I was not in “Blue Heelers”, whatever the hell that was.

The Ultima V: Lazarus connection is otherwise correct.

Lum: dude you were totally a blue healer

Update: It’s worth looking at the entries for the voice actors we used. Some of them are actually, gosh, professionals.

Went another week without updating again. You’d think I’d come up with more stuff to talk about, but lately all I’ve been doing is saying it somewhere else.

Oh well, here’s to day 8 of my 10-day workweek.

Yeah, I knew already, but I didn’t say. Because I’m nice when asked to be.

No big stories here, just photos and captions. Unfortunately my HTML skills are out of whack, so all you get is thumbnails and links to the bigger pictures. This was from Friday, May 19, at a downtown Austin bar known as The Jackalope.
Continue reading The Wolfpack Wake…

There was a party tonight in Austin. Everyone who was a developer for Shadowbane (with scant few exceptions) was invited. I was the only one on the guest list who neither actually did development work on Shadowbane or worked for Wolfpack Studios.

I took pictures and might write up some more personal notes from the event, but for now:

• Stray Bullet Games, the new studio emergent from what was Wolfpack Studios (which Ubisoft officially dissolved two weeks ago)
  has at least one revenue stream and workload, in the form of contracting to another game company I don’t think they want named yet, in addition to supporting Shadowbane for Ubisoft, again on contract. The new studio will include just about everyone who was working for Wolfpack at the time of its closure except for most of the design staff (mainly because their contract work does not include design, at least not outside of Shadowbane.)
• Quite a number of ex-Wolfpackers had moved out of the Austin area and could not attend, but several who do live in the Austin area were absent. Company co-founder Todd “Warden” Coleman was the most noticeable no-show.
• Clay “Nazgul” Towery brought the Wolfpack Studios logo banner that was on display in the Ubisoft booth at AGC last fall. Everyone present signed it. Including me. I was touched that people there thought I should. It’s apparently going to be framed and set up at the Stray Bullet offices (which are the same as the former Wolfpack offices.)
• Nazgul has a picture of my crotch with his foot against it, along with many other people’s crotches and his foot. I think they were all male crotches, but Sara “Lietgardis” Jensen was there and fair game.
• I made it all the way there and all the way back. Anyone who didn’t want me there was gracious enough not to say so. I probably should stow my old apprehensions, but they’re hard to get rid of. Still, the surprise made the pleasant experience that much sweeter.
• Many bawdy stories were told, most of which I know better than to repeat to the Internet, especially the ones involving suction darts and ant metaphors. (Both of those involve Jeff “Ashton Kai” Toney, who is a very nice but demented person.)

I care for this slightly less than I cared about Scott Bonds (the “IWantToWorkAtEA Dot Com” guy, whose site is down.) Though the latter ended up working on The Godfather Game, which didn’t get completely shat on, so maybe people like this deserve a break.

It’s hard, because I’m not young and enthusiastic like these guys. I never was, never will be. Spectacle comes easier for people like this. But so does naivete. Why isn’t it taken as a given that Atari isn’t the same Atari that has ever been? It’s just a brand now, owned by a French company that considered it valuable to associate itself with an American company that was trying to sound Japanese (and had some spectacular failures along with its success), and has been on the rocks financially for the past three years, growing more and more desperate.

Is the only enthusiasm about the game industry coming from people like Adam Poots? Is the greatest source of willpower to make something “good,” somehow, coming from those who admittedly don’t know what they’re doing?
I guess that’s the case. And for every one of me, there’s probably 10 Adam Pootses. And I was never that much for competition.

When Rama knocks, you better answer. The fourth in a series by Nina Paley, whom I’ve raved about before.

Yeah, I need more to write about. Maybe after this weekend. Work’s keeping me busy. Real work, even.

My second Gama feature, from last Wednesday. I might need to invest in a new camera. Had this one for five years; that’s probably long enough. Damion was there, so hopefully he won’t twig on something I totally left out.

I write this with heavy eyelids from the laptop I’ve bought but have since heard is crappy compared to what I could have got. The monitor riser/keyboard slot for my main computer finally gave up the ghost during an insomniac stagger to my desk and nearly gave me a heart attack as it clattered to pieces and dusty hardware fell off into the abyss. I figure I might need to start worrying about heart attacks.

I’m hoping to go to Austin today, as I expect I’ll want to more and more, just to get Away. This past week was one of the worst I’ve ever experienced professionally, and it’s not going to get better very fast.

Continue reading On being a professional…