Noah's Blog

Getty Images Stock Music

2009-08-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

I found out last week that I got into Getty Images stock music library managed by Pump Audio. This is one of if not the most prestigious stock music libraries going, so needless to say I was very excited. I'm in the process of filling out the paperwork, and then will be choosing which tracks are going to go up.

New Piano Piece

2009-08-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a short piano piece I've been working on seriously for the last few days. Enjoy!

http://www.noahpotter.com/mp3/NP_Nocturne_No2.mp3

New Samurai Styling

2009-05-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Wrote this for fun today. Enjoy!

Improved new mix of flute and guitar piece

2009-05-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

I posted an updated mix here.

I think this is a pretty big improvement over the original; I reduced the reverb tails substantially and tweeked the delay settings on the early reflections to create more of a "concert hall" ambiance.

I also used some EQ tricks to clarify and separate the woodwinds, brass and strings a little more clearly.

Upbeat and dancy new track

2009-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

I was just messing around and came up with this yesterday. I was especially pleased with the catchy piano loop and the general upbeat-ness of the whole thing. Enjoy!

Bach Fugue

2009-04-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

Here, for the sake of amusement is a rendition of one of my favorite Bach organ fugues, in G Minor, performed by yours truly.

New Flute and Guitar Piece

2009-04-17T01:58:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks I've remixed one of my classic video game tracks, now featuring some live performances from Ardelle Potter on flute and Michele Vanni on guitar.

I posted the track on New Grounds.

Another track posted at "NewGrounds"

2009-03-12T17:48:00.000-07:00

Here's another music track, this one is a creepy forest sound-scape inspired by the wood elves from "Warhammer". Enjoy, and please vote! (instructions in previous post)

New music track posted on "NewGrounds"

2009-03-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

I added a music track to this website called "NewGrounds" today. Members of the site rate people's work on a voting system, so if you have a second to follow the link and rate this, I'd really appreciate it. There will be a series of icons on the left of the screen, possibly off the bottom of the screen that rate the track on a 0 to 5 scale. 5 is the best. Please vote! Thanks!

This was originally the end credit music for a student film I was helping with, that wound up not getting finished. In any event, the spirit lives on here...

Interview with me at "The Score"

2009-02-23T09:16:00.000-08:00

I recently gave an interview with Emmett Cooke at "The Score", an online magazine about film and game composers. The link is here.

New review for boxing day

2009-02-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, my first feature film "Boxing Day" got a great write up at "Geeks of Doom". Check it out!

New Clarinet Sonata Published

2008-11-09T19:15:00.001-08:00

My publisher, BRS Music, has posted my new clarinet sonata for sale on their website, here: http://www.brsmusic.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=204

New Action Track "Mayhem"

2008-10-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a pretty furious action score that I was working on recently. It's up on Cue Pop if anyone is looking for some dark / industrial driven fight sequence music. Might work for horror too.

http://www.cuepop.com/details.asp?LibraryID=2283#

(the "play" button on CuePop is the small green arrow in the mid upper right)

New World Music Track

2008-10-09T08:24:00.001-07:00

I had a fun time yesterday putting together some "world" music.

The creepy background noises are from extended techniques on a gong. Its amazing the weird noises you can get. Other special effects include a synth-xylophone in a super high register, with an echo effect to create the "raindrops" background effect.

Noah Potter - Forgotten Eden

Grand Tournament Las Vegas

2008-08-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to this event in a few weeks. I need to "finalize" my strategy to take advantage of the new rules changes. I think mainly I'm just going to go to have a good time rather than to be truly competitive: next year the gloves come off :D

Just Web-Published My Clarinet Sonata

2008-05-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

I just put up a web page featuring my clarinet sonata, with both the score, parts and recording. I'm hoping to use Google advertising to drive some traffic to the page, and maybe follow up by contacting some prominent clarinetists.

The piece was a lot of fun to play & perform. I like to think that it strikes a nice balance of being modern but also accessible and enjoyable.

Nothing in particular

2008-03-03T10:07:00.001-08:00

I figure it’s a more authentic blogging experience if I let my entire audience disappear between blog updates. What can you do.

So, while waiting rabidly for the next democratic primary elections, I started using face book more regularly. Specifically there’s this one game called Knighthood, which is really fascinating. It’s like playing Nobunaga’s ambition but with real people as vassals. I’m really impressed with how it uses a social network as a platform. Its almost the next step for those ancient Bulletin Board based games like trade wars, but with a much larger audience. They’ve got a great viral model, in that you must invite friends in order to get any where. I worry that this fact makes it too much like a pyramid scheme rather than a game. What chance to late arrivals have?

In other news, I think I’m going to check out the Warhammer 40k grand tournament in Los Vegas this year. It looks like a good excuse to drag the wife to Vegas. We’ve been looking to see some of the cirque shows, and also play some more video poker.

Second Day in Tokyo

2007-07-19T19:44:00.001-07:00

We got up at 4:30 to trek over to the famous Tsuigi (pronounced Skee-jee apparently) fish market in Tokyo. The streets were practically deserted as we walked over to our subway station. The key reason to go this early is the Tuna auction. Unfortunately, we had heard that due to a variety of mishaps involving some clueless tourists disrupting the auction, we would not be allowed into the actual auction event itself. We had no clarification as to what those mishaps were specifically – maybe someone decided to grab a 500lb tuna and run, who knows. Aside from that, we had no idea what to expect.

On the ride there, a decal on the subway door puzzled us. As best as we could tell, it suggested that in case of raccoon attack, we should drop flash-bombs and run for it. However, it was to be a raccoon-free commute this morning, lucky for us. The smell of fish guided us in the right direction out of the subway once we arrived. The market is a huge warehouse, with barrel-front motorized platforms careening at high speed down the narrow walk-ways. The endless variety of fish and seafood is stored in rectangular Styrofoam casings.

The scale is mind boggling – from the enormous tuna slabs being hacked open with swords to individual store owners filling wicker baskets of the freshest catch. We were greeted with bemused smiles from some of the shopkeepers, as they weaved around us to plop still flopping flounders into tanks of water for shipping, or stabbed a struggling snapper to fill an order. We saw scallops in their large triangular shells, as well as octopus and squid lined up like sardines. Some of the stalls had tasting samples for serious buyers. The whole thing was a sort of macabre aquarium, with everything you can imagine having been fished out of the ocean present.

