Fury Pre-Beta

This weekend was our big pre-beta test. There were loads of people in the game battling it out. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them as I started to get sick Friday and was pretty much at dead to the world all weekend. I blew my nose so much I swear it must have been brain matter that was starting to come out toward the end.

I wound up laying on the couch most of the time under some blankets while watching really old South Park episodes. I finally got to see the Terrance & Phillip episode that they ran instead of the second part to the ‘Who is Cartman’s father’ story as well as said second part. I had missed those when they originally aired and I feel much more complete having finally seen those two episodes. I had actually meant to watch seasons 1 & 2 of Deadwood again, but I couldn’t get motivated enough to get them off the shelf.

Anyway… If you have signed up for Fury’s beta you should get a move on. That Fury isn’t going to unleash itself! Here is the link.

And just to get you into the mood here is our latest promo video.

wait for it... its loading...

Rejected Wii Games

I know some of you wonder about the game design process. I bet you wonder what sort of things come out of the mind's of game designers. Well, let me just say it isn't all gold. Sometimes things that pop out of our minds aren't that pretty. Sometimes things get jotted down on the white board that not even the alcohol can excuse.

Normally, what gets erased off the white board by the magical fairy janitor as he gingerly steeps over our drunken sleeping bodies that are passed out on the office floor, is gone forever. But somehow this Loading.Ready.Run group has managed to gather up this collection of Wii Games that were rejected.

I warn you that this isn't pretty and can be considered quite offensive. I should also point out that some of the players of these game's aren't using their Wii strap.

Do you know where your towel is?

Don't forget Friday is Towel Day.

You sass that hoopy Douglas Adams? Now there's a frood who knew where his towel was. You are invited to join your fellow hitch hikers in mourning the loss of the late great one. Join in on towel day to show your appreciation for the humor and insight that Douglas Adams brought to all our lives.

What do I do? Carry your towel with you throughout the day to show your participation and mourning.

When do I do it? May 25th.

Where do I do it? Everywhere.

Why a towel? To quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

What not to do? Panic.

Prince of Persia Classic

There have been several times I have asked in interviews (job & media) to name the worst video game I have ever played. My answer has always been something along the lines of:

I won't say E.T. on the Atari 2600 because that would be too easy. Instead I'll say Prince of Persia on the Philips CD-i. I played Prince of Persia when it first came out on the Apple II. I remember being surprised that a game of this quality was launching first on the Apple II because at the time the Apple II market was almost completely dead. It had such great game play and those beautiful rotoscoped animations. Then it started to get ported to other platforms and it seemed that with every port it got a little worse. It was a CES show in Vegas where I played it on the Philips CD-i and was just amazed at what an unplayable piece of crap it was. Not only did it play like crap, the animations had been cut down so much that they looked like crap too. And Philips was trying to sell this system as the latest and greatest new system and it couldn't even play a game that had launched on the Apple II.

Now granted there were some versions of the original Price of Persia that added some cool touches, the Super Nintendo version was pretty cool if I remember correctly, they added better boss fights and some other things. I remember feeling completely ripped off with the PC VGA version as it was just a thin coat of paint over top the DOS EGA version.

But now it looks like the classic version is getting a complete face life for XBOX Live Arcade and it looks pretty sweet.



Just hope you didn't mod your XBox 360 if you want to play it. See: Modded Consoles Blocked from XBox Live. If I had an XBox I would have modded it to get around region locking on games. I've said it a 100 times, I am not willing to buy a next generation game system here in Australia and then be screwed if/when I return to the U.S. I brought my XBox, PS2 and Gamecube with me from the U.S. and if I want to buy new games for them I have to have somebody in the U.S. buy them for me and ship them over because of region locking.

Congratulations Ken!

I just realized I forgot to post a congratulations to Ken aka Axix for winning the World of Warcraft comic contest for April. He got an honorable mention I think twice in the past as he was trying to win an iPod. Of course now that he has won they have changed the prize over to a $100 Jinx gift certificate. Some of my luck obviously rubbing off on him.

My friend Eric met Ken years ago during his newbie levels in Everquest. He joined our guild which consisted of only Westwood Studios people and their real life friends as the first person who didn't fall into either of those categories. He is still in the current incarnation of that guild many years, a game, name and faction change later. He came out to Vegas twice while we were living there to hang out and is a really cool guy who deserves to finally win that contest. So again, congratulations Ken.

Free Comic Book Day 2007!

...Nuff Said!

Ode to Rick Parks

I was exchanging emails about Eye of the Beholder with the other day with Irene who goes by the handle Sentinel69. I was pointing out which avatar portrait from the game was based on me and which were other Westwood employees. The portraits were done by the late, great Rick Parks (aka the Center of the Universe). So I got to thinking about him and decided to Google him. I found the dedication video that was included with Lands of Lore 2 after he passed away.



Oh man, watching that gets me right in the chest. He was such a great guy. The way he is laughing and such on the video was the way he always was. He was always in a good mood and just uplifted any situation. If you were wondering why he appears kind of stiff in the video, its because he has some other medical problem that eventually led to his neck being fused so he couldn’t turn his head from side to side.

When Rick first came to Westwood he was so out of our league. He had been playing around on his Amiga drawing pictures, and getting some fame among Amiga users for doing so. I just tried searching for some of his Amiga pictures but struck out. The one that I remember the most was a simple picture of a Mickey Mouse drinking glass. Another had a man and woman holding a torch and walking away from the camera with purple marble pillars on either side.

He also did the mural of the Excalibur casino in the old ‘Strip Joint’ (as in Las Vegas Strip) employee cafeteria in the Mirage Hotel and Casino. The cafeteria used to be full of parody art about the other casinos such as a statue of David representing Caesar’s Palace where the statue is posed as if he was embarrassed and trying to cover his nakedness. Ricks mural was the scene where the young King Arthur is trying to pull Excalibur out of the rock but having trouble and even his horse is holing onto his cloak and trying to help pull.

The mural above the bar in old Mount Charleston lodge above Vegas was his as well done sometime in the 70’s. He did some a lot of work at Siegfried and Roy’s house, some mural on a boat owned by Donald Trump and much more.

Brett and Louis (Westwood’s founders) told him they really couldn’t afford to pay him what he was worth, but they worked out a deal where Rick would get time off to do other projects because he really wanted to do work on the computer because he thought it was so fun.

He brought the quality of Westwood art up so much. Not just with his own work, but just by his presence, everybody else’s work as well. I know I got a whole lot better after he started to work there. I remember thinking my pictures for DragonStrike were much better than anything I thought I was capable of at the time.

Now since all that is making me kind of sad, let me end this with a funny story. I mentioned this all started with the emails I was writing to Irene aka Sentinel69. So I just assumed the 69 was the typical number thrown onto the end of handle as the sexual reference. (In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure voice) “Sixty Nine Dude!”

Years ago one of the in things to do was to steal the yellow plastic table numbers from Carl’s Jr. and put them on the dashboard of your car. I had the number 68 on the dashboard of my very sporty Toyota MR2. (Just tried looking for a picture of the Carl's Jr. Number thing online and again struck out) Several times I would have a girl in my car say something to the effect of, “Shouldn't that be 69?”

