Peter’s Blog

I am now a published, professional writer. Check out my piece for The Escapist called “But I Thought Games Were Supposed to Be Fun!”

Uwe Boll wants to fight his critics. Really. And he’ll include footage in the Postal movie he’s “working” on right now.

I’ve been geeking out this evening and have returned to my earlier work on my Metropolis concept and have been fleshing out the world some. I guess it’s a good sign that three years later I still find the idea fascinating.

I just played the “interactve story” Façade and it’s quite impressive. Basically you end up between feuding friends and are forced to react. The free-flowing conversations are impressive, though there are some techincal limitations (for example, you can’t say much at once). It will be interesting to see if games end up adopting this technology. I could see it leading to incredibly rich NPC interactions.

The Chemical Brothers wasnt you to GALVANIZE!

The Escapist has a fascinating article on the underground world of game collecting. And no, this isn’t the warez community but rather collectors would will do anything to collect rare and unreleased games:

In a smoke-filled room with low lighting, one regales me about the time he privately shipped a Harley Motorcycle to Japan in exchange for a one-of-a-kind piece of hardware stolen by Indonesian sea pirates.

Sony announced the PlayStation 3 prices, and they aren’t pretty. The base system, with a 20 GB hard drive, is $500. The better system, just like the Xbox 360, is another $100. Wow. Apparently something like half the cost of that is the Blu-Ray drive. Even though I don’t have one, I’m a big supporter of the Xbox-line, mainly because I hate Sony and their attrocious computer-related products. That being said, the PSP is mighty attactive: it has a gorgeous, big screen and isn’t very heavy. If only it had decent games, like the Gameboy DS, or I could easily put iTMS videos on it.

I mentioned Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends earlier and now I’ve heard of another interesting steampunk game, Steambot Chronicles. It’s for the PS2 and probably isn’t a great game, but you’ve got to love a game with steam-powered ‘trotbots’.

I have been playing The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion recently and been having a blast. The world of Tamriel is massive, you’re free to do just about anything, and the graphics are beautiful. So what has my Wood Elf Agent been doing recently? Picking flowers. I’m serious.

Not only is the foliage the most realistic I’ve seen (including Far Cry, which was quite impressive), but there are also lots of nice looking flowers. And you can pick them. Doing so gives you incredients that can be combined using the alchemy skill to create potions to sell or use. So, as a money-making venture (and because I needed healing potions), I’ve started picking flowers and making potions with them. And that’s why I’ve been picking flowers in Tamriel.