h. Play – Page 171 – That's about right.

Game pricing

Awesome article from Greg Costikyan and yet, a bit obvious right? It says a lot that we need to discuss how to be ethical with F2P games when the main advantage for developers is sustainability of their jobs which translates into not screwing over users. How would you be against that? I don’t know but I’m glad that the word is out and generates comments. Because F2P is an important business model, not just for games. It’s getting better.

But I tend to prefer the “Pay Once, Play Forever” model discussed in a Jason Rohrer blog post on game pricing, the race to the bottom in app stores, to the back to back Steam sales and super lucrative bundles.

Jason wants to get money on day one because it makes sense when you’re working on a game over a couple of years. The simple fact that we in the industry feel that it’s normal to go on and on without revenue is crazy. Also, “free” means assholes trolling you and making you feel miserable after some hard work. We see those comments on app stores all the time.

Games doing well with this POPF business model (Minecraft, Terraria, Garry’s mod) all share something though: they’re almost like tools. They are not just games, they let people create and make stuff. That’s very interesting because not only those games are ethical in their pricing, they also allow their users to not just grind or escape, but build and design things.

It means that once you have your game core concept pretty solid, a prototype, you should think about how to monetize that shit while being fair to both you and the user. You need to balance out your evilness and it’s a pretty cool game in itself.

Audio&Games

GameAudioGameAudioGameAudio

Post author By harold
Post date January 17, 2014
No Comments on GameAudioGameAudioGameAudio

Perfectly said. So if I am building something it pretty much has to have sound. Sometimes I see the audio designer like a costume designer in games. We dress games sonically and it gives them everything they don’t have without sound: a life, a vibe (any game without audio feels desperately flat) and of course excitement. As costume designers, nobody gives a damn about our work.

This is why it makes me cringe when I see developers using SFXR for every-thing, even when it doesn’t match the game at all. I mean at this point with seasoned developers it’s just offensive: respect audio, behind the go big with sound because it’s part of making a game polished there’s the need to understand sound and be able to set up audio placeholders as much as with visuals. Learn how to communicate about sound, get some serious understanding of audio. Learn to determine your game audio intention, not the technical 3D part, don’t worry about that. You need to have a sonic idea of your game as much as you have a visual one.

If programming takes so much resource that we deliberately cut the audio out of the equation very early on, it means that programming needs to get simpler or better so that it doesn’t happen. We made a lot of progress but it’s still a massive problem with prototyping.

Me Myself&I

One of those week

But way more crazy and painful. Working my ass off, I feel like a zombies with a s, yes.

Little restaurant with that amazing French food.

I went to see my foster mom who took me to the restaurant for the first time ever. Just the two of us. She told me she did it with all her kids so you know, humidity in my eyes. Sometimes she talks to me and I can’t really hear her –honestly not that interesting either- because I’m loving her so much at that moment. That woman. That bond.

She asked me if I wanted my picture when “she’ll not be around” and told me that I could get anything from the house to keep, even getting priority over her six kids. I’m thinking that I’d rather have her keep her stuff and live a little bit forever? No?

She’s alive and well for now though, just a bit of arthritis. Like she says “it was a very small weekend” but I always have to jump on the road early. It takes me a while to go back to my own life, parking at my parents, talking a hour while they watch CSI:Miami with terrible voiceover and finally sit here, breathing deeply and trying to stretch out as much as I can.

Next time it’s on me Mèmère.

Me Myself&I

New nifty sites

Still modifying little bits here and there but mostly there, thanks to Boilerplate and HTML5Bones. I still think css and html should be one and only damn file called .website or .html6 whatever with strict rules for formatting things and one and only one way to present your structure. People say “learn to code!” and I say “make that shit simpler, way more unified and consistent how about that”. No one would read or write if grammar and spelling were like computer languages.

Sorry. Design mind problem.

Me Myself&I

Big White Mansion

On 8 December 1919 he wrote in his diary “ I shall never live with fewer worries, never have time to develop ideas, I wish I could get out of Europe and get to an idyllic tropical island where one does not have to fear the winter, where one does not have to slave, but find time to think and more importantly to be a free spirit.”

Richard Neutra (got this very nice book for Christmas!). Fine, it’s kind of a romantic vision but I’m from Paris, romantic shit is what I ate breakfast lunch and dinner.