I would reply, “No I wasn’t born in 1969, but now that I know where you mind is let’s say we skip dinner and just go back to my place.” I won’t comment on the success of this particular pickup line because a gentleman never tells. (That and I'm sure you are sick of the baseball analogies.)

Anyway, what makes this funny is when I went looking for Rick Parks stuff and found this video I noticed it was actually put onto Youtube by Irene. Except on Youtube she signed up as Sentinel1969. I’ve been busted by my own joke.

10 Questions with Australian Gamer

My "10 Questions" Interview is up at Australian Gamer. There is a forum link at the bottom where people can discuss the interview and I am supposed to answer questions. I am thinking about posting the rap lyrics I wrote to the Lord of the Rings back in 1990 instead. Well see.

But thats not why I gathered you all here today. I wanted to tell you about my post. The day before yesterday I created a forum account and started poking around reading various topics. I stumbled across the ‘relationship’ thread. It was nine pages long and had a few humorous posts but mostly it was a car wreak that I couldn’t stop reading. When I got to the end I just had to add a post of my own.

I met her while I was working as a soldier in the pay of the Argentine government. Her name was Rachel and was an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency charged with the training of counter revolutionary anti-Sandinista Guerrillas opposed to Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Read More

The post has even been nominated for Post of the Month!!! That’s right baby! I could win a Ghost Recon II t-shirt and Xbox 360 faceplate! You can be damn sure I’ll be reminding you when it comes time to vote!

Supanova 2007

The Supanova pop-culture expo (or as the rest of call it: sci-fi and comic book convention) was this last weekend at Supanova. I was on a panel about ‘why video game character’s work’ on Saturday. There were much better topics for other panels but thats my luck. I spent all day Sunday working our booth where we were running 4 versus 4 Vortex matches of Fury.

There were lots of people saying how great the game looked and I told them that the Sanctuary and War Zone in this version has already been replaced by much much much better stuff. Some of the new levels that are starting to come out now are looking really awesome. If you haven’t signed up to get into the beta you should head over to www.unleashthefury.com right now and get it done! The pre-beta version isn’t that far away and it will support lower machine specs than the previous alpha version.

Other things at Supanova was Alex Maleev who is a noted comic book artist know for his Daredevil run with writer Brian Michael Bendis. His credits also include Superman vs. Predator, Avengers Illuminati, The Crow: Flesh & Blood, Silver Surfer and the upcoming Halo 2! I got him to do a sketch for me that I will eventually get around to scanning onto the computer. I told him I took one of the Marvel Civil War: The Confession pictures off his website and colored it. He told me I should send it to him and actually sounded like he meant it. I told him He should do a coloring contest with some of his artwork. He said I should do a coloring contest. We finally settled on me trying to get the Bullpen Bulletins podcast to do a coloring contest; which I did and they seem to think it’s a good idea. I need to rework my colored version though, something I did while killing time and watching TV isn’t really my best effort.

Ron Glass (Shepherd Derrial Book from Firefly/Serenity) and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian from Star Wars) were at the show. I wasn’t able to get away from our booth because there were only two of running things on Sunday, but I got one of the guys on the Battlestar Galactica XBox Live team who was standing in line to get Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica)’s autograph to get Ron Glass to sign his Serenity comic book cover for me.

Marv Wolfman, writer of DC's famous Crisis on Infinite Earths among many other notable accomplishments in the comic book industry, was there hanging out in a back corner of the Pandemic Game's booth. He had a panel where a good number of people showed up but he was mostly sitting by himself at the Pandemic booth. I have the New Teen Titan's issues he wrote back in the 80's, but they are in storage in Vegas. I didn't have anything in the small part of my collection thats here in Australia that he's written. I talked to him for a few minutes asking him why he was at the Pandemic booth. He said he is doing a project with them that he can't talk about yet. I bought the scripts from Nightwing #129 and #130 from him just to have something for him to autograph. I'm going to have go find those issues. I've always been kind of interested it writing for comics and like to read issues along with the script just to see the different ways different writers do it.

Overall though I was disappointed I the show. I was really hoping to find some back issues on my want list but it’s a pretty small convention and not a lot of non-local vendors whose shops I haven’t already searched showing up. The girl who showed up last year dressed as Cammy from Street Fighter 2 was there in costume again this year. Yes the costume was exactly like it is in the video game and yes she had a body that could wear that type of costume. I went through puberty all over again.

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.

iPod Blues

My iPod nano stopped working last weekend. I had been listening to "A Forest of Stars" the second book in Kevin J. Anderson's "Saga of the Seven Suns" series as I travel across Brisbane from comic store to comic store trying to fill in my missing issues of my Daredevil collection. (Hows that for geek quota?) I had been swapping the iPod into the car radio adapter and headphones all day. But then once I got home it wouldn't turn on. I tried plugging it into the charger and computer with no results. I went online and tried all the tricks and still couldn't get it to turn on.

Monday morning I took it down to the Apple store which is complete with its 'overly hip' Apple store employees. Somehow I got my time of my trip back to the states for the last E3 confused with my trip to SOE the year before and thought it was out of warranty. I was told by the 'Apple Guy' that Apple doesn't do repairs and instead will sell me a refurbished iPod for FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! (thats Australian dollars btw) which is about the same price as an 8 meg Nano. Mine is the cheap 1 meg version. He gave me the number of 'The Mac Doctors' which was an independent store in Brisbane that does do Apple repairs. He wrote the number on a card from memory implying they refer people to them a lot.

I realized my mistake about when I bought the iPod a few hours later and went back. I was met with a little suspicion but once I showed him my receipt and he looked up my 'registered' iPod in the computer they accepted it.

I picked up my refurbished replacement today no problem except for the parking. They are right next to the Bose store where I bought my excellent noise canceling headphones. Both stores have two designated parking spaces and both places park their official company car in one of the spaces. Idiots.

But the back to the $400 AUD for a refurbished iPod. WTF? Seriously why would they charge so much for a refurbished iPod when you could buy a top of the line new one for the same price. Even if they wanted you to buy a new one, wouldn't it be easier to just offer you a discount price on a new one? Offering to sell you a refurbished, out dated older model when yours breaks so soon after the warranty going out just made me want to buy a cheaper MP3 players. I certainly didn't feel like spending a lot more money to buy a new iPod, cheap or top of the line version.

Next Generation Clothing

I have a bunch more links to reviews of Fury from GDC but I keep forgetting to forward them to myself from work.

But... remember that cool graphic equalizer t-shirt I wore to the Australian Gamer party a few weeks ago?

Oh come on its only three blog post down. Jez, I can't count on you people for anything. If are all going to come together as my legion of worshiping fans I am going to need you to focus more. Anyway scroll down and have a look, I'll wait.

Back? Okay now check out this cool shirt from Think Geek that James linked to me today. Granted its just bounces back in forth in one small animation loop, but I have to get one!

The next generation of this stuff is going to be really cool. Philips is already doing some cool stuff like their 'emotional sensing' light up clothing (link to the cool pictures) and Philips Lumalive technology.

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.

CDC Games Invests in Auran

This story has been going around the business news wires:

BEIJING, China --(Business Wire)-- CDC Games, a business unit of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA) and pioneer of the "free-to-play, pay-for-merchandise" model for online games in China, announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to invest in Auran, a leading developer of online games in Australia.

