bigfatgamer

Wrecking Crew v.2

2011-07-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

I've been spending my nights (and early morning hours) on my side-project Wrecking Crew, a competitive timed-demolition game for FB. This new version is the first with two buildings, each with it's own leaderboard. The work I've done in v.2 paves the way for the continuous addition of more buildings in the future.

Wrecking Crew will eventually have a list of buildings that you can destroy. Every week, the world leaderboards will get reset, with a new chance to place.

Wrecking Crew

2011-07-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

So, my first real attempt at creating a simple FB game has been going well. I have 223 users after 4 days, and today topped 700 games played. One guy played over 30 games himself, two days in a row. Just need to get 100,000 more like him, and I can get some capital for this thing! ;)

My plan is to keep working on it, eventually adding a monetization layer and see if I can make some $$ on the side. My pipe dream is to pay off my house by getting $1 from 500,000 people. On FB, that's possible(!)

My favorite things, together

2011-06-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

Football and Boobs.

Want to be a Game Designer?

2011-06-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

I'm having lunch next week with a young tester that wants to be a designer.

My first reaction to folks that 'have ideas' and want to be designers is surprisingly harsh. I mean, I'll have a fun brainstorm with anyone, but if you really want to be a designer, I'm going to rip your heart out and step on it right in front of you. Well, metaphorically.

This isn't out of cruelty...it's both fair and helpful. Having an idea, even a VERY good one doesn't make you a designer. Ideas are the easy part. As I usually say, "Coming up with the idea is like fucking chics...it's a blast, but the real design is like raising the baby."

Next, you'll also have to have a practical skill to help take those ideas and make them real. Oh, and day to day it's going to bore the SHIT out of you. Finally, you probably will never get someone to give you even $10,000 to make YOUR game, nevermind $30 million for your opus Call of Duty clone. If it is your game, it won't be for long. The people that gave you money will influence your design and change it, and the rest of the design should be changeable to some degree by to your peers / team to get their creative investment. No one wants to work in your kingdom. It's a team effort, son.

If you're still interested after this initiation rant...then we'll talk about how it's a really awesome job. :)

Adele

2011-06-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

HOLY shiz, this Adele album (21) is out of this world. She sings with convincing emotion. I FEEL when I hear it.

Making Facebook Games

2011-05-16T00:29:00.001-07:00

Looks like my first concept for a Facebook game may see the light of day. It needs a lot of work on the viral and accessibility fronts (way too hard for the FB crowd at the moment), but has a couple of hooks I'm excited about.

A Fine Day at Monterey Bay, I say!

2011-04-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

My sister Colleen is in town from Boston, mostly to see Lisa, myself and our new baby Grace. I decided to take a one of her days here to show her the sights in Monterey, as well as Carmel, with the 17 mile drive between the two.

Life with Baby

2011-04-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

Grace is 10 weeks old today. Here she is giving me the rasberry yesterday.

Every day brings new joys and new worries. Like someone told me recently, "Parenting is about worrying for the rest of your life". Yup.

She's now smiling at me, which melts me to the core.

New Adventures!

2011-04-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

I start on a new adventure in game development on 5/25/11. I have no idea what this holds for me.

I was very comfortable and successful where I was, doing what I was doing. However, my instincts (which have seldom been wrong) instructed me to jump into the casual / social / mobile space, with a possible jump even further into AR.

Now, it's a matter of getting my head into the work, opening my ears to those around me, and closing my eyes and seeing visions of the possibilities.

I love having to define myself all over again. It's rejuvenating!

Augmented Reality

2011-04-12T17:23:00.001-07:00

I think it's going to explode in 3-5 years. Just need a practical device.

There are worlds within our world out there right now. You just can't see them yet!

The Importance of a Positive Attitude

2011-03-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

I've spoken before about the power of optimism when setting out on a new venture.

The greatest enemy of optimism can be experience. I suppose that could be a valid definition for cynicism. Where would we be as a people if we stopped trying things despite previous failed attempts? Look around your house...your TV, your radio, your medicine, your DNA...for Lisa and I, our beautiful baby girl Grace.

It is smart to listen to history, but it is unwise to let it kill your dreams.

Perhaps the greatest crime, and one I cannot abide is that of spending time assuming that history will repeat itself and using that experience to resist progress.

Virus + Asthma = BOOOOO

2011-03-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Got a throat infection a week back. Reared it's head again, this time triggering Asthma attacks. Neat!

My first home-brew Facebook Game

2011-03-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

I now have a backbone that allows me to build Facebook games on a:

graph.API <-> Jscript <-> FLASH (AS) <-> PHP <-> SQL bridge.

My test app (which is in a broken prototype phase) is http://apps.facebook.com/winterland

I've spent very little time on the app itself, whereas this is primarly an excercise in the backend stuff. Now that I have my own "engine" (really a bunch of PHP, AS, JS files) I can build almost any type of game with social connectivity. Neat!

Feel free to give it a try and report any bug data / feedback to sdesilets@gmail.com

Early users will have a distinct advantage as the app comes online. :)

Check 1....check 1...

2011-03-09T22:34:00.001-08:00

Hey friends! Been a while. I've been busy taking care of my daughter, getting back to work after a month off, and messing around with a facebook game project.

Work is great, life is great. Posts should get more regular now. :)

The Creative Mind and sleep deprivation

2011-02-09T18:23:00.001-08:00

When I get tired, I get PUNCHY. I also get quicker with my non sequitur and tangential 'improv' thinking. I assure you, dear reader, that there is no shortage of noise, but there are also some eurekas that occur in this mind phase that do not occur as often when in a focused 'work' phase.

Of course, it's possible that the perceived value of the output of the phase is affected by the accuracy of the perception itself.

I think of this episode of Family Guy

STOMP STOMP

2011-02-09T18:21:00.001-08:00

Two neighborhood cats like to run around on my roof at all hours. Across the PVC sheeting over our den (an extension to the main house), they sound like someone rattling our windows and doors. VERY relaxing.

Solution? CLEARLY it's to buy a roof dog.

Newborns: What I've learned thus far

2011-02-09T18:02:00.000-08:00

5 days in and here's what I've learned about newborns:

Seeing and smelling their poop makes me just as happy as hitting BlackJack. Woohoo!
They pretty much do 3 things. Eat, Poop, Sleep. Ahhh the life
They only leave you with the energy to Eat, Poop, and Sleep (sometimes)
They smell wonderful. There really is a 'Baby Smell'. (not counting poop here)
Their poop starts as a thick black tar like substance called Meconium. No odor, and STICKY. I feel like I'm cleaning up the Valdez spill, but off of a butt and not a bird.
They lose some percentage of their birth weight over the first few days, then (ideally) gain it back and then some by the second week of life
If you don't already, you start thinking about your own health from a very new perspective

Sniff Sniff. Is that the future?

2011-02-09T15:01:00.000-08:00

It must be hiring season...the pings from recruiters is heating up, and mostly from the casual games space, which may be more interested in classic game dev experience than ever as CG's grow n maturity and depth.

All these pings start painting a picture...I see someone one-upping OnLive's strategy, and delivering high-end PC and Console games through a web-browser (activeX, widget, etc).

Combine this with a trend where new TV's have apps, including web-browsers in them and you might see IE, Chrome or some new game-central web-portal usurp consoles. Then the TV becomes the final destination in visual entertainment.

It's a good dream to me because it's a practical one. Deliver games-as-service and the hardware wars take place around a more widely relate-able device (TV).

Paternity Leave

2011-02-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

We brought Grace home today. Stressfully joyous! Like games development, plans don't really materialize as expected. Our routine has adjusted on the fly. All the fancy bells and whistles from Babies R Us don't equal the value of one firm, oversized pillow. Instant lap bed and play area.

Shifts are immediately obvious. I watch Grace while Lisa can spend 1-2 hours doing whatever she'd like and vice versa. Seems to work.

Tonight we're going to try putting her down after a feeding and Lisa and I sleeping with her in the bassinet. Although I suspect that I'll be waking up every 15 minutes to check on her.

Such good times, exhausted and loving it.

It's official!

2011-02-03T19:08:00.001-08:00

My face is so fat that I have Mr. Belvedere jowls. It's definitely time.

Big Day Tomorrow

2011-02-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

Well, tomorrow we head in for the scheduled C-Section. Unless we get bumped (which scheduled C-sections do from time to time), then we'll meet our little girl around 1:30 - 2:00pm. Once we have her out, healthy, with no issues, then we will have come to the end of a very dark and trying chapter in our lives, and the beginning of the one we were expecting, filled with poop, vomit, no-sleep and constant worry. I couldn't be more thrilled. :)

Almost there....

2011-01-31T23:45:00.001-08:00

Boy, I've been feeling really shitty. The closer we get to the delivery date on Friday, the worse I feel. Had a bit of a panic attack today, actually, with outbursts of anger through the weekend up to that point. WTF?

Best I figure, with our history, the anxiety of the anticipatory build-up has been increasing my stress level. I think once Grace is born, and before we get into the other stress of raising a kid, we'll be able to breathe a HUGE sigh of relief. Shitty thing livin' in fear!

Game stories are like Porn stories

2011-01-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

Was having dinner last night with a neighbor and their kids. Their curious about my career and what it's like to make games. They asked me what I'm working on, and of course I can't give any details but I told them that lately I'm busy getting the building blocks of our story up and running.

"Story?" They were confused as to why or how story matters in video games.

Perhaps the best analysis of game story came from my wife. She observed that a story in a video game is like a story in a porn movie. It just has to set up the scene quickly, then get us right into the action. Hot damn. She's a genius. I can't argue.

Trust is the best delivery mechanism

2011-01-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

Answers, religion, medicine...all are accepted by people you trust.

When a stranger comes to your house and offers any of these with fervor and insistence, it creates tension.

Update

2011-01-23T09:31:00.001-08:00

Baby

We're heading into the home stretch. The birth will be a planned C-section, but the date has not yet been decided by the doctor. Sometime between now and 2/16.

Work

The new project is moving along. Spend more time with politics than creativity lately, but that's to be expected as the group grows. I'm taking 3-4 weeks off for Paternity leave soon and feel satisfied that the team has the wheel and we're heading in the correct general direction.

4th Album: Reconstruction

2011-01-11T22:15:00.002-08:00

Here's the 4th album. It sums up my 2010.

Public Speaking / Presenting Thoughts

2011-01-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

In the last few years, I've suddenly become comfortable with public speaking. I'm just starting out in my practice of the thing, but I think it's going to become a larger component of the next 20 years of my professional life. I think it's time to take some coursework on public speaking to (hopefully) accelerate my skills development

The trickiest component I've noticed is the concept of 'Energy transfer'. A co-worker, Charles, came to see my band once. This guy wasn't easily impressed or pleased by...well...much at all, but he said something on his blog the next day that said "They're a little sloppy, but tight enough for punk, but they have so much fun up there it was contagious". I believe that whether it's music, theater, ministry, or presentation...the transfer of energy from broadcaster to audience is a catalyst for delivering a message.

