Avatar photoSteven Savage

Procedural Content – An Invisible Service

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A friend of mine recently found Jukedeck – a service that will randomly generate music for you.  Depending on your membership you get to download randomly made music and have assorted rights to it.

It’s fairly obvious from my work at Seventh Sanctum that I love randomized stuff.  Also as I’m a big proponent of Roguelike games and procedural content in things like Borderlands, I’m really biased.

But looking at Jukedeck I began thinking that they (and me to an extent) have explored procedural content as a service.  I mean yes assorted generator-makers like myself have done that before.  But I don’t think people have thought about it as deeply as could be.

Procedural generation, at its best, involves researching data, parameters, and patterns.  It involves finding ways to make them into code that delivers something recognizable.  It is work, it is art, and it is critical to certain artistic forms.

(Hell, it’s pretty much core to No Man’s Sky).

However, procedural generation rarely gets appreciated.  We’re used to it, having seen it make dungeons and weapons in our games from decades, or simply create stuff for pen and paper RPGs with dice rolls.  We take it for granted because it doesn’t stand out, it’s integrated into some media – or we are used to seeing it treated in a funny way, from randomizing errors to brain-shaking numbers of game possibilities being touted.

Jukedeck, by making procedural content a service, made me “see” procedural generation a bit clearer.  It is a service in some cases (I know, I provide it).  It is core to some media.  We’re just so used to it we don’t see it – or see what goes into it.

Step back for a bit and ask just what role it’s played in your life . . .

  • Steven Savage

The (Literal) Joy Of Networking

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So over Thanksgiving I did some networking. I should note it’s no exactl intentional – I do it automatically as I like it

A lot of people don’t like Networking, and my theory on that is simple – we get taught to make a natural human activity (socailizing) into work. It’s not fun which is what it should be.

Over Thanksgiving:

  • I met Neale Bayly, who does motorcycle demonstrations for good causes, writes on his experiences, and in general seems to be someone who would normally be fictional character. Turns out he’s real, very cool, and we chatted after meeting during a delayed plane. It was fun, I got inspired, and of course I followed him.
  • * Meanwhile on twitter over the holiday I noticed Magencubed made comments on superheroes. That resonated with my recent analyses of Concrete Revoluio, and we traded some commentary. Just random twitter opened my mind – and I learned a lot.
  • Finally, on the flight back I had a chance to talk with a gentleman working in branding (as we discussed things privately, I won’t mention his name, but we’re connecting on LinkedIn) and we had a marvelous discussion about Hasbro and other companies in fascinating branding efforts.  But often Hasbro because damn.

Three connections, three different people, just because I was open to networking and it was fun. Really, it was natural.

And that’s when Networking is best. I could talk techniques, I could talk methods, but the thing is be open to Networking. Be open to connect when it’s there, be interested in people, socialize.

And when you’re not wanting to be social? That’s fine. Find what works for you.

Networking is an art, and an individual one at that.  Know when you need to express it.

– Steven Savage

Sailor Moon: In The Name Of The Moon I’ll Hug You

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Well it’s time to start posting regular updates on this whole effort, so here’s a regular update. About the whole effort.

If you’re not familiar with whats going on, I and my co-author Bonnie are doing a book on Sailor Moon. Specificly, we’re examining how it impacted women in North America by A) interviewing various women, and B) Seeing what impacts we see as common.

Simple, but effective – so I want to do updates reguarly.

So right now we’re writing chapters on the titular heroine of Sailor Moon, and the values in the show. It’s gotten very interesting.

Here’s what we’ve found:

First, when you look at it, Sailor Moon, a reincarnated Moon Princiess is about as far from a Disney princess as you can get. Clumsy, cute at best, overanxious, she had the world on her shoulders. Sure she had a handsome prince, but he was an problematic amnesiac who couldn’t remember his past life nor his previous magical abilities, making him a big, juicy target in a top hat. Add the fact that various supernatural beings tried to kill her all the time and let’s face it – Sailor Moon’s life sucks.

The inversion continues with the character – she was also subversively loveable. She had a big heart under the ditziness and manic behavior. She brought people together. She was very human in her feelings and her flaws and that really made people love her and relate to her. Sailor Moon was that wacky friend you new – or that flawed person you were – that somehow got everyone on the same page.

The same kind of subversiveness was part of the show’s values. The show had it’s moments of moralizing (often via Tuxedo Mask, who was used as a hunky Jimminy Cricket when not being kidnapped), it had “Sailor Says” shoehorned into it in North America, but t did have core principles. It was about love, friendship, and persistence, as well as a understanding, and forgiveness.

For an action show with a surprisingly high body count (especially if you were a Monster Of The Week), it emphasized a lot of values that were distinctly non-violent. Even when there was violent, it was often motivated by love, justice, and protection of others – and those motivations gave characters their powers.  The show often involved fighting monsters, but it was about non-violent values.

The show and stories often delighted in gender fluidity and playing with standard gender roles. There were obvious gay couples such as Sailor Uranus and Neptune, but also gender-shifting and gender-bending characters. The characters, even when evil, were not evil for their differences in sexuality – in many cases, such as Zoicite, it humanized them.

Sailor Moon was a story about a clumsy reincarnated princess who freaked out constantly and saved the day, was about love and forgiveness in the face of cosmic horror, and where gender and sexuality weren’t simple. Sailor Moon was filled with things that seemed contradoctory, but were reall a different way of seeing things.

Now, put yourself in the place of a girl or young woman seeing this for the first time and you can imagine it’s a revelation.

  • Steve