Right Up To Ceiling

Serial Jen is FINISHED.

End result: The final day for submission is the 3rd. It's now the 1st. That leaves me with a couple of days for proofing. Anyone wanna' read it? The maximum word count is 18,000. I came in at 17,894. Man, I'm reaaaaaaaaaaaaally pushing it.

Oh, and as usual, my titles suck, so if anyone has any ideas for what to call this story about a anime-styled, cranky ghost hunter going after a child serial killer, please feel free to contribute as whatever you come up with will probably be several orders of magnitude less sucky than my own attempts.

Also, my FFX characters are approaching deity status. Just doing the final levelling up, all stats almost completely maxed out, final game time just crossed the 142 hour mark with still a few more hours to go. The final boss who took me nearly a half hour to kill the first time, will go down in less than a minute now. Ah, the power...

In other happy news, this afternoon, I'm off to pick up my shiny, new, didn't-cost-me a thing X-Box so that I can start properly reviewing X-Box games. The girlfriend is also ecstatic because it looks like odds are very good she'll end up drawing a series for a favorite writer around the house, Serena Valentino, she of Gloom Cookie fame. Any comic geek/goth freaks reading this will know what I'm talking about.

Back to gaming. And comics. And writing.

Life is good.

Labels: Comics, Games, Writing

Stay On Target...

Serial Jen just broke 50 pages. I think maybe, just maybe, I can wrap this up in ten more. YAY!

Unless Jen does something drastic that bumps up the page count. Which she does every three or so pages anyway. ARGH!

Stubborn characters SUCK.

Labels: Writing

Thank GOD...

Blitzball sidequest: FINISHED.

I'll never have to execute another fucking Jecht Shot for the rest of my days. Screw this team game shit...

All Celestial Weapons acquired. Lulu is now so amazingly powerful that she kills pretty much everything with one casting of "Ultima" and if that don't do it, she's got the "double cast" ability that lets her do it twice. Of course, the only problem now is that she's so imbalanced compared to the other characters (I've been constantly using her, meaning that she's been going up in levels like no one's business and no one else has) that it's gonna' a take a while to bring the other characters up to speed since she kills everything before anyone else can move.

This is a good problem to have...

Labels: Games, RPGs

Break Time

This has been a fairly productive week.

I've cranked out multiple articles for my opinions on games, where they're going, started reading comic books, kept up faithfully with Serial Jen, at least 3 pages a day, just broke 40, and watched the animes Outlaw Star and Super Yo-Yo, then gone off and written my reviews of them. The only thing I haven't been doing is playing Xenosaga, and that, unfortunately, is because the software was... hm... how shall I put this? Acquired through "enterprising means" and likely bought from some guy selling them at a table at ridiculously low prices with an English vocabulary only slightly larger than the number of teeth in his mouth. In other words, the PS2 refuses to read it. Argh. I suppose things will continue this way until PlayWorks gets more credibility in the industry and more developers start kissing up and unloading free software in their laps. As it is, they're not receiving much cooperation from anyone except the keepers of the Bill-Box. *Sigh*...

Oh well, at least there's still Final Fantasy X.

Damn that Blitzball... pissing me off. And this monster hunting side-quest is getting really, really old. On the other hand, I've acquired every celestial weapon but one, and that'll be done once the stupid Blitzball tournament has been won...

Right. INTO THE FRAY ONCE MORE!

Labels: Anime, Games, My Life, RPGs

Welcome To The Candy Store

Today has been a good day for freebies...

Unfortunately I can't keep all of them (Well, not the comics anyway...) but to have this much in the way of geeky goodness dropped in my lap in one day is kind of mindblowing.

I got that Xenosaga game and now, at long last, the geekdom truly ignites. As far as the comic books go, a lotta' classics, which I'm extremely happy about, since most of them I can review favorably. A reprint of G.I. Joe... the nostalgia factor alone makes that a winner, a Trade Paper Back compilation of my all-time favorite Marvel storyline the Dark Phoenix saga, back in the glory days of Claremont and Byrne, the 80's comic dream team, a TPB of the Jim Lee run of the X-Men... oh, and I'm supposed to review the entire run of Sandman plus Death compilations, but since I already have those, no freebies there...

So now there is this big, huge, gaping maw of geek matter that draws me in with the inexorability of a white dwarf crushing under its own gravitational pressure in that most feared of all cosmic phenomena, the Black Geek Hole. Speculation in the scientific community suggests that travel through could lead to new laws of time flow, possibly lead to portals that circumvent normal relativisic laws of travel, or possibly lead to other dimensions altogether, like my deranged imagination, for example.

Between writing Serial Jen, playing Xenosaga (Purely for work-related reasons, of course. I love my job...) reading a mess of comic books, writing up all that material, and securing new article ideas/interviews/reviews for the PC platform (Yes Amos, those last two are directed at YOU. Do me proud. Use your spell check regularly, we work on American spelling, so it's "center" not "centre" which is stupid anyway...) and last, but certainly not least, sucking up to the girlfriend in the wake of the Geek Vortex, things will be busy and posts, while not disappearing altogether, will probably be small.

See ya' on the other side...

Labels: Comics, Games, My Life

Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus...

And he's bringing GAMES. In the metric tonnage...

The trip down to Playworks was one of those Good News/Bad News scenarios, although I think in the long term, the good news far, FAR outweighs the initial disappointment of the bad news.

First off, the office. Is temporary. Right now they're holed up in their MASSIVE version of my Cave, a side-company they own which is a glorified videogame den for members of the club, called The Brotherhood Of The Box. Basically you pays your money, and that allows you unlimited access to a while buncha' X-Boxes that are laid out on one end of the place (Just request your game, pop it in, and try to show some consideration for other players who visit...), or, if you're lucky, you sit down at the couch with the MASSIVE screen hooked up and digital surround with optical cabling and play like you've never played before. When I showed up, they were, unsurprisingly, playing DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball.

