Bastion

Somewhere in San Diego there exists a couple of buildings. They’re buildings with glass windows and a soft feeling, or so I’ve been told. They’re buildings that are “not too intimidating” when compared to other species in their particular building genus. At least, that’s how The Behemoth President John Baez described them to me at the tail end of a roughly 32-minute interview that took place in Boston last weekend during PAX East. Baez and Level Designer Ryan Horn shared their thoughts on several topics: BattleBlock Theater, what the studio would like to see from the next-gen version of Xbox Live Arcade and the developer’s thoughts on working with Microsoft.

Yes, we managed to cover a lot of ground. This despite the fact that we were sitting comfortably in folding chairs set up in a largely unoccupied space behind the booth over which hung a large arrow bearing a single word: “Behold.” What precisely the attention of PAX attendees was being called to may not have been initially palpable to the first-timers among them, but then again, nor was it to the XBLAFans crew when Horn and Baez — the latter fielding an increasing percentage of the questions we asked the two men — began talking about video game prototypes.

Our attention, as it turned out, was being directed towards those two buildings. Or rather, what goes on inside their walls.

They’re not buildings in which the developer makes games, mind you. They are buildings in which the developer tests games to see if they work. Interestingly, one of the games that has been analyzed there isn’t property of The Behemoth — it’s property of fellow successful indie studio Supergiant Games. And at some point this summer, the iOS version of Bastion will lose the distinction of being the only game from another developer to be put through its paces by The Behemoth. The studio will begin using its pair of non-development buildings to investigate whether or not all manner of foreign games work in the manner that their designers intended them to, and whether or not that’s the way they should work.

The Behemoth will task those working inside the friendlier-than-most-of-their-kind buildings with providing quality assurance (QA) and usability lab services to fellow independent game developers. One indie should help another indie. This type of help, however, will come with a price tag — and not a discounted one.

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SuperGiant games, the creators of Bastion, just announced on Twitter a reveal trailer for their upcoming game Transistor. You can see it above! As for whether or not this will come …
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Supergiant Games have revealed that Bastion sales have reached 1.7 million across all platforms. The action-RPG was first released on XBLA as part of Microsoft’s 2011 Summer of Arcade …
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It frightens me to think how much money I’ve spent over the years on video games. True, I may not be walking down Rodeo Drive with 20 handbags full of dresses, jewelry and shoes, but I really wonder how many of us could give the traditional shopaholic a run for her money when it comes to the amount of money we’ve dropped on games, guides, consoles, and the like. Considering consoles range from the 2-500 USD when they’re released and games have always been in the 50-60 USD range. Game guides are roughly half that price, as are controllers. Other game peripherals can be as much as twice the cost of a game.

Yikes.

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