I’ve already wasted 90% of the 3 sick days “vacation” i’ve had.
I don’t feel like i’ve accomplished too much, and that includes no accomplishment in recreation. I don’t feel rested at all, but more aggetated.
I wanted to play some good game, but i didn’t. Hardware related issues are only partly to be blamed.
I managed to do some stuff, but I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment.
One big diffrence between the high tech industry and show biz, is emotions.
Show biz was created to invoke emotions and thoughts, while the high tech industry is quite the opposite.
High tech requires maturity, self-control, relibility, responsibility, profits, deadlines, detailed documentaions, profits, stress, and death causing boredom.
Don’t get me wrong, high tech life is packed full with emotions, stress, anger, hate, fear, all these are the path to the dark side, while in show biz, even though you deal with those emotions (and often too much) you tend to also dead with happiness, love, friendship, trust, respect, joy, bliss, admiration, and more emotions that do not exist in the high tech world
This might be one of the reasons I want, and always wanted to be a game maker. While game programming is 100% high tech, you get to rub in with some of the nicer emotions at your work place. That is, if you’re not making games like Doom, Half life, warcraft or 99% of the crap that’s out there.
Boy, I wish Ron Gilbert could have read this post and tell me when he thinks about it.
I’ll put a note in his blog.
I just finished watching yet another episode of Unscripted, a show
about a few actor wannabe’s and their struggle in the cruel harsh world
that is Hollywood.
They go to auditions, do stand-in and extra jobs, go do an acting class, and have emberrasing moments in their personal lives.
All throughout this show, there are mini-speeches given by their acting
class teacher, which reminds me every single stage director I’ve ever
met. Pompous, arrogant, cocky, man who acts as if he knows everything
better then everyone else, especially better then you and me, but in
real life he’s a loser who is yesterday’s news and all he can do now is
teach acting in the local high school.
He keeps having speeches about how hard it is, how tough it is to be
successful, how much the work itself (the acting work) is what’s
important, and there’s talk about talent, and agents, and politics, and
backstabbing, and all sort of shit.
But then I get reminded of the industry i try to be in.
The game industry.
Like Ron Gilbert say all the time, even though the game industry really
really wants to be as big as Hollywood, it’s light years away.
The budgets for the largest games ever made, only makes a small tiny fraction in comparison to big time movies.
And to think that you might enjoy a movie for about two hours, but most
games have 30+ hours of game play or they don’t get a publishing deal.
Online games have much more then that in game play hours.
From what i know, games like Warcraft, gets budgets of something like
10 million dollars, while the crappy game I slaved over had no more
then 300,000$ as it’s budget. while movies like Star Wars, as IMDB tells me, have budget of $115,000,000 (estimated).
Hell, the crappy company I work for, who makes this really boring file
storage servers used to store the rendered data that makes movies have
a budget of more then 10 million dollars.
Oh and let me tell you about the cruel world of programmers… or
rather the cruel world of Israeli High Tech. Those actors in the series
complain that they have to work while they’re looking for they’re
break, that they feel uncertain, that it’s a tough world where dog eats
dog, where you get back stabbed by your best friends, where you don’t
know what the future holds, and that if you’ll make it or not is not up
to you, because there are agents, and directors, and producers and a
whole lot of bunch of people who have more power then you and all you
got is your acting work.
Well, it’s the same here in my world. I don’t know if and how
long my job’s gonna last, I don’t know if the company I work for
is going to exists in a month, I don’t have any power over what i do,
or what i don’t, and especially I don’t have power over weather
I’m successful or not.
At least in the Hollywood acting industry, if you got talent, and
you’re working hard, and with some luck you get to be successful, and
famous and rich. In my world, both the probability of that happening is
lower, and the amount of money and fame you earn is much less.
I think that statistically, the mean average of our industry’s gain as
an individual is lower by a few orders of magnitude then of an
individual in Hollywood. This is worth checking up, because i might be
rambling nonsense here.
In any case, and i want this written down first so i can have a copyright on it, my idea is this:
Lets make a TV show/movie/comic strips/flash cartoon/computer game
about guys who are trying to get a break as game developers, and the
harsh life and environment they are in.
