Chugga Chugga

Well, work is definitely leaving me tired out. I'm not sure if it's because half of it consists of uninteresting tasks that anyone with opposable thumbs could manage, or because there's just so much of it. I've been falling asleep or coming close to it all over the place. No good!

I met my roommate yesterday when I got out of work. She seems nice enough, and not at all messy. This may be because she's brought next to nothing with her. She said that all she does is eat and sleep. Aside from chatting online and randomly browsing the Internet, she appears to be telling the truth. But I'm not around for most of the day, so it's hard to really say. She's actually sleeping as I type this, though...it's difficult to function in a relatively dim room in as close to silence as I can manage.

The thing that's been on my mind lately is the difficulty of game mechanics. In working with my info lit team, it has become abundantly clear to me that many game development students, and to my dismay a fair share of designers, do not understand how to inject both creativity and purpose into mechanics. I have run into a group that I never hoped to encounter. Not only do they not leap at the chance to brainstorm, they prefer to argue with the constraints that would leave the inventive designer enough room to be creative without so much free reign that the ideas run rampant. Just in listening to them, I've lost sight of my own concept that started the project. That is a scary thing indeed. The worst of it is that they've reduced the game to mediocre and over-used puzzle mechanics, like mazes with obstacles that can only be moved once and simple memory games. Booooring! I didn't realize just how spoiled I'd been with the great team members I've had over the course of the last school year. =)

On a similar note, I've been struggling to come up with some nifty new mechanics of my own. Amanda pointed me to a pretty neat resource for some rather ingenious and visually appealing (in some cases) games. These are apparently the kinds of games she hopes will come out of the senior team project classes next year. I feel a strong desire to hold onto the amazing ideas I've been generating with Wes, but at the same time I see where she's coming from - these games are pretty cool in their own right, they have low production costs, and they were able to get the attention of IGF. I've just discovered that my roommate snores...

After the busyness of this week, I'm quite glad that I have this weekend off. It will be one of few, which means I'll treasure it all the more.