I think that was about all I could muster for the news that Tammy Faye Whatsername had died. Why is her death headline news, exactly? Because a decade and some ago, she bilked thousands of people out of millions of dollars? You’ll pardon me if I can’t really muster up a lot of sympathy for her.

I’m sorry, this is just more of America’s bullshit obsession with people who are famous for no good reason. Why do we pay attention to these sorts of people? What is it about our culture that draws us to what are basically utterly worthless, and often *vile* people, and causes us, as a culture – certainly not me, with fame and as an inevitable result, money?

Why can we just ignore these people and have them go about supporting themselves legitimately, or self-destructing by themselves? I’m talking Paris Hilton, Jack Thompson, et. al. Let’s just stop paying attention to them, *please*. There’s a war on. Our government is the most corrupt, most incompetent in my lifetime, and I’d guess the most corrupt *ever*, to be perfectly direct. Why does all that get swept aside because some con-artist kicked the bucket?

So, in an earlier post, I gave my definition of what a “game” is – it’s a series of choices presented to the player in a way that they can make informed decisions that allow them to make further choices. As with any definition of an art, it’s hard to say whether something’s ‘right’ or not – is there even a ‘right’ answer?

But the more and more time I spend with this definition, the more and more useful it reveals itself to be. The keys are the concept of “informed decisions” and “further choices,” and the thing that’s tested the definition’s mettle is the constant exposure I have to ‘game designs’ written by people who simply have no concept of what ‘game design’ actually *is*.

Digression: If you had to make a decision who should fly a 747 full of passengers – a trained, experienced pilot, or a twelve year old high school student with no flight training or experience, why would you ever choose the twelve year old? Yet, this happens all the time in the game industry. Game design is a learned skill. There are reasons that decisions are made the way they are, and if you don’t understand the basic mechanics, psychology, and theory at work, you are not a game designer and you shouldn’t be flying goddamned airplanes. Just because I can make my job look easy doesn’t mean it *is*.

Maybe I can end another paragraph with asterisks around the word *is*?

Anyway – back to the definition of what a game is. (ooh – missed opportunity) Informed decisions are key. And it’s not “If you go left, you will be eaten by bears, if you go right, you’ll be eaten by zombies.” If I present you with a choice to go right or left, and both corridors look the same, and you have no additional information, I haven’t given you a choice that has any significance. Maybe you’ll go left, maybe you’ll go right. It doesn’t matter, because you have no way of knowing what the consequences of making that decision are.

If I give you the same choice, but one corridor is lit, and the other one is covered in blood, now you have some information. Sure, it’s really heavy-handed and stupid, but you can actually make a decision based on some sort of reasoning. Honestly, you’d be surprised by how many people in the game industry – designers, even – don’t seem to understand this point. And no, I’m not talking about an art-house game that’s about the pointlessness of choice, or predestiny, or some cop-out excuse about how my example sucks, okay?

Information and consequence. The choice has to have both, or it’s not a real choice. Now, that’s not to say that every time the player is presented with an option that they have to be given a real choice. Sometimes, you can give the player interaction for the sake of pacing. In Brooktown, for the PSP, I’d give certain characters dialog that required the player to choose between similar responses that would end up at the same NPC response. The different responses would have an almost insignificant impact on the game (+1,-1 to confidence, maybe), but the issue was that conversation needed to flow like real people speaking, and this person was pausing to see if the listener was actually paying attention.

But if you’re talking about *gameplay*, that choice has to have consequence, or there’s no point in giving the choice to the player. If you want someone to choose one path or another, it’s a risk-reward calculation the player should be able to make. Short path, but more enemies? Are they under a time limit? How can they tell one path is shorter? Maybe they can see their destination is closer that way, maybe they can see a bigger cluster of enemies, maybe they have a map, blah blah blah. Lots of ways to communicate that information, but again, a lot of times people seem to overlook the fact that the player needs information. The choice, similarly, shoudl have consequence – if the player takes the harder path, the fact that it’s shorter should make a difference. Maybe they’ve got a time limit, maybe they need more “experience points,” maybe there’s a powerup hidden in there somewhere. If you don’t give the player a reason to challenge themselves, they’ll take the path of least resistance. In this case, they take a long, unchallenging path that’s less interesting, and wonder why the game sucks.

So, as a razor, the definition is remarkably effective. For any mechanic, whether it’s a gameplay or a narrative device, is the player informed enough to make a real decision, and does that decision have a consequence? If the answer to either of those is “no,” it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Bomberman Live came out this morning, and since I was up at 7 for some ludicrous reason, I picked it up and gave it a whirl. It’s a completely competent iteration of Bomberman. Almost nothing that deviates from the formula, as far as I can tell, with up to 8-player Live support.

I picked it up, because Bomberman’s a great little party game, and 8-player Live sounds awesome. Hopefully we can get some TGF games going.

I’m not one for balance for balance’s sake, but this actually seems to be an interview with Kaz Hirai and Jack Tretton where neither of them says anything completely outlandish or ridiculous. It’s like they actually have respect for the people they’re addressing. More like this, please, and less of the crazy.

Peter Dille: “With the Xbox 360 you’ve got an inconsistent design, some have a hard drive, some don’t, and none of them have Blu-Ray, and the HD-DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product?”

He then goes on to rail on MS’s current quality control issues. Hey, Peter – people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. You remember the PS2 and its quality control issues? Doesn’t seem so.

But re: “inconsistent design” – at least people understand the difference between buying a hard drive or not. That’s reasonably clear. I think it was a stupid decision to not standardize the presence of a hard drive, sure. But the PS3’s some-units-have-hardware-backwards-compatibility-some don’t is a lot more “inconsistent,” and a lot harder for consumers to grasp.

