Bulletstorm Message Board

It has been far, far longer than a fortnight since we last heard even the slightest peep about Epic’s Fortnite. Many fortnights, in fact – enough to bridge the gap between last year’s PAX Prime and this very day. During that span, renowned puppy eater and fearless chainsaw-gun entrepreneur Cliff Bleszinski departed the studio for somehow greener pastures and also another Gears of War game came out or something I guess. The latter, however, was developed by Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly, who now happens to be on – you guessed it – Fornite. Also, they’ve been rechristened Epic Games Poland, a distinctly less optimistic (yet far more factually accurate) name, if you ask me.

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It would be fair to say that – before today – we knew almost nothing about former Bulletstorm lead Adrian Chmielarz and co’s “weird horror” departure into the land of indie-dom The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Now, of course we’re in the dark on Ethan himself. He’s vanished! Like a magician or your phone when you’ve removed it from your pocket and freak out because you have no idea where you left it and it’s in your other hand. The whole point of the game is to figure out what happened to him. But it’d be nice to know, well, how we’re going to scare up some clues from the game’s cast of “haunting and macabre” characters. That aaaaand mooooore [chains rattling, bats, spooky ghost sounds] below.

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#thevanishingofethancarter More »

I'm coming up on ten years working professionally in this industry (something I'll reminisce more about in a month or so). This realization has me feeling a bit nostalgic lately, not to mention thinking about the many changes that have come in that time. I'm of course referring to things like the huge advances in technology and interactivity we've seen, the groundswell of support for independent gaming, the rise of competitive gaming as a medium people will actually pay attention to, and a greater focus from the endemic press (not always positively, certainly) on the human side of the game industry, among other things.

The ugly specter of Jack Thompson's legacy continues to haunt our industry to this day. How have we allowed that to happen?

These are all, to be sure, major shifts that have occurred over a relatively short span of time, as these things go. As an industry, we have most certainly evolved into something bigger, crazier, and frankly just a lot more interesting than what we were ten years ago. Which is why I find it all the more frustrating that we're still dealing--or, in many cases, not dealing--with the same cultural problems that plagued this business long before I even started in earnest.

Back when I began my career, video games were mostly mired in a place of cultural scapegoating and mockery. Jack Thompson, the patron saint of saying ridiculous things and somehow getting the media to repeat them, had just begun his war on Grand Theft Auto and the supposed sickening violence of our industry. Fast-forward to January, 2013. The primordial crazy being spouted by Jack Thompson has been taken up by actual politicians. And no, I'm not just talking about the likes of Leland Yee, whose campaign to ban violent video games in California was met with an expensively dismissive wanking motion from the Supreme Court. I'm talking about those who, in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook, have taken to violent games as the scapegoat du jour. I'm talking about major political figures like Vice President Joe Biden, who has at least shown an ounce of restraint when talking about the need to research the link between violent video games and violence in reality, as well as Senator Lamar Alexander, who demonstrated the opposite of restraint when he said violent video games were "a bigger problem than guns."

It boils down to this: as I look at the perception problems that plagued the industry in the past, and the perception problems that plague the industry now, I'm seeing far more overlap than I feel like I ought to. But why is that the case?

For one thing, I don't think we've ever done a particularly good job of defending ourselves. Gamasutra's Kris Graft wrote an intriguing piece back when Biden was first making overtures to the game industry over Sandy Hook. The whole piece is worth a read, though to sum it up, Graft basically believed that going to meet with Biden under the auspices of helping to "fix" gun violence in America was tantamount to admitting we're part of the problem. In my opinion, he was absolutely right. While I respect those who disagreed with Kris--including IGN's EIC Casey Lynch, whose retort was equally thoughtful--having seen the result of the meeting, it's difficult to believe that our representatives going there really did much of anything except to help galvanize the notion that violent video games really do have a serious place in this conversation. Now the news media has picked up on this violent video games angle all over again, just as it did with Jack Thompson so many years back.

Ignoring outreach from the Vice President's office wouldn't have necessarily been a smart move either, because that says we're indifferent to these kinds of problems. Rather, it might have been nice to see a response to Biden's invitation that rejected the question of "how can we help to stop gun violence in America" on the merits that video game violence has never been linked directly to actual violence, or at least not any more than violent films, violent music, or whatever else. The ESA, who are ostensibly the lobbying agency for our industry, have made a few limp reiterations of that fact in statements following Sandy Hook and the meeting with Biden. It was the ESA who helped win us the right to constitutionally protected free speech in that fateful Supreme Court case. So why are they not more confidently responding now, knowing this is the case?

