This isn’t a general “year in review” thing – it’s basically just a summary of what happened to me this year. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, there’s nothing here worth reading.

1.) Last year’s new year’s resolutions: 2/3 ain’t bad, but the one that I missed is one that regards my personal health, which sort of sucks. The two I succeeded in were: get design input at work, and undertake a large creative project outside of work. The one I failed was: lose 14 lbs.

2.) House: There have been a *lot* of incremental improvements to the house this year, including finishing two rooms (the two rightmost rooms in the upstairs), upending the front yard (though that’s still incomplete), different housemates (a very, very good, very compatible combination), major reorg of the house (we moved upstairs again), and a lot of relatively minor organizational issues that got solved. Feels like progress. There are still water leaks in the front of the house, but that problem has been apparently traced pretty definitively to the roof, which is the single biggest piece of progress we’ve seen on the issue since the beginning. It looks like two of the windows downstairs have stopped leaking, while the one that I would have “expected” not to have been fixed was indeed not fixed. Last night, two upstairs windows sprung leaks, but that wasn’t entirely out of the realm of reasonability, given the fixes to the roof last year, and the utter insanity of the rain last night.

Still, overall, it looks like that problem is down to the home stretch, and if that gets fixed, the level of stress in my life during the winter will decrease so dramatically as to have felt like a physical thing.

3.) Physical Fitness: Hoo boy. This, as noted above, was the resolution last year I didn’t hold to, and it’s becoming a serious issue. I’m now ~230lbs, and that’s probably 20 lbs above where I look reasonable, and 30 over where I “should” be. This year, I’m going to try a different approach. Reasonably, it’s not likely I’ll be getting substantially more exercise (though that will be a focal point) – the major focus is going to be on eating less. Portion control, plain and simple. Lunch, for instance, always consists of X amount of food, which is invariably more than I need for lunch, but I eat it anyway because I don’t want it to go to waste. Which is stupid, since I have a fridge at work, and I can just refrigerate what I don’t eat, and eat it the next day. So, I’m writing down a list of things to do, and printing it up, and posting it at my desk, so that I just see a visible reminder of it on a daily basis.

4.) Hobbies: I’d gotten a bit too videogame-focused in my hobbies over the last couple years, and hadn’t really done anything creative outside of that, except for a few paintings. This year, I did a painting of a good friend, for her wedding gift, and participated in the National Novel Writing Month, which resulted in a 50K word story, that was based on a concept that a couple of us had been developing as the plot for an RPG. Turned out much better than I’d expected (we’re NOT talking “good” by any stretch, just better than I’d thought), and showed me that writing is both an accessible, and really entertaining thing to do. Definitely participating next year, if for no other reason than to finish up the story I started this year. Also learned I can sort of sing & play guitar at the same time, which I thought previously was more or less impossible. Again, not well, but enough to know that it’s an entertaining process.

5.) Work: It looks like I’m officially a ‘game designer’ now, and not a hybrid. My credit on Sims 2 was ‘game designer,’ so when management switched over to the new team, that seems to have been what stuck. Which is quite good, for me. It looks like this year’s going to be a rough process. People are, by and large, frustrated, and the new management really failed to make the transition properly. As a result, a lot of people’s feelings got hurt, or screwed outright, and the team’s basically almost falling apart. We’ll see how things shake out, but it’s not a promising start. Still, it looked to be on the upswing at the end of the year, and hopefully, things start on the same vector.

6.) Other stuff: I think this year, I really learned a lot about dealing with people, understanding conflicts, and being able to look at personal and personality issues with a bit of a better understanding as to what’s going on, and where the conflict comes from. It’s been a process that I’ve had to develop both in work, and out of it, and I think I’m getting reasonably good at it, which is strange, because thinking back, I *was* really good at it in high school, when I needed to be, then for years, it was simply not a skill I spent any time developing. Sort of like most of my skills, once I got to college. Alas.

