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.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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.What not to do? Panic.
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.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
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!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Gamecock Fury at GDC '07
Yesterday was Gamecock's big press day at the Game Developer's conference so lets go surf the tubes for industry press. Heading over to Google with a search for "GDC Fury" to see what we can find...
"Fury First Impressions" from Firing Squad.
Hmm, not a bad write up. Pretty good actually. Some screen shots of the new levels. Doesn't look like he understood that those were pre-built characters and you don't have to be "offensive or defensive based characters which can concentrate either on long range or melee attacks."
What else can I find...
"Fury First Look" from Gamespot.
Okay this guy hasn't done a very good job.
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.
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.
"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.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
CDC Games Invests in Auran
This story has been going around the business news wires:
What I love is this bit that always gets included in Auran press releases:
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. :-)
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 AuranSee 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.
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.
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. :-)
Monday, February 26, 2007
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.
You can buy one for yourself from Thinkgeek.
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.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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:
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.
The first words of mine ever to appear in print were 'Dear Stan and Jack.'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.
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.
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.
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.Laugh out loud.
"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."
Monday, February 19, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monday, February 12, 2007
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!"
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!"
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