Why so few updates?

Two main reasons.

I would love to blog more about my work as I work in the games industry. The problem is that I work in the games industry. Toilet paper rolls need to sign non-disclosure agreements to even get into the city where I live, more or less. Maybe not entirely true, but almost. It could be. So, I can't talk about that. Yet.

The other things I could write about is my life. However, for some reason, I seldom talk in detail about my life other than to complain about stuff. Not that I'm in any way a depressed or bitter guy. I think my life is fairly normal in its ups and downs. But for some reason I feel that the things that are closest to my heart... is private. Even things that are fully normal. I tend to keep those things for myself. I think it's because I feel so strong for them and cherish them so much that I don't want other people's input in fear that they might, deliberately or not, diminish them.

Part of me just wants to go my own way. I do in a lot of things. I like it and would rather have a slightly more quieter life than I have now. I'm an introvert and do well in small circles. I live with people I love beyond myself and I want nothing more than to focus my attention on them.

And part of me wanting to go my own way is because I've grown so incredibly tired over the years of people having opinions about everything that other people do. Opinions that go so far as to stand in the way of others with no clear benefit or reason other than possibly skewing the world into their idealized - and distorted - reality. Opinions that push for laws forbidding people from loving the people they want and living the way they want, with only the opinionated bystander's best at heart. Even opinions that forbid other opinions, like some religious groups that think that their opinions deserve more protection than those of others.

I'm tired of being active in political discussions, because I care far too much about some things to back down and be quiet. This also drains me as it can sometimes fill all of my waking hours, playing a debate over and over, trying to figure out the best way to formulate what I mean so that the point might come across at least to someone. Over the years however I guess I've been burned by the fact that most "debates" - at least those online - draw the attention of people who just want to state their opinions and well... I guess "be immature" is the short version of it.

I love a mature and diplomatic argument that stays mature, because they can accelerate a learning process like crazy in all involved parties. Not only may others realize your point of view, you get to understand theirs, and somewhere in the sometimes chaotic soup of it all... people, me certainly included, can start thinking in other ways and views can actually change.

I've taken a long journey through my life. My views have changed because of others but mostly because of myself. The most important change happened in my teenage years when I grew tired of hating myself, and decided that "hey, maybe I do like guys too and should stop militantly denying it". Since then, I made it a point to always be ready to question my values and beliefs, most of which had come from others anyway. Some stayed the same, some grew stronger as I explored them and some unraveled completely like a fuzzed up ball of yarn becoming a simple string that led nowhere. Disposable.

Metaphoric enough for ya? I think I'm going to stop here for now.

Anyway... Ijust jumped back into politics for a bit. Only for a little while. We'll see where that goes. Scary as hell. Whatever happens I bet that I and my loved ones can live the lives we want anyway, if not just somewhere else and with a lot of work. Then I might actually start writing more, when I feel that I have more control of my life.

Oh, f-ck

The title summarizes what I feel right now.

The weekend passed and I got absolutely no time to just recharge. A friend turned 30 and had a really nice party which I of course don't regret attending, and the day after had me and my mate go for some much needed furniture shopping. A good weekend, but oh how I feel the repercussions of not taking even one single day off from it all.

The game client is compiling. I need to get in there and look some things up before moving on to my other point on my schedule - defining what sounds we'll need to request from our sound artist. It looks like I need to do a full recompile. That'll take an hour. Guess I'll have to start with the list anyway.

The reason I'm on my seldom updated blog right now is that f-ck. I need to vent. Not anger or anything like that, but just everything. My load is currently extremely high, higher than I'm used to, but the difference between now and - say - 6 years ago, is that feel that I can handle it. But, I need to shut down now and then and recharge. To wake up one day of the week at least and think "hey, what's the time? oh, it's THAT day, I don't need to care... but I'm up now, so what to do? yeah I think I'll fire Guild Wars 2 up... no wait, I'll just not get up from the couch and then I'll look at something stupid on Netflix. or, some tutorials on some cool thing that I've been wondering about for a while..."

I'm not really getting that here on the blog, of course, but at least I'm braiding text out of the strands of my mind and getting some feelings out in some form of orderly fashion. It feels soothing. It helps, I think.

I've got a cup of coffee before me and the game is still compiling. I started watching "Moon" on Netflix yesterday and got halfway through. That's a movie I probably would have never watched if it wasn't for that new service (new to Sweden anyway) where I can just click and watch instantly. It's nice. It's very different and I want to know what happens next. I'll probably finish it in the evening. And that's another thing - I'm looking forward to watching a movie. Movies. Like, I haven't done that in many years because getting to the point of watching something is always filled with obstacles. If it isn't the drag of downloading a torrent it is the drag of buying a disc absolutely filled with advertisements... that I just paid for. Buying a DVD or Bluray today almost feels like willingly kicking yourself in the crotch, taking a photo of it and shaaaaaaring it with all your friends and family.

*sip*

Yep, still compiling. This is a long one. So, a sound list...

That reminds me of the LiveStream I did with our publisher Paradox Interactive on twitch.tv last week. You can find it here. It's an hour of babbling and game play from "my" latest DLC release for Magicka, "Dungeons & Daemons". I haven't watched it myself yet actually, but I know it's rather lame and embarrassing. I was relatively prepared for it, I thought, but then they changed the setup at the very last minute and suddenly most of my preparations went through the window. That, and it's two very different things to build English sentences in writing and in speech. And screw trademark symbols - I'm not a representative for anything here but myself™ and my creativity.

Back to sounds. I'll have to go through all the scenes and "play" it in my head. This'll take a while. Good thing I don't have to wait for my brain to compile. Hm... or is that what this just was?

Idea: Minecraft, Bases

I would like a mod for Minecraft that does the following...

When you create your world, you start next to your "base". The base is a obelisk of some sort, or maybe a magical tree, or something similar. Something stationary. Once built, it cannot be moved.

The mod would add a lot of monsters and animals, and maybe resources. Some of the monsters are basic ones, like the one's already in Minecraft, and the others will be more and more difficult.

Now, the "base" obelisk erects an area around it, stretching 200-500 meters or more, that gradually decreases the difficulty of monsters spawned in that area. The farther you get from your base, the harder your encounters will become (or, technically, the less decreased the difficulty of the encounters will be).

Also, the farther away from the starting point of the server you get, the encounters will get generally harder and the resources and treasures should be generally better. This gradient should stretch over several thousands of meters. Some resources might not be found at all around the very start. Base obelisks does not affect the resources, only the difficulty of monster encounters.

You should be able to build a "base" obelisk. This is a process. Let's take a magical base tree as an example. You first need to plant it using a special seed that you've found somewhere. Maybe you must enchant it as well, or something. When you've planted it, you must grow it. Using some sort of relatively difficulty-to-get-yet-attainable resource, you feed it either directly or through some sort of internal "inventory". With time and player presence, this will grow. The more it grows, the farther and stronger its "encounter easification field" will grow. However, before its become a real trunk and not just a growing sprout, it will even attract  a steady raid of monsters, so you will have to protect it while feeding it. The tree will then need both water and sun to not wither.

From time to time, there should be light enemy raids, even in the "safe" areas. The tree should be a main target for these raids. If it gets damaged, the remaining pieces of it will wither and the safe area will fail. How this will work with no players around, I'm not sure. Maybe it would feel Ok if the raids came only with players around. You'll probably want to be in the area a lot of the time, since it's an area of general safety for mining and building. The enemy raids should be fairly light. Nothing armageddon-like as that would defeat the purpose of erecting a safe area.