Outside of the market, there was a smaller row of shops and eating places. There were several empty Sushi restaurants, as well as one with a 45 minute wait outside. Ardelle suggested that we follow the crowd, and we did. We stumbled upon perhaps the best Sushi bar in the world, “Dai Wa”. My extremely limited Japanese vocabulary gets me nowhere – it is self evident that we need a table for two before I get a chance to say so. However, sinister phase two of the waitress’ dialog was incomprehensible. Fortunately, the Sushi chef spoke English and invited us to enjoy a “set”. The focus seems to be slightly less on presentation than I expected. The Nigiri was set down with no plate on a lacquer counter in front of you. The chef brushed each mouth watering slice with soy sauce before serving. The Uni, sea urchin, was indescribably better than in the States. I commented that the fish we were eating probably had moved in a more or less direct line from boat to plate since it was caught.

Last Week's Concert

2007-06-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I premiered my Clarinet Sonata last week at Fulton Recital Hall in Chicago. Many thanks to Charlie for all of his hard work learning the thing, it was a great experience all around.

The recording is available at my website.

New Music added to website

2007-05-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

I added a computer-rendition of my Clarinet Sonata to my web page today. Also, a dance for flute and piano that I wrote for my wife's birthday last year. The link to that site is in the title here.

I will be performing the clarinet sonata on the 31st of May at 12:00 at Godspeed Hall on the University of Chicago Campus, for any interested.

A Pre-Show Obstacle Course

2007-05-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

So the GSB’s year end extravaganza “Follies” was last week. I played piano for my friend Kathryn who was singing homage to Milton Freidman set to the tune of “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”. The performance was a lot of fun. I got to reconnect with some classmates who I hadn’t seen in a while. At any rate, I feel that most people didn’t fully appreciate what was involved in preparing for the act. I don’t mean 25 years of piano study or hours of practice. I mean getting the piano onto the frikkin’ stage.

So the piano at Mandel hall is this gorgeous concert grand. Unfortunately, despite the wheeled undercarriage, this beast doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. Indeed, it floats into place with all the grace and elegance of a slow-motion Hippopotamus on ice skates. We didn’t have any sort of stage crew for Follies, so I had to recruit whomever was standing nearby before our act to help move the thing into place. So the challenge, which recalls a LEAD Outdoor Experience exercise from o-week, is to maneuver the piano from its shaded hiding spot backstage through to its appointed spot stage left. Standing in the way of this are:

a 12’ hanging video projection screen which is being watched by the audience, so that everyone would notice if you hit it by accident.
a row of 4 chairs from the “Oompa Loompa” skit (don’t ask) placed directly between the piano and the stage
a thick backstage curtain, draped over an orchestral percussion set (yes, really)
the main stage curtain
a motley assortment of audio and lighting cables
a special floor that is apparently traction-free for shoes while being quite resistant to pianos

You have exactly 45 seconds to move the piano into position before the spotlight turns on. Ready, Set, Go!

Who’s paw prints are these?

2007-05-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

As some of you may now, we’re right now in the process of selling our condo. We’ll be living in a museum for the next few weeks as open houses begin. Of course, the kitchen appliances are always spotless, the spices always organized alphabetically and the hallway mirrors always windexed, so there wasn’t much work involved there. However, our new bedroom door needed to be repainted.

Fortunately, we still had the original paint cans from the move-in period. This sidestepped the entire debate over the precise “eggshell” finish we needed, and enabled us to cut right to the chase, the actual painting. I was in the middle of putting a second coat on the back of the door, and the paint lid was on the floor face up next to me.

Suddenly, in a bounding blur of grey fur one of our two cats came prancing through the doorway. I did a quick double take as the white paw prints starting trailing from the doorway to our bed. My effort to leap after the cat only encouraged her to jump onto the bed. There were four white kitty prints on our brown sheets by the time I caught her. Cici (the cat) wasn’t amused with the “get the white acrylic paint out of my back paws” process which ensued.

TDH Part 7: Early Raiding

2007-04-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

As we last left the story, TDH was just beginning to raid regularly with the two other guilds Poison Arrow and Deadbanger’s Ball. (“Raiding” involves game content that is difficult enough to require 40 (in those days) players) Molten Core was the holy grail of raiding at this point, and daring to set foot in it was audacious in a way that probably can’t be explained unless you were there. In terms of how raiding effects a guild, I had an opportunity to learn directly from PA’s leadership, which was obviously quite experienced in guild management. I want to talk here first about what the raids were like, and then on the effects that the three-way guild alliance had on the participating guilds.

To raid in these early days of WOW, you needed first to get 40 people together and coordinated at the correct time. Some guilds form around the idea of raiding exclusively. These guilds have stringent regulations, but mainly, they self-select for people who want to raid. If you get these sorts of people together it doesn’t really matter what your attendance requirements are per se, because the crowd has self-selected. In any event, we had some significant difficulty rounding up the requisite number of players. Just look at the basic question: If you played WOW and wanted to raid why on earth would you join a rag tag band of people doing it for the first time instead of an established guild that could provide quick rewards? Since individual skill had little to no bearing on raid results, with group experience IMHO being the decisive factor, successful & proven groups drew the recruits.

Poison Arrow started the guild alliance in order to begin working on Molten Core. They didn’t have enough players at the start, so the alliance was a necessity for them (and for us). We had about 5-8 regular Two Dollar Horde players show up for the Thursday night raids, with the bulk provided by PA and another 10 or so from DB. The early raids were grueling experiences. My own perspective was that you would spend hours just waiting around, only to die because someone else didn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing. I found it grueling, unpleasant and unrewarding from a loot perspective.

Poison Arrow had an interesting approach to minimizing the sort of drama that until this point had been rife in TDH. They had one guild officer, Rapscallion, who’s role was to basically be a complete hard ass. This was an example of what I had already been learning – a successful organization has got to rigorously enforce its rules. A person who’s not afraid to do that is invaluable. PA was also very strict about not allowing its members to raid with other guilds, thus crafting a sense of cohesion. PA was a living example of many of the lessons I’d been picking up in guild management.

PA, the strongest guild organizationally speaking of the three, began to attract players from the other two guilds. Indeed, I think it may have been part of PA’s leadership plan to siphon off players from the alliance guilds. This has been my constant experience with guild alliances – players will flow towards the guild that better serves their interest. Most of the time that interest is the ready availability of in game loot, though the defectors most often don’t perceive that themselves. That’s another story that I’ll get to later.

Deadbanger’s Ball suffered the most from this steady attrition of players to PA, indeed the guild was largely destroyed as a result. How TDH managed to survive, is not completely clear. I think the people who stayed at that point were largely a result of my own personal network from PvP games – hence TDH players tended to be a little more boisterous and a little more competitive than PA players. Two key events were taking place at about this time that I think helped make TDH endure: one, I had started leading competitive teams of “Alterac Valley” games, and hence had a strong in game personal network of players from that. And two, the appearance of a new 20 man raiding instance, Zul Gurub, gave us an opportunity to start raiding for ourselves without PA.

