Fuzzy gumdrop bears.

I am very, very tired. There are two exams this week, one tomorrow and one on Friday. The Friday one is of so little concern it’s actually gone negative and made me start caring about other things entirely, like chocolate unicorns and licorice sunsets.

For real.

Actually, Friday’s exam is for my Linguistics class. So far it’s proven to be the most interesting of the four (five if you count HGD) and for some reason the material is very easy for me to grasp. I really enjoy learning the mechanics of languages and understanding the fundamental similarities and differences between them. Further evidence that I’m in the wrong field? I leave that puzzle to you, dear reader.

In other news, I have something of a war going on in my mind. On the one hand, I want very much to support the Tigers and watch them battle the Yankees tonight. On the other hand, the season premier of Lost starts at nine. Even though the show managed to seriously disappoint me last year, I can’t help but feel like I want to give it another chance. Like a battered wife, I will continually return to the husband that I know loves me when he’s not on the bottle.

Yes, I just compared watching television to an abusive marriage. This will probably come up when the devil greets me in Hell.

Update: turns out the decision was taken out of my hands…rain delays are wonderful, and now I have something to do during tomorrow’s afternoon break.

Brain crack.

How many of you watch The Show? More importantly, how many of you are familiar with Ze Frank’s concept of brain crack? I’d like to add one small detail to his take on the issue: the feeling you get when you see “your idea” implemented by someone else is far worse than the feeling you get if you try it yourself and fail.

Even since I became interested in game design I have, at various times, come up with lots of different concepts for games and things related to games. Naturally, not one of them has ever actually seen the light of day, except perhaps in idle conversations with friends. I have all the same reasons most people do…not enough time, not enough experience, not enough money, etc. The ideas sit around in my head, a source of comfort and encouragement in the quiet hours just before you fall asleep when your brain has nothing to do but take stock of your life and accomplishments.

Of course, none of these ideas have ever been revolutionary, and over time most of them get incorporated into a game. Hell, Battlefield 2 almost single-handedly utilized every facet of a game concept I’d come up with a few years prior. Most of the time, though, it’s less like being swallowed by a whale and more like being torn apart by ravenous piranha…little bits of the ideas are taken here and there until virtually nothing original remains.

Why am I bringing all this up? For the first time since I joined Husky Game Development a year ago I find myself in the position to take one of my ideas and do something with it. Though my current project has been shaped by everyone on the team, the concept and major gameplay details are all things I’ve been babying in my head for years.

It’s a situation that is as terrifying as it is exhilarating. There’s nothing quite like seeing something you envisioned for so long start to take shape before your eyes, but at the same time the risks and pitfalls are so many and varied as to be almost paralyzing. You’ve got to cede a certain amount of control…unlike the world of dreams I do not directly command all aspects of the process. New tweaks cannot simply be incorporated on a whim. The will of the team as a whole must be embraced so that everyone can feel like a part of the final product.

Even more frightening is the very real possibility that this game will suck. How hard will it be to see something I’ve put my heart and soul into casually dismissed by gamers because it’s no fun to play? What happens when, inevitably, triage will have to be performed and features either cut or drastically altered to make our deadlines? What if the game I always wanted to make becomes the game I was forced by circumstances to push out?

Having no experience in game design and no real reason to believe I have any kind of gift for it was easy to ignore when I had all that brain crack kicking around inside. I could console myself that, if I was only given the chance, all these amazing ideas would be fun and engaging and popular.

The possibility that they aren’t is probably the most frightening thing I’ve ever had to think about.

This post is about mice (not the ones with fur).

I need a new mouse. Not “need” in the usual sense our generation uses it (i.e. “want”) but in the sense that mine doesn’t actually work anymore.

My current (broken) mouse is the original Intellimouse 3.0 from Microsoft. Say what you will about their software, but Microsoft made by far the best mouse ever release with their 3.0 model. The size is perfect for your hand, curved and sloped a just enough to let your wrist tilt comfortably. It’s lightweight, incredibly precise (or it was for the time at 3,000 samples per second) and has all of its buttons placed in perfect positions. Oh, and the scroll wheel is heaven.

The breaking of my mouse has actually been a slow process. The scroll wheel has been acting up for a long time, but recently it finally got so bad as to be unusable. I attempted to take the mouse apart to see if I could fix it, but it turns out that the tiny screws holding the casing together are either a) very cheap or b) affixed with voodoo magic. I managed to completely strip the heads on both of the lower screws, effectively ending all attempts at repair.

