Sargonas.com

So it was time again for the annual Video Game Awards last night. Its a strange affair. The general populous looks upon it as an “oh, neat” kind of thing, I feel. Us in the industry and hard core gamers alike however seem to be a bit divided between “dear god not this again” and “sweet, something else to help boost the industry’s image!”

Sadly the cast of the train wreck that is Jersey Shore trying to banter with Mike Tyson does NOT help our image :\ Especially when it follows Snoop Dog performing.

I have to admit each year the presentation has gotten a bit better. At first it pandered to the stereotypical audience they expected that would watch this on Spike.. and it was embarrassing for the industry really. In the last few years though it has really turned around, something I credit Geoff Keighiley with having a hand in. Still it needs work. For starters there is a fairly hefty list of categories, this is a good thing. However they seem to bookend a single award with a trailer/reveal and another of the same or a musical performance, followed by a commercial break. Now this isn’t to fill the 2 hours… no… because twice in the show they rattled off a list of award winners for several categories with no mention of the other nominees. If they would just cut out all the big hype marketing bullshit, and only cover the awards we could fit it all in. I mean you don’t see this shit on the Oscars!!

Now I know your thinking “Well they HAVE to put all that in there to generate interest to make enough people watch it!” well I understand that, but I don’t care. If the show cant stand on its own they they need to just keep adjusting until it can, but they need to phase this shit out slowly as they do it.

Also some of the categories though need work. They have best sound track and best score. This makes sense really, one is geared towards the selection of mainstream music, the later is which had the best in house music. A good divide if you ask me to split games like Halo and Dragon Age who have incredible original music from those like Brutal Legend that have amazing sound track selection. The problem is all of the nominees except one for “best Soundtrack” were RHYTHM GAMES (Rock Band Beatles, DJ hero, etc) WHAT THE FUCK???!!?? There is already a “Music Game” category, so why put this shit here as well? I mean is there really a quantifiable difference in the songs between Rock Band 2 and Band Hero, and Lego Rockband? A totally wasted and ruined category if you ask me. Also we have the category “Best DLC” which is a noble cause, but the 4 nominees were 2 packs for GTA IV and 2 packs for Fallout 3. That’s kind of stupid, because its essentially down to 2 possible winners really.

My last major gripe is the timing, I don’t think the show should be on in mid December when the holiday blockbusters are still fresh and the early year super-hits (I’m looking at your Arkham Asylum) are growing dust. They need to be in the spring for the prior year if you ask me, that way there are no just-release-last-week titles contending for space when everyone is still riding high on the PR.

One good thing to come out of it all though is the general populous has far less if any impact on the winners now, and its entirely industry based on he voting, this is good, and how it should be. All in all, the show is getting better and I hope in two years time its where I want it to be, at which point I plan to attend

Last night was the second annual fundraiser event in SF known as Ümloud! It’s a charity fundraiser geared around Rockband 2, whose goal is to raise money for the prestigious Child’s Play org started by the venerable Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade. (If you want to know more about either of the two groups check out their sites, http://www.umloud.org and http://www.childsplaycharity.org)

It was a BLAST! Entry was free, but there was a “suggested” $10 donation. Everyone recieved two raffle tickets for their amazing series of prizes, (well amazing if you ignore the three copies of Tony Hawk Ride they gave away). Bands could register to play on stage for $35, or for $120 get the full “Ultimate Band” treatment with recorded video and a band photo. There was also a silent auction for some amazing stuff, such as one of the much desired Eddie Riggs statues and one of the coveted $1000+ Uncharted 2 special editions.

We rocked it at one of my favorite venues here in town, DNA Lounge, which conveniently enough is rather close to my house as well. There is a live stream that was fed over justin.tv and is still archived, however sadly the audio sometimes falls out of synch, and there are a few gaps, for example, my entire band set has only audio and about 10 seconds of video :\ Still it’s worth a look for some of the more memorable moments! http://www.justin.tv/dnalounge/archive Some of the best highlights was the Broasis show.. although I think it was better when I was drunk, and my personal favorite was going up on stage as part of King Friday and the Awesomettes, playing I Was Wrong by Social Distortion.

