How White and Nerdy Are You?

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Keith Olbermann, but about halfway through reading David Freeman’s book on bringing emotion to games (I’m not going to use the title of the book, or his trademark phrase, which I think is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read), what went through my mind was that this is one of the worst books ever written.

I mean, it’s a book on writing. The whole *point* of the book is, in theory, how to make compelling characters, and how to write about those characters in a way that’s compelling to the reader. He focuses on his “techniques” for creating interesting or “deep” characters, though I loathe to say so, because I don’t think the guy has a goddamn clue in his head about what makes a character deep OR interesting.

He basically says that a character has anywhere from 3 to 5 major traits – he calls these character diamonds, because normally, most of his characters have four major traits. Something like “dry humor” might be a trait. “Depressed” might be another. So, he’s basically taken his characters, and reduced them to four major bullet points. That’s “interesting.” Not. He talks about his techniques for “deepening” characters, like showing sisters who have common traits, or common knowledge, or can (god help me) finish each other’s sentences! It’s so clever, it makes me want to shoot myself in the EYEBALLS.

He talks about making groups have similar traits, so that you might make them “deeper,” like have a group of cavemen have a worldview that might be spiritual, instead of scientific, in a way that might be more spiritually “true” than the modern, scientific worldview. Ohymygod! Genius! He said one way of making a group “deeper” would be to give them characteristics like “nobility,” which he elaborates on by saying, “Maybe they could carry themselves in some sort of noble way.” I shit you not. This, in a $50 book about writing.

I’ve written one really crappy “novel.” 50,000 words in 16 days. I’m a better writer than this guy will ever be. His notion that one can break down the act of creating compelling characters and dialog into a fistful of trite, simple rules that are accessible to anyone is stupid beyond belief, and what’s STUPIDER beyond belief is that he has a whole consulting group that people PAY. THIS IS INSANE. Has no one who’s ever hired him ACTUALLY READ HIS BOOK?!?!?!

The writing examples contained within it INSTANTLY disqualify him from ever writing about writing in ANY medium, games or otherwise. The guy writes like a goddamn fifth grader. A practically illiterate goddamned fifth grader. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Why do I ever go to an EB Games, or a Gamestop? Every time I walk in to one, I leave either wanting to burn the store down, or strangle the people working there. There’s really two things wrong with every specialty game shop I’ve been to, save for Network Video, in Burlingame, CA, and to a lesser extent, the EB in the Emeryville Bay Street mall.

1.) The people: The people who staff these stores tend to be relatively young, and the main qualification for working in one of these stores is that they’re gamers, to some extent or another. They’re often unkempt, sloppy, have no sense of professionalism. A greeting is more likely to be, “What up?” than “Welcome!” The cashier might have a really sloppy haircut, be talking to someone on their personal phone while checking you out, or be “DOING THE DEW!!!!” while talking to you. If you want to talk about reinforcing the image that gamers are basically illiterate morons, you really need to look no further than game store employees to get a sense of why the public at large has the image they do.

On top of lax (now there’s a kind word) presentation, there’s also this sense that a huge percentage of game store employees are power-hungry cretins. They’re just as happy to say, “We don’t have that,” and look at you like you’re an idiot for asking of a GAME STORE has a particular GAME. HOLY COW. For some idiot reason, I go to the EB in Oakland when maybe, just maybe they’re (in theory) more likely to have something than the Emeryville Best Buy. But I’ve NEVER found anything there that the Best Buy didn’t either have earlier, more of, or cheaper. But there’s some weird tic that I have that says, “Hey, this is a specialty game shop! Maybe they have games that the big-box retailer won’t!” Ha. Sigh. Weep. But the inventory thing’s not the real problem. It’s that the employees are fundamentally bureaucrats, who revel in whatever red tape they can throw in your way. Walk into a Starbucks, and ask the person behind the counter something. You’ll get a cheerful smile, and some useful information. Maybe they don’t have what you want, but they’ll try to suggest something. You want something a little different than normal? Great!

