Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry by Jason Schreier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Press Reset follows people working at some of the biggest publishers and developers in the video game business, and in doing so author Jason Schreier paints a rather depressing portrait of a dysfunctional industry that works on a boom and bust model, with layoffs and studio closures regularly forcing workers to seek out new employment, often requiring them to move to different cities, states or even other countries.
Amid the stories of mismanagement (and a few are epic, especially the tale of 38 Studios) some bright moments occur when small groups of devs band together, go indie and find success on their own terms, even as they grapple with some of the same long term stability issues, albeit on a smaller scale.
In the end there are a few suggestions on how to make the work environment better for the artists, programmers and others who make video games, notably through unionization (which has started to happen since Press Reset was published) and the idea of studios only having small core “creative” teams and hiring contractors for pretty much everything else, like level construction, art generation and so on. This is also happening to a certain degree.
For some people featured in the book, the ultimate solution for them was to simply get out of the video game business altogether, moving into jobs that pay better, provide more stability and generate less stress. Press Reset is an excellent, detailed look at an industry that should really be better for workers than it is, considering video games have been around for decades, and generating billions in revenue for many years.
Recommended.
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Reviews
Movie review: Deep Impact
Yes, here I am reviewing a movie a mere 24 years after release!
NOTE: Spoilers ahoy if that matters to you.
Deep Impact is the “emotional” (I’m using Netflix’s word here) giant space object threatening Earth movie that came out in 1998. The other one and the #1 movie of that same year was Armageddon, which I’ve only seen the last 20 minutes of for some reason (it did not inspire me to watch the previous 120 or whatever minutes). Armageddon takes a more hands-on approach to its giant space object destruction, while Deep Impact actually reserves the disaster porn for the very end (spoilers!)
My summary would be: This was fine, but the investment in the characters just wasn’t there for me. I mean, none of them seemed like horrible people or anything, I just felt no real connection to them because the movie jumps from scene to scene quickly and features a fairly large cast of characters. It also has these weird tonal shifts where it goes from a hammy TV movie vibe to something more grounded and sober.
The score was distracting and nearly ever-present. This was probably the best example I’ve seen (heard) in a long time of a movie telling you how you should feel. THIS IS SAD. THIS IS EXCITING. THIS IS SCARY. THIS IS SAD. If there had been a score mute switch, I would have used it. EDIT: I looked at the credits and the score was by James Horner, who I usually like! Or so I thought. Anyway, I stand by my assertion that the score was heavy-handed all to heck and back.
The cast was strangely unremarkable. No one stood out, everyone just blended in. I mean, you can’t top Morgan Freeman as the President (ten years before Obama would win), but he didn’t really do much other than make speeches on TV and look presidential (remember how high a bar that was just a few years ago?)
The opening sequence, with (spoilers) Charles Martin Smith’s character getting early warning of the doomsday comet, was completely unnecessary, since it has no bearing on the rest of the plot. It was cute watching him type “Connect to server” to try to email his findings, but the server was down, ono. So then he copied the info onto a floppy disk (all of this is lovingly shown as it’s so very hi-tech and all), tosses it into a manila envelope, then dashes off in his Jeep down the long, scary mountain road to deliver the news.
Why he never used a phone is not explained.
Anyway, he and a driver of a big rig both coincidentally become distracted at the exact same moment, there is a collision and the Jeep goes tumbling down the mountain, exploding like it was carrying several tons of TNT, and the information is lost.
Again, this has no effect AT ALL on the rest of the movie. The movie picks up a year later, they still have had enough time to build a spaceship (spoiler) to plant nukes on the comet and divert it (spoiler). I have no idea why the scene with Smith was included. It’s like someone wrote an early draft and this scene accidentally got left in the shooting script.
The movie does pick up as the comet nears and every plan to get it out of the way fails. It looks bad, and there are noble sacrifices to save babies and kids. The spaceship crew, led by crusty old Robert Duvall, sacrifices themselves in order to nuke the larger chunk of the comet. It’s not explained why this works perfectly and failed totally when they did it earlier and just split the comet into two pieces, a little one and a big one. But with only a little chunk, the death toll is reduced to mere millions instead of becoming an Extinction Level Event (ELE), life goes on, and President Freeman gets to make a speech at what appears to be a terrible matte painting of the Washington Capitol under (re)construction and the babies will go on to grow up and post reminisces on TikTok or something.