Unfortunately, the editor who was supposed to meet me, apparently a former, disgruntled editor of one of the newspapers here, Today, was sick with a bout of food poisoning, so I didn't get to sit down and talk to her. I met everyone else though, and it's pretty much what I suspected, a stinking, drooling, giggling den of hardcore geeks.

I felt right at home.

I hung out with their creative director (He's one of the poor slobs that works there 18 hours a day, sleeps the rest of the time and see his home twice a week) and he dragged me off for cigarettes and coffee. He seemed pretty bemused by me, since most of the people who are begging to be reviewers are local, speak English pretty badly, and are mostly kids in their late teens or early 20s.

CD: I'm going for a cigarette... Uh... you wouldn't happen to smoke, would you?

My Pithy Reply: I'm a WRITER, for God's sake...

CD: [Big grin and thumbs up]

It was pretty casual. I talked to the Editor In Chief (Translation: He runs around trying to secure funding until the marketing person is hired) and he pretty much told me that there wasn't any doubt that I could do this job based on the resume bomb I carpeted them with. Unfortunately, they weren't able to hire just at this time, and so the best that I could hope for was volunteer contributing reviewer.

HOWEVER...

In about two months, once their marketing person has been hired (Whoever that ends up being, interested, Ching?) and things stabilize a bit, they're going to be looking for a fulltime reviewer/editor. They told me the job was mine in May if I wanted it.

IF I WANTED IT?!?

IF I FUCKIN' WANTED IT?!?

In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "He don't know me very well, do he?"

So it looks like for the next little while, they'll be easing me in as a volunteer reviewer. That'll show me the ropes of how they work around there, get to know the people while they get to know me, and assuming all goes well, I'll have a job that, if you can believe it, will require me to go out and purchase game consoles and write it off as a business expense come tax time. They tell me it would be better if I had all three consoles. It's a tough, painful process, having to go in there and buy those consoles so I can get saddled with free games, but hey, I'm a professional and there's a job to do...

[Distant Ironic Mode OFF. Redneck Mode ON]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Redneck Mode OFF. Distant Ironic Mode ON]

Anyway, they've already registered me on their web community, given me staff privileges that allow me access to sections of the forum hidden from general gaming eyes, and given me my first two assignments: Xenosaga and Primal, both for the PS2. I pick up my games on Thursday and have been warned to keep my Xenosaga review down to 600 words or less.

Bonus Points!

After that decidedly odd experience, the girlfriend and I went down to our regular comics joint, @omix comix, to see if there was anything interesting and so I could paw, molest, and whisper sweet nothings into the packaging for the Babylon 5 Season 1 DVD set that is still sitting there, waiting for me to get up the funding to bring it home.

She's doing their new website, and so we're scoring major points down there and getting discounts left, right and center. Today the owner asked me, completely out of the blue, if I'd be interested in doing the comic reviews for him. This of course, made my jaw drop as first people are throwing free games at me, now I'm getting comic books too.

Maybe, just maaaaaaaaaaaaybe... Life can be not terrible once every few days.

So to tally up the total damages for today. I am now:

Officially a games reviewer for Playworks.
Am now officially a comics reviewer for @omix comics
Will officially be Reviews Editor for Playworks if things work out.
Am now getting paid to play games, read comics and then talk about it afterwards.

Too.

Fucking.

Sweet...

In the meantime, the demands of paying the rent continue, and so it's time to sign off and get back to writing more marketing-based web copy for a friend of mine who is hoping I can start sounding less casual and start sounding more slick and corporate since this is the third crack I'm taking at the web copy. I think I've finally got it nailed, so with any luck I won't need anymore rewrites after this. Then it's back to FFX.

Hey, it's not just lazing around, it's my job now...

Labels: Games, My Life

WHY IS THIS SO STUPI...Oh, This Is Ours... Eh Heh, Heh, Heh...

And so the end result of the visit to the RCB, which was a great source of satisfaction to the girlfriend was...

Even THEY were baffled by their own easy to use, quick, efficient, online registration system, had to get another pencil pusher to help, still couldn't do it, had to call a manager, then had to call us back later in the day once they've straightened it out.

Call me sadistic, but I derive great pleasure from the bureaucrats being overwhelmed by their own bureaucracy...

It started when the pencil pusher (Actually, a kind of nice lady. For a pencil pusher...) went over our particular case. The case being we tried to register the business online and got stopped dead cold in our tracks because while the girlfriend could register herself as an owner in the business, I could not, seeing as you had to log onto the system using your National ID number, which of course, I don't have, not being local.

This, apparently, was something the rocket scientists had NOT taken into account when they developed their online system, but had conveneniently failed to mention anywhere in the registration process. This despite the fact that the government has officially stated that it wants to encourage foreign workers, investment and entrepreneurship in Singapore. So the message I guess, is, "We want you to come here! We want you to work here! We want you to have businesses here! We just don't want you to be able to start one!"

Like, HUH?!?

Thus, the girlfriend had already used her credit card to pay for the registration before the system stopped her and said, "You can't do that." So the pencil pusher tried to do it for us, couldn't. Called her co-worker, her co-worker couldn't figure it out either, they called the manager, and finally after some fiddling around with the system, (And a 90 minute wait, we went off and got lunch) they got it all figured out by doing some arcane thing with system access that ordinary users aren't. So in the end, their convenient, online, easy to use system only worked out when we went DOWN to their regular office and they had to circumvent their own safeguards and it took three of them to do that.

Convenient. Easy. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur it isssssssssssssssssss...

