Joseph Bulock

Exactly.

E3 is a trade show. Vendors show their wares, and attempt to generate interest in their product. I would love for it to be more of a "film festival" type experience, but the industry just isn't there yet. I'll pose these questions. Are two drunkards fighting in an alley performance artists? Is Pro Wrestling art? Are professional sporting events art? Is news coverage of a battlefield art? Of course the counter to these is: Is a movie about any of those things art? Is it art just by virtue of being a movie, or does it have to do something particular? Which side of the fence does a game that attempts to create an interactive cinematic experience of any of these events fall on? Once again, is it art because it existed, or is it art because it did something artfully? And finally, just to be pretentious, it has been argued that art cannot exist in the commercial realm. Once art becomes commodity, it looses the "essence" of art. How does this effect video games, which never have an original, which are instead, only designed for mass consumption?

I'm going to point out a fact that has generally been beat to death. Video games are a brand new medium. Most of us forget that because most of us grew up with video games, and have seen the dramatic development of the technology that fuels the medium. However, we can't forget that movies were the exact same way back at the turn of the century. Once film and cameras were developed, technology expanded rapidly for about three decades, but many of the films are not what we would consider "a movie" by modern standards. They were explorations of the technology, with only a secondary consideration given to content and meaning. I think were still generally in that phase of maturation as far as interactive media is concerned. We have our Shadow of the Colossus's and our Half-Life's, but these are only the Nosferatu's of our generation, pioneering gems that found a balance of technology and vision that hint at the possibilities of the future.

Plenty of programmers in the industry do not have programming degrees, and plenty do. The one thing that Hurl shot has right is that a 22 year old with no experience won't get a programming job. Will a degree make much of difference? Nope. If the programmer happened to spend some time actually learning programming while in school (which is barely required to graduate from plenty of programming degree programs) and can put together some clean, efficient code, that will make a difference. I can't think of a single employee here at Obsidian that got their job here by showing a degree. I can however name tons of people that came in here without one, but great demos, and tons of experience (not to mention great attitudes and amazing work ethic) and are of course, our coworkers. In my experience, degrees aren't worth much of anything in the game industry. The serve as water cooler talk. What gets you in the door is whatever you teach yourself, either in school, working on mods, or through self education.

If thats the same Intro to Discrete Mathematics I have, you should give it a read. I loved that class when I took it, and the book was solid.

Definitely not fish soup. I am vegan/vegetarian.

Once again, you astound me sir.

If you let me try NWN2 for an hour, I will cook tofu for you. Chinese restaurant style. Deal? If I hadn't just come back from dinner, this would have been tempting... Sorry.

That's a shame, but I'm the same way with apples Do you like cookies? Cookies are the best.

Do you like bananas? I only like bananas dried. Fresh bananas have a texture that I just can't get past.

I love tofu.

While I agree that some QA jobs are like this, I don't think it has to be this way. It really depends on the company. In my experience, the larger the company, the worse treatment for the QA. I've worked at a large publisher, and it was just as you say. However, working with a much smaller publisher was very relaxed, and they tried to take decent care of us. Obsidian, of course, takes the cake. They treat their testers like real people, and respect QA as vital to the project. Definitely the best tester job I've ever had/heard of.

botp Can I get a translator?

One thing to consider is that the idea of Hit points themselves are fairly detrimental to the immersive quality of a game. I'm personally a fan of the (very few) games that did away with them, and tried different damage systems entirely. While it had its problems, the Bushido Blade series did some fun things without HP and health bars. I only point this out because right now so many of the attempts at immersion are very superficial. Yes your characters might limp in Resident Evil 4, but they don't have problems firing their guns when their hurt, they don't fun faster at full health, etc. Basically, I don't have to worry about my health except to make sure I don't die, and to me, thats not immersive.

The best thing about MGS Twin Snakes is that the new cinematics were directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, the same guy who made Versus and Azumi. For those who don't know his work, it's crazy, over the top action.

Cube - Mario Strikers - MGS: Twin Snakes - Eternal Darkness - Animal Crossing GBA -Super Dodge ball

Animal Crossing: Wild World Nintendogs and still working on We Love Katamari.

It was not done well.

OEI will have our new megafast connection after the holidays, so you can expect us on the server a fair amount more in 2006.

Damn, sounds as if you're setting us up for some serious ownage there. I'm updating to 1.2 but the problem is that the game starts to load. screen goes black and the blinks a few times then drops me back at desktop... I think I need to swap graphics cards again I have this problem on my home machine sometimes. A log out and log back in always takes care of this for me. Can't promise it'll fix it, but give it a shot.

We usually hop on around 5:30 on Wednesday. Personally, I love going medic. Nothing but a vehicle is going to kill me in one shot, and medic is awesome for taking out snipers. It's also fun to keep a wave of guys going towards a flag that a few guys think they can hold down.

I would argue for the overly sexual cat girl as most annoying stereotype, though over sexual girl with massive gun and quiet guy with massive sword both rank very high.

For people who enjoy anime, BESM (not bessen) is a really fun rules system. It plays with the stereotypes found in the worst of the genre, while allowing for a GM to build stories reflective of the best of the genre.

Working at Obsidian is never boring. :D

There are currently a number of OEI employees on the server, if anyone wishes to shoot at us, and be shot at in turn.