As I’m sitting here in my cube, two unfamiliar faces walk in. One is a local guy, who knows me but I do not know; we introduce ourselves. The other is, I am informed, the new Producer from corporate for our project. I only mention this because their behavior in the moments that follow is so striking to me. I’ve been in the games industry for seven years now, and over and over this moment occurs. Here’s the setup:

• We are all People of Importance. That is to say, leads, or producers. Folks with Influence.
• We have not met before.
• We are engaged in our normal work-a-day existence. Say:

• I am sitting at my desk, typing away.

• You are being given a tour of a new office, chatting away with your tourguide, who is also a Person of Importance.

In this situation, several things happen right off the bat:

• “Hi, I’m the producer on [insert project name].” “Oh, hey there. I’m the lead designer on your project!” [smiles, handshakes]
• We all know that we would do well to know one another. This is clear from the moment the titles are exchanged.
• And, suddenly, we have nothing else to talk about. I mean, we hardly know each other, weren’t prepared to meet & discuss anything, etc.
• But, we’re not quite ready to bail on the opportunity to get to know another Person of Importance.

What happens next is the strangest thing: the human urge to connect and make an impression on someone that we know will be important in our future kicks in, and you strike up a conversation with the person that you do know (in this case, your tourguide), right in front of the person you just met. And you pick a topic that hopefully will be of interest to your new acquaintence.

The scenario progresses as follows:

• I sit and listen. I’m learning things about you (and your tourguide), and as you are a Person of Importance, I want all the data I can get on you, and thus am more than willing to do this. Happy to, in fact.
• You, thus, have an interested audience, which makes the conversation you are having with the other guy easy to have.
• It works really well. For about thirty seconds.
• Then, the strangeness of having a conversation with 2/3rds of your group kicks in, and the conversation swoops to a swift close, and with semi-embarassed grins on their faces that they indulged in this strange “talking in front of someone you just met” behavior, everyone breaks.
• “Nice to meet you!” “Really great! See ya around!” [ more handshakes ]
• Everyone leaves happy.

This has happened to me, oh, let’s see here, maybe 50 times over the course of my career? The exact same process. It fascinates me, these human behaviors that emerge 100% of the time that we are often completely unaware of.

Sunday brought me to Gotham. I must tell you that I am already a Christian Bale fan, having devoted myself to the pursuit of his work some time ago. Even so, I think I can say that Batman Returns is a gift from the gods. Save for about 5% of the film which is a little off, the goddamn thing is easily the best envisioning of Batman since Miller took his turn at the wheel.

This, however, is not news. Lots of folks have expressed their admiration of this turn of the tale. Here’s a review that sums up exactly how I feel about the film, to spare me the typing. I want to share a startling event that occured as the credits were rolling.

My kids & I & the buddy with whom I was enjoying the film with were throwing “That was AWESOME!”s back and forth at each other, as you do. One of my kids quipped, “I can’t WAIT for the second movie!” The other kid remarked, “I wonder who they’ll get to be the JOKER!” I stared at them, suprised, perhaps disbelieving. Second movie? Could they… not know?

That film was already made, wasn’t it? You remember, Jack Motherfucking Nicholson? I mean, this was the fourth film in an already established franchise, wasn’t it?

…wasn’t it?

Uh…

Batman (1989)

Directed by Tim Burton

1989. The film that I was imagining was the natural follower to Batman Begins was made 16 years ago. My children, who had so startled me by acting as if this film had not existed, had not, in fact, been born when it was released theatrically.

Dig further:

Batman Forever (1995)

Directed by Joel Schumacher

This horrendous nightmare (that we all wish we could forget), the most recent Batman film, was released in 1995. Ten years ago.

Slow to the punch, I. Late to the party.

In conclusion, I have determined that The Kids Are Right, and Batman Returns is actually the first Batman movie of a new franchise. Apparently starring Christian Bale. Which, god knows, is the way I would want things to have been arranged. I intend to enjoy it.

This weekend brought about what I can only describe as a gaming explosion.

