Who is looking after designers? and Wiii!!

From the recently announced EA Settlement:

Software engineers have won a $14.9 million settlement from Electronic Arts, in a settlement of a California class-action lawsuit over unpaid overtime, following a similar $15.6 million settlement reached in October with graphic artists.

As far as I'm aware, this is the end of the class action lawsuits against EA for unpaid overtime. Which leaves me wondering who are protecting the designers in all of this? Unpaid overtime is nothing new to the industry - more of a standard than I really wish it was. I worked 50 some days straight on a project before with no compensation what so ever besides keeping my job. And companies wonder why people leave so much and the lifespan of a designer is so short (5 years i think?). I've yet to figure out where designers go to die aside from being producers. As I get older I think more about job security than ever before, leaving on time (8 hour day) is looked down upon and there are 3 or 4 kids fresh out of school lining up to take my job who will work more hours, work for less and complain less. The industry needs to change and hopefully I'll still be in it to see it happen.


On another note, Nintendo changed the name from Revolution to Wii. My knee jerk reaction is that everything Nintendo has been trying to accomplish with the DS Lite and the Revo controller - making games more massmarket and appealing has been completely eradicated with this name. Only time will tell and maybe it will be like the Palm Pilot - which is no longer called that, has been just Palm for over 10 years now but people still know it as that name.

'why did it have to be tanks?!'

So this has been a weird week. Started off with me getting older (emphasize on old these days) then woke up on Wednesday morning in more pain than I have been in my life. It all started off with a pain in my side at 5 a.m. and the thought I should just roll over. The pain didn't go away and became so unbearable that I had to wake my girlfriend up. Since we just recently moved to this area we had no idea where a hospital was. Finally getting to the hospital and feeling the closest to death I ever have - being in a wheelchair with a blanket wrapped around me as i get wheeled to the xray machine. Turned out I had a kidney stone (i thought only old people got those?? grr) which lasted all day wednesday and most of thursday.

On the plus side, my girlfriend got a DS Lite (white) on friday. That thing is indeed sexy. They changed the 'feel' of the buttons and the dpad, for the better I think. The strap did drop that weird thumb thing that I think only James Chen uses. Oh and the power supply is different from the GBA SP/DS and the gameboy micro. Cause seriously, this is what I need in life - another power supply dangling from a wall. Speaking of DS - Mario Kart DS got added to evo this year. Oh you know it, the 'kids' are going crazy over having something new added.

So as I was slowly waking up from death this weekend i tried to play some Call Of Duty 2 on the 360 that I've had forever. I don't know why I bought it - I got caught up in the hype of it being the killer app to own/show off for the 360 but also I met a few of the guys from Infinity Ward and figured I would support them. Rumor has it that they have an Alpha 3 cabinet there and they are close to where I live so maybe I'll get in contact with them to play one of these days. The game starts off with my favorite part of World War 2 - the russians beating the germans due to their winter. Maybe it's because I'm from the midwest and our winters are no joke either.

So the game starts off and i'm like, 'wow - this is one of the most amazing games I've ever played'. Then I stop being the russians :( whack. So then I gotta be the british and I can't even discern the badguys from my teammates immediately and I have a shitty gun. whatever, i'm still having decent fun. Then...they put me in a damn tank!! Maybe thats what the 'kids' want but damn you all to hell for making me drive a tank. Reminded me of when I was having fun playing Ratchet & Clank then they made me race a car...and get 1st. Grr. I'm done with the tank mission at least and I'll keep playing it - but another tank...and ggpo to COD2.

random musings

Sorry that I haven't been able to update much here lately. We (as in the GoW2 team) have been working nonstop for E3.

The few free hours I've had I've been trying to play some of the 10,000 games that have been coming out. When did March become the new Christmas anyways? I stole that line from James Chen who should have his own blog. I should post his phone number on here so everyone could call him and tell him so.

Anyways, I picked up Tetris for the DS. I played online a few times which was pretty fun. I played once against someone named, 'Kratos' which made me laugh. Too bad Nintendo won't let me use the microphone thats built into the DS to talk to the person I'm playing against.

Also picked up Metroid for the DS. I am one of the weak humans who can't play FPS -- I get dizzy for some reason. If there is a character on the screen to stare at, doesn't happen but take that away and I need some dramamine. However Metroid for the DS doesn't really do that to me, which has made me want to play the game even more. However...that first level is HORRIBLE!! At first I thought it was just my inexperience with FPS's but I would enter a room and there would be 2 doors (the door I came in and the door i need to go out) and after shooting some enemies I would be turned around as to which door was which. I would go through one and see a curved hallway so I would go back into the room and try the other door and I would see a curved hallway that looked the exact same. I think I'll keep playing it though. Maybe one of these days I'll try online for it when my girlfriend isn't owning up the DS with Animal Crossing.

Speaking of DS - I really want a DS Lite.

Downloaded that Tomb Raider demo for the 360. I won't lie, I had a lot of fun. Everytime a new Tomb Raider comes out I get all excited about how this one won't suck and for the first time I think this one won't suck! There were a few things I didn't like about the demo - mostly the controls such as tapping R1 to grab onto an object and tapping R1 to release holding onto the object. I wish they would have just done hold down R1 the entire time. Oh well. There are a few really good things in their controls though when you are platforming. They have this mechanic when you are doing the ledge shimmy you press Y rhythmically to move faster. It takes what is usually a boring a slow/boring mechanic and keeps it interactive for the player. Well done.

