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Recent Media Coverage
- Wits
& Wagers Developer Q&A, May 5, 2008
by
Ryan Geddes
On Wednesday, Microsoft will release Hidden Path Entertainment's new
party game Wits & Wagers for download on Xbox Live Arcade. We
recently talked to Pobst, Hidden Path's CEO, about Wits & Wagers, Xbox Live
Arcade's allure for startup developers and the economic statistics of
large Asian countries.
- 360
Sync Interviews members of Hidden Path
Entertainment with a Wits & Wagers preview, March 17, 2008
interview by
Devin "DaKing240" Kofsky
At GDC, I was able to interview Hidden Path Entertainment for some
upcoming games. However, we had to hold this video… until today! So, let us
present the exclusive footage of Wits and Wagers!
 
-
Official Xbox Magazine Reviews Hidden Path
Entertainment's Wits & Wagers video game in their April 2008 issue
review by
Paul Curthoys
Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) calls Wits & Wagers "a
genius quiz-show game that ranks right up there with classics like You Don't
Know Jack." One of only five Xbox LIVE Arcade games to win OXM's
coveted Editor's Choice award, Wits & Wagers stands out from the crowd,
and "The resulting social dynamic is absolutely a blast."
"The best part of this trivia game is that you can be a total knucklehead
and still mop the floor with your smartypants friends. Wits &
Wagers is far less about knowing the age of our planet or the year
Braille was invented (or other numerical facts), and far more about how well
you bet."
"Wits & Wagers lets up to six players connect over Live from any
combo of 360s and couches (for example, three players from one house and
360, two from another, one from a third), or four players can gather around
a single console. This flexibility allows Wits & Wagers to do
exactly what a good party game should - let you laugh your ass off and have
fun with friends. Good job XBLA, - more like this please."
The Verdict on Xbox LIVE Arcade: 9.0, Editors' Choice
- CEO Jeff Pobst & CTO Michael Austin
Interviewed about the XNA Culture Demo
Jeff: Culture evolved from the very first XNA demo shown
at GDC in 2006. In fact, the new Culture demo (that you can
download today) was actually completed by our team in August
of 2006. Microsoft originally approached us in February of
2006 to help them show off the XNA technology at GDC - four
weeks later. We quickly designed and developed the flower
demo that was shown at the conference and then a couple
months later, Microsoft asked us to take around 10 weeks and
upgrade the original demo to the one you can now download
with three trial game modes.
Frank Savage on the internal Microsoft XNA team recently
modified the underlying technology in the game to work with
the current XNA framework rather than the version of XNA
that we used in 2006, but otherwise the demo is very similar
to the one we originally delivered. There are a few upgrades
and adjustments we look forward to addressing as we hope to
spend more time on it again and make it a more complete
experience in the future.
Michael: XNA is very easy to work with. I'd never worked
with C# before we started the demo (I've been a C++ guy).
After how easy it was to use and seeing the level of support
MS provides in its framework, we use it internally for most
of our tools now.
- Video Interview on Culture Demo and Defense
Grid: The Awakening:
Fresh off the press, Microsoft announced today
that some games were being delivered on the Xbox Live Arcade, and some games
were using the new XNA technology for the communuty. So how lucky were we to
snag an interview for 2 games that appeared on both press releases! Hidden
Path entertainment tells us about Defense Grid: The Awakening, and Culture!
Enjoy!
- Culture Demo Previews & Screens:
  
- Microsoft Announces Two Hidden Path Entertainment products available
on Xbox 360
- Defense Grid: The Awakening (coming this summer
for Xbox LIVE Arcade)
- Culture (XNA Game Studio 2.0 demo available for
free download for a limited time)
Xbox LIVE members have been using a large portion of
those Microsoft Points in Xbox LIVE Arcade, which is the
premier destination for digitally distributed,
high-definition original and classic games. With over 116
games to choose from on Xbox LIVE Arcade, everyone’s invited
to get instantly immersed in the fun. Xbox LIVE Arcade is
also home to the world’s most innovative independent
developers, with more than 25 independent studios serving as
the creative fuel behind the original games that represent
more than a quarter of the Xbox LIVE Arcade library. The
following titles represent a sample of games launching on
Xbox LIVE Arcade in the near future from the world’s leading
independent developers: ...
“Defense Grid: The Awakening” (Hidden Path
Entertainment LLC). “Defense Grid: The Awakening” is the
definitive tower defense game experience designed
specifically for Xbox LIVE Arcade and launches this summer.
