Hiro Antagonist

Forsaking IT

2010-03-05T00:50:24Z

To make a long story short, I've been interested in making video games for a living for most of my college years. I've done it extensively in the past as a hobby. After graduating from college into the worst job market in decades, game dev jobs, rare at the best of times, were non-existent.

Rather than go to insane lengths to get an industry job when no one was hiring entry level designers and remain unemployed for who knows how long, I did the sane thing and got a job in the IT industry.

It's a decent career, and I'm skilled at it, but at the end of the day, it's just a job. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I'm passionate about. It's rare that we find jobs doing what we're passionate about - the realities of keeping a roof over one's head and food on the table and supporting a family tend to take priority when it comes to what we do for a living.

After graduating and going to the Ausin GDC and finding a ghost town, and nary a job, despite having a top-notch portfolio, I became a little bitter.

Aside from being a career doing what I love to do, there's little to recommend about being a game dev. Low pay, long and sometimes insane hours, and little job security tend to make a decent paying, secure IT job with 8-5 business hours look pretty good.

Said bitter period seems to have ended after about six months. It's a good job, incredible co-workers, but I feel like I'd go nuts if I did this for 10 years.

I suppose the future brings what luck, circumstances and personal motivations allow.

76 ways to fold a pocket square? Holy fsck!

2010-02-18T07:55:52Z

I work in the IT field, and recently the directive came down from above that people in the IT department need to start wearing dress shirts (keep in mind that the standard IT uniform is slacks and a polo shirt).

The first few days it was just as a joke in one-upmanship, a sort of 'well, the higher ups can start wearing dress shirts, and I will too, I'll just go all out with it'.

After a few days of numerous compliments, everyone I didn't know calling me 'sir', etc, the whole dressing up thing started to grow on me.

So now this is what I look like every day going into work (usually a boutonniere/flower in my lapel also, though not in this pic of me):

And upon actually starting to use pocket squares and researching how to fold them, I found this - holy fsck! I had no *idea* that 76 different ways to fold one of these things actually existed:

When you're focused...

2010-02-12T09:27:09Z

Bipolar disorder, much like the name implies, tends to have its positive effects and negative effects. For me, far more negative than positive, thus why I see it as a curse rather than a blessing or anything akin to that. Of course, wandering around for two years with food tasting like ash, being terminally depressed, hating everything, best friends, yourself most of all, your soul feeling like a black pit and generally feeling that you're living in hell on earth might tend to influence my view.

Nowadays, thanks to the wonders of modern medication, I rarely, if ever experience the negative side. Or the positive side that often either, but given how very, very bad the negative side was, it's not something I spend a lot of time regretting.

One of the positive effects is the ability, at times, to focus on things to an amazing degree. I'm talking 'work on the same thing for 8-10 hours without stopping' focused. Having to eat or use the restroom is incredibly annoying, and you get through both as quickly as possible to get back to... Whatever it was that caught your attention.

In certain areas and occupations, this is incredibly useful.

One of the downsides that accompanies this for me is when all that energy has been poured out, I'm exhausted, both physically and mentally. And when I'm tired and my brain is tired, thoughts tend to... Well, repeat.

"Where did I put the butter dish?"

A split second after that thought;

"Where did I put the butter dish?"

I already realized where I put it, and am heading to grab it, mind you, but the same thought comes back, even after the problem it presented has been solved. If you have a question in your mind, and you arrive at a satisfactory answer, in the normal course of things, the question doesn't pop into your head again.

It's like an echo, almost. Except when un-medicated, worn out, low on sleep, stressed out, it can get bad. Really bad. So bad that I would turn on loud music to drown it out, and I couldn't hear the music over the sound of my own thinking, just the same thing over and over just the same thing just the same thing just the same thing just the same thing just the same thing...

Well, you get the idea. These days, a minute or two of it is pretty frustrating. And that's at a normal 'volume', for lack of a better word. Imagine that going on non-stop for hours on end. And it's so subjectively loud that you can barely notice a boombox playing loud rock music five feet away.

So yes, for every delightful positive, a nasty negative. More negatives than positives for me, in my case (most cases are not exactly alike and differ in severity and particular symptoms suffered).

Just something to add for everyone out there who has no idea what bipolar disorder is like, or would like to better understand someone they know who suffers from it.

