deathmtn

Via Eric, here is a really engrossing and comprehensive history of Zelda's development. It's all really interesting, particularly Miyamoto's shifts in role and attitude (and his consistencies).

This part about players' expectations in the early 2000s also caught my eye:

By this point, Eiji Aonuma, who had directed The Wind Waker and was now in charge of overseeing all Zelda games, had determined that three things were necessary for the next Zelda to sell well:

1. A cooler, more realistically proportioned Link

2. The ability to explore on horseback

3. An engaging world similar to those seen in fantasy movies such as Lord of the Rings

All three elements had been present in Ocarina of Time and Aonuma sensed that fans wanted Nintendo to build upon that style of game, rather than do something completely different. At the end of 2003, he discussed the matter with Shigeru Miyamoto, informing him that he wanted to make a realistic Zelda game, which would expand upon Ocarina of Time's appeal. Miyamoto was initially skeptical; his style of developing games called for a constant stream of new ideas rather than refinement of old ones—a trait that was commonly seen across Mario games. Eventually, though, he gave Aonuma permission to attempt a more realistic Zelda that would follow in the footsteps of Ocarina of Time, and advised he use the opportunity to accomplish things Ocarina of Time couldn't.

That really was the case, if in fact you need to sell 40 million copies, as they did, sadly.

Taking this conservative tack had consequences, though.

During these early stages of development, one of the concerns the development team had was that they weren't able to formulate new gameplay ideas. Similar to The Wind Waker, a number of the ideas in this new Zelda were shaping up to be similar to prior games. At the same time, the team didn't want to make too many radical changes for fear that it might alienate part of their audience once more—especially in Japan, where sales were already shrinking.

…

Response to a playable demo at E3 2005 was positive, but Aonuma felt the game lacked a uniqueness—especially in comparison to his Zelda project on the Nintendo DS, which now featured intuitive touch controls, setting it apart from.

They ended up doing stuff with the Wiimote to address this. I played a bit of this game and gave up on it shortly. But it indeed did sell well.

I didn't know about this:

Twilight Princess was, at the time, the largest game Nintendo had ever worked on, and the company's very first "AAA" project in scope and team size.

I didn't know that AAA was a quantitative term! I thought any game made by a "large" team for a large publisher was AAA.

Just learned via Bonus Cat that cats eat hummus. I was surprised, then realized that hummus contains oil.

From Katt:

[The guy] read the “WARNING WEAR A HELMET DO NOT RIDE IN WET WEATHER” label on the park tricycle and is now mildly concerned because he took it under the sprinkler without a helmet. I told him he’s ok.

Sometimes, being able to read is a curse.

OK, I've validated that, when editing a video, it is in fact worth using a GUI app instead of just typing ffmpeg commands and then reloading the results. Being able to tell what you've done before the render is important.

Fight the Power: Remix with 2020 with Nas, Black Thought, and some MCs that I don't know but are solid.

Wow, the things you find when you wonder what's that guy doing these days?

Max Ogden, besides being a really good programmer, seemed like a mellow and progressive programmer guy based on what I read from him on Twitter and tech podcasts. And that is the case for a lot of these cases of sexual abusers, as we know. I'm still shocked. Trust no one based on social media impressions, I guess.

Australia has extremely nice coasts. Then again, maybe all coasts are aesthetic from an aerial view?

Is the American Dream Really Dead?

Ironically, part of the problem may actually be the American dream. Blue-collar white people – whose parents lived the American dream and who expected their children to do so as well – are the ones who seem most devastated by its erosion and yet, on average, tend to vote against government programmes. In contrast, minorities, who have been struggling for years and have more experience multi-tasking on the employment front and relying on family and community support when needed – are more resilient and hopeful, precisely because they still see a chance for moving up the ladder.

There are high costs to being poor in America, where winners win big but losers fall hard. Indeed, the dream, with its focus on individual initiative in a meritocracy, has resulted in far less public support than there is in other countries for safety nets, vocational training, and community support for those with disadvantage or bad luck.

The American Dream has become, to most people, making it yourself while leaving the other suckers in the dust. You know how that works out.

