I wonder if what the left needs to do to become effective again is to basically bitch and whine until it’s so. I was looking at cnn.com, and their “quickpolls” are always either biased towards conservative-appealing answers, or they’re so vague that they’re completely worthless as even unscientific polls. And I thought, you know, the reason they’re set up that way is that right wingers bitch and whine whenever there’s a poll like, “Is Bush as dumb as he looks?” and the response is 90%/10%.

So, CNN simply doesn’t ever put up polls like that, because they fear the whiny, bitchy right wing backlash. But when completely inane polls like, “Did you find President Bush’s Inaugural Speech Inspiring?” go up, no lefties send them irate hatemail saying, “Christ, that’s a fucking stupid poll question,” because it’d be a whiny, bitchy thing to do, and really not worthy of anyone’s time, as an individual cause. But the right wingers don’t give a shit about the big picture – they’ve gotta have everything their way. So, they’re crazy/stupid enough to actually take time out of their day to scream “bias” even where none exists.

So, while you can have lefty think tanks, and whatever, it seems to me that really, what the left needs to do to really change the dynamic in the media is just become the most obnoxious, petty shits you can imagine, and make sure the media *knows* that every single time they run anything even remotely favorable about the right wing (we’re not talking neutrality here, that wouldn’t be enough. We’re talking “complete shutout”) there will be a really vituperative, obnoxious campaign mounted against them for even uttering the words “Iraq invasion” and “democracy” in the same sentence.

Yes. I know it’s awful. I’d rather not have anything to do with it at all. But is there *anything* on the left’s side that’s even remotely as effective as this sort of activity on the right?

Games:

Haven’t played much Live recently. Can’t really explain it, other than a general lack of impetus. I don’t know – there are people I haven’t talked to for a bit that I could actually keep in touch with via Live, but just haven’t been on. Ei-Nyung’s sister & nieces were here over the weekend, so I’ve been … busy, I guess.

Have squeezed in a few hours of Resident Evil 4, which is a tremendous, astronomical jump up from Code Veronica, or even RE:0. The shift in perspective is *such* a startling difference that it’s surprising they haven’t done it before, except for that it did require a full 3-D world. So there is that, I suppose. But the other thing is that at least thus far, it hasn’t been all inventory management and “how close can we keep the player to death all the time, and here’s some really obtuse and ridiculous puzzles,” all the time. So it’s quite an improvement.

Other crap:

Mobi’s getting a friend tomorrow, I hope. Friend from college just moved out here, and he’s got a dog ’bout Mobi’s size named Monte. So hopefully, they’ll get on alright.

Can someone explain to me why Democrats are saying, “Well, we’re all going to approve of Dr. Rice’s appointment, but we want the chance to debate it…?”

What the fuck? So, you’re going to sit there, and say that her appointment is a foregone conclusion, despite her monumental, catastrophic fuck-ups as the National Security Advisor, yet you wanna sit there and publicly wank about it, depsite already having acknowledged that you’re going to let an incompetant buffoon be appointed *regardless* of what is said during the debate? You DUMB FUCKING SHITS ARE TOO GOD DAMNED STUPID TO BE AN OPPOSITION PARTY.

Grow a goddamned spine. Learn to fight for what is *right*, you dumbasses. It’s because of your spineless, brainless, gutless idiotic complacency that Bush gets to slide on *SO MUCH BULLSHIT*. Ok? Do you understand? It’s not only his fault he’s an evil, megalomanical psychopath, ok? It’s *YOUR* fault, too.

Except Boxer and Kerry. You two are awesome.

Thank you.

Media Consumption:

I’m at what I believe is the last checkpoint in The Mark of Kri – a game I haven’t played since early 2003, I believe. It’s quite good, but for some reason, I got to the last level, then stopped playing it cold. No idea why, but that’s what happened. I picked it up again a week ago, because I remembered being pretty close-ish to the end. Of 6 levels, I was on level 6. So, I figured I’d close it up. Now I’m stuck because it’s actually really damn hard to fight like, 10 guys, and archers, all at the same time. So, I’ve gotta get back into the groove, and remember how to actually play the game, in order to beat the last level. Alas!

Haven’t been playing much xbox recently. Probably because GTA:SA took up 100% of my gaming time, and I’ve got a hankering for RE4, which has gotten such stellar reviews that I’m probably just going to get it outright, rather than rent it through Gamefly. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, as one might say. I still haven’t even *touched* Otogi 2, because I’m not yet done with Otogi (I got it from a friend at Sega for cheap – I’m not *totally* insane). Up next on the xbox though is to get deeper into KOTOR 2, and PoP:WW, if Mercenaries doesn’t come in before that. Mercenaries has some of the best TV spots I’ve ever seen for a game, but the best trailer in a good long while for me, is for Mark Ecko’s Getting Up, which was just posted on Gamespot a few days ago, and just came to my attention today. I was leery about the premise at first, but damn – they really hit the urban dystopia vibe perfectly, and actually found an angle that gives the graffiti aspect of the game the feeling of doing something *powerful*. Find it, watch it, revel in it.