It's important to remember that it's not just about the amplitude of the message. Charles Manson shares a LOT of energy in his diatribes, but the message is deranged. There's also 'bad' energy such as nervousness, frustration, etc. The best energy I've seen is that of someone who knows the message so well, and speaks about it with enough gesticulation that implies passion for the topic.

Lastly, I've discovered that moving from face to face and making direct eye contact with the audience can help me connect, and probably vice-versa. If someone looks away, then I won't go back to that face, since it makes them uncomfortable.

WOW. GREAT Baby news!

2011-01-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

Had a few doctors sessions this morning (there are a lot when your wife is high-risk, have to be very cautious). One of the sessions was an ultrasound.

The baby (Grace), is 5lbs and is at the 73% size. WOAH.

We lost our first two, one at 30 weeks, the next at 6 days old (after being delivered prematurely at 33.5 weeks). The first death was related to Pre-Eclampsia, the second due to N.E.C, a gut-rotting infection that strikes a small percentage of premature infants who were growth restricted and whose guts weren't strong enough.

So to see that Grace is 2 lbs larger than her brother and earlier in her cycle to boot? WOOOOHOOO! Grace will be delivered early at 36 weeks (3 weeks from now), and if you're a baby, you want to be as heavy and big as possible to survive outside the womb. I can say honestly that this is the first time since 12/21/09 that I've truly been happy. Keep those fingers crossed!

Busy Vacation and Update

2011-01-01T20:02:00.001-08:00

What a great winter break!

We hosted the family on Christmas Day, everyone had a relaxing and fun time which is its own reward.

I ate too much (what else is new). That's probably about to phase out though. Me + home all day + a full fridge = uh oh.

I finished up 8 tunes for my new album, "Reconstruction". Good fun. I'll post an iTunes / Amazon link as soon as it's ready.

I got an iPad with some great apps. My favorite is ArtRage, which allows me to pump out really quick and fun finger paintings. Yay!

Lisa's getting really big now, as the pregnancy approaches 33 weeks. We have a VERY important and informative doctors appointment on Monday, which will let us know if any shit's about to hit the fan. Things are looking really good so far. I'm so excited!

Got the Kinect. Sweet fun! I wonder how much more steady my hands are now after using it. The UI selections require very steady positioning of the hands. I enjoy it. Sports is crap...but Dance Central is AWESOME. I danced for 3 hours straight, crushing on the leaderboards. I was huffing like a...well a fat man, but I was having too much fun to realize I was getting (gasp) excercise. When you're as big as I am, it doesn't take much to get to the target heart rate, I can tell you!

My Self Pity Mantra

2010-12-19T23:22:00.000-08:00

I have a tattoo on my right hand. It's my son's hand print. The kid was 6 days old when he died, and we watched him on the table, turning purple, fighting back to a soft pink a few times until his body ultimately failed him and we had to let the doctors stop trying.

The tattoo reminds me to never feel bad for myself. Every second I stop or quit to afford myself some pity, I am wasting my time. It's hard to find the line between remembering Marcus and Julia and wallowing. I'm advised to talk about it. We refuse to see a doctor. This is my catharsis in my reflective moments. But when I linger just a bit too long, I have to remember my mantra on self-pity.

What's happened has already cost me time and pain...self pity gives it even more. It's doubly unfair to myself to do so. I still have to plan. I'm not allowed to give up. I will PUSH. I will GO. I will get socked in the face. I will get back up. Whatever. Pain? Fear? Recognize it, accept it, Move on. Don't close my eyes, don't hang my head, don't withdraw. Keep smiling. Laugh. Open back up and hope again. Ow. Again. Damn it, this hurts. Again. Over and Over until my time is taken from me. Don't take out what happened to us on other people. It's not their fault. There is no fault. Bad things happen. There is no 'fair', truly, and that's okay. You can't even get angry at that fact. Keep moving.

It's all temporary, but I have to fight like it isn't. No one will know I existed in 100 years. So? Seeing the Big Picture isn't an excuse for emotional detachment or not trying.

I will fail at times. I will crumble. I will draw the curtains and stare at the wall. I will want to fall into a very deep dark hole where can sleep it all away and give up.

That's when I'll look at Marcus's hand. That kid was a real tough cookie. I won't disappoint him.

Presentation On Rapid Prototyping

2010-12-18T23:55:00.001-08:00

I've been asked to give a presentation on Rapid Prototype development at an upcoming conference.

While I share my opinions openly, readily, and too often, I never consider my opinions 'knowledge'. But I suppose to give a presentation is to just express a Point of View, so long as the presentation style doesn't fall into tones that imply the information therein is 'law' or some new discovery of epic profundity.Anyway, Just thinking about it off the top of my head...figured I'd use my blog as a sort of sketchpad for the abstract.

Jack of All Data: On Generalists and Specialists

Renaissance workers vs. expert workers, and why you want the former earlier and vice versa.

I'll probably talk about my own personal career experience a bit, how working at multiple studios on various titles allowed me to explore and gain experience across all the data layers it takes to make games, from textures, to modeling, to animation, to scripts, writing, voice acting, level design, and how all of these experiences put me in a particular skill set to help assemble prototypes with high velocity. I've less become the guy who will take a chunk of data and bring it to completion and more the guy who builds the prototype and then builds a team to bring the idea to fruition.

The important thing for me to remember if I use this topic is to not end up with the conclusion "To make rapid prototypes, just hire a generalist with my broad experience". That's both a bit too self-aggrandizing and not easily replicated on purpose. Unless of course I can figure out a consultant biz model!! ;)

A Tale of Two Prototypes

Show footage of The Inferno Prototype and the newer prototype. I'll talk about the very different goals of each, and how I set about working on each.

Know Your Target

For both the Dante's Inferno prototype and the most recent prototype I've had the pleasure of working on / creating, we knew exactly what the goal was. If you don't know what you're trying to make, you're sunk. Prototyping has room for failure, but it should probably be the failure of not proving a known goal, and not a failure in figuring out what you want to make.

What Are we Doing For Lunch?

On the difficulty and cost of getting groups organized, and why it's so important to keep your prototype team small.

I've been thinking about the cost of a feature, either for a final game or prototype. I'll start out perhaps with the analogy of trying to get a group of 3, 7, 10, 20 people to agree on where to go for lunch.

I want a language to express my ideas, so I'm thinking about painting each feature as a ratio of Work Units and Conversation Units. Every goal requires some ratio of WORK:CONVERSATION units. Each additional member of a team adds some amount of both, at their own ratio based on their personality, skill set and experience. Some team members may be more uncertain and want to talk more about a feature before setting to work on it, some may just jump into the work without enough conversation and end up moving in the wrong direction.

This part of the presentation should lead to the point about the inverse proportionality of size:speed on a team and how large teams sink prototype and pre-production success.

I'm a Monster - by Headless Studios

2010-12-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

This reminds me of some of the shots and character performances from Iron Giant. Could also be the 1 tone per shape cutout simplicity to the plates / envs(?).

Thanks to Webster Colcord for sharing this on Facebook. Had to do my part to promote it. :)

I'm a monster from Headless Productions on Vimeo.

Morgan Freeman's Hand

2010-12-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

I heard that Morgan Freeman was in a car accident and lost a hand. I've seen him in two commercials where he conveniently has the same hand off frame behind something. HMMMM.

To the internet...one sec...(sound of running to the other tabbed window)...

...

Ahh. It's paralyzed. That's too bad. :(

"Get busy livin...or get busy giving yourself 'The Stranger'"

Holiday Break

2010-12-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

Recording Music and playing games. 24/7.

Action Figure Band

2010-12-09T20:14:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking of releasing my new album under banner of a band made entirely out of action figures.

or at least making a music video entirely out of stop motion for one of the songs.

Or not.

Hmm.

Tuning a Guitar: on Dealing with Constant Fear

2010-12-08T07:05:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has ever put a new string on a guitar understands the stress of the anticipation of a break as you do so. The string grows tighter and tighter as you tune it up. Not every string comes off the line equal, and some snap before it reaches it's note. Two tragedies in a row has Lisa and I tuning a third, waiting for it to snap again. We wince.

Lisa is now in week 29 of our third pregnancy. We lost our first two. The first, Julia, died in the womb at 30 weeks of a placental abruption, in which the placenta literally detaches from the uterus in a cataclysmic failure, killing our girl. It was truly horrific, blood everywhere. On my hands and knees scrubbing it out of the rug. Our second was Marcus, who was delivered early because his heart rate was dropping frightfully at 33 weeks. He survived for 6 days before dying from a rare intestinal disorder stemming from bacterial infection resulting from growth restriction.

Lisa has been pregnant for 3 years now, with no children. We decided to try again, not because it's logical, but because not trying again feels like the future is dead. We also have a new reason to hope. Lisa has been taking Lovenox, a relatively new medicine that prevents the clotting that we now know Lisa is prone to...a factor in the first two losses.

We have more and more reason to hope that in 7 weeks, when the doctor will insist on a C-Section (since Lisa is so high risk), we will meet our little girl and be able to bring her home and help her start her life. Our girl is growing nicely, is already nearly as large as her older brother was, and 5 weeks earlier. Things are by all accounts looking up.

Still, we are holding our breath. Not because we want to...because that is our natural, subconscious reaction to two losses in a row, both at the last possible moment. We are going to go so far as to clean out the back room that I haven't gone into since Marcus died. It still stands silent, with the changing table I built, a fresh paint job, a Winnie the Poo toy collecting dust. "It's a Boy!" balloons lay deflated, flat on the floor, a ridiculous metaphor for our experience last year.

We've decided it's time to head in there, spruce it up and dare to hope for the first time since last year. Hell, we may even go so far as to buy a carriage + car seat. :)

Robot Bitch Army

2010-12-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

I picture a future where a family can invest a robot that not only does their chores, but can be ordered to run off every morning from 7am - 3pm on any given company's robot bus, to the robot labor camp / factory, where their robot can earn them wages and bring them back into the home.

"My robot bitch better have my money!"

Story

2010-12-06T23:56:00.000-08:00

I continue to be amazed at how much passion I have about story telling. Even a few years back I was poo-pooing story and focused on mechanics. Which of course is rediculous to me now. Both are required.

Getting Back to Flash & Odd gaming pattern

2010-12-06T23:52:00.000-08:00

Man, I've been away from personal projects lately. Got back to Flash tonight, mocking up stuff for work. Of course, I still remain settled comfortably in AS2, refusing to take the time to learn AS3, which is sitting right in front of me.

I've totally not been playing many games these days. With the exception of Railroad Tycoon II and PC Battlefield BC2, I have very little interest in gaming these days. I need little more, honestly. My damn 360 is gathering dust. The TV is Lisa's every night. I sit in here on my PC. Probably while I'm mostly PC these days! But Railroad Tycoon?! WTF? Can't stop playing.

