Civic Diary 5/20/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Hello everyone, welcome to my weekly look at my attempts to be more civicly engaged.

And . . . not a lot has happened.

One job ended last week, a new job began this week, and I’ve got some vacation coming up. I’ve had a lot on my mind obviously.

Which is probably a good lesson in this entire quest to be more civicly engaged – it’s not a simple, linear process. You will get interrupted. You will need to take a break. You will have Other Stuff To Do.

I confess to some pangs of guilt as I’m busy working on this, and it’s opened up a whole new world to me – but also I realize that’s the way it is. The desire to do this is real, and it won’t go away just because I’m spending a week getting a new job.  Or anything else.

I think that’s one of the most important things of being civcly engaged is that it has to come from a “real” place. A desire for change. A desire to connect. A desire to find out what you should and can do. But you can’t fake it or do it out of guilt, it’ll be false and exhausting.

A lot of really civicly active people I see are passionate. They’re for real. This is part of what they live and breathe – and when you try to do this as well that’s what you’re evolving towards.

However I do have a few findings.

  • Still planning to attend a local political meeting in June to understand how I can get involved in GOTV. That’s gonna be a big step for me.
  • I like the place I live, and I figure next year I’ll give a look at being on a city board. I’m being realistic here as I have a lot on my plate – three books and then some. I also want to learn more about it, but the idea calls to me.
  • By following the news more I’m realizing how much does not get said. Did you realize the guy’s behind Ben and Jerry’s have been involved in protests supporting better voting rights?  They’re part of Democracy Awakening. That they got a arrested at a protest? That they’re releasing an ice cream in celebration of it? Exactly, you didn’t hear about it.  The news is not always what you think.
  • I’ve become far more aware of how ideas, often insane ones, spread throughout political consciousness. If you told me a few months ago people would be freaking out about transsexuals in bathrooms, I’d figure it’d be confined to some religious group or a single state.
  • That guide to activism I’m reading, The Little Book of Revolution, is very helpful, and I thoroughly recommend it – even as I’m still finishing it. I’m going to have to reread it a second time to develop more of a plan, but it’s fantastic.
  • By now my reviews of political news and activism ideas is pretty regular. That always keeps “tweaking” me to move forward – it’s building structure on top of the passion.
  • As people continue to rail against the political establishment – mostly Trump supporters but also some Sanders supporters – it’s clear a lot of people don’t get that an establishment gets things done. Organization is how things happen, and if you don’t like the establishment your choices are to influence, take over, or replace.
  • As much as I support protest, that’s only part of it. Protest can inspire, it can disrupt, it can influence, it can get people to organize. But it seems people value protest for protest’s sake (mostly angry screaming) and that’s even counterproductive.

I suspect I’m not going to be having a lot of deep civil insights the next week or two. But I’m going to keep posting these.

I think I like this as I’m doing this publicly to hold myself accountable. If I screw up, I screw up in front of the world (well, on a blog and anywhere from 30-150 readers). It’s nicely sobering.

Besides, the choices I make do affect the world.

– Steve

Job Skills For The Future – Scheduling

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

So as I explore Job Skills you’ll need in the future, as the Geek Job Guru that I am, let’s talk about one no one thinks about and everyone is usually awful at.

Scheduling.

No, REALLY.

Let’s be honest right now basic scheduling of meeting, events, software launches, etc. is almost always an excruciating experience.  Why? Most people are terrible at it.  Recently I got to talk to someone who had been quadruple booked for a meeting, which I think wins him some kind of award.

So right now people are really bad at scheduling.  They don’t plan, they don’t think, they don’t check the responses.  They don’t think about launching software before a weekend.   Yes I’m bitter.

So being good at scheduling and planning events sounds like a job skill that everyone bloody well needs now.  And they do.  Trust me.

But now I want you to add what we’ve talked about previously, about working with people in other cultures and time zones and so on.  Scheduling becomes even more important in the future – says the guy who often works with India teams.

Now I want you to imagine critical technologies becoming more and more intertwined, where every software launch has more far-reaching effect every release.

I want you to imagine publicity issues of launching a book just an hour ahead or behind in this wired world.  Now ask how that’ll change.

Good scheduling is definitely a skill people could use more of now, but one that is going to be far, far more vital in the future.  But I’d also take now, thanks very much.

I think this is important enough that scheduling and planning as a basic skillset is something talented people will actually need to call out in resumes.  Note it among your planning skills, or your software launch skills, or your media release skills – but note it.

As for getting better at it, I’d recommend this:

  • Just general awareness will go far.  Take some time to watch how you schedule and plan.
  • A basic project management or planning guide or class will work wonders. Pick up a book, take a class if you can.  Get some knowledge yu can use.
  • If your company or team is bad at it, schedule (ha) a meeting to discuss how it can be done better.  You’ll learn more and you’ll look good taking initiative.

