THE PROTOCULTURE

Issue: Games: Online Distrobution

2011-10-31T15:51:00.000-07:00

Issue Summary:
Online distribution (digital delivery,electric software distribution) allows game companies to deliver video game content without the use of a disk. The content is delivered directly to the to the end users platform (PC,game console,phone) via the internet. The content may be streamed or downloaded, streaming users may download and use the content whenever they choose and for as long as they would like, while downloading users hold all downloaded content on their platforms hard drive.

Online distribution is an enticing option for companies because it cuts expenses and opens the door to new business models, like how the music industry adopted the Open Music Model. The music industry is now able to sell songs from an artists album separate, giving listeners the option to buy the songs they already enjoy without being forced to purchase the whole body of work, which alleviates the need for listeners to decide if they enjoy songs they have not heard yet.

Game companies now have the ability to initially sell a portion of a title, then present the rest of the game as downloadable content, or (DLC). This is beneficial to the company as they may release the title as a complete standalone for full price no matter its point in the development cycle, and continue to release additional game content at leisure over the course of years for a third the price of the initial release.

Steps to reproduce:
Online distribution has become pioneer country in the games industry, with one company emerging as arguably the front-runner of the service. The company is named after the gaseous phase of water, it was started by a big boned individual and his weird friend. They used to build operating systems for a philanthropist until they decided they liked games better than doing things that only facilitated it, even though they were pretty good at that as well.

So they built this internet thing that sells their own and other companies games and DLC. They figured it would just be easier if every game was in one place, because for them at the end of the day it was about fixing a problem they saw and they would deal with the money stuff when it came up because they had crap-tons of cash already, and were pretty much over being rich.

They traveled hat in hand to video game and internet people they met along the way trying to get them to see how this would help everybody and fix a big problem before it got worse, but nobody wanted anything to do with it.

Even their old philanthropist friend said no. The philanthropist reasoned that no other video game company in their right mind would give a competing company their product to sell, that other company would rip them off, obviously, and they would not have any say in how their game is presented. What if it's not front page? What if it competes with something they were trying to sell? It sounded stupid.

The public thought the service sucked hard at first. They just wanted their games, and they did not trust the internet to hold on to something they bought on their behalf. What if the internet or the company went away, what would happen to what they bought? It sounded stupid.

But the vapor company stuck with it, they approached each developer individually and plead their case in a way that the developer knew money didn't mean shit to them as they had more money than they knew what to do with. They were more interested in changing stuff, so a lot of people gave them their games to take care of. They took that responsibility seriously, almost everyone got off their back, and things got better for a while.

Expected Result:
Major game companies have recently pulled their titles from the vapor store. Each has a different reason, but most boil down to conflict of interests, exploitation, or money. The companies that object appear later with their own online delivery service with modified objectives.

They provide only their own titles, all the profits go directly to them, and the end user must deal with them directly if they need help playing the games they bought. But it hasn't gone so well. People don't like or trust them, they want them to go back to the vapor place because after a while it just became easier for the people to get everything from one place.

So now end users are mad, because they just want to play the games they bought, and not deal with shit they don't care about and didn't pay for.

QA Observations:
QA believes online distribution is an unavoidable but dangerous direction for the industry. The absence of physical media will negate the need for artists, floor production personnel, and many more vital industry jobs.

This shift puts responsibility for the survival of the industry squarely in the hands of game companies. End users have no dealings with the data delivery process, and without a physical disk are beholden to the deliverer for services and content if something happens to their hard drive data.

If the end user feels they are being cheated or manipulated deal with each online distributor separately for access to purchased content for too long, they will simply stop purchasing the product. The end user only wants to play the video game they purchased, and only wish it to be fairly priced, complete, and available to play any time they wish to play it.

QA suggests companies decide among themselves a centralized hub for delivery of online content after coming to an agreement on the business related details among themselves, as it now makes the decision to do the right thing completely up to them.

Games: Call to Duty

2011-10-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

Libya is a country in northern Africa. Sudan is to the south, Egypt to the east, Tunisia to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Libya's flag has three solid colors running horizontally across its length, red on top, black in the middle, green on bottom. A white crescent moon and star sit center in the black bar. Its capitol is named Tripoli, the locals pet name for the city is, "The Mermaid of the Mediterranean."

In 1969 Muammar Gaddafi was a Libyan military officer that didn't like how the government was running things, so he convinced his military buddies to take over the country with him. He assumed office September 1st, 1969. Right after his inauguration he abolished the Libyan Constitution of 1951, deciding instead to make laws up as he went along. His hobbies include wearing silly clothes, hanging out with other famous dictators, and making people that don't like him go away.

The citizens of Libya got tired of putting up with Muammar's shit on February 15, 2011. They got together in downtown Tripoli and walked around holding posters on sticks that briefly described things they didn't like about him and the shit he pulls. Muammar was confused as to why they mad. Nobody ever said bad things about him to his face, so he figured he was a pretty good dictator. He chalked it up to a miscommunication, but just to be on the safe side he ordered his military to shoot or arrest anybody that had something to say.

The bad eggs had a feeling this would happen, so the next time they got together they made sure to bring sticks, rocks, or whatever else they had laying around. But the Libyan military didn't sweat it much because they were strapped. They told the bad eggs to go home, and when it became apparent the bad eggs weren't going anywhere, the military went ahead and shot or kidnapped anybody that had something slick to say about their boss. The bad eggs in turn started tossing stuff at anybody that still liked Muammar enough to do what he told them to do.

One day both sides said fuck it and began killing each other, because talking was taking too long. And that’s been going on for a while now, but is winding down because other countries heard about what the bad eggs were going through and decided to help where they could. They always thought Muammar was a dick, but didn't feel it their place to say so until someone that lives with him said it first. The bad eggs found out where Muammar's sons were hiding with the help of their new friends and arrested them. Most of Muammar's army has stopped helping him. Mummers must have been over his family and country though, because one day he grabbed everything he could fit in his car and dipped out, but they found him later and killed him violently in the streets without a trial. But I get where he was coming from, he was running a perfectly fine dictatorship for decades, then all the sudden everybody gets their feeling hurt.

