Slowtrain

I'm waiting for the next story where its revealed some large developer was strapping its employees to a rack and covering them with leeches.

I've seen an embarassingly large number of zombie films.

That's a great list. But you're missing at least three. Rio Bravo: All time classic western of the highest order. One of Waynes best. And Dean Martin is freaking brilliant. The Outlaw Josey Wales: With due apologies to TGTBATU, and Unforgiven, to my mind Eastwood's best. Joe Kidd: Not an epic classic, but a stripped down small scale piece of grit that is always a pleasure to watch, even if FIck Van Patten does give me hives.

I like my shooters cheap and loose.

Ah, work ethics, indeed. And here I was thinking of the moral fiber of the modern developer.

Ethics isn't really something I'd associate with low and mid-level software development positions in any job related sense, so I'm just curious what v_o is referring to. Taking pencils from the office supply room?

Ethics in what sense? Not stealing code from other developers?

That's always a problem. And all these kids going through these new game developer degrees at colleges and universitites is just going to make it worse. WHere do they all expect to work, I wonder.

No. Obsidian's CEO thinks that a simple action RPG that doesn't need character creation potentially sells more copies than a more complex tactical RPG (and he's probably correct). However, he's expressing it in a way that makes it sound like he thinks that gamers used to love character generation but now can't stand it. Completely ignoring the fact that one group (IWD buyers) were a few hundred thousand PC RPG fans while the other is a few million console gamers who just want a random action game. There are plenty of modern PC games that are far more complicated than IWD, but Obsidian obviously isn't interested in making a complex PC game. Saying it's impossible is insulting to those companies and to the gamers who like that type of games. OK that makes sense.

The results would be the same regardless, its the fact that R* wanted it quicker. This means that dev's don't get paid, and are expected to work extreme hours. It is always wrong. It ruins relationships, and quailty of life etc... Just because its games, doesn't mean we want to spend every waking moment of our lives doing just that and nothing else. Do software developers in general, or game developers in specific, have any sort of union? Just looking in from the outside, it would seem a profession that could use one. Developers seem to have to take a lot of abuse.

Wait. People really think the rolling up of a party in IWD is a complex and off-putting activity? That's kind of like saying wiping your backside after a crap is a complex and off-putting activity.

because in the States the average salary in the industry is 90k/year, which is a lot even by NA standards That seems a somewhat higher number than what is usually thrown around. Certainly some developers are making that much, but for an average? Anyway, its not simply annual salary that's the factor but also how many hours per week do you have to put in to collect that annual salary and how miserable are you during those hours and how many additional hours away from the job are required to get the work done as well. Making 100K USD a year isn't so great if your putting in 100+ hour weeks of numbing labor to do it.

Again, the question comes to mind why anyone would want to work in game development. To me it really seems the kind of job you would only do if you couldn't do anything else. I find it kind of bizarre that it seems such a popular course of study for kids these days.

Yep, but we've all known that for a long time now. Reviews, unless they are played exclusively for the lulz like Croshaw, are useless, both for good and bad. One of the values of a game forum like this is you generally get more hinesty and insight into an actual game than you do from the "professionals." I think its kinda cool, really.

The answer is: Borneo.

Well, most of them we've heard before in some form or another, such as it's not DX becuase you can't build a fort ot of garbage cans. *shrug* That may be a perfectly valid point for some. Personally I wasn't so much into building things with trashcans and potted plants in DX. But, if the HR world is extremely limited in interactivity, it coud be an issue for some. I won't know until I play it how I feel about it.

I think System Shock 2 is a better designed game than Deus Ex: more focused, more polished, better AI's, the Dark engine that it used along with Thief 1 and 2 was a fabulous engine for a stealth type game. Deus Ex, otoh, is a lot more complex a game than SS2: DX is less focused but there is much more to it in terms of possibliites of gameplay. The gameworld and levels are also more complex and interesting. SO really for me, it's close to a tie. I used to prefer DX over SS2, but in the end SS2 has had a longer shelf life for me than DX.

I used to use a couple good ones. There was the adventurers mod, which was a big mod that changed a ton of stuff, and made the game much better. Doesn't change the basic % chance to hit though. There was also the giants mod that added a whole buch of new creatures that made exploring the gameworld a lot more fun (and dangerous). DOn't know if these are still around though. Haven't gone looking for a long time. Edit: Here's the giants mods: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View...tail&id=994 I also found a version of the Adventurers mod at PES, but it looks like a truncated version.

Eh,thats nothing. Start worrying when you forget where you put your enemies teeth.. Its dang hard to eat corn on the cob with someone else's teeth though, enemy or not.

I remember the second one. Wouldn't call it a romance, not in the BIowarian sense. Regardless, anything from MW is a bad example since MW was basically when Bethesda was at the height of their writing powers; they've not shown for a long time that they are capable of anything close to that.

I'm waiting for id's next engine iteration to have a romance module.

That probably explains why I can't remember where I put my teeth.

We just slumber uneasily. It doesn't take much to wake us up.

lol. It was due to happen though. RPG's are rapidly becoming dating sims. Thanks Bioware.

Ah ha. I see a new lucrative revenue stream for game publishers: charging players for in game fixes when they encounter problems. If you get a quest item stuck in your inventory, just go a an in-game store and log in to the publishers tech help and for .95 they'll remove it from your inventory. Troika would still be in business if Sierra had thought of that.