Going to Sydney

I'll be in Syndey this weekend for Supanova. I haven't really had the time to look into who is going to be there until now. Comic wise we have Stan Lee by video conference... Marv Wolfman, unfortunately I don't have anything of his here in Australia for him to sign. Whilce Portacio, don't think I have anything of his here either. Something seems to be up with ComicBase because it isn't showing me all of the issues for people I'm working for. Going to have to go over and post on their tech forum.

Bruce Spence is going to be there, he was as the last Brisbane Supanova. I really wish I had something cool from Road Warrior (Max Max 2) for him to sign.

There is a Fury billboard up in Sydney that I want to try and get to see.It is on William St. near the corner of Boomerang. Click on the pic for a much larger version.

Speaking of Fury, I've also been doing a few questions a week over at Game Arena. Here are the links to part 1 and part 2. Part 3 should be going up anytime now. We also announced some major changes to some of the game systems last week which you can read about here.

I would love to go back and edit this to spice it up, add that JBHIV humor, but Snipers aren't going to set their own selves on fire! Don't call Homeland Security, thats just my way of saying I'm going to play Team Fortress 2.

Re-Hacked

Way back when I first started this blog I was annoyed at the way it put a one pixel border around all my pictures, especially my picture over there on the right. I had drawn in the drop shadow on the white background and the border ruined the effect. I was way too lazy to search though Blogger's template HTML code that was way more advanced than the HTML code I had been familiar with years before. So instead I just put some simple HTML code into one of the 'about me' sections of my profile that loaded the picture and the links that used to be under it.

Not so way back, but still awhile ago, a friend pointed out that I don't have my blog's name nor my own name written as text very often and therefore I'm not easy to find on search engines. I could fix that but updating so fields in my profile but I found out that Blogger no longer allows you to to put HTML in any of those fields. So if I changed anything on my profile it wouldn't save. In order to get the new picture up I had to rename the new .jpg file, over writing the previous 'Blond 2006' picture.

So to make a long story even longer I fixed it all yesterday. I nuked the HTML in my profile, updated several fields; notice all the posts are signed "Joseph B. Hewitt IV" instead of "Joseph the Fourth" now. I still didn't use their layout because it makes the picture really small. I re-hacked my picture and links back in. I do like the way it says my name now instead of 'About Me' like it used to. It was quite the pain figuring it all out though, comment out a line... see what changed... change a line... see if it worked... There were times I was screaming and shouting at the computer so much Connie thought I was playing Team Fortress 2 again.

I did find a bug though. I was dismayed at the profile's lack of choices for profession categories. For a Game Designer I expected to there to be something like 'Software Development' or at least an 'Entertainment' category but there isn't anything close. I chose 'Not Specified' but it doesn't save and always resets back to 'Accounting' which is the first option on the list. Horrified at being listed as an Accountant (sorry Becky) I switched it to the very generic 'Technology' category.

Scott at My Extra Life is doing the judging on his Jack Thompson Photoshop contest this weekend and posted all the entries. I was a little disappointed at all the dodgy ones. I was hoping to see a few really grand entries but most of them seem to have been given little thought and were pasted together using MS:Paint. I guess I am more used to seeing the quality Photoshop Phriday stuff on Something Awful.

Jack Thompson's First

As you may have heard, the online comic strip My Extra Life is doing a Jack Thompson themed Photoshop Contest. Jack has even already sent them a Cease and Desist. Not a legal Cease and Desist mind you, more like doggy threat. But as pretty much everybody and his favorite video game character knows, he has no legal leg to stand on. So just like his (actually filed) Cease and Desist, 5 PM Friday deadline filed against Rockstar Games regarding what he claims is a reference to him in the game, it too is being ignored.

The whole thing reminded me of the Hustler Magazine, Campari ad parody that implied that the Reverend Jerry Falwell had sex with his mother. This is the ad that sparked the lawsuit: Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988) which went all the way to the Supreme Court and inspired the movie “The People vs. Larry Flint”. So I decided to throw together a Photoshop entry for My Extra Life’s contest basically recreating that same ad parody with Jack and video games as the focus. If you follow that last link to the lawsuit, you can see a scan of the original parody ad this is based on.

Now you might think that wasn’t really any real ‘Photoshopping’ done. But I want to point out that that the joystick and Atari game were not originally in the photo with the Campari. I also had to match the lighting; note the silver-ish highlight reflection on the bottle to match the Atari game? Okay still not anything all that difficult and probably not a ‘contest winning’ entry but I am thinking it should at least get an honorable mention for the historical reference. I still hate all that dead space on the right caused by having the joystick there, but that is the best picture of the Atari Joystick I could find that I could match to the Campari photo.

