Posts by Furyo

  • Mass layoff at EA - cuts 600 jobs

    Heard along the grapevine this is mostly Pandemic staffers. Wouldn't exactly surprise me down in Brisbane since they canned their Batman game lately, and Mercs 2 and LOTR are done in LA too. Even if Riccitiello said yesterday there would be a Mercs 3, there is no certainty they'd be the guys doing it.

  • Mass layoff at EA - cuts 600 jobs

    If a 310 million loss made EA go bankrupt, they'd be the Atari of the industry, and would have been for a long long while. Remember their plan to buy Take Two for 2 billion of their own dollars? (they had planned not to take loans for that one last I checked).

    And as far as running companies to know about this, I just happen to still have more experience in marketing and project management than I do as a level designer....

  • Mass layoff at EA - cuts 600 jobs

    I have a hard time believing their quarter result is purely consumption based. I would have to look at a more detailed financial report but I have a feeling they just wrote off a lot of investments they had due to the financial crisis and the bottom employee is getting the shaft because of this. This really sounds like a decision taken essentially to please the immediate confidence of the shareholders rather than looking at a longer term strategy. They've been saying for the last year how they want to give the focus back to quality titles, those aren't gonna get made in a company in which employees trust and confidence gets undermined this easily whenever the wind starts blowing the other way.

    Games sales supposedly have started to slow down since the financial crisis boiled over. The thing is though, I say supposedly because this started proper so late into the quarter that there is no hard evidence, figures backing this up. Before the public's confidence goes down, it starts with your investments and your market capitalization going way down. And this has happened, and a lot sooner than any sales figures could indicate.

  • What gamer are you?

    http://www.mygamemug.com/results.php?t=DSFV

    Yep, the Helping Hand....somehow they're spot on. Never cared for competitive play, never cared for challenges, storming a dod 1.3 map on a nice 12 v 12 match with like minded guys always was my gaming sweet spot. Even online outside of games, that also translates to the kinda stuff I've been doing for years. Helping running large groups, recruiting for them, moderating forums (steam forums no less) etc...

  • Deus Ex 1 too slow paced, not memorable enough

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    This may be true for your company but is certainly not a universal truth. I know for a fact that Capcom for example always has an open ear for fan complains and rethinks some design decissions if the complains appear appropriate. I witnessed this a couple of times during the development of Bionic Commando.

    Closing eyes and ears is one way for developers/publishers to deal with the community. But its a pretty arrogant one imo. In the end you make the games for the players not for yourself. If you start to hate your audience, ignore them and treat them like idiots who have no idea you should work in a different buissness. Fanboys can be annoying and idiotic but its an privillege to work on something that has fans. Its just too easy to look down on them from your high horse...

    This is my opinion as a professional. I obviously started the thread from the fanboy perspective. Didnt knew that mapcore is a place now where only strictly professional topics are acceptable... You know thers better forums for that. I still see it as a place where i have a lot of friends and where i can talk about things a bit more open.

    Please don't turn this into a company vs company policy, because there would be no end to this discussion. I never said you should close your eyes and ears, but as a developer I hope you take good care of not letting just every opinion, especially those expressed by fanboys dictate what you do. If you did, trust me you wouldn't even start trying anything new. Any license that has a remote connection to something classic will get everyone torn between the "I'm glad they changed this and that, I needed something fresh" and the "WTF were those guys thinking changing my beloved feature" crowds.

    This is not about hating my audience, even less ignoring them or treating them like idiots. It's about taking your own design where you want it to go based on the playtests you organize. Because looking at the forums for reactions is only going to give you a multiple headed monster you won't be able to do anything with.

    As far as not making the games for ourselves as developers I totally agree, but in the end you make it for your publisher not for the players. The publisher dictates what he likes and doesn't and also funds the development studio more often than not. In your position at Grin, I think you would know that. Particularly when your boss said so in a recent interview. At Ubi, this is the exact same thing except we're developers as well as publishers which actually gives us a lot more freedom (I think). For one thing I get to pick which projects I work on, a luxury few studios can give but that generally increases the quality of the games because there starts to be competition for these spots.

