Transraad Studios

Dancing in Outer Space

Here’s a preview of the fifth and final part of Five Stories From the Future, my upcoming short fiction compilation.

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At 20:00 Geosynchronous Time the panels on every planet-side observation window clicked, whirred and began to move. The thousands of adverts which hovered over each individual ten meter-tall blinder like a school of remoras blinked out of existence seconds before their hosts disappeared into their bulkhead receptacles. Those of the cleverest design didn’t simply turn off but appeared to crack, crumble apart and then whisk across the floor, crossing the half-kilometer distance to the panels shutting themselves on the opposite bulkhead.

These bits of data were the favorites of the children on Harbin Spindle, so much so that those who weren’t immediately shuttled off into their afterschool tutoring made their way to Esplanade Circuit to chase them. The elders, those closer to ten than five, huddled in little groups under the shade of the trees sharing screens and crude programs they’d cobbled together using the basic assets issued to them for educational purposes. The best among them could mess with an advert enough that the colors inverted or the audio clips became corrupted, both highly amusing to the youth programmers. The younger ones however were content to simply run after them like schools of minnows swimming through the air.

It was over one of these groups that Winston almost tripped and fell on his face.

Contrary to his own pessimistic assumptions, his old reflexes didn’t fail him. He paused in mid step, heel of his freshly polished shoes centimeters away from the burst of holographic light darting across the floor. Sure as the sun, a moment later came the children in hot pursuit. They blew past Winston, all hoots and hollers and the rasping of their baggy nylon school uniforms rubbing up against each other. No one paid any attention to the grownup in his grownup clothes with the grownup expression on his face.

He watched them for a moment. They jumped the barrier around a row of acacia trees, ignoring the brittle-voiced admonitions of the nearby trashcan robot whose job it was to sweep up and consume the leaves that caked the floor tiles. By the time it deployed and turned its cyclopean periscope eye to track their progress they were long gone. It paused for four or five seconds before retracting its camera once more and returning to its janitorial duties.

Winston walked aside off the primary thoroughfare and towards the planet-side windows. Traffic was, for once, light, with most of the station inhabitants still locked up at work and incoming travelers sparse owing to the proximity of Lunar New Year. The absence of noise pollution and the ample strolling space was in direct contrast to the crush of humanity and commercial activity that characterized most spindles under the aegis of the People’s Republic.

Seen from the observation balcony the Earth, front lit by the sun relative to the spindle’s axis, seemed to glow. Central Asia beckoned from underneath an uneven frosting of swirled cloud patterns, the northern frontiers of the People’s Republic itself just out of view near the lower right hand corner of the towering window. Winston had hoped he could catch sight of the Pacific, though he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to see the islands he wanted to anyways.

He brought up his cellular and dialed a personal call straight off the numpad, no need to access his list of contacts—this was the one number he knew by heart. The cellular recognized the region to which he was dialing and popped up a window displaying the predicted overall cost projected off currently updated telecom rates, local data tax and an averaging of the duration of calls he’d made to the same number over the past three months. It wasn’t cheap; orbital-terrestrial signals never were, and the figure highlighted in yellow gold font would be an uncomfortable bite into his already-depleted savings.

“Dial,” he said.

The call punched through. Winston imagined the errant signal racing up Harbin’s bulbous communication spindle and being fired down at the planet, but all he could see was a pair of zero-g maintenance laborers in the distance making their way across the Esplanade’s torus exterior. The boots on their boxy civilian hardsuits seemed to rise and fall in rhythm with the cellular’s smooth ringtone.

One, two, three, four rings. The fifth got cut short by a bright three-note melody, the telecom provider’s jingle.

“Xin chao, said the voice on the other end. The visual display was shut off by default.

Winston smiled at the sound. “Since when do you say hi to me in essyessy?”

“Tatang?” The visual display flickered. The black square dissolved into a profile of dark blond hair, blue-gray eyes and fair skin, though not so fair as Winston remembered it. “Dad, you freaked me out for a second. Your code was blocked and all I saw was a general Mainlander signature.”

