Oh boy, don't get me started on the Nintendo 64 controller. I hated it. Hated the weird layout, hated the fact the analog stick would always get loose.
These days, Nintendo wisely offers alternatives to their "wacky" controllers in the form of Classic and Pro pads for the Wii and Wii U respectively, but we were shit out of luck with the N64.
Oh, except for Alex Clark, who decided the hell with it, and made an N64 Pro Controller anyway. Reshaping the original casing, bringing in a second stick and moving the buttons around, he's got something that not only looks like something Nintendo might have released, but which will work on an actual N64 and play games just fine.
Snobs will try and bring up Herzog Zwei, but really, the RTS genre as we know it starts with Westwood's classic Dune II, which, while playing a little rough around the edges these days, still looks amazing.
Being so old, though, many of you might not have played it. Not to worry. Here's a version of the game running in HTML 5, meaning it'll spin along quite nicely right in your browser. You can even play some multiplayer if you're feeling up to it.
Its inspiration/competitor DayZ is an exercise in tension and mood. The WarZ, on the other hand, is an exercise in boredom and broken code.
Making things worse, my first five games all ended in some way or another with other players killing me, and I suspect at least two of those, given the range and immediacy of my death, were the result of cheating.
Now, normally, I'd find this practice abhorrent. In a game that works, cheats subvert the rules and undermine most regular player's experience.
But The WarZ isn't a game that works. To call it an alpha would be to give it too much credit, so shonky is the world and its inhabitants, and if you stick to the rules, there's very little to do except hold down the W key and develop a lingering sense of regret.
So cheating in The WarZ might just be the only way, at least at the moment, to have some fun with the game. Which might explain why cheating is already so popular with such a new title.
A community has exploded around the idea, with many major cheating sites offering a range of cracks, hacks and trainers to let people tailor their WarZ experience.
The speed with which they've been able to offer these programs, usually for a price, suggests The WarZ's protection measures against such activity aren't exactly top-shelf. But the scale with which they've been picked up also suggests many customers who have paid for the game are now paying a little more to see if they can salvage some enjoyment from the title.
Some of these cheats are straight-up cheats. Access to better weapons, instant headshots, etc. But others reveal an interesting side-effect of The WarZ's broken launch: a form of community improvement. Below is a tweet I saw earlier today from ArtificialAiming, one of the biggest cheat sites on the internet.
New WarZ feature!- No Fall Damage!Never die again due to shitty steep hills or SuperJump!Enjoy!... fb.me/BzbJCyVs
In the game, that's an actual problem. And here's a fix, not from the developer, or a mod, but from cheaters. Other sites are offering similar programs, offering ways around other things people have issue with, like The WarZ's excessive (and even more boring) night cycle.
It doesn't atone for the fact most other cheats undermine other people's experience with the game, or that sites like AA are profiting off such behaviour, but it is a strange and wonderful thing to see regardless.
It shows Mrs. Kuzma revealing that, to go with the system, two games have been hired for the kids to play. One is Goldeneye. Brandon is pleased.
The interview's good reading, as it shows what the pair are up to these days. Brandon is making skate videos and works for online streetwear retailer Karmaloop, while Rachel lives in Florida where she's a photographer.
When you look back on all that's happened in the gaming world—games released, scandals unveiled and surprises unleashed—it's been a long, long year. Let's take a look back at what that year has been like for Kotaku.
Pretty soon after I was hired here at Kotaku, I started doing weekly round-ups of our best content. So now I'm going to round up our best work from over the entire year, including the gorgeous pixel artwork you see above that Michael Myers made for us. Hopefully I didn't exclude anything.
Via our lovely video editor Chris Person comes this absolutely baffling video of a 'birth' in Second Life, an MMO. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be beautiful, weird or funny. Maybe a bit of all three. Someone out there thought it was a good idea to record this, though.
The real question for those of you that sat through the whole video: who is the father?
What's up, buttheads. It's me, Biff. Look, I know my sports betting advice this year didn't play out so well. Sorry if you bet your adjustable-rate mortgage balloon payment on one of my lead pipe locks. How was I to know I had a printer's error? Really, that stuff was the Gray's Sports Almanac from 2014. So just bet my advice in two years at triple the amount, you'll win back everything you lost and still make a fortune.
