Hashtag In Memoriam

Doesn't matter where I go on the internet tonight--everything is a reminder that we very recently lost one of my favorite actors of all time. It still hasn't really sunken in, to be honest. Chalk that up to denial being the first stage of grief. I just want to say a few words in his honor.

My first memory of Robin Williams is probably his role in the movie Flubber. I don't really remember the movie that well, just that it made me laugh like a lunatic back when I was only three years old. Granted, a lot of things make you laugh when you're that young, but maybe not quite so hard. I remember being obsessed with that movie for what seems like years looking back. Even got my mother to make "Flubber sherbert" on multiple occasions--her own recipe, I think.

Robin Williams has had so many roles since then that I've loved. So many times in those seventeen years that followed I laughed uncontrollably at something he said or did. I think we all feel a similar way. Laughter, to me, is very important, and Robin Williams was just one of those people who was outstanding at spreading it. And when I say "outstanding" I mean it. Not just good. Not just great. Outstanding. Sure, there were other comedians I'd seen or heard when I was younger, but his natural talent to produce comedy gold out of thin air was, in my mind, unparalleled.

"Comedy gold." I use the phrase because comedy, in my opinion, is a very valuable thing. I love to joke around, and I love to laugh. Without my sense of humor, I'd be an entirely different person--and a much more boring one, at that. It may be cliche, but it's true--I need comedy to live. I need it to de-stress. I need it to break the ice. I need it to handle awkward situations and sadness and frustration. If I couldn't let it all just slide off and make a joke about my situation, I honestly don't know what I would do.

This past year, I feel like I've lost a lot of the people in my life who helped to sculpt my sense of humor and attitude on life. Robin Williams is just the most recent comedian I've lost; before him, my grandfather and great uncle passed away, and I still miss them greatly. The two were brothers, and always made jokes. I admired my Great Uncle Theodore for his ability to crack jokes even when he himself was not happy, and I always wanted to be able to make an entire room roar with laughter the way my grandfather had. And while I may not have known Robin Williams personally, his demeanor affected me as well. I try to emulate his ability to be quick and witty--though I may not always succeed.

I'd like to thank all three of you for showing me that laughter is indeed the best medicine. I hope that wherever you are now, you're all still laughing and cracking jokes and just generally being wise guys. I promise you that I will continue to exercise my sense of humor every day, and use it to bring joy to myself and others, the same way you all did. I'll miss you.

--J

Hashtag This Is My Jam

I've been thinking a lot lately about what your taste in music says about you as a person. There must be some correlation between the two, even if it isn't concrete. Every song in your favorite playlist has a reason to be there, as well as a story about when you heard it for the first time. Perhaps an old friend introduced the band to you, or maybe you used to hear the song on the radio all the time during your commute. Whatever it is, every song you like has a backstory.

Now, when it comes to my taste in music, it's pretty hard to pin down, because I generally tend to like all sorts of stuff. I'd like to think this speaks to my attitude about life, as I consider myself a generally laid-back person without many preferences. I've collected a wide variety of songs in much the same manner that I've slowly garnered a wide variety of friends and acquaintances, as well as a stockpile of information and ideas.

A good amount of the music that I have on my computer is from games that I've played and enjoyed. Some of my songs are from artists like Sting or Seal or Dave Matthews--artists that my mother would listen to all the time when I was little, and I like Billy Joel and Elvis Costello because of my father. My taste for jazz is all thanks to my father, as well, and my uncle who would make him "Steve's Bright Jazz Jumble" CDs. All of my friends from college have introduced me to some musician or another, though my room mates have probably expanded my library the most. And, of course, if it weren't for a certain person, I wouldn't enjoy country or show tunes--and I wouldn't know about "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy", which is quite possibly the best country song ever.

Lately I've been really into remixes and mash-ups, though I'm not sure how that trend started. I've recently discovered Pogo, an artist who samples from movies and makes remixes out of those samples. Majestic Casual is also on my radar now, thanks to one of my fellow camp counselors who told me about their YouTube channel. I'm still collecting songs, and probably will be for the rest of my life.

The coolest part about all of this, however, might be that now--at this very moment--someone is reading my words and adding music to their playlist because of me. Not all of you will, obviously. But now, hopefully, I can become a part of someone else's musical history in the same way that a lot of people in my life have become a part of mine. Spread the music, guys!

--J

Hashtag Why Not Change The World?

People often ask me what I go to school for, and when I tell them "game design" I get a lot of mixed reactions. Now, I get it. Video games rot kids' minds, and all that. I can vent about all the ways that I disagree with that opinion some other time. Right now, I just want to talk about why I do what I do.

It all seems pretty simple--games are fun. I've been playing games since my parents showed me the old Intellivision machine they had down in the basement. We played Frog Bog and Burger Time, and it was a lot of fun. Then they brought out the Sega Genesis, and I learned about Sonic the Hedgehog. I played the god-awful multiplayer mode of Sonic 2 with my dad. And then I got my first Nintendo console from my cousin Rick. The N64. A hand-me-down, yes, but a glorious machine all the same. I learned about Zelda and Mario, and I was hooked.

So, naturally, when my mom told me that they offered game design classes at Hofstra on Saturdays (I'd actually already been going there for cartooning classes), I jumped right on the opportunity. Me? Making games? Sounded like a life-changing experience, and a hell of a good time. I was a natural at it, blowing through the tutorial packets and adding my own mechanics to the games. I took game design at Hofstra for a few years, and I eventually got too advanced for even the most advanced class. The teacher offered for me to be his TA at one point, even though I was probably too young to actually get paid for it. And then, just like that, they stopped offering it.

Well, I was heartbroken, but I had to continue on at home. For most of middle school, my nights consisted of what I now consider to be some pretty basic programming. They say your first dozen games are terrible. Lucky for me, I got them out of the way back then. Now I can focus on the real stuff.

I wish that I had designed more games in high school, now that I look back on it. After middle school, my game design kind of petered out, and I thought I wanted to become an engineer. Then I realized that was dumb and that I should stick to my passions. I forcibly worked my way into the GSAS (Games, Simulation Arts and Sciences) major at RPI, and now I make and play games for class. What a life.

But that's just my backstory. Those are the facts of how I got to this point. When people ask me "Why did you choose game design?" though, I have more to say. Yes, I've been doing it for a while, and yes, I think I'm pretty good at it--I'd say I have to be if my portfolio was enough to get me into the major at a prestigious school like RPI. But what's the underlying reason? Why do I love to make games--sometimes even more than I like to play them? Why did I put so much effort into working my way into the GSAS major?

It's honestly a pretty simple answer: I just like to make people happy. Through all of middle school, even when my games were terrible, my friends still had fun playing them (and breaking them). Once I got to college, I was good enough to get a decent percentage of my floor playing my game all at once--everyone trying to beat each others' high scores. It was a lot of fun, and bringing that much joy and competitive spirit to my friends felt good. So why stop there? If I got into the major, and eventually the work force, I could create fun experiences for even more people.

That's what I thought for most of my college career so far, and it still applies today; however, there's even more to my ambitions nowadays. I started watching Extra Credits on YouTube last year--maybe you've heard of them, maybe you haven't. Basically, they talk about what games are, what they were, and what they could be--definitely an interesting show for someone like me. They got me thinking that I could do more than just letting people have fun with my games, and working as a camp counselor has made me realize it even further--games are capable of teaching skills that are applicable in the real world, if used correctly.

When I play Magic with my campers, I watch their skills grow. The decisions they make change the more they learn the game, and I find that to be an amazing phenomenon. I've resolved to try and help each one of my campers better themselves in some way, and gaming seems to be a good method to do so--they don't even realize they're learning because they're having fun, which makes it ideal for the ones who are harder to motivate. I've already seen improvements in regards to strategy and critical thinking with the campers I play with--and more of them get interested in the game every day.

Unfortunately, though, the camp has a policy about playing card games during the day--a policy I was aware of before; but I thought it would be okay to play on the playground, seeing as we had no other structured activities during that period. Turns out, it isn't. That won't stop me from teaching my campers, though. I've got so many other games in my arsenal--ones that don't require any peripheral equipment. I plan to teach my campers how to do freeze improv, as well as several word games that I play occasionally at school in the dining hall.

It would obviously be ideal to use Magic: the Gathering as a tool to teach my campers strategy, but I'm still deciding whether or not I want to fight that battle, seeing as we only have two weeks left, anyway. I might get a starter deck for one of my campers who's really into the game, but I'll likely have to ask permission from his mother first. If he has cards of his own, he'll find others who play, or introduce them to the game so he has people to play against and hone his skills. He says he's considering becoming a game designer as well. Who would I be if I didn't try to nurture that dream?

Hashtag Intelligence Quotient

It's interesting how I always seem to have a few coinciding events from different pieces of my life meshing together in a way that lends itself to writing blog posts. I'm not sure if this is strictly serendipitous, or if this is my own mind subconsciously piecing it all together for me. Either way, it makes my job as a blogger so much easier.

Today, one of the campers from another group noticed that I often use more sophisticated words when talking to him in particular. I told him it was because I know that he's smart, and he asked me to guess his IQ. It was at that point when I realized that I don't actually understand the IQ scale at all. I'd never bothered to look it up. And now, lucky readers, you won't have to, either! I mean, unless you want to partake in some tangential learning. I'm always all for that.

So, before I get into the explanation of the scale, I'm going to go back to that "serendipity" thing I was talking about before (and no, I don't mean the movie with John Cusack in it). It just so happens that as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed today, someone had taken a "quick IQ test" and shared the results. "Alright, I'll bite," I thought to myself. I clicked the link and took the test for myself, netting a tidy sum of 130 points. An "exceptional" score, apparently. My, don't I feel special!

That was rhetorical. I do feel special. I uh... if you answered that out loud, I have bad news for you--you talk to computer screens. Sorry you had to find out this way.

Anyway, I looked up the IQ scale after I got my score. Apparently, this is the gist of how it works:
100 points is the median score--which means that, on a bell curve, a score of 100 is right smack in the middle, at the 50th percentile mark. Every fifteen points above or below this is another standard deviation from the center. So, by way of fancy statistical calculations, we can determine that 95% of people have a score between 70 and 130. This means I'm in the top 3% of humans, intelligence-wise. That's pretty damn nifty.

Of course, IQ tests could be total bollocks. If they are, I might be no smarter than a chimpanzee. Or a kumquat. Or even a piece of driftwood. But I'll give them at least a little bit of credibility.

To be honest, I'm a little skeptical about things like IQ. They just seem so immeasurable and/or subjective. But, I guess, if we can have a strictly mathematical grading system in our schools that directly correlates to how many questions we answered correctly, we do have some way to measure--at the very least--knowledge of a certain subject. Does this relate directly to what we've coined as "IQ"? I have no idea. There are some things about humans, however, that I doubt we will ever fully understand. In the meantime, I'm totally okay with people thinking I'm smarter than approximately 97.8% of people in the world.

EDIT: Turns out, memorizing the answers to an IQ test makes you measurably smarter--at least by the standards of said IQ test. So yeah, maybe the tests aren't perfect.

As with all scientific tests, you really need a large sample size--which, in terms of an IQ test, means a lot of questions. Unfortunately, with the nature of IQ tests being that they're timed, and with how goddamn dry and repetitive they can be (find the pattern in these shapes. Now find the pattern in these numbers. Now find the pattern... etc.), I just can't give them my full concentration. I've always been a good test-taker, but if my score depended on how quickly I finished, I'd be doomed. I bank on the fact that I have much longer than I need to finish the test.

However, with this new technology that can pause videos when you look away from the screen, and with a little bit of psychology and clever design, we might be able to make an IQ test that knows when you're paying attention to it and when you aren't. Because I don't think that ADD and a low IQ coincide. You can be brilliant and not pay full attention all the time--perhaps because your mind is a more interesting place to be than a stupid test filled with weird symbols.

It's really a double-edged sword. The longer you make the test, the more accurate it is, but the more boring it becomes. Unless you're in the mood to take an IQ test, or you really love taking them, you're not ever going to know just how smart you are. Chances are, though, if you love taking IQ tests, you're probably at least in that top 3%, and you're probably pretty good at them.

Hashtag Worldbuilding

As a designer, I appreciate the little things in games that most people don't notice. I've played an absurd amount of Wind Waker this week, and at one point I tried to decipher the Hylian characters in a few places on Dragon Roost Island. For example, on the letter that the Rito Cheiftan writes for his son, there are the Hylian characters for Komali's Japanese name, "Komori", as well as another kana, "ru", which is supposedly an out-dated term for "outcast". This gives Komali's reaction to the letter another layer of depth, and honestly makes him seem less like a brat.

At first, you think that Komali is just some stubborn kid who won't listen to his father, mostly because when the father speaks to Link, he does so in a manner that is calm and dignified--the way you'd expect a chieftain to be--while Komali acts like an immature child. But the relationship between Komali and his father is just that--a father-son relationship. As such, it's not hard to believe that they would speak less formally to one another, and that there would be more raw, personal things in the letter that Link, as an outsider, does not see directly. But by Komali's distressed reaction to the letter, we learn of the conflict from his more emotional take on the situation--whereas the chieftain's is more matter-of-fact.

Most players wouldn't pick up on such harshness from the chieftain, but it is quite possible that he, as an authority figure, is embarrassed by his (assumedly) only son's trepidation performing what is, to the Rito tribe, a rite of passage that signifies manhood. By not climbing Dragon Roost for Valoo's scale, Komali is essentially perpetuating his childhood--much to his father's chagrin. How must his people see him as a chieftain if his own flesh and feathers is too cowardly to be a man? For the chieftain, Komali's reaction is a disgrace to his entire way of life; Komali, however, is going through emotional turbulence and isn't thinking about his heritage. Granted, it's definitely a trope, but it's still an interesting minor conflict.

Something that a lot of people don't realize when they're playing adventure games like Zelda is that, in many cases (at least, in good games), the troubles of the people you assist have persisted since some time before your arrival. As such, the people in question should act in an appropriate manner. In the case of Valoo's rage, Komali is the most directly affected because he cannot climb Dragon Roost in the manner that he needs to to earn his wings. His father is deeply entrenched in the situation, as well, but in the manner that a chieftain/father would be. Everyone else is essentially a postal worker for the people of the Great Sea, and they still have jobs to do. They are no doubt troubled, as well, but they continue their work because they have to--which speaks to their tribe's mentality. The Rito are a proud race, and don't let their personal issues interfere with the duty they have to others. It is never expressly stated (as far as I know), but yet we can still make such statements about the Rito tribe. This, to me, signifies good world-building.

This kind of insight and thoroughness is what separates the great games from the not-so-great games. World-building is something that Zelda games do very well for the most part, aside from a few minor issues every now and again which I won't get into here. If you try to complete the Nintendo Gallery figurine collection in Wind Waker HD (which I actually did earlier today), you'll realize just how many characters there are that you don't even really think about.These characters help flesh out the world on the surface of the Great Sea, and while they may seem unimportant, with only a few lines of dialogue each (if any at all), without them the game would feel empty and incomplete. So for all you designers out there: spend some time making the world feel alive instead of just focusing on the protagonist and his story. I guarantee it'll make for a better finished product.

Hashtag Good Bad and Ugly

Working as a counselor is certainly an interesting experience. Every day brings some good moments, as well as some bad ones. Today was a bit of a roller coaster, so I figured I'd just write down the highlights here for you guys.

By second period at camp today, I had already lost myself to uncontrollable laughter twice. Now, as a little bit of background information, I have a camper who does not like to participate in anything. He's always whining, and I'm not entirely sure that he understands sarcasm--or humor in general, for that matter. Today, another camper of mine told him that he was going to be hung up like a pinata, and he believed it. Naturally, he started freaking out, and we had to calm him down and tell him it was a joke. This, of course, is a lot harder to do when your sides hurt from laughing hysterically. Which I was. He seriously thought we were all going to beat candy out of him. I couldn't look at him for a good five minutes and have any luck keeping a straight face.

After that, during second period, another camper of mine decided he was going to show us a "note from his mother", which, strangely, was written sloppily in orange magic marker. It read: "[Camper's name]* does it haft to go in the pool"--seems legit. We showed the note to some of the counselors from other groups, who found it incredibly amusing, as well as the director, who said it was the "best note of the summer so far." I'm inclined to agree.

*Note: If you've heard me talk about these stories in person, you may know my campers' names; however, I feel weird actually saying their names on the internet, so I'm keeping it anonymous, at least for now. I'm not sure if it matters, but better to be safe than sorry. Something something confidentiality something something.

Of course, the good times, they have to come to an end. The rest of the day consisted of the pinata-to-be whining about everything. Didn't want to participate, didn't want to listen. The soccer coach--bless him and his astounding patience--did everything he could just to get this kid to kick the ball a little. Guy seriously deserves a medal. I could never do that. Kid's impossible.

We were only able to get this camper to participate once more over the course of the entire day--he actually won a game of Nukem for his team by some miracle. But even after doing well at the game, he refused to play it any more than the once, and started to throw a tantrum. This was not his first, and certainly not his last, but the final straw today was a few periods later, when he decided to "accidentally" pour woodchips in my hair and down my shirt.

Now, I agree with my co-counselor that this isn't normally something you'd take a camper to the director's office for. But after five weeks of increasing disrespect towards camp staff, enough was enough. And here's why the "ugly" in the title of this post is warranted. It's me. I made it get ugly. Normally I'm calm, collected, and relatively jovial, but something about the proud little smirk on his face when he said "oops, it was an accident" just made something inside snap. He knew it wasn't an accident. He knew it was wrong. And he was proud of himself for doing it. That kind of attitude is not one I will ever accept from a camper, nor from my own kid should I have one some day.

I didn't yell, though. I didn't get angry in the traditional sense. I just got very stern and serious--as well as a lot less verbose than normal. I could tell it was unsettling to more than just the woodchip-bearer--the other campers who were playing Magic with me at the time of the incident instantly went silent. The kid almost threw another tantrum, but something about the sudden burst of un-moving authoritativeness in my voice kept him from being as disobedient as he had been for the rest of the day. He knew I wasn't having any more of his shit. I told my other campers that, unfortunately, due to their fellow camper, the game of Magic we were playing would have to be cut short, and promptly took him to the director's office to have a talking to.

For the rest of the day, the kid was silent. He didn't cause any more trouble, and didn't raise his voice to us again. Something about seeing the least serious counselor suddenly become the most stern person on the playground must've really struck a chord. If someone who's normally really chill becomes angry with you, you know you must've really messed up. I'd prefer not to have to do that again, but if I get pushed that far I will. Hopefully my campers now know better than to assume I don't have limits of what I'll put up with.