noisewar internetlainen - games, politics, and sarcasm

Wow it's been quite some time, since I've posted, my every day propelled in an endless orbit around the dense cluster of wonder-eyed cartoon pets and treacherous travails of game development that was my universe for the past year. Today our MMO-lite star was borne (not born) to the public, and in some ways the work has only begun. If I'm being overdramatic it's because this project has really felt just that cosmic.

Littlest Pet Shop Online officially launches today although it's been online for the past month in various beta phases. I firmly believe that while there is so much more I know this game can be, it has the best production values of any Light Persistent World out there, and certainly has the foundation for us to build upon it all our production dreams. That is the great game changer about an online game. I remember mulling about how MMOs were services not games before, but now I'm really face-to-face with just how much the capacity for dev-to-customer responsiveness ends up requiring more responsiveness from all.

My personal involvement has ran the gamut from game design to production to mentorship to padawanship to press monkey to DARPA think tank... too much to define. Sometimes I felt like I was part of everything, sometimes like a part of nothing anyone else could recognize. Towards the end of the project my Sr. Producer was removed from the project and that made it even more nebulous for me. It's quite a realization to accept that your project is really a living organism, not the vision of any one (or few) creators but a sentient mass of decisions, tweaks, features, design, and code that you must constantly redefine the vision of for yourself and your customers.

I can't talk about the lessons learned from this project because the lesson is only at the semester midterm exam, you know that one you wake up just before, in a cold sweat, fearful that all the preparation you did was lost in a previous dream? But no, regardless of much dream stuff there is, when I log into the website and see our client waiting there for real kids to make real accounts and meet real friends as we push real content out in real patches... certainly something wonderful was achieved. It sits on a bed, not of passive dreams, but clever threads, being weaved by hands that disregard real or not real, because the endless space of kids out there demand their days fulfilled.

It took the past year to get here. Now, we entertain.

Yeah, it's been a while since I've had a chance to post. And boy have there been so many things I've wanted to talk about, but now at the cusp of what should be a bright new year, I can't bring myself to carol about all the devastation our economy is experiencing... it's just too negative. While Xstine and I have consoled ourselves with the idea that our industry is recession proof, is it really? The official unemployment rate is 7.1% in Silicon Valley, above the national average, but if you used metrics from before the Clinton administration retooled CPI to their pleasure, national unemployment is over 16%.

But like I said, let's stop talking about it. There will be plenty to decry next month, when the market loses faith in the mythical year-end bounce. Let's talk fun things, like my new favorite site: www.mymomisafob.com It captures the charming, annoying irrational love of the asian mother, steeped in impromptu paranoias and Engrished superstitions.

Ignore the fact that the picture I posted comes from the now defunct Timesplitters developer Free Radical, who sadly along with Factor 5, Midway, EA, et al. are among the many with career casualties this last month. You know what's fun? RoboKill is darn fun for a simple flash game! Reminds me of shareware classics like Raptor: Call of the Shadows and Zone 66, remember those goodies?

Also, I know this is a bit old, but I finally got to check out Wario Land: Shake It at the store, and it really leverages every bit of the Wii's potential into a solid, novel platformer... and it has an awesome "trailer" so check this out!

Anyways, it's tough mustering up much season's spirit this year, but things are darkest before the light, right? And with so much dark coming, preparing to take advantage of the light is the best way to position ourselves for festive years to come.

Due to work circumstances, I'm not in the country right now. Following international coverage, it's been very interesting to see just how addicted to our election non-Americans can be. It's quite a spectacle, this American political extravaganza, and it speaks to our ability, indeed our need to concentrate our hopes and expectations on a human element. Obama acts as a lens, a crystal clear grain that braids and magnifies those in-line with his vision, yet scatters the vagrant rays of the misaligned for future self-reflection.

It's very unfair to say that Obama's supporters are the new America. But they are certainly the empowered America. I don't think this nation should be divided, and I think the "old" America should realize that it's time to step up and support Obama as our president. I said the same about Bush, and I'll say the same about Obama, and any future president we elect- a part of America made that choice, and we should respect that other part as soon as the divisiveness is over. Look at the election maps; the states are split in mini-majorities even on a per county basis. There is no prototype American. In fact that's our strength.

Remember that our Founding Fathers did not always intend for everyone to be able to vote. They wanted voters to be educated on the issues, and to show their responsibility with property ownership and such qualifications. The reason we have the electoral system today is because our Founding Father, despite their misgivings about the mobocracy, realized that as a republic, the participation in government is not a Federal business. And so the responsibility went to the States.

So please, dear Americans. I feel this very acutely being so far from home. Remember your roots. Remember your history. Remember that even though the States give every American the opportunity to vote, you have a responsibility to vote as an educated individual, and part of that education should be realizing just how diverse and unique our nation really is, and how the electoral system exists to protect that. Remember that the electoral system was so important to them because whoever the minority opinion, no matter how wrong, is still part of America.

WAR is truly everwhere. At home Xstine and I are havin' a blast playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and almost every itch we had from leaving WoW has been epicly scratched. And boy were we itchy because the end-game in WoW left some unhappy scabs.

Outside of our world of epic vritual battles, one has already been fought an lost on Wall Street. Some friends have asked for my perspective on the bail-out mess, and I want to use a WAR analogy. In WAR lore, the evolution and advancement of warriors comes from the endless combat between the legions of Order and the minions of Chaos. A great story and its great heroes can only be made with this precarious balance. Too much one way is complacency, too much the other way is anarchy.

You may think it's far-fetched to compare a fantasy video game to financial crisis in this way, but there's one thing to consider. In Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel he recounts his finding that over the historic rise of civilizations, what built the greatest ones was a combination of geography and natural resources that promoted an optimal state of controlled competition. To have less was complacency, to have more was anarchy. Sound familiar?

Now look at the bail-outs. Chaos has lost, if you believe the anti-free-market crowd. Order has failed if you know better than to believe the Fed. The problem was that Order assisted Chaos, and vice versa. No one knew their roles. The Fed answers to the market now. The market believed the Fed would save them.

What I'm trying to say is that a healthy distrust between the private and the public was lost, Freddie and Fannie being prime examples. What we face now is an extreme reaction as the Fed and Paulson nationalize the market. Chaos has learned that losing the battle means being saved by Order. Where's the impetus to fight?

Now, I give the Fed credit for not bailing out Lehman brothers, as they knew the books were probably so toxic nothing could be done. And F&F? Ok, sure, they were a GSE, blah blah. But bailing out AIG? An insurer? Forcing BoA to take on Merrill Lynch? And now hints at extending help to foreign banks? Unlimited Sec. of Treasury power? For those who think cash is safe, I'll point out that the (maybe) $45 billion left in FDIC divided by the $100,000 insured per account is not a happy number. Plus each of these banks going under have tons of employees; Lehman alone has 26,000+. NY is depressing. I can't even make a conhesive paragraph out of all of it.

And somehow Bernanke is in the back saying a recession is imminent if there is no bail-out. Hello, the recession has arrived, but the punishment for misdeeds has not. Will not? Well that depends on how many tax-payers realize it's angry mob time.