I keep meaning to get into map making, i did a while back with duke nukem and then half life, but i then got sidetracked.

Shame as its actually quite fun, especially i imagine if u make something really good. Must be quite a blast to see lots of people playing and praising your work like that,.. hmm with Doom3 and HL2 coming out maybe i should look back into it (especially with ET too, thats a neat game! - anyone know where i might start with this?)

http://www.poorintern.com
- The Voices In My Fruit Loops Tell Me I'm Special -

$150,000 in the Make Something Unreal Contest awarded such memorable mods as MaxSMoke's Unreal4Ever... and I don't remember anything else. It gave, at the time, half talented level designers like develbunny with his map with invisible floors and invisible pits you can fall into a prize over Jeremy Graves's masterpiece. Mr. Graves works at Ion Storm Austin now. Here's hoping for another round of memorable successess in the $1 million prize!

The big prize that was awarded to Unreal4Ever should have catapulted the mod to the forefront of not just the UT community, but the Mod Community in General. It should have been the Counterstrike, or DoD or Urban Terror of Unreal Tournament. Instead, despite a 2 week spike in number of players, U4E remained fairly unpopular with only 3 dozen or so players and irregular support on the part of MaxSMoke. The mod wilted when it should have been flourishing. Instead of bridging the gap between UT and UT2k3, the mod basically vanished as the UT community shrunk from a few thousand to a few hundred people. In Summer 2000, the "Golden Age" of the UT Community, Planetunreal was raking in 25,000 hits a day. Today, it averages 3,000. Just think what would have happened if the mod awarded the big prize was able to bridge the gap? Then again, Tatical Ops didn't win the big prize, yet they put their game on the market via Infogrames.

Moral of the Story? The perfection of your mod or level and your ability to sell it will make you successful, not some silly cash prize from NVIDIA.

Cliff sold a generation of hard-working kids out on the idea that everyone would hire them if they just made cool looking levels and worked as hard as they could. Nothing could be closer from the truth, and it is obvious that he became the token spokesman for the teenage level designer working his butt off who makes it big, but in reality, simply wanted to both increase the mod community for his own game, as well as have a pool of talent that the top 1% might be worth using, if even that. MSUC did it before with it's "enter your mod, win big, get your name out (and we own anything you enter, btw)", and they're repeating it again this year, with some more cash and a video card maker on board.

It's not about talent. It's about elevating people to the community, creating spokesmen we can point at and say "they did it, you can to!", and romanticizing the reward for your work, a phantom carrot on a string, dangled in front of people. They work, you profit.

Depressing.

But, I suppose, U4E survives today. Its last update on the site was 5/06/03, and before that its last update was 3/31/03. The front page, instead of being filled with hype about the mod, is now basically bad mouthing Planetunreal. Maxsmoke says he has a UT2k3 version in the works, but doesnt have a screenshot to show for it. The last update of his mod - Unrea4Ever Fortress v1 came on 6/13/02... ALMOST ONE YEAR AGO.

Wow. I really doubt that. I look at the rosters of game companies and most of the time I have no idea who the people are.

But even so...

I went to those "custom" map websites for Q3:A for a long time and I got to know who the superstars were. It is true that some of them did get work now and then, but I'll be damned if their work wasn't GOOD WORK. I don't remember ever thinking "That popular guy doesn't deserve to be popular or doesn't deserve a job." No way.

So I think #2 is just shadowboxing with himself. Great talent comes from the known and unknown ranks of the gaming community. If your portfolio impresses the people at company X, you will be considered whether you are the most popular mapper or not.
This comment was edited on Jun 6, 13:41.

I guess Epic is out of ideas , which is obvious from the latest UT's.

Um, they've done this contest before. It's a way for them to stimulate the community and prolong the life of the game.

2003 did suck, but maybe they'll get the hint with 2004...


Supporter of the "A happy fredster is a muted fredster" fanclub.

http://www.originaltrilogy.com/

I guess Epic is out of ideas , which is obvious from the latest UT's.

Mark, you don't get credit for fishing for talent.

#2 said "In re: to level designing, you don't get job based on talent anymore, you get them based on how much of a presence you are in the community"

I don't agree with that statement. But even if you think that's true then a contest like this will hopefully elevate the most TALENTED people to the highest possible presence in the community!

On what do you base this? I see talented artists (some with little work experience) getting hired all the time. None of the developers I know would hire someone because of "community presence." I agree with you that map ratings don't matter that much, and that it's foolish if presence takes presidence.

In re: to level designing, you don't get job based on talent anymore, you get them based on how much of a presence you are in the community. Same goes with whether your map is rated well or not on mapping sites.

It's sad. There are a ton of capable people out there that I see all the time, who have excellent work, and they're totally ignored in favor of Joe Bob who makes yet another boring outdoor canyon DM level.

People with no skill whatsoever get hired all the time. Skill has little to do with it. It's community presence that's the key these days. Sad.

Makes me wish I didn't quit mapping three years ago

Inf must win.

This comment was edited on Jun 7, 01:53.