Whatup!
My name is Travis Williams and I am the Senior Producer for PAIN for the PlayStation Network. It’s been a while since I last posted on the Official PlayStation blog. Every time I have it’s been a great experience. You all have shown me “da-love” so I wanted to make sure that when there was something cool to share with you that I would be back. I want to tell you what we’ve been doing with PAIN and why you should pay attention to us in the months to come.
Before I continue let me say welcome to the new PAIN users that have come via the Metal Gear Solid PlayStation 3 bundle. We’re happy to have you. Between your covert world saving missions you might want to take some time to pass a little gas. I won’t tell.
Snake SNAKE SNAAAAAAAAAAAKE!
Ahem…. Where was I? Oh yeah….
Tomorrow, the 19th of June we are releasing our next free update to PAIN. This will be a two-week process where each week we release new features and content to PAIN. This is a two-week process because we are perfecting our content delivery process. We have always had this goal with PAIN that we should be able to move faster with our content delivery than most games. If you are a normal PAIN blog reader you might laugh at that comment. They have been waiting for months for us to pick up the pace. Some of them were wondering where I’ve been lately.
While we are not completely done with this exercise I believe we have come a long way in making sure that the PAIN content delivery process is ironed out. In the coming months you will see new modes, characters, environments, and content options that everyone has been asking (or demanding) since we released in November (in the US). The great part about all of our future work is that it is worldwide. If I knew it was going to be this hard I would have shut my face before making such bold comments.
Oh well.. at least I am finally makin good right? Right?!
So what’s in the 6-19 update then? Here you go…
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Jukebox Play – Now you can play your own tunes inside of PAIN. If you have some time go back to my previous blog posts and you will see where you users took us to task about including this option. So it’s DONE.
New Downtown Layouts – We have new configurations for downtown. Demolition and Block Party. Go to the trophy room after your update and you will see how to unlock these areas. You can also play these areas in HORSE now too.
Multiple Character Selection – Many of our players wanted to play two player games with different characters. So there you go.
Logo Skip – Now you don’t have to wait for the logo sequence to get right to the game.
The next PAIN update will happen a week later… This will include…
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Nigel – A nod goes out to Sony Europe for helping us make a hoodlum the right way. Nigel will be available for download.
Platinum Club – If you are awesome at PAIN and earned all your Platinum medals then you will get brand new layouts for Spank The Monkey, Mime Toss and Fun with Explosives. You even have an exclusive leader board. Now that’s elite. If you are in the Platinum Club trust me… you have skillz.
That’s all for now. The PAIN content train is gaining speed. I’ll be back next month to tell you all about our brand new “Abusement” Park and how we are still as ridiculous as we were when we made Downtown.
I really should have more supervision… *Evil Laugh*
Peace
Thanks Travis, that’s reassuring to say the least. I was so worried my system was gone. Worst part about it I keep hearing stories about how if you send in the launch ps3’s they’ll send you back a 40gb without any backwards compat or an 80 with limited backwards compat.
Anyways, I’ve been playing the game with the jukebox and finally started getting my trophies back on the newly formatted drive. Game is awesome and keep at all your hard work for us ps3 owners. We need games like this and Pixel Junk, HVB and novastrike to keep the PSN viable and different from the other services out there.
Players who don’t enjoy PAIN clearly have no stress to vent. Looking forward to new ways to project damage onto those I curse in real life.
Travis, thanks for the update. Still no sign of the update over here in the UK.
I’m struggling to get my head around the time differences from when you posted that comment, and when you were referring to!
So when you said “it should be OK in the morning London time”, do you mean Friday morning UK time, or Saturday morning UK time?
(my head hurts)
If it helps, it’s 13:44 on Friday as I type this!
@Kevling: It should be any minute now. I just got off the phone with SCEE.
ok so it’s 2:50pm London Time and still no update, any more news.
ignore last one as did not realise last post from travis was US Time so it looks like I a bit impatient. Sorry Travis
woo hoo just checked it again and the update is here. Thanks for all the hard work solving the problem.
Before everyone starts posting the UI part of the update is coming through now so give it a while before you start posting about sign off issues. You will be updated again shortly.
Okay everyone. Ops has deployed UI update so everyone should be fine now!
Cool. I’ll try again this afternoon.
Thanks for the reply Travis!
Hey Travis, Don’t know if your still reading this, but I have to thank you and the Pain team for making this a title that I am playing again! The update fixed pretty much all my problems!!!! Awesome!
Regarding High Velocity Bowling, (I know it’s not your area), I’m not trying to hurry them, I just want to make a suggestion.
Is there any chance that they could try and get the rights to put in those two bowlers from the movie Kingpin? If you don’t know who I’m talking about, they were Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray) & Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson).
It might not be that hard to secure the rights either, it’s an old movie, not a franchise and the studio would be glad to have the films profile raised and promoted for dvd sales.
I know this is not your business, but I have no-way to contact their team. I just want to pass on a suggestion which all bowling fans (who’ve seen it) would kill for.
Pllllleaaaassseeee pass it on. If they’ve ever heard the suggestion before that would be cool to know.
Meanwhile, while I wait for more content from them, I’ll keep going with PAIN!
@CraigIversen: Yes, I am. And you are welcome. I already passed the info over to the producer about the fact that people are waiting for them to make some noise. Like I said that team isn’t large but they do great work. I am sure you will hear from them soon.
travis , i’m from uk i just downloaded the patch when i go to the juke box , then i selected one song to play , the game will freeze and i’m forced to restart my ps3:S
any solution?
This might be one of two things….
1. You are not playing a MP3. (We only support MP3 currently)
2. You are playing a variable bit rate MP3 which we don’t support either.
The update is great! Thank you so much for adding the jukebox! It’s a wonderful feature that more developers should look into implementing!
Thank you for responding to my question. Your an absolute champ for that. You are obviously a very busy man, but I’m sure everyone here appreciates the time you have for the users, not many people find that time. Your number one in my books!
Take care dude.
I love the new layouts to the maps/city/level. It’s so strange to look at it from these angles. Feels like a new level all together sometimes.
Great update and maybe for the next one you should think about a night filter for this level or like an evening one where the sun is kind of going down a bit, orange kind of skyline. That’d be sharp as a thumb tac.
Anyways, you’ll be happy to know we spent more time playing this than Mgs online “ha”
P.S. What’s the deal with the Ufo’s in all the windows and such? Cool stuff.
Good update. I’ve been bumping my music and busting bones.
Request which I’m sure others have touched up:
Ability to save replays AND upload replays to Youtube. ;)
Thanks again!
@Gamesblow: We will not be spending more time with the Downtown Level art wise. We as a team have moved on. We could be there forever. The next area in PAIN will soon be revealed. I think you will love it. It has a lot more moving parts.
What UFO? Hmmmm
@Clinton: That’s a good idea. We should do that *grin*
when are we going to get the amusement park level? there is a billboard with the ad on it in the game