READ MORE

What I love is this bit that always gets included in Auran press releases:

About Auran
Established in 1995, Auran is one of Australia's oldest and largest game studios and has won numerous technology awards. Boasting a team of internationally experienced developers, Auran's staff have worked on a titles including: Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Mythica, Middle Earth Online, Need for Speed Underground, Magic and Mayhem and many more.

See that "Star Wars Galaxies"? They have that in there because of me even though I really didn't work on Star Wars Galaxies. I was a CSR for Star Wars Galaxies for about 8 months back at launch between EA's closing of Westwood and starting at Auran. I was trying to get onto the Everquest dev team and my friend Shawn Lord at SOE recommended that I could easily get my foot in the door through the CSR department. He said that is where most of the Everquest designers had come from at that point. Anyway, I have brought up several times that the Star Wars Galaxies listing should be replaced by one of the other billion games I've worked on but there it is again. Come on, wouldn't you be more impressed by something like Command & Conquer than Star Wars Galaxies anyway? Lets face it, Star Wars Galaxies sucked.

Actually I just got an "Eye of the Beholder" fan mail yesterday from a girl named Irene. Thats right, a girl! I showed her where I hid my name in the artwork. :-)

Brisbane Australia Gamers Meetup

Yug from Australian Gamer and Hawk from Game Arena had a Brisbane Gamers Meetup party this last weekend. There are some pictures and links to youtube moves here.

Everybody loved my t-shirt which Connie had gotten me for Christmas.

Eventually some people from Auran turned up, including Michael and Joseph (who definitely won the prize for best t-shirt of the night).

It has a graphic equalizer display on the front that lights up in response to ambient audio input just as you would expect a graphic equalizer display. Yug took some pictures of it but I don't see any posted. If you look at the picture of the 3 girls dancing you can see me talking in the background on the right. See that yellow-ish smear of color? That’s my shirt.

You can buy one for yourself from Thinkgeek.

Battlestar Galactica Site Live

The website for Auran's upcoming XBox Live Arcade version of Battlestar Galactica is now up in running.

I havn't gotten an XBox 360 or any of the new generation systems for that matter. At first I didn't miss not having one. Fueled by my anger with region codes I was able to avoid them. But now as more and more cool games are starting to come out I feel the loss. Or maybe it is just that there is no really cool PC games I am looking forward to in the immediate future.

George R. R. Martin's First Published Writting

I am reading "Deamsongs" a George R. R. Martin rretrospective - yes its spelled with two R's. Its a collection of short stories he has written over the years and he has a little introduction the front called "A Four-Color Fanboy." He talks about his childhood and how he got into witting and we get this little gem:

The first words of mine ever to appear in print were 'Dear Stan and Jack.'
They appeared in Fantastic Four #20, dated August 1963, in the letter column. My letter of comment was insightful, intelligent, analytical - the main thrust of it was that Shakespeare had better move on over now that Stan Lee had arrived.

I went onto the forums of Comic Geek Speak podcast and posted this find and servo106 replied with this picture taken from the Fantastic Four DVD-Rom.George went on to say as a result of his address being printed he got a chain letter in the mail and being a naive kid he mailed the required quarter to the next guy on the list. Turns out that guy ran a comic book fanzine which he mailed back. This introduced the young George to the world of the independent fanzine press where he started getting his stories published.

Study: Surgeons who play video games more skilled

I can't resist commenting on this story that just popped up on CNN.com

Study: Surgeons who play video games more skilled

I love how it has to end with two paragraphs of back peddling in case you were starting to think that video games might not be the root of all evil after all.

A 2004 survey by Gentile found 94 percent of adolescents play video games for an average of nine hours a week. Game-playing has been linked to aggressiveness, poor school grades and can become a substitute for exercise.

"Parents should not see this study as beneficial if their child is playing video games for over an hour a day," Gentile said. "Spending that much time playing video games is not going to help their child's chances of getting into medical school."

Laugh out loud.

Like Football with Swords

I know I said wasn't going to post every little Fury news article from now on, but I really liked the analogy. Can you imagine it? First down would go from being a good thing to "Oh man poor Bob... he was first down!" Though in Australia with Australian Rules Football first down does kind of work that way. BAM! Cheers mate!

And to be fair I said I wasn't going to post all the Gamecock links and this is actually normal media not even specifically video game media. Speaking of that, you can expect to be blasted by Gamecock 'pimping' Fury here real soon as we are going to be their first game to market and GDC is rapidly approaching.

Anyway this was on the front page of the theage.com.au's technology section. Nothing new at all and it talks more about Auran the company than specially about any of our games.

And while I’m at it here is an interview Tony did with IGN last week where he talks about Fury, Xbox Live Arcade Battlestar Galactica and Gamecock Media Group.

Kane is still cool even though EA sucks

Gamasutra has an extremely friendly (read: white washed) history of Electronic Arts. It even goes so far as to try and shine a good light on EA’s tendency to buy up smaller companies and close them down a few years later.

Acquiring these studios’ Intellectual Properties significantly enhanced EA’s portfolio of games, but as Gibeau explained, acquisitions also brought much needed talent into the company.

Yeah, I’m sure the dozen or two hand picked people they kept from each company were great for EA, but I am willing to bet it wasn’t so grand for the 200 or so people that lost their jobs.

I love Origin Game’s founder Richard Garriott’s takes on the buyout and eventual closing of his company. He started a new company called Destination Games and when Origin was shut down, he hired back all of his core people. He pointed out just how much money EA gave him for his company and then let him have all the people back again. So what did EA get for the money? They have the right to Ultima, Wing Commander and some other games I can’t even think of at the moment. Yeah, they’ve been making a mint off those games I’m sure.

The most frustrating part of all this is that I believe the reason this keeps happening to companies EA acquires is EA. Here is another bit from the article.

In 2002 Westwood released Earth & Beyond, a complex massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Unfortunately, Earth & Beyond struggled to find an audience and EA shut it down two years later.

The reason that it struggled to find an audience is directly the fault of EA. The original design was much larger and broader in scope. Players were to get planets they could colonize and develop as well as explore and fight in space. But EA was afraid that game would be to complex for the AOL audience they wanted to target. So they changed the game into the watered down, beautiful yet boring game in order to try and get that AOL audience. Unfortunately the AOL audience wasn’t even in the market for that type of game.

They did the same thing to Pirates which was an isometric pirate game on the PC before EA came in. It became a half-baked, over-development, 3rd-person, adventure game that they then decided wasn’t worth their marketing effort.

Anyway, I really didn’t want to rant this long. I was just typing up this little bit while flying on the griffon in WoW. I am not even going to waste time editing the above to read better. Just not worth it.

I will however give a link to an interview with Joe Kucan, can from C&C. You might be thinking this sense of humor in interviews is a lot like mine, but I have to say that he’s been like that all along. I’ve had to work at it.

I won't be buying C&C 3 myself. They lost me with all the crap they did to Battlefield 2042 though it looks like everybody else who was outraged has since forgotten about it.

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!"

Gamecock

From the guys who brought you Gathering of Developers aka GoD games, we now have Gamecock Media group.

