Handwritten Note

Photos from Fountaindale

2012-01-13T21:05:00.016+08:00

Fountaindale Manor.

After a couple of "So where are the photos?" prods from Nick, I've finally found the time to sit down and write a quick photo-blog about my trip to Fountaindale Manor in Robertson, NSW last year. If you want some more background about the trip, you can find the details of the clinic and the Cave project here.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find my DSLR's charger in time for the trip, so I was only able to get a few quick snaps with my phone during those few times we had free moments to entertain ourselves. Therefore the quality of the pictures aren't so great, so perhaps treat this as a friend's album of happy snaps instead of a nicely processed report.

Petals of matrimonial ceremonies past.

Needless to say, when a building has a history of becoming decommissioned as a hotel a few years after being awarded the Most Luxurious Hotel in the Commonwealth, recommissioned for private use as a country club, repurposed into a pilot's hospice for WWII, then a Franciscan friary, and eventually settled back into a hotel once more, there's going to be a lot of creepy stories floating around. And to be honest, the groundskeepers seemed quite happy to keep some of the peculiarities of the grounds intact - perhaps to maintain that Shining vibe, or perhaps because it was just so ingrained into the building that no amount of paint and lawnmowing would stop you thinking you're about to tread into the middle a pagan burial site.

One of the many garden paths leading nowhere in particular.

The grounds of the manor were huge, and talking to the relatively-newly established owners it was obvious it was no small task to keep the immense gardens under control. Which is cool. However...

An actual stone altar.

What I said about blundering into a potential seance site? No joke.

Note the seating arrangement is a pentagon.

This is a tree that was part of a Treasure Hunt we took part in. We also found an abandoned charm bracelet right here, which at first we assumed was a clue for another team. After confirming with Mike that he hadn't left it there, well... given the overall theme of the event, I was content to leave it for someone else to find (ie. be cursed by).

What manor estate is complete without an abandoned caretaker's hut?

We weren't spared the haunted vibe inside either. Plenty of attic stairways and tucked away rooms and nooks. I don't mind admitting the first night, while most everyone else was settling in to their rooms, I was wandering around trying to find the most likely haunted spots. (Turns out I was way off - it's a small room on the second floor by the bathrooms.)

This chair, however, pretended to sit in the same position every morning. I knew its secret though.

Hauntings aside, take away the creepy ghost meta-story we all seemed quite happy to throw over the top of the experience, the Manor was a gorgeous venue. (And perfect for a Murder Mystery dinner.)

Scenes like this made for stunning morning walks.

And of course, at the end of the day, it's the company you keep that makes the memory last.

Generally the first recipient of my "Good mornings!" each morning that week. (This was taken on the Friday of our departure. I pretended it was disconsolateness - and not relief - in his expression.)

The clinic was an amazing experience. I didn't even touch on the incredible mentors, or working with both the Cave team and members of other teams, or the consistently delicious meals. I'm still in the process of reviewing all of my notes, and weeks later I'm still finding inspiration from the presentations, exercises and individual chats I had throughout that intense week.

Thankyou again to everyone involved, and I wish all the best for the teams and projects as they continue to develop.

-Anthony

Breaking in a new playspace.

2011-09-28T11:20:00.004+08:00

Back in April, amidst a rant on why I prefer social interactions in games over mechanical interactions, I briefly brought up the topic of bridging the technological gap that board games can't yet manage:

"When pegged about bringing board games to the modern game player, many designers will work straight to the tablet/PC port. Sometimes it works well (Neuroshima Hex!), but a lot of the time the port misses the point of it's original game, the tangible obligation."

It turns out Disney are going to be the force that breaks into this playspace in a significant way with AppMATes. These "Mobile Application Toys" are figurines that interact with an iPad app that Disney will release. The iPad will essentially become a digital play area that is manipulated by the physical toy.

A video with Disney Mobile's Bart Decrem shows how the toys and app will work.

Admittedly this is focused on toys and singular play. However the technology could certainly be abstracted away from the Christmas-retail focus that we'll undoubtedly see, and into more meaningful social play.

Imagine an Ogre Tactics style strategy game, with physical pieces and cards that manipulate the digital environment. A Civilization or Catan spin-off with digital calculators that respond to the movements of your meeples. Some of these broad ideas could easily be integrated to an established platform, like Disney already have with the iPad.

(Hello significant removal of development overheads!)

It will take pioneers of game design to move into this territory, lest the playspace become inundated with flashy gimmicks with no meaningful context.

Designers who value meta-data and automation to free up player intentions.
And layered user interface that is prohibitive to print, but intuitive to touch.
And juicy, juicy polish that can bring a stationary figurine to life.

I have a dream of these mash-up digital/physical playspaces, and they look fun.

-Anthony

The Habit.

2011-09-23T11:45:00.009+08:00

For the last few months I have been using a Habit Chart to start good habits. It looks like this.

This chart is helping to cut down my wasted efforts (time in front of the TV or playing mindless timewasters) and encouraging me to spend time on the things I actually want to do.

What I've done is broken down my life - all the things I want to be better at - into seven responsibilities. Every time I do something to fulfill that responsibility, I fill in a vertical rectangle with the date and squiggles. By the end of the month you have what amounts to a primary-schooler's impression of a bar graph.

This chart gives me the incentive to do the daily grind that it takes to form good, lasting habits.

Going back to a previous braindump about the Success Circle, being successful at something is a habit borne of practice - every day. It doesn't matter how much you accomplish of the task, as long as you regularly, consistently practice at it. Quality in any discipline is 90% perseverance.

It can be incredibly easy to put off practice. I would know, I have an entire misspent youth of experience to back that up. The problem with putting off practice is that the procrastination itself becomes a habit.

When you put it off for one day, another day won't hurt.
And then another day turns in to a couple more.
And a couple more becomes a week.
Then one more week. And before you know it, you've spent a month without a single instance of practice.

It was important for me to include personal responsibilities to the list. Being a good father and a good husband is pivotal to having a stable environment to let me work on other things. And it takes a lot of work to fulfill those responsibilities. This chart keeps me accountable not only to myself, but to others that rely on me to pull my weight.

Now I have a way to look at how I've spent my time, and know which areas I can use some more practice to make a lasting habit of.

-Anthony

Presentation update.

2011-08-24T10:07:00.003+08:00

I'm going to be a man with many hats at this Saturday's Show Us Your Bits 2011!

Firstly, I'm giving my playtesting presentation - this time for a full 15 minutes. As a result, I've updated the Prezi for "Playtesting Is Your Friend" with extra bits and easter eggs for opportunistic rants.

Secondly, I'm taking a copy of the mafia card game to showcase and get people to playtest. I'm actually hoping to do a bunch of games that test a couple of ideas I've had about economy to streamline the game even further.

Thirdly, I'm hosting a paperjam!, an hour-long workshop on paper prototyping. I have no idea what attendance is going to be like, but it should be fun. Worst case scenario, I sit there by myself doing some prototyping of my own!

Fourth(ly?), I'll be there as the usual Let's Make Games Inc. money-man and directer of traffic.

So that's going to be a busy Saturday!

-Anthony

Playtesting Is Your Friend.

2011-07-20T13:20:00.008+08:00

This is the Prezi for the lightning talk presentation I was going to give at What's Up Pitches?! back in May. Due to scheduling issues at the event the presentation didn't happen, so I've finally found time to blog about it instead.

[edit:] Embedding the Prezi isn't so hot with this Blogger template. The Prezi can be found here.

It starts with the basic premise of my business and current project, and then ambles into the hows and whys of playtesting a game design.

There are plenty of playtesting methods, each with their own pros and cons. Mark Ambinder goes through Valve's playtest methodologies in his presentation available from their publications library*. Although the methods discussed are largely designed for digital games, the approach and information gathered can apply just as easily for table games.

Two methods that I have used extensively - pretty much exclusively - for my current project have been Design Experiments and Player Feedback.

Design Experiment playtests are used to isolate core mechanics and put them through rigorous case testing. It involves identifying a problematic or unbalanced mechanic and creating an environment that the mechanic can be accessed and played repeatedly without interference from the rest of the game.

This is incredibly useful for troubleshooting, tweaking and testing new ideas. The key is making sure you can easily emulate and remove the rest of the game so that the information you gather is relevant for a full-length game session.

This is slightly easier for digital games; god-modes, location warps and event spreadsheets can ease the pain of having to work/play through an entire level to test a boss mechanic.
It is severely different for a table game. It is important to make sure the results you've acquired are just as applicable to a 2 hour game session as the 2 minute playtest. This requires a fundamental understanding of your entire game system and the motivations driving your players.

An example is the Allegiance system for my current project.
I had toyed with the idea of drawing an Allegiance card at the start of the game to determine which team you ultimately belonged to. Originally this worked out well, but due to the development of other mechanics I ended up ditching the system.
This worked in the short-term, as it provided players with open opportunities. They could react on the fly to what was happening around them.
However after a few more rounds, players started to complain that they had less direction and motivation. Although I originally thought this was just the counter-balance from the freedom to pick your own allies, after more discussion it came out that this openness devalued the worth of the end-game.

Essentially, no one cared who won the game.

I wasn't convinced that the Allegiance system could be inserted back in to the game without breaking other systems, but I really wanted to test it. So after a couple of full rounds, we sat down with some testers, removed the rest of the game and played with just the Allegiance cards. Each player still had their turn as normal, but we narrated our actions to imitate the gameplay.
This allowed a massive turnover of multiple playthroughs, and we found that even though we did not have a full 2-hour investment in the end result, there was still some level of emotional feedback when the social mechanics of the Allegiance cards were played out.

End result: playtest successful, and Allegiance was reinstated smoothly into the game.

Player Feedback is the second method I mentioned heavily in my presentation. The premise is simple - ask your testers what they thought. The reality isn't nearly so easy.

Your playtesters will have just experienced your game - for the first time, third time or hundredth - with their own set of intentions, reactions and narrative. What one player might have considered a courageous and bold move, another would snarl was deceitful and petty.
So who is right?

It is important to understand three things when you ask your playtester a question:
1) Your game's system(s),
2) The intent of your design, and
3) The intent of your players.

The last is the one that gets forgotten about. You absolutely must know what kind of player your tester is.
Are they competitive or co-operative? A sore winner or a sore loser? Do they grief? Are they tactical, strategic or reactive?
If you don't have a rudimentary understanding of your tester's game psychology going in, the only information you will be able to garner from their feedback is a basic emotional recount of their experience. Which is fine for the player, but that is not information that you can use to effectively test against the logic of your rules system.

