3 posts tagged “kotaku”

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.

"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..!

This blog has been drifting about my consciousness since last Monday after touching down at Newcastle International with memories of the mass gathering of the gaming populace of Europe - Leipzig 08. The last trade show I attended was ECTS 2002 in London when I was working for Jester Interactive - it was a bitter-sweet affair as ECTS 2000 was so much more memorable and for a Dreamcast obsessive like myself, the stuff of dreams. It was during the time Sega were in denial regarding the imminent death of the console and this was supplemented by an infamous e-mail by Peter Moore (yep, him with those guns) who reassured us all that everything was fine and we should all just keep developing for the Dreamcast. In the case of ECTS, I was the obsessive gamer whose nose involuntarily bled with joy at the sights of magazine features made flesh - I was the carrier of the swag and the drinker of the PlayStation2-flavoured Kool Aid. Leipzig 08 would be a different matter for me entirely...

Now the thing about travelling to Leipzig is that for anyone reading this, they would probably consider it no big deal to hop on a plane and travel to Germany. For me, it was due to the fact that this would be my first time on a plane. Yep, you read that right. A man of 33 years of age not ascending to the heavens and looking down on the planet with godlike vision. It was no fault of my own - I was brought up in an environment where holidays for us involved travelling down to the nearby beach. On foot. There was one special occasion where we ended up in a caravan at the foot of Snowdonia, though air travel? Forget it. As I type, my dear old Mum is still hasn't flown. She doesn't even know how to drive a car, bless her. Maybe I've taken after my Mum in that respect of not trying things straight away and sitting on my laurels. This was an opportunity I couldn't miss though.

I did almost consider dropping out. There's a part of my brain which is to blame for my virginity in many things - the "don't want to rock the boat" part of my brain. When I was offered the job at Midway Newcastle, those devious synapses snapped into attention and I almost refused the offer. Thankfully I've learnt to reign in that indecision and doubt and just went ahead with what my heart told me. Get out of this flat. It's killing you slowly. It was a big deal moving, but in hindsight I'm glad I did it. Same with buying this place. I almost balked out of getting a mortgage at the interview in my local bank. I'm here now and feel a lot more secure and a lot less stressed. I rammed down those uncertain thoughts and responded in the positive - I was going to Leipzig!

This meant I had to bone up on air travel though - I asked the advice of many people and got some very handy hints. "Chewing is important to keep your ears from popping" commented one workmate. "Taking off is fantastic!" mentioned another. On forums I was advised to limit myself to 100ml liquid containers, not to take the piss at the security terminals and simply enjoy it. I bought my first ever suitcase! I grabbed some euros! I received homework from work! Yep, homework. Leipzig wasn't going to be a holiday - it would be four days of working at the Wheelman stand as part of the Midway stand. We had reams of documentation to read up on about the game. We also had practical tests where we would have to talk through the first mission of the game - Frantic - to our producers, who posed as inquisative members of the press in case any of them wandered into our stand. The thing is that we weren't really the types of people who would normally demonstrate games to strangers, but by the end of the boot camp I think we were more than prepared for it. One downer was we were playing an old build of the game from E3 - so there was some bugs which had to be skillfully avoided while playing the game. They're fixed now, but it was hard to concentrate on playing the game and talking to people about the game when you had to avoid wayward traffic which appeared to make a beeline straight towards your car.

The whole process of airports was something of a new thing for me. It was exciting and interesting but I wasn't actually scared about flying - I just wanted to know what to expect so I felt a bit more at ease. Thankfully there was a bar at Newcastle International, so a quick double Gin and Tonic (the lass behind the counter was unsurprised at my joy that they only did doubles) and I felt a bit more ready for it. It was weird to see grizzled travellers go through the motions while I was floundering - at security I took everything out of my coat pockets and then put my coat on top of it all only to be told by the security guard that "I could have just took my coat off and put it in the tray". Remembering the advice not to be a smart arse, I let it pass and soon found myself in the departure lounge looking out onto our plane to Charles de Gaule Airport in Paris.

Christ, it looked small.

