Club Silicon

The missing link

I recently had an epiphany. An epiphany so obvious it really was humbling. And I wish to share this with my creative brothers and sisters.

Just as the song by The Police goes, "The Missing Link" are words from their hit "Synchronicity". There is a pronounced missing link from my efforts and indeed from everyone's efforts.

Mankind, particularly those in developed nations, and most particularly those in the United States, are caught in an ever accellerating sequence of technological upgrades. From games to music to all manner of technology, it is not enough that something does a job well. Because that job can always be done better. Unlike hope, this really IS the source of mankind's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness.

I realized that the main reason (no, not my wife or children) that I am not progressing musically at the speed I want is because I am constantly distracted with new toys, whether they are phones or software synths. My epiphany ended with the need to stop, to put back this missing link, and to return to the creativity that led me here in the first place, that brought me true artistic progression. Ironically it was the slower pace of each technological lifecycle that was this mystic ingredient to my productivity. From the Ad Lib card to MODs, I have written far more music using these two forms of composition than I have anything else.

I marvel at Tom Kenny, my former editor now senior editor at Mix magazine, for his life is forever moving forward. He is always aware of the latest gear and who is doing the coolest stuff in their studio. Fascinating, because in itself there is no creativity. It is pure journalism, pure reporting. It is entirely possible that Tom can trace the entire line of Solid State Logic boards, and even understand how most of them work, but has never sat at one for hours coaxing a perfect mix as Peter Gabriel might in his studio at Real World (which I am told has a main room that sounds awful, despite its awe inspiring visual design).

I no longer wish to be on the cutting edge, knowing exactly what Wwise does tomorrow or what the best convolution reverb is. I need to create. I need to live and breathe using the tools at hand. I'm going to pull a "640kb should be enough for everyone" and feel GOOD doing it. 

My next PC will be the one I use for at least ten years. If it breaks I will repair it, not replace it. I will not upgrade it. I will not add on to it. The same goes for my gear and my software. It will be a snapshot of compositional power I had not dreamed of growing up, and I will take advantage of it, and bathe in the gear and software that exists NOW, and not come up for air. 

I encourage all composers who read this to do the same. Create. Create. Create. Leave the innovation to the engineers. 

Music and Toothbrushes

Here's one of those funny things that you might not think about. Today we got a Costco coupon book in the mail.

Years ago, I first encountered the Costco "bulk" form of retail in Sam's Club. You could get 24 cans of generic soda for about $6. Extremely cheap, Jason Emery's parents went there a lot.

So this coupon book had "put thousands of dollars in your pocket from these savings!" Incredible, I mean really incredible. I can actually have lots of money in my pocket just by BUYING THINGS! Okay, we've all understood this illusion, it has been around commercial enterprise for years. Spend more to save more. The smart ones don't "buy" into this at all, but instead look for the best price only for that which they need.

But then again, where is the reference for what it really costs? Cost of manufacture of course is a complex array of information. But there's something to be said for just how much you feel is fair to pay for something. Most intelligent folk probably have the following figures somewhere in their head:

Fast food meal: $5-$8
Car: $15000, tops
House: $100000, tops
Bed: $500-$800 depending on side

Anyway, here's the kicker: how much do you pay for a toothbrush you use only for personal cleanliness once or twice a day for 6 months for 30 seconds at a time? Around 3$, maybe as high as $5. Now...

How much do you pay for a song that fills you with joy each time you hear it, and you use it anytime you want, for 3 minutes (sometimes more), for the rest of your life? iTunes has set the standard value at $1.

Think about it.

Theory and Focus Groups

After having been in this industry since around 1994, and having played video games since 1983, I've seen quite a few trends and incredible changes take place in video games. Most of these trends and changes have been documented in varying levels of accuracy by private enthusiast and user group newsletters, books, a smattering of television specials and documentaries, and of course the innumerable web blogs and pro sites.

There is one common thread, that in part will apply to this post as well, that I have seen in all of them, even the ingenious posts of Lost Garden. Observations are made that sometimes deplore the sinking of game design into the sector of "pandering to public taste and mass market appeal". People yearn for the days of yesteryear when games were simple five to ten minute escapes from reality in an entertainment format that was somewhere comfortably between the imagination sparking pastime called reading, and photgraphically realistic depictions of television and film. "Here's the way we should really make fun new games". Mostly theoretical with little to no practice.

However, there are a few answers to this line of theories. Not only is Xbox Live Arcade one of the most interesting and popular new game environments taking account of the five to ten minute escape and adding a few additional goals, but in addition, the fact remains that new game ideas are inappropriately tested and researched. I probably have at least ten to twenty ideas I consider pretty novel and yes, of course fun for game design based on casual as well as hardcore gaming principles, but I haven't even started to write them down because I would want them properly focus tested, and I'm writing this post to indicate that the barrier to entry I had imagined was based on money, when in fact it's based more on proper planning, a fair amount of hard work, and creative use of the internet.

If one has a game design idea one has only to present it with a few pieces of documentation and as much in the way of a demo as possible by posting it on a website. One then would require an appropriate database with fields for age, sex, region, etc.., and solicit feedback over a period of a few months. Attracting attention to the website could be a matter of posting it to Gamasutra, and a professional looking site dedicated to new game concept feedback could, with the use of some banner ads (no pop ups) do this for free and the ads would pay for the bandwidth and space usage, OR it could be hosted by Gamasutra, Gamespy or Gamespot.

This would be an invaluable tool for publishers and indie developers alike. Testing your idea using this basic principle would yield valuable and most importantly current data without rediculous pre and post market conjecture based on previous titles with whatever similarities you think might make it "kinda like" your new title. Studying previous titles' success by sales is an incredibly complex process, not just involving the sales figures but marketing data and supply chain statistics to come up with a real definition of success or failure based on break even numbers. It also encourages someone wishing to publish a game with a more broad and informed set of figures to make a much more educated guess about pubic interest in a product.

There are in fact focus programs that generate tons of data for five grand and up per session, but the most important time to do a focus test on a product is either when a design document is presented and / or when a single chunk of the game (the demo, or vertical slice as it is called by some) is ready to play, before full on development begins. The web is a wondrous place to do this without forking over the cash, but I haven't yet seen an place that does this yet. (hint, hint) :)

Ideals

This series will utilize a concept my father introduced to me. Think of the most ideal way of doing something without limitation, and work towards that. This concept is a staple of brainstorming and can lead to very interesting results. Let's start with a few easy "ideals":

Camera: Since the idea behind a camera is based on a single image, why not have something built into your eye like a heads up display that when triggered either by a thought or a double blink, a picture would be taken of everything within view. Storage would be an issue of course, but most likely it would be inside your brain and saved to external sources via some sort of wireless transmission.

Writing: Dan Simmons brought this concept to life in the science fiction novel Hyperion with the story of the poet, Martin Silenus. "First came the word. Then came the word processor. Then the thought processor. And so it goes." A writer can walk from room to room and have their thoughts recorded rather than having to type. The only problem with this method, at least in my own case, is that thoughts are more difficult to control than one's hands. Before actually writing something with my hands it takes me one or more attempts in my mind. How would a thought processor distinguish between a throwaway thought and a thought you want to keep?

Cleaning: One of the black holes of personal time is cleaning. If you are a clean person you will probably waste at least one third of your adult life doing laundry, dusting, cleaning dishes, etc.. An automated way of doing this would mean you remove clothing, drop it in a "clothes drop" part of your wall, and within an hour or so it will be perfectly folded or hung. Quite probably some wealthy people already have this done for them, but it may not be automated using machines. The same goes for dishes. If there is a dishwasher that actually cleans dirty dishes (including hardened chunks of food) and dries them AND puts them away, I'd like to see it. And while Dyson has created the first vaccum cleaner that doesn't lose suction, it should run under its own power and be able to clean any surface no matter what the obstacle.

Transportation: Ellen DeGeneres and I agree that traffic problems are extremely bad. In smaller countries, public transportation is an easy solution. However I believe the ideal worldwide is teleportation. For those that don't wish to be broken down however, we should open up various airlanes. We're limiting ourselves to two dimensions. Especially once vehicles are automated, you simply type in a destination and don't worry about controlling the vehicle. Why has this not happened sooner? The automotive industry, that's why.