I recommend reading their company story, the Legend of Gamecock, on their website if you want the torrid, shady details.

Make all the fun of the name you want but consider the following:

1. You know you won't forget the name and its going to get lots of press.

2. Its pretty cool that they support small developers who are usually at the mercy of the large publishers. They even let them retain the rights to their creations.

and 3. you just know the booth babes are going to be hot!

Now if you are wondering why am giving them so much attention, you should head over to their website and check out their lineup of featured contenders. Thats right, Gamecock is going to Unleash the Fury!

Auran's Battlestar Galactica game

Just a quick little post about this announcement that went out over the weekend:

Officials from Vivendi Games division Sierra Online officially announced plans to release Battlestar Galactica over Microsoft's popular Xbox Live Arcade service, as well as the PC this fall.

The space combat simulation, which is based upon the hit series airing on the Sci Fi channel, is being created by veteran Australian developer Auran (Trainz Railroad Simulator), and will feature both single and multiplayer gameplay as either the humans or Cylons.

READ MORE

Stayed tuned for more incoming information...

50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002

I've been flipping through various comic book forums trying to find a place to settle in and discuss the titles I enjoy reading. I've also been jumping over to the blogs of some of the posters on those forums and on one of them I found this list. I changed the marker for those you don't like from 'strike-thru' to (X) since I can't figure out format code for 'strike-thru' on the blog.

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, italicize those you started but never finished, put an (*) beside the ones you loved, put a (#) next to the ones you intend to read some time and an (X) next to the ones you didn't like.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien (*)
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov (#)
3. Dune, Frank Herbert (*)
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin (#)
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson (*)
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M Miller Jr
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey (X)
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (*)
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (*)
28. I am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin (X)
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven (X)
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Space Invaders from Space

Here is another great vintage video game environmental art project. These guys found out that Google was going to being doing a fly over of the campus and decided to put up some stuff that would be visible from Google Earth.

Now I’m a little confused about ‘Google’ doing the fly over as I am pretty sure Google doesn’t own and satellites.

Check it out.

When I first saw the pictures I thought it was bigger than it is. There is a link to a large picture where you can see the two pieces with the buildings from the campus to put it them in perspective. I can imagine we will probably start seeing a lot more of this art from space sort of thing in the near future, then advertising companies will start doing it and it will quickly become uncool.

In the mean time I need to think of some cool vintage video game environmental art project of my own.

While I'm on the subject and instead of making a whole new post about, my personal favorite is the tile mosaics and I just found these two on flickr: Bubble Bobble tile mosaic on Bear Gardens SE1 and A Bomberman tile mosaic bitmap spotted about 15 feet up a wall in London.

That is Not Me

You might have seen the story about the "Apprentice" applicant who is suing Donald Trump for age discrimination. Several news sources are reporting his name as "Joseph Hewitt" though his full name, as seen in other sources, is "Richard Joseph Hewitt". If you care, which I can't see why you would, you can read the story here.

I am also not the Joseph Hewitt who did the Gearhead games.

Okay, glad we got that all straightened out.

A Song of Fire and Ice to HBO and The Diamond Age to Sci Fi!!!

Variety is reporting the following:

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy series "A Song of Fire & Ice" into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
"Fire" is the first TV project for Benioff ("Troy") and Weiss ("Halo") and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.
...More...

And Sci Fi channel is reporting:

SCI FI Channel unveiled a new slate of programs in development, which includes shows from executive producers George Clooney, Darren Star and Mark Burnett. SCI FI made the announcement Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson's best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.
...More...

I'd give all that a “double woot” but that might put my expectations up too high which may lead to disabilitating depression if they fail to live up to my already inflated expectations.

Impulse Gamer Interview

There is a new interview with yours truly up at Impulse Gamer which you can find HERE.

You’ll notice I plead ignorance when asked about how Auran was formed. I just got the following email from my boss filling me in on Auran’s founding history.

Very good Joseph – you sounded reasonably intelligent.

For your historical knowledge, AURAN was “founded” by me and a hot shot “genius” gamer called Greg Lane. The company began with the name Australis Microprogramming on Jan 1, 1995. Its name was changed to AURAN about a year later.

The company was then “saved” by the Hilliam family who became involved in 1998. Tony commenced as a full time working director in 2000. He and I own the AURAN group of companies.

Greg lane has left the building.

Kind regards
Graham

My boss says I ‘sounded reasonably intelligent”. That’s a good thing isn’t it? “reasonably intelligent”? Wait, does “sounded” reasonably intelligent mean I’m not reasonably intelligent but I did a good enough job that I may have fooled people?

Well he does end with “Kind regards” instead of “pack your things and be out of the country by sundown” so I think I’m good. Whew!

Dear Blizzard, Regarding your Marketing Department

I tried to post the following to the World of Warcraft Forums, but since i took so long writing it, by the time I went to post it, it told me I had to log in again. So I did but then it returned me to a completely blank post entry page. The entire thing was gone. Well would have been gone if I hadn't learned long ago to type this crap up in Word and then copy/paste it over. So tried to repost it and got the error "???wow.web.forums.error500.message???". So I'll just post it here instead.

update I got it posted, lets see if it lasts or is deleted and I'm suspended for through some odd interpretation of the rules. You can find it on their forums HERE.


Dear Blizzard,

I don’t want to sound like I’m trolling or anything but I was pretty annoyed when I got the latest Blizzard Insider email with links to all the stuff in the collector’s edition. What’s the point, they are already GONE!

Let me start over by telling my story:

I pre-ordered 3 copies of the TBC from Electronics Boutique in August only… ONLY! 2 months before you even announced that there was going to be a collector’s edition. There was no price or release date for TBC at that time.

So when I went back and got my 4th copy of the game (my wife has taken over my second account. Don’t judge me) and a 4th pre-order of the TBC they manager asked me when I had pre-ordered my other copies. I wasn’t exactly sure and said, “a few months ago.”

She pulls out the pre-order book and starts at the beginning looking for my name and she gets to somewhere in July and there is a red line across the middle of one page. Nope she says, “You didn’t order soon enough to be offered the collector’s edition.”

She went on to explain they only got *some number I forget* copies of the collector’s editions and they are calling people in order they pre-ordered and offering them a copy of the collector’s edition. She said that there was a chance that somebody could turn one down and that if I had ordered within a few weeks of that red-line date maybe I could still be in the running. The other guy chimed in that nobody had turned one down so far.

I checked my receipts when I got home and saw that I was almost 2 months out from that red line in the book I knew I wasn’t getting one. Again note this is all still before there was a price or a release date. The people who were listed in the book before the red line pre-ordered over half a year ago.

A friend of mine’s wife called Harvey Norman (Yeah I’m a yank living in Australia, don’t judge me) Anyway, they took great pleasure in informing her that she would have had to pre-order the collector’s editions the day they were announced… and besides the employees had already claimed them all. They were probably joking… probably.

So back to the point, why are you advertising the collector’s edition? They are already sold. Do you just want to rub it in? The only thing you are accomplishing is driving up the price for the guys re-selling them on Ebay. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you didn’t grossly underestimate the demand for the collector’s edition. Maybe there will be copies available on the shelf. Maybe you’ll have a contest for coming up with the funniest game-related ‘maybe’ punch-line for this paragraph.

