Audio&Games

Platform exclusivity

Imagine if Sword & Sworcery EP had been out on Windows Linux Mac. Yes, no fancy number 3 in the charts –charts and grades… I think we could live without them- but the same amount of buzz on Twitter and at least, EVERYBODY would have been able to buy it and play it.

I realize that there’s this idea that the gameplay needs a specific device. But as we’re seeing more and more because we have a lot of ways to control a game available on multiple platforms –joystick, gamepad, mouse, touchpad, touchscreen, stylus, keyboard, remote, nothing- the idea doesn’t really hold up.

Magical experience that I could get on my laptop, on my couch.

I don’t really believe in the “unique experience” of a device. I played Braid on the 360 and on my laptop, it wasn’t different. The mechanics, the ambiance are still here and working. Same with Everyday Shooter. I think that you should be able to play a game using whatever you want to control it, at some extent. I don’t like the “put your finger on the screen” in a game that really doesn’t need this to be enjoyable, like Sword & Sworcery EP. It’s just a matter of creating an artificial scarcity when software can be virtually available anywhere. The scarcity is that you need an iPad to play this game. It profits Apple and nobody else.

But back to the input in games. It’s a matter of personal preferences. Some people can’t play a fighting game without an arcade stick. Some play with the “insane” Reverse Mouse setting in first person shooters (the variety of configurations from people jumping with the thumb or with the pinky is remarkable). Some people are comfortable playing a driving game on the keyboard etc. I didn’t really like Crayon Physics with the mouse but with a Wacom it’s perfect, even more than with your finger on the iPhone. Same with World of Goo. I love playing shoot’em up on a keyboard and I’m really bad with a gamepad. It’s endless.

So why would developers absolutely try to make people believe that you need the “real” deal? There’s none. It isn’t a meaningful goal for most players to quote Daniel Cook again. It’s like music or movies, even if there’s a “perfect way” to enjoy them –the bigger the better?-, people listen to mp3s in noisy environments or some watch movies on their computers. But you know what? They’re happy. It’s not that I don’t want to push them to have a better experience but if it fits for them, if it fits their lives then I’m happy that they listen to my music in any circumstance, even at a funeral with shitty headphones.

In the case of games, devices are damn expensive. Comments about game exclusivity are telling these days. People are like “dude, I can play Street Fighter IV on my netbook, why couldn’t I play your 2D game on it too? I need to buy a useless 600$ tablet to do that? Seriously? Well no then”. Some people do everything on their laptop, it’s a really convenient device, it’s quite expensive. The next digital expense will probably be a newer laptop for them, not a device that is going to cost the same price just to play a few apps and show off to their friends how cool it is. And developers I know it’s hard but learn to say no to the hype, snobbery and the platform diktat. Sword & Sworcery EP is exactly in this case, Mashable interview:

Why iOS and not PC?

I go way back with Apple. After messing around with things on the Commodore 64, I really got into art and animation on the Mac Classic with Hypercard. When Jobs got things back into gear and they launched the iPod, I really dug it. I remember thinking, “this is the form factor and these are the designers to create the mobile video game console of the future.” When they launched the iPhone, I was in the video game industry doing PS3 type stuff, but I was conscious that the iPhone was “it” — a design that would last — and their high level approach to the App Store was a revelation compared to the licensing, publishing and distribution headaches on other platforms.

I don’t see where it’s a nightmare on PC. Geez, people are not even afraid to sign up for Minecraft or worse, pay obscure strangers for items on eBay. There is no business justification. It’s just a matter of personal nostalgia mixed with grabbing attention by releasing a game exclusively on the iPad. Further in the answer:

Personally, I don’t spend any entertainment time on desktop machines or laptops, and of course, the expectations are quite different on those platforms.

Personally, I know a lot of people spending their entire entertainment time on computers. Personally, I don’t know a lot of people owning an iPad. People are like “the iPad sold 15 million units in a year” but it’s nothing compared to the amount of other devices. Laptops are selling at about 250 million units a year. Developers need to not be dependent on one platform and yet everybody falls into this trap. If now Superbrothers can’t satisfy people asking for S&S EP to be released elsewhere because of their contracts with Apple, I think it’s hurting them. Developers need to be strong.

IF YOU ARE A GAME DEVELOPER YOU NEED TO READ THIS SHIT BELOW UNTIL YOUR NOSE BLEED. THEN PRINT p 53 ON YOUR FACE.

Gdc 2011 game of platform power

View more documents from Daniel Cook

I get the bet of selling less at a higher price within a walled garden for an overhyped device. It doesn’t last long, usually.