Also, Freeman’s second to last speech is a bummer because he says the US and Russian missiles failed to stop the comet (this was when Russia was almost viewed as a good guy–again, how times change!) but now they know where the pieces will hit, and the little one is going into the Atlantic, so goodbye US east coast! The effects here are perfectly serviceable and relatively restrained compared to, say, 2012, but the scene in which Elijah Wood, his new wife and his new wife’s mother’s baby are literally running up a hill to escape the massive tidal wave reminded me of people trying to outrun the deadly cold in The Day After Tomorrow. This is not a good comparison.
Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10 asteroids nuking the dinosaurs into oblivion, Deep Impact rates 6 asteroids.
Book review: Gotta Read It!
Gotta Read It!: Five Simple Steps to a Fiction Pitch that Sells by Libbie Hawker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This short book is about pitches. The story kind, not the baseball kind. I got it as part of a book bundle and I love short books, so I dove in.
And it’s fine. Hawker provides plenty of her own pitches as examples and while it may seem ego-driven at a glance, it’s nice in that there is an authenticity to the pitches. She’s not “writing to the crowd”, she’s providing examples of work she has relied on directly to help sell her novels.
The writing style is light and the book can be finished in an afternoon, all the better to apply the lessons therein. I don’t foresee myself making use of it much with my own writing, but for those who may need to work on and use pitches, this is a concise and worthy resource.
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Book review: So You Had to Build a Time Machine
So You Had to Build a Time Machine by Jason Offutt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I wanted to like this more than I did. In the end it was a light, uneven parallel dimension romp that has tons of stuff in it, but doesn’t really hold together that well.
Also it is more about alternate universes than time travel, so the title is sort of a fib, too. 😛
On the plus side, the smirking, sarcastic tone is carried off well. The characters all seem to know how ridiculous everything is and more or less roll with it. This does mean that “serious” character moments tend to come off as maudlin or out of place. As the “Miller waves” that prompt shifts in time and space grow more frequent, the changes grow more dramatic, from small stuff like street names changing to Earth being overrun by orcs. Apparently.
And this is also where the story lost me. Look, I don’t expect hard science fiction in a work that is clearly filled with gonzo tech and lots of hand-waving on how or why it works, but I still felt there was no coherence and the author just started throwing in weird stuff for the sake of being weird, with one character, a hulking bakery owner known as Brick, tossing off a line about how maybe worlds filled with dragons and such actually exist because writers aren’t imagining them, but are somehow tapping into the cosmos and really seeing them. Sure. So this means you get (spoilers, sorry):
– Dinosaurs
– Orcs
– Zombies
– Giant insects
– The Devil (?)
All of these could still work, I just felt the explanation for them was too glib to buy in, and it hurt the story.
I also felt the characters were treated strangely. I swear Brick starts out as one character and ends as another entirely. Skid, the purported hero of the tale, is an ex-circus performer who specializes in throwing knives. She uses this skill in the story, which is good! But her character seems almost emotionally defective and needs to be bailed out by brick, like a powerless princess. I wanted to see her kick ass, and she does kick some asses, but (heh heh) the number of asses felt too low. Other characters disappeared for long periods of time, only to resurface later without explanation (or to any real effect), possibly to signal the randomness of all this parallel universe stuff, but it just didn’t click.
Finally, the ending was strangely anti-climactic. It just happened and was done. It literally involved pushing a button. You could make pushing a button exciting. This was not exciting.
Still, I do appreciate that the author went for something a bit tonally different from your usual alternate dimension fare, and I admire both that and the fairly consistent wise ass tone that is carried throughout (though it should be noted that if this tone is something that would grate on you, stay far, far away).
Overall, I can neither recommend the book, nor warn anyone away from it. It’s not bad, just flawed and falls short of what it could have been.
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Book review: Write Novels Fast: Writing Faster With Art Journaling
Write Novels Fast: Writing Faster With Art Journaling by Shéa MacLeod
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is short. It’s less of a book and more of a booklet–which is not a criticism, but more a heads-up to anyone looking for a comprehensive take on art journaling.