Inviting Everyone to Share Their Own Games With
Millions
Demonstrating a look into the future potential of
community-created games on Xbox 360, Chris Satchell, general
manager and chief XNA architect at Microsoft, announced that
seven games created using XNA Game Studio 2.0 would be
available immediately for Xbox 360 owners to download from
Xbox LIVE Marketplace: ...
“Culture.” Created by independent game
development company Hidden Path Entertainment from the
United States, “Culture” contains challenging games and
puzzles based on beautiful flowers.
- CEO Jeff Pobst moderates "The State of the Interactive Industry: The
Power of Play" a panel produced by enterpriseSeattle at the World Cyber Games
Finals. The Panel included Microsoft Game Studios VP Shane Kim, Warner
Brothers Interactive VP Samantha Ryan, PopCap games cofounder John Vechey,
Flowplay CEO Derrick Morton, and Chris Mefford CEO of Community Attributes.
"In 2006, U.S. consumers spent $9.1 billion on video games,
said panel member Jeff Pobst, chief executive of Bellevue
game maker Hidden Path Entertainment LLC, citing a Price
Waterhouse study. In five years, that figure will grow 35
percent, to $12.5 billion."
"- Seattle has the nation's fourth highest concentration of programmers and
engineers and third highest concentration of multimedia artists and animators,
behind San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"It's easily one of the top places to recruit and bring people in for game
development,'' said moderator Jeff Pobst, chief executive of Hidden Path
Entertainment."
-
Video Game Industry Boosts Local Economy, Q13 Fox Seattle, October 5, 2007 by
Susan West
It's no simple task creating video games. Jeff Pobst,
the CEO and founder of Hidden Path Entertainment in Bellevue says, "A video game
product you might play at home might take three years and hundreds of people to
actually make."
- Art Director Dave McCoy and CEO Jeff Pobst present talks on Art &
Production at the World Cyber Games Educational Track.
- CTO Michael Austin and Design Director Mark Terrano contribute to the
CoDe Magazine Cover Story on developers using XNA and discuss the making of
Hidden Path Entertainment's 2006 demo for Microsoft: 'Culture.
"Michael Austin, Chief Technology Officer of Hidden Path Entertainment,
echoes Fristrom’s comments. Most C++ developers are simply not interested in
looking at managed languages, but it seems that trying C# is loving it. Austin
explains, “We used C++ on most of our development projects in the past. We used
C# to develop the Culture technical demo (Figure 2) for Microsoft at last year’s
Game Developer Conference. Culture is, on one hand, a casual game with flowers,
butterflies, and easy controls, and on the other hand a high performance
next-generation Xbox 360 title. Once I used C# to develop a procedural flower
modeling tool, I was hooked - now we use C# for almost all of our tools and
prototype games.”
Figure 2: The Culture technical demo was developed by Hidden Path
Entertainment for Microsoft and GDC 2006 using an early release of XNA.
- CEO Jeff Pobst participates on a panel at Gamefest "How to Engage the
Community Without Enraging Them" a panel moderated by Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's
'Major Nelson'. The Panel also included David Weller, XNA Community
Manager; Elizabeth Loverso, Director of Product Development, Red Storm
Entertainment; and Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward.
"Empowering the community is also important, according to Pobst. "What's more
important is that people who are part of the community want to have a
relationship with other people in the community... they want that prestige or
status among other people. The more that you allow them to do themselves, the
happier they are."
- CEO Jeff Pobst moderates a panel on Console (& PC) Online Services
and Strategies for the 2007 Online Game Developer's Conference in Seattle with
Todd Northcutt, Director GameSpy Technology, GameSpy/IGN, JJ Richards, General
Manager Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live, Microsoft, and Michael Shorrock,
Director of Third Party Relations, Sony Computer Entertainment of America.:
"As a series of points, Richards stated “I can have chat in my games,
now that it’s a proper keyboard.” The moderator, Jeff Pobst of Hidden Path
Entertainment interjected, “Are those buttons available for gameplay?”
Richards confirmed that they would be. “All of the sudden, I can have a
controller with mini-buttons, if I want,” said Pobst. “It’ll be very interesting
to see how developers take advantage of that innovation,” commented Microsoft’s
Richards."
“It’s an open system, so publishers may have, [for example,] an Activision
pavilion. They may have a variety of games in there...”
The moderator inquired if pavilions must be purchased or leased by publishers.
“What we’re creating is a very flexible model for developers and publishers,”
Shorrock responded. “We’re open to proposals, how you might like to proceed.”
