Interviews – Obsolete Gamer

World of Warplanes Interview

World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition launched on February 12 and we’ve been very excited by this release. We would love to continue to add more games to this platform, but we are currently focused on offering console players a solid World of Tanks experience on the Xbox 360. Obviously, Wargaming is forging new ground with Microsoft and XBOX360 in bringing, AAA quality, free-to-play battles to console, so we are focused on getting it right and proving that free-to-play works in this space.

Interviews

Lady Death

Geoff Mendicino on His Tourney for Charity: LOVE of Florida 2012

A number of factors came into effect for me to ultimately create a charity tournament. It’s close to the holiday season. As an aspiring FSU Criminologist grad student, a lot of the disadvantaged and less fortunate kids out there get brought to our attention. Tallahassee is also a very unknown part of the Florida scene, especially the tournament scene. This is the perfect opportunity to put Tallahassee on the map, before I leave for good to pursue my goals in California the same month.

I’ve been a part of the Fighting Game Community for 5 years now, and I wanted to give something back. Not only to the FGC, but also outside our community to the needy. Overall, mixing the tight family-like community from fighting games to bring awareness and help to those in need. That’s my inspiration.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

Nexus 2 The Gods Awaken Q&A

There is a fantastic modding community for Nexus 1 and we know what this did for our game. We are still amazed by what some of these modders did. Really impressive. So, for Nexus 2 we will not only continue to support the modders, but in fact we want to create an even better moddable game. With more and better tools, easier access to parts of the game that were hard to mod in the original. If all goes as planned we will be using the Unreal tech for Nexus 2 and one of the reasons for this is that this tech does allow us easy support for the modding community.

Interviews

Honorabili

We Interview Chris Avellone From Obsidian Entertainment: Part 2

Well, in terms of influential yet obscure, that cuts a lot of games out – I feel a lot of the more common games have had a big influence on my designs (Portal, Chronotrigger, Ultima Underworld). If I were to name some “obscure” ones, I’d probably say System Shock 2 is the top of the list (it’s basically a design doc for how to make a great game), Amnesia: The Dark Descent for introducing a challenge mechanism that could simultaneously terrify you, Bastion’s narration mechanics, and Wasteland for proving to me how you could use game mechanics in the context of a “conventional” RPG to make some truly brilliant levels if you took a step back and thought outside the box.

Interviews

Honorabili

We Interview Chris Avellone From Obsidian Entertainment: Part 1

Neal Stephenson (with Snow Crash) is not only a huge host of design ideas on just about every page of his books, but he taught me when it was important to describe something and when it was not – there’s a end chapter line in Snow Crash that simply says “and a car chase ensued.” He had no need to describe anything further, that was enough, and it was simple, elegant, and I appreciated he didn’t try to force details and action when none was needed. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to this day makes me understand why it’s better to have less voice and less focus on ultra-realistic visuals if you truly want a player to empathize with a subject. Sometimes it’s easier to empathize with a stick figure than a highly-rendered 3D model, and it’s because the viewer is able to project more of themselves onto an abstract than something someone else has excessively detailed.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn Q&A

The first order of business is bringing creative collaborators to the table. Lydia and I brought in Todd and Aaron Helbing to write the script and Stewart Hendler to direct the series. In concert with 343, we developed the story and began to define a visual aesthetic. Our series focuses on cadets in an academy setting; like any great story about adolescence, you’re dealing with varied personalities of the characters struggling to define what will become their adult identity.

Interviews

Patrick Scott Patterson

David Crane speaks on the triumphs and pitfalls of his multi-decade career

“I would have never predicted the classic gaming movement where people continue to play their favorite games 30 years later and who bring in a new generation by exposing their kids to the classics,” he stated. “Sure, we tweaked the games to a fine point and we felt those games were the best games on the market at the time, but it still surprises me when classic gaming enthusiasts tell me that for pure game play, modern games fail to live up to the standards we set back in the day.”

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

The Interview: Amanda MacKay – Battle for Everything

Battle For Everything is a tower defense game packed with unique twists and alien battles by sea, land and air to save planet Earth. It was created by Coke Zero as part of its sponsorship of Battleship, which hits theaters May 18. Gamers can use My Coke Rewards points to access additional levels and upgrade weapons for the chance to win exclusive prizes, including Coke Zero coupons, movie tickets, concert tickets, dream vacations and more. My Coke Rewards points can be found on 12-, 16- and 20-ounce bottles, fridge packs and 24-packs of Coke Zero and other Coca-Cola products.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

The Interview: Robby Zinchak: 8-Bit MMO

There are several NPCs in-game that will teach you the basics of how to play, or give you quests. RobbyZ will teach you the basics of how to play. Draco the Architect is a dragon who likes to build, and he’ll teach you how to use the construction system by giving you various quests. Tutorial Zombie is a mercenary of sorts, and he’ll give you contracts to go out and kill the nefarious LawyerCats that plague the wilderness. I am planning additional monsters & quest NPCs in future.