Oh and btw Adobe, the publisher of Photoshop, discourages use of the term "photoshop" as a verb because that undermines the company's trademark.

Robert Jordan

I just read on Slash Dot last night right before leaving work that Robert Jordan passed away. I personally gave up on his Wheel of Time series a few years ago which is a big thing for me. Usually when I start a book or series I will finish it even if I absolutely loath it. But I got just tired of where the series was going (or wasn’t going I think was more the point) and gave up. I used to use the Wheel of Time books as a good example of how popular writers still need good editors to keep them in line. I still read (listen to unabridged) a lot of Stephen King’s stuff and I just can’t help but wonder sometimes how much better the books would be if he had an editor that said, “I don’t care if you are Stephen King, cut out this fluff and pick up the pace!” like I’m sure his editors were able to do in the early days before he was the success he is now.

Anyway, back to Slash Dot. I was reading through the comments on the post and there are some very harsh parting words for Mr. Jordan.

In the spirit of the man, friends and family of the deceased have requested that his eulogy be tedious and poorly written.

God finally finished Book 11, said "Are you fucking kidding me?", and whipped out the Smite Stick.

So this means I'll get to wake up my girlfriend like this tomorrow:
"Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news: Remember how you were worried the 'Wheel of Time' series would never end? Well, you don't need to worry about that problem anymore ...."

After that it sort of deteriorates into arguments regarding those types of posts.

I did notice this passing shot at George R.R. Martin.

I hope George R.R. Martin is paying close attention.

I love his "Song of Ice and Fire" (The Dwarf, in the toilet, with the crossbow, heh.) There was some talk when his last book came out in 2 parts that he was starting to show signs of " Jordan 's Syndrome" Maybe this will help him focus. (and get the damn thing written).

I don't want to sound cruel or insensative, but if Mr. Martin passes on before finishing his series, I'm going to follow him down to hell and I'm bringing a typewriter! Now I really hope Mr. Martin goes on to live for many many years to come because 1. I kinda hope that for everybody, I'm not a death wishing on others kinda guy, 2. Because I do really enjoy his writing and am really looking forward to Dances with Dragons, and 3. I'll really feel like crap for having said what I just did about hell and the typewriter!

Oh and one last thing I wanted to say. The Wheel of Time series was one of the first really big fantasy series to be released unabridged on audio and for that I will always place it on a pedestal, even though I stopped listening to them. The readers, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer, were excellent and I absolutely loved the accents they did for the characters from different regions in the world especially the Seanchan.

Oh my GOD! Is that what I sound like?!

Yesterday I was the guest on the latest episode of PALGN’s Podcast. It is a good example to show how much of my legendary wit is due to extensive editing and rewrites.

PALGN – PAL (as in Europe and Australia PAL TV signal as opposed NTSC TV signals used in the United States… which doesn’t really matter as much anymore as most newer TVs can accept both signals) Gaming Network – is one of Australia’s most popular gaming publications created in 2002 as an answer to the US-centric nature of online games journalism. This is their 3rd officially scheduled podcasts, as opposed first ones they released without ‘officially’ schedule them. I’m not sure what that story is, iTunes is showing me six episodes total. I downloaded one of the earlier ones before going on the show but only listened to about half of it. Been doing a lot of writing lately and I can’t listen podcasts or audio books while writing. I’m just going to imagine something went down akin to the buddy cop movie scene where the captain calls them into his office and yells at them for being wild and out of control, telling them that the Mayor and/or the Commissioner is on his back and that they have to get these podcasts officially scheduled or he’ll have their badge!

Anywhere here is the spiel:

You know that feeling you get when you take a left down the strip in Vegas, pass the Bellagio, and somehow find yourself in Queensland desperately searching for a decent fajita, paying the bills by working on what was originally pitched as a Korean MMORPG but is now an MMO with a multi-million dollar prize pool backing it? Yeah, I hate it when that happens ...

Featuring special guest star Joseph Hewitt, Senior Designer from Auran, we also unleash the Fury and discuss his experiences working with Sony, EA, Westwood, and Sierra as well as on a variety of gaming classics including Command and Conquer and Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception. As if that wasn't enough, he also helped support Star Wars Galaxies at launch, complete with inside info on how life was in the trenches - the man's got game. Literally, actually - most in their original boxes! (Read More)

Right click to download the podcast
Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via iTunes

What is the secret of comedy?TIMING!!! Hmm, that works much better verbally. What makes stuff work better in print is rereading you stuff, massive editing, removing the fluff, moving bits around, giving it time to settle and then coming back to it and editing it again, rinse repeat. It is definitely the edits and rewrites that gives me my pacing and timing. Live on the air I fell apart, I just didn't have that magic.