Religion

2010-02-07T09:21:35Z

Religion is a funny thing.

Among those who take some measure of pride in their intellect, religion is often considered to be something foolish. After all, it's belief in something you can't prove or demonstrate the existence of. Might as well believe in pink elephants while you're at it.

Humans are inherently spiritual, and seem to always seek a god of some sort, something greater than they are, or something that is less flawed than humanity is.

I was raised Roman Catholic, lots of tradition and history there. When surrounded by those who believed in the same thing, it was easy. Heck, even surrounded by people who believed in an entirely different god, or one similar enough save a few details that people tend to kill each other over, it was still easy enough.

After all, they believed in something.

I'm not sure I do anymore. Not atheism of any stripe - having a firm belief in the absence of a deity of any sort without being able to definitively prove it strikes me as being no different than having a firm belief in anything else you can't concretely prove.

Agnosticism, I suppose.

I just don't feel the presence of God any more. As time goes by, the understanding that I can't prove to myself that God exists in any fashion that would give support to believing in God, the farther I feel I am from my religious roots.

See, there's this argument in Catholicism that God doesn't want to provide humans with direct proof that He exists, basically because it doesn't take any work or risk to have faith in something you know for certain exists. So for faith to be worth something, the less certain you are God exists, the more it's worth. Or something along those lines.

Perhaps you see the inherent problem here.

You see, before, I felt something. I didn't believe in God on the basis of nothing at all. At some point in the last year or two, that feeling began to vanish. It'd been around for 26-27 odd years, mind you, so this was unusual.

For a while, I assumed it'd come back, and I went through the motions of being a Roman Catholic. However, time passed, and I began to feel like a hypocrite for going to Mass and saying I believed in something when more and more, I really didn't.

So I stopped going.

Nothing terrible happened. Nothing changed. Wish it would have, really.

Honestly, I'd prefer to live in a universe with the God that Roman Catholics worship. For all the things that humans don't like about Him, he's pretty decent. And the things they don't like about Him tend to be things that have a pretty basic explanation - everything people don't like God for is on the basis of God being a human being.

See, if a human being did the things God did sometimes, or ordered the universe as God did, well, that human would be a bit of an asshole and a little bit sociopathic. Only God isn't a human. Humans might be made in His image, but human He ain't. If you were omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent and the universe simply existed because you desired that it exist, you'd find yourself doing things the same way. I'd put good money on it.

So for all the things people have called the God of Christians a lousy God for, I don't have a problem with. Well, save for the one where you can't prove He exists.

I'm trading in my Roman Catholic hat for an Agnostic hat until I can prove to my own satisfaction that God exists.

I'd like to say that I have faith that I will at some point in the future. The scary thing is that I really don't know if I will or not.

Legion: Angels vs Automatic Weapons - Guess Which Wins?

2010-01-28T05:16:25Z

Who screams for ice cream? I DO!!

The trailer looked interesting, I'll give it that. The premise made me shake my head though. God decides humanity has to go. Only 6 people with a trunk full of automatic weapons stand against the full might of the Almighty.

So they're cinders at the end, right? Nope. Nooo, nooo nooo. No sir. Not at all.

As it turns out, angels are pretty vulnerable to bullets. And most of all, headlocks! Seriously, you can darn near kill an angel with a headlock! True ~~story~~ film bro!

So. God has had it with Man. That God you heard about who destroyed cities with angels? Well, apparently God is all out of those guys. Michael the Arch Angel has decided he doesn't care for God's new plan of action. He falls to earth, cuts off his wings, grabs a ton of guns and heads out on the road.

Out in the middle nowhere, with a dollop of desert scenery, six ~~decent actors~~ humans with completely boring stories, flaws, and unexplainable motives are in a diner. One of them is pregnant.

How? You never find out. Why? You never find out. Another ("Jeep", Lucas Black) follows the pregnant one ("Charlie", Adrianne Palicki) like a lost puppy dog. Why? Visions, apparently.

In what must be one of the worst "C'mon, doing this for the paycheck, remember, doing this for the paycheck" career moves Dennis Quaid ("Bob Hanson") has ever made (and he's made some bad ones, so this took some doing), Quaid is forced to play one of the most hackneyed dim-witted country-folk cliches you've ever seen. Nice guy, but every time he moves on screen, says anything - you just shudder.

