Still not dead – The Return

Hello,

My two weeks in France are well and truly over. They were pretty good. The place the family stayed at was fantastic with great hosts and wonderful hospitality. The weather, on the other hand, was rubbish. Thunderstorms? In the south of France? In August? Gah!

Fortunately, for those times when staying indoors seemed the only sensible option, I had my DS and 50 or so games to keep me company. I will do a write up of my broadening impressions of the DS, my 2gb DS flash-kit and the games I think are worth it at some point in the future.

I also have a rant I’m preparing to write. The theme came to me in that period between going to bed and falling asleep when your brain starts to close its windows and put its lights out. I’ve been reading a lot of videogame news and an increasing amount is coming from sources that are, for want of a better phrase, enthusiast powered rather than anything else. When you look at sites outside the realm of IGN (eww!), Gamespot or Next Generation Online (the closest thing this culture has to proper online journalism) you see a lot of gamers telling the industry what’s right and what’s wrong. Now I don’t disagree that these vocal gamers are the customer to a certain degree (non-gamers and casual, less vocal gamers are actually a far more significant customer) but I do disagree that they have the faintest clue as to what they’re preaching about most of the time. So, in a rare role-reversal in this culture, you’ll have someone inside the videogames industry preaching to gamers about what they should and shouldn’t be doing. Let’s see them have a taste of their own medicine and see how gracious and diplomatic they can be.. 😈

Life at work is still blissfully wonderful. OK, it’s not entirely perfect but it’s as close as things are likely to get. If you hadn’t heard from Free Radical’s recent press release the top-secret project I’m working on has been partially revealed in that we’ve announced we’re working with LucasArts. I know what you’re thinking but I’m not going to tell you whether you’re right or wrong. I will say this though – I’d done a game for LucasArts some years back with my previous game developer employer. It was a GBA version of Jedi Power Battles and the collaborative experience had been quite a trial – particularly at the very end. Recently, LucasArts had made an announcement explaining their commitment to making great games and to raise the standard of their output. It may be too early to see just how that committed they are but over the last few months it’s become clear to me that, internally, they’re very focused on gameplay and fun. I’m looking forward to seeing their future games and am thrilled to find myself working for such a professional publisher.

OK, that’s all I’ve got for you right now – this post was intended to be a fairly short update. I do want to talk DS, rant a bit and write up about what I actually do as an Associate Producer at some point but I’m so easily distracted!

See you soon.