Most of the times I’ve seen this question this week, it’s actually been about Joystiq, not me personally. And before I actually talk about this, I should say that I’m not in enough of a position of leadership at Joystiq where I even have the ability to choose whether we as a site cover a show or not. I have covered E3 for Joystiq for the past few years, and if I’m asked to go again, I definitely will, but plans haven’t been made yet and I don’t know what my plans are. So all of what I’m about to say about this is completely my own opinion — I can only speak for myself in this case, which is why this is here and not on Joystiq itself. I am pretty sure, knowing most of my talented colleagues on Joystiq and elsewhere, that a lot of games writers will agree with me, but of course their opinions are their own.

At any rate, here’s the answer: No, I will not decline to cover the ESA or E3. Yes, if I’m lucky enough to be asked to cover the convention, I will. And no, of course I’m not in favor of SOPA or PIPA, or any other legislation that puts the interests of a few selfish idiots over the benefits of so many.

But Mike, you say, the ESA supports this stupid legislation openly! Why not send a message to them by refusing to cover their convention?

Well, for a few reasons. First of all, and most obviously, E3 is the biggest game event (in the United States, at least) of the year. Many of the biggest game reveals and interviews (both in my career and in the industry overall) happen at E3, and any journalist who stays away from it for a political reason is simply not doing his or her job. My first duty is to my readers, and my readers want to know about E3, and I have a duty to tell them about it. Not to mention that doing my job makes me money I need to live. So there’s that.

Now, you might suggest that if all of the journalists decide to heroically pull out of E3, maybe the ESA will get a message, or maybe they’ll even cancel it. But honestly, I don’t think that will happen. Because here’s the real thing about E3: It’s not really about the journalists anyway.

I’ve gone to E3 for three or four years now, and guess how much I’ve ever paid to the ESA? Zero dollars. I’ve gone in with a big shiny press badge around my neck, I’ve had the lunches they offer to the press every day, I’ve sipped their coffee and eaten their free cookies, I’ve sat down on their couches and hiked all over the giant convention center that they rent out every year. I’ve cost them way more money than they’ve ever seen from me. If you really want me to stick it to the ESA financially, you should suggest I go to E3, and take up as much space in their convention center as I can. The E3 show isn’t for me — I benefit from it in terms of doing my job, but the ESA isn’t at all dependent on whether I show up or not.

Nope — the ESA is most dependent not on games journalists, but on exhibitors. It’s dependent on the games companies there showing off new titles, on the various accessory manufacturers who pay to rent all those rooms in the convention center, and on the public relations firms that build all of those booths and schedule all of my appointments there. The ESA doesn’t financially benefit from me being there at all. Instead, it’s the companies I cover at E3 that hold the real power. They’re why I’m there too, after all — if the ESA held E3 and none of those game companies showed up, I’d probably stay home and play games.

Now, of course, my press can help sell (or not sell) those companies’ games, and so yes, they’re there spending all of that money on the ESA because they’re trying to get covered by me and the rest of the press. And yes, the ESA does care that I come, but not because it loves me or cares about my opinion. The ESA only cares that I and other journalists show up so that it can sell booth space, and sell memberships to the association, and maintain its status as an influential industry organization. But I don’t affect any of those things directly — again, I work for my readers, and nobody else.

So here’s the deal. Instead of asking me and other journalists to betray both our livelihoods and the readers we serve, you should go to the people that the ESA really cares about: The exhibitors. Already, one studio has decided to not exhibit at E3, and asking other game studios and publishers to do the same would affect the ESA’s bottom line much more, and hopefully convince the organization that its position on SOPA is wrong. I’ll still cover studios, even if they aren’t at E3 — I just saw Red5 at CES, and am really looking forward to Firefall, and will happily write about it whether I see it at E3 or not.

Plus, talking directly to studios and publishers mean you have the power: If they refuse you, you can boycott them or their games until they make a move on the ESA’s stance. Yes, you can boycott my site if you really disagree with my position, but the ESA doesn’t even advertise on my sites, as far as I know. Even if a boycott of Joystiq is super successful, you’re just hurting me and my parent company, not anyone having to do with the ESA.

I’m heartily against SOPA — I’ve called my congresspeople, I’ve talked to my friends and family about how wrong it is, and I support any effort to defeat it. But when you ask me to support SOPA by not doing my job at E3, you’re asking the wrong thing for both of us. The ESA takes its money and power from the game companies that are its members, and if you really want the ESA to pull a turnaround, you should instead be talking to them. Good luck to you — I look forward to seeing (or writing) a post on Joystiq saying that the ESA, due to pressure from its members in the industry, has decided to change its position on this heinous legislation.

Update: And there you go. I will say this about the whole SOPA deal — obviously it took some pretty heinous legislation to bring down the Internet’s fury, but God bless the American legislative system on this one. People talked, power listened.

Music

Radiohead’s The King of Limbs was probably the first new album that I got into this year — I didn’t like it nearly as much as their past work (I liked In Rainbows much better), but it was still a solid offering. Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues was great, I really liked Jay Z and Kanye’s Watch the Throne collaboration, and M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was another really great album.

Honorable mentions go to Cake’s Showroom of Compassion (a little disappointing, but any Cake album is great in my book), The Decemberists’ The King is Dead, and Childish Gambino’s Camp, which I think is great, but a little overrated, just because of how awesome Community and Donald Glover are even outside of the rhymes.

Books

Oh man — this is really embarrassing, because I didn’t read nearly as much as I was supposed to this year. All I really have for actual 2011 books are the ones I want to read: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, Lev Grossman’s Magician novels, and Ready Player One by the great Ernie Cline. I read Dance of Dragons and thought it was all right. But my favorite books this year, as I’ve said a few times already, are two Warhammer 40k omnibuses by Dan Abnett: Eisenhorn and then Ravenor. The Warhammer 40k setting is so awesome, you guys, and Abnett really knows exactly how to portray it in the most interesting way. Hopefully once I finish with my Warhammer 40k obsession I can get back into some more literary reading.

Movies (and TV)

There are so many great movies I haven’t seen yet this year (Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Shame, The King’s Speech, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), so I probably haven’t even seen the top five movies from 2011 that I liked most. But I did like The Muppets, Source Code, Captain America, Super 8 (probably the best of the year so far for me), and X-men: First Class.

On TV, I did really enjoy The Walking Dead, though not as much as most people, I think. The BBC sitcom Pulling was probably the best thing I saw (it’s on Netflix — I’m not sure when it came out in Britain), but I also liked Community, Parks and Recreation, Damages, Sons of Anarchy, Archer, and Happy Endings.

Video Games

I’ll refer you to Joystiq on this one — my “Best of the Rest” picks will be up in a little bit, and I’ll link it right here when it’s out. [Update: And here it is!]

But in the meantime, here are my top five of the year:

1. Skyrim: I’ve told this story already, but I wasn’t a fan of Oblivion or Morrowind. In those games, the graphics and the bugs got in the way of true immersion in those varied worlds — I never stuck around in them long enough to really enjoy myself. But Skyrim’s revamped engine and interface smoothes over almost all of my issues with it, and what’s left, then, is a really fantastic, filled out fantasy world, one that’s living and breathing and gorgeous, in which I am the hero. When you bent Oblivion or Morrowind to your will, they usually broke, and usually in a way that ruined your immersion. But when you bend Skyrim, it bends beautifully, and meets you with XP and loot on the other side. Just a brilliant game, brilliantly done.

1.25. Batman: Arkham City: It’s almost too bad Skyrim did come out this year, because otherwise my GotY would be Batman, no question at all. I love Batman, as you might already know, and Arkham City is a great sequel to Arkham Asylum (which was my GotY the year it came out, even with Bioshock and Portal in the running). The way that Rocksteady took the closed-in, perfectly designed environments of Arkham Asylum and placed them outside in an open world is just plain genius, and the controls and setting are fascinating enough to me that I’m only about 20 Riddler trophies away from collecting all 400 to 100% the game yet again.

3. Portal 2: In the first game, GlaDOS’ character really made the whole show work. Yes, it was a great first-person puzzle game, and yes, the story and setting were well-done. But the first Portal was really about GlaDOS, a fully-formed, complete character that interacted with the player in a really meaningful and amazing way. How awesome is it, then, that Valve replicated that feat not once, not even twice, but three different times in the sequel. Not only did we get GlaDOS’ character redefined by placing her in a brand new spud of a setting, but we have the eminently quotable and likable Cave Johnson, and Wheatley, who is one of my favorite video game characters of all time. Stephen Merchant’s performance basically sets the bar for voicework in video games, as far as I’m concerned — every line is just delivered perfectly, and his work makes the story and the game a constant pleasure to play through time and time again.