Our apartment kind of made out like bandits too. In the vein of true irony, Wedge’s boyfriend, Witwix, won one of the two pairs of Astro A40s. Quite hilarious since one of our other roommates works at Astro and has been trying to score him a pair for a while now. Also Clarence won the Uncharted 2 special edition, as well as the final raffle item, the ION Drum set. He already has one however, plus I have my own in storage, so not sure what he plans to do with this new one!

Over all I had a blast, and got to hung out with a metric fuck-ton of industry friends from around the Bay. The night was awesome enough that I didn’t make it into work until noon today! I am interested to see what was raised once the numbers are tallied, hopefully its a hot number.

A big thanks to Chris Kohler, John Seggerson and Joe Market for making this all happen for the second year in a row, as well as their army of volunteers. Child’s Play is one of the few charities I really have a strong feeling about, and something I take quite seriously. Anything that benefits it makes me happy

So I love my iPhone, I really do. I left Verizon after 7 years of happy service, and jumped to AT&Ts world class shitty service when the first gen iPhone launched. That little phone was the first ever to last me more than a year. Until that point I upgraded phones annually, coughing up the full phone price almost every time since I was only upgrade-eligible every 2 years. This summer the 3gS launched, and that little work horse was finally traded in, after 2 years of round the clock abuse, and the 3g has been a strong little phone ever since as well.

I have recently had my hands on the Droid and Droid Eris (henceforth referred to as Eris here) from Verizon, however. With the ever increasing frustration I have been getting from the Bay Area AT&T network, that seems to degrade weekly, I am beginning to have doubts how much longer I will be on the iPhone train. The Android app store now has versions of every iPhone app I can’t do without, plus amazing things like Google Goggles. (until you have used it, like I have, you cant understand how cool it really is!). Also the native support of google voice, something I have but am slow to adopt due to the iphone’s clunky support of it, is a big tipping point for me as well. I now have a bay area phone number on GV, and I would like to use it in tandem with my 502 number on a more regular basis.

At this point I am facing a tough decision. Convert my iphone into a powerful ipod, by deactivating its phone service and using it as my day to day ipod as well as it’s wifi powers to run some apps, and switch over to an Android powered phone or ignore all the hooplah and stick to my Apple love. To be honest it’s not looking good for my ex-girlfriend’s stock options at Apple.

Both the Droid and the Eris are enticing. The Eris’s pebble like shape and size is, in my opinion, superior the the physical design of the iPhone in many ways. At first I felt it lagged behind the Droid due to its using the Android 1.5 OS and not the newer 2.0 and due to the fact it runs the HTC SensUI, however I have now learned Android 2.0 will be available for it in January once HTC is done updating SenseUI for it. Even better, you can turn off SenseUI in the settings and use the base Anndroid OS if you so choose. (Although the SenseUI has a lot of improvements the Android can benefit from). The Droid however has a slightly larger screen (0.4 inches) and a slide out keyboard. Using it though is NOTHING like my keyboard experience from when I owned the Verizon 6700 due to its small size and quirky feedback. Also did I mention the Droid is $199 and the Eris is $99?

After spending time with both.. I am finding it harder and harder to resist the urge to go to the store later this week and jump back to Verizon, $175 AT&T termination fee be damned.

Talking with some folks today about UT, and being invited to play some UT2k4 in an interdepartmental gaming group that gathers over lunch got me thinking. It made me remember one of *the* most epic moments in LAN Party history in my life, and one of the hallmarks of what was so amazing about being honored with the Gummi Bear clan tag, both in game and out.

