Your daily dose of Barnettics*.
Paul’s taken one of his infrequent breaks from running around the office yelling strange things at people to give a speech at the Lift Conference in Switzerland. Here’s his talk:
Make sure you go and lavish him with praise and affection here when you’re done watching it (or before, if you’re a disingenuous sycophant).
* “Barnettics” is a great term shamelessly stolen from the inimitable Kate Flack. It’s only a matter of time before the cult starts up, so get in early!
Paul “The Mastermind” Barnett in Geneva
Paul’s off giving a speech at the LIFT ‘08 convention in Switzerland. This afternoon, he wound up on a Swiss radio show (though the host sounds oddly Australian-ish to my American ears). Anywho, here he is, entertaining the neutral and ranting about Warhammer:
WARNING: ROMANCE WITHIN
As many of you apparently now know, I went and got myself engaged. Jeff and Paul - a pair of romantic softies - snuck a congratulatory easter egg into the end of the latest Beta update podcast (all the way at the end, AFTER the copyright notice). So a big thanks to them and thanks for the emails and PMs, folks.
For those interested, here’s how it happened:
I was heading over to Dublin to visit our friends at GOA and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to trick my Irish lass into tagging along so I could propose on her ancestral home turf. Once the business was wrapped up, we had a day or so of free time to see the sights and experience Ireland. On our last day there we took a trip out into the country to visit Glendalough. After braving the increasingly-harsh weather, we made our way out to one of the nearby lakes that lay between green fields full of grazing lambs and an ancient ruined monastery. And that’s where I proposed. As Jeff and Paul mentioned already, she said yes.
And there was much rejoicing.
Anywho, I suppose I should introduce you to my good lady now.
Aubrey, meet the Internet.
Internet, meet Aubrey:
We now return you to WAR-related shenanigans
IncGamers Interview(s)
This is one of a pair of interviews I did for these folks way back when during this year’s dismal E For All expo in LA. They didn’t have a mic and it was godawfully loud, so I wound up screaming for twenty minutes straight doing the two interviews. This one is the better of the two, if only because I stood closer to the camera and was therefore occasionally audible:
The other interview is here, if you feel you must watch it.
Brief disclaimer:
These interviews are a few months old, despite being posted very recently, so if I say something that seems to contradict current wisdom (i.e. our Q2 launch date), assume that the lag between recording and posting is to blame.
AFK - Ireland.
I’m on my way out to Ireland this evening. I’ll be in Dublin through the weekend, checking in with GOA and being sociable with our Yurpian pals. Then it’s off to London for a day before heading back home. There’ll be a handful of Mythic folks in town, so if you see us wandering the streets of Dublin looking confused, feel free to say hello and/or buy us - by which I mean me - a pint.
Also, poor CJ’s been hard at work polishing the podcast we recorded prior to Thanksgiving for this month’s newsletter, but I fear that the team is moving so quickly through new content that our weekly beta updates may have already covered a fair chunk of what we wanted to discuss. Such is the price of an energetic team that’s chomping at the bit to reopen Beta (very soon).
Dear Irish Fans.
Assuming that anyone from the Emerald Isle actually sees this, I require Irish advice.
I’m going to be in Dublin for a few days (November 28th-December 1st) to hang out with our buddies at GOA.
1) What are the must-see places in town?
2) My lady-friend loves green, outdoorsy stuff. What’s the best-looking, yet reasonably-close-to-Dublin spot for that type of thing?
Any and all advice is appreciated.
E for All - Impressions.
E for All, as expected, is NOT the “new E3.” I had a general hunch that this was going to be the case and planned to only be around for the first two days as a result. Our first clue of what waited inside the hall came upon arriving at the show, where we were met not with 50 foot banners dedicated to the most anticipated upcoming games, but rather an ad for (I kid you not) some sort of franchise fried chicken restaurant’s mobile phone game adorning the entryway.
Heading into the hall, it became clear that the WHOLE SHOW took place in about 1/3 of the South Hall of the LA Convention Center, meaning that it occupied roughly 1/16th the floorspace of the old E3.
Tooling around ahead of the public opening on the first day, I saw all I cared to see in less than 15 minutes. The most generous description I can offer of the show would be “cozy.”
With that said, I feel obligated to offer the following:
If you bothered to head to E for All, you almost certainly got access to games with next to no wait time that would - at any other show - have had you rotting in line for HOURS, just to get a brief sample of gameplay. In that regard, I imagine the show was a special and unique little diamond of awesomeness for certain fans.
We, for example, had a few kids that literally played the WAR demo from the time the doors opened on day one until the time I left some eight hours later. Was attending “worth it” for those guys? I’m guessing that they’d say it was.
So maybe this will become the “secret” spot to hit up in the coming years for folks who want to play the big, upcoming games without waiting in line for ten hours straight to do so.
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| From E for All - 2007 |
A few more random shots can be found here.
E for All
I’ll be heading out to LA in a little under seven hours to do press duty for the E for All show.
Despite the name and location, it’s CLEARLY not going to be a “new E3″ of any sort. In fact, none of us have any clue what it’s going to be like at all. It’s open to the public, so there’s always a good chance that it’ll be a total zoo, but it’s also an unproven event taking place at a weird time of year, so it’s equally possible that we’ll be there the whole time, twiddling our thumbs in an empty convention hall.
In any event, I’m going to be on the floor Thursday and most of Friday. We’ll be fully staffed for the whole show, but I can only stick around for the first couple of days. I’m primarily there to do interviews, but it’s hard to tell how busy that will actually keep me, so if you see me just staring aimlessly off into the distance, stop over and chat for a moment.
We’ll be in the main EA booth - dangerously close to Rockband (mmm….. Rooooockbaaaand… *drools*) - with a bunch of machines up and running WAR for your gaming pleasure, so even if you ignore me, make sure to stop by and take a look.
Leipzig, Germany
Here are a few shots I took of Leipzig during a bit of downtime at this year’s Games Convention. I was too busy working to take any pictures of the actual show, but GOA put together a cool little video about WAR’s presence on the show floor.