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Shalinor posted:... I know a lot about cheese for someone allergic to dairy. God dammit I miss cheese. I hate you all.  Turns out there's also a stall in the centre of Leam selling yank import sweets and cereals and I look forlornly at it every time I walk past on my lunchbreak 
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Nov 2, 2012 19:17
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If I couldn't eat cheese I'd kill myself.
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Nov 2, 2012 19:48
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Gosh, I am so proud of this multi-page derail I've created.  The best parmos, btw, are from Kebabish at the top end of Linthorpe Road. They are huge and terrifying and the bolognese one(like a normal parmo but with bolognese sauce on top!) is the best. This said, I really cannot eat more than about a quarter of a parmo without starting to die. If nothing else, it really makes you appreciate a good salad, or any salad really. Mike's Return on the corner of the street I used to live on served a salad of lettuce, white onion and vinaigrette(vinegar and lemon juice) which after eating a parmo tasted like the sweet love and forgiveness of Jesus himself.
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Nov 2, 2012 22:13
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If any of you ever come to DC you owe it to yourself to eat at Ben's Chili Bowl. It's an American legend. Chili cheese halfsmoke with chili cheese fries > all.
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Nov 2, 2012 22:44
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icking fudiot posted:pretty brutal retrospective on kaos studios. Just read that. One of the most brutal deconstructions of the nature of AAA game development I've ever read. When they eventually start making textbooks about games the way they do about film, this story will probably feature prominently.
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Nov 2, 2012 22:45
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Toronto (Canada) (and the surrounding area) has couple really good poutine restaurants. These and the few good sushi places are the only foods I miss since moving to America for work
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Nov 2, 2012 22:50
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I miss White Spot because I'm secretly a senior citizen 
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Nov 2, 2012 22:52
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Monster w21 Faces posted:We, everyone talking about piling cheese on top of french fries, are fat bastards who will never find love.
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Nov 3, 2012 01:05
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floofyscorp posted:a salad of lettuce, white onion and vinaigrette(vinegar and lemon juice) which after eating a parmo tasted like the sweet love and forgiveness of Jesus himself. Lettuce is such a lame vegetable. If there ain't cucumber, spinach, tomato, carrot, SOMETHING in there, it ain't a salad 
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Nov 3, 2012 02:20
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floofyscorp posted:Mike's Return RIP Mike, King of Parmos. Shot himself. :I In slightly brighter news, I've got the go ahead from bosses to upload some company work to my folio ;D GeeCee fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 02:56
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Shalinor posted:Lettuce is such a lame vegetable. If there ain't cucumber, spinach, tomato, carrot, SOMETHING in there, it ain't a salad
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Nov 3, 2012 11:20
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How did I not know Mike's Return? I'd have walked that far further than Megabites on Waterloo Road when I was in the halls for a decent Parmo.  Anyone know where I could find a pork parmo? A lot of the takeaways are Muslim owned so they are hard to come by.This place has always done the best Parmos from places I've got them: http://goo.gl/maps/FMaBm Think I might fire off an application to Eutechnyx's Level Up scheme even though my Portfolio still isn't exactly brilliant. A Sloth fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Nov 3, 2012 |
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Nov 3, 2012 17:01
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Shalinor posted:Alright England, listen up. You just officially lost your "calling Americans greasy fastfood-eating bastards" privileges for the decade. Hate to break it to you, but after this two page derail I checked and 'parmo' was invented by an American living in England. We're still the 'king' of greasy fastfood bastards.
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Nov 3, 2012 18:40
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Can anyone make a compelling case for why releasing my F2P iOS game in a few weeks would actually not be a bad idea? How it wouldn't be buried in the holiday sales? (I really, really don't want to delay this thing again, even if that would mean a better product at release. It needs to be out ze door, drat it.)
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Nov 4, 2012 23:02
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I didn't think that F2P iOS games have a release schedule - you can't really gift them easily. If anything it seems like having it available during christmas time with iTunes gift cards would help out no matter what.
