Andrew Revell's Work Blog

CLOSED. Or at least moved home.

andrewrevell — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:33:16 +0000

If you’ve come here expecting, well, anything then you’re going to be disappointed as this is now a closed blog. It has been moved back to where it should have been all along

http://www.andrewrevell.co.uk

See you there.

Opinion Jamming

andrewrevell — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:28:57 +0000

Long time no post, but I really don’t have anywhere else to put this and I want to write it down while it is fresh, so here goes…

Sometimes my brain does things before allowing itself to work out whether it is a good idea, especially when there is a stage involved. It happened once while I was holidaying in Mallorca and left me standing on a stage in a garish shirt naming hits of George Michael and Elton John. It did culminate in free sangria, mind.

It happened again, this time in front of fifty or so prominent members of the games industry. If you don’t know, this week has seen Brighton host the Develop conference. By virtue of the fact I went to ECTS a couple of times, I know what a specular highlight is and perhaps more importantly I asked nicely I was chosen as one of the people to cover the conference for Disposable Media.

Another bit of information needed for these events to make sense is to know that there is a gaming radio show and podcast called One Life Left. It is occasionally daft, regularly funny and very excellent. According to Wikipedia:

“One Life Left is Europe’s first and, currently, only professionally produced dedicated videogames radio show. It is presented by Ste Curran and Robert Howells. It includes news, reviews, features, competitions and a weekly studio guest. One Life Left is broadcast on Resonance FM, a London community radio station at 20:00 every Monday.”

Obviously as that is from Wikipedia, it is wrong as Simon Byron is the co-host with Ste Curren, at least at the moment anyway. The pair hosted a live show at Develop on Wednesday lunchtime which was great and on Thursday they also stepped up to take the edge off the free sandwiches with a little segment entitled “Opinion Jam”. To quote the Develop conference website this time:

“A conference, compressed: Ten industry luminaries put their ludicrous opinions under a stress test. Each makes a three-minute speech with as much composure as they can muster, then tries to defend their point under crossfire questioning from their fellow competitiors and the Opinion Jam Devil’s Advocate. The winner? The speaker who converts the most people to their lunatic fringe. A new, improved, unnecessarily complex scoring system and thrilling audience interaction make the Opinion Jam an essential choice for attendees whose attention spans have been ruined by video games.”

A great idea, although there was a slight problem when they didn’t have ten luminaries on the day. Despite that, things pressed ahead with the use of the three minutes devoted to topics as wide-ranging as begging for work (in a professional, respectable manner) to singing the hits of the-day-before. Perhaps the bravest opinion to be put forward is that games, created by the games industry, should be referred to as “Games”. Charles Cecil on the other hand didn’t dare stir up such heated debate and went with the old classic “You shouldn’t need to put a chair up against your door to avoid paying pimps when you’re in Ukraine” although he did claim to have never been to Ukraine, which in my opinion harmed his overall argument.

It was all going swimmingly until they ran out of luminaries and asked for some more. Thankfully, Ellie Gibson of gamesindustry.biz fame stepped up and ranted about people ranting about there not being enough women in games, claiming women are capable of making up their own minds. She filled her three minutes, people nodded. Very good.

And there was still some time left, but somehow it was me that ended up on stage trying to convince people my opinion was correct, not another industry luminary. I tried to convince them that over preparation was a bad thing, which seemed appropriate. I made a couple of points, but more importantly the audience laughed when I intended them too and as soon as I started to run out of steam Ste ended the time. Excellent. Amazingly a fair few agreed with my opinion and while I didn’t win* I don’t believe I came last, or it was at least close.

Perhaps the best thing to come of it was that at the free bar after the conference had finished was punctuated with people saying “Hey! You’re that guy!” and meaning it in a good way. Even better, they all said it was really quite good and that I was very brave to do it. Despite that, more than one person continued by pointing out the irony** that a lack of preparation was my only major problem. One person also told me it wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t got a northern accent. I’m not sure of the reason behind that, but thankfully I have got a northern accent so it did work. According to his criteria at least.

