I remember when I first started posting on message boards some time in my early teens, how people, by and large, always tended to assume I was male unless I told them otherwise. My usernames were usually on the gender-neutral side, and my writing style back then was very concise and to the point; those factors, combined with the statistical likelihood of most forum posters in my spheres of interest being male, were probably what made people default to such assumptions about me, even though I don’t recall anything about my approaches being particularly masculine. It seemed like the only time people would really call someone’s gender into question was when they had a particularly feminine-sounding username or choice of words.

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Leopold McGinnis, author of Game Quest and friend of yours truly, has recently written a new novella called Bad Attitude. Being the huge Leopold fangirl I am, I bought a copy as soon as it was available (and was even congratulated on being the very first to do so), received it last Friday, and gobbled it up in two hours that very evening. It’s a freakin’ hilarious read, poking merciless fun at people who see success, money, and power as their reasons for being, and even has clever hand-drawn illustrations in it. Needless to say, I highly recommend reading it.

In unrelated news, I finished my summer game company job about two weeks ago, and am now back in school, both studying and working as a teaching assistant. It’s looking to be quite an eventful term, indeed. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to finish Chivalry in the process.

So, it appears as though I am around the halfway point of my stint here at Telltale, and while I do not yet hate my job or the game industry, I’m starting to get a little bit bored with my life. The excitement of meeting new people and learning new things that was ever-so-present when I first got here seems to have passed. Now I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with myself.

I do know, however, that my next professional goal is to be a game designer. Programming is fun, but I personally find it fun mainly because it’s a means to an end. Most programmers I know like to program for the sake of programming. I’m not like that, meaning it’s quite possible that I’m not a real programmer. I could have just as easily learned to be an artist or an animator or something; it would have been just as much of a means to an end as programming is for me. My true passion is creating characters, worlds, and things, and making them interact. And just for the hell of it, allowing others the chance to interact with them.

I’ve also been working on designing a new amateur game. That is all I’m going to say on the subject.

On a completely unrelated note, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are excellent movies. I just saw them last week and was profoundly moved. They were directed by the same guy who directed Waking Life, which is also an excellent movie, though a lot wackier and weirder. In a good way, of course.

I swear I’ve done this meme before, but not on this particular blog. However, that guy who wrote that book I reviewed in my last blog entry appears to have tagged me, so now you get to read embarrassing answers to semi-personal questions. Doesn’t that sound fun or what?

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I admit it, I’m obsessed with personality tests. Sure, they don’t tell me much that I don’t already know, but I still find them tons of fun regardless.

Today, I took this personal DNA test thingamabobber,[1] and my results gave birth to the following image:

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Apparently, I’m some kind of cautious artist. An artist, hmm? I wonder why I’m studying computer science to get into the game industry and not art/animation. Probably because I scored too high on authoritarianism; most artist-types hate that, after all. And besides, computer science is a REAL degree.

You know, I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. It does promote saccharine, materialistic notions of love and all. However, I have to say, I do love the chocolate. I mean, how could anyone NOT love chocolate?

Yesterday, I had my wisdom teeth removed. Fortunately, the worst of the pain is over (I think). Unfortunately, I still need to eat soft foods, so today, I’ll have to limit my chocolate intake to chocolate ice cream.

The good part of wisdom tooth removal is that, unlike when I was recovering from laser eye surgery a few months ago, I can still use a computer without having my eyes get exhausted. This means I have ample opportunity to take advantage of my week off school and see if I can finish TGTTPOACS, then start the beta-testing in time for the release date I have planned for a month from now. In the meantime, though, here’s a screenshot of the intro scene. Consider it an Eat-Lots-Of-Chocolate Day present.

Frasse and the Peas of Kejick. Play it. I COMMAND YOU.

Not just because a regular reader of this blog made it, not just because it’s made with SLUDGE, and certainly not just because I got to be a beta-tester and my name is mentioned in the credits no less than three times, but because it’s incredibly cute and a lot of fun to play. It’s not ridiculously difficult, either.

Highlights for me were as follows: excellent usage of two extremely adorable player characters, each with different abilities; a puzzle in which you assemble a boat yourself, IKEA-style (and there’s an extra part left over!); a bar called “Casa Blanca”; and diuretic berries. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

In other news, I’ve been getting into some very interesting religious discussions over at the AGS forums, satisfying my ever-present intellectual needs for the first time in what seems like ages. They’re a great bunch over there. Could this mean that their engine really isn’t that bad after all?