Author: harold

Categories
Me Myself&I

Tokyo SMASH

Tokyo Smash from har0ld on Vimeo.

Beat by me, Tokyo by Japan.

 
Beat by me, MC Lyte by MC Lyte.

It’s very interesting to work on a hip hop beat. There’s much more going on than you would think, there’s a lot of work over details changing absolutely everything because it’s pretty straightforward, kick snare hi hat, bass and chords looping. The whole thing has to punch and feel like you never can have enough. Great challenge, it’s really addicting.

It’s been very good to try out and push limits, practice the best design tools for music : EQ & COMP. I love this snare smashing doors opening up for MC Lyte’s shotgun voice and tone killing everything  in the room.

I wanted somebody rapping something more introspective, kind of looking back on life and how to look up and not give up and stuff. Whatever.

Enjoy, yo.

Categories
Audio&Games

Change, skeleton and diversity

Game development started in the 70s, when racism sexism and segregation were supposed to end, or at least they were discussed and people knew they were wrong. To summarize.

Because game development started with personal computers, only rich white people could afford them for their kids therefore game development quickly became a 110% white men. Now 10% of women. About 20% of Asians if not more. 1.5% or 2% of black people and Latinos in 2005, maybe less today. I mean the LGBT community and issues they have are bigger in the gaming internet world than racial diversity is, how is that? I’m not sure I’ve worked with more than 3 black people like me, lost in an ocean of machines and white guys over a decade doing game audio. Trust me it gets on your nerves at some point or at least, a lot of questions come in.

We are now a $65 billion a year industry where apparently in the biggest market that is the US, black people and Hispanics play and purchase more games than any other ethnic group.

You see how wrong all this is?

So post-WWII post-civil rights movement post-feminism generations are allowing the same racism and bigotry as before, only softer (maybe not so soft in multiplayer online games). The system is against minorities (expensive computers were, knowledge and networks are) and education doesn’t shift anything if people are too busy solving crazy game related problems to even think about including change in what they do, diversity is not their problem. They probably think social progress has been done and that it’s minorities’ fault if nothing changes. Game developers understand very well systems (or at least they should) but they are often introverted nerds who really, really appreciate their routines and the coziness of a stable world with no change. Like heroes of their games.

 
Imagine me saying to the 99% white team: “could we have something else than a white dude, just for a change you know? No? Hey come back!”.

Change is a process guys, not a destination nor a light switch. You need to change too. Everyone. Everyday.

Every year the GDC is almost crying for “more diversity, yay!” but the industry is hiring on compatible aesthetics, driven by publishers’ marketing schedule which means that a person like me is not really connecting with the overall white game culture (I’ll never be a Games of Throne D&D board games fan, I come from the play world of musical instruments, 8/16bits and PC games and skateboard sorry). They say designers should be curious and explore plenty of things, I’ve been used to diversity, all my life. It’s the “other side” who’s not despite knowing that they need people like me. It’s just weird.

Where are the black owned game studios oh snap, they don’t exist at all. 30 years in and it’s still not happening? You’d think Hollywood is crazy conservative but they are at least smart enough to understand where the money is how to provide for an audience. The game industry absolutely fails at that, even when the industry has some hints.

You know GTA San Andreas the game around black dudes and crime in California? Best selling game ever on PS2. Third best selling game of all time in 2010. Biggest success for a GTA game at 27.5 million copies, something that will probably never happen again (on a side note, gamers questions about which GTA game is the best always end up with racist slurs).

But I guess we can’t do “black-themed” games without crime in them, can we? *crickets*

Where I lose a bit of hope is that even on simple, not complex race-related things game developers fail at providing or nurturing openness and diversity. The pattern is simple: they assume something and/or you can go fuck yourself. Like considering that everybody is right-handed in a FPS (you’re laughing but aiming accuracy is much higher when the weapon is on the side of the aiming eye and yes, I’m a lefty) or thinking that maybe some people can’t use WASD correctly, game developers fail at being accessible, at opening up to people despite having a medium allowing us to make changes like we want, more than ever today. We don’t really take advantage of this malleability, which is not available for any other medium. What a shame to be so stiff.

