Goal Line Blitz!

I've recently come across an American Football MMO...that's so far really cool.

I'm considering starting a new team for the upcoming season and want to gauge interest. If you wanna try it...use the link below and then post your character name in response here.

Up

Kian and I finished Up today on the 360. We had a lot of fun with it...it was a good co-op adventure that was very similar to the Lego games that we enjoyed a lot. Kian continues to amaze me at how well he's learning new game mechanics. Now that we're getting low on truly co-op games to play, I think we're going to start down the list of games we have that are ok for him(Banjo Kazooie, etc) and just pass the controller back and forth as we play through the campaign.

Red Faction: Guerrilla - Metacritic

Volition's latest offering is off to a great start!

Kian's Kindergarten

I may have mentioned before how the school system works here in Champaign...it's different than anywhere I've ever seen before. You list your top 3 choices of where you want them to start school in order, then there's a lottery that determines if you get your choice. There are some weighted factors...siblings at a school, proximity to a school, etc.

We've been stressing out about where Kian would end up because if you don't get one of your choices, they could end up anywhere they can get crammed in. But all of that was solved when we got back from vacation and found that Kian got into our top choice!

Catching up at work

This is the first time in a very long time that I've been away from work for over a week and playing catchup is difficult. I have lots of documents and emails that require my feedback or reply along with trying to get a full day's work done going forward each day. I'm nearly caught up though...

So much to say

A lot of things have been going on recently, so I'm going to do my best to get my thoughts out here this week on all of it.

My son's Kindergarten is nailed down, we took a week long vacation to Disney World, lots of family coming to visit starting tomorrow...

phew!

After the dust settled...

I was happy that the Browns traded down from the #5 pick, but then the next two trade downs started to make me nervous. Then I realized what we got out of the trade:

#5 pick

for

Alex Mack, Center, California.
David Velkune, OLB, Hawaii
Coye Francis, CB, San Jose State
James Davis, RB, Clemson
Kenyon Coleman, DE, NY Jets
Abram Elam, S, NY Jets
Brett Ratliff, QB, NY Jets


Holy crap! I'm super excited about this, particularly James Davis in the 6th round when at the start of this season I thought he'd be one of the top 5 RBs selected.

Red Faction: Guerrilla - Demo

It's on Xbox Live and Playstation Network today...

Go get it!

Being at a new studio when your last project ships

This is the first time I've been at a different studio as my last project is hitting retail shelves...and I'm finding it quite interesting. When you're still at the studio that made the game, people tend to be much more positive overall and you don't get many fresh perspectives unless friends in the industry contact you(again usually more positive than usual)

Since I'm no longer at EARS as Godfather II is launching, I'm seeing much different conversations about the game. Artists are much more frank in their criticisms of the look and everyone is quick to point out the problems with game play before they talk about what was fun. I truly feel like I'm getting the most honest feedback about my work than I've ever gotten before...especially because some people have had no idea I worked on it as the conversation begins.