“Huh, that’s odd. It must be a recent change,” he said, trying to recall the last time he’d had an orbital-terrestrial call interdicted. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Well at first everyone thought I was from the States, so I started going Доброе утро, как вы to everyone.”

He laughed. “Здорово, at least you look the part. But why…”

 “It was getting stale, so I changed it up. ‘Woah, bet you don’t know that I know this too!’” She grinned ear to ear; that expression alone would have been worth a four times the cost to Winston. The Earth, space and the stars all receded into the background.

“Ang yabang mo. And then you show them your SCSC passport.”

“And then I show them my SCSC passport. And photos of my dad.”

“Such a spitting image.”

He almost told her that he was happy simply to hear her voice regardless of which language it was in, but he knew she didn’t appreciate such sentimentality. When he’d finished helping her move into the campus dormitories she warned him against any “essyessy telenovela-style bathos.”

“So you’re getting a tan already or is the color correction off on my end again?” He asked.

“Are you kidding?” Her hand flashed over the display for a moment and her face disappeared, replaced by a panorama of a brilliant blue ocean abutting a crescent of white sand impacted with beachgoers. “What else am I going to do in Hawaii?”

Winston shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know; study, go to classes, study some more…”

The display turned back to her face. “Ugh, now you sound like Uncle.” She rustled through something and brought a piece of paper up in front of the display. “Can you read that? Galina Hsiang. Full-academic-scho-lar-ship.”

“You just carry that around with you everywhere you go?”

“No, of course not, but I come here straight after class so I just bring my bag with me.”

He shook his head. “It’s good to know Chem E isn’t giving you too many problems at least.”

“Never mind about me,” she said. “How goes the search?”

He started walking, he always preferred to circumambulate whenever he was on a call, it helped clear up his train of thought. “I just came out of seven straight hours of interviews, so I’m a little out of it.”

“And?” There was muffled laughter in the background behind Galina. “How did it go?”

“I heard a lot of stock phrases I’ve heard before.” He rested his hands in the pocket of his old Firm pea coat. “Verbatim.”

Galina frowned. “It’s not like you have a crappy skill set, Dad.” She paused and looked aside for a moment. “Well, depending on which skills we’re talking about here.”

“Obviously not the ones that ones that would be illegal on a Mainlander spindle, or any spindle for that matter.” He felt an unpleasant hum behind his left ear. Another call, whose number he did not recognize except that it was native to Harbin Spindle, was trying to get through to him. “Speaking of which, I have an ominous call on the other line right now.”

“Wow! Pick it up!” She waved her hand at the display. “I’ll be the one to call you next, I promise, OK?”

He cleared his throat, glancing over his shoulder to make sure there was no one spying his awkward gait walking towards the nearest bench with hands jammed into his coat. “Only if you have time, I want you to focus on your studies. до свидания.”

“Tam biet, Tatang.” She disappeared from his sight.

Passive Aggressive E-mail From Section Manager

“Hey ____,

Lately I just don’t feel like we’re getting your 100 percent. Or even your 90 percent. Now I know you’re a smart guy so I feel a little dumb telling you this in this email, but all of us here at _____ have a little something to work on in our quarterly performance. None of us are perfect, but smart guy that you are you no doubt recognize that some of us are closer than others at any given moment, and, shucks, if the same trend of Who’s Giving How Much continues the way it’s going now?

Well, I don’t think I have to tell you that some people at the office are going to reflect just a little bit more negative sentiment on their quarterly team critiques than we’re used to.

Regards,

______

Monster of Management, Angry Birds Dad Extraordinaire

_____@____.net”

Con el Joder de Montaigne

This is a crossposting of an open letter I sent to the mailing list of a friend and colleague who’s in the midst of his own novel project. The letter is in response to a question asking if the readers would be receptive to the idea of a rather dramatic continuity revision where the medieval/high fantasy elements of the world in question would be replaced with those of the Napoleanic era (muskets, cannon artillery, fancy uniforms etc).

