We're not here to seek approval but disgrace and celebration

Cluck It! in the app store now!

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 09:09:12 GMT

So, the iPhone game I helped to build with some of the ex-Pandemic guys is now available on the app store!

Very excited to get it rolling - it's been nice to ship a game again, even if it's a little smaller than the usual!

You can grab it at here - any feedback and comments gratefully accepted!

Posts with content coming soon. Promise.

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:54:30 GMT

1. Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
2. Click random article again; that is your album name.
3. Click random article 15 more times (or however many times seems appropriate for your band); those are the tracks on your album.

Red Reflex are a political outfit, coming from a straight up rock background but moving into their esoteric psychedelic phase after travelling through South America.

Their third album is "Let's See" - both a play on the nature of the Red Reflex and a reference to opening their eyes to the situation of global crisis. This is the album where all their old fans get in a huff and leave, because they've gotten too "out there"

Coalition Against Terrorist Media
The album begins with a cacophony of Fox media samples blaring one into the other announcing to the world that there's more to Red Reflex than simple rock. The whole thing then merges into a noisy, thrashy rock number.

1096 in Ireland
Celebrating something that no-one in the band is really sure about. It's Irish, so it's political. A single voice calls out against a minimalist backbeat.

Ningbo Bird
The first track on the album that you'd consider "traditional Red Reflex" this is a ballad-y rock number about freedom.

Juan Pablo Brzezicki
This track begins with syncopated drums, filling up to a white noise rage filled anthem. Lyrically this begins the Polish cycle of the album - thus setting up one of the four conceptual pillars on which the album has been meticulously constructed.

Barbour Baronets
A traditional protest song, against a symphonic background - by definition, Barons oppress.

Mahjong Master
The second of the great pillars is erected with this track, a reimagining of "One Night In Bangkok" as psychedelic-rave-rock anthem.

Islandshire
Pitchfork declared "Islandshire" the "Least Listenable Song of the year," in their end of year round up. A noise filled chaos that borrows from the riffs of every other song on the album, and quickly accelerates them into complete disintegration. Red Reflex have upheld "Islandshire" as the apotheosis of the Red Reflex sound - and in fact, music in general.

National Ski Hall of Fame
Directly after the confronting "Islandshire" this track is pure pop power ballad. Red Reflex will not play "National Ski Hall of Fame" in concert any longer, because of its commercial success, which they say misses it's point entirely.

Hugo Demarco
Simply the words "Cow. Palace. Endocrine." shouted endlessly into the abyss for three minutes and ten seconds.

Walnut Township, Bureau County, Illinois
After hitting some of it's most contrary notes, the album begins to open up here, into a sound many call "New-wave Red Reflex" - characterized by the strong electronic back beats overlaid with classic rock styling and lyrics.

William Dennison Cary
Part two of the Illinois cycle, an ode to the establishment of Cary, Illinois.

Carl Yastrzemski
Further elucidation on the Polish cycle of the album, by way of rocking riffs and the longest canasta solo to appear on any Red Reflex album.

NFATC1
A hidden track (track 78 on the album) recorded backwards. Sadly, one of the better tracks Red Reflex performed, almost entirely unheard because of the work required to decipher it.

Roleplaying conventions

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:33:47 GMT

In Aus - when's the next one?

Edit : I guess I'm looking for the next one after Pheno - as this weekend is too close!

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:17:05 GMT

I have things that have been on my collect list for a long time. Today, I managed to wipe one off - someone in Sydney put a full set (well, missing expansion 9, but otherwise a full set) of the original Eon Cosmic Encounter up on ebay.

This will bring our total copies of CE up to three - the nice new Avalon Hill version (now out of print) and the Games Workshop edition as well. However, the Eon version is the holy grail of Cosmic Encounter - at least, with all the expansions it is. There was much promise that eventually a modern reprint would be released that included all the additions that the Eon expansions (or the Mayfair reprint) brought to the table. No-one has ever managed to succesfully do so, though. The AH version wasn't as succesful as had been hoped, so there was no expansion reprint.

Now, with the Eon version being the definitive CE it's obviously become a target for the collectors market. It's not unusual to see a full set running around $500. The Mayfair edition (which includes the first couple of expansions) runs at around $250 these days. I scored the lot for $100 (with Kate's helpful auction sniping skills), and very happy I was.

