List seven songs you’re enjoying right now:

1.) Teardrop, Massive Attack
2.) Mind Killer, Adam Freeland
3.) Red Flag, Billy Talent
4.) Sweet Lullaby, Deep Forest
5.) Unsung, Helmet
6.) DARE, Gorillaz
7.) Nothing But You, Paul Van Dyk

No real “reason” behind any of the selections, deep-meaning-wise. Mostly just heard ’em in some context (a surprising number in videogames (I’m such a nerd)) and liked ’em.

Saw Pirates last night with a fistful of peoples. I loved the first one, and was really looking forward to this.

SPOILERS!!!
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So, in terms of how I felt about it, that sort of breaks down into two viewpoints. As a standalone movie, I thought there wasn’t a really good, overarching story arc. There were too many set pieces, and not enough time spent with just the characters. All these “blockbuster” sequels, from Hollywood’s perspective, seem to nead “more.” More villains, more action, more explosions, bigger effects, etc. I wish they’d just ignore all that, and make things that are appropriate to the story. It may end up that things are bigger, and more exciting, but it almost always feels like an effort to just have more for the sake of more.

In terms of other things I found disatisfying, Davey Jones’ crew was simply too uniform, in terms of color, and overall visual “noise” levels. They were really interesting in concept, but in practice, aside from Hammerhead-guy and Conch-head, there was little way to distinguish one brown, spikey guy from the next. The other thing was that Jack Sparrow, I think, worked better when he was a Captain only in his mind, or in search of a crew.

That said, I actually rather liked the movie. But that’s largely because it’s clearly the first half of a larger film, where they’ve set up plot points that are clearly not going to resolve themselves until well into the second movie. I liked a lot of the story of this movie – the realization of Davey Jones and his locker in particular. Just seemed like a really interesting character, and am really interested in seeing how the three major factions play off each other. There were a number of details that I really liked, like the Kraken-summoning mechanism, Jack’s multi-eye makeup, etc. There was a little too much in the way of nods to the audience (Will getting slapped, the dog, the comments about “rum,” etc.)

So, in terms of the first half of a five+ hour epic, I really liked it. As a standalone entertainment experience, somewhat problematic. Oh, and Jack’s last moments on-screen in this movie were incredibly well done. I wish I hadn’t had that particular plot point spoiled for me before, but ah, well – what’s done is done.

Mobius woke me up this morning by taking up half the bed. Went downstairs, and finished Call of Duty 2 for the 360. Awesome game. Klay & Nana came over to say, ‘hey,’ and pick up some $$ we owed them for a dinner a couple nights ago. Then, we went over to Alan & Becky’s to watch the World Cup finals. I was really pulling for France – they just seemed to want it more. Then Zidane freaked out, and the whole spirit of the thing deflated. It had gone from a really good match between an aggressive French team, and a strong Italian defense. I don’t know a whole lot about soccer on the world stage, but it was a fun match to watch. To have it decided by PK’s, and have such a bizarre act close a guy’s career… it just seemed sort of sad.

Went to SF, to Beard Papa to get some cream puffs, and stopped off at Yerba Buena garden to sit down for a bit, and listen to some opera in the park. Yeah, I though it was weird, too. Then came home, sat around for a bit, and decided to do something productive. That manifested itself in cleaning out the storage bin in our backyard, where I found a saw. So, I used the saw to cut off some branches on the avocado tree that were growing below the graft, then cut down the almond tree, which died about a year ago.

And then it’s now.

I’ve gotta break down the tree branches, but with the power tools in the back of the garage, and the garage full of stuff from my parents’ place… yeah, it looks like it might be a bit before that happens.

A chair is a pretty important tool we have, and having a good chair, I think, is worth a lot when you spend most of your working day with your butt planted in one. I used to think that $800 for an Aeron was an astronomical sum of money, and let’s be honest, it is, but it’s *worth it*. I’m strongly considering bringing my Aeron to work, simply because the chairs at work are so bad that I think it’s making my lower back hurt. Mind you, the chairs at work are *particularly* bad. Just cheap, uncomfortable pieces of crap.

If I were to ever outfit an employee at a company:
* Aeron, or similarly adjustable and comfortable chair
* Adjustable height desk
* Keyboard of the employee’s choice
* Wireless mouse of the employee’s choice
* Two identical, 17″+ LCD monitors
* Noise cancelling headphones

That’s sort of the “bare minimum” from my perspective, in terms of giving someone the tools that allow them to work comfortably for eight hours in a cubicle environment.

At my current job, I have the keyboard and mouse, and that’s because I was pretty aggressive about asking for a very specific keyboard, and mouse, because the flat keyboards aggravate my left wrist, which got mangled in a bike accident in high school.

