Diary of a Failed Game Designer

Everything has a course For me this Blog has run it's course. It's time to close the door. I have a few thoughts about why  now is the right time to shutter this blog but to write a 5000 word eulogy about why I'm not going to blog anymore seems a bit strange. It's not important anyway. Not blogging doesn't equal not  playing, talking about, or writing games. Thanks you to everyone who read, commented on, or shared the things I posted over the past 4 and a half years. Of course special thanks to the two actual friends I have gained from the blogging experience. Charles Akins and Jens D. They have been constantly supportive of this blog. I appreciate that. I would gladly share a drink with either of them given the opportunity. I have to also thank Neal Tanner who has done more for my games than I have, and  honestly believes my designs are better than I think they are. We will continue to work together to finish projects and put material on the website and to distribu...

Life in general: I own  the  following albums, Plus three or four EP's Cookie Puss (1983) Licensed to Ill (1986) Paul's Boutique (1989) Check Your Head (1992) Some Old Bullshit (1994) Ill Communication (1994) The In Sound from Way Out! (1996) Hello Nasty (1998) To the 5 Boroughs (2004) The Mix-Up (2007) Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011) So I'm 40 years old. That makes me 8 years old when Cookie Puss dropped. For the record I was not listening to  Bootleg Lp's of the Beastie Boys when I was 8 years old. I got my hands on Cookie-puss many years latter. Given the members of the band are all about  8 years ahead of me  age wise in makes sense that I came to the  party a bit late. I was aware of MTV when I was Eleven, considering my sister is six years older than I am, I was was exposed to all her music at the time. (Mostly Hair bands, but anything on MTV was fair game.) Regardless of how it happened for better or worse the dawning of my teenage years can be s...

Warning. To all  you amazing folks who read the gaming posts on this blog, this is not an RPG post. This is a post about boxing. I need to say I am not a boxing expert, but I am a boxing fan, I have been a boxing fan since I was young and would watch matches from my grandfathers couch. As an adult I understand the endemic and historic corruption in the  sport. I also have a fair grasp of the sociological and economic issues that underpin the sport. Its dirty, it always will be, and it always has been. I still love boxing. It can also be as close to pure competitive poetry as anything else we have to offer. Barbaric?  outdated? outmoded? sure, absolutely. Go on you tube, watch Micky ward vs Emmanuel Augustus . Come back and tell me those guys didn't leave it all in the ring, that there was not  respect at the end of the fight. There's something about that kind of purity that give me chills, every time. Watch Tyson Loose to  Buster Douglas. In the context of boxin...

Then it turned into a 2 hour discussion of cars we used to own and how we destroyed them. It was a win. Yeah I had that........once upon a time

In no particular order here are the RPG things I have on my plate right now. The  Article for Dyvers "Can't we all just get along" project: I have an idea what I want to write and a few notes now I need to write it. Then read it and write it again. I may be the only one doing game system type stuff for this project though I'm not sure of that, either way it has to be good, cause everyone else will be doing great stuff. Aleria The RPG:  I have not talked about this here yet, but for the record I am in the middle of building a system exclusively for my campaign. Based off My AAEE game only  taken a bit more seriously, I have quite a bit written, with  quite a bit more to go. I guess the reason I have not talked all that much about it here is because I don' think some of the ideas in the game are quite ready for prime time yet. To be honest this is and has been for a while my primary project. Nova 74: The game of 70's crime cinema is still thing, I need to keep p...

View from the  building I work in. One of my coworkers took this from the 4th floor the other day. Damn look at that sky. Mountains seem good. Can't wait to get out and about. -Mark.

Too many posts for two days I get that. Something I love ..and have always been more than a bit obsessed with  is procedurally generated animation. I would love nothing more than to be talented, patient, techie, or  savvy enough to dabble in this sort of thing, but I'm not, so I live vicariously though others. But this , using  procedures and Sound to  create 3D animations (as I understand it) is just for my simple brain, Simple brain blowing. I'm not even upset that it's around three years old, I'm behind on this one, but glad I caught up. Originally linked to off of the  Fantastic Blog "False Machine" From the RESONANCE Vimeo site" "Resonance is a collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers/studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways. resonance-film.com for more details and opportunities to get one of the limited edition Blu-Ray and DVD versions of the full film." Ch...