4. Warhammer 40k: Space Marine: This was one of my favorite “video game” experiences of the year, and as I say in my Joystiq post, this was my favorite shooter of the year, even beating out bigger contenders like Modern Warfare 3 and Gears of War 3. As you can tell from my reading habits, I have fully fallen in love with the Warhammer 40k universe — I love the fantasy conventions translated over to sci-fi, and I love the scale of it: everything really is times 40,000, from the army size to the dreadnoughts and all of the various Space Marine powers and technologies. And of course Relic Entertainment loves this universe as well, and that’s evident in this game — everything from the architecture to the various Space Marine models and skins in multiplayer has been poured over and intelligently designed and laid out. From the over-the-top introduction of the dashing Captain Titus to the incredible climax of the story, this game is just terrific, and I hope it sets up lots of other, just as awesome Space Marine and Warhammer video games to come.

5. Jetpack Joyride: So many great iOS games this year, but this one takes the cake — it’s simple and fun, and yet also deep and rewarding. Halfbrick’s polish is astounding, from the amazing music to the various little animation touches (breaking the glass on the floor! High-fiving scientists for missions! And all of the various jetpacks and costumes are great too) and all of the missions and their various inventions and innovations. The game’s only one button (and there’s not even a button on the screen for it), but there’s so much addictive depth in the meta system that I’m still playing this one, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

Whew. There you go. If I missed something (and I’m sure I did), let me know.

What is this, you may ask? Why, it’s an ebook, in EPUB format, of 14 of my best and favorite short stories and essays that I’ve written over the years. I’ve been writing little bits and gags for quite a while, and this book collects all of the best ones, and then some. There’s a foreword by my good friend Mark Turpin, art by a few other good friends, lots of little interstitial quotes and fun stuff that I’ve written and put together over the last few months, and lots of full color pictures for you to marvel at and enjoy. You can read some previews and excerpts of the stories right over here.

And now, you can own this ebook for yourself: It’s available for $7 right now.

To buy THE SHAPE OF TEETH, click here, go over to a site called TinyPay.me (they’re very trustworthy and easy to use), and then use a Paypal account or a credit card to purchase and download the book.

BUT WAIT! Instead of buying through that link above, you could buy THE DELUXE EDITION of THE SHAPE OF TEETH, which includes not only the core book itself (so don’t buy both!), but also two more exclusive stories to read, a brand new and never-before-seen introduction for those stories, as well as a 36-minute audio podcast featuring me both talking about and reading three stories from the core book. Those three stories are “It Came From the Black Lagoon, and Was Vaguely Unsatisfied,” “The Incident in the Town By the Sea,” and “Godzilla in Love.” Trust me — the book is great, but the Deluxe Edition is the one you really want and it’s available for only three dollars more, or $10.

To buy THE SHAPE OF TEETH DELUXE EDITION, click here, and go through to TinyPay.me, which will let you buy the book (which comes in a zip file with the extra stories and the mp3 audio recording included, all DRM free) with Paypal or a credit card.

If you have any questions about this book, have trouble with the files or the file formats, or anything else, I can be reached at mike@mikeschramm.com.

I am so thrilled that you’re here to read about this book, and thrilled to FINALLY be able to offer it up to you. I hope you all like it — I’ve spent quite a while working on it (it was written over a matter of years, though the actual editing took a few months of my free time and weekends), and boy am I glad that it’s finally out and being sold.

And stay tuned — my next project will probably finally be getting that iPhone app up off the ground, so if you like buying and/or downloading things that I’ve worked on, you’re in luck, because there’s more where this came from. Thanks again!

A minute or two passes. The bus doesn’t come. The man in the gray suit takes out a handkerchief, wipes his forehead, and puts the handkerchief away.

The second man steps back on the curb and sits down. Another moment passes.

What’s that? You want another excerpt from another story? Here you go!

“I fully respect the opinions and findings of the research team,” said Commander Me’reth into the microphone. She was careful to keep her face calm and her tone strong, despite knowing that her exact image in quantum duplicate was being broadcast across light years to the committee’s various homeworlds and stations. “It’s true, there is something important about Earth that surely the chronometer activity has shown. But I entreat you to find another way — there is too much beauty and power in this world to simply destroy it.”

“Are you suggesting, commander,” asked Grauthor in a gravelly voice with the slightest hint of a sneer on his face, “that we should place this tiny, insignificant blue pinprick up above the soverignty of our Lord Emperor and his realm?” Me’reth didn’t flinch. “You claim the chronometers are not to be doubted, but if that’s true, this drop of filthy, backwoods water may someday present a threat to our families, our children, our very way of life! Pardon me, commander, but I would have it recorded that such a claim, if indeed you are saying so, borders on treason and even heresy itself!”

Oh man, I would pay A BILLION DOLLARS to be able to read both of those stories in full along with the 12 or so other stories in the collection! And the foreword by Mark “Turpster” Turpin! And the full glossary, and all sorts of little bits and pieces and addons! A billion dollars!

Well you don’t have to, because The Shape of Teeth epub is only seven dollars. That’s right, when it comes out on Friday, you’ll be able to buy it for only $7.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a Deluxe Edition available for $3 more, or just ten dollars. Ten dollars is cheaper than going to a movie theater in Los Angeles, and if you live in a place where going to see a movie is cheaper than ten dollars, then you should probably go see a movie. But then skip your dinner that night, because seriously, ten dollars isn’t much at all.

And what do you get with this Deluxe Edition? Why, two more stories, which you will probably love (or loathe, who knows), AND an mp3 of me, Mike Schramm, reading three of the stories from the book. What’s that? You want an excerpt of that mp3? Why, here you go friends!

What an incredible deal! What a purchase you can make to end your year! Please come back here to mikeschramm.com on Friday, and buy your copy, standard or Deluxe, of The Shape of Teeth! I will really appreciate it. Thank you very much!

Yes, the ebook you’ve been waiting for is finally, FINALLY (almost) here. The Shape of Teeth is an ebook collection of short stories, essays, and various other things I’ve written, both old and new. Some of them have been published before (some on this very site), but I’ve proofread and updated them specifically for this book. Some other things have been published on other sites, but they’ve since disappeared from the Internet. And some of the things in this book are completely new. Here’s what you’ll find if you buy it:

• A foreword by the very funny and inimitable Mark “Turpster” Turpin. Yes, it’s rare to find this man writing and not talking or doing videos, but he’s written a very excellent and fun little piece to start this book off. I appreciate it very much currently, and you will too when you read it.
• Art by the very talented gentlemen listed on the cover. They all did terrific work, and they did it out of the generosity of their hearts, only so my words could be broken up by some of their very fascinating images. You’ll love these pictures, I’m sure — some of them are in color, some in black and white, all are fascinating.
• 14 (give or take a few) stories and essays written by yours truly, ranging from the scary to the silly, from the fun to the ephemeral. Some of these are just fun little jokes or pop culture bits, some of them are more in-depth and serious, and some of them are just plain weird and will make you wonder what I was thinking. There’s something for everyone — some of them you’ll love, some of them you’ll just like, and some of them will have you shaking your head.
• A full glossary of defined terms for the uninformed (or apathetic).
• A brand new three-part story that no one, even the early readers of this book, has ever actually read before.
• Plenty of gorgeous, full color pictures like that one on the cover, all taken by someone who doesn’t exist.
• Inspirational quotes to guide your way!
• DRM-free! Not actually medically evaluated by an independent panel of doctors, but it’s probably not too dangerous for you.
• And the book is available in a very convenient and easy-to-carry EPUB format, which means you can load it up on your e-reader of choice (or just use a free app like this one to read it on your computer).

This initial release will only be available as an EPUB download, but the book will eventually be on both the iBooks and Kindle stores, pending demand. The EPUB format is very versatile, though — if you have an iPad or a Kindle, it’ll be very easy to send it to yourself and open it up.

And what will this book and all of its wisdom and charm cost you, you ask? All of this can be yours for the low, low price of Seven American Dollars. ($7). That’s right — on December 30th, 2011, you’ll be able to come right back to this page, pay $7 via credit card or other available forms of payment TBD, and this ebook file is yours to do with as you please.

BUT WAIT! That’s not all!

That book sounds incredible, you say. How could it get any better?! Well let me tell you friend: it can. Because you could spend $7 on the book itself. OR, you could buy the Deluxe Edition of the ebook for just $3 more, which will land you at a nice round price of $10. And what does the Deluxe Edition get you?

