Companion Investment

BioWare’s “Dragon Age” is your standard computer RPG in the style of the genre that they helped define with games like Baldur’s Gate 1&2 and Neverwinter Nights. The quality is what one expects from a BioWare game: insanely high, and after logging a couple nights (5 hours) of play since Tuesday’s launch I’m thoroughly hooked both to the game play and the world. I’m not going to talk about the excellently developed game world and lore, or the smooth, action-oriented-yet-still-typically-RPG combat. No, you can go to any number of gushing reviews to hear about that. What I want to talk about briefly is something that I’m seeing for the first time in this game that should have been done a decade ago in this genre and that other developers need to pay attention to.

In full fantasy tradition (re: Lord of the Rings, Dragon Lance, anything by R.A. Salvatore) the lone hero is never alone for very long and sooner or later he is bound to become surrounded by companions, followers, and well-wishers (in that they don’t mean him any specific harm.) In a video game context these are often fully (or partially) controllable characters who may aid the player in his quest. In most cases the player will have full access to these character’s inventories, being able to swap out old items for new and ensure that one’s adventuring companions are at least as well armed as the hero himself. This is all well and good and from a game play standpoint makes perfect sense … until your companion is taken out of the story and beyond your control by often unforeseen circumstances. Maybe you reach a new town and your hero and his companion part ways or perhaps it is something more sinister involving a dragon and the muffled screams of your companion as he is devoured whole. Whatever the case, story often necessitates the removal of companions and in an abrupt manner as to be more visceral. If only you had known it was coming so you could have removed that Ogre Slaying Knife with a +9 against Ogres from your companion character beforehand and put it to better use than residing in the bowels of some flying lizard.

I’ve been in this situation in countless games and it results in one of two types of behavior:

1. You never give your companions anything of value, that way you won’t miss it should they be gone
2. You save your game often and after you experience a companion’s departure, reload and strip them of all your possessions before continuing again.

Dragon Age makes this a thing of the past. I’ll admit, I’ve grown accustomed to losing items off of lost companion characters in RPG’s, so imagine my surprise when after my first cameo companion character left my employ my personal inventory became filled with all of the items he was carrying, including that nice sword I gave him. The same happened later on with two other companions who met their untimely demise in a cut scene during a crucial plot point and I had just equipped them with new stuff too. Now I know this seems like a little thing, but a decade of playing games where this wasn’t the case and then all of a sudden the optimal solution presents itself? Well you think someone would have thought of it by now.

At any rate, it’s a feature I hope to see again in the future in what so far appears to be an excellent game worthy of the BioWare pedigree. I’m just happy I can finally equip my companions with decent weapons and armor and should I decide to feed them to a dragon to allow myself a hasty retreat, it’s nice to know that my investment will return to me, to be sold or given to my next hapless comrade.

Spektors

There’s this thing Regina Spektor does from time to time when she sings where she makes it sound as if her voice is holding back all the emotion in the entire world and she just can’t contain it anymore and for a brief moment, lets it slip. That shit gives me chills and I love it. Just listen to “Us” and “Somedays” on the album Soviet Kitsch.

Lazy Week

Having turned back the clocks by an hour last night 9:30am this morning was really 10:30am according to most people’s internal clocks and thus the coffee shop was a bit more crowded when I arrived than it usually is. Most of the inside seats had been taken, at least the ones where a single person can sit without looking like some kind of ass for taking a table that can comfortably fit 4. There were seats outside though and the weather this morning was warmer than expected due mostly to the fact that the sun had been out for an hour longer than usual as the result the “fall back” portion of our bi-annual time travel experiment.

At any rate, I got my double mocha with mexican chocolate in a to-go cup and sat out on the patio of Epoch Coffee and began my Sunday morning ritual with the opening of this week’s Austin Chronicle. At fist I thought it had just been me, but after a few pages of the Chronicle I realized that it had been a slow week for everyone as the paper was fairly dry and uninteresting. There really didn’t seem to be anything new or interesting going on this week. For me personally the week as a whole was something of a non-starter with every day constantly feeling like Friday. On Monday I came into work after lunch due to a server integration that was supposed to have taken place earlier in the day, but was still going on, meaning I had no real work to do except for one fairly productive creative meeting. Tuesday was another late start but little work got done as we spent most of our time testing the stability of the latest server build. Wednesday was business as usual, but since the week had failed to start correctly it never really felt right. I suppose by Thursday I started to get into the swing of it and by the end of OT on Saturday I had gotten a decent amount of work done in what was otherwise an unremarkable week.

