In the third and final installment of our three part (Part 1, Part 2) exclusive interview, ArenaNet’s Creative Director Daniel Dociu discusses Guild Wars 2’s marketing campaign, aspiring concept artists, and the games he plays. Then he tantalizes us with a little hint about the sylvari redesign…
In the second of our three part exclusive interview (Part 1 here, Part 3 here), ArenaNet’s Creative Director Daniel Dociu discusses his artistic preferences, Guild Wars 2’s interface, alongside his relationship with ArenaNet’s 3D artists and remaining personal ambitions…
I have owned the newest Nintendo’s handheld console for a little more than a week. Here’s what it inspired in me…
Aieee. American game retailer GameStop has acquired Impulse, StarDock Systems’ digital distribution service. This means Stardock is getting out of the digital-distro game, essentially succumbing to Steam, and handing their infrastructure off to a brick and mortar retailer.
In late March of 2011, Tap-Repeatedly’s Lewis B sat down for an exclusive interview with Daniel Dociu, the formidable creative force behind Guild Wars 2 and its stunning art direction. Daniel is the creative director for the highly anticipated MMO, and one of the most talented and respected concept artists in the business. As insightful as it was fascinating, the interview makes us love his work all more… This is Part 1 of our three-part …
And lo, Steerpike reappears on the front page of his own website. I’ve been super-busy! Thank heavens for Lewis and Mat and Gregg keeping stuff alive in my absence.
This month’s IGDA Culture Clash column was whipped up in a hurry. I had a whole other one done, but realized it wasn’t really going anywhere. And as it happened I’d just read an article I wanted to comment on. So while I had no intention of discussing the Dead Island trailer, I did. I do. Here.
Special Bonus Content! Just now a good friend of mine wrote a beautifully crafted email to me, reacting to the trailer. I’m including that at the bottom of this, because it’s worthy of discussion. Check it out!
Listen. Can you hear it? Those faint whispers? They’re the faint whispers about a new generation of home games consoles. Whispers that are starting to become steadily more audible; driven by rumor, speculation and internet job postings. When people start to talk about such matters, conversation often moves swiftly on to guessing what features the eventual successors to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will bring. Digital distribution, proven to be a hit on PC but …
There were raised eyebrows when ArenaNet first cited Team Fortress 2 as a point of reference for elements of Guild Wars 2’s Player versus Player combat. Most individuals naturally felt the influences between the games would be drawn from the core principals of class team work and players knowing their specific duties within their class framework. What has become apparent however over recent days, is that at the heart of Guild Wars 2’s crafting system …
Breaking through a brick wall. That’s what at times it must feel like for ArenaNet when marketing Guild Wars 2. Outside the relative comfort of fan forums such as Guild Wars 2 Guru, there appears to be a direct lack of understanding or opposition to the fundamental changes they are making to the genre. Embracing the changes of adaptive class types and self sufficiency, coupled with the direct removal of a dedicated healer is a …
An exciting and wordy discussion has been wandering across several of Tap’s forum threads, notably here, and also in various comments on articles. Fully grokking a conversation being held by the Tap community requires a certain ability to master the art of tangential crossover.
ANYWAY, to quickly sum up: some of our debaters did not like Half Life 2, some did, but for variant reasons; everyone likes STALKER but some wanted different things from it; System Shock 2 is very scary but may not have aged well; and something to do with Neocron, plus some other stuff.
Here’s a Culture Clash column I wrote for the January 2011 edition of the IGDA website. I’m happy with it, but less pleased with the fact that our theme does not allow ~ symbols above an N in post titles. So if you were to read it out loud you’d have to say “pinn-nnnnnnaaaaahhtah,” like Winston Churchill.
Who was a great man. No busting on that dude. Won us WWII!
Still, though, tildes would be nice. Also: this is the last old Culture Clash I’ll publish on Tap’s front page (I’ll post the new ones here); the rest I’ll be back-dating so they’ll appear if you look at older posts or if you visit the Content -> Editorials -> Culture Clash section in the main menu (or just click here). This article is actually older than the previous one here on Tap – The Beauty of a Living Thing – and the rest will be older still. Thus, to prevent confusion, the back-dating. You may also note subtle differences between these (my originals) and the one on IGDA (which they sometimes edit slightly). Either one can be considered Canon. In any case, click to read on!
Have you ever had such a desire to play a video game that to soak up every column inch of information and to repeatedly tap F5 on the developer’s blog is simply not a good enough fix? That need eventually becomes a permanent itch, where the first thing you do at 6am as the alarm sounds isn’t to say good morning to your partner/girlfriend/lover/cat/other, but is instead to leap onto the computer and check the latest forum posts …
Warning: Bulletstorm will make you rape people. So says Fox News, that bastion of fair-and-balanced reporting, its experts dourly citing completely unrelated and often debunked studies to that effect. To my knowledge no rapes have been connected to the recent demo release, but likely the law hasn’t been looking for said connection. Bulletstorm is going to make you rape stuff, not because there are any rapes in it or because it endorses rape or even uses the word rape (though it does use the word “dicktits”), but because… um.
Assuming what we can from the demo, Bulletstorm is juvenile toilet humor with liberal amounts of gore and NSFW, often sexually-charged achievement names for killing things by pumping shells up their rectums or what have you. Sometimes juvenile toilets can be kind of awesome.
I’ve written Culture Clash for the IGDA website for over eight years now. I’ve always meant to start posting my monthly columns here as well, but never got around to until now. As time permits I’ll post the older ones and back-date them, so give me a couple days, then be sure to check out the Culture Clash category archive here at Tap to read more.
This one’s about… hell, click the button and you’ll see.
“A future in which almost every aspect of your life includes a game like experience is all but inevitable.” — Jesse Schell, Video game designer/researcher, Carnegie-Mellon University I just got around to reading the December issue of Scientific American. Bad mistake, I should have gotten to it earlier because therein is a fascinating article by John Pavlus called “The Game of Life.” He makes the very simple claim that games will become part of our …