Frankfurt – Page 2 – RIT German Games Industry 2019

Worming through Worms

Thursday was the day we were to head to Kalypso, a studio I’ve never really heard of that’s famous for a game series I’ve never really heard of, Tropico. More specifically, Kalypso is an entirely private publisher that is actually kind of a big deal, especially due to being private. They were very nice people, and despite the small size of their space, still managed to seem important simply by handing us all Fritz-Kola with El Presidente, the main figure of Tropico, emblazoned on them, and not after the fact, either; this was a bona fide brand deal. They also had catering, which I didn’t touch, because I don’t eat lunch. Germany sure does feed itself well.

The only picture I got from the trip was the Kola. We were allowed to take pictures (except for one slide which spoiled something; we didn’t sign an NDA, but I’m not going to go any further out of courtesy) but I just didn’t.

After that, we headed to the graveyard. It was gloomy and gray, and it was actually almost cold now, in stark contrast to all the days before. It wasn’t much more than a normal graveyard, to me, but I did take some pictures of some odd and interesting graves.

The graveyard from near the entrance.
Yes, all of that is stone.

The temperature turning toward the cooler end didn’t stop us from going out to get ice cream afterward; we were told by the people of Kalypso that there was a really good ice cream place in Worms. They weren’t wrong!

The ice cream at this place had numerous odd flavors I didn’t understand because I don’t speak German. The germans told me that the flavors mimicked common candies. I hesitated trying any of them out of fear of nuts. I got Oreo and “Raffaello.”

Oreo wasn’t just vanilla with Oreo cookie chunks in it like you’d expect from usual ice cream. It was actually Oreo flavored, and the cookie chunks weren’t directly from Oreos, but rather, like Oreo cookie flavored chunks specially made for the flavor. I don’t know what they were, exactly, but they were good.

Raffaello was a very, VERY profoundly dark chocolate flavor. My mom loves dark chocolate and even she would have to do a double take, it was so dark. It was very good, just pretty startling, especially from an ice cream. If only more ice cream places were this good.

After that, we took a quick shopping break, and headed back. I bought some candy, and while I was, I spotted weed gum. I felt obligated to take a picture, because that sounds like a terrible idea. Whatever works, I suppose.

Once we’d gotten back into Frankfurt, we made our way to a schnitzel place that was a snug fit for our large group. It was a very cozy place, even though the waiters were hard to understand even for the germans and seemed both tired and vaguely disgruntled. The schnitzel was even better than it was at Salzkammer, too; it’s hard to describe its flavor, but it was a unique kind of taste that I can’t recall ever having, and it was really nice. I’m definitely going back if I ever return to Germany.

A picture from the area we were all seated at.
Germans seem to do thick fries far better than America does. Maybe I’ve just not been to the right places in America, or maybe America’s just better at thin fries.

We all paid for Volker’s meal as a token of our appreciation for herding us all to the right places, showing us a good time, and keeping any of us from missing any trains or getting lost around any corners.

The Big Boy Studio Tours

To start out our Wednesday, we departed for Nintendo of Germany. Nintendo of Germany doesn’t handle any development, but they do handle localization, which occasionally involves some game tweaking. Regardless, it was really neat to be there.

First, we had a substantially lengthy meeting briefly going over some of Nintendo’s history and past directors, as well as their mission statements, and then going into what Nintendo of Germany specifically does.

The rooms were named after my favorite Nintendo games; Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, and Toad. True classics.
The view out of the meeting room window.

When the meeting was done, and after everyone’s questions had trickled out, we went back downstairs to the ground floor to have lunch. Since me and my family generally don’t eat lunch, I wasn’t hungry. I did, however, get a chocolate chip muffin. I also saw a magnetic pin of Mario smoking a blunt in an official Nintendo office. I can’t tell if that’s beautiful or perverse.

Notice how the wrapper has a very easy to peel rim around it, unlike what I’m used to in America.

We were then shown to what I think was the break room, but it doesn’t really matter what room it was, all that matters is that it was jam packed with neat Nintendo stuff absolutely everywhere.

There was even a gift shop on the floor that I didn’t take a picture of. Reportedly, there were hard to find Amiibos there for cheap, but we had very little time, so my general lack of interest in Amiibos kept me from realizing until it was too late. Me and Sam did, however, buy things, with the help of the woman who was giving us the tour. I got a “Kirby’s Dream Blanket” which I think I’m gonna hang like a poster, and some Legend of Zelda decals for gadgets such as phones, tablets, and laptops. There were some lame, stock image decals in the pack, but also some really nice ones.

