Toy Story- i think about this way too much

So... As a result of having a kid, i've watched the Toy Story movies Quite a lot lately. They hold up suprisingly well to repeated viewings. Most questions are answered, story-wise. But there are a few...

Questions That Remain Unanswered at the Close of the Toy Story trilogy:

1. What happened to Andy's dad?
We never hear about him. We've never heard anything about him. You always only see Andy's Mom.
Even if he's not important to the story, it's possible to drop hints in the dialogue or the visuals somewhere .Bonnie has a dad-you can see him gardening in the last scene. You barely see Bonnie's mom. (Hey, did you notice that? In Toy Story 3, Whenever you see Bonnie in the frame, Bonnie's mom's head is cut off, cut off by very deliberate framing to focus on the kids and the toys.)

As far as i can tell, there aren't any hints about Andy's Dad. The fact that there aren't any photos anywhere argues strongly for divorce. But he could be dead. He's not even in his son's graduation photo, which we see in the movie. Bonnie has a dad- we see him gardening with his wife in the last scene of Toy Story 3. I think it's cool, actually- it reflect a lot of kid's real experience, and, in terms