Scott Hartsman/Gallenite is a free agent

[CylusSoulreaver]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

You make yourself a better designer by shutting the fuck up, getting off the soap box, putting yourself in a room with a computer and the tools, and create cool ass shit.

You don't write about it. You fucking do it.

If you're going to be critical of an individual's design capabilities, you should probably take your own advice to heart.

And LOL @ the -nets that implied that Rockstar's games were terrible. I haven't worked at SoE for years now, you twat.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by CylusSoulreaver

If you're going to be critical of an individual's design capabilities, you should probably take your own advice to heart.

As I said before...

My point isn't to ridicule anyone even though it sure sounds like that. She will be used as an example in my point. And my point is when you let people in this way (And let's not fucking kid ourselves on the kiss ass meter hierarchy over at the good ol' boys club at SOE, (Or Sigil when it was still around) you end up with people who do not have a clue what is going on in development and it shows in the final product.

The problem isn't one individual's design capabilities. The problem is the system in which people get hired then go on about useless shit instead of taking that time and actually doing something with it besides writing emo blogs. Whether you fuck your way in, kiss ass, or actually deserve a shot and get hired through experience in gaming; quit blogging (Even the word itself is annoying as fuck) about useless shit and use that time to actually impact a game. She sure as fuck isn't becoming a better designer by studying the helmet design covering Master Chief's head and writing a paper on proper pixel usage. Makes me wonder what the hell she does when she should be knee deep in a tool kit.

And to clarify, this goes for any Bozo developer who does this same shit. It also makes me wonder what games would be like today if a producer had a wooden spoon on his/her desk and could whip the ass of anyone caught alt tabbed to other video games calling it "Research", where the end result will be instead of working on quality content 8 hours a day for a month, playing video games for 3 weeks and jamming down a bunch of shit to hit a milestone in 3 days because they fucked around the last 30.

Want to fuck your way in and then think you deserve respect for being a designer? You better damn well get off the blog and prove yourself first.

And edit: Rockstar's games are becoming more rehashed everyday. If it wasn't for a new GTA in 2011 and Max Payne 3, (Midnight Club, Manhunter, and Red Dead revolver IP's and the games are fucking horrid) Take-Two would slide even further down the rabbit hole. Combined that with the only decent original IP that anyone was really looking forward too was LA Noire back in 06 which completely fell off the radar now.

So don't get too cocky. Your company isn't exactly making the pinnacle of games at the moment to warrant it.

And one last protip for you pal. The armchair QB's you try and mock here for not shipping any games have turned out to be some of the best developers in the business. And they didn't have to fuck their way in either.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Tred

Christ I hate agreeing with Ut cuz he's so overzealous but this blog shit is indeed retarded. Whoever even thought up the the term Blog and/or "Blogosphere" needs to be shot in the kidney. Blogs are for pretentious douche nozzles that enjoy watching TMZ (puke) and don't get actually anything done. Just fucking DO it. I'm looking at you George Really Rotund Martin.

I agree, game design blogs are largely worthless (there are exceptions of course, like Sirlin.net). However, technical blogs can be invaluable like these:

realtimecollisiondetection.net - the blog » Optimizing the rendering of a particle system
Misinformed Cognoscenti

It is great to get concise tech info in a simple blog format, and is immediately useful to any programmer whether they shipped a game or not.

[CylusSoulreaver]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

.

You realize that you can get your point across without all of the "fuck your way in" comments, right? You can claim that you aren't trying to ridicule anyone but, fuck me, that's exactly what you're doing and it's just rude.

And honestly, how can you fault someone for blogging in their free time when you basically do the exact same thing? One could argue that you could be spending your time getting better at your job, whatever it is, rather than pissing all over people on forums like these It's almost as though you're personally offended that people may pay more attention to her blog than your rants.

And thanks for the protips, champ. I'm now guaranteed to sleep better tonight, having been enlightened by you.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by CylusSoulreaver

You realize that you can get your point across without all of the "fuck your way in" comments, right? You can claim that you aren't trying to ridicule anyone but, fuck me, that's exactly what you're doing and it's just rude.

