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Montgomery Markland

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Everything posted by Montgomery Markland

  1. This isn't really the appropriate place to discuss this, but if anyone wants to ask me questions about anything at all, feel free to add me on Facebook: Montgomery Lee Markland
  2. Mixing business and art is a feat rarely accomplished, but it is not an impossibility as many great novels and films attest. The game industry is still in its nascent stages. For most of the early days of "movies," the "art form" consisted of nickel arcades showing nudie flicks. One of the first great "works of art" in the film industry was the unabashedly prejudicial The Birth of a Nation. Movies had been around in various forms, primarily exploitative, for the better part of two decades when D.W. Griffith's epic hit the screens. As for equating Obsidian to McDonald's, the analogy is so absurd as to not warrant challenge.
  3. Since when are you "any reasonable person"? Haha, fair enough.
  4. I am leaving Obsidian. It is by choice; but that is not a reflection on Obsidian -- I simply have an opportunity any reasonable person would pursue. Obsidian is a great studio. I would love to work with all of the owners again in the future. I'll miss working with many of the game creators at the company; but I intend to see them all socially as I am not leaving Southern California. As for "company loyalty" and that other nonsense... The average time spent at a single company is dropping across all industries. This isn't the 1950s; I'm not going to sexual harass the secretary and I'm not going to hold onto some vestige of feudal fealty in the form of "corporate loyalty." Business is business.
  5. 1) Start a mod team for a game such as Half Life, Unreal, Call of Duty, Crysis, Fallout, etc. Keep the scope of your mod small (one single awesome playable level) and add one unique, compelling gameplay feature to the game. When you have that finished, polish it for months, work on the audio, the visuals, everything. Create the most awesome section of game for whatever modding platform you have chosen and then use that as your demo reel. You'll get interviews if you execute well and the rest is up to you and your interviewing skills. (This route has the con that you are not making connections inside of the industry while you are working on your reel). 2) Get a job doing QA for a studio and in your spare time learn the tech that the studio uses and create the exact same thing I described above in your spare time. Do a competent job as a QA guy at the same time. Use your creations as your internal job application. This approach probably has a higher success rate, but it chains your ability to advance to the studio you work in some regards (ie you might not ever be able to show what you make to anyone outside the studio, limiting your portfolio's utility unless you go make something with some publicly accessible tools). Basically, make an awesome level for a game and you will get a job unless you are scum (and if your level is awesome enough you can probably get away with being scum too -- I'm sort of scummy sometimes and I have a job).
  6. Ancient evil comes back to wipe everyone out is one of the oldest stories the human race tells. So, it's not really fair to say anyone ripped it off when they are telling a variation of the old myth. There is nothing new under the sun.
  7. All the Phillip Marlowe books - 'The Big Sleep,' 'The Long Goodbye,' 'The High Window' - were set in LA. Are you thinking of Ernest Fontana's "Chivalry and Modernity in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep." ? The Long Goodbye is so good
  8. Alternating between Mass Effect and Dead Space for single player and CoD5 and L4D for multiplayer.
  9. It's nearing the top of my list of things to do (getting the new guys on the purgatorio team some support from my end) -- it's been an insanely busy 6 months.
  10. These would all be awesome: 1. Bladerunner 2. Altered Carbon 3. The Call of Cthulhu 4. Terminator (Post-Nuclear Holocaust) 5. Warhammer 40,000 6. Mad Max 7. Rifts 8. Shadowrun 9. Neuromancer 10. Firefly
  11. Individuals obtain mastery over written expression through practice. So... write a ****load of stuff. Write everyday. You are a writer if you are writing. If you don't write, you are not a writer. Write short stories. Write plays. Write screenplays. Write game narrative content for a mod team. Write non-fiction. Write journalistic pieces. Write speeches for politicians or corporate figures. Write for the college newspaper. Write for pay if you can and for free if you can't. Write forum posts. Experiment with different styles. Learn all of the rules so that you can break the rules when appropriate. Consider your degree options in terms of utility. Most degrees provide little real-world value unless you obtain a degree that establishes some low-level form of credentials or credibility. Seeking a degree in liberal arts disciplines such as English or history will compel you to become more familiar with the associated subject matters; however, you can compel yourself to obtain the same degree of familiarity without external pressure. A computer science degree will provide the most utility when it comes time for you to apply for game development jobs. Try to get published. Start with small market literary publications. Search the web for potential markets. Find websites like this: Short Story markets and submit your material to the various places. You'll get probably 1000 rejections for every acceptance, even if you are competent. Ignore that because it's irrelevant, all you are trying to do is build momentum at this point. Definitely write or design something for a mod team, preferably one that actually releases something. Combine released mod work with published written work with a comp sci degree and you will turn yourself into a saleable entity. Add in some experience doing QA and you will be in really good shape.
