Built to Play 43: Trapped in Space

This time on Built to Play, Danielle visited Xbox Canada and Arman discusses Canadian games and the great outdoors.The Built to Play staff doesn't make it outside often. Sure we can see the outside from the windows in our studio, but we rarely experience it. Just kidding. Our studio doesn't have windows. Anyway, Danielle actually left the studio to talk to play some upcoming Xbox One games, while Arman talked to game designers about why they liked the outside. For Arman, it's baby steps.Tune in about 50 seconds into the show to hear us chat about these games and _Assassin's Creed: Unity. _Plus we hear from Nitai Bessette, the level design director, of AC: Unity and Matt Grandstaff, the global community lead at Bethesda Softworks. Daniel also met two designers from Lionhead on the Fable Legends team, the game's director David Eckelberry and the villain's designer, Lewis Brundish.As we've repeated multiple times on the show, Canada is the third largest centre for game development in the world, right behind the United States and Japan. Which is why it feels odd when we can call so few of those games "Canadian." Games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed are all games made in Canada, but you wouldn't know that from looking at it or playing it or talking to the developers. To be fair to the first two, Mass Effect and Deus Ex both have had levels set in Canada (Vancouver and Montreal respectively), but Assassin's Creed, even when Ubisoft Montreal leads development, never feels like it belongs here. The majority of development studios in Canada are owned by larger publishers, like EA, Square Enix, or Microsoft, none of which care very much about where these games are physically made so long as Americans buy them. So the majority of Canada's big budget games don't feel very Canadian. Alexandre Fiset felt this weirdness while he was at Beenox, a studio based in Quebec City that's owned by Activision. Beenox makes games starring Spider-Man, sometimes based on the ongoing film series. Fiset wasn't satisfied working on a Marvel hero living in a fantasy New York, so he left the company to start Parabole Games. Parabole recently completed a kickstarter for the game Kona, an episodic series about a supernatural mystery in northern Quebec.Fiset wasn't alone in thinking about his game as a cultural product either. Raphael van Lierop, founder of Hinterland Studios and designer of the Long Dark, has been thinking about game design as a way to make something local. The Long Darktakes place near the mountains of British Columbia, far north of where van Lierop lives on Vancouver Island. It's a survival game based in the rough Canadian wilderness.Fiset and van Lierop discuss Canada, the garrison mentality, and why cultural diversity is important for all games, not just Canadian ones. You can hear from them starting 38:45The Long Dark's survival mode is now available on Steam Early Access. Kona's first episode will be released in April 2015. You can play the demo here.Once again thanks to the Free Music Archive for access to great bands like Podington Bear. In our Xbox One preview section, we used the following tracks from that band: "Nature Kid", "Moondots and Polkabeams", "Lake Victoria" and "Belfast". We also used "Hedge Schools" by Peter DiPhillips. For the rest of the show we used the following songs from the Free Music Archive: "Wanna see my Spaceship" by Beatoven,"Run to Canada" by Min-Y-Lian, "Detective" by Krowne, "Photosphere" by Charles Atlas, and "Blind Eyes" by Everlone. We used sound effects from Destiny. This episode was written by Danielle Rosen and edited by Arman Aghbali. If you liked this episode leave us a comment, review or subscribe. Thanks for listening!