MacLeod has found a process that works for her, outlines it in simple detail, and importantly includes numerous photos of her art journals to show exactly what she is going in terms of how she organizes pages and the material that becomes her novels. There is a level of enthusiasm and amiable goofiness here that makes art journaling appealing, particularly for people who may have tried and failed with software solutions like Scrivener. I think some people are just more visual or hands-on, and that physical connectedness is what helps spark their imagination and gets the actual writing flowing.
I feel like I was like this when I was younger, but now I’m not so sure. I am tempted to try, and MacLeod’s slim book is a fine example of one approach to take. I can give this a recommendation, assuming you can get it on the cheap. It really must be emphasized how short it is! Most people could probably fly through it in 15 minutes. Still, what’s here is decently presented and could help some who are stuck with their current plotting methods.
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Book review: Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker
Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is exactly what it says on the tin–a story about a group of teens who are returned as adults to a realm where their tabletop RPG is a real world. The concept is a favorite of D&D or D&D adjacent nerds, but Gillen’s writing elevates the material beyond its hackneyed premise. It is very dark, but in that darkness the characters feel authentic and make mistakes and judgment calls that never feel driven by the needs of the plot.
The art by Stephanie Hans is bursting with color and drama, perfectly matching the grim setting.
Recommended, with the caveat that Volume One does not have real closure–you are fully intended to move on to see the rest of the story.
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Book review: Young Protectors, Vol. 1
The Young Protectors, Vol. 1: Engaging The Enemy by Alex Woolfson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked this up on sale and it’s a great example of “if you want something done, do it yourself” as it’s a Kickstarter-funded queer superhero comic–not exactly a sub-genre bursting with entries.
It’s fun and a bit naughty and sometimes juvenile, but it keeps things PG-rated. The hero of the story is not yet 18 years old, so this is also a kind of YA adventure. The art is appropriate for a superhero comic and there are lots of explosions and things, along with the innuendo, sly side looks and snappy comebacks.
My own real beef (not to be confused with beefcake, which there is plenty of) is that the story stops abruptly, and I am not seeing a Volume 2…yet.
Otherwise, recommended.
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Book review: You Are Awesome
You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life by Neil Pasricha
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the bio for You Are Awesome it’s mentioned that Neil Pasricha gives 50 speeches a year–nearly one a week. I saw one of these speeches, back in December 2019 (what a simpler time that was) and he is a fantastic, engaging speaker. He could probably give 150 speeches a year (post-pandemic, of course) if he could clone himself. You get some of that same zest and enthusiasm in his books, but while You Are Awesome doesn’t get the blood pumping like his oration, it does a pretty good job of outlining his philosophy on taking on life and, in particular, accepting and moving past adversity.
He breaks things down into nine “secrets”, or steps to follow and the book is a quick, breezy read, full of anecdotes that Pasricha always makes interesting, his tone so dang friendly and relatable.
The advice ranges from simple and sensible (“Be resilient. Keep going.”) to what has worked well for him (“Be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond.”) to somewhat less conventional things. When he talks of shifting the spotlight, for example, he refers to the belief many have that everyone is watching them, when for the most part everyone else is too absorbed in themselves to be paying much attention to every little thing you do. Accepting this means letting go of your ego. Pasricha is basically saying get over yourself.
My favorite piece of advice is to carve out time strictly for yourself–no interruptions tolerated! This may be more difficult for some, depending on their work or home life, but I really like the idea of shutting out this noisy world of social media and the relentless drive to catch and keep our attention (“Engagement!”) so I’m fully on board with this.
Overall, I think someone–especially someone young, though it’s never too late, as they say–following the advice in this book may not necessarily end up awesome, but they will probably be a happier, more content, and more successful person.
Recommended.
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Mini movie re-reviews: Star Trek: Into Darkness, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
I’ve actually watched a few movies recently, perhaps finally feeling the pangs of not seeing a movie in a theater since March 2020 (it was Onward, which was on Disney+ by the end of the month as all movie theaters shut down for pandemic fun times). Now, I don’t actually miss seeing movies in theaters (hell is other people), but movies themselves? Yeah. And I’d been wanting to indulge in some science fiction. It didn’t even have to be good. Which leads me to my first mini re-review:
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013): I mostly remembered this one as being inferior to the 2009 remake origin story, and it still is. There is plenty of silliness to be had, from re-purposing bits from the original Khan storyline to no good effect (the Spock/Kirk death reversal, which lands with an utter thud), Khan now a supremely white Benedict Cumberbatch (though he is wonderfully slimy and weird in the role) and once again using improbable devices to propel the plot forward, like having all the Starfleet bigwigs conveniently meet in a room lined with huge windows and completely vulnerable to attack (guess what happens next?!)