Charles S. Dutton ("Percy Walker") plays a very under-utilized role as the diner's cook. A noble, caring soul who never seems to have any explanation for any of his motives, actions or dialog.

Paul Bettany play perhaps the most aesthetic, thin-figured version of the Arch Angel Michael ever seen on this earth. Another good actor with terrible, terrible dialog, motivations... Well, everything, really. Much like all the other decent actors, all of the blame lies in the director's staggeringly incompetent hands.

Seriously - from what you hear of the Arch Angel Michael, you get the impression that he invented ass-kicking. If you could imagine someone that'd put Rambo and any role ever played by Schwarzenegger to shame, you'd be blinking at Bettany as he goes through the motions onscreen.

All the other angels don't have names (cannon fodder, of course), save Gabriel, who is played by Kevin Durand with hit-and-miss acting that's almost entirely composed of 'miss'. He wields the most amazing Ginzu Dewalt Swiss Army mace you've ever seen. Seriously, every time you think you've seen the most ridiculous thing it could possibly do, it tops it.

They battle hordes of humans possessed by angels (no, really) in your standard cliched zombie / horror movie style, and only Gabriel gives them a hard time. But he's incredibly vulnerable to headlocks as it turns out, so at the end, all is well.

AND YOU DON'T KNOW HOW OR WHY ANY OF THIS HAPPENED!

So. so, so, so bad.

Summary: Nice visual effects. Good actors. Good scares. Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, plot, story, directing, dialog... Everything else - just terrible.

This is the movie Uwe Boll turned down. UWE BOLL. The worst director in existence! Well, he has some serious competition now.

Don't pay to see this. Please.

Corporations: We'd like to openly buy politicians. US Supreme Court: Sounds like free speech to me!

2010-01-22T06:02:30Z

In a stunning display of ~~common sense~~ idiocy, the US Supreme Court has decided to allow corporations to buy politicians openly.

There's a smart guy, David M. Walker, former head of the US General Accountability Office (info) who said today (paraphrased) "If you want to limit corruption, don't allow campaign donations from anyone who isn't an eligible voter in the district of the person being elected."

This would limit the influence of someone's money to the amount of money one individual has. There's not many Bill Gates' out there, so this means that influence couldn't be bought by vast sums of cash, paid by corporations who want politicians to make laws that give them a financial advantage.

The US Supreme Court stated today that corporations can give unlimited amounts of money to politicians.

You see where this might be a bad idea?

Right. So an ad was produced by a group, with group funds. Only at the time, the law stated that ads that were paid for by group / corporate / union funds and not individuals, or regulated political action committees (PAC's) weren't allowed 30 days before an election. Fairly sensible. Could be better, but fairly sensible.

Today, the US Supreme Court says 'Well, saying someone can't make an ad is censorship. And that impinges on the right to free speech. The right to free speech is the first amendment in the US Bill of Rights, and a sacred law if there ever was one. So having a law that causes censorship is wrong.'

This was the sane part.

US Supreme Court goes on to say 'Soooo... Instead of just saying 'It's legal for anyone and any entity to say whatever they like about a politician, at any time', they say 'Corporations can give unlimited amounts of money to politicians'.

What.

The.

Fuck????????????????????????????????

Seriously, how did 5 out of 9 Supreme Court judges think 'I'm sure this won't be abused or lead to massive corruption!'

The other 4 said 'This is a baaaaad idea'. But sadly, you only need 5 out of 9 Supreme Court judges to make monumental legal decrees and laws. Monumentally irresponsible, foolish, insane, idiotic, naive legal decrees and laws too, as it turns out.

If this law isn't changed, we're so fucked as a nation. Corruption is probably the most fatal thing that can happen to a government. Look at Mexico and the way that the government can do nothing to stop whatever the drug cartels want to do. Look at any third world nation where you can buy an official.

Law will no longer serve the citizen, protect the citizen, forbid the government to interfere with what the citizen has a right to. It will serve the entity with the most money. And that entity will have its best interests in mind. If yours happen to conflict, you're fucked.