I can’t emphasize how much people need this skill now, and how important it’s going to get over time.  Remember, I belong to a profession, Project Management, that just exists to coordinate things – we exist for a reason.

Your Scheduling skills have good reason to exist too.

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: Procedural Gaming and Procedural Materials

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

As I wait for No Man’s Sky (if I disappear for a week in June, you know why), I’ve been analyzing the game, what it means, and what it tells us about procedural entertainment. Today I’d like to focus on crafting.

I love crafting. I enjoyed the Atelier series of games, finding new alchemical potions. I love Starbound‘s crafting (OK, maybe I’ll vanish in July too). You can guess that Minecraft was a revelation. This all goes back to Demon’s Winter, a vastly underrated DOS game that let you build magic items.

With No Man’s Sky, the huge emphasis on crafting has me intrigued. The thrill of finding elements, the joy of a discovered blueprint, the fun of creating the right components. I love the challenge of building the ideal loadout, and NMS is going to give me that and all of the exploration and resource collecting. I’m looking forward to it.

I will be the guy staying on one crap planet for hours because of a wealth of ruins filled with schematics. Trust me.

No Man’s Sky provides a mixture of real and made-up elements, a nice nod to both recognizability and to the proper sci-fi feel. But as I’ve watched the game, I’ve come to realize there’s another, missed opportunity that other games should take up.

Procedural elements.

Imagine a game like NMS (or NMS II, which again I feel is possible) that has procedural elements. The joy of discovery is not just felt on finding a new world or a new blueprint, a strange crystal or interesting rock formation could hold an element no one else has seen. There could be elements even the creators hadn’t foreseen, out there, lurking.

Sci-Fi and fantasy is often about strange and unusual materials. Let’s see more of that in games.

Of course to make them useful and understandable, procedural elements would need to be handled in certain ways. here’s my thoughts on it:

Where They Fit

Procedural elements would have to work into an existing crafting structure. The elements have to have some recognizable use despite their procedural nature. This would likely mean:

  • The crafting structure recognizes general classes of elements (builds weapons, catalyst, etc) and procedural elements fit a general class but have unique cases. “Iron” is the same all over, but that procedural deposit of “Dekelite” has unique traits, thought both can be used to build weapons.
  • Thecrafting structure recognizes specific elements, and procedural elements can “substitute” for regular ones and bring certain benefits. Thus “Chromatic Polytanium” may substitute for “Copper,” but any scanning device built with it has extra bonuses.
  • Items that are used to power/supply other items may provide unique bonuses. A unique element that provides energy may, perhaps, deliver double the fuel value of a common one.

Unique Traits

It’d be pretty easy to make procedural elements that seem very samey, so work would have to be done to vary them. The need for variance would depend on how often they’d be encountered, of course (more on that later). But traits may vary along such areas as:

  • Specific use.
  • Elements they substitute/are used for.
  • Bonuses and combinations of bonuses.
  • Disadvantages and tradeoffs.
  • Additional effects (perhaps if you make a potion with this element it always confers invisibility)
  • Physical traits (even different colors or weights).

A game that uses procedural elements should have enough variances that they’re actually interesting, unique, ad surprising. Otherwise it might not be worth implementing.

But done right it could be amazing. Imagine traipsing through a fantasy forest to discover a rare gem deposit whose naturally holy traits repel demons and confer charisma. Imagine exploring a distant world to find a fuel source that boosts your hyperdrive beyond capacity – but will wear down your spaceship.  Each finding is something unique, wondrous.

When You Can, Add Story

I’ve written about the need for procedural games to have pproceduralhistory. Same goes for procedural elements – I can’t say it’s required, but having “more” to the elements than a name and trait may be neat.

Maybe a procedural element in a fantasy game exists because a certain area is irradiated with magic. A procedural element in a SF game may have unusual energy properties because it was formed on a planet near the sun. Add something tomake the elements meaningful.

Or at least give us some flavor text for fun. Something to help us build our own story.

Oh and make sure the names are appropriate. I’d much rather find Chromatic Steel with it’s ability to make swords tht dazzle with rainbow light than a similar element called Furbonanium. Only use nonsense if it fits.

Don’t Overdo it

Finally, unless procedural elements are a theme of the game (and it may be), don’t overdo them. If you want these elements to stand out, then they have to stand out.

In any game of reasonable gameplay (20-40 hours) odds should be that only 1 or 2 procedural elements are found unless that’s a core part of the game. An element like this should be fascinating, amazng, perhaps game-changing – and overdoing it reduces the wonder.

That moment you find that rare deposit should be one you remember for the rest of the game.

So that’s my take on where NMS’ offspring should go – and a lesson we can learn from the current development of NMS. If a game focuses on the wonder of discovery and crafting, why not surprise your audience with procedural elements. Give people that unique experience that is personal – and perhaps theirs and theirs alone.

 

– Steve