Vague Inspirations and June 5th, 2014

Inspirations.

My brain does this thing, where it will take an abstract phrase, picture, or concept and run with it.  It gets me in trouble by making me build up all this hype for something in my mind, and when things aren't what I thought, I get let down.  Its a flaw in the minds of nerds everywhere actually.

In elementary school our Kindergarten class room was situated with the library blocking it from the rest of the school, so it was a common thing for teachers to let the kindergartners go and look at books if they just could not lay down for nap time.  I could not read, but that did not stop me.  I found this book, I have no clue what it is today, but I checked it out for a long while.  There were pictures of a boy on the roof of his building and he was playing with pigeons and running around.  I could not read then, so I just came up with the story in my own mind.  I do remember that in 1st grade I found the book again and read it, and it was just... about nonsense basically, so that was probably the first time I got hyped for something and it was a let down, ha.  But the joy of coming up with my own story kind of stuck with me.

Little things set my mind off.  I do have a collection of phrases from songs that I keep.  I have liked entire albums(The End of All Things to Come) because they were full of these little phrases.  I love reading the vague descriptions on cable tv about movies I do not know, because these things set my mind on fire as well.  I have a very large amount written for a story treatment that was me imagining what "Half Nelson" could be, based on its vague description I read once.  It is nothing like the movie, though I loved the movie as well.  Its a mind exercise I do on purpose now that I realize it.

So why do I bring this up?  Well Ico did this to me.  I saw maybe 3 seconds of footage of Ico, and saw the concept art for the main character, and my mind did its thing.  I wrote a treatment for a story involving a boy that never spoke in the entire thing, and that had to go on this long journey with a sword.  Eventually this became a story some of you read called "Joshua Fell".  The short story was more of a writing exercise, each chapter focusing on something I knew I had to work on.  Some were overly detailed, some were sparsely done, but I committed to not caring and just doing it to work on certain writing skills.  You would never imagine that it was inspired by Ico.  I have written 4 short stories in this world with lots and lots of notes for future ones as well.  I never imagined Ico being this story either, so I wasn't let down.  Its just that sometimes concepts spur me to creativity, and reading and seeing vague descriptions seems to work for me.

I did it for Shadow of the Colossus as well.  I did not get around to writing the story, but I have a treatment, chapter outline, and plot point list.  Its a story called Ouroboros, the World Eater.  In it a young man is descended from a line of famous dragon slayers, in fact only his bloodline can do it.  The man sets out to right his wrongs, and the wrongs his ancestor did, in a story based around thinking before you do something and inspired by the vague summation of Shadow of the Colossus.  I'd go into more detail, but I've seen people take story concepts from personal friends and try and profit off them without permission, so I'm very skittish about talking about stories in a public way.

Anyway

Team Ico was once an incredible game company, and these 2 games have meant a lot to me.  I'm hoping next week we get news of their 3rd game "The Last Guardian" because I am about ready to give up on it.

June 5th, 2014

There is a type of game that rarely comes around where the little details and the effort the developers take to realize a world is the defining feature of the game.  Games like Journey and Ico surprise us with these little touches, and sometimes it takes some jarring or taking away something to make you realize how much you miss it.  Sometimes its just moments in games.  Today I was playing Shadow of the Colossus, and I saw some fruit on a nearby tree.  I pulled out my bow and aimed, and TWANG shot the fruit down.  I got off my horse and went over, and sure enough I could eat the fruit.  When I turned back though, my horse's attention wasn't on me.  I moved the camera, and there framed this perfect picture of me on a grass knoll, eating a piece of fruit, and my horse just sauntering over to a tiny pool of water and drinking from it.  As his mouth made ripples in the water, the sun caught these ripples and reflected light into the camera.  It was really magical, and one of those random game moments where everything the developers did to create something beautiful came together.

George Makris is a name I did not know.  When it comes to PC equipment, I have always been a fan of Corsair.  I have only ever used Corsair memory in my computer builds.  In the past 5 years or so, Corsair has branched out to make the best things in several categories; when Corsair enters a market, people already in that market cringe.  George Makris is the man that did a lot of this.  He started in the company as a memory tester.  He saw a listing on their forums and sent an email, and was hired.  While there he was very vocal, he said he was annoyingly so, being outspoken about the ram qualities and such.  Finally they said "let's see George put his money where his mouth is" and they put him on a memory development project.  After that, someone at lunch asked him about power supplies and he talked about all the bullshit that went on with power supplies(something I've known in music equipment and computers for a while), and so he said "come join us and be co-designer of our new power supply group".  Boom.  Corsair is the #1 power supply company in the enthusiast market.  After that, George started their case design branch.  Corsair dominated the enthusiast case market in only a few years, their designs becoming #1 sellers and #1 rated cases in the industry.  "We're an enthusiast company, if you're not building your own computers, you're probably not working on product development.  A lot of our competitors obviously have never built a computer themselves, and it shows".  That's from an interview on LinusTechTips, which is how I found out about him.  George is also in charge of cooling, and their specialized yet somehow not confusing, fan product line is great as well, being the highest selling consumer grade water cooling maker too.  All from the equivalent of the "I started in the mail department" guy.