GX Internal April 2000: More Reports! Newsletter GX Poll: What’s Your Handle? Jim Burns’ War Stories: Dead Lady new @ Sven’s Weird Games: Of The Jungle Total GX: >83 name - dept - handle/icq GX Profile: Taylor Murphy Colin Adams - Creative - 71986047 (rogue3) Terence’s Murphy’s Law Shane Bettenhausen - Production - 69676755 (thray) Terence’s Trip to IKEA Andrew Burwell - Creative - 20436896 (Mandrew) Rik’s Time in PlayStation Nirvana Serdar Copur - ProdDev - 70598590 (Quicksilver) Hank’s FinK.L. Experience Brian Darnell - Production - 71986047 (Brain) Quake III Astrology with Nightasha Scott Foreman - Ops - 69850268 (Mufasa) Gabe’s March Madness Naomi Garcia - Ops - 70925090 (names) GX Classifieds Francisco Gonzalez - Production - 69732125 (gunslinger) Marnie Hrones - Ops - 72186670 (Q) Llana Ivanovich - Production - 64367262 (Nightasha) I’d sell that Patrick Lynch - Dev - 69004258 (Patrick) for a dollar! Zach Macfarlane - Production - 10937234 (HaggisMaximus) Mike McGrath - Dev Jacob Nguyen - Production - 69000002 (anger) Christian Nutt - Production - 2705592 (ferricide) Produckshun Report by NemK: Mark Shlagenhauf - Dev PRoduckshun is chuggling along. We now haev Zachary Stern - Production - 24733421 (Zack) for new KEWL hax0rs working on the Databass 2 of PART-TIMERS: them work on council gaems liek KARNOV and ULRTA TURBO MAN 6: CHAMPANEANSHIP EDITSHUN the Nicole Martin - CustServ - MissLady other two work on Mr. smarty man STEEVE JOBS Thomas Akiyama - Production - 70745369 (thomas) appple games and adventshure games like Lizard suite Larry. WE meet our goals for E# becuase I hax0red Ying’s Return to the Bat Cave [DevBerk]: staging1 with a screendoor orifuss and made the re- We are the children of the darkness. We hide in shadow and ports say 9999% complete!!!! (Shhh don’t tell Keen). live in the land of confined chaos. No more CTF at night. The daTAbass is getting biggar eceryday when we add No more female sighting in the office. Free parking is a term games like UNREALE 3: NALI HEALING FRUIT ORGY of the past. The only free parking we will ever get is that in / ARENA and intarviews with famouse persons like obj/0076/76310.asp. Give us food, drinks and a projector CLIFFY BELZINSAKISKI (big smarty mann whom wears to play FINKL video and we will be happily married to our gold rings around his neck to look tough like Jason Hall). projects. GFG. Funny moment fo the week: I was playing the EverCwest expainshun: SUPER LINE DANCING FROG Trish dishes out E3/PartyTime Express: ROUNDUP when that regis fillbarn wannabe Nemisis E3 prep is crazy! We are sorting out the Flights, hotels, and (haha he can spell is own name! YUO SIR NEED A party. We are having party at my good ole buddy Hef's SPEEL CHECKAR!!) told me that it was actualy place and everyone at gamers that is going to E3 is attending DAIKANASTA and it sucked. I couldn’t let him say that the Gala. IF you have any questions or concerns at E3 please about my LOVE goddess Joan ROMEREO so I threw my moose at him and kicked him in the butt. Then i let me know! went back to playing EverCwest with CHEEE and saw JamesM offers up a Product Development Update a dancing lizard. Focus Study Progress Status Document: The Product Development Group was formed to help people Inquiries: Justin “Fusty” Hall - [email protected] get stuff done. Product Managers help bridge the gap be- Help & Attitude: tween all the different groups at Gamers, acting as facilita- Ter ence “Nemisis” W ong & Sam “Ren” Par ker (G .I.P.) tors and liaisons. They track timelines, break down com- Photos: Nat “Binky” Baldwin munication barriers, and leap tall buildings in a single bound. Proofreading: Nat “Binky” Baldwin status? pulse is strong, outlook is positive. 75% chance of Humour: Scott “Mufasa” Foreman survival. gx internal - April 2000 - Page 1 More Editorial Styley from John Ricciardi: Reports In the interest of deviating from the norm (which would be to The FiringSquad Report by James: say that everything is either chugging along or full steam FiringSquad is doing pretty well. We're on track for 9 mil- ahead), I’ve decided to invent a new catch-phrase to be lion, and we're preparing for a big week to close out the used just this one time: here in editorial, we are “creamblastin’ month. We have the Voodoo5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce all the way,” folks. First things first: As many of you know, 2 GTS previews in the works. Bob's currently down at Bliz- Mr. Sam Parker has departed Gamers.com for the poi- zard South gawking at Warcraft 3 (and all the lovely SoCal soned—err, beautiful—waters of Gamespot. We’re all sad women no doubt). to see