7.) Friends, Family, Etc.: This has been a pretty substantial year, due to (6), and it’s fundamentally altered my understanding of what I want out of a long-term relationship, and also, how I relate to a lot of other people in my life. Not in a bad way, for the most part, though I do realize that my tolerance for things I don’t like is very, very low, simply because I have *so much* in my life that is literally perfect – I wouldn’t change a thing about 95% of my daily experience with people outside of work. So, I get really irritable about small crap that makes no difference, simply because I’m not used to being irritated by it. Hopefully, that understanding turns into a little bit more acceptance and forgiveness of the things that do bother me, but that’s an active process I need to work on.

8.) Health: Found I’m suceptible to asthmatic bronchitis, in the midst of hayfever season. Nothing like a cough that’s so intense it keeps you from sleeping properly for a week, and sends you to the emergency room twice in the span of a week. Drugs, fortunately, helped quite a bit, but I worry it’ll be a consistent, sort of annual event. I hope not, but we’ll find out this year. Definitely one of the reasons I’ve spent so much time mauling the front yard in recent months.

9.) Death: This year, for the first time, a good friend of mine died. I’ve had friends of the family, and people I’ve known die, but no one I’ve been as close to as Kevin. The event put a lot of things into perspective for me – brought back the feelings of, “what do I want to have contributed to the world, once I’m gone,” sort of feelings that I had often as a child, but much less so, now that I’m in the day-to-day groove of adult life. Kevin was a artist, though I only ever knew him as a hacker, but his art was stunning, and really forced a change in perspective for me. At work, I’ve been essentially designing what’s been “needed,” but what I want to do is design something that changes the way people think about games. Something that shakes them up, and makes them look at their life in a different way. I don’t know what that is, yet, but if I find it, I’ve got Kevin to thank for lighting the way.

Hrm. I’m sure there’s a crapload of stuff I’m forgetting, but it’s become sort of uninteresting to most people enough, for now. 😀

Yes, that image forks my blog format. No, I’m not going to change it. 😀

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Went out this afternoon, after playing some PGR3 with A_B, grabbed a shovel, and mauled the front yard. After I was done, I wanted to get up on the roof and shout, “I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!!” for no other reason than I was just completely hosed with adrenaline. I probably could have picked up a car, or been shot, and nothing would have brought me down.

It’s not done yet, but since it’s been raining recently, and hasn’t rained steadily in about two days, the dirt was *perfect* for what I needed to do. Not so sticky or muddy that it made getting around impossible (though it was difficult), and soft – soft like mashed potatoes soft. Really easy to move around. So, I dug up all the bulbs in the front yard, buried the stump I chopped up about a month ago, and dug out most of one of the two remaining stumps that needs digging out. I moved an absolute shitload of dirt, though, and the difference in apperance is pretty stunning. (yes, I know that’s all irrelevant without pictures) It’s difficult, though, because what I need to do is kill the grass. Which means basically killing *everything* in the yard, then laying down mulch on top of the whole thing.

It’s difficult because the soil’s so rich, and time available to work is rare enough that every time, I’m starting from about two giant steps back. I’ll turn over half the yard, and in a week, things are sprouting again. So, I fight the larger things, like the stump, and the bulbs – things I know I can remove, and they won’t grow back, and figure that the grass, clover, and other odd plants, for the time being, are battles I can’t win. But, I’m also “shaping” the garden, in the sense that I’ve finally buried the French Drain pipe (which has always stuck up a bit out of the ground), and have pulled some of the dirt up the hill, and filled in a big sort of “pit” adjacent to our neighbor’s garage, so that the slope of the hill more or less matches the slope of their foundation, which is how it should be (and was, before our previous neighbors had excavated the area to replace the foundation for their garage.

