at last!

yup, i am horrible about updating this thing in a timely manner, what else is new? I have to say, I've been bowled over with work these days.. it's super-busy at the office and I really haven't found much time to support this thing. I plan to keep it going though, SO HELP ME ----


Things are alright in videogameland. Pretty quiet as the world prepares to be taken over by Halo once again, especially of note since it's the first nextgen incarnation since the original one released lo those many years ago (what was it - 2001?) Yeah Halo 2 doesn't feel like "that" long ago but it has never really made a huge marked imprint on the gaming culture as I feel the new one will. Anyway, I guess we will see - I think it's due Tuesday or thereabouts. Personally, I have never played any of the Halo series, though I do think I have an ISO floating around of the PC version, somewhere. I might pick up the old Xbox original for the hell of it (it can't cost more than a couple bucks at this point!) I am certainly not a FPS player by any means, but I guess I should familiarize myself with some of those conventions... well, maybe. Somehow I feel like it's something I "may not quite get around to..."

Midway is releasing Area 51 Blackside, or something like that, to coincide with the Halo release.. which is sort of retarded, if you ask ANYbody. No matter how good it winds up - but I am interested to see how a like-genre can stand going up against the "king," I mean will some people pick it up for the hell of it? Not everyone's got a 360, after all. It should be interesting to see what happens.


I strapped into "The Hulk Ultimae Destruction" last week, for the first time.. a couple of years old, but I can see way it was well-received. It was easy and quick to get into, and it's a game where they've truly captured the feeling of being a superhero (well, superhuman character, but you get my drift) and an adaptation of a comic-book character, no less. It's easy to see how it was inspired by the movie, and I have to say it just "feels right" --- though it did get boring for me after messing with it for awhile. I didn't venture too terribly far into the game, but already they load up on the "boring sandbox missions." Most people love that stuff but it's always gonna feel awfully tacked-on for me. Do this! Carry that! Mess with the environment which is shallow and limiting! I know, I expect too much - I guess it IS just a videogame, and therefore "it's gotta make money" but when you are controlling a guy like the hulk, it's sooo much fun already to pick cars up and throw them at helicopters and stuff like that - it really is - but rather than smash up the sides of buildings, I wanna be able t0o smash into and through the buildings. I know it's kinda asking a bit much for that level of depth, but come on it would be VERY cool! When I think in those terms I am reminded of the feeling of playing Katamari Damacy the first time, as you grow your Katamari larger and larger and you suddenly feel this wonderful feeling of how far they actually would support this concept (you get large enough to pick up EVERYTHING). That's such a great feeling from a videogame. Anyway I won't close the book on Hulk yet, I will dig a little more to see some of the meat of the game. I think it's a good job, considering.

I am surprised there've not been more successful superhero games. Well scratch that, I am NOT surprised, for obvious reasons - but I am sort of shocked there's not more in that vein, if even unlicensed stuff. Superheroes seem like half the job of design is figured out already - you could make some crazy unbelievable game with a guy like Superman for crying out loud! Any of these guys.. of course the biggest recent travesty is the Transformers game, but like anyone will say "you can't expect much from licensed titles," it's almost pointless to go above and beyond and churn out a powerful game. Though if you do, it can bring your studio some serious kudos...

I got a couple Saturn games in the mail this week, I haven't plugged them in yet (maybe later this evening, if I am not too terribly beat!) There's still a handful I want to track down, slowly but surely. Also I am still stalking a JPN PSX game "Umihara Kawase," it's just sort of sitting there on this guy's auction looking at me innocently. "No one wants me! I could shoot up very expensive though!!" Yeah and your reserve hasn't been met either. We'll see. i'd love to pick it up for peanuts, I don't really wanna think about having to shovel over upwards of $50 for a title like that (though stranger things have happened). I have pretty much given my grim acceptance to the fact that if I want to land Zanac PSX I'll have to shovel over some pretty pennies for that thing.. sucks.. but I love those compile games, and that's the swan song!

Work is going alright. As usual "I can't really talk about my project" which is too bad, but of course - makes sense. I did a little round this week looking over all of the levels (it's got LEVELS - I've said too much!) and it feels good to have an overall gander of the game. I have been doing a lot of last-minute "band aid work" this past week, getting pulled off the current level that I have been trying to wrap up - hopefully in these next couple of days, I will be able to concentrate on doing that and moving onto the next one. I am getting to help out with a little more hands-on design stuff than I've done in the past, which is definitely a good thing (difficult in this case, but enjoyable). It's something that kind of gets my goat, though - I start to feel like "oh why can't we change these gameplay systems to more appropriately work in X way?" and I can quickly see how those guys can get pretty frustrated. art, design.. it's all about compromise, really... That's where style saves you, I suppose...

getting a job?

(an email i wrote to a guy who i was trying to help get a start in games - i eventually helped him get hired as an intern at Obsidian, after a period they hired him on fulltime)

hey what's up kevin, this is ron - i met you at kurt's bday last weekend.
sorry for the delay in emailing you, it's been a busy week! and another one coming up.. dammit time to go back to it already! whew, anyway... BTW i apologize in advance for a super-long email, here goes.

so i checked out your website, i wanted to drop you a note real quick. we talked briefly about how it can be rough to get a foothold in the industry, so i wanted to pass on a couple of links and info that might be useful to you. take as much (or as little) from it as you feel is necessary - i can only give you my perspective from what i have seen and dealt with in my own endeavors..

first things first, if you are looking for jobs you need to hit some websites pretty steadily. VFXpro.com is the first one i was telling you about, on their main page there's a sidebar with a link to a jobs forum. know this link, make it your best friend!!
just opening it up you'll see tons of openings for all manner of positions, in all areas of the world.. long term stuff, short term, you name it. even looking for a second i see plenty of interesting opportunities across the board, though of course as i sad they are for different disciples of varying levels of experience. At this point i say dig through the listings of the past month (and then some), see which look like they are on your mark or even near to it - the first step is to make some contact, even if the job could be something out of your range you could still get a good contact out of it (and who knows, they might have another position open that is more relevant to what you are specialized in). Anyway, that's the first step...

the other site you should check for jobs is gamasutra, i think you need to register with them (it's free, no matter) to view the detailed listings/contact info. everyone in the industry should be pretty familiar with gamasutra anyway, it's pretty muh one of te number one sites for all general game industry news without much fanfare or fluff. not prety but easy to digest and you can keep up to date with who is important, and why. Also, just "living" on their job boards is a good way to learn what companies are located where, what types of jobs they "usually" hire for, stuff like that. it sounds kind of petty/secondary but it's a really good way to learn a lot of the "backed" that you need for looking for work (and being able to properly represent yourself when dealing with the business guys, etc). mind you applying to jobs on these sites is no guarantee that you'll even get a response, unless you've got a sharp resume - TONS of people read the gamasutra listings everyday, probably thousands of folks i'd wager... still, "anything is worth an email," you never know who it will end up with.

other than that.. i have seen a few other sites with job listings of various quality, nothing i have looked back at in recent times though (but it's always good to do research and keep a lookout for the dark corners of the internet, if you get my drift). i have known people who have found work on craigslist, stuff like that.

there's a couple other websites i must plug as well. you don't wanna approach these as job-source, but thy are invaluable regardless (if you're super-lucky you might get job leads to whatever degree, but that's not the point). maxforums.org is one of the most useful sites i have found on the internet.. it's just a big forum where people hang out and yakk about 3ds max all day long. users of various skill levels, hobbyists and industry people.. yeah, it's pretty nerdy, but honestly i have learned so much by hanging around on that board. there's such a great community, loads of talented and smart people, everyone's always posting works-in-progress and doing critiques and all of that. it's daunting (a lot of it is WAYYY better than anything i will ever make!) and therefore humbling, but the people are friendly and helpful. if you need help with something, and you are polite and patient, you can usually get some kinda help with anything obscure you throw at them, tech-wise.. or a least pointed in the right direction of where you should look. Seriously, my education in 3ds max pretty much came out of spending a solid year buzzing around that website. so many of those people will take the time to write super-detailed tutorials on how to do.. EVERYTHING. the point is, it's a strong community witha lot of people who are eager to help each other, share the wealth. i possibly wouldn't be working today if not for that website.

another good site that is pretty important is neogaf.com, their forum is one of the most popular "game discussion websites" in the whole world. if maxforums was kinda dorky, THIS site is 110 percent off the charts fucking supreme dorkiness.. but again.. it's sort of the first line for a lot of important information in "what's going on in the industry." You get a lot of mega-game nerd fanboys on there (most of it, actually) but there's a healthy representation of game developers who post on there as well (usually under anonymity, but if you stick around and pay attention you can weed them out). this site has gotten some heavy notoriety lately as some higher-level project leads (and studio heads) have been posting pretty high-profile shit in here in the past year and change.. which is pretty remarkable. at the same time they are starting to let too many people into the membership, so it's getting kinda diluted... but still it's worth sticking to, you'll find all game industry news pretty well covered in here. yeah i know i keep saying it, "this all sounds pretty dorky" to be hanging around all these gaming messageboards and stuff... but it is vital, this is where the business happens ad is reported these days, for obvious reasons. it's messy and kinda cryptic, but if you want to know what's going on you sort of have to give a good shit about it. Even if you have the attitude "hey i just wanna work in production, i don't care about the politics of it all, leave that for the suits to worry about.." that's small thinking, because the business and politics of it colors everything. it's been the beginning and end of careers for all of us, really, like it or not. if you really can't care about it, then it will probably bite you in the ass sooner or later.

so there's my website info crap, that's the beginning of it anyway. there's a little more, but no sense heaping on all the secondary shit at this point - if you can get into this much, and go with the flow, then you are on a good roll for damn sure, ad you won't have much trouble finding your own way where to go next..

now-- as for your website. i checked it out, i looked at your demo reel, your resume, etc. this is one area that i take very seriously, because at the end of the day this is all you got, man. your website will pretty much represent all that you are, in the world, to your potential clients - so you better do a damn fine job of conveying to them what you are about and why they should hire you. websites and portfolios are difficult, for obvious reasons.. not only do you have HUGE competition (so many shmoes out there have half-decent websites), but at this point the people you want to view your website are so burned out on looking at that shit that it's gonna take something done -just so- for them to even register a blip on their radar. for this reason, you really need to follow the program and learn how to develop a perfectly polished, well-representational website. this extends to all aspects of it, from the user interface, to the way you lay out your resume, to the way you setup your demo reel video. it's a little maddening and obnoxious to have to deal with this - not only doing your work, but the complete other world of how ot present every little detail of it.. but like i said, we live in a world where there's so much competition on the middle ground that it's really the only way to be considered on a professional level.

