Marek

*donk*s are unacceptable unless it's jake saying "video games" followed by a donk... please make that happen, it will please me so much

Excellent podcast with good free flowing conversation. It's great to hear you guys talk and it also reminds me of being at E3 or GDC and having some random discussion with you. I love this shit and hope you'll do many many more.

I know it's a tired subject but I have to rant about the games press for a bit. When you're a game journalist (and I was one, albeit on the fringe) you're constantly bombarded with press releases. When you decide to use one as the basis of a news post, it's your duty to kind of go through them and ignore all the spin and PR bullshit, and find the little nuggets of actual information and actual news contained within them. PR managers are extremely good at burying the actual news if it's in a company's interest, and will generally tempt journalists with easy-to-copy-paste prefab quotes and straplines, but you kind of have to look through that. I think very few people understand this and it's always disappointed me. And now that I'm on the 'other side', actually working in the game industry, and having the full view from the inside, I'm even more disappointed. Like when the NCsoft reorganizations happened. If you were a smart journalist, you'd find a couple of real actual bits of news: * Around 70 people were made redundant * The company is stopping development in Europe * Most of the 'political power' within NCsoft US is moving from Austin (Garriot brothers) to Seattle (ArenaNet founders) Very few outlets picked up on any of these angles. Instead, 90% had a headline along the lines of "NCsoft announces new division NC West!" with some PR copy about how they're aiming to be #1 in making AAA MMOs. Some even went beyond the PR quotes, such as headlining with "NCSoft West to Take on Blizzard in Next-Gen MMOs". What? No one said that. A couple of publications did use 1% of their brains and wondered what might be happening to Tabula Rasa in the future. They re-dug up some older rumors of it getting cancelled, but then headlined with something like "Tabula Rasa not being cut says NCsoft". They get maybe one brownie point for trying to connect the NC West announcement to Tabula Rasa, but again that wasn't really the heart of the news story, and even if it was they may have missed the truth there. The redundancies were hardly mentioned. And even fewer really picked up on the other points. Watching the headlines come in on Google News was truly depressing. Some people are trying to do a good job (I thought GamesIndustry.biz had a good writeup for instance), but I wish a lot more of them would. Maybe I'm expecting too much or being to hard on games writers who generally don't get much pay or much time to do their work, but still, it kind of makes me really sad all over again.

soooooo NCsoft is downsizing massively today. Me and my team and all of dev in europe affected. Spaff and Rusalka aldo made redundant. It's weak Im looking at new opportunities already but it sucks because I really cared about my work at nc. Oh yeah nci in America has also been axed apparently

I recommend reading these two articles I wrote for AG: http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,776 http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,785 My optimism about this game has been tempered by over a year of no new info though. There's good ideas at the heart of it but I don't know yet what to think about the execution.

There were 70+ redunancies, so NCsoft Europe has effectively been halved. There's been a global restructuring. Some details here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ncsoft-confirms-nc-west-formation It's been a bizarre and emotional few days. It's all very depressing, though some things aren't as bad as they could have been, and I'm trying to focus on that. The intention of starting a new developer is there, and hopefully we can make that happen. If any of you guys have good leads for publishers or VCs with an interest in either browser-based or full-scale AAA MMO development, please send me a PM.

NICK!!! I realized later yesterday that I had forgotten you in this thread, I' m so sorry It was hastily written whilst at the lord nelson (Nick also got pwned by the hammer of redundancies. )

You win the thread.

also the Title is supposed to be 'lame' but my iPhone fucked it up

What? Who?

Also maybe it should be a main forum? Because it's really easy to miss.

Erm to offer something constructive: any country in Europe is probably fine, but if you're looking for countries where English is spoken a lot, try the Netherlands. Scandinavian countries are a good bet, but stick to big cities. Sweden and Denmark are nice. Heard good things about Norway but tough to integrate fully... people will speak English but it's tough living there not knowing Norwegian. Germany might also work (like Berlin or Munich maybe). Don't know much about immigration or work permit policies though. I've never had to think about it because as an EU citizen you can live/work anywhere in the EU without any paperwork.

Leaving the US is not a bad idea. Even though Obama is going to 'win', McCain is probably actually going to win. Wait until the elections are over just in case, then GTFO.

Very good trailer! I like!!

At. Definitely at.

I always thought Peter Molyneux was kinda hilarious. Then a bunch of years ago I started paying more attention to him in the press and it made him more hilarious. Then I saw him at a press party for Fable once and it totally reinforced my mental image of him. And now that I'm actually in the game industry, I keep hearing these amazing anecdotes about him. The man's a fucking legend. Also I dreamt about him once. :molyneuxsmall::molyneuxsmall::molyneuxsmall:

Good, good. My message was directed at the forum at large, by the way. I really needed to vent for a second.

I would just like to add that if you are thinking about working in the game industry, you should really banish that thought immediately. Instead, think about how happy you would be just being a traffic warden, or maybe a turd miner. Those are good, solid jobs. The pay might be low but you'll be so much less likely to have all hopes, dreams, soul, et al crushed by The Man. I'm going back to the shower now.

Toblix?

He is clearly complaining about non-Norwegian police.

Haha wow these are 10x better than the ones you showed yesterday.

Yes.

Yeah play it. It's win. You HAVE to play it in co-op though, it's essential.

I've been too busy crying in the shower.

Alright, so I moved from Holland to the UK a few months back. Microsoft does not like this. Microsoft, a multinational corporation, cannot deal with the fact that I emigrated to another country. I have a Dutch Xbox Live account. Now when I try to add Microsoft Points, it displays the cost in GBP (fair enough), but doesn't accept my Dutch or my UK credit card anymore. I guess I'm meant to be using my Dutch creditcard as my account is Dutch, but I'm guessing since it's not asking for euros it's causing problems there. And my UK credit card won't be accepted because the associated street address is not in Holland. So I tried changing my account's locale, but this is not possible. That's right, you can't change the locale of your account. I searched around and it's a known problem. If you call MS they'll tell you to bugger off and create a new Xbox Live account for the country you are in, which of course means losing your friend list, gamerscore, achievements, etc. This is retarded. I am here, credit card in hand, READY TO PAY A COMPANY MONEY, which they are refusing. I am in fact unable to play Braid because of this dogshit. Why does Microsoft not want my money? Are they afraid I'll buy Microsoft Points in another currency and lose them a slight amount of money? Oh no, think of the children! Fuck them.