alanschu

I don't think you strictly *need* gamepad support for your engine. I think it just provides a boost to gameplay scores (which is most important for games that focus on gameplay, naturally)

I don't have my R&D department up yet, though I believe I do have a designer with 700 skill now. What qualifies as a AAA game? I created some Sci Fi RPGs and the 3 of them have been absurdly successfully. One was just a hair under 5 million units shipped and gave me buckets of cash.

Was able to figure out Game Dev Tycoon. Have about 100+ million sitting in the bank with a large company making games for the 360.

Game Dev Tycoon is kicking my ass. Evidently I'm not very good at making video games! >.>

I'm guessing, at least somewhat, it's motivated by Sundin's presence on the team.

I'm sure reporting on a story that is being spammed to dozens of different news outlets is an express lane to a Pulitzer Prize! Never mind that the contents of said email are about a video game, so I consider your retort to be irrelevant. Unless you think that gaming journalists have a chance on winning the Pulitzer based on their reporting of video games.

This actually isn't true. They only played 80 games in most of the 80s, and during the early 90s they had experimented with 84 game seasons too. Although whether or not it's enough to significantly alter a lot of the record books is another story (though when Gretzky is close to 3 points per game... lol)

I think you are understating it when you say "5 identical messages." Make it 1000+ and it starts to become irresponsible journalism because they are rewarding (and hence encouraging) spammers for their actions. There's news to report, so they should report it, independently of whether it's going to take 2 seconds or 2 minutes to clean their mail. In this case, the spammers happen to be right that there's news to report. Next time there's gonna be a war and people are gonna send their emails about it, in fact so many emails that the journalists will get pissed off and won't report it. Cause your job as a journalist is to discourage spammers, not to report what's real. Expecting the media to be truly objective is living in a fantasy world. I don't agree with your implicit support of the notion that spam is an acceptable and even encouraged way of ensuring your story is seen and recognized. Nor do I agree with the implicit support that a company should not be held accountable for encouraging actions that actually waste time and money. You still understate the time investment. 2 seconds or 2 minutes? I guess if you just shift click. WHOOPS, a genuinely important email that went out about an amber alert for a young child abducted by a child molester ended up squeaking in between the 1000s of emails that were spammed to your account. Or worse yet, the one that didn't get received because an inbox was full. You're not the only person that can come up with exaggerated hypothetical situations where something bad happens. Furthermore, a journalist has always chosen what to report on. There's a reason why we don't see news about Allan showing up to work this morning though. Few people care and it's a waste of time and money to report on that. Though I'm sure some people would still qualify it as news. There is actually anti-spam legislation in places as well, so it really opens up a whole can of worms to support the actions you think are acceptable.

i generally agree, but what happened was the golden era rpg's were heading forward forward forward and then BAM, they just stopped. a few years later we got dumbed down games trying to cater to different audiences instead of deeper experiences built on the groundwork laid by "golden age" crpgs. so now, we need to get back to the "good old days" type of game before trying to improve on them. dragon age 1 was a step in that direction, imo, but that even that game was followed up by a dumbed down acshun!! game as a somewhat related side note: where is the spiritual successor to system shock 2? i guess its deus ex HR, because it sure as heck isn't bioshock infinite. It's uncommon for there to be a "Golden Age" that results in consistent improvement since then. Lest it not actually be called a Golden Age at all. I can see your point about returning to the Golden Age in order to find that magic again, and maybe that will be the case. But I wouldn't call "A return to the way things used to be" as being any sort of a "Golden Age."

If your name is "Allan" you can use the one I got (Whenever I try adding it, however, it says my post is too short...) EDIT: Fixed it. And yes, it is awesome that he told me to Stay Frosty.

Nope. But I did meet Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn, as well as Nathan Fillion and Peter Dinklage.

I went to a local Comic Convention in Calgary.

Yeah, making sure that your demo work aligns somewhat with the project goals is pretty paramount IMO. Especially for a bigger studio that feels those types of press demos are necessary in their marketing campaign.

Well, Bester is suggesting that it'd be irresponsible for the message to get lost in all that spam.

This would be more relevant if Obsidian actually had control over the Fallout IP.

This difference between the late 90s golden age and this possible "upcoming" golden age is that the "upcoming" one is a throwback to the original. In the late 90s, it was still pushing new things. I'm more eager to see what new things come down the pipe with the Kickstarters, rather than promises of going back to the "good old days."

I think you are understating it when you say "5 identical messages." Make it 1000+ and it starts to become irresponsible journalism because they are rewarding (and hence encouraging) spammers for their actions.