After that, we went to visit Crytek. Like Nintendo, we had to sign an NDA, despite the fact we weren’t told anything that wasn’t publicly known in both. Crytek, however, was a little more strict and didn’t want any pictures taken of the studio, which was alright, since there wasn’t much in there that inspired me to take a pic to begin with. It’s hard to compete with Nintendo’s star power, especially when your audience consists of a decent number of Nintendo fanboys.

A lot of the presentation was similar to Nintendo, but unlike Nintendo of Germany, Crytek has developers. We didn’t see too much development going on; in fact, the offices felt particularly empty. I think we arrived at lunch break, and it was also hot today as well, so that may have been a factor.

Our hosts spent a substantial amount of time selling us CryEngine, and for good reason; they want to rival Unity and Unreal with their engine as a large side project. I’m mostly unimpressed, because all the technicality goes over my baby freshman head, and a lot of the neat things shown were repurposed components and work-arounds, which honestly doesn’t really rub me the right way. It’s no doubt a “high performance realistic 3D” game engine, and I think that’s just far too narrow a scope to rival Unity or Unreal. Not to mention they’re still working on the documentation. All that said, it’s got a lot of potential, and I’m at least interested to see if they can rise to match their goals.

With nothing left on the agenda, we headed back to Frankfurt, and after some deliberation, decided on getting ramen for dinner. I was concerned we wouldn’t have enough space for everyone and it’d be a shoddy stall restaurant, but I was more than satisfied with what we ended up at. It was a very nice restaurant, and the food I ordered—shio ramen with three gyoza as an appetizer—was great. I think a hint of spiciness in the ramen really makes it that much better, though. Oh, and I also sort of used chopsticks for the first time. I don’t think I could eat solid food with them, but they’re not bad for eating noodles.

I forgot to take a picture before eating. It looked all nice and orderly when I got it, as restaurant ramen tends to look.

At the restaurant, we decided to hold a Smash Ultimate tournament back at the hotel. I gathered my switch dock and HDMI cable (I knew they’d come in handy!) and headed to the room, and we got started. I did surprisingly well, maybe because Link’s projectiles are really hard to deal with even if the one playing him isn’t very good. I ended up getting third place, but I think that’s very respectable considering I was playing characters I’m not that great at, namely Joker. (I’m not that great at anyone, to be frank, but I’m better at some characters than others.) Sam won the tournament after losing in the very first round and clamoring up through Loser’s Bracket, and after Alex dipped out to help the games go faster and also sleep.

It also probably warrants noting I was using my usual controller, and everyone else was using joycons.

Frankfurt Sightseeing and Receptioning

Having gotten an inexplicably decent sleep, I was out and ready to stroll around Frankfurt with little difficulty, at least as far as I remember. That is, except for the fact I had to go back and get my glasses just as the others were leaving. By the time I was back, they were gone; I’d told them to go on without me, but I didn’t expect them to be so far ahead. I walked at a pace substantially quicker than my usual, and never quite caught up to them on the way. That probably wasn’t helped by a couple photo detours.

Once I’d reached their destination, Frankfurt Cathedral, however (which they graciously supplied a link to in the group chat which I could plug into Google Maps), I found them standing around. Apparently, I’d arrived just a couple minutes before the sightseeing was about to start. I’m glad I was on time, because the Cathedral was just as impressive and nice to look at on the inside as the outside.

Looking up the outside of Frankfurt Cathedral.

Looking around the inside of the Frankfurt Cathedral.

Look at all the detail on this singular little corner on the outside of the cathedral.

After that, we began to simply walk around Frankfurt, as I took pictures along the way.

The protruding center part is actually another building, behind the white one. What unfortunate placement…

I didn’t realize it as I walked across, but we went across the Eiserner Steg, a bridge famous for it’s staggering amount of love locks. I wouldn’t have recognized it was a famous bridge had a good friend of mine not noted it while I was texting her. While everyone else was getting lunch, I took a detour back down there to look at it again, appreciating it a little more this time.

Take a look at all those locks!

This would normally be enough to wrap up a whole day for me, but we had another event in store for us; a reception with the Mayor of Eltville am Rhein himself, Patrick Kunkel. I only learned of our shared name about two-thirds of the way through said reception.

