I’m going to start off by asking some challenging questions about the nature of art and whether games will meet the criteria for being considered art. Then I’m going to offer practical pointers on how the best single player experiences are created by designers. Sometimes I’ll review SP Campaigns from retail games or report on game seminars I’ve attended, starting with Ken Levine’s recent presentation at the NYU Skirball Center for New Media. So look forward to some provocative stuff!”

ABOUT HEAVENGAMES, LLC
HeavenGames LLC (http://www.heavengames.com), based in Lombard, Illinois, is a privately owned web-content publisher building and maintaining sites for PC strategy games. Because of its many high-quality sites, content, and vast resources, HeavenGames has become recognized by developers and press around the globe as one of the premier destinations for gamers worldwide.

Hey all, just wanted to give everyone an update on how HG 2.0 - now code named “Cloud 9″ - is turning out. I just read over Zen, Pecunia, and Elpea’s 24-page preliminary outline for the software specifications, and it looks awesome so far; it’s following the basic philosophy described previously in this blog. Jayhawk and I have given Zen our feedback and he’s getting started on the next stage: an extensive delineation of the ideas in the outline. I don’t normally italicize things, so what I mean by extensive is potentially a 1,000-page comprehensive specification of every single possible aspect of the Cloud 9 software. This stage is one of the biggest for this project, so it’ll be a substantial amount of time before we go onto the next, which will be a description of what actually needs to be done with respect to programming.

I’ll give you updates all along the way though, so you can see how HeavenGames will move on to the next level of serving its communities.

So being a proper American college student, I really play way too much of the following games: Halo 3, Guitar Hero 3, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. My roommates and I have played Smash since the days of Gushers and Capri Sun. (Brief tangent: Why the hell didn’t Capri Sun turn me into the Silver Surfer like the commercials so obviously indicated?) As expected, we have all been eagerly anticipating Super Smash Brothers Brawl for a looooong time and were destroyed when it was postponed.

All I’m saying is: if Brawl gets postponed again, I’m going to snap. I’ll go into the streets and throw turtle shells, metal fans, and Pokeballs at people. There’s only so much of no Zero Suit Samus ogling and Snake awesome watching that one person can take.

I do not have a video game addiction.

Yow, busy week. HeavenGames announced its sponsorship of ROFLCon, the rocksome convention about internet memery that’s being put on by a bunch of folks over at Harvard University. HG will have a booth and everything there, so that’ll be pretty cool. But what is more cool: they have Tron Guy. Tron Guy. No one can seriously tell me that they’d be willing to miss this:

We also got started on a new news system for HeavenGames main. It will still be a feed of news from all over HG, but will also have news from the gaming industry that gaming enthusiasts would be interested in. Another bit of news for HG is the start of the Battle of the Forums, a great contest that’s pitting all the forums at HG against one another. Check out the thread for more info!

So what’s coming soon? More new stuff for HG main, hopefully we’ll have our review system soon.

Okay, so this has been a long time coming. I and our Financial Director - Lazidane - are aggressively exploring the possibility of HeavenGames merchandise; t-shirts, hats, and the like that you can wear to show everyone that you’re a dedicated member of one of the best communities on the net! There’s a thread in Outside Discussions discussing this, so definitely stop by and give any ideas for HG merchandise or how we can sell it.

LOMBARD, IL - HeavenGames LLC today announced that it is maintaining its dedication to internet communities by sponsoring ROFLCon (http://www.roflcon.org), a convention in Cambridge, Massachusetts planned for April 25th and 26th. It is being organized by a team of students from Harvard University.

ROFLCon will dedicated to internet celebrity and the culture surrounding it. The Brothers Chaps - the creators of Homestar Runner, Ryan North - the creator of Dinosaur Comics, and Jay Maynard - “Tron Guy” - are only three of the 35 popular internet celebrities which are currently confirmed speakers for the event. In addition, the convention has confirmed a number of members of academia to discuss online culture and memetics. ROFLCon’s potential success is apparent in its press coverage; it was reported by WIRED in December and will certainly continue to receive such attention.

Registration for ROFLCon is now open, and as a sponsor HeavenGames encourages its visitors to sign up and attend the convention. Additionally, it encourages its visitors to provide any information on any originators of internet memes to ROFLCon’s administrator: Tim Hwang at thwang (at) fas (dot) harvard (dot) edu.

ABOUT HEAVENGAMES, LLC
HeavenGames LLC (http://www.heavengames.com), based in Lombard, Illinois, is a privately owned web-content publisher geared towards the creation of sites for Real-Time Strategy and City-Builder games. Its sites, content, and vast amounts of resources make HeavenGames’ sites recognized by developers and press alike as one of the premier destinations for gamers worldwide.

Continuing HeavenGames’ mission to serve and develop its community, it is revamping its main portal to provide general gaming information that all gaming enthusiasts will be interested in. First, news. Rather than being just a newsfeed for the rest of HG, it is going to be dedicated to becoming an important stop for gamers everywhere. Starting now, it will have industry news that gaming enthusiasts will want to know about, filtered for convenience and enjoyment. The newsies on the job are none other than long-time HG visitors Snook and aznninjahitman.

What’s coming soon? The esteemed Oliver - HeavenGames’ Art Director - is hard at work on a redesign of HG Main that better reflects the network’s mission. Morever, HG is exploring the possibility of having its own style of video game review. It is also investigating the supply of other articles about great games that are out right now but aren’t covered in a specific Heaven. HeavenGames Main will be for gamers, by gamers. Keep an eye out for more developments!

Battlefield Briefings. Okay, yeah, they don’t really apply to a blog in a video game vacuum. But man, they’e nummies. And I like to imagine myself as an armor-clad knight charging into battle…with a laser pistol. Laser pistol is clutch. Anyway, so what HAS gone on in HeavenGames? We’ve hired Oliver - the esteemed designer of both Starcraft 2 and World in Conflict Heavens - as our Art Director. (We decided to change the “Department Head” title to “Director,” the former is a wee bit too wordy.) The man is quite skilled and he’ll do splendidly. Baske has taken over the Marketing Department and is already hard at work; right now, he’s working on a contest that will pit the HG’s forumers against one another. Which forum reign as the champion? Keep your eyes out for information on how to enter and win glory across all of HeavenGames!

We’re also working hard on hammering out the specifics for HG 2.0, our automated content contribution system explained earlier in this blog. We realize that it’s taken a bit of time, but since this is going to be the biggest undertaking HeavenGames has had in years, we want to do it right. If I have my way, we’ll have a new logo with this somehow integrated in it:

Okay, what’s coming for HeavenGames? When we finish the specs for HG 2.0, I’ll post it on here for everyone to see and we’ll get to work on programming it. We’re also close to getting a new HG main, with gaming news, reviews, a new design, and all kinds of other scrumptious stuff. Also, Smash Brawl is coming out and there’s sure to be a self-indulgent videocast of me wrecking my friends with Zero-Suit Samus. Woooo!

See you on the battlefield!