Friday, November 6th, 2009
It’s time to announce the winner of our fantastic compo to win 5 GOG games of your choice.
The judges’ favourite was Jimi Cullen’s song “Old Games Are Better Than New Games” which we present here in its entirety. It is truly a thing of majesty and we appreciate the effort Jimi put in!
The fact that he raps about our game ENTIRELY counted in his favour, but anyone who references the Starcraft LAN debate while spitting rhymes is an automatic winner. Well done, Jimi!
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Friday, November 6th, 2009
We’re back from Gamecity, and this week we take on more Epic Mickey, more Band Hero arguments, Borderlands and Germany. Join us, but not in the sense of fusing yourself to our very being!
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page.
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Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Today I was having some issues syncing my iTouch 2nd gen iPod, so I decided I might as well do the paid os upgrade. It costs £2.99, and I don’t really agree with it, but “sod it” I thought – if it fixes my problem then fine.
I don’t like Apple. I have an iTouch mainly because of the podcasting support – I have an iPod compatible car stereo and being able to listen to my favorite shows when I’m driving is actually a serious upgrade to my life.
So let me tell you what this paid for, 270 megabyte OS upgrade (whose main feature as far as I can tell is to allow you to buy movies from Apple) did:
First, it stopped my iPod being able to connect to the internet through my router. I checked the forums and this is a very common problem. People advise replacing the router (!) or firmware upgrading the router.
Second, it broke compatibility with my car stereo.
So yeah, at this point I’m pretty pissed off. This is actually the worst consumer experience I’ve ever had, and the only thing that mitigates the situation is that it’s Apple, and I’m highly glad I now have this story to tell. It’s like catching sypholis from someone you hate.
So, I post on their forums a fairly rude “Apple, wtf are you doing” thread. It was fairly rude, but it didn’t have any swearing in it, and did involve an actual question.
I had thought this situation couldn’t make me more angry. I was wrong. Apple went ahead and violated about the only ethic I really strongly believe in: free speech. They removed my post.
This whole situation got me to thinking about Apple. I know a lot of people who really evangelize apple. I have always hated them. I’m going to try and explore why.
Let’s start off by comparing Apple and Microsoft. Here are the core aims of the two companies when it comes to their customers:
Microsoft want a monopoly.
Apple want to make money.
Let me rephrase that:
Microsoft want you to be addicted to their software.
Apple want to sell you more things.
Here’s another one:
Apple has a customer base which largely loves it.
Microsoft is at war with its customer base.
Do you think that really favors Apple? Because I don’t. Apple can do whatever the hell it likes and still be loved, whereas Microsoft actually has to please people.
Now don’t get me wrong: Microsoft is evil. But the crucial difference here is that Microsoft is evil to companies. Not to you. To companies. It buys companies and kills them, or kills them by obscufating supposed standards. It does this so it doesn’t have worthy competition. But it also understands that part of having a monopoly in a software business is to have good software.
Microsoft buys companies with good products, consumes what’s good about them so it can give it to you, then throws away the husk.
Apple does something much, much worse.
It buys companies with good products so that they can’t release them on Windows; uses them as a selling point for OSX, and then ignores them. Case in point: Logic.
Exploring Apple’s forums is a really, really shocking experience. I advise you to try it. The forums are full of complaints about how this or that or the other has broken on someone’s ipod. And no answers. Apple never reply. The only replies that aren’t “I had this same problem and I just had to buy a new iPod” (translation: result for Apple) are idiot Apple fanboys basically pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
This has been a bit of a badly structured rant, and I apologise for that. But I’ll just finish by saying that the bug list of the new iPod OS appears to be longer than the feature list. And this is an update you have to pay for.
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Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Sorry about my lack of cross-posting of late: I tend to put everything up first on ModDB, intending to cross-post here, but sometimes get distracted by shiny things. I WILL BE BETTER. Here’s the concluding part of our Gamecity escapades…
Well, I’m pleased to report that the event was a huge success. We still need to edit all the video that we shot, and I’ll be posting an in-depth behind-the-scenes article on Gamasutra soon, but here’s a quick look at what happened…
Here we are on the big screen outside our event. It was amazing to have the game in such a public place: literally anyone could walk in off the street and play it: there’s no better feeling than that when you’ve been working on something for ages!
Let’s rewind a second. We have to shout out our hotel, the Best Western Westminster, who GAVE us a room for free to store all of our huge piles of kit in. Talk about supporting indie developers! Also, the room was called SYNDICATE, which was amazingly fitting.
Yes, er, Nottingham is the “City of Caves”. Next year: Spelunky live?
Here’s an early shot of the event: things started off pretty busy and stayed that way throughout! Our banner was proudly on display and the strange “boxing ring” which had been constructed in the corner proved an apt location for Bin’s duelling. Nobody beat him all day: someone managed to score 1 though! Our plan to put people who performed well into a draw definitely paid off – Bin proved a bit too unbeatable.
This is my favourite shot of the event. You can see that we managed to snag a projector and screen. The game really looks awesome when viewed from a slight distance: the colour really stands out. We got some amazing praise from people about the visuals: one girl said she wanted to play it because it “just looked so pretty”!
A lot of people wanted to chat to us about the game, and this was great. It was a fantastic opportunity to hear what people thought and get some feedback.
Bin had to face down some fearsome opposition!
It’s all over. Thanks to Graham at Low Brow Trash for all the logistical help, and also big huge thanks to Iain, Christine, Margaret and all of the Gamecity team for making it possible!
Footnote: if you’re in Nottingham, go for a drink in the Pit and Pendulum – it’s a very, very silly over-the-top Hammer Horror-ish theme pub. There are quite a few of these things around the place now but the Pit has an atmosphere that is ALL ITS OWN.
The Gamecity video should be out soon – will let you know.
It’s back to the grindstone for us now – lots more work to do on art and single player. I will keep you informed if we do any more events – I have some plans…
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Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Hellgate: London was so bad that it actually made me think it was impossible to make an action-RPG with guns work. True skill-based combat is almost anaethemetic to the genre.
However, Borderlands pulls it off fantastically. If you like Diablo, it would surprise me a lot if you didn’t like Borderlands.
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Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Paul will likely do an uber post this week, but for now here’re my GameCity photos.
It turned out a great success. People were much more willing to engage with Synapse than I was expecting (it is after all a hardcore game in a tent in a town center), and we got a few of people who played it for more than two hours, which is pretty good. If you’re one of those people, make sure you email me (ian at mode7games com) and I’ll get you on the beta. Honestly, the whole thing has made me very excited. I think we might have something here.
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