(no subject)
Well, here I am. I'm not particularly excited about the "eljay" thing, but I'm going to want my domain for serious "important" things rather than a journal in which people can go "omg he likes star wars he's the devil" (or whatever they would say).
I found a great blog about game design recently, I hope he posts regularly. His analysis of genre lifecycles felt spot on, and the view of games as an addictive drug is depressing but probably true. Even if it's not the whole truth, it's a good thing to keep in mind when I'm designing because I want to remember that people are going to be losing hours of their life when they play my game and I have a responsibility to make it worth it. I guess that can be simple, make sure that it's at least fun, but I think it's also important to really think about what people are spending time learning and to try and make patterns that can be beneficial to the rest of their lives. The behavioral psychology stuff is what I'm remembering most, and that wasn't even him, that was a gamasutra article. I have to remember how to work the cycles of rewards into games, keep the people hooked.
Also on the game design front, listened to a couple talks by Will Wright (designer of Sim City, The Sims, etc.) that were awesome. He definitely made the short(?) list of people I idolize, along with current front runner Christopher Alexander. He can be my saint of game design. I actually like to think of my idols semi-literally sometimes, as having their own specific domains. Christopher Alexander is kind of an idol of architecture, life and religion, Bowie an idol of music, Feynman for physics/mathematics, Whedon for television/writing, Mignola for comics, but the funny thing was that even though I had all these idols (I kind of want to have lots of little shrines in a closet I make offerings to. Yes it's strange) I never had a good idol for game design. Until now. Will Wright, I'm going to totally make little offerings of flowers and incense to get your blessing on my game projects. Oh, Wozniak too. But he'll be for robots. Along with Beam. It's a very short list of idols, really.
Oh, but Wright. He is really, really smart. His next game, Spore, is going to rock ass into the stone age. His talks make me want to learn about cybernetics and read up again on chaos theory and step automata. But the idea of treating games as a space that you map, basically you create rules and it's very difficult to foresee what emergent properties the game will have, especially as the rules become more complicated. The best way to design the game is to actually create rules and then just explore, find what emergent properties are fun and reinforce them, get rid of the stuff that isn't great, or if your rules don't create any cool emergent properties then start with some new ones. Anyway, very interesting.
Not much else to say. Work is the same, except with more foot pain. I think I need new shoes. I'm washing clothes today, which will be awesome. A man can only wear the same shirt for so many days. Bought the new Sleater-Kinney album, The Woods, off of iTunes along with You're a Woman, I'm a Machine by Death From Above 1979. Liking both quite a bit so far. Need to listen to the Woods a couple times to get the feeling more, but I almost always have to listen to something at least three times before I really like it.
I also need to post more about the new ethical systems I'm working on (yes, the future religions of our world will be developed on... "eljay"), hell I need to start writing it down period. We'll see. It's always very disappointing to write the ideas down because my eloquence of expression doesn't quite pass muster yet. Know the only way to make it better is to write though, so I guess that's what I'll do.
I found a great blog about game design recently, I hope he posts regularly. His analysis of genre lifecycles felt spot on, and the view of games as an addictive drug is depressing but probably true. Even if it's not the whole truth, it's a good thing to keep in mind when I'm designing because I want to remember that people are going to be losing hours of their life when they play my game and I have a responsibility to make it worth it. I guess that can be simple, make sure that it's at least fun, but I think it's also important to really think about what people are spending time learning and to try and make patterns that can be beneficial to the rest of their lives. The behavioral psychology stuff is what I'm remembering most, and that wasn't even him, that was a gamasutra article. I have to remember how to work the cycles of rewards into games, keep the people hooked.
Also on the game design front, listened to a couple talks by Will Wright (designer of Sim City, The Sims, etc.) that were awesome. He definitely made the short(?) list of people I idolize, along with current front runner Christopher Alexander. He can be my saint of game design. I actually like to think of my idols semi-literally sometimes, as having their own specific domains. Christopher Alexander is kind of an idol of architecture, life and religion, Bowie an idol of music, Feynman for physics/mathematics, Whedon for television/writing, Mignola for comics, but the funny thing was that even though I had all these idols (I kind of want to have lots of little shrines in a closet I make offerings to. Yes it's strange) I never had a good idol for game design. Until now. Will Wright, I'm going to totally make little offerings of flowers and incense to get your blessing on my game projects. Oh, Wozniak too. But he'll be for robots. Along with Beam. It's a very short list of idols, really.
Oh, but Wright. He is really, really smart. His next game, Spore, is going to rock ass into the stone age. His talks make me want to learn about cybernetics and read up again on chaos theory and step automata. But the idea of treating games as a space that you map, basically you create rules and it's very difficult to foresee what emergent properties the game will have, especially as the rules become more complicated. The best way to design the game is to actually create rules and then just explore, find what emergent properties are fun and reinforce them, get rid of the stuff that isn't great, or if your rules don't create any cool emergent properties then start with some new ones. Anyway, very interesting.
Not much else to say. Work is the same, except with more foot pain. I think I need new shoes. I'm washing clothes today, which will be awesome. A man can only wear the same shirt for so many days. Bought the new Sleater-Kinney album, The Woods, off of iTunes along with You're a Woman, I'm a Machine by Death From Above 1979. Liking both quite a bit so far. Need to listen to the Woods a couple times to get the feeling more, but I almost always have to listen to something at least three times before I really like it.
I also need to post more about the new ethical systems I'm working on (yes, the future religions of our world will be developed on... "eljay"), hell I need to start writing it down period. We'll see. It's always very disappointing to write the ideas down because my eloquence of expression doesn't quite pass muster yet. Know the only way to make it better is to write though, so I guess that's what I'll do.