Ah, well. Work’s getting better. This particular project is actually turning out decently – at least relative to my expectations. Made an interesting discovery today that I think actually makes it *feel* much, much better. I changed up some of the art with my mad mouse-drawing skillz, and it such a beneficial and entertaining change that a coworker of mine and I were playing multiplayer, and laughing, and actually having a pretty good time. So, that was pretty satisfying. There are other peripheral bits of work that I’m getting to do that are both fun, and really educational.

There are a couple potential future avenues that could actually be *really* interesting, and if they were to take off, could actually make this a really fun, satisfying job. So, things are turning up, I think. Outlook is definitely positive, at least.

I’d like to do some creative writing. The little blurb I wrote last night about the drowning man was an interesting exercise. I can see an image, or a sequence of images quite clearly, but don’t yet have the skill to translate that into anything really more than a utilitarian description of things. Sometimes, a good turn of phrase comes around, and I thought a couple moments in last year’s NaNoWriMo project turned out pretty well. It was satisfying and fun enough that it’s definitely worth devoting some time to, since I enjoy it, and it costs me nothing.

Mind you, I’m not even going to come close to approaching Kerowack’s quality, but hey, it’s just a hobby, so whatever. (for anyone who hasn’t read Salmon Apples, bug that guy about getting a copy. It’s extraordinary.)

I think one of my hangups, both in writing, and in game design, is I’m just a bit too slavishly dedicated to plausibility and realism. I have a very hard time putting myself in a mindset where I can think of the “fantastic,” that is unfettered from reality. Earlier in the year, one of my friends came up with the crux for the last game I worked on, and it was this little simple “twist” on reality – an abstraction that made all the weirdly ridiculous things about the game that I couldn’t wrap my head around suddenly make perfect sense. And it was almost like a mental block – I’d never have come up with something like that – it’s just not part of the way I think.

And it’s not that that’s explicitly a bad thing, it’s just that other people have different strengths, I think. But I get a lot of pleasure out of things that are just slightly fantastic, or *un*real, that it seems weird to me that I have to have things make sense, even when they absolutely don’t have to.

Probably also part of the reason I was terrible at improvisational jazz. I think these days, I can impart emotion into say, playing the saxophone or the clarinet, or with simple things on the piano – I’m familiar just enough to know how to create a tone that conveys a sense of something. Which is something I’m really, really grateful to my parents for basically beating into me against my will. But for some reason, though I can improvise, I can’t make the *music* itself “say” what I want to. It’s only the tone of the individual notes I can bend to my will. I always find the actual music – the structure of the notes – somewhat banal, and tired. Formulaic, I think.

Which is weird in a different sense, because when I’m talking about game concepts or designs, I think my strength is that I’m *not* formulaic.

But maybe not?

One thing that’s interesting is that I’ve been writing “pitch” documents. Basically two to five page summaries of concepts that get “pitched” to publishers, in order to get new contracts for games. Nothing I’ve written has been picked up, but I’ve only written two and a half so far (the latest one’s only about halfway done). But the other thing that I’ve found is that I’m very much taking bits and pieces of other games, and putting them together in novel ways, while adding new little ideas here and there. I think the end result, for the things I’ve pitched, are pretty novel, but if you break it down, you can summarize the ideas by piecing together a number of different games, and then filling in the holes with “new.”

And it weirds me out a little that I don’t think I’ve had a concept that I *couldn’t* describe by referencing other games. And while that’s in part because I’ve got a ridiculously huge-assed library of past game knowledge to draw from, the other part is that perhaps it’s because I’m thinking about creating something new in the mold of something old.

But in some sense, is that a bad thing? Not to compare myself to them at all, but basically, Charlie Chaplin & Orson Welles took things that had come before, and amplified them, added to them, and made them better than they were – bent existing tools to new purpose. And to some extent, the result was something completely new and revolutionary.

Hrm.

I dunno. But my thought basically is, is there a concept for a game that I can come up with that I *cannot* describe in terms of other games? Can I think of an established game, even, that I can’t describe in terms of other games? Is it the language I’m using to describe the idea that requires reference to older thigns, or is it that the idea itself is essentially just a mishmash of older ideas? And at what point is that a new idea?

Was posting a comment on a friend’s blog, and realized that our house is almost entirely furnished of things we’ve had since we were (or still are) single (both me, Ei-Nyung, and the housemates), or hand-me-downs from my parents. As a result, *every single room* in the house is essentially a mishmash of stuff. There is no single room in the house that looks like it was coherently assembled with any thought to aesthetics, or how the various items work to form a coherent whole.