I’m not a fan of Starbucks, in theory, but in practice, they’re really quite good about creating an environment where you feel positively toward the whole experience. EB seems to be determined to do the exact opposite of that, and make your experience as painful, frustrating, and irritating as possible by letting their employees be smug, barely competant jackasses.

And that’s all pretty obvious. Walk into almost any game store, and you’ll see some only marginally literate moron telling someone’s mom she’s an idiot for not knowing the difference between Devil May Cry and Devil Kings. Whatever. But the second thing really started to get to me today.

2.) Organization: The organization of game stores sucks. The organization of every game section of every major retailer (and minor retailer) sucks. Why? Because they’re almost always alphabetized, and unless you know exactly what you want, you’ll never find anything that way.

What you want, I think, is for all the *STOCK* to be alphabetized – the stuff that’s kept away from the consumer, so that the employees can find it quickly. Anyone comes in and asks, “Do you have Game X?” they can look it up immediately, and make sure they have phyiscal stock on hand by finding it instantly.

But in terms of browsing? I have almost no desire to look through a store alphabetically. I also, frankly, have almost no desire to look at game box covers. They’re essentially meaningless, and when faced with a thousand game box covers, browsing through covers is absolutely horrific.

What would I suggest? I don’t really have any great ideas – I think part of what you’d need to do is take into consideration who walks into a store, without knowing what they want to buy already. That’d be parents, who are probably looking for a specific age range, or a game that is similar to another game. So, organization by genre or rating would probably be useful. I’d also keep the number of titles on display WAY down. Maybe have on the display shelves games that were released in the last two months only. This way, you don’t get the fatigue of walking in and being faced with a thousand really visually noisy game boxes to look through, only to not be able to tell WTF is going on.

I’d have hardware running a lot of the major new releases, so that people could see them. I’d have a library of commonly-requested games that can be easily swapped (by an employee) into a system, so that the consumer can try them out before buying. I’d have places to sit, and watch trailers/videos of existing games, or if you wanted to peruse a library of magazines/reviews, or what have you to make an informed decision, do that. I’d have at least one internet-connected computer, so that consumers could check out GameRankings or something, for reviews, or so that employees could make informed recommendations to people who come in with questions.

Of course, all this would cost a lot of money, and hiring competant, experienced retail employees who see something like this not as a part-time shit job, but as a career, at salaries that attract good people, in a location that’s attractive, accessible, and *feels* more upscale than your generic strip mall nonsense… I doubt you could really compete with the Wal-Marts of the world. But I’d like to think that if you got parents who don’t have time to understand every game that Little Timmy plays to *trust* your recommendations, and for them to feel like they’ve made a reliably well-informed decision, that maybe they’d support a store like that.

Maybe not, but the bigger thing is that honestly, I just wish I didn’t hate specialty game stores as much as I do.

This is just mesmerising. It’s old, sure, but if commercials were this interesting, I’d fastforward through the shows to get to more ads.

One weird note: What is is that you’re re-winding these days, when you make media go backwards?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/5365676.stm

Good luck, Hamster.

Been a little bit since I posted. Largely, because there’s probably nothing all that interesting going on to be worthwhile. I had a bit of post-euphoria funk, but that appears to have been dealt with.

Weirdly, one of the realizations to come from that funk is actually that I think I need some relatively regular “me time.” Whether that would be just getting out of the house with the dog for a few hours, or some time in the house alone, for some reason, recently, I’ve felt really … crowded. And it’s not like I’m seeing more people or anything, with the exception of that prior to a few weeks ago, I worked relatively alone, and now I interact with people pretty regularly. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just created a need for me to be able to make some distance between myself and everyone else.

One of the other things that’s been clear is that relationships are indeed work, and since Ei-Nyung and I aren’t commuting anymore, we really do need to make some time to spend together, whether this is doing stuff, or just discussing our days, or what have you. Time we used to take for granted isn’t there anymore, now that we’re not trapped in a car for two hours a day together with essentially nothing else to do. It’s work, but it’s not like it’s work I don’t enjoy, I just have to remember that it’s something we have to do.

