Long Overdue

I'm writing this on the 24th, but when you read this I'll be done with my horrible little night job entirely. It's been dominating my time recently, so the Week in Briefs has suffered accordingly - the only news I ever had was "I went to work lots, I wrote some articles that it wouldn't be prudent to talk about, and I had a bagel". So let's take a moment to say goodbye to this wretched little life, and welcome in the new. I'm going to start improving everything I can about myself and my life. I want to get back into some fiction - Veiled Worlds is great for my High Fantasy stuff, but I want to get paid or at least recognised - and I want to start doing something social. Gigs are probably a good idea. I used to be an entire person - I stripped myself back, became streamlined, and pursued this little career with all the speed I could muster, and now I've got it. I can afford to branch out a little, to grow myself back.

Also, reverting to my normal shape would be good. Being a potato is fine, I guess, but I want to be able to wear a t-shirt without putting on a corset underneath. Anyway, let's get through some of these links that are piling up.

Gay Marriage Is Just Normal Fucking Marriage Idiots!
Craig L Likes a bit of Borderlands!

Modern Warfare: No Russian (Richard Cobbett)

I don't play the Call of Duty games any more, so I'm not likely to pick up MW2 until it's absolutely necessary for my continuing relevance as a journo, but luckily, folks like Richard Cobbett are willing to write at length about the actual scene without getting into the controversy at all. Richard's take is always important to me because he's a plot guy, like me. I love the story, I want to know what happens. Symbolism comes later, in the bath, with a kebab.

This is almost exactly how I feel about Nicolas Cage!
MW2 glitch report!

Enslaved - Interview (Eurogamer)

This made me cry. Against my will! Read the second page (linked). Games are being made by sexy people who come from a country that looks like Fallout 3. I realised more clearly than ever that we literally have a place that looks like Fallout 3 on our planet. Fail, fail, fail.
Also, ooh! A game about Journey to the West!

Denby is an Infidel and hates GoRdEn FrEiMeN!
SSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUURRRRRRRGGGGGGEEEEE!!
Spelunky Speedrun - 3:48

This week, tell me what to buy for my X-Box and PS3. I'm reading Phillip K Dick and listening to Marina and the Diamonds and Chevelle. I really should get around to reviewing those films...

Written by Jaz McDougall on the 24th for publication on the 27th of November. Oh, alright then.

[Continue reading]

This Popsicle Stand

I got the new PCG (208). I was flipping through, thinking about the articles I contributed. I felt good. I felt happy. I bought it at the end of my shift the other day - I was staying an hour later for a co-worker, I'd just put them on the shelf, and I decided to buy it and have a quick look. I remembered the Dreamkiller review (page 111), remember that after finishing it, Craig had more work for me straight away. The Race On review on page 106 was written while I imagined that he'd got a stack of activation codes from developers all at once, and he was farming out the work as soon as he could. It wasn't just a pondering of how being a Reviews Editor might work, it was something of a validation. I'm a work horse, I thought. I'm just one of his writers now, I'm not the clumsy squire any more. Okay, I ask a lot of questions, I'm unsure, and I write the word "gameplay" in the strap from time to time, but he's treating me like a proper freelancer.

And I remember thinking, as I handed in Race On and was promptly commissioned for a third consecutive project: that was the whole point when I went down to Bath. Tim's tour of the office was "There's the fire exit, try not to go on fire, I'll get you a keyboard, do you know what you're doing?" My answer was pretty much "yes". I got on with it. There were hiccups, but I went around asking if anyone needed work done. I was useful.

On page 114 is my Torchlight review. It took me 23 hours to download it, I managed to get it running and see the main menu, and then I had to go to work. I'm sitting at work all night trying my hardest to review a game I've never heard of and haven't played. When I get home and go to bed, wake up, eat, and sit down to play it, I've only got eight hours to review it. I have a Tuesday deadline but I know it's a grudging, defeated deadline; I know its the deadline Craig gives you because he's a great editor and you can't do a 2 pager on something like Torchlight in 8 hours. I know they need it by Monday, really, to start the ball rolling with art and editing and so on. Eight hours isn't enough to get a third of the way in. I need to know this thing inside out. I need to show them that I can come through for them, that they can expect great things of me and depend on me. And yet, in eight hours, I need to be standing in a filthy petrol station getting called a fat prick by degenerates.