The citizens of Libya will soon own a country, which means they have options. They may decide that everybody should be able add their two cents. They could decide that gods’ decisions are better than peoples, or they could just let somebody else like Muammar clean up the mess. Nobody knows what's going to happen because Libyans haven't had to make their own decisions for a long time and may have forgotten how to take care of themselves.

A video game about Libya will happen sooner or later. It will probably be first person shooter, but video game people also have options. A deity could hover above a bustling Tripoli, laying asphalt over dirt roads and clearing rubble from downtown streets. Replacing mortar shelled husks with farms, libraries, and schools. Maybe the deity populates the homes and roads with people that enjoy doing stuff that needs to get done. It could descend parallel to its project from time to time, taping citizens on the back to ask how they are doing or how they feel about the way things are going.

Or a rebel could sneak into military compounds to gather information, ducking military and sympathizers at every turn, searching for people stolen in the night by asking questions, doing favors, and deductive reasoning. Or a high ranking Libyan officer could talk his way into Muammar's inner circle, sowing dissent through speech option castle gossip, and misdirecting troop movements while pointing the rebels in the right direction, ultimately guiding them to their prize.

But it will probably be an first person shooter. Some buff dude with a pointy beard and ray ban shades to conceal his baby blues will stroll up Shari an Nasr shooting skinny guys in hipster scarves and beige camouflage onesies. He'll befriend this local cat that knows what’s going on and where everything is, but the local gets himself killed when he runs out of ways to help the big dude. About six hours in the caricature of a gay African prince shows up during a firefight to make a big speech. Bang, Bang, Bang, two to the chest, one in the head. Problem solved.

Nowadays any video game involving a gun is first person. Developers have a hammer so designers draw nails. Nails are a popular choice for any job because they are easy to make and come in a wide selection that all do the same thing. They plunge headfirst into any surface regardless of depth, and when the job is done the hammerer can recline secure in the knowledge he muscled up a construct anyone may enjoy at face value without forcing his end user to shoulder the burden of learning why the disparately complex pieces that form its whole go together.

Ya did good, Libyans, best of luck.

Games: Arcades

2011-10-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time until we became what we played. The arcade at its peak was both sanctuary and battlefield. You would walk in with your five dollars, do a lap around the dark room, taking in the sticky floors and soaking up the flashing lights and jarring sounds of bleeps, bloops, punches, tire screeches, and coded messages shared between fellow game players. They chat about everything from fighting game fatalities to rumors of your favorite company finally releasing your favorite game on console. Because after all, the arcade did what game journalists and the internet do now before anyone even knew that there was a need. It got us all together in one place and told us what we needed to know.

You would feed your dollars into the weird little box that would only work about 40% of the time. And if it didn't, there was always a twenty something guy milling about, ready to fulfill the task that the ugly machine had failed at. You could tell him by the half apron that constantly jingled when he walked, and the look of disdain he had when you made eye contact with him, because that meant that he had to work, and the only reason he took the job in the first place was to be around video games. not feed little kids quarters.

You grab your loot and once again look around the area, even though you know exactly what you want to play. So with your head down you slowly saunter toward the wall of people that circle shoulder to shoulder but quietly entranced behind two guys standing in front of a video screen that flashes harder and screams louder than all others around it. There is a fight happening. You have read about this fight, and practiced it yourself a few times in the arcade late at night when no one else was around, but never when it meant something. Your hands start sweating and your heart starts racing as your legs begin to move themselves close enough to get near the machine. Your arm shakes as you stretch out your hand and place a quarter at the base of the screen, next to five others in a line. Then you wait.

Darwin would have you believe that Lan parties and online play would be the natural evolution of the arcade. People say that the arcade never really died, but that with the introduction of these tools we were all were rid of the hopelessly archaic need of "seeing each other" that plagued us in the stone ages of gaming. To this I would only ask that a person one day take the time out to visit any medium or large game company and ask where to find either the "code dungeon," or the "tester pit." Then visit a large Lan party like the one pictured above and walk those dark corridors.In both these places I believe you will see what Ebenezer Scrooge was showed by the ghost of Christmas future. Some fucked up shit.

They are all dark warehouses illuminated by rows and rows of video screens reporting the same images. And next to them sit rows of rows of expressionless kids with faces invisible to the darkness. Not really playing games,just manipulating those images for a response. As long as something, anything happens on screen its ok. It doesn't mean nothing.

Arcades were places of anticipation and excitement because you were under constant audit by your fellow game players. At anytime during play a person could stand next to you, put their money in the machine, and test your skill. And if you won you could look the other person in the eye, say "good game," and have that guy walk away knowing that you beat him in a fair fight. Or you could be a D-berg, just walk away from the machine and allow the peon to finish your round because you were, "bored."

I am sure its all relative, and the future of online play will introduce something to entertain or inspire me enough to forget how much I miss the true social aspect of the games we play. But as of now I feel that technological advancements have taken us from playing the games we play for enjoyment, to constantly De-bugging the games for companies prepping the next release, patch, etc... We now just sit alone in a room, accountable to no one, accepting challenges from funny 1337 tags with no soul.

People: Over there by the bowling alley

2011-10-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

A long time ago I was new to the city, so I relied on my buddy and roommate to show me the sights. He worked over on University in that office complex between the library and the bank. He grew up on Dale right where it blends into Upas and then into Pershing. I drove down Pershing everyday on my way to school.

On my way down Pershing I'd catch glimpses of Frisbee golfers, bouncy castles, joggers, and sunbathers in the park. Through holes in a fence I'd see dudes in funny clothes root through bags full of metal clubs looking for something to save par. It was my favorite part of the day because the ride felt like a theme park attraction highlighting the benefits of living in the beach city I used to see in movies and listen to my moms friends brag about when they came back from vacation.

My buddy and I lived on the corner of Louisiana across the street from a restaurant that made Georgian food, Russian Georgia, not America Georgia, I found out later. It was a second story two bed one bath that provided modest living at an indecent price. We called our landlord the terminator, he was about six five, two hundred fifty pounds, had frazzled blond locks and a wrinkled sun pocked face. His frigid baby blues seemed able to ascertain your current fair market value down to the change in your pocket and potential earnings if you were foolish enough to keep his gaze.

