The Gamer's Quarter

[Harveyjames]

aww.

[daphaknee]

james im going to punch you in the nose

[Harveyjames]

You would try but it would sort of turn into a fumbled hug and then we'd embrace, our unspoken affection finally given sweet release.

[helicopterp]

that's the funniest thing you've said out of caps-lock in a long time
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Harveyjames]

So Dess, what do your tutors think about WiiWare? Seem it's going to revolutionize the videogames industry if the hype's to be believed, since the dev kits cost a quarter of the XBLA ones and the installed user base is enormous.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8947&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=1

[daphaknee]

ill make o ne with you harveyjames

[kirkjerk]

For Xbox live, isn't the problem the approval/review process, like making sure the fifth level of your game doesn't suddenly throw 200 winged penises at the unsuspecting tyke who downloaded your fiendish trojan horse of a creation? Is there any reason to think Nintendo would be more relaxed?
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=/ \(<D)_/
==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

[Harveyjames]

What's the problem, is the approval/review process too strict on XBLA? I don't know anything about it.

[fish]

its a resetable process.
if at any time you fail any kind of certification, the process starts over.
you can spend months submitting new builds without ever getting to the end of it.

also, MS has TONS of guidelines and CRTs that you absolutely have to comply to.
sony is much more flexible about these things.

nintendo...who knows?
i dont know anybody working with them personally anyway.
i wouldnt want to be a nintendo 2nd party dev tho.
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you cant spell selfish without fish

[Harveyjames]

I'd love to work with nintendo, but then I am an Iwata / Miyamoto fanboy.

[dessgeega]

week four.

sometimes among my classmates i see that dangerous thing, that reverence to authority thing, that idea that the ability to create a videogame is something that our professors bestow upon us. sometimes classmates will raise hands and ask "is it possible for a game to do this?" as if our teacher is the authority on what is and is not possible in a living medium.

those students who've actually made games, who know that this isn't the case, are visibly frustrated with the curriculum.

i am restless in lectures. i don't feel i'm learning anything. obviously, i've had to invent my own work to feel as though i'm making any progress.

there's so much i want to say in class, so much i want to challenge, but after six hours of class, three hours of homework and three more hours working on my own project, i no longer have the energy to say anything.
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[The Great Unwashed]

Do it. Challenge it. This is an important time for you and for your fellow students. If all of you don't find the energy to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done then it's damaging to you, to your fellow students and even the school itself. Otherwise you're just helping the system churn out more damaged goods.
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[Cycle]

And whatever happens, never forget... that we love you, Dess.
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[helicopterp]

If I'm ever in your neck of Texas, which probably won't ever happen, you can hand me an index card with all the things you want to say but can't because as a student you're somewhat subject to the authority structure of the school. I'll bust into the lecture hall during a vapid industry talk and read down the list with Gob-like gusto and intensity.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Harveyjames]

[Cycle]

except harveyjams, primarily because he's a jerk.
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[Harveyjames]

what are you talking about, just yesterday I sent Dess a lovely picture I made of her on Wii paint, which was attached to a message where I'd put a 'less than' sign next to a three so it would look like a heart, like this ---> <3 . What did you do Cycle, beside make me LOSE MY LUNCH

[Cycle]

I cured cancer.
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[Harveyjames]

I'm going to bed now. And whatever happens, never forget... that I love you, Cycle

Toodles!

[Cycle]

Yeah I know, EVERYone loves me. I'm just that kinda guy, you know? Women want me, and so do men.
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[daphaknee]

i demand that you listen to anarcho-punk and public enemy every morning before class, to get that energy back

[boojiboy7]

[Harveyjames]

I never really had a problem speaking my mind in lectures at film school, but that's because I'm a big show-off.

[Intentionally Wrong]

I have notebooks full of snarky criticism of things my instructors said. I recommend it.

[Redeye]

Games to play in school.


Draw a gallery of an instructors' clothes.

Divide by category.

Ties, pants, jackets, shoes, etc.

Then assign codes to each item and have a gambling pool based on projected combinations.


My brother and some friends did it in high school to one of the teachers and one of the other teachers found out about it and asked to see it.

She laughed her ass off.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Harveyjames]

That's awesome!

[dessgeega]

week five.

the knife i borrowed from a classmate. the paint i sent away for. the cardboard came off the box, and the newspaper was a copy of the dallas morning news i pulled out of the trash.

the shirts they gave away the first day of class, one for everyone, bright red with the school masthead emblazened across the chest. i spread out the newspaper, laid down the shirt, and put on top of it the stencil i had carved out of cardboard. i shook the paint can and sprayed.

minutes later, there's a black space invader sprayed across my school t-shirt.

i adopted the space invader as a personal emblem years ago, but it hasn't been nearly as relevent until i came here. as a queer woman, as an indie games creatrix, i have never felt more like i was intruding on a space that wasn't expecting me.

invader, i.
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[dessgeega]

week six.

this week i showed up to school without realizing i had a mid-term scheduled. i struggled with it, left three questions blank, and went home deeply upset. they were the "list three things i explicitly mentioned in my lecture" type of question.

i was angry and frustrated that despite all the work i do, for class and on my own time, despite generally knowing my shit, which i think i do, my grades are ultimately decided by my ability to memorize notes the night before an exam.