Fortunately, making a decent website and portfolio presentation is pretty far from a shot in he dark. Because there are tons of really well-put together sites out there, it's pretty easy to fish through a handful of them and figure out what to do (and what not to do). Off the bat you can see some basic design principles going on - simple design, super easy to navigate, "less is more.." Really the people who look at your stuff don't want to deal with animated menus, exotic fonts, slow-downloading animated GIFs, pages and pages of info to delve thru, stuff like that. just easy and to the point, letting the work speak for itself. that's not to say that style should be ignored, just downplayed, simplified.

in my website, i wanted the main page to be the main interface - all of the images are available as the first thing you
see, you can tell what i have worked on/who i have worked for right away, what type of stuff i specialize in. i tried to trim it down as best i cold (i probably am still showing more than I need to), but hey you don't wanna spend forever criticizing the shit out of it. it's always easy to get back to the main page, the email button actually launches into an email, blah blah. it's stupid and simple. i started a website probably seven years ago, which looked horrible but i have revamped it and made it better every couple of years since (maybe 3 or 4 big overhauls) - but always the same general principles which i have seen on lots of other peoples websites. the best thing to do is get a working version, then send it out to all your buddies and tell them to critique the hell out of it. you'll hear plenty of half-assed advice, but always some great ideas too.

when i apply for a job -- depending on how interested i am in the job - i will email them to see what's up, and send a little paragraph about myself (what i do, where i live, who i have worked for, what projects, what software, my specialty.. brief and to the point). this is usually going to some HR person.. but if i know they are looking for an artist, i will do some digging and find out the art directors email address (usually not very hard, just do a little research online - pretty fucking easy). i'll email that person too, and then i will also send a physical package to the art director in the mail with a CDRom with like 10-15 jpegs on it (stuff from my website, plus maybe some more delicate stuff that i don't wanna post publicly for whatever reason), and a copy of the cover letter w/ all my contact info on it too. not hard to find the mailing address of any company, and just send it to art director's name c/o that company.. it will definitely wind up on their desk, at least. After being laid off from neversoft last fall, i went a step further and dd something new for the 1st time in years, i made an actual video DVD to show off my reel. probably super simple, but i neer did that before (that you could stick in a regular standard DVD player) all nicely edited and etc. i had an editor buddy who helped me out, there's tons of people in town who will help you put that shit together if you're not able for relatively cheap.. again, just gotta do some research, ask around, etc. If you are applying to some bigger houses (FX and stuff) they refuse to look at jpegs and websites, they are kinda arrogant.. they only want "video DVDs or nuthin'"

so, yeah, there's my piece for ya, do with it what you want. i know getting a job in this industry is tough, like any industry where there is a decent level of competition - and that sucks, but really it's not THAT bad that it's "almost impossible" or something. it just requires a lot of love and a lot of dedication and honestly being the guy who's gonna dig under rocks for a little while to cover all the bases. none of this stuf is even THAT hard, it's just sense.. and time, really. it sucks to have gone thru school, to have even had some work experience, and then after that, you sort of feel like "you've pad your dues" already and desere some job stability, on-the-job-training, something.. well, you don't really get that stuff in the entertainment industries. basically you either get lucky, or you're naturally crazy talented, or you're the guy who has the effort and the motivation to say "fuck it, i will take however long it will take to get myself established, and when it kicks my ass out a few times, i will keep crawling back." Of course, it DOES get easier, as you do learn shit on the job, and make contacts, and build up your reel, and your rep. But it takes time. A couple years sounds like a pain in the ass, but considering how many of the years of your life you will actually WORK, a couple years is nothing, just a blip on the radar...

so yeah, i know this was an absurdly long email, and it's probably a little crazy "why the hell does a guy i don't know write all of this stuff?" Honestly, I have been there, and it's only 'cause there have been other people (on those forums, who i have met, worked with, etc) who have done the same for me, clued me in on where to look, what to do with my work, etc. What comes around, goes around.. kind of.

lastly, after all of that, i didn't even get to critiquing your actual work.. ha! but the same rules apply, you have heard all that before anyway. i offer my friend jim's website as a great inspiration for what a great anim portfolio looks like.. i have seen this guy rise from humble origins, he is super-successful and a great guy also - jimjagger.com

alright man. good luck!

-Ron Alpert
2D/3D Environment artist

http://www.texturemonkey.com
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take out the trashes

Ahh, it is my neglected videogame blog. How am i ever gonna get rich ad famous off of this thing if i don't update it nineteen times a week, i wonder..?

That, my friends, is up to the courts to decide. Anyway, it's the weekend, and i am away from the office. It was a busy week with some late nights of wrapping up certain unfinished business and performing some edits on some levels that needed to be taken care of. I look forward to see how the next phase of the assembly line cleaned up where I left off, come Monday (though to be honest a couple more days out of the office wouldn't be upsetting..) Not much gaming recently, though I did make a couple of eBay purchases (such a wonderful thing!) I received the 2nd Hulk game "Ultimate Destruction," which enjoyed a very positive critical response as I recall.. also out inthe post somewhere are a couple more Saturn games, Baku Baku Animal (supposed to be a good puzzler) and a game called, I think, Gun Griffon. Ah well. It was only a cent for that, why not eh?

No gaming this weekend (yet,) though perhaps tonight I will load up Hulk and see what all the fuss is about. Last night after we returned from the bar, a spirited game of Tetris Attack (the best!) though my drunkeness was severley disabling my skills... Disturbingly, the SNES video cable seemed to peter out and so rather tan enjoying some SF2 we hadda retreat to PS2ville and plugged in some good old Bust-a-Move (is that what it's called? Shouldn't I be ashamed not to know this?) It made for some fun times though. Actually almost made me want to shell out for a Wii.

It's coming, maybe.. they are going to support the Japanese PC-Engine Super CDRom2 games, i guess (try saying that a few times!) and that's something that has raised my eyebrows. Tons of great shooters on that system! It sounds like they will only trickle software out for tat system though, so I am not all gung-ho. I recently bid some hefty $$$ on a modded TurboDuo (it had a region switch on it) but of course I had to draw the line.. I can't justify spending megabucks on that kind of stuff at this stage of the game! Tempting, though, when you see rare + weird stuff like that come down the pipe. I have my eye on a few weird "curiosities" lately, I would like to pick up a Virtual Boy someday (wait, that doesn't sound so appropriate) - it's got some interesting looking games, Red Alarm (like Star Fox, or so i have heard) - the mario clash game, pinball, 3D tetris.. yeah that all sounds rather gimmicky, but hey videogames are all about gimmicks, right? Seriously, I do remember the old Master System 3D glasses and being very impressed by how they operated - I think "true" 3D in gaming is something that deserves way more inspection than it has been given.

Lately I have been playing the old TG16 title "Blazing Lazers" (love that cheesy name!) AKA Gunhed, emulated on my GBA. That was a sweet spot of game history for me, when the vert shooters just started to get really, really fun. Compile - EXCELLENT company for that sort of stuff, Puyo Puyo be damned... I can still get quite a charge out of it, though I do need to recall the trick to amp up the difficulty (it's a bit too easy when you boost the weapons up). A spiritual sequel "Space Megaforce" (yah, more cheesy I know) AKA Super Aleste wound up being one of my very favorite SNES games, ever - the the degree that I'd be surprised if I haven't mentioned it elsewhere in this blog already (and surely it will come up again!) Now that I have that Test PS2 I am eager to pick up Zanac X Zanac, though I am hoping not to have to shell out the $150+ asking price for the new one - hopefully a cheaper used copy will show up on eBay at some point (either that or I will get rid of Radiant Silvergun and see if i can break even).

Other games I have on my mind - my friend got my interest picked in a title called Indigo Prophecy, also the Suda 51 game (Killer 7) might be worth a look (again, I think I have mentioned that title already). I guess that's all that's on my mental plate at the moment.. I downloaded Under Defeat for DC (naughty, naughty) but hae yet to burn it (i gotta remember how to do that stuff)

--------------------------------

Of course I can't end this blog without giving a mention to "The King of Kong," the decidedly biased videogame documentary that is enjoying some alternative success lately. good film, I enjoyed it very much - some good laughs, it's less a documentary about old quarter-munchers than it is an interesting look at human nature. While I can understand that some truth might have definitely been sacrificed to "create a better story," it's a good film and I am glad to see this theme getting some play in the big leagues, however relative. For those not in the know, here's a quick summary - "competitive video game playing" rose in the early 80s as "super-players" would spend marathon sessions in front of arcade cabinets to attain astronomical scores. These games were designed to hand you your ass after a quick burst of gameplaying enjoyment, but of course a particular niche of players would wrap themselves around these "simple but difficult" games and dedicate themselves to conquering them - of course, the list of people in the world who could actually do this is quite short. It's faded from something that's never been quite in the limelight, but the scene still exists among a very small (and specific) group of people who maintain their little society today. The film tells the story of an underdog who goes on to achieve videogaming greatness with the 25+ year old Donkey Kong machine, as he goes thru all sorts of hoops to prove his worth in The Hall of Esteemed Gamers - and must face much challenge as some good ol' boys aren't so quick to relinquish their thone quite so easily.