Other simple change that doesn’t really happen: audio. We all know that the earlier in the process game audio is started, the better it influences and merges with the rest. It’s not even a game feature, it’s been known since Star Wars at least. And yet at the 2012 GDC the two keynotes on audio highlight that audio was -wait for it- started early in the process and helped make the games stand out (Bastion and Ravenwood Fair). Like it’s a discovery for computer game professionals, really? These games are going to be exceptions in a sea of games with bad audio? We don’t change. We painfully crawl without looking around. The GDC becomes Groundhog Day too often these days. We get stuck in loops of inactions.

Even with words we suck at change. Video game is a terrible term for our medium (it has this immature stigmata) I’ll say it over and over. What “video” means for teenagers today anyway? Nothing. But if in the industry you talk about computer games people think you’re overreacting.

I feel down watching a 1988 Chris Crawford talk because it’s still so relevant to us. 88, it shouldn’t be the case goddamn. How people can get butthurt with Raph Koster’s game grammar or don’t understand how AAA studios close one after another, I don’t know. It’s crystal clear to me. Some people explained very precisely how and why the current way games are produced is doomed if you don’t want to hear it, please don’t. But you should stop doing that if you care about computer games.

I mean if you don’t even care about business decisions and trends of your own fast-moving field, if you don’t try to think ahead of that, how can you think of integrating more minorities or even feel that the gamedev community needs to do something about that? At the end it’s not your problem, right? Wrong.

The game industry and culture are a small island shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, mostly because of the lack of openness and diversity (real diversity, not having black hookers in a “lol next gen” Sci-Fi game). It’s an interesting time with the big studios dissolution trend, small teams are back. Will they think of expanding horizons or will they stick even more to the same paradigm? Unfortunately I see the latter happening more often than not (it makes sense though, it’s a protective reflex to stick with people like you when you are in struggle).

The game industry smart people’s inability to actually provide and support change in a 30 year old industry born after huge social progress -the biggest ever- is deeply infuriating, pretty depressing. And I don’t know what to do. Except my own thing, I guess.

Categories
Me Myself&I

CRSP

Cleanness. Ruthlessness. Smartness. Politeness. Giancarlo Esposito’s character in Breaking Bad Gus, is the epitome of that. On Reddit comments show that people dig and are scared of this man at the same time like no other character on TV.

 
*badass poker face*

It seems like when these character traits are of a black man, it triggers simultaneously utter fascination and extreme fear. It creates a sense of scary perfection I think: someone with confidence, who takes no BS and cares about what’s going on, who knows how to behave to any situation with knowledge and experience and who has a lean, firm body that doesn’t age with potentially a big dick or a rounded ass attached to it? Man, that’s scary perfection. Beyond politics, that’s Barack and Michelle. Compared to my French president and his wife it’s not even the same league.

That’s some creepy stuff right here not only for white folks (but mostly), for black people too because somehow it goes beyond these two’s expectations of what being black mean, which simply means to be proud of who you are and do what you want to do like everybody else. It shouldn’t be creepy but thanks to living in a white controlled world (who is still discussing something as irrelevant as knowing where the president was born in 2012? Not people of color), it is.

Take rappers, prominent black figures of today. They have ruthlessness and smartness, they went from nothing to quite a lot doing whatever was needed. But they miss cleanness and politeness so people don’t think of them around them. They’re like clowns on TV. When Jay Z tries to be the casual dude, you don’t believe it.

Now this bad motherfucker right here who -in the show- can talk his way, is loved by everyone and gets what he wants without no one noticing anything but a polite and charming man, now that’s crazy. That could actually happen.  Of course it happens with white dudes everyday but somehow, they’re off the radar. If traders were black, they wouldn’t steal anything as there would be a cop behind them at all time.

This happened to Giancarlo recently:

Days before the interview, Esposito was stopped and frisked by New York police while walking out of a theater where he was rehearsing a play. After several frantic minutes – with him and officers screaming, and their guns drawn – they realized they had the wrong guy. Their suspect had a hoodie, and Esposito was wearing a suit. When it was over, one of the officers recognized him, from his recent turn on ABC’s "Once Upon a Time."

