Rock Band Madness

Um, wow. Rock Band, Fog Machine, strobe light, automated

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

A Friend you can eat

I guess advertisements work, because I bought some Swedish Fish when I was at the grocery store. Today, I was sharing them with my roommates and their friends or signifcant others, and if anyone refused, I'd go, "It's a friend you can eat!".

Also Today, I watched basically what's deemed the CA state finals HS marching band competition. And wow it brought back a ton of memories. My roommate was in a marching band too, so it was a lot of fun. One of the bands, had like 300+ 100 colorguard, it was insane. We can actually hear the bands from our house, so we just drove 3 blocks to DVC and watched. Their stadium isn't really optimal for field shows though, t's really low, and pretty small, but oh well.

This had me wondering how CHS is doing, especially with all the director changes and whatever drama going on. Looks like they're doing pretty well.

Everything's Duckie Edition

Currently, since I haven't officially moved my stuff yet (will on thanksgiving, finally) I currently only own 1 DVD. Can you guess what it is? Yes, that's right, Pretty in Pink. I own it because it was included in the invitation for our holiday party, and yes, it's an 80's themed party.

UbiFun

I don't know if this is limited to game companies, but people like emailing everyone funny things they encounter in their daily web browsing. I personally enjoy it a lot. If it wasn't for a my coworkers, I would've never experienced beer shampoo.

Toilet Seat

I was eating at Mcdonald's for lunch today, and this McDonald's is fairly small, where everyone can see the bathroom, and the bathrooms are single occupancy. Even though they're 'private', in that you lock the door when you enter, they're still separated into male and female ones.

In the middle of lunch, I was randomly looking at the bathroom direction, and there's a woman waiting for the bathroom. One second later, a man walks out of the women's bathroom, and the lady gives a huge glare at him. The instant she enters the bathroom, she walks back out, and yells out towards the guy (and everyone in the restaraunt can hear), "You left the toilet seat up!" "In the WOMEN'S bathroom!" (with very high emphasis on the word women)

What made this moment funny, is that the guy responded. He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't know what happened, and said, "I only... only washed my hands."

He may or may not have been lieing (as perhaps another male occupant went in before him), but since I'm a guy, I don't know if women always leave the toilet seat down in women's bathrooms or not. I would think it would be weird to use a toilet seat, and then lift it up afterwards.

So what do you think, did this guy leave the toilet seat up, or just wash his hands?

Kitten Sandwich

Out of all magazines, an espn one (I think) is probably the least likely one you'd ever see me reading. I don't normally read sports magazine, as I'm not into sports, but there was one on the kitchen table, and I was bored at lunch, so decided to scan through it. I'm glad I did, because I love this ad. I wonder how comfy being snuggled by two pieces of bread would feel like.



I'm also not so certain that I'm someone on the lookout for friends to eat.

Ill-prepared

If you didn't know already, I'm the choir director for my ward. And If you knew me really well, you'd know that I'm totally the person you don't want as choir director. I can't sing, never been in choir, don't know how to warmup, don't know how much each word, nor each portion of a word should be enunciated while it's sung. I just know very little when it comes to choir-ing. Add in the fact that it's hard to get a pianist, I get stuck with figuring out how to direct the choir, and lead them while playing the piano (and I don't even have a piano or keyboard at home, so I'm sightreading the piano music, leading the choir, while all at the same time trying to figure out what the choir needs help with...)

Well, we get to add another layer upon this fun little equation. Our christmas number, we're doing jointly with the spanish branch, and (well i don't have the music yet, but I've been told that) half the song is in Spanish. So now, I can't even pronounce the lyrics, oh boy.

Cultivation

Today was my 2nd day of my new job, and I had a nice surprise when i walked to my desk today - a plant! my desk definitely needed the added green. I didn't though, ask if it was my responsibility to keep it alive.

I took a picture, but even though I'm positive there's no sensitive info in it, I have no idea what the policy is in terms of these types of things, so you guys won't get to see my plant.

However, since i felt the sameway with FSS, i never posted pictures from there either. So, Here's a cool picture i took:



It was definitely fun working with all that talent, and artists. Even their stick figures are high quality!

Arachnophobia Part II

I lay down on my bed, glance at the ceiling, and what do I see? Another spider... Not just randomly somewhere on the ceiling, but directly over my head!

This one too was squished to death.