We’ve all seen SO MANY movies and tv series about making TV and movies.
But in recent years, I almost haven’t seen one game that’s about making
games. Yeah, you might think there’s not enough exciting material
there, not enough meat to work with, and that’s where I disagree, and
where i come in the picture. Do you think that there’s enough meat in
the commercial flight business to make a whole show about ? or in
office life ? It’s the same thing. What makes a show/movie/game is it’s
story, or stories. Not the setting, but the setting is what sets the
environment. And i say let’s have game making as the environment !
I haven’t seen any game developing in games since good ol’ larry 3.
Let do it !
And remember, if you do it before me, I’ll sue you, because now that I’ve dated my idea, it’s mine !!!
Yuck !
Do you guys remember that episode in X-files about the cockroaches when one walks past the screen ?
I was watching some TV episode, and a cockraoch just walk past the living room, like there’s no tomorrow !
He ran away after i sprayed him. I think his final resting place is somewhere underneath a pile of computer junk that’s next to our sofa.
I’ll ask “Hevra Kadisha” (Lee) to do some gravedigging and dispose of the corpse.
Cockroaches are the one most disgusting thing there is in existance.
And the fact the i get to meet all too many of them, especially this week, when i’m sick, doesn’t really do me good.
Yeah, I woke up yesterday to find out there were two dead ones outside my room. one in the kitchen and one in the living room.
Just dying out.
I remembered the story about miners taking canaries to the mines so they’ll know when they hit a gas pocket when the bird dies.
I felt the same way about the roaches, as if they come to our apartment and died from something here.
Lee’s been wanting to move out of here for ages now, and i’m feeling as if I’m starting to grow old of this place, and that it’s time to move on, but the future is so uncertain.
Who knows if i’ll have the same job tommorow morning? or next month ? or where am I going to go study by MBA at ?
Read my next post.
I’ve just tried to install and play Phsyconauts, One of the games i’ve been really looking forward to play.
But it seems I can’t. I need a graphics card that can support Pixel shader 1.0 and my GeForce 2MX doesn’t.
So basically if I want a new graphics card, i need a new mother board, since it needs an AGP 8x and if i’m buying a new motherboard i’ll and a new cpu, and some memory, so i should probably get a new big complete computer instead of only those 4 components.
Which also means, new hard drives, new software, resinatlling all my existing software on it so i can work normally, and countless hours of tweaking and screwing around with stuff until i get everything to work.
It means i’ll have to dedicate tons of my free time to the cause.
Why does it feel like a burden? I’ve used to love getting new hardware !
Is it me getting old, or me getting exhausted ?
*sigh*
I also have a feeling i’ll need a new screen. The one i have has been serving me well for the past 10 years. It’s one of the best god damn monitors i’ve seen, So sharp and nicely coloured.
Unfortunatly, I havn’t seen any good LCD screens that I like. Everything simply sucks. The color, the refresh rates, everything and the ones that don’t suck cost a small fortune.
well.. off computer-hunting…
But now, i can’t decide which game i’m gonig to play next.
Still Life ?
Moment of silence ?
I need a bright and funny game, not a dark phsychotic murer related game like these two.
Any suggestions ?
Since I’m not able to do any real creative programming at my workplace, I do it in my spare time at home.
So, i’ve upgraded the “what shows are on” webpage, and now you can have a personalized show page instead of My show page.
try it out :
http://www.odedsharon.com/shows/login.php
I’m abiding my doctor’s orders and staying at home, and not going to work.
I do read and answer my work emails tough.
I was shocked when I got this angry email from our hardware lab maanger, who was complaining about my “misbehaviour”. I have two issues about this letter, first that it wasn’t true, and accused me of doing many things.
second, that it was sent to all the company’s directors. My boss, his boss, their boss, all the bosses.
I had to reply calmly and logically to his accusations.
Today I found an invitation for a meeting with the obnoxious guy who send me tha email and the VP of RND.
All that when i’m sick and home.
Great.
