There was a time when I was playing X-Com all night that I would start thinking about how much AP it would take to get to the end of a school hallway, etc. It was pretty annoying to have that kind of framework in your head all the time.

Have you guys ever gone into a store or a video game store and feel proud to see the product you help make? Also what is your favorite video game you have worked on being in the industry?

It's always fun! I take a lot of screenshots for games, and it's always amusing to see them wind up in magazines or on websites, too.

I think you need to see the movie A Boy and His Dog... You might change your mind about that.

Would you rather live in a cabin in the snowy mountains of Maine, or a beach house in Florida?

That would be some desert island to have electricity and a working internet connection. Alas, it's hard to say as I could easily say something like WoW so I could communicate with the outside world AND run daily quests while waiting for the rescue plane to find me.

However, I would probably wind up and be happy with any of the online shooters. You rarely ever wind up with the same game twice and your opponent is always evolving -- you can never really beat the game, even if you unlock every weapon, perk and achievement. Same could be said for an RTS. While I'd love to take an RPG (I've played some of the recent Bioware ones 2 or 3 times through), this is a desert island and I'd need the game I take to be challenging for a long time.



Yes. I have felt proud of every game I've shipped (and some I didn't ship). Each development cycle has it's challenges and overcoming them is just part of the amazing development process. I was particularly proud of Dark Alliance 2 as we had a very bare bones team operating in a tight deadline with Black Isle in its final days. The development challenges were such that the project would have been doomed if not for some amazing efforts by the guys on the team. While it wasn't the highest rated game I shipped (Kotor 2 and NWN2 and Mask all rated higher), it was the little project that could. I wish I could name off all the people that busted tail to get that thing out the door. In retrospect, it was a suicide mission much graver than anything the Omega 4 Relay could have whipped up and we got it done. I also learned a lot about making a sequel =) To this day, it's the game I've played most of any I worked on and the only one my wife has played.

I have another oddball question to ask. What do you guys think of 2012 and do you think were all going to be vault dwellers in the year 2013?

Hey, at least he gets fed.

Cookie: Snickerdoodle. My wife bakes cookies for my team every holiday season and these usually get the best reviews.
Pizza: REAL Chicago Style (Lou's or Gino's) pizza
Fast Food: In and Out. It's a revelation for first timers.

First job: video store clerk in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.

Dream car: an old diesel Mercedes-Benz Gel?ndewagen and an environment appropriate for using it. Alternately, an early '70s BMW 2002 tii with a 5-speed Getrag out of an E21 3-series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Gelaendewagen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_2002tii

Current car: a 2004 Volkswagen R32.

If we're talking computer games... I think it was Olympic Gold? Looked a lot like Track & Field, but even simpler with fewer colors. We had one of those early color CRT monitors with various shades of purple and green. It was archaic by today's standards. My parents also had an orange/black monochrome monitor. I remember my dad's PC had a tape drive and 128mb of memory was the new big thing...

A few other games I remember from back then; Eye of the Beholder (1 & 2 on PC), Hard Hat Mack (Apple), Blueprint and Joust (Atari)... Good times. Started building PCs in high school when the first pentium chip came out.




Everything. Art, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, you name it and I'm inspired by it. My welding/fabrication background often has me going out of my way to look at how various buildings are constructed. I'm a huge fan of nice clean welds and simple construction. Worked a summer doing shop I-beam fabrication and welded some of the pieces which went into a state prison and Detroit Tigers Stadium. As a designer, you have to keep your head open or you'll miss some truly inspiring bits of life. The simplest shape or concept could be extrapolated into an entire level design if you let your creativity do the work. I love speed-mapping FPS levels for this reason.



I think I was more in disbelief than anything. I'm still kind of in disbelief. Kind of like when I bought my first motorcycle. I'd always ridden my dad's bikes since I was 4 years old (50cc mini-Indian), so when I could finally afford my own it was just surreal.



Lol, I just looked up Robert Lee and surprise surprise it is a pretty common name. Have to wonder though if any of them are related to the General like me. I was in grad school with a guy who is a distant relative of Grant. Good-natured ribbing ensued as I pwned him over and over in Unreal.



Love Swiss, but got turned on to Feta during my honeymoon in Greece. There were fires crossing the countryside on the Peloponnese Peninsula, so our food options were pretty much local fish of the day (often a bad catch) or 'Greek Salad' (cucumber, tomato, onion, and a big chunk of feta with olive oil and herbs). Really healthy, but try eating that a straight week for lunch AND dinner.



I'm not quite a browncoat, but I thoroughly enjoyed the series.



Demon's Souls, maybe. Eh, on second thought I'd bring a PC and a bunch of editors to make my own games. Playing a single game for an indefinite amount of time would get old no matter how great the game is. I'd rather spend the time polishing an opus.

How closely are the people at Obsidian working with the team behind Fallout 3?

Growing up I spent a few years living in Costa Rica, where my parents are originaly from. That is where I developed my tarantula catching skills!