Say, did I ever mention I hate bureaucracy?

Well, I do.

We're nearly there, anyway. After all that got settled we needed to acquire our business registration info, the documents we need to present whenever anyone asks for certification that it actually exists. This is deceptively known as "Instant Information" and we went down to the "Instant Information Counter" and were told our instant information would take a few days.

Say, did I mention I hate bureaucracy?

Well, I do.

I'm A Loser Baby... So Why Don't You Pay Meeee...

Hm... it's kind of pointless for me to try and go to bed in a few hours for an interview at 4 pm, so I think I'll just skip that show up dead tired. From what I can see, the Playworks guys operate in a Zombified state anyway, so me showing up slightly brain dead from writing and playing FFX shouldn't be that big a deal and might even score points.

I'm still not sure if they're looking for a full time staff writer, or just a contributing one. That hasn't come up yet. I'm pretty much game for either, although if review copies are on offer for both positions, I'd probably just opt for the contributing writer since it means more time at home to play.

Yeah, I got my priorities screwed on properly, don't I?

Labels: My Life, Singapore Stupidity

Money? I've Heard Of That. Is It In Algeria?

There may be a job in the offing, and happily, it may not be with Nadya!

After not hearing from Playworks for a few days after writing them, I assumed that they weren't interested and wrote them an e-mail that said "Since you didn't write back, I'm assuming you're not interested. Oh well..."

They wrote back.

I have an interview on Tuesday. I already warned them that there will be no suit, tie or shoes involved, since these are all primary ingredients which, when combined with me, act as a catalyst for spontaneous combustion. But then, they're gamers, so I didn't think the suit thing would be part of the culture. Still, if it works out, it'd be a paying gig. They've warned me however that the hours are insane. They work 18 hour days 5 days outta' the week. Sometimes they don't even go home during that period, so it's pretty hard core over there... My guess is they're probably gearing up to see if they can send some lucky bastard to the E3 and play games until they achieve cerebral hemorrahge, but that's the price you pay for being a geek.

RCB Stands For Retarded Cheatin' Bastards

Or, if you follow conventional wisdom, Registry of Companies & Business.

This is the next critical step. Now that MOM has said it's okay for me to get a job, I have to go to the Retards and it seems in order to make themselves more efficient, user friendly and convenient, they are slowly making the transition towards the process being done entirely online.

This, of course, has made the whole process more tedious, less efficient, needlessly complicated, and unbelievably inconvenient, if not impossible.

The girlfriend was so frustrated by the whole affair she ended up slugging back three drinks in the aftermath of the not successful attempt. Things like instructions to click on hyperlinks were there was none, asking ME to log onto the site to confirm the registration and then finding only locals with a NRIC (National Registered Identity Card) make it impossible for me to do this, and so, we are faced with the prospect of making another trip in broad daylight in order to accomplish this.

I am beginning to see the appeal of Marxist teachings after viewing all the hoops involved in the so called "Easy start up process" to running a business here. If there is one thing that the Uber-Capitalism of Singapore has been teaching me of late, it's that Lenin had a point.

Oh well, at least there's the possible game writing job to look forward to. That'll be fun for a while until I realize I'm spending more time writing than playing, at which point cynicism kicks in and I start yearning for those blissful days of unemployment...

Labels: My Life, Singapore Stupidity

And For All The Edmontonians Out There

Holy Fuck.

Just read Karen (She of the endless wit) Chow's blog and heard about the fire on Whyte Ave.

For me personally, the only rational response is:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH GOD, WHY DIDN' T YOU TAKE ME INSTEAD?!?

Edmonton friends can click off now for the next paragraph.

Asian readers can know this: Whyte Avenue is the designated Old Quarter of Edmonton where you'll find all your 19th and early 20th century style buildings that still has the "old town thoroughfare" sort of feel to it. Littered with Mom n' Pop establishments where the owners actually man the cash register and know their products (Assuming they don't make them, or don't have them made by friends) Whyte Ave has always been the traditional home of folksiness, artsiness (It's a true Bohemian enclave, unlike the artificial ones that Singapore is trying to create) and its proximity to the university campus guarantees a certain minimum amount of hipness and attitude. This is where my beloved Princess Theatre (The local art house cinema, something Singapore is, again, UTTERLY devoid of) used to be, Greenewoods, the bookshop, Warp One, the geek comic store (Which I've been told is slowly degenrating into a pool of greedy, commercial insanity) and more bars and cafes than you can swing a dead cat at. I spent a good number of years unsuccessfully trying to finish the macho nacho platter at Squire's Taven, home of free food on Friday nights. Played pool at the 24 hours pool hall just down the street. Went down for the Fringe Festival to take in many bad amateur plays and a suprisingly large number of good ones, and basically have invested the entire street with being a significant part of my formative years in university, which is when I actually consider myself to have become interesting and more or less human.

Having Whyte Ave go up in flames like that is kind of like finding out the playground I used to love as a kid has been paved over to make way for a bordello. That's just wrong.

Man, they weren't kidding when they said you can't go home again.

Now I feel like I have to try and include Whyte Ave into the Jen story I'm writing, since it takes place during roughly the same period that I was going to university anyway. If I can't have the real thing, I may as well try and at least preserve the nostalgia of it...

Labels: Friends, My Life

It's Official: MOM Is Fed Up And I Reap The Rewards!