No sympathy

Last night, I went to bed, shut my eyes closed and layed down. Shortly after my face felt a little tingly. I fidgeted a little, opened my eyes, and witnessed a spider (a very very ugly spider) crawl off my face. (well, technically I felt it crawl off, and then saw where it landed)

Yeah, that wasn't pleasant at all. I jumped out of bed, watched the spider, and grabbed a giant textbook, wrapped one end with a tissue, and slammed it against the little critter.

Bugs crawling on my face get no sympathy from me, and will only result in being squished to death. Let this be a warning to any of your insect buddies.

Pickiness

After recent E3, leipzig, and PAX, I often wonder what type of 'gamer' I am. When I was a kid, I'd play every game out there. Now, I'm incredibly picky, and settle on 2-4 games a year.

After reading the transcript of one of the panels at PAX (about girl gamers), where a guy asked, "How can I get my g/f to stop playing solitaire 24/7 and move on to a better game?" (something of that sort) the panelist responded, "you don't, it's what she likes, just like how some guys only and ever play Halo." Which got me thinking on what if I considered each videogame a different hobby in itself, and I'm just changing hobbies every year. That wouldn't make me much of a gamer, just like a die-hard soccer player isn't necessarily a sports enthusiast. (or is he/she?)

Whenever I mention I'm a game designer, or a gamer, people tend to mention games like Crysis, or Halo, or Portal, or GTA, or etc etc, a long list of games I haven't played. so what started as a commonality to start off a discussion, ends up distancing us apart. I don't see much commonality between a person who loves fencing with a person who loves softball, so how come when it comes to videogames, everything is jumbled into one hobby?

I also see many misunderstandings in other fields: since i like Salsa, then I must like Hip-Hop (or the even worse un-categorizable dancing seen at church dances), since I like (theoretical) computer science, then I must like programming, since I like (Discrete) Math, then I must like Calculus, etc.

Or is this just my nature? All of you already know how VERY picky I am with food. I guess, I'm very picky about everything else too. Whenever I generalize an interest, misconceptions come up, when i don't, well it gets too verbose to explain what I exactly like (especially to someone who's not familiar with that category).

Harsh Criticism

I've been catching up with ex-EGM editor Dan Hsu's blog. It gives really great insight onto the realities of gaming journalism, and unfortunately reinforces my current standing of, "you can't trust only one good review".

But I definitely understand the game publisher/developer's side, Noone strives to make only a 'so-so' game. When you have 20-40 employees spending 2 years of their life into a product, they're not going to agree with a low review score. But of course, it's because of this, that game designers have to really try to detach themselves with their passion, and objectively ask themselves, is someone else going to have fun with this?

Are your parents home?

I hate to keep on puting age related issues on here, but i've never been asked this question since, well, since I lived with my parents (10 years ago).

I was still in some state of shock when answering, "Um, uh, I'm one of the residents here".

Of course I'm happy to look younger than I really am, but it does get a bit tiring to be thought up of as a kid. Maybe I need to work on my diet and tone up a bit so I perhaps maybe look like a Man instead of a boy.

On a different, but similar note, regarding chinese gymnasts, if there doesn't exist evidence that those girls are actually young, anyone who knows me, for sure knows that you can never tell how old an asian is by looks and/or size/muscle mass. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

(I wonder if we were elves in a past life...)

Hmmm...

Ah, the allure of stuffed animals...


http://view.break.com/536276 - Watch more free videos

Maybe I should try this next time

Thanks M!

M(E) sent me this awesome link

Virtual Wooing

Well it's settled. I'm officially the worst wooer.

I just finished Mass Effect, unsuccessfully wooing the potential love interest of the game.

Mass Effect is a futuristic RPG, with very in depth dialog. In every conversation, you have many natural options to choose from. I guess it turns out for the potential love interest of the story, I must've chosen every wrong thing to say to her.

Guess that's why I'm single...

Carded

Wow, I haven't been carded in a long time. I guess I look even younger when I'm with my cousins. K/H and J/P were visiting San Francisco, and we went to the sony store at the metreon. They have some type of truancy/loitering policy or something (and even though it wasn't a school night/day), if you're under 18, you're not allowed in the store without an adult.

Well, we were just browsing, and a security guard said, "You're not allowed in here, may I see your ID?" I was quite flustered, since I had no idea what he meant (I didn't read the under 18 signs or anything before then). I was confused, and simply replied, why?

