So… I was really nervous today there’d be massive layoffs, and there weren’t. But there was essentially worse news – that if deals aren’t signed by the 15th, the whole company dissolves. As a result, basically, they said people should start looking for new work. The end result, while honest and forthright, and renewed my respect for Julian, had the effect of basically everyong going into, “Well, it’s over,” mode. Which is probably the right thing to happen, but it’s depressing all the same…

Guess it’s time to start looking. One interesting possibility is that a handful of other laid off workers, if it comes to that, might scramble to build a quick XBLA game. Which could be pretty awesome, though… who knows. It’s just a bit depressing.

A couple things have contributed to the lack of recent blog posts. For one, Google Reader has made almost any, “Hey, have you seen this?” posts irrelevant, and for two, nothing much has really been going on.

I’ve been trying to do NaNoWriMo this year, and for a second year in a row, I don’t think I’m going to finish. I got to about 17K words so far, and I hope to hit 25K by the end of the weekend, but that feels… unlikely at this point. Part of it was that in the first week of November, I had a sudden, unexpected writing project at work which took up a lot of mental space, and part of it is that I think I made a mistake in starting with a story, and not with a character. I definitely write best when I think I have a general idea of who the character is, and I stick them in a variety of odd situations.

Because this particular thing, a novelization of a pitch concept from work, started with a story arc, I thought by exploring different segments of the arc, I could get a better idea for who the character is. Apparently, my brain doesn’t really work that way. It also may be that the character/setting just isn’t hitting the right notes, and inspiration isn’t really strikiing. Who knows?

In other news, I haven’t gotten paid since I got paid late at the beginning of November. Seems the company’s simply not bringing in money right now, and the bank account’s run dry. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next month or two. Half of me is hoping I get laid off, can collect unemployment, and take a stab at writing a game pitch, or help out a friend who’s doing some indie game development. The other half of me is sort of frightened at the prospect of not having a job in this economy, but oh, well. I dunno. It’s hard to say, honestly. I like the job, overall, but the things about it that are frustrating are particularly frustrating because a.) it doesn’t feel like I can change them, no matter how hard I work, and b.) I feel like maybe I’m starting to learn some bad habits as a result.

Been playing a fistful of great games – Mirror’s Edge is audacious and new, and Gears of War 2 is about as insane a blockbuster-style game as you could imagine. Hard to say what’s up next – C&C3: Red Alert, Fable 2, Far Cry 2, Endwar, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway? Who knows.

Tomorrow, we go to babysit for D for the first time. Maybe I’ll get some writing in then.

Gears of War 2: Horde mode = big fun. Can’t wait for Left 4 Dead. Campaign is longer, graphics are much more impressive, and all in all, exactly what I wanted from Gears 2. Hopefully the multiplayer will have legs, but currently, the matchmaking system is SLOW. 360 RROD’d on Friday, so I borrowed a console from work over the weekend. Still, means I’ll be console-less for Mirror’s Edge, which comes out Tuesday. *sigh*

Belgian Liege Waffles with Maple & Bacon: I made Liege waffles a while back, with sugar blobs that would melt and caramelize in the waffle itself. I thought, “Man, these would make awesome bacon waffles,” and made some maple candy from syrup last night, busted it up this morning, cooked up 10 strips of bacon, and made the yeast dough. All told, the process was about an hour and some (plus rising time for the dough), but the end results were pretty awesome. The bacon was subtle, the syrup was not, but the combination was pretty excellent. Froze the leftovers for breakfast during the week. They’ll probably make TERRIBLE toaster waffles, though, ’cause the syrup will leak out and get all over everything. TOTALLY worth it. 😀

Anti-Prop-8 rally in Sacramento: We drove up to the protest in Sac, and it was worthwhile, and a good time. Lots of people, everyone really positive and hopeful despite a shitty situation, and while I dunno what sort of effect, if any, it’d have (I suspect basically none), it felt good to be out there with a lot of other people who wanted justice, freedom, and equality. Couldn’t be a bad crowd.

That said, the organization was sort of lame – schedule said 1-4. There were basically 3 hours of mostly unintelligible speeches, and their PA system was garbage. Some good speakers, when you could hear ’em.

We ended up getting lunch, and *almost* missed the actual march. Still, a great way to spend a day, and one I’ll remember for a long time.

NaNoWriMo: Good grief, I’m behind. Between the elections last week, and a surprise ton of writing work for work, I’ve only managed about 7,800 words so far. That’s where I was on day TWO the last time I did this successfully. Still, I’m not giving up. I finished the writing work for work last Friday, and since the 360 died, I’ll have more time in the evenings. I didn’t get a whole lot written this weekend (1K), but I was pretty happy with it, so I suppose that’s alright. Gotta remember to basically write whatever I’m interested in at the time, rather than trying to maintain any sort of continuity – that method worked the first two times, but it was more out of luck than anything else.

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. 🙂