Extinction within a game?

Recently I have been up to my eyeballs in Red Dead Redemption. I am quickly coming to the end of the game and starting to pursue achievements I feel I could easily... achieve. While looking over the list of achievements I came across "Manifest Destiny", worth 5 achievement points, where I must: "Kill the last buffalo in the Great Plains in Single Player."

For some reason this makes me feel oddly uncomfortable. This is strange to me because it is a feeling I have never come across in a game before. It is one thing to run around shooting animals I know to be on the endangered species list. So far I didn't mind shooting beavers, cougars, or owls; there seems to be no end to them. Like most games they are killed and replenished.

A part of me feels that if the achievement simply called for killing a whole number, maybe 30 buffalo, and knowing that more will appear on the plains at some point, is something I am ok with. But in a game where storytelling elements have pointed out the stupidity of the white man, and the atrocities imposed on the natives of the land, I feel like I am morally wrong to pursue this achievement.

Now maybe I would be less inclined to care if it was simply a hunting game, instead of a game which introduces many moral dilemmas throughout the narrative, and a character who, surprisingly, is of a higher level of moral fortitude than I was expecting. And because the game so liberally portrays characters and situations in a strong good and evil light, I feel like I am partaking in too much of the evil. Perhaps it has more to do with the context of the game itself and how I feel I will shape the world of the game than it does with feeling like I am recreating a horrible portion of the past.

I guess I feel almost sad in the same way I would feel sad to kill a major character in Fallout, knowing full-well that they are never going to be alive again within my saved game, and that is the end. It is truly the exception, game characters which can be killed off at the discretion of the player, not by the forced narrative or intended structure of the main game, never to be respawned again. It is something that literally makes me stop and think, because I need to weigh whether I will want this person around in later playthroughs of the game.

But with the buffalo, there is no real benefit. They are simply animals wandering a section of the game world. So in a way I suppose there is a combination of guilt and discomfort, performing an act with overarching social implications. Knowing that the thing you are going to do will set a chain of events creating years of despair and completely ruining the lives of millions of people. It is different than simply killing an individual character in the game which is a carbon copy of a seemingly endless supply of the same character.

I have no problem killing an individual character in a game, usually because I have no idea who this person is or how they exist in the world. But I suppose if I saw a flash into this characters life the moment I pointed a gun at them I would feel different. Imagine it: you aim your pistol at their head, then the screen flashes to white. You are given a glimpse of them at home, providing for their family, playing with their children, and other happy things. Then you are brought back to the game with the crosshairs on their head. Do you continue and kill this character, or are you second guessing?

I know I was in a similar predicament when I knew I was face to face with a cannibal in the game, and I had to hogtie a man and bring him to the cannibal. I didn't want to do it. I already knew this guy was bad, I had seen multiple family members crying over missing loved ones, seen the piles of bones out in the wilderness, then heard the cries of the man I chased down as he said "Don't do this, he is crazy." But when I tried shooting the cannibal first, I failed the mission. I begrudgingly did the mission again, and was able to kill the cannibal before he killed the man, so I felt ok in the longrun, but I was really sucked in by the whole thing, and I am still impressed by how emotionally swayed I was by this simple mission.

And as for killing the buffalo? I don't think it is weird for me to feel this way. Yes these are just characters in a game, but so was Aeris and I cried when Sephiroth killed her. But there is a lot more going on here, everything I listed that I don't feel like listing again, which the developers did an amazing job layering over and over in order to illicit and emotional response and investment from the player, and I have to applaud Rockstar San Diego for creating such a moral dilemma for myself.

Quote me

You can't overcome tyranny using decency. - Me

Halloween 2000

Wow, I can't believe it has been more than 3 weeks since my promise to write more on this thing. Stupid deadlines and paychecks.

There are so many video game related pumpkins this year, I had to get in on the action.

Back in 2000, I carved this Akuma / Gouki pumpkin. I think this is the only picture I took, and it is at night, so you can't see the actual pumpkin in the shot. All of the sections are completely cut out. I apologize for the poor scan and picture quality.




I miss the pumpkin dearly.

My First Pixel Art Painting

Here is the final result. See below for a walkthrough of making this painting.



Noteworthy:

• Measures 22"x28"


• All colors are mixed except Mars Black and Titanium White


• Completed off and on throughout the month of September and in the first week of October.


• Each "pixel" is 0.5" square


• Painted with acrylics

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On an occasional basis I run across someone making some piece of art, reminiscent of classic 8 or 16-bit gaming. I always love seeing them, whether they're made out of paper scraps, colored magnets, or paints. But one day it clicked: why the hell haven't you done one of these?

Inspiration struck. I had a big canvas sitting at home, waiting to be painted on. I had purchased it 5+ years ago at a BigLots for few bucks. I originally drew a design to paint, and never got off my butt to do it. I no longer liked the design, and couldn't think of a better thing to paint. But what should be the subject?

