• 26Aug 08

  Berkeley comes home

  Saturday morning we picked up our bulldog from the breeder at the vet and brought him home. He's a super cute pup, though a bit whiny. After three days he's starting to get the hang of sleeping through the night, and he is really taking to the potty training thing; he's only had one accident. As promised, here are a few pictures and a video of his first weekend home.

  

  

  

  

  He likes to sleep on his back. I think he looks like a French bulldog when he is upside down. Also, notice my wife's hilarious fat unicorn shirt.

  

  For some reason the stupid video page isn't giving me an embed code so I'll just have to give you a link. Go here to watch it. This is a 12 second video of Berkeley's first time in the grass and his frist time meeting my parent's adult female lab, Koda.

  

  Thankfully, Koda and Berkeley get along fine.

  

  • Posted Aug 26, 2008 6:05 am PT
  • Category: Pets and Animals
  • 19 Comments
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• 20Aug 08

  Playing The Middle Man

  Every now and then, a game developer comes up with a good idea, and sometimes that good idea makes it into a good game. If that game sells well, it doesn't take long till we see that good idea replicated, expanded, prostituted, and killed in nearly every game that follows.

  Hence, we have the double jump, bullet time, the wall run, the dreaded quick time event, and many more. These ideas aren't limited to gameplay mechanics either. We have the light/dark storyline, the "hardcore" character makeover, gritty shades of brown realism, minigames in any game, and so on.

  

  It's been a while since we've seen something rock the industry so I thought I'd offer my own new idea. Actually, it's not that new, more like a natural progression from where we are now. But I might as well put it in writing so that when it happens I can hang with the cool kids and say I said it first.

  So what's this new innovation? What do I have to add to the industry that could and should be copied add nauseam?

  The middle.

  Yeah, the middle, that lovely place between light and dark, up or down, right or wrong. It's the gray area, the sketchy zone, and I think it could make games a little more interesting. Let's look at a few ways it could be implemented.

  Middle of the Road
  In Grand Theft Auto IV, you're with a few kill-or-don't-kill situations. I don't want to spoil anything for those that haven't played it yet, but one of those situations involves two characters related to each other. Perched on a rooftop with a sniper rifle, you must decide who lives and who dies. What if you don't want someone to die? I didn't want to get in the middle of this family squabble, so I deliberately missed my mark, firing a warning shot between the two siblings. Guess what happened? Yeah, I failed the mission. Turns out you have to kill someone.

  

  Why can't I take the middle of the road? Why do I have to choose good or bad, right or wrong, life or death? Why can't I ride the fence? Some would say that taking the apathetic route makes for a boring experience, which is a valid argument, but apathy has its own consequences. How would the characters react if neither of them died? Would they come after you? Maybe one of them would try to force you to kill the other. I know you can't always ride the fence, nor would you want to, but having the option would make for a more realistic, less polarizing experience.

  I think Mass Effect, and in a way GTA, are both heading this direction. In Mass Effect you are a good character, whether you like it or not. You can choose to be a ruthless professional, or a cheerful savior, but at the end of the game, you're still the good guy. The opposite is true for Niko, who despite his attempts to escape, still lives a life of crime at the bitter conclusion. By placing a character in a specific role, developers are able to squeeze in a bit more moral ambiguity. Mass Effect forces you into some prickly situations, but thanks to the robust conversation system, and the fact that you know you're still playing the role of the good guy, you can often find a way to take the middle ground.

  I try not to be a big fence rider in my personal life, because nothing is more irritating than a completely apathetic person, but when it comes to choosing who lives and who dies, I think I'd rather sit that one out.

  Middle Management
  Sports games have been doing this for a long time, so it can't be long till we see other genre's following suit. Nearly every adventure game has you going from zero to hero, low life thug to king of the criminal world, or poor mercenary to private army general. Unlike the corporate world, your rise to power in most video games has you skipping straight to the top. You won't have to spend time in middle management, ordering people while you take orders yourself, and that's not always a good thing. It can be tough being the assistant (to the) regional manager. There are all kinds of tense situations that being stuck in the middle could bring to games.

  In Saint's Row you were able to recruit a few homies, and while that was a good start, they turned out to be little more than meat shields. What if instead of recruiting homies to accompany you on a mission, you could recruit them to do the mission? What if after receiving a new job from Mr. Pegorino in GTA IV you were able to call up Brucie and see if he wouldn't mind taking care of it? Can you see the possibilities? Maybe Brucie's roid rage gets the best of him and he kills someone important--now you have to clean it up and discipline your underling, or risk getting busted for him. No doubt this would add more stress, strategy, and decisions to the gameplay. It's essentially like adding the general manager mode from most sports games, to the GTA formula.

