What we’re listening to…

This week we’re looking at the music our developers are listening to, which is fun for me, because it gives me new bands to research. Given I rarely listen to the radio anymore (outside of Pandora), I’ll be sure to read up on some of the artists mentioned (looking up Ratatat as we speak). Oddly enough, most of my music purchases these days are based on reading about a band — not listening to them..

Speaking of bands I’ve read about, I had heard good things about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. I took a chance on it, and ended up really liking it. If you’re a fan of The Stone Roses, you might like it too.

Here’s what everyone else is rocking out to…

Nathan X, Associate Producer: Red Fang, Kyuss, Mastodon, Knights of the Abyss, Within the Ruins, Darkest Hour, The Hives, Spinnerette, Koffin Kats, Black Star, The Who, The Subways, The Go! Team, and Bad Brains.

Marisa Lyon, QA Tester: Eels, Gogol Bordello, The Indelicates, and the new Decemberists album.

Cory Dornbusch, QA: Carbon Leaf, Neal Mccoy, Brooks and Dunn, Hollywood Undead, Tool, A Perfect Circle… I don’t know I hit random.

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What we’re playing: Sending Galactica off in style edition

This week many of us will be saying farewell to a good friend, as the final episode of Battlestar Galactica airs tonight. If you’ve noticed over the past few weeks, a number of devs have been playing the Battlestar Galactica Board Game for Thursday Night Game Night. As a Galactica fan myself, I checked out Jeff Lundin, Chris Esko, Ryan Salvatore, Jay Woodward, Nate Ellis and Jon Paul Duvall playing the game. In the pic above, these Final Five Six were in denial about their Cylon heritage and trying to accuse our Brotherhood of Steel of being a Centurion model.

Outside of the BSG board game, here’s what everyone else is playing…

Chris Esko, Gameplay Programmer: Dawn of War II, Madworld, King’s Bounty, the Battlestar Galactica boardgame.

Jay Woodward, AI Programmer: Some sort of improvisational Battlestar-finale drinking game (drink when something explodes! Drink when someone dies! Drink six times when a Six dies or Adama says “roll the hard six!” Drink one thousand nine hundred seventy-eight times for the colonial anthem!), the Battlestar board game (of course!), tabletop 4th ed. Dungeons & Dragons, and GTA IV.

Mark Teare, FX Artist: NHL 09, Prince of Persia, V-smile Baby.

Jon Paul Duvall, Designer: BsG boardgame, Dominion, Tribune, D&D 4th Edition; video games: WoW (yeah, damn that black hole, I thought I had escaped…)

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What’s this Twitter rubbish?

Well over a year ago, I thought Twitter was a a fad that would just go away. I was one of those kids that said, “nope, I’m not joining that party.” Well, in the past few months/weeks I’ve realized – it’s kind of a big deal. This week we join the cool kids with our very own Bethesda Blog Twitter feed.

So what will you find in our tweets? For the most part, I’d expect you’ll see similar updates to what you’ll find here, perhaps a bit more immediate than waiting to pull together a post on them. Given that you can’t type much up on a Twitter, you might hear about stuff there first. And who knows, we might have some surprises in store as well. Or maybe we’ll just tell you what color socks Todd’s wearing.

What we’re playing

This week’s edition of “What We’re Playing” comes late into the weekend after yours truly spent most of the weekend watching college basketball and crossing his fingers that his alma mater would make the “Big Dance.” Now that they’re in, I can relax and play Peggle.

Here’s the games we’re playing

Chris Esko, Gameplay Programmer: Mirror’s Edge, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Peggle.

Fred Zeleny, Agent Z: Rock Band 2, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, and House of the Dead: Overkill, which is the best purchase I’ve ever made for my Wii, and makes me happy I can play it with one hand, so I can keep a bottle of whiskey in the other.

Pete Hines: Dawn of War II, Fire Emblem DS, something new for 360…TBD

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What we’re watching: We’re watching Watchmen

This week we’re talking about the TV shows/movies that we’re currently looking forward to (or already watching). Tonight, many of us are going to see the film adaptation of Watchmen. Should be fun.

Let us know what you’re watching these days, as well as if you’re going to go see the movie (see poll question). Have a great weekend!

Megan Sawyer, Artist: Watchmen, whatever I get on Netflix tomorrow, Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse, Ghost Whisperer, CSI, Eleventh Hour, Lost, Heroes, CSI: Miami, and possibly watching Repo! The Genetic Opera again.