Before we attended that, however, we had to get there, and once we did, we had plenty of time to spend until the reception. Me, Mike, Stephen, and Volker stopped to get ice cream first due to the sweltering heat, and the rest of the time I spent doing nothing by the river, which beat back the heat significantly with its cool breeze. I drifted here and there, loitering and lounging until I came to settle at a drinks place where everyone else was until it was time (which I did not take any pictures of).

The castle we walked into (yes, a castle) was positively full of flowers, ones I took many, MANY pictures of, but I kept only the best ones. Here they are;

The reception involved a short tour of one of the towers of the castle, from which we had a nice view, plus a few historical exhibitions within that I was too knocked out by heat to care about. I took pictures of the view, but they were through windows and not very remarkable. It was startlingly cool inside, to the point of being downright chilly. I joked the mayor was hoarding all of the cold air for himself.

Looking up inside the top floor of the tower.
A view of the tower from the outside.

Afterwards, a miniscule “meal” of sorts where we were served champagne and pretzels with a special cream cheese to go with them. I did, in fact, take a couple sips of the champagne, but promptly decided it didn’t taste very good and I’d much rather have a couple glasses of water to combat the ever-present heat. The trees and coming dusk helped, at least. I can, however, technically say that my first drink of alcohol was in a big flower garden castle behind closed doors with a mayor that shares my name, overlooking a pretty river.

The place we had the drinks and pretzels, and where the panorama was taken. The tables aren’t shown.
The cream cheese we had with the pretzels.
The champagne I quickly abandoned in favor of water.

Thursday in Frankfurt

Today we took a tour of another game studio: Kalypso, located in Worms. Kalypso itself is not a game development company, although they published the Tropico series developed by Limbic Entertainment. As a marketing/publishing company, Kalypso works mainly with graphic design, such as banner art, box art, as well as quality assurance testing. Our tour guide showed us around the studio, including the quality assurance labs and some of the offices, used by employees who handle finances and marketing. We also talked a little about quality assurance as a job. Contrary to what most people may believe, it can be very challenging and tedious. It involves not just playing games, but carefully examining them and trying to cause bugs to occur, as well as reporting those bugs. Quality assurance engineering/testing is generally the entry-level job for most game design graduates, and is what I hope to land as my first job in the industry, eventually working up to a UI designer/programmer, or gameplay programmer.

After Kalypso, we walked through the Jewish Cemetery.

It is customary in Jewish tradition to leave stones on top of gravestones, as a sign of respect and to show that somebody was there to visit the grave.

Wednesday in Frankfurt

Today we took a tour of Nintendo of Germany. Nintendo of Europe was located on the 16th floor of the building, while Nintendo of Germany, which deals with Germany, Sweden, and other nearby countries. Their office was located on the 14th floor, and we were shown a presentation about some of the history of Nintendo, and what Nintendo of Germany does. NoG mainly handles localizing games from Japanese into German, as well as marketing, and public relations.

After the tour, we headed downstairs to the second floor to a “game-museum”-like area, where we played a couple rounds of Super Smash Bros.

Some gifts we all received after the presentation.

I got my very first amiibos at the shop in the same building. The shop is meant only for employees but the employee who gave the presentation was kind enough to pay for some gifts and let us reimburse her.

Later in the afternoon we took a tour of the Crytek Studio. They are a subsidiary of Ubisoft, and are the developers of games such as Far Cry, Crysis, WARFACE, Ryse: Son of Rome, The Climb, and Hunt: Showdown. We were shown a presentation of what students should expect when looking for jobs in the game design industry. After showing us where the employees work on their proprietary engine, CRYENGINE, and work on their games, one of the software engineers showed us the CRYENGINE and how to make a simple trampoline using pre-made objects from the SDK. We also got to try out one of their VR games on Oculus: The Climb.

Afterward, we had dinner at a nice ramen place called Ramen Jun. This was my first time ever having Ramen, and although it was the saltiest thing I had ever eaten in my life, it was pretty tasty.

Sakura martini. It was so good I ended up having two

The Fires of Frankfurt

We woke up at a reasonable time to get on our train from Paderborn to Frankfurt to start the second half of our trip. Just before heading out, we got the opportunity to buy some breakfast and a snack for the train. After some debating with myself, I decided not to buy any candy for the train, but instead, buy a supplement to the breakfast I had at In Via.

All that shininess on the pastries is sugar icing of some kind, by the way.

The train ride was plenty comfy, and had WiFi, so I spent it writing one of these blog posts. In what felt like no time at all, we were off the first train and waiting for the second. I decided to wander, see if I wanted to buy anything, and look for a bathroom. Find a bathroom I did, but at a price. Literally.