I wasn't too phased by the size of the thing - jumbo jet or small passenger plane, I just wanted to get up there and see what all the fuss was about. One thing which was a neat surprise for us all was that the plane wasted no time in bombing down the runway and taking off and when we shot up into the air, it was a moment I'll never forget. I was transfixed with what was outside my window as we drifted through the low-laying wisps of cloud. I turned once to look at the interior and felt a bit strange seeing it at a very definite angle of 45 degrees. I quickly turned back to see the ground disappear in a transition of ghostly whiteness while I rapidly chewed to keep those wayward ears of mine in check. Emerging through those clouds to a fresh new sun-bathed world was quite the thing. I have vertigo but only when I'm clinging onto ladders - but this felt like I was totally safe. I often compared it to travelling on train - you don't really consider you're travelling on a train, you sit there and accept it. In the same way, I was accepting we were thousands of feet in the air and heading towards Paris at quite some speed.

That was something else I couldn't quite get my head around - when the plane banked, everyone stayed in their seats. The sensation was quite an interesting one - looking out of my nearby window and seeing nothing but cloud, then looking out of the other windows and seeing nothing but sky. What also wasn't lost on me was that 2 hours later we were in Paris... I mean, that completely freaked me out. I'm so used to land travel and seeing scenery zip by horizontally to give me indication of movement and yet here I was looking at exotic French candies and the confused signage of Charles De Gaule. It was quite something. We had some dinner in a faux-pub in a dingy part of the airport, where I was forced to order salad with my Croque Monseiur. Salad, as we should all know, is the devil incarnate. It's the garnish which shouldn't be. It's like a creepy uncle sitting on an armchair watching Match of the Day while slowly scratching his crotch. If I had my way, salad would be banned and replaced with chips.

The second flight was just as long in a plane which was even smaller, though already I considered myself something of the flying expert now. I almost didn't even pay attention to the classic display of safety and emergency measures by one of the air crew. It was strange looking down on the patchwork countryside littered with towns and lakes of Germany and feeling like you were hovering over a different country. We touched down at the modest airport just outside Leipzig and I had one thought in my mind - this was the most countries I had ever been in the space of a day. Mum would be proud! We were met at the airport by Sascha - one of the two drivers who were responsible for carting our tired asses from airport to hotel and from hotel to venue. The SUV was decorated in Midway logos of titles at the show including our own blessed Wheelman logo I have learned to grow to love with repeated exposures.

We had practically spent almost all day travelling, so we made ourselves comfortable in our hotel rooms - which were very nice indeed. Again, it was the first time I had stayed in Germany and also in a swanky hotel. The Westin Leipzig definitely ticked all the right boxes except for one - tea and coffee-making facilities. In all the hotels I have visited on my travels, there was always a kettle, some tea bags and some biscuits. Not here. A well-stocked mini-bar and some tasty European treats but no sign of that stalwart of all things British. It was mentioned that this is the way in Germany, so I better get used to it. I am something of a tea addict - growing up I drank nothing but tea and after scoffing at people who drank "the posh stuff" like Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong, I succumbed and delighted in the myriad of assorted tea tastes.

At dinner in one of the hotel's restaurants, we caught up with some of the guys who already worked that day - the first day when the Conference was open - and we got a taste of what to expect. It was extremely busy and many, many people were interested in what Midway was offering - not just Wheelman, but also TNA Impact and the insanely popular MK vs DC Universe title. We learnt that Midway had two stands at the event - we had the sparkling edifice of the consumer stand along with synonymous booth babes and free swag - and we had the more serious Midway stand in the Business Centre part of the event. This dealt with all dealings with retail as well as interviews with press. I was impressed to find out it even had its own kitchen.

The next morning I was in a sense of confusion at breakfast - there was so much to choose from and I must have looked quite hopeless trying to work out what the hell to do. Did I need a tray? Of course not! That didn't stop me taking one in a sense of pure Britishness until I realised our tables were laid out with the civilized trappings of cutlery and plates. I eventually settled on the German equivalent of a cooked breakfast, though soon realised very quickly that sausages in Germany aren't all that great. The tough outer skin I wasn't that big a fan of, and the sausages had cooled to the point it felt like I was chewing down on severed fingers. Nomnomnom.