Fuck elitism. I want games to spread out, not to be intellectual products for rich people. If a game absolutely needs a device to be playable then fine: golf games can be kind of Wii exclusive, I understand. But if it doesn’t and that you’re snubbing me with a point & click retro-nostalgia game at 5 bucks that would still work perfectly on my laptop experience-wise, I’m like no.

ps: nothing against this game at all –I hope it makes them rich, great AudioVisual design, indie game love etc-, it’s just that it’s in the news and a perfect example of how game developers don’t think long term and are driven too much by their nostalgia (platform, art-style, theme, game mechanics, retail-like business) rather than innovation. S&S EP is a great example of execution done well but I fear that it’s going to make other young game developers believe that there’s a future in exclusivity.

There isn’t son.

Me Myself&I

Twitter, 5 years and me

It seems like a decade. This service totally changed my life.

Debut

I don’t know how many French were signing up in early March 2007 but I was, after the famous SXSW that really showed up what Twitter was. I immediately tried it thinking that it was a great idea. Microblogging. Sweet.

It wasn’t to follow friends because even today Twitter isn’t popular in France –at all- so it wasn’t for that. It was for discovery. Hooking up with strangers that’s right. Maybe dating too of course. Whatever was going on.

Everything you do. Even that.

My first follower was Baratunde Thurston. Yes, it was incredibly powerful to see a BLACK MAN on the internet and nerdier than I was. Funny, witty, in the transmedia-internet-geek world, I thought that was awesome. He had a few hundreds of followers and when he worked his ass off, live-tweeting Obama’s election and campaign it was magic. He’s now Director of Digital @TheOnion and has 74,887 followers… I can’t wait to meet him because it has to happen. So many times I wanted to write to him but was too afraid to lay down some stuff.

French people in Paris on a Saturday night.

I immediately wrote in English. For me it was not even a question –why would I tweet in French when no one understands it?- and I wanted to improve so much at it that I had the idea to bring some rhymes and for like a year and half I tweeted this way and geez, it made my brain stronger and my dictionary skills better despite weird, silly, corny tweets. Mind game.

Twittervision

Anyway I just loved the fact that I had some insight in very different lives across the world, here a geeky mom in St Louis, there a web developer in Czech Republic, UK, US, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Australia… In real time, not on an irc channel with nicknames but on the web, via sms with pictures and “real” names.

More and more it became a really neat source of information too. At first I didn’t want that too much being an avid user of rss but I couldn’t resist and see that I would see a tweet and then the same in the rss feed, later. Sean Bonner showed me how much Twitter is useful and relevant in the news realm.

I giggle every time.

I also tried to follow funny people because the 140 characters limit is great for that. What value can you add on a personal level if you’re not relaying news? Comedy. I stumbled upon Alison Agosti who had about 400 followers. I thought it was a bug when I saw more than 100K like a year later but she’s funny as hell and she has a vagina too so it’s totally normal :-)

But the big thing for me has been the #itstartedontwitter with my Verdell Wilson.

Only the beginning…

It’s also been an amazing tool to connect with indie game developers as the RT process just do that, making you discover someone else via someone you already follow: this is why the new RT ain’t worth shit, making the discovery process less transparent and more intrusive.

Because of the constant stream, the more I was following people –and usually Americans- the less I was caring about France and what’s going on here. I was realizing that like rss I could just jump to the information’s source. More fascinating global, less local circlejerk.

I also saw that Twitter was used a lot by black people in the US and that I was writing English better than 98% of them. That would sometimes make me angry but I would get over it, what else is there to do?

Now I think I’m hitting a wall with Twitter. Yes having friends partying in Austin while having a tsunami in Japan, wars and conflicts in the middle East is like watching a horror movie with a comedy and a documentary at the same time. It isn’t healthy even if as the TV, I’m hooked, reading and reading, trying not to miss a tweet which could ruin the story unfolding in front of my eyes… I mean I knew about upcoming riots in the Middle East weeks before they happened, thanks to Twitter. Twitter gives a sense that there’s no time zone at all but there is and I just can’t keep reading tweets in Paris after California is up because it’s like dozens of updates after each refresh. It’s exhausting.

Backend

On the dev part, I thought Twitter very clever to let people build clients and competing over innovation. Now they’re being like total dicks, blatantly stealing ideas (the Android client was quite unique but not really efficient, the last refresh is a copy/paste of Seesmic) and saying “don’t do anything else guys, we’re in charge thanks”. Not cool.

