I was furious. I admit, I'm an emotional person, I get happy, annoyed, satisfied, or frustrated easily and get over them fast. But I rarely get really angry. Today, I'm furious.
During today's class, we talked about different culture has different value priorities. While American might believe honesty to be the most important value, Eastern culture (Chinese, Korean) might consider loyalty to family and friend takes priority to personal honesty. To further demonstrate his point, the instructor show us a survey given to people in different countries for their opinion on honesty.
People are given the following scenario: you and your best friend were driving in a residential area. Your friend went over the speed limit, and accidentally ran over someone. The question was would you lie under oath that your friend is not speeding?
Over 95% American refuse to lie, while 48% of Chinese remain honest, and 26% of Korean insist they would tell the truth and send their friend into jail.
The idea is to show that for American, telling the truth might be very important; but for Chinese and Korean people, stay loyal to their friend is more important. There's no right or wrong about personal value priorities, but as project managers, we need to be aware that each team member has their own value based on their experience, knowledge and culture.
After the discussion, a classmate raised his hand and said: I know you (instructor) said there's no right or wrong when it comes to value priority, but if St. Peter is those country, St. Peter would tell those people "NO, this is WRONG!"
The class was quiet for a while, and I said: "I'm sure there's a Chinese god believes it is more important to stay loyal to your friend and family than honesty." And guy said to me: "what did you say?!" At this moment, the instructor stepped in and said: we should all respect other people's value. And we moved on.
In fact, I was FURIOUS! My face was burning and I want to stand up and said "HOW DARE YOU! How dare you judge my people in the name of your god?!" I wanted to slap his fat, obnoxious, self-righteous face.
I guess there will always be people go around say "I'm right, You're wrong" in the name of religion, personal value, social "norm".... All you need to do is stand your ground and push back.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Easy Fun and Hard Fun
My friend recommend me this article, and after reading it, I find myself split in the middle regarding the "Zynga Abyss".
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-zynga-abyss/251920/
Yes, Farmville is designed to get player spend hours doing virtual crops, spamming friends, planning resources, decorating farms. Many "hardcore" gamer would consider that waste of time or stupid. But you know what I think is really stupid? Playing Ninja Gaiden, get defeated/killed by the lowest enemies every other minute and try again and again and again... Yet as hard as it is, I've seen people speak of this game with great pride, no less than winning a Nobel Price, about how he finished it at the hardest level. I'm sure that's what the designer had in mind about "hard fun", that you spend days even months of your life mastering your skill of killing monsters in one particular game which you'll never use in any other circumstances. But truth to be told, if I have a choice between Farmville and Ninja Gaiden, I'll pick Farmville in a heart beat.
The article used another game as a comparison of what's a good fun, compare to Farmvilles' "coercive and unethical fun". A simple game that let you run the course of obstacles for as long as you can. But I really don't like this kind of game, Tetrix, Pacman... because you'll never win. No matter how good you are, there's no winning. You always end up losing/dying. You can argue that the reward is you get a bit further with practice, but still in my opinion, the game doesn't reward you for trying. Just when you think you get better at it, the game present you with a more difficult challenge and you failed again. Maybe the Ninja Gaiden Hardcore people would find this challange/fail model fun, not me.
One thing I often seen in "hardcore" game designer is that they tent to have this "this fun is better than that fun" thinking. If we can accept TV shows such as Jersey Shore co-existing with Mad Men or Rome, why do we feel the need to "educate" our players what is real fun, and what is "evil company stealing your money fun"? We're not talking about coerce candy out of little kids here, for the most part, facebook gamers are grow men who can (gasp!) be responsible for their own action, money and how to spend their life. If someone enjoy spending hours of time and tons of money on virtual crop, who am I to say "you don't really enjoy it, you just feel compelled to do it because the game is designed as such". A entire city is designed based on this concept, yet we all go there and have a good time. Programs and rehab facility is built to help people get out of playing "coercion" games, yet we blame the people not the game itself.
So why, as game designers, we feel the need to "purify" our product into such moral standard? Why can't we just let people have their fun, believing that they're smart enough to make their own choices, and if they want to "waste" their life away, it's not our responsibility to stop them.
I considered myself a "hardcore" gamer, although I don't like to use that word. It's such an obnoxious and exclusive word. Indeed, I also feel that most facebook games are shallow and viral focused. They don't offer a good fulfilling story, not much game play to speak of, and rely too much on spamming your friends. But that's just personal taste. A game with better story, deep game play, rely less on spamming would be nice to have, but that doesn't mean it's more "moral" than Zynga games.