By the time the “guild alliance” fell apart TDH was strong enough to survive. More on that next time, where I’ll talk some about the Alterac Valley teams.

Cross-Town Signals

2007-03-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

So, my friend Tony dropped by the other day. He brought by a collection of his new comic book series "Jack of Fables", which I read in one sitting. Great stuff, I highly reccomend it. Toto (from the wizard of Oz) gets mauled by a tiger in one of the funnier scenes.

So anyway, the real point is that Tony lives in view of our condo from his building. We spent a few minutes while he was over trying to figure out exactly which window belonged to whom.

Tonight, after an exchange of phone calls, we agreed to send a signal at exactly 10:15. I'd flash our living room lights on and off slowly three times, and wait for the counter signal. There's something wierdly compelling about the experience of sending out a secret signal. My wife and I turned out all our lights at the appointed time and flashed the living room track lighting thrice. Behold, a single blinking lamp in the upper right corner of an apartment building across the way. Signal received. Counter signal sent and received. If only we had bothered to think of "sinister phase 2".

We've decided we need to get some Aldus lamps and confuse the hell out of our neighboors. I note that very few of the nearby buildings (if any) are in a position to see *both* the signal and counter signals.

Back from Ski Trip

2007-03-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

So, I learned to ski last week which was a big step . I didn't break anything either, which was another big step. (or both were big slides rather depending on how you look at it) Never having gone before, but having heard numerous horror stories about ski injuries, I had it in my mind that ski slopes must have gigantic animatronic trees that pop out directly in front of you or something - but no. There is merely the fear of hurtling head long down a mountain side and that’s about it.

After four days of practice I even made it down a blue at my wife’s urging. I only spent a small amount of that attempt face-first in the snow. There were even pictures to prove it. The only pictures of last year's snowboarding attempts are of me sitting down on the board in the snow, which was pretty representative of the entire experience. I had a hard time understanding the purpose of the snow board: it seemed to be a transportation device that was only capable of moving you about a foot and a half in a random direction and then dumping you off.

I also had a chance to go snowshoeing which was also a blast. The fun part is that your feet randomly sink about two feet into the snow whenever you step "just so". Though no moose were encountered directly, the promise of moose sighting kept us poised and alert.

We got stuck in the Salt Lake City airport for about 12 hours on the tail end, which was the only downside. Somone in a nearby airport lounge chair was playing some sort of electronic phone game that went "Bee---oop---oop" every ten seconds or so. I couldn't see who it was directly though because there were about 10 people stooped over their phones, and it would have looked wierd to wander around attempting to triangulate the sound. I suppose that in some version of Hell, everyone else is given a little beeping electronic toy except for you. "Bee---oop---oop".

Buzz starting to build about virtual currencies

2007-02-07T14:10:00.001-08:00

Clearly, virtual currencies are indeed where the industry is heading. I wonder how long it will be for someone to take the leap from doing this just within the context of a video game to actually creating "legitimate" currency.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070207/zenke_01.shtml
(link in title)

More interesting press re: Second Life

2006-11-19T22:38:00.000-08:00

An interesting article on CNN talks about real life car companies tyring to sell cars in Second Life.

It looks like GM is making a few mistakes getting into this space. I'm interested that they chose such a low price for the cars - you'd think part of the point of playing in this virtual space is brand awareness for them. "So cheap that anyone can have one" is probably not the image GM is going for. This would have been a perfect venue to showcase some interesting "concept cars". Its also interesting that they are going for total customization by the user/owner: of course, this has no relation whatsoever to the actual experience of owning or buying a car.

On another note, whomever does Second Life's marketing is doing a really good job of getting their name out in the press. Business Week and CNN have been talking about this quite regularly. Given the first mover and network advantages of the space, might Second Life be the start of the first truly usable VR internet?

"Local" webvertising?

2006-11-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

We had an interesting speaker in my Pricing class yesterday. He contrasted Google's use of auctions for advertising (Bidding for AdSense Keywords) with traditional media buy patterns (TV, Print, Radio etc.)Since online ads are measured in clicks (a viewer action) rather than impressions as in traditional media, companies ROI on advertising money is much easier to quantify. One of the speaker's "thoughts for the future" was the idea that local advertising would play a bigger and bigger part of overall internet ad revenue. Will it?

On one hand, the potential for selling ads on Google Maps or other map-it sites is clear. Restaurants might pay to appear on the map while someone was searching for driving directions towards a theater for example. As a map becomes less and less useful the more ads are placed on it, Google might manage this map space in an auction style as well. Provided that Google, or whomever, can provide some simple way to facilitate these media buys from local companies this strategy makes a lot of sense.

The problem I see with the "local" concept is that I'm not sure it applies very well to the internet beyond the "map software" space. While the web in many ways is much more "precisely targeted" than traditional media, the one area where old media is better targeted is by location. It is much easier to reach residents of a particular city block by placing an ad on the side of a bus shelter than it is by using the internet. I think one shouldn't discount the power of traditional media just yet: It has become one of a set of tools rather than the only available tool.

Welcome to "World 2.0"?

2006-11-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

It looks like Microsoft is going ahead and creating a virtual currency as I described in my previous post:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/features/microsoftpoints.htm

These points will be the currency of choice for buying Zune songs, and also for buying maps and extras for Xbox live.

If anyone has the power to pull this off, it's Microsoft. My prediction is that this is the start of an era in which the corporation eclipses the power of the state in a variety of formal ways such as currency, virtual and non-virtual security, market making, etc. Indeed, due to the trans-national nature of internet transactions, its allready private companies that are providing transaction security, rather than the court system of a state. Interesting stuff IMHO.

Property Rights in Virtual Economies

2006-10-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

A friend in school brought up a game called Second Life to me yesterday. I'd read an article about it in business week a few months ago, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. The basic premise of the game is that players in a virtual world have ownership rights to the property and IP that they create in the game. The company backs this policy by supporting an exchange rate between virtual in-game currency and US dollars. This enables players to "cash out" when they quit the game, and also to run businesses selling virtual real estate. (Pretend Estate?)

So what exactly is "virtual" about all of this? Second-Life land plots have rents and a fairly liquid selling market if Business Week is to be believed. Since the US dollar isn't backed by gold (needless to say), in my eyes a video game currency is just as "real" a currency. This has all sorts of interesting implications. Whereas in the past a "theme park buck" was mainly a way to get you to overpay for services, here a company actually has the ability to *Print Money* (again, antiquated verbiage) backed by nothing more than their user experience and IP.

