Game Week

It would appear that this is GameAxis week. That being the magazine I crank out articles on occasion for. They have a bunch of stuff they want by the end of the week, including some Nintendo DS games for review (Most of which, quite honestly, are somewhat questionable in quality, but oh well…) and a trip down Otaku Memory Lane with a visit to a toy store (Again, not a regular toy store as you remember from a childhood, but a “professional” toystore with items no child could afford) and have a talk with some of the owners about that institution of anime, Gundam, and the endless variations on that theme that are now available.

So it’s off to the toystore this afternoon with the little ol’ micro-recorder to get some of the thoughts from the toy aficianados about the wild n’ whacky world of Japanese giant robot toys and modeling kits, which I have only a cursory familiarity with. I know Gundam, and am a big fan of the second installment in the “original universe” series, Zeta Gundam, but knowing Gundam does not mean knowing the toys, since I can tell you that Zeta Gundam is transformable, but I cannot tell you which edition of the “Gundam FIX series 0005 through 0072″ is the one that’ll actually do that. Let alone whether that series actually covers Zeta Gundam, or one of the other variations like Gundam Wing or Gundam Seed.

I just read that last paragraph back and realized the intimate knowledge required for made up stuff is now beginning to rival the amount of knowledge a particle physicist needs…

Oh well, off to the land of toys.

Neil-O Speaketh

As promised, here is the article with the questions I managed to fire off to Neil-O when he came down to Singapore over the course of July 4th-6th. Since it’s a small, local Singapore publication, odds are you will never see this article outside of the island, so enjoy this semi-exclusive content, and thanks to GameAxis for not caring what I did with it after it went to print…

Neil Gaiman AKA The Geek King

If you’re ANY kind of comic book geek, I’m totally wasting this space, but just in case you’re not… Neil Gaiman is one of the breakthrough writers of comics. While some may argue that his work is not as “important” as Alan Moore or Frank Miller, there’s no denying that he has been far more commercially successful. His very weird and very literary Sandman comics grabbed the much coveted female readership that no one had been able to touch. Then he went off and started writing novels and won awards for that. Now he’s getting into films, so with all this stuff going on, what’s next for the guy?

When he came to Singapore over the course of July 4th-6th, here’s what was dug up…

GameAxis: What about your involvement in video games? Writers like Clive Barker and Orson Scott Card have contributed to stories for games, why not you?

Neil: I’m such a Typhoid Mary when it comes to games. All through the early to late 90’s, nice people would come to me and say, “Video game!” and I’d go, “Absolutely!” and they’d say, “Brilliant! Here are our wonderful new offices, here is your contract, here’s a brand new computer for you, and we’ll fly you somewhere for long conversations with sparkling water in designer bottles, and you will talk to our top geeks!” And I would fly out there and we would have these great conversations and I would go back and then… I’d phone them up a week later and say “Well, I’m ready to roll!” and they’d say, “Actually, they’ve just come in this morning to close us down.” And after that happened three or four times, I started feeling like maybe I just wasn’t meant to be doing video games. I still feel bad about several new companies run by very nice people… I have jackets with their logos on them… Maybe one day someone will do some E-Bay collection of out of business video game companies.

GameAxis: What about you as a gamer? Do you play?

Neil: I love video games, I love video gaming. I sort of reveal my grumpy old man colors when people ask what my favorite video game ever was. And I tell them it was the very, very first, original Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy text based game, because the graphics were best, being all in your head. But also I think because that was the first game I ever got absolutely addicted to. It was that moment of waking up one morning, realizing that I’d been playing it in my head all night, and I had just solved something. I was like “Whoa, I can do that…”

GameAxis: But then there’s all that Gee Whiz CG Wizardry in Beowulf…

Neil: Beowulf is a film I wrote in 1997, with Roger Avary, who did Killing Zoe, and Rules of Attraction and co-wrote Pulp Fiction. We wrote this as a live-action movie, and it’s gone through various vizzi, viccis… vicissitudes—not really a Monday morning word… and then it was just about to be made as this low budget, live action film, when Robert Zemeckis came along and said he’d always loved our script for Beowulf. And wanted to do an adult film, having done Polar Express, he’d done this sort of 3D motion capture technology, figured that it was time to try and take that on a level, and do something with it for adults. And so bought our script, and that goes into production… actually, it’s in production now, but they’ll capture the performances of Anthony Hopkins and all of those people in October. But one of the things that’s fun about that is because all the characters are digitized and all this, they actually will be creating the game at the same time. So there should be a Beowulf game at the same time as there’s a Beowulf movie, and with luck, my curse on video game companies will finally be ended, before someone else gets dragged down, [like] Electronic Arts going down with the ship…

You Know Your Priorities Are Seriously Out Of Whack When…

You wake up to start the day and make sure that before you get around to doing anything else, you finally get in a sufficiently big chunk of novel written to make sure you can rest easy thinking you finally did a decent amount for once.

While that may be admirable in the “Aw, he’s so dedicated to his craft, he really is a struggling novelist!” sort of way, it kind of puts me horribly behind schedule. To wit, I have:

1) Struggled with and only just now finished the latest revision to The Script That Wouldn’t End.