We learned to set our watches to his rent collection, and did so not to be there for them. We began doing this after the third month there when upon walking to our apartment from the back alley we stumbled onto what we thought to be another exciting installment of our downstairs neighbors weekly play titled, "Domestic dispute."

It turned out to be our newest neighbors, two pretty girls that had moved in a month earlier. They had found offence in the terminators monthly practice of going door to door collecting tithe like a Nottingham sheriff, and decided to tell him as much. This turned out to be the first month we had failed to scrape enough together to pay the man, and decided it a perfect time to explore the neighborhood.

So we started down El Cajon, stopping at this bar shaped like an adobe house and painted blood red. While my buddy was showing his ID to the bouncer I sat on a bike made of metal to smoke a cigarrette. My buddy ended up going in while I sat outside to finish up.

I watched young dudes and chicks with asymmetrically teased hair hop out of reasonably priced sedans wearing t-shirts with names of bands I had never heard of on them. A few that were waiting for the bouncer to let them in would ask me for a smoke and we would make conversation about music or art or the weather. Some asked me how I liked my bike. I told em that its safe enough but dosen't handle the turns so well, most got the joke.

Later we walked back up El Cajon near where it crosses Louisiana and went into this bar set into the right side of a hotel. The hotel looked like it was assembled from the cleanest parts of southern plantations and the bar looked at first glance to be a rally point for ex patriots and jazz musicians. We muscled up next to a fossil that had fallen asleep on the stool a few years ago without being noticed. A piano played old sad standards in the back by the booths, and I could smell a steak somewhere. When we left my buddy remarked that the vibe seemed like "A better episode of twin peaks," which isn't a good thing I guess.

We figured that even the terminator would have given up the search for us by then, but made one more stop to be sure. We walked across the street to this place that had a fancy liquor glass on its sign but inside everything smelled like beer and body spray. The floor was sticky and the TV's were full of big dudes throwing stuff at each other. I swam to the bar and asked for a drink, the bartender said, "Hold the bleep up, champ." So I decided to go out and have a smoke while I waited.

While I was out there a chubby middle aged guy in a blue sweater with a lightning bolt shooting across the middle swayed toward me and stopped about a foot from my face. He told me he had noticed my hat, I assumed he noticed because I like to wear hats with the initials of my home town sports teams on them. He let me in on a rumor he heard that many homosexual people live in the city my hats initials represent, and asked if I count myself among their ranks or am native to the city we were in.

I verified his rumor by stating that I am of the hats city and in fact many of those, and I leaned in close here and he did the same in kind, "homosexuals," do indeed roam free there, and although I am not of their honorable tribe I suggested in so many words that he may in fact be, seeing as he was interested enough to question complete strangers about them. He pushed and yelled and carried on after that, but nothing much came of it. My buddy came out during the ruckus and suggested we go home, so we did.

Much later I ended up falling in love with one of the girls downstairs that stood up to the terminator, and surprisingly she loved me back. We moved few blocks up El Cajon to an apartment on the corner where Illinois intersects thirtieth, where we still live to this day. Its a second story one bedroom one bath with a patio that provides modest living at a kinda silly price. The landlord is a old guy with short grey hair that drives a Buick regal and laughs at his own jokes a lot, we don't see him much. I told my buddy where we had moved, he said, “oh nice, so you live over by the bowling alley?”

I told him I hadn’t seen any bowling alley as far as my exploration had taken me. He explained there used to be a popular bowling alley on the corner of Meade and thirtieth. He said that back in the day the alley would host parties and music events there. He said one night it would be a scene where guys with spiked hair painted green and tight fitting clothes with steel spikes jutting out of them would bounce around off tune to live music, and the next night it would be filled with students full on beer and hormones groping each other hidden by black lights and the crashing of seven ten splits.

He said they demolished it a while back because homeless people would give everyone a hard time, and patrons got so drunk they would forget that people lived around there and had to go to work the next day. Later I passed by where he said the alley was and saw a condominium for old people with a big chain coffee shop sticking out the bottom of it, but sure enough farther down and stuck in a walkway of the condominium was a sign that said “BOWL” in an old seventies drive thru font and another sign above it shaped like an arrowhead. In the middle was a guy wearing a headband with a feather sticking out.

She and I have been living here for a while now and we like it well enough. She works as a chef at a restaurant over on Adams across the street from the park. I work way up in Miramar helping to make video games for little kids. I like where we live because it’s easy to get on the eight oh five in the morning. I can make a left on Meade then a right on thirty second to a freeway onramp only locals seem to know about. I drive by this guy walking his daughter to school across the overpass every morning and if I don’t see them I know I’m late.

She always seems to be telling him the most exciting story ever and he just walks with her book bag slung over his shoulder smiling and responding to her with his hands as if he is helping her finger paint. I never had occasion to talk to him but I assume he is walking her up the block to the elementary school wedged in between Oregon and Idaho. Seeing them do this everyday makes me feel like I used to when I rode down the hill on Pershing that spit me out downtown, but different because I never saw myself in the people down Pershing.

I felt they were able to lazily stroll the city's bounty, picking and choosing the freshest and most savory portions, while us foreign surfs shanghaied by promises of sun and sand toil away in heat day in and day out preparing their feast. But watching those two happily go through this ritual every morning gives me the feeling that the city’s epidermis pales in comparison to its innards. We surfs live warm and slow and happy even when everything seems all about the people just passing through. One day his daughter will get old enough to walk alone or we will move again and that’s ok, we will figure something out.

People: The Bomb Farm

2011-10-28T17:07:00.000-07:00

A medium time ago I worked for the navy on an aircraft carrier. I was an aviation ordnance man, we dealt in bombs, guns, pyrotechnics, rockets, missiles, and torpedoes. But mostly we dealt in bombs.

We assembled bombs, moved bombs from place to place, or guarded bombs until ordered to put them on something leaving the boat. I spent my entire naval career hanging around explosives.

A completed live round had two yellow bands painted around its nose. Two blue bands meant the bomb was inert. Basically just a big rock that would never be anything else.

Live rounds included a complex system of safety blocks, and required an insane amount of applied pressure to trigger a reaction. If assembled and maintained properly there was an astronomically small chance they would blow up prematurely, even though they had the potential to do so. They were designed to sit around until it was time to get to work. A very specific pattern of mistakes were always the culprit if a yellow band bomb went off before it was supposed to, or not at all.

