Bleah. In a bit of a funk. Two of the guys I hung out with at work have recently left – one for Harmonix, and one for Bungie. If you made a list of the “most jealousy-inducing places to work in games,” the only other companies on the list would be Valve and Blizzard. On top of losing two people who were both really good and fun to hang out with, it really makes me wonder what I want out of my career in games, and why I am where I am.

Right now, things aren’t bad. I’m really happy with the state of the game we’ve been working on, and I think it genuinely has potential to address a really long-standing problem I’ve had with games in a really interesting way. It’s not “art” – at least, not yet – it’s just entertainment, but I think it’s entertainment that has the potential to be pretty damn good. The problem is that the company is hemorrhaging talent, and it’s at the point where there’s only one other designer (the guy I carpool with) who I know has what I’d consider real talent. There’s one guy I think is pretty good, two that I don’t really have any experience with, and one I think just doesn’t have it in him.

So, the thing is, even if this game gets put into the pipeline and gets a full budget, does this company have the talent to make a genuinely great game? Maybe. That’s about all the hope I can muster for the future. At the same time, if I ask myself, “Where else could I work?” the answers aren’t good. There’s the four mentioned above, but they’re in different places, and moving isn’t really an option I’m interested in pursuing. In the Bay Area, there’s EA Redwood Shores, Sega, Crystal Dynamics, Double Fine, Factor 5, Backbone, Planet Moon, Secret Level, 2K Marin, Nihilistic…

2K Marin’s obviously got a lot of hype – with Bioshock the critical and commercial success it was, they’re clearly pushing for a huge hit with Bioshock 2. Someone recently asked me why I hadn’t interviewed there yet, and frankly, the problem is that I don’t know what I’d do with a Bioshock 2. The gameplay mechanics weren’t what “made the game,” and the story… was done, in Bioshock 1. There’s nowhere to take that story.

You could do something thematically similar, but the things that made Bioshock distinctive and unique were really one-offs – you’d have to pull off something equally challenging and unusual, but in a totally new and different way. And *even if* you managed to pull that off, you’d only ever be the successor to Bioshock. It is in some ways, a lose-lose situation – not even enough of an interesting challenge to be motivating. Bioshock 2, unfortunately, is a game that *shouldn’t exist*, and as a result, I can’t really imagine wanting to devote two years of my life to that project.

Obviously, it’d be great to make something that was a commercial success – that’d be grand. But more than that, I want three major things:

1.) To work with people I enjoy working with

2.) To work on something I am personally proud of

3.) A sense of creative ownership (even with collaborators) over the work

Point 3 isn’t really gonna happen at any of the major companies, but point 2 would definitely be facilitated by working at a place that really knows how to make quality games. Point 1 is a tossup, and something that’s always hard to find – but not impossible. There have been times where I’ve really enjoyed working with the people I work with – they just haven’t lasted very long before the situations were shaken up.

Feh. If I were honestly totally motivated – to the point I’d need to be to *actually* start an independent development, I would work on something in the evenings outside of work. But I don’t. I have a tool I *should* be writing stuff for, but I can’t find it in me to sit down and work on it. Why is that? Fear of failure? I dunno. I can’t explain it. I should just do it.

Oh – one other thing – having now spent some time with the iPod Touch – it’s an incredible piece of hardware. While it’s missing some of the functionality of the iPhone, the thinness it achieves as a result actually makes it feel really, really different. While the iPhone’s sort of chunky, this thing feels like a really … futuristic thing. I mean, what it really feels like is nothing. It’s just a screen – yet it’s also an iPod, plays video, surfs the web (in a remarkably useful fashion), tells me how to get places, allows me to read e-mail, blah blah blah.

More than just a really neat phone, or a really neat iPod, Apple’s onto something that feels like it could really be the future of computing. For what 90+% of what I need to do, if all I had was the Touch or an iPhone, I could do exactly that. The only limiting factor is the physical size of the screen, and the speed at which I could type on the thing.

I can’t say I have any good ideas about how to resolve those issues, but when they are resolved, which they obviously will be, this actually feels like it’ll be the future of computing.

So, not really all that much to post. I guess outside work, there’s not a whole lot going on that isn’t hanging out at home, with the dog or random friends. Work’s actually going pretty well. I think we’re on the right track, and actually going to be making something that’s potentially quite good. I’ve got a prototype running with stuff I’ve hacked together with existing tech, and it’s actually fun to play. Stable enough that other people in the company can come by, check it out, and have a good time – more, they come back for more. That’s a really excellent state to be in for a prototype, so I’m pretty happy about that.

Got a bit of a cold last week which knocked me out for a couple days. Dealing with the f’ing city for permit stuff is a nightmare. Turns out, we can’t get any money of the $4,800 they charged us because the *previous* permits were “undervalued.” I went down to the city to ask how the F they can charge us extra for permits that have expired, but they basically said, “tough shit,” and that was that. It’s true the previous permits were undervalued, but they claimed that when re-opening expired permits, they do a revaluation as part of the process, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

So, fine – we’re out ~$5K, but more than that, it’s the last goddamn time I get permits for work done in our house. Fortunately, all that’s left is a remodel of the main floor bathroom, and I just don’t give a shit whether we get permits for that or not. Fuck those guys, “fair” or not.

