Developers on Games

Jesse Snyder, one of the more Senior Designers at Treyarch has gotten an offer from another developer up North in Seattle and took it!

Read more…

Good luck up there Jesse!

After approximately 10 years working with/for Activision Mike Denny got an opportunity to work at id.

miked.devsongames.com

Interesting thread over at Gamasutra.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20462

Ok, I’m not a huge fan of the Medieval-ish games, but Diablo 3 is going to rock! My memories of Diablo 2 were taking breaks in the wee hours of the morning while working on “Return to Castle Wolfenstein.” Jeremy, Chad and I would start up a coop server, put the speaker phone on and laugh our asses off while collecting all of those gay mana/healt vials. Just remembering it makes me want to play it, oh wait! We’re going tonight!!! OHHH YEAAA!

Please check out the latest and greatest Diablo 3. I saw the the gameplay trailer and it was awesome! The enemies just keep getting bigger and bigger! The physics is also nice…View this Post

In the link below, Noah Heller goes out of his way to mention that Gearbox’s Brothers in Arms:Hells Highway is not even in the same league as Call of Duty: World at War.

Link:EuroGamer

So, shortly after this interview a lot of people in the community, especially in the forums on TeamXbox.com and even at GearBox’s own forum immediately start pointing their Fingers at Treyarch as saying all of these negative things. And ya’, there’s nothing really setting the story straight… Unfortunately it happened and now Treyarch and Gearbox are mixed up in this unfortunate tangle of “bad press.”

If you notice in the interview, it’s an interview with Noah Heller and Rich Farrelly, but Noah is doing most of the talking, and really is the only one bad-mouthing other games, including GearBox’s BIA. Noah mentions he’s the Senior Producer on the project, but from what I know, he works on the Publisher side of things, ie Activision. Rich Farrelly, on the other hand, actually works at the developer Treyarch, and only talks about the game and team focusing on it. Reason I say this is because most people in the community (and in those Forums) are stating that Treyarch is the one saying that BIA is not in the same league, when in actuality it’s the Senior Producer from Activision saying this. I also know that Treyarch as a whole is completely embarrassed about the whole ordeal and does NOT think Brothers In Arms is out of their league nor a poor game in any way shape or form!

I really feel sorry for Treyarch and Gearbox cause both development teams are getting a bad wrap, one being in the press and the other by a lot of community members. I hope both developers recognize the mix up and no bad blood is spilled.

UPDATE:

So Treyarch has released an official apology for the fiasco that happened over the weekend, posted on TeamXbox:

“Hi everybody,

My name is JD, and I’m the Community Manager here at Treyarch Stduios. I’m writing to you on behalf of my colleagues here at Treyarch.

Over the weekend, we learned that some disparaging comments were made by an Activision rep at a recent Call of Duty: World at War press event. We want to let everyone know that we found those remarks offensive, and they do not in any way represent the feelings of any developer at this studio or at Activision. We hold all of our peers in the development community in the highest regard. We have nothing but respect for the guys and gals at Gearbox.

We offer our sincerest apologies to anybody who was offended.

Kindly,
Treyarch dev team”

As a hardcore shooter fan Spore has only slightly turned my head. However, I know from playing multiple MMOs (I had a problem) that creating characters can be one of the most fun aspects of a game. The Spore Creature Creator is a stand alone game(?) that lets you create funny little creatures to later be used in the full version when it drops in September.

If you look around, you can easily find the torrent for the trial version that was leaked recently. I would suggest it, because even though there is limited content in the trial version I was still amazed at how much I could do with this thing. I have created a true abomination of nature.

Even if you aren’t a big fan of these types of games, give this a go. It’ll hold your attention for a lot longer than expected.

Absolutely fantastic article http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php on why crunches aren’t all that great.

Not that it’s something that we hadn’t worked out ourselves – albeit while looking up at the dwindling patch of sky, while we hurtled towards our death at the bottom of development plunge over a period of 3 months or so.

Mind you, the text is so teeny tiny, I’d recommend reading it at the start of your day, rather than later on during your ‘invitational work period.’

I (MikeD) added my first blog post on my personal page with some late night funnies… Check it out.

