Yesterday, I un-mounted a massive full oak kitchen in Le Raincy in a house from a dude who was beating his wife and his kids and who would occasionally shoot at people in the street. He died alone in his bedroom and his body was discover three months later. The house is now the property of a gay couple who was selling this wood stuff if you were willing to come and get it, which we did with my dad.
Life is weird and cool and weird.
I don’t know if it’s a human feeling or my generation hitting the 30s or if it’s related to our fast times, but I feel like we’re trying to slow things down. To stop them. The problem is that it’s still moving. Things constantly move and change and we have to change and adapt too.
This is what I see; nostalgia is up: remember the 90s? Yeah I do and it was great but I don’t want to spend time on it, now. France, what are you doing with Arafat who gives a shit solve your problems and reduce this massive state that costs so much without being effective. You thought having an iPhone and Spotify was solving a decade of digital mess but they’ll go down like Windows XP or Real Player and you need to fight to keep your freedom and be nice to content providers like musicians. Facebook is awesome if you continuously spend some time filtering shit in two clicks -game feeds, hide all- and retain information to yourself (no phone number, minimize apps accessing your shit). Same with game developers stop whining about Steam and educate users, tell them to go to yourwebsite.com to get your game and if they don’t understand why it’s so important well, fuck them. Discussions are great but at some point we have to move on.
2012 babies will probably not have the stupid, retarded school system we got and that’s great. Erase it from your mind, it’s the past. Start thinking about how you will take care of that with the new technology we didn’t have. Possibilities are mind blowing.
Change, adapt and if people don’t around you, still change and adapt.
It’s September. Shit is getting real.
I know I can do even better and that it’s only the beginning but I’m pretty proud overall. I feel like I could inject some diversity into game audio, bring in some new flavor, if only developers could embrace change a bit…
Some trivia:
– Vimeo interface slaps the shit out of YouTube’s. It is SO much better and intuitive and clean to do your thing there.
– Germans and the demoscene share consistently more than anyone else, I could download the original HD file every time. Americans, Brits and the commercials/motion design crowd are the worst (you can only watch, never download and remix).
– The main edit was done in one shot, then days of tweaking polishing and cleaning.
– Rendering time on an old dual core with 2G of RAM: around an hour. Slow, but not so bad (I know the time when it was hours to do the same).
Meanwhile, three tracks and a game in progress…
Age restriction has nothing to do with it, even the heaviest gore, most brutal massacres can be captured in screen shots and published inside the community as much as you like as long as they are part of a game, any game on Steam – exposed female nipples, however, even if they are part of a game, will get you banned.
It’s not how people agree to private companies’ policies like Apple’s or Valve’s that kills me.
It’s not even how they don’t question shit about double standard, censorship (remember this one?) and ridiculous, unfair rules.
It’s the fact that they want more of that. They want these companies to take entirely over their lives because they have brands tattooed on their eyeballs and don’t want to see shit. YAY! All my games in one place (how many greenlight posts demanding Minecraft on Steam?) and all my life on idevices.
Internet freedom is shrinking in usage, not so much because of governments or laws. So many people already think that the internet IS Facebook and nothing else (you have everything there: news, friends, games). I’m freaking out.
It’s not about copyright, IP, F2P, piracy. I have no problem with games as service as well.
It’s something about computer games and business model, it’s the elephant in the room: we don’t master game development. We don’t.
@tiedtiger wrote:
If you are struggling with the same moral question, then my advice is simple: Get over it. Repeat sales is a basic business model, used from fine restaurants to lowly casinos.
Casinos and restaurants master every single thing involved in their processes, this is how they make money, not so much because they repeat sales (it’s not so much the volume it’s the margin, ask Apple). Decades, centuries of experience. A restaurant knows exactly how it’s going to work out for that red velvet cake, restaurants have a worldwide map of people’s taste/costs to produce meals today. It’s known. Casinos have the house edge. No mystery, randomness close to zero.
Us? We have incompatible tools, we have no idea who we are aiming for, we have no game audio standard, we reinvent the wheel constantly and we never know exactly when a cake game is done! We breath chaos.
We never know exactly when a game is done and what is going to take to please people. People don’t know either.
Therefore the F2P paradigm doesn’t work so well if at all, and that’s my problem with it. It’s a timing problem.
I give some tracks and songs for free. I know what it takes to make a song and also know what it takes to make a game, a polished game. It’s way harder than anything I have ever done, add the fact that you don’t know what you will sell in a F2P scenario (everything is possible) and that if you make bad choices you can kill two years of work instantly, I mean it’s suicidal right?
