Maybe everyone blames GameSpy because the only time GameSpy is annoying and worthless is in those games that require you log in to GameSpy. So basically, just mentioning GameSpy makes your online worthless.
Question on a totally unrelated topic: Why exactly are games in other regions so expensive? Games in Australia, New Zealand, Eastern Europe, Mexico, South America, etc can be 1.5 - 2 times more expensive than in the US, and that's with people in some of those countries making much less on average than in the US. What's going on that makes them so pricey?
Originally, in the 1980s to early 90s. The need to import games combined with a weak dollar would have kept prices high. However, the continued high price today is justified because the Australian market is tolerent to high prices. Pathetic isn't it.
It is quite annoying with steam games that have regional pricing as there is no justification with why a digital title would cost more when you are the one paying for bandwidth anyway.
It is not all bad though, Australia is considered the same region as the UK when it comes to region locking. It is quite easy to import from the UK and save 50-80% on the Australian retail price of a game. This is even advisable with ps3 games, which despite being largely region free usually have DLC locked to a regions store, being interchangable between Australian and UK PSN stores.
I buy very few games within Australia these days.
Bluefist on
STEAM & PSN: Bluefist56
0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited July 2010
I buy games locally, but tend to look for whoever is trying to undercut everyone else. Like, I just grabbed Starcraft 2 for $70au. That's 30% cheaper than every other retailer. Not as much of a saving as importing, but I'm an impatient person.
Sometimes you have to act quickly with steam, you can often catch games when they first come out at the normal price and a few days later the regional pricing kicks in and the price doubles.
Actually I did a TON of different things for GameSpy, much of which was not press, and regularly worked directly with developers and publishers, so yes heavily industry. Even so, working in the game industry isn't relegated to just those guys that design games, it is a broad field encompassing many different jobs. Look back at my sports commentator analogy. When you start telling people that you don't think their particular job is considered industry work, you start going down a slippery slope and really come to question what it really is to work in the industry. Is the guy that does the art for a game less of an industry employee? What about the guy that designs the advertising campaigns, or the PR guy for the company, etc etc. See what I mean? You have to understand that it is a big industry and everybody has their part, and I wouldn't presume to be so arrogant that I'd tell somebody that they are less industry, because odds are that without them we'd lose an important part of the chain. Hell look above, I even consider the clerks at GameStop to be industry workers, because they distribute the product.
Also saying GameSpy Arcade Sucks is a pretty cheep shot. It's an OLD program that served a purpose back in the day, of course it doesn't hold up now. You might as well say that compared to present tech the Atari sucks.
I strongly disagree with you there. Saying a Gamestop clerk is part of the games industry is ridiculous. That's like saying someone that works at Blockbuster is part of the film industry. Distributors like Gamestop are the middlemen between the videogame industry and consumers. The gaming press are similar, their job is to report on the videogame industry to consumers.
If I were to come up with a loose definition of what the videogame industry encompasses, I'd probably say that anyone that contributes directly to games is part of it. So executives approve projects, PR people help sell projects, etc. If you contributed to the middleware side of Gamespy then fair enough, I'd consider that part of the industry (though some middleware created for more broad use I probably wouldn't).
And sorry man but even back in the day Gamespy Arcade was pretty terrible.
I've always associated Nintendo's terrible online with Gamespy since they're the backend for the whole thing. Maybe the 3DS's online is supposedly so cool because they're dropping that shit and going with something built from the ground for their use.
Yakuza? If you can't see the GTA influences in that game you're nuts. Heavy Rain? ...the hell? That's classic film noir mixed with a touch of Saw (or at least it is so far, I actually just played the "crawling on broken glass" bit). Even if gangs do show up later, the game's hardly based on them.
...no, I'm not being closed-minded, I'm thinking like a project manager. Sure, you can have fun, but you don't want to screw around to the point that it interferes with the work. The realistic take on Twisted Metal was apparently explored deeply enough to imply that Jaffe directed at least a few people to work on it, otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it. We're not talking about an artist doodling Sweet Tooth as a realistic biker on his coffee break, here. And no, you don't have to work on the concept for "three years" to explore the concept. Besides, the only way he would be a "crappy manager" is if he let his employees run willy nilly doing whatever the hell they want to without any direction. That's why I said he would be a "crappy manager" if the realistic take on Twisted Metal WASN'T something Jaffe wanted to explore, which I'm saying isn't the case. Do you even know what you're arguing about anymore? I mean, I do realize that criticizing a Sony employee activates your berserker rage, but yeesh.