Outside love I’m realizing what culture brought me and keep sending me to California:

-music (rock)

-sound design

-skateboard

-game development

-music (funk)

-bike

That’s like all my life, man. And now modern architecture. It’s only been a couple of months that I dig and realize how much that attracts me, deeply. Architecture really modifies your perception of the world: seeing modern buildings make me feel in such a progressive world, the future now, even if it’s a bit of an illusion. It’s an illusion until it’s not. The modernism that happens in Paris is tucked in 200 year old buildings, you can feel the weight, the dissonance as if France was transitioning from a flamboyant past to a bland future.

Anyway mister Neutra, same feeling here in 2014. I don’t have a Frank Lloyd Wright to work for yet though but I’m working on it. *badly needs LA job*

One day I’ll build my modern, affordable and simple passive house in Compton. I’ll call it “Big White Mansion”, jam on my bass in it and it will be awesome.

Audio&Games

Last year in games

It was bad. Not just business wise but as Raph Koster points out in his blog post:

But this was the year when an editor at a games publication actually said to me “stop writing.” This was the year that the metaphors of violence were the most popular way to describe what we should be doing to each other’s life work and passions. Burning down. Destroying.

The game industry in 2013 felt like that to me too.

I’m a game developer and reading that an editor at a games publication can actually say “stop” to someone who contributes to the game design community as much and as hard as Raph does (and when people minimize that I just think STFU you don’t know shit), says it all. Something is super rotten in the game industry. I don’t know how to react except prototyping on my own and reading arguments.

I’m a game audio designer and all I heard about all year long was audio implementation and 3D sound and HDR and things that are absolutely not core to a great game audio experience. Tons of games don’t use that at all and have great audio. Needs for more audio interactivity and flexibility are shared by all my peers in the field and yet, nothing changes. We use the same inherently broken audio stream design. It’s been a while now. Like over a goddamn decade. It became taboo.

We like to remind ourselves of how a couple of people pretty much had solutions to seamless, atomic game audio end 80s or how Nintendo masters game audio design since Mario but the game industry is not about mentors or spreading knowledge, it’s about being violently childish (Fmod vs Wwise yay). Back to Raph being humiliated online, back to Chris Crawford –kind of the father of us all, amirite- treated like “fuck that old weird dude”. Back to that article where professional game developers can’t wrap their heads around the idea of people having fun driving a cleaning truck in a simulation. I don’t know, jumping on platforms for 30 years seems pointless to me too and also, your mom albeit being old is still a ton of fun. You get the point, to each his own. Good designers know that. They analyze, they don’t laugh at taste or worse, bully you (super condescending title, Gamasutra) because you don’t play the last AAA or the last indie darling. There is no hierarchy in games, it’s like music.

Anyway, a lot of people profit that situation of intellectual stagnation and game design idling. From that editor to Raph to guys selling sound banks and focusing on how important having $50K worth of microphones will change your game audio forever, it’s not about games. It’s about business and I’m just as naive as ever: if we move on, their business will fail. If tomorrow someone comes up with a cheap, responsive audio engine that does what games need and not what sound people want Fmod and Wwise would bleed.

Computer games complexity is such that a lot of people are living out of it, without asking the good questions or caring about where it goes, what we can do with them. The mutation is slow. I blame rent and living wages.

Me Myself&I Music

Harder

Composed in L.A. Finished in Paris. An essay on minimalism and structure. Also, quiet hop funk storm. Peace.

Me Myself&I

Are we sex yet

So I’m making an erotic game. There are enough platformers around, I think.

Which means, sex research. Everything, from physiology to history to businesses. Getting some ideas, feeling how much I’m on something or if it’s rubbish etc. Good news is, I’m on something.

Bad news is, holy fuck is sex the subject where you see the most vile and ignorant human behavior. Race, hitting me hard when I never thought of interracial sex as “something” nor did I have physical preferences except for having kind of the same height/width that I have. Black women. Oh my, I didn’t know (fourth graphic). There’s way more depressing stuff, trust me.

(this is a very good example of how racism and race issues are always, always there somewhere even if I don’t search for them; and then they hit me with a cane the size of Jupiter.)

The ignorance and the shame around sex that I see all around, web or real world makes me realize the luck I had growing up as I did and how I’m pretty much a sexpert today.

So excitement, huge depression, hope, I got it all. Moving on.

Me Myself&I

Something rotten

I might reuse this picture a lot.

These days I’m realizing that one of the most powerful weapon to change things around –learning from others- is not used at all.

