How to Draw a Chicken:
How to Make an MMO:
Latest Comments
- De Niro
- How I Spent My Vacation: Elfing
- Debut Album
- I don't think that's what "banning" means
- My Policy on Torture
- How to... (draw a chicken/make an mmo)
- Installing a TumbleLog Template for WordPress
- How's the economy
- This is what I have to deal with
- Podcasts at VirginWorlds
- I'm a PC so FUCK YOU
- Who Runs Bartertown?
- Addressing the Perplexity of Azaroth
- It's a win
-
Latest Posts
- De Niro
- How’s the economy
- Oh wait… it *is* a moon
- I don’t think that’s what “banning” means
- My Policy on Torture
- I’m a PC so FUCK YOU
- It’s a win
- This is what I have to deal with
- Ask the internet for help
- Urban Legends
- 500 impressions in 2 minutes
- Richard Garriott’s Voice on The Colbert Report
- Games for little kids
- I can’t wait to steal this movie off the internet
- I love asofterworld
-
Feeds
RSS Feed
21 Comments
Sadly, I would be glad if half the people who want to start MMOs would read such a book, because I’m not convinced most of them have read much beyond the WoW strategy guide and a mountain of message board posts.
Are you saying that’s a good book, or that they teach you how to draw a half-circle and oval and leave it at that? I’m always up for reading another book even if I get almost nothing out of them at this point.
Actually, I think I did read that when he emailed me a link. NM about the question.
Hah. I got a good belly laugh from the chicken picture.
I’m also a little too tired to figure out whether that book is a joke or not.
But I did like the chicken picture.
If you think that book’s a parody, then you obviously never read the IGDA forums or realize how desperate for attention and/or validation people can be.
That book has to be a joke; I thought this design stuff you guys do is real difficult, which would make writing a textbook on it almost impossible. That’s the impression yall give anyway.
I’m reminded of Alan Emrich teaching classes in how to design games at some college somewhere, despite the Moo3 debacle.
I’d like to see a few more books from this author. Here is a short list of subjects he should tackle:
1) Secular, representative government for war-torn, down-trodden peoples and their idologies. A beginners guide.
2) Solving the energy crisis in twelve easy steps. With companion DVD ROM.
3) What to consider when building an interstellar rocket ship.
The chicken thing is funny as hell but I think its kinda mean to pick on that kid and his book.
I like watching old scifi movies, ’cause the guys who made those wore their hearts on their sleeves, y’know, all their hopes and dreams and fears about the future and their guesses about how technologies and advanced societies would work, where they put a huge amount of effort into it and they thought they were really far-out but they end up seeming totally naive and pitiful when the future actually comes around.
I don’t think they woulda made anything if they woulda known how it would make me laugh, but on the other hand, I think it was super important for them make the stuff that helped people visualize all the different ways we could do stuff, ’cause that’s what got us to the point where I could be a Big Jerk and laugh about it heh.
Seems kinda like the same thing here, and from a totally selfish bastard perspective, if anything we say now stops him (or somebody like him) from doing another one of these kinda things, we’re killing off our own source of laughs ahaha.
Crap, now I gotta think about how to make it easy for him to invalidate my point of view in case he reads this.
Okay, I got it.
Man, there’s no way they coulda EVER made a game as great as Vanguard with this kids approach to things *covers mouth*
Ryan S.:
I know you said to never mind the question, but just to make it clear anyway:
To draw a chicken, you definitely don’t want to skip the third step.
Step three is one of the most important steps.
Ole Bald Angus:
I know, I know. You’re right.
I actually saw this and thought of the chicken-joke about a month ago, and checked myself.
Even though that chicken thing is funny. And man, that makes it hard for me to act like my momma raised me right.
I realized that it wasn’t as funny as that would have been mean.
But yesterday I saw he had gotten a new job as design lead, and figured that if any of this hoo-hawing hurt his feelings too much, that’s a nice way for him to tell us all to get bent.
Practically a preemptive strike.
I’m not saying that makes it right, of course. Just not as mean.
Meanwhile, the chicken thing is still just as funny.
This concludes the excuses portion of my comment.
I’ve definitely contributed my own fair share of naive and pitiful to the collective. I can only hope that this post, in some small way, helps to point the eyes and jeers of the public … you know … away from it.
Anyway, thanks for bringing all the poop to our little party here, Grandpa Youkidsoughta Knowbetter.
Everybody! Scatter!
We’re no match for the depression-weaned, war-hardened old-man-strength of his generation, but thanks to the meth epidemic, at least a few of us aren’t too fat to out-run the old geezers!
Ha!
OMG…a friend sent me that book last night and I had a little chuckle. Then I was a bit sad. I just worked 3 years as the Lead Level Designer on the canceled Gods and Heroes and know how hard it is to make these games. It’s fucking HARD!
Ouch, Mund. Nothing worse than working for that long and winding up with no chicken.
Unless it’s working that long, and then your chicken has one leg, is blind in one eye and lays crap-filled eggs.
