As we head into Autumn and Winter, it's becoming the time of year when I want to settle into a good long RPG. To put it bluntly, a nice long game like this is kind of like the gamign equivelant of reading a nice long book infront of a fire. Except I don't have a fire.... Fortunatly, we have perennial RPG maestros Bioware and their next release, Dragon Age: Origins coming out in the next few weeks.
On the not so fortunate side, for the first time in my life I've come across an advertising campaign that puts me off wanting to play it.
It's mainly the music and themes really, but to me this seems a bit like scoring Lord of the Rings trailers with Marilyn Manson. The theme of the trailer doesn't help either, given that it's quite probable that the sex part of the game may amount to less than 1% of gameplay.
The ironic thing though is that really, is that I kind os suspect all this is going to achieve in the end is marketing a game designed for one type of person (one willing to take at least a moderatly cerebral approach to a game) to the kind of people who are expecting something simpler and who will find this utterly boring...
Friday, October 16, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Alexjholt.com v 2.0
Well, after taking onboard some professional reviews at conceptart.org on how to improve the site, the whole new thing is up at www.alexjholt.com as before.
Now all that needs to be done is to reformat the old images still present into web optimised .gifs to increase loading speed and thats it done. Then just to keep adding to it and applying for jobs!
Now all that needs to be done is to reformat the old images still present into web optimised .gifs to increase loading speed and thats it done. Then just to keep adding to it and applying for jobs!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
AAA Titles?
A very brief little post here, but I really think that my concept of what a AAA title means must be vastly different to most employers. I'd personally get the impression that a AAA title is a defining title that only comes out occassionally (being like an A title, but so good it defines things that come after it). Half Life would be AAA, so would WoW (and probably most things by Blizzard to be fair) the Sims, Halo, Guitar Hero and GTA too, things of that sort of calibre.
Massive financial success, massive critical acclaim AND actually being a defining moment in the genre MIGHT qualify a game for that status in my eyes.
Really, to claim that all your titles are AAA, or that you only want employees with triple AAA experience seems a bit odd to me, obviously you want the best, and you think your game is the best, but I'm afraid it just looks slightly daft when every single job listing seems to say that they'll be working on a AAA title. One or two of them might conceivably be, but quite possibly none at all.
I guess I just prefer a bit of modesty about these things, particularly when the game isn't even released yet. Although as every title is apparently AAA, I suppose that means its easy to qualify for it...
Massive financial success, massive critical acclaim AND actually being a defining moment in the genre MIGHT qualify a game for that status in my eyes.
Really, to claim that all your titles are AAA, or that you only want employees with triple AAA experience seems a bit odd to me, obviously you want the best, and you think your game is the best, but I'm afraid it just looks slightly daft when every single job listing seems to say that they'll be working on a AAA title. One or two of them might conceivably be, but quite possibly none at all.
I guess I just prefer a bit of modesty about these things, particularly when the game isn't even released yet. Although as every title is apparently AAA, I suppose that means its easy to qualify for it...
Monday, July 20, 2009
A Bit of Reworking
I was literally just clearing old my backlog on DeviantART, getting rid of all pieces which are old enough that they don't represent my current skills, when I came across this:
This particular piece was a speedpaint done in Painter, probably in the region of a year and a half ago. If I'm honest I never particularly liked it. I liked the idea when I started painting it, but it just didnt't come out right.
So, coming upon it now I decided to have a go at fixing it up. Nothing fundementally changed, just took it into photoshop for 40mins and went over it a bit, just to bring it up to something better.
Now it's still not perfect, it really needs to horizon line moved away from midpage and lots of tidying up. Infact I'm even tempted to say this is only the bottom right quarter of a much better composition, but anyway, really I find it quite interesting just to see what I now recognise in pictures now that I didn't a year and a half ago.
Thoughts?
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Saturday's Art
Had a very good day yesterday art wise, and as this is really an art blog these days:
1) Finished off my entry to the 'Stranger is a Strange Land' contest on game artisans.
