Controller Throw

Resident Racism 5!

2009-03-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

Resident Evil 5 just dropped on Friday. It's not without problems, but it's still pretty great. (The addition of coop really goes a long way to making it feel fresh!) All people want to talk about is the racism issue though... and that's good because it's pretty effing important.

The New York Times has weighed in on it. Their call? Not Racist.

Bullocks. :(

It's been about a full year since RE5 was first announced. I remember watching the first trailer. Being your average white privileged American male I didn't pick up on anything racist. Africa seemed like a shocking new setting to put zombies in; a far cry from the spooky mansions, castles, laboratories, and Raccoon City streets of Resident Evil's past. I was stoked for it!

And then the internet had some objections.

My initial reaction, like a lot of gamers, was a knee-jerk defense. It was very similar to Seth Schiesel's: zombie viruses don't give a shit what color you are. Anyone can be a zombie and these zombies just happen to be black because the game is in Africa. I was offended that people were really digging for a racist agenda in the game.

But after reading the arguments and talking to people that are much smarter than myself I began to realize that this is a pretty shallow mentality. Just because it doesn't personally affront me with a racist message doesn't mean that it's not racist.

It seems like the big issue is that RE5 preys on century-long fears of Africa as the "Dark Continent." Africans have been depicted as savages forever... the fact that Capcom has justified this imagery for their game by injecting them with zombie viruses (oh I'm sorry... Las Plagas parasites) does not make this imagery ok. And after playing the game they really leverage this imagery to great effect, particularly in the first act. That's not ok.

Seth even points out in his article that a game like this could not have been made in the States because of the social ramifictions. How could that possibly mean that it's ok for it to be made somewhere else? Poorly played, Seth.

I also wonder if there are places in the States where a game like this is actually craved. Are there racist players out there that really want a game where they get to play a white guy shooting black zombies in the face? That also seems to make the game Not Ok.

Overall this article reads more like something I would expect to find in the enthusiast game press... kind of sensationalist and full of defensive posturing. No one's trying to come after games for being racist. No one's trying to take our games away. These conversations are important... and not just because racism is important. I hope that these conversations are important because games are important. They influence people just like other respected media. If we want to be held up next to these other types of media then we should create more thoughtful products and we should certainly be ready to receive the same criticisms.

-Brad!

Ensemble!

2008-09-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

Ensemble Studios is being shut down.

:(

I was completely blown away by this news. Ensemble has been a rock in the industry for over a decade, churning out the highly successful Age of Empires series. Age of Empires III, released in 2005, was their best selling effort to date with 2 million copies.

So what in the world could have gone wrong? So many thoughts went through my head when I read the news... Is Halo Wars terrible? Is it not focus testing well with the Bungie Fanboy Nation? Was Ensemble's burn rate incredibly excessive? Was there some kind of internal dispute with MS Corporate? Did ES have some other game that was a huge money sink? Is MS pushing their cost-cutting measures to the extreme? More details might come to light in the future, but I'm guessing that the whole story will never be revealed to the public.

I'm still super interested to see how Halo Wars turns out. It's obvious that there are a lot of passionate people working on the game and the Halo IP should give them a license to print money. It's just so weird that the MS axe would fall at this point in development... the game isn't even slated for a release this year. :(

Being a part of the Outrage Games shutdown back in 2003 I know how much something like this can hurt. THQ axed Outrage the day that Alter Echo (my first game as a professional) went gold. It was completely out of left field and utterly devastating. I feel for the guys and gals in Texas right now... here's to hoping you all land on your feet!

-Brad!

Zelda!

2008-06-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I go through these moments of extreme doubt about my job. The weight of the real world feels super heavy and making video games doesn't feel like a very noble profession.

I think it's obvious that this time around it was triggered by Erick's death.

Whenever I feel like this there's always this one memory that I come back to. When I was about 8 years old my brother and I saw what can only be described as a completely fucking insane ad on tv for The Legend of Zelda. (side note: I would love to talk to someone that had a hand in this over at Nintendo of America... wtf?!?) We were kind of tired of Super Mario and we were hungry as shit for something new to put in the most holy of video game consoles, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This part always gets fuzzy... but I think that our Dad matched our money dollar for dollar with a most generous donation so that we could scoop Zelda within the first few weeks of its launch. The game was such a huge mystery... no one knew what to expect. I just know that as an 8 year old boy the anticipation and joy that I had when first firing up Zelda was overwhelming. And holy shit... the game did not disappoint. It consumed me for months... just an amazing innovative work from Miyamoto.

