Blizzard Entertainment’s phenomenal video game/MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) “World of Warcraft” aka “WoW” has recently released new downloadable content (DLC) for the player community.

This brand new virtual game item is a “Celestial Steed” or virtual Horse, that players can use to ride across the virtual game worlds. That’s all it does apparently, it makes your character travel quicker around the game.

and it costs $25.00 to purchase and download to your game account.

According to the reports/writeups on other websites, 4 hours in after the item was released (it was released around 9 or 10 in the morning), the Download Queue was already at 80,000 players..and rising.

4 hours, 80,000 units sold @ $25.00USD each. $2 million dollars by lunch break.

There’s alot of hateful comments and such circling this as well, something like “why so expensive? who would pay that? i could use that $25 so much better than a virtual horse.” Answers return with “It’s the person’s money, not yours. They decide not you.”

So, 80,000 players sounds CRAZY A LOT already.. but looking at it, the total online community stands at over 15million players (last i read reports of “14 million WoW players” couple years ago)..so 80k players is nothing really…instead, it does show that yes, the majority of players do feel that the item is not worth spending for. Nonetheless, it’s still $2million in 4 hours. Let’s see how many of us can say they even make $1k in 4 hours.

My source page: Blizzard Makes 2 million in 4 hours

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Ever wondered why a new Game costs $60? “Game are so expensive! 10 games would already be $600 at least before tax! My pockets!”

Here’s an excellent video to explain why, and breaks down where each of your precious dollars go.

Those thinking of your careers, this video will help you get an idea what each discipline gets .. ;D

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o.o

just read a bit ago how the Industry had an average loss of 4% in salaries..and the difficulties they faced in the past year..

but look now!

sales have gone up! “Up 6% with PS3 (Playstation 3) making the most of that..”

The top ten console retail software titles for March 2010 are as follows:

1. God of War III (Sony Santa Monica/SCEA, PS3), 1.10 million
2. Pokemon SoulSilver (Game Freak/Nintendo, NDS), 1.02 million
3. Final Fantasy XIII (Square Enix, PS3), 828,200
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DICE/Electronic Arts, Xbox 360), 825,500
5. Pokemon HeartGold (Game Freak/Nintendo, NDS), 761,200
6. Final Fantasy XIII (Square Enix, Xbox 360), 493,900
7. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Nintendo, Wii), 457,400
8. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DICE/Electronic Arts, PS3), 451,200
9. Wii Fit Plus w/ Balance Board (Nintendo, Wii), 429,600
10. MLB 10: The Show (Sony San Diego/SCEA, PS3), 349,200

- Gamasutra.com

Over 1 million units sold for just the month of March.. wonder how many in total sales now.. hmm x]

there’s also a breakdown list for number of gaming platforms (consoles/handhelds) sold, which i guess also accumulates into that 6% increase:

Retail console unit sales for March 2010 are as follows:

1. Nintendo DS: 700,800
2. Wii: 557,500
3. Xbox 360: 338,400
4. PlayStation 3: 313,900
5. PSP: 119,900
6. PlayStation 2: 118,300

- Gamasutra.com

These hardware sales are most interesting to me..for example it shows that there’s like an average of 300,000 new homes to purchase a PS3 each month! More and more families are having the gaming console at home, which means a constantly growing community, which means more love for the gaming industry!

and just look at the number of people now with a Wii in thier homes…550,000 more in just a single month of March.. wow. o-o

Check out the full article: Industry Sales Up 6%

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recently been reading up some resources for animal fur for an animal texture project im working on, and i came across skunks, and now..i’ve found a new love for these commonly despised creatures.

they are adorable.

at least the domesticated skunks are.

it seems to be getting more common for humans to adopt skunks as pets, and it appears that if raised from young under human care, they become really affectionate pets…aside from being just gorgeous with their fluffy black-and-white fur patterns! Skunk-experts are saying that Skunks are a lot like having a cat as a pet!

Pet skunks don’t spray, because they have been…fixed.. hence they don’t have that awful odor that everyone associates these poor animals to.

i wants one!!

Please watch these videos for the greater cause! More luff for these outcasts x]

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woaaahh! Psyched!

I’ve finally received my official Starcraft 2 Beta Invitation from Blizzard Entertainment!

Millions and millions around the world have all but been anxious to get a chance to participate in this beta, only mere thousands worldwide has actually got their golden tickets in thus far.

