Wait… What?
It’s how people (“hackers”) talk when they don’t want to be overheard? You mean like unencrypted straight text? Yeah, I mean, um… No. Just no. And 733t on IRC would likely get you banned. Ugh. Stupid television I’m glad I don’t have you.
I get at least two or three emails a week from folks curious about the texts that I use in classes or what I’m reading at the moment. So the new approach is to place all of those items in that sidebar. There are a bunch in there already, but only 3 at a time display. I’m sure there are a bunch of different texts that I’m not thinking to add at the moment, but I’m at the home office without my library and I’m not prepared to start adding willy nilly from my reference manager.
If I were a little more proactive I’d probably put my $0.02 in on each text, but I’m busy at the moment slogging through pulling all the bits and pieces together on what will hopefully be my own addition to that little sidebar. I’m at about 50% completion on the book at the moment. The other 50% is partially complete as well, but needs a good amount of integration and smoothing into a more cohesive whole, which is what I believe I’ve done with the first half of the text. The other thing I’ve done is really separate out the more historical elements and focus on the ethnographic. That isn’t to say there isn’t a historical bent, particularly in the industry chapters and as I get into development tools, but it is quite different from the dissertation.
I knew I had some additional thoughts to share post-SIEGE, but they hadn’t all percolated up yet. Nor have I had the chance to sit back and record a video of the Unity 3D demo that I did. That should be coming soon. But not yet. In the mean time, Jason Della Rocca wrote up a nice post and in usual form uploaded some photos. It was nice to see Jason again at the event, making it feel a bit more like the game industry center rather than the periphery. Georgia and Atlanta have come a long way in the last year. Even Athens has a couple of fledgling businesses attempting to get things going. Furthermore, I suspect that Osy and all the work that has been going on with recent efforts at UGA may be spun off, so all in all, things seem good, despite the economic situation.
Jason’s talk, as he says in his post, focused on 10 things that don’t suck:
For my keynote, I gave an updated version of my “10 things that don’t suck” presentation. Also, did a more niche panel on economic development type stuff, and a separate lecture on failure as the path to success/innovation.
The list I walked away with was as follows:
Now, of course I have to convince Jason that though my PhD says “Science and Technology Studies,” I am one of those Dr. people who “do games.” It may not say game studies, but I wrote my dissertation about work and creative practice in the game industry. Of course I don’t have any snazzy photos of me and Warren Spector, so that may ultimately be my problem. But maybe that makes sense, instead you’ll find pictures of me like this one, hanging out with developers rather than the folks at the top:
GDC 2007 Photo Jog
All-in-all, the event was a delight, save one presentation that simply rubbed me the wrong way. Typically I’m not one to get up and leave a presentation, but I was frustrated enough ten minutes into the talk that I decided having my blood pressure elevated for another 50 minutes was simply not something I was interested in. Upon returning to my notes I realized that what ticked me off was a definition of “risk” that doesn’t include human time/labor as having value (“The square root of bugger-all” to be precise). Tell that to MMOs attempting to battle World of Warcraft for the time of users. Sorry. No cookie.
There was a significant call for “internship” opportunities by students present at the end of the weekend town hall meeting. I’m actually not sure that the different definitions of “internship” are the same for what students are asking for and what industry is hearing. What many of the students seem to be asking for are unpaid internships for credit to gain experience. What industry typically has are paid internships for in-school or just-out-of-school folks hoping to demonstrate and hone skills prior to entering the workforce. There is also a significant difference in these two definitions in terms of time over head (there it is again, time, sheesh!) on the part of the internship offering company as well as expected output from the intern. What may very well be the “answer” for this is to create a kind of incubation/training system where students can work with other independent developers for free/credit, rather than asking/hoping the local industry do something time demanding and different than what they have become used to. Several times I heard students say when asked about a reel or portfolio, that they simply “don’t have time.” Make time. I did. Party less. Get lower grades. Do something different, because I don’t accept that answer. I see what you do on the weekends and weeknights. I have visited the bars and I know your WoW avatar names.
Perhaps the coolest part (besides the parties, which in GDC style were “off the hook”) was that The University of Georgia was graciously provided a space at the job and education hall for having rounded up so many attendees. Having never done this before, and not really asked permission, things were a bit sparse, but I feel we did well with a budget of $0.00 and the impressive efforts of folks like Josh Marsh who posted our running trailer, available for your viewing pleasure here:
UGA SIEGECon Promo video from krash nburn on Vimeo.
Well… I may not have posted much around here recently, but I’ve actually been writing all over the place. Mostly recently I posted two essays over at Game Design Aspect of the Month after the excellent Mark “Danger” Chen suggested that I might be a nice match for the August blogging topic. That particular topic centered around “game design” infused game development. There ended up being two essays that I managed to complete, but there is a third that is still rattling around in my head. The first, “The Console, Debug Menu, and Gaming Development,” is a first shot of thinking historically about the rise of more interactive tools for game developers. The second, “The Rise of the Technical Artist and Tools Engineer,” is more contemporary, looking at the recent ascendancy of the sub-disciplines of Tools Engineer and Technical artist. Each is one part of a broader question I’ve had with regard to “interactive” videogame development. Neither displays my usual critical stance and was instead intended to be informative. Of course, they each feed into broader conversations and thinking I’ve been doing with regard to tools and tool development.
