maximusfuller

On the 18th of August I bought Counter Strike Global Offensive, a purchase that I regret and don't regret at the same time. I am writing this post on the 2nd of November which means that I have had the game for 76 days. In that time, I have put 317 hours into CS GO meaning that on average, daily, I spend 4.17105263 on the game. This does include idle time however, causing this to be a unreliable number because I have left the game running overnight and whilst I'm at school accidentally. This is the amount of time that I have spent IN GAME. I say this because I have spent many hours watching professional CS GO games, streamers play the game and other Counter Strike related media. I bought the game for £5.99 (About $10), this means that I paid £1 for every 52 hours of the game. This number however is skewed by the fact that I have spent about £60 ($100) on in game items such as cases and skins (cosmetic IN GAME items that bare no value on the way you play, yes, I know it's sad) some of which I lost due to betting on professional games. (I lost a £24/$40 skin betting on a team that was going through an amazing winning streak when they played a team on a losing streak and lost) This takes the amount of hours to played ratio to £1 for every 4.8 hours. I am also saving up for a knife that costs about $150 (I will hopefully get the money from trading), All of the time that I have spent playing CS GO have triggered many headaches. I suffer from migraines, caused by staring at screen for to long, dehydration and no sleep. Before I started playing I got maybe 2 a month, in the last 2 and a half months I've probably had about 10. My overall point of this post is to tell you not to buy CS GO, it is fucking up my sleep cycle, school work and other things in my life. I say this as I am about to put down a bet on Fnatic to beat LDLC in the ESWC final. God I hate myself.

In the gameplay demo of Firewatch from a few weeks back, a book that appears in Gone Home can be seen. This implies that the two are set in the same universe. I think that it has been confirmed that teenagers that we saw weren't Sam and Lorrie, however the theory that the two are set in the same universe would make sense as Steve Gayonor (One of the leads on the game) has a close relationship with Chris Jake and Sean. Earlier this year, Steve Gaynor stated that "Gone Home, System Shock and BioShock are set in the same universe". This theory also seems plausible as Steve worked on BioShock 2 at 2K Marine and Ken Levine worked on both the both the BioShock series and the System Shock. So, in theory all 4 games are set in the same universe, unless of course Firewatch is set in a multi universe and the real story is about trying to Rapture which would be awesome. Mainly because I want to see what Olly Moss could do with that world. Thanks for reading!

Yeah I kinda guessed that. I asked the Campo Santo guys why they did it and they said that they did it as a joke.

