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Tag Archive for 'games'
Having the entire day laid bare before me, my biggest problem seems to be where to begin? Talk about a luxury problem, huh?
It’s honestly not an easy thing to come to terms with.
On the one hand it makes sense to start working full time with something as soon as possible, to secure some funding for the lean times.
On the other hand, since I’ve got a handful of months funded, what better way to burn through them than on the things I’ve been daydreaming while I’ve been stuck in a 9 to 5?
And I’ve had a lot of those day dreams. I mean, a lot.
Yes, people of the planet Earth and outlying satellites, I am as a matter of fact a ‘free agent’, even if this blog seems as inactive as ever, which would be because I spend my days basking in the sun, reading long-overdue books and experimenting with various outlandish fruit combinations for smoothies that’ll blow your socks right off and send tears of joy rolling down your cheeks.
Alright, so I’ve started reading some books, the other stuff I’ve only dipped by toes into. But I’m working on it.
But a I am a free agent, having had the opportune fortune of ending my 6+ year stint at Io Interactive by being escorted out the door along with some 30 other people who for various reasons found themselves down and out in Copenhagen on the single most beautiful spring day in a decade or more.
No, I’m not entirely sure what happened. I don’t think any of us are, including friends and colleagues left behind, but considering that I’m the least experienced of the developers let go — most of them having 10 years or more behind them — I’m left to wonder on my own what the overriding idea was…
But, as is always the case, the bad memories fade and the good persist, and much as I’ll miss the excitement of working on large-scale games like the Kane & Lynch series — where I spent most of my time — I’ll miss my friends there infinitely more. The banter, the heated TF2 matches, the coffee trains and the overarching eagerness to prove our meddle and just create great games.
So hurray for Facebook, Twitter, blogs, mail and Skype. These things truly shine when you suddenly find yourself going it alone.
Lucky for me, I’ve had it in mind to quit for quite some time, having made several preparations for doing so, and this quite literally couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time. Add to that the timing of having spring making its way into Denmark and me getting to soar my oates on some of those vanity projects I’ve been wanting to do for years, while Io continues to pay me for a few months more…
Things could be a lot worse.
Beyond that, my plan is to hook up with friends of mine for a pretty cool project we’re all very excited about. After that I’ll go the way of the modern-day ronin: The Freelance Web Designer.
Hopefully, this also means I’ll be able to find the time to blog some more, not to mention bringing out the next version of K2 within a foreseeable future.
Oh yeah, and then Red Dead Redemption is coming up in May, so…
I’ll expound on my plans in the near future; for now I just need to get them more organized as well as learn this new routine of not having an office to go to for a little while, which is probably the hardest part about not being employed. It’s surprising how fast time flies when you’re just milling about the house.
Goodbye Io, and thanks for all the fishcake.
My great friend Brian, who kicks ass in all kinds of ways, finally released his new casual game extravaganza, Deep Blue Sea 2.
What are you still doing here? Git!
So this is what I’ve been working on as a level designer for the last couple of years; the parts with the motorbikes and the burning cars and what not.
My good friend Brian Meidell decided to go up against the iPad, and launched the site for his new game Deep Blue Sea 2, yesterday. It looks amazing, and Brian is one of the most talented guys I know, so you can bet you it’ll play just as well. The game is coming in march for both Windows and OS X, but head on over and check it out now and sign up for a notification mail.
The irony of me lauding how a closed proprietary device is helping oust a proprietary technology is thick, but honestly I couldn’t be happier that Flash seemingly isn’t supported by the iPad. Gruber has written much about Flash and Apple, and he’s a clever guy, so if you haven’t read his stuff yet, you should do yourself a favor and consume his site start to finish, but here’s my take.
So that’s what’s been keeping me so busy, huh? The teaser site is up, and so is this, the first viral, which is close to my heart:
It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of Eric Chahi’s Another World. Nothing compared to my pal Gil however, who decided to play around with the canvas tag a bit, and in doing so ported part of Another World to pure javascript.
Yeah.
That’s pretty crazy.
I think I’ll crawl back in my hole and gawk at my die roller (“Why weren’t you a port of Another World, huh? No, no, I’m not mad; I’m disappointed”).
Everyone, the demo for Io Interactive’s latest game, Mini Ninjas, is out, now. Comma. Congratulations to all my friends and coworkers who worked on it. Now Go get it, and while it downloads, read some impressions.
Woke up to this scoop:
Hi Michael,
Thought you might want the first notice – because of your posting, i’ve received a fair amount of email, and i’ve decided to post my book for FREE on my blog…Its more important to me that the story of Lucasfilm be shared and circulated than for me to profit directly. So if you wanted to add that to your blog – you’d be the first!
Thanks for your kind words and support.
Michael (Rubin)
I don’t know what you’re still doing here, when you should be over there, downloading the hell out of that thing! It’s gorgeous; the full 518-page book, complete with photosRare photos I might add, plugged in many cases straight out of the Lucasfilm vault or even personal collections from the people who were there., index and whatever else you’ll find in the printed version, covering everything from Lucas’ earliest years up through the creation of ILM and its struggle to put Star Wars up on the silver screen, down through Coppola’s experiements with mobile film making, the creation of Pixar, non-linear editing, digital sound editing, the creation of the Games Group and much much more. It is in actual fact, a book about the creation of modern filmmaking (and to some extent games even) as we know it. Don’t let the technical foundation scare you off though; it’s not only accessible, but centered on the people, not the tech. It was easily one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in years.