The Nether could be similar, but require another way (or no way) of building such a "base" obelisk. Maybe its difficulty should simply scale with distance from a portal, and nothing more, making it hostile as it should be.

A mod like this will make it important to get further away from safety if you wish to find good resources. More difficult monsters will yield better rewards when killed, but will hamper you if you wish to harvest the natural resources in the area. You will have to erect well protected bases here and there with a base obelisk if you want to make the area habitable and workable which will probably be worth it, but you'll have to travel further away from that safety in order to find the lucrative monsters. The mod would also make it important to work together. It could possibly even increase the density of encounters by a factor based on how many players are in the area or on the server.

Apart from the new monsters and resources, this should not be that tricky a mod to make. It would give the game a more tangible and acute sense of progression. Granted, the progression would still be limited in how many interesting monsters and resources you can throw into the system, but still. I seldom fight monsters when looking for diamonds in Minecraft. Or clay, or fine wood, or plants or anything. My biggest fear is falling into lava and as long as you don't mine downwards you're always fairly safe.

EDIT: Similarly, monsters could have their own bases that increase their numbers and strength in the area. If we use the tree as an example, they could have their own decayed and moldy version of it that they protect with powerful monsters. Maybe it doesn't even need sun to grow, to make it more interesting and hard to find. These bases are rare and generally just generated when the world is. They may, when destroyed, drop something extremely rare that does something arcane and awesome. Perhaps a seed to a giant bean stalk, or fertilizer that allows the players to grow a tree in the Nether, or something. Something really worth getting.

Counting Cheap

...poker cards.

I can't sleep. Naturally, because I've been awake since 5 and the time is now closing in on 1 in the middle of the night. Why not. And yes, that's in "military time". We don't do "pm" or "am" over here. 5 is five and can only occur once every 24 hours.

So, what did I do today? I went with my partner to look at a couple of apartments. A not so fantastic one and a pretty awesome one. It's located a bit off, but it's a nice apartment and has a lot of diverse cultures living in the area, something I personally feel is fascinating.

I also put an order for 2000 blank poker cards from The Game Crafter website. It was a sale, where each card cost 1 cent each, so I bought 2000 cards for $20, plus shipping for $25. Why would I buy 2000 blank poker cards? I'm a game designer. I've wanted cards like this for a long time to easily prototype stuff. I have plenty of ideas and an excel sheet with 10 different interdependent balancing tables to prove it. Soon I'll have prototypes to prove it, too.

Actually, I put in an order for 3500 cards, and the other 1500 cards and a fold-out gaming board were for a couple of friends who joined in to make the shipping less painful.

And also, work.

So I'm pretty exhausted. And I can't sleep. Clock rings in 4 hours. I went to bed... 4 hours ago. Oh, fun. Knowing myself I won't be able to sleep in another hour. Because, of course.

I wonder, what would be the harm in a cup of hazelnut coffee at this point. My "tomorrow" is fucked either way.

Linearly Explaining a Non-Linear Creative Process

I've been thinking for a while that I should document my work at Pieces Interactive with the Magicka game and put it together to nice and tidy blogposts giving the reader a good view into the thoughts behind what I do. The challenge maps, the items, the campaign maps, and so on.

So, I started documenting some of the process by writing in various documents - one for each map, for example, and it went fairly well... in the beginning. I've realized that what I do when my brain goes into creative mode is that it works in a very non-linear fashion. It's like, in the beginning, it's straight forward and tries to get a grasp of the entire picture. To do that, it's usually about going from point A to point B, a start and an end. At some point I see the whole picture. I must do this - I can't form a solution to a problem to which I don't know all the facts.

At this point, I usually get to some sort of slow-down. Well, it might feel like it anyway for the linear part that had just made sure to absorb all the facts.

However, behind the scenes, there's another part of me that starts working that's not really very linear. It starts by understanding the entire whole as an entire whole. It still needs help by my more logic side to turn and twist things. It does this by throwing vaguely formed questions about the whole in the form of feelings, and "I" respond by trying to see whether this fits as a concrete and corporeal part of the whole. In other words, I get vaguely shaped pieces of a puzzle thrown at me. They mostly have a color or pattern, representing a feeling, but their shape isn't very well defined. It's up for the logic me to make sure these parts get a suitable shape so that they fit in the whole, or send it back and ask for a different hue or color altogether. Sometimes I send back a question myself. And, while doing that, more facts are formed and fed to the non-linear part of me and the whole keeps growing, changing, shifting, moving.

It sometimes feels like we're two very different beings, working diligently on one complex task together. I can't use my logic side to hurry up and work on a problem that I know my... emotional or creative part does best. But I seldom need to. I can, however, work on other things while that other part takes it time. I know the pieces will fall into place given enough time and solving other problems and not forcing things is usually the way to go.

At my current job I feel that both parts of me work beautifully. I design the feel of all the challenges, items and versus maps and I implement them as precise as I can by scripting them. Even the scripting takes a bit of creativity as many of the "new" features used in some of the challenges are simply cleverly braided together using functionality that was already present.

I digress. I think...

What I was supposed to say is that once I reach a certain point in the process of a map or similar, my brain starts working non-linearly. Instead of one "thread" of thought I get some sort of... tangle of thoughts, all intertwining. One thread keeps the feeling of the whole in mind, while another tries to braid together with it to form details in the feeling, while another logic thread tries to braid itself with the technical and artistic limitations and possibilities of the game and our team, while another lasso thread keeps everything new in spirit and balance with the rest of the game, while another thread jumps in from time to time to blow at and whisper seemingly random things at the threads and make them shift and flutter in the wind for a bit and easier find their grooves.

Sometimes threads snap off and they go to the bin in favour of other threads and ideas and feelings. Sometimes the major underlying threads change drastically, either by myself or by new facts or ideas from the team, and the other threads either adapt, change or get replaced completely.

I love it.

Upcoming map... part... tease.

What I love less is that I can't easily put it down in writing. The design, yes, but the road there, no. It foils my plans. I can mention some of the more simple choices I've made and write a while about those. Why did I put Trolls in this wave where there were once Beholders? I could probably explain that, more or less. Those are logical, linear decisions. I can even go into some depth of the feel I was aiming for here and there, but for the most part...

Well, to explain much of it I'd have to make some sort of hypertext document, where parts refer to other parts both before and after themselves in the same text. I realized as I was filling in the files for the various, and seemingly isolated, challenge and versus maps that I started referring to the other maps and other things. Some thought here depended on some thought there. Some addition or cut here depended on some addition or cut in a completely different place, map or item.

The blogpost would be linear - it has a beginning and an end - but its contents would refer to each other and seemingly loop. And they probably do sometimes. What started the loop that gave birth to some of the important conclusions? Well uh... the thing is, the creative and non-linear part of me can't really speak in linear terms. Duh. I'd have to put a lot of effort in trying to bring that process into an explainable and measurable form.

I'd confuse the fudge out of both the reader and myself, because... I would ironically be trying to solve a problem to which I don't know all the parts.

This blogpost is probably the best I can do in that regard. I'll do my best, though, because it's fun to give the players an insight into the thought-processes that are behind the Magicka DLCs coming from us at Pieces Interactive.

Not Listening To Myself

I really should start listening to myself more often. I don't know how many times I've said that to myself after I've bought a game that someone told me was awesome but I knew from everything I had seen that I thought it looked like a horrible game for me. I have more or less always been right and can't think of a time that I thought "hey, this game WAS fun after all and worth the money!".

