The Bored Game Designer Look

I debated whether to put this here or in the gaming blog, and since it's not expressly about gaming, it's more personal, I figured here is better.

Anyway, I'm watching an interview with Rob Pardo, one of the developers of WoW, and he has a look that I've seen many, many times. It is a look of exhaustion combined with boredom combined with that intense focus through adversity that only comes otherwise when you're drunk and just telling yourself "maintain."

I've sat in on quite a few developer conferences such as these, many of them hosted by people I know very well, so I knew exactly what they were thinking or feeling at that time. It's difficult for a game designer to be in these situations, and while I understand the marketing aspect of putting your developers out there, these are not the people you want front-running any kind of discussion with the populace.

And here's why...

When a developer is giving these interviews, he's talking about stuff that he's done with, it's in his past. Sure, designers all operate on older material, for balance issues and whatnought, but all the effort they've had has gone into that, and now it's done. When Mr. Pardo left the office on Friday to come to BlizzCon, knowing he'd have to do this interview, he was sitting working on content that hasn't been announced, and coming up with ideas that probably never will be announced, and suddenly he has to rein that in, and talk about current stuff. It is a shockingly weird combination of boredom (dealing with stuff you've spent countless hours hashing over, answering questions you answered months ago in development) and stress (in keeping your big trap shut.)

That look of concentration that designers get isn't the look of a man who's intent on hearing everything about your question, in the back of his mind, as he hears what the question is, he's putting together things he can't say, filing away information that flowed quickly from his mouth talking to other developers earlier, but that he can't talk about right now.

Now, that seems simple, just don't say what you can't say, but it's shockingly easy to blurt something out that you shouldn't. Working behind the scenes like this for a few years there, I had to monitor message boards, hold chats, and whatnought, primarily as a fill-in for some random person who was in a meeting or whatever, and because of that I spent a lot of time re-reading our own press releases, just to find out what I could say. People would ask pretty inane questions, questions which they knew the answer to already, if they'd just read the press releases, or they would try to trick you into giving something away, showing favoritism or whatnought, or just randomly blurting something out.

The latter was my big fear, the former, there, I didn't care about. It never mattered to me if the fans knew I was a big Aragorn/Eowyn fan, or that I hated Dwarves. But a lot of the time, you try to tow that line of neutrality. Another common question is along the lines of "why is this overpowered?" to which the answer you will *always* receive is "we're looking at that very closely, but we haven't decided, either way, about it yet."

Of course, I was a bigger fan of dad's stand pat answer of "I don't answer why questions."

Shooting the Guy Who Cut You Off

In internet games, there are three types of players. The first, and the player I am, is the casual player, not in the sense of their devotion to the game, but with how they take winning and losing. You screw up, you figure out what you did wrong, you go back and do it again. There are the hardcore players who blame people as cheaters when they lose, because they could not possibly have lost otherwise.

The third group is the focus of this post: The whiners. These are players who have to deride other players' abilities to play the game and companies' ability to make the game in order to feel better about the fact that they just got owned. These are the people who go to a message board, and post "Nerf Shamans!" because they just got beat by one.

What they don't realize, however, is that, for one, the company is aware of this fact, moreso than the players think they are, and therefore interpret any opinions without real data backing them up as straight whining. These are the posts you simply ignore. Well, you don't ignore them, if there's like 50 of them staring at you. You take note that someone didn't like something, and you move on to more important things.

For another, people tend to forget the 20 times they killed a Shaman if, one time, that Shaman completely wrecked them once. To quote Mike McD, "walking in here, I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking about how I lost it." When you have a slightly lopsided fight, you assume your skill carried you through, you feel good about yourself, or you assume you need a little better gear, or you need to do "this" next time.

When you have a very lopsided fight, you remember it. I remember that poor level 16 Priest who was standing outside the Deadmines entrance flagged. No way he thought there'd be a 45 Shaman bearing down on him there. He died in one Windfury proc, and I immediately giggled to guild and parents about the affair. Likewise, when someone beats you down, and I mean flat out owns you, you think about it afterwards, what you could have done differently.

