The Chewy, Charry Bits

I'm at the last bit of my game, LaunchCraft. I still think I implemented it poorly, but I just want to be done with it. Which is a really crap reason for wanting to finish a game, but at this point I need any motivation to get through it. Game development is alot of pain working with obscure tools and uncertain documentation aimed at MIT compsci gradutates who read WC3 specs to wind down, I find.

To be more accurate, working with open source tools is like that. I could very well use any manner of commercial prodcuts to get my game done, and that would likely be the wiser course. But I have this thing for freedom, and have various, radical scenarios where entire swaths of my PC goes down, or companies dissolve, and then I have to rebuild whatever I was working on from scratch. With open source, that option is there. The code never dies. There's no company to die and leave you in the lurch. You can always work 'light'. That is, with as few dependencies on the nefarious commercial companies which have the habit of going out of business or discontinued whatever widget you are relying on.

Or maybe I'm just a not so disguised zealot.

But it means having to endure a lot of pain and feeling not entirely bright while trying to solve what you think is a pretty straightforward problem. The problem has been solved, but it's under a mountain of documentation, and even then you're better off peering at arcane source code written by the bright, genius sort of coders who find making game-frameworks to be just the sort of challenge they need between reading WC3 specifications.

It's humbling, to be sure.

Open source suffers for the same reason that Apple does so well. User interface design. In this case, as the programmer, I'm the user, trying to use different bits of code to make a game. Trying to make this bit of code work with this bit of code. Invariably the sort of people who write game frameworks (the bits I'm trying to tie together) can't conceive, or don't plan for, programmers like me who can't understand why there's no, say, simple way to pause the game, and will answer, in a slightly bewildered tone, an answer that is in no way obvious and involves using bits of code that I suspect were made by a malevolent AI bent on eventual human enslavement.

But it goes, it goes. Roughly.

Making Games

My current hobby is making video games. Ugly horrible 2D abominations that look like really drunken Atari remakes in MS Paint, they play worse.

But its fun making them. OK, mostly infuriating and frustrating and an elaborate experiment to make me feel stupider than usual, but when everything ends up working and you have something that you'd still be too embarrassed to show anyone while sober, there is a tremendous feeling of accomplishment, like baking a cake when all you've done before is make a rather tepid mug of Horlitz.

It's also nice to be working on problems that are unlike the problems I deal with at work, which is roughly, getting information from point A to point B.Where A and B can be a user, another machine, some server run by some other company, etc, etc. It's not uninteresting, but I've beendoing it for... a very long time, and isn't as interesting as something you can, at the end of the day, load up and play.

There's also lots of other types of thinking that goes into it, more than 'how do I get the spaceship to go across the screen if I press up', more along the lines of game design. How do you make a game interesting, what elements to put in or leave out. It can be dizzingly complex and often I'm left with a mess at the end that's not altogether fun.

Future posts will be me blundering through game design theory, possibly some horrifying screenshots of my games, and, likely, some posts about the family.

L4D2 NPC's and Infected Rejected Out Of Hand

Oil Derrick Worker:
You never see them, because, well, they're kinda isolated, but you hear reports about them, and they sound terrifying.

Tai Chi Master
If you ever swing that ax faster than an heavily sedated sea sponge, he goes down immediately. But should you go slower, HOO EEEEE!.

Hipsters
You only ever encounter their corpses, they go first.

Vegan
He can be found dumpster diving, looking smug and eating rats.Organic rats.

Flautist
A jazz flautist.

Driver
Sits in his car, a well-notated map of Toledo in his lap, a cold cup of coffee on the dash, and him, crying softly.

Concierge
He stands, looking from the door to his front desk, torn behind a hunger for human flesh and a sense of duty.

Gymnast
Stands below the double rings, arms still on the rings, him looking up, moaning.

Foodie
Fusses and pats you down, emits a low 'humming' noise as he considers, invariably leaves you alone.

Adventure

So, it's begun. Sometime while partaking in my hobby I'm mildly ashamed about, I formed a bit of a bond with the people I was playing with. Folks from Metafilter, which seeems, in retrospect, to be the last sort of people I'd cleave to. Not that they are dull, at Metafilter, but they are so full of snark and invective and trenchant analysis as to why that thing you like sucks, it makes it a unlikely source of friendship.

But I have.

Sure, there have been hiccups, and the invaraible flare up of forum drama, but all internet hang outs get those. It's a question of whether the place is left standing afterwards. And it's stuck. Fortunately, miraculously.

Bright, funny, interesting people playing video games and getting angry over strange things like K:D ratios and Team Stacking and things that, granted, likely have analogues in say, a bowling league.

So, it's been three years or so. Playing, chatting, forum drama, jokes, in-jokes, in-in-jokes, baked goods exchanges, Secret Santas, meetups.

And now we are having the Mother of All Meetups. Forty or so of us, descending upon NYC. To play games, drink, eat food that'll cut our lifespan by not insignificant amount.