My job is suddenly sitting between me and my career. Suddenly, after months of hating it, it's my nemesis. I phone my boss and tell him that I can't work. I don't lie, I don't claim that I'm sick or whatever, but I don't give him the reason. Now, phoning a boss is a stressful thing. In the two years I've worked there, the one time I felt sick enough to call out of work, I was so nervous about calling that the adrenaline started to clear up my symptoms (it's similar to a decongestant, actually). I did it anyway, of course, because you can't let them convince you that you're lying, but suffice to say, I wasn't confident making this call to my boss. He wasn't happy either. It's his responsibility to have staff members that can cover shifts, but he doesn't, so he has to do it. Boo hoo, covering a single night shift after two years of my staying late, coming in early, doing extra shifts, switching with people, etc. Cry me a river.

As evening drew in, he texted me. He'd been reading my twitter, and noted that I was "very active online". He thought he'd busted me, I guess. Yep! You got me. I own a computer, I use twitter. I confess. I can chuckle now - at the time, this was my boss getting angry when I needed to be entering analytical realms and turning my cat into a tree with a fish. I told him not to check up on me or text me again, so he phoned. He phoned, and I watched it ring with my stomach in knots, and then a voice mail message came up. I turned off my phone. It took me an hour to calm down.

So the next morning, my boxout wasn't ready. These are the lovely diagrams and info-boxes that break up the page and draw you into an article you'd never otherwise read; see Rich Stanton's excellent example on page 105 of this month's issue. I was running out of steam, and pitched some shitty boxout ideas at Craig, and then went to bed. That night, I had some better ideas, went to work, and worried about my job.

That's the thing. That's how they get you. You start worrying about your job. I listened to the voice mail, and words like "disciplinary procedure" and "absent without leave" cropped up. Stomach churning, I struggled through my shift. I made the right decision, but that's not the point. It's the threatening texts, the letters, the impending fiscal doom.

So I got the new issue. I was flipping through, thinking about the articles I contributed. I felt good. I felt happy. I read my Torchlight review and noticed how much it'd changed. I realised that my boxout idea had been missing titles and sub-titles, that Craig had put them in. Some captions were different. Writing this blog post and reading the printed article again, I probably over-reacted, but it felt like I tried my hardest, I pulled out all the stops and stayed up till my eyes were streaming and wracked my brains and clicked on goblins and transmuted gems and compared loot and scribbled in a notebook and sketched out boxouts and took screenshots and here, this review of mine, seemed like it had been barely saved by the competent hands of PCG.

If I hadn't been working at the petrol station, I'd have had more time, a clearer head, people to bounce ideas off of, and I could have got that boxout back to them on the Monday. One of these days, I'll discover that I've been working at a gas station for 10 years and I never earn more than half a living writing games.

It really got to me. Later, at home, I was moping around before work. Lisa took me aside, kissed my forehead, and whispered softly into my ear: "Tell him to shove his job up his ass."

This amazing, life-changing decision is sponsored by Lisa, because she made it possible. She's paying our kitty-loan with her pay check. She's letting me take the plunge.

I reached into my bag and took out an envelope, sealed. My letter of resignation. I put it on my boss's desk. It's a sentence long - it essentially just says "I resign, my last day is the 25th." I didn't want to waste ink telling him what an honour it had been and how truly grateful I was for my 50p-more-than-minimum-wage job. I gave a week's notice - the notion that I'd give more went right out the door when the manager/supervisor/ubuntumancer left a few months previous. This means I won't be working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing day, New Year's Eve, or New Year's Day. This means I won't have to keep the noise down when I play. This means I won't have to listen to Radio 1 any more. This means I'll have more time for the blog. This means I won't have to let my knees eat my jeans. This means I don't have to wear the red clown suit any more. This means I don't have to make polite conversation with ignorant fucktards. This means I don't have to sell cancer sticks to people. This means I don't have to sell gutter press to people. This means that when I get an email with work, I can say yes. This means that I can sleep in bed with my wife. Every night.

I just got my life back.

:')

Written by Jaz McDougall on the 21st of November 2009 for publication on the 23rd.

[Continue reading]

Dream

This is just a glitch, I do have friends really. No, really.