And you're posting in the industry thread, for god's sake. You should know by now that an offhanded sentence by a developer or executive can often reveal a wealth of hidden information.
You've never played a Yakuza game, have you? Yakuza has more similarities with Streets of Rage than it does with GTA. Mix in some Shenmue (omg another GTA ripoff, m i rite?) exploration/minigames and you've got Yakuza.
I've no clue how Eat Sleep Play handle their pre-production stage but I'm guessing they don't just send a handful of people off to work on it seperately. I'm pretty sure those sort of things are generally nailed out in design meetings before either being accepted or thrown out. The length of time they spent on them is never even implied at in the article and if you think it was then you're clearly reading into it way too much. And regardless, I still don't know what the fucking point is of complaining about them when they were rejected ideas anyway. Do you also expect deleted scenes in movies to be amazing? Cause they're generally cut for pretty good reasons.
I fail to see what the industry thread has to do with you breaking down an article with the direct intention of insulting someone. I may dislike Peter Molyneux but I'm not going to quote an article about him and try to break down every single thing he says so I can post a snarky little comment about it. Not only would I be a dick for doing so but it'd be a complete waste of everybody's time (mine and whoever decided to actually read it).
So Gameloft's thinly-veiled knockoffs of popular games are profitable. I can call them knockoffs without getting yelled at, right? ...wait, they're not Sony. OK, I'm safe. Carrying on.
Actually I did a TON of different things for GameSpy, much of which was not press, and regularly worked directly with developers and publishers, so yes heavily industry. Even so, working in the game industry isn't relegated to just those guys that design games, it is a broad field encompassing many different jobs. Look back at my sports commentator analogy. When you start telling people that you don't think their particular job is considered industry work, you start going down a slippery slope and really come to question what it really is to work in the industry. Is the guy that does the art for a game less of an industry employee? What about the guy that designs the advertising campaigns, or the PR guy for the company, etc etc. See what I mean? You have to understand that it is a big industry and everybody has their part, and I wouldn't presume to be so arrogant that I'd tell somebody that they are less industry, because odds are that without them we'd lose an important part of the chain. Hell look above, I even consider the clerks at GameStop to be industry workers, because they distribute the product.
Also saying GameSpy Arcade Sucks is a pretty cheep shot. It's an OLD program that served a purpose back in the day, of course it doesn't hold up now. You might as well say that compared to present tech the Atari sucks.
I strongly disagree with you there. Saying a Gamestop clerk is part of the games industry is ridiculous. That's like saying someone that works at Blockbuster is part of the film industry. Distributors like Gamestop are the middlemen between the videogame industry and consumers. The gaming press are similar, their job is to report on the videogame industry to consumers.
If I were to come up with a loose definition of what the videogame industry encompasses, I'd probably say that anyone that contributes directly to games is part of it. So executives approve projects, PR people help sell projects, etc. If you contributed to the middleware side of Gamespy then fair enough, I'd consider that part of the industry (though some middleware created for more broad use I probably wouldn't).
And sorry man but even back in the day Gamespy Arcade was pretty terrible.
While I already said it's a very loose association, one that is not on the same level or even planet, it still in a small part is. In the same way that the guy working in the mail room at Foxcorp is still an employee of Fox, though not the same kind as say a news anchor for Fox. I consider it all part of a rich tapestry.
You mentioned a few things you consider industry work, well let me ask you about some. While working with GameSpy I created and ran some advertising campaigns for upcoming titles, even though I was not an employee of the company making the game does that count? How about running their betas under the same circumstances? Game companies just make games, they generally don't have the infrastructure or back-end to run massive betas themselves so they farm them out to companies that can. What about running contests for them? I could name a hundred more little things like that.
Also gaming press generally works with and has direct access to developers and publishers.
You are free to say that Arcade was crap, but back in the day it served a purpose and was fairly popular. I know because I did 2 years of tech support for it, and I remember how big it used to be.
Let's get some news in here before the latest episode of the Cloud and Unco show shits up the joint.
Sega Sammy, the holding company that is parent to a group that also includes arcade and pachislot businesses alongside Sonic house Sega's consumer software operations, saw a 14.9 billion yen ($173 million) profit for the three months ending June 30. Contrast that with a 7.8 billion yen ($90.5 million) loss in the same period last year. Sales are also up, rising 51 percent year over year to 91.3 billion yen ($1.05 billion).
