…in the BIO section.

someone on the net was nice enough to send this cool historical info along:

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The “machina” of ancient greek drama was an actual machine used to lower performers onto the performance space; most notably in the plays of Euripides. “Deus ex machina” was, originally, a reference to an actual mechanical artifact, not merely a dramaturgical mechanism as you suggest in the interview. It is only through time that the phrase has come to mean “a contrived ending.” You may verify this information through any reputable contemporary source book on theatre history.

I hope you find the above information amusing. And I look forward to the release of your game.

Sincerely,

Jim

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thanks, jim!

GameGirlz is an interesting gamer news web site. they just posted a new Deus Ex interview. Cassandra, a writer for GG, actually asked some fresh questions too. so head on down to the GG spot if you have time.

meanwhile, here at the austion ION office, we are still prepping for E3. as i’ve said before, we’ll be showing off missions 01 & 02 (complete)–so right now we’re fixing bugs and polishing things related to those missions.

also a lot of work is being done on the mission docs for all the other missions. months ago each designer planned his missions out in detail, developing NPC’s, instances of skill use, goals, etc. but as is always the case after some time we began to develop a much better grip on exactly how we’re going to implement things. mostly thanks to the fact that we crunched really hard to get missions 01 & 02 done. in doing that, we learned a lot. basically, we’re busy as always, but we can now see the light at the end of the chunnel.

(hmmm…now *there’s* an idea: chunnel assault mission…)

my enemy design article is up at gamasutra.

“karma police, arrest this man, he talks in math…”

think thom yorke was talking about a programmer when he wrote that song? even if he wasn’t, it works…

the deus ex team is burning the midnight oil tonight. chris is assembling all the pieces we’ve all worked on so much lately, cutting a fairly polished alpha version cd to send out. i’ve never worked on something so solid at alpha. we have a lot of work to do, obviously, since it’s just an alpha. but things are looking good.

now “fake plastic trees” is playing as i drop a few last trees on the map. thank god for mp3’s.