Some interesting business models that derive from this phenomenon:

1. "Free" MMORPG

Currently, games like World of Warcraft make their money by charging a monthly subscription fee. The company leaves a ton of consumer surplus value on the table in this scenario. People are paying to maintain access to an investment that they have made in virtual objects. In Warcraft, this investment can amount to hundreds or thousands of US Dollars in gear and experience, not to mention the value to the player of their in-game social network. Think about it: The player pays $19 monthly to have access to goods and services that they value at *more* than $2,000. How could the company claim more of this value?

Consider a MMORPG that is free for players to play. The company creates and controls a market for the in-game value that these players create. The value of controlling that market, of embracing the market forces created by your user base, is far greater than the value to be gained from subscription fees (I can't imagine that most consumers would be willing to pay $100/mo to play warcraft)

2. Non-Game Currencies

What if Google created the Google Dollar? What about the Microsoft Franc? Current thinking in military strategy and popular social science describes the declining power of "the state" compared with non-state actors. (Al Quaeda to over-use an example)What if companies begin to supplant the role of the state in issuing and backing currencies?

3. Hedge Funds and Market-Making Opportunities

What if you had a hedge fund that specialized in trading virtual (game) assets? Could you approach Blizzard with the idea of making a market to trade Warcraft gear and characters in an official, controlled manor?

TDH Part 6: What Defines "Rif-Raf" in WoW

2006-10-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

As we last left our guild, we had survived our first exposure with "drama". We had also just begun to implement some more rigorous recruiting standards. Though draconian, we felt that the stringent dual criteria of being able to type in at least broken English while also being a mammal would ensure a higher standard of recruit. In all seriousness, we were indeed starting to quality control a little better. As I would soon learn, weather or not someone could get along with me was not always the best indication of if they would fit in the guild or not: The organization had developed a culture that wasn't a carbon copy of my own personality.

I recruited a friendly player named Tikatu into the guild. I had seen him around the server often and we had gotten to chatting occasionally. He had an off-color sense of humor, to say the least. This didn't really bother me at all, (at one point in college I'd gotten into a "most offensive concept" competition, which will remain unwritten) but other people were not so understanding. We were left with a situation in which he would push the limits of what I found objectionable in guild chat. If he went to far, I would remind him that there were women and children present. This in turn created a running "family chat" gag.

unfortunately, what this meant for people who had a lower tolerance for juvenile humor, was that they were almost always being exposed to more than they would like to deal with. In retrospect, clearly my comfort zone was both higher and lower than other guild members.

Now, a guild is a very fluid environment compared to say, a job. People have a sense of social obligation to stay, but not any sort of enduring financial commitment. This means that as soon as players are pushed out of their comfort zone, be in emotionally or whatever, they will leave the guild.

Since I tolerated Tikatu's off-color humor, I inadvertently selected away from those who did not. Several more people left, including the remainder of the original Everquest crowd. For many people, it is easier to just leave and start over than to even bother addressing the issue of another's behavior.

I never wanted to be in charge of censoring other people's behavior or speech. What I didn't realize at the time, is that rather than trying to censor someone, I should have enacted policies never to recruit them in the first place. I would rather have been in a guild with the people who left than with the behavior problem that drove them out. Part of being a leader in this environment meant "protecting" people who were too timid or unwilling to confront others.

Everyone always starts their first new organization thinking that they are somehow different than everything else. Just like dotcoms thought they were a new breed of company, new guilds think that they are the only people to get it. The founders usually have some great vision that you can get by just by being nice to everyone. Reality is not so simple. The fact of the matter is that if you as a leader don't make the tough choices of who to recruit *and who to exclude*, those choices will be made for you. You cannot maintain a guild, and I suspect most social organizations, without an element of exclusion.

Salsa Dancing & Business Ethics

2006-10-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

My fiance is a phenomenal dancer. I've tried going to salsa clubs with her, and she's good enough to make me look good by association. I however felt acutely non-Latin. Attempting to remedy the situation, we signed up for salsa dancing lessons. The first lesson was a ton of fun, and I'm looking forward to going back.

One of the most difficult things about dancing, for me anyway, is that the guy *has* to lead a girl who is probably much better. Apparently, there was some mystic combination of hand signals that are required to get her to move just so without tripping over your foot. The last time we went dancing, we even began working out a set of primitive hand signals. One squeeze means twirl etc. We had it all wrong apparently, The true arcane art here is to push the girl just so to indicate where you need to go. The push needs to be timed correctly with the steps.

So that brings me to the main reason why Salsa dancing mystified me before: Everyone tells you to count in 6, using two groups of three. The *Rhythm* itself from a musical perspective is quite clearly in 4. Apparently this doesn't bother anyone else. For me, it was confusing that these alleged dance beats had no correlation whatsoever to the music.

The other crucial missing ingredient was that the two partners need to place their weight forward into each other slightly, so that each can get a sense of what the other is doing. Aha!

So, in any event, I'm having a great time with the 5 individual moves that I know how to chain together. I feel that my dance partner is hoping for more variety, so we will be back for more.

In other news, I'm taking a class called INTOPIA which is an acronym for something that I can't remember. The class is an elaborate business simulation that I'm not supposed to talk about it too much detail outside of class. The reason why I'm mentioning this at all, is that the same thing happened to me twice: My class mates backed out of business deals that they had signed with me because they got better prices elsewhere, after the fact. I'm sorry but that is just phenomenally uncool. In one case it was a deal for one of our key production inputs, and my team wound up behind the 8 ball at the last minute. I don't think anyone bothered to stop and consider that the lost good will is probably more important that the short term profits gained. Next time I'll have to negotiate penalties for dropping out of the deal or something. Ridiculous.

Google & marriage Licenses

2006-10-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Google came to give a presentation on campus today at 7:30am. Clearly, everyone attending had been thinking the same thing. "How do I dress up, yet Techy". For business school, this means that everyone wore some level of dress around the "Sportcoat and Jeans" look. Those who showed up in "full banker gear" were probably secretly logged in the recruiters little black book. "Subject 14 unsuitable for dress code violations..."

The rest of the day was spent frantically driving around town attempting to scratch to-do items off the pre-wedding list. My fiance and I went to the marriage license office in downtown Chicago. To get there, you followed a series of arrows around several corners and finally arrive in a large room filled with clerks. As you look around the various piles of paperwork wondering which form you need, an annoyed looking attendant asks (for the 6.03*10^23rd time today) if you are looking for the license application office which is not actually at the end of the long chain of arrows, but is instead down the hall. This poor man could solve this problem by getting the arrow changed. Clearly this minor adjustment is beyond the scope of anyone's job description.