Anyway, even if I did give you the other half of the almanac, the notable events of 2012, what sports book was gonna give you odds that NBA Live 13 wouldn't release? That MLB 2K12 would be the last baseball game on the Xbox 360? OK, alright, those were probably even-money propositions. Still, here's the rest of what I should have told you would happen in 2012.
The dominoes that fell in Peyton Manning's release, free agency, and his signing on Tuesday with the Broncos tumbled all the way to the cover of the NFL's signature video game. More »
The man who made Nintendo into a video gaming giant is warmly regarded in Seattle. But Hiroshi Yamauchi has never seen his team play. There are rumors, going back as far as 1992, that he doesn't even like baseball. Seattle and the Oakland Athletics opened the Major League Baseball season on March 28 and 29 in Tokyo. It was the last chance for Yamauchi to see the team he "has always viewed ... as a thank you to Seattle for being so welcoming to Nintendo of America." More »
Two days ago, the "Tecmo Bowl MMO" was left for dead, less than halfway to its funding goal on Kickstarter. After a last-minute comeback that conjures images of the Music City Miracle, the Ghost to the Post, and the Bills sundering the Oilers in 1993, Gridiron Heroes met its funding target. Sport's most emotional moments are often the ones manifested as allegories of real life victories. That makes it precious, indeed, when the beauty of real life echoes the triumph of sport. More »
After two rounds at The Masters, the 44 best scores and ties, plus anyone within 10 strokes of the leader, make the cut. Since 2006, when the course was lengthened, no American amateur has survived to "Moving Day," the nickname for Saturday's round. Yesterday, I did so. As a woman. More »
T.J. Brida usually shows up 15 minutes ahead of his shift. This day, he was thinking he'd be late. He pulled on his work shirt, ran out the front door, got in his car and lit a cigarette, cursing and smacking the steering wheel all the way.
T.J. Brida had just thrown 13 1/3 innings of perfect baseball. And then he gave up a hit. More »
Every main character needs a good nemesis. Seinfeld has Newman.McBain has Mendoza. And Tiger Woods has Scott Ratchman, who represents all the older kids Tiger defeated in his youth career.
It's appalling that anyone would think that rigging the opposing lineup is acceptable in a million-dollar contest predicated on throwing a perfect game. What is truly outrageous is that the contest's administrators at 2K Sports saw nothing wrong with it either.More »
The University of South Alabama is none too pleased they won't be appearing in NCAA Football 13 when the game releases in July. This season will be USA's debut year in Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision play, and while they're ineligible for postseason bowls, three other schools making their Division I-A FBS debut—Massachusetts, Texas-San Antonio and Texas State—will be included. More »
As a private-school doormat for decades to two big-boy conferences, until last year most people couldn't name one guy on the Baylor football roster. Even if Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy in 2011, it didn't make the school's fight song any more recognizable last week. Maybe that's why so few noticed that when NCAA Football 13 released—with Griffin himself on the cover—the Bears didn't take the field to "Old Fite.". More »
It should be no surprise that THQ jettisoned its expensive exclusive license to make video games with the UFC's imagery and fighters. The company is hurting badly and had gone through a huge, soul-searching reorganization, jettisoning its kids-stuff division and completely bailing on E3 this year. In a surprise announcement, EA Sports revealed it had bought the UFC license from THQ.More »
Twenty-seven million dollars is a lot of money. But it's not significant. Not in the case of the Madden monopoly lawsuit. In fact, I'm struck by how meaningless all of the terms are in its settlement. More »
When Kobe Bryant hypothesized that the 2012 U.S. Men's Basketball Team would beat the 1992 squad—the original Dream Team—Michael Jordan just laughed. Charles Barkley said only three players from the current team could have cracked their roster.
Video gamers can settle it for themselves this October when both squads, in their United States Olympic uniforms, appear in NBA 2K13. And yes, that means Barkley is at long last returning to a video game.More »
It's inevitable that women will appear as playable athletes in a football title, the executive producer of the FIFA video game series told a petition organizer. But it's far too late for that to happen in FIFA 13, and he couldn't commit to any future year in which it might for his series.