On the business part, I just don’t get why the Flickr/Pinboard business model (pay once forever or once a year) is so disregarded. What the fuck is wrong with getting real money and stop the ad bullshit? If power users are ready to pay a fee, you should let them: they will drive followers to do so. People made Twitter.

I never had a big thing for trending topics but these days there are like effing useless, full of scammers and fake accounts. I’m still amazed at this 4000+ RT of a fake Dave Chappelle account using the #prayforjapan, what the hell people. Or the all Charlie Sheen thing. Like a lot of things when there’s a crowd, we often all get so dumb.

So I wonder what the future of this service is going to be. Like the internet showed, clones are probably going to emerge, open sourced. Dave Winer is trying to do that with rss so that you can update everything including Twitter in real time with a feed.

Whatever happens now, it will never be the same. Thanks guys.

Me Myself&I

I’m serious

If we legalize all drugs, minorities –I mean, everybody but white people- would automatically get control of it (estimation for the US only for 2003: 321 billion $).

If it happens, the balance of power between the “West” and the rest of the world would change so dramatically that it can’t happen. For now.

Maybe even some region of the world would become much more attractive than Europe and the US. Mexico’s insane violence (2010, 15 273 people murdered) is pretty much all drug-related. Other than the annoyance of the high possibility of getting killed in the worst manner possible, I’m sure it’s a nice place to live.

I’m always amazed to see that cannabis for example was totally legal when the business was controlled by the English empire. It went illegal when India claimed its independence. It became illegal when Jamaica claimed its independence.

It became illegal in the US when Mexicans and black people were using it, changing dramatically the country in the early 1900s, working their ass off and inventing the cool that will spread out and be part of the US culture. White America could stop the prohibition but just couldn’t take that “minorities” were and are happy with weed.

It’s illegal in France because hashish equals Arabs and that despite being a country open to so many things and ideas, France doesn’t want to accept its culture blend. Which also means sharing power (millions of euros market) with non-white people. And this nasty play about values and moral on how drugs are bad while alcohol is legal and globally, the leading cause of death for males aged 15-59… During that time the prison system is a profit-making industry (click on the number 1). I mean, it’s just sick man.

So in the end there’s no rational political behavior about drugs because it’s just a matter of losing huge power: could you imagine how strong would become South America if instead of smuggling cocaine to the US and Europe they were trading it to the richest, smartest white people in the world like they do since decades but this time without the BS? They could fucking rule the UN, Swiss banks and own the NASDAQ. Latinos ruling white institutions?

Yeah, it’s the worst nightmare ever for the current system. Hence the century old war on drugs. It needs to stop.

Audio&Games

Divided by GDC and 2011 trends

Post author By harold
Post date March 17, 2011
No Comments on Divided by GDC and 2011 trends

The industry is facing the biggest crisis I’ve seen since I’ve been involved making games. And more, there are giant conflicts and generation problems within the crowd of game developers. I don’t need to be in SFO to see it. For now it was quite always the same: games for consoles with teams of people doing crunch time.

Now it’s much more open. We know innovation comes from little team and that it’s the blood of our activity. We know this generation of consoles –as it was predicted back in 2004-2005- while creating a need for extra specialized people with great skills, killed thousands of jobs. There’s Minecraft. There’s Angry Birds. There’s Steam. Facebook. It’s almost overwhelming.

Themes that seemed to be big.

Game Developer Conference. Fuck you “Video Game”. Fuck you.

Gamification

I don’t care at the end. It’s good and not good at the same time but users will see how they will feel about it. This debate is useless, people will go for it or might find at some point that will and motivation are stronger when not linked to superficial and kind of meaningless rewards.

Socialization

My problem with Facebook games for now is that they’re not really interesting –I’m trying MouseHunt, meh- and make people having boring jobs something that we, as game developers, enjoy because we can use all this time to make them click and share. Games always have been inherently social and for now, I haven’t seen a game I wanted to play on Facebook. Maybe it will change but with their recent moves about in-app games or how Facebook is getting greedy by being the biggest platform in the world, we’ll see. But for sure, numbers don’t lie and people are playing a lot (half of the 500+ million people on the network). CityVille seems to be much better than the last generation of games. The social network as a platform is definitely interesting and a huge trend.

Mobile AAAfication

Good news everyone! You’re going to experience unprecedented high technology mobile games! It’s not so good news for developers as the price of entry to make games for 3DS/NGP is going to be 2 to 3 times more expensive at the very least. Gamers can expect a shitload of ports from this generation of consoles. Not so interesting.

