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Brian Reynolds Interview
jyak writes "Over at the Daily Radar, there is an interview with the game legend, Brian Reynolds, about his new company, Big Huge Games. Apparently, Firaxis is now hiring, if anyone is interested."
He hangs out with Sid Meier. That gives him near-heroic status in my book.
> of the same game... the DOS one, the Windows one, and the PSX one...
So fuck? Do you really think anyone cares?
It is better to be silent and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Brehon Rynolds wrote The Adventures of Raspberry Slim and Knave's Quest III: Fucked Eight Ways From Sunday. And Brendan Behan is the drummer for the Conan O'Brien's television show band! The Starcraft guy was Brenolds Rynin, a fact that you really should have known.
Ken Dodd is watching you!!!!!!!!!!!
If you wrote a game I'd pirate it and then I'd piss on it! You suck!
Moderate this person up, he is hilarious. I must get his/her phone number. Moderate UP UP UP!!!
Well, they get exclusives because they effectively pay for them. Basically, they bundle together advertising and editorial packages; you give them an exclusive, you get a break on a big advertising deal. It's pretty unethical, but fairly typical of the game industry. (I know Imagine does this as I've verified it with multiple people, and one company threatened to sue my publication if we didn't pull down an article that screwed up the "exclusive" they'd purchased from Imagine.) Incite may work the same deals, or something similar, but I wouldn't know with any certainty. They've been promising big numbers, and some people may actually buy their grossly inflated claims. (They promised 400,000 circulation with their first PC issue after printing a million copies and pricing it at $1.95, but didn't even come close; more like 100,000.)
You're not imagining things. There's a lot more 'punative' moderating going on lately, I got moderated down a week ago as a troll for something that, ok might not have been plus five material, but certainly wasn't off topic, especially not considering the post that I was replying to.
We can only hope that the retro-moderation works...
BTW: Do you know how much effort it took me to track down a description of what the retro-moderation process is? It's not in the moderator guidelines... I had to do a few searches and scans on Google to get a reference to a December slashdot post that technically described the retro-moderation, and even it didn't describe the consequences!
As I understand it, it's like getting moderator status, people are picked at random and given 10 recent posts and their moderation history, and asked to judge if each post has been moderated fairly or not. I haven't yet been asked to do this, although I've had moderator status 4-5 times... (yes, I'm posting anonymously on purpose :)
If anyone has a direct link to an explanation of the current retro-moderation mechanics, I'd like to see it. And don't just say 'read the moderator guidelines'. It wasn't in there a week ago, although there is a place or two which claims it is. (Unless I'm utterly blind, if so kindly point out the paragraph number.)
I don't think there are anywhere near enough nude Natalie Portman pictures on this site.
I think you'd better be looking out for Faith and Charity, because it looks like Hope just left the building.
Ryan Beinolds is one of my favorite game developers of all times. He is the one that created Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Prehistorik (1 and 2). Does anyone still remember Prehistorik? It was the best!
I have heard that he has plans to continue the Starcraft series with Starcraft III The Last Cadaver. Does anyone know if he is still committed to developping this game?
Anyway, congratiulations to Ryan Beinolds and his great interview.
I used to work under Brian Reynolds at Firaxis and I heard some interesting stories about him and Civilization(tm)-style strategy games. Apparently, Brian enjoys studying cultures with different technology levels to get a better idea of how civilization actually develops. So he (with Sid's backing) would take all sorts of research trips to different parts of the world and report back to the programming team afterwards. We were all insanely jealous, of course; Brian would study the cultures of Spain, Japan, Peru, and nearly every country in between. Once, he even took a trip to the Galapagos islands to have sex with the turtles!
Brehon Rynolds was the Starcraft guy. Brendan Behan created Prehistorik 1. He also wrote The Quare Fellow and Borstal Boy. The 3D engine for Prehistorik 2 was mostly written by Reinhold Messner and Burt Reynolds.
Hope this helps.
I've enjoyed all your movies, Mr. Reynolds, and was glad to see your major comeback in Boogie Nights .