Naturalizing: Drum Beats, Machine Guns and Animations

2010-12-01T23:20:00.000-08:00

Years ago, when I bought my first drum machine (1991), I couldn't get a 'natural' sound. At the time I didn't know why. Soon I discovered the culprit. When a human hits a high hat or snare, it's a little different every time along multiple axes: Velocity, location, etc. All creating varied and often subtle output along the axes of volume, decay, pitch. A few years later I bought my first drum machine with a 'Naturalizer / Humanizer' routine that would randomly vary up these outputs to make it sound more 'human'.

Years later, a sound design pal in the industry taught me how machine guns feel more natural if every time it fires, you either modulate pitch, decay, volume on the fly or at least pull randomly from a set of 20 - 40 pre-set .wav files with the variations built in.

Vince and I used to chat about the idea of applying this 'Naturalization' modulation concept to character animation sets. It's a REALLY hard sell. "Hey, let's spend millions on a VERY subtle effect."

Anyway, I'm curious as to whether or not some dynamic randomization within an animations frame set, so long as the degree of divergance along the baseline curves is controlled for the sake of blending...could add some value. Based on what I've heard about Drake's modulated anim system, I'm more encouraged that this is a good idea, and will continue to mark the difference between top tier character performances and 'meh' mechanical looping sets. Hmm.

'Shooter' glossary of terms: The Hurricane

2010-11-29T20:52:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking a LOT about 'shooters'. As such there are some concepts that have been tip-toeing through my mind. One of them is 'The Hurricane'

This is a metaphor describing the pace of action in a MP map. The idea is that most multiplayer maps, when viewed from top down, tend to resemble a Hurricane. If not the layout, then the way people move through it. In this analogy wind = action.

Like a Hurricane, the winds along the outer edge are the slowest, and the winds at the center are the fastest. Battlefield Bad Company 2 provides a very large storm with very slow winds on the outer edge. When you spawn along the outside of the storm, you tend to have your time to choose how and where you enter the busy center. Of course, the squad option allows you to spawn on your mates immediately at the center (which can be ill-advised at times).

Quake (1,2,3 Arena), TF2, Modern Warfare 1 & 2...these games provide maps that are smaller, denser, and as such the winds pick up speed. Even along the edges, the winds are faster than the hurricane of BFBC2.

To create higher winds, make smaller maps. Respawn times and square-footage-per-player contribute to wind speed as well.

Happy Turkey Day!

2010-11-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

I hope all your Turkey Days were merry and full of good stuff.

Now let's all go walk 300 miles to burn it off!

Lead Level Designer

2010-11-22T23:31:00.000-08:00

Yo, I'm looking for a Lead Level Designer folks. If you have a couple of shooters under your belt, have been in a lead position for at least one of them, I'd love to hear from you. sdesilets@gmail.com

Obvious Warnings and The Trapeze Artist

2010-11-22T23:20:00.000-08:00

The danger of experience is that it leads you to believe that you can see the future. A group of senior employees are more likely to spend time trading concerns (most of which are perfectly obvious to everyone else), instead of talking about solutions. It's personally validating to call out what will probably happen as a manifest of personal experience, but seldom is not a replacement for solving the problem at hand.

Imagine if a trapeze artist is about to set out on a high wire. Other trapeze artists call out "You know, we might fall and that will hurt". True, but a uselessly obvious observation. Either way, the show must go on, so shaddup and get out on the damn wire! ;)

Unity Pro

2010-11-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

Got a Unity Pro License. Opens up all the bells and whistles. Here's a quick shader + lighting test.

Columbus

2010-11-07T18:03:00.000-08:00

I am Columbus.

Okay, I'm not discovering anything nearly as important as the New World (I just make video games, geesh!)

Like Mr. C, I don't know exactly what we'll find, but I've charted a course, got money from the King and Queen, was given a crew, and we're all headed due West to find Gold.

The crew will want to know exactly where we're going. I won't be able to tell them until we get there. There will be much gnashing of teeth and worry, doubt in the leadership. We will ride through many storms and sickness. All a natural, necessary part of doing something new. The few brave souls will keep things running smoothly. I could very well get thrown overboard. No use worrying. Sail on. Keep course.

In the end, when that last fog bank clears, we'll see land. Will it be a new land, something worth writing about? Or will we have have gotten lost at sea, accidentally or (worse) intentionally turned back to the known, well-traveled shores out of fear?

Bon Voyage!

Will the Kinect Succeed?

2010-11-04T23:08:00.000-07:00

It will do well at first, then die a swift, sudden death.

Hey, it looks like a LOT of fun, and I'll buy one, sure. But man, at the END OF THE DAY, who wants to jump around to play their games? Novelty gets you off your ass, but laziness will win in the long run.

New Vs. Familiar in the Mass Market

2010-11-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

vs.

Some of us find the image at the left to be far more interesting.

However, IMO, it's hard to argue that the image to the right is not more conventially appealing to a larger group of people.

When I worked for a short stint at Harmonix Music Systems, back when they were making Frequency (the grand-daddy of Guitar Hero), we were discussing why music games don't sell in the U.S. At the time, there hadn't yet been a Guitar Hero. Only the domestic failure of Parra-the-Rappa. There were those of us mystified at how such a wonderful title like that could be so ignored by the U.S. Market.

That's when it occurred to me..."Wait. Maybe the evil corporations aren't FORCING us to buy all these licensed games...maybe...just maybe...that's what we (gulp) WANT."

At the time, Frequency had very poorly known bands for its tracks. I mean, how many average Americans know who 'Meat Beat Manifesto' is? Hmm. Indeed, it was the addition of tracks from bands that 'everyone' has heard of, with a plastic guitar to cement the fantasy that struck the match with the mass market. The rest is Guitar Hero history.

Look, at the end of the day, if you want to make a game that sells over 5million units, you need some element of recognizability. Whether it's the fantasy, the rendering, the activity, etc...something therein has to strike a chord of relatability.

When I work with artists that are tempted to make something 'never seen before', I'll remind them of Oddworld Stranger's Wrath. A game that those of us who worked around the clock for years to make are VERY proud of, was critically acclaimed, but that was ultimately unrelatable to a mass market. Be careful of creative hubris. It can provide the soul of the product, but can lead you away from those who would pay your bills.

Emergent Gameplay Systems

2010-11-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm calling HORSESHIT on the general concept of 'emergent' gameplay systems.

There are only permutations of output from any matrix of combinatorial elements. Sure the total number of permutations may be un-testable, but in effect...releasing a game with unforeseeable output is technically irresponsible. Even, say, in a product line as expansive as Magic: TG.

This all reminds me of a abysmally bad engineer I worked on a flight sim with once. He was a contractor who was tasked with authoring a Fighter AI system. Weeks after he started, he proclaimed "WOW!", calling us over to his machine. We saw a squadron of fighters floundering around each other in the air, nearly colliding. In the end, his AI solution was to train the planes to 'learn' how to fly together at run-time, every time. "They're learning how to fly together! See how they're getting smarter? Wow!"

Wait, I'm sorry, what? They're learning? We didn't pay this guy to author a simulation of the learning process, we wanted planes that emulated a pilots decision making process, at varied degrees of fidelity (to express AI pilot skill). To state the obvious, this created a trust issue for the rest of us, both in the system, and the author. You should probably NOT be amazed or surprised by the output of your own system, in general. The reaction implies a lack of mastery of the thing.

This was the first time I realized that the varied output of any system can and should surprise and delight the customer, but NOT the author. ;)

Team Culture

2010-10-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

Team dynamic is a tricky business in any industry. How well a team works together or 'gels' is a fascination for me. I've been privelaged to have worked with some really effective teams that move together very quickly and in the same direction. When a team is in the zone, it feels like 'flocking', where you all move immediately together.

The concept of a 'good team' is often thought to be lost on the business / organizational side of things. Those who suggest this is the case would point to personal experiences on teams that are getting the job done, to quality, with efficiency, and enjoying it only to have the team broken up and reassigned to other teams.

I've been on teams led by narcissists, creative genius madmen, tyrants and 'buddies'. (In a lead position, there is very good chance that I won't escape someone thinking me one of these) I've been on teams that got together years later for reuinion BBQs, and teams that had got burnt out and got the hell out the second the game was finished. Overall, I am not aware of any formula for building a successful team, but the following have been true of the top teams I've worked with:

- The team members have to know, accept, and enjoy their roles
- The team members trust each other
- The team knows what they're making, and believes its worth doing
- The team members are honest with each others work
- The team members solve more than they complain about
- The team provides alternatives with every complaint
- The team learns from but doesn't dwell on their own or each others failures
- The team had a really good sense of humor about about themselves
- The team played together
- The team works fast, and works hard
- There is healthy, but not caustic competition

On Being Direct

2010-10-28T22:35:00.001-07:00

One interesting side effect of our loss of Julia, then Marcus was the apparent dissolution of my fear of confrontation. As a result, I just say what I'm thinking, which has made life better for me overall. Only recently has one particular relationship caused me to apply some 'polish'. I caught myself though and began being more honest thereafter.

Let the chips fall where they may. For me, getting my views out as they occur is far better than 'holding it in' where it will fester only to later manifest itself with the increased amplitude of suppression over time. Honestly, if your opinion is simply put out there, it's less likely to feel vectored to any particular party and trust will actually be bolstered. There will be folks that don't want or appreciate such directness, but that's not my responsibility. If propriety = dishonesty, then better to be improper! ;)

Persistence of Vision, a Myth

2010-10-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

Hmm. Was looking this up. Sounds like it's a Myth? Debunked in 1912. Interesting.

Accessibility in Games: Cognition and Variable Tracking

2010-10-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

I'm spending a lot of time talking about this right now on my new game. What makes a game 'Accessible'?

The dictionary description of 'Accessible' is 'easy to use'. I'd extend this definition to include 'easy to learn'. Perhaps another way of putting it is 'easy to track'.

According to this article, the human brain can track up to four variables simultaneously. When tracking 5 or more, the brain's response is no better than random chance. A hint at accessibility here, perhaps? Don't have the player have to keep track of more than four variables at a time.

How is this meaningfully applied in game design to make better product / experiences? I played Bulletstorm today and it was exciting but there was a LOT going on and I was a bit overwhelmed. Perhaps there were more than 4 things going on at one time? Seemed like it. I must offer up at this point the very real possibility that I'm just a burnt out old gamer that can't keep up with the twitch gameplay. ;)

It got me thinking though, the later levels were overwhelming, but not the earlier levels. Then it dawned on me. Games often increase difficulty by having me keep track of more variables from second-to-second, for instance by spawning more enemies at once. Another way of phrasing this is that the staging of enemies was closer together, quickening the pace and the number of variables I had to track second to second.

I now have to consider this. How do you increase the challenge without increasing the number of variables that the player has to keep track of? According to the study linked to above, when overwhelmed in games, you'll eventually win just out of luck, not really because you learned to handle it. The question for me is this...what would these variables be in any given game? The number of mechanics I have? The number of enemies on screen? The number of red barrels in the environment? The number of sounds I'm hearing?

