Site update
Updated the List of Works page, and I’ll add new samples from the latest books in the next few days.
Unemployed Man official website
Jason Arthur pointed out that this site exists, and it looks excellent! The panel on the front page is from the Golden Age section.
The preview is from Clem’s section, btw. Nice choice for the site.
Your Moment of Zen: Bonsai
This is a browser based game a friend of mine created. The link was busted for a while but now it works again. Check it out:
http://googoobachoo.de/Flash/bonsai.swf
For more, check the site proper: http://googoobachoo.de/games.htm
Steam and Portal 2 on the PS3 – or why I don’t understand PC and PS3 fanboys
This week is E3, the biggest video game convention of the year. At the PS3 press conference, Gabe Newell of Valve announced that not only would Portal 2 come to the PS3, it would feature the Steamworks suite as well. That’s a fantastic surprise which will enhance video gaming in general, and yet both PC-based Valve fans and PS3-only gamers are complaining as if it was the end of the word.
Some background info: A few years ago, Valve released the Orange Box on PC, XBox 360, and PS3. It contained Half Life 2 and its episodes, Team Fortress 2, and Portal 1. Valve had to outsource the Portal 1 port for the PS3 to an EA studio (Electronic Arts was the publisher of the retail versions) because they didn’t have a PS3 development team. The port was bad and led to quite some public animosity between Valve and the PS3 community because Valve didn’t fix it. How could they when they didn’t have anyone who could do it in house?
So Valve said they wouldn’t port anything to the PS3 anymore unless they did it themselves. That never happened, and Newell’s criticism of the Playstation over the years increased the animosity from PS3 gamers.
When Valve announced that Steam would come to the Mac earlier this year, PC gamers were either happy to see others would get to experience the platform, or they were running scared because yet another piece of PC gaming was being diluted by opening up to another platform. You can put me in the first camp, by the way. Now that PC and Mac gamers can run Steam on either operating system, everybody but the most hardened PC fanboys seems to be happy. Valve ported most of their games to the Mac already and are working on the rest, using OpenGL for Mac while Windows games are using the proprietary Microsoft DirectX. PC and Mac gamers can play multiplayer matches together. If it exists on both platforms, they only have to buy a game once, then can install it on Mac and PC alike and play to their heart’s content. Since Steam is supported by many, many publishers, Mac gamers can also look forward to more games making it to their platform of choice now.
That’s icing on the cake all around, right? Well, when the Mac thing was announced, PS3 gamers were bitching that it wasn’t them who’d get the Valve love, partly because of the OpenGL thing which the PS3 apparently uses as well.
Now they do. And as I said above, the fanboys are bitching.
PS3 fanboys are complaining about Newell’s about-face, when just 2 months ago he was saying that the PS3 was a closed platform he wished was more open. It’s rather ridiculous because what they’re doing is try to hold on to their self-righteous indignation against one of the only gaming companies that didn’t port for them and was a bastion for PC gamers, even though now they’re going to get those former PC (and 360) exclusives, too.
As you might guess, this last bit is exactly what some PC fanboys are now railing against. They’re afraid that Valve too will dilute their games just to appease console gamers, dumbing down control schemes and so forth.
Yes, that’s irked me to no end as well in the past. Call of Duty started out on the PC, then went to consoles, and the controls were dumbed down because an Xbox controller has only so many buttons. Or leaning out of cover was apparently deemed unnecessary because these stupid cover mechanics like in Gears of War were so much easier to deal with for console based gaming (I like some cover mechanics like in Brothers in Arms, but others suck like in Call of Juarez 2 and Gears of War).
However, interviews with Valve members have always shown that the privately-held company hasn’t at all changed its philosophy of making the experience for the gamer the best it can be. Why would they do this now? The company is not beholden to shareholders, so they can take their sweet time to perfect their games, and they can experiment and thus propel gaming forward. Portal 1 was such an experiment, making a first person physics based puzzle game with a unique charm that stands out among the glut of first person shooters out there (don’t get me wrong, I love FPS games).
Valve takes chances with game mechanics and their controls are pretty barebones to begin with, so I don’t see why their games should become worse. They pay attention to narrative and art direction in their games, so dumbing down their games in that department doesn’t seem likely either. And most importantly, they focus on their community and nurture it through free updates (120 updates for Team Fortress 2 on the PC to date – not so on the Xbox 360 because it doesn’t allow free updates), a pretty much hands-off approach when it comes to anti-piracy measures (since Steam acts as a natural, unintrusive DRM), and actually saying that it’s better to try and win over pirates to become paying customers rather than punish those who pay by adding restrictive DRM that turns games into more of a hassle than an entertainment medium.
The more important thing about the announcement was that Steam features would be coming to the PS3, including automatic updates, and the Steam Cloud (letting you save your games online so you can continue playing on another machine and pick up where you left off). For now, it looks like it won’t be possible for PC and Mac gamers to play online with PS3 gamers, but who’s to say this won’t be coming eventually.