"Minors aren't allowed in the store at this time"

(So I was thinking oh,, he must be refering to J/P)

"Are minors allowed in with an adult?"

"Someone a bit older, yes, but you have to be next to your parents"

(Now realizing he was still referring to me, I matter of factly say:)

"I'm 28" (and shows ID)

And the guy laughs, and, takes a closer look at my ID. "Wow, sorry, yeah, you're fine."

I can understand being carded buying alcohol, and even understand perhaps not looking 21, but, looking like someone under 18? I definitely hope my mannerisms inflect a more mature age...

Misunderstood

Well, the BART station just opened up a 2nd parking garage, and so for once I thought I might have a closer than 15 minute walk parking spot to the station. Well, I get to the top (the 8th floor), and after spending a good 5-10 minutes just driving up the thing (*wishes for car elevators*), the parking lot is full. Normally, before the 2nd garage, ther'es an electronic sign saying if it is full or not, but it wasn't working (probably because of thme combining it with the 2nd garage).

But wait, there is one spot left, but a big ole truck is taking up .25 of the spot. My car is tiny, so I manage to squeeze through.

Then, when I return to my car after work, I get this note on my car. "I'd just like to let you know that you parked really close to me. Please spend more time watching where you park."

For some reason, despite its politeness, it still irritated me (Well, only slightly). I guess part of me gets annoyed when I am not allowed a rebuttal to explain the circumstance.

Well, a different more important question, though, is, what's better excerise? Walking up and down 8 flights of stairs, or walking 15 minutes to and from a far parking spot? Driving up the garage, probably wastes a lot of gas, and takes just as long to get to the station, so I'm not saving any time, so where should i park?

To tell or not to tell

A few days ago, I was walking to the train station, when I noticed a man in front of me unfortunately had a coffee stain on his bum. He just walked off a bus, so either he acquired it there, or for some reason enjoys wearing pants that makes him look like he had some extra poo.

I then thought to myself, should i tell this guy? If that guy had an important presentation or meeting with a client, a stain like that could easily break an important deal.

On the other hand, there isn't much he can do for the time being. After my similar experience, I would just be self conscious the whole time, really annoyed and frustrated about the stain. And even worse, if he already knew, then someone else pointing it out, might just make him realize how noticable it really is, and potentially making him feel even more embarassed and awkward.

I opted to not tell him. What would you do?

Dreamscape

Well, this happened a few days ago, I've just been forgetting to blog about it, but:

I woke up one morning a few days ago, and for some strange reason, I was in my parent's house, in the room I lived in as a boy. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. I knew I was dreaming. This sense was so strong. There's no way I could be at my parents home. I then attempted to wake myself up. But, I had no idea how. I basically just looked up, and yelled, "your dreaming, wake up!". I kept on screaming for like 5 minutes. It didn't work, so I was like, 'oh well, maybe I'm not dreaming, I better start getting ready for work' and thus I proceed to the shower. My dream continues, and I don't remember anything of it. But when i eventually woke up, I totally remembered i knew I was dreaming. It was so strange.


Later that day I told one of my co-workers this story, and he mentioned, that he read some documentary that some people actually attempt to try to recognize they're dreaming when they dream. This way, they can 'control' their dream, and do whatever they want. I wish I had that mindset during my dream, lol. Instead, I spent the whole time trying to just wake myself up. I should've been instead playing a bach double concerto with Sarah Chang, or proving P=NP in front of well-known computer science theorists, or starring in a spy thriller movie doing some crazy crouching tiger hidden dragon martial arts. So many possibilities... How stupid of me to just go to the shower and get ready for work.

PS. Oh, and sorry M.E. for possibility misleading you into thinking this post is about our awesome high school piano composition, but I thought the name fit.

My Commute

I like my commute in the morning. It gives me time to read my scriptures, and I get to see some awesome views every morning. Here's some pictures I took with my phone.

Mystery Mojo

Wow, today was a weird day.

It's not quite normal, scratch that, Extremelely, very (Ochen) not normal for me to get hit on. It's just something I'm not used to encountering. But today I got hit on twice. Interesting day indeed.

My cousin's dad happened to be in SF for business today, and since I wanted to get this DS thingy from my cousin, he gave it to his dad, and during lunch today, I went to pick it up. And on my way, this guy approaches me, kind of stands in front of me as to talk to me, and then gives some type of wink, and says, "Hey handsome".