• An exclusive written story, never before published, which didn’t get included in the ebook itself. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of this one, but I’m often a very bad judge of what’s good and what isn’t, so with the Deluxe Edition, you can get this one and read it for yourself! Maybe you’ll like it.
• Also, an exclusive essay, which is about Lindsay Lohan. It’s one of the first things I wrote that went viral, and it is pretty funny, if a little dated.
• AND you’ll get the real prize here, which is a special MP3 audiobook version of three of the stories from The Shape of Teeth. You can hear me, Mike Schramm, reading these stories in my very own voice, with all of the inflections, pronunciations, and tones that I intended while writing them. If you like my podcasts, this will be fun — it’s like podcasting, only I’ve written all of the words I’ll be saying.
• Plus, I will appreciate you as a good friend. And, you’ll get first dibs on anything else I put out ever (which, according to plans, will probably be iPhone apps, or more books, or who knows what).

Boy, when you put it that way, who wouldn’t want to just go ahead and spend the $10, right? That’s cheaper than most meals these days — skip lunch and read a book! All of this will be available to the public on December 30th, 2011, so stay tuned and get your wallets ready until then. Thanks for your patience! It’s finally coming out!

Right now, it seems like the haters are ruling things over there, as only a couple of movie choices have positive votes on them. I figured that even before the liveblog starts, I would give you my opinion of a few of the choices so you can have some context.

Currently, the first season of the Walking Dead is winning. I probably won’t watch the whole first season, and I’m actually currently watching that series on my own — I think I’m up to episode 3. So I’d probably just do two episodes of that if that wins. I’ve seen both Tron Legacy and Scott Pilgrim, but those might be fun to watch because I actually went on the junkets of both of those, interviewing the actor and directors about the movies. So I might actually have something interesting to say about those if they win. I own the DVD for Princess Mononoke, so I’ve obviously seen it a few times, and I do have things to say about anime. I also own the DVD of Super Troopers, and I actually met those guys once back at Ithaca College. I’ve seen Kick-Ass once, and I haven’t seen any of the other movies on the list at the moment — some of them look good, some of them not so much.

So there’s a little context. I’m heading out for a couple of hours now, so there’s plenty of time to put some votes and suggestions in over there. If The Walking Dead wins and someone else wants to suggest an episode for me to watch and commentate on, then I’ll choose the most highly rated one, otherwise I’ll just pick one myself. Good luck voting! Thanks for all your involvement so far — this is already fun for me. I’ll be back in this post later on this evening to type up the winner as I watch it live.

0:00 All right — the winner is The Walking Dead, season 1. As I said, I don’t have time to do the whole thing, and I’m in two episodes already, so I’m going to do episodes three and four. I’ll recap them and give you my opinions on the episode as I watch it live here. The whole thing should take 1:30 (two episodes, 45 minutes each), so that’s what the clock is.

I will say to begin that I think The Walking Dead show is pretty good. It’s well shot and well produced, but I haven’t yet been blown away by the writing or the characters (remember, I’m two episodes in). I’ve heard multiple people say that the series never lived up to the potential of the pilot, and I generally agree with that sentiment so far. It makes sense: You really have to be special if you want to use zombies and get something new done, and while The Walking Dead is a strong setting and has strong characters, we all kind of know zombies already. I am a huge fan of the comic books, I should say, too: I think there, the timing and even the scares can be pulled off a little bit better from panel to panel. But we’ll see — maybe I’ll see something in these two episodes that really sells me on the series.

0:01 This episode is called Tell it to the Frogs. I remember in the books that Sheriff Rick (that’s his name, right?) does eventually make it to the camp at some point, so I presume that will happen fairly soon here. There is no “Last time on The Walking Dead” on Netflix, but last I remember (spoilers!), the racist dude was left on top of the department store, and the Sheriff was exiting Atlanta with a van full of minorities and a really happy guy in a sports car.

And hey, we start this episode with Mr. Racist right again. I kind of thought his was a one-shot story, but I guess they did drop some tools out on the roof last episode, so I guess there’s more of him to tell about.

Aw, he’s delirious, and his wrists are all cut up. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Mr. Racist? Because I don’t. He’s racist, remember? Is it possible that there’s a racist with a heart of gold? “Hey guys, I really hate black people and mexicans, but boy … sometimes I just really need a friend, you know?”

2:08: Racist guy finally remember he’s at the top of an apartment building full of zombies chained to a pipe. He’s crying for Jesus. Would it be more poetic if these zombies didn’t used to be white people? “I deserve it,” he says. Man, they’re really trying to make you feel bad for the poor racist. I … still don’t?

4:01 What is he yelling? “I ain’t gonna start begging now,” I guess. “Don’t you worry about me begging ever.” How self sufficient. And here are the title credits. I really like the credits, actually — I saw that one shot of the empty highway even before the show was done shooting, and I was like, yup, that looks about right. I wonder why the title words show up the way they do. Maybe it’s like a zombie, shambling towards you? Left, then right, then left. The … Dead… Walking.

Now’s as good a time as any to tell you what I think about zombies. There are two things about zombies that really interest me in telling stories and entertainment. One is that they’re pretty much the perfect horror mechanic — they’re the living (ok, unliving) embodiment of all kinds of human fears. The main one is death, and that’s a fear that’s universal no matter who you are or where you’re from. No matter who you happen to be, death is coming for you, it’s inevitable, and when zombies start showing up, death isn’t just a quiet moan outside that people try and avoid talking about, it’s also trying to kick in the door and get to every last one of you. Zombie movies are also very much not just about your own death, but about the death of loved ones — every “oh no, he’s been bitten!” moment in a zombie movie is really about dealing with losing those closest to you. The premiere of Walking Dead, that story about the guy and his son trying to get over the wife/mother’s death, is about moving on and letting go of the people you love when bad things happen to them, which we’ll all have to deal with at some point and of course which we’re all anxious about. And then of course there are the other fears, like biological threats, creepy crawling hands, and all of that other stuff.

The other interesting thing about zombies is something I first heard someone (I don’t remember who, sorry) say about zombies in video games. Zombies are a human analog, in that they’re a way to show a lot of fun and exciting gory stuff, without actually doing anything bad to humans. The sheriff in WD can, for example, walking down the street, shoot five people right in the head, stuff an axe in the neck and forehead of five more, and then rip the head off of a woman and run away into a building. If he does that to real people, he’s a mass murderer and a maniac, but if he does that to zombies, he’s a real hero who’s just barely survived some major danger. Zombies let you do stuff like cut heads off and blow out brains, and even people who’s normally be sickened out by stuff like that if they saw it in a Human Centipede or Saw movie, think it’s awesome.

Oh hey, they just showed the racist’s name in the credits, and it’s Michael Rooker! I totally forgot — I saw Michael Rooker last year at Treyarch when they were doing promotion for the Black Ops zombie map that he stars in, and he was quite a character. He was supposed to be playing the map, but he wasn’t interested in actually playing Call of Duty — instead, he was drinking the free booze like crazy, and telling crude stories about women to the Activision PR guys. Unfortunately, I don’t remember any of the stories, but I do remember that Rooker was not kidding around about all of the various things he’d done to and then said about women. Lots of cursing. I thought about interviewing him for Joystiq, then decided against it and just talked to the devs for a bit.

4:44 One of the guys in the van says “Nobody’s going to be sad he didn’t come back” (about Rooker — now that he has a name, I kind of do care about him) ” … except maybe Darryl, his brother.” How convenient. He’s got a brother that we’re going to meet when they get back to the camp. I’m still not down with this — the guy was an unredeemable racist last episode, and the only reason he’s still there is because the fat dude dropped the key. That’s basically luck. And while I wouldn’t really put the guy to death, karma says he deserved it, and I ain’t fighting with karma.

5:33 Here’s the Sheriff’s wife and kid, hanging out with their would-be dad. “If you think this is bad,” says fake dad, “Wait until you start shaving!” Oh, that’s cute, he’s trying to be a father figure. I would love for this kid to not buy it at all, but of course he does. I don’t like this guy, I don’t like this kid, and honestly, don’t really like this lady.

I like the Sheriff, though!

7:12 The car is heading into the camp, still ringing with that alarm. I don’t buy that — don’t alarms shut off, especially when the car is turned on? It’d be funny if that alarm never, ever shuts off — five years later these people are still living out in the woods, all deaf, with a car alarm going off.

Also, the alarm was originally used as a lure for the zombies, if I recall correctly. Wouldn’t the people at the camp be angry that it’s still going? I guess they are yelling to turn it off, but it would have already attracted everything walking from miles around, no?

Oh — old soldier guy agrees with me. Him I like, too.

8:33 Should I be a little wary about the fact that the first camp the Sheriff runs into happens to be the exact one with his wife and kid in it? That’s what happens in the books, and I guess you could explain it away and say that there’s only one camp near Atlanta and so of course that’s the one that he’d end up at, but Atlanta’s a big city.

