You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March, 2007.
I had a chance to play the Wii some this week while in Las Vegas on a team-building exercise with eight other Iron Realms staff members. Naturally, since we’re video game developers we had to bring a couple of systems with us to play in the suite we typically get to serve as a base of operations. I brought a huge suitcase so that I could stuff a PS2 and a couple of Guitar Hero guitars in there, and someone else brought the Wii, which I’d never used.
Yes, 
that is Grieving and not Griefing.
Brad Delp, singer of the 70s rock band ‘Boston,’ committed suicide on Friday though I only saw the news this morning. I don’t think anyone’s going to claim that Boston was one of the greatest bands of all time, but their eponymous first album was, I believe, one of the longest charting albums ever. I recall having a tape of the album as a kid in the early 80s and remember listening to their biggest hit, “More than a Feeling,” quite a bit.
It always saddens me when someone whom I “knew” as a younger person dies, and I was moved to fire up Guitar Hero immediately and play “More than a Feeling, which is my favorite song to play in the first GH (and I’ve played it many, many, many times). I closed my windows so as not to annoy my neighbors, turned the volume on my receiver way up and launched into the opening notes of the song.
When Brad’s voice kicked in (ok, not really Brad’s voice, but the cover singer on that song isn’t half-bad, and it’s the thought that counts) I really fell into the moment and easily flowed through the song, reveling in nostalgic memories of Boston. I’ve never felt so in-sync with the song before. The lyrics “I closed my eyes and I slipped away” in the song took on some pretty melancholy overtones this time through and put me even deeper into the groove. Upon finishing, I realized that I’d just beaten my high score (currently 267,934 on Expert mode for anyone who cares).
Thanks for the music, Brad. We’ll miss you.
Susan Wu has a nice post up on a panel she participated in at the SXSW conference recently called “Web 2.0 to Web 3D.”
In it, she writes, “The question I was trying to answer was, “Is the next generation of the consumer web 3D?” I think the answer is not necessarily.”
GDC was over on Friday but I barely logged in at all over the weekend. I needed to revive and I do that largely by staying offline and going outside. It is gorgeous here currently so there was much hiking.
I ended up attending zero sessions at GDC this year unfortunately but it was one of the better GDCs I’ve attended from my perspective. The big upside was that it was in San Francisco rather than San Jose, which is the difference between a real city (not that it’s perfect!) and a highly-populated extended strip mall. This means I could more easily commute (since I live just north of SF, in Mill Valley) and that it’s very much my ‘home territory.’
Emotiv went out of stealth mode today with the official announcement of their first product: technology to enable thought-controlled games!
Microsoft released some interesting stats today at GDC. A good summary of them can be found here. Some observations:
Halo 2 is the most popular Xbox Live game. I’m unsure if that is a testament to Halo 2’s yummy goodness or a lament for better 360 multiplayer games. Perhaps both.
As referenced in the previous post, I played in the ISM Charity Poker Invitational Tournament tonight. It was reasonably fun, and I ended up playing at the same table with Brian Robbins from Fuel Industries who is an experienced guy working in the online space. We’ve never met face-to-face but “know” each other from an email discussion list.
Well, it’s that time of year again and thank god it’s in San Francisco this year. I will go on record as saying that I’m not, at all, a fan of San Jose. (It is the Game Developer’s Conference, of course.) GDC is, for me, a combination of dread and fun. I do not like public speaking, but I just treat the dislike/fear as a weakness to be beaten down, so I’m giving my first GDC talk this year. I thought it best to start out small, so I’m speaking for only 20 minutes, followed by 20 minutes by Sulka Haro from Habbo, and 20 minutes by Erik Bethke from GoPets Live! I’m also running the same roundtable (on three different days) with Daniel James as we did last year.
MMORPG. Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game. Is there any point in including the RP? Should we just drop it and refer to them, consistently, as MMOGs? Just to be clear, there’s little doubt that roleplaying matters in text MUDs/MMORPGs. I’m really just referring to the top tier (WoW, Runescape, etc) and mid-tier (Everquest 2, CoH, Eve, etc) MMOs here.
Things are getting crazy out there.
Gamasutra has an interview with Kelly Flock of THQ who reveals that they are working on a Warhammer 40k MMO. This makes two Warhammer MMOs currently in development since EA is working on one for the original Warhammer universe itself. The two worlds are, of course, quite different, but how are these two projects going to avoid confusion among consumers who are not existing Warhammer fans? THQ says they’re going for a mainstream market so they’ll have to reach beyond the Warhammer/Warhammer 40k fanbase.