Life, Head On

ID:96865
 
Jun 13 2010, 7:23 pm (Edited on Jun 13 2010, 8:02 pm)
Keywords: anime, motivation
Since my last entry, I've watched up to episode 14 of To Love-Ru before giving up and deciding it was never going to take itself seriously, then moved on to watching Super GALS...


...which I found to be an overall improvement, as did the bayesian rank on Anime Network for the two series. Of course, both series target a demographic I've outgrown, but that's not to say some entertainment cannot be derived.

Not that I don't appreciate the suggestions of Glass Fleet and Peacemaker, I just haven't got around to them yet.

So what the Hell am I, anyway?

In watching all this anime lately, I've found no real motivation to play any one of the hundreds of games sitting about the house for about a week or two now. Well, aside from a brief investigation of APB's "Key To The City" event. In about 3-4 hours of play, I found it to be a fun enough game, but the spray-and-pray mentality of the game mechanic is really not appealing for a gaming purist...

... but considering how little games I've been playing lately, am I still a gamer? It seems to me that I derive too little satisfaction from gaming anymore. It's nothing less than a pivotal identity crisis, being a gamer has been my core identity for some 27 years, and this has been a little hard to wrap my head around.

Furthermore, anyone who has seen my walls-of-text on message boards and blog comment threads that I seem to have an agenda of combating commonplace ignorance (insofar as my singular perspective is capable of perceiving truth). Lately, I've been contemplating the right or wrong of this, aggravated by a rather wrong-minded suspension from a board I was hanging out on.

In addition to my gamer identity, it seems my moral/academic values have fallen under inner-criticism as well. The situation has given me a pause worthy of epic quotations.

I'm an independent game developer, in theory.

I'm scheduled to visit a prominent graduate placement agency for an interview on Thursday, but I'm beginning to second-guess my life satisfaction as a member of a corporate workforce. It would seem my best course of action is really more along the lines of independent entrepreneurship, sabotaged unfortunately by poor motivation skills.

I would like to get back to work on what I've been building, soon. It seems to me that my losing confidence in my works is the worst possible thing I could be doing. Learning to overcome this mental block is probably the most productive thing I could be doing. I've fallen off the horse, I need to get back on it.

Currently on the game designer plate: I don't want to abandon my strategic M.U.L.E./Dwarf Fortress hybrid concept for Planetbreakers, but simultaneously I want to make it breathe. I've been grappling with how to go about doing this. It's entirely possible I'm already on the right path, but in re-orienting myself with the project I feel the need to retest all my premises.
Jun 13 2010, 8:07 pm
I'm beginning to second-guess my life satisfaction as a member of a corporate workforce. It would seem my best course of action is really more along the lines of independent entrepreneurship, sabotaged unfortunately by poor motivation skills.

I did the same thing, thought the same way and had the same problem. And resorted to the same fall back of just watching anime. Now I'm working as "a supermarket shit kicker" and too be honest, I love every minute of it. The sheer amount of exercise I get, physical strength I've since built and human interaction I've had has been one of the better things to come my way.
Jun 13 2010, 8:11 pm
Hmm, you know, I do need regular exercise. Perhaps I should eschew these white-collar jobs I've been looking at and just see if I can hook up with a part-time blue-collar one. I can still pursue my entrepreneurship, but with a bit of income to show for it.
Jun 13 2010, 8:24 pm
Geldonyetich wrote:
Hmm, you know, I do need regular exercise. Perhaps I should eschew these white-collar jobs I've been looking at and just see if I can hook up with a part-time blue-collar one. I can still pursue my entrepreneurship, but with a bit of income to show for it.

That is entirely my theory. If you end up not liking it, you can after all, just quit and end up back where you started. It also greatly helps with motivation, if you give me a second to explain what I do and how I work.

I'm essentially the weekend manager. That means I'm in charge of the shift, give out the orders and see everything runs smoothly. I have to split the load (which means scan each box received individually with an RF gun, to make sure the warehouse sent us everything we ordered) and see that it goes to the right department (my department receives stock for the Deli and Bakery as well as our stock).

About the time I finish splitting the freezer load (two or three pallets) is when the other two workers for my department arrive and I have them start on that, I then move onto the coolroom and split the three pallets there.

Once that's done, I haul the empty pallets down to the produce backdock for a truck to deliver, and collect three pallets of milk in their cool room and take it back to mine. I then have to split the milk.