But the company still struggles with declining overseas sales, with 3.3 million software units sold in total -- largely contributed by Iron Man 2 and Alpha Protocol -- the latter of which received a tepid critical reception, and according to Sega West president Mike Hayes, "hasn't sold what we've expected."
"Demand was generally weak in the U.S. and European markets due to the headwind like sluggish personal consumption," the company said. The consumer business, which includes home video games, individually reported a 636 million-yen ($7.4 million) loss, then -- but the figure represents a drastic narrowing on the 4.5 billion-yen ($52 million) loss in the segment for the same period a year ago.
But the company's largest share still comes from overseas markets -- about half, or 1.68 million units, of its total software sales came from North America, with most of the remainder in Europe. Sega sold just 270,000 units on its home shores of Japan during the quarter.
Like Capcom yesterday, Sega stated its intention to address its challenges with a push into the mobile and social game market: "The Group needs to adapt to changing business environment in which the market demand for new content geared to social networking service (SNS) and smartphone is expanding," said Sega.
Yakuza? If you can't see the GTA influences in that game you're nuts. Heavy Rain? ...the hell? That's classic film noir mixed with a touch of Saw (or at least it is so far, I actually just played the "crawling on broken glass" bit). Even if gangs do show up later, the game's hardly based on them.
...no, I'm not being closed-minded, I'm thinking like a project manager. Sure, you can have fun, but you don't want to screw around to the point that it interferes with the work. The realistic take on Twisted Metal was apparently explored deeply enough to imply that Jaffe directed at least a few people to work on it, otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned it. We're not talking about an artist doodling Sweet Tooth as a realistic biker on his coffee break, here. And no, you don't have to work on the concept for "three years" to explore the concept. Besides, the only way he would be a "crappy manager" is if he let his employees run willy nilly doing whatever the hell they want to without any direction. That's why I said he would be a "crappy manager" if the realistic take on Twisted Metal WASN'T something Jaffe wanted to explore, which I'm saying isn't the case. Do you even know what you're arguing about anymore? I mean, I do realize that criticizing a Sony employee activates your berserker rage, but yeesh.
And you're posting in the industry thread, for god's sake. You should know by now that an offhanded sentence by a developer or executive can often reveal a wealth of hidden information.
You've never played a Yakuza game, have you? Yakuza has more similarities with Streets of Rage than it does with GTA. Mix in some Shenmue (omg another GTA ripoff, m i rite?) exploration/minigames and you've got Yakuza.
I've no clue how Eat Sleep Play handle their pre-production stage but I'm guessing they don't just send a handful of people off to work on it seperately. I'm pretty sure those sort of things are generally nailed out in design meetings before either being accepted or thrown out. The length of time they spent on them is never even implied at in the article and if you think it was then you're clearly reading into it way too much. And regardless, I still don't know what the fucking point is of complaining about them when they were rejected ideas anyway. Do you also expect deleted scenes in movies to be amazing? Cause they're generally cut for pretty good reasons.
I fail to see what the industry thread has to do with you breaking down an article with the direct intention of insulting someone. I may dislike Peter Molyneux but I'm not going to quote an article about him and try to break down every single thing he says so I can post a snarky little comment about it. Not only would I be a dick for doing so but it'd be a complete waste of everybody's time (mine and whoever decided to actually read it).
No, I haven't played Yakuza, but clearly I'm not the only one who noticed the GTA influence:
As far as development ideas, we know that the Twisted GTA idea went so far as to get multiple concept drawings, ideas for numerous factions, and a mention at Comic-Con. Clearly it was more fleshed out than "you know what would be hilarious? If all the drivers were mutant animals! Bwahahaha! Okay, back to work."
And clearly you haven't been reading the thread much if you somehow think we DON'T insult people on a regular basis. Kotick, Pachter, various Sony execs, hell, anyone who says something stupid in an interview. And I thought the Twisted GTA idea was derivative and lame enough for derision. It's not as if I was going "ooooh, he's eating a ham sandwich! What does he think he is, a pig? Here pig pig pig! Soooiiiieeee! Etc."
So Gameloft's thinly-veiled knockoffs of popular games are profitable. I can call them knockoffs without getting yelled at, right? ...wait, they're not Sony. OK, I'm safe. Carrying on.