The ESA has done some good work defending the industry, but when it comes to the violence debate, its responses have lacked strength.

There are those of us out there who are, at least, trying to steer the conversation back to a saner place. The always great Adam Sessler had an interesting bit on Fox News' live webcast this past week, speaking about the history of video games and their similar persecution compared to music, film, and even opera. Plenty of writers have written intelligent op-eds expressing weariness over the continuation of this debate, especially in the face of all the research that's been done previously. But it often feels like we're talking at ourselves. Hell, I'm probably just as guilty of that right now as anyone else. Which is why I maybe find it a bit frustrating that those who are chosen to represent us in the larger scope of the world aren't more assertively balking at this notion that we need even more research into these supposed links between violent games and real world violence. Why have I not seen a press conference that simply features the head of the ESA staring slack-jawed at a TV monitor featuring Wayne LaPierre's airing of grievances over Mortal Kombat and Bulletstorm? Why has nobody in any position of significant power in this industry simply gotten in front of a camera and said, "Look, you have got this all wrong..."?

Again, I don't have a solid answer to that, though I imagine business reasons most certainly factor in. It's difficult for the game industry to turn the tables on the NRA's hateful video game rhetoric when you consider that the same arms manufacturers that fund the group are the ones who hold the rights to the guns we license for those same violent video games that the NRA supposedly is lambasting. That's a web of ugly that reared its head this week thanks to Eurogamer's Simon Parkin. I haven't been able to get it out of my head since.

Biden's office was right about one thing. The video game industry does have a perception problem, but the issue isn't solely inherent to the violence it purveys. We, as enthusiasts of the medium, are often portrayed as loners, social outcasts, and, quite frankly, cringe-worthy human beings by those who have not taken the time to understand that those are really only a very small portion of our greater whole. People aren't so much worried about "violent video games" as they are "violent video games played by people who are probably socially awkward serial murderers." The picture of seething, hateful blobs of humanity resting comfortably in an office chair as they curse at and "pwn" people in grotesquely violent shooters has become the default picture people call up when thinking of those who play games. There are people like this, and they are loud, crude creatures who frankly misrepresent the notion of what gaming is supposed to be about (fun, competition, interactivity, creative expression, among other things). There are awful people like this in every facet of entertainment, but somehow, we've let our awfuls become our default image. Angry commenters, forum trolls, and thoughtless haters are stealing our narrative and feeding into this resentful and fearful perception people have of what games are all about. All the while, those who are actually paid to represent this medium are quietly nodding along, trying to figure out how to right a ship that feels like it's been rudderless for ages.

Ultimately, it starts with us, and our seeming inability to communicate our better qualities to the outside world. It's not as if gaming hasn't produced remarkable stories outside of the most wretched connections to those who do terrible things. As one particularly recent example, amid all the THQ layoffs of last week, it impressed me to no end how quickly the many developers and publishers came together to collect and promote job listings for those who suddenly found themselves unemployed. I can't think of another industry so quick to spring into action like that when their peers--and, quite frankly, their previous competitors--find themselves in a tough spot.

I am very much looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V. I am less looking forward to the recursive conversations about video game violence it's likely to spark up all over again.

Cleaning up our image isn't just about making ourselves look less overtly obsessed with violence (though, that would probably help). It's about making people recognize us as people, making them recognize the good this industry is capable of, and that any large community can't be adequately judged by its few bad eggs. We've spent way too much time allowing the media, politicians, and frankly a good chunk of the rest of the world dehumanize us into easily dismissed, mock-worthy caricatures. We've let a perceived obsession with violence define us.

We have made major strides in recent years at diversifying this medium, both in terms of the kinds of games we play, as well as those who call gaming a personal pastime. But we've done this quietly, internally, and in a way that has clearly had no major impact on how those outside of our core group view us. As a result, here we are, however many years later, still facing these same issues, these same stereotypes, these same political push-backs that feel like they should have dissipated into obscurity long ago.

I guess I just find all of that a little bit sad.

--A

#gearsofwar People Can Fly, the Poland-based studio behind 2011's Bulletstorm and the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment, said goodbye to creative director Adrian Chmielarz (pictured) and two top artists today, according to Gears developer Epic Games and Chmielarz himself. More »

The fine people at Official PlayStation Magazine UK trust the PlayStation 4 spec rumors enough to build the entire next-gen console with the assumed parts, which are all off-the-shelf PC pieces. Rumors have the PS4 using an AMD A8 3850 processor and AMD Radeon HD 7670 graphics card, the latter of which is identical to a mid-range, year-old AMD graphics card, the HD 6670. The processor is a "cheap" CPU solution, OPM writes.