Call of Duty... many of them. I admit I've spent about 300 hours on the PC version of MW2 because I could play with my friends without exception and it was easy to just join a game. Yes, it was a wonky server system that didn't work all of the time, but it worked most of the time for us. Then came the other games. And I bought two of them, knowing I shouldn't have, but I listened to others. A bit like the "slow" idiot in this video.

And blah, blah and blah. No, I haven't fallen for all of the hyped games, but of course I've bought some of the huge AAA titles, such as Battlefield 3 - but that's because I felt from the start that I would like it and hey, I did.

The other day I bought RAGE.

I didn't like anything of what I saw from it, from the game play to the graphics and aesthetics. People and a couple of friends talked warmly of the game play however, and I thought hey, it's cheap during the Steam Summer Sale, so why not. Naturally, the day after I bought it someone pointed out to me that the game cost 1/3rd as much in a local store. Anyway, I installed the 21 GB of game and gave it a shot.

Blam. Unexplained settings. Unskippable intro. Okay, some important recording plays, but I interrupt it by opening the very first door upon which I step out of something. I can't get back in. I want to hear the message though... so I restart from last checkpoint. I need to watch the intro again. Still unskippable. I step out of the first thing, gets greeted by cutscene. A man asks me to come to him, sure, I'll do that, I'll just look over here fi- BLAM. Gets shot by invisible sniper because I passed invisible border. Dead. Reload last save, which luckily was outside of first room, but I have to watch encounter cutscene again.

Okay, passed that thing. I'm apparently in danger, especially since I'm clearly visibly someone that the bandits want and we have to bail. I get to a camp, gets a "quest" that I have to accept, and the quest is... to go to the bandit camp. The bandits that were awfully dangerous just a second ago. With a simple pistol. My reward? An armor to put outside my suit. Why not give me the armor before I go in? Why not give me the gun at the beginning, so we could just kill the bandits there instead?

Okay. Mission... Drive there. Oh, but not further, invisible car wall, for reasons. Why? No reason. Into the mission area, invisible walls everywhere. Can't go there. Can't jump over this, but you can jump over that. Health bar? Nope. But I have health. Why can't I see this important resource? Oh well. OK, so I'll have to defibrillate using some sort of mini-game. A timer tells me to get ready, alright! ...at the end of the timer, it asks me if I'm ready. Yes... Now it's charging. Zaap... I completely miss the timing. I live again. Apparently, my timing here determines how much health I get when I live again. Wait, what health? Where can I see it?

Then, the driving back and forth. The people standing in your way to slowly tell you things that they'll then show to you, in writing, in a quest contract paper window that appears where you have to either accept or decline. But... if I decline, you'll just stand in my way and not allow me to pass you. The game will halt until I accept, so why do I have to accept? It's not a role-playing game. You're a shooter. You do that relatively good, I guess, so why are you wasting my time with nonsense?

I uninstalled it. 20 GB of "unique textures" that all look the same. Grey textures in uneven resolution loaded "as needed" meaning when I look around I can actually see them load, unimaginative areas, invisible walls everywhere, a metaphoric wading through mud between the actual game play just to slow me down, and the story is more uninteresting than the level 20 quests of the original World of Warcraft. I don't have time for this. Why don't you just give me a solid shooter experience when that's what you do best? It doesn't have to be Quake or Doom, but you're not an RPG in any stretch of the imagination so why do you want me to think you are?

Ugh. No.

I bought a lot of other titles during the Steam Summer Sale, following mostly my gut (and wallet).

Some Heroes of Might and Magic VI which will be the first in that series that I've ever played, Puzzle Quest I which I've bought and played on Xbox 360 before (I didn't like the story of the sequel). Bulletstorm, because I loved it and wanted it on Steam instead of Origin. Risen. Bastion. Deadspace I and II. Unreal Gold, because Unreal meant a lot to me years back. Mirror's Edge, because I loved it for the Xbox 360 and want to try it on PC. Cave Story+ because I played it once and loved the crap out of it. Fable I because I don't want to use my clunky old Xbox for it and it won't run on the Xbox 360. Dear Esther because the idea is fascinating. Recettear because it was crap cheap and looks charming. Galactic Civilizations II because I know I love that type of game ever since one of the first I played, Deadlock, back in the day. Darksiders, I liked it kind of, even though it has more tiresome testosterone than Gears of War and God of War combined. Everything roars.

Anyway, I should just go with my gut. It's usually right.

I should play old games more, too. I should try to get Fallen Haven to work again. I wonder if I think that's a good game still.

And I'm looking forward to Torchlight II and Path of Exile, both of which are made by open people that really know - or at least try - to make fun gaming experiences. They know their strengths and keep to them.


EDIT: Oh, and I probably should start playing the games that I buy. Like, sit with one of them and play it until I either finish it or grow tired of it. Or simply give up because I know I'll just get pissed if I continue, like in the case of RAGE.

It's not a paradox

So, our publisher Paradox really likes what we're doing for them and the game Magicka. Seeing one of their representatives play some of the new stuff we're making, grinning, going "aaah" and "oooh" and ending it all with several big thumbs up really made my day. And it was already a pretty good day.

While I obviously can't say much about what I'm currently working on due to reasons, we're really thinking outside the box with our upcoming things, both in terms of game mechanics and difficulty. I can't personally beat our stuff alone but I've made sure it's balanced and possible. Every time I fail I know it's because I wasn't good enough. I have all the tools at my disposal to beat it but I get tripped up. Tripped up by the very things I added to the game to cause the player to trip up, even. How's that for irony?

In other news... I tend to get chosen as administrator or moderator for forums, because I know how to stick to rules and not abuse them, and I'm fairly good at being fair. Sometimes you need to actually act, which some moderators fear, but you can't just start banning and deleting just because you and other users don't share the same opinions or do things that others are not allowed to - unless this is stated in the forum rules and guidelines.

For example, on the Paradox Plaza's forums, they don't usually allow for links to external sites. Being given administrator rights, I asked them for scenarios where I would like to link to external sites anyway for either good solutions for potential problems with Magicka and the like, as I felt I might need it. I didn't but asked anyway because that's what I do. I try to keep things professional.

Then it comes as a surprise when one user of a community sub-forum that I've become moderator for goes on a righteous rampage over how horribly unfair and tyrannic I am when I decide to delete some posts of his (and mine) where he starts being sarcastic and makes me defend myself. I did so and responded that "wait, I should have just deleted this trolling and drama, my bad". I was appointed moderator status to prevent and stop drama and not feed into it myself. But this was incredible terrible and on top of that, I've apparently (according to this one user) been horribly sarcastic and horrible to everybody else for a long time and deleted their posts like a mad man. Ironically, I've never heard any of this from anyone (nor deleted anything but clear verbal punch-fests just as I'm supposed to).

And oh my god, the time and energy he put into proving how I abused my power (though I'm hardly ever online, for one), but all the examples he could come up with was times that I had nagged and complained about things and how people act. Yep, I do that sometimes, but when I say "this is really annoying" he have systematically interpreted this as "you should and may not do this", or something. I don't know, the whole thing is illogical and blown up into cosmic proportions... because he can't take the fact that he have done something wrong and just go on.

Well, letting things like these just go is one of the tools in a moderators tool belt. Yes, you should naturally try to handle problems with professional dialogues and, when needed, admit fault if you do something you feel is unfair. Yet, the most important thing is to move on. Some users will dislike you, your ways or the products you're working with or supporting, regardless of what you do.

