Mark Danks

There were a couple articles which were posted that game developers would find interesting.  One is by N’Gai Croal, the video game writer for Newsweek.  Monday Morning Quarterback is an email discussion between N’Gai and Geoff Keighley.  While there are parts which I disagree with, overall, it is a very balanced view about the battle occuring between the 3 hardware platforms.

The PlayStation 2 set such high expectations for the PlayStation 3 that there was no way that it could meet them.  While I wish that the PS3 was selling even more, the price is obviously a huge issue.  I have no “inside info” about it but, everyone I talk to knows that until the price drops, Sony is not going to be pushing a lot of units.  I was pleased to see them discuss the lack of 3rd party success on the Wii as well.  All of the games that Geoff mentions at one point (Super Smash Bros Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, Metriod Prime 3, Brain Age Academy, and Wii Health) are all 1st party titles.  Even if the Wii continues to sell (which I am not convinced that it will), I just do not see 3rd party publishers actually making any money off of it.  From a game development standpoint, I think that the Wii is the same as the Gamecube.

The other article was an interview with Bing Gordon, the Chief Creative Officer at EA.  In the article, he makes reference to how the Renderware technology basically failed within EA.  I was one of the people involved with trying to use the Renderware technology, both on The Godfather and on LotR: The White Council.  We tried to use it but, the Renderware technology had a ton of problems, much of which I described in an internal EA whitepaper.  However, the EA culture is just not set up to use a central technology.  There are too many games which are too different, and the politics between the studios and between the game teams is fierce.  Without any incentive to cooperate, Renderware was doomed from the beginning.

Of course, in the end, EA got Burnout and Black, which have already made back way more than the $48 million purchase price for Criterion.  Also, the disruption that EA caused for the rest of the industry who was using Renderware was massive.  The irony is that EA thought that they were purchasing a technology suite, but really got some game teams.

I have played the Final Fantasy games for years.  I am not an “old school” type of player, since I started when FF VII came out.  However, I tend to play them fairly completely…more than your typical casual gamer.  I have finished FF 1, 2, 7, 9, and 10.  I am currently playing 3 and 12.  FF 8 and X-2 just annoyed me…I could not get into them enough to play them.  The announcement of FF IV for the DS is great news to me.

FF IX is probably my favorite one, big heads and all.  One thing that I have noticed is that the characters (from an RPG standpoint) are turning into vanilla.  While FF 3 has the whole job thing, FF XII has licenses.  The problem with licenses is that each of my characters is the same.  I tend to power up all of my characters so they all have the same magic and weapon abilities.  With FF X, by about half way through, the same thing happened.  I had jumped around the board enough so that all of the characters had the same abilities.  FF IX “restricted” what characters could do enough so that they all felt different.  I really had to decide which characters to have in my party at any one time.  Toss in an art direction which I really liked, and you have my favorite Final Fantasy game.

A few months ago, I bought a piano. Nothing special, just a Yamaha upright console piano. I have played piano since 1st grade and took lessons for about 12 years. During college and graduate school, I played off and on, although it usually involved working on my own pieces.

My daughter started taking piano lessons a few months ago, which is what caused me to buy a piano. I have not sat down as often as I would have liked to play it…I am sure that she plays it more than I do these days. But days like today make it worthwhile. I played for well over an hour. Mostly I played the “old standbys” like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Bartok, and Satie (yeah, Bartok and Satie are “old standbys” to me…my Master’s degree is in 20th Century composition…what do you expect). Being able to sightread those pieces and enjoy them is something which I am extremely happy that I can still do. Apparently, all of those years of lessons which my mother forced on me actually paid off.

I need to make sure that I spend much more time playing music…maybe I’ll even dig up my classical guitar…

Once again, I am flying over an ocean heading home.  DevStation, the Eurpean PS3 developers conference, just ended.  I was over for a week to meet with my counterparts in SCEE, as well as attend DevStation.   Lots of good meetings, lots of good informal discussions, and lots of good food.  The dinner I had at Nobu was definitely one of the highlights for me, although random pints in pubs throughout the week was also a lot of fun as well.  I sensed many of the same things from developers which I felt at the US DevCon last month.  General consensus is that the PS3 is hard, but once you wrap your head around it and stop treating it like a PC (or like another “unnamed console”), then there is a lot of power.  The SPUs are so much flexible than a vertex shader, but since people have been focused on GPU shader programming, it takes some retraining.  I had some conversations with some developers which planted some seeds in my head for some very cool tools.  Hopefully they will come to something.

The first movie on the flight just ended, so only about 8 more hours to go (it is an 11 hour flight from London to San Francisco).  This time, it was Children of Men, which ends on a positive note, although it certainly is not a happy movie..  On the way out, I saw Stranger Than Fiction which was also pretty good.  It is rare that I actually end up with movies that I like on flights…probably a combination of bad choices and my finicky tastes.  Hopefully I can get some sleep soon so that the jet lag does not pound me into the ground on Sunday.

On the game playing front, I finished Okami a couple of months ago.  This is an accomplishment, since it took me 45 hours to do.  I needed a break from video games after that one, so I did not play much for a little while.  On my Mexico vacation, I picked up my PSP again and cranked through both Daxter and Rachet and Clank: Size Matters.  One would hope that I would stick with the shorter games for a while, but not even close.  I am currently 15 hours into Final Fantasy XII on my PS2…and on this trip I started Final Fantasy III on my DS.  Maybe in a few months I can finally get to God of War 2, but by then I am sure that something else I want will have come out.

Something cool…I mentioned MapMyRun.com a little while ago.  My hotel was right near Oxford Circus, a prime location right next to the SCEE offices.  I did a bunch of running leaving my hotel then heading around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.  It was really cool to log the runs on MapMyRun.com and get the exact distances (6.19 miles) without figuring it out on a map with a piece of string like the old days.

I managed to get away for a week to do some scuba diving down in Mexico. My entire family heads down south of Cancun, Mexico once a year to dive, sit on the beach, and drink margaritas. We rent a condo in Puerto Aventuras and just do ocean things. Even though this was our third year doing the trip, we do not try to do any sightseeing. It is all about diving, relaxing, and spending time with the family. My parents initially started the trip so that they could spend time with the grandkids.

Continue Reading »