So, why is this such a meaninful item? I'm not much of a posession kinda guy. I don't need lots of things to make me happy. However, the one's that are most significant to me are the one's that represent a connection and act as symbols. The last item I managed to write off my collection list was a set of signed Alfred Bester novels. These are a talisman of a moment, to me. Alfie died before I had a chance to meet him, but even so these represent a little piece of connection. They came with a tale - the seller was an old store owner, who ran a sci-fi specialist in his town. Bester cheerfully signed some stock, and the wall. That wall had lots of signatures, Zelazny and Heinlein among them - I can't rememebr who else was called out. In any case, the wall was demolished with the building and all those names were lost into dust. I still have the novels, though. A symbol of a moment passed, a touchstone to the lives of some of my favorite authors.

In a very similar way, CE represents a special moment, to me. There's an energy that surrounds a group of people playing board games, and I like to think the flavor of modern beer-and-pizza gaming owes a lot to the moment CE was released. Now, I've got my own touch stone to then.

And, collectible as it is, I'll play the hell out of it. Red wine will be spilt on it, I'm sure. Because that's what games are for.

(repost, as I accidently posted in the past ...)

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:55:58 GMT

Meme responses coming, too all who answered! The question about memories has thrown me - my memories are weird and fuzzy, but I'm brininging it all together atm - at least, as soon as I get back from a quick LA trip.

Cosmic!

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:39:35 GMT

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 06:27:32 GMT

COMMENT HERE AND I WILL:

a) Tell you why I friended you.

b) Associate you with something.

c) Tell you something I like about you.

d) Tell you a memory I have of you.

e) Ask you something I've wanted to know about you

f) Tell you my favorite userpic from your list

I know I barely post, and memetics is a poor substitute - but hey, it's one of those nice ones that at least encourages communication. Actually life has been so chaotic for a lengthy while, mostly in ways I can't really talk about publicly. So, there's been a minimum of me talking about it here. Feel free to tag me over a beer, though!

Switching

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:17:24 GMT

So, you know how annoying all those Mac owners are with their holier than though hipster attitude? I finally worked out why that is.

It's because Macs are awesome!

I used to work for a Mac wholesaler way back when (10 years or more) and at the time I never found the Mac experience compelling. For starters, I *liked* mucking about with computers to get them to work. That was part of the appeal.

Whoa, how things have changed.

Bit of back story first. My laptop (a three-ish year old Dell and my primary PC) bit the dust a week ago. It's been sick for a month or so, but it's pretty much gone to the hell-realms now. This (plus a bit of tax-return cash) meant that it was time for a new one. I was vaugely considering getting a Mac laptop - but a quick browse at the store and I ended up with an iMac.

Did I mention Macs are awesome? They're awesome.

I fully anticipated spending a bunch of time setting things up. That's what would have happened if I bought a Windows laptop/desktop. I would have been up until midnight getting everything the way I like it. Instead, I was set up in 10 minutes. Then I had to spend a little time getting used to the way Macs do things, so that took another 20 minutes or so. Then I just did stuff. Apparently, somebody built a computer which just does the stuff I want to do - and doesn't consider "Fucking about getting it to work," as one of the things I might want to do.

Even iTunes makes sense on a Mac. All the weird counter-intuitive bits aren't counter intuitive, they're just Mac-ish.

Seriously, I don't do much computer evangelising - I've got a bunch of gadgets I love that I don't feel the need to pimp. This is the first time in a long time I've got a new piece of hardware and thought "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

It's awesome. If you're sick of worrying about making your computer work, and would like to focus on using your computer to do work, consider switching. At least you can't say I didn't tell you!

Archetypically

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:49:26 GMT

Stealing from tyggerjai as is my wont...

qamar posted: If we made a game of Talisman of our lives, what character would you like to be? I don't mean, 'what hero from the sanctioned deck' would you be (yawn), but what is the one or two word summary of how you want to be perceived by your community or how does your community already perceive you?

I'm interested in what people think - I've lost track. I'm interested in the responses here, as they'll be completely different to the one's I'd get in a work frame, I think.

