I'm off to London in the morning (the early morning...very, very early) and I'll be rushing from meeting to meeting all Monday and Tuesday, so I don't know if I'll have the time - or the opportunity; my hotel doesn't have broadband, something that seems to be generally lacking in London - to post anything. Just FYI. Last time I was over there, I had approximately six hours between my flights. This time, at least there will be time for a proper dinner. I think. I hope.

Right: back to packing.  ¶ 23:29 1 comments   

  I hope everyone Over There had a cosy and satisfying Thanksgiving - go crazy with the turkey sandwiches and shopping today, people! You really need to kick-start your economy, and what better way than to throw away thousands on DVDs, games, electronics, books, music, and kinky leather outfits? I'm just sayin', is all.

Someone below asked if I've tested Half-Life 2 yet: yes, I have. I've played through the intro twice - once at the office, once at home (where it ran perfectly smoothly on my Dell laptop in 1280 by 768; great engine) - but I'm going to leave it sitting on the shelf, together with Jak 3, until Christmas. I need to finish a couple of other games first, and then there are looming deadlines and tons of work to be done before I punch out for the holidays. I'm anxious to dig into it, however, and it looks stunning. The characters! The environments! The sound! I wouldn't want to be developing a first-person shooter right now, that's for sure. I've been told that the story isn't the best in the world, and that the game gets repetitive, but when it looks, plays, and feels this good - well, you can't really complain. I'll talk more about it in January, once I've had some quality time with the game.  ¶ 09:30 0 comments   

  In Dreamfall land, everything appears to be on track for the December 23rd thingy. What is it? What? What? Can't tell you yet, and some (most?) of you will have to wait days - perhaps weeks - post-Christmas Eve to see it. But it will contain much yummy goodness from Santa. And once January comes a-knockin', we'll start to drip feed all y'all with new screens and info. We will try and update the site pre-'05, however, so keep your peepers peeled. If you're good, I'll give you a glimpse of something cool. Things are going well in general, and everything is on track, something I'm definitely not used to. But I'm lovin' it. Dreamfall out.

The snow stopped falling yesterday, and now it got warm and rainy again, and the ice turned incredibly slippery, which is absolutely lovely. I'll be leaving the country on Monday, but unfortunately only for two days - and I have a feeling London won't be a heck of a lot better than Oslo. No snow, true, but chilly and wet. Luckily, a new Apple Store has opened in London, which makes the trip worthwhile.

Speaking of Apple, I'm quite miffed (yes, miffed) that iTunes won't be launching in Norway at any point in the forseeable future - at least according to Apple (and you'd expect them to know). I honestly want to throw my cash their way - buying tunes online and dumping them on my iPod is a dream come true; William Shatner's wonderful interpretation of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds awaits - but they don't want my money. Their explanation? The market is too small. Hey, we may be few, but we're rich and wasteful. I could easily spend a hundred bucks a month on music, given the opportunity. I buy CDs, but they don't leave a lot of room to experiment. Bring on the free market - national borders don't belong on the internet.  ¶ 22:20 5 comments   

  Every year, it's the same thing. Snow falls, trains stop, highways are clogged, everyone goes nuts. Winter seems to catch people by surprise - which is strange, since you'd think Norwegians would be used to it by now. "Good lord, there's white stuff falling from the sky! Run! Run for your lives! Aieee!"

It is honestly annoying when every train is delayed, and it takes me an additional fifteen minutes to get into work, just because the tracks are 'slippery'. It's called ice, guys, and you'd better get used to it.

I have now vented, and feel slightly better.  ¶ 09:22 2 comments   

  Say what?

Sunday. Been having Blogger problems - ergo no blog. And also because I've been blissfully, blessedly lazy. I've just been through the craziest four weeks in recent memory (only because I have a short memory), and this weekend was supposed to be the crash-and-do-nuffink weekend...after Friday's office Christmas party, that was. Which was fun.

I've only been half successful, and I haven't crashed-and-done-nuffink as much as I would've liked to. Hell, I've only gotten a few (well, four or five) hours of gaming in, and all of that in Halo 2.

