Honestly this is where I work. I come in everyday and sit down on that chair, place my computer on my levitating lap-desk and plug into “The Net” as my parents like to call it. The biggest perk reveals itself every-time a client walks in for a meeting. The intimidation horrifies them and thus forces them to meet my every demand.

Behind that gray wall lies my main frame personal-super-computer [power level: 9000] that creates the games parallel with my subconscious. It’s all very next-gen. And if you have to ask what any of that means, then please navigate out of “The Net” to somewhere more meaningful lacking pretension.

I’m lying in bed here picking the scabs on my arms from a “casual” game of football over this Thanksgiving while mulling over recently edited game design lectures about meaning in games. It’s all very fuzzy and wreaks of that in-between dream state that so many strange and wonderful ideas come from. I call them 2AM ideas. And while in the morning they may have lost their magic, at least in that feverish rush to jot them down on the nearest parchment there exists some excitement that out of the madness of my subconscious something new and interesting has come forth.

Oh yea, back to football. A lot of my friends don’t understand my passion for football [of the American sort]. Some of them watch it, others even follow a team or two, but most care not to “lower themselves” to view such a primitive spectacle. I say that pretentiously here, but I do understand their view. By all rights, football is the war replacement that feeds the public’s need for resolved conflict through some kind of mock-violence. I get it. And I don’t care, because that kind of sociological crap works well on paper, but rarely in practice. Plus, it’s boring and no fun.

Growing up young, I was always pretty athletic, a bit of a natural at a lot of things to do with physical coordination. By the looks of my trophy case, I’m a natural born basketball player, but the reality was, and still is, that I loved football with every bone in my body. I wanted to play. My grandpa was a star quarterback for his high school, even made his high school’s top ten athletes of the century. My dad, also a quarterback for his high school. He taught both my brother and I how to throw a pass. We watched college football players like giants, and their coach a god. Every game I watched either televised or in person was the biggest thrill of the week, and perhaps some of my happiest memories were of large come-from-behind-down-to-the-last-second victories shared with good friends and family.

But that’s not the real reason I love football.

In seventh grade, there was flag football. I was a star. Running the option with our star quarterback, we went undefeated. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have 2-3 touchdowns a game. But then came 8th grade. Pads. Helmets. The whole outfit was cumbersome. I was small, quick and nimble. The once perfect model for a flag football player, now the bottom-of-the-barrel tackle football player. But that was good. That is where my love for football starts.

I had no chance to make the A squad. Since last year, it seemed like all the players were now a full foot taller and I had shrunk. Peering out my helmet, I could barely see past the linemen hunched over the line of scrimmage. So I settled into my spot on the B team. I played defensive back and returned punts for the first half of the season. It was alright, but what I really wanted to do was return to my halfback spot. It was a different animal. The option [pitch pass left or right from a quarterback roll-out] was no longer in our repertoire. We had to hold onto the ball. In practice we ran drills for this kind of thing. Two of our gnarliest linemen would stand on the 2 yard line, stomping their feet in anticipation of the next in line. I wanted it. My heart is racing just thinking about this while I write. The coach handed it off to me out of the blocks and i barreled through them, fighting and pumping my legs, never quitting. I didn’t make it into the endzone, but be damned sure I wanted to.

I did it again. And again. I didn’t stop. I loved the challenge, the odds stacked against me. The coach recognized this and he pointed it out to our A team that practice. My fellow teammates knocked me on the helmet in celebration of my perseverance. That is why I love football. The bonds it can form, the character it builds and the lessons it teaches to those who give in to its greatness. From this one season, I gathered a sense of duty, accountability, work ethic and discipline that I would have had a hard time finding elsewhere. Few other places is this offered than in the competitive war-zone of American football.

Now. If you’re too old to play football, or just not impressionable enough. To understand the beautiful things that this sport can offer, I recommend going out and watching the movie Rudy. It is the only movie that I have ever actually cried at. I’m not trying to be macho here, other movies have choked me up, but Rudy made me weep when I was 11 years old [prime number].

What does this have to do with game design? Have you lost it?