and my grades are what decide if i stay or if i go, since i'm on academic probation for dropping out of my last school. and then i got angry that anything that happened at my last school, a different experience that i abandoned precisely because it didn't engage me in the way that my current program does, should have any influence over my work in the field i actually care about.

i got my grade back today. it's an 80. i left three questions blank, but i apparently got just about everything else right.

a classmate and i were expressing our mutual dismy at the fact that so many of our classmates' experience with videogames does not seem to extend far beyond world of warcraft.

it saddens and worries me a little. an artist is expected to be able to discuss the work of other artists in her field; if you're an animator, i don't think it's out of the question to expect you to be capable of having an intelligent conversation about the work of osamu tezuka, or at least walt disney.

i appreciate that people have different perspectives and backgrounds, and i think the medium needs those people; but, at least for me, i think that if i am engaged in the medium of videogames, i should be at least somewhat familiar with the work of eugene jarvis, dave theurer, jeff minter, yu suzuki, richard garriot, jordan mechner, gunpei yokoi, shigeru miyamoto, matsuura masaya, yuji horii. i just feel as though i have a sense of my medium.
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[daphaknee]

conversely do you know anything about world of warcraft? GOD THERES THIS GIRL AND SHES ALL I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT GAKMES BUT SHE HASNT EVEN PLAYED WORLD OF WARCRAFT!! maybe someone is thinking that about you gosh thats so lame

[Harveyjames]

Well, congrats on the test!

You know, I'm not sure I think that having a base of knowledge of other creator's work is as important as you do. I have a friend who draws comics and yet knows shit about the history of comics- that doesn't change the fact that her comics are incredible.

[SuperWes]

[daphaknee]

super wes i just said that but less eloquently why do you have to do that to me

[Harveyjames]

You were concise and make the reader do the work, though. Like Confucious!

[Redeye]

More whining about industry worker exploitation.

I guess the Week 1 intervention business at videogame school explained all of this.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Adilegian]

[helicopterp]

Hey where? And do you share your stuff?
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[boojiboy7]

[Harveyjames]

Well, they might have read a bunch of books you haven't, who knows.

Seriously there are dudes in Africa who've never heard of Michelangelo but it doesn't make their carvings and sculptures any less beautiful. I don't think talent and creativity are the same thing as having an enclycopedic knowledge of other artists in your field. In fact sometimes the best thing you can do is just ignore what everyone else is doing / has done and create your own stuff completely that's completely independent of the rest of society.

Case in point, Shigeru Miyamoto has said many times over the past 30 or so years that he 'doesn't really play other people's games'.

[kirkjerk]

[Harveyjames]

Absolutely- I guess what I'm saying is that snobbery of this type is kind of pointless. I mean these guys might not have played Earthbound through to the end, but the chances are they've got life experiences in areas I can't even imagine. I'm sure it all rounds out.

[dhex]

one's circle of familiarity often happens by chance.

and sometimes people are just plain ignorant.

or really, really monochromatic. (same diff)

it happens.
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[Redeye]

Value systems guide the choices of information to consume.




OR:





Yeah, I know there's more to it than that.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Scratchmonkey]

Certainly you don't have to have a varied background to appreciate or create "art" or whatever we want to call it. Media. Texts. Whichever.

The question is then given the existence of videogame "schools", whether you should expect people to have a varied background in the medium and/or whether the school should provide some sort of perspective related to that (i.e. should "art" schools teach representational art, impressionism, expressionism, cubism etc., for a given definition of teach, that is, should they make you try and replicate or art or just clue you in to its existence?).

I don't think you necessarily need to have a wide background in games in order to make good ones -- the best videogame designer I know doesn't have a console or computer in his house. Instead, it's all erector-set style toys, board games and scratch paper fucking everywhere.

In any case, I would say that a wide knowledge base in a school concentrating on production, like art school or videogame school, isn't really a requirement, it's what each individual gets out of it in terms of their personal production, although offering some sort of optional overview course seems like a good idea. Comparing this to say, graduate school in literature is a bit of apples and oranges because then we're talking about critical studies, in which case I would say a wide knowledge base would be beneficial and probably expected.

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, and not everyone can afford to have played that many videogames. I mean university is pretty elitist as it is, what with the tuition fees and all. Expecting people to have bought and played an enormous amount of computer games beforehand is just adding to the problem. Obviously there's emulation and piracy, but you can't expect everyone to do that, especially since emulating anything made since the Playstation is quite difficult.

[boojiboy7]

Yeah, I wasn't saying all people at dess's school should know videogames. I guess my own schooling is a bit different, as we are there to study literature, so I would expect people to be better read, but in an environment of creation, I would expect more variation in the levels of knowledge. Like some people might know a ton of games, others, not so much.

It also could just be that people only talk about WoW because they know it is an easy common ground.

[Harveyjames]

Yep, probably, just like how in the first year most everyone at animation school talked about Scooby Doo and not Jan Svankmajer.

Then again I'm willing to bet these guys who talk about World of Warcraft are just really into World of Warcraft.

[boojiboy7]

[Adilegian]

[daphaknee]

[daphaknee]

i see what everyone is saying but it WOULD be nice if dess's school had A LITTLE more variety, like i met some of them and it was almost acceptable but still