The example I used in my presentation is when I changed from asking "Did you feel powerful?" to "When did you feel powerful?" during a testing session.
After a few sessions asking the first question, I had pages of the same feedback. Anyone who won the session felt powerful, everyone else didn't.
As soon as I started asking the second question instead, "When did you feel powerful?", I instantly received better feedback. The players who won would often have a similar end-game related answer, but everyone else was now giving me a wide range of experiences.
With a larger and more informative dataset, I now know what it is about my game that will make someone feel like a powerful mafia crime-lord, and not just someone who lost at a card game.

That's the gist of the presentation. I probably could have talked for a good half hour on the subject, so fitting it all into a lightning talk was pretty tough.
It came out as fairly concise, although I was pushing the three minute limit. Perhaps it was a stroke of luck that I didn't end up giving it!

-Anthony

* This is an amazing repository of information for game designers and AI programmers. Eat it up kids!

Real Social Games...

2011-04-01T19:04:00.004+08:00

... are board games.

They aren't compartmentalised timewasters on Facebook. A social game is when you get to socialise while you play. It happens in online play. It happens in MMOs.

But it mostly happens around a table.

There is a lot of uncovered ground with interaction and socialisation in gameplay. There is an element to a truly social game that a digital game can never supply - the obligation of a tangible mechanic. It's too easy to blow off a digital game. You can just disconnect if you hit a losing streak. Change your spec if you want to PVP instead of raid.

If you're sat around a table with four other people, you have to be committed to that gameplay cause. Pushing your pieces around the board, holding your cards and rolling your dice. No one else will step in if you walk from the table. You're there, face-to-face, with your rivals and teammates to the end of the game. (Unless you're a bad sport!)

The delicious side effect to this is that the best part of the game happens off the table. All of the trashtalk, the negotiations, the fits of rage and fist bumps, these are all experiences of a social mechanic. And nothing within the game should get in the way of it! A game can certainly aid in the off-the-table mechanics, but most of it is already inherent in the partaking of the social game.

So, what's missing? Why aren't board games prioritised as high as digital games? Or what is preventing players from finding meaningful experiences outside of digital games?

Board games are missing a significant technology leap.
When pegged about bringing board games to the modern game player, many designers will work straight to the tablet/PC port. Sometimes it works well (Neuroshima Hex!), but a lot of the time the port misses the point of it's original game, the tangible obligation.

I think the digital port is important, but it is not the only way to bring new technology to social games. Why don't we have board games with combat calculators built in? Statistic trackers? Digital counters and scoreboards?
It could be a difficult line to breach. You don't want to remove the aspects from the game that give it physicality - players still need to roll a real dice, push a real piece, else there would be no more physical obligation to play the game. But there's plenty of meta-data that could be automated.

The Microsoft Surface is definitely a step in the right direction, but it's not a dedicated solution. Monopoly's Electronic Banking Edition is also bang on the buck, but this technology integration is sold only as a fad, not an innovation. There could be so much more to it!

The experience of a completed game is a narrative. A completed game around a table is a story shared personally with everyone present. Technology and game mechanics should be used to turn that experience into a memorable story with as little friction as possible.

Choose the platform, technology and mechanics.
Let the players play and be social.

It would be a waste to miss the opportunities to give game players a chance to create more meaningful stories with each other, just because we didn't figure out the best platforms for our games.

-Anthony

fear not, ranger

The many languages of English.

2011-02-11T10:33:00.003+08:00

I had a pretty heated discussion with a client the other day. It was an extremely frustrating experience, and one that almost cost me a good business relationship. At no point could either of us answer the other's questions, and when he dropped the "You're not listening to what I'm saying" bomb, I was floored - I had been thinking the exact same thing!

We both left the conversation angry, depleted and nowhere even close to having an understanding about the other side's argument.

It took a while of reflection to figure out what had happened. Even though were we both speaking English fluently, we were speaking different languages! The client was a project manager and wanted to talk in terms of milestones and scope, whereas I was wearing my bookkeeper hat and wanted to talk in terms of source documents and invoices.

Since neither of us were willing to bridge that disciplinary gap, it created a barrier between our communication. We were talking about the exact same thing, but without a common language we just ended up butting heads without finding a solution to the problem at hand.

It is vitally important to know who you are talking to, and know how to communicate with that person. I was only recently introduced to the concept of code-switching, but until the other day I didn't have a practical application for it - I'd only previously seen it refer to either multi-lingual conversationists or bridging the gap of talking and texting between kids. But it is more than that. To be a successful communicator, you need to know that what you say makes sense to the person listening. Communication isn't about talking, it's about making sense to the person listening.

Many of us work in cross-disciplinary workplaces, even multiple workplaces. This is a minefield of social cliques and dialects! How often do you actively change your communication to suit the people you are around on a daily basis?

I'm learning to communicate with the programmers at RocketHands. I know now that I can't just take off about 'shareholder drawings' and 'targeted demographic marketing' without giving examples.
I talk with my band mates differently than I do with my bookkeepers. I certainly don't knuckle-bump my co-workers and give a "'Sup!" to my office manager.
And now I know that there isn't a single client language. They all work in different industries, come from different circumstances. They don't all know about bank reconciliations, the same as some audiences don't care about pentatonics and many gamers don't give a flip about monomyth narratives.

I did call that client back. I put on my project developer hat and talked in a language similar enough that I could start to breach some bookkeeping concepts. As a result we now have a dialogue and process that isn't usual for bookkeeping, but one that can develop into a solid understanding of both businesses.

-Anthony
we need to synergise our backwards overflow

Thought|Post - Success

2011-01-11T21:52:00.002+08:00

The theory is: success is a habit.
Habits comes from practice.
Practice comes from motivation.
Motivation comes from inspiration.
Inspiration comes from success.

Put the five points in a big circle with a one way arrow going around. The trick is to figure out where your strengths are in the circle, jump on from there and work your way around to where you want to be.

-Anthony

the only wrong way is to not do it

Thought|Post - Nature of Business

2010-11-22T13:32:00.004+08:00

It turns out that when it comes to writing, there's an inbetween state where I find something I want to write about, the idea is longer than 140 characters, but shorter than a typical blogpost. Mainly I've been storing them up in my head, but that's starting to take up too much space. Instead, I'll just start posting them here as mini-posts.

Anyway, little bits of pith always sound trite over Twitter.

--

The nature of business isn't an objective science. The trappings of business can be charted on graphs and defined by trends, but the nature of business is personal, emotional and coincidental.

We don't purchase items - we buy experiences.
We don't obtain services - we hire personalities.
We don't invest in enterprises - we buy into people.

I'm certain you'll never hear someone like Richard Branson claim he has business down to a science. The only people who would boast something like that are the people who aren't aiming high enough to break out of their numbers and graphs.

-Anthony

The Indie Team Startup.

2010-10-21T14:03:00.002+08:00

Starting as an indie is a pretty daunting task. You don't have to just make a game, you have to make a business. You can't get away without knowing about your target markets, press release distribution or how to lodge a BAS. Ignoring any aspect of your business can very easily make the time you spend on game development moot, which is a scary notion when you're in this by yourself.

So at first you might think that bringing more people in can make things easier. Time to team-up! But creating an indie team has its own hurdles and issues that need to be considered before you start slapping high-fives and chanting "C-C-C-COMBO" with your best buds.

Here's the response I gave to some fellows over east looking to start up a medium sized indie team, similar to RocketHands in scope. I talked mainly about the issues that team start-ups face, although quite a bit is still relevant to the lone wolf start-ups. Enjoy, I hope it is helpful to you guys as well.

The first step in planning your start-up is deciding the business structure. This is a pretty complex topic!, and not one to be handled lightly. Individual situations call for individual solutions, so make sure to consult with your legal/accounting agents beyond whatever advice you receive from everyone else.

When dealing with business structure - the company structure vs. the partnership conundrum - there's three elements that separate the effectiveness of the two structures; overheads, tax and trust.

In terms of overheads, partnerships win out. They don't have the high registration costs of a company, you don't have the ongoing annual licence fees with ASIC and you don't need to declare official board meetings and spend time sorting out your secretarial volumes and meeting minutes. In terms of both time and money commitments, from start-up to business to closure, partnerships are on paper the cheapest.

Tax is a more complex subject, and one you should definitely bring your accountant in on before deciding. As a partnership, you will all be responsible for your own personal income tax. As a company, you will be responsible for your own income tax as well as the business' company tax (30% of the company's net profit). Looking at this from the most basic resolution, it would look like partnerships are easier to sort out the tax for, but realistically in the games industry we very rarely deal with net profit anyway; whatever spare cash we end up with usually goes straight into future development and continued support for the most recent releases. Dividends will be a rarity for your first years (unless you create the next Minecraft or Flight Control off the bat!), so you will either be looking at shareholders drawings or wages, both of which are fairly easy to manage tax-wise.

The last point, and most important, is trust. This isn't to say that you need to quantify your trust in the rest of your team - if you don't trust someone, you shouldn't be going into business with them in the first place! - but you all need to objectively sit down and talk about risk management and liabilities as a team.

As a partnership, each one of you is equally liable if something goes wrong. It doesn't matter if it is Team Member A that brokered the bad investment deal, or Team Member B that infringed on copyright material, or whatever the situation might be; if someone stuffs up, you are all equally responsible for the resolution of that situation. Large partnerships can also find it harder to continue operating if someone chooses to leave; this situation can take a lot of negotiation and potentially be more expensive for the business in time cost, especially if you aren't dealing with an amicable parting.

As a company, the company itself is its own legal entity, and in most cases will be the entity liable for any dispute resolution. (There are situations where the director of a company can become personally liable, but that usually involves either gross mismanagement or vast amounts of unpaid tax.) Also inherent in the company structure is the company's constitution - usually your accountant will use a standard company constitution template unless you request otherwise - that will objectively outline how internal disputes can be handled; from engaging or resigning a director, how shareholders can vote, to closing down and winding up the business. These two parts of the company structure, in my opinion, far outweigh the cost benefits of the previous two points that favour partnership over the long term of a business.

If you end up going the route of the company, you need to consider how you want to structure the shareholdings and the board. In a typical situation shareholdings will be equal amongst all members of a start-up unless clearly negotiated prior to association. Make sure that shareholdings, not directorship, dictate control of the company! You don't want all of the members of your team to be directors of the company, that just means you have to get every single person to sign every single form before you can get anything done. If someone is out of the office, away on holiday, whathaveyou, you don't want to have to wait for them to get back to sort out the paperwork.

Elect one person as director, another as secretary, and let them sign the forms. Control of the company instead should come from the shareholdings; to enable this, everyone should have equal shares of the same voting class*. This way each member has equal voting power when making important decisions during a board meeting, has an equal stake in the company's value and potential dividends, and they all own an equal portion of the company.