I play Warhammer, and I have come far enough in the development of my sense of self that I can admit this even to beautiful women who dress in business casual and have to have the use of the word “gaming” defined for them in this context.

[ aside: ]
I believe folks of this sort often think I mean I’m a gambler when the subject comes up. They are at the same moment relieved and curious (like, side-show-carney curious) when they discover that this is not the case, and that we are talking about some kind of exotic gaming ritual, where people get together with the explicit intention of having fun for no purpose whatsoever. It baffles some.
[ end aside ]

Anyway, what was I talking about. Oh yeah! Warhammer.

Some folken know that I play. These “friends” (as I call them) often spread this insidious rumor that I’ll play anywhere, anytime. This is not true. I’ll play anywhere, anytime, as long as my wife has not already scheduled something for us. And, hey, just let me know, and maybe I can work something out.

So what happened was this: I was assigned to a team that, unbeknownst to me, was full of Warhammer geeks. As is turned out, no one knew that the team was aware of the latent geek potential in this group, and my arrival… well, it kinda sparked a freakin’ campaign. They could smell it on me, I swear. “Dude, he’ll run a campaign. Let’s get him spun up on it.”

Fast forward to Saturday.

4pm: My 1 opponent arrives at my house, army in tow.

For those not in the know, Warhammer campaigns are played in campaign turns. My weak understanding of sports makes me think that these campaigns are structured kindof like a season of Baseball: everyone’s competing for 1st place, but it’s much more about attrition over the long run than it is about any one scheduled game. But, like baseball, you get yourself into these games where you have to win.

Anyway.

I have a table in my studio, a 4′x8′ monstrosity that doubles as my wife’s fabric cutting table. I had divided this table into two game tables, each 4′x4′, allowing 2 games to be played at once. I had no idea how many people would show, and in fact had been wondering if I would end up making trees all night.

Pssh.

8 players at its peak. 7 1/2 hours of Warhammer gaming madness. 5 games played (I won mine, thank you very much, even if I did cheese the victory a tad). 26 beers drunk, and a gabble of chips consumed. 3 beers spilled. 4 rules fights, all of which Matt won (damn him!). 3 trees broken. 1 unbelievable Chariot Overrun, where our requisite n00b player of the campaign smashed his chariot through 1… 2… 3 units, an event long theorized as possible, but never actually witnessed. This on his second turn of play ever. To quote Miagi, “Beginner… luck.”

Folks wandered out at around 11:30pm, leaving me in kind of a dizzy haze. My gaming has been full of fits and spurts since we moved to the Bay Area, as I left most of gaming friends behind in Seattle. It was the densest game night of the past six years. To which I say, w00t!

p.s. And, on Sunday, I played Champions for four hours. It’s good to be a geek.

I have arrived at my new home away from home, and it is… good, I think.

I was ushered into a new, spiffy cubicle yesterday morning. The walls of this new habitrail contraption are higher than the last cube I had, which is a cube upgrade of sorts; now the only person who I can see as they are walking by is the 6’10″ Tower of Denmark who is my director.

Now, I am tall. I’m just under 6’1″, which puts me just inside that elite class of folks who can scan a crowd while within it. Western civilization is a fine place to be a tall man, they say, and I have seen nothing to contradict this appraisal. However, it also puts tall people into a state of mind that I can describe as “I’m taller than you.”

Thus, when some giant appears, and suddenly my head is tilting back instead of forward when I look at this guy… it’s a little disorienting. And, as a tall guy, I don’t have any communication patterns that apply to people who are taller than me (because, see, I’m taller than you), and so I end up using tall guy body language, only up instead of down…

I’m going to fall on my ass during a meeting, is what’s going to happen. So it goes.

My new gig is made all the better by the presence of several old and dear friends. It’s actually kinda strange, working with the same people I was working with in the other place, but in a completely different environment. It honestly feels like I accidentally stepped through one of those blue, glowing rifts in reality, and have emerged in some alternate universe where I work at a slight different game company and everyone’s roles have been shifted around haphazardly.

I like it.