Moving on is important for two reasons:

1. The problem is noted and left behind, because most of the time the problem just isn't worth putting time and energy into compared to other things. Also, some users just won't give up. Is one user that important to you that you'll drop everything you're doing and everyone else just to make that one user happy? Probably not. You'll of course try to solve the problem, but once you've done what you can then that's it.
2. The problem itself is oftentimes the mere existence of itself, as it's often just a brawl, trolled up drama or a heated argument. As a moderator, you're there to prevent and quell those things, not feed them or let them be fed by others, regardless of what you emotionally feel that you want yourself. That's why it can be hard, but you're a moderator and it must be done. After all, if you can't be expected to, nobody can.

So yes, what makes it a good day is the realization that hey, I don't have to deal with this. It feels good to be able to stop and say "hey, it's actually not my responsibility to make that person understand that his logic is broken". Someone might not like me for it, but I do what I can and have no obligation to do anything more for this one person, and he can dislike me all he wants. I've done my best, and if you still don't like it, then that's not my problem. Move along. I do. And it feels so good.

A couple of years ago I wouldn't be able to let things like this go. I'd defend myself to the end. This person is still that kind of person, and believes that this issue is so important that and huge that he must see to it that I fall from my high horse (by riding one himself). Yet, I'm just trying to sit and relax on a bridge by the lake. I want to take it easy, to chill out, but then there are people like him that sees the smallest conflicts like a great battle against the evil dark and the ever-shining good, and he appoints himself courageous knight of the latter.

So, why this rant if I can let go, you ask? Wrong conclusion. I've let that argument go and done what I can. I should put a temp-ban on him for not stopping when told, but I think I'll just let it go. He won't learn from it anyway and it'll just feed his martyrdom. I'm writing this because I wanted to spill some of my day to my blog for once. I seldom do. And I felt this was the perfect example to just talk a bit about how work, hobbies and one's personal life can blend together and cause problems if you're not careful.

I love when my hard work pays off and people come to me and say "hey, you've done one hell of a job". That makes stupid things like these feel so minor, like drops of water running off of me in the rain and down into the water below me as I sit here on the bridge, dangling my feet over the lake's surface.

EDIT: Oh and apparently one of the main designers of the original Magicka, Emil Englund, saw the new content the other day and said that he was very impressed with it.

EDIT 2: Snapple crackle. This upcoming stuff might be some of the best consumer value stuff yet!

No More Facebook

A few days ago, I finally terminated my Facebook account permanently. Not because of being "addicted" or anything like that but because of this.

And because I don't want to be Facebook's product to sell, because that's what you are for them. You're not their customer. You're not Google's customer if you use Google+ or any other of their free services either, in fact. You're the product. You're plenty of information to sell and you're a pair of eyes that can look at advertisements. Yet, I still use some Google services. At least they're not trying to "share" everything I do in new ways every week and have me opt-out of that if I want to and if I can find the hidden setting for it like Facebook did. And well, Google still has services that are actually useful.

But mainly because of the first reason. I'll quote myself:

"Having to explain any of this really feels like explaining how to walk because it's such a basic thing. Trust and circles. Being you the worker and you the friend and you the parent. It's about filtering away parts of ourselves and sometimes adding a bit more depending on the people you interact with. Put all those groups in a single place... I mean, picture how you would need to shape yourself, what role to put yourself in, for that to work. Ask your friends, family, flirts, co-workers and your boss to come home for a party where you act as if everyone was the same kind of friend. It'd get totally fucked up, and if not, it'd get so extremely shallow and boring. That's what we get with people assuming we're in any shape or form resembling our real selves on Facebook. We're not. That would be absurd."

And yes, I'll remove the Facebook Like-buttons from my blog the day I can be assed to figure out how.

Another thing with services like that is that they're designed to suck you in and get stuck consuming a stream of unimportant information disguised as important, and make you feel that supplying similar information is important, because everyone else does it. It's really a nasty piece of psychological garbage that a lot of people get completely sucked into. People even lose jobs because of this.

It's meant to give you quick fixes. A few likes. More friends, more potential likes. A photo of a cat. A photo of a hamburger. Oh lucky you, you've got a kid, upload a photo and get an instant high score of likes. Disgustingly optimistic and naive? Tell it to everybody! Call it "being realistic"! Billions of likes! Keep it rolling, don't stop! Welcome to the world of... no substance at all.

Instead, you can be creative and productive with your time. Facebook doesn't want that, naturally, because that would mean less time reloading pages on their site which means seeing less advertisements and supplying less information to their database of what you are interested in.

Blizzard and Diablo 3, Why they slaughter replayability

Blizzard slaughtered replayability in Diablo 3 by making so that there is absolutely no point in replaying the same class again. Your max level Barbarian is, for example, every barbarian. Rather, it can be with just a few clicks.

In Diablo 2, your barbarian was THAT barbarian. You could start a new one and make a totally different kind and experience. You had to think your choices through as well so as not to make too many mistakes, which also made you extra attached to the character and the effort you put into it.

I stand by my opinion that the casualization choices they've made have killed off what once was Diablo. They have essentially put training wheels on a genre which made its name by not having training wheels.

They've instead of modernizing the genre simply switched it out to safe and bland. I'm sorry. I can't see Diablo 3 as more than a graphically really nice, and gameplay-wise adequate (it's too easy for far too long for example), hack'n'slash with as much depth or even less as the PS2 title Dark Alliance. It's just a shade of what Diablo 2 was.

What are they thinking? And starting a real money auction house? That would only make sense if you could in fact make tons of different character builds and have reason to sell and buy and experiment with different setups. It would have made sense in Diablo 2. But here? You've got your max level character and there is really not that many different sets of items suitable for it. You're a barbarian? Alright, have a mix of vitality and/or strength.

Unless... they're planning a World of Warcraft and release many expansions that simply increase the level cap ever so slightly, just to inject new items into the game and have people buy/sell those in the auction house so Blizzard'll get their cut. That's the only realistic plan I can them having, unless they've simply just f-cked up.

• After having had a day to reflect, I update:

Of course; that's the point of Diablo 3 having the "one character is all builds". You only need a few clicks to change character build (something that took creating a new character and going down a new path in previous Diablo games), and can much faster purchase new fitting items off of the real money auction house, where a cut goes to Blizzard.

And, of course, the various builds must be designed in a way that you'll need the correct gear for them and you can't just go with a few different items. That would make Blizzard's strategy perfectly clear anyway, and they're not ones to not think things through.

Blizzard then doesn't have to wait for you to build a new unique character up to buy those items - they can just sell you your needed gear (which, essentially, they've disguised as a "player driven" auction house) whenever you need it. It's designed to make you want to buy the things from Blizzard instead of grinding for them yourself. Yes, there is an in-game currency auction house, but most people will obviously want to sell things for real money when the real money auction house goes live (in a few days).

And it's all for the "endgame", mind you. Of course. Because that's Blizzard. Their RPGs can't seem to follow anything but the "oh just you wait, it gets fun in the end (after some 20-30 hours of grinding)" mentality.

Diablo 3 is through-and-through designed for being a game experience fed by microtransactions; the concepts are two halves of the game - the auction house was not designed to be "an addition".

• So a TL;DR.

Question: Why does Blizzard slaughter replayability in Diablo 3 by making classes be able to change build at any time?

Answer: Because they want to sell you items through microtransactions with as little delay as possible, disguised as a "player driven" auction house. Because of this disguise they could charge a premium fee for access to the game, and, because of this same disguise, the pricing of the sold items can theoretically be ridiculously high and the players, not Blizzard, will get the blame for being greedy.

It's fucking genius.

Note that I'm not trashing Blizzard. They know their business. Am I disappointed with Diablo 3 as an old Diablo 1 & 2 fan? Oh, yes. But I've got myself covered there. 