This is where I don’t get the game developers fanboism who should be damn concerned about these cost problems, especially after seeing what this generation did to us. Guys, are you blind? 17 years studio dies, a game selling more than a million units with layoffs a few weeks later, hello?? I’m more and more amazed at the lack of maturity on the business side which is totally connected to what we do guys. Iwata had some really true words about generalist and craftsmanship gone away in the industry and the fact that so many people today are specialized makes them forget and not care about the general aspect of game development. That’s not a good trend and I think game developers are in denial on this subject.

Distortion of realitification

Walled garden. They smile at you, promise to make a room for you and then screw you and your work, most of the time. Ask SuperMeatBoy with MS. Ask developers working for Nintendo, Facebook or Apple. Trip Hawkins warned people about that and I still can’t believe how game developers just go for the “I always wanted to make my game on the last generation of machines from my favorite manufacturer of all time”. I am inclined to make games mostly for Windows not because “I love Microsoft and started with a PC in 1991” but because it seems to me, as a developer, that it’s where I can do whatever I want, distribute it and develop easily at about no cost. Nobody, no manufacturer, no hype machine matches that. I don’t care about the aspect of fragmentation –think Minecraft and stop thinking about making complicated things that are not going to work on graphic cards with pixel shaders 1.2-, ease of development, freedom of creation should be I don’t know, praised! But no. Let’s just let these platforms fuck us hard at some point or fill our lives with endless stress we don’t need. That’s how a REAL game developer does!

Despite really nice successes like The Sims, Half Life, Garry’s Mod, Dwarf Fortress, Bejeweled and so many others, people strike for this game that will outsell Mario and GTA combined so they become the next Miyamoto on the console of their dream. There’s a ridiculous distortion of reality. For a very few games using and in need of a specific platform, a lot should be done on computers, desktops or laptops or mobile. Being platform agnostic should be the default because you should focus on your game and people playing it, FIRST. That’s still too rare. Fuck.

Indiefication

On the good side, a lot of great, polished games. More than ever and it’s awesome. But the dark side is coming now, which is elitism. Indie has never been for me just a way to describe people who are making games professionally without publishers. Nothing more or less. But of course now it’s a 1337 Club where if you haven’t been coding since the age of 4 while drinking beer or doing design from a trailer park well you’re just not indie at all. That’s not great for the community of people making games and I’m starting to see some strange tensions.

Hollywoodification

Awards, red carpet etc It’s good to see games getting media attention and all but it’s just a way for the traditional AAA business to show off its voice-over actors and receive awards so that people can forget about quality of life issues, crunching for weeks to release a game of the year. Guys remember: everybody in the industry knows who Notch is, what he looks like and that he made Minecraft. The team behind Red Dead Redemption? Nobody knows who the fuck you are. For the same amount of work, I’d rather be Notch any day.

Me Myself&I

Courage Wolf is always right

Post author By harold
Post date February 27, 2011
No Comments on Courage Wolf is always right

Amidoinitrite

Anyway, millions of things to do. Also, never loan/rent your apartment to a dirty dude with long hair. Holy fuck.

Me Myself&I

Windows Phone is good

Seven days with a new Windows Phone 7.

It’s a very interesting time in terms of competition in the world of smartphones. First despite the amount of hype and how everybody in California owns one, the smartphone market globally still barely represent a quarter of phone sales (20% of global sales mid 2010). It’s still the beginning. But the growth is on.

// Before

I used an Android Phone for a year. I had fun with it except that my HTC Hero had some issues with AES Wi-Fi encryption, making it kind of useless when it cannot connect correctly to the free wireless… I don’t know if I’m the only one but from my light usage (email/twitter/fb/sms/reading/maps) I can say that:

I’ve pretty much never used the “killer feature” called copy&paste. I retype, save the link or use the “send by email”.
I don’t play games or music because it ruins battery life. It’s a communication device for me first.
What multitasking? I use an app. I quit. I launch another one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Also, if I use six or seven apps very regularly, it’s a maximum.
The free app with banner ads in your face model is getting annoying really fast.
The Gmail app is plain sad.

Then the update mess. Holy shit it’s a mess. I started with the 1.6, missing a lot of good stuff. Then last summer I finally got the 2.1 update which I already had tried with a custom ROM (I don’t want to do that kind of shit again, ever). Then nothing, change your phone. The 2.2 update brought speed improvements with JIT optimization and the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, and added Wi-Fi hotspot tethering and Adobe Flash support. Flash that I had partially from the start with my phone but don’t care about (watching videos on a tiny screen? Really?). My HTC Hero could have used this update but no, I have to get a new Android phone so I can have the last updates and last apps. Or go through XDA.