Once again I've interviewed someone that really needs no introduction but this time I'm just going to give you a link to his Wikipedia page if you need to read up on him. Me: You are an incredibly talented musician that mainly does work in the video games industry but could you see yourself in the future doing work outside of games? Chris: I could imagine doing music outside of games, but I don't know if it would necessarily qualify as "work." Before my career became an actual career (if you can even call it that currently—it feels very randomly-constructed to me), I used to write and record a ton of non-game-related music pretty much entirely for myself. I'd like to, someday, have enough time again where that would be possible. Every once in a while I'll toss something I write or record up on my Bandcamp page, but it's pretty infrequent: http://music.chrisremo.com/ In the future it would be nice to write and record full albums, which I used to do when I was still in college and recently graduated. Me: So you were doing a lot of work on your music before you entered the industry. One of your earlier jobs was in journalism. Why did you choose to go on the media side of things instead of straight into development and did you ever thing that you would become a dev when you were working as a journalist? Chris: I'm only in the video game industry at all by accident, actually—until it happened, I had no intention of being either a video game journalist or a video game developer. I was a music major in college and my original intention was just to "be in a rock band," which is an extremely ambiguous career goal. In high school and college I played in bands and loved it. Playing live shows is still some of the most fun I've had doing anything. Then in college I co-founded Idle Thumbs along with Jake and several people from the online adventure game community, including James Spafford and Marek Bronstring, among others. We all met each other online. At the time, all my "real-life" (as opposed to online) interests were around things like music, books, and movies, but then in my senior year of school I applied to a job at Shacknews on Jake's recommendation, and much to my surprise (given a total lack of real experience) I got it. So I found myself with a job in video game journalism, and it became my career for a few years before I moved into development. As for whether I thought I'd become a developer, I don't really remember if I thought about it very much. By the time I got hired at Irrational Games, nearly all of the people I regularly hung out with in my life were video game developers so it felt natural in some way, I guess, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything in real terms. I often feel that I have this job for no particularly good reason (which is how I felt as a journalist as well), so in the several years I've been doing it I've tried to expand my skill set as much as possible to justify the opportunities I've had. Me: Wow, that's a really awesome story. Currently you are working on the music for Firewatch. Can you tell us what the genre is of the music that you are creating and how it will be used effectively in the final product? Chris: I can't really talk about it in much detail right now–not because I'm not allowed to, but because it's still so early and there's not much there. We have a PAX panel scheduled where we'll show a gameplay demonstration and the first trailer, and the trailer will include the first piece of music I've written for the game. You'll be able to hear that soon. It has electric guitars in it. But I don't really know yet if the trailer music will necessarily be representative of what's in the game itself; the trailer music builds and builds in sync with what's going on visually, but the game will have very different tonal than a short intense trailer. I've done some various tests for in-game music, but none of it is conclusive at this point. Me: Fair enough, I understand why that you can't say much. Idle Thumbs recently welcomed a new member to the team, Danielle. What do you think the next big change to the network will be and do you have any changes planned? Chris: think from our (certainly my own) perspective, this wasn't really intended as a deliberate big change to the network or anything—regardless of the outcome, the actual motivation for bringing Danielle on permanently was simply that she fit in really well and was a valuable voice on the podcast. We weren't secretly looking for a new co-host or anything like that. I've been good friends with Danielle for about four years, and I don't think it would ever make sense or work out well to introduce a Thumbs co-host who isn't a good friend who fits in well. Like, we would never take applications and do tryouts and then hire someone and hope it would work out. (Also none of us get personally paid for this so that would make no sense for multiple reasons.) Making Danielle permanent is my favorite thing to happen to Idle Thumbs recently but it wasn't planned or orchestrated or part of an expansion or something. Idle Thumbs is just a weekly recording of conversation among people who work in the video game industry and share a certain kind of humor and outlook. As for further changes, who the hell knows. We always have all kinds of ridiculous ideas but only a tiny percentage of them ever get made because Thumbs is a spare-time affair and we're idiots with short attention spans. It would be nice to do more under the Thumbs name but I never know how to find the time. Me: That's really reassuring to know. Idle Thumbs was brought back after a successful Kickstarter. Do you think that if the project failed and you didn't accumulate enough money would the Idle Thumbs network still be up today and would Campo Santo be together? Chris: f we didn't hit our goal I think there's a really really strong chance we wouldn't have done the podcast anymore. The more time goes by the more I think that would have been the right decision. When we did Idle Thumbs from 2008 to 2010 it was paid for entirely out of pocket and recorded on a dining table in my studio apartment. Our lives were all somewhat different at the time we were in a position to bring the podcast back and that kind of bootstrapping just wasn't really going to be sustainable anymore. In the intervening years our lives got a lot more complex and we all had more time-consuming obligations and responsibilities, so the only way to make Idle Thumbs work in the way we wanted it to work (that is, always recorded together, not over Skype, with good recording quality and on a regular schedule) was if it could somehow be a self-sustaining entity with its own space and budget. The Kickstarter allowed us to rent a recording space, pay for equipment and hosting costs, tackle projects like the store in the high-quality way we wanted to do instead of as cheap on-demand products, and so on. Now that the Kickstarter money is mostly gone (technically a lot of it went away almost immediately because of the cost of manufacturing and fulfilling all the physical rewards, which were super fun to work on) we have made Idle Thumbs basically self-sufficient through ad sponsorships and the store. Without that initial money from the Kickstarter I don't think we would have been able to get to this point, and Thumbs would have been a slow drain on our money and physical space, and I think it would have been a lot harder to maintain the kind of enthusiasm that makes the podcast work at all. I'm incredibly grateful for the backers who let us make this stupid website something sort-of-real. Me: Final question: I can imagine that you are very grateful that Kickstarter exists because of what it did for Idle Thumbs but has your opinion on the crowd funding platform changed because of talk of people abandoning their project once they are done or just lying about what their project will be like? Chris: I don't think my opinion on Kickstarter as a platform has changed much. I think people need to be aware that every project they back is a risk. (There are also a lot of irresponsible project creators of course.) There are so many exploitative business models out there that aren't crowd-funding, so I don't think crowd-funding should be vilified because it can also be abused in addition to used well. I think there's probably a lot more crowdfunding abuse—mainly unintentional abuse born out of ignorance—in games than in many fields because game development is such an aspirational thing, and because game players tend to be a lot closer to game developers than, say, film viewers are to film directors. In games it seems a lot easier to rally people to the cause of getting your game made than it is as a filmmaker or author to rally people to their own cause. (Obviously, well-known figures in any field will have an easier time of this regardless of discipline.) Games just have a participatory nature that I think relates to that. That and many other complex factors lead to a real artificial inflation of video game Kickstarters (maybe including ours as well, who knows?) and that's going to inevitably lead to problems. Hopefully over time people, both project creators and backers, become savvier about the incredibly difficult realities of game development, and there will be fewer letdowns. Thanks for reading and thank you Chris for being such a good sport. If there's anyone you would like me to talk to just comment below!