But then again, Angus has already made a Vanguard joke in this thread, so just forget I said that.
I can see it now…the new design mantra in development companies.
“Don’t forget step three…it’s the most important one!!!”
“But yesterday I saw he had gotten a new job as design lead, and figured that if any of this hoo-hawing hurt his feelings too much, that’s a nice way for him to tell us all to get bent.”
Or has he?
He appears to be working at a random advertising agency in south west England. Unless he somehow took an identical picture of the A-team van from his office window as the anonymous PR drone at Inbox Digital did.
He also claims to have given a seminar at GDC and to have been running a games studio in 2001 … when he’d have been 12.
He doesn’t appear to have been credited for any of the things he’s allegedly worked on and there are allegations on several MMO design boards that he’s simply invented his employment history.
I’d say the ribbing appears to be entirely in order - especially given his enormous hubris here.
Hmm, I made a post earlier which appears to have been eaten. Perhaps all the links in it flagged me as a spambot.
Anyhow the tl;dr version now free of links is that I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him. He’s not a lead designer of anything but instead appears to work at a small English web design bureau.
When he’s not doing that he appears to spend his time creating an elaborate Walter Mitty style fantasy world around himself complete with fake work experience and imaginary game companies he’s been involved with - at least one of which he apparently headed at the tender age of 12. Try Googling for ‘Sysdevja’ (his alter ego) and all will become clear.
Good job on the nickname. Apparently he’s a big name on the MMORPGMaker IGN forums. He apparently made an enormous ass of himself in this thread here, what with all the posts that go:
-Removed by Sysdevja-
-Removed by Sysdevja-
-Removed by Sysdevja-
“Sysdevja changes engines based on which lunar month he is in, or so it seems.” LOL.
Actually yer making me feel even MORE sorry for him with that Walter Mitty stuff man!
On the bright side, mebbe all this attention will boost him up to Gaming Celebrity status AHAHA.
Well, even if this ends up going bad with all the Demons of the Internet Unleashed on him, somebody in the industry might feel sorry for him and give him the hook up he’s after, obviously he loves this junk and he’s got a lot of energy.
There, that should make Jeff feel a little better ahaha.
Yeah, they seem to love (hate) him at IGN’s MMORPGMaker forums, where he’s got at least one locked thread and someone saying he reports changing freely available game engines “every lunar cycle.” And he’s got that bogus avatar of himself looking all Lou Reed.
Best idea yet. Sounds like he’d make a fine celebrity.
Antipwn:
I have WordPress set to hold comments for moderation if they have more than one link.
I usually get around to clearing-out the spam-traps within a day, when I check for un-trapped spam.
I hate to admit that any good comes of the spam-bots’ comments and splogs’ trackbacks, but come to think of it: if it weren’t for the un-trapped spam, I wouldn’t be quite as obsessive about checking for legit comments being delayed.
Not that I don’t appreciate the comments a whole lot, but just that the spam just pisses me off even more than that.
At most, it might take me two or three days, if being eyeball-deep at work happens to coincide with being overwhelmed by chaos at home. That doesn’t happen too often.
So if your comment doesn’t show up right away, it’s just being delayed.
That goes for any comment which doesn’t show up right away. Even if it has no links at all, it might be flagged as spam for a suspicious substring or the like, ’cause I’m heavy-handed with the comments’ black-list on anything that has made it through the spam-filter before. Stuff like “.info”, for example.
But even though the blacklist will flag the comment as spam (rather than holding it for moderation), the notion that there’s a difference between the two is someone else’s silly fantasy. The reality is that both of those lists (as well as the list of recent-comments) have to be manually reviewed for mis-sorted comments, since the errors are randomly distributed among them.
So those will eventually show up, too.
Probably.
With the spam list it’s easier to miss it whenever there’s a freak wave of spam and some oddball comment or another gets buried in the mess, plus sometimes I drink.
***
Edit: Discovered a new one. While thinking I’d be doing something helpful by changing Inhibitor’s comments’ URL’s to his new domain name, I accidentally deleted one of the comments instead. So there’s also that possibility.
I just looked at that dude’s blog for the first time. Not sure what to say. His post on WoW is just… wow.
So he doesn’t understand his own post?
Nice. number two search result for “how to draw a chicken”.
its a parody, cant anyone see it? I’m sure he is sat laughing at you all
4 Trackbacks
[...] The Way You Do It - MMO For Nothing And Your Chicks For Free 26Nov07 Courtesy of Jeff Freeman, the best guide to MMO design [...]
[...] Jeff Freeman recently made a post on How to Draw a Chicken. [...]
[...] me he reído solo frente al computador, pero desde hacía tiempo no me reía tanto como con “Como dibujar un pollo“. Yo necesité varios minutos para entender el chiste, pero básicamente se trata sobre un [...]
[...] stuff in there. I remember he mailed out this link shortly before we left the company. He thought this book was freaking hilarious — he was chuckling about it for weeks. This album cover game drove an [...]