Okay, so it wasn’t THAT bad and I did have a lot of fun. It was a blast actually and I may appear on their show again in the near future. There were more than a few things that we were talking about where I was thinking that I had debated and researched those issues before but just couldn’t access the information. Just now I went back through my old blog posts and found two of them. So while you are listening to the region coding section here is my post Console Modding versus Region Coding from August 1, 2006. Then when we get to talking about TV shows and view on demand stuff here is my post Av4st Y3 Scurvy Dogz! from September 12, 2005 on the subject. As you can see; I’m much more deadly and to the point in print. Hopefully with practice I can get my verbal game up to par. If anything, not having to worry about all the spelling mistakes should give me a leg up.

The Fourth

I was playing Fury on our live beta servers the other day and found out that one of the guys in my pick-up group posted about it on his blog. So I decided to use it as an opportunity to vent about GTA IV.

It may not be immediately obvious how the two are connected. Here is a link to his blog:

What I want for the Gravity name/FURY discussion
Gravity Gaming. Home of Team Gravity - Saturday, 08 September 2007

© Gravity Gaming. Home of Team Gravity

Zero Punctuation

A link went around the office the day that I thought I would share. Zero Punctuation puts out these little flash movie game reviews that are pretty funny. He was picked up by Escapist Magazine which now publishes a new one every Wednesday. He has put up three of them for the Escapist so far and I think three before that. My favorite is still the first Escapist one which reviews ‘Heavenly Sword.’ I highly recommend giving it a look-see.

There is another thing that I feel I should mention though. While going to the sites linked above to get the URLs to make the links. I experienced an odd computer pause and keep getting little ones as I tab back and forth through the sites. I think… and I am just guessing here… that it may be caused by the large flash “Fury Challenge Beta Event” adds that came up on the Escapist site. They are new add that I haven’t seen before and show some scenes from the cool “School of Life” Fury video.

People have asked me about the death move in that video. He stabs her through the throat, why then break her leg? The answer is the same reason he then jumps up onto her shoulders and flip her over into the wall... because thats the point of the death blows in Fury. They are finishing moves, equivalent to spiking the ball in the end zone. They are a clear statement to the other player that not only did you kick their ass, but you took the time to sign your name on their right cheek with your sword while you did it. Slash! Stab! ...yours with love, Joseph... BAM!

It’s Getting Close

Check out this picture from the news section of Penny Arcade today (Aug. 1 2007) with the Fury booth right there in the upper right!
I think that might be me over on the right side of the booth. See the Fury 'F' logo on the booth endcap? I think I'm the guy right above that wearing the black shirt with the white blur on it (the Fury 'F' logo again) talking to a guy in a blue shirt.

There is a good write up of PAX 2007 as a whole at Slashdot with a big section on Fury.

I'll be honest: Fury came at me from nowhere. I'd read about it before coming to the show, knew that it was approaching an Open Beta, and that it was a free-to-play PvP title. That was just about all I knew when I sat down to play and chat with Fury's lead designer Adam Carpenter.

When you're trying to quantify Fury's gameplay type, it's better to think less about online RPGs and more about first-person shooters. Fury has essentially taken the swords and sorcery milieu and dropped that whole cloth into an FPS schema. In each match, players spawn in, rush out, and slam into each other in extremely fast altercations. Everything is fast; from character creation to combat can be just a few minutes. MORE

There is also some good coverage of Fury at the 2007 Cyberathlete Professional League Summer Event last week over at eSportsTV.

We are getting set up right now to have the servers up and running for tonight when the first paying customers of the game will be able to log in. The game is still beta but these will be the players who have pre-ordered the game. I also just found out that the 'Customer Service' button on the main screen links to a site that isn't connected to our CS Tool yet, so if you have any problems use the Customer Service link on the website, not the button in game. The good news is that the problem is already fixed in the latest build.

Remember there are just two weeks left till Fury Challenge. So get in now and get some practice in!

A tale of PAX 2007

PAX was awesome! We had lots of people checking out Fury. A seat never stayed empty for more than a few minutes. We were passing out Fury beta disks like… like umm… like we had brought enough for everybody at the show! At one point Tony and I headed over to the LAN room to hand them out and on the way over we passed the booth where Wil Wheaton was signing autographs and I handed him one as I went by. He looked up at me a little baffled, glanced at it, and then confusedly said “thanks?” So just remember when you are battling it out in “Fury Challenge” that could be ‘Uncle Willie’ kicking your butt.