Thanks!

Ah, completely my fault.

Yeah I'm quite new to this but if there's anything you want me to ask Jake or anyone else just say!

I'll use these apart from possibly the last one.

This is a thread to discuss the Firewatch presentation at PAX Prime that is currently taking place in the Hedgehog theater and can be watch here.

Sean is a man that really needs no introduction on the Idle Forums but just in case you are new around here, I'll give him one. Sean Vanaman is a video game designer and writer that is most well known for his incredible work on Telltale's Walking Dead and being co host of the Idle Thumbs podcas and Dota Today. Vanaman's earliest job in the games industry was at Disney Interactive Studio, formerly know as Buena Vista Games where he worked as an intern in their creative development group. Sean carried on working there until after his graduation from the University of South Carolina. He later took a job at Telltale and worked on such titles as Tales of Monkey Island and the company's Wallace and Gromit game alongside Jake Rodkin who he left the developer with to form their own company, Campo Santo games, who are currently developing Firewatch. I contacted Sean to ask him some question for the Forum regarding game development, Campo Santo among other things. Me: When did you first realise that video game development was the right path for you and could you ever see yourself branching out into another profession? Sean: I don't think I ever realized that it was "the right path," to be honest. I've always just made choices with my gut and asked myself if the work was fulfilling (it hasn't always been, but more often than not it has been, which in the video game industry, makes me very lucky) and if my gut said yes than I stuck with it. Video games continue to interest me and there's nothing quite like making something exciting or unexpected come out of a game, but it wasn't like "this is my path!" I think that's a very romantic idea that oversimplifies how life can happen. I just wanted to work on creative things with people I liked and kept my eyes wide open for any opportunity to do that. Game development is definitely the right thing for me right now but I've been proven wrong too many times by the way life goes to know if it will be forever. I know I'm completely committed to this game and our company and the people here and I know that I don't want to make a game in any other circumstances with any other people! Me: Obviously you are very committed to game development and the project at hand but say when Firewatch is released, it is a success and something happens meaning that you work in the gaming industry any more what would career path would you choose? Sean: That's a good question. I don't really know, off of the top of my head, what I would do if it wasn't game development. I think I'd still want to be making something, that is where I'm happiest. I would maybe get into making actual products or something with machines -- I have a motorcycle that I like to work on a lot and I think something that combined working with people to make something (like games) and working with my hands (like working on the bike) would be pretty good. Me: Other than working on your motorcycle and playing Dota, what do you do in your pastime? Do you have any side projects that you are working on at home? Sean: I started playing the guitar a few months ago so I do that A LOT. More than I thought I would. I turned 30 last month and was sort of worried that that ship had sailed -- I'm not particularly musical or anything like that. But I play over an hour a day and am shocked that I'm actually getting better. It's not embarrassing when I play now. I know that probably sounds stupid because you're taught you're entire life that "practice makes perfect," but as you get older it's easy to thing "oh I didn't learn that already so it's probably too hard." The fact is that is dead wrong. Everything is hard, in some way, and it's the things you care about that become secretly easy. Me: Interesting. You sound like a very busy man! Currently Campo Santo is working on Firewatch and at the moment it is a fairly small studio. So other than writing, Sean, do you have to double up on roles or are you only doing the writing? Sean: We all do four, maybe five roles! Because we're so small everyone has to do everything. I run the business and do business development, do the bookkeeping, implement content in the editor, voice direct, cast, design scenarios, work with Chris on sound decisions -- lots. Everyone's job is to just make the game and make sure the company is running well. I like it that way. Me: Wow, with all of that I'm surprised that you have time to podcast. I'm assuming that Fire Watch isn't that far into development or near completion but in its current state, what three words would you use do describe the game as a whole? Sean: We're a little ways in but we've got a long road ahead. About another year, I think. The game as a whole? I would say it's... hmm. Man, this is tough. 1. Unique. 2. Creatively ambitious (two words). 3. Amalgam (in that it's an amalgam of all the things we believe in as designers). Me: In the future, could you see Campo Santo becoming a fairly big studio creating multiple titles like Double Fine? Sean: I don't see Campo Santo becoming a really big studio, no. I don't think size has much to do with success and I'd like to keep the studio working on one thing at a time unless everyone agrees we shouldn't. I think there's something really great about all working on the same thing together. Success for Campo Santo will be sustainability -- being able to make the things we want to make and pay people what they are worth. If we can do that and be between ten and fifteen people, I'd be happy. But who knows! That's it for the interview. I will hopefully be carrying on with Idle Interviews next week with some questions for Chris Remo then after that Jake. I plan on talking to people from all corners of the industry. Any suggestions/feedback regarding pretty much anything are welcome. For some reason Sean also asked me some questions about a whole load of things which can be seen on the Campo Santo blog which I will link once it's been published. Thanks for reading and thanks to Sean