Suddenly, job!

Installing the computer and myself at my new workplace, Pieces Interactive!

I shall use my scripting and design abilities to conjure magic.

That Dream

Tonight, I had old faithful again. The Dream. That Dream.

I was going home from somewhere to somewhere, by train. A very large train, internally, but that's not the point. I had gone shopping for various groceries; some candy I think, perfume, wine. I had my things in an ordinary plastic bag, and was sitting in a rather crowded train. Note that the dream doesn't always take place in a train.

Interestingly, as with all versions of this dream, I felt... alive, social, outgoing. I easily talked to people and they knew me, and I knew them. Many faces are usually of people from my childhood, a very few might be from more recent times, but it's more than often strangers to me in real life.

Suddenly as I prepare to get off the train, as I know it's like 1 or 2 stations left to go, I realize that I can't find my bag. Or can I? The bag I got doesn't seem quite right. I know for sure what I bought at the store, and my partner at home is expecting me to get some of the things for her... But as I look around and compare bags that seem to be spread around, with nobody really caring that I look in them, I start to realize that I don't know exactly what to expect of the bag; I can't remember clearly what I bought, only the concept of it more or less.

I got an idea though. I'd quickly talk to the reception at the train (yes, a reception, remember it was a very large train). I went there and after a strange encounter with a very randomly trolling train engineer, even though somebody right before him just warned me not to talk to him, I found a small crowd of people in front of the reception. I stand in line, and as I get closer I realize that... the line is invalid. For some reason the machine to get your line number was at the front of the line, and so I get my number and... There's like 100 numbers before me, and the receptionist seems to take her good time. People are getting restless. I watch out of the windows and try to determine where I am.

Hm. Strange. I know I'm going homewards, there's no doubt about it but... where am I? I vaguely recognize myself. But surely the next station is home, I will recognize it, and it'll just fall into place. But... how does it look? When I think of it, what does my home look like? My apartment? Do I have a home?

The dream either faded into something else entirely after that or I woke up, but it doesn't really matter. This dream never goes on longer after that anyway.

What I've come to learn from this dream over the many years (more than a decade for sure) is that it seems to revolve around me getting home, but the further I go the more I start realizing that I don't know where home is and the more I start doubting if I can really find it. It feels like it's there, waiting warmly for my arrival, to embrace me in a definite end, but all memory of how it looks and smells and feels are just faded. Like a dream you really try hard to remember, the memory just out of reach.

It's either by school bus, by train, boat, car, walking, space craft perhaps, flying, or a mixture of them all. Sometimes I finally get off the first means of transportation just to go by foot, but usually when the dream lingers on and the further I get spatially in my travel the more lost and insecure I become.

Another element is that there are usually quite a lot of people around, people that I know in one way or another. People I belong with, perhaps. Usually, it's faces from kids of my childhood. Kids from school, and I didn't really know many of them very well at that time to be honest, but I had a little normal circle of friends I guess. As the trip homewards goes on, as the dream goes on, people get off at their stops. Because we're usually all going home. Each time, the crowd grows a little bit smaller, and the familiar faces are more and more replaced by unknown ones. A silence grows into what is usually found on public transportation in larger cities as nobody knows anybody except for perhaps a couple or two chatting in the back.

So by now I'm going somewhere, and I can't remember how it looks, but it feels like I've missed it even though I know I've been alert and kept my eyes open for it. I can't remember where I was supposed to get off, and I've seen all my friends get off to where they belong.

Somehow in all of this I'm rarely sad. I just feel lost. Like the answer is there, just out of reach. I really try my best to reach it or to find someone to tell me where to go, or in recent dreams use my phone's GPS (which suddenly just won't activate).

The day turns slowly to dusk. One often recurring element is that the world is sort of... overgrown. Not abnormally so, but trees are often dark green and lush, tufts of grass break through the asphalt here and there, lawns haven't been mowed in a year or two. It's almost always late spring or something.

If I don't just wake up after the dream, or dream of something else that I can't remember, the dream changes to me probably having exited my means of transportation (just because I felt it pointless to continue by it) and being confused and lost while people around me do stuff. Nothing in particular, just living their lives I guess, while I feel that time is ticking and the warmth of home and those waiting for me there is just... so far away. But what do I know; I can't even remember what it looks like. I think that in a way, I might even sometimes conclude in my dream that that place doesn't even exist.

It's not concrete. It's only abstract. A concept. And the more I try to form in my head what a concrete version of the concept would be... it won't form. Sometimes in the dream I finally know this, but in the beginning I'm always at the same starting point.

I'm tired of this. I guess these dreams aren't far from what I feel in real life.

I can't seem to hack the recipe for breaking this cycle. Once in my life the dream changed. A few years back as I was studying at the University of Skövde the dream changed for the first time in my life. I was going home at the end of the day, accompanied by new friend, and... I'm not sure I arrived at home, as in an apartment or anything, but sometime we stayed up instead of going home. Hit the town, ate some food, hung out. I don't remember that I dreamed this any larger number of times though and it returned to its old self a while after.

So... What now. What ever? Is my concept of home unrealistic? It's (usually, I guess) too abstract for me to determine if its details are flawed or realistic. I know that home for me is where I feel secure and enveloped in warmth and love. I think that pretty much sums it up. Is the concrete form of that a house with an own family? A small apartment with a dog or a cat? I'm not sure it even has to be a place, or any kind of other individual for that matter.

Something with this dream's constant recurrence tells me that there's something wired wrong in my thinking and that it's probably very cemented, so to speak. A defective circle that has fed itself over many years. Not that I'm implying that it's impossible to change it - not at all - but that it's probably very hard for me to do it on my own. I can't even see exactly where the problem lies, or which of my known problems might be the cause (or effect) of it.

Is my dream telling me that I'll never reach my goal or do I simply have faulty goals? Do I even have goals suited for me? Because honestly, I only have a concept of home, not a concrete picture of it. Sometimes I think I have one, but then it changes or fades. Am I looking for a form of finality in a world that I, from realistic thinking, know doesn't exist since everything is always evolving and on its way; in perpetual movement?

The only finality of this, physical, existence that I can think of is death. And no, by the way. I've never had such thoughts and have none now.

The only somewhat lasting continuity of this existence is existing, or life. And regardless if you're locked up inside a room or a cell for all your life, or if you're out travelling the world, your existence isn't always the same. Time passes and you change, your surroundings might change, what you want and need and feel changes. There is no absolute finality in it.

So what is home? Where is my home? Is it really a destination?

That's a very ingrained thing in my way of thinking that with perseverance and time there's a goal, a home, predefined and concrete, waiting in life at the end of a difficult road. That everything I do are steps towards it.

It's actually quite silly when I think of it. I usually see myself as a highly realistic person that makes his decisions based on logic and by weighing real options. I don't think I'm generally too pessimistic though, nor too optimistic, as I deem both extremes to be usually unrealistic. I know by experience that most problems can be solved so I usually don't get gloomy over them. Pissed off at times, yes, but I don't give up until I've either succeeded or exhausted all options.

That's not entirely true. I can't say I apply that mentality on everything, and that might be part of my problem. Or maybe more probably an effect of it.

So yes, at the tip of the tongue is the saying that "the journey is what's important and not the goal" or similar. But that implies that there is a goal.

*break*

Am I blind to what might be staring me in the face all along?

I start out my journey towards the goal home in the presence of friends. Are they, the friends in my dream, home? Another manifestation of my abstract concept of home? With them I feel that I belong, more in the dream than I've felt with any friends in real life. They usually vary from dream to dream, so they're not any certain persons in particular. I think.