I have heard that Wil’s keynote speech was great, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet (actually I’m listening to it while writing this). I didn’t really do anything at PAX except work the booth. I walked around once before the floor opened and once again a little later. I bought some t-shirts and the first Bone episode: “Out from Boneville”. No, it’s not porn. It’s an adventure game based on an independent comic book series by Jeff Smith.

The trip on the other hand was a nightmare. Our flight out of Sydney was canceled because our pilot broke his toe playing tennis. So much for arriving a day early; I knew we should have flown Qantas! Then our computers didn’t arrive until about 2 hours before the show opened. We had to set up the computers, install Fury and create noob friendly Incarnations on all the characters. At one point I’m trying to hook up a monitor and I see a bright red blotch on the white table.

“Hey that looks like BLOOD! Hey it IS blood! There is blood all over! Hey somebody is bleeding! Who is bleeding?!”

The answer of course was me. I was bleeding. I must have smashed my cuticle while stuffing wires into the hole to where the computer was underneath. It was just a little cut but it must have been bleeding for awhile; because it was all over my hand and the table. So when we say we put our blood and tears into this game, we are telling at least half the truth. And if you don’t believe me I’ll cry.

Home Sweet Home

I am back from PAX. The show was great but I am exhausted. I'll do a full run down on the whole thing later, I'm just too tired to do anything big at the moment.

I did, however want to link to this interview on Grrl Gamer with the amazing Connie Hewitt.

Also I found this flash game called HEWITT.

One year in the making Hewitt is complete & is the most epic adventure game we have created since 'Griswold the Goblin'. Help Hewitt find a girl for the dance in this awesome adventure RPG

What did I ever do to deserve this?

Current Entertainment

I finally finished season 3 of Deadwood. I had heard that the final episode was quite the let down; but I was hoping that with such lowered expectations it would still be okay. But it was SUCH a let down I didn’t even realize it was the finale! There was still another DVD and I thought there were more episodes. I mean its building up to this big confrontation… building and building… and then nothing, it’s over! The final DVD is just extras. I thought I had missed a DVD and went back through the box.

It reminds me of the thing I didn’t like about the movie Gladiator. The whole movie they are building up my expectation of seeing the armies of the Roman Empire marching on Rome but then it never happens. If they do ever make the 2 movie length episodes to finish out Deadwood they better be EXPLOSIVE! …of course by then the momentum they built will have been spent.

I just started in on the third season of Entourage thanks to my friend James from work. I didn’t think I’d like it but I really do. I like the way they keep it upbeat. I like the way the writing moves it along. I keep expecting something really bad to happen to Vince’s career and there to be this dark turn to the series but it doesn’t happen. Sure things go wrong and there is the natural up and down flow, but it always manages to land on a positive note without feeling fake or like its undeserved. There are also lots of hot women flaunting their body in every episode.

I also just got the audio version of the latest William Gibson novel, Spook Country, from Audible, but I’m saving it for the plane trip to PAX. No direct flight this time – Brisbane to Sydney to San Francisco to Seattle. Same thing for the way back. I don’t know how I ever survived these trans-Atlantic flights without my Bose noise reduction headphones and unabridged audio books. But I’ve been meaning to try and track down a real email address for Audible to tell them their website layout sucks. Seriously if any Audible marketing people are scanning the web for mentions of their site, YOU WEB SITE LAYOUT SUCKS! Seriously give up the vertical columns and give the titles some room to breathe. I’m tired of having to click on each title to read about it. Do you know why if you click on the book to the right you go to Amazon instead of Audible? Because when I am browsing for what title to purchase, I have Amazon open in another window to read up on the book and see its reviews.

Oh and since I went on about Audible, let me go on about the Bose headphones. They RULE! ...except my wife got a better pair. When she went back to the states for E3/EIEIO I begged her to take my headphones for the trip but she was scared she would lose or break them or something. But halfway through her trip she went out and bought her own pair and they are newer tech and sound a little bit better. They also have a rechargeable battery while I’ve had to take stock in triple A’s. I’d steal hers but she got the ‘on-ear’ model and I prefer the ‘around-ear’ ones. It is probably a good thing she didn’t take my pair with her though, because she did lose her iPod on the plane. So if there is anybody from Bose people scanning the web for mention of their products, send me a new pair and I’ll pimp them from now till George R.R. Marin finally finishes the Song of Ice and Fire series… yeah THAT long!

Fury Challenge - $1,000,000 Pre-Release Tournament

Fury is holding a $1,000,000 tournament as their open beta event. The tournament will run the last three weekends in September. Hop in, try the game before release, and hopefully win some prizes. read more | digg story

This is me testing digg.com's 'Blog It' feature btw. The Fury Challenge tournament was announced at the Fury Party in Sydney last Monday. There is a similar one in Brisbane tomorrow (Thursday) that I'll be going to. They are parties to show off the game (and our FHM cover model and 33rd most beautiful woman in the world, Fury Model, Siobhan Parekh (link maybe not safe for work.)) to retailers and some lucky fans who won tickets.