The last stop on the boat for live explosives was a flight deck staging area called the bomb farm. During combat operations the bomb farm became a sea of yellow bands. The only difference in them being size, shape, color, and kinetic potential.

I assembled, protected, and drove around most of the bombs that ended up there. And now it was time for them to leave the nest. But I was more nanny than father. I played midwife, babysat, then put the kids on the bus. Luckily at that point in their development they were very low maintenance, so my job was pretty easy. When they left the boat they became someone else's problem.

One day a pilot told me the bomb I loaded on his plane had successfully neutralized the bunker a high ranking general was hiding in. I asked him if the bunker was in a populated area or out in the desert. He responded, "Why the fuck do you care? We didn't hit Homoville."

Homoville could have been the target for all I knew. He might have been mad at me because the bomb was ordered to destroy Homoville but hit the ground like a lazy rock instead. He figured since I raised the bomb its on me, I made a mistake somewhere down the line and the bomb failed at the only thing it was ever taught to do. I tried to stay positive about the situation, at least the general and his bunker are neutral because I managed to raise one bomb right.

I never knew what was going on there, e-nothing squids were only told enough to get the job done. The internet, laptops, and cellphones were regulated, and ship television only aired sitcoms, sports, or highly edited music videos. This was done so external influences wouldn't make us angry enough to kill someone prematurely.

Out to sea when not at work I hung out in the ships arcade playing the Soul Calibur or Marvel vs. Capcom coin ops, or in the library reading books left laying around. As in when a bookshelf tipped due to bad swells the fallen books would stay in a pile on the deck until someone came along, dug through the pile, and took one away.

I spent my entire naval career around bombs and don't remember seeing any cool explosions. But at least life was simple, bomb goes on the plane, plane comes back empty. Bravo Zulu.

People: Attack the block

2011-09-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

Venetians created the word ghetto to describe an area where the Jews lived. 1940's Germans picked up on it later for the same purpose. Nowadays a ghetto is described as an overcrowded urban area which is more often than not associated with a specific ethnic or racial population that lives in economic disproportion with the rest of the area. There are many names for a ghetto now, America calls it the hood, Brazil have Favelas, and Great Britain has council estates.

Attack the Block focuses its cameras on a particularly nasty South London stretch of council estate. We meet a young bird with an uptown look waking the streets at night head down clutching her handbag when a young street gang patrolling the night for cake, hoodied up, masked down, and tools tucked, find their meal in her.

They look to be no more than teens but move like an experienced wolf pack. The bike scouts make a quick pass before the leader and his right and left arms descend on her turned back. They heartlessly run her for her purse and valuables until a falling object crashes into a nearby car, providing her a means to escape.

The crew, led by a kid with dead eyes and malice charisma named Marcus, decide to let her be and instead investigate the crash site for valuables, only to find the object to be a small but ferocious alien. Together they manage to kill the alien and decide to take it to their local guru/weed dealer to figure out how to profit from their trophy.

Pest is the youngest of the group and carries a punker ethos of mayhem and destruction for shits and grins. Dennis is the hardheaded but loyal chief of staff to Marcus' president. Biggz is the closest to innocent of the group, he loves his mother and wants to do right but manages to curtail these urges to keep face within the gang. Jerome is the intelligent pragmatist, and also serves as the moral compass of the group.

And it is in this this crew of kids' search for the truth of what is invading the council estates and why it is happening that Attack the Block truly shines.

All of these actors are first time performers, and most other science fiction or horror films that introduce these types do so to dispatch them without the audience getting too attached or creating an order of death based on importance of the actor. But in Attack the Block the viewer gets to watch this crew go from street monsters to simple children dealing with an environment that would kill them aliens or no.

The action involves them trying to survive the night by fighting, running, or a combination of the two. They are supported in this endeavor by neighborhood friends and enemies, but unknowingly bring trouble to anyone that helps.

The film is bright and quick and the monsters plausible and vicious. The crew approaches the invasion as I imagine these real life kids weaned on only the best parts of war through Call of Duty would. They run out full of piss and vinegar ready to catch wreck , then retreat as fast as their legs can take them when they realize that heroes die violently and there is no pause button or respawn in real life. Biggz sums it up best in the film when he says, "Right now, I feel like going home, locking my door and playing Fifa."

This is enhanced by the fact that during their plight they must face not only aliens but gangsters, police, and the ramifications of their own decisions through a begrudging alliance with the lady they robbed at the beginning of the film.

This film could not have come at a better time as the rioting in Brittan eerily mirrors the films themes. As the kids mature and begin to realize what is behind all of the chaos they start to understand their role in it and in the end face the issue head on, sacrificing themselves in order to save the small plot of land that others may see as better off gone, but to them it is the only home they know.

This film is a throwback to 80's adventure films like the Goonies or Monster squad in that they too were not afraid to let kids be kids while also dealing with adult issues. But it better serves as proper social commentary on how a group of people economically trapped in a small place develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome to their environment. Learning at the end of the day it is the people you share your cell with that you grow to love and trust, and external forces notwithstanding, It's how you accept the truth of your actions and move forward from them that make you what you are.

Games: Knar - Gar The Groin Ripper

2011-09-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Third party developers are a lot like restaurants in that the mortality rate is high, and that the prospect of your business crapping out in the first few months is often a better hope than the long bleed it could become.

The cost of programmers, artists,testers,hardware, and the random ins and outs of running a business in a technology driven industry makes the non "in-house" development team an endangered species. And if EA's attempted hostile takeover of Take-two was any indication, the big sharks can smell any devs blood in the water from a mile away.

And here is where the big problems, the problems that lead to the shutting of doors, the firing of employees, and the general fuckery of the whole situation occurs. Imagine you are a Producer in a moderately respected third party and you gained notice from Company X for your creative use of the Jumanji engine in your latest title, "Shane and Grinch."

So Company(Publisher) X sits you down and tells you that the grappling hook mechanic and usage of massive gibbs would be perfect for their new Video game adaptation of the film "Knar-Gar, the Groin ripper." They want the title to be multi platform and want it to coincide with the movies release July after next. you explain to them that this is the first simultaneous multi release your company has ever done, and that your version of the engine was tweaked for a specific console.