So I said no thanks. Here’s the carrier update coming and I’m going to get this Samsung Omnia 7. BAM!

Nifty

// UI-UX

I was really interested into the new Metro UI. Now that I’m playing with it, I can tell that it’s fucking delicious, butter smooth and all. At first you think that it’s gadget, you think that it’s too edgy and unnecessary but everything makes sense after a while: all these words become data and you end up manipulating data instead of representation of data (icons and “app body”). With an accent on natural motion with less clicks and trees and sub-menus and dialog boxes, everything seems more… Relaxing and focused even if it sounds weird. And what I see works perfectly for business or personal use. Grids of icons don’t look mature or efficient anymore. Navigating on Windows Phone 7 feels like a background process more than any other UI I experienced before. You have to try it for a while to understand. It’s awesome.

Index to swipe. Thumb to get back. For everything.

It’s fast, integrated, minimalist, well done, data-driven: you don’t launch your sms app to type a text message, you swipe to your contact list where you can sms/email/facebook wall them in one click from the home screen if you pinned her/him. I could do that on my Android but it was so clunky and confusing. The button just for the camera –love it-, the left or right landscape mode with symbols within icons moving accordingly… They polished the shit out of their new platform. And Microsoft really has nailed and deeply thought something here with this fancy 2D layout. It’s so satisfying.

Now about the stuff lacking. Like being unable to update a status on FB/Twitter/SomeTrendySocialNetwork directly from the Me Tile. Everything is pretty perfect and they miss that for launch? Unbelievable. Or is it to favorite developers to sell apps? Or because –for example- the Twitter API is god-awful to deal with so that engineers pushed to wait before it’s sold to Facebook or Google? I guess it weighs in too. Microsoft took the liberty to create the little apps that count like the weather, translator or unit converter. They’re as polished as the OS. They didn’t want to allow the light smartphone user like me having to deal with shitty third-party apps for basics like that. It’s smart because it ruined my Android experience.

Bad: give me a tool-shortcut to take screenshots of this beautiful UI on my phone please. Let people spread the word MS.

// Marketplace

I think the trial mode –not really available on other mobile platforms- is a really good choice for both users and developers. It’s known that while Android is full of apps, nobody is making money. The growth in competition between developers is not going to ease this as we can see on the iPhone where a few make a lot and everybody else pretty much nothing.

For users on Android you have fugly apps with G banner ads everywhere. You don’t want to pay when it’s free and that well, it gets the job done. But you have to deal with all this web intrusion. On iPhone it’s hit or miss: you buy you’re happy, great. Otherwise you’re screwed and try to not tell anyone that you paid that corny Mahjong game five bucks.

Now on Windows Phone everybody’s happy in theory. I’m trying Wonder Reader these days and it works well. I’m willing to pay the developer for its work. I feel that it’s the most balanced relationship: trial without restrictions or ads, I like it I buy it, I don’t I uninstall.

There’s no “I’m trying to scam/spam you with a lite version and really try hard to sell the full version to your contact list” way of doing business. Since the trial model is proven and always has been strong in digital distribution businesses (ask Steam these days), I feel that it’s going to be the same for smartphones. Remember, apps are bought once and for all, if you don’t like it it’s like you just dropped money on the sidewalk. After a couple dozens or more of not expensive apps, people are going to really want to try before hitting the “buy” button.

The one in the middle is the official Android app. Looks designed by/for a 7 year old.

About apps quality I think it’s already way better than Android. I already have all the apps I had on my Android: Flickr, Amazon, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Chuck Norris facts… Kidding. Though they’re available too. Some apps are a bit slow but they’re all enjoyable to use, much more than their counterparts on Android and iPhone thanks to the sweet UI. I have experienced one app crash so far, a shady Flickr uploader (a Flickr API problem I suspect). Also, apps are all available in France too. For the life of me I couldn’t get the Android Amazon app even with my European unlocked phone, in Paris or L.A. And it happens a lot, even for free apps like Google Reader. So weird for Google the global company.

Bad: get the Zune Music out of the search please.

// Development

Maybe nobody has noticed but the pace at which people port iPhone games to Windows Phone is quite insane. Like ten times faster than to port on Android. Thanks to minimum specs and great dev tools and being a bit late to the party which is an advantage in this fast-moving hardware mobile market.

This tool is creepily efficient. It’s called Expression Blend 4.

Anyway I’m saying great dev tools but I should say really great. I did iPhone development saw Interface Builder Xcode, I tried Android and the AppInventor, Eclipse and all the endless annoying Android SDK installation…

Here you download a small exe file that gets everything you need at once and five minutes after finishing the download, you can fire the emulator and have an app page running. How about that.