Which isn’t all that weird, because right up until this second, I’d never essentially given it any thought. But now that the thought has really sunk in, part of me wants to strip a room, and give it some unified coherency. Like, to take the “office,” and using my grandparents’ very Scandinavian-looking desk as a central point, and fit the rest of the room decor (admittedly, a bunch of music equipment, a TV, some also-very-Scandinavian chairs, and a couple bookcases to match.

It’d be even better, once the upstairs living room’s drywall is done to actually furnish it in a way that makes actual sense, instead of having a bunch of totally random things put wherever, just because that’s the stuff that we had.

At the same time, that just feels weird. We have tables that function. We have couches that function, and are comfortable. Why change those, when we know they work?

I dunno. Weird.

So, there was a link on FARK about tornadoes or hurricanes in Canada, and it made me wonder, “What if Canada invaded the US, because they felt that we were primarily responsible for global warming, and thus, the hurricane (tornado, whatever), which they view as a legitimate threat?”

I mean, you can’t say, fight nature, but if the US, or China, or India, or EU, or whatever at some point is unwilling to take action to curb global warming, and let’s say there’s consensus between the remaining nations, at what point does drastic action on the environment’s behalf make sense?

No, I’m not advocating war on the US lest the CAFE be raised. It’s just a thought that popped to mind, and figured it might be worth discussing.

So, in game development, there tends to be a somewhat adversarial relationship with marketing. Sometimes, it’s just wondering WTF they’re thinking asking for a particular feature, sometimes, it’s outright hostility. I tend towards the latter camp, and frankly, my experience thus far with game marketing departments hasn’t really left me holding them in high esteem.

Of course, there’s a natural tendency to be at odds, simply because the marketing department are the ones that tell you that you can’t just make whatever you want, you have to make something that will sell to someone. Nominally, they’ve got some capacity to do research, and listen to the supposed consumer.

I think the thing that bothers me is quite simple. As a designer, it’s my job to create something interesting. Maybe fun, maybe thought provoking, whatever – something compelling. And if I can’t make myself genuinely interested in it, it’s very hard for me to do a good job. But more than that, it’s *also* very hard to make something interesting for someone that’s *not me.*

Why? Well, I only occupy my own headspace – I can only judge what *I* find interesting. I can’t tell you what a 12 year old girl wants, and frankly, it’s stupid of me to try. I can make something I think is compelling, and ageless, and might not overtly say, be hostile to 12 year old girls, but I can’t get into their heads, and understand them. Never gonna happen.

And frankly, neither can marketers. They can listen to them speak, and they can relay what they say in condensed form, but in my experience, they don’t know any better what a 12 year old wants than I do. And I know what makes a compelling interactive experience a hell of a lot better than they do.

Am I biased? Oh, hell yes. But the thing is, their job is to nominally study a demographic, and determine what they want. I would say that most real acheivements that further a medium are things that the market doesn’t know they want until *after* they’ve seen something radically new.

Show me a marketing person who did a focus group that showed the Sims would be the commercial success it was. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

…

Right. So, there weren’t any. And the marketing genius who really got behind Katamari Damacy? Hmmm.

No?

I don’t harbor delusions that great art comes from creative freedom. Great art often comes from trying to get around crushing limitations. And I’m sure the schmoes that commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling were as ignorant and shortsighted as any current-day marketing drone.

And I think that that’s also my major problem with democracy, and the current political climate – political strategists, and the like. Leadership isn’t done by the masses. Ever. Leadership is done by leaders – people who are willing to break the status quo, not people who sit there and ask their pollsters what the public wants. What the public wants is stability, and the status quo, whether it genuinely benefits them or not.

Consider the wave of malaise that swept the Democrats after Kerry started to crumble as the polls closed. How many people really *fought back*? I certainly didn’t. I didn’t want to say, question that the entire electoral system was broken, and that the election was possibly stolen. Instead, I gave up. I figured the public was stupid, and that was the way it was. Because *I* was willing to settle for the status quo.

How easy it must be to placate the public. How utterly trivial and banal. Leadership comes from the purposeful resistance to the status quo, in politics, life, and game design.

…ask a complete stranger if the movie you just saw was, “like, the worst movie you’ve ever seen.”

It’s particularly good to do, if you think that person’s out with someone they’re romantically involved with, like a girlfriend or a wife. It’s even better if they might have actually *liked* the movie that you all just saw, and figure you’re an ass for having asked about what the beginning of the movie was, ’cause you showed up 10 minutes late and were talking through the last 10. If I’d have had my portable sterilization ray, I’d have zapped them and been done with it. Oh, well.

THe movie in question, incidentally, was “The Lake House,” which I can’t actually recommend without reservations. Those reservations are:

* You have to at least marginally like Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. If you don’t, you won’t:
* Buy into it.

