SiN Episodes
Encyclopedia
SiN Episodes is the title of a series of episodic games
for the PC
that would have expanded upon the 1998
computer game SiN
. A total of nine episodes were planned with only the first one released. Developed by Ritual Entertainment
and powered by the Source engine
, the first episode "Emergence" was the first computer game by a major developer to both be produced episodically and delivered over the Internet without the intervention of a publisher. This was accomplished through Valve Corporation
's Steam content delivery system.
In 2007, Ritual was acquired by casual game developers MumboJumbo
, stalling the franchise and leaving the future of the series uncertain. With the sale of Ritual to MumboJumbo and departure of several employees, all future development of Sin Episodes appears to be delayed indefinitely, if not entirely canceled. MumboJumbo has already tasked Ritual to develop "high-quality casual content."
. This high score mode is superficially similar to Max Payne 2's Dead Man Walking and Resident Evil series' The Mercenaries mode, where the objective is to survive as long as possible among the steadily spawning and increasing enemies. Unlike Max Payne however, there are time limits to the maps and it is possible to survive an entire round. The scoring system is also tied to the Personal Challenge System which runs at a much higher rate than in the main game. The challenge level changes every few seconds depending on the player's performance and the higher the challenge, the higher the rate of points that are accumulated. This mode was introduced into the game on June 26, 2006 with four maps available. An update was released on July 18, 2006 which included three further maps.
with a population of 27,000,000 and described as a mix of New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Areas that are featured in Emergence include the Freeport Docks, Sintek Supremacy Tower, and Radek's hidden drugs
lab on board a beached, derelict oil tanker.
and team based modes.
One of Ritual's main design goals with SiN Episodes was to offer interactivity, character-driven gameplay, emergent AI
, and a plot reflecting the choices made by players through an opt-in statistics system that aggregates play data to a database: the intention that future episodes would thus depend on the choices that are made by each player.
SiN Episodes is built on the Source engine with additional technology added by Ritual.
, who had also composed the soundtrack to the original SiN. The "Emergence" soundtrack was available as a standalone item on iTunes
soon after the release of the game on May 12, 2006. A CD version of the soundtrack was made available later in the year on August 18 and included two bonus tracks.
Unlike the disjointed electronic tracks which changed from map to map as in the original
, "Emergence" employs a more focused approach by utilizing a central unifying theme underscoring other elements of the soundtrack. This method was inspired by the approach used by John Barry
in the Goldfinger
film and other James Bond
style soundtracks. The central motif used was Jessica Cannon's theme, the song "What's the World Come to", sung by Sarah Ravenscroft.
. As of January 27, 2007 the game has sold 150,000 units, enough to recoup development costs but not enough to fund a sequel.
Episodic games
An episodic video game is a video game of a shorter length that is commercially released as an installment to a continuous and larger series. Episodic games differ from conventional video games in that they often contain less content but are developed on a more frequent basis.Such a series may or...
for the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
that would have expanded upon the 1998
1998 in video gaming
-Events:*Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts 1st Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo to the AIAS Hall of Fame*British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosts the 1st annual BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards...
computer game SiN
SiN
SiN is a computer game first-person shooter based on a modified version of the Quake II engine developed by Ritual Entertainment and published by Activision in late 1998...
. A total of nine episodes were planned with only the first one released. Developed by Ritual Entertainment
Ritual Entertainment
Ritual Entertainment was a computer game software developer established in 1996 by Robert Atkins, Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Richard 'Levelord' Gray, Michael Hadwin, Harry Miller and Tom Mustaine...
and powered by the Source engine
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
, the first episode "Emergence" was the first computer game by a major developer to both be produced episodically and delivered over the Internet without the intervention of a publisher. This was accomplished through Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
's Steam content delivery system.
In 2007, Ritual was acquired by casual game developers MumboJumbo
MumboJumbo
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, MumboJumbo LLC is a publisher, developer and mass marketer of casual games for PCs and game consoles including those manufactured by Nintendo, Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft Corporation. Established in January 2001 they originally focused exclusively on...
, stalling the franchise and leaving the future of the series uncertain. With the sale of Ritual to MumboJumbo and departure of several employees, all future development of Sin Episodes appears to be delayed indefinitely, if not entirely canceled. MumboJumbo has already tasked Ritual to develop "high-quality casual content."
Gameplay
Arena Mode is a new single player mode and was designed to run a contest at E3 2006 as part of a promotion alongside Vigor GamingVigor Gaming
Vigor Gaming was a privately held manufacturer of enthusiast level personal computers based in City of Industry, California. The company was founded in 2004 by several former employees and the former owner of competing company. Vigor Gaming Computers are designed specifically for gaming...
. This high score mode is superficially similar to Max Payne 2's Dead Man Walking and Resident Evil series' The Mercenaries mode, where the objective is to survive as long as possible among the steadily spawning and increasing enemies. Unlike Max Payne however, there are time limits to the maps and it is possible to survive an entire round. The scoring system is also tied to the Personal Challenge System which runs at a much higher rate than in the main game. The challenge level changes every few seconds depending on the player's performance and the higher the challenge, the higher the rate of points that are accumulated. This mode was introduced into the game on June 26, 2006 with four maps available. An update was released on July 18, 2006 which included three further maps.
Story
Freeport City is a bustling, futuristic megacityMegacity
A megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people. Some definitions also set a minimum level for population density . A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more metropolitan areas that converge. The terms conurbation,...
with a population of 27,000,000 and described as a mix of New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Areas that are featured in Emergence include the Freeport Docks, Sintek Supremacy Tower, and Radek's hidden drugs
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
lab on board a beached, derelict oil tanker.