It’s been a week that I use Expression Blend 4 and I already have two apps navigation flows running smoothly in the emulator. I just need transition effects, binding real data and I’m almost done with solid alpha beta versions.

That’s an amazing achievement and because MS is full of engineer once again, they communicate on the technology making this possible –Silverlight– when they should introduce people from a product point of view first. Microsoft can’t get PR right, we all know that.

I don’t want to use Silverlight for anything but for Windows Phone for now. But using it through Blend 4 is quite awesome I can’t deny. The product MS, the product attracts designers. Technology, not so much. Remember, the code is behind. (not saying that it’s less important, but it’s not the best bridge to consumers right?)

Bad: None really, absolutely no crash at all with the dev tools… I’d like to be going even faster to build a complete app with Blend 4. Enough about visual stuff like FXG import and Photoshop shit. Let designers build the entire app with real data (at least for the reading part) with a few wizards, give more pre-made transition effects templates etc Ease and fasten the real creation process, it helps so much to not only see the design but the data in it. But it’s just been 7 days with the tools so maybe everything is here and I have yet to find it. Also, make it easier to download tools updates please!

Overall:

Best mobile experience ever. Minor issues (OMG I don’t have copy&paste bullshit included) about to be fixed. I thought my camera button wasn’t working well but it’s actually because I’m lefty and leave my hand on the proximity detector. So it’s all good and works perfectly now.

Best dev tools ever. Really hard to not fall in love with them. Productivity and classiness to the max.

From my simple and honest experience, I don’t see how Nokia made a mistake. You should really try a Windows Phone if you’re about to get a smartphone. I’m totally serious.

Audio&Games

Global Game Jam 2011

Startin’

What went right

-The organization

It was amazing. Thanks to the ISART and Anne-Laure, the facilities, food and everything else were absolutely top-notch.

-The people

Geeks and nerds and laptops. It’s always working.

-The theme

“Extinction”. Not easy, brought a lot of constraints which is a good thing to do a game in 48 hours.

What went wrong

-Differences

From students who never have participated making a game to people who are doing it since 10 years and more. Doing a game in 48 hours is hard so I think that it really doesn’t help to have such a big difference of experience. That’s why I felt that it’s great to introduce people to game dev and not push my game concept –which wasn’t good enough to really stand out anyway- but help and just “be around”. It’s always a good feeling to see some young blood and explain to him what’s going on with his eyes lightening up. But at the end it kind of frustrates me to not have a team of people that can output something really nice because they all know the process and can maximize the 48 hours. I think there are two things you can do in 48 hours of game jam: you can develop a neat and original mechanic with no or almost no polishing OR something more traditional but with a little something in the polishing that is original, would it be with a render technique, a sound implementation etc. It’s super hard if not impossible to get there with a really heterogeneous team.

-Sausage fest

It’s really sad. Two courageous girls for like 60 dudes. It just brings guns, aliens and shit we saw three gazillion times. It’s hard to design, again, some sounds for skeletons. And explosions. And death. It’s just so hard to get dudes out of this that I just don’t try. The Global Game Jam is a celebration, not design courses by Harold P. They’re all too happy and excited to do something for bros like fart jokes and all that it’s hard to be the one to say “C’mon guys”, especially 30 hours in, when your brain starts to melt. Maybe I get old. Maybe 10 years of this meat fest is really getting on my nerves. There’s so many themes to reach out. And no, the answer is not to do a Global Game Jam Women. It’s to change ourselves.

That makes me think that I will need to contact a very mature programmer for my project.

-Technique

We did a HTML5 game it’s “the future” yadda yadda yadda. It’s fucking bullshit. It’s supposed to work everywhere. It’s not. In 2011, I cannot produce sound that can be played properly in two different browser, way to go developers and manufacturers. It’s beyond lame. Look at the notes on Wikipedia for HTML5 audio format support:

WebKit on Mac OS X uses QuickTime, and supports whatever formats that does.[w 3] This includes H.264, MP3, AAC and WAV PCM, but not Ogg Theora or Vorbis. These are supported only if installed as third-party codecs, such as XiphQT. Google Chrome supports Theora, Vorbis, WebM, and MP3.[w 4] Chromium can be compiled to support anything that ffmpeg supports, and may or may not support patented formats such as H.264 and MP3.[w 5] Origyn Web Browser for MorphOS uses also FFMpeg for playing HTML5 media content.[w 6][w 7]

You really want to edit the Wiki and say STANDARD MY ASS YOU ALL FUCKING SUCK. We tried everything. At the end it wasn’t working and we used a Flash player. Which can only get MP3. Which is a file format that can’t loop. And remember, it is just about playing sound files. No fancy features or filters. Just basics.