This is an account of a dream I just had. It was an interesting, involved dream, and not everything made it across to my bedside notepad, and even fewer details were jogged when I read that with my morning tea, so this is like the movie trailer for the agonising three-hour epic I just watched.

I'm also doing well, thank you, and you? I'm back to nights tonight, so back to trying very hard to get lots of things pitched. Any freelancers reading this, might I ask: what the hell do you do over Christmas? It's approaching like a big white cloud on my calendar. I suppose I'll nag some websites, or... hmm.

Anyway, the mental dream.

Dream Log, Tenth of November, Two Thousand and Nine.

I am on a train. I know that this train is running between the streets of Glasgow, but the windows look out onto vast Scottish hillsides streaked with moody rain. The embankment beside the train is sunny, and students are lying in their thousands there, sunning and reading and laughing. The roaring train doesn't bother them.

We arrive at George's Square - I read the gold letters. I am not on a train, nor is there any sign of one. George's Square is about as large as a McDonalds, decked out with exuberance and greenery, black buildings with gold plate. It's more like a little plaza - it faces a waterfront where the sun is setting, although the light in the square matches high noon. In the back of the square is a blueish wrought iron staircase. The steps are too high. I climb them. I am going home.

I live in a house almost exactly like the one in the last level of Braid, except for that this house is atop the tallest, dingiest building in Glasgow and, inside, it looks exactly like my bedroom in the waking world. I don't linger.

I take the train again. The bouncer from the local night-club sits next to me - he's a sweet guy, about seven feet tall, and I've known him since school. Enormous, but gentle. He has a silly expression, like he's been giggling all morning. I get off the train at a lonely platform and make my way alone through the countryside, uphill, along cobbled roads dusty and cobwebbed, and I reach a huge derelict house. It looks like the house from the Narnia books, but sagging, rotten. I go into the main room and sit on the floor and take out my laptop and write. I'm writing a review that I recently wrote in the waking world, and it's coming out word for word.

It doesn't last long though - soon the day is over, and I'm on the train again. I'm aware that a day has passed, and I'm commuting again from my house above the tiny George's Square, this time to the university where Lisa is. I'm not sure if she's teaching or studying, but I'm writing on a notepad on a study table in a hallway. I'm opposite a professor's office, which is open.

On the desk, at which nobody is seated, lies a name-plaque: "Herne Hornes". In the room, a teacher is busying about. I know it isn't Professor Hornes - I know the teacher shares a name, but not a likeness, with one of my teachers at school in the waking world, but I can't remember which.

The teacher is peeing in a punch bowl on the drinks cabinet. He has filled it entirely with pee. Then he takes the bowl and pours it over Herne's desk, and replaces the bowl, and briskly walks out.

Some young guys are congregating in the hallway, and the teacher accosts them. "Hello, have you gents submitted your 'Least Favourite Professor' yet?" He's trying to get them to put Herne Hornes as their worst teacher. He sits next to me and the rest of them crowd around demurely, while he passes out forms, which are signed and return, and then collates them. He mistakenly bundles my Portfolio together with his paperwork. I tell him that he's got something of mine, and he apologises, and when he hands it back, it reeks of piss.

I'm in George's Square and suddenly it's the real George's Square, the big one that isn't a nice residential plaza. There's a train track running right through it, and beyond, I can see the little stair case with the tall steps that leads home. I just need to get there. I cross through the train and it starts moving while I'm in it. I start panicking about being whisked miles and miles away when all I want to do is go home, when suddenly the train is a bus, and it's stopped at the end of the dirt track to my parents' house (which is where I live in the waking world). I step off the bus, and wake up.

Written by Jaz McDougall for publication on the 11th of November 2009. I've never went for my notebook so fast as when I woke up from that dream. By the nine.

[Continue reading]

Enter the Fanboy

This week, I bought a PS3. I managed to install it beneath my monitor - it's connected with HDMI cables, while my PC is using DVI cables. This means I can switch between inputs with a button on my monitor - Borderlands, Uncharted 2, Borderlands, Uncharted 2.

Not that I've played Uncharted 2 much. Lots of games are stacking up in my "to play" pile, and the ones I'm playing right now are pretty interesting. Borderlands is particularly intriguing. I'm not ready to voice a solid opinion yet, but it does seem like it's a very shallow game held together by one fantastic mechanic. The networking problems are atrocious, though - I haven't really had a hassle free multiplayer game that didn't end in connection problems, progress lost, etc. Wait for the patch.