Now, next weekend on the other hand...  ¶ 14:39 2 comments   

  It snowed yesterday and the snow stayed and now it's winter and you'd think it's been winter forever already with all this snow and ice and people falling over and trains running late and I'm not happy about it. At all. This is the time of year when I wish I lived elsewhere, like Borneo. Or maybe somewhere they don't eat people - like Gibraltar or Sydney. California would be all right. Chances are, however, that I'll be wearing thick socks until, oh, May? I don't foresee a lot of opportunities to take time off in sunny climates between now and E3.

There are too many games to play this autumn - too many great games - and I'm at a point where the pile has grown so tall, I don't know where to begin. There's San Andreas, which I've only played for seven or eight hours. There's Fable, which I've fallen in love with and definitely want to finish. There's Halo 2, which I started on a week ago, and I've gotten maybe a third of the way through. There's Half-Life 2, which I bought yesterday and I've played through the opening chapter. There's (phew) Burnout 3 and Jak 3 and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal and EverQuest II - and soon World of Warcraft - and The Sims 2 and still - still! - DOOM 3 to finish, and Katamari Damacy and Colin McRae 2005 which I've barely had time to unwrap and, God almighty, it's the best autumn in gaming history...and I don't even have time to play! It's awful, it really is. I've decided that, this weekend, I'm going to hunker down and spend some quality time on the couch. It's about time to get my priorities back in order. But why-oh-why can't publishers spread their releases out more evenly? It'll be another two or three years until we see a line-up like this one again, so why couldn't someone just hold back until spring or next autumn? Well, to be honest, it'd be sort of nice if everyone stayed away from next autumn...  ¶ 23:22 3 comments   

  The Incredibles was perfect, and - oh, all right - 'incredible'. It's the sort of movie that makes you happy to be alive, that brightens your day and makes you all giddy and inspired; a celebration of, well, everything that's worth celebrating. I'm resorting to hyberbole because - heck, that's the only way to describe it. I want to see it again and again and again. Brad Bird is a genius, and superheroes have never been cooler. Never.  ¶ 01:00 4 comments   

  Someone down below asked about system specifications for Dreamfall. We haven't nailed that down yet, but it's safe to say that - at maximum quality - you'll need a fast rig and, most importantly, a fairly high-end graphics card (a Radeon 9800 with 128MB does the job). Hopefully the engine will be quite scalable, but don't expect to be able to run it on an old PC. A good gaming PC today, however, ought to suffice. If you can run DOOM 3, Half-Life 2, or The Sims 2, you'll probably be all right for Dreamfall.

I just came across this little item: Pixar would consider producing a hand-drawn feature "if the story ever called for it". The statement, by Pete Docter, was apparently met with applause. And in related news, Disney is preparing to make Toy Story 3...without Pixar. Heavy sigh.  ¶ 18:12 6 comments   

  You can tell it's crunch time when this blog is dead.

It's been a working weekend here in Oslo. I came back from the US Friday morning, on an exceedingly crowded and ridiculously uncomfortable Continental flight from Newark. (Their philosophy on leg space, service, and decent food appears to be 'no, not really', and I'll do my utmost to avoid that flight again, despite the fact that it's the only direct flight from North America to Oslo.) I have basically been at the office ever since. Dreamfall's second autumn deadline is today, Monday, but seeing as we have another one coming up on December 10th, there will be little downtime before Christmas.

But it has certainly been worth it. This weekend has seen all the separate threads being woven together into a mostly coherent whole, and there's now actual, honest-to-God gameplay happening - together with some stunning visuals, fantastic sound, and great controls. Dreamfall has finally become a real game, and I'm as proud as can be. There's a long, hard road ahead, sure, but my faith in the project has been renewed. (Not that it was lacking: you just need confirmation from time to time that you're on the right track.) Previous deadlines have been based around either game features or visual iterations, and this is the first once since the E3 demo where everything has come together. It's quite lovely.

When will you get to see any of this? Soon-ish. There's something happening on December 23rd, but I can't reveal that yet. It's also likely that there will be an upgrade to the site just prior to Crimbo - a screenshot or two, maybe, or a brief, tantalising teaser video - but again: it all depends on a) time, and b) marketing plans. You'll get something, that's a guarantee - or at least as close to one as I can give you. (Usual restrictions apply.)