After all, at the end of the day, Zynga or any other game studio, is a company whose primary function is to profit. If a game generate millions of user and financially successful, the game should be considered a good game, which deserve our respect.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-zynga-abyss/251920/
Yes, Farmville is designed to get player spend hours doing virtual crops, spamming friends, planning resources, decorating farms. Many "hardcore" gamer would consider that waste of time or stupid. But you know what I think is really stupid? Playing Ninja Gaiden, get defeated/killed by the lowest enemies every other minute and try again and again and again... Yet as hard as it is, I've seen people speak of this game with great pride, no less than winning a Nobel Price, about how he finished it at the hardest level. I'm sure that's what the designer had in mind about "hard fun", that you spend days even months of your life mastering your skill of killing monsters in one particular game which you'll never use in any other circumstances. But truth to be told, if I have a choice between Farmville and Ninja Gaiden, I'll pick Farmville in a heart beat.
The article used another game as a comparison of what's a good fun, compare to Farmvilles' "coercive and unethical fun". A simple game that let you run the course of obstacles for as long as you can. But I really don't like this kind of game, Tetrix, Pacman... because you'll never win. No matter how good you are, there's no winning. You always end up losing/dying. You can argue that the reward is you get a bit further with practice, but still in my opinion, the game doesn't reward you for trying. Just when you think you get better at it, the game present you with a more difficult challenge and you failed again. Maybe the Ninja Gaiden Hardcore people would find this challange/fail model fun, not me.
One thing I often seen in "hardcore" game designer is that they tent to have this "this fun is better than that fun" thinking. If we can accept TV shows such as Jersey Shore co-existing with Mad Men or Rome, why do we feel the need to "educate" our players what is real fun, and what is "evil company stealing your money fun"? We're not talking about coerce candy out of little kids here, for the most part, facebook gamers are grow men who can (gasp!) be responsible for their own action, money and how to spend their life. If someone enjoy spending hours of time and tons of money on virtual crop, who am I to say "you don't really enjoy it, you just feel compelled to do it because the game is designed as such". A entire city is designed based on this concept, yet we all go there and have a good time. Programs and rehab facility is built to help people get out of playing "coercion" games, yet we blame the people not the game itself.
So why, as game designers, we feel the need to "purify" our product into such moral standard? Why can't we just let people have their fun, believing that they're smart enough to make their own choices, and if they want to "waste" their life away, it's not our responsibility to stop them.
I considered myself a "hardcore" gamer, although I don't like to use that word. It's such an obnoxious and exclusive word. Indeed, I also feel that most facebook games are shallow and viral focused. They don't offer a good fulfilling story, not much game play to speak of, and rely too much on spamming your friends. But that's just personal taste. A game with better story, deep game play, rely less on spamming would be nice to have, but that doesn't mean it's more "moral" than Zynga games.
After all, at the end of the day, Zynga or any other game studio, is a company whose primary function is to profit. If a game generate millions of user and financially successful, the game should be considered a good game, which deserve our respect.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Guy~
I have this idea about this guy I met in China. There's story behind this painting, and I'll tell it after I finish.
Oh, and if this looks like a certain Bronzino portrait... that's because it's largely based on that painting. I really like Bronzino's painting, I figure it won't hurt to borrow from his poses.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Not Happy...
I'm not quite happy with this one. It doesn't turn out the way I wanted it to be. Although... I did change my mind quite a lot since I first start it. So I guess it's really not that bad, I can see a lot of places where I can make this better, but I really don't want to keep working on it. I want to paint new stuff.
So I'll leave it as finished as I care to finish...LOL. And I need to get some sleep.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Background...
The problem with background is that... It takes a long time to paint, and in the end, people hardly notice it. Ah.... It's like 4 hours work from last night to tonight, and it doesn't show at all....
but I don't want to keep working on the face, it mean, the only thing left is blending and that's what I'm trying to avoid...
You know with every painting, (almost every painting), there's a painful period when you just want to give up and start something new. Now is that period... I just have to keep pushing forward and hopefully it'll end up worth my time.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Must... Stop... Blending....
I didn't get much done tonight, mostly because I end up in my "blending" mode again.... It's just so easy to fall into that mental stage, almost like a trance or something.
Oh, and I took someone's advise, use the hair to cover up my lack of reference and knowledge of human anatomy. Now that I look at this piece, her head seems too big!!!.... ah....that's an easy change, I'll deal with it tomorrow.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Update
What I've been trying to change about my painting is the way I blend color. I feel that I blend too much. I tried very hard to learn how to blend smoothly, now I can somewhat create a smooth skin surface, I don't like it anymore. I want my brush stroke to have some character, some personality, some style in it.
So I took an old unfinished painting, and try to make something new. Used a wet edge hard round brush, no air brush no smooth... I actually kind of like it.
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