He doesn’t get upset about it, his entire career is based on race. He stays clean, he ruthlessly keeps his pain for himself because it’s a smart thing to do and he probably was very polite to the police. Like bad mofos do. CRSP.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Shit

It’s not that everything turns into shit but they kind of do though. The last bastion was family but I guess I see it crack more and more. Some people who were so close don’t see each other anymore and so on. It’s weird. I’m so naive. I want to believe! When I was a kid I remember saying to my parents that we should have a huge BBQ thing with BOTH of my families and that it would be the best thing ever. I remember seeing them smile and tell me that it might not happen, they didn’t say why I just had to grow up witness and understand why I didn’t have to be upset about the “aw that’s cute” vibe they sent. Anyway.

Thanks, stupid ideas
Sigh

So before they did this stupid bike lane, you could park in my street (it’s going to be important later). On the right side we had parking spaces. They decided that it was not useful to have parking spaces so they took them off. Then they put a bike lane. Then they put these green barriers on the right so you can’t park on the sidewalk. Then they put these retarded white HUGE things so that people can’t park on the bike lane (they do anyway, btw) and also can’t maneuver something big like a horse trailer.

So first that picture happens everyday with different configurations of annoyances. Cars use their horns, of course. Did I mention that there’s a bus line too so that if you park slightly off the bike lane the bus can’t go? He uses his big horn too. I’ve seen a bus stopped for 25 minutes, you can imagine the concerto.

Second my building has sewer problems, these days it smells super bad downstairs. Pipes are almost a hundred years old, it had to happen. So it’s clogged as fuck. So we need to pump it out. So we need a truck. So we need to park close: you can’t run a big diameter pipe across the street with cars and buses, obviously.

So now it’s a clusterfuck, I had to call the town hall, we have to get the authorization from the bus line (15 days in advance), move the stops of said bus line for a day, stop cars for a day too and synchronize the company doing the job so that we can literally pump the shit out of my building and pay around $1200 for this.

It’s great.

People most concerned by the problem downstairs don’t do much except complain, my dad already tried to unclog it by himself but it didn’t work long. Too many baby wipes too (guys wipes clog, don’t throw them in the toilet, ever)…

So yeah I don’t know, things turn to shit. Sometimes it’s kind of unavoidable (old pipes) but sometimes it really is because of some fucking moron up there who doesn’t have a foot in reality and fucks a lot of people’s lives over. I don’t have a car, I love bikes but I also know that people move in move out, get stuff delivered, need an intervention like us etc. You don’t just decide that cars are now strictly prohibited just like that.

If you wondered why I so much want and dream about a brand new green passive house pretty far from people, now you know.

Categories
Audio&Games

Play within the rules without them

The relationship between music and videogames is not a rhetorical one, it’s not just an analogy– the language describing it may be, but the various identities are a fact. Structurally, there’s little the two forms don’t have in common. This has design implications– rhythmically, formally, texturally, etc. Most importantly, in practice, both music and games are played– and can be played in very similar ways.

Musical instruments are games, as are compositions. They are possibility spaces with boundaries implicitly or explicitly inviting certain types of play.

Amazing, amazing blog post.

And this is in essence, exactly what I feel and felt. I said earlier how I had so much fun playing music that I wasn’t playing computer games as much and felt guilty about it (if you make games, you’re supposed to spend your life on them when you’re not making games, right? Wrong).

So I always wondered, what is it that I don’t like with games? That I never do what they want me to do? Achieve goals. It’s been a constant that when I play, I tend to achieve obvious goals when there’s nothing else to do (fighting games) but as soon as I have freedom, I enjoy it. How many times did I even try to play shoot’em ups without firing a bullet, flowing through enemies waves? Oh man. When you think about it competition is good (or the best), when it’s not really perceived as a competition.

And, it’s true, competitions can reveal amazing seemingly endless vistas to our senses of possibility. This openness points toward the divine. Then– the feeling shuts off when we realize that the possibilities can be ranked by order of their usefulness. We will be more likely to succeed if we behave in certain ways. The problem here is that the conditions of success, and sometimes the methods for achieving success, are pre-determined by the game’s design. The game imposes a value system on our experience. The divine impulse can remain intact only if we’re always open to our inner sense of infinite possibility (which will mean entertaining the less "useful" possibilities).