Most players give up after about 10 minutes, assume the other guy was cheating, hacking, or their class is overpowered, and then they go to make a post saying so, as if anyone cares. The fact is that no one does, and it doesn't help your case to say something. You only come across as a whiner.

So, you've played for a while, you really think Shamans might be overpowered. What do you do to tell Blizzard this fact? First off, calm down. Capital letters begin sentences and names, they don't come somewhere in the middle unless they're "I." Likewise, post with decent English. People ignore typos. But u r not gonna get nowhere if you use internet shorthand.

Next, go to another server, and roll that character. Play it for a while, over the span of a month or two. See how to play the toon. Then determine if you're getting owned due to skill or due to overpowered abilities. Chances are, the guys that are owning you just play the game better, they know their class, and they know your class, and they use that to their advantage. Ignorance of your opponent's abilities is a failing in your skill, it does not mean they're overpowered.

If you still think they're too strong, then start doing math. Lots of math. Break out Excel, and make lots of equations. Find someone to help you who has that class, and run tests. Lots of tests. Enough that a thousand might just not be enough. Collate the data, make it easy to read and understand, and have the raw data available.

And finally, present your opinion in an unbiased format. Show a baseline with justification saying "this is what should be the norm," then show how the target goes outside that norm, how he does more damage than he should. Prove that it wasn't a fluke, it wasn't play skill, prove that you know what you're talking about, and that your opinion is valid.

Unfortunately, most Americans take "freedom of speech" to heart and assume their voice has weight. To put it bluntly, it doesn't, and you have to do a lot of hard work to prove your worth.

Good lesson to learn for life, not just for complaining about Bainshees.

I Know I'm Not a Link Guy, But...

wtf?

Clicky

New Blog

After dealing with so, so many WoW idiots who have no clue what goes on in the development of a game like this, I've decided to create a new blog that is just me rambling about gaming, in order to largely keep this blog to more "personal" matters. News you can't use: Here. Me ranting aimlessly about games: There...

Clicky

The Shot Heard Round the State

I'd say around the world, but hey, the national media don't give a rat's ass about the Midwest.

I recall, for the moment, the beginning of my baseball fandom, sitting in the living room of my parent's apartment, playing MLB Showdown with Tom, and watching the Cardinals game over his shoulder. Someone, I forget who, hit a home run, and Tom scoffed, "spoiled fans, can't even cheer for a home run."

I cheered for this one.

And the first time I saw it was hours after it happened.

First I knew of the win, the front page of ESPN.com greeted me as I awoke with a picture of Pujols staring skyward, and I needed no other information, the Cards won, and that's what mattered. But being the intrepid fan that I am, I read on.

And the more I read, the more desperate I became to see video. The moment I saw the pitch leave his hand, I didn't need to know what happened beforehand, I knew it when it was thrown. I can barely make out pitches in-flight now, a carefully honed skill from watching countless Darryl Kile games. But Lidge's entire body posture gave it away. When he fell away from the pitch, before Pujols swung, he hung there, and though the shot was from behind him, you could tell the look on his face, gritted teeth, quick intake of air of someone who had just dropped a knife, and could do nothing but pray it didn't hit his foot point first.

And then the home run. As classy a player as Pujols is, in almost all aspects of his game, he had a Sosa/McGwire-esque stare at this one, as I imagine everyone in the ballpark did. I think he knew, as much as anyone knew, that this wasn't just a home run hit by a good player. This was a towering blast delivered by a legend, and that same blast made him a legend. And like every kid in St. Louis, like every person who wishes they could play in just one Major League Baseball game, he watched. In that moment, you could almost see in his eyes, "that ball is gone...and I did it."

