Flying Around Google Earth

It is so deeply moving for me to just fly around google earth and explore random places. Get perspectives. I imagine myself there and it shakes me to the core.

Today I found myself flying around Dallas for hours. Getting some cool and moving perspectives, but not much to say. Not much to see in street view. Then I randomly decided to drop a pin in England, street view, and BAM! Instant beauty. (Map Location). It's like that every time - I could drop a pin anywhere in the world outside the US and I have a 95% chance of seeing something wonderful. Beautiful or interesting. Humble, but glorious. Profound and withstanding. Look at this picture I wish such love was etched into our walls. I wish I knew what it was like to truly have a heritage; to really deeply love my country. In a way that I could not describe. To feel the same love you have for your country coming through the ancient chisel strokes of a man you've never met. I have no idea what that feels like. But I feel it in every brick of even the lowest slums in the farthest places on earth.

I feel like we just keep saying "America is great", "freedom!", just because we think we're supposed to, but nobody really feels it. Nobody really believes it. Is it just me? Am I just negative? Am I suffering from "the grass is always greener"? Am I "only happy when it rains"? When I have something to complain about? Or am I sincerely concerned about a very real cultural vacuum? Vanilla. I feel like our flag should just be a decaying white canvas. Like everyone who has come here has left behind their culture, and replaced it with nothing. Every other country has piles and piles of paint upon paint, and they continue to tend to it, but no one has touched ours. No one wants to say something, put something on that canvas, that then they'd have to tend to. But the canvas needs tending itself. And it will disintegrate without paint. But I have no answers, solutions, or solid ideas. How would I have started this experiment differently? I don't know. Maybe I'm just wrong and I can't see what's right in front of me. I mean if I'm right about us having some sort of culture-lacking culture, then how do we produce so much worldwide entertainment? Are we just experts at exploitation, manipulation, and spectacle, unafraid to use shock value and break laws like a cheap hooker because we have nothing else to offer? Are we just turning the world vanilla? Or is there something we really contribute that I just don't see? Is there some deep unspoken unique cultural value in the US that I live and breathe so much I simply don't notice?

I struggle with this every day. I didn't have a tough childhood compared to many, but I have never felt like I was truly a citizen of this country. Accepted. Treated equally, given freedom. A citizen of the world, maybe--at least that made logical sense. In the middle of shithole, TX, I was not given the opportunity in public school to specialize in things that kids in bigger city public schools could--the options were Ag (agriculture) or the horse-shit vanilla version of every subject. I felt neglected and discriminated; forced to participate in a system that hated thinking and learning but required my childhood as payment; surrounded by collections of people that do not care, consisting of individuals that really wanted to, but were okay without, afraid to challenge an imaginary norm, living vicariously through characters in movies who escape it. I just constantly find myself saying, "What the fuck?" I can only imagine what black kids have gone through in poorer communities. What has happened, and what do we do to change it in a real way? How was England able to get over slavery before us and fully integrate black people into their society while the land of the free is still sitting over here with it's thumb up it's ass? 240 years. 240 years of freedom and we just keep inventing new forms of slavery.

Am I just a jerk or what? Let me know. I just want to have real love and pride for where I am and where I came from, and right now it seems like the only way to do that is to be an island unto myself. I want my children someday to have that feeling I've never known.

(Map Location)

Protest Against "Pixels" DMCA Action

According to this article, Columbia Pictures has hired and anti-piracy firm to go around demanding takedowns of every video on the internet that includes the word "pixels" (thanks to reddit for bringing this to my attention). They're even taking down videos that students made for no profit for an assignment.

This is out of fucking control. What level of stupidity are we willing to tolerate? Our culture is our responsibility, and we need to stop letting these assholes destroy it. They are not allowed to stifle speech and creativity. Not because our government says so or not; because we say so. Because if we say so, our government will eventually reflect and protect that. This is OUR society. OUR culture. You can't just hijack a word out of our language. We need to seriously re-think our IP laws, but first we need those with power to know that we are not okay with this.

We need to send the IP owners of Pixels a big "fuck you".

So I say we protest by putting the word "pixels" in every sentence, picture, or context we can, while also not spending a single cent on the movie Pixels, or anything else associated with Columbia Pictures.

Here are some pixels images you can download and use for a profile picture (or whatever you want--I won't go after you).

I included the DMCA note in my images because according to the Library of Congress, false DMCA complaints are punishable under penalty of perjury, and I am sick of seeing the rich and powerful walk free when they break the law. If I put up a video on Youtube titled "pixels", then put in a DMCA complaint for the trailer for the movie "Pixels", and it got taken down, I could get put in jail. But it would never happen to someone in power at Columbia Pictures. It takes an act of congress to make someone with money or political power face criminal charges. Why is that okay? Their action against the word "pixels" should be considered unlawful, so I think they should be charged criminally for every single "pixels" takedown request submitted on their behalf. (Of course it would have to be led by an agency with the money to do it--yay freedom pixels)

Let me make this very clear: I believe Columbia's activity against the word "pixels" should be considered illegal activity punishable by perjury under the DMCA because their claim to ownership of the word "pixels" is false. No one person or entity has a right to claim IP ownership of a word that our culture came up with. Nobody has the right to claim sole ownership of any previously existing word or creation from any language or any culture that has ever existed. You do have the right to create new words and help us create new culture. You do not have the right to conquer existing culture unto yourself, thereby removing it from society and contributing to social degradation. I believe these rights are evidenced not by written law but by common sense, cultural sense, and the inherent responsibility to preserve culture, language, and freedom of speech. It's a basic human right. Pixels.

Make your own pixel images! Share them pixels! Don't forget to use the word "pixels" every chance you get. Just tack it on to the end of your sentences, like this pixels. "Pixels" can be the new period. A period is a pixel, anyways. How poetic.

We do this stuff for gay rights and other important issues in our culture. We should continue taking responsibility for our culture by protecting our language and artistic expression. I want to see what you guys create, and I don't want you to be afraid of any kind of stupid shit like this.

Some interesting ideas and thoughts in this reddit thread. If you have any other ideas on how to protest this or any useful links, please share in the comments pixels.

Game Review: Rise of the Triad (PC, 2013)

I'm not feeling it. Confused design goals. Identity crisis. Here are my thoughts and what I might have done differently if I could have been involved as a designer.

I get that Rise of the Triad is a game that doesn't want to take itself too seriously, but it really just seems like serious stuff undermined by gimmicky, way too non-serious elements. Giant floating coins and weird little alien platforms in the middle of a blood-splattered rocket scorched WW2-ish dungeon. The logo looks really serious, like this is going to be a gritty action experience, and so does the UI of the first menu--I'm really getting into a dark mood. But as soon as I click on a menu item, the sound of the click is a very cartoony "pop". The mood was just ruined, and now I'm not really sure what to feel. In that context it's not funny or non-serious--it's just out of place.

I also understand that it's trying to carry that philosophy from the wolfenstein age of video games into today. But instead of using the same philosophy that conceived the first ROTT (or at least made it great) to conceive a NEW ROTT, it seems like they just made the old ROTT prettier. I don't think they understood that since the medium has changed and the cultural context is different, it will have to be different from the original to provide the same experience and be appreciated by this generation.

Ex: Old ROTT, you collect pixellated cartoony coins floating in midair in an pixellated cartoony world of guns, henchmen, and crazy enviros. New ROTT, you collect perfectly rendered coins floating in midair in a perfectly rendered world of guns, henchmen, and crazy enviros. It's like, are we still playing Mario? Before, with the old graphics, the floating coins and coin-collecting didn't seriously conflict with anything. But now it does. Now it looks weird against a backdrop of realistic gore and henchmen. Ideas about what should have been done to carry this theme through: Just put the coins in nazi war chests on the sides of your paths, or scatter realistically-sized coins around the ground. Now you have your coin element, but it doesn't interfere with the tone and experience of the rest of the gameplay.

Now that's just a band-aid fix to use as an example. The real design problem is more over-arching. Because I don't think that band-aid fix I just suggested would necessarily serve this game if it's high concept were more fleshed out and went in a more contextually conscious direction. The game doesn't have a unified identity or gameplay experience. So let's make one as an example. I'm literally thinking of this as I write it.

What drove our decision to make the old ROTT the way it was? It was intended to be a Wolfenstein sequel, but was cancelled in the middle of development. So we took the pieces we had and tried to just make a fun shooter that didn't take itself to seriously, had fun, and just explored the space of what 3d video games can be.

What did people love about the old ROTT? Didn't take itself too seriously. Just about the action and mayhem. Crazy FPS obstacle course.

Since we didn't really design the original game from scratch to be the game it became, let's go with what the people like and make a game for the modern era that doesn't take itself too seriously, lets you have fun with the mayhem with gratuitous violence and action, and some crazy fps obstacles.

The problem is, that game I described has been created a million times since the first ROTT, and many probably got some inspiration from it. So the landscape is different. You can't just make another one. Serious Sam is the first game that comes to mind. Goofy, gratuitous action that's not trying to be any more than a video game. Duke Nukem, same thing. But what happened when they released the new Duke Nukem for the modern age, in the same style? It bombed. They didn't adjust for context. So the question is, what are we going to do differently to establish ROTT again as an inspiration for further video games of this style in this era? What are video games NOT doing? What are they afraid to do? What's really popular and why?

Here's what I would have gone with and built off of: over-the-top violence and action. GTA mayhem is so much of a thing, youtube is littered with "let's play" videos of it daily. Get some really good physics, particle physics, explosions, bullet and gun effects, etc, and record replays of every match so people can edit and post up videos. Make it so you can throw your tons of guns AT enemies when you're out of bullets, and use everything in the environment as a weapon, even punching through or taking chunks out of walls if you get enough power-ups or hit bonuses. Or, if you're going the infinite ammo route, make the player invincible, and make it all about creating as much destruction, death and chaos to the enemies and critical components within a certain time frame, like Crash Mode in the earlier Burnout racing games. Maybe if you shoot rockets in certan places, it can undermine a building's foundation, collapse the building, and kill everyone inside. Like Battlefield Bad Company. Take the best of all these games, and take it all to a new level. Beseige has also recently taken the world by storm for it's entertaining violence and ease of sharing replays. (I think it came out after the new ROTT, but it's an example about the success available to those kinds of games). Maybe if you use one of your sniper rifles, you can shoot a button on a panel or an explosive barrel from across the map that creates an awesome chain reaction. Just build your levels and environments in a way that caters to this gametype. Have some Agent Smith style situations where there are tons of guys in one place and a few grenades send them flying all over the place. Make heads explode like watermelons and arms fly off and impale other NPC's. Get nuts with it. I wanna fly through a replay of a level I cleared and find eyeballs splattered on the walls and badges stuck in the sides of crates like throwing stars. You could even do this with the player model, showing the aftermath of the fight on his body--a piece of shrapnel shoved in his eye, hair missing, his hand in a container on ice, brain or skull matter clinging to the barrel of his gun.

The best thing about it: NOBODY IS DOING THIS. It could've been all yours.

And debug the game. It doesn't matter how great the design is if the game doesn't function. I can't help you with that. All I can say is, the bar has been set, and you absolutely have to clear it if you want to make a great game. The screen flickers in the menu, it won't save any of my video or controller settings, and it's easy to get physically stuck in nooks of the environments.

But the most important thing was the high concept design. There's little to no tension in this game, and where it does exist, it seems out of place. I have infinite ammo, I run super fast, and there's all this wacky stuff, but I still have a pretty standard health situation to mind, but I'm not supposed to take cover? It just seems confused. It's not giving me a clear reason to continue playing.

The community involved in this game is great, but I think they could've done a lot better.

I hope this review was enlightening and inspiring to you. I am available for design consulting.