So if I can help make one person in the world feel the way that I did when I first slapped that golden cartridge into my NES, then it seems to me that I accomplished something worthwhile in my life. And working at Double Fine I really feel that we're not only making great games, but we have a chance to make someone's favorite game ever.

Sorry for this totally emo and self-indulgent post. I've been cooking up some other topics about some crap that bothers me about the industry right now but they all seem kind of weak at the moment. Maybe next week. :D!

-Brad!

Erick Wujcik

2008-06-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

I found out this morning that one of my friends died over the weekend.

Erick Wujcik was an unbelievable dude. We worked at Outrage Games together in Michigan. It was my first full time gig in the games industry. Outrage was cranking away on two games at the time: Rubu Tribe and Alter Echo. Rubu Tribe was the company's main focus and I was hired on to be the first full time programmer on the other game. The two games shared technology, but when it came to gameplay code I was the only one. And I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.

So I worked a lot of long hours trying to figure shit out. And my direct supervisor was kind of a dick. It was hard.

I remember one day I was kind of having a freak out near the end of a 16 hour day. No one was in the office. We had a milestone coming up on Alter Echo and I had to have a chunk of the combat system ready to go. At that exact moment it was in a state somewhere between Complete Garbage and Absolute Shit.

It was then that Erick came by my office... man he worked some weird hours. :D He just sat down next to me and started talking in that amazingly nonchalant way of his. He told me that I was doing a great job and that I was one of the main reasons that we were actually going to hit the next milestone payment. He thought I was the one that was holding the project together while most of the company was busy working on the other game. When I look back at it, this wasn't just a confidence boost from a co-worker... it was more like an affirmation that I could succeed in this industry. If someone with as much experience as Erick thought that I was doing a good job, then maybe I actually was.

Erick was an amazing person. I kind of lost touch with him after Outrage dissolved, but he was a joy to talk to whenever I saw him over the past 5 years. I really hope that he's sitting at a folding table in the sky, chilling out with Gary Gygax, poring over the new 4th edition of D&D.

Erick - you are missed. :(

-Brad!

GDC Day One!

2008-02-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

GDC is underway! I had an incredible day yesterday... I got to meet so many interesting people and so many interesting alcoholic beverages.

I'm hungover. Here we go.

When I sat down for my first session at 9 am, the guy sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I saw our name tag... did you work on Psychonauts? That game rules!" Talk about making my entire conference in the first 5 minutes. :D I chatted with this guy (Bryan) for a bit... he was a super cool dude who was trying to break into the industry after coming from business software. I hope he makes it!

I've gotta run out the door, but I'll fill this in later. Here was a run down of my day:

Master Metrics (talk by Chris Swain and Daniel Arey)
XBox Keynote (XNA Community games! Gears 2!)
Rules of Engagment (talk by Blizzard's Rob Pardo)
LUNCH w/ Outrage kids!
Matchmaking in Halo 3 (talk by Chris Butcher, super genius at Bungie)
Structure vs. Style (talk by Chris Hecker, super genius at Maxis)
Hotel bar w/ Outrage!
Game Developer's Choice Awards (gogo Erik Wolpaw and Emily Ridgway!)
Valve party (I got to hang out with the Double Fine kids, I got to see my old buddy Nick from Raven who's now at Valve, I got to meet Greg Kasavin and talk to him about video game journalism and Red Alert 3, I got to meet 2 of the 2kAustralia designers that worked on Bioshock and bullshit about game design, and I got really drunk!)

All in all, a super kick ass day. GDC is doing exactly what it does to me every year: re-energizing me about this industry and reminding me why I got into this business in the first place. If Day 2 can be half as awesome as Day 1 then I'll be very happy!

-Brad!

SeXBox Followup!

2008-01-30T10:24:00.000-08:00

Allen replied to my last topic asking me to elaborate on why I think it's so important for the industry to monitor the use of sex in games. I had to think about it a bit... but here's what I came up with.

I think that it's more about American society than anything else. Sex is still kind of taboo in this country and I feel like we're far more likely to be censored as an industry for featuring sex than we are for featuring violence. Sex feels like a major hot-button for conservatives and "family-values" organizations. I don't want to see the games industry relegated to comic-book-like status. The comic code of the 50s was really detrimental to the success and growth of the comic book industry, and now comics have sort of been pushed to the fringe and only enjoy cult status amongst nerds. (You probably know all that, but I really think there's a parallel here... and here's the wikipedia page for more info if anyone needs it... I know that I did!)