All of these may be valid 'variables' in the context of the study's use of the term. It may be that the brain is constantly shuffling / reprioritizing between sets of 4 items from millisecond to millisecond based on screen space proximity to your reticule (where objects at the edge of the screen fade from your awareness until they either move to center again or grab your attention with an edge event). If this shuffling of variables is occurring, then the pace at which your brain can refresh and reprioritize focus of this list is perhaps the closest equivalent to 'skill'. Another of saying this is 'Attention Span'.

My interpretation of the science of cognition is as rough and anecdotal as it comes. My advice to aspiring game developers in the next generation is to study cognition in university and apply it meaningfully to games development! Good luck!

The Character Connection: Performance vs. Response

2010-10-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

When building a character based game, say a 3rd person action title, the development team needs to decide if the character's performance is more important than its responsiveness.

For instance, if a character jumps and falls, do you play out a 60 frame (2 second) animation for the leg compression at the tail end before returning control, or should you interrupt the animation should the player input?

The answer is not empirical. Depends on the game. Inferno, like Devil May Cry relies on upon a constant interruption of the characters performance. Deadspace, RE4 / 5 require a slower response for tension's sake. What does your game need from it's character? Is it about the character's believability or about your agency?

Unity Test

2010-10-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

Demolish the building by aiming the cannon with your mouse and pressing the LMB or CTRL to fire

3D Physics Test

Building Crumple Zones Into Your Design

2010-10-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

Most of you are probably familiar with the notion that Volvo promoted in the 90's of designing 'crumple zones' into their cars that are intended to 'crumple' on impact, absorbing the force to re-direct it away from the passenger.

I see Product Designs like A Volvo. When the design hits that innevitable brick wall of budgetary / man-hour constraint, something has to take the brunt in the design.

The first step in implementing this in practice is to list all features for your game. Next, pick the core three features that you absolutely can't lose. The three features that put together creates some experience of value. (If you don't know what these are, you're in trouble, by the way). These three features represent your 'Passenger'. The Passenger is the most precious part of the vehicle and must not be killed. Then, begin layering your other features around the Passenger to protect it against the innevitable collision that's coming. The features on the outer ring will be sacrificed first of course, so that's where the least necessary ones go.

"They're All Necessary!" you say? No they're not. And if you don't know which features can be removed, someone will do it for you anyway when the cuts come. Best to own this up front. It's the mature / responsible thing for a designer to do.

Hands Off, Take 2

2010-10-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

So, I'm the guy that builds prototypes that gets the money to make games these days. I'm 2 for 2 with Dante's Inferno and now the latest project.

Last time around, on Inferno, I promised myself that I would begin the process of pulling away from creating content and focus on my leadership role, which classicly consists of spending most of my day communicating. In the end, of course, I ended up working 7am - 10pm days on average towards the end because I insisted on implementing some boss fights, a flash mini game (Which was a HUUUUUGE mistake admitedly, I knew how much it sucked, but couldn't convince the EP to cut it, ungh), as well as a demon that would cool down and re-ignite.

The problem is, I was working two jobs. I could get content created from 7am - 10am, then the meetings would commence and run all day until 6pm on average, then I can work again from 6pm - 10pm (later on 12am). The big issue there is I'm not focused on one or the other, and ultimately am selfishly holding on to content creation and putting the project at risk.

In retrospect, it was easier to do that on Inferno, since the creative calls were out of my hands after the first few months. That's a whole other story.

Anyway, now I'm Creative Director on our new game and have to consider once more how much I'm going to grab and build vs. entrust to the team to take care of. What it really comes down to is where you get your validation from. I still get validation from MAKING stuff. Slowly, I am recognizing the validity / need for people at the top who can communicate / articulate / evangelize to the team...so the role feels more substantial now. Especially considering the departure of a previous leader that was notorious for grabbing control at all levels, who is now gone. That leaves a substantial communication / leadership gap that has to be filled.

Will I be able to be more 'hands off'? I need to practice doing so. It will be hard for me to say the least, but now I have to be the leader I wished I had before, someone who trusts their team to do what they do best, and only use the big hammer when a course correction is required.

Between Expression and Paradox of Choice

2010-10-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

When designing character / vehicle systems that enable the user to express their individuality, one has to walk a line between offering too few and too many choices.

Masters of Orion 3 (unlike M.O.O 2 which was perfect!), Sins of a Solar Empire...these are games with overly complex systems, IMO. They're playable, but aren't catering to the mass audience.

My team's challange is to create a system that has few enough choices to relate to and memorize easily, while offering as many permutations of output as possible.

Starbucks' drink menu is a good example of not-too-many-base-elements, but a wide variety of combinations. Me? I order a Iced-grande-one-pump-vanilla-soy-latte. Been to Starbucks all over the Western Hemisphere, and never heard anyone else order that same exact drink. Their base set allowed me to express my individuality through my drink order, the same whay City of Heroes allowed me to do with it's top-notch character creator.

But one company stands alone in best demonstrating a base-set:perumutation ratio. Taco Bell. Those guys take Corn, Beef, Chicken, Cheese, Beans, Rice and create many menu items out of them. The one thing they haven't done yet is have a soft corn meal inside of a hardened Beef Shell. Hmm. Inside-Out Taco!

Anyway, there's only so much the mass-market wants to keep track of. The Sims sets a good standard on character creation options, given their wide appeal.

My Stop Motion Anim Progress. Magnets

2010-10-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that magnets are very useful for holding the figure's feet down. I use carpentry staples as a sort of snowshoe on the action figure's foot, then lay out a metal sheet, and pin down the figure by setting their metal-laden snowshoes onto the magnets. This also allows me to slide the character around with more ease.

Communication

2010-09-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

The further I've gone into my life, the more aware I become of how important and equally difficult successful communication is between any group of people that is >= 2.

It requires great care, insight, empathy to deliver a message in a way that is custom tailored to the audience. You will never be able to control how people perceive your message, but you can make that message as clear as possible to reduce the effect of the noise of their varied perspectives.

I find myself wishing that schools spent time educating children in the art of successful communication beyond the basics of the written and spoken word. Gesture, tone, eye contact....all valuable axes of expression in facilitating a 'safe' environment / context for a conversation or debate where people feel free to speak their mind without being threatened even in the most subtle of ways.

Bioshock Infinite and the Loop of Quality

2010-09-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Ken, Shawn, Sinc, Nate, and all the good folks at Irrational have shown us another nightmarish yet beautifully eccentric and cultist human societal tangent. Oh, and there's floating cities and you can control crows. Why not? You wonderful bastards. I can't picture pitching this from within the larger game corporations, quite honestly. You'd have to take the year to build this first in order to convince folks.

Take a peek, if for some reason you've been under a rock and haven't seen it yet.

Irrational has the hardest challenge. Following success with an equally stunning success. Pixar, U2, Valve, Blizzard...few organizations hit it 'out of the park' repeatedly. Will Irrational keep it going? (by the way, I discount earlier Irrational offerings. They didn't really make a huge splash like BioShock did, eh?). So will this next brilliant vision from some of the finest East Coast game entertainers hit paydirt? Watching this gorgeous narrative, it's really hard to imagine that they won't.

Valve, Blizzard, and now perhaps Irrational all have hit a sweet spot with both critics and consumers that creates a positive feedback loop on quality / success. What's a positive feedback loop? Well, if you had a basketball game where every time a team scored a point, you added another player, that would be a positive feedback loop. The more you win, the easier it is to win more, and so on. When a company like Irrational breaks out with a critical success, it buys them both financial 'space' (meaning time) to work on unorthodox visions, as well as the leverage required with the publisher to chase their creative rabbits into very strange and unknown holes. Publishers don't lean towards risk in their ROI analysis, and as such ideas without precedent fail to open pockets. "Faith" in creative vision really doesn't enter into the evaluation of new products.

So, fantastic job Irrational, you wonderful bastards. Almost makes me wish I was still in Boston making levels with some old Looking Glass friends. ;)

Fourth Album: Reconstruction

2010-09-15T09:08:00.001-07:00

'Reconstruction' is my fourth home-recorded album, and my greatest breakthrough in recording quality thus far. Each album gets successively better in fidelity and mix as I learn. The album's songs are mostly built around the theme of perserverance, something that Lisa and I know a LOT about after losing our two kids in two years. Songs like 'Go On', 'Let it Go' speak to this directly. Where the last album, 'SMASH' had more to do with the negative emotions that go along with adaptation and evolution in relationships, this album is almost all positive, which reflects my overall state of mind these days.

Here are some samples of the 10 songs I've chosen from over 20 songs I've written in the last two months, for the final album:

Let It Go
Go On
Team
It
Sugar Rush
Fair Warning
Something New
Dust
One Less thing
To Rest

Bad Blogger!

2010-09-15T08:53:00.001-07:00

I've been very sporadic in my blogging, hell I'd even call it a 'drought'.

Things have been very hustly-bustly at work with a lot going down. Things are moving forward nicely, and there are some more friends involved now, which means more talking. Talking always exhausts me! lol. Maybe I should tone down my energy level during conversations and ration it for marathon communication days.

It used to be that when I got home, that's when I'd record, work in Flash, write, draw, etc. Now my creativity is limited to Friday / Saturday evenings. Every other night I sit on my ass on our super comfy couch and play Bejeweled Blitz. (I got 550,000 pts recently. Yup). I have become one of the 'masses on their asses'. Just so exhausted at night. Hell, I'm exhausted now and it's only 9am!

Lisa told me that I've 'stopped breathing a few times' lately when I sleep on my back. Hello Sleep Apnea! No wonder I'm dragging my ass so bad! Time to get a sleep study done so I can get my Darth Vader sleep mask. The problem seems to be that when you lay on your back, your jaw flops open, pressing in on your throat, closing it. If you're heavy like I am, all that extra weight from your face hangs off your jaw and presses down even harder, effectively choking you, and depriving your brain the oxygen it needs, which continually wakes you up mid -sleep cycle. A pattern that is exhausting to your body and you wake up not feeling rested AT ALL. It's insideous too, supposedly, making you feel worse and worse over time.

Okay, it might be a fetish.

2010-09-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

Hot action figures. I can't seem to stop collecting them. Maybe it's an extension of my fantasy of becoming a glamour photographer!

On Story Writing and Trips to L.A.

2010-08-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's a first for me. Flying to L.A. to meet with writers. Something I'll probably be doing a lot more of in the future.

As Creative Director, I've been working on the story, but really just coming up with the logical flow of a series of events. I first supply WHAT happens to WHO, WHERE and WHEN.

You then need to hire professional writers to tie it together and tell the HOW and WHY of the story...the part that really matters to the audience.

Video game stories often suffer from only taking care of the first bit, and not telling the REAL story, which is how these events affect the characters.

