Posts by FrieChamp

Complaining about DNF being delayed or 3DRealms being quiet about it is so 2001.

If you think that way, there is no way 3DR can win this. There is nothing...NOTHING, that justifies a 10 years (or longer) development time. Well..maybe..a Half-Life - Starcraft cross-over virtual reality MMO maybe. Featuring portal technology and plasma gun mounted unicorns.

But I guess it's safe to assume, it will not be like this or at least 3DR will have a lot of explaining to do to convince people of the game. Meanwhile I keep my mouth shut until the teaser is out and remain skeptical

I've been to disney land too when I visited Paris with my parents.

It was great

I will go to Paris for New Year's eve with a few friends and I was wondering if anyone of you has done this before. We might stay a little longer than one night actually, because we can stay at my friend's aunt's place for free

I know we got some french folks on the board and other people who might have visited Paris before. I have done the sight seeing stuff on a previous visit, so we are mainly going for the new year's eve celebrations (PARTY ). Has anyone got recommendations for restaurants and dance clubs? It might be already too late for reservations, so time is urging..

Thanks in advance

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Electronic Arts today officially announced Tiberium, a squad-based first person shooter set in the Command & Conquer world.Set release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 late next year, Tiberium has you playing as Ricardo Vega, a "Forward Battle Commander." As Vega, you take control of multiple infantry, armor, and air squads as you fend off an alien invasion (and presumably the forces of Nod) in single-player as well as multiplayer modes.

Executive producer Chris Plummer of developer EA Los Angeles noted, "After two years of pre-production, it is exciting to finally reveal this game and its rich fiction to the world. We've put a lot of effort into evolving the tactical shooter experience by taking core gameplay compulsions like commanding, choice and dominating your enemies and delivering them in first-person. Some of the weapons and mechanics are truly innovative for a first-person game. We're very proud to be part of a project that has the potential to really make a mark on the canon of sci-fi fantasy fiction."

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/50441

New C&C fps game :megamon:

I heard rumors about this already at the beginning of this year, I'm wondering what engine this will run on...Renegade multiplayer was actually quite fun (on LAN parties)

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I think when we showed The Casting everyone agreed it was nice and it really showed that there was a potential for creating virtual actors, but we're still at this frontier where we don't totally suspend disbelief. We still have this uncanny valley to bridge. But today, I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time.With our next project we're going to demonstrate with hundreds of characters that we can have extremely realistic characters that not only move like real actors but express themselves through facial animations and speech like real actors, and are extremely accurate to the actors they are portraying.

How important is the actor in this process compared to the technology?

It's one hundred per cent important, and that's the big difference compared with what we were doing in the past. In the past the limit was the technology. In the production of our next title what we're discussing with Sony, is not "does it look good?" but "is the actor right?" Now we are really casting actors and we're looking for a performance because we've bridged the technological gap.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=31593

I'm skeptical about the "interactive cinema" thing. I played Fahrenheit and while I thought the ability to have influence on the storyline by choosing different actions was amazing, the button mash parts were quite frustrating. If they drop that and the tech demo they showed is an indication of the technology they are developing for the character animations, they could create something truely great! Hurray for emotions in games

Cylinder and monocle ahaha

Yes 86k is quite disappointing, but keep in mind that this is US and November only (and the game was released in the middle of the month). I'd wait until march or so before jumping to any conclusions. It is safe to say a LOT OF sales are lost due to piracy though

Probably the same applies to UT3, the COD4 sales for 360 are absolutely :megamon:

It's a little early to call Crysis a failure in terms of sales isn't it? What sources are you refering to anyway?

Crysis belongs to Crytek, whether they create sequels for the game or not is totally up to them. They choose the publisher they want to work with.

Props and big thanks to Mojo. I had worries that the mystery trojan took over the site completely when the forums were down yesterday and that it would take much longer until anyone starts with the update process - so this is a very nice surprise

If this document is still up to date, here is a list of features that the forum update should bring:

http://area51.phpbb.com/docs/features.html

Obviously there are still some things that aren't working yet. Most importantly, the frontpage isn't fully back up yet, which means there is no spotlight galery (which had problems before) and most importantly - the "There are X unread posts" link isn't showing up I've always found that to come in really handy.

I'm not sure what the plan for the frontpage is tbh - do you want to restore it Mojo, or do some "changes" ?

As far as the design goes, I liked the custom buttons Mike did, maybe we can get something similar back. The user information/avatar being on the right of the post is the most confusing part to me as well, you got my vote for moving it back to the left.

Hehe just saw this posted by Zaphod in this thread. Looks beautiful, 2 guys did this? Amazing.