Wait--this is the Ask Burt Reynolds Anything forum, isn't it?
MMMM, PANTS....
No offense, but everyone knows who Sid Meier is because he puts his name on all of his games. The names of most of his games are not as famous as he is; a sure sign of the propaganda working.
nevertheless, he DID do some interesting work with civilisation. I loved that game, as I'm sure many did.
Firaxis wants people who have been trained, in a way they believe a university can provide.
:-)
Or, Firaxis wants people who have shown a particular motivation, that completing a university degree can be a sign of.
There's no need to have a degree to get going in the industry as a whole; though. Just write your own game, make it really good, and sell it to a publisher.
Yes, I'm being optimistic. Sue me.
Have you ever read Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga? He describes a game very similar to this. Extremely realistic simulation of a world. Players buy countries to command. I suppose they could probably let people buy pieces of the country to sub-command too. A very interesting idea there.
-Matt
-Cheetah
only time I've had the "must have a degree" door slammed in my face is when applying for a visa to work in the states. The immigration law says "must have a 4 year degree or equivilent experience", well I've been working in the computer industry for 5 years and I've done 3 years of a 4 year degree, but because it is the company you are applying to (the sponsor) who has to put in the application, they are usually not willing to make a case for you. It's a shame because they need my skills (thus the only reason they are trying to get the visa) but they are afraid of the immigration laws.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Did you read the article? The part about:
"BR: Yes, at Firaxis we were both owners of the company and equal partners."
So, one of the partners left the company. Big deal. No one got screwed here.
Later
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
What are the reasons for the split between Reynolds and Meier? There seems to be some implication in the interview that Reynolds didn't have the opportunity to assume complete responsibility for a product.
Warning: Major cynicism here.
How was Firaxis formed? By breaking off of Microprose. So the people who broke joined Firaxis were the ones without any job loyalty.
Now, less than a year (IIRC) later, people _again_ leave the group and form their own company. If a company is formed by a faction in another company, they should not be surprised when people leave the second company again for "professional reasons".
Or than again, maybe I'm just being cynical. Firaxis is a great company, but...
void recursion (void)
{
recursion();
}
while(1) printf ("infinite loop");
if (true) printf ("Stupid sig quote");
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Brian, Tim, Doug (and Jason & Dave) are all great guys. I'm sure their company will produce cool stuff once they get set up properly. As long as someone can convince Jason not to use DirectX for multiplay. You've got business independence, now go for platform independence!
But my main complaint with BHG is that they're so damn busy. I hope they're at least spending some time with their families.
Daily Radar is owned by Imagine- but why do *THEY* get the exclusives and not as much IGNPC or even PCGamer? As for incite... they seem to already have a major foothold in Europe (there are a lot of .de sites with the incite banner.. which ALSO often get a lot of exclusives, such as a huge batch of TF2 images or a few Halo shots)
And by the way... exactly how was my post at all trolling? It doesn't make any sense. Daily Radar and Incite both cheapen the community for different reasons. Daily Radar for their biased and sometimes idiotic reviews. (Did you see their Q3 vs UT peice? UT has the most advanced bots ever... on bots: "They both suck, Edge to Q3.". UT has a very nice interface that remembers "hey, we dont have to use our arrow keys for this anymore" but they shot that down saying "Q3's is more gamey!")
Incite just takes the PCXL 'sex n' games' philosphy a step further, only without the humor which makes PCXL a good read.
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Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
What i don't understand is why Incite and Daily Radar get all the exclusives. I dont know a single person who likes Incite magazine, and Daily Radar is pretty much a laughing stock in the gaming community. I mean, they gave the Princess Mononoke movie a "MISS" MISS! And they gave a "Hit!" to the new 007 flick even though they said, and i quote "this is not a good movie" in the review.
yet they get all the first look high-quality movies and interviews.
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Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Yessss..... but what if while one side is busy designing loads of little softare tanks, the other side launches a REAL Cruise missile?
If God created us in his own immage, how do you explain Vanessa Feltz?
