To inaugurate my new PS3, I decided to spin a PS2 game. It’s like calisthenics. I don’t want it to pop a hammy or anything. So I bought a copy of God of War II. I was a big fan of the first and the second slipped under my radar. I sped through the game over the course of the weekend, but what really separated the experience for me was the bonus disc.

On the bonus disc, the game ships with a documentary and interviews. Unlike the polished and completely fake documentaries that you see out of most studios (mine included), this documentary shows a team that is dissonant, unsure of themselves, extremely tired, and most of all humble. I was shocked! Usually these pieces are edited such that only the positive comments and only the hopeful comments get through. While there seems to be some self-editing of folks while the cameras are on, you actually get to see what game development is like.

Working on anything creative means arguing and it means sometimes having hurt feelings. I couldn’t believe Sony let them show something that makes them look like they don’t know everything they are doing and that they have doubts about their abilities and how the game will turn out. If you look at Tiburon’s special feature clips they have on Madden special editions (and what Ubi has on Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell specials and so on), you would assume we always think that we shit sunshine and rainbows.

I guess I just react better to “Hey, we made some art. Here it is. It was tough to get together, but I hope you like it,” rather than “Look at this! It’s the most awesome game in the world! Please treat us like movie stars!” Cory Barlog lives in a tiny little apartment like I do. To have them include that in the documentary just says loads about the culture at their studio. Kudos to Sony Santa Monica.

Oh, and the game was pretty fun too.

“RPG elements” is sort of game designer’s code for “no skill required”. Source

Extremely true. Most people who touch on design have no fucking clue what game dynamics are and why they are important.

This is beautiful. Since I don’t like clicking on JPEG links without knowing what they are, I’ll tell you it is a sort of staged taxidermy. It isn’t icky. Scout’s honor.

Bought a PS3 yesterday in the Metal Gear bundle with some of dem dere blue rays. Now I have too many games. Have to finish GTA, etc, stop hating life.

If your design process is to come up with ideas that “sound like they would be fun”, it’s not enough.

If your design process is to categorize the various types of consumers that exist and then create the first thing that would satisfy that stereotypical archetype, then it’s not enough.

If your design process is cultivated to narrow down the number of people who question your decisions, then your creative effort is not enough.

If you think that design process terminates with a document that lists why your ideas are fantastic, then your efforts are most certainly NOT ENOUGH.

That was quite a date, Niko. I’ll have to admit, I thought I’d seen a lot of Liberty City, but I’d never seen anything like today. You called me at 4 am. What were you doing up at that hour? Don’t you ever sleep? Anyway, I assumed you didn’t realize what time it was, so I asked you to call back at 8. You were very polite. At 8:09, the phone rang again. You wanted to go on a date. At eight am. Ok, cool, I had you pick me up at work for some reason, even though I clearly just got up. I’m not even entirely sure how I got over there! Such is the crazy life of this city.

You pulled up in a car I’d never seen you drive before. Our two previous dates you picked me up in one of those airplane towing things once and in a police cruiser once. So I was glad to see you pull up in a normalish Perennial until I noticed it was a little beat-up. And I say a “little” in order to be nice. But the ride was pretty smooth, up until you grazed that police car. Then we went on that tear around town trying to lose them. You hit an, I’ll admit, pretty sweet jump and despite my screaming, you were able to shake them pretty quickly. You would think they’d be diligent enough to keep looking for you after about ten seconds of being out of their vision, but we’ve all heard the stories about Liberty City’s cops. Lazy and Gun Happy, I hear. LC’s finest.

After that, you were driving a little loosey-goosey. You slammed into that dude by the bridge pretty hard. I was glad I was wearing my seat belt! But then his car burst into flames and he went running across the road aflame, screaming madly. I thought we should get out and exchange insurance information, but you felt we should just keep driving. I guess since I don’t drive much, I’m not up on what is auto-etiquette these days. Is it different in your home country or am I just out-of-touch?

Well, we tried going to the comedy club, but it was like ten in the morning at that point… did you really think they would have a morning matinee? But you were smooth and pulled a handbrake U-turn thinking I wouldn’t notice. Oh Niko Niko Niko. The fast food place we ended up was okay. I don’t normally eat fast food, but surprisingly, all that adrenaline kicked up my hunger. That burger was a delicious breakfast!

By the way, that suit you were wearing would have looked absolutely hot but it looked like it was covered in blood! You didn’t even seem to notice! Did you just come from a slaughterhouse or something? I mean, I washed my hair for the date, the least you could do would be to put on some clean clothes.

So I don’t want to be ungrateful because I’ve never had a date like that. But when we pulled up right now and you leaned over and I smelled the mix of blood and gunpowder and burning exhaust and Burger Shot Special Sauce, I’ll admit I got a little nauseous. So it’s not that I don’t like you Niko, I just didn’t think it would be too classy to vurp in your face is all.

So I’ll see you later. That helicopter you were telling me about sounds like a lot of fun. Let’s try that next time. Dates were never this interesting back in San Andreas! Ta ta!

Dyson spent three years re-engineering and re-inventing the hand dryer.

How long and how much breadth will we give ourselves to solve our technological problems?

I haven’t posted any real content in five days, so mea magna culpa.

I’ve been busy. I’m excited about the new title I am working on, if we actually get to make it how it looks in my head. That’s all I can say. I’ve found the hardest part of game design to be the interpersonal relationships involved in communicating ideas and eliciting trust.

I’ve been reading the book Brain Rules after seeing it recommended on Garr Reynolds’ blog and it is a fantastic read. It is everything you wanted to know about how we understand the brain but didn’t know you wanted to know. The author keeps a very light-toned James Burke sort of style, teasing in the following section at the end of the current one. It’s a fantastic tool for anyone who has to present anything to any sort of audience – which is most of us, but it is of great use to game designers. I may make a Library section some day soon with all the books that have been helpful to me thus far in my career. The list would be small now, but it’s expanded by two this year alone.

I’m still suffering through GTA4. Every day, I uncover a new bug that makes me unhappy. There are some simple usability tweaks that R* could have done to this game that would allow me to put up with them (save anywhere, jump to a place you’ve been before as in Oblivion, make the cops less omniscient) but as such every time I get killed thanks to the targeting reticule deciding against targeting the guy with the shotgun 10 feet in front of me and instead focusing on the guy a hundred yards away, I have to grind out the getting a taxi / driving halfway across the world and it gives me plenty of time to stew over what I don’t like about the game.