Ummmm..., I was totally caught offguard and was just too bewildered to respond, and I just kept on walking. I should've expected this sooner from San Francisco, I mean come on the trains have 'gay tv' ads on them, but the only time I'm really walking out in San Francisco is during rush hour and near downtown, so all you see is business people sipping a cofee on the way to work. (And also, I'm not going to be embarassed, but
having blonde highlights probably has a stronger correlation to gay men than straight, which someone might use as an identifier without knowing the person)


And as I went through the day, I was like, wow this will make an interesting blog post, and I probably could've embellished more, but encounter #2 is just all the more juicy.

My train hits pleasant hill, and I start walking towards my car. This girl approaches me, asking how to get to richmond. I start off a little puzzled because I don't know the area very well, and my brain is kind of thinking, trying to remember where richmond is, where she then just goes, "Your cute" and smiles. My brain has finally finished calculating where richmond is, and I kind of give an automated response of, "Thanks, I appreciate that". She's not so bad looking either, so I was thinking about returning the favor, but I refrained (which in hindsight, to anyone else, I should've complemented her, but this case I'm glad i didn't). Again, with my brain kind of being delayed, I was like, yeah take the BART, you have to xfer when you get to... and she interupts me and goes, "You wanna hook up?".

Me: "UMMM..." (This i guess makes my second um for the day)

She kind of notices my state of surprise, and diverts the situation by asking, "do one of these busses go to richmond?" Since I had no clue, I just said, just take the train, when she then follows up with, "Do you have kids?"

And I go, "No...."

And then she decides to introduce herself. she goes, I'm Myeesha (Or something like that, Already forget her name), what's your name?

"Matt"

"Do you want to hookup?"

"Um... that's alright"

"You're cute. You sure you don't want to? no kids right?"

"No thanks"

"No kids?"

At this point, I beign walking backwards, and go, "Good luck, take the bart, you know how?"

"Yeah."

And I hear her mumble some more, questioning, no kids?

I face away, and walk away.

A book and its cover

Can you identify a type of person by what car they drive? Even more so, can you tell what type of neighberhood, by what cars are parked there? I ask this, because literally, every house on this street has a truck parked in its driveway. Even my roommate has a truck. Does this say soemthing about the street I live on? Or am I trying to read into things too much?

Chocalate suprise

You delve into a chocalate, and then bam! this artificial concoction that tastes more like glue, wax, and sugar, than the claimed flavor of cherries, or strawberries, or rasberries enter your mouth. You spit it out in disgust, and just wonder, how in the world does such a candy store get so popular. This is what I think of See's Chocolate.

Every time i drive home, the first residential street i turn on has a See's store right at the beginning. Every time I pass it, I think, this is such an out of place location (well it's kind of close to the mall), but I'm like, they must not get any business.

And to my surprise, on Saturdays and weekends (ok, wow, i can't beleive I just typed that, Saturdays, and Sundays), I see the parking lot full (There's no other store). This totally baffles me, I can't stand their candies. I know I don't have any where close to a normal person's taste buds, but still, I think my whole extended family hates See's Candies. Do not buy us a box for Xmas.

What do people see in this brand? I can understand jelly bellies. A Jelly bean is much smaller than a See's Chococlate. furthermore, The bad flavors are supposed to be bad, that's part of the appeal. But See's, you're paying like a whole dollar for a bad choclate. I don't even pay that much for a good piece of choclate.

If you want to get me a chocolate for a gift, give me ferrero rochers

My Endless Fear

About 2-3 weeks ago, I was for some reason feeling really rushed after I left work. When I went onto the train, there were 2 empty seats. seeing that everyone else around me decided to just stand, I was like ok I'll take the seat then.

So I quickly go to the seat and sit down. About 5 seconds later, I jump out of the seat, realizing my bottom is all wet. I had sat in some wet puddle. Feeling totally embarassed (and suddenly realizing why noone took the seat) i went to another part of the train, with my butt wet for a whole the rest of my 35 minute train ride. Due to my embarassment, i didn't even look back at the seat to see what that liquid was.

After I got home, I quickly changed, and now finally being able to see the bottom of my pants and underwear, noticed it was all yellow... I didn't dare smell it to guess what i sat in.