Yeah, I'm going to Meet People From The Internet.

I've done this before, but locally. After all, the thinking I go through is, "Hey, I'm a people from the internet!". I haven't been disappointed or scared or stuffed into a medium sized cooler smelling suspiciously of chloroform. Which, I"m sure, shocks those less nerdy.

But it all makes sense, you see. It's not that I just met them over the internet. I played with them, suffered trials and tribulations, which, while not say, the scale of the Dresden Fire Bombing or even the hardships make your local SWAT gel, aren't nothing.

We already know so much about each other. Not just personal details, which can be lied about, admittedly. We know some more interesting things. How each other responds to pressure, to failure, to success, to unfairness, to goddman totally overpowered/underpowered updates to our game du jour.

It's damned exciting. Connecting the voice and still pictures to the real, live, breathing mass of fellow nerdery. To meet one's tribe, one's people. Adventure.

Pacino On Flotilla

Another post I made for the Full Glass, Empty Clip gaming blog. This has to do with the indie game Flotilla, which is a turn-based strategy space combat sand box exploration game. With no goddamn save feature.

It’s a rough galaxy out there.

You go out there, every day.

You flank and open fire and strategize because the galaxy isn’t doing you any favours. You tear at your hair, at the bulkheads, you claw your way past the militant penguins and the looming space hulks because that’s what you do.

And the Galaxy tries to shove back?

It tries to take from you what is your right?

You shove back. Maybe you get another ship, maybe your flotilla gets bigger.

You keep growing.

And you know you’ll kill for that flotilla, for every upgrade you’ve fought for, for every new ship that you’ve won.

Because that’s what you do. The Galaxy isn’t going to be explored by itself. It’s up to you, and your crew.

That’s it. That’s what the Galaxy expects from you, and, damnit, that’s what you expect from you.

Now, maybe I’m too jaded, too old, too damn tired to think differently. I’ve spent too long out in that galaxy fighting the good fight, the right fight. But you shouldn’t have to do all this in one go.

What are we? Robots? Animals? I say we are not. I say we are not that thing which can continue on for hours upon hours. We are flesh and blood. We have laundry to do, and kids to mind, and all the little things that make up a life. The little things that go on between conquests. That’s life, gentlemen, that’s living.

You remember that don’t you?

At the end of the day the Galaxy doesn’t care for your life your place in it. It’s only hungry for your ships, and for everything you’ve worked so hard at for the past 40 minutes. But you can’t give it to them. Not after all the sweat and blood it’s extracted from you, step by step, fight by fight, tooth and nail and fist and bone.

And we shouldn’t have to give it all up. Should we? Because our time is fractured. It’s cut up and divided and pulled, stretched out across the day. We shouldn’t, we can’t.

We need a save feature.

Andy Rooney On Teams and Fortresses

I'm blogging over at this gaming blog some of my MeFi friends setup. Specifically, some of my MeFi friends who formed Mefightclub, which is kinda the gaming arm of Metafilter, I suppose. This article has to do with Team Fortress 2, so, if you're not a PC gamer, and not hip with all the incarnations of Team Fortress, you can skip this post.

I don’t know what’s happening to gaming these days. In my day you had a fortress, you had a team, and you just went at it. It was like tag or flag football, the bedrock of any small town community. I know community isn’t in vogue these days. It’s one for one and all for none, it seems. I watch the television and it’s not more about team sports, its about the individual stars. A trophy for this, a medal for that.

It seems to me that nowadays, our fortress team games are obsessed with personal milestones. What sort of whacky combination of numbers have to be achieved today, I wonder. When I was younger, you just worried about how many times you fragged, and how many times you got fragged, and that was that. Now there are silly hats and punny little titles given to any number of strange number crunching.

Lately I’ve been wondering if it doesn’t have to do a little bit with things. What I mean is, too many people are in a rush to get things, get into the city, say, pick up a newer version of a pair of pants that have been perfectly fine these past five years. It’s not that I wouldn’t do it myself, if was a little bit younger, a little less wise, but it’s a shame all the same.

And seemingly, the company that, to be honest, makes me think more often of plumbing supplies than video gaming, has attached their weird and wonderful number crunching to getting more things. What’s wrong with a rocket launcher, I ask? Now you want a rocket launcher that does more splash damage, or less splash damage, maybe heats up your car on a cold morning.

It might be a bit much, I wonder.

But things move on, sure as taxes, or your toast getting inedibly dry after an endless conversation with a coworker you don’t like too much. I’m not one to complain about things. But it seems to me that the Team Fortress of today is a little too friendly, maybe, a little less fortressy. I don’t think we ever needed hats to really enjoy the game. We sure don’t need more things.

At least, I’d like to think so.

Ready, Fight!