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Also, I didn't mean to go nuts and start posting all these stats and talking about percentages and stuff, my main contention is that there is plenty of space in the western game market for indies to exist, and it is growing every day. I believe there is a market for independent games which is only now starting to be tapped with the advent of all kinds of technology that is closing the gap for developers to get their games directly into the hands of their audience.

First of all ^^^ I absolutely agree, the prospects are getting better for indie developers every day and it is something all of us should be happy about. Secondly "negligible" was a bad choice of word, I didn't mean to come across as "down looking" and judging from your quick list - there are certainly a lot more indie devs out there than I know about. However their impact on the AAA games market as of today, I dare to say, is "very small". And I say "AAA games market", because you raised an interesting point - the games market is a lot bigger than us hardcore gamers generally perceive. I would just wish, that indie developers could compete in this segment with titles from EA, Activision etc. simply to drive the innovation process more than they currently do.

Btw. I've been following Charlie Cleveland's blog for a long time and now read the UW blog, as well as listen to their podcast. Very interesting stuff.

Interesting, why a 2nd studio in Sweden though?

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“The new studio is working on a very, very big Hollywood sci-fi brand” for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, hints Andersson. “It’s a real triple-A thing.”

Terminator 4 - The Game

Yea I've been wondering for a while already why there is such a negligibly small number of independent studios in games development. It's usually just one or two guys in their basement, selling their game for a few bucks or even give it out for free. The only "famous" exception are the guys from Introversion who created Darwinia and Defcon (and publicly proclaimed "fuck publishers!").

Look at movies or the music business, there is a huge number of labels and production houses that create content (or art if you will) way outside of mainstream, but still create medium to good quality stuff, which often establishes a big enough fan/consumer base.

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If you are looking for companies to approach making games with some other loftier ideals than stock value I would look somewhere else.

We're all ears

Quote from Izuno

Would you say that about all games/franchises that have great sales? If you worked at Bungie would you tell people "don't buy Halo 3 because our franchise has already been successful enough" ? Or is there something about Guitar Hero you just don't like? ...or don't like anymore?

I don't mean to single you out, because a lot of us have had these thoughts about publishers "milking it." Would you feel the same way about a publisher milking what you've developed? What if you work at Infinity Ward? Would you complain about strong CoD4 sales?

I'm serious, btw. We're all here because we work in the industry or with the industry or are modders etc... In general, don't we want gaming to be successful and growing? Maybe we don't?

Just some thoughts.

Meanwhile, another funny review from Yhatzee

I would just like developers and publishers to innovate more. Why have 10% innovation each title if you can have 10 times the innovation? Afraid of failure I guess - "too risky".

In context, I think Harmonix did exactly the right thing. They came up with something really new, fresh, fun - Guitar Hero. Did a sequel - Guitar Hero II (and Guitar Hero - Rock the 80's, which was already "milking" I guess, but I'm willing to oversee this for now ) and then they moved on to Rock Band. Rock Band has so many new features, you can safely call it a completely new game. They took their chance, made money, but knew when to move on.

Part of this was the sale of the Guitar Hero franchise to Activision, which was unfortunate on the other hand, because in my eyes Activsion is the industry's captain of no risk, business investments so to speak.

Their entire portfolio seems to be built upon bought licenses and sequels: Call of Duty (4 titles so far), Tony Hawk (I think they reached the 10th game in the series by now), the ancient ID franchises like Quake (4 games) and Wolfenstein (3rd one currently in development) and now Guitar Hero (title numero 3).

From a business point of view it makes perfect sense, they bought a strong name and a proven game concept. They stuff it out with new songs, "boss battles", a few new multiplayer modes, sign some deals with music equipment suppliers, get Slash on the game cover and run a lot of advertising. And I assume that's what they will do until the games don't sell anymore and they have driven the franchise into the ground, then they move onto the next franchise. I don't believe the merge with Vivendi Games is going to change anything about this.

Sure, one could argument, that big sales and industry growth is a good thing for everyone working in games. Sequels also finance new franchises after all, but if a sequel doesn't bring anything (significantly) new to the table, it annoys me, because these titles steal a lot of consumer attention and shelf space from innovative titles. I guess it's just a matter of knowing, when to stop, but if you are suit and just look at the numbers, you stop as soon as numbers hit a certain low. As a gamer it makes my heart bleed.

Ok I should have been clearer:

I don't think he laid out his points as well as in previous reviews of his.

It was still funny

I think now would be the right time to post the "THIS CANNOT END WELL!" macro.

Dux you win the prize for most disturbing thread title of 2007 in Game Industry discussion.

Your prize is one week in the cellar with a rabid pitbull.

Concerning the review: He doesn't have a lot of points on what he bashes the game for, but I guess Activision milking the franchise is reason enough not to buy it.

Looks outstanding! Spotlight?