Blog - MrTambourineMan

2 comments by MrTambourineMan on Apr 19th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

So I abandoned this blog of mine and I have no intention to ever return to it regullary, but from time to time I stumble upon some gems of game/mod industry that impress me so much that I simply have to share it with anyone who happens to stumble upon my lair on moddb. The thing is, yesterday I was sitting in the holiest of rooms in my apartment (i.e. toilet), takin' you-know-what and reading a local gaming magazine when I noticed a smallish review of a simple indie game called Gravity Bone. It looked very casual - nothing special, but my trusted reviewer pointed out it is a game everyone should try. I didn't really give it much thought and I returned to the PC browsing the web just tired and bored with myself when I remembered about this game, found in on the internets, installed it and gave it a go. I was literary blown away - it was short (20 minutes or so) and sweet adventure game, built atop of Quake 2 engine (KMQuake II) and it remembered me a lot of a game very dear to my heart - No one lives forever. Now I won't go describing a gameplay or anything, because I would have ruined the game for you, but take my advice - go download it at Blendo games, browse for "Gravity Bone"  and spread the word - I guarantee you will spend 20 quality minutes of your life.

Picture representing minimalistic, yet likeable TF2 like art direction

0 comments by MrTambourineMan on Sep 10th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Age of Empires Imperialism
A rumor came up yesterday about Ensemble studios closing it's doors. The studio is notable for it's Age of Empires series, and was lately working on Halo Wars(they still are working on it btw). Well rumors turned out to be true, Microsoft stated, I quote:

.
Shane Kim, MS corporate VP of interactive entertainment offers similar point of view on Edge. More interesting comments came on behalf of Wild Tangent CEO Alex St. John - he said that MS is "ramping down" it's investments in 360 and is entering a "recovery phase". For more interesting info click all the links in this post, you will be smarter and more beautiful afterwards (g33k is c001)!

0 comments by MrTambourineMan on Sep 9th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Few all-important industry news came up at the very beginning of the week, things so important that they can't wait for Sunday to be revealed.

EA & Ctytek announce Warhead ready PC

In one of the worst marketing moves EA (which became kinda' cool in the latter half of the present decade)
made in recent times they announced Crysis-ready PC for 700$. Head over to Shacknews to learn more about this.

Brad Wardell talks about Gamer's Bill of Rights

In my first blog entry I wrote a little something about this theme, now Shacknews made an exclusive two part interview on the subject matter. It's stuff that's definitley important for us gamers. Here's a story Brad told which clearly shows the bullshit we as PC gamers have to face:

There's more stories, but I have to save some of those for Sunday when there's a big deficit of gaming/industry news, you'll be able to live without them, but you will not survive if you don't read the two stories above.

0 comments by MrTambourineMan on Sep 7th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Not as much shocking gaming news as one would expect this week, here are THE news (well, not really )

Oddworld Creator Talks Consoles and PCs

I really don't want to sound like I have some kind of grudge against consoles. Some of my fondest gaming memories are from playing famcom as a kid and I'm just about to buy PS3/Xbox360(haven't decided yet) but some disagree:

Emil Pagliarulo About Writing a Fallout 3

Whole lotta love Fallout. Nuff said.

Another studio picks up Unreal Engine 3

Black Foot studios pick UE3 as their engine of choice for their game Sky Gods - here's what they have to say:

Lengthy Spore Interview

While you're listening to THE MAN, check out the Metacritic and Gamerankings and your local gaming store.

0 comments by MrTambourineMan on Sep 5th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Bioshock Postmortem

It is a good Friday, some cool insight on game development came from 2KBoston/Australia - Bioshock postmortem on Gamasutra, an interesting read indeed! In the main article there''s a link to free Bioshock art book for those interested, so go take a look.

PC gaming is dead!

Read about how a PC game Sins of a Solar empire sold half a million copies on a million dollar budget, once again - Gamasutra. Publisher "blames" it on low system requirements.

PC gaming is dead, part 2.

Tom Jubert, man behind Penumbra says piracy problem is ''Overblown", tells why Crytek-like claims of piracy of legit vs. ilegit copies aren't really in the ratio of 1:20. Published on Edge.

0 comments by MrTambourineMan on Sep 4th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

I couldn't wait till Sunday to post this one, Noel Gallagher ( Oasis ) touched the topic of Guitar Hero in his recent interview with musicradar, here's what he had to say:

Source: MusicRadar via Kotaku.

0 comments by MrTambourineMan on Aug 31st, 2008 digg this super bookmark

There seems to be little of industry (we know which industry I'm talking about right?) news on MODDB. A little more insight into what the big boys are doing would do no harm I presume so I will post here some of the news that caught my eye this week. Here we go:

Left4Dead Interview.
The latest interview on Left4Dead with Chet Faliszek [Old man Murray anyone?] came up on Shacknews today - it's a good read, but nothing really new there.

Id talks bussiness.
Todd Hollenshead & John Carmack chat with GamesIndustry.biz, Todd says  that for PC Hardware manufacturers are probably secretly happy about piracy on PCs. Read through the interview and you'll see that he has a point there.

Digital distribution milestone?
Swedish games company Grin sells 130 000 units of Bionic Commando remake through XBOX Live Arcade and PSN in only a week - not bad at all.

Crytek <3 consoles!
Crytek became well known since the release of their gfx-monster Crysis for blame-it-on-piracy statements. Here they make another one. Alternative version would be to check what configuration average gaming computer has [info via Steam survey].

PC gamer's bill of rights
Stardock reveals their proposal for (PC)gamer's bill of rights -
The Gamer’s Bill of Rights

1) Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
2) Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
3) Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
4) Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
5) Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
6) Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
7) Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
8) Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
9) Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
10) Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.
 
[MrTambourineMan signs it right away]

Ken Levine says he's a nerd, tells anecdote:

That's it for this week, any comments are appreciated. Good Night, and Good Luck