Well, some of you, and by some of you, I mean possibly the sole reader of these posts, Adam Baranowski, God bless his soul, might have realized that my last post included hyperlinks, pictures, and *GASP* actual video clips. I know that it's kinda sloppy, some of the spacing was a bit off, the fonts were moderately inconsistent, but most of this was due to the fact that the text didn't wrap around some of the pictures "oh-so" perfectly like it did in "preview" mode. Like I said a while back, the blog is still primarily about the writing aspect, and learning some of the other blogging stuff at my own pace, so I'm not too worried.
Some of you (again, synonymous with Adam) might have also picked up on the fact that at least my last couple posts have been about gaming, or some aspect of such. In addition to actually forcing myself to learn how to use a "big boy" safety razor last week, I decided that I would try another new thing, and actually attempt some real "gaming journalism" or whatever one wishes to call it. If you want to become better at something, you have to have the basics down pat, but also not be afraid to delve deeper. Perhaps it's presumptuous to say that I've got the fine art of writing "down pat," I guess that could be up for debate, but I admit that I've not really ever pushed myself to write about gaming. I mean, I certainly know way too much about it, I'm more or less the "authority" for even my gaming-inclined friends for release dates, game reviews, industry moves, etc... But I've always convinced myself that the journalistic aspect of gaming has always been reserved for the exclusively funded few in magazines and heavily-trafficked websites, and then...those miserably unfunded hacks that write grammatically preposterous two sentence reviews of games. I'd say 98% of the industry are the latter.
How does this tie into my life as it stands? Well, most people at my school, in my grade, are at a point where this summer usually means preparation for a senior thesis, and this usually is accompanied by a summer internship. Now, there's a lot to be said about what is required to "nail" an internship, though the whole "it's WHO you know, not WHAT you know" is still quite an accurate statement. Perhaps a much more interesting one is that provided by my wonderfully supportive college that informed me that "(insert disturbingly large percentage) of available internships are not posted/shown by Kalamazoo College." Of course, this makes me question if those individuals in the Center for Career Development have the best job security in the world if they are so brazenly advertising that they aren't doing their job. I mean, it's not like they should be worried about having to support those that participate in the externships that they sponsor.
They expected me to live in a nice suburb of Chicago on a 50 dollar a week stipend, pay half of the housing costs, as well as transportation costs. And this was all for an externship that didn't pay. Like I said, Kalamazoo College is no stranger when it comes to stabbing people in the back. I mean, "having" people's back. My bad. I guess what the past two paragraphs are getting at is that I've been surfing around for externship possibilities, and, perhaps this is an equally stupid notion, but I've been doing it in the gaming industry. Personally, I'd love to write press releases for a development studio, or even write dialogue or a script for a project, but it's hard to find developers that aren't just looking for code monkeys. That's the fancy term for the little computer science junkies that are already more than conditioned to work in overly small spaces, crunching algorithms.
And that's why I've spent the last couple weeks brushing up on my game writing skills, as well as trying to get the contact info on every decent developer that I can find. Double Fine (the people behind Psychonauts, as well as the Lead Designer being the head guy on Grim Fandango) apparently have an intern program, albeit unofficially, but their location is fairly expensive to live in, AND, they don't pay. Though, oddly enough, I read that California law says you MUST pay all your workers. Perhaps blackmailing Double Fine in regards to such might work...hmm... I've placed their really cool logo below, as well as a link to Double Fine Studios this for those interested.
Double Fine's Logo, click here to visit their website
Other than that, I've got Valve's info, but have yet to find out if they have internships. It's a tough situation, because part of me says I shouldn't pour out my heart into something if they flat out don't do it in the first place, but part of me says that doing such might just make the difference for someone that otherwise wouldn't offer an internship. I don't know, part of me says that trying to find a internship of the video game sort, so soon to summer, and expecting to be paid, is COMPLETELY crazy. I guess it all goes back to that whole, "trying to spite one's parents" dealio. Honestly, I wish I would have had that "parent-spiting" moment earlier in my life, perhaps when so much wasn't a stake.
I don't want to spent my life as a tool, doing something I hate.
Then again, who does? *thinking about it* Actually, there are probably more than enough people that would be okay with that.
Like I said, the other big name is Valve, I'm spending the next couple days getting contact information on game studios: e-mail addresses, phone numbers, locations, etc. I mean, seriously, how BADASS would it be to intern at Valve? For those of you who don't know, Valve is the name behind the Half-Life series.
Valve Studios is located in Bellevue, Washington, and is responsible for Half Life 2, which won over 35 "Game of the Year" awards, and has an "average critic score" of 96% on Metacritic.
I've also thrown in the OFFICIAL trailer to Half Life 2 below. Now for those of you that don't find it horribly impressive, this game debuted 4 YEARS AGO, and this was a pre-release trailer before the game was finalized. Still, it's quite impressive
The link below leads to what I think was a much cooler trailer that debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, but Gametrailers is a jerk and won't let me embed it, so instead, here's a link: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/135.html. I already did a big article about Half Life 2 but, I figure this is enough information if any of you are curious about learning more. Besides, of course, reading that article that I wrote.
So, yeah, aside from that, I still need to talk to my parents about ALL the paperwork about the lease for the apartment for college. We got the form sent to us about three days ago, but then JD's grandpa had to look over some details, and then my parents were too busy between work and symphony practice last night to get around to looking at it. I'm shooting for tomorrow, when my dad is perhaps less stressed over having to deal with grade cards for his fifth grade students. Basically Trident, the leasing company, just needs to have the forms before we show up, so that's about two weeks, but I also don't want to put this off. There's always a chance that my parents could get grumpier. Always.
Summing things up. I head back to Kalamazoo in about two weeks. Have to deal with paperwork before then. Trying to come up with some internship possibilities before then, as well as work a bit more to make more cash. I'm going to try to put up a new post soon on Bioshock, as I just finished that lately, as well as any new developers that I get info on. Other than that, hopefully I can meet with Adam and Jess before spring quarter begins, lock down some sort of internship, oh, and I have work tonight in about an hour and a half. That's about it.
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