How not to be a (games) writer

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Saul Alexander

I’ve just spent the day at one of my least favourite activities – looking for work. Job-seeking is a particularly unpleasant pastime when it’s accompanied by the dread certainty that you won’t find any jobs that you’d actually want, and that even if you do, they’ll be accompanied by unreasonable lists of qualification and experience requirements. “Must be super-energetic, popular and completely without a conscience!” “Must have at least three Nobel prizes!” Even if one has such godlike abilities, it seems the only option for the would-be job-hunter is to become a corporate shill, dispensing dreariness and misery to the masses. The employment sites are absolutely clogged with ads essentially asking for charismatic dynamos to do the most tedious nonsense, which essentially amounts to wearing a headset and conspiring about ways to sell people shit they don’t need.

I’m sorry,  but it’s been a long day, and I’m just a bit grumpy, alright?

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Posted in Autobiography, Game Writing, Suffering | Leave a comment

The machine and Florence

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Saul Alexander

I’m not an angry person by nature. I’m much more likely to hide in a cupboard than come out swinging, all things considered, although I like to think that when it really comes to the important stuff, I’d make a stand. Like when I discover that alternative powerhouse Florence + the Machine are performing in Sydney in November, but that only people with a Debit Mastercard (la de da!) are allowed to purchase tickets, it’s enough to get me posting on a blog I’ve left abandoned for seven long months.

Maybe it’s not life or death stuff to you. Nor to me, I suppose – I know I’ll survive missing an “intimate” performance at the Seymour Centre from one of modern music’s great performers. I came to the Florence party a touch late, but Lungs is now easily one of my favourite albums of the last decade. Still, I’ll be okay.

But what about the kids, huh?

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The sweet smell of body odour – Global Game Jam 2011

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Saul Alexander

I’ve been a bit slack around here lately, but that seems to be the way with blogs. When things are actually happening in real life, they get neglected. A few days ago, I intended to write a rant about phone companies, but then decided it would only make me angrier. I may get to it at some point, but in the meantime, here’s the short version:

Phone companies are fucking useless! Graaaagh!

Done.

Now to the main reason I’m posting. Back in the heady days of January, 2011, I hung out with a team as they did their thing at the Sydney branch of the Global Game Jam, a 48(ish)-hour game development competition. I had a Good Time, and ended up writing quite a lot of words about it. These words have finally surfaced on the interwebs courtesy of industry site Gamasutra.

If you have the time and inclination, please go and read them.

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Whatcha doin’, fool?

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Saul Alexander

Okay, so now seems like a good time to actually go into some of the reasons why I started this blog, as well as tangential issues like where the name came from what’s the point is of being an artist, anyway.

Since pretty much forever, I’ve suffered from varying degrees of depression and anxiety. Also pretty much since forever, I’ve known that the purpose of my life is to create things. This combination is nothing new – from Van Gogh and John Keats to Emily Dickinson and Kurt Cobain, making beautiful things and feeling bloody awful about the world have pretty much gone hand-in-hand.

There’s been a great deal of debate over the centuries about just what the connection might be. I imagine there are a great many connections, but probably the fundamental one is this: the world can be a pretty damned horrific place, and artists (I believe) tend to be more sensitive than others to ideas and feelings which exist outside their own personal bubbles of reality. In discovering the incomparable beauty of existence, we also see the inexpressible horror. Each is a side of the same coin and, on any given day, tails can be as likely to fall as heads.

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A fool’s game: Vet Lucie Disastrous

Posted on February 26, 2011 by Saul Alexander

So I know you’ve all been devastated by the lack of posts for the last couple of weeks. But I have a reason for my slackness, promise! It’s because I’ve been busy, and specifically because I’ve been busy helping my friend Jennifer Sandercock make a game demo! The game is called Vet Lucie Disatrous, and you can get the demo from here.

This is my first experience working on anything close to a real game, even if it has been built with the slightly bodgy Adventure Game Studio. My part in the process was writing the bulk of the words and a bit of work on the puzzles, characters and story. Jenn did everything else, a superhuman effort which included: coming up with the concept and the initial design of the puzzles, story and characters, as well as all of the art and coding. We’ve made do without animation and sound at this point.

I really enjoyed working with Jenn – the role of “collaborator” seems to come to me more naturally than the role of “auteur”, which I think is a positive when it comes to game-building. I’m very keen to get into more of it as soon as possible (hopefully including writing the rest of the script for the full version of Lucie D).

Here’s the link to the game one more time. I’d be interested to hear people’s feedback, although you might have to take a mental step back to the glory days of point-and-click adventures in order to truly appreciate its shtick!

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A Valentine’s poem

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Saul Alexander

“A” is for affable, always very chattable,
“N” stands for naughty and nice.
“G” is gregarious, frequently hilarious,
And “E” covers everything else.