Despite the long hours, I have been able to invest a couple of hours in Halo 2, and while my first impressions were somewhat muted, I'm now hooked. It's fun. It doesn't look that much better than the first one, and the field-of-view is way too narrow - an unfortunate change that I haven't seen mentioned in the press; it limits what you can see, especially when you're wielding two weapons. While it's 'just' more of the same, with polish, you can't really fault it for that. The opening hour is a bit dull, but it improves massively once the story gets rolling.

Right: back to the grind. We've got a version to complete. (And to think, I'm actually sitting at my computer playing the game right now. You guys will have to wait until next year.)  ¶ 09:09 7 comments   

  Boston.

I was supposed to be on a plane back to Norway at this point, but plans changed, and at 4 PM this afternoon I hopped on the express train due north. Unfortunately, I won't have a chance to see much of the city, seeing as tomorrow will be jam-packed with meetings from AM to PM, and my flight back to New York - and following that, Oslo - departs at five.

It's been an extremely busy week - busy but productive - and it will continue to be so once I get back to the office Friday morning: we have a crucial gameplay deadline on Monday. More on that this weekend (if I'm still walking). Right now I need to crash on my highly inviting Sheraton bed, and sleep the sleep of the very tired.

  ¶ 06:18 2 comments   

  My usual 'borrowed' wi-fi link is AWOL this time around - or at least so slow that it might as well be - so my only recourse is Starbucks, where I'm paying a minimum of $6 to check my mail. And post a blog. And browse a bit. On my lovely PowerBook.

New York City is cold today. Yesterday was warm and beautiful, tomorrow's supposed to be frosty. The city's always unpredictable this time of year - but I'm counting my blessings. It's better than Norway.

The new corporate Funcom site launched today (I believe), and it's quite lurvely, orange-y colour scheme and all. And that Dreamfall Flash movie isn't too shabby either. There will be updates to the Dreamfall site in the future, too, but I can't tell you exactly when. Look out for content updates some time around Christmas: maybe some new concept art, maybe some screenshots. We'll see. There's lots to pick from, and our next deadline - November 15th - will result in a version that looks a real step up from what we've shown so far. It's quite stunning.  ¶ 19:03 2 comments   

  Well, then. Bush it is.  ¶ 22:49 12 comments   

  You know that a game is overhyped when IGN makes the time and date of the review a story. I am, of course, talking about Halo 2, also known as the Second Coming of Christ. Will it go to eleven, or will it trip and fall? Heck, I got the special edition on order (tin! It's shiny!), so if it's the latter, I - and a million others - got duped by the hype machine. Wait: I hear the buzzing of bees.

I can't remember the last time so many huge titles were released in such a short span of time. From September onwards, it's been one long Christmas Eve for gamers - and one long, painful visit to the dentist for our wallets. And it's not letting up any time soon. I still haven't finished DOOM 3, and now Half-Life 2 is just around the corner. Ack. At least I get to call it 'research' with a straight face. There are advantages to this job.  ¶ 20:50 4 comments   

  It's good to see political discourse alive on well - in my blog. Since I can't (legally) cast a vote tomorrow - nor, regrettably, buy one - I'll stay out of the fray. I am debating staying awake tomorrow night to witness the revolution first hand: I honestly can't remember a more exciting presidential election since, well, the last one. Although that one turned exciting in the days and weeks post-election. America knows how to put on a good show, that's for sure.

With any luck, there won't be riots in the streets when I fly over to New York on Saturday.

I won't be staying more than five days this time, and they will be busy days. I'm attending a conference, and there will be Meetings. Some lucky souls in expensive suits will get to see the minty fresh Dreamfall 'autumn teaser', and also another, um, 'autumn teaser'. (I'm good with names.) Hopefully, all this teasing will put money in our pockets. Money good. Money equals more games for you guys. Games good.

GTA: San Andreas good. But I'll write more about that some other day. (It's not perfect, and I will nitpick, but it's generally quite superb.)

Aaand if you're American, have access to UPN, and you're not watching Veronica Mars, then shame on you. The show keeps getting better and better (aside from that somewhat embarrassing "ownage!" episode; why, why, why? Why?), and I'd hate to see it go. So check it out, watch it, TiVo it, whatever, and give me the opportunity to keep illegally downloading it off the internet. Hey, if I had the choice I'd pay for it. Honestly.  ¶ 22:57 3 comments