It’s particularly depressing to see this when you know that any fucking piece of computer hardware bought in the last five years or even the last ten years, can play a goddamn wav PCM audio file of any resolution and loop it without a problem. It’s ridiculous to have computers with enough RAM to store HOURS of sound, enough raw power to apply über complex filters on it and not being able to play a simple 16s looping sound. It’s because of politics and money that I’m screwed in my work. Sigh.

Anyway. Good times and may I encourage you to do it next time!

Flickr Set of the Global Game Jam 2011 in Paris.

Global Game Jam Paris Games. (I know, the website sucks hard, jump to France Paris-Paris)

I think we look good after 48 hours sans shower. Don’t smell me bro!

Me Myself&I

Improvisation

I knew his death would trigger something or put me into another perspective.

Now I look at my legal family, dad mom and sister and I need to face it.

I just feel totally off them. Not like stranger off, more like alien off. I have this memory of an evening where for the first time I cranked up the volume of my radio to blast What’s Going On. Of course I didn’t know what it meant, I just loved the voice, the feeling and the music. My parents went apeshit telling me that we were not in the ghetto so I had to turn that down. Damn I was like eleven or twelve and never thought that I would remember this forever.

It was telling a lot about how I’m different from them -they don’t care about music like I do and don’t know shit about black music at all, they’re talking about people of my color like they’re bad and just a little bit of excess is not allowed- but of course, I was just confused. Now I know why I’m still confused. Because I see how by having a typical stuck-up white intellectual family on one side, a really divided and discriminatory society on the other side, I feel so screwed. Neither of them are satisfying. And yet by my position, I have it all but. Fuck.

BlackGoldOfTheSun

I have to recognize that overall it always felt artificial with my parents, from the beginning. Like an industry contract: you help me out in life, I’m a good son to you. Nothing too personal, just business. I mean, it started with them coming to visit me, offering me presents at my foster family house and when you’re a kid you go where you can have more of these. I call that business. Then I just learned and soaked up knowledge they were giving me like a sponge. Looking back on it , that’s all I did, sharing emotions, love was more than rare despite trying and create awkardness. It’s hard to admit it and I’m sure they would be sad but hey, letting me do what I wanted to do without support, like an obligation they have to fulfill, does that too. That’s ok.

I have a connection with my foster family that looks like the “default family connection”, like most of you have. Because I grew up there I guess. It feels natural. Despite the same physical differences I feel connected in a way that I have never been able to reproduce with my parents. I tried, I hoped, it was bullshit. You don’t really create that, it exists or it doesn’t.

They warn people that old –that is, any baby after 12 months- adopted child integration into a family is complicated. Since the beginning I feel being a character, playing a role. For a long time I thought it was going on pretty well and felt real but it honestly never felt true. There was a big “…and scene” moment when I was at last, alone. 25 years like that.

What is left when you don’t connect at all emotionally with your family? What’s like to talk about black hair with your black dad? Damn I wish I knew. It’s terrible when people including the closest are both pointing at me as black while saying I am not black because I don’t act like a black dude kind of sending the message that I’m neither black or white and so I don’t belong anywhere. Guys, I am black, dark skinned or chocolate if you want. Visually I can’t hide it, hence the classic “where you’re from? I mean, ethnically” I get all the time in France la Rude. Otherwise I’m just Harold. I don’t fit any of your boxes. Even when I want it.

The terrible under representation of black people in circles I’ve been involved in didn’t help feeling comfortable. Don’t laugh at it, a lot of white people get totally depressed living in Japan and I remember this black Katrina refugee sent to Utah, 1.4% of black people there (compared to 12.9% nationwide). She went crazy. Well I’m doing that since day one so in some way it’s easier but it’s also much heavier. I grew up being the 1% black stat and when I saw a lot more black people I was twenty something and they were friggin’ undereducated 99% of the time. France, US it’s all bad. WTF am I supposed to do with that. It feels like it pushes me into craziness: being all the time the exception and wanting to be more in the pack –but which one?- while still wanting to be different because it’s a positive value. Often. But not too much? How much then? I’m confused.