I understand you wanted there to be a limited quantity. What I don’t understand is why the percentage of collector’s editions to accounts is so low. I think the only people who would be upset if there was a higher percentage are the people who managed to get one to sell on Ebay. Am I pushing the ‘selling on Ebay’ thing too much? I really don’t see them becoming valuable collector’s items years in the future. People really do want those extra goodies in the box. The DVD, the art book, the in-game pet… yeah we actually want to open the box and get those.

What I don’t understand is what your marketing department has been doing all this time. The figures they came out with recently: troll priest, undead necro, and tauran shaman. Great marketing job on that one, never even heard they were coming. I managed to grab the last one they had for the first two, but the shaman was already sold out. They are already gone and yet everybody who sees them is amazed and asks where I got them. The t-shirts Jinx is selling, “Camp Taurajo”, yeah I’m sure that one is flying off the shelves. The cool shirts you had on sale from Warcraft III that would still work as WoW shirts have never been restocked.

Now I think the company who put out those figures I mentioned above did all the work there and that Jinx designed their own shirts, so umm what has your marketing department been doing for the last 2 years, raiding? And don’t say promoting WoW or TBC because it seems to me that isn’t too hard and shouldn’t be taking up that much of their time. The Burning Crusade doesn’t really need that much extra marketing kick, its kind of selling itself. You already got the market nailed. The girl manages the hair saloon around the corner has a 60 rogue. My wife has six level 60’s and her MOTHER has two!!! Marketing TBC is kind of like putting up ads for life preservers on a sinking ship, I’m pretty sure you got a sale there.

Here is some DKP-free constructive advice, assuming you guys do want to make some money... you do don’t you? A little dragonling beanie and the Murlock beanie that gurgles, you know the Murlock one that everybody has been talking about for the last few YEARS! Yeah, people would buy those.

Now figures, people love to have figures on their desk. I am sure you know that everybody wants. Everybody wants a figure of their own character and I’m sorry to admit I haven’t figured out how you could do a pieces-parts figure that people could dress with their own facial options and equipment. But until we figure that one out, put out a couple of packs of the 6 inch figures, for example an Alliance pack, a Horde pack, and a few mob packs. If those do well you can expand it to include some of the top end dungeon theme packs with mobs and a larger boss figure. If Homestar Runner can sell those 6 inch figure sets, I’m sure a multi-million dollar company like you guys can pull it off too.

All my love,
-Joseph-

Call of Duty: The Lawsuit

Gamasutra has great article up exposing some of the dark underbelly of the game industry. Basically lawsuits are flying between Activision and Spark Studios over the 3 game development contract of the Call of Duty series. The contract was included as an exhibit in the lawsuit so when the judge unsealed it became public information. So Gamasutra got 3 leading game attorneys to comment on it. It is exactly what you would expect to find in a contract between a large experienced publisher and a newly formed company. It is 15 pages long, but that is only because they include scans of the entire contract with their comments in-between the pages explaining the various sections.

Read the Wii on the Wall

Friday night was the monthly IGDA (International Game Developers Assoc.) get together for the local Brisbane chapter. It was hosted at Yug’s new apartment. Yug is also one of guys who runs Australian Gamer. You might remember I mentioned meeting them at the Game1 expo in Melbourne. They were the guys who had the Sonic and Shadow mascots playing Sonic in their booth. Here are the clips of they posted on Youtube.


Sonic & Shadow in the Australian Gamer booth at Game1 in Melbourne, part 1.


Sonic & Shadow in the Australian Gamer booth at Game1 in Melbourne, part 2.
Anyway, he has this new apartment in the Valley. It is right above all the fancy restaurants and a block away from all the party bars. The best part is the fact that his apartment is on the top floor with a GIANT balcony. We had the BBQ (or barby as the Aussies say) Now being the computer nerds we are, we got a projection TV up there and a Nintendo Wii.


It was a little bit of trouble at first setting up a table for the projector and finding a place for the IR thingy. Then we realized we had to rearrange everything because we had to stand behind the projector. Say what you want about the graphic quality of the Wii compared to the Xbox 360 and the PS3 but it look pretty damn cool up there on the wall. Also being computer nerds those of us who weren’t playing were deeply involved discussing the nuisances of the Nintendo paradigm and the way games like Wii Sports lets complete video game neophytes jump right in feet first and have fun competing against hardKore players.

You can find more pictures in this thread on the Australian Gamer forums if you actually have that sort of time to waste.

I'm a Playstation3. I'm a Nintendo Wii.

Ah, so many possible jokes I could add to this and yet so little time. I believe the parody is from G4TV.

So with that look at where we are now with the current generation how about this pictorial history of video games consoles.

I used to have pretty much all of those including some other dedicated pong machines they don't show. I had them on display in my office at Westwood Studios at one time but wound up giving most of them away to Goodwill when I had to pack up and move to Australia. I sold the later ones and kept the current generation ones and the Vetrex.

If you tour the office of any game developer and don't see a Vetrex sitting on somebodies desk, something is horribly wrong.

I took the Vetrex home from my office and EA shut down Westwood, need I say more?

Happy New Year

Well it is 2007 here. As I am slightly in the future as far as some of you may be concerned I thought I should mention that still no flying cars or silver jumpsuits. Our sci-fi fiction has lied to us.

2007 MMO calendar

Speaking of “the children” MMO Portals Network has put out a 2007 MMO calendar.

All of the proceeds from the Calendar’s sale go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Each month features a different MMO game and has autographs from the developers of each game. It features the following MMO games:

• Dark Age of Camelot
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach
• Eve Online
• EverQuest II
• Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising
• Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
• Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
• The Chronicles of SpellBorn
• Ultima Online
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• World of Warcraft

Little late for a Christmas present but for all of us who didn't buy a calendar yet because we were worried we might be getting a few for Christmas and didn't, it is pretty snazzy. Either way it’s nice to see another gamers giving to children’s hospitals especially with Child’s Play Charity pulling in just shy of a million dollars this year. They say the full results are still trickling in so they might just make that million dollar mark. Here’s hoping they do, and if not this year then next year for sure.

Killing Monsters

The effects of violence in video games and in the popular media as a whole has become another one of those issues where anybody who dares to go against prevailing opinion is instantly vilified. I often find myself on the beating end of some tirade about video game violence. I usually recommend this book: Killing Monsters Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence.

Not to long ago one of the local news stations did yet another regurgitated, no actual investigation, puff piece on those dangerous video games corrupting the children “Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!” and I fired off a surely ignored letter to the station also recommending the book.

Anyway!!! Gamasutra posted an interview with Gerard Jones the book author.

There is another book called The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim published in 1975 that I also want to read but I’ve always been too lazy to order from Amazon.

Secrets of Game Design: 3

When I came up with the whole “Secrets of Game Design” idea, it was really just a way to vent in a silly way about Adam making me change verb tense in all the game design documents. To be fair he doesn’t actually make me change them, he does it himself when he reviews the docs if I don’t do it when writing them. It was also a way for me to set up the joke about things happening to the “player” as opposed to the player’s “character” in the second Secrets post which I really just didn’t follow through with. It was a pretty lame post. Lacking "umph" you could say. So for this one I’ll actually be somewhat serious.

