I have nearly finished a little experiment on player immersion. I got the idea when I was listening to Robert Rice’s talk on video game immersion at TGC. He broke down elements of immersion and helped draw connections between technology and it’s impact on player’s experience.

Anyway, I still have 3 things to do. I’m going to be getting art from Ciara Livingston, someone I work with at the bookstore, whose style is perfect for this, edit all of the text for better style and impact, and finally get the final voice recording for the closing.

I can’t count. The fourth thing I need to so is create a Google form to collect information on the experiment so I can get an idea of how good it is or how much of a waste of time it is.

Anyway, here’s the link.

After being inspired at the Triangle Game Conference, I decided to open up some projects.  First, I’m writing a simple little experiment that will hopefully prove some ideas I have on immersing players in a story.  I’ve already done the technical work, so I just have to create content.  Thankfully I made it a point to do this rather low tech, so it wont’ require much, but I have got an artist to help.  Her name is Ciara Livingston and I think her artwork will only make this better.  I’ve also convinced my wife to do a voice recording.  Exciting stuff!

In the job world, I’ve started a project that involves actual software development.  Web development specifically.  I’m creating a web tool that will modify apache configurations live.  I don’t think anyone has done this before, mostly because it isn’t something you want a lot of people to go around doing.  Either way, it’s an exciting change of pace from my normal system administration work.

On Sunday my wife and I will have been married two years.  Holy shit.

In my job right now I’m working on doing a live server migration. Just because I like a challenge though, I’m also trying to set up mySQL replication and NFS clustering. Don’t know what that stuff means? Well, if I pull it off I will officially tack on, “Awesome” to my job title. If I fail, the company I do this for will cease to exist until I fix the problem.

Other than all of that jive, the wife and I have moved into our first real apartment. Sure we lived in Japan for a year, and in Oklahoma for about 2 months, but this is the first real prospect of making a home.

The wife get never stops being amused at the unending supply of geek that I can produce. Today I will be trying to start a new gaming group online. While gaming with them will be fun, I’m more excited to talk to everyone again, because it has been almost 2 years.

I haven’t gotten a career job yet, so while I’m applying I’ve re-opened my login tracker project. My goal is to get the desktop version working perfectly, and then develop an iPhone companion app. Hopefully this product will be somewhat successful and supplement our income. That all is based on the idea that I actually finish it.

Oh, Flower, on the PS3 is really stunning.

Amanda didn’t care for him.

Though now that her opening had failed, she had to continue with the presentation, hopefully bailing out her own ship of sinking self-esteem.

“The captain has told me that we will arrive at, ‘Atlantis,’ by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning, and before that I was going to go over some exciting information about this exciting new hotel.”

Amanda had given countless presentations like this before, but never to her idols, fantasies, and favorite tabloid fodder.  She was having a terrible time rconciling the fact that she had just read that Britney was having an emergency c-section for twins, but still sitting less than 100 feet away.  She knew that Jennifer Aniston had sworn death threats against “Brangelina,” but they were all siting together.  They even made small talk during Amanda’s presentation.

Amanda felt like she was going to throw up.

Twenty minutes later, after four failed jokes, sixteen minutes of dull information, and no less than nine-thousand interruptions from that dipshit from England, Amanda did throw up.

Even though she had always carried a tooth-brush and toothpaste for these occasions, the thought of having to go make small talk with the celebrities after vomiting made her sinking self-esteem ship  capsize.

Amanda would be drinking tonight.

When she was hired for this job, she thought she had won a golden ticket.  In fact, she had gotten a golden ticket.  It was part of the gimmick.  The company who hired her had built this outrageous hotel in the south pacific ocean.  It was a luxury oil platform.  They had swimming pools, bowling alleys, 5-star restaurants for whatever type of cuisine you wanted, casinos, shows, walks on the sea floor, and an underwater bar.  They had sent golden tickets to some of the highest profile people in the world.  It was an all-expenses-paid vacation to the hottest thing in the world.  Her company had even rented a cruise ship just for the trip there and back.

Amanada woke up at 8:30 in the morning the feeling that she had shoved a brick through her head.

Then she realized it was 8:30 and they would be disembarking in 30 minutes.

Then she realized she had passed out on the floor, and the proof was on her face.

She tried to reassure herself that all she had to do was be there to welcome everyone to Atlantis and after that the staff would take over, but she was going to look like a burlap sack doing it.

Somehow, while her self-esteem ship was sinking to the dark depths, it exploded.

By the by, the movie, “The Code” isn’t so great. It has got some A-List actors, but it tried way to hard and failed.

So my ideas. First, I thought about creating a website. I’m sure it exists already, and I don’t think I have the energy to do it, but what it would be is a central resource for gamers.

Wow, breakthrough stuff. I know.

What I really want it to function as, is a social networking site for gamers to find other people, their million different names, stats, and games that they have, so they can have a better time playing games with people they like.

So your profile would have bare bones information about you, and then all of the various games you had on various platforms and poll whatever statistic collecting sites there are, for live updates of those players’ informations. That way, everything is in one place and people can check up on friends, rivals, and clans.

The other idea is for a game that I should have made by now, but I didn’t have the angles worked out. Of course it is a zombie game.

Now, there are humans and zombies in a procedurally generated town/city. There is a certain number of humans that can exist based on map size. They are naked and helpless. They have to forage for food, water, and supplies, while being attacked by zombies. Their scores will be based on survival and zombie kills.

The Zombies are endless, but there will really only be a certain amount roaming at a time. The zombies can be either human controlled, or player controlled. The beauty of this is that the zombies serve as a lobby while you wait for your turn to be a human.

Those who wait can see a top down map of everything except where humans are, and jump into a zombie that isn’t in use and run around doing their best to find and kill a human. If they die, the kick out to the map, and another zombie starts.

I have lots of other ideas to make the game interesting by restricting player-to-player communication, and various other sensory issues.

If I were a better man, I would create a team and make this game.