But they shoot down this logic with reassurances that they have worked closely with third parties in the past that voiced the same problem, and the outcome was simply David Blane magic.But with doubt in your heart and dollar signs in your eyes you get on-board, and out pops the Contract. Its nothing serious, and only a little binding, they say, just a way to keep things honest, and to keep both sides informed and on the path to success.

And stuck somewhere in-between the part about security badges and the section detailing parking privileges, is a little thing called a Milestone clause. This little gem of a business practice makes it legally clear that if you do not hit a (usually publisher defined) set of goals by a certain date, then you and your people are not getting paid. No one gets paid. The Programmer doesn't get paid, the testers don't get paid, the producers don't get paid. The Mocap dudes, don't get paid. And that is not good.

Say it is November now. The Launch date is about about nine months out and everything is looking good. The emails from the Publisher are positive. You as a smaller third party cannot afford a marketing juggernaut, but thanks to the fat pockets of Company X you see early teasers for you game on the Internet, and in magazines. They love how it is coming along, they sent you dev kits, manpower for test, even the programmers learned to code for all platforms by going to Naughty Dog's website. Every thing is looking great for a July launch, and everyone is getting paid.

So December rolls along, and the problems with it. You get an e-mail from The publishing manager about how the Gibbs that they loved so much are not going to get any play now because "Large Rob Cycle," and "Emohunt" have trusted video game violence into the spotlight during an election year, gotta tone down the violence, bud. So you run down to tell the programmers that they are going to have to go back and clean up the code they already finished.But its too late, they now have their own problems.

They tell you that the testers are sending them way too many bugs about the goddamn grappling hooks, and that trying to fix all of them would take them well into the next lifetime, and that it would be easier for everyone involved to just tone the mechanic down to isolated...quicktime events... No.

So you run back to the office to stab you balls with chopsticks when you glance at an open magazine page flapping in the wind.And there on the page is none other than an old screen cap of Knar-gar in all his glory, Ascending a mountain with grappling hook in one hand, and an enemies throbbing nutsac in another, looking as if he just took a big bite out of it like it was a Georgia peach. Fuck.

Next thing you know you are a talking head on TV, shilling the hell out of a project that you don't even recognize anymore, while every journalist on the planet wants to crawl deep into you ass about the "uber Violnce" your new title touted when they played it at the HAXORZ game show. They want to give you both barrels concerning the voice acting, collision, the hard to open shrink wrap, and ask if these issues will be addressed by launch. Fuck.

So you go back to the office and call a meeting. You tell everyone in the room what is riding on the project, and that the expectations have reached a fevered pitch because it is running parallel to the film. They all got to get on the ball and fix this, no matter how long it takes. Not so fast.

You get a call from the publisher and they are mad, well not really mad, just disappointed. You missed four of six milestones and unfortunately they cannot pay you the full royalty for that particular six week cycle. They hope you get back on the ball, they wish you luck, and remind you to tone it down,bud.

Usually no money from the Publisher would not be so crippling, but you took on the extra manpower from them and now you have to pay them. Everyone on staff has been working Eighty to ninety hour weeks and have been waiting on the "Big Check." So to not have that money during crunch time will just about be the worst thing that could happen. But hey, payday is about a week and a half away, so there is time to figure something out, right?

No. Its June now, the title is not close to shippable, a couple of programmers have quit, and you are now two milestones in the hole. It is looking bad, it is looking really bad. A "false launch"(A title that doesn't ship on its specified date) looks inevitable, and you getting shitcanned is both assured and looked forward to by yourself.

And then it comes. Company X has taken notice of your repeated missed deadlines, they notice your company unable to attain the standard of quality that the Company X brand requires. But it is ok, They have an option. If you sell your company to them, then they will eat the cost of the false launch, eat the cost of the missed milestones, and put a pretty penny into the coffers of you and your shareholders. And all they ask is that you work exclusively for them, under relaxed conditions, retaining most of the autonomy that you previously had.With the small exception that most of the money will go to them obviously, and the benefit of stock perks will be theirs also, and they choose and redline all the games you make.Besides that though, good times.

So you and your Dev house go with the only option available, and you spend the rest of your careers pandering to whatever Company X asks of you, Never getting to create original or innovative games because the company bottom line demands at least one hit from every company every fiscal year.

This cycle of Milestone manipulation occurs constantly in the game industry, and almost always serves to benefit to Larger company. And while it is true that former third parties like Neversoft and Vicarious visions still operate much like they did independently while under a large publisher( in this case Activision), far too many companies fold nowadays due to the intense pressure for every title to be a triple A success.

I prefer the Valve method of "it will be done when it is done." A situation like this serves to allow employees to produce great work in an relaxed environment. And while I understand that it would be financially irresponsible for all companies to do this, I would like to see publishers allow some of the more respected and proven companies to have more time in producing their titles and to not be held under the thumb of unfair Milestone achievement practices.

People: The Search For Animal Carney

2011-09-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Skateboarding Cambrian explosion of the mid nineties birthed a vast species of riders and styles. Before its arrival anyone wanting to take up the sport had to be lucky enough to be in the proximity of a skate shop with employee’s kind enough to let them play on the Vert or kicker ramp in the back, or patient enough to teach them tic tac’s in the parking lot out front.

But the revolution born of the search for animal chin had come into its own. Skateboarding had traveled all the way from Southern California's beaches to Northern California’s urban jungles, evolving to survive along the way.

Skateboarding magazines and videos documented the change, images containing lanky long haired dudes carving barefoot around abandoned pools or down sun drenched hills on flat fat boards with big wheels made way for images containing guys with dreads, crew cuts, and wild curls weaving around pedestrians to jump or slide or grind staircases and rail sets resembling an M. C. Escher print on tiny boards curved on both ends with skinny wheels.

As a Young Turk coming up in the bay area I was lured to the culture because it allowed me to retain any interest that I fancied at the moment while still being able to communicate with people that weren’t like me. I could show up to the EMB and play horse with a guy that’s really into black metal or head up the street to the Pier and learn crooks from a Columbian kid that didn’t speak English but spoke a common language. Skateboarding became my social network before the internet came into its own.