I'm part Asian, but where I grew up most of my life, that's pretty much == "10000% asian holy-crap why dont' you have an accent and know kung-karate!? " Asian. My Junior High had, uh, 3 Asians, I think, if we are counting me, which I rarely do.

I moved Grade 10 to some city school. The mullets weren't as rampant, and the 1972 Camaros and '82 corvettes were replaced with cars that were so riced up they made "The Fast & The Furious" vehicles look like your grandma's K-Car. With the beeping reverse. Supras, RX-7s, s2000s, cars that had wheels that were more expensive as my first car.

Oh, and the school was about 90% not-white (where not-white is Indian or Asian (where Asian is Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese (where Chinese is all the way from hard core Honger who comes to school in a Mercedes 500 SL to the CBC who doesn't know Dim Sum from KFC's boneless wings))).

It was a slight adjustment for me.

One of these adjustments was dealing with a school that was about 50 feet from an arcade. For some reason, the kids from Hong Kong were really really really really really good at Street Fighter II. There were two big screen games set up, and two more just plain cabinets. The reigning champ would sit, slumped, with the arrogant Triad gangster air that is hard to describe, and stay there until he was bested.

At some point a dot-matrix printed Street Fighter II Bible was circulated. I kid you not. there were moves and combos and ... just.... Think Game Faqs except more obsessive and crazy.

The moves these kids did were, I daresay, things that most nerds have not seen. Here are things I"ve seen them do:
-freeze Guile (during which you cannot hit him, he's in the middle of a high kick, i think)
-mute the game (yes, by some game combo hackery)
-reboot the game (no, not by reaching on the top of the cabinet)
-turn Dhalsim invisble (this was before the SF version where Dhalsim could go invisible. He couldnt' attack, he just disappeared)
-do the infamous Invisible Throw (Guile would do a Medium throw movement, and even though the opponent was far away, they'd just fall down and take throw damage).

It was a heady time. This was, as far as I can tell, the Asian equivalent of early 80's Breaking Dance Offs. There were strange rituals, like, if you won the first game, you 'gave' the second round to the other player; that is, you played the 2nd round hard, but when the other player was almost dead, you'd just took your hands off the controls. Breaking this ritual was... frowned upon.

Anyhow, that's my story of the Super Awesome Hardcore Street Fighter II I grew up with.

Closet Trekkie

During a backyard chat with one of our neighbours, the new Star Trek movie came up. Me, being a resident nerd, was naturally prodded as to my undying excitement and unfettered joy regarding it. I'm not a huge Trek fan. I watched The Next Generation with my family when it first came out, it was like Family Ties except with less cunning and more phasers. I skipped most of the other series except for a bit of Deep Space Nine, and then only because it had Hawk from Spencer for Hire (he was one bad ass mofo (possibly more than Tubbs)).

So, obviously, in revealing all this, I suppose to the average normal (non nerd), I am a Trekkie. But us nerds know what a real Trekkie is. They have memorabilia, they go to conventions, they know at least a few passing phrases in Klingon. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm not a Trekkie.

In any event, one of my neighbours looked at me slyly and said, "You're a, a 'Trekkie'", as if accusing me of harbouring a harmless if slightly disfiguring form of hepatitis. She has this light European accent, and said it with such pitying derision, I felt my cultural wherewithal being challenged; although, to be honest, I've been upfront to my neighbours about my utter lack of cultural knowledge, a ponderous adversity to culling any sort of zeitgeist or being hip with who the Algonquin [sic] Five [sic] are, and why they are important, and why the name just makes me think of the Council of Elrond. Nevertheless, I will not be accused of something I'm not.

It's a cross, that us nerd, us introverted elite, bear. Yes, we are socially awkward and avoid any undue social gatherings. Yes we have odd and vaguely childish preoccupations which, if you really cornered a normal and asked them about it, they'd have to confess it was pretty rad. But we like to be derided and ostracized for things we really are into.

We take an odd pride, I think, in these impolite and outlandish hobbies. It's not that someone cosplaying Babylon 5 is without social awareness. It's not that two people re-enacting the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail think it's hilarious to the general public. We love it in spite of the normals. In spite of being called odd and weird and chronically virgin. In spite of being pitied and pidgeon-holed and generally laughed at.

Like, I'm terribly into PC gaming, or odd web comics, or software engineering practical theory (yes, yes, I know, oxymoron). I don't mind being avoided at cocktail parties for this. I don't mind my parents trying to veer any conversation in polite company in a wide berth around said subjects. I do, however, take umbrage with dealing with the normals baggage about stuff I'm not particularly into. I think that's fair.

It was hard to convince this neighbour. I decided in the end it didn't really matter, a nerd is a nerd is a nerd, I'm sure they think. Besides, anyone who knows that the serial number for the Enterprise was NC-1701 isn't entirely innocent of Trekkie-hood.

Oh, yeah, I BLOG.

