Month: October 2013

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Me Myself&I

America [censored], yeah!

When I was 12 years old it was perfectly OK to watch Robocop or Predator,” Bleszinski says, “but the second that a breast was flashed on screen, my mother would attempt to toss a blanket or a coat over my head. That probably explains a lot of my adult issues. Americans in general have really weird ideas about sex and violence, and that micro-example kind of summarizes it nicely.

Cliffy, speaking of sex in games. The article describes the difficulty to get sex in “big games” right. The article doesn’t mention anything about app stores ban on anything sexual, like it’s totally normal.

I was raised Southern Baptist, and no one ever talked to me about genital selfplay. So I didn’t ask about it and didn’t cum until I was a 22-year-old graduate student living in Florida.

Twanna wrote about her first orgasm. She is far from being the only one raised like that.

Both Cliff and Twanna are around my age, maybe a bit older. America’s sex culture –or lack of- is frightening and twisted as fuck.

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Me Myself&I

Sex in Japan now, Sex in the West tomorrow

Fascinating article on Japan and the rise of the Single.


SEE WHAT I DID THERE ALL RIGHT.

A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.)

I say rise of the single instead of “no sex” because well, it’s not the same. Masturbating is having sex alone and only Japanese know what they’re doing in their bedrooms.

"Both men and women say to me they don’t see the point of love. They don’t believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard."

It rings true for like, lots of people amirite. The point that older generations don’t get is that it really became hard to do everything with someone, with virtually no safety net. when it was possible post WW II (the Great Acceleration), it was in a certain fashion that is no longer acceptable (patriarchy, jobs for life). We knit around those concepts, bearing with more or less of that old system that brought us to adulthood but barely works today with couples working for relatively small wages, struggling much more than their parents, regardless.

So the norm explodes. In Japan mostly, we’re still all fucked up by catholicism and stuff anywhere else. Even more since 9/11 (“we need to stand against Muslims, let’s get married!”). Sigh.

Younger, I was wondering how my generation would hold on in our 30s because obviously, we knew that marriage wasn’t that much of a great thing to do. And that it didn’t matter to raise kids. But in a mix of laws, social pressure and history we’re lagging. It’s coming though. I predict a huge amount of singles in their 40s and 50s in the next decade in Europe and US.

According to the government’s population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%.

It makes total sense. It’s totally taboo to talk about that but really, we don’t need more humans around these days, Mother Earth would agree. Nothing personal against kids, just a question of timing. Maybe in a generation, fifteen twenty years from now it will become natural to start a family in Japan because everything will be much easier, cheaper etc so that people can actually enjoy a family life and not try hard to survive it. Until then, hello Single Life!

Older generation don’t understand that you can mainly care about yourself AND still care about your surrounding. Because we know our surrounding are affecting us, so we take care of them. It seems like an equation that hurts their brains. “if you’re selfish, you don’t care about others”.  That was before globalization, grandpa.

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Audio&Games

Is this the end of the graphic race?

Big news in the world of hardware and graphics.

Nvidia just announced a streaming system to play on your TV with heavy graphic computation being done in your office room or basement on loud computers.

AMD announced a couple of weeks ago Mantle, a low level API for its graphic cards.

Both technology are working on current gen. For the very first time since GPUs exist, the new graphic generation is not based on completely new hardware but on software features and enhancements. It was already the case for the past few years but now manufacturers just don’t hide it anymore.

It makes sense now that each of these marvel of technology are in the billion transistors count (7.08 billion-transistor chip for the very last AMD card, it is mind-blowing). Moore’s law is so slowing down (14nm is a bitch, ask Intel about yield).

AMD and Nvidia have to sell more cards that are today absolutely under-used or way too expensive. Even PC enthusiasts don’t upgrade anymore. No one wants to change to Intel’s Haswell as well.

It’s a massive industry shift and I think everyone is going to benefit: users with better app performances and still a wide range of choice, AMD and Nvidia don’t have to rush products out anymore and developers get more market stability than ever.

I sure hope it will push game developers to spend more time on things like AUDIO and INPUT. ‘bout time.

Also manufacturers, slow down on 4K BS. I have yet to see a game programmer happy about 4K textures and the shit storm that will come with managing that asset size just to please a couple of rich dudes out there is not something they’re looking forward to.

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Audio&Games

Kick in the butt

Look at all our highly-rated games, look at this embarrassment of riches.  It gives the unmistakable impression that videogames today are basically great.  Even though they’re not.  They’re really not.

Wow. On videogame reviews.

I obviously concur with this. But it goes way deeper than game critic. A recent article with Chris Crawford, a dude who’s been making videogames since 1973 says that he doesn’t need to play games these days to know if a game is good or interesting or none of that. Immediately someone commented that he was stupid and that he should go away. Thirteen industry people agreed.