Exactly what I feel when I record my bass: the game rules are that I need to play at at certain constant volume, be perfectly clean on every single note etc. Even if I still play the same as before, I might not feel the “divine impulse” because  of the “recording system” imposing itself. So it will be different and probably not as good. Which is why Miles Davis and so many others just recorded everything in the studio, forgetting about the game rules. Just play with this sense of infinite “possibility” (it’s the best description of this feeling I ever read) and have somebody listen to hours of hours of shit to get the gem, the gem that is the purest form of play.

It explains why sometimes by being invincible in a game you just become good enough that you wouldn’t need the invincibility, you know? Because now you can enter the game flow and perform well, without stressing out about hard rules like dying and starting over again.

What is wrong is the widely-held assumption that these kinds of barriers and motivators are essential to the form of games.

Exactly. For example, in Everyday Shooter you have 7 levels. If you fail at say level 3 you have to start over again at level 1. Why? Because the designer decided that it was this way, old school Japanese arcade style. Artificial barrier against my enjoyment. It’s not a matter of being “hardcore” or being “casual”, if play is everything at the same time. If I want to play level 4, I should. If I’m not good enough for it, let me try it. I do that all the time with music and this is how you progress and enjoy. I can start playing music casually on a slow blues and two hours later you can’t follow the number of notes I’m dropping on a 180bpm solo. That is play to me. Let me do my thing with your game.

Competitive structures have had, and will continue to have, many things to teach us (at best– about valued/loved play processes), but they lack a particular kind of realism that’s wanting in our games right now– playspaces that, as in life (though very differently), allow for the full flourishing of our creative faculties, the active exploration of shifting possibility spaces and the intimacy with the materials that form their boundaries.

*Bumps fist* On a side note, it makes me glad that my game prototype tries to dive in more into that matter. It’s good to see that what makes sense to me but makes me doubt, has some backup from a dude I don’t know but who explains it very well. At least, we’re two!

Categories
Me Myself&I

Free sex

We should not ever pay for sex, water and air. I don’t know, these things seem way too precious, too essential to have them monetized. Water largely is and that’s totally wrong and I really wish I hadn’t had to buy bottles (I still drink plenty of tap water, though).

I’m pretty liberal I guess so paying for sex shouldn’t bother me too much, but it does. Because I know that it’s not about sex.


“I’ll suck your tits for 2 credits!” Wait, that’s just wrong.

You see women who need sex, masturbate. Or because it’s obviously easier for them (17 times more contacted than men on OKCupid according to this), they’ll get a dude back home but really, maybe the best is using this vibrator and at the end, women don’t seek to pay for sex. It’s interesting to me that 50% of the population doesn’t seek to pay for sex while the other half overall thinks that it’s OK to do so. There’s something wrong if half of us don’t do it, right? Because it’s not worth it. Because men don’t pay for sex, they pay for something else, something men seek so hard. Power, charisma, or the illusion of having some. It’s very, very old news for feminists.

There’s this pretty amazing interview over the Rumpus with clients and sex workers.

And then the following summer, I wanted some money to buy something (some really cool mod boots that I would never be able to afford on my own) and I thought I could use his lust against him. He came to work way earlier than everybody else, so I showed up early too and told him I could do some of those things for money.

Very important, money. In the US people would do ANYTHING for easy money. Or get ANYTHING for free (this girl on The Soup getting a “slut butt” tattoo because it was free). It’s a disease at this point. So to buy some stupid shit, this young hetero dude is ready to blow some guy’s dick, “using his lust”. That’s fucked up, and that’s how it works for quite a lot of women too who only think about that material shit. I’d rather work a full year to get these boots than executing a pathetic plan like that.

At several points, I had disdain for certain acts, but when I felt trapped or needed rent or wanted those shoes, I crossed those self-imposed boundaries.

It’s important to note how people fuck themselves by getting used to easy money. Auto-coercion. Yes, it’s not only with prostitution.

I tried meeting women on the Internet, but fat, drunk and married does not exactly make for a compelling personals ad. And then one day, about ten years ago, I ran across a personals posting that was clearly an ad from an escort.

It’s incredible to me that men think that it’s normal to be fat drunk, in a relationship and not score pussy. Women do crazy ass shit to be sexy and grab some cocks! It ain’t free, for anyone! So dude grow a pair, divorce, hit the gym drink less and you might get some, for free (drinks not included). Not only it will be better for your entire self, it will cost you less. Men, stop being lazy ass losers with high demands.