The subtitle of this site, indeed, the entire domain, is a mocking of anyone who calls themselves a 'blogger'. As if the medium (RSS enabled text feeds) is of any importance. It's like a writer calling themselves a 'typist', or a 'quill and ink afficionado'. What the thell, right? I find all terms around 'blogging' as if it, in of itself, means a flying shite, to be ridiculous.

If you write, then you're a writer. But even that term I find slightly pretentious. IMHO, unless someone has paid you cash money to do write, even if it's for a series of Erotic Poetry featuring a busty elk and 27 different types of fruit flavoured chapstick, you can't really call yourself a writer.

We all think of the same thing when that heavy term is rolled out: New Hampshire, the stormy sea, a rusty functional type writer, a stuffy man in a turtleneck with workman hands and a Pall Mall hanging out the side of his lip.

A real goddamn writer. Someone with life experiences and rejection letters HE writes to the New Yorker.

We don't think about pasty desk jockeys writing their thoughts on hairballs and kitty litter and having the following things in their blog title: "Screed", "Scribblings", and the most ultimate of words ever to be included in a blog title, "Musings".

Amateur. That's what I am. I'm an amateur and this is amateur hour and I happen to post it over HTTP to website anyone with too much free time can access and read while wondering if my spellchecker really is that broken. Amateur writer is what I'd call myself, if pressed, and to be honest, even if I was pressed, I'd mention something about video gaming or something equally horrifying cocktail conversation killer and keep my eyes on my shoes.

Another thing about blogs. What is the deal with corporate blogs? Isn't the purpose of a weblog a personal account from one person? I mean, when a large corporation or institution starts a blog, they should just call it a 'recently updated PR news site'. You know?

I'm listening to Rage Against the Machine at the moment. This post might be 139% more angry than usual. My apologies.

Chomsky Comments on Left 4 Dead

I think what's clear here, in this shot, is that it's the humans that have the guns, the mandate to power in this situation. The undead, these new immigrants to a world that's still very strange to them, they are, quite categorically, unarmed.

There is a struggle for hegemony you can see here. Dominion over land, a fight for sovereignity. What would you do if armed strangers came through your land? You'd attack, naturally. You'd defend yourself, is what you'd do. And if we are even attempting to consider the justice in this situation, the undead are merely fending off the humans with their hands, their feet. How much damage could they do? But, time and time again, we see a disproportionate response to this from the humans. A call to arms, a god given right to take the lives of countless undead and for what? The opportunity to trespass, because, quite clearly, that's what's happening here, trespassing on the land of the undead.

What is interesting to note, in this third shot, the old man taking a gas can and shooting it. What's going on here? what's the narrative in this action? He quite obviously pillaged that gas tank from the land of the undead, and then he shoots it. He uses their fuel to kill them.I think, I think there is a unmistakeable message being sent here. Not only are humans your betters, but they will use your resources to do away with you. It's, I mean, there is no other way to respond but to try and repel such invaders, I think. That's the rational response.

And we see that the humans cross all types of age racial and gender barriers, so all humans, everywhere, are complicit in these war crimes. For anyone paying attention, any one willing to do but the most cursory of research, it's pretty easy to unearth instances of these invaders shooting undead who were not doing anything. Just standing. Maybe looking menacing to the humans, maybe not, who knows? The humans are quite unwilling to open up channels of diplomacy with them, and this is something that's been reported and documented by me and others, that I don't need to go into here. But it's been documented by very serious journals, very important papers.

And here is the Tank. A name, that I have no doubt, was given to him by the humans. I'm sure he doesn't see himself in such militaristic terms. He's quite obviously only protecting his own here. I mean, he's forced, or created by the undead to match the sabre-rattling from the humans, they use what is obviously their meagre means to try and match the militaristic juggernaut that is the human invaders. And if we are serious about finding who's the criminal here, if we have even the faintest inclination towards social justice, the onus quite clearly rests on the humans; as is obvious in all the cases from the footage that's been made available.

CLAMPS!

I had to go to Home Depot to get a few things. Mainly to bumble about with and make a total mess under the guise of 'home improvement'. The only thing it improves, frankly, is my already impressive ability to swear while holding what I think is a philips head screwdriver. Could be a hammer, actually.

I'm no handyman, is my point. I'm pretty good at putting on a grin and 'bearing through something until it's sort of done but nothing you'd ever show to polite company', though. Which is how I get into these situations, wandering through cavernous home improvement SUPER STORES looking for a flange or a shivel or god knows what other word they've devise for, say, a rubber washer.

So I was there at Home Depot, with Owlet and The Dog. I went with them because having them around greatly reduces the chance that anyone will mistake me for a handyman and ask me for an opinion vis-a-vis the best method to route out a double iron casting tackle block; also because apparently two year-olds can't take care of themselves if left to their own devices ('very fast, very strong, and very stupid' was an apt description I heard of them once, not a lie).