Just a couple of hours after the last post, I actually got a call from MOM telling me, lo and behold! MY APPROVAL IN PRINCIPLE HAS ACTUALLY BEEN APPROVED! I think this has something to do with that last visit yesterday morning. The officer at the desk (They're called "officers" now, no one wants to be a pencil-pushing bureaucrat) must have had something to do with it. She was pretty baffled (AGAIN...) when the records showed that my application for a 10 day process had been pending since January, and since I had nothing to do with it, logic dictates that, against all odds, the bureaucracy must have fouled up somehow. I suppose in order to prevent further blame from burning up the ladder (The girlfriend's theory is that they probably lost the application and just won't admit it) they just went and gave it approval in order to hush it up and keep it all in the closet.

So now that the Approval In Principle has been given, I can actually go off and register a name for a business and then hire myself to it, thus circumventing being illegal in Singapore, WITHOUT having to apply for permanent residency.

Thank. GOD...

Crank Up The Drama Magnet

One of the double edged swords that seems particular to my life is that even when I am trying my best to avoid drama, it breaks into my house, ties me to a chair and forces me to watch the slide show it made of its trip to Iraq and North Korea. Which is to say that once one worry is addressed, another shows up asking to be invited to the party.

The worry in question is the next step in bureaucratic hurdle of starting a business, getting the Banker's Guarantee. This is essentially hostage money. When foreigner goes and starts a business in Singapore, a Banker's Guarantee of $3,000 is required. You put up the money, they hold onto it, and one of two things happens; when you decide to pack up and go, you rescind your employment pass and you get the money back with some small interest, or, you get arrested for sleeping with 15 year old girl at the fish net stocking party you threw with your clients ("I swear to God, she LOOKED 21!") and the money is taken by the bank as punishment for you not behaving yourself. One of the steps that is required to do this (Being poverty-stricken, I threw myself at the mercy of Ching and she delivered. I owe you biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime, girl...) aside from putting up the money is that you have to present a business plan, usually the same one that was presented to MOM to get the approval in the first place.

However, the business plan that got us approval in the first place was sitting on the girlfriend's E: drive, and that, due to some incredible carelessness on the part of the computer repair guy when she brought it in, has been mistakenly reformatted, and we only made the ONE print out. I get queasy just thinking about that. I've made multiple copies of my novel which I believe are sitting with various friends as a redundancy measure, I never did that with my third book I'm currently writing. The guy who fucked up felt so bad that he threw in a free graphics card as compensation to her, but in my case, I'd just look at all that work gone and irreplaceable and a graphics card just wouldn't cut it. If I'd lost my OTHER novels in the process... shit, that's 8 years of writing down the tubes...

So anyway, after placing a rather worried call to MOM asking if it was possible to get a copy of that business plan back, they gave us a FAX number, if you can believe that, to which we are supposed to fax our request, and they will "consider" it.

Damn you MOM...

Press "X" To Dodge

The tedium of Blitzball finally got to me and I've moved on to something else to ease my frustration, only to find it may just increase it. Running around a rocky area called "The Thunder Plains" trying to dodge 200 bolts of lightning in a row in order to get one of the components required to assemble one of the various Ultimate Weapons for the the characters.

Dodging 200 bolts of lightning, what sick bastard came up with this one?

Probably the same kind of sick bastard that is actually sitting down trying to do it.

Damn you, Square. Damn me too, while we're at it...

Labels: Games, My Life, RPGs, Singapore Stupidity

It's Official: MOM Is Senile...

Bedtime will not arrive until the Singnet guys come over to inspect our line which has been giving us sporadic internet connection for the last week or so.

In the meantime, I am posting this in the wake of the latest visit to MOM.

MOM is senile. I am sure that is the official diagnosis now. There are many reasons that have led me to this conclusion, but the guiltiest parties are a parade of chronically recurring symptoms that are only worsening with time:

1) Chronic forgetfulness

MOM: What was your name again?

Me: It's me! Wayne! Don't you remember? I was just here two weeks ago!

MOM: Really?

Me: Yes! I've been coming here for weeks now! Don't you remember? The application? The delay? Don't you remember any of it?

MOM: Just tell me what your name is again, and we'll look into it.

Me: AUGH!

2) Chronic Amazement

Me: I'm telling you, I haven't gotten any word on the application yet.

MOM: But that's IMPOSSIBLE! It's only supposed to take 10 days!

Me: You said that already. Two weeks ago, and two weeks before that, AND before that.

MOM: Wow! Really?!?

Me: Yes.

MOM: REALLY?!? WOW!

Me: AUGH!

3) Chronic Stupidity

Me: Look, I need an extension for this passport again.

MOM: But why?

Me: 'Cause my two weeks are up.

MOM: But how could that be?

Me: Well, there's this thing, it's brand new, just hit the market, it's called a "linear timestream." That means that one second passes. Then... another second passes. And another and another! Eventually you have a whole piles of seconds that, when totalled to 60, is called a minute. Sixty of those are called an hour and 24 of those are days. 7 of those are weeks, and two of mine have elapsed, so stamp me.

MOM: But you've already got a stamp for extension here.

Me: [Icily] Gee willikers, how 'bout that? Where do you suppose that came from?

MOM: Hey, this is my stamp!

Me: Well stick me in a dress and call me Sally, so it is...

MOM: How come it hasn't been approved yet?

Me: I was hoping you could answer that.

MOM: Well, we'll look into it. What was your name again?

Me: AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! KILL ME NOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The short form of that rant being that yes, the passport has been stamped in utter confusion, and yes, it will be looked into again.

MOM... I don't know how to tell you this, but you're old. It's time. Either go to the retirement home and spend your days mumbling about application forms to the geraniums in the corner, or get someone to take you out into the backyard and put you out of your misery like a well-loved but half-blind, stone-deaf sheepdog well past it's prime. You can't dance the Charleston anymore and, by the way, the Germans lost both World Wars so shut up about the Kaiser and that young Adolf troublemaker in Berlin. It's over. Just deal.

