kleinluka

I just learned one of our original members, Zach Ford @Zaford20 aka “von ferret” has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 36.
 
For those of you who don’t know him, Zach was one of the original members of Mapcore. Working at Gearbox for most of his career he worked on (among others) Borderlands and more recently PUBG as a Level and Game Designer. 
 
I have so many good memories with Zach, wasting fools in BF2 every night while teaming up in the attack helicopter, playing frisbee in a park in Savannah during a thunderstorm, long conversations about life…
 
RIP buddy. You will be missed.

 

I just learned one of our original members, Zach Ford @Zaford20 aka “von ferret” has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 36.
 
For those of you who don’t know him, Zach was one of the original members of Mapcore. Working at Gearbox for most of his career he worked on (among others) Borderlands and more recently PUBG as a Level and Game Designer. 
 
I have so many good memories with Zach, wasting fools in BF2 every night while teaming up in the attack helicopter, playing frisbee in a park in Savannah during a thunderstorm, long conversations about life…
 
RIP buddy. You will be missed.

 

I just learned one of our original members, Zach Ford @Zaford20 aka “von ferret” has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 36.
 
For those of you who don’t know him, Zach was one of the original members of Mapcore. Working at Gearbox for most of his career he worked on (among others) Borderlands and more recently PUBG as a Level and Game Designer. 
 
I have so many good memories with Zach, wasting fools in BF2 every night while teaming up in the attack helicopter, playing frisbee in a park in Savannah during a thunderstorm, long conversations about life…
 
RIP buddy. You will be missed.

 

I just learned one of our original members, Zach Ford @Zaford20 aka “von ferret” has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 36.
 
For those of you who don’t know him, Zach was one of the original members of Mapcore. Working at Gearbox for most of his career he worked on (among others) Borderlands and more recently PUBG as a Level and Game Designer. 
 
I have so many good memories with Zach, wasting fools in BF2 every night while teaming up in the attack helicopter, playing frisbee in a park in Savannah during a thunderstorm, long conversations about life…
 
RIP buddy. You will be missed.

 

One word: 
engineer.
 
Miss that guy ;(

One word: 
engineer.
 
Miss that guy ;(

One word: 
engineer.
 
Miss that guy ;(

Congrats! 👏🏻👏🏻
Updated the post.

Hello, I have also switched studios. I now work as ld at Techland where I am ruining @Lizard's diet with my butter biscuits.

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

Thank you and congratulations, @kleinluka!
Oh, btw- if someone could link my twitter and website that would be awesome.
twitter.com/celeryslcice
https://willgranda.com
 
 

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

New job for me, as of August 8th. Senior Material Artist at Playstation Studios Visual Arts
Congrats @celery I have updated the list!

Hi! I'm Will "celery" Granda, and tomorrow is my first day as a full-time surfacing artist at Full Circle (EA). 😁

Age is the biggest component imo.
This is something I used to tell already back when I was moderating the Italian gaming forum, and that's many years ago: if we are realistic, we are not the target audience.
Most AAA revolves around these live service that we, as working professionals, in stable relationships, maybe mothers and dads, haven't got time for! I'm sure we have all seen stuff that looks like it can tickle our interest, but it's just too big and becomes offputting.
CliffyB was right when, responding to criticism to Gears of War, talked about the pros of shorter but more polished experiences. It's a shame we don't diversify more, for example I'd buy most COD games within the launch year, if they sold the campaign on its own at 1/3 1/2 of the price.
On top of time, themes are a big thing, there's not really much to connect nowadays for a mature audience.
I'm so glad I played Last of Us only last year, I think it triggered some emotions I would have never felt before becoming a dad.

When you work on games for a living, most of the smoke and mirrors that works for the average gamer won't work on you. So I find getting immersed is harder now than before

Yeah I was talking to one of the level designers at work about this today. I'm finding it harder and harder to find a game I can really stick with and put a lot of hours into. Whereas 10+ years ago there were quite a few games that I would really enjoy and put many hours into.
Now some of this is probably down to me getting older, having less time to play, my friends not playing as much and my tastes changing. But then I think about Battlefield 2042 and how bad that's been received. Before it came out and all we had were trailers I was pretty hyped for it. I wanted a modern day Battlefield like BF2, BC2 or BF3 but with modern graphics and that's exactly what the trailers looked like. Obviously, that never came to pass and I cancelled my pre-order after playing the beta. But if DICE/EA did release a modern day BF2 I reckon I could really dedicate some time to it.
Now, I guess we're in the minority since the games industry is pulling in some serious cash. The masses must be loving it but I guess most of the money is going into a small number of franchises (COD, LOL, Pokemon, Mobile games etc).
I dunno, maybe when we can't progress with graphics any more without a significant jump in graphics power the games will get better and we'll focus on the gameplay instead?
Old man shouts at cloud!

Yeah, lighting is an art form, more important than ever! Lumens is amazing, but you still need to know how to squeeze it's juice.

I finally caught up to the latest episode. Kinda sad this show is ending but considering all my favourite characters have been killed off with a couple exceptions it's probably for the better.
Also, how is Negan now the most likeable character on the show? Everyone else annoys the shit out of me now except Negan.

I'm closing this thread as it has outlived its initial usefulness and has been reduced to mostly personal attacks and misinformation, neither of which have a place on Mapcore.
If any mods disagree with my decision feel free to open up a discussion in the Staff section of the forum.

Late to this thread.  A lot going on.
I was not close to Zach but I remember him back in the early days of Mapcore. Painful to hear. So sorry to those close to him and his family.