Categories
Audio&Games

Developer logic

Devs: so this Windows 8 app store thing, I don’t know…

MS: look people, we tried to learn from our industry successes and we’re offering you another channel to broadcast your games and apps, what is so wrong about that?

Devs: well we always loved the openness of Windows and want to take advantage of it.

MS: that’s cute and all but that’s also bullshit. How many of you developed great things that took advantage of Windows’ freedom in the past ten years? How many valued the freedom?

Devs: …

MS: that’s right, pretty much no one. Meanwhile how many run for/found success on XBLA and Apple app store?

Devs: …

MS: exactly. How could you blame us for taking reality in account? You guys rushed for complicated approvals, expensive console dev certifications and liberticidal walled gardens. The better you guys are, the more you want to be trapped in closed systems. Blame yourself for opening the Pandora box…

Devs: but you’re supposed to be wise because you’re a giant.

MS: I’m just a company with shareholders and my goal is to make money, like all tech companies and even non-tech companies. Sorry.

Devs: but we’re making games which is art which doesn’t really need to make money.

MS: make up your mind and explain why you would do anything to be on Steam, then.

Devs: to reach more people.

MS: You don’t need Steam to reach people on the internet. Come on now.

Devs: Yeah but you fucked it up with GFWL and PC OEMs never have been able to make great, simple gaming machines.

MS: I’ll give you that but today through the rise of laptops and tablets things are more unified than ever. We offer all the tools you want to develop easily and another channel to distribute your games and apps, we finally understood why design and performances are important and you still can install whatever you want, what the hell do you want?

Devs: We don’t know what we want but we know that we don’t want you to do it!

 

That’s pretty much the vibe today in the game industry. So mature.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Social pressure

In a sense I’m glad we did our big Europe trip before social networks existed. We checked our email maybe once in every city — if we could find an Internet cafe. For the most part we were on our own. Just one couple amongst a sea of tourists. There was nothing different about the bottle of wine we had in that one Italian restaurant. Except that it was our bottle of wine, and we shared it just with each other. Not with anyone else. It was a whole month of secret moments in public, and we were just… there. We didn’t check in on Foursquare, we didn’t talk about it on Facebook, we didn’t post any photos anywhere. I now look back and appreciate the incredible freedom we had to live before we all got online and got this idea that the value of a moment is directly proportional to the number of likes it receives.

Elezea.

Now, imagine kids growing up with the social network/pictures default world. There’s no way that at some point they will not go dark, all dark and inexistent online.

Funny how for my old ass the internet was freedom and how for younger generations it already is not.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Perspective

The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Louis Vuitton luggage are not.

A short lesson on perspective. He’s talking about the ad industry but it works for any creative business…

To resist the urge to self-censor. I totally do not resist these days and that’s not good.