So, with kids in tow I go asking various people in orange aprons where I can find a clamp. This is a terrible word for a nerd to have to say in public, because only one thing comes to mind, and that one thing repeats AD NAUSEUM.

"Hi, do you know where the clamps are?"
CLAMPS! CLAMPS! MY NAME is CLAMPS! You want me to CLAMP him boss!? Why I oughta clamp YOU!
"Clamps?'
CAN I CLAMP HIM boss?! CAN I? Clamps! CLAMPS!
"just down aisle 18, about a third of the way down on your left."
"Uh, thanks."

Owlet's Odd Geek Tendencies

Owlet is now two and a bit. She, for some unknown reason, has cultivated some odd geek tendencies.

As all toddlers love Raffi for an unfathomable reason, she is of course addicted, addicted to "Baby Beluga". Needs to hear it all the time, like a crackhead needs to hear the sound of a butane lighter on a broken lightbulb. I guess there are far too many syllables in Beluga, so she ends up saying "Baby Yoda", which is, frankly, awesome. What makes it more awesome is that we can say "You want baby yoda? more baby yoda?" and she knows exactly what we're talking about. (Last night, "Attack of the Clones" was on, and she was, disconcertedly, scared of Yoda. How can anyone be scared of a small green alien who talks in broken english?)

Pie has a very strong attachment to geek culture, and I don't know why that is. Maybe because pie is universally awesome. I call this the 'Bacon Effect', anything naturally awesome will become a 'geek thing' (see also, Tron).

So one day we go to get some pie. I assume she doesnt' really know or care why we are strapping her into the carseat, just that she can constantly say our names in a querolous tone, as if a lead-in to a pithy and enlightening question (Dadda?). Of course, she has a vocabulary of about 15 words (not counting sounds that animals and various modes of transportation make, I'd say it's about 4), this never happens. Funnily, she's completed mastered the tone of a question, so when she says "Dada", about 30% of the time I'm completely fooled into thinking she'll follow up after I say, "Yes?". Anyways, pie. We go get pie at this one supermarket that has the mostest bestest pie in town. We come back home. Owlet is put down for the night. She wakes up in the middle of the night and has a little chat with Mrs. Owl, it goes something like this:

"Me eat."
"You're hungry ?"
"Me eat."
"What do you want to eat?"
Thoughtful repose, a real deep introspection into the reasons for existence and whatnot.
"Me eat pie."

The fact that she connected all the dots and knew, with absolute certainty, that we had pie, blew us away. Or maybe she made a lucky guess. Or, I dunno, maybe we really don't expect a whole lot from our toddler. Or maybe pie is so awesome it accelerates brain growth. That seems most feasible.

A Hobby To Be Mildy Ashamed Of

I'm a gamer. No, not a rapacious player of Monopoly and Scattergories; not a chess player or someone who plays contract bridge with 67 year-old retired storm-door repairmen with fond memories of Nixon.

I'm the other sort.

There can't be another hobby that garners as much disdain and derision as video-gaming. If I spent my afternoons staring at small pictures printed on non-resusable stickers sold by major governments at OUTRAGEOUS prices, I'd be considered 'bookish'. Not weird. If I whiled away the weekends in the garage with an engineer's cap faithfully re-creating a 100 year old oak from plasticized brocolli and making sure the 6:45 Stony Creek runs on time; people would smile at my sense of child-like wonderment. But if I spend my evenings yelling at 16 year-olds over the internet to "Just cap the goddamn point", or "Do you even know what cover fire means" suddenly I'm puerile and 'need to grow up'.

Er.

There are many ways to think of video-gaming in layman's terms. Or, if you will, lay-grownup's terms.

Some of the more strategic games are like chess. You have a mental picture of chess in your mind? Now imagine that nobody takes turns. Now imagine instead of a rook, pawn, bishop, knight, queen and king, you have about 3 more hierarchies of classes. Try not to imagine the sort of person who would find this entertaining.

For the more bloodthirsty sorts of games, imagine playing darts in teams, and everyone goes at once.

These are helpful analogies, I think. Many of the older generation still think of Pac-Man when they hear video games, or if they are really hip with the times, Doom. The younger generation will probably not have to talk in low tones about their gaming hobbies (apparently 97% of them game), or shrug and look bewildered as other adults discuss sports or reality TV.

And, if I may put forward an odd and wildly unpopular viewpoint, there isn't that much to be ashamed of.

Gaming is still gaming. Whether it's Monopoly or Team Fortress 2, it's still people getting together, forming teams, and trying to beat the other side following some arbitrary rule-set. It's still, I know this is crazy, social. And, if you're not playing online, at least it's still a mentally active hobby. You are engaged, you're thinking, you're trying to frag that goddamn 13-year-old who you swear never ever logs off, don't kids get any exercise these days?

