So, I’m going to the Game Developers Conference this year for two days. Today was the first. I went to a talk by Ken Levine, creative director of Bioshock, called “Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story.” It was a great talk – insightful, engaging, and often funny. More, he vindicated a lot of my positions on story in the game I’m currently working on. I wish the project lead had been there, but it’s nice to know that I can now back up a lot of my arguments with the opinions of one of gaming’s most respected writers.

I also went to the Microsoft Keynote, which was interesting for only two reasons:

1. The XNA Creators Club can now publish to Live Arcade. This is astonishing news, honestly, and makes a sort of hobby game development project much more likely to actually get into the hands of players. I’m really quite excited about this.
2. Gears of War 2 was officially announced.

Point 2 is really a foregone conclusion, but the first game was fun, so hooray for more of (roughly) the same. After that, I went to a talk by Rob Pardo, who is one of the most influential and important people in the industry – basically the guy who’s running the show from a design side for World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2. The talk was about Blizzard’s approach to designing multiplayer games, and while interesting, it was a little on the dry side.

After that, I went to lunch, where I met a couple MIT alum developers, including Steve Meretzky, who wrote the classic text adventure Planetfall, one of the first games that people regularly say moved them to tears. After lunch, I went to what I thought would be an interesting talk – Marc Laidlaw, the lead writer on Half Life 2, Steve Meretzky, and Ken Rolston, the lead writer on Oblivion, as well as some guy from Midway. The talk was “Stories Best Played,” and given that panel’s credentials, should have been a mindblowing roundtable about creating stories that are ideally suited to the medium. Instead, it was a roundtable talking about games with great stories – Loom, Planescape Torment, Thief, The Fool’s Errand, Ico, Bioshock, Phoenix Wright, and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

This talk ended up basically being the people talking about why they picked a particular game, and then the other people saying that they liked it or didn’t. It was surprising, crushingly uninteresting. Given that I’d just been talking to Steve Meretzky, and found him quite engaging and funny, the talk was a complete letdown – particularly with Laidlaw and Rolston present as well (though Ken Rolston is pretty damned funny).

After that, I had a splitting headache, turned in my pass at my company’s booth so someone could use it tomorrow to attend talks, and then boogied on out of there.

When I came home, the kitchen had been drywalled, which totally blows my mind. Pics will be posted soonish – aside from the teardown, this is the first time it’s actually looked… different.

Microwave: GE Cafe microwave – $349

This matches the range that we got – it’s about $100 more than we were looking to spend, but has some nice features, and looks great. We got it at the Sears Outlet, for about 50% of retail.

Dishwasher: Jenn-Air JDB1100AWS – $594

We spent a good deal of time trying to find a dishwasher that was better than our old one. The cheapest stainless steel dishwashers were roughly $330. Most of the really cheap ones were essentially our old dishwasher with a new front. That was a really… unsatisfying option.

Unfortunately, keeping our old appliances wasn’t an option (if I haven’t already written about that, it’s enough fodder for another post), so we had to find something new. This was a floor model from Fry’s, which we actually managed to negotiate the price down from the stated floor model price. This was, far and away, the cheapest stainless from/hidden control model we’d seen – the next closest was more than a hundred dollars more expensive. With a stainless “tub” on the interior, $150 more.

Refrigerator: Samsung RF265AASH – $1350

This was also bought at Fry’s – a return due to the customer not anticipating the proper size. Cosmetically, it’s more or less perfect, and has never been used. We got it for $150 cheaper than its normal price, which was nice. We’d looked for a good while for a French door fridge, and the next closest option was a Kenmore from the Sears Outlet for $1499, and we couldn’t find one that didn’t have something that didn’t have more than a minor blemish.

The Samsung is everything we wanted and nothing we didn’t (no self-closing doors, unfortunately, but the only model we saw with them was almost a thousand dollars more).