Sam go, and we wish him the best of luck, but for the Nat represents with The Fun Report: rest of you, be warned — the cake/cookies/free drinks deal Sometimes, we here at Gamers are so wrapped up in finally was a one-time-only affair. accomplishing the corproate vision - establishing a puppet Now, on to bigger and better news: We be consolidatin’, government in Belize - that we work long, arduous hours foo. That’s right—no longer will the Production and Edito- without rest. I started to feel, after a while, that some of us rial departments be two separate entities with differing agen- were losing focus on the fun-loving premise on which the das, cliques and fashion styles. Even though the roles of Prod company was founded; namely, an addiction to ninja midget and Edit are still pretty defined and, well, different, the two pornography. I knew that a problem was present, like a bodies of water will come together like chocolate and pea- thorn in my mind - but for weeks, a solution eluded me. (In nut butter to form one powerhouse team in each depart- all fairness, I should note that those were the same weeks ment (Video Games, Computer Games, Unplugged Games). when I frequently emerged from the women’s restroom, This streamliney-ness (new words are fun) means things will coked up to my eyeballs, and yelled things across the room be more efficient, clear and all-around downright funtastic like “Dennis is a graham cracker! CRUNCH!”) than before. A couple of people may or may not have been Then, one day, as I was meditatively forging expense re- promoted through all this, too, but since I don’t know the ports, the answer hit me like a sack of kittens - the company specifics of that, we’ll save the “congrats” for next issue. needed a way to express its desire for enjoyment - a “fun- Also in the news... The E3 redesign is just about finished. lovin’ orifice,” if you will. I set about on my quest to create The design and dev folks did an amazing job for having such such an outlet - a quest which would eventually lead me to a short time to pull things together, and while on the inside the far reaches of the office, into the cave of IT - a geophysi- we may not be all that different come the morning of May cal anomaly which even light cannot escape. After correctly 11, the outside will be lookin’ spiffy like Mr. Clean’s bald- guessing that Andreas’ last name was, in fact, unpronounce- tastic dome. able with a human tongue, he was required by cosmic law to One last bit of gooey goodness: all y’all put your hands grant me one wish. I selflessly used that wish to create, for together now (c’mon, I know you watch Showtime at the you, the workers of Gamers.com, the “FUN” mailing list. Apollo) for Nao Higo, who, with me in tow, trudged through Upon annoucement, membership skyrocketed to more than the entire show floor of the Tokyo Game Show in one day thirty people, which is rather astounding, since it means that to spread the word about Gamers.com to a legion of (mostly) all those people were out of meetings long enough to check receptive Japanese game company representatives and ex- email. After the popularity surge of the mailing list, I felt it tremely attractive booth babes. Thanks to Nao’s hard work, fitting to create a web page for people to share their at- we might someday be able to conquer Japan as well (after tempts to colletively feign social lives. I commited my own we take over America, of course). Well, I guess that’d be computer to serve up the page, which unfortunately marked the big news for this month. Otherwise, everything’s great. the death of the Barbara Wenzel Fan Page, and with a little With E3 right around the corner, things are rather hectic, but help from the Magical Internet Gremlins, coverage plans are coming together nicely. We’ve got a Con- fun.internal.gamers.com was born, for all of you to love. sole News Editor coming in just before E3 (almost had two, Further bullitens as events warrant. but Crappy Puppy counter-offered—damn), and Sandy’s doing an amazing job with the PC side of news. Barring any Previous issues of the newsletter are natural disasters, our E3 coverage should be pretty solid, available on the intranet as PDF files: and going forward into phase 2 (or 3.. or whatever your department wants to call it), our overall content is gonna http://www.internal.gamers.com/ continue to get stronger and stronger. Page 2 - April 2000 - gx internal That’s all for now. mata raigetsu! (until next month...) Joel Downs Presents... A Short History of Gamers.com Every once in a while, people ask me about the origins of formally banned all competitive hamster fighting.