Now, everytime I sit down on the train, I have this constant fear I'm going to sit in a puddle of pee. I either spend a good 5 seconds looking at my seat before sitting down. And if i forget to spend 5 seconds looking, i end up having a knee-jerk reaction causing me to fidget to the side, and double check if the seat is dry, before fully sitting down.

I just might be scarred for life...

3 Door Closet

Is there a nontechnological field similar to HCI (Human Computer Interaction)? Because when I stare at my closet, I wonder, did whoever design it actually try to use it? They seriously need to learn how humans interact with a closet.

It's not that bad, but so you can all understand, It's a master bedroom closet (not walk-in) and has 3 sliding doors, evenly taking a 3rd each of the closet. However, there's only 2 rails, so 2 doors are on one rail, and the third is on a different one. This means you can only have 1/3 of the closet available to you at a time.

Now, the closet itself, is partioned into 2, with a shoe like rack built into the center. So basically the 3 openings you can get via the doors, do not match the layout of the closet. I want to fire whoever made this closet. It's only slightly bigger than what someone would expect from a regular room closet, why not just stick with 2 doors half the size of the closet, like every other closet?

Or at least have 3 rails. I guesss this guy hasn't ever had fun with a 3-board whiteboard or chalkboard. Hmm... A white board closet, now that's an idea...

Tone Mute

I'm not really tone deaf, but I've always struggled creating a pitch. My high school friends termed me as tone-mute.

But actually, I am kind of tone-deaf. My ear is good at some things and horrible at others. I have a really hard time telling relative pitch. I can tell if two notes aren't the same, but a lot of times it's hard for me to tell if it's flat or sharp. Especially if the two sounds are different timbres.

Part of me thinks that I really am tone-deaf, and that I learned pitch by feeling the resonance rather than hearing it. And eventually, my massive amount of time playing musical instruments has slowly improved my ability to detect intonation.

I read an interesting article at lunch today, which brought me to this site:
http://www.delosis.com/listening/home.html
which then has lead me to believe I'm not as tone deaf as I think I am, but compared to my friends who got perfect scores, I still wonder why I have to struggle despite all the musical training I've had...

Ye Elders of Israel

I kind of touched on this in my facebook random comment thingy. But where are all the guys that play piano? It's kind of funny that every ward I visited, I played piano for priesthood. And when I visited Walnut Creek, they didn't even have a hymn. That may change, now that they know I play piano.

Economics

You know, I kind of wish I studied more economics. I haven't even taken the basic 101. Well I did take MM's Game theory courses, but outside of game theory, and outside of the literature reviews I've read for my research in auctions, I kind of wish I had more economics background.

Now as I'm developing for a small game company, I regret not taking classes even more. Every decision we make, and resource we spend, we always have the underlying question, are we going to make money from this?

And for online games, this typically leads to a few different interesting paradigms:

1) A Subscription model
2) A RMT (Real Money Transacation/Trade) model where the basic game is free, but you pay for perks
3) Expansion based model - where online play is free, but new content is only acceissble via buying expansions
4) Free online play
5) Any Hybrid of those 4 (e.g., hgl is a hybrid free online but has subscription options)

So which model should games use?

They all have various pros and cons, and if anyone is curious, see
http://www.digra.org/dl/order_by_author?publication=Situated%20Play
for some good analysis, (and other various videogame conferences, just too tired to find them)

I also think a model based on CCGs (like Magic) can be a good model for videogames too. Needs to be done right though. (I really want to know how much Magic Online makes.)

Final Fantasy music

I'm a big fan of the music from Nobuo Uematsu

As I was randomly watching the trailor of the re-release of FF4 for the DS, the music instantly sparked many emotions within me. Which lead to me think, what really makes music sad? I definitely think there's some key components regardless of context(for instance, a fast intense sequence is not going to be viewed as sad). But for the most part, I think the event tied to the particular phrase, piece, or song has more to determine why we think it's sad. (assuming the piece has no lyrics)

I'm curious on a song such as Aerith's theme, if any emotion would be sparked by someone who hasn't play FF7. I guess this would be akin to sad music in Movies, but at the same time different. Videogames require a lot more time investment, and as playing as the chars, in my opinion you get a lot more attached and relate to the characters of the story than from a movie or tv series. And even so, If I even reheard the music played during the background during those sad scenes, I probably wouldn't be able to correlate the sad scene to the piece.