With that stellar introduction, OPM tested its fake PS4 against an Intel i7 2700K with Just Cause 2, and against the PS3 with Bulletstorm and Skyrim. OPM tracked rendering and frame-rate benchmarks for each system, and was underwhelmed with the results. Just Cause 2 was clocked at 21 frames per second, and the other two stuck around 30, but with barely noticeable graphics improvements from the PS3 version.

Again, these are only the rumored PS4 specs, and simply duct-taping them all together and popping in a game doesn't equate a true, finished console. Techradar's components editor Dave James offered some insight into OPM's test: "Sadly just benchmarking the relevant PC components in the current crop of Windows-compatible games wont give you much of an idea how a PS4 utilising those components would actually perform.

"Coding on closed-platform devices, like consoles, means you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of the hardware because you know that every one of those devices will be exactly the same."

Sony may use newer versions of the graphics card and processor as well, James said. The moral of this story, then: Rumors are rumors. Image credit: OPM

Today I come to you with a heavy heart and a higher-than-average tolerance for dick jokes. Bulletstorm – perhaps the manliest manshoot of them all, depending on how you measure these things – is officially dead. Apparently, People Can Fly’s cartoonishly profane murder symphony didn’t fly with Epic brass, so now Grayson Hunt is getting mad skillshots on angels. Somewhere, a giant remote-controlled dinosaur is shedding a single tear. Made of lasers. So then, what happened? Well, in what’s almost assuredly a first for a game company – nay, the whole of humankind – Epic’s Mike Capps partly blamed PC piracy.

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During a post-panel interview at PAX East, Epic Games president Mike Capps admitted he thought about letting People Can Fly loose on a Bulletstorm sequel. He even admitted that there had been some "initial development" completed on a sequel.

"We thought a lot about a sequel, and had done some initial development on it, but we found a project that we thought was a better fit for People Can Fly," Capps told Gamespot. "We haven't announced that yet, but we will be announcing it pretty soon." He may be referring to the new PC-exclusive title that Cliff Bleszinski revealed was in development.

In regards to the possibility of a sequel, Capps said he'd have no problem producing a second Bulletstorm game. "I'd love to go back [to Bulletstorm]," he said. "I think there's more to do with Bulletstorm. Heck, it kind of ended wanting more. I'd love to see another project, but right now we don't have anything to talk about."

#bulletstorm Bulletstorm, one of 2011's more surprising critical successes, wasn't as big a hit at the register, with Epic Games boss Mike Capps telling GameSpot that "From a sales perspective it was good, but not amazing. I think EA was hoping we'd do better." More »

#fineart Most photographers ply their trade by capturing snapshots of reality and preserving them on film. Through careful framing, posing, and a bit of luck, they seek to distill the essence of foreign lands, exotic vistas, war zones, and even distant planets. More »

#bulletstorm Bulletstorm, released in February, is probably still 2011's most foul-mouthed game. It may be 2012's most foul-mouthed game, too. It coined the term "dicktits" after all. More »

The October issue of Game Developer's magazine features a postmortem on foul-mouthed shooter Bulletstorm, which includes one of the greatest anecdotes on cross-cultural development ever. If you've ever had a foreign friend just learning how to swear in your native tongue, you can totally see how Polish developer People Can Fly fell into a snare of its own creation and made a terrible mistake.

"Do you know any swear word in a foreign language? German, French, Polish? When you say it out loud, no biggie, right? Not a problem to use it during a family dinner, I assume?" Adrian Chmielarz, creative director at People Can Fly told the magazine.

He explains the swearing in Bulletstorm was just "exotic and fun" to them, and publisher Epic let the studio run with it, not realizing that they'd gone beyond their own intentions. The developer didn't realize the power of the words.

"It was only at the end of the development," Chmielarz remarks. "When I read the Polish translation of the game, that I realized how dirty we were. I swear a lot. A LOT. And yet still I ... kind of blushed."

Speaking with Kotaku, Epic President Mike Capps lamented Bulletstorm's financial performance, saying that the title "didn't make money for us." However, despite its relatively poor sales, Capps implies that the game was still worth making, and that Epic-owned developer People Can Fly is more to the studio than a content farm for the Gears of War series. "The next thing we do with People Can Fly will be great," he said.