The most positive experiences were always ones where there was a real emotional connection, where the sex part of the relationship took a back seat to just talking.

Note people, we’re talking about sex workers but it’s more like take-care-of-me-I’m-such-a-loser-I-have-no-friends workers. It’s NOT about sex. It’s about the power of having someone doing what you want, even just sit here and listen to your tribulations.

I think the thing I am most ashamed of is that I’ve been to Asian massage parlors. These are places with women who are very recent immigrants from China and Southeast Asia, and for a fixed door fee you can get a massage, and for a fixed “tip” you can have sex. On the one hand, it’s convenient; it’s cheaper than a typical escort and you don’t have to make an appointment in advance or have your references screened by the woman. You just show up. On the other hand, the sex is often not that great.

And call me naive, but what I discovered after a couple of trips to these places is that many of these women are victims of sex trafficking.

No shit, Sherlock. You’re naïve, you’re a moron and you don’t know how to use Wikipedia or a search engine for anything else but “escort close by”.

Other than the women in the massage parlors I visited, I honestly don’t believe that most of the women doing this felt degraded. The ones that were escorts who didn’t have pimps, didn’t have drug problems, and weren’t trafficked, I honestly believe that they chose their profession about as much as any of us choose our profession.

What is most when it’s the minority of sex work? Most have pimps, drug problems or are trafficked or all of the above. What is choice when you really need this money right now to pay some debt and not start a homeless life, money that would save your ass and that this thought is very well known by the one trying to hire you? You still have the choice but you know you will do it, for the sake of efficiency. This is how people also “choose” other not-so-great jobs. Duh. But if you demand weren’t there, there would be no supply either. You start this sad business, not sex workers.

Many years after my first blowjob-for-money experience, I went through a bi-curious phase and I guess I have to say now that I’m really a bisexual who leans hetero. Speaking only for myself, if my only two choices were becoming a warehouse picker for Amazon for $10 an hour, or sucking dicks ten times a day for $50 bucks a pop, I’d buy me some kneepads.

So many Americans would do anything for money. Greedy to the bone, to the core. Even on app markets, developers have a “whore mentality” trying to get you with anything with the help of disgustingly bad, sloppy apps. Easy money.

Somebody can point to, say, a fellatio porn scene where the guy is rough on the girl and calls her names, and say that it’s inherently degrading, and my argument would be that it’s only inherently degrading if the girl doesn’t want to do it. I mean, I’ve had it done to me. I thought it was a blast. And I didn’t even get paid.

Of course, everyone can have a blast with that kind of stuff. People can do whatever they want to themselves and partners sexually, it’s all right. It’s when you are paid, when it’s your job, your daily function in this society to be a bucket for cum from guys you wouldn’t bang, doing this not to have fun but to pay bills, your child school and debts that the situation is slightly different. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know man.

The money changing hands is a way of saying, “This money symbolizes our agreement that this is temporary, a fantasy, it’s just pretend, and at the end of the hour we go our separate ways. Now c’mere and let’s pretend!”

I mean, the “pay and let’s pretend!” is sad to me going to Disneyland so in this case, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know how guys can do it again and again.

Next time you’re in a fast food drive-thru at 2am on the way home from some bar, look through the window at the people in the kitchen, see how they are spending their Friday nights for minimum wage, and think about humiliation. Read about chicken-processing plants, Amazon warehouses. There are a million humiliating ways to make a living in this capitalist world we live in.

So maybe we shouldn’t push people to do anything for money like you do? Maybe we should explain that you can be happy without a 5 bedroom house or crazy car rims or fucking shoes you want? Or that maybe waiting a little longer by working a low income job that doesn’t make you cry your soul out or want to try meth to escape is a better plan? Dignity is not about how much money you have/make, people. It’s about how you sleep at night. People lack education to understand that, but it doesn’t change the fact.

Also, people react very strongly against sex— or at least against sex done in a way that they disapprove of. People are going to say that sex work was created by the patriarchy, to serve the patriarchy, that it commodities women, treats them as objects to be bought and sold. I don’t agree. To believe that, you have to believe that all of these women lack agency, lack any will at all.

