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Now I just cannot help to notice that the escapist Final fantasy XIII critic is right on target. Since the beginning of the game I find the plot really hard to follow and the characters too much stereotyped. Is this the culmination of all the elements that made final fantasy have so much success, flattened down to stereotypes because a large pool of developers just do not have any more ideas ? The best answer I have about the combat mechanics are that they where dumb down to cater to people with short attention spans.

Lucky for us, we can decide to not follow most of what is in FFXIII in our game design and it will be for the better.

I got this unexpected news from slashdot.org :
“Kotaku is reporting that Infinity Ward, the development studio behind Modern Warfare 2, has been at the center of strange events recently. Jason West and Vince Zampella, two lead developers, have been fired by parent company Activision for ‘breaches of contract and insubordination.’ Speculation is rife as to the reasons behind this; following Modern Warfare 2′s spectacular sales figures, it seems unlikely that the studio’s performance could be to blame.”

I really think that IGDA should push foward for more cohesion in this industry. As of the moment we should look at the movie industry for answers about the futur of our profession. It is really sad to twist the passion of creators in this industry : “We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.” Kotick later stated he tries to promote an atmosphere of “skepticism, pessimism, and fear” in his company and, “We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.”.

Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, dies and goes to Hell. The devil greets him when he arrives and says “Bobby, out of all the people up there, you remind me most of myself, so I’m going to let you choose your punishment for your first thousand years.”

The two start at a short hallway labelled “First Timers” and stop at the first door. Inside is an old man, screaming, having his skin peeled off in 1 inch strips. The devil explains “At the beginning of the day, his flesh is renewed. By nightfall, he is nothing but a pile of organs hanging onto a skeleton. This is the only punishment where you get a few hours rest every night.” Bobby feels a bit nervous about the long future ahead of him.

They walk to the next door. Inside is an even older man, screaming louder than the first man, and he’s slowly being lowered into a vat of acid. The devil explains “This punishment lasts all day. It starts at the toes and works its way up. When you are completely burned away, it starts over. Some say that after the first 800 years, though, it feels more like a massage than a punishment. I suppose it’s not so bad if you really enjoyed hot tubs when you were alive.” Bobby starts sweating at the thought of his eternal reward.

They come up to the third, and last door of the hallway. Inside is an EXTREMELY old man, screaming at the top of his lungs. A gorgeous young woman, chained to him by the ankle, is giving him a passionate blowjob. The devil grins “This punishment may look like fun, but after the first few hours, you get tired, but you may never rest; not for a thousand years. This punishment is one of endurance. Now that you’ve seen your choices, which one will it be?” Bobby Kotick doesn’t take long to decide which of the punishments he’ll undergo.
“I’ll take the last one. The blowjob one.”

The devil accepts Bobby’s choice with a nodded bow, and opens the third door. He enters in, unlocks the chain on the woman’s leg and whispers in her ear “Your replacement is here, you’ve been relieved.”

Nextgen.com has a full transcript of the torrent site that leaked on january 20th the two disc version or mass effect 2. Now I am not very happy about this as this game is quite an undertaking from a scenario and technology stand point. It really deserves to be bought. I played the first one through five times on different difficulty level. I actually bought my xbox for this game. Although I dislike some industry practices Electronic art as done in the past, I do not think they deserve that specific title to be pirated.  This sequel does not need a demo “before buying”, we all know its better than the other one. I guess the argument will go on forever, that those prople would not have bought it anyway. All in all, as a professional game developper I can just condone this case of piracy.

Read the transcript here : http://www.nextgn.com/2010/01/21/mass-effect-2-leaked-to-torrent-sites/

Additional thought on bitbag here : http://www.thebitbag.com/2010/01/21/mass-effect-2-leaked/

Developers spending a decade in a career holding pattern for below market salary with ‘profit sharing’ incentives, no real project deadlines, a motion capture room apparently used to capture the motion of strippers (the new game was to take place in a strip club, owned by Duke, that gets attacked by aliens), and countless crestfallen fans. *Sniff*, I would have played that game.”

Read the rest at Wired :



http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/

Using the Dolphin Emulator. We can see the game looks delicious. Even though the author states that the game actually runned at 60 fps, the recording killed the fun a bit by slowing it down in half.

The dolphin emulator can be found here

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