Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[Yegolev]

For those of you who live near there or are willing to relocate how could it hurt to apply?

You can't win big if you don't roll the dice.  That said, I'm pretty happy in my rut, working for a company that's 120 years old.

[WindupAtheist]

I have no useful experience and will probably come in drunk, sleep on the job, smoke weed in the bathroom, and steal all your office supplies.  That said, please hire me.  I'm a people person.  And honest work sucks.

Also, Sinij may have just made his best post ever.

...in-game adds for penis enlargement (and crafting) are about only innovative thing about the title...

Lawl!

[Slyfeind]

That is so going to be a WOW clone. There's a fucking castle on the home page!

[Yegolev]

That's just from the MS PowerPoint CD.  They will get something better once they hire those ex-Blizzard artists.

[Yoru]

Blah. What a day for my F13 email to go bust. Hey Raph, can you add my f13 email address to the mailing list? I love the smell of press releases in the morning.

Go read the press releases page. :) No mailing list yet.

Yeah. I saw that, oh, five minutes after posting. Go go gadget Jumping The Gun!

Oh well. When you do produce a press mailing list, I will get on it, even if I have to send some large men named Vinnie down there to SoCal.

Don't make me call the Vinnies.

[damijin]

Fun for everyone, you say?

What about those of us who only have fun at someone else's expense. For it to be fun for me, I must be causing someone else not to have fun... oh god..
PARADOX.

[HRose]

When did this turn into a "beg and carp for a job" thread?

[Mr. Right]

HRose just made my day.

[Evangolis]

Feel free to wander around the site and learn about us

So, I'll play.

Given the way the basic logo outline looks, you've read Linked and liked a lot of it, which is good, because I think I read it based on your original recommendation.  You're going to try to break the story genre boundaries and avoid being seen as a Fantasy/Science Fiction/Modern Urban niche service, while catering to all those at once, and there will be dancing.

But I look at the logo, and all I think is, Whoville. 

Moving is a deal breaker, not that I have the credentials anyways.  But when you do playtester invites let me know.  Contrary to appearances, I can play games and not talk about it in public.

[Signe]

There is no room for me in your gainfully employed world.  I'll just lurk outside and poke you with a pokey thing once in a while.  Good-bye Happy Smiley Raph... Hello Pokey Stick holed Raph.   

[Soln]

what is Chris Allen going to be offering?  I know he has groupware assets (?).

[Mr. Right]

Feel free to wander around the site and learn about us

So, I'll play.

Given the way the basic logo outline looks, you've read Linked and liked a lot of it, which is good, because I think I read it based on your original recommendation.  You're going to try to break the story genre boundaries and avoid being seen as a Fantasy/Science Fiction/Modern Urban niche service, while catering to all those at once, and there will be dancing.

But I look at the logo, and all I think is, Whoville. 

Good start.

Tackling fantasy, sc fi and modern in a single game seems over ambitious even if it's just providing some toolsets like NWN.  It reminds me an other project...

[TripleDES]

Putting fantasy and scifi into the same game better not end up as a piece of stylistic shit like Tabula Rasa.

[Krakrok]

I would like to point out that they are actively accepting resumes.  For those of you who live near there or are willing to relocate how could it hurt to apply?

edit.  I would like to point out that this is an awesome opportunity.  How often do people get a shot at working with some of the forerunner of graphical MMO's?  Shit, wish I was not willing to relocate.  I would give it a shot otherwise!

The pay and the idea/implementation could suck. I wouldn't even think about it without finding out what they're going to build first and I'm in the general area. The job listings claim it's revolutionary.

-C++ isn't listed but that could be a given.
-PHP is listed which would probably mean they are going with MySQL.
-A client is listed though it doesn't say what language. Java is listed.
-DirectX/OpenGL are not listed but it could be a given as well.
-150+ simultaneous users is listed.
-Java/Python/Ruby are listed. I'm going to guess Python because EVE has had success with it.
-Flash/Shockwave are not listed.
-A custom scripting language is listed.
-Procedural art isn't listed.
-P2P isn't listed.

If I were to guess this gives us a LAMP server, a 250-500 user interconnectable Python world server, and some kind of (java?) 3D client where you can write your own game scripts. Possibly with user run servers. Or NWN+IMVU+Runescape+SL+Popcap.

[Engels]

-PHP is listed which would probably mean they are going with MySQL.

I thought php worked with MySQL?

[Lum]

Young, hungry, idea-filled people with no experience this will attract.  That should be fun.

Nah, there's a lot of folk in the industry who still think Raph has a lot of Nifty Ideas(tm). I'd probably apply for something were I not already quite busy.

Oh, and Krakrok, your analysis of their jobs page is about 99% dead on by my reckoning - a bright future in industry analysis awaits you! Only quibbles I have are that PHP != mySQL, there's plenty of support for heavier dbs now. And the scripts listed aren't necessarily Eve-specific, those are just the new hotness scripting languages. Minus Lua, which may or may not be intentional.)

Analyzing help wanted ads are always fun, you can tell a lot about projects under development because that's precisely the point where they have to decloak just enough to recruit folks. Of course that doesn't prevent "false flags" stuck in ads specifically to throw people off - I'm looking at you, Bioware!

[Cheddar]

Young, hungry, idea-filled people with no experience this will attract.  That should be fun.

Nah, there's a lot of folk in the industry who still think Raph has a lot of Nifty Ideas(tm). I'd probably apply for something were I not already quite busy.