I should probably be more sentimental about this. This is a big scene, I guess. I like how it takes the lady (I can’t remember her name, but I think the actor’s name is Robin — she was in Prison Break) only like 30 seconds to get to “oh crap, I left a coma patient in the hospital and then shacked up with his buddy.” She’s so overcome with emotion — except when she has to remember to foreshadow exactly what happened.

I probably shouldn’t be so hard on the writers — the father stuff was just shorthand to show new viewers that this dude has moved into this family’s life a little too soon, I guess. But it doesn’t really endear me to the show.

11:40 See, this is why I like the sheriff — he’s smart. He understands, he’s honest, he’s our hero. When bad stuff happens at this camp (and trust me, I know it will, and not just because I’ve read the books), it won’t be because the sheriff did something dumb. It’ll be because these petty people with their stupid problems will cause all kinds of trouble. Look at Robin, all shifty. Leave the drama behind, woman!

Also, the soldier won’t mess anything up, either.

And here we go — one of the rednecks is a little too cold, wants the fire hotter. Shane apparently figures he hasn’t dealt with enough trouble (what with his surrogate wife and kid being retaken by a dude in a coma), and decides to pick a fight. Me? It’s late, we’ve had a rough day — I’d let the redneck light his fire and just let him get eaten when the zombies show up. But nope, Shane’s in a fussy mood because he can’t go hunting for frogs with the kid.

13:47 Pragmatic soldier brings Darryl up. Everybody claims they should tell the truth, soldier guy says no. Uh oh — I don’t agree with soldier guy on this; why lie? If Darryl gets angry, well, there are plenty of rooftops and pipes left in Atlanta, right?

The fat guy says that racist is probably still alive since he chained the door to the roof, and “that’s on us.” Actually, dude — it’s probably on the guy who dropped the key, right? That’s you, right? I wouldn’t start bringing “us” into this situation. “That’s on me,” is what you should say there.

And he’s racist.

15:44 Sheriff loves his kid. Don’t see how — what’s that kid done?

Then he jumps in bed with Robin. Did they even wash the sheets before Shane headed out? Because that’s funky.

“I want to take it all back,” she says. “The anger, and the bad times, and the mistakes.” Sheriff ain’t havin it. Also, it’s a little shameless and obvious to use “cocky” as an innuendo. Come on now, writers.

There’s Shane. I knew we’d get to him sleeping out in the rain. What’s he want? Go with another man’s lady, get burned, brother. I’d tell him to go talk to the sisters, but both of them are pretty annoying.

21:59 Sheriff can’t stop thinking about the racist, but before he gets the ok to play hero, we get a zombie sighting. I wonder if the writers have a time limit on how long they can go on this show without showing zombies. If I was in charge, I would. You’re one of the only shows on TV where you can show zombies nonstop? Do it! I’d care a lot more about the “cocky” scene if they were also getting attacked by zombies at the same time. Just saying.

They beat the zombie down — and then keep beating it. Guys, guys, guys! Chill out! It’s twice dead now. This is one reason why I liked Shawn of the Dead so much — in that one, they figured out that you just have to hit the brain, and then you’re good to go. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been in Walking Dead since this all started, but you think they’d be more efficient at killing zombies by now than just having five guys with blunt objects stand around and beat on it, no?

Like, for example, use a crossbow like this guy who just walked out of the woods. This guy’s loud, disrespectful, sweaty and dirty, and violent. Must be Darryl? I guess he actually does know about the brains, but I also like how they say he can’t cut the deer meat off, but then he pulls a bloody arrow out of the zombie’s head and just carries it off. I guess he’s not going to lick it clean or anything, but wouldn’t that be just as infected?

Also, speaking of questions, are they worried about the zombie deer at all? Maybe the deer was dead from arrows before the zombie bit it. But I’m still not clear on what exactly happened in this world — maybe they should stand around and beat the deer to death too, just to be sure. And then maybe-Darryl can shoot it through the eye, too.

25:32 Oh, he’s calling for the racist. It is Darryl.

Also, the sheriff’s name is Rick Grimes. Darryl fights about as well as his brother, which means the Sheriff counters and beats him down.

27:23 I forgot they call zombies “geeks” in this show. Not really a fan of that — I don’t think anyone in this universe so far, not even the asian guy who loves his sports car, has ever shown any awareness that they’re actually in a zombie apocalypse. Don’t you kind of have to do that now?

I guess Walking Dead is getting away with it, and yes, I guess it might make things meta if the characters have foreknowledge of zombies and their behaviors and weaknesses, but is it weird that zombies show up in a universe where there’s apparently no cultural references to the zombie mythos? In Walking Dead’s universe, that means there was no Night of the Living Dead, no 28 Days, and no I am Legend (originally written, by the way, in 1954). Zombies are also based on voodoo mythology — is there no voodoo in the American South of this universe?

If this is all true, and you subscribe to the idea of multiple universes with infinite possibilities, this might mean that if our own world ever actually gets to its apocalypse, it just might be some thing we’ve never actually imagined before. That would kind of suck, because whatever disaster awaited us would likely have no actual cultural meaning attached to it. As I said before, zombies come preloaded with all sorts of human anxieties and fears, but if you’d never heard of zombies and they suddenly showed up, you might not understand what they were all about.

Perhaps I’m getting too heady. Back to the show.

28:00 “The hell with all ya’ll,” says a teary Darryl. “I’ll go get him.” The sheriff is going back too. I agree that this point that it’s the right thing for the sheriff to do as a hero, but are we al forgetting that the racist is a racist?

Huh, Shane remembers. Good for him. “We left him like an animal caught in a trap,” says the sheriff. Do we all buy that the sheriff really wants to save him now, but didn’t back when they were actually leaving him there? I guess it makes sense in terms of moving the show’s plot forward, but if he really feels this way now, I don’t really see him leaving the city in the first place. As soon as they said “Oh right we left the racist on the roof,” that would probably have been the time for him to talk about how nobody should die that way, right?

30:48 The wife and kid don’t want him to go. What are they going to do? Just live the rest of their lives in the woods?

I guess the show is doing a good job trying to create a tangled issue here — at the very least, the writers are trying to create a little drama, and then putting characters squarely on one side or the other. That’s commendable, and it works. The characters are doing a nice job of trying to lay out each side clearly. But I’m not down with the premise; I thought the racist guy’s story was done, and I don’t want him back anyway. What are they going to do when they find him, bring him back to the camp? He was violent, stupid, angry, completely belligerent, and that was before he got left on top of a roof with a bunch of zombies.

32:56 Pragmatic soldier guy is pragmatic. I guess the van is being set up for the next episode’s central conflict.

34:24 “Four men, four rounds. Let’s just hope that four is your lucky number.” Shane’s being a real douchebag. And yes, that’s what I meant to say. He’s not wrong about leaving the racist behind, but dude, you don’t have to be so cocky about it.

35:24 Wait! The kid shows signs of intelligence! “Think about it, Mom. Everything that’s happened to him so far, nothing’s killed him yet.” Now that’s some solid thinking, kid. Glad to see you got past the “I don’t want you to go” nonsense from before.

They park on railroad tracks (sure, that’s convenient) and decide to walk into the city. Come on now. There was a construction site that was zombie free last time! I think maybe they blew the gates open on that, but there wasn’t anyone living in there — wouldn’t it still be clean?

I do like the music, though. The best part of this series is the subtlety. It’s very Japanese in its horror: Western horror movies go for big reveals and big scares, but Eastern horror movies (which have leaked over into a lot of Hollywood movies lately) show you the danger and let you discover it for yourself. Like The Ring — Eastern horror movies will open up a closet door, and hold a shot there for ten or fifteen seconds, and it takes you about that long to realize that THERE’S A KID WITH GLOWING EYES IN THERE STARING AT YOU. Western horror movies would just show the protagonist opening the closet and freaking out. Walking Dead isn’t quite as subtle as supernatural horror, but it is careful and slow with the way it reveals and scares, and I do like that.

36:25 Shane took the kid to catch frogs!!! Unbelievable. “Listen kid, I know your dad who you thought was dead just rolled back into your life after I hooked up with your mom, and yes, I understand that your father went into the city to fight zombies and save a racist even against your wishes, and you might never see him again. But hey, how about that frog catching?” Stupid.

I hope Shane gets eaten. I don’t remember what happens to him in the comics — I think I remember the sheriff being responsible somehow.

37:44 Haha, practical black lady is questioning “the division of labor here.” Us too, lady. Us too.

Oh man and just when I start to like her, they give the girls a sassy girl talk chat. The annoying girl misses her vibrator, and “me too,” the scandalous old lady says before they all start cackling like a bunch of hens. Come on. I hope they all get eaten.