I needed an example for my point. And unfortunately, there are about 100 more examples out there. As far as the fuck your way in comments, I call it like I see it. The industry needs less of that and more Arm Chair QB's who have not shipped anything taking those spots. At least they fucking work when they aren't micromanaged. And as proven in the past, they will kick most designers assholes around the block twice who got in through the buddy system and now think their claim to fame is going to be writing artsy fartsy shit on the internet pertaining to some retarded game theory instead of just shutting their trap and creating something fun to play as they * should * be doing.

And let's not forget where our little spat started. You said she was trying to be a better game designer by blogging about Halo 3. I said that's a lot of horseshit. I don't need to repeat it anymore, you can see the reactions yourself.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

The problem isn't one individual's design capabilities. The problem is the system in which people get hired then go on about useless shit instead of taking that time and actually doing something with it besides writing emo blogs. Whether you fuck your way in, kiss ass, or actually deserve a shot and get hired through experience in gaming; quit blogging (Even the word itself is annoying as fuck) about useless shit and use that time to actually impact a game. She sure as fuck isn't becoming a better designer by studying the helmet design covering Master Chief's head and writing a paper on proper pixel usage. Makes me wonder what the hell she does when she should be knee deep in a tool kit.

Just to clarify, was she blogging at home on her time, or during work time?

If it's the former, then she is passionate and trying to broaden her horizons, however limited or good they might be. This sort of behavior should be applauded and shows someone who is multi dimensional, as long as she accepts feedback and learns.

If it's the latter, then that does suck and ridicule should commence. Although not to the level you propose.

That said, the 'Just Do It' bad Nike commercial bullshit analogy you keep repeating ad nauseum is stupid. The best explore, educate, and discuss so they are better in their field, be it coding, audio, design, pr0n, or whatever.

Saying 'just make shit' really is asstastically stupid. Especially in relation to games which ain't exactly factory work.

Just do it is why we have so many crappy bad MMOs floating around, with individuals who push shit without taking the time to comprehend the big picture.

If we had more developers who blogged good information and did more than occasionally post sycophantic shit on F13, the games marketplace would be a better place.

The valid problems you do mention are a result of piss poor leadership and/or management. That isn't the designer's fault, although someone who sleeps there way in probably is better off blogging about another game, instead of doing actual work.

[CylusSoulreaver]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

And let's not forget where our little spat started. You said she was trying to be a better game designer by blogging about Halo 3. I said that's a lot of horseshit. I don't need to repeat it anymore, you can see the reactions yourself.

I said that she was trying to be better by playing the game, not by blogging about it.

Playing stellar games, both inside and outside of your genre, is exactly one of the things that developers should do. Even if you only get one "Ah shit, I see why/how they did that!" per game, it's completely worth it.

[Utnayan]

That said, the 'Just Do It' bad Nike commercial bullshit analogy you keep repeating ad nauseum is stupid. The best explore, educate, and learn so they are better in their field, be it coding, audio, design, pr0n, or whatever.

You don't learn about game design by writing bullshit papers and "expanding your horizons" on a blog on a 3 year old video game's art assets. You get your ass in a room, open up a development/tool kit, and create. Then you play the shit out of more games and either spin or create your own ideas and implement them, design them, code, you name it. You do not get better sitting there typing up keynote speeches about shit you should already know about. And I, and obviously lots of other people, facepalm everytime they fucking see some moron write a novel on why atmosphere is a key ingredient for a game.

Playing stellar games, both inside and outside of your genre, is exactly one of the things that developers should do. Even if you only get one "Ah shit, I see why/how they did that!" per game, it's completely worth it.

I completely agree. I disagree on writing about, what should be, common sense after playing. If anything, it screams what the fuck are they doing making games if they do not know this shit already. Which is a case in point back to the buddy system.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by Dis

I played before Scott and after Scott EQ2. I can say there was a marked improvement in the game. The main problem stems from the fact is all you get is a first impression with gamers.

EQ2 by default probably had hundreds of thousands of gamers who sampled EQ2 in beta and post launch several months. If you cant grab your audience then, you have pretty much garuanteed you will not get them back, ever.

