An American Game Journalist in Paris

By John Gaudiosi 

PARIS, FRANCE—I’m writing this blog from the Westin in Paris, France. Outside the hotel I can see the Eiffel Tower. I’m actually in the heart of Paris’ major tourist attractions. With Christmas just around the corner, the City of Lights is even more beautiful at night. The weather has been gorgeous, cool fall weather and clear skies, which makes strolling through the streets at night a refreshing experience. What does this have anything to do with videogames, you ask? I’m in Paris checking out what should be one of the biggest PlayStation 3 exclusives of 2009 at Quantic Dreams – Heavy Rain. 

Over the past 10 days I’ve been in Reykjavik, Copenhagen (for a night because of a delayed flight), Amsterdam and now Paris. The reason for these trips has been videogames. Games are truly a global business today and videogame publishers often take some of the top journalists to game studios to get access to the people behind the games and get a feel for how and where the games are made. 

This was my fourth videogame trip to Paris this year and I love the city. The people and the food are another story. I usually end up eating pizza and sandwiches because French food is generally pretty horrible. This trip was especially nice because it’s fall here and the weather is absolutely perfect. The location of this hotel makes walking to major sites a nice exercise. And Sony built in some free time to allow us to enjoy the city. 

I was also able to experience what it’d be like if Sega’s Crazy Taxi was set in Paris. There was a major demonstration with sheep farmers, who brought hundreds of sheep downtown to protest the economy. As a result, hundreds of riot police were brought in. Evidently, protests always lead to riots in Paris – democracy at work. As a result, our cab driver took us through the city to try to avoid the blocked streets around our hotel. Along the way, we ended up going the wrong way down a one way street and also got stuck behind a trash truck. Our driver tried to go around the truck and ended up playing chicken with cars coming the other way. At one point, he shut off the cab with cars facing us and took out the key. Yelling ensued. We eventually ended up backing up into oncoming traffic and going around another way. If there was 50 feet of street ahead, he’d floor it. It made those New York City cab rides seem tame. 

The actual details of the Quantic Dreams studio tour are under embargo until December, but I can talk about their last game, Indigo Prophecy. Atari published that game for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox and the game played like an interactive thriller. Every decision a player made impacted the direction of the game. Heavy Rain will utilize the same basic design, although it will take advantage of the advanced processing power for PlayStation 3. And one again, the player will be involved in a thriller.

This was my second trip to Amsterdam and both were with Sony for Guerilla Games. The first time was a first-look at the PlayStation 2 shooter, Killzone, about four years ago. Now owned by Sony, this trip focused on the PS3-exclusive Killzone 2, which comes out in early 2009. For anyone who hasn’t visited Amsterdam, I highly recommend this city. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. (It’s up there with Prague as one of my favorites.) And unlike Paris, the people are friendly and everyone speaks English (or at least doesn’t pretend not to understand English like the Parisians do). Our hotel was in the center of town, just a block from the famous red light district, where hookers are literally available in storefront windows. Amsterdam is also ripe with shopping. No matter which direction you walk down the cobblestone streets, there are shops of all sorts. I’ve also never seen as many bikes anywhere. Although the city only has 700,000 people, most of them seem to bike to work. As a result, you always have to check for bikes when you have a green light to walk a street because they don’t look out for you. I personally think that riding a bike in that city, with the way the taxis drive and the canals (with no guardrails), is suicide. It’d certainly make for an interesting videogame, at the very least. 

Killzone 2 is another big shooter for the PS3 that’s being created in what was once a huge bank. Over 130 people are working on the game, which is twice the size of the team the last time I was in Amsterdam. Guerilla Games is now owned by Sony, as well, having been purchased three years ago. That said, the company still works as it always did on its projects, but now has access to all of Sony’s resources. This sci-fi shooter, which takes the battle to the home planet of the Helghast, is a completely different experience from the first two games (Killzone: Liberation was released on PSP). And it stands out from Insomniac Games’ Resistance 2. At the end of the day, it’s the kind of game that could attract gamers to the console, which is what the battle between Microsoft and Sony is all about these days.

Back when I was gaming in the basement, my Mom would always yell at me that games wouldn’t get me anywhere. It’s funny to think that now games literally do get me everywhere. Most of my global travels from Tokyo to Iceland have been because of games. Because I travel so much for work, my idea of a vacation is not going anywhere.

Especially given this addendum, written in London because my flight from Paris to New York City was canceled because “they didn’t have enough fuel to get to New York.” Yes, that’s an actual quote from the Paris ticket office. Because there’s also an Air France strike, all of the hotels were booked, so American Airlines sent us to London and I’m staying off the airport at a hotel. The joys of traveling abroad…