Memes!

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:49:03 GMT

No posts in a long time. Been rolling through one of those periods of introspection, so haven't had much to say. So, time to let others speak for me - the first five quotes I approve of from somewhere that has quotes ...

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.
Whitney Young (1921 - 1971)

You've got to make a conscious choice every day to shed the old - whatever 'the old' means for you.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Carl Jung

Changing role of the lead designer

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:52:58 GMT

I forgot to post this when it went up - the video from my GCAP talk last year is up at Sumea for anyone interested.

The first half is a bit rough (as is the movember mustache I'm rockin') but the ends got some good stuff.

Off the grid

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:33:05 GMT

Heya peeps - Kates wallet and phone were nicked out of her handbag during last nights festivities, so we're out of any real contact. Email is best.

Regardless of that, we both had a blast and we're both hale and full of cheer. It's all a hassle (cancelling cards etc) but such is life. Great to see everyone there.

Bruckheimer gets in to game

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:24:00 GMT

"Video games represent a new and innovative medium for what we've always tried to do, which is to tell great stories. But this medium is unique in that it gives the player control over how those stories unfold. I look forward to working with MTV Games to create new original game stories, always looking for ways to innovate the medium."

Welcome to not-getting-it-city.

That's not what games are for. It's a precise misunderstanding of why the genre is new and innovative. It's not about letting players control how stories unfold.

It's about creating spaces in which people can have experiences. It's about tools for players to create their own stories.

But you know, good luck with your new venture and the fundamental misunderstandings that go with it.

Is your producer smarter than a 5th grader?

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:58:08 GMT

Okay, the whole premise aside, and ignoring the fact we aussies don't have a 5th grade - the mechanics are bloody stupid, and it pisses me off every time I watch it while I wait for New Inventors to come on ABC.

If the player gets a question wrong, then they proceed to check the answer of their selected 5th grader. If the 5th grader has the answer right, then the player proceeds to the next question.

The player also has access to two cheats. One, "peek" - lets them look at the 5th graders answer - they can then choose to use that, or take their own crack. There are times when this may be useful (although they're pretty much edge cases - this isn't especially useful unless they have the answer wrong, and you know from their wrong answer what the right answer is).

Then there's the copy. The copy makes no fucking sense. It's a cheat you can only use once, and it just takes whatever answer the 5th grader has and makes that your answer. WHICH IS EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING THAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU SIMPLY DIDN'T ANSWER AT ALL. Because if you're wrong, you simply fail-over to the answer the 5th grader has written.

Now, admittedly you only get one save, so once that's out of the way there's some merit to the difference between a copy and a save. It still annoys me. Game shows need game designers with a lick of sense, I swear.

A new renaissance

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:16:28 GMT

We're in one, and it's focused around a new concept.

It's not about being a renaissance man, but forming renaissance communities.

There was a time when one person could know everything - at least, that's the myth of the renaissance man. That caused exciting sparks to fly across the boundaries of different kinds of knowledge - revolutions in thinking overnight.

That's the promise of a renaissance commmunity.

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:53:09 GMT

Questions from thorfinn

1. Tell me about something good, including what makes it good.

Damp woods atop the mountains. It's good because it's the scent of home, and of fresh life.

2. Tell me about something bad, including what makes it bad.

Miscommunication. The root of much misery is simple lack of understanding.

3. So, you used to be a happy-go-lucky town clown. You aren't any more. Why?

It stopped being funny.

That's the short answer, after a sense. The longer answer has to do with how I relate to people and social situations, and ties in a little to your answers about being in the place to help people. I used to set out to remake social environments into comfortable spaces, diffusing any discomfort through jesting. I undeniably enjoyed being the center of attention, too.

These days I'm much more interested in engaging with longer term change, which is rarely best achieved on a group level. I'm fascinated by people who achieve, and change, and evolve, and become. So, that's the place I'm interested in being - and I don't believe you gain from observing change, you only gain from being a part of it.

So, far more immersed these days. I also act as a leader/mentor in my workaday life, and I tend to take that home. Not so much the attitude, I hope, but definately the responsibility. I do feel ultimately responsible for the people around me, and I see endless opportunities to help. But you can't force help or change upon people, so I stand at the sidelines and wait for people to ask, basically.