There haven’t been any new movies recently, at least not any that haven’t been sequestered to limited New York and LA only releases. That coupled with my disappointment at Tim Schaffer’s new game Brutal Legend and the fact that my efforts on the dating sites this month have all fallen flat has sent October out with a whimper and sigh. November looks to be starting off with a bang however. If the calendar doesn’t waiver there are new games and movies every week this month and I’ll be heading up north for Thanksgiving, which will be a nice break. I also decided to renew my Match.com membership so we’ll see how that works out.

Today (aside from the coffee earlier) I’ve been sitting here listening to bands in my “One More Time” playlist. These are new albums this year that I have already listened to at least a couple of times, but haven’t quite judged as good or bad. I just finished listening to “Population” by Most Serene Republic, an auditory cross between Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Polyphonic Spree. It’s not bad, but it fails to really identify itself or grab me in any discernable way. Friday night I listened to “Golden Vessel of Sound” by Yume Bitsu, an album that starts with a strong track and immediately falls apart, never managing to reorganize itself into something worth listening to before it ends. Right now I’ve got the latest release from Kupek “Tries Again” . You’ll likely never see Kupek in stores as it’s a side project of comic book author Brian Lee O’Malley, which he releases for free online. There are a couple standout tracks in this release, but overall it’s not as impressive as his previous albums. Still, it’s pretty damn good for what is essentially a home produced and recorded album.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading to Waterloo Records later today and I’ll be back on the dating sites later tonight to see who I contact this week. It’s a lazy end to a lazy week.

Post Coffee Addled Essence

I was going to write a post about how my job as a game developer is largely misunderstood by the general public who see game developers as lazy, overpaid, anti-social slackers; a misunderstanding borne from the misunderstanding that all game developers are programmers and the misunderstanding that all programmers are wealthy geeks like Bill Gates coupled with the misunderstanding that making games involves playing games most of the day and the misunderstanding that people who play games are slovenly and anti-social.

I decided not to write that post though and in fact the only reason it came to mind at all was as I was planning to write that I had to work overtime yesterday and for the next two Saturdays. My mind immediately wandered to an explanation of the required overtime that exists as part of my schedule as a game developer, overtime that as a salaried employee I don’t get paid for because I’m eligible for a “bonus” that usually ends up being 10% or less of what I would have made had I gotten paid for overtime.

That’s all beside the point however as I can’t recall why I was going to write about having to work overtime at all except maybe that it’s Sunday and this is my only full day off this weekend and after getting back from the coffee shop this morning I’m looking for ways to get as much out of it as possible. And now I’ve lost my train of thought completely so I’m just going to post this as a chronicle of my addled state of mind and start again with a new post.

This. Isn’t. News.

I’m sorry people, if the president is going to play basketball then he’s going to have to specifically play with women as well … and old people, and children, and a homeless person, and republicans, and anyone else who may or may not even have any interest in playing an informal game of basketball with the president but who nonetheless make up a segment of the population not currently represented in said basketball game. Because let’s face it people, the president and his administration should represent the exact make up of the country as a whole. In fact, before the president does anything, time should be spent in order to make sure that what he’s doing and who he’s doing it with represents as many distinct groups as possible, because if he doesn’t it obviously means he’s discriminating. And while we’re at it, I think the president shouldn’t be allowed to eat whatever he wants or watch whatever he wants. The president’s activities and personal life should mirror the voters’. The president should eat whatever most American’s eat, so let’s have a poll and decide what that is in order to make sure he’s appealing to as many people as possible. The president should only be watching or listening to the most popular media, so let’s have a poll and decide what that is as well. And why stop at the president? If we’re going to hold the chief executive to such standards than surely it means that we all already meet such standards ourselves. I propose we pass a law that any basketball games held on public property (parks, rec centers, etc.) must represent a plurality of the local population. I’m sorry if you just want to have a pick-up game with some guys from work or your friends from he neighborhood on the weekend, but if it’s going to be in a public space then you’re going to need to diversify the participants or not have the game at all … those people who aren’t part of your game who may or may not even have any interest in it might possibly feel left out even though they didn’t ask to play.

This. Isn’t. News.

If we stop giving a shit about dumbass minutiae and realize that just because we voted for someone (and if you voted for the other guy guess what … you don’t get a say in this kind of thing, although you can say “my candidate would do things differently”) that person doesn’t need to represent every single voter in every single thing they do with their life. I want my president to have a favorite beer, I want him to have a favorite baseball team. I want my president to have opinions that may not be those held by the masses. I want my president to get together with a group of people and play basketball and so long as he isn’t actively excluding someone, who cares?!