It also fulfills a deep cultural and evolutionary need. Just as TV, movies, and books fill the need for story, gaming fills the need for the tribal activity. Whether that's hunting mastodons across the steppes, digging through rotting logs for grubs, or carrying a pigskin ovoid across painted lines in the astro-turf, humans are pack animals. We evolved working together, towards a common goal . We crave problems to solve and objectives.

And gaming all too well fulfills that need for the nerdier of us. Or if you are part of the youth, fulfills that need for almost all of you.

But, if cornered in a cocktail party, I'm still going to say I go antiquing.

Re : Open Air Elevators

Thank you for your note concerning your buildings' open air elevators. I'm glad you contacted us, because, frankly, several of my repairmen have raised some serious issues. It's not just the open air elevators -- which I'd like to note, even with your considerate email -- is in breech of several state and federal safety laws; there are other, even more grievious infractions.

First off, you might want to hire a better security company. The one you employ seems to consist of shady looking gentlemen carrying poorly concealed weapons. They have no radio for communication, and wander aimlessly around the halls. Their favourite manuever is popping out of a door unannounced, as if hoping catch my men in the act of... I don't know what. They are both dangerous and ineffectual, which brings me to my second point.

Every building I have sent a technician to, there is a -- by all accounts very dapper -- young man. He sports a leather jacket and a pompadour but despite his charms (of which my technicians inform me are many), he brandishes a weapon. The presence of this thrill-seeking young man is evidence that your security needs re-evaluation. He has been seen riding on top of elevators. This is incredibly dangerous. As you know Winksen and Sons Elevator Repair are not responsible for injury sustained during inproper use of our elevators.

Speaking of liability, many of your hanging lamps (which are, again, against code) have fallen. Some of my workers have suggested the lamps have been shot down. I can't begin to express my anxiety thinking of my men walking around your buildings which is apparently used as a shooting gallery.

And a minor point -- although it might be related to my first two -- having arbitrary doors painted red can be confusing for many of my men. Some assume they are the fuse and electrical rooms.

They could not have been more wrong.

Every single one of these rooms, even in different buildings, seem to house documents of high importance. We only note that since both your highly suspect security guards and the dapper young individual have been found, often, in these rooms. Sometimes dead.

I'm glad you opened up lines of communication, I think we'll need to revisit our terms when our contract expires this October. I'm certain my insurance cannot cover the buildings you have in your holdings: quirky at best, grossly negligent at worst.

Kindest Regards,

Stanley Winksen

Possible Dialogue in Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead (a zombie co-operative shooter game) apparently has eight THOUSAND bloody lines of dialogue, and no cut-scenes. It's like an abomination unto the jRPG scene, overpaid CG artists, and washed out actors who once made out with their sisters.

So, with that in mind, I present to you:

POSSIBLE DIALOGUE IN LEFT 4 DEAD

• I say, is that wound infected or is your skin moisturizer pus-based?
• Jesus, another zombie?
• THIS IS THE GAME THAT NEVER ENDS! IT GOES FOR ON AND ON MY FRIEND!
• My current ammo count is 11, I'll keep updating you as that changes!
• No safe safe zone and no shotgun shells makes Homer something something.
• I'm going to try and negotiate with them!
• I now have 10 bullets.
• Godsdamnit, the NRA was right.
• We've been wandering for close to 30 gameplay hours, and we are still only four surivors. What are the odds?
• You would like me to continue reading random lines from my Dickens Digest? Oh, alright, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
• Ok, you're in a dark dungeon, the smell of kobold is in the air. Sam, you need to wait a turn to use magic missile. Jenny, please roll a saving throw, you've stepped on a troll trap-- AAAHH MORE ZOMBIES!!
• It's 8 now.
• We got a see-saw like device, a ledge that's just too far to pull ourselves over, and some cinder blocks. How odd.
• As I was saying, it's our constant oppression of the differently living that has caused this power imbalance that presses upon the average undead. It's in this wasteland of public discourse and accountability that the inevitable grassroots insurgents sprouts, making us the invading conquerers. The oppressors.
• So I might like him, go ahead and ask him if he might like me, but dont' tell him I might like him, dont' tell him we even had this conversation. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, I'm so nervous. WHAT THE HELL ZOMBIES!!!

PAX 08 : Power Overwhelming.

There really is a dizzying array of crap, vying for attention like a gaggle of refugee children reaching out imploringly to a UN peacekeepker because, they, you know, need their insulin or something. All sorts of hyper niche games and gaming.

There's table top gaming, which is kinda like board games on steroids layered on top of a complexity of rules that have width, depth, and actual Newtonian mass. A vast complexity of rules. I think orc and tanks play key roles. In the more popular table-top games, an orc-tank hybrid is almost the entirety of the game mechanic. From what I can understand, it's fun.

And then there are the console games, many of which really hardcore gamers turn their noses up at, games like Madden 09 or That One Shooter In the Sci Fi Or World War Two setting that's really eXtremE! You can lump in here the movie tie-ins, the Ideas Ripped Off Of Smaller Developers by a Megalithic Behemoth. Also known as Frat Boy Fair. It's the “2 Fast, 2 Furious” to a hardcore gamer's “Glengarry Glen Ross”.

