Author: harold

Categories
Audio&Games

Diversity in money and jobs numbers

People in games, listen.

Hidden Figures

– Budget: $25M

– Box office: $228.4M

9X

Moonlight

– Budget: $1.5M

– Box office: $55.8M

– An academy award

37.2X

Get Out

– Budget: $4.5M

– Box office: $194.9M

43X

Empire the TV show renewed for a new season, averages 15M viewers.

Fate of the Furious, directed by a black man, just crossed the billion dollar mark at the box office, making four times what it cost.

ALL of those are prominently about black people, minorities and sport a diverse cast.

ALL of those are doing more than extremely well. What does the game industry offer this year?

Another WWII shooter. Another walking simulator where everybody is dead and you’re a white dude smashing aliens or whatever. Another RPG where your white self crafts stuff and roams endlessly.  I mean.

Blizzard paid attention and included a diverse cast in its last game Overwatch. It won all of the awards, has apparently 30 million players monthly and is now a billion dollar franchise. IN ONE YEAR.

It’s nuts to me how bad we are in games at listening and paying attention to society, societal changes. Game development is an ultra risky business and we refuse to do anything to help sustain ourselves, despite answers being around us. 2017.

It’s mind-blowing.

Categories
Me Myself&I

You’re great brother, persist

I’m standing in the corner of that place that sells a lot of coffees. There’s some beverage based on a unicorn? I don’t know, I don’t care. I’m early for a job interview and I could use more caffeine. It is sunny and crowded. I can feel, really feel the The Office vibe. Groups of women, a lot. The kind of obnoxious one talking a lot and not caring about what’s going on around is standing next to me, waiting for her name too. Her coworker is totally’ing her so hard. The classic group of three black women + one, in this case a white woman. Patterns are funny.

I’m looking around differently now. I saw all of us humans, but one. a black man. I don’t know how many times I have been scanning a room in my life looking for that dude. But I’m pretty good at it now. I almost instantly spot the employee and count him out, it’s cheating. All entry level jobs have black dudes. I spot him right after, kind of in the middle there, sitting on a table, kind of leaning on it.

He’s wearing a black hoodie. The contrast is pretty strong, it’s beige and white around and there’s this intriguing dark spot right there. I kind of know. He’s homeless. Maybe? If we were in Hollywood he could be anything really but here…

So this brother kind of wakes up because of all that sudden noise and chatter and I’m staring at him and he scans the room too and sees me real quick and I can barely take his eyes looking straight into mine. I’m immediately overwhelmed and not in the mood of fucking crying fuck can I get my coffee now?

In less than 150ms everything clicks, everything adds up and everything is awful. I’m here for an entry-level job and I’m feeling fine and feeling in pain at the same time and it’s because I shouldn’t really be here but I am and it feels so damn lonely and hell, the others me are not doing so good and there’s only two of them in sight. All the time. I shift+delete those thoughts and they keep coming but I’m pouring some sugar in my latte, trying to keep it busy. Patterns are not funny.

Meanwhile he’s calmly moved away from the center of the room and tries to hide the fact that he doesn’t have much to do here. Me neither I guess. He slides through people like a ghost and settles in a calmer area, next to the bathroom. “Good spot” I think while going the other way, back to my car.

I didn’t get the job, the team who interviewed me didn’t seem happy –huge euphemism here- anyway so I guess… I don’t know. I hope he’s alright and will continue to do so even though I know… I hope I’ll be alright. I’m stranded, I do everything I can but brother wherever you are please, please, please don’t give up. Pour those screams into the rocket that will propel you to your destination. Be humble, channel. It’s going to be long, pace yourself but stay in the higher rpm, ready. Never forget why you’re doing it. Persist. Good luck, I love you my man.

Categories
Me Myself&I

EU in my mind

I just read this headline:

The EU abolish roaming charges across Europe starting 15th June

That’s super cool, if you travelled you know how big of a deal that is. I recently had to get calls from France, about 3 calls of 3mn or less. 20 euros, bam.

