- The economic downtown affecting my job
- One or both of my parents becoming seriously ill
- Getting diabetes
- Getting fat
- Sustaining a minor injury that requires Katie to take care of me for an extended period of time
- Forgetting to pay a bill on time and getting a late fee
- Having all my friends suddenly discover how dull I’ve become and abandoning me
- Receiving a blow on the head while playing a team sport that gives me amnesia
- Arriving home to find that one of our cats has eaten the other
- Taylor Hicks in Grease
- The drive on my Xbox 360 dying
- Being last in my fantasy baseball for the second year in a row
- Losing my right hand in a freak accident at the zoo and having to learn to do everything with my left hand
- A mounted television falling on my head while in a sports bar/grill
- Forgetting to write a blog post on day 362
- Brian Gray slipping on the ice in front of his home, only to slide uncontrollably down the hill into oncoming traffic and being run over by a Menorah car
- Robot uprising
- Being on an episode of What Not to Wear
- Quoting something I thought was from something only to be informed that it is actually from something else
- Mispronouncing the word wafer
Author: Scott (Page 90 of 104)
Unless you’re performing Shakespeare, you have one huge advantage as an actor over the audience: none of them know the script. Most of them have never read it, and the few that have don’t remember the details. So messing up a single word? No one will know. Flub a whole line? Cover for it quickly enough and only a few people will notice.
This is also a huge advantage of game design, although it is often balanced with early hands-on previews and marketing; the players haven’t read the design documents. They don’t know what’s been cut from the game.
It’s an important piece of information to keep in mind when making the tough decisions on what needs to be cut or deferred. Our job is to make the best game we can ship, not an ideal and perfect piece of software that comes out “sometime.”
We also have the advantage of more time. While an actor must react within the split second when he or a fellow actor forgets a word or line, a game team usually has time to discuss and investigate an issue before deciding what should be done.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that our decisions must, in the end, be in service of the players. Our decisions need to be based on both the original intentions set out by our design docs and the compromises we can make that still reveal the best experience to the player. In many cases, it is better to cut a large system wholesale than to release something that may only fulfill half the design doc.
It all circles back to the fact that the player won’t know if a huge system is entirely cut, and that time can be spent making other features better. On the other hand, releasing a half-done system usually reveals the scope of the design doc and the fact that the implementation fell short.
What other similarities are there?
- Previews and Focus Tests are invaluable.
- It takes a lot of different people with a lot of different skills to get one show or product done.
- No matter how hard everyone works, the only thing that matters is the reaction when the curtain goes up.
- Most of your fans are really nice. Some of them are insane and scary.
Katie and I are back in San Francisco, back home. My mom, too, is back home at her apartment in New Jersey. She was discharged from the hospital this morning. She came home, showered, and ate some porridge. All in all, she’s doing very well, considering that a section of her intestine was removed from her body less than a week ago.
Here are a few pictures to back up my encouraging words. This first one was taken when we visited her yesterday, and the one on the right is from this morning, just before we took her home:
We woke up at around 9 AM or so New York time and our flight arrived into SFO at around 9 PM or so San Francisco time, so it’s been a rather long day. I managed to finish Watchmen on the plane. I also won a contest with my Pokemon. He bedazzled the judge Dexter with his acting skills.
I’m not an airport security expert either, but I am one of those (many?) people that think the entire routine when entering the gate area at US airports is mainly theatrics. The shoes, the liquids – it all seems to be there to reinforce the notion that we’re being secured against the types of attacks that have been identified in the past. I suppose it does prevent me from using large amounts of liquids or my shoes as potential weapons, but that seems like fixing a potentially leaky dam by plugging two specific small holes.
Not only that, these procedures does more to punish the innocent than the guilty. Security lines now take longer to process for all travelers because of the time it takes for everyone to take off and put on their shoes; additionally, the liquids policy makes it much more inconvenient for any legitimate traveler to bring their usual makeup or personal care items.
Lastly, in the big picture view of things, it’s hard to imagine that these policies will stop determined terrorists from achieving their objectives; that’s what frightens me most. Before September 11, it was somewhat inconceivable that less than a dozen men could commandeer multiple planes with their objective being to crash the planes into large structures. This wasn’t because plane hijacking was unheard of; it was because previous hijackings hadn’t been kamikaze missions.
Terrorists aren’t necessarily smarter than our security teams are, but they have the advantage because they can afford to react. Our government is in a tough spot because they need to be able to outthink and predict events and actions that haven’t yet happened. The security policies that I see at our airports don’t convince me. Perhaps there’s more than meets the eye, but it feels more like theater than actual protection to me.
I have to go to bed but I need to blog out a somewhat unreasonable devotion to an empty promise I made myself!
My mom gets to go home tomorrow! As do Katie and I! Home, in this case, is different for us, but it’ll be nice to see our kitties again. For my mom, it’ll be nice not to have to sleep next to sick people. Hospitals are so full of sick people. It’s an epidemic!
Katie said to mention my mom’s delightful Irish nurse, Gabby. She’s nothing like Gabby from the PBS show Ghostwriter. Or Desperate Housewives. She’s kind of like the Irish innkeeper’s wife from The 39 Steps, though. Except a nurse!
Never mind, Katie said the innkeeper’s wife was Scottish and unfulfilled. I guess I’m just a big pile of stupid.
We watched Iron Man tonight, after going to Outback Steakhouse, which is about as white as you can get.
We saw Hamlet last night at the New 42nd Street Theatre. It was in previews and was quite good. Polonious forgot one line, which made him sad, and Hamlet was the Ice Truck Killer, which made him somewhat creepy. But a very good actor! And it means he’s worked with Michael C. Hall, who gets props because he is often referred to with a middle initial. That’s when you know you’ve made it!
That’s all from me, Scott I. Dai. You’ll see my name in lights one day, if you consider computer monitors tons of tiny lights. And if you intentionally look at the Sims 3 credits. You have to click on them from the Main Menu. It’s not something most people would do, I guess. But I expect you to.
And I’m not Scott I. Dai on there. Only Scott Dai. I haven’t made it yet.
Unless by it, you mean a blog post.
In that case, I HAVE.
YEAH BUDDY. DAY 39. IN THE BOOKS.