The kitchen’s still awesome. Still getting a little used to the layout, and because the panel eliminated a couple units of cabinet space, the pantry area feels a little cramped, strangely, but it’s still pretty spectacular, and I don’t have any complaints about it.

We still need to paint. I keep putting it off, mentally, and as a result, end up putting it off in practice as well. We’ve gotta tape up, put some dropcloths down and knock out the primer and paint in a day or two. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but if we do that, it’ll be only the second room in the house that’s legitimately *complete* – the only other one is the downstairs bathroom. The downstairs bedroom would be as well, except for the window leak. Once that’s proven to be fixed, we need to repair the water damage, add trim to the window, then that one’s done as well.

Whee.

Been sort of tired recently as well. Maybe it’s got something to do with the sickness of the previous week, but I’ve been feeling kinda run-down. Just sort of a loss of momentum as well. There was a period where I was painting the Mini, doing stuff on the house, etc. It was good – these days, I find myself looking at webpages all evening, which is a totally pointless waste of time. I feel like I’ve got to take control of my time again, and make sure that I’m doing something – even something entertaining – just not something tedious and pointless. I’ve got a couple small things around the house that need doing – a vent cover in the downstairs near the window in the living room needs installing, the Mini still needs to get its last couple coats of paint on the roof, and the lawn needs some serious weeding.

Still, work’s going well – the project is finally satisfying, on the right track, and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. The guy I was having trouble with before has worked out – we’re working really well together, and I’m perfectly happy to admit that while my frustrations about the work environment were legitimate, my judgement about his potential and his personality were incorrect.

Groovy.

Crazy day today. Took care of a bunch of errands, made a good double-batch of buta kakuni, had friends over for shabu-shabu & Rock Band, took Mobius to the beach, and made some headway cleaning up the spare room.

Of course, I also ended up falling asleep in the hammock in the mid-afternoon and as a result burned the living crap out of some balsamic I was reducing, but other than that, hey. Not too bad.

Played around with the iPod Touch that Ei-Nyung got for me for my birthday. It’s pretty incredible – so much functionality in such a tiny device. One interesting thing is that a couple of my friends have been working on porting Aura, our GBA game from a couple years back, to the iPhone, now that the SDK is out.

Kick ass!

So… the kitchen’s done… with one exception. The permit can’t be finalized, because the inspector found out there were unfinalized permits. Fun. Re-opening the permits today cost $4,800, and the inspector’s coming tomorrow to do the first round of inspections.

*sigh*

Still, on the positive side, the kitchen’s done (for the most part). On another negative side, there’s something weird going on with our fridge. It appears to be keeping things cool, but it’s reading out that it’s at 68 degrees. Which is obviously not refrigerator-like temperatures.

*sigh*

So, today’s been weirdly good and bad. On the positive side, it’s been ten years as of today since Ei-Nyung and I started seeing each other! And I’ll leave it at that. With more pictures of the kitchen.

Spent a couple hours tonight moving stuff back into the kitchen. There’s a couple minor issues – the first was that the refrigerator kept beeping, and wasn’t actually cooling down. This was curious, but after a couple minutes of exploration and a little disassembly, I found the door sensor hadn’t been reconnected when the delivery people reassembled the doors. Oops. Easy fix, and we’re on our way.

The second problem is that the plumbing below the sink is leaking. Nothing that can’t be relatively easily fixed, but sort of a bummer nonetheless. A quick trip to Ace in the morning should take care of that no sweat. Everything else is FUCKING SPECTACULAR.

The tile looks awesome, the sink is HUGE, there’s tons of closet space, the lighting is bright and cheery, the new fridge is huge, and there’s space for everything we need (and probably then some). Oh – the other weird detail is that the stove isn’t level. It tilts slightly forward. I’m sure it’s not a big deal, and Monday those guys can level it out, but it is a touch odd.

We ended up sticking an old Altec Lansing set of speakers & a subwoofer into the cabinet above the microwave – so if you want to listen to music, you can hook up an iPod and have at it. Sometime over the weekend I think I’m going to drill a hole into the adjacent cabinet and run a wire with a connection, because the only real problem is that it’s all mounted kinda high. If the iPod, at least, could be mounted lower, it’d be much more accessible. It actually sounds decent even with the cabinet doors closed, which makes for a really eerie effect.

Yeah, I know – pictures – but I didn’t want to post the end result without a really good shot of the kitchen in bright light, and that means it won’t happen ’till tomorrow.

There’s still areas that need to be painted, so it’s not “finished” finished – we need to do a really good job masking up – there’s a lot of stuff to screw up if we do a bad job of that. Oh – one of the last details that needs to be hooked up are the living room lights and the pendant lights above the bar division between the living and dining rooms. Not that big a deal – probably ten minutes of work, but it hasn’t happened yet.

So, Jim & Co. are coming back out Monday for the last of the inspections and to finish up the last bits, then we’re off to the races! Good times.

Things are close to being done. One thing from today: the glass tile looks AWESOME.

I don’t actually think it’s proper to cast Hillary as a demon, but this is a pretty funny use of a quote from Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series, and it does to some degree sum up how I feel about Obama, and why I like him more than any of the other people running this cycle.