The ancient and ignored idea of a joint project between BZPower gaming companies disintegrated when Anaglyph left BZPower, and to be realistic it wasn't going to happen anyway. Because of that, I'd like to propose a social event that would encompass every gaming company willing.

Amateur E3 (AE3) is a recently proposed social event where all gaming companies interested will post a piece of work, game demo, finished game, or announcement that fellow developers will critique and play. The event serves two purposes: A ), a social event where developers can mingle, and B ), a chance to get opinions from other industry participants. The first event will be hosted on GameCraft, but other companies will host the event every year as it goes around to even out the participation.

The event takes place August 30th. It's up to you to participate or not, but the idea will be discussed with other developers as you think this proposition over. Keep in mind that this is not only a social event between Anaglyph and Biotech, so the private hostilities inside the companies will not even come into the picture.

Thanks for reading!

Oh, and to enter, post here.

Just post and say "Biotech is in" or something.

*content move to above post*, try not to double post -- *DWAN*

So what guidelines for the event are we going by? How long will it last?

It's outlined in the topic I linked to.

*coughBZPisalreadyworkingonthiscough* :P Yeh, DoF beat you to it by like, a day, but oh well, no problem. Honestly, I'm not overly supportive of GC at the moment, but it might be worth a shot nonetheless. Would we want to do a separate website/forum/etc. for it, or would it be purely on GC?

I'm not going to say yea or nay yet, but I'll certainly consider the option. :)

And personally I'd rather get rid of the private hostilities altogether.

Uh, no, I talked to DOF about this two days ago, and he's probably talking about the same thing. :P

The problem with BZP is... it's BZP. Not all of the developers will want to make a Bionicle-themed entry, and it's better to have a more flexible community for an event this broad. GC won't be the permanent home for the event, it's just what I thought I'd use for the first time.

The other note, is to my knowledge the idea DoF was pitching was for a "game's repository site," a collection of BZP games on a linkable site where they were arranged by quality rating etc.

Even if he was proposing a BZP E3 of sorts, I personally would still do both. As Alg noted, BZP wouldn't allow non-bionicle themed games, nor would Anaglyph be allowed to participate as a whole. *shrugs*

:)

Mmm, not quite I think.

Yeah that's true. Even we aren't doing solely Bionicle. OK, that's all I was wondering.

Yeah that's what I was thinking of. I told him we ought to have an IM meeting with those involved seeing as I don't have a full idea of what he's planning (hence why I was confusing it with something like Alg.'s). Just so long as the rating system is better than the Software Library's. One-size fits all doesn't always work (by their system Pacman would get a very low rating, even though it's one of the most well-known games of all time).

I seem to recall that the Random Shooter series was allowed there, but true it was only in light of the other Bionicle games being produced.

Personally, I'm only vaguely proud of Random Shooter Zero. RS I & II sucked.

About DOF's idea, there are rating sites like that ALL over the web. There would have to be something about this site that makes it unique.

It wouldn't really be public in the traditional sense, it's more or less just for BZP games.

Heh. *remembers the RS0 reviews on the GMC* :P It's funny, I looked back through the old BT topic and realized that the Insurgent wasn't receiving stellar reviews either. People liked the graphics, but as a whole it didn't quite fit together. That's one of the problems with being a game designer - you get to see how incredible the game is turning out to be, while the public is still only seeing the old nasty version (screenshots don't seem to quite cut it).

I heartily agree. However it does have at least some merit because it intends to administer to BZP only.

RS0 got better reviews on YoYo, but it still wasn't great.

Yeah I've noticed Yoyo doesn't seem to rate things very high. And some of their top pics stink. :P

YoYo sort of annoys me. GM7 was basically an announcement that Mark got an offer he couldn't refuse.

Oh, and pretty much everyone besides Biotech is in on AE3. You should probably come to a decision soon.

Plus Yoyo loads fairly slow, even on a T1. :P Personally I preferred GM much more when it was more or less Mark's project and not becoming a big corporate thing, but there's not much we can do it seems.

You'll notice that I tend to be rather non-conformist and unswayed by other people doing something. But chances are we'll end up in it anyway. Just to confirm, we don't necessarily need a full-version game to show right?

The topic I linked to answers that question. :P

I love hearing you guys talking about your unsuccessful game projects...

*huggles game topic with 80+ pages* :P

Ooh look Leppy finally made it. :P

*cough* 'tis only 60. Not that it matters to me. :rolleyes: That game has blue screened my computer literally every time I've run it, so I haven't bothered with it much. I think the old one ran like once...*shrugs*

So you in AE3 too?

Actually, we're both right. If you've viewing the forum with 30 posts per page, it's 80. If you're viewing it with 40 posts per page, which appears to be the default now, it's 60.

Naturally, I like to view it at 30... :P

AE3? Yeah, I guess so, I mean, I just kind of like, tag along behind Algernon, so...

Ah here's the culprit of all the lag on BZP. :P Binky changed the forum default to 40 because it reduces the server load.

But yeah that's understandable. *switches own view count to 50*

*switches view count to 5*

Wow, 477 pages!

Is Biotech entering or not? We need a straight answer soon.

*finally finds what he's looking for* My gosh Alg. make it more obvious that demos are acceptable. :P

But alright, I suppose I can give in and show up. After all, I suppose we're kind of expected to. We may or may not show up with a full game, but at least a demo, and perhaps an interesting announcement...

Dibs on bailing if need be. :P

OK I heard that the date has changed, but...to what?

No idea.

Works for me.

Well by this rate for you (from what Ive heard from Leppy, Lyg, and you) it sounds like the date keep getting postponed :P