The Near-Myopic Optimism Required to Do Something NEW

2010-08-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

When you set out to do something never done before, you really do need to truly believe in the idea. Of course this idea will work. It will be massive. Yes, it will be unprecedented. It will make history. There is no question to you. It is as obvious and as simple as breathing.

Every detail feels like it's always been in your head. Even when you say it for the first time to yourself or others, it just flows out like you already knew it. Like you're saying your name. Even if it ends up a complete disaster, what an amazing feeling to have for any duration. The conviction of vision.

What a ride.

The Illusion of Democracy

2010-08-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Democracy is an ideal form of government for the American people who are obsessed with personal expression.

I wonder...now that there is Facebook, people are voting more than ever...but not on political issues. No, we're voting on the issues that are REALLY important to us...like do we like what cousin Cheryl did with her hair?

Perhaps Facebook is the perfect treadmill for our Individualistic expression? Maybe Democracy is the ideal of it, but not easily related to in practice.

GROTI: Gamer Return On Time Investment

2010-08-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

What is the one resource you can never get back? Time. Why are you spending it playing games?

Well, the truth of course is that those of us who choose to spend some part of our short lives playing games do so for our own personal reasons (escape, etc). Regardless of your own motivation, wouldn't you like to get more value for that time investment? Wouldn't it be nice to have more to show for it?

Something I'm evangelizing right now at Visceral to anyone that would listen is the notion that game developers need to start respecting people's time in our designs. We need to focus on adding more Gamer Return On Time Investment.

Xbox Live does a great job in giving the player a metric that describes their personal investment in gaming. The GAMERSCORE describes to both the world and yourself how much time you spend playing games. Well...really it's achievement-based and not tied to the number of hours you play, but it's the closest example to a meta-investment tracker that we have to tell us the story of how much time we sink into gaming. A high MetaCritic score is desirable for those who see value in the Gamerscore to begin with. It's something you can build upon. A 'piggy' bank that gets bigger. A form of meta-reward for playing games.

One specific example where we as developers can focus on giving the player a higher GROTI is by removing the wall between single and multiplayer experiences. Both SP and MP are part of one product experience, and as such should 'talk' to each other. If I spend 30 hours in a single player game, I would really like to have that time investment carry over to multiplayer. I'd like something to show for it. Why can't I bring some of my XP or loot from SP into MP? If your answer is 'balance concerns', I'll accept it, but that's not the end of the discussion as much as just a new problem to solve.

Currrently, Zynga games, Pogo and MMOs have the best persistent sense of GROTI. Your time investment is 'going somewhere' or rewarded with Meta points and not just 'pissed into the wind' as my surly stepfather used to say. It's my mission to build this meta-reward based, high-value GROTI into high-end console games.

evolution

2010-08-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

More story-telling, country-rooted ditties have been popping into my head over the last year. No idea where it's coming from. I've been going to Tom Petty concerts and watching Tom Petty documentaries...maybe that's where the dark blues and storytelling is coming from(?).

Anyway, here's what I mean. It's a sample of my latest tune...laid down the initial tracks last night:

To Rest

Beyond Words: Conveying Information Effectively

2010-08-05T05:45:00.000-07:00

"A picture is worth a 1000 words".

What would you personally prefer, if the task ahead of you were to construct the piping to the left? A word document that listed, in great detail the steps of construction? Or this diagram?

I recently attended a presentation that my friend Stone Librande gave at EA Redwood Shores. It was an encore presentation of his 2010 GDC presentation One Page Designs. In the presentation Stone reviews the history of Game Design documentation, from the 'Game Bible' to the use of Wiki.

In his presentation Stone cites Tufte, but more importantly demonstrates beautifully his personal successes in conveying more and more game information through the use of visual aids / diagrams.

I am passionate about the pursuit of effective means of communication through visual aid. Design Bibles are laughably ineffective in my experience. I remember my lead designer at Oddworld getting upset at one point when the lead engineer came over to him and asked about a feature. "It's in the doc. Didn't you read it?". The engineer replied "No. Can't you just tell me?". People don't read docs, not because they don't want the information, but because it BORES THE SHIT OUT OF THEM. Yes, you can say "Well it's a job, so read it anyway", but that's not exactly the best long-term solution.

On the Simpsons game, we had the most elaborate, advanced, well-maintained Wiki I've ever seen. By the end of the project, people would just come to me for information anyway though. I thought about this, and remembered that "There are two kinds of knowledge. Knowing something, and knowing where to find it." In the case of the Simpsons peer, they didn't have the knowledge, but they knew where to find it. Me. The Wiki could be out of date, but I'll have the latest information. Actually, once the Wiki fails you with stale information, you don't trust it. This is true of all documentation, in written or illustrated form.

Anyway, Tufte and Librande are onto something. I'll go one step more abstract in the analysis of why pictures > words. Because they engage our senses and are thus more likely to pull us in / get our interest. Reading brings the eyes no joy. It's all tax. Only the subject matter can keep you going. That's why visual conveyance of information wins. It's flat out more interesting even if the subject matter is not.

On Dante's Inferno, I took docs one more step. I made interactive flash 'flipbooks' for all the Boss Fights. You can see the original flipbook for the Minos Boss Fight here. Naturally as you start building and testing it, changes occur, but if you played Inferno, you'll recognize it. It conveyed WHAT happened WHEN and showed the scale of the boss relative to the player, cues about the environment, the camera, etc. It was successful in engaging the viewer and gave them the overall gist of the flow of the boss fight (stages, etc). Here is another example of an interactive doc is the state-machine doc I made very early on to help myself define what state (move) could branch into what 'other' state (move).

"That's all great, you're an artist. I can't draw to save my life." You say. Fair enough. Here's the problem. Holding that this is all true, the conveyors of information need to build art skills, or have a staff of artists that can assist them. I'm extremely lucky in that I was born with artistic ability, which makes me a more effective communicator than I would be otherwise. There is some frustration with the message in Stone's presentation or Tufte's books, or in what I've said here. Not everyone can do it.

Politics

2010-07-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

At this point in my career, it's impossible to ignore the necessity of politics in my day-to-day operations. You really do need a model of 'how people work' in order to convince them to join you on a journey into the void ahead with trust / faith / belief that you will all come out winning.

The very word 'Politics' induces bile and mistrust. The animals 'snake' and 'rat' come to mind. 'Liar' is synonymous to 'Politician'.

Ultimately, I believe it comes down to this. If you understand politics as a tool, and you are gaining ground towards your goals through the use of it, it doesn't seem all that bad to you. Otherwise, if you don't feel like your opinions matter or that you have a hand in the control of the organization, you most likely either don't understand, haven't figured out the correct tact, or at the very least choose not to employ your political skills.

I do believe there is a hypocrisy in those who say "I don't deal in politics". Have these people ever approached another human being because they wanted something? Asked their parents for the car keys? Asked a potential mate to get a coffee? Exaggerated or focused on a detail in a message to elicit a response? Custom-tailored a message to sell the other party on an idea? Have these people ever been in a personal relationship? Then they've used politics. Politics to me is the art of getting other people on board with your ideas.

The line I personally won't cross is in denying the other party the opportunity to weigh in and change the idea. So perhaps here we see a distinction between 'Barbaric Politics' (where there is only one way) and 'Politics of Compromise'. The former is about getting your way, absolutely. The latter is about getting people on board long enough for them to get invested, at which point politics can be dispensed with.

Grooming Yourself for Politics

The base requirement for success in politics is the ability to articulate.
The next important element is knowing your audience. That filter will determine which words you use to express your message. A skilled politician can say the same sentence 100 different ways depending on who's listening.
Lastly, knowing when to sound impartial vs. passionate will be important. When delivering logical arguments, a dispassionate approach lends itself to credibility. If the pitch is one of 'vision', allow some emotion to fill the eyes, gesticulate more with the hands, let the eyes open up and the speech quicken at points.
Always slow down your cadence on the words you want the audience to remember. If you need a specific example of this in media, listen to the Beastie Boys. They tend to stress the last word of each line, and that's the one that is easiest to remember.

One Less Thing

2010-07-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a sample of a new track I wrote yesterday.

One Less Thing

The Swampy East

2010-07-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Was out of town on a 5 day trip to see my buddy and his wife in Bethesda MD.

It was nasty weather. As swampy, humid, hot as you can imagine. As far as weather goes, the East Coast can completely suck it.

My favorite part of the trip was visiting Old Town Alexandria, VA. Lovely. Even in the heat.

I flew Virgin America both ways, and I really dig that airline. Smooth flights, made smoother by my own personal entertainment center. Sure, they bend you over a barrel with $8 movies, but at 41,000 for 5 hours there really aren't a whole hell of a lot of alternatives.

On the way back, met a groovy younger couple. Very smart, very sweet people. Best of luck to them both! A 5 hours trip breezes by with some good conversation, for sure.

Back to work today. I can't talk about the details of course, but LOTS to do! :)

Get To the Egg! Simplicity of Purpose in Gaming

2010-07-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've already discussed previously, the theory that men take to 'shooters' so naturally and by the millions due to the fact that we are guns. Now, let's talk a bit about how the single-minded, relentless vectored assault of our little swimmers relates to online MP play, and mass appeal.

A few of us were dead-reckoning the total sales for Dead Space 2 the other day. (My money is on 2.8m first year btw). The other parties involved in the conversation agreed that a game like DS2 'just is not' a Halo-scale seller (12m units per release). So why not? Hmm. Got me to thinking.

DS2 is a game where you are surviving. You are on your heels, slowly advancing through a world that has a significant advantage on you. It is not a 'run and gun' experience. The pace is slower and more delicately staged. DOOM, QUAKE, HALO, and the upcoming BULLET STORM are much faster paced and I believe that appeals to more customers. But why?

More dudes prefer to play like sperm. Single-minded of focus. With purpose. Clear goal and vector, GO GO GO! Run and Gun. Stopping to consider too many variables diminishes appeal to a narrower audience. BioShock, Dead Space, RE4...these are 3m-5m sellers to be sure. My theory is that, to breach the 10m mark, you really have to simplify the Rules n' Tools.

'You have Two guns and a grenade. There's the hill. Now TAKE the hill. GO GO GO'.

Sperm.

Holy Crap this commercial is well executed

2010-07-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

Entrepraneurs vs. Investors

2010-07-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

Which are you?

An entrepreneur will weigh risk, but fearlessly disregard it in the face of a vision they believe in. They lead the charge and make something out of nothing. They create a core value where there was none before. They fuck up, get back up, shrug off the failure, and charge full on into the next idea like nothing happened. Failure is like pooping. We all have to do it, but you shouldn't carry it around with you afterwards.

An investor has no interest or skill in making something out of thin air, but they will then take the core thing of value, and add more value to it. They invest in the idea that was created by the entrepreneur. They often finish what the entrepreneur has started.