Stay classy cloudeagle.
And again, Jaffe doesn't even work for Sony.[/QUOTE]
Sony gives him money to make a Sony IP game. That works for me.
Despite initial scepticism over its price, Kinect looks set to be a big hit.
Retailers are reporting high pre-order numbers for the device, which will be available in November for £129.99 bundled with Kinect Adventures.
In fact MCV understands one large chain has encouraged stores to secure 10 pre-orders for Kinect a day. Sources says they expect advance orders to topple half a million in the UK by launch.
It’s a U-turn for retail. Key voices previously declared sub-£100 as the only way to capture Kinect’s target market (MCV 593, 25/06/10). Now these firms are hailing the high price tag as “reflective of the product’s playability and appeal to a wide range of customers”.
Grainger Games’ sales director Phil Moore told MCV: “The feedback we’ve had so far from our customers is that they feel the price is appropriate to the product.
“We have taken a large number of deposits for Kinect already and it is set to become our biggest pre-order to date. This tells us the device’s appeal has not been affected by the price point.”
The Hut Group’s head of business development Sarah Jasper agreed: “Based on our orders thus far, customers are clearly excited by this offering and price – and quite rightly so.”
Retailers are also confident any remaining cynics will be won over, provided Microsoft is able to showcase the experience of playing Kinect effectively.
GAME Group’s UK MD Martyn Gibbs told MCV: “Kinect is a fantastic piece of technology and we believe that once people actually try it for themselves, they will understand the full scope and value of what it offers them.”
I thought these things always got good preorders? Why the hell are they assuming that preorders are from average customers?
Soccer moms with no 360s in the household who will have very angry conversations with microsoft support hotline operators when Kinect comes out.
Since when did soccer moms preorder games?
Well, they are heavily involved in piracy discussions. Why not pre-orders, too?
And before we go down the piracy path again, I should warn that Darkwarrior's spirited defense of the pegleg lifestyle in this very thread got him banned by a mod.
Who is buying Kenects? Given its proximity to the holidays and the general knowledge of the people involved, I would say ebay scalpers. They see new stuff, they think 'shortage...kaching!' and buy it without caring that the interest is probably low. Granted they look at it and say 'hey...thats like a wii isnt it!! BUY 10,000!!!! I'll make ZILLIONS!!'.
Soccer moms with no 360s in the household who will have very angry conversations with microsoft support hotline operators when Kinect comes out.
Since when did soccer moms preorder games?
Well, they are heavily involved in piracy discussions. Why not pre-orders, too?
And before we go down the piracy path again, I should warn that Darkwarrior's spirited defense of the pegleg lifestyle in this very thread got him banned by a mod.
By no means do I want to bring that shit up. It's just that parents buying things for their little kids is probably the most common scenario in defense of something. Usually in service of the idea that they know next to nothing about what they're buying. This can then be used to attack or defend whatever point seemingly needs to get made.
I'd rather read car analogies than constant streams of mythical soccer moms buying crap for their children.
Soccer moms with no 360s in the household who will have very angry conversations with microsoft support hotline operators when Kinect comes out.
Since when did soccer moms preorder games?
Well, they are heavily involved in piracy discussions. Why not pre-orders, too?
And before we go down the piracy path again, I should warn that Darkwarrior's spirited defense of the pegleg lifestyle in this very thread got him banned by a mod.
Wow, I didn't even notice that Darkwarrior got banned.
Yea, I knew something really bad was going to come out of that conversation.
Soccer moms with no 360s in the household who will have very angry conversations with microsoft support hotline operators when Kinect comes out.
Since when did soccer moms preorder games?
Well, they are heavily involved in piracy discussions. Why not pre-orders, too?
And before we go down the piracy path again, I should warn that Darkwarrior's spirited defense of the pegleg lifestyle in this very thread got him banned by a mod.
By no means do I want to bring that shit up. It's just that parents buying things for their little kids is probably the most common scenario in defense of something. Usually in service of the idea that they know next to nothing about what they're buying. This can then be used to attack or defend whatever point seemingly needs to get made.
I'd rather read car analogies than constant streams of mythical soccer moms buying crap for their children.
A soccer mom is like a Ford Taurus, An Otaku is like a VW bug, and a hardcore gamer is like a BMW.
