PAX Report

 I consider myself to be somewhat of a convention veteran. I've attended conventions, i've volunteered, i've been a dealer and an artist. But PAX is different from any other convention i've attended. PAX really makes me feel like some sort of a rookie con-goer.

This should be obvious, but it's not the anime or sci-fi sorts of conventions i've attended in the past. When attending an anime convention, i tend to go to the panels that interest me, then split the rest of my time between the dealers room and artists alley. PAX has no dealers room or artists alley. There's a ginormous exhibition hall, but it's got very little in common with the dealers rooms of anime cons.

When i say the exhibition hall is ginormous, i mean that the room is larger than the first convention i ever attended. The rest of PAX is just as big. I've already traversed downtown Seattle several times just going between panels. Luckily, it's also the best organized con i've ever attended. I went to pick up my badge and i was only in line for about 10 minutes. The schedule is really well though out and there's actually signs and volunteers everywhere to direct attendees. It's a far cry from other cons where i've literally gone around taping up pieces of paper with sharpie scribblings directing people to the dealers room.

Some things are the same tho. I'll make an obscure refence in the middle of a conversation, and people will actually pick up on it. There's cosplay, altho it's not nearly as common as it is at anime cons. It is, however, more common than it was at EnderCon, where i was literally the only cosplayer. There's also a strange phenomenon i've encoutered before where someone will be playing a rhythm game like DDR or Rock Band (either as part of a competition, or as "live music"), and the people who are watching will be practicing their moves at the same time.

And that's just day 1. It's now time to venture forth for day 2.

Even worse than Snakes on a Plane...

It's gamer funk on a train! APPARENTLY, a whole bunch of other PAX attendees stole my idea of taking the train to the convention. The lounge car on this train is a scary place, filled with games ranging from dominos to magic to d&d to full LAN parties. For reals. We're currently stopped in Portland. I'll be in Seattle in a few hours.

Boojie == Eleven

Do you remember the episode where Ivanova and Marcus are out searching for First Ones in the vicinity of Sigma 957. Marcus suggests that the First Ones they contact might be friendlier if he put a bucket on his head and pretended to be the ancient Vorlon god Boojie.

It occurs to me that the real Boojie probably wears a fez, not a bucket. I figure it just gets mistaken for a bucket because he also carries around a mop.

An Open Letter

About 3 years ago, i pointed out on deviantArt that Link of the Legend of Zelda fame is quite feminine and jokingly concluded that this must be because he's actually a girl.

Someone came across this picture yesterday who is apparently quite mortified that i'd make such a suggestion. It's not as if i'm actually saying anything negative about the Zelda games, but from his responses, you'd think i was some sort of puppy-kicking baby eater. Altho, to be fair, i do get accused of that a lot in my line of work.

Anyway, the noteworthy part was when he suggested i "Seriously, write a letter to Nintendo and they will tell[link] you, HE is a guy." Don't ask me why there's randomly a link to my dA page in the middle of his sentence. He probably doesn't know why he did that either. In any case, asking Nintendo about Link's secret identity sounded like the sort of activity that could provide literally minutes of entertainment.

So... that's what i did. I'll be sure to let you know if/when they respond.

phredt draws

You know The Joy of Painting? It's that show on PBS where this white guy with a giant afro paints gorgeous landscapes in half an hour. Allegedly, you're supposed to be able to follow along at home and increase your own painting skills.

Bob Ross is no longer with us now, but his memory lives on in the internet. Over on Ustream (which is kind of like You Tube, only you get to stream live video on it), there are now many shows where artists will draw for you in real time. I've been told multiple times that watching me sketch is a bit like watching Bob Ross paint, so i figured i might as well set up a show of my own over there and see if those people were actually telling me the truth.

Earlier this evening, i did my first live drawing broadcast and it wasn't horrible. It was about half an hour of  me sketching up a factory for making robots. The recording of it is online, altho the sound is a bit on the quiet side. I think i've got the sound problem solved now and my plan going forward is to draw something up basically every saturday morning. Just head over to the video section of the site to check it out.

Licensed Video Games Are Never Any Good

Even tho Telltale Games makes their living by completely disproving this trope, i'm still quite leery regarding their recent announcement that they've acquired licenses to make games based on the Back to the Future and Jurassic Park films.

In my opinion, the pitfall most movie-based games fall into is that they are play-the-movie games. You know, the kind where you start out on Tatooine fighting Jawas and sand people, then there's probably a big fight in the cantina. After that, you fly to the Death Star and fight storm troopers, then the grand finale of the game is flying your X-wing down the trench and firing a proton torpedo down a ventillation shaft. The primary problem with this approach is that that story has already been told once as a movie, and they probably did a pretty decent job when they did so. Rehashing it as a video game doesn't enhance the story in any way.

I fully expect Telltale to understand this and come up with original stories for these properties. But on the other hand, i don't see how you can do that for Back to the Future. The movies cover straight from the DeLorean's maiden voyage clear up until it gets run over by a train and completely destroyed. That pretty much leaves the only option for new stories within the same canon as following Doc Brown from the time between when he dropped Marty off at the end of the first film and the time when he took Marty and Jennifer into the future (also at the end of the first film). I suppose they could try setting the games after the third film, but i believe that's already been tried, and it didn't work so well.

Oddly enough, all this trephination trepidation about licensed games comes at the same time as the release of the first Doctor Who adventure game, for which i am quite excited. Unfortunately, the game has some really strange distribution model wherein if you're in Britain, you can download the game for free from the BCC, but if you're in the rest of the world (like me), you have to wait until the game becomes available for purchase next month to play it.

But i think i'll save talk of software licensing and game distribution for another time.

New Site Launch

I haven't really used phredt.net for much for the past few years, mostly because i've been using my account over on deviantART instead. Unfortunately, dA has really gone down hill in the last few months. The newest version of their software is so buggy that sometimes it doesn't even display the pictures every time. I consider this to be a major flaw for a gallery program, but dA doesn't seem to mind it so much.

This means i'll be maintaining my gallery here at phredt.net from now on. Using blogger as my content management system might not be the most robust method ever, but at least the images display on a consistent basis, so it works for me.

Currently, i'm working on a new project codenamed Futureland, which is basically a series of adventure games with each one being about the same size as Spaceman Deke. My goal is to have the first game done in time for PAX this september. We'll see if i manage that one.

Also, you may have noticed a link for video which leads to my ustream page. Now that i've fully moved into my new apartment and my DSL is (finally) set up, i plan on broadcasting me drawing stuff most saturday mornings. Feel free to tune in if you're interested.