That’s what’s cool when a bunch of countries agree on something and work together to make it easier for people to live, forcing private companies to STFU and let us have something. People still have a hard time in the US to understand that the government is the only barrier to company abuses. Mobile and internet services are so brutally expensive here, ugh.

But the EU is in trouble. I have no idea what’s going to happen.

It was a gorgeous weekend on the west coast though. Hopefully we don’t get nuked yet.

Categories
Audio&Games

Cant care

It’s been interesting. First, Ian Bogost article on how video games are better without stories. Which I agree with, without denying the attraction for people to play games FOR the story. It’s a matter of taste but also as Ian says, it’s not where games are the strongest, I don’t think we can argue against that. Video games were about gameplay before anything else. The article talks about narrative in games with a new story-heavy game that just came out, What Remains of Edith Finch.

Watching a playthrough my immediate reactions are:

– Make it a movie.

– Cool assets. That’s a lot of work to cram in some interactivity that is not that central to the game: it’s about the story, not mechanics or fancy way to advance the plot through game scripts. Thus back to my first point.

It made me think about why I have such a hard time connecting with stories in games –and everywhere else- and it’s because writers always think they’re slick to talk about family because that’s universal right?

Wrong. Family is a vague concept to my adopted ass. The all genealogy thing and what happened to uncle Bob, I just can’t give a fuck. And it’s not because it’s not compelling, but it’s really not to me. It’s bland. It’s washed out. It’s the past that isn’t really what’s going on today.

It made me think. What kind of stories do I like? The ones that are vague. The ones that leave room for interpretation. The ones where relationships are absolutely not about that ultra classic view of family. I’m starting to think that if I loved Akira, it wasn’t so much because of the amazing sci-fi and paranormal stuff going on but because it’s just a bunch of kids with no family. They are their own family. I connect with that. Same with Mr. White and Jesse in Breaking Bad. It’s like emergent families. That’s a lot more interesting to me because that’s how my life has been: many families, none with which I share anything biological.

In short I connect with stories where family is a concept but not that hard, body-wired thing. And it’s not just because I’ve been adopted that I don’t connect with that, I think I’ve seen enough toxic biological families to know that traditional family is not something that you should put on a pedestal or imagine as being universal.

I see narrative design –right, writing- as more interesting when you add mystery in the relationship itself, not when you add mystery around a classic family tale.

Anyway.

Categories
Audio&Games

Game developers please

I don’t get how we end up where we are.

All machines and devices that we use are personal computers. CPUs, RAM, storage, Operating Systems, Updates.

All PCs, all doing the same. Your phone, your console, your laptop it doesn’t matter. All the same.

All running software that we mostly get online because that’s how we’ve been doing since online exists.

I don’t get why we’re spending so much time separating things and making them as if they were different. They are not, at all. People acting like Japanese games would be successful on Steam like, duh. I wanted that for the past 15 years if not more and it’s not slick or anything: we love their games and we don’t necessarily want to buy a new machine to play them.

Like, is that even an argument? Why wouldn’t we want people to play our games on whatever they want, now that we can do that pretty well? Why wouldn’t we want people to pay for computer games, those things that are so damn complex to make?

Instead we create silos inside silos inside silos and bargain our sweat to ludicrous levels.

I don’t get it.

Categories
Me Myself&I Music

LMK

Composed in 2014 in Paris, lifting and re-mastered in 2017 in LA.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Elections

French people are salty all the time, by default. Even if the candidates were perfect, people would not believe them and they would resent their propaganda about earth needing our help, or how we should be dismantling the banking system etc.

It’s just how we are. We don’t trust and we like to not trust. It’s a sport. Which is also why nothing is going anywhere because well, there’s no goal besides being the smarter in the room. That leads nowhere though.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Moment

My dad lost his mom a couple weeks ago. 103 years old. It was time. She felt it, called her kids to say goodbye. They had a nice funeral, all the family but a few including me was there.

I still think about him telling me online, at 65, how he felt a little lost without his parents now. I saw the kid in him in that moment like never before.

We’re all kids forever, in a way. Sometimes we doubt it.

