The smell is insanely bad and leaving the windows open to air it out is not a great idea right now since the temperature mysteriously dropped this month. The bottom line is that something died inside my wall. In the crawlspace. That's the word from the building maintenance guy. In his words, "I'm going to have to hire some tiny Mexicans to get in there since I'm too big, y'know?" I just responded, "yeah, whatever." I mean, why not hire some tiny white guys? There's plenty of those over at Chili's watching ESPN.
When I got home tonight, I noticed something unusual on the lawn outside of my apartment: a man. Maybe in his late 50's or early 60's. It was a little hard to tell because it's dark outside of my apartment when I don't have the living room lights on. He didn't seem to move when I passed by him to open my front door, so I went back to take a look at him.
"Hey man, are you ok?" "Yes, I'm ok. I'm just resting. Do you know where the closest hospital is?" "Palo Alto Medical Foundation is over on El Camino, but that's not really walking distance. Can I call you a cab or something?" "I don't have any money. I'm pretty much homeless. I just need to get to a hospital."
At this point, I knew I would have to call the cops. Not because the guy needed to be busted or anything, but because he might need medical attention. I'm not a huge fan of the Menlo Park police department (see my earlier post on getting a click it or ticket) and I kind of feel like making the phone call is like calling in an air strike on myself or something. Anyway, I made the call, picked up a blanket, and headed back outside to wait with the guy while the police showed up.
"I brought you a blanket. It's cold out here. The cops will here in a few minutes to help out." "Thanks. Do you mind staying with me?" "Not at all."
The man was holding a couple of pieces of paper in his hand which he handed to me to look at. Two sheets of paper had various family pictures. They looked pretty old from the look of the clothing and hairstyles. Perhaps the 1950's.
"That's my Mom and family. Two sisters and a brother." "Your Mom was a very pretty lady." "Yes she was. Her and my Dad split up. Got a divorce, but not before he had her committed and she got shock therapy. She was never the same since." "That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear that. Is your family from around here?" "No, we lived in Modesto. I'm just here getting help. I went out tonight to get some dinner and here's where I ended up."
At this point, the cops showed up. There's not much more to the story. I do kind of wonder why none of my other neighbors came out to see what was going on especially when the ambulance showed up with its lights on. I also wonder how long the poor guy had been wandering around until he showed up on my lawn.
I've been distraught now for a couple of months ever since I realized that 80's music (an all-encompassing term I hate by its own limited value) is now being marketed as oldies. For example, here's a heinous compilation available from Varese Sarabande: Then-Totally-Oldies-80s-Vol which is a perfect example of the mentality that is smushing good and bad music alike into a one size fits all package for people whose musical diversity doesn't extend that far past the soundtracks for Valley Girl or Pretty In Pink. I mean, I don't know what sort of insane person's playlist would sequence Gary Numan's 'Cars' (which was actually released in 1979 on 'the Pleasure Principal') right after 'Jessie's Girl' by Rick Springfield?! Now if you happen to like both those songs, that's fine, but it reminds me of a Saturday Night Live sketch where Will Ferrell was on Who Want To Be A Millionaire. In the sketch, Will gets the first question right and wins $100. When the host asks him if he'd like to continue on to win more money, he smiles and calmly tells the host that he's satisfied with just winning the $100 and that's as far as he wants to go.
Now, I'm not one of those people who claim that the music they grew up with is the best music ever and all modern music is crap. Far from it. I actually grew up listening to Kiss, Styx, Electric Light Orchestra, the Kinks, and solo John Lennon which is about as far away from what I listen to now as you can get. The problem was that was that US radio was stuck on 33 with the same handful of 'hits' from these bands playing ad nauseum. Didn't any of these bands have other songs? Prior to our local radio station making the transition from rock to cutting edge rock, the only alternative I had were occasional tapes of the John Peel show that my cousins would send over from England. This is where I first heard Public Image Limited, Killing Joke, U2, and Siouxsie. When 91X (one of the local radio stations in San Diego) suddenly made the switch from classic rock to cutting edge rock, there was a virtual flood of new music (new wave if you will) which instantly shoved classic rock into oldies territory and probably disenfranchised an entire generation of music lovers who resented the reclassification. As much as I loved turning on the radio and hearing new music, I could also sense a huge problem: radio broadcasters were continuing with the same format of playing only the hits.