Want to pay what it costs for pharmaceutical companies to research, make and sell medication? Or do you want to pay 1,000 to 10,000 times what it cost them to make that drug?

Guess who has *boatloads* of money? Guess what you'll end up paying?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It can get much, much, much worse (^{see: Mexico}).

I just hope that this won't stand for long. I wouldn't put betting money on it being repealed though.

Video Game Devs Rush to Fall On Their Swords; Desire Seen Laughing Common Sense Out of Door

2010-01-15T08:29:08Z

News of late that's been sweeping the video game development world is the outbreak of another 'EA Spouse' event, RockstarSpouse, in this case.

Synopsis: Rockstar San Diego, creator of games like 'Midnight Club' mistreats employees, asking them to work long hours for no overtime under high stress, to the point of making some literally suicidal. Promise rewards, bonuses, etc, as compensation and then never delivers them.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. In fact, it's commonplace.

For those of you not well acquainted with the video game development world, I'll answer your immediate 'What the fuck?'

See, the game dev industry is popular. Really, really, really popular. 250 applicants for every opening popular. Every kid that's grown up in the last few decades thinks video games are the coolest thing in the world. So you have a serious glut of people who want to work in an industry that is small and doesn't scale in relation to available talent.

For every person that protests sweatshop working conditions, there's an idiot out there that will literally do their job for free. No, I'm not pulling your leg. And for those, there's ten times as many who will do it and not demand to be paid for their work up front, or by the hour, or on any reasonable basis that's become commonplace in the corporate world.

Not only will they work for little or nothing, they'll work insane 80 hour weeks for 3/4ths the year or more. That grinds human beings up like a leg of lamb in an industrial meat grinder.

So who's to blame when you have a vast number of people who will gladly rush to fall on their own swords - nay, race *each other* to fall on their swords?

I'm not really certain. Primarily the lack of labor laws that affect that field, secondarily the people who put up with the BS because the job is seen as being so desirable, and lastly, the companies that put obscene practices like this into place.

To the three categories of people above, I hate all you fuckers. The one industry that has jobs I find fun and fulfilling, you had to go and ruin. There's days I'm embarrassed to admit I'm a 'creative', because of the vast collective stupidity shown off situations like this. Maybe we'd be better off if you all discovered your inner bastards.

Sucked In by the Computer

2010-01-04T15:56:51Z

Time seems to go by so quickly. Are the days really shorter? I sit down after work, look at the computer, next thing I know, it's midnight and I head off to sleep. Where'd the evening go?

I think I've figured it out - time, at least our experience of it, is subjective. When it comes to surfing the web and playing video games, there is no indication of time passing. It's just one giant 'now' that never ends. Until you realize you've just spent 4 hours staring at a computer screen.

Not that the time spent wasn't worth it, just that it seems like your free time was only a split-second compared to the rest of the day's drudgery. And you end up feeling shortchanged and upset for reasons you can't quite put into words. It's like your day, the time you have to yourself, has just vanished. And it pulls that vanishing act off every night.

Enough nights like that in a row, and it's going to have a negative impact.

I think I'll try doing something else that isn't staring into a screen whenever I start feeling like I have no free time. It's not that I don't, it's just that my caveman brain hasn't caught up with the future - time passing in a dream world, or inside a computer screen, doesn't make any sense to it.

Consciousness is a funny thing, bootstrapped on 6 million years worth of accumulated biological hardwiring. Sometimes it suffers from Futureshock:

A Glorious Dawn

2009-12-28T07:27:22Z

Whenever I'm feeling down, this makes me feel better.

So that's why prohibition only makes it worse...

2009-12-09T07:49:47Z

In a recent BBC interview, the person explained why a prohibition only makes it worse.

Cracking down on a drug makes the risk increase. An increase in risk makes the price rise. The more the price rises, the more lucrative it is to expand production. The more money is involved, the more risks people will take.

Basically a nasty, ever-increasing feedback loop.

This very simplified, half-asleep post brought to you by Logic and Common Sense, proud sponsors of... Nothing related to the War on Drugs.

*personal disclaimer: I really could care less about drugs. But the use of disproportionate force really bothers me.

"Justice", in the sense of the philosophical concept, or understanding, implies that the response to a transgression is to the same degree as the transgression itself.

In other words, if a person jaywalks, you don't chop off their legs.