Interviews

Jorn Asche

The Interview: Tortured Hearts

Tortured Hearts™: Or, How I Saved the Universe. Again. is an epicly epic, satirical RPG, dedicated to the proposition that most RPGs take themselves far too seriously. Since almost every imaginable plot scenario and character has already been used and overused to the point that cliches are unavoidable, Tortured Hearts™ instead revels in pointing out that the life of adventurers is one endless heroic cliche, some sort of existential trap created by the gods of RPG worlds. Tortured Hearts™ is set in the unique custom world of Eupherea, where things are different. For example, the gnome race hasn’t yet been written out of the Big Picture. Celestial bureaucracy, which functions much like ordinary mortal bureaucracy, has a hidden hand in the affairs of things and especially in the lives of adventurers.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

The Interview: Twin Galaxies Video Game Trading Cards

The Twin Galaxies Video Game Trading Card Set was originally created to celebrate Twin Galaxies’ 30th Anniversary. But the vision for the card set soon expanded to encompass the history of the worldwide video game industry, with cards created to honor the iconic industry pioneers, the world champions, the video game personalities, landmark milestones and events and significant people who, through their creative contributions, have enriched the global video game community. The card set already honors people including Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell in addition to the most recent world record holders on the hottest new games on the Nintendo Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Interviews

Matt Bradford

The Interview: Nolan Bushnell

This is going to sound very dismissive, but…they were really crappy games [laughs]. Quite candidly, the technology was not extensible. It was viewed a tiny little step on the pathway to a multi-game, which is where everyone was going. Everyone wanted to do a multi-game. Once you have a multi-game, it has to be good enough, and [the Fairchild Channel F] just wasn’t. The Magnavox Odyssey, they basically had huge returns, and actually in some ways—and i hadn’t realized it at the time—but kind of poisoned the well for consumer games going forward.

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The Interview: Dr Peter Favaro

Well, Alter Ego was to be followed by a game called Child’s Play -a humorous simulation about raising children, but Activision fell on financial hard times and had to be scrapped. The project manager was someone named Brenda Laurel, whom everyone first referred to as “The Lizard Queen” in the early days of the Internet. Since then I have had some game ideas. One is finally coming to fruition. It’s Internet based and code named K-OS.

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Ten Questions: Dave Barton – Zork Universe

Roleplaying gave way to gaming once I got a Spectrum and then an Amiga. I started playing at the tail end of text-based games, when it started to become all about the graphics, so I never really thought I could make my own. The intervening years were spent as a consumer of games. Fast forward to a few years ago and I jumped at the chance to work on games for Jolt, first on UI and art direction then as a game designer. The skills I had learned working in print and online media seemed to come together and allow me to revive my passion for creating virtual worlds.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

The Interview: Johnathan Wendel: Fatal1ty

Play about 8 hours a day in the virtual world working on my movement, timing, strategies, fighting skills and hearing the sounds of the game. I want to be so knowledgeable about the game that if I hear a pin drop or an item picked up from anywhere on the map, I know exactly where my opponent is at all times and where he could be in the next 5 seconds. Predicting your opponent’s moves is very important.

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Ten Questions: Yehuda Berlinger: It’s Alive

After some experimenting, I began to realize that there is nothing holy in the end results of a game. Often as not, they are just that way because the designer or publisher had to choose something. Often, it was the first number they came up with, or whatever matched the type of game that they liked to play. Since different people like different things, it seems obvious to me that games should be played differently by different people. There is no “right” way to play the game, despite what the rules say. There are better and worse rule sets, but even then, if people like playing the worse one, why stop them?

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The Interview: John Wilson – Zenobi Software

The ‘Zenobi Love’ .. just what the f*ck is that? Zenobi Software was a part of my life, is still a part of my life and always will be a part of my life – it has nothing to do with ‘love’ it was (and still is) the ‘driving-force’ behind my existence.It was a dark rainy night and Balrog was slumped over a plate of mince & tatties when there was a gentle ‘tap’ on the kitchen door. “Bloody visitors .. and at this time of night as well!” growled Balrog as he flicked the errant pea(s) back on to his plate and shuffled off in the direction of the knock. “John Wilson ?” enquired the chubby-faced gent stood in the pouring rain.