Let's cut to today.
In California, we have a trio of radio stations which used to have very diverse playlists and programming (you could hear ska next to punk next to techno next to rap), but cutting edge rock has been replaced by modern rock. The definition of modern rock (based on what I hear at any given time on any of these stations) can be summed up as a blend of California 90's punk, 90's grunge, and a smattering of newer bands that sound like they could have been from either of those first two categories. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, and the Offspring constantly rotate around the clock like room temperature California Rolls at the Sushi boat. It's all very safe, very recognizable, very homogeneous and easily dismissable as background noise while driving to work or working out at the gym. If you like 91X in San Diego, rest assured, you can get the same blend in Los Angeles (KROQ) and San Francisco (Live 105). For example, at 12:25 PM, I just checked all three of those radio station's websites to see what songs were playing:
91X - Smashing Pumpkins 'Zero' (a great band, but they've produced a lot of other great music since 1996).
Live 105 - Nirvana 'Polly' (at least it's the acoustic version).
Yep. That's pretty much the definition of modern rock.
Why is it that every generation of music has to fall prey to the same marketing driven neutering? 70's music should not be defined by disco and soft rock. 60's music should not be defined by classic rock and pop. Music should be defined by our own individual tastes and not by generic labels which dictate what we listen to by what's conveniently at hand. Bands are not just their hits or the singles that make it onto movie soundtracks. I can only imagine how much great music I would have missed out on if I'd just let marketing guide my musical likes and dislikes. So, the next time you listen to some 80's music don't dismiss it as novelty music (which it is clearly marketed as by concentrating on silliness like Falco's 'Rock Me Amadeus' and the Greg Kihn Band's 'Jeopardy'), but rather ask yourself why there's no possible way you'd even hear anything like Love and Rockets next to Madness or the Clash these days (unless your local radio station has a faux-nostalgic 80's show with some British accented DJ). How about using Pandora to find some other music you may like that you've never heard of? How about exploring an entire album's worth of material on I-Tunes instead of just settling for the hit? How about tuning into Nic Harcourt's Mornings Become Eclectic on KCRW which easily has the most musical diversity of any radio broadcast on the face of the planet?
In the videogame industry, nobody likes news like this: Game Over for Tomb Raider boss. People who've been working in videogame development for a long time probably know that the industry is far from being a picture of stability: developers lose valuable contracts, publishers release triple-A bombs, and companies reorganize at the slightest hint of financial trouble. More senior development staff have probably been through some or all of these situations and have developed the ability to recognize and react accordingly while less experienced staff may resort to professional panic. Inevitably, when any signs of real or perceived trouble reverberate through the industry, a third party becomes very interested in everybody's situation: recruiters.
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. - Mark Twain.
A recruiter (sometimes referred to as a headhunter) provides client representation between potential candidates and potential employers based on the needs of both parties. There are numerous benefits to using a recruiter whether you're an entry-level game designer or an experienced game designer. Recruiters can provide direct contacts with company hiring managers that would otherwise be difficult to attain. Recruiters can assist in negotiating different salary requirements for a position. Recruiters can also help locate specific roles for highly specialized candidates.
Very early in my career, I worked with a recruiter named Maria Barton to help me get one of my first big game design positions. Before she sent my resume to any of her clients, she took the time to become familiar with my job history, skill set, and, most importantly, my character. She helped me iterate on my resume with each potential position that came up. She kept in touch with me during the entire process letting me know what companies she was contacting on my behalf as well as refining the search to hone in on the most appropriate fit for my skills. When I finally got the job, she stayed in touch with me for the first few months to make sure I was happy in my new position.