Short fiction

2009-11-27T09:15:08Z

An off-the-cuff scene:

"Don't fuck with the gods? Guess what. You're stuck on dry land in a
dark alley in a nasty neighborhood in NYC. What are you going to do
now?"

"You forgot something little man... You're on an island" he said smiling.

"Is that... A train?"

As the ground shook, the sound of a single train off in the distance
grew to a roar of a million trains thundering down on them. The
ear-splitting noise of buildings and concrete being crushed in by an
implacable force beyond imagination was drowned out by the deafening
roar of water, so loud that it became incomprehensible as a sound.

The waves rushed in with terrible fury and all the concrete and steel
around them became as nothing more than tissue paper in the wake of an
avalanche thundering into a valley.

As they receded, he stood there completely dry in front of something
so mangled that it was hard to guess what it could of been, if it
hadn't been for all the blood now mutely staining the wet ground
around it,

"I told you little man. Don't fuck with the gods."

As he walked away, the city lay in utter ruin.

When You're Up...

2009-11-23T11:54:07Z

Whenever I try to describe to others how bipolar disorder affects me, I think often of my father. Upon being diagnosed, and even years later, he was continually surprised. "You don't look ill! You seem just fine!"

The same sort of exclamation was often received from others. And in time, I realized that the vast majority of it was only evident to me, an internal whirlwind or constant horror obvious to no one else, even those who lived with me. The symptoms are often chalked up to the normal variances of human behavior, until the person is clearly acting insane on a regular basis.

I suspect many people with bipolar disorder felt the same compulsion I did, to act as though everything was normal, nothing was wrong. And to be honest, people treat you differently when they know. So I don't tell most people. And thanks to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, they never know.

It's my father who made me want to write about it though. It's hard to understand something when it is rarely talked about, and even more rarely described in understandable terms by those that suffer from it.

For me, the coin is weighted heavily towards the depressed side, so I never become manic enough to be clearly off my rocker to others. When it all started, and when it was at its worst, I really wish I had, because then someone would have realized something was wrong a lot sooner. As it was, I spent three years living in hell on earth.

When you're up, or on the manic side of the cycle, it's like the difference from just having woken up, the world being groggy and people having to say things twice for them to make sense, and being fully awake in the middle of the day.

Things are easier to understand, connections easier to make. You're still you, just that every cylinder is firing perfectly at full efficiency. Sometimes they fire too fast, and that's when you start acting in a manner that makes others around you think 'This person is a bit crazy'. Neurons seem to serve thinking best when they're not overwhelmed by activity. Thoughts need some time to come to a conclusion, and when they're interrupted by another thought, and that one by another, your brain just spazzes out.

It's addictive. This is why many bipolar people decry medication. It deadens that incredible high along with evening out the incredible lows. Everything is simply better. Food tastes better, people are more interesting, you enjoy things more. Simply put, everything good in life is more so, to an almost unbearable extreme. If I could bottle the stuff, it'd wipe out the market for euphoric drugs in a day.

Outwardly, it doesn't look any different to others. The person might be more interested in going out and being social than usual, or more talkative than the norm, but that's about it.

Nobody, save those that suffer from it, seem to understand in the least what it's like. Figured I'd try to describe it a bit. Who can know what nobody talks about?

Ruin Porn

2009-11-06T05:43:45Z

Maybe it's just because ruin porn is so incredibly popular that I hate it so.

In the 1700's when people lived in shabby huts, they painted shinning edifices. In the 2000's when people all live in shining edifices, they photograph shabby huts. Go figure.

Selling my awesome Domo Kun costume (north Dallas)

2009-10-25T23:40:26Z

I'm selling my Domo Kun costume from last year, it was an absolute blast to wear - tons of people asking for photos, hugs from every cute girl in sight and the sound of people's jaws dropping when I'd walk into a party :D

Very high quality plush fur trousers w/ suspenders, detachable arms and body. This took an amazing amount of labor to make, and it's very well crafted and durable. The body is constructed from foam panels with a plush covering that has teeth and eyes sewn on, and a lightweight frame. The costume is quite comfortable to wear, and light enough that you won't mind wearing it the entire night. The large mouth on the costume also means that eating and drinking isn't a problem, which is really nice on a costume this elaborate. Should fit anyone from 5'5" to 6'6".