I lurk the German site Half-Life Portal. In the comments section for one of the current articles about this announcement, someone actually focused on Steam coming to the PS3 as a negative. He or she speculated that Valve was moving further and further away from game development and turning its focus toward publication instead. This seems unfounded to me since Valve’s game development and the Steam online distribution platform are two branches of the company that operate pretty much independently of each other. They work in tandem as far as Steamworks is concerned, but game development isn’t beholden to distribution.
That out of the way, why would it be bad for Steam to come to the PS3? It would allow Sony to implement an existing online distribution platform so they don’t have to develop something themselves. It’s also a first step to breaking down yet another barrier between gamers worldwide. The divide between the PC and yet another console could potentially fall completely if online play between PC, Mac, and PS3 could be implemented.
Sure, Steam isn’t on the 360, but who’s to say that’s always going to be this way?
Imagine a time when you could play online with your friends no matter what platform they’re on. Right now I can’t even play Left 4 Dead with friends who own a 360. If cross-platform gaming with the PS3 were to become possible, and if it would be lucrative enough for Microsoft to also introduce Steam on the 360 (and get rid of the pay-for-updates/DLC policy), I could potentially fire up my PC and play with PS3 and 360 gamers alike.
But what’s more, wouldn’t it be nice if the PS3 got added to the list of gaming platforms you only have to buy a game for once on Steam? You buy the game, then install it on PC, Mac, or PS3 and don’t have to rebuy the title for a different platform. I could be swayed to actually buy a PS3 if this happened. Though if PS3 exclusive titles began to be ported for the PC as well, I wouldn’t even have to do that.
At any rate, all I see is positives and possibilities. I wish gamers would do so in general instead of fearing for the worst or defending their platforms so damn much.
Oh, and here’s the Portal 2 teaser for your viewing pleasure:
Unhappy White Girls – Kickstarter.com fundraiser
Here’s a project I’m working on that’s up on Kickstarter.com. There are 72 hours left on the fundraiser.
There’s a 5 page lettered preview here so please check it out.
Unbelievable. First time ever I’m seeing money from a backend deal.
SHUDDERTOWN is selling really well, and I got a note earlier that money from issue 1 is coming my way. I accepted the backend deal because the script was really intriguing and the artwork was a challenge I was looking forward to tackling. So this is icing on the cake.
If you’ve so far missed out on this comic from Image written by Nick Spencer and drawn by Adam Geen, head on over to Newsarama and read the first issue for free. This is a maxi series, so you’re in for quite a ride!
http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album.php?aid=34726
Wow, totally forgot about this short story
I’m currently collecting and uploading a metric ton of lettering/design/logo samples and found a short story that was never published. This is back from the Ronin Studios days.
Thommy Melanson did this horror anthology VARIED SCARIES that had each story pick up a tread from the story that preceded it. The story I wrote was going to be the second in issue 4, following a story about a serial killer. At the end of that story, the serial killer left a note in a truck stop restroom that read “for a good time, call 555-xxxx.” That’s the thread I picked up for my story, though it’s kind of a background element.
Unfortunately this issue never got published, nor did the anticipated trade collection of the entire series.
Since this story will never find a home in print (and the lettering is quite bad being from my second year as a letterer), I figured it’d be nice to put up here. It’s not the strongest writing but sort of holds up. Aside from the butchered hoodoo and tarot references.
PinkRayGun.com on Contropussy
Here’s a nice behind the scenes look at the comic and how it came to be. The interview was done during the Meltdown signing the other day. Be sure to click the link for more than this little excerpt.
http://www.pinkraygun.com/2010/05/10/a-look-into-contropussy-the-webcomic/
Mis-interpreted lyrics usually just lead to funny stories. Well, until the internet came along and allowed you to correct your friend with a twenty second Google search. Anyways. In the case of Contropussy, it led to a kicking webcomic. Emma Caulfield (yes, that Emma Caulfield, Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was talking to her friend Camilla Rantsen about a Prince song and how she was never sure if he was singing contropussy instead of controversy. Since the word was so wonderful, they decided they had to do something with it. The obvious solution was to create a webcomic about a cat.
Tags: Articles, Camilla Rantsen, Christian Beranek, Christian Meesey, Contropussy, Emma Caulfield
In good company
Over at the Digital Webbing lettering forum, someone posted a link to his lettering-appreciation blog post. It contains a page from THE GUNS OF SHADOW VALLEY and also features work by the likes of Costanza, Klein, and Piekos. Thanks, Liban!
So we bought a new printer
Also, just finished the first issue of SHUDDERTOWN and I’m pleased as punch with it. Look for it in March from Image Comics.
Tags: Image Comics, Shuddertown