As he does, I obviously suggest you just go ahead and buy the real thing, should you like what you see.
PS: In case you missed it yesterday, Michael Rubin appeared on Pirillo back when he was promoting the book. There’s also an interview up over at Unidentified Sound Object.
Update: Downloads have passed 10.000, and Michael has posted a breakdown of where the traffic has come from so far. There’s also a FAQ.
I’m a man of few available hours these days, much to my dismay, as I do crave so, the act of classic blogging. And yeah yeah, I should fix the weird layout issues WordPress 2.8 caused in my footer, but it was either that or an entry, and since my friends have started pointing fingers and calling my blog dead…
Now, games, peeeehew. Do they ever suck.
I finished Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots a while ago, but forgot to post this review-thingie. I never thought I’d play it — I always hated Metal Gear Solid — and now that I have, I’m not sure how I can play any other games again; I’ve been so spoiled…
And so will you be, if you haven’t played MGS4 and still continue reading…
Dave Arnesen, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, alongside Gary Gygax, has died.
As I also wrote when Gygax died last year, what I’ve gotten from Dungeons & Dragons is what I surround myself with every single day. My job, my hobbies and the D&D campaign I play in every other week.
I salute you gentlemen, with the finest mead of the kingdom.
If you don’t follow gaming news, this may have slipped by you, but trust me when I tell you that it’ll blow up everywhere in a day or two.
OnLive is basically a platform for playing a game that sits on a remote server, streaming the video to you over the internet. It sounds fantastic, awesome, revolutionary in a big way, and entirely implausible. At first I dismissed it, but the more I hear about it, the more I believe in it. Unless Sony and Microsoft manage to cock-block it, it’ll absolutely change the gaming industry.
If you’re even remotely interested in games, you owe it to yourself to check out the press conference video.
If this works — and that’s a big if, mind you — you’ll virtually never have to worry about upgrading your console again, because everything is run server-side. Games will be cheaper, faster delivered and you can’t lose or scratch the disc! As a developer, depending on how the OnLive business model will end up working, we also are no longer shackled by system specs. Piracy goes out the window. Noisy or defective components? Not a problem. And it works on your TV, your PC or your Mac! You can literally be playing on the TV, the wife comes in to watch Oprah, and you just flip up your MacBook and continue! The implications are absolutely mind boggling. And that’s just games; how about on-demand films and TV?
This is a game changer, pun and all.
Bought Company of Heroes off of Steam this morning. I’m generally an RTS hater, but since everyone around me seems to be playing it constantly, I thought I’d give it a try, so that if nothing else, I would be able to whine about specifics, rather than just in general. And Relic did Homeworld, the only RTS worth playing, so…
As it turns out, the game needs to authenticate itself against THQ’s servers, which would be fine, if we weren’t behind a firewall. And since it can’t phone home to mama, it asks me politely to insert the disc… Wait, what?
As it so happens, I happen to have a disc I can use, which I promptly put it in… But, of course that doesn’t work.
Horror stories of copy protection schemes are abundant. It’s a sad state of affairs, when I would have saved both money, time and a headache by downloading the game illegally. And let’s face it, it’s a 4-year-old game; if you’re still worried about copy protection, you’ve got your priorities wrong.
Can we please get past this? How can the experience of buying a game get worse as our technology gets better? It makes no sense.
Update: Tried authenticating via a cellphone instead, to bypass the firewall. Still no luck.
The other day a couple of us stayed around at work to watch Mazy play through an hour and a half of Killzone 2, because we are nothing, if not addicted to sci-fi in whatever shape or form it might take, regardless of our preconceptions. And while we were all somewhat surprised that the demo turned out to be the actual first level (we expected a bit more from the opening, I must admit), and while the gameplay part of the game didn’t do much to redeem itself from my previous post, I will say that we were all pretty well entertained throughout.
I just spent the last half hour running through the Killzone 2 demo, a game for which I had previously been looking forward to quite a bit, going so far as to even pre-order it. However, after this playthrough, I’ve had to cancel my pre-order, which serves as a good prelude to this entry.
Killzone 2 is already getting plenty of accolades for its graphics, and even for its gameplay. It currently holds an impressive score of 90 on Metacritic and is sure to sell in the millions. Congratualtions to everyone who worked on it, I’m sure it will entertain many and hopefully break well more than even.
And I don’t mean to be the cynical prick trying to bring down this apparent masterpiece, but…
After years, I’ve finally uploaded these fanastic Homeworld 2 cutscenes.
A reader of mine — whose name has been lost in time — ripped them for me a long time ago. And by pure luck, he couldn’t find the dialog audio files, which are streamed separatly from the score and ambient soundtrack. The result, is an almost abstract series of beautiful aesthetic-centric science fiction vignettes that seem to have no purpose, other than to be cool and awesome.
It’s like science fiction porn that way; just enough story to support what we came to see… Something something desert world, something something starships… I get it.
Now, my Youtube skills are weak, and I can’t figure out how to retain the quality of the original files, so if you’re so inclined feel free to download the originals yourself.