Range: GE Cafe slide-in – $1299

This was the best find of the last two weekends, by far. This is just about 50% less than the standard retail price, and though we got it from the Sears Outlet, it looks *perfect*. One of the biggest disappointments of the kitchen remodel has been the miscommunication that led to our stove and dishwasher being disposed of, instead of being kept.

Finding a range that has been a good combination of affordable, but *better* than the one that we used to have. This was difficult because our old stove was really great. It had a really good oven, a really nice high-powered burner, and proved to be really reliable and useful.

The only thing that was problematic with the old range we had (a GE, as well) was that the back console actually stuck out enough that it was difficult to put two tallish pans/pots front-to-back. As a result, when we started looking for a slide-in range (no back console), it was somewhat difficult to find something that really met the quality of our old range, was aesthetically pleasing, and a similiar, if not better value than our old one.

This thing, though… man. Feature-wise, it’s set to blow the doors off our old stove. It has four burners, one central griddle burner (and griddle), and two ovens. Our old stove had a power burner with (we think) 14,500 BTU. The new one has one 18,000 BTU burner, one 17,000 BTU, one 6.5K, and one 5K. The central is 9.5K, I believe. The oven is also a convection oven, which our old one was not.

We saw this at the Sears Outlet a couple weeks ago when we were looking for (what I remember as) $1,499. We thought, “Hey, this is a great stove,” but didn’t get it at that point. The next week, they were both sold, and we couldn’t find anything else that really hit the right notes. We went yesterday, and there was nothing. We went to the Sears Outlet in Milpitas, Fry’s, Best Buy, Sears, Airport Appliances… nothing. Nothing in the same value/feature range at all. We went back to the Sears Outlet in San Leandro, almost just because there wasn’t anything else to do. As we were there, they rolled out two pristine versions of this stove. Literally, I was standing in front of a blank space, and the woman at the store just rolled the range into the slot right in front of me. If there had been a spotlight and chorus accompanying her, it wouldn’t have made it any more dramatic in my mind.

Crazy.

So, that’s it – we’ve knocked down all the major appliances for our kitchen. My feet are tired, my legs hurt, I’m sick to death of looking at kitchen appliances, but we really got some good stuff for excellent prices.

So, after weeks of enthusiastic playtime, our Rock Band drums finally met their demise last night. The yellow pad had split in two sometime during the evening. The pad still works, technically, but it’s clearly going to degrade from here – the rubber pad’s already showing where the edge was rubbing up against it last night.

I called the Rock Band support line (since the automated stuff all assumes faulty pads from the start), and talked to a guy there. I explained entirely honestly that the pads failed through normal (but heavy) use, and that I was just wondering if it’d be possible to order a spare part.

He told me the pads were still covered by warranty, and it wasn’t a problem to replace them. Using the same “Express” method that they shipped our replacement guitars with, the new pads should be here in a couple days, and then we have a month to ship out the old set. While obviously, I’d have preferred indestructible pads, or guitars that worked correctly from day one, the Rock Band customer service has been really, truly excellent, going well above my expectations of what they needed to do.

Okay, well – it hasn’t REALLY begun yet. No one’s come and actually done anything seriously different to the kitchen. But Ei-Nyung and I have been moving the various bits and bobs that are movable from the kitchen into the “gym”, clearing it out for when these guys start going to town on Tuesday.

It’s pretty strange. As messed up as this kitchen has been, it’s been *our* kitchen for the last five years (in various incarnations – thanks to Colin for a number of improvements). Now, it’s about to be completely destroyed and rebuilt basically from the ground up.

I’m really, really excited, as is Ei-Nyung. The new design is so much better, from a usability perspective, that it’s hard to believe given the original shape of the kitchen that this isn’t what they did from the start. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if it *is* what they did way back in the day, and it was only the bizarre ’70’s remodel that made it a completely ill-conceived, non-functional space.

The other thing that’s strange is that we have a stunning amount of useless shit in our kitchen.
Okay, you’ve been to our house, or you know us, so maybe that isn’t a huge surprise. But it’s not our fault! When you’ve got housemates, you tend to accumulate some random crap. Stuff we’d never, ever buy – like canned chicken. So, we’re clearing some of that stuff out as it goes out of the kitchen, and some of it will undoubtedly get cleared out as it comes back in.