Beyond all of the business side of things, making a start-up with a medium sized team can be hard work. Preferably everyone will have the same kinds of hours available to work, similar work ethics and will try to make a conscious effort towards working as a team - this last becomes more difficult each time you add another person to the team, not because of their personality but because it is one more person that needs to make decisions and agree to act on someone else's. Timing of work can be pretty important as well; it is much easier to get things done when you can be in the same room, or at least on the same line of communication, at the time that you're doing your work. Time commitments inside and outside of the studio can make a huge difference on the quality and quantity of development that gets done.

Lastly, and most importantly, despite all of the above, make sure you make games! It sounds pretty simple, but I've had to stress this to a few start-ups now. It can get very easy to get caught up in the niggly bits of the business, but you have to remember that without games you won't have a business to niggle over. Making games should be first and foremost in your activities, and everything else can come after.

*It may be worthwhile asking for your shares to be created as multiples of 12, as this makes the shareholdings easiest to divide amongst a variable number of shareholders, but that's just a bit of number OCD on my behalf.

-Anthony

for what its worth, this still took just as long to edit than to originally write

Game Design for the Non-Technical.

2010-10-06T13:19:00.004+08:00

So lately I've been getting a number advice requests over email from indie developers, ranging from business structures to game design. In typical fashion I'm unable to reply to these emails in anything short of five paragraphs, so I figure: "Why not kill two birds with one blunt object haphazardly hurled in the direction of my blog?".

The following is my lightly edited reply to an email I received from a fellow non-technical type asking how to get a game made without the development know-how; something I can very much relate to!

---
To start with, the thing you need to figure out is why do you want to make this game? The answer to that question is going to guide you in how you potentially end up developing your game.

If you want to make this game because you think there is marketable viability in the idea, I would first suggest you go look at your competitors on the platform you want to work on. Find out what your competitors have done, why they did some things, and why they didn't do others. See if you can find out how much time and money they spent on their development on their blogs or on developer forums.

If you still think the idea has some legs, it's time to saddle up and find your team! Work out your budget and prepare your core design and pitch documents so you've detailed everything you know - it doesn't matter what you don't know, that's why you're hiring other people - but they need to know the core concepts that are definitive in your head.

I would recommend the first member of your team you should look for is a concept artist. A hundred page design document is all well and good, but a few choice screenshot mock-ups will explain everything so much faster - if you're like me and have neither the technical or artistic capacity to show people what you want, then an artist is essential to getting your message across.

Then you'll need a progammer! (Something to keep in mind; given any limits in budget or time, any dual-classed developers are golden (programmer/composer, programmer/artist etc). For basic gameplay, you could potentially only need a single developer who covers all of your bases.)

Once you have your potential team, but before development starts preferably, make sure you have all of your publishing bits sorted with your platform, ie. if you're making an iPhone game, sign up for the App Store Developer Program, figure out how distribution onto devices works, make sure you're familiar with the languages and technology they allow (and more importantly what they don't allow!), and all of the taxation and banking shenanigans required. The App Store has made most of this pretty easy to handle, but I've not any experience with the Android program yet I'm afraid.

(Of course if you're dealing with an experienced team, they'll already have the personnel and experience to make this process a lot smoother, but that will go hand-in-hand with higher development costs.)

Lastly, make sure you're up front with everyone you deal with in what they're going to get out of the project - contractor fees, profit-sharing, usage of your game in their portfolio, etc. Sorting all of this out early saves heavy headaches later on. Get everything in writing as early as possible so creativity isn't stifled with legalese halfway through the project. Professionals will respect and appreciate the boundaries, and you will be saving your time and investment if things don't go according to plan.

If you want to make this game because you like the idea and think it would make a good game, then there's some good news and bad news. Bad news first is that every developer has ten ideas that they think are "cool" and haven't yet had the chance to make; the adage of "Everyone has ideas, it's how you execute it" has a lot of traction in the game design world! A blog post by Derek Sivers explains the concept very well. It's not game related specifically, but the concept applies 100%.

The other thing to keep in mind is that it is a lot harder to find people who will buy into your pitch if you can't back it up with some financials of how they're going to get reimbursed for their time and effort. It can be possible to find people who will buy in to your idea just as much as you do for free (and the internet can be great for this), but it can take a lot of coaxing and project management to make it happen.

The good news however, is that there are heaps of ways for non-technical people like us to make their own games. There's quite a few pre-made development engines that make putting together game ideas quickly relatively easy - some are free, others cost a little bit but can be worth the money. Quite a few established developers use these tools to prototype their own ideas before working on their code and assets with a larger team!

I can't personally vouch for all of them, but I have seen some really good projects get made quickly with Construct, and I'm about a month or so away from testing it for the first time myself to prototype a marketing idea. There's also a substantial list of art and sound assets for indie developers at the LetsMakeGames resource page, lots of great discussion and a job board at the Indie Gamers forum, plus the Almighty Google is always helpful for finding resources and people to collaborate with.

And at the end of the day, it could be more rewarding and satisfying knowing that you made your game yourself!
---

-Anthony

hi ho, hi ho, it's off to a ramshackle mine looking for bloodstone while the zombies are out at night we go!

Contracting Basics.

2010-08-30T16:26:00.007+08:00

I've recently had some stories come to me about friends (or friends of friends) being burned by nefarious schemers practicing unethical business. I feel really bad for my (friends of) friends, not just because they've been pushed out of pocket for no good reason, but also because if they'd come to me first, they might have had a few more tools to cope with the situation, perhaps even prevent it completely.

Here's a couple of things to keep in mind if you are planning to get yourself an ABN and go the route of working as a sole trader. These are just some tips mind, not a complete overview - there's some extensive sources available from federal and media bodies - but if any of these points can save you a day of stress, then my job is done!

You don't pay to do your work. This is the first thing I always tell anyone registering for their ABN, and usually it gets met with a blank look - why would anyone pay to do their job? Well, it happen. Whether you're asked to temporarily pay a supplier's bill, or fork out for the advertising costs associated with your students, it's not right. You're there to provide your employer's business with a service, not capital.

Between a boss and a contractor, cashflow should be one way only; to the contractor.

Your terms are seven days. As a service provider, you likely won't have any source of income other than the invoices you send out at the end of your work week. Make sure you get to know who is processing your invoice and make sure they treat it as a wage, not a supplier or utility provider. Typically an office administrator will shelve an invoice until the end of the month, which means you could be waiting up for four or five weeks for the payment to be authorised. Your cashflow will not survive these kinds of delays, so make sure you (politely!) let your employer know that your terms are seven days, just like any other employee.

Your invoices need to be paid on time; as a sole trader, your cashflow is your livelihood.

Invoice on time! Whether you've invested in a bookkeeping program and fancy letterheads, or are writing them out in those little invoice/tax booklets, the important part is making sure that you've accurately allocated your time and have the invoice ready by the end of the week, or first thing the next week at the very latest.

If you're late with your paperwork, then so is your employer. Don't give anyone a reason to not pay you on time!

Claim your super. Contractors are entitled to superannuation! Under superannuation laws, if you look and smell like an employee, then for superannuation purposes you are an employee - there are very few situations where a contractor is not entitled to superannuation under these rules. Also, superannuation is always added after the gross salary/hourly amount, ie. an advertised contract for $100k should also include $9k super above the initial contract amount. Make sure to fill out the Super Choice form when all the other paperwork is signed; if you're not offered one, make sure to ask for it.

Superannuation may be a pain the arse, but it is a pain in the arse you're entitled to.

Hope this is helpful to someone, somewhere, sometime!

-Anthony

anyone?

The importance of clean underwear.

2010-06-10T15:06:00.004+08:00

Over a month ago now my wife and I were involved in a car accident. We are both thankfully fine and have since moved on, but at the time it felt pretty horrific. My in-laws took us to the Joondalup emergency ward after we had moved my poor little car off the main road; I had insisted we go due to my wife's pregnancy, and my wife insisted because of some little thing about me not being able to move my neck.

One of the key memories I have of this experience is lying on a hospital bed with a neck-brace on and sandbags around my head, my beautiful wife standing on one side and a cute nurse on the other, both of them pulling at my jeans and telling me to stop fidgeting. And despite the frustration of having to lie still and not being able to move, and the concern for what my x-rays were going to come back with, at that time the only thought I had was; "Gosh, it's a good thing I put good undies on this morning".

The important things in life, huh?

So quite a bit later, once the nerves had settled and I could look at my car's smooshed boot with my stomach dropping, I started thinking about fundamental things I do every day. What actions do I make day-in day-out without compromise, and how many do I cut a few corners with? It can be so easy these days, when there's one thousand other things that need to be done, to say "You know, that's good enough".

There's going to be a time though that a cut corner is going to cost me. I'm not going to know when, it'll be unexpected, just like that car accident. But sooner or later something will happen, and what will determine how well I can manage that situation will be how well I have done my fundamentals. Is my filing done correctly? Did I send the confirmation emails to everyone? Have I returned that overdue phone call?

Am I wearing clean underwear?

[TL;DR] Don't compromise your daily minutiae. One day you'll be thankful that you did it right the first time.

-Anthony

you're dropping your f'ing oranges

Cents sense.

2010-05-17T19:39:00.006+08:00

I get annoyed pretty quickly when it comes to other people's business, mainly because it's my job.

I get to see quite a few business people in their work environments with my job, ranging from the struggling to the highly successful. They all undoubtedly work hard at their business, and many of them have piles - if not shelves - of business and management literature.

And I always seem to see the same mistakes.

I don't know what these books and DVDs are saying to my clients, but there must be something fundamentally missing in the self-help sections that we consistently see similar mistakes over and over and over. Unnecessary mistakes that cause stress on the business owners and the business itself. They may not be fatal to the business, but all the unnecessary stress sure isn't making their job* any easier.

Here's my four-point guide to business that you don't have to pay $29.95 at Borders for. It isn't going to solve all your problems, but they're healthy fundamentals that aren't missing from good businesses.

Business is people. Your employees, clients, customers, suppliers and land-lords are all people. The sooner you remember to put a face to a name, the sooner you're going to get better deals, better loyalty and better service. Learn to communicate creatively and consistently. Courtesy, grammar and punctuation speak volumes louder than your track record when dealing with someone new. Everyone has their bad days, so don't make theirs worse.

Know your cashflow. Cashflow is the lifeblood of your business. You should know every facet of your income and expenditure, even if you don't handle it directly. The minutiae isn't important, as long as you have a clear understanding of your ins and outs. Massive warning bells go off as soon as I hear the words "You know more about my business than I do" - that spells hands-off and responsibility shirking. Trust that your money people can handle your business, but know exactly where you dollars come from and go to. Anything less is willingly handing your business over to someone without your vested interest or sovereignty.

Contractors are more than workers, employees are more than errand-runners. Surround yourself with professionals that listen, work proactively and respect your business. These people will bring specialty knowledge and abilities beyond their initial job description - use them! Use effective delegation**, and give your people room to move, learn, teach and make mistakes.

