kainasylum

 Had a great day biking through urban territory today, and it gave me a lot of time to think... On my list of things to think about was an update to my games list, about three months worth of purchases.  So without further ado...

• Splinter Cell: Conviction (360) - because I have acquired a taste for stealth gaming
• Resident Evil 5 (360) - Harvey hated it so much that he gave me his copy.  I only play it co-op with Jamal... I don't imagine this to be fun at all in single-player
• Mushroom Men (Wii) - because I nearly destroyed myself working on this game... its development time spanned a pivotal transition period in my life and career.  I finally purchased my own copy from Amazon because my old studio never received any copies from the publisher to give to its dev team.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (360): because I heard the fiction was compelling despite the flat combat mechanics.... I finished the game and traded it in for store credit.  The fiction is, indeed, compelling, and the combat was, indeed, flat... boss fights were frustrating
• Civilization: Revolution (360) - because Sid Meier is supposed to be the shit... so much so that he puts his name on the box in possessive form.  I own Sid Meier's game.
• I really wish I could get a refund for Braid on the 360.  That game was pretentious.

I eventually retired myself from the arcade-hopping Street Fighter circuit during my sophomore year of college (1995).  Playing it off and on only for fun, but never again at a competitive level since those late high school and early college days.  Classes were starting to get hard around that time.

Recent Game Purchases:

• Street Fighter IV (360)
• Street Fighter IV Arcade Stick
• Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD (XBLA)

The arcade stick loses recognition for diagonals, sometimes :(

My favorite character in SFIV is going be Abel... because that would be nicely ironic.

Best meal ever was the one I had at a hotel in Atlanta after being stuck by the airport overnight (thanks to a combination of homeland security and Atlanta airport's chaos): Sausage, bacon, eggs, french toast, biscuits, and gravy.  I had no idea my body was missing this until I had it... and yeah, I surprisingly never had a chance to try the French toast in France.

As far as games and technology, I'm making up for lost time.  It's like I got back and exploded with pent up gaming bubbalicious 32-bit BLOW YOU MIND SUPER FANTASTIC MAGNIFICENT!!!

New Game Purchases:

• Xbox 360: Arcade Edition (Manufactured Nov. 3rd 2008, uses 12.1Amps *Jasper Chipset*) - to replace my dead 360 Elite, which fell victim to the dreaded Red Ring of Death.  Hopefully, the hard drive from my Elite will be transferable
• Chrono Trigger DS - Because that game will always have a special place in my heart
• Final Fantasy IV DS - Because the original Dragoon Knight's name is "Kain"
• Disgaia DS - The perfect medium to collect and sort my own perfect little world in hell
• Fallout 3 (Steam) - Because I was unable to purchase this in France with my American credit card, and I'm assuming additional downloads will be involved over time.  Also, I might play with the editor

...Still waiting for a PS3 price drop.  My instinct tells me that it is inevitable.

Not having a phone during my stay in France sucked.  The one I purchased crapped out on me pretty early on.  To compensate for that lack of phone for two and a half months, I've decided to go all out on a new phone, which means that I'm committing to living in the States.  As Americans, we have it really fucking nice with our standard of living and overall quality of life, and I shall never forget that as long as I live.  This country is and will always be my home base, and so I've just signed a two-year contract with T-mobile for their G1 phone which runs on the Android OS.  I chose this phone after a lot of research... taking special care to compare this to the iPhone as well as other notable contenders such as the high end Nokia and Blackberry models.  After unsuccessfully trying to type my name into an iPhone three times (it wanted me to be "kaim" all three times), I chose to go with the G1, and I'll probably be playing with the Android SDK once my brain stops waking up in the middle of the night and falling asleep in Austin's afternoon.  Aside from the tight integration with my google account (gmail, calendar, reader, contacts, etc.), I also get pretty solid GPS functionality combined with googlemaps as well as the ability to bypass my plan's calling minutes and international fees by using a Skype app that runs on the Android OS.  T-Mobile is the only U.S. provider that has an official policy of unlocking your phone after 90 days if you need to leave the country for any reason so that the phone will work with any GSM SIM card in the world.  My old phone number will not work anymore.  My new number has the same area code +nine.0.five-2.seven.VIII.one

Game Purchase: Resistance 2 (en Français)
Because the Playstation 3 is region free when it comes to games, AND Little Big Planet is starting to get old.  Komina and I need a new activity to go with our beer and wine.  This shall be that drug.  Incidentally, the purchase price of 69.99 Euros translates to 89.10 Dollars :(

So...

My original job function when I was assigned to Arkane's Lyon office was to assist with an ambitious story-heavy AAA project that Arkane was co-developing with EA as part of EA's experimental games initiative codenamed "Project Blueprint".  About a week after working on said project, I was placed in the role of combat strike team lead (and primary hero combat programmer).  About 4 weeks into my time on the project, the upper EA execs had decided to mothball the project in light of global earnings for the previous quarter.  About 600 were laid off from EA worldwide that week.  Apparently, this was a ball that had begun rolling long before I got there.  The majority of the dev team was laid off except for a few individuals that would be wrapping up the project in the hopes that it may someday be resurrected.  For some reason, I was chosen to be a part of that skeleton crew.  My priority at work is to help maximize the chance of resurrection by polishing the combat of the game as much as possible.  So far, I've been very happy with the direction of combat in the game... working with a badass martial artist animator who plays a lot of games helps with this sort of thing.

