GameHorizon was fantastic and I’m gutted that I could only attend one day out of the two. However it was a fantastic day and I got to meet some cool people so I’m not going to cry too much.

There were five talks on Wednesday and they were all pretty good. The introduction with Pauline Jacquey (Ubisoft Reflections) and David Polfeldt (Massive Entertainment) was a great start to the day where they discussed their backgrounds, successes failures in management and some general advice for life. It was quite interesting to hear about the experiences of managers and producers since that isn’t a topic that seems to be discussed much at these sort of things.

Henrique Olifiers (Bossa Studios) spoke about his visions for online gaming interactions which, while interesting, mainly consisted of common sense. He also talked about the effect social media has had on gaming and discussed the pros and cons of using social networks.

Fredrik Wester (Paradox Interactive) talked about the rise of his company and the way they managed to create their own market and keep it. The brief mention of the ‘anti-marketing’ is actually pretty clever.

After a little break we had a Skype Q&A with Will Wright which was one of my favourite talks of the day. He took quite a few boring and standard questions and still managed to put out some interesting answers, even if they were a little abstract at times.

The last talk of the day was a discussion and Q&A session about the future of gaming hardware by Mark Rein (Epic Games), Sameer Baroova (GameStick) and Andrew Oliver (Blitz Games Studios). It was good to hear about some different insights into gaming hardware that didn’t come from the regulars in games journalism, but by the people making the games for these machines. This one really needed to be longer but there were still some great opinions in here.

After the talks we headed to the after party and got to chat with some other attendees as well as David and Fredrik. We ended up going out for a kebab with Fredrik and hearing about some other stuff he had to say on a variety of topics. It’s nice and also a little strange hanging out with these people face to face and chatting with them for a while. They never tried to get rid of us, never turned down any questions, wanted to hear our opinions on stuff too and they seemed like they wanted to be there which is quite refreshing to know at this time in the games industry. I was a little concerned that the ‘big’ people attending would end up being typical faceless businessy people but I was happy to be proven wrong. I’m going to Gamescom in August and if that’s as good as this was then I will be over the moon.

Here are some links to the talks. If you have the time I’d definitely watch all of these.

Keynote: The fearless creation of the million dollar game (ignore the warning, it’s only muted for 2 minutes)

Anti-social behaviour: playing in open networks

Using an axe to carve a niche

Live Q&A with Will Wright

Roundtable: New opportunities in video game hardware

I can’t vouch for the talks from the second day but I’m sure they’re good too.

lessie2d:

callmemonamiral:

Whether you’re indie or AAA, for consoles or computer, I want to follow you and get to know you !

It’s hard to be less productive than me, but I like to identify as a game developer.

I guess I am technically a game developer now but I probably don’t bring much credit to that term right now haha

1:4 is probably the ratio of hours working and hours googling the reason why the stuff I programmed doesn’t work

Ironically I made a post a little while ago in which I said I would write something. Then I forgot to write something because this is uni crunch time and I don’t really have time to write anything at the moment so I’ll just summarise everything I’ve thought about lately into a nice bullet point list.

• I’ve been playing the alpha of Prison Architect and it’s pretty cool. It is lacking some endgame but then again it isn’t finished yet so I can’t be too harsh. I also have trouble feeding all my prisoners so then they get angry and kill the chefs, which means there is less food available. The trials and tribulations of running a prison…
• That Pizza Hut app for the Xbox 360 is incredibly stupid. Even those websites where you order food would make more sense to use. It would really be the cherry on the cake if you paid in Microsoft points because not only have you wasted your time buying a pizza from a mediocre takeaway but you also would have no idea how much you paid for it.
• I spent about 40-50 hours playing Trackmania 2: Canyon over the last few months and I love it. It has a couple of problems but as far as racing games on PC go it’s pretty damn good and you should pick it up because it’s a steal for £16 (if you like that sort of thing anyway). Not your typical racing game, there’s more focus on driving around crazy environments, a buttload of drifting and there’s a lot of air time. Has a nice learning curve though. Custom skins and tracks add longevity to an already lengthy singleplayer component. The multiplayer is where it’s at though. Making your own content is a doddle too.
• I am predicting that the next Xbox is going to be poo.
• Jim Sterling’s ‘Jimquisition’ is a weekly breath of fresh air which I’ve gotten into the habit of watching and it’s nice to be reminded that gaming journalism isn’t as deluded as it seems sometimes.
• I’m going to GameHorizon in May and GamesCom in August. They are meant to be great venues and I have the bonus of living right next to the place where GameHorizon is hosted. I am looking forward to those.

