Categories
Audio&Games

Controllers

I was reading Jeff’s blog post on fad controllers and read a comment thread where people shamed some dudes who were playing games on keyboards. Here’s my take.

Controllers –joystick, gamepad, keyboard, Ouija board- are like musical instruments. You have your preference and you can play any music with it but probably, it fits some genre better than others. With the right skills though, you can do whatever you want: beating Super Meat Boy on a keyboard is a bit like covering some early Pantera on a saxophone, that sounds risky. But if you’re good, you probably can do that. And you’re awesome.

Controller choice doesn’t matter so much. People are having fun? You good. What developers need to do is test different input and make sure they’re all decent, instead of polishing one input scheme to death while forgetting about the others. And  of course, a re-mapping tool should be standard these days.

I miss the Wiimote. I could play golf and physics-based games for the next five decades with it without any issues.

Categories
Music

Prince The Machine

Prince inside the music and the masks

“and I don’t need to hear that anymore.” I’m screaming. This book, Prince, Inside the Music and the Masks was a great read. It focuses on the creative endeavor and business side of his life which was basically his entire life or so.

Prince’s parents, with six kids and a father dreaming of making it big in music, were struggling. They divorced, his dad left the piano behind, Prince started playing it. The rest is history.

His relationship with Warner starts almost immediately. He is poor and receives his first advance, $80,000, from them after they heard his prowess in the studio. Then he has to give the label seven albums. But producing creative outputs is not like producing furniture or food. He was sometimes right on point –Purple Rain- and sometimes way off –rapping- and it’s fascinating reading about him conquering the world, losing influence, battling with the music industry practices, being thirsty as fuck –his duo with Beyoncé at the Grammys- while he was destroying every single stage on earth on monstrous tours (his last one made close to $100M). So many of his songs sound much, much better live.

He was constantly looking for new ways to sell his shit. He pioneered many business models. His songwriting might have gone down –just kinda lazy I’d say– but he was sharp as hell on the contract/payment end. I’m really sad to not know what he would have been doing right now. I am pretty sure he would have started a social network/streaming service. During the 2000s, he was around but he was mostly just making more money than ever. For what? What would he have done with it? Building a new label with only women artists? Just burn bills in a giant fire pit during one of his show with a new song called Money Flames? Would he have released a dozen jazz albums now that he was getting older? Would he release them only on DVD Audio with discrete surround sound?

We’ll never know.

Categories
Me Myself&I

adfool

So if just one of Facebook’s 2 billion users entered “Jew-hater” as her “field of study”—whether out of malice or a misplaced attempt at humor—an advertiser who typed that same term in the same field could then include that user among the target audience. (Following ProPublica’s and Slate’s reports, Facebook disabled these targeting options.) To the extent there’s a problem, then, it’s not a case of machine intelligence run amok but rather a lack of any intelligence in the process, machine or otherwise. In short, Facebook’s ad tool is dumb.

The entire ad business is dumb, always has been. That’s also why we don’t like ads. Find another fucking business model. Lower your filthy profit expectations and have a good life. Is that hard?

Categories
Me Myself&I

Check up

Oh yeah, I forgot that I stopped smoking tobacco a year or so ago so happy birthday to me! I also not long after stopped putting sugar in my coffee. Not really something that I planned to do but there is so much sugar in all the food here that I figured that would not be bad to cut down a bit.

After sweating less, not smoking made me sweat more. Under stress, not smoking anymore would make me wet like I have never been before. It’s getting better. The sensation of losing focus progressively went away, I don’t have the issue anymore but I remember how strong that felt. Nicotine trying to be smart.

The funny thing is smelling someone smoking without seeing him/her and thinking “wait, this smell smells familiar but I can’t.. Oh right, cigarettes”. I forgot! Of course the hard first 5 minutes on my bike are gone. I can bike at full speed immediately, lungs wise. I can feel them getting cleaner. Cool, but not life-changing for now.

Coffee is definitely better without sugar but I sometimes miss the sweet morning kick. Sugar stimulates so much of our excitement. It wakes us up, keeps us awake more than  the coffee itself. But also it’s such a drug. I. WANT. SWEETS.

Anyway, my wallet is happy for me too.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Keep your phone simple

How often do we have our phones with ourselves or in sight? Or more like, how often do we not have them with us?