The weekend was pretty productive. On top of finally really knocking down some weeding we’d been neglecting, we cooked dinner, and had leftovers (sorry, no pictures). Orange chicken, from Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a spectacular recipe – distinctly orangey, not cloyingly sweet or overbattered. We ran out of cornstarch about 3/4 of the way through (the batter is a dip in egg whites, and a dip into cornstarch), but the mochiko flour we had for Lindsi’s Mochiko Chicken recipe finished out the batch. Of course, now we have no cornstarch, and no mochiko flour, so next time we’re at the supermarket, that’ll be something to keep in mind.

Had breakfast at Merritt with Klay & Ei-Nyung, which was (as always) a really good time.

Yesterday, I spend $150 on clothes, which is pretty unusual for me. Got a pair of black slacks, a black & grey striped Calvin Klein shirt (the best of the haul), and two more button-down shirts – one a deep red, the other a light beige. Then, a brown belt (the previous belt broke), a slightly metallic dark brown/beige tie, and a bottle of conditioner. Yeah, it’s weird. Leave me alone. Like I said in a previous post, there’s something really weird about working in an uber-casual environment all the time. I figure my dad rebelled against my grandfather’s always-on formality by being always-off (formality-wise is all I mean). Maybe it’s my job to broker a balance between the two. Casual sometimes, more dressed up sometimes. Maybe it’ll be completely random.

Listening to Ok Go right now. It’s a surprisingly good album, for something I picked up because they were dancing on treadmills. Sort of rekindled some desire for rock, which I’d been sort of lacking since what, maybe Green Day’s American Idiot. Been picking up a little more music, since I got some good headphones, and was looking for some isolation from peoples. That came in the form of two Fischerspooner albums (both awesome), Ok Go (as above, good), The Faint (aside from about three songs, unremarkable), Gnarls Barkley (good, but largely not my style – Crazy’s an incredibly catchy song, though – that, and ‘Just a Thought’ made the purchase worthwhile).

If iTunes would let you apply the $1.00 you spent on a single towards the purchase of the rest of the album, I bet their album sales would substantially increase. Same with their single sales. One of the big things that keeps me from buying a whole crapload of singles is that if I like it, what then? I’m essentially out a buck, as I’d likely buy the whole album, and end up with two copies of the same song. As a result, I tend to only buy singles from albums where the album isn’t any cheaper than buying the songs individually.

Work’s fun. I know I’ve said that I’m looking for some isolation, but that’s just a personal quirk. I’m actually really enjoying it on a day-to-day basis, in part because the guy I’m working with now, I really like working with. We’ve got a pretty easygoing, jokey atmosphere, which I remember now that we had back when we worked together at Maxis. It’s good to have someone at work whose humor matches yours. There were a fistful of people I loved working with at Maxis for that very reason, but hadn’t found that at the new place yet.

Another thing that’s good is that I “won” one of my company’s games through a trivia contest, and it’s actually really good. It’s a licensed IP, and it’s essentially a port of a game that came out on a different platform, but it’s really well done. It’s nice to actually really enjoy something my coworkers have worked on, becuase one of this company’s flagship games I absolutely despised, and the sequel, IMO, doesn’t look to have fixed most of the problems. As a result, I’d had a bit of trouble feeling good about the company I’m working for, but this at least goes some way towards readjusting my internal impression of the studio.

Still…

What’s the saying? “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

That step happens next week. I’m really, really looking forward to it.

So, what’s happened since that last bout of euphoria? Not a whole lot, unfortunately. I think I might have caught a cold or something, ’cause I’ve been dead tired the last few days, and haven’t been able to sleep. So, bad combination, that. Led to a couple days of grumpy me. Alas.

Things are still good, though. Work’s went really well today, despite a bout of tired-induced writer’s block the day before. So, tomorrow I’ll get to either start in on a new character, or keep working on my ‘pet’ character, which I’m basically gonna do even if I have to write her entirely in my spare time.

Kinda weird, I’ve got a couple really good games queued up – I’d like to finish Dead Rising, Yakuza, Tomb Raider: Legend, and a fistful of Xbox 1 titles, DS games, whatever. But I’m definitely hitting the saturation wall, where unless something’s essentially a social experience, I haven’t been all that interested in actually *playing* anything. I think it’s just when you’re thinking about a game all day, it takes a certain alignment of the stars to make playing a game in the downtime appealing.