The one knock I have on Three Nights in Baseball, which is otherwise a very good book, despite colleagues' hatred for La Russa, is that he is either protecting Pujols or sucking up to him. There is no mention of Pujols, there is only "The Great Pujols" through the entire book. It almost offended me, if it weren't both true, and about who is perhaps now my favorite player.

But, I digress. I dug deeper into that inning, and I have never wanted to be out of my job so badly in my life, with its sleeping schedule that took me away from this. I have watched, what was before this, arguably the three most defining plays in St. Louis sports during my lifetime (61, 62, and 1-Foot-Short), but this one I missed, and hearing the rest of the inning, and the stories involved, I have never wanted so bad to see it happen live.

First, Eckstein, with one strike away from going home, made the sudden shift from "it doesn't matter," from knowing that the best he could hope for was a single, probably a blooper at that, knowing Lidge, and that it probably wouldn't matter, to deciding that it had to start somewhere.

And from there, Edmonds, who is a free-swinger. Tom mentioned his decline with the bat, and I have to agree, though I will have to see him have another off-year this coming season to firmly believe that fact. But rather, I want to believe, in my biased fashion, that he heard from Eckstein, standing on first, exactly the statement that Eckstein made with his bat: "just get on base. Albert's waiting." I did not see this at-bat, aside from the last pitch, and that last pitch was bad. I don't know what Lidge was trying to throw in that instance, I can only assume it was a slider which didn't slide, given how many he threw otherwise in that inning. Instead of sliding back to the plate, it just stayed inside, and set up what followed.

And then there was Pujols. Pujols, until today, was still a young player, promising, but young. He was a very good player, but he was not The Great Pujols in my mind. While this may seem as a knock against him, it's not. In order to be "The Great" anything, there has to be one career defining moment. This is why people knock on "very good" players who never won a championship. They didn't have that moment. Marino never had that moment (though other things made him great). Pujols now has his moment, and in one swing of the bat, he went from the best of St. Louis to the best of the League, and when it's all said and done, I don't think his name will be out of place with all those he's compared to. Great players don't get that opportunity and waste it. They don't stare at a rattled closer, even the best closer in the game, and let him win.

There are other images, Andy Pettitte, mouthing "oh my god..." as the ball left the park. The fans dying into sudden silence. Pujols staring up at the shot, perhaps admiring his own work, perhaps seeing, from a different angle, Kirk Gibson. Lidge, ducking down on the mound, knowing as the ball left his hand that he had just given away the game. That you don't throw that pitch, with that little spin, in that location, to that player.

If the Cardinals go on to win this series, this will join all of those moments as the most pivotal at-bats in the history of baseball.

The Cardinals, however, still have two more games. They have Oswalt, whom I believe they will beat. Oswalt, like Pujols, is good but not "Great" yet. This could be his moment. 3 innings of shut-down ball, no walks, and fewer than two hits, and the Cards are in trouble. If Oswalt goes 7, he gains his moment, because putting life back into that team now is going to be near impossible. If the Cards can even nickel and dime him at the beginning of the game, scratch at him, it won't matter if he gives up runs early, because the emotional trauma of this game will wear on the rest of the team. If the Astros lock it down and get a lead, they steal momentum. The question is whether or not they can handle this blow and come back swinging.

And then there is Clemens, who needs no more moments. He's got enough. And if there is one man, like him or not, who can take this gut shot, look up, and ask for more, it's him.

Short of Clemens getting hit by a bus, there's nothing that will make me hope for the best, not yet. The Cardinals during my fandom have had a history of destroying his kind in the playoffs, when it matters. The other two elder statesmen of pitching excellence fell before them, and Clemens could be no different.

But Clemens won't fold if his gameplan isn't working, not like Maddux, he'll find something that works. And he won't fold if his fire isn't there, not like Johnson, he'll work around it. He's a fighter.

I hated him before for coming back out of retirement. I hate him more now that he stands between the most meaningful home run in Cardinals history, and what might just be another footnote.

Eminem

Inventive title, ho!