The answer is pretty much never. They are in our pockets, our hands, nightstands. We do not need complex security to simply use them, it’s overkill. People talk about airport security, forgetting that a vast majority of people never fly. Kids, girlfriends and family? You have bigger issues in your life if you cannot trust the closest people around you. And again, they don’t have much time to do anything to your phone, as your phone is with you 95% of the time.

I have never set up a pin to unlock on any smartphone ever. I got my phone stolen this year for the first time, it was definitely my fault (simply leaving it on a desk in a public space). Some LTE data was used. I could track it precisely but then the battery died (and the USB port was fucked up so, the phone can charge wirelessly but no one knows especially the homeless person who probably used it). If the battery had not died, I either was finding the phone, blocking it or erasing it. Now I can’t but the phone is probably buried in a landfill. Nothing of importance was on it. I lost a few dozens screenshots and mildly interesting videos. I upload my pictures regularly.

I don’t know how you guys can type the same 4 pin code hundreds of time a week. Or people trusting the system and then losing 4 or 6 years of pictures and memories. I know interfaces are sleek and responsive but backend technology is a big mess, don’t forget about it. Do not trust computers blindly.

All I’m saying is, companies induce fear and the need for you to upgrade. Fear is the biggest trigger for action. They know friction is at a minimum: paying for something with cash, or a card, vouchers, is fast enough. the gain of paying with your phone barely exists. But also, without bank and payment data on your phone if it comes up missing that’s a whole lot less stress.

Don’t sleep.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Saturdaymn

Well,

I had forgotten again that I have comments enabled on my blog. Sorry! I replied to the few from the past few months. For your information I have vomited 1,668 posts, and you barfed 1,124 comments since 2004.

Man, writing a book is a trip. I have my 150-200 pages pretty much done, now tightening up, trying to make it a little fun. It might take months.

This week was rough in the news. The most famous YouTube streamer let a “fucking nigger” out of his mouth, a developer took action, everyone is quiet now. Meanwhile an ESPN journalist speaks the truth and she immediately faces losing her job while the president finds the time to tweet about it. Kaepernick is still unemployed for protesting. And an ex-policeman in St Louis was acquitted of murdering a black man with his own personal AK-47.

I just spent two hours with my mind frozen on those facts (and more). So as I always do in those moments, time to clean up rooms, hard drives. Change strings on my bass. And get ready.

Categories
Audio&Games

Sonic is the past

There is a new Sonic game that came out this summer. This is the original ad I guess.

Sonic

So the new game is called Sonic Mania and it is basically the continuity of a game that came out in 1991.

To this day, I’m not sure you can do a better first game than Sonic the Hedgehog did. It destroyed me when I saw it. I was going to the store to buy a game for my birthday. A platform game for PC that looked gorgeous and fun and that I had been eying for months! Sonic was running on the Sega Genesis on the demo stand.

It blew my fucking mind, took the ashes off the ground and blew them in my face again.

The speed, the colors, the shapes, the sounds –that ring sound y’all, think about how perfect it is- it was so insanely better than anything I had seen and heard in my life. I didn’t even care about the game I wanted anymore, nothing meant anything in front of that little TV, watching beautiful scrollings and animations. Sega was in another league at that time.

Now, 2017. I really don’t care about Sonic anymore. Not by disrespect or anti-nostalgia, it’s just that the gameplay, the concept, the music are part of the past. A pillar of game design and one of the best aesthetic produced in the 90s. But it’s still just a platform game where you go fast and sometimes stop to jump on some trigger. I don’t know.

26 years later, almost 3 decades is a very, very long time with computer culture. Imagine if people demanded the original Mario Kart in mode 7 to be re-done because that’s the real Mario Kart. That would be weird. If Sonic Mania had come out in 2004 when Steam came out or 1999 to finish the decade with the most famous hedgehog, that would be different and make a lot more sense.

For me nothing can beat the first time I saw the original. Ecstatically traumatized by a blue animal.

Categories
Music

What’s wrong with you DJs

It has become so stupid.

DJs these days “spin” 30 seconds of some stuff, add a fucking air horn, spin another 30 seconds of something, repeat a hook over and over, completely changes the genre of music after half a hour. What the fuck is this?

We had a block party on my block yesterday and I wanted to get on stage and cancel the entire shit.

