Smed's Blog

The video game business is like the movie business. We're in this because it's what we love to do and we all thoroughly enjoy a great game, even if it's from a competitor.

I have to say without reservation that Modern Warfare 2 is the best single player experience I've ever had in a video game ever. This game is unbelievable. I've never seen such an amazing and engaging game. That airport level was seriously intense. It took a second to even register what was going on, and then replaying it a bunch of times to try and figure out if there's a way out of the moral quandary.

The multiplayer game is spectacularly done too. I can't say I've played a lot of that yet though. What I have played has also been first rate and I plan on spending a lot more time playing it.

Congrats to the team at Infinity Ward on a job well done. They've set the bar very high.

Smed

It's interesting how many comments we get about BFR's. Well you can stop sending the "please don't put BFR's in PS Next" emails. They aren't in there.

Smed

Our Denver office is going to be insufferable tomorrow :) Come on Brady... you  couldn't pull that off? That's ok. Monday night isn't so far away.

sports.espn.go.com/nfl/recap

We all have our vices. For some gamers RPG's really do it for them. One of the things I've always loved about SOE is that we built our company on the core idea of making games across many genres, and that includes the world's first MMOFPS, Planetside.

I love Planetside. I really do. It's an amazing game. you won't find any other FPS where you can have a 100 vs. 100 battle raging. And we pulled this off 5-6 years ago.

There's a great description of a Planetside battle here:

www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/05/planetside-the-1/


I really couldn't sum it up any better than that. To me the idea of a massive firefight on that kind of scale is why I'm a gamer. 

Planetside had a lot of really great things about it, but it also had some frustrating things. The whole Sanctuary concept is something that slowed things down too much. We also didn't get people back into the action quickly enough.

But the core of Planetside - massive battles with vehicles and infantry was something we nailed really well.

To me, Planetside Next means we get a chance to take the essence of everything that was fun in Planetside and make it a lot better. Massive battles on a scale no other FPS will touch. None of this 64 player stuff. REALLY MASSIVE. With much better organization, and a tight focus on making sure the action is always going on, with awesome graphics.

Damn I love Planetside. I really do.

Smed

This is going to be a new thing for me. writing a blog for work is hard for me. I feel like I have to always talk about the company, and I guess that's how it should be. But I really love the idea of getting out there with a lot more ideas about a variety of subjects.. sometimes about games, but sometimes about a great new book I've read. Pretty much whatever comes to mind. 

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It's funny... even though  I run an online gaming company, a lot of people wonder whether or not I play games or if I'm just some "suit". I got into this business over 20 years ago because I wanted to make games. This isn't a job to me, it's a big part of my life. It's what I do when I go home at night. I'd like to pretend I have a super balanced life. But mostly I like to go home and play games with my kids, or I read (I read a LOT). I play a ton of FPS games... (BF2, TF2, CS, Combat Arms).

I have 4 kids. All of them play games. My oldest 2 kids (my son who's 14 and my oldest daughter who's 12) play MMO's with me all the time. It's a lot of fun. It's a built in group. My younger 2 daughters (ages 9 and 8) play a lot of online games too.. mostly Free Realms (one of ours) or Club Penguin (not one of ours but an awesome game nonetheless).

Been playing a lot of Heroes of Newerth lately.

That game is absolutely amazing. I am thoroughly impressed with the level of polish and balance that S2 Games has put into it. if you haven't checked it out,  give it a try. It's based off DOTA (the widely played mod for WC III).

www.heroesofnewerth.com

Smed