Zilla's actual return thread.

[Zilla]

So I'm back. I think what happened when I left was that DigiPen was chewing on me, and I had to go take care of that first. I think other forums got busier too, and took a lot of my time. I had some flings with some people on the internet, I worked at Nintendo for a while... I went back to DigiPen, where I switched to a design degree, got chewed up a little more, worked on a few games that never got published, and decided that until they get the new design degree actually figured out, I'm not going to shovel money at them anymore.

And so, I'm not at DigiPen anymore, and I might not go back. I'm looking for design positions at any of the companies up here (there was a position at Bungie I was looking at, but it got filled before I got my application together. <_<). Right now, I just do QA for Nintendo, and I'm going to be doing that for a while yet until something better comes along.

I have a boyfriend who lives with me now. We met on forums, and eventually we progressed to IM, then to phone calls, and then I flew out to Baltimore and went to Otakon with him, and then we both flew back to WA together. He's a sweetheart, though he can be a little aggravating sometimes.

I went a long period of not playing mafia, after having played at HoRP and MafiaScum for some time. I think I'm still quite sharp at it, since HoRP started back up and I fell right back into the old habits.

Modern games continue to generally suck, with a few exceptions. I've been playing Dokapon Kingdom a lot lately, which is this hybrid of Mario Party and an RPG, which is quite fun. You liberate towns from monsters on a game board, collecting money and experience, and progressing through the story, all the while trying to be the richest player among all the players. It's a little cruel at times, and some of the things could be more polished, but I like the game more for its flaws, actually, because it's quirky and unique, and shows a lot of thought in its design.

I still rock on Rock Band, and I still play Melee every day on break. I've been playing tons of Killing Floor on Steam, because it's what I wanted Left 4 Dead to be, which is a more open ended squad-dependent zombie SURVIVAL, instead of a linear, FORCED co-operation race-path.

I just bought 19 gamecube games and I still am on the internet more often than not, and I haven't been playing them.

[Azisien]

Are you....Solid Snake?

[Zilla]

Oh yeah, I'm totally Solid Snake, you're quite the astute observer.

'cause we both came back on the same day... around the same time. And... I like games, Solid Snake likes games, I got a boyfriend, Solid Snake's pining for a girlfriend...

[Bob The Mercenary]

OMG HAI Zilla!!!

How have you been? Well, you just told us how you've been. Awesome that you found a boyfriend through a forum. 19 Gamecube games?? o_O

[Premmy]

19 Gamecube games?? o_O
I owned almost thirty Gamecube games at one point because you never get good money for trading them in.

[Krylo]

I owned almost thirty Gamecube games at one point because you never get good money for trading them in.

I didn't realize there were even 10 gamecube games worth playing, much less 19-30.

[Premmy]

The're like treasure,you gotta search for em, man.

[Solid Snake]

Are you....Solid Snake?

Aww shit guys I've been found out.

...Welp, there goes that awesome alter ego I worked so hard over so many years to cultivate. =/

[Zilla]

Oh and by the way, what gave me away?

Edit: I have over 50 gamecube games now. Some of those 19 that I bought, I regret doing so. I bought Bomberman Jetters, because Bomberman 64 was absolutely astounding. I thought it might be like that, but instead I get horrible story, and horrible controls, mixed with "classic" bomberman multiplayer, which is nowhere near as fun as the multiplayer from the first N64 game.

I got Mario Party 5 too, mostly for the collection aspect. It's pretty much the worst Mario Party of the series.

I got Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, but I'm never really in the mood to play it.

I got PSO: Ep 1 and 2 Special Edition, and I haven't played it yet, though I really loved the game back in the day.

I got the Sims 2 for Gamecube... which is definitely interesting. it's not a console port of the PC game, it's a different game entirely. I used to have the first Sims for Gamecube. I actually prefer that to the PC version, actually. It feels like the console versions are more like Sims 1.5 and Sims 2.5

I also somehow accidentally bought Pokemon XD. I don't even care about Pokemon. I forgot I had it in my hand when I bought it, I think. Oh well, it was only $3.

[Bells]

I REMEMBER JOO!!! HAI!!!!

Since you are what we could call an "Insider" with the gaming industry, let me ask you this...

what is your take on this? (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/8586-Extra-Punctuation-Molyneuxs-Unfocused-Innovation)

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Hey welcome back Zilla! :)

[greed]

Man welcome back Zilla.


Shit you being back reminds me we need to get a Mafia game going here, I think they're not banned anymore, just none are going.

[Zilla]

I agree with him on that article, about how design has been corporatized, and is moving away from that kind of field. Unfortunately, I don't really like where it's headed either. I don't like the idea of having an industry populated by EA, Activision/Blizzard, and other conglomorate publishers that constantly retool games to fit a formula, but at the same time, the alternative we're presented with today is an Indie landscape where convention isn't merely questioned, it's unquestionably challenged.

