A Language Tangent and a Subscriptions Budget

The weekend is off to a slow but steady start. Last night, I watched an Ang Lee movie entitled Lust, Caution. Everyone I know says that Chinese would be too difficult to learn or too hard to speak or that it's just plain ugly compared to similar Asian languages, especially when sung, but after watching the film, I think I disagree. In all fairness, the lead actress had a relatively soft and low voice, but her speech and singing alike were beautiful to me. It was interesting to see a portrayal of a Japanese tea house in one of the scenes, because I have often been impressed with the idea that Japanese culture is so much more graceful and peaceful - here, it was quite the opposite.

It was also strange to realize what few parts of the Chinese language are still drifting around in my head: wo (I/me), ni (you), ta (he/she, distinguished by the written character but pronounced the same), men (pluralizing suffix), shi (verb to be), bu (negative), ma (question), and of all things, gege (older brother) and didi (younger brother). I don't even have any brothers, so I've no idea why those stuck. There's also xiexie (Thank you), ni hao (Hello), and zaijian (Goodbye) for actual phrases, as well as meiguo (America) and zhongguo (China).

From every language I've been exposed to, there's one sentence or phrase that I keep in my head. For French: Je ne comprends pas. Parlez-vous anglais? (I don't understand. Do you speak English?) For Spanish: Hola. Como te llamas? (Hi. What's your name?) For Japanese: Ima, nanji desu ka? (What time is it right now?) For Latin: Semper ubi sub ubi (Gibberish that sounds like you're saying "Always wear underwear" when translated aloud). For German: Volkswagon (No translation needed, but they just say it funny). For Russian: da (yes). And Chinese: Wo shi meiguo ren. Ni shi bu shi zhongguo ren? (I'm American. Are you Chinese?) I'm not sure why these sentences have been tucked into my mind. Logically, they should all have to do with asking for help or getting the other person to speak my language in one way or another, but clearly it hasn't worked out that way. Some are from languages I never formally studied. Some are from encounters from people living in the culture from which the language comes. All have strong memories, both good and bad.

Today, I have been at work since the relative start of my day. I've spent the majority of my time attempting to come up with scenarios for Amanda's game. It's harder than you'd think to come up with situations for teens to ponder that would expose them to cultural or class differences without delving too far into morals. In essence, it is hard to create questions that do not have one right answer, at least on the count of 100. I will nevertheless persevere, because I am honored that Amanda asked me, and more so with each day. She truly is an admirable game developer, if only she would show it more often. I saw her yesterday with the board game Trouble tucked under her arm. Today, she told me that she had taken out the cardboard bottom to the game and redesigned it to be a game about oil use and how it effects the world. She's going to get it printed on cardboard soon, and I hope to see it when she's done. I'd never think to do something like that. I hope I'll be that smart in another 10-20 years.

The rest of the day will most likely be devoted to games and movies - ha! I hope to sneak in some reading outside before the clouds and dusk chase the sun away, but if I don't, I have a game that Amanda gave me for inspiration sitting on the desk beside me, I still need to finish playing the Myst series, and I just signed up for a Netflix account so I won't keep buying movies that I don't particularly want to see again. There's apparently an option to instantly watch movies on your computer in addition to those you receive in the mail: that's my kind of plan. I suspect this subscription, along with my music and video game ones, will take up my recreational budget for the summer. Fortunately, I should have a beta to try out in a month rather than paying for an MMO on top of this. Assuming no one drags me downtown for food too often, I think I have a solid basis for enjoying my months off from school to the fullest.

Morning Meeting

This morning, I had the pleasure of meeting Vance Wallace, a designer who has worked on the Lara Croft series and knows the Rockstar creators of GTA. With a background in acting and directing before his five year foray into game development, he seemed quite animated, even though he'd just flown in from California, and 10 in the morning was admittedly not his style when it felt like 7 AM. While my advisor Amanda was attempting to get access to the presentation room and make sure everything was set up, we had the chance to talk - it was interesting to discuss how No More Heroes actually has intelligent battle mechanics that may appear hack-n-slash oriented to the untrained eye, and how Mario Kart has finally begun to lose appeal beyond its purpose as a party game.

