We were recently contacted by the Make-A-Wish foundation with the news that a young man had chosen to invest his wish in us. This was no surprise. Well, a wish in Gabriel was a surprise. A wish in me, certainly - I'm an investment. Here are only a few of the things that make me such a winning opportunity:
It's a little inside baseball I guess, but at the same time the story was so delicious that we couldn't leave it be: a District Attorney in Texas is on trial for building himself a sweet rig on the county dime. The machine in question sports "two hard drives, seven fans, high-end video and audio cards, a wireless Internet connection and cables that glow under ultraviolet light." It's a crime, yeah, but it's an awesome crime. I make an exception for awesome crimes.
Echochrome is something every PSP owner should certainly check out, and it's easy to do so, at any rate its as easy to get on there as any other demo, which is to say that there are elements of dark sorcery. Creating a folder in a specific subdirectory with the title "NPJG90019" is the sort of thing a crazy person would do. That said, I have it on good authority that we will never survive unless we occasionally indulge in madness.
I have some PAX news to share.
-The PAX 10 site has launched. We thought PAX would be a great place to show off some independent games. Basically the idea is that you can submit your game to us, we'll look at it along with about 50 industry experts and the 10 that we think are the best will get shown at PAX. You can get all the details here.
-We've also put out a call for speakers. If you think you have something that PAX attendees would be interested in hearing about or you have an idea for a panel let us know.
-Early bird pre-registration ends March 31st. So you need to register this month if you want to save $10 and get your 3 day pass for just $40.
In other semi PAX related news, the film Nerdcore rising will be opening this weekend. I say it's semi PAX related because it's a documentary about Nerdcore hip hop and it features PAX regular MC Frontalot. They filmed a pretty long interview with Tycho and I as well as the Front. During part of it they asked us to deconstruct the PA theme song and try and explain it for people who aren't huge nerds. They posted the result up on YouTube as a sort of teaser for the film I guess. I'll go ahead and drop it in here.
As usual I will warn you that this clip features graphic footage of us in our hideous true forms.
Before Army of Two came out, I was having trouble making sense of the reviews I had read. Invariably, the game lost a certain quantity of metaphysical "points" for its Single Player experience, and was redeemed to a great extent by its multiplayer modes, both adversarial and cooperative. I've never considered it anything other than a multiplayer game, taking the name of the game in question as a helpful suggestion.
Just got back from the store with two copies of Army of Two, my mind already blossoming with mercenary exploits, when it suddely became clear that the game has no LAN option. I repeat, no LAN option. Even on the same Goddamned network, both accounts need to be Gold Tier Live accounts. You seriously have got to be fucking kidding me.
(CW)TB
Gygax always struck me as a tremendously sinister name: no mortal name, this. This was the sort of name one earned in the service of horned devils and more primordial shapes of evil, a boon for the loyal servant, placed like a black crown on the bowed head.
So Tycho and I are still playing WoW most nights. In fact, as of this last weekend I think it's fair to say our little five man crew has the Auchenai Crypts on farm. When I was playing before with Dudefella I really only did PvP. This was back when you had to grind honor or risk losing it so I had to play constantly. I had a good time but it meant that I never really saw any of the new content in the Outlands. Now I'm back with a solid group and we're making all the five man instances our main priority. I've never had this much fun with the game and I think it's due to a combination of things. First, I'm playing a radically different class now. I went from disposable DPS to main healer and I really like it. I've given every class in the game a try and a few of them I've run up past 60. I can honestly say this Druid is my favorite. The other big factor I think is that we have a well balanced five man group we can count on made up entirely of friends. We don't have to worry about PUGs or meeting stones. We've also stacked the classes in a way that means most of the time no one is competing for loot. I won't bore you with too much more about our adventures. I just wanted to say that I'm back in and so the news about an "Art of Blizzard" gallery show to benefit Child's Play really has me excited.
