The real reason to attend GDC isn’t to hear some announcement from game companies, since you can get that anywhere. It’s to discover firsthand the thoughts and feelings of those behind the games. The one presentation that everyone had to check out and was talked about for months afterwards was Tetsuya Mizughuchi’s, in which he spoke of his eclectic work up till that point, and with the highlight being a work in progress version of Rez.
From what I gather, this year’s might ending be being WIll Wright’s “Future of Content” presentation earlier today. Everyone who heard the man speak went away completely awestruck, not by what he had to say… besides being widely considered to be one of the few legitimate geniuses in the field of games today, he’s also an engaging speaker as well…. but of what he revealed. And it’s his new project, Spore, which might go down as the most ambitious video game ever,
Basically, you start as a single cell entity and you end as an entire living, breathing galaxy. You can read full details here and its not at all surprising given his knack of making life a game, and a fun one at that. As I stated before, I could give a rat’s ass for most PC games… except for WIll Wright’s, which serve as not only good games, but important ones in my opinion.
For something of this magnitude, there’s only a few who stand a chance of orchestrating such an endeavor, and as much as I hate to admit it, EA might be one of the few publishers able to foot the bill. For a while, I was afraid Wright’s output was going to fizzle out due to the Urbz, which I still refuse to believe he had much part of, and even if he did, I doubt he really enjoyed it.
I guess it’s time to see something good finally come out of the goliath that is EA.
One last GDC related thing: remember all those free HDTVs that all the attendees to the Microsoft presentation? Well seems like they all have to pay taxes on them.
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Anyway, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m home on the computer while MK sits next to me, playing Pikmin (she’s on the very last level actually). We both got up around 3ish, but that’s because she was up till 6 playing Okage, whereas I had to up super early to secure tickets for What Is It? (more on that later) and went back to bed afterwards. Plus I was still tired from yesterday; we both ventured into Brooklyn where I dropped off some boxes of my stuff at the new place. Next weekend is the big move, when everything must go.
So yeah, I found a new home. Was it hard? How did the search go this time around? Well, it didn’t. Actually, I basically said “fuck this shit” almost immediately.
After just one day of looking for a new place back in mid February, I was already sick of the whole process. I’ve been through it all before, and I just couldn’t handle the stress of checking Craiglist every ten minutes, making literally hundreds of phone calls and emails (then stupidly getting names and places mixed up), repeatedly running across the city multiples times like a madman in a single day, checking out one piece of crap place after another, dealing with all sorts of crazies, and figuring out which one I could maybe tolerate the most yet again.
I know I had a month and a half, but I also knew how it was going to end, cuz it always ends the same damn way: after finally finding the perfect place, and everything is set between myself and my future roommate, I get that late night email saying “Yeah, I know this is going sound really shitty, but, like at the last minute, my buddy Jake needs a place to crash. He got dumped by his girl and kicked out his place… you know how it is. But good luck with search!” Then I spend the next day scrambling to see if those other not as good but I now want it places are still available. They’re not of course, so then I have just three days to impress some sketchy character that I’m okay enough to seal the deal right there on the spot. It’s always a person whom I know that I have almost nothing in common with, to the point that I know deep down that this individual may not make an ideal roommate, but when you have 48 hours till you are homeless, you tend to be becoming naively optimistic.
Plus, as all my friends know, I have really bad luck, so when I say that I’ve met some real crazies, I mean it. I’ve had some really absurd, and in some cases, scary encounters. Once a girl interviewed me the whole time on a pogo ball (remember those?) while her boyfriend smoked a bong in the background. Another was with a guy who couldn’t stop scratching herself. Once was a dude who gave me a thirty minute dissertation on why gays where evil (it wasn’t enough that I wasn’t gay, he had to make sure I wasn’t “sympathetic to their cause”). There was this one time where, in the middle of a tour of a particular place, I “discovered” some fat guy sitting in a dark closet, chatting online. Plus there’s the expected crazy old people who don’t want to hear you talk and stay up past 10, the never gonna get anywhere actress who has about a million photos of herself back in 85 when she was an understudy in Cats, or the “hot bartender chick” who’s constantly bending over in front of me as to test me or something.
And the best part is finding out how bullshit ridden the description is online. There’s almost always something truly appalling by general standards… like used drug needles on the stoop, or a hole 5 feet wide on the ceiling, or the stink of shit, and its all treated as no big whoop.
I knew things were not looking good this time around with the very first listing I checked on; it was for a huge bedroom in a great neighborhood… the Groove St. area in Jersey City, where I used to live (till all the damn white folks who came after me drove up prices and it got too expensive, so I had to move to shitty Journal Square). The price was, as they say, too good to be true, as it alwasy is, but I called anyway. The first conversation was less than encouraging, but again, that’s to be expected, at least for me. If there’s one thing I don’t get from all my apartment hunting is people’s attitudes and even tone of voice; if I had a room and needed a roommate, I would at least try to sound pleasant on the phone when screening potential roomies. The last thing I would want to do is come off as some depressed loner who’s constantly on the verge of tears. But again, I let it slide and just wanted to check out the place. But after the third or so schedule visit was cancelled because… get this… the crackhead (litreally) who’s occupying the room won’t let anyone inside, I called it quits.