Take the dreams I had for a short time while studying at the university. Some, if not all (can't remember), ended with me not going home to a place but I stayed with my friends in one way or another. I was home with them. However, the friends in my dream were mostly those I had closest to me in real life. A certain ms Rosin was one of them back then, I recall. When I dream I can't find home the people are usually mostly kids from my childhood (no particular age though, we just are and are equals).

In these dreams, the only time I feel I belong is before I realize that I don't know where I'm going, where my final goal lies. The only time in the dream I feel close to the embracing warmth of home is before I start realizing that I don't know where the warm embracing home is.

What am I looking for? Friends? Or maybe in other words, love? It's certainly more realistic than the idea of a warm (loving) embracing home as a definite place or destination.

But the kind of love isn't that of passion and romance, that's clear from the dream, but rather of acceptance. Of everyone being themselves and everybody else loving it and expecting it.

So, if the friends (or the manifestation of belonging, of being loved) aren't any people in particular, then what are they?

Painfully obviously me?

*break*

Maybe. And by me I mean what I do and what I am. I have no problem accepting myself or loving what I am and stand for, most of the time.

At the beginning of my university years I felt that I was suddenly allowed to be me much more than ever, to express myself and to be with people that expected nothing different of me and cheered me on.

Maybe then after all, doing what I love is home rather than a future goal or state. I guess that being with actual people that appreciate what I do when I do what I love wouldn't hurt, and ironically... that's not common.

That brings me to another subject. Well, at least I think so.

What if I want goals? In my mind I believe that is what makes me motivated. In reality goals haven't motivated me much so far, though. To be honest, they've mostly been only stressful and potentially been in the way. It's one thing with deadlines when working professionally at a company - they usually get me motivated more the closer to the deadline, but long term personal goals are the opposite.

Perhaps they silently become expectations instead. A goal is reached by committing and putting in great effort. An expectation is just achieving the minimum. And when a goal turns into an expectation like that, the effort still feels as great as when trying to reach a goal but if I expect to reach that goal and fail, I feel like I have let myself down. And I don't have to fail to feel that way, of course. If I subconsciously expect myself to finish and encounter resistance, I feel like I've failed.

Because of that, it's hard as hell to do anything in my spare time (which I have lots of now). I mentally block myself - not because the effort of doing something is too great, but because I expect myself to carry it through until I reach the goal. Expecting great effort in advance is a good way to kill spirits.

So what should I expect of myself?

I know that I am a good game designer, that my English and Swedish are both good, that I have good writing skills, that I understand aesthetics, that I understand programming and how all parts in games come together and how that creates limitations for all parts involved. Maybe knowing this is what makes me expect nothing less than to carry through from start to finish without hiccup (and thus completely devoid of any playful curiosity and experimentation).

So I know I suck at doing things, basically. But that's the thing. I expect myself to just do it and when I don't, which I won't from just saying "just do it", I've let myself down. The circle feeds itself indefinitely.

But yes. That's the root of some of my problems, I think. But I was better at just doing what I loved if I go back a couple of years and yet, the dream was there.

*break*

If the friends during my journey in my dream are a manifestation of home, then what are they?

Maybe they're simply a concept as well and I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe they're not the cause but the effect. So thus, maybe home is not the cause but the effect. Home is not what embraces me in warmth, but the warmth and love that causes me to feel like home.

Home for me is not in the future or someplace else, it can only be here. Where ever I am, and never anywhere else.

As an insight it feels a bit detaching in a way, but maybe I've always been just a bit too sentimental. And it might help explain why I sometimes need to be by myself. If anyone understands and loves me and lets me be me completely, it's me, which is the reason I didn't use the term "need to be alone" because that's not the true feeling.

But I still don't feel like I've come to a conclusion. I've simply asked new questions.

*break*

Maybe one small step of breaking the circle of passivity and give myself more love is to... well, do what I love. Such as playing some games that I rarely play (but love) because whenever I play them I feel guilty for the fact that I'm not doing something productive. And I can't do anything productive because my spirits are shot.

Real Person vs. Social Media Person

No, I'm not going to rant one bit about personal integrity or the evils of services doing exactly what you signed up for by accepting their terms of service. They might still be evil and rotten and greedy bastards, but it's not what I'm going to talk about.

It's something I've been thinking about for quite a while. Talked to a friend about it the other day and he couldn't other than agree with my thoughts on it. Look at Facebook. The standard user adds contacts to it at a regular basis. Friends, family, co-workers, cousins, and so on. Contacts. People you usually would never ever want to spend time with all at once suddenly bunched up before the Billboard of You.

Personally I felt that what I could write in my feed diminished little by little for each new contact I added. First we had the friends, and then I could write a bit of everything. Oh, now I have a friend from that class. Ok, can't talk much about that class anymore. Oh, now I have someone from that job who might know that and that person. Ok, can't talk freely about work anymore. It goes on and on. You censor yourself. It's fairly natural in the situation.

But - many people on there seem to believe that if you read all posts by me in my feed, you can make a good picture of me. Even otherwise intelligent people. The thing is, I know that if you were to read my feed you'd probably conclude that I'm a cynical and whiny fellow because of what I usually post there. It has come to a point when I don't want to share much of the positives of my life. If I write about future hopes and plans or personal victories then I know that a lot of people that I really don't want very close to me will be able to read it.

The more people you get in your contact list, the less personal you can be. It goes from full and complex to shallow and simple. It's the same as hanging out with a few select friends - you can usually talk about mostly anything. The more people you add to the room, the less personal you can be. You don't know everybody very well and don't want to let them into your private sphere just yet. It's human nature to want to feel safe. It's in our nature not to show our every weaknesses to strangers, be it moments of sadness or happiness.

So what do I post on my facebook account? Usually neutral stuff that nobody cares about anyway, some music link here and there, a photo, and when I dislike something. It can be something or someone, expensive software being incompetently programmed or a movie sucking balls in all the wrong ways. Small annoyances. Because that doesn't let the wrong people in very deeply, I suppose. Close friends tend to understand that. Others... have a tendency of thinking that what they see on facebook is you. The whole you.

Really, that is quite stupid when you think about it. And sometimes you get a reply just oozing of hey, I'm gonna put him in his place for everybody, that whiner. It's not often, though, and that's not really the problem either. It's when things like that surface that they can be dealt with. It's all those cases where people just read and make up their minds behind my back.

Trust me, there are lots of things in my life that are precious to me and a lot of things that makes me happy. I'm highly optimistic, realistic and logical. I rarely give up. I'm stubborn as hell. I would like to think that I've got integrity. I don't take disrespectful shit from anyone even if that puts a job or something on the line. I'm unemployed, but have saved up some money for the occasion. I have little idea what to do with my immediate future, but I know that things tend to work out. Also, what I love and like in life tends to be different from many others. I don't care much for pubs. I don't care much for... taking a coffee and mingling with a group where half of them are strangers. I don't dance, physically. Needless to say, I don't like shoes and I love being barefoot. I was more open with the positive sides of life way back but it made me feel... exposed.

And some people have attacked that, more or less aggressively or passively. An example would be to write something like yeah, we heard you the first time as if he/she suddenly spoke for everyone. Apparently, stating time and time again that you really like to play guitar with your friends or travel to Japan every year and pour photo after photo into your stream, that's fine. You're supposed to like doing that, or whatever. Other stuff are just weird, aren't they. Well, my life's fine without people stepping on what's good, so I'd rather keep that to myself and my closest friends, thanks. The others can have the leftovers.