Hair Today

I got an updated picture up. The problem I'm having is that I'm a funny looking freak!... but that is besides the point. What I meant to say was back when I first put this blog up, I set up the picture in Photoshop to have a drop shadow on a white background. I'm big on the clean white background with drop shadows, notice that I drew the Thottbot logo the same way. When I uploaded my picture to blogger it displayed on the blog with a black line around it. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the line in the template right away, so took it out and then linked it into one of the text fields of my profile using HTML.

Unfortunately, Blogger no longer lets you have HTML in your profile text fields. It still works, you just can't save it anymore without it giving you an error message that the IMG tag is not allowed. Even if I open my profile now and try to save it without any changes, it gives me that error. I host that picture on my own site though so I just saved over the 2006_blond picture with the new one and viola new picture.

I have since found the HTML that caused the black line and figured out how to remove it. It will just take some work to undo all the custom hacks I've done to the template especially since I'm not really all that good with HTML and got it all working with lots of trial and error.

"Hmmm wonder what this line of HTML does? type type type... reformatting my AHHHH!!! Put it back! Put it back!"

I have thought about going to one of the new blogger templates since they make it much easier to add stuff, but again that will take lots of work. I'd have to save out all my links and figure out how to get the resizing code to work again. Notice how if you restore down (that's what that's called? The middle Window's button in the very top, upper-left of the screen between the 'minimize' and the 'close X' buttons. The mouse over tool tip says 'restore down'. I could have sworn there was another word for that.) and then shrink the width of the window the main text area of my site stops before it starts overlapping the blue, left-hand border. If you go to other standard Blogger blogs and do the same thing, their main text area will keep sliding over till it hits the left edge of the window.

Anyway, there is the new updated picture. As you can see I am no longer blond. You can also see that the dye used to match the bleached areas back to my natural brown is fading and that I am due for another session at Orb Hair, my hair salon. What was the end result of being blond? Did I have more fun? Hard to say, maybe if I wasn't in constant state of 'crunch time' at work and got out more I have better data.

PAX '07

So I'm going to the Penny Arcade Expo later this month. Its the 24th through the 26th in Seattle. If you are going to the show be sure to stop by and say hi and play a few rounds of Fury.

By the way I don't have the blond hair anymore, boy what a bad idea that was. It just killed my hair. I was wearing it back in a pony tail on occasion and so much of my hair broke off it. Anyway, its back to brown and hopefully on the way back to being healthy. I really should update that picture over there.

Oh and we announced the subscription model:

The game will be available from both retail and online at standard retail pricing from October. It is free to play with regular free content updates, plus an option to subscribe for additional benefits. Importantly, all players, regardless of subscription status, have access to the most powerful items and abilities in the game. Subscription offers additional benefits, choice and flexibility.

You can read the full press release on our forums.

We got pretty well slammed over on Kotaku over it because they seemed to be under the impression that we said it was going to be completely free "end of story." When asked by the press we have always said that we were still working on the subscription model. Though there is an interview of Tony sometime around March where he let slip that it was going to be Free to Play with an optional subscription, but I couldn't find it with a quick Google. But seriously it is free, you can play the whole game without any missing features or abilities that affects your play/power in the Warzones in any way FOR FREE! There are just extras for subscribers who are willing to shell out a little money to pay for those servers, bandwidth and my paycheck. Its being talked about all over the forums so if you feel like discussing it the previous link above to our forums is a good place to start.

The Magic Sign

There isn’t a Krispy Kreme in Brisbane. But they are popping up in some of Australia’s other major cities. When I flew back to Brisbane from both Melbourne and Sydney recently I saw multiple people on each flight with boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. I don’t get that. I also don’t get the mini Krispy Kreme donuts that were starting to pop up in all the Casino food courts and malls in Vegas right before I left.

Krispy Kreme donuts are just donuts except… except when they are bathed in the magic light of the sign! Oh yes, the sign with those two special words: "Hot" and "Now".

The sign is turned on when the donuts are being made. It is when those little lumps of dough take that magic ride along the conveyor belt of happiness and are magically transformed into the Food of the Gods. It when you can press your nose against the glass, pick out an unassuming lump of dough and say, “that one! I am going to eat that one!” And then you can watch it travel up and down, around and about, under the waterfall of frosting and then out to the front of the store. You can point out your donut to the ultra cool chick-magnet of a guy who gets all the girls (because he can get free donuts) who will happily pull it off the belt and server it up to you. Personally I like a ice-cold carafe of strawberry milk with mine.

