Friday, March 09, 2007

Gamecock Fury at GDC '07

Yesterday was Gamecock's big press day at the Game Developer's conference so lets go surf the tubes for industry press. Heading over to Google with a search for "GDC Fury" to see what we can find...

"Fury First Impressions" from Firing Squad.

Hmm, not a bad write up. Pretty good actually. Some screen shots of the new levels. Doesn't look like he understood that those were pre-built characters and you don't have to be "offensive or defensive based characters which can concentrate either on long range or melee attacks."

What else can I find...

"Fury First Look" from Gamespot.

Okay this guy hasn't done a very good job.
How Auran plans to implement realm-versus-realm combat has yet to be seen, but it's certainly ambitious.
I've seen how they are going to implement it. You walk up to the match making guy, the Astralist, and sign up for a War Zone match. Badda bing badda boom you are in a realm-versus-realm battle. Ambitious? Maybe he just doesn't understand that it is instanced combat with matches pre-set up via match making. I also don't quite agree with him on the definition of the term "skill-based."

And what is that I see in the comments section? One of our alpha testers breaking his NDA. Yes, dufus that is exactly what is expected in the alpha version.

Back to the Google results...

MMOz has a bit quoting our latest newsletter which I didn't get for some reason. I signed up on one of my email addresses way back when just to keep an eye on the marketing department. I got the last one and... oh wait... I bet I used that other email address that I haven't checked yet.

What else can you find for me Google? And enough with the "Off-Road Fury"... stupid racing game...

"GDC Fury Impressions" from Game Daily.

A good review don't get me wrong but from reading it I get the impression that this guy has never really plays games, but occasionally sits on the sofa and watches his nephew play "that Nintendo thing." There are parts where he makes the game sound turn based.
Every time a player initiates a hit, they can either dodge or parry it or take the damage, which in turn ticks away on their health meter.
Thats how you describe Real-time MMO-style PvP combat? Did the Gamecock guys liquor them up that much before showing them the game?

Speaking of liquoring up the press, I found some pictures of the Gamecock media group party over on Kotaku. Now I must warn you that these pictures aren't for the feint of heart. And no this isn't the "midgets and strippers" party like they put on at E3 when they were Gathering of Developers (GOD games). This is more like a scary French circus on drugs. I tried going through the gallery looking for Adam and Tony but all I could find was the guy dressed up in the Gamecock mascot costume holding up the giant Auran laptop computer that I whined about dragging around Melbourne last year. Maybe Adam and Tony didn't survive the party.

Okay... ready for the link. Just keep saying to yourself that they do it to gather the attention of the jaded press and get coverage. Just think if you were a member of the game industry press whose party would you rather go to, EA's or somebody known for doing something like... GDC07: Insane Gamecock Party.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

this is my favourite so far...
http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/771/771741p1.html

you can actually tell the guy was listening (or at least taking notes/recording), and paid attention to how it worked when playing.

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

We have got to get them to understand the concept of incarnations. They way they all write about 'only one character per account' without mentioning how you can rebuild your character with different incarnations gives the wrong impression. Maybe we should just get them to say you can have up to 255 characters on one account and they all level up together.

And I've checked all my email addresses and I didn't get a copy of the newsletter. Gonna have to look into that.

BugHunter said...

"respec" is a common enough term that they might be able to use it effectively to get the point across.

"You can respec your skills as often as you want with no penalty/cost and store up to 255 specs at once to choose from."

I think people really need to get that part of it. Charges will be confusing as well, but it's not important until your playing. Understanding the vast non-grindy flexibility of your character is crucial.

BugHunter said...

Weren't these guys pretty negative about Fury when they first caught wind of it? I'm glad to see that one of them have played it now and seems to have bought a clue.