Posts by dkm

  • Irrational Games shuts down

    Well to be honest, it might not be a bad thing in the long run? Don't get me wrong, it sucks for everybody affected, it really does. But I think I get it. I obviously don't know the whole story and I bet there's more to it than what has transpired so far but I can understand his position. When the studio you created turns into a bloated corporation far from its origin, when the company culture changes, when you don't have as much control as you would like to (publisher, tbig team, etc...), when everything takes longer than you want to (because too many people, too many decision makers) I can understand that you might want to start afresh. Now I guess he could have just left and the studio could have carried on, but Irrational probably would never be the same thing. I personally saw that happening at Starbreeze which went through pretty much the same thing. When the creative guys (now at Machinegames) left it definitely left a void that was hard to fill, the image of the company, the culture, the games, everything becomes different when the vision goes. I'm not saying the name should have died and I'm sure the Overkill guys will continue to do a great job but there'll never be a 'real' Starbreeze game ever again. Irrational will always be remembered for the games they made and maybe that's a good thing? Better than seeing them turning into Rare?(again, I'm not trying to justify his actions, and it's crazy to see so many talented people on the market, just saying it might make some kind of sense)

  • RoboCop (2013)

    I didn't like it.

    I thought the script was pretty bad, they removed every single edge to the movie (like 90% of action movies nowadays), and stripped pretty much everything that made the first one a good movie.

    Detroit's grubby dirty streets are replaced by some generic skyscrapers and residential areas. Violence is just not depicted in a satirical way like it used to, the humour is almost non existant and there are a couple of pretty big plot holes.

    Samuel L Jackson part was borderline cringeworthy and served no purpose (yeah I get it, they tried to replace the old movie ads by that pseudo Fox newscast but it completely lacked any subtlety). I'm not a die-hard feminist, but they even replaced Lewis, a strong woman character, by Omar (The Wire) and the only women are assistants and the lovely stay-at-home-crying wife.


    Kinnaman was good (as usual) but overall it's very very far from Verhoeven grimy satirical dystopia. That being said, there's a fairly good focus on the human-machine struggle and it looks really pretty.


    I didn't think it was a horrible movie and I wasn't expecting anything else than what I saw but I can't help feeling sad to see movies so soulless, so PC, so smooth...and it really makes me miss the 80-90s' bite and badassery...

  • How to tell someone they aren't good enough

    I agree with everything that has been said, answering is super important, both for the image of the company and for the person seeking. Nothing worse than not knowing. For the anecdote, I got my job at Starbreeze back in '06 after the 3rd mail I sent them. I had been sending a few mails to different companies and while some answered, a lot just didn't reply. I had sent my mails during summer vacation, so I waited a bit longer and sent another one to Sbz that never got answered either. I was getting a bit cranky by then and after 2-3 weeks without an answer, I sent a last (polite) mail in the vein of "wtf-just-answer-even-if-it's-a-fuck-off". Turns out that the (new) HR missed the 1st one due to vacation, the second one apparently got to his spam folder (yeah sure...) and the last one eventually got me the job. Just to illustrate that a lack of answer can mean a lot of things. It's usually that you're not good enough, that they're not actively looking or that you don't fit the profile but it's so frustrating not to know... Whenever I was in the reverse position, I always made sure I answered or get the HR to do it for me.

  • Oculus Rift

    Quote from Pampers

    Really? I think it's been overhyped a lot, and wasn't super impressed the times I've tried it. It's still cool and all, but I think it will take a couple of iterations before it's there.

    Sure, but it's hard not to think about it as the future of gaming... Just picture the tech in 2-5 years

  • Carmack officially leaves iD

    Yup. Pretty happy about that! You can argue that it's the end of an era, but I think it was long overdue. He's a visionary and he's probably better off building the future of gaming

    I for one am totally looking forward to what he'll bring to Virtual Reality!

  • Playstation 4

    Quote from Thrik

    Switching between resolutions while in the middle of play would be extremely noticeable on any TV above about 36 inches so I definitely hope that doesn't ever happen. That sounds incredibly distracting to me, especially with static elements like HUDs. If I had to choose, I'd always take an FPS drop before a resolution drop so long as it doesn't go below 30 FPS.


    We used to do that at Starbreeze. For years we've had adaptive resolution (I wasn't there at the time but since the 1st riddick in 2004 I think) and yes it's noticeable sometimes when a lot is happening on screen but I personally take that anytime to a slowdown under 30fps.

    Of course people should never take that as an excuse for poor optimization but I think it's "ok" to do that as a last resort kind of thing (as long as it's done correctly and doesn't look too much like poop!)

  • What are you playing now?

    Been playing some Völgarr the Viking. Man, this game's a bitch! Super old school (including the difficulty) and no BS.


    Makes me relive my childhood spending afternoons trying to remember enemies' placement and levels in Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

    You know, those games where you actually needed skills (and to know the levels by heart...)


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