I tried to get back into it after quitting WoW for the 2nd time, but playing without friends just made it get old real quick. As opposed to the when I played in beta and gold, the only reason I stuck with it for so long was because of friends. For my brief time the 2nd go around, I can honestly say the game was better.

If Gallenite was responsible for saying, "hey guys, why did we toss out all of our lore from EQ?", and started the intiative to bring back familiar sites such as Neriak, then I am all for him moving on to bigger and better things.

One day all game developers will start realizing that the statement: "This is not *insert game* with better graphics" is actually not a bad thing to strive for. The devs for Asheron's Call 2 said the same shit, and the devs for Everquest 2 said the same shit. Look where those games have ended up.

Guess what, we want Everquest with better graphics, and Asheron's Call with better graphics. Dont fucking deviate from a successful world you have created. If you want to improve certain aspects of gameplay, character creation/progression, graphics, etc. that is great. But dont fucking completely obliterate the lore and overall feel of your game, just because you want to do something new, then slap a 2 at the end of the title to try and sucker your audience into buying your crap game.

I think Gallenite realizes that, and IMO, that puts him ahead of most current devs.

Exactly. Look at any game that deviated from the successful first, and examine its success. Super Mario Sunshine anyone? AC2, EQ2, etc, etc. Why is Zelda so successful?

I think the problem is, devs want to make a name for themselves or do something that feels like their own work, something they actually had to create themselves. It's like if you asked a group of authors to rewrite Dickenson with modern settings, they'd want to do something new so as to feel like they did a damn thing. The problem is, with games, everyone wants the original with shiny new bowstrings, nothing more.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by khalid

On my Bruiser I had 4 hotbars full of abilities and all of them I would use when their cooldown was up. It was whackamole with abilities. No decisions had to be made, it was just hit everything when the cooldown was up, and I'd never run out of mana. Many of the abilities were basically just copies of each other.

It seemed like instead of giving you one ability on a 3 second cooldown, they would give you 6 abilities, each on a 18 second cooldown. Hotkeying everything was impossible.

It's funny, I play MTG every 3 months and the place I go to has about 30 computers. I stroll by when I go to the bathroom and always get a laugh at the kids playing WoW just mashing their fingers on the 1-9 hotkeys. I can only imagine how bad EQ2 would be with that many hotbuttons. You have to wonder what people were thinking when they did this shit, what crack they were smoking.

[Ilucide]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

You don't learn about game design by writing bullshit papers and "expanding your horizons" on a blog...

If you don't take time to think about what games have done well, and how you can do it better, then you're not really going to be a quality designer, Ut. There certainly aren't enough hours in the day to hit up every game that's released, either. Or every good game. I've got plenty on my shelves that I can't get to.

The very people you're praising here on this forum who've done well in the industry (Kaplan & Afrasiabi), blogged at length about what was wrong with EQ, and how they thought they would do it better. We just called them 'updates' back in the day, not 'blogs'. In fact, they're the very poster children for introspective design, rather than brute force. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes they're humorous. And sometimes they're right (bottom post: How to Aggravate Your Players).

Those very same people now realize that doing is much different, and more difficult than ranting.

As for the comment on sitting down in a room with a development kit and creating? That, unfortunately, shows a pretty poor understanding of what good design & game development requires. Because good game development stems from understanding your intended players and their needs, and melding that with your own experience.

Also worth mentiong: mostly you're not going to have professional tools. Sitting down with Aurora, Unreal or Crysis is neat and all, but most game designers don't actually have that available for 50-60% of the time they're on a project. They have broken, buggy, and incomplete tool sets because very few engineers like developing tools. Even if your team has quality engineers working on tools, those take a long time to develop and get online, and they're almost always reinvented for each new projects.

As an aside: if you're a coder, and you want to work your way into the games industry? Be willing to work on tools, and you'll be welcome just about anywhere.

[Hachima]

Game ideas are only as good as the capability of your developers to implement them. Or the tools designers are provided to create content.

I bet there are are many great ideas that are out there that get shut down because the developers say it would be too hard to implement, even if that's not the case. Or they try to implement the idea but they can't get it right, so the idea gets scrapped.