It’s like DJs have become incapable to make people enjoy the music, the vibe, to make them slow dance. It’s about them doing something on the mixer, like pressing buttons and reading waveforms on a laptop is a big skill. The more you like and know the music, the more infuriating it feels like.

“Oh now that’s my JAM” well enjoy real quick girl because that’s going to be over in 3, 2, 1…

I don’t get it. Is it a copyright/broadcast issue? DJs have to pay fees to if they play 75% of the song so they only play 20% of it? I’m still mad.

And what is this weak ass selection? You want to represent the West Coast there are so many anthems, not just Dre and Eazy E. Like, ugh.

Categories
Audio&Games

PlayerUnkownsBattleGround

PUBG is a big deal. 8 million copies sold in five months. The game was released this year and already has passed the most played games on Steam. There are currently 874,171 players running on auto-generated islands.

That’s completely absurd. And yet it makes sense.

PUBG is Battle Royale. Everyone my generation and younger has wanted to play a Battle Royale game, there we are. The keys to success are consistent with other very popular multiplayer games:

– It’s all about gameplay

The game started as a Battle Royale mod. Everything you do has repercussions, from when you open your parachute to how you hide in the bushes and what you loot. Simple interfaces, straight to the action. PUBG is about gameplay and nothing else.

– Hard, but fair

You will die a lot without understanding what happened. But you also will get the satisfaction to do the same to others. Anyone can eliminate anyone. That intensity and fairness are the core loop (just like CS).

– Very high dynamic

You can be alone in the middle of some cornfield or in a building fighting with fifteen people in a 2 minutes span. In single games, that dynamic is authored and usually ultra predictable (battle music fades in). In a multiplayer game, it’s really hard to balance high gameplay dynamic, which is why it is usually about high intensity and nothing else. PUBG’s design –Battle Royale’s- pulls that one together with ease. It is great game design.

– Customization

People have their preferences and like to express their individualism. This is a part of gameplay. Diversity, inclusiveness and hat choices are fantastic to involve as many people as possible and broaden reach. This is not rocket science and probably why most developers still don’t get it :p

 

Now, the big elephant in the room. Yes, this game is about killing other people. Yes, when someone gets hit, they crawl on the ground and you will shoot them in the back. In a game setting with friends, especially friends with beers in the same room, laughs will happen. But we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people online doing this for all kinds of reasons, not just pure fun.

Everything that Raph Koster says about building societies by accident applies here.

Raph Warning

Let’s face it: a Battle Royale game kind of invites all kinds of terrible behaviors. And in the current social climate in the real world, I can see how a lot of people will look forward to play a game that teaches them to have ice in their veins while roaming an area with two guns and grenades. That’s a little bit terrifying. For what I can see, Bluehole the developer has taken a strong stance and they ban anyone on sight. But they unban too. This is where things become complicated. Now that the developer has very strong foundations for the game, welcome to managing a society.

The game will be polished, eventually. The issues with a giant, growing community of people killing each other until there’s only one left? They probably will last forever.

Categories
Me Myself&I

Dear recruiters and potential future co-workers

Hi,

If you’re reading this, you did some research and clicked on links. Nice to meet you! This is my personal blog where I write about a pretty large variety of subjects. Sometimes it’s a brain fart, sometimes it’s deep enough to maybe make you think for a while. There are grammatical mistakes and typos. Blogs! What can you do.

I am passionate about sound design in computer games and animated movies, mostly. I am an avid reader and spend most of my free time devouring articles and reviews about architecture of houses, CPUs and GPUS, audio tool chain, games etc. With a side of memes, of course. I record, edit, play music and sounds constantly. I am the best I have ever been! I understand a lot of things now that I was only able to conceptualize a few years ago. Psychology of sound, technical improvements, musicianship, I am trying to unify all of this in my brain to be as efficient as possible to make a decision in front of a new audio challenge, on a new project.

It has been a little while since I have worked on a big game. There’s this joke that goes like “Best advice in game audio? Marry well!”. It didn’t pan out this way for me and as an immigrant starting from scratch, I had to do what immigrants do: take any job available. Now that I successfully did that, I am more than hungry to design sound and produce audio for awesome worlds and experiences.

So, let’s talk! I’m a bit awkward socially, I stopped smoking a year ago so I might sweat a lot but other than that I’m ultra-focused, nice, extremely reliable and resourceful and the person you want on your ship. Don’t worry, I will wear black shirts.

Best,