PixlBit

I like how tagging Jason Statham is a thing. You can beckon for him in the site's seachbar and it comes up with epidsodes of NWP and other features graced enough to involve him.

I like that Patrick brought these points up, and I agreed with the assessments of contract work and budget management Angelo and Julian gave in response. The industry is always in flux in terms of employment, it seems that only a few people here and there actually stay in one place for a very long time. Sometimes it can be under nasty cirsumstances with horrible stories behind them, but many times people just come and go. People see how long Shiggy has been with Nintendo, saw how long Cliff was with Epic, and look at how many of the popular faces in the industry have had tenures at certain companies for a long time and assume that it must be that way for all people, and it's not. People leave when their contract work is done, sometimes they get hired on as Angelo said, sometimes people with tenure leave because they need a new environment, there's tons of coming and going with most companies.

Irrational Games and Ken Levine run a couple podcasts at their website and in one episode they were talking about how one of the level designers or artists, a great talent and good friend of Kens I guess, worked with his team for months on a certain level only to have Ken tell them they needed to scrap the whole thing because the aesthetic didn't fit what Bioshock Infinite needed. The guy blew up on Ken and eventually left to a different company to get some fresh air, but inevitably came back to Irrational when he was ready. Levine says people come and go all the time and sometimes it can be quite healthy, after being away for a while and recharging their brains people often come back to Irrational because Ken tells them the door is always open if they want to return.

That's a pretty specific case and doesn't speak perfectly well to the topic of layoffs, but it's one of the things that made me realize people are always on the move in gaming. Just a few weeks ago Marcus Lehto, one of the big designers who's been with Bungie for a long time, was on Twitter pretty openly discussing how he was considering uprooting his family and moving to find a job at some new company with a special project he wanted to work on, but after some deliberation with his wife and kids decided to stay in Washington with Bungie and with his wife and girls. For people who are young and new to the industry, people who aren't like these big named veterans, they probably tend to be doing more of the contract work and move around the country/world switching studios much more often. It's a young industry that's changed a lot in the last couple decades, many of the people who were green youngsters in the 80s and 90s are now veterans with families, starting their own companies with the wisdom they've gained over the decades and mistakes they've seen or made. Despite all that it's still quite young, wild, and things are always changing, and in all that fast paced flux there's some gross and unethical things that can happen. Like people crunching and not getting overtime, or people working in bad conditions like the makers of Metro Last Light endured, or having bonuses depend on Metacritic scores.

I hate studying law and business, so I'm in no place or interest to suggest solutions, I just like to keep my eyes open to observe the industry I'll eventually be a part of. For the early years of my journey into game design I just want to work on games, build skills and resume, get paid enough to live a simple life, and if I have to move around often to new places I'll just deal with it, and hopefully not get abused or cheated illegally in the process. The whole dream for many people is to find that one special place, become part of a tightknit family of designers you can work with and make groundbreaking games, but most of the people who actually attain that game design career goal seem to have to slog through lots of shit before they get there.

You guys covered a lot of ground on ethics, but I think you forgot to go into detail on what you all think about DLC and the methods developers use to keep people employed. Some gamers who are outside the industry or don't know quite how the business side works sometimes see DLC as inherently evil, anti-consumer, and think it's a scheme to nickle and dime people in every case. Gamers only see it from their POV and don't actually know what's happening at the studio behind it all. Many developers seem to handle DLCs by sending their larger team to focus on the new game while a small (sometimes maybe only a couple or few people) detachment goes to work on DLC. It seems like a low risk way to make a little extra money, but it also keeps those employees working. If they weren't doing something they'd be looking for new work at a different studio, or they'd be getting laid off, etc. It's seems to kinda work for some companies out there. I think it's silly for people to call DLC evil or greedy. You can call a certain company or a certain CEO evil or greedy, or even a certain piece of nefarious DLC shady. But DLC in itself isn't bad, sometimes it might be one of the few things keeping a company from dying and keeping a group of people on board with a job.

Gamers don't know how to aim their fire most of the time, they just spray shotgun-blast vitriol at the industry and generalize things because gamers are often ignorant to how games actually get made, how businesses operate, and all the whos and whys of the industry. And some of that might not always be the gamer's fault, some of that blame should fall on the enthusiast press. In the gaming world we very rarely get exposes and investigative journalism digging into the grittier topics. Some gamers might be gross and ignorant, but it's hard to blame some their stupidity if there isn't a fierce press out there reaching into the uncomfortable topics that developers and publishers don't want anybody to ever see. If the press makes developers and publishers uncomfortable that should be a good sign that the press is doing its job right, and some press & industry folks seem to be aiming to acquire more cushy relationships and friendships, future job opportunities, and letting too many opportunities for investigation and criticism slip by.