Still, J.J. Abrams is adept at keeping the action rolling, and there is plenty here. This is basically an action movie in sci-fi clothing. There is also some nice interplay between the cast members (I could watch Karl Urban as McCoy all day long) and everyone just seems to be having a good time in their roles. The effects are big and loud and very Abrams.
In the end it’s not a bad movie per se, even though there are any number of weak points, but this is a case where Abrams’ approach of “more is more” somehow manages to hold together till the end.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Director’s Cut (1977): Spielberg wanted to fix some issues with the original film and asked the studio for money. They agreed with one condition–that he show inside the mothership. He reluctantly agreed, giving us the “special edition” of the movie. That’s also included on the Blu-ray I have, but I skipped it in favor of the Director’s cut, which is essentially Spielberg’s fixes, but with the mothership interior rightfully cut.
Some effects, particularly the matte work and the painfully obvious set that comprises the mountain road where the police chase a group of UFOs, do not hold up very well, but this movie is now 44 years old, so I’m willing to cut it some slack. Other effects still hold up decently and the mothership’s arrival at Devil’s Tower is still spectacular.
There’s a lot of very Spielberg stuff here–the camera dollying in to a character (or out), overlapping dialogue, quirky people who feel real, not out of Casting 101. There’s also something almost painfully authentic about the domestic scenes involving Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) and his family. In one early scene, one of the boys climbs into the daughter’s playpen in the living room and starts bashing apart a doll on the rail. Why? Because that’s the kind of mindless, attention-seeking destruction kids engage in. It’s great.
You can quibble with some actions of the aliens–Spielberg is clearly more interested in setting a mood than being logical, but the moods he creates work so well–from the subtle horror of screws on a floor vent unscrewing themselves and toys coming to life, to the child-like wonder of watching the mothership interact musically with the scientists gathered at the Devil’s Tower landing site.
This is also a very 70s movie. The pace is deliberate at times. There is no build-up to a final big action scene. The story ends gently, and there are no real villains. It presents the idea of aliens wanting a kind of cultural exchange. It’s hopeful and just nice.
Also, despite coming only two years after Jaws, the fashions hold up much better than you might expect. Maybe the 70s have just become hip (or groovy) again.
Book review: The Successful Author Mindset
The Successful Author Mindset: A Handbook for Surviving the Writer’s Journey by Joanna Penn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Joanna Penn’s short book is exactly what it says–a look at how to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally to live the life of a writer, through new writer tribulations, on to actual publication and then dealing with what comes after (should you be so fortunate).
As such, there is little in here about how to write, but plenty of advice on how to deal with everything from self-doubt to overzealous fans, using a Problem/Antidote format. Penn’s style (seriously, a writer named Penn? The closest I get is someone calling me “pencil neck”) is open and friendly, and she provides excerpts from her private journal to illustrate points she is making, which is a nice way of building trust with the reader. The advice is practical and pretty common sense–you’re unlikely to slap your forehead and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” but it’s still handy to have all of these ideas collected together and presented in a way that’s easy and entertaining to absorb.
It’s also just a nice change-up to read a book about writing that is not about, well, the actual writing part.
Recommended for new writers or those on the cusp of publishing.
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Book review: I Am Legend
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This short novel, published in 1954, is another entry in the Richard Matheson collection of grim futures, pasts or presents. In this case the story is set about 20 years in the future, in 1976, although there are no issues with verisimilitude as Matheson largely steers clear of any references that would date the novel as another incorrectly depicted near-future. The main character of Robert Neville drives a car, not a flying car, and he listens to vinyl records, just like hipsters do today.
For those only familiar with the 2007 Will Smith movie, the story is the same only in broad strokes. Neville has survived a virus that has turned most of the world’s population into vampires, and is convinced that he is likely the last human alive. Hiding in his fortified house at night, he tries to stay sane while investigating possible cures for the virus.
