Which I did at the Develop Conference in Brighton last week. Develop has an audio track – one day of audio talks. Most impact on me had Jason Graves, my new hero

I think Jason can be seen to belong to the A league of video game composing, certainly after Dead Space 1 and 2. For me he was the best speaker, no slides, just showing some actual work on his laptop. A very sure speaker, totally unpretentious, funny. Unlike his somber sounding name he is a young and … dandy fellow if I may use that word. And for some reason what he is and says inspired me. Here is why:

• He makes everything sound so simple. He is among the dozen top dogs, but he doesn’t really make it seem hard. Yes, he had 3 years of Hollywood internship, but hated it, and later got asked by an Australian company to compose music for a game. He loved it, bamm.
• The way he talks about his job, you get a basic, primal feeling that you can trust him, that you should hire him. He projects not musical wisdom, but basic virtues like love for his job, punctuality, passion and tight, reliable organisational skills.
• He has shown how he loops, and layers. There is nothing new and magic about it, and he says so itself. He just does a good job, delivering 20 tracks of stems to his client, so the client has much to choose.
• Again, the strengths he talked about were very simple and effective: He is punctual, on time. He listens really hard to what the client wants, and takes much care to make the client happy, as every rework cuts a big chunk of his money “per hour of work”.  He emphasizes that he works 9 to 5, that he works quick and efficient. He has a family with 2 kids.
• This is no high science. This is a guy blessed with some talent and a lot of charisma, who in 2001 started to do good, reliable, efficient work on game soundtracks, who is good with transmitting this mindset to potential clients, to earn the trust, get jobs (100 so far) and rise to the higher levels of our career.
• He said that he had no horror experience before EA gave him the Dead Space job. He says that people nowadays give him new jobs in other genres he is unfamiliar with because they liked how he helped Dead Space. He also commented on how he hates this mass bidding shit where 12 composers pitch stuff for free for a big game, 11 of them getting heavily exploited. Nod nod nod!

I don’t know. I agree with everything he says. And somehow I got a new perspective. Or it just makes me think. I had a big problem with working all the time recently, I try to adjust to a different system of mind, of work/life balance.

To work on charakter, reputation and mindset, to work on a tight organisation and a regular routine, and to let all that shine through – maybe as important or even more important than the music skills.  I don’t know, all I can say is that at this point I really needed to meet a Yoda to reflect on myself. Thanks Jason, hope to stay in touch.

Especially the clue searching parts. Interrogations got better, but still sometimes too hard. Depending on the witness. Chases on foot are insane, I feel my character is out of shape compared to what the developers expected. Without the radar, no way in hell could I catch a fleeing suspect. You sometimes see 0.5 to 2 seconds of them before they are out of sight. If you happen to have your camera not manually pointing in the right direction, no chance in hell. 90% of the time I run towards the red dot on my radar and try to figure out where they jumped or climbed or whatever…  My first chase I needed to try like 6 times…

I am at my 3rd real case, these are small, quite simple. More Derrick than Agatha Christie or Bulle von Tölz. Somebody should do the exact same game without the shooter elements, and with harder non-linear cases (like Poirot novels), with more cases as DLC… That would be awesome. I read 50 Poirot books. Imagine a great looking game, where you buy DLC like you buy a new crime novel, same characters and graphics, but new case, new suspects, new murderer… That would be insane and a gold mine. I would buy 50 of that, too. It’s all about the cases, the suspense, and the solution after all.

Maybe they get more sophisticated. So far I solved the cases much faster than the game expected me to. And I am not too bright, I am just used to Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.

Still, I stick to my motto, to take a game as it is, and therefore, with the aforementioned squinting, I enjoy a stylish game. But I can never suppress my imagination running wild when I play a good game, I always come up with a dozen things to make it better (in my personal opinion). Is this a modern disease? It is easy to find music or art which is “perfect” and “divine”. But it is extremely hard to find a game that is not in some aspects “stupid”, “simple”, “only a game”. Which is OK but I would prefer the games to reach out of the screen, to spin my mind, suck me in like a book, amaze me so that I forget my name or where I live.

- has around 950 hours of his show online

- estimated 1850 episodes

- that are all (still) available all the way back to 1999

- viewable by non-Americans (!)

- without advertising (!!)

As seen on http://www.thedailyshow.com/videos . OK, you need to click each chunk of a show. OK, some things are dated because it’s very contemporary. But that means it’s also very much history! The mindset of the US TV landscape conserved for eternity. And Jon Stewart is a charming funny host. I admit, the older episodes are not as brilliant as the newer ones, which often are sarcastic entertainment art. Still very enjoyable!