So are songs sad because they inherently are, or because they're attributed to a sad event? Or do both exist? (Or have we just been trained to associate particular musical themes to different emotions, e.g., with colors, pink->baby girl, blue->baby boy?)

The Bat Cave

Working at a gaming studios is definitely interesting.

One interesting dynamic is that only 1/4 of the lights are on at work. If any of you know me, I like light. and I like light all the time. I like the lights on during a movie, and not just a little light, butas much as I can.

Well, this kind of poses an interesting situation at work. The first week I was working here, I was actually right next to a window, so the daylight was bright enough to keep me normal. But then I got moved closer to the HGL team, and put into a corner where all the cubicle-ish walls block the light from the windows, and the 1/4 of them from the ceiling that are on. It's like total pitch black. I don't understand how the person before me was able to work. A & K refer to it as the 'bat cave'

But I guess being in computer science, I have learned a lot of students like working in the dark. And quite a few gamers like to play in the dark (I have the glow in the dark gaming keyboard to re-affirm that, even though i don't use it in the dark). So I guess Gaming programmers really like the darkness.

Well. I remedied the situation and brought two lamps. However, I bought too bright of bulbs, and so on the other side of my cubicle-ish area, you can see bright white spots. I just leave it as a nice surprise to anyone who walks on the other side.

But again, I ask, what's the fascination with working in the dark?

NDA's

Wow. How do I communicate all the cool things I'm doing at work without saying what I'm doing? Everyone is asking me how my first week of work went, and I struggle. Well I start off with, "Work is really fun!" and then that ends up being the whole conversation.

But I guess I can spend this time going into more detail. So far, I've been assigned solely to Hellgate:London. What makes work so enjoyable, is that it's a great mix of creativity and problem solving. It's easy to come up with cool ideas to improve the game. What's harder though, is designing something cool with limitations. I have to be able to create something new and innovative but with using as few of our programmer's resources/time as possible.

Sometimes I feel I'm in the middle of a tug-o-war at work. I basically have 2 bosses. One which is like a creative lead, who I brainstorm with and we settle on cool things to add to the game. Then we have the guy who's in charge of assigning tasks to the programmers. And he basically shuts down every idea we have. "We don't have time for that!" "That guy is swamped with the UI improvements!" "I have two programmers out on vacation next week!" But in a lot of ways it's good, it really helps me think out of the box, because I have a cool idea, but I need to figure it out within the limitations of the system.

Which, personally, I love these types of tasks, and think I actually excel at these type of things. Everywhere in computer science, there's this concept of a "blackbox" . That is, you have this mysterious black box, you don't know anything inside of it. All you know is you give it something, and it'll then spit something out. You then have to be able to do something else using the blackbox.

Toy Problem Example: You have a biased coin that doesn't have 50/50 odds. Instead, you get heads with probability p, and tails with probability 1-p. How do you use that coin to be able to get 50/50 odds? (Hint: The answer doesn't rely on the value of p)

So, getting back on track, I constantly want to do wacky things. The challenge I encounter at work, and what makes it fun, is figuring out how to do that within the bounds of the system.


Hmm, I digressed a lot, maybe I should of labeled this post BlackBox instead of NDA. But yeah, being under an NDA is very annoying, since what I'm doing at work is so cool and fun, I just want to tell everyone else!

Mass Transit

Wow, it's nice having access to a train/subway system. If I had to drive, I wouldn't want to live anywhere farther than 15 minutes from work. But with the BART (Bay Area Rapid Trasit), the Muni (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) and CalTrain I have so many choices to live. Basically I can live up to an hour away, and not be annoyed by the commute since I could just sit down on a train, relax and read, or play a game, or just sleep some more.

The harder thing now is choosing where to live...

San Francisco

Well, I'm here. It still hasn't hit me that this is going to be a permanent place of residence. I still feel like I'm on vacation. Probably because I'm still looking for a place and temporarily staying with A&K. Anyways, wow, today was busy, I visited both the Palo Alto and San Francisco wards. Both were really cool, so I'll probably end up wherever is most cost efficient and/or where I find good roommates.

GTA

I don't have too many opinions about this game. Mainly, because I haven't played any game in this series at all, nor really plan to. What may surprise some of you, is that I don't play it because of the potential violence and nudity, but because these games are too open ended.

