Band and Albums that should be in Rock band...

... but probably won't be.

To be updated as I think of more.

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead -- Source Tags and Codes
Arcade Fire -- Funeral
Neutral Milk Hotel -- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Led Zeppelin -- Zoso, II
Pink Floyd -- Dark Side of the Moon
Radiohead -- The Bends, OK Computer
Blur -- Selections from Parklife, 13, and Blur
The Stone Roses -- The Stone Roses
Calexico -- Garden Ruin
Greenday -- American Idiot
Galaxie 500 -- On Fire
The Flaming Lips -- The Soft Bulletin

Random Stuff

Recently, I read The Black Company by Glen Cook, which is the first in a series of books about the aforementioned Black Company. I suppose at the time it was published it was something of a groundbreaking book, but after reading Erikson, and to some degree George R.R. Martin, it feels a little quaint. I think the writing style is downright adolescent, and the flow of the words is very poor. The plotline and characters are what give the book it's place in the hearts of fantasy fans, and it does have interesting characters and a decent plot, but Erikson does the same thing better.

The book follows a squad of soldiers in what seems to be the best mercenary army in the world. They end up working for "the bad guys", in a poorly explained war. What starts out as interesting and cliche avoiding ends up banal and unsurprising, but there are still good parts to it. I'll probably keep reading the series, maybe after I pick up the next Mistborn book (come on Brandon Sanderson, don't fuck up Wheel of Time any worse).

I've been playing warhammer online a lot with my wife, Danielle, and it's really grown on me. It's the first MMO that's sucked me in at all, so that's really saying something. I wish it were a bit easier to get into a scenario (not UI wise, but queue length wise), but otherwise fantastic. I don't have to get Saints Row 2 or Dead Space thanks to WAR. Next week, however, is a definite dual buy of Fable 2 and Little Big Planet.

As far as wine goes, I've found an absolutely fantastic Zinfandel blend called The Prisoner at Wally's. Wally's is a local LA wine shop. The Prisoner is just an AMAZING Zin. Hugely fruit forward (which is my preference), but still fairly complex, alcoholic, interesting, a fantastic wine. You might notice that I'm terrible at describing wine. I just don't have the heart to try to name a bunch of flavors that the wine really reminds me of more than tastes like. The other wine we've been drinking lately is called Porque No? it's another Zin blend, not quite as good, but a fantastic QPR at $18 a bottle. Really a nice wine. I might order more of it.

Red Alert 3 and stuff

So I've been playing a lot of C&C Red Alert 3 lately. Since it's an online beta I've only been able to play online. I have to say it's quite a good game. Definitely the best C&C game I've ever played. It sports a much improved Warcraft style resource model and I love the amphibiousness of the buildings. The three races seem quite varied, and if they're not quite balanced yet, I still have a ton of fun playing the game. My chosen race is the Empire of the Rising sun due to their unlimited expand ability and the transformation of the mechs.

One of the great things about the game is the back and forth nature I've had with some of the battles, and the ability to recover from missteps. In the last game I played I was doing really well, but I had neglected to fully build up my navy and lo and behold, the enemy comes with some naval vessels. Luckily I could just pack up my construction yard, move it on to land where it would be well protected by my infantry and continue the game, which I handily won through ground and air forces. This follows another game I played back and forth with an opponent for over an hour wherein we were constantly battling for control of the map until finally I was able to destroy his army, though we were both basically out of resources.

I'm glad I work at Pandemic at times like this so I can get in on some of these early betas (though now it's available to all C&C 3 owners). Anyway if you can get your hands on the beta, highly recommended, otherwise, hopefully there will be a demo.

We also saw two movies this weekend, Pineapple Express and Bottle Shock. Pineapple express was really good. Funny and action-packed, it wasn't a movie just for stoners. Tons of laughs. Bottle shock was elevated due to the performances of Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman, but I don't think it was quite a good movie. It's about the Judgement of Paris in 1976, where California wines first beat French wines in a blind taste test. The movie focused on the family that owned Chateau Montelena at the time and embelished quite a bit. It was still a good film, but I find the subject matter interesting enough to not have it Hollywoodized all to hell. Interestingly the screening we selected included a Q&A with the director and producer of the film. Both were affable and you wanted to like them. The movie was good, but apparently another movie is coming out about the same subject matter, so I hope that one is better.

Amanda Palmer at Troubadour 8/4/08

The wife and I hit up the Troubadour to see Amanda Palmer tonight. There was a really good opening band called Vermillion Lies, not sure if I'd like thier music on an album but an extremely entertaining live show. Apparently this was Amanda's first show on her new tour, so she was pretty nervous.

Still a great show. I have to say I really appreciate shows where the artist or band appreciates the audience. I first noticed this when I saw Devotchka and the band just seemed happy to be able to play music for an audience that really wanted to hear them. For some reason that really made me fall in love with the band. This show was much the same. When the Dresden Dolls perform, it tends to be a bit more "professional", the show seems more rehearsed or something. This show was more cozy, almost friendly. I really like that kind of thing. The performance was really good also, Amanda brings all the passion she normally brings to Dresden Dolls shows to her solo performance as well. I'm also liking how her new album sounds so far so the fact that most of the show was her solo stuff was a plus for me, thought the crowd seemed happy to be pandered to with older Dresden Dolls material. It was a really good show, and I highly recommend the Troubadour as a venue. The wife and I were thinking of seeing more shows there for bands we don't know so well just to try to find new bands since it's such a great venue. We've seen Devotchka and Amanda Palmer there now and both shows were lots of fun.

10/10

So, Grand Theft Auto IV received a plethora of 10/10 scores from various outlets around the internet and print. And my friends and co workers are up in arms. Pulling flaws from a seemingly endless bag, they deride the impossibility of a game with so many problems to be "10/10", with the subtext that 10/10 is perfect.

I submit that 10/10 should not be considered as perfect but should be considered to be one of the best games currently available. 5 star movies are not necessarily perfect, nor are five star hotels. The entire game rating system is so broken, basically decided by the American education system of 90-100 being an A, 80-90 being a B and so on. Where as a two and a half star movie would still be enjoyable to the people most likely to see that type of movie anyway, a 50 game is pretty much considered to be garbage. Game reviews are in this weird sort of range of 50-95, anything less than 50 is crap, anything 95 or above is fantastic. Less than 50, the ratings start to fall apart. I would like to see reviewers adopt the five star system or else use the alphabet grade system, where a C is mediocre a B is good, and an A is fantastic, and not use numbers with it at all, there's nothing less than an F, nothing higher than an A+.

So what's a five star game? An A+ game? For me, GTA IV certainly is. No one offers the GTA experience better than Rockstar. Call of Duty 4 is a five star game certainly. Mass Effect as well. Halo was probably four and a half stars for me. Saints Row was probably three stars.

There has also been a lot of talk about hype and brand, and I would really like to see a study done on whether a hyped game gets better reviews than an unhyped game. I think it's clear that brands make a huge difference, I think Mario gets an extra 5-10 review points just for being mario, and it's clear that GTA got an extra few points for being a GTA game. I'm sure had Saints Row 2 somehow eeked out the GTA IV experience, it would have gotten good reviews but I doubt it would have gotten many 10/10s.

So that leaves me in a weird spot. I don't really think GTA IV should be called a 10/10, but I disagree with the rating system as much as the score. I'm thinking GTA IV should be a five star game, and it should have some fellow games in that exalted list, just like films.

Tooling Around the Wine Country

For our fifth year wedding anniversary, the wife and I headed up to Solvang, Ca. in order to go to a vineyard where one of our favorite wines is produced, Talley. We ended up having a great time and picked up a ton of wine, Solvang is a nice little town, even though everything but the restaurants and tasting rooms close at 5 pm. We went up to Arroyo Grande Valley where Talley was located and, also having found another wine we really enjoyed in Solvang at a wine bar, tried to visit Toucan Vineyards, only to find out that it's a 3 acre plot done by a wine lover and his wife. We were fortunate enough to discover that he was having a tasting right near where we were driving around in Arroyo Grande, Ca. We stopped in and ended up talking to the guy for quite a while, It's really amazing how much there is to know about wine, this guy knew quite a bit and I HIGHLY reccommend his wine (not that I'm any kind of expert). Particularly the 2005 Zinfandel and the 2006 Toucan Couvee. Really good stuff. Talley was good fun also, we picked up a couple bottles of the Pinot we love so much and ended up having a great time just tasting a bunch of wines there. The people in Central CA are very friendly and it was really nice just going around tasting some of the great wine they make up there. Highly recommended for even casual wine fans, no one is overly pretentious and everyone is really eager to help show you the ropes.

What's a Designer?

I've been following the recent drama with an old coworker of mine, Adam Maxwell, and the games industry at large. It's regarding the value of writers in the industry versus designers, and whether designers should be encouraged to write, or whether writers should be encouraged to work on games and elevate game stories.

I sort of think the whole conversation is somewhat pointless, but some of Adam's comments got me thinking about design a bit, and I figured I'd make a post about it so I don't forget. I really tend to assume no one reads this so I sometimes go off on little rants (guess I'm never working at Neversoft), but I'm going to try to be somewhat diplomatic here, possibly more diplomatic than Mr. Maxwell.

My point then, finally, is that the role of "designer" on a game team is just fucking awfully horribly and terribly defined as far as roles go. Everyone knows what an animator should do, everyone knows what programmers do, everyone knows what environment and character artists do, but what does a designer do?

Well he or she designs the game of course. Whoa... back up a second. What does that mean, exactly? Iterate on mechanics? Implement game features? Create Missions? Map out levels? All of the above? Manage an overall game vision? Write the story? Write Dialogue?

At the end of the day, depending on where you work, or even what project you work on, all or some of the above roles could belong to a designer. I think that means the entire idea of a "designer" at a game studio is somewhat useless. It's too ill-defined a role. I like the idea of a level designer, I like the idea of a mission scripter. I like the idea of a vehicle tuner (maybe, more on this later). I like well-defined roles that define jobs for people that they can actually do. I like giving people tasks they have a snowball's chance in hell of accomplishing.

Generally, in companies where I've worked, the role of "designer" tends to be given to people who's job it is, at some point or another, to make levels or missions. This then gets extended to include "designing" game features, whether they're mechanics, or window dressing around the mechanics. This tends to be done in the form of documents, whether they're short abstracts, or long, detailed descriptions, the role of "designing" mechanics falls to people who tend to be hired for skills having little or nothing to do with designing mechanics. They are then dropped into a role where it's basically impossible for them to actually design a mechanic.

You see, mechanics are designed in code. For better or for worse, love it or hate it, in the forseeable future, mechanics WILL be designed in code, or at least they should be. The initial idea should be implemented, iterated, and polished. This doesn't mean other departments don't have input, but it does mean, that at the end of the day, programming has control over the feature, or to be more specific, the feature is good to the degree that the person working on it has control over it, and that person is inevitably a programmer. You can give a data driven system to a non-programmer to "tweak" or adjust, and you can even sit this person down with a programmer to iterate with them, but at the end of the day, you're asking for frustration because the programmer is going to be the one who adds the feature that just makes the mechanic feel right. The "designer" on the mechanic is either going to dictate to a programmer who slavishly implements everything the designer says, in which case, will allow the designer to dig him or herself into a deep hole of not really understanding the guts of what's going on, or the programmer will just ignore the designer and do what he likes, in which case the designer rightly feels useless and undermined.

So why isn't the programmer the designer? Why are people in this industry reluctant to acknowledge the fact that at the end of the day, the programmers are in charge of the game features because they have the most control of the features? Are they afraid programmers will get big heads? (Maybe my head is already too big, I mean, look at this post).

We need people to layout maps and script missions and design game encounters and situations. We need people to provide feedback, Write stories and dialog, and generate content, but the job of "designer" is usually going to be a content creation job, and programmers are going to be the ones who actually "design" the mechanics of a game, at least until such time as the art is advanced enough so a non-techincal person can start to take the reigns of a more advanced feature. This means lead designers and project directors should be interviewing gameplay programming candidates as if they actually were designers, and vetoing those they deem unfit, and lead programmers are going to have to go along with this to some degree.

The guts and mechanics of a game are among the most important attributes to a game. A game with weak mechanics is going to be a bad game, no matter how good the engine or how nice the writing is. I think it's important to acknowledge and understand who is ultimately in control of this.

Why PS3 Is Hard

I think there are a lot of misconceptions in the general gaming audience as to why it's so difficult to develop games on the playstation 3 versus the X Box 360 console. Generally, there is the concept that somehow the Cell architecture makes it very difficult to create PS3 games. This isn't really true. The Cell itself is a challenge to develop on, but it's not really much harder than creating a multithreaded engine that can fully utilize the 3 core X box 360 chip. The challenges are different, but not necessarily worse. The chip itself is insanely powerful and once you start to unlock the power, you can really do some cool stuff. However, the PS3 GPU, the RSX is actually not so good. It's slower at most things than the X box 360 GPU. That's probably the first thing that's tougher about the PS3. The GPU actually being slower than the X Box 360. A lot of the performance can be aided by clever use of the SPUs on the cell processor, but it's definitely something you do have to worry about on the PS3 that you don't have to worry about on the X Box 360. But even that's not so tough, developers have had situations like this before.

No, the real problem with the PS3 is the tools. And while it is Sony's fault, it's very difficult to blame them. Microsoft have given us an absolutely incredible, fantastic toolset for 2 console generations now. The fact that they make the development environment, debugger and compiler internally is a tremendous advantage. Not to mention their amazing APIs with fantastic documentation. Then you have other debugging tools like Pix and XBPerfView, and the lead becomes huge.

Sony, on the other hand doesn't have the tremendous software background that Microsoft has, so they don't control the development environment so perfectly, nor do they have a large team of engineers that they can just throw at any project. This leads to disjointed, poor tools. the compiler we use for PS3 development is GCC (the Gnu C++ Compiler), the debugger is SN Systems Pro DG debugger, the code editor we use is Visual studio. The compiler is incredibly slow, whereas on the X Box 360, a full compile of our game takes maybe 30 minutes, on PS3 it takes over an hour, and it completely pegs both of my cores at 100% utilization. Sony was kind enough to develop a network compilation solution similar to incredibuild, however (a definite lack from the Microsoft toolset). The fact that the debugger is disconnected from the game also leads to tons of minor frustration when I find a bug and want to edit code and can't type. The tools also frequently crash and are far more bug ridden than Microsoft's tools.

The debug hardware itself is actually better, 256 MB of debug RAM and Gigabit ethernet go a long way, but overall the software situation is just dire. And the hell of it is, it's gotten a LOT better from when the PS3 alpha and beta kits were being distributed.

This means that most cross-platform teams started working with X box 360, which is so much easier to start with. Most of us also assumed PS3 would be faster, so it'd be easier to port. Unfortunately, unlocking the power of the Cell is very difficult when starting from an X Box 360 codebase, whereas unlocking the multicore power of the X Box is relatively easy when starting from a cell-friendly architecture. So many teams basically did it backwards and then had to play catch-up on the PS3 with some truly miserable software tools. Now that the PS3's architecture is better understood and the tools are usable, if not fantastic, I think future games will start to have PS3 as the lead platform and then get ports to 360, and overall this will lead to higher quality PS3 games.

2007 In Review (Part 2)

Ratchet and Clank Future

This was a fantastic game, beautifully executed with a great sense of humor and fantastic mechanics. Wonderful level design, not to mention one of the best looking games of the year. If it weren't for uncharted, I'd probably have made this my PS3 game of the year. It was a bunch of mindless fun, with tons of weapons and a great upgrade system. I'd never played a Ratchet and Clank game before, so this was a particularly good experience for me.

The story seemed a little disjointed, but I figure it's because I'm coming in late. The plot is very simple and straightforward. The dialog is pretty funny, though. Definitely kid's style game, and I wouldn't say it quite hits the Pixar mark of appealing to adults, also. But it didn't detract at all.

Graphically, it had a wonderful art style that ended up looking really good. Almost like a realtime cartoon CG movie. It didn't have a ton of graphical bells and whistles, but it had a nice, solid look. Definitely overall one of the better looking games of the year.

Definitely a very high quality game.

Rock Band

To put it simply, this is the game of the year for me. The game itself is executed perfectly. The songs are sequenced amazingly well, the drums feel incredible, and the new guitar (once I got a fixed version), is just fantastic. The track list is the best ever in any rhythm game, and the downloadable content is incredibly impressive (still waiting on those albums though).

Graphically, I think it's about perfect. Character creation is simple, but effective, and the show itself has impressive animations to go along with the song. The environments are simple, but effective, and the crowd rendering gets the job done. No one is going to give it an award for best graphics, but considering the screen is mostly covered in UI, it does fine. And watching it while you're not playing is still a fun experience.

The guitar is the best of these games, in my opinion. It hits exactly the right difficulty. The drums take some getting used to, but once you start to get it, it feels amazing. If anything it feels even more like you're playing the real instrument than it does on guitar. Singing is fine, I was hoping they'd figure out something a little better than Karaoke Revolution, and the star power section is just that, but it doesn't blow me away.

This game is great if you're alone, but if you don't play it with friends, you haven't really played it at all. Playing with a group of friends trading off instruments is one of the definitive gaming experiences of my lifetime, and the best part is, you don't even have to be a gamer to get into it. Everyone I know can enjoy something in rock band. Truly a remarkable experience.

The game isn't flawless, however, the online multiplayer feels something like an afterthought, which is somewhat understandable because the game shines much more with 4 players in one room than online. The menus in general are just terrible, however. Very very strange menu flow when changing instruments and if you want to reconfigure your band it's very very confusing. The largest flaw, and perhaps most unforgivable is the complete lack of an in-game store with which to purchase new downloadable content. This egregious flaw is probably keeping many more casual players from exploring the downloadable options, which at this point equal the number of songs in the game, or are damn near close.

Nitpicks and small flaws aside, this is truly one of the greatest games I've ever played.

2007 in Review (Part One)

2007 is probably the best year for video games I can remember. 1998 was good, to be sure, but 2007 was absolutely incredible. I'm going to make a few posts about the games I played with some of my thoughts on them.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

When I first downloaded the Uncharted demo, I was somewhat underwhelmed. I found a game, with a decent, if unspectacular, shooting mechanic; and a likewise just above average clamber puzzle mechanic. From this I wasn't sure if I wanted the game that much, so instead of buying it, I just put it on my Amazon wishlist.

I ended up getting a copy for Christmas, so when I'd absolutely finished every other game in my library (except one), I fired it up.

Holy crap. What seemed like sort of a mediocre shooting experience turns into one of the best cover/shootout systems I've encountered. The enemies seem incredibly threatening without being unfair, there is ample reason and motivation to move from cover to cover to avoid flanking enemies and grab more ammo, there is even reason to run up and occasionally melee fight an enemy. Turns out to be just a fantastic system and if the game leans heavily on this mechanic, it's the right call, because it's a lot of fun.

The clambering/ puzzle solving sections were fun as well, but I wouldn't say they were really spectacular in any way. I really liked the overall variety in the gameplay, however. One minute you're in a gunfight, then you're in a ridealong section, then you're piloting a Jet ski through hostile waters. All fun, all exciting, 100% pulp action.

The story and characters are really good as well. Nathan Drake is a likable hero, even if I don't quite buy him as an "everyman". I like how the characters and game in general have a sense of humor akin to pulp action movies, in the vein of Romancing the Stone and even Indiana Jones. The story is interesting and actually has a few twists I didn't see coming. The atmosphere in the game also works in it's favor, with lush jungles, absolutely incredible water, and creepy interiors to explore.

The graphics are overall great, maybe just shy of fantastic. The jungle environments are refreshingly colorful, and there are some really nice lighting effects that get really shown off in interiors. The water is, again, fantastic, with oceans that made me want to take a swim, to white water rivers that seemed ready for a raft. Just incredible water, I really liked it.

The game's not flawless however, I feel it tends a bit on the difficult side overall, and there was a puzzle where I just banged my head against the wall until I looked it up on gamefaqs. The final boss encounter breaks the rules established earlier in the game, which is something that I can't stand. For all the great graphics and wonderful technology, occasionally I feel like the art lets the game down. The animations in particular are occasionally bafflingly odd looking. Visually though, the nits are somewhat small. Balance wise, I feel like it's a bit more of an issue (I played the game on normal). I never got to the point of throwing my controller, but there were definitely some frustrating times.

Overall, top-notch game, too bad it wasn't the system seller it deserved to be.

Mass Effect

Ah yes, finally, the long-awaited follow up to Jade Empire. Mass Effect. Here's a game, that I feel has some huge, glaring flaws, things I could bitch about for hours with my friends. One of the most frustrating moments I've met in video games. And yet....

And yet it remains one of the best games of 2007, and probably one of the best games I've ever played. The graphics are absolutely incredible. The faces look amazing and the animation sets the bar. I loved the feel of the game, artistically, I constantly felt like I was in a golden age science fiction story.

The characters, story, conversations, and player character story arc, are all in some ways unprecedented in video games. The story isn't quite up there with Planescape:Torment, but I will say I think it tops KOTOR. I really enjoyed the way the conversation system worked, and how the character traits no longer really affect the combat mechanics. I really enjoyed the writing and dialog and found some funny moments in the game.

The shooting mechanics aren't so hot. Particularly at the beginning. I feel like the designers decided to have a sense of character progression by making the player better at shooting as the stats level, but this has the unfortunate side effect of making the shooting feel really lame and crappy until your levels are high enough. The balance is also occasionally just awful. I had several incredibly frustrating fights until I leveled up enough, whereupon the entire game is ridiculously easy. I don't mind an overly easy game, but I hate an insanely frustrating one. The complete lack of tutorials doesn't help either. Also... Offhand grenades on back? Really? The driving parts are sort of mediocre also.

Overall, the story pays for all, and towards the end, even the shooting gets fun. From what I've said it may sound like I didn't enjoy myself, but I actually had a hell of a time with this game. Easily one of my favorite games of all time.

That's it for now, I'll post more as the mood strikes.