I cried.

I still can’t believe it.

…

awesome.

The line at Davies was about half an hour long, which makes it almost a hundred times longer than it’s ever been. I’ve never been more proud to cast a ballot. Ever. People were out in droves, and everyone was excited and hopeful.

I can’t believe the election’s almost over. I can’t believe how nervous I am.

Doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Basically novelizing a story/setting I’ve been developing for a project at work (with some of my coworkers) – I figure even if this particular story isn’t perfect, spending a lot of time in the characters’ heads will help me think about it better, and communicate it more clearly to the rest of the team.

Fun. Haven’t been blogging a whole lot recently, mostly because 1.) work’s gotten a lot busier, and 2.) Google Shared Items has so much content that almost anything I’d want to talk about, I end up simply sharing there and commenting on it in that interface.

Played a couple excellent games recently – Dead Space was awesome, and Civilization Revolution takes a really complex, PC-style strategy game and makes it accessible to console controls. Just downloaded the Mirror’s Edge demo (amazing) and the 2nd episode of the Penny Arcade game (more of the same, still good).

Whee! It’s been raining like crazy. Windows still leak, but it looks like they’re at least getting (somewhat) better. We shall see.

Don’t have time to write a detailed post, but:

1.) Chris Crawford on Game Design: Not recommended, unless you’re a real game design wonk, and even then, only the first half of the book is really all that useful. The rest, a summary of Crawford’s experiences on the various games he’s developed, is old enough that it’s actually mostly obsolete. His writing style will also put off people who don’t take well to arrogance. Didn’t bother me all that much, but it actually does make some of his anecdotes less useful, because it’s really hard to determine whether it’s Crawford’s brain or his ego talking. I enjoyed the first half, but I *am* a game design wonk. So there.

2.) The Design of Everyday Things, by Robert Norman: Excellent, and highly recommended if you’re in any field of design, or have any influence on anything design-related. Hell, if you do anything with systems of any sort, or have users that interact with your work, it’s highly recommended reading. Many things that “feel” obvious are codified clearly in this book, and it gives you a more structured way to talk about what makes good design good, and bad design bad.

Next up, The Stuff of Thought, by Steven Pinker.

The last few months at work have sucked. Full stop. That’s why I interviewed at Sega, that’s why I was looking elsewhere. I was bored, I was underutilized, and I wasn’t doing what I do well. I wasn’t learning, I wasn’t producing stuff, and I wasn’t challenged. So, when I was promoted, that burden shifted to me. If I’m bored now, it’s my fault. If I’m unchallenged and underutilized, I’m not doing enough.

There are two major components to my job, now:

1. Help the designers continue to grow: This basically amounts to a combination of continuing education, and getting people to interact more. It means not being buried in your own project, but staying aware of everything that’s going on at the company. It’s reading, playing, and thinking about those things critically. It seems incredibly strange to me that you could have a game designer who isn’t a voracious consumer of information, who isn’t always up to date on the latest technology and design, but strangely, most people seem to just put their head down, work on whatever it is they’re working on, and only peek up to play a few games here and there. A lot of the designers also *only* game as a hobby. I’ll be exposing them to a variety of other things, from getting artists at the company to help them learn to draw, to getting as many of them as possible to participate in things like NaNoWriMo.
2. Maintain a high standard of quality across all projects: While I’m pretty comfortable with the first part, just because I have a pretty useful and actionable philosophy when it comes to design, and what kinds of experience you should have to be a good designer, this was a little more challenging. My position now exists both in and out of the project hierarchy. On one hand, I’m working on a single project. On the other hand, I have to know what’s going on on all the projects, and ensure that from a design perspective, we’re actively addressing the major problems these games face. That means that essentially on one project, I’m a generic designer, on all projects I *also* work at a level higher than the leads. It’s quite strange, and I thought it would be really problematic.

Fortunately, it isn’t. Today’s the first day that some of the things I’d set in motion have come together, and they’re working out well so far. My worries about the hierarchy have proven to be largely irrelevant. People have accepted me in this role pretty quickly, and there don’t seem to be any problems with that. I can give input, and it’s taken well. More, it’s acted on when action is necessary. So far.

Did the first wave of one-on-ones with the individual designers, and again, things went well. I was a little worried that things would end up running short – that we wouldn’t have enough to discuss for the 15 minutes/per designer I’d scheduled. HA. 60 minutes of scheduled one-on-ones went to three-and-a-half hours. But all good discussions, lots of good information, and some things that I could do to actively have a positive impact really quickly.

One thing is a largely structural change to how designers interact with the CEO/Creative Director. It’s a pretty big deal – peoples’ relationship to him has been one of the most difficult aspects of how the company works, but for a couple months earlier in the year, the project I was on had it, IMO, licked. I’m hoping to bring that structure back, apply it to all the projects, and get all the designers on the same page, so that we develop a structure that keeps interference to a minimum, while still allowing the CD to have the proper, required input for the various projects.