I remember a few years ago David Yee, who worked at Westwood having recently left SOE where he had worked on Everquest. He was trying to get his friend, whose name escapes me, hired on as well. We flew his friend out for an interview and after work we all took him out to dinner. Then we went over to Mary K’s arcade which my friend Adam tells me has since been turned into a pool hall.  Afterwards one of us got the idea to go to Krispy Kreme. The cry went up, “KRISPY KREME!” and we tumbled out of the arcade, arms waving and yelling our cry! We piled into the car and shot off across town. When we got with in sight we saw that the sign was lit! We screamed our joy and screeched into the parking lot, leapt from the car and ran into the store arguing over which sad little lump of dough was going to turn into the magical, mouth-watering, ring of godly pleasure we would eat.

He thought we were nuts.

We all sat at the table eating donuts in single bites while swigging down the moo juice. He sits down with a plate of 3 regular donuts.

There was a sudden silence and much confusion.

“What are you doing? You got the wrong donuts!”

“I don’t like plain glazed donuts.”

“They aren’t PLAIN glazed donuts! They… they’ve just been down… look the sign… KRISPY KREME.”

“So?”

“Here eat this one, ill get another”

There was another silence as he took a bit. I don’t think any of expected anything other than what happened, but I can say there was an edge of nervousness on all our faces. We were in fact risking the fabric of our world if he didn’t just keel over and die of pleasure at that one bite. He did though. He literally swooned.

“Oh my God! This is the best donut that I’ve ever tasted! It’s like liquid sugar that is somehow still in solid form. It just melts in your mouth.”

I’m paraphrasing those second two sentences because he was busily stuffing his mouth at that point and it was a bit difficult to understand what he was saying.

I miss those late night Krispy Kreme runs. Drew sent me a link of some place here in Brisbane that not only claims fresh baked donuts but they also deliver. We haven’t tried them out yet, but I am not getting my hopes up.

Army Men

One of my earliest childhood memories must have been from when I was about 3 or 4 years old. It’s not my oldest childhood memory which is which has something about living in this house with a couch. I remember us having these tall thin glasses that were clear with a colored strip that wrapped up around the side kinda like a candy cane.

Back to the other memory which I think takes place before my bother was born and that would put us in either Ohio or Florida. I was at the Commissary (grocery store on an Air Force base) with my Dad.

I remember just being in some blah mood. We got up to the cashier and he asked me if I wanted a pack of gum and I said, no. He asked me if I wanted some other impulse buy item and again I said no.

Finally he asked me if I wanted a bag of army men. A serious bag ‘O 100 army men – one hundred – army men. Crawling guys, mortar guys, mind sweeper guys, radio guys, kneeling rifle guys, those guys their gun above their head (about to bayonet somebody or crossing a stream?) Oh oh oh, don’t forget my favorite, mounted machine gun guy. Oh yeah, I loved those guys. Army men are so much fun.

But again, I said no.

What the hell was I thinking?! I would have had a BLAST with 100 army men!

Why didn’t my Dad check me for a fever? I can think of no other reason for my behavior. I must have been sick, deathly sick. It was obviously negligent parenting. He should have checked bought the army men for me and rushed me to the hospital!

Every time I see army men to this day, over 30 years later, I still hit myself!

This just in... again...

Well I guess the announcement is out regardless that there was no announcement because the credit list for Fury went around the office today so everybody could proof-read their names. All the new promotions were in the credits so I guess I can put back the post I made before:

We had some promotions go around the office. Adam is now the Creative Director. Cameron and I have split the Lead Designer into Lead Content Designer for me (yay me) and Lead System Designer for him. Also Connie got promoted to Quality Assurance Manager.

I am doing what I’ve been doing; except now I am also responsible for more things. I am now the guy who gets blamed for the crap that sucks (like that wasn’t already happening) I also get to wade through the *Designer bug list and assigning them to the right people. I also have to get up a half hour earlier to be here in time for the Leads meeting. I’m serious… a half and hour EARLIER! You know I used to believe that mornings were something that happened to other people.

I would ramble on some more but I can’t actually see at the moment. I just got back from the optometrist and even with this zoomed to 500 percent I can barely read what I am typing.

In other news, this went out today:

Brisbane, Australia – August 1, 2007 – After a highly successful showing at Gamecock’s E.I.E.I.O. in California and a packed debut preview weekend, Auran, developers of the upcoming player versus player massively multiplayer online title, Fury, are excited to announce a partnership with the kings of competitive gaming – the Cyberathlete Professional League. MORE

And and the eyesight is fine now. I guess a few people misunderstood what I was saying. My eyesight was blurry because the optometrist put in those drops that dilate your pupils so he could shine can a really bright light into them and see the back of your eyeballs. They take about 3 hours to wear off. Loads of fun.