You know, whatever your beliefs are I always thought that when the real world shows you that there’s a better way, you go for it. I mean, this is what we did post WWII, making progress.

Today though it’s increasingly something people not only don’t want, but are against! Healthcare in the US is still a raging debate, despite Europe, despite Germany, despite Sweden, despite France, despite Costa Rica, the US will not copy something that works somewhere else and apply it to its people. Not even something as basic and crucial as healthcare. Mind blowing.

The same can be said for all cultures, France can’t structurally change despite having Germany perform a ton better and three decades of economic analysis coming from everywhere stipulating over and over what needs to change so real growth comes back. Nope.

Not knowing is one thing. Not applying is I suppose, a right albeit a dumb one. But not acknowledging that something else is better or “refusing” that it is the case is plain denial and goes against everything we went through and built up to the past thirty years. We now have to fight hard just to allow common sense to be heard (yes, end the drug war, yes, right to die etc).

It’s just fucking weird. It’s like we benefit progress everyday but don’t care about future progress that we enable now, with changes. Well, I’m craving for them changes.

Me Myself&I

Rimming

Fell on this article about rimming some dude and straight anal sex.. The conclusion says it all for me: “I’m only in the meat body for so long, whatever is going to give this spirit the best experience on earth, I’m taking it. You know?”

Especially something good, harmless and free. So let’s cover the subject.

But why??

Because pragmatism: the area is packed with a mountain of nerves and vessels and muscles, like a lot. It makes sense to use all of that to enhance pleasure, don’t you think? Did you know that the area between genitals and the anus is twice as long in males as in females? That’s some playground stuff right here and so by extension, in the heat of the moment you can lick that little star too, all of that being connected underneath. The act also means that you probably completely trust your partner to do or receive the gesture, which is a sign of a healthy relationship (and why you can’t really rim a butthole on first date). Also a lot of people rim: between gay and lesbians, straight female and straight males who play with theirs, you will not be in the minority if you try:

That’s worldwide. That’s double the interest in half a decade. We are broke, bored and have the internet apparently.

But what about poop??

Well science, Bitch. You have a muscle that acts like an automatic door which is closed by default so unless you or your partner are willing to push and shit in each other’s mouth, it is safe to lick and kiss some ass. If we’re talking about poop in butt hair or around, just demand that stuff to be gone, forever. A clean and moisturized bottom is probably way safer than your coworker’s keyboard so don’t get too paranoid on that. The clean your butt and empty your stomach before playing part is obvious but I guess it needs to be said again.

Let’s say I just got out of the shower, how can I ask my partner to do it, that I’m ready?

No you’re not. You can’t just clean your butt and ask someone to lick it. You need to learn on your own first by touching, squeezing, massaging, pushing, pulling, petting the entire “danger zone” while you imagining her moaning, sucking on your cock. There, I did it all for you.

The point is to get comfortable with your own entire body, first. I’m sure I would be traumatized by anal penetration if it was to happen for the first time with someone else, in an confusing and painfully dry way.

Don’t make your partner responsible for your own body discovery, that’s your job.

Once you know yourself, the asking part is easy. You know what you want and you’ll feel if the partner is up to it and because your butt will be squeaky clean and sexy, she’ll probably go at it on her own. I mean, it happened to me.

Anyway, this stuff takes a while. It takes quite a long time for a straight male to think about something deeper than the penis tip discharge, that moment we’ve been waiting for over and over and over. Boring. It took me about a year between the idea of playing with my butt and understand my body better and find pleasure. Sometimes I would give up. “This is weird and dumb”. Pass that.

Once I found the p-spot, I increased my pleasure gradually for another year, at least. Learning how to breath. I didn’t know what you can get from controlling and playing with the Joy Machine, full throttle, including nipple stimulation. Oh yeah, touching nipples simultaneously with your genitals increases pleasure, for all humans. Nerve connection (in my twenties I HATED any nipple stimulation so I guess it’s a matter of learning). We’re talking about complete blackout of the mind, body shaking-induced orgasms. And at least 5 liters of cum everywhere. La petite mort, the real deal. I feel like it made me hornier, but more in control of it. That is some upgrade. Maybe it’s just me. I don’t think so at all.

It goes full circle: as a boy entering puberty you start shaking the tip of your tiny penis with shame to let some white stuff come out because it apparently wants to, and as an adult you start playing with your butt with shame, to achieve something way stronger than just emptying your balls. There is more to your body than just bodily functions.

*drops the mic*

*waves crowd*