2) Been told I’ve been offered another article to write for GameAxis that is due on Friday, in addition to the the news article I give them normally every month.

3) Been told that I can also tack on 1 pager section to my Neil Gaiman article with reccommends on my five favorite Neil-O comics. And no, I’m not allowed to simply throw in the first or last five Sandman TPBs. I am dead sure, however, that at least two will be in there…

4) Have been told by the fiance that Maxim Singapore is now interested in having me write a couple of articles for them, so whee! Looks like I will soon be able to add Maxim to the list of rags I’ve shamelessly whored myself to.

5) Have a ONE FUCKING HOUR documentary script that is supposed to be done by Friday, and that is scariest of all, since I was supposed to have it done on Wednesday, but due to the Script That Wouldn’t Die, got pushed back more and more and more. My thinking now is I will just lay out a rough structure, throw in huge gaps everywhere with [To Be Researched In Detail] in all the empty spaces and then randomly jump from section to section filling out actual voice over sequences as best I can to give them an idea of general style and flow. Then just hope to hell that’ll be enough to buy me some time to flesh it out properly.

Oh, right, and make sure that I’ve written a blog entry for today, which I’ve now done.

And people wonder why my fingers dance like the wind over a keyboard…

Man. That’s a lotta’ work. Oh well, it’s all writing work, so while not necessarily a breeze, I know at least that I’m suited to the task…

But the most important thing of all is that the novel is really building up a good head of steam now, I can always feel it boiling in my head, even when I’m not writing it, and it’s sitting at 126 pages, or 33, 000+ words.

Yup, just 17, 000 more words and I’ll have used up half my supply. Ack…

And here are some fun facts about the novel so far:

Most Used Profanity: Fuck

Least Used Profantiy: Merde

Most popular product: Cigarettes.

Most popular drink: Coke.

Most Popular Pope: Pope Caius IV

Most popular car: The kind with four wheels plus one in the car that that driver guy uses to steer.

Most Requested Act of Hygiene: Washing Hands

Most popular body part for violence: The head.

Countries that have so far appeared in novel: Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, England, the United States of America and Rome.

Countries in which people have died horribly: Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, England and the United States of America.

Countries in which people have thrown up: Thailand and Singapore.

Countries in which people have paid suitable homage to Robert Smith & The Cure while dancing around like Nancy Boys in a Fairy Ring: England.

Countries with greatest concentration of roadside diners attacked: The United States of America.

Countries in which pretentious gallery openings have occurred: The United States of America.

Countries with greatest concentration of really obnoxious advertising executives: Singapore

Countries in which people have chronically masturbated: Rome.

Trust me, it’ll all make sense. I hope…

Neil-O-Palooza Day 1:

One word first to summarize the general emotion of today’s events.

WHOO!

Okay, now for needlessly detailed blathering.

The press conference was where I had to put on my journalist hat and try and curb any fanboy-ish tendencies (Somewhere in my head, a hollow, echoing voice rang “You are a professional. Act like it.” Of course, it rang false) but it would seem my attempts to curb my own enthusiam were or less totally pointless in face of the complete dissolution towards Fan-Boyish Goo that happened 3/4 of the way into the press conference by the other journalists anyway.

On that note, I was quite impressed with the fact that the vast majority of people there actually DID know quite a bit about Neil, and some of them had–with much bashful pride–admitted to being in the “Neil-answered-my-question-in-his-blog” club, of which, I will remind people till the cows come home, that I too am a member.

I found a perfectly good and empty seat right smack dab in the front row, and promptly grabbed it after asking if anyone has claimed it and hoping they hadn’t. When Neil showed up, he was in Archetypal Neil form, sporting the now legendary look of completely black pants, boots, shirt and leather jacket. His only concessions to the rainbow were the dark blue tinted sunglasses, and a little pin he wore in the center of his chest (a la super hero insignia) portraying the British and Singapore flags side by side. People checked their mini-disc recorders, micro-cassette recorders, and digital as well as video cameras.

When the conference started, it went pretty much like a classroom, with the quickest draw on raising their hand being the one that got in a question, and this time it was not “May I please go to the bathroom.” There were also quite a few people there who seemed to be “One Time Journalists” in that they ordinarily didn’t write anything professionally, but thanks to connections, friends and other unsavoury means, had managed to be a journalist on the one day that Neil-O was giving a press conference, and thus qualified for that 24 hour period.

The questions ran the usual gamut, some very specific (Read: GEEK) questions about his comic work, some more generic stuff about what he ate while in Singapore, and other questions about his career and work. I managed to fire off a few questions on behalf of GameAxis, the full contents of which I will print here at a later date once the magazine has gone to print, since it wouldn’t be fair if I did otherwise. It’s free anyway, so I don’t feel bad about doing it afterwards.

Here is the experience of sitting there watching Neil Gaiman talk:

The first thing that amazed me, was aside from the usual pauses for thought and some “Ums” scattered about here and there, Neil talks one hell of a lot like he writes; articulate, precisely expressed, and deeply quirky and clever. It was quite unlike my experience with William Gibson (No disrespect to him at all, he is STILL my God Of Style) who’s dense, complex and vicious prose is completely at odds with the laid back southern states accent.