Our team formed up outside the hotel in our eye-catching red Wheelman shirts and soon piled into another form of transport which I would be experiencing for the first time - a limousine! This was a special limo for promotion of another Midway title - This Is Vegas. It was at the show but only in the form of a looping trailer. In the morning sun, I noticed a lot more of Leipzig - it's a strange place in that it kept on reminding me of Raccoon City in one of the Resident Evil films. All that skyscraper and tall buildings and hardly anyone on the streets. Graffiti of various (thankfully mostly appealing) forms took over a lot of the area along with the huge advertising spend of Sony's LittleBigPlanet - they had taken over an entire side of a building near our hotel with a massively impressive mural. I learnt later on that we were going to have our own Wheelman city-based attraction, but the plans to put half a Pontiac G8 poking through a building were put on hold by those pesky Health and Safety people who appear to be ruining the fabric of our lives entirely.

Another weird thing about Leipzig is this - the town feels empty and deserted and yet the venue is a very, very professional and adequate affair. In fact, it was more than adequate - it felt like it was made just for the purpose of fronting this annual affair with relative ease. We passed through the Business Centre and grabbed some water for the stand while oggling at the various meeting rooms, demo pods and varied munchies which decorated the tables. One of the guys who worked yesterday showed some of the freebies we were giving out - Wheelman high-visibility jackets and Wheelman licence plate holders to name but two. I suddenly drifted back to my time in ECTS and secretly yearned to have those freebies in a swag bag to take back home and needlessly fill up the empty spaces in my batchelor flat with anything but walled static. I shook this profound feeling off as we strode towards one of the four massive consumer halls.

It was very hard not to involuntarily let out a feeling of elation and excitement seeing the stands of other companies showcasing the games which we as gamers could be playing in months to come. Sony had a massive presence there and the LittleBigPlanet stand was unmissable - it was overpowering in its cutesy attraction. We strode on passing the massive EA stand, the huge Ubisoft congregation of titles, Rockstar's surprisingly modest no-bullshit stand and then - back out into the daylight. The morning sun was quite warm to me considering the same time yesterday I was enjoying cooling Northern breezes, though I quickly acclimatised myself as we continued like the cast of Reservior Dogs with intent and determination - into the next consumer hall. In the distance I could see our stand - it wasn't as overpowering as EA's or Ubisoft's stand, but still just as noticable and unique.

As we approached, we could see the Wheelman stand - our home for the next four days. The stand was like a circular monolith to the celebration of rotation - several spinning monitor screens managed to hypnotise people by keeping the Wheelman trailer from spinning with them; above the stand was an orgy of tyres and montage while a large life-size cut-out of Vin Diesel stood guard outside. Essentially, the stand was also designed as an oven for cooking human beings - as we found out as soon as the doors of Leipzig opened and the unmistakable foot-falls of gamers echoed around the hall as they made a beeline for the demo-pod of choice. Before this startling vision, I took in the whole ambience of our stand -  we had a portion of a TNA Wrestling ring with which a wig-adorning German announcer would whip up the crowds into a frenzy supplemented by an scantily-clad booth babe and the head of our Creative Director spread out across 16 television screens.Our pod of six demo stations soon became occupied and a team of three-four people including myself talked through the game to many, many people.

It was surprising how easy I got into the whole "selling the game" thing to people - it can be so easy to be unsincere about going through the storyline of Wheelman to someone for the hundreth time, but I really relished it. In my mind, we were salesmen and we were there to sell the game. On the first two days, we perhaps over-sold it - we were over-trained. This isn't a bad thing though as we came across as extremely knowledgeable regarding all aspects of the game. It was also relentlessly hard work. When I'm in the studio, I sit on my arse and move fingers on a keyboard and mouse. It's not really the most tiring thing in the world, though it was something of a rude awakening to be on one's feet for 9-10 hours keeping an eye on multiple monitors to point players in the right direction in the training mission.