Some publishers, he said, might want their pavilions to be free. “Some people
might want to charge. Our business model is flexible enough to allow for either
way.”
He said that releasing DLC six weeks after the retail launch is the optimal
time-frame, giving gamers a chance to exhaust the retail versions, building
demand and expectation, but cashing in on market excitement.
“If you try to release DLC six months after the retail launch, you’ll only be
targeting the tail end of demand, instead of the peaks,” he said.
- CTO Michael Austin and Design Director Mark Terrano speak at Career
Discovery 1: Careers in the Game Industry:
Michael Austin at
Career Discovery 2007, Bellevue, WA
"The Career Discovery Series focuses
on middle and high school students... led by industry experts all throughout the
day-long event."
 
- Design Director Mark Terrano's 2006 Project Horseshoe Keynote:
"There were short punchy keynotes by Mark Terrano, Nicole Lazzaro, and
Raph Koster, after which we coalesced our overall agenda, set by the group in an
innovative bottom-up fashion. It is notable to me that the keynotes were as
insightful as you’d expect and would have been worthy of strong applause
anywhere."
- Design Director Mark Terrano's 2006 Game Writers Conference Keynote:
Mark Terrano at Game
Writer's Conference 2006, Austin, TX
"Terrano's keynote was peppered with big-picture ideas and humor..."
"Games can connect with their audiences in very personal ways, with players
building their own very personal stories about their characters - almost like
they're children or pets. Game stories are not necessarily about other
characters or elaborate plots, they're stories about real people and the actions
they took to outwit their opponents."
"Terrano is convinced that we can do better, improving the combination of
writing and gameplay into a powerful experience. He says, "Our form of
entertainment goes deep - all the way back to childhood play. In games, we can
make anything happen. People can get things from games they can't get from other
media."
"The presentation itself took the form of a fast paced and humorous
PowerPoint presentation. Terrano is a relatively unassuming looking man.
Bespectacled and not too tall, he probably looks exactly like what you think of
when you think the words “Game Designer”. Despite his unassuming look, Terrano
has a fast, energetic and engaging way of speaking"
"The presentation concluded with a lovely analogy between video games and
medieval cathedrals. These structures were created by craftsmen willing to work
long hours because they were caught up in a vision and wanted to help create
something great and lasting, something that might have a chance of changing the
world. Mark Terrano believes that games can change the world and maybe more. As
he puts it “We can make anything happen”. "
- Microsoft shows 'Culture at Leipzig:
"XNA can create other types of game too
though, it said, including one, called Culture, which
involves circling weeds on a spherical planet using
other flowers."
- CEO Jeff Pobst comments at the WSA's 13th Annual Investment Forum:
-
From WSA's Investment Forum, SeattleTimes.com, May 25th, 2006
by Brier Dudley
'Networked gaming is inspiring developers, according to Jeff Pobst, a former
Xbox developer relations manager now running Hidden Path Entertainment in
Bellevue. "It gets really interesting and exciting when you start designing the
content knowing how it's going to be distributed and making that distribution
part of the content,'' he said.'
- 'Culture at GDC 2006:
'Culture in
Microsoft's Booth at Game Developer's Conference 2006, San Jose, CA
"The demo showed a small spherical planetoid covered with 15,000 flowers
swaying in the wind, along with butterflies, realistic physics, and a dynamic
world. It turned out that the demo was actually running on two machines, one a
PC and the other an Xbox 360. He explained that Microsoft commissioned an
outside developer to make a demo quickly using XNA tools, and the developer was
able to port the code from one system to the other in a day. In fact, Satchell
said it would have taken less than a day had the tools not been in alpha at the
time with many undocumented functions."
-
TriXie on the Scene at GDC 2006, Xbox.com, March 22nd, 2006
by TriXie
"Over at the XNA Framework kiosk, I saw a cool example of this with a game
called Culture from Hidden Path Entertainment. No, you can't play it anywhere
yet … I was told they "just got it working in time for GDC." Anyway, it's a 3-D
simulation of cellular automata. It was written entirely in C# using a
pre-release version of XNA Framework. Uh, yeah.
Here's my version: It's a game where you have a planet covered entirely in
grass. You shoot seeds at the planet and flowers grow. You try to cover the
entire planet with flora—especially red flowers. As your garden grows,
butterflies flutter around, including MSN butterflies, which I thought was a
cute touch. It sounds simple, but it looks amazing. I couldn't quite wrap my
head around the strategy re: seed dispersal, but it looked really pretty."
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