Unfortunately, Maria's level of professionalism isn't always the norm in the videogame recruitment industry. In relation to the news I mentioned at the top of this post, my current place of employment has been deluged with phone calls from a whole slew of recruitment firms. Generally, they will look through game credits (usually available on MobyGames), find the main number for the developer, and then call everybody up on the team to try and lure them with the promise of exciting job opportunities. Nothing is more uncomfortable (or unwarranted) as having your work interrupted by a phone call from somebody who lacks the professional courtesy to contact you in any number of other ways (LinkedIn, Google search for email, etc.)! At one company I worked at, we employed the services of a recruitment firm who actually turned around and tried to recruit from beneath us! In the worst cases, I will actually put the recruiter on hold and then transfer the call to our Human Resources department.
Why don't we have that kind of relationship?
So, why do recruiters do this? It's a classic cold calling model (by Wikipedia's definition, a business to consumer approach). For every hung up phone, non returned phone call, and brush off, there's the one disgruntled or panicked employee who will bite. Recruiters work on commission. This means that they are paid an initial fee for referrals and paid a much larger fee (usually a percentage of a candidate's first year of salary) for placement. Bad recruiters will generally blanket the industry with a candidate's resume whether the candidate is qualified for the position or not. For example, an FPS project may be looking for a lead level designer and the recruitment firm sends over a resume for an MMO systems designer. The rationale is that if you throw enough material out there, something will probably stick.
At lunch yesterday, we were discussing the issue of why videogame industry recruiters may be a dying breed. To illustrate my point, I brought up the fact that most large print newspapers have lost a significant source of revenue from classified ads to free, online classified ad services like Craigslist. According to this article, http://www.smartmoney.com/sectorpatrol/index.cfm?story=20050907, newspapers may be losing as much as 40% of their advertising revenue to websites like Craigslist! Similarly, traditional recruitment firms are no longer the only game in town when it comes to job hunting. Craigslist and Gamasutra are two of the biggest sources of free job listings, websites like LinkedIn provide valuable resources for networking within the industry, and many of the bigger developers have their own internal recruiting departments and job postings.
Now, all this being said, there are still some good recruiters out there (like Maria). If you are going to use a recruiter, make sure they are referring you to companies / teams where your abilities would provide a natural / appropriate fit. Make sure to let your recruiter know who you may have approached on your own and, conversely, make sure your recruiter keeps you up to date on who they are contacting on your behalf. Stay in contact with your recruiter on a regular basis and make sure you that your recruiter doesn't do anything without your permission. Finally, do some research into recruiters and find one that has good word of mouth and fits your needs. Do not blindly take on the services of just any recruiter that may contact you since this can produce unexpected results that may not be in your best interests.
Personal Game History: Jurassic Park Rampage Edition
I was surprised today to moderate a comment about Jurassic Park Rampage Edition! The really weird thing is that we were briefly discussing the same Jurassic Park game at work today in relation to the upcoming Tomb Raider Underworld game that we're working on at Crystal Dynamics! Unfortunately, I can't be more specific in why we were talking about it, but possibly in the next few months I can talk about it if I get permission from upper management.
Anyway, the first Sega GenesisJurassic Park game was a HUGE hit for Sega and BlueSky Software, so it seemed like a no-brainer to pitch a quick sequel. The game was approved for development with much of the original team, but a significantly shorter schedule (6 to 8 months I think) in order to get it out quick while the franchise was still hot. I don't remember all the specifics about the game's development, but I have a few memories:
I wrote the original design document with the assistance of my producer Jenny Cleary. This was the first design document I ever wrote and, unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it anymore. This was also my first job as a game designer since I'd been a largely unsuccessful junior programmer prior to this. If you play the first Jurassic Park game, I did the code for the options menu on the title screen. Woohoo! Also, for any aspiring game designers reading this post, I can't stress enough how valuable any amount of a programming background can be in relation to game design!
I designed two of the levels for the game: the Aviary and the Cargo Ship. I know the gameplay for the Aviary frustrates a lot of people, but I really wanted to try something different with the level design, so I inverted the traditional layout (bottom to top) and made the gameplay flow from top to bottom. Instead of worrying about falling, the player had to worry about pterodactyls that would carry them back to the nest at the top of the level. With the Cargo Ship, I'd been inspired by a Japanese Super Famicom game called Septentrion (known in the US as S.O.S.) which takes place on a Titanic style sinking luxury liner. I wanted to use the rising water level gameplay to chase the player through the different decks as raptors tried to kill them. This was quite a technical feat for the programmers since the Sega Genesis didn't have fancy Mode 7 to simulate the water effects.