So, it’s still a slow process, and a crapload of work, but man, the rush of adrenaline after churning through it for about an hour and some was just awesome. Felt great – satisfying, productive, and physically awesome. I’m really out of shape, but it was really good to just do something, exercise the muscles, and make progress on a project at the same time. Great stuff.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Lifeguard, Programmer, Mechanical Engineer, Game Designer

Four movies you could watch over and over: Memento, Blade Runner, Reservoir Dogs, The Princess Bride

Four places you’ve lived: Oakland, CA, Piedmont, CA, Boston, MA, Santa Monica, CA

Four TV shows you love to watch: Top Gear, Brainiac, Good Eats, The Simpsons

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Osaka, Japan, Seoul, Korea, Helsinki, Finland

Four websites you visit daily: news.google.com, gamespot.com, kotaku.com, atrios.blogspot.com

Four of your favorite foods: Sushi, burritos, japanese-style curry, ice cream

Four places you’d rather be: Tahoe, the beach, walking the dog in a park somewhere, sitting on the couch playing games with friends

Four albums you (like a lot): God Fodder (Ned’s Atomic Dustbin), American Idiot (Green Day), Exit Planet Dust (The Chemical Brothers), No One’s Really Beautiful (Jude)

Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Ok? Let’s be clear on that point. He’s a fairy tale, just like the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and many other wacky creations people have made up over the years. I’ll stay away from the obviously inflammatory followup to that.

But I simply don’t get why people get upset when their kids are told Santa doesn’t exist. I just read a CNN article about how a recent episode of Everybody Hates Chris “gives away” that Santa doesn’t exist. You know what? I don’t give a flying fuck.

Why do we tell our children lies, and get upset when those lies are revealed? Do we not want them to know the truth? Do we not want them to understand the difference between reality and fantasy? Can a child not live a rich, full fantasy life and not understand that it’s just that, fantasy?

When I built spaceships out of my old living room chairs, when I was eight, did I think it was real? Did I enjoy the process any less? Just because you, parent, have become some sort of deluded cynical shithead that you think that for your child to be entertained, they need to believe the lies are real, think about what you’re saying, for a moment.

You’re saying that you explicitly want to lie to your child, to obfuscate the distinction between what is real, and what is not, and you’re getting *upset* when the lie is revealed, and the child is shown the truth.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Can someone explain to me why the wiretapping, on top of *all* the other crap that’s come to light recently, isn’t so obviously grounds for impeachment that proceedings haven’t *already* started?

Bueller?

So, I went to sleep and felt fine last night. Got to sleep at a reasonable hour, slept a good night’s sleep, and woke up with a blinding headache. Every time I sat up, the lights turned up, and I had to lie back down. It felt like someone had my head in a vise. Painful. Spent most of the morning in bed, then by afternoon, felt good enough to wander about the house. Went to a new chinese food place on Lakeshore, which ended up being more Panda Express-y than I’d have liked, but it was still actually reasonably ok. Almost regardless of quality, it’s nice to have another restaurant on Lakeshore.

Spent the rest of the day playing games, then in the evening, decided to do a bit of gardening, which I did for maybe 30 minutes, before I got frustrated it was so dark, and tired, from moving dirt. It’s strange, how satisfying the work is, though. Ended up digging up a huge cluster of bulbs that were just about to sprout, so that was really good – saved me some trouble in the future. Still trying to dig out a bunch of roots, but the process is just really slow. You’ve gotta dig around the perimeter, then start cutting the roots away until you work your way to the main “trunk,” which then requires either a sawzall or an axe to get through. Again, satisfying, but not necessarily easy or fun.

Something a friend of mine said on his blog reminded me of bits of my adolescence, and for some reason, one of the memories that bubbled up to the surface was going to Redwood Park, in high school, and mountain biking. Or rather, the weird thing is that it reminded me of a time I went to the park, and *didn’t* have my bike. I would walk the trails, but imagine I was on my bike – “brake here, pedal pedal pedal, left around this root cluster, wheelie, pop up the rear wheel. Pedal pedal, brake, right around the rut, left over the root, jump the small gap back to the right, pedal, brake turn hard right back off the seat, drop off, I’d probably have fallen there… pedal pedal, shift to an easier gear pedal UP wheel up over the root, shift weight forward, pop the rear wheel up, left into the rut, ride the rut whoa, that root would have surprised me, and over I go.” That sort of thing was really commonplace. Days after a ride, I could visualize every detail of it.