Also picked up the first disc of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Samurai Champloo, which is this weird hip-hop samurai thing. So far? Awesome. Not Cowboy Bebop or Firefly awesome, but awesome nonetheless. Where Spike Spiegel was more or less your chaotic good character, Mugen is actually pretty well chaotic evil, or at best, chaotic neutral. Strange, for a main character. Also got the Broken Saints DVD for Christmas from some friends, which is epic – almost daunting in length. It’s apparently 12 hours of content spread over 4 discs, and I’ve seen maybe the first 20 or so minutes, which I’d seen before on their website way back when. So, I’ll have to dig into that as well.

I’d been watching and listening to some random stuff at work in the background, while doing other stuff, but work’s actually required my entire capacity the last week and a half. Now that we’ve got actual work to do, and I’m actually getting to do work I *want* to do, rather than simply stuff I have to do, it’s both tiring and effortless. The results of the last week or so have been better than I’d expected – I thought it would take me a little while to overcome the “got too much to do, and not enough info” paralysis, but I guess I’ve been thinking about this long enough, and was confident enough in my ideas, that I think it’s going quite well, and that it’ll make it into the game in a form that is recognizably my own. Which, as most of you know, has been a dream of mine for the last several years. Happening pretty quick, all things considered.

Thunderstruck:

At about 5am this morning, I was awakened by the single loudest thunderclap I’ve *ever* heard. If you told me that it struck ten feet from the house, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. It was like you could hear the contours of the Earth as the boom moved away from us in all directions. Unbelievable. I expect that I was actually awakened by the lightning flash, then heard the thunderclap in its entirety. There were a few more after that, but because I genuinely wasn’t sure whether or not the house next door, say, wasn’t on fire (based on the insanity of the sound), I got up, wandered around, checked the windows, etc. In the three or four minutes I was awake, I can say with some certainty that I doubt if I’ve ever seen more rain fall out of the sky at a faster rate than I did for those few minutes. Utter madness.

I got up a few minutes ago because there was a drip from the bedroom window (surprise surprise), and I put up some tape to keep the water running down the window, rather than dripping on the sill. Whee. It does give credence to the roof leak theory, rather than the improper window installation, because this window’s leaking, and neither of the other two are – those leak under longer, more constant rain. This one seems to leak at a particular volume of water.

We’ll see.

bizarre.

So, one of my New Year’s resolutions was that I was going to grab as tightly as possible to any opportunities to get into game design. Whether at work, or for next year’s GBA competition, or whatever, the point was that I was going to take *any* opportunities that arose, or do my best to make them out of whole cloth.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Today, I ended up with basically the responsibility for finalizing the design, and executing at least one of the core systems for next year’s game. I thought there would be more involvement from the official “design team,” but strangely, I’m basically in a team by myself, with one new designer to vet what I write (he’s hosed with work from other teams, so he basically said to go wild, and he’d make time to help me get up to speed on the process, and make sure I wasn’t going completely crazy).

What’s weird is that in some sense, now I’m in over my head. Still, I know I can swim, and it’s just a matter of really putting my mind to it, and then creating prototypes, and making sure that this system is as tuned, and as versatile as possible. It’s pretty interesting – though I know that the system’s so central to the gameplay that I’m not going to be allowed to fail (if things look bad, I’m sure additional help will just “appear,” but still – my goal is to get as much of this awesome with as little necessary help as possible. But, of course, input will be good, and I’ve gotta make sure that I talk to the people who know the individual things that this system will affect inside and out.

I think it’ll be fun, it’s a great stepping stone, and quite frankly, shows that I’ve been given a lot more trust than I could have hoped for. Time to kick some ass.

I finally finished GTA:SA. It is a masterpiece. While the story and gameplay aren’t particuarly well-integrated, save for some in-game dialog between characters, the combination of sandbox-style gameplay, and the noninteractive cutscenes worked really, really well. The voice talent was extraordinary (Young Maylay, the voice of the main character, did an exceptional job, as did the person who played Wu Zi Mu, and James Woods, as Mike Torelli), the writing was really compelling, and the game world was so authentic-feeling, and enormous that it really created a sense of immersion and freedom that almost no other game has managed to do.

I was able to use real-world knowledge of how San Francisco was laid out to navigate San Fiero, and though it’s not an exact replica, it’s a more accurate portrayal of San Francisco, as a city, than any other game I’ve ever seen. Los Santos feels like LA. Las Venturas feels like Vegas. But still, they feel like interesting, vibrant places of their own, with their own visual appeal, unique branding, and visual touches.

The mission structure was extremely varied, the journey through the entire game world was logical, and provided a consistently interesting and rewarding payoff, and though the game is *extremely* violent, that violence takes place within a context that causes it to make sense. I think the reason that the violence in GTA feels more affecting than the violence in a game like Doom 3, which is much gorier, is that the violence in GTA feels like a choice, even when it isn’t. There are times in the game when I wanted Carl to say “no” to Sweet, to not live the gangsta lifestyle, and to realize that the things he’s acheived in the course of the game have given him a different option, and a different way to make the ‘hood a better place.