2) A Conceptart.org daily sketch challenge: 'Reptilian Beast has both Elephantine and Tortoise-like qualities'
3) Speed Paint - Truth or Dare
1) Finished off my entry to the 'Stranger is a Strange Land' contest on game artisans.
2) A Conceptart.org daily sketch challenge: 'Reptilian Beast has both Elephantine and Tortoise-like qualities'
3) Speed Paint - Truth or Dare
4) 'Creature of the Week' on Conceptart.org, first concept of 'Creature that Refridgerates itself to cope with cold.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
A New Home
You may notice a change is design on this blog. That's because it's now integrated into by brand new website and needed to match it. Also because realistically it previously didn't look that great.
Anyhow, if you haven't visited already, you can find my site at the unforgettably named www.alexjholt.com
See you there hopefully.
Anyhow, if you haven't visited already, you can find my site at the unforgettably named www.alexjholt.com
See you there hopefully.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Academia: It's Own Worst Enemy
Yesterday I happened to catch a brief section of a program about why women's pay is still on average less than mens. I must admit I didn't watch the whole thing - money as a measure of success has never really interested me, and the program itself didn't give the impression it was going to come up with any meaningful solutions, and merely stated the kind of reasons behind it that I'd already concluded myself. However, in one brief section of it they were talking to a group of University students who were doing law, who were in there spare time entering into a beauty pagent.
Now it goes without saying that I dislike the concept of beauty pagents, and especially the very plastic artificial image of feminity they promote. It would seem that the male presenter of the show roughly agreed with that kind of viewpoint, and asked these girls why they wanted to be judged on their appearance when they were obviously all so intelligent. One of the responses was something to the effect of 'I'm proving my academic worth all week, but thats not all there is to me, and other things have value. Like beauty'. It's a pity that they had to add that last bit, because a skill of looking like a plastic doll aside, the rest of that statement has an interesting point to it.
The issue is that academia really only endorses other academia. Now that is a bit of a generalisation, but the point being that unless something can be directly tied into a representation of academic success it is looked down upon. This is probably most true of secondary schools to the point where they are practically parasitic of their student's successes. Unless a school has a focus in the arts, the chances are that for the most part achievement in the sciences, maths, english and so on is far more highly valued than the arts or anythign extra curricular. Academia tries to force itself into being the prevalent force in someones life while they are young, and so I don't think its really surprising to see that anti-intellectualism seems to be embedded within youth.
We get this because academia tends to have a rigid sense of meritocracy, and therefore students who are 'bad' are effectivly forced into competing against others at their own game, and losing. No one likes to lose, least of all the young and impatient. This is not to say that people should be
allowed to get an easy way out by being lazy. It's of course fair to make sure that everyone has at least a decent grounding in english and maths, and arguably IT even if they struggle against it because it's doing them more harm than good to let them go into the world without having developed those key skills. But at the same time, you have to be practical. Not everyone is a scientist, although everyone should know some science and so on for every subject, but only to the point where they have a grounding enough to know what they want to pursue.
Infact, for once I'm actually willing to say that I think my former school is right about something. Albeit for the wrong reasons. By the time I left school they were beginning to introduce a system whereby SATs would be taken a year early, and thus GCSEs would start a year early and be spread over three years rather than the normal two. I dislike their reasons - which are to effectivly increase efficiency in their meat grinder of an educational machine, SATs are irrelevant to your prospects so getting them out the way allows more time on the GCSEs to thus allow higher grades, which would seem admirable if I didn't know the kind of minds behind it. On the positive side however it does mean than children get to branch out earlier into specialising in their chosen subjects earlier, which I'd hope would do something to slightly ease any anti-intellectualism present.
Perhaps some kind of solution involving doing some kind of apprenticeship kind of thing as a kind of qualification amoungst GCSEs and reducing the range of mandatory ones if they are doing that. The problem with that is it starts messing around with child labour issues, so it probably needs more work as a concept. Retired professionals being paid by the government to run classes perhaps?
