Gaming Execs Never Learn

So I’ve been working a lot of overtime on a title that my unnamed company wants to release soon. As is typical, the folks at the top don’t even have the design finished. But that’s not what I’m pissed about today.

I’ve been looking forward to this game. It is supposed to be the kind of mindless fun that non-gamers would enjoy, making it perfect for a professional gamer like me to play (since I’m sick and tired of playing games by the end of the day and just want a casual game experience). It’s also good for kids.

So, I’ve been playing the internal beta a lot, having a wonderful time. Then suddenly, a patch comes down out of nowhere (I work in a different city than the design team). Apparently, someone must have told the design team that I was having fun. Because they upped the difficulty level of everything in the game from “fun casual gaming experience” to “even the guys at Penny Arcade are going to find this so irritatingly difficult that they quit playing after five minutes”.

This is a game for children and casual gamers!  Are you trying to make children cry?  Or maybe you want them to find it so difficult that they stop paying for it every month?  Or maybe you just have no idea what you’re doing and are going to focus-group another game to death?

How is it that once you reach the top of the gaming industry you forget how to make games well and on time? Executives could learn a lot from the OCD of QA testers. Too bad they never ask us. And pay us shit for saving their asses. Meh.

Wake up, it’s 1984

So, I’ve been thinking on and off about this.  It’s 1984.  In a sense.

You see, one of the main features of Orwell’s book, in my opinion, is that the populace of the world he imagined seems to be fairly isolated from one another.  Which is understandable in that world, since anyone close to you could very likely “turn you in” to the authorities for any of the innumerable things that are illegal.

How is this like where we live today?  Well, the populace of America is fairly isolated.  Sure, we may have our little circle of friends or be close with the people with whom we work, but think in a larger sense.  How many of your neighbors do you know by name?  How many people do you know who could be trusted with your housekey?  Now think how many strangers you would “turn in” to save your own ass?  After all, they’re just faceless automatons, as far as your life is concerned…

I don’t think the reason for this isolation is the same as in Orwell’s fictional future/past.  I think TV and the internet may have a lot to do with it.  I also think that we don’t have a common thread to which we can all cling.  Nationalism is passe, so we don’t all group together as “Americans” anymore.  In fact, we are more fractious due to partisan politics, drastically opposed religions (and atheism), or any number of personal beliefs which place us in direct opposition to one group or another.  “We” have plenty of reasons to hate, fear, or just avoid “them”.

I don’t have a point.  I was just thinking about it in the car.  Oh, and I hate you.

Gygax Jones

For some reason, I have lately had a serious urge to play Dungeons and Dragons.  Not just a one-off battle or two with a pickup group at the local gaming shop, but a serious weekly campaign.  Something in which I can develop a complete character over time and exercise some problem-solving abilities.

I assume that part of this comes from a desire to socialize.  I find it very difficult to socialize with others, usually because I find socializing for its own sake boring and pointless.  And since I don’t drink, I can’t just go down to the watering hole and shoot the shit with some random assholes like I used to.  But with a common task at hand, such as a long-term D&D adventure, it’s easier for me justify it in my “there-must-be-a-goal” mind.

Another reason I have this particular desire is probably some sort of longing for the halcyon days of youth.  I haven’t played D&D for so long, it’s like a link to a forgotten past when life was happier.  I can remember playing with friends when I was 12, laughing at our own stupidity, poer-gaming and cheating whenever it suited us.  I definitely have different feelings about how the game should be played now, but the joy of being young and playing the game still lingers in my memory.

Let’s not forget that D&D is an excellent form of escapism.  When life is rough and the bills have to be paid, it’s nice to remember that at the table, you can be a true adventurer.  Video games accomplish this somewhat, as do other hobbies like playing guitar or writing (both of which I also engage in), but something about the pure fantasy of being someone else for a while - someone powerful and heroic – definitely satisfies a need somewhere deep in my core.

So, if you know of a decent group that could take another player in Austin, TX…  Let me know.  I need a lifeline here.

Ordinary Clueless People

It has come to my attention that average people are completely stupid.  I know, it’s hard to believe, but it appears to be true.

