Steve

Moderators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    1047

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Steve

  3. Posted

    Is your map really the best map?

    The answer is in fact yes, so it's cool.

    What I mean to say is, this is a moral dilemma that can only be solved by reaching deep into your own soul. Who is "Castorp," really? What are his values, fears, ambitions? Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

    Dig deep, meditate, and you will have your answer.

  6. Posted

    So, I know it's totally lame to beg for votes on a webforum but... I am totally lame!

    Backstory: A while ago, some of you may have read my review of F.E.A.R. If you couldn't tell, I was totally "into" the game. I started messing with the level editor and doing some mapping stuff for it. Then Fileplanet announced a contest-- 'make a FEAR map and enter it. You could win big!'

    Long story short, I made a deathmatch map called Residential Evil (you know, a clandestine facility under a spooky mansion) and entered it. Screenshots:

    reshot21qr5qn.th.jpg reshot56ek7yg.th.jpg reshot34pt2we.th.jpg reshot19hk4cs.th.jpg

    Now my map's up for a public vote on Fileplanet. It's cool to have it in the running, but it'd be cooler to win! Check the maps out at http://www.fileplanet.com/fear/contest/poll.aspx , and uh... vote for mine! Registration required... a pain, I know, but it's free.

    If I take home the gold, I'll dedicate the win to all you Thumbers across the world.

    Thanks in advance, guys... and sorry for being totally lame!! :getmecoat

  9. Posted

    I like reading interviews with, and articles written by, programmers behind the PR curtains. How they manage to solve certain problems, optimize certain algorithms, that sort of thing. That's why my favourite game-related magazine is Game Developer.

    edit: possibly because i'm a programmer

    My point exactly.

    Another thing is the question of return on investment. For most people in a specialized role on any given title, their time is better spent performing their development tasks than doing interviews which the majority of mainstream readers might not find interesting. It's all about marketing, but that's reality. Doing interviews takes time out of anyone's schedule, but dealing with the press is part of a creative director or executive producer's job, whereas that isn't the case with, say, an AI programmer.

    I think the point's come out of this thread though that a wide array of people in game development are interviewed, but less so, and less publicly, when their role is further from the top. I mean, these people do get proportional exposure, as has been noted in the examples from the 1up Show or Game Dev magazine, or specialist trade/fansites. I don't know that there's anything especially wrong with that structure.

  10. Posted

    I can't say I necessarily agree with this. It's all well and good to want more access to developers, and for them to speak more freely. But functionally, how well does this work? For one thing, most members of the team are very focused on their own roles. A programmer is very knowledgeable about working with his code and making the game systems work properly, but would a mainstream media outlet have much to ask him? And furthermore, most members of a development team aren't necessarily media-savvy. Do they even want to be interviewed? Would they have the personality to give good interview answers? I think that more members of a design team are interviewed than one might think, but that programmers or technical artists or environment artists tend to receive questions from specialist publications as opposed to somewhere like GameSpot or 1up. You see essays and such from these people in Game Developer magazine and on Gamasutra.com, where the industry audience for them exists. The creative directors, producers, and lead designers that are usually interviewed by mainstream gaming press are the ones charged with holding the overall vision of a game's design, and knowing what to talk about and how to say it. They really are the best ones to talk to about a game overall.

    Another question is of consistency. Everyone who talks to the press needs to be on the same page about which features to confirm or deny, when it's too early to mention certain aspects of the game, what constitutes 'spoilers' or simply isn't relevant from a publicity standpoint. Remember when Molyneux went telling tales out of school about Fable, and all the backlash that created? And he was the president of the company! Every extra person that PR allows to talk to the press is one more opportunity for someone to run their mouth, stir up the NERD RAGE in the fanbase, and cause problems for the game before it's ever released.

    Oh Marek-chan why would you take something that Jane Pinckard said seriously :mock:

  16. Posted

    From Wikipedia: "He voted against the expansion of school desegregation plans and the establishment of legalized abortions (dissenting in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)) and in favor of school prayer, capital punishment..."

    It is not a sad day for America when someone with that voting record is no longer Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It will be a sad day for America when Bush appoints someone even worse in his place.

    edit: btw happy birthday General

  18. Posted

    Um, I'm currently playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow on Xbox, and I..... :shifty: ......I wanna fuck Sam Fisher.

    The first and third SC games are way better, especially Chaos Theory. You'd really want to tear off Sam Fisher's normal-mapped bondage suit in CT.

  24. Posted

    I don't usually play anything multiplayer, but lately I have been playing some MP stuff with a few interfriends of mine, and it's been fun and a real change of pace.

    • Splinter Cell Chaos Theory: Oh man, the co-op. It's completely different from any co-op experience I've ever had, and totally fucking hilarious. Being able to distract guards so your friend can run up and shiv them, or having your ass saved by your friend running up and taking a guard out at the last moment as you were about to be discovered, etc etc... fun, different, a laugh riot. New co-op maps coming to the PC soon supposedly.
    • Dawn of War: I don't ever play RTS either, but DoW just looked like too much wacky-style mayhem to pass up. The armies are huge, the battles are chaotic, and being able to summon a giant walking monstrosity to wade through the enemy force, tossing troops and vehicles left and right is intensely satisfying and again, hilarious. Awesome to play against the computer with a friend.
    • Battlefield 2: It's an EA game, so I feel bad about it already. The interface is terrible and the damn thing overheats my computer half the time for no explicable reason. But when you get on a good squad, everybody's communicating through VOIP, and you perform a precision strike on an enemy stronghold, clearing the place out and capturing the point... excellent.

    Also Katamari 2, FEAR, the DoW expansion are all coming out in a month or two, about which I am personally hyped. :grin:

  25. Posted

    Of course, WoW indeed calls it an "8 slot bag," so the Thumbs design is correct in that it quotes the game's terminology. As an editor, however, I would tag the phrase with "(sic)" when quoting it.

    That's the justification. I think a (sic) on the bag itself would pretty much obliterate the joke/reference though. In any case, this is one to take up with those hyphenophobes at blizzard.