~confused reader

Well no, I haven’t lost it. I was thinking about all this in terms of what it is I want to players to feel/come away with from playing a game. Then I got to thinking about football due to my wounds from a recent game, and thought: “Well, what did I learn from playing football?” Well this is it. But video games these days don’t attempt to instill honor and sacrifice into the latest version of Madden do they? But why not? I’m guessing if people played a game like that, they’d love football quite a bit more and probably would start a petition to ban any and all half-time shows full of glittered bimbos and pop-stars for the sake of the integrity of the sport, but that’s another post…

Rather than be thankful for something specific, I think this sums up a state of mind we should all try to be in. If there’s something the first world lacks, it’s perspective. Not that I sit around making a list of what I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving, I basically just eat stuff and lay around. That’s thanksgiving, sloth and gluttony. A.K.A. America. But yea… perspective… delicious, juicy perspective.

I’ve never talked about the Iowa Hawkeyes on this blog, not sure why, but it never struck me. Well now that I don’t really have the time/energy to work up a thoughtful post.

Man, what an awesome game.

Anyway, about that WMT 600 AM, house of the voice of the Hawkeyes, Gary Dolphin. I wanted to hear how he called it, rejoice with fellow Hawk fans in the call-in shows and so on. But in true Iowa fashion, we are 10 years behind everything else. No internet streaming worth anything. I tried two OSs, 4 browsers, and different firewall/security settings for each, according to their FAQ. Great stuff over there.* The tragedy is that this wouldn’t be tough to fix. Put just a little more effort for some permanent streaming server and you’d service Hawk fans around the world clamoring for the voice of Gary Dolphin or any local news in fact. Hell, record the thing and upload it to iTunes for free as a podcast. Put an ad on it and you’ve got free-money.

I’m sure my words will fall on deaf ears, so I’ll be heading to the local radio store to pick up a radio. Iowa, why do you alienate me?

Forget the meaning of life, that’s too muddy. I mean I can’t even settle on the meaning of a simple movie, let alone an entire lifetime. But the point, that’s something deceptively simple. But important. What’s the point of life? Not just life in general, although that is an interesting question. I’m talking about the point of your life.

So narrowed down a bit. What is the point of your life? What is the ultimate goal, if there is one? Anyone accomplishes a lot of different things throughout a lifetime, whether it be finishing a marathon or waving at someone, they have an effect on the world. But I’m not sure a wimple wave is the magnum opus of the average human being. It may be for some though, or at least simple survival. In a third world nation, I imagine a father’s hope would be to somehow survive long enough to see their kids leap-frog their birthright for a better life. It may seem meager to us, but when all odds are against you, it’s a noble pursuit in my mind.

So let’s narrow this down further. What is the point of life for the average American? Touted as the wealthiest [perhaps for only a little while longer] most extravagant, free-time having nation on the planet. What is the point of our lives? For me, its the same as the father in the third world against all poverty, but on a larger scale. My goal:

“Help as many human beings as possible continue their time on Earth for as long as possible.”

I want to see our future generations have a better life. Now there is a loaded word in there. “Help” or “better life” is all relative. To a serial killer, that might mean something generally horrible, and to an anarchist, something possibly toxic. My definition of “help” has everything to do with the thesis here. The means for which I believe we can extend our time on Earth for as long as possible. In order to do this, I think we need in some way, with some governing body of some kind to find a way to harmonize our relationship with the environment, with each other as a society and ultimately with “the bigger picture”. We need to stop taking more out than we put back and if that means drastic measures, poverty and such that’s fine. Humanity can endure extreme hardship, but it can not endure its own implosion. It can not endure a resource-less Earth.

Helping never works if you just give the man a fish. You must take the more challenging route of taking the time to teach him to fish. This is an overwrought analogy, but it works. The right thing to do is often the hard thing to do. The easy thing right now is to patch the dam with gum[money].

I’ve thought a lot about this, and I often wonder what I can really do to maximize this path, and maybe not a lot at the moment. But I do know, that my attitude towards this whole thing is humble, willing to take on hardship, or even welcome it for the promise of a better world 30 years from now. I would be satisfied with that. I’d be 65, looking towards a new world, with a glowing future. Knowing that I was part of a generation that sacrificed their own lifetime for the future of others. I’d be damn proud.

Oh yea, and the meaning of life? That’s simple. It’s 42.