In the original Jurassic Park game, we were given strict orders not to kill dinosaurs because it would upset kids playing the game. We ended up having to put them all to sleep with a tranquilizer gun which would cause them to lay down with little z's over their head. In the sequel, the movie had already proven to be a big hit and people had a much different impression of dealing with dinosaurs, so we were not only allowed, but encouraged to blow the creatures to bits! I mean, c'mon. What kid isn't going to want to kill something that will tear a bathroom apart to bite some guy in half?
I still keep in touch with a few of the BlueSky folks who worked on the game. Keith Freiheit (the lead programmer) works at Bottle Rocket Entertainment, Dok Whitson (lead artist) works at SOE, Mark Lorenzen (artist and designer) works at a division of Electronic Arts (the last time I heard from him), Mark Botta (programmer) works with me at Crystal Dynamics, Karl Robillard (one of my favorite people ever) is probably somewhere in Arizona programming Linux applications, and Rich Karpp (programmer) is also at Bottle Rocket Entertainment.
Kyle Mannerberg was a fellow designer at Crystal Dynamics. I'm not sure how or why he died, but he passed away during the latter part of December 2007. I remember Kyle as a very quiet guy with a dry sense of humor and a great book collection. I could always go by and shoot the breeze with him about movies, H.P. Lovecraft, what a crappy place Namco was to work at (during the early 90's), and all sorts of other geekery. I was all set to work with him this year on the next installment of Tomb Raider and I'm sad that i'll never get the opportunity. If you have a moment one evening, look up at the night sky and give him a smile.
Quick update! The project I'm currently working on is heading towards something called Vertical Slice. By definition, Vertical Slice represents a cross section of the game which contains all the game play that the eventual finished product will have. At Namco, it was called P1 (1st playable). At other companies, it's just been a looming date. I think we're in really good shape for the most part on our Vertical Slice, but time is really limited and things sometimes go a lot slower than I would like.
In addition to my regular work, I'm also finishing up another article for http://www.gamecareerguide.com/ AND trying to power through this year's NaNoWriMo. This clip from Family Guy keeps popping into my head while I'm trying to write:
Alright, back to work. More regular updates shortly!
On Game Design: asking questions of the interviewer
Here is a perfect example of a man who fails to get enough information before embarking on a course of action:
Other than trying to mess with Bruce Lee, this man's biggest mistake was not only failing to ask the right questions, but not pursuing the right answer. "Wash your shtyle?" provided him with only a vague answer which he then turned into another question which garnered no further information.
At the tail end of every interview I conduct, I ask the candidate, "do you have any questions for me?" Very few candidates take the opportunity to ask me any questions and fewer still ask questions that are little more than formalities. In my experience, the worst projects i've been on are the ones where I had the least information walking in. With the right questions, a candidate can learn a lot about an individual (the interviewer), a project, a position, and a company. Any one of these questions, in turn, can provide invaluable information that can help determine whether the project or company is the right fit. Don't leave it all up to the interviewer to automatially provide all this information. Be proactive! Here's some examples:
“What is your toolset like?” – show some curiosity about the tools that are going to be used to develop the project: modeling packages, scripting languages, level editors, etc. If the toolset is in a transitional phase, ask what steps are being taken to fix the toolset or get it ready for production. A friend of mine went on an interview recently where the project only had 8 months left in development and there weren't any tools for design! How is that supposed to work?!
“Who’s in charge?” – ask about the project / company's management structure, team hierarchy, etc. If you interview with somebody who's going to be in charge of you, make sure you get a good vibe from them. If you have past history with somebody on the team, make sure you get to talk to them to see where you stand. I've had two jobs where I've had to work with somebody I didn't get along with before. In one case, the individual drove the project into the ground while in the other case, the person was a real asset to the team and helped us out immensely. Some people change, others don't.