Good thing.  The awesomess of Raph + Lum + MMO would cause fanbois heads across the earth to pop like grapes. 

There is only so much we can handle.

[Margalis]

Maybe I will apply. I don't have multiplayer gaming experience (other than messing around with Torque) but I do have network programming experience and I would be best technical hire ever.

[LC]

FTW

[Morat20]

-PHP is listed which would probably mean they are going with MySQL.

I thought php worked with MySQL?

PhP works with anything. It's just commonly used with mySQL, because it's open source. Personally, I loathe PHP just a little less than I loathe all such languages. But then, I've been stuck in web development hell for four years now and am more than a bit sick of it.

[Krakrok]

Only quibbles I have are that PHP != mySQL, there's plenty of support for heavier dbs now. And the scripts listed aren't necessarily Eve-specific, those are just the new hotness scripting languages. Minus Lua, which may or may not be intentional.)

If they want to reduce time to market by leveraging existing PHP applications like IMVU did they almost have to go with MySQL or Postgresql for any web backend stuff. LiveJournal, FriendSter, Habbo Hotel, SecondLife, and the largest dating site all use MySQL. Areae used Oracle at SOE but unless they received more than two million in VC I think it's out of their budget. If they're going with any kind of distributed system Oracle would also be out. Plus what happens if they give everyone a free melon again?

I prefer MSSQL and the 2005 licencing looks pretty cheap but thats just me.

And new hotness scripting languages which are all 10+ years old? :P

I'm just partial to Python because I've done a Python<->C like scripting language bridge and it was pretty dang easy. Delphi for the win.

[Strazos]

Someone wake me up when Raph tries making a Game...

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

[schild]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

Diet Persona 3?

[Slyfeind]

I like the thought of having one highly customized toon and living in a 90210 type place and having the ability to travel to westworld in the morning, medieval world in the evening it is intriguing.

So...in other words, Second Life? Or am I missing something?

[Raph]

Lua could have been there. I dunno why it isn't, actually.

OpenGL/etc aren't because, well, this is server programming, not client.

BUT apply anyway. If you're good, we won't let you get away even though the spot technically isn't open.

You are right to think that we are modeling on the Web style dev -- LAMP stacks, all that jazz. There are a lot of virtues on that side of the fence that the game world ignores. My talk at GDC this year is actually on this very topic.

Also because of this, if your expertise is primarily web side not game side, we still want to talk to you. You do large scale web database stuff, portals, AJAX, whatever? Email me.

And yeah, we'd talk to someone who was badass at Flash too. I figure, someone who is badass is badass, and the language is a detail.

[Margalis]

I am sadly a master of AJAX..which I'm almost embarrassed to admit because I hate it so intensly.

[sinij]

Hire him already, man wants to be starving art^h^h^hmmorpg developer, let him.

[naum]

I am sadly a master of AJAX..which I'm almost embarrassed to admit because I hate it so intensly.

I have a love/hate relationship with Javascript in general. The whole remote-to-server AJAX usage is neato and stuff, but overkill has quickly crept in. Google Maps (or some of their other apps like Analytics, but NOT Google Reader are too) OTOH is an excellent example of what can be done elegantly.

Been programming primarily in PHP (and server side *nix stuff,  including C network programming) now for over 6+ years (back to when PHP4 was beta shiny). Have used Perl, Python and even recently Ruby on Rails but for large scale stuff I fall back on my own custom framework CMS that I have developed that provides articles, comments, blogs, photo galleries, podcasting, check/credit card e-commerce tie, newsletters, calendar,  banners, user role permissions, etc... …really getting sick of PHP though PHP5 added enough nice-ties to make it OK (i.e., _autoload, static methods/attributes, objects now referenced instead of copied, etc...). Really love Ruby but RoR, despite the fanboy hype, has many issues to resolve that are already solved by PHP -- deployment, instability of FCGI and/or lighttpd/mongrel kinks… …Python is sort of sweet, don't mind the whitespace thing, but the whole declaring "self" as an argument in every object instance method just drives me batty…

MySQL not a given with PHP anymore. PHP5 comes bundled with SQLite, which IMV for most sites, is a better solution. I've also used PostgreSQL and with the new PDO object wrapper, database selection is a moot point anymore…

[Trippy]

Lua could have been there. I dunno why it isn't, actually.

Lua's not object oriented, that's why it's not there :D I.e. you are presumably looking for somebody who can write a custom object-oriented scripting language to be used as the in-game programming language a la LambdaMOO. Also Java's not a scripting language.

[DataGod]

I predict 07 will be a very interesting year! :)~~

[damijin]

I predict 07 will be a very interesting year! :)~~

Better than 06, at least.

But that shouldn't really be too hard considering MMORPG.com had to put a "None of the Above" selection for best new release in their 2006 awards, due to the sheer badness of 2006.

[stray]

Just shows how far behind things really are. For the entire rest of the gaming industry, 2006 has been a pretty great year.

[Dundee]

Up to you, Righ, we're all about the users. ;)

Open it to internet vote and in a couple of weeks you'll be on Comedy Central, announcing  Stephen Colbert's World of Colbertcraft.

[Akkori]

I only know enough of any programming language to screw things up, but I *can* write pretty well, and I love complex interactions. Add a dash of creativity, and I could make a good Story/Content guy. Did I mention that I'd work cheap? lol

Well, 2006 has sucked for the virtual-world gamer, and it would be nice to see a new face in town. Maybe a MySpace/Sims/Tycoon/BF2142/ATitD/EVE kind of game?