Feeling up Zoe Mode

Its Ross here, and this is my first post. Oh the joy. So yesterday the camera man made his way down to film us, and psychologically abuse us with his camera lens. There is nothing quite like the cold, lifeless stare of a video camera lens to make the average computer geek freeze on the spot or, as in my case, babble like an idiot about Jigglypuff, the Scottish and Praliens.

I was somewhat shocked by last weeks video diaries on the dare site. There were more gimmicks flying around than some giant, gimmick producing machine at the annual gimmick Olympics. In retribution, the London teams are now hard at work producing a 300 man lightsabre battle, complete with cg characters, digital effects, spaceships, a full cinematic soundtrack and a real, talking horse. Oh wait up, we'll just make our games instead, silly me.

So anyway, what else did we do? we had a meeting to discuss the nitty gritty of the game mechanics. 3 hours later we emerged from the room, bloodied, sobbing and clutching various sheets of paper with lots of scribbles on. These scribbles contained the very core of our 'to be developed' content, and are in essence, the dead sea scrolls of Desire FX. . . Or maybe the 10 commandments.

Now that we have the content for the tutorial mission within the game, we know what we have to be focusing on next in preparation for the Alpha build of the game.

We were also lucky enough to have a visit from Ste Curran from Zoe Mode do a presentation about his mum, or more so, her gaming interests and how they relate to the video gaming industry. Mr Curran is an excellent example of why Dare is such an awesome experience, and it was a pleasure to chat to someone who obviously doesn't simply want to produce generic, space marine simulators, but who understands that lapsed and casual gamers represent an opportunity for creativity within the industry, as seen in Zoe Mode's recent Crush on the PSP .

Though i will say that his views on the Library level on Halo made me cry a little inside. Mr Curran, spawning enemies who run right at you with no respite, in a constantly repeating, mirrored environment over and over and over and over again, are not a good design choice. It is tantamount to taking a beautiful, endangered eagle, painting it red, plucking its feathers, dressing it up in Burberry and making it eat its own head.

But i digress, talking to professionals, disagreeing, agreeing and trying to understand the strange world of games is just one part of what Dare and indeed the industry as a whole can offer. LucidDreams eat, sleep and indeed dream games. We discuss them till far to late into the night, we scribble down our mad little ideas (re: Praliens), and we pour our heart and soul into every moment of the time we spend at E.A's beautiful offices.