"Brazil is a pretty solid gaming country."

If you're rich and import everything.

I finished Metroid last night...man the last few bosses were kind of a pain in the ass. Great game though....much better than I expected after all the negative talk. I was also impressed with the level of exploration in the game; its really not all combat, though they somehow managed to keep the fast action pace of the game going strong throughout.

Took me 14 hours. Beautiful production values....definitely the best cutscenes on the Wii hands down. The story could have been much better with the way they paint Samus as a character, but besides that stuff it was pretty solid and keeps you intrigued to the end almost like an RPG. This is a great 1st step to modern day, yet vintage, Metroid gameplay. That article about this game beinbg the death of the franchise was a fucking bad joke. I score it an 8.7 Please let Team Ninja make a sequel on Wii 2.

Hmm I discovered (after walking to and asking in several game stores in London) that Radiata Stories and Monster Tale have not been released in Europe.  Pretty annoying.  Will have to get them when I go to the US in a couple of weeks.

Will try to get a DS game tomorrow, either Chrono Trigger or Dragon Quest IX to see if I can stop playing picross and play something else.

...

PS  Thanks for the welcome Travo buddy.  good to see you.

bugsonglass said:

Hmm I discovered (after walking to and asking in several game stores in London) that Radiata Stories and Monster Tale have not been released in Europe.  Pretty annoying.  Will have to get them when I go to the US in a couple of weeks.

Will try to get a DS game tomorrow, either Chrono Trigger or Dragon Quest IX to see if I can stop playing picross and play something else.

...

PS  Thanks for the welcome Travo buddy.  good to see you.

You can get Chrono Trigger on the Virtual Console, so get DQ IX. I guess we will have ti import Radiant Historia and even Trauma Team Bugsy.

Analyst labels overtime as a natural part of game development; says Unions shouldn't exist

Full-time game developers shouldn’t complain they have to work unpaid overtime, an industry analyst has said during an extraordinary outburst in defence of Australian studio Team Bondi.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter claimed to have never met a developer who hasn’t worked overtime, nor does he believe working extra hours unpaid is a legitimate source for complaint.

“I’ve never heard a developer say ‘I don’t work overtime and I don’t work weekends’,” he said in a video address published on GameTrailers.

“If you’re getting into the industry, you are going to work plenty of hours.

“I hear from lots of people on Twitter about these Team Bondi guys in Australia, [hearing complaints about how] they’re young and right out of school, well, don’t pick that as a profession then.

“If your complaint is you worked overtime and didn’t get paid for it, find another profession," he said.

Pachter’s comments come in the wake of an overtime scandal which threatened to engulf Sydney-based studio Team Bondi. The LA Noire developer has been repeatedly accused of subjecting its staff to ‘brutal’ crunch work, though some staff are now speaking in defence of the studio.

“The [Team Bondi staff] were asked to work crazy hours, I don’t know anybody in game development who calls it a 9-5 job,” Pachter said.

“So that [complaint] doesn’t really resonate with me.”

Pachter can fuck off.

Lots of things aren't unprecedented or illegal, that doesn't mean people shouldn't advocate for improvements or against mistreatement of employees by corporations who (as a whole, not any one of them individually) have amassed way too much power within and out of the governments for the public's own good. That you've also been exploited in the past, that exploitation is common in this and every other industry, doesn't make it right and something to shrug your shoulders at. I'd hope you want your kids to get by better than you did, if situations as bad (or not even) as Team Bondi's are common for you and sitting there taking it "like a man" or "because this is real life" or "because there's nothing that can be done" isn't going to do that. Sadly I guess shit really has to hit the fan for people to finally get off their butts and do something about such things, as they have in the past, and will do in the future. Maybe some day societies will be built on the well being of the people rather than on the economic interests of the few and powerful. Maybe we won't live to see it, but maybe by doing at least something we can live to see incremental improvements toward such a future. Or not.

(Agnates) It ain't going to happen.  Unions, which brought about workplace reform, are almost dead.  It's going to have to get a lot worse than it gets better.


However, there a lot worse workplace problems then getting a job straight out of college in a white collar industry in one of the world's most livable cities.  So they had to work more than 8 hours and had an angry boss. Big deal.    


Australia has almost full employment and software development jobs for those with the qualifications are lying on the ground to be picked up.  It would be hard to find a job in the gaming industry in Australia, given the companies that have gone under, but there are plenty of other development jobs to go to if they felt they were abused.


Australia also has some of the best work place protections on the globe, if they had legitimate concerns they could have been addressed at the time they were working, not years later when they are miffed about not getting into the credits.


Yes, most corporations really are evil, particularly if they are public companies, but in this case there is little to complain about.  This is the case of a bad boss, one for which several remedies are in place to correct.

Bam! Go straight for the Ad Hominem fallacy.

I'm not going to dignify that with engaging you on this issue.  Re-read my post and take that as my reply.

There's certainly something to be said for pushing for improvements in the workplace, but I'm more of the mind of stop whining and better your own situation. A lot of these guys who are complaining I'm guessing are very young. That was the impression I got from one of the developers who was interviewed in one of the first articles about this. They may not have realized yet that it's not a company's job to make sure you're happy, well paid, and living how you want. I know in my early and mid 20's I didn't quite understand that and I stayed in a bad job much longer than I should have. I complained about my work conditions to everyone except my employers and eventually an ex-coworker told me it was my fault that I wasn't happy in my job. Looking back on it he was right, I should have moved on and it wasn't long before I did and life was good again. That's what these guys needed to do as well.

Another funny thing about looking out for yourself instead of expecting a company to do it is that it tends to force change in those bad companies. They either end up restructuring or going out of business, just like my old bad company did.

edgecrusher said:

That Goldeneye article is absolute crap.

Why is the guy acting like This new HD version couldn't possibly be as good as COD and the like, and acting as if nobody knows how good the game is going to be, and saying it was only accepted on Wii because the Wii has no good FPS? That is horseshit.....yeah and if it bombed on Wii people would be blaming the Nintendo audience for not wanting mature games.

As far as I know, its the exact same game that was on Wii, just better looking. Maybe they will enhance the multi-player, but I doubt the campaign will be any different. And the campaign absolutely destroys any call of duty game I've played, so how can a journalist claim it couldn't POSSIBLY be as good as popular shooters on HD consoles? Claiming Eurocom couldn't possibly make a game on the level of Treyarch or Infinity Ward? The fuck? It is...the game came out last year.

Edge I have only this reply

game journalism/