There’s a series of interviews - by our old friend John Walker - over on Rock, Paper, Shotgun (for some reason, I keep typing Rock, Scissors, Shotgun) that has been picked up by Slashdot. This, according to the kids, is “way cool” - and I’m going to have to take their word for it. I’m not into that whole slashdotting thing so I wouldn’t know. I only use the net for old person things, like reading articles, looking up difficult words and paying bills.
(Also, occasionally, to look at videos of Japanese schoolgirls inserting aquatic vertebrates into their private parts. I mean, who doesn’t?)
Continue reading ‘/.’
Screenshots have ‘leaked’ (as part of Funcom’s quarterly report, so not so much ‘leaked’ as ’sneakily released’) and you’re getting a look-see at the very latest pre-pre-pre-Alpha (or whatever we’re calling it this week) of The Secret World.
Specifically the juicy-tender combat action-y bits of The Secret World; not so much the conspiracies and politics and adventures and stories and all that funky jazz. We’ll get there. The band’s warming up.
Continue reading ‘The latest word on The Secret World’
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is now (and has been for about a week or so) available on the Xbox 360 (the preferred console of true game connoisseurs, don’t you know?) in all territories (except the UK) as an Xbox Original, via the Xbox Live Marketplace (downloadable content rocks).
So why not the UK? It has to do with ratings, and since we’re in no position to go through the ratings process all over again - it’s a pretty harrowing and time-consuming process, unfortunately, and requires the submission of tons of assets to the ratings board - we have to leave the tea-drinkers hanging. Blame the bloody BBFC. (Censorship FTW!)
I personally purchased and downloaded the game on my Xbox last week - when it was finally available for sale in Norway - despite the fact that I have every single edition published thus far, including the Steam version. It’s tradition. Like Christmas. And dwarf tossing.
Oh, and the headline is a bit misleading, because games do get re-released. I don’t even know how many times The Longest Journey has been published in a new edition at this point (probably close to one million times), and we probably, most likely, hopefully haven’t seen the last of Dreamfall either. And remember, the more times you buy the games, the bigger your reward. In heaven.
From 1997 to 2007, I attended every single E3 - the first two years in Atlanta, Georgia (showing off The Longest Journey at a tiny booth with home-made, laminated posters), and every subsequent year, until 2006, at the Los Angeles Convention Centre Center.
Not so this year. This year, I’m staying home.
Continue reading ‘Not at E3, and why’
(I wrote this article a few weeks ago, but for some reason I didn’t get around to posting it.)
Iron Man was fantastic. That’s accepted comic book geek code by now. They got it right and Marvel’s off to a flying start producing their own movies. They’re rebuilding the universe on the silver screen, character by - excluding the X-Men and Spider-Man - character.
Continue reading ‘Make mine Marvel - finally’
The Secret World is growing fast, but we’re far from fully staffed. Here are some of the positions we’re looking to fill right now:
Continue reading ‘More than just a job’
Music I purchased today:
Sigur Rós, Von. Feist, Let It Die. Mew, And the Glass Handed Kites. Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.
I don’t know why I haven’t bought Von before, since I have everything else by Sigur Rós - including their latest, Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (”with buzzing in our ears, we play endlessly”; great title, great album), but hey, new music to write to. I need music to write, and I get some of my best writing done to Sigur Rós.
(Also, my daughter loves it and falls asleep to Hvarf/Heim every night.)
The rest of the stuff I haven’t listened to yet, but I’ll get around to it soon. If there’s one thing I always have time for, it’s music. At the office, on the road, at the gym - I’m never without my iPod and my music library.
Andrew Stanton of Pixar on their approach to the creative process:
The day we start thinking about what the audience wants, we’re going to make bad choices. We’ve always holed ourselves up in a building for 4 years and ignored the rest of the world, because nobody are bigger movie geeks than we are, so we know exactly what we are dying to see with our family and kids. We don’t need other people to tell us that. We trust the audience member in ourselves.
Which is a philosophy I definitely subscribe to. You can worry yourself green about what players will and won’t like, you can do focus testing on concepts and characters, you can survey the market and conduct polls, you can identify and follow every new trend, but in the end the only opinion you can truly trust is your own and the opinions of those around you - the people who will spend three, four, five years of their lives working on a project. We’re all gamers, we all want to make - and play - the best game possible, and that’s what directs our decisions every single day.
That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to the players and the community, but at the end of the day we need to go with what feels right to us and not second guess our own choices.
(Via /Film)
Age of Conan has launched, summer has arrived, I’ve been absent for way too long and it’s time to answer some questions.
So, when should I mark my calendar to play the new episodes of TLJ that are going to come out?
Continue reading ‘Cacoethes scribendi’
Everyone’s probably already seen this, since it’s been making ‘the rounds’ for a few weeks, but it’s still worthy of a post - if only as a warning of what’s to come.
Continue reading ‘We are all doomed’