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Nov 4, 2012 23:06
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Getting recognition on iOS titles is incredibly hard. Most iOS review sights will charge you for reviews because they're scum. You're going to either need to spend a lot on marketing or catch on with core review sites with something special and different. It's a horrible sector.
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Nov 4, 2012 23:07
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Sigma-X posted:I didn't think that F2P iOS games have a release schedule - you can't really gift them easily. If anything it seems like having it available during christmas time with iTunes gift cards would help out no matter what. - In about 3 weeks, the press is going to be deluged with massive sales from EA, Rovio, etc, etc, etc for Thanksgiving. - Following that, all the same big publishers will be doing deep discounts on their back catalog for the run-up to Christmas. - Christmas and through to the new year, they'll run even stronger discounts, to snag all the people with new iDevices. ... which means the difficulty a new title has with getting press? That gets infinitely worse. All the channels are clogged with sales chat. If I could get the game out beforehand, I might get noticed, but then my game will be thrown to the side as everyone snags 99c Vice City and god knows what else - which would destroy the tail / any playerbase build, as they'd forget about me well before the sales ended. Instead, what I'm going to do is, basically, stay exactly on the same track I was already on. I'm going to pretend I'm releasing soon, keep playtesting it hard, etc. Instead of releasing the game, I'll release a series of teasers/trailers. Those should be able to pierce the noise at least as well as any new release would, possibly better since it's distinctly not-sales-related news to fit between sales. Use those to drive interest and build leading up to release in January, with the advantage of having a completed game for most of that (which means better video). This also gives me time to line up press with the TouchArcade guys / anyone I can bend the ear of. EDIT: But, yeah. iOS is a rough market. So is PC (and getting onto Steam), XBLA/PSN is infinitely worse these days, and so on. None of that's new, it's always been hugely hard to get noticed as a small developer. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 23:18
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A couple of goons are part of review sites in the iOS thread so thorw down in there and you might see some word-of-mouth love and something in a few good sites. But yeah, they're human after all and they want curious and interesting titles to entice them.
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Nov 4, 2012 23:20
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Shalinor posted:Unfortunately, not. If someone in the sector wants to convince me otherwise, cool, but the strong advice I'm getting from everyone thus far is, basically, the following: I would argue that unless you're spending the time improving the game so it has a better reception at launch, any day it's not out is a day someone isn't downloading it. The holiday season is a great time for games and you don't want to miss it. Also, if you're concerned about top free chart placement, $.99 sales only affects the paid chart. Also, I don't know that press is really at all significant for iOS games. Now if you might get featured by Apple, that's a different story, so that's a huge factor. You could also release the game as a soft launch and see how it performs and then decide whether it's worth the extra ad cost in December or wait for the new year.
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Nov 4, 2012 23:53
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Zeryn posted:I would argue that unless you're spending the time improving the game so it has a better reception at launch That way, I'd be set for a dual-platform release on January, instead of squeaking in Android support at a later date to possibly no additional press. Zeryn posted:Now if you might get featured by Apple, that's a different story, so that's a huge factor.
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Nov 5, 2012 01:51
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[redacted company name] is really slow. In a couple of days it will be a month since my interview.
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Nov 5, 2012 10:02
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Shalinor posted:I'm certainly not just going to sit on it. I'm figuring I'll spend it on polish, and also on an Android port. I realize Android isn't worth tons and tons, but given that I'm on Unity, the cost/difficulty of a port is relatively miniscule. A later android release is a way to reintroduce your game and if anything is going to help your iOS tail.
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Nov 5, 2012 10:06
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:[redacted company name] is really slow. In a couple of days it will be a month since my interview. I spent a month after my trial waiting to hear back. I'd actually started a new, horrible, office job in the meantime because I assumed the silence meant I hadn't gotten the job. Man was I excited when I got the call!
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Nov 5, 2012 10:33
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floofyscorp posted:I spent a month after my trial waiting to hear back. I'd actually started a new, horrible, office job in the meantime because I assumed the silence meant I hadn't gotten the job. Man was I excited when I got the call! I just got a response about 5 minutes ago, I wonder if they read the thread.
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Nov 5, 2012 10:58
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I just got a response about 5 minutes ago, I wonder if they read the thread. Monday morning, my office.