One thing that was made abudantly clear to me is the man knows how to handle a crowd. There’s nothing overtly showy or theatric about the way he presents himself, it’s quite the contrary. He’s quiet and well spoken, but he does it with a friendliness, humility and openess that’s immediately disarming. He’s a very NICE, very smart, very genuine guy and you immediately think to yourself, “If he weren’t a famous published author, the girls would have stepped all over him in highschool.” He’s TOO nice. The guy is SWEET. When things broke down towards the end and the various journalists ripped out their novels, comics, hard/soft cover trade paperbacks to be signed, he made sure every single person walked away with a signature. He even drew little ankhs on the covers of some people’s Death TPBs.

He is, in short, one of those people you wish there were more of, and rather than resenting his success, you’re glad that someone as nice as he is got it, because it means that sometimes, people do get what they deserve, and his gracious, humble presentation is proof that not everyone has to be a jerk to “win.”

After that was a break in the afternoon, which I needed to run errands, like pay a visit to GameAxis office to receive new games to play (And free Batman Begins passes! Sometimes my job is actually COOL!) and work over That Script I have mentioned before. Almost over now…

Then is was off to the screening of MirrorMask, which was having a 15 minute presentation of the Electronic Press Kit (More ubiquitously known in the industry as an EPK) which will be dissected and strewn about willy nilly by various entertainment shows and channels as fodder for the Propaganda Machine. Here I met my ol’ friend Ching (Note to readers, she is the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan city friend I have at the moment, she even makes friends with people who have the same breed of dog, something I cannot and shall not ever do…) because I’d mentioned I was going to worship at the House of Neil-O, and she decided to tag along to see if I’d make a boob of myself.

I had only one request of her, and that was because I had an old familiar feeling in my gut. It was the same feeling that was hovering there when I went to meet William Gibson, the feeling that said, “You will NOT tell him he’s the reason you became a writer, you will NOT tell him he’s the reason you became a writer,” only to completely explode into, “YOU’RE THE REASON I BECAME A WRITER!” when I finally came up with my book.

This time the feeling was saying, “You will NOT tell him, he’s your damn hero and an ambassador of hope to geeks everywhere, you will NOT tell him…” And so my request was, “Please keep me from making an idiot of myself.”

So anyway, we went to collect the tickets.

Much to my amusement, when I finally went to get the tickets, I was facing the same girl who I had ranted about the dismal state of Singapore comic book stores to when I bought my Neil-O Love-In tickets. I went up to her and told her my name.

She took one look at me and said, “Oh, it’s YOU…”

Ack…

Suffice to say, I got
my tickets and Ching more or less figured out I’d been busted. Either that, or said girl has read this very blog and doubtless has a dart board of me on her bedroom door.

I also ran into a lot of people from the press conference who seemed to recognize me, and called me by name, but I simply couldn’t recognize or remember them, since I have the short term memory of a senile hamster. This made Ching think I was a lot more popular than I actually am (That is to say, NOT AT ALL) and didn’t help my argument much of me being an anti-social hermit that was doomed to obscurity.

There was an odd tune playing while we all patiently awaited the arrival of Neil-O. It was a distorted, dissonant version of Close To You, and it was driving us mad after the 35th repitition. Eventually one of the handlers of the event, the very British sounding and very Chinese looking Lena St. George took control of the mike (After an amazing squeal of feedback that knocked out my ability to hear anything in the high frequency range for an hour), and announced that Neil would be delayed.

Translation: He’d gotten mobbed.

In order to keep the crowd entertained, they decided to screen Neil’s directorial debut, a half-hour short called A Short Film About John Bolton, which I heard much about, and had given up all hope of seeing except as an extra on the Mirrormask DVD. And that kept us all suituably pacified and entranced. Pitchforks and torches were stowed away in favor of more Neil-O goodness.

When Neil-O finally arrived, he said, as expected, that he’d gotten mobbed, and the seemingly simple task of trying to leave a restaurant became insurmountable when everyone and their half-deaf dog wanted a picture with him, or an autograph.

He talked about MirrorMask. He showed it. I was amazed and am now looking forward to it more than ever. I also found out that’s where the dissononant version of Close To You was coming from and in context, it was far less annoying. Then he took questions, and even though the presentation was running amazingly late, he said the signing would be moved to the comic shop on the third floor, and no one would go home without getting something signed.

Seeing how late it was, and seeing as how I hadn’t seen the fiance all day (And I don’t like not seeing the fiance all day, I’m endearingly co-dependent that way) I decided that I’d better hoof it home and try to score a signature tomorrow, when he’s signing at Japanese Mega-Bookstore Kinokuniya at the middle-of-the-work-day hour of 4 pm. I expect many people will suddenly call in sick that day, but heck, I’ve got time…

On the whole, seeing Neil-O in person has merely reinforced in me why I fell in love with his stories in the first place. He cares deeply about stories, he’s genuinely thankful to his fans, and the issues of ego and arrogance have completely slid off him like bacon off Teflon. He is a geek with a genuine enthusiams for simply letting the imagination ride, and thank the gods that the rest of the world thinks it’s cool, because though I normally am loathe to say this, it really couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

And on that note, I haven’t written any of my own damn novel today.