“What are the working conditions like?” – you should always get a good idea of what sort of time you're going to be putting into a project. Ask about overtime, crunch mode, weekend hours, general daily hours, etc.
“What is the schedule like on the project?” - this is a critical question with a simple answer. Follow it up with “how far along is the project?” Does the amount of time measure up with the project? Does it seem like enough time? Too much? Too little? If a project is on a tight schedule, there are going to be issues with the amount of hours you will have to work as well as the overall quality of the project. People and money can always be provided. Time is generally static.
There are a ton of other questions you could ask, but these are the prime candidates for raising red flags.
"Artists have portfolios that showcase their fine art skills and work from the projects they've been involved with. Examples of game design work are often something that job-hunting game designers just don't think about or don't think they need. However, examples of game design work can be as critical to your chances of employment as an art portfolio can be to an artist. Examples of work can include system documentation (specs), scripting examples, level layouts (paper / Max / Maya), magazine reviews, articles, or interviews. Get yourself a good presentation binder to put everything in and make it look professional and presentable. If you are going to put any examples of your work up on a website, keep it professional. Don't link to personal BLOGS or other websites that may influence the reader."
Over the past month, i've interviewed two prospective video game designers and one guy who wants to get into video game design. Out of the three, one guy had nearly 20 years of experience in the industry, another about 10, and the last guy had practically no applicable skills. However, they all had something in common: no examples of their work. SO, this post is going to expand on the concept of the video game designer's portfolio and what a candidate can use for material.
Games: not everyone you interview with will have played the games you've worked on, so bring copies of your credited games with you and a memory card with a save file that will allow you to quickly access the areas of the game with your work. Better yet, if you have a pre-beta build with production-based options (free camera, simulation pause, wireframe view, etc.), bring that. Most, if not all, companies you'll interview at have a wide variety of development kits. Heck, I think I even saw a Dreamcast devkit at work the other day!
Press Coverage: bring previews, reviews, and other articles related to the games you've worked on. Cut them out of magazines or print them up off websites. Bonus points if the article mentions you by name or has screen shots / coverage of anything that was specifically your work.
Articles: have you worked on any published articles or academic papers? Bring those with you! Be prepared to talk about your opinions.
Paper Design Work: regardless of how technologically far we advance as an industry, basic video game design still has its roots in the classic staples of game design: paper maps, skill tables, documentation, sketches, etc. Bring it with you because it helps flesh out potential employers' impressions of your skills. One of the designers on my team got his job almost entirely based on a sketchbook he brought with him which contained everything from room designs to player mechanics and game play setups.
Level Layouts: you can bring actual Maya or Max files or just printed renderings. Be prepared to talk about layout methodology: block mesh (the process of laying out rough level shapes which are then handed off to art), components (the ability to think about level element reuse), game flow (how the player moves through the layout), and workflow (what stages of production the level goes through from start to finished game). Another great thing to do is to have some representations of your work on the layout and then pictures of the final product.
Misc. Things: spec work (systems design), scripting examples (Python, Lua, state machines, C++, proprietary languages, etc.), Excel schedules, etc.
When you have the bulk of this material assembled, put it in some sort of order either chronological (similar to a resume) or by skill set progression. Be prepared to talk about any and all of it. In addition to the physical version, keep a version on CD (or DVD) and also a version on an FTP somewhere. This will decrease the burden of how much you carry into an interview and also provide a handy two pronged backup in case you lose your portfolio or the dog eats it or you need to leave it with somebody.
Now, let's say you don't have any industry experience. Does that mean that all this information is useless because you don't have anything to make a portfolio out of? Not at all. 3D packages like Maya and Max are available in free student versions. Use them to come up with some level layouts. Scripting languages like Lua and Python are readily available and can provide valuable insight into how just about any other scripting language you may run into will work (structure and terminology). If you have some game ideas, try documenting them in high concepts (the idea for the game summed up in a short paragraph along with bullet pointed features) and game specs (game play systems defined). Work on presentation and the proper use of game development terminology. Take a game that you like and write up a document on how you think it works. If you have any friends that are already in the video game industry, have them look through your materials and offer you tips.