This beats all of my podcasts in sheer hour power. Compare it to Conan o’Brian, who allowed non-US viewers to see a few episodes for 1 week! Now I can see snippets of 1 show or so. Or I need to seriously hack myself into seeing full episodes at snail speed. Look at Bill Maher, a few outtakes. This pains me more than it entertains me. Or even Howard Stern at SiriusXM: SirusXM want $12.95 a month to hear his show, and you cannot even choose a country other than USA when you try to order. You need a US credit card. To order their WEB ACCESS. Because the internet is in America, stupid.

I guess it’s because I clicked on a fake twitter notification mail a few days ago. Be careful with that shit! Let me tell you what happened, and as I do so, imagine how a total PC beginner would have felt!! (I on the other hand use computers since 1984 and have worked 10 years in IT, and even I was stunned).

It started with popups that my hard disk is damaged. Reboot necessary. I found that highly suspicious. Why a reboot if my hard disk is broken? Makes no sense. If you ever get any of those, google the message BEFORE you do anything. I did. I found, that a series of Malwares use those error messages. What they in my case are trying to do is scare you into buying a software.  If you click away any of those messages, a fake software called “Windows Diagnostics” comes up, looking really convincing I must add:

Very well done fake!

Your PC is burning. Please fill water into your disk tray.

Here is the thread about it I found at BleepingComputer.com. Those guys are excellent. Complete step by step solution.

Anyway, “Windows Diagnostics” malware already started to take action. Opening of programs was blocked. More random windows errors. So I hit CTRL ALT DELETE and… the task manager was gone too! At that point I started to get nervous. My virus scanner was gone too (without any fight by the way). The malware also fakes problems with your folders’ contents, removes entries from your start menu… What the…

I followed the commands of the thread. Rkill closed the malware, my task manager was accessible again and my breathing returned to normal. Now as the link mentioned I downloaded the awesome software Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.. It checked my hard disk for 3 hours, then removed every trace of the Malware. I want to marry it.

If you are still unimpressed, there is another scare for you. I don’t have to tell you how many deaths a novice user would have died already – harddisk crash, PC acts weird, I can’t open programs anymore, some start menu entries missing…

Now after the reboot, I find desktop empty, start menu almost empty and my hard disks containing 0 files. Good scare, beats 10 cups of coffee. But I was clever enough to realise that this was still the “virus” speaking. That fucker has set my entire hard disk’s content to hidden.

Again Google helped me out. After some wild goose chases (I thought ownership trouble, wrong account or permissions etc.) I simply used a DOS prompt and the command Attrib to set all files to not hidden.

Again: BleepingComputer.com helped me 100% for free, privided RKill for free, and I could completely remove everything for free with MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. I am happy that other companies work the karmic way I do, so I followed through and bought their software for under 20 Bucks. Now I am Malware protected.

I USED to give a fuck’s damn about spyware and shit. My last spyware killer messed up my 80€ Norton Antivirus (now on my never-buy-again-list) in a way that it never worked again. My mails to support have not been answered, but it has only been a few years since then. But then I saw her face, now I’m a believer! So PLEASE install MalwareBytes Anti-Malware now for free or <$20. With all the spam and fake and shit on Twitter and Facebook we can all use it.

And NEVER click on those fake emails “you have 3 facebook notifications” or so. If you get one, always go to FAcebook or Twitter directly, don’t click the link. I have spend 2 secs on that scam page! And as far as I know, that was all I have done recently to deserve this.

Don’t know how I can pay back BleepingComputer for their help in need. But I will figure something out. Maybe a thankful blog post?

So I just bought their full range. And you should too!

Bookworm (find English words in a cluster of letters) $0.99
Peggle (world-famous chance/skill based inverted breakout) $0.99
Plants vs. Zombies (the title says it all) $0.99
Bejeweled 2 (again very successful match 3 game) $0.99
Escape Rosecliff Island (Hidden Objects) $0.99
Chuzzle (Match 3) $0.99

All links take you to the Appstore.

I guess for most people, the name Champions means nothing. But for me it is my personal roleplaying game. For many years, pen & paper roleplaying was my main thing. Of the 15 games I own, still own, hidden in my basement, Champions is the only one I guess which I discovered myself, no recommendation, and which I promoted and defended for years, without ever meeting somebody else who liked that game independent from my doing. Rolemaster was my other pet roleplaying game, but I met totally independent groups of Rolemaster player several times. Champions was my thing.

Champions Online cost nothing to play now, but is a 3.3 GB (slow) download. Last night after work, I saw the download had finished on my laptop, so I clicked install: And a few default characters from the Champions books were shown: Defender, Dr. Destroyer… And now I realised, they really made Champions into a MMO. I did not expect any connection at all. But they took look and feel, the setting, some characters, the stats…  Maybe not much, but so nostalgic for me. This feels like they made your favorite movie into a game, a movie which you discovered by yourself and nobody you ever met had heard of.

