http://www.bobsgame.com/ – Gotta love this guys tenacity.. No internet for 100 days, my god this guy is going to emerge a Zen Master.  Check out his site, or simply go here: http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp and let Nintendo know that this guy deserves a little, or a lot more respect than what he’s been given.

To quote Bob

I don’t need a publisher, that’s not the issue. I must become a licensed developer to have a licensed game with licensed tools.
I’m not asking Nintendo to publish my game- they aren’t a publisher for third party titles. Many publishers are interested in “bob’s game.”
All I’m asking from them is that they allow me to purchase a DVD with the software I need to get my game into retail shrinkwrap.

The Game:

The actual game does look pretty promising, with a lot of the features of the RPG adventure genre that you would expect to see the big boys put out that they just don’t:

• over 200 completely unique characters!
• many things change depending on the in-game time, day and weather
• 20-hour-long retail-size
• deep personalities that evolve

Demo Videos of The game:

Great little play on Zelda with a Miyamoto theme I don’t konw about you but I am rocking out to the free world here.. While they tend to be a bit too commercial and mainstream 80% of the time housetime.fm can produce some wicked tunes if the right DJ is behind the wheels. My favorite station right now has to be ETN.fm , slwoly leading me back to Progressive Trance although there is no substitude for the hard hitting bassline of good hard house music. But ‘good’ hard house music is a hard thing to find

Enjoy:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/465005

Phew, it is pretty insane what can happen in 9 days.. But it has all happened and now the ball that is my life is back rolling full steam. Hope everyone had a wonderful xmas and I hope the video below provides some great laughs to end a great year!

Wicked show, thank god he is still pumping em out over the month cause I need my fix. Gotta love the end

I have rarely ever seen ability or hand eye coordination like this before demonstrated..

http://www.developmag.com/news/29488/Montreal-is-not-an-efficient-place-to-run-a-business

We are doing research as a company to find out which city is going to be more attractive to run our studio out of and I cam eacross this piece that gave me a little scare as I was fully sold on Montreal.  Mark Greenshields just slams the city as a whole and goes out of his way to paint it in a bad light, citing talent shortages to the fact that the salary increases don’t make the tax rebates worth while.  Well that alone is a crock as I have spoken with employees in montreal and their wages are consistent with everywhere in the industry, not ‘40% higher’ as Greenshields would like everyone to think.  But the best part about the above mentioned link is to go through the comments that follow.  When the comments that follow are 10 times longer than the article and every single one of them is bashing Greenshields and calling him a crook I seriously start to question the words of this man.  Even better the GM from Eidos called in the Develop magazine to setup an interview (also found here) discrediting Greenshields and so did Tascan of EA

I am so grateful for the open endedness of the internet and how we aren’t just force fed opinions of people such as Greenshields without allowing those with equal experience a voice to speak up and chime in.  Here are some the comments from that original article

But he was not loyal to us, didn’t pay us what he owed us (he owed over 20000$ to some contractors) and stole some DC-Studios IP: he copied the hard drive with DC-Studios DS engine, Firebrand depending on DC’s technology.

If he had 5-6 companies that failed in various cities, is it the city thats not suited for a game company, or the man thats not suited to manage such a company?

management reeking down the halls. Bad decisions were being made by the brass, and as a Senior Artist I could see the ship sinking from a mile away before it sunk, I jumped ship 1 year before it did and I am thankful that I have made the right choice to leave.

You wanna do cheap and quick money? Well, take your “business” elsewhere and shove it. Oh, and the money you still owe me too.

Good riddance, Mr Greenshield! I wish you keep doing what you do best: crash, burn… and migrate.

the reason Mark left Montreal, was that due to wanting to by-pass Quebec law requiring immigrants to send their kids to french school, Mark never applied for citizenship. He instead operated under a work Visa that allowed him to stay so long as he owned the company. As soon as DC went bust Mark had to leave the country within 30 days

Who can really listen to Mark Greenshields when it comes to running a studio and having business success in this field? This guy moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow bashing on Edinburgh. Then, he moved to Montreal from Glasgow bashing on Scotland. Then he opened in Dublin, praising the great business environment there, while closing Glasgow and bashing again on Scotland. Now, he’s closed down Montreal, bashing on Quebec, while moving to Florida. Oups! I forgot! He closed down Dublin as well!

As an ex-insider of one of Mr Greenshields’s disastrous studios, I can tell you exactly what is the problem with DC Studios or now Fireband operating anywhere in the Universe for that matter: Mr Greenshields himself!

And as for Montreal being no good for games, that’s utter nonsense. Mr Greenshields was no good for Montreal and we are glad he’s gone. Good luck to his new disaster waiting to happen.

Mark Greenshields is a greedy, cowardly little man.
In the same few weeks as he made our entire team redundant, he sent the team round an email offering us discounted rates on hiring his new florida holiday-home.
I understand that businesses go bust, and that people’s wages can be lost when that happens, but in 2 months of ceaselessly trying to chase up unpaid wages (before the studio went bust) he blankly refused to answer any call i made to him, and would not answer a single question i put to him.
I worked at DC studios for a short 13 months, I was paid on payday 4 times, again with no apologies or straight answers. By the end, it was simply the norm that we were never paid on time, no one expected to recieve wages til at least a week after payday.

A friend sent me this in the mail today so I thought I would share:

A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American  company (Ford Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River .  Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak  performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat.  A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order; American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information,  but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s  management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors,  2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering  manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder.  It was called the ‘Rowing Team Quality First Program,’ with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rowers.  There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.  The pension program was trimmed to ‘equal the competition’ and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid-off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment.  The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.

The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India .

Sadly, the End.

Here’s something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can’t make money paying American wages.

TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US   The last quarter’s results:

TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.

Ford folks are still scratching their heads, and collecting bonuses…

IF  THIS WEREN’T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY

In a historic moment Researches at the Japanese ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratory were able to digitize images from thought patterns in a human brain directly onto a computer screen. Researches(Yukiyasu Kamitani, who is with the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, and Frank Tong from Princeton University), under the direction of Mitsua Kawato first showed a group of test subjects the six individual letters that make up the word ‘neuron’.

Then by measuring very specific brain activity visual cortex ATR’s researchers reproduced each of the letters, from each of the subjects, on a computer screen.

“It was the first time in the world that it was possible to visualise what people see directly from the brain activity,” the private institute said in a statement.

“By applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams.”

Even more important researchers and fellow scientists alike are excited about the possibility to discover the exactly level of consciousness of a comatose patient.

http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/december-9-2008/

One of the best engaging discussions I have seen on his show in a very long time..  Jon makes some great points that will stay in my mind for a while and while I disagree whole-heartedly, especially when it came to gay marriage, with the man my respect for Mr. Huckabee ballooned after seeing how he conducted himself here.

http://assassinscreed.us.ubi.com/soundtrack/index.php

Password is ‘Target’ (case sensitive)

My question here is why oh why isn’t there more?  God this soundtrack is absolutely mouth wateringly beautiful.. Plus it is all in high quality Wav’s so hardly any compression.  I could listen to this for days.

Also got my hands on the Prince of Persia Soundtracks yesterday and I am inlove with these middle-eastern themed games.  Such beautiful sounds