If you don’t have anything of substance to say … if all you can do is nitpick … if your only response is a total denunciation of something without any concession or chance for rebuttal and discussion, then you’re not part of the process and you’re wasting everyone’s time.

At Home and Abroad

Not trying to start a fire, just a passing thought: it seems to me that often the same people who are advocates of “less government”* also believe that the US should be more involved abroad as “the leader of ‘the free world’” and in activities often described as “nation building”. Put simply, they want to be left alone at home so they can meddle abroad. It seems contradictory to me. Not that people on the other side of the aisle are any better. I suppose the question is: why do “we” need to be the leader? Isn’t part of the point of the UN that no one country should have to bear these weights? Does the UN actually work, or have we been subverting it’s authority for so long that we’ve made it toothless? Like I said … just a passing thought.

*in quotes because I believe most people erroneously say “less government” believing it means just that, when traditionally “less goverment” means less federal government and more focus on local government … an idea I can get behind under the right circumstances, but that’s the subject of another post.

What Are The Chances?

I just sent a message to someone on OK Cupid who looks an awful lot like a girl named Tara that I dated once back in college. Tara is more or less a footnote in my romantic life as nothing ever really developed (it was one of those wrong time, wrong place kinda things), but our only date was to see The Promise Ring live at the Middle East downstairs with Jets to Brazil opening. This was the first time I had every really heard “emo” music (emo being a style of music played by former hardcore punk kids from 1984 till early the 2000’s where it was destroyed by the mainstream and tuned into boy bands with guitars) and it was also the first time I heard Jets to Brazil, whose first album I bought soon after and has contributed to making life worth living ever since.

I never knew Tara well enough to even begin to decipher whether this person I messaged is her or not other than a passing resemblence and it’s been 10 years and people change so I guess we’ll see if I get a reply and hopefully what this person’s real name is.

55

There are only 55 songs left in my “listened once” play list, comprised mainly of Cave-In’s Creative Eclipses EP and Thrice’s Alchemy Index vol. 3 + 4, both of which I acquired a couple weeks ago at Cheapo Discs on Lamar blvd. The other big contributors to the remaining list are The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which I got at Waterloo Records (also on Lamar) on Labor Day weekend and Connor Oberst’s Outer South, which I got from my Dad back in July.

Technically speaking I’ve already listened to the Connor Oberst CD twice, once when my Dad was driving me back from Bradley International Airport in Hartford on a visit to the folks in Connecticut this past July and once on the iPod after I ripped it. iTunes doesn’t know about that first listen though and to be honest, it wasn’t a “good” listen so I can’t really fake count it and thus it gets what is technically a third obligatory listen.

Obligatory is an unfortunate term to use with Oberst, but the fact of the matter is that between Bright Eyes’ Cassadega in 2007, the first self-titled album with the Mystic River Valley band in 2008, Outer South in 2009 and his Monsters of Folk project, I think the man is spreading himself a little thin. It’s not that the music is bad – I can recall a few gems from Cassadega and the Connor Oberst album at least – it’s just that it’s no Lifted or I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning. Not that I expect to be constantly blown away by an artist, it’s just when I find my enthusiasm waning and see someone come out with 4 albums in 3 years, I wonder if that energy had been spent on just one stellar Bright Eyes album, would I have been more impressed. I suppose it’s the ages old criticism though, the kind levied at bands whenever they released double albums. Why make 2 albums full of so-called filler when you can give us 1 album full of hits. Sometimes art makes demands and you just can’t say no.

Listen Twice

Back earlier in the summer I made a post about eMusic selling out and at the time considered quitting the service entirely as some sort of a boycott. Like any hardcore addict however, I was not able to simply discard my paraphernalia and be done with the whole scene. While the changes eMusic made this past summer were almost entirely deplorable (album-purchase-only tracks and full-download-only albums being prime among them) the service remains an excellent source of indie downloads. The main reason I had initially considered a boycott was that my downloads were reduced from 65 a month to 37 for my $15 subscription. This was a change in pricing structure that seems obviously made to appease eMusic’s latest catalogue addition (Sony) who like all major labels are reluctant to sell their music for less than a certain amount even though it really doesn’t mean less money for them.  Since the change was made however it seems that eMusic has been going out of their way to fix the PR problem they created, especially for long time users such as myself with “grandfathered” subscription plans that gave us more downloads at our price point than newer users and who because of this fact obviously lost out on more monthly downloads than others. What eMusic has been doing is giving us ways to get more free downloads. It started in August/September when they gave users with older accounts 50 free downloads. The catch (like the monthly downloads) is that these downloads had to be used before the beginning of my next subscription period, ie. within a month. The next bonus was to give 10 free downloads for rating 10 albums, a virtual freebie. One would think that I couldn’t argue against such a wealth of music downloads, but it would seem that I can.

