Meet One of My Internal Metaphors
Somewhere in the back of my skull a wizened mambo stirs a gigantic pot. Ideas I find neat (interesting, but impractical for some reason) I give to her, and she tosses it in the pot. Occasionally I ask if it's ready. She may let me taste a bit of the gumbo, but mostly she just laughs and says, "Not YET, childe."
I've been a gamer geek as long as I can remember, longer than my computer geekery. I remember my first hack, altering a die roller my mother wrote for me during her QuickBasic class.
Computers blossomed into a powerful interest with my first job. My boss was self-employed - paid to sit at home, think, and smoke a pipe. Nice work if you can get it . . . and it took me a long time to learn how to get it. Understanding computers wasn't nearly so hard as understanding people. Unfortunately, its usually the latter that gets you jobs.
So I worked crap jobs, honing my meager skills and resume as best I could. I turned that into a full-time geek position at a company too cheap to hire someone with a degree. I continued gaming, and dreaming the slacker's dream: a job pays me to play games. My current job comes close; I get to watch SJG products slowly take form around me. But it's still a regular job; hard work for middle-class pay, albiet in one of the cooler companies in existance.
I want to sit at home, and smoke a pipe, and earn good money.
I'd heard of several examples of alternate reality games, but never heard the term or thought of them as a genra. I've toyed with the basic idea myself, before tossing it to my mambo. The idea of multimedia games as a service industry is wonderful. The examples I've seen so far all have surreal mystery plotlines, and annoyingly flashy websites.
I could do better. Given a team of roleplaying and computer geeks, I could do a lot better.
And from the back of my brain I hear a cackling: "There's the salt I needed!". I don't yet want ask if that means it's done . . .
I've been a gamer geek as long as I can remember, longer than my computer geekery. I remember my first hack, altering a die roller my mother wrote for me during her QuickBasic class.
Computers blossomed into a powerful interest with my first job. My boss was self-employed - paid to sit at home, think, and smoke a pipe. Nice work if you can get it . . . and it took me a long time to learn how to get it. Understanding computers wasn't nearly so hard as understanding people. Unfortunately, its usually the latter that gets you jobs.
So I worked crap jobs, honing my meager skills and resume as best I could. I turned that into a full-time geek position at a company too cheap to hire someone with a degree. I continued gaming, and dreaming the slacker's dream: a job pays me to play games. My current job comes close; I get to watch SJG products slowly take form around me. But it's still a regular job; hard work for middle-class pay, albiet in one of the cooler companies in existance.
I want to sit at home, and smoke a pipe, and earn good money.
I'd heard of several examples of alternate reality games, but never heard the term or thought of them as a genra. I've toyed with the basic idea myself, before tossing it to my mambo. The idea of multimedia games as a service industry is wonderful. The examples I've seen so far all have surreal mystery plotlines, and annoyingly flashy websites.
I could do better. Given a team of roleplaying and computer geeks, I could do a lot better.
And from the back of my brain I hear a cackling: "There's the salt I needed!". I don't yet want ask if that means it's done . . .