But it’s stupid to think it this way. Women try to make easy money and dudes like you are showing up and are ready to pay thousands of dollars. Supply, demand. Yes, it serves the patriarchy and builds up ignorance. Yes, it serves these women who will have all the chances to get fucked up in their future life but fair enough, a lot choose this way for money, attention and fame. Yes, a couple of women who haven’t been fucked up by ultra religious childhoods nor sexually abused, who love the taste of semen might have careers and make more money than what they do now with a “classic” job but it’s like athletes, the career is short and it’s physically hard. These people exist and are for all I can see, a true minority. But yeah, they do exist and they usually have a career plan, save money for their next business/house and disappear asap. They just try to make that dollar and if the situation was inverted, wouldn’t I be interested to do this, save money and invest into things I’d like to do? I would run some numbers and think about it, I have projects and times are rough. I don’t judge. But I damn sure know that that would screw my mind up and be a huge trade, a big mental risk.

We shouldn’t be proud of  a society that values putting ourselves to the very end of the edge to exist. The US are building and sending drones everywhere for security reasons blabla, it’s still wrong and always will be. It’s wrong to facilitate war for security reasons, as it’s dumb to say prostitution is OK because an extremely small minority make this choice and lives it all right, all their lives while we forget about the pandemic problem. Society decided that wealth, bank account health is all you are and it serves men in more ways than one. What about our human health? Maybe legalization would make it better but I’m not so sure legalizing goods like drugs is one thing, legalizing services and human trade is definitely something else.

The only way I can think of being OK with paid sex is through one of these couples running websites and fucking in front of cameras. There is certainly no coercion, not from life or from a pimp, and people genuinely love and craft these videos. You can only be a bit jealous but as soon as more people will run that kind of business, people will not be able to live from that. Back to free sex.

At the very end, the problem lays in our sexual education, which is inexistent, laughable and/or terrible at best. The day our society output young adults who are not afraid of sex, know their bodies well and want to master them even more, the day we stop forcing this idea that we should aim for monogamy despite pretty much everything indicating that this doesn’t work at all, the day we don’t laugh at the dude who really comes hard with a female armpit in his face, then maybe people will be like “what is porn? What is prostitution? People paid for that? lol.”

Yeah I know. It’s far.

Categories
Me Myself&I

From soccer to what do we do


Thanks, Tibö! What an inexistent defense, it hurts.

Fine, the French team (EDF in French) has some work to do. But I’m surprised about how people react like the EDF doesn’t represent France. Uh yeah, it does represent it.

Slow, not giving a shit, not caring, not running? That’s the France I know and experience more than often everyday.

Thinking that being in quarter final is good enough? That’s the France I witness in everything.

Getting a check for a bad job and feeling no shame? That’s France in a lots of ways .

Their salaries? Do you know how much money football generates a year? FIFA has a bigger budget than the UN, that’s how much. You know players careers stop at 35 top and that they will still have to live for a long time? I don’t pity them but it really is simple economics, supply/demand stuff that French can’t stop being stupid about. Nasri insults journalists? He talks bad? What are you guys, virgins? You know where he comes from don’t be coy, let’s move on. His job is to score, not to have eloquent discussions about how the team lost. Come on, be smart about that journalists but I guess you can’t, you need to sell your paper and true, we live in a gossip society. Blame the game, not the player (who apologized).


Spotted last weekend (click to enlarge). Dude, we can find the IP. Second, it’s so childish.

Do you know why so many French players do/did so well in England (you need to check out Thierry Henry’s stats at Arsenal, it’s insane) or elsewhere but can’t score in the EDF? Like Trezeguet, third French all-time top goal scorer with great careers in Italy and Argentina. Absolutely fucked by Domenech -the worst coach ever, protected by the French Football Federation, the closest thing from Sicilian mafia with SACEM– and totally ignored by France since he missed THAT penalty in 2006. But he made us European champion with a beautiful shot (perfect left, good god it still is so good) and I’m sure he would have saved us often since then. The one who really messed up at the 2006 world cup is not Trezeguet, it’s Zidane.

He certainly made the team super anxious before the shootouts by getting a red card, he ruined his public image forever and ever, he ruined the celebration we were going to have for him and he enabled everything in people’s minds about stereotypes of how Arabs are violent, can’t control themselves and don’t apologize. Terrible. In one move, he destroyed the beautiful illusion of a  somehow united, multicultural France that he represented. That sad moment and the 2005 fall suburbs riots started white people in France to think that minorities are indeed, a problem (that is minorities became visible, before they were only on CDs).