I've been off work this last week, and it's been great. I've made some progress with other mags, with websites, and with how I feel about my life generally. Here's hoping I can survive on writing before too long, right? I almost met my quota last month - three perfect quota months and I'm ready to stand on my own two feet, I think. Which reminds me - do you edit a magazine? Do you need a shit game reviewed? Send it to me! I'm prompt, accurate, fair, and still quite naive and easy to exploit.

Links:

Terry Cav"vvvvv"anagh Bares his Wares!
Ludo gets Ludological at Gaming Daily!
REO Speedwagon: The Game!
M_the_C shows his impeccable taste in ambitious games!
Notch cobbled Minecraft together from Zombie/RTS bits!
Michael Abbot Defends Linear Narratives (But Only Good Ones!)!

Swings and Roundabouts (Chewing Pixels)

"For now, the eccentric video game designer seems happy to be playing in the abstract. Giant trails of string loop around the room, tacked to the ceiling. On some, tiny plasticine models of children hang from paperclips, swinging as trapeze artists on micro-ropes that, if ever scaled up for humans to enjoy, would defy both the laws of gravity and health and safety."

Simon Parkin doing his wonderful thing over at Chewing Pixels, this time showing Keita Takahashi at his most experimental in a big busted house. There's an odd moment near the end where Parkin lists off some indie games that he's been playing and, winning Takahashi's approval, finishes it with Street Fighter IV, and of course, Keita lights up at that too, for all his derision of the mainstream. It's interesting to me because there's a definite anti-mainstream sentiment among some independent game developers (and the gamers who love them). Seems about as pointless and hurtful as setting up an all-black KKK - why can't we rate games on their merit? If a mainstream game really is better than an independent one, why stand next to the pasta-and-gold-paint piece of crap and say "THIS is the future of gaming!", I ask? Especially when so many great indie games get mixed up in this debate and swallowed by their refusal to "market" themselves, like it's a dirty word. If you've got a lemonade stand, you still need to put up a sign that says "lemonade". Grrr...

IGF and Melolune (Laura Shigihara)

"After finishing the soundtrack for Plants vs. Zombies I basically allowed myself about 6 months to work full-time on it (I had been working on it part-time for probably about 2.5 years prior to that) and it’s at long last nearing completion."

Yep, lead composer for PvZ, Laura Shigihara, submitted something to the IGF. Click through to listen. This should be interesting, I'll keep an eye on it.

5th November, 2009 (DF Devlog)

"Gulsheb escaped from the depths during the third year of recorded history and wandered the mountains for six years. Eventually she tired of this life and convinced the humans living in the hills below that she was in fact a manifestation of Tob, their goddess of deformity. She was a towering, bloated one-eyed thrush with a fat, bulging trunk in place of a beak, so it must not have been that difficult. The villages united under her rule, and she directed a sixty year expansion. Then the war with the elves began."

Toady One is still quietly making the perfect game, his "personal mission", and it looks like he's added in fell beasts that take command of villages, towns, regions, and empires. The plan for this game is quite grandiose, with each world generating an intricate history from scratch that any dwarf can comment on. It can only get better.

Today, I'll be trying to figure out what's so compelling about Haze, and trying to get back onto night shift for starting work on Wednesday night. If you have a PS3 and you're on the Playstation Network, add me as a friend. My ID is "jazmeister", and I'm accepting everyone.

Written by Jaz McDougall rather early on the 8th, for publication on the 9th of November 2009.

[Continue reading]

Scoring

A friend of mine recently put out a general inquiry on twitter - what is Game X like? Is it good? Now, I happen to have reviewed said game, so you could say that I know exactly how good it is. However, I've also been paid for my opinions and observations of it, so dishing them out willy nilly is a quick method for devaluing my product. I trust this guy, though, so I sent him a terse, private message: "I gave it XX% in a review recently." My friend felt that it was more than enough to go on for making his purchasing decision. All done, everybody's happy. That's what scores are for - to sum up the review in a little, easy to distribute number. But just because I gave Blood Bowl 80% in PCG (see above) doesn't mean that you're going to enjoy it. You need to read the damn review. So what are scores, really, and why do we need them?