Payroll is sacred. One day late wages will add more stress to your business than the worst customer relation. Your employees rely on their money being in their accounts when promised - failing to meet this promise will create a chain reaction of anxiety and grief that will extend well beyond your reach of influence. There is no quicker way to undermine the respect and goodwill for your business than failing to meet payroll obligations.

There you go. I'm certainly not qualified enough to be writing books about this, but I'm confident that any business owner taking these four points to practice will be much less anxious than those that don't.

-Anthony

* Or mine, for that matter.
** Hint: Delegation does not equal hands-off.

for you, no charge

Clearspeak.

2010-05-12T11:56:00.007+08:00

I was fairly certain at one stage that most people were on the same wave-length as me. We generally had the same idea on what 'good' meant - good quality, good nature, good ethics. Given this idea, I made a conscious choice that I could sacrifice some level of communication when talking with other people because good people would 'get it'.

Then the internet came, and without the additional hints of gestures* and vocal recognition, it became paramount that my written word was made clearer so that I was understood. This quickly separated myself from the majority of other IRC users, many of whom were populating #funfactory and creating the foundations of today's txt-speak. This discipline to grammar that I exercised with extreme prejudice in my own written communication lead to my desire to start writing.

Surely since I could string a sentence together, I could be a writer, right?

Well, kind-of.

What I didn't realise was that there are two kinds of communication; factual and creative. Factual communication is exactly that - factual, objective and clean. One plus one equals two. This apple is green. You cannot continue to act in this manner in good faith of our contract. Etcetera.

The second part of communication, the creative part, is broad. It's not just the ability to convey a fictional story. (Even that is a factual means of communication - the story already exists, it just needs to be told.) Creative communication is the ability to express ideas that don't necessarily have an objective basis.

A manager's ability to delegate and provide leadership is creative communication.
A salesperson's ability to make a customer feel comfortable and empowered to buy a specific item.
A writer's ability to convince the reader that the story they're telling really is as good and exciting as the cover depicts.

And what I know now, quite a few years later than when I first logged on to IRC, is that creative communication has nothing to do with the meaning of your words. Or that they're in the right order, or that the right punctuation is used. Creative communication is about how you say it. The timing of when you say it. Who you say it to. And why you're saying it.

These things can be just as important, sometimes more so!, than what it is you actually say.

A little while ago I tried pitching an idea to Senor Kranzky about a game I was keen to make. In my head it made sense. I had flowcharts showing user throughput, I had marketing plans in place and was even sure that technically the program would be a breeze to create.

When it came to time to talk everyone through it, I choked. I could factually point to everything I wanted and what purpose it would have and why it was designed in that fashion, but I wasn't prepared to pitch it creatively. I had no idea why anyone else would want to look at this game. I stuttered on ideas, and in the end though I had provided "a good idea" for the purpose of the game, the actual game content itself left everyone underwhelmed.

I've since redesigned from the ground up what I want in the game and suited it's function to match it's purpose. As a result the re-pitched idea came much more smoothly. I knew now what I wanted to do, and how to say it. I didn't have to convince that it was a good idea - factually this was evident in the redesign - and my enthusiasm for the idea came much, much easier.

I'm not a salesman. At all. Years upon years of excessive typing and having hours to formulate replies has left my interpersonal sales and pitching skills underdeveloped. I consider this to be a positive trait though, 'cause it just means that whatever I need to sell is going to have to be so freakin' awesome that it will speak for itself.

And in that circumstance, telling someone about it - creatively - is so much easier.

-Anthony

*Of which I use. A lot.

quit yer jibber jabber and help me with the boom-booms

Ubuntu.

2010-04-27T19:55:00.003+08:00

I was talking today with someone about the different virtues Western societies promote compared to non-Western societies. In particular what came up regularly was the idea of isolation common in capitalist societies - the idea that a person's value is demonstrated by how well they can stand on their own two feet without the support of others.

The thought behind this is that a person's self-worth is more inherently valuable to the society when that person can survive and provide within their own means. They do not drain from the others around them, and are therefore not a liability to the societal economy. This is well evidenced by the value we place on economic-based milestones through early development; first bank accounts, pocket money, mandatory tax file number registration at high school. Most people consider moving out of their family's home to be the equivalent of a coming-of-age rite. It's when we get to feel like a Big Person.

This was then compared to non-Western philosophies of community; in particular this person had good experience with South African ideas of community and family. He told me that in parts of the world that don't emulate American economies, the idea of self-worth isn't inherit in what you achieve by yourself, but what you achieve as part of a group. The word he used was "ubuntu", and described it as the sense of belonging to a family and fulfilling your role in that family unit by being open, giving and true of yourself.

When people act within the group in a true manner, with ubuntu in mind I assume, they give and provide to the group by being honest, fulfill their obligations by doing what they were naturally made to do. As there is no value apportioned to self-worth individually, the value of giving and providing to the community is no longer about economical value (what has been earned and traded), but of the generosity and values imparted with the gift.

This has the additional benefit then of valuing the act of giving more than the economy of receiving. Compare this to our tribe; when we go to buy presents, we stress so much about the receiver's perception of the gift's value. "Are they going to like it? Did I spend enough? Do they already have it?" By then we have forgotten the important part of the gift - our thoughts, time and intentions.

I know I've been told a few times that the most important gift someone can give is their time. And I know I've personally sacrificed time on many occasions to earn additional self-value, often in the form of additional wealth. As to when the time spent overbalanced the value earned, I couldn't tell you, but it definitely has happened at some stage or other. Sleepless nights from previous employers have proved that.

The thing is, I value my self-worth and my ability to work. I value my mixture of creative and business processes. And I also quite like what I understand of our capitalist economy. But I also appreciate the value of a community that shares its time and value to the benefit of its members with no other motive than to further the community.

I want to create this kind of tribe around me, I think. Where no person who fulfills their duty is a liability, regardless of it's apparent worth to an outside system. I'm not certain I can marry this idea yet with my plans of enterprise, but I'll let you know when I do.

-Anthony

i bunt you too [heart]

Right now.

2010-04-25T15:02:00.007+08:00

My lovely wife bought me a magazine yesterday, a periodical devoted to entrepreneurs and management-type people. It has key points on the cover like "Learning from the young rich" and "Motivation is the key to success". Bono's there with his weird glasses looking out of place with the corporate blue backdrop and non-rock'n'roll typeface floating around his head.

I've read more than half of the articles in the magazine now, and all of them seem to have the same premise, a familiar one I find in a lot of business literature;

You want money now.
I've got money. I can tell you how to get money.
It's a spiritual thing. It's a people thing.
You should do what I do.
And here's an advert for what I'm selling.
This is how I do it. You should do it like this and make money now.

Thing is, a lot of these guys have good ideas I agree with. Great ideas. Common sense business ideas that no matter how many times they are reiterated with catchy slogans ("The attitude that matters is gratitude!"), people forget them. So what's my problem with this style of advice? Two things!, one small and one not-as small.

Firstly, they try to up-sell the advice. I have no problem with people making sidelines by tutoring and mentoring - far from it! But it rubs me the wrong way to have your left-hand page article outline a generalised problem that every business person faces at any time in their career, and mirror that with a full page advert on the right-hand page with the solution to that very problem. It's akin to psychic hotline adverts sitting opposite ambiguous horoscope warnings.

But that's just editorial nit-picking. My main concern is this.

Everyone wants me to be rich now.

The tone I get from this magazine, and most other "business" related media, reads like personal inquiry and assumption about lack of drive and success. Am I thriving right now? Am I making my next sales call to push that cash cow over? Am I reading this from my personal jet while taking a day trip to France? No? Why the hell not?!

It sounds like everyone wants instantaneous wealth right now. Everyone wants to teach me how to find this secret stash of cash right this very minute, as soon as I get off my lazy ass to get motivated and do it! It's easy, you just need to listen to me now and use these methods now and you'll get money now. Now. Now!

Except.

I don't want wealth now.
I wouldn't know what to do with it.

Maybe I will in ten years time. When I've got more experience. And the contacts and network to put larger plans into place. With legitimate channels to invest that wealth into business ventures.

But I don't want it now.

And this is where I have a large problem with these guys. For all their good ideas and innovative philosophies, not one of them ever, ever mentions the word "work". Let alone coupled with "hard". Or "lots". Or even "a little bit of".

Now, I'm not accusing anyone of getting more than they've worked for; I'm hardly in any position to make that kind of statement. They are where they are for the work they've done, and I am where I am for the work I've done.

What I don't like about this is that it endorses the concept of the entrepreneurial mindset being solely to find the quickest way to raise personal wealth. The shortest line from point A (poor) to point B (money-hats). And - though I can't definitively prove this - this seems to be what people want to hear. They don't want to hear that you have to work long and hard to set up legitimate and pragmatic businesses. They want to hear about one day work weeks and private jets and retirement funds bursting twenty years before they're due. This must be the prevalent desire of the entrepreneur market, otherwise I wouldn't have all these successful business people consistently trying to sell this idea to me.

What would we all do if we had our instantaneous windfall, right now? Regardless of how I answer that, I doubt that whatever I lay down would be nearly as effective or long-lasting than what I will do with that wealth once I have earned it through experience and perseverance. I need to learn how to use that money before I own it, and thankfully I won't own it until I've earned it the old-fashioned way, over a good length of time.

"So the bars of West Hollywood, London and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren't even young anymore, their B-plans having been washed away by beer and vodka years ago.
"Meanwhile the competition is at home, working their asses off."
-Hugh MacLeod

There's a lot to be said for windfalls. If you want to rely on them though, start investing in the lottery.

-Anthony

i once thought i had a windfall, but it just turned out to be gas

My vote on game censorship.

2010-01-25T17:22:00.007+08:00

I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but I've wanted to dedicate a good few hours to it, and these days in my adult and criminal life I struggle to find the time to link a few good hours together. So alternately, I'll try getting my thoughts together over a few sittings, so forgive if it gets a little long and disjointed.

I'm unsure exactly where to start this, so I'm going to go with the central thought that runs through every argument I come across: Michael Atkinson is allowing children to participate in adult content. Regardless of what he says, his actions prove vastly different in the real world outside of his politics. He's quite happy to talk political rhetoric about his constituents, how the OFLC has failed to hold up its own regulations and that the vested groups behind the R18+ rating are solely economically interested in the debate. He admits to the censorship label of his politics, and talks quite candidly about his own children playing the video games he disagrees with.

(Didn't realise this got so long. Follow the cut for the rest!)