Lastly, with some small warnings, don't be afraid to take some representative design materials with you when you leave a project or company. I don't mean to dump the project onto a hard drive and take it home or anything like that. Be selective of the materials you take in relation to anything proprietary (particular to a toolset, work flow, technology, intellectual property). Keep copies of the design documents you work on. The other day we interviewed a candidate who said that he "didn't know they could take anything like examples of work from a company they'd worked at". These materials are still covered by any NDA you may have previously signed, but they also represent your work. The thing to keep in mind is that it's generally not a good idea to show any materials from a work in progress (like if you left a project early) or, again, anything that gives away any proprietary information. When you interview at another company, you're under their NDA as well, so unless you're interviewing with somebody really shady, the work you're presenting will be secure. ALSO, don't post any of these sorts of things to any websites or blogs or anything like that until a sufficient amount of time has passed to merit the release of these materials without harming a property. I recently heard about an artist who posted classified art from a high profile next-gen title on his/her website as part of an online resume. Not a very good move.
Well, this review has been sitting around on my hard drive for a couple of weeks due to extensive shenanigans caused by Norton Internet Security 2006 and bad ATI drivers. The short version of the story is that I’d get these weird errors when closing Windows like can’t stop cpp.exe and a bunch of other crap. On top of that, an ATI PC video recorder device I got came with a bunch of old ATI drivers which I even updated, but they still managed to crash my computer out to some ridiculously low resolution at 4 colors any time it found some graphic content it didn’t like which, unfortunately, included Grid Wars (a great Geometry Wars ripoff I was playing). Anyway...
The other weekend, I used a little slight of hand to get MM out to the cinema to see Alfonso Cuarón's"Children Of Men" (based on the book by P.D. James). I knew very little about the movie or the source material and mainly went because i'm a huge fan of Cuarón's work (one of the best road trips ever in "Y Tu Mamá también" and arguably the best of the Harry Potter film adaptations to date, "The Prisoner Of Azkaban").
Great Britain in 2027 looks like the worst of World War 2 war torn Europe plastered over with crass Western commercialism and peppered with pockets of bourgeois wealth (a rich socialite lives in high rise palace with a life size recreation of Pink Floyd's "Animals" floating over a conveniently placed factory next door). A world-wide epidemic has eliminated mankind's ability to reproduce, so the remaining generations of increasingly paranoid, hateful, and racist citizens slowly count the days and hours until the entire human race becomes extinct. Theo (Clive Owen) is a news reporter who’s begrudgingly dragged back into a life of radical activism by his ex-wife who is helping an underground movement smuggle the world’s first pregnant woman out of the country to the safety of the mythical Human Project. What happens along the way would give away too much of what makes the movie special and unexpected, so I’ll skip the plot details and focus on what I liked about the movie.
Children Of Men has an undeniable sense of place; a near-future stunningly realized both as a setting and a society. If you look back at movies like Blade Runner or the Fifth Element, they used sheer density of vehicle motion and color in tight, three dimensional space to define their futuristic city settings. Children Of Men has a more grounded approach using only a slightly more futuristic setting than today and eschewing flying cars in favor of density of emotion and class struggle (a pointless, but desperate exercise considering the rapidly approaching end of the human race). The only real sci-fi elements in the city are 3D advertising elements projected onto sides of buildings which aren’t so impossible to imagine after watching the Tokyo city streets reflected in a cab window in Lost In Translation. In a possible nod to both Blade Runner and the Fifth Element, Children Of Men throws a Chinese rickshaw into its opening street scene.
Children Of Men is part thriller, part action movie, and part social commentary. That being said, one of the greatest things about the movie is that the characters portray a very realistic combination of believable emotion met with believable action. Little details become essential components of the main character like the various pets (which MM pointed out are substitutes for children) that are affectionately drawn to Theo or when very visible cracks appear in his normally aloof exterior (a desperate, uncomfortable kiss with an old flame or an uncontrollable burst of tears). Sure there are some visually impressive, meticulously choreographed action shots which track for minutes on end without cutting away, but these always serve as frames for the characters and never as just throw away visual effects shots like most Hollywood pictures. Within these shots, characters retain their humanity and never do anything super human or unbelievable.
