Dante's Corner

Short Stories, Short Fuses

2010-10-10T01:43:00.000-07:00

When I started to write my first novel, I had a very select few people who would read new content for me an provide feedback. This lasted several months until I began roughly three months of overtime in the beginning of February 2010. When I came back to writing, I found all of my readers had pretty much disappeared, save one new reader who ended up being my sort of my, 'editor' if you will, based on previous professional work she had done in the past. She's incredibly helpful in providing feedback, and isn't afraid to 'tell me how it is.' However, I do find the following trend to be disconcerting.

There are a few people reading some of the short stories I have began to write. These stories are indeed short, just above, say, flash fiction. The longest one so far is only 7,000 words. Now, there are some people who have read these and provided feedback, but there have been a large amount who have asked to read my works and then never reply, literally. Not even with a follow up. I'm not talking about someone saying, 'Oh, I've been busy,' because that is understandable. I'm talking about people who think they can actually get away with never replying to you, as if my data seems to have disappeared in a 'series of tubes.' Such insolence, it makes me want to smack them. Not literally, but at least glower at them in person. Yes, we all need to glower more, this I am sure of!

I'm dreadfully sorry for the over-usage of quote marks. It's about two in the morning and I feel like raging on a few faces right now.

On the plus side, I have been branching out and writing fiction that I normally wouldn't consider. I've written Horror, Science Fiction, and General/Literary fiction shorts, and have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both real friends and general acquaintances (of course this is after editing! HA) so clearly I'm doing something right. That or they're afraid of a fat, angry Italian (who is actually a mutt, fyi).

Player Based Game Experiences

2010-08-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

A lot of games have two approaches for defining the character or characters played throughout the game. It usually falls into one of two categories:

1. Pre-defined role to play
2. Completely "open ended" with various Good, Evil or Neutral choices

In a way, this is a solid approach to please most gamer styles. Some people like to let their guilty pleasures get the better of them while others like to play the Knight/Heroine in shining armor and some people just want to play and get it over with. Then there's the crowd that wants to be the hulking barbarian or badass ninja/spy, et cetera and you come pre-loaded that way.

This is what I don't see often (or pretty much at all):

Games usually have one goal, to entertain the player by making the journey from Point A to Point B. But what if instead of trying to entertain the player with events, you attempted to do so with choices and made Point B instead Point ? Let me give you an example.

The user is dropped into a University and is given a letter/email saying, "Dear , the other half of your payment will be wired upon completion. There is an odd set of occurrences happening around campus and we think it is about to become fatal. Please investigate and handle it accordingly."

Now with this being your Only link to what the character's goal is, you know several things:

1. You've done this before and you are some sort of professional
2. Something is awry but nothing seems to have been set

And that's about it. At this point the design and programming genius comes to play (literally). You can make whatever scenarios you want, everything from stereotypical events like violent animal right's activists, cultist shenanigans or secret CIA recruiting, or slightly more sinister and grisly scenarios like kidnappings and rape, or government chemical testing. But this would be where we can make a difference... What if they were all there? Or at least a lot? And better yet, what if the circumstances and NPCs tied to these scenarios weren't static? The replay factor would be immense (as would the potential complexity)

The second part (and most likely the most demanding) would be interaction. Objects, NPCs, areas, et cetera would have to be very in depth. From the given plot, you could be a detective, government hired agent of some sort, assassin, procurer, all sorts of things, and how you act is what Defines who you are. Do you go to the chemistry lab and use components to kill or sedate a security team overlooking a private government funded on campus project? Do you break into the Security armory and go guns blazing into a den of murderous cultists? Or do you use subtly to sneak past a receptionist by sabotaging her chair and hacking files as she tracks down a repairman?

Everything you uncover (or lack thereof) could impact where the second part of this game goes (or second game/DLC for that matter depending on the time sink factor). In the end, there is no 'right' way to finish the chapter since your mission was vague.

Anyway, I'm interested to see what you guys think in regards to the Tech and Design of a game like this, and whether or not a game like this would even remotely interest you past the first five minutes.

Thanks,

-Dante

Et Tu, Stephenie Meyer? Get Real.

2010-07-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

As a fiction writer that dips a toe in the stream of horror and fantasy, I cannot remain quiet on a monumental genre exploding book series like Twilight. This blog however is not a rant or rave in favor or opposed to Twilight, Stephenie Meyer, or any other teenybopper Heroin. It is a reflection upon the bolstering of modern Horror and Fantasy.