There is a real need to dispell the kind of intellectual arrogance that is present in the world, just as much as its necessary to get rid of the anti-intellectualism, both feed off each other and its an unhealthy state for society to be in. Tying back into the beginning though, I think society as a whole needs to work towards giving people more subtle avenues of expression. Its entirely reasonable to not want to be represented by one aspect of your character, and academia is merely one of the most greedy of claimants upon people's identity. Vanity is just as bad, although arguably less institutionalised. But for intelligence, occupation and education particularly, the amount of clutching at peoples identity is what drives people away from it and into potentially more self destructive avenues.
Now it goes without saying that I dislike the concept of beauty pagents, and especially the very plastic artificial image of feminity they promote. It would seem that the male presenter of the show roughly agreed with that kind of viewpoint, and asked these girls why they wanted to be judged on their appearance when they were obviously all so intelligent. One of the responses was something to the effect of 'I'm proving my academic worth all week, but thats not all there is to me, and other things have value. Like beauty'. It's a pity that they had to add that last bit, because a skill of looking like a plastic doll aside, the rest of that statement has an interesting point to it.
The issue is that academia really only endorses other academia. Now that is a bit of a generalisation, but the point being that unless something can be directly tied into a representation of academic success it is looked down upon. This is probably most true of secondary schools to the point where they are practically parasitic of their student's successes. Unless a school has a focus in the arts, the chances are that for the most part achievement in the sciences, maths, english and so on is far more highly valued than the arts or anythign extra curricular. Academia tries to force itself into being the prevalent force in someones life while they are young, and so I don't think its really surprising to see that anti-intellectualism seems to be embedded within youth.
We get this because academia tends to have a rigid sense of meritocracy, and therefore students who are 'bad' are effectivly forced into competing against others at their own game, and losing. No one likes to lose, least of all the young and impatient. This is not to say that people should be
allowed to get an easy way out by being lazy. It's of course fair to make sure that everyone has at least a decent grounding in english and maths, and arguably IT even if they struggle against it because it's doing them more harm than good to let them go into the world without having developed those key skills. But at the same time, you have to be practical. Not everyone is a scientist, although everyone should know some science and so on for every subject, but only to the point where they have a grounding enough to know what they want to pursue.
Infact, for once I'm actually willing to say that I think my former school is right about something. Albeit for the wrong reasons. By the time I left school they were beginning to introduce a system whereby SATs would be taken a year early, and thus GCSEs would start a year early and be spread over three years rather than the normal two. I dislike their reasons - which are to effectivly increase efficiency in their meat grinder of an educational machine, SATs are irrelevant to your prospects so getting them out the way allows more time on the GCSEs to thus allow higher grades, which would seem admirable if I didn't know the kind of minds behind it. On the positive side however it does mean than children get to branch out earlier into specialising in their chosen subjects earlier, which I'd hope would do something to slightly ease any anti-intellectualism present.
Perhaps some kind of solution involving doing some kind of apprenticeship kind of thing as a kind of qualification amoungst GCSEs and reducing the range of mandatory ones if they are doing that. The problem with that is it starts messing around with child labour issues, so it probably needs more work as a concept. Retired professionals being paid by the government to run classes perhaps?
There is a real need to dispell the kind of intellectual arrogance that is present in the world, just as much as its necessary to get rid of the anti-intellectualism, both feed off each other and its an unhealthy state for society to be in. Tying back into the beginning though, I think society as a whole needs to work towards giving people more subtle avenues of expression. Its entirely reasonable to not want to be represented by one aspect of your character, and academia is merely one of the most greedy of claimants upon people's identity. Vanity is just as bad, although arguably less institutionalised. But for intelligence, occupation and education particularly, the amount of clutching at peoples identity is what drives people away from it and into potentially more self destructive avenues.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