Fortunately, the redneck breaks it up. He is exactly right — they are definitely not in a comedy club. They are washing clothes in a dirt pond. There isn’t a cocktail waitress or a goofy poster in sight. Right on, redneck.

40:04 Robin has major issues with Shane. Apparently she completely hates him all of a sudden, but I’m not sure why that would be. Guilt, I guess? Oh, apparently he told her that the sheriff died. Poor Shane. He’s totally getting eaten, before or after somebody kills him.

Darryl pulls another blood-covered arrow from a zombie’s head as they go through the department store. I wonder if it’s the same arrow that he used on the other zombie.

41:45 Uh oh, annoying blonde #1 is picking a fight with redneck. Haha his job “sure ain’t listening to some smart-mouth uppity bitch.” Oh, redneck. Saying that stuff right in the middle of an abandoned quarry with five girls who were just talking about how much they miss their vibrators? Nice move, buddy!

It’s all or nothing with these writers — either you’re completely and totally lovable and vulnerable in a world full of soul-crushing threats, or you’re a big talkin’ moron who doesn’t know when to shut up. The only guy in the middle ground is the asian dude, but at least he got to drive the car around on the empty freeway for a while.

42:33 It’s sexual revolution all up in this quarry! Yes, at this point, redneck has hit his lady and bought his way right into evil territory, but that’s fine — time for Shane to redeem himself and do something at least a little heroic. Shane takes out a little frustration, and beats the redneck like a deer-chewing zombie.

43:49 Show’s almost over, let’s get ourselves to a cliffhanger! The Lucky Four army finally makes its way to the roof, and … The racist is gone. Well, most of him is gone.

You might says he’s been disarmed. Looks like that hacksaw came in handy. That pipe sure lost its grip on him. Hope he got his severance pay! I’m just kidding — what a performance by Michael Rooker. Let’s give him a nice hand, everybody!

That’s all I got. And credits — let’s start episode 4.

0:00 The annoying sisters somehow found a canoe and decided to take a little fishing trip in the canyon. They’re arguing about what their dad knows about fishing, but guys — THIS TALK IS NOT REALLY ABOUT FISHING. It’s about the differences between these two despite the fact that they’re sisters. See how that works? If you ever have to write a scene, just keep that in mind — make your characters use words about whatever they’re doing, but have them actually talk about what they mean to each other! It’s like magic.

“Because he knew we were so different. He knew that you needed to catch the fish, and I needed to throw them back,” says the younger sister. See how this works? Also, this whole episode (called “Vatos”) is going to be about how characters either need to keep what they’ve got or throw it away for the future. Trust me. We’re only two minutes in, but I’m a writer. I know.

The girl who wants to throw things away got a bite. Which means by the end of this episode, we’re probably going to be throwing a lot of things away.

3:49: Yup, the weird guy who’s with pragmatic soldier guy is digging a grave while dramatic music plays, and then we jump to the credits. I knew he was going to play a part in this episode — he was a little too excited about rubber hoses last time around. Nobody gets that excited about rubber hoses, and doesn’t have a lot more to say about them.

Then we jump to a little crossbow/bullet mexican standoff on the racist’s rooftop. Not sure why Darryl is so bummed. Maybe he thinks they ate every part of the racist but the hand.

We do know that they cut the door open when they entered, and there weren’t any other zombies around, so the racist must have headed off the roof. They follow the blood and — fire escape? Oh no — another door. Wait a minute, if they only went back because they were sure the racist was alive, and the black guy was sure the racist was alive because he chained the door up, what about the other door? Wouldn’t he have remembered “Well, I chained one door, but the other’s completely open — he’s probably dead, no need to go back.” I think he would have.

7:06 “Jim” is the pragmatic soldier’s friend’s name. Always the pragmatist, PS tells him to drink some water, at least. Look, PS, he’s just really frustrated about that rubber hose. What if the van doesn’t come back, and you have to take the RV somewhere? That hose fit perfectly!

Racist apparently escaped into a room where there JUST HAPPENS to be a portrait of a bunch of rich white guys on the wall. Whew! Nice catch for him, huh? He must have felt right at home walking into there. “Hello, good sir, welcome to the boardroom! Have a seat here and let me just shake your — oh.”

8:37 The annoying ladies caught a bunch of fish, apparently. If only they’d caught a vibrator, too — then everybody would be really happy.

9:51 This is a big department store building. Apparently the racist cauterized his hand on a stove, and then jumped out down a fire escape. I knew it!

It’s probably worth noting that I don’t remember any of this racist stuff from the comics — as far as I remember, they went straight out to the camp, and then things went crazy out there. I guess this all works in the show’s universe, but I still don’t like that premise that they left him and then came back. I wonder if the first two episodes were written together, shopped around as the pilot, and then these episodes came later. That would definitely add to what I said in the very beginning (man, this is long, right?) that the show doesn’t really live up to its initial bang.

The Lucky Four are convinced by Darryl to head out into Atlanta and find racist Merle. I gotta say — I don’t know where or how they’re going to find him. That’s a real stumper.

11:53 “Why you diggin, Jim? You headin to China?” Shane asks a creepy Jim. What did Robin ever see in this guy that she jumps in bed with him right after her husband supposedly dies?

Jim just wants to dig some graves, people. Man. Just leave him alone! Can’t a guy dig a bunch of graves and scare a couple of kids in peace? Let him dig!

Then Jim brings up the whole deal with Shane beating up the redneck, and says he’s wrong for getting involved in someone else’s marriage. Shane? Involved in someone else’s marriage? NO WAY. Robin should speak up here — Shane would never ever insert himself into someone else’s marr– oh. Oh. Never mind then.

13:34 Shane attacks Jim. And handcuffs him?!? Holy crap, people! Just let the guy dig some graves so he can deal with the death of his family! Why’s everybody so concerned about Jim hurting some dirt?

14:34 Asian guy is suggesting that he and Darryl can deal with the guns better than the Lucky Four all together. I agree — I should learn Asian guy’s name, because I think he’s beating out the sheriff as my favorite character.

Although, we just learned that he delivered pizzas before the apocalypse, which means we’re learning something lovable and endearing about him right before he’s about to undertake a dangerous mission. That … is probably bad.

16:08 The Asian (sorry — Korean) guy wakes up a zombie who was just sleeping in a car.

I’ll repeat that: A zombie was just sitting there sleeping in a car.

“Muuurrhmmmm… brainnnsss… hey, guys — I’m just, I’m getting a little crampy here. I’ve been shambling around for a few days now, and boy are my dogs barking. Does anybody — does anybody just mind if I just sit in this car for a second? Just gonna take a load off here, just for a little bit. That’s cool, right?”

“Boy, this carseat is kinda comfy. I know we don’t need to sleep any more guys, brains and all that, but I just — Look, I’m just going to close my eyes for a second here, guys. Well at least one of them — my eyelid got ripped off on the other one. Man, I’m really tired. I’m just … I’m just gonna…. lay my head… zzzz… brains…..”

“Oh hey! Was that an asian guy running past me?! Or was he Korean?”

16:48 Spanish-speaking kid shows up out of nowhere, his gangster buddies are right behind him. And Korean guy gets kidnapped. I knew it!

I like that the sheriff gets his hat back. Listen guys, I’ve never been in a zombie apocalypse myself, but I do know that if one goes down, there’s nothing you could really use more than a really solid hat. It protects your eyes and skin from the sun, keeps the sweat off your brow, and it makes you look darn stylish while you’re burying an axe in some dead girl’s head. Yup, there’s nothing better to have during a zombie plague than a hat. Oh, and maybe a big bag of guns. That helps, too.

18:34 JIM’S BEEN TIED TO A TREE! Listen, there are a lot of things you can do in a zombie apocalypse — you can steal cars and planes, you can kill zombies all you want, and according to Shane, you can even beat up rednecks and tell women that their husbands are dead to sleep with them.

But you hear me now people: Don’t you ever, EVER, dig a bunch of graves. Not on Shane’s watch. No siree — nobody’s digging graves at this camp! Take that, Jim, you grave digger.

18:54 “How long are you going to keep me like this,” asks Jim.

“Well, I don’t think you’re a danger to yourself or others,” says Shane. “But you better stay away from that dirt out there. It doesn’t appreciate being moved all around with a shovel for the purpose of burying dead people. YOU GOT THAT!”

Seriously, Shane. Digging graves. Leave him alone.

20:08 Jim thinks the sheriff is tough as nails? Didn’t Darryl think his racist brother was tough as nails too? Nails must be extra tough in this universe.

21:21 Darryl just called the mexican gang “this little turd and his douchebag friends.” Hey now — did you really mean to call him a douchebag? Oh, you did? Oh, never mind then.