I also managed to bump into both Ste and Simon in the evening, who also both seemed happy with the whole thing. As well as Ste saying he appreciated someone (anyone!) volunteering he even asked if I minded him ending my time when I started providing them with dead air. I said it was alright, this once.

The whole Opinion Jam will be available in a podcast soon if the recording worked, although there is a chance I’ll be edited out. However, in the politest possible way, it is hardly a show that exudes professionalism from every pore so it’ll probably stay in. In fact if it wasn’t for that slight lack of professionalism in the show I would never have volunteered myself, I’m not that daft. I knew how it worked and I felt what I was about to say would fit in with the rest of the show…but if it all went wrong it would probably still fit in with the show anyway.

In the end I think it probably went quite well, but more importantly it was good fun and I’d do it again in the same situation. Plus it turns out they are both genuinely nice guys, which is always a good result.

No sangria reward this time though, unfortunately.

*Although if you normalise the results so my speech lasted three minutes, not one and a bit…

**This isn’t actually ironic as my “presentation” was about how being over-prepared was a bad thing. Being prepared is a good thing and it would have helped. In retrospect, this was something that should have been mentioned but, y’know, I didn’t prepare.

NeverTheFirst

andrewrevell — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:31:58 +0000

Well, this is it:

www.neverthefirst.com

All the work from the DM website (well, lots was scrapped but you get the gist) and lots of work throughout February has ended up in that link above. It was almost finished around the last time I put a blog post here, but it has had a fair amount of polish since then as well as making posts to get into the swing of things. It has managed a hundred visitors a day regularly without too much advertising, so hopefully that will become a steady figure now I’m going to be advertising it. Got a few things in mind to increase it, but it is going to be an uphill struggle to get it to the next level.

For the moment though, I’m happy with it. I’m convinced that the four reviews on there are four of the best I’ve done, I do enjoy being able to roam free with my words.

I really will post up links to stuff I’ve done for other places at some point, but for now I’ll leave it there.

OK, I’ve been away a good while. I know! Here’s a long post to make up for it…

andrewrevell — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:15:48 +0000

And things have changed since. I’m still writing for everywhere I was writing for before (and I’ve got a few links to stick up as well, even if some have been up a fair while) but recently I’ve been having something of a reshuffle.

A little before Christmas after a massive amount of thought, I decided to hang up my boots as Disposable Media Editor. Fast forward a couple of months and I’m still sort of holding the title, but with greatly diminished responsibility. I’ve probably still got the title as I was part of the furniture for a very long time and through force of habit people are still coming to me with ideas. It’s slowing down as time passes by and although I’m sure I’ll still be allowed to throw in my tuppence worth the title might go as well. I did spend a massive amount of time doing DM related activities and I can’t quite bring myself to stop (eg. the magazine is currently hiring a massive amount of new staff and on auto-pilot after writing the job advert I then went on to post it, including my own name as Editor – so there are now 60 emails all addressed to me sitting in the DM inbox. The fact I know that proves that I still check those emails too…).

They now have a new Online Editor to sort out creating a new site as my version of the site was scrapped after various bits of negative feedback (the straw that broke the back of the DM Editor Camel, really) and a staff member promoted to doing more organisation. The latter is Adam Parker, writer of the Wish-list every issue in DM and currently is suffering slightly due to trying to handle DM and a Uni course. Sensibly he’s putting emphasis on his course which means that the Online Editor is the one who is effectively taking over from me.

Conveniently, I’ve also got to mention him as he also blogs and he stuck a link to my blog on his eons ago. Or at least in the last couple of months while I’ve not been posting so I’ve legally got to return the favour. His blog is a much more up-market affair than this one, concerned with the ins and outs of new media and IT/Internet related things with both analysis and thinking. Sort of pips this one which is either “I wrote this. It’s here:” or more regularly “I know I’ve not posted for a while, but”. Anyway, his blog is a good read and he does know what he’s talking about (he’s the Web Producer for Motorcycle News) so nip over and read it:

http://thewayoftheweb.blogspot.com/

It’s probably worth mentioning that he’s also both a very nice guy, a decent writer and is being fantastically helpful. So read it.