Now everybody’s seen that I’ve found somewhere to “leen”,
On the days when they’ve put out the lights.
She’s not all that tall, but she’s sturdy as a wall,
And we never really have any fights.

I do try to do the dishes, in accordance with her wishes,
Even though they never seem to mind.
And my voice is so deep, that it sends her to sleep,
Whenever we have story-time.

But all these things seem small, when you’re a monster who’s her Saul,
And you get to have her snuggle and her kiss.
‘Cause I’ve searched around the world to find the right kind of girl,
And I’ve found one who’s more better than the rest!

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Podding my cherry

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Saul Alexander

So I unexpectedly got a call to be a guest host of this week’s GameArena podcast. Listen in awe as I try to convince the guys that point-and-click adventures are cool! This is my first ever experience of being recorded talking about stuff for the listening pleasure of others, and I think it went reasonably well, considering. Listening back to it only makes me cringe in a mild kind of a way.

If you have found your way here after listening to the podcast, then welcome! This is the place where all my writing that no-one will publish ends up. There’s already some fiction, stuff about music and movies and even a bit of autobiography. I’ve only had the blog up a month, so expect lots more content in upcoming weeks. I seem to be averaging slightly more than a post a week.

If you’re really only interested is games stuff, check out Beefjack. I do news for them on a regular basis, as well as a smattering of reviews and features. It’s a pretty nice site, it’s growing very quickly, and – best of all – we bribe you by giving you games just for participating! Tell your friends, tell your mother.

Also, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. Hope you enjoy your stay!

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In the Cake Hole: Journeys out of mind

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Saul Alexander

(This was written as a uni assignment, a few years back. I got an HD for it, so I submitted it to a number of publications, but it was rejected by all of them.)

Names have been changed to protect the unwashed.

It’s sometime after midnight on a Saturday night, and here we are again. It’s months since I’ve been to the Cake Hole, an Inner West apartment so-named because it used to sit above a bakery, and so was filled morning and night with the smells of baking cakes. Those scents have long departed, and it is more and more the second part of the moniker that is taking hold.

The Cake Hole’s inhabitants are friends of Queenie, my girlfriend, who first brought me here several years ago. It has always been a grubby place, a true heterosexual lad-house, but things have stumbled further downhill of late. The empty bottles that have littered the floor since my first visit have now been seasoned with broken glass and a visible layer of cigarette ash, and the smell of spilled bong-water mingles with unwashed man, ushering those of us with a sense of smell out to the balcony. Drug-taking, legal and illegal, is a way of life here, and cleaning-up is only for special occasions.

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Posted in Autobiography | Tagged | 1 Comment

A Sword, part 2

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Saul Alexander

This is a continuation of my story, “A Sword”. You can read part 1 here.

“Perhaps the greatest evil perpetrated by the Radagasts,” Zelda went on, “is in drawing that creature here.” She pointed her nose towards the soldier, who still stood impatiently on their neighbour’s doorstep, then sniffed and screwed up her face as if she’d encountered a foul stench (although, truth be told, it was hard to smell anything over the pig poo that clung to Derrick’s clothes). She went on:

“Everyone knows that Bonobus’s greatest rival is the great god Chintozel, Lord of Violence and Generally Messing Stuff Up, and that beast is – without a shadow of a doubt – one of his greater minions.”

At that, Derrick sat up straight, staring longingly at his sister, who widened her eyes in a way she considered portentous. But a moment later she flicked her head back around as quick as a snake, for she’d heard crunching footsteps, and now she saw that, yes, Chintozel’s foul spawn was striding forcefully towards the fence-line, face like a storm.

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Musings on melancholy: The Smashing Pumpkins at the Big Top, Sydney 16/10/10

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Saul Alexander

(Been meaning to write about Amanda Palmer’s Australia Day Spectacular, but have had no time. So instead – the below was written last year for publication on another site, the editor of which mysteriously began snubbing me.)

Pumpkin, smashed.

“It’s not cool that you cheer more for that song than for the last song.”

It’s only the third song of the concert, and Billy Corgan is already on the defensive. It seems to be his natural state of being. He’s just played the opening riff to the Smashing Pumpkins 1993 hit Today (you know the one: da-da da-da da-da DA-da-da), and a deafening cheer has risen from the tight-packed crowd. What’s Billy’s reaction? He pauses the riff and tells them off.

This attitude is pretty characteristic of Billy, even when he was a megastar. But his sourness seems to have grown as his popularity has diminished. Instead of appreciating the fans he has left, he criticises their inability to enjoy his new stuff as much as his old. It is my considered opinion that the man is both a song-writing genius and a bit of a douche.

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