October 10, 2008 - 4:00 pm
Here goes the logic:
Peter M. creates a new Fable II and adds in a companion dog
Fans rejoice!
Peter M. gets feedback from gamer that he finds hurting his virtual dog funny
Peter finds this fantastic
“The other bloke standing next to him said, ‘Ah, you’re such a wimp. I just left my dog and he was hurt and he had to crawl around and I found it funny. It just made me laughed he was so injured all of the time.’”
“That was a fantastic moment for me because I realized that’s what I wanted. Some people are going to be fanatical about the dog, but I didn’t want to ram him down your throat. I didn’t want to insist that you had him.”
Why did Peter Molyneux bother putting the dog into the game if he doesn’t want it to be a pivotal part of the game? The only reason I and many other gamers want to pick up Fable II is because of the ability to use the dog to battle and find loot. To me the dog is what sets this apart from the first iteration of Fable on the Xbox, I guess I fall into the category of those people that will be fanatical about it.
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September 15, 2008 - 9:00 am
Microsoft has a reputation as an evil giant that will squish the little man at any given chance and stories like this one make it hard not to believe. Seems that MS has recently fired a former game tester for talking on recording with a press site about the issues that MS was having during the early launch of its Xbox 360 consoles. This is no secret to anyone that there were many quality problems with the launch consoles and MS tried hard to keep things under wraps, but this man decided to pull back the curtain a bit and tell some stories about his time at MS.
Delaware, a 29-year-old Seattle resident, expects to face civil charges from his former employer VMC (which tests games for Microsoft) and Microsoft as well. He will likely have to hire a lawyer. Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said the company does not talk about personnel issues.
Microsoft had him fired on Wednesday. Delaware worked as a game tester at Microsoft but was employed by the temp agency Excell Data. He reported directly to a Microsoft manager, who told him he was being let go because of the VentureBeat article.
We need more people like Robert Delaware who are willing to stand up and speak their minds and tellt he truth about what is going on behind the scenes. This to me is a bit of a witch hunt, a huge billion dollar company is hunting down the average Joe to silence him and send a msessage to anyone else getting ideas. Shame on MS for strong arming him after firing him.
What do you think?
[Via VentureBeat]
The banter on Xbox Live has gotten so out of control and counterproductive, that Shadowrun designer Bill Fulton has declared “Rochambeau” on the world’s largest multiplayer service. He was a leader on matchmaking at Microsoft, so he knows what he is talking about. My argument is that, well, no shit. Did they actually expect to drop people in a world on anonymous competition and expect them all to play nice? I do not wear my headset unless I am in a game with people I know and/or have played with and demonstrated some adult like qualities.
Talking trash after a game is fine. You don’t have to stay in the lobby. Yet when a gamer thinks its funny to shout racial obscenities that would make Eddie Murphy blush just for the hell of it renders the service basically unusable. Here is Fulton’s main point:
Non-gamers simply don’t love games enough to put up with the crap they get online. The reason they would consider playing online is to have fun with other people - and right now, playing games online with strangers rarely delivers that for anyone outside the hardcore demographic.”
Herein lies the problem. How do you plan on fixing this? If you outlaw cursing, people will claim censorship. Start taking away memberships and you will have a mass revolt on your hands. Leave it alone and nothing happens. I sure hope he has a plan because I see no reasonable solution to this ongoing problem.
[via Gamasutra]
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