#oneaday Day 97: The Grindstone

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently writing daily for GamePro. This is, of course, awesome and I'm both happy and honoured to be able to do so, even if it means having to remember how all you Americans spell things and the fact that companies are singular nouns, not plurals.

Having been out of full-time (well, pretty much any work) for the best part of a year, coming back to actually having to do stuff in the daytime is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a system shock. Not in a bad way, though. On the contrary, it's nice to be able to get up and know that I have Things To Do. I don't know if you (yes, you, reading this) have ever experienced unemployment, but while it sounds like the best thing ever in many ways—just not having to commute is heavenly—after a while it does get both annoying and demoralising.

Which is why returning to work—even if it's work from home at curious, PST-friendly hours like I'm currently doing—can sometimes be a surprise. Having had entire days of nothingness to fill with any combination of sitting on the Internet, watching TV, trawling your DVD collection, playing video games or even—shock—going out—having a healthy chunk of your day taken up by Stuff You Have To Do means that you have to rethink things somewhat.

It's a lot more difficult to find the time to go out running, for example. I could go in the mornings if I woke up a bit earlier, of course, but still operating on a slightly-skewed body clock means that doesn't always (ever) happen. There's the weekends too, of course—but then weekends get filled up with socialising and doing things you don't have time to do in the week. You start to understand the expression "not enough hours in the day" all too well.

Don't get the impression I'm complaining—I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing and I hope that shows in what I produce. I like what I do and people who read it seem to like it, too. So that's all good. I just find it quite amusing that when you have the time to do everything you might want to do, you don't have the means to. And when you do have the means to, you don't have the time! Craziness.

I couldn't tell you for sure if things are going to stay exactly this way, but it's certainly better than the way things have been. It's been a long, difficult and not particularly pleasant road to get here, but it's entirely possible that the destination's in sight. What that destination is? No idea.

We'll find out, I guess. Watch this space.

#oneaday Day 96: Don't Take It Personally, Babe

The thing I like about games that are a bit off the beaten track is the fact that they're not afraid to break with every gaming convention under the sun in order to try something a bit different. Objectively, sometimes they're not great "games" in the traditional sense, but they are definitely worthwhile experiences that explore interesting new ways of telling stories.

One "author" who produces such games is Christine Love, who is fond of creating ren'ai titles. For the uninitiated, ren'ai games have strong plot elements of romantic love. They're not necessarily dating sims or hentai games—though some are—but all of them have a narrative which explores love and emotions. Final Fantasy VIII, for example, is regarded as a ren'ai game. Stretching the definition somewhat, you could even argue Silent Hill 2 has elements of the genre.

The appropriately-named Love's titles, however, are much more up-front about their intentions. Digital: A Love Story and the oddly-named Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story are two games which go about telling a ren'ai tale in similar, though markedly different fashions. Both of them revolve heavily around the use of technology and its role in interpersonal relations.

I'll resist spoiling either of them, but I think they're well worth exploring for anyone interested in the "visual novel" genre—anyone who liked games such as the Ace Attorney series, 999 or Hotel Dusk, for example.

Digital: A Love Story sits you at the desk of an Amiga (or rather, a non-copyright infringing equivalent) five minutes into the future of 1988. Purely by interacting with your computer and dialling up a number of virtual BBS systems, a genuinely compelling tale is told without any graphics whatsoever. You don't "break character" for a single instant in the game, and it's this gameplay "hook" that keeps you playing to see what's going on. I'll say nothing else, as that would spoil it. But it's excellent—if only for nostalgia value. It happens to tell a good story, too.

Don't Take It Personally… is a little different. Taking a more Japanese style to its art, it looks like a dating game, though it isn't one. Casting players in the role of John Rook, a 38-year old double divorcee who came to high school teaching in 2027 as part of a mid-life crisis, it tells a tale which explores interpersonal and social issues that you don't generally see in games. It's a relatively simplistic visual novel in terms of gameplay, with only a few choices to make, but like Digital, it's the story that matters. And it's told in a very interesting way through three different "layers". There's the face-to-face action, where the player, as John, sees and hears what's going on in front of him. John also has access to his students' Facebook-like social network, though, and is able to read any of his students' communications—even the private ones—giving an ethically-questionable insight into what they're thinking and what is really going on behind the dramas that unfold. And thirdly, this game features possibly the only time you'll ever see 4chan (sorry, "12channel") being used as a Greek chorus.

Both games have a "message" and while Don't Take It Personally in particular is a little heavy-handed with it towards the end, it's cool to see games trying to say something a little more than the usual melodrama.

So check 'em out. They take, like, two hours at most each. And they're free. You love free stuff, right?

#oneaday Day 95: Car Pee Gee

There's a ton of things that people haven't tried in the world of video games—mostly because of certain assumptions that are made about the people who play them, or more specifically, the demographics of who plays what.

Let's take the racing game genre as an example. It's generally assumed that racing games will be played by petrolheads of varying degrees. The überhardcore petrolheads who actually know what a limited slip differential is rather than just treating it as a powerup will be into the Forza Motorsports and Gran Turismos of the world. Those who just enjoy flinging cars around corners are built for the Ridge Racers, Need for Speeds and Project Gothams of the world.

And that, it seems, is the limit of what the market assumes to be "people who like racing games". But I like racing games, and I wouldn't describe myself as a particular petrolhead as such. I also like other genres, and I would pay good money for a game that fused together some different genres and gave racing games a bit of personality. Because let's face it, however good the driving action is, the in-between races bit of most racing games is about as interesting as a spreadsheet. Sure, it might have a soundtrack by Junkie XL or The Prodigy, but it's still dull as ditchwater and completely character-free.

I want a racer with a plot. I'm not talking about half-assed efforts like Need for Speed Underground or Ridge Racer Type 4. I'm talking about a game where the unfolding storyline is just as important as throwing a BMW M5 around a 90-degree corner. It's been tried once before with TOCA Race Driver, but to my knowledge, never again since. There's also Square's Racing Lagoon, but good luck finding a copy of that ever.

No; what I envision is something along the lines of the old Wing Commander games, where there's an unfolding story and some good character interaction punctuated by, in this case, racing rather than space-shooty-bang-bang action. If your character has been talking to a rival racer and talking smack to them in these interstitial "plot" sequences, it's going to make you feel all the more inclined to do your very best against them when you see their name flash up over the top of their car in the middle of a race. Perhaps you could have a co-driver sitting in the car with you talking to you and making comments as you race as well as helping you out by warning you of upcoming corners and hazards.

Unfortunately, I doubt it's ever going to happen, because most racing games these days are treated as triple-A titles, which means that they get tightly focus-grouped and marketed at a specific demographic: the petrolhead.

I want to play the racing game for the RPG fan, the interactive movie fan, the adventure game fan. There's no reason why either side of the experience has to be compromised—just replace the battles from a JRPG with races. Why shouldn't it work?

Oh well. I can dream on.

#oneaday Day 94: Darkness Falls

It's been quite some time since I blogged at this hour. Last year, it was a semi-regular occurrence, thanks either to my buggered-up body clock, failing to blog until the late evening (or in some cases, until after I'd gone out and come back again) but for the most part, this year the datestamps on my work have been for the correct day. Tonight I've been recording a podcast, though, and I didn't think to write something earlier, largely 'cause I was working.

I like night-time. I've often thought that night-time is the period in which my brain works best. Well, I'm not sure about "best" because I doubt if I wanted to do anything which could be called "work" right now that I'd do it to the best of my ability, but my brain certainly is at its most creative.

This is both a blessing and a curse; it means that the imagination can run wild, allowing you to picture wild and fantastic scenes as you attempt to lull yourself to sleep, but it also means that you can worry about things like taxes, cancer and alien invasions. It's strange that the time of day at which you should theoretically be most exhausted is actually the time at which your brain seems most keen to get up, jump around and keep tapping you on the shoulder.

Perhaps it's the fact that there's no other distractions. By the time it gets to this hour, hopefully you have no "commitments" to worry about, no work to do, nothing you absolutely must do right now. As such, your brain decides that it's playtime and starts wandering around looking for things to do when in fact all your body wants to do is get to sleep.

Sitting in darkness with a total lack of distractions is a good time to get things sorted in your mind. Given that we live in a world where we are surrounded by devices, websites, pets, siblings, partners, family members and various other things which all demand our attention to varying degrees, the opportunity to sit in the darkness and be, for once, alone with your thoughts is something which should be welcomed and cherished. You don't necessarily have to come to any conclusions or make any big decisions—but the simple act of taking a moment to listen to what your brain is telling you is often enough to make you feel better about something.

And remember, whatever your brain might be telling you at 2AM, the eventual outcome will never be as bad as you're expecting. So in many senses, those anxieties that you might find yourself feeling at stupid o' clock in the morning may, in fact, just be setting you up for a pleasant surprise a little way down the road.

Now I'm going to go to sleep before I babble on about any more crap.

#oneaday Day 93: The Language of Barbers

I do not know how to talk to hairdressers or barbers. I'm not even convinced I know the difference, aside from the fact that hairdressers are assumed by Jeremy Clarkson to be somewhat effeminate and drive girly convertibles like the Mazda MX-5 before charging you three hundred quid to make the tips of your haircut a little bit lighter, whereas barbers, in my experience, tend to be blokey blokes armed with scissors and clippers who will shear your mane for ten quid.

Regardless of whether I'm talking to a hairdresser or a barber, though, as soon as I get in that chair, I don't know what to say. I have a couple of "backup haircuts" that I can consistently ask for — "number [x] all over" if I want people to see what the shape of my head is all over, or "number [x] at the sides and back, short on top" if I want the back of my head to feel like Fuzzy Felt whilst having enough on top to do weird things with "product" if necessary.

But I'm still not sure of the etiquette. The idea of walking into a barbers' shop and saying "do something with my hair that doesn't make me look like a penis" seems a little… odd. I mean, I'm sure people who cut hair are suitably trained in the art of not making people look like penises (or at least, not unless they ask them to) and have plenty of creativity of their own, but when I sit in that chair, it feels like I should know what I'm asking for.

Perhaps it's the "bloke thing" that Bill Bailey discusses towards the end of this clip:

Namely, the fact that "blokes" assume that they should know what they're talking about; the haircut equivalent of not walking into a garage, bursting into tears and saying "it's broken!" whilst pointing in the general direction of your car. You can't point at your hair, say "it's shit!" and get them to do something with it. For one, that's putting a lot of trust in someone you don't necessarily know to do something to your appearance that you have to live with every day.

What makes it worse is the fact that any time I have genuinely asked anyone else what I should do with my hair, I have never got a straight answer. This leads me to believe that no-one knows what to say to barberdressers, and that everyone is in fact fooling each other by talking about highlights, lowlights, split ends and pro-vitamin B5.

And don't even get me started on the range of "product" out there. What, pray, is the difference between hair gel, wax, putty, goop, spunk, glue and splart?

#oneaday Day 92: Dream On

Discussing dreams is regarded by many as self-indulgent, but then so is blogging, so to the people who whinge and moan about everything I say "RASPBERRIES, GOOD SIR" and bare my bum at them. (Maybe not the bum bit.)

But anyway. Dreams. Weird, aren't they? A statement that surely qualifies for the "Captain Obvious Award 2011", yes, but it's true — which is why it's obvious, obviously. I have, however, come to the conclusion recently that the most vivid and bizarre dreams seem to come not during your big long sleep that you (hopefully) have throughout the whole night, but instead in those brief "snooze" periods you have between alarm clock harassment in the morning. Assuming you use an alarm clock. If not, it's those brief snooze periods you have between waking up and deciding you can't be arsed to get out of bed just yet.

Anyway. Regardless of when those brief snooze periods happen, that's when your brain suddenly decides that the most interesting and/or fucked-up dreams really need to happen. Because, as everyone knows, the brain works best under pressure. Ask any student or journalist with a deadline coming up.

Take this morning. I woke on an airbed on my friend's floor (I do know how I got there, I hasten to add) and considered getting up but wasn't sure if it was a good idea because my phone battery had gone flat and I wasn't wearing a watch. And this being the digital age, of course there were no clocks anywhere to be seen that weren't on mobile phones or on TV-connected things that made noise and would wake up my sleeping companion (who was on a different air bed, I hasten to add, and sleeping off an enormous amount of alcohol that he had consumed over the course of the whole day in celebration of both digits of his age changing) so basically, I couldn't tell if it was late enough to wake up in a suitably sociable manner. You get me? Good.

Now we've established that, I can explain; following the above, I established that it probably was too early to wake up, so I promptly fell asleep again. (Oddly enough, I find it enormously difficult to fall asleep at actual normal bedtime, but have absolutely no problem dropping off again in the morning. Somewhat frustrating and a little impractical.) My brain decided that this would be an appropriate time to imagine going to the fridge, taking out a 4-pint bottle of milk to take a refreshing cold swig from and discovering that it was actually full of egg-fried rice.

"Hmm, seems a bit ricey," I said. The people in the kitchen at the time (whom I didn't see) found this hilarious and we all had a good giggle about it. Then I woke up. Cool story bro.

If dreams are supposed to be some sort of "message", then I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what that was trying to tell me. I drink too much milk? I really fancy a chinese? I'm going to die? I have no idea, but I guess it's no weirder than the time I dreamed about navigating a field made entirely of strawberry mousse.

#oneaday Day 91: Boozehound

It's a curious thing, alcohol. Some people enjoy it, others don't. One thing we seem to be afflicted with a bit in this country is the assumption that alcohol is somehow necessary to have a good time, like it unlocks a magical gateway to some nether realm of ultimate happiness.

But does it, though? It certainly lowers inhibitions and makes people more open to the idea of acting like a dickhead — and, by extension, amusing everyone else. This certainly leads to lots of memorable evenings — it occurred to me last time I was out with a bunch of people that a lot of stories start with "there was this time we were all really drunk" and end with someone being sick or falling over or hurting themselves.

Good nights don't necessarily need alcohol to be good. You just need something to happen to be memorable. This depends a lot on the chemistry between the people you're with. With the right people, you can have a thoroughly silly night without the need to get a sick bucket afterwards.

The people I was out with tonight are some of my oldest friends; people I've known since high school. While our nights out often involve a bit of drinking, we certainly don't need drinks to act like dicks and yell "COCK" at each other.

Which is, you know, nice.

I have a lovely weekend ahead of me so I will say goodnight for now. Stay frosty.

#oneaday Day 90: You'll Never Win

Got an iPhone or some sort of portable telecommunications device which supports push notifications? Take a look at its home screen and count how many notifications you've got. Not counting emails, I have 39, and I know the second I go through all those apps and "clear" them, they'll be back with a vengeance.

The same is true with emails. My inbox count on my iPhone has been hovering at somewhere around the 650-700 mark for a long time now, and there seems to be absolutely no way to shrink it down. My GMail button in Chrome claims I have 948 messages, but I think that's the total in my inbox, not unread. And like the notifications, I know that as soon as I batter the shit out of my inbox and get that number down to something approaching zero (it can never be zero, because there's always at least one message you find that you think "I'll just leave that in my inbox, I might want to refer to that later", conveniently forgetting the fact you have labels, folders and a search facility) those messages will be back to haunt me. Well, not those same messages, but some new ones.

It's the age of Web 2.0 that has done this to us, of course. The fact that we get bombarded with messages from various social networks on a minute-by-minute basis, everything vying for our attention (when in fact most of these emails are asinine, vapid crap that we really don't need — who gives a fuck if someone just commented on a photo you were tagged in? Check it later.) and, in many cases, causing the important stuff to get lost.

I remember back in the CompuServe days, receiving an email was A Big Deal (particularly if it was from Julia, at least until The Incident) because it didn't necessarily happen every day. Largely because not everyone Had The Internet, because some people didn't have a modem, or others were concerned about phone bills, or whatever. But at that time — oh, that golden time — you were lucky to get five emails a week, and certainly none inviting you to extend your penis with Biblical quotes (and no, sadly I'm not making that up).

I guess the solution would be, of course, to turn off notifications and to stop Twitter, Facebook and whatever else from emailing me every time someone in my network does ANYTHING… but then how will I know that someone just tagged me in 300 photos? (With an email for every photo, obv.)

In other news, it's probably about time I cleaned out my aforementioned GMail inbox. I'm going in… if you don't hear from me in 3 hours I've probably died.

#oneaday Day 89: Tick

Time zones are a big pain in the arse. Particularly when you find yourself inadvertently operating on one that you don't live in. I've had a pretty ballsed-up body clock for quite a while now, but it sort of doesn't matter.

It started towards the end of my time in Southampton last year, when I made a new friend online who happened to live in the mountains in the States. We frequently talked until stupid o'clock in the morning which meant that I'd go to bed as the sun was rising and often not wake up until the afternoon of the next day. Like, late afternoon. The kind of late afternoon that made staggering into the local shop and having the man with the smelly armpits behind the counter asking "how my day had been" to be a little embarrassing. Of course, there were extenuating circumstances at the time that meant I wasn't particularly concerned with social niceties and a sense of "normality" because frankly, at the time, my life was anything but "normal".

But anyway.

(The fact I was also doing some writing work based on Eastern time shifts probably didn't help matters. The closest approximation to a "working day" that I had started at about 7pm and ran until 11 at night. But I digress.)

A trip to the States over the holiday period last year offered the opportunity to live like a normal human being for a while. There was also the fact that at roughly 7am (or sometimes before) I'd be woken up by either a large dog wanting a cuddle or children watching television. I don't begrudge them those things, particularly as I was sleeping in their lounge, but it did mean that I could wake up at a "normal" time.

Currently, it's not quite as bad as it has been. I still stay awake quite late—despite trying to get to sleep early in many cases—and find myself able to get up anywhere between 10AM and 12PM GMT. Oddly enough, this is only the case when I'm at "home". When I'm staying with someone else, whether it's sleeping on a floor, couch or hotel room bed, it's absolutely no problem to wake up at a normal time—and go to sleep at a normal time, for that matter. It's curious.

Still, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm essentially operating on Pacific time for much of my waking existence. This isn't so bad, of course, as the work I'm currently doing is based around Pacific time and I have a lot of friends in the States with whom I can chat via Twitter and various IM systems. (There's also the fact that some of those people clearly never sleep at all, but that's an entirely different issue altogether.)

So if you need me, don't ever worry about it being "a bad time" because chances are, I'll be awake somewhere, somehow, sometime.

#oneaday Day 88: Help Wanted II: The Helpening

After the resounding success of the Help Wanted post from a few days ago, here's another challenge for you all. This time, the ads are all in an attempt to recruit the parts people play in various board games, making them either more or less obscure depending on where you're sitting. Or anyone who knows any of the answers to either post a massive geek.

So without further ado, here we go:

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WANTED: Exploratory self-starter with keen negotiation skills required for this exciting new opportunity. Play a key role in the challenges of running a successful startup. Candidates with an nderstanding of mining, logging, agriculture and bricklaying will have a distinct advantage. £DOE

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WANTED: Keenly creative cartographer sought for the mapping and development of a potentially affluent French region with ties to the monastic orders. Forward planning an essential quality. £good

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WANTED: Programmer with experience of languages such as LOGO required for exciting new factory-based robotics project. £OK

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WANTED: Investigator sought for project in Massachusetts. Background and past experience not important, but an open-minded nature and desire to explore the supernatural is essential. Some risk of death and/or mental disorders. £excellent

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WANTED: Crew for spaceship. Must deal well with crises under immense pressure and be able to tell their left from right. Good communication skills, forward planning and a collaborative nature are essential roles for the successful candidate. £allrightIsuppose

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WANTED: Crew for spaceship. Must deal well with crises under immense pressure and not be a cybernetic sleeper agent. £fairlygoodish

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WANTED: Family-focused agricultural type with good time management sought for ambitious farming project in 13th century Germany. Accommodation provided. £good with significant bonuses for good performance.

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WANTED: Spatially-aware type with fondness for single colour required for immediate start in collaborative, decorative block-laying art project. Must be focused on own contribution, potentially to the detriment of other collaborators' work. £awesome

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WANTED: Are you a bit like Brother Cadfael? Then perhaps you belong with our monastic order. We seem to suffer a bit from violent crime and are in urgent need of new members of the Order to keep the peace. £voluntary

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WANTED: Travel enthusiasts sought for railroad excursions across the United States, Europe, Scandinavia and Germany. Must have a knack for booking entire routes and then inexplicably blocking them off for anyone else's use. £pro rata

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WANTED: Bean farmers urgently required for spectacular new bean-farming opportunity. Type of beans unimportant. £dependent on performance

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WANTED: Electricity enthusiasts with good mathematical and financial skills sought for employment in Germany and the United States' national grids. Must be able to count. Forward-thinking skills a distinct benefit. £good, but in a weird currency you've never heard of.

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WANTED: Ambitious megalomaniac type sought for systematic conquest of provinces by fair means or foul. This is a somewhat unpredictable position where you can be sure of a new experience every day. £variable

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WANTED: Warlike conquistador sought for conquest of entire world and/or stalemate situations with similar types. Must have considerable amount of patience and competitive nature. Would particularly suit people with too much time on their hands. £spectacular

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So, any ideas? Make your guesses in the comments.