The deadline for final wrapup on this project is December 19th, after which it will be put on hold indefinitely.  The folks on the EA side of things would love to work with us again, but there is no guarantee that we will be available if and when that project gets resurrected.  I return to Austin on December 20th.  Since my original reason for moving to France was for this project, my return to Austin is somewhat permanent.  My role at Arkane is uncertain at this point.  I've offered my head to their chopping block on two occasions, but they would not accept it.  My base of operations will be Arkane's Austin studio where I'll be working locally or remotely with whatever projects need working on... traveling as necessary whenever remote communications become insufficient.

It's been a crazy ride, so far... I've gotten quite used to being "that foreigner living in France".  I will miss a lot of things about Lyon, but my time outside of Les États-Unis has also given me an appreciation of the life I did have in Austin.  Ultimately, the choice to make Austin my home base instead of Lyon was mine to make.  Moving to another country was the perfect treatment for the intense ennui that I was suffering before I left.  Unlike the last time, I don't think I'll be as social as I was during my previous life in Austin.  I'm tired, and there are some things that I need to do on my own for a while.  The events shortly before my departure from Austin in October were rough on my soul... and I've had a lot of time to think about the shape of my existence during that previous life.  Most likely, I will be disappointing some people after my return.  To those who happen to read this entry, please understand that it's not about you... it's me.

There seem to be a lot of fans of this game at Arkane.  The unofficial tagline seems to be "If you like Deus Ex, you'll love..."  This was Troika's last game before they went out of business... and it apparently garnered a huge loyal fan following despite the numerous bugs and lack of official patch support.

For some strange reason, Steam would not let me purchase Fallout 3 in France, so I figure this would be a good time to get acquainted with White Wolf's World of Darkness.

I had to contact Valve support to be able to purchase this using an American credit card from a French IP address, but it finally went through and the demo is absolutely amazing!

I have been waiting a long time for a first person shooter with high production values and swarms of enemies that focuses on co-op instead of deathmatching.

Bought the PC version directly from 2D Boy's website.  I have a lot of respect for a game this polished coming from a core team of 2 people who develop games within local coffee shops that offer wi-fi.  It's inspiring, actually.

After finishing the demo, I didn't think I'd be interested in getting the full game, but the memories of the experience grew on me after a while.  The art style, the music, and the cheeky writing from the mysterious "sign painter"... it all went together along with some unique physics-related game mechanics that make World of Goo a fascinating specimen for the collection.

Bought it on Steam.  I meant to play it a while back... I figure now might be a good time to do it.

Playing Arkane's very first game will give me a full picture of how their design culture evolved over time as well as get a sense of history for some of the people I now work with.

Arx Fatalis was made by a core team of about 12 really passionate people who jumped into this risky project as a labor of love.  I'm digging the design culture at Arkane so far; it's like nothing I've ever experienced.  For the first time in my career, I now find myself officially bestowed with the duties of designer, producer, and programmer of combat for the game I'm on.  It feels weird to be the bottleneck for other people's tasks, so I've been working into the night to get that bottleneck resolved ASAP.  This is why you've been seeing me on Skype and IM in the middle of Austin's afternoon... that would be about midnight or so in Lyon.  I am also not used to being given so much trust and freedom with such an important part of the game.  It's quite liberating, actually.  Arkane has put a lot of stock in me, and I absolutely won't take that for granted.  Hopefully, I am as good at combat design and communication as they seem to think I am.

This feels like the beginning of something.

Some people like to keep a log of books they've read or movies they've watched.  I've decided to start marking a log of games I purchase in this journal.  My intent is to also make a quick note of why I decided to purchase the game.

When you make a decision to buy a game, you are basically making a decision to...

• PLAY MAKE-BELIEVE: Engage in a media-centric activity that focuses on mental experiences as opposed to physical experiences, such as travel, farming, sports, or sex.  In games, you merely PRETEND to travel, farm, do sports, or have sex.  This is a mark of our species' acceptance of the consciousness industry.
• SPEND TIME: Spend your precious free time on the product... more time than you would probably spend on other forms of media such as books, magazines, TV, movies, and web surfing.  More time than you would spend on teh sex.
• SPEND MONEY: Allocate expendible income to the product... more than you might spend on books, TV, and movies.  More money than most people spend on getting sex.
• DO EXTRA WORK: Unlike books or movies, games make you work.  They often present some challenge that you are willing to participate in... as if we humans were born and bred to fight and solve problems using the tools that we are presented with.  You work to learn the controller interface with the game.  You work to learn the game's systems and rules created by somebody else.  And you sometimes find yourself dealing with artifical constraints for the sake of "game", such as building a working bridge out of living goo things instead of solid construction equipment.  I am no expert, but I would imagine that this is a lot more work than sex... but then, maybe I don't work hard enough... never mind.  How do I delete words that I've already typed into a computer?

Anyway, despite all this, there are people out there who make a conscious decision to participate in a select few of these games.  I'm pretty picky about the games I spend money on.  So for that reason, I'll be using the "GamePurchases" tag to keep a record of games I buy from this moment on.

BTW, I just bought Peggle Nights.  They offered free plush Chuzzles, and the game would be great to play on airplanes.

I really miss my consoles.  My laptop is my only source of games, right now.  I'm probably going to dwelve into the world of PC gaming as soon as I can figure out how to use my U.S. credit card on Steam while in France.