When playing a game, just like when watching the theatre, I am willing to let a lot of things go, but there is a line; a line where you are forced to see the props behind the curtain. They “break the fourth wall” to continue with the theatre analogies.

For example in “World of Warcraft” you will often get quests to kill some number of baddies. Then after doing that, you’ll get a follow-up quest to kill the leader baddie. The leader baddie is usually far in the back of where the regular baddies are. If you went really gung-ho when killing the baddies for the first quest you might have killed the leader baddie already. When you get the second quest you have to then pretend you didn’t kill him. You have to just play-along with the storyline and go kill him again. That’s fine. I can do that. I can see the painted backdrop and flat plywood trees on the stage and still say, “Okay, I see where you are going with this. I’ll use my imagination. It’s a forest.”

But I have run into two newbie quests that screw this up in the closed beta expansion of a game that I don’t believe I am allowed to publicly talk about yet... ahem...

In the first quest line you have to kill some number of baddies. Then you get a quest to kill the 4 baddie bosses. Then you get the final quest to release the captured apprentices. The problem is that the captured apprentices are in the same general rooms as each of the bosses. You were already in those rooms and saw the apprentices tied down to the sacrificial alters. Granted in the storyline of the quests you need some magic pixie dust or something to waken them so they can escape. Okay, maybe they were two heavy for your group to carry out, tied down with magical chains, or something the first time you were there. I’ll give the quest designers that much leeway.

The problem is that they are in the rooms with each boss meaning you have to fight the bosses again. Following the story progression though, the bosses are already dead! I understand that baddies respawn so they can be alive and ready for the next set of eager adventures. I can pretend not to notice that they are alive and well the next time I go there. But the quest storyline itself should not put me in that situation. Even if they are thinking like an advanced game designer who wants to make sure that more people are available to group up because they have to keep going into the baddie area with each successive quest, they could have finessed it better.

The second quest is even more glaring (though now as I reread this as posting it, it actually pretty much the same). In the first part of the quest series you have to kill some number of baddies. Then in the second stage you are asked to investigate the cave they are in further to find what could be causing these baddies to act like ummm baddies. This turns out to be a red glowing crystal thing. Once you find this and tell the quest guy about it he wants you to kill this 2 headed dog thing that is somehow tied in with it all. I kinda forget the details here. The problem is the red crystal thing you had to find in the second stage is directly behind where the dog spawns. There is no way you could have gotten to the red crystal thing without already having killed the dog.

This isn’t the same as the example in the 2nd paragraph, because in that example you could have done the first part without kill the boss. In this example, as I've said, you can’t get to the red crystal without killing the 2-headed dog. By following their quest line I am forced to break that fourth wall. By all rights when the guy tells me about the 2-headed dog I should be able to respond, “Oh him? Yeah, I pwn’d him already. Give me the prize.”

You could then go on to sing, “I am the one, the only one. I am the God of kingdom come, GIVE ME THE PRIZE.” But only if you are a big Highlander / Queen fan.

Political Activism on the Playground

So President Ford passed away. Guess he couldn’t live in a world without James Brown. So if they come in 3’s who is your guess for the third? And shouldn't the saying be, "they GO in 3's?"

President Ford was my first bit of political activism. On the playground during recess I used the swing set as my platform to lead the chant of “Up with Ford! Down with Carter!” Didn’t last long before the recess monitor told us that because of the time difference, being in Italy, the election was already over and Carter won.

I had no reason to pick Ford over Carter other than that my parents, being a military family stationed at San Vito dei Normanni Air Force base in Italy at the time, were voting for Ford. It wasn’t until midway through the Regan administration that I came across political views of my own.

I often check Google Maps to see if they have gotten new versions of the maps of Italy so I can see where I lived. The town of 'San Vito dei Normanni' is in the ‘heel of the boot’ near Brindisi. It should not be confused with just plain 'San Vito' which is another town in northern Italy. In Google Maps its just a blurry white thing. I can just make out what I think is the soccer stadium near where I lived but it’s just a guess.

Merry Christmas

Here is the link to the "Fury" Christmas card we sent out to those that subscribed to the news letter.

It has already gotten a few programmers talking about seasonal things they would like to do to the game.

Merry Christmas from the Fury team.

Secrets of Game Design: 2

You should never cause or let anything bad to happen to the player. For example you shouldn't hurt the player and you should NEVER kill the player. Killing the player would be bad. The player is the customer and killing him would be detrimental the success of your game.

You can cause lots of toil and trouble for his CHARACTER though.

This secret of Game Design is one my personal pet peeves. All of these design documents that say things like "If he player takes damage then decrease the health counter and bla bla bla" No! If the player takes damage CALL AN AMBULANCE!!!

I don't really want to drag this out anymore than I have to but there are lots of places in the design documents that mixing up "player" and the "player's character" can cause things to get really confusing.

Codemasters Press Release

Codemasters has a very interesting press release up.

30th November 2006
Codemasters Online Gaming EXCLUSIVE Play Test

Codemasters Online Gaming is thrilled to offer you the EXCLUSIVE chance to play test a totally unique concept in online gaming! We are offering a selection of qualified participants the once in a lifetime chance to take part in an exclusive play test on 8th and 9th December 2006.

Based on an award-winning engine, this game is ultimate in competitive online RPGs and features a unique fusion of combat and fast-paced action as well as an abundance of awe-inspiring visuals and dynamic game play characteristics.

In order to be in with a chance of being selected for this exclusive play test, gamers are asked to fill in their details on a simple form. Full details of the play test and prizes available can be found here!

Maybe you should check it out. Might be something fun. You might be furious if you miss it.

Fury Podcast and the Oncoming Summer

I'm here flying without a net. Just reformatted this machine and just this second realized that I haven't reinstalled MS:Office which means no MS:Word which means no spell checker. Though this beta version of Blogger appears to have its own. And you didn't even realize I had switched to the beta version.

But, why you ask would I risk coming forth without the aid and backing of Microsoft's mammoth personal word processor? Because I have breaking Fury news! This week on Game/On, MMORPG.com's Podcast show, co-host Jon Wood is joined by special guest and former co-host, Michael Hampden. Mike is currently working at Auran Games on the MMO, Fury. The two discuss Ryzom, the Wii and much more.

Direct MP3 link: HERE

Who is this Michael Hampden you now ask? Quite full of questions today aren't you? Michael Hampden is the newest addition to Fury's International design team. Michael is now responsible for all the story, text and verbiage in the game. He has even gone through and renamed the all of the abilities. This being the third time they have been christened might mean they may actually stick this time. The good news is he took my ability icon art into account when naming them so they are no longer out of sync with the art. The last renaming was based on the ability description not the art which was based mostly on the previous set of names. Don't look at me like that, I just work here.

In other computer news, besides reformatting this haunted machine in an attempt to exorcise it I have opted for a $500 and some dollar portable air conditioner. Hopefully now we won't have to drag all of the computers and such out into the living room where the normal air conditioner is. I use the word 'normal' only in comparison only to what appears to be the standard downunder. I understand what they call "ducted AC" is somewhat rare. I find now while looking for a picture of these wall mounted "split" AC's that only 45% of Australian households own an air conditioner. Not even half and its damn hot and humid here. As Matthew Broderick once said:

"Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot."