Who is buying Kenects? Given its proximity to the holidays and the general knowledge of the people involved, I would say ebay scalpers. They see new stuff, they think 'shortage...kaching!' and buy it without caring that the interest is probably low. Granted they look at it and say 'hey...thats like a wii isnt it!! BUY 10,000!!!! I'll make ZILLIONS!!'.
You'd think people would learn a little caution after the bottom fell out of the PS3 market in less than a week, but the Internet sucks at recent history.
Who is buying Kenects? Given its proximity to the holidays and the general knowledge of the people involved, I would say ebay scalpers. They see new stuff, they think 'shortage...kaching!' and buy it without caring that the interest is probably low. Granted they look at it and say 'hey...thats like a wii isnt it!! BUY 10,000!!!! I'll make ZILLIONS!!'.
You'd think people would learn a little caution after the bottom fell out of the PS3 market in less than a week, but the Internet sucks at recent history.
The scalpers were going nuts over Wii Music man. At least, they were on Craig's List in my area.
Trying to sell preorders and then once it was out, new copies for about a hundred dollars or more.
Within about a week later they were selling the game at a loss. I'd see the same scalpers posting the game for $30.
Oh, I know. I started in an entry-level testing job working on Sonic Chronicles. It's tough and it can be a soul-sucking job, particularly if you're working publisher QA. Hell, BioWare QA is, as far as I can tell, almost unique in the industry in that it's very much an integrated position with the developers. We don't treat our QA people like faceless testers, but instead we ask that they do exactly what the name of the position implies - assure quality, which involves a lot of subjective feedback.
But that's the exception rather than the norm, and in a lot of cases you are going to spend a significant amount of time making the next Dora the EXplorer game rather than working on a AAA title. I got lucky and made it into Design with a large studio that turns out pretty awesome games, but that's a lot to do with geography and right place, right time. Most people are nowhere near that lucky, and this needs to be something that more people interested in joining the business are aware of.
I have never worked on a AAA title. The closest I came was Lord of the Rings: The Third Age and I barely got on that game in time to get my name in the titles. And everywhere I've ever had the fortune to work has never treated QA as the name implies. It was always looked as the one major department that doesn't generate income. So of course, they're always looking for ways to 'streamline' things.
It's depressing how many times I've sat in department meetings to be told that the developers don't like that we were writing bugs*.
*
In some cases, it was simply they were overwhelmed by the number of bugs we'd write and they'd complain that we were being 'mean' to them. In one other memorable case, it led to revamping the bug writing format because it appeared that 50 'faceless grunts' were telling the programmers how to make their game. The down side of using an 'if,then,should' format.
Heh. Last response because I don't want to take this thread too far off topic, but my sympathies. One of the things that we were taught early on (by a lead designer, mind you) was that we should never accept 'don't write bugs' from a developer. Our job was to tell the developers what needed fixing - and honestly, now that I'm on this side of the fence, I love getting bugs. It means that when there are a million tiny pops in my content, I don't have to go through and find them all by hand! It's not that I have better things to do, but that I have other things to do that take priority.
Hell, for most of the last four months of Mass Effect 2, my job was to go through every conversation aboard the Normandy and make sure that there weren't any minor bugs in the conversations such as Depth of Field pops, camera pops, that sort of thing. This involved taking video caps of every single path through each conversation and then watching those videos with a Word document open to note what I saw. It was mind numbing. It was boring. It also meant I got the opportunity to work on making the non-critical Joker conversations somewhat cooler by adding gestures. That segued into me becoming a Cinematic Designer for DA2.
The flip side, of course, is the number of people who become term testers with grand plans, ended their contracts, and then never went any further than that. It's unfortunately all-too-common for people to never break out of the 'entry level' of the industry, or at least not for a long time. I got lucky. A few other people I know also got lucky. The majority, however, did not. And I mean, we're at the better end of things.
Anytime someone tells me 'I want to work in video games!' I ensure that I give them the full truth of what it can (and oftentimes does) take. It's not fun and games. It's not tightening up the graphics on level three. It's often several years of wading through bullshit before you can get to the stuff you want to do. And even then, you may never get out of the bullshit.