Turd’s feisty, but he freaks out when he sees what Merle the racist left behind. He fell down on the floor there, sheriff — why don’t you give him a hand up? Turd’s in a gang though — he’s his own man, not interested in handouts.

I got more, you guys. Don’t worry, they’re coming.

22:27 The Unlucky Three head over to the gang’s HQ and get told about Guillermo, who’s apparently the leader of the gang. I kind of think it would be great if it was the Guillermo from Weeds leading the gang, but nope. Guillermo looks like one of the kids from The Wire, though he’s not as great an actor.

Uh oh, my writer’s intuition is kicking in. We haven’t heard from the racist in a while, which means he’ll probably show up at some point here, just as things are getting to a boil point with the gang. We’ll see. Along those lines, the writers aren’t really nailing the whole “keep things or throw them away” angle, but we’ve got Jim hanging on to his family and their deaths, and the Unlucky Three catching Turd, and trying to decide whether to hang on to him or the guns. Nobody’s had to make a real choice yet, but I guess that’s where we’re headed.

25:12 Turd’s name is Miguel, but I’ll keep calling him Turd. Asian guy’s name is Glen, so I’ll call him Glen.

And again, writers do a nice job here of putting the sheriff in a tough position, and using the black guy and Darryl to really hash out the two sides of the issue. That’s something I don’t always do in my writing enough — characters who have to make a choice should really get both sides of the issue explored for them or buy them, and that always makes the eventual decision that much more of a payoff.

28:57 I wonder what this Mexican gang’s story of the zombie apocalypse is like. What did they do when they first found out zombies were everywhere? What have they had to eat all this time? They’re in some completely outfitted auto shop, and the folks in the camp outside the city had to strip that muscle car for parts? And I thought the city was completely abandoned anyway?!?

Also, if I was a head writer/producer on this show, and I did have a rule about how long the show can go before zombies show up to fight, this episode would have already broken it. At least we have some gangster’s abuela to resolve this tough situation.

30:09 Haha, Guillermo completely folds when his grandma shows up! Unbelievable. He was going to really kill three/four men for a bunch of guns, but his grandma can tell him to back down? I don’t know, guys — I know you like this show, but that’s pretty goofy.

Oh but at least we get to see some of their story. They’ve been gardening in the backyard, apparently — they’re gardening gangstas! And there’s a nursing home! And one of the gangstas is a doctor!

Oh man, and Guillermo was in on it all along! He was joking about the dogs! But he still would have killed the sheriff! “Wouldn’t be the first time we had to.” Really? REALLY?

I don’t know guys — I think the gangsta nursing home might have just ended this show for me. It’s too goofy. “These people — the oldies? Staff took off, just left them here to die.” THE OLDIES! Come on now. Guillermo is a custodian! I guess that explains why he’s such a terrible actor.

Not buying this at all. Guillermo is explaining how mexican gangsters are willing to stay in a city crowded with zombies to protect a bunch of “oldies” in a nursing home (possibly even having to kill armed cops who come by) just because they care. No really. That’s what he’s explaining.

Maybe I take that stuff about how he’s such a terrible actor back. He literally just had to tell this show’s most unbelievable story all by himself. And this is a show where the sheriff found his family in the first camp, and a bunch of guys went back into a zombie infested city to save a racist who they accidentally left on a rooftop.

I dunno, guys. I dunno.

34:30 At least the Lucky Four are back together. About time for the racist to reappear?

Yup. “Dude, where’s our van?” “I left it right here, dude.” “Dude, where’s our van?” Oh no! Now Jim won’t ever get his rubber hose!

35:46 “I built up the rocks so the flames can be higher? See?” Yup, thanks buddy. That is clearly the argument that was tearing this camp apart. Now that the flames are higher, everybody’s going to be fine.

Notice that as Shane comes down to talk to him, he’s hanging out with the sheriff’s kid again. Sure, Robin did just say about twenty minutes ago that he should stay away from her kid and her family, but that was before JIM STARTED DIGGING GRAVES. The world really has changed, people.

“I hope you understand the need for this time out.” I had no idea Shane had a psychology degree. Need some help getting over the horrible deaths of your family? Ask Dr. Shane, MD to help you out: he’ll punch you in the face, handcuff you, tie you to a tree, and you’ll feel better in no time!

36:38 The redneck is really smashed up, and as if we needed any more reasons to dislike him, he even intones a little sexual abuse to his kid. That I obviously can’t stand for — I liked him when he was breaking up the cackling ladies who clearly WERE NOT at a comedy club, and I understood him when he just wanted to keep a hold on his family, but he’s pretty clearly due for a zombie buffet at this point.

Also, the Lucky Four apparently have to run back to camp without that van. Seriously: Jim needs that rubber hose. I hope that van gets back in one piece.

37:24 Uh oh, pragmatic soldier winds his watch every day. Get the rope, Shane! Maybe it’s not just digging graves — maybe any repetitive motion isn’t allowed here at all.

Also, hey now, pragmatic soldier, with that “I give you a mausoleum watch to remember time” joke around the campfire. This ain’t no comedy club.

39:08 Just a few minutes left! Time for a cliffhanger. Yup, little annoying sister has to pee, and clearly nothing bad can happen now.

ZOMBIES! Guys, did you forget that this show was actually about zombies? Because I almost did. The last zombie we saw was the one waking up when Glen ran past, and … that’s been about it for this whole episode! Oh, and the ones Darryl killed with his arrows.

Oh redneck Earl, we barely knew ye. All we knew about you was that you hated women and abused your family. Surely there was more to know! Maybe we can see you in another life — an undead life.

Little annoying sister gets bitten too, which means the sisters are probably about to get even more annoying. Shane gets bitten, and none too soon. Luckily, the Lucky Four reappear to save the day. Oops — guess I was wrong; little sister isn’t going to be annoying for too much longer. Big sister will have to be doubly annoying for the both of them from now on. I guess they really are different — looks like giving up the things you catch is the wrong way to go.

But man, all those zombies really came out of nowhere, right? No zombies at that camp for weeks, and then they all just start suddenly stumbling in out of the forest? It’s weird — it’s almost like something changed, like something that wasn’t there before pulled them in. Something like the fire being larger, and … OH CRAP. Thanks for nothing, fire fixer.

Also, Jim is apparently psychic. THE END.

—-

Whew! I hope you guys enjoyed that — I can’t imagine anyone is still reading this, but there you go, one and half hours of commentary. I would like to hear from you if you enjoyed this, and I especially would like to hear what you think if you happen to watch these episodes while you read this. I don’t know if this was completely successful, but I may try this again at some point — maybe I’ll make an audio commentary instead. Thanks for reading! Lates ya’ll!

I’m going to go and dig some graves.

Every time this conference meets, they do something called a “game jam,” in which all of the developers park themselves in a room with soda and snacks, and just jump into Xcode and work overnight on a brand new, original products. Some developers do it just for fun, some do it just to mess around with a new framework or check out a new feature of the language, and some of these developers have actually prototyped or even just coded games that later were actually released out for sale on the App Store. I’ve been to one of these before, but as you may have read, I recently started messing around with game development, and recently have been playing with iPhone dev as well, so I’m going to actually sit in on the game jam tonight, and try to get a working iPhone game made before I go to bed this evening.

I have no idea how it’s going to work, so I promise nothing. The theme, announced today at lunch, is “opposite,” and since I heard that theme (I tried not to come up with any ideas before they announced it, so I’m starting completely from scratch), I have narrowed down a pretty solid idea that I think I can pull off with the Cocos2D framework. It’s inspired by a few different things I’ve seen this week: It’s simple (because I’m not a very good or experienced coder — I need simple), it’s based on an old arcade game (because I went to a bar last night with old school arcade games, and really enjoyed the reminder of how pure and enjoyable old school arcade games can be), and it’s a pretty standard game with a crazy little twist (because Mike Lee said yesterday that the best ideas are 80% boring, with a nice 20% crazy frosting on top).

I’ll be liveblogging the whole process right here as I do it this evening — the game jam starts up at 8pm mountain time here in Denver, so come back here then if you want updates. I’ll be posting pictures, videos, and maybe even streaming, depending how the network connection here at the conference hotel holds up (spoiler: it probably won’t). I do want to document this, though (because I want to really test myself in terms of development, and really try to learn from it), so there will be plenty here to see if you come back later. In other words, stay tuned. This will, hopefully, be a lot of fun.

6:39pm: I’m about to head out to dinner, and then off to the game jam proper, but before I go, here’s a quick sketch I drew together in Sketches for iPhone with my original idea. As you can see, I am not an artist.