You can read rough drafts of the first few chapters of Mazurek here.

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Wherever could the idea for such a drastic change-up have come from?!

In all seriousness though I’d hope this is a change that would be done to bring the work closer to exactly the sort of story you want to tell and the world you want it to be set in as opposed to a desire to react against something or simply add a new sort of flashy pyrotechnics. My point is that this shouldn’t be another ham bone casually thrown into the stew pot to add flavor, but part of an organic and uncompromising process of hashing out for yourself the elements of world and story described in the previous sentence and sticking to them.

If you find that knights in shining armor and catapults are not something you’re not 100-percent crazy about and were just a convention you went with because it was what was “the simplest,” “the most traditional” “the most familiar,” or whatever other reason that hinges on the feelings of others as opposed to your own then by all means jettison them immediately and get to work doing the necessary research for how such a technological shift would impact the world and all the different cultures in it.

The only time I was ever able to successfully finish writing any short stories or novel-length projects was when I was confident enough to say “fuck off” to these manifold mumbled arguments (most of them really just mental blocks inside my own head) that if I wanted to write a story about X, well of course it would have to include Elements C, D and E because That’s What People Expect—all this shit that rounds down into a single lowest common denominator which is using your using your writing to be the apple of someone else’s eye. That, my friend, is the road to getting bored; to losing steam halfway through; to that state Frank Herbert derisively referred to as “writer’s block,” an overpowering feeling that you’d rather be doing something, anything other than writing because the project simply doesn’t excite you anymore.

Some might argue the importance of compromise in all things—I would humbly posit that in creative endeavors there is no substitute for personal passion. Indeed, creative work is five percent inspiration and ninety-five percent perspiration, but dilettantes such as ourselves—and many others in this group, I assume—find the will to perspire only for projects that fundamentally inspire us. I don’t buy the idea that there’s a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma in regards to this equation. A novel is a huge creative endeavor undertaken by one individual, demanding of both one’s time and creative energy. If you agree about that I would then ask you this: why would you ever choose to put such an investment into something you’re only half-assed about?

You know me; I’m a very idiosyncratic writer and a very opinionated and adamant one when it comes to the sort of worlds I’m interested in and the stories I want to tell. I’m not like this to prove some sort of abstract point to others or to just be a sand-in-the-Speedoes “gadfly” or whatever shit like that. I’m like this because it’s the only way I can keep doing the stuff that I’m motivated enough to finish and put the maximum amount of effort into. Mazurek, the series whose first novel I finished writing last year, is completely devoid of magic, so-called “fantasy races” or supernatural elements in general. You know full well that I hate said conventions, but hatred wasn’t my impetus for writing the series and its world as I did. In fact, there were early abortive drafts of Mazurek that had a variety of different magical elements shoehorned in. None of these got very far and I finally jettisoned them when I realized that they were not useful tools in my belt for crafting a compelling story and characters, but mental blocks that were actually holding me back from achieving said objectives. It was only when I mercilessly murdered any last vestige of cowardly “but who do you think you are to just not include Element Y in your story” thoughts from my subconscious that I was finally able to take off creatively and have Book 1 finished within the span of a year.

I was going to go into a lot of nit-picky detail here and give my thoughts on the idea of magic and early modern technology coexisting, but right now I think the most important thing is making sure you have the right intentions at heart. Mazurek is unfinished and still needs a lot of work, but hell if I’m not going to admit that it’s the greatest accomplishment of my life so far and that I’m damn proud of it. I hope the decisions you make in regards to your own writing projects are, for your own sake, made in the interest of maintaining a similar feeling about them. It’s a great feeling, doing exactly what you want to do, and your passion will be felt by the readers as well.

- Mark A.