Characters
- Colonel John R. Blade (player): Colonel Blade is the leader of HardCORPS and is "obsessed" with bringing Elexis to justice.
- Elexis SinclaireElexis SinclaireElexis Sinclaire is a fictional character and main villain in the SiN video games series by Ritual Entertainment and SiN the Movie, a 60-minute anime OVA by ADV Films and Ritual Entertainment.-In video games:...
: Elexis is the CEO of SinTEK Industries and wants to speed up human evolution. To do this, she has made a mutagenic drug called "U4". In 2010, UGOUGOUGO Entertainment, Inc. is a website providing coverage of online media in entertainment targeting males age 18–34. The company is currently based in New York, New York, United States. On July 24, 2007 it was announced that Hearst Corporation would acquire UGO Entertainment...
featured her among the 50 best girls in video games ("charming, brilliant, and an absolute fox with nigh-impossible proportions"). - JC Armack: "A HardCorps hacker with a secret to keep" Jessica calls him "Skeeve". His name is likely an allusion to John Carmack.
- Jessica Cannon: The newest addition to Blade's core team at HardCORPS, Jessica is able to infiltrate most secure lockups with ease. She is voiced by the actress Jen TaylorJen TaylorJennifer Lee "Jen" Taylor is an American voice actress best known for her role as Cortana in various Halo games and the Xbox 360 game "1 vs. 100".-Voice work:...
. - Viktor Radek: Viktor Radek leads the Cartel, and is suspected of helping Elexis with U4 shipping. He is voiced by actor David ScullyDavid ScullyDavid Scully is a comedian and voice actor. This“vocal chameleon“ primarily known for his voice acting career in video games,and is most famous for creating three distinctly different and popular characters:...
.
Development
Ritual's original intention was to release an episode every six months that would cost US$19.95 and take around four to six hours to complete. A total of nine episodes were envisioned. Although originally released as a single-player game, various multiplayer modes were planned including co-operativeCooperative gameplay
Cooperative gameplay is a feature in video games that allows players to work together as teammates. It is distinct from other multiplayer modes, such as competitive multiplayer modes like player versus player or deathmatch...
and team based modes.
One of Ritual's main design goals with SiN Episodes was to offer interactivity, character-driven gameplay, emergent AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, and a plot reflecting the choices made by players through an opt-in statistics system that aggregates play data to a database: the intention that future episodes would thus depend on the choices that are made by each player.
- Community-driven outcomes: Ritual is considering using the trends of players to decide the plot development of the game in future episodes, a concept only possible with episodic development. If the majority of players make the same decision when faced with a choice, future episodes can be steered towards that outcome. Ritual explains, "if a feature is well-received by gamers, we might expand its role in the game, whereas aspects that aren't liked can be changed or phased out completely." At the same time they said, "we understand that it may be frustrating to not see 'your' outcome become a reality, so we’re still determining the extent to which this feature will be implemented."
- Multiple-material surfaces: The Source engine does not natively support multiple materials on a prop—in other words, a model can only be made out of one thing. If an object such as a vehicle includes glass it will behave like the metal covering the body, and if you add armour to a character it will behave like flesh, unless you set the entire character to be metal. Ritual has added technology to alleviate this and have different material types on the same model.
- Dynamic difficulty: Dubbed the Personal Challenge System, SiN Episodes adapts itself to the player's skill level and varies the skill, numbers and toughness of enemies faced in accordance the player's performance to ensure a suitable level of challenge as well as to help pace the player through the game, ensuring an even game length across all skill levels. Indeed, Ritual claims that a proficient FPSFirst-person shooterFirst-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
player and a brand new FPS player started at the same time and, despite their widely different level of ability, finished within a small range of time of each other. However, a bugSoftware bugA software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
present on release in the dynamic difficulty system caused the system to never ease up on players making it overly challenging and unforgiving. An update released through Steam on May 17, 2006 resolved this problem.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was composed by Zak Belica, then Audio Director at Ritual EntertainmentRitual Entertainment
Ritual Entertainment was a computer game software developer established in 1996 by Robert Atkins, Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Richard 'Levelord' Gray, Michael Hadwin, Harry Miller and Tom Mustaine...
, who had also composed the soundtrack to the original SiN. The "Emergence" soundtrack was available as a standalone item on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
soon after the release of the game on May 12, 2006. A CD version of the soundtrack was made available later in the year on August 18 and included two bonus tracks.
Unlike the disjointed electronic tracks which changed from map to map as in the original
SiN
SiN is a computer game first-person shooter based on a modified version of the Quake II engine developed by Ritual Entertainment and published by Activision in late 1998...
, "Emergence" employs a more focused approach by utilizing a central unifying theme underscoring other elements of the soundtrack. This method was inspired by the approach used by John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
in the Goldfinger
Goldfinger (film)
Goldfinger is the third spy film in the James Bond series and the third to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Released in 1964, it is based on the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. The film also stars Honor Blackman as Bond girl Pussy Galore and Gert Fröbe as the title...
film and other James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
style soundtracks. The central motif used was Jessica Cannon's theme, the song "What's the World Come to", sung by Sarah Ravenscroft.
Reception
SiN Episodes: Emergence received generally favorable reviews and currently holds the score of 75 on MetaCriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. As of January 27, 2007 the game has sold 150,000 units, enough to recoup development costs but not enough to fund a sequel.
External links
- SiN Episodes: Emergence at MobyGamesMobyGames-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...