I don't mind having genres, with some in-built tropes. The corporate structure produces games laden with tropes, as they love to take and are afraid of the risk of innovation. However, the games I've been seeing lately out of the Indie scene sometimes go too far in reinventing the wheel, and we lose some truly great things in the quest to be new and innovative.

My favorite era for gaming was the SNES, and then the N64. the SNES was during a very hardcore phase of games, and represented final polish on a known system. They were in a comfortable mode, and had a lot of experience to back up some of the best 2D games out there. With the N64, a completely new, truly innovative frontier opened with fully functional 3D gaming. Designers had a completely new paradigm to run wild with, and risks were easier to justify taking.

I liked the paradigm shift that happened when 3D was introduced. I didn't like the paradigm shift that happened when casual gaming was introduced. Nintendo blowing the market doors open, and distorting the profits by making games for a wide audience for massive consumption, has, in my belief, made the entire industry a little cheapened. People look to the money and see that Nintendo is raking it in hand over fist, and they see that it's because they got people to buy games that hadn't been a part of the market before, and they feel that they must cash in on this as well.

Resources are shifting away from the hardcore market, and now all that designers seem to talk about is how to build an experience for lazy gamers. Since designers aren't lazy, they're designing systems for their envisioning of a person. These titles lack depth, and a lot of the depth they do have erroneously goes into flashy effects and overblown story sequences. True mechanics design has suffered immeasurably since the 5th generation.

But I digress....

[mauve]

Welcome back, Zilla!!

[akaSM]

Are you....Solid Snake?

Don't be silly, it's obvious that Zilla is Liquid Snake :knowledge:

[Doc ock rokc]

You know Zil, I have been kinda feeling the same way about video games lately. We are reaching the age where the wild becomes domesticated. The mapping of the unknown, if you will. Its just so easy to just plug a few new models into a FPS engine like the UT stuff and make a new game rather then build something of its own.

I have been wanting to get into video games for years and I hope I learn at some point to make something game changing. I hope that You do the same at some point.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Snake's welcome back thread is totally destroying yours in length at the moment. YOu need to start bribing people.

[Fifthfiend]

Oh man just earlier this afternoon I was thinking oh man, what ever happened to Zilla

OH WAIT my bad, that was SpacePope.

Nevertheless I am pretty sure I have wondered, intermittently, over the last year and a half or so, whatever happened to Zilla

AND NOW I KNOW

[Solid Snake]

Snake's welcome back thread is totally destroying yours in length at the moment. YOu need to start bribing people.

...Why should I feel any need whatsoever to compete against myself? O_o

Oh wait, I'm posting this under my Solid Snake account. I should have switched back to Zilla first.

[Zilla]

I mean.... *-ahem-*

...Why should I feel any need whatsoever to compete against myself? O_o

If I wanted a ton of pages on this account's return thread, I would have brought up Homestuck here, instead of ranting about it in the Solid Snake thread.

So instead, if we wanna beef this page up, I'll start talking about how Minecraft was good and now it's boring.

Minecraft was good when it was novel. When it was full of wonder and aspiration, it was amazing. I'd go exploring, and learn the tricks of the game, and be forced to adapt to new challenges. But it builds up, and then, once you hit a certain point, the learning curve entirely flattens, and it becomes rather boring. And that point happens faster than I would have liked.

I busied myself with a bunch of projects, but I refused to use an inventory editor or any cheap ways out. It's become somewhat apparent that I would need to use that if I wanted to make anything truly grand though, but... I just can't get myself to cheat like that. I want my work to mean something, but at the same time, things make that work harder than I had originally thought, and that makes my enthusiasm dip, and eventually, I just don't have the ambition for the project anymore. I was building a castle, and I built the perimeter wall, and one corner I built into a tower, and I had battlements along the wall, and I had the keep high on a hill, but... Eventually, my enthusiasm waned between carting loads of stone to furnaces and the massive landscaping I had to do to remove the land from the mountain that I built my keep on.

I did another project, which was probably my latest project, of building an underwater glass dome. The hardest part about that was removing the water. I think if I do it again, I'm going to build a mound of land underwater like a mold, encase it in glass, and then dig out the land.

Also, it's darker underwater than I would have thought... If you don't have a shaft of glass that breaks the surface, you get nearly no light under the waves...

I eventually turned enemies off, because I was just fucking tired of working on something and getting killed. This made it easier to work on the projects, but now the world is friendly and there's no real sense of danger... I'm not sure if this was a smart thing to do.

[Loyal]

I got the Sims 2 for Gamecube... which is definitely interesting. it's not a console port of the PC game, it's a different game entirely. I used to have the first Sims for Gamecube. I actually prefer that to the PC version, actually. It feels like the console versions are more like Sims 1.5 and Sims 2.5


I agree with this. But if you get a Wii (assuming you don't already?), avoid The Sims 3. I dunno about the 360 or PS3 versions, but the Wii port of that game is littered with bugs and seems to have a lot of removed content.