I’m 27, nearing 28, and I don’t have the time and energy to deal with nonsense, even though I have very little choice. Though I will say that Journal Square was automatically off the list. I’ve been there and I know its a fucking hell hole. And sorry, that new Barnes & Noble that everyone won’t shut up about ain’t gonna make the grizzled homeless folks just magically disappear.
I’ve enjoyed living in Manhattan, if only for the sake of convenience, but that’s about it since I really hate my neighborhood at this point. Everyone knows about my roommates and how insane they are, but I’ve never really talked about the other folks I have to deal with; I live near 125th Street, west of Broadway, on the very western fringe of Harlem, where the angry downtrodden and snobby rich Columbia students clash. If there’s once thing that I’ve learned from living in poor parts, its that poor people are perpetually pissed, and maybe it’s understandable, but it gets old after awhile. And I don’t give a shit what anyone says, reverse racism is still racism; there’s nothing worse than being labeled as some dumb rich white guy, cuz folks, I ain’t rich! Hence why I’ve stuck around: the price I pay is fairly sweet, plus the locals do provide entertainment to a certain extent, but that novelty has grown old (though I do have some decent stories… for next time). Plus, when cable access is the biggest reason for staying in the city, you know it’s time to leave. But I knew that finding a similar deal on the island is next to impossible, unless I move somewhere even more slummy, and I want to avoid that if possible (hence why, again, Journal Square was automatically off the list).
There’s Queens, which is alright I guess, but considering that every single time I found a decent place and was set to move in, it’s been with aforementioned jack-asses who pulled out at the last minute with some lame ass excuse, I’m beginning to think that God doesn’t want me to live in Queens.
Then there’s Staten Island. Hey, it’s a nice place; I’ve only been there once, and that was to help a friend film a movie at his place of work, an Entenmann’s factory. It was neat cuz I got all the free cookies and cakes I could take, which ended up making me fat during my later college years. Anyway, it’s too fucking far away.
Finally, that leaves Brooklyn, a place where everyone knows I just love. Though my perceived hatred for Brooklyn is not totally true; first off, yes Brooklyn does suck, but so does everywhere else, including Manhattan, Queens, Jersey City… even Seattle. Its just that certain types of Brooklynites really get on my Goddamn nerves, in particular, those from the ultra hip sectors, i.e. Willamsburg and DUMBO. If there was ever a cultural wasteland, those parts are it, and their inhabitants personify the elitist hipster that we all know and would love to punch in the face and steal their iPods Minis (at least I would).
You have two primary types of people who live there, the perpetually happy go lucky, care free “trustafarians” who are so proud of themselves for having a hundred plus folks on their MySpace page and are still stoked about that “totally awesome!” quip about Goonies they made at some lame loft party the night prior (cuz, gosh, nobody talks about that movie anymore) or arty farty, graphic designers who act all emo and shit for no good reason, which really makes no sense since if you live in those parts you’re already rich and good looking, so what’s with the angst?
And before I get a ton of flack, I have spoken with plenty of life-long Brooklynites who can attest to how lame (and needlessly expensive) the whole region is becoming as well.
Otherwise, there are some decent parts, and I moving to one of them… Sunset Park, with my long time friend, and former “boss” at WSVA, Stephy. We’ve actually been meaning to live together for a while, but the timing just wasn’t there. That was until this time: I got a call from her out of nowhere a day into my apartment search; she asked if I knew anyone who needed a roommate since she was looking for a new one, and was just as tired of dealing with psychos and the such. And I knew right then and there that I had a new home.
Its a really nice home too. It’s actually an entire house that she owns, and besides a nice sized bedroom, the bathroom doesn’t resemble one you’d find at truck stops, there’s a cozy living room, dining room, a kitchen that’s devoid of years of grease and trapped dead bugs on the wall, and even a spacious backyard. Best off all, I’ve known Stephy for years and know what to expect, plus communication won’t be a problem (whereas my current roommates run out of the room when I enter the enter the apartment).
God, it’ll be so nice to cook again! Seriously, I haven’t been able to do so for the past three years cuz my last three place have been such fucking horror-shows.
Anyway, last night was also the Beer Drinking Fools reunion show, but MK is almost set to beat Pikmin, so I’m gonna stop here and watch that. Next time, details on the show, any video game news I’ve missed over the weekend, plus my account of the greatest retard flinging poo and dead snails at naked women with animal masks movie of all time. At least I think they’re flinging poo… come on, it’s tards! The dead snail thing I am positive about.