Wasteland 2: Eclectic Boogaloo

This is a cross post of an obnoxiously long reply I made to a thread on the forums for Wasteland 2, an extremely exciting new videogame project in which I—as some of the text suggests—am personally invested(in more ways than one).

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Much of the friction generated over this issue is partly the result of, ironically, the funding method that made the entire game project possible in the first place.

Part of the promotion around the WL2 Kickstarter campaign was that we, the fans devoted enough to contribute money up front (regardless of to whom our devotion was directed be it the Wasteland IP, the memory of Interplay as a whole, individual Interplay alumni to be involved in the project or whatever/whoever) would in effect be micro-shareholders in the project going forward with a say in the final product. This is a very cool, very empowering concept on its face, conscientious and respectful of how much good will and—dare I say it—love was behind the outpouring of tangible ($$$) support that came out of the woodwork. But observing the matter with slightly deeper scrutiny brings up many issues.

Kickstarter is a very young model. It’s a very good one with huge amounts of promise (maybe someday they could even fund a second Wasteland game off it; dream big, right?), but a lot of the legwork hasn’t been done in regards to defining things like the level to which Backers have real, actionable propriety over the project they support. Of course, totally quantifying that sort of thing is virtually impossible and the most likely reality is that it’s on a case-to-case basis shifting between fan feedback and internal ideas with the final decision always coming down—as it should—to the leader of the project (F. Brygo).

But you can’t underestimate people’s natural penchant for questioning and extrapolating off of any and all systems whose rules aren’t explicitly defined down to the tee, which might lead to some more unsavory ruminations like “so does a $2,500 Backer have a definitively more influential opinion than someone who came in with $30?” I’m going off on tangent here, but all in the interest of illustrating the point that none of us are really all that sure of how this Kickstarter/Backer/Fan Participation model works, and that’s going to contribute to some of the wild overestimation and underestimations of the influence of one’s personal opinions that we’ve already seen going down.

How many of us have already seen a thread for a suggested mechanic we thought was silly or actually destructive and gotten antsy when it started gaining popularity and replies, worried that it will gain enough steam to actually make it to the desks of the devs and be taken seriously? For a normal project such a thread might not be so big a concern as the “Suggestions” board might as well be “Wishful Thinking,”  but in this case, where we actually don’t know the full impact of a (hypothetical) suggestion that makes a (hypothetically) big splash, you start to understand why some of us get antsier and more defensive than might be expected.

To actually get back to the original subject brought up by Krellen, I absolutely agree that one of the top priorities should be creating something that’s first and foremost true to the original game. I think we’ve all been burned by committee-designed, stockholder-approved reboots and remakes that cynically molest bits and pieces of franchises revered by many older gamers just to try and turn a triple-A buck. There’s nothing inherently wrong with More of the Same when the original work was solid enough to warrant it, but I also think it’s entirely possible and desirable to [b]improve[/b] on an original. Yes, I know that sounds like slippery slope sacrilege to many. By “improve” I don’t mean rip up the guiding principles and start again, quite the contrary. Improvement and [b]refinement[/b] are all about taking what already works and further polishing it as well as marrying it to new elements that can both amplify the appeal of the original elements and create new, novel dimensions to the work as a whole. Krellen cited Fallout 2, a sequel in this model. The graphical and gameplay aspects of FO2 were virtually identical to those of FO1, but I challenge anyone to say there weren’t dramatic changes outside of those graphical/core gameplay areas. Black Isle stepped their game up creatively with what was IMO a far more ambitious and satisfying story, larger scale and abundance of complex detail that actually [b]mattered[/b] (none of this “lore” nonsense).  You might remember that certain sectors of the hardcore Fallout fanbase had it out for FO2 for a long time precisely because of said changes. A lot wanted a scenario that was just as burnt-out and rural as the first game had been.