This was something of an issue - our build of the game had no subtitles so we were constantly showing people where to go. A lot of the people who sampled the game were German and the ones who couldn't speak/understand English actually were able tor read English - which helped the next day with a freshly-subtitled build. In the mission, you're a getaway driver for an old flame called Lumi Vega (I'm getting flashbacks here...!) and you basically follow her directions; there's no map for the first mission to keep with the whole cinematic feel of the game though it's hard to hear Lumi when A) You don't understand spoken English and B) our wiggy announcer chanted "Midway!" repeatedly to the sounds of questionable Euro-dirge. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being super-critical here - just that it seemed to be going against our pitches.

It was a constant stream of people - I greeted them with a cheery "heeelllo!" and then asked whether they spoke English, then talked them through the plot and the intracicies of Vehicle Melee. Actually, that was one of the perks of the job - knowing that their faces would light up when we showcased stuff like Vehicle Melee, Air Jack and Cyclone. We were told that those were the things we needed to show to "sell" the game and it was very, very addicting to demonstrate Air Jack and see eyes light up. There was genuine surprise and it was a very powerful argument for those visitors to our booth who thought our game was another GTA-wannabe. "You can't do that in GTA" one of us mentioned to an inevitably surprised convert. It was relentless though - time seemed to stand still in that booth and as soon as one person or group of people left, we'd get more people. There's that couple of seconds of resetting the dev kit, grabbing some water to parch my dry throat and get back to greeting and selling the game.

We had quite a few people interested in the prospect of the game being released on PC, while an incredibly large majority of people - and I'm not exaggerating there - absolutely loved the game. I think the proof is definitely in the pudding. People have read about the title online and possibly read about some of the criticisms and putdowns from some so-called gaming news sites and forums, and it's only when you show and let them sample the game that the penny drops. We're not trying to be like GTA - it's a happy medium of different inspirations to form a cohesive experience. We're a tasty cocktail of GTA, Burnout and Pursuit Force, cherry-picking the coolest bits from other titles and inspired by some of the best car chases in movie history, and crafting a game out of it. The over-training actually paid off when a member of the press came into the booth and I instantly switched to Salesman Mode and even persauded him to stick around to check out the Air Jack and Cyclone - he was very, very happy to have stopped by. I think that's the thing - the nice surprise people get from expecting one thing and getting something totally different.

There were some much-needed breathers during some of the very successful signing sessions - TNA wrestlers Christian Cage and Christy Hemme were about to throw freebies into the crowds and sign stuff while we gave out autograph cards (I've become a keen TNA fan since catching it on Bravo - takes me back to my late night WCW watching sessions...!). Mortal Kombat's Ed Boon also popped down to sign things as the Midway announcer chanted "Ed Boon!" in a hypnotic rhythm. In that moment, I think I felt like I was very much part of Midway as a whole - it's easy to work in Midway Newcastle and feel like we're just one studio, but far from it - we're part of many studios and this trip was also a great opportunity to meet some of the guys from those other studios. We met with the German Marketing guys who were extremely welcoming and very friendly people. I met Mr. Hector Sanchez who's producing Mortal Kombat Versus DC Universe - which was strange because when we met it was like we already knew each other if only from checking out each others' Facebook page updates (Also his MKasts make for incisive listening!). I met Jason Jones from the London office -  I think he's an IT bloke, though I managed to rustle him up some freebies even if it meant me shamefully wrestling a free Rock Band t-shirt from a women for the benefit of Jason's niece.

How did I end up in that situation? Well, the final two days were actually a lot more smartly used - instead of burning ourselves out over-selling the game, we'd show Cyclone and then if there was no-one in the queue, showcase those special moves. This also meant we'd have half a day to explore the booths so I spent some time grabbing swag for Jason. One horribly sickening thing I noted during my varied excursions through the halls of Leipzig was the phenomemon of "T-shirt". Massed crowds of swag-hungry gamers gathered in frenzied swarms at the stages of major booths as announcers shouted "T-shirt?" and threw out varied garments to be grabbed and wrestled to the ground. It was startling to see as I came from a more measured and civilized time where t-shirts were given freely and without a fight. Kudos has to go to Rockstar Games for their take on "T-shirt" - eight-player Midnight Club LA network race, winner gets a T-shirt. Simple. A sense of achievement and dignity was rewarded to those lucky winners. I still feel a tinge of guilt wrestling that t-shirt away from a crestfallen woman. She could have been grabbing it for her son, for fuck's sake.