We were at Asylum Lan. The exact one I don’t remember sadly. I think 2k4 had been out for less than a few months though. GB was in the final match (no surprise there) playing the new and awesome Onslaught mode. Now bear with me because the details of my memory are fuzzy, as are the exact mechanics of ONS and the map in particular. Perhaps a fellow Gummi will drop by to flesh out anything I forgot. Sadly, I think this was one of the rare matches we don’t  have a video cap of

It was best 2 out of 3, and on round 1 we steam rolled fairly well. I think we linked up the nodes to their core, and damaged it down in under 2 minutes. Nothing spectacular, about on par with our performance the whole tourney, but fast enough to demoralize the other team a bit. Then round 2 came up. Now, this particular map, if memory serves me correctly, had 2 nodes outside each teams core, where only one was needed to link up to the chain across the board. (For those who have never played ONS mode, you take over nodes to build a straight link from your core to theirs, which drops the shields on their core and allows you to damage it.) We strategically had people in the right place at the right time to take over the first node faster than normal, and two guys in place to start capping the second node the instant we had #1. By time #2 was then taken, the team that took #1 was already at #3 bunkered in and ready to start the process, using link guns all along to speed things up. In the time all this went down, the opposing team was still at the alternate #3 taking it, and preparing their vehicles for a convoy to #2 to try to take it from us en mass. Something major was about to go down though that no one other than Stale knew. While we were working on #2 and #3 he had peeled off in a vehicle and flown up to grab the Redeemer, and then hauled his ass up high in the air. Before #3 was even fully ours, to complete the link to the Core, he fired it off on a slow path to their core. Because of this, when we took node #3 the message popped up on everyones screen saying the Red Teams core was exposed. Before the message even faded and anyone had any time at all to react however, BOOM the core was destroyed and we won the match. I think it was a good 20 seconds before the other team realized what had happened and it sunk it.

My hazy, 5 year old memory wants me to think it was 45 seconds into the match.

Yeah, we fucking rocked that shit in record time. I still have the trophy from it! Ahhhh memories. Such a different time in my life that I do indeed miss at times like this!

Gummi for fucking life, yo.

So bouncing around some ideas with some fellow industry peoples on twitter has seeded an idea.

What about some forums somewhere for people of all studios/publishers/etc to come together for an industry themed hang out? One thing I have learned over the years is that we are an AMAZINGLY social group of great people who have great ideas. These people are the very reason I use twitter as much as I do, its such a great way to stay in touch with everyone of the same mindet. Also, given the rough times the industry is going through, as a whole, it would be a fun resource for former people from shut down studios and mass layoffs to trade info on potential job opportunities with those of us still inside. There would be a few simple guidelines.

1: Industry only, this does not include media. The whole point is a place for us to talk with each other without all the background chatter and fanboyism to clutter things up. (NeoGaf is fun but I had wading through 50 posts to get to one from someone I care to discuss things with).

2: NOTHING nda breaking or even remotely close discussed, ever. Its a place for us to geek out over games. Talk shop about development. Bitch about that jerk reviewer on gamethatrockmysocks.com who rates every singe game under a 50 just to fuck up their meta critic score. And maybe trade free copies of game X for game Y under the table

3: Self policed. Something like, you have to register with a work email address, and have your account manually approved by someone upon review. After that you get dumped into a user group assigned to your company, with a designated person from that company who manages the membership from there on out to handle folks who come and go as time goes on. Its not a perfect system, its not intended to be. Were not trying to make an iron clad secret order or anything, just a place with enough of a buffer zone so that we can chat without obnoxious interruptions. There is no intention for it to be secure enough to get away with talking about trade secrets. (might I remind you to read point 2 above?)

4: the whole thing administered by a random selection of folks from all over, to help make sure there is no feeling of “such and such company runs this site”

what do you guys think?

So I just got a new toy. Dating someone from Apple has its perks, not only do I have someone incredible awesome to spend my time with, but I was able to get a Time Capsule for my laptop to backup against for about 30% off!

This thing is great. Its a much better secondary wi-fi point for the front half of our house due to its increased strength, and the 802.11n speeds. Also its nice being able to turn time machine back on, and not having to worry about the fact I am backing up against something that I have to physically remember to plug into my laptop anymore, so now its always-on! I am such a geek sometimes… sheesh.

On another note, why is it people who have cats that are “scared of people” always seem to love me? Yet again an antisocial cat thinks I am quite awesome after just a few hours around me. I don’t get it.