I have like 30 books or so of Champions or the Hero System to which it belongs, the main book is totally worn, almost all pages loose. This morning shortly before I checked out Champions Online for an hour, I took a massive bunch of paper out of my roleplaying box: Old Champions characters. *good times*

The game looks great, cel-shaded, very good modeling: try the muscle fader or body mass fader during character generation. Your Sims or Guitar Hero will not allow you to make 400 pound fat guys in skintight suits. Capes wave in the wind, light effects, you can change your facial expression or favorite stance.

Of course, nothing can be as wild and free as the character generation in the real pen & paper Champions (where you can simulate with the rules any wild idea you might have). So, no I cannot time travel, turn enemies into cardboard boxes, shoot magic fruit or transform enemies into any item I can think of. It’s a goddamn computer game. BUT, the 10 archetypes feel OK, especially beast and monster types. I don’t know why we need 2 of 10 classes who just use guns. There is destroyable and throwable environment.

The other players in tutorial town where I obviously still am show how flexible the character generation is (obese mutants, tiny faeries, guys with robot legs, hot zombie chicks, monsters made from rock or metal or whatever) and it looks awesome.  You can customize for example two torso layers of clothing, shirt + jacket + lower coat part each separately, change form, material and inner and outer color scheme. They really got that look of the classic cartoon superhero.

I made Tony Lukado, my fav own Champions character from back in the day: A homeless-looking guy with a floppy hat (made from demon skin, the source of his power) and stobbles. And it worked quite well! I took archetype “Grimoire” = magic user which is very close to my old character (demon magic).

I can’t access the wild unbalancing powers of my old character, everything gets pushed into 10 well-balanced drawers, and you get more powers along a linear line as you level up. But, on the other hand, you might profit from other characters, you can team up. My “mage” so to speak can’t even hit somebody. I can’t make a guy that can do everything.

Disclaimer: I am a total MMO noob so I cannot make any objective comparison. I did not notice any apparent faults, on the other hand, the quests where much better than in any other fantasy MMO I checked out, and they were quite fluent, drawing you deeper in, with follow up missions, team missions, special emergency missions… I had to cut myself loose and to remember I have work to do.

So, wanna play? 3.3 GB download, no cost to play, all game except some additional content is fully available, no limited features. Drop me a line and we meet (I can play a few minutes every few months hehehe).

http://www.champions-online.com/

People root for privacy of their own data. Hate big brother 1984-like transparency. Love the Pirate Party which is all pro that. Dislike Stasi/Communist East Germany. Love Wikileaks. Hate the tax office. Like democracy and the constitutional rights we all enjoy.  And beat up snitches after school. There is a lot of Two-Face insanity hidden in there somewhere.

Let’s look at the latest data Wikileaks have received: Sensitive data about bank accounts in Switzerland. It appears they want to disclose the names of supposed tax defaulters soon.

Judging from the past, nothing will be blocked out. Everything will be public. Private information about people who may or may not have dodged taxes or broken laws. Wait a minute, you hate the guts of the IRS and “tax office should go to hell”, you hate that any big brother like thing peaks into your privacy…  And this you love? This is an invasion of privacy clusterfuck. What about any innocent ones among the list? They might lose everything (job, position, trust, business partners) and will possibly never be able to  prove their innocence. Think it through.

And how about the guilty? They have rights, even murderers get protection in a constitutional state, remember, those very rights you love and the lack of which you protest against when discovered in certain countries east of here. Not full public stripdown even before any trial! They are not even properly accused.

And I am not even starting about the list being possibly cleverly forged. Drop a few enemy names here and there, everything else is legit… It’s quite easy. You know just what will happen, if you can make a good fake and throw it at Wikileaks, they will not have any good taste or any moral regrets to smite your enemies by Select All Upload All like the seeding monkeys they are.

I have friends who have been in custody for 6 months because of wrong accusations of tax fraud. I turned out the government couldn’t find anything in those 6 months, which is the maximum time they can lock you up without a trial in Germany. They was an anonymous tip,  but they failed to find any slice of proof, nothing to even start a trial. Funny, heh? You see, anyone can accuse anybody else, and harm them. Like, well, the STASI!  Remember GDR/DDR, communist East Germany? Somehow NO-ONE thinks they were cool. But they had private persons sniffing into the affairs of others (guilty or not), putting it in neat files. At least they didn’t upload them!

Just saying. There is too much blood on the tights of this Robin Hood. Wikileaks is as elegant and reserved as a steamroller. If you need to upload info, why can’t you block out the information that might be hurting innocents? Or possible innocents? Or even kick the rights of suspects. Isn’t that kinda dictatorshiply? Why don’t they give the names to the police and upload everything removing ANY Names. This is as interesting to read, and does not harm anybody without a proper trial. Just saying.

Now, I will close all browsers, work on my sound design here, and wait for the next headline: “Wikileaks Publishes List of Witches – Public Burning Scheduled For Saturday”.

http://knightsofsoundtrack.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/looking-back-at-2010-time-for-statistics/