Posts Tagged ‘Humor’
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
The Daily Babbler
by Rona Gabbler
Welcome, Dear Reader! We have something completely different for you today. Far from the golden palaces, magical mansions, and lofty wizard towers of Silmarian society, this time The Daily Babbler takes you to another world!
Nestled in the rolling foot hills at the base of towering snow-crested mountaintops in the land of California, we visited the famous Flying Aardvark Ranch. Here we caught up with the renowned Corey S Cole, Earth chronicler of Gloriana – and especially Silmarian – adventures. It has been over ten years since the Coles related the tale of the Hero’s rise to the throne of Silmaria. Ten years, while their creative talents languished in relative obscurity. But now the talk of the town is about the upcoming launch of Corey and Lori’s mysterious new game project. Here, in this exclusive interview with your intrepid reporter, we reveal some of the secrets.
Rona Gabbler: Mr. Cole, It’s such a thrill for me to finally meet you after all these years. You look just like your photo on the back of the “Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire” box. Except that you’ve shaved off the beard. And lost all your flowing long hair. Oh, and weren’t you wearing glasses back then? At any rate, our readers are just dying to learn the truth to the rumors that you and Lori are creating a brand new game.
Corey Cole: Well, it isn’t exactly new. In fact, we started on it almost two years ago …
RG: You’ve been working on this game for Two years! That must be amazing! I’ll bet you have the most incredible 3D graphics and fight sequences ever! Flying mounts soaring around floating islands in the sky, barely avoiding the attacking roflcopters… Will the players need special 3D glasses to play?
CC: Actually, it isn’t that type of game at all. There’s excitement and adventure, but…
RG: I’ll bet there is! Exploring the dark underbelly of the Silmarian sewers, trying to find the sunken temple where the magical lyre of the Minoan monarchs lies guarded by monstrous Minotaurs and giant, poisonous, man-eating snakes! Ooh, you’re following the lyre’s notes and you have to duplicate those notes in order to open the locked doors…
CC: No snakes or musical notes. This isn’t “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Loom.” This is interactive storytelling. The player is a critical part of the story and will shape how it comes out.
RG: Oh, you mean the player will get to say something really clever like, “All your base is belong to me,” and you’ll set Silmaria in space! It’ll be every story ever told all rolled into one – You’ll get to create your own creatures at the cell level and adapt them to fit their environment, then they’ll have kids and start societies and go out to space and…
CC: You’re thinking of Spore. Will Wright already did that game. No, we’re focusing on one story so we can make it the best we can. And it’s in Silmaria.
RG: I knew it! Silmaria where the sun is always shining and exciting things happen every day! Silmaria, with its soft, sandy beaches and crystal clear waters. Silmaria, where the pirates ravage… Oh, that’s it! You’re making a game about pirates!
CC: That was Secret of Monkey Island. Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. Ok, Lori and I do like pirate adventures…
RG: Yarrr! Shiver me timbers, matey! Scupper me with a marlin spike….
CC: No! Not a pirate game this time! Maybe later. This game is…
RG: Oooh, I’ll be it’s in the palace! You’ll be a skilled swordsman and get to run through the hallways and jump up and down to avoid traps. If you get through it all, the Hero will declare you the new Prince of Silmaria!
CC: That would be Prince of Persia, and we’re trying to do something very different here. You’ll make friends and solve puzzles; not so much of the swashbuckling. But you will…
RG: Ah! Political suspense! You will rise to meet every challenge. People will look up to you in awe. You’ll promise to save the country from a collapsing economy, and people will flock to your cause!
CC: Um, no, this isn’t about Barack Obama’s election.
RG: Barack who?
CC: Right. Where was I? Oh, going back to school.
RG: You don’t have to do that! You’re already a Hero!
CC: Not me, your character. You get to play one of the students at…
RG: Hogwarts Academy! Ooh, I love J.K. Rowling’s work. She’s just as talented at writing as you are at making games! I can see it now, “Harry Potter and the Sands of Silmaria”!
CC: Um, no, this is about the School for Heroes.
RG: The School for Heroes? I thought that closed down after that little incident with the Meeps and the Thieves’ Guild. They just about ran the Famous Adventurer out of town on a rail.
CC: Oh, well, he got better. The school is open again and better than ever. Well, except maybe for the Rogues. But you get to play a young Wizard…
RG: See? See?! I told you it was going to be Harry Potter! I knew it! When Harry dropped out of Hogswarts, he…
CC: It’s nothing like Harry Potter! All right, so it is about a Wizard at a school with a mysterious past. But other than that…
RG: Mysterious past? Kind of like Katrina and the Dark Master and biting people? Scary! I can see it – You play a Vampire’s child, trying not to reveal that you are bloodthirsty monster. Fortunately, the only thing that gives you away is the pointy canine teeth, your overpowering reaction to the sight of blood, and the fact that you sparkle in the sunlight…
CC: No! It’s NOT about Vampires. But you do have a secret …
RG: A Secret! What is it? We love secrets! Our readers are dying to know what it is that we need to not reveal to anyone else, cross our hearts and hope to cry. Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone about this. We’re all very good at keeping them. Why, I write about secrets all the time!”
CC: MUST… NOT…. KILL…. GNOME….
RG: Unfortunately, our interview came to an end as Corey apparently had some sort of an asthma attack and had to be restrained, poor dear. But we can now confirm that the rumors are true. The Coles are creating a very exciting new game set here in our own sunny Silmaria. We look forward to hearing more about this great event.
There you have it. Another brilliant interview with your Gnome for news. Toodles!
- Rona Gabbler
Tags: Game Design, Humor
Posted in Humor | 4 Comments »
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
A good friend of ours, Richard Aronson, wrote a little tale – based on a true gaming event – that turned into a monster. We think the “tale of the tale” is almost as interesting as the original story, so we’ve invited Richard to be our guest blogger this week.
I met Richard through Mensa in the late 70’s. We had both recently gotten into D&D, and I had started up a game for the Los Angeles Mensa group. Richard started his own campaign and introduced me to a couple of other groups. The Cal Tech players had developed their own D&D variant called “Warlock” with more detailed combat rules. And there was Ed Whitchurch, who ran a store called Le Maison du Guerre (that’s “The House of War” slightly misspelled). Ed ran a unique campaign that mixed fantasy gaming and tabletop wargaming, not to mention as odd an assortment of players as you’d find anywhere.
It was in Ed’s game that Richard picked up the story of “Eric and the Gazebo”. Richard added a few embellishments and wrote it up for a few newsletters. And then it spread. Lori and I were amazed to pick up “Knights of the Dinner Table™”, and find the characters retelling the story… without crediting the original source. Later, the characters in Nodwick had a gazebo adventure. And in the online RPG RuneScape, you can build a Gazebo. If you examine it, the game says, “Run away, it’s the Gazebo!”.
When we did a “humorous stories” panel at DunDraCon and asked how many in the audience had heard of Eric and the Gazebo, nearly everyone raised their hands. Just four hundred words, but they turned into a worldwide legend. Here’s Richard’s story of the building of the Gazebo.
The Tale of the Tale
by Richard Aronson
Back in 1985, I told Lee Gold and her RPG group a story. That story, of course, was “Eric and the Gazebo”. And Lee told me, “Now you have to write it up for ‘Alarums and Excursions.’” [A&E is the oldest and longest-running fantasy role-playing game publication, started in 1975. It recently published issued #400.] Since she had the power of life and death over my characters, I did so.
Then Corey and Lori Cole read it in A&E. They reminded me that I was supposedly contributing editor to “The Spell Book”, the magazine of Mensa’s RPG SIG, and they’d cut my salary by half if I didn’t write it up for my column. So I wrote it for them, with some minor tweaks.
