Bad PR stunt is Best PR stunt?

A few days ago most gaming journalism websites were quick at reporting the news that LittleBigPlanet was going to be delayed because of the lyrics in one of the game's songs. Apparently it includes two quotes from the Qu'ran and doing so is offensive to those of Islamic faith.

This has lead Sony to retrieve all of the game's copies in order to replace them with "fixed" copies which don't feature said song. Not only that, it enraged most people who have preordered it, except muslim people, though.

While the corniest gaming websites were busy writing articles with titles like "Is LittleBigPlanet doomed?" gaming forums all over were flooded with threads where users started discussing religious matters. News websites and broadcasts have been mentioning this all around the globe.

Now, guys like Phil Harrison agree with Sony and say replacing the game was the best decision they could have made.

I have followed a few of those discussions and some of those were actually good. Though we might have been lead to believe it, not every gaming website is filled with hate-consumed tenage trolls.

What do I think about this? First of all I don't think recalling all of the game's copies is a good idea for several reasons. A patch that cut access to the song should suffice.

There are people who defend this is not enough and say that the people who don't have their consoles connected to the internet wouldn't "benefit from this correction to the game". Why would someone buy this game if they don't have their consoles connected to the internet? It is a major part of the game.

Well, even though I wish MediaMolecule the best of luck and believe their intentions are good, this sounds like too much luck to be just an innocent mistake. Because of this the game had a gigantic amount of free exposure and loads of people who didn't know this game was coming got to see bits of gameplay during primetime.


It seems like a trend like this could show up anytime:

1. Include something offensive in your game
2. Remove it due to pressure from the media
3. ????
4. Profit!

inérciaDemoparty2005 in 2008 report

Well well here we are again! InérciaDemoparty was a blast and hopefully this post will prove it.


I left my house at about 13:00 or so in order to meet zeroshift in Lisbon so we could do some finishing touches on the demo we were doing for Inércia. The sideways head-bobbing animation was born here to much enthusiasm.

The trip lasted longer than I expected. We left later than we had planned (21:00?) and made a detour to pick up another scener and some pizzas, plus another stop for caffeine. We had plenty to talk about for the whole tour.

We got lost inside Porto while looking for two things at the same time: inércia and a bathroom.

At about 4:00 we got to the partyplace. Khozmic, Filami and Kazuya started finishing their demo and just wouldn't stop for anything so that got me curious. It looked great.


Didn't sleep in that first night because I would regret it later.

The next day came rather quickly, along with a lot of extra sceners. We had lunch at a Pizza Hut (I see a pattern here) followed by the afternoon activities.

The first one was the GameDev-PT Show & Tell, a really interesting idea that worked well. Several members from GameDev-PT organized themselves and showed work they had done and thought it was interesting to everyone. It really was.


Afterwards it was time for a Blender introduction workshop by zeroshift. It's a really interesting program and I was there to see its features. It's free so check it out.

After a McDonald's fueled dinner (I hate it but the idea of eating pizza for the third time in a row was bothering me more than those things) we got back to the partyplace and after a -traditional- delay the compos started.


The first one was the combined graphics compo, where my image was so confusing it crashed ps' Mac. Next, the music compo. I did an all-nighter the night before and the low lights and soothing songs made me regret it a bit.

Demo compo time, the moment we were all waiting for.

There were five productions. First up was vs* with a Processing demo that was nice though a little too procedural-looking for my taste. Next it was Jae's turn with a GP2X demo, one of the shortest I have ever seen but it was enjoyable. After that was Khozmic, Filami and Kazuya's time to shine with their demo. It looked really great but for some reason it ran rather slowly on EviL's laptop.

...and this was it. After following the demoscene for a while this was the time to see the first demo I ever worked on grace the bigscreen. The crowd was surprised by the name (and I was surprised they didn't know it yet) and a bit later they were laughing really loud, which lasted through the demo as new scenes were being shown.

I was really proud of it.


Then, a really stylish animation by Kamikaze_Tutor (dude, sometimes I don't know wich nickname to use) was shown. I like it a lot.