As someone who specializes in rapid prototyping, I am for sure settling on the reality that I am an entrepreneur. For better or for worse I get a notion, jump right in after a brief risk analysis, but the truth is if I believe in it, I just go for it. My life is full of moves that everyone around me scratched their heads about, were unsure about, or thought I was crazy for doing. But it's worked out just fine.

Quitting Looking Glass. Crazy! They went under 1 month later. Moving to CA. Crazy! I love my life with Lisa, and my career has taken off. Leave Oddworld. Well...that wasn't crazy, since going to Valve was obviously a move up. My only dumb move was leaving Harmonix before Guitar Hero came out. I would be rolling in $$$. But seriously, who would have dead-reckoned that perfect storm of cute-game + licenses + plastic accessory? I know none of us did at the time. ;)

Anyway, life is too boring to make 'smart' / 'safe' moves. You do that if you want to survive. To THRIVE or grow, you have to step out, over untested boundaries, into a sea of variables and against a gale wind of conventional thinking...with nothing but the conviction of your beliefs to guide you.

Doing vs. Talking

2010-07-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last 4 months working on something.

By working, I mean 'doing'. By doing, I mean creating. One vision, crystal clear. Not one meeting that lasted more than 5 minutes to decide 'where to go next' at any given moment. There's a problem. HUDDLE. New play. BREAK. My company loves me. I give them optimal ROI. My job is to keep the ship afloat with product. Starbuks runs aside, I take my time there VERY seriously. No one is entitled beyond their current achievements.

On my last project as the Lead Designer, where I had to lead through talking, content development took a back seat. I now return to my center, which is leading through DOING. Truth is, too much talk upsets me. At some point, shut up and go make it, seriously. Let's stop now and then, up periscope, gauge our track, then back down and GO.

Now, to do anything monumental or remarkable, you'll tend to need many others to join your efforts. This is where leading-through-talking comes back as a necessity as your team grows. The important question is...when and if a team grows, how can I lead while still building as a means of communication?

A Healthy DOING:TALKING ratio
My perfect team culture is one where, with the exception of the very top leadership (project manager), every team member does n amount of development work for every n minutes of communication overhead they bring. The ratio of DOING:TALKING is very important for protecting where the organization spends its money. Whenever I'm spending an hour in a meeting explaining something to someone who won't leave the room to go make something for the product, I grow impatient.

I once refused a request to write up a list of features for someone because they couldn't answer one simple question: "What are you going to do with this information after I spend time getting it to you?" The answer was dissappointing. They just kinda-sorta-'needed'-to-know. Why? Explain to me how you knowing makes better product, and I'll take time to compose the information. If YOU don't even know how the information, in your hands, will lead to better product, then sorry. I will never compose or spend time dispersing information to anyone without knowing how it's going to be immediately applied to make or improve product.

Allright. Nuff said. Now...back to work! ;)

Whew. SMASH! finally done

2010-07-05T19:06:00.001-07:00

Cover is done, the songs are on the Mixonic server, and it's the best mix and production job yet.
5 tunes, only 15 minutes long. I'll price it at like $4 or something on iTunes / Amazon if they'll let me.

Here's the cover (unfolded):

Music: Fourth Album

2010-07-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

So after three weeks of not feeling a single creative impulse for art, music...ANYTHING in my free time, I finally got the bug this weekend. Went crazy with yard work, and songs started popping in my head again. So I started the fourth record. The songs have a strange new perspective on life, relationships both personal and professional. I'll have to sneak one in about tits and fucking just to balance it out. Or maybe a full-on song about poop.

Anyway, this one is about team-work. Jesus. Sounds like I work for HR. Now do some trust falls, listen to this sample and shaddup. ;)

Team

Making the Batter: How too much of anything too fast can break a system

2010-07-02T08:24:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has made cookie dough from scratch will relate to the need to fold in the ingredients over time. You do NOT make the dough by dumping all the ingredients in at once and mixing. The order in, and amount of which you add the elements matters.

Look at the CA 'metered light' system. When you line up to get on the highway, you must stop, and wait for the light to turn green. This is to prevent too many cars all flooding the highway at once. The amount of which you add the elements over time matters.

Lastly, I think back to my days as a boy in Tai Kwan Do. I remember asking my teacher how he broke the wooden boards. He told me that the wood can withstand more force than he can apply if it's 'given the time to adjust', but when he introduces all his energy into one focused point of attack at once, it is too much for the board to absorb and it fails. The amount of force over time matters.

And so it goes for any system. CNN's site crashing on 911 because the entire world was logging in. Cell phone networks going down after an earthquake from a surge of traffic. A village getting washed away by a giant wave. Dying from eating too many almonds at once (arsenic poisoning). All examples of how a system can fail if too much is put on the system too quickly.

It is here that I must project this pattern on everything around me that I want to succeed. How can I further guarantee success of systems in my life by governing the release of pressure upon them? For instance, I've started running. I'm very heavy. Too much stress on my legs too quickly will lead to injury and I won't be able to run for a while. FAIL. So even when my lungs say yes, if my legs complain too much I must listen and give the system time to adjust. At work, A project can go from 2 to 40 people overnight. Can I bear the strain of indoctrinating and establishing working partnerships with 38 people within the span of 3 weeks? What suffers as the system gets overloaded in this scenario?

Ultimately, flexibility in the system is required to sustain increased pressure, over any amount of time. This is as true for my legs, as it is for my inter-personal and professional attitude. Try to break a plane of rubber. Strike as you will, it will absorb and bear the load.

Lazy Good for nuthin'

2010-07-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

Boy, the last three weeks have found me crashed on the couch at night, passing out by 10pm.

I've always come home and worked on something creative. Now I sit down in front of any of my super-expensive, super-fun, creative outlets and...uh...I have no motivation or energy for it. Stalled on my Flash game. Stalled on my websites, stalled with Z-Brush, stalled with music...ick!

This new late night lull coincides with my last 4 weeks of increased strenuous excercise (I've lost 15 lbs!). So between the new 'thing' (sssssssssh!) at work that I'm heading up by myself and my 5am runs, I suppose it stands to reason that by 8pm I'm just a Big Ole' Lebowski. Or 'El Dude-a-rino' if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

Why Men Love Shooters

2010-06-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah, okay...gals play shooters too, but guys clearly represent the bulk of the demographic for the genre / activity.

There is a timeless debate involving the nature vs. nurture motivation behind men and guns. Do they like guns because we gave them toy guns to play with? (Nurture). Or did the kid see the gun and say "Momma I want THAT!" (Nature). You can argue that just because nature exists, it doesn't mean you should nurture it, especially when fighting our own nature as part of creating a better 'society'.

Born to Aim

To me, it's as simple as this: Men ARE guns. Look at our hardware. We spend our entire lives aiming. Your entire evolutionary purpose is to hit THE target. Every time we pee, it's target practice. We are natural ballistics experts. For men, there is NOTHING more natural than aiming, save for breathing.

Threat Analysis and Recognition

Studies show that during Christmas time, when men enter a mall, their blood pressure rises (where as most women's blood pressure drops). I'd posit that this is due to the fact that the male lizard brain sees every other male as a potential threat which tugs at the fight or flight response. Most guys I know don't like other dudes walking around behind them. I'm certainly not the only one that likes to sit with my back against the wall and facing the door when I go out to eat.

When I walk around, my eyes are darting about constantly, scanning the crowd. I take in vast amounts of visual information. Women in my life notoriously do not see the things I see, sometimes miles away. I SCAN. I believe that this is also, in general, a trait favored by the male lizard brain.

Threat recognition.

So, holding that both of these perspectives are on point, it would go a long way to explaining why 'dudes love shooters'. It involves two of our most natural skills. Add to this the fact that the activity is competitive and can establish my place in the pecking order makes the combination intoxicating to males.

Bostofornian

2010-06-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

For fun, I registered a domain www.bostofornian.com. Seeing all those Bostonians in SF yesterday gave me the idea.

Nothing there yet, don't bother checking it out.

I figured there should be a place for people who not only live in CA, but elsewhere that are from Boston, where they can see and talk about their favorite places from home, see what's going on, and otherwise try to bring a little Boston to wherever they live. We all get a little homesick.

Boston takes series with Giants, a day at the park!

2010-06-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

Saw the game yesterday at AT&T Park up in San Fran.

It was a GORGEOUS day for a game. Some may say it was too hot, but we luckily sat under the overhang, up in the nosebleeds. Even better, the breeze was kickin' up there. Super sweet.

There were more Boston fans than Giants fans, I swear. I attribute that to all the 'Bostofornian' transplants like me that said 'F this!' to snow and crappy produce, and 'F yeah!' to sunshine and ...er.... earthquakes. Well, there has to be some catch, eh?

And while no one at the park looked quite THIS good, there were super-drunk Bostofornian chics high fiving everyone as they drove out of the garage. Sweet.

Taking the IP With You

2010-06-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

What is the goal of any entertainment company?

Well, 'to entertain', of course, but also to make a profit while doing it. With after-market (used games) ravaging the packaged goods sector, alternate content delivery and pricing models are becoming more attractive in the industry.

If your model is one where you are trying to constantly create appealing micro transactions to your customer, you really are creating not just a game, but a 'place' in which they spend their time. Your IP becomes an experience in which there is a store at the ready, to sell you optional upgrades, extras, etc. From a psychological perspective, consumers are more likely to hold onto their CD if they've bought extras for the product. Each purchase creates an 'emotional' history with the product. The more things you buy, the less likely you are to ever sell the disk back to GameStop...even if you never play it again.

Currently, Facebook games are making GOOD money selling coins / stars / hats / whatever to customers for $10 - $20 a pop. Even if 10% of the 70 million monthly users of Farmville buy extra credits at $20 a piece, that's $140 million. Jesus. Talk about playing the numbers successfully. It's worth noting that the average Farmville user doesn't spend more than 5 min at a time in the game.

I think that if you create an experience for your customer, and they were to spend more time in your IP / world, throughout the day, the odds of selling something to them increases dramatically. This is why it's worth extending your IP across every device that the customer could possibly own.

Games are already doing this. Hell, we made a Dante's Inferno Facebook game. That's the first step, but these one-offs share no data and thus have no interaction with the 'heavy-client' application. We must do better to make these apps mean a damn to each other.

So whether if I'm on Facebook, my PC, my iMac, my iPhone, my iPad, my Droid, my PS3, my 360, I can have meaningful interactions with the IP. So I can play a puzzle game on my iPhone that buffs up my character and when I return home and fire up my heavy client (PC, iMac, PS3, 360), the buff has been applied and I can play with my newly improved character.

'Taking the IP With You' and 'touching' the game data across a network of light and heavy clients will create some of the most persistent 'blur the lines' experiences to date.

Behind the Green Curtain

2010-06-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

Sat in on a meeting today, surrounded by people waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above my paygrade. I sort of felt like Jack Ryan in The Hunt For Red October when he sits in on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It was a great immunization shot for being around power. My hand shook and my heart raced for the first few minutes, but then I calmed down. Definitely have to dress better if I'm going to do that again. ;)

The Importance of Analogous Comparison

2010-06-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

A ship on the open seas is directly analogous to a game project, almost 1:1 in every way. Clear direction, chain of command, morale, competing ships. All lines up for me.