He also pointed me in the direction of LinkedIn. It’s a very clever little piece of the Internet but I’m a bit stumped as to how to use it. My profile is here (they gave code to put in a natty little picture, so dammit I’m using it):

So if you are also listed on there, add me. My email address is andrew.rev ATTHELANDOFNOSPAM googlemail.com. And if you’ve not registered there, join. We can be oddly baffled together then.

And I’ve still got loads to cover.

DMWii, or Disposable Wiidia has released since the last post. It’s been doing OK with roughly 2000 downloads so far, but it’s not been advertised much so that is pretty good going. It’s got a fair bit from me in it – 3 separate but slightly related articles at the front as an introduction to the Wii, a general guide to it and some details of the first time I used one (a month before release at the Good Food Show). They’re all short and to the point, aimed squarely at non-gamers with the intention being to have another article following it with in-depth Wii analysis but the writer of that didn’t finish it. So my three set an odd tone to the magazine which is a shame. I also did two reviews (the first review copies DM ever received, Tony Hawks Downhill Jam and Cars) which both scored 3/5. In addition to that writing I also designed my three articles and also did five pages of design for the Virtual Console article.

All in all, it could and should have been better, but it’s not too bad and I’m broadly happy with all my bits.

On the Retro Fusion front, things have started moving along nicely as they have now received money they’re owed so everyone is looking forward to Issue 3. My writing is all finished for it (there is a chance I’ll do more if any is needed) and I’ve got another couple of articles to design as well as spit and polish on the two I’ve already done. More information on release dates and suchlike when anyone knows such things.

The big news though is that after stopping being Editor at DM I’ve decided to wander off on my own and launch my own website, taking everything I learned at Disposable Media and combining it with everything I’ve learnt writing for various other websites. For now I’ll keep the URL under my hat as it’s completely devoid of content but as of around two hours ago I finished stamping on bugs in the design and it seems to be pretty much finished. It builds on the code started for the DM site although a lot of progress has been made in two almost solid weeks spent on it. Everyone who has seen it has been positive about it so it’s probably been time well spent.

Much like this blog, it’s going to be a simple thing. While writing for various established sites I’ve always felt a little bit fenced in and unable to fully write in my own style, although inevitably some leaks out every now and again. GameStyle is a wonderful site, it’s relatively strict house-style doesn’t make it easy to write for. Boomtown is better, but I never want to completely go off the rails. So this will be an opportunity to do just that whenever I feel the need. It’s split into reviews and blog/news/articles. Neither will be particularly innovative, but hopefully it’ll all be friendly enough to keep people reading it. Reviews will just be roughly 750 words and marked out of ten and things on the blog side will be a lot more varied – everything from quick posts about the latest news, longer pieces about gaming in general and “proper” articles. As they’ll all be mixed together it might be a bit odd, but it probably won’t matter.

I’ve even been reading my Sega Power back issues in preparation for creating the content. And since Sega Power is largely responsible for me writing about games (hell, it’s probably responsible for quite a lot of my sense of humour) citing it as an influence feels very good indeed. In fact this is probably how I should have felt while being in charge of DM…but I never did. Combine all that with the fact I’ve now seen the finished version of the site and I’m extremely proud of it and it’s fair to say I’m quite excited at the moment.

Fingers crossed that it takes off and becomes a success, but at this point I’m not sure I care if it doesn’t. I’m just looking forward to writing for it.

And I seem to have not got around to posting links to reviews for other places. It can wait a bit longer.

A bit of a fiddle

andrewrevell — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:51:13 +0000

Just fiddled around to choose another theme as it looked a bit boring before. This is better, but not a vast improvement.

Considering I’m making a pretty-damn-complicated WordPress site for Disposable Media I’m looking at this thinking “I’d change that, that and that” but more importantly also “by doing that, that and that” which is both pleasing and depressing at the same time. Once I’ve finished that site off, it looks like I’ll be moving hosts of andrewrevell.co.uk so I can create a proper looking page.

