I’ve been happily enjoying my Facebook, so everyone that pays attention to me there will be getting this in a little bit as well.

I’m sure most of the people who care about Rock Band 2 will be skipping past the article here and just going straight to the opening cinematic. Which is about as great as anything, and it’s in continuity with the Rock Band 1 cinematic.

Behind the curve as always. I’m pretty sure I thought it would be harder to set up than it was, but I’ve also been very hung up on what I wanted the world to know about me.

Oh well. It’s here. Having it crawl through my e-mail for contacts made me feel all amazingly well connected and stuff.

Yeah, it really is that funny.

Easily Tom Cruise’s best role of his entire career. Complete with dancing, though he keeps his pants on this time.

Oh yeah, Tom Cruise is in this movie, and Ben Stiller made a really good movie making fun of action movies and Hollywood in general. You will be going to see it now.

Well, not all of you, just those of you who play Tabula Rasa. And it won’t be you specifically, just a record that you once existed.

Yeah, you might have already seen that one. But you probably haven’t seen KLRU Docubloggers’ interview with Richard, where he explains what it was like to be the son of an astronaut and why he’s truly living his life’s dream. That’s because it just got posted this afternoon. Thanks to JJ Weber for the tip.

Today was Lum’s last day at NCsoft’s Austin office.

Almost a month ago was my first day at NCsoft’s Austin office. And tomorrow I’m going back. I’m working in game support for one of the several games NCsoft publishes.

That means I’m a GM. And it also means my job wasn’t at all affected by the cutbacks announced today and rumored for, well, longer than today.

Yeah, it’s hard not to feel conflicted about it.

Continue reading Transitions (me too)…

Ever since I’ve been paying attention to the Austin game development “scene,” it’s been a cyclical build-up and tear-down, with terribly short and terribly harsh swings of the pendulum. And maybe it’s because I’ve been one step removed from the rumors and the scared rumblings that I didn’t notice Spacetime Studios had a press release up about last week’s layoffs.

But, well, some things got telegraphed. From stories I heard at Richard Garriott’s latest garden party, which I did not attend, the project has still not found a publisher. This just seven months after the official reveal that its original publisher, NCsoft, had pulled out (probably some time after the pendulum had already started swinging), and three months since they bought back the IP.

The latter tells me that there’s at least someone in charge at Spacetime that still believes their seemingly nearly-finished game (I have no real perspective on how close it is to finished) has life still in it, which Jason Durall’s post supports. But meanwhile, blogging machine Brandon Reinhart hasn’t had much to say in nearly a month, which likely means there’s a lot more on his mind than his WoW loot accounting.

Yeah, me too. And the other thing about the pendulum in Austin, when it swings, it stirs everything else up. The resumes are flying, and the competition just got a little stiffer for game development jobs, certainly those around Austin.

Maybe it’s just because it’s an election year. I think I would have liked to see Darkstar being played, at least.

Edit: Aaaaand there goes Midway Austin. “90-130″ employees is quite a range.

Yeah, I never thought I’d hear Chumbawamba again. Or want to. But this is a funny, catchy song. Thanks to KUT Radio and Eklektikos for playing it on my lunch drive today.

Listen or just read the lyrics.