Yet instead of attempting to negotiate or provide a solution to the problem he vocally debates, he makes every move possible to block what is globally recognised as a socially responsible Good Idea. If the system of the OFLC and video game interactivity is so broken that the issue warrants this much attention - why oppose a potential solution? Why do "gamers" have to live up to his expected outcomes when the games industry is the group putting the first foot forward in finding a solution?

Back in '08, my then -eight-year-old cousin was not allowed to play any Ninja Turtles games, despite being a pretty big fan. My aunty and uncle didn't want him exposed to the violence. Fair enough, that was their choice, and as their gaming-enabled nephew I obliged - all presents were either G-rated games, or non-game related presents.

Imagine my surprise then when this Christmas just past, at the viewing of a simulated car-jacking on the news, my cousin said, "That's lame, I do way worse things taking a car in GTA." I was left momentarily stunned. Had my aunty and uncle backflipped completely in just over a year? Maybe exposure from school friends made it too hard to uphold such a regulation consistently? Regardless, I was very curious to find out how my cousin had come to finding himself playing a game which, to be honest, I don't find very appealing. I checked with my uncle - it seemed the MA15+ rating had little impact over what games the kids at school were playing.

I asked my uncle; if GTA had an R18+ rating instead of MA15+, would the kids at school be playing it? The answer was a definitive no - anecdotally, most of the parents considered their sub-teenage child to be mature enough to handle content that was rating M or MA15+. Were the game rated R18+, the parents would not have allowed such easy access to the material. He was pretty surprised when I told him the same game my cousin was being allowed to play is globally rated an Adult Game - M(17) in the US, and AO18+ everywhere else.

One of my favourite games to talk about when discussing the R18+ rating is EA's The Godfather II. If you decide to play this game, within the first hour of play you will have violently taken over a drug distribution ring (and be rewarded with in-game bonuses for it), execute other gangsters (that is, force into unarmed submission and kill), violently take over a prostitution ring (and again, be rewarded in-game) and make an assault on a strip club, fully undressed women dancing with poles included.

No censorship involved.

In the first hour.

And I can legally go and give this game to a 15 year old.

I don't want this kind of content available to kids. Frankly, I felt pretty sick playing it myself - it severely lacked the moral gravity and faithfulness to its movie counterpart that made the original Godfather game so enjoyable. I didn't make it much past that first hour before putting the controller down and filing the game away in the back of the cupboard. So how can this type of experience, shared by many, many other members of the Australian public, justify not having an R18+ rating?

The argument that's often brought up with this issue is what the OFLC considers as the "impact" of the content. Games with high impact content are being made to submit modified versions of the game to receive a legal rating to distribute in Australia. This is where I fail to understand the argument logic:

Games should be heavily monitored and classified accordingly due to the interactive nature of the content.

For a game deemed to high in violent or adult impact, certain elements are modified or removed from the game - eg. drug names are changed, sprites of dead bodies are removed faster.

Thus resulting in a game that still has the same level of interactive function with a lower level of conscious repercussion.

Isn't that counter-active to what's trying to be achieved?

Perhaps, at the end of it all, I will be disagreed with because I am a "gamer"; and furthermore, even worse, a developer that produces content for "gamers" for economic benefit. Atkinson is very, very keen to separate his idea of "gamer" from the rest of the Australian public. It's apparent in all of his rhetoric - only "gamers" support the R18+ rating, the same "gamers" that swear and curse and send death threats. Except, no, not all "gamers" swore at Atkinson during his Kotaku forum debate, and it's not gamers exclusively that want a well-functioning ratings system for video games.

As an adult, as a gamer and game developer, as a business man, as a socially responsible member of my community and as a (distant) future father, I want to keep interactive adult content out of children's hands. The difference between me and Michael Atkinson is that I'm willing to actually do something about it.

-Anthony

if you haven't yet, make sure to speak up at the online discussion paper while there's still time

TTYL!

2009-11-04T20:38:00.002+08:00

It wasn't until today, when saying goodbye to my mum with "See you in L.A.!", that I realised how close we are to leaving for Vegas.

I'm excited! Food, shows, and the wedding of course. I'm coming back a married man!

I'm actually more excited than a single exclamation mark can express, but multiple exclamations could be construed more as a form of instability than excitement. Just take my word for it: I'm a little jumping boy on the inside.

-Anthony

one two three woah!

[ding!]

2009-10-21T17:07:00.003+08:00

Like a lightbulb, see.

Derek Sivers' notes on Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody.

I really would like a copy of this book now, if you're listening Santa.

[edit:] You can get the first 12 chapters online here. Thanks Mr MacLeod!

-Anthony

i got my box of crayons: now what

EiP: The Misuse of Internet Tools for Fun.

2009-10-16T23:55:00.004+08:00

So I had an idea the other day, which has lead me to create this in the last half hour.

It's an experiment-in-progress for a new method of interactive fiction using my recently newfound joy, Prezi. The writing isn't special (as I said, half an hour!), but as far as experimenting with the medium and the execution of the idea, I think it worked pretty well?

Any comments would be appreciated! If the format is well received, I will definitely consider spending the time to try a proper composition.

-Anthony

[edit:] The WiP version can be found here for those interested, but I'm going to finish writing all of the parts before pathing it.

seems you're mouth is still open: you might want to do something about that

Works In Progress

2009-10-12T18:02:00.007+08:00

In reply to Nick's semi-recent post, I thought I'd too write down what I've been doing recently. As I load more projects on to my plate, I've found it becomes easy to forget about everything I've done as they're overshadowed by the great big Piles of Still To-Do.

And then once I do take those few introspective moments, I go "Woah, I've managed quite a bit!".

And then I pat myself on the back.

And then I try to high-five myself with limited success.

Prezi!

So one of the most excellent indiegamer.com dudes pointed me towards prezi.com, a (relatively new) mind-mapping presentation tool. You can use it to create really great interactive presentations without having to use boring old slideshows!

Check out the totally sweet RocketHands mission statement I made in a few hours that we're going to use to replace our old XtraNormal video. It's pretty plain, but without graphics it's sleek, swift and loads like the Flash.

What I like about Prezi is that you can go off track and click on stuff that looks interesting without having to wait to get to it (except I've managed to bugger this with ours due to my own cleverness! Just schzooom in and follow the path, you'll enjoy it regardless!), so it's pretty great for live presentations too. Or just letting someone explore your presentation on their own terms. Plus you can create really fun spaces!, instead of [Next], [Next], [Next]. Go up! Down! Upside down!

You're probably getting the hint that I find prezi pretty fun.

Writing.

I'm right in the middle of a new piece for The Penfolk. I've started and scrapped a whole bunch the last few weeks, experimenting with unfamiliar territory, but as I've already discovered from previous postings I'm exceedingly crap when I don't know what I'm talking about!

For a little while I thought was going through a serious creative-blocked period, but I've since started this piece in very familiar territory and I'm feeling a lot more comfortable writing with it. Although there's a lot to say about pushing creative boundaries and succeeding at failing, but I was starting to get really bummed about not writing anything I liked. So even if this piece doesn't turn out great, I'm happy to have discovered I have a creatively comfortable zone that I can work with and enjoy!

Business Stuff.

And then there's a whole bunch of business-y numbers and columns and stuff that while I find interesting, I'm sure the rest of you won't. So just take it on my word: numbers are okay!

In other brush-with-fame news, Tim Schafer told me to man-up and use Invisibility. Divine intervention? I think so!

-Anthony

residual earnings are just alright, oh yeeeeah, baa naa bada bada baa naa naaaa

Quotables.

2009-09-18T11:14:00.005+08:00

So I'm having a bit of fun with the RocketHands' marketing and PR. Writing up irreverent press releases is turning out to be a favourite pass-time. But most of all, I like it when I get to make stuff up.

For instance, with our first press release, we used a quote from Jack about the nature of RocketFuse's beginnings. I thought it was fine, it gave some insight into the gamejam nature of the team's development. But for a little while we toyed with the idea of using some fabricated quotes. Following are some startlingly falsified quotations we almost used:

"I felt sorry for [RocketHand's programmer] Rob, y'know," explains designer, baker and programmer Jack Casey, "He'd put on his astronaut helmet and go to his corner to play with this cardboard rocket all day. So we agreed to make this game so he could move on. Rob, if you're reading this, just let it go - you won't get to be an astronaut. Ever."

"We had this big discussion," said designer and snow-board prodigy Brad Power, "About what it means to us to be indie. Could we sell a game? Are we allowed to commercialise our work? Are we even allowed to let someone else look at it when it's, y'know, finished? We didn't really come to any conclusion by the end, so I snuck it onto the App Store when Rob and Jack weren't looking."

"I don't know much about it to tell the truth," said head honcho Jason Hutchens. "I've been busy writing code to send a new lunar shuttle into orbit while on a cruise vacation. Let me know if the game's any good, will you?"

With tongue firmly in cheek, I will press onwards to make people aware of our existence. It's a big internet!, but I've got a MacBook and a cheese sandwich to see me through.

In other BIMBAMTHWOOSH news, I have Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, and I think I may go have a dally with it before the awesome TEAMUP* action next weekend.

-Anthony

*Dibs on Gambit mother'uckers.

hello elvis!

Dollars and sense.

2009-09-13T21:57:00.003+08:00

Even though I was intending on taking a day off today, I still had to poke around the RocketHands sales figures for RocketFuse and do some number-crunching.

After some mathematiculating and investigation, it seems Apple is withholding the GST from our sales and intends to "remit to the competent authorities", which means the ATO in this case*. Although this is a nice gesture, I'm not entirely certain it fits into the ATO's Grand Scheme of things - at what stage does the ATO reconcile the GST amounts declared and unpaid by the developers to the lump sum provided by Apple? As far as I'm aware, there's no other company that offers to remit GST made payable by a separate party potentially before the tax has been declared.

What's concerning for me though is that I can't find much discussion about this anywhere amongst Australian developers, and the few I did see are pretty misinformed (ie. "I dont know, but you should assume what Apple gives you is gross". Try using a calculator, people!). How many developers are paying their sales GST twice just because of all this murkiness?

I'll be calling the ATO tomorrow to see if someone can clear this up for me.

In other non-Apple news, I can't sign in to XBox Live because I once tried MSN Messenger six years ago and Windows Live! thinks my iinet.net.au email account should be a Hotmail account or some humbug. Lame, I was planning on settling in to Shadow Complex tonight.

-Anthony

*That low-hanging fruit's too easy, even for me.

my dog thinks you smell like money

Psssssssssssssht.

2009-09-09T23:46:00.002+08:00

I'm sure I don't need to duplicate this information as everyone reading this blog would already know, but I'm gonna anyway: RocketFuse has been released and is live on the App Store! Yaaaay!

I got to write a whole bunch of press related stuff, including the press release and related email copy. It was fun! Being an indie developer, we get to have quite a bit of leniency and can play a little bit more irreverently than if we were slightly larger. At one stage I was toying with some manufactured quotes just for fun, which I found extremely amusing - I think I might recreate them for a RH.com story in a week or so.