This has been a scene which, although it's been completely off the pop culture radar. retrogamers such as myself have long had some degree of interest in - it's very interesting to see it gaining any kind of attention in this day and age. There's another documentary out there in the ether as well "Chasing Ghosts" looking back at the whole Golden Age of Arcade Gaming, I haven't seen it (can't even find it!) but I'd love to get a chance to view it..

dash, bored...

yeah, so.. no game posts from me this week. well, i was busy workin', whattaya want!! Quiet week in the news, too.. Factor 5 is the new whipping boy of the moment (shame, shame) and nothing else really going on. Lots of people are probably wrapping up Bioshock and Metroid 3, in 6 months no one will remember either as these things go. I wanna butt in and say this much, though - it was important that Nintendo still put out a game like Metroid, which - though I have not played - still caters to a particular market. Everyone's up in arms "is The Big N gonna abandon it's hardcore players?" Maybe not, at least not with lightning speed. They throw some curveballs here and there - I am glad to see they can still put out quality games like this which won't poop al over the franchise (even though a lot of signs point to them eventually phasing out that market, possibly). Yeah, I a doomsayer sometimes..

Anyway of course Halo is the next Bog One on the horizon, I am not sure but isn't it out the end of the month or something? That will take over the world for a little while. Sony's pants are down with nothing to counter, so far as I can tell. There's some decent competition for Halo (relatively) due out next quarter, and thereabouts... I kind of wish someone would stand up and fight them though (isn't the Team Fortress due out for Xmas?) That's Cel-da for that community though, so it's a little up in the air (though it will make a mark, and I say more power to 'em). Of course Nintendo is looking at a good season with the next big Mario installment due shortly as well, as everybody knows - though after Sunshine people are sort of waiting to see how it actually feels to get hands-on with it (I mean, New SMB was a precursor to some degree, but it's apples and oranges - really). Platformers just don't have the same world-bending power they used to, even with the Top Dogs like that. Mario will do as well as it could, and I am sure everyone who bought Twilight Princess will pick it up, plus maybe a few more (hell, their installed back is.. remarkable!) But I am sure it'll never live up to the legacy set back at the dawn of N64, for obvious reasons.

And then there's Wii Fit, of course. Yeah, so this will be an interesting holiday season to watch, but not as weird as last year.

-------------------------

So I was at a Labor Day BBQ last weekend, in Santa Monica - a good time, but certainly a little thought provoking. My buddy who works at Sony Imageworks was throwing the shindig, and so there was an excess of visual FX folks there. Now, this is interesting, as VFX for TV/Film is definitely a different scene than what goes on in the games industry. It's generally considered that VFX>Games a lot of time, and "moving to film is the natural progression of the Games Artist.." Quite a few of my friends have made the transition, others have mentioned it. Talking to the people at this party, I could sense a little bit of people looking down their noses at me "oh, so you just wanna stay in games. don't wanna make more money, huh?" It's interesting. You see, I have done a tiny stint in the so-called "big leagues," and I won't lie - it was a thrill, and I truly enjoyed it - and would love to again - but games are my thing. I have my reasons, and I am not shy about calling them out. Games are smaller, more intimate affairs - I work with 60 people on a whole game staff, or just for a single SHOT in a film! I like working with small groups, and also you get "flex room" in games - you can move around a little more, wear different hats so to speak. Help out on design, UI, story, etc etc. Hell even suggest an IP if you know what you are talking about. Films are wayyyy more constrictive.. you're part of a department, you're pigeonholed into doing a specific thing, you just keep pumping that stuff out. That's not to say it's not glamorous, it's just not gratifying for me in that I want to do all sorts of stuff, rather then specialize in one area forever. As usual, I exaggerate, but there's truth in it.

The ideal situation for a guy like me is to go back and forth, experience the variety of the different mediums.. bring things I learn from one area to another one. I will never forget the thrill of sitting in the screening room of an FX house and watching with pride as my WIP shots were playing over and over on the big screen. I could do that again!

Games I want to play

Alright, I just fiished an entry not 20 minutes ago, but I just was struck by inspiration for a quick follow-up.. rather than edit it in, I decided to post it separately, here are som,e games I would like to play (these games already exist.. some of which I even own!)

In no particular order--

Umihara Kawase (any version) - I have tinkered with it for a few moments on the SFC version, but it's not got a proper playthrough yet. It was enough to get me interested - they need to make more weird games like that! I recently lost an auction for the PSone version, and the curret one is kinda pricey.

Thunder Force IV, Elemental Master - Sega Genesis shooters, I actually bought both back in the
day. I gave them about 15 minutes of playtime though, for some reason they never captivated me in the way their predecessors have, but they are still very much worth looking into (especially the former). To this day Thunder Force II and III (II especially) remain some of my favorite moments in gaming.

Hyperduel - same dev as above, and I've played through the MAME bversion of the lackluster PCB. The Sega Saturn version is supposed to be a worthwhile enhancement however, if I ever see it floating around for reasonable $$ then I will snap this up.

Gunstar Super Heroes - I loved the old Genesis title, and played this one for a moment.. it didn't grab me. But it's legacy (and the weirdness I have heard about it) definitely intrigues me. Treasure's an honest dev!

Killer 7 - Suda 51 is growing on me. As always I like weird, stylized games, so long as they have substance to them. This one sounds uberweird, but it's got enough of an underground following that it could be worth dropping a couple quid for. I'm interested to see where his new title "no More Heroes" for Wii goes, though I am not impressed with the tech of the screens I have seen. If I get a Wii I will certainly check these titles out. This guy reminds me of Clover Studios, for obvious reasons.

Space Raiders, Megaman Network Transmission - I recently scored both of these Gamecube titles for peanuts on eBay. Something I never do (buy game for a system I don't own?) but the system is cheap enough I could get it for peanuts as well. I may eventually, but more likely I may just buy a wii someday. Space Raiders is an odd-sounding descendant of Space Invaders.. it got skeptical press, but always sounded worth checking out to me. For some reason SI is still --hard-- to play!!! In fact the 1991 update is still quite fun, and yes even the original can be addictive as well. As for Megaman, it's a throwback to the sidescroller days using the "ick" new incarnation.. but I remember playing a build at E3 some years ago and being interested. Hey we don't see many side scroller platformers at all these days, and with a pedigree like this, it's bound to be worth a look (especially as the reviews were't awful)

Guardian Heroes, Burning Rangers - I am on some kinda vintage Sega Saturn kick lately. both of these were standout titles back in the day, I don't know how well they've aged but they are still referred back to even now. If i can find them cheap I'll jump on them. I have the GBA rom of the former but never felt tempted to boot it up, it didn't review too well anyway.

Wario Ware Twisted - the 2nd one in the series. I was a big fan of the first Wario Ware, and this one is often referred to as the "peak." Stupidly, I borrowed the game from a friend for >6 months but never looked at it once before returning it. I should just pick it up though. It's lik only 10-15 bucks!! If I do ever get a wii I'll likely get their Smooth Moves game as well, it's supposed to be alright. I am sure it's not great, but I get the feeling I would dig it.

Donkey Kong: King of Swing - this game always sounded appealing to me. old school gameplay (you just use the shoulder buttons and that's it). It's got a little bit of a following, supposedly it's a descendant of the old-old-HOLYCRAPold NES title Clu Clu Land. I should just flash it sometime. There's a DS followup in production as well, I wonder if it released yet though?

Drill Dozer - similar to above, a Game Freak-produced title (yeah, they make Pokemon besides.. and nothing else apparently!) for GBA. Noted as "the last cool GBA sidescroller," it was originally released in Japan as "Screw Breaker" which sounds cooler (and well yeah, sexier). It just sounds like it's easy and fun and good technique.

That's it off the top of my head. I could go on with my 2nd tiers but i'll let it chill out for now. Suffce it to say I have a ton of oldschool PCE CD-ROm games I'd love to check out, plus about 20 games on Nintendo DS which would probably suck me away for a good several weekends (if I ever caved in and bought a DS). Fodder for future writing, at least.

Time to get back to making games for the rest of you, then...

signz of the timez . . .

yeah so i thought it would be pretty street and hip of me to incorporate "z's for s's" into my usually-useless subject line. it's tight though. i wonder, when was the first instace of the ebonics Z (or it's predecessor?) Did it originate sometime in the 1950s or 1800s (on purpose, not out of ignorance, I mean)


Anyway, let's talk about games. Game, games. So the EA Skate Demo has been out for some time now, and it looks pretty interesting, from the scant bits of info i have heard about it. I still suppose it's playing like a better Thrasher with Tony Hawk gfx. Man, i did not like Thrasher (but even i could have if I'd given it a real chance, perhaps!) The gamer community seems to be eating it up, and you know what - it sounds like it's a good game that was made with some love. So in that respect, good on them, they deserve it.

I got my hands on a couple of games this week, myself.. oldies but goodies. Last night I fired up Psychonauts on Xbox (the guy who works beside me says "that game hurts my eyes!") Um.. weird game. Very impressive though. Again, obviously a labor of love, and I am a little surprised that it didn't get pushed a little more - victim of circumstances? Style-wise it feels like it has "Nickelodeon Property" oozing out of it's pores (though it's an original IP from what i can tell) and while that turned me off initially, what can I say, it works! In spite of that it's a bit dark-laden more so than you'd think, given that label. Anyway I made it through the first section, interested to plunder further. It's nice to see when a project is driven on (almost) all fronts and put out nice and polished.. and lovingly. Shame what happens when it's released to an ungrateful public, but what else is new.

Today's play was 'NiGHTS Into Dreams" for our ol' buddy Sega Saturn. I have had a Saturn nearly a year now, complete with the special Analogue pad (1st to market, right?) but have only finally received this game from an eBay auction today, at last. Mind you I do remember popping it in for a moment here or there in the break room of my 1st job sooo many years ago, but not long enough to give it any kind of look. Anyway, cool game. I can see why Saturn players loved this back in the day - weird, colorful, stylish, "cool feeling." I had a little difficulty figuring out the mechanics at first but it gave me some onscreen info AFTER I failed my first attempt, so yeah better late then never. It's funny playing these older games in that there still remained a semblance of difficulty "if you die then it's game over, back to the beginning!" Yeah I sent the Psychonauts dude to his death countless times last night, only to regenerate at the last checkpoint ad nauseum.. not so with NiGHTS, you get that ass handed back to Character Select Screen thanks very much.