There's also the negative stigma that games are just for children. This really isn't the case, but I can certainly understand why those on the outside would have that view. It's up to the folks inside the industry to try to broaden the appeal of games and snap this mindset, but there's sort of a chicken-egg problem here. You can't really prove that games aren't just for kids if they only deal with kid-friendly issues. But then when you put sex or other mature themes in your games people are going to attack them outright. It looks like games are targeting children and trying to expose them to filth. Blech.

I do feel like Mass Effect is going about this the correct way by putting in tasteful sex scenes that feel more grownup. This is good way to avoid offending people and also show them that we can responsibly approach mature themes. It's basically the exact opposite of Manhunt's approach to violence.

I try not to get super defensive when people attack games for being too violent or too sexual. They're trying to protect America's youth and that's a noble goal. And it still hasn't really been proven if gaming or other media can sculpt someone's psyche. But even with ESRB ratings kids are going to get a hold of the games and they're going to experience the content. I don't think that we should be censoring extreme content but I also don't want to personally work on a game like Manhunt. You have to take the good with the bad though, so I guess we have to just do our best as responsible adults to keep the material out of the hands of kids as best we can.

Hope that clears it up! Thanks for reading, Allen!

-Brad!

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari!

2008-01-25T18:08:00.000-08:00

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari looks amazing.

That is all.

-Brad!

Alien Sex!

2008-01-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

Mass Effect was released in November amidst all of the holiday hullabaloo. The good doctors over at Bioware were shooting for an incredibly immersive sci-fi adventure with a host of interesting characters... including a bunch of aliens. During your travels through the stars you can stop and chat with your crew members and the denizens of many planets. Two characters in the game, a hot girl and a hot alien girl, are open to extra curricular activities if you talk to them often enough and ask them the right questions. Bioware refers to these in-game actions as "romantic subplots" in their 360 Achievements. Clever, clever guys.

So there's a sex scene in the game. Check it out here on the youtubes. And again!

(I'm going to skip over the fact that you can only choose between boy-girl sex or girl-girl sex. Apparently boy-boy sex is just too taboo...? Holy crap is America weird...)

So now the stage has been set. And with a presidential election coming up it only took a couple of months for someone to notice. Kevin McCullough scooped it up and wrote a scathing article bashing the shit out of the industry and Mass Effect. Then of course some gamers flew off the handle and told him that he was an asshat. I wish they had exercised a bit more restraint... but it's on the internets and people are pretty serious about things over here. Kevin then went on to post a scathing rebuttal to all of the "Gamer-Nerds" that wrote in to him. I guess I shouldn't be too offended... I mean, he capitalized both "Gamer" and "Nerd." And he hyphenated it. Thanks Kevin! I appreciate your support.

I'm not sure how I feel about this entirely. It seems like Kevin really enjoys riding that moral high horse around, telling us why we're bad and what we can't do. But while his sensationalism is bringing readership to the site, it's also weakening his position because he's such a dick about it. It's hard to think of this as little more than an internet troll.

But at least he's coming at it from a respectable position: we don't want our kids exposed to smut. That's pretty reasonable. I don't want kids seeing smut either. There's a time and a place for everything, and it's the exact moment that you turn 18. But these scenes in Mass Effect aren't exactly hardcore pornography. Kids are probably seeing worse stuff on tv, in movies, or on the internets.

The only difference here is that it's interactive. But here's where Kevin conveniently gives the industry too much credit. The scene isn't really interactive. You make a couple of choices and then the characters do pretty much whatever they want. You have about as much control over what's happening in this sex scene as you do in any standard porn dvd. This is kind of another topic altogether, but Mass Effect is a far cry from a "virtual orgasmic rape" simulator as Kevin puts it.

Sex in gaming is kind of a big deal and it's something that we have to monitor closely as an industry. The ESRB, the media outlets, and parents need to keep fighting the good fight and try to keep adult entertainment out of the hands of impressionable youth. And by and large it appears that they're doing a solid job. Kevin doesn't really point to a solution in his article, but I hope that attempts to legislate this kind of thing fall flat. Self-regulation seems to be working for other types of media and the games industry shouldn't be treated as a special case.

-Brad!

Play This Thing!

