Nachimir

I'd completely forgotten I was running this greasemonkey script. There's one that prefixes "Michael Pachter" with "smug know it all prick, " too. I feel mean running this Molyneux one now

I love the achievements that feel like they're for something worthwhile, difficult, or outside the bounds of just progressing through a story. They feel so much more like actually setting out to do something and attaining it, instead of incidental tokens gained for getting through, say, the chapters in Vanquish (Not to say those aren't still like little bits of crack or sugar to my reptile brain though). I think it was an early launch title, a Madden game or something, where the designers had basically said "We've got to put what in for Xbox Live? Huh? Ok.", then squeezed in ten fifty point achievements, nearly all of which could be powered through in a single practice game. It's got better, but especially under commercial pressure, I think it's probably quite difficult to design ones that aren't just a by-product of playing. Borderlands, Vanquish, Arkham City: The list of achievements feels quite similar from one game to the next. "Let's make them carry a gnome from start to finish" is unfortunately quite frivolous and far down the list of priorities, and that's a shame. The best, oddest achievements are the ones players will tell stories about.

Yes, resizing the audience out: Their stream had crashed which is why they're all looking puzzled in this, but I got the closest moment I could to them hitting 3.3 million: This is such a lovely moment compared to the closed door pitching and crass parties in some other bits of the industry. Some bits that made me laugh from Tim's improvised closing speech:

I'm working at ten-thirty p.m., and it's nice having a stream of happy, celebrating people in the background. Hooray for them

There's also that people's stored payment methods on Amazon might go out of date between them backing the project and it reaching its target. I guess they get an email from Amazon payments, but some of them probably ignore or cancel.

I've wondered about that too. I bet over time, with large numbers of backers, there's a fairly consistent ratio of loss to that.

There it went! There was a lull, then a massive rush as it got to within a hundred. I guess a bunch of people were waiting to be the one that tipped it over into the next million.

and how could your list be missing Spaff? https://twitter.com/#!/thespaff

I fell in love with this a little when Jim tweeted the first screenshot this morning. British Indie Stalker with tea-drinking robots. Cannot wait

I believe this is BigJKO: https://twitter.com/#!/jonkristinsson

Artoo's third leg is almost showing.

:0 It's like this is all that remains of Geocities.

I post this a lot. It fixes youtube comments: http://www.tannr.com/herp-derp-youtube-comments/ (You can click on them if you really want to read what they actually say, but mostly I look down, go "Hah. YouTube comments" and leave the page).

Not a good way to deal with your critics. Inept, even.

Phil Fish came to GameCity last year. I didn't get to speak to him much because he was in one venue and I was working in another most of the time, but everyone on the team liked him and he was apparently a super nice guy.

Here is a live Peregrine Falcon cam, positioned where they nest on this university building. It is much less exciting and cute than a penguin cam ¬¬

Thanks, I'll PM you both.

You just need to use the bit after the = sign, like this but without spaces: [ YOUTUBE ]d2D71CveQwo[/ YOUTUBE ] Also: AAAAAAARGH! I bet it can raise one of those front legs to pierce living things after knocking them to the ground.

Congrats Kroms and Orvidos! I am currently doing something very scary and entirely independent. Early tests have gone well, but it could soak up a huge proportion of my remaining money, then fail. Eek. Basically, to make it not fail, I need to learn a huge amount about marketing, which is not something that comes naturally to me

Ah, yeah. I meant high for an unknown team asking strangers for money, not high for the kind of project he's proposing.

A gazillion people will have been hastily throwing together Kickstarter pages since Double Fine hit 1M. DF are doing so well because they've already proven they can make excellent things. A lot of potential backers probably share your reservations. I think their goal is set very high, and though the guy is clearly experienced (summary at the bottom of his page), the team he's formed aren't well known. He's going for a very niche project though, so maybe he'll get there. Edit: There are some, uh, interesting rewards in there. Including, for $1000, "participate in conference calls with dev team members to express your ideas", and for $10K, a customised real gun. #1 tip I've seen from people on Kickstarter: It's all, or nothing if you don't make your target. Setting a high goal makes little sense when you'll always have room to overshoot and can set expectations instead.

Excellent to see, thanks Sno. I wish Capcom had the balls to treat it this seriously:

In the meantime: http://www.textfiles.com/underconstruction/

8:34 - headshot!