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Nov 5, 2012 11:08
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By the way, I'd just like to take a moment to say that salary negotiations are distasteful and kind of nasty. Everyone should get paid scale, period. I'm in the position of negotiating a salary for a country I know almost nothing about at a company I don't know about upward mobility at. I like the company's stuff and I'd probably be willing to work there for food and rent, so I'm not exactly burning up over not making anywhere near my initial request, but I also don't like the feeling of being made to accept a number without much context at all.
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Nov 5, 2012 12:26
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HR gets in monday morning, may as well check out the games thread. Oh poo poo that guy we interviewed a month ago hasn't been told yet! *calls him* Hmm bored, might as well check the games thread again, oh awesome he says he'll work for food and rent!
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Nov 5, 2012 12:42
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:By the way, I'd just like to take a moment to say that salary negotiations are distasteful and kind of nasty. Everyone should get paid scale, period. I'm in the position of negotiating a salary for a country I know almost nothing about at a company I don't know about upward mobility at. Are you going in a weird tropical country? When I was sent to South East Asia by my company (after 3 year in Canada), I was able to get a small raise in my salary - to live in a country where the average person makes probably 10X less than me. It's worth doing some research to understand the pay scale there first, I'd say.
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Nov 5, 2012 14:28
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:By the way, I'd just like to take a moment to say that salary negotiations are distasteful and kind of nasty. Everyone should get paid scale, period. I'm in the position of negotiating a salary for a country I know almost nothing about at a company I don't know about upward mobility at. If you're paying everyone scale then everyone who sucks is bringing down the wage of everyone who doesn't and everyone who doesn't is going to go looking for some place that pays more. If you want to retain people you need them to feel that they're being adequately compensated for their work, which is a number individual to them, and moreover since everyone has an inflated opinion of themselves an obviously flat number for everyone is going to sow a lot of discontent. Studios that bleed true talent wind up hurting badly and dying out. Obviously compensation is just part of it, but the notion of getting paid scale is almost as ridiculous as your previous notion of putting your wage on your resume.
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Nov 5, 2012 17:54
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Hi guys is anyone familiar at all with UK contracts or redundancies? Or even possibly a good resource with that information.
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Nov 5, 2012 20:20
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concerned mom posted:Hi guys is anyone familiar at all with UK contracts or redundancies? Or even possibly a good resource with that information. What sort of thing do you need to know? Got a couple of interviews next week with a couple of the big UK devs, which is exciting enough, strong chance of a third working on game-related tech.
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Nov 5, 2012 21:18
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BizarroAzrael posted:What sort of thing do you need to know? Well we found out last Monday that the company is moving premises this Wednesday and everyone will have to sign a new contract, and some people will be made redundant, or could take redundancy. Our contract says the company has the right to move anywhere within 10 miles, but the new premises are almost 12 miles away and in a much harder location to get to for a lot of people, in some cases adding an hour to the commute. Everyone found out today if they are safe or not, some people got let go and the rest of us were given a letter that said we'd like to keep you on, you have 2 days to tell us if you want to stay, or we will consider you want to be made redundant. This is without seeing the new contract even though they insist it will be identical (obviously signing nothing without seeing it). Presumably we have to sign new contracts because the distance is over 10 miles. What's more, the letter then goes on to say that because we have been offered a new contract, if we decide to take redundancy, it would be considered unreasonable and we would not get redundancy pay. I've read up a little on the government website and this is legal, as in if you decide not to take it on, they don't have to pay you redundancy, but only in an unreasonable situation. Surely breaking contract by moving outside of 10 miles is reason enough to want redundancy? For some people adding a huge new expense in commuting and extra time is easily reason enough isn't it? So can they enforce us to sign a contract in two days, and can they basically not pay redundancy to people who have been offered a new contract but want to take redundancy? Oh also, three people said they wanted redundancy and were told they wouldn't be allowed the pay because they were offered a position. Sorry for the huge post!