So, yeah. This post is about two phenomenon really. One being diminishing closeness with growing groups and the other being people not understanding that phenomenon.

Also, a friend said something smart the other day:

I'm getting jealous of those who haven't yet got themselves a facebook account.

I've been thinking lately that I wonder how it would feel to just delete one's account (as much as it's possible, at least). Somehow it feels like it's time to move on. Do I need facebook? Do I need to keep the contact with people like that? I will miss out on announcements made by friends who assume everyone's got facebook, of course... but that's about it. That, or I should just prune away at my contacts like a mad man. Get down to the core group of friends, but... even then, there'd be a lot of different circles that I would be willing to share different facets of myself with. So it feels like it's either all or nothing if it's to really matter.

I've always always preferred small groups to bigger ones. That's not because I dislike social contact - quite the opposite. I love hanging out with a small group of friends because you can get much deeper, much more personal. The less people there are, the less chance of the wrong person learing the wrong thing about you. It could be a friend of a co-worker who learns that you plan to quit your job, or a person secretly disliking you finding out that you have a fetish for goblin ears or something and can't wait to spread the delicious news. And you might not know who that is. Of course it matters what other people think, especially those that you take for friends. Strangers, not so much of course, but then again... who knows what strings they can pull in the wrong directions?

But look at me. Having to explain any of this really feels like explaining how to walk because it's such a basic thing. Trust and circles. Being you the worker and you the friend and you the parent. It's about filtering away parts of ourselves and sometimes adding a bit more depending on the people you interact with. Put all those groups in a single place... I mean, picture how you would need to shape yourself, what role to put yourself in, for that to work. Ask your friends, family, flirts, co-workers and your boss to come home for a party where you act as if everyone was the same kind of friend. It'd get totally fucked up, and if not, it'd get so extremely shallow and boring. That's what we get with people assuming we're in any shape or form resembling our real selves on Facebook. We're not. That would be absurd.

Now I'm starting to sound like that one guy at the Swedish Game Conference who said the same thing over and over for over an hour when he could've just summarized it in 5 minutes or less.

(I know the grammar of this post isn't the best and it certainly doesn't represent my skill in English.)

Swedish Game Conference 2011

Attended the first day of SGC today and there were yawns. Good advice for publishers to people who want to pitch games for them, but a little much "we are awesome"-talk from them as well.

Interesting talks by the founder of Atari, and during the day he and others said some stuff that must be repeated over and over and over to people doing creative work again until the end of time. Namely, stay focused and try try try again. Fail but don't lose enthusiasm for it, try again. And again. Expect failure and have new ideas in the pipe. Try again.

I think it was Daniel Kaplan, maybe not, that said that perfection is a curse and that it keeps you away from the market. Not new but it needs to be repeated. Perfectionists seldom release their stuff onto the market. The others do release their stuff - some fail, some sell. And those that sell may grow because their author gets funds in the process and can let it grow.

Another important concept that was touched is that, more or less that, 1% of target audience liking (and paying) you is eternally better than 100% that doesn't because they can't. That was actually not at all the wording that was used today but it's more or less the same. Never releasing your product aiming for perfection is endlessly more worthless than a blemished product on the market. The latter actually has the potential to sell. And selling isn't just about money money money - it's about getting funds to survive and being able to keep doing what you like doing.

Talked to a bunch of really nice people today. My previous employer's new animator Cezar, talked and lunched with Daniel Kaplan of Mojang, chatted away with a mr. Wowbagger, a Jonas Berling of a smaller (yet epic-sounding) project. A Richard formerly at Immersive Learning but now employed by Pieces. Feels like I'm forgetting people, crap. Anyway. Everybody seems to know somebody in every company. Game development is a nice, small and intense arena.

I also got a very interesting talk with mr. Badylak and it seems as if there might be a few gold nuggets to get from Gothia Science Park of help to me afterall. This makes me slightly more confused, but still not.

Conclusion: A lot of work ---> A lot of potential

Now bed, tomorrow the second and last day of SGC. After that, probably Civilization 5. Good game. And as mr. Kaplan said today, which again is old wisdom but something that must be repeated, make a game that you will like. Make a game for you. I'd make complex turn-based strategy/tactics games.

Visor of Urgency

So, things aren't as calm as they were back in July, but I knew this day would come. I just didn't know exactly how it would look.

My employment ended at the end of August as planned. It was supposed to start again the first of this month but hasn't and it's a bit of a mess. I don't know why decisions take so long and who I'm waiting for to make those decisions anymore. While I'd love for employment I must expect/assume some measure of upfuckery.

Some of the dust has settled however. As expected I see the situation more clearly now that I have the visor of urgency, so to speak. Now more than in a long time I must choose what to do with my situation. I've been thinking over the years about starting my own small company but have put it off. Now, if I get hired again by my previous employer I have to start a company, and if I don't get hired by them I also have to start a company to try to do my own thing.

I've been thinking back and forth about what to call my company as well and have gone through a whole lot of options. Mercetron was one of them, but Google is stupid and I don't want people to associate my company name with something so stupid as the thing Google "suggests" when searching for it. Also, it's hard to pronounce correctly for people and the spelling is even harder to try to explain. Tonight I got the idea of what I wanted to call my company and it's a rather unique name that's been with me for years. Also, it's kind of new in that I haven't used it much at all online. It won't be associated with any baggage I might have left behind unknowingly.

I won't say what the name is before I've gotten around to registering it though. That's just how I do things.

And what would I do with my company? Well, I am a game designer and a programmer. Or maybe rather programmer and game designer... I've always felt that my technical skill is programming, and that game design just comes natural somehow. I get ideas either myself or from other sources and I grind them up in my head to create something bigger... I iterate and iterate and iterate. I test scenarios, I continually ask whether a feature or mechanic serves a purpose or is superfluous. I remove stuff, I add stuff, I see the game grow and breathe and evolve into something as if it has always been what it will become. I love it.

I've been thinking table-top games. I know the language of the platform and the compiler is relatively easy to handle. Prototyping is fast as well. It's also extremely challenging.

Today I bought a pen for drawing. Not at all the one I set out to buy but after half an hour of testing more or less all the pens they had and weighed the usefulness factor of this and that one, I settled for a rather simple and thick black marker pen. I like thick and deliberate lines. I've never really been a fan of pencils. I'm thinking I really want a small Cintiq, but it's no way near cheap enough not to feel just stupid to buy. Maybe if I get something going in the future it'll be worth it - until then a pen will do.

This week, Swedish Game Conference in Skövde. I'm going but have no idea who's going to be there or what they're going to talk about. It'll probably be interesting anyhow so I'll see when I get there.

Harmony

I don't think I've felt this calm and in harmony for a very very long time. I'm not entirely sure why that is either.

I'm sitting here with a fresh cup of coffee, I haven't bothered getting dressed since I woke up this morning and quite frankly - why bother. I've just had some leftovers for dinner. Before me I have a few documents open. They are finished but unpolished charts with rules, game phase descriptions and maps for a table-top game I've been working on for a while. I'm looking forward to playing more Sanctum later this evening with a couple of friends, and I'm actually looking forward for work tomorrow despite the mess and uncertainty of my current job.

My apartment is a mess. A large grimy electric barbecue machine needs to be cleaned. I need to shave and cut my hair. It'll come. It'll be done.

I feel... good. My being, right now, is good. I have a cool, cute mate who's constantly surprising me even today 10 years after I first met her. I have great friends that I can trust and who stand up for me when I need them.