I have a lot of other things to get my hands on, actually a lot of stuff lying around (old-school roms mostly) that I want to give my gaming attentions to, but really I am looking at endless piles of work to do ad I'd rather stuff my free time with trying to level that mountain. Ummm.. I have some things I'd love to vent in here about my day job and what I'd like to do about it, aesthetically and business-wise, but I'll keep a lid on it for now. I'll say this much, I see a lot of work I can do yet and I am glad to be in a position where I can flourish so long as I can keep my energy flowing. I do miss "old-gen" though where it was easier to get away with being more stylish in a way.. funny how much we all bitched about it back then.

Watching the gaf boards, it's dramariffic as always. Heavenly Sword is getting "sorta" disappointing reviews (is it out yet?) and even worse is Factor 5's Lair.. 4.9 from IGN??? What is this?? I imagine that some high-ups gotta be pissed. This really confounds me, the credibility of website/mag previews gets completely called into question in these cases. Sure they wanna have a neutral stance (though optomistic) when a game's in prerelease state, but to be honestly excited about a game and then turn into a bitchfest when the game releases speaks purely of "something is just not adding up here." A quick zap over to gamerankings.com shows that more than a couple of reviewers think this title is a crock as well. It's too bad, Factor 5 = no slouch (net the best dev, but certainly not a bad one). Worse though is that the PS3 needs these "hyped games" to follow through and build their brand up. They haven't got anything to play on that system, still.

What else.. hmm Denis Dyack is at it again defending the latest round of "Too Human" butchering going on over at gaf. I gotta hand it to the guy, he IS what he is. You'd think someone above that guy would have yelled at him by now. It starts to make me wonder if it's all part of some bizarre otherworldly marketing scheme (which apparently even I am feeding into, now...) The latest round of pics they showed look bleh to me too. Some of the recent shots (past 6 months) didn't look bad, certainly not "amaaaazing" but not offensive. I think this entire thing is up in the air, but one thing's for sure, they did a good job of getting that game on everyone's lips (after all these years!) It sucks though, because now even if it winds up a "good game" then it won't win over the naysayers who have dug in roots to speak out on it. It'll have to be at least on a level with Bioshock to get a decent reception.. good luck, guys...

yep... i know

Yeah, so.. I guess I finally have to bite the bullet and buy a Nintendo DS at last. Siiiigh. It's been a long time coming, but I can not refuse the siren song of Arkanoid. I had the NES version about a billion years ago, with the special paddle.. ya know, the one which broke later tat same night. I don't really wanna think about how much that puppy goes for on eBay MIB these days.


For that matter I had Stack-Up as well. but it was missing some pieces, so i brought it back and exchanged for Popeye. Yeah-h-h Popeye's all well and good and everything but --geez-- I wish I coulda given Stack-Up a shot. ROB got pretty lonely. Hey, sure, he wasn't exactly the most elegant piece of gamin hardware, but.. damn.. unlike the power glove, at least it WORKED.

So recently i have come to the realization that I must finally shell out and buy a next-gen console.. can they still be called next-gen at this point? Xbox 360 is going on 2 years old, in a couple more months! Anyway, last "current system" I bought was a PS2, back in 2002.. it's still faithfully serving, 5 years later (well, it's good for watching movies on, what can I say). I inherited a half-busted Xbox (model 1) about 1 year ago, I think it's been.. anyway, I don't game too much at home, and my PC is definitely pretty long in the tooth as well. What this all adds up to is the fact that I gotta get me some new hardware. I am still no aficionado, at least not inthe conventional sense - but as time passes, more and more I realize that it's my duty as a game artists, especially in these times (and the coming ones) to stay more current with the state of things. Now, I cruise all the regular gaming sites, I get an eyeful of what's hot (and what isn't) pretty regularly - but it's getting harder to appreciate as the tech keeps leaping forward, from just some crappy Quicktimes and screengrabs. I gotta say, in these days when an xbox live account enables you to download no shortage of demos, this is a pretty cost-effective deal. I am not going to pony up immediately, but I think pretty soon I will be bringing a new console home.

And so the question is, then.. what to buy? Oh, here we go. I had this dilemma last time around too, it was a lot of back-and-forth until I got my job at Left Field Productions and it became evident that I'd be needing to look at however many Action Sports games I could get my hands on. At that point PS2 was the king, baby..

This time around? Well, I had been considering getting a Wii for a little while, actually.. but it definitely doesn't suit for the reasons mentioned above. Many of it's coming games are NOT hi-tech looking, to say the least.. if I got it, it would be strictly fr entertaining my girlfriend, I'd suspect. It would be cool, but as long as I am not burning with desire, I don't think it'll happen. But, I'd love for them to give me a reason. Make some weird games, Nintendo!! Come on!

PS3. Sigh. This is the one I'd most "like" to see sitting on my self, for a few reasons. But to buy one, especially right now, would be folly. It's expensive as hell! There's no games for it! The live service is.. uh.. not to terribly impressive, just yet! Man. There's nothing for PS3. If they had half as much going on as the Xbox then it'd raise an eyebrow or two of mine, but as it is the thing is floundering. I feel bad.. I wanted them to get their act together. It's just sitting limp with it's buddy the PSP. I would have more to do with my aging PS2. Ah well, maybe next year.

And so, the conclusion is, I need to get a 360. The download service sells it, for my purposes! That and.. well.. hell! There's next-gen GAMES on the thing that you can get right NOW. Tons of 'em. Bioshock, Crackdown, halo Shortly.. Plus all the backlog. And it's cheaper. Oh well.. let's not forget, the things are built shoddy as all hell. I guess that's one thing the poor PS3 has going for it, anyway.. it actually kinda works..

I guess that settles it. I am gonna do some more research and see just how crippled the download service is on PS3, if for nothing other than argument's sake. I know people are downloading stuff off there.. not really too sure what's on offer that's a good compromise though (Ninja Gaiden AGAIN? QBert?)

I gotta end this by saying I do hope PS3 gets it's act in gear. They missed their window to rule the world again, but they can still scrap together a decent showing. They've got some amazing talent in their stable (exclusives-wise) that can put up a strong level of support, if they ever gt the games out at a reasonable time (and maintain exclusivity). I guess time will tell -- good luck guys, you will need it!

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A few posts ago I railed against metal gear solid 4. I said it lookd too realistic and boring, "like work..." Well, I saw the latest Leipzig trailer today, the one with the new bosses. Okay, I take it back!! "Laughing Octopus" -- man. Where the hell do they come up with this stuff? Like it or hate it, I appreciate the weird craziness of this stufff. It reminds me of crazy japanese Cyberthink from the 80s.. I don't know how to put it. But it's iconographic for next gen, for PS3. I am glad they are doing weird out of the ordinary stuff - keep it up. I still can't say the game will be my cup of tea, but I appreciate the bizarreness. It AIN'T REAL LIFE!!

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Skate demo released for 360 a few days ago. All I have seen are sme crappy Youtube vids.. I wanna get my hands on that thing. I am guess Thrasher, and I am sure I will not feel it when i finally get my hands on it.. but i bet it will be kinda fun. I get the sense that developer was driven to make something a little special. My loyalistic NS tendencies were strong before but these days I want to just see something different and unique, special. Nothing wrong with that. I have seen the latest trailers for Tony Hawk 9 as well, and it looks nice and all.. more of the same, as usual, though. I hope they got the framerate up fom last year, and maintained the fun factor without getting bogged down with features or something -- yeah i am biased but Project 8 was a fun arcadey title, and they could easily replicate that (in a good way). I guess we will see soon.

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Things are alright for me at Obsidian, I started arting a new level last week. To tell the truth, it was rough getting started.. though it was a theme I thought I would enjoy, it was a dra-a-a-ag. You get burned out sometimes, and when that happens, youjust do't wanna do ANYTHING. Just don't wanna look at it for awhile! So I started cobbling together some reference, got some direction from my lead, started filling in the elements. It began to take shape, but very unsatisfactory, even after a couple of days.. no enthusiasm. Today was "Eureka!" though, sometimes you get lucky and come across that single piece (or in this case, pieces) of reference that just NAILS it for you "oh crap! THAT'S what it should look like..." I wet and slaped some nw walls in, a couple different elements, and suddenly it's looking far less stupid and it's invigorating to work on once again. Whew! And on that note, i go to get myself to bed.

(de)termination

yeah so... hrrrmph. this is it, after all this time... i am finally entertaining the notion of buying a next-gen system. "what's that!" you say, "but Ron HATES videogames.." Yeah well. What can I say. Being the "next gen artist" that I am (ahem ahem) I am cognizant of the fact that it is getting tougher and tougher to keep up withthe trends.. damned irresponsible.. and though I check the boards and the local sites daily, one can only keep so abreast of the information without (duh) getting one's hands dirty every so often. And yeah, I guess xbox version 1 isn't exactly cutting-edge anymore.

One of the big things I have realized is that there's this whole demo-scene going on now - you buy a next-gen console and subscribe to the online component, and you'll get access to all manner of downloadable material.. Rather, the latest up-and-coming hot product will release a sampler of what's coming down the tubes next. I definitely don't have time to play through full games of -- ANYTHING these days, so honestly samplers would pretty much hit the spot for me I suppose. After all, I am basically concerned with getting a rough glimpse of what is out there, not necessarily that being in my position I would need to play through everything..

On the selfish side, it would be nice to have a set-top box to stream movies from. My friend did that one night at his apartment, he downloaded a flick for a tiny fee (for a single viewing, or 24 hrs.. whatever it was). Yeah I was impressed, it looked pretty quality! I have got sorta addicted to downloading movies back in the day, but it has been so long since that period.. such a pain in the ass for a nonbeliever like me. I have no problem about tossing a couple buucks (yeah.. a COUPLE!) to DL something from my couch, without havoing to get up ad do ANYthing. i don't need to keep a DVD copy!

On the personal side

So what, then, to sink

Captain of the Industry

Games COnvention (or whatever they call it) apparently is goin' on in Leipzig, Germany right now. With E3 a thing of the past I kinda wish i could be there at the moment to shmooze and see what's goin' on. Also, damn it, it would be fun to just bum around in Germany. I hear the clubs are great and I know it would be a good time. Maybe in a few jobs from now I can swing it...