  

  It's looking like Godfather II is going this route and I'm interested to see how it works. Gamers are a fickle bunch, so EA is going to have to walk a fine line to get this right. We want realism, but we don't want our games too real. It might be fun to be in middle management, but we don't want to have to pay bills, or put up with people sending us faxes from our future selves.

  Mid-life Crisis
  As far as storytelling goes, video games are still in their infancy compared to other media. We've had some amazing stories and fascinating characters over the years, but even our best pale in comparison to intriguing literary characters like Shelley's Frankenstein (a personal favorite), or cinematic performances like Tom Hanks' Forrest Gump. I know, I know; Aerith died, Yorda was saved, and Gordon Freeman is a projection of ourselves—those things are great, but video games still have a long way to go before one of their characters generate as much buzz as Heath Ledger's Joker.

  Once again, I look to the middle to help spice things up. I know the subtitle says mid-life crisis, but we don't have to go that far. How about something not so extreme. Kratos is cool and all, but peal back his Xtreme RAGE!!! and what do you have? Nothing. Just another generic game character. He's cool to play as, but hard to identify with. At least I can't relate to Kratos—he's just so stinking mad all the time.

  

  I'd like to see developers lean more towards the middle, where the rest of us live. I'm talking about interesting everyday characters that go through real change. Video games seem to like to force extreme people into extreme circumstances when it is far more interesting to watch a normal person get pushed into an abnormal adventure (or an abnormal person forced into a normal world, like Frankenstein or Forrest Gump). Again, GTA IV was on the right track with regular guys Niko and Roman. I know every game can't star an average un-super powered character, but that doesn't mean they can't be normal. I guess my definition of normal is a little loose, you might substitute realistic in there instead, but that wouldn't fit the middle theme.

  Part of the magic of Star Wars (at least the old ones) was that despite being in a galaxy far far away, it was a story about a regular group of people getting swept up in a crazy adventure. The fact that all these crazy aliens still developed relationships and communicated like we did is what made them so appealing. Grizzly space marines are cool, but they don't have to be so extreme all the time.

  

  So there you have it, a new gameplay gimmick for developers to ape for the next five to ten years. Like I said, if things continue the way they do, we'll probably start seeing some of the things I mentioned. It just makes sense to move away from the extremes, to scoot back to the top of the bell curve, where the average joe's live.

  What do you think? Could we use a little middle in our games? Do you have a mechanic you'd like to see used and abused?

  • Posted Aug 20, 2008 7:30 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
  • 80 Comments
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• 18Aug 08

  rehired...sort of

  I talked to my former boss today and it turns out they are willing to pay me all the money I asked. They just have to do half up front and the other half when I finish. I'm cool with that because it totals up to my old monthly salary, so as soon as I sign some paperwork I'll get to work. The money I make will get me through another month or more, which is nice. I'd still perfer stable employment, but working from home (well my parent's home) and spending more time with Brooke isn't so bad. It's going to take some extra discipline to work eight hours a day when I don't have an office to go to, but I think if I set up a space and call it my office, it might work out.

  It's funny, I keep worrying about what's going to happen next, where the money will come from, or if I'll get hired by someone, but that doesn't seem to do any good. I've been doing the best I can with what I got, and I'm continually blessed by new opportunities. I haven't done anything wrong as far as the job hunt goes. I'm just waiting on an employer to give me a shot...then again, maybe I don't need an employer.

  So I sort of have a full-time job, but that's not the good news. The good news, my boss told me, is that Wal-Mart is on board for the day of encouragement. My boss has been trying hard for sponsors, and it finally paid off. Wal-Mart loves the idea, and they want to support it, but since it is only a few weeks away (Sept. 12), they can't do much until 2009. What they'll do for 2008 is stock Day of Encouragement greeting cards in every Wal-Mart in America. These cards will be accompanied by a bit of artwork by yours truly. They still have to flesh out a few things before they totally green light this, but my boss is optimistic. Crazy huh? In a few weeks you could walk into your local Wal-Mart and find some greeting cards with my artwork on them. I can't really describe how awesome that is. Also, being picked up by Wal-Mart could bring in some serious cash, but I'm not sure if or how any of that will trickle down to me. I didn't create the day of encouragement, just the mascot, but that's gotta stand for something.

  Anyways, I'm just about done with the new soapbox blog I mentioned earlier, so I'll try and get that up soon. I'm going to be stupidly busy with artwork, and web content creation (and a new puppy) for the next few weeks, so I'll be in and out of here.
  

  • Posted Aug 18, 2008 3:48 pm PT
  • Category: General
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