We loved Bulletstorm, so it's good to hear that lackluster figures in the consumer sector haven't blinded Epic to the FPS's stellar critical reception. Now that we think about it, a lot of games we've liked lately have been selling poorly. Maybe Joystiq is cursed? Maybe we shouldn't have stolen that gypsy's ice-cream. Or defiled that mummy's tomb. Or built our headquarters over this ancient burial mound. Whatever, this monkey's paw we got at that frogurt place should take care of it.

Failing as a game developer can be a rather frightening thing. When your big budget product doesn't turn a profit, the general consensus is that you may be on the chopping block. Go ahead and ask the former developers of Bizarre Creations, or Black Rock Studio how understanding their publishers were when their labors failed to deliver big sales numbers. And then feel free to buy them a drink. It's the least you can do.

Maybe it didn't sell, but that makes Bulletstorm no less awesome in retrospect.

Epic Games apparently doesn't think the way most publishers do, possibly because they have been in the development game themselves for so long. In speaking to Kotaku late last week, Epic president Mike Capps made it clear that they stand behind the products they believe in, whether they make money or not.

In this case, Capps was specifically referencing Bulletstorm, the gleefully immature first-person shooter Epic co-developed alongside the Polish development studio it recently acquired, People Can Fly. Though the game came close to cracking 300,000 units in its first month, Bulletstorm hasn't earned back its hefty budget at this juncture, and seemingly is destined to forever exist within the dreaded "red" zone.

That said, Capps had no interest in putting any sort of blame on People Can Fly. Bulletstorm might not have made any money, but Capps believes in the studio, stating that Epic has no interest in using them to simply churn out additional Gears of War content, and rather expects big things from them.

"The studio has shipped AAA content," he said. "The next thing we do with People Can Fly will be great."

Capps plans to further tout Bulletstorm, and the other various IPs at Epic Games at next month's GDC Europe, giving a talk called "Size Doesn't Matter: How Epic Brings AAA Attitude to Every Game, from Gears of War 3 to Infinity Blade." It's a catchy title, and certainly should make for interesting listening for anyone who wants to understand Epic's approach to making games. Still, it could have used a little more dicktits, if you ask me.

This kind of thing just scares the hell out of me. While Bulletstorm isn’t exactly the kind of game I’m going to put on a pedestal and hail as the one true future of electronic entertainment, it was a new franchise, a rare shooter that didn’t take itself deathly seriously, a good-looker and a game that at least attempted a few bonus ideas. It did a lot of things right, and it was clearly having a great time in the process. Yet it didn’t turn a profit for devs People Can Fly and Epic.(more…)

Speaking with Kotaku, Epic President Mike Capps lamented Bulletstorm's financial performance, saying that the title "didn't make money for us." However, despite its relatively poor sales, Capps implies that the game was still worth making, and that Epic-owned developer People Can Fly is more to the studio than a content farm for the Gears of War series. "The next thing we do with People Can Fly will be great," he said.

We loved Bulletstorm, so it's good to hear that lackluster figures in the consumer sector haven't blinded Epic to the FPS's stellar critical reception. Now that we think about it, a lot of games we've liked lately have been selling poorly. Maybe Joystiq is cursed? Maybe we shouldn't have stolen that gypsy's ice-cream. Or defiled that mummy's tomb. Or built our headquarters over this ancient burial mound. Whatever, this monkey's paw we got at that frogurt place should take care of it.

#bulletstorm Mike Capps, president of Gears of War development studio, doesn't regret Bulletstorm. That game got a lot of hype—and some extraordinarily odd press coverage—when it was released earlier this year. It was an odd first-person shooter that was vulgar in tone and creative in execution, rewarding players for, well, being creative in how they executed kills in the game—more points, for example, if you shotgunned a guy into a giant space cactus. More »

Did you like Bulletstorm? Did you enjoy the multiplayer modes? So did I! I can’t imagine anybody’s still playing them, but that’s for Epic and not me to decide. They’ve just released the Gun Sonata DLC pack, offering three new maps for Anarchy, the game’s arena co-op point-scoring mode, and two new maps for Echo, the game’s corridor-shooter point-scoring mode. For this they are charging ten American dollars, which is a number that is a little more than nine dollars, but significantly less than twelve dollars.