To me, if one of the oldest computer game designer known is saying that he doesn’t play games anymore because they’re all the same, I just nod. I don’t need to play Bioshock Infinite to get a sense that this FPS makes no sense. A couple of videos and reviews from different people –that is, no professional review-  demonstrate it. I avoid graphic porn because it makes us tech dudes way too soft on what games actually are. So a dude with 40 years of experience designing games yeah, I get that he doesn’t need to play the last GTA. That’s like, duh. But no, people get nasty and immediately dis him.

The lack of humility and respect around and in the game industry is something, man. You’ve got to be a fan for something, hardcore. Expert. I was glad the article brought in Little Big Planet and how it’s been overrated because it’s cute. It was the poster child for “a new era”. Heavy Rain, same. But every time I would criticize those games because they’re not so great, people would jump and think I have a problem or that I’m just a hater because “you use Windows”.

Look at how polarized people are around deities that brands have become. We’re speaking of Sony “community”. Xbox “community”. People buying a Wii U “by loyalty for Nintendo”. Console “wars”. Exclusive games mean you don’t have it, I DO TAKE THIS. There is no adult behavior. It’s embarrassing.

Games can’t mature if society as a whole just keeps getting more childish (remember iOS people going crazy because Instagram was coming to Android? What in the actual fuck).

So we need to step up. We need to stop being so complacent about our medium, hard.

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Audio&Games

Beyond the story

The recurrent thing that I hear with David Cage’s games is that his stories suck. At some point, they suck and Fahrenheit had left me with a sense of WTF like no game before.

The NYT said from his last game:

It would be one of the worst movies you’ve ever seen, even though Ms. Page and Mr. Dafoe give fine performances.

Four games, four times where the main critic is about the story. I don’t know, maybe David shouldn’t write stories, only direct and produce games. Or maybe they shouldn’t spend so much on making believable 3D characters and hire a solid team of writers.

IMO stories in games work better in an “expressionist” way like Kentucky Route Zero or Gone Home. Engagement is triggered by your own curiosity, your own building. When engagement is directed heavy-handedly through a blockbuster movie like experience, it always feels tacky and probably always will. So you’d better have a great, great story.

The sad part is that it underlines how the French, auteur vision of creativity doesn’t work at all. Collaborative work is where it’s at and in ten years, Quantic Dream has shown to the world how the French model is broken as fuck. Motion capture is top notch though.

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Me Myself&I

River

Uncut, as you can hear.

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Me Myself&I

Checkpoint

The 80s were about integrating two families, discovering the extent of it.

The 90s were about me, discovering what I can do, what I like.

The 2000s were about discovering the outside world, how it works.

The 2010s just started and I guess they’re about making sense of all this. I can’t make sense of it. Between what I’ve been told, what I’ve learned, what works what doesn’t what society accepts or condemned, pretty much nothing makes sense and I see exactly where but what’s the point? It doesn’t change shit.

I mean it does in a way make sense it’s just that it’s way, way way less romantic than I thought.

I was reading this excellent article on Dave Chappelle. He is important to us black dudes because everyone loves him. He quit over pressure and the terrible feeling that he was doing things wrong. The author goes on negritude:

But the broader, more important meaning of Negritude has to do with a process isolated and identified by these poets. It is the process by which Black people, who have been cut off from and made to learn to know themselves again, come to accept themselves, and begin to believe in (i.e. to value) themselves.

I guess I am in that process too. When I’m looking at the game industry, I try to find some ways to feel comfortable and like myself. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed Japanese culture influence so much, there was no black VS white, no rock VS funk. They were showing me that I can be free. That was on paper.

In the real world this is not how it works. This is where Dave’s story is important to me. He went up there and then he was like, “no, man”. The price to pay was too high: ignore who you are and become something you are not. When you are a black dude who had the chance to avoid any trouble, who had the chance to study, who had the chance to be free compared to 99% of other black dudes, the pressure in higher careers is unfathomable. It’s not even pressure, it’s 600 gigatons Blues.

Like Dave had to conform to Hollywood, I have to conform to the Videogame Industry and it’s very hard. I love and always will the solving problems side of game development and how much we can do compared to the real world. I feel genuinely connected to this. But I don’t know how to position myself within current mainstream game development culture. Mainstream game culture. Mainstream western culture.

QUESTIONS. SUSPENSE.

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Me Myself&I

Bald full of win

I went to Baldwin Hills two weeks ago.

BALDWIN HILLS YALL

Wikipedia says it all:

Baldwin Hills Estates (east of La Brea, southwest of Santo Tomas Drive, south of the Jim Gilliam Recreation Center and north of Stocker Street), one of the wealthiest majority-African American areas in the United States, and is sometimes called "the Black Beverly Hills".

I so wanted to see it, you don’t even know. Just neighborhoods with black people, looking good and over Los Angeles. I read about that place. I dreamed of this place. I imagined myself biking that hard hill, needing some water and some nice black people would ask me if I wanted some.

It happened exactly like that. I had to give up and walk and this black woman is there on the other side of the street. She doesn’t even yell, it is so quiet up there. She simply asks me if I need any water and I gently declined, short of breath and walking with my bike on the side.

