I love awards shows. The awards themselves don’t matter, but the shows are generally entertaining and inspiring. George Clooney put it best:

For the record: If you are in this room, you’ve caught the brass ring. You get to do what you’ve always dreamed to do and be celebrated for it, and that just… it ain’t losing. I don’t remember what awards Lauren Bacall won. I just remember her saying, ‘You know how to whistle, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.’ And I have no idea what kind of hardware Robin Williams took home. But I sure remember “carpe diem” and, ‘Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.’ I never forget that.

He described exactly what awards shows mean to me. Recognizing newly iconic pieces of acting, writing, cinematography, music, directing, etc. Though I had only seen a handful of films last year, maybe only two nominees, Clooney’s speech connected the dots and reminded me why I was watching. Needless to say, I was enjoying the show.

Then, during a latter commercial break, a little monster appeared on screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmQvc6tB1o

A fire ignited. I was watching something play out on television that had been living in my head for the past five years. That fucking monster… that fucking idea ruined the Golden Globes!

Years ago, I had an idea for a story. A little creature has found itself alone in the “real-world”. Frustrated, I dug up my unfinished idea, last modified on 10/4/10, and posted it to Twitter:

He awoke to a light. This warmth was unfamiliar to him. As he sat up, he peered down at his hands. He had never seen them before. They seemed to emanate streams of dark smoke. He slowly sat up.

He began to walk. He had come to find that he was walking down a crowded sidewalk, passing shop windows. While looking through the windows, he noticed his reflexion. He stopped. He was a tiny figure, no more than four feet tall. His cartoon like body was shrouded in streams of smoke. His large eyes glowing solid red.

Nobody seemed to notice him standing there, staring into the glass. Nobody seemed to notice him at all. Hesitantly, he turned and proceeded down the busy street. As he walked, he could not help but notice every person was holding hands with another, be it man and woman, man and man, or female and female. At the end of the busy street, he came to a crosswalk. He decided to cross the street.

This street was much quieter. It was also much shorter for it was only home to one restaurant. He stopped in front of one of the large windows and gazed inside. Every table was full. At each table sat a couple laughing or smiling while sharing a bottle of wine. He hesitantly turned and continued down the street. He came to another crosswalk.

This next street was home to a playground. This playground was full of happy children, all of which seemed to be accompanied by both of their parents. The parents pushed their children on swings, threw baseballs back and forth, and played hide and seek together.

This was all becoming a little overbearing for him. He was not used to these surroundings. He was quickly growing tired of the happiness that surrounded him. He was living within a nightmare. No, he was a nightmare living within a dream.

Good or bad, finished or not, the visualization of this isolated creature, alone in the real-world, growing into something beautiful and shutting down prejudice and rejection was exactly what I wanted to depict. This was an idea I thought I could get back to at any time. It was my idea and no one was going to take it away.

Ideas can be frustrating. They are easy to push aside for another day. But if an idea is realized by someone else, it’s defeating (and can ruin the Golden Globes). Especially when it is used in a brand-beefing commercial.

Ideas are scary, but become scarier when you realize they are not sacred.

During episode 30 of the excellent Exponent podcast, Ben Thompson and James Allworth spin off into a fantastic bit about patents, copyright, and innovation. Allworth’s polarizing take should whet your appetite:

Copying each other doesn’t blunt innovation; It spurs innovation.

During a chance encounter at the 2002 Warped Tour, Geoff Rickly of Thursday offered me a single piece of advice: Never be afraid to steal. It certainly runs in-line with quotes such as “Good artists copy; Great artists steal,” and “That great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.” At the time, Rickly was an idol of mine. His words struck deep.

As previously mentioned, Zero Counts was inspired from episode 105 of The Talk Show with John Gruber, I completely redesigned Zero Counts with my first practical foray into HTML, CSS, and PHP. (Archive.org capture from 12/18/14.) In less than one years time, my writing, design, and coding skills have vastly improved, all thanks to copying Daring Fireball.