Back to work…

Sometimes Ya Gets Lucky

So not just ten minutes ago, I’m sitting around cranking away at the new novel, and thinking about a script that I have to crank out by Saturday morning when I get a call from one of the editors over at my game magazine gig, “GameAxis.”

The conversation goes something like this:

Him: Hey, you heard Neil Gaiman is coming to town?

Me: Oh, is he? Yeah, I think I might have been vaguely informed of that, but I don’t really pay attention to these things…

Him: Oh, not a big fan, huh?

Me: I’m aware of his work.

Him: Too bad. We need to send someone down to his press conference and since you’re our designated Uber Geek, I thought you might be knowledgeable enough to be our point man, but if you don’t know him that well, the-

Me: ME! MEMEMEME! OOOH! OOOOHMEMEME! NEIL! NEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I AM NOT WORTHY TO CLEAN THE SCUM OFF HIS SHOES BUT I WORSHIP AT THE HOUSE OF NEIL NONETHELESS!!!

Him: So… you wanna’ cover it?

Me: [ After five seconds of realizing "MORE NEIL-O!"] YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!

Him: Great! I’ll make the call, it’s 10 o’ clock, July 4th at the British Council. Most of the guys there will only know he’s a famous writer, so you gotta’ ask the geek questions. That okay?

Me: …

Him: Hello? You there?

Me:…

Him: Hallo?

Me: NEEEEEEEEEEEEIL-OOOOOOOOO!!!! NEIL-ONEIL-ONEIL-O OHMYGOD, I GET TO TALK TO N-N-N-N-NEIL…OOOOOOO!!!

Him: I’m guessing that’s a “I’m looking forward to this…”

Wow, what’ll I wear? Well, something black of course, because Neil likes black, and I’d better borrow the fiance’s i-pod, ’cause Neil-O likes those, ooh, ooh, and maybe I’ll wear my black Sandman T-shirt! Yeah, that’s it, that’s not fanboy-ish at all, and find my sunglasses, maybe dig out a leather jacket, pick up a British accent, find out what hotel he stays in, kidnap the designated housekeeper for his floor and steal his towels and soap…

Interruption From Offline Lameness

To continue the lameness ONLINE!

Hm… So the last time I wrote anything for the blog, it was on July 29, from the office. Now here it is, quite a few days later into August and I suppose people are wondering if there’s some nice, big juicy anecdote to share with oddness, neuroses and hilarity aplenty.

There isn’t.

I am making a few interesting discoveries about myself since I got promoted to being Editor-In-Chief at Playworks. These discoveries are an immense source of relief to me since it means that I’ve actually put my money where my mouth is and don’t spit venom from a position of envy because I lack the power of others. The first and most important discovery I have made of late is:

1) I have no taste for power.

Being in charge, having underlings or subordinates, being able to toss out orders and watch others execute them may be a dream come true for some, but personally I just find it annoying. Having to worry about someone will make the deadline or not, having to send out the umpteenth e-mail to some software company to make sure they’re sending in their press materials as promised, having to tell people this article won’t go in, or that article was too big and I’m taking the axe to it is NOT my idea of fun. Worrying when you tell someone to do something and you wonder whether they WILL do it at all is not fun. Being asked to make decisions about the quality or content of work done by someone other than myself is just plain irritating. Why anyone would want to have people subordinate to them is beyond me because it just means you have worries outside of your own personal sphere that you now must contend with.

2) I like to write, not edit.

I would rather be in the driver’s seat when it comes to writing. Being an editor feels too much like being a backseat driver, where you have to respect the guy at the wheel, ’cause he or she IS at the wheel after all, and yet at the same time, you still want to scream, “Left! No LEFT! LEFT!!! ARGH?!? WHERE’D YOU LEARN TO DRIVE!?!?”

I’m a good sport about having my stuff edited. I know my work ALWAYS benefits from having something edited. I just HATE editing myself, because once I start, I have this compulsion that I have to fight to simply tear the whole thing in front of me right down to basics and rewrite it my own way and then have THAT edited by someone else.

Editors are wonderful things that are necessary to the craft of improving writing, and I am quickly discovering that while I CAN edit, I would–perhaps selfishly–rather have MY writing improved than have to worry about improving someone else’s. Especially when some of the work comes and it has no basic understanding of grammar to begin with, which makes me wonder, “Why do you even want to be a writer in the first place when you obviously don’t even care about the fundamentals?” Which brings me back to my point of having my work improved, as opposed to rewriting someone else’s just to get it to a standard I’m happy with. Usually that rewriting means the content is now 80% mine and 20% whatever I thought was salvageable.

3) I am a totally disorganized schmuck.

Wow, big surprise on that last one. Before, it was a matter of having the editor tell me what they wanted, and I would just set my nose to the grindstone and start cranking stuff out. Now, I find myself in the much less interesting position of sitting before an Excel spreadsheet, pushing articles around to see what kind of page count we’ll have for the month, and whether an ad or another article should follow this or that piece and frankly it BORES THE HELL OUTTA’ ME.

I do not like organizing pages and articles. I like organizing thoughts and presenting opinions and articles, but I have no interest in further organizing those opinions and articles into a sequential order that makes up the entirety of the magazine. This to me doesn’t really feel like writing, it feels like administration and I am NOT an administrator, will NEVER make a good one, and will in all likelihood fuck this up big time at some point.