Anyway, you can see a picture of a wall mounted "split system" air conditioner HERE. The worst part of these split systems is that they always seemed to be mounted at the end of the wall, in the corner. Obviously that is closest to where the connection goes to the main unit outside, but it is never anywhere near the optimal place for it to be to cool the place.

I haven't given this portable AC thing a try yet. Its actually been stormy this weekend and is forcast to continue as such for the rest of the week. So its been pretty cool in the evenings and doesn't look like I'll get to put it to the test till next weekend. Also I just spend another $50 bucks on a sheet of foam today. The portable AC has an exhaust hose like on the back of a dryer, well not an Australian cloths dryer as they just blow right out into the room but lets not get started on that. Anyway, on the box the portable AC is pictured in front of a sliding glass door, exactly what I have here in my home office. But the two pieces of foam they give you to fit into the window opening (the exhaust hose goes through a hole in one of the foam pieces) aren't enough for the sliding glass door. So I went to Clark Rubber and tried to buy a strip of foam. It would have cost me $60 bucks for two strips the size I needed (2 because I wanted and extra just in case). But because I was having the guy cut it it was more expensive than buying the whole sheet. $50 bucks for this giant sheet of foam. And the worse part is that I have cut the strip I need and yet I still have this giant sheet of foam. I was thinking maybe I could pawn it off on some kids playing in the pool.

Work Work Work

I’ve been slaving away all this week trying to get all of the game’s user interface graphics into two 1024x1024 textures. It took me twice as long as I thought it would to cram all the On-Screen UI stuff into the first one and am now banging my head against the wall trying to get all the Dialog Menu UI pieces onto the second. As of today I am officially behind schedule! There is also this thinking that once I get everything onto the two master textures that it won’t be any work getting it all to work in game. I am pretty sure there will be quite a bit of time spent by me and the programmers putting it all back into the game.

Connie was promoted to “Lead Quality Assurance” on Fury today. My review is on Tuesday, I’ll let you know if the decide to toss me out or not.

I just found out the other day that we are going to be showing off Fury at the Game Connect expo this Friday and Saturday. I’ll be working the booth Saturday.

eGames Expo

So the gang was at the eGames expo this last weekend. It was at the same place where I was at two weeks ago but where that was an auto show with a new video games thing added on, this is an actual video game show. We think they had somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand people attendees over its 2 and a half day run.

The Nintendo Wii was there again as well and was again a major draw now 1 week ahead of its Australian debut.

This 3D Video thing that is currently being Slashdotted was there but none of the people who were there that I asked actually saw it. They all said it was there; other people saw it and said it was pretty cool, but I’ve yet to interrogate any of them.

Anyway people really seemed to really like Fury. Lots of people say that it was much better than WoW or Guild Wars though I will add that would be in context of what Fury is compared to what those other games offer along those lines, which is pure Player versus Player action.

Comments from the MMO players were:

“So much faster than a normal MMO”.
“No boring level grind”
“I don’t have time to play Wow any more – I got to 60 and now there’s nothing to do that takes less than 4 hours”
“Battlegrounds is full of twinks and uber-geared players”

Comments from the FPS gamers were:

“I don’t play MMO’s because they’re too slow and boring – and I don’t have the time”
“I really like it – it feels like Unreal Tournament but with swords”

Tony mentioned that when he talked to a few of the people who didn’t seem to be getting it, he got comments along the lines of “I found the controls awkward.” But upon further investigation he found these people were more FPS type gamers who aren’t used to the 3rd person controls found in most MMO games. We do have plans to have a more FPS friendly keymap default in the game and Adam is now talking about adding the keymap selection to character creation.

The best part about the show is these audio clips Tony did we he asks people what they thought of Fury. When one player compared it to WoW, Tony asked him what server he plays on and the kids starts saying “Oh I play on a” and its about there he realizes what he is saying and as the words are coming out of his mouth you can hear him trying to draw them back in “on a private server.” Whoops.

Secrets of Game Design: 1

I have decided to reveal some game design secrets. The first of which is that when you are writing design documents you have to say stuff happens. I take it from your stunned silence you don’t get it. I’m sure you get that stuff happens but you don’t get my point. You have to write that stuff happens not that stuff will happen. I have this problem when I write I say things like “When the player presses the close button the GUI menu will close.” That’s bad. You have to change that to “When the player presses the close button the GUI closes.” See the difference?

Every time I finish writing a design document I have to then spend another 30 minutes changing all the “will do stuff” to “does stuff”.

But Joseph, what does it matter? It’s the same thing! Why does it matter?

Beats me.

But be sure to join me next time on SECRETS OF GAME DESGIN!

Last Weekend in Melbourne

I finished typing this up Friday night but was going to pull a picture off my camera but forgot about it. I've been slaving away at Customer Service Tools all weekend and only realized I didn't post this when I went to shut the computer down and found the doc still open. So anyway without further ado I spent last weekend at the Game1 expo in Melbourne. Let me tell you about it…

First of all Ashwin doesn’t show up at the airport. He is one of the two marketing guys going to the show with me. The second marketing guy, Paul, is supposed to take another flight. Ashwin is the guy running the show, he knows who we are getting the rental computers from, where we are getting the monitors from, where we are getting the plasma TV from, who to talk to about setting up the booth and other little stuff like where the expo is actually being held. He’s the guy in the know. Me? I’m just the guy carrying the GIGANTIC, two-handed laptop computer that will be running the server. The problem is that Ashwin hasn’t shown up at the airport.

I get on the plane and after about 10 minutes sitting at the gate there is an announcement on the PA that if Mr. Segkar was on board could he please make himself known to a member of the flight crew. I look around… nope he’s not here. Then about 5 minutes later a ground crew guy comes on the plane and starts giving me the third degree right there in my seat where all of the other passengers can assign this delay on me.

“Am I traveling with Mr. Segkar? Did I check in with Mr. Segkar? Have I seen Mr. Segkar at all this morning? Is there a phone number where I could try to call Mr. Segkar?” I think he even asked me I was, or have I ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

I’m sure they are going doubly nuts because of the foreign sounding name. All I have that I can think of to give them before they start in with the thumbscrews is the cell phone number of Andrew, my assistant producer. I don’t know if he has Ashwin’s phone number or not, but hey it’s early in the morning and I figure he’d probably appreciate the wake up call. They leave me alone after that and about 15 minutes later we take off. I shrink back into my seat, pop on my $500 Bose, noise reduction headphones, and pretend I can’t feel the eyes of the other passengers on me.

I should interject that my Bose, noise reduction headphones ROCK. The whole background airplane noise was gone. I have The Prestige by Christopher Priest unabridged audiobook on my iPod. I saw the trailer for the movie adaptation a few days ago and it looks awesome so when I saw the audio book on Audible.Com I grabbed it. The movie is already out in the states but doesn’t open here till the 17th which is still a week away for those of you reading this at some alternate future time.