Maybe this is the calm before a storm. I know I have a lot of things before me and I don't know a tenth of what they are. I'm hoping for the best, hoping for sanity, order and some form of maturity to prevail. I've learned a lot from the past years and I'm at the threshold of leaving that behind for good.

But right now, I'll just take sips of my coffee and rest my feet for a while.


Oh, there they are, asking if I want to play Sanctum.

Java

No, not the coffee.

But seriously, what surfer would make that association before associating "Java" with the programming language?

I think I had a break when finding a book ("Head First") that explained the basics of Java but written for... well, me, it seemed. It wasn't "this is programming and this is a computer" nor was it "this is a superflux caputization megamax twix ultra mk 2 interface". It was "you're not stupid, this is how Java works". I'll plow on, but yesterday I wrote my first snipped of working code on an Eee PC and ran it.

Java uses a main(). When was the last time I didn't work with an fully event based language? Like early 2000. How I have missed having the simple control of a main function that dispatches everything and that lets me decide the order in which to do everything. Not events, floating fuzzily in space until fired.

For me, that extra level of control feels delicious. It's hard to have a clear picture of everything and the problem a program is solving when huge parts of the execution of the program just lingers in some black unknown space. That's a little how fully event based stuff feels like. I like to say "yes, you have a message for me, good, stand over there until I'm ready for it" instead of "you have a message for me, I'll take care of that maybe now or maybe after I've done that other thing or maybe in the middle I don't know".

It's probably not that confusing for those that like it but that's the jist of it for me. And I really don't have anything against events but I prefer to use my own callbacks and stuff as much as possible. It just feels less uncontrolled, more structured. For example, take Unity, where there's a "core" somewhere hidden and everything runs through events. It works well but... I don't know, it feels flimsy.

Well, this was just a start. I'm glad though that I've seemed to pass my traditional first "learn new language barrier". I never know when or how to pass it usually.

Motivation

Great TED Talk about motivation and how carrots & sticks as a means to motivate has been proven ineffective and in some cases even motivationally destructive. Why do I post this? Partly because I love this kind of psychology but mostly because it talks about a subject I've been fighting with for a long time: Motivation

For years, I've been trying to figure out exactly what makes me motivated. What makes me want to work and not go home from office. I've had different theories which seemed so-so, such as interface design, game design, and lately I thought it might even be game editing tool design. For some reason, what I usually finish when it comes to private projects are either level editors or menu systems or things like that. Tools, not an end product.

Quite recently, I think I found what the common denominator was in all this. I love improving things. When I'm faced with a task I usually start thinking of how to make that task easier, how to improve the workflow, to get past that boring part of the work as quickly and as effectively as possible. One good example is when I worked at Lockpick Entertainment. We had these huge excel-documents with miles and miles of items and abilities and units for this huge MMO real-time strategy game. One day, I was given the task to transfer these from the excel documents to the actual game database. The way this was done at the company before was to go to a certain website with your browser, click "add item" and then, field by field (usually around 30 or so fields), copy and paste all the stats cell by cell into the site. Then you pressed done, and you were done with one of the often hundreds of items... of one excel document.

No, I thought. There had to be another way to do this, so I did some digging and came up with the solution: I'll make a visual basic script for each excel document which goes through the list and parses it to an XML-file. At the other end, one of our programmers took a few hours to make an importer for it. The exporter took a week or two to make, the importer a day or so, and in the end each excel-document had a large button "Export to XML". You clicked it, all data was exported into XML, and with a single copy-paste into the importer website and a "Ok", weeks of work could be done in 10 seconds.

This was during a beta of the game which meant that these lists would be updated at least once every day. Using the old way, this would simply be impossible, or soul-destroying for the one who had to do it. Regardless of how impossible it would have been however, that's how my brain works. It loves solving problems, but it hates droning. When I started working at Lockpick I had tons of fun, and I was praised for the work I did. Interface design, the exporters, story writing, forum management.

However, my last time at Lockpick was the complete opposite. I had to sit with an (inferior and oh my gods so improvable) mission editor and make as many strategy game "grind" missions as I could as fast as I could. We are talking creating missions using a website, where your only view of the map was - and I'm not kidding - a 128x128 thumbnail of the height map. The units were red dots. It was an area smaller than your photo on your Facebook page.

That was the most boring and soul crunching job I've ever done, I think. Partly, it was so clear to not just me but the rest of the team that the editor had to be replaced with something... functional. And also, I was producing something that I simply didn't believe in. My boss did, and that was that. I was spending days to create a mission (in which there couldn't be much variety due to our restrictions) that a player would go through in 2-3 tries. Oh there were so many things wrong with the whole concept, but I was a grunt, and I was put to do a grunt's work in the end.

(Speaking of which; we had a "manual" for that editor which I took the liberty to improve. We went from a whopping worthless 4 pages to 22 pages and those were 99% explaining every single control in the editor window from top to bottom. I liked doing it because it felt like it actually made a difference. Players and other workers would some day use that tool and would need a pedagogical manual to understand it.)

Back to the subject... I'm a problem identifier and a problem solver, I guess you could say. I'm not just a game designer, I'm not a hardcore programmer. I'm not a great artist. I'm not super good at any one thing. I'm rather all-round. Not in a way that I don't like doing anything so let me bring you coffee; no, but in a way that I like doing a little bit of everything and see everything come together. I love systems, how something on one end affects something on the other end. I like to "tie the bag together" as someone once put it.

And I love not just game design, but I'm fascinated by the business side of it too. I strongly believe in experimenting with concepts of free/pay which doesn't involve the selling of a billion hats. (And I strongly oppose the concept of being able to buy yourself past progress where progression is the meat of the game. I believe in paying for the opportunity to progress. In a way, think an expansion to World of Warcraft as opposed to being able to buy yourself to top level and the best gear. Yet, some developers and publishers really think it's a good idea. Maybe it is in some cases if you want to kill off your own games and sell new ones instead, but not from a game developer's point of view - you put love into creating a game that players get to pay to not play.)

This was kind of a rant.

Uhm. I think I'm going to go play some...thing.

Squandered Good Intent and Charity

So today I threw some money in the direction of the Red Cross (in Sweden) to show some support for the people in Japan. Such a small country with so many people, and they get hit not only with a tsunami but nuclear reactor meltdown in the midst of it which some say is as bad as the Tjernobyl incident.

Now, these are not the only ones in the world right now needing help. Let's not forget the unrest down south where dictators send in air strikes on his own people for protesting against him. While monetary support for these is probably good, one other good way of helping is actually awareness. Exposure. The media has turned its eyes towards Japan and their crisis, forgetting for a moment places like Libya which in turn makes it easier for their president to strike without as much media attention. Not that his actions aren't already bad enough.

Anyhow, I have seen a "campaign" a few days now called "Pray for Japan". It leads to a site (twibbon) which says something like "Japan needs our support so lets pray for them". Pray? Pray? How about actually helping? How about at least inform viewers in how to help? Spreading that kind of information?

So today I sent a donation. I certainly haven't got a solid economy at the moment, but I felt that in the midst of good intentions getting squandered on "praying", at least I could do the right thing.

And yeah, I know, that's very un-Swedish of me to say. You should just get back to your place in line, don't make a sound, don't sound like you're better than anything or anybody else, and be a good citizen (and today, ironically, the Swedish government will vote about the "data retention directive" - a law that ultimately allows them to track our every step, when and with whom we communicate with).

For information on how to actually help the people in Japan (or for example Libya) you can go to Red Cross (Sweden) or Red Cross (America). Remember though, even if you can't help directly, you can always indirectly help by informing others. It's definitely worth more than a million prayers...