Meh to New Year.

The notion of celebration on New Years Eve (Is it New Year's? Apostrophe confusion has gripped the many...) is an old and tired one for me. Maybe it's because I'm old and tired. I've been party to many frustrating New Year Celebrations - one of which I will never forget. It happened in The Krazy House in Liverpool and one hilarious female reveller thought it would be funny to steal the glasses from my face and disappear into the throng. I was seething and (even worse) pissed so I spent a lot of time shouting at blurry strangers. I got my glasses back but they were scratched to buggery. I rarely get lucky with people on New Year too. You'd think that would be the best time to play tonsil hockey, but alas. Nope. I've had little luck in that respect. Fireworks also lose their appeal after you've seen them for the first... I dunno... ten times? So sod it. I'm staying in.

Party Pooper!

Yep. Even my headings pour scorn on my decision to stay in, but I'll be slowly drinking while watching the terrible television schedules and/or drunkenly increasing my Gamerscore through online Xbox Live antics. The service has recently been up and down and Xbox Live frontman Major Nelson (aka Larry Hyrb) has tried to calm down a lot of angry people who have received Xbox 360 consoles for Christmas and discovered that they can't play online, although the problem is a lot more than that - the fact that the console needs to be online to do certain things. When the service goes down, people piss and moan - although they have a right to if they've paid for the service. I've not noticed that much because I don't normally play online with randoms because it can be a scary process. I remember a long session of Uno where a lot of the players were half-naked men in darkened rooms. I know of this because they all owned Xbox Live Vision cameras. It's quite something to actually know who you're playing with. Still, I'll see if I can pluck up the courage to go online tonight.

365 Update!

Well, one of my resolutions is to get 365 finished - it's all well and good to have all 365 pieces of artwork to hand but I spent last night arranging them into folders. I need to scan in a load more and track down what pieces of artwork were done on what date. I'm going to be using CreateSpace to get the book published - I used blurb and although they did a great job with the printing of my 365Lite! book for my Mum as a Christmas pressie, CreateSpace offers a lot more than blurb - including the acceptance of .pdf files (meaning InDesign!), your own ISBN number and - because the company is owned by Amazon - the book will be sold through their website! I'm also wondering about connecting the book to charity so profits raised will go to good causes. I ran many miles for Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support and I'm thinking I can raise money for them without all that painful training stuff. As way of an apology, here's a sneaky peek at a piece of 365 artwork never seen anywhere else -

I'm looking forward to getting everything arranged. One of the lovely things about Vista is that with the large icons, it'll display a sexy large icon with a preview image of what's in that folder - this'll prove invaluable for seeing what gaps are left in what months and tracking down that artwork. While on the subject of "Good Things About Vista" - the tabbed folder navigation is pretty awesome too and helped me cut through the monotony of arranging images in various folders. Actually, it feels a lot like when I was younger and I filled out sticker albums. There are gaps which will slowly get closed off. I'm actually very excited by it all - it'll show a snapshot of my year as an artist. There were times when it felt like a chore, but they were few.

Get Me Back To Work!

Honestly... I'm fed up of being holed up here with no work to go to. "You must be mad!" I hear you shout. Nope. Work kept me busy and industrious. Anyone who's been in a state of depression will understand the importance of this. When I was unemployed, it did no good to me and was a factor in my second Trip To The Abyss Albeit In A Different Coloured Submarine. I was thinking about getting my job at Midway and the interview I had with them was such an incredible thing - they were friendly, warm and generous in their comments. The previous interviews I had with other companies were a different matter. Shall I name names? One interview was wonderously confused by the interviewers changing the job role halfway through the interview thus making my carefully-collated portfolio pretty redundant. Another interview almost felt like a bear trap - like they wanted me to fail, slip up or make a wrong move. I think in this industry there's sometimes a feeling that some people are piss-takers. I've worked with a few in my career who have basically blagged their way into the job and they've been instrumental in ruining games. It's a shame, but there you go. I'm glad I'm in a studio where (mostly) everyone has an enthusiasm and a feeling they don't want to produce a turd of a game.

Avoiding The Brown Stuff

Wheelman is always in my thoughts. I guess it can't be helped when I've been working on it this long... there's still obstacles to vault over and negotiate although I'm determined to do a good job. One thing about working for a company which practically saved your life is that you don't take the piss - I'm not exaggerating either. I was quite close to something horrible and I was pulled away from that. I looked at the Midway site last night and was freaked out by the forums and the general concensus on the company's image. It is frustrating in a way - I was very lucky to see Stranglehold's progress on our company twiki and when it eventually became a physical entity on shelves, I was proud and happy to see the game's lifecycle. The guys in Chicago worked crazy hours to get the game produced, and it shows. I was even lucky to thank one of the designers for producing the Museum Level - which I really, really enjoyed. So you have Stranglehold which I consider to be a very un-Midway title. There's been un-Midway titles in the past like Psi-Ops and The Suffering which have been bold in their direction although the sales figures painted a different picture. Talk to people who played both games though and they will state how much they enjoyed them.

On The Other Hand...

...there's Cruis'n.

Yep, that's not a PSOne title. It's on the Wii and sometimes it frustrates me that stuff like this comes out when Midway are trying to "not do an Atari" and end up in the shit. Sadly it's more commercially viable for them to release the game as is instead of spending more time working on it. All the rep built up by Stranglehold gets put back... the same happened with Hour of Victory too - it could have had more time to be tinkered with, but it came out and received a panning. Recently Blacksite also suffered the same fate - not enough time to make it the game it could have been. I was gutted when co-op was dropped and when I got my hands on a copy, there are moments when it truly shines (the first appearance of the spire hitting that shopping plaza in slow motion comes to mind) but there are also moments when there's literally nothing happening. The driving bits are frustrating at first, but you soon get kinda used to them. Harvey Smith did comment about development on Blacksite being "fucked" in an obvious attempt to get kicked out by Midway so he can work on Deus Ex 3 - but when you have worked in the industry for as long as I have, you realise that all development is fucked to a certain degree. I think it was a shame that Blacksite appeared so close to the release of Call of Duty 4 - which is a simply astounding assault on the senses. It does a lot of things very well indeed and really immerses you.

What I'm Trying To Say...

I'm a gamer. I've played games for a long time on a variety of systems and I love the immersion. Getting into the industry was great for me as a gamer because I got a kick (and still do) out of the creative processes behind the games which have given me so much enjoyment over the years. The mistake people make with companies like Midway, Rockstar, Ubisoft and EA (to name a few) is that their output is from one studio when it's actually a collective from many different studios. Midway Newcastle is the only UK-based Midway studio and I think that's going to be hugely important in the games we produce. You'll find Wheelman will have a different feel and look to the US-based Midway output and that's something I'm glad to be part of. There's not been much press of the game though January will change this as Midway's Gamers Day will give gamers the chance to play the game for the first time. I chatted to one of my superiors about how worried I was that Wheelman wasn't in many of the "What to look out for in 2008" articles in the gaming press, but he assured me that Midway didn't want to shoot their load too soon with Wheelman coverage. There's a method to this madness...

Secret Sauce.

There's things we're doing with Wheelman which are quite, quite insane. For a start, we're using the Unreal Engine to power the game and the engine in question wasn't really designed for high-speed action/driving games. Thankfully we have a team of programmers who have come up with scary miracles. The game is looking gorgeous and I really want to show people the game in action too. We have gameplay elements which are quite fresh and different to the norm.  We have a soundtrack which fooled me into thinking someone was watching The Bourne Supremacy on DVD for research purposes - they were actually playing a build of the game..! We don't have a huge tacky graphic with the word "Nitrous!" pop on screen and block your view (although if it does come up as a suggestion, I will shout it down from the highest mountain). Most importantly - we have a team of people who are mostly gamers and know what's great and what's shite. Things have been designed, re-designed and tested. I like the fact there are outspoken and vocal people on the team who aren't treating the job as a way to pay off their mortgages. In short - Wheelman isn't even close to Cruis'n. Be assured of that. To get you in the spirit of Wheelman, check out the FMV trailer which has been doing the rounds for some time. I'm hopeful that gameplay footage will soon be forthcoming and people can start judging for themselves... (This is a YEAR OLD..!)

Finally...

Well, it's been something of an update (and a long time coming) but I hope you all had a great Christmas (or whatever festiveness you happen to celebrate around this time of year). Christmas at home was bliss - almost no arguments (although there was a minor squabble over sausages) and it was good to see everyone again. I also hope you have a great New Year although it's already technically 2008 on the other side of the planet. My resolutions? I have quite a few, but I will take a leaf out of Tracey Emin's book regarding them. I'm treating them more as rules than resolutions which I will stick to. I think as you get older that re- rules become more and more important to the way you live your life. When you're a carefree hipster (you know - the type that ruined the third season of The Mighty Boosh), you don't care much for them. You're more interested in kissing random strangers when the bells chime and have no fear of you losing your spectacles as you have perfect eyesight anyway. Grrrr. I'll leave you with a clip of when the Boosh set its adventures in fantastical places and not some grim area of Camden...