New footage leaked out for Mario Galaxy, the board-goers are kinda oohing over it. It looks.. well, i wouldn't say it looks "awesome." It looks capable, but man - a team like that, a history like that, you'd think after all these years they could churn out something somewhat remarkable! I'll say this much, even considering the hardware, the graphics look absolutely as perfect as they would ever need to (I'd still say the same thing about Sonic the Hedgehog 1+2 on Sega Genesis --- hell even Mega Man 1+2 back on NES, to be honest!) But now that the visual style is fixed at perfect, when can we expect the follow up of spot-on gameplay? It's harsh to judge just my short tidbit-previews and teasers, so I will reserve, but I already know the outcome 'cause "it happens every time." If you don't need to revolutionize, why would you bother...

Anyway in spite of myself I am interested to see the game when it launches. Have they even announced a date yet, I forgot! Mind you I have never played Sunshine and even worse, haven't played 64 for more than 5 minutes. I guess I could part with $5 on ebay for a system and a cart...

This piques my curiosity about New Super Mario Bros on DS, but again after what I'd seen "why bother?" It doesn't look bad, at all, it just looks like.. re-tread. In case I am coming across as overly mean, I'll think back to... 1991 when Super Mario World came out and it was already getting old. We all loved it as it was a big audiovisual upgrade, and it had some nifty tricks and gimmicks, but sooo much of that was forgettable. Run to the right, jump. Get coins. Get 1UP. For such a beautiful and remarkable game, why must they rely so heavily on gimmicks and cake-icing to get by.. when the design of the earlier efforts were rather GENIUS? Someone put it on autopilot and called it a day.

It's a little frowned upon to get snarky at the top franchises in gaming so I won't say anything to the tune of "these are bad games," they just aren't very evolutionary play-wise. Back then they didn't really need much more than an A/V upgrade and "more stuff to do," but in hindsight I want 'different, WEIRDER stuff to do." This loops around to today's games, where (damn it) everything is the SAME. Sequels are all well and good for films (not so much lately, honestly) but on games it just gets more and more boring.

I won a copy of Psychonauts on eBay today. My coworker told me "it'll hurt your eyes to look at..." I can't say I've ever been too entranced by the screens I have seen of it but something about this game tells me it might be a little more approaching what games could (and should) be about. I dislike the design of the character, and I wince at the thought of "steering him around with an Xbox controller" but i am eager to plug in and get my feet wet with it.

Looked at the video of Spore today, there's a new one up. It looks.. weird. Not bad, not bad at all.. the style looks a lot goofier and kiddier, or something, than I would have expected. Like Scholastic Edutainment or something. Again I am being harsh (but we should be!) I think WIll Wright is a Genius, looks like a megadork but a guy like him should look that way - he has a wonderful history and I think someone like that who has single-handedly helped steer the culture of videogaming more than a couple of times deserves a LOT of credit. He's no blowhard, just another PC geek in his suit and tie who seems to really know what the hell he is doing and the world is pretty fortunate for that. It's funny how he should be ranked among the likes of Miyamoto and yet you'd hardly picture the two ever being in the same room, never mind the same context.

I worked till about midnight last night and wrapped up my latest level, and now I am off onto the next one.. no end in sight! I am happy with how it ended up, I still want to make some changes to it as time permits. Like I said before, "next gen is a pain in the ass" and ain't that the truth. .but it's nice having more showpieces, I gotta admit.

go on! HIT THAT crack pipe!

you know what, i can't stand the fact that it's very close to midnight already, again.

i feel sometimes like what has become of my life is sort of like a nightmare wrapped in a sesame street napkin and left on a windowsill for stupid birds to peck at. yeah sort of like that. and there's angry bums with bad headaches on the street like 6 or 7 stories below, lining their noggins with silverfoil so as to keep the FBI/Aliens (one and the same) from reading their thoughts.

i can't believe this is my second blog entry today and i didn't even wanna write the other one. it exists purely for displeasure. maybe one day i will get cool and with me, so will it. maybe i just like to see myself write nonsense, in any case. I like it, but you hate it!

My mind has been on a tear lately. not super happy or super pissed, but just kind of "let's do this.. then this.. then this." Lots of things to take care of. I am going with the flow of feeling older and feeling more and more trapped in some stupid prison/plan i force myself into though, and i don't like it any more than the last time i thought of it. it feels stupid to complain about anything when you think "AHHH!!! I can do anything i WANT! I am a white male betwen the ages of 18 and 42, i have a car, a bank account, a credit limit, and no STDs or outstanding warrants (that i am aware of). I can go anywhere do anything see anyone i please.." but the feeling of that freedom is so ludicrously impractical that it's essentially a non-issue. i wonder, are the people in jail the ones who are free, and WE'RE on the other side of the bars? (Not really, but i just wanted to write that). Seriously though, I am sure some people dig it. Huh. Some peopl will be into ANYthing.

I have been plowing through work lately. it's sort of plowing through me as well.. i feel like we two are wrestling, and somehow the ultimate expression of each of us are either perfectly married or forever doomed to failure so long as continue in this awkward and ridiculous embrace (hmm, sounds like just about any relationship anyone has ever been in, doesn't it?) I suppose if the feeling was not there that it could all go horribly, horribly wrong somewhere down the line, then there woudl be no stakes and i would be so bored i'd just find a beach and keep walking up and up and up until (a) i froze and starved and died or (b) arrested, private property, no trespassing or (c) someone saw me wandering aimlessly and pointlessly and presented me with some interesting ponderous conversation and we went off to explore it somewhere, where my joints wouldn't really hurt so bad.

i realize i should probably hop in my car and jet-jet-jet home right now, but the thrill of getting actually home is a little tempered bu the fact that there's more shit to deal with there, and all i really need to do more han anything else is see myself through a few more hours of dedicated productful productiveness (and productive duct-tape) and then i can submit myself to the glorious thrall of temporary death i.e. brief, brief slumber for some scant hours.

damn, i love to have eyes and fingers!! if all else fails, at least as long as i got those things then i know i am alright. i'd make a good potato....

another aimless post

.. they are all aimless, come on...

monday, after a long weekend. i think i wrote in here the other night, after i got back from vegas - i don't even remember! it's all a blur, man...

i have been grinding pretty heavy at work lately. so much to do and so little time. i am kind of a stickler for quality, no matter what i am working on and if there's a motto i will have is "if you are gonna do it, do it right..." and that's just how it has to be.

man. i hate next-gen. i think it's going to make me lose my mind. there was a time, not long ago, when i was salivating at the thought of "ohhh i cannot wait, all this extra memory to throw around, i can finally make big huge texturemaps all over the place, just dripping with gorgeous detail.." Well sir, that day has finally come (or so it would seem) and the verdict is.. bittersweet. i do live having the extra space, (no more compressing everything to 256 colors? 128 pixels, at BEST?) but the flipside of it is - it takes TOO DAMNED MUCH TIME to make all the tiny details now! It's true - our memory went up but our allotment of time hasn't. they aren't exactly hiring armies of artists to make stuff yet (unless you're EA, or someone) and so this translates to "if you wanna make stuff look pretty, go ahead, but do it QUICKLY." The game biz has always been about speed, no matter where you were - but now it's just mounting. Can I hack it? Sure you can, any good game artist worth his salt is gonna have dozens of shortcuts up his sleeve. Honestly, one of the great things I love about this job, I have to say it's extremely rewarding to develop your personal process, your work method. Everyone has their own repertoire.. I am no different. You share stuff, you pick stuff up, but you always have your own tricks and shortcuts that you rely on to get the shit done.

By the same token, there's always gonna be some pratfalls that everyone's gonna fall victim to. Sometimes it's a huge pain in the ass.. sometimes you get so burned out on the little details that all the time you made up earlier is gonna get gummed up on something stupid. well, this happens all over the board, unfortunately, in any department of any job.. the key is getting better, more efficient, so that you can cruise smoothly thru the troubling BS with relative ease and get your stuff out the door looking as nice as can be.

overwork.. late last week i was sitting at my desk pulling apart lightmap UVs for what seemed to be endless time. jus tpulling stupid little boxes around.. placing them in ornate interesting patterns that matter to no one at all.. so long as my shadows don't overlap and bleed. i wonder how many hours of my life i have spent staring at UV maps, nah better not to think of it!! When I couldn't drive to vegas anymore, i handed the wheel to my copilot and drifted in and out of sleep from the passenger seat. you can bet that as my eyelids sunk hellward, i was having visions of those same UV maps being unwrapped in my mind.. the white lines and red dots, pulling and sorting and scaling and placing and resorting and offsetting... i could see it clear as anything. As the driver spoke to me about.. i don't know what, my mind drifted on the brink of oblivion as my attention was concerned with the nonexistent UV maps manufactured by my subconciousness. I tried to snap out of it and rejoin the conversation, but i would mentally pull a couple more boxes over to the right "just because it felt good."

Sigh.

So I need a vacation.

---------------------------------

I got my Gunner's Heaven game running on the Test PS2. Glad to see it works! I want to make a 2D run-n-gun! I missed out on a bid for the other PSX game I wanted, and it relisted for about 20 or 30 dollars more. I will have to wait for that thing to slip back down into affordability (isn't it a test kit, can't I just run burns on that thing!!!) In spite of my DC piracy noted earlier, I really don't mind shelling out a little cash for some of these games, really. Somehow it's less of a hassle.. or something. I guess so many of them cost so little anyway. Almost all the Saturn games I've bought cost me practically nothing. Well okay I DID shell out megabucks for that --one-- title (you shmupos can guess which one) but if need be I can always sell it back for the original investment. Sigh. I should just trade it in for the Zanac game, shouldn't I..

Watching myself type this (extremely nerdy) hot air, I gotta say it is nice, for a change, to spend mental energy worrying about simple shit that DOESN'T EVEN MATTER.

Alright. I want to finish up my current workload tonight. If i go on a tear I might be able to pull this off. Off I go...!

take that!