For a time I was heartbroken, since the 3.0 mouse has been discontinued for several years (replaced by a vastly inferior model). Lest you think I’m the only one who feels so attached to this particular model, new in-package Intellimouse 3.0 mice were selling for as much at $120US on eBay!

However, my morale soared when, while searching through various sites reading on Logitech mice that might possibly be a replacement, I found out that Microsoft is re-leasing the old 3.0! Not only that, they added a thinner cord, slicker feet and a new rubberized housing to replace the (admittedly) cheap plastic one on the original. What’s more, they stuck in a 9,000 sample sensor…for reference, that’s more precise than even the $100+ “gamer” models from Logitech and Razer! All for just $40, which is actually less than what I paid for mine back in the day.

It’s possible that I’ll hold out until their “premium” Habu mouse is released. $70 is a lot of money for a mouse, but then that’s only a bit more than I originally paid for this one. If the reviews give it a major advantage over the 3.0 I’ll pick it up.

The hipster instinct.

Everyone keeps talking about this Web 2.0 bullshit as though it’s the greatest new way to make money on the internet. When I look around, though, it seems like there’s a much simpler business model that must be making someone money, because everyone with a screen printer is doing it. The steps go something like this:

1. Think up some “clever” phrases or puns. If you’re lazy, rip off the latest “cult” movie, like Napolean Dynamite or Snakes on a Plane.
2. Put them on a t-shirt.
3. Make a website using lean, thin lines and solid colors.
4. Liberally apply photos of cute “geeky” girls wearing said shirts.
5. Profit?

Honestly, I didn’t realize there was such a massive market for t-shirts. I mean, I know that I myself have been guilty of buying shirts with videogame-related icons and phrases, but practically all of my purchases were made over two years or so.

This (naturally) leads to the theory that humans have a genetic critical period, occurring somewhere in their late teens or early twenties, during which we are compelled to buy t-shirts with words on them. I assume that the entire internet shirt market is supported by humans entering this brief period of their lives.

Movie night.

I saw The Departed last night – on recommendation from Pat – and I’d like to add my own to that. It’s got Jack Nicholson, who can always be counted on to be great, and the rest of the cast did a pretty good job too. Be warned, however: the dialogue is littered with heavy New England and Irish accents. I don’t know about you, but after two hours of listening to the (sometimes poor) drawl of the characters the sound really started to grate on my ears. By the end of the movie I was ready to leap through the screen and implore them to speak like real people.

No offense to my east-coast friends, but your speech patterns make me want to throttle you.

That’s a small gripe though. Overall it was an excellent movie, good pacing and prodigious use of dramatic irony. Not really a detective film since you pretty much always know what’s going on, but it’s fun to see the characters trying to figure it out along the way. The ending feels a bit more abrupt than it needed to be, but I think that’s partially because I thought the movie had ended three or four times before it actually did.

One other thing I noticed – for some reason the film feels like a period piece. It’s set in contemporary Boston, but on more than one occasion my brain wanted to put everything in the twenties or fifties. I think it was probably the gangster setting, which I tend to associate with Al Capone and stuff like that, but from time to time things like cell phones and laptops caught me off-guard. Kind of strange, I’d be interested to hear if any of you got the same impressions.

In any case, I’d recommend you go out and see it. Well worth the price of a ticket.

Don’t mind me.

This post will make sense to approximately three people, but I’m going to make it anyway.

Optional caption: “It’s about damn time.”

Conference, shmonference.

Tomorrow I head out to Philadelphia again, this time to attend the game career seminar at the Videogame Expo. Though not terribly expensive when compared to other conferences, once you figure in flight costs, gas and parking it starts to add up quick. The seminar (though not the rest of the expo, as far as I can tell) is part of the GDC conference circuit. In fact, I already know that I’ll be seeing a few of the people I met in San Jose last year while in Philly…so, hopefully, it will allow me to strengthen those ties in preparation for the real deal. In all honestly I can’t afford this trip in the strictest sense of the word, but in the end I decided that I’d rather attend and realize I wasted money (if the seminar turns out to be useless) than not go and wonder if I should have.

I’m not sure that’s a sustainable way to go through life, in the long run, but I think it will keep working as long as the government continues to be stupid enough to loan me money.

Besides the theoretical career benefits I’ll also get to visit Darth and Sarra, whom I haven’t seen since the end of August. The secret reasoning behind this is simple: I get to stay with them, which means I don’t have to pay for a hotel. Darth, the silly man that he is, even offered to pick me up from the airport.

I think my true calling lies in leeching off my friends.