That’s about it I think.

How are you?

lessie2d:

dudehugespeaks:

Yesterday reports that Adam Orth, the guy who somehow caused this shitstorm, is no longer at Microsoft.

Let’s pay attention to the wording here. Resigned. Not fired.

Now, beyond all of the use of the impact font and the “Haha let’s make an internet meme out of this guy we’ve never met” let’s also remember that what happened between Adam and his employer is now between the two of them. His comments may have exploded on the internet, but it’s actually quite possible that he was eyeing a departure, or he was getting bad reviews, or was tired of the perpetual overcast nature of the Pacific Northwest and timing may have been right for him to move on.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. When someone leaves a company there’s what publicly is stated and there’s what really happened.

And you’re likely to never, ever know it.

I have never met Adam, but I have friends who know him and have told me first hand that he’s a good guy. Maybe he’s got a mortgage. Maybe he has kids. Bills to pay, just like you and I.

What is the point of saying all that? Should I feel empathy for him just because he maybe has a mortgage or kids? Does his personal situation make what he said less awful? Hint: it doesn’t.

It’s awfully easy to sit on an anonymous forum or venue and sling mud at someone who has put themselves out there. Show me a person who hasn’t said something dumb or incorrect or yes, even cocky on the internet and he should cast the first stone.

Funny fact: not many people know that “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is an extreme form of the Ad Hominem fallacy. I’m not having any of that. His mistakes are not free from judgement just because there aren’t many people in the world who never hurt anyone or said something stupid/incorrect over the internet.

We’ve all been there.

Let’s also keep in mind that Adam was not an official spokesperson for Microsoft.

But, Cliff, as an employee of a large company you should know better?

Sure.

But if I departed from Epic every time I said something dumb I wouldn’t have made it the last 10 years there. (P.S. Mike Capps was right…the Wii was a virus after all.) People make mistakes and sometimes it’s hard to actually convey a proper emotion, intent or meaning in 140 characters. (Hell if I had a nickel for every email that was misinterpreted when I was at Epic.)

Now, I don’t know as much as you’d think I know about Microsoft’s future plans. Even if I did I wouldn’t go blogging about it like some sort of fool.

My gut is telling me that an always online future is probably coming. It’s coming fast, and possibly to the majority of the devices you enjoy. Adam’s analogies weren’t that far off; although the vacuum one was kind of weird. Sim City, with all of its’ troubles on launch, seems to be selling briskly. Diablo 3, the poster child of a messy launch, is estimated to be at 12 million units. (Remember the internet rage over the art style shift? I barely do. But it seemed so important at the time!) I would bet money that without the always online elements of Diablo 3 that it would have sold half of that.

“I’m so angry about this game treating me like a thief!” ::alt tabs over to bit torrent::

So you’re saying that people who pirate a game were not, in any way, pushed by the very companies that made those games into doing so? That all those draconian, ridiculous, ILLEGAL DRM they are pushing down our throats is not the reason people don’t want a “legitimate” copy of a game? Get over yourself, piracy is not a problem, it is a symptom. It will happen as long as companies treat us like criminals, as morons who should just “deal with it”, no matter what kind of blatantly immoral, illegal measures they throw around just for the sake of their own profit.

Remember when Microsoft made the decision to only allow broadband on Xbox Live? It was a bold move back then; broadband penetration wasn’t anywhere near what it is now. And yet the march of progress continued. Sooner or later our government, or Google, or any number of providers are going to get their shit together and we’ll have universally fast internet for the majority of the first world.

“The majority of the first world”? Do you know how small portion of the world’s population that represents? Are you being so classist as to actually disregard the fact that the majority of the world’s population/consumers actually don’t live in this “first world” you speak of? But I guess these people don’t matter, everyone knows that those who live outside the US/Europe live on top of trees and never buy any games.

Or at least the ability to stream Dawson’s Creek on fucking Netflix at decent quality.

And here’s the thing. I’d be willing to say that any early adopter for any new piece of technology is probably going to have some sort of solid internet connection. Also, and I’ve stated this before, keeping that umbilical cord connected might not always require some sort of insane fat pipe. Sometimes just 3G might be enough.

