Couple things about me up front. I have thick skin. 10 years in Philly and the last 7 in Boston, I'm a big boy, I've heard most everything. I have a 12 year old son with Autism, the word retard offends me, deeply. I'm married to an insanely beautiful woman (so far over my ski's it's embarrassing) and have 3 other kids, 16, 14 and 9. The boys (3 of them) are gamers, oldest is a hard core gamer/athlete (like dad) and a ranked SC2 player.
I was a gamer LONG before I owned a game company, just like I was a fan long before i played in the big leagues. I so desperately WANT to post as a gamer and fan, but understand it just isn't going to happen.
For that my PR and Marketing folks have each other on speed dial, and sweat constantly...
I've lived my life being very open and very honest, and that's been as good as it has been bad. It's usually pretty easy to tell where I stand.
The thing that has changed over these past few years is that when I post in forums like this, FoH, Tribal Wars, our Reckoning forums, is that I represent over 400 people and their families, and that's a pretty huge deal.
Generally people that post the real bad stuff about me are Democrats and Yankee fans, and that's cool, I get it. But you Yankee fans, keep hating, that's cool, I understand. Please don't come here and post 'You" have 27 or 28 rings or whatever, unless your Derek Jeter because YOU have none, I have 3, I was honored to play with 3 very special groups of men and be a part of 3 World Championships, and that made some folks mad...
I keed. In all seriousness this forum, this very place, like FoH and the others, is where 38 Studios becomes the next great gaming company, or not. Everything we become is literally 100% dependent on you. You'll either love our stuff and want it bad enough to buy it at full price (pre orders and week 1 sales are EVERYTHING to a company like ours) or you won't, but there will be no BS here.
We're a studio of 400 hard core gamers who want to make awesome games we want to play, for gamers. That's our secret sauce, that's the thing we MUST hold onto as long as we can. When that stops i'll likely walk away.
It's why, even though it's painful, reading the good WITH the bad is essential. If you don't listen to players you stop making games players want to play, and that sucks.
It's also why I have finally come to grips with the fact that in a forum like this one post can start "Art sucks, hate it, derivative..." to "Amazing art, the world is vibrant and alive!" and both can be right. It's 100% subjective. Even though I watched this world come alive and I have seen the personal sacrifice hundreds of people have made over hundreds of thousands of hours, some people aren't going to like it.
What I can assure you is there was and never will be one short step, or short cut, to ANYTHING we do or make. People that bought our CE and SE are going to realize that even more, as both are way beyond anything, quality wise, I've ever purchased.
Quality trumps all, saying that after the demo may sound hollow and you might call BS on me and us for it, but I promise you where we control 100% of the work we will set a bar that will be insanely challenging to meet, and continue meeting it as long as we're around.
So again, thanks for this, this thread took up my entire flight out, 6 hours and 11 minutes, but it was worth it because we're prepping for a new sort of 'Opening day" and threads like this don't pop up for games people aren't interested in. It's the same thing I told young players walking into Yankee Stadium, be good enough to get boo'd because Yankee fans are highly intelligent, they don't boo players that suck.
I'm sure we'll be chatting more, just wanted to say thanks and we hope you think Amalur is as awesome as we do.