  • Deus Ex 1 too slow paced, not memorable enough

    Quote from Taylor

    Why has Mapcore recently turned into a Gamersyde, Gametrailers or Kotaku comments section. Filled with people misconstruing everything they can, seemingly on purpose, so they can complain and whine about it?

    Amen. Stop being so scaringly fanboy-ish guys. First Fallout 3 then Deus Ex... No amount of complaining online about your presumed design choices is going to change anything, so wait for the game to be released, then bitch all you want.

  • The only constant in the world is change

    Slight change to your last note:

    - Never believe you are right. Know you are. A belief that turns right in the end is still sheer luck, not experience. Take the data you have, the playtests, the stats, and see the truth within. Being experimented means making the right choices so the playtests and stats never prove you wrong.

  • Alan Wake

    I think it was a great trailer, and I'm quite hyped by the psychological approach of the story. This and Heavy Rain are high on my list of games that may get somewhere we just haven't been before in terms of story telling, which is my pet peeve in games development. Remedy has been strong in the past in that department, so I hope this one delivers

    As far as graphics are concerned, they had poor performance running this on an overclocked quadcore two years ago, so I never expected the game to ship in this decade anyway, or clearly never with that kinda visuals.

  • My Portfolio

    As far as showing old work and improvement, there'd be a slight modification I'd make to the comments above, even though I do agree with them:

    I think it's fine to show old work as long as that's the ONLY version of the work you present. Good, old work is still good when pros take the technical limitations or your own personal knowledge into mind. In your case, you're showing multiple versions of the SAME work, which is where it just doesn't work for me. Your own personal improvement over multiple maps is I think something actually you SHOULD show. Proves you're able to learn from your mistakes and are getting better.

    The accompanying text, whenever there should be one could also help sell that idea.

  • Left 4 Dead

    Guys 50 euros in europe buys you the same thing as 50 dollars in the US, the exchange rate comparison doesn't hold any water. You're just lucky to get that "price cut" because you happen to currently live on the right side of the pond currency wise.

  • [REL] dod_rive_rc3

    The skybox was Pedroleum's work, I'm not a texture artist yet Well, considering Pedro isn't either there goes my point.... Pedro used ref pics that he blended together in Photoshop, so this is a purely fictional place

    Pedroleum is known in the DoDS source community for his models and skyboxes mostly but maps from time to time too.

  • [REL] dod_rive_rc3

    Finally, 18 months after I originally started on this map, it's time to release it.... You may have known this map as a gloomy, foggy village, yet the only way to finally deliver on the gameplay I set out to create was to revamp the map entirely.

    Map contains 32 spawnpoints, a minimap, HDR and was compiled with final settings. I'm constantly running in between 95 and 220 FPS throughout the map, on a ncore2 duo and 8800 GTS.

    ----------====== [ dod_rive ] ======----------

    Mission Brief

    This is early September 1944. The Allied offensive just crushed the Axis in Paris.

    The Germans are short on resources and desperately trying to retreat and regroup.

    A small faction of Wehrmacht soldiers are trying to hold

    Rive down to slow the Allied advance...

    U.S. Army: Eradicate the Germans from the town and march on to Germany!

    Wehrmacht: Hold off the Allied advance at all costs!

    ----------------------------------

    Credits:

    Level Design: Francois "Furyo" Roughol

    Additional models and textures: Pedroleum

    Many thanks to:

    Pedroleum

    Friends at Valve

    Fuzzdad

    qUiCkSiLvEr

    and all the beta testers on this map.

    Have fun !

    Download links (mirrors welcome):

    Dodfrance: http://%7boption%7d

    ModDB: http://%7boption%7d

    Screenshots thanks to dodfrance.com (click on them for larger size)

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    [Blocked Image: http://public.dodfrance.com/furyo/dod_rive_06.jpg]