OWCH!

Yeah, so here's my quality-of-life post (hopefully, a quick one..) Inspired by a recent thread on gaf, "why do developers leave the game industry?" Notably, the videogame industry is notorious for overworking their staffs with long hours and insidious crunch times and blah blah blah. Burnout being the eventual result, and dissatisfied people quitting their jobs to go and do something "normal," in order to have more time for social and family life, stuff like that.

Sigh.

Every job I have worked a has had some kind of overtime, "crunch" or "hardcore" periods where the staff was expected to put in extra hours beyond the (legal) call of duty to get a game done in a relatively tight schedule.. and the higher-ups will usually dangle some carrot or other in front of everyone's heads "if you do this for us, then 'good' things are going to happen!" Well, yeah, but define "good," please.. anyway anybody in the biz knows people who've done quite well, if not for working on a bonafide top-rated franchise then at least one that's moved a lot of SKUs, and so we all have friends who are "rolling in the dough" relatively. I remember moving here to LA 7 years ago, hearing how it was the land of milk and honey.. I didn't hear wrong....

So what happened? Why are people so bitter about crunch? Isn't it worth it, for a few years of your life, to pretty much just suck it up and play a little hardball? Sleep is for wusses, right? I have sort of got a reputation among those who know me as a workaholic, and yet you don't see me cruising around town in my canary yellow murcielago. Well, that's because i am a hoarder and i keep it all in coffee cans. no wait, i am extremely generous and i gave it all to charity. to ell the truth, i blew it all on blow and ho's, and don't you forget it. Well honestly, i've just not been in the "right place ad rigt time" (yet), but that's another story. Anyway i have already picked out my future mansion(s), wife (v/s), and cemetary plot (well at least that one is true). I am just waiting for the backend.

Anyway back to the point.. I find it ludicrous, the number of people who whine about hardcore. Yeah it's tiring. yeah it's not for everyone. Yeah it's... illegal in some cases. The morality of it is a different story. But there is no "slave industry.." no one is MAKING you do this. The compensation is not quite as evenly balanced as it, erm, could be, but still.. you are making leisure products! There is a future in it for anyone who has the nerve to hold on for awhile. If you can keep your metabolism from going belly-up, and you honestly enjoy your part in what you do, then just keep as (unfinished)

back from vegas

that's nerdy


saturday night @ 9:30pm, just got back from vegas. i hadda take a day off from work as my girlfriend's ol' pal was getting hitched - we drove there all day, caught the wedding, crashed into the hotel bed (hard... i was gonna go to the casino but the urge to sleep absolutely overtook me). we just returned home and now i am gonna settle in for te remainder of the weekend with -- some work! yeah, it's never a moment to breathe, for this guy..

i was talking with a friend the other night, she is a bit of a writer and i suggested maybe she had ought to funnel her energies into a game-industry blog. she mentioned it had struck her but she didn't want it to be a case of conflict of interest. Yeah, i thought of this before, as well - and sure enough, i come home saturday night and see a link to my own website (and a quote from my own blog, which apparently had some editing issues) sourced from my very own company's fan-forums. yeah, a little strange and kind of off-putting! not that i don't welcome people reading what i have got to say in here, of course, i just need to always be mindful of the fact that it's important to always keep an eye over one's shoulder - you never know who can read what you are saying and what they can do with it, especialy in these days of "the new media."

As for the abilities we now have of "instantaneous information transmission," pretty much globally, or on a smaller level - well, yeah - it makes one tend to slow down for a minute. I have spent much time in the past on company messageboards (intranet) speaking my mind, relatively freely... i have learned it's better to keep to yourself largely (this is unfortunate, but understandable, as politics will dictate). that's just locally, but globally, everything is magnified...

Anyway, with all that in mind, i will always stick to the usual endless NDAs and such that i have signed (if you read it here, it's been in a wiki somewhere already, pretty much...) as opposed to disseminating the juicier info -- though that would certainly be more fun to get on about (ohh, the things i have seen, over the years). maybe someday when I become a powerful blowhard, eh? And now, to work...

i guess it struck a nerve...

another busy day in the office, i was repairing ugly gross temp geo and textures.. well, replace "repair" with "replace" and you have a more accurate idea. sigh, texturemonkey, modelmonkey, got no money, janitor at the end of the day.. i make buildings! i make trees! i make fire trucks. i am like god with a boss!!!

I am not usually at liberty to say much about in-progress projects, for obvious reasons - let's just say that the game which i am currently working on.. it's been in production for a little while, and some time to go yet - it is coming along. i am pretty cut off from the community on the other side of the office but i finally ventured in there to see what was cookin'. their game is coming along very nicely. i was pretty impressed... hopefully i will get to put in some time on that project as well, at some point...!

so i like to listen to videogame-themed podcasts during the day, to while away the hours while i weld verts and offset pixels and yawn and fart and pick my nose. Honestly when you're pretty busy with production, it's an essential way for a guy like me to keep tabs on what's going on with the industry news - and honestly these days, there's no shortage of news in this field... no shortage of drama, especially! I will write a "podcast breakdown" blog one of these days, soon enough.. there's way too many to wade thru as it is, and honestly i can only bear to listen to a few of them. But the ones I like I do like very much, and heartily recommend. Today I had to give the latest DL of EGM Live a spin. Not my fave podcast for certain, but informative and not too terribly obnoxious (i'd say it's in the top 5 lately, actually). They did have a real nice interview with Lorne Lanning, the mastermind behind Oddworld.. remember those guys? One of those studios who were rather quite displaced from the "nerve center of the gaming scene," but always known for putting out quality (if eccentric) software. Truth be told, I never played any of their games (longer than a couple of moments or so) but surely I appreciated thir capable contributions to the gaming pasture.

Anyway I had my opinions about this Lanning fellow before, after reading some interviews previously and then, of course, their recent descent into sketchiness.. but I have to say I think the guy is on the level after listening to the ol' blowhard go on at length. Of the things he had to say, it was nice to hear him concur with the very thoughts I had had lately... to paraphrase, "in general, most people out there think that videogames are about killing! And the part of the consumer base that never gets into games, for that reason they are not really thinking that it's for them..." This is absolutely true, well it's not the main reason exactly but it's a strong contender. Look at other media.. all movies are not about killing! All the books, TV, etc.. Well, that is to say, that none of these other media chiefly focuses on one major factor. I have to say that for video games, a good 80 percent of them would have to involve some kind of combat.. sure you have sports simulators, racers, puzzle games, etc.. but these are still all dwarfed by the Halos and Final Fantasies and Ninja Gaidens of the world. Yeah, I know it's kind of a skew that I am putting on things.. but even te less violent, or more cartoony action games, involve running around and killing.. or at least shooting, rendering incapacitated, and so on.

This is why I am a big fan of puzzle games. You're goal is not necessarily to rack up points for murdering, you are exercising your brain/logic/thinking on the fly abilities. I'd say the same in favor of strategy games (even if they have a military theme), to some degree.. though yeah, I guess I would be a bit of a hypocrite, to a degree.

When I was at Neversoft I gained a huge respect for that sort of game, in that it was not really violent at all and neither was it trying to be a bonafide sports sim (rather, "inspired by..").. but it was concentrating on the player and his interaction with the environment. it rewarded creativity and let you feel like you were in this giant playground, doing things that you couldn't exactly do in real life (zipping up powerlines, over rooftops, etc). Sure it depart from reality early on, but it did so in a properly abstract way as to remain credible as a unique type of video game - and one that is not often duplicated, which I have to say is unfortunate.

It will be interesting when EA's Skate game releases shortly, to see how much of this formula they will try to emulate. Regardless of the whole "too late to the party?" argument, or any actual controversy, I have to say it's nice to see that in this day and age that anyone (even if it's a mammoth conglomerate like EA) is willing to still explore this relatively ignored avenue of game-style. I am disappointed to see that "oh well it's all got to stick to skateboarding," but it could be a lot worse.. skateboarding with guns?

high pitch nine

another weekend got through. my eyes are bleary with sleep. my concentration is compromised (boring TV program on in the background) My already terrible typing skills are a little worse than usual.

tired.. i hoped to get a lot of work done this weekend but i burned out. it's okay, i will handle it better during the week if i am not all used up by the time the week begins.. i am a firm believer in the notion that if you step away from something a little bit, you can enjoy a better perspective on it than when you are lost in the thick of it. Actually, i like that.. it gives me a little new perspective on my life. Not new... i think i remember thinking the same thing as i bought a tom petty CD in central square, cambridge, about 8 years ago...

it was a little bit of a difficult weekend.. alright not really. it was honestly one of the nothing-est, forgettable-est weekends i have had in some time (and i think that would register as a good thing!) But i was in a "make myself feel busy" mood, so i wouldn't say i unwound very much.

feeling a little out of it, anyway. there's been a lot going on in my life, around me.. a lot on my mind. i can feel myself sort of poking and prodding in ways designed to "make things interesting" (whether that's good, or bad.. i can't say) -- but it's part of my program i guess. i like it when things are a pain in the ass, when there's obnoxious problems and unsettling burdensome situations looming just over the horizon to deal with.. exactly what survival advantage is that going to give me? sigh, i would make an excellent astronaut.. why couldn't my parents be teachers (or therapists). Actually if either of those were the case, i'd probably be some boring investment banker, or the manager of some office equipment supply and shipping outfit. yeah, it would be easy, and i would be driving some economy sized sedan and have a dog named skip and an HDTV with Tivo and all of that. I'd probably live in New Jersey with my wife Diane (blonde) and our two buck-teethed children. yep, it would be a different life.

i wish, just one night, my consciousness could slip thru the space-time continuum and trade places with my alternate universe doppelganger, and i would have to spend a day as Office Supply and Shipping version of myself. I'd have to spend a couple of hours getting over the initial shock, but trying not to blow my cover all the while (even though my kids would sense something was wrong). i would end the day realizing that I'd most likely slip back into my proper dimension at the strike of 12 midnight, so i would use the opportunity to act without consequence and wreak havok with Office Supply Ron's life. End up in a brothel, a jail, a horrible truckstop divebar somewhere.. something... get knocked the hell out in a bar brawl and come to back in my proper body.. Hopefully, Office Supply wouldn't have had a similar idea and left me in an equally compromising situation, or then there'd be some honest-to-goodness hot water i would not exactly be too keen to deal with (though i can appreciate comeuppance and karmic universal payback. can't i??)

well.. nah.. no. that is all just a retarded man's fantasy, actually. in all likelihood, the best i could hope for is that somehow space and time itself bent far enough to cross and the electrons that carry the data impulses of my blog posting, immediately after i'd hit the "publish" button (not so named), would be super-transmogrified by sunspots (remember those? 70s) and accelerated to Office Supply's universe and we'd essentially switch blog postings (his would end up in my website, mine in his)

Does any of that make any sense? i'll simplify it.. you know when you play that old video game, Pac-man (yes, it always comes back to pac-man).. when you go in the little "warp tunnel" at the side of the screen, you leave the left side and instantaneously reappear on the right side, or vice versa. BUT! For that one brief second, the pac-man you control exists not in his single blue maze reality, but a shared endless void of oblivion, yes the same oblivion where all things have come from and eventually end up. Yet just as he is on the brink (the millionth of the millionth of a second that his essence dis-registers from the visual plane and registers, relatively, in the non-plane), he immediately is plucked back and reappears at the extreme other end/beginning of the same circular universe.