Pass this on to anyone you know who might be interested!

"Human Nature" or "I've Been Around Computers for Too Fucking Long"

2009-10-23T08:48:59Z

Some things are so easy to fix. Others... Not so much.

When it comes to machines, mechanisms, computers - it's rare that it's something I can't fix. When it comes to people? It seems to be pretty much the opposite.

Maybe I've gotten too used to being able to fix broken things, become ensconced in the world where I literally can make everything better, or at least make it into something that makes people happy. I like that last one a lot.

Thought about working on people instead of computers early on in college. Despaired over the understanding that you never can make them as good as new, and they break down sooner than later. Contemplated trying to fix people's heads for an even briefer period, came to an unpleasant realization that I do my best not think of.

Habits can change. People, not so much.

If their problems stem from human nature rather than a nasty bacteria that shouldn't be there, there's not a damn thing you can do. Between genetics and environment, we seem to have been given a permanent stamp that we can't erase, rub out or alter to save our lives. Literally, some times.

I see things that I know can be different, can be better. But in all honesty, they never will be. Whatever the people two thousand years from now will be like, I can guarantee that they will still murder, steal, lie, cheat and in general, be unsavory little bastards in many respects. And I'm giving good odds that they won't have flying cars either :/

We might not be able to change who we are, but what we can do is work with it, not against it. Tiger Woods may be an undisputed master when it comes to hitting a small white spheroid a long distance accurately under challenging conditions, but when his water heater explodes, he calls a plumber. It doesn't make sense to try and be an expert at everything. Aside from being impossible, it's a waste of time. Everyone is good at a few things, better at them than they are in comparison to others. Wrangle those and harness them to get where you need to go, and don't sweat the rest.

I can't fix people. People can't even fix themselves.

Human beings are incredible when it comes to adapting though, finding what works best and then exploiting that as much as they can. And that's a good thing. Actually, that's a great thing.

The rest? That lack of perfection, or having faults you wish you could fix? Fuck that shit. Don't bother with it.

Time is finite. Do the best you can with it. Don't waste it trying to change what can't be. Just go out and do.

Suburbia

2009-10-09T06:14:15Z

I'm not quite certain why I hate suburbia so. It's certainly fashionable to do so these days, though usually that's enough to make me stop doing something right there.

Fashionable or not, there is just sort of a soul-rending feeling that 'Suburbia' with a capital 'S' gives me. Communities should grow and accrete in an organic fashion. Rows of identical houses that spring up overnight, same size plot, same size lawn, same size family - these things disturb me. It's certainly artificial enough to land well within the realm of the uncanny valley, and perhaps that's at the heart of it.

I grew up in an old city, a little over 200 years of age. Which in America makes it the equivalent of growing up right next to the pyramids at Giza. That has a certain psychological effect on a human. What you take to be natural are streets the width of two horse-drawn carriages. And alleys the width of one. Every alley is that width. You don't know why till much later, but in my mind, it's the proper width for an alley to this day still.

Save in the downtown area, streets aren't in terribly exact grids. Or as is the fashion these days, gently rounding curves that only have one tie to reality - the turning radius of a car. The houses and avenues follow the land, more than the land being shaped so every yard has the same exact slope, and the streets are so level you could teleport from one road to the one furthest away in the neighborhood and not stumble as you set your foot down.

With such an incredibly artificial environment as the one presented by Suburbia, you start to have doubts about the sort of people who'd willingly live there - are they just as artificial as the 'neighborhood'? In all honesty, they're probably not - a safe place to live for a decent price, not far from work. The rest doesn't matter terribly much to them, I suspect. Whatever terrors besiege them in the night, the artificiality of their neighborhood isn't one of them.

Lucky bastards.

How to Kick Ass at FPS's

2009-09-07T14:22:58Z

"Actually, raw reaction time, which doesn't even change too much between 20 and 30, is not the primary element of skill at first person shooters. I've looked at the raw reaction time (i.e. click your mouse when you see a light turn on) of many gamers, some who absolutely dominate me and some at or below my level, and there was no real correlation between that reaction time and skill. From what I've gathered, I've determined that skill at FPS games is more a function of experience and training rather than raw reaction time.