Vance was here to apply for the level design teaching position for the fall. He had been asked to give a mock presentation, and it was Amanda's intention to see how he handles himself in front of a crowd. Unfortunately, there was no crowd. It was just me and Amanda. Oh well.

His presentation was both humorous and informative. His first slide had nothing but his name in green on it, and he then opened up by saying that "Limes make everything taste better" as he switched to a slide of limes. At first this seemed completely irrelevant to the rest of the conversation, but he eventually looped back around to it, citing the fact that he had displayed his name in green as an obscure form of foreshadowing to the fact that he was going to say something about limes. The ensuing discussion of how to actually create foreshadowing of game mechanics was quite fascinating, though necessarily brief. If he makes his way back here, this will be a guy I'd like to learn from.

I felt enlightened by more than just the words and content of his presentation. It's becoming more and more apparent to me that I haven't been flexing my design muscles. If things keep going the way they've been going, I'll be pretty weak coming out of the gate in a year. Design is a complicated beast with so many components to take into consideration. They're components that I love, but I have not devoted enough time to them. Excuse me while I retreat into the murky hollows of my mind and attempt to reemerge with something more spectacular to my own pessimistic eye.

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.

Welcome to Work

I haven't really kicked up with all of my summer projects, but enough of them have been starting to get off the ground for me to feel busy. Today, my info lit team started working without me. I have to say, they're off to a surprisingly rough start. They're already getting caught up in one idea at a time without leaping around in the chaos that I've come to expect from the people I brainstorm with. It was terribly frustrating for me to be sitting at a desk across campus trying to make them understand what I meant by moving on from an idea and making conceptual popcorn. I was much more explicit with them than that, it was just a nice visual in my mind.

My three jobs at the library are taking up a few less hours than I thought they were going to, which is not as good for my wallet as it is for my mental health, but I'd say that's more than a fair trade. While I was watching the desk at the library today, I wound up corresponding with my team, attempting to start laying out plans for the project as a whole for the summer, brainstorming key points and phrases for the paper that Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen and I will be writing this summer if our proposal is accepted, and talking to my academic advisor Amanda about the work I'll be doing for her within at least the next 5 weeks. I'll be meeting with her tomorrow night to go over the details, so I hope it turns out to be a good move on my part.

She and my boss Marie at the library started talking about me while I was sitting at the desk as well. It was a little strange to hear them discuss keeping me at the college for longer than the next year when I was right there listening, but it was also interesting to see that they had completely different ideas. Marie thinks that the only way I'll stick around is if they offer a graduate degree I can invest in, and that I'll take off after that. Amanda wasn't clear about how she wanted me to stick around, but she questioned whether or not I'd really want a graduate degree from Champlain in a separate but related field after Marie had left. I don't know what I want to do with my life at this time next year, and I said as much. I was surprised to hear her say that she thought it was absolutely wonderful that I'm just being me and doing what I do.

It's funny though, because I've been a bit torn over work lately. I love doing things that help other people. I also love doing things that other people working with me are excited about. I've gotten plenty of recognition for this work as well. But lately, it seems like I become a bit of an afterthought once the hours of operation are over. When people approach me, it's often to talk about projects or experiences; it's hardly ever to just ask how I'm doing or to invite me to participate in something. All of my friends in the dorm with the exception of one or two, and including my boyfriend, went for the first summer walk by the lake tonight. I don't think anyone considered walking a few feet down the hall and asking me to join.

Sometimes, being so close to other people just makes things even worse when they still don't acknowledge that you're there. But to end on a more positive note, it really makes me appreciate the people that do bother to check in with me, whether they're up a floor, or in the next town, or in a state over.