I’d do the same for swimming races – I was so familiar with certain pools, I could feel the texture of the walls against my feet, and know how careful I’d have to be when turning. I could see every detail of a hundred yards of breaststroke, when to breathe, when to kick, and pull, how far I’d be from the wall on my last stroke, where I’d surface from the pull-down… The whole thing. I don’t think I bother to do that at all for anything anymore.

Weird.

There’s that saying, “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” There was a discussion at work today that basically centered around the fact that a good portion of the team isn’t involved in the design process, and is, as a result, feeling left out. I had sort of an epiphany – when I first started designing stuff, I went to everyone I could get my hands on, for input, for feedback, just for perspective. I would bounce ideas off of everyone, because people simply have different skills and ways of looking at things, and it’s good to get as many people involved in the process as possible.

So, it was weird to sit there and think that basically, I’ve stopped doing that. In part, because last year, I did a huge portion of the design and implementation of a system in almost complete isolation, I got used to having to rely on figuring out how to do things on my own. I still tap the resources I have – I’ve been talking to one of my friends, who’s got an incredible amount of experience, and always has good ideas about how to implement pretty ludicrously complicated designs. So it’s not like I’ve been ignoring the resources at hand.

But I definitely haven’t been reaching out beyond the people I feel like I know really well, and part of that is simply training – you learn that everyone else is busy, and so I figured that I had my work to do, and everyone else had a similar amount. But this year, one of the things that’s really fucked is that we had essentially no production staff – no one to run the schedules, to set people in motion, and to make sure that people had interesting work to keep them occupied.

So, part of that fell to us, and we failed to do it right. It’s strange, though, how quickly it becomes easy to isolate oneself – part of what it takes to be a designer in this industry is to be fearless, and have no ego. I’m not good at either of the two, but I’m learning.

You have to be fearless, because you’re putting your ideas on the line. You send them out into the world, formed from your head, and they come back to you changed, crippled, mangled, and sometimes, much, much better. But your flaws are in those ideas – the things you overlooked, the things you didn’t take into consideration when you should have, and more. Every mistake burns – it makes you feel stupid, and inadequate. every time someone comes to you with a question – “why didn’t you do this,” you’re forced to wonder if you made the right decision, and if not, why.

One of the most important things I learned from my dad at my last job was that it’s often not that you need to make the *right* decision – it’s that you need to make the *best* decision. You need to take your information, and you sometimes need to move forward, even if you have no assurances that you’re right. School teaches you to be right – to make sure that you have the correct answer. The real world teaches you that quite often, you will be, and you’ll need to be wrong, and that waiting for the right answer will mean waiting forever, when there’s so much to be learned by simply moving forward, making the mistake, and learning not to do the same thing next time.

Which, of course, ties to the lack of ego. You have to be able to distance yourself from your work – you have to understand that sometimes, it won’t be the way you want it to be, or that you’ve made a terrible mistake, or things need to get cut simply because we don’t have the time to implement it in the way that you want. And through all of that, you need to not take it personally, and continue to strive to make the best thing you can.

The last thing, I suppose, is that design is really a service. In part, what you do is that you create, but the other part is that you take other people’s ideas, and incorporate them into the whole. It’s not like painting, where you take your vision, and make it reality. Maybe one day, games will be like that again – but until then, designing games is part facilitating collaboration, and part visionary creative genius. Ha.

It’s been strange – the last few weeks have been patently awful, at work. The situation with a number of the perosnalities on the team has been really grating, and I found myself perusing Gamasutra’s job listings today. But we met tonight to discuss a number of these very same issues, and discussing them opened my eyes, in one respect, to the fact that I’ve been using only a hammer, and in art it let me vent some of my frustration at how badly this team’s been run so far. It seems like we’re moving toward the right track. We’re not there yet, but we’re walking in the general direction.

Just saw the movie Layer Cake – it’s a British gangster film, sort of like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch (I mention those simply because Guy Ritchie was originally slated to direct), but a bit more serious – less obviously funny, and a lot more tense. I really, really enjoyed it, and am actually interested in seeing Daniel Craig as James Bond, now, where I had no interest before. If he brings any of the intensity he brought to this, it’ll be quite interesting to watch, and it’ll put Bond in a totally new place on the map.

Recommended.