I was stoked to get my copy of Mass Effect for XBox 360. Not just because this is one of the most beautiful looking games for the platform (the graphics are stunning), with a really rich plot, and great gameplay, but also because gskinner.com contributed to it, and it's not every day you get to see your company name in the credits for a blockbuster video game.
Check it out (arrows added by me, Michael is one of the developers on our team):
Bioware was a really great company to work with, and it was interesting to get a glimpse into how Flash is being used by the console game industry.
Comments (7)
Hey Grant, can you tell us more about how Flash fits in to Mass Effect? I've heard anecdotes of Flash in console games before but would be interested to hear more detail.
Congrats on this btw, Mass Effect is a truly amazing game.
Posted by: Rick Mason at December 17, 2007 11:02 AMURL: http://www.fitc.ca
Congrats also on the Mass Effect mention and I second Rick's request for more how Flash was involved (or what your part was in the game).
One nickpick regarding your blog's right hand panel - does it HAVE to be in flash? It was annoying to discover I couldn't control-click on another article link to open up a new tab in Firefox. While it only took 30 seconds to figure out that I wasn't at fault - that it was flash, not html - this puts a very small bad taste in my mouth for using flash instead of html. Otherwise, your site is great!
Posted by: David Bisset at December 17, 2007 12:12 PMURL: http://www.davidbisset.com
I'm not certain we can go into specific detail about our involvement, but if you look at this press release:
http://www.scaleform.com/press_10_30_2006
You'll see that Mass Effect uses the Scaleform engine. The Scaleform engine runs Flash player content on multiple gaming platforms including XBox 360. If you consider that Flash doesn't really have any 3D capability, but excels at scalable 2D, you can take a pretty good guess at what it is used for in the game.
Here's some more info on the Scaleform engine:
http://www.scaleform.com/products_gfx
You've gotta love the diversity of platforms open to Flash content!
Posted by: Grant Skinner at December 17, 2007 02:13 PMURL: http://gskinner.com/blog/
Wow. What an interesting crossover. Do you plan on collaborating again with the console bunch?
Posted by: Rezmason at December 17, 2007 04:32 PMURL:
Ah, very cool. I spent a year working at Electronic Arts - all of the menus and in-game HUDs in their titles are Flash as well. It was a lot fun; definitely an interesting change up from the web.
Posted by: Ryan Taylor at December 18, 2007 01:00 AMURL: http://www.boostworthy.com/blog
Congrats Grant, we are implimenting something similar using scaleform and Hero Engine. Good stuff.
Posted by: Ivan Todorov at December 20, 2007 04:52 PMURL: http://www.blitzagency.com
Congratulations! Hope you guys will contribute more flash stuffs to gaming industry.
Posted by: Min Thu at January 10, 2008 07:57 AMURL: http://www.flashmo.com