The beta has been running for about 2 months in now, having launched around Febuary this year, with beta access keys being valued at over $300USD on EBay…look at how crazy people are about getting this game! So it comes naturally to be this hyped about getting your very own beta invitation..!

Hmm.. i wouldn’t mind selling the account..i could use the money better hehe and i’m not sure i’ll have enough time to fully participate with all my homework piled up here.. x]

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Wooo! And we thought our Game Industry was “recession proof”.

The annually conducted “Game Developer Salary Survey” has noted a 4% drop in the average salary someone in the industry earns!

Salary Breakdowns by Discipline: (annual average)

Programming - $80,320
Art & Animation - $71,071 (increase 2% from previous!)
Game Design - $69,266 (increase 3% from previous!)
Production - $75,082
Quality Assurance - $37,905
Audio - $82,085
Business & Marketing - $96,408 (drops 6% from previous)

Read full writeup over at Gamasutra.com!

Who says you can’t make a living from Video Games? hehehe.

That’s also just average salaries from working in the industry, i don’t think they take to account outside work like casual games (iphone apps/facebook apps/web games) x]

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Crytek studios is at it again, after showing off another outstanding CryEngine 3 Tech Demo at GDC, they’ve also left us with a brilliant game trailer..giving us a glimpse of the game’s post-apocalyptic New York city.

I for one absolutely love this trailer, it definitely holds true to Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli’s cinematic game approach…using a very dramatic sequence, coupled with a heart-warming soundtrack, it builds a powerful emotional response in us as we watch it. In the mere 1 minute, we already get attached to the soldier character the short cinematic focuses on, it’s beautiful. The “common trailer” would be to show how bad-ass your new game is going to be, with action packed sequences and guns blazing, but very very few games take on this cinematic-emotional approach..Crysis 2 being one of these (other games that have done it is Bioshock 2, Final Fantasy series).

Crysis 2 is looking fantastic needless to say. It’s ranked #1 on the GT Game Rank (i’m assuming #1 hyped-for) out of over 9000 other games, that shows alot lol. The new game is a depart from the original game’s lush tropical island environment, and now takes place in an urban landscape, New York City. The game is being built on the new CryEngine 3, which is “optimized” for consoles (booo.. dumbed-down engine from the original pc-power-oriented CryEngine). It still looks awesome, but i feel there’s something lacking/missing when i saw the tech-demo D: there’s just no same “oomph” i get from back when they demoed the first CryEngine. The only “new tech” i really digg is the new dynamic texture blending feature…something i’ve never seen before in any other game (maybe it’s been done before, but not in any of the games i’ve had the chance to explore).

Anyhows, enjoyyyyyyyyy the beautiful Crysis 2 trailer! I believe the trailer is all in-game real-time footage, not pre-rendered cinematic, which shows off just how powerful crytek’s game engine is…

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really motivating video, showing us the awesome studio of Epic Games, people responsible for the leading industry game engine “Unreal Engine”, also responsible for the award-winning “Gears of War” games.

the video has Cliff Bleszinski (aka “Cliffy B”) giving some basic information regarding the studio, as well as ways to get into the industry x]

gosh.. i’d give anything to work with Epic Games, just look at their facilities and offices! -dreams-
especially look at Cliffy B’s office…! tht’s pimp!

Epic Games Studio Tour Part 1 & 2:

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A recent release of DLC (Downloadable Content/Expansions) for Infinity Ward’s “Modern Warfare 2″ makes 2.5million sales (at $15 a pop) in just the first week, with 1million of which was sold on the very first day of launch (for xbox360).

plain Awesome. @_@

Well, to put into some perspective, the single title alone (MW2) already sold over $1billion net in sales (eat that, Avatar!)..there’s numbers around confirming a constant average of 20 million players online at any one time, worldwide..so 2.5million sales for just DLC is small in that sense, but for ANY game DLC to even manage 1million in sales is already painstakingly impossible…

in my personal opinion, i’m not really sure just what’s so hot about Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer. The singleplayer campaign is short, but it does deserve a hand or two for its presentation..the sales though is because of the multiplayer, but really, isn’t it just another war-themed-first-person-shooter? i could be wrong x] (i’ve not had the chance to play the game yet)

hay, but the world plays it, loves it, and even wants more content (DLC)…i’d work to make it happen.