Seeing as how Super Mario World is my favorite game of all time, I opted for a scene from it. With the canvas measuring about 22x28 inches, I didn't want to paint the "pixels" smaller than a half inch each, and after some soul searching I found my subject and arrangement. It was a perfect fit.

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Prepping the canvas

First thing to do was clear out all the pencil drawing which was already there. I layed down a few layers of gesso until I couldn't see the original pencil marks very well.

Then came the meticulous task of drawing a grid across the whole canvas. There were a lot of crooked lines, and there are a number of non-square pixels in the painting, but they are hidden better after painting.

After creating the grid, I did another thin layer of gesso to be sure the pencil wouldn't smudge. I then drew out the basic outline of the character, with a focus on which pixels would then be black.

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Attacking the Background

After that it was on to the background. You can see I took up most of the butcher pan to mix the background green.

For those who don't paint, the pan is a simple metal pan for mixing with a palette knife, with all the sample colors sitting on a damp paper towel to help them dry slower. Simple stuff.

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The Right Tools

At this point I am a few days/sessions in. I had done a lot of the earlier work during the daytime with plenty of daylight, but later moved a nice lamp from the living room. My lovely wife took notice of this and went and bought me a new desk lamp.

I used to have a 2 lamp setup back in the college days, which is VERY useful for both painting and sculpture, but have given the lamps away since then. It was so nice of her to get the lamp for me, and it made my life so much easier. Plus it is very flexible and doesn't get hot to the touch. Good deal. Viva Ikea.

Only bad thing was the light showed me all of my mistakes I had missed in the simpler light. I then had to re-mix the right shade of green and do touch-ups to a large number of areas. This had a huge impact on me, and I made sure to mix plenty of paint and do it right for every color I was to lay down from here on out.



If you look close you can see a splotch of brown at the base of Yoshi's foot. I hadn't realized until after I started painting that I had no Mars Black. I tried mixing some colors to see if I could get something dark enough to pass as a base, but quickly opted against it. I went and bought some new paints the next day.

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Going Black

The black pixels seemed like a great anchor to be able to count and measure all the other pixels from. Knowing this I painted in all of the black pixels

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Going for Yoshi

Yoshi seemed like the next best thing to hit. I purchased a lime green tube of paint to require less unique mixing with my phthalo and hooker's green. A touch of raw sienna and a hint of titanium white and he was good to go.

I got through Yoshi faster than I had originally anticipated. I figured I would start some other night, but then I dove in and was done with it fairly swiftly. I was also surprised to not see much aliasing in his colors, and how orange the cinch of his saddle is.




Here you can get a pretty good sense that this is an acrylic painting. I didn't mix any kind of matte medium so the paint is thick and fairly glossy. Personally I love seeing the brushstrokes and thicker sections of the piece from up close, it gives it a lot of character.

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Wait, that's not Yoshi's Saddle?

I was shocked to learn, after completing the painting, that the big orange object in the dead center of Yoshi IS HIS ARM! I have no idea why his arm is orange, but nonetheless, it is orange. A small part of me feels like my childhood has been ripped to shreds. I was tempted to take a blade to the thing and destroy it, but I held back the urge... for now.

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Process Discovery

On occasion my unsteady hands were creating sloppy results. I tried my hardest to be careful, not wanting to re-mix paint, but then decided to allow myself to bleed the brush into the areas with black or white. Because I wasn't mixing those colors, I didn't need to be as meticulous, and could go back over the sections later. This allowed me to work a little faster and ease my brain a bit.

Looking back it seems like a no brainer.

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Full Setup

Here you can see the arrangement I have been working with. I always had the laptop off to the side to match colors and count pixels. I almost knocked my water cup into the laptop only ONCE.

You can also see the outline of Mario, which I was surprised to find was a very dark red, and his glove.

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The Cape and Nose

Another shocking thing I learned while making this, most of the cape has the same color pink as the bottom of Mario's nose. The whole time I was painting the pink on the cape, I thought it looked odd and I was doing it wrong. But I kept going, and after taking a step back noticed that it finally felt right.

And upon further inspection, the pink I had used was far too saturated. So when I mixed the pink for the cape, I went back over the nose, hence the sloppy bleed into the mustache.

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Proofing

Saving the red for last was a choice, and a somewhat stupid one.

A little background: I am always the biggest proponent for proofing colors when making art which is either going to get printed or put onto a TV.

Here is an example of proofing. On the left is the Mario image pulled straight from the game rom snapshot on a pc. Running it through the proof feature of Photoshop (ctrl y) displays the colors as they would appear in their final medium, in this case NTSC TV.



I first noticed when I was mixing the red, and it wasn't very red, but more pink. I opted to fake the colors a bit and pump the red a touch. In the end I think the red I ended up with was a great result.

