Nothing big today, just a couple of things I thought I’d bring to your attention. I’d write more, but I’m swamped with actual work this week. Crazy, I know.
First thing is Edge Magazine. My complaint with them stands and I won’t read their magazine until they change it. I want to know who writes the things I’m reading. Just like I want to know what’s in what I eat, I want to know the source of what I’m reading. That Edge continues not to give authors their due amazes me, but hey, that’s their thing, go with it. That is until you do something like this:
Here’s an idea: let’s give the representative of a game publisher/distributor (ENCORE) a column at a very prominent gaming news website (EDGE online) where they can attach a sensational headline to something that amounts to no more than a press release to advertise upcoming games in their new product line (Mystery Adventure Games). It will be sure to get attention, and will actually do more to convince readers the exact opposite.
I actually didn’t expect this from such a mag as Edge, what with them being THE big journalistic game mag anymore… That’s an awesome advertisement Encore bought…I wonder how much they paid so they could place it as a column in Edge. I wonder if Edge sees anything wrong with a column that is essentially advertising.
The other is mods becoming a professional deal now. I love it. That’s always been my big complaint about mod teams, how unprofessional and silly they were. It’s a truism that 99.9% of all mods starts don’t finish and 99.9% of those are crap. If you believe those numbers (they might be numbers I pulled right out of my butt), there aren’t many good mods. The thing is…a LOT of people want to work in the game industry. A LOT. It’s why the quality of life in game dev houses is lacking in most cases. That’s a different story though… this story is about how mod teams are operating now:
However, things are changing. "They’re not just doing it for fun any more," says Doug Lombardi, Valve’s marketing director. "It’s not just so they can brag to a bunch of people on a forum. They’re serious. They want to quit their day jobs and do this thing for real. So they’re forming companies. I was around in the Half-Life days, and if you’d told me in early 1998 that people in the mod community would be forming articles of corporation, I would have laughed at you. But we see it now."
That’s fucking awesome. I’ve been in on a few mod teams. Actually, probably four or five over all. And the only one that ever made anything at all (even though they didn’t finish, due to outside reasons) was the one that was run by a current game designer in the industry. He had a plan, specific jobs for everyone and checked up on people if they didn’t check in often enough. It wasn’t quite like a job, but it was close…and we got stuff done. We made a total conversion with two separate alpha releases. That’s a LOT more than most total conversions every do and even we didn’t finish. It’s just the way of mod teams.
Or maybe it was the way. Apparently mod teams are hiring and firing and checking resumes (something my did all of back in the day…we were visionaries…or something). That’s great. It’s still cool as heck every time a developer releases tools to modify their game (Far Cry 2 could REALLY use some tools like that) and even cooler when we get good mods for good games (or bad games for that matter). The more games we get, the better.
I just wonder…if mod teams are becoming business like, does that mean it’s like holding down a second job? Do I have to clock in and out? Do I get performance reviews? Code reviews? Because a lot of that is why I escape into playing around games in the first place…
What Would Matt Do: Here’s what I’d really do, assuming unlimited funds. I’d start up a company to make games and run my company like a company I’d want to work at. Come and go as you please, as long as you’re getting your work done. Have twice as much vacation time as normal places and work to make it a friendly, casual environment. Why? Because that’s how every company should be. If we’re going to have to spend our lives working, why does it have to be miserable?
#1 by gatmog on November 20th, 2008 - 9:20 pm
What bothered me more than the fact it was an advertorial was that it was so poorly written. It’s like they did a search and replace on some press release template with the words “Adventure Game”.