Pause for Station Identification
The new year is well underway. I have a Post-it on my desk that reminds me to eventually re-purpose this site into something I actually post to occasionally. I’ll get around to that ANY minute now.
Maybe.
Anywho, in the meantime, you can continue to stalk me via any or all of the following means:
Standard caveats apply: Opinions posted are my own/do not represent The Mothership, may include salty language and/or bizarre iconography, not liable for fits of Lovecraftian madness, etc.
BioWAAAGH!
A lot of people have noticed the announcement we made earlier today regarding Mark leaving Mythic and EA creating a new MMO/RPG division that’s made up of Mythic an BioWare. Regarding the former, the official statement is pretty straightforward. I encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to do so, as it offers some useful details related to what’s ahead.As for Mythic itself, I’ll just clarify a few points that have been repeatedly tweeted, IMed, emailed, called in to me over the past few hours (sorry for not responding, we were watching “Transformers 2″):
1) No one else is leaving the studio. Apparently, someone was spreading nonsense rumors earlier about Paul or Adam or Carrie or myself being sent to Austin. Lies, lies and damn lies. I haven’t been able to find any such rumors myself, so who the hell knows - maybe the rumor ABOUT the rumor was a lie. Always remember - there are a limitless number of people online with comparably limitless free time and a weird love of just making things up.
2) We’re all really excited about working alongside BioWare as part of the MMO/RPG division. While we’ve got a lot of experience ourselves and have learned a lot of lessons (some harder than others), it’s exciting to know we’ll have the folks at BioWare right there with us as we move forward as a company. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Ray and Greg a few times in the past and they are clearly passionate about MMOs and games in general. Their affection for us was very clear today and I think they really made the team feel comfortable and supported. And, for the record, that attitude is nothing new. When we launched, BioWare was the only other studio that sent us something as personal and cool as this.
3) While we are working alongside BioWare and with Ray as our group GM, we are still Mythic. Our core operational leadership remains the same, our production and development staff remains the same. Our plans for WAR remain the same (and you’ll hear more about them shortly). Speaking of which…
4) Regarding the future of WAR, Jeff’s next Executive Producer’s letter will come out tomorrow and has a lot of new details explaining what we’re doing to tackle the “Top 5″ list he mentioned previously.
So that’s that for the moment. I know there’s a lot of “Chicken Little” silliness afoot at the moment, but take all of that with a grain of salt (and then throw away the salt). Mythic is fine. WAR is fine (as are UO and DAoC) . We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us and we look forward to tackling it as part of the new RPG/MMO wing of EA.
I am not dead.
It’s been a busy couple of months and I promise to post something like a proper update - just not right now. A short version of the past month and a half:
- Prepping/pimping Tomb Kings. Lots of press, working with folks doing interviews I couldn’t make it out for (see two bullet points down).
- Games Day Baltimore/Getting a badass squig cake out of Duff and the Charm City Cakes crew. If we make it into an episode, it’ll probably be aired in late summer/early fall.
- Got married!
- Honeymoon!
- Back to work tomorrow, then sprinting to get ready for E3 next week.
I HAVE been good about posting nonsense on Twitter, though. So… yeah… follow me or something.
Mmm… caaaake.
Who are these two handsome devils?
Protip: You should come to Games Day Baltimore.
Rock-n-roll!
Somehow, I managed to forget to draw your attention to the fact that I am now - officially - a rock deity:
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| From WAR-Misc |
That’s a picture of our office “garage band” - The Hamtouchers - hanging out with members of Blue Öyster Cult (they of “More Cowbell” fame) in our local recording studio.
Why, you ask?
Because we were recording a track together. An EPIC track. A track dedicated to Warhammer’s Slayers (newly added to Warhammer Online).
You can download it here, but be warned - it may melt your face off with ALL THE AWESOME.
ROCK.
May I have your attention, please.
At the following link.
[EDIT] This post is deeply “meta”, apparently. Which is just fine by me.
The Twitter Game Dev List
Sam Houston from GamerDNA put this together. It’s a list of Game Devs and studios on Twitter. I found a fair number of interesting folks who I hadn’t been following previously. Definitely worth a look!
Blog Warhammer
So it seems I’ve been derelict in my duties. Why? Because I’ve failed to point out the most-excellent “Age of Blogging” event that the folks at Blog Warhammer are organizing (and that OODLES of sites are participating in).
Some quick advice to bloggers new and old:
We love constructive criticism. Let’s face it - if you’re running a WAR blog you’re part of the most passionate, “plugged in” part of our community. You represent an important part of the “voice” of the community and part of that relationship means voicing concerns. While I usually won’t read ranting or aimless whining, but I’ve always got time for even-handed, considerate criticism of what we’re doing. Be tough, be honest, be fair.
That being said:
It’s okay to be a fan. I like reading about people having fun with our game. While it’s fun for Devs to read about people enjoying their work, it’s actually also an important feedback mechanism. Just like constructive criticism helps us know where there’s room for improvement, positive feedback helps us know what people are enjoying the most and, thus, what sorts of things they’d like to see MORE of.
Make sure we can contact you. We really DO read most of the WAR blogs we’re aware of and sometimes that means we have questions to ask or feedback to offer that don’t belong in blog comments.
So… yeah. Get out there and blog! If you start a new site, make sure to let me know!
‘Tis the Season
A handful of lunatics are playing the Desert Bus portion of the old (and unreleased) Penn and Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors game non-stop, raising money for Child’s Play. For those who aren’t familiar with Desert Bus, allow me to shamelessly steal from Wikipedia:
The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.
The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson—for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends). Players may continue to make trips and score points as long as their endurance holds out. Some players who have completed the trip have also noted that, although the scenery never changes, a bug splats on the windscreen about five hours through the first trip, and on the return trip the light does fade, with differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided only with headlights.
As you can see, volunteering to play this game non-stop for 120 hours straight is an act of benign holiday madness. So you should make sure to donate. After all, how often can you do something good while ALSO causing a stranger to suffer?
More Halloween pics.
I know, I know. I’m stupidly late, but a couple of folks asked if I managed to look less like a “Spy vs. Spy” character in the end, so here are some shots from Paul’s Halloween party:
