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I've been meaning to write this blog post for two weeks now.... I guess it wasn't the most instantaenous thing in the world to suddenly convert all my feelings into a convenient block of text. Here I am, two weeks on and sitting in my flat; unemployed and waiting for stuff to happen. Good stuff to happen. I mean, seriously good stuff. I'm quite excited by it all, but I think I'm probably not the only one playing the waiting game after the fallout of our studio's closure. There's people waiting for dole, people waiting for interviews, people waiting for job confirmations, e-mails, phone calls. It reaffirms the notion that this big floaty rock is one big waiting room. Waiting for what? I could go all profound, but meh. It's too early.

Ever since the Chapter 11 bankruptcy announcement for Midway as a company, we've been erring on the side of caution. Anything could happen, right? The company was still operating as normal, but the Chapter 11 thing was like a silent dread-spectre hovering over all of us. The cause of this was through some allegedly shady dealings between Sumner Redstone and a bloke called Mark Thomas. No one knew who he was, and he tried to reassure everyone that it was all fine. Alarm bells rang though; it seemed quite, quite dubious. All of a sudden, the company was sold to him for a paltry $100,000 and then a magical legal process ensued where all deadlines for debts accelerated their deadlines for payment. Midway didn't have the funds at the time to pay them, and thus Chapter 11 became part of our legal vocabulary. It was all fine though - we'd still be operational; at that point, we were working on finishing up with Wheelman. The great thing about that was that I (and others) were putting in a lot of latenighters to get the job done, so we were practically too busy to worry about Chapter 11. We just got on with it.

The Ubisoft deal was pretty flawless in its execution, and a necessity to get the game out and marketed to its fullest potential. Some saw this as a sign of weakness on Midway's part, but it turned out to be quite a sweet deal. It gave the company more breathing space and we were happy to see a shiny Ubisoft trailer up on Gametrailers getting some good feedback. Perversely, some people considered the game to be better once Ubisoft was involved, rather than Midway. The company name was unfortunately synonymous with disappointment, cheap and tacky... was it deserved? I'm not sure... it wasn't as if any of us in the studio were skimping on our workloads. We were passionate about what we did, and we all enjoyed playing videogames. I know, it's a cliche, but it's one which runs throughout the industry; people who work on videogames will more likely or not love playing videogames too.

I don't want to think that the Midway taint somehow carried through to the erratic review scores which Wheelman received. Although we saw many, many nuggets of positivity on gaming forums, the journalistic view was distinctly Marmite - they either totally "got" it and enjoyed it, or hated it. People were perhaps expecting a bit too much from the "GTA4 Meets Burnout!" strapline from a past preview. Maybe they were annoyed they couldn't shoot a cop in the face - and doing it as Vin Diesel, no less! The IGN review was a definite shocker though. The studio suddenly turned from a festival of back-slapping to one of numb shock. Countless e-mails filtered throughout studio inboxes during the next few weeks. Positive. Negative. Positive. Negative. It was quite literally a rollercoaster ride of emotions. The game was selling well in its opening week though - I think a lot of the guys were quite happy in that respect. Sadly, we also learned how Metacritic worked in not only influencing peoples' minds to a possible purchase of our game, but also how they consider some review scores to have more of a weight to them; a weighted average. How fucked up is that? Unsurprisingly, the IGN review score was weighted, and the Metacritic score dropped like a stone.

Straight after completion of Wheelman, the studio didn't sit on its laurels. We got back to work on a new IP called Necessary Force, and it was a very exciting prospect. Set in the future, our game would put you in the shoes of a street-toughened cop who would have morality choices during his investigation. You would piece together evidence, make connections, go looking for new suspects and interrogate them. Work had already begun modifying the Wheelman engine to a much more gritter and impressive-looking result; the concept guys began producing beautiful renderings of the cityscape, characters and vehicles, while the designers were busy with documentation and possible scenarios. I spent the time producing graphics and concepts for the cop's PDA unit, which would be an integral part of the evidence gathering and manipulation. We had a lot of nice ideas for the game - for instance, the morality system affected the weather and time of day too. If you were a bad-ass cop, the days would feel shorter, and it would rain more often. This was also linked to a system where the city would systematically be cleaned up - more desirable pedestrians, graffiti taken off walls and newer, more optimisitc buildings taking the place of the run-down buildings.

Soon we got to a point where the game could be pitched - at the same time, we had a 60 day notice through from the London office. A legality in the UK, we had to be informed 60 days in advance of a possible closure. The timing of E3 couldn't have come any better. I helped produce the Necessary Force booklet, the logo and any other materials which were needed for the presentations. A lot of companies were booked in to see the game, and we had high hopes that some good will come from it. Post E3, we were told there were several interested parties, and the next stage would be meetings and due diligence procedures by those companies to assess the studio. Throughout all this time, I admired the fact we still worked on the game, and we still got on with the task in hand like a well-oiled machine. Not many people left the studio, we all had high hopes for the title. For me, I was at a low point until I saw the game in a darkened meeting room. It looked amazing, but not just that - a press of a controller button and it would start to rain - but not just rain, but turn surfaces wet, create flooded puddles and atmospheric drips and dribbles from building ledges.

We continued working. It was quite a good feeling to see the game evolve to the point where it had a pretty much playable section which involved all the disciplines of the game - bar the evidence collecting. We had a suitable aural soundtrack of cityscape ambience, our antagonist had a voice and the world was teeming with life. We had monorails travelling on huge overhead networks, massive water pumps dotted around the massive sea wall. We had sleazy prostitutes hanging outside equally sleazy strip bars, tramps lying half-dead on dirty mattresses... it was a proper world, and I feel we were all proud of what we had achieved given the time. One thing is for sure - the threat of losing your job is a strong motivator.

Studio representatives from across the country were treated to this secondary demonstration - our cop would get into his Police Interceptor, which was akin to a beefy muscle car with sirens and an engine which sounded like the devil. A call from dispatch would inform him of a perpetrator driving erratically after fleeing the scene of a crime. That would give you the opportunity to give chase, driving through old derelict warehouses, the tight streets and finally skidding to a halt outside an alleyway. The perp gets out the car and flees down the alleyway, you follow in pursuit. We had a neat mechanic of jumping over fences and dodging obstacles where if you hit the action button spot on, you would climb over things without too much trouble; do it successfully and you'd have more chance to capture the criminal. After this, a brawl takes place followed by you throwing the perp through a wooden fence. The chase continues through an abandoned and crumbling building full of obstacles which need to be negotiated in the same way. Eventually you come out onto the roof and are treated to a panoramic view of the city, before jumping down to a lower building's roof and brawling once more with the perp as you are both bathed in the light of the animated neon sign.

This was shown behind closed doors to many people - including the guys from Edge, who gave the demonstration a glowing write-up. The Edge thing also span from another piece of good luck - the Game Horizon conference was in its usual digs at The Sage in Gateshead. It would be a short taxi ride to the studio for anyone wanting to check out the game in action, and Edge wanted to see it. Maybe they were guilty about their 4/10 Wheelman score, maybe they were concerned and wanting to help the studio out. Either way, the write-up was a lovely thing to read and experience in those uncertain times. It's weird how tangible the morale was in the studio - like a symbiotic creature, you could sense and experience the highs and lows; you contributed to them and experienced them. I was one of the more optimistic, glass-half-full types of people who worked there. Sadly, the truth was that the glass was in a constant flux of being half-full and half-empty.

After all this, Necessary Force wasn't picked up, although it actually helped safeguard the studio's future for that period of time. It showed the studio wasn't entirely worthless as just a studio. We had an IP, we had a chance. A hope. As one hope dissipated, another materialised - we had a chance with a studio I can't name. No, I really can't name it. It was a big studio though, and our boss managed to get us a space to pitch to this studio for a project which would secure our future. It was another boost to morale, and even though we lamented Necessary Force not getting picked up immediately (some of us, myself included, still had hope), we got to work on this new chance. This is what I will always remember and admire about working at Midway Newcastle - we just got our heads down and got on with it. I've never worked for a more industrious and proud bunch of people, and for that moment in time, I was proud to be part of that team. Honestly, 100% proud.

We did all we could for the new pitch and we gave it our all. We had to - our futures depended on it. As we did this, I noticed small cracks start to appear. Some studio members moved onto other jobs, significantly a bunch of designers moved up to Dundee to work with Ruffian. It was hard to not ignore their empty seats, their inactive computer terminals. Looking around the studio, it was depressing at times. I worked late on that new pitch, though I saw the late-night enthusiasm start to wane... understandably, people have families, homes, kids. Me? I was the bloke who lived on his own in a flat, so I was quite happy to spend as much time as possible in the studio. Someone came to take out the temperamental vending machine, and I knew it could soon be over for us, so I made the most of it. One night, I chatted to our incredible studio boss regarding the situation and what he thought of it over some fish and chips. It felt strange, but at the same time it felt good to get things from the horse's mouth. He did the best he could possibly do for the studio - he worked insane hours, talked to as many people and contacts as he could. We understood when during studio meetings, he would add the caveat of "no guarantees". We knew nothing was guaranteed, it was actually a guarantee in itself that nothing was guaranteed.

You could tell he had a heavy heart on the day he told the studio that the new pitch fell through - we were up against two other companies, and the truth was that although we had produced the best pitch out of the three, the larger studio didn't want to take the risk. Our boss then proceeded to tell us that now was the time to start work on our CVs, our portfolios... use the time wisely to get the best opportunities out there. He even mentioned that we can do anything that afternoon - stick around, play games, go home to see loved ones. We all thought we had the best chance at this pitch. It felt like the most obvious route. I even imagined the sign of that new company on the considered offices down the road. I saw in my mind's eye what could have been, and maybe we all believed it. The truth was that we tried our hardest - our absolute hardest to survive, and it wasn't enough.

They caught us totally off-guard. We had expected that the closure would be on Friday, and everyone was working to that point. A week after we were told of the failure of the "big pitch", Tuesday 14th July would be a day I will never forget. As lunch neared, our secretary noted on the security cameras that Matt Booty - the bigwig Midway CEO at the time - was outside the studio "with a bunch of people". The news filtered through the studio like wildfire accompanied by assorted reactions - mostly of the "oh fuck" variety. Everyone's Twitter and Facebook entries suddenly took a turn for the worse. We knew it was coming. Michael Caine slid a bit too far to grab that pallet of gold, and the bus was slowly skidding into the scenic Italian ravine. None of us knew it would happen on that specific day, although the timing couldn't have been any more perfect - it was the day before payday.

There was talk behind closed doors, giving us all a chance to get trinkets and documents together. There was frantic backing-up of files which were intended to be backed-up later on in the week. The anticipation was electric but not unsurprising. Maybe that was the thing - we had anticipated this moment for so long, that it didn't seem that new to us as an experience. They all filtered out of the boardroom and we all met up in the middle of the studio like we normally did with studio meetings. Matt Booty loomed over the other members of his posse - some of the Midway HR-types, a group of unfamiliar people alongside them. He went through the speech he probably rehearsed in the taxi on the way to the studio - we did a great job on Wheelman, we were considered the best studio in the Midway family - but this was obviously not enough. He added that he was there to close the studio that day; the people next to him were the insolvency suits from London who would be actually doing the closing.

We remained as respectful as possible, until it was brought up that there would be no pay headed to our bank accounts. No redunancy. No holiday pay. Nothing. Understandably, some people got quite angry about this - some stormed off in anger to continue to backup and safeguard their future careers and portfolios. Some of us asked why we were not getting paid when the London office was reportedly cash-rich. After all the work, the praise, the highs and lows of it all... it came down to this. I felt relatively at ease knowing that we could all finally stop worrying about the studio, although this brought up a whole lot of questions regarding our personal situations. Some people in the studio depended on that payment - mortgages, kids, wives... it means nothing to a suit. The atmosphere was rather tense, made evenmoreso when the insolvency guy piped up in the softest voice I've heard. Obviously this bloke wasn't suited to speaking to large crowds of fuming developers. There's always that cliche that a company is only as good as the people who are part of it - the lifeblood of the company. In that given moment in time, we weren't anything to these people. We were human detritus which needed to be filtered out of a saleable asset.

The insolvency bloke handed out RP1 forms to fill in. Like every single horrible form you've filled in during your life, this was full of stupid questions and pitfalls. Some people left with the forms to fill in later, but I wanted to fill it in there and then. I didn't want to fill it in again, and never wanted to look at it again. As me and a workmate were in the foyer going over the form with the aforementioned softly-spoken gent, out of the corner of my eye I saw a locksmith enter the building and begin examining the locks to the front door. They were changing the locks as we were there. Accompanying this locksmith was a squat, middle-aged, balding prick whose job was to make sure none of the employees would leave with any office property. He made some charmless small-talk to one of our effects artists as he left with all of his stuff in the stereotypical cardboard box.

Back in the office, this arsehole made even more of a horrible noise by shouting "30 minutes!" like a disgruntled landlord of a busy pub. This was his building now, and he wanted everyone to get the fuck out. I packed up my monitor and made sure to let that arsehole know it was actually mine when he questioned me, to the point that he actually backed away. Maybe this guy does have some kind of soul after all. While this was going on, hands were being shaken, documents were being exchanged. Snippets of chatter supplemented by one word - pub. Like refugees, we scattered out to form a dishelved line towards the local; the beer garden was already half-full of deflated ex-employees. Considering what had just happened, there was still laughter and joking. We still chatted about "what had just happened" and our plans for the future. It was heartbreaking seeing everyone slowly filter away from there... wondering what would become of us as individuals now that our team which was such a solid and incredible machine had been disassembled like a piece of flat-pack furniture.

What really annoyed me was we were planning on giving our boss a send-off on the Friday - we had planned a collection, a big card, gratitude in spades. All the work he did... after that day, he was still working for us. Job days were being organised and companies were coming up to the North East to check us out and consider recruitment opportunities. Even though I had a kind-of-shaky plan B, I was told to go to these job days "just in case". I went to the Bizarre Creations one the next day in the same pub we lamented our sorrows, and there was a lot of people there. Again, we felt like refugees surviving on free tuna sandwiches, but I think the guys from Bizarre were charming to chat to and were genuinely pleased to be of help. Thankfully plan B worked out on the day after, and on the orders of my future boss, I stayed at home instead of going to the Sony Recruitment Day. There's been more job days since then, and we've even got an action group up on Facebook.

Personally, I've been saving since I knew that there would be no guarantees - I've spent the past fortnight living frugally on savings and working on bits and pieces for the new start-up company I'll be working with in August. Other people have been pro-active in their search for new employment - Necessary Force definitely did us no harm for reputation, in fact the new start-up company was helped along by the concept work produced in Necessary Force. It's going to be great working with some of the guys from Midway Newcastle - at least we're saving a bit of the North East's development community... for this is the thing. Midway Newcastle is no more, and a third of the games industry of NewcastleGateshead has fallen by the wayside. I remember when Edge did a very optimistic feature on development in the North East of England - I felt happy to be a part of that, I really did. I think that it's been a shock to people that the company died - I know many people are disappointed that Necessary Force won't be coming out any time soon. I quite like the fact it's this mystical thing which hasn't really been seen, and only experienced - and enjoyed - by Edge, the only journalists to see the game in action.

The epilogue to all this is kind of strange. We heard horrible rumblings which I can't go into detail about, but they only strengthens how despicable it was to not pay us when we were expecting it. Those RP1 forms will mean that we get some kind of monetary compensation back for all our hard work, but only after 8 weeks of waiting for those wonderful legal procedures to take effect. There's been other forms of action too - one of which could be a Phoenix-esque rise from the ashes of Midway Newcastle, but it could be doubtful. After all the heartache we've had to endure, I'm thinking some of us just don't want to be played any more.

One thing is for sure - I am proud to have been part of a strong team of incredible people. The studio was genuinely a nice place to work and reside. I felt it had evolved from a shaky start to a powerhouse of development, talent and experience. It's a crying shame that it ended the way it did - and in the worst possible way too. I think the only way to truly get over it is to consider it the end of one chapter leading to the beginning of a new chapter. I just hope everyone I worked with finds a job, security and happiness.

They deserve it.

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated, although this was the last known photo of me taken when I was trapped in the cold and endless darkness of space. Why have I not posted stuff for so long? It's hard to say... in fact, it's quite hard to say considering all which is going on at this moment in time. I wish I wasn't so fucking mysterious with all of this, but that's why there's been so little movement in my tiny blogosphere.

I also had one of the best weeks of my entire life last week, where I felt loved, complete and finally part of the world; with all the shit going on around me both externally and internally, this was the eye of the storm and was a place I dearly miss. It was a break from it all and a strategic emotional pit stop. I have fresh tyres, a full tank of petrol and - most importantly - a purpose.

Watch this space. It's going to be glorious.

It's official - Wii Fit is now a part of my life. Every day at around 7PM, I jump onto the Wii Balance Board and get my BMI reading. The picture above was the first BMI reading I got from it, and I was kind of shocked. Obese? Me? Overweight, yep. I am that. Not obese though. Obese? Thing must be broken. Yet I look down and see the developer belly which was hewn from countless late-nighters and an infinite conveyor belt of takeaway meals. Actually, the way Wii Fit shows you your BMI is kind of horrendous if you're weight conscious - your Mii is on screen and thin to start with, but slowly expands as the BMI increases. The end flourish is a comedy sound effect which does nothing to help the fact that there's a cartoon version of yourself on screen looking pretty fat and miserable.

Wii Fit has helped me in the past two weeks or so to a much more nicer BMI of 30.15 - I yearn for the day when I'm not in the painfully red obese oblong and am sitting in the pink glow of being overweight. It's still not a good place to be, but a hell of a lot better than obese. I've been on the thing often as well as complimenting the workouts with some running again. Ah, I've missed the running. I am determined to lose this gut though. Half my wardrobe now is unwearable - I've got slim-fit hipster jeans slowly getting covered in dust, and shirts which don't button up the way they were designed.

I was extremely lucky to pick up Wii Fit though - I somehow managed to get to PC World the exact moment they got stock in (and ironically it was after a 3km run..!) and now I'm getting serious with some rhythm boxing courtesy of a trainer Mii who sounds a lot like Jason Stratham. It's crazy I come out of those workouts with a sweat on, but it all helps. I've also cut out completely the chocolate and sweets. Biscuits? None of that sweet cakey nonsense for me. I've forsaken my treats for a gutless body. Is it natural to be doing this? I guess I just don't want to bounce as much these days.

I went for my annual visit with my optician at the weekend - although my optician has now become a Scottish fella with worse eyesight than me. Could this even be possible? He managed to put myself at ease with all the wacky things which are currently happening with my eyes. I have floaters - one main one for each eye - which drift into vision sometimes to say hello. I hate floaters. I also have the joylessness of seeing light sources shimmer in a next-gen-bloom-kind-of-way - it was a nice novelty to begin with, walking home with a dreamlike sheen over all. Now? It's kind of bloody irritating, evenmoreso when I was out running one night and not only were the lights all shimmery, but there was mist about - which only seemed to make the effect much worse. Oh, and the glasses constantly steaming up through my exertions too. So, yep. I hate my vision.

Mr. Optician also told me of the things to expect if (when?) one of my retinas decides to detach itself from the back of the eyeball. My old optician told me that I should expect a "curtain effect", though the new optician was a lot more descriptive - expect plenty more floaters than usual (like shitloads more) followed by flashes of white light and then the dreaded curtain effect. When that happens, I should phone them up without hesitation. I've been told that this is what you would expect if you are short of sight. On the good news side of things, he did mention that my eyesight hasn't changed that much - although his final test (a new one I didn't experience last year) proved I may soon need *two* sets of glasses - one for reading and one for normal everyday activity.

Getting old sucks. So does the prospect of spending money on spectacles - although my healthcare covers £200 of it all, so I decided to get a new pair anyway and also a pair of sunglasses in lieu of the pair I lost when I was training for the GNR a few years back. I did feel like not taking my vision for granted when I left there, so I decided to watch Watchmen at the wonderous Tyneside Cinema. Verdict? Really enjoyed it, although I've not read the book in a while so maybe when I re-read the book, I can get angry with the film like half of the critics out there. There were some very brilliant bits in the movie though, and there was some pretty impressive gore too, especially the scrap in the alleyway. People who have seen the movie will know exactly what I mean.

What else? Wheelman is going to be out next week! I'm quite excited about this - feedback on the demo has been majorly positive. There are still the naysayers out there, but we've got the majority and that'll do us. The game should be out the 25th (I've seen 24th somewhere though...) in the US and the 27th in the UK. To celebrate this, Ubisoft have produced a brand new trailer which - quite frankly - kicks serious booty -

Now Ubisoft produce some lovely trailers - they have a knack of marrying mainstream music with the action (check out these trailers for Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed and try and tell me otherwise, oh doubter of things!) and the above is no exception. I think it puts Wheelman firmly in the "fun" department. "Look, it's not a seriously gritty thing like GTA4. It lets you shunt cars, spin 180 and shoot shit and leap from car to car with gay abandon!". This trailer has got a lot of positive feedback, though I think it's interesting that the Midway logo has been toned down somewhat - you can see it at the end, but you need to squint a bit.

I think that says a lot about the company in this day and age. I can imagine the marketing men of Ubisoft getting together and realising that the Midway logo is a negative than a positive. This is sad news, though perhaps unsurprising given the slow descent which has been happening. Vin's also interviewed very, very briefly for GameTrailers TV (Note the caption for the interview doesn't mention Midway Newcastle) and it's pretty much telling that Vin doesn't really seem to know too much about the game. I've crunched on that motherfucker for over a year, the least he can do is know a bit more about it.

Vin recently appeared on a French chat show for Fast and Furious, and looked kind of unsettled when Wheelman was shown on big screens and one of the hosts handed him a controller. The result? Vin bouncing off walls and spectacularly ending the demonstration slamming into a roadblock. Thankfully a cop car exploded and the audience went crazy. Thank god for that exploding cop car, or else it would have looked kind of stupid. The host then showed Vin "how it should be done". Vin tried to rescue the situation describing the "Reverse Cyclone" (It's actually called The Cyclone, Vin) by getting up out of his chair and turning on the spot while shooting an imaginary pistol.

So, yep. I get the feeling that Vin would rather talk more about the new Riddick game than Wheelman - that's the impression I get. Has Wheelman changed from the original vision of a straight-laced GTA clone - in Vin's eyes? Is he pissed off that you can do all that fun arcadey stuff? I'm extremely glad we didn't go down the GTA4 route of chore-like gameplay and the seriousness of it all. GTA San Andreas had parachutes and jetpacks. What happened?

I think Wheelman will do well at retail - I think there's been that turnaround we've all hoped for when the gamers of the world realise what we're not trying to be. "GTA4 Meets Burnout" seems like a good description. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks - review scores (the ones I've heard of have been very favourable), the game's release, sales figures and that possibility of a sequel. If we get to do a sequel, I wouldn't mind at all - it'll be great to see where else we can take the franchise and add the things that we wanted to, but couldn't.

It'll be interesting to see if Vin's on board too - or at least care enough for a sequel. Maybe if we have an unlockable Riddick skin, he'd be interested.

Edinburgh was a lovely place to visit. Extremely lovely in all ways - lovely people, lovely places, lovely architechture, lovely dramatic mountainous vistas. It's something I've not really done before - gone out to a place by myself. You look at holidays these days and they seem so catered for the couple; the luckless loner doesn't even get much of a look-in. Still, it was another eye-opener in that I can do more independant stuff like that without too much bother. My first act to total independance was leaving home to live by myself down in Wales - don't get me wrong, I cried for a little while when I settled down in the semi-crumbling bedroom I slept in for four-and-a-half years. It seemed plain wrong just to disconnect myself like that, but it was truly something important and I recommend anyone to do it - although I was more motivated by finding one of Mum's many cats pissing and shitting all over my clothes after being trapped in the tumble dryer.

So it was my first time in Scotland and it was just nice to be there. The train journey wasn't that big a deal, really - one-and-a-half hours later and I was there - and the way Edinburgh is laid out, it's a very tourist-friendly place. I spent the first two days there doing the whole tourist thing - I went on ghost tours, underground town tours, visited the castle (which was pretty special for many reasons), bought souvenirs and took many photographs which you can oggle on my facebook (when the thing can actually load up so I can post a link...). There was a weird feel to the place - like a really low light which was doing some weird things to some of my photos. Good things, mind you.

So get this - in Edinburgh Castle, there's a tour which tells you the story of the Honours of Scotland - or the Scottish Crown Jewels. You can go through a twisted, linear corridor full of education, mannequins dressed in period gear and Cromwell trying to steal the Honours as they were hidden away. Now the crazy thing is that the penultimate thing you see are replicas of the Honours - touchable versions of the crown, sceptre and sword. Around the corner? The actual Honours guarded and surrounded by a glass case - how crazy is that? You get the tourist speil and then the real thing. I liked the Castle for it had a lot of things to see and do including the One O'Clock gun which fires across Edinburgh every day except Sundays. There are more things I needed to see as a tourist, but I'm definitely going again this year for my birthday, so I'm very much looking forward to it!

I also met up with a bunch of Midwayians on the weekend - the Saturday was a pub crawl, although some of the pubs seemed to be quite dead and lifeless. We had some Polish pubs, some old man pubs and finally ending with a visit to a rather terrible nightclub called The Citrus Club which also featured one of the worst toilets known to man. You don't want to know. To be fair, the thing started well in The Guildford Arms - one of the oldest pubs in Edinburgh, and one which has some beautiful exterior and interior ornate detailing. We were celebrating not only the closure of Wheelman, but also celebrating the depature of a veteran of Midway Newcastle. I was sad to see him go this week, but he sounds like he has his life nicely planned - something involving holing up in an exotic part of the world where living is cheap and mortgages are laughed at.

Oh, and Wannaburger. Such a lovely discovery on my trip - they do killer burgers and some very lush milk shakes. Recommended!

The next project is currently in a state of pre-production flux. I've come off the few tasks of Wheelman left; one of which I was particularly pissed off about, but kind of understandable considering we were working like trojans. I've taken up running again in a determined mission to lose some weight. It's been rough, though - taking any break in regular exercise, it's difficult to get back into it. I managed 3 kilometers on Sunday, but I'm sure with practice I'll be back to my svelt self. I have many shirts and jeans which no longer fit me, and that saddens me. I feel a lot healthier too - the trap of falling into the whole takeaway food thing when working late nights meant I had quite a few health issues which have thankfully taken a back seat. There's talk that we won't be crunching like crazy people for over a year.

The Ubisoft thing is an interesting prospect - it's being called a "strategic alliance" by the PR teams, and although the naysayers are spitting predictions that this is a death knell, it's not. Check out who makes movies these days - there's many studios getting together for creating movies and pooling their resources. The economic climate these days ain't good as we are constantly reminded by the news, so this is more a shrewd decision than an act of desperation. There's some definite positives to the deal - Ubisoft can put their marketing clout behind the game and give it an audience it deserves. It does sadden me that there's people out there who want to get the game now "It's an Ubisoft game" rather than "It's a Midway game". Yep, this is what we're up against. I don't read comments these days, though when I mistakenly read them, it's deflates the soul ever so slightly.

Don't read the comments, kids.

The "PS3 Is An Ass To Develop For" story which was picked up by Kotaku after a podcast interview with our executive producer didn't make for easy reading for me either. I'm not sure how I feel really about that. Maybe it was a planned move to get more publicity by invoking the rage of both 360 and PS3 fanboys in a single swoop (over 30,000 views of this story already), but I'm hoping there's no real lasting damage to this. As part of the development team, we're always told about keeping confidential over many things - the Ubisoft deal being one of them. I had prods and pokes from some ex-workmates from old companies, and I had to be all mysterious and sage-like. I also know that Midway PR do scope out this blog and I've been positive about Wheelman - not because it's the "done" thing in the eyes of the company, but because I believe it's a genuinely exciting title. It just saddens me when detrimental stuff happens which shouldn't ever happen in our position at this moment in time. We need to be winning back the hearts and minds of the gaming public, not turning them away.

Shaun also appears in the latest Major Nelson podcast! I listen to the show regularly, and although Larry Hyrb seemed rather enthused by it (and a bit surprised, grr), his co-host "e", wasn't that keen. I will have to bother him with Xbox Live messages until he sees sense.

I've been getting on with my own thing at work for "Project 2" - essentially a lot of research and development. We've got a lot of planning already done and I'm really stoked by some of the concept art and character art which has been created already. I've been grabbing recent showreels of motion graphics studios and the like to get a bead of what's fresh and new in the world of graphic design - they invoke inspirational bubbles which turn into concept sketches and ideas. I really want to do something special with the front end of Project 2 because I wasn't that enthused by how the front end for Wheelman turned out - you'll see in the demo. There was a recent presentation of Project 2 along with a pretty incredible mood video which was put together by a lot of different art disciplines. I've only just started to get back into the swing of mock-up design and have a good idea how the front end can progress... but that mood video. Ohmy. You could have put that on gametrailers.com and it wouldn't have looked shabby all.

Speaking of which..... new Wheelman gameplay footage!

There's also some 3D screenshots knocking about - my particular favourite being the bike chase for the way the sunlight glints off stuff. Please check out this stuff and download the demo on Xbox Live and PSN when it becomes available sometime this month.

The fact I now have extra time on my hands means I can now concentrate on some side-project stuff including The Cult of Karl video. I'm currently working over the animatic with some finished artwork and realising that the video should be in the sexy form of 16:9 whereas it's been produced in 4:3 - big mistake. I've had to re-position all kinds of transitions and the like, though I feel great working on it again - it's been in cold storage for too long. The strange thing is that when I work on animated stuff, I feel like I belong in that discipline. This brings me nicely onto one of the things I wanted to share since I visited rllmukforum.com for a brief visit (and they are these days, although I hear that the mods have since cleaned up the acts of the arseholes who frequent there) and one of my PMs was a question regarding...

"How did you get into the games industry?"

Well, it's been a bit of a strange journey - I've been passionate about videogaming for some time since the days of the Atari VCS. Yep, that makes me feel rather ancient, but I'm glad that I spent my time exploring virtual worlds. I also enjoyed the interfaces of later games on newer systems - I think I had a thing for pixel art and I practiced that on an ancient Spectrum game creation tool called the Skateboard Construction Kit. I know, a weird thing to indulge in, but it got me into tiling stuff together and learning more about pixel art. I think I appreciated loading screens too and how artists could be more creative with restrictions. At this point, I also hooked up with a school friend called Andrew Nibbs, and we would spend time in his basement after school working on videogames. I'd do the graphics, he'd do the code. It was quite a pleasant set-up as I fondly remember the huge toasted doorsteps graced with butter accompanied by generous mugs of tea that his mother would bring us. I guess that was the first development house I worked for..!

I then did the whole education thing - I still believe perhaps I should have cut down a bit on the education, but it did mean that I was trained up in that work ethic of 9-5. I did a graphic design course followed by an BA(Hons) Animation course. I think this is why I feel the way I do working on The Cult of Karl video - I had the mindset that I would be an animator when I left that course. I remember when we were took on an outing to Annecy in 1997 to check out the animation festival they had there. It was quite enlightening in that we had many companies like Dreamworks, Pixar and the like who were extremely eager for talent. Sadly we were in our first year of animation, so we were definitely not prepared for it. The sun shone with optimism and we were all happy to think to the future where we'd be in Annecy again with portfolios and hopes... it wasn't meant to be though.

When we arrived back in Annecy in 1999 with our portfolios and a lot more animation knowledge (although we could have had more considering the place I was taught wasn't that much cop), we discovered that no-one was hiring at that time. Omniously, the rain clouds hung about during our visit and our portfolios became handy make-shift umbrellas as we trudged through the puddles. Thunder cracked above our heads and our hearts were full of dread. Thankfully my big break for the industry came when I was given a phone number by one of the computer teachers who worked at College. It was a phone number with the name "Gavin Morgan" which I ended up phoning in semi-desperation and demanded to know if there were any vacances for me. The company I phoned up turned out to be Jester Interactive, and the guy who picked up the phone thankfully wasn't Gavin Morgan - so I got a job there as a Trainee Artist working on a game for the Dreamcast called Hellgate.

The crazy thing is that I soon ended up jumping from the position of Trainee Artist to Lead Artist. Now this is quite crazy because I kind of protested this as a bad thing - the leap from the bottom of the rung to the upper rungs of the hierarchy of art-related jobs in the games industry was stellar at best, but ill-advised at worst. I felt I was pretty inexperienced and realised that being a Lead Artist meant I had a lot more admin in my life, and a lot less actual artwork. I did have my hand in a lot of disciplines though - I animated cut scenes, helped out with world creation, singularly created the front end for the game and generally got on with any other minor jobs there. At that point I wasn't too good with communication with other artists which soon lead to me being demoted back to Artist - a move which I didn't feel that angry about because it felt like a good thing to do.

I worked at Jester for some time on several projects - some of which were canned to the depths of the unknown when the company had a bit of an identity crisis. I also worked on Music 3000 - which was a time where we had a lot of fun creating content for the title. I did all of the front end interface design including some of the "skins" which were used to decorate the interface with. I think that was a happy studio at that point - the studio stereo was cranked up with sweet tunes and we got on with it. The last major game I worked on there was TT Superbikes, where I had become a Lead Environment Artist responsible for a lot of the architectural detailing of the track. This was quite a rewarding job as it was a challenge to recreate reality with polygon limits (the game was on PlayStation 2), although when the game was done, I resigned. I think one of the reasons for the resignation was the management's distrust in us as a workforce - there was suspicions and the place didn't feel like a good atmosphere to work for. So I left.

Next up, I worked with Tim Wright (aka CoLD SToRAGE) - the ex-creative director of Jester - for a company he started up called Checkmate Solutions where I'd work on the interfaces (graphical and UI design) of some eJay products - music creation software. The office was a full and energetic place on my first day, but this was all a bit of a lie - half the office was there just to hoodwink some grant agency to give Tim some money. Did this surprise me? Nope. This was the wonderful world of games development, and little tricks like that didn't really shock me. "Ah, business as usual, then". It was pretty hard work in that payment wasn't that regular - we'd have milestones to achieve and if we achieve those milestones, the company got paid. I probably got paid half of what I should have been paid due to all this, so I ended up having to become freelance for a year to supplement my meagre wages.

When all the eJay stuff was done and work had kind of dried up, Tim let me go and I concentrated on the freelancing - although I was actively seeking full-time work. From there, I got some lucky breaks doing tutorials for magazines as well as learning about how important it was to network and communicate with people - a guy I sent an e-mail to regarding how much I loved his work called Derek Yu, actually hooked me up with an LA company called Say Design, where I would be working with them on Flash animation, graphics and mock-ups for web-based games. While this was going on, I would be going to interviews to various development houses for work as an Interface Artist and after some interview failures, eventually Midway Newcastle took me under their wing in 2006 for which I was extremely grateful for. So far I've worked on Rush on the PSP as a GUI Artist and Wheelman on 360/PS3/PC, where I evolved into a Senior UI Artist. I've learnt a great deal about different disciplines - working in a larger studio means that there's more departments and more communication to take part in.

So anyone who wants to work in the games industry - I'll give you some handy pointers. Play videogames. Play them as often as you can and get passionate about the games you are playing. Make mental notes about what impresses you about those games you play. Also get onto videogame news websites and sites like gametrailers.com, where you'll get the latest info on games. Soak it in. The passion is an important thing which will help you greatly. This has been a very videogame-orientated post; I think I've managed to get a lot off my chest - hopefully more when I start losing all this weight...

Oh, and I am quite tempted to get a PS3 now I have experienced the lovelyness of Killzone 2. Maybe it's time to forgive and forget Sony for their moments of insanity. Maybe.

Live in London? You've no doubt fully experienced the joy of thick flurries of snowfall, rolling large snowballs at people and filming them on your mobile phones to upload on YouTube and building elaborate snowmen which have been photographed by lazy paparazzi and turned into newspaper stories. Now I love the white stuff - totally adore the way it transforms the environment. I treasure every scrunch of snow underfoot, and any wide expanse of white which has remained untouched is irresistable. Sadly the snowfall wasn't as spectacular as Down South, and as such was a bit underwhelming.

The walk into work was embraced with a blizzard which caused me to grin like a chimp with the aforementioned scrunching into work as workbound cars cautiously crept at low speeds on the freshly-laden white gold. A lunchtime was well spent taking some snowy pictures to overload Facebook with, plus the discovery of a huge expanse of untouched snow. Ohmy! I scrunched all my worth. The walk home was unfortunately rain-sodden and the snow slowly disappeared - something I was expecting. There was traces of fun had by others - sledge marks down the hill on my road and a confident snowman grinning at me. Meanwhile back in London, there were more photos of people sledging down hills and generally having a lovely time. Bastards.

I remember living on the Wirral and seeing Winter weather reports - huge white snowclouds over Northern England and Scotland. "Ah, how nice it would be to experience that." I thought. So now I'm living here, all we seem to get is one-day snow. It's there and then it's gone. It doesn't linger like it should, and leave me empty the next morning. I do have vivid memories of the one time it snowed when I was back home to the point where it was an impressive couple of feet of snow. We'd go down to the park and use cheap (and dangerous) sledge-equivalents - bin liners - to drift down the hills illuminated by a low sun. That was something which I still remember and wouldn't mind it happening again just once before I shift this mortal coil.

So get this - Wheelman is done. It's finished and out the door! I've been spending some time off work hanging around the flat and getting out when the flat reminds me too much of my freelancing career. There's still some work to do on my side of Wheelman's other tendrils - work on the demo version of the game and tweaks to the PC version of the game. Once that's all done, I'm going to take a break to Edinburgh and just explore - I've not been to Scotland before, so it's another tick on my imaginary list of things I've yet to do. Swimming with dolphins can wait. As much as I look forward to going, it's a shame there's no one to go with - it's always been me on my own most of my life, so it's become something of a norm.

Wheelman's been getting more positive press too - the latest is from Eurogamer. They've recently posted a very favourable write-up which mentioned the lack of multiplayer near the end, but here's the thing - the game has a respectable amount of stuff to do. It's strange that the reviews of Fallout 3 failed to mention multiplayer, though it's not been designed to be a multiplayer game. Wheelman can't be multiplayer due to all the stuff we've got going on - slowing down time, etc. I've played multiplayer with slowing down time and it always doesn't seem to work. FEAR comes to mind - it felt like a horrible interruption which you couldn't really control. The game also feels a lot more together, especially the side missions. Street Showdown? Some of those are insanely frantic affairs - a couple of months before it was a more sombre and toned-down affair. Completing a Showdown in 1st place is a pretty nice feeling as it feels like you've earned it.

I'm just happy we're finally winning the hearts and minds of gamers online - comments have been more positive in recent months, and I'm glad of it. The game's development has been a long and varied one - we've had ups and downs, some wrong decisions but ultimately some extremely right decisions which have gotten us to the stage we are now. I've definitely learnt a hell of a lot working on Wheelman and when it comes to the next project, there's going to be things which I will definitely put into motion early into the project so mistakes aren't made. "That's not going to happen in the next project". It sounds like familiar naivety, but I have hope in my heart.

The next project though. It's coming on nice. Very nice. I am the Keeper of Secrets though, and cannot utter what is being worked on. It is coming on nice though. Mmm. Nice!

The tumblr of an Adobe "fan" is now my new favourite thing ever. Basically it's a blog of gripes of new Adobe products in terms of their UI. It is pretty mind-blowing what stuff has been found too - I'm always refining and polishing the UI I've produced, though it looks as though the UI in Adobe products hasn't been thought out that well. I can testify to that as I've used Flash CS3 throughout Wheelman's development, and sadly Flash CS3 is no way developer-friendly. It's bug-ridden and full of all kinds of UI horror. I'm tempted to send some pics or gripes to that Tumblr...

In other news - I caught Slumdog Millionaire yesterday at the wonderful Tyneside Cinema in town and it was pretty enjoyable stuff! If you don't know of the story, basically it's the story of this "slumdog" called Jamil who appears on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in India, and answers many questions successfully. There's questions asked - how can this guy who comes from the slums know so many cultured questions? The genius is that the film will show you through flashback how he knows. There's a love interest and also It had moments of grimness though - which was a bit surprising for the "feel-good film of the decade".

The film was produced by Celador Films who also produce... Who Wants To Be A Millionaire! So in that respect, it was pretty authentic. Danny Boyle did a majority of the direction (the fact there was an Indian co-director wasn't mentioned in write-ups) and it definitely feels very Boyle-esque, even down to the soundtrack which has a superb mash-up of the sounds of India with MIA. I'm definitely eyeing up the soundtrack. One more thing - the Indian host of the show comes across as a right bastard. I like this.

I've been having fun finding animated music videos and also incredible live action music videos on YouTube - I favourite them and make them into playlists, although when checking back on my playlists, I'd find that I would see ominous "video unavailable" warnings in red, meaning that copyright owners have got hold of YouTube and politely asked them to remove that content. It's kind of creepy that when I uploaded some portfolio footage not long ago, YouTube actually knew what music was on there and it would possibly invoke some kind of copyright issue. Gah.

Anyways, those videos had to be removed and I'm making a list of them. A list. Christ, this is the future. We are living in a world where we can oggle videos to our hearts' content and check out constant streams of constantly-updated information pages. A list. Sheesh. I wonder why YouTube offer up these video-related treats for so long only to have them removed suddenly. Don't these copyright holders know that all those views can become purchases? Interest? A fanbase? I do like collecting animated videos though, speaking of which...

The Cult of Karl. It's been on-and-off in terms of getting the final version done due to all the Wheelman work, but now I have no excuse. Working hours are back to normal and now I am time-rich. To be honest, I miss being creative for myself. Sure, it's great to be creative for Wheelman, but I need to have some "me" time and create things which aren't going to go through a bazillion design decisions. I want to get a book together of artwork too - I need an art book! It's not an ego thing, it's more like a thing I can show my Mum. She hasn't even seen any Wheelman screenshots, video... *sigh* She definitely has no idea what I get up to. If she had a 360 or a PS3, she could download the forthcoming Wheelman demo and get a better idea!

Soooooo, I'm about to start getting all creative on this final day of my first break, although I'm bound to be playing Fallout 3 all afternoon. Or Gears of War 2. That thing still hasn't touched my 360 yet. Can creativity wait? It's a question which is getting easier to answer every day I get through.

"You must be the only person who hates taking days off work for being sick". I see these words manifest themselves onto my television during another rummage through the Capitol Wasteland of Washington DC, It's noon and I'm already frustrated with myself for having such a lousy immune system. I remember when I was young and carefree - mortality wasn't even questioned as I joyfully threw myself off tables in a bid to fly like Superman. Sure, broken arms were the result of such bizarre (and scientifically proven as manic) behaviour, but I cared not a jot. Now I'm hacking up my throat with coughing while getting a sweat on combined with a nice headache as the icing on a rather joyless cake. Mmm.

My frustration lies with not being at work. Sounds crazy, right? Well, I think there's something in my DNA on my mother's side which has given me a strong work ethic. I was brought up in an environment where work = money = food on the table. It's a simple but very definite equation of sorts. I also like feeling like I'm occupied with things - the devil makes work for idle hands, perhaps. I like the security of having stuff to do and doing that stuff in the company of other like-minded individuals for the common goal. Now when I'm sick and out of the office, I get idle hands. It never used to be that way - when I was a teenager (who also had a paid job delivering papers to practically every letterbox in my hometown), I had my spare time taken up with projects of an artistic nature. I think I'm having trouble kick-starting my creative juices in a non-work capacity...

Still, the immune system deficiency could be down to the Wheelman grind - and I don't mean that in a negative way - it's that it's a constant stream of work and late-nighters in the office which has become a very regular occurance. I actually felt guilt having a weekend to myself - guilt! Is that weird? We've not got long to go now on the game in terms of development - you may have read the month's delay but we're also releasing a Wheelman demo before the game is released on March 20th on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. I'm keeping quiet about the demo though - there's something rather cool we've done with it, but I shall not spoil the surprise. You will like it though. Oh, yes.

So the game is almost finished. It's kind of an exciting time in the office as we start planning the next project. Again, NDAs and the sort prevent me from revealing anything regarding it, but it's going to be an interesting prospect. We've got an internal showing of what work's been done with it soon - I've seen some of the concept art already, and it's looking quite lovely. Actually, that reminds me - I was pretty blown away when in one of the meeting rooms of how close our concept art for Wheelman matches the things which go on in the game itself. I always love checking out the concept guys to see what they're up to. I think they've got the coolest jobs in the studio, to be honest. Yep, I'm envious. I often am. The only thing which is annoying is that the concept art needs to have a larger audience - hopefully we can embelish the credits with some of their fine work.

Some of you may have caught the Fallout 3 reference in the opening paragraph - to tell you the truth, I've been hooked on it for a while now. I had my thing with Oblivion and really got into the whole storyline, environment, characters... and now it's happening again! Bethesda have done a pretty impressive job with Fallout 3 - there's some truly inspiring vistas to check out, I think no other game has captured a feeling of survival and grim menace better than Fallout 3 - especially when you're out on the open wastelands and feel a huge sense of vulnerability. Whenever I discover new towns, I always feel like there's a lot of possibilities from that discovery and it's also another opportunity to get more involved with the storyline and the lore of post-apocalyptic Washington DC.

There are flaws though - much in the same way Oblivion had flaws. For a start, the VATS system (where the action freezes on a target and you can take out specific body parts) is pretty cool to use - I did have doubts, but I only realised that shooting in a normal FPS-way is also rated by VATS in terms of percentages. It's okay if you use a weapon with bullets, but painfully obvious when shooting a missile and watching it pass through the Super Mutant's chest. Later I discover to always shoot on the ground with that thing, and all was well. VATS also sometimes lets me down when I'm using it indoors and I somehow end up shooting at the edge of a wall's corner where the target I was trying to shoot at was in perfect view.

Other gripes? Repairing weapons wasn't that clearly telegraphed in the game - I ended up discovering I could repair weapons with other weapons through word of mouth. Yep, I know it was in the manual - but who reads those things anyway? (Unless you're in the glory of the Katamari Damacy manuals in their lush artwork and characterful mastery, but I digress), It's very easy to repair a weapon of lousyness over an awesome weapon - case in point, the Lincoln Repeater is an insanely lush weapon, but if you use a hunting rifle and have the Repeater in your inventory, it's easy to accidentally repair the hunting rifle with the Repeater. Doh.

The game also suffers from some broken quests - like Oblivion did - in Big Town, I was told to fix some robots in a scrapyard for an impending attack of Super Mutants - except there were no robots to fix. The guy I give scrap metal to in Megaton has disappeared and the woman who willingly buys the fingers of bad men from me has gone AWOL too. It's things like this which can shake me from my dreamy escapism at times, but there is forgiveness. I think it happens in a lot of games - you spot a huge bug and then you just get on with it. Oh, unless it's the bug in Fallout 3 where your character can sometimes get stuck in scenery. I hate that soooo much. I do forgive that for the fact the game is such a huge achievement and undertaking, although I do save my game a lot more than I should because of it.

You won't find such gripes in the stellar reviews of the game though - I don't think that many game reviewers have 80 hours to dedicate to one game for a review - unless they're hardcore. This is why I don't normally trust reviews - word of mouth is gospel. I also used to think demos were a good indicator, although sometimes it's very easy to get it wrong - case in point is the Blue Dragon demo which I absolutely hated though only because it threw me right in at the deep end with no tutorials about mastering the advance combat systems or inventory choice you'd get in a sprawling RPG.

Sticking with my games-centric blog-tone, I've just watched what is the last ever episode of Consolevania. You can grab it here and I thoroughly recommend you give it a watch, even if you've not had a chance to see the other episodes. The show's been going on for a few years now, with regular(ish) episode releases. I think I got into the show late around the end of Series 1, but since then I've enjoyed the reviewing stylings of Rab and Ryan. Here's some classic examples of what I'm rambling on about -

Rab reviews Batman Begins...

Ryan's take on gaming Hype...

Now the thing with this final episode is that it very much reminded me of the last episode of Gamesmaster - Dominik Diamond basically spills his guts and gives us a heartfelt journey of his feelings about working on the show with a very memorable closing line - "I should come up with the funniest gag in the history of Gamesmaster, but... I can't". Thankfully the magic of YouTube means you can watch the whole episode in its entirety before some copyright-hugging arse forces it offline...

Back to the last episode of Consolevania (and it actually saddens me to type that) - Rab also wears his heart on his sleeve during footage of Consolevania's Top Ten Games of 2008. A lot of things are covered - the fact that they don't want to be remembered for being people who review games negatively. As Rab points out, games are wonderful things and we should be happy to be part of that. He mentioned that the Videogaiden show they did with the BBC Scotland (also up on YouTube) basically stripped them of their love of games and they ended up becoming reviewing machines. There was also mention of how Rab regrets being pissed off over comments on forums to the point that he stopped the ability to comment on consolevania.com as well as the Consolevania YouTube page.

Personally, I believe that rllmuk was a lynch pin in all this. I used to frequent the place often, but I soon realise that it is full of people who appear to have nothing but negativity and hate in their hearts. Anyone who speaks praise of a game is instantly spotlighted and analysed. There was an uneasy analysing process, sniping, arguing... just horrible. If the arsehole community of rllmuk are responsible in part for Consolevania's departure, then fuck them. I think this is the defining moment for me. I'd sometimes slink back on to rllmuk after a hiatus and get back into the groove of talking about games until being reminded how bad the place can be. In fact, fuck it. No more internet gaming forums for me.

If anything, I think Consolevania has left an interesting legacy of archived programmes and shows - like a history of gaming from 2005-2009. We can look back on those episodes and remember all the good things - the positive things. The blue-eyed soul.

Well, I've cranked out this blog and I'm still bored. I think the next entry will be a journey through the games I used to play on my trusty ZX Spectrum +2. Ah, happy days of being young and carefree. Pumped full of testosterone and acne, though the glow of a broken cathrode ray illuminated the darkness and put me on the road to where I am now.

Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing.

Happy New Year! I've been a bit tardy on this blog, though with good reason - Wheelman has gobbled up my free-time like some kind of pilled-up workaholic. Thankfully the light can be seen at the end of the tunnel and we're finishing up with a lot of things. It's nice to get a sense of closure though it's a bit sad - there's always something strange about releasing something you've worked on for so long into the big, bad wilds and seeing it fend for itself. Needless to say that I've had a lot of fun working on the game as well as learnt a lot about the structure of the studio of a large game project. It was quite daunting and overwhelming to begin with, but now I think I've gotten into the groove and become part of the system too.

I do think that I can affect stuff through the simple process of communicating - during my time in the industry, I've noted the lack of communication can lead to some terrifying outcomes, so I often chat to co-workers about the game, send out feedback e-mails and the like. I also find that I'm more of a workaholic than ever before. It's strange - when I was lounging around playing Fallout 3 (scarily excellent game, by the way) during the extended Christmas break, I was getting slowly more and more bored of it all. I needed some kind of motivation with my time. It's also because it's the end of the year and it feels right to laze about scoffing chocolates and not getting up to much. I beat myself up about not being productive for myself rather than working on Wheelman. Now the New Year is upon me, I'm now starting to ramp myself up for some productive art-type stuff. I still have late-nighters but soon they will become a thing of the past and I can concentrate on my own arty passions like drawing huge paintings of cyborg lasses and....

The Cult of Karl video! Above is my first YouTube upload and it's a good one - the finished animatic for the video! See that pic at the top of the post? I did that today and it's a kind of "proof of concept" about how the video is going to look. I've already uploaded the animatic on my YouTube page - where I'm also starting to collate playlists of amazing animated (and non-animated!) music videos. My partner in crime (and the awesome writer of The Cult of Karl tune), Chris Merritt, has plugged the video and it's now managed to grab 1,000 views. So many views for my modest video! I think that both Chris and myself are benefitting from this exposure so it's definitely a great thing to do.

Now comes the hard part - working on the finished thing. It's great that I have a framework to build on top of in Flash now, though I am always weary of Flash as my extended experience working with it on Wheelman has given me the knowledge that it's a horrendously buggy piece of crap. I mean, there's things you can do in Flash which are, well, Flash, but they can't be exported in video format - which means I might have to cheat and use FRAPS to capture a running Flash file. It sucks, yep, but so does Flash at times. I'm wondering if Flash CS4 has solved all of its wonderous issues. Still, the prospect of getting a finished music video is very exciting indeed and could hopefully lead to bigger things for me during my spare time!

Oh, plug time - Official Wheelman website! It's up and there's lots of goodness to learn and glean from what I've been up to for these two years. We've been getting some bits and pieces in the print magazines, though not nearly enough coverage as we could get. Hopefully nearer launch things will gear up and sort themselves out.

This is a relatively short blog post for me, though this is due to the fact I've been busy again today doing work-type stuff, but (most importantly) being industrious and loving what I do. I'll keep these blog posts more regular and less like novels for the New Year. I do have some nifty resolutions too, one of which involves working less though only because I couldn't have worked any more last year..!

So with that, I will leave you as I venture to bed with dreams of Broccoflowers. Yep, they exist.

Nightnight!  

"He f**ked your grand-daughter!"

These words bounced through my ears and into my brain before it registered that this was not only a shocking thing to say on an elderly actor's answerphone, but was also bloody funny. The actor in question was Andrew Sachs - he who played the stereotypical Spanish waiter, Manuel, in the classic BBC comedy known to us crusty old Brits as Fawlty Towers. Anyone who lives on this slowly-diminishing island of the United Kingdom will know that those four words uttered from the disabled mouth of Jonathan Ross during Russell Brand's pre-recorded podcast will know of the damage they have invoked to not only Brand's and Ross's collective media careers, but also (somehow) imprinting on television.

Two complaints were made after that podcast was put out. Just two. What followed was the outrage from that glorious institution of decency and pig-headed liberalism - The Daily Mail. "SACK THEM!" yelled their front pages as they detailed in transcripts what was (and wasn't) broadcast so their readership could pick up their pitchforks and torches and go on a moral rampage. The background story for Ross's exclamation was Brand had sexual relations with Sachs' grand-daughter - who incidentally is part of a troupe of "ladies" known rather affectionately as The Satanic Sluts. Throughout the podcast after the f-bomb was dropped, they kept on leaving answerphone messages. And kept on leaving more answerphone messages. At one point, Ross suggested they "use up the tape". This was all fantastic fun to listen to, but it was almost like listening to something fished straight out of the digital trashcans of 6 Music's desktop. As entertaining as Tom Baker's vocal torrent of abuse while making radio adverts for beds.

This is the thing though - that podcast shouldn't have gone out in the first place. It seems that the people responsible were those who let the podcast go out. Needless to say, a horrible knock-on effect has taken place. Thanks to the Mail, those complaints rose from 2 to 30,000; Brand has resigned from his radio DJ role at 6 Music; the controller of 6 Music has also stepped down; Ross has been suspended from everything he's been associated with at the BBC - which includes his chat show, his film review show, his radio show...

The newspapers made for grim reading as The Mail had a smug printed grin on its gurning paper face. It felt like they had won some kind of victory and the readership applauded such a wonderful decision. It definitely felt like somone had taken a molehill and crafted it into a massive mountain - the incident didn't deserve all the coverage and spin. One good thing from all this was that it pushed all those doom-and-gloom stories about the fall of the World's Economy to the inside pages - we can be at least thankful for that. The more worrying thing was this radio-based japery had suddenly impacted on the BBC as a whole and soon their programmes were under the spotlight. The Mail once more grabbed the reins with obvious relish and listed so-called wrongdoings that the BBC were responsible for. All the programmes mentioned are loved by many and have been cited as being ground-breaking entertainment.

As if by magic, Channel 4 produced the imaginatively-titled "The TV Show" and self-analysed itself with a newly-found moral compass. "Were we wrong to show a disabled person falling off a stool on the recent Peter Kay skit of The X Factor?". "Was it in bad taste?". They had a line-up of disabled people in the studio to comment - one of which actually took it as what it was intended to be - a joke. To quote Billy Connolly, it seems some people can't fucking take a joke these days. It's a bad time for television now - it'll be scared to put a foot wrong and dare to be exciting, edgy and fresh. It'll start to become a place which will be monitored and measured to the point where programming will start to become stilted and homogenised. It's indeed a sad thing. Charlie Brooker even commented that he's had issues with his enjoyable Screenwipe series where the BBC would step in and change/remove content. I do remember his comment regarding The Queen's Speech had to be removed and replaced with a "Removed at BBC's Request" while accompanied by some apt System of a Down. He had some great words to say regarding the Ross/Brand scandal.

Speaking of Mr. Brooker, he recently scored a victory for decent television by writing and producing the frankly jaw-dropping Dead Set. For those of you who have yet to experience it (possibly those Stateside), imagine the Big Brother house in the midst of a zombie outbreak. The hour-long initial episode had me in fits of amazement at what I was witnessing - frankly it was something I was glad to be watching at that moment in time. They had a meagre budget, but the whole five-part series oozed a filmic quality and a sense that everyone involved worked as hard as they could to come up with the goods. There were some great observations from Brooker - especially the Big Brother character archetypes - as well as some cracking effects work, Zombie Davina being an absolute triumph of casting and performance plus a crapload of gore. I'm hoping there's no sequel, but also hoping this will get the recognition it deserves. Actually Channel 4 should seriously consider showing the thing (it was shown on the network's hipster-sister channel - E4). It's out on DVD now and I really, really want to grab it and watch it without all those sodding adverts. Here's one of the best bits. (Curses to E4 for not letting me embed.)

Top Gear returned for a new Autumnal series, and it was insanely good. It was definitely the very embodiment of "cocking about" and in one truly mindless-yet-amazing moment, Clarkson drives a truck through a brick wall for one of the many truck-based challenges. He was injured by this act, but only slightly - and it made for great television. The Daily Mail reported this not for the act, but for the remark he made about truckers. They commented on how terrible and irresponsible and yaddayaddayadda. I would very much like to see The Daily Mail sink into the sea without a trace - it's one of those newspapers which irritatingly holds the moral high ground. If they had their way, shows like Dead Set and Top Gear would be banned and off our screens. Television would not be doing itself any favours with this move - many people these days don't watch television in favour of escapism from all this credit crunch dread through laughing at failblog.org and playing videogames.

Ah, videogames. My 360 is dead and I have to put it into its snug cardboard coffin after I've finished with this blog entry. It'll take 2-3 weeks until it comes back to me, but by which time I will have missed many major videogame-related launches for the 360 including Fable 2, Dead Space, Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2. The frugal part of me likes this. I won't be spending money on videogames which I could squirrel away in my bank account or save on buying a nice rug for my living room. I still have a list in my head of things which will make this flat more homely, although the work schedule I currently have with Wheelman, I've not spent much time here in the flat. I have such an amazing dream of what mural to paint on my wall, but have no time to do it. It's frustrating.

The game is definitely coming together though - I play new builds and get excited with what I'm playing. We're still tweaking things and people are working hard on getting the game as good as we can make it. I've become something of a Good Samaritan during downtime, fixing other peoples' bugs and chasing up other bugs too. I've been polishing my pixels and optimising as best I can. I don't want to be responsible for any slip-up or oversight on my part. I've been living day-to-day and working as hard and as best I can on this project. I've also made some decisions regarding what's going on in the media and on forums - in that I've decided to stop posting on one popular gaming forum as it's turned into something I don't particularly like. I've posted there for a fair few years now and there were the primary boasts of being a developer (working for Jester Interactive at the time). I've made friends on there, but there's this renegade element which relishes in piracy, name-calling and generally adhering to the Internet Dickwad Theory with gusto. You can't argue with these people especially when it seems like there's some kind of mob mentality - it's almost like being back in school. Balls to that. Keep your arguments about "Which is the best Zelda?" (Link's Awakening actually). I'm off.

Also I've self-imposed myself from reading any videogame-related "news site" - I use the term lightly because these are glorified blogs with people who consider themselves journolists but are anything but. The commenting hoards of the gamers will also be disregarded - the gaming public can either be wildly supportive or wildly hostile - there is no middle ground. I need to get myself onto some news sites which aren't so subjective and out for the blood of "suffering publishers/developers". So no more Joystiq. No more Kotaku. These sites can get on with their usual thing trying to fill the minds of gamers with negative and cancerous thoughts, and I'll get on with my thing of working on something I believe in.

I was also meant to update my blog the other day but I've been suffering a pretty lousy cold/flu thing, so I missed out on congratulating Mr. Barack Obama on being the new president of the USA. It's pretty monumental that he's the first black president too - although we all know colour shouldn't have anything to do with it. It's pretty exciting stuff! Also in keeping with the tone of this post, people are still talking about Ross/Brand..!

"Are we there yet?" yelled the kids in unison. I shook my vision clear and look out towards the vast desert road which stretched before me and my sweat-covered steering wheel. I study the road surface once more - it seemed a little more detailed and potholed than before. "Are we there yet?" once more echoed through my ears as I looked up and stared at the skyline. I was sure that was a different sky. Out of curiosity, I turned the wheel to move into the other lane. Yep, it felt a lot more smoother than it did - I was surprised at this fact considering I had been on this road now for over two years. "Are we there yet?". I stared into the horizon and saw nothing but the curvature of the earth, although the cacti appeared to pop into existance a lot less now. "Are we there yet?"

Welcome to the world of videogame development.

Wheelman's development has been the longest I've worked on any videogame (just over 2 years) - and considering this is my first AAA title, should I really be surprised? Over the past nine years of development, I've had a maximum of eighteen months as a limit and psychologically used this as a yardstick to pace myself like one would normally do when running a marathon. So imagine when you finish those arduous 26.2 miles only to be told there's an extra 8 miles to go. You'd have energy left, but you definitely wouldn't feel like you have prepared for this surprise. Again, I shouldn't be surprised. Myself and a determined core of the studio have crunched on Wheelman for over a year - a year of hard work, late-night takeaway meals and not much time to paint that exotic mural up in my front room. I'm kind of lucky that I don't have a physical relationship as I know it would be in tatters now. Me staggering back home in a zombie-like trance only to find the missus waiting for me with a "Where have you been?" look. I'd mumble something before crashing out to bed.

It's been longer for a lot of the studio though - three years of development. It's been a long journey, though it feels like we're almost done. The car will get to its destination and the kids will eventually stop yelling that cliched question. I booted up an old build of the game from last year, and it's insane the amount of progress we have achieved in getting the game where it is now - we have much, much better handling; our version of Barcelona is looking more alive; we have complete missions with an almost sultry level of polish and attention to detail. I still enjoy taking a perfectly decent car and heaping huge amounts of virtual damage onto it. At this stage, we're now finishing up on things - killing bugs, fixing graphical glitches and finding every opportunity to play new builds. I think a fair majority of us want the game to succeed and to do well for Midway - I know I want it to. We are mostly gamers who know what irritates us and what makes us happy when we engage in our pastime when we get a spare moment. There's been a very active e-mail Feedback mailing list where there are daily opinions, points raised and a healthy result of hopefully making our game even better.

My tasks now on my "Burndown" list are mostly optimisation and making parts of the UI even smaller and more programmer-friendly. As this is my first title where I'm using Scaleform and Flash CS3 for the front end work, it's been... interesting. What I do know is that using Flash for anything precise and developer friendly is an impossibility. Take this nugget of unjoy for instance - our in-game map is split up into many, many square pieces which helps with memory and frame rate. Now Flash CS3 has some alarming habits, but one of these is forgetting about integer numbers. So imagine all of these squares are laid out on a grid. It's all very precise - 280x280 pixel pieces on integer (non-decimal) co-ordinates. Flash magically does something with these pieces so when you load up the scene, sometimes you'll get pieces which are 279.9x280.1. Not only that, but their positions have also been slightly altered. The result? Noticable gaps in my map. I've been trying to combat this, and a lot of work the other day was spent adding a pixel buffer around the piece so when these pieces overlapped, it would mean no seams. Optimisation has also become something of a chore as Flash sometimes does some very strange things with vertices - and not just that - deleting whole portions of the map when I delete one vertex. It's maddening to say the least. I'm ever hopeful we get the new CS4 with all the stuff which should have been put into Flash CS3 for the next project.

It does annoy me sometimes when things don't work the way they should - or have been designed to work. A myriad of crashes have lost so many man hours on this planet. Imagine if we had no crashes on the computers we work on - we'd be living on the fucking moon by now. Speaking of crashes, I think my Xbox 360 has finally bitten the bullet. It's now freezing up a few minutes into playing a game (from boot-up) and now I'm resigned to the fact that I've become another casualty of Microsoft's Biggest Fuck-up Ever. A lot of the guys in the studio have suffered the same fate of 360 death and know only too well of the horrible procedure of getting a coffin from UPS to cart away that white box which offered so much including the always-constant fear that its innards would implode with badly-vented heat and break the hearts of many, many gamers. It is heart-breaking because the machine is such a damn attractive beast with a vast wealth of great games, but let down by some shonky manufacturing. I suppose I've got a fair amount of play out of it, but I've had a fair amount of play out of my PlayStation2 for a much more impressive number of years. In fact, I bought the thing on the first year of my career in the games industry and it's still working fine. I'm going to phone Xbox Support tomorrow and it's going to break my heart.

So the PS2 and Wii (and possibly the Dreamcast I'll never sell) will get dusted off and given some loving. I've also ventured into PC Gaming again and bought some fine bargains from PC World including the fancy-schmancy Unreal Tournament III Special Edition for a tenner. I've got the thing already on the 360, but alas - 360 won't work no more. I enjoyed it very much with joypad, but we know the keyboard and mouse are the natural home for any self-respecting FPS, right? Plus those 18 hours of UnrealEd video tutorials have sold it to me. Midway as a company have invested heavily in the Unreal Engine and I do use UnrealEd for stuff, but only for exporting, checking and the like. It'll be good to get a lot more pro-active with it for the next project.

I think the problem with working so hard and long on something is not having time to learn new skills and expanding my circle of artistic knowledge and experience. As you may have figured out, I want to take a wall in my flat and turn it into a super-sexy mural. I've got the design in my head and I really want to start work on it, but coming home now means rationing time so I get enough out of the hour or so I have around to do things before the inevitable drifting off to bed. Of course, when Wheelman is all done and wrapped up, time will become a lot more available for me as we revert back to the regular working day. That's going to be a very exciting day because I'll be able to explode with ideas and creativity: I'll become a man on an artistic mission. One of my first missions is to work on getting a more fancy-pants finished version of my video for Chris Merritt's Cult of Karl tune. Chris (who has recently revamped his site with lots of goodness) has been in contact with me and loved my animatic (click on that to grab it!) though I feel a bit crappy for not working on the finished thing due to a lack of time. I made time for that animatic - lunch breaks included, but not had the chance to fully go through with, well, any animated music promo. It's been my dream to finish at least one animated music promo before I shift this mortal coil.

Now this may sound all very dramatic and all, but recently Shynola's Gideon Baws sadly passed away. He was 33 - my age. From what I can gather, he suffered an accidental blow to the head earlier in the day and later on in the day he died from an aneurysm. It just shows you how sometimes life can be so short, so every day has to be lived and enjoyed. Shynola have produced some of the greatest music promos ever - and in tribute of Gideon's passing, I present to you some of Shynola's best. R.I.P.

Plus the classic Go With The Flow promo featuring the Queens of the Stone Age which can't be embedded because Universal are a bunch of arses.

Rather frustratingly the demise of my 360 couldn't have come at a worse time. There's many, many new games out on the horizon ready to be grabbed and played. Dead Space looks positively astounding in its execution and the fact it's an EA game which isn't really what you'd normally expect from EA - kudos to them for that. I've not seen any advertisements for Coca Cola in those previews yet, so there is hope. Fable 2 is coming out soon, as is Gears of War 2. Oh, and Fallout 3 - although since I can't enjoy it on my 360, I'm seriously tempted to play the thing on my PC. Saints Row 2 is getting a lot of praise from gaming forums, and yet I can't sample its goodness. What I will say from the looks of it is that it's what GTA4 could have been - the developers of Saints Row 2 appear to remember games should be fun and not all dramatic and po-faced. God bless them. Here's a slice of fun, fun, fun!

Christmas is coming and I have many credit-crunch-busting ways to grab presents for people. I think all the hoo-ha about the collapse of the World Economy is something which we engineered as human beings. Imagine how unphased we'd be if we lived in, I dunno, the Isle of Man? They've got their own monetary system going on there so I'm sure it's all business as usual. I am a great believer in karma, so the imminent demise of Iceland isn't all that of a surprise. Regular readers of this blog will have gotten that little joke, but feel free to find Icelandic references in past posts and put two and two together! There's the hoo-ha of "negative equity". Bullshit. I'm glad I bought this place and feel happier because of it. Those who fear the values of their homes decrease are possibly those fly-by-night types who jump from house to house in the same way I used to when I rented. Whatever happened to a sense of stability? A rock to build from? A lot of things which wind people up are constructs by - people! It's all very much a human race doing itself an injustice. Me? I'm happy to live every day as it comes although I know now that my Christmas present for this year will be the heating of this flat during the Winter months. Nothing really tangible, but could be the thing which saves me from a very uncomfortable time.

In other news, Charlie Brooker's Dead Set is soon to make a showing on E4. This is a genuinely exciting concept for me and one Charlie probably has been thinking about for some time - a zombie outbreak with the main characters of the series being trapped inside the Big Brother house! Even more astounding is that Davina McCall becomes a zombie - and a pretty impressive one from early reports. The show will begin on the 27th for 5 days with the finale being on - yep, you guessed it - Halloween! Check out the trailer here. ("Embedding disabled by request" are words which fill me with woe.)

Harry Hill is back! Harry could be considered the less vitrolic version of Charlie Brooker as he is also a commenter of what comes out of Satan's Googlebox, but there's definitely a touch of the surreal. All three parts of the first episode can be now viewed via the constant magic of YouTube. I'm also enjoying Stephen Fry's America - although there was a shaky start in the first episode, the second episode delivered in a lot more ways. He has also recently revamped his website to 2.0 and that includes a stalker-ish Twitter feed. He's currently poncing about Africa eyeing up lions! I also took advantage of Virgin's current 1p rentals and I have to say that Rambo was pretty impressive popcorn-munching brainless action, though Be Kind Rewind? What the hell happened, Michel Gondry? You suddenly run out of creative juice or something? Ghostbusters remake? Funny, yep. Not much else really did it for me compared to the heart, soul and sheer creativity found in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I even felt cheated out of spending a penny on it. It goes to show you that not all film directors are guaranteed to be awesome all of the time (I'm looking at you, George Lucas). Here's the only good bit of Be Kind Rewind...

Oh, and the camouflage bit.

Well, there's not much else to talk about. 40 minutes until bedtime and it's getting a bit colder in Chez Pick. I bought some more bits and pieces from a workmate and good friend of mine who is going on a dizzying journey around the world - and I probably mentioned in an earlier post, but I promised him a place to stay here when he comes back. He helped me a great deal when I was kicked out by my evil ex-landlord from Iceland (aha!) so I am more than happy to return the favour. It'll be good to have someone knocking about this place, but this is happening next year - actually when Wheelman should be out on shelves for all to grab - so it's also a deadline for me to make this place a bit more habitable. At the moment there's still a bit of a bare bones quality here which I need to shake off somewhat. I do enjoy coming back here though after walking back from work in the dead of night. Nothing but the startled sight of bunnies pelting back into their holes, sleeping truckers in their curtained cabs and the reminder that my lousy eyeballs aren't doing me any favours when confronted with the exaggerated glare of many light sources.

Here's hoping that soon the walk back will be a less nocturnal journey!

Oh, almost forgot. Consolevania's back!

Photo Credit.

I remember when the word "crunch" was a word which I associated with tasty breakfast treats. It's biscuits. It's the soothing sound of a booted foot flattening virginal snow on a cold December morning. Now the word has a much more sinister meaning. It's tightening of our belts. It's spending less. It's bolting down the hatches for a shitstorm which is the doing of greedy bankers who appear to have no morals for the harm they've caused on the newly-unemployed and those who put faith in the banking framework which our civilization now appears to be balancing on.

I turn on the news and see hundreds of billions of dollars spat out into the ether - not even George W would even think of spending so much on heavy ordinance generously sprinkled on the yet-to-be-liberated countries out there. Credit crunch. It's the phrase which will be in our collective brains for generations to come and could be the undoing of the entire planet. Supermarkets appear to be capitalizing on this by actively using the word "crunch" in their advertising and wheeling out unbelievable deals which we cannot resist.

To be honest, ever since I bought a flat (and my older brother reminded me of this terrible "mistake" I made given the current climate), I've been living like a bit of a pauper. I've not had a chance to buy things to populate the flat and call it my own. The same painted walls with which the seller left this place remain as they were with the ashen ghost-shadows of picture frames left for me to imagine "what if...". I have plans for this place, but plans like that require time and money - two things I'm in need of. That's a lie actually - my bank account is recovering nicely, though I guess I'm a bit freaked out to spend my monthly paycheck on the things which will make this place special. I had a defining thought of going crazy and painting a huge mural in my living room as a sign of rebellion towards all those landlords who caused me grief in the past and stopped me from decorating those inviting always-white walls in something more hopeful.

An Ikea catalogue plops through my letterbox and I can't help but be memorized by the cheap-but-stylish furniture which adorns each page accompanied by the hipster family grinning like Swedish monkeys with not a care in the world. "Credit crunch? Pfft!" they could gibber from their gurning mouths as they recline and admire their new sofas. I need bookcases though. Bookcases can be used to display the swag which I've invisibly dragged with me from property to property. To be honest, I really don't give two hoots about the credit crunch. This is my home. I love the fact that I know I won't be kicked out or given notice by an over-zealous landlord, The first thing I will do when I get some spare time and courage to spend a little is to paint that bloody salmon pink hallway. What colour? Any bloody colour other than salmon pink.

I visited home for the first time in an age last week - I got a conditional holiday which I thankfully earned through the usual prerequisite of hard work on Wheelman - more of that in a short while. I missed the train travel. It's a contrast to the insta-travel miracle of flying from locale to locale. You appreciate the journey more on a train. I got stuck into the book I bought from the car boot sale the last time I was home - Evil Spirits by Cliff Goodwin, or the life story of Oliver Reed told with a lot of factual enthusiasm. I think I'm on a bit of a biography kick at the moment as I'm reading through the Russell Brand book when I get a chance too. Proper books. The very notion of the "e-book" fills me with luddite fear, although ironically I love my gadgets. Some things shouldn't be changed for the future... I can't imagine traditional books running out of battery power.

I mentioned that train travel was missed, though I didn't miss the Merseytravel-branded train journey from Liverpool back to home - even though Liverpool is the European City of Culture for 2008, Merseytravel still has that same oppressive feeling it ever did. I'm not sure why this is the case - I do remember the travels to Liverpool when I was a teenager were always punctuated with sweet-throwing Scouse teenagers or pisshead tramps. I think it's a lot better now they have hulking big security guards strolling down the carriages. I'm not sure which is worse. Still, I made it back home in one piece and took my usual stroll through Market Street to see what's changed. One thing which never changes though is the Pick House. In some ways, this is a good thing - I feel safe and unstressed by the thirteen cats my Mum still hold dear; the open log fire which is more a necessity and a remnant of the past rather than a conscious design decision... and the horrors that await me in the bathroom.

Mum is strange at times. If something breaks like, oooh, I dunno - the water boiler? Well, she'll consider this as an instant money saving. "I'll be saving money on gas now!" she would no doubt exclaim in her frugal braincase. This means that there's no central heating and no hot water. If I wanted hot water to wash, I'd have to heat up a huge pan of it on our stove and then cart it into the bathroom trying to avoid any curious cats getting under my feet and causing an accident flavoured by severe burns. As well as this, the toilet no longer flushes. In another twist of Victorian nonsense, flushing requires filling up a bucket of water and pouring the contents into the toilet bowl. If you get the speed right, it almost sounds like the toilet flushes like it's intended to do! I also noted that the cold water tap was constantly flowing to "relieve pressure from the next door neighbours who recently had central heating installed". I'm not sure if this is a viable excuse, but it was a scary flashback to a time when we did actually lived an impoverished lifestyle and our cold water tap (we only had cold water in those days too...) was constantly on.

I do enjoy coming home after a break from working in NewcastleGateshead, but for the love of Christ - why aren't these things sorted? I now make sure I don't take my shower for granted. The fact I can flush a toilet at will without filling a bucket or the miracle of hot water coming from my taps without waiting five minutes... my family appears to be in some kind of strange timewarp which doesn't feel like reverting any time soon. Mum seriously suggested I book a shower at my big sister's gaff - how weird is that? "Uncle Steve is in the bathroom, wait until he's done!". No, I can't impose in such a bizarre way. It's the only thing I dread. If I'm lucky enough to get time off to visit them at Christmas, I might consider a B&B option for the fact that there will be a proper bathroom waiting for me. I did the usual stuff when I was there though - went to the Car Boot Sale with my big brother, Ant, and picked up a Billy Connolly VHS for Mum and a truly terrible DVD called Alien vs Hunter inspired by, well... what do you think? I've not seen it yet. I'm expecting greatly bad things. I think the trailer below has confirmed my best and worst fears...

I spent one day going on a long walk around the varied locales of West Wirral including the beach I used to be taken down to with other family members - that was our holiday time, for it was the only thing we could realistically afford. I popped over to West Kirby and half-considered walking out to one of the nearby islands, although the thought of ruining my shoes with mud and sand put me off this prospect. I ended up checking out my old school where I spent a good deal of my formative years being bullied by people I could only describe as lamentable fuckers. Calday Grange Grammar School had old elements still in place, but a lot of it had changed somewhat. I skirted around the place from a safe distance to avoid a curious security guard and noted the lush expanse of green had been violated with many ugly squash courts. It got worse when I walked back - an entire (and huge) playground had apparantly been sold off and now sat a bunch of over-priced houses. I hate that. It's happened a few times to me - Withens Lane College where I studied Graphic Design on terribly slow Mac Classics no longer exists and that's all housing too. I could go back even further and tell you that my old Primary School is now.. yep. Houses. Thankfully memories can't be knocked down and built over, but it's a sad inditement when school grounds are turfed over for rich footballers to live on top of.

Actually, some of my worst memories were linked to that playground. I was always the goalie in football - always picked last. The joyless sting of a football slamming into my face and catapulting my spectacles into the air. One of the worst memories with that place involved a school Sports Day. What I tell you now is absolute truth and what I had to put up with when I was part of that place - I was taking part in a 400m running race along with a line-up of hateful bastards. The thing is that in those days I was quite a kick-ass runner - I guess I had plenty of practice running away from trouble - and when the race started, I was confident to the point that on the home stretch I was leading the race. Now this is the absolutely surreal and bat-shit crazy thing - many, many people in the crowd were not happy about this and proceeded to make their feelings known with plenty of booing and shouting. This was a mob of sheep who behaved in the same way everyone else did, and because of this I unsurprisingly lost confidence, ended up going over into another lane and being disqualified - much to the amusement and satisfaction of the crowds.

Let me just take this opportunity to say I've changed my mind - I'm glad they bulldozed that fucking playground. Maybe that moment in time is now someone's lounge. I'm glad.

I returned back home and bumped into Mum, relieving her of overweight shopping bags full of price-slashed bargains. I think it's one of the few perks she has these days - and I empathised with her as I'm also partial to a bit of bargain-hunting in supermarkets. We both ended up bumping into Nan - who I was glad to see looked a lot better than the last time I saw her. I tried not to think of her as some kind of Bond villain sitting in her back garden facing the other way on a bright red mobility scooter. She noted I looked like Uncle Colin with my beard and I promised her that I'd make it to her 100th birthday party - she's currently 98 and she has that wonderful trait that all our family own - tenacity. It got me through that school and it keeps me going. I think this is also the reason why there is no hot water in the Pick House.

Back in NewcastleGateshead, I appreciated the break from the hectic work schedule of Wheelman. We've got a submission deadline soon and the game is taking leaps and bounds - it's very exciting because there's a lot of fine-tuning and improvements which take shape with constant build updates. I'm currently going through UI elements with a fine-toothed comb, so there's optimisations to be undertaken, maps to be updated and polish to be added. It does feel like we're coming to the end of the game and it's good to know that we've come a very, very long way from the early days. I do know that these next few months are going to be quite crazy, but I've been crunching (there's that word again...) like a trooper for a year now and there are no qualms with working those extra hours. I do miss my "me" time though - I really need to start producing artwork again which is my own, though getting back from the studio means I've got a few hours to do what I need to do before I hit the hay. I'm envious of those on my DeviantArt friends list who produce so much because they have the time to do these things. As I've mentioned before, this has been the longest I've worked on any game during my 8-9 year career in the games industry.

I have just finished work on the animatic for Chris Merritt's Cult of Karl video though - you can grab it here (Flash file 20.6Mb). The next step is to flesh out the animatic with finished vector-based work, which needs I'll need to start producing character model sheets on Illustrator and import them over. One thing I've learnt about using Flash CS3 for the video is this - it's a buggy piece of crap which needs fixing. I feel a sense of anger that Adobe don't fix their shit - what the heck do their programmers get up to? It still amazes me that Flash doesn't even have parenting or IK functions - how the hell do those 2D character animators put up with it? I can name some terrifying bugs off the top of my head, but the fact I use Flash in our UI along with Scaleform means I can spot these bugs and realise that Flash isn't all it's cracked up to be. While I'm on a rant - iTunes. Someone has created a wonderful thing called Genius in the new iTunes, which can cross-reference music that sounds like the music you're currently listening to and in turn you can discover brand new music. I approve of this, though I don't approve of the "pfft" sound which can be heard whenever Genius actually does anything. "No problem, Steve! You can turn it off in the options, can't you?". Nope. Apple make great products but seem to tie them up to shitty software, which in turn does those aforementioned products a disservice.

The strange thing is that someone sent me over a link to the new Adobe CS4 launch and there's a lot to like - especially since they've fixed Flash to the point it can scale keyframes over time in the same way After Effects does, has its own 3D engine (along with Photoshop...!) and also - YES - IK in animation rigs. All I need now is a sack of cash.

In other news, I've bought the new Mighty Boosh book - The Mighty Book of Boosh - and it's a wonderful thing to behold. Lots of beautiful imagery in the shape of lush photography and some incredible hand-drawn typography treatments of the Boosh Boys' crimps. This is why it would be a shame for real books to be phased out by crummy virtua-books. I definitely recommend this book for anyone and - yep - makes the perfect gift for Christmas! Check out that link to the Amazon page to check out a "Look Inside" preview - you know I tell nothing but truth!

I've also discovered through the magic of T61, a bearded musician by the name of Benji Hughes. He's got a recent album out called Love Extreme and it's quite a handful - 25 tracks with a sound which is akin to Beck/Eels/The Flaming Lips but with some electro-inspired intervals and a lot of harmony thrown in for good measure. I need to see this chap live if only to admire his vast beard and exquiste taste in sunglasses.

I'm excited for Winter - already the transition to Autumn is giving me a warm feeling in my heart. Scattered leaves and cooling breezes make me happier and the possibility of a snow-filled Christmas once again enters my mind. You know, I think life is a lot easier when you realise a lot of the stuff out there is designed to try and bring you down. Why isn't there a news channel which broadcasts only the good news stories? It's very easy to be affected by all the horrific news out there.

Maybe ignorance is bliss. I'd rather be a happy idiot than a fully-clued up genius.