From “The Spell Book” it was reprinted in Corpus Christi Texas’s newsletter (which I was told about when I received a copy of that issue) and then it was reprinted in a Mensa newsletter in North Carolina that never told me or asked my permission. And then “The Mensa Bulletin” sent me a letter; they’d read it in North Carolina and wanted to reprint it nationally. Oh, and if I could make it maybe 50-100 words longer, then it would completely fill a page.
“The Mensa Bulletin” ran it in 1989. And John Chu, a Mensan teaching at the University of Buffalo, asked me if he could reprint it on the Internet. In 1989, the Internet was not exactly public. It was used by academia and defense contractors. I was making a very nice living coding proprietary encrypted email for a Fortune 100 because there was no alternative. Ah, simple times. So I told John Chu, “Sure, as long as you spell my name correctly.”
Roughly five years later, I was a professional game designer working for The Sierra Network. I was on a humor panel at DunDraCon in San Ramon. I told “Eric and the Gazebo”. After the panel, an irate and less than fully hygienic (but scrawny and therefore not scary; I am many things but scrawny is not one of them) accused me in a loud voice of having stolen the story from his friend.
Plagiarism is a relatively minor concern to a professional programmer. It’s very serious for a professional game designer. So I had to start regaining control of my copyright. When I got back home, I did a Yahoo Search (I don’t think Google even existed yet) for “Eric and the Gazebo”. As I recall, there were over 3,000 hits. John Chu’s was there, and it attributed me properly. Most of them didn’t.
In order to protect my copyright, I had to contact these people and tell them to give me credit or remove my story. Most of them had no problems with giving me credit. A few asked for some proof of copyright. That cost me some stamps, unless they were willing to believe John Chu’s attribution as being the earliest version on the internet. A Google search today shows 13,000 hits for “Eric and the Dread Gazebo”. Included in the top 10 was an Australian web site which did not have attribution.
Okay, so my characters in Lee Gold’s game avoided some rotting diseases.
Some people got some laughs, and I’ve met some folks that were, for the most part, worth meeting. So I’d do it all over again. But next time I’m arming myself with a torch of gazebo slaying first. Plus FOUR.
The Original Story…
Here’s the version we printed in the Fall, 1987 issue (#13) of “The Spell Book”:
Richard Rambles On
by Richard Aronson
Humor is hard to define. Vocal humor is always easier than written humor, and acted plus vocal humor easier still. Think of how many movies/plays/TV shows you have laughed out loud at, then think of the surely smaller number of cartoons/comic books you have laughed at, and the yet smaller number of books (without pictures) you have laughed at. So I have been handed a tough assignment — make people laugh with only the printed page for my instrument.
Actually, if I could draw, I’m sure I’d be allowed to use a graphic device, and perhaps one will be inserted by ye Editors, but ever since they moved out of L.A. I’ve had much less input into the actual production values of The Spell Book, so I really cannot do more than suggest, whereas in times past I was able to say: Hey, look, right here should be a picture or an ink blob or something to liven up this otherwise drab piece you wro…. But I digress. While I can recount many tales that would (and have) make (made) people laugh out loud, I can think of only one that might, might mind you, work in this altogether restrictive setting: Eric and the Gazebo.
Let us cast our minds back to the early days of Fantasy Role Playing, back when ye Dread Gygax was loose upon the land. Funny how humor and horror can start out so alike. Let us go still earlier (yes, it is permitted to breathe sighs of relief) to the days before Gygax (and the courts) thought that he owned FRP. In the early seventies, Ed Whitchurch ran “his game,” and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson, a veritable giant of a man. This story is essentially true: I know both Ed and Eric, and neither denies it (although Eric, for reasons that will become apparent, never repeats it either). If my telling of it does not match the actual events precisely, it is because I’ve heard it many different ways depending on how much of what type of intoxicants Ed had taken recently.
The gist of it is that Eric, well, you need a bit more about Eric, or else I won’t fill quota. Eric comes quite close to being a computer. When he games, he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimum solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise in all respects a superior gamer, and I’ve spent many happy hours competing with and against him, as long as he is given enough time.
So, Eric was playing a Neutral Paladin (why should only Lawful Good religions get to have holy warriors was the thinking) in Ed’s game. He even had a holy sword, which fought well, and did all those things holy swords are supposed to do, including detect good (random die roll; it could have detected evil). He was on some lord’s lands when the following exchange occurred:
ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: (Pause) It’s white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About fifty yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: (Pause) It’s about thirty feet across, fifteen feet high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.
ED: It’s not good, Eric. It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.
ED: It won’t answer. It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric, it’s a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (roll to hit). What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: (Pause) Wasn’t it wounded?
ED: Of course not, Eric! It’s a gazebo!
ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus three arrow!
ED: It’s a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don’t know why anybody would even try. It’s a *)@#! gazebo!
ERIC: (Long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.) I run away.
ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It’s too late. You’ve woken up the gazebo, and it catches you and eats you.
ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I’ll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my Paladin.
At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. It is solely an afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was not situated on a grassy gnoll.
That is the story of Eric and the Gazebo. It’s funnier when I tell it in person. Isn’t it always, though. Be seeing you…
Tags: Aronson, D&D, Humor, Spellbook
Posted in Humor | No Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Sseccus. That’s “SUCCESS” spelled backwards, the way most of us seem to approach it. Some people are naturally talented and seem to know instinctively just how not to succeed. Others practice Sseccus on a daily basis. But just in case you’re one of those rare and special individuals who hasn’t yet learned how to fail, here’s your “How Not to Succeed” guide.
- 1. Don’t prepare – Spontaneity is much more honest.
- 2. Play games at least 5 hours a day – They teach valuable life lessons.
- 3. Sleep is for the weak. And hamburgers and fries are a cost-effective diet.
- 4. Dazzle them with your brilliance.
- 5. Never put off until tomorrow something you can postpone to next month.
- 6. One size fits all. Customization is a waste of time.
- 7. Dot every “i”, cross every “t”. They’ll never really understand it otherwise.
- 8. It’s not your fault, so make sure they know who’s to blame.
Now these aren’t capital crimes. Every one of the above “strategies” can have some value, taken in moderation. But they’re a quick path to failure when overdone. Let’s see how you can turn a grand opportunity into another missed chance.
Don’t Prepare
I recently had a job interview for a project and position about which I was really excited. I didn’t get the job. A few things went wrong, but I think #1 was lack of preparation. I knew the position was mainly about programming using C++, a language I hadn’t touched in about 5 years. And I had a week or two to prepare before flying out for the interview. So why didn’t I pick up a C++ book and review the syntax and features I hadn’t much used? Mostly because I didn’t think of doing so. But there’s no excuse for that.
When you are going into an interview or negotiation, starting a job, or going on to a new project, think about what you will need to do it well. Do a little research and legwork. Find out about the company and the people you’ll be meeting. Refresh yourself on the technical environment. Or you can just be spontaneous – also known as “unprepared”.
Play Games
Obviously Lori and I like games. We play them, create them, and talk about them… a lot. Games have a lot of good things going for them – They teach you hand-eye coordination, problem-solving, storytelling, and often details about the game setting. MMO’s teach you how to get along and work towards a common goal with other people. Player-vs.-player games build your reflexes and give you a competitive edge. You can also learn discipline and patience.
The thing is, it doesn’t take 20, 30, 40 hours a week to learn these things. A good game can be just as fun – probably more – in a few hours of play as in an endless repetition. World of Warcraft “daily quests” are a great example of something that takes a lot of time out of your life without providing any outside-of-the-game value.
Twenty or thirty years ago, all the talk was about how our children’s minds were being turned into gelatin by endless hours of TV watching. These days, a lot of that TV has been replaced by game play. To some degree, there’s value in that – Studies have shown that senior citizens who play bridge are mentally sharper, more alert, and healthier than ones who don’t. But taken to an extreme, those are priceless hours of your life – or mine – that we will never get back. Eh, so what? Let’s play. We can get the work done some other time.