Look at it from a creative standpoint: a musician or novelist debuts with a work that you absolutely love. If his followup sounds/reads exactly the same note for note, word for word, will you not start wondering whether or not he’s developing as an artist? Many truly creative people are driven towards iteration and refinement out of pure instinct, a sense of competition with one’s self regardless of whether the consumer wants a carbon copy or some sort of completely new and uncharted territory. Stasis as well as blind noodling are both signs of creative crisis, and I think we owe it to Fargo and co., seasoned veterans and gifted creators that they are, to not expect them to adhere to either extreme and not put on a facade of shock when they don’t.

It’s extremely early and we’re still finding a lot out about every element of this game. Who I want to hear from most at this point is the creators themselves; see mockups and read white papers of what their ideas and hopes are, and from there start thinking of real, sensible suggestions and proposals that do justice to this whole idea of participation and personal investment.

Issues with Mass Effect 3 not involving the ending

The third and final installment in Bioware’s multi-million-dollar sci-fi roleplaying action game trilogy has come under a remarkable amount of fire the past few weeks for the nature of its final 15 or so minutes. Reams have already written profiling every little bit of minutiae on the weakness of the ending and/or its manifold plot holes and continuity errors, and I’m not particularly interested in adding yet another voice to a “debate” that’s already grown hopelessly convoluted and divergent. Suffice to say, approaching the matter from the perspective of a writer who cares about good storytelling, the defense of the ending that invokes “artistic integrity” on Bioware’s part is based on fallacy. Firstly, take into account the fact of the fundamental, seemingly last minute rewrite of the antagonist’s motivation away from dealing with a phenomenon in dark energy to a virtually out-of-nowhere McDune-esque fixation on soft serve Marxist historical inevitability—in particular, that of organic and synthetic sentient life to come into conflict (nevermind the actual real world inevitability of organic life to come into conflict with, er, other organic life). Secondly, artistic integrity isn’t a catch-all excuse for poor writing. Sneering pomo trickster-ism aside, continuity errors and lack of denouement are not literary technique, they are indicative of what amounts to a creative prolapse.

Instead, I’ll rattle off one observation on the series that’s come to a head since the release of the third game:

The continued devolution of the Paragon/Renegade mechanic: Many, many contemporary roleplaying games quantify the morality or lack thereof of the player’s actions through a slider bar or number, and Mass Effect is no exception. There existed, however, a novel spin on the mechanic earlier in the series. The first game, a schizophrenic-designed, misguided attempt to recreate the Starflight series as an RPG, implemented Paragon/Renegade as a tally not of the ends of the player’s actions, but rather the means by which she reaches them.

Generally speaking, in the first game a Paragon path was typified by adherence to preexisting rules and regulations while a Renegade, true to the term’s proper definition, flaunted said regulations in pursuit of her goal. The moral agnostic approach was capitalized upon with situations in which taking a by-the-book Paragon decision would lead to a worse outcome than a Renegade decision, and vice versa. It seemed as if Shepard could make whatever decision she saw fit, and each individual character would draw their own conclusions of how it reflected upon her based upon their own characterization.

It was an uncharacteristically nuanced system coming from Bioware, a studio which in fact led the charge on stale codification of player morality. It was natural then that the system would be truncated and dumbed down with each successive installment. The second game, in keeping with what was generally a harder edge and more gun-for-hire overtone, framed the Paragon as Mercy/Compassion and Renegade as Revenge/Disgruntlement. The conceit of Loyal Lieutenant vs. Driven P.I. disappears almost entirely, replaced Hug vs. Punch.

Perhaps it was because of the second game’s more mercenary feel that the removal of a dimension from the system wasn’t so jarring as it could have been. Renegade may indeed have become a shorthand for giving someone a right hook, but the staff writers handling character writing did a very good job framing those decisions in such a way that those getting belted more often than not got what they deserved, making them said decisions highly satisfying as opposed to a farcical kicking of a puppy to get +5 Dark Side points.