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geez.. last post was december last year.. blogs meeting its inevitable fate!

never!

anyways, for my still-loyal followers, here’s an update of what i’ve been up to!

classes are back in full cycle again now, and it turns out all 4 classes i signed up for, are heavy on project work…i signed up for this History class, which i assumed would be just reading and writing sorts, but there was an opportunity to opt to take own a personal hands-on project to mod a game or something along that lines, and of course, i jumped on it immediately! i felt i would benefit alot more from this option, as opposed to writing papers for the History class, my work i do here will possibly end up in my portfolio for my future, don’t think a paper would fit anywhere hehe.

so, yes, 4 giant classes, 4 giant projects simultaneously, most pressure i have ever faced. Another class i’m taking right now is a Game Development class, where we’re simulating an actual game development office, the class is split into various production teams (artists/programmers/etc), and we’re collaborating on building a game in the Unity game engine. The first major milestone in our development timeline will be this years GDC 2010 (Game Developers Conference)…the directors want to have a playable demo of the game ready for the show..so there’s a lot of pressure, and absolutely no time to fall behind in any of our tasks, otherwise the entire team crumbles..it’s make or break! You can find out more details about this class and the game project over at SemesterGames.com.

here’s a picture of my work in progress for this game project, had to model a 747 plane:
Boeing 747 (clik for full size)

As noted earlier, i’m also working on another game project, more personal for this one, so i decided to build a level (map) for Team Fortress 2. I simply adore the art style this game took on, and i could go on another whole post about the game’s art direction alone, but yeah, it’s brilliant…so i’m hoping to create something that is in line visually, with the game’s style..but of course, being a level, it will need to also offer great gameplay, so there will be some level design skills displayed together.

At this point of the project, mostly all the work is technical tests. I have to make sure i have understood all the ins-and-outs of the Hammer editing tool, and make sure the technical assets which drive the game, works. A great example is that for the game, players will need to “deliver a payload” (push a cart) along a track to the opposing team’s headquarters. Setting this up alone (the track, the cart, being pushable, etc) took me forever to figure out how it works, and even when i did think i had it all set up right, after compiling i went to try it out in the game, and it did not work, so there’s fixing to do, which means burning up more time. There’s various other key elements to the game level, so you can already see this isn’t going to be a straightforward deal.

here’s pictures of what i’ve got so far with this TeamFortress2 level:

the 3rd project i’ve got my hands busy on is a game(low poly) character…requiring to model, texture, and then rig and animate..notice i’ve pretty much not done any rigging/animating, its not my thing lol. but i’m up for the task either way..it should make something for my portfolio. i focused alot more on the model’s topology for this project, something i have always been aware of, but rarely really put this much focus onto it. Good topology is critical for any model that will be animated, and it takes an extra good eye to be able to create such topology..which i kinda struggle with to be honest.

here’s the character’s work-in-progress shots:

there’s a 4th project, it’s also a modeling project, modeling a generic human male model, with quite a fair bit of detail, but i’m not too happy with the outcome i have so far, so won’t show anything for it yet.

well, this is what i’ve been drowning myself in for the past 2 or 3 months since my last post lol…signing off!

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Alright… it’s inevitable blogs die out..

i’ve been simply too busy with my work to be writing new stuff lately..

and

this is the majority of the reason why:

i present my latest 3d model, the Dreadnought, from Warhammer 40,000.

I previously posted my work-in-progress for one of the sidearms of the droid, and i know i should have posted smaller updates, but i just forgot to and didn’t have the time to..

This is certainly one of the best work i’ve achieved personally, and it’s the biggest personal challenge yet as well..this is a planned High-resolution/high-poly model. all my past projects have been low-poly. This is my first undertaking for a high-poly model.

again, this model shown here is just a work-in-progress, it’s the furthest i have gotten, and absolutely far from my completion goal. This model is incomplete! There is pleenntyy more details to be done, pieces/parts missing, etc…!

But i would still like to get critiques as usual, so fire away!

And best wishes to everyone this Christmas, may all your wishes come true, and have a very blessed new year!

Warhammer 40K : Dreadnought 3D Model (Clik on images for Full Size)

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Yeap.

as i previously posted, Activision’s new game “Modern Warfare 2″ (developed by Infinity Ward) has lived up to expectations in every perspective. The new game released and swept up $550million dollars in sales in just the opening 5 days!