A couple of weeks ago now I finished and finally posted a long running examination of several prototyping tools that I’d been investigating for various classes and personal use. The real punchline is somewhat hidden in the middle there (“Bad Casey!”):
Ultimately, what I found interesting about each engine was its approach to pipelines. Getting art assets and design data into an engine becomes the crucial component. Image libraries, text file parsing, and supported scripting languages quickly become the focus for engineering problems on these engines. All except AngelXNA that is. The real plusses and minuses for each engine seem to come down to file support, preferences toward coding conventions, and supported platforms. While AngelXNA is great for prototyping and does an excellent job of using XNA’s asset pipelines, it creates Windows only binaries, and while it may allow you to prototype on your Xbox, taking it other platforms will provide not an insignificant amount of work.
Now I just need to determine how all of this additional writing fits into all of my other academic activities.
Well, this weekend was a whirlwind of activity at SIEGE in Atlanta. I ended up speaking at two different panels, one explicitly about Unity 3D and the other, ostensibly, about physics. Though it wasn’t my intention, the Unity 3D Panel ended up being mostly a Unity 3D love-in after Tom Higgins managed to handle the majority of our complaints prior to the actual start of the session. Items such as SVN support and other components supposed to part of Unity 3D 2.6 as well as a future fusion of Unity 3D and Unity 3D iPhone came as music to most of our ears. Even the physics panel had some Unity love. I got to plead with the audience to not write their own physics engines, though I’m sure someone out in the audience will proceed to roll their own just for the fun of it and spend months debugging it when they could have just sat down and started playing with Box 2D or some other physics engine and had much more fun.
Ultimately though, it is the kind of response that Tom gave us, and the user community that makes Unity 3D what it is. There was some interesting discussion if the fact that Unity 3D started out as a Mac project by Mac developers set a kind of initial trajectory for the developers and users that makes it particularly friendly and collaborative, especially compared to other user communities that often times seem less receptive to learning users. Hopefully Unity 3D can maintain that attitude.
Oh. And Ben’s Detonator framework is the bomb. Sorry, bad pun.
Also while at SIEGE I received some excellent feedback on Osy from one of my favorite designers, Ian Schreiber. We also had an excellent extended conversation about teaching game design in the college setting. Something we’ve both found to be an important topic. This of course spilled over to an extent into the education panel round table. But ultimately I was somewhat saddened by the lack of attendance at the experimental game panel, something at GDC that is continually packed and near and dear to seasoned developers hearts. I guess not enough folks have taken lumps yet to really love experimental design…
I spent the latter part of last week at the “Frontiers of New Media” organized by some great folks at the University of Utah. You can get a sense of the conversation and the different talks over at their website, but I wanted to post here the contents of my talk, which were delivered with my freshly completed presentation system using Löve 2D and the Planet Cute tiles from Dank of Lost Garden. Overall I’ve been pleased with the current setup, which allows me to run around with an Xbox 360 Controller (wired or wireless with the RF adapter) during a talk.
I greatly enjoyed Dr. AnnaLee Saxenian‘s talk examining IT industries from Silicon Valley to China and India, which gave us a great deal to talk about. After listening to her, I’m particularly interested in where the videogame industry diverges from what I would call “the IT industry proper.” There certainly seem to be some interesting parallels, but also distinct differences. That is something that I’ll have to investigate further. There is also something interesting in how many of the game industry “Argonauts” going back to other countries actually have very little experience and instead have done so more due to lack of clear opportunities here in the United States, but significant opportunity to bring skills and expertise home.
Below is a first attempt at how I plan to post these new “presentations” given at conferences. Because they are “played” more than they are “presented,” I’ve had to adjust to some degree.
Frontiers of New Media (FONM) – Casey O’Donnell – 09/19/2009 from Casey O’Donnell on Vimeo.
If you are curious about the “engine” of sorts that I’ve assembled using Löve or any grisly technical details, feel free to ask. Next I hope to attempt using Osy and the Unity 3D engine as a space for constructing my presentations, but more about that shortly.
No, not that baby. At least not yet. No, this was a very fun talk presented at the University of Georgia‘s Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) “Gaming Seminar” last Tuesday evening. All in all it was an excellent seminar, connecting me with all sorts of interesting new folks at UGA who I’ve not yet really had a chance to meet. This included John Kundert-Gibbs and Brion Kennedy of Bit Brigade. Similar to my talk at the University of Utah, I used my new presentation system to deliver my talk, which you can view below.
Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) Presentation – Casey O’Donnell – 09/22/2009 from Casey O’Donnell on Vimeo.
Crazy Backyard Mushroom
I’m not fully sure when it began to grow, but it has now been a staple curiosity of the backyard ecosystem for several weeks now and has even spawned several unsucessful artistic forays. Behold something straight out of my imagining of Lewis Carroll’s imaginings.
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Looking forward to Twitter-gnashing/wailing with #snowleopard install issues tomorrow. Backups in case #itsnotgonnawork. Fun with #s. [#]
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Should be finishing proposal. Instead investigating barcode libraries: http://bit.ly/uk6y with particular interest in: http://bit.ly/47OIo3 [#]
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Remix culture +1: http://bit.ly/198Ila [#]
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And it has begun. Have my early adopting was returned after a PhD required hiatus? http://twitpic.com/fltpi [#]
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Seriously, is this MUA at the corporate level? Spidey/Mickey Fusion? Disney Buying Marvel For $4 Billion: http://bit.ly/21pFwx [#]
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Published Daily Digest for August 18th
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Shared Fig. 8 released!
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Seems the only emotions I feel toward my email tend toward regret, disdain, apathy, … Sounds like it is time for this relationship to end. [#]
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I am significantly boring my dog. She says that academic writing is not something that amuses her and that it ought to stop and walk ensue. [#]
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