Finally got around to playing Ghost Recon for the 360 also. I have never played any of those Tom Clancy games before, I love how that man has a whole genre - buff. Anyways since I never played any of those games before I didn't know what to expect. I hella didn't expect to have Geometry Wars rendered on top of the game but I gotta admit that calling a Black Hawk to shoot fools down is pretty damn entertaining.

I don't know why anyone wants replayability in their games, I can't even play all the damn games that are out right now. I'm still trying to finish up Daxter on the psp and I have yet to play Syphon Filter, open up MegaMan Powered up or even buy Oblivion. I love how people complain about how games are only 10-12 hours. At this point I wish all games were like 7 hours. I want to get in, experience it and get out.

I don't know if it's cause we are in LA or what, but a favorite guilty pleasure of many of us here on the GoW team is celebrity gossip. When a new issue of US arrives, we all take turns reading it. We've also been reading Pink Is The New Blog. Keeps me entertained when I'm here nonstop.

Speaking of entertainment, is everyone watching The 1up show? Its my new favorite thing and I've been going back and watching all the episodes during dinner time here at work.

Last but not least I'll leave everyone with a video someone sent me when I posted about Brice the blind Mortal Kombat player. Here is a video of him versus the game's creator - Ed Boon.

Five Fighting Games - Part 3

Sorry that I haven't updated in what feels like forever. We have been really busy trying to get God Of War 2 ready for E3 and what not. I decided to post the last of this random article that I had to write for a publisher at one point. I wrote it so long ago that I barely even remember why I had to write it.

Since this is the most complex games of all time I figured I would tell a story about when I landed the most complex thing for the first time ever. I was in Japan at More arcade which has perhaps the best players in the entire world. It was during the middle of a week day and Daigo himself was there practicing for SBO. I asked my friend to ask Daigo if I could play him a couple of games in every Street Fighter game they have - ST, A3, 3S, and CvS2. Daigo laughed and said sure.

So i got beat up in CvS2 cause I suck at that game, held my own in ST, actually won a game in 3s (this was before he started to beat everyone up in that game) and the final game was Street Fighter Alpha 3. He picks VRyu and I picked VZangief. I suck more at A3 than any other SF game. I don't know why but that game just doesn't click with me. On top of that, I'm white and suck at doing VC's.

However! On that day I actually landed the full Gief VC (including the OTG) against Daigo, something I hadn't landed in years. Even though I got beat up by Daigo going from one game to another, somehow landing that one combo made me smile. Anyways...here is the final part of this series.

5 most complex fighting games of all time:
A. Street Fighter 2: World Warrior. The grand daddy of fighting games and arguably more complex than some of the current games that are coming out (Dead Or Alive for example). Having moves that no one had ever attempted before - Spinning Pile Driver and Dragon Punch motions, World Warrior had depth that stemmed beyond Paper Rock Scissors. Different character classes - fireball characters, grappling characters, sonic boom characters, zoning characters, link combo characters, there was something there for everyone and they all played off on a meta-relationship that didn't allow one to rise to the top of being the best. This game really did set the bar for complexity that few games have even come close to reaching.

B. Virtua Fighter 2. While at first appearing to be easy with the 3 buttons, Virtua Fighter took those 3 buttons and created some of the most complex game play ever seen. Requiring the player first to spend weeks just learning how to activate their different moves, while some moves take even longer such as Akira and his Stun Palm of Doom, weeks were required to master situations on how to land those moves. So much time is spent on learning a character and fleshing the character out, that it is often unheard of that anyone masters more than one character at a time.

C. Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo. Being the 5th incarnation of the same engine, Super Turbo introduced new elements to an engine and created arguably the best Street Fighter to date. Overheads (standing moves that had to be blocked high), Air Juggles, Super meter, Throw Techs, were all introduced for the first time to bring out a whole new world of depth to an already complex world. Being released in
1994, the game still has a strong following where people travel all over the world to play each other.

D. Tekken 3. Namco wanting to break away from being, 'that other 3d game' decided to re haul the Tekken engine and created one of the best fighting games the world has ever seen. People soon realized that 10 strings were not good with all the parrying, countering and holes that they left, so soon players moved on to bigger and better things. Advanced techniques such as light stepping, wave dashing, crouch dashing, etc allowed for players to master more and more things to win with. Combined with the fact that characters were time released - strategies that were good one week could potentially be obsolete when a new character was unlocked.

E. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Having 56 characters and teams of 3 characters per team - the team combinations went through the roof. Not only that, but the teams were built around a helper subsystem, so that when you were playing as the point character you could still call out one of your teammates - and the helpers each had 3 different things they could do. So once players even got past which helper subtype is good for each character and what characters make up a good team, then the concept of counter teams were introduced and everything that goes along with that. But not only is there that level of depth, but also the techniques that each character could do. Flying, Air Dashing, Fast Fly, Push Block canceling, etc all became common words that people used as a language to communicate with one another over the various techniques that they were discovering how to do and how to win with.