Chris Crawford On Game Design

Just finished this book (see title), a most excellent read. Mr. Atari’s take is one from the old-timers of the game industry, thus his remarks range from insightful to scathing. Rightly so, the gaming industry has seen little innovation in over 5 years and is currently cranking out tons of me too, more-of-the-same and pretty sequels at a comfortable rate. He says it best:

“Computer and videogames are now a narrowly defined entertainment form avidly pursued by a subset of the mass market. It’s easier this way for everybody. Marketing people know exactly whom to advertise to, what the ads should look like, and so forth. Retailers know exactly how to stock their shelves. Producers know precisely what sells, and designers don’t have to sweat being innovative; they need only apply the latest technology to the time-honored standard designs. It’s a comfortable arrangement, and it works well. Thousands of satisfied employees grind out products for millions of happy, well-defined customers. The system works; everybody makes money.” –pages 338-339,

Funny thing is that you can replace “computer and videogames” with almost anything in pop culture. First comes to mind is hip-hop, country music and television. It’s as if the machine is one-trick pony and is destined to be formulaic and squeeze out creativity. All that talk of empowering the individual in the new media boom of the mid nineties was just a pipe dream. I believe there are solutions, inspiration and innovations out there its just that the blanket of big money is covering it up at the moment.

Random Ranting

TV has gotten out of touch with its viewing public, whereas they been guilty in the past, its now become so insipid, so obvious and pathetic that even those device dependant have begun to wonder what’s going on.

I’m so sick of the Harley Davidson mythos I could hork. What was once a true underground American subculture has been packaged, glossed over and consumerized so well that for 20,000.00 and a leather jacket you too can be one of the disillusioned. Super-size that with 100 dollars worth of cookie cutter tattoo ink and you can be forcefully immune from any disenchantment. Target market pudgy midlife crisis with a 2-beer buzz and fell asleep watching Easy Rider. Lazy-ass OCC wannabee Victims!

If I see one more Civic fitted with a coffee can stinkpipe and an aluminum airplane wing on the back, simultaneously sporting shite stickers and the cheapest tires available I will go on a rampage of epic proportions. This is another example of crass, cheap-ass, magazine-induced hypnotism designed to infiltrate your wallet, you’re a victim, WAKE UP!

Why is it that Mountain Dew is cheaper than milk? –No wonder there are so many fat kids. How did we end up living in a culture that has to spend extra time, money and effort to NOT eat so much sugar?

The cry to “live more – consume less” seems to be falling on deaf ears. The machine has been running too well, for too long and its been pulling at the people so well that we’ve excepted, expected and eagerly anticipated the next level of convenience, high-fashion and media produced self-image consciousness. Trying hard not to be a victim. It’s a war and I don’t know how to win it. But at least I’ve woken up and it’s pissed me off.

Bomb That Freight

Trainspotting, not the movie. Right outside my current office lays a few sets of railroad tracks. The occasional magical glimpse leaves me checking the tracks like the weather channel. Every so often I get the view of some of the most amazing collaborative graphic design I’ve ever seen. Juxtaposed against flat industrial colors, clear-concise identification and some of the best/most abbreviated transportation logos known to man are the very colorfully chaotic, wonderfully garish tags, bombs, pieces ever produced by an aerosol can. These graffiti artists sometimes flip me right out. What makes it perfect is the placement on the canvas always says excellent design in its polar opposites simultaneously. Freedom and conformity, post-mod and mod, cause and effect, static and movement, order and chaos - like I said, flips me right out. They are like moving museum pieces randomly exposing themselves to the urban sprawl. Inspiring!

I [heart] Beck

Finding a personal duplicity in musical tastes. On one side the quest for the headwaters of my distinct cultural conditioning are leading to areas of country, folk, bluegrass, blues, 60’s rock and 70’s country rock. No lack of excellent music there. On the other side, some strange need to immerse myself in nothing but machine-based, beat driven, science fiction orientated, mellow-jazzy-trippy-lounge-turntablism, has got me collecting some pretty obscure but wonderful discs. The only (perhaps not only, only unfound) balancing genre seems to pivot somewhere around the artist Beck.

Further introspection reveals a similar dichotomy in the visual realm. One side steeped in the traditionalism of typography, serifs and copperplate script fashioned with the utmost integrity, illustrative elements inked with brush and pen. Fueled by an immense passion-driven knowledge of Art Nouveou, the Arts & Crafts Movement, -history, theory and practice. It is a rich and sublimely interesting field of study. Then Jekyll’s Hyde: a digital, cyborg vision where nothing exists only in pixel, vector and code. It is sterile, clean, organized and controllable. I like it.

Organic vs. artificial? Soul/spirit warring against logic? Left vs. right brain? Maybe it aint no thing and I should just let it flow, be like Beck.

Hear Me Roar!

I am Galacticus and I am invincible! Surrender now and I will spare you. I mean it. I wield the Power Cosmic™, which means that you're really in for it. My hunger for consuming planets in very big, its so beyond ravenous it aint funny.