I'm not a person who likes to be dropped into a virtual world where I have to construct my own goals and see if I can accomplish them. I instead want the game to present me a series of challenges. Yes, games like Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls, and Tony Hawk, additionally do present challenges, but these games focus so many resources into making an immersive world that the actual challenges presented end up being stale. That's just my opinion, as I know many will disagree since those are all top rated games.

Harmonix

Guitar Hero, Rock Band, SingStar - which game do you support?

SingStar's success in Europe as well with the initial launch of 200 available songs in the US PS3 release kind of scares me.

I mean, yes, I'm excited that the music game genre is now mainstream, and that there are many viable options. However, Harmonix, is the company that made it happen. They are the ones with the creativity. They are the ones that create music games because they want people to have fun. They want the non-musician to experience music. They want you to have fun. Making money is only secondary to them. They made music rhythm games before guitar hero, before the sudden popularity of the genre. They are the ones that took the risk. They are the ones that found the format that 'click's with the anti-gamer. So the next time you have the option to support Harmonix vs RedOctane vs a random internal Sony studio, Choose Harmonix.

Ok, well some of you might be confused.

Before Guitar Hero was made, Harmonix, had 2 'niche' music rhythm games, Frequency and Amplitude. RedOctane on the other hand, became a specialist in hardware. During the DDR craze, if it wasn't for RedOctane, there wouldn't be any dancepads with a lifepsan greater than 2 weeks. I do respect RedOctane very much for the role they played in making DDR popular and accessible to the US.

So, with Harmonix now having experience making music games, and redoctane acquiring a specialty in making hardware specifically for music games, it only made sense for them to join forces and make guitar hero - which they did. And then they made guitar hero 2.

But then, they split. Harmonix wanted to continue their dream of giving the 'ultimate' music experience, while redoctane, seeing real money for the first time, didn't want to abandon the guitar hero label. So, they split. RedOctane was acquired by Activision, and unfortunately, Activision didn't have the same mentality as Harmonix. They don't care for the players, they just care about the money. They don't want companies like Harmonix to succeed. They specifically made sure their PS3 controllers wouldn't work with Rock Band. (The only reason they didn't do this for the xbox was because it was infeasible without making gh2 controllers not work too.) If you can only afford one game between guitar hero 3 (or any other future guitar hero, also note that future guitar heros are very likely to copy and include drums and singing too) versus rock band, get rock band. Support the company with the vision. Not the one (well the one who's publisher) is only caring about the end profit.

Oh yeah, Before SingStar was Karaoke Revolution. Guess who made karaoke revolution, yeah, Harmonix did. Support the company that wants to bring a music experience to everyone, not the one who has the most lobbying power among the music labels to license their songs.

Dev PR

My opinion might change, now that I have 'dev' status, but I can't stand dev posts that try to justify decisions with faulty arguments. If you want an item to be more rare, just say so, "We feel the power level of this item warrants an arena rating requirement." And people will understand your decision.

What not to do:

Quote from: Drysc
The non-set items are there to fill out the arena sets, they're essentially placed there specifically so that arena players have a reason to participate in other aspects of the game. We want to see their faces around, we don't want them just standing on top of the battlemasters all day.

So, with them being arena items intended to fill out the current top-end arena set, and our increase to rating requirements all around, it's actually very logical.

First thing, This is so NOT logical, and devs shouldn't make their player base feel like they're stupid.

Furthermore, I don't like the attitude that players should do things that they don't want to do. C'mon, those players already had to spend 100+ hours to level up to 70 in order to just play arena, and you don't want them to play what they enjoy most about your game? I really do have a love-hate relationship with WoW.

Phad See Iw

Yum, my favorite dish. I can eat this forever.

However, even though I like Thai Kitchen, nothing compares to the Phad See Iw at Lynnwood's Talay Thai (I hope that's the name of the right restaraunt).

I guess I'll soon have the luxury to experience the thai cuisine in SF, I hope it's up to par!

Side Question: with the recent scare and rise of rice prices, are my favorite rice noodle dishes going to get more expensive?

Violin Virtuoso

It's interesting how I keep on mentioning that a video game designer is my dream job, and it is, but when I was growing up, I even more badly wanted to write video game music. I even interviewed the US squaresoft branch sound technician for a high school english assignment once.

Now that I've become quite rusty with my music skills, those dreams have dampened quite a bit, but I'm excited as ever to be a game designer. I guess we all have multiple dreams and at different points of times, different ones become our 'daydream' so to speak.