4. Why qamar, in particular?

There's a bit of my vows that says "Because she makes me better than I am alone," - and I think that's the truth of the matter. As a partnership, we fly closer to the sun than we do alone - and if we fly too close, there's someone there to catch us.

5. Is your current workplace fulfilling your expectations? How?

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I showed up here (about a year ago, now - man, time flies!) but we're in a place where I'm very fulfilled. I'm driving the creative vision on the team, we've got a great set of smart people working on cool stuff, and I'm also instrumental in ensuring the development environment is great - everyone is involved and engaged and things are going great on a project we're all excited by.

It's also one of those enviable projects where the decision-making for the team is handled by the team - important (and trivial) decisions aren't made for us, they're made by us. An ideal situation for developing strong titles. Realistically, this is the best position I've been in since I started working in this industry - a great team, and the power to do great things.

Of course, on Friday we got bought out by EA.

What does that mean? It's hard to tell, from here. There's certainly no changes coming in the short term - the paperwork alone is likely to take a while. Beyond that, the promise is that EA is changing, and the thing they're changing into is driven by smart, autonomous teams in control of their own destiny. If that pans out, things here will be shiny - and exciting, for a goodly while.

If it doesn't, that's okay too - I've learned a lot over the last few gigs, primarily "how to build great teams and get them doing great stuff," - regardless of where things end up, I'll keep that rolling. If that stops rolling here, then it's time to reappraise where everything is at - I'm working on a wait-and-see principle at the moment, though.

Win prizes! And stuff!

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:26:13 GMT

For the first three people who reply to me and re-post this challenge, I will send you something. It might be something I've made, or something cool from my hidden stash, it might be a mix CD - or a rubber duck, a book I think you will enjoy, or something else that is awesome. Whatever it is, I promise that I will get it to you in 365 days or less.

The only thing you need to do in order to participate is to be one of the first three to reply to this. You can do it likewise, if you like - but that's up to you!

The first 3 participants win!

Questions!

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 04:43:46 GMT

Answers for Kat! More answers for morgan303 coming, along with questions for Thorf!

1) What is the best hair you've ever had and why?

In the dying days of Netizen, I cut off my dreadlocks - salvaging as much hair as possible. This meant I had different length tufts all over my head, in a kind of faux-einstein fright-wig.

It wasn't necessarily a good or desirable hair-cut, but it defined my mood pretty much as clearly as any haircut has.

2) You decide to run for PM what is your key policy?

An end to pressure groups and corporate interests in politics. And funny hats for everyone!

3) If there's no place like 127.0.0.1 then what is there?

This is interesting, actually - for the most part, I'm not one of these "home" people. This could be because I moved around a lot as a kid, or it might be because I always had at least two homes - sometimes three. With the travel Kate and I have done over the last while, we've pretty regularly had 7 'homes' going at the one time.

To me, home is where the people who love you are. Home is wherever family are waiting to provide whatever the family rituals are - whether it's a cup of tea or a slorchy couch or a heated discussion and everyone clustered into the kitchen to cook and chat and catch up. These are the things that define home, for me.

4) If your life was a limeric how would it go?

I got so stumped on this it held up my entire flow! Will hopefully come back to it.

5) Britney yes or Britney no?

Yes. I somewhat admire the way that, as someone who's lived her entire life in the spotlight, she's clearly made the decision to live her flawed and damaged life exactly as if that weren't true. I know plenty of people who've made the sort of mistakes she's made - it's pretty clear that right now she's a bit of a mess. Regardless, there's no presentation (nor has there ever been, at least not since the "I'm a virgin," days) or fakeness about her life and her living. Despite being under observation pretty much 24/7 she just gets on with the living. It's refreshing, in a world filled with savvy media manipulators (Paris, for example) to watch someone being themselves, even if that's not an especially pretty picture.

Of course, this question was written (and the answer) just before the mega-meltdown. Still stands, though.

And while we're talking about creative collectives

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:33:18 GMT

This talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas begins interesting and becomes outstanding. Skip the seadragon stuff if you like, and move onto photosynth - it builds environments by collating data from (for example) Flickr.

