Posts by Mojo

  • its a bird, its a plane its...

    Quote from ginsengavenger

    kevin spacey as lex, i dunno...

    He is one of the few people that should be Lex. When they first announced the movie, I had hoped spacey would be Lex.

    This and the Pirates Trailer made my day yesterday, sooo going to be a good summer. FINALY

  • If you could choose a role in a gamedev. team...

    I updated the Poll with a couple more Options.

    Lead Designer is more like a Producer here at GBX, though we all get to design the game (which is rather cool). Mission design is carried out by us LDs and we get input from everywhere else in the company.

    Even at Gearbox, LD is semi split up with some of us focusing on the combat and others focusing on moment work (intros outros, and the fun things in the middle). I like the moment work, mainly since its a lot of creative freedom to have the scene play out to my, well mainly Mike's, wishing.

  • Open season for level design positions?

    They could be one of the companies that want experienced LDs. All the LDs here don't have 2 years industry experience, but have well over 2,3, even 4+ years of mod experience and creating levels on their own free time.

    Sad thing is that you could have a bunch of years mapping but, to some companies, if you aren't in the industry then they don't even look at you. Its not really the company that is at fault since maybe if someone on the LD team saw your work they might think its great, but when the resumes come through Human Resource Department, or whereever, and they see no industry experience, then it is just turned away.

  • Open season for level design positions?

    Quote from ReNo

    I'm just about to graduate from a game development course (Defrag is in the same course, year below), and I must say that a lot of people don't seem to have much interest in gaming and game development. Its not a statement that applies to everybody obviously - there are people on the course that eat, sleep and breathe games - but a worrying amount of people clearly don't. Most of them have dropped out over the 4 years, either for lack of ability of lack of interest (with a couple being hired and abandoning the course in favour of employment). Going to a game dev course doesn't mean you are ready to get a job in the industry, I can confirm that much.I just got hired and am scared shitless that I won't be able to live up to the role, but at the same time I'm really excited about learning the ropes and working with a bunch of like minded folks. I've not had the most successful mod experience (only "successful" mod I've been a part of was Adrenaline Gamer, and my work on that was pretty much entirely independant) but I'm certainly not a newcomer to the scene, and I feel I've proven my desire to not only build levels, but have solid technical knowledge and push the boat out a bit with creativity. I guess the next few months will tell if I've been picked up too early!

    From what I've seen, there certainly are a lot of companies looking for level design talent at the moment, but the same can be said for most areas.

    I think (even with what I said above) if you have the drive, determination, and passion for games and designing them, then that is all you need. Schools are not evil in my book (despite the fact I made them sound like that above), it is just, like you said, so many people don't have the passion that they just create crap.

  • Open season for level design positions?

    Quote from Furyo

    Bottom line, if these newbies aren't any good, they'll be gone at the end of the project. Permanent positions are only given to those that can do something.

    Much like the Gearbox COGs program. We have about a 50% success rate, those that don't seem to have the drive or determination just aren't brought on fulltime; Others just decide that they want to continue with school or that maybe Professional LD is not what they want to do.

    This leads me to:

    Quote from kleinluka

    What I find problematic with a lot of the newbies that are hired straight of school with not even modding experience is that a lot of them just seem to work in games "because it's cool". They have next to no intention of improving or learning new things let alone do an acceptable and good job in the position they are holding. This is a big problem. But to big companies people are just numbers so things like that slip underneath the radar very quickly.

    Exactly. I have seen some portfolios of students at some of these schools and while some might have a really good design methodology, others just don't seem in it at all and they see it as a way to make money. I don't get these schools since they teach you the what and the how, but not the why. You learn from doing actual mod work and having communities critique you, not by doing some job to just get an 'A'. I can understand the schools for terms programming, but for Art it is much better to just go to an art school (at least what I think, but hey I am a level designer!).

    Even when you get hired the methods you used while doing mods and what not are completely changed. You might lose a lot of the freedom, at the beginning, you had when you were modding but as you grow with the company you begin to understand more of their own game design process. This may continue until you get to design major parts of the game or even a game itself!

    And since now I am just spewing thoughts out of my head and not really putting them in coherent sentences I shall leave this.

    Seacrest Out!

  • Silent Hill

    I do enjoy how everyone took this movie so seriously. Yes it tried to stay serious and I am glad it did. If it went the shitty route of Alone in the Dark and any other Uwe Boll Shit, then I would agree with everyone. The thing with these movies is to just shut off your brain and not think at all. I enjoyed it thoroughly, despite the 20 minutes of exsposition towards the end. No it wasn't oscar-worthy, yes the acting was terrible.

    Having not played the games, I thought it told a rather good story (sort of), at least well enough for me to understand what the fuck was going. Now some people next to me didn't understand the ending, but being in Texas I have become used to morons who don't understand the easiest of things. From the first 10 minutes or so once they entered silent hill, I knew it was going to take an almost Japanese cinematic approach.

    It was different, it was the action-packed waste that was Resident Evil and hardly the horrible Super Mario Brothers.

    As Mike said, it is hardly the worst movie, and also hardly the best movie. I went in not expecting anything and I went away pleased and happy.

  • titanic 2...

    having seen most of the remixed trailers, I would have to say that sleepless is the best (of the ones with only content from that movie) but Titanic 2 is by far the superior of them all (using so much footage I cannot comprehend - The Beach, Catch Me)

    I was not prepared for the awesomeness of this trailer.

    BTW the warm goo - austin powers.