The basic categories that set an elite gamer apart from an average or newbie gamer go something like this:

Predicting your opponent and being unpredictable yourself: Knowing where your opponent is going to be, and acting in a manner that your opponent can't predict. If you can put your crosshair where you know your enemy is going to be, and he can't do the same, you're going to win even if he has better raw reaction time than you. This is a function of experience with the game.

Decision making: Evaluating the importance of the various high-level goals in the game, deciding which ones to prioritize, and acting on that decision. Making better decisions, making them faster. Again, a function of experience with the game.

Aiming skill: If an enemy appears on your screen away from your crosshair, how quickly and accurately you can move your mouse to put the crosshair over him. This is a function of training, learning exactly how much mouse movement corresponds to how much movement on screen, and being able to precisely produce that movement with your hand. This is often confused for reaction time when watching people play, but really, the reaction time component is only in seeing the enemy and deciding to shoot him. The rest is muscle memory.

This is where input lag really hurts, it's very very important that your field of view appears to correspond to your mouse movements with absolutely no lag. Console games don't suffer from this because aiming with console controllers is far less precise than using a mouse, so the input lag "hides" behind the imprecision of the joystick. When the game meets the PC where people are using mice, the lag between moving your mouse and your on screen view changing becomes perceptible.

Movement skill: The ability to manipulate your controls to allow you to travel faster. Not just finding the most efficient routes, but being able to use quirks in the game's movement code to give yourself more velocity. Another function of training, getting the control inputs just right can be difficult to master.

Teamwork: In team-based games, communication, chemistry, planning, and effective group decision making."
-sahonen

Austin GDC - Zomg, Like a Girl Going to a Ball

2009-09-02T13:44:47Z

^not me, but in the field I wish to be paid for working in

So I'm volunteering again at the Austin Game Developer's Conference. Last year was a blast, and the only frustration at the time was having to finish another year of school, thus being unable to take anyone up on job offers.

YAY! GRADUATED!

Now comes the hard part.

Lessons learned from last year:

1. Be in a position to be able to take a job. (check)

2. How ever many business cards you brought with you, it's not enough (working on that)
2.1. Try to make the business card visually interesting and a bit informative. (working on that)
2.2. It's just an excuse to get their card anyway - yay social rituals!

3. Have work to show (almost done)
3.1. Have an easy way to show people your work (hmmm...)
3.2. Have a website (halway mocked up so far)

So, those of you with experience in this area, please comment with advice.

I'm contemplating bringing my laptop with me, and putting the video footage of my level design on that, and designing a visually interesting card and getting like... 250 copies of it. I'm not sure if lugging the laptop around with me everywhere is the best idea though...

Thoughts?

Quote of the Day

2009-09-01T08:19:34Z

"Software development is a lot like a having a baby. 1 woman, 9 months = 1 baby. You can't add 8 more women to the equation and get a baby in one month."

Gamer Girrrrls

2009-08-28T09:08:09Z

Why, did you think they all looked like this?

To be fair, the stereotype of the fat nerd isn't true when it comes to gamers - they're more underweight than over (QuakeCon, a 3,000 person LAN party was filled with 25-30 skinny guys for every chubby fellow).

But what of the stereotype of the female gamer?

From personal experience, I'm not at all surprised that 40% of the people that play video games are female. Back in the 80's as a kid, that would have been odd, but as games became more complex, they picked up a bigger audience. Especially sims, the Sims, if you will.

I'm at odds with how I feel to female gamers. Half the time I wish I'd never heard them on the mic, because all of the sudden prejudices rush in and I don't think of them the same way any more. Gamers that sound younger than 14 also do this to me.

I play competitive, twitchy games. I've got a knack for them and the obsessive mindset to practice them far past when most sane people would stopped playing. During tournaments, I'll put in as much as 75 hours a week. No classes helps, of course.

I don't mind people that casually play twitchy games - they're playing to have a relaxing good time. Perfectly legitimate pursuit. Sane, even. I'm also playing to have a good time, though more for being the best at something than anything else.

So I find myself resenting female gamers (the ones that play twitchy FPS games, that is). Which is frustrating, because intellectually I'm all for people being all equally meritable.