Again and again, we're seeing the sharing of "common" data becoming a revolution. Google maps is amazing now because it's a gigantic map of the world, with satellite pics, or even because it has street level images now. It's amazing because it maps across. Because it compresses a large subsection of the information that Google archives (you know, the internet) and places it in context on that map.

The information avaliable online IS the largest lever mankind has ever encountered. Information tech like photosynth and google represent the firm place to stand.

How will you move the world?

So

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:52:54 GMT

I was trying to come up with a limerick for madkap last night, and I started to think about things I'm entirely unqualified to.

The whole post-structuralist / post-modern / death of the author jazz I know only by association with clever people. So forgive me my lapses of terminology or understanding.

However, it seems to me that somewhere along the line story-telling went from having an invisible author (you read the tale on its own merits) - to the surprising revelation that an author was present. Thus you get a whole bunch of fourth-wall breaking - which was astounding when I first encountered it, and is now all a bit old hat. Then you get the concept of the work that exists beyond the author - in the relationship between the reader and the work. Which is great - and something game developers cannot avoid considering daily because, more so than any other "author" since the dawn of time, we're forced to consider it. Once games leave our hands, the reader treats them as their own. Not only that, we hear about the million different ways they've used, modded, and interpreted our work - on forums, through email, in person.

So, what comes next? It seems to me that it can only be a relationship, again. A relationship with a dynamic between authors and readers that makes both of those categories irrelevant. The sort of relationship that can't happen in a novel, or a film, or any static media - precisely because they are unchanging and unchangable. This is the sort of work we're beginning to see the very beginnings of - MMO's, The Sims, Facebook, even the back and forth between hackers and developers. People influencing systems as users and creators and the line between slipping back and forth.

It's not really death of the author so much as complete death of the passive user - we now have these slippery pools of creatives playing together. There's no doubt that's the way the future of games, the future of interaction is headed. It's a many to many relationship now, nota one to one. There is no author, nor passive reader - there are only the creators. It's death of the reader, if it's anything.

Anyhow - smart people, who know things - I'm looking especially at Penny, DJ, McCrea (wherever he may be) and Roseanne here - tell me where I'm radically off the rails! I'm curious, now.

And I've still got a limerick to write.

Career options

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:06:25 GMT

Thanks to verylisa - a list of my ideal career paths.

What I find most interesting is how many of them are related to therapy / counselling / coaching - although Director is close to the top as well - and I'm sure that's the closest role to the one I actually do day to day that they have in their database.

Large elements of my job these days are along the lines of being a coach / mentor - but it does make me think I should pursue the desires I have to pick up some more concrete qualifications along the coaching / leadership / counselling axis.

1. Sports Instructor
2. Director of Photography
3. Recreation Therapist
4. Director
5. Art / Music Therapist
6. Set Designer
7. Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
8. Coach
9. Makeup Artist
10. Costume Designer
11. Social Worker
12. Occupational Therapist
13. Clergy
14. Addictions Counselor
15. Motivational Speaker
16. Massage Therapist
17. Music Teacher / Instructor
18. Speech-Language Pathologist
19. ESL Teacher
20. Sport Psychology Consultant

Meme response

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:02:57 GMT

So, meme-stuff courtesy of dorukai:

Five questions, and, although I’m usually a dead-end for meme’s, as I don’t tag people or any of that – ask me and I’ll ask you questions. Hopefully good ones! No promises, though.

1) What ever happened to Netizen?
Short answer, I screwed up. Long answer – we ran into a bad place money wise, and looked at getting VA-Linux to buy us out, which didn’t end up happening. The reasons for that are about equal parts the fact that the whole end-times were happening in the face of the dot-com crash and a drop in VA’s stock price AND that we weren’t really a terribly well run business, as a business.

Now, would I ever do things like that again? Not in a million years. Somewhere between here and there, I’ve learned about what it takes to run a successful business, and what a business model means. We weren’t really well placed on that front, although it wouldn’t have taken too much to get to where we needed to be. We certainly had the talent in man-power, just not the right set of people to transform that man-power into cash efficiently. On the flip-side, would I undo it? Not in a million years. I learned a lot by being in over my head. I do have regrets for some of the other people involved, and the hardships they went through – if I could undo those, I would.