We would pop in VHS skate videos starring our extended family down the five to see what they were up to. And while the clothes and locations were different the old attitude remained.

Video parts for bay area skaters were quick cuts of riders stealing flip in flip out manny’s through busy intersections and bombing residential neighborhood hills filled with pedestrian and vehicle obstacles accompanied by jazzy hip hop tracks with rappers describing relaxation methods they predicted would last from then until infinity.

Whereas San Diego skaters recklessly pushed at near light speed against backdrops of empty schools and unpopulated vacation destinations juxtaposed by aggressive rock music that bolstered every trick landing with a cymbal crash or guitar riff. And for me no San Diego skater epitomized his particular genus more than Jason Carney.

I was introduced to Carney through a Maple skateboard company team video called Seven Steps to Heaven I had purchased because at the time I wanted to skate just like Marc Johnson.

I sped through the other rider’s parts impatiently working toward my idol until a young guy wearing a backwards cap, blue jeans, and a white t-shirt hunched over vomiting on the base of a staircase rail stole my attention. The next scene was him pushing mach ten across the roof of a garage then kick flipping a gap, landing cleanly on the second story porch of someone’s yellow adobe house. I put the remote down.

I thought I had seen his breed before, at first glance he resembled the guys I skated with from Bakersfield whose distinguishing characteristics where goatees, slicked back hair and lowered Chevy's with whitewall wheels. Their females had soda bottle bodies with big hair and tats with sparrows flying into their bellybutton or a slick devil winking on their arm. But this guy was different, he had the usual elements of the type, but along with looking like he didn’t give a fuck about getting hurt he skated like he didn’t give a fuck that there was anything in his way.

I watched the camera man struggle to match his speed while he casually ollied a waist high trash can holding a beer. The rest of his scenes were long takes where he would effortlessly pull off paint the landscape, taking the long route to an ultimate goal that you wouldn’t realize until he arrived and couldn't believe he survived afterwards.

I was jealous. My skateboarding world was a gold rush where only the newest and most technical stunts were held high. We worked within a small plot of land that only allowed two pushes and a short setup. It was rubber band style street performance art that required tightrope walker zen.

To me Carney was more surfer than skateboarder. He didn't do anything I hadn't seen before, but he made the ride from trick to trick a visual representation of what those bay area rappers were talking about. And it all felt pure and dangerous and innovative and I wanted to see more.

Logging onto the skateboard social network required travel to any park, ledge, rail or stair set skateboarders congregated. You would go there to get your classifieds from a guy that learned the shop out east was accepting sponsor me videos for an amateur roster and your reviews from a dude that thought Chico was overrated because he barely had switch. I rolled up to a low bank about a year after watching Seven Steps to Heaven and asked around about Carney as he hadn’t appeared in any magazines or video’s I had seen since.

The story was different for every person asked. One guy said, “Yeah Carney was brutal, I heard he got into a fight in Mexico and is doing life in a Tijuana Jail.” Another guy told me he got kicked off of Maple because he was always wasted and wouldn’t go out to film. One guy believed he had fallen into the skinhead scene and disappeared. I asked a buddy of mine in town from San Diego one day, he said, “Carney, Yeah he’s doing alright, I saw him over at Carlsbad High a couple months ago.”

I never got a definitive answer to what happened. Things being what they were at the time if you weren’t constantly producing new video you were quickly overtaken by young guns willing to jump off anything for a roster spot. A few years later Maple skateboards faded from the scene and so did I.

I ended up moving to San Diego, and here I live an old mans life in a young mans body. I have bum knees and bad balance due to an extra thirty pounds that crept up on me while I sat in a chair at my office job. When I do get out I have to drive to spots instead of skate. I blame the driving on the fact that I have to get to work later but it’s really because I would sweat to death if I tried.

Every once in a while when I pass the Sports Center double set or hold the rail while I walk up an office complex staircase downtown in my mind I see the image of a distant relative that claimed that piece of architecture by being first to do something with it that no one had ever thought to do before.

A while ago I walked into a newspaper office to pitch stories to the arts and culture editor because San Diego is expensive and you need a lot of hustles to pay rent. She liked my ideas well enough but suggested a story to me about a skateboarding event in need of a Journo.

I told her I didn’t have many ins to the community down here and the ones I knew were about as active as me. She told me to take a shot anyway and gave me the name of an event called “Rumble in Ramona.”

I wrinkled my face, looked upwards, and said, “Yeah… sounds... familiar…” I had never heard of it. The only words I had ever heard spoken about Ramona made it sound like a sequel to deliverance. I am sad for bylines so I took the gig, but not without doing some internet research if only to learn how I would die.

Through this person less social network I learned that for the last three years the Rumble in Ramona has been the main rally point for skateboarders of the thrasher tribe. I found a video of events past and in them I saw a bunch of middle aged guys in pads standing on a Vert ramp shooting the shit and laughing.

The ramp looked to be erected in somebody’s backyard, and in the pipe a guy that looked like an older version of Christian Hasoi was casually pulling off lean back crooks while a guy on the ledge that looked just like Lance Mountain banged his board on the pipe in celebration. To the right was the roof of a house that had people sitting on it drinking Jack Daniels and cheering on the skaters.

To the left of the ramp and behind the crowd a Punk Band thundered in tune to a hurricane mosh pit made up of old bald guys in lock shoulder and long haired dudes pogo-ing in the old style. Even bigger guys stood hands folded on the periphery and would only move when someone fell. They would push through the crowd, pick them up, brush them off, and send them on their way.

Next to the Stage people milled about the crabgrass examining tricked out American muscle while girls with the look those guys in Bakersfield fell for posed on the car hoods in sexy poses.

I went a little deeper into the event to find who runs it and all signs pointed to this place in Ramona called Slappy’s Skateboard Garage. I searched business sites to contact the owner hoping for an interview, and way down in the column covering ownership titles sat a familiar name. Jason Carney.

His name linked to a video walkthrough of the shop. A young guy covered in tattoos wearing a v-neck and trucker hat introduced himself as an employee and motioned toward the shop as he began walking in. It was shaped like an ordinary house.