This is kinda late and kinda OT now I guess, but I wanted to honestly thank you for going through that grueling BS and taking the time to actually look for those graphical pops in ME2, it looks a damn sight better than ME1 in that regard. That was a serious pet peeve of mine in mass effect 1, and working in software QA myself (for retail software packages) I know sometimes polish issues like that aren't the main concern for testers, so often will get overlooked. But the first thing I noticed playing ME2 was the Z-sorting, LOD popping, Depth of field bugginess was gone, and it made the experience a ton more engaging.
Who is buying Kenects? Given its proximity to the holidays and the general knowledge of the people involved, I would say ebay scalpers. They see new stuff, they think 'shortage...kaching!' and buy it without caring that the interest is probably low. Granted they look at it and say 'hey...thats like a wii isnt it!! BUY 10,000!!!! I'll make ZILLIONS!!'.
You'd think people would learn a little caution after the bottom fell out of the PS3 market in less than a week, but the Internet sucks at recent history.
The scalpers were going nuts over Wii Music man. At least, they were on Craig's List in my area.
Trying to sell preorders and then once it was out, new copies for about a hundred dollars or more.
Within about a week later they were selling the game at a loss. I'd see the same scalpers posting the game for $30.
That's hilarious.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the "holy fuck new vidja game thingy those things sell out, right?" tendency would push up pre-orders a bit.
Posts
Originally, in the 1980s to early 90s. The need to import games combined with a weak dollar would have kept prices high. However, the continued high price today is justified because the Australian market is tolerent to high prices. Pathetic isn't it.
It is quite annoying with steam games that have regional pricing as there is no justification with why a digital title would cost more when you are the one paying for bandwidth anyway.
It is not all bad though, Australia is considered the same region as the UK when it comes to region locking. It is quite easy to import from the UK and save 50-80% on the Australian retail price of a game. This is even advisable with ps3 games, which despite being largely region free usually have DLC locked to a regions store, being interchangable between Australian and UK PSN stores.
I buy very few games within Australia these days.
Or summer.
Or weekends.
Or when valve are all "ah lets's just have a sale."
Also why has the Urugaan picture in my sig turned into Lenin :?
I strongly disagree with you there. Saying a Gamestop clerk is part of the games industry is ridiculous. That's like saying someone that works at Blockbuster is part of the film industry. Distributors like Gamestop are the middlemen between the videogame industry and consumers. The gaming press are similar, their job is to report on the videogame industry to consumers.
If I were to come up with a loose definition of what the videogame industry encompasses, I'd probably say that anyone that contributes directly to games is part of it. So executives approve projects, PR people help sell projects, etc. If you contributed to the middleware side of Gamespy then fair enough, I'd consider that part of the industry (though some middleware created for more broad use I probably wouldn't).
And sorry man but even back in the day Gamespy Arcade was pretty terrible.
You've never played a Yakuza game, have you? Yakuza has more similarities with Streets of Rage than it does with GTA. Mix in some Shenmue (omg another GTA ripoff, m i rite?) exploration/minigames and you've got Yakuza.
I've no clue how Eat Sleep Play handle their pre-production stage but I'm guessing they don't just send a handful of people off to work on it seperately. I'm pretty sure those sort of things are generally nailed out in design meetings before either being accepted or thrown out. The length of time they spent on them is never even implied at in the article and if you think it was then you're clearly reading into it way too much. And regardless, I still don't know what the fucking point is of complaining about them when they were rejected ideas anyway. Do you also expect deleted scenes in movies to be amazing? Cause they're generally cut for pretty good reasons.
I fail to see what the industry thread has to do with you breaking down an article with the direct intention of insulting someone. I may dislike Peter Molyneux but I'm not going to quote an article about him and try to break down every single thing he says so I can post a snarky little comment about it. Not only would I be a dick for doing so but it'd be a complete waste of everybody's time (mine and whoever decided to actually read it).
Stay classy cloudeagle.
And again, Jaffe doesn't even work for Sony.
I would take him to IHOP for some stuffed French toast and lemon pancakes
While I already said it's a very loose association, one that is not on the same level or even planet, it still in a small part is. In the same way that the guy working in the mail room at Foxcorp is still an employee of Fox, though not the same kind as say a news anchor for Fox. I consider it all part of a rich tapestry.
You mentioned a few things you consider industry work, well let me ask you about some. While working with GameSpy I created and ran some advertising campaigns for upcoming titles, even though I was not an employee of the company making the game does that count? How about running their betas under the same circumstances? Game companies just make games, they generally don't have the infrastructure or back-end to run massive betas themselves so they farm them out to companies that can. What about running contests for them? I could name a hundred more little things like that.
