RAMBLIN' MAN RETURNS

NOTE: Youtube seems to be having a problem with this video- I'll look into in a bit if it's still not playing end of day- sorry folks, park's closed. Moose out front shoulda toldja...


Ok, this one is pretty damn rambly- sorry bout that.

Happy New Year ya'll!

David


By the way, even since I got my new Mac, my video and audio have been out of sync. 
Promise I'll figure it out before the next one- totally sux. Sorry bout that!

Ok, and here are the pics of my now clean, memorabilia-free office :)

Making Room For The New...

Cleaning up my office in preparation for the game's script/story work. I need to get started and finished this week and a clean office tends to help me focus. Also, given that my brother and parents were in town this last week and we were short on bedrooms, I pulled out my couch/fouton and slept in here. So it's just a total mess. Plus, prepping for a very focused, very busy 2010 and the best way to start is with a clean slate.

Usually when I clean I just tidy up, but there's a sense I have of needing to make some significant alterations; to toss and/or file stuff I have not used in years in order to make room (both literally and energy wise) for new things to come into my life. So there's LOTS of old design notebooks and research books heading into the garage.

Thought I'd share some of the chaos!

David

ps. oh the graphic novels are a stack I'm gonna take over and donate to the library, get some new geeks into comics :)  Oooh, wait, 2 of those are someone else's that they lent me! Phew! Glad I caught it in this post- had totally forgotten! I guess those are staying put till I see Mr. Foge again! Sorry Richard- close call! 

Is there a proper way to tweet?!?!

Just like I musta missed the 'how to be super cool and get tons of chicks' class in junior high, clearly there was a Twitter class in the last 2 years that I musta been too busy to attend. Cause clearly there are some folks out there NOT having a good experience with my tweets.

Now if they are just elite, snobby pricks (i.e. 'waaah, you typed in CAPS and in my little stupid world where letters can hurt you, that means your are yelling at me! I so sad now!), I really don't care.

But as an all around nice guy AND a game designer, I do like to give folks the best entertainment experiences I can. And it's got me wondering a few things about twitter...well really, it's got me wondering one main thing:

Do you guys like to see people you follow tweet a lot or just 2-5 times/day?

To me, I don't have twitter on my cell and I use tweet deck so I just have a window open and when people tweet during the day, it's just another little piece of info to suck up my attention for 2-5 seconds. So I dig it when I see a block of tweets from Kevin Smith or Brian Michael Bendis (whom I both follow). And I don't mind if they have to use 3-4 tweets to make a point cause I have the overall thread opened on tweet deck for context. And I follow them cause I'm interested in their take on the world so to me, the more the better.

But I've had a few messages since I've been back where peeps are like, "I ain't following Jaffe no more, he spams twitter with blocks of updates"...and it makes me wonder: do most people feel this way?

And if so, why? Is it cause they follow on a cell phone and every time someone they follow updates twitter, they get a little chime and they gotta look down at the phone? I can see how this would get annoying but again, that's not how I follow people...to me, the more tweets from someone the better.

So help me out...what do you guys/gals like to see from people you follow? And yeah, I know it's my account and I can do what I want but again- annoying pricks aside- if I can communicate to folks better, I'm all open to learning the best ways to do that.

Thanks ya'll!

David

Thanks For Coming Out Tonight...

Yeah ok, so I’m back early. At the bottom of the blog you’ll see the names of the 3 folks who first called me out on it and- thusly- won a copy (be it download code or an actual disc) of our next game.

I had wanted to do a whole redesign of the site, maybe switch over to Wordpress and do it all snazzy. And I still may, but just not enough time in my life for that these days (which is a great thing) so it’ll have to wait a bit.

So why did I come back early? Why did I come back at all? Well, I have three explinations:

#1- Fuck the haters. While I was offline, I had so many people tell me they dug the blog and/or dug the work we’ve done over the years, that it occurred to me that I was ignoring all of the great support- and there is tons of it- and was only listening to the haters on the net. Stupid me, I know. I have no plans to do that again. And then when I found this clip of Kevin Smith talking about much of the same sort of thing- and saw how much better off he seems focusing on fans vs. haters- I knew it was time to head on back to my online home. I may have posted this clip once before but it really stuck with me over the last few months. Here ya go:

#2- DUDE HUGE- I was sitting in front of Cliff Blezenski the other night at the really fun Spike VGAs. I turned around and chatted with him for a few and I asked him if his blog was coming back. In typical super cool Cliff fashion he smiled and said, “Nah dude. Blogging is so 5 years ago”. And while I realized that he was right, I also realized I still like doing it. Life’s too short to not do the stuff you like. And so...here I am.

#3- JAY Z- Riffing a bit on #1, an early Jay-Z song- Izzo (H.O.V.A.)-opens with Jay speaking the following lines:

‘Thanks for coming out tonight. You coulda been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with me. I appreciate that’

Now as unhip as it is to admit, I'm only NOW getting into Jay-Z and I only heard this song- for the first time- about 3 weeks ago. And when I heard those opening lines, it occurred to me that people take time out of their lives to visit my blog, read my tweets, visit our EAT SLEEP PLAY site, and most importantly, play and discuss and support our games (and in doing so, they are promoting our games). And I was just hit with a real strong sense of gratitude that made me want to get back to connecting with the peeps who really get behind and support the stuff we make.

So there ya go! Those are my reasons. And it's good to be back!

I'll be twittering more than I blog and vblog just cause we're all very busy with the game (and it's only gonna get more busy) but I'll be around either way.  Oh and no, we're not ready to announce the game. So you can ask- and I'm grateful that ya'll care enough to keep on asking- but as of now, no news on that front.

Ok ya'll! Nice to be back- hope everyone had a great holiday and has some fun stuff lined up for New Year's Eve!

Talk soon-

David

For the record...

Not sure if anyone still comes here since it's been password protected for so long but it's the only way I can respond to some press BS that hit today. This- by the way- is just me responding to some press inaccuracies and does not reflect me coming back to blogging. So no free games ! :)


Hope you are all well- chat in a few months when we announce our game- later!


David


ps. ever since I got this new mac my youtube videos have been out of sync- I'll check into it when I get back to blogging in Feb/March when I return...