Wedding plans are progressing! We've booked our tickets for Penn & Teller too, woop woop! Everyone is really looking forward to the trip. I've got it in my head I'm gonna win at the card tables this time. Although highly unlikely, it would be pretty awesome to come back from a trip both romantic and profitable.

Still practising on my bass-axe. I want to learn a few more basic stuff, and I'm thinking of recording myself so I can hear what I'm doing wrong (or possibly right, I guess?). Although I'm finding most satisfaction at just playing "solid", I can feel my lack of faculty on the instrument compared to what I know I want to play.

And then there's Dr John. I've been revisiting this amazing, amazing New Orleans piano player, and I just recently discovered these videos on YouTube. Look at his hands, they barely move. I mean, holy crap!, he plays the fattest version of Fats Domino I've heard and it looks like he's only playing two notes total! Goddamn funky doctor.

In other sweet soul music news, I took the puppies for a walk around the swamp near Wanneroo yesterday. They quite loved the romp through the grass, but I could do without the sodding mozzie bite on my arm.

-Anthony

me big chief me got big band

Elvis for $250? Let me think on this.

2009-08-26T20:55:00.003+08:00

So, we've finally decided on The Date. On Tuesday 17th November, I will be standing at the front of the Mirage Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, and will tell my precious fiancee that no matter what happens, she's stuck with me until one of us keels over.

Romantic, ain't it!

Now that we've bought the tickets and booked the hotels and everything, I'm starting to get really excited. We're going on holiday again!, and getting married!, all at the same time! Now that it's a tangible 'gonnahappen', everything I do now seems a lot more ... dedicated? I'm not sure, I just feel a certain sense of purpose to everything now that wasn't present for the last few weeks.

I'm going to break the news to my grandpa on the weekend - I think he might be a little disappointed, but I'll have to assure him that when we get back there's going to be a big party that all the family can come to. I think we're going to have it at the zoo. I like that idea. People will have something to do other than come and say hi to us and then stand around waiting for the sausage rolls.

We're taking Vic's family as well as mine, which is great, as I'll have the bro-in-law to take on all of the rides that no-one else would dare consider. New York New York rollercoaster, I'm comin' back for seconds! Man, food and rides and shopping and shows, I can't wait! Well, I can, but I'm going to be impatient about it.

In other awesomegameyouregonnaloveit-worthy news, the Rockethands team has submitted our first app to Apple for review. Awlright! Look out for the news at www.rockethands.com for when it's available on iTunes.

-Anthony

as in, armaggedon outta here?

On Demand.

2009-08-10T13:06:00.005+08:00

Had a strange gig on Saturday.

We decided to pull out a bunch of old songs (mistakes!) and record the gig (self-conscious!) for future reference. The resulting first set was pretty bad, thankfully we forgot about the laptop recording in the corner and played some good sets after.

Personally, just went to show how often it's easier to perform when you're not thinking about what you're actually doing. Muscle memory, auto-pilot, something or other. I wonder how many other things I do would turn out better if I just didn't think about it? Writing for one, that's proven!

In other sensory news, there's a strong breeze blowing through the windows, and the puppies are clambering all over the couch to get as much of it as possible. All those smells, it must be like puppy-cinema for them.

-Anthony

i like the bit when they blow stuff up

[blink]

2009-07-28T15:01:00.003+08:00

Excerpt:

"I love you so much, sometimes I think I... I'm..."

"A carrot?"

"Yes, I think I'm a carrot."

"I know how you feel!"

lolwut?

-Anthony

i'd doubletake, but frankly, this is almost par for the course

Cats are from Orisinal, Dogs are from Azeroth.

2009-07-16T18:16:00.002+08:00

Something occured to me today after smacking one of my puppies in the face with a rubber ball: he didn't want the ball because he wanted to play with it, he just wanted it because I had it.

Then for some reason, I straight away made a comparison between core and casual gamers.

I've kind of sat on the fence between the two for a while now. I've dabbled in WoW and WAR, and I've spent vast amounts of time match-3ing. I tend to go in and out between what I like and dislike between the two.

But it got me thinking - whenever I play an MMO, it feels like a job. I don't actually have fun playing games until I play a fun game. Like Portal, which I played for the first time last night.* Incredibly fun! Done with in a handful of hours. I didn't have to get anything, find anything, I didn't have someone standing nearby with an item that will take me 60 hours to pass the pre-requisites just to hold.

When I was playing MMOs, it felt like I had to have stuff. Actually, scratch that, I will go ahead and say: to play MMOs, you have to have stuff. You're forever finding upgrades to stuff that's now no longer competitive, or even serviceable. To partake in certain content, you have to have certain level gear or you just won't make it. There's some content 99.98% of a game's subscribers that won't ever see, but lordy, if you do happen to have that specific epic loot, everyone will know about it.

Core games is about stuff - the getting and having of.

And y'know, right now, I'm not about stuff. I just like... doing.

Shooting? TF2.
Punching? Freedom Force.
Growing? Plants vs. Zombies.
Wearing a tiki mask and belting a hell of a curveball with my super spear? Mario Smash Tennis.

I think I like not having to get stuff just to play a game. I just want to play the game.

In other sweet, sweet news, Margaret River Chocolate Factory has taken my tastebuds and programmed them to love nothing else but their dark chocolate buds. Mmmmmm.

-Anthony

*There was too cake!

mice are from hyrule, i don't know why

I got muh new shoes on.

2009-07-07T16:36:00.004+08:00

And they're comfy.

Since I've taken the puppies' training a bit more consistently, Vicky insisted that I buy myself some proper walking shoes. After spending all of 1.5 minutes in Foot Locker amongst a dozen or so playaz*, we beat a hasty retreat and crossed the mall to the significantly less busy Athlete's Foot. After a quick measuring and assessment without a single mention of "bros" or "hoes" from the in-store music selection, I walked out with brand new sneakers!

I haven't owned a pair of sneakers since I was in primary school, and now I own a pair that I consider the most expensive item in my wardrobe.

They're white with blue gel stuff.

-Anthony

* playaz [plahy-uhz] n.

- See douchebags sense 2

lookin' back on when

The business of not-quite-knowing.

2009-07-06T15:54:00.003+08:00

I've now learnt it's best to write these using the actual site's 'Compose' space - cutting and pasting even from Wordpad does wacky things to the html that takes, me at least, a long time to fix.

So, hep! and all that jazz. Today's a day of cleaning for me - mostly spent with laundry so far, but I'm to be tackling the kitchen as soon as I've finished procrastinating here. I didn't have much of a weekend this week, and once I did get some time to myself last night, I sadly spent the most part of it completely failing at doing anything useful in TF2 that I think I might give up on the game for a while. The upside to which is that I can spend some time finishing Freedom Force (for freedom!).

We recently posted my new blogpost on the rockethands.com website. There's obviously a lot to the issue of classification of games and the proposed internet-filtering by the Federal Government - I'm certain I don't have complete and total understanding of the situation, but I'm also certain I have enough to rightfully be concerned.

I have to admit I've been mulling over the next part of this post for a few hours now, and I'm not quite sure what I want to get out of saying it. Censorship bad mmkay? - most people would agree with this, or at least have some good input. Penn Jillette had something to say back in May regarding the banning of the Japanese game Rapelay. I don't know if I agree with all of his spiel, but at least he's thinking about the idea of censorship instead of knee-jerking. (On the topic of this "game", how could a group of adults sit down in a room together and even consider the idea, let alone spend the significant amount of time needed to implement it into an interactive product? I honestly don't understand.)

Is it as simple as the Classifications Board being prone to kneejerking themselves? That seems a little harsh as far as criticism goes, but their results don't seem to help prove anything otherwise. As I mentioned in my RH post, how the hell can Godfather II ship to Australian retailers without a single whimper from anyone; not the retailers, "watchdog" and supervisory groups or sensationalist media outlets? Kane & Lynch nickname its difficulty settings with drug names that almost caused Fallout 3 to be outright banned. The decisions of our classifications board seem arbitrary at best.

It's fair to say that if this board will be an important element in Conroy's filtering of online games, I'm a little concerned how this might affect local digital content creators. Looking at the case studies listed on R18games.com.au, a lot of refusals have come about because of "high impact violence". I don't see God of War, Godfather or the Warriors feature on this list, so what's their definition of "high impact violence"? If these decisions can cause a product to be completely blocked from public consumption, shouldn't content creators have access to at least the broad terms of these definitions, if not the specifics?

It makes sense to me that if the public cannot have an Adult Only classification for interactive media, the OFLC should explicitly provide the details of their guidelines for content creators so we can have a better idea of what boundaries we can work within. I can foresee this kind of request providing one of two things; a solid framework for game makers to adhere to when creating mature content, or evidence that our classifications board is based on the merits of arbitrary subjectivity.

Either or, I don't mind.

In other wind-tossed news, my darling fiancee has taken to replying to my statements of "All business!" with "... at the front, all party at the back." It is evident I am in dire need of a haircut.

-Anthony

toasted bad guys comin' up!

The Haunting of the Bell

2009-07-03T19:20:00.011+08:00

It started with beeping.

Similar enough to the fire alarm’s that I actually checked the alarm’s batteries the first time it happened. Press the button, squeal in my ears – nope, not the fire alarm.

It didn’t beep again until the next day, by which time I figured out the source to be the doorbell we hadn’t yet deployed. It was a simple thing from Bunnings – a plain button and a block of grey plastic that promised to spew out inane mono-tonal tunes on command from strangers at our front door – and we’d already inserted the batteries in anticipation of the hordes of visitors we expected this timely technology, well-positioned for ergonomic ease, to summon to our simple home. I’d set the device to the ding-dong chimes of Westminster a few days earlier, and this high-pitched legato beep was certainly not bringing about fond imaginations of Big Ben. Slightly annoyed, but not yet perturbed, I removed the batteries and promptly forgot about it all for a week.

The second time the batteries were inserted, it took only two hours to beep again, this time three long beeps in a row. The next morning both Vicky and I were in the kitchen on another repeat performance.

“What is that?”

“Doorbell.”

“It woke me up last night.”

Oh, that’s not good; anyone who’s had a fire alarm battery go flat at 2 in the morning knows the pain of electrical devices cracking shits when you’re deep into nappytimes. I’ll look into it I said.

That night, in the middle of an episode of Studio 60, it chimed. Neither of us had obviously touched the button – were anywhere near the button – but there it was, sitting on the kitchen bench, LED display merrily glissing up and down, the speaker blaring out an almost in-tune Three Blind Mice.

“…”

“Whaaaaat,” he both droned, staring at each other. After a quick ‘it wasn’t me’ check, I got up and found the button transmitter. Hit the button.