Recently in the past few years, it feels too much. Probably because of the depressing state of work and business in France in which I sank myself in for poor benefits but anyway. I can’t take looks people are giving at my family and me when we hang out in public. I can’t look at my parents, sister, in the eyes anymore. I kind of don’t want to see the extended family despite the fact that I miss them a bit but man in the south they don’t like guys like me and I still have painful memories of escaping looks when I was taking pictures with my beautiful deep blue eyed white cousin. I can’t take that shit anymore, having to explain how the fuck I am related to him her or them.

It’s easier to connect with friends because the relationship“doesn’t have to be”. No question asked. It’s easier with women because they deeply know even if they say that they don’t, what discrimination and living in a world that looks ok but is totally fucked up are. It’s easier with people who happened to have a not so conventional personal life. But even in these cases, I’m dealing with my quite unique paradigm which draws me away from everyone.

I guess that’s why I appreciate so much to be alone, to be myself by myself. I worked on that, how to be happy alone since forever. I’m good at it now, thanks to OCPD tendencies, music and games. Oh and the internet.

And that’s also why I love so much improvisation: a set of rules and total freedom around it. No judgment, no why, it’s on the fly. Can’t stop won’t stop. It’s also one of the rare, universally appreciated skill.

That’s what I always did. And that’s probably what I’ll always do.

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act.

Me Myself&I

Eula World

It’s maybe because my not-so-private life is shacking or because there are too much networks to follow at the same time but I feel that all these services offered for free in exchange of scanning our lives are going to witness a slow down in registration. So much privacy issues. But yes, I just signed up for Quora. <sigh>

A lot of services get me with stats. From views to plays to followers, of course it’s addicting. But sometimes it just feels so useless. The real value of networks is what I get from people and what I share. It will never change.

It’s amazing how a blog, on a server you rent, feels so much more cozy and at home than Facebook despite the fact that both are equally public. Except that Facebook technically does own what I share where on my blog, search engines give access to it and that’s it.

So even if this is kind of true, I guess I will do it over and over. Blogging freely.

PS: the import closed all the comments, sorry. Also, you might need to update your rss with the same address as before, it has to be done, sorry for the inconvenience. The feed address: http://har0ld.com/playground/feed

Me Myself&I

Dads

Post author By harold
Post date January 10, 2011
3 Comments on Dads

The kind of day you never forget.

Of course we were late for the ceremony. Searching for parking when people were entering the church. Being at the door away from the family and the coffin felt so painful. I am part of this family too, I should be there. I close my eyes and try to get the anxiety away, listening to the church dude. “He’s been living here for 41 years” 10 years later I was a baby in his life. “He was involved in different local organizations”. I can see him play petanque, getting ready to go hunting or fishing, his perfectly organized workshop. “He was in pain, which reminds us of Jesus on the cross”.

What the fuck is that. I forgot about that disgustingly lame behavior. Fucking church you ruined it I fucking hate you.

Then I am not listening anymore, so angry (and then you ask money huh? I hate you church). Before the incense thing someone from the family sees me and gets me a place with everybody in front. Bursting in tears seeing her and others, I feel so embarrassed. After all I am the only black man in this all white crowded church. But one of the closest person of the dead. It’s kind of overwhelming.

We all follow the coffin outside. I say hello to everyone, some I had never seen again since being in my “current” family 25 years ago. My dad is chatting a little bit with her but he’s keeping it simple. After all he barely knows more than my foster parents which is a number reduced to one now.

We’re the first at the house. She arrives, I think she looks amazingly kind and pure. Exhausted too. Quickly everybody is here in the living room, starting to put on the buffet on the table. Smiles, tears, everybody is here and it’s beautiful and warm. But it’s also unbearably awkward with my dad, the stranger to whom no one talks to almost. He’s in the corner, sitting down with a plate I made for him and as pretty much all day, I can’t look in his eyes at all. I can sense that everybody is like “keep the bad language down, there’s Harold’s dad listening what would he think then huh?”. I feel bad for him. I feel bad too.

I just try to get to chat a bit with everybody, following cigarette breaks outside, getting back for more coffee to fight the jet lag and the cold thick fog of the afternoon. As much fog outside and inside my head.

It’s 2pm, the family leaves for the crematory later and while I would love to join, we have some road to hit before the Parisian traffic. It’s like I’m staying 5 minutes saying we’re leaving and doing nothing, just enjoying to have them all around me. I feel so lucky and proud. They say they put a picture of me in the coffin too. Humanity at its roots. For what it’s worth…

I think the hardest part is to stretch out my mind in order to include everyone I love. So many different worlds, so many differences, so many unique connections when in some ways, I’d like to be in a “normal“ situation with “normal” connections.

What “normal” is, what family, love, friends are. Sometimes I don’t fucking know. I just freeze.