Because some things are so bizarre and wonderful that they never grow old.
Interesting updates tomorrow. Now watch, listen, and sing along in your head.
Monthly Archive for February, 2010
I’m in pain.
One pain is the pain of my wisdom tooth that was recently taken out. The amount of pain comes and goes with the drugs, and I’m feeling more than a little woozy, but it’s better than it was on the first day. Still, it will take some time before I feel even remotely OK again.
The other pain is the pain of reading about Greece. The amount of racist nonsense that’s being presented in the media is just disgusting. Facts are thrown out the window in favour of absurd clichés and stereotypes and the complexities of the situation are neatly ignored. Greece is presented as a country without civilization, a bunch of uneducated leeches stealing Europe’s money. One article (in German) even says that, for nationalist reasons, Greeks still give their children heathen names. Heathen! Yay for the great German Theocracy, I suppose. The article also accuses Greeks of keeping their alphabet for nationalist reasons – because they’re the only ones using it, so clearly that’s barbaric and behind the times. Not, you know, just their alphabet.
And in Greece, of course, all this is fodder for the right-wingers and the racists. So the racism of Europe is doing wonders for the racism of Greece. Thanks, guys.
It makes me sick. It all makes me sick.
My wisdom tooth is out. It hurts and it bleeds and I look like a zombie.
And it took forever. My system was in such distress that it just ate the anaesthetics up, and everything remained sensitive and painful. I could’ve run a marathon, but they just couldn’t get my stupid flesh to go numb. Monkey instincts.
The young doctor who started the operation kept getting more and more nervous, until he had to get his more experienced partner. After a certain point it went quickly, if noisily, and now I’m back home and feeling weird. Also spitting blood.
I am thankful Verena was there, because otherwise I would’ve had a total nervous breakdown.
I have updated the about page!
Finally you can read everything you always wanted to know about your favourite person called Jonas Kyratzes! Read the ludicrous biography today!
Coming soon: the pretentious biography. Only available on this blog! Get yours today!
There is no definition of computer games.
There in no such thing as art games. Games are art.
Gameplay is not the opposite of storytelling.
Graphics, music and level design are storytelling.
Mediocrity is not balance.
Abstraction is a tool. Only specificity gives meaning to art.
Interactivity is not abstraction.
Meaningful art is enjoyable. An unpleasant game is not deep, it is unpleasant.
The tools of game design are profane, the purpose divine.
There is no General Theory of Game Design.
“This is so badly infected that if we try to operate now, you’ll scream our heads off,” very much like “It would appear your baby has fangs,” is just one of those things you don’t want to hear.
On antibiotics now. Tooth (singular for now) to be removed on Wednesday. Will try to do some creative stuff in the meantime.
I’ve just found out that they shall be cutting out my wisdom teeth today.
Or, to be precise, they shall be breaking them in two and then scooping the leftovers out of my jawbone. Because it’s more fun that way.
Anyway, I’m terrified. When it comes to dentists and dentistry, my argh threshold is very low. Now that the tooth is also doing the whole swelling-and-infection thing, and hurts when I touch it, it’s probably a very excellent idea to take it out as quickly as possible, but… I’m still fucking terrified.
Needles. How I hate needles.
Argh.
Bad news:
- I went to the dentist today, and she’s certain that both of my lower wisdom teeth will have to come out.
- One of these is hurting a lot.
- I don’t have an appointment to get them taken out yet. The doctor I originally wanted to go to doesn’t have time in the next two weeks because the colleague that she works with is sick.
- I’m calling another doctor tomorrow to see about scheduling an appointment.
Good news:
- We were at a good friend of ours today and played a board game called Tomb. It was fun, but deeply flawed in several ways.
- This reminded me of how I used to design board games when I was a kid.
- Which in turn led me to have an idea for a board game that would be absolutely fricking awesome. And I have decided to add it to the list of things I will be working on in the future.
- I am considering whether it’s possible to create this as a do-it-yourself board game, where you can download everything from the internet and print it out yourself. Might be fun.
Anyway, I have taken my drugs and hopefully the pain will soon subside so that I can sleep.
If the last post sounded like I was depressed – well, I was. And I am seriously reconsidering some of my planned projects. As much as I love the idea of the internet as a space that promotes creative experiments… the reality of it unfortunately tends to be quite different. Too much is still about cliques, about getting into the right places, the right groups. And I’m too busy making stuff to play that game.
But I’m not quite giving up yet. With the help of some tech support people, we’re finally approaching one of our oldest dreams: making our own film review/analysis site. Verena and I have been talking about this almost as long as we’e known each other, and I think it has the potential to be tremendous fun. Of course, the internet is already full of film blogs, but maybe this one will find its audience. We may not be hip, but we’ve got an enthusiasm and love for the medium that a lot of hip people don’t have, so maybe that will mean something to our readers. I’ll let you know when the site is up and running.
There’s more coming. I’m in the process of updating and restructuring this website. I’ll be writing more about various topics that interest me, and less about my projects, except when there’s actual news. I’m also trying to submit some of my stories to a few places, so if anything gets accepted, you might get to read something of mine. The story I’m currently submitting to literary magazines is thematically related to the Museum of Broken Memories, so if you enjoyed that game, I think you will like it.
And of course there’s Phenomenon 32. What’s the status on that? The status is that on Thursday I have to go to the dentist because one of my wisdom teeth has decided to start digging its way out of my jaw and into some other teeth, and the release date of version 0.9 will depend on how long I will be in horrible pain afterwards. (Yes, I’m absolutely terrified of this. To make it more fun, this tooth is half-embedded in my jawbone, so they’ll have to break the tooth in two and then scratch the rest out of the bone. They say it’s as painful as it sounds.) I’m not sure whether the actual butchery operation is going to take place on Thursday, so we’ll see. But as soon as I’m up to it I’ll release a playable version of the game. This version will also include some adjustment to the ship’s movement to make it easier to control.
That’s it for today.
I’d been looking forward to the release of RPGcat for some time now – it really makes me smile, and I wanted to share it with people. I thought it had real potential to become a webseries that people would follow and enjoy.
The reality of it is quite different, though. A few people thought it was hilarious, but most people were just bored or disinterested, if not outright hostile. (So much for the gaming community, I suppose.) There’s no point in putting in this many hours into making more videos if this is the general reaction. Yes, the reaction to most of my work tends towards the extremes, but this is too much. Too few people are enjoying this and too many are hating it.
This makes me wonder quite severely about the future of this site and my online work. I want to do more than just design games, but frankly it looks like every time I try to do something else all I do is piss people off or bore them. I’ve often suspected there’s something about me that annoys people: some quality of smugness, or just something off that rubs people the wrong way. Maybe that’s the reason.
Right now Verena and I have several more web-related projects almost ready to go. Since we’re not exactly rich, the hosting and domain costs are a big deal to us, but we’ve been paying this money in the hope that the result would be something people would enjoy. If this is not the case, we will have to scale this stuff back quite a bit, and concentrate only on writing.
I’m not fishing for compliments here. I got a pretty clear picture of the reaction to the video. Just thinking out loud, really. Wondering about the shape of the future. (I thought it was prettier.)
