I used to draw stick figures on a landscape and I would play it like an RTS. I would animate on the page, erasing and redrawing the figures as they did things, as the landscape changed, etc. I have a lot of notebooks full like this. Page after page of a landscape dotted with people doing things. I would make up context for them, a world map, which consisted of two main continents with a massive river down the middle. In the river there were islands too. I would drag my friends into it, they'd have their own little civilizations and we'd do mock diplomacy, we'd tape pages together, we'd keep one another updated on what was happening on our side of the "world". This game gave me a pretty good foundation for drawing, even though it was really rudimentary, I did it enough I felt I could get a good sense of what the marks would be when I did certain things, which made it easier later on. Video games always had my attention too. Quake, unreal tournament, age of empires, the sims, minecraft, garrys mod, half life, counter strike, runescape. My dad had a half life box set that came with the base game, opposing force, blue shift, counter strike, and team fortress. I still enjoy the art on the box, the layout of it, the idea that all those games could come in one package (orange box foreshadow). Really exciting and inviting. I'd look at it and imagine all the different experiences I could have playing each of those games individually. The impression made on me by the box, by purchasing phsyical copies of games later on, lucky experience.

Something about the sensation of movement a lot of these games had (the sims and age of empires being a bit of an exception, I just liked medieval themes, and still do, and the sims was a game my sister and I could enjoy together growing up. I normally really preferred first person games, again because of the feeling, the pseudo physical sensation.), moving quickly through the game world could make me feel like I too was moving, cutting through the air. For a long time, the computer I used to play games was the family computer that lived in our basement. The carpet was a sort of beige and brown blotted color, the walls were sort of pinkish. The basement had a smell different to the rest of the house. Not an unpleasant one, but different. It was like crossing a threshold into something totally different. It was colder and looked different too. It had an unfinished room that at the time was scary to me as a kid. All this was enough to make each time I went in a bit of an event. Not only was I about to enjoy a video game, but I was crossing into a different place entirely.

There was a separate hallway by the stairs down to the basement where my dad hung patents he had for electrical things he had designed at work. I never understood what he did at his job when I was growing up but I do feel like, almost by some weird inevitability, I've arrived at similar interests by my own route through games, music, etc. I'd head past them, and turn on the computer to find myself transported elsewhere. This wasn't a form of escapism as my childhood, by pretty much any measure, was awesome. It was just pure enjoyment and interest in the computer: A bunch of rocks arranged carefully with intention and tricked into thinking. Eventually this interest in computers and games and art led me to drawing concept art for games, my first sort of dream job. Then naturally to graphics, 3d software like blender. When I gave this a shot the first couple times, in middle school, I found myself overwhelmed and without the necessary discipline to make any sense of the interface in front of me. I managed a few renders, but never bothered past that. That's ok though and I would eventually come back to it when I had more to offer it. In the meantime I'd still draw, but my focus shifted to music after I was given a copy of ableton.

When I am making music, if I begin working with an idea in mind of where I should go, that usually ends up bringing me to nothing but complete shit. There's a fluidity I'm going for that I can't always get to but always gives the best results. Can't do that with every medium, I think that's part of what makes music and drawing special to me, there's a degree of real intuition in so many steps start to finish. Simultaneously that's what intrigues me about a bigger project like a game; that you can think it through, that you can then interact with and work alongside these ideas you ideally came across in that intuitive fluid place. Maybe it all becomes fluid at a certain point, once you learn enough, about yourself, about your tools, until it just gets boring and forces you introduce newness and you're back at 0.

alright so time flies, it's true what they say about it. It's already been a whole year since i last updated the blog.

I played the first sims game a ton growing up. Seemingly endless hours of fun supplied to me by placing fireworks indoors and other classic pranks. One thing that really sticks with me though is the soundtrack. All the mischief one got up to in the game was bookended by calming piano music, latin jazz, samba, etc. I have since grown to really love these sounds, years later in life being re-introduced to them by teachers, mentors, friends, and the youtube algorithm late at night. It wasn't until much later that I made the connection that I was first introduced to sounds like these during the countless hours I had spent building virtual houses and trying to find a way to play the game with a family of 8 children with no parents. I didn't really hear music like this growing up by way of it being played around the house by my parents or anything like that, and I wonder if I would have been as receptive to it if that were the case.

Everything exists in its own context, its own cultural time. There's an appeal to making something that "speaks for itself", or "stands on its own", but I don't really think anything really ever does. I am starting to think too that the opposite might be stronger in some way, and allow more freedom for the maker. There have been other instances for me where the context of a piece of art / music does more for the work than it does for itself. After seeing a movie scene play out, the song becomes so engrained in a way it would have had no chance of being on its own. Or in the case of the Sims, I feel my really getting into the sounds of a genre were really helped by the context in which I first heard it. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I would have liked it anyway. It's pleasant on its own, easy to love.

The game Moon RPG is probably the best example I think of for this idea, but it's going to apply to everything in varying degrees. Movies are good too, but video games are special to me and what first came to mind when I initially discussed this idea with a friend. Moon RPG is an interesting game for a lot of reasons and I won't go into detail as far as what the game is about and why it's interesting from a game design perspective; there are a lot of better written articles and videos about that already. I'm really interested in the music aspect. The player can collect songs and discs while they play and listen to them. Already awesome. But there's an enormous amount of music (over 7 hours!). To me, a lot of the music completely transcends what I would expect from video game music, both in the absolute ecstatic nature of it and what it makes me feel. Listen.

It really has it all. In what other context could someone assemble a 7 hour album of such variety of style and actually reasonably expect a solid amount of the material to be thoroughly enjoyed and digested? (albeit maybe subconsciously here in the context of playing a game. Though, listening is still listening, whether passive or active.)

Would I really feel compelled to listen to every track of a 7 hour album made from music by bands I have never heard of had it been presented to me as a set of discs, or a massive playlist? Maybe if I was in a really specific mood, but I don't think it would hold my attention like the soundtrack of a unique game does. Not the same way, anyway. The game as a backdrop allowed the music to affect me, the listener, in a new way, a stronger & special way that music on its own would not have been able to. I think that this is also what all the ways of sharing a work try to do, sometimes well, sometimes not. Every signal we shoot out into space - It's always trying to develop a context around something in the hope that it explains our own affection for it to others. Here's some more.