Labels: Singapore Stupidity, Stupid Scripts

Agh

Serial Jen is now officially at 31 pages and still going strong. It was supposed to be over at 36. Why?!? WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF?!?

AGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Labels: Writing

I Repeat

I hate playing Blitzball.

Stupid sports game... I didn't want to be a jock in real life, what makes Square think I wanna' be one in the fictional world of Spira... Argh... Wakka's Overdrive Reels had better be worth this grief...

Labels: Games, RPGs

Sporadic Manifestations

That is an apt description of both my postings and my income of late.

I keep getting checks in the mail of a few hundred dollars at a time for work I'd done and completely forgotten about. These checks always seem to come in just as I say, "Well, that's it, the bank account is nearly empty," and keep me going for another couple of miserly weeks. Thank God for videogames, novels and DVD extras, great ways to kill days at a time without having to go out and spend frightening amounts of money...

There probably aren't going to be much in the way of postings for the next little bit because A) not much is happening, and B) To prepare for the eventual release of Final Fantasy X-2 later in the year, my nostalgia kicked in and booted up Final Fantasy X, ostensibly just to view the ending cinemas one more time... and of course I realized, "Hey, I didn't play this game to death the first time around and get EVERY single ultimate weapon for EVERY single character and get EVERY single one of them up to max level and win EVERY single trophy in the Blitzball tournaments... so now guess what I'm doin'?!?

My GOD... I'd forgotten how beautiful this game looked...

So between trying to crank out a minimum of 2-3 pages per day on Serial Jen (Up in the 20s! Whoo! Hope it it doesn't get up into the 90s like the last one...) and then retreating to the Cave to summon Aeons, play Blitzball and generall try to ogle Lulu's cleavage when she bends down for her "victory pose" after winning a fight, things are wonderfully, blessedly quiet and routine. Aside from the fact that each day is one of financial uncertainty, this is more or less the life I'd always hoped to live, minus the book tour and plasma TV home theatre set up. Everything else is pretty much there though; the girlfriend, the cat, the writing, the games and the movies. I want for very little except a little more financial stability, although, the more I think about it, the more I realize it means the end to this incredibly pleasant lifestyle (IE, full time job equals 8 hours in the office, 5 days a week, or, success with the book means more pressure to write regularly, only now with editors hounding me..._) and so I'm trying to get as much mileage as I can outta' this before Change, as it always, cheekily, reliably does, goes ahead and fucks up something that was working out just fine, thank you very much...

Who Would'a Thunk It?

I don't fucking believe this one. This just happened this evening while making a cigarette run to the 7-11. I looked casually at the shelves, and saw what I thought was a pretty hip, stylish looking geek/gaming mag. Closer inspection revealed that it wasn't one of the familiar gaming mags I know from the U.S. or U.K., but something actually produced HERE. What bowled me over even more was that it's GOOD! My God, it's ACTUALLY GOOD! No grammar errors willy nilly, no spelling errors, and the writers actually seem to be able to live up to that title!

The magazine itself is called Playworks and has only been in circulation since November. I was caught by this particular cover right here for Final Fantasy X-2. After flipping through it and actually laughing in all the right places (Their Mean Letters Responses section by Dr. 1-Up... God, I wish I'd written that abortion joke...) I felt compelled to write them and beg for a job. I did that about three hours ago, barraging them with everything from my agent's website to the my mention in the National Book Development Council of Singapore's website as a "Singapore Writer" (Yes, they've already co-opted me, the sneaky bastards...) some of my online articles, like the one written for Upload magazine, and last, but not least, but pseudo review of Suikoden III that was posted right here in this very blog. Two hours ago they wrote back asking me for my contact details. That stunned me, since the e-mail was sent off at about 11 pm local time, but I guess someone must've been burning the midnight oil over there to get the next issue out, so I guess all I can do now is wait. Still, writing for a gaming mag would be a ton of fun for a while, and might even potentially lead to possible avenues of exploitation for Geek Life...

I'm getting entirely too mercenary for my own good these days...

Right, back to Final Fantasy X... See you all in a couple of weeks...

Stupid Blitzball tournaments... I don't even like Blitzball...

Labels: Games, My Life

Here We Are, Born To Be Kings, We Are Princes Of The Universe...

Just had an idea while walking back with the groceries, and I wanna' get it down before I lose it.

One thing I have always loved about RPGs was the fact that usually the storylines had fairly big, epic scale. Usually the scale was save the world, although sometimes it was save the galaxy. But today it suddenly occurred to me, "Hey, why doesn't anyone take it further?"

So I have now come up a rough idea for an RPG that would either be called Karma, or Nirvana. The scale here isn't just epic, it's cosmic. It's multi-generational and the stakes are the very fundamentals of existence itself.

You control an entity. I have to call it an entity because over the course of the game, the protagonist would actually shift in form, gender, what-have-you as time passes and it moves onto the next cycle of its karmic/reincarnation system. Okay, let me back up. I haven't yet fully worked out the mechanics of the plot yet (Since this idea is about 15 minutes old at the moment...) but it has something to do with the hero/entity progressing over the course of entire lifetimes, moving onto the next cycle in newer, more powerful forms. The idea of "levelling up" would be slightly different in this game, as you get Karma instead, and while you will progress in "levels" during the course of one lifetime, adding new skills, upping your stat-attributes and all the usual rigamarole associated with RPG advancement, the big key here is that you will die. You will die frequently and you will often want it to happen because when you do die, it will doubtless be in the elimination of some key figure of the plot and when you are reborn into your next life (Years, sometimes centuries after the previous one) you will be able to spend the Karma you acquired to purchase new abilities for this new life. Actually, maybe I should be more specific and say that while you will still acquire experience points in order to advance the abilities of your current character (And some of those stat/ability upgrades will carry over into the next life) the Karma points are what allow you to purchase the "Super" or "Cosmic" abilities will allow you to truly kick ass in combat.

