November 11, 2008 – 12:17 am
A little quick note.
Things are moving forward on a number of ‘fronts’ for me, job-wise - most of which I can’t share for understandable confidentiality reasons. (And some things I won’t share, just because frankly, the bureaucracy of immigration drives me nuts so why should I drive you nuts too?)
Anyway, I hope you’ll bear with me. I’d love to tell you all about everything, but I just can’t otherwise I’ll wind up as a headline story like QUIET LONER MURDERED FOR NO APPARENT REASON. (Did I just call myself ‘quiet’?)
Oh and by the way, despite the implicit violence, I haven’t gone ‘all Grisham’ and I don’t now work for the Mafia. Although now I say that, maybe they should get into games. I mean, there’s money in it.
Right, back on track: for now instead of specific work-related stuff if I talk at all here, it’ll be about games ‘n’ stuff, so I hope that’s alright with you. I’m sure we can continue our productive (ahem) dialogues.
So next time: why Saints Row 2 is remarkably awesome.
November 5, 2008 – 5:36 pm
It’s a pretty surreal world out there today - for me, at least.
Four years ago I went to bed in Brighton, hearing the pundits say that John Kerry was going to oust George W. Bush from the White House. I woke up and felt like I’d slipped into a parallel dimension.
Last night, I went to bed knowing for certain that the near-impossible had happened; America had voted for its first black President. I only managed to make it to 10pm before I fell asleep, but I knew at 8pm, unlike my wife who knew at 4am… because I was sitting alone in a California hotel room, eating pizza and watching CNN.
Why? Well, I’ve been here since Friday, interviewing for a job - which I got an offer on yesterday. Yeah. I’m going to move to the USA and live in California. It felt pretty surreal. Two monumental events, and I’m celebrating with Dominos…
My life - and the political landscape for America - have literally changed overnight. I won’t bore you with politics, but unfortunately I can’t tell you much about the job, either… yet. I will say I’ll be working for an MMO company, they’re obviously based in California, and… actually that’s all I’ll say. (And for those of you who I have told, feel smug if you like, but don’t mouth off in comments, please… everything will be revealed in time.)
Well, I better get going. I have bags to pack, meetings to attend, lunches to eat and planes to catch. I’ll be back in the UK tomorrow. At least for a while.
October 28, 2008 – 9:08 am
Yesterday: BRUTAL DELUXE.
Today: BRUTAL LEGEND.
October 22, 2008 – 1:21 pm
Boy, you guys are quiet. Y’know, you never miss the stalking until it’s gone.
I’m pretty busy right now, but not too busy to answer a few questions. Anyone got any? About anything? NCsoft? Eurogamer Expo? Life, the universe and everything? I promise to subtly evade anything that would compromise me in some way.
Apart from that, anything goes.
October 20, 2008 – 9:25 am
Eh, the delay between updates here is a little annoying to me. It’s annoying partially because I feel like I should update on a regular basis, but also because I know, in part, that I can’t update because I can’t tell you everything I’m doing - so even when I do say something, I might not be able to say everything. Sorry.
I’ve been busy, if that much isn’t obvious by the silence.
Here’s what I’d call a ‘non-spoiler’ update though, for those who are interested. Read More »
October 14, 2008 – 12:47 pm
With the Eurogamer Expo in two weeks precisely, we’re at last opening up the volunteer program. I say ‘program’ as if it’s sophisticated and well planned… anyway here’s what I posted to the EG Expo group… Read More »
October 13, 2008 – 8:45 am
We have blast-off. The first ever games designer… in spaaace… etc.
No, the date wasn’t ringed on my calendar. I vaguely remember being told he was going up in mid-October, but I never paid much attention to the exact date even at NCsoft, so thanks BBC. I hope he has a safe and successful flight, and that he feels it’s worth the THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS (approximately) that he paid for the privilege.
That’s a heck of a lot of money to follow in Dad’s footsteps. If he wanted to save money, he could have gone Virgin Galactic, who’ll be charging a lot less - but then Richard’s going to be up for ten days, not ten minutes.
In case you’re wondering, that eye-popping budget was never bandied around much at NCsoft when I was there - but not for the reason you might be thinking. See, it’s all Richard’s money. (Nope. I didn’t think Ultima was that big either.) Not a penny came from NCsoft. Which is good. Because otherwise right now you’d probably be wondering just what else that cash could have been spent on.
Instead of just thinking: “So how is this supposed to help Tabula Rasa, exactly?”
October 12, 2008 – 9:22 pm
I finished Call of Duty 4 today, which was sort of surprising as I thought I had ages left to play through. Turns out ‘Act I’ was the longest of the three, so without even trying hard, I suddenly came to the end.
Probably took me about 10-12 hours to play, which I know these days is seen as “Too short” but for me it’s just right. (I like to finish stuff, and preferably not over a period of months and months - unless we’re talking some super-engrossing strategy game, and those don’t often appear on console.)
Overall experience? Pretty good, but I came away thinking it wasn’t the breakthrough FPS experience I thought it might well be, judging by some reviews. Perhaps that’s because it’s not that up-to-date (it did come out in 2007) but actually, I think it’s because I felt like I’d seen it all before:
- The ‘hold off the bad guys for X amount of time’ mission
- The ‘escape under heavy fire’ mission
- The ‘fire on people from a flying thing’ mission
- The ’shoot from the back of a moving vehicle’ mission
Read More »
October 9, 2008 – 9:24 pm
As I’ve said many times in many an interview and to many people in person, City of Heroes was the reason I joined NCsoft.
In April or May 2004, I can’t recall, I was playing the game (on the US servers, natch) and enjoying it so much that I was considering starting a fansite about it, based around a twinned blog - one character based, one player based. A very good friend of mine said to me: “Instead of making all that effort for nothing, why not go and work for them instead?”
The rest is history. (Funny thing is, I never did get around to that blog idea.)
While I worked for NCsoft I never stopped playing City of Heroes (Well - not altogether), but of course I was privy to a lot of behind the scenes information. Which meant often, very little came as a complete and total surprise. (And if it did, it was often not a good surprise.)
Which is why it’s great, now, to start to look at the game from a genuine, uninformed player’s perspective again. Today the EU site is hosting a Developer Diary focusing on the Day Jobs system from Issue 13, and it makes for a very interesting read. Read More »