I think I need another mug of tea. Press release after the jump.(more…)

Having been available on consoles since mid-April, the Bulletstorm "Gun Sonata" is now finally available on PC. The meat of the DLC is comprised of three Anarchy mode maps: Sewers of Stygia, Hotel Elysium and Villa. The pack also includes two new Echo mode maps, Crash Site and Guns of Stygia.

Gun Sonata can be purchased for $10.

The space-pirate tale Bulletstorm also brought a soundtrack suited to its popcorn-flick tone and motifs. The game's full 24 tracks are now available for you to grab, 100 percent free, with 0 percent cussing from Grayson, Trishka or Sarrano, courtesy of Epic Games. the file is a 130 MB .zip and the audio is .mp3. [Epic Games] More »

As a "thank you" to its fans, Epic has released the entire Bulletstorm soundtrack for free. Composed by Michal Cielecki and Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz, the music is surprisingly devoid of the profuse, ridiculous profanity associated with Bulletstorm. That said, and you'll know this if you've played the game, it is the perfect music for scaring, killing or otherwise negatively affecting dicks.

Head over to Epic to download your own copy. Just be careful about when and where you decide to listen. The dinner table probably isn't the best place to whip yourself into a dick-killing fervor, for example.

I am as outraged as a man who hasn’t yet felt the effects of his morning tea can be. Which is to say I look the same but I’m typing marginally harder.

I spotted over at PC Gamer that Epic have released the Bulletstorm soundtrack for free. Kind of them, no? You can download it here. Except I’ve just discovered the hard way (clicking through every track in sequence) that it features everything except the Disco Inferno cover that plays when you get to the club, which is to say they left out the one track everyone remembers. Epic have dropped the ball right onto our collective face. If you haven’t played Bulletstorm, you can watch the part I’m talking about below.(more…)

New maps, more mayhem, more over-the-top action! The Bulletstorm Gun Sonata Pack is now available worldwide on Xbox LIVE Marketplace and PlayStation Network for 800 MS Points or $9.99. The Bulletstorm Gun Sonata Pack will be available soon for PC. Players will have access to three new maps for the g...

It's been said that one can never tire of gunshots to the groin (well, someone, somewhere has to have said that at some point) but humans, being a particularly fickle lot, are always looking for a change of scenery. Bulletstorm's new Gun Sonata DLC, out today for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Epic's balls-to-the-wall (literally!) FPS, should help satisfy that primal need.

The pack, well, packs two new Echoes mode maps (Guns of Stygia and Crash Site) along with three more locales for Anarchy mode (Hotel Elysium, Sewers and Villa) for the sum of 800 Microsoft Points / $10 on Xbox Live and PSN, respectively. The content is up on XBL now and will hit PSN with its weekly update this evening. As for the PC version, EA tells us it's still planned, just without a firm release date at this point.

Bulletstorm Gun Sonata DLC ($10) [Xbox.com]

If you're a PC user who wanted to try Bulletstorm through legal means, the demo is available now on Steam and Games For Windows Live. A demo for consoles has been available since prior to the game's February 22 launch.

For a game that seems to use an expletive-filled roulette wheel for its dialogue, Bulletstorm delivers a clip full of fun. Check out the demo, just make sure that nobody with sensitive ears is around.

Better late than never? Bulletstorm has finally released its PC demo, which is perhaps a tad late to make up for the bad blood over its previous cancellation, but presumably still within plenty of time to convince the doubters to take a look. Quintin loved it when he reviewed it, and Kieron, Quintin and I had a good old chat about it here. You can download the demo RIGHT NOW from Steam or apparently on GFWL, but I got fed up of their ghastly website when trying to find it.

#bulletstorm Over-the-top first-person shooter Bulletstorm features some painful-looking, biologically questionable special kills. These gory demises raise questions, such as, "Who is responsible for rendering an asshole torn apart by a power drill?" Meet People Can Fly special effects artist Jose Teixeira. More »

#art Gears of War is a very brown video game series. Bulletstorm, a new game that was co-developed by the same team, is a lot more colourful, something that began right back with the game's early concept art. More »

#tv The Twitterverse went off like a fireworks volley on Thursday when news passed that "Community," the critically acclaimed but low-rated NBC comedy-drama, was picked up for a third season. How did the show's creator celebrate? "I came home and I played 'Bulletstorm.'" More »

A few weeks ago, Bulletstorm kicked its way onto store shelves. The IGN Bulletstorm review was positive, calling the game "actually something kind of special." But what do other IGN editors think? We gathered a quartet of Bulletstorm players to find out how People Can Fly's foul-mouthed shooter shapes up...