Your notion of a “10 year product cycle” has rested pretty heavily on the concept of backwards compatibility. Kaz Hirai, in numerous older interviews talks about the fact that your library extends to the next Playstation console as being part of their 10 year plan. Not so much anymore, eh?

Oh – and from A_B’s comment in the last “Some Idiot From Sony Said Something Stupid” post, dropping the price on the 60 gig then phasing it out is just poor.

So, the PS3’s now officially $100 cheaper.

Big deal.

When the most commonly heard response to the fact that you’ve dropped the price of your console $100 is “Still too expensive,” you know you’re in trouble.

The problem with the PS3 is that there’s simply nothing to play on it. Killzone 2, however good it supposedly looks (and I don’t think it’s particularly pushing the envelope), is a sequel to a nice but mediocre predecessor. Nothing else Sony showed is all that compelling, except the one screenshot they showed from Infamous.

Little Big Planet looks awesome, but there’s not really much to it that they’ve showed that really looks particularly… “fun”?

So, what’s that leave? It leaves a very short timed exclusive for Unreal Tournament 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 (which to me looked *awful*, from a narrative perspective – the trailer was one of the worst I’ve seen), and… what? A bunch of stuff that’s multiplatform that runs *better* on the 360.

So, I have no idea, honestly, what Sony’s hoping to accomplish with this price drop. They’ve taken something there’s no compelling reason to buy and made it cheaper. Whee.

Thing is, let’s say that the price of the PS3 drops $100/year. That means I’ll buy one in 2010. That’s a problem for Sony. They’ve got to come out with something that’s really mindboggling, and the problem is with the current power of the high-end consoles, mindboggling in a way that the 360 can’t touch… that’s just really, really difficult.

I wish Sony would stop talking to me like I’m a complete fucking idiot:

Jack Tretton, today:

“You’ve got the hard disk drive built in with every device and the benefits that brings; but that’s not something that consumers have ever had in a gaming system before, built in.”

Really? Xbox?

Thing is, this is just the latest in a long series of things that Sony reps have said that are obvious lies, and they *know* that they’re obvious lies. They even know that most people know that they’re obvious lies, but they do it because no one’s going to call bullshit on them. Basically the same reason the current administration lies with impunity.

Stop treating me like a moron, Sony, and maybe I’ll eventually consider buying your idiotic overpriced piece of crap.

So, the iPhone’s out, as everyone knows by this point. I’ve held it, I’ve tried it out, I’ve read a bunch of reviews, and I’m going to buy one.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not going to buy one right now. I have no idea when I’ll buy one. But unless they really screw it up more than it’s already screwed up, when my current Nokia e62 dies, I’ll almost certainly end up with an iPhone.

For the most part, the things that it currently does badly, I don’t really care all that much about. I don’t really use a lot of data – the times when I want it, I won’t care that it’s slow. I’ll be looking up an address somewhere, or killing some time waiting in a line or something. I don’t do much in the way of MMS/text messaging, etc.

Physically, the iPhone is gorgeous. Seductive. The screen is beautiful, and the UI is good. I’ve never seen a UI on a phone that comes anywhere even remotely close to the iPhone’s UI. As much as I generally like Sony Ericsson’s UI, or Nokia’s UI, finding various options and functionality in those phones is like searching for a needle in a haystack. There’s almost no rhyme or reason to it, and as a result, the functionality may as well not exist.

On top of that, it seems like the first convergence device that actually makes sense. I could have an episode of Top Gear, some music, my calendar all on the phone, and all of them would not only be functionally useable, but a *pleasure* to use.

So, yeah – my next phone is very, very likely to be an iPhone. Who knows when that’ll be, but who cares, either?

Busy weekend. Our friend M came down for the weekend from Seattle, which was awesome. It’s always really great to see him, and being able to hang out with him for almost two days solid was a rare treat.

I’ve been painting the Mini’s roof. Yesterday, I did a final sand with 240 grit sandpaper on a power sander, and applied the first coat of paint (with help from Ei-Nyung & her younger brother). It was a bit too thick, and got a bit “orange peel”y, but it was a good start nonetheless. The problem was that the nice glossy white revealed a couple noticeable divots in the otherwise smooth roof. So, I mixed up some more Bondo, and filled ’em in, then sanded it down. Put another coat of paint on this afternoon, which was basically just mineral spirits with the paint that I wrung out of the roller yesterday. Really thin coat – maybe too thin.

I let that dry for a couple hours, and then gave it a once-over with 600 grit sandpaper and a spray bottle of water. It’s about half sanded. Needs another pass just to get the blobs out. I don’t think the paint had fully hardened either, so it felt a touch gummy. Still, the roof of the Mini is distinctly white now (Canvas White, according to the paint can), and needs about four to six more coats with a wetsanding every two coats. I think it’s gonna be really great when it’s done.

After doing the roof, there’s some spots I’m going to try to fix on the burgundy part of the body, and I’m hoping that I can match the paint so I don’t have to paint the whole car, but who knows? Either way, it’s not that bad – it’s time-consuming, but satisfying and fun.

I think in the end, the roof, the side mirrors, stripes on the hood and the wheels will all be this canvas white color, and the rest of the body will be burgundy.

Then, I just need to get to the mechanic, and have them figure out why the clutch is slipping once the car’s warmed up. Talk about having my priorities backwards. Heh.

Also spent about an hour and a half pulling up weeds, and ended up with blisters on my right middle finger. Fun times. Tomorrow, I go back to work, where I have literally nothing to do.