This feels like living in a favela.

PSP reviews

andrewrevell — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:28:49 +0000

Somehow I seem to be permanently reviewing PSP games at the moment. It’s an odd situation what with it being my least favourite console ever but it’s by far the one I’ve been spending the most time with. Guitar Hero 2 lands on your doormat and you are too busy to move away from Need for Speed: Carbon to play with it. Thankfully there is one massive plus to all this, most work can be done in bed.

(As an aside I’ve just discovered that opponents quitting from the online mode of NFS:C doesn’t give you the win, even if you were ahead. Hmmph. And yes, that is why I’m updating the blog, with 7 people online it seems to take a while to find a game)

Anyway, enough chatter there is recent work to link to:

Ridge Racer 2 PSP Boomtown

Mercury Meltdown PSP GameStyle

FIFA’07 PSP GameStyle

Elsewhere, the Wii special of Disposable Media is progressing nicely with people sent off beavering away. Hopefully all writing (my own included) will be finished for the Wii release day ready for a week (wiik?) of design after that. Previous issues are still doing well, Issue 5 has now managed more than 4000 downloads and Issue 4 has now passed the hallowed 10,000 mark.

All issues total 45,000 downloads to date.

That’s quite impressive really…if the new website does as is intended and drives more and more people to the site who knows how many we’ll get.

Mercury Meltdown

andrewrevell — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:10:11 +0000

Another review – this time Mercury Meltdown. Re-reading it I think the final score might have been a little harsh, but I found it totally devoid of charm and utterly, utterly boring. As it’s not like I should have added five to the score or anything though, I don’t feel like I was too harsh. The review, over at Boomtown:

Mercury Meltdown PSP Review

Polished off another handful of reviews today that have been sitting half-finished for a few days which have now been submitted.

Disposable Media is currently doing quite well, a second push has just started to get downloads that seems to be having good effect. The website is progressing nicely, one more bit to do before lots of polishing and error checking. Then it’s finished. And the secret project is both secretive and progressing nicely.

Monkey Reviewing

andrewrevell — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 07:27:36 +0000

A review of Buzz Junior: Jungle Party over on Boomtown. Good clean fun.

Buzz Junior: Jungle Party PS2 Review

I’ve been working on the new DM website a lot in the last couple of days – it’s come on leaps and bounds with the front page pretty much finished. Although I’m developing a nasty sinking feeling that it might all be ripped to shreds to start with a new solution as despite it looking great on my 1680×1050 res. monitor it isn’t quite perfect at 1024×768. (It’s based around 4 boxes, one for each section and including an advert for the mag means you have to scroll for the bottom two sections which is far from ideal. We’ll see what happens).

Ah well. It’s been a good learning process. Looks like I might get to learn a 4 column layout as well as a quartered layout though…

Speaking of which (learning, not website layouts), having re-read some of my older reviews and the ones posted in the last few days (and especially this one which I’m very happy with, as it happens) I do feel like I’m constantly improving which is great. I’m not getting any money from it, but y’know. Can’t have everything.

Gun: The Showdown

andrewrevell — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:11:15 +0000

Famed as being the first PSP game I’ve genuinely enjoyed. It’s got flaws and the fact it was made for every other format a year ago don’t help it but it’s good, clean fun.

Anyway, the review is here:

Gun: The Showdown PSP review

And I’m still snowed under. Hopefully I’ll manage to submit another couple of reviews tomorrow so they should be up next week-ish. After that I’ll still have a handful left to polish off but I’m getting on top of it all thankfully. The DMWii Special is starting to move along now, but I’ve not been able to work on the site for quite a while now which is annoying as it was making good progress. The Unspoken-of project is whipping along nicely too, thankfully.

Looking for Victim…

andrewrevell — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:17:13 +0000

Infected review up at Boomtown and what a rubbish game it is. It could have been good – but it isn’t.

Infected PSP Review

Hopefully a steady flow starting now work wise.