EverQuest II Players

EverQuest II Players

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Crabcore gif for your enjoyment

I know this isn't related to video games, but I can't help it.

To commemorate some of the worst music on the internet, I decided to share these with you all.

Look them up on youtube if you want to check their video out, the band is called Attack Attack.

Made by miriku @ www.miriku.com

This Capsuleer is Signing Out

So, after a couple of years of intermittent play, I've finally let EVE Online go, at least for the time being. I enjoy the game when I can find a good group of people to play with, but mostly spend most of my time in a mind numbing, yet cathartic haze of mining rocks.

I love the game, I guess it's just not loving me back enough to keep me paying for it month after month, at least at this time. This is definitely a game where you have to participate in it and get active. You have to look for the fun, it won't seek you out.

I've had a bunch of fun with it, but it is time to power the ship down and look for adventures in other regions of space, should they show up.

Scribblenauts is a Great Game For Someone Like Me

I've always liked words. I used to be pretty proud of the fact that when I was in grade school, my reading and writing levels were through the roof compared to 98% of all other students in my grade level. Over the years, that deteriorated to the mess you read in this blog, but nonetheless, I still like big words, and enjoy what I claim to be a decent grasp of my native language.

While there are a lot of puzzle games out there for all kinds of people, there are only a few for dorks like me who enjoy words just for the sake of words. Sometimes I like to mull over the sound of a word, or the meaning of a word just because I enjoy it. Games like Bookwork Adventures, and Word Shark appeal to me, but a game like Scribblenauts is pure crack.

While the game mechanics are clunky in terms of the odd platforming physics, and the interactions between the objects, the game really appeals to the part of me that wants to BREAK IT. Maybe it's the QA background that I have, but I am always trying to think outside of the box and refuse to solve the puzzles in an obvious way. It's an ex game tester's dream, let alone a word dork's dream.

I've been having a great time playing this. I recommend it to those of you that really want to push the game's massive dictionary and play around with it. It's not a game for people who are looking for exacting movement and interactions, because in all truthfulness it's quite sloppy in that regards.

Saavedra's Fan Faire Recap

So, I'm MOSTLY recovered from the SOE Fan Faire as I write this. I say mostly, because my voice has only partially recovered, and my feet still "kinda" hurt from standing around at the booth so much.

I had such a good time this year! At least I think I did! To be honest, I didn't have alot of time for recreation, as I was almost exclusively chained to our kiosk demoing The Agency! I don't know how many times we ran through the gameplay that we were demoing, but I do know that I lost my voice over it.

Besides all of the demoing, the panels, and the SOE related events I really didn't get to do all that much in terms of extraneous activity. I have friends who live out there, but never got a chance to call them, I think I spent all of my free time talking to guildies or potential Agency players.

As I put it to Dan, our producer that was there, we only really took naps the entire time we were there. We are talking 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night. In fact, I never left the building even once during the event, and didn't see daylight for 3 days. The only time I saw the outside was when I arrived and when I left.

Anyways, this was a great Fan Faire for me. I thought our game was well recieved, the crossroads area was trafficked much more than in past years. I was enjoying all of the affection that EQ2 was getting, despite my not being on the team anymore. Overall it was a good time.

One really cool thing for me, that I'm not sure most of you can relate to is the fact that this new Odus expansion will be the first EQ2 expansion where I don't know about everything that is going into it before I get to play it. For the first time I'll be able to experience it purely as a player instead of a developer, so I really look forward to that. I'm also looking forward to some of the cool features that are coming and probably anticipate it as much as the next EverQuest 2 fan!

This time around, I quite enjoyed The Agency panels, despite the rocky start we had with the first one. I got to field quite a bit of questions about Pvp and it made me so happy to see all of the interest in it. We got to show some footage and images that no one has seen before, so that was pretty cool as well. I thought it was pretty fun watching people with their cameras snapping shots like fiends as we showed some of it.

I saw some really fantastic costumes this time around as well. There must have been double the number of entries this year! I was so impressed by the fact that some people chose to make costumes of things that were not particularly their avatars, so that was so cool. Big props to the girl dressed as a Siren, not only because she wore the costume well (and I mean very well!) she did such a great authentic job with it.

Anyways, I had a great time and look forward to doing it again, God willing. I always feel so blessed to meet the people who keep me employed and always feel so grateful for their enthusiasm. It makes coming back to work such an exciting thing.

Oh Midway

It bums me out when I hear all of the news about the crumbling game giant Midway.

I worked there for almost 12 years, and that place was like a second home to me more than many of you can imagine due to how much overtime I spent there.

It really pushes my buttons to hear that Ed Boon is twittering about his next Mortal Kombat game while my friends are packing their desks in San Diego.

I still remember the day when those guys bought us out. Back then the company in San Diego was known as Leland Interactive Media. They made games like Offroad Challenge, John Elway's Quarterback and Dragons Lair. They made so many promises back then, and truthfully the company did really well for a number of years.

Almost every 3rd party title that came out of Midway over the last 15 years came out of San Diego, IE the games that kept them afloat long enough to make lots of lukewarm Mortal Kombat, Blitz, and NBA Jam sequels in Chicago. It's sad that this is one of the studios that doesn't make the cut.

Learning is Often a Painful Experience

A long time ago, a great programmer that I knew by the name of Steve Ranck told me that learning is painful. At the time, I think it was around when I was learning to use 3d Studio Max when I was a track designer for the arcade game Hydro Thunder, and I was having a rough time with it. Hell, I was having a rough time with all the tools we were using, despite the fact that they were fantastic.

The bottom line is, alot of game design is painful to some extent. Putting ideas on down on paper is one thing, but executing them is another. That's why you hear about all of these developer horror stories where an executive or producer that isn't close to the actual production of his game makes outrageous demands of his designers, artists and programmers, leading up to an implosion of sorts for the game. They just don't understand that some tasks are difficult to the point of being "painful".

For just over a week now, I've been learning some new design stuff for The Agency, and boy oh boy have I been pinging the pain threshold! The work I'm currently doing is super cool, and fun to do, but man oh man, It is rough when you make n00b mistakes. I'm the kind of guy that likes to get really good at one thing, then move on to the next, and I'm in that "next" transition right now.

The point of this is, you aren't going to learn anything unless you get out of that comfort zone. Those of you that are picking up unreal ed for the first time for example, you are going to find it almost insurmountable in how complex it is. What I want to say to you guys is, don't give up! You have to break through the wall before you can really get comfortable with the tools of the trade.

I'm by no means an expert in the realm to be truthful. I am a great tool user when it comes to game design, but I require a certain amount of ramp up time before I really get comfortable with it. I'm blessed in the aspect that I have a job that I can go to that practically forces me to learn these things... Things that I'm already interested in on a hobby level, where I have to get results in X amount of time, therefore I'm forced to persevere through that tough learning stage. Those of you out there that are just getting started, sitting in your bedroom dreaming of becoming a game designer, you have to buckle down and blast through the roadblocks, it's the only way it's going to happen.