I still plan to start a business again, one day. I owe a lot of my current success, in strange and winding fashion, to the Netizen experience. I also think the seeds of my future success were planted there – time will tell.

2) What city have you enjoyed living in most?

Melbourne, hands down. Right combination of proximity to friends and family, culture, events, friendliness of public … just great.

3) make a game chronicling part of your life, what events does it cover?

Oooh, interesting question. Because I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently (I’ve got a GCAP talk coming up on the changing role of the lead designer) let’s cover my career. So it’s a game about making games – your goal, to rise from entry level designer to creative director with complete creative control.

4) Describe the core gameplay.

It’s a bit Viva Piñata meets Theme Park – it’s all about cultivating and harvesting skills, which then automate so you can move on to the next level. So you begin building core feedback loops for the player, trying to overlap them so that different players with different play styles get satisfaction as they come in. Making sure that the signposts are right so that people are drawn into the things that captivate them, and making sure they’re enthralled and gently surprised by the individual experience.

Then you move into level design, and trying to build sequences rather than individual events. Establishing a pattern and theme to your overall level concept, with a nice rhythm of satisfaction and gameplay that evolves over the course of the sequence.

After that, you begin to work on the strategic level, juggling the overall game’s ramping and buildup, ensuring that there are entertaining things for the player to do on a regular basis, new toys to play with and new things to understand. At the same time, you need manage the people who are developing the individual components and bring the entire thing in on time and on-budget.

Finally, you end up doing everything above, but at the same time you’re doing user-analysis, market-analysis, fending off corporate overlords and multiple axes of interference in order to build out your vision. Once you have that in hand, you have to keep multiple projects running at the same time.

5) What’s your favorite book of all time?

One? So hard!

It’s probably Now Wait For Last Year, for the effect it had when I read it. For being one of the generally unsung novels by my favorite author. For the way the edition I picked up had three blurbs (one on the front, one on the back, and one inside front cover) and they all sounded like they were for different books.

“Terra’s fate depended on the one man who could not be killed, because he had mastered the secret of borrowing life from the future!” is the front cover blurb, as the wonders of the net informed me. The one on the back was about a doctor and weird drugs, and the one inside was about a time traveling president.

Written in 1966, this is one of the great works of science fiction, for me. It’s also wonderful because it’s so clearly a transitional form – everything is set up in classic Sci-Fi fashion. Earth is fighting a war against alien bugs, with the assistance of their allies, the humanoids from Lillistar. However, all of the classic PKD themes are there in full – the everyman protagonist, the musings as to the nature of reality, the paranoia and sense of futility. By the end of the novel, everything has been turned on its head, and the straightforward setup has exposed many layers of complexity.

This was also one of my key inspirations for Demolition By Proxy, an RPG I wrote many moons ago that I consider to be perfect. Not perfect as in "Greatest Thing Ever" but perfect in the sense that it was a complete expression of my world view at the time - perfect for me, not for anyone else. That was ten or eleven years ago – it’s not what I would choose to make or say now. It was, however, a fulcrum of future potential for me – and in that sense, it is a perfect moment, past.

Of course, if you ask me in a week, I’ll have changed my mind.

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:44:38 GMT

How will easy access to virtual worlds for todays kids (tween/teen) change their concept of identity?

We're already seeing things that first wave 'net users utilised as symbols of identity (email addresses, online nicks, etc) being treated as essentially disposable by the current young'uns. What next?

Vogue

morganjaffit@gmail.com — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:43:15 GMT

Katie posted about this, but given I'm currently biting my nails and awaiting other news (will get back to you on that one) I'm going to elucidate.

One of the things I love about the world are those moments when you get a glimpse through the cracks into something else - something different and unexpected.

To me (and I'm hoping to you) the competing families of exotic contortionists that constitute the modern voguing movement will be that something, at least for today.

The fact that these hidden duels between families for notoreity and fame take place makes me happy, for today. It feels simultaneously like something from a bygone era, and something modern and fabulous.

It's also, of couse, taboo and voyueristic - because that glimpse is into a culture I have no right to enter - and that too is part of the appeal. Thanks to Jules for the Krumping reminder, because that (by a longish route) led me to the voguing.