It’s gonna be a bit of a political nightmare, and it’s going to require everyone to stick their necks out a little, but the potential upside is SO big that I think it’ll be trivial to get everyone on board. I know almost everyone’s already on board, anyway.

So, it’s good. The role feels right for me. It’s the kind of thing I can do well, have a strong impact at the company. I’m still hands-on, designing the details, implementing parts of those designs myself, but also working with people to solve the company’s bigger problems, for the first time with authority from above as well as below. Here’s to change.

Picked up a bunch of game design-relevant books, in order to find some good reference material for the design department. Managed to convince the company to pick up copies of Understanding Comics for everyone, since it’s a book I think every designer should have their own personal copy of. Got a bunch of books for myself, and I figure once I get through them, I’ll either have someone on the team (whoever needs the information the most) read it, and summarize it for the rest of the team, or if they’re as good as Understanding Comics, get the book for the individual designers.

Right now, I’m about halfway through Chris Crawford on Game Design, which is alright, but in the sort of second tier. While Crawford is a respected figure in the industry, and he has a lot of good insights, the book, and his experience, is somewhat out of date. His examples stop in 1990 or thereabouts – almost 20 years ago at this point. While the fundamentals of design haven’t changed all that much, the fact that half the book is stories about him developing his games makes them feel less relevant than they should.

The good part is that the fundamentals are still quite good. He talks a lot about designing the *game* first – not designing to technology, but ensuring that the core mechanics are the most important thing. Unfortunately, though he goes into some detail when discussing the pitfalls of his development work on certain games, without the game itself, it can be hard to understand how this stuff presented itself.

Another problem is that Crawford’s got a bit of an ego. That’s fine – he’s an industry luminary. But it also makes it hard to gauge how realistic he’s being about certain aspects of his work. Whether it’s intended to be ironic, or he thinks he’s just being honest, I can’t really tell – but he pats himself on the back a *lot*, and it makes me wonder (not having played the original games (though I do remember seeing Balance of Power & Guns & Butter on the shelf at the Egghead Software I used to hang out at as a kid (me = nerd))) whether he’s able to assess his own work properly.

There are indications that he can – he’s quite critical at times. But again, the phrasing makes it difficult to tell, and that’s a problem.

Next up is The Design of Everyday Things, which I’m enjoying quite a bit, though I’m not very far in. Like Understanding Comics, it’s one of those books that isn’t at all about game design, but any game designer will instantly recognize that it TOTALLY IS. I’ll need to get quite a bit further to say whether it remains so, but the core precepts are obviously good, and the examples re: control mapping on objects is so relevant to one of the current issues I’m dealing with at work that it boggles the mind. 🙂

And on a slightly related note, I picked up (buy 2 get 1 sale), Jeanne D’Arc (PSP), Endless Ocean (Wii) and Conan (360). So far only played Conan. It’s a shameless God of War ripoff – the combat’s reasonably satisfying (though nowhere NEAR as polished/visceral as GoW’s), but the storytelling varies between sloppy and horrible, and the game itself is really rather unpolished. Still, it’s relatively entertaining, and hews more toward the book/Busiek comic version, rather than the Schwarzenegger movie version, which I’m glad for.

Still, the recent comics had Conan as a relatively noble soul in a rough-and-tumble world – his nobility was the thing that was surprising. In this, he’s mostly just a brute – I’m hoping that as the game goes on, we’ll see more of the depth of the character, cause it’d be a shame for him to remain this shallow throughout. Still, it’s a Nihilistic game, which doesn’t give me a lot of hope. Their last game (Marvel Nemesis) was one of the worst games of the last generation. This is a huge step up, but it’s still a long ways from great.

Wow. So we’ve had the Ion Drum Rocker kit for RB2 for a couple days now, and it’s great. totally worth it. Had a whole mess of people over for a Rock Band-a-thon tonight, and it was a blast. Had a drum-off with Sylvain, which was really fun – managed to edge him out on Everlong on expert (we were playing songs we knew we had no hope of doing all that well on) by 100 points (out of 45,000).

Had a pretty odd cross-section of people over. High school friends, work friends, college friends… the nice thing was that everyone hung out well together. Big fun. Can’t wait for the next shindig. 🙂

So… about a month ago, I interviewed for a Creative Director position at Sega. The job looked like a really good match for my skills – I’d basically be auditing third-party designs, and working with those third parties to ensure that their games were up to a really high standard of quality.