I've posted a bit about this before. The Reticule has a three-grade scoring system - it's either not good, good, or really good. They also have a "really really good" badge they distribute. RPS and The Escapist don't score games. Gaming Daily uses a percentage, but it looks like they're changing to a four-grade shebang. IGN does an out-of-ten-with-a-decimal thing, so that's really a percentage too.

When I have to use scores, I prefer a percentage. You can really think about it, especially when the mag defines what each score bracket means. PC Gamer has this to say of games scoring 46-60%: "A very ordinary game, quickly forgotten. Think twice even if you find it cheap." The next one up, from 61-75%, reads: "A decent effort that, but for a little more polish, coulda [sic] been a contender." So, for me, scoring a game 60% is saying that it's right on that line. If you get a 65% game in a bargain bin, buy it, it'll entertain you. 55% is a waste of money.

From the consumer's point of view, then, scores below 60% mean nothing. For a developer, getting 57% shows that they need to take it seriously next time - they need to hit it out of the park and develop their features. If Braid had stuck to the Mario-with-time-bending of the first world; if it hadn't attracted David Hellman's art or bothered to license the music from Magnatune; if it didn't have any pretentious shit on signs or hidden endings - Braid might have scored a 60%. Could have been a contender. If I'd written that review for alternate-universe-shit-Braid, alternate-universe-lazy-Jonathon-Blow would have read it and known what he had to do. If I'd scored it 20%, he'd have thought I was being unfair or needlessly cruel, and may have given up games entirely. As a critic, my job is not only to inform the consumer, but to have a dialogue with the artist - this is what I think, this is what is great, this is what sucked and here's why. You need to know your stuff for this - not just

The third person we review games for is the publisher. People get hired and fired on the basis of scores. Should we give a game a high score to give the devs a break? No. It's easy to blame the reviewer, but really, the publisher is the one making an obnoxious, inhuman decision. Say you want red sauce, but a publisher tells you that, if you use white sauce, everyone at DICE gets to keep their jobs? Should you use white sauce? No! Fucker! I want delicious tangy red sauce, with antioxidants and stained tablecloths! Don't base your decisions on arbitrary things - do your job and fire people because they got drunk and peed in the water cooler.

So reviews are complex, and scores are simple things. The Angels and Demons idea, where you score the bad elements separately from the good and let the reader compare, has promise, but it's just lots of work to quickly and easily represent something that is involved and complex by nature. We sweat over our reviews - we're speaking to you, the Gamer, and you, the Developer. We take them seriously. Just fucking read them.

Written by Jaz McDougall for publication on the 6th of November 2009. I really want some white sauce now.

[Continue reading]

Nine Reasons that Day Shift is brilliant

As you may know, I work night shift in a petrol station part time to supplement my earnings as a freelance writer. I work three days in a row, then I get three days off. At the completion of my last shift of three, I'll get home from work, sit at the kitchen table, and make a tough decision: do I want to switch to day shift for my days off? Here's what that implies:

Day 1: When your body is expecting to sleep at about 8am, stay up for the entire day and sleep at night time.
Day 2: Frolic and caper with frabjous glee. See the list below the cut for why this day is awesome.
Day 3: Start out as per day 2, but stay up all night and go to bed on the morning of Day 4.

How many times do I sleep during this four day period? Three times. While I'm up for the whole of the first day, I'm so unbelievably tired that my ideas are shit, my sentences are poorly constructed, and I'm likely to find all sorts of mundane things far too funny. In short, it's a torturous day of mounting delirium, where you're increasingly likely to phone Tim Edwards to bawl that you love him, and not very likely to do much valuable work at all. (Except sci-fi fantasy, of course. You just need to clean it up once you've had a sleep.)

For this week, I'm on holiday. It means I'll be focussing on my writing entirely, but it also means I can just switch straight to day shift. Here's ten reasons why that's awesome.

The Morning Routine
Getting up, showering, eating breakfast, talking shite - this is something I don't get to do with the family at large. While there are drawbacks to living with your Wife and your Parents, you really reap the benefits if you're up early enough to make everyone tea and toast. Doing all these robe-and-slippers activities in the morning means that you're much less likely to stumble down the stairs in your underpants while the Occupational Therapist is meeting with Dad, or get the mail before you've fixed your bed head.