That second one’s the really big one – you’ve got to completely suspend your desire to ask *why* certain things are happening, at the beginning. It’s like the beginning of Equilibrium, in the scale of “okaaaaaay, whatever.” But for some reason, for the most part, it works. At the start. There are times later in the movie that are definitely “WTF? How could they not (do obvious thing)??!?!?” and in large part, that’s another reason I can’t really recommend it without reservation.

Because for anyone who’s really bothered by that sort of stuff, it’ll drive you absolutely batty. But if you just sort of “let it go,” and not worry about it too much, it’s sort of a weirdly charming little story.

Two other things:

1.) My parents are moving away tomorrow, as you might have read in an earlier post. it’s weird, but I guess I’ve built up to it, and it’s not overly strange. We’re not the kind of family that really made a big deal out of “family time,” on a regular basis, so I figure we’ll see each other less, but probably spend more real “time” together. Which is probably going to be just fine. I hope they find a place they grow to love soon.

2.) I spent some time this afternoon unplugging our desktops, and the various accessories therein. Basically, the two computers are connected to a single monitor and keyboard in the “office,” and when I’d originally hooked ’em up, I did so without rhyme or reason. The cables were a total mess, and it was obvious. So, I unplugged everything, rearranged some stuff, and slowly, methodically hooked it all back together, zip-tying the various cables, separated basically into power cables and everything else. It looks much neater, until you look behind the computers, where there’s a big pile of bundles of cables. Didn’t really know what else to do with them, but they’re safely out of sight.

3.) (yeah, whatever – I’d only thought of two when I started) spent some time cleaning up the downstairs, though my progress was pretty feeble. Now that my parents have dropped off a lot of stuff, it’s actually quite crowded, with four people, a lot of my childhood stuff (and useless crap), and some of my parents’ stuff. It’s just weird. We’re even getting two more chairs tomorrow, because my dad doesn’t like ’em (they’re my grandparents’ chairs) and I love ’em. So, that’s even *more* stuff. Geesh. We’ll find a place for it, I suppose. One thing that’s really weird is that this house is pretty well perfect for four people. It’s big for three. It’s monstrous, for two. It’ll be weird, one day, when it’s just Ei-Nyung and me, and maybe a child. I figure that’ll happen eventually. Weird.

I want to make a game. I’ve had ideas in the past about stuff I’d really like to make, but they’ve all been beyond the scope of what I could do, reasonably. Games that were “too big,” no matter how we’d tried to make sure we’d thought of something small. We’d start small, and it’d grow, and grow, and grow. This concept, though, for the first time, feels *right*. Not that the previous stuff hasn’t been good – it’s been *damn* good, and one day, I’ll see that stuff gets made as well.

But this one – it’s the right idea, at the right time, for the right hardware, and can be done with relatively small overhead by a relatively small number of people. Other times, I’ve had excuses – I didn’t know any programmers. I didn’t know any artists. Whine whine whine. This is a concept that can be done in theory with almost no financial overhead. It can be done with relatively few people. It’s not ridiculous in terms of content generation, asset creation, whatever. If it’s done right, and people are receptive, it would be the game that *absolutely* is *the* defining game for the platform, no question in my mind.

The only question, really, is whether I’ll reach out and grab the opportunity – find people who are also willing to pursue this idea, take the risk, however small, and devote the time to make it happen, or whether I’ll watch as it passes by…

So, reading one of the recent story arcs on pvponline got me thinking. The basic overview of the story is that there’s a character, Shecky, who’s basically a boozing, gambling con-artist, who fleeces his close friends for protection, to avoid a huge debt he’s racked up. One of the people who’s hiding him gets beat up by the person coming to collect what’s due.

At some point, the “good guys” beat up the enforcer, who’s trying to collect from Shecky. Later, Skull pays off Shecky’s debt to get him off the hook. Shecky then decides to leave, now that he’s no longer a fugitive, and says that he’s glad that he’s now got somewhere to call home. Of Skull, he says, “Kid, you’re the only person who’s never judged me. Not even once. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

It’s presented in such a way that my perception of it is that that’s upposed to be a good thing. Skull’s pretty consistently the “innocent” one, and generally, his simplicity is supposed to be a good thing – something to aspire to.

But this really rubs me the wrong way. Shecky used them, he got one of Skull’s friends seriously injured, he lied to them repeatedly, and has never done anything positive for anyone else. Why is “not judging,” in this case, a good thing? It’s not like Shecky was being pursued by some evil villain for no reason – he’d racked up that debt, and was running from it.

It bothers me that basically, you’ve got a character who excplicitly does bad things, and the “hero” is the one who basically ignores all the shit they pull. It’d be like having a heartwarming story about how Hitler was really a good guy underneath all the genocide, and the hero of the piece is the one who can see past the evil actions, to the inconsequential non-evil that hides behind it.

Whee!