I really didnt let this blog die, I just got lazy and unmotivated, thats TOTALLY different. I swear!

So time for the obligatory blog-catchup. In feb I moved to the Bay Area when EA relocated me to the Rupture team, this was a Huge Thing. Then 2 weeks ago I was laid off. This was also a Huge Thing. I am currently waiting to hear back this week on a (hopefully) pending job offer for another team at EARS. If all goes well I can hopefully land that and stop worrying

Living in San Francisco is amazing, and I think I have found my last true Home. This place, is so me. I wish I had moved here years ago. I have some awesome friends here, and some equally awesome room mates I have known for years, and just this weekend started hanging out with someone new who is even more awesome than all of the above, but I wont go into detail on her for fear of jinxing myself

Lastly, the first day I started work out here, Tucker passed away. I hadn’t seen the little guy in weeks, so this really sucked. As soon as as I have my life settled and am in my own house, I plan to get a Yorkie of my own, but it sure wont be another Tucker, he was one of a kind.

So yeah thats the most important bits I guess of the last few months. I’m gonna make an honest effort to get back into updating this regularly, but we will see just how well this actually works. History does not favor my track record.

So I started playing Prince of Persia on the 360 this weekend, and I must say I am incredibly impressed. The game gets rid of the stress and time sink of dying, reloading, frustrations and complications related to it all. You cannot fall to you death in this highly acrobatic based game…. you just get “saved” back to the last area you were standing by Elika. You cannot die in combat, you simply loose a Quick Time Event (you dont even have a health bar!) and when you loose that QTE, Elika simply saves you with a quick magic attack, and the Boss re-heals himself up a good chunk.

Also there are virtually no other beings to fight, just the same 4 bosses, repeatedly in their respective realms. All in all I love it. You can focus on the story they want to tell, the impressive visuals they want to show you (and they are indeed impressive) and the puzzle and acrobatic challenges they want to make you jump though… and thats that. It totally redefines platformers, and I LOVE it!

That’s right! I’m moving, AGAIN!

My new boss, Shawn, has deemed me worthy of a relocation out to San Francisco. However I will be working out of the Rupture office in downtown SF, and not at the main EA campus in Redwood City (this is a good thing really). Current plans look like I will be moving around mid Feb or so.

RAWK!

aaaand I’m back at the condo Its VERY rare for me to be at a gaming event and call it a night at 11pm, but when you factor in the time change, its 2am, and damn it I’m tired!

Today has been an absolute fracking blast. After getting in the hall early around noon (yay media badges!) I spent the two hours of media-only quietness trying things out before the lines got stupid, and saying hi to tons of people who would be otherwise busy the rest of the day. I finally got to meet Spyke, our Beta Producer for Warhammer Online in person, and ran into a random person in the food line who, it turns out, is our EA rep to Wal-Mart down in arkansas. After eating food while ignoring all the chaos around me I teamed up with BananaHammock and ran around to various things, and he introduced me to a handful of people I know but never met in person. After that I bounced around between hanging out with him and E and Kitty, and catching up on old times with The Girls, and watching V3nus destroy every single person who came up against her at the Plantronics booth in UT3. (Even I tried.. it was… tragic..) On day 1 the hall is only open from 2-7, so it wound down fairly quick on the show floor side. I got side tracked and missed out on the Key Note speech by Ken Levine, which made me a sad panda AND forgot all about the Final Boss/Freezepop/Jonathon Coulton concert… grrrr. Instead though I had just as much fun at the GamerDNA party at the hyatt.. Rockband FTW! (speaking of.. i saw rockband 2… OMG!)

Forgive me for the lack of insight into WHAT I saw, as I spent little time playing games and seeing new stuff today. I last was able to be social in person with my gaming community crowd in SEPTEMBER of last year, at WSVG Toronto, so I was really longing to say hi to a lot of people. Tomorrow I plan to “play tourist” and check things out, and flex my Media Pass muscle to skip a bunch of demo lines, heheh. I’ll upload some pics later tonight or tomorrow and link em here when I can.. however I shall be calling it a night now, my feet are absolutely KILLING me.