Office Hours
There are times when I've went to bed at, for example, noon. I've got no emails. Today is a slow day, I think. I won't have any work. Then I go to bed, and wake up at six - a half hour after Future employees leave the building - to find a few emails asking if I'd like to do stuff. Now, instead of working on it all night, I've got to wait until the morning to say "k." before they can send me the link to the download, post the review code, activate the seven crystals, what have you. This way, I can catch emails and reply to them throughout the day, and if it's a little thing, even submit something before they leave the office.
This also means I can visit the bank or the post office without having to overhaul my schedule and nudge my sleeping hours.

Other People
Not many people wander into my bedroom at three in the morning. Those that do are usually just in the business of meowing at you for food. It's lonely working nights, but it's even lonelier working nights at home. Nobody on twitter, steam, or in the blogosphere (except the occasional American) - just me, filling up my own google reader and twitter feed. And inbox, occasionally. Day shift allows you to phone people and have them respond, to send an email and get one right back. I'd never have guessed how much I needed social interaction until I worked nights, which I've been doing for almost two years.

Lunch time
Taking a short break for something delicious and easy is, again, something I don't get to do that often. Your body shuts down at night whether you want it to or not, so your appetite takes a hit. Sure, why not stick this in the oven for an hour. I mean, it's not like I have to go anywhere. Rushing downstairs to make a sandwich, wondering when that download is gonna finish so you can get to work, and enjoying a fleeting game of TF2 adds to the excitement of being a games writer. There's no impetus for rapid movement when your world is lit up by monitor alone.

Light and Noise
Which brings me to this fucker. You know how you like to listen to music? I can't do that here. Sure, I can use headphones, but I can't reeeeeeaally crank them because it makes a tinny rattling noise that wakes up my Wife, who usually has work or gaming first thing. And I can't turn on the lights. I don't know about you, but I write well when I have lots of loud music blowing my head off. And natural light? Can't beat it.

Google reader
When you go to bed at 12pm and wake up at 6pm, you're waking up to 349 unread items. When you sleep at 12am and wake up at 6am, you're waking up to about 50 unread items, and you can handle the rest as they arrive. Same goes for twitter.

Head Space
On night shift, your head is always in the wrong place. In the morning, I'm tired enough to be a little silly. In the evening, I'm asleep. At night time, by brain is wondering why I'm still up. Not conducive to my best writing ever.

The Evening Routine
Winding down the work for the day, sticking things in the oven, grating a little cheese, setting up for the long evening of TF2 or a great big singleplayer game - you don't get to do that when you're unconscious.

TV
"Don't Tell The Bride", 1:45 am.
"Bizarre Animal ER", 3:15am.
"The Worlds Strictest Parents", 4:15am.
Yeah, no thanks.

Bed
When you sleep for six hours somewhere between 8am and 11pm, and your wife sleeps outside of those times, you're never going to actually be in the bed at the same time as she is. Not an uplifting prospect for a romantic man like myself. I moved my whole life to a strange country for her, and then she did it for me. It matters to me that we get to lie in bed at night, and we don't. This week, we do. Back rubs and crying ahoy!

Written by Jaz McDougall for publication on the 3rd November 2009. I am so making toast and tea for everyone today. I'm up super early after last night's out-cold-by-8pm fiasco. What can I say, I'm a Rocknrolla.

[Continue reading]

IT'S EMO TIME

Not really emo time exactly, although a trusted source whispered into my ear that the seminal Sunny Day Real Estate are back together again and touring right now. This is big news for a guy who stood by and did nothing while Emo music was raped and pillaged. I pretty much gave up on making music, and stuck with the writing - a decision that's paying off. My buddy Ralph, for whom surrender is never an option (even in the face of certain intoxication), has been hitting drums with expert precision for The Whisky Works. They're actually doing a big UK tour next year, and... wait, this isn't what I wanted to talk about.

I wanted to mention that I bought jazmcdougall.com, and I'm being super lazy about doing anything with it. The plan is to have this blog there, and maybe some cheeky email on the side, get some hosting up there... it'll be awesome. Super busy though. That's not what I wanted to talk about either.