And then.. all the games of Pac-man being played, in all the videogame systems in the universe (in this reality), in each case all the pac-mans will disappear to the same brink of nonexistence and then reappear.. but they will EACH return to the single proper place, in opposite, from their point of departure.. (are they the "same" pacmen though? are they the same form of energy and matter or are they interchangeable, recycled? that's for another blog post)..

SO!! Then.. in this case.. what if the game is being played, the pacman disappears for the millisecond.. what if the power goes out? what if the electricity shorts.. what then? the pacman has just momentarily lapsed from his existence.. one foot out the door so to speak.. and then his lifeline is BLIP cut out completely? the machine reboots, producing a new fresh pacman, lacking any history.. but where is the displaced, limbo pacman? does he join the other half-formed infinite pacmen from all the other video games who's power has blipped out over the years? do they add up infinitely, in some great conceptual non-nowhere, where all sounds and recipes and thoughts and beliefs and colors overlap ad flow freely and distribute, somehow, back into the collective consciousness of the waking dead, the daily toilers, munching their donuts and riding their subways and combing their combovers.. writing their gay dating articles, drinking their diet redbulls, redesigning their ergonomic keyboards and faux woodpanelled living room walls in scandanavian design, binging on ice cream and sandwich and fondue and flambe' and homo sapiens..

this, this commonly displaced pacman, i am this pacman, he is my thought, my child, my progenitor, my predecessor.. my teacher, my student, my leader and follower, my inspiration, my degradation, the point from which i can not return likewise the goal of my future success (and the cause of my greatest failures). As the pacman eats the dots, as man eats his popcorn, as he sucks the four cheeses off his pizza, as he burns the hanging flap off skin from the roof of his mouth, as he puts a scrapey ice cube in there to cool it off and in also scrapes the roof of his mouth, and his eyes become teary.. and his neck becomes sore, and his ears are itchy, and his thoughts and love, become numb...

and the quarters are fed into the machine, and pacman eats the dots as his machine eats change, and the government produces more quarters, and quarters buy shit which leads to more quarters, and some OCD asshole in georgia or bammer or something somewhere collects them all and organizes in rows of 6s and 8s by dates they were pressed and dates he found them, and cross-referenced by the day of the week (alphabetically) or numerically, number of letters in that day, deciding by -- get this -- a FLIP OF THE COIN, and his family disowned him, his dog even dislikes him, his sister can't understand why he's so messed up and she herself is so normal, and perhaps he was molested as a child or hit by a car or stung by some weird blood-disease-inducing insect (which had no malevolence in it's tiny insect heart, it was just hungry) which was enough to not truly poison or kill him, just enough to destroy his otherwise normal thoughts and way of processing the world.. and in so being his misery is deep and grey and no smell color or taste, like radon, but when he finds his orderly correctness it is appropriate and proper and so right in a way that would never make any sense to anyone else ever, it is a simple singular binary feeling in his way, in his mind, in his proper perspective of the world... and this too he measures numerically, and cross-references with secondary and tertiary methods of measurement, all equally meaningless to anyone but him and especially to him, as he is a hybrid production of not only the normal human way of being and thinking but also this inevitable fucked up and "free radical" endless flowing way of creating and perpetuating new just-as-meaningless-logic, as meaningless to him as anyone else's non-logic wouldn't be to them, either...

and he has his quarters, and his counting, and his days counting down.. and pacman has his dots, and his warp tunnels, and his non-dead-zombie non-pacmans in limbo waiting for all the other pacmen to join them at the end of time, which is the flipped tunnel end of the beginning of time, ironically...

and i have my job and my black keyboard and my jumpy leg, and my bleary contact lenses. and office supply ad shipping ron has diane, and new jersey, and the Tivo. and we will never cross paths for real, for neither of us exist (well, i do, at least, or at least i think i can tell i do because it hurts a little when i hit my arm, to check)

and i have to go to sleep so i can wake up in 5 hrs and drop my car off at the mechanic so he can rip me off and make me pissed of a little bit more in a shitty part of los angeles on monday morning, and then i will go through another week of my life doing the same pointless thing which is all the meaning in the world to me, anyway. Don't swim in your trash. And if you do, don't come up for air, because you can find some between the trash.. in "trashy-air pockets"

Battle of Shoot 'em Up

now THIS is what I am talkin' about. i love the internet, in that you can totally randomly be searching for something and accidently find a crazy website loaded down with tons of goodies that you didn't even know existed.
Here's the latest:
http://projectjapandreames.neufblog.com/shootem_up/wallpapersflayers/index.html

A french site (break out the google translator!) - but honestly i haven't even started with the text just yet. This page is bleeding through with tons of oldschool gaming flyers/promo sheets for various arcade titles from the wonderful 16-Bit era. there was a time, albeit brief, when programmers were lazy and it was easy to churn out game after game after game with nearly identical engines "fly to the right. shoot guns. acquire larger more colorful weapons." hell even
I could program that! But in those days graphics were suddenly stepping up a few levels and that
glitz was enough to get the fans ecstatic (myself included among those numbers). In America it was still a kid's industry, but in Japan it seems like they were taking it a bit more seriously, promotion-wise. These flyers and wallpapers harken back to a time when ultra simplistic gameplay was no sweat, you were just excited to see pretty explosions and abominable biomechanical nigtmare bosses with glowing lifebars deteriorating in their midsections. These
flyers portray some of the funniest engrish you'll ever see, and some of the illos are just bleed-from-your-jaw AWFUL, but it's all totally fun and reminds me of a time "best left in history" - the days of R-Type, Zero Wing, Truxton, and Chelnov. I want to print these all out in high quality and wallpaper a room (i wish!)

drayumkeyast

today for the first time in a while i plugged in a Dreamcast controller and went to tow while i waited for my girlfriend to get her act together so we could have some lunch. I have often said that the DC was the last "cool"system that has been released, at least to my taste in video gaming.

Sega has always been a cool company, in that they were always well known for producing a stable of relatively mainstream-accessible material and yet they'd always support that with a healthy string of somewhat offbeat material. I can't really think of any other developer even approaching their size which would be so well-known for going across the ma as they had. A couple come to mind.. Konamai at times, Capcom, certainly Nintendo... but Sega stands alone when it came to weird risky (flat out crazy-shit) across the board. Hardware, arcade, and generally franchising what they could, to different degrees of success. Ironically, in the end they've never wound up with that "one surefire franchise" which could stand the test of time and the process of evolution. Phantasy Star, Sonic, those are venerable series but they never maintained the integrity overall of Mario, Zelda, Street Fighter, Metal Gear Solid. Perhaps it could be argued in some cases (Virtua Fighter). But no one would argue that it's incredibly hard to maintain ANY franchise over the course of several generations - survival through one is tricky enough.

My roomate at the time and I bought our DC after the thing dropped to @ $100. It hadn't been out for that long (a little over a full season?) it seemed and already it was getting long in the tooth, or rather, short to remain on the shelf. A shame, as it was finding its legs and no matter how you sliced it, what kind of gamer you were, it was shaping up to provide decent support in many categories. In fact I'd say it was one of the final systems to launch with a relatively decent lineup that didn't feel totally rushed out the door (ready to rumble, sonic adventure, hydro thunder, NFL, some others which escape me.. oh yeah Soul Caliber!) Yeah that's not all LAUNCH launch but close enough. Anyway when we picked it up, it wasn't long before I got my hands on virtua tennis - a game i could still have a blast with to this day. Titles like that don't really need several iterations if you ask me, the gfx are already good enough and the play control is completely spot-on.. I am not any kind of tennis fan, but games like that completely nail down for me the pure lighting-in-a-bottle of what is just fun about video games! My roomie and I would unwind at the end of the day with that game, I am one of those who gets very violently into it with the trash-talking and screaming and pretty much pummeling my own opponent with fists and such (on the couch beside me, not merely the screen). Yeah, so online has never been a big deal for me, I confess.

I remember going out to "splurge" on a DC keyboard and a copy of Jet Grind Radio (after seeing it at E3, i knew I had to get my hands on that game!) We never used the keyboard for more than emailing, really (don't ask) though in hindsight I really wish I had picked up Typing of the Dead at some point. JGR proved to be really fun - also great to look at and listen to, even if i never did get terribly far into it (the slippery controls were kind of a buzzkill) but it didn't matter, that stuff was fun.

