Guys, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I dunno if you heard about that, but it was. I realize it’s silly to schedule your declarations of love around a commercial holiday, but I bought my fiancée some roses anyway, just to be safe. I also would like to make some other declarations of love right here on my blog!
I love Etrian Odyssey III in a platonic silly sort of way. I love that it will probably devour another 100 hours of my life, and I love that it is set on the high seas (at least in portions) in which F.O.E.s appear to be sea monsters and rogue schooners. But mostly, I love it for the intriguing new character classes. Like the monk class, which offers this piece of art as an option for a character portrait. This ensures the fact that everyone of a certain age — that is, the age to have been into anime between, say, 1994-96 — will have a warrior on their team named “Ranma.”
Also, I love InDesign, in a less silly way. I’m nearly done with GameSpite Quarterly 4‘s layouts (I just need to finish the deluxe edition section and put together some things like cover art and whatnot). I have accomplished in two days what normally takes two weeks. And with much less frustration and cursing and crashing and slowdown and general awfulness. And also….
Two-page spread layouts! Yeah, I can’t wait to see this one in print.
This is like night and day design-wise from the previous issues, I can’t wait.
Holy crap – I’m in love with the design *and* what seems to be the ‘mechanics of play’ theme.
Well, the whole book doesn’t look like this — readability is the most important consideration, and not all games have much art, so there are maybe 7 or 8 really elaborate splash pages in the book. But, I’ve sprinkler far more images within article text, so there are many fewer pages of solid grey to be found.
With layouts like that, Quarterly 4 is going to be worth every cent of the hardback price. The variety in articles will make for fantastic variety in art, too. Can’t wait!
I must confess I am in a swooning, feverish state of passion in my love for EO3. The issue looks swell, though!
Also, I’d imagine that it must be a bitch to find print-quality images related to the subjects at hand that wouldn’t get in the way of the text. Still, it’s cool to see you having fun with the layout this time, Parish.
This ensures the fact that everyone of a certain age — that is, the age to have been into anime between, say, 1994-96 — will have a warrior on their team named “Ranma.”
Erm. I…
I guess I shouldn’t confess how I plan to get into EO3 solely for this reason, then.
I love EO3 as well and pvc figures I will own of EO in the future.
Oh man, I’m previewed!
That sure looks purty.
Now, in light of this new fancy visual layout and its potential to make the print editions more appealing than reading everything online, are you generally going to be pestering people for more images with future articles? Or current articles for that matter.
… I also have to note the irony that this is in response to having a program better suited to laying TEXT out, but hey.
Wow, Jeremy, Quarterly 4 is shaping up to be jaw-dropping. Can’t wait. Would you care to comment on the differences between deluxe and standard, or is it too soon?
Also, do you see a point where some GameSpite content gets a glorious, glossy, full-color, coffee table book kind of treatment? The game-nerd in me thinks it would be so kickin’ to have this thick, heavy book that the uninitiated would pick up out of curiosity, think it’s some sort of art/photography book at first (okay a bit of stretch there), and then it slowly hits them: “Wait, this book is a devotional to… video games?! This is cool!” I guess it would be kind of like what the cool kids at Starmen.net did with their anthology, but ‘Spitey. Easier said than done, of course.
You could have each writer select one work (their favorite, or something), and call it Gamespite Quarterly: Best of, Year 1.
Of course, we might squander a lot of our fanbase’s good will if we start double dipping ALREADY.
What would be the point of that? All articles end up on the site, and the books will never be out of print. I couldn’t possibly justify shuffling around recycled content for the sake of a quick buck.
And I don’t really foresee us ever moving to color. The prices for print-on-demand color printing are unreasonably high.
Thanks for clarifying the situation with on-demand full-color printing. I wasn’t aware.