TDH Part 5: I Farm or Family Dies

2006-10-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

As we last left our story, Two Dollar Horde had experienced its first brush with guild drama. We lost a few people, but as always seems to happen, a new batch of leaders step up to fill the void as the old ones depart. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please check the first few "TDH" articles posted previously.

Lonk quickly emerged as a guild leader, setting up a website and getting some guild rules in place. I had still been rolling with an "everyone can invite" policy until Lonk set me straight. Our objectives were different now: The policy intended to promote rapid growth for its own sake was actually *preventing* us from growing.

Several people somehow got invited into the guild without really being able to type in coherent English. There has been a rumor circulating the Warcraft communities for a while about so called "Chinese Gold Farmers" who actually get paid to gather in-game currency. Whenever people go overboard with "China will economically defeat us" doom & gloom forecasts it helps me to remember that it is indeed cost effective to pay groups of people to mine pretend gold. This implies a certain extreme disparity in standard of living, but I digress. The running gag was to say "I farm gold or my family dies". I'd love some external verification that these companies actually exist.

One person I even remember booting specifically. I logged on and got greeted with private messages that one of my guild members had stolen a piece of in-game gear from another player. The person insisted in horrible English that it had been a mistake, with the justification being that they had "wanted it". They said right after "please believe me". So, I said "I do believe that you wanted the item, and what you did was inappropriate" and promptly kicked them.

At any rate, there was some internal speculation that the non English speakers were in fact gold farmers using our guild name as cover. I confronted one of them, but they didn't appear to understand what I was saying. In the end, I realized that we had an organization starting to form that some members really valued and respected. The time was over for open recruiting. Lonk delicately raised the point by saying "Why the f&@%^ does everyone have invite privileges?" Point taken. I consolidated invite ability to a select group of guild officers.

A little before the previous drama had died down, we began some limited raiding activities as a guild. We had been invited by another guild, Deadbanger's Ball and their friends in Poison Arrow to raid Molten Core. Molten Core required a group of 40 people to run effectively. Early on we had about 20 or so from Poison Arrow and another 10 each from TDH and DBB.

We were just starting to get a taste of what organizational work was required to run a raid. We also had taken our first steps to becoming a more "professional" outfit: Don't let everyone who applies into your guild! Strange how the recruiting strategy that had worked when the guild had nothing to offer but a social space failed so thoroughly once we did have something to offer, by way of raids and PvP reputation. Next time: The extra drama that I promised you last week.

The Natives Were Impressed

2006-10-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

My audition last Thursday went really well. The Goodspeed Hall piano has verly light action so it was easy to play the Chopin Etude. I just found out this afternoon that I got invited to play it in a "University of Chicago Piano Showcase" concert on the 19th. I figure what with a full course load and a wedding to plan, what harm could there be in tossing in a tight concert schedule?

I'm also going to be learning the Piano portion of the Prokofiev op. 94 sonata which is one of my favorite pieces in general. Its been a few years since I looked at it. It's a nice feeling to be able to circle back to a piece that was once way too difficult, and be able to do it with few problems.

(For those of you waiting for the next TDH installment I'll try to put it together for tomorrow)

Baroque Ornamentation & Why PC > MAC for audio

2006-09-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

I made a recording of Bach's Invention no. 3 and added it to my site today.

From a musical perspective, the inventions are usually delivered to very early piano students (a year or two of study). As such I used to regard them as "easy". After many years, I can finally appreciate the fact that these pieces are absolutely unforgiving. It's not hard to get the notes, but it is extremely difficult to get the touch, style, phrasing and ornamentation correct. Revisiting the ornaments, I'm trying to play them as slowly as possible rather than as fast as possible: I feel that taking some time with them helps to add some tranquil grace to the piece.

In any event, I am growing more and more dissatisfied with my Mac PowerBook. This is a machine that is supposed to be perfect for the multimedia user. Instead, audio quality suffers from the lack of available inputs. I had to buy a special USB adaptor to use stereo audio inputs. This level of distortion in a $64 input is completely unacceptable. Further, it has been my understanding that ".mp3" format is pretty much universal these days. I had to convert my output file three times and fiddle with a bunch of advanced settings in iTunes to get this from garage band through .aif to .m4a and finally to mp3. I thought this was supposed to be easy? Maybe I'm just used to Sound Forge on my old PC. Oh how I miss thee.

Flaws in Warcraft PvP

2006-09-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

I found an article on Gamasutra about World of Warcraft "teaching the wrong things".

The author makes the point that the game rewards time instead of skill in most cases. I think he's dead-on about most of the game. However, I think he does underestimate the skills taught by trying to get 40 people coordinated. Teamwork and leadership are great lessons, IMHO.

The author also makes some interesting points about the factionilization caused by Warcraft's guild system. That guild vs. guild factions were a direct consequence of game mechanics was something that hadn't occured to me before.

The article also echoes what I said about the PvP system leading to inevitable collusion. Well worth a read.

TDH Part 4: The Appearance of Impropriety

2006-09-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned previously, I had been building up a bit of a PvP reputation on Malygos. One of the PvP events that was popular at the time was Capture the Flag. After good games, I would log onto an Alliance character that I had created for the purpose, and congratulate the Alliance opponents on a job well done. I chatted with many of the players, and when one of the best Alliance PvP players, “Lifeguard”, created a Horde character, I invited him into the guild. This was a disastrous decision for reasons I would soon discover.

Strangely, the disaster had nothing to do with Lifeguard as a personality. He was a really nice guy. The disaster, was that some of the hard core players in my guild seriously objected to the idea of having an “alliance” player in Two Dollar Horde. Specifically, the Everquest crowd of friends took issue with it. They internalized the game-design feature of Horde vs. Alliance and felt that it was unethical to chat with the other side. The game itself does not allow players to communicate with the other faction directly. As far as I was concerned, this division was silly. I enjoyed talking trash with the opposition some times. I also enjoyed growing my social network in the game.

At this point I need to touch briefly on some events that were taking place on Malygos server at the time. Capture the flag in Warcraft has some serious design flaws. These flaws involved ways to make games between two good teams drag out indefinitely. Since the game rewards number of games played, this causes a direct conflict of interest. Further, since players are rewarded on a relative scale versus other players on their same faction (Horde or Alliance) there was an added incentive to collude with the Alliance. In practice, PvP teams would occasionally “trade” the first two flags in a capture the flag game and then fight for the third. Rumors circulated that the top guilds even colluded to trade wins. Since losing is not punished, I have no doubt that some teams did trade wins to pad their scores.

