John Zeitler

So last night’s little soiree with Split/Second (also known as Concerto for Eight Automobiles, With Explosive Accompaniment) was notable, to me at any rate, for two reasons. The first was that, obviously, I managed to reach the long-hovered-over 15K mark for my Gamerscore. The second, though, was that it was a minor little brush with fame. See, Robert Bowling, the community director at Infinity Ward, is a well-known figure– he was just on Major Nelson’s podcast, and given the high-profile status of the Call of Duty games, he’s been in the public eye a bit recently, particularly in regards to Modern Warfare 2′s multiplayer. So imagine my great surprise when I happened to stumble upon him in a random matchmaking lobby.

Yeah, he blew me up. Repeatedly, I might add. I think I got him good maybe once. But I managed to lose two races in a row. Not just lose, but come in dead last. The closest I’ve come to gaming with a quasi-celebrity, and I blew it badly.

Oh, you bet I still tweeted about it, and I’m still excited that I even had the opportunity (there’s, what, two zillion Xbox Live players out there? the odds were flagrantly against me ever seeing his gamertag, let alone playing against him). But, as far as introductions go, I kinda wish things had gone differently.

Incidentally, and I say this now with more conviction than ever, you want to play Split/Second. I mean it.

….I needed to rest today, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

….I hate the fact that I had a missed post yesterday, but not nearly as much as the fact that I don’t have anything worth talking about tonight, either. With any luck I’ll get some rest and have a real post tomorrow night… assuming I don’t lose track of time with Steam for the Mac (and assuming Valve actually delivers on their “buy-once-play-anywhere” plan which I still adamantly believe is a blatant lie).

I’m just now getting to start the Rush to Judgment Part Two, and as a result I’m going to have to delay the post until tomorrow. We’ll get to it, I promise… maybe we’ll even have six episodes to talk about.

Had a great playtesting session last night with some friends, but it seems that along with the ideas, I also managed to get… a sore throat. So I’m still 50-50 whether or not I’m going to do any Warhammer tonight, which irritates me because I was really looking forward to it. Ah well.

I’ll probably have some further notes on FF13 tomorrow.

Sorry about the two-days-in-a-row-with-no-content thing. Been busy gaming and doin’ other stuff. Tomorrow I should have a more solid post ready.

Sorry, folks– the scheduling mishap from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning kinda messed me up and threw me off-tempo. What’s worse, I can’t correct this because I have a full agenda for today and won’t have time to bang out a lot of words. I’ll have a full post up tomorrow, early-ish maybe, and then we can all get back to our normal grooves.

Incidentally, for what token bit of content it provides this post, I now know definitively how to pronounce “Sazh”. It only took, oh, three hours of gameplay. On the other hand, though, I think that FF13 might be the first time that the playable characters’ last names have been mentioned on-screen (Large Ham Collider incidences such as “A TRIAL FOR ASHELIA B’NARGLE B’LAMADAMADINGDONG” or whatever aside), and it even manages to explain why any sane individual would name their daughter “Lightning” (spoiler: they wouldn’t).

…….the big post about FF13 was supposed to go on time delay for today. Sue me. I was hopped up on chamomile. (Can you really be “up” on chamomile tea? Isn’t that sort of the opposite of its normal effect?) Anyway, a proper post should be up later today. If not, well.

Yeah, relaxation? Gone now. Today was stressful to a ridiculous degree. Tomorrow is not looking much better. Still, a bright spot did come up: the rumored Apple event for the 27th just became official. So in a week or so, I’ll be able to see lots of new and interesting things that I’ll never in a million years be able to afford. Sort of like CES, but more smug.

Frangible Time Update: Finished Episode 3 tonight, bringing the word total up to 46.1K. I’m giving myself a one-day mulligan due to illness to hit the 50K line, but that means I need to re-work my outline for the next episode to match the great heaving plot twists that have been introduced over the last two episodes. On the one hand I love it when my characters derail my plot like this; on the other hand, it irritates me to rewrite stuff I thought I had planned out.

Like the above says, the illness and trips taken over November made writing… problematic at best. However I’m on track, doing better than I expected to (I honestly didn’t think I was going to get even this close to 50K by the end of the month), and overall I’m very confident I’ll be able to finish the story before the 1st of the year. Well before the first of the year, in fact, because I have two episodes planned out (loosely) already, with just a single episode in the middle to conjure up based on the pre-existing plot. I may have mentioned that FT is a very different story, thematically, than what I’ve done before; what I’ve written tonight pretty much seals that, I think. You guys probably won’t see it until June or so. Just take my word for it.

One other thing. Remember how, years and years ago, I said that writing fan fiction prepares you for being a real writer in that you get to work with themes and concepts applied to characters you know? Yeah. Tonight validated that, too.