Instead of just battling with one ball, though, I had the idea that my black and white pong paddles will fight with a bunch of different balls. There will be a dynamically moving line separating the two (I’ve been meaning to mess around with the particle system in cocos2d, so hopefully I can make some black and white particles fly around and make the line sort of a “leaky vortex” kind of thing as it moves), and every time the ball passes over that line, I imagine it splitting into one of each color, as well as pushing the line a little bit to one side or the other. So the goal of the game won’t just be to keep balls from falling off the screen, but to bounce them back at the line, trying to push it back away towards the other player.

I have a few other ideas, much more murky. As you can see, some of the balls are bigger than the others — I have this idea that maybe the balls pick up steam and grow as they cross the line, which means keeping a ball bouncing for longer makes it more powerful with each bounce. Unfortunately, that would also make it more easy to keep in the air, so I can foresee some balance issues there.

I’m not sure if the opposing paddle (the white one) will be AI-driven, or an actual mirror of the black paddle, maybe requiring the player to move both his paddle and the opposite at the same time, but only trying to bounce the balls with the black one. And the other idea I have is that the line will move across the screen — it’ll start out as a relatively tame and quiet game with a black paddle and one ball on the white screen, but eventually that black vortex-y line will crawl leftward (maybe I can even do a dark humming sound effect that grows louder as the game goes on), and as it moves towards the black paddle, the player will be left with less and less room to maneuver as more and more action takes over the screen. That works with the theme too — you’ll be getting frightened by your opposite color crawling ever closer to you (even though that threatening color is the one your paddle happens to be as well).

Anyway, that’s my basic idea — we’ll have to see how that all plays out in with my very, very rudimentary coding and artistic skills. I have a feeling it’ll change a lot once I get things moving in the game; I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep it interesting and playable as just a basic Pong game, especially one that’s meant for one player rather than two (I know I could do two players on the same iPhone touch screen, but I’d rather make a single-player experience). But I think there’s enough to start with — I’ll go grab some dinner, and will update when I’ve actually sat down to start coding. If you’re around and watching, let me know what you think on Twitter, please!

8:22pm: Here we go. Xcode up and running, cocos2d Hello World built. First thing I’m going to do is create a new scene in cocos2d, and then a front and back layer. If this game works out, I will probably have a few different scenes, and I think it’ll be worth it to break from the template right now.

I’ll try to remember to update this often — from what I know about these things, it’s easy to get involved in the work and forget to document it. So I’ll try to make a note here every 20 minutes or so. Will set my iPhone timer if I forget.

9:07pm: Ran into my first issue — had to set the background color of the first layer to white. Got some good help from developer friend Markus (@markusn on Twitter) who I’m sure I’ll be bothering quite a bit this evening.

9:32pm: Had an issue trying to instantiate my first paddle, because I was trying to call a method called “paddleWithTexture” by using the selector “initWithTexture.” I messed around with it for a good five minutes, then asked Markus to come over and check it for me — with him looking over my shoulder, I ran to check the name of the method right away, and ended up looking stupid. I told him I was dumb and sorry for wasting his time, and he shook his head at me and said that kind of thing happened all the time — “you could spend two hours on stuff like that.” Coding is tough for everybody, apparently.

11:06pm: Speaking of spending two hours on something, after way too long I’ve finally got a ball and a paddle moving on the iPhone:

Had an issue with the ball not getting put in my ball array (apparently you have to allocate the memory for an object before you use it — go figure!), and I still have a problem of the paddle going off screen when it reaches the edges (not sure what the deal is there — maybe a float/int problem). But at least the ball and paddle are in there and working, collision works as well.

Next up, I’m going to try to build that line that goes across the screen — on one side, it’ll be black, and on the other it’ll be white. Then I have to figure out a way for the ball to interact with it when it crosses over (so you don’t see a black ball on a black backgound). We’ll see.

12:34am: I have been forgetting to update, obviously. I have the line going across the screen, and it’s easy enough to have the ball interact with it, but now I have a problem. Changing an image on a sprite is a pretty easy task — if you use a spritesheet, which I’ve never actually done. The other devs are telling me it’s a tough topic to learn at a game jam, and they say I should do a more brute force approach, but I’m torn. I should learn spritesheets at some point, right? Still working on it.

3:00am: Still working. This is a slog — I’m getting dragged down into stuff that’s a little bit over my head. I’m juggling a few different problems, but I am getting worn out. The game looks about like I want it to look, but the gameplay’s not quite close enough yet to start balancing it — I can’t seem to get the ball textures to switch color, and if I can’t get a white ball on a black background and vice versa, it’s not really playable. I’ll give it a little while longer yet.

4:29am: Ok, I’m going to call it. I’m not anywhere near done, though the game actually looks and plays somewhat all right:

What I did:
-I got sprites on a screen, and got them to move. The black paddle is moved by touch, and the white paddle currently just follows the black paddle, though I’m not sure if I’m going to leave it that way or not. But all of that was my own programming. The black section that crosses over the view is also all my own programming, which I was pretty impressed that I pulled off without any help.
-The ball does change color when it crosses the line, which was a big win for me. Huge thanks to both Markus Nigrin and Ray Wenderlich for helping out with that one — Ray’s site is great if you ever want to learn iPhone programming or cocos2d.
-I got collision working, which wasn’t so much me (though I did spend a good hour or so on it) as it was a developer named Max, who actually makes the great Soundrop app. He’s working on some really interesting stuff, and he (with just a little bit of input from me) really knocked the collision on this one out of the park.
-And I learned a heck of a lot, both by working on my own game and by watching and talking to the other devs here. I definitely feel like I’ve done quite a bit tonight, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot this week in general about how people deal with this stuff.

What I have to do yet:
-I never did get other balls to spawn, but it seems easy enough — with another hour or so of development, I’m sure I could get that going. That would really make the game more interesting and really bring the thing together.
-And the final piece of gameplay would be making all of those balls actually move the divide back and forth. That seems fairly easy too – I probably will implement it at some point in the future.
-I didn’t get to do any particle work — I really thought I’d get a chance to do that tonight. Oh well — I’ll take a look at it when I get home. All the devs here told me it would only be a few lines of code, once I actually figured it out.
-And I didn’t get to make a title screen, which was probably hoping for a little much anyway. I got all dragged down in the collision stuff, when I thought I’d already solved those problems in code. My biggest issue with the collision turned out to be that my paddle code was written for a horizontal paddle, so when I moved to a vertical paddle, it introduced a whole bunch of issues. And then when I mirrored the paddle on the other side, that broke a lot of stuff too. If I’d had better collision code in the first place, I could have gotten a lot more done.

Oh well. Definitely not a failure, but I thought I’d have more to show. Oh well. Stay tuned — I do see myself working on this one in the future, and maybe it’ll even turn into an app that people can play. I don’t have a developer account, otherwise I’d just release it for free, but if I pick up a dev account in the future and this gets into a form where people can play it, I’ll let you guys check it out. Have a good night! I’m off to pass out (and then wake up in three hours for another day of conferencing and then a long flight home to LA. Gooooood times.

Update: After a few more tweaks, here’s the game in action:

It’s not done yet, but it is actually playable. I may still mess around on it a bit, and if I ever get those last few things done, I may even try to release it out as a free game (if I end up spending the $99 to be a real app developer). I don’t know how fun it actually is, so I’d have to do some game balancing, but at the very least, if I added touch controls to that opposing paddle, it might be a pretty interesting two player game. We’ll see.

The first dream I had was publishing a book, and I can tell you that The Shape of Teeth (as I’m calling it — see last post) is coming along quite well. It’s been delayed again (sorry!), but I’ve got a few really talented and really nice artists putting together some art for me, and once that’s all set, I’ll assemble it and it will be ready for your reading enjoyment and pleasure in the ebook reader of your choice.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to follow another dream of mine, which is to actually develop some games. I still love writing, and I still plan to be a writer for the rest of my life. But just like some people build things out of wood or paint for fun on the weekends, I want to really try my hand at making some solid video games. This is one that I’ve struggled with for a while — to make really solid games, you not only have to be really good at math, and really understand computers, but you have to be good at art, and know how to have fun, and a whole bunch of other talents, some of which I don’t actually have.

Still, I’m driven to do this, so after a few unsuccessful starts with coding in various languages (did I mention that you have to be really good at math? I’m generally not), I decided to get all the way back to basics. When I was a kid, I used to literally code in BASIC, which is the old “20 GOTO 10″ language that we all probably learned in school. And I wasn’t bad at that one — I programmed an address book, and some text adventures, and even a maze game in Extended Color BASIC on my Tandy computer. But since then, programming has all moved from messing around with variables in a pretty linear manner, to object-oriented programming. Now, you don’t get a $STRING and output it, you build an object that will input or output a string object whenever certain conditions are met. At least that’s how I think it works — I can’t seem to wrap my head around the structure and thinking behind object oriented stuff. It’s too complex for me.