That’s why I still think the shareware model, free demo (generous), paid game (from let’s say $2 to $20) and of course micro-transactions later seems the strongest and fairest way to sustain a gamedev team and make people happy. Nothing greedy in this (I’m talking about independent developers here, obviously).
I don’t want players to think making games as a funny hobby. It’s hard work. I think we shot ourselves in the foot by selling $.99 games, people have NO IDEA how hard -or long- it is to make a great game, that stupid price made them believe that it’s actually easy and painless. The ratio amount of work/money made is the worst of any kind of entertainment. To go back to Tadhg’s analogy, people have a notion of what is going on in their plate at a restaurant. They have no idea with the freshly downloaded title on their digital device.
I think we need to stop running for virtual gold mines or leaning on the good old brick & mortar past. We should start being honest with the audience, educate people, that will help shaping up better connections with players leading to better games. We will learn more, have better tools, tweak all that until it’s running perfectly well.
Like for food the business model angle or the art angle will blend and we will be ready to embrace a MasterGameDesigner show on TV.
Woke up. Had to go to my parents to help with some internet cable-needs-to-be-rewire-from-the-street-problem. RER A, RER E. Apparently my help isn’t needed, dad’s way to not make me feel like I have to be there for them. My sister has some eczema on her face which seems to block her from doing anything useful at home so I set the table, go get some bread and help mom while dad goes picking up the grandparents. My grandfather’s friend, Parkinson is keeping him warm and also, very very stiff. He can barely swallow so it stresses out mom and all of us enough that we can’t really have conversations. Plus, talking about a 53 year old shooting his ex boss in NYC or Apple winning against Samsung is not that funny, more like signs of a completely sick society.
Tension, I get that dad has like 300 things to build/fix/repair and mom is on his ass it feels like they reach all the time for the last strengths they have to not fight or scream. Grandpa is losing it he almost wants to punch his daughter when she forces him to drink water and he’s all like “no, you calm down” it’s time to grab him with dad and put him on his bed for a nap, it’s always a little weird after a bottle of wine and lunch, dude’s still heavy. Dad asks if I want him to drive me back to the RER A, I decline politely and push him to go nap, I know he needs it. My sister is gone to bed because her eyes hurt but she come down with me and put her ass in front of the TV while I clean up the kitchen. Mom thanks me, I say bye to everyone, go see grandpa who’s sliding off the bed, put him back in position and talk to him a second but it’s like, he’s not here at all. I smile and go. RER E, RER A.
Public transportation is good to see how bad people’s behaviors are. Back home, grab my skateboard change clothes, back to RER A. Stretching, breathing, pushing, focusing, jumping. Smiling, spitting, snoring, blowing my nose, sweating. Finally, train back home. Black baby in stroller looking at long nose white dudes like they are really weird makes me smile, makes me think about my past, creates one of those big ball in my throat. Doors open and it’s like the world is on fire and I don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn.
Burn, motherfucker, burn.
My father doesn’t play music, has no rhythm, no pitch and doesn’t listen to music either.
My mom played harp when she was eighteen, I never saw her play it in my life. She played a bit of piano and can read music, she likes some music from time to time (her parents had a music store).
My sister is a mix, she listens to some music with her headphones but otherwise, she’s like my dad.
No one in my extended families plays music. Obviously, I’m the only black dude of the clan and naturally, I’m the one living and breathing music.
It’s been weird, I started piano lessons at 6 in a situation where my new parents tried to give me anything I’d like to try and me trying to please my new parents by saying yes to everything. Well at twelve, I was over classical piano. I was frustrated to play a music that doesn’t make me feel so good, I wanted upbeat and funny stuff to play, fat chords and imaginative melodies. Black music.
Took bass at fifteen when my friends needed a bassist for a rock trio. I remember thinking that I would like this instrument, because I loved bass notes on the piano ( does being a lefty affect that? I don’t know). My parents didn’t give a shit so my grandparents took me to a store and bought me my lefty bass and an amp for 200 bucks. A week later like every fresh musician I was like “was it a good idea?”.
A bit more than fifteen years later, my parents still don’t give a fuck. I mean, never encouraged me, never asked me to play, never asked me anything about it, never said anything cool about it to people, they just kept telling me to turn my shit down at home. My take on computers, composing, playing piano again, starting guitar and making songs? Not a word. Except once or twice in front of a lot of family people, like to make it like they care about what their son does musically, which is kind of not that true. Sigh.
