thewitparade

I actually had a productive day at work today. I moved to LA to start a new career in game design. I'm working for an old-media entertainment company breaking into the online gaming market. I have no professional game design experience but I got hired anyway. Why? Because I know a shit load about games. I don't just harbor a passionate love games. It wasn't simply that I've always played games. Lots of people can lay claim to all of that. I know what mechanics work and why. I know what's fun and what's not. I can intuitively anticipate potential issues in a given design. I am a fast problem solver. Most importantly I know when to ask for help if I need to know how to do something. Pretty good package, eh? Despite all this supreme awesomeness my biggest stumbling block so far has been something that has plagued me all my life: I suck balls at math. And that hasn't been more evident since I've been tasked with balancing the loot distribution over our player levels.

I struggled for the past two weeks. I analyzed the data from a bunch of other games, figured out the ratios per level, did my best to crunch some numbers to figure out just how end-game skewed some games are. That still left with this black hole where our numbers were going to land. So I spent a lot of time reading about motorcycles instead.

But I can only do that for so long before I feel the guilt creep in. (Residual Catholicism in effect, yo) Plus we needed the numbers soon so I fired up Excel. I don't know how to use Excel. Or rather I didn't when I started. I'm getting the hang of it now. It's like a puzzle game where you supply the pieces and solve for whatever it is you need. I could seriously geek out on that app. Anyway, after the initial head scratching and algebra consultation with one of our engineers I cobbled out what looks like a pretty good formula and game plan. I felt like a real dev. Yay!

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I think today's the day I go down to the tattoo shop and make an appointment with the owner. I'm betting he's not open till August. His spot is blowing up. I could go with someone else but I wanted an anatomical heart, similar to the one on the Mexican loteria cards. And this guy's shop logo is an anatomical heart. He's drawn them in all kinds of styles. Seeing how this tattoo is about me being in LA right now, I figure it's gotta be him. I hope he's got the time to talk!