This ginormous number has broken past records across the entire Entertainment industry (music, movies, tv..? etc. )…movies like Harry Potter and The Dark Knight (box office record holders) have lost their hand to the Gaming Industry

“The title’s success redefines entertainment as millions of consumers have chosen to play Modern Warfare 2 at unprecedented levels rather than engage in other forms of media,” says Kotick, CEO of Activision

As a cap to the triumphant announcement, Activision is quick to note it “remains cautious” about the current economy both domestically and globally, and points out that consumer spending remains a “significant concern.”

Doesn’t really look as though the economic crisis is preventing consumers from buying games..

Isn’t this just inspiring? Makes you wanna work that much harder to get into such an expanding and fearsome industry

Read further! It’s really interesting!
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26135/Activision_Modern_Warfare_2_Rakes_In_550_Million_FiveDay_Gross.php

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reading more.. and there was this part of a writeup in my game magazine (GameDeveloper) that i simply feel has finally put alot of my thoughts into one good piece of writing.

Read on:

There are songs that are kind of catchy. Others you just can’t get out of your head. And then, ever so rarely, there are those songs which are so memorable, you could swear you had heard them before. Song taste is highly personal–different people react to different songs in different ways– but the breakout hits are the ones that resonate on this level with a large number of people.

Creating a breakout hit is no easy task, in part because the songwriter’s instincts can often be wrong. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith was reportedly surprised that “St. John” from Permanent Vacation was met by collective yawns from concert-goers. He thought he knew what made a hit–the song had an interesting riff, topical lyrics, was meaty to play live–but somehow just didn’t reach the fans. Today, the song is a footnote in the band’s music catalog.

All creative fields are like this. Sometimes films and books just catch fire from nothing. Sometimes, sure-handed directors stumble. Pop radio is full of songs like “The Macarena” and “I’m Too Sexy,” all done by bands that later proved to be one-hit wonders unable to repeat their success. This is true of games as well.

- Damion Schubert

It’s not easy making games. Not easy making “that game that sold billions of dollars in revenue”. Only 1 game gets that recognition…out of a whole barrage of hundreds of other titles developed and released under the same hardship and labor.

Even then, if you did successfully launch that “One-hit-wonder” game that has everyone talking about, everyone itching to squeeze that few minutes out of lunch break just to play your game… repeating this success in a sequel or follow up game will be no easy task.

I’m sure this ‘concept’ applies to all other fields of work aside from the Entertainment fields (ie. real estate, automotive, etc).

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Here’s what i’ve been tackling these several weeks…

working on my very first High-resolution (high poly) 3d model, and i’ve chosen to challenge myself to take on the fearsum Dreadnought, from Warhammer 40k. my previous work has mostly if not all, been low-poly modeling.

this is the work-in-progress of all i’ve gotten so far… this model here too is incomplete, i still have to add alot more details, and some “iconic icons” for this part of the machine. This is just the “assault cannon arm” part of the entire Dreadnought machine that i will be modeling.

work in progress!! nothing’s final or complete!!

Enjoy, and critiques strongly welcomed!

Dreadnought Assault Cannon Arm:

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there’s a gigantic game release coming up just around the corner..!

it’s for the new Call of Duty game, “Modern Warfare 2″.

word is Modern Warfare 2 will be [the] biggest launch in the entire entertainment industry of 2009 (suprassing any movie launch, music album release, tv series, etc.).

this is absolutely music to my ears on a personal level. again we see here how much our society today embraces Gaming…our industry has been growing rapidly, and it’s growing so fast it’s hard to ignore these days. Major milestones date back to early 1998/99, and we’ve just been getting better and better at our job these many years.

Back to this upcoming Game Release news, there have been other prior “epic-monumental Game launches” in the past, such as Microsoft’s “Halo 3″ game..Microsoft reporting $170million in revenue within 24hours of the game hitting store shelves.

The Call of Duty series, or franchise, has been running for a great 4 or 5 years now, starting back with the very first “Call of Duty” game, that at the time, also made a very successful launch/premier into the Gaming market..needless to say, each of the successors of the game title have been steadily growing in sales, with the last “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” game, selling already 13million copies across all game platforms (ps3/xbox/pc, at like $50USD each copy).

The new game from Infinity Ward is gonna be plain awesome, with a what-seems excellent Co-Op game mode, fresh new visuals, and it’s gonna be one magnificent launch.

Keep an eye out for “launch day” numbers when it arrives!

Read further on about this on Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24108

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