The camera followed the employee inside, there was a glass truck display where the kitchen would have been, and the walls were covered with pro rider decks and posters that read “Creature,” and, “Independent.” In what would have been a bedroom a little girl in a chargers jersey played drums in time to a punk band.

But no Carney, I clicked around looking for the picture of a ghost with no luck until I happened on a car enthusiast website and there he was, standing in the front yard of his shop holding a dollar bill up to the camera next to his friend and business partner Jake Doomey. The caption under the picture read, “Doomey and Carney make their first buck. Good luck guys.”

I was pretty excited about heading over to the Rumble in Ramona this year because not only was I going to meet one hero it looked as if I was going to meet the pantheon. But on the Curb Crushers blog under the top post dated Sunday, August 7, 2011 sat seven simple words that managed to send me all the way back to square one, do not pass go, do not collect a byline.

It turned out the author of that very succinct obituary was none other than Lance Dawes, arguably the greatest skateboarding photographer ever to walk this earth. So not only can the guy tell you everything you need to know about skateboarding in one photo. He can tell you everything you need to know about best laid plans in seven words. The words: "Sorry everyone, The Rumble is canceled, sucks."

Eh, such is life, besides, I'm walking away from the table up a buck. I finally got the answer I have been searching fifteen years for. Carney, yeah he is doing alright.

Games: Planet Puzzle League

2011-09-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

A medium time ago I lived in San Diego and worked for one of those places that make big posters and provide computers and copiers to people that don't have them or don't know how to use the ones they have. I didn't have a car at the time so I had to ride the trolley to work.

The trolley is a big red above ground bus on railroad tracks that shuttles poor people from places they can't afford to places they'd rather not be. Its route's are assigned colors, The blue line takes you from Old San Diego to Mexico. The orange line takes you from Petco Park to the Gillespie field. The green line takes you from Old San Diego to Santee. Most locals don't ride the trolley because it only stops at places we work hard to avoid.

My workplace was a block away from a stop on the green line called Hazard Center. I lived about five stops up the green line. So the trolley became my main mode of transportation to work. I had to get up pretty early to catch a ride that wouldn't make me late. I would usually get there about five minutes before the trolley at the same time as three other poor people.

One guy wore a suit with the name tag of one of those clothing stores that seemed to stock anything someone found on the street, and the isles looked like people would try shirts on and thrown them on the floor if they didn't like it. A girl wore the outfit from one of those places that serve hotdogs with no buns, instead they shove a stick up its butt. And one guy wore a chefs outfit with the name of one of those chain restaurants that serve almost passable imitations of Mexican food.

I had enough time between stops to get a few founds of Tetris Attack or Planet Puzzle League or Panel de Pon or whatever else you want to call it for the Nintendo DS. After about a month of Daily Play mode I began to feel pretty good about where I was with my skill. I had a good rhythm, I didn't get flustered when the garbage blocks started to pile, and was regularly pulling of five and six combos. Every once in a while when I looked up I saw people steeling peeks at me. I just assumed I was startling them because I tended to get vocal when I was having a band round.

One day I hopped on the trolley and sat down in the wheelchair access double wide because my legs like to breathe. I pulled the DS out of my purple apron and to my surprise the chef began waving his DS at me from a seat across the train. I gave him a respectful head nod and looked back down then did a double take when I saw his name pop up on my wifi local. I knew it was his name because it was written all over his back pack in old english style lettering.

Turns out he wanted to to do an audit of my skill. I looked up at him and said, "Really?" I was trying to warn the poor guy, he had no idea that this is what I do. I play games and he mistakenly assumed I was in it for funzies. He responded with a shoulder shrug, which let me know that he needed the lesson I was about to teach him. I never found out which game he wanted to challenge me in because I only carried Planet Puzzle League, and it supported online play with one card so that's what we played.

It took him about two stops to beat me. He made a jab at me with baby chains then would make a horizontal clear with a gap above the middle block. Before I knew what was going on he would drop one in the middle and I would be in the weeds until he put me out of my misery. After the match he smiled and said, "Something something payoso." I assumed he was telling me good game but I'm not sure because I can't speak Mexican. I tried to congratulate him on his crap win but it turned out he didn't speak American.

He mercilessly beat me every morning for the next three months. By this time the other poor people we share the train with had joined in and chosen sides. The department store guy went to camp chef and would sit over his shoulder commenting whenever the chef would complete a big chain which he did often. The bun less hot dog girl sat over my shoulder and messed up my focus by making dumb suggestions like clearing horizontally or bunching same color blocks on the same side.

By the time the green line got close to our destination the car would be packed and we would get pretty rowdy during a close match bot nobody seemed to mind. The most anybody would do would be to walk up and ask department store guy or hot dog girl what was going on and they would give them a brief synopsis of my fail. Every once in a while after a close loss the commuters would all go "Ohhhh!" and give me shit even though they couldn't do any better against this freak bot.

I got fired about five months after I got the gig at the copy place for loading WOW on one of the work PC's so I could do dailies. My record against the chef ended at a respectable 52-0 considering he didn't know what he was doing. I still look for his tag on live every once in a while but not for revenge or anything, well a little, but its mostly because looking back the dream of beating him made me forget that I was going somewhere I didn't want to be surrounded by people I didn't know. And by the end I learned a lot about the people that I shared the trolley with without even having what some people would define as a real conversation. We plotted and commiserated and celebrated together by playing a silly little game for kids on the way to work, and that's gotta be worth something.

Games: Metal Gear

2011-08-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

So there is this brother and sister team that have been putting out movies about video games on the internet for a while now.The brother is tall and skinny, his small frame producing a brick bearing slouch at all times. He wears slim rim glasses and his hair always looks abandoned even though its pretty short.

He sounds like a frustrated lover when trying to explain what a game is trying to say and why it is important that it tried. The main recipient the monologues is his sister, Who doesn't care if they have something to say or not, she only plays them for fun.

His sister has brunette hair that is sometimes long and other times short. Her face carries the look of a person that's constantly waiting to be surprised but rarely gets surprised. When she gets bored debating video games with him she passes the time by saying things she knows will make him mad, and if that fails she will either hunt him like wild game or attempt to kill him outright using the weapons and wearing the outfit of a character in the video game she fancies at the moment. This pisses her brother off because he wants her to take video games seriously.