My first job, Parillo's Grill - Dishwasher

Dream car I would say Porsche 911 GT3RS but for now I put around town in a Boxster S.

-jS

Hobbit Hole with a HUGE underground garage up in the Angeles Crest area or down by Palomar Mountain. Twisty roads and beautiful scenery is abound out here. Big Bear is also a beautiful area. The altitude would also be handy in case the apocalypse occurs and sea level rises several hundred feet or say a tsunami hits the west coast.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to take an Advertisemant or Plot Developing role in the gaming industry?

My first job was working at a Books-A-Million in Fairfax County, VA. I stocked magazines (and if you've ever seen a wall-o-magazines at a Border's or something similar, you can imagine what a task it was) alongside shelving and running the register. Fun stuff.

I agreed entirely, I find a lot of my inspiration also comes from reading actual historical events, especially those from my own culture (Australia). I'm often very inspired by the 'mateship', sacrifice and perseverance revolving around the ANZAC tradition in WW1 and WW2. I've had many thoughts of conveying these same traditions in the form of some Sci/Fi concepts I have brewing around in my head.

But I'm glad to see you guys are very switched on, kudos to the Obsidian Team.

Slinging snow cones, cotton candy, and corn dogs at a carnival. Aside from the drunks, druggies, angry parents, and overall slave labor, it wasn't that bad. Until night fell, at least.

Who is your favorite musical artist?

Also, never got answered. Is your work schedual interfering with life in any way?

First job was working computer shows selling hardware for a local computer shop. We'd sometimes build computers for customers at the show. I got to the point where I could build a computer from parts in well under an hour (no operating system).

Well, my current car is an 05 Subaru Impreza WRX STI. I bought it back in 2005 before Ken Block turned the STI into a 'bromobile'. It is still mostly stock except for a Perrin Master Cylinder brace, slotted rotors, pads, stainless braided brake lines, and a Kartboy short shifter. My goals are to swap out the suspension next for Tein coilovers with EDFC, bigger sways, harder bushings everywhere, end-links, etc. Basically a complete suspension swap for a fully-adjustable kit as I loooove trackdays and Solo2 SCCA. Then after the car handles and rides like I want it, I'll gradually start upgrading the motor.

Dream car?... I think it would be a dream motorcycle. My 1098 is pretty close to a dream, but if I could pick any bike, it'd be the MV Agusta F4CC. That thing is pure six on wheels. One of the best parts of riding a motorcycle in California is lane-splitting to the front of traffic at stoplights is totally legal. I'm hoping the next big Triumph Daytona will replace my old Speed Triple.

An Ariel Atom would be ridiculously fun to own though for weekend canyon carving though. One of my buddies wants to get a Lotus Elise. I suppose a heavily modified STI ($30,000 500+AWHP rally motor) could be a dream car.



Assuming the world is going to end in 2012 simply because the Mayan calendar stops on that date is like assuming the world will end when your Nerdcore calendar runs out on Dec. 31st. Hello. No Mayas left (at least not the civilization, just decedents), so no new Mayan calendar. Pretty sure the Mayans figured, "Hey, the likelihood of us existing in 2012 is pretty remote, so why bother?" Besides, it a bit difficult to make an infinitely long calendar with chisels and stone. Hell, is that even possible with a supercomputer?

Haven't people been saying the world is going to end over and over for at least a millennium? There is a word for people who keep doing something expecting a different result... Oh yeah, insane. One day, the world might end, by why piss away your life worrying about the exact date? Being raised by a stoic empiricist has helped me in identifying and avoiding paranoid delusions. I'm a strong believer in self-determination and limited fatalism, philosophically-speaking.

Deep... deep... I agree with you and think the same way. I really don't think 2012 is going to be end of the world but thought it'd be a fun and interesting question to ask I think 2012 is going to be an exact repeat of the y2k bug :brokencomputer: :ahhh: :slap:

Speaking of 2012 have any of seen the movie? Towards the ending when all the people are rushing to their uhmm safety (don't want to spoil the movie) is what I think of vault tech. Vault Tech from my impression is kind of company that would do the same thing conning people out of millions for their safety then try screw them over and leave people behind to their fate though there was plenty of room and resources (The same situation with the Arcs in 2012). This would make sense if you've guys seen the movie.

What are you up to Summer?

Suppose a nuclear war as bad as the Great War happened, you take refuge into a vault and one day after the vault door has opened you travel out into the wasteland, what's the first thing you'd do?

Are any of the Devs out tonight getting Bioshock 2?

I loved Shenmue enough to import it for the Dreamcast and play through the entire thing. I also double-dipped and played through again in English. I never got around to finishing Shenmue II, but I've kept it in my backlog for when the time is right.



Maniac Mansion for the NES (I can spend days messing with the different ways to complete that game... then doing it all over again), or Actraiser for the SNES ("Birth of the People" is one of my favorite songs for a video game soundtrack ever).