Guilt Inducing Video Games

NXE is here!

After months of work, the magic day has finally arrived.  Many of the features my team has developed are invisible to you, dear reader, but trust that the dark magic they emit fuels the juicy bits now flowing to your console as of 45 minutes ago.

One reasonably high profile feature, and a personal favorite of mine, that you can see is Marketplace on the web, which you can find here.  It’s a million times easier to find games and movies, manage the content you’ve already purchased, and play with your download queue.

Any feedback you guys have on either the new user experience, or especially the web-side stuff is welcome and appreciated!

Looking for Programmers

If you’re a programmer, live in the Seattle area, and are interested in a little casual MMO side project, we’re still looking for developers.  Preference is given to those with a Flex or Java background, and experience with Electro Server 4 is a major plus.  Approximate time commitment is 10-15 hours a week, and we meet every Sunday afternoon at a local coffee shop.  Contact Dan Cook if you’re interested.

The Swarm

As you’re probably aware, I’ve been severely negligent in updating recently.  Between being sick and working my ass off to get NXE out the door, I’ve been sleeping very little, and as a result my mind has been hazy and uncreative = no blogging.  Some might feel guilty about this - I’ve found that feeling guilty is usually a waste of time.  Nevertheless, I’ll be making an effort to blog more going forward.

Last autumn was absolutely retarded for great game releases, and despite the fact that my upper management keeps telling me that this year is even more so, I don’t think it’s really sunk in until now.  I hit up Dead Space a couple of days after release, and got about half way through before Fable 2 came out.  I’ve said this a few times recently, but I really must applaude EA for getting their shit together, Dead Space is a really great, innovative game. 

From a design perspective, there’s three highlights: The use of anti-gravity and limit oxygen in a survival horror game adds a lot of tension to the atmosphere;  the concept of killing enemies not by shooting them enough times that a certain damage threshold is reached, but rather by strategically dismembering them; and finally the floating, over the shoulder UI that leaves the screen unobstructed.

While Dead Space comes from EA Redwood Shores, another EA Studio, DICE, is releasing the highly anticipated Mirror’s Edge next week, and it looks to be another innovative blockbuster.  I get the feeling that there’s a lot of talent in EA that’s been suppressed by the policies of upper management for a long time, and we’re starting to see it explode outward.

On the homefront, Fable 2 definitely interrupted Dead Space for me, and hooked me in long enough that I’ve nearly pummeled that game into the ground.  Peter Molyneux’s stuff has always delighted me, and I think Fable 2 is much more the vision of what he was looking for in the original Fable.  While the game is great, I think my biggest issue with it is how easy it is to flip the characteristics of your character.  Human beings are very good at optimizing and finding shortcuts to things, and there are many, many features of this game that seem to be superfluous - they add a sort of sugary filling into the world, but the manner in which they are implemented means that you have no reason to ever do them because they are a slower route to the same destination with no benefit (chopping wood to earn money over blacksmithing or serving drinks would be an example of this). 

Another homefront title Gears of War 2 is released Friday, so that will likely take over when Fable gets put back on the Shelf.

I’ve started poking around at Fallout 3, naturally, as well, but this is a game I want to savor, and I’m not prepared to comment at this juncture.  I’ve heard rumors about Prince of Persia and Red Alert 3 coming out at some point here, but at this point I feel like I’m eating at one of those country buffets where everything smells amazing, but there’s just so much food that you can’t eat it all without making yourself sick.

I’m really going to need a vacation.