A while later it was time to sleep.


5 hours later I woke up. Once again sleeping on the ground didn't make my back hurt at all. I think sleeping at demoparties regenerates me a lot more than sleeping under "normal" conditions.


Healthy conversations, breakfasts and some demos later, the results were announced. Zeroshift won the combined graphics compo, there were no awards given on the music compo and on the demo compo our demo won first place! Here it is!

Packed, took a picture and got back. It was quicker this time.



I slept from 24:00 to 12:00 today. I'm ready for the next one!

...and don't forget to come to inérciaDemoparty 2008!

I am pleased to announce that inérciaDemoparty is back and its recent edition starts today! And it will be the first time I have something up my sleeve. I'll be entering in at least two compos, one being the demo one (finally!). More info here.

I'll tell you all when I get back.

lowpoly sackboy

After a while without posting models, here is the last one. It's my version of Sackboy, the main character in MediaMolecule's first game, "LittleBigPlanet". The way it's made makes it easy to just drop a texture underneath the stitches and AO and it works with just some minor tweaks.




Edit: As a fellow polycounter suggested, here are some screenshots with lights and some poses.

Spore: Is piracy justified?

As many I have been eagerly awaiting Will Wright's new game, "Spore". Since its unveiling at GDC 2005 the media has been buzzing all over each new bit of information about it. Curious, because the "unveiling" itself was 30 minutes long and it only seemed to scratch the ear of the beast.

It was, without a doubt, the most ambicious videogame I have ever heard of.

(I am considering those games I believe will be finished, not some newbie Wow-killers or anything ridiculous as that. Those don't usually leave a sheet of paper or a couple of text documents.)

Then, the Creator Creator demo came out and amazed a huge amount of people due to the weirdness of some characters, the likeness to other well-known ones or even the insane amout of Spore-made penis monsters. The term "Sporn" was coined around these few days. Maxis must be having a blast trying to stop those from populating the other players' galaxies.

Then I had the luck of being in the portuguese lauch of the game but I don't usually pay more than 30€ for a game so I didn't buy it. I'll save my speech on game prices for some other time. Anyway, I have been talking to some people who bought it and reading online reviews and checking Amazon and this was what I found:



I tried to understand why this was happening. While some people were raving about it, a whopping lot of people were giving it negative reviews.

Well, it seems the copy protection sistem included with the game is really, really agressive. You have to connect to the internet during instalation and you only have the permission to install it 3 times. 3. You paid full price for a game that will evaporate rather quickly.

Some people are defending that you should buy the game if you really want it and then download a copy without those protections and play it as you wish. Other people are saying they should simply boycott it and leave it in the shelves. The most otpimistic say you should buy the game, don't open it and then return it saying the reason is the horrible copy-protection system.

These measures are making me think twice about buying the game, even when it gets to the 30€ price tag which is a pity, I wanted this game to have the success I believe it deserves. Why couldn't this happen with the next WWII shooter?

These are sad times.

The people who atually buy the products still have the "YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR" ad thrown in their faces when they try to play their movies or go to the movies and gamers have measures that stop them from playing the games they bought or even slowly destroy theyr machines. Remember Starforce? Excuse me while I throw up, I shouldn't have thought of it after eating.

[edit:] These polls say a bit more about DRM than I did. If you want to know more about this subject, check this out.

London Game Career Fair '08

Hey dudes and dudettes.

It's that time of the year again! Last year I got to be at the London Game Career Fair, talking to several people from some awesome companies, i gave them business cards and portfolio CDs. First time I left the country alone and first time in London. This time I have better things to show. If you want to know more about the event, here's the official link.

How did I get the money to go there?

Well, let me show you what I was doing one year ago:

Which one am I?

That's right, you just know it from the bottom of the heart.

We have lift-off!

After some weird experiments involving html, xml and a weird ftp method, I bring you my website! It is basically an online portfolio that will be constantly updated.

I will try to improve it so it's a bit more functional, but right now it's enough. It only needs better art and that's what I am doing right now. I'll show it when I can.