Yep, finally you can see what I was working on for the last year. If you've got a PS3 or Xbox 360 then you can see what took up all my spare time when I should have been animating or breathing non-corporate air. My online tag on both systems is Matazone, but I haven't paid for Live on the 360 so I'll be playing the PS3 version the most, but feel free to add me. Either way, if you've got one of the systems, download it and let me know what you think!

Has anyone played it yet? Did you like it?

We don't have a PS3 or an Xbox 360, so we cannot play it.

What? And exactly which industry does Moop work in? Crikey, at Criterion it was considered negligence if you only had one of them! (For the whole team, not just the designers.)

It's definitely not like that where he works! There's no culture of "you must have every recent games console under the sun" there. Only one person at his office has a PS3, as far as we know. As for Xbox 360s, quite a few people have them (though tons of people don't), but we haven't really felt the need.

He says the horrible interface on the 360 and the fact that they tend to self-destruct really puts him off of spending money on one. I don't know what it's like at Criterion, but where he works they can play games on production consoles and devkits at work, and people often borrow consoles from the office over the weekends. They also have a games library for reference purposes. So it's definitely not necessary for every person to go out and buy their own consoles and games to stay abreast of the latest trends. He'll probably get to play the Burnout Paradise demo when he goes back to work (he's been on holiday since the 10th).

Yes, I dislike the 360 for those and many other reasons.

We certainly wouldn't have been allowed to borrow the devkits - they cost a fortune, and the code on them would be even more expensive if it got leaked. There were games libraries at Criterion too, but with one or two copies between 150 ish people...

I suspect that the pressure was more heavily on designers to get all the machines and keep up with new games, but that is our job. Even so, it was still expected that the whole team would keep roughly on the same page as their target audiences.

No, no, they can't borrow devkits! I just meant they can play on them at work. I was saying that they can take production consoles home, of which they have a few. Only about 50 people work at his office, though.

The expectation to buy expensive consoles for research at home just isn't there, even for designers. The office has all the stuff they need for that, so why would they need to? Generally it's considered the company's responsibility to provide its workers with the tools they need to do their job, including research. For instance, they have a new project where the designers have been playing a lot of games with similar concepts for research purposes, but they do that during work hours on work equipment. Yeah, it's expected that people who work for a games company are into games and understand what gamers want, but that shouldn't stretch to owning every games console that their company supports. It costs a lot of money and seems unnecessary when the office has all the relevant equipment.

It was just expected that people who took their jobs seriously would keep themselves up to date on the latest trends. People did play games at their desks too, but you would often have around 20% of the team buying the big new releases (different people, depending on what titles they liked the most).

I can see both sides of the argument, and yes it would have been very expensive to keep up with everything, but it did mean that there was a general excitement and depth of knowledge about the industry from a personal perspective as well as a professional one. It'll be very interesting to see if that's there wherever I work next. I think that I'm going to be in for some major culture shock!

It is a more laid back and fun atmosphere but I don't think it can really be implied that any of us don't take our jobs seriously or don't know about the latest gaming trends. We often have big groups of people in the comfy room at work when someone buys a new game and I often play 360 games at a friend's house. My main point is that if you work for a games company you can keep up without buying everything and that not buying everything doesn't indicate lack of excitement. Just lack of money or willingness to commit to a product that you're less than thrilled about.

I find it weird that they expect you to spend so much on something 'work related' but I guess it all depends on what kind of company you're used to.

Back on topic, I will make sure to have a go at Burnout Paradise after Christmas. It's quite probable that some of my work friends have already - lots of people were gleeing over videos of it months ago.

It wouldn't be political for me to comment on my views of some of the leadership choices at Criterion, so I shall not.

I didn't mean to imply that you and the people you work with don't take games knowledge seriously, I was trying to say (slightly awkwardly) that this was the view taken by one/some of the higher people at Criterion. I could see what they meant, but I also think that they lacked perspective on just how poorly paid some of their employees are... Or should that be, 'were', since many were made redundant four days after finalling.

Grumpy? Bitter? Moi?

Perhaps a tiny bit, but I'm still quite proud of the game we made.

Aah, don't worry about it, I wasn't taking it too personally. I was just kind of puzzled by the 'must own every console' attitude since I've not really experienced the same thing.

It's good to hear that the tech compulsion isn't industry-wide. That gives me some hope for wherever my next job may be.

I finally got around to buying a 360, which should arrive tomorrow so I'll actually get around to playing Burnout: Paradise now!

Huzzah! Anything that's wrong with it, it wasn't done by me.

To be honest I think the company moop works for is a minority from what I know of my brother working in the industry. He's lucky in the fact that his flat mate also work in it so it can kinda be split up over who get's what when it come to the consoles. I also think from the sounds of thing moops been pretty lucky with his companies attitude.
Oh I'll poke my brother to see if he's tried it as I have no console.