Marek

I'm spraying thumbs-logos all over the place, so I'm easy to recognize. I play mainly on servers that have cs_office running exclusively. For once my Euro timezone is giving me an advantage. If I get up tomorrow morning at 8 I can have breakfast and immediately start playing HL2

Yeah the jumping works pretty poorly. I hope they'll tweak it too. I play as technitai[nl]

Yeah, there were two brief (5 min) moments of downtime. It wouldn't recognize my password, but by the time I had requested the reminder it was already back up. Steam servers are holding up just fine.

GameSpot is a good example of consistent by-the-numbers consumer advice. From what I've recently read PC Gamer UK and GamerTM also have good mainstream style reviews that are interesting and entertaining (not always the case with GameSpot). Their reviews would probably serve as good examples. Whatever you do, don't segment a review into seperate sections for graphics, sound, etc. unless the magazine you're writing for does that. Most publications don't like that style, and will immediately disregard any submissions that have seperate headers for each aspect of the game.

I continue to be highly interested in Valve's cabal thing. It sounds like a really clever way to manage such a giant team, as you're giving people small bits of ownership over specific levels and making them emotionally invested, instead of having them just execute whatever the lead designer commands and having their contributions spread all over the game. Their prototype-heavy development is pretty fascinating. I do wonder what the texture artists were doing while the orange levels were being made though. Were they setting up a giant collection of all-purpose Eastern Europe-city inspired textures?

If you do that make sure you look at the right reviews for guidance, i.e. not IGN.

Is it easy to convert from Mozilla Plain Vanilla to Mozilla Firefox?

"God invented the giraffe, the elephant, the cat ... He has no real style. He just goes on trying things." - Pablo Picasso The world needs tighter art direction.

The claim that the game industry is bigger than the movie industry in terms of money involved is being regularly contested by game industry insiders, so I wouldn't take it as a fact just yet.

I think you were the victim of a propaganda dream. Check your room for bugs.

Here's a better donkey bridge.

I love that site.

Hey isn't that the guy who founded AdventureGamers.com?!?

That freaking rules.

No soup adoption for you!

There's some speculation on various forums (and now this one too) that the November issue of Edge will introduce a new format. There's indeed a couple of vague hints in the October issue which I have in front of me now. I'm a little big nervous, since my two-year Edge subscription starts ........ with the November issue. Crap. I hope they don't screw this up. This is from a new editorial team after all. That's not to say that Edge can't be improved. Far from it. There's a lot of shit that needs changing, though they're luxury problems given that Edge is already superior to pretty much everything. I just hope it gets better, not worse.

Uhh, "celebrating the artform of interactive digital games in the new millenium". Whatever, use your imagination, and pretend that sentence was better. I was really unsure of the redesign at first, but after an hour of reading it really grew on me.

I'm bumping up this thread again for my own silly amusement. The new redesigned Edge arrived today. Overall I'm really positive on the change. The layout is less consistent now, with some pages in serif font and others in san-serif, more randomly placed of images, a lot more colored bars, and bigger headings with a black shadow duplicate below it. The magazine has gotten a bit more chaotic, but after the initial shock, I have to approve. Each feature is a lot more distinctly designed now, and the magazine has gotten a lot more colorful. It's like it's now celebrating games, instead of looking at it from a distance. There's also some great structural changes, too. The columns are now at the back, the screenshots-minipreviews are gone (instead the contents page now has a great collection of images), the "random shit" section has been deleted and expanded into a section called "Start", which still has random shit except for like 20 pages now, with short interviews, sidebars, news bits, etc. thrown around. The basic idea actually works now. The columns now each look different, and the letters page is no longer shit. Conclusion: it's good. Oh, and it's gotten thicker by about 20 to 30 pages (actual content, not ads).

I'm still not sure what to think about 9/11, but I do know some degree of iffyness is probably involved. We don't really know that much about the details of that day, and the 9/11 investigation was seriously thwarted by the Bush administration. For what reason? Anything ranging from incompetence to conspiracy is a possibility for as long as the Bush administration doesn't really open the book on things. Actual plans once existed to crash a remote-controlled jet plane onto Cuba, to create a cause for invading it. That was under Kennedy, I believe. At least one book has been written on Pearl Harbor being a case of deliberate strategic misjudgement so that the Japanese threat would be obvious to everyone, and America could go on the attack. Not a popular story, but it's been well-researched. I'm just saying these things pre-emptively to those who cry "conspiracy nut!" at the first sign of someone using his imagination and discussing the possibility of something that people don't want to be true. I really don't know about 9/11 though. I have a very hard time making up my mind about it. I wouldn't be surprised at anything, though.

Alright, calm down. We'll tolerate some things here, but let's not take it too far. I do understand your anger, cause I'm feeling it too, but let's keep it somewhat civilized. ZeroXcape: I will (forcefully) disagree with you. It's funny that you point out the media as being biased against Bush and trying to defame him. From where I'm standing, the Bush administration has been cleverly feeding talking points to the media and pretty much used it to win the election. Howard Dean is an angry maniac! Howard Dean is an angry maniac! Howard Dean is an angry maniac! Howard Dean is an angry maniac! Kerry most liberal senator! Kerry most liberal senator! Kerry most liberal senator! Kerry most liberal senator! Kerry most liberal senator! Kerry wants global test! Kerry wants global test! Kerry wants global test! Kerry wants global test! Kerry wants global test! Kerry is a flip-flopper! Kerry is a flip-flopper! Kerry is a flip-flopper! Kerry is a flip-flopper! Kerry is a flip-flopper! Kerry is a flip-flopper! It's actually the Bush administration that rarely discussed the contents of a debate, or answered questions head-on, but focused by far the most on rhetoric. When a reporter gives Dick Cheney a list of criticisms from the Washington Post, one of the most highly respected newspapers, the answer is "we don't consider the Post friendly, so we won't respond to any criticisms". (And don't hang onto that because it's one example. Just pick any interview or press conference and pay attention to what they really say.) Cop-outs and rhetoric-filled replies have been the order of the day since Bush came into office. They've continuously created buzzwords for the public that helped create an alternate reality in the minds of everyone. Old Europe, Axis of Evil, Coalition of the Willing, need I go on? Does Bush use the word idealogs in normal conversation? Is this the real world we're talking about? If you're subjected to that crap day in day out, then yes, you'll start thinking like it. You'll think that the other side, which has some less-than-pleasant but very real things to tell, are spewing propaganda at you, but that's only because you've already been led to believe something else.

That is so beautiful. Problems of the world: solved.

Let's try to make some kind of centralized Bush-hating effort instead of raping innocent little off-topic threads. Thank you. Please, continue.

Crap! They found the award we were going to give to EA at E3 2005.

I perceived Fortuyn as a threatening and dangerous development, and I still think of it that way in retrospect. Let's not forget that he deliberately put himself in the underdog position. They were screaming "he was demonized!" when he was killed, but the whole campaign strategy was built on Fortuyn stirring controversies and blaming the media. I know this is not a popular view, but it's what I really think.

Erm I thought Arnie couldn't ever become a president because he wasn't born in the US?