At this point in time, my plan is to wait for the inevitable “rival” that will show up, thinking that they have what it takes to make editor and bitterly resenting the fact that I have the position and they do not. The absolute SECOND that I smell so much as a whiff of that ambition, I’m going to be hollering GIVE IT TO HIM! PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASEE!!!!!! And practically be BEGGING for a demotion back to writer, because I AM a writer and not an editor. Let someone who wants this power have it. Me, I’d rather just crank out the pieces rather than push them around on an excel sheet to see how to squeeze ads in between.

In Other News:

Star Wars Galaxies continues to take up the vast majority of gaming time. It’s not like I haven’t been writing. Actually, I have, just making numerous contributions to a Star Wars forum as one of the unofficial Jedi Investigators because we’re all quivering in our space boots at the thought of one day becoming the few, the proud, the Jedi.

For those of you that don’t know (IE, those of you that have lives) one of the tricks to Star Wars Galaxies is that the option to become a Jedi Knight is NOT available from the get go. Instead, there’s some super secret mysterious process to go about becoming a Jedi that the game developers refuse to divulge. It has to do with the actions of your character. Whenever your character fulfills the secret criteria required, BAM! You “unlock” what is referred to as the Force Sensitive Character Slot. This means you must now abandon the character you’ve been playing with, and create a whole brand new one that has the ability to slowly train and become a Jedi.

I want Jedi.

So do thousands of other people. But so far no one’s done it.

So I’m just one of many sad, obsessive geeks who conspires with others across the net, putting out one theory after another on how to unlock FS, tracks the progress and investigations of others, and is basically devoting a rather unhealthy amount of energy to what more or less amounts to a virtual quest. But then since I’ve always wanted to be a Jedi, this, to me, seems like a pretty cool thing to do.

So How’s Everything Else?

Not too bad, actually, thanks for asking.

Aside from the discovery that I am not power hungry (An IMMENSE source of relief to me, I was always worried I talked about hating being in charge ’cause I was never in charge and thus envious. Nope, after being in charge, I can DEFINITIVELY say I LOATHE it) the job itself is still pretty okay. I get to do some writing, just not as much as I’d like. I’m still playing Star Wars Galaxies and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. The relationship still seems to be on steady ground as the girlfriend and I realize that we can live with each other without killing each other, although the one year mark is just a few months away now. At that point I’ll find out whether I have any sort of commitment phobic latent reflexes that were just waiting to kick in, but somehow I doubt it.

There is the little matter of the fact that I now have to keep regular hours, whereas she continues to live on Martian Standard Time of a 28 hour day, so sometimes she’s awake during the day, and other times she’s asleep, as her 20 hour day marches inevitably through the week, pushing her bed time around like an obssesive janitor with a broom and only one scrap of paper to clean in the whole school. But, we’re getting used to it.

How are things on the publishing front?

Beats me. I should write to my agent and ask him. I’ve been so plugged into Star Wars Galaxies that I completely forgot about it.

Which means, yes, that I haven’t written a single new word for the third book. But since I’ve got
two books under my belt anyway, I refuse to feel guilty about that. Two in the hole? I can afford to slack.

What movies have you seen?

Since Finding Nemo? NONE.

The combination of lack of money with Star Wars Galaxies has effectively put an end to that, so I haven’t seen The Hulk, Charlie’s Angel’s 2, Terminator 3, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or any of the other latter half summer popcorn flicks. That should be bothering me a lot more, but since watching any of those movies would deprive me of SWG time, it hasn’t. This same explanation also gets a big ditto for DVDs.

When the hell are you coming HOME?!?

Talk to my agent.

What is your idea of a perfect life?

Gee, I’m glad you asked.

First, I wouldn’t be here, I’d be in Vancouver. With the girlfriend. Do not ask about marital status, you’ll be giving her too many ideas that will be addressed eventually, but in the meantime, I don’t need any brochures for how to calculate your salary to buy a nice, shiny rock dropped in my lap “innocently” because she just “happened” to have it handed to her (after scouring all the best jewelry stores for the better part of the afternoon).

LET IT LIE.

I’d be in Vancouver, and I’d be a novelist, and I would have The Cave, my legendary escape from reality, sound proofed with the Uber Gaming Rig PC (IE, constantly upgraded with the fastest processor, graphics card, RAM, and other necessities to ensure SWG is always lookin’ fast and pretty) all the game consoles, a truly MONSTER plasma television with 6.1 THX certified sound and a DVD archive to rival the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences itself. I would probably also have a couple of 80′s arcade game cabinets in there, just for nostalgia’s sake, and some bean bag chairs set up. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and various anime posters would adorn the walls, and so would a shelf full of genre fiction and comic books.

Aside from trying to live in The Cave (At our current apartment I have already set up what is called The Cave, although, to be fair, it’s really The Cave .02) I will crank out my novels, occasionally venture out to make a total ass of myself on book tours (Oh yeah, this all works under the assumption that not only do my books get out, but people really like them), or accompany the girlfriend on one of her Cons since I’m convinced she’s going to make a splash of her own in comics and thus will have to deal with her own set of fans who are, to be perfectly honest, probably a much scarier bunch than any I’d have to deal with.