Not counting the alternate ending on the DVD release of the movie, both book and 2007 film agree on Neville’s ultimate fate, though they differ significantly in the specifics.
I found the story curious. Matheson does a good job of unspooling Neville mentally, as he pounds back the booze, smokes like crazy, rages, then goes quiet and back to the work of surviving. He reminisces about his wife and daughter, both years dead as the story opens. He gets sloppy at times and nearly pays with his life as he scavenges the landscape under the safety of daylight. All of this is good stuff, but the relentlessly grim and humorless tone started to wear on me about halfway through. The occasional melodramatic flourishes don’t help, either.
Matheson does mix things up a bit, but the inevitable march toward what one surmises will have to be a tragic ending, seems more about Matheson making some clever, Twilight Zone-style reflection on how WE are the monsters, not the vampires. Well, they’re monsters, too, but MAN is the real monster. Admittedly, this may have been more a more radical statement for a science fiction novel in the mid 1950s than it is in 2021 (and especially as the world slowly pulls out of an actual global pandemic), but still, it left me unsatisfied. I almost felt like this was a first pass at what could have been a deeper, richer story.
It’s a quick read, though, and anyone who’s seen the 2007 movie may be interested in comparing how much it diverged from its source material.
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A review of 3/5ths of Atom Heart Mother
I can’t recall exactly where or why I recently came upon Pink Floyd’s 1970 album Atom Heart Mother, but I did and after listening to it on Apple Music, I added the album to my library so I can listen to it in the scary world of not-being-connected-to-the-internet.
This is my quick review of 3/5ths of the album. I will explain.
Much like a number of Pink Floyd albums, Atom Heart Mother consists of a small number of songs (in this case, five), which means some of the songs tend to be very long. Atom is bookended by two such songs, with the title track opening the album and clocking in at 23+ minutes and “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” coming in at 12+ minutes to close the album. In-between are three average-length songs.
“Atom Heart Mother” is…interesting. It features a choir and orchestration, but it’s not used in the same way as on The Wall, and the song has an experimental feel to it. I haven’t listened to it enough but it seems like it would be good background music (this is not intended as a backhanded compliment). I may come back and offer more on this song later.
“Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” starts with a bunch of sound effects and reading up on the song has led me to never fully listening to it. I just haven’t been in the mood.
But I have listened to those three tracks in the middle.
The first is a song by Roger waters called “If.” It is melancholy and acoustic and feels a bit like some of the quieter moments from his solo albums, though his voice is in better form here. It’s a nice song. I like it. I don’t know that he could write something like this today.
The second song, and my favorite of the three, is the last PF song from the classic line-up to be written and feature lead vocals by Rick Wright. His voice actually sounds very reminiscent of David Gilmour’s, smooth and silky. “Summer ’68” is said to be about the groupies Wright may have fooled around with while on tour and the lyrics really don’t do much for me—I can easily imagine a better song being written over the music. But if you fuzz out the literal words, the song is catchy and wholly unlike what people consider the Pink Floyd sound. There is a jumpy, jangly piano, brass horns kicking in, some patter that recalls the harmonies of The Beach Boys. Describing it, the whole thing sounds like a mishmash, but somehow it all holds together. It’s catchy enough even as I write this it’s getting stuck in my head again. It kind of makes me want to seek out Wright’s solo work.
The last of the three is David Gilmour’s effort, “Fat Old Sun.” Let’s be clear—Gilmour is not a great lyricist and I think he would willingly admit that. The lyrics here aren’t bad, but they are very ordinary. He presents the song as a languid mood piece, strumming away and singing in that light, breathy voice he finally seemed to shed on The Dark Side of the Moon. It’s probably meant to be dreamy-sounding, but is more sleepy than dreamy. The song ends in a guitar solo that one critic correctly stated amounts to not much at all. This is not “Comfortably Numb: Early Preview.” But while it’s my last favorite of the three, it’s not a bad song. It’s more a formative one, that reveals Gilmour—as with the other members of the band—trying out things to see what clicks. It’s inoffensive.
Overall, the three songs form a relatively mellow and accessible mini-album that is sandwiched between the extremes of the tracks that precede and follow it. If you’ve never listened to early Pink Floyd, I can recommend these songs as some of the better examples of their pre-Dark Side efforts. On a scale of one to five cows on album covers, they rate a collective three cows.