Categories
Audio&Games

Creative process and critics

Rock Paper Shotgun talking about Full Throttle:

On release, Full Throttle was perhaps the first sign of adventure fatigue from critics. It was 1995, and the flawless DOTT and S&M had in years past rightly received rave reviews from everywhere, inducing everyone else in the industry to try to copy. The press were perhaps looking to take LucasArts down a peg, and Full Throttle provided the opportunity. It was short, the puzzles were simpler, and it had some absolutely god-awful action sequences. It didn’t receive a drubbing, of course – but it did represent the beginnings of the tedious decision that the time of the adventure was coming to an end.

They. Were. Trying. Stuff. Out. It’s something that critics get-but-don’t-get most of the time. Creative people try things out, find a recipe. They use that successful recipe for a while. Then they want to switch it up, change things. Consolidate, reduce, add.

Short? Yes, because we’ve known for a long time that people don’t finish games.

Simpler? Yes, because we’ve known for a long time that people hate difficult, convoluted puzzles.

Action? Yes, because we’ve known for a long time that people like action a lot.

Yes, most of the time it doesn’t do as well as previous output but… That doesn’t really matter because the reasons for changes are not stupid and if you want the old stuff, it’s still around.

We’re here now in 2017, where the most popular games have some narrative going on like Uncharted or Thimbleweed Park or Mass Effect. Adventure games never really died, that was a headline trick. That’s what I dislike with journalism/coverage of creative stuff: pushing a narrative when really, there’s none.

We just create entertainment and try to sell it to continue to create entertainment. If you want to write about that, dive into the design and business decisions that are shaping games but don’t go for the kind of lazy and obnoxious “X is dead” or “Y is everything now”.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Playoffs

I’m all for the Spurs because:

– It’s the home of international folks and immigrants. In Texas. That’s weird and I like that.

– it’s my brother from Paris Tony Parker’s home.

– They put the D in Defense. Pretty much the only team that will come at every single shot taken, and try to block it. Watch them, it’s unreal. Every. Single. One. Danny Green is a nightmare, I wouldn’t like to play against him.

– They grind and out grind other teams. They can play a full game with a 1 point difference and you can be sure that they will stay focused and win. If they lose it’s because well sometimes, you have bad luck or a dumb ass referee.

– Kawhi. I remember watching him on the bench being shy and shit, I thought he had so much potential. He exploded. First, top notch defender. Then, he got good at 3s. Last year he had issues with dribbling, this year he’s BALLING. I’m noticing now that he’s working on his left hand a lot. The dude is updating his game faster than your apps and devices.

– The Spurs are the only team that will beat the shit out of Lebron’s without thinking about it. They lost in 2013 to him and it wasn’t because of him. He’s almost a non-factor to them, which is unreal.

I think Greg Popovich and Tony Parker played mind games all season, making everyone believe that Tony couldn’t score anymore so that during the playoffs, he would and that would be a disaster for other teams.

Professional teams know positions, techniques. To win, you need an extra factor. It can be an absurdly good 3pt shooting like the Warriors or Rockets or it can be something else, like a point guard scoring when he spent the entire year passing the ball. That’s why I like watching Kyle “Frame by Frame” Anderson at the Spurs. You never know what he’s going to do. Dude is random as fuck –in a good way- and that screws up other teams. J Simmons is the same. It’s so good to see. Pop is so damn good. 

That’s why the Cavs, defendant champions are in trouble: they are predictable as hell. We know who will shoot the ball three passes earlier. We know they can’t do well without Lebron. It’s going to be rough for them to get to the finals, the East is thirsty. The Warriors have become a lot more unpredictable this season and that’s scary for my Spurs but San Antonio is I think even more scarier, they have d e p t h (and no pressure like the Warriors have). The bench is dope and they have the best mix of veterans and young bloods IMO. Hopefully the WCF is those two teams going at it. It’s gonna be LIT.

Tony, you know it’s the last time you can maybe get a sixth title. I wish I could send you some muscles or a third lung because I feel like, it’s doable. It’s doable son. GO SPURS.