The whole point of this game at the moment seems to be the systematic elimination of various levels of Gods. I think quite a few religious parties would get mightily offended with this game, but for the moment I toying with the idea that the character progresses in power and ability over the years, decades, centuries, millenia and eons to eventually challenge the fabric of deification itself and kill it.

The reason I started this post with that Queen lyric is because I've ALWAYS wanted to see, hear or read something that took it at a literal level. This character/protagonist will start out in a tutorial/introductory prologue as a fairly primitive sort of person who is more enlightened than those around him, and will challenge the conventions of his pre-agragrian society as the game's intro. He'll start to question the idea of why people have to live in fear of gods at all, and will, after successfully beating the shaman/priest/religious figure of his tribe, die at the hands of the tribe.

Then we move to the next "chapter" (The game will be divided into chapters) with a woman, although she recognizably has the same eyes and similar facial structure as our cave man. Whatever abilities the cave man acquired through levelling up and Karma acquisition will also be present, though can't be spent just yet as the woman, for the first few minutes of the new chapter anyway, goes about her normal life, as usual feeling that something is inherently wrong with her or the world, though she can't quite articulate what. Eventually, her country is totally ravaged by a thinly disguised stand-in for Hebrews who are killing and enslaving people left, right and center, claiming this land is theirs by divine right, and the woman watches as her family is slaughtered and her military helpless to defeat these substitute Hebrews as divine intervention in the form of Holy Fire or whatnot decimates troops and she begins to truly question and hate the presence of gods.

This triggers latent memories of her previous life and now the game gets cooking as you can finally spend those accumulated Karma points to buy up new abilities. She manifests these cosmic abilities as she attempts to unsuccessfully repel the Hebrew stand-ins (This chapter, like most to follow, will probably take about 3-4 hours to complete, and will have many twists and turns) as she is regarded as both a saviour by her people and a demoness by the righteous Hebrew stand ins that bitterly resent her interference in their divinely approved genocide. Eventually, at the end of the chapter, her "boss" is a confrontation with the substitute Moses where they discuss the rights and wrongs of brutally murdering an entire people based on a God's say-so and the Moses substitute shrugs and says he is merely an instrument of the divine and it is not his place to question these purposes. The woman says that maybe it's about time someone started doing just that, and proceeds to beat him, leading to his martyrdom, rise to prominence of this new religion, the unavoidable slaughter of her people. She is struck down by the prophet's own god, since humans can't seem to do it, and dies with a burning sense of injustice in her heart.

The game continues on in this fashion, with various incarnations of this same soul always rising in power/stature (As a result of the accumulated Karma and experience from the previous life), always having the same eyes and same general facial structure and always eventually rising to challenge the deities of the universe. It starts out small in the first few chapters, taking on the human agents of these gods, and gradually, as the game progresses, the amount of time it takes for the soul to come to itself and remember its purpose gets shorter and shorter, until finally, towards the middle of the game, permanent retention of past lives goes into effect. Many sacreligious moments will occur in the game with more thinly disguised religious moments pertaining to all faiths, such, as for example when the protagonist goes out into the desert to see the game equivalents of Jesus and Satan during the temptation, and the protagonist stands in for humanity demanding that they both go away and leave people alone.

Gradually the scale of the game ramps up, going beyond the confines of earth to encompass the galaxy, and finally the entire universe. I envisage certain cutscenes/plot developments like when the supercharged, nearly god-like protagonist engages in battle with one of the more powerful pantheons/deities in an effort to stop them from wiping out an entire cluster of galaxies, and fails, showing a cutscene that involves the death of trillions upon trillions of sentients who snuffed out as a result of divine whim. The game would end with the final form of the protagonist, now, for all intents and purposes, a god, wiping out the last of the deities that rule the universe, and in chaos that ensues from destroying such a pillar of existence, finally makes the ultimate sacrifice of using their superpowered soul to keep the universe going, but with the provision it has wiped out any possibility of coming back as a more concrete deity to once again control the lives of countless beings.

The theme of the game is, of course, that humanity doesn't need gods, fate, or destiny and that in the end, human will should be the defining factor of life, not religious faith or divine intervention. As the protagonist advances from humble cave man to prominent leader of a nation to mistaken prophet to finally demi-god and fully divine status, there is a constant reinforcement that blind faith is wrong, expecting a divine force to rescue you is wrong, carrying out genocide on the justification of divine right is wrong, and that ultimately, we are responsible for our actions and should not give, or make accountable, our actions to anything beyond ourselves.

Let's just say I wanna' take Nietzsche's famous statement of "God is dead" a step further and have a game where God is killed and existence is the better for it.

This is truly evil, isn't it?

Labels: Games, Rants, RPGs

Downtime

Not much to report today in the aftermath of Suikoden III. I think I'm experiencing the game geek equivalent of post-partum depression in a mild state. I don't actually feel upset or sad, so much as I feel like I stopped carrying something and I'm still wondering what to do now that I don't have it to occupy my time.

In the meantime I've been doing small stuff. Wrote another article for Upload, a review of websites they gave me that forced me to join up with a free "Friendfinder" service for locals. Since I wasn't particularly interested in making new friends, I just dropped the tagline, "Love Is Dead And I'm The Coroner" and proceeded to write a snarky, mean spirited intro that should repel all but the most psychotic of women. Nadya got back to me about changes she wants to make to her concept proposal again, and I did it and sent them off.