Obviously minorities are not a problem when they clean up our streets, take care of your kids, suck your cock in Vincennes’ woods or win France a world cup with 2 goals from one dude of Algerian Kabyle descent but as soon as they’re desperate, using bad language as anyone can do from time to time or fighting police harassment or selling cannabis to white people, we condemn them as if they were the worst filth of this Earth.

This is not how integration will work. You can’t have a relationship that alternatively goes by either kisses on the mouth or punches in the face, you know?

And if all these people from minorities or fresh immigration do better, perform better, feel better outside the country they are born in, there’s a problem within the country.

Categories
Audio&Games

The problem with Unity

It’s mostly made to create universes, scenes, worlds. It’s not good at creating games.

Let me explain.

There are so many things made easier with Unity. You drag and drop assets, you drag and drop scripts and press play to immediately see what is going on. In 15 minutes you can create a room apply physics and move inside this world, according to the law of gravity, or not.

For that it’s pretty insane and an excellent tool.

For creating games that is, designing rules and applying them it’s pretty terrible. I mean all of sudden it’s not drag and drop or pre-fab or anything designer-friendly, it’s pure code.


Help. Halp.

It’s not that it’s too complicated, it’s just that it’s not designer-friendly. Look at how much information you get for stupid visual things that you really care about far, far into the development process. First, mechanics, core mechanics. I build a game.

All of sudden it make sense that everybody on YouTube is doing the same with this tool, creating 3D environments and eventually dropping some FPS style gameplay or third person whatever.

To me it’s almost like the Unity team should do it in reverse: make everything about gameplay with pre-made stuff (like setting a time limit, a score, simple behaviors and operators like they do for the input), a lot of documentation about how to make great controls and rules and much less about shaders et all. This stuff is complex and only experimented coders use them, it’s almost like they don’t need documentation, they know what they’re doing. Designers trying gameplay ideas? Not so much.

Designers can learn to code but it’s so damn slow! It’s so tedious, I think we know enough about games to pre-fab a lot more or make it more granular and fluid yet friendly when it comes to create mechanics. Game Maker is closer and yet lack other stuff.

 
The little mechanics engines of my game prototype, thanks Playmaker!

How is that visual programming is not more prevalent in game development? In this article they aim to build entire apps but it’s not a good way to look at it, parts of game development could definitely profit visual programming simply because there are more about design than code parts.

I definitely miss those not-really-existing-yet tools. It’s almost like we’re artificially supporting two different worlds, design and code, when they should merge to some extent and create something different. Let’s make it happen, people.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Over the counter

Mom (accountant): so I was looking at your income for 2011, it’s uh…

Me: Yeah, yeah… I know.

Mom: So, what’s happening?

Me: Well the situation is pretty bad, as you know.

Mom: Yes, only 2% of my clients are paying taxes on benefit, worst ever.

Me: Wow.

Mom: So are you searching? I mean I know you work on some stuff…

Me: Yes, it’s tough companies are in trouble, they close or lose money or certainly don’t hire. It’s all about 4 or 6 months contracts at the very best.

Mom: Are you searching in the US?

Me: Yes, first and foremost. But it’s not great there either. I applied for a great position for a great company where I could do a great job but you know, I don’t know.

Mom: I see.

Me: Sigh.

Mom: And uh, do you plan to do something else than sound in games or?

Me: You mean joining dad and my sister to do some woodworking? Ha, I don’t know I’m not against completely switching careers but it’s tough, I want to apply what I learned in twelve years, at the end ditching the all thing when I know it’s right here… But yeah, I know what you mean.

Mom: Because you know…

Me: Yeah mom… I do.

There’s such a gap between gen X and boomers, it’s really tough to have sane conversations without the classic “you don’t know SHIT” ending them.

