A Great Quote About Being a Game Designer

I heard this from a fellow designer that I did not have as much of an opportunity to work with as I would have liked, James Mouat. It's a quote about being a game designer:

"To me, the real brilliance of a great designer is not the ability to flesh good ideas into good designs, but the ability to survive the production process. When the Big Push comes, the designer is out there all alone with most of the responsibility and almost none of the authority, constantly second-guessed from above and below, ever on the defensive and at the mercy of the talents and loyalties of his team and unable to prove the validity of his vision, as most games are neither fun nor graphically/aurally stunning until near the end of development." --Jason Shankel 

It's fairly accurate, as quotes go. It might sound a bit depressing, but having that drive is what keeps me going every single day. Ideas are easy. Fleshing them out is a bit more challenging. Living and breathing a design, communicating it daily with conviction, knowing how best to talk to everyone on your team so that they understand and buy into your vision for whatever feature/mission/system you're working on all the while knowing that it could all go away...to quote Mark Henry, "THAT'S WHAT I DO!"

I've worked in the industry eight years. The one original IP I came up with that was actually picked to be made by the first studio I worked at wasn't protected correctly. Three of the projects I've worked on have been canned, one of which had a feature I can't get into but was incredibly awesome. This is the game industry. Have I been upset about these things? Sometimes, sure. Because when you pour your soul into something and see it tucked away for the world to never seen, it's a bit disappointing. But you keep going, working away at the next project, because when something you've worked on does make it's way out, and you see gamers play it, it's the best feeling in the world. You know that you've been part of a team that has helped make something that someone, somewhere, will get enjoyment out of. It doesn't have to change their lives or make them think about some deeper meaning all the time either...these are of course things to strive for in certain types of game. But sometimes...sometimes putting a smile on someone's face is enough. And knowing that makes all the 'bad' worth it.

What I'm saying is, I love my job and all the challenges it brings. I work with extremely intelligent individuals who always give me something new to think about and are able to bring excellent knowledge to the table in any discussion we have. I hope I get to do this for as long as I'm on this Earth.

Quick Notes:

• I totally used to be in choir in high school and later. Multiple auditioned groups, even. Check out my baby face around 47 seconds into this video. Third row, to the left of the guy with glasses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6u_OiMJo7M
• Sorry if I rambled above. It's late, but I wanted to post to keep my 'one a day' promise
• This is the worst article ever: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-problem-with-the-gaming-industry-is-that-developers-make-too-much
• My Oculus Rift is out of customs hell! I hope it gets here next week! Huzzah!

Who doesn't want to be a Near-Sighted Shinobi with I.B.S?

So I just spent...No spent isn't the right word. Lost. I just lost two hours to Rogue Legacy. It's an amalgamation of many enjoyable things. Balls difficult, like you'd expect from a Rogue-like. Randomized as well. It has some Castlevania: Symphony of the night thrown in there. A bit of the "One more turn" from Civ. The twist is that your characters have traits, which can get passed down. You get money during your trips in the castle, which you spend to unlock new classes and upgrades after you die. Any money not spent is given to the gatekeeper prior to re-entering, so you're encouraged to spend it. I did end up being a Shinobi, who was near-sighted, and had irritable bowel syndrome. It's just a lot of fun. Highly recommended. Play with a controller if possible.

Quick notes:

• Great article on Kotaku about Sid Meier. This quote sums me up too, I asked Meier, who is 59, if he ever thinks about retirement. “I kinda feel like I am retired,” he said, laughing. “I'm doing what I wanna do—I've been retired for a long time. I still love making games, so I've really never thought of that.”
• I was had a block of meetings today that was from 2:00pm until almost 7:00pm. To be fair, the last one was supposed to be over at 5:00, but ran over...just a bit. It's all going to be worth it!
• I'm working on a variant for Legendary, the Marvel deck building game. Should iron out some problems I have with it.

I Laughed So Hard I Cried

http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/2013/06/top-16-worship-music-typos/

Amazing stuff. The comments contain some great ones as well. Phew, I could barely catch my breath on some of them. So good.

