I think I have failed myself a bit, since the web design course is going so-so with a few complaints landing in our forum. Whether this is my fault or not is difficult to tell. It is a challenge for the students to adapt to a mindset where the HTML-code makes sense. It is a very difficult step the first time and somewhere along the course of my teachings I fear that I did not perceive the difficulties involved in learning web design and coding HTML. It's a devastating defeat that I failed to look at it from the eyes of my client: The Student. The basic level of anything is in my oppinion the most difficult to teach.
A fragment of the student body in the course is feeling helpless, feebly facing a cryptic language, which is a problem difficult to patch this late in the course. I am however feeling a bit unjustly accused of not providing all the necessary conditions for one to learn what they are supposed to.
Then again I'm a perfectionist and failing one single student feels like a huge defeat, so perhaps I should really mind those that are still on track.
I've been working alot with my dreamlandburning concept lately. I even made a little swf which I'm not particularly impressed with. It's an emo-board for the project, which I learned from watching it, needs a ton of change. The project has had much better progress on the business side than on the design part.
Suddenly got myself a couple of ideas on how to make a successful game dev-company out of this last period of my education. I think I owe some of this entrepreneurial creativity to Tobias Sjögren's lecture which I had the pleasure of attending this week. Dreamlandburning has a huge market potential if the potential customers have grown so much as I expect them too. The clients must be able to embrace games not only as spin-off products but also, if made well, as products reinforcing the end-user's perception of their original product's quality. If successful, we'll have ourselves a new genre born out of the demands from users and customers alike.
I've also recently discovered a whole lot more about gospel music, thanks to a little friend. I find gospel just as good as one can assume I would, given that I have a passion for religiously fueled music, poetry and other media. Gospel is good. God is great. Religion isn't, sadly, but it apparently inspires people to great artistry.
I've spent much time lately working with Torque2D, which is becoming more of an amazing tool the more of it I manage to unveil. Crafting our game Azidakeep in it is almost easier and faster than when using for example Flash, my previous authoring tool of choice. When given the power and speed of T2D, game development truly becomes the craft it is. If I compare tools and call Torque2D a hammer, any other dev-tool feels like slamming nails into a board with the forehead.
I've also discovered a pleasant need of mine. I need romantic atmosphere. Or I will explode. "I do that sometimes". Romantic paint on everything I do. Business, development, teaching and social life: Everything must have a romantic touch: A romantic eye laid on a burning horizon full of fulfilled dreams. Perhaps this is in some psychological way, which I dare not dig deeper into, really really linked to how fair I find artistry inspired by religion and desperation. My danish friend told me he thinks really good creative things come from lust and dismay, two words with meanings interestingly not too far away from what I believe religion brings.
Another friend of mine told me "it is not a nintendo game", referring to social activities and relations. I said "no of course it's not", wishing not to sound completely mad or stir a violent end to any eventual discussion.
But I find it difficult if not impossible to look away from the mechanics. That's why you can elevate game mechanics out of a drama and make a very fine game, an area hardly touched at all by game designers. Social activities and relations all look a lot like a game and it's usually only about realizing what keys to press to get forward.
It is however, relevant to reflect upon whether or not you wish to play the game optimally, which takes away from the emotional relation we have to social acitivities, making us more psychopathic. Classic mediated drama could apparently be called a series of imperfect moves. From the emotional impulsiveness of the characters involved, we grow feelings for them and despair with them. You probably want to make the choice to play it imperfectly, reproducing the problems spawned from being emotionally impulsive. Playing imperfectly is not a problem for me, since I'm to such a large extent a hopeless romantic dreamer. Every time I manage to think "entrepreneurial" about such social activities and overcome a fear, usually resulting in me getting what I want, I feel less human inside. I guess I could say that the way we play social activity games imperfectly is one of those things which makes us human. I do not like people who play the game perfectly and I dislike their obvious attempts just as much as I disgust when someone really can't play at all.
With real social activities, we are definitely talking about a game of imperfect information, since the patterns and the game world is huge. But on the other hand, we're dealing with behavioral patterns of human beings which are sometimes frighteningly similar from person to person.
It's really interesting and it's making me supercreative just elaborating with these thoughts. It is though, as stated, probably cynical madness to apply it to it's full extent to everyday life, no matter how clearly one can gaze upon the pattern.
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