When it's not silent frustration over every other male around me drooling to do things for them, it's over how easily they give up. And emote. "Oh My GOD! Did you see that? Gosh I hate this game! Stupid [insert whatever here]!"

There's these male reflexes that leap to say 'shut the fuck up kid, get your head in the game or get out'. But that's what I'd say to a younger guy who didn't know better. The odds are they'd shutup and work harder, or quit. Doesn't seem like a productive strategy for female gamers though. Just grit teeth and say 'yeah, we'll do X next time and things will work out' or 'yeah, you've just got to do Y, don't sweat it, you'll get it next time'.

I hate myself for feeling like this. Both in that I feel I have to act a certain way, coddle people, and that I feel like a female gamer won't take the game as seriously as her male counterparts and just give up when it gets tough. Or give up a lot easier than a male would.

To be honest, games are entertainment. If you're not entertained, there's a failure somewhere and the odds are that it's not you. If someone has a low frustration threshold and doesn't place significant import on a game, all said and done, that has little play on games as a whole.

Gaming is also a social exercise though, and interacting with people is part of it. Where should you expect others to live up to, and what is too much to ask?

I'm not certain that any of us know.

Cliche'd Movie Cliches

2009-08-25T15:46:45Z

On James Cameron's 'Avatar':

"While I'm very interested in watching the movie, at this point Avatar looks like it's going to feature the same old contrived storyline featured in sci-fi over the last decade: humanity and industrialization are evil and nature and those connected to it are good. There's been this tendency to depict humans are awful, uncaring monsters."
-MaWeiTao

What I want to see is a movie where the earth is invaded by cruel and uncaring hyper-industrialized aliens with advanced technology that manages to replicate all sorts of human tools and machines yet not out-do any of them, where caring humans teach the invading aliens about the wonders of living with nature, or pull off a reverse of the European colonization of the Americas.

Executive Bonuses

2009-08-24T11:11:36Z

Executive bonuses are something of a political hot-button these days. The thing is, a lot of talking is done, but nothing changes. Nor will it change. Even though the pointless greed is abhorrent to most folks, those in a position to change this sort of thing seem to see it as a cost of doing business.

And as long as that stands, as long as companies *can* pay giant severance packages and ludicrous bonuses far out of seeming proportion to what is deserved, they *will* pay them.

Sure, it's despicable in many cases. A lot of things are despicable though, and little is done about most of those things. Things only change when people are directly affected, or there is large amounts of political capital and will to make a change available.

None of these three conditions have been met, as far as I can tell. The average Joe might be pissed off about it, but it's not like it affects him as much as the price of gas does. If something doesn't directly affect people, it's pretty rare anything gets done.

Even if it doesn't make sound economic sense, that doesn't mean that there's any particular reason it won't happen. The business world really doesn't act on sound economic premises - perfect knowledge doesn't exist. And when decisions are made with an imperfect understanding, don't expect the logical thing to happen.

Business is more of a study in 'how badly can people run things before it implodes?' From first-hand experience, pretttttty badly.

I expect abhorrent bonuses and the like to be around for a long time to come.

What is human life worth?

2009-08-18T11:54:01Z

Something that's bothered me for a while has been the difference between what we say and what our actions say.

To be more specific, that we say human life is worth so much. There's this meme going through society that says that human life is the most precious thing in the universe, or darn close to it. But on the whole, the actions of humanity imply that human life is worth very little.

We fight, murder, kill, commit suicide, take fatal risks at times, etc. If human life is so precious, why do our actions say that it's only worth how convenient it happens to be at the moment?

Why are we willing to die for *anything*? Why are we 'willing to die' to begin with? I won't pretend that the barrel of a gun can't change things. But it would be foolish to say that the only viable means of effecting change is with the barrel of a gun, or at the price of someone's life.

Aside from willing to end the lives of others, we are almost just as willing to end our own to further whatever cause we believe in the most at the moment.

Something is seriously fucked up here. Wish I knew how to fix it.

Mmmm... Injustice

2009-08-11T21:12:44Z

"A great deal of consumer relations in big business nowadays boils down to this Frederick Douglas quote:

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

So. True.

Note to self - when becoming evil dictator and taking over the earth, have polling firm determine this value on a per-city basis.

More Billy Mays

2009-08-08T19:33:02Z