This has me thinking of picking up some volumes concerning naval history. The attempt is to find patterns of success that exist in that world, and try to imagine how they may be applied to ours (game dev).

It may well prove to be a fruitless exercise in academic onanism, but with each industry well specialized, I tell you that further evolution of each will be well motivated by the process of analogous comparative analysis. A more accessible way of phrasing this is that we should all be looking for ways to improve ourselves and our industries by looking at others that may at first glance have very little in common, but upon deeper inspection yield very similar problem spaces, and ultimately hidden, transposable solutions therein.

Old Looking Glass Studios Footage

2010-06-23T09:17:00.001-07:00

An old LG pal sent me this video. It was a piece done by a German Film Crew, for a Euro gaming magazine. You can see 'Thief' being made (back when it was called 'The Dark Project'), and then the last half was spent showing off the then state-of-the-art flight simulator "Flight Unlimited II', which I was the Lead 3D Artist on.

If you jump to 5:35 you can see the 24 year old me, in my bleached glory (jesus, wtf was I thinking?) demonstrating my obvious lack of experience in front of a camera. Good times!

Metaphor Book

2010-06-22T20:58:00.001-07:00

Lisa bought me a metaphor book for Father's Day. (although our first two children died, I guess I still consider myself a 'dad' technically, but I dunno, loose feelings on it I guess).

Anyway, the book is fantastic. My favorites so far:

"Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play"
- FDR

"Giving a 77 year old Viagra is like erecting a new flagpole in front of a condemned building"
-Dabney Coleman

Personal creativity dead this week

2010-06-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is one of those weeks where I have ZERO creativity when I get home. The interesting thing is that for the first time EVER, I'm totally fine with being brain dead and not working on a project. Weird.

Undulations are natural, and the spark reduces to a faint glimmer inevitably from time to time.

Although I AM designing a Mexican / Mission fountain for the back patio. Does that count? ;)

21st Century Tech: Material Sciences

2010-06-17T21:59:00.001-07:00

There are engineers already assembling custom materials at a molecular scale. A carbon fiber surface that can split along dynamically created seams? Possible soon.

A Nuclear sub that expands its flexible skin at the bow, then allowing the pressure to collapse it down, pushing the bulge in the skin rippling down the length of the ship acting like a corkscrew, pushing the water back and propelling the ship? Possible.

Clothing that can open and close the gaps between fibers to allow the material to breathe or 'wick' as needed. A t-shirt that breathes like cotton but can tighten up (without getting smaller), closing out air, and trapping in body heat to stay warm in cold weather? Possible.

A ceramic 'stuff' that can be put into a microwave-sized device and reshaped into any object and stabilized. Make a plate for a dinner party, then clean it off, put it back in, and turn it into a coffee mug, then a serving spoon, then a figurine. Possible.

Fabric that uses nanotech to free itself of foreign particles, turning water + detergent cleaning methods into a caveman era process? Possible.

Body armor that changes shape, intercepts photons wraps them around the surface and sends it along it's original vector (creating cloaking). Possible.

An object made from a material that constantly alters it's surfaces to create a pressure differential at all times from top to bottom (hovering). Possible.

It's going to be pretty f-ing wild.

A.I. and Performance

2010-06-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

What is 'good A.I.' in games?

Is it 'how smart it is'? That's close, but not quite.

More accurately, it's 'how smart it acts'.

Perception of A.I. quality is not proportional to the number of calculations performed in its state machine, nor the number of state machines. In fact, the consumer will never know about the secrets of the machine under the hood. No, quality is measured by the consumer in terms of what they can see and hear. Thus how 'good' the A.I. is, is a function of performance.

Now, I'm not using 'performance' in the context of efficiency. I mean 'performance' in a theatrical sense. A.I. must take into account various events as stimuli that drive decisions about which state machine to transition to. "I'm walking. A car rolls in front of me blocking my path. I should stand still. Go to Idle". That's just the bones of the performance. The real magic sauce is adding a relate-able human emotion in there. So...the A.I. stops when the car sudden pulls out in front of them, the A.I. tracks his head to the windshield, raises his fist shaking it, and yells "Watch where you're goin, jerk!". Was the A.I. successful in mimicking human behavior when it simply stopped? Only basically. It's the performance draped over that basic path-finding layer that makes it seem real.

A.I. is an act. It is mimicry. So, saying that A.I. is 'better' due to a denser set of calculations is like saying that Tom Hanks won an Oscar because he has a higher IQ than the other nominated actors.

In a title that only requires each actor to play one role, and the same way every time, a successful performance is best served through a nuanced and well-directed set of one-off scripted lines and animations. Half Life, Drakes Fortune, these are very well written, performed and scripted (game scripts mind you) games of this sort.

I imagine games 20 years from now. You can approach the game a million ways, so everyone you know who is also playing it will truly have their own personal experience. We're fast approaching the interactive TV programs described in Fahrenheit 451, really. So if A.I. already pantomimes gesture so well, what's the next step?

Procedurally generated dialog. Synthesized Speech.

Here's what I see it the system looking like.

The first, and hardest-to-solve step in the process is to build a machine that inspects the state of the A.I., considers environmental variables around it including player events, and arrives upon the 'context'. This answers the question "What's going on?". In this scenario, the player is holding a slice of cheese out in front of the A.I. for some duration, at a relevant distance.
Once you have the context of the scene, you have to consider history. "Am I predisposed one way or the other in my attitude about what's going on?". The lookup table considers the nouns and verbs implied in the scene. Turns out this A.I. has recorded that dislikes[24] = 'cheese'.
Now that we know what's going on and what my attitude is about it, we have to look at the available verbs of the A.I. in order to decide what course of action to take, answering the question "What am I going to say about this?". Instead of pulling from a static library of pre-recorded sound bytes (which inevitably betray themselves over time as a finite set, and fails the suspension of disbelief thus immersion of the experience), the system constructs a string out of appropriate nouns and verbs.
We construct the string. "I" + "don't" + "like" + "cheese".
For an additionally personal touch, we check the temperament of the A.I. for interesting modulators. "Asshole" is listed. Okay, let's add something an asshole would say as a preface. So it's now "Fuck You," + "I don't like cheese."
Now, we filter through the A.I. attitude about the presenter of the cheese. Turns out, it's you, and 2 minutes ago, you set his house on fire and fucked his wife (so of COURSE you're going to offer him cheese, it's the only polite to do really...). So let's add some real negative emotion here..."Fuck You! I don't like cheese!!". We'll add angry gestures in there too, and make sure to increase the attack and volume on each word, especially on the first bit.

Now, it's easy to walk through the logic of a simple case. I don't mean to suggest that this isn't a MASSIVELY difficult task. However, this is an area of research that mountains of money is being hurled at, with very smart people working on. Already, companies that came out of think tanks like Bell Labs, M.I.T, CalTech, Berkley, are all working on human speech synthesis and it's sounding REALLY good now. There's an uncanny valley they still have to cross, but I am impressed with the latest offerings. There are even attempts at codifying / standardizing a markup language...sort of an HTML for intonation. Very promising indeed.

In short, when this technology is implemented in games, you'll finally have your near-Turing, Deus-Ex-Machina gaming experience that blurs the line more than ever between you and the game. You may even be more emotionally attached to your games if you start believing that the person in the machine is getting lonely because you haven't logged in for so long. ;)

Believing in Something

2010-06-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

Although raised (and I use that term VERY loosely) Catholic, I nevertheless and predictably found myself without a theological belief system by my late teens.

Looking back now, I was very smug about it, in that sort of 'wow, you still believe in god? You haven't evolved past the dark ages!' way. It was obnoxiously 17 years old of me, I know. ;) My motivation for not subscribing to a relgious belief system was the same as why I wouldn't LOVE the Beatles just because everyone else said I should. I wanted to figure it all out for myself, thank you very much.

The negative of 'going it alone' is that without a firm belief system, life can be really scary. The question 'why' is an omnipresent itch that needs scratching. Belief systems provide answers to that question, salve to the itch.

Of course, I was missing the real point about belief systems. Whether it's god, the economy, your career, your family, or even your favorite sports team...having something to believe in is paramount to our happiness. A Belief can give you that reason 'why' you get up every morning, 'why' you should be good to people, 'why' you should pay your taxes on time.

As an aside, a belief system is a much more positive motivator than the threat of punishment, IMO. Doing something or not doing something due to fear of consequence is pure game theory. In order for a choice to be important, the choices must be backed by a 'credible threat'. Fuck your wife's sister? You go to hell. Steal a car? You go to jail. These tend to work for most folks, and far be it for me to rattle that cage. I would of course prefer that folks do good things because it's 'right' and not do bad things because they're 'wrong', but as relativistic as I am, I have a very hard time defining either in empirical terms. I believe that sometimes it IS good to kill another human being. Contexts far exceed the boundaries of a binary filter.

Of course, a clash between belief systems is inevitable and sadly fatal. I'll always favor the Buddhists since they seem to be the only religious belief system that doesn't evangelize or try to convert people. There may be historical examples of Buddhism matched with politics I suppose that challenge this assertion, but I've never had a Buddhist monk show up at my door with a pamphlet if you know what I mean.

My belief is that we all need to focus on what's bothering us individually, and leave your neighbor to figure their own mess out. If we both deal with our 'baggage', then we can approach each other with open honesty and trust. That's ideal, however, and requires that everyone share a base level of introspective analytical tools. They can be taught, so maybe instead of ministers telling us how to live our lives, they teach us how to take our thorns out of our own paws and to be less afraid, so we don't hurt each other. After 37 years on this planet, my experience is that it is my fear that holds me back from all that is good. Remaining open and fearless with other people has been my greatest challenge, and offers my greatest rewards.

Oil, Our Addiction, Our Mess

2010-06-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

With the Gulf of Mexico being flooded at this very moment with a continued gush of oil at an unfathomable and oft undersold scale, it's very easy to point at BP as the lone 'bad guy', with greedy little men wringing their greedy little hands, rat-like eyes darting about.

As the owner of that well, who allegedly cut corners on safety explicitly, British Petroleum certainly is responsible for the cleanup, but we Americans are all responsible as well for this whole mess. It is our petroleum-coated lifestyle driving demand for the black stuff, and thus do we create incentive for corporations to get more of the crude, faster.

Our dependence on petroleum doesn't end with our vehicles. From birth, we are swaddled in synthetic cloth that contains petroleum-based products. The food we eat comes packaged in oil-derived plastics. That coffee cup, the straw in your coke, those shoes you're wearing. Everywhere you look, you see something that came from oil.

Numbers vary from chart to chart, but according to most sources that I can find online, the U.S. consumes over 25% of the world's oil yearly. Of note, we produce only 10.5% of the worlds oil every year, with the delta representing our 'dependence' on output from other nations.