I was thinking to myself, figuratively, that bathrooms are a commodity in these midway train stations, and then I see a toll booth, with more secure doors than I’ve seen than any other toll booth in recent memory. I don’t know if the goal is to get stingy people to resort to desperate measures, or what, but regardless, it was easily the worst bathroom I’ve been in the whole trip. Even in other public bathrooms, the toilet seats were on securely and they didn’t smell bad. It wasn’t unworkable, though. One doesn’t require much to go through the bathroom process.

The next ride in our trip to Frankfurt didn’t have enough seats for all of us, but me and a couple others got by sitting on our suitcases. I played against Alex in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate and got moderately to severely bodied for all but one match, which coincidentally happened to be our last one. I’m not saying he rage-quit, but… (He absolutely did not rage quit. I’m merely obligated to make an overconfident joke about it.)

Frankfurt, like Paderborn, made a terrible first impression. Though we got there very much in time, unlike my arrival to Paderborn, it was hot as all hell, seemed fairly shabby (I would later learn this is only the case for the area near the train station), and vaguely stank of smoke. It was even hotter in the hotel, even in the lobby, and only some lucky customers get a ceiling fan in their room. It’s not even an extra charge. I pity, and worry for those without a window OR ceiling fan.

After the raging thunderstorm that exploded onto the scene almost as soon as we set foot in the hotel, the sky brightened once more, like night turning into day. It was only half past four, but it felt like eight throughout the storm, and the brightness of the sky was frankly a little disorienting. Not disorienting enough, however, to prevent us from going out to dinner.

I’m pretty sure there were intermediate events, but I’ve forgotten them if so. We found a nice place called Salzkammer, which was constantly playing music that sounded uncannily similar to Despacito for the entire time we were there.

Here’s Despacito in German. I’m not sorry.

I had a schnitzel, followed by some white chocolate mousse. “Sweet and sour rhubarb” didn’t quite sound like the kind of thing I’d enjoy, but I had faith that it wouldn’t be put in with the strawberry, white chocolate, and vanilla ice cream if it didn’t go well with it, and that faith was well placed. It certainly couldn’t match the strawberries (which I’m beginning to think I should eat more often), but it was no slouch.

Finally, Frankfurt had one more special event planned for me; it introduced me to Frick and the MEAT ROOM. I did not enter either of these stores(?), and do not plan to change that, because I fear the consequences.

And so, my first night at Frankfurt came to a close. The stupid levels of heat were thankfully beaten back a little by a fan graciously given to me by the front desk, and allowed me to sleep fairly well. All’s well that ends well?

Big Studio Day

In the morning, we took a tour of Nintendo, Germany. All of us were super excited, yet some were tired(or just me). As a star company, Nintendo is very careful about its information; we were given visitor passes, had to sign in and were only exposed to certain areas. On the 16th floor is the European headquarter of Nintendo where we weren’t allowed to go. In this building, there are no game developers(they are mainly in Japan as we were told), instead, it’s a marketing and localization team for the European market. Very nice and understandable of the organizer, we were treated to some freshly brewed coffee before the tour started. After passing 100 security doors, two PR workers gave us a presentation on the company’s history, values, and leaders. The lady was very patient with us during the question session, however, all of the questions were about marketings rather than game development. Afterward, we had lunch at their cafeteria and I dripped tomato sauce on my white shirt, rip. I think the break room was the highlight of our Nintendo trip where they display the old consoles, Nintendo figures and a bunch of other gears. It was like a Nintendo museum. There was an employee only shop where I bought 2 amiibos, 4 coasters, and a keychain with the host’s help.

How a smart was parked, thought was funny

Our second stop was Crytek. For those who doesn’t know the company, they were the original developer of FarCry(Ubisoft now owns the IP), Crisis series, RYSE son of Rome, Robinson and their newest game Hunt showdown(still in EA). For their presentation, the HR demonstrated a brief overview of the company and how to get jobs in the interview. After that, Brian gave us a live demo on CryEngine; I can tell he tried really hard to sell us the engine but… In my opinion, CryEngine has a lot of potentials and may be able to compete with Unity or Enreal in 5 years, but for now, it has a lack of functionality. I understand that they made the Engine for Crysis and it’s a side project of the company, yet I just don’t think it’s ready to be popular. For example, Brian showed us how you can add invisible wheels with spring to an empty mesh to create a trampoline without writing scripts, however, you’d have to play with the two values to make the perfect elasticity. First of all, it’s kind of weird to have wheels on random meshes even though they are invisible. Second of all, it takes a lot of time to come up with the perfect values while you don’t have a formula.