Maybe some day, I'll be a violin slash piano virtuoso that designs AAA games and teaches Discrete Math at MIT...

Flagship Studios

Well, I got the Game Designer job!

So seeing how I'll be moving in a week and a half, I guess I'll try to put more blog posts up, and let everyone know how I'm doing.

If you're curious what I'll be working on:


Most of my time will be on Hellgate: London, there's a small chance I'll be working with Mythos too.

Journals

J's Sunday School Lesson has definitely inspired me to start a journal, and how it could be a great way to let your descendants get to know you, as well as being able to re-live your own memories in more clarity in the future.

And thinking about journals, has had me thinking about blogs, and how maybe I should actually tell people about this one. Well, If I move to SF, then I'll probably make this public, so people can catch up with what's going on with me.

Which then leads me to, should i put blog entries into my journal? Links to these youtube and gametrailer clips are probably not going to exist 30 years from now. Well maybe, but might not be the easiest to access. Well, irregardless, i think this blog has much more context when you have the video clip references.

Pitch Correction

Hmm, maybe this will finally inspire me to write music again. I'll actually be able to record them with my own voice... hah!

Well technically I guess it was always possible with single track pitch correction... I guess I'll just have to work on being able to sing 2 notes at a time to fully take advantage of this.



also at http://dvice.com/archives/2008/04/miraculous_dire.php

Space Shooters

I don't know why I love space shooters. Maybe because it's a very straightforward and simple premise... I don't know

Anyways, I'm very excited Ikaruga has come out on XBLA. It has such an elegant mechanic that adds so much depth to the genre. No other shooter has accomplished the great feeling of 'overcoming insurmountable odds' as much as Ikaruga. (You can be immune to one color of bullets at any time and switch anytime)

I still have no idea how I ever achieved my personal record of 6 credits to beat this game back on the Gamecube. Now, I rarely can survive the beginning of lvl 4...

Ventrilo

After playing some WoW 2v2 with my cousin, I pondered, what would sports be like today with voice communication?

I mean, for every competitive team based online game, voice communication is a prerequisite to succeed even at the basic level. Just imagine a game of soccer or football, or whatever game, where each player can instantly communicate to all other players on his or her team. I guess I don't have to imagine, it'd probably be pretty similar to strategies in online games.

O2Jam

People always wonder how I can play the hardest songs on Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Well, It's because I love this genre of games. I play EVERY music rhythm game I can get my hands on.

When you play games like O2Jam, rock band is pretty easy in comparison



Granted I can't beat Red Sign yet, but I can get through 80% of the song. I never really tried it on panic mode though, that might make it easier.

More Higher Up

Even though I don't play Magic anymore, I'm a constant reader of their site. Recently they posted this great archive of old articles of Richard Garfield. I highly suggest reading through them if you have any interest in game design.

After reading his articles on the creation of his game, 'The Great Dalmuti', I just reminisced on the countless hours my cousins and I played tiến lên (even though I thought it was always called tiến lân). I don't know what's so addicting about that game. Maybe because the game is short and has a lot of variety. Or maybe for those, 'ah hah!' moments where you beat someone's 2 of hearts with a bomb. Or maybe, I just like counting cards, and this is an easy game to count cards with. Actually, you have to count cards to do well in the game. which brings me to a different point, I don't understand how Casinos have made people think 'counting cards' is considered cheating outside of the casino. They need to play some tiến lên

Post 0

Well, this is my first post, and first blog. I leave no guarantees of enjoyment while reading. And of course you may have missed this post, because I'm not making this public. If I feel like I actually will be regularly blogging, then I'll make it public. This is my experiment for now.

Even though growing up, I loved playing single player games, I've migrated to games that only let you play with other people. Thus, cooperative music rhythm games like guitar hero, rock band, and MMOs have been on top of my list to play. Even though many good single player games like God of War and FFXII have come out, I always end up playing multiplayer games. Playing with people is always more fun than by yourself. I wonder if Lost Odysey will change that. With it being my first next gen game by a japanese company, I look forward to the cinematics and beauty of the game. And of course, the music, by Nobuo Uematsu is incredible. If I finish this game, this will be the first in quite a while for a single player game.

After wandering around video games news sites, I encountered myself upon Patapon. Music Rhythm game + strategy + RPG? Too bad it's on PSP only, this would've have been perfect for something like Xbox Live Arcade.