I think in this life we’ll probably have favorite restaurants that we’ll be pretty well known at, wander around little shops in town or on the islands, and generally just be the weirdo couple that seems to only have one foot in this reality. The other is basically in our own heads.

Not everyone’s idea of happines, but it’s mine, and I’m hoping its achievable sometime within the next little while.

Okay, that was a fairly sizeable post. Everyone happy with it?

Good.

I have to get back to the Jedi Forum…

EGAD…

In a stunning turn of events, I now find myself in the odd position of being an Editor-In-Chief at Playworks magazine. This will necessitate me switching over from cigarettes to cigars, exclaiming “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” at every opportunity, asking “Where the heck did that Kent get to now?!?” making fun of Jimmy, and advising Lois that there’s only one “r” in “Rapist.”

Excepting the fact that I have no clue how to actually edit a magazine since I’ve always regarded editors as the enemy (Which means, I suppose, that I must now bitch about writers) the only real concern I have about this sudden switching of gears is how much it will impact on my Star Wars Galaxies time. While the nature of the job guarantees that I will be playing many videogames, the fact that there’s only ONE that I want to play at the moment will doubtless be a cause of concern for the superiors, but then they can’t keep a watch on me 24 hours a day and have to leave the office for meetings anyway, at which point, it’s out with the Zelda and BACK TO BESTINE, BABY! THE NEXT ROUND OF JAWA ALE IS ON ME!

Oh well, at least I CAN play since there are now two computers in the office with my account installed on them, and a third on the way, the Uber Gaming Rig which will now be desecrated in the name of George’s Merchandising Beast…

Have Geek, Will Travel

Well, what a bizarre day today turned out to be.

The story begins just a couple of days back when I was given an assignment by Playworks to cover some of the gaming events that will be occurring around the island. Tournaments for real time strategy games like Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, or fighters like Soul Calibur 2. Since I’d never covered a gaming event (usually just sitting around spectating) I was kind of curious to see how I’d fare as a journalist this time.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

The head honcho of the magazine called me in as I was playing around with Flight Simulator 2004. I had to go down to the office because they needed a review of the game and my PC (at a paltry 450 MHz) was in simply no condition to run it, let alone store the 3 gigs it demanded in terms of hard drive space. So while I was playing the game (Yes, I picked a 747. Yes, I took off from La Guardia. Yes, I flew to Manhattan. Yes, I crashed it into a building. I couldn’t help it…) I was taken in by the Chief and asked if I could go down to the Eastern end of the island (Called Pasir Ris, I lived there for my first two years) and attend a Microsoft press conference that was going to cover all the X-Boxy goodness coming to Singapore in the next few months. I figured that would be interesting and said, “Sure.” Then I found out it was on the same day as a Soul Calibur tournament I was supposed to be covering and, for reasons that escaped me at the time, the Chief took me off that and put me on the press conference instead and told me it was all fixed.

Then he asked me if I could demo a game.

I didn’t understand, and he said that at the press conference, they were also going to be previewing a couple PC games, and one of them was going to be Flight Simulator, so he wondered if I’d be willing to play it. Apparently Microsoft Singapore had been reading the magazine recently and asked for Shoeless Wayne Santos to comment on the games since he seemed so knowledgeable about gaming.

“That’s it?” I asked rather suspiciously.

“Well, and talk about it a little bit. Just what you like or don’t like about it. Don’t worry, it’s not a high pressure situation, just a little room in a chalet, with a computer, people sitting around. Almost like talkng to your friends when you show them a new game.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, that sounds cool. I’m in.”

“Can you do Rise of Nations too?”

“I didn’t play Rise of Nations, I don’t know anything about it.”

“But you wrote that Rise of Nations feature.”

“I read the ‘net and lied through my teeth. Come on, you know my PC can’t handle it. You’d better let the reviewer do it.”

He nodded glumly and I went back to trying to skim my Cessna off George Washington’s nose on Mt. Rushmore.

So yesterday, while doing research on the ‘net, I got an SMS request on my phone to get onto MSN messenger by the Chief for a talk. I don’t have MSN and so I resorted to using the Girlfriend’s computer since I stubbornly try not to take in a more than necessary Bill Quotient on my machine.

Chief: The reviewer can’t make it, can you talk about Rise of Nations?

Me: I’ve never even played it.

Chief: Can you come down today and give it a try? We’ve already installed it on the Uber Rig PC.

Me: … … … *sigh*… okay…

So I went down and took it through its paces, indulging my usual anachronistic tendencies and pushing my civilization’s rate of technological advancement to such ridiculous proportions that by the time my nearest enemies had discovered how to make Pole Axes, I was already assaulting them with tanks, bombers and machine guns… I love technological advancement in RTS games…

Today then, I got up, hiked outta’ the ol’ pad and made my way down to my old stomping grounds, where this recreational area called NTUC Downtown East had been put up (Basically a family chalet/weekender sort of place away from the hustle bustle of the city) and found the area I was supposed to go to.

Which was not a chalet.

Which was not in a little room.

It was a conference hall. With huge ass projection screen. And someone was handing me a microphone.