I grabbed a modest amount of swag, though it was pretty inspiring to see many people walk around the event with Midway bags and the Wheelman painting I had seen crafted a mere month or so back in the studio. The Midway stand was kind of guilty of "T-shirt"-type antics, though it was perhaps a bit more generous than the sparse offerings of other stands. I would say that though, right?

I queued up for a few games - Pure was a nice surprise although they really needed to tell people how to pull off those amazing stunt when getting gnarly air. The longest queue wait was Mirror's Edge - it was strange because I had a secondary motive to try and score one of the rather fashionable t-shirts which sported the main character beautifully realised in Anime form. The wait in the queue was explained soon after an hour when we discovered "VIP"s were jumping the queue holding onto sweaty VIP cards. I struck up a conversation with some guys from the UK - a bunch of Irish lads who run a website called Citizen Game (there's actually another one based in the US, doh) and talked about my feelings of some of the games of the show and, of course, bigging up Midway and Wheelman. They mentioned they wanted to be the next Kotaku and I advised them that this shouldn't be said aloud - besides, Kotaku seem to have it in for Midway. Plus Brian Crecrete is kind of creepy with that beard.

I eventually got into the now-mythical booth and was pleasantly surprised by the game - it looked lush and played quite nicely although there was some little glitches and bugs which I'm sure will be ironed out soon enough. It didn't last that long for a demo though - about 10 minutes? I made sure I used this experience for the next day when we were trying to show as many people as possible the joys of Wheelman. As for the Citizen Game boys, they did mention me in one of their gargantuan podcasts, though I came across as a complete arsehole dissing LittleBigPlanet.

Okay, LittleBigPlanet. I love your look and style. I like your character design. I love the opportunity of creativity, but jeez - you're a bit spongy to play and your levels have a depth to them which meant when I played in a team of four people, we kept on mis-judging those horrible swinging girders due to the fact we weren't on the same horizontal plane as they were. Doh. This is a valuable lesson - never, ever trust Gametrailers scoring from their userbase. I was thinking about this yesterday night on my walk home through the sleeping truckers and the hiding bunnies of the industrial estate... it's okay to mark a film trailer because, well, you're watching it and that's all a film does - it entertains through visuals. Now a game trailer on the other hand... that's totally different. You can have the world's best game trailer but the game could ultimately fail to deliver when you get a controller in your hands to play it. That's how I felt about LittleBigPlanet - it has promise, but ultimately it wasn't all that filling. I speak the truth!

Killzone 2 was a nice surprise - it actually looked a lot nicer than I expected and played decent too. I think my rekindled Sony interest came when I was at the rather exceptional Sony Party playing Wipeout HD in Frenzy mode (soooo lovely) while listening to the best DJ set around and drinking Champage Red Bulls. Yep, the game which hooked me into the original PlayStation was working its magic again. The actual event took place on the Sony stand and was a hive of other games-related press and exhibitors with which I entertained with my expert dance skills and the fact these skills were projected up on a huge video wall for all to see. Sadly the free drink policy didn't cover free food, which was confounding and somewhat crazy to say the least, but at that point I felt like we - as a company - were all one big family. The post-party buzz in the Hotel bar afterwards only strengthened this resolve.

I didn't really get a chance to play many other games - Guitar Hero On Tour on the huggable DS was a nice diversion but was obvious that the unit was designed for kids as my fat, useless fingers testified. Lego Batman was very familiar to me as I played Lego Star Wars religiously, but it was great fun. The aforementioned Midnight Club LA was a solid racer with some lovely GTA4-fuelled visuals.. I only wish I had more time to play more games. I really wanted to check out the new Bionic Commando, Street Fighter 4, Diablo 3... *sigh* I did get to check out our so-called competition and was happy to report back to the troops that there was nothing to worry about at all. The four days were relentless hard work, but I ended up making new friends with some very, very lovely people. My one regret was that I didn't go out with Hector and the others on the second night, though my body and mind was in no right state of mind. One of the guys told me off and mentioned that this was "par for the course" although it sounded like some crazy adventure through dodgy bars, nightclubs and a torrential rainstorm. I think I eventually got the whole "work hard, play hard" thing even if I called it quits early due to the fact we were drinking on "school nights".

