bioware

Crowded Field, Modest Diversity Slowly Implodes Industry

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the August issue of Play Magazine, split into a few blurbs across a two-page spread. I thought it rather worked in that format.

While everyone is freaking out about the economy, some trends are older and more reliable. Over the last decade, as the game industry has become big business and budgets have skyrocketed, yet everyone has continued to produce more less the same material, more and more groups and individuals have had to compromise.

The 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I watched the Academy Awards for the first time, a few weeks ago. The MPAA’s screener ban (instituted in part to cut down on indie competition, under the ruse of piracy prevention) had apparently backfired, as the 2003 nominees consisted of perhaps the most well-chosen bunch of the right movies, for the right awards, that the Academy had ever selected. I thought, hey. Why not.

After an hour and a half, three hundred commercials, Billy Crystal’s singing, Billy Crystal’s unfunny jokes, Billy Crystal’s just-this-side-of-unkind remarks to Clint Eastwood and others, endless Hobbit awards, and Billy Crystal, I wandered away. I now thought I understood, first-hand, the general antipathy for award ceremonies.

With this in mind, I was unsure what to expect when I walked into the IGDA Game Developers Choice Awards. I had read about the Gunpei Yokoi ceremony the year before; that had sounded unconventional and sincere. Yet: it was still an awards ceremony. How long could I tolerate the pomp, I wondered.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Xbox update!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Knights of the Old Republic is the missing single-player mode of Phantasy Star Online.

Just thought I’d point that out.

GOD, when will it get started? I’m twelve hours in, and the plot has just barely begun to crawl out of its fetal position. Although I still am running around the same town on the same planet, now I have met a Jedi! I’ve accomplished ONE THING. Hooray!

This still is more fun than JSRF, however.

I think I’m in trouble. I really like the article I’m writing. This is never a good sign.

Out of the frying pan, into the SIMULATED COCAINE BUSINESS

  • Reading time:3 mins read

I have an Xbox. It is huge. I’m using it as a platform for my Dreamcast. The main reason I got it is that it came with a bunch of software that I wanted anyway, and which on its collective own, even at a discount, would have cost about the same as I paid for it AND an Xbox. What I didn’t realize, though, is that I got a SPECIAL BONUS prize not even mentioned in the auction: ten digital tracks of what I assume is the top of the top of contemporary white suburban trash metal. The person from whom I got the Xbox did not bother to name his custom soundtrack, so I have renamed it “NOOOOOOO!” for my further convenience. Somehow I cannot bear to throw things away (especially if they’re free and special, as this soundtrack so clearly is), so it remains on the drive.

Although I have no clue what I’m doing, I begin to understand the appeal of the recent Grand Theft Auto games. I was vaguely familiar with the first two. They were silly and kind of dumb. Mister Lemming And Company really did something else with GTA3, though. It is hard to wrap my brain around how much work went into the most unlikely details. In Vice City (which, from about an hour’s play, I don’t enjoy as much), I spent more time listening to a seemingly-endless parody of public radio than I did running people over. Now that’s entertainment!

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is… reminiscent of a BioWare game. It is, alas, more contrived and a bit less flexible than I expected, yet the portion I have experienced is not without joy. For its part. I wish I could say the same of JSRF. I did not wish to believe what I had heard — as the trailers made the game seem so pretty! And Hideki Naganuma is not a man to argue with. And the soundtrack contains the remix of Guitar Vader’s “I Love Love You”! I mean. How could the game go wrong? By not being fun, I guess. What happened here?

Well, I know what happened. Or I know how the game feels about what happened, whatever it is that happened. I won’t get into that at the moment, however.

Sega GT is a car game. I don’t understand car games. I set it to play Oingo Boingo while I crash my realistic car all over a series of vaguely attractive race tracks, lose money, and slowly crawl into video poverty. I am sure this must entertain someone.

And. That is all I will say on that matter, for the moment.

Wait, no it isn’t. When I first began to play Vice City, I tried to be a nice guy — and yet I did not quite understand the controls. I wound up punching a hooker in the face. This seemed to excite my mother (who had lingered nearby, out of curiosity) to no end. She yelled at me: “Hit her again! Hit her!” When I complied, this still was inadequate. “There’s another one! Hit her!” I planted my character’s foot into the face of a hooker ascending a flight of stairs. The hooker flew in a slow, steep arc and crashed to the landing below, in a pool of blood. Money scattered everywhere. “THINGS!” my mother cried. “GET THE THINGS!”

…

I’m not sure I have a comment for that.

BioWare!

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

BioWare consists of the most Canadian people I’ve seen in my life. I’ve heard it elsewhere, but it’s true! This is as much an underhanded compliment as it is an abject observation.

Honestly, I expected something a little different from our meeting. I wanted to talk more extensively with some of the developers, to ask about the whole process of running a company of their specific ilk. Unfortunately, we were hit with yet another dose of scheduling difficulty.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )