Last year, I searched for “mashup” on google and got zip. Now you search and you get tons. Gotta love that. Recently stumbled onto DJ Earworm and I’ve got to admit, we’re at a brand new stage of artistic development.

I’ve long believed that we will develop a new level of language once we can communicate using emotions. First we used crude hand signals, body language and grunts - the rudiments which has gone from cuneiform and kanji and evolved into txtmsgs and L33tsP34K. Thirty+ years ago, we starting samples and scratching. Earlier, I pointed out about WiiJaying.

Sound, especially popular music, convey an emotional role, almost engram of emotion that when you hear the music, the emotions come with it. Mashups allow those emotions to overdub on each other, weaving a complex structure.

First we had a songwriter who took an original folk tune and made a new song of it. For instance how Hank Williams music pulls from early tavern & bluegrass music.

Then we had remakes of those songs. All through the 40s, 50s, and 60s, it was incredibly popular to make entire albums with no original songs.

Then we had an incredible rise of original music - very rarely now we have remakes, but soon people began to sample other works, evoking the original emotions.

Now we’re to the point where full musical structure are woven full cloth of other emotional impacts - so emotionally, there’s an entire landscape of musical combinations.

Now, if we could only learn to communicate in these complex glyphs to convey complex emotional information without having spend time to remix them all. For example, I come home from work late one night and the wife glyphs at me that “she’s angry, why I didn’t call, and she had her heart set on our anniversary tonite being special” and I glyph back that “two employees are in the hospital, the car has a flat and I’m sorry” all at once.

One of the necessary steps of communication is the ability to get the “other” to empathize with you, and more importantly make it seem you’re empathizing with them - removing the “other” in the communication. If we were able to just give our emotions to others and receive - without the definitions of “otherness” (male-female, black-white, my body space-your body space, etc), we could immediately know where the other stands and recognize a common path.

DJ Earworm’s mashups take this to a truly new masterful level, overlaying all of the emotions to make some increble stuff - I highly recommend his “What’s my Name?” and “Stairway to Bootleg Heaven”.

Other sites, please recommend yours -

Smashup Derby’s Smells Like Billy Jean (watch out, more than slightly adult content here) Please note that the crowd loves to sing along on these, indicating that the emotion is common to all of the people in the audience. What is it about Smells like a Teen Spirit and White Stripes?

Strangely, I’m reminded of Simon and Garfunkel’s cover of Scarborough Fair with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme with the 6 o’clock news.

Took the rest of us long enough to catch up, hell, that’s 40 years old now.

Is it’s name. I pronounce it Tiggers, not Tigers, not Tigris. Tigger.

The Independent Game Rating System is an inevitable thing. With all the republicrats running around screaming “What about the children? What about the baaaabies?”, and with all the concepts of classifying the damage to kids’ poor tormented psyches that video games do, someone had to step up and try to appease both sides.

You know, sometimes confrontation is a good thing and sometimes capitulation… excuse me, compromise is bad. TIGRS is an effort to appease the jerks, and it’s a good faith effort. I don’t know Daniel Kinney, but this seems to be a genuine good attempt. At least the designs LOOK cool.

With a rating system, as a business owner, I reduce the level of risk to my business by posting. So without further adieu, here’s the TIGRS for That Cult Game.

Mild Language Intense Cartoon Violence Animated Bloodshed Suggestive Themes Crass Humor Drug Use

Not Bad, huh? Personally, I think it’s sad that parents can’t get it through their heads: If you BREED, YOU’RE the one responsible. Not society, not the neighbors, and not the police. Do your best, but don’t blame others for your or your kids’ failures. Do your very best, because the kid deserves no less, and if the kid turns out to be a brainless monster, deal with the monster. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, people are broken.

But don’t blame a GAME DEVELOPER for it. That’s just weak thinking.

Gah. Lawyers. Accountants. All I want to do is play a game that will allow me to subvert weak minds to my will and conquer the rest of them. Is that such a difficult request?

So, here’s what I’ve learned recently:

1) Do not sign away Intellectual Property. Nope. No can do. No 3rd party will investigate a partnership (like a publisher) if your IP is in contention. If you are paying for IP and if you have the right contract, keep ahold of the IP, otherwise you’ll never be able to create derivative works from it.

2) Don’t listen to lawyers too much, otherwise you’re a dick. A lot of the contractors I’m working for NEED the recognition. Lawyers don’t want to offer up any liability - they are doing their job, but the bottom line is, if a contractor is doing an excellent job, you need to be able to recognize them for their efforts.

So, there’s no way for me to actually enforce the recognition of my contractors unless I (I the business, not I the individual) make it part of any agreement that I sign. Thus enters into the language “reasonable good faith effort”, a term which is technically unenforcible.

Contractors Stand Up!
If you’re a contractor, what’s your rights? Officially, all you have to do is send an email informing the game developer like so:

Hello {company}
For my {writing, artwork, development} work done on your game, SuperFigureActionFightersFoo, please credit me as {Bob Kelly, or appropriate name}.
Sincerely,
{Your name}


CC the email to yourself and save, save, save it away.

Does this enforce that they give you credit? No. Does this give you the ability to put it on your resume and CLAIM credit? Does this protect you if they say “No, you didn’t do that credit” - yes, it does because if they don’t respond to you, the email is a document that can be used in legal battle if absolutely necessary. Yes. Does this give you more rights to renegotiate extra payments? No.

Why does this matter to me right now?
I’ve been done good by two of my contractors - over delivered both of them. I have no desire to screw them over, but the IP issue something that means a lot. So, how do you be extra nice to your partners? I can’t sell them part of the game, but I can give them TOP BILLING. That’s right, I’ll be loudly announcing my Artwork and Sound design people and give them some excellent real estate to make sure

Also, if you’re in need of an artist, I’ve got dibs, but I’ll share. She’s looking for work.

Hopefully next week I’ll be able to post and announce the That Cult Game’s Official Title!

I lurk on about 40+ blogs a week, one of them being the excellent Tales of the Rampant Coyote, and this week they’ve turned on the Game Design issue of Rogues/Thieves/Sneaks with an excellent post. Ok, the title is a bit whiney, but it’s still a good analysis of the issue of designing for Rogues AND other members.

Personally, I dont’ think his post is about Rogues - it’s about player expectations.

In a multiplayer level map sense, maps are either ALL about the Rogue, or NEVER about the Rogue. Do I add a trap here or not? Worse, in other games like anything from the Bioware pact, the very first thing Bioware does is add a second character to beef up your Mage/Thief - (Baldur’s Gate had Inowen, Planescape Torment had Morte, and NWN2 had Kelghar.) I love the characters - but hate the reason why they are there: mages and theives are chumps at lower levels. Plus, I’ve never liked the whole D&D bullsh*t of spellcasting - “go to sleep, wake up with spells”. Even NWN2 bailed on that stupid idea (”everyone take a knee!”).

From a D&DO/NWN sense, traps just SUCK. What happened to the old Grimtooth’s Traps where you had a chance of taking out the ENTIRE party? Now-days, it’s just better to use your warrior to run and trip them all, and have the cleric heal if necessary (my patented “Ogg the Caveman Thief” method of trap detection).

Here’s what kills me: if you design a level with too many mooks, the fighters and squishies get angry coz it’s too hard. Too few, and the Rogue whines “It’s a boring map” where he can’t be “stealthy.”

Plus - why can’t a warrior walk silently if he’s NOT in armor? Why do mages make a lot of noise when walking (they’re squishies, dammit)? Don’t tell me that it’s “training” - it’s common sense.

My proposal (which you’re all waiting for) is to develop a game where the player’s EXPECTATION is set upfront: the warrior has to be prepared to drop the armor and NOT kill things. The combat and magic system needs to allow for silence and subdue. If a mage can cast invisibility, how does one un-invisibility them? Thief did this, and did it well. Oblivion had a little of this.

And when the marketing department whines because the game isn’t going to be a mass market success, tell them to learn to market a game with higher player expectations, rather than pressuring the developers and designers to make a game “that they can understand” with a “low barrier of entry.”

How to Play:

Every player chooses a frequent emailer employee on an Email Alias that receives Business Traffic, for instance _helpdesk. The players keep score over a day. At the end of the day, the points are tallied and the player who had the least amount of points gets first choice the next day.

Scoring:
If the employee sends an email with extra superfluous punctuation (?!?!?!), you score
1 for each exclamation point “!”,
1 for each extra question mark “?” following a question (the first question mark doesn’t count)
1 for each extra question mark OR exclamation point in the Subject
2 for every misspelling of a question mark or exclamation point “!!!11!” or “??/?”
4 for ALL CAPS preceding an exclamation point or question mark
8 for the words “LOGICAL”, “BUSINESS”, “NEED” or “PROFITABILITY” in ALL CAPS

Winning:
At the end of the week, the winner gets bragging rights, and if the others are nice, a free beer.

Sometimes we stand beside greatness. Nicole Bradford, the Global Director of Strategic Growth for Vivendi Games appears to be one of those great souls who knows the value of commitment, and how to sell a good idea.

On Wednesday, Ms. Bradford announced an initiative that game developers need to help students. In her eyes, an mine, it’s a match made in heaven: Good developers needs practical knowledge of Math, Science, Communication, and Art. Our schools need mentors from community members - role models - to help students learn practical skills.

But this is also self serving, and not just in the “We get smart students.” There’s a political battle going on, and just like when politicians point at Booze, or Drugs, or Iraqis, saying “America is under attack”. This battle frequently involves GAMES. We’re too violent. Or corrupting the youth. Or just plain not good for kids, because we all know that our children should play innocent games like Ring Around the Rosie, or Chess, or Cowboys and Indians.

Now, I know *I* may have a problem when I volunteer to present Heresy.com games to children, but others in our industry don’t. I can offer my services to the more enlightened teachers and schools, maybe academies or colleges.

Bottomline, Ms. Bradford rocks, and deserves our support. I encourage all of you to offer her your assistance.

So, wow, where did I go for 3 days?

Most recent memories first - The flight home I met some awesomely cool developers, primarily because the Security at Oakland didn’t recognize what a Nintendo DS is. “I’m going to open your backpack, ok?” She already opened it without my consent. “What is this?!?” “It’s my DS.” “What’s a DEEE-ESSSS?!?!” Me and a whole bunch of people looked at each other and smiled.

What I wanted to say: “Listen you low rent, white trash, toothless bitch, get your meaty hands off my tech, and please return to smoking meth in your mobile home because that’s obviously where you came from.”

What I really said, “You play games on it. Like a Gameboy.” I lifted both hands and waggled my thumbs in mock combat.

“Oh!” She threw it back in, and turned to another highly competent, security enforcing meth addict, “Yeah, he should’ve put that through alone.”

I’ve got real confidence in these people keeping our airways safe. I really do. Look at it: it’s got screens, buttons and an on/off switch. You don’t go through this for every MP3 player, and you didn’t need to do this for a DS.

But this event opened up to one of the best conversations that made the entire plane trip quick and fun. I met 4-6 other developers, some from Rainbow Studios, who were the very friggin’ cool. A big thanks & shout out for Heather and Nathan. Some of us are doing lunch on Monday.

Me and My Big Mouth
q. “So what does Heresy Research Labs do, Bob?”
a. “Independent developer. I’m bootstrapping an independent design studio so I can create casual games with a bite.” Oooh, look, I’ve got a bullet that describes the business.

q. “So what have you done?”
a. “Nothing. I’ve spent 2000 bucks plus on development tools, artwork, and accountants.”
At that time, the “jaded” guys in the industry walk away. I get it. Yes, in YOUR industry, I’ve got no track record. Don’t be so snooty, guys. In my industry, I pulled down 6 figures this year. Blow me.

q. “So what are you working on?”
a. {Internal monologue - *sigh*, here we go again. Do I tell them about That Cult Game? Right now, it’s fucking vaporware if I don’t deliver at all. Oh, well, fuck it.} (Please note that the internal monologue has occurs so fast it now microsecond) “I’m working on a cult simulator. You create your cult, your cult leader and do what you do every night: try to take over the world.”

To say that the reaction to this game has been INCREDIBLY overwhelmingly is an understatement. Everyone has ideas. It’s wonderfully rich to mine right now. Bottomline, the game I’ve got right now, sorta sucks gameplay wise, *I* don’t like it enough to be proud of it.

The CCP White Wolf After Hours party
I don’t know HOW I got this invite. I met a man at lunch. He gave me an invite. I got an invite. Very. Fucking. Cool. He seemed to be wanting to keep under the radar, so I’m not dropping his name here. But a big thank you to John for the invite. Also, the White Wolf’s marketing woman - damn sexy woman.

Academic Research is the Bomb
I’ve got two rules of thumb about GDC. Go to the Developers/Publishers Rant. See every Ian Bogost talk. If you hit those two sessions, everything else is icing.

The rant - yes, I was there for the Wii Is “Two Gamecubes Stuck Together With Duct Tape” by Chris Hecker. Personally, this is a classic example of the meme overshadowing the message.

Rant 1: Wild Tangent CEO Alex St. John. Windows Vista Upgrade was poorly done. I met Alex in another session - he’s the real deal and a good guy. I wish he had the guts to mention DRM, tho.

Rant 2: If you’re gonna be an Indie Developer, be a leader… not a schlep (Richard Hillman from EA)

Rant 3: Nicole Bradford - What the gaming industry can do for kids: Math and Science. By far, Ms. Bradford’s call to action was the best of the best. She gets her own post later today.

Rant 4: Jason Della Roca - Sorry, guy, I didn’t understand your rant. In fact, I’m reading other sites and I don’t think they understood your rant.

Rant 5: Chris Hecker - Nintendo needs to care about ART (not that Wii sucks).

Rant 6: Lee Jacobson - If you’re gonna be an Indie Developer, be a business man

Rant 7: Greg Costikyan - The Indie Publisher is in a lot of trouble, and that causes the Indie Developer more problems.

An entire day thinking about “Intellectual Property” - all my game ideas are important, but the mechanism in which are delivering my games are just as important. Also, the session raised my expectations and helped me think about what I want out of Heresy.com. The CEO of Chrome, and some of the lawyers were incredibly helpful.

Awesome IGDA party last night Roe (651 Howard), where they basically gave up and opened the doors so everyone could walk in, and I ended up with Seok Min Oh’s nametag. I figured I was Irish Korean for a night. And I even met myself. Also, the coolest domain name encountered so far: UltraBlueBunny.com.

Game Developers’ Conference 2007 - a bunch of nerds stuck in a large glass building trying to network. It’s funny, actually, because there’s some of us that have good strong social skills. Once you shove those guys out of the way, damn we’re sad.

That’s not true actually - compared to last year, the attendees are extremely social and the freak factor is pretty low. I attended the “Creativity Boot Camp”, which I ducked out of to the Independent Developers Summit. Last year the conference didn’t lock you into a “track” - this year, they seem to be a nazis about it.

More importantly, I refreshed some acquaintances from last year, talked for a while about game philosophy - saw a very good presentation about Puzzle Pirates, which allowed me to feel hope about my development path.

And, like it or not, while my first 1 or 2 games will not be a economically “friendly” as I could make them, I know which way I need to take my company. Best quote of the day, “There’s people out there spraying the street with a fire hose full of money. Go get a garbage bag and get all you can.”

Sounds ruthless, a bit, but for these companies, it’s the difference between game and no game, and if making a pet and charging a couple bucks for it is the difference between making payroll, then that’s the deal.

Also, Jonathan Mak of Everyday Shooter is my new hero. In a room full of developers who have been convinced that if you’re independent, you have to be more innovative - he basically said, “Innovation is a waste of time: focus on the game.”

If you ever get the opportunity to see Kyle Gabler presentation - do it. His presentations never suck, and he’s always got a new view at a problem.

Rule number one of traveling: Never show up in the middle of a Chinese New Years Day Parade. The taxibus couldn’t get me to the front door of the hotel, so, I went down Market street to Broadway, then up through Chinatown to the voila! the Hotel Triton…. which is an nouveau Art Deco meets post 1990’s Apple Macintosh design.

Once I got here, the color patterns alone frightened me back to life. In short, the rooms are good looking, and big if you’re a Lilliputian. I don’t mind so much because there’s so many mirrors I can see myself from any angle… A visage that always puts a smile on my face… but enough about how the room makes me look good.

Unlike last year, I came in two days earlier to work get a lay of the land, figure out how I’m going to get to the convention, where the best food is, and where the best Starbucks is. That’s a joke for those of you who haven’t been here. From my window, I’ve got 1 in view, and 2 more within a block of me. And there’s a Peats, and a few others.

Traveling rules #2: I’m lucky I don’t have cable - even though I’ve run all over the place, today, the History Channel frigging rocks. Last night it was wonderful History of Sex (Love the Greek urns… and both the Samurai and Greeks were a bunch of perverts). Right now, I’m watching Barbarian Battletech and the “Dark Ages. Gotta love those Goths. If I had a working TV at home, I’d never get anything done.

Third Traveling Rule - Holy shit you people watch a lot of commercials about erectile dysfunction and herpes. Both include side effects of sudden loss of blood pressure if you stand up too fast. Funny as hell if you think about it.

Off the Irish Bank in a couple minutes. Cya2morrow