  12. This thread is really starting to make me want to play Mass Effect again, but there are too many other games to play right now. rofl Allow me to appoligise in a most humble fashion for being an arrogant idiot. I should have picked up on your humour. p.s. Hershey's *URGK*. I'm looking forwards to ME2, ME's story was perhaps the most enjoyable experience I've had since BG 1. Honestly apologies not necessary. I wouldn't wrestle in the mud with you guys if my feelings were hurt easily.
  13. I'm not so sure of that, buck-o. Anyhow, any ideas? Mass Effect or Left4dead? You clowns can be funny, but you're not so bad at suggesting decent games. L4D is a must play if you like multiplayer action games at all. It's really an amazingly well done game. Mass Effect is certainly in the top 10 should-play games of the past two years, but imho, L4D is at the top of that list with little competition. P.S. Nightshape - I don't care if you call me a retard, but you should try and be funnier about it. Also, Hershey's will be the first to go.
  14. Don't be a tard. If you're not willing to converse about the topic, that's fine. EA outsource's alot of artwork, I know for a fact they did this with burnout paradise, I also know that if an asset wasn't of a high enough quality it was ditched. I'm merely commenting on trends and how companies work... Obsidian as an independent developer isn't likely to work the same way as an internal EA developer. "Your level designers who ignore aesthetics won't care." I wouldn't say that about a single level designer I work with. Infact I know the extents they're going to. You got served
  15. This would rock. We should start a Planescape D&D campaign and record it. For a very brief time we had two cool PnP sessions going. A D20 Modern thing with the Dark Matter setting run by Nat Chapman and a WH40K campaign using whatever the rpg thing is called for that run by J.R.
  16. Volourn, don't be a noob. Graphics in NWN1 were dated. The game was awesome as a platform for modding, one of the best ever, BECAUSE of the dated graphics (tilesets, etc.). The dated graphics also made the multiplayer/pw scene robust for obvious reasons. Good RPGs have traditionally lagged the pack in render tech (though that's changing). Half Life 2 was released 2.5 years after NWN1's release. Are you telling me NWN1's graphics are only 2.5 years behind Half Life 2's?
  17. If you use biotic powers combat is pretty cool, just like combat in Bioshock is pretty cool if you use your plasmids. Gun-only combat in both games isn't quite up to snuff with games that focus solely on ranged combat and nail it, but that's understandable given limited resources split among multiple combat systems. Dude no worries, I wasn't irritated at all; just being snarky. You have to admit the nazi/straw man joke owned. Also, whoever was arguing about outsourcing and stuff... whatever. If you want to outsource your art to a second world country and get poorly optimized meshes with weaksauce normal and spec maps, go for it. Your level designers who ignore aesthetics won't care.
  18. [ontopic] Honestly, compared to 99% of the games that ever graced a video display, KOTOR1, KOTOR2 and Mass Effect are all finely wrought pieces of craftmanship. Do they have their flaws? Sure, but they each entertained a significant portion of their multi-million audience. This is a personal choice, but I try to not let perfect get in the way of enjoyable. For example, are Superbad or Minority Report classics? Who knows? Were they enjoyable movies? Sure. I liked 'em. I didn't go in with inflated expectations and I feel like I got my money's worth in entertainment value. Enjoying a game is a personal choice. In fact, an individual's preconceptions and expectations probably have as much to do with the enjoyment of a game as the design or any other component. [/offtopic] [sarcasm] I'm glad we skipped logic straight away and went right for the straw men. I would continue this discussion with you, but it's clear you support national socialism so all of your points are invalid. In what layer of the Abyss did we sit down and have a discussion about legitimizing why I post at the codex and elsewhere? I explained why I post at various game forums. I could not possibly care less whether you think my reasons are legitimate. [/sarcasm] [didactic (okay so this meta tag is pretty sarcastic)] Feed/Teach Man->Fish You can't always have good collaboration between well-informed and educated coworkers operating in a professional manner with a communal interest in aesthetic quality when you first wake up in the morning. GET ME MY COFFEE AND A WELL-OILED CREATIVE TEAM COLLABORATING IN REAL TIME WITH THE FORESIGHT TO SELF MANAGE THEMSELVES AND UNLIMITED PROGRAMMING RESOURCES TO SUPPORT THEM ALSO I LIKE SOME WHISKEY IN MY COFFEE THANKS!!1111 But if you cultivate that sort of thing, you'll find it happens more than it does not. People rise to the challenge. Most people prefer to get engaged in their work product if they are properly managed. Outsourcing the art with some direction designed to provide consistency and level designers ignoring visuals and aesthetics might suffice in some circumstances, but it's not going to predictably produce quality levels. I'll end with some mealy-mouthed sentimentalism: People often meet your expectations, no matter how low. Expect little of people, and you will get little. Expect a lot of people, and sometimes you will still get little, but sometimes you will get lots. The net gain in expecting a lot of people is, therefore, apparent. [/didactic] [ontopic] All this talk of Mass Effect is going to get me to replay the game I think. I really did enjoy the crit path a lot after the first few hours. [/offtopic] I also used to like Big Macs before I became a vegetarian.
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