The third game falls off the rails. Here we see a “triumphant” return to the facile old Bioware worldview in which complimenting someone makes you more of a Paragon, while telling them they’re a poopoo head makes you more of a Renegade. What in the world does this have to do with orthodox vs. heterodox? Or even compassion vs. revenge? At times the decisions categorized as Renegade are so beyond the pale that they seem to be an attempt to invoke the sort of “chaotic evil” path from other RPGs such as Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment. Of course, Torment is infinitely more complex in its character writing, and sets itself apart from the vast majority of other RPGs in that an evil protagonist is not simply a mustache-twiddler or a callous jerk. He is instead what many of us would characterize in the real world as evil; a straight up psychopath who systematically exploits the emotions of others for no other reason than the ultimate in schadenfreude amusement. It is a playthrough that’s actively difficult for a normal person to numbly click through with no emotional reaction other than the urge to get those “100% Complete” cheevos.

The only thing that makes ME3 actively difficult to play through is the fact that such refined and satisfying gameplay is attached to such overbearing penned-by-committee storytelling. Maybe my next post will be a diatribe on a certain breed of contemporary genre writer and writing in which detailed worldbuilding and strong characterization are sad counterpoints to the fact that the central plot premise and its execution are by far the least interesting part of the franchise. Expect Mass Effect to return as a recurring case study.

Advice For The Dumb at Heart (on Dwarf Fortress)

The non-issue of Dwarf Fortress clones comes up quite often on the Bay12Games message boards. The fact of the matter is that one can’t copyright abstract concepts or a broad premise like that of DF.

Tarn Adams, the sole dev behind DF, is obviously a master programmer, but the control scheme, interface and feature creep inherent to the game all suggest he’s a tepid designer at best. That said, all those things would be manageable (the interface is terrible and autistic, but it does work) on their own. Unfortunately it’s exacerbated by Adams’ penchant for veering off and spending months focusing with Ulillillian intensity on silly little sub-features and “color”—such as whether or not the hide skinned off a domesticated cat in a Temperate Evil biome will zombify and attack your leatherworker—which, while admittedly amusing, are of little import to the game mechanics at large. I won’t question the fact that such color differentiates DF from clones and predecessors, but one can’t help feeling some resentment towards Adams’ weekly bullet point presentations (all meticulously logged on the DF dev blog) on “fixes” like changing the color of vampires’ teeth and/or toggling the existence of hermaphroditic domesticated dogs in world gen while it still takes four keystrokes and three menu screens to build a simple field fortification.

But, ah, that’s where the rebuttal of the sycophantic set, a rather considerable and arguable majority demographic in the DF fanbase, comes in. “Who are you to say what Toady (Adams’ handle) should or should not work on first? This is his work of art!” To which I would respond that “we” are the consumers. Freeware or not, nonprofit or not, a videogame is still a product, and even if the creators seek no monetary gain outside of altruistic donations they still have a responsibility to entertain and address feedback from their target audience in the interest of keeping the stalwarts pleased while also expanding their market. Adams’ seeming refusal to accept this as his own personal reality (all creative people have a make-believe world in which they live, some are just more honest about it than others), and the sycophantic set’s systematic heckling of any dissent along these lines, is most likely not a small reason behind the recent rash of so-called DF clones, and, more importantly, the consumer interest in them.

One of the most contentious clones is the result of one disgruntled fan’s subversion of the entire DF source code to use as the basis for a parallel project. This project seeks (or sought, I have no idea as to its current state) to address the fundamental problems in interface and game mechanics, many of which have played a large role in DF’s reputation for opacity in the extreme. The mastermind of this project is seen on the Bay12 boards as being, naturally, Worse Than Hitler; who would dare “rob” Adams of his baby?!

But really now—what did people expect? If Adams continues to pursue his tack of saying—whether implicitly or explicitly—consumer feedback has little to no role in the development of DF going forward then I can only wonder why he continues the sham of having an ongoing “alpha release” and forums for public feedback, except to bask in the happy braying of a select cabal of Toadies.

I think I may have just answered my own question.