The serious business of making games

Everything old is new again… 2006 :)

I always figured it was pronounced oo-be, because the Latin word Ubi is pronounced that way. And since “Ubi” is Latin for “Where” I thought the company name was a play on words: “WhereSoft” instead of Software.

Apparently, it was originally a contraction of “Ubiquitous Software”

The serious business of making games: What is the right way to pronounce “Ubisoft”?

Also, How do you pronounce the name of Ryu’s spin kick move? Google tells me it’s “Tatsumaki Senpukyaku” but it doesn’t sound anything like that when he says it.

You be soft?

Hurricane Kick?

Sure, if you want to be boring about it.

I meant “what is he actually saying in game?”

I think we’re limited by the quality/limitations of the sound sampling of the time(s) – see the BTS interviews with the sound samples of MK moves. It sounds closer in later versions. Later the “super” version adds “shinku”

Yeah, I saw this video during my research into this important, life and death question. But he sounds mostly the same in the newer games too.

Jason Schreier’s new book, Press Reset, about instability in the video game industry is out tomorrow.

Blurb:

From the bestselling author of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels comes the next definitive, behind-the-scenes account of the video game industry: how some of the past decade’s most renowned studios fell apart—and the stories, both triumphant and tragic, of what happened next.

Jason Schreier’s groundbreaking reporting has earned him a place among the preeminent investigative journalists covering the world of video games. In his eagerly anticipated, deeply researched new book, Schreier trains his investigative eye on the volatility of the video game industry and the resilience of the people who work in it.

The business of videogames is both a prestige industry and an opaque one. Based on dozens of first-hand interviews that cover the development of landmark games—Bioshock Infinite, Epic Mickey, Dead Space, and more—on to the shocking closures of the studios that made them, Press Reset tells the stories of how real people are affected by game studio shutdowns, and how they recover, move on, or escape the industry entirely.

Schreier’s insider interviews cover hostile takeovers, abusive bosses, corporate drama, bounced checks, and that one time the Boston Red Sox’s Curt Schilling decided he was going to lead a game studio that would take out World of Warcraft. Along the way, he asks pressing questions about why, when the video game industry is more successful than ever, it’s become so hard to make a stable living making video games—and whether the business of making games can change before it’s too late.

Epic Mickey?

Warren Spector’s Disney Deus Ex!

I’m 130 pages into Schreier’s new book, and it’s definitely been worthwhile so far. The first chaper is focused on Spector, largely on how Junction Point ended up at Disney and how that chapter camer to an end as the company shifted its gaze to social and mobile games, meaning there was no place to go for JP as development on Epic Mickey 2 was completed.

The next chapters are dedicated to the production of BioShock 1, 2 and Infinite. 1 & Infinite sound similar in that for a long time nobody really knew what the game will actually be like due to the way Levine used to run things until shit eventually hits the fan and everything got done in long periods of crunch ‘magic’. BS2’s production seemed more defined by a very aggressive timeline the pressure to follow up on a game like BS. Also, plenty of 2K internal politics like Irrational turning down BS2 in favor of doing an XCOM game (which Levine then lost interest in at some point) and still being miffed about some other studio working on BS2. There’s also a brief chapter on the logistical clusterfuck the XCOM shooter was and how everyone was ultimately wondering about why it did not end up getting cancelled. The book also covers some of the indie endevaours of former Irrational and 2K Marin folks.

I’m still extremely sad that we did not get the dystopian post-apocalyptic Disney World Epic Mickey that was initially envision - that looks so damn great and interesting!

billede

billede

That does look epic.

It looks great from my perspective, too, but I rather think the Micky Marketeers were right to nix it. It ain’t gonna fly with the kiddies or more importantly, their parents/grandparents.

Warren Specter wanted to make a Disney game for himself, the rare adult with an obsession with Mickey Mouse and other things Disney. From an interview

I remember when I told my Mom I was working for Disney, her response wasn’t “What?” It was “It’s about time.” That’s a quote! So there’s that, and when I was in college I was an animation freak. I wrote and published so many articles about Warner Bros cartoons and Disney cartoons and Max Fleischer cartoons. When I got the grad school I wrote my masters thesis on Warner Bros cartoons and how cartoon characters develop over time. The first thing I did in the table-top game world was Toon, the cartoon role-playing game. The second thing I did at TSR when I got there was the Bullwinkle and Rocky party role-playing game.

As you say, kids and their parents have other ideas.

This is disappointing to hear.

At this point if you’re boycotting certain companies because you don’t like their practices, you may as well boycott them all. Every one of them has assholes and racists and toxic shitheads in them. You can’t win that fight. They’re everywhere.

True, but then if consumers gave it a go anyway the result would be Americans consuming less, so yeah for them?