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Nov 5, 2012 21:42
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So I've got this Starcraft 2 mod/map I've been tinkering with for a while that I want to use to start a design portfolio with, any advice on how I should present it? I guess I've never really thought about it, should I spring for a website like the cool kids? Are links to youtube videos unprofessional, or are there people who actually want to see specific files?
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Nov 5, 2012 21:56
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concerned mom posted:Well we found out last Monday that the company is moving premises this Wednesday and everyone will have to sign a new contract, and some people will be made redundant, or could take redundancy. Our contract says the company has the right to move anywhere within 10 miles, but the new premises are almost 12 miles away and in a much harder location to get to for a lot of people, in some cases adding an hour to the commute. Okay, that's way out of my league then. I guess see if GetWellGamers has anything to say (assuming the UK and US laws are similar enough) or you might want to see about collaring Gamer Law over Twitter and see if he'll offer advice. because it sounds like you're working for an rear end in a top hat outfit. I'm sure until you see the contract it's not really an offer though.
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Nov 5, 2012 22:25
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I've been made redundant twice in the last year and a bit (it wasn't my fault, honest) and have encountered being given a new contract to sign and from my experience I would say what they're doing sounds incredibly dodgy. You want to get legal advice. I would try ACAS to begin with, they're the government body that's meant to deal with this.
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Nov 5, 2012 23:35
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Senso posted:Are you going in a weird tropical country? When I was sent to South East Asia by my company (after 3 year in Canada), I was able to get a small raise in my salary - to live in a country where the average person makes probably 10X less than me. It's worth doing some research to understand the pay scale there first, I'd say. Eastern europe. Cost of living is super super low, though. As for the guy who hates scale- wah wah wah. You act like compensation is based on merit, but that's only, at best, partially true. And I'm not suggesting that everyone be on the same scale. If I go work at a small, growing company, I expect to be paid less now and more later if the company does well. If I go to work for Blizzard I want some cash right now thank you very much. But the system we have for negotiating salaries at point of hire is unfair to the worker. They don't tell you how much you *can* get, you are lucky if they even give you an estimate. And since we're in an industry with incredible differences in pay by region and even by company (but salaries are always kept secret) you are negotiating blind with a negtiation "partner" who has all the power and a vested interest in paying you as little as possible. Scale might not even be the answer, but the current system sucks. edit: And negotiating hiring salary is certainly not meritocratic. Anyone who has ever worked in this industry for any length of time knows someone who got hired because they worked on game X, which was awesome. But then you hire them and they can't find their own butthole. edit2: and putting my salary request in my applications was not *my* idea it was the suggestion of two different hiring directors and two different companies I consulted with about it. It might be a bad idea, but it wasn't my bad idea and I'd appreciate you not beating me over the head with it everytime I post here like you are the god of resumes. I would also like to point out that both Bethesda and CCP, among others, request your starting salary requirements with your application, so this isn't some wacky idea I got from a Ouji board. Comte de Saint-Germain fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Nov 5, 2012 |
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Nov 5, 2012 23:36
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Shalinor posted:Can anyone make a compelling case for why releasing my F2P iOS game in a few weeks would actually not be a bad idea? How it wouldn't be buried in the holiday sales? Aside from the signal:noise ratio being insane in the thanksgiving window...
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Nov 6, 2012 00:23
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I would also like to point out that both Bethesda and CCP, among others, request your starting salary requirements with your application, so this isn't some wacky idea I got from a Ouji board. How odd. I've always said 'tell me what you want me to do, and I'll tell you how much it will cost."
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Nov 6, 2012 00:24
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(yep, I'm delaying Jones for 2 months - don't want to see it die in the Thanksgiving/Christmas fallout, but anyways...)Pixelboy posted:How odd. I've always said 'tell me what you want me to do, and I'll tell you how much it will cost." ... and I mean, yes, it's a bit stupid and unfair, but this is business dude. Ours is far from the only industry that does it. Do what everyone else does - network, and if that fails, hand them the latest Game Developer Magazine salary survey and point to the line that matches your skillset.
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Nov 6, 2012 01:12
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There's also cost of living calculators all over the internet. You can find enough information to get you in the right arena for negotiations pretty quickly.
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Nov 6, 2012 02:00
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