Thank GOD for my gift for useless facts and details. I ended up sitting AT the Microsoft table, with a PC in front of me, with a flight stick, and the huge projection screen behind me, and was told, “So play the game and tell us a little bit about this…”

At which point, for Flight Simulator 2004, I riffled off all the trivia, like how it was supposed to celebrate the December 17th centennial of powered human flight. How it had in game flight lessons by John and Martha King of King Aviation Flight School, one of the biggest in America, how it had coaching by Roy Machado, another revered flight instructor, how it used the new Garmin 295 and 500 series GPS indicators with 24,000 real world airports, both towered and non-towered. All the while casually picking another 747, taking it from Kennedy International and driving it through Manhattan.

And was once again reminded of how different the mindset is of Westerners from Singaporeans.

They were a pretty quiet bunch, and I had to keep checking to see if they were following me, since I was probably speaking at warp speed (As usual) and frequently had to stop and say things like:

“Any questions? Anyone? Anyone? No? What did George Bush call Regan’s economics program? Something economics. Anyone? Anyone? D-O-O economics. Voodoo ecnomics. QUE HABLA CANADIAN ENGLISH, OR WHAT?!?”

Sigh…

Then I had to sit down and watch some corporate propaganda program where Microsoft had insightfully decided that people who played games were broken up into four groups. On one end of the scale, you had what they referred to as “Time Killers” who were people that played for a few minutes or an hour at a time as a momentary distraction. On the other end, they had what they called “Committed Gamers”.

“Like our friend, over here,” the MS Marketing guy said, motioning towards me. “Committed gamers look like… HIM! Long hair, casual clothes, beard… pale complexion because they spend every waking hour playing games. Games, games, games, right?”

“Uh… yeah…” I said in a less than definitive tone of voice.

Then they showed more videos of upcoming games and it was time for me to play Rise of Nations. More trivia about strategy games, the differences between turn based and real time games, and Rise of Nations was supposed to be a marriage of the two genres. My little farmers farmed, my miners mined, my soldiers killed. That was it.

More game videos, propaganda, goodies bags handed out (I am now the proud owner of a) an X-Box t-shirt, b) X-Box polo shirt, c) X-Box towel, which I think will become our new doormat) and eventually it was time to take to the X Box consoles and start playing the new games we’d just seen. Or a few of them anyway.

The X Box marketing guy congratulated me on winging it. I asked him when the X Box Live stuff was coming to Singapore and he said in a few months. He told me he’d look forward to my reviews of the X Box live games.

“I’m not reviewing them,” I said.

“What? Why not?”

“Can’t afford an X-Box Live account, come on, I’m a writer, man, look at me…”

He smiled and said, “You’re also a games reviewer. Don’t worry, I think you’re all set with us when the time comes.”

Later, while smoking outside, the Chief also congratulated me, since he wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to say and was just glad I actually knew what I was talking about. He wondered if I wouldn’t be interested or able to take on more reviewing/writing chores and asked, “Is it possible?”

My only reply was, “Well… it is and it isn’t. It is ’cause I can crank it out, yeah, and I have fun doing it. It isn’t ’cause… well… look at my PC. It’s crap. I can’t review PC games ’cause I can’t run them, and I can’t do GameCube reviews ’cause I don’t have a GameCube.”

He thought about it, nodded, and said, “I think I can set you up for that. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

So after an odd day where I not only had to play games to an audience but TALK about them too, I scored a free X-Box live account, a free gaming worthy PC and a free Nintendo GameCube.

I. Love. My. JOB.

The Game Geek Lives

Today (That phrase being a highly relativistic one, dependent on such factors as whether one can truly consider it “day” when I’m a night person and whether you are reading this in Europe, North America or Asia) I put together my first interview with a game developer.

Somehow, this marks something of a minor milestone for me. In the same way that I got a huge kick when I read my byline on my first published short story, or saw my name in the credits for my first television show, this moment of actually interacting with someone who is responsible for contributing to the hobby that has provided me with so much pure escape over the decades felt like I had actually accomplished something.

While it’s true that this was for a free java-based MMORPG it’s still a game and these guys worked hard on it, so I still feel there’s a certain measure of respect that’s got to be given to these Coders Of Fun, and it was neat to actually be able to ask questions and get answers and not be treated as a fan or enthusiast at some Con, but actually be considered someone within the industry that had the power to make them look good or bad.

I made them look good, of course. Although the interview came out to be a little over 1,000 words, and the limit for the interview segment was 400, so there was quite a bit of chopping up done and deletions of entire questions and answers to get it to fit, but such is journalism for ya’… No massive novels with unlimited word counts here…

It has been, surprisingly enough, a remarkably productive last couple of days.

I got a few of the articles out of the way, mostly the easy rant-based ones, one on the glory of early geek anime wunderkind Robotech: The Macross Saga for The Geek Vault, and the other on the importance of story in games for the rant column I.M.H.O, because apparently the previous contribution was more of a friendly essay than monomanical diatribe. I’ve reviewed the Runescape free java based MMORPG, wrote my feature piece on it, and compiled my interview, which, by the way, received this little note from the developers at Jagex:

Wayne

I am now pushing graphics to get together some images – any special requests?

