RL Grind

So anyone familiar with MMO jargon will understand the title, RL (real life) and grind meaning the processes you have to go through again and again that you don't really enjoy (at least not the Nth time) but that are necessary to your survival and progress.

I'm grinding today, doing yet another iteration of my resume, updating my website, blogging (because maintaining a web presence can in some ways help me get a good job) and of course doing homework.

I had a meeting with a man in the employment office at my school on Friday and based on his feedback I had a few things to edit and change. Beyond that he gave me some information on some upcoming internship opportunities that I plan to jump on. Beyond that I have the normal project and school work which come with any new semester (though with any luck this will be the last time I have any classes) and I'm actually enjoying being back and on a schedule again.

As far as game theory goes I just finished reading a very good book titled "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" by Raph Koster. While I don't agree with all his points he does have some very interesting ideas. Such as the idea that games cannot attain the form of art (IE we see movies, music, and painting as art but not games.) until certain conditions such as authorial intent. While I do believe there are some games out there that reach the level of art I can see where he's coming from.

Aside from the fact that videogames are a relatively young medium, we have a lot of cultural bias working against us. Games are equated to play and play is equated to children and childhood is equated to innocence. Thus when any game is released that isn't innocent there is usually some kind of a backlash. I could go into rants about pretty much every point of the book but frankly I'd rather just suggest that anyone interested in game design read it. If nothing else it gives you one more thing to consider before putting pencil to pixel as it were and might help you make better games.

At any rate it's getting late and I think I'll take a few minutes of time to enjoy myself before heading to bed and starting my RL dailies tomorrow. Here's hoping we all score a power-up in the coming months.

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