Still, whatever is done needs to be done right, David Rutter told Fernanda Schabarum, a 29-year-old gamer living in South Florida. It can't be a token tack-on feature, and certainly not a downloadable game or extension that sends a message that women play a second-class sport. More »
EA Sports, though it is inviting women who are hockey fans to its product, has also invited a different problem this year by signing up the Canadian women's star Hayley Wickenheiser, and United States national team standout Angela Ruggiero. Both will appear in the "Legends" mode of NHL 13, which is due out Sept. 11 in North America. "Be a Legend" puts an all-time great from a past era on the ice in present time. Ruggiero and Wickenheiser, both gold medalist Olympians, have well earned a roster spot. But these are the first two real-life female athletes to appear in a video game simulation of an all-male professional team sport. And so their inclusion raises the uncomfortable question of how to rate their skill relative to a universe of male performers. More »
I knew what was coming after I lost to Green Bay, 24-17, in Week 11 of my first season in Madden NFL 13. It was the same kind of thing that came in Week 2 after a gutwrenching 24-20 loss at home to San Francisco, in which I was cited for the lack of a "clutch gene."
It was ESPN's Skip Bayless, a media personality I actively avoid, someone put on my TV screen by my Xbox 360 to bray about my defense's inability to tackle opposing runners. Never mind that I was controlling just one player, a running back. Win as a team, lose as a team, get ripped by Skip as a team. If it's in the game, it's in the game.
"Hah-hah, there's Skip!" said my opponent, still connected by chat.
This is a glitch video to end all glitch videos, and not just because that's a player getting checked over the glass and into the fourth row of a hockey arena. It's also Sidney Freaking Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins superstar who has lost, like, an entire season's worth of games due to concussions, going back to early 2011. More »
Never pass up the opportunity to sit," Ben Haumiller (above) told me, as we slumped back on Virginia's vacated sideline bench at Wallace Wade Stadium, the Cavaliers in the locker room leading Duke 17-14 at the half this past Saturday. Pondering the long walk to the free concessions in the press box, I half considered sticking my mouth under the spout of the UVa water cooler. All we had been doing for the past four hours was standing on the sidelines and keeping quiet. But you really have no idea how draining that kind of work can be, especially in the early autumn sunshine at a Southern football stadium.
Ben's face already betrayed the onset of a sunburn, and though I had worn a cap, my neck and cheeks were sure to peel in the next two days. My feet throbbed and by Monday I'd be walking with a limp, thanks to a poor choice of shoes.
To explain what the hell we were doing, you have to go back to the roof of a parking deck in Florida about nine years ago. More »
EA Sports, on Sept. 27, canceled its troubled NBA Live 13 project. It is the second time in three years that sports video gaming's dominant publisher has pulled the plug on its NBA simulation at the last minute. More »
EA Sports should junk its NBA simulation. Just get out of it and this license altogether. There is no upside to kicking the NBA Live can another year down the road, for either management or labor. Two straight efforts at publishing an NBA simulation have failed, which didn't even happen in the days when games were sold on cartridges. It only gets worse from here. More »
Five years ago, an NCAA executive said EA Sports should be allowed to use actual names of its amateur athletes—commanding a higher licensing fee as a result—because players' likenesses were "rigged into the games now by illegal means." Permitting their use would clear up the matter and bring more money to the NCAA, he said. The comments came to light in documents exposed by a lawsuit 15 former college players have brought against the NCAA and EA Sports.More »
Nothing deleted from Twitter is ever deleted on time, and sometime between Monday and Tuesday, a disillusioned former Madden developer figured that out. By then, his unvarnished rant tossed a dripping slab of red meat to Madden's many Internet enemies, and it didn't win the author much support from his old friends. More »
The dangers of buying used, people. According to 9News, this Christmas, the Giles family found themselves horrified after their five year old son, Braydon Giles, found racy pictures on his refurbished 3DS. Presumably, the pictures came from previous owners who utilized the system's camera function. (...who the hell DOES that? For porn, I mean.)
The pictures were discovered when the kid asked his older brother with some help in deleting the pictures. There were nine in all.
Naturally, the father—Mark Giles—returned the 3DS. GameStop apologized for not catching the pictures before trying to sell the system, and then offered the family a new 3DS.
Despite being appreciative, the father doesn't feel that the new 3DS really makes up for what happened.
"You can't unsee this he's 5 years old maybe when he's 18 or 20 maybe he won't know anything about it but he's not going to forget about this tomorrow," Giles said.
As our own Chris Person put it: "You can't refurb a kid's brain."
A couple of months ago, if I started a new game—no matter what it was—I'd start off on a high difficulty. At the very least, I'd go for normal, but only if it was clear that normal would provide a challenge. I reasoned that nowadays ‘normal' is geared toward a more general audience which may be less familiar with games than I am. And, more importantly, pssh. Of course I can do better than normal!