I don't like his games. They are plain, boring, uninteresting, lame, and dull. I'd much rather stick to the times and play Quake III. Not some stupid 2D strategy game that people like because they think Sid Meier is good and popular. He should be forgotten about lest he provides a decent, well thought out game. Good bye forever Mr Sid. Adieu.
I don't like her becsuse she is titless, curve less, facially unattractive, mentally dull and witless. I don't like Sid Meir either. He is also all of what Natalie Portman is. I use Windows 95, don't like Star Wars and disregard linux as a lame-ass operating system with no potential compared to Microsofts fame and fortune. I own a Pentium 166 and my favourite game is Dune 2000. Long live me and long live you. Because you wil have to live long without a life in front of a computer screen. Hahahahahhahahahahaha!!!! I am good.
My stupid corporate filtering software won't let me look at the story. But the Big Huge web page is so new it isn't blocked yet. :-) But I don't see anything there about their first game. Can anyone tell me if there's anything about it in the article?
:-)
But in the absence of that information, I do have two things I'd like to see them do.
1. Put the *Real* designer's name on the game. At Microprose and later Firaxis every game had Sid's name slapped on it, whether he designed it or not. Apparently the marketing folks think the sales value of Sid's name is more important than giving the true designer his due. When Firaxis was asked about this policy, their reply was that it is really a "stamp of approval" from Sid, and doesn't really mean that he actively worked on that game.
Because of this, most folks don't even know that Brian actually designed CivII and Alpha Centauri with little significant input from Sid. And now that he's on his own, he finds that the name value that should rightly have been his on both of those great games instead stays with Sid.
So I'd like to see Big Huge take up a policy of crediting the proper game producer, just like movie studios do at the front of a flick. Let the actual game designers have the credit (or blame) that is rightly theirs.
2. As for their first game, I'm dearly hoping its MOO (Master of Orion)-like. That's a game that has had people screaming for for an update for years. Some of the BR touches that CivII and SMAC had would do wonders for the 3x turn-based space genre. Plus anyone who read the back of the SMAC manual knows what a big fan of science fiction Brian is.
Anyway, I wish nothing but success for Brian and Tim and all the gang at Big Huge. And if they need a beta tester there too, my email's attached.
Yeesh, check out the requirements on that page for programmers:
1. Must have a CS degree.
2. 5 years experience in games programming
3. AI, 3D on consoles and PC, Distributed network stuff.
Well, I don't have a CS degree and have never programmed a game professionally. AI, 3d graphics on the PC and distributed networking I know pretty well, but I guess I wouldn't even get a look in, I imagine they junk anyone without a CS degree in the first pass.
Sad really. Ahh well, hopefully they'll make some good stuff.
You can't win a fight.
there's no doubt that network play adds something to real time strategy games. Attempts to make better strategy engines have been very successful but nothing beats a human opponnent. I thought at one point that a great addition to Internet play would be to open the archetecture. Standardize your unit interface and allow anyone to create units (graphics + code) as well as maps. With strict rules as to what defines strength of the unit, speed, etc, one could come up with a cost per unit in resources that doesn't give any one unit an advantage (eg, lots of little foot solders or one really big tank cost the same). Then one day I had a really strange idea: What if all those "credits" you were spending were actual cash? It would be very much like gambling (except this is a game of skill.. not exactly gambling by las vegas standards). One could envision a scenario where two countries wish to go to war but neither country has an army.. so rather than wreck their economy by recruiting their peasant farmers, they hire mercenaries and agree to pay them on a per-kill-basis. So you buy a unit for (say) $2 and when it is killed, you opponent gets $1.50 (depreciation you know), the designer of the unit gets $0.10 and the rest goes to the game developer (or the server). You could have games ranging from free games to super expensive games where the players are fighting with weapons of mass destruction.
Another idea was that individual players should be able to take over one unit that is a "leutenant". That unit can have other units assigned to it by the commander. The leutenant is paid by the commander to mobilize some of his/her units against the enemy. This way people could participate in expensive games and learn the ropes, whilst getting paid for it, before they enter the paid games themselves.
How we know is more important than what we know.