Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our first Community Spotlight in quite some time. As of late, we've noticed that our interviewing process seemed to be a bit haphazard in our selection of interviewees, something I plan to fix. From now on the Community Spotlight will be highlighting cool people doing cool stuff on our forums, people and groups that deserve the attention, and will benefit from having their project splashed on our front page.
This time around, we're interviewing Nutduster and GrenadeGorilla8, two members of the illustrious custom map testing group "The Circle of Jerks". Well known around the forum for hosting fun customs, and providing reviews and opinions that don't take themselves to seriously, TCoJ has proved itself a mainstay of our forums and our Customs Lobby. And so, without further ado, here's the largest portion of our gigantic interview.
[l-col]RightSideTheory: So, good morning/mid-day/evening fellows. How are you?[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: I am well. Grape Ape?
Gorilla: Pretty good. No complaints other than ordnance drops[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: I take it you're not a fan of certain aspects of the Halo 4 Sandbox?[/l-col][r-col]Gorilla: You could say that. I like most of it. But I feel it could use a few tweaks.Nutduster: I would agree with that. Jury's still somewhat out for me, but some aspects of it are not to my liking, so far.[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: That's what custom games are for! Speaking of custom games, I hear you guys have a pretty cool group that tests customs. From what I've heard, it's fairly popular, and you guys seem to have it structured fairly well. TCoJ, I believe. Care to give me a small blurb about what you guys are all about?[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: TCOJ is a customs lobby we've been doing for about a year or a little more than that, going back to Reach. We meet one night a week for a few hours and play the maps of whoever signed up that week - then we recap the next day. It originally started with me looking for a customs group to play with, and Gorilla was already running one with a few friends... those guys have since moved away from Halo, as far as I know, but the two of us have kept the lobby going and formalized it. And of course, it's oriented around forge. We're map-testing, not just playing infection and minigames for a few hours... not that there's anything wrong with that.Gorilla: Right. I think our ultimate goal is to help people perfect their maps and become better forgers and map designers.
Nutduster: Yes, exactly. And the word "people" also includes us... we both forge and are always looking to improve via feedback from our other players.
Gorilla: All the while creating an enjoyable customs experience.
Nutduster: And of course, constant circle-jerking.
Gorilla: That too.[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: I have to ask, what inspired the name "The Circle of Jerks"? Was it all the circle-jerking?[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: You'd think so, but that's really a complete coincidence. It's an anagram for... Ah, I'm really bad at anagrams. It's just a bad joke basically. We don't take ourselves too seriously. We like the name, it's funny and juvenile. And lately we've started trolling matchmaking a little bit, so it seems more appropriate than ever.Gorilla: Plus we needed a better name than CGN or Custom games Night lol
Nutduster: In our first official H4 lobby, after the testing was done, we went into BTB and played "hide in the base with all hardlight shields." That's the kind of jerks we are.[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: You call it being a jerk, I call it creatively enjoying matchmaking. So, you've recently had a Halo 4 Lobby, do you have any future plans for TCoJ in Halo 4, or plans extending through the rest of Halo's life span?[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: Unless an ordnance drop lands on and squishes Gorilla's last nerve, we'll be running TCOJ weekly throughout Halo 4's lifespan. That's the plan, anyway. We're both mildly disappointed with the lack of forward progress in Forge, but it's still the most fun thing to do in Halo and we're still making new maps - as are many others - so we all need lobbies like this to test our creations. After Halo 4 - who knows? We'll see. But I've been playing Halo in groups since CE - back then it was a weekly LAN game, on two tiny TVs in a smelly, dirty apartment. I'm a Halo loyalist.Gorilla: Agreed. Our other ultimate goal would be quit our jobs and run TCOJ full time. And eventually world domination.
Nutduster: You'd think it would be hard to take over the world via circle jerks. And you'd be correct.
Gorilla Its a long hard road. But somebody has to do it.[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: Maybe you should change your name to "Circle of Pretty Cool Guys" to support that, it seems to be something really needed when it comes to testing maps and providing feedback. You guys are right on the money with that idea. But, I digress. What made you want to host your group on Forgehub? And going back further than that, what made you join up with Forgehub in the first place?[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: I was a Forge Hub member long before TCOJ, going back to Halo 3. I met Gorilla on the forum - don't know when he joined, but that's where we hooked up (uhhh...) for customs play. Not cosplay. I'm not Sky, dammit. Interview pull quote: Nutduster and GrenadeGorilla hook up for cosplay!Gorilla: Lol. Back in the day when the original group started it was just 3 or 4 of us. And we needed more like minded people. So long story short, I joined FH looking to expand our small group.
Nutduster: Originally I joined by randomly Googling around for a Forge forum - at the time Forge Hub was almost the only one, or at least the only significant one. I joined right after Foundry was released for H3, so basically at the time that map-making for Halo on console began in earnest. It's always been a good community in my opinion.[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: What do you think of how the Customs Lobby sub-forum is run? Would you, as a group, want to make any noticeable changes, or would you want to keep things pretty much the way the are. This question could extend to the whole of the TRC, if you were so inclined.[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: I'm good with the customs lobby. It's one of the most informal and unmoderated sub-forums on FH - don't mistake that for a request that it change even one iota. I like it. Most people who post there are cool, friendly, and just looking for games. Since the threads are paid less attention and the same people post in there a lot, we joke around and give each other a lot of grief. It's a good place to get a game, without a doubt. It was also very cool of the admins (or whoever? the invisible hand of god?) to give us our own shiny red prefix for threads. We didn't request it - someone just noticed we were loyally keeping up the lobby, week in and out, and created the thing. We really appreciate that, and that, in a microcosm, is why we like Forge Hub as our home.Gorilla: Basically this^ lol[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: We try really hard to help the community out when we notice that they're doing cool things, basically that's why you're getting interviewed. You have one of the longest running (coolest) groups on Forgehub, so you deserve a little bit of attention and praise. Hopefully this front page article will net you a few more members or participants!
But, before we depart from this most enjoyable of chats, and make no mistake: this chat (and the precluding conversation about penis size among the TCoJ members) has been very enjoyable, I'm forced to ask you an extra question. Every time we conclude the Spotlight, we ask the interviewee to formulate a question for the next candidate(s). Your question is, sadly: "If you became a walrus, what would you do and why?"[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: Ewwww. Well, obviously I'd swim seductively in the ocean and be mistaken for a mermaid by a deranged, shipwrecked sailor. Then I'd swim with him to my underwater lair and we'd make sweet walrus-on-sailor love until he expired from lack of oxygen. That's the right answer, isn't it? Do I get an A?Gorilla: Lol. I haven't thought of that much. Meaning ever. I don't think I can top that.
Nutduster: You'd of course be the sailor. I should have stated that up front.
Gorilla: ooooh right of course. So that answers it for both of us then right?[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: Yep, that's your answer for the entire site to see. And you get an A+ Nutduster. Ignoring the growing levels of Bromance in the air... what question would you leave for the next interviewee?[/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: Hmmm - gotta be one even more torturous than the one you just gave us... Cory? Step up here. I know you have something awful in mind.Gorilla: I am drawing complete blank. The walrus thing threw me off a bit.
Nutduster: Alright here goes: fuck/marry/kill: Halo 3/Halo Reach/Halo 4? Just because we like starting flame wars in the comments. Jerks, we is.[/r-col]
[l-col]RightSideTheory: Oh dear god, I'll have several buckets of water handy... but, thanks for interviewing with us guys, it was fun and enlightening![/l-col][r-col]Nutduster: Thanks! We enjoyed it[/r-col]
http://www.forgehub.com/forum/customs-lobby/
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