The only appliances we’re replacing in this go-round are the microwave (changing from a standalone box to a micro-hood combo) and probably the fridge. While the dishwasher/stove don’t match each other, frankly, they’re both completely functional, and it seems a waste to replace them right away. The fridge is still functional, but we’d like a different form factor, and the nook it’ll be placed in is a different size than our current fridge. The dishwasher and stove, on the other hand, are the same size as future upgrades, so there’s no pressing “need” to upgrade now.

Man. Crazy stuff.

So, in Washington State, the caucus was called for McCain before all the votes were counted – 13% of the vote remained uncounted, despite only 1.8% separating the two candidates. The race was called for McCain by the state party chair Luke Esser, based essentially on his certainty that the state would go McCain’s way. You can read a little more about it here.

The interesting thing to me is that Huckabee had beaten McCain in two contests earlier in the day. Kansas was his in a landslide, and got more votes in Louisiana. Then, Washington is called for McCain. Imagine if Huckabee had beaten McCain in all three states? What would the headline that night have been? What were the headlines for Obama?

Instead, this is the kind of thing that gets posted on CNN:

“McCain gets mixed message; Dems deadlocked after contests

Republican voters in Louisiana and Kansas told John McCain they weren’t ready to support him. Washington state, however, backed the Republican front-runner Saturday over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, according to state party officials.”

Instead of “Weekend Blowout” or “Huckabee Sweeps McCain,” it’s “McCain Gets Mixed Message.” That’s what people see – it’s not momentum for Huckabee – momentum that appears, by rights, to be his – two states and one that’s extraordinarily close, it should be more “McCain on the Run” than anything else. But because the state chair called the race, unreasonably, for McCain, that’s now the status quo, and Huckabee has to overturn what people will accept as a general truth.

This is EXACTLY what happened in 2000 – by framing Bush as the victor, the media tilted the election in his favor. Instead of Bush being unjustly installed by the Supreme Court in a contested election that was both obviously defective and too close to call, they called Bush the victor, handing him the de facto victory. Once he was crowned, Gore had to work to overturn the “valid” result of Bush’s victory, instead of the genuinely neutral or Gore-favored *REALITY*.

So, it’s interesting to me that McCain’s people, or the GOP in general are not only above stealing elections from their opponents, but from people within their own party. Talk about being fundamentally corrupt. Sure, you can lay the blame at the feet of Luke Esser, the guy who called it, but you have to also lay the blame at the feet of McCain, the entire GOP, and anyone even remotely involved in the election who isn’t *insisting* that the votes be properly counted.

I’d hate to have Huckabee as the nominee, simply because that would mean we’d have some (however remote) chance of having that nutcase as President. I despise McCain’s party-line obsequiousness as well – I’d rather have a rancid piece of cheese in office than either of those morons. But I suppose it’s interesting, seeing again how powerful framing can be – all you need to do is announce the victor in an authoritative manner, and people will immediately adjust to that victory being the status quo. Essentially, the Dems need to learn to put that out there right away – announce victory, however tenuous, as early and loudly as possible. Presume you have won, and in many ways, that’s all you need to do.

Man… every time I hear Obama talk, I want him elected more.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/08/bush.speech/index.html

‘WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush, in a rousing speech to fellow conservatives, exhorted his ideological cohorts to “fight for victory and keep the White House in 2008…”‘

What does that mean? Does “Conservative” at this point mean someone who is a fiscally completely irresponsible, in the pocket of big business, a religious flat-Earther, scientific know-nothing (okay, a redundancy there), homophobic, racist, xenophobic warmonger?

I mean, I guess I’m curious – if Bush is “one of you,” philosophically, at what point do you look at yourself and say, “Holy shit, what have I done with my life?!?”

Permit for kitchen remodel obtained.

Excellent.

