I Post All My Own Ideas

I noticed Kotaku has split up to have an Australian Version. My link over on the left used to just be www.kotaku.com but it would translate to www.kotaku.com.au for me when I used it. I’ve edited it to be us.kotaku.com which is the direct link to the U.S. version.

What’s the deal though? Why? It would appear at a cursory glance that the U.S. version of the site appears to be exactly the same except with more stories. The U.S. version appears to have all the Australian specific articles as well. It’s just the Australian version that has less stuff. What is up with that?!

Okay, that isn’t really why I gathered you all here this evening. Back in April I did a 10 question interview with Australian Gamer. I also managed to get myself into a bit of controversy when my fictional story in a ‘relationship’ thread was nominated for the April Post of the Month. I found myself going up against another post that was really nothing but a number of parody pictures of that guy from the move ‘300’ yelling “This is Sparta!!!” I found out that he didn’t actually make any of those pictures, he just collected them from across the internet and posted them. I said something about that in the thread.

Here is my original blog post about it. Go and read that PotM thread and ask yourself who is being an ass. You might even be tempted to say nobody. But I certainly don’t see any of my posts as being overly rude.

Okay jumping forward to the present day. The October Post of the Month thread. About halfway down you’ll see this post from El Taco:

Because it's a shirt+faceplate, I'm expect Joseph4th to come in here, make one post, get angry at me for winning then never posting again.

What an ass.

Why did he do it? Why did he say my name and summon me so? He's young and doesn't know any better. Now the first version of my response was a bit over the top and probably a wee bit too cruel. I toned it down quite a bit during the editing stage. I also was originally planning on changing the faceplate in the picture as well as the t-shirt. I was going to turn it into a Del Taco faceplate but since they don't have Del Taco in Australia it would have been a lot of Photoshop work with little humor value in return.

Anyway here is the link to the October PotM thread so you can read it all for yourself. Share and enjoy.

Fury Beta Keys

I had a few things I’ve been wanting to post but every time I sit down at the computer I always have one small thing I want to do first and then I vanish into some pan-dimensional time warp not to return till way past my bed time. I think it has something to do with Deadwood. I’ve been re-watching seasons 1 & 2 while waiting for season 3 to arrive from Amazon.

But before it isn’t relevant anymore I thought I would point out that Fury's official “actual” beta is coming up. Not to be confused with the “pre” beta. You can sign up here and if you got an “in.” Know somebody working on the game… somebody like… ME! You can tell me what email address you used to sign up and I may be able to poke around in the piles of beta applications and give yours a push toward the accepted pile. Assuming your machine will run the game, looks like we won’t be doing a Commodore 64 version, sorry.

Fury Beta Sign-up Link

For those of you without an in, Ten Ton Hammer is offering a limited number of Beta keys free to people who sign up for their brand new membership program this weekend. First come first serve so either get on over there in a hurry or get to know me!

Ten Ton Hammer Beta Keys Offer

And for those of you still sitting on the sidelines, and those sidelines happen to be in Los Angeles, Gamecock is going to hold a Wake for E3. You can read all about it over at Joystiq or a little about it here on Kotaku. Anyway point being Fury will be there and will be playable.

A Flurry of Fury!

I have been too lazy to update with all the post-GDC reviews and instead have just let them pile up. I started to think I just wouldn't link them anymore because as the game gets closer to release there is just going to be more and more of them. But since I had been saving these and I haven't had time to update the blog in awhile I figured I would just dump them all in one messy post. They are kinda in reverse order and I hope all the links work since I haven't tested them since reading them originally.

You will notice that some of these are more in depth reviews by the people that just gave it a quick look see at the Game Developer's Conference.


Gamasutra article about the Auran & CDC deal


March 30th post talking about the next Penny Arcade Expo that shows Fury being played at PAX 06

Tony being interviewed at Ten Ton Hammer Part One

Part Two:

The Fury Myspace page


The ABC2 (Australian Broadcast Network) April 27th broadcast of ‘Good Game’ with a couple of 5 second sound bites from Tony and Paul

MMORPG.com

Gamespy

Warcry GDC preview

F13

Games Radar

Kotaku

Warcry

Game Informer

MMORPG Newsletter

In other news, Ability Icons are finished!!! Yay!

Connie just had her pictured published in the April 2nd Brisbane Issue of the MX News newspaper.

I will have an interview up on Australian Gamer in the next few days.

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.

Auran Loves the Gamecock

MCV, a big UK, game industry newspaper had Gamecock’s launch as one of their lead stories this morning: GOD Founders Launch Gamecock.

Kotaku has a second story, this time just focusing on Auran and Fury: Auran Loves the Gamecock.

So Fury is out there in the public eye now. The Alpha version of the game is slowly letting in more people and the Beta version isn't that far away. Which means I better stop writting on this blog and get back to work. Next task: finish up the last 100 or so Ability Icons... sigh.

Captain's Log, Supplemental:

Not going to make a whole new post for this link because 40 million post about Fury and Gamecock is already getting old. Anyway I found this one a few days ago when googling "Gamecock Fury" only when I went to the link it said 'server error'. Obviously it was pulled until after the official announcement. It is an interview with Gamecock co-founder Harry Miller at Games Radar.

When I was a kid I thought Supplemental meant something along the lines of "we're in trouble" because of the way Captain Kirk always said something along the lines of "Captain's Log, Supplemental: The Romulans are attacking!"