Oh, and I had to go down to my old, favorite post-production house, 4MC, now newly christened "Ascent Media" thanks to some merger out in the 'States by their owners, and met up with an old coworker who promptly threw more work in my lap. This is a good thing, since it also meant I could bug her about the DVD and PS2 games that she owes me from the last time I did her a favor. Jen still needs to be written and finished, and I expect I'll take another chunk out of it today.

However, I took a brief break to actually sit down and read something for once, something I haven't actually done in months and felt pretty weird about. Since I can't actually afford Pattern Recognition at the moment, I opted to go and reread the classic Ender's Game.

Damn I wish I could write like that.

The thing that I like about Orson Scott Card (Or at least THIS book of his, I wasn't too crazy about the sequels that followed) is that he is not the master--nor does he care to be--of style, eloquence or even memorable dialogue. What he TOTALLY kicks ass in is psychology. All the characters in Ender's Game come off as very deep, unbelievably complex, and even if they're not dropping pithy dialogue eveyr 5 seconds, everything they say or do oozes character and sympathy. Somehow, without relying on any kind of pyrotechnics, but just pure, blunt, human psychology, Card's characters come off as more memorable and engaging than most of the extremely well-spoken characters that appear in the vast majority of literature today. Admittedly even when I compare my gods, Gibson and Gaiman up to this one book, their characters pale against it. How the hell did Card DO that?!?

It also pains me slightly to realize that this book I love so much was published by the publishers who are currently sitting on my book, and was in fact EDITED by the editor who has my books. I keep wondering what that guy could do for me to improve my writing if the likes of Orson Scott Card got his ass kicked by him. Argh... that eager part of me that wants to learn just sorta' burns at how closely the opportunity is, and yet at the same is still inaccessible for the moment.

I continue to obsess about Xenosaga, now scouring the 'net downloading every available audio and video file available to work up my already psychotic levels of anxiousness for this game to a whole new level of mania. I think it would really cool if someday I could actually work with Square or some other big RPG company and write the scenario for their game...

Sigh... a guy can dream, can't he?

Oh well, off to pick up groceries. Whee!

Labels: Books, Games, RPGs

Oxygeeeeeeeeen!

For those of you who for whatever reason actually follow these ramblings, you may have noticed a clear, decisive absence in posts. That is for one very simple reason:

Konami's Suikoden III for the Playstation 2.

I am finally coming up for air after sitting there this morning at 4:30 am, watching the final credits roll on the game and checking the game clock to realize that I had been playing for over 100 hours. The guys who made this game lied. They said it would take 60. This is the kind of lying I like though.

Yes, this is the obessisive compulsive RPG gamer side of me again, finally being put to rest for at least a couple of weeks and letting me come up for some air. I don't know what it is about those damn games. I think it's the whole immersiveness of it, because RPGs don't just give you a realistic environment to play around in, they give you a world, with traditions and history and little people all wandering around going about their business. One of the things I liked about this game--well, there were a LOT of things I liked about this game--was the fact that when I wandered around in the cities, they felt like real cities with people talking to each other, kids playing, people at medieval market stalls stuffed with baskets of fruit, vases and urns... It was just unbelievably cool if you're the kind of gaming geek like me who just wants to completely lose himself in the game.

It was a good game. A fine game. I was initially put off by the simplistic, cartoony, polygonal graphics, after coming from the visual powerhouses of games like Final Fantasy X, but in the end, what Suikoden III lacked in visual splendour it made up for with one of the few epic story-lines in video game plots for 2002, and I can see why it won the awards for RPG of that year. From a pure story point of view (Assuming you care about that stuff like I do) nothing could touch this game. It just sucked me in, and no matter how tedious the random battles got, I kept pushing myself to move forward because a) I HAD to find out what happened next, b) I got so attached to my particular group of 108 possible characters in the game I just liked making them kick ass be at ridiculously high levels and most important of all, c) I stupidly felt like there were stakes involved, high ones, and that I wanted to make sure that when the upcoming battle with the enemy came up, my troops were up to the task, the enemy would be thoroughly vanquished, and the sanctity of the kingdom was preserved. When a game gets me THAT emotionally involved in the welfare of its fictitious world, I know I have a winner on my hands. Fortunately, I didn't have to neglect the girlfriend for this particular effort, 'cause it had anime based designs, a fantasy/epic storyline and she is ALL about that stuff, so 3/4 of the time she was sitting there playing backseat gamer and pointing out things/objects I'd missed, and sitting there oohing and aahing the story right up until the very end. I'm the luckiest guy on the planet. My girlfriend got just as excited about the end of a videogame as I did.

And that, my friends, explains where I've been for the last week. Coming back again and again to fight for the preservation of the Zexen principality and the Grasslands to ensure they wouldn't be annihilated by the overly ambitious Holy Harmonia Kingdom and its phalanx of magic wielding Bishops. On a scale of five shoes, I give Suikoden III five shoes, with shoelaces. All neatly tied up.

Of course, now it's time to worry about the real world. First thing up:

Uh... We Don't Know. Go Away And Don't Bother Us.

MOM is confused.

The Ministry Of Manpower, in its usual, stumbling, bureaucratic way, has promptly gone and fucked up my application for a business and they don't know how or why it happened. Fortunately, none of this is my fault.

What happened is that normally this type of application would be processed in about 10 working days and they would tell you what the outcome was, first by sending you a letter to let you know what your processing number is for references regarding inquiries, and then, eventually with the final outcome itself. None of this happened. I never received my letter, and my passport, which, thankfully was extended to the end of February, sat there and clocked the days. Last week, I finally got antsey and so called up MOM to ask what was going on. MOM was utterly confused as to why this happened and asked for my name and passport number, and that they would conduct an inquiry to find out what happened and either call me at the end of the day or the next to let me know what happened. They didn't call that day. The next day they DID call, and that was to act surprised all over again and ask me the same questions and tell me they'd conduct an inquiry and that I'd be receiving a call by the end of the day or the next. The next day, they called back with the nebulous, "It's still being processed," excuse, which seemed to baffle the woman on the phone as much as it did me. So I had to write a letter to MOM explaining in the politest possible terms, "Please extend my passport while you sort out your fuck up," and they did it, telling me that THIS time, for sure, the processing shouldn't take more than ten business days.