So. Hillary takes CA. I suppose I’m not all that surprised, but honestly, I’m a little disappointed. While I think Hillary will, if she’s nominated, be a fine candidate, I’ve always found her to be a bit too much of an opportunist. Though it’s by no means anywhere on the scale of “important issues,” anyone who takes the stage with Jack Thompson loses substantial points with me. Not because videogames, in the grand scheme of things, matter as much as something like Iraq, but because it shows that she’ll take a firm stand on something despite being completely ill-informed or ignorant on a subject.

That said, either candidate is such a vast, vast step up from the entire Republican field (and the current administration) that I will happily, happily vote for either of them. I’m actually really looking forward to the Republican nominee getting utterly obliterated. I hope it’ll be a crushing, humiliating, ignominious defeat. I hope McCain, if nominated, is completely undone by his obsequiousness to the current administration. Feh. Screw all of ’em.
—

In other news, Ei-Nyung and I are going to the Permit Office on Thursday to get a permit for the kitchen! Exciting. Also exciting, though in a more “abject terror” sort of way, is the fact that I have no idea what the current state of the house permits are, because I have no idea what state Mike Mohsini left the other renovation permits in. It’s been something that’s been weighing on me for the last couple weeks. I wish I could ignore it – I just want nothing to do, ever, with that guy, or anything he’s ever done or will do, again. So, hopefully it won’t be too bad. I guess we’ll find out Thursday.

*sigh*

Still, progress on the kitchen front is good!

At work, things are going alright. Today was a bit contentious. Part of the issue is that we’re doing a lot of re-evaluation of the game’s core with a really stripped down team. This means I’m not working with *designers* on the design, I’m working with artists and engineers, some of which don’t have any design experience. So, I’m trying to listen to them and take their input, but there are also some aspects of the process where I want to just say, “Okay, enough. I’ve got the experience and judgement to make the call.”

Still, it’s good to get a taste of my own medicine. I’m usually the skeptic, or the one who’s critical. This time, other people are critical of me. It’s fine, I can take it, and hopefully in the end, the game improves as a result. The process can be tiring and frustrating, though.

Looking at picking up Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles for the DS, but I haven’t been able to find a review anywhere, and from what I hear, Ubisoft embargoes reviews that aren’t stellar until after the game’s release date. Which means no news is bad news. We’ll see, I suppose. If it’s not great, it’s probably a good thing. Professor Layton and the Curious Village comes out Sunday, as well, and that’s probably even more up my alley.

Spent this evening watching TV. Still a bit under the weather from a cold that kept me home Monday. I wish I could get up the will to go paint the Mini, but it’s damned cold in the garage, and painting’s sort of a pain in the cramped quarters of the garage. When I was doing this over the summer, I’d open up the garage door – makes a world of difference. Ah, well – I suppose it’ll wait ’till the Spring.

Roofers might come tomorrow, too. Pretty strange.

Yeah, this post is really disjointed. I also started reading The Prestige, by Christopher Priest. We saw the movie over the weekend, and it’s really, really good. The first time I saw it, I was disturbed by how weak the end of the movie was, but I think I “get it” now. The structure of the movie is astonishingly well realized, and the actors do a really spectacular job of developing some really complex characters. There’s at least four or five interesting parallels in the movie, and one of the tricks the movie’s able to pull is how direct, how straightforward those parallels are, but how complex and nebulous they appear to be. Great stuff – I’d highly recommend it. Though most reviewers seem to think of it as merely “entertaining,” or a diversion, I think it’s a really interesting depiction of what obsession means to a person obsessed.

And it’s got a really cool, vaguely steampunk aesthetic, plus tricks!

Right. I’m really out of it. Good night.

Well. Met with Jim Duncalf tonight, and gave him a check for 50% of the kitchen work. Thursday, Ei-Nyung and I will be going down to the city to get a permit for the work, and hope that not too much of a mess was left by the previous contractor. I know there’s at least one permit that wasn’t closed out properly, but I don’t know if there are others that are still not finished…

So, the kitchen’s officially underway. We’ll see what Thursday holds.