If there's anyone that you guys would like me to get for this just comment who!

I'll get him once I've done all the Idle Thumbs interviews, I love his website.

I do not know how i missed that, thanks a lot. And I don't think that I'll ask him about you and him having tea. It might scare him off.

I was fully aware that the email is the email of the world's greatest X Factor contestant, Olly Murs.

Please, please tell me that that is his legitimate contact address. Because you know, I'll try it.

One step ahead of you. Hoping to get Olly Moss in but I can't find his email anywhere.

Hasn't everybody

Please no.

Thumbs, what website(s) do you use to keep up with the latest gaming news and reviews? I mainly use Polygon, love their reviews. I also read RPS a bit, mainly to discover new Indie titles but I also enjoy the Wot I Think thing that they do. Other than those to I sometimes use IndieStatik for weird Indie games and I enjoy the small bit of Video Games coverage that The Verge do. Anyone looking for a great feature you should read this. It is written by Chris Plante and describes the launch of Towerfall Ascension among other things. Heis one of the main reasons why I read Polygon the most out of any site (along side the McElroys) and the feature that I just linked is one of his best pieces of work and one of the best pieces of games journalism I've read.

I agree with quite a lot of you. Twitter is a great place to get news because it is becoming much more often for devs to release information on twitter now and reading from my twitter feed is like cutting out the middle man. I get new a lot faster.

I use the the app Flipboard and subscribe to my favourite sites then just use the part of the puts them in order of most recent and that is good for me but the only problem is that I get the same news story from different sites which gets in my way a little. The app I use also has really cool animations.

Never hear of it. Just checked it out. Looks good.

So I just read an article on RPS about a game called Team Indie. It looks like a pretty awesome 2D platformer. The concept is that you play as characters from different indie games like Badland and Braid and you have to use their abilities to get through levels. It's being developed by Brightside Games and will be playable at Gamescon so if any of you are going I think that you should check it out. Here's the link to the website where you can sign up for a giveaway of the game when it is released.

EA just announced their new subscription based service 'Access' on the Xbox One. Their plan is that people will pay a set amount, monthly or annually, to gain access to currently 4 of their titles on the console and early access and discounts on some of their upcoming games. In light of this I had an idea for a similar service that Humble could provide for PC users. You would pay Humble a set amount to receive a couple of new indie titles every month for your PC. I think that it would be great to give smaller games and their developers recognition. As well as this, an added incentive to subscribe would be that a small junk of the money that you are paying would go to a new charity every month that is chosen by the user in a poll on the Humble website. I would definitely pay for this and I think that it would be a great money making idea for Humble.

Wow this looks really ambitious. Not as ambitious as Star Citizen but I can't imagine that the there are like 4 studios working on the game.