2008-01-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

Indie Games proponent Greg Costikyan has said some pretty bold things in the past. (Just read some of his stuff... like Death To the Games Industry: Long Live Games) He's also formed Manifesto Games, an indie games label, and a new-ish website called Play This Thing!.

Play This Thing! is an amazing showcase for indie games... they serve up one indie game everyday. They've been very consistent and there are some real gems up there. Most of the games are on the PC, and there's usually a free playable demo so it's easy to check out anything that sounds interesting. This site is the raddest thing ever and my hat is off to them for helping indie devs get more exposure. Hopefully we'll see more innovation trickling into the mainstream because of sites like this. Go Greg Go!

-Brad!

The cake is a lie!

2007-10-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

I finished up Portal a couple of weeks ago Unbelievably awesome! It has a great gameplay hook (umm... portals), great dialog, excellent production values, and it's short enough that it doesn't become repetitive. And holy shit the song from the ending credits has been stuck in my head for a week. (<-- SPOILERS) It's also a genuinely funny game in a sea of super serious squad based first person shooters. Hooray comedy! I really hope that this game helps bring about shorter, more innovative AAA titles. This is exactly the kind of game that should be available in stand-alone form on XBox Live Arcade. Maybe Valve is the only kind of company that can make a game like Portal. They already have a great in-house engine that they don't have to pay any licensing fees for, and they have the cash flow from Half Life and Steam to pretty much do whatever they want to. The sky's the limit over there. But I've heard rumors of "budget" licensing of the Unreal engine, so maybe it's not too much to hope for. EA kind of squished my hopes and dreams for a middleware revolution a when they bought out Criterion in 2004... but maybe they just delayed the inevitable for a few years. If small studios full of talented people can license next-gen technology on the cheap and produce a short AAA title in the downloadable space then I'm going to be very excited about the future. And oh look... we already had RoboBlitz that used Unreal3... maybe the future's not too far away after all. :D

Hang on... this post was supposed to be about Portal. Portal is badass. And I've been told that ex-Double Finer Erik Wolpaw wrote a lot of the dialog. He's pretty awesome... and if you didn't think Portal was funny at all then I'm coming over to your house with a shiv. Actually... come to think of it... if you don't buy Portal right now I'm coming over to your house with a shiv. Remember the Detroit face-cutting thing? Yeah... it's real.

-Brad!

Bionic Commando!

2007-10-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

Hot damn they're remaking Bionic Commando. Bionic mother fucking Commando.

If you aren't aware, Bionic Commando was an arcade and NES staple back in the day. You control some dude with a weird name like Ladd Spencer to save Super Joe, the main character from Commando (another ridiculously awesome Capcom classic). At first glance it looks like standard side-scrolling platformer fare, but the big twist is that your character can't jump... instead he shoots out his telescoping bionic arm to swing and climb around the environment. It was very innovative at the time and a hell of a lot of fun.

Bionic Commando on the NES was very different from the arcade version. The Japanese version was called Top Secret: Hitler's Revival. It's in the future and you have to stop the Nazis who are trying to revive Hitler. 8-bit games didn't exactly have the market cornered on original plot lines. When they localized it for the States they decided to take out all of the Nazi stuff and replace it with... other stuff. The Nazis became Badds and Hitler became the mysterious "Master D." (man... Japan is AWESOME) At the end of the game you shoot a rocket through the cockpit of Hitler's chopper and his face explodes (sorry if I ruined it for you, but I think the statue of spoiler limitations on Bionic Commando has passed). It was very badass to kill a reborn Hitler as a 12 year old. And holy crap was that a lot of rambling explanation just so I could post an 8-bit image of Hitler's face exploding.

I am a little bit cautious about getting too excited about the remake because of the development team. It's being developed in Sweden by a team that's most recently done PC ports of GRAW. It's being overseen by some creative directors at Capcom Japan. And it's being produced by American producers at Capcom USA. It's not necessarily a recipe for disaster... but... I'll be crossing my fingers. I want some hot next-gen bionic grappling arm action!

-Brad!

Jerks!

2007-10-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a lot of Halo 3 recently and it got me thinking about what makes people act like complete asshats online. Every 20 second post-game lobby of a Halo 3 match is filled with more expletives than a 20 minute Lewis Black stand up special. What the hell is going on here?