Dan Stapleton, IGN:

When Microsoft announced the Xbox One in 2013, it was going to require an always-on internet connection to function. After backlash from gamers and Sony’s gloating proclamation that the PlayStation 4 would play games just fine without the help of the internet, Microsoft backed down and dropped the requirement (except for a one-time console activation). As it turns out, Microsoft’s initial approach was more realistic about the modern reality of how games are made, and what’s effectively required in order to have a reasonably stable experience with a physical copy of a game you buy off the shelf today. Your console will indeed run without a connection, but your disc-based games may not give it much to work with.

This piece started and ended exactly how I wanted it to; picking up with Microsoft’s original (and much maligned) “always-on” strategy, and ending with today’s “always-on” gaming reality.

Ben Kuchera recently spoke with former AAA developer Keith Fuller for this tragicomic piece on the instability of recent AAA titles. In short:

This sort of thing is more common than you think, and it leads to muddled, unfinished and often buggy releases. It’s not a matter of including the kitchen sink; developers are sometimes tasked with adding a hot tub at the last second as the project develops.

Stapleton touches on the fact that patches are blessing, but I seem to remember a time when there weren’t even a reality. Maybe I’m showing nostalgic naivety, but I’m having a very difficult time recalling game-breaking bugs from the pre-PS3/Xbox 360 era. But can today’s AAA, reality-verging games truly exist in a non-patchable world?

Games are more complex than they have ever been. The benefits of more powerful hardware are simply enablers. In 30+ years, we have moved from simple sketches of fantasy to unparalleled productions that now challenge reality. Global resources are required to make today’s video games. That doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of the time and resources it takes to generate cutting-edge animations and textures in highly detailed main characters, let alone randomly generated NPCs. I imagine it’s easier to create windblown hair now than five years ago, but nothing compared to the two frames it took in 1988. Just because a console “can” doesn’t make it any easier create.

As an aside, allow this 2011 piece from Gamesradar entertain you: how I wish Microsoft would have stuck with their original strategy.

Ben Kuchera, Polygon:

What I want this story to do is to put into perspective how much money it costs to get to that point. There is no huge flood of cash here, this is four people working very hard to make a very decent livable wage in content. That $408,000 a year is a workable budget for a four-person media company, but it’s far from obscene. It’s a realistic budget for the work they’re going to be doing.

It’s also very possible that in terms of hours worked and money cleared on a per-person basis they’re making less than they made at IGN. What they’re earning is the possibility of greater success, and that success will be owned by them free and clear. That’s an amazing feeling.

A colleague of mine and I discussed many of these points moments after the news broke, of which I posted here:

As an employee of a large tech firm, I deeply understand the desire to freely speak about the industry you are a part of and the prohibitions instated. The benefit Kinda Funny Games has over other would-be media personalities is an established fanbase; however, that makes it no easier to cast aside benefits, workplace friendships, and security.

It’s scary that Kuchera felt the need to write this piece. Hard to believe that most didn’t run these numbers themselves, if just to flirt with the idea of starting their own Patreon. (Then again, Kuchera is more privy to the zeitgeist of games media than myself.)

Without a doubt, Kinda Funny will be a challenging venture; however, the opportunity to break-even creating and owning what you love is a challenge worth taking.

Griffin McElroy on the The Besties finale, time stamp 3:32:54:

Maybe music is the closest comparison but there is no other industry, there is no other media where genres are these huge barriers between… There are people who play fighting games who are categorically different than people who play RPGs. I don’t think there are as many genres an any other medium and I certainly don’t think that there’s as big a divide between those genres.

Not only that, but games by their very nature are interactive, meaning… your experience playing the game is going to be different. So by their very nature, there’s no guarantee that two critics played the same thing. I feel like those divides and those experiential differences that you have with a game are only getting bigger and bigger and bigger. That means that calling something your game of the year is completely… Of course it is because you’re the type of person who likes that type of game and you had that very specific experience playing that very specific type of thing. It just seems kind of meaningless.