Infinite Lives

It isn’t often that games journalism fills me with warm fuzzies—and, well, almost nothing I read ever fills me with warm fuzzies—but the latest installment of Game Time with Mister Raroo has supplied me with a nice, comfortable, soft feeling. I think this is the exact feeling most toilet paper commercials attempt to inspire artificially, and with limited results.

In his most recent column, “Cross-Platform Lovers: How To Cope When Your Girl Isn’t A Gamer,” devoted family man Mister Raroo (it’s probably a pen name) offers sound, sage advice in balancing one’s hobbies with home and hearth. Apart from its being legitimately helpful, the whole blarticle is confident, sweet, and adoring, a little love letter to the Raroo family.

And while the column itself is certainly earnest, it’s written with the endless charm and gay lilt of a midcentury instruction manual. (Also: the endearingly illustrative line drawings, which bolster the article each step of the way, were inked by Missus Raroo herself.)

Here is an especially tender excerpt:

Still, Missus Raroo is very supportive of my hobby. For instance, she buys me games as gifts for Christmas and my birthday, asks questions about whatever games I happen to be wrapped up with at any given moment, assists with the editing my articles and their illustrations, and even occasionally takes the time to pen an article or two herself. In short, Missus Raroo is the best pal a gamer could wish for.

This wouldn’t be the case, however, if I wasn’t thoughtful in how I incorporated video games into my life. While no two relationships are the same, hopefully some of the ways I’ve learned to balance video games with the other loves of my life will help other gamers who are in the same boat as me. Just because one’s significant other doesn’t share a passion for video games, it’s still very possible for the relationship to be strong and healthy.

Oddly and eerily, and immediately before I stumbled across Mister Raroo’s column, I was inexplicably rereading this post at the Game Widows book blog, and it had left me feeling sour.

As a point/counterpoint, the two in concert are incredibly interesting; Mister Raroo’s column matches the pace of the Game Widow post step-for-step, but with a gentleness that cannot be outdone.

• GameSetWatch – Game Time with Mr. Raroo – Cross-Platform Lovers: How to Cope When Your Girl Isn’t a Gamer

A few days ago, Jeff Grubb tweeted that Petri Purho’s just-released Crayon Physics Deluxe was, at that moment, the subject of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” I am an admirer of National Public Radio, so of course I tweeted back, and soon after, Alex Litel saved the day with a link to the audio. Team effort! Good hustle, everybody!

In the video, Petri demonstrates the wicked-cool tablet PC version of Crayon Physics Deluxe. He also demonstrated the tablet PC software at the Bay Area Maker Faire this summer.

I just adore Petri. He interviews so well, I think, because he has such boundless graciousness. This exchange happened:

“But it does seem like you’re sort of standing that tradition [of big budget, blockbuster video and computer games] on its end, a bit, no?”

“Yeah—and I don’t think I’m the only one. There’s been a lot of really small games that have come out in the recent years, like World of Goo and Braid and Aquaria. And these are small games usually made by one or two people…”

I loved that Petri was able to describe indie game design in a way my mom could understand.

I did learn one new thing from the woefully short (five minutes!) interview: as I’ve always suspected, the children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon inspired the game.

• NPR – Computer Game A Mash-Up Of Crayons, Physics

Now that my readership has appropriately flatlined, I am permitted to publish the second in a three-part series of journal entries about my quest to create the perfect avatar. In part I, we talked about caricature, and I obnoxiously examined what makes my own face distinctive. Now, we examine what, exactly, makes cartooning effective. Here’s a hint: HAIR.

Seeing in the Abstract

Let’s talk cartooning.

In his wonderful work of literary and visual criticism, Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud explains (emphases his):

...I’m going to examine cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification.

When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential “meaning,” an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.

How do cartooning, caricature, and avatars relate to videogames in a broader sense? The key, I think, is iconography. Take a look at Character Design for Mobile Devices, wherein realistic character design and artistry are pared down to their simplest and most fundamental pixels.

“How did you feel,” 1UP editor James Mielke asked Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano, “about seeing your elaborate illustrations transformed into such tiny sprites?”

Amano replied with an elegant description that could be applied to any type of icon. ”...Back then, ...my art couldn’t just go into the game without major adjustments,” he explained. “So I looked at the sprites as just a symbol of my art. Here’s an example: when you say ‘Mount Fuji’ and you make a motion like this”—here, Amano makes a peak sign with his fingers—“everybody knows what Mount Fuji looks like, so they get the mental image in their head. So I was in charge of making the master art piece that people would keep in their mind, and people would remember this art because of these symbols in the game.”

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Know what got shut down yesterday?

Waterford Crystal. I saw it on the Associated Press newswire. I said to my mom, “Oh, man, hang on to those glass vases or whatever, because it’s all over for Waterford.” I mean, Waterford Wedgewood is only bankrupt, but you know what that means.

Mom and I were at dinner, still talking about Waterford vases and Wedgewood dishware, when Chuf’s roommate—why am I calling him Chuf now?—IM’d me. My phone buzzed; I spent the rest of dinner staring at it.

If you don’t know what I’m getting at, please catch up. If you don’t feel any sense of loss or regret right now, this isn’t for you; come back later. Or, if you want to hear from someone who actually suffered real loss today, that’s over here. Or all over 1UP.com. Take your pick.

Or maybe you’re looking for something really articulate. You won’t find it here.

Right now, on a popular games message board somewhere in the dark recesses of the Internet, people are posting direct download links to, and torrents for, complete collections of audio and video files, and to screenshots of EGM cover scans. The idea is to hoard them, the same way I hoarded Circus Animal cookies in August after Mother’s shuttered its factory. I went to the convenience store, looked at the bags, counted my cash, tried to Collect Them All.

My mom knows a lot of people in that office on Second Street, by the way. She’d periodically come to San Francisco, intending to ruin my life for a week at a time, and she’d start by killing my credibility in the office (thanks for the help). She’d take a cab directly to the building; she’d bring her rolling luggage right to my desk.

“Stay here,” I said to her once, putting her in my desk chair. “Play Solitaire. Here,” and then I pushed the mouse toward her, “I am giving you Solitaire.”

Other parents play Guitar Hero. Why can’t my mom play Guitar Hero?

“Where are you going? Can’t you leave work yet?” my mom wanted to know. Her rolling luggage was now in Alice Liang’s chair.

“No, play some Solitaire,” I told her. “I have to record a podcast.”

My mother looked at me sidelong. “Wearing that?” she scoffed.

Oh, my God.

Later that night, Sam Kennedy said—I think only teasingly—“Your mom has no idea what you do for a living, does she.” I laughed. I was heartbroken.

My mom is affable, and she has the best of intentions, but what she loved about my job was a magazine to put on the kitchen table, with a byline to show off to visitors. She is 77 years old. She is a willing patron, but she has no idea what you do for a living, does she.

My mom is the Betty White of corporations.

My mom reminds me, with a sigh, “Look. You need money to do what you want.” That’s true. I get that. It’s sad when you run out of money.

My mom wants to know how everyone is doing. My mom wants to know that everyone is safe. How is that nice young man, Sam? How is Garnett? (“He’s handsome and charming,” she once observed, “so stay away.”) Scott? Is Scott OK? Let’s just start with who is not OK. OK. So we go through secondhand lists of names, and she is filled with worry, even though she isn’t sure what’s going on. Me neither.

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