We've internalized difficulty like that. I hear it all the time: games are getting easier, oh the good ol' days, they're gone, gone! Sometimes, without difficulty, some people start to wonder if what they're experiencing can even be considered a game, like with Dear Esther or Proteus.
But something curious happened recently: I noticed that playing games at high difficulties started to feel grating. I realized that playing normal/high difficulties often makes me feel like I wasn't doing it because I was having ‘fun' per se, but more because I felt I had something to prove. I'd want the better achievement for a high-difficulty run-through; I'd be able to tell people what I did and sound that much more impressive.
Part of the recent change came from being absolutely torn down by Persona 4: Golden's highest difficulty. I'm at a point where going through one level in a dungeon might take an hour, if I manage to survive and avoid getting one-hit-killed. I'll often preemptively kill myself if I didn't do amazing in a skirmish, if I spent too much SP or got knicked enough that it would affect me in the long term.
I felt I had something to prove.
I remember doing something similar in Super Meat Boy when I saw that I wasted an errant second on my run: it wasn't good enough. I could do better. Except unlike Super Meat Boy,Persona 4 has me feeling delirious. Oh, have I died for the tenth time in a row without making any progress whatsover? Have I spent hours in the same place with nothing to show for it? Haha! I don't even feel a thing anymore. Alrighty, back on the horse we go.
In an effort to retain what little of my sanity was left, I decided that any other titles I was playing concurrently to Persona 4 should be played on easy. Despite that decision, hovering between ‘normal' and ‘easy' on games like Far Cry 3 and Hitman: Absolution still felt wrong. I hesitated. Thinking back on it now, it reminds me a lot of being at a party and not knowing how to relax and just have a good time.
It wasn't until I started watching videos by popular YouTube user Criken, where he does all sorts of idiotic things, that the joy of easy mode really ‘clicked.' Maybe being sloppy and stupid could be fun. It's not so much about wanting to bulldoze through everything without thinking; games facilitate that at normal difficulties too. It's about having the ability to be creative and silly without penalty.
So now my Agent 47 runs around with ‘weapons' like radios instead of guns. Turns out, radios can be just as effective as whatever might typically be in a hitman's arsenal. Imagine my glee when I hocked said radio straight at a guard's head, and everyone screams and points their guns at the radio as if they could kill it? Or when I threw a glass bottle at the wall near a cop, they become alarmed and call dispatch about a suspicious sound... only to then stare at a wall for like two minutes?
It's so absurd, and I'm loving it. Compared to trying to stealthily navigate a level—which was what I was doing prior—what I'm doing right now feels way better.
In the case of Far Cry 3, easy mode is helping me muscle through a story that has clearly gone off the rails and is kind of bad, and, to my horror, still probably has a few hours left for me to experience. Far Cry 3 is not alone in this regard: all too often, I'll find myself wading through a game that goes on for longer than it needs to. I don't feel that very many games respect my time, and easy mode helps alleviate that.
More importantly, I'm moving into a place where I'd like difficulty, but not in the way most games give it to me. Mechanical difficulty is not the only type of difficulty there is.
Mechanical difficulty is not the only type of difficulty there is.
I want to play more games where I have a hard time putting the pieces together on what happened, like Thirty Flights of Loving. I want games that challenge my values and force me to make difficult decisions, like the The Walking Dead does. I want games with challenging themes and ideas that make me feel uncomfortable, like with Analogue: A Hate Story. I want to play games where the characterization of those I interact with is a tangled web of inscrutable desires and motivations, like in Dragon Age 2.
Physically going through the motions of pressing buttons, at this point, is easy. I know how to do that, I've played a ton of games that have refined my skills and reaction time. Until more games give me reasons to make those actions complicated or messy, I'm plenty happy seeing what a game can offer me when I stop being so serious.
You might know the name Victor Ireland—the outspoken ex-head of Working Designs was responsible for translating and publishing a number of beloved Japanese games, like the Lunar series and Alundra.
But you might not know his son, Broderick Ireland. Broderick, an 18-year-old designer who just released his first game on the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace, is a member of the "next generation" of game makers: he wants to bring games to life just like his father before him.
Second-generation designers are not particularly common in the video game industry, as interactive entertainment is still so young. So I thought it might be interesting to do a Q&A with Broderick. We talked about his new game, his interests, and the many ways in which his father has influenced him over the years.