There are casual games that are so quirky that a pink octopus who sells cupcakes to send their children, represented by some sort of semi-sentient mushroom, on a field trip to the center of the OceanVerse to explore their colour dimensions is seen as derivative and a 'safe bet'.

And, last but not least, there are the HARD CORE GAMES. Shooters, RPGs, RTSes. Games with tech trees and advanced HUD overlays and intra-dimensinal load-out screens. Games that push the meta-narrative and make frantic stabs at Foucault. Games that have screens that make you think “Dear god, that looks like WORK, except... harder.”

There are some games that I do have an interest in, but the vast, vast majority of it are just pretty colours and neato graphics that I will never see outside of the convention. A man only has so much time during the day, only so much of the family budget that they can divert towards next-gen cutting edge consoles.

But the highlight of PAX wasn't the expo, it wasn't the multi-million dollar corporations selling the Next Big Thing in Electromagorical Edutainment. It was the fellow nerds. Nerds and geeks and social cast aways who totally 'got it' when you would say in the most sardonic voice, "Moo moo, moo moo mooo moo moo moo... MOOO!". Fellow gamers who wore ironic shirts that were weighed down by the amount of inside jokes they contained. 

It was nice to be part of the nerd herd. If only once a year.

PAX

Thanks to thekiko for the photo.

The Penny Arcade Expo is kinda like the Mecca for gamers. Obviously without the deep religious connotations and how it fulfills a devouts Muslims life with love and joy and the uplifting of the spirit etc. More like, a place where everyone that is quite like you can gather and feel sorta normal. A cattle drive of nerd herds, if you will.

All sorts, flavours and shades of gamers will find PAX irresistable. I know what you're thinking, "There is more than one type?". Alas, like your vegetarian co-worker who you see sometimes having a Filet-O-Fish, there are so many, many degrees of us.

There are the table top gamers, the role players, the RTS dudes, the FPS maniacs, the handheld acolytes... Oh, it goes on. Sure, there is overlap. But there are only so many hours in the day, only so many ways to particpate in a hobby that brings universal denigration and sneered lips of disdain.

Now, what's Penny Arcade? Imagine if you will the most powerful gaming webcomic in the world. Granted, that's like saying 'imagine the worlds most radical needlepoint'. It's a niche of a niche market. Something that mostly appeals to geeks (webcomic) about something that only appeals to geeks (gaming). Nevertheless, it's webcomic that can shape and change multi-million dollar game's futures, can leave PR hacks quivering in their cocaine-dusted hooker-lipsticked armani suits, and can quite literally make or break a game development house.

And it's two guys.

Two guys who started small, and through wit, great drawing, and not a few references to wangs, created (what I assume is) a multi-million dollar empire.

It's the sort of maverick story that any red-blooded American hopes they'll star in. These fellows speak truth to power (albeit, you know, power spoken about how richly detailed and/or nonlinear a given game narrative is). In a world where everyone, even the gatekeepers, are in the pocket of the Rich, Powerful, and Morally Suspect, it's refreshing to think of two guys who can make their way because they speak The Truth.

At least how they see it.

Which is better than the pablum and middle of the road handjobs that most journalists in the gaming industry seem to write. They who are beholden to the great corporations for access, and therefore who's very job becomes just another way to give free advertising.

Penny Arcade are, in short, like the Daily Show, except about something far, far, FAR less important.

Well, not unimportant. Just not earth-shattering. You aren't going to turn heads at your next company picnic talking about the great untapped potential of Psychonauts or the rise of free-to-play MMOs in South East Asia. No one is going to stop talking to the National Geographic amazon rain-forest photographer doing a stint in war-torn Sudan to hear you expound on the procedurally generated content.

Gaming as a hobby is what I'd put as a solid second tier hobby. I mean, objectively. From the average man on the street, it probably fits somewhere between professional pan-handler and collecting all McDonald's Disney commemorative cups. But you know, myself, I can't put gaming any lower than watching TV. Hell, in many respects, gaming is much different from playing board games. Not, you know, Settlers of Catan, but Pictionary or Boggle.

It's a fair bit below what I would call first tier hobbbies, also known as Facebook-profile hobbies, admitted-to-at-cocktail party hobbies, resume hobbies, and meeting the in-laws hobbies. First tier include the outdoors and perspiring. There might be powerbars involved, sometimes tournaments and ladder draws.

But second tier is nothing to laugh at. Often, or loudly, anyways.

In short, I'll be going to PAX this year. My first time. I'm more than a little nervous. I mean, real people. Real nerd people who probably abhor social contact as much as I, which takes the whole ordeal past Terry Gilliam absurd and careening blithely towards Hasselfhoff/K.I.T.T. slashfic bizaare.