Even though the presentations were a little frustrating, I enjoyed Crytek the most out of all companies. Because it was very casual and people actually make games in the office. We got to walk around their studios and talk to people, many of them were catching deadlines for Hunt’s new patch and all QAs were working hard. The whole floor was overheated, no doubt, feeling bad for the game developers. We weren’t allowed to take pictures at all due to upcoming releases.

After the two companies, we headed to a ramen place for dinner. It was a 20 minute walk and I was hangry the entire ride. My day was very fulfilling and I was satisfied with what I saw.

Eltvile am Rhein

Eltville is a small town an hour away from Frankfurt, known for its wine, sparkling wine (Sekt), and roses. It is a very neat town that reminds me of Stardew Valley, where everyone knows everyone, there’s nothing but peace and relaxation.

I had a slow start this morning since I decided to sleep in. I pretty much just grabbed a drink from Starbucks and then got ready for our little trip. After we arrived at the town, we made our first stop at an ice cafe and I enjoyed a vanilla ice cream coffee. Then, we walked around the town a little bit and chilled by the river for a while. It was a really peaceful moment that I chatted with my friends while staring at the river. Besides boats, there were also people kayaking, crewing, jet skiing and so on. Followed by, we enjoyed some drinks at a bar by the river. It had perfect selfie lighting where I took 100 pictures until we had to leave for the garden.

The garden was absolutely beautiful! We got there at 6:30pm ish which is the time for perfect sunset lighting again!!! I made Sam take i++ pictures for me until he couldn’t bear with me anymore. (poor Sam) The mayor showed up at around 7pm and gave us a tour of the tower which contained a little museum and a small meeting room. In the museum, there was a case full of letters where capital letters are stored on the top rows, thus, they are also called upper case.

Back in the garden, the mayor prepared a little champagne and pretzel ceremony for us. It was so fancy that I have never experienced such in my life. I felt rich. Coming back home wasn’t so hot anymore, the train was actually cool and bearable. Surprising, I did not end my day at a bar again, instead, I wrote blogs with a nice mango colada by my side.

Did not steal anyone’s drink for this picture.

Tuesday in Frankfurt: Electorate Castle

After surviving nights of sauna-level heat at night, we took a tour of the Electorate Castle today in Frankfurt. This castle is as old as the 14th century, and contains an exhibit of the work of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern book printing. After having a drink at the bar by the river, we looked around the garden in the courtyard, then we went upstairs to see the exhibit.

Photos courtesy of the talented Penny Wang

Inside, there was a case which contained letter and number stamps which were used for printing books and newspapers. I believe we discovered where the term “upper case” for capital letters came from; the capital letters were stored on the top row of cases.

We also got ice cream prior to the tour. I finally got original spaghettieis this time, with strawberry sauce that resembles tomato sauce.

The tour was given by none other than the Mayor of Frankfurt, who mentioned to us that he worked on designing and publishing comic books, which are well-known throughout Germany. Afterward, we took a group picture together

Getting to Frankfurt

Today was just a traveling day. I had pretty much packed my suitcase already so my morning was chill. I sat in the cafeteria and drank coffee until our cab was almost here. Which my professor found out later that our breakfast wasn’t free; we drank 500 euros worth of coffee for the past few days.

Unfortunately, our first train was delayed that we couldn’t make it to our connection ride. However, I think the Germans are very experienced with situations like this so we quickly had a backup plan for a different connection. In the first train ride, we did not know where to get off until the very last minute so everyone was panicking to get their suitcases and to rush off the train. Our second ride was quite sick, I would say. First of all, we did not have seats where many of us had to stand for a couple of hours (I was lucky enough to get a seat). Second of all, I was overheating the entire ride!!! Especially when the train stopped for 10min before the final destination, I could not breathe there.

The hotel has a very convenient location that’s just across from the train station. But for the same reason, the hotel is also very aged without AC. I understand that it is a German thing most places don’t have ACs; so I’m trying my best to adapt. After we settled down at the hotel, it started pouring which cooled down that temperature a lot. Then, I popped into Stephen’s cab for dinner where I had caramelized pancakes. It was so delicious that it’s even compatible with my favorite dutch pancakes. I also couldn’t believe that Stephen tricked me to look away so he could steal my pancakes.