So I decided to shoot low — I poked around for ways to build games without actually programming them, and I eventually landed on the bottom rung of the ladder, with a system called Scratch. Scratch was developed at MIT as an educational tool for kids — it’s as basic as programming gets. Instead of coding scripts, you just drag and drop certain visual rules together, and then those rules move images around, and if you put it all together in the right way, you can make a game. So I decided to sit down and play with this a little while back, and after about an hour or so, I had made my first game, simply called Cat Jumps Over The Dog. And here, in fact, it is:

Just press the spacebar to jump over the dog, as many times as you can. The record is somewhere around 130, I think.

Simple? Yes, but that was kind of the point — it was simply an experiment to see if I could build a real, working game, no matter how easy or how dumb it actually was. And I tweeted that out, and a few people actually played it. I even got beta-style feedback — players told me that seeing “You Lose,” even when they had really tried, was disappointing. And I got some good feedback on the flags in the background (which were the only part of the game that I actually drew myself — everything else in there was clipart from the Scratch app). It was at this point that I realized, holy crap, that I had made a game that people had then gone on to play. Dream, here I come!

I decided to ramp things up with Scratch a little bit then — the system is really simple, but I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to push the limits a little harder. I’ve always had an idea for a 2D game where you see a car driving from above, and you can pick up ammo and fire weapons at enemy cars — sort of like Spy Hunter, but without all of the instant reflexes required, and all of the crashing and danger. I worked for about a week and a half with Scratch, and even drew some of my own graphics for the game (which are terrible — I have never in my life had an aptitude for art or design, unfortunately). I used Scratch’s in-app music system to create some sounds for the game, and I implemented a few tough things to do in Scratch (you’d be surprised at how hard it is to determine collisions between objects sometimes, or make a van that spawns mines stop spawning them whenever it’s dead). The result of that work was my second game, Race Attack! (The title of which, my friends later informed me, had some unintended overtones of racial violence. Totally unintended! It’s just a game about racing and attacking.) You can use the arrow keys to steer your car, and then the spacebar to fire missles (when you have ammo).

You’ll notice that in that one, the end of the game always says “Game Over” — except (hint hint) when you actually win. I programmed an actual ending to the game, unlike Cat Jumps Over The Dog, because people asked for one — just score 50 points to see it in action. And I couldn’t really resist throwing a fun nod in from one of my favorite games, Metroid.

Man, I had a heck of a good time making both of those games. Sure, you could argue that they’re boring and terrible, and that the art sucks. But I was overjoyed to make an actual game with an actual set of rules that people could actually play, and even get better at, and even succeed with. Even though Scratch is completely visual (and meant for children), I found parts of my brain that I hadn’t used in years lighting up and sparking like crazy: a problem would arise without a clear and convenient solution, and I’d turn it over in my head, even when I was away from the computer, and mess around with the code and try different things, until I finally would land on something that worked. And then I’d work on that thing, and make it better, and eventually I’d come up with a solution that wasn’t just clear and convenient, but actually quite elegant. In other words, I was coding, you guys! I was really doing it!

My success with Scratch has inspired me to go even further — I decided to move up the chain just a little bit to Gamesalad, which is another visual development system, though one that’s a little closer to code than Scratch’s Playschool-style development. Yes, I’m not really coding still, but I have found that Gamesalad’s system of actors is actually closer to object-oriented programming than I’ve ever come before, not to mention that I actually understand what I’m doing. Plus, it has the benefit of what’s supposed to be a pretty easy port over to iOS and even the Mac App Store, so while everything I’ve done over there has only been in HTML 5 so far, presumably I could eventually take a game to an actual commercial enterprise without a lot of trouble.

My first game on Gamesalad is going to be an inside joke from The Incredible Podcast of Amazing Awesomeness — a while ago, a listener asked what kind of game we’d make if we ever made one, and we came up with the idea for Cat Wars 3: Feline Frenzy, which is a dual-stick “barker,” in which a dog takes on a whole army of cats (we figured that the best games in trilogies are always the last ones, so we’re starting with Cat Wars 3 rather than the two nonexistent earlier games in the series). I actually have a working version of the game running, and lots of ideas to put in it for later builds, but since my temporary art is so terrible, my Tipoaa co-host Turpster (who is actually an animation student and thus has a proclivity towards art) is revamping the art completely. I haven’t seen anything he’s done yet, but I’m sure it’ll look better than the junk I drew.

After he’s done with that (and we’re done with a few other things I want to put in the game), we’ll be actually releasing Cat Wars 3 as a free to play HTML5 game — my first real, actual game release. After that, there’s a chance we’ll take it to the iOS App Store, actually implementing the iPhone’s touch screen for the controls, and putting in a few more extras that would only be available on the App Store version. I don’t have a playable version of Cat Wars to share yet, but it’s coming soon — we’re aiming to have it out by the end of October at the latest, hopefully before then.

And then, guys, I have even more. I’m already working on another prototype in Gamesalad, and I really do want to learn to actually code, so I’ve been looking at Cocos2D and a few other “helpers” for developing my programming skills. Unfortunately, Cocos2D is an iPhone-only thing, and that requires an Apple Developer account, which I haven’t actually grabbed yet. If anyone knows of a similarly free and relatively simple system for making games on either Windows or Mac that would help me figure out this object oriented stuff, I’m all ears.

I also saw Notch coding in Java for his Ludum Dare project, and man, that really looked amazing, though he’s obviously a talented and very experienced programmer, two things that I am not yet. But I definitely have no end of game ideas, and the prototype I’m working on in Gamesalad is a game that I’ve wanted to play for a long time, though no one (as far as I know) has ever made it yet. I’d love to tell you more, but I don’t want to promise something I can’t do, so we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

In truth, I’m worried that the idea is a little too complex — that despite all of my success so far, I’ll end up bumping into a problem that just requires too much math (or, you know, an actual computer science degree, of which I don’t have course one) for me to ever actually understand and figure out. But for now, it’s still a lot of fun, and all of the issues I’ve come across have eventually been solved. After all, it turns out it’s not all that hard to actually follow your dream: Just go out and chase it down, one step at a time.

But let’s be honest, bells and whistles are the fun part. So now my goal is to add all of that stuff I told you about — some art to go in between the chapters, some extra pieces by people who aren’t named Mike Schramm, and some other fun things I love about books and have always wanted to create for one of mine.

Art is the first concern; I had a talk with an actual, for-real artist who didn’t know me well enough to be offended the other week, and asked about just how much money she expected to make for a commissioned drawing. Unfortunately, the figure she quoted me was way higher than I expected, and given that I was planning to ask some artists that I really admire to make work for me for much cheaper (and don’t want to offend them), the bottom line is that I just can’t afford to commission all of the artwork I’d need. So my new plan is to find some art that fits my pieces, and then ask nicely if I can use it for the book. The issue, of course, is that this is a book for sale, so obviously I don’t want to just Google some work and stick it in without compensation. But hopefully I will find some things that fit, and then maybe ask an artist I know well (very nicely) to do an original cover for me, and then hopefully the book will be a little more than just text.

I’m going to ask a few people to write things, and those should be pretty easy to slot in. I have a few ideas, as I said before, for more “book-y” things to include, so I will work on those and they should be pretty fun.

And of course I have settled on a title: “The Shape of Teeth.” Originally I was aiming to use a title of one of the stories (so I could do the traditional “… And Other Stories by Mike Schramm,” which I really like), but as I was going through them and editing them, I found this phrase which I not only liked the sound of, but which I think really fits the wacky theme that threads through all of this work. I like the idea of not teeth themselves (which would mean real danger), but the shape of teeth — something that hints at actual physical danger, but might end up being all in your mind anyway. Noone but me will probably ever get all of that out of the title, even after reading through the whole book, but just like everything else in this project, I put it in there just for me anyway.

I hope this all sounds interesting enough to you all that you’re excited to buy the book when it comes out. At this point, I’m probably aiming for mid to late September, but if it bleeds into October, that’s fine anyway. Fall is my favorite time of year, and it seems like a great time for magic, for stories, for huddling around a campfire in the dark woods and sharing some crazy, funny, or touching things you’ve heard lately. That’s what I hope this ends up being — I’d love to have been able to make a real book, something I could sell in a leather-bound edition that smells like creamy paper, with a built-in ribbon bookmark and an embossed title page. But instead, I’m crafting this ebook file for you, and my goal is to make it the most hand-crafted and pored-over digital document you’ve ever had the pleasure of paying a few bucks for. So stay tuned; more news soon.