This is the predicament we're in. We know we are built on the stuff, we know our way of life is tied to the stuff, we know the stuff is running out, and we know the stuff is ecologically unsound. Green technology can't yet match the energy output of oil. The stuff REALLY is densely packed with raw energy. Miracle Sci-Fi technologies like Cold Fusion, Zero-point, seems to be the only obvious replacement for oil, but I'm not holding my breath.

Ultimately, if we all REALLY wanted to stop this sort of thing from happening, we'd stop buying appliances, stop driving our cars immediately, stop buying groceries in packaging...hell, we'd just stop buying...because it seems that everything has a little oil in it.

But we can't. We're like heroine addicts who know it's killing us. It just feels too good.

Contextual Modality and the Human Brain

2010-06-14T08:46:00.001-07:00

So, I'm sure you're all familiar with the concept of the mind having 'tracks', as in 'You have a one track mind'?

Well, the scientific truth appears to be that the brain is really at its best when focusing on one track at a time. While we pride ourselves on 'multi-tasking' in the modern era, studies are concluding that our brains are indeed NOT built to multi-task with any efficiency. We think we're making more progress by attending many tasks at once, but really we're just scanning back and forth between them all rapidly, making poor rates of progress on all of them, and threatening to not finish some.

I have found that I will get into the 'groove' of one track and run very deeply therein. However if someone distracts or interrupts me with a thought or data along another track, I'm not very effective at remembering what it is they said. So if I'm thinking 'Dog', and you tell me that your car is blue, I won't remember what you said. If I were thinking about cars, I'd most likely remember that yours is blue.

I think this issue has manifested itself with me in how I run meetings. I always establish the context of the discussion at the front end. This tends to lead to more structured discussions, where tangents are shut down and held 'offline' after the meeting. "We're talking about horses today." Then, if someone starts talking about oranges, I can interrupt them and remind everyone that 'Horses' are the topic of discussion and that we can have a mutually exclusive discussion about oranges if necessary, later. It's my experience that meetings run this strictly are more productive and everyone comes out feeling like they relate to what was accomplished and not unsure of the outcome.

Movie Review: "The A Team"

2010-06-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Saw 'The A Team" with a pal today. I went in with low expectations, and came out really, really entertained.

The real standout performances were Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, He's Just Not That Into You) as "Faceman", and Sharlto Copley (District 9) as "Murdoch".

The movie was a large extra-cheese pizza and a fireworks show. Some real kick-assery. I give the movie -10 points for depriving me of more T&A, which I expect when Jessica Biel is onscreen. Sadly her character was portrayed with all the seriousness you'd expect from a female agent in a Bourne Identity style film. Boo!

The action sequences were the height-of-too-muchery, in a very good way. Ridiculous, unbelievable, and wonderful. The editing choices during the action sequence were frenetic but not in a good way ( I got lost sometimes ), and the cinematography got too close to the subject at times. That's nitpicking though...it's not like I could do a better job!

So Bravo! Guns, muscle, grit, attitude, intrigue, government baddies, betrayal, loyalty, honor. It was like Terms of Endearment, really. ;)

Book Review: The Next 100 Years

2010-06-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I haven't finished it, but I'm enjoying it so much I can't contain myself. I'm reading Friedman's The Next 100 Years and have to say that it's a real page-turner.

The real gist of the book is this: The European Age is over. The 20th century sealed it. As of the end of WWII, The Age of The United States began.

One of the major causal factors for this shift in power is the fact that The United States was the only superpower in WWII to not suffer attacks against its infrastructure (Pearl Harbor, Midway, and a brazen solo fighter strafe attack in Eureka Oregon don't count since none of those locations are manufacturing centers). The U.S. escaped with all its manufacturing capabilities, and thus economic centers fully intact, while England, Germany, France, U.S.S.R, Japan all had to start over from scratch and rebuild.

The other prime motivator for his theory that the United States is on the rise despite a constant sense of domestic pessimism that 'things are going to hell', is the fact that the U.S. Navy is unique in that it is omnipresent on every Ocean of the world. Basically, we're the only nation in the world that can afford a Navy of such scale. Despite the advent of air cargo, the vast majority of goods are transported by sea. He who controls the shipping lanes, controls the world.

Other interesting aspects of his look into the 21st century ahead are:

Think China is a major player? Think again. The reality is that most of China is landlocked between dead economic zones. Himalayan range to the south, Mongolia to the North. Geography is not kind to China, never has been. Their only real chance to break out and be the center of the world economy was when they constructed the 'Treasure Fleet' eons ago and controlled the western pacific. Remember that point...oceanic control is key. China's sole wealth lies along its coast, in the cities. Their entire interior is vast, but dirt poor. The products they produce in their economic centers along the coast can't even be bought by the majority of their own people. Most of it is sold to the vastly wealthier Americans. Hence if we struggle financially, they actually get the brunt of it. Friedman observes that our greatest export product of the late 20th century was unemployment. Yes, we felt the initial, short-term shock of losing so many blue-collar jobs to China, but eventually those Americans will re-educate themselves into other sectors. Meanwhile, if we stop buying plastic goods from Target and Walmart to save a few bucks next month, it means that hundreds of thousands of peasant workers that migrate from central China to the city are laid off and their families starve. I say that they get the worst end of that deal.
The U.S. doesn't need to 'win' any wars around the world. We just need to keep up pressure by waging war constantly in the homelands of our enemies to prevent them from getting their shit together.
The world population which exploded in the 20th century, will actually begin declining. Friedman points out that up to the industrial revolution, large families of children were raised to make money for the family. Children either worked on the farm or were sent to factories to support their families, around the age of 10. Now, children don't work, they go to school, and bring no money into the house. They put families into economic turmoil because they now are a cost, and having more than 2 children is impractical for the family economic stability.
Women once lived more than 70% of their lives 'having' kids. Now women live to 70 - 80yrs, have 1 to 2 children the kids go to day-care or school by 6 and are thus spending 5 - 10% of their life raising kids. This massive amount of free time leftover for the female gender is still a very new phenomenon, and will continue to lead to significant shifts in our way of life, mostly in the institutions of marriage and monogamy. 150 years ago, women lived short child-rearing lives, and widowers would commonly marry 3 wives in their lifetime. So the term 'Till Death Do Us Part' didn't actually imply a very expansive chunk of time. Now, that phrase means 'For up to 70 years'. A bit different, and at least challenges young couples to really contemplate the commitment. This is one possible reason for couples getting married much later in their lives. Most young couples now party hard in their 20's, then 'settle down' in their early to mid 30's. That's certainly what I did! Honestly, with so much life together still to go, you really should go have some fun. Even at 30, with the average lifespan at > 70 years, you're looking at a 40 year life together.
Another pattern that is chipping away at the old institution of marriage is a waning economic dependence. Women no longer are impoverished when the marriage ends. The favor of civil courts and the surge of female rights and financial independence means that women will no longer be motivated to 'make the marriage work' by threat of financial ruin.
The big surprise to me was Friedman's projection of surging Turkish influence in the East. Basically, it's the only nation in that region of Islamic heritage that has it's economic shit together. History certainly validates this, as Islamic / Moorish / Ottoman power has always gone through Turkey.

Anyway, very interesting book. Worth a read!

Game Development Process

2010-06-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

The longer I'm involved in games development, the more intense my fascination and concern about the development process.

Here are some observations, based on 15 years of software development thus far:

You really do need a visionary. It's okay if they're kind of loony, as long as they really believe in the vision and evangelize / defend it to the bitter end. The ideal of course is if the entire TEAM is the holder of the vision and believe in it fanatically. That's like winning the lottery though.
You need a tough-as-nails project manager. This can be a Producer, manager, whatever the title, but they watch the clock and counter the visionary. They defend the team's time, happiness against the visionary.
The team doesn't really know what it's doing until about 1.5 - 2 years into development. That's when the tools have been online long enough for them to practice using them. THIS is why 3 years is the magic minimum for exceptional quality, high metacritic games. That cycle length gives the team a chance to redo the weak spots
Everybody on the team seems to know better, but very few can handle the pressure of having to commit to an answer / decision and have it be their fault if it doesn't work out
If teams get too big, too fast, it's disastrous. Nothing worse than 30, 60, 100+ people all standing around not really sure what they're making or why. I've literally seen companies run out of money because of this clusterfuck scenario
Great product isn't great because of documentation. Documentation is most important to people who aren't at the point of execution (Managers / Producers / Investors ). Documentation to me is most valuable when new team-members or external partner teams join and need a brain dump. If a current team-member needs to go read a Word doc to know what the hell is going on, your team is dysfunctional. Distributed development does increase the need for rabidly iterative upkeep on documentation
Oh, and Design docs are HISTORICAL, not PREDICTIVE. Specs are deterministic, so somewhat predictive, but the details will change during execution. After these changes, the documentation becomes a record of what happened.
Agree to the goals before getting into a discussion. Otherwise it will easily become derailed and design discussions will devolve into a relative vanilla vs. chocolate debate. The stated goal helps filter and structure these debates so they don't waste everyones time.
People talking in circles about a problem feels like progress to the participants, but can often be an illusion. Like a treadmill with a scrolling painting in the background. Measure twice, cut once...yes. A room full of people all holding the tape over and over again with no-one cutting is disastrous.
I don't see enough productivity in general in the industry. Folks strolling in at 10am or later, checking their email then going to lunch. Work doesn't begin until 1-1:30pm. I don't like it. Now, I have the gift of gab as bad as anyone else, but I tell you that there are very few people that can match my productivity when I'm engaged, so I earn my 5 minute gab breaks. My AVERAGE day is 11 hours. I expect no less than 10 hours from my team, 8 of which should be solid. At your desk, focused, productive. the other 2 hours? Lunch, coffee breaks, browsing, jib-jab, whatever you like.
Hell forges the strongest bonds. A high-stress project can push people to the edge, but they all come out of it remembering each other with fondness. The irony is that they will run screaming from the company or IP that did it to them.
Lead through doing. Words really are cheap. Show people what you mean by building it. If it really is successful and folks applaud the work, your team will notice and want to emulate the success.

Tom Petty

2010-06-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

We saw Tom Petty this last Saturday at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

He's one of those acts that, although I've NEVER bought an album from him, I somehow know every last word to all of his hits. It's probably because he's been around forever and has received a lot of airplay over the last 30 years.

He's a consumate performer, that one. My only regret is that right after the Oracle show, he was heading up to the Gorge Ampitheater in eastern WA, where we saw him last about 5 years ago. That was a TRULY magical evening under the stars with 20,000 people singing "Free-Falling" all in a haze of the good stuff, and looking over the glistening Columbia river.

Learnin' ZBrush: Dragon Head

2010-06-05T00:30:00.001-07:00

You HAVE to make at least one dragon head or T-Rex head...modeling 101!

And with a splash of life in that eye...