Strangely enough, Mike Judge's"Idiocracy", a comedy, proved to be a perfect companion piece to Children Of Men. Idiocracy is centered around the concept that Darwnin's law of survival of the fittest has not favored the intelligent or the strongest, but rather those who who can simply reproduce faster and more often.
Some bad language, but gosh darned funny!
500 years in the future, the world's IQ level has dropped dangerously low leaving a world full of idiots who survive on a combination of unplanned pregnancies, overbearing commercialism (water has been replaced by a Gatorade-like substance which has electrolytes to satisfy thirst, but ends up killing crops world-wide), mind numbing television, and a steady diet of fast food. Two normal citizens from the 2005 (an average military man and a prostitute) are frozen in a military cryogenics experiment and end up being abandoned only to awake in this dumb, futuristic state of the world.
Idiocracy wasn't promoted at all. There was no website for it (that I could find at least), no advertising, and no sense of it ever having appeared at a movie theatre near me. I have a theory on this. Western comedy has a 5% dumb factor. What I mean, is that given any sitcom or movie, there's an allowance for only a small percentage of the cast to portray dumb characters while the remainder of the cast has to be intelligent. The dumb characters are used for comic relief, plot devices that rely on buffoonery, or as some sort of tool to make the intelligent characters feel better about themselves. The dumb characters are a mirror held up to show us what we shouldn't be by the smart people who show us who we should be. It's a comfort thing. A comedic safety net facilitated by Gilligan, Homer, Peter Griffin, and a ton of other men (how come there aren’t many dumb female characters?). Idiocracy completely inverts this whole paradigm by making 2% of the cast smart (in an average way) while the rest of the cast is completely stupid. This is probably scary to a lot of people.
So, we have two ends of the spectrum here: a drama about an intelligent world falling into chaos because it can't reproduce and a comedy about a stupid world falling into chaos because it can reproduce. I ended up liking Idiocracy for many of the same reasons I liked Children Of Men, albeit comedic angles on the same concepts and issues. For a comedy, Idiocracy did an amazing job with its sense of place ranging from a skyline of incomplete freeways and tied together skyscrapers to a Costco the size of a small country. None of the shots are particularly realistic. They have a 1960's Star Trek matte painting look to them that may seem cheesy to a lot of viewers, but actually go a long way in creating a world that looks as practical as it does improbable. You'll never look at Fuddruckers the same way! As far as the characters, they stay remarkably consistent; none of the dumb characters ever get smarter and none of the average characters (regardless of their intellectual advantages) ever actually save the world. Infact, there is no typical happy ending to the movie and it ends just as bleakly and inconclusive as it begins.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village: I never had much tolerance for word puzzles back in my grade school days which makes portions of this otherwise fantastic game a little frustrating. That being said,
it's refreshing to see a triple-A (graphics, control, gameplay, and sound) title on the DS when 9 out of 10 other titles are pure crap. Level-5 are one of the best
developers in the world and I can't wait for Dragon Quest IX on the DS!
Phil K presents Y4K:Phil K is an Aussie DJ and producer who releases consistently great breakbeat collections that mix in house and progressive beats. In general,
you can't go wrong with any of the Y4K releases which include mixes from Evil Nine, General Midi, and
Hybrid.
Sightings by Sam Keen: I heard a great interview with Sam Keen on Michael Krasny's show on NPR. The quote on the back of the book sums up the
subject material perfectly, 'Our most intimate revelations of the sacred can happen in unexpected moments and unlikely places.' My Mom likes to watch and chat with birds, so I'll be sending this to her when I'm
done.
Into the Wild: Sean Penn pulls off an incredible adaptation of Jon Krakauer's equally incredible book. Along with the upcoming Watchmen, this is one of my
favorite books where I was really nervous that Hollywood couldn't do justice to the source material.
