Subspace Review STS145: History of Video Game Design Ryan Barrett If you happened to catch a friend playing Subspace on his or her lunch break, you might dismiss it without a second thought. I know I did. A blurb about Subspace in a magazine caught my eye, so I went to the game’s web page to check it out. “Weak,” I thought to myself. “It looks like Asteroids.” Of course, Asteroids was beloved when it was released in 1979, but after 22 years or industry progress, games are expected to be somewhat deeper and more immersive. A few weeks later, at the urging of a friend, I downloaded the beta and tried it out. When I looked up, it was 3:OO in the morning. I was convinced, and so were reviewers and fans alike. Subspace garnered praise for its perfectly balanced gameplay and the developers’ willingness to take technology risks too bleeding-edge for many others to attempt. Kevin Rice of DailyRadar says “So what’s the big deal? Why are people still playing a technologically and graphically outdated game? In a word, gameplay. This game is the epitome of substance over style.”’ The highest praise, however, is the thousands of people who still play it to this day. Identification Subspace was developed by Virgin Interactive Entertainment and published in k1997. Virgin hired producer Rod Humble from Kesmai after his success on the boxed version of the action-oriented flight simulator Air Warrior. “They asked him what kind of game he wanted to make. [He told them] and they said, “Sure, go ahead and here’s the money. True story.’” Rod brought on board Jeff Petersen, a talented Kevin Rice, ”Subspace: The Best Game You’re Not Playing” feature for DailyRadar.com Jeff Sengstack, ”Subspace“ Subspace review for GameSpot PC http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature~page_890~1.html http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/stories/review/O,ll114,198841,00.htmlprogrammer he had worked with at Kesmai, and within a month they had a rough prototype up and running. As development cycles in the game industry go, Subspace’s was somewhat unusual. The development team was small and unproven as a group, and Subspace wasn’t a flagship title, so “Jew” and “Rodvik decided to release the game to a public alpha and beta test. This meant that anyone with an Internet connection could download the work in progress, try it out, and send their comments straight to the developers. For a newly created, fledgling team, this was definitely a winning strategy. There aren’t very many clear accounts of what happened shortly after, but one thing couldn’t be disputed. VIE disintegrated in a puff of smoke. Some of VIE’S assets - including the Westwood development studio, known best for the Command and Conquer series - were bought by Electronic Arts, some of them were folded back into Virgin, Inc., some were divested to Interplay (which now uses the VIE name as a brand name), and some of them simply vanished. Subspace was one of the assets that vanished. While it did exist, though, VIE created some landmark games and a lot of lasting memories. Gameplay As is the case with many games, Subspace’s back story is inconsequential. This is due in no small part to its gameplay. Subspace is an unabashed Asteroids knockoff - at its core, it consists of spaceshlps that fly around and shoot at other spaceships. The view is top-down, the environment is a two-dimensional plane, and the concept is exceedingly simple. The one catch is that the movement model is true to Asteroids as well; the controls allow the pilot to thrust and affect the ship’s momentum, following Newton’s laws of physics. The environment consists of walls forming wide open spaces, tight corridors, mazes, asteroid fields, and doors. There are two main weapons, guns and proximity bombs. The one-size-fits-all powerup is the “green,” which appears as a pulsing green blob and upgrades any one of the ship’s subsystems (engine, shields, guns, bombs, etc.). There are also various special items such as stealth, repel, burst, and x-radar.The one innovative gameplay feature is that the ship’s health, or energy, is also used as the ammo supply. Each bomb and bullet takes a certain amount of energy to shoot, and the ship’s energy level is constantly but slowly recharging. This adds significantly to the depth of the gameplay. This concept may be historically proven, but in 1997 it would have seemed tired and cliched. However, there is a piece missing. Subspace is an Internet-only game. The official term is “massively multiplayer,” but the reality is much more immediate and powerful: the pilot doesn’t play against a faceless computer opponent but against real people, thousands of them at once, from all over the world, at any time of day. Each pilot has a name and password, which they use to log onto a Subspace server, or one." There are many different kinds of zones, both individual and team-based, including Alpha (beginner), Chaos (every man for himself), Capture the Flag, Warzone (team fighting), Control (a strategic team-based game), Hockey, and others. The servers run 24 hours a day and remember each pilot’s score and statistics. The display has a map of the pilot’s immediate surroundings as well as an integrated chat window so that pilots can talk to other players, their team, or everyone in the zone. Notifications of events in the game are also displayed here. Subspace was one of the first games to allow hundreds or even thousands of people to play in a multiplayer game at once, and its multiplayer design was a tremendous success. Technology Subspace uses a fast, flexible 21) graphics engine, capable of drawing dozens of ships and hundreds of projectiles on screen while maintaining a high framerate. The resolution, user interface, and controls can all be customized. The game CD shipped with a level editor and server executable so that users could run their own servers. The game rules
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