As far as the ethics of all of this are concerned, I did have a problem with outright win trading to gain unjust rewards. I didn’t see the problem however with trading the first two flags in a game to speed things along. You see, a typical game of capture the flag should take less than 20 minutes tops. Games occasionally dragged on for three hours. I drew an ethical distinction between directly cheating other players (win trading) and agreeing to honorable rules of engagement with the opponent. I can see easily that this is a slippery slope. Honestly, I regarded this as a game and hadn’t given too much thought to the idea of ethics being a component.

Shortly after I invited Lifeguard to the guild, I was playing Capture the Flag at 2am. There were only three other Horde players online at the time, so we were playing outnumbered 10 to 4. Lifeguard, who was on the other team, tried to arrange for us to get 1 flag so at the very least we would get some reward out of what was essentially a no-win situation. I agreed to this plan with the proviso that the alliance players would duel in relatively equal numbers midfield instead of just steamrolling us.

The Everquest crowd was furious beyond anything that I could have imagined. Far from a large grey area, they perceived that I had made an ethical violation of principle equivalent to directly cheating or hacking the game. I was very surprised. They also pointed out that as the leader of the guild, my behavior is amplified in significance. This was a good point that I hadn’t really considered until then. I wouldn’t want to play with a cheater any more than I would want to be one. Regardless of whether I thought I had been cheating or not (I really didn’t think so). My guildies *did* think so, and that impression taught me a valuable lesson: namely that the appearance of impropriety is just as damaging as the real thing. I told everyone that I honestly didn’t realize that they would object to what I had done, but as their leader I would never do it again. They accepted this at face value and agreed to stay on. I made Lifeguard aware that the trade the night before (which incidentally hadn’t even worked) had been a one time lapse of judgment on my part and that this would never happen again

The next day, Lifeguard logged on while I wasn’t around and asked in guild chat if anyone wanted to trade flags. 4 of my best guild members quit on the spot. When I logged on later and found them gone, I pieced together what had happened from some others in the guild. I booted Lifeguard’s character from the guild. This made no impact on the recently departed guild members. The damage had been done. This was another huge lesson: you don’t always get second chances. Further, in an online world with no real attachments people will leave at the drop of a hat.

The next brush with guild drama would come as a result of our open recruiting policy. Just because someone is friendly doesn’t mean they are a “good fit”…

(stay tuned for more)

The Mystery of Early Video Game Explosions

2006-09-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

The side-scrolling shooter game has fallen out of style recently. However, the things were fun and making them was an art. In preparation for my presentation on Tuesday, I took a good look at one of my favorite "old school' video games: Xevious.

If you don't mind registering at Gamespot, here's a quick video of Xevious.

To take a quick catalog of the sound effects in Xevious:
1. Opening Fanfare
2. 5 second music loop, repeats the entire game
3. the sound your guns make
4. the drooping sound for bomb shots
5. the "smack" noise for bomb hits
6. the crystalline shatter noise that enemy fighters make when they die
7. the "ping" that your shots make against indestructible targets
8. "1 up" noise

It's odd at first glance that the enemy fighters don't make a more realistic explosion sound. The same is true in other shooters like Axelay for example. The enemies that you kill most often disappear with a pleasant sounding crystalline wash, or a mild bubble-sounding "blop". Why don't they explode? Indeed, having just been shot out of the sky, you'd expect to hear anything up to a mangled alien death-rattle with fiery pieces of debris wooshing through the air (within the limits of early 80s technology of course). But no.

Contrast the sounds made by the waves of enemy fighters with your own bombs. They *do* blow up. Enemy tanks and buildings have a much more explosive splat noise.

I wouldn't chalk this up to "over-analysis" either. The fact of the matter is that Namco's sound designer probably sat down and tried to use more realistic explosion noises, and they didn't work for some reason. Why might that be? And more importantly, why *do* the current noises "just work"?

A more 'realistic' explosion sound probably would have been way too repetitive (i.e. annoying). Since you are blasting through waves and waves of enemies, if each one makes a bang - a high contrast noise - that bang is going to fight for your attention. Bomb drops, your ground attack in the game, happen with significantly less frequency in Xevious than gun shots or airborne enemy deaths. The bomb drops are also the subject of more player attention: you have to line them up carefully with your bomb site. Thus, a higher contrast sound is acceptable.

The enemy death sounds needed to blend more, however. It's my guess that the explosion and gun shot sounds were designed to harmonize with the swirling background loop, at least on a subconscious level. The end result is a sort of stack of musical contrast: moving makes no noise, shooting makes a very low contrast noise, explosions are marginally more contrasting, then finally the falling bomb and explosion noise highlight the bombing aspect of the game, which is one of the key gameplay features that makes Xevious different from space invaders.

The main point I want to make is that every single sound in a game needs to be taken in context. They do not exist in a vacuum. In a well designed game, the sound design should work with the gameplay, the art direction and the story to create one complete experience.

Plans Placed on Hold

2006-09-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

There is nothing quite so irritating as having a perfectly good plan interrupted by the most mundane and pointless of trivialities.

For example: I had this wacky idea that I'd post a new recording of piano music every Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, this first installment will have to wait. You see, I had been planning to record from my keyboard into my apple laptop. The machine built by the company that thinks its catering to the multimedia crowd *doesn't have an audio input*. Lame.

Second, the GSB person in charge of student groups wants me to coordinate the setup of the fast forward website with them. This means that instead of signing up for cheap webhosting with a credit card online, I have to go through what has turned into a week long process to coordinate the hosting companies' billing department with the school.

I hate wasting productive energy. Somone please comment with something thought-provoking.

TDH Part 3: Growing the Guild

2006-09-22T07:45:00.000-07:00

At this point, (early summer 2005) the guild was a purely social organization. I viewed it as a way of expanding my social network inside the game. I didn't know what a raiding guild was, and wasn't too interested to find out. The thing is, the top guilds had an elitist air about them, intentional or not. I remember trying to PvP (player vs. player, i.e. fighting teams of Alliance in games of capture the flag) and being removed from groups to make way for "Hell" and "Virtus" members. It was not a good feeling. Also, I had little interest in doing what it takes to be "included" by what looked like a group of 12 year olds. (I imagine it involves being self-aggrandizing beyond the limits of good taste though I have never put this to the test)The guild was a place in the game where not only could I feel included, but could include friendly people as well. This was my goal, to grow the ranks of Two Dollar Horde while trying to select for the friendliest people. I was sure they were out there, and probably as annoyed with the current balance of power as I was.

Towards this end of recruiting as many friendly people as possible I instituted two radical policies: One, anyone in the guild had "invite" capabilities (the ability to add another player to the guild). This ability to invite new members is usually reserved for "guild officers". Two, the recruiting criteria was simple. The game allows you to wave at other players by putting a "/" before the word wave when typing. I would /wave at people and if they responded with a return /wave or /cheer I'd invite them into the guild no questions asked.