One of my favorite artists of the past ten years is the aforementioned rapper, which is something that would probably surprise quite a few people, and most conservatives would probably think I'm going to hell expressly for liking him.

First off, just about anything backed by Dre, I can listen to and enjoy. Both 50 Cent and The Game fit into that category. I'm not the biggest fans of theirs, though, since their fare generally runs more to the standard hip hop material of parties, strutting, and occasionally rapping about what their ghetto is like. It's interesting, but I can't identify it, really. Overland wasn't the best of areas, but it certainly wasn't a ghetto. Anyway, Dre behind the beats makes just about any song listenable, so there's that.

Beyond that, there are generally two things that separates Eminem from his contemporaries. The first is his general style, which is to say he doesn't have much of one. One review I read of him stated that his breath control is amazing, and I have to agree. He certainly doesn't have the speed of a Twista, but lyrically, he's capable of going a lot longer than just about anyone I've heard. There are songs of his that I simply cannot sing along with because I run out of breath about half way before he breathes. He also has a capacity to generate lyrics which are interesting simply from a phonetic standpoint, which is really the core of rap as a purely technical music form. I've said before that rap is poetry set to music, but now I think there's more than that. The really good artists have a means of generating a phonetic sound that goes beyond that. There's really very little meter, but there is a similar discipline behind it, it's a rawer form. In a way, the form relies a lot more on alliteration than it does on rhyming, though the difference is slight.

But I get away from myself, Eminem does this better than any one else. If you can divorce the phonics from the words, he generates a rhythm that almost no other artist does. This is why when he's going on about the normal fare, I can still get into the song.

The second reason I can get behind Eminem is that there is an artistic quality to his work. Talking with Jaryd and Joe about hip hop, something that we're all very weirdly familiar with (doubly so considering we're all suburban white geeks), I compared Eminem to Edgar Allen Poe, and they both looked at me with a bit of shock, but it's a comparison I think fits very well. There is the obvious darkness comparison, both of their art carries a very dark feel, but so does Marilyn Manson. Eminem uses that darkness as an art, that he delves into the macabre to evoke emotion, rather than purely to shock.

This post came up from a listening of "Kim," which, along with "Kill You" are Eminem's most controversial songs. Kim, in particular, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. While he's rhyming about killing his girlfriend in pretty graphic descriptions, there is an underlying emotion which comes across through the song. While I can't say it's up there with the greats of culture and whatnought, it is a very effective vehicle. He goes to lengths that the vast majority of humanity will not go to, and in so doing says all the things that we all think when we get angry.

The simple premise of being cheated on by a girlfriend is somewhat overdone as an emotional vehicle, which is why I feel such a song is more refreshing than offensive. Rather than pining away like your average Stabbing Westward song, he's expressing his pain through anger, a phase that is one of the steps to getting over things.

I wholly think that his critics don't look at it as art, they look at it as hate, and I can somewhat understand that. Go look up the lyrics to Kim, and you'll find some pretty bad shit in there. But at the same time, I can listen to that song, and relate it to a recent breakup. While that statement will likely scare a lot of people, it's not the anger, necessarily I identify with, it's the pain. Similar thoughts go through everyone's head, something that is very well done in the movie Closer, where there are two very awkward situations of break ups where there is the standard grilling session that comes after breaking up, wondering why, wondering what went wrong.

There, it's sadness, it's an expression of loss and emptiness, which is only one of the myriad of emotions that go on there. Eminem's song expresses the same situation and emotion, but instead looks at it from a different angle. It's quite obvious to me that he did not kill Kim, unless there's some alien simulacrum running around. It's a horrific song, don't get me wrong, but the thing about it is that it's supposed to be horrific. When you see the first murder victim in Seven, you get the same emotion. Shock, horror, fear. But beneath that is artistic intent. There is a story there, a reason to continue watching. It is not Jackass, where the intent is simply to make you go "ew." That I can't get behind.

But saying and showing horrible things can be artfully done, even if I never watch Seven anymore unless it's the edited version...:P