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http://www.chriscanfield.net/Offsite/fbiRobocopPony.jpg

BRILLIANT!

That made my day. Thank you sir!

http://www.chriscanfield.net/Offsite/fbiRobocopPony.jpg

Does anyone else find this image ironic?

http://www.chriscanfield.net/Offsite/slashdoterror.gif

It's like heading out on a romantic interlude while whispering "my wife will never find us here." This page simply could not have been served, by basic comedy rules of the universe.

Dada download link died, so here is a mirror.

He actually has half of his face in one of the pictures, and his mouth in another. If one were so inclined, you could splice together the two images to create something that looks like
this.

Not as great as a mugshot, especially with the slightly different perspectives of the two pictures, but it might do. A little reconstruction by a skilled artist, and you could have a really accurate full-face.

He must have gone to Roland High School. Anyone want to give them a call? (918) 427-7419

I feel bad if this kid really had been planning on getting out, but I've known people who "planned" on getting out for years and never did. And I've been cleaning spyware crap off of people's computers for years.

I work in the industry, and plan on doing so for the rest of my life.

But I do still love games. It's not a job, it's a passion. It's also a tough dichotomy. The people most likely to hold strong opinions are the ones most likely to work in the industry. And the industry is small enough that chances are you will have worked with someone or will work with someone at some point.

For example, I own a DS, but don't own a PSP. I love the industry enough that I want the PSP to do well, so I will talk about its shortcomings and where I think it can improve. But I also work with Sony... daily. Well, frequently anyway. If I post here that I think that Nintendo's focus on new play experiences with the DS has paid off, and that the PSP needs to branch out to more experimental projects, could that upset relations with Sony? In legal theory no, because I haven't violated any NDA's. But everyone fears that the real answer is yes.

This guy grossly violated his NDA. He clearly talked about the size of teams, the number of dev kits in the US (which even most industry people don't know), durations, etc. But that doesn't change the perception is he was fired for saying that something sucks. And we all have strong opinions, and sometimes something does suck.

And he was expressing a phenomenon that people have been expecting and experiencing: diminishing returns. Each new generation of system is less and less deficient overall, and so the experiential delta between subsequent systems becomes smaller and smaller. That's just a fact of developing technologies, and I blogged about it in 2003. Now with the Xbox 360's launch lineup generally accepted as good but not particularly mind blowing, could that article come back to haunt me? Could that last sentence?

It is a fine line that a lot of people walk. Your job is your life, your passion. Nobody gets paid enough to put up with this shit if they didn't love it. But with that comes the fear that you can't critique anything or else you're out of the club.

House of the dead had a 7 million dollar budget and grossed 11 million in domestic box office. Add in overseas numbers and DVD sales, and you have what the industry considers a real winner.

What happens next is, of course, the problem. A: people watch the movie, are terrified by how bad it is and don't come back. B: With a success under his belt, Uwe Bowl is given 20 million dollars to make his next movie, with is also drek but doesn't have the charm of a low-budget film. C: Anybody who didn't see the first movie goes in to see the second movie, realizes how bad it is, and doesn't come back.

In essence, you have hollywood investing in people who can sucker the largest audience into bad films.

BTW, I just posted this to the IMDB forums, but might as well share here. This is the poster for the movie. This is a quick photoshop edit of the poster to make it look like the character from the game. The actress was more than capable of pulling off the role, but without competenet direction, cinematography, and costuming she didn't have a chance.

Here's the new map of the US.

They should teach the new map of the US.

I always thought that arcades should have leveraged the control the owners have over them and setup a giant game-playing network, ensuring that even if there wasn't local competition ther would be competition from somewhere. Sadly, now the arcade owners would only be on par with consoles if they networked, but it is something they will have to do... and soon.

They also need to profit share with the people who develop arcade games if they want to survive.

Of course, the best games in the arcade right now (and for a long time) have been DDR and Konami's motion-tracking system setups. Apparently American Sammy was also tremendously successful with that soccerball - kicking game that everyone recognizes. Why we don't have more creative hardware-based games is beyond me, but that mantra of console compatibility that dominated the industry in the 90's needs to end.

100 million blank CD's were sold in Canada last year, only 1/2 of which went to music piracy. Where did the other 1/2 go?

Digital video game piracy is rampant due to the wide availability of blank CD-Rs. Yet game designers never see a dollar from this obviously illegal trade. Look at how the existing levy in Canada has supported musicians and technicians, allowing the music scene to grow untethered from the chains of traditional economics. It's a veritable renaissance of human expression, all supported by the taxes collected on their behalf by the CPCC.

Yet us game designers don't see a penny of the money CD-R companies have made their living from. By my estimates, if the CPCC has collected 28 million dollars for music piracy, they should have collected 100 million for digital videogame piracy. That's enough for 5 high-profile Square-quality launches per year, or 200 art-house releases... enough to support a console of their own. Canada's publically supported movie industry has given us The Cube... Isn't it time for The VideoGame Cube?

As a game designer, I feel underpaid by this lawsuit.

(note, the above is an example of oh-so-trendy serious sarcasm. By having read this comment you agree to not make any laws based upon it.)