Nightshape

Yeah, sucks when governments make decisions like this but what can you do... Atleast we've upset the American's that's always a win.

As some of you may know, a few years ago I started work at a small start-up games company called Canalside Studio's (University in house games studio). I spent a year at Canalside working on a game called Yo Ho Kablammo, this was the year that it came second in the Dream Build Play competition. My contract ended after a year, I went on to finish my degree, and get a professional games industry job. The next year of guys from the University, plus some of those which chose to stay on and finish up the game have finally done so, it's had an immensely long development cycle for a game so small, but it's done. You can now buy Yo Ho Kablammo from XBLA for 800 MS points. Enjoy. Screenies and stuff

Modern warfare games have been done just as much. Completely disagree about Treyarch. Sure their single player is usually a bit disapointing, but their multiplayer almost always owns IW's. Call of Duty 1 was excellent, but Treyarch's additions in United Offensive made the multiplayer amazing. Call of Duty 3 has awesome class based multiplayer. World at War removes a lot of the cheese and makes the game more skill based. Dogs kick the heck out of aim bot helicopters. True enough.

Wait. And. See. That answer's a cop-out, Nightshade. You think that Dragon Operation game you're working on will make CoD:MW2 obsolete? They're not related. I am not working on Operation Flashpoint, please don't associate me to anything unless I've associated myself with a project, which I will do in good time. I won't be explaining, and you can badger me all you like, I'm not moving an inch.

Wait. And. See. AND ITS NIGHTSHAPE DAG NABIT!

Lets see... Well I wouldn't mind playing Alpha Protocol, and Brutal Legend. Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 will likely keep me entertained. But if I was to look at this year as a whole, its been bad, a very poor year. Oh and as far as CoD:MW 2 goes I believe it is obsolete.

I would imagine that this has already earned back several times what it cost to make. Bioware did drop the ball with Mass Effect DLC, it's one thing Bethesda has NAILED for FO3, love it or hate it, they've delivered loads of content consistantly.

Ahem. The Lord Weird Slough Feg, saw 'em in London YEARS ago, awesome \m/ I didn't realise they were on the Brutal Legend soundtrack.

I'm sorry... Die can represent realism...?

With both Avalanche and GRIN doing massive layoffs/closing the job market is oversaturated. And foreign companies dont hire foreigners without years of industry experience, so it looks grim. Im thinking about becoming a magician/illusionist instead, I hear there is money to be made in that particular banana stand. We've hired both a Swedish and French graduates. So you're wrong, I think you're workshy.

I find the replacing only a few icons tends to work better. Most people I've tried this with tend to figure it out pretty quickly when none of the icons work, but when it's only a couple icons they tend to get tripped up much more. Takes longer before they get hit by it, but the delay is worth it. And this is why you always lock your desktop when you leave your desk, people. So true.

Some guys from my Uni that works there have confirmed that they're closing down, and no one knows why yet. Swede paper IDG reports that ex-employees have said that it was because they lost contracts they had counted on getting. So whats the lesson here? Dont count on keeping yourself afloat by churning out an endless stream of mediocre-to-bad games? Grin *shudders*, you're right though, what else can you expect from a developer that churns out so much crap. Talking of which Kaft me olde, when you gunna finally get an industry job and start being a real designer opposed to sitting in ye white tower proclaiming magnificence?

So I'd be right to say you're not into girl on girl action . You're spot on though, developers are afraid to deal with sex from a serious perspective, its a hard thing to do. What was it Josh said, something along the lines of developers not being able to treat certain matters seriously or something along those line. Now from a male perspective, I don't mind collecting cards with half nakid women on 'em, I appriciate naked womenses, but I'm afraid of real women , objectify woman oh mighty developers and then I won't have to deal with my social inadequacy. *fap* *fap*.

PROGRESS QUEST!

I stand corrected, I didn't express myself well there at all. I love the story behind IWD: sometimes less is more and, yeah, even the item descriptions give a great sense of place. What I meant is that the setting is... ambient, it's good but it doesn't get in your face. TBH, fighting through the Yuan-Ti temple was so much fun I completely forgot the setting, but that's a good thing in my book. As for the music - for me the best of any IE game, period. Cheers MC I actually ended up prefering IWD to BG2, I found myself enjoying the narrow scope, and linear level design more than the non-linear lets shove it all in chapter 2, of Baldurs Gate 2. You're right though, IWD's story is up there, I always felt I knew the world more than I did while playing any other IE game, this was based purely on the delivery.

I was saying DON'T BUY SECOND HAND GAMES. Not, not to trade a game in to buy new.

I love the way the price gap between PC and Console is spoken of as simply being a licencing cost. It's part of it but not the whole picture. Console development is more expensive than PC development, you have Development kits (they don't come cheap), you also have something called TRC's, this is basically certain requirements which are required to be passed in order for a game to see release on console, good companies can usually do this in one or two passes, but it can take months. PC development, theoretically, is only the cost of a PC and software, which are incurred by default by console development also. This is before you take into account the actual cost of paying everyone who is developing said title, and potentially middleware any licence said software may require. That's about all I feel safe to talk about to be honest. PC games are cheaper because development costs are cheaper, but as a result the product quality is often lower as anyone could release on the PC, open platform. Console as a closed platform are easier to develop higher quality software for, but on the flip side, the development cost itself is greater, this is obviously passed onto the user. In an era of development budgets that run into millions, and can be considered to be somewhat high risk, a game costing

AI could be better than it is currently, it's the fact that extremely good AI isn't fun. AI, should be called AS, that is Artificial Stupidity.

I got a promo copy of Overlord 2... I'm actually impressed, makes me wanna go buy Overlord. Damn minions are cute...

Ya know, I don't even REMEMBER the area that you guys are on about, so it can't have been that hard. Infact, I don't recall a single area that was exceptional in difficulty throughout the entire game. So I find this Darth Jebus's guys claims utterly out of whack. That said, it's a bit like hades and the whole werewolf escapade.

COD4 feels bland and static... Sure it runs at 60fps, but you never really make an impact on the world. It's really static, it's one of those, oh look I can shoot through walls, why don't you show me to wall blow apart. Black really changed the way I think about FPS's on consoles.

I agree.

Extremely well spoken, probably some of the simplest but to the point advise i've read in along time.

I can't believe Sawyer digs Isis, probably the most awesome thing i've learnt about the guy

...... You must have a strange sense of what gameplay is then.