Speaking of fun, I actually chickened out today. An email went around that the profanity filter wouldn't working for awhile (though the CSR's are still on to BAN you if you get out of line so don't go getting any ideas) and I really wanted to reply to the email with just the word "FUCK!"

This Just In...

Okay, so there are obviously quite a lot of you out there reading this as opposed to just Bughunter as the comment sections on each post would suggest. How do I know this you ask? Do I have a secret hit counter on the site? No, I’ve just had about a billion people ask or email what happened to the last post that I deleted even though it was only up for a few hours. The announcement email hasn’t gone out at work, so I took the post down till it officially goes out.

As an aside I’ve been wandering around the Petroglyph forums where there are quite a few threads about Command & Conquer and other old Westwood games. Of interest is the details about where the C&C story would have or was going with Westwood before EA’s C&C3. It even reveilles the shocking truth behind the C&C 1 UFO!!! I haven’t actually played C&C 3, still sticking with my EA boycott that I announced in regards to not buying Battlefield 2142. I do have the C&C 3 demo that is on a CD I got from some magazine but I haven’t installed it. I’m told it’s actually fun.

I just found out there is an article about Fury in Brisbane’s “City News” magazine. It’s the one that had the “Show Stopper” banner across the top, and the very cute Kelly Brightwell on the cover. So if you happen to be in Brisbane Australia and wander by a bus stop or convenience store, pick one up. It’s free.

New Fury Trailers

The Fury "Cinematic Trailer" and "School of Life Trailer" are up on Gametrailers.com I've embedded the normal versions below with links to the widescreen HD versions.

There are also more and more reviews popping up everyday, but like I said I wouldn't even have posted that last huge set if somebody hadn't already gathered them.

Cinematic SD <Click here for widescreen HD version>


School of Life SD <Click here for widescreen HD version>


Alex, our community manager and not to be confused with my bother (notice the lack of flaming staff & giant Asian dragon tattoo), posted a timeline for Fury on our forums that shows all of the upcoming dates and such.

Unleashing more Fury links

So E3 has come and gone again. If you follow the gaming press at all then I am sure you have heard about all the ups and down, deaths and rebirths that E3 has gone through. This year it was all invite only where the various companies invited select journalist to private showings in hotel meeting rooms. There has already been official word that E3 is getting yet another change around next year. They claim because of publisher feedback, I think it may also have something to do with all the companies who showed up at the same time, put on their own showings in other hotels and didn’t pay the E3 people a dime.

One such company was the new independent publisher ‘Gamecock’ which just happens to be publishing Fury, the game I’m working on. I wasn’t going to post all the links from various online news sources because there were just too many of them, but as it happens one of the guys at work did collect them all. Since I have them I might as well post them.

First up are links specifically about Fury followed by ones that are more about Gamecock & their EIEIO show which includes the Wake and Funereal service they held for our beloved E3.

Warning: I spent ZERO time making sure these links work and at the moment I don't even care that they overlap into the right-hand menu. I've been working the non-stop for the past few weeks and I'm going to go to bed. (edit: yeah, who am I kidding? Like I could walk away while it looked like crap. I stripped the text of the links down to the host site so they don't run over the edge. Still didn't test them all though.)

P.S. I've also started to see Fury banner ads popping up on some of the bigger game related sites including the likes of Penny Arcade and PvP Online.

Specific Fury links:
kotaku.com
gamershell.com
gamespot.com
gamespot.com
ign.com
gamespy.com
destructoid.com
tentonhammer.com
1up.com
worthplaying.com
gamespot.com
gamezone.com
gamedaily.com
gamespy.com
joystiq.com
gamevortex.com
tentonhammer.com
tentonhammer.com
mpogd.com

General Cock Links:
vgblogger.com
fungz.com/destructoid
news.com.com
mercurynews.com
variety.com
tgdaily.com
slashdot.org
destructoid.com
gamespot.com
gamespot.com
zdnet.com
wiiha.info
venturacountystar.com
npr.org
usatoday.com
dagbladet.no
joystiq.com
forbes.com
latimes.com
kotaku.com
firingsquad.com
mtv.com
mtv.com
mtv.com
mtv.com
mtv.com
mtv.com
destructoid.com
wired.com
wired.com
ripten.com
wired.com
forbes.com
kotaku.com
joystiq.com
grrlgamer.com
vgblogger.com
washingtonpost.com
gameshout.com
nintendojo.com
gamemusic4all
gaygamer.net
gamedaily.com
gamersinfo.net
escapistmagazine.com
gamersinfo.net
firingsquad.com
cnet.com
grrlgamer.com
gamasutra.com
wanderinggoblin.com
gamasutra.com
publicradio.org

Have you signed up for the beta yet? www.unleashthefury.com

Deadwood as a LARP

I just got season 3 of Deadwood from Amazon. I knew it was coming so for the last week I have been watching seasons 1 & 2 again to catch up. As I’ve been watching it I can’t help wishing that I had seen the show back when I was running Testament, my live-action role-playing game. It has so many elements that would work so well in that type of game.