I really wanted to talk about kids. Now, Super Meat Boy is going to be great, yada yada, and the fact that Ed McMillen did this video doesn't make him any better or worse than the majority of adults:



If you go to the Youtube comments, someone calls this girl "smart". I mean, of course she's smart, but you don't go around calling people smart, do you? Watch the video and watch how Ed shows the girl his game. I mean, this is something all developers do, but because it's a little kid, there seem to be these unwritten rules.

For example, "You can talk to me like I'm an idiot." Kids are basically aliens. Their brains, while not entirely formed, are definitely working - my thoughts as a child were just as complex and in-depth as they are now. What's changed is my ability to communicate those thoughts, and to analyse them based on context. I now know that you shouldn't pee on people's cars, even if Dad doesn't mind when you pee on his work van. I now know that you shouldn't show people your penis - they don't want to see it. I now know that you don't drink water from puddles. Adults get so wrapped up in their experience and knowledge of context that they can think kids are stupid.

Kids are so not stupid.

My parents got us Mario Paint when we were young, and they sat with the manual and tentatively clicked around with the little toy mouse, and they tried to open up the game a little more for us. My brother and I sat back, itching to get to it. Mum and Dad went off to do things like chopping wood and making dinner and paying bills, etc, while we set to the important shit. In an hour, we'd figured out the music, the flyswatter game, the hilarious screen-wipe animations - we were having a blast. We just figured it out.

You know when you have a nephew over and they're pouring soap into the toilet and you snatch the box away from them and ask, "Why did you do that?!" You know when they say, "I don't know..." and you say, "How can you not know?!" and despair for the youth of today?

That's a vocabulary problem. That's the kid being entirely new to our culture. That's them wanting to say "I didn't think it was a problem, I just didn't know it was a bad idea and I tried it, I'm really sorry and I'll never do it again now that I know its not cool." Not a lot of words, not very difficult words, but there it is. Kids aren't articulate. You need to give them a minute sometimes, and you need to let them do their own thing, and be clear and fair and calm with them. "Abe, if you put soap in the toilet it fucks up the sewer system." Then you need to make it absolutely clear that they aren't a bad person. "Ice cream?"

Links time!

The RPS Verdict: Borderlands

"Kieron: We really sound like we hate this game considering we all love it.
Alec: I think it’s more a matter of circling, unsure how to define why we like it.
Jim: It’s genuinely entertaining, isn’t it?"

I love these, even though it's a terrible review device. Borderlands sounds awesome.

New DF Tools (After Action Reporter)

"[...] a fortress viewer that lets you explore your fortress like it’s an isometric pixelart game. If only we could play Dwarf Fortress in this kind of view!"

I can't half wait for the day when Dwarf Fortress looks as lovely as it secretly is. Until then, of course, I'll keep poking away at my fort. You do play Dwarf Fortress, right?

New York (James)

"This is where you start in Deus Ex."

Deus Ex is actually one of the few games that give you an opportunity to do this kind of thing. The only other I can think off at the moment is Fallout 3: you could visit the things and stuff and be like "DOOD I'M IN THAT FAMOUS PLACE FROM FALLOUT 3" and get dirty looks. Anyway, Tom went to New York and took pictures. Another in a long line of envy-inducing PCG outings, although I think this was strictly not-business.
I must stress that Liberty Island is so totally in New Jersey. Even if it's technically a little blob of NY, like a sort of civic pseudopod, it is so totally in NJ.

Reality (distractionware)

"I actually make games full time – and full time as in, well, all the time; all day, every day. I quit my job two years ago and I’ve been trying to find some way to balance making the games I wanna make and being able to afford doing it since. My savings from work are long gone, and I got a loan about a year ago which has since run out."

There's a donate button. You should so totally donate. I did, but then again, I'm awesome. You might not be awesome. Oh well. Sucks to be you, then.

Oh, and I found a secret preview for something totally unrelated to Terry's upcoming VVVVVV. Don't ask me what it is! It's a secret! Don't click here either!

People Buy Games, Don't Play Them!
Cobbett Is Pretty Damn Funny!
Telling Famous Black People Apart Is Hard!
I Hate Beards: IGN Does Not!

Written by Jaz McDougall for immediate publication on the 22nd of October. This stupid review code is STILL downloading. Wait, you didn't think I was really gonna let you play the secret preview did you? That shit is aaaaaaaall mine.

[Continue reading]