Nothing too major today, other than Volition being awesome. They brought around a drink cart to offices today to give people refreshment as thanks for working hard on SRIV. When I say drink, I mean DRINK. They had the margarita machine on there. I was in a meeting and was handed a Screwdriver. The game industry is a lot like Camelot (a silly place), except you WANT to go there. Awesome of the studio to do that for everyone.

Quick bits:

• This Pathfinder Adventure Path is awesome. Starts with players at level 1, ends with them around 17-18. That's an insane amount of content. If you're playing in my game, don't even think about reading it! I'll know.
• I need a dry/wet erase mat. I really wish I'd picked up a set of Tac-Tiles when they existed, but alas. They were these amazing dry erase interlocking tiles that had a grid already on them. They were fantastic. Apparently a company has the rights to them now and is going to do a kickstarter soon, but I need them sooner than that. I'll probably pick up a set anyway.
• Rogue Legacy is out tomorrow. Seems cool. Can't wait to give it a spin.
• Glad I didn't actually have to use this for real last night/today

In which I receive a giant package

So the Pathfinder stuff I'd ordered got here today. It was approximately 25 pounds, which is a lot of paper. I've not really been able to go through any of it yet, as I just got home and was in meetings most of the day. It's a sizable list of things though:

• Pathfinder Core Rulebook
• Pathfinder Bestiary 1 & 2
• Rise of the Runelords campaign book
• Gamemastery Guide
• Bestiary Box (cardboard minis for all the monsters in the Bestiary)
• Rise of the Runelords Pawn set (cardboard minis for all the things in the Rise of the Runelords campaign)

Can I just say that I really dig being able to get the cardboard minis? They're incredibly solid and are a fraction of the price of trying to match minis. Yes, having minis is cool, and where I can I'll likely sub in some of my original Descent ones, but WotC makes it such an expense to try to get minis and offers nothing like this for D&D. I plan to start digging in tonight, before I get into some more The Last of Us. That is, if I'm not playing Borderlands 2, since the D&D themed DLC comes out today.

It was pretty freaking warm today, until it dropped 15 degrees in around 2 hours with an incoming storm. I took some pictures and video. The video is kind of awesome because you can see some clouds moving south, with others moving north. 

It's not quite as easy to see as I'd like, due to shaky-cam, but you can still make it out.

Quick notes

• My daughter is currently reading the Bestiary and asking if we'll have to fight all the things inside. She just asked if we'd have to fight an elf mermaid.
• My Oculus Rift is still in processing hell. Apparently they have a batch (with mine) locked up in customs. This needs to get fixed.
• At some point today, the weather channel said on their site that there was a 'Weather Advisory' for our area. Not a 'Severe Weather Advisory' mind you, just a 'Weather Advisory.' I was henceforth advised that there was indeed weather outside.

Something New

I'm going to update this everyday this week, because I can, and if I do, at least I'll be more apt to most more often. When I don't have anything particular to speak at length about, I'm just going to post some random musings.

• I bought a lot of Pathfinder stuff this week. I'm going to be running a game for my family. Should be fun. I really hope the adventure I purchased isn't too age inappropriate. If it is, I'll just have to work around it. I'm fairly certain I can do this. Also, prepare to see a lot of posts about Pathfinder as I go through it.
• Can I have Project Spark already? Seriously, it looks fantastic. Just watch this video. I would have loved for something like this to exist when I was a kid. The closest I ever got was Maxis' Klik & Play. We made some really weird stuff with that. I'm sure it's as un-intuitive as I remember. This, however, does not look difficult to use, teaches kids a bit about programming, and actually seems to have a large variety of games it can make. My children as super-excited.