The guild grew in spurts and bubbles. You'd occasionally invite a "connector" who would bring in 2-4 of his/her own friends. We grew to around 75 characters this way. Since some players (Real-Life Humans) had multiple characters in the guild, we probably had close to 30 real unique players. I didn't really attempt to govern the guild in any way, nor was it needed. Much to my surprise, new recruits praised my leadership. They said that the guild atmposphere was much friendlier than their previous guilds. Lesson one of leadership: As a leader, people will like you by default as long as you don't attempt to exercise power. Lesson two: recruiting friendly players had, surprise, created a friendly sociable guild. Thus we had two main assets: A funny guild name and a pool of friendly players.

Throughout this early stage, we had no turnover whatsoever. We also had no appreciable "Drama" in guild chat. Demographically, we skewed somewhat older than average (I have no statistics to back up what the average WoW player's age is, but the average age in our guild was 28). Further, as luck had it, a sizeable core group of our players knew each other online from playing "Everquest" (EQ). Apparently, some of them had originally thought I was a friend of their who had played by the name "Aardvark" in EQ. I dispelled this rumor to everyone's surprise after a few months. Strange how a case of mistaken Identity can be exacerbated by the anonymity of the game. In any event, we became known as "that Everquest guild". I felt this was a dubious distinction. I heard the adjective "Carebear" used to describe us at several points.

Since PvP was my main focus in the game, (I love team vs. team competition) I wound up building up a reputation with the other PvP regulars. I started being asked to fill in spots on the "good player" teams when their guildies weren't around. My character class in the game, Hunter, played to my own strengths. The hunter has a sort of "radar" in the game so I made it my mission to act as an AWACS in games of capture the flag. I didn't have the gear to compete with the best alliance players one on one, but I could sure as hell vector my team of better-equipped players to crucial points.

My own reputation blended with that of my guild mates. We began to be known as a PvP guild, which was something that I was much more interested in. Being known for battlefield ferocity is far superior to being known as a Carebear IMHO.

The guild was established. We grew briskly. Our first brush with the cruel hand of "Guild Drama" was just around the corner.

Chewy Software Part 2: Spinning Tales, Spinning Wheels

2006-09-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

After I got my dotcom web design job (Calypso Systems, LLC), it was difficult to keep the nascent game company rolling along. Meeting for one day weekly isn't really enough to get anything meaningful done. Further, the goal of producing a playable game demo seemed somewhat remote. There was some immediate attrition in the ranks as a result of this drifting. We lost one artist and our two programmers as they left for school and jobs in other parts of the country. What remained was your erstwhile author, Tony and the programmer.

We had no shortage of cool ideas. Tony and I had pushed away from the generic fantasy setting that we had started with towards a more "Bio-Mechanical", Sci-Fi universe. The result was that we had pages and pages of brilliant drawn art from Tony. Due to the size of the team and our limited time commitment, we began to assemble a very limited demo. You could walk around. That was about it really. The character art was lifted from "Diablo" as a place holder.

Meanwhile, my training in graphic design from my job began to pay off. I got better and better with Photoshop, and began to pick up some 3d Studio skills. Leveraging my Photoshop and web programming experience, I was able to do some nifty things to keep the project rolling. I made a level editor in JavaScript that could output the primitive tile-based maps that we were using in the game through a palette / point and click interface.

This is the name of the game in keeping a micro-business project running. Being able to do multiple roles while picking up the skills you don't have yet. Since I had composed more music than we would ever need done within the first month, I concentrated on picking up the art skills that we needed to turn Tony's drawings into in-game art. Thus, what we lacked in team size and skillset I tried to compensate for with youthful enthusiasm and lots and lots of training.

After a year had gone by, we were really no closer to our goal. The programmer's company didn't seem interested in picking up the idea. Further, we had a crippling notion that the game needed to be "perfect" before we could move on. The Great was indeed the enemy of The Good.

Then the dotcom bubble burst. My company, Calypso, was owed almost a million dollars from clients that could not or would not pay up. I was at a crossroads: figure out how to turn this weekend project into a viable full-time business or move on.

TDH Part 2: How to Name Your Guild

2006-09-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

Since the game is split into two sides, Horde and Alliance, (which don't tend to interact much save on the battlefield), I was mostly exposed to the "cool kid" guilds on Horde side. So what makes a "cool kid" in Warcraft, and what makes a "cool guild" for that matter?

WoW's gameplay is based around collecting hard-to-obtain gear. The best gear is only obtainable through a large scale group activity called "raiding". The "coolest" people on Malygos server from a purely materialistic point of view had the best gear. Therefore, they were also in "raiding guilds". "Raiding" requires coordinating up to 200 people to arrange for 40 of them to be available on any given night, with a proper mix of skills and specialties. Of course I knew nothing of this at the time. From my point of view they had cool stuff and an aura of success. And a guild tag wrapped in alligator brackets under their printed character name. Mine just said "Aardvarkina" with no cool brackets :(

There were many guilded players walking about Orgrimmar (the Horde Capital). "The Wings of Tiamat" was an older guild that was at this point on its way out. "The Many" was also a popular guild. Two of my employees at Chewy Software were in "The Many". They didn't want to leave their guild to join mine. The reason offered I didn't really understand at the time: something about having earned points towards getting good gear in their guild or something.

One-word guild names began coming into vogue. Hell. Virtus. Aeternus. Emminence (the premier alliance guild). Virtus was the creme-de-la-creme of horde guilds. Their players were the most highly regarded. Funny how being too busy to talk to someone makes you more an object of envy. (Not that they weren't cool people to chat with... I'm just saying)

This one word latin stuff seemed a tad pretentious to me. I wanted something funny that would help me recruit more players. Several off-color inside joke names were passed over.

I began trying to work on "Horde" puns.

Hordiculture - too obscure
Horde'oerves - too French, and not menacing enough
Hordinary People - too weird
Aunt Hordtense - again, too obscure

Two Dollar Horde came in a flash of inspiration. Off-color enough to be funny without being patently offensive. Pure gold.

We've been copied several times. There are now "Two Dollar Horde" guilds that have sprung up on other servers. We have also been written up repeatedly on the "best guild name" threads that crop up from time to time. However, I can safely say that we were the first.

I picked up a guild charter for Two Dollar Horde that evening and began collecting the 10 signatures needed to create the guild.