Assumedly there will elan, maybe some bon homie, and perhaps even more French phrases that mean 'friendship, but the really good kind that makes every X-Genner wish they were part of a small but close knit World War Two commando unit'.

Or maybe I'll see some cool games and get sloshed. You know, whatever.

Style

Thanks to ~ RAYMOND for the photo.

Below is my article for my work newsletter; this issue's theme is 'Style'.




We nerds,-- the Basement Dwellers, Code Slingers, the Reviled Who Shall Not Be Mentioned -- can blissfully ignore style. We also ignore fashion, slickness, presentability and anyone who points at us and says "heeey, straight shooter!".

It's partly that yes, we have the social awareness of a leperous donkey, that cannot be argued; but for most of us, it goes deeper.

There is a long standing tradition, nay, I'd say a belief that runs to the ROOT of geekiness. That is, FUNCTION, over FORM. This is not right in all cases, maybe not even in most cases, but it's a leading tenet of being nerdcore.

There are many instances in which this belief is challenged and crushed. The iPod, for example. There was time when it wasn't the dominant mp3-music-video-lifestyle-media-enabler it is today. There was a time when all sorts of horrid, ugly, but reasonably priced mp3 players vied for your dollars.

There was one in particular that was the darling of the nerd community, the Archos Jukebox. It was better than the iPod in almost every single respect: (BLAH BLAH BLAH technobabble BLAH). Short version, the iPod was a late 80's Lamborghini, and the Archos was a Corolla. Yes, one look admittedly much nicer and sleeker, but it was would also be a mere footnote in the book 'Things to Waste Enormous Sums Of Money On With Laughable Durability' whereas the other car (with all the style of a pail of compost) could easily be passed down the generations until the Four Horsemen take a canter.

Sadly, one look around any bus stop will tell you who won that race. For nerds, it was an outrage. The iPod was inferior in every way: capacity, compatibility, battery life, price.

It was sexy though.

It often goes whistling by geek's heads that sometimes, the FORM IS the FUNCTION. Personal mp3 players were well, PERSONAL. They were mini-status symbols of coolness. You could carry around an Archos if you found external hard-drives particularly fetching, but otherwise you went for something sleek, that looked like it was forged in a crucible of pure Design and Hipster Cred. Which reduces your choices to Apple products or if I.M. Pei ever gets around to designing personal electronics.

In the end, we geeks can appreciate there is some sort of value in style. That, in some instances, our raw understanding of function is not the end all and be all of how useful things are. We can appreciate such ideas at a very abstract level; it won't stop us from wearing spaceship T-shirts and jeans.

Conference : Amenities

Thanks to Hysterical Bertha for the photo.

It's like the dot-bomb never happened. There were pool tables, foose-ball, bean bags, Really Cool Chair that look like they were made by Apple designers with too much free time and an advanced degree in plastics, free pop, juice, muffins, candy bins. It was a little overwhelming. At any moment I was expecting someone to walk by with a Pets.com shirt and start raving about his stock options.

At lunchtime, the conference provided the lunch, in three large rooms, one for Mexi-Cali, another for deli, and another for grill (burgers etc). The opulence of it all was pretty stunning, especially for me, coming from the public sector; where the only thing that's free are the stir sticks for the coffee you had to pay a quarter for.

The after party featured a band with enormous geek cred, "The Flight of the Concords". They sing songs of fantastic musical value about awkward park meetings, a future populated by ironic robots, and the tepid and routine love life of a couple that have been together for years. The crowd went as wild as crowd full of (mostly) hyper-intelligent geeks can get over loud lights and music.

The party room itself almost sent me into full cardiac arrest. They had free arcade cabinets, open bar (beer, wine, etc), sushi, sundae bar, thai food, pasta to order, Wiis setup with Wii Sports all loaded up.

It felt like it was 1999. Without Prince, of course.

Conference : People

Thanks to tamedblossom for the photo.

Maybe it's a function of them being Americans, but damnit if it wasn't quite a culture shock talking with random attendees. They all have that fire of ambition in them. All looking for the next startup, the next big deal. Even the average coder for a University Library, had a startup on the side. And here I was, just a 'regular' programmer, wanting to learn a technology for the company I was actually employed by.

I felt like I was a gentle cloud, drifting through, meeting large gas guzzling muscle cars, ON FIRE. Even the most average looking geek, if engaged, would start talking about the latest startup they were part of, and how they want to leverage their business to business synergies to create real value for the Web.

It was energizing, in a way. To be surrounded by so many blindingly bright people, all with a wealth of life experience, and a blazing future ahead of them. I just couldn't work up the passion to tell them how I hoped to make a user-friendly, stable system that was easy to maintain. To put it another way, I was Mary-Ann, surrounded by Gingers. To put it in a less creepy way, I was Toyota, surrounded by Ferraris, ON FIRE.