I never really got much further with my DC, though some years later my buddy in NYC set me a spindle full of burns (oh so illegal). Think of me what you will--I can hear it now "It's guys like you who led to the Dreamcast being oboslete and Sega dropping out of hardware," oh ok let's not get too carried away. I wouldn't have bought anything else for it anyway, beyond what I did (well, maybe about 2 or 3 titles). I picked up American Pro Trucker today, for the first time in like 3 years - such a great idea for a game, even if somewhat sloppily conceived! I don't care. To me, games like that are what define a system - those are themes that SHOULD be made into video games. There's a reason you don't see more offbeat titles like that, and it's a shame. Crazy Taxi is another, a game I always considered to be a decent diversion but not one worthy of generating much fanfare.. for some reason the community embraced it, because it was unusual (same as above, really). Games like these came and went, and they were fun - captivating, if only for a few moments - but they've not left much in the way of an indelible mark on the gaming landscape. To me, that's sad - instead, we get umpteen versons of final fantasy or re-re-re-re-releases of ninja gaiden. Not to knock on the legacy of either such title, but GEEZ, it's not what you would call innovative or -shrug- "weird..."

I would love to see Sega "come back" and toss their hat into hardware once again - I have no doubt that it will never happen, though. Frankly I am amazed they've done so well (and in such a style) as they have with their resulting publisher-only status, and like many I am curious to see what they will evolve into. It is reassuring to notice that they look back on their legacy as far as the types of titles they will continue to put out, anyway. I haven't forked over money for a Sega game in a long time (well.. not a new one) but even a picky gamer like me can find something that they've funded to wrap their teeth around. (If I had a PSP, I would likely be playing Crush right now!!!)

Sega, as a company, is one I have much to say about - we have had a long history together (and presently, I admit they are the ones paying for the development of my current project). I will always hold them in high regard for what they released during the 16-bit years (in spite of the awful CD-Rom and extra-awful 32X nonsense and all of that). Sega Saturn is something i am just coming to appreciate now (better late then never) and I hope they can manage to stick around and maintain their relevance for a long time to come - gaming would never be the same without them!

Try Hard...

so i found a couple of interesting JPN PSone games to check out: UMIHARA KAWASE SHUN and GUNNER'S HEAVEN. The former is a follow up to a Super Famicon title where you control this little girl with a Bionic Commando-style grappling hook in order to maneuver around levels- this one is more of a puzzle game than then "kill the futuristic Nazis" as it's inspiration was. I only played the SFC game briefly but this always struck me as one of those weird little cool games with a nice level of polish. Gunner's is pretty much an unapologetic rip-off of the old Sega Genesis favorite Gunstar Heroes, minus the 2-Player Co-op mode as well as the novelty. It looks like a pretty direct rip-off but honestly, is Gunstar a game that SHOULDN'T be ripped off? It's a little surprising that the Run 'n Gun genre is among the simplest as they come, yet it's never been terribly exploited. Here and there, but not so much as your typical platformer fare has. Anyway this game looks fun, with appropriate 2D love (both games are 2D actually) and I think it's a safe bet for both.

At this stage, I am not gonna ever pick up a videogame out of duty or brand loyalty or any of that - is f it is necessary reference for a project I am working on, then that is obvious, but otherwise I am not really into gaming for leisure anymore. So if I do pick up a game, it's gonna be pretty much for the other value it could give me; that is, what I can glean from it. There's so many knock-offs and sequels and all sorts of yawny bullshit littering the landscape nowadays, but there's also still a fairly healthy back-catalogue of just.. weird, interestingly designed games. Maybe the majority of those won't have the polish and finesse that more market-driven games would have received, but there are often enough cool little elements to make them worth one's time "oh, why didn't I think of making a game like that!" I have a whole rant about the Forgotten and Ignored Conventions of Gaming, but that's going to be more of an undertaking than I wish to sandwich in over here..

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I consider myself to be somewhat savvy of Game-History related matters. I am not a whiz, but I have my share of knowledge. Yet every so often I will come across some morsel of info that will even have me scratching my head. The latest case - while cruising around on wikipedia, I stumbled onto the colorful history of a little company known as America Online (AOL). A minute of reading and I learned that the mega-corporation which helped shape the face of the Internet, began life as a humble obscure videogame download service?! No lie, apparently it was a special service for the Atari 2600 called "Gameline" - a special cartidge you'd plug into the console, which linked up to your phone jack. You could download games on a pay-to-play basis, something like a nickel per play - or something like that. Very bizarre. Anyway the thing debuted too close to the video game crash, and so it never really got too far - but the company which developed it (service and tech) went on to slowly morph into a pre-Internet Service (think of a low-level Prodigy or GEnie or whatever). Then time passed and some weird shady operations occured (don't they always) and it eventually reached mammoth status.. pretty strange.

crashed out to zero

whew, man. wednesday night, i just got back from dinner. behind at work so i am doing a little bit of late hours to catch up. i am really, really anticipating this weekend's arrival - hopefully i won't need to put in much time at the office (if any..) and I can just take a breather and relax a little. bit my nerves feel sort of fried right now.

things are going alright for the most part, since i have returned - and now it's "business as usual." Just trying to slip back into my routine and gt things under way as they should be. getting out of phase was a little weird but it was honestly nice ot be away from the computer for a few days. i am not much for camping, but suddenly the concept is wholeheartedly appealing... or maybe just jail, that might do the trick.

i feel antsy about things. i am coming up on close to 6 months at this job in a little while (another month and change, but the time flies by) and already I can feel myself getting a little nodgy "what's the next thing.." I am not used to being stable with much for any extended period of time after a little while. it's kind of my natural response at this point. it's hard to imagine that a couple of years could pass and all things could stay relatively consistent, but as usual i won't say "let's not put the cart before the horse, alright?" Oh I just realized, that saying is in drastic need of some modernization.

mostly i am realizing lately that things feel sort of out of my control. it's a sinking kind of feeling. the thing about it is that all the control i could want or need is there for the taking, for a guy in my position - at this point in my life, i could just quite honestly pick up and do whatever the hell it was i wanted to. but my superego is the boss, and it says to stay put and just let time pass. surrender to the stability. stop trying to look behind every rock, "steady as she goes." There was a time at Neversoft when I was sort of powered by that same voice, but my motives were different, I had other plans back then. Things are not bad now, but i am feeling kind of aimless. Like i wish i could snap into "autopilot" and just let the time pass me by and then snap out of it a year to two later, when things had sort of progressed as they'd been going. like when this "bas of stability" that i keep referring to was finally established. i'd be out of debt, our game would be released, etc. etc.

I am tired of feeling that way! My personality is characterized by a certain spark that makes me want to live for the moment, be rash, do strange and somewhat compulsive things. i wouldn't say i act without consideration of consequences, but i definitely would do things with more of the "no risk, no reward" mentality. and now i feel myself slipping more into this compromising attitude, "sit back and let things settle." I don't want to live like that! I want things to be different. Maybe I just need to feel more gratification (or appreciation) for the things that are already there. i need some recharge for my perspective, but not in a manner that's a hard slap in the face (like "you see how bad it COULD be?") Life is a series of trial and error, but for me it's so satisfying when things pay off.. little things..

Anyway, I am just rambling. Even if my mood is a bit tweaked it feels better to try to put some words behind it, to verbalize it. i guess that's the benefit of writing in these things.. you see yourself trying to describe what you are feeling.

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Now that I have been back from Boston for a few days, I can feel it relegating to just another memory of an odd period in my life, one that exists out of sequence with the rest of my everyday life. A couple of weeks will pass and then the whole episode will feel like it's been months and months since the whole event. It was a little weird being back in the middle of Summer, I haven't been there during this season in several years. Yikes, i forgot how hot and humid and gross it gets in the Northeast! It never really bothered me too particularly when I grew up in it, and I have always preferred the heat to the cold (even if intense).. but man! I guess I have been spoiled by the Southern California weather, after all these years. Sure it gets hot as all get out here, but it's a dry heat.. not muggy like that place. It was just gross and uncomfortable to stand outside. I wonder if the humid weather has changed at all since i left, even slightly. I know the winters have apparently been getting markedly snowier since I moved away..

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flying back from Boston was interesting - on a flight, I am one of those guys who can either pass out for the entire trip, pretty much, or not sleep a wink at all. it depends on circumstances I suppose. anyway, this return flight to LA, I was awake for the majority of it. I had a nice 1st-class seat (never happened to me before, but i did volunteer to give up an earlier flight seat so they hooked me up) and thus a little super-extendo leg room, but i couldn't seem to pass out quite so easily. that's fine, i'd slept a bit the past couple of days and i really had a lot of things on my mind. it was kind of nice to just kick back and have some hard time to think without much distraction, to digest some of the events of the busy week prior. Yeah, lots of things on my mind.. As it was a night flight, I spent a lot of time staring out the window and trying to comprehend the scenery below me. Flying is such a strange thing, it's such a displaced feeling. Always makes me feel like I am a giant, with a distorted sense of time, scale, and distance. Looking below as we'd pass over different cityscapes and countrysides, I'd try to understand the patterns in what I would see beneath me. Civiliation, all laid out neatly and completely before you, all at once. Everyone's little life, their little community, their little tiny powerlines and roadways and lake-fronts.. their commercial zones, their baseball stadiums, their residential neighborhoods, the freeways.. cloverleaf overpasses.. all laid out neat and flat and tightly connected, intertwined, everything perfectly attached. slowly and steadily carrying out the endless routines of each person's little lives, each in their little radius. The repetition of patterns in nature, lakes and streams look like tree roots and lightning bolt fingers. Industrialized society connected to huge empty plots of farmland connected to huge empty dark wide open spaces of infinite black nothingness, until the next patch of city would appear once more.

It is a marvel to behold and i never tire of it, it is so fascinating a thing to witness, every time. each place is the same, the colors of all the lights are the same, the layouts of each patch are similar. It all looks so cold and empty, it feels hard to believe it's full of people just like me, it just feels like everything is being run by invisible little specks. It's incredible to look at your two hands, to touch your forehead, and to think that from these meager tools that all of this which you see below has sprung, in such a short time.. just a few short generations. After I double my age I can't imagine what it will look like, if it will be fancier and twice as dense and alien looking, or just a little more of the same but pretty familiar - just a little more packed. Who knows.

I could talk about this stuff all night, my thoughts are full of it.. but i have some urban sprawl of my own to tend to, at the moment.