Late Night Funnies…

Ok, I know I’m in the minority for being a PC gamer, but I wanted to throw out some of my opinions on “On-demand games.” I’m comparing Steam to Direct2Drive, as both have their pros and cons, but one is an obvious winner in my eyes now.

Is an extension of Gamespy where you can purchase Movies and Games online, download them, and watch/play them as you please. I feel that out of the non-steam “on-demand games” this is probably the best website to purchase games from. Direct2Drive always has a reliable connection and bandwidth when you are anxiously waiting for the download to finish, as well as speedy purchasing system. Some, in my experience, have lagged for a few hours.

This is Valve’s brainchild of a program that allows users to purchase the latest/greatest of any game Valve happens to let in, and if the developers/publishers put the effort in getting them a Steam-safe version. Steam has a fast purchasing system, since it is it’s own application, but I’ve had experienced an issue where the purchase server was down for a day, Steam has a decent connection too. About a year ago Steam finally delivered a key feature, the friends list feature, which happens to be one of the best features they put in.

Comparison:

Direct2Drive has been my trusty reliable source for on-demand games for about 3 years now. For the past 3 years Steam really didn’t do it for me. Steam was not feature complete when it first came out, very few games were on it, and it was slow as balls, and a resource hog to boot. Actually still is a resource hog, looking at my Task Manager now, it’s taking up 15mb of Ram, and 74mb of Virtual Memory, and the application is completely minimized to the system tray. When I open up the Friends list and main Steam Window it eats up 20mb of Ram, Virtual Memory holds at 74mb. All this when we can just have a shortcut on the desktop?

However, now that Steam has matured and gotten more “feature complete” it is a better application in general. With the Friends List and now Achievement point system (a la Xbox Live), I believe this is going to pave the way for Gaming on the PC. It’s always good when you log into Steam and notice your friend is playing a game, which you can join on the spot. And the issue of “not many games supported” seems to be going away as time goes on. I guess it pays to have a complete package.

Something to compare against, I recently bought a game on both Steam and Direct2Drive, just for the heck of it and do a little comparison. The game was, “Grid” by THQ. Now, Direct2Drive seemed to have downloaded the game quicker, but it also did not run due to some issue, wouldn’t even get into the Front End… So after a day of frustration I decided to try the Steam route. After it was done downloading, I loaded it up, which it did, unlike the Direct2Drive version, but would not get passed the “Loading” portion after the initial Front End. So, after researching, I found out that Grid is not setup to work on 8 Cores. Found a little mod (xml editing) someone did for the Demo version and did it to my version, which worked like a charm. (The issue was that the configuration for 8 cores, apparently it supports it but the configuration is incorrect). So now I got into the game… Something else I noticed, but have yet to really experience, is that Grid has Achievement support for Steam! Unlike the Direct2Drive version (0 points). As time permits, more and more developers/publishers are putting in the effort to make Steam-Safe games, which in the end make all of us (not many) still have a enjoyable PC experience…

I think it was this experience that converted me to try using Steam first, and then go to Direct2Drive, as before, it was always Direct2Drive first then try out Steam…

Conclusion:

My preference is:

I really enjoy using Steam and with the Friends list and Achievement System (POINTZ!) I think this iswhere PC gaming is at, even though it’s kind of a hog. However, it all comes down to how much you really want a certain game. You will find situations, as I have, that Steam may not have a game you want but Direct2Drive will. Then you get to make the decision as to what you want, maybe Steam will get it in a little while?

PS. There is 1 HUGE issue with On-Demand Games. That is, most on-demand games are geared as a specific sku for that particular on-demand site, ie Direct2Drive/Steam. However, the PATCHES too have to be geared for those skus… So when a patch comes out for the actual “store bought” version, it does not necessarily mean it will apply to your on-demand version. I think Steam will be able to out-beat the supply and demand for patches than Direct2Drive will. I’ve noticed that some games on Steam have been patched, but the patches are not available for the Direct2Drive version, WTF!?

So, looks like Call of Duty 5 info was released and again Treyarch is getting owned due to their history with the Franchise. Check out the link.

From Kotaku: Call of Duty5 To Feature Co-Op, Eye Ball Burning