Where is the harm in "lukewarm run of the mill books"? As a writer or reader, should I actually be worried that a publisher will overlook me because I have not written in a style borrowing from powerhouse "dribble" that so many critics love to attack? If I were a hack writer, I might have a leg up in getting published so long as I addressed key elements for saleability thanks to a lower standard. As a reader of the "mediocre", would I not be enraptured by the works of Edgar Allen Poe or Mary Shelley should I come to find them?

The fact is, popular series such as Twilight and Harry Potter may not be paragons of excellent fiction, but they were good enough to entice nations of avid readers, old and new. That's the main reason I can't rag on these series, regardless of how much I did or did not enjoy them. They attract new readers to genres I enjoy, and the reinvigorate those who may have fallen to the wayside.

The next time you want to spit and curse about how Rowling or Meyer has "killed" your precious reading/writing niche, consider what the readers might purchase next after they've finished Breaking Dawn or Deathly Hallows.

In the end, it all comes down to taste. Maybe I don't adore angst filled drama about magical teenagers battling puberty and evil sorcerers, or stalker vampire boyfriends obsessed with plain Janes, but what I do like is that people are out there buying books again and proud of it.

Perspective

2010-05-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

Perspective is a very powerful force in all aspects of life. By perspective, I refer to the definition that pertains to how a person/creature views something with the knowledge they have about it.

I've often thought that people never actually change, but their perspective does. I've done a lot of "changing" in my life, but there have been universal laws to which I have been bound in my person that remain no matter just how much my perspective may suddenly shift. Fatalism, cynicism, rebelliousness, fascination with darkness, unexpected cruelty and the ability to withstand stress and encumbrance that would crush a lesser person have been common themes in my life needed for survival of body and mind. That's about where the static values end though. I have been labeled many things in my life depending on that which I have embraced, be it fashion, style, music, sports, etc. yet these things remain. My perspective has shifted a lot though.

I think perspective is one of those things that some Game companies and publishers either are able to properly shift and embrace or die in obscurity. There's a reason that some games, no matter how popular the franchise was, simply didn't do as well as they could have. A classic one that comes to mind in Contra. I played most of the games from the original to the Playstation 2 title, and the last game was moderately fun but lost on younger crowds and lacking real ingenuity. Perspective was not changed, and instead of shifting and evolving to meet the demands of a new generation, they faded into the memories of older gamers, dearly treasured yet not entirely missed.

I think as an artist, nay, creator (to borrow a broader term), successful posterity into the annals of our time and beyond is a goal which we all either openly or secretly desire. So how does someone create something worthy of this? I think perspective has a lot to do with it.

Why are some popular tales Timeless while others are as obscure and meaningless as a badly translated cookie fortune? Because some things call to a Generation while others call to Humanity. This is not to denigrate those that have a limited scope, for such works can be extremely important for the time, but as someone who feels lost between two generations, I simply do not care to cater to a specific crowd.

I'm not encouraging you to "Sell Out" but simply think on a broader scope, do I want this game/art/book to touch the emotions of many, or SCREAM AND CRY AND LOVE AND DIE to the few? Because if you aren't doing the latter with a limited scope and perspective, frankly, who is going to give a crap?

The Decadence of Evil and Depravity

2009-11-29T01:53:00.000-08:00

Now, I don't mean to sound a hypocrite here since I am writing a book featuring basically your classic villains, but I see a growing trend is lots of media outlets.

The celebration of "Evil" acts and people has been around as long as there has been recorded history but being mainstream in American culture (not just popular, but truly mainstream) seems to be the rage. I feel from a psychological standpoint that there is a very good reason for this.

A lot of us are raised with the concepts of good and evil and that we should be good. Ambiguous was a hard thing for me to understand when I was young and like many children saw things in bacl and white. As we get older we understand shades of grey and this is where I make my main point. Although some of us are vain enough (or actually qualified) to see ourselves as proper heroes, most of us adults can relate more to anti-heroes and sometimes villains.

You see more and more of this especially in the Video Game Industry. Dark and gritty games are nothing new (Doom, Wolfenstein, Contra, etc.) but there was always a fair amount of lighter hearted games to balance things out. Don't get me wrong, there are still lots of family friendly games out there bringing in the dough but what are most gamers looking forward to? I would suppose the new Assassin's Creed II or God of War, and better yet, Dante's Inferno. These games are not exactly showcasing bad guys as the protagonists but they are definitely not you knights in shining armor.

