On EA Louse

I’m not going to give you a diatribe about the whole EA Louse/IceFrog thing that started a few days ago. Game development is something I don’t know much about.

But that’s the point of today’s post. How many gamers know anything about game development? EA Louse’s blog, for most, is a tiny peephole into the great, wide world developers enter every day when they go to work. In the realm of media representation the ground-working group, who probably make up a majority, are entirely silent. We sometimes feel the residual rumblings in our world when reports of a tremulous round of layoffs come in, but we never get any comment from that shader who got discharged or the five-year veteran of a dev’s art department who got a little pink paper rather than a paycheck.

We always hear from the big folks, though. Hideki Kamiya, Shigeru Miyamoto, David Jaffe, Cliffy B. And it’s almost always all smiles and mysterious tweets, isn’t it? But is that how it is for the average developer? What does the average developer even do? I honestly don’t know, but I’d absolutely love to find out. There’s just so little information out there until those rare moments every fifth full moon when the planets align and someone gets pissed and takes up anonymity to become the next whistle-blower. Then we get the bitter, angry description of development—“layoffs are always looming, management’s a joke, it’s like living in a police-state.” But is that even the full picture? Is that even what we should care about?

I think so, but not just that.

I think the process of game development should be more accessible general knowledge than it is. If you consider games to be an artform, you must agree. After all—no other major artform is such a mystery. I love books—I can write a book. I love music—I can make a song. I love art—I can paint a picture. These are things everyone knows how to do, whether they have the desire or determination or not. But games development is such a nebulous, esoteric concept that I wouldn’t know where to start.

Hell, how many of us know everything necessary to even make a flash game?

Exactly.

But it’s not like people just hate getting information from low-level developers—it just never comes up. Even something as big as EA Louse’s blog isn’t covered on Gamespot or IGN. Instead, GS gives us “uDraw doodling on Wii Nov. 14.” Well fuck them. Because they’ll ignore the small guys when they bitch about work conditions but if Gabe Newell says the PS3 is balls, LORD HAVE MERCEY. It’s allover the fucking place.

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m done being in the dark. I’m going to learn about these people more. Who is EA Spouse? Who’s Sanya? Who’s Abdul Ismail? Why do I know more about Gordon Freeman than the tens of people who created him from the ground up? Or, hell, any game character. If you care more about playing the games than hearing about all the bullshit politics around them, that’s perfectly legitimate. But can you really say you don’t care about who made the game? These faceless developer names you hear—SledgeHammer, Bungie, 5th Cell, Ninja Theory—all have many people that actually do the developing. And I think we need to learn a few of those faces if this industry’s ever going to do some developing itself.

Cheevo's made me a Hoarder

Not so long ago, in fact approximately 1 month BC (before cheevo’s) I could regularly be found heading down to my local independant game retailer, 5 or 6 members of my beloved game collection in hand, most of them still half complete on my xbox hard drive, ready to do something I loved to do…..trade.

Getting a good price on my old games & leaving the shop with some shiny new ones, or some dusty pre-owned ones was a regular occurance back then.

But no longer, and it’s all thanks to those sometimes easy, sometimes painfully difficult & sometimes downright ridiculous achievments (or trophies if i’m in the PS3 mood).

I just can’t part with games knowing there’s still points to be earned, points that in most cases I know I will never see, points in games that may never even see the inside of the disc tray again, but you never know so I better keep hold of them.

This has of course led to me having what can only be described as a huge collection of games and an emergency shelving shortage and has led me to be what can only be described as a hoarder, but you know what…..I love it.

Thanks to the almighty achievment i’ve played and more importantly enjoyed games that I wouldn’t otherwise have given a second look, persevered with games that only a few years earlier would’ve been tucked neatly under my arm on a trip to the trade in store & given me that joyous feeling of nailing one of you’re more difficult tests. So thankyou cheevo’s, you’ve made me a more open minded gamer and a more hardcore gamer, oh, and you make a beautiful sound when you unlock.