I definitely agree you don't owe EA anything. Though I also feel EA doesn't owe you anything either. Companies typically sell because they need the money. Without Richard Garriott selling to Electronic Arts, Origin probably disappears altogether. So even if you absolutely hate every Origin game ever released after Richard Garriott sold Origin, you likely wouldn't have been in any different sort of a spot. You can read up about it here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_14/87-The-Conquest-of-Origin Things to note: Spector and Garriott both talk about how they had minimal "EA interference," until games started running over budget and behind schedule repeatedly. Want to know how Origin dealt with it in the past? Garriott would privately invest his own money. Unfortunately part of the woes of a publicly traded company such as EA means that stuff like that is very difficult to do. Someone like Bethesda would have a bit more leeway, although I'm sure Zenimax still draws the line somewhere. Origin also seemed to struggle with the fact that they had SO MUCH more resources. They doubled their staff in the first year, and doubled their projects. Exactly like Greg Zeschuk said recently, Spector stated that EA gave Origin enough rope to hang themselves with. Once security was established, however, infighting among Origin started to crop up. Some of it due to BS politicking at EA, but it's interesting how once you're no longer fighting for survival, things can suddenly become more competitive. So yeah, EA bought all those companies. Thing is, Origin prior to them was a place of extreme working hours with questionable structure. But fans never care if developers are burning out at unsustainable rates of work, as long as they get good games. Right?

Ah, Poe's Law.

My QA is not "go work at a QA factory in an isolated clean room for $12/hr" though. The reality is that, unfortunately, QA at BioWare isn't particularly transferable to QA at other companies. Some places, like Rockstar, don't even opt for designated QA individuals and mandate that the developers all double as QA. There's been a few people that have come through other QA departments that ended up at BioWare, and it tends to be highly regarded for what it's worth. It's still not as glamorous as programming and the like, nor as universally recognized throughout the industry. I applied for a QA position at BioWare to get my foot in the door. I have stayed in QA at BioWare thus far because they treat me pretty well and respect my contributions as a member of QA. It's flattering when I see a programming post and I mention that I might apply, and the programmers I currently support admit that they would find it bittersweet, because while it'd be an addition to the programming team, it'd mean a loss for their QA support. My primary driver for considering other options at BioWare, however, is more due to the fact that I recognize that moving to a different place in QA and not just becoming a "people manager" is likely not in the cards.

Yeah. I'm guessing it's a bit of a "welcome to turnover and we're scrapping a lot of the things the former-CEO bought into" type of stuff. I'm certainly skeptical that EA got positive ROI on that purchase. Although at the same time, if it IS seen as a sinking ship, it is better to cut losses. I'm not too surprised that there's a lot of cuts going on in the wake of Riccietello's departure. I suspect the FY report isn't going to be very good, which is likely what prompted his dismissal. Because creates a (justified?) perception that gamers in general are typically mudslinging brats. They often justify said actions because of things like "it's just how the internet is" and other stupid stuff like that. It paints gamers in a poor light when they champion absurd things. For instance, when people vote EA the worst company in America, or run off and file an FTC complaint because they were mad at the ending of a video game, it undermines both gaming and gamers and makes us the butt end of jokes. Now, I know some people are innately insular and are very much of the "KEEP IT THE WAY IT IS BECAUSE I LIKE IT THIS WAY" (i.e. whenever people ask for a game, they always ask for sequels or make explicit comparisons to other games they are familiar with). I do feel this undermines gaming as a whole, however, because I like to see *new* things attempted. I always say "Thank goodness we didn't get another sequel instead of Planescape: Torment." Heck, in some of the more ambiguous cases it can be argued that Mr. Fargo's inability to make Wasteland 2 in the late 90s worked out so well for us (because we got Fallout in its stead). Of course, keeping it the way it is is NOT an abundance of RPGs or the types of games that we all like to play here. Keeping the way it is is not taking risks, and it's sticking with where the money is. Ironically, for all the love that Kickstarter is getting, it's a class A example of not "keeping it where it is." On some level it's "going back to where it was," although I'm curious to see how effect that will truly be in the long term, but it's also the place where devs CAN take more risks. The only problem with that, of course, is gamers tend to not know what they're missing when they have never gotten it. No one clamors for another Civilization game, without having experienced a Civilization game. As such, if Sid Meier doesn't make a Civilization game, we all miss out. I'd love to see increased diversity in games, and part of what can motivate that is an increased diversity both in the types of game players, and the types of game developers. So yeah, when I see such glorious things like "Yes! I didn't buy that video game because I don't like that developer!" or even "This dwindling stock price makes me happy" I get frustrated because I'm of the mind that it's not a positive thing for the games industry when someone can look at the demographics and go "these are the type of people that make up such a vocal part of this population." Yes, I'm sure I'd be content with nothing but a lot of isometric RPGs. But then, I only know that because someone decided to go out and try to make an isometric RPGs when there hadn't been any before. Thank goodness he did. Maybe there's something even more awesome out there and we just don't know it yet. tl;dr I dislike it because it seems the perspective that gamers are in many ways immature, is a very accurate assessment when taking into account how overrepresented the vocal people are.

I took some time off due to orthodontic agony, and have a comic con this weekend. Hopefully I am still employed on Tuesday!

They did that with Street Fighter 2 as well.

I guess it reminds me somewhat of Chris Rock's skit:

It did have quite a few actually, they could just all be skipped. Navarre, Gunther (though in his case, skipping=LAM on the wall), Simons, etc. Fair point. I was more referring to the end of the game itself. The thing about the "boss fights" in Deus Ex, however, is that they are mostly just "fights against named characters." They are mildly tougher than your average grunt (which would make sense given they are augmented). You can just run away from Gunther too, I believe. Anna can only be skipped, however, if you glitch her AI (otherwise she must die as Alex won't give you the key otherwise). Even then, the most satisfying way to kill Anna and Gunther is to use their killswitch.