Contrary to the beliefs of many Halo 3 players, I am in fact not an African American Homosexual. (side note: Why are these two "insults" the most popular ones heard on xbox live? Are we really that racist and homophobic?) I've been working on this theory about why the XBox Live community seems to be comprised primarily of douche bags. Here's my breakdown:

1) The Greater Internet Dickwad Theory. It's pretty simple... normal people, when given a public forum and pure anonymity, tend to just fly off the handle and become assholes.

2) Competition. I'm guessing that most hardcore gamers haven't been exposed to the concept of healthy competition. (or at least they think it's a load of shit) They don't see the positive qualities of being a humble winner and loser, so there's no reason for them to do it, especially in the consequence-free environment of the internets.

3) Fraternity hazing logic. I think that a lot of hardcore gamers are abused in other parts of their lives. School, girls, jocks, parents, etc... there are a lot of forces arrayed against them and they tend to be a frustrated lot. I know that I had a rough time being a nerd in school. Judging by the pitch of my opponents' voices, it seems like most of them are in middle-to-high school, facing a lot of rough challenges everyday. When given the chance to be a good sport after winning or losing, these kids tend to vent their anger and pass it along to me. Thanks kids!

4) Single player games. Most console-only gamers are pretty new to mutliplayer online gaming. Single player games have largely been about player experience... making you feel like a powerful badass as you stomp on the AI and achieve total action-hero victory. Most single player games have only gotten easier in recent years as well... they're pretty damn easy compared to how difficult they used to be. Halo's matchmaking is pretty good... resulting in a 50% win/loss ratio. That should be good enough for everyone to have a good time, but when you're used to utterly destroying an uncaring AI 98% of the time, winning 50% of the time is kind of like a swift kick in the junk.

I wish that I knew more about psychology or other sciences that deal with why people act like asshats. Maybe I would have more facts to back up my theory. So take all of this with a grain of salt... I'm sure there's someone out there with a PhD that could tell me just how far off base I really am.

And finally... my apologies go out to the 5% of players who genuinely return my "Good Game" sentiments in the Halo 3 post-game lobby. You guys are fucking awesome and you give me hope for both gamers and humanity in general. :D!

-Brad!

Operation Darkness!

2007-09-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

This is just too crazy not to share. Sega is creating a turn-based tactical World War II game that involves werewolves, magic, skeletons, and godzilla-esque monsters all into one ridiculous package. Oh Land of the Rising Sun... what will you think of next? I'm not sure if it's going to get a stateside release, but here's a crazy video for you.

-Brad!

Golgo 13!

2007-09-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

Golgo 13 for the NES. I think I rented it back in the day. It was intense for my 10 year old brain to try to handle some of the mature themes that were going on in there. There's an implied sex scene and a sniping sequence that had actual blood. Oh my!

ONLY YOU CAN HELP HIM SAVE THE WORLD!

I don't know if anyone else actually played this game, but the thing that sticks out in my mind is the terrible control scheme. Conventions had already been developed at the time of its release and yet the developers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to map Jump onto the B button. There are only two effing buttons on the NES controller. Two. Every game in existence puts jump onto A. Mario jumps with A. Why can't Duke Togo jump with A? I guess he's too busy smoking and getting laid to be bothered with controller mapping conventions.

Anyway... let Golgo 13 be a lesson to all of us. If you're making an FPS right now please don't try to get cute and put Fire on the Left Trigger. :D

-Brad!

GAME FUEL!!!

2007-09-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Hype Machines... take a look at that Halo 3 juggernaut that MS is rolling out. It's getting just a wee bit out of hand with all of those corporate tie-ins that are popping up. Pontiac, Burger King... wtf?

But then there's the Mountain Dew tie-in. I can almost forgive Pepsi for this hilarious can of GAME FUEL sporting the Master Chief. I've played a lot of Halo with a lot of 12 year olds on XBox Live. Most of these kids sound like they're chasing their Ritalin with Mountain Dew. So hats off to MS! Halo and Mountain Dew go together like a Plasma Pistol and a Battle Rifle. (nerd cred, son)

Although I am a bit scared of what all of that extra caffeine is going to lead to on September 25th. Prepare to be abused.

-Brad!

Hype Machine!

2007-09-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

I just finished Bioshock. It was pretty dope. But was it a perfect 10.0?

Umm... no.

When I first started playing it I was having a hard time getting into it. All of the things that Ken Levine has said over the past year about revolutionizing the shooter genre kept popping up in my brain whenever I ran into a flaw. Bioshock is a good shooter. Shit... it's even a great shooter. But is it going to completely revolutionize the way we make shooters? Is it the effing messiah?