We even were priviledged enough to see the lifecycle of the festival from early birth to inevitable death as we helped pack away the dev kits and watched as teams of workers streamed into the now vacated stands with step-ladders, drills and the occassional fork lift truck. This time was spent reflecting on the event as a whole - it welcomed more than 200,000 visitors - a lot more than this year's toned-down E3 event in Los Angeles. I was fascinated by the way the event was like a living organism as people migrated from stand to stand for those bloody t-shirt giveaways and Guitar Hero-fronted live performances. It was an exciting mess of colour, noise and activity and I loved every bit of it. Interestingly enough, next year a rival event is going to be happening in Cologne - the argument for this event is that Cologne is a lot more connected than Leipzig. Even though Leipzig has a truly stunning facility, the city itself is sadly lacking in accommodation and, well, glitz. The happy-shiny LittleBigPlanet advertising was in direct contrast to buildings covered in graffiti set to be demolished whenever the time was right - which felt like never. Leipzig is a city stuck in a time bubble which seriously needs to burst for the event to compete. Midway will be attending the Cologne do instead of the Leipzig shindig next year and if they ask me to help out, I would do so in a heartbeat.

The journey home was a bit... weird. I got into the mindset of a seasoned traveller once again and now I was taking for granted all the cool shit which was going on outside my window. Saying that, the final journey home was pretty amazing - we flew over NewcastleGateshead (I could see work!) and the plane banked across and over the sea before drifting into land. I think I'm something of a addict now and it won't be long - like all addicts - until I'm on bigger and longer air journeys. I don't think I've suffered from jetlag yet, so there's always time. What is important is that I feel a lot more confident booking a flight and jumping on a plane. The novelty of being somewhere far away in a short space of time is quite seductive.

Work is still very much a large part of my life now regarding Wheelman's development - I've been crunching since the start of the year, so this final push to get the game to a submission stage means I still keep on doing what I always do. I think there is a core group of people who have crunched as much as me - evenmoreso. We have something to prove and we want to make sure our first AAA title will be as entertaining and accessible as we can make it. The game recently had another touch of graphical polish added to it, and Barcelona looks even more inviting as our skies look bluer and richer in colour. I think it's a good thing to distance ourselves from the cliche of next-gen brown. What is quite a nice feeling is knowing that we're now finishing up on the title - my schedule is considerably shorter than it was and it's great to see missions converge into a playable build from start to finish. There's still work to do, but I think there's an tangible current of excitement in the studio. We also have seen a sneaky preview of the marketing bits and pieces and it looks pretty super-sexy thanks to the artistry of the talented Pete Thompson in the concept department. I miss that department. All I have at the moment is programmer chat...

Not really had much time to do anything else really - as the huge month-long gap in blog entries can testify..! I'm finding spare time to continue my Cult of Karl work and hopefully I'll have an animatic ready to be put up on YouTube in time for the re-birth of the Gervais/Merchant/Pilkington podcast although the preview on iTunes left me a bit cold - they dusted off the old anecdote of slugs eating the glue from stamps again. I also hope Gervais and Merchant don't bully Karl like they did with their recent podcasts - it's horrible listening and feels like the pair are genuinely envious of Karl's popularity. Oh, and a masterstroke from Ben Folds - leaking his own album with a collection of fake songs he produced with his band in a day in the studio, yet the fake album is very, very listenable indeed!

One more thing - the 360 is back to normal. For the moment. I've been tainted by those terrifying red rings of doom though so I've been playing the 2D delights of Braid (the hype is very much jusitified) and Castle Crashers. I always feel a sense of regret for Microsoft droppng the ball with the 360 - not with the service and the games, but more for the console itself. I've never known a console like it to be so unreliable and uncertain. I still won't be getting a PlayStation 3 any time soon though - lest I forget I am still all mortgaged up. Strongbad's new Wii game was enjoyable although quite short, but I did giggle with glee at my own interactive Teen Girl Squad episode. I'll be cautiously considering getting other Wii games even though the Wii console will gladly take credit card details and nothing else.

That owl hoot outside signifies the end of this blog entry. I'll update more when I get a chance!