Month: June 2017

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My Take – E3 Day 2

EDIT: So I kind of hurriedly made this post in the wee hours of the morning , and forgot to give context as to what I’m talking about and why I’m talking about it.

This weekend marked the start of electronic gaming’s big E3 event. It’s where game producers and developers get together to showcase their biggest and best offerings for the upcoming year, with the announcements of new games, features, and tech/consoles yet to be released. One of my hobbies is…well playing video games. It seems like that’s one of the bigger hobbies for really anyone to have, and I’m not different in that regard. And when I discovered what E3 was way back in high school, I’ve always made it a mission to watch it, and watch it live if I could. I blame G4 mainly. That channel was on 24/7 at my house when I was on summer break during high school, and it covered everything it could during E3. So, I immersed myself with it, watched all the coverage on new games, the trailers…the works.

Nothing has changed in the last 15 years for me. I still get excited about this stuff, and it’s for the same reasons too I’m sure: new unique games that look almost too real to be a video game, stories and characters that transport the player to far off lands to be part of a quest that…you get it. And getting into storytelling like I have over the past 8 years or so, has really opened my eyes to how much work and thought is put into creating these worlds and characters. Everything has to be so thought out, and so in depth that it’s just as impressive, if not more so, when games “get it right”. When the story and gameplay converge into an experience that truly transports you to another place. Few games have really done that for me. God of War 1 – 3, Uncharted 2 and 3, Assassins Creed 2/Brotherhood/Revelations/Black Flag, Kingdom Hearts 1&2…admittedly I’m a PlayStation homer, so I’m pretty one sided in terms of gaming experience. But those games were ones that told a story that fascinated me, and whose controls and gameplay were comfortable and not clunky or repetitive (I get the KH and GoW series’ battle system was a bit button mashy, but for what it was trying to do, it worked), and overall just kicked ass. I know “kick ass” isn’t a measuring standard, but those games really did just kick ass. I’m sure there are a few more games that I’ve played in my lifetime that did their jobs, but these are the ones that stick out to me, because of how good they were and how much I connected with them.

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So here are some thoughts on today’s E3 happenings and my first official podcast. It’s a bit scatter brained (because it’s 2:00 in the morning and I’m still processing everything), but I wanted to give a fresh take on all of things I saw in the Microsoft and Bethesda press conferences today (yesterday).

This is also my first podcast…like ever. So, I’m also sure that over time I’ll understand how to organize better and form my thoughts into more understandable sentences. But, it was fun wasting an hour talking about video games. I could have been sleeping instead, but overall it was fun.

There will be a longer post on it in writing, probably coming on Tuesday, but this is just a stream of consciousness, fresh take thing.

ENJOY!

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So I’m a pretty big music “nerd”. I put nerd in quotes because I wouldn’t necessarily say that liking music and the process of putting it together is nerdy.

Case in point: Jacob Collier. This guy fascinates the hell out of me. I mean, perfect pitch aside, the stuff that goes on in his head and how he writes music is astounding to me. But he represents the thing I like the absolute MOST about music: individuality.

The fascinating thing about music, just as with story writing, is that there are literally 1,000’s of ways to put music together, and all of them can be uniquely yours. Sure, you have inspirations and the such, but to go out and make music that is a reflection of – what is essentially – yourself is a truly personal experience. At the same time, when creating music with friends, it’s at once personal and collaborative. Every person who is apart of making music, is inserting themselves into their individual parts of the song. It’s kind of profound in a way. If you took two people, and had them write the exact same type of song, I guarantee you’d have two completely different interpretations. In the same respect, if you gave those same two people a melody and asked them to fill out the piece, you’d have two completely different takes on the same melody (if you exclude music theory and part writing rules and such…giving someone a box to write inside can sometimes lead to predictable outcomes).

That’s why the creative process fascinates me. Each person brings with them different life experiences, which influences their interpretations, which shines through their art. It’s lovely really.

Just my two cents for the day.

I’d like to delve deeper into the ideas behind the creative process: like what drives people to create the things they create. Maybe my first podcast can be centered around that question? We shall see.

 

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First blog post

Appropriate blog title is appropriate.

Hi there internet! My name is Justin and my life is just as chaotic and uneventful as yours. I understand that both of those words are juxtapositions of each other…it was intentional.

I received the idea for this page from my best friend who told me that I’m a good writer, and I should start up a site where I can post all of my random thoughts, and introspective, emotional Facebook statuses in one centralized location. OK that second one wasn’t something he said, but it was something that I thought of. And the more I thought about it…the more I wanted to do it.

But I was facing an inner dilemma: I didn’t want to just write the same old things over and over again. I can only be so philosophical before I run out of words and intellectual illusions. I wanted to start a site that allowed me to post and cover all of the things that interest me. I’d like to think of myself as well versed in a lot of different topics: music, film, sports, social commentary (I don’t want to say politics…because…I hate that), social media…you get the picture. My brain is constantly channel surfing, searching for something to keep me occupied. Sometimes it’s writing music, other times it’s playing video games, or reading comics.

All things interest me in some aspect, and I want to talk about all of them.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have my main passions: music, percussion, teaching, creative writing,  mixed martial arts, football…my go to’s. And more than likely this site will be flooded with posts about those topics. But like I said, I want to talk about everything.

My intentions are to create content that appeals to the masses. I want to write/talk/film things people are interested in experiencing from my point of view.

In the coming days, I’ll be contributing more to this blog, and as I figure out how this site works (it’ll take me a few days I’m sure), the page itself will start to take shape. I want to start filming some shorts, start a podcast…start a schedule for content: to streamline things. I’ve always been pretty bad at that if I’m being honest, so I’ll be using this site to keep me on the up and up.

I’m looking forward to this. It’ll be hectic, scatter brained, and quite possibly stressful…

But I couldn’t be more excited about it.