We'll see...

The Beautiful People

Nadya is not in town. Or if she is, she's not speaking to me at the moment, which I regard as a Good Thing.

One thing I have noticed about the Beautiful People, and perhaps this is because they are, in fact, beautiful, is that they have a very reliable habit or not calling you back when they say they will. Normally, I suppose this would be regarded as an extremely annoying trait to have, especially if you want to keep their company, but they can get it away with it because, again, they are beautiful, and that turns a blind eye to many normally intolerable failings. Since I'm wierd and don't seem particularly eager to keep their company, this suits me just fine.

For the last little while, the majority of communications with Nadya have been through e-mail. I think she finally realized I was serious when I said if the sun is out, it's Access Denied regarding me. I wrote up her concept proposal/treatment, sent it off, she came back to me saying that she liked it, but that minor changes needed to be made 'cause she'd spoken to some people at a possible network that wanted to pick the show up, and they said they wanted certain changes made to the concept. Fortunately, they WERE minor, so it was no big deal. I was a little taken aback when she sent me photos of herself and the other host (Taken by a professional photographer here by the name of Wee Kim, hey, no snickering in the back there, that's his real name...) that she just naturally expected me to nicely crop and drop into the document. I once again grumbled about The Beautiful People and how they expect everything to be done for them because they are beautiful (Unfortunately, more often than not, they get their way) and so enlisted the help of the girlfriend to do that, since I'm utterly clueless when it comes to computer tech that goes beyond cut n' paste.

The document was done, I sent it off, and promptly got a call from ANOTHER total stranger who is now asking me to write HIS concept proposal/treatment based on glowing references from Nadya. Whee... gettin' to be a real popular boy here. Or, as I explained to the girlfriend, "I spell for people who can't."

That was yesterday. I'm assuming that he's one of the Beautiful People too as he said he'd call either yesterday evening or today, and has thus far failed to do so. Oh well...

GAMEZ! FREE GAAAAAAAAAAAAMEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why, oh WHY didn't I stumble onto this scam before?!?

Perhaps it's because I'm just getting craftier, more mercenary, gearing up for Geek Life (The unofficial motto if it ever gets off the ground, "We're Not Nice, And We're Not Sorry About That Either...") or it's just the needs of the poverty stricken, but I may have finally stumbled onto a scam that will ensure I'm always at the ready with the Latest Hot New PS2 Thing and it won't cost me a cent!

Of late, I have been helping out the girlfriend by writing articles for a free tech-head magazine here called Upload. Initially it was just doing the movie/music reviews that she didn't want to, though lately I seem to have taken over all her chores with this mag, 'cause I write them faster and it's not as painful for me to come off as snarky and obnoxious. While flipping through the irregular contributor's copies we receive, I noticed that they had a game review section. I also noticed the game review section was riddled with small errors such as, for Lord Of The Rings, "There are up to four controllable characters, the ranger, Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn!" (Nope, not making that up, it's actually in there...), and pointed these out to the editor, mentioning in oh-so-subtle fashion, "I'm a darn good writer AND a dedicated gamer, y'know..."

So since they already like the articles I've been giving to them, I've been asked to review GAMES! I GET REVIEW COPIES! OH MY GOD, IT'S LIKE GEEK HEAVEN! And here I was, wondering how, in my poverty stricken state, I was going to get my grubby little hands on a copy of one of THE RPGs of 2003 (Second only to Final Fantasy X-2) Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power) and it turns out that the kind boys at Upload are willing to drop a copy in my lap if I would do them the favor of telling them what I think, WHICH I WOULD'A DONE FOR FUCKIN' FREE ON THIS BLOG ANYWAY!

MY GOD, LIFE IS RICH, AIN'T IT?!?

This also means that aforementioned FFX-2 as well as other goodies in the pipelines like Silent Hill III and Clock Tower III could also be within the grasp of my sunlight deprived hands. If only they didn't already have a DVD reviewer they were comfortable with it would be heaven. Ah well, it's all region 3 stuff anyway, so I guess it's no big loss...

Hey, Aren't You Supposed To Be A Writer Or Something?

Oh yeah, temporarily forgot about that.

Serial Jen MUST be completed before the end of March. If I'm going to submit that short story for consideration in the Open Spaces Anthology for Canadian speculative fiction, then I need to mail it off before April 3. I keep telling myself that I work better with a deadline anyway, and the only thing that could possibly put the screws to this story and make it nigh impossible to complete before then would be the untimely arrival of Xenosaga, which would also entail a sudden absence of my shoeless presence from the blog scene as well. For future reference, the only times I will, in all likelihood drop off the face of Bloggian Earth for days at a time, would be A) I got dumped B) I'm playing a REALLY good RPG that triggers my obsessive-compulsive gaming disorder. Heck, I figure even if I were on a book tour, I'd probably keep blogging, if only so that all the fans could find out what I really think of them, and that poor schmuck who so politely told me he thought I was so cool... in reality, my polite grin and thank you was saying "You, my friend, are an utter and total ass."

Okay, I think that should be it. I'm pretty much up to speed with everything that's happened (Not much admittedly, since it was all about Suikoden III) so the only thing left to do is reply to e-mails that have been piling up and going largely ignored...

Labels: Games, My Life, RPGs, Singapore Stupidity, Writing