The place i work for is going downhill. Mark my words. It’s another company on the way to be closed down. Instead of concentrating on the work it’s concentrating on details, like when I use font 11 instead of 12 in a requirement document that’s never gong to be read by anyone, and when i claim it’s nitpicking and irrelevant, i get a whole lecture how much it’s important that all the documents have a unified format, and how much it’s important for the company development and bla bla bla..
Last I heard such nonsense was in Israeli army beurocracy. The copmany is turning into a military ruled company.
No wonder, when it’s CEO, and VPRND, and half the newly hired chain of command all came with vast experience from commanding in the army.
And that’s exactly where the company’s managerment is going. It’s not managing, it’s commanding.
I’ve heard people talking about finding new jobs.
While i’m cough less, i actually lost my voice, but not my typing voice.
I walk in to the office, and not more then 1 minute later, i cough, and immidietly being told to go home, so i won’t infect everyone.
I decide to go home after a meeting which I wanted to attend.
I sat there silent. I have one remark, and i whispered it out and then realized that i should go home.
I’m going to work from home tommorow as well..
Note: this post is followed by real time coughing. I’ll type in *cough* when ever i cough while writing.
I had some *cough* fish soup on wednesday, *cough* which i think had bone in *cough* in it that scratched the back *cough* of my throart.*cough*.
I felt a soar throat on thursday, *cough* and yesterday *cough* *cough* *cough* *drink* *cough* ….*slowly breathing*…..*breathin*… *another sip of drink* ..
Where was i ?
*cough*
I started coughing yesterday.*cough*
And i’m couhing as HELL today *cough*
I wonder if my boss will tell me to go home because he doesn’t want to to get him coughing too. *cough*
It’s gonna be hard talking at working tommorow, that’s for sure
*cough*
Last week I tried the two weeks trial of City of heroes, i missed out
of the last to days of my trial account on account of Lee fainting out.
However, I managed to get 12 days of fun game play, and gather some critique.
First, the game itself is nice, but it’s a lot “yet another MMORPG”
game. There weren’t too many game play elements that were new to me in
this game, and even a lot of the game systems were less good then other
games I’ve played.
The chat system was really annoying, and i even think it’s the worse
chat system I saw in an ONLINE game, not counting Ballerium’s chat
system.
The character creation section of the game was very elaborate, and in
good terms too, after all, it’s a super hero game, you should be able
to make any kind of cool hero you want.
The Quest system reminded me the one I devised when working on
Ballerium, but it was much simpler and too constant. I designed and
programmer something FAR better then this.
Assaf M.(who also played the game) claims, and i agree, that
superheroes are suppose to battle supervillians, and not only stupid
gangsta mobs that roam around, and sometimes are way together then
super heroes, if their level is higher then the hero’s which is kind of
absurd, I do have to say that the power balance of the game is pretty
good, and that they really nailed it in terms of experience, and
toughness, and grouping. Tasks forces (which are a one mission group)
were a nice idea, but had problems in their implementation, because it
would be frustrating to find a group that would play with you for 6
hours straight.
Flying, is awsome. I think every game should incorporate flying into
it. Playing CoH was just like in my dreams, where i’m flying.
All in all i was a nice game to play, but i wouldn’t have paid money to play it.
Soon I’ll start playing World Of Warcraft, and I’m expecting I’ll be sucked in it real good.
But for now, here are some pictures of my time in City of Heroes:
This is me. Next to the city hall of Atlas Park.
There was a costume competition going on when i got there.
Flying. I just LOVE flying..
Can’t get enough of flying …
Me and some group memebers doing a quest
A 15 year old girl from USA called “Pink Healer”. I claim that you can
tell when you’re playing with a 15 year old girl. You’d have to be
totally gay to be playing this character.
Me and some guys looking for bad guys during a quest
Ooohh.. Found Them
Getting ready to Attack. Everyone is standing while i take a picture.
Attack !!
Look how i do that cool rain of fire thing !
And some fireballs !
Take THAT!!! You … Lvl 8 monster !
All is just another day’s work..
I need to fly away now. Goodnight !!