Chris Esko, Gameplay Programmer: Watchmen, BSG, Lost, Important Things with Demetri Martin, In Bruges.

Sam Bernstein, QA: Battlestar Galactica, Clone High, and always Futurama.

Aaron Mitschelen, QA: Wait, TVs can show things other than games?

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A Word About Chris Mullender

We lost a good friend last week. Chris Mullender, a programmer at 4J Studios, passed away suddenly last Monday morning. Chris was instrumental in development of the PS3 version of Oblivion and also worked on Star Trek: Conquest. Everyone here at Bethesda respected Chris and his work tremendously.

Paddy Burns, who worked with Chris at 4J, summed up Chris for us:

“He was a brilliant programmer who loved making games and bringing up his three young sons. He was very involved in his local community, where he was proud of his work in getting Dunbar’s Christmas lights up, and setting up a few websites for local schools and charities.”

As I said, we were saddened to find out this great guy, programmer, and father of three had passed away so suddenly. Our thoughts go out to Chris’ family and friends.

What we’re playing: Helghast edition

There’s plenty of great new games being played these days — Dawn of War 2, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Street Fighter IV or more — but after seeing the above photo at 1Up — I figured we had to feature Killzone 2. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the game, and I look forward to sitting down with it.

Here’s the rest of the games we’re playing this weekend…

Craig Lafferty, Senior Producer: Killzone 2, Zen Bound, World of Warcraft.

Jay Woodward, AI Programmer: GTA IV: The Lost and Damned, iDracula, and more of the Battlestar Galactica boardgame.

Chris Esko, Gameplay Programmer: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Rock Band 2, trying to resist buying a new computer to play Dawn of War II.

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What we’re playing: Shoryuken Edition

There’s plenty of great new games to be played this week (Dawn of War II, Halo Wars, GTA IV: The Lost and Damned), but the office was certainly a buzz over the release of Street Fighter IV. Talking with others at the office, it definitely feels like an arcade experience when you’re playing against other guys online. As I type, I’m nursing some pretty severe thumb blisters.Here’s hoping we can generate some interest for an office tournament played within our theater. That would be amazing.

We hope you’re all having a great weekend. Let us know what games you’ve been playing…

Dan Lee, Artist: Retro Game Challenge (DS), Street Fighter IV (360), Rockband 2 (360), Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)

Joel Burgess: GTAIV, Gears of War 2, Morrowind.

Liz Beetem: Dawn of War 2 and House of the Dead: Overkill, which is awesome and anyone who likes horror anything should buy it! It is the Dead Alive of videogames.

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What we’re playing: Flower(s) for Valentine’s Edition

It’s Valentine’s weekend, so several guys at the office are giving some love to Flower — a new downloadable game out on PlayStation 3 this week. if you’re looking for something different, I highly recommend it.

Here’s the rest of what we’re playing. Hope you’re all having a lovely weekend.

Mike Dulany, Programmer: Flower, House of the Dead: Overkill.

Aaron Mitschelen, QA: LotRO, WoW, Persona 4, Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad (wait, what?).

Gary Noonan, Animator: Working on a top secret MW mod project.

Liz Beetem, Tortured Artiste: House of the Dead Overkill while blasting the psychobilly outta my ITunes in loving memory of Lux Interior.

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What we’re playing: Going back to old favorites edition

Taking a glance at the emails developers sent me for “What we’re playing” this week, I noticed that many players are going back to some of their old favorites. With oodles of new content coming to Burnout Paradise, I’ve noticed a couple guys are playing that — including myself. There’s also folks playing games they never got around to — like Chrono Trigger and Grim Fandango. Then there are guys going back to play our games: whether it’s Gary’s checking Morrowind mods or other members of the team catching up on Fallout 3 and Oblivion.

And while Tim Lamb didn’t send a submission in, I can only guess that he’s still playing Call of Duty 4.

Here’s the rundown of what we’re playing. Have a great weekend.

Gary Noonan, Animator: Morrowind and a world of plugins. Special shout out to the MGE gang. Fantastic addition to Morrowind.

Ryan Ashford, Programmer: TF2, Grim Fandango (yes!), and potentially something from my collection of unopened games.

Craig “Claff” Lafferty, Producer: Burnout Paradise, World of Warcraft, COD: World at War.

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