A post I meant to write two days ago

This image has nothing to do with this post, but I found it rather lolsome. I unfortunately have no idea whom to attribute it to.

WiiWare went live on Monday! Six games were released, and if you’re interested in reading more about them, Wired has good coverage.

It seems like a strong beginning, and it’ll be interesting seeing how WiiWare pans out. Will it give developers an opportunity to ‘test the waters’ of Wii development, as a space for proof of concept ideas? Will it attract indie developers working on quirkier, somewhat riskier games? Will WiiWare even develop a audience? I think that’s a fair question, given the reputation the Wii has for appealing to very casual players, who presumably don’t seek out game information themselves.

I just listened to this segment on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show on New York’s video game industry… or rather, lack thereof. When I started really looking at where the development studios are, I noticed that there’s really not much in New York — which was pretty surprising. There are a lot of publishers, but not a lot of the production gets done in NY, outside of slightly more niche segments of the industry, like casual and mobile.

It’s not a terribly in-depth discussion, more of a 20 minute fluff piece really, positing that New York is developing a video game industry…. maybe? The most interesting discussion comes when a couple developers discuss the difference between development on the west coast versus New York. According to them, on the west coast, investors have a higher risk-tolerance and are more adventurous when it comes to new ideas and putting money into startups. Incidentally, I have heard in the past that, in the games industry, the further east you go, the more… progressive game design becomes. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the exact quote and source, but that was a stereotype that I carried with me for a while. Knowing what I know today though, I doubt that experimental design knows geographic boundaries.

Another interesting (but not game related) story I heard on Public Radio, this time NPR’s Talk of the Nation: America’s most overrated product is the bachelor’s degree. That’s what Marty Nemko says in this article anyway. The jist is that far too many kids charge headlong into college thinking that it’s some manner of magic bullet, that it’s a guarantor of salary X. In reality, according to this guy, a great many undergraduate programs are woefully inadequate, not only not guarenteeing salary X, but not even guarenteeing basic adequacy for expected performance in the work force. To quote from the article:

“A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below “proficient” levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.”

I myself opted not to attend college, but I don’t mean this to be my vindicative “I told ya so”. Yes, it’s directly relevant to my own life decisions, but it’s also relevant to questions many of my peers face, as well as my two younger brothers. Societal pressures still insist that college is a must, but more and more, I feel that it’s entirely acceptable to ask, “does the cost-benefit ratio for college make sense for me?” or even, “is college right for me?” I know of several people for whom a trade school or career college would likely be a much wiser choice.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go stir fry some noodles. Warrior needs food badly.

DemoCRAZY

The portfolio page for my Indoril mask/helmet is up. Good to finally have that out of the way.

Big ups for Indiana for last night, by the way! It was very much an exciting primary, so much so that I spent a handful of hours F5ing certain websites and checking in on the cable news networks. It’s extremely gratifying to feel that your vote is truly meaningful, which isn’t always the case at the national level in Indiana — traditionally a pretty solidly red state. This voting thing is working out pretty well for me; in 2006, I was lucky enough to live in a contested congressional district, and we exchanged a Republican representative for a Democrat. Yes, those two-year elections do occasionally count for something!

The gorgeous trailer of Mirror’s Edge

I’d not heard of this game before. I post it mainly for the beautiful art direction — pristine white spaces accented by shapes of bold, vibrant color. Hopefully the game chiefly sticks to these sort of visuals, and doesn’t spend too much time in the murky dark green color palette we see a flash of in the trailer.

The player movement is remniscent of Assassin’s Creed, but in the first-person. The Wikipedia article includes a quote saying that, “principally, this is an action adventure. We’re not positioning this as a shooter – the focus isn’t on the gun, it’s on the person.”

Mirror’s Edge is developed by Digital Illusions CE, DICE, mostly known for the Battlefield Series, due out “Late 2008″ on PS3, 360, and PC.

Under sun and sky, outlander

I’ve taken some time out of the project I was working on —an earnest attempt at a custom Team Fortress 2 map— to work on what you see to the right.

It may look familiar to anyone who enjoyed Morrowind; these are the masks worn by the Ordinators of the city of Vivec, though obviously reimagined for the higher-res game art of today. This is actually something I started way back with my original Oblivion mod-work, but I never went beyond a basic high-poly model. I decided to revisit it to help remedy two weaknesses in my portfolio: a lack of human faces (important for a character artist) and a lack of Zbrush work. Because I already had the base established, I figured I could take this to completion fairly quickly. I wasn’t intending to take it to in-game implementation, but once I had done the full texture job, it was a matter of hey, why not?

Here are some further in-game shots: 1 2 3 4. The plume needs some work — it looks fine in 3dsMax, but there are some transparency issues in Oblivion itself. Also, you may notice in the profile shots, he is lacking ears! I’ve yet to fully explore how best to address this.

That said… here’s some stuff!

● I noticed shortly ago that Gamers With Jobs finally got their new site design up. I mention it, because the design was done by none other than my friend Eric Carl, web designer extraordinnaire! It’s a huge upgrade for them, much more professional than their old design, which I felt didn’t do justice to the thoughtfulness of their content. I mean, let’s face it, people absolutely do judge websites by their cover —er, design. I admit that I do.

● I finally got around to checking out Black Isle’s leaked VanBuren alpha, ONCE KNOWN AS FALLOUT THREE. There’s not, unfortunately, a lot to comment on. It’s very true to the first two Fallouts, and I will admit feeling a pang of bittersweet nostalgia that Fallout will not be revisiting the isometric turn-based style any time soon. However, one can’t help but wonder what might have happened, had this game seen release? I suspect it would have been another obscure and underappreciated gem, a fine game —possibly a great game— but only a modest market success, and likely not enough to, at the time, save Interplay, or ensure the Fallout franchise a bright future.

In any case, I note with some irony that Black Isle’s Fallout 3 was to start the player off as a prisoner… which happens to be the same way that every main entry in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series has begun.

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB

Tom Chick interviews Brian Reynolds of Big Huge Games. It’s mostly a look back at Rise of Legends, but also strays into more general questions. I’m really looking forward to what these guys do for their next games.

Over at 1Up, the question of just how personal game-playing can be is mulled over. Games as wish fulfillment, games as a mirror. I wish they’d try to distill it a little more, and deliver a firmer judgement on what exactly inspires personal involvement though.

RPS interviews Rod Humble, of EA Maxis. Humble is an interesting figure, both a part of EA, crusher of foes, vanquisher of dreams (I kid, I kid), and a producer of small art games. The interview mainly centers around Humble giggling at the various cruelties one can enact upon Sims.

Richard Bartle, co-author of the first MUD, has some harsh words for the anti-videogame figures of today.

● I’ll end with something I’ve dabbled in the past couple weeks: two MMOs — the free trials for Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest 2. Apropos of nothing in particular, I asked a friend who had never played an MMO before if she’d like to try LotRO out with me. She agreed, fortunately, because these games are always more fun with friends. We set aside a night to jump in together and check it out, but when the time came, Turbine’s account services were down, and she was unable to start the trial (I had accidentally started it the night before). That put a bit of a damper on our appetite for the game. We played the next night though and had a pretty good time, though not good enough to entice either of us back in. Though we had seven days, it was the only night either of us spent much time playing.

This post is already long enough, so if you want to read more about my brief flirtation with Everquest 2 and LotRO… well, there’s more after the jump.