This morning I was listening to a local radio morning show here in Austin.  [Please keep in mind that Austin is supposed to be hip, cool, and forward-thinking - and that this is an "alternative" station, also supposed to be hip, cool, and forward-thinking.]  The radio hosts were having a nerd-off between one of their interns and a caller, with concert tickets the prize if the caller could be nerdier than the intern.

OK, I’m actually going to let it slide that they were making fun of nerds (geeks, freaks, whatever you want to call them).  Nerds and geeks are usually quite good at poking fun at themselves and they (we) are also aware of how ludicrous some of the things we enjoy might seem to others.  So they’re forgiven for the lack of sensitivity.  Gracious of me, no?

Here’s where they pissed me off:  The caller told the show’s hosts that she was into cosplay and the hosts had no idea what that was.  Really?  In the age on the internet, in the time of geek chic, these two clueless tools had to have cosplay explained to them.  Really?  Do you live in a box?  Have you been in a coma? 

All you have to do is read ONE news aggregate website of your choice, plus the user comment threads, to keep up with what’s happening in the world.  It only takes a few minutes a day and it’s not fucking hard – though I suspect the hosts may be illiterate, based on how much airtime they devote to the cultural barbarism that is known as sports and their daily consumption of alcohol.

I often wonder how clueless rejects like this are allowed to keep their jobs, let alone speak publically in front of a large audience.  I see this at my work, too.  The lazy, the moronic, the intellectual backwater hicks are somehow not only allowed to stay, but to advance to positions of importance. 

It’s enough to piss me right the hell off.  If you’re going to talk every day on the radio, at least try to keep up with what is actually going on right now in the wide world, not just the little sports-and-booze area you’re interested in.  You might gain a larger audience.  Tools.

The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

A lot of lessons can be learned from traffic.  Not the awesome ’70s jazz-rock band featuring Steve Winwood when he was still relatively cool; actual, literal, automobile traffic.  I’ve often thought this.  In my life, there has been a lot of opportunity to observe automobile traffic, usually while in the thick of it.

I hate traffic.  I hate it with gusto.  It’s irritating, infuriating, frustrating and many other -atings.  But once in a while, one can transcend the suck and suddenly become aware of a zen-like lesson that we are being taught by simply existing in the center of it, if only we were to notice.

Of course, one of the lessons is that a lot of people are complete morons, likely incapable of the basics of survival if the cushion of modern Western civilization were removed (especially Lexus drivers).  But I have gained deeper understanding of some higher concepts while driving.

I used to spend a lot of time on the highways.  I was raised in a rural area, which meant that we had to drive for at least a half hour before we encountered anything we needed (like school).  I also lived a very gypsy-like lifestyle in my early 20s.  It was somewhere out there, on the highways of America in a blizzard at night, that I zoned out and suddenly had a revelation about something that my Physics teacher had tried to teach me, but I was too busy thinking about tits.  In astrophysics, one can often determine the movements of objects that cannot be seen by the movements of objects one can see.  Scientists knew Pluto was out there before we actually found it because of the motions of the planets we were aware of.  I realized that the same was true on the highway.  I knew where the cars that I couldn’t see were located – and what they were likely doing – simply by observing the behavior of the cars that I was able to see.  It really brought the lesson home in a concrete way.  It was at that point that I realized there might be other things to learn about the greater universe simply by watching traffic.

Since then, I have learned things about life, philosophy, art, sociology, etc., during the rare moments when I stop being pissed off that I can’t see over all the damned tanks – er, SUVs – and allow myself to be teachable.  Am I alone in this or has anyone else had revelations in traffic?  Or maybe during some other mundane task of the modern world?

I need my morning coffee to make my morning coffee.

So this morning, I experienced part II of this phenomenon.  I got myself a coffee mug.  I filled it with water.  I opened the microwave (I use instant coffee).  I put the mug in the microwave.  I closed the door.  And I walked away.  A few minutes later I realized that some steps had yet to be completed, like turning the microwave on, etc.

