T w e n t y S i d e d

I wasn’t able to talk about everything I saw from E3 this year. There’s just too much for one guy to see and write about. I did manage to watch most of it, but I’d have to keep up the current writing pace for two or three weeks to cover everything properly.

I didn’t stream the Sony press conference. I watched it. It was a good show. But I wan’t up to streaming and giving live commentary. I just wanted to put it on my second monitor, slouch down in my chair, and let the information wash over me.

I also skipped Square Enix and Nintendo. The former because I was busy with mundane tasks in meatspace, and the latter because Nintendo coverage just isn’t a priority on this site. Nintendo is important as an industry-wide force, but I don’t have any reason to talk about their individual titles.

But before we end this week-long orgy of marketing, half-truths, and sensory-saturating trailers, let’s talk about a couple of the things I missed:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2018: Wrap-Up”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Here are the rest of my thoughts on the Ubisoft show. As before, the whole 1 hour, 50 minute ordeal is in this video at the top, and my text synopsis is below.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2018 Day 3: Ubisoft Press Event Part 2”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is it. The last of the E3 streams for me. This one ran long in terms of commentary, so I’m going to make it a two-parter. As before, I streamed this show along with Ross, who worked on Good Robot with me. He works at Ubisoft now, and was streaming this event from inside the Ubi offices.

We start off the pre-show with some talk about Uplay and the Ubi offices that I can’t easily summarize here. As before, I’ve got a brief text-based reaction below the video:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2018 Day 3: Ubisoft Press Event Part 1”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I went into this presentation with a massive chip on my shoulder. I’m always sharply critical of Bethesda on a creative level, particularly when it comes to things like narrative, dialog, playtesting, QA testing, interface design, art style, pacing, combat mechanics, PC support, sound design, presentation, user choice, character design, system requirements, physics, scripting, animation, game feel, respect for legacy source material, enemy design, lighting, and Todd Howard’s annoying half-smirk. I was ready to hate on these guys for an hour and a half.

But when it comes right down to it, I think they won me over. I liked several of the offerings. I was genuinely excited about others. I even enjoyed some of the presentations for games I don’t care about. And in the end, I wound up laughing at Todd Howard’s jokes instead of laughing at Todd Howard directly. It was a good show, with solid titles, well presented, with just enough levity and self-awareness to disarm me.

If you watch the video, take note of how many times this happens:

Me, shouting at Tood Howard, “So are you guys going to finally get around to fixing [longstanding annoyance]?!?”

(5 seconds later)

Todd Howard says to the audience, “And yes, [longstanding annoyance] is no longer an issue.”

Me: “Huh.”

The text summary is below the video:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2018 Day 2: Bethesda Press Event”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

More connection problems plagued this event for me, so the show was fragmented into several streams with annoying continuity gaps between them. Rather than posting the raw mess, I’ve trimmed it down to the coherent bits and omitted the stuff I don’t care about.

As before, the text version is below for the non-video folks.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2018 Day 2: Microsoft Press Event”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Streaming is always a complicated process. You’ve usually got about six different bits of technology all strung together. My usual setup is Open Broadcaster + a webpage for chat + my webcam feed + ManyCam Studio + a AAA videogame. Add in the challenge of balancing multiple audio sources, keeping FPS reasonable, all the technology on Twitch’s end, and the capricious nature of Windows, and it’s a miracle I can do it at all.

All of this is to say I didn’t get it just right this time. The audio gets a bit wonky in spots and there’s that mishap in the middle. Whoops. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of this just about the time E3 winds down.

Below are my thoughts in text form, for you non-video types.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “E3 2018 Day 1: EA Press Event”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.