Weirdly, I don’t feel that way about thinking about *working* on another game, but yeah, take from that what you will.

I’ve been taking Mobius to the local dog walk near Beach School. This is pretty different than the dog walk that’s closer to my house – it’s less interesting, say, from a topological perspective, but there’s always a lot of dogs there. So, if I take Mobi to the local dog walk, he’s lucky to find another dog to play with. If I hop into the car, it’s a three minute drive, and there’s never been less than five other dogs. So, he gets to socialize a bit, and meet a whole bunch of new people, which is basically his favorite thing. So, that’s been really good.

Hm. 9:30. Maybe I’ll hit the hay, try to get a good night’s sleep. Hit up the pool in the morning, go for a swim, and settle in to another day of writing.

It’s sort of strange, that my career is now about 80% writing, and only about 20% what I’d consider “design.” Sure, all the dialog trees are essentially gameplay logic, and there’s a good deal of awareness of what you’re trying to get a player to do, or how you’re trying to steer a conversation, or how a particular conversation should reflect how the player’s played. But it’s weird, because it definitely feels like my primary job is the writing, and it’s almost like a secondary job to make sure that the logic and stuff actually works.

Bizarre. NaNoWriMo last year ended up being way, way more useful than I could have ever imagined.

I have no idea what it is.

I was walking Mobius at maybe 9, this evening. It was cool, dark – a little brisk. The walk started out normally, but we walked from the left of the house, down the street, and turned the corner to go around the downhill block. As we’re halfway down the block, a smile spreads across my face. I don’t know why. I can feel my heart beating in my chest – not in a bad way, but each beat feels distinct and clear. I’m smiling like an idiot, now. Mobius looks back at me – he’s a few feet in front, sniffing some bushes, and I start running, down the hill.

I was watching House earlier in the evening, and he started running – something he, as a character, hasn’t done in a long time. And I guess maybe I felt like running because of that. And in the same way, it was something I haven’t done in a long time, and for a good long while (from about mid ’96 to about 2004), I simply *couldn’t*. But I can, now. I can run without pain, and more importantly, without fear. Oh, I’m in terrible shape, don’t get me wrong. But I ran, flat-out, for the better part of the block, and Mobius galloped to keep up with me, instead of the fast walking he usually does when I jog along.

Maybe in that moment, I triggered some sort of “runner’s high,” but I doubt it. I walked the rest of the way home, and halfway up the hill home, again, a giant smile spread across my face, and I couldn’t stop it. I smiled the whole rest of the way home, and if you know me, my default expression isn’t a giant fucking grin. But there it was.

I feel good in the kind of way that I feel like some sort of giant catastrophe must be imminent. Everything’s just absolutely great. I love my wife to pieces. I love my friends. I’m living with a pair of really awesome friends, who bring a lot to my life I wouldn’t otherwise normally see. The friends I don’t live with are *spectacular*, and I love them to pieces, too. My parents seem to be doing well, which is something that’s been a long time coming. My dog is great. The house still has a long way to go, but the potential is *ridiculous*, and when we’re done with this place, it’ll be a *palace*.

My job’s really turned around. I hated the project I was on, but it’s over, and I’m working full-time on something I bring a lot to. I feel *great* about my ability to contribute to it, the direction it’s going, and the fact that I live a convenient distance away, and the work-life balance is good.

I feel… confident. I’ve always felt hesitant about my abilities, in regards to work. Not anymore. I know what I can do, I know I can do more, and that greatness isn’t a matter of “if,” but a matter of “when.” I feel like I can control my own destiny.

I know these feelings are transient, but I think this may be the first time in my adult life where I’ve been almost euphoric, simply because things are just absolutely, positively perfect.

I couldn’t ask for anything more. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

So, finally finished Arrested Development tonight. Awesome show, and I wish I (and about oh, 10 million other people) had caught on to it earlier. Alas, it was not to be. The show went out well, though. Plots were wrapped up, and the end seemed to come togehter in the way that it should have, instead of being abruptly axed like Firefly.

Extraordinary stuff.