runonsentence

I constantly come across great photos, links, videos etc.  I want to share them but I don’t want to spam Facebook, Twitter or my blog.  So I finally caved and started a Tumblr account.  It’s not a blog, I don’t write anything more than a mini-description of some of the links.  This is my blog, this is where I write and post things relating to my life.  My Tumblr account is for random crap I find.  So if you’re ever bored and want to see random cool photos, videos and links, head on over!  And if you have a Tumblr account too, follow me!

RUNONSENTENCE

Abstract Artform – I Am Canadian

Back in Winnipeg in my teen years I was good friends with a guy named Shea.  Very talented and ambitious.  He is now known for his work in Abstract Artform, his hiphop project which is getting noticed by the Canadian hip hop scene.  I’ve posted a video of his before, here’s another:

The lyrics make me nostalgic, very Winnipeg.

He also just launched his own record label, things are looking up for him!  Check out the label’s site here!

Labour Of Love

Let me preface this entry with a simple fact.  I love my job.  I love the industry I work in, and I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.

Often when I tell people I work in the video game industry I’m met with the same response.  They think it must be the easiest job on the planet and that it’s nothing but fun.  They imagine my life as one without the challenges that come with a “real” job.  The truth is, the video game industry is one of the biggest economical juggernauts out there.  It brings in more than Hollywood, or the music industry.  This year it was worth almost 75 BILLION dollars.  With those kind of numbers involved, you better believe it’s not just a bunch of kids dicking around on computers, this a high stakes industry, this is as real as it gets.

But it’s also a young industry.  As the cost to make a single game spirals deep into the millions and production times begin to exceed 5 years in some cases, the industry is consolidating and going through a phase of vertical integration.  At this point, almost all studios are under a handful of major publishers like EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc.  Independent mainstream developers are vanishing as they’re absorbed by the big players.  All this change as the industry matures with its audience means it’s still a very volatile industry.

Third-party studios pop-up every day, and just as easily they get shut down.  With the overhead for a single game digging deep into the coffers, even if it’s successful, one miscalculation on the projections for that game can lead to a studio closure, and 100s of people out of work, falling back into the job market, competing with each other, and new members to the workforce fresh out of university, for a new job.  Or if the publisher decides to cancel your game mid-project, this can lead to mass layoffs, not to mention a major drop in morale.  The video game industry is easily one of the most competitive fields out there, even more so now during the recession, which is another way of saying it offers some of the lowest job-security around.  And with the relatively small amount of studios (compared to to the amount of job applicants) being clustered across the globe, be prepared to relocate for work, and often.

The video game industry, unsurprisingly, attracts people who are passionate about making games.  And there’s no short supply.  As the industry consolidates under a handful of major publishers who invest millions in single SKUs, more and more is demanded of employees.  Overtime to meet a deadline is not unique to this industry, but stories of year long crunches with mandatory 80 hour work weeks (in some cases with no paid overtime or comp time) are becoming more and more common.  And individual employees can’t do much about it, because there’s a long line of people either out of work or just out of school dying to take their place.  As a young industry, and one that’s grown with immense speed, it’s largely unregulated.  You hear stories of shady practices all over.  Sham-contracts seemingly being the big one right now.

Sometimes you feel like you live at the office.

All of these factors take a toll on employees, and their families.  There have been a few high-profile instances of this coming to a head.  This industry, if you want to get in and stay in, has to come first.  It’s not for someone looking for a balanced life.  You will spend years trying to get in, you will never feel totally comfortable that your job is secure, you will have to go through periods of crunch where you only go home to sleep and if you have family you won’t see much of them during these periods; you will have to move often either due to studio closures or downsizing or to climb due to limitations at the current studio, and in some cases you may even need to deal with shady practices, etc.  It’s not the easy lifestyle many imagine when I tell them I make games for a living.

Many talented workers decide the big publisher model just doesn’t work for them.  They want to retain creative control, they don’t want to compromise quality for a release date, etc.  So they decide to start their own studio, and go at it independently.  And fortunately for them the blockbuster game trend has left the market wide open for indie games to make a large impact.  And while the indie game market is experiencing its golden days, it’s still the wild west.  With no publisher to back you with marketing, or give you what often ends up being valid criticism, combined with the inherent niche market these games tend to skew towards, for every successful indie game with a new vision, there’s hundreds of confused messes that flop miserably, if they ever even see the light of day…  And without publisher backing, the development costs are out of pocket.  If the game doesn’t turn a profit you default on your mortgage.  It’s hardly a high-security alternative to mainstream game development.

While going for a walk with the Design team at work the other day, we started talking about the phenomenon called “Smoke-Bombing”.  Due to all these trials and tribulations that come with working in this industry, every other day you hear about someone who decided they’d had enough and just vanish, poof, to a new career.  We shared a few stories.  I’d once heard of a guy who’d been in the industry for over a decade and one day just quit to give bike tours in Europe.

This past week Chad smoke-bombed.  After nearly 3 years fighting to get into the industry, and knowing full well he was in all likelihood less than a year away from a fulltime salary position at a studio, he took stock of his priorities, looked ahead at the kinds of sacrifices it would require, and said no.  He is now in the midst of completely re-planning his life, no easy task.  But I totally get it, and in his case, I believe it was the right decision.

Personally, I don’t see myself ever leaving.  Sure, this industry takes a lot from you.  Sometimes almost everything.  But having a job you’re passionate about is a hard thing to walk away from.  Even if that passion can be used against you.  And the money ain’t bad either.  It’s an extremely volatile industry, and it requires hard work.  That’s just what it is.  Whether or not it’s worth it is something each individual must ask themselves.

I spent years fighting for a fulltime salary position.  Now I fight for a designer position.  I’ve already moved to 2 cities in 3 years, leaving behind 2 great lives in the process to start over.  I’ve been laid off.  I’ve had a project I was passionate about get cancelled.  I’ve worked a few 80 hour weeks, and many more 60 hour weeks.  But I do it all willingly.  I love this industry; I love the work, I love the community, I love the product.  I can’t see myself doing anything else.  And Longtail has done nothing but right by me.  They’ve given me recognition, fair pay and steady opportunity.  All crunch has been voluntary, and making the transition into Design is not something I was expecting to be available to me so soon.  In a lot of ways this industry saved my life.  I was lost until I found it.  Despite its taxing requirements, it’s an exciting time for me in this industry and I can’t wait to see what my career has in store for me, and the places the industry is heading.

As Chad drifts away from the gaming industry into some new career, I will miss sharing this adventure with a friend who was with me before it all started.  I will miss hoping for the day we once again worked together at the same studio, living in the same city.  But this industry isn’t for everyone, and he needs to do what he needs to do to find a life that suits him.  And I wish him all the best in it.  We’ll always have the DA2 credits!

Indie Game: The Movie

Pre-ordered this a while ago, take a look and if you like it you should pre-order too.  You don’t actually pay until it comes out.  God bless Kick Starter.  Watching this trailer, I can tell I will connect with this movie deeply.  A proper documentary on game development has been a long time coming!

P.S. I just realized the startup making this movie, Blinkworks, is based in Winnipeg!

I want to see this movie!

Crunch!

It’s that time again.  Crunch has arrived.  Working 60 hours weeks for almost a month now.

Crunch is a bizarre time.  13 hour days mean tempers can run high, and diminishing returns are an industry fact.  But it’s also like being in the trenches.  It’s when a studio bonds, and you get to know the programmer to your left and the artist to your right.  It’s when bright minds work together to creatively solve major problems.  Everyone pulls together to meet a sometimes seemingly impossible goal.  The studio buys dinner for you every night, and everyone laughs and jokes around for a bit.  You get home, pass out in your clothes, wake up and do it all again.  And eventually that title ships, and you have tangible proof it was all for something.

I’m finding crunch a lot easier to handle now that I’m in a junior design position.  Designing levels until 11:00 PM is a much more rewarding task than staying until 11:00 PM waiting to test the latest changes.  For me at least, no offense to my QA brethren.

Things seem to be going well though, so fingers crossed and knock on wood, crunch SHOULD end soon and I can have a life again!

Rome: 3 Dreams Of Black

A few years ago I had just moved in with my cousin Bill in Edmonton and started my job at BioWare as a QA Term Tester.  I was realizing this was the industry I was meant for, and was really excited about it.  Many nights when I’d get home I’d talk Bill’s ear off about how exciting it all was for me.  He gave me great career advice and of course shared my passion and we often talked about random ideas or directions we’d like to see the medium of gaming take.

One idea I’d had for a while was for a band to release a “game” as a music video.  A heavily scripted, interactive scene set to the band’s new song.  It had a lot of artistic potential.  Well a band finally did it, and they did it well.  They took it one step further with adding user generated content to it, so it’s not just interactive but networked.  I love seeing gaming as a medium branch in new directions and try new things. 

Please check out the “video”!  All you do is move around the mouse when the icon changes to look around and effect your environment.  It is meant to be run in Google Chrome.

P.S.
A video of the making of:

Making the interactive video.

Wedding Photos

As you can imagine, many photos were taken at my Dad’s wedding.  My brother recently bought a nice digital SLR camera, but given my history with photography I was given that camera for a lot of the night.  I’m no wedding photographer, and it’s been almost 3 years since I really did anything with a camera, but none the less, some of them turned out pretty nice! 

Once I’d collected photos from as many cameras as I could, I adjusted the levels, cropped, bordered, etc, the good ones and made an album online for them.  Anyone interested in seeing wedding photos from my Dad’s wedding in Winnipeg can find 284 of them here!

To view them, click HERE and then just keep tapping the right arrow to scroll through the photos.  It starts with the good photos from the nice camera, and by the end it’s cellphone pics.  Enjoy!

I Get Around

My friend Ashley posted a pic on her blog of all the places she’d taken pictures on her iPhone.  It made me curious so I checked mine.  I get around!

Dance On Broadway PS3 Release Party

Friday was the release party for Dance On Broadway PS3.  Ended up having a fantastic night.  After work we all went for drinks at a bar before making our way to a place called Hamachi House.  It’s one of those Japanese restaurants where they cook the food right at the table in really entertaining ways!  Had a total blast.  Got pretty drunk on sake and rye & cokes!

After the dinner John (the producer) gave a speech commending everyone for their hard work on the project, saying goodbye to a few friends moving on to other endeavors and welcoming some new friends.  One of the designers, Kim, made everyone some awesome plaques to commemorate their work on the project.  Really appreciated it, and love having it on my desk next to my PC.  It’s especially cool that it says Quality Assurance Lead, and not Term Tester!

After that everyone proceeded to get very drunk and have a great time.  I’ve been at Longtail for 7 months, and it admittedly took me a while to feel at home, but the release party was a great time with some great people, I’m lucky to be a part of it!

At one point we realized we recognized the guy at the next table.  It was Victor Garber from Titanic!  He was also the Dad in Alias.  We bought his table a bottle of wine, trying to be all cool, but he ended up leaving before the table got the bottle.  Smooth.  I’m sure the rest of the table appreciated it though!

Afterwards a group of them headed to club, but I’ve never been much of a clubber, and was feeling pretty beat by then anyway, so I caught a cab home.  I was pretty drunk when I got home and Ryan thought it was riot.  A great night!  I got a video of a few parts, check it out!

Dragon Age 2 Demo

The Dragon Age 2 demo is now available for Xbox, PS3 and PC!  Go download it and see the last game I worked on at BioWare, the follow up to Dragon Age Origins, the first game I ever worked on!

Click here to download the PC version.

I’m in the process of downloading it on Xbox.  It’s gunna be surreal to play it.  Last time I saw the game it was still a major work in progress, in something known as whitebox.  Lots of place holder assets and very barebones.  To see the game completely fleshed out will be awesome.  I’ll get to enjoy the game from both sides.  I worked on it enough to feel a sense of pride, and know the “behind the scenes” that went into it, but it will still be new enough that I can enjoy it with the excitement and curiosity of a consumer.  Cannot wait for the full game to come out!

Making Of Dragon Age II Part 1

The first part of Dragon Age 2’s Making Of video.  As much as I love where I am now, I miss this team and franchise.  Good times!

Dragon Age 2: Making Of

The video is a little cut off on my blog, but is totally watchable.  If you can see it in all it’s glory, in HD at Gamespot.

A Bug’s Life

An interesting article that gives some insight into what it is I do!

A Bug’s Life - GamePro

Famous!

I’m on the Longtail website!  Check it out!

On the main page it shows one of 7 people that work at the studio, so mine shows up sometimes.

From there if you click the Mission link at the top it takes you to this page, where I’m on the first row of people, including a testimonial I wrote!

I just thought that was kind of cool!  Fun fact: I took the pictures of everyone!  Dale Furutani: Longtail’s resident photographer!

Progress

I’ve been seeing some pretty motivating results lately at the gym.  I’ve foregone weight training for cardio.  Hour and a half, 7 days a week, with a good diet all week.  40 minutes of interval, then the rest is a sustained pace, and the odd high-intensity sprint.  I burn AT LEAST 600 calories of cardio a day.  Usually 700.  I’m currently losing about half a pound a day!  I can see a visible difference now.  My face is thinner and I have less of a gut!

I started at 176 about 2-3 weeks ago.

Goal Setting Recommendation: To move to the next weight range you need to weigh 159 pounds to be in the NORMAL weight range.

I’ve lost 8 pounds since I started, and need to lose 9 more to get into the healthy range.  So 2-3 more weeks.  My current goal is 155.  Once I reach it though, I’ll probably just set a new goal like 145.

Pretty soon I should be able to fit into all the clothes I have from Winnipeg.  And my goal is to be in even better shape than I was then.  Once I have lost my gut and at a body-fat percentage I’m happy with I will start re-introducing weight training and bring my caloric intake up a bit to get a bit more muscle and definition.  By next summer, I’m hoping to look the best I’ve ever looked!

It’s so awesome to finally be seeing results and have a clear plan on how to proceed.  I’ve been trying to lose weight for about a year now, and it used to be so shrouded in mystery, and felt out of my grasp.  But it’s a simple math equation.  End the day at a calorie deficit and you lose weight.  Simple as that.  Plus a bunch of handy tricks for keeping your metabolism up, like taking the stairs at work, drinking ice-water, tea, spices, etc.

I have before pictures from 3 weeks ago.  When I reach my goal of 155 I will take new pictures.  And if I’m feeling confident enough, maybe I’ll post them on here to show the difference!

Vindication!

Even though I’ve been a console gamer for a few years now, I’ve always held that the PC had higher potential.  And to this day, I can’t really enjoy competitive FPS games on console due to the fact that controllers just can’t compare to a keyboard and mouse.  I’ve argued this position for years to console gamers and finally the console makers themselves admit it!

I have yet to figure out why they chose that picture for the article…