This industry is the biggest entertainment avenue out there, but it's still so young. Nobody is really guiding it, people are making their predictions and everybody is flying by the seat of their pants. It's like you're building a downhill gokart and it starts to slide down a slope while there's still no steering wheel or seatbelt built into it, but you grab onto the side as it slides down the hill. Then suddenly the slope gets way steeper and you shoot down the hill at full speed, just like how to gaming industry blew up into the biggest avenue of entertainment in the last several years without anybody really expecting it to happen. There's no seatbelt or steering wheel, no driver, but it's flying down that hill as fast as it can and you're holding on for the ride without a clue as to how this will turn out.

That's what I observe, and I have no solutions. I'm just hoping I don't hit a tree as I hold onto that gokart flying down that hill.

I never heard you could buy new guns and animals, have you bought any of those? I wonder if they're cool?

I've been having dreams about games since I was a kid and I still have a ton all the time, and I remember lots of them. There have been so many thousands I can't hope to relay them all here or pick favorites really. Sometimes I simply dream about a game I've been playing lately. Back when Fable 2 first came out I would quit the game and go to sleep only to continue dreaming I was playing the game and I could hear all the voice work, music, and play with the mechanics and do quests. I've had dreams of playing matches of Civilization and other strategy games. I dreamt I was playing F.E.A.R. and that was the only time I've ever had a nightmare about a video game, it was horrible and I was glad when I stopped dreaming about that game lol. I've dreamt I was Mario a lot and I could jump hundreds of feet into the air. In the dream I can always feel my guts getting butterflies from the falling, it's kind of scary but it's real exciting.

Then sometimes I'll dream about games that don't exist, ideas I've made up in my head. I've blogged about some of those from time to time but not recently. I really like those dreams, sometimes they're lucid enough that I can even manipulate the levels as if I'm in a level builder, bringing walls down, putting rooms together, etc. I've been able to dream pretty vividly and regularly since I was a kid. I know people who don't dream or never remember their dreams, it's crazy. The parts of my brain that help you dream must have more electricity going to them and be wired a little different.

That sounds awesome, I've never actually liberated an outpost via a seaborn attack. I always come from the hills around the camps. I sneak in the bushes outside the walls marking all the targets with the camera, then I throw rocks to bring them to me one by one and kill them, using the bow and silenced sniper and knife.

Do you like to hunt down the collectibles like the relics or letters of the lost? It's cool how collecting those things gives you XP and also helps you unlock signature weapons. There's cool unlockables in the game I think. If you activate all the radio towers on both major islands you unlock the Bushman assault rifle which has a silencer, extended magazine, and scope. The signature weapons you can unlock are all pretty neat.

Clowns are awful, I'd be terrified. I'd want to die fast and with the shortest period of pain possible, like from a nuclear explosion or a laser beam from a giant alien dreadnaut as they glass the planet from orbit lol. That'd be a decent way to go out.

It's probably pretty easier for Steam collections to get neglected since people tend to have so many games. Did you get some games during the Steam summer sale or anything? There's a ton of games I want to get on Steam, I'd be set for months and months if I bought all the games I wanted on Steam. There's so much great content there.

Mirror's Edge can be found for good $10-$20 on amazon for PS3, it's $20 on Steam. I looked on amazon and for 360 it's crazy expensive though, for a new copy at least they're going from full price $60, up to $150! Used copies are normal though, mostly $20 and below.

Sorry I made you switch games lol, but at least Far Cry 3 is a pretty good game to switch too, you should have lots of fun. You said you played for 2 weeks straight, do you have any favorite aspects of the gameplay?

You're not alone Rodney, I've never been outside the US either lol. I've been to Indiana and Nebraska though and that was a lot of fun. We have family in Indiana and went to tour Notre Dame, went to something called the Blueberry Festival where I found some great Greek food and blueberry pies to boot. In Nebraska we like to go camping and fishing.

Venice is really cool, you can hop right onto gondalas and use your push-pole thing to go around the waters of the city anytime you'd like.

That's cool you found a book you like, thriftbooks seems pretty neat! I'm not sure exactly how it works, if people sell their books to the place and then they get shipped from a warehouse or if it's like amazon or ebay with lots of sellers all over the place. All I know is that my book was in very good condition, decently priced, their appears to be no shipping for people in the USA, and it's coming from Seattle lol. When you search for books though it comes up with lots of different locations. Maybe they sell both first party and third parties or something like amazon.