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Final Touches

And finally I went back over the sloppy overlap with the mars black paint. I tried using a bit of drafting tape at first, but it wasn't keeping the paint out very well, so I went back with a steady hand to finish the job.

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It's a me

Everyone I was showing pictures to thought the painting was quite small. So I had someone take a picture of me next to the piece to show the scale. I was quite happy to have a picture taken of me.

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The End

Thanks for reading. I hope it wasn't too wordy. And if you have any questions about the process, or anything else, please feel free to contact me.

Up next... either Super Metroid, or chibi Ken from Puzzle Fighter.

Might as well

And so it begins (again.)

Last July when my father passed away, I created a blog. The first post was a bit of a brain dump, getting my feelings and thoughts out of my head so I could find a little inner clarity. I had intended to turn the blog into a game design blog shortly after, trying to take a step towards a bit of professionalism and critical thinking. The past year has been a roller coaster of chaos and happiness, and I feel stable and driven enough to forge ahead and get these thoughts out more often.

Most of my inspiration comes from reading user blogs and comments on Gamasutra.com and Kotaku.com. There are always strong opinions on a multitude of subjects, both serious and light-hearted, and I often have a strong opinion, which I have molded over the 4.5+ years I have been in the industry. The experiences I have had and the people I have met have helped me grow drastically, and I feel I am ready to get some of these thoughts out to educate and entertain.

So I hope you enjoy reading this, and hope some of it is somewhat entertaining.

Enjoy!

1939 - 2008

My relationship with my father was, and is, incredibly complicated. Growing up there wasn't a man I respected and adored more than my dad. He sincerely cared for me and my brothers and I have years of fond memories of him and our family.

He was the epitome of what a father should be:

• Stature: He was taller than me.
  
• Strong: He could lift things right over his head.
• Smart: He knew the answers to a lot of Jeopardy questions.
• Sophisticated: He drank wine, and only sometimes was it in a box.
• Skillful: When anything broke, he could fix it. Car, fridge, bike, anything.

In all, a bunch of S's.

My fondest memories of him were probably picking him up at the airport. My dad would work in other parts of the country, and sometimes other parts of the world, and my mom would count down the days to when he would be getting home. The day he arrived was an event. My brother and I would bring our newest toys to show off, we would sit excitedly on the ride to the SLC airport to pick him up, we would even go past the amazing diorama displaying the layout of the airport complete with miniature planes. We knew exactly where to go and where to wait for him. We had that airport memorized. And all the people would walk off that plane and somewhere never quite in the beginning, and never quite at the end, he would pop his head out of the pack. His handlebar mustache and cowboy hat were always a dead giveaway. He would kiss us all with his prickly chin and scruffy stache, hug us while smelling of some other city on some jacket I'd never seen, and then I would carry one of his bags for him (which wasn't always a chore when it had wheels, that was bonus fun.)

Throughout the years my childhood admiration faded, I grew to know him for who he was and the adult choices he made. He broke the hearts of every member of my family one by one, and sometimes all at once. He abandoned his responsibilities and abandoned his blood relations, on numerous occasions. I can never really describe what he did wrong, it was always more of a matter of how he did wrong. If you look back on all the things he did to make the family upset, it would seem that we are all petty for complaining about such small things, but it was every single instance of every single small thing that ever took place which compiled into the very thing we grew to despise about him over the years; complacency and neglect, not your average father qualities. When I would talk to him on the phone (while he was in another country) he would never try to stop and see where I was coming from, trying to be the diplomat for the stranded family in the states. He would only ever defend himself incessently and never hear a single word I said. I stopped talking to my dad in 2002, fed up with his lies and excuses.

On June 16th I was told my father was diagnosed with Myeloblastic Acute Leukemia. My co-worker looked it up on wikipedia, he said I probably shouldn't read the details. Apparently it can be contracted by coming into contact with high levels of some substance, which I assume (and hope) was a result of years in the tunnel engineering and boring business. I wrote him a (long) letter before he went in for the chemo. Even after all my anger and frustration, I couldn't let him leave without saying something. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of leaving thinking I was ungrateful or misunderstood him. He understood.

He remained in Bolivia, his home since 1999, and spent the last few weeks of his life going through chemotherapy and laying in a bed in a hospital. I spoke to him on the phone, but he couldn't talk back. I could only hear the breathing machines and faint grunts and sobs while I said my goodbyes.

Antony Ivansmith passed away on July 21, in the evening.

So here we are, complicated. I've spent the past seven years or so determined that I would hate him and I would never care if he died, and yet things are complicated. I'm still mad at him for what he did, and I don't imagine I will ever not be mad any time soon, but that doesn't mean I never loved him, I never had fond memories, or that I'll never cry when I think back on missing the father I actually had, the father I wish I had, and the father I wish I still had.