Mack McPaddywagon

I am a recording engineer by day and a gamer by night.  Actually, I'm often a recording engineer by night as well.  And come to think of it, I'm sometimes a gamer by day.

Let me start over:

I work as a recording engineer and, despite how angry they can make me, I love video games.  Though I've been mostly a PC gamer since about the end of DOS/beginning of Windows 3.1, I am no stranger to other platforms.  The ones I can remember having owned are (in somewhat chronological order):

  • Atari 2600
  • NES
  • Super NES
  • Game Boy
  • Sega Genesis
  • Game Gear
  • PC
  • Nintendo 64
  • Game Cube
  • Game Boy Advance
  • XBox 360

If forced to choose, I'd say that FPS titles are my bread 'n butter, with RTS as a close second.  I can't stand playing an FPS on a console (unless it's GoldenEye of course), so my 360 is relegated to 3rd person games.  Unlike Squiddy and Scrimshaw, I generally do not have the patience for RPGs and am very proud to say I've never played an MMO.  Not that there's anything wrong with that...

"No matter how corrupt, greedy and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful." - Kurt Vonnegut


Posts by Mack McPaddywagon

They don’t make bears (or games) like they used to

August 25, 2010 - 11:04 am

Posted in General Rant | 1 comment

I haven’t really been on top of this whole “being an angry blogger” thing recently, and for that I apologize.  I’m sure there will be plenty to piss me off and relight that angry creative candle as soon as I start looking for it.  It’s not as unhealthy as it sounds, I promise… For now, [...]

Are games “too hard, too long and too full of stuff”?

May 23, 2010 - 4:38 pm

Posted in General Rant | No comments

Now that that’s out of the way… The answer is: no.  But, by golly, I’m getting ahead of myself again. The question in question was posed in a post on Kotaku by John Davison of GamePro (formerly of What They Play and 1UP).  In this post, Davison says the crew at GamePro have been speaking [...]

EA’s Project Ten Dollar marches on

May 11, 2010 - 2:37 pm

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Posted in News, Sales, Sports | 1 comment

I expect this is what Project Ten Dollar’s next phase will look like. “Gimme the cassshhh!” Project Ten Dollar, for those of you who don’t know, is the name of EA’s master plan to take more of your money.  At its inception, the basic premise was this: if you buy a game new, you get [...]

Roger Ebert: “Video games can never be art.”

April 22, 2010 - 1:10 pm

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Posted in General Rant | No comments

The ultimate internet troll? In case you missed it, Roger Ebert proclaimed recently, and not for the first time, that “video games can never be art.”  Never.  Not at any point in the entire course of human history will our favorite interactive medium achieve such a “lofty” status in the eyes of the man who [...]

British Government Right Keen on Game Industry

April 20, 2010 - 2:50 pm

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Posted in General Rant, News | No comments

To any readers interested in the audio bidness, I recommend looking into a subscription to Audio Media.  Not only do I recommend this because it’s free (it was when I first subscribed, at least), but it provides some good reads on a wide variety of audio topics, including music recording, post production, broadcast and, on [...]

I Just Don’t Know What to Think Anymore, EA

March 22, 2010 - 2:34 pm

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Posted in General Rant | No comments

Dear EA, I’ve been over this before: in the past two decades or so, you’ve confused the crap out of me.  I’ve loved you, I’ve hated you, I’ve nothinged you.  Now, just as you’re starting to move pretty solidly back into gamers’ collective good graces, you get fast and furious with some pretty serious mixed [...]

Bad Company 2 continues its not-so-covert war against Modern Warfare 2 with map pack announcement

March 16, 2010 - 5:35 pm

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Posted in News | 2 comments

DICE have taken every opportunity to capitalize on the mistakes made by Activision and Infinity Ward with regard to Modern Warfare 2.  From their timely announcement that Bad Company 2 would be using dedicated servers right down to the language on the game’s info page (emphasis mine): All of [Bad Company 2's] features combine to [...]

Where Are My Classic Space Flight Sims?

March 10, 2010 - 7:04 pm

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Posted in Sim | 3 comments

Pewpewpew! In the most recent issue of PC Gamer, there was a short preview of an upcoming space flight sim called Naumachia.  The gist of the developers’ introduction to their game was that they felt space flight sims have become a little too heavy on the RPG elements (like EVE Online), and as a result [...]

Activision vs. Infinity Ward and the Future of Call of Duty

March 3, 2010 - 4:56 pm

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Posted in News | No comments

Yesterday, it was reported that Infinity Ward’s CEO and CTO (Vince Zampella and Jason West, respectively) left the company under fairly unclear circumstances.  All we knew was the following: Activision’s human resources department had concluded an investigation into claims of “breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward” and that the [...]

Trouble In Paradise: Activision Ousts At Least One Infinity Ward Boss, Tim Schafer Still Awesome [UPDATED]

March 2, 2010 - 11:16 am

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Posted in News | 1 comment

Rumors are flying about some serious drama going down between Activision and prized developer Infinity Ward. Beginning with a post from G4′s news outlet The Feed, it appeared as though nobody at Infinity Ward had seen or heard from studio heads Vince Zampella (CEO) and Jason West (CTO) since a meeting with Activision that took [...]

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