Vanguard is a good example of this, or at least the Vanguard I played. I leveled to 50 and enjoyed the game a lot. I was in 'Ted's Club' (I think it was Ted, butno one talks about Ted's club? oops) Anyway we worked with devs while they were working some of the first raid bosses after release. A big problem they faced was the lack of any type of scripting language for special encounters and everything was done in C++.

This was a technical design decision that really put a limit on what could be done with encounters. As great as ideas game designers may have had, they would often get turned down because of the work to implement the ideas.

I've worked with game developers that are no longer passionate about the project they are working on and question why people still subscribe to the game they are still working on. Can you picture Utnayan working on Vanguard?

You need to have a combination of both talent and passion throughout all your teams. I think Scott had the talent and passion for EQ2, and I'm sure he passed some of that passion on to others he worked with. At least I know he cared enough to log on from home during his morning coffee to hook me up with some exp pots to help me on EQ2 when my character got messed up when he didn't have to =) And other public responses that at least gave the appearance that he cared.

So the whole blog thing really seems like a positive thing to me. People that are willing to spend their time to analyze any aspect of a successful game is a good thing I think. Even if even the material isn't 100% related to what you work on, its a good skill to work on and develop if you want to be able to learn from other games.

[Alarion]

Originally Posted by Ilucide

As an aside: if you're a coder, and you want to work your way into the games industry? Be willing to work on tools, and you'll be welcome just about anywhere.

Pro tip: stop requiring a BS degree and 10+ years experience with 2 shipped games under your belt for a fucking tools developer. Not directing this at you or your company per se - but this seems to be a normal for the games industry.

I think what Ut's point boils down to - is that the people with the passion for games development, whether it's coding, art, design or sound fucking engineering can't ever break in w/o going through some stupid fucking minimum wage QA bullshit job or not even getting paid as an intern - or they have the equivalent of a double fucking PhD Yet, certain other super-unqualified people get hired because they give good head and are happy to go ass to mouth.

I would *love* to work on tools as a entry into games development. But I have neither the degree nor the game dev experience. What I DO have is 10+ years of software development experience in a team environment including being a founder of a very popular open source project. Many other people here and on other gaming sites have similar or better experience and could run circles around the people who currently "work" in the industry - but they will never get the shot. I guess for us, it requires us to develop our full game in our spare time to show you people that all your stupid requirements are mostly bullshit. Also, many of us who want to get into game development have financial responsibilities(you know, mortgage, putting food on the table for a family, etc) and dropping our reasonably high paying job to make $8/hr as a QA person just isn't going to happen.

Also - there are other languages perfectly suitable for tools development besides C++. You should really start considering C# developers for this.

[Drave]

Originally Posted by Alarion

What I DO have is 10+ years of software development experience in a team environment including being a founder of a very popular open source project.

Or try to be the founder of an open sourced game project?

Do it well, you could network your way into the gaming industry and build the experience resume, AND carry others into the industry with you.

Edit: There might be some opportunities here...
Multiverse | About Multiverse

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Alarion

Also - there are other languages perfectly suitable for tools development besides C++. You should really start considering C# developers for this.

It's definitely not like this all over. Your description of yourself sounds very much like with one of the times we've brought someone onto a team to do tools development at SOE three or four years ago.

Ton of dev experience, C# tools environment, lots of initiative, no experience in games, but passionate as hell about the product itself. Easily one of the most genuine helpful personalities I've ever met, and very persistent when it came to trying to land the job.

He got the job. He rocks, and he's still there kicking ass on far more than tools now. (The tools he added deserve a lot of the credit for Kunark being able to be populated in the amount of time that was in its dev cycle.) It's a lesson that we applied to hiring at ohai also.

Best I can say is - If you see C# listed anywhere at all, and are genuinely interested in helping other people do their jobs better (and it shows), are persistent and talented, and can communicate all of this while still being a person that leaves your contact thinking, "Hey, that person would get along well on this team," you can overcome pretty much all of the rest of the written "requirements."

And to be clear - He had zero inside connections to start with. Walked up to me at a fan faire and introduced himself. Just knew what he wanted to do and figured out a way to do it.