Sleep is for the Weak
I’m writing this at midnight, as usual. I probably have another hour to go on it and I’m getting up at 8:30. But that’s ok; 7 hours sleep is almost as good as 8. Six will probably do in a pinch, or 5. This really comes from a few things – procrastination, habits (a sleep schedule that doesn’t match up with reality), and failing to plan ahead. But the bottom line is, we make mistakes when we don’t sleep enough. We are less alert, more careless, and our concentration and hand-eye coordination are affected by tiredness.
Your health (and mine) matters. You need to eat a balanced diet, keep your weight within a reasonable range, get regular exercise, and so on. It’s easy to skimp on some or all of these when you’re busy, or have other things you want to be doing. And then it multiplies – When you don’t exercise, it gets more difficult and painful, so you find excuses to do even less. When you don’t sleep enough, you lose the benefit of good judgment that tells you that you need to go to bed.
You can develop bad or good habits equally easily. If you have the bad ones, you’re going to have to work three times as hard to break them. Better get started now; it isn’t going to get any easier.
As for those burgers and fries – Well, I lived on the McDonald’s QLT (Quarter Pounder with Lettuce and Tomato) and slices of pizza for a Summer. Somehow I survived the experience. They seem economical, but you won’t be doing your body any favors. Mix it up. Eat some vegetables. Keep your portions small – A few bites taste the same as a Mega Meal. You’ll feel better, weigh less, and have better energy and focus. Ration your sugar intake while you’re at it.
Dazzle them with your brilliance.
Listening is much overrated. You’re so wonderful, and it’s very important that you share that wonderfulness with your friends and coworkers. What would they do without your fascinating tales (also known as “endless, pointless stories”)? If someone else brings up a subject, it’s essential that you either share your anecdotes and wisdom about it or change the topic to a far more interesting one. If you’re bored – and you will be if you have to listen to someone else pontificate – clearly everyone else will be just as bored. It’s your job to entertain them.
You won’t learn anything new this way, but that’s ok. I’m sure you already know everything important already. And everyone else surely wants to hear it from you. Repetition is an effective way of reinforcing knowledge, so surely it must be a good thing for you to tell the same anecdotes to the same people over and over.
Of course, there’s the tiny little danger that the other person wants her say just as much as you do. Or that she might get just a tiny bit annoyed at your telling her something she already knows. Or – perish the thought! – that slightest little possibility that maybe the person on the other side of the table actually knows something relevant and important. Naw, we know from watching actors and sports stars that everyone is automatically an expert on everything.
Never put off Something you can Postpone
Scientific American had a great article last December called, Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. They said that “everyone procrastinates occasionally, but 15-20% of adults routinely put off activities that would be better accomplished right away.” I’m one of those; perhaps you are too.
There are a lot of reasons why we delay doing things. Some of them are completely reasonable – We need more information, or we currently have higher priorities. Others are silly… to everyone except the person who is delaying. Maybe if you don’t pay that bill, it will go away. Maybe someone else will do your work for you. Maybe a creative muse will descend upon you and make your work much more brilliant if you just give it time.
Procrastination is often caused by anxiety, the fear you will do a poor job. The problem is, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The longer you put off a task, the less time you will have for it, the more stressed you will have become about it, and the greater the chance you will botch it. If you really don’t think you’re prepared to do something well, don’t give in to the fear; fix the reasons for it. That might involve doing additional research, getting assistance from an expert, or breaking the task down into more manageable sub-tasks. But don’t simply avoid the problem. Schedule a time when you will do it, and plan what you have to do first so that you can do the task well.
If you just can’t decide on what to do, stop for a minute and think about it. Write down your choices; otherwise it’s easy to get your thoughts in a loop where you can’t settle on one thing. Look down the list and consider the pro’s and con’s of each possible decision – It might help to write them down as well. Then pick one. If there’s no obvious answer, flip a coin or roll some dice. If the choices are that close, it probably doesn’t really matter which one you pick. In any case, once you’ve made the decision, stop worrying about it. The choice is made; go with it!
One Size Fits All
This has to do with any situation where you’re selling something. Applying for a job or asking for a raise is “selling yourself”. Anyway, we’re used to mass production. Everyone watches the same shows, listens to the same songs, and drives cars that look pretty much alike. We’re told it’s more efficient to make everything the same.
If you want to be just as successful as everyone else, you can be the same too. I mentioned last week how Susan Boyle managed to make herself stand out from 50,000 competitors and millions of people who didn’t even try to compete. Sameness is a losing proposition.
I’ve applied to a lot of jobs in the past for which I didn’t even get a response. Some of them seemed like ones tailor made for my background and skills, but I couldn’t get a foot in the door. For the recent interview, I did things a little differently. Knowing quite a bit about the company and its philosophy (from doing Internet research), I customized my resume and application letter specifically for them. I didn’t tell any lies, but I emphasized skills that they would consider important and cut out some details that wouldn’t interest them. Instead of trying to dazzle them with my amazing “jack of all trades” career, I focused on how I would benefit their company.
I got a response and I got an interview. My letter and resume stood out from the thousands they receive because it told them what they needed to know and showed them that I cared about the company and that job.
This is really all about listening. If someone comes to you and says, “I need X,” you aren’t going to accomplish much by saying, “No, you don’t. You need Y.” Especially if your main reason is that you happen to have extra Y and not much X. Sure, you can discuss whether X is really right for them, but you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. You’ll do a lot better by either finding someone who wants and needs Y, or by doing the work it takes to find a way to offer X. Look, listen, and adapt.
Dot Every “I”, Cross Every “T”
“When all is said, nothing’s done.”
Maybe this is just a variation on dazzling and failing to listen. But certain of us have a habit of trying to say too much. I once marketed a health food supplement. I had a neighbor totally sold on it, but I hadn’t finished my pitch. So I kept going as I watched his eyes glaze over. I made the sale, but would have done a lot better to stop at “enough”.
Maybe, just maybe, the person you’re talking to isn’t totally stupid. They may already know a lot of what you’re trying to tell them. Or they might not, but when they get to the point where they need to know more, maybe they’ll come back to you and ask specific questions on the parts they actually care about.
I have lots of pompous friends and relatives who like to explain every detail. I’m often one of them. But most of us aren’t full-time teachers. Even when we are, students learn a lot better if they ask the questions. Say enough, and no more.
Another form of this is “losing the forest for the trees.” If you spend too much time on details, you may lose sight of your goal. On programming projects, you’re often better off using an off-the-shelf library function – even if it isn’t exactly what you want – rather than writing your own function for a common task. That way you can concentrate on the parts that really matter.
Know Who to Blame
Ever failed at anything? Ever had a project canceled? It probably wasn’t your fault. I’m sure you did everything possible to make it succeed, but those idiots around you blew it. It’s very important you share that information. If you’re applying for a job, be sure to tell the manager how stupid your previous manager was. Surely they won’t think you’ll be saying the same things about them to your next prospective employer.
You may have been through some pretty awful situations, but if you really stop and look back at them, most of them really aren’t such a big deal. People make mistakes; that doesn’t make them stupid, incompetent or evil. You’ve probably made a few yourself. Telling other people about all the dumb things others have done just makes you look vindictive. Enough such examples, and pretty soon they’ll wonder whether there are really that many stupid people in the world, or if it isn’t just simpler to assume you’ve been the cause of all those failures.
I might have the opposite problem. One time when I applied for unemployment payments, I said that I had been laid off because I hadn’t handled the work well. The interviewer said that in his 20 years of working for the unemployment office, I was the first person to admit that I might have lost my job because of my own fault rather than someone else’s. Most people don’t like to admit to themselves, let alone to others, that they could be responsible for their own problems.
But you know what? It’s a lot easier to look in the mirror, say, “I blew that one,” and move on. Be honest with yourself, figure out what you did wrong, and take action to avoid making the same mistakes again and again. Even if other people did screw up, so what? Think about what you can do in the future to help the project succeed even when people make mistakes. I can guarantee this – Mistakes have been made on every significant task ever done. A lot of those tasks succeeded anyway, and those were the ones on which enough smart things were done to override the mistakes.