Over the last year specifically I’ve decided to adopt a more regimented listening procedure for new music. I have two iTunes playlists that aid me in this task. The first is my “never listened ‘09″ list, which contains anything I added to iTunes this year that I have not listened to yet. The second list is “listened once ‘09″, which contains tracks downloaded this year that have only been listened to once so far. The idea of these lists is to ensure that I listen to everything at least twice. To most this might seem like unnecessary organization, but the fact is that when I started monitoring what I had downloaded but failed to listen to at all (let alone twice) late last year, I came up with a surprising amount. The simple fact of the matter is that I acquire an enormous amount of new music every year.

Now let me make a quick aside here and say that I realize that in this age of digital downloads it is not uncommon for most people to acquire a ton of music at once, but in my experience the average person tends to download (or acquire from friends) a number of tracks that they never plan to listen to. This often manifests itself when Person A looks at Person B’s iPod and sees a bunch of tracks that they don’t have by an artist that they are marginally aware of. Rather than pick and choose (because they don’t know the name of the song or songs they like to begin with) they transfer all the tracks to their own iPod and have all of a sudden have acquired several hundred new songs 90% of which they will never nor have the intention of ever listening to.

I’m a music lover, I acquire music in order to listen to it and due to the fact that I only acquire music legally (that is to say I pay money for it) I have more of an incentive to give it a listen, thus the two playlist system I mentioned above. At this point in 2009 I have acquired 1236 new tracks. Over the last month I’ve probably acquired somewhere in the neighborhood 160 new tracks between my 87 (37 + 50 bonus) eMusic tracks in September and the purchase of several CD’s. My “listened once” play list has about 180 tracks in it at the moment, with some tracks going back as far as this past July. I’d say that only half of that 180 are tracks from this past month.

Anyway, the problem I’m running into is that my two playlist system was designed to alert me to un-listened or under-listened tracks and force me to give them a spin. The problem is that the more tracks that pile up, the less likely I am to give them a quality listen and the more likely I am to just play them without really getting what I’m hearing. This of course leads me to my point. Reducing my monthly downloads from 65 to 37 was almost a godsend, giving me less to listen to and more to spend quality time with. And now that I live near two decent record stores and have access to physical media of catalogues not available on eMusic, there’s even more music to discover and I always prefer physical media to digital. If eMusic insists to giving me free downloads though then I’m going to have to use them and the problem that arrises is that I’m not downloading quality music, I’m downloading things on a whim, which works out sometimes, but more often than not winds up flat. The result is that I’ve listened to a lot of mediocre music lately and I almost want to quit eMusic in order to reduce my music intake to only what I can find physically, thus focussing my listening (ideally) on music I’m going to like more often than not. Ultimately I wish that eMusic had a per download pricing plan with the same low per track pricing as their monthly subscriptions, because there’s going to be stuff I’ll only be able to find on eMusic and I don’t want to miss out on it. The question I guess is whether the frequency of good finds on eMusic is worth the glut of mediocre picks I force myself to make in order to satisfy my subscription purchase?

The New Geography of Dating

I guess I’ve decided to take my first stab at dating here in Austin. At some point during the past 6 months or so I must have re-upped my Match.com profile for 3 months and then forgot about it and let it re-up again for 3 more months. While I was still in Virginia I didn’t see much point in checking it as I knew I was going to be leaving, but since I’ve still got another month to run out on it, I figured I’d give it a whirl.

I’m no stranger to Match, I’ve used it previously with mixed results. I’m incredibly picky when it comes to these things though so the people I contact are few and far between. If someone happens to contact me, either through a message or a “wink” that tends to smooth things over though. Last weekend a cute Asian girl, a few years younger than me, winked at me. Last night I decided to reply to her wink with a message. We’ll see where things go from there.

If anything, I’ve become more pragmatic when it comes to dating over the last few years. I know what I do and don’t want in a person and in a relationship. My only problem tends to be that when I find someone who meets my criteria, I don’t meet theirs. I have to admit that I’ve often chalked my lack of success to geography, or rather the type of people I met in my previous geographic location. I’m hoping that a new latitude and a city like Austin will find me people more my own speed and ideally women who meets my standards while I meet theirs.