Consider that a message from our sponsors, back to the story…

I land in Melbourne and get to the hotel. We were supposed to stay in the Holiday Inn but it was booked up as it is the weekend before the Melbourne Cup horse race. Instead we get a place right around the corner. I was told the Holiday Inn got 3 stars and this place got 4, though I realize now that I don’t know exactly what system this is and what it’s star’s might mean. For all I know the stars could represent the number of unsolved homicides in the hotel the previous month.

This place is several very old buildings chopped up on the inside, divided into closet sized rooms with a tiny bathroom added on. It has a 12 inch TV mounted way up in the corner of one wall with no cable or movie service. I can’t remember the last time I went to sleep in a hotel room without the Discovery Channel on the background. It has a little internet room down in the lobby but the wireless doesn’t even connect from the room.

It did have a very large piece of green, furry, spiked, carpet that crawls along the baseboard.

But who cares about the room, it’s a place to sleep and I can live without the Discovery channel especially with the wonderful wildlife already living in the room. I toss my bags onto the bed and call Andrew to find out what’s going on.

Ashwin had problems with his rental car return, told the airline he would need to take the next flight and they removed his bags from the plane. The problem appears to be the ground crew didn’t get that update. All they knew was they had some guy with foreign name not show up for the flight but had luggage on the plane they couldn’t actually find. It must have been fun for them.

The important thing is that he was actually on his way which is more than we can say for Paul. I heard one story that he was bleeding from the ears and was taken to the hospital and another that had something to do with him getting a tooth pulled the day before and him not being well. Never did find out what happened there.

Fast forward a few hours and Ashwin arrives and goes right to the Expo center. He gives me a call and tells me to “grab a cab” and head on over.

Have you ever tried to grab a cab, downtown in a major city at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon? I go out front and give up after a few minutes. The hotel is on the very corner of the central business district and the street outside is very busy and had a physical divider along the center. All the cabs driving by on my side of the street have already gone through the city and have passengers, all the cabs entering the area are on the other side of the barrier.

I go back into the hotel ask the front desk to call me a cab. The receptionist tells me that there is a cab stand around the corner in front of the Holiday Inn. I go up and around the corner. There is a cab there. I ask him if he is on duty and he says yes. I get in. He asks where I want to go. I say the Melbourne Expo center. Suddenly he can’t take me because he is waiting for somebody in the hotel. Umm… Okay. I get out.

But a woman comes right out of the hotel and gets in the cab. He puts her luggage in the trunk and gets back in. Then there is some arm waving and shouting type gestures from both of them and they both get out and he takes her bags out of the trunk. She demands his card and says she is going to report him. He drives off with out a passenger and she leaves her luggage on the curb and storms back into the hotel. By this time there is a couple waiting for a cab as well. The problem here is the traffic is at a dead stand still so no cabs are going to get here any time soon. Eventually one works its way up and two businessmen come out of the hotel and walk right up and into the cab. We shout that there is a line. The guys looks at me and says, “Its okay, you can get the next one.” I give him a suggestion that he probably would need several years gymnast training to accomplish and go back to my hotel and tell them that the cab stand is a bust and I need her to call me a cab.

Fifteen minutes later a cab shows up. I get in and tell him I’m going to the Melbourne Expo center. He looks at me confused. He points out the window, “But that’s right there!” One city block in the cab, 10 bucks. Granted though it was a long city block, a good 10-15 minute walk. Except that isn’t the end of it. I go into the Expo center and ask the woman in the front desk how to get to the Game1 Expo. She apologizes before telling me that I have to walk the length of the expo center, go out the back, the width of expo center, then back halfway up the other side. The length of the expo center is about the same distance from the hotel.

So about another 20-30 minutes later I BS my way into onto the floor because of course I don’t have a badge or any sort of registration. Ashwin tells me that the computers have just arrived too. Oh that’s great! Only it isn’t because of the 7 computers we were supposed to get (6 and a spare) we have 5. They should all have 2 gigs of ram and two of these have 1 gig and the 3 have 512mb. Ashwin takes care of this. We have the guys doing our computers for the up coming eGames get us computers. Ashwin we have need more tables, he finds more tables. We need chairs, he finds chairs.

I set up the computer. Yes me. Normally I am the LAST person you want setting up computers and installing things because things just go wrong for me. But no this seems to all be working. Turn them on and half of them boot right up. Check the others and then they boot right up too. Install “Fury” and “Call of Juarez” on them just in time for them to kick us out at 11pm. Show runs 10 to 10 the next day and I call Andrew and tell him to expect my call at 9 (8 his time as there is no daylight saving time in Brisbane) to have him walk me through setting up the server. We had prearranged that he would have to walk me though the server set-up. I set the alarm for 7 so I’ll have time to eat something in the morning except that who ever put the clocks forward in the room got the AM / PM thing messed up. After oversleeping and missing breakfast I do manage to get to the expo floor at 9:00 and call Andrew. Setting up all the IP stuff goes fine but although machines can ping the server just fine the game won’t connect to the server and we can’t figure out why. We start calling other people, we believe people from playtest are in the office but can’t find a phone number that will bypass the “Auran office hours” recording. Eventually Andrews manages to get ahold of Chris Bergman who calls me and after a few minutes he solves the problem. The server is trying to use the ‘main’ database which isn’t there instead of the local database on the machine. To make the mater worse the program to switch which database the server uses isn’t installed on the laptop. So Chris talks me through editing the registry to repoint it to the right database. Me editing the registry are another thing you generally don’t want me doing but again this time it all works find. The machines connect, the game loads, yay!

So the rest of the show went pretty much okay not counting there are only two of use for a booth that really needs 3 minimum, 12 hours show days, and one of machines kept overheating while another kept losing connection to the server. I never did get to go stand in line to try out the Wii but looks like people were having fun with it.

IGN Australia

So I spent the weekend at the Game1 expo in Melbourne. I am in the process of writing a whole incident report but I really need to get back to work on this design spec so I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

In the meantime I feel bad that I haven’t posted anything so here are two Fury links from IGN Australia. First their Studio Tour of Auran and then their Fury Hands On.

There are some memorable quotes. My personal favorite is:

"twitch gaming skills move to twitch thinking"

I also guess nobody told him the “low-flying dragon clutching a large crystal” is called a Perkon. Or maybe they did and he just didn’t it sounded as cool as a ““low-flying dragon clutching a large crystal” and you know, he may have a point there. Where did we come up with the name "Perkon" anyway?

He also got a little mixed up with the elements. The game is based on 5 elements kind of taken from Asian lore. It is Water (Life, Positive Energy, Blue) opposed to Fire (Death, Negative Energy, Red) and Nature (Growth, Positive Form, Green) opposed to Air (Decay, Negative Form, Purple). Earth, the 5th element is neutral and isn’t involved in the elemental parts of game play. For the purest Air really should be Metal in the Asian system we are using, but the effect of metal became lightning and eventually the name got changed to the more Western-like “Air”. For the simplistic its just Red vs. Blue and Purple vs. Green.

He makes a little mistake trying to peg Fury’s place in the current pantheon of next generation game graphics:

"Although bettered by Gears of War and others, the Unreal Engine 3.0 kicks some serious butt. Gorgeous."

The Problem is that Gears of War was also built using the Unreal Engine 3.0. DOH!