Once all that splitting is done, the other two should be finished the freezer load (they never are, most of the time front-end (checkouts) are express alerting (they don't have enough workers, so they steal mine...) them), they move onto the cool room load, and I rotate the milk (put the closer expiration date milk up the top) and then stack the new stuff.

Once that's done, some computer jargon later I move onto helping put away the coolroom load, wrap milk crates and send them down to the produce back dock and crush a crap tonne of cardboard (we recycle).

And that's my job, each individual milk create weighs approximately 18KG and boxes can be as heavy as 20KG (most aren't though).

When you look at that, a lot of it is mindless movement. Rotating and stacking milk for instance doesn't require any thought at all. "Milk on shelf goes to higher shelf, milk in creates gets appended to the end, job done". It's only time consuming.

This gives one a lot of time to think about game development, design, implementation, and if you're really good, writing the code in your head as you're working and thinking of better ways to do stuff.

tl;dr -> Mindless movement means lots of thinking.
Jun 13 2010, 8:35 pm
Sounds more interesting than the last gig I got when I worked for a supermarket: Deli. That gig is actually not too unlike fast food: stand behind a counter helping customers, clean, prepare food. All the movement took place in the deli section alone, and the lethality of the meat slicers mildly terrified me.

It would not be very easy to land a position like that around here. Unemployment in my county is at about 15%, and those kinds of positions are oft the first to get filled in a crisis. However, there's something to be said about the satisfaction of an honest day's work.
Jun 13 2010, 8:52 pm
Tiberath wrote:
When you look at that, a lot of it is mindless movement. Rotating and stacking milk for instance doesn't require any thought at all. "Milk on shelf goes to higher shelf, milk in creates gets appended to the end, job done". It's only time consuming.

This gives one a lot of time to think about game development, design, implementation, and if you're really good, writing the code in your head as you're working and thinking of better ways to do stuff.

tl;dr -> Mindless movement means lots of thinking.

This is how exactly I felt when doing a lot of mindless movement at a supermarket job, and to be honest, by the time I got home, I wanted to do what I been thinking about so bad and work all night on it. It worked out pretty well (except when I stayed up all night doing said work)! I also thought about how beneficial the exercise is as well.

Though, to be honest, in reality, this will never lead you much further than where you already at (unless you somehow continue climbing positions), so I'd still go to school (have no clue if you do or not). I already wasted too much time into such a job that eventually disregarded me going up in position like I planned. Sometimes they just promise too much to make you work too hard for little pay. Perhaps I just got the short end of the stick where I live.
Jun 13 2010, 8:52 pm
Geldonyetich wrote:
Sounds more interesting than the last gig I got when I worked for a supermarket: Deli. That gig is actually not too unlike fast food: stand behind a counter helping customers, clean, prepare food. All the movement took place in the deli section alone, and the lethality of the meat slicers mildly terrified me.

Are you sure you're not me? 'Cause my first experience with a supermarket job was also Deli, I also felt uncomfortable with the meat slicers and eventually abandoned my job 'cause I hated the work, the atmosphere and about everything to do with it.

Oddly enough, it was the deli of the same major supermarket chain (same chain, different store).

It would not be very easy to land a position like that around here. Unemployment in my county is at about 15%, and those kinds of positions are oft the first to get filled in a crisis. However, there's something to be said about the satisfaction of an honest day's work.

Give it a shot anyway. It's well worth it. =D
Jun 13 2010, 8:57 pm
Neblim wrote:
Though, to be honest, in reality, this will never lead you much further than where you already at (unless you somehow continue climbing positions)

I'm first in line for 2IC if my manager or 2IC leave the department. Otherwise, I'm presently happy to just sit where I am for a few years.

so I'd still go to school (have no clue if you do or not).

I don't, and am not planning too. I graduated year 12 passing subjects like Mathematical Methods, Physics, Accounting, Information Processing and Management, English and ... something else, that's as much as I cared. And very few of anything I learned in any of those subjects has since been of any use. The odd physics law just makes me look smarter than everyone else, that's about all physics was good for...

Sometimes they just promise too much to make you work too hard for little pay. Perhaps I just got the short end of the stick where I live.

Short end of the stick. I earn $20.~ AUD an hour on weekdays, $29.~ AUD an hour on Sundays/split shifts and $40.~ AUD on public holidays/after midnight/any hour over 38 during a week.