But, given the story and characters that they’ve created, it at least makes sense that the actions would unfold as they would. I did my best to play as nonviolently as possible, which is almost always my goal in a game that does give me the freedom to do so. Still, I killed *thousands* of rival gang members, tens, if not hundreds of cops, and ran over uncountable numbers of innocent pedestrians in the course of my journey.

One thing that I absolutely *loved*, and spoilers follow, so beware – I really enjoy it when a game brings you back to a familiar environment, but gives it a different twist. Gradius V does this, where you go back in time to replay a particular level, but your previous run through the level is recorded, and played back as you play through the level in a slightly different way. Being able to see your effect on the game world is a mighty reward, and the “riot” sequences in GTA are extraordinary in this regard. Things you have seen before – a city you have spent hours in, has changed radically, and it’s great to see neighborhoods that you “lived” in torn apart.

It’s incredible, and so astonishing in its scope that I wonder if perhaps GTA 4 will simply be renamed “videogame,” at which point, no other videogames will actually be necessary. Of course this is unlikely to actually be the case, but GTA:SA is a third person shooter, a flight simulator, a skydiving game, a driving game, The Sims, a mini-RTS, and Mario Party, all rolled into a stunningly realized, coherent package.

I was not a fan of Rockstar games prior to this. I love Max Payne, and they get points for publishing that as well. But GTA III didn’t capture my attention, and Vice City didn’t capture my imagination. San Andreas does both, and does so with such intensity that it is likely that it is the best game I will play this year. Incredible stuff.

Said goodbye to an online community I’ve been a part of for the last three years today. Last night, one of the relatively new members posted some inane racist crap about Asians, and was too stupid to know the difference between talking about people, and literally being racist. I’d hoped that the mods would have the common sense to enforce some of the values we actually used to really hold dear – that we would not tolerate racism, misogyny, or any other form of discrimination. But the problem is that the moderators apparently have some completely fucked up sense that quantity is more valuable than quality, despite a single person basically driving off two long time regulars, several months ago. Of course, the other person that was responsible for them leaving was a mod himself, so basically, that situation was just fucked from the start.

So, I’m sad – there are members there that I genuinely hope to keep in touch with, and have formed what I consider valuable, hopefully lasting friendships with. And the only reason that I feel ok leaving the community because of the actions of this one jackass are that I think that those friendships are strong enough to continue, even in a diminished capacity, without the forum.

This brings up the question, though, for me – can an open community survive being open? Can it survive being closed? If it’s closed, it stagnates – there needs to be some constant influx of new people, to keep things interesting, but at the same time, letting in any ol’ shit-for-brains ends up with situations as we have now. I think the key is proper, vigilant moderation. The Gamer’s Forum lost that, when some warped concern for not hurting this guy’s precious feelings got in the way of actually telling him to shut up when he was saying idiotic bullshit. But even then, vigilant moderation leads to disagreements, or the strict enforcement of a single point of view on how to run a community.

For me, I would have preferred that, and had people leave because they thought a community had a certain style, and it turned out that wasn’t the style, then having new people come in, screw up the established community, then force people who were there from the start to have to choose to leave or not based on whether they find this new iteration of the community acceptable. For me, it simply finally crossed the line when overt racism became grounds for a slap on the wrist, rather than a kick in the balls.

C’est la vie, on one hand, on the other hand, I hope my friends from TGF remain so. I realize that in these times, that’s somewhat of an unlikely proposition, yet still, I remain perhaps naively hopeful.

Finished another series of levels for Aura, for the Jan 5th submission. There’ll be another round of elimination, then we’ll see if we make it on to the finals. Given the amount of “gameplay” there is (probably 20-45 minutes, for someone playing it for the first time), and how entertaining it is, versus how much content you’d have to create to make a platformer or other puzzle game similarly entertaining, I think we’ve got a good chance for success.

Ah, back to work tomorrow. Sadly, I suppose, but at the same time, we don’t have a lot to do, really. So, I’ll bring in the xbox, and probably hit up some KOTOR II or GTA, and that’ll be Monday. Real work will probably start trickling in soon, though.

Decided that as soon as I’ve got a hankering for a new game, rather than purchasing it, I’m gonna start up a GameFly account. I get a lot of games for cheap through the Want Ads at work, but despite most games being on the order of $5, it’s costing me money that I don’t really need to spend, as most of the games end up being purchases mostly out of curiousity, just to see the mechanics of a particular game. GameFly’s got an interesting setup, in that if you like a game, you can keep it at preplayed prices – and as such, you can see the condition of the disc in your own house, and the instructions/case are *new* because they never send them out.

So, working on Knights of the Old Republic II and GTA:SA now, so it’s not like I need to start it up now, but in a month or so, rather than buying a new game, I’ll start up a GF account. I want to break the “collector” mentality, where I’m in the habit of buying games. It’s an expensive hobby, and a sort of stupid habit, as I doubt if I play more than 25% of the games I’ve got on any sort of even remotely regular basis.