It took me at least 20 minutes to think that I could have engaged a conversation with someone living there and that I didn’t, totally just high on the beauty, those families living peacefully, that dude asking me wassup walking down his driveway with his 10 year old son, both looking like hip hop stars. Pianos standing in the middle of living rooms.

It’s a weird thing to feel so comfortable somewhere and at the same time, being such a stranger.

So thankful I’ve been in those hills though. I shall return.

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Audio&Games

Japanese game development

The great Chris Deleon had a video earlier this year wrapping up how Japanese game development was/is making things differently compared to the West. It’s interesting to see that Japanese companies hire employees right after college and keep them pretty much for life. It means that these companies take care of rookies, who in return become good and loyal, working for the company forever (think Keiji Inafune for Capcom).

The problem is that it induces a massive secrecy in the industry, the good thing is that it creates stability, which triggers cohesion, which triggers high quality output. Japanese games are usually tight, it comes from this culture. Western game development on the other side… We’re all mercenaries. Inside Ubisoft or through multiple companies we’re trying –like Chris says- to show what we can do for the next job more than make great games. I guess it kind of worked as long as we had a stable market with consoles.

It’s no longer the case. There is no stability, there’s chaos. How many platform you can ship your game on, today? It is so crazy that even Japanese game development took a toll: Mega Man creator left Capcom after 23 years, kickstarting a game that looked a lot like what he did there. Nintendo, the black box where no one knows what’s going on inside, doesn’t know what to do (and the first sign of that was announcing the 3DS and immediately say “it plays Netflix!”, that’s where I knew).

People associate Japanese development greatness with Japanese culture but I don’t think it’s typically Japanese. It’s a culture that values good design, that’s all. As the video demonstrates, it makes sense to start designing a video game directly with the hardware, not by making artworks. It’s good production design and yet, I’ve seen that once in my career in the West. Once.

The key for game developers is to be able to sustain their creativity through iteration and for that, a large platform is required. A great team is required. A vision is required. Some freedom is required.

It’s a very difficult equation these days.

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Audio&Games

90s shoot’em ups

I played dozens and dozens of shoot’em ups this summer, starting end 80s, when enemy patterns become interesting and fun and when music and sfxs start getting much better and lovely.

Yesterday I went through Radiant Silvergun, 1998. Connoisseurs know. Chant du cygne. One of the most amazing shooter ever.

I love them all for so many reasons.

Nostalgia is obvious. I remember having our bikes stolen in Brittany because we were playing Raiden with my cousin’s cousin and were hooked. The coin-op, the stress of losing money for nothing…

Second and I think it’s something that I’m good at: avoiding, dodging. Analyzing patterns and acting accordingly in real time, staying out of crashes. Keeping calm. Playing music is very close to that, so is being a black dude in a white world. I always loved the possibility of avoiding things, so much more powerful than straight conflict. You know, the all Judo thing.

Shoot’em ups are all about that, so much pleasure being alive after a massive wave of missiles, energy beams or simple bullets. Isn’t it life?

But more pragmatically, I love how those games are crafted. 1990s Japanese game development. In ten years, in a very strict and narrow style of games we go from boring pew pew to holy fuck how did I even make it through that OMG THAT BOSS AND THAT DIVINE MUSIC AM I DEAD.

It’s beautiful how looking at what works and what doesn’t, designers slowly improved those games. Very pragmatically, if an enemy pattern works and is smart, all developers copy it. I love that, I love the fact that they are all more concern about making a game that works than being pricks with over-inflated egos. Remember, Japanese game development is super secretive so these guys were probably analyzing competitor games or maybe reverse-engineer them.

All this for us, guys. Other example with sound effects: early 90s, all developers are trying different ways to make the “add credits” sounds but quickly when they find the good ones, they immediately applied them on every system that runs that audio chip (usually some Yamaha FM synthesizer). Plus, it becomes as important as the logos (Neo-Geo, Capcom intros!).

Keep. It. Simple. And. Invest. Wisely.

It’s all about fun efficiency. Let’s copy and slightly improve! And so forth from controls speed to the number of stages (I did one with 32!!! They all go down to around 7 at some point), the bosses, bullets colors, from how many layers in parallax scrolling before you can’t see anything to designing the lonely tank somewhere who’s going to hit you because you though it wasn’t a threat…

So yeah by 1995 all shoot’em ups kind of feel the same, but they’re all pretty great and feel good. Variation comes from how designers want you to play it: more tactical at the bottom of the screen or more aggressive moving toward the top, more “pure” (classic upgrades + bomb) or more complex (charge mode or lock on). When you start playing one, you know what you will have. You will have some fun, let me tell you.

Today even within genres, even with nice features or more interesting mechanics than these relics, so many games just don’t have a nice feel. And it’s all because we don’t make games this way anymore.

See you in the next episode, I’ll explain…