So when I’m compiling a couple of years of tracks and music, building sound design for my 2012 demo reel, I think about all that. I hear my stuff, it makes me pretty proud or really proud knowing how I had to believe in myself and work harder. Some stuff I almost don’t even know how I composed it, how it came to reality but I sure feel like having A LOT more to express refining my skills and tools. Yeah.
Of course it would have felt better, I would have felt more confident with some support or I can’t even imagine what’s like to simply enjoy playing music with family but that’s the way it goes. Some room for improvement in my life, definitely.
HexGL
HexGL, Wipe Out clone in HTML5 by a French man, yay!
Nice controls, yay!
No sound, boooo.
And I know why, HTML5 audio is a mess and the Web Audio API isn’t solving anything! Code once, run anywhere REMEMBER? Well it mostly works for visuals, please make it work for AUDIO ffs. Holy fucking shit when are we going to learn like never, apparently. No offense but a Wipe Out game without futuristic hovering sounds and techno tracks is USELESS. Where is the juice?
The scariest thing about last weekend is not Todd Akin, it’s being a teacher and get five years in prison for having sex with students at your place, all of them being above 18. Of course all gave consent.
5 years. Half a decade for that.
It’s the worst message you can send to all the legally horny women out there. Todd and his stupid shit? Ignore this bitch who cares, we all know he’s lying and saying retarded shit, water-doesn’t-get-you-wet retarded. Rape is serious. We know, women know only a very few morons would say the opposite and we will not listen to them.
But this? It’s saying you are a woman and you can’t act like men. You can’t have legal sex if you are a wife but you can have illegal sex when you are a husband. No judging, no moral just facts.
If you’re a woman it’s considered disgusting behavior, you’re a monster but if you’re a dude and you get caught it’s “shit happens, let’s move on” time? WTF.
This story is saying if you are a woman you can’t have strong sexual appetite. You can’t possibly want to act and decide to have group sex at your place, with adults, consent young people you know. Uh yes, she could.
Texas uses this no-sex-between-teachers-and-students excuse to grill this woman for cheating on her husband because the good behavior for a woman in Texas -and in the Judeo-Christian West world- is to shut the fuck up, raise kids and wait for your husband’s cock in your mouth when he gets back from whatever. Maybe from some other pussyhole.
I don’t know, it bothers me. I want women to be free and enjoy life like this teacher did (nobody was harmed or molested). I want them to not worry about thinking of sex, I want them to long for sex if they want and I’m tired of associating women and “non-sex” and rape as if it was the only way for women and all of us to think about this beautiful thing that is having fun with your body reaching higher pleasure, sweating.
I think it would profit everyone.
In response to this. DICE is a great developer but they have Electronic Arts backing them up (unlimited money, sort of) and it’s going to be interesting now that EA is shifting from AAA to F2P or small scale games.
To me game audio is dependent from game development which is dependent from game business. Game audio is a mess because game development is a mess because game business is a mess. I needed to understand the balance of power and how ultimately this impact my field.
In order to focus on quality innovation and fun on games (which is pure R&D), you kind of need an unlimited supply of money and time which are very hard to obtain, as you know.
So if you try to fund your game from your previous games, you want them to make money, in a sustainable way if possible.
If it happens, then game development goes right and game audio is happening in the best setting possible which is the one you want, otherwise: project cancelled, called at the last minute, miserable audio budget… The list goes on.
Busimech
Business is crucial. What people need to understand is that the computer game business always has been complicated (that is, borderline unprofitable) because as Marc Cerny says in his talk the only constant in our field is change. These days game developers are all jumping in the AAA VS Indie/F2P wagon but it’s not a matter of who’s right, it’s a matter of what’s going on, how people use their digital devices and what is going on behind the scene. It’s the other end of our development/design spectrum.
For example, some people might think that the iPhone5 and iPad4 will continue to guarantee a stream of revenue on the iOS side, getting even bigger even. But you have to understand that:
So on iOS the success window is going to be even more narrow. Which means cross-platform dev tools as much as possible (diversify your bonds, nigga).
Another example concerning game audio: F2P == retaining players from day one and as long as possible == BIG AUDIO AND SHIT. But if you’re a small team, you should probably not go the F2P road (you work two years with a friend, you’re broke as hell you don’t make a F2P game because it’s trendy, WTF?). At least in the West, in Asia it’s another story.
The hundreds of millions of handheld consoles sold is a thing of the past and because Nintendo/Sony still don’t match game development easiness and cheapness we have with mobile phones and tablets, I would not go this way (get away from exclusive deals, no game is going to make me buy a $250 game device anymore).
Business is complicated, it is crucial and everything is possible. If we want to be able to push on quality, innovation and fun and because it’s so tied up to development variables, we need to get business right and control it.