The game I was running was White Wolf’s “Vampire the Masquerade”. Now if you don’t know anything about that particular game; throw away all those pre-conceived notions you just got. It’s not what you think and yes I know what you are thinking. Toss out the whole Ann Rice, Anita Blake, tight leather and lace, pansy ass, vampire images. See told you I knew what you were thinking.

When run correctly, a live-action game is a social-political one. It is basically a power struggle set in a social setting of people who don’t really like hanging out with each other in the first place.

I can so easily see setting up a Live-Action Role-Playing game right now based on Deadwood. I wouldn’t use the Deadwood setting exactly but instead maybe do it as either sci-fi or fantasy setting, but the set-up could be mimicked under both. The sci-fi or fantasy thing just lets you throw in some other magic or technology items that help role-playing games. For example things like healing potions/med-kits that allow injured characters to quickly recover from injuries.

But look at the set-up of the power structure in Deadwood. Most of the major characters in Deadwood are completely supported by the miners. They don’t mine themselves, but rather run casinos, brothels, and the like which are supported by the regular people aka the hoopla heads. I can easily see setting up the really good power players as owners of casino/brothels just like in Deadwood. In the show each of the major players then has a cast of secondary players which new major characters have to interact with to learn the lay of the land. This is how the two major players learn what is going on and how the goals of the new people fit in with their own goals and motivations. For example in the first few episodes where Bullock and Wild Bill first arrive in town, Swearenger is worried that Bullock and Wild Bill are together and will open a business that will compete with him. Bullock and Swearenger’s archetypes are already diametrically opposed to each other. That sets up some good role-playing. Both Swearenger and Bullock get to play off each other and interact with the secondary characters to establish themselves. Later when you have Hearst come in, look how he both opposes and aligns himself with the existing power players. I’m only a few episodes into the 3rd season and haven’t seen him interact too much with the secondary players but I can see how I would arrange that. Man I could do so much with that setting. Maybe I’ll just steal it for a short story or something.

My Brother and his Fire Staff

I was talking to some friends earlier today about when the balance of power shifted between my little brother Alex and me while we were growing up. One day he is the little brother and I can beat him up and the next he is bigger than me, lettering in Wrestling and eventually getting his 3rd degree black belt.

I remember our last fight when he was a Junior in High School. He pinned me to the ground in the front yard and then waited till I gave up. It took me about 45 minutes to finally admit that he beat me.

As it so happened when I got home tonight I found an email from my friend's wife, Rita. She tapped this performance of Alex playing around with a fire staff in his backyard.



I was really excited when she told me that she put the video up on YouTube, but I have to say I think I know some flashier moves. Granted I've never tried them while the staff was on fire so there is that. I have a desire to go out and play with a staff right now and see what I can whip up. It’s only the lack of a staff that prevents me. I left all that stuff back in Vegas.

Finally I think I should point out that he did have people standing around pretty close so maybe he didn't want to do anything that might get away from him and risk setting them on fire. Also Alex hasn't been doing the serious martial arts training for a few years now; though I'm sure he could still whoop my ass pretty easily.

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.

Just a real quick post from work

There is a review of ‘Fury’ in the July 2007 issue of Atomic, an Australian computing and technology magazine, It should have hit the stands today though I didn’t see it when I checked out the news agent at lunch.

Also, Lords of the Dead, one of the guilds participating in our ongoing pre-beta weekend tests have posted their first impressions of ‘Fury’.

And now I’m off to Sydney. Why you ask, for a game convention, trade show or something else exciting? No. I lost my passport and I have to go in person to the U.S. Consulate in Sydney to report it lost and apply for a new one. I did manage to get a list of all the comic book stores around Darling Harbor so it won’t be a total wasted trip.

Oh by the way there are still 'Fury' pre-beta keys available from IGN. We are increasing the number of players each weekend during the pre-beta period. Just remember that this is still an unfinished version of the game. It isn't even at the beta stage hence the name "pre-beta". Now I'm sure YOU understand that, but you know how those other people are.

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.

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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. :-)