Learn from your mistakes, but don’t let them control your life. Just work on the things you need to do so that you will make different – and hopefully smaller – mistakes the next time.
Going from SSECCUS to SUCCESS
There are other ways to fail, but success really comes down to just three things: Prepare, Communicate, and Perform. And the biggest part of communication is listening. If you find yourself having trouble accomplishing the things you want to get done, there are reasons. You may be afraid that, if you do too well, others will expect too much of you. You might not be doing the work and preparation needed to succeed. Or maybe you just aren’t listening.
But you know what? Success is fun. It’s exciting and fulfilling. And the more of it you have, the more you take on and accomplish, the better it gets. And that means that high expectations are really just exciting opportunities. That’s something worth striving for… and did I mention fun?
Tags: Humor, Life Advice
Posted in Life Advice | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
This Sunday is Easter, a time of symbols and traditions. It’s Springtime, and Easter represents hope, new life, fertility, and rebirth. Kids get a few days off school, and families get together to feast and celebrate the joy of life.
As far as children are concerned, the most important traditions of Easter involve chocolate, candy, and a bright pink or yellow Easter Bunny. People decorate colorful hard-boiled eggs which are then hidden about the house and yard by the Easter Bunny (cunningly impersonated by game-loving parents). On Easter Day, the kids scurry around trying to find and collect the eggs. A few eggs were usually hidden too cleverly. The real surprise came from finding these hidden eggs the following Easter. So these days most wise parents substitute hollow plastic eggs with a few jelly beans or chocolate coins inside. Easter is obviously sponsored by the dental industry.
Un-Egg-Spected Surprises
Game Developers like to hide Easter Eggs, too, but they do it in their games. An Easter Egg is a hidden character, place, or event in a game that seems a little odd, hopefully in a humorous way. They can be references to pop culture, history, other games, etc. Sometimes they open additional game play (“secret levels”), but more often they are just there as a reward for observant players.
While Easter Eggs can be distracting, they actually have an important role in improving the quality of a game. I like to describe the “intensity graph” of a game as looking like a roller coaster. The action and intensity build to a peak, then drop down to a more relaxed level before starting to build again. The “low points” of intensity provide contrast for the high points. Without them, a game becomes stressful and less fun. Also, the highs seem higher when there are lows against which to contrast them. An all-action game or movie will not feel as intense as one that gives players/viewers a chance to relax a little between the action scenes. Easter Eggs provide that lull in the action.
Egging on the Clowns
Quest for Glory featured many Easter Eggs, including “mirages” in the desert such as the Persian Golfer (a reference to the Persian Gulf War), the Awful Waffle Walker, and a submarine that showed up in the lake near Spielburg. We also had cameo appearances by such luminaries as the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and “Sanford and Son.”
During the development of Trial by Fire, Brian Hughes mentioned that our menu system reminded him of the menus in productivity software such as VisiCalc (one of the early spreadsheet programs). These programs often contained disabled menu items intended for future enhancements, and he suggested that we could have a menu item that did absolutely nothing. Thus was born the “Silly Clowns” menu, originally a feature that had no game effect whatsoever.
We may have lost some of the purity of the idea, but probably made it more fun, when we decided that we could actually do something with a “Silly Clowns” mode. In the production version of Trial By Fire, Harpo Marx only makes his cameo appearance in the alleys of Shapeir when Silly Clowns is active. Some of the death messages have sillier versions too. Since these are totally useless changes, they keep the spirit of the useless menu option.
Brian was also responsible for the “Saurus Repair Shop” Easter Egg in Trial by Fire. This scene had to be cut from the original release because we ran out of disk space. However, AGDI contacted Brian and recreated it for their recent VGA version of the game. Saurus maintenance – not for the faint of heart.
One of the Sierra artists, Jerry Moore, was famous for slipping a Star Trek reference into every game on which he worked. For example, there is a miniature Starship Enterprise on the shelf of the magic shop in Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire. Jerry also added the Maltese Falcon statuette to the treasure room at the end of Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero.
At the time, this was purely an Easter Egg, but Lori decided it would make an interesting plot point for the rest of the series. We put a “black bird” in each game and added a Thief story thread inspired by the movie, “The Maltese Falcon”. It started as an Easter Egg and became a MacGuffin (a plot point object).
Easter Eggs of Azeroth
World of Warcraft is full of Easter Eggs. “Critters” in WoW are small level 1-3 animals that are just there for atmosphere. While wandering through the Grizzly Peaks, I came across an odd group of critters. They were in a group consisting of a deer named “Mother of Bambina”, a small fawn named Bambina, a rabbit named Thudder, and a skunk named Flower. The names are variations on characters from Disney animated films, and the reference could have stopped there, but…
Suddenly I heard a gunshot and saw Mother of Bambina fall. Off to the side appeared a dwarven hunter; I could imagine his gun still smoking. Bambina called out, “NOOOOOO! Mother, we will avenge you!” Then he ran to the hunter and stomped him flat in a single attack, after which the rest of the party wandered off. It’s amazing what a level 1 critter can do to a level 75 hunter, given enough incentive and adrenaline.
There are dozens, hundreds – maybe thousands – of other pop culture references in World of Warcraft including an entire quest chain with character and object names from The Legend of Zelda video game series.
World of Warcraft also has the traditional type of “Easter Egg”. Every year at Easter time (but running late this year), WoW features the Noble Garden festival, which includes having Easter Eggs hidden throughout Azeroth. Inside each egg is a small prize – a few coins, or sometimes a lovely Spring dress. The latter are rare and much sought-after by role-playing ladies and completists. Lori spent most of our first WoW Easter searching for eggs and slaying bandits with her Paladin in Westfall.
Speaking of eggs in Westfall, Alliance players can tame a chicken in Westfall by repeatedly doing a Chicken Dance around it. If they are willing to make themselves look completely ridiculous, they can earn the small reward of a special pet.
Egg-Qual Time
There are of course Easter Eggs in many other games besides World of Warcraft and Quest for Glory. We just don’t play very many of them these days. Feel free to comment on this article with some of your favorite Easter Eggs from other games. Here are a few from older games:
Some Sierra games were best known for the many ways the character could die. LucasArt’s Ron Gilbert thought that character death was bad storytelling, so the player character could not die in The Secret of Monkey Island. Except when he falls off a cliff, and a Sierra-style death message pops up: “Oh, no! You’ve really screwed up this time! Guess you’ll have to start over! Hope you saved the game!” A few seconds later, the box disappears and Guybrush bounces back up onto the ledge. He looks towards the camera and explains, “Rubber tree.”
In Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the main villains are Trebor and Werdna. Try reading those names backwards, knowing that the game authors were Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg.
During development of King’s Quest IV, someone substituted a picture of Roberta Williams topless in a hot tub on the death message screen. The original image came from the cover of Leisure Suit Larry, but was touched up to “add a couple details”. That image lasted almost until the final version, but Roberta made them take it out shortly before the game shipped. Alas.
Diablo is famous for the “Secret Cow Level”. Fan rumors suggested that the original game had such a level, so Blizzard actually added one in Diablo II. You have to play through the entire game, then take a couple of special actions in town, to unlock a game level populated entirely by very aggressive cattle.
Have an Egg-Ceptional Easter!
This Easter, hide some fun for your young (or not-so-young) friends and share some Easter Gaming Goodness. And maybe you can help us find some of those lost eggs from earlier Easters.
So, What Easter Eggs have you found in computer games? We look forward to reading about your favorite game – and real life – Easter egg experiences in the comments.
Tags: Game Design, Humor, Quest for Glory, World of Warcraft
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Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
“Why so SERIOUS?” – The Joker, The Dark Knight
Humor is a very serious business. I say that because I’m not very good at it, yet somehow managed to make a living at it for several years. Quest for Glory is known as a “humorous adventure game” series and we worked hard at keeping it that way. As frustrating as adventure games can be, we decided that it was better to have people laugh with us than scream at us.
Humor isn’t just for “funny” games and stories. Quest for Glory has a serious plot – the inexperienced Hero overcoming all odds to save the world. But along the way, there are many humorous moments and occasional outright silliness. Those moments lighten the mood, making the next dramatic bit all the more powerful.
So, how do you make a pun fun? We’ll show you how it’s done.
Running Gags
The idea of a running gag is to have a short joke that keeps showing up in different contexts. Ideally, it gets a little crazier each time and ends in a “payoff” punch line. Warner Brothers cartoons were famous for this. Airplane had a character say, “I guess I picked a bad time to give up smoking.” Not at all funny by itself, but by the time they got to “… a bad time to stop sniffing glue,” “… a bad time to start guiding space shuttles,” and so on, the accumulated ridiculousness became hilarious.
We didn’t have too many running jokes in Quest for Glory, but there was a walking one – the Awful Waffle Walker of Tarna. Marc Hudgins, a QG3 animator (and later lead artist on QG4), animated a walking waffle just for fun. He showed it to us and we ended up integrating it into the game. You kill it, you eat it.
The one-upmanship of Erasmus and Fenris might count as a running gag – Erasmus would start to tell a joke, Fenris would top it, Erasmus would try to recover, and Fenris would end with a zinger. It was enough to make anyone gag.
Ridiculous References
Quest for Glory got a lot of mileage out of anachronistic references to other sources. We used the Marx Brothers in QG2, Young Frankenstein in QG4, and dozens of other pop culture references. At one point Erasmus tells the Hero, “I can say no more,” and Fenris responds, “Please say no more.” That’s from the Beatles movie, “Hard Day’s Night.”
How abstruse were the in-jokes? I think we can safely say that nobody got all of them. Looking back at the Hero Magazine included with QG4, we had an article called, The Hero as an Artform by Fish Crawdad, “Ze Greatest Hero in Ze World” That’s a reference to Chris Crawford, who used to (jokingly, we think) call himself, “ze greatest game designer in ze world.” Chris, in turn, used “ze” to make fun of the fake French accents beloved by self-appointed “auteurs” in the film industry. Or how about the “Elderbury Pie” you bring Baba Yaga in QG4? Did you know that “Erna’s Elderberry House” is the fanciest restaurant in Oakhurst? I didn’t think so.
Other references in that magazine (and QG4) include “October Derleth” (August Derleth), “H.P. Craftlove” (H.P. Lovecraft), the mad monk Amon Tillado (“The Cask of Amontillado”, by Edgar Allen Poe), “Carl Atlas” (Charles Atlas, the body builder, who used to advertise on the back cover of comic books), and “Mister Mannerly” (Miss Manners, the newspaper advice columnist).
Monty Python was a favorite source – for example, the Dead Parrot Inn is only funny if you’ve seen their dead parrot sketch. Vorpal bunnies were feared monsters in QG4. To get to Erasmus’s house in QG1, you first had to get by a gargoyle who asks you “Questions Three.”
There were even references to other Sierra games. Every Quest for Glory features a moose head somewhere. This was a long-standing Sierra tradition used in King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and other games. In Mordavia, the moose has fangs.
Certain Sounds are Silly
An aardvark and an emu check into a hotel in Azusa. Whatever happens to them, we know it’s going to be funny. Quest for Glory 1 featured the Antwerp, one of the strangest monsters in gamedom. Basically they just bounced up and down, but it they landed on you, it was crushing. If you hit one with a dagger, it split into multiple baby Antwerps.
It could have been worse. We could have set the entire game in Cucamonga.
Rhyme and Pun-ishment
“Doctor, my funny bone hurts.” “Well, it’s clear… You need an a-pun-dectomy!”
It’s been said that the pun is the lowest form of humor. They say that as though it’s a bad thing. But we need high humor and low. Most puns (excepting certain shaggy dog stories and Feghoots) have the virtue of being over very quickly. A pun can be fun if you tell it and run.
A pun is really just a specialized form of word play. Other forms can be excessive alliteration, using alternate meanings of words, having a character use language you wouldn’t expect, and many others.
The Gnomes in Quest for Glory are known for their sense of humor – and particularly their puns. In the first game, you eventually learn that dark wizard of the brigands is actually Yorick, a gnome jester who makes you cross a crazy room in order to talk to him.
In Shapeir, when you first go into the magic shop, you are greeted with, “Welcome to my little shop of wonders. Wonder what shop this is? It’s magic of course. I am Keapon Laffin, proprietor. You must be Nobil Caws. Proud to know you Mister Caws.” He spoke in riddles and rhyme all of the time. He was obviously a pun-dit of pun-demonium.
In Shadows of Darkness, you meet the Gnome comedian, Punny Bones. This unfunny Gnome can’t tell a joke from a straight line since the time he told the joke so bad that it made Baba Yaga curse. You get to help poor Punny regain his punchlines by bringing him a Good Humor Bar in QG4. Yes, we raised the bar for humor there.
And a Gnome named Anne runs the “Gnome Anne’s Land” Inn in Silmaria in QG5. Her food is world renowned – The lobsters there are so fresh, you have to slap their faces. And salad dressing? Her tomatoes wear tuxedos and her lettuce wears lace.
Some of the most effective puns are accidental. Just remember – When no pun intended, then no pun ish meant.
The Funny Pictures
We love comics because a good illustration can often make something funnier than mere words. Frank and Ernest is a personal favorite. The characters and settings are so wacky, the words just seem funnier. Besides, Bob Thaves comes up with a lot of fun puns.
The original EGA Hero’s Quest used a very cartoony style – How realistic can you get in 320×200, 16-color graphics anyway? That set the tone for the game. The entire “bouncing Antwerp” bit came from a Jeff Crowe illustration. Similarly, the cartoony appearance of Erasmus and Fenris in the first game goes right along with their bantering dialogue.
The detailed room backgrounds were filled with knick-knacks and in-jokes. At Keapon’s magic shop, you will see stuffed antwerps, the Starship Enterprise, and x-ray goggles. The goggles were ‘a veil-able’ when you needed them.
And then there were the opening cartoons… The first game opens with the Hero chasing after a small Saurus, then running away from a much larger Saurus. In the second game, your flying carpet almost gets hit by the Starship Enterprise.
Seek Serious Silliness
Did you know that April is National Humor Month in the U.S.? That gives us license to carry a pun. That’s an awesome responsibility! Have you told a bloke a joke today? Made a llama laugh or a gorilla giggle? If not you – then zoo?
With the Glory days behind us, it’s once again time for us all to light the lantern of laughter and kindle the candle of kookiness. We must seek out new lines and new pun-tifications. We’ll boldly joke where Gnome Anne has punned before.
Punny Bones, Fenrus, and Erasmus’s images were from QG4, created originally by Tim Loucks.
Tags: Game Design, Humor, Quest for Glory
Posted in Humor | 6 Comments »
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
“It’s elementary, my Dear Watson.” – or not – since Sherlock Holmes never actually said that. Just as you may or may Not be curious about the Elements that make up the world and all life within it. There have been many attempts to classify the basis of all matter into just four elements – Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. However, such attempts miss out on the heart and soul of true alchemy – the fifth Element.
And what, you may ask, is the fifth Element? Why, Pizza, of course!
A ‘Sedimental’ Journey
Earth is traditionally the element of solidity and protection. As the only element with any real substance, one could say Earth really matters… or at least that it’s really matter. What’s it matter, really? It’s ‘earthential’ to our standing on the planet, and I think I’m on solid ground when I say that.
In Glorianna, Earth is susceptible to Fire and Air loses to Earth. That’s because wood is “earthy” by virtue of being solid, and wood burns. It could have been the other way around, with Fire burning Air, and Earth putting out Fire, but then Water would have been left behind. Blocking the water would have been a dam nuisance to the story line, so we practiced a little damage control by letting Earth “ground” the air. Earth is really heavy, so Air has trouble carrying it, you see. But mostly it was because Fire already had an enemy (and Water has anemones).
If you need protection, visualize rock walls… or build some. In a crisis, stand your ground and remember that the Earth itself is your guardian. Just don’t try to stonewall anyone in authority while you’re stoned; you might find yourself breaking rocks on a chain gang. And don’t wall yourself in.
Air On A G-String (Or On the Side of Caution)
That’s Mozart, not what exotic dancers wear. Or maybe they do wear violin strings; some of those outfits are pretty skimpy. Hmm, air, g-strings, Marilyn Monroe? Uh, where was I?
Oh yes, air. It’s the lightweight, lighthearted element that lifts your spirits (or Marilyn’s skirt). Forget that, it’s an obvious air-or. As we mentioned, air doesn’t like to be grounded, but it could go the other way – Wind and Water, working together, can level mountains. Air is the element of movement, of speech, of music, and of course, the Winds of Change.
A wise person once said (well, actually, it was The Hollies who sang), “All I need is the air that I breathe, and to love you.” The Police said something about, “Every breath you take, I’ll be watching you,” but you can get arrested for that sort of airheaded behavior these days. And how about that Air-ol Flynn? Loved him as Robin Hood shooting his air-ohs straight to the target. But let’s not get too far off the mark here. I have a burning desire to move on to the next Element.
Fire You Looking at Me That Way?
This is the really hot topic; I’m really fired up about it. Besides, they’d fire me if I held my fire this time. I don’t want to start a flame war, but you know how it is – You play with fire, you get burned. So I’ll take my place in the hot seat and just fire away at this energetic element.
Fire warms our homes, gives us light, cooks our pizza (more on that later), and generally adds a little excitement to life. Light that fire! Romantic candlelight dinners in front of a warm fireplace on a cold Winter’s night would be rather challenging without the element of Fire.
Magically, fire adds energy to anything you need to do. Witches light candles and incense in their ceremonies to attract the attention of the spirits and to commit themselves to the ritual. When you need power, visualize the flame that drives you to succeed. Just don’t burn out in the process.
Water You Wadin’ For?
Well, now that we’ve dipped our toes in the water, it’s time to dive in all the way. You may think you’re washed up, but sometimes you just have to come clean. (Note to Lori: This is sinking fast! Can you bail me out? I know, I know, that isn’t really your bail-iwick.) Sometimes you may feel like a very small fish in a very big pond, but if you stick to your (water) guns, you can really clean up some filthy situations. If at first you scrub out, dry, dry again.
Water is the element of healing, love, and new beginnings. When you want to try something new, start with a long, soothing bath. You’ll smell better too. Drink plenty of water and share it with your water brothers and sisters. Always see the glass as half-full. Make no empty promises. Water your house plants every week. Get into the swim of life!
Conserve energy – If you commute to work or school, join a car pool. And when you’re drown on your luck, or drowning in love’s debris, maybe taking a bath financially and in trouble with the loan sharks, look to the healing power of water to wash your sins clean and make it all better.
Get Yourself a Pizza the Action
“The Element of Pizza is best known to symbolize quick energy and regeneration.” – ChaosBurnFlame on a comic book forum.
Without Pizza, life as we know it would not exist. The world of Glorianna was built on the firm but flexible foundation of crisp pizza crusts. Without frequent Pizza Factory™ excursions to fuel the furnace of creativity, few of the Quest for Glory team members would have survived those late night crunches – or the late night munchies – that make up the Sisyphean Nightmare Warren™ of game development.
Dr. Cranium insists that the world is made up of five elements – Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Pizza. However, Dr. Cranium is also a Mad Scientist, and they are sometimes known for their crackpot theories. The Wizards’ Institute of Technocery (also known as “WIT”) has this to say on the subject:
“There are some misguided individuals who insist that the world is made up of five elements. Of course, those of us enlightened in the advanced arts of Technocery know better. Only Earth, Air, Fire, and Water are true elements. Pizza is actually a compound formed by composition from the basic four elements. Earth is present in the form of flour and yeast – and often as oh-so-yummy mushrooms. Water is an essential element of pizza dough, since dry flour is pretty hard to knead and rather messy to toss. Tossing is of course an essential part of the magical development process of a perfect pizza as it incorporates air into the mixture. Finally, Fire is used both in baking and the bold burn of the pepperonis. Nothing is present in Pizza that cannot easily be attributed to one of the other four elements, and therefore Pizza is a compound, not a true Element in its own right.”
Dr. Cranium responds:
“Now what do those so-called-Wizard nincompoops know of SCIENCE? They all run around in dresses and those silly hats and prattle on about their “technocery.” That isn’t even a WORD! They call me mad, but what do they know of madness? We’ll see how crazy I am when I TAKE OVER their silly WIT with my pizza-powered siege engines and my army of Elemental Pizza Warriors in their impenetrable pizza-box armor. THEN who will be the crazy one? Muahahahahaaaaa!”
Confounded Compounded Conclusions
So, there you have it – The eternal, fundamental conflict between the impeccable logic of science and the emotion-driven fantasy world of magic. Will science prove more powerful than Wizardry in the end? Only time will tell. Is pizza really elementary? I’m not sure about that, but it’s definitely alimentary.
Our little fable comes to an end as the elements combine to form amazing new compounds of wonder and magic. Four elements, or maybe five. Every one of them is important. That’s why they’re in the Alphabet Song – You know the line, the one that goes “Elemental Pea.” All I am saying, is give peas a chance and maybe we’ll have whirled peas in our time (or at least flavored with thyme).
Yes, it’s true – Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective, never once uttered those words in the Canon of stories that have come down to us. And yet it’s his best-remembered phrase. The movies made that line famous.
Tags: Dr. Cranium, Humor, Quest for Glory, WIT
Posted in Humor | 3 Comments »
Thursday, October 9th, 2008
“Writer’s Block” is an ancient curse of writers in every medium and genre. You have a deadline and something you want to write, but somehow the words just won’t come. Well, writer’s block isn’t just for writers anymore. Now anyone in any profession can find ways to zone out, get distracted, and avoid doing useful work. Here are a few of my favorites.
www2 – Wasting aWay on the Web (Win With Wikipedia)
Research! You can never do too much research. And there’s so much information to be had on the Web. Here’s how “research for procrastinators” works. I used to do this with the New Columbia Encyclopedia; now Wikipedia lets you do the same job even better. First, you think of a topic that might be related to what you’re writing, then do a Wikipedia search. You find lots of information and citations, and more importantly many details that don’t at first seem relevant, but do seem Highly Interesting. That of course mandates that you look up each of the related topics in turn. Sometimes a key word will just pop into your head, so you need to look that up as well. Hours later, you might or might not have completed the original research, but your head will be filled with Fascinating Facts you can share with your Friends.
Of course, Wikipedia is but the beginning. There’s a whole World Wide Web full of wondrous and worthwhile wisdom out there. One must keep up with the latest news – There could be inspiration in any of those stories about Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin. Or about Britney. Or the baseball playoffs. Then there are the blogs – Everyone has an opinion, and some of them are Really Inspirational. Web comics – After all, humor is very important to writing and gaming. Besides, some of them – such as Penny Arcade, GU Comics, and Ctrl+Alt+Delete – are Really Relevant Resources on trends in the gaming industry. Oh, and while you’re at it, check out Looking for Group, because you never know when an orphanage might attack you.
What did people do before Google and Wikipedia? Why, they read books and magazines. Fortunately, you can still do that. Amazon.com has several million books. Several of them are undoubtedly of interest, or maybe even useful, to your work. Why not spend some time browsing their catalog and reading user reviews of a few thousand books. Once you find a few that are clearly critical to your research, go ahead and order them. Of course, there’s no sense working on your project until the books arrive and you have a chance to study them.
ggg2 – Good Going, Got a Game, Got to Go
Well, since we’re best known as game designers, and this is nominally a blog about games, it’s clearly essential that we do even more research… by playing games. Now the small-minded might think this purpose best served by spending a short time each with a lot of different games of varying types. But we know that the only way to truly understand the strengths and limitations of a game is by playing each game thoroughly for endless hours. After all, World of Warcraft is really designed around all the players reaching the maximum level and attempting the raid dungeons over and over. Can anyone who hasn’t wiped on Nightbane or Lady Vashj or Archimonde repeatedly truly be said to have experienced all WoW has to offer? We think not. It is, of course, purely a coincidence that we keep researching the same games and that those just happen to be our favorites.
Corey pursues his valuable continuing game research in bridge, Travian, and World of Warcraft. Those are good for about 10-15 hours a day, so who has time for new games?
Oh, then there’s online poker. How ya gonna get rich if you don’t play? Online poker is great, because you can play it at home, at the office, or in the middle of a meeting with clients. They surely want to hear your bad beat stories! Discipline is very important in poker. You need to fold lots of hands. How better to ensure that than to play while you’re in the middle of doing something else?
Eat, Drink, and Procrastinate for Tomorrow We Diet
There is an ancient saying – “Life is uncertain, so eat dessert first.” Well, maybe not quite so ancient, but the thought has undoubtedly been there since before recorded history. Having thought of the line, I of course had to Google it; two sites attribute it to Ernestine Ulmer, American writer, in 1925. Anyway, having run out of ideas for this blog, I of course ran to the refrigerator. A pear, a chunk of cheddar cheese, and a bowl of Peace Cereal’s “Mango Passion” later, inspiration smote me and this section was born. Never let it be said that we don’t practice what we preach! Real time research, that’s the ticket. Unfortunately, sufficient procrastination through gustation can lead to bloated bellies and thighzable thighs. So can sitting at your desk for hours on end reading, writing, programming, or playing games, so…
Get out there and exercise! Yes, that’s very important. Go bowling, take a walk in the woods, play with the dogs, and pump some iron. All of these things make you stronger, healthier, and most importantly, get you away from whatever tasks you’re avoiding. Besides improving blood flow to the brain, those minutes or hours of physical activity might just give you a chance to find that vital inspiration you’ve been missing. Incidentally, it is clear that testosterone poisoning is an important contributor to stupidity in the male of the species. Therefore, testosterone levels must be controlled through frequent horizontal exercises upon a soft surface to maximize brain activity. More research is required on whether women benefit equally from the exercise… much more research performed as often as possible.
Procrastination Process Chart
Since some people are more visual than word-oriented, we thought we’d better illustrate our ideas with a flowchart of how not to complete a project. The other choice would have been to write another section or two. Since we ran out of ideas, the flowchart seemed more useful (to our purpose of getting this blog out tonight).
Tags: Game Design, Humor
Posted in Humor | 4 Comments »
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Well, shiver me timbers, me buckos, it be that time o’ year. Official Talk Like a Pirate Day be Friday, the 19th of September. Ye doesna want ta be a lubber, does ye? Avast, ye scurvy dogs!
Ye be wantin’ the whole scuzzy tale? That ye can find on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. You can even learn the ten best pickup lines to use on buxom wenches on TLPD (Such as “Pardon me, but would ya mind if I fired me cannon through your porthole?” and “Prepare to be Boarded!”).
When ye be ready ta start talkin’ the talk and walkin’ the walk, ye might larn a bit aboard this here schooner.
Pirate Lore (or Pirate Lori)
“There be a bit o’ pirate in all of us. Some of our most memorable D&D adventures involved the pirate ship “The Lion Rampant” and its intrepid – or at least unusual – crew. Cap’n o’ the Rampant was Buccaneer Brucie, a foppish, presumed gay male paragon played by Lori. The first time she rolled into gaming session dressed ta the nines as Buccaneer Brucie – scarves, flintlock, cutlass, powdered white wig, tricorner hat, and all – there were several seconds of awed silence afore the gale force laughter hit us all.
Corey was slightly less impressive as the Dead Pirate Rogers. Despite never having watched Mr. Roger’s Neighorhood, he soon learned that a fuzzy sweater was apparently required armor for the role. Dead Pirate was a Dwarf, and First Mate to Cap’n Brucie. Of course, Dwarves aren’t yer usual sort o’ pirates.
Rogers was actually King Rockhard Ironstaff, deposed leader of the Dwarven kingdom of Moronia. Bein’ not a altogether bad pirate, Rogers composed this song (to the tune of the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean theme song (this happened long before the films):
Yo ho, yo ho, privateers we be!
We plunder, we pillage,
We ravage the village,
But always by letters of marque –
Because we’re not pirates, but privateers,
We don’t do this for a lark!
Yo ho, yo ho, privateers we be!
Also memorable in the ship’s crew was Ferdiad, the sadistic ship’s surgeon. His favorite “cure” for all ills was Doctor Death’s Salve, a concoction so caustic that many preferred to die of their wounds rather than be cured with the Salve. (There was the time that Hobbes, the mischievous Hobbit, substituted Dr. Death’s salve for bear grease, but we won’t go there…)
The jolly ship’s crew had an actual treasure hunt in character on our ranch in the middle of the night by lantern light. Unfortunately, the character who had the map was a Hoka (a species of intelligent bear-like creatures from a high gravity planet in stories by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson). The Hoka, being a bear of little brain, started happily leading the party off in entirely the wrong direction. We’d marched half-way across the ranch before someone thought to actually look at the map.
The adventures of the Lion Rampant were chaotic and silly, but rollicking good fun.
Look Behind You! It’s a Three-Headed Monkey!
Despite having authored multiple best-selling “adventure games,” we’ve never played them very much. LucasArt’s “The Secret of Monkey Island” was the notable exception. We loved the humor, the mostly non-frustrating puzzles, the graphic style, the music, the setting, the story. It went on a short list of computer games that both of us loved to play (along with Rogue, Dungeonmaster, and Wizardry).
Note the timing on game releases – Hero’s Quest shipped in 1989, The Secret of Monkey Island and Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire in 1990, and Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck’s Revenge in 1991. We talked to Ron Gilbert – lead designer of the first two Monkey Island games – at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference, and he admitted to being influenced by Hero’s Quest, just as we were by his games.
Secret of Monkey Island had the most fun combat system we’ve ever seen in a game. Instead of slashes and thrusts, Guybrush Threepwood and his opponents hurled deadly (at least to the ego) insults at each other. Each insult could be parried by an appropriate witty repartee. Of course, you had to practice your dueling skills to hone your wit to a razor edge.
The story also held together really well, including some great foreshadowing. Early in the game, Guybrush is trying to be recognized as a pirate. Asked if he has any special talents, he says, “Well, I can hold my breath for ten minutes.” This turns out to be important later in the game, and those patient players who held out for the full ten minutes got to see an Easter Egg of sorts.
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Whenever we visited Disneyland, we tended to make a beeline to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The imagineers did a fantastic job with the setting. Combining Pirates with the Blue Bayou restaurant was a stroke of genius, as each contributes to the atmosphere of the other. The food at the Blue Bayou was also probably the best the park had to offer. As fond as we were of pirate stories like Treasure Island, The Muppet’s Treasure Island, and The Princess Bride, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride made us shiver with delight.
So we looked forward to the Pirates of the Caribbean film with a mixture of anticipation and fear. Would they manage to capture the essence of the ride, or turn out a commercialized travesty? To our delight, the movie was fantastic. Johnny Depp played Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the spitting image of Buccaneer Brucie (well, aside from having dreadlocks and a beard, while noticeably lacking a purple frock coat, white wig, and high heels – It’s all about the attitude), and the writers managed to walk that narrow plank between humor and a dramatic story absolutely perfectly. We were already Johnny Depp fans, and Pirates solidified his standing as one of the great character actors of our time. Of course the movie did undermine one of the basic premises of Piratedom – “Dead Men Tell no Tales”. Then again, most of the pirates in the movie were Undead Men, so maybe that makes it ok.
