Nightshape

Not anytime soon... Well unless you count the NGP and the 3DS.

... If only things were that simple.

Are you actually saying DA2 is bad?

I'm joining him for a week. You should donate kirottu!

1- I guess it's to do with marketing, I'm actually dead set against it, I think the games industry should be open. What I can say is, there are alot of office politics at some places, and also some pre-madonna moments, due to stress exhaustion etc... I actually think what you'll find is, people love working in this industry or they leave. The ones that leave do so because they don't love it enough to put up with the negatives. I would love to be part of a behind the scenes documentary in which a development team was followed for a full dev cycle till release, and this is exactly how I think it should be, sadly everyone seems to be worried about image. 2- It isn't horrible, there are just occasionally bad projects, that turn into death marches... Its sad, but it happends. There is something to be said in seeing a project to the end, and there is something to be said for knowing when to move on. If you really want to work in games, you can make it, but it isn't easy getting that first shot, and it never seems to get easier, but stick with it and you'll end up finding a balance between work and life that works for you, and part of that is finding the right company to work for. The link should be fixed. I hope it inspires you.

You had a childhood... I thought you were the eternal 'Volourn' ! I don't think that DA 2 writing is bad... But, it's not the best writing I've seen in a game, but then again Heavy Rain won a bafta for best story, and that whilst not bad, wasn't exactly award worthy. It's a funny old world.

There is also this perspective:

I'm very sorry, I hope you can understand that I cannot - despite wanting to. Can we ask why you can't? NDA's and not wanting to be blacklisted. Also, its a bit like dishing the dirt on your drinking buddies... Some of these people are good friends of mine, I wouldn't want to upser them. Edit: Please bare in mind that I will and do share as much as I can, because I really do think that the gaming public is one, interested in what happends behind closed doors... Like any culture of celebrity, (just not in the same way as say hollywood), and two, gamers are intelligent enough to actually understand and respect the process of games development, and hence why sometimes things turn out the way they do, and thiirdly, I'm a gamer like you guys, I love games.

I'm very sorry, I hope you can understand that I cannot - despite wanting to.

Out of curiosity, are you willing to recount some stories? I'm sorry, I can't.

I'm posting this with Fionavar's consent Hello Obsidianites, Tomorrow I embark upon a grand adventure, I shall be meeting up with my friend and ex-games industry colleague Andreas Gschwari, an Austrian fellow who has decided to dedicate a year of his life to walking round the coastline of Britian. That's about 4500-5000 miles on foot. I will be joining him for 5-6 days, to walk the Yorkshire coastline with him, the whole point of this post is to try and raise a little awareness for Andreas and the cause he's walking for. He's walking for a charity called Trees for life, the charity is dedicated to restoring the caledonian forest. Alot of the UK's forests were cut down over the last 1000 years or so, and as a result alot of wildlife has lost its habitat. This I believe is a step in the right direction. Andreas has a facebook page, blog, and website where you can offer donations to the charity. I'd like to thank you for your time reading this, along with thanks to Fionavar, and Obsidian Entertainment for allowing me to post this here. Wish me luck on my journey. Cheers Chris "Nightshape" Hardwick

Are you the rubberbanding developer ? I think everyone's worked at good and bad places. My job is ok, dealing with whiney babies known as Repo traders, wish we had a coffee maker though. Rubberbanding developer... No... Just some low-level tech goon. The thing about all industries, be it games or not, some jobs will expect you to work longer, and harder for nothing, this is one of the reasons why the games industry is considered immature. I've heard some seriously horrible stories, I've experienced certain things first hand, and I've also had some great times. We've all met someone like the cardboard box man in the video, and equivalents for other industries. I do miss the Codies coffee machine, free latte was always nice.

He is the best game designer of all time, who no one talks about. He was the lead in System Shock, designer and programmer in Ultima Underworld 1 and 2, and had a hand in most other LGS projects from Terra Nova to Thief. His part in Deus Ex was minor, as far as I know. He's not known because his role in various games is bit unclear. He's programmer and designer, but I guess most think he's just programmer. For example in Ultima Underword: Producer: Warren Spector Director: Richard Garriott Design: Paul Neurath Doug was one of the programmers. In Ultima Underworld II he's already leading the team with important positions. Project Leader: Doug Church Lead Design: Tim Stellmach Design: Doug Church, Paul Neurath Lead Programming: Doug Church Producer: Warren Spector Director: Paul Neurath System Shock: Producer: Warren Spector Project Leader: Doug Church Lead Programmer: Doug Church Warren Spector might have been given credit that actually belong to Doug Church. From Thief onwards, Ken Levine (sort of) takes his place so quality stay high during his run all the way to System Shock 2. Only thing I can't figure out is DeusEX. Doug and Kenny are gone, Warren remains. Lead Designer is Harvey Smith. Then come DeusEx Invisible War and all bets are off. What really happend between those two games? Your basic consolization (that we see in every game nowadays) maybe? Or was the input from Doug so important for the DeusEx - credited Special Thanks (Additional Programming and Design Input) Doug Church - that he still played the key part in what made that game so great. In DeusEx Invisible War Doug didn't do anything, but got credit in Special Thanks. Please... Unless you know the man STFU.

I enoy my job working on Fifa, it really isn't all bad. I've worked at good and bad places.

GFY.

How? Where's episode 3? Probably waiting for sufficient inspiration. They tend to work on projects they have interesting ideas for. Episode 2 was half retreading ideas that were already tired by the time Half-Life 2 ended. You do realise I was being sarcastic? *sigh* Valve doesn't operate in the same environment as most other developers.

How? Where's episode 3?

Eh, don't complain too much about those cutscenes. 'Cause then the devs will make the cutscene long and unskippable and place it before a hard boss battle that requires a specific pattern you need to learn through trial and error. You complain about that too, then they add Quick time events! Now not only is the cutscene unskippable, but you have to tap random buttons that pop up as fast as you can, follow that by a segment of mashing a button as fast as you can giving you early carpel tunnel syndrome. Miss just one button press or you don't mash that button as furiously as you should have and start again! Plain old cutscenes aren't that bad. Why can't all game developers be like Valve? Valve are lazy... But they can afford to be.

Mostly the 3D over 2D thing was related to memory consumption.

For some reason your post made me think of Wizardry. Love that game... Especially the faery ninjas'.

The problems with PC gaming, and PC gamers aren't anything to worry about. It's just some developers genuinely can't be bothered. It won't sell enough copies to justify the development expenditure. That's a common one, along with the piracy angle. Not that I agree, but I have noticed that PC SKU's tend to exist when someone is not only willing to fight for it, but also make it happen. That's how things seem to be in my experience, when you get the PC SKU, its a few developers on the team who've fought hammer and nail to make sure it happends, and they're usually the ones doing alot of the work. That said my experience is limited to a few products. When I was at Codies, they dropped the PC SKU, for Bodycount, after about 6 months, I personally believe that was a terrible mistake, but it still happend.

Yeah, that's no shock to me... I don't even know why it exists personally.

With regards to ? Anything thet don't like, like say DA 2...