The interview went well, and a couple weeks later, I got an offer. The offer was quite a bit under what I’d asked for, salary-wise, and the position title was “Associate Creative Director.” I asked them whether it was a different position than the one I interviewed for, and they said no – it was a communication error, and the position was always one for an Associate. Also meant the bonus structure was different, and the total yearly salary was substantially lower, as a result. Still, the experience woul be good, and so I thought I’d take the offer.

Before accepting, though, I thought I’d tell Julian (the CEO at Factor 5). I figured I’d had things go reasonably well here, and the main problem was that I felt really underutilized. Also, in the last several months, there had been quite a number of changes for the better at the company, so I figured at least out of courtesy, I’d ask if they wanted to keep me around. Figured I’d probably just go for the Sega job regardless, ’cause I couldn’t think of anything that would keep me at F5.

Still, a few days later, they came back with a great offer. I’d be essentially managing the entire design department, but also working on all the projects at F5 simultaneously. There hadn’t been a previous position that did this. The entire design staff had been pushing for a “Design Manager,” that would do the managerial aspect of the role – ensuring the Design Team’s needs were being met, and there was someone to basically act to push back against the executive staff when they made really weird requests.

The salary was a substantial improvement over my current pay, and more, I’d be busy with interesting work, working with talented people who had a problem that I thought I could work to address. Still, the Sega opportunity would lead to more exposure – I’d be working with a number of really great companies, I’d get a lot of exposure to a variety of development methodologies, and work with some of the biggest names in the industry.

The F5 job, on the other hand, was more hands-on, working “in the trenches,” instead of directing from a distance. There’s definitely something appealing to me about that – keeps me working with “real” stuff, and continuing to learn from hands-on experience. It also lets me help people who have a specific problem – a lot of talented individuals who lack cohesion and involved direction.

In the end, I was talking with friends about it, talked to Ei-Nyung about it, spent a lot of time bouncing the ideas around in my head… and in the end, Alex Hutchinson gave the most salient piece of advice – you don’t care about the title or the money – find the best game, work on that.

One of the games that F5 has in the pipe is the concept that I busted ass on at the beginning of the year. I’m *extremely* proud of it, I think it’ll be an extraordinary game, and since it’s a concept that I basically pushed from the start, I really want to see it through to the end.

So, that was it. I stayed at F5 and took the promotion. Was announced today to the design team, and will be announced tomorrow to the rest of the company. The official position is, “Principal Designer.” Wacky. Ei-Nyung suggested (unfortunately too late), “Designer-at-Large,” which would have been awesome.

What you should be doing is campaigning like you’re campaigning for *yourself*. Don’t let your handlers dictate your every move, and come up with some “safe” strategy that will appeal to everyone.

You know what people want? They want you to go out there and kick the living shit out of McCain and his cronies. They want you to go and verbally tear them a new asshole because they’ve fucked the country for the last eight years and intend to do so as long as they can.

We need you to get out there and fight like you mean it. Fight like *YOU* would fight. With a fire in your belly like when Kerry gave his most recent speech at the DNC – a lively, impassioned, sincere speech – charismatic and full of intensity, and not like the shitty monotonous safe garbage he spewed in 2004. Give us Barack, as charming and engaging as Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, or on Saturday Night Life in 2003, and not the droning, robotic, cardboard cutout from 2000.

Your “people” will tell you it’s risky, that you’ll drive people away, blah blah blah. Palin works because she gets the idiots fired up about idiotic bullshit. Eventually, yeah, she’ll hoist herself on her own petard, but it’s clear that she can lie to your face and the media won’t do shit about it.

YOU do shit about it. YOU get in her face. YOU take the fight to their doorstep, into their house, and knock them the fuck out. Do it on your terms, not theirs, and FUCK the people who are telling you to play it safe and slow.”

The last post on Republicans got me to thinking… what’s the point of having people like that around? I mean, evolutionarily speaking. I’m not talking about “social conservatives” – I get why that disposition would be helpful in the long run. I’m talking about the Bush-era conservatives. McCain supporters. The kinds of people who saw Palin’s speech and thought of it as a substantial discussion of policy, and the kind of thing that makes you a qualified leader.

The kinds of people who really need their Republican “daddies” to save them from the horrors of the world. The kinds of people who hear the Republicans talk about “small town values” and the “death tax” and don’t realize that they’re voting for policies that work explicitly *against* them.

Not people who are Conservative in any good sense, but the people who cheer bullies. The Starscreams of the world. What’s the point in having them around?

And it got me to thinking – maybe it’s just that they piss off the people who can actually *make* change. They get them so riled up that they have to eventually finally get off their lazy butts and do something.

I dunno. Frankly, that’s all I can think of. Starscream bitched and whined at Megatron whenever he sat back and rested on his laurels. Having the pressure of some total buffoon trying to seize power from you can be a good motivating force to get you to do something substantial to shut them the fuck up. But that still doesn’t seem right.

I just don’t know why they exist. Anyone have any ideas?