My paydays rarely suck.
Jun 13 2010, 9:13 pm
Who says I have to go to a school to be well educated? I can learn things on my own, with the added benefit of being knowledge I actually need, as I'll be wanting to use it at the time of learning it. ;)

And 2IC isn't a trained manager job. To be a manger you actually have to take a course they provide at the area office. A 2IC doesn't need such training, so they'll advertise it in store before offering it to transfers. And before they advertise it in store, they'll offer it to the most qualified person in the department (which ironically isn't me, there's one other person who is more qualified, but they're not interested in the position, they're happy where they are).
Jun 13 2010, 9:14 pm (Edited on Jun 13 2010, 9:21 pm)
I enjoyed earning my Bachelors degree in Digital Technology and Culture but, when push comes to shove, I think the my learned academic discipline would serve me better than any of the individual skills I learned there (especially considering how quickly software becomes obsolete).

So I wouldn't hold myself above working in a supermarket. Indeed, given that a degree makes manager positions seem a lot more tenable, that may well be going as planned. Besides, there's nothing to say a fellow can't moonlight in a labor of love.
Jun 13 2010, 10:12 pm
2IC is chain wide and means Second In Charge. On the roster it says 2ICMngr
Jun 14 2010, 5:34 pm
Throw my 0.2 in.

I've been undergoing the vary same... degradation of my self proclaimed "gamer" status for the last few years.

It's most certainly tied to age. Unless something significant changes our view of gaming, the trend of "lacking thrills" will continue.

This transition seems to have started occurring around the time my interest in game development picked up. I wasn't getting what I needed out of games so I started thinking about what I wanted which naturally lead me to BYOND.

Over the course of 4-6 years with BYOND, I've had my ups and downs of inspiration. I keep trying to create something grandeur and I keep over extending myself.

This last few months has seen an all time low of game development inspiration and I'm hitting some technical challenges with my latest SilverLight endeavors so I'm really turned off right now.

I'm wondering if this is me accepting failure or if this is the next phase in the natural course of aging.

What's interesting is that I've had a 10 year career in software testing which I am about to throw away just so I can do something different. I'm looking into local gaming companies and I'm hoping to get my foot in the door without taking too much of a pay cut.

I'm just bored of everything. I'm starting to ponder sword fighting or something. Anything to feel pain or to feel alive. I need to get out more I think.

My quick (light hearted) suggestion as I have to run...

Tackle the one thing you really want to accomplish and then move on to something totally different (like sword fighting).

ts




Jun 14 2010, 6:03 pm
When it comes to not feeling like much of a gamer anymore, to a great extent, I think my standards are higher. It's not that I won't ever try to play a game - I very much look forward to giving Elemental: War Of Magic a spin - but I sure am not that excited about the average drivel to fall off the clone game factory assembly line.

To another extent, I might be just a bit depressed, what with the major post-graduate life transition an whatnot, which oft brings about a change of habit.

I actually got some work on Planetbreakers today, but I get the feeling I haven't really thought this through. It's actually coming out to be somewhat Startopia-esque. I need to turn the concept around a bit.
Jun 14 2010, 8:09 pm (Edited on Jun 14 2010, 9:56 pm)
I picked up FF2 for the GBA and I can mirror your sentiment that it was ridiculously grindy. It seems back in those days Square had yet to discover the appeal of a decent story, and was experimenting with some kind of free-form character advancement mechanic which didn't quite work right.

I think the keyword when it comes to differentiating the good from the bad game is craftmanship. A lot of games these days aren't wrought with the craftsman's attention to producing something good, but rather wrought with the marketer's attention of getting a demographic of people to buy it.

As Oscar Wilde observed, "Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong." I don't know what you would call the kind of player who buys a game because of the brand or the hype instead of the merits of how it plays, but "gamer" is not an appropriate label.

Unfortunately, given how much attention has been placed on them, I'm largely disillusioned towards the whole hobby. It seems the goal is to keep an eye out for promising indies, as the projects that required big bucks are usually sell outs in the end.
Jun 14 2010, 8:12 pm
This comes to mind.

Also, check out Ghost Hunt, it would probably be right up your ally.
Jun 14 2010, 8:23 pm
Tiberath wrote:
This comes to mind.

Or, for that matter, this.

Also, check out Ghost Hunt, it would probably be right up your ally.

Looks very interesting indeed, and it ranks #245 on Anime News Network (out of some 3800 catalogued animes). On to my "want to see" list it goes. (And I won't have to look far to find a means to do so, as apparently it's being streamed for free off Anime News Network -- there's a first!)