Diiiiing doooong diiiiing doooong it spluttered in awful grandfather-clock mimicry. I slowly backed away from the device, ran for cover under the doona and refused to come out until well into the next morning.

There were another two incidences of the ghostly Three Blind Mice melody, the last happening well late into the doorbell's last fateful night. The device, its life-blood batteries and wiring guts now sprawled throughout the house, no component in line of sight of the others, has not cried again since. And hell come henceforth for any who break the holy seal that separate these parts.

-Anthony

see how they run

Birdy birdy tweet tweet.

2009-06-23T16:20:00.007+08:00

So I finally bent to the pressure and signed myself up for Twitter.

Momentous? No. I'm not even entirely certain what I'm going to do with it. I struggle to think of witty things to say in my Facebook status update*, and Twitter seems to be another form of the Facebook status update, without the rest of Facebook.

In that regard, I guess it's a win!

I've also been at it helping with the organising for the LetsMakeGames.org Trivia Night. Although I won't participating directly (will probably help on the door and marking instead), I've not delved into the precious tomes of questions so that I may see how well I do answering the trivial challenges myself! Do I expect much success? Not really!, but it should be fun nonetheless. If you haven't yet bought your tickets from participating outlets, why the hell not? Hurry! Before they're gone! Forever! Like your innocence!, you decrepit, blackened soul.

In other heat-blasted related news, it's frigging cold (if you weren't already aware). The challenge this poses comes at the worst of times - when faced with the porcelain totem, an irritable pressure building up in the bladder, a man must make a difficult choice: cold seat, or cold hands?

-Anthony

*Except when douchebags make it so goddamn easy. Then I don't even need to be witty!

sapper is a spy!

Sir Duke

2009-06-08T23:16:00.003+08:00

I just transcribed the whole thing in 20 minutes.

About time, I've wanted to know this song for a long time.

-Anthony

they can feel it all over people

Getting it right the third time.

2009-06-08T13:31:00.004+08:00

I don't want to get too heavy with this, but while I've been out of action the last week, I've been having a small bit of crisis. Everyone has them, especially when things are going slower than anticipated. It's not a nice feeling when you start to question yourself, instead of just questioning in general. "Why?" is a lot healthier than "Why me?", etc.

So of all places, I was amazed to have my turn-around at my cousin's first holy communion; there's no laying-of-hands story here, fret not. It was being held at his school's church, and my Dad and I were sat outside in the sun, leaving the pews for the holy and listening to the proceedings through inefficient speakers. At the end of it all I had a bit of a surprise when I bumped into an old university friend, also present for a cousin's first communion. We got to talking, and he was really excited to hear that I had started a career for myself in games development. He told me about the Turtles arcade machine (!) he's buying for his recording studio and we talked in circles about Sierra adventure games and arcade machines until we had to gravitate towards our separate families.

I thought about this chance encounter after the fact, and realised that for a while now I've been using my energy - a lot of my energy - to convince people that being self-employed, in the games industry, is going to work for me. At the end of the day, I settle with admitting to self-employment with work in the family business and my music background carrying my bills and leave the battle not necessarily defeated but so friggin' tired. I've spent so much time and effort into convincing people that I'm being successful, that I end up using all of the energy I need to actually be doing the things I need to be successful.

And then I talked with my drummer friend, and I didn't have to use up anything at all.

So at the end of this? I will surround myself with people who are interested in what I do. Not interested because it's me that's doing it, that doesn't cut it. I'm going to look for the people who listen to what I'm about and dig it, and I will hold on to them like they're the last bit of gold in the earth, because those are the people who are going to get me beyond the finish line.

In other cringe-worthy news, poor Arthur's getting the snip this Thursday. Poor guy won't even know what they're for before he loses them.

-Anthony

okay, okay... fourth time lucky

There's a 100% chance that something might happen.

2009-05-25T23:18:00.004+08:00

Rewards should never be left completely up to chance. Even if there is a 0.0001% that someone might not get the unspecified reward within a timely manner, it will happen to one person, and he will use the Internet to complain as loud as he can.

Designers, listen: If you want a positive experience for your players with randomised content, create failsafes so they are always rewarded, even if their luck really sucks.

It surely can't be that hard to create a diminishing non-success marker that hits 0% after n tries.

In other aviatory news, I saw a flying go-cart this weekend. He circled above me a few times while I took the puppies for a walk before flying off to whatever fate befell him*.

-Anthony

* In my head I imagined he had a dozen moneybags of loot, twirling his luxurious moustache and cackling wildly. He would then land his kart-plane on a secret runway where his crab-walking sidekick would greet him and be left to haul the moneybags away into their secret base, waiting to be liberated by some derring do-gooder with an ironed suit and fancy watch.

such is my ambassador

You got me.

2009-04-29T19:20:00.004+08:00

I don't know.

It's a simple sentence. The words make sense, I know what they mean individually and collectively, but the last few weeks I've tripped up a few times using it, having to explain myself soon after. At some stage - I don't know when* - the phrase has turned to passive-aggressive negativity. Consider the following;

"I swear; I saw him with Estelle down by the corner only an hour ago."
"I don't know if I believe that," said Marcy.

What Marcy really meant to say (and potentially should have said);

"I swear; I saw him with Estelle down by the corner only an hour ago."
"I don't think I believe that," said Marcy.

The second option is the true explanation of Marcy's meaning, yet nearly everyone, anywhere, for anything, the first option is used. 'I don't know' doesn't mean that you are unsure of the implications or decisions, it means you actually don't agree but you won't say so outright.

Three times now, in two weeks, I've had to amend my statement of "I don't know..." with "and by that, I mean I actually don't know." It's been strange. Is it so rare for someone to admit they don't fully understand what's going on that these words have had their collective meaning changed?

So you should all know, I'm taking it back. 'I Don't Know - I Mean It.' I'm not disagreeing with you, I honestly haven't yet decided. For the befuddled and absent-minded. For the indecisive. For the fence-sitters, I'm taking it back.

I don't know.

In other binding news, I proposed to Vicky on Monday night. Depending on who's telling the story, it was either all rather cute or very poorly time-managed!

-Anthony

* Unintentional, I swear.

quick, while she's distracted by a fly

I'm sure I had a reason.

2009-04-21T19:23:00.003+08:00

Professional well-being is something that should be considered by everyone regularly. I can't say how often - I could only come up with some arbitrary period which has no relevance to anyone else's own cycles. But it's something that I'm fairly certain plenty of people don't think about, at least not everything that it may encompass. Professional well-being isn't about the binary status of being employed or unemployed; there's such a large overlap of needs that I'm not even entirely sure I can consider it all.

Just like physical or financial well-being, we need to exercise, maintain and develop our professional lives. A couple of priorities that I have been keeping in mind recently:

Sustainability - There are many facets to maintaining a sustainable profession, but highest there is personal satisfaction. If I cannot see myself enthusiastic and satisfied with what I want to do in a month, a year or ten's time, then I shouldn't be spending my most immediate, urgent time right now not being there. Work should be hard, but you have to get some satisfaction from what you do - otherwise, why are you there?

Relationships - At some level we are all business people, and at all levels business is about people. You absolutely cannot maintain good business without maintaining good communication - with employees, employers, contractors, creditors, debtors, investors, bankers, mother-in-laws, archnemeses, whoever. Whether the relationship is professional, short, friendly, in confidence, they need to be respected, maintained and worked on. Without people we have no business, and with no business we have no profession.

Integrity - Honesty and respect should be the core tenants of all business. Without honesty, there is no sustainability; without respect, there are no relationships. Enough problems have been caused on the larger scale by dishonesty and disrespect - cowboy tactics did not work there, and they won't work on the smaller scale. It's just... easier to do things right, and serves no long-lasting purpose to do otherwise.

Well, those are my big three things that I've been thinking on lately.

In other siege related news, I've joined the cool kids on WAR. It's doing a lot of things I wished WoW did, so I'm pretty happy with it at the moment. Also, picking up the Collector's Edition for cheaper than the standard? Goodtimes!

-Anthony

fridgepants

Just like the previous, this one stains the carpets.

2009-04-06T23:33:00.006+08:00

Lamentations and woe, good people - too long between blog posts!

Pointform tonight so I can get to bed;

* The final release of the Perth Game Industry Survey is up at letsmakegames.org. A great starting point for identifying the local industry profile and its broad intentions. Great work Nick!

* Teh Learning Curve finally got their first video up. Can't say I'm too surprised by the conclusion for their first episode. I look forward to further instalments, if only for more of Jeremy's peculiar squeaking.

* Beautiful Katamari is... stunning, for many different reasons.

* Look left: I has blogroll!

* Look down: I has puppy!

Welcome to the household, Arthur. Though you are making my house smellier, you're also making my girls happier.

-Anthony

bugbite squared

North by magnetic north.

2009-03-25T21:35:00.004+09:00

So I kind of always figured I had a moral compass, but I didn't think it would point so dominantly while working in a corporate environment. There's been a number of times in my job that I've dealt with the "bad feeling in my stomach" and I'm pleased (and just as surprised, honestly) that the feelings have been right on the money each time.

My theory is that this has come about due to my actively learning where my boundaries lie, something I hadn't known or thought of until I found myself under Nick's management. Until I took my most recent position I didn't even think of myself having boundaries, let alone knowing how far (or close) they were to how I carried myself.

Boundaries aren't necessarily fashionable at the moment; we need to have everything and all right here and now, be prepared to do everything at the whim of whomever's one step ahead of us, just so at the end of the day we've been able to take one more step to advance the greater picture. This seems to play in almost every circle I involve myself in at the moment - political, corporate, social. If we do not go past one more stack of paperwork, if we cannot be satisfied with temporary mediocrity, if we will not divulge our selves entirely to the gaping bottomlessness of social networking, what are we? Not a team player, not socially conscious, not... human?

I disagree with this to the extent that it implies boundaries by their definition are bad. A boundary that is not noticed, evaluated and revised can hamper development, true, but once acknowledged it is better to know where you can stand safely today and work on moving the line a little further another day. Boundaries are not weakness, they're not ineptitude nor unwillingness -- as a work in progress, a boundary is merely a marker in the sand to say "I'm here today, but I'll be there tomorrow."

I now have a fair idea of my lines and where I stand on any number of issues. I know if I get that "feeling" I should take a step back and take another look at the situation to see what I'm missing or don't like. I guess what's weirding me now is that I am coming to decisions that I feel I should perhaps tread more carefully around, but there's no sign of the uneasiness. I know exactly where I stand and what I will fight for, and my boundary is nowhere in sight.

Choose your battles, I guess.