The show takes place in their living room usually, sometimes in their bedrooms or their backyard. Most episodes begin with the sister sitting on this ratty looking recliner, staring absently at a point a little up and to the left of the camera, intently pressing buttons on a controller. Her brother walks in and asks what she is playing, and she tells him the name in a kiddy voice.

You barely ever see any video games during the show. Its mostly them talking about video games or acting out a scene cousin to the game the sister said she was playing. Its as if they would rather not force people to sit there and watch other people play a game that they could just as easily play themselves, and would rather spend time talking about something that they found interesting about the game .

The show might not even be about video games per se, maybe more so the show could be about the lives of people that have been playing games so long that the act of interacting with a platform is just an afterthought, in the way a lawyer with a new case spends months preparing briefs, interviewing witnesses, and discussing it in bars with colleagues knowing full well the actual trial may only take a couple of hours and wont be as interesting as they hoped it would be.

Sometimes the petty squabbles, setbacks, and pressures of a life dedicated to a polarizing single purpose makes the lawyer laugh, or dealing with people that like the law for what it is and don't worry about its potential to be more makes him so pissed he puts a hole in a wall of his fancy office,but after all is said and done he celebrates everything about the life he chose and wants everybody to find something good in it even though he knows it might take a long time or never happen at all.

Games: Level 5

2011-08-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

Level 5 is a video game company based in Fukuoka, Japan run by president and CEO, Akihiro Hino. Level 5 focuses on traditional role playing games, but they also push the boundaries of JRPG's by integrating action, city building mechanics, and other ingredients fans would generally think incompatible with familiar role play functionality. Notable games from the company include, Dark Cloud, Rouge Galaxy, Jeanne d'Arc, and the Professor Layton series.

In Dark Cloud a being called the Dark Genie decided to destroy the world because he didn't like it the way it was. He smashed the buildings and killed people, then decided not to clean up after himself. A young boy named Toan lived through this rapture. He saw the rubble and the dead stuff and everything else and wanted to do something about it but didn't know how, until someone called the fairy king gave him a magical stone imbued with the power to take broken stuff and make it like it was before it was broken.

Most games that share the playpen called Traditional RPG's approatch cataclismic events from the front. The player and characters in the story are generally set at defcon oarnge at all times. A looming evil is always preparing something, placing the final toutches on its masterpeice, laughing at the starry eyed fools that would challenge the inevitable. But what if it already happened? Do the people just give up, do they sit on the rubble that was their home and pine for better days, do they pack up and move? Level 5 began their title during the epilogue. There was no hero to stop the Dark Genies plans from playing out, or maybe he was just late.

Each subsequent title from Level 5 introduces itself as if it had never seen another of its species. Akihiro Hino resembles his children in that unlike the CEO's of most companies he is involved in every aspect his products creation.

While RPG Japan frets over its stumbling foundation, worried that disembodied serial killers now hold attention over mute effeminate heroes with silly haircuts and princesses that fell down and forgot everything, Hino sits you down and tells you about this dream he had where sky pirates fly free, or about that dowdy man in a big hat that's really good at figuring out puzzles. Hino uses every mechanic in the design book to not only show you what he saw but allow you to experience what it felt like to be there.

His games tell a story, which should be said of all games, but would be a damn lie if spoken. They serve as the video game equivalent of a favorite dive bar, a place where the jaded and cynical of our industry go for a cold drink, a hot meal, and to have a close friend weave us a yarn that reminds us why we do this crappy thing for kids.

Level 5 is going to pass on the Tokyo Game show this year, opting instead to throw their own party called "Level-5 World." Although much like a good guy in life they will still make a few titles available to their friends that attend the big convention. Level 5 recently opened an American office and plan to release 5 new games in the future.

People: The analog wikipedia

2011-08-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

A British Columbia library will be offering people to check out soon. Anybody with a library card will be able to walk in and browse the Surrey City Center library catalog of human beings. The soul they find most interesting will sit with them and talk about all the shit that happened to them so far in life.

Even the library has given up on books, as if they think the physical holding and reading of books is what's keeping people out of libraries. People used to steal away to libraries for some peace and quiet, if this catches on it may be the only place someone will be able to find an actual conversation.

People: A solar tree grows in Long island

2011-08-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

A thirteen year old kid discovered a more efficient way to collect solar energy. He used the Fibonacci sequence to build a tree with leaves that mimic photosynthesis. The article said he thought it up while walking around the Catskill mountains. It turns out that sunlight likes the version he made better than the solar panels we have now. People are throwing awards and praise on the kid as if he invented trees.

At Evo this year some eight year old kid made a bunch of older video game dudes look silly. Evo is the biggest tournament in the fighting game universe. Grown men that enjoy playing video games train hard for it.

The eight year old kid didn't train like they did though. He probably couldn't explain advanced guards or crossover counters, he just played the same game everyday with his friends. His parents noticed that he was really good so they entered him into the tournament. He ranked in the top forty eight this year in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Kids are dumb because they have no concept of what they can't do yet. They find something they are interested in and pursue it like a meth addict until they get bored. Adults are smart enough to understand that some things are just never going to happen.

If adults want something to happen we have to do a lot of work which takes forever. We have to find out if someone has already done it.We have to find out if it makes money. We have to see if a lot of people are doing it so we know its ok to do also. It's a lot of work, so we usually focus on things we think are going to pan out.

Kids don't, they just barrel into anything they fancy all willy-nilly. Knowledge and skills people born in nineteen sixty accumulate through experience are old news to the average twelve year old. Old people shouldn't even bother explaining things to children anymore. The internet has them covered.

Ubisoft added DRM to their title "From Dust." This made a lot of people that bought the game mad because Ubisoft didn't tell them they were going to do it. They want to be able to play the game they bought without being on the internet, but Ubisoft wants everybody that plays the game to pay for the game, not just them.

After reading a lot of articles about the DRM scandal I still have no idea what "From Dust" is. I don't know what type of game it is or what I am supposed to do with it. I hope Ubisoft and the public figure out what they want from each other, then do that thing they agree on, so I can learn more about the game.