Also gaming press generally works with and has direct access to developers and publishers.
You are free to say that Arcade was crap, but back in the day it served a purpose and was fairly popular. I know because I did 2 years of tech support for it, and I remember how big it used to be.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29683/Narrowing_Losses_Ongoing_Challenges_For_Segas_Consumer_Biz.php
It still disorients me when I see "Sega Sammy" and remember "oh yeah, Sammy bought Sega."
No, I haven't played Yakuza, but clearly I'm not the only one who noticed the GTA influence:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1075171p1.html
And this is from a guy who loves the game.
As far as development ideas, we know that the Twisted GTA idea went so far as to get multiple concept drawings, ideas for numerous factions, and a mention at Comic-Con. Clearly it was more fleshed out than "you know what would be hilarious? If all the drivers were mutant animals! Bwahahaha! Okay, back to work."
And clearly you haven't been reading the thread much if you somehow think we DON'T insult people on a regular basis. Kotick, Pachter, various Sony execs, hell, anyone who says something stupid in an interview. And I thought the Twisted GTA idea was derivative and lame enough for derision. It's not as if I was going "ooooh, he's eating a ham sandwich! What does he think he is, a pig? Here pig pig pig! Soooiiiieeee! Etc."
Stay classy cloudeagle.
And again, Jaffe doesn't even work for Sony.[/QUOTE]
Sony gives him money to make a Sony IP game. That works for me.
Just wait till he starts talking about having sex with your mom.
To be fair, though, I don't think Jaffe has gone to an indie conference and made a dickass of himself in front of his peers.
To be fair, he doesn't really need to.
Hey, let's be fair: that was Darkwarrior.
Silly and pointless as our conversation is, I don't think Unco's delved into kinky sex acts just yet.
At any rate, Kinect. Yeah, I'm a little surprised by the high preorders too, since the crowd Kinect's going after doesn't pre-order as much.
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Can't see it from work. Does it involve teenagers "acting radical" and/or "getting jiggy with it"?
Metroid: Other M commercial thing with a picture of Samus giving a thumbs down.
People who aren't you and also want to spoil the narrative that it sucks.
Soccer moms with no 360s in the household who will have very angry conversations with microsoft support hotline operators when Kinect comes out.
Since when did soccer moms preorder games?
Well, they are heavily involved in piracy discussions. Why not pre-orders, too?
And before we go down the piracy path again, I should warn that Darkwarrior's spirited defense of the pegleg lifestyle in this very thread got him banned by a mod.
Hell I'm calling it: If Kinect doesn't sell out this Christmas, I'll eat my cock.
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By no means do I want to bring that shit up. It's just that parents buying things for their little kids is probably the most common scenario in defense of something. Usually in service of the idea that they know next to nothing about what they're buying. This can then be used to attack or defend whatever point seemingly needs to get made.
I'd rather read car analogies than constant streams of mythical soccer moms buying crap for their children.
Edit - This is a good TOTP
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Wow, I didn't even notice that Darkwarrior got banned.
Yea, I knew something really bad was going to come out of that conversation.
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See, the Kinect's like an Edsel....
Now, she's not much of anything.
A soccer mom is like a Ford Taurus, An Otaku is like a VW bug, and a hardcore gamer is like a BMW.
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You'd think people would learn a little caution after the bottom fell out of the PS3 market in less than a week, but the Internet sucks at recent history.
The scalpers were going nuts over Wii Music man. At least, they were on Craig's List in my area.
Trying to sell preorders and then once it was out, new copies for about a hundred dollars or more.
Within about a week later they were selling the game at a loss. I'd see the same scalpers posting the game for $30.
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This is kinda late and kinda OT now I guess, but I wanted to honestly thank you for going through that grueling BS and taking the time to actually look for those graphical pops in ME2, it looks a damn sight better than ME1 in that regard. That was a serious pet peeve of mine in mass effect 1, and working in software QA myself (for retail software packages) I know sometimes polish issues like that aren't the main concern for testers, so often will get overlooked. But the first thing I noticed playing ME2 was the Z-sorting, LOD popping, Depth of field bugginess was gone, and it made the experience a ton more engaging.
I just think it's highly improbable.
That's hilarious.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the "holy fuck new vidja game thingy those things sell out, right?" tendency would push up pre-orders a bit.