The only bad thing is there is no online component so you'll need to hit the Nucleus art gallery in Alhambra, CA. The opening reception is on March 8th at 7pm. I've spent a lot of time drooling over the World of Warcraft art books so I'm really bummed I can't make it out to this. If you plan on attending let me know. Maybe I can pick something up via one of you guys. I think a giant portrait of a Lich above my fireplace would really tie the room together.
If you're in the area please make a point of checking this show out. I know it's just my opinion but these are some of the best artists in the business and the chance to see their work up close and even own it should not be missed. Not to mention it's all for a good cause.
-Gabe out
The agreed upon comic, in the agreed upon place, according to the ancient ritual.
I think we've got the concerts for PAX pretty well lined up, but I'm always trying to massage the lineup, and I spent part of the afternoon educating myself about W(izard)rock - the odd metagenre/community devoted to Harry Potter. This is easily done, provided you have sufficient time and interest, by visiting either WizardRock.org (naturally) or by availing yourself of the Wizrocklopedia. I can't jam in anymore bands this year, not even if I stack them sideways, but I'm keeping an eye on this shit. I especially enjoyed Ministry of Magic's Snape vs Snape, which features awesome guest vocals from Seattle locals The Parselmouths.
It's unfortunate that Melt Wizard is no longer a going concern. I'd fly them out just to play Weis & Hickman over and over.
On the HP tip, you may also find this trailer interesting: We Are Wizards is a documentary about the surge of fan works dedicated to the series, including Brad Neely's profound Wizard People, Dear Readers. I was under the impression that I liked Harry Potter quite a lot, but I may have been mistaken.
(CW)TB
There is already a surprisingly elaborate browser game for Deadliest Catch, a television program where men risk their lives trying to outsmart crabs. The show has no right being as entertaining as it is, and the more we thought about an retail game based on it the more enthusiastic we became. This is true, and I wish we had recorded the conversation: all strip progress halted for forty-five minutes while we indulged in the creation of co-operative, asymmetrically competitive structures that would support the theme. The hook is very similar to Iron Dukes actually, the only distinction being that the treasure one hauls up is not gold, but is instead a prison full of delicious animals.
A week or so ago, I read over Stephen Totilo's off the cuff interview with Cliff Bleszinski, who is also known as CliffyB, and is still sometimes called Clefairy B. In it, Clifford makes a few personal observations about the PC as a gaming platform - namely, that it is schizophrenic in its focus. The industry itself apparently agrees, but it hasn't spared him any heat. Epic's Liar-King Mark Rein scuttled out from a rotting log to do some damage control, but noone on the Internet remembers anything for more than a week anyhow. It's wasted effort.
Just a reminder, tomorrow night is Pokemon night at the Comic Stop. We start at 6pm and go to 8pm. Bring your deck and any extra cards if you want to trade. New players are welcome, just pick up a starter deck.
-Gabe out
So I need to apologize her to Ted Mathot for a mistake I made with some concept art for our game. If that doesn't sound interesting to you feel free to stop reading now.
We started working on the game back in 2006 and at the beginning obviously I had no idea what it would like like. Whenever we start a new project I start by looking around for some kind of inspiration. In the case of our game it was one image. The cover to a comic book called Rose and Isabel. It had the exact pallet and "feel" that I though would be good for the game. So I sat down a did the very first piece of art with Gabe and Tycho and FF Prime in the background. I used the pallet and even the composition from the Rose and Isabel cover. When it came to do the ruble I couldn't get it right. My rocks looked like shit and I loved the way he did his. So I used them. In my head this piece was just something to kick start the project, to supply a direction and help visualize the world.
It might not make sense but I had to do that piece before I could do my own pieces like the one below. I realise they are not very similar but in my head there is a direct connection between the two. I could not have gotten the one without first doing the other.
We were threshing GDC news when we came across a LEGO Universe article, and when I say "article" of course I mean "the most rudimentary kind of impressions," because I don't think they're ready to let people really see the guts of this thing. Flynn's interview at Kotaku has a few more details, I'm not sure how much there is to know - but none of this has stopped me from building a nest for it in my heart of hearts. The only advice I would give NetDevil at this point is to maybe beef up their stock of community managers.