Next Time: The first members & guild formation

TDH Part 1: How I got into Warcraft in the First Place

2006-09-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

Back in the end of 2004, I never thought I'd like an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game for the uninitiated). I had a very low opinion of "Everquest", and an equally unflattering stereotypical opinion of those who played it. I liked real time strategy games first and foremost: I had been ranked in the top 1000 in "Starcraft" as an individual player and at several points been in the top 20 of the 2 man team bracket in Warcraft 3. The thrills of teamwork and competition were what kept me playing both of those games. They were/are akin to competitive sports rather than games. If you think I'm making this up, read this article on Slashdot. In my eyes, the contrast between an MMORPG like Everquest and an RTS like Starcraft was akin to that between a trekkie club and a semi-pro soccer league. (no offense to trekkies)

I was introduced to WoW (World of Warcraft) by one of my employees. A very talented young artist, Adam was one of those people who just played every single new hot game that came out on the market. He's the kind of person that you rely on to keep you in tune with the best of the indy music scene. He started playing World of Warcraft as one of our large client projects began to wind down after delivery. In the interest of sociability I joined him and several of his friends on "Malygos" server. I had heard that the male tauren (Minotaur) models were sometimes hard to see over in game, so I went for the female model. (Yes I am confident enough in my masculinity to admit that online.) My usual gamer tag "ProudAardvark" wouldn't fit, so I named her "Aardvarkina".

The game is addictive beyond belief. I'll talk about that in more detail in another post, but suffice it to say I'm almost positive that in my lifetime there will be video game addiction hearings in Washington DC akin to the analogous Tobacco ones. There will be incriminating internal memos from video game execs talking about how to increase the addictive properties of their games. Indeed, creating addiction is a basic component of game design.

As several weeks passed, I began to form a small social network in the game. The network consisted of two people that I knew in real life, and a whole slew of people that I knew only from their character names. Funkadelic, Bem, Imtan, Grisdelda, Sten etc. Indeed, friendships are extremely simple to start in an online world. You have a shared experience of playing the game, coupled with the familiarity of seeing the same people repeatedly. Its a socializing force not unlike a church or community group - shared experience and familiarity create community.

Pretty soon, I decided it would be fun to form a "guild": at that point I figured it would mean slapping a name onto our social group. But what would we call it?

Video Game Music Presentation

2006-09-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

I'll be giving a presentation at Wheaton college on video game music on the 26th for any of you in the Chicago area.

Chewy Software Part 1: Primordial Start-Up Soup

2006-09-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

Back in the summer of 1999, I had just graduated with a shiny new music composition degree. Naturally, I put that degree to use by learning HTML and casting my resume into the dotcom feeding frenzy. The idea was to get a steady job in Chicago while I built up my composition portfolio to get a music job in the video game business. During my search, I went over to the part-time job board at the career placement office on campus. What I saw was an ad that asked: "want to work in video games? give us a call..." I figured, probably too good to be true, but why not?

Several returned phone calls later, we were meeting on weekends on the University of Chciago campus. There were four programmers, a spouse, myself and two artists. It turned out that one of the programmers wanted to use the team to re-pitch a game concept that had been rejected by his boss. The goal then, was to build a "demo" of the game as a selling tool. I'd be adding sound effects and an audio track. This seemed like a great way to get established in video game music. The major selling point for me was the chance to work with Tony Akins, an amazingly talented comic artist.

These early sessions were largely social - we ordered up some Harold's Chicken and talked about what we wanted the game to be like. We called them "chewing and bobbing" sessions (we'd eat and nod agreement). I think Tony has one videotaped just in case any of us decide to run for office).

I got my dotcom job as a website designer, and our weekend sessions continued.

Major Faux Pas

2006-09-16T12:40:00.001-07:00

So, I had the honor of being invited to one of the many schmoozey recruiting events on campus by a very prestigous firm. I took an excerpt from their email so as to protect the innocent. It begins:

>>SAVE THE DATE

>>As the last days of summer draw near, I want to be the first to welcome you to your final year at Kellogg.

Kellog? Oops. This was followed several minutes later by a:

>>Please disregard the previous Save the Date
>>SAVE THE DATE

>>As the last days of summer draw near, I want to be the first to welcome you to your final year at GSB.

I was contemplating a reply telling them that I was honored to be invited by [rival firm name], but decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

Introductions

2006-09-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

My second year of business school is just getting underway. With the flood of new emails in my school account also comes the usual hectic reshuffling of schedules and commitments.

Two important experiences in my life are coming to an end. First, I had an amazing summer internship at Sure Payroll in Skokie IL. I have to say I was quite skeptical about applying to work at a payroll company. I didn't think I'd fit in - Here I am coming from a background in video game development - full of glitz and "fun". But, I was interested in the role - developing a new product. The deciding factor for me was the people I'd be working with. I learned that my immediate boss ran an alpaca farm in his spare time. How cool is that? Not only were the people interesting, they were also smart and capable. Instead of the passion for games and product design that I'm used to seeing in my co workers, there was a genuine passion for business strategy and growth. I liked it. I came away from the interview hoping I'd get an offer. For some strange reason, the "Me and My Llama"song from Sesame Street was stuck in my head on the drive home.

Second, I'm getting ready to pass on the leadership reigns of my World of Warcraft guild, Two Dollar Horde. I started the guild almost two years ago, as a completely casual thing. Strangely, it developed into an ideal test bed for all of the organizational & behavioral management training that I'm getting at school. You've probably all read the article in wired about the leadership training inherent in guild management. In my blog, I'm going to try to address some of that in more detail. Having run my own successful small business, I'm going to try to compare and contrast the two experiences. The question that I'm sure has been on your mind for a while, "What happens when you sick a $100,000 dollar University of Chicago MBA on a video game?" will be answered at last.

I'm going to be taking on two new commitments as the school year begins. One is to get more involved in the chamber music scene on campus. I've started practicing my audition material, including the flashy Chopin Etude no. 1 (Usually guaranteed to impress the natives). I've known that piece for a long time. Every few years I circle back to it with a feeling that I've "finally figured out how to play it". The curious thing about the piano is that each new skill plateau you reach tends to open up a wider view of things that can be improved. Your practice time as a musician improves your ability to perceive shortcomings in your playing. I'm also going to be playing a softer more lyrical c# minor nocturne which has been a favorite of mine for a while. The goals here are to get a concert or two over the course of the year, ideally with an opportunity to premier my new clarinet sonata.

Also, I'm resolved to take a more active role in developing the "Fast Forward" organization on campus. I'm going to be setting up a phpnuke website for the group. I have this idea that we may be able to develop it into a useful networking tool for current students and alumni. At the very least we can "out-web" the other student groups on campus and make a bigger name for our media industry group. Look out consulting group, we're gunning for yah!

Thanks for reading so far, thus concludes my first blog entry.