SupComming it up with Chris Taylor
I just had the pleasure of playing two 2v2 ladder ranked games with Chris Taylor, designer of such games as Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege, and of course Supreme Commander, as my partner. We won the first game and lost the second game, both of which were on Open Palms. It’s been a loooong time since Chris was last able to play, and it shows. I think he was having Total Annihilation flashbacks or something … he built a factory as the first item in his build order!
In the first game, Chris was taken out pretty early by tactical missiles launched from an advanced firebase. I had rushed the other opponent with my commander, overcharging his factories and some of his power generators. Then I walked to the edge of his crescent base, built a few land factories, and used those to pump out a large enough swarm to overwhelm and defeat him. Meanwhile, I controlled most of the mass deposits on the map, teched up, and started pumping out siege bots.
The second opponent, the one who took down Chris, was actually a bit of a challenge to take out. He had a lot of T2 point defenses, so it took several waves of siege bots to whittle him down, but the end really was inevitable. It’s too bad chat isn’t included in replays, because these two guys were really poor sports. They repeatedly called Chris a noob after they killed him (not realizing who he was, obviously), and the remaining opponent was even calling me a noob as my siege assault bots washed across his base like a tsunami on Tuvalu! I don’t think it makes sense to call the player who’s slaughtering you a “noob”, but then again, it also doesn’t make much sense to bother correcting someone who is calling the player that’s currently slaughtering them a noob.
The second match was a much better showing. Our opponents, Antisocial and Pokie, were very gracious, and they at least knew who Chris was. Of course, that didn’t extend to giving us any handicaps (this is competitive play, you know), and they wiped the floor with us more quickly than a janitor in Taco Bell does with rat urine. I got way too aggressive with my commander while not having enough air support, and I ended up being taken out by tech 1 gunships. Chris was taken out shortly thereafter.
All in all, it was great fun playing with Chris, and I hope I have the opportunity to do it again (assuming he practices, of course :-P). He remarked afterwards that, despite working on making the game for three years, he really hasn’t actually had much of a chance to play it, being busy as he is with so many other things. I said that being the designer of a game is utterly worthless unless you wantonly abuse that position. So don’t be surprised if, the next time you play against Chris Taylor, his 100,000 hit point commander teleports into your base at the beginning of the game and starts firing off TA-style D-gun blasts in all directions. Because that’s totally how Chris Taylor’s commander should roll.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:35 am
haha nice! Yeah, I messeged him after the game giving him thanks and whatnot. I think its great he was able to play, both that he has the free time and he is willing to spend a few minutes with the fans. I wish I could have dropped in to help defend Chris for the first game, I am not a big fan of poor sports. You got him in the end though, so it was nice.
April 7th, 2007 at 6:00 am
That sounded like fun. You’ll have to drill him a bit on build orders for next time. :)
April 7th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I would be honored to fall to a teleport-the-100,000-hp-commander-in-the-middle-of-my-base attack from Chris Taylor.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:04 am
At least in the replay’s we have their names. Forever will they be known as the idiots that called the guy who created the game they think they are so ‘l33t’ at a noob. Poor sportsmanship should not be rewarded, especially over the internet.