And for that I am grateful.

I don't know about most of you but I had a pretty rough decade or so when i was getting raised. Couple that with most of the movies I did watch growing up with franchises like Terminator, Alien, Predator, Robocop, Die Hard nd the list goes on. I grew up watching the celebration of violence as one of my favorite authors phrases it, and I didn't know very many "good" people. I cling to the anti-heroes and the villains I guess because I it is something I understand. The only exceptions I think should be noted though.

The Silent Generation heroes. Some people might claim these are anti-heroes but I would disagree to some extent. Regardless though they were celebrated regardless of who they ended up putting a bullet or two in, decades ago. Bad guys were bad and good guys were just Bad Ass. I kind of miss that.

There are still some Bad Ass good guys in media but they are few and far between and often riddled with the cliche dark and brooding past that haunts them.

That's why in my book I laid down the gauntlet. How do you make a truly bad ass Good Guy? The kind where every act of violence is perfectly acceptable from all audiences. I gained a fair amount of inspiration from the Inquisitors from the Warhammer 40k franchise. I have not read their novels nor played the games but read up on them and watched a few videos.

It took a little heresy so to say but I am happy with the result in the Bad Ass Good Guy. The only problem? Something just seems... Off. When you hear what he does, you will get a hint that there is something possibly sinister going on, but is it? Completely open to interpretation and incredibly ambiguous, my priest in the book is a delight to write and read.

Bad guys might be all the rage for protagonists nowadays and because of that, I challenge you to make a good guy that doesn't alienate a gross amount of your audience.

Novella in Progress

2009-10-24T22:11:00.001-07:00

Since High School I have written many short stories and most of them have been dark, grim and gritty. That is what I mostly grew up watching on TV in the movies and a lot of what I ended up reading. I've always had this problem of never really liking the Good Guys simply because I could never really relate to them. I have always cheered for the underdog, the villain and the doomed. It was through these many short stories that a character was being formed called Talimin. He was briefly mentioned in a short story in my senior year of High School as a sort of necromancer or summoner in a Yakuza gang war short story I wrote. I later adapted him for a game world I was tasked with creating in college with a small group of friends and colleagues in a group short lived called Toolshed Games.

I have adapted him since as part of a Novella I am currently outlining as one of three Point of View main characters. The story was originally going to center on him, but after reading Joe Abercrombie's "The First Law" series, the importance and entertainment of character development was painfully obvious. The other characters were afterthoughts and tools to supliment him but now they are equels. Enter Baelin and Balador. Baelin, an assassin as old as the dust and just as wicked as the shadows that cover it, and Balador a revenge bent apprentice seeking the destruction of his master's murder. The three characters parallel for most of the story and converge at the end for a spectacular finish.

The plot outline for the story has been completed for each character and design and planning is still under way but the writing of the Novella will start soon enough.

If you are interested, or have questions, let me know! Don't be shy :)

Papi-G Yo!

2009-09-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

After months of involuntary servitude at the dungeons of ATT's call centers, a blessing in disguise has occurred. My father who has been battling Kidney Disease for almost five years now requested I come down to San Diego and help him out as his health is getting worse with time. San Diego unlike Spokane Washington has a fair amount of game companies and is only about two hours away from Los Angeles. This presents two advantages for me right now, I can apply for actual game industry jobs and also I now have some time to work on some of the pen and paper games I have been drafting for six months or so and possibly give a stab at programming one.

Papi-G (Pen and Paper Interactive Gaming), slightly named in honor of my old man with a twist of humor is a little currently psuedo-hybrid company for both my pen and paper games and upcoming video games as soon as I program the rust out.

For those few of you that actually check out my website on occassion it is about to undergo a huge overhaul as I better acquaint myself with Dreamweaver. Right now it looks like something a first semester Engineer slapped together on a Sunday night.

I am open to criticism and suggesstions for the site, finding a primo place for tutorials would be awesome as there are SO many out there.

As far as my Papi-G projects go, I'm working out the kinks for Archer vs. Archer and I just finished the combat system for the project currently codenamed "Cultists and Catacombs". I'm having tons of fun with both right now, I wish I could share more right now but I need to polish up before I go public with them :)

Peace Out Yo! BANZAI!

-Dante