The full conversation follows:
Kotaku: For starters, could you tell me a little bit about your game? What type of game is it? What's special about it?
Broderick:Space Crüesader is a twin-stick, Robotron-style shooter with tons of added flair. Cool explosions and effects, over 370 professionally-recorded voice-clips, over 45 minutes of music, etc. There's also some options to turn on subtitles for the hearing-impaired and to disable flashes for epileptics—you don't see those considerations in indie games that often. I really tried to make it more than "just another twin-stick". In fact, that's why I realized pretty early on that the player needed something to do other than just "here's a level, here's your time limit, shoot stuff". This eventually lead to the rescue gameplay mechanic that the game is kind of centered around now. Adding in the rescue mechanic really made the game more interesting, as it also added a sort of underlying story of the "why" behind everything your doing that's there if the player really looks for it.
It's actually a fair bit more complex than "you've gotta save Earth!", but it's not super in-your-face and it's intentionally ambiguous to an extent, as I personally hate stories that try to get overly wordy and detailed in a genre or game type that doesn't really need the added detail. There's also a lot small pop-culture references I threw in, whether it's in badge descriptions, some of the default names on the global highscores, or voice clips. Pretty much just little winks and nods that the player will encounter throughout the game, but, again, in a very subtle manner—they may not even realize they're references.
Essentially, I really tried to make Space Crüesader something with a bit of soul, going above and beyond what a lot of Xbox Live indie shovelware delivers. This isn't Twin-Stick Shooter 9001: Scantily-clad Zombie Avatar Massager Edition—I really tried to make this special.
Kotaku: Xbox's Indie Marketplace feels a little desolate these days, and I've heard that it's tough to get a lot of attention on there. Do you plan to take the game to Steam or any other platforms?
Broderick: There are bright spots and some terrific games, but it is a pretty grim marketplace, yeah. Attention definitely runs at a premium if you're on XBLIG, as most everyone sort of brushes it off as the area where all the crap goes. I've heard it described as the red-headed step-child before, and I think that's a pretty good description.
As for other platforms, I would love to get Space Crüesader on Steam, in fact I had it added to Steam Greenlight day one (i.e. the day Half-Life 3 was put up 10 times). I was totally prepared to bring Space Crüesader to PC and Mac (possibly with Linux support too), but my Greenlight page wasn't an FPS or Minecraft clone, so it was hard to get attention.
I currently don't really see much of a reason to spend the time (and, by extension, money) to bring it to other PC marketplaces if I can't get it up on Steam, as that's really the holy grail of PC distribution. We'll see. I'm very interested in Mac (and Linux to a lesser extent), as they really don't get a lot of games and I don't think that that's very fair. If the Greenlight thing doesn't work out, I may very well look into the Mac App store. Greenlight seems to be governed mostly by "hey, this looks pretty" or "hey, this is another First-Person Shooter/Minecraft clone", so I suppose that only time will tell.
Kotaku: Tell me a little bit about what it was like to grow up with Victor as your dad—did you get to see a lot of games before they were released in America? Did he show you a lot of games when you were younger?
Broderick: Gaming has always been a pretty huge area for me growing up. I definitely remember playing some of the games Dad was working on growing up (and a few that never made it to release). A lot of great games that I've played have been imported (a few of the recent ones like: Earth Defense Force/Global Defense Force, Blue Dragon, DeathSmiles). Our copy of Gears of War is actually one of the Asian copies (the Korean one, I believe) because Dad wanted to play it on his Asian Xbox! I was also in a segment cut out of the original Making of LUNAR. We still have the tape with my 6 year old "staff" interview discussing my view of the game's production in my custom-sized LUNAR Polo.
Growing up I also learned what "Save", "Confirm", "Yes/No", etc. looked like in Japanese pretty quickly, as even if you can't understand what the characters in a RPG are saying, you'd better know what those mean or else you'll be replaying a lot of areas. One of the things I found out about importing is that for every three or four great imports I played there were also one or two really, really weird ones (I'm looking at you and your man-juice, Cho Aniki).
I definitely seem to remember more of the imports of recent years than the really old ones, mostly because I think, at the time, I didn't really "get" what was so special about them. "Oh, this game's got weird crap on box of it. I can't understand the text. Whatever, I'm just going to go back to Banjo Kazooie." That kind of thing. I do want to make it clear that I definitely understand and appreciate their significance now, as I can already hear people going "You grew up surrounded by great imports, why don't you remember all of them!? Why haven't you mentioned [import X]? Why aren't you talking about Waifus yet!?"