So, be ye a landlubber or a true pirate? Ye’ll get ta show yer true colors this Friday and on International Talk Like a Pirate Day every year. Scupper us with a marlinspike if we not be speakin’ the plain truth. and speakin’ it like pirates!
Brucie’s Flag, the “Hello Sailor” and the singing Meep pirates were from our first “TLPD” on Transolar years ago. The coin is a bronze casting that Lori made at an SCA event from the mold of the coins used in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. The Monkey Island cover is from our original game box. The portrait at the beginning of the article is of the notorious Meeps, Cap’n Redbeard and Molly (a Meep thinly disguised as a parrot).
Tags: D&D, Humor
Posted in Game Design, Humor | No Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
A recent article in Game Developer magazine (August 2008 edition, page 34) had us saying, “Yes! Tell it like it is!”. Actually, the article was a standard “What went right and what went wrong” article about developing an adventure game. It was the sidebar by Penny Arcade co-creator Jerry “Tycho” Holkins that really caught our attention:
“If we had known what we were getting into, we would never have done it. Game development is an endless Sisyphean nightmare warren of terrible nightmares. We wish we could go back in time, to our first meeting with Hothead, and shake our past selves, crying out: “Run, fools! Run for your very lives! Game development is a nightmare warren,” et cetera. We would spend a lot of time driving home this nightmare warren concept.” – Tycho
[Incidentally, we view Penny Arcade almost every day. Check out their unique blend of sardonic humor as they discuss the ins and outs of Games and the Game Industry.]
We often have starry-eyed young game players come up to us and ask, “What does it take to become a Game Designer, O Great Ones?” (although they usually don’t phrase it quite that way). This is much like a son, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, asking, “What did you do in the Clone Wars, Daddy?” We put our arm on their shoulders (ok, Corey does that… Lori’s too short), smile condescendingly, and say, “Son, it takes Moxie. Moxie, hard work, and luck.” Then we pat them on the back and send them on their way with such sage advice as “Study Hard”, “Get Good Grades”, and “May the Force Be with You”.
What we don’t say to those innocent dreamers is that game development takes all the sweat from more work than you ever thought you were capable of doing. It takes the blood from opening up your creative heart and watching it all spill out upon the cutting room floor. It takes the tears of frustration and agony as you try to deal with impossible people doing impossible tasks under impossible deadlines. It also takes selling your soul to the Devil.
We don’t say it because:
- A. We don’t like scaring people
- B. We’d like to play their games someday
- C. We get a kickback from the Devil for every soul we get to sign on the dotted line
“There are a few things we wish we had known beforehand. First, not to make video games – but we covered that…” – Tycho
Why is game development so hard? We start out with a set of vague concepts about the game style and features, then spend months or years creating art and music, prototyping then refining the code, and gradually putting it all together. I can tell you that we were in total despair over a few of our games just three months before shipment because they felt bland and lifeless. Then the music and sound effects were added, and suddenly the games took on life. Still, even after a year or three of work, we’re never really sure we’ve created a great game until the fans come back and tell us we managed it.
The Horror! The Horror!
You might have heard horror stories about months-long crunch periods of 60 and 70 hour weeks to complete a game. The situation is industry-wide; almost all game companies have similar horrible overtime periods. But you may wonder why. I know we have at times… usually when we are in the middle of pulling an all-nighter.
What it all comes down to is that game development is an inherently chaotic process. We are trying to create an experience that has a certain feel and flavor, but our tools have no built-in intelligence. We have to draw every pixel, write every word of dialogue, and program every interaction. We create shortcuts for some of this, such as art tools that let us draw a polygon and apply a texture to it, object-oriented programming tools that let us specify a class of behavior for certain types of objects, and so on… but in the end, almost everything needs to be hand-tweaked, tested and retested for play balance, and finally reluctantly released to the playing public.
“… coming in as people who ordinarily just buy entertainment software, we didn’t understand that a project doesn’t actually look like anything until the very end. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that our game would be about grey blocks stumbling around a featureless world.” – Tycho
On the rare occasions when we get ahead of schedule, we use the extra time – and more – to add more features or to further tune the game play. Then, inevitably, many of the bugs and play balance problems show up only when we think the game is finished in the final phases of testing. This is of course because our characters are nothing but “grey blocks” for most of the development phase – The testers can’t really put a game through its paces until it’s almost finished.
No Pain – No Game?
Is it possible to create a great game without pain? In short, “no.” The pain can be reduced, and the overtime spread out a little, but a game produced strictly “by the book” on schedule is almost always a boring, flat-feeling game. That’s because game development is all about passion and chaos and “endless Sisyphean nightmare warrens.”
So, our advice to all you wannabe Game Designers really should be “don’t give in the the Dark Side of the Force.” But since no one ever takes that advice, don’t worry. We know a dandy lawyer who will be happy to write you up a Game Development contract. Don’t be too concerned if he asks you to sign it in blood. In triplicate.
Have fun!!!!!
Tags: Game Design, Humor
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 10 Comments »
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
I suppose that it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call this the “Class of the Titans,” but the Golden School is that “he who has the gold runs the school.” So we’ll class-ify ourselves as above average, and school ourselves to get back to the subject at hand – the Making of the “School for Heroes.”
Over the past few weeks, Lori has been working feverishly on creating www.TheSchoolForHeroes.com web site. She’s using the “grunge look” so that there is a lot of background detail behind everything on the page. Besides looking cool, this will give us the opportunity to sneak some hidden puzzles into the site. Meanwhile, Corey is creating an interactive “What kind of hero are you?” quiz to help our players/members decide on the character classes that best fit them for the school.
“Character class” is an old role-playing term, but it has a double-meaning when we’re talking about a school for heroes. The game characters will be assigned to a “class” such as Warrior, Wizard, or Paladin, then will take classes in that subject. Instead of just puzzles, we’ll have class assignments. Of course, the classes and assignments are all about fun, not busy-work!
Did you ever have one special teacher who really made you enjoy a class in school? That teacher probably gave you unusual assignments that really made you think about the subject material. One of Corey’s favorite teachers was Mr. Cross, an 8th grade math teacher. One day, when he saw that Corey was a little bored with the standard material, Mr. Cross asked him to stay a few minutes after class. Pulling out a College workbook on probability theory, he told Corey, “You might find this interesting.” A lifelong fascination with probability and chance began that day. By the way, Corey highly recommends “Lady Luck” by Warren Weaver if you’re interested in the subject.
Lori had a great high school English teacher, Mrs. Eades. This was the first time Lori really felt special in a class. Mrs. Eades went out of her way to encourage the talented students and make the class fun for them. Lori was inspired to continue studies in creative writing in College and to become a schoolteacher. Without Mrs. Eades’s encouragement, Lori might never have become a professional game writer.
The School for Heroes is full of special teachers for exceptional students. Everyone has the chance to show that they are heroes inside, and the teachers recognize and encourage this. They will go out of their way to make all of the classes fun, to create unique and challenging assignments, and to mold their students into true heroes. Have you done your Wizard homework lately? One of your assignments might be to search the school for hidden messages that can only be revealed by use of the Sense Magic spell you learned in the last class session. Of course it gets even more fun when you discover that not all of the secret messages out there were placed by your teacher. There are many secrets to discover in the School for Heroes.
So that’s what The School for Heroes is all about – a place where the true heroes live, laugh, love, and learn in an exciting, challenging, and above all fun environment. We hope to see you there with the other great heroes! We’ll be sure to send you to the head of the class.
Tags: Game Design, Humor, School for Heroes
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 2 Comments »