In other explosive news, man, TF2 is just plain fun and on high rotation at the moment. Although, despite the eloquent Tim's advice, I seem much better at helping other dudes blow up enemies than doing the murderin' myself. HMMM.

-Anthony

just tap e and i'll be there

So smooth it was like he'd been practising it the night before.

2009-03-20T00:26:00.003+09:00

I had a dress-rehearsal for a dream early last morning.

The dream started with all of the characters, myself included, getting dressed and top-and-tailing the important scenes. Then the "official" dream started, and we proceeded with the entire narrative. I don't think I've ever rehearsed a dream before, but there you go.

Another reason this dream stuck out was that it was almost entirely void of dream-logic; nearly all of the dialogue was spoken instead of being tacitly understood, there was no fast forward of the boring bits. It effectively played out like a Wednesday night movie with a storyline that was involved enough to warrant having been impressed with my subconscious, while cliched enough to not be too proud of it. It was almost a cross between Two-and-a-Half Men and Pretty Woman, if the Charlie Sheen character had a promiscuous butler called Jenkins.

In other rage-inspired news, someone threw a lit cigarette on my car while stopped at the lights. Unfortunately by the time I had noticed and used the windscreen washer to extinguish and remove the offending article, the lights had gone green and I was forced to move on.

Not that I would have, y'know, done much had I witnessed the offender. Probably.

Also, from the top-shelf content of Ellen's sparkling new blog I discovered The Outbreak, a zombie choose-your-own-adventure web film. How cool is that?!

-Anthony

pretty cool

The problem is, we didn't grow up.

2009-03-15T22:43:00.007+09:00

As a kid I always thought I would run away with the circus. The idea - the certainty - came from an Enid Blyton story I'd read, and ever since it just seemed like the most probable thing that would happen when I was older. I didn't daydream about it; it's not like other kids daydreamed about being bankers and teachers and scientists, so why would I waste time thinking about an inevitable?

It's pretty evident I never did quite graduate to carniedom, but my brief stint as a travelling performer did put to rest some misconceptions I had as a kid*. It's hard work - that's a given - but it's also a boring life. There's rehearsaltime, and showtime, and sleeptime. Wash, rinse and repeat. You absolutely live for your day off, if you've a mind to explore. That's what I enjoyed the most about working abroad; spending time walking through the alien cities I barely touched.

But on the other hand, there's the love of your craft - day after day you do something that is profoundly your own. I remember having distinct pride in the fact that my skill alone allowed me to travel and see things I would never have otherwise ever seen in my entire lifetime.

Something I find hard to empathise with are the people born to their circuses. From a young age rehearsing, performing, knowing a standing ovation but not the same home from month-to-month. I wonder if for these people there's a choice between staying the status of permanent displacement and giving it up for certified home roots.

If this choice does exist, is that leap of faith as hard for them as the contrary leap is for us?

I want to take more time to watch for when my circuses come around. Perhaps we shouldn't be so scared about packing what we're doing for the sake of trying a different direction every once in a while.

-Anthony

*Perhaps not misconceptions, but difference in priorities I guess.

in case of emergency, please do not panic

Darth Vader is holding a duck.

2009-03-11T21:56:00.008+09:00

Book voucher well spent!

I spent a long time playing Day of the Tentacle, The Dig introduced to me the idea of "serious" narrative in games, and for a long while I adored (and I probably still do) the humour of Sam & Max. I hadn't really noticed before, but LucasArts could possibly have been the most influential game developer during my first few years in gaming. I'm fairly certain this little tidbit isn't what's going to give George Lucas the warm fuzzies when he goes to bed tonight*, but it at least helps me make sense of where my fixation on adventure games comes from.

The first memory I have of being interested in a game I wasn't playing is watching my Uncle Paul play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I never did get to play it myself, but wow! Indiana Jones, slumming through tombs and trap-infested dungeons with gold, gems and broads trailing from his every pocket, all on my uncle's command! A game that didn't feature Italian plumbers or masked mutant turtles didn't often pique my interest at that tender age, but something about Harrison Ford's pixellated features had caught my attention.

Since then there's been everything from Maniac Mansion to Lego Star Wars, and like an oblivious Threepwood it's taken an actual book about LucasArts to flick my nose and make me realise that all of these games came from the same people. Hell, if you even start to Kevin Bacon this a little you get to add one of my all-time favourites Psychonauts to the list; Tim Schafer's job interview as reported by the author is almost worth the price-tag of the book alone.

So nostalgic gushing aside, if nothing else, I admire LucasArt's dedication to the almost forgotten form of the point-and-click adventure game amidst the leaps and bounds the industry has made in other directions.

After fanboying about Day of the Tentacle for the twentieth time today, one of the guys from work suggested I should try making my own adventure games with AGS or similar, which admittedly is a tempting idea, but it's not like I haven't got enough on my plate already, is it?

In diary-keeping news, my weekends are slowly starting to get booked out, which is nice for the first few, but can get tiring pretty quickly. I'm going to have to start developing some better sleeping habits if I'm to keep up.

-Anthony

*I'm fairly certain that'd be the mountain of cash he'll go nappytimes on.

free sandwiches for roadies

Hey, you know, I'm...

2009-03-09T22:30:00.004+09:00

(Actually, the above title has no relevance at all other than my wondering if I can actively write a sentence via title quotes backwards so that you get one long (and likely somewhat muddled) sentence in reverse-chronological order. Just think on that, it'll make sense eventually.)

Hot news for the water cooler crowd today was the Watchmen movie. Like many other nerdtypes I have been very much looking forward to the Hollywood adaption of Alan Moore's delightfully glum vigilante tale. Of course there many were reservations and "what ifs" before the actual veiwing, but really, by the end of the two-and-three-quarter hours, the movie had accomplished as much as any other potential Watchmen movie could/may/has done. It was solid, the casting was superb, and there's a couple of really spectacular and shiny moments that is going to make the DVD purchase essential.

Yes, there were obvious parts missing, but I don't think their absence hurt the movie at all; I actually think some parts that are missing would have weighed the movie down too much. There's time for some things on paper, and time for other things on film, and I think Mr Snyder assessed these elements and did what he thought was best for his medium. (I guess I could go more in depth, but lacking any sort of proficient command of Blogger I have no idea how to do LJ-style cuts to hide teasers behind.)

In more apocalyptic related news, I started Fallout 3 on the weekend. I didn't think so many shades of brown and grey could look so pretty. I'm playing a swaggering cowboy-sawbones cliche that likes explosives a little too much, which usually results in everything within a certain radius exploding by the word "What?" and then having to forego any form of reward due to the guilt that wells up as I realise I also took out half of the captives I was attempting to save.

What fun!

I mousetrapped our first mousecular visitor yesterday. At least he had a nice feed of peanut butter before, y'know, snap.

-Anthony

later cecil! we knew ye not, 'cept for your little rodent tail

Still standing? Check.

2009-03-02T19:22:00.008+09:00

So I broke a mirror the other night.

I guess I could consider myself somemuch of a superstitious person; I avoid cracks in pavement, as I quite happen to like my mother. I spare a thought for passing ambulances, and I certainly don't flip a coin unless I intend to follow the choices determined as such.

I played it extremely safe the next day, but the novelty wore off by this morning, let alone six years and three hundred and sixty-four days later. It did however get me to thinking what the length of seven years really is. In terms of lifegoals, living and family, seven years is just, well, seven years - it's a bit of time, but not as great an expanse as a generation or a lifetime. But put it into the perspective of seven years worth of bad luck, and quite immediately I had a different appreciation for the given time period.

Seven years of prank calls, cold pizza deliveries and wondering if my house is burning down would be hard work. The stubbed toes every morning would be enough to warrant a mid-town rampage.*

So what makes seven years of success adequately uninspiring, yet the same amount of time given to red lights and long queues all but shreds any smidgen of complacency? Shouldn't I be just as diligent to make sure my next seven years are successful and not just accident prone? I'm fairly certain there's something in this as far as relationships between effort needed for different levels of success and perceived difficulty, blahdy-blah, but really there's only a few hours left to the weekend and having just finished Fable II I feel the need to do something destructive.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great game, and I'm sure I made the right choice at the end, but good narratives always leave me deflated by the time they're done.

In other news, we watched Wall-E for the first time today. Holy moly, what an accomplished movie.

"I don't want to survive, I want to live!"

I thought that was quite an impressive message to have iterated throughout a family movie.

-Anthony

[*] Wouldn't (fictional) Tokyo be pissed if Godzilla's only quibble was kicking his bedside table that morning? Forget the missiles and tanks, all he actually wanted was an icepack, poor bastard.

it just wasn't the choice i thought you'd make

We said we'd be happy with either.

2009-02-25T19:57:00.005+09:00

Exciting times!

A new baby has been welcomed to the house. He's got a good colour to him, healthy sound, light enough to pick him up when I want. Boston hasn't hasn't met him properly yet, but I think they will be fine.

Good looking lad, isn't he?

I've had it in my mind for a while now that I wanted to try something new musically, and the choice between bass or drums wasn't hard. I could talk about musicality and arrangement and commitment to entry, but really it came down to which one I could plug headphones into.

It's interesting having something musically new to play with, it's been a long time since I've had this feeling. It's something quite a few people are familiar with I'd imagine, when they'd got the chance to start a new instrument back in school and they came home that first night proudly showing everyone the case it came in and all the extra little bits. And that first honk into the mouthpiece, accompanied a split-second later with the realisation that you can't just blow into the dented mouthpiece and have Louis Armstrong come out the other end, but maybe you just need to wait until your next lesson and your teacher will give you the Secret to being the next virtuoso.

The nice thing about all this is that I know better now, and won't be so disappointed in a few weeks time when I'm still fuddling around the strings trying to play Yankee Doodle.

-Anthony

[saucesplash]

I thought you'd be taller by now.

2009-02-23T22:00:00.000+09:00

Dear Internet,

So. It's been five years. I could say it's been a while, but I kind of doubt you were counting.

Quite a bit has happened since I saw you last. I've cut my hair, all srs bns-like. You've started putting @ symbols in front of everyone's names. I had to ask a friend what that was all about.

I have to admit, as momentous an occasion as it was when we found each other's company again, I'm perturbed that I spent most of our first day together Facebooking and looking at lolcats. I had sort of expected this grand and intricate web of networks and contacts to blossom upon the connection of that delicate little ethernet cable, but just as I had remembered from our times previous, you provide little reward for the equivalent energy put in. (I'm currently thinking that may not be a bad thing.)

I think we'll be different this time around. I'll let you know if I need anything.

(As an aside, though I may have struggled for a moment with the name for this blog, I vetoed 'Blog of Pants' as suggested by certain others purely on the basis that I didn't want any conditions required for participation. No blogscrimination based on attire around here, thankyou!)

-Anthony

you should know that you're just a temporary fix