Some Happenings

Seattle’s Penny Arcade Expo, which now seems to go by the name PAX Prime, was sufficiently action-packed to deserve its own post. It’s getting the deluxe treatment, in the form of some type of specious games article you’ll be able to find in a bit. It’ll include banter with booth babes, banter with people who created my favorite games ever, banter at sexy parties, and reflections of unadulterated wisdom. For now, this is me and some new friends (these three from the Escapist) driving to Chinatown a day before PAX began.


yay new friends (from left: a hidden John Funk, Janelle Bonanno, meself, and Kelly Helder)!

PAX held much adventuring with friends old and new, yet little good photographic evidence. Sorry, internets.

Continuing this multimedia extravaganza shall be a poem I scribbled down after a beautiful evening catching up with old friends. We were camping at a site somewhere along Mt. Ranier, next to an expansive lake. It’s of that very much out-of-the-way kind of place, reachable by odd winding dirt roads, that you always seem to share with heavily-armed hillbillies and the kind of women who’ve mastered the obnoxious drunken come-hither scream. Our first night camping, both came out in full force, firing off what must have been a barrage of .223, 12-guage, 9mm, and vodka rounds from atop a big rocky outcropping a few meters from our tents.

I of course wetted and forcefully blew on my bicep, in order to make powerful farting noises, which seemed to confuse them sufficiently that they moved down the lake a bit. This was a comfort for our entire party.

The second night, we spied a brave law officer, and heard far fewer and far more distant gunshots. That day had been an exhausting mix of heavy drinking while floating lazily on a lake log, and heavy drinking while sitting around a fire. All with sunshine, which I certainly wasn’t used to. Folks progressively went to sleep, until it was just myself and one of my favorite people in the world. Here’s the poem.


Embers

The day comes to a close
Cicadas surround with their notes
Dragon eyes form in wood’s grain
On fire as the pit slows to dying

I join a friend from far away
We move from the fire as night
Comes alive, and we speak of moving on
Until the cicadas go silent

Tobacco smolders, weaves shining lines
Dimming slow as satellites in the sky
Fire’s embers breathe orange from their core
Log styled like Aztec dog huffs flames

Hours later in the sea of black
Its eyes remain in points of light


Gamasutra was gracious for even accepting Psychology is Fun, let alone accepting it a hefty few months late. At the time I really did consider it some of my best work – though it could have conveyed certain ideas better. It was a little horrifying, for instance, to see folks think I was actually attacking Ian Bogost. I agree with the man, and more importantly learn from what he has to say, most if not all of the time.

That’s all the updating that comes to mind just now.

But Not Yet

This is not The Promised Post. That I've been legitimately busy (maybe for the first time in my life) makes writing about the past few months evermore the daunting task for one so traditionally lackadaisical. Or lazy, lazy probably works better. I'm indulging the lazydazical side today, sipping hot chocolate in the Seattle drizzle.



Yes, this coffee mug moonlights as a cereal bowl.

Language is Beautiful moves along, that's the main point for this post. It's a game on poetry that's been submitted for the IGF, and, though maybe not where it should be (existentially), some great feedback came from folks at Meaningful Play and my lovely friends, both on and off Facebook. The best analogy is that a bunch of crazy people have poured rare and fragrant coffee grounds into my brain, the water is still hot, and the redesign, it percolates.

It's taking time, and that's fine. I'm not making instant coffee. I'm making multiple designs to reflect how we read poetry, in a non-game-ethnocentric sort of way. That is, the value and weight of the words should, ultimately, balance with the value and weight of the interaction.

And for now I'm home, safe, and chocolated.

Fine, Fine

I'll update my CV. Happy now?

A lot's happened since my road trip down to Sunny Southern California. I'll make a post about it. Later. Promise.