If there is one thing that I have found to be consistently true about me, it’s that getting me to do anything consistently is a chore. Take blogging, for instance. At the slightest disruption (you know, leaving one job for another, little things), my routine is OTFW: Out The Fucking Window. Routine and I have a passing relationship at best already; adding OTFW to the equation… well, let’s just say it doesn’t make things improve.

This isn’t always a bad thing. For example, my brief hiatus over the past week has brought forth evidence that there are people out there (actual human beings) who reading this skree. I was astonished and humbled at this. Hello there, Dear Reader, whoever you are.

It’s a little bit like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (an absolutley marvelous play with a not-so-marvelous movie attached to it); here I was, lingering in my own secret backstage null-zone, blabbing away, only to find that the audience had crept in. Very strange.

Anway. That’s neither here nor there.

I posted a while back about text adventures (and will do so again! I cannot be stopped!), and got some interesting responses. Here’s one, from one of my eloquent friends:

So, I finished Spider and Web. It was surprisingly addictive (I got it the same day I got God of War, and yet I still haven’t played God of War,because I wanted to finish this). [ ed. note: If you haven't already, go play God of War. Right now. Put down the keyboard, and just walk away. ]

In the end, I only had to look at the walkthrough once to [ put a big spoiler in my email. ] Admittedly, I got lucky with the “Big Puzzle” – I knew that my [ spoiler ] was being brought to the [ spoiler ], so I decided to hook the [ big spoiler ] up to the [ shhhhh ] so I could [ I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you ]. Imagine my surprise when I [ spoiler'ed ], only to have [ I ain't telling you the rest ].

Anyhow, despite all my obsessive playing, I’m not entirely sure that I *enjoyed* it. There’s just this element of frustration (punctuated by brief periods of Aha! pleasure) that seems endemic to the genre. To be fair, this game had some of the most logical and least arbitrary puzzles I’ve seen, but it still felt like you are playing the game in shackles, looking at everything through a keyhole, if you know what I mean.

This is exactly what I was hoping would be clear. Let’s read that again.

To be fair, this game had some of the most logical and least arbitrary puzzles I’ve seen,

Word. And, the point that I’m trying to make is that illogical and arbitrary puzzles have nothing to do with the genre of text adventures. They have to do with the fact that text adventures were last developed at a time when all video games suffered from illogical and arbitrary puzzles (that would be the late 80′s). Every single one. I don’t know if you remember, but think back. Finishing a game at all didn’t used to be a testament of stamina, but was instead an indicator that you either a) were a frickin’ genius, or b) you asked someone how to do it.

The corollary to this point is very simple:

Applying contemporary game design principles to the text adventure genre would completely transform genre into something pleasureable and unique. This is long-overdue; too long have text-adventure aficionados mimicked the ancient mistakes of the old masters. They didn’t know any better, guys, and they aren’t making games in that way any more. Neither should you.

My friend continues:

It’s a tough balance. Either you severely restrict what the user can do/see,in which case the user feels constrained, or you give the user lots of freedom in which case the puzzles get really hard because there are just too many possible solutions.

No, no, see, this is what we’ve started to figure out in game design of late. What you do is you give the player many things to do in your interactive world, which generates immersion. You insure that only a few of these things to do will permute your puzzle space (it’s safe to be able to move items around, but it’s dangerous to be able to flood the whole complex). Then, you make the solution(s) to any puzzles you put in front of the player clear, but challenging. That is to say, it should be clear what you have to do, and the how should require some kind of mental dexterity (and require few, if any, short mental leaps. Long mental leaps are excluded entirely).

The best text adventure puzzles are built this way, and are deeply satisfying to complete. Say it stronger: the best games are built this way.

There is a list of items about 10,000 long that text adventures need to blow through to come up to speed. They include things like checkpoints, a “main menu”, clear help systems, clear reward / scoring / objective systems, tutorials…

Simple enough to think about. More complicated to do.

But, it’s text. It can be done.

I’m glad I played the game, though – it’s definitely memorable. Thanks for turning me on to it.

You’re welcome.