Ahhh… the power of being a journalist in the gaming industry…

I’ve also finally received my e-mail addresses for the people I need to interview for the other “regular” MMORPG game that you have to pay to play so I can finally get started on that article. And, at long last, I finally finished my Charlie’s Monsters #2 story. Anyone that’s interested in seeing how Charlie’s Monsters #1 turned out can see it here.

Incidentally it looks like Charlie’s Monsters has been picked up by a new online comics website called Creature Feature Comics.com and will soon be making regular appearances there. They’re going to enable a tracking system to see which are the most popular comics so take on pity on us and click like mad on Charlie’s Monsters when it makes its debut! Stay tuned for more shameless promotion!

This will also allow me to get to work on Cm #3, tentatively entitled “The Hoe-Ray” wherein an evil scientist develops a morph-o-matic beam that transforms average, decent women into… Hoes. This will be a two parter, since I’m using it to vent many issues with the corporate world, such as a sexed up advertising accounts executive getting hit with the Hoe Ray and remaining exactly the same.

Too… Scary…

I’m STILL playing Fatal Frame at the moment, determined to get the super features that will make my camera nigh invincible and finally allow me to take revenge on all those God Damn Ghosts that have been giving me the Free Willies since I started playing. Nearly there now, just have to complete the incredibly difficult “Fatal Mode” and those sweet, sweet power-ups will be mine…

Stupid Cat

Uno is getting more aggressive with her domination of the household. This does not mean that she’s actually attacking Zero, but she has realized that merely moving towards him sends him scurrying and so is using this (Admittedly minimal effort on her part) tactic to take up all the sweet spots that he used to favor, like the window with the best sunbeam in the morning, or the rug.

I am hoping in utter futility that there will come a day when Zero finally realizes that not only is he bigger than she is, but also far more physically fit and combat-worthy. She is, after all, a pudgy sort of kitty, who probably has a little bit of Persian in her considering her squat appearance and dinky little legs. So far his actual physical superiority has done little to give him any kind of tactical advantage since he freaks and runs at the slightest provocation. I feel sorry for my poor, cowardly kitty, but if he’d just use some of that muscle and fang nature saw fit to give him, he wouldn’t find his territory progressively shrinking…

Behold: The King Of Slack

A few entries ago, I talked about how I was remarkably busy cranking out one article after another and once it was all said and done, I would finally able to do these things here:

1) I still owe the girlfriend a web comic, a three pager.

2) I still need to put the final touches on the Jen rewrite.

3) I have to start on my “Young Tolkien In Love” short story which, it has now been revealed to me by the muse, will invovle dwarves who have taken refuge in the USSR and are spouting Marxist doctrine at every opportunity.

4) Finish watching borrowed DVDs, the pile is manageably small now.

5) Finish reading Big Bill’s Pattern Recognition as I think I need a reinjection of style into my prose. Though to be honest, I don’t there’s very much room for that kind of artful description in my next novel, since that’s going to center itself largely around the idea that Vampires and Elves exist and have been at war with each other for quite some time.

Of these, only the last two have any appreciable dent in them, which I feel bad about.

However, I am going to try and NOT play Fatal Frame (Going for the ultra-difficult “Fatal Mode” in attempt to view the X-Box only special ending! SCARY!) tonight, and at least get that 3-pager done since I got an e-mail from my new employers with a bunch of assignments to be carried out that consist of:

Interviews with staff of a new MMORPG.

Interviews with staff of a new free Java MMORPG called Runescape.

10 pages worth of short reviews.

4 Geek tournaments for RTS games and fightin’ games.

My regular column “The Geek Vault”

The letters page.

A review of the Mac i-pod (Neil-O’s favorite gimmick! Automatically cool just because of that!)

And some column called “Inbox” which I’ve never heard of, but may be yet another of many new features and columns that are being added to the mag as people come up with them.

Oh well… busy is good…

In Other News

Repeated squirting of Uno has resulted in her not going into Zero’s room to ransack his food. When we’re around, anyway. I’m pretty sure she’s raiding his food dish when we go to bed, but we can’t do anything about that since he’s too cowardly to defend his own space.

Also, I think Uno is getting bolder with pushing him around. While there is still no fighting taking place, and probably won’t be, Uno is beginning to realize that all she has to do is make the slightest move towards Zero and that sends him scurrying into the next room. The cautious detente is still in place, but I think that Uno is starting to enjoy her new found power which involves minimal effort on her part. Bitch. Leave my cat alone.

Neil-O… What’s It Gonna’ Take?

I am now secretly formulating my new strategy to write an e-mail to Neil-O that will compel him to answer. In-depth analysis of his blog replies indicates that he tends to reply to weird questions (But not too weird), interesting bits of information that he didn’t know, or questions about himself that or his related works that not many people would know about. He DOES NOT respond to worshipful e-mails or e-mails asking him which city he wants nuked in his name. I have now decided that I will abandon that approach and try going with the other ones in my super-secret attempt to get him to reply, which I am broadcasting here for public consumption, and will doubtless be read by the Girlfriend anyway, even though I’m hoping she won’t read this and stumble upon my ultra-secret plans. I’d make a great movie villain.

Duty and planning call, must return to scheming. Remember kids, this is a SECRET.