Umm... no.

But maybe that's ok. Maybe it's up to us as gamers to block out the gargantuan silly hype machine and just focus on the final product. Once I started playing the game with this in mind I started having a LOT more fun. It is a great game. Who cares if it's not going to revolutionize anything... it's incredibly polished, creepy, beautiful, etc, etc... and it should be recognized for this... I'm sure it's going to win a ton of awards this fall. It's more evolutionary than revolutionary... but that's ok too. I happen to be a big fan of just about everything they do over here.

I just wish that the Hype Machine wasn't so wildly and ridiculously hyperbolic when it came to games like Bioshock. Just tone it down a bit and I'll be cool with it. If your game is great, just believe in it and present it as work that you're proud of without all the rigmarole.

I'll leave you with this video that was passed around the internets... splicing some choice sound bytes from Ken Levine together with gameplay from Bioshock and older games that it... umm... "borrows" from.

-Brad!

Matchmaking!

2007-09-12T17:14:00.000-07:00

Halo 2 is awesome. It's a great game. But it's not so un-fucking-believable that there should be millions of people still playing the damn thing going on three years after launch. How the hell did this happen?

One word: Matchmaking.

The dudes at Bungie are smart. Like wicked retarded smart. I saw Chris Butcher give a talk at GDC and I felt like there were angry fire ants inside my brain as I tried to follow his presentation. They made the first great fps on a console. But with Halo 2 they didn't just put a ton of time and effort into improving the game. They put an additional ton of time and effort into how you get into the game.

This is the part of PvP gaming that is so often overlooked. Developers are spending so much time on the game itself that they're neglecting how players find and get into games. Server browsing is old and stale and makes me feel like I'm rubbing two sticks together trying to get a spark to light somewhere inside the vast ocean of the internets. It's a total crapshoot... you never know what skill level your opponents are going to be and people are constantly coming and going from the server that the teams are rarely balanced. And have you ever tried to get 3 or 4 of your friends on the same server on the same team? Fuck that noise.

The Halo 2 matchmaking system is all about playing with your friends against random internet jackholes who are roughly the same skill level as you. That's the real key to the system. Forming a party, playing a game with static, relatively even teams, and then coming right back to the lobby with your buddies with voice chat enabled the whole time. It's brilliant.

Hopefully as developers get their next gen technology ducks in a row they'll start to have a bit more time to spend on additional systems like matchmaking. But until then I guess I'm destined to continue running around the internets as a space marine wearing a damned BMX helmet.

-Brad!

First!

2007-09-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the first post for Controller Throw. My aim is to post thoughts about game design, the games industry, and some other crap.

A little about me... I have a degree from the University of Michigan in computer engineering. God that sounds so fucking pretentious... but it's the truth and I don't think I'm better than people that never went to school. Some of the smartest people I know didn't even finish high school.

I worked at Outrage Games on Rubu Tribe and Alter Echo, two games you've probably never heard of... I'm sure that part of that has to do with the fact that one of these titles never actually shipped. After the company folded (R.I.P.) I went to Wisconsin and did a very brief stint at Raven Software on X-Men Legends. Those guys are rad as hell and it was an awesome place to work, but I was offered a chance to move to San Francisco and work with Tim Schafer at Double Fine. So I grabbed it because... umm... hello? Day of the Tentacle? Full Throttle? Grim Fandango? Etc? I helped ship Psychonauts and now I've switched into the design crew here for our new title, which I can't tell you about for a while. If you ask about it I'm going to cut your face, because I'm from the suburbs of Detroit. That's how we roll.

Enough of that.

There are two kinds of game design blogs that I'm going to try to avoid being like. If you've ever read game design blogs from the internets you've probably encountered one or the other of these:
1) The blog from the kid who just graduated from Game Design College and has never shipped a game before. He's got a lot of big ideas but he has no idea how this fucking industry works... but oh man... he's played so many games and if they would only listen to him for just a second.
2) The blog from the arrogant asshole game designer who thinks that he's got this game design thing all figured out. He never misses an opportunity to point out why game X sucks and why he, like, totally knows how to fix it. He's also probably working on some industry changing idea... and it's probably related to Interactive Storytelling.

If I can avoid this kind of pretentious asshattery then I'll be a very happy person. If I can't, well... you can punch me in the face if you like. But beware... because... you know... that face-cutting thing... it's real.

-Brad!