Kotaku: What are some of your favorite games? Have you always wanted to make games?
Broderick: This may come as a surprise, but I am fairly unbiased when it comes to genres. I've played so many games that it's really hard to name my "favorite" ones, but I can name quite a few ones I enjoyed a lot.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
I played this game to death on the 360. Literally over a thousand hours, a few characters, the whole shebang. Then I got it for the PC a few years ago and logged over five-hundred hours on that copy.
Tales of Vesperia
Out of all the Tales games that I've played, this is by far my favorite. The writing, voice acting, gameplay and style all came together in this one. Most Tales games have some of it come together (seriously, spend more money on voice acting!), but not all of it. I'd totally recommend it.
The Ace Attorney Series Phoenix Wright was my #1 reason for owning a DS for a while. Every game in the series was great. Somehow something as boring as a court proceeding was turned into something awesome. Who knew?
The Professor Layton Series
Great puzzles? Good stories? Addictive music? Professor Layton has it all. A series that should definitely not be missed.
Disaster: Day of Crisis
A Wii game that's not shovelware? Sign me up! Pretty much Disaster Report (another great series) but as a wacky action game on steroids (Flaming tornado? Yes, please!), I was astonished when this game wasn't picked up for the U.S.
Freshly Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland
Remember that annoying guy in green tights from Wind Waker? He actually got his own spin-off series for the DS. The even more surprising thing is that it's a really great top-down adventure RPG. Another title that should have made its way to the U.S.
Dad said Nintendo told him the character was too "controversial" for the U.S. market, so I'm unsure if it'll ever come out here.
DJ Max
An amazing music game, this is another title that never made it to the U.S. market. Eventually we got, what, one of them? Other than some of the menus and most of the music being in Korean, a surprising amount of the game is in English. Sometimes it's worth it to boot up my PSP just to listen to the music.
The Ganbare Goemon Series
A lot of childhood memories are associated with Goemon. The characters and settings (who can forget Gorgeous My Stage?) made it something really special. I'll always remember the first time you call on Impact in the Nintendo 64 Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (the U.S. name), as that made a huge impression on my 4-year-old self. Aside from one or two duds (I was never a fan of Mr. Goemon, for example) the series holds up really, really well.
Half-Life 2
I'd never live it down if I forgot this. This is definitely one of my all-time favorites, simply because of the immersive story-telling, gameplay, etc. Everything about it was so perfect. Definitely one of the best games I've played.
Demon's Souls/Dark Souls
These games set the bar (for me at least) for challenging, strategy-oriented, action RPGs. These games used the minimalistic story-telling that I mentioned earlier—just enough to get you into the world, but not too much that it pushes you out of it. Amazing games.
As for your second part of the question, no, I didn't always plan on making games. I knew that I always wanted to be a part of the process, but I never would have dreamed that I'd be doing the programming (mostly because I was never very good at math). Thankfully, when you're programming, you've got to improve your math skill quickly, or else you're in for a lot of very frustrating nights.
To be honest, I always thought I'd be a part of the visual process (designing, directing—a visualizer), but I started learning programming. Then I got to do both programming, and designing. That's the fun part—when you're only limited by your own creativity. Once you have to work within the limits you've imposed... that's when it becomes "work". The middle to end of development is where "if it was easy, everyone would be doing it" comes into play.
Kotaku: What sort of influence do you think your dad has had on your work?
Broderick: Generally, I'd say it's been a huge positive influence. He's been the one that's helped from the start, so I can safely say that the game wouldn't be what it is today if he hadn't helped out. That said, I can't say that all of his ideas were gold (just like I can't say that all of mine were either), but between both of us—between the arguing about what should and shouldn't be in—the game was definitely changed for the better.
I also learned a lot—a lot about how the industry works internally, a lot about industry politics, a lot about design, etc. Looking back at where I started, essentially a gamer with absolutely zero programming and zero design experience, I can't imagine getting from where I was to where I currently am without his help.
When you look back on all that's happened in the gaming world—games released, scandals unveiled and surprises unleashed—it's been a long, long year. Let's take a look back at what that year has been like for Kotaku.
What's up, buttheads. It's me, Biff. Look, I know 