• The latest WWE PPV, Payback, and the followup RAW were so good. I hope they continue this week, but as I don't have cable I have to wait until tomorrow to find out.
• I'm about halfway through The Last of Us and it's very good so far. I hate giving numbers, but the truth is that it lies somewhere in between the 10's and the 7's its received. The emotions that come across in the faces of each character are probably the best I've seen in a game. The voice work is topnotch too.
• I'm almost done reading "You" by Austin Grossman. It's an interesting read. Not everything in the book works for me, but the nostalgia is strong. If I could only ever recommend a single fiction book about video games, it would still be "Ready, Player One." 
• My friend Jayson Trost is Shaun Spencer from Psych, without hyper-observation skills and eidetic memory. I've realized this while watching Psych season 6 on Netflix. That probably means Justin Talboom is Gus.

PS4 Me?

You can ask most people, I can find the good in anything. Find me the worst game you can think of and I will come up with a decent argument for at least one part of it. That's just me. I try to find the good, acknowledge and catalog the bad, and move on. When I'm investing time in something I don't want it to be a waste, so I at least make it a learning experience. It's not about convincing myself that something bad is good, it's about understanding why decisions were made the way they were, specifically in games.

Slightly to that point, there is something to be said about being both a gamer and a game developer. In many ways they are one in the same. Gamer me continually pushes game developer me to create better experiences, and as a game developer I am always looking forward to advances that allow for new ways for players to experience games. On the other hand, it sometimes takes away from the excitement of announcements, because many times the features and experiences we, as an industry, want players to have are all very similar. We see things moving certain ways, shaped by societal changes. We actually put a lot of work into predicting the future and what players are going to expect from games by the time a product we are working on launches. So in some ways, Game Developer me tempers what gamer me hears.

So all that said, game developer me agrees with a lot of what Sony said in their PS4 unveiling. Games being a more social experience. The barriers of use being broken down. Predictive algorithms that end up tailoring your experience to be more about what you enjoy as a player. These are all great things that will absolutely be a boon to developers. Gamer me, though, heard what they were saying, was excited, then let down by what was shown, because the promise of this new experience was not apparent in any of the new titles that were talked about. Sure, the share button is cool, and it absolutely goes to the point of barriers of use being broken down that I mentioned earlier, but gamer me has seen clips and streaming PS3/360/PC games already in the past few years. The social aspects mentioned all sound great, but nothing was shown really making use of any of them. Don't get me wrong, the games shown were all technically impressive, but none of them sold me on the ideas that they spent the first half hour talking about.

Killzone - visually great
Driving Club - More photorealistic than any GT game
Knack - Potentially fun premise
Infamous Second Son - I've confirmed what was shown was in-engine, so nice!

Third-party stuff is more difficult for me to gauge, simply because I admittedly play a lot more on my PC now, so if it's going to be available on PC that's where I'm going to buy it since I've invested quite a bit of money into it. Comfy couch comments need not apply as I've wired HDMI to my TV from my PC, so I'm just as comfy as I would be playing on a console. So while Watch_dogs looked AMAZING, they've basically confirmed it for PC...and it was confirmed to be running on a PC at the Sony event. I liked what I heard about Destiny when it was unveiled this past weekend, so that hasn't changed. I'll definitely get it on a platform where I'll be able to play with the most of my friends. So all that stuff was nice to see.

I just wonder, in general, if Sony did themselves any favors by announcing early. Sure, it allowed them to talk about what their thought process is for their new system, but again, nothing they showed really utilized much of what they talked about. In addition, the expectation at E3 for them will be, "Well what else new do you have to show us?" So if they come out and just show the same games, but further along and more in-depth, it could be slightly problematic from the aspect of competitors potentially showing new games too. People are going to be more excited about the things they didn't know about versus learning more about something they already knew about. Hopefully they have some cool, new games to show at E3 as well that aren't just third-party offerings available elsewhere too.

So while game developer me really digs the platform potential that was talked about today, gamer me just didn't see it in action enough to get excited. When I have a PS4 (and I will, I'm not even going to try to convince myself otherwise) I will play and enjoy Infamous Second Son, Knack, whatever Media Molecule and Naughty Dog come up with, and many other exclusive titles for sure, but I'm disappointed that we were told about what Sony's vision of next-gen was, without really seeing that in practice.