The funny thing is she never knew unemployment, she started her own accounting company only after a couple of years at a bigger firm and never stopped since. I always knew unemployment even before working and I only have been able to start my own thing after 9 years, when Sarkozy did something that fucking everybody could have done way earlier but I digress. My mom uses a ten or fifteen year old accounting software and support ends this year. She told me she won’t change her old habits, they are working! I am so used to learn new software it’s a second nature for a game developer. And she’s asking me if I could forget about knowing how to produce a full sound spectrum from blips to soundtracks applied to software, game and UX design and start something else, are you shitting me right now. No, I can’t. I love it, it’s deep I’m good at it and games and apps are too huge to feel that I should give up because my timing in this world was worse than my mom’s. That’s not cool.

See you on Sunday mom, and thanks in advance for the champagne we will have for my 33.

Categories
Music

A decade later people still don’t get it

Again,

I would suggest to you that, like so many other policies in our society, it is up to us individually to put pressure on our governments and private corporations to act ethically and fairly when it comes to artists rights.

Oh really? Were you fighting Apple when they were offering 160 Gb iPod that obviously no one could entirely buy the music for? You should have gone apeshit on Western Digital, in the name of artists. I’m serious.

75,000 albums released in 2010 only 2,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. Only 1,000 sold more than 10,000 copies.

I would stop at the first number. 75 motherfucking thousands in ONE year. And you want them all to make money? Do you realize how it’s like, unrealistic? It’s not food, it’s not an amazing tool like a computer (that you can use for other things than downloading music, you know?) and you have music everywhere around, how can you almost demand that these albums make money. It’s ridiculous.

The accepted norm for hundreds of years of western civilization is the artist exclusively has the right to exploit and control his/her work for a period of time.

You dreamin’. Artists didn’t own shit up to very recently -thanks digital freedom- and that’s why it usually ended up badly, especially with bands. Don’t you watch Unsung or Behind the Music?


And journalists applaud and everybody follows.

Now while something like Spotify may be a solution for how to compensate artists fairly in the future, it is not a fair system now.

Neither was iTunes! And yet, you all embraced that pathetic pile of shit so that you can sleep at night for not going on the internet, “stealing” even though you still “steal”.

Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing. Despite huge new efficiencies created by internet distribution –no CDs to make, no distributors to store and ship them, no CD stores to build and run– artists receive the same pathetic cut. That is the disaster of iTunes. Instead of using this new medium to empower musicians and their fans, it helps the record industry cartel perpetuate the exploitation.

This is from the still very informative unofficial iTunes page.

On the other side they are very happy to sell a bunch of iWhatever, music is just a way to attract you (like apps and games). Also, Spotify: “24,000 people have listened to the Dear Esther soundtrack on Spotify. My revenue for this: 93 euros. Hmm.”. It’s the same disaster as iTunes, same cartels controlling rates (so that even independent artists get fucked too) except that you stream instead of downloading which technically is the exact fucking same, same terrible hype and same terrible greed.

I didn’t hear you guys complain to Apple. You swam in their kool-aid, happy. So when I hear artists complain about how Spotify is unfair I really want to say STFU quite a bit. Join good alternatives. Bandcamp is the star at the moment. Sell directly, it’s still better.

On nearly every count your generation is much more ethical and fair than my generation.   Except for one thing.  Artist rights.

Untrue. It’s more like a large majority of artists still believe in the old system from your generation and get fucked by it through Spotify and what not. Artists today have not only rights but also power they never had before and they are respected as long as they don’t play the game like dicks.

I saw some artists who don’t sell but ONE of their albums on the internet, the rest being ONLY available on P2P. It is stupid (but maybe it’s a legal problem with labels? Sorry guys). I saw artists selling their CDs on their websites but sending you the wrong one that you already have without even bothering to tell you etc. I think artists are bad -if not retarded sometimes- with technology and distribution but it has nothing to do with gen X or gen Y not wanting to spend some bucks. It’s totally untrue. I’m not proud but I paid a CD album more than 50 bucks on Amazon because I loved the shitty mp3s I had so much. It was unavailable anywhere but thanks to Japan, I had a perfect CD. When you genuinely love, you spend. It will happen, with no effort.

I make music, 70+ tracks on the internet entirely made by myself, some for free some streaming only, some for download some are asking a minimum price of $1. I just try to make good stuff that will still be good in ten years or more and put my heart in it. I don’t tour, I know a thing or two about musician’s depression and I still don’t think Emily is wrong.

Actually I think her generation will get tired from hardware ownership and visual dictatorship and will blossom with sound, music and silence. Because cycles, son.