Since I wasn’t blogging when part I occurred, I shall share that here as well.  I made myself my typical morning cup of instant coffee and sat down to read for a while until I woke up the rest of the way.  I thought the coffee seemed weak, though sweet enough.  After several sips, I thought it seemed very weak, so I decided I had erred somewhere and would dump it out and start over.  I dumped out what was actually a cup of hot sugar water.

Apparently, I require coffee before I can successfully make a cup of coffee.

Let Me Entertain Me

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the gaming industry.  Mostly because I work there, but in an essentially ineffectual position, so I get to ponder a lot of what’s going on but don’t really get to make any kind of impact.

The industry, as I see it, reminds me in a lot of ways of the early days of the film industry.  We’re still building the basic technology, still experimenting with what can be done with the media, and it seems there are still new stories to be told.  From an artistic standpoint, we’ve got lots of wiggle room yet, and that’s a very good thing. 

In addition to aesthetics and technology, the gaming industry is a lot like the early film industry in that the infrastructure has yet to be completely established.  There is no centralized location for people who want to make games to congregate, as in L.A. for the film industry.  There are no laws regulating industry practices, no permits to be obtained from the local government, and no unions.  That’s right, no unions.  That means nobody protecting the “little guys” that are necessary to the process.

Before I continue, I think I should say a few things about unions in general.  I’m not typically a fan of the modern labor union.  Labor unions began as a means to stop workers from getting hurt, keep people employed, and to ensure that people got paid fairly for the work they did.  I respect that.  We can’t have a few bullies running everything and treating everyone like peons with no recourse.  That’s just economic feudalism.  Unions formed in the early and mid 1900s – the film industry included – as a means for many little players with similar needs to act as one big player in the market.  That’s cool.  Unions today, however, seem to be existing merely to keep themselves in existence.  With the basic rights of the workers in question now supported, there’s little for the unions to do besides nitpick on minor contract details.  They need to continue to exist, lest the basic rights be stripped away once again, but with a lack of meaty issues to bite down on, they have begun to split hairs.  I guess they must be bored.

That said, it may be time for unions in the gaming industry.  Several years ago, there was some media hubbub about the way that EA treated its employees.  Salaried employees asked to work absurd hours with no overtime pay, specifically.  This is exactly the kind of thing that a union is designed to prevent.  Currently, the industry operates with a lot of temp workers in the “lowest” positions.  These temp workers are asked to work incredible hours, for little pay (though overtime pay exists, since they are hourly employees), with no benefits whatsoever.  These positions are essential, and there are plenty of people willing to take these positions as a means of “paying their dues” to get a better position in the industry.

This post is already longer than I had expected (and has veered from the original topic about which I intended to write), so I think I’ll wrap up here.  I could go on for hours, playing Devil’s advocate with myself and weighing the pros and cons of the way the industry treats its lower-echelon employees, but I’ll leave it without resolution.  What thinks thee?  Is this the way it shouldbe?  Is the industry – which mostly prides itself as being progressive and forward-thinking - operating fairly?  Or are they falling back on pre-industrial age models in order to extend the profit margin? (Is falling back on those models necessary to ensure that the industry’s foundation is secured?)  Hmm.

PS – It’s too early in the morning to be genuinely angry.  I’ll try to summon some rage for later today.

Who am I?

“Who am I?” may be the defining question of my generation.  With myriad options available and the insane levels of freedom we have to just “be ourselves”, it is often very confusing just trying to figure out who we actually are.

I can think of any number of people I have wanted to be – even attempted to be – but always come back to the simple fact that we are what we do.  What we think about ourselves or tell others about ourselves is immaterial, as the core of who we are is represented by our actions.

None of this actually tells you much about me, except that I think too much and tend to use twenty-five words where five would have been enough.

So who am I?  Basically, I’m a fairly good example of an over-educated, under-socialized, slightly misanthropic video game QA tester from Austin, TX.  I have been an artist, a poet, a musician, a gamer, a nerd, an alcoholic, and a member of any number of subcultures.  I have wasted a lot of time trying to be “cool”.  I am now trying my hand at writing, so I need a public forum in which to do so, that I may receive the petty insults of others in an effort to improve my skill via inane criticism.

Keep one thing in mind as you read what is here:  This blog is not being written for you.