A year ago, we started the Bethesda Blog, the official blog of Bethesda Softworks. I noticed that when I posted about work on this blog, my traffic tended to go up. Even now, I get lots of traffic from google searches, hitting past entries like the unofficial credits lists or the various troubleshooting posts -- which are basically reprints of the great stickied threads on our official forums (that is, hidden away on our forums so they wouldn't come up on keyword searches, at least, not easily). Since so much of the web is now dependent on google searches and keyword tags, I hoped that creating a blog with useful information would make it easier for people to find out more about our games.
Also, it gives us a central depository of information about our games and company -- the intended audience is not only our fans, but also the team itself. I love being able to go to the bethblog and see links to articles and press about our stuff.
Finally, the blog is a great public way of celebrating ourselves as a team and as a company. The Q&A's are a great way to get to know the developers here as people, and I love the posts about extra-curricular activities like the TF2 challenges. As much as our focus is about the games we make, ultimately, what makes Bethesda a great place is the people working here.
Happy Birthday, Bethblog
Wall-E for best picture of the year
Wow. Instant classic. I hope my future grandkids study this film in high school. I think its Pixar's best film. The animated short that came with it was terrific, too.
Wall-E is a love story between two robots who can't talk, but their story was more believable and better acted than most live-action romances. The character arcs they both go through felt so real to me. Deep, believeable characters who experience a true change through story telling -- its my personal holy grail that I wish video games had more of, that movies and TV are able to do so much better.
And the visuals - my god. Stunning. The first half of the movie is poetry to me -- especially considering I've been working on a post apocalyptic game for the past four years.
Anyway, go see it. Well worth it. Too bad, Martie is terrified of him. The beginning of the movie is a bit scary and bleak. One child did start crying and had to be taken out when we watched it.
Mia's Pizzas in Bethesda
Megen and I had dinner at Mia's Pizzas last night in Bethesda. We met up with our day of wedding coordinators to discuss our wedding -- rather, Megen and our coordinators talked while I sat there for moral support.
This was our first visit - we tried their brick oven pizzas. Really good. The crust was chewy and delicious. The pizza we tried had broccolini, mozarella, hot peppers and chicken. The crust, however, was my favorite part.
When the ship runs out of ocean
Diablo III announced. Nice. It looks pretty amazing, especially the gameplay video. Loved the destructible environments.
I must say I am disappointed that Blizzard has stayed on the conservative side in terms of design with their updates to Diablo and Starcraft. Diablo will be interesting since World of Warcraft has a lot of Diablo-like qualities. I have no doubt, however, that they will be incredibly fun, addictive and polished games. Blizzard is the top of the class when it comes to game development - nobody does it better.
In fact, World of Warcraft is currently banned from any computer I own due to its highly addictive qualities. Its easily one of my favorite RPGs.
I know they are working on another Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. I hope its World of Starcraft.
UPDATE:
Dear Blizzard,
Please forgive me.
XOXO,
Ash
Let me worship you again, great Pixar
Just fandango'd tickets for Pixar's new flick Wall-E. Meg and I will be seeing it this weekend.
And now I shall rank their movies (update: I forgot Cars, now added to list)
1. The Incredibles
2. Finding Nemo
3. Toy Story 2
4. Ratatouille
5. Toy Story
6. Cars
7. Monster's Inc
8. A Bug's Life
Cookie Monster on Colbert
Hilarious segment with cookie monster. I think the Sesame Street characters are great when they appear on shows for grown ups.
Greatest vending machine ever
Though I wish there was a stick with a mechanical arm for me to control.
Steve Carell on The Daily Show
I loved Steve Carell when he was on The Daily Show -- especially when he did the grocer segments.
Credit Crisis? Subprime Meltdown?
Washington Post three part series on credit crisis/subprime mess - good stuff. Even better was This American Life's story, The Giant Pool of Money.
The part that bothers me most is the amount of fraud and lack of financial sense that must've been going on when brokers were selling mortgages to folks without checking salary or credit records, people who clearly could not afford them. Sub-prime mortgages have the highest rates -- which brokers and Wall Street love -- but the only people who qualify for the sub-prime are the ones with bad credit and low income, people who shouldn't be taking mortgages or refi's out.
Where was the consumer advocacy here? The brokers only cared about re-selling the mortgage and making their fees, and the people taking out no-interest ARMs - surely they knew they had to refinance before their rates went up?
Here's the thing. Buying a house is one of the most stressful and confusing things I've ever had to do. I firmly believe its all a scam for realtors, lawyers and brokers to make money on fees and padding, its designed to keep an industry alive. I'm a relatively intelligent, college educated man - I read all the books, blogs and websites. I get it. I just don't understand why it has to be so convoluted.
I think every high school should spend a good month on consumer education - how do I apply for a mortgage or car loan? What do credit ratings mean? Banking, savings, retirement accounts, doing your taxes. Why don't they teach that kind of stuff? Most regular people never use calculus or algebra, but we all apply for loans, open bank accounts and use credit cards.
The Bubble - washingtonpost.com
Happiness is a warm...
Watched Across the Universe last night. One forgets just how great the Beatles are -- they are like Shakespeare, they can do it all - love, pain, regret, drama, euphoria, humor. Perhaps its because I was alone with the cats, tired from working long hours, but I absolutely loved this movie. It was exactly what I needed to unwind and recharge the batteries.
I loved the visuals, the cinematography and the music - boy, the music. What a great way to tell a story - using Beatles songs. Eddie Izzard's Mr. Kite interlude was incredible, I watched it a couple times. I loved the a capella nature of the singing, how it was truly a musical, not just a series of music videos. How much of the story was told through the songs and musical numbers.
I only regret I waited so long to watch it (and that Megen wasn't here to see it -- though that does give me an excuse to watch it again).
My heart thrown open wide
Back in high school, I used to go on trips to the beach with friends and my thing was to make mix tapes to listen to. Mix tapes, as in cassette tapes. I would record the tracks off CDs or other tapes on my boom box -- I loved that boom box. It was literally the first thing I ever bought with money that I had earned on my own - at my first job working fast food at Roy Rogers (I believe I was 14 and rode my bike to work). Yes, it is no surprise for anyone who knows me that my first voluntary purchase, after getting my first paycheck, was an electronic device, something that needed to be plugged or run off batteries. I remember using a personal check, since after getting my first paycheck, I immediately opened a checking account. My grandmother was not very happy when I got my bank statement and she saw me spending my money on stuff like a boom box, and CDs, and books, and video games...
Anywho, I've been spending time mucking about my Itunes library on my MacBook, and decided I would create a mix playlist for Megen when she drives home next weekend for a wedding shower - the Megen's Shower playlist. Much easier putting together a playlist and syncing it to her Ipod, then starting/stopping the record button for a cassette recorder. Plus she'll be driving for 10+ hours round trip so the playlist I'm putting together will be looong.
Shhh, the playlist is a surprise though so don't tell her.
Thoughts
My wise friend -- and best man -- Matt told me yesterday, "You will always be finishing a game but this, you don't always get to do this." Definitely gave me some perspective.
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