132 - Daylight

[Grabthehoopka]

If I'm not, I'll have to go work on Call of Duty or something... :-/

Gasp! Design-by-commitee! A fate worse than death!

[matt]

Justin (the other half of 24 Caret Games) and several other of my friends work at Infinity Ward. They seem to like working there, but I don't even like playing Call of Duty, so I can't imagine working on it for the rest of my life.

I have long thought of where I'd like to work if I could choose any place, and I don't have any good answers. Frictional would be cool, but I don't want to move to Europe. Valve is awesome, but after Retro/Grade, I'm not sure I want to work on the same game for more than 3 years. Double Fine is neat, but I don't like San Francisco.

Maybe if Infinitap doesn't work out, I should build a time machine and learn Japanese, so I can work on Team Silent. hahaha

[Grabthehoopka]

I don't like San Francisco.

I hate San Francisco too! I go to school there, and everyone's always going on about how wonderful it all is and the culture and how they "fell in love" with the city and all that, but it's filthy and crowded and it smells like poo. I can't conceive how anybody would want to live there unless their job was also there and it was convenient.

Maybe if Infinitap doesn't work out, I should build a time machine and learn Japanese, so I can work on Team Silent. hahaha

I suppose if you did, there would be no way of knowing. You would have to change your name so as to not reveal your time travel to yourself. Maybe you should go back and look for particularly complex procedurally generated chain link fence particle systems or something like that. Some kind of clue. And when you find something noteworthy, you can travel to Japan and begin unearthing a twisting, turning, web of conspiracies that eventually culminates in a long, slow dolly in on an old timey framed photo of you with the dev team.

[matt]

I can't conceive how anybody would want to live there unless their job was also there and it was convenient.

I don't think San Francisco CAN be convenient. You can't live anywhere near the city unless you are multimillionaire, so you have to commute from similarly ridiculously expensive areas. (I guess unless you live in Oakland, but that seems a little scary). So you are stuck with a nasty commute AND an expensive cost of living. Los Angeles area has similar problems depending on where you work, but the cost of living isn't AS bad, and if you work at Infinity Ward (Woodland Hills) or Insomniac (Burbank), then you can live close to work without spending a million dollars on a house. If you work at any in Santa Monica (Naughty Dog, Riot, Sony Santa Monica, Treyarch, etc) then you are kind of screwed. You'll probably have to buy a million dollar house, AND commute 30-45 minutes.

I really want to move to Austin because they have extremely affordable cost of living and a great indie community, but my wife vetoed it. Maybe we'll move to Nevada? We can stay close to California, but with a much lower cost of living.

And when you find something noteworthy, you can travel to Japan and begin unearthing a twisting, turning, web of conspiracies that eventually culminates in a long, slow dolly in on an old timey framed photo of you with the dev team.

I'll have to be on the lookout for that. hahah

[RightClickSaveAs]

You could start surreptitiously slipping your ideas into Call of Duty, little by little, until the series over time transforms into a survival horror with limited guns and no multiplayer! By tapping into that market of people who automatically buy everything in the franchise, in time you can force the larger public to realize the error of their ways and how great horror games can be. Change the system from the inside, REVOLUTION! REVOLUTION!

Are any studios based out of Portland or Seattle? Those both sound like great places, although I haven't been myself, and I base that off of everyone I know who's been there raving about the cities.

[matt]

I think it's tough to transform a popular franchise with probably a thousand people working on it into something else. hahaha

In Oregon, the only studio I can think of is SCE Bend Studio. That's like 3 hours away from Portland though. I did find this, but I don't recognize too many of the names other than the Fullbright Company.

In Seattle, there is quite a few: Valve, Microsoft, Bungie, Sucker Punch, and Monolith (the developers of F.E.A.R.). Game Dev map lists quite a few more.

While I interned at Microsoft during the summer, Seattle actually had a drought, and it barely rained. However, it is my understanding that outside the summer, it is gloomy ALL THE TIME and rains a ton. I saw a therapist when I was there, and she said a lot of people have terrible problems with seasonal affective disorder. My wife vetoed Seattle as well.

Some people can stomach Seattle, but some people really don't like it for the reasons above. One of our artists (Chris) stayed there for a while and didn't like it at all.

[Grabthehoopka]

You could start surreptitiously slipping your ideas into Call of Duty, little by little, until the series over time transforms into a survival horror with limited guns and no multiplayer!

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/cal ... ld/#!NJiYN

Eeeeehhh...funny you should say that...

[matt]

I read about that, but I doubt it'll ever see the light of day. The Call of Duty franchise is worth too much to Activision to touch something as controversial as the Vietnam war. It's a shame Sledgehammer couldn't bring it back and just NOT call it Call of Duty, but I suspect they'll be working on Call of Duty until it becomes unprofitable, which I suspect could be along time away.

While some feel the franchise has been stagnating, I suspect the move to a 3 year cycle per studio is going to give the games a shot in the arm as well as increase production values, which may be the main reason people play CoD games. While I didn't enjoy Ghosts, I was amazed by the production values and how epic the scope was.

Maybe people will eventually get sick of the franchise, and Activision will get desperate and let Sledgehammer do a 3rd person Vietnam horror like game, but it's possible once that happens, Sledgehammer will have other ideas for what they want to work on.

However, I'm keeping my fingers crossed they revisit that game idea.

[Grabthehoopka]

The Call of Duty franchise is worth too much to Activision to touch something as controversial as the Vietnam war

Yeah, but then again, they had the Bay of Pigs invasion in Black Ops, which was about on par with Vietnam in terms of shitty US military operations...but then again, it was lesser known...and I've never played Black Ops, but I was under the impression that at least one level took place in Vietnam?

That's what was neat about this hypothetical game, the inspiration came from them finding out about this military operation nobody ever talks about where we found a huge, extensive underground tunnel network that stretched between Laos and Cambodia, and since they didn't have it mapped and had no idea how extensive it was or what was inside, they had no other option than to just send soldiers into the tunnels, and they were too far underground for a radio signal to go through, so there were whole squads of soldiers that just went in and never came out...

However, I'm keeping my fingers crossed they revisit that game idea.

Or they inspire someone else to rip them off. We need more horrific war games, PLEASE!

[matt]

Ghosts was the first Call of Duty game I've played, so I can't say for sure. However, I believe you are right about Black Ops having some Vietnam content. I imagine they glossed over the horrors of the Vietnam war, when it seems like Sledgehammer wasn't planning on shying away from it.

Hopefully there are more games about the horrors of war because I think it is important. In my long term plan, I would like to make a game about that, but it's not next on my list. I think to do that right, we'd need more time and resources than we may have for our next project.