Even then, it doesn’t matter. If you’re on a forum raging about Adam’s comments there’s a whole new generation of kids who are growing up always online who won’t really give a shit. And all that anger, all of that vitrol, all of that lynch mobbing that the internet seems to love to do lately will be for naught and forgotten.

So what you’re saying is that we should let our children grow up in an always-connected world. And since they never experienced the freedom of having your own, offline, private space, they won’t complain? Are you seriously suggesting we just let greedy, big companies to condition children into thinking they don’t have another, better alternative to what you’re preaching here?

My wife and I were discussing these issues this afternoon and she mentioned the example of “Hey what if I’m a gamer who wants to go to a cabin in the woods for a week and I don’t have online access there?” My response was “Unplugging entirely sometimes isn’t always a bad thing. And that’s the edge case…the week-long vacation to the cabin is only 30 hours of not playing a game or a device that’s built for much more.

Technology doesn’t advance by worrying about the edge case.

It does. Technology advances by fulfilling needs. Later on you make a point that those who hack/jailbreak their devices are such a small share of people that it won’t matter. Some might say, they are an edge case. But look at that, technology evolved to accomodate their need for more control over their devices. Technology is for everyone, not for just the majority dominant share of population.

What about the people who work all day, and can only access your always-on device when they are already at that situation your wife described you? What if their whole experience with the device constitutes an “edge case”? Will you just tell them “don’t play my game”? Will you exclude them from that experience because they’re not as *ahem* privileged *ahem* as you are?

If a service is good then people don’t mind paying for it. My Ipad is always connected because I love browsing Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. I love the ecosystem of Itunes and the App store. If the ecosystem of an always connected device is fantastic then suddenly people don’t really seem to notice any more. When electricity came along and people had to have meters attached to their house they didn’t mind because they loved the idea of light bulbs, electric ranges, and refrigeration.

Guess what? Always online isn’t a good service. Not for most people. Connection lags, connection drops. Most people are just screwed over by ISPs and try to survive with that little they WE have.

If we don’t have devices that aren’t fully always online you can bet your ass that we’ll have devices that encourage you to return to the online ecosystem in order to “check in” and make sure everything on the system is legit. Could you hack/jailbreak such a device? Sure, but that crowd will almost always be the die hard/enthusiast crowd that’s not the average user and makes up a small percentage of the potential sales.

And with WHAT data can you affirm that so vehemently? What model makes you be absolutely sure that in the future the share of people who want to be in control of the devices they own will stay the same as today?

And “make sure that everything on the system is legit”? Please. If you bought a system, it is yours. Everything you do with it is legit, unless it tramples on someone else’s rights. And, my friend, invading people’s privacy and taking away their control over their own property? That is so much stomping on individual rights I don’t even know where to begin.

“Well that escalated quickly.”

I find it disgusting that an online community would revel in the fact that they may have potentially contributed to a person losing their job. Even then, if they didn’t have anything to do with it at the end of the day, that they have the collective ego to think that they could do that. In a world of Indie-go-go and Kickstarter, where we can do great things in numbers, we should know better.

Oh, we’re being protectionists now? The guy brought this onto himself, by treating consumers as second-class citizens. But no, I get that one person’s job is more important than the needs of everyone else.

Honestly, I feel it disgusting that someone with your reach is preaching protectionism like that. Guess what? Getting that guy away from any position of power is a good thing, if what he wants is in wild disagreement with what is fair for the people. You should know better.

I’d rather live in a world where someone can slip up, say something that the world doesn’t agree with, and not have the collective internet lynch mob up their ass.

Well behaved people rarely make history.

Deal with it.

To wrap up: I WILL deal with it. I will deal with it by not staying silent. By not allowing companies to impose ridiculous restrictions upon the way I use technology. I will deal with it by tearing those arguments of yours apart and letting the world know that you actually have nothing to support that stance that is just fertile grounds for settling in invasive surveillance technology, hiding behind the purpose of “making sure the device is legitimate”. I will not stay silent while you treat the needs of the public as “an edge case we shouldn’t listen to”.

The people will have what they want and what they need, not just what companies are willing to give.

Deal with it.

Could not agree more. I don’t know why Cliffy B wants to defend this guy.

I think it’s about time I wrote something. It’s been a while…