36-minute run. 10 pull-ups. Super soupy weather, but not hot at least.

This is obviously unlivable, but I'd be willing to try anyway: Reza Mohtashami's concrete house idea

20 burpees, 10 pull-ups, more baby steps on the deadlifts: 5@60, 3@88.6, 1@117.2.

I’ve been reading Kolyma Stories, which are short stories about the Kolyma prison camp in Siberia, where the author lived for several years.

The duty orderly was pleased that the death had happened in the morning instead of the evening; he would get the dead man’s rations for that day. Everyone understood that, and Potashnikov was bold enough to approach the orderly and say, “Leave a crust for me.” But the orderly responded with the violent cursing that can only come from a man who was once weak and is now strong and who knows that he can curse with impunity. A weak man curses a strong man only in extraordinary circumstances, when moved by the boldness of despair. Potashnikov said nothing and retreated.

He had to decide to do something, to make his enfeebled brain think up something. Or die. Potashnikov wasn’t afraid of death. But he did have a secret passionate desire, a last stubborn resolve, a desire to die somewhere like a hospital, in a bunk or a bed, being attended…

As you can see, they’re bleak stories. I happened to read one that didn’t contain violence and felt universal, about people faking being carpenters in order to experience some warmth. I read it to the guy, and while it didn’t blow him away, it was understandable to a six-year-old. It sucks to be cold.

Four hours of freakin' email development tonight. There are an insane amount of hoops to land a message with HTML and images intact into a Gmail inbox.

Jaron Lanier says a lot of things about social media that are correct in this interview, but they're things I'm already familiar with. This statement jumped out at me, though:

Many people in Silicon Valley were fleeing, to panic bunkers and second homes and survival compounds in New Zealand. Some of them were even inviting Lanier along. “A few people have called me from time to time and said, ‘Hey, you have to get in on our New Zealand thing,’ ” Lanier confided. “I'm like, ‘No.…’ I just feel like, if we can fuck it up here, why can't we fuck up New Zealand? What's better about New Zealand than here? It's even riskier for earthquakes, so the only thing about it that's inviting is we haven't fucked it up yet. This idea that you can fuck up the world, but then there'll be some part of it that you haven't fucked up, is wrong. If you fuck up the world, you fuck up the whole world, you know?”

Lanier had no intention of going anywhere. He was going to ride it out in his carnival house, pay taxes, and try to fix what he could, he said.

I'm impressed that he's going to stay and fight and think maybe I should stay and fight. The problem is that the fight may be futile, especially if the problem is Americans, not the various very real systems tricking and oppressing them. I have to acknowledge that that's a possibility at this point.

If it is futile, the reasonable thing to do is to escape the country, as brownpau had the foresight to do two years ago. I've often said that, while I stall on this decision, I feel like a frog sitting in water that is steadily boiling.

10-4-4-4-4-12.

The email struggles never stop. Today, I had a problem with a script run by cron not finding `cat`. Then, then path issues mysteriously fixed themselves?

Then, Gmail tagged my email as phishing again.

This Museo Rosenbach album is sprawling and yet compelling. The 22-minute song that follows that track is interesting all the way through, which is incredible. I credit the organ (or synth organ) for bringing it to life.

I'm guessing Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda listened to a lot of '70s Italian prog.

36-minute run on an easier route with no hills. Treat yo self, as they used to say. 10 pull-ups.

I had to go fetch a bunch of documents for a refinance (the second wave of documents), and it took an entire hour of my Sunday night.

Unacceptable! And yet, what can I do but accept it.

Snipperclips is one of those rare games that’s actually fun for adults while also providing non-mindless challenges for 6-year-olds and involves meaningful teamwork. (And yes, I’ve spent plenty of time on mindless challenges and am not opposed to them for kids of an age that I have yet to define.) There’s this clear set of consistent actions and rules that add up to an incredible amount of variation and emergent complexity. I’m astounded by this feat of game design.

Weird. There was an Internet backbone misconfiguration causing slowdowns this morning. I definitely noticed it and tried restarting stuff in the house.