Categories
Me Myself&I

Team HarVerd

Harold's Last Day in LA
In full action 

Dear Santa,I’ve been good. Unfortunately my partner and I have been separated by some obscure stupid things. So dear Santa I’d like you to get her to me as soon as possible. Thanks. Harold

Cold water
I’m waiting


She’s coming

Dude Claus,

Thanks Santa. Have a seat, have a glass of milk and then you will come and taste my foot in your mouth for being so late. I don’t care that Christmas is December 25th, you should have give me my fantastic gift way earlier! I’m waiting for it for ages now! And all you can do is have this lousy face full of hair. Seriously dude. Hopefully I’ll see her this week but don’t you ever do that again to me you giant dwarf. Actually next time I’ll be with her so don’t bother moving your lazy ass, you can stay home getting drunk. Harold

Categories
Me Myself&I

It’s a funky situation

I didn’t know how hard it would be to just switch and go back and forth on two different western culture and cities.

This is in picture, what is happening to me:

ffffuuuuu

Or in a more detailed version:

HDCffffuuuuuu
It makes me laugh but at some point since I’m back, I look like this. Everyday.

Anyway, I put my finger on what is making me crazy: there’s too much dynamic in Paris. Dynamic in the sense of the difference between things, like in music between the softest sound and the loudest. From top to bottom, moving all the time. Mildness doesn’t exist.

The good part is this amazing social diversity. Rich, less rich, young, old, every kind of body shape, every single color or ethnicity of the world interacting with each others in a little city, packed in the public transport is something I always love to look at in Paris. One time I remember these women, a 1meter 85 (6”1) black woman chatting with this 1m40 (4”9) blonde white one in the train like they are at a pajama party. “Interracial” couples are so common it’s not even a feature. Also adopted children with white parents are quite common. It’s hard to witness that level of social mix in LA. You can easily see it here.

So that is a great result of chaos and diversity in Paris. Everything else makes me want to throw things.

It starts with the sunlight going from bright enough I can’t see my monitor screen to darkness where I need to put the lights on. In 20 minutes. Same with temperature. Outside cold then metro a little warmer then cold in the street then this fucking hot door at the BHV, then super hot in the store and everything back. Whatever you wear at some point you need adjustment because you’re going to feel uncomfortable with a 20°c delta up and down in one hour.

It’s the same with people. From the children yelling and jumping to the elderly going downstairs in the metro creating a big traffic jam because they are slow as hell. From the old white lady who stinks perfume so hard to the black dude smelling like he didn’t take a shower since august, I feel like I’m always fighting some sort of annoyance.

As for services, it can be awfully harsh but sometimes, people are just perfectly doing their job and being nice. You can expect everything from the worse to the good with an emphasis on the worse though. Yeah, it’s boring not to know.

I feel like french people are thinking this way: “I don’t give a shit about what’s going on around me because I have the right to do and exist as I am”. Well yeah technically it’s ok but society-wise, it means chaos. And it is chaos. Just look at any damn sidewalk in Paris, how people behave. Amazingly random and chaotic. Oh, maybe it’s because of dog shit.

No wonder why french can’t agree overall. There’s always a voice, someone to fuck everything up. You know, like this stupid group of drunk people screaming like pigs in the streets and making bars to have serious problems with the police.

Social chaos creates status quo and stagnation which are totally unproductive, as France politics during the last 30 years can demonstrate that. Of course great people, great minds and great things are born from this amazing source of creation but they love to get the hell out of Paris whenever they can. Plus they usually get success outside of this town.

I loved LA for this overall stability. Stability of weather, people behaviors, what you can expect from a service etc It’s so much less stress in the everyday life that you can comfortably focus on your work, especially creative ones. That king of micro stress you don’t even know from where it comes and which makes you want to punch people in the throat after years of having to deal with it like these awful RER strikes, each year. Well I don’t want it anymore.

Interestingly enough if I look at my dad’s generation –50s- virtually no one got out of France. My cousin in its 40s, a little more like a couple of his friends. Me? I can already count a dozen of them going from Germany, Spain, China, Morroco, US/UK, Swiss, Australia, Japan.. We are going to be very different from our parents and older generations, we are going to be the french who moved around the world instead of staying in our little village, pissing and shitting on each other’s back while smiling like it’s no big deal.

So if we ever get back to our country, it’s going to change. In a good way, I hope.

Categories
Audio&Games

Bad times

When I read a bit my last posts on games I really feel I’m hitting a wall. I know things now, more than I search answers or develop points of view as I was doing previously.

I think I’m pretty sick of the game industry. I go backwards into my rss game feeds folder, just looking quickly.

This is so wrong:

– The awful and crazy stupid story about Edge, the lawsuit and everything. It’s still on.

– The massive layoffs everywhere in the game industry while an ultra realistic game about current wars around the world is making shitload of money with more than 6 million sales in three weeks, proving that behind the marketing and the robust production value, despite a horrible setting and theme, a well paced and balanced game mechanic (linear but freedom is here, hard but life regeneration is here) in an involving view (first person) is just crack cocaïne.

– Seeing that after the bullshit about physics cards they’re trying to bullshit us about the 3D glasses that seem to always sprout headaches.

– About that, seeing the pain in the ass that is to design a game WITH multitouch for anything else BUT the goddamn iPhone (because of that). Android doesn’t support it officially in the US, Win7 is fully multitouch ready but we still search for good devices using it (Zune HD?). And I don’t talk about the console manufacturers and new interfaces. Oh and this year thanks to SF IV and classic vintage game pr0n, the Stick is back for good.  It’s an input mess after a pretty stable period of 10 years (gamepad, keyboard/mouse).

– Seeing how this young creative industry is getting as stupid as the others.

– Closer, seeing some talented people thinking (or doing it) about leaving the game business, the game creation and the game design is sort of depressing. People like Jonatan Soderstrom, Olivier Lejade… Valuable people staying in the dark of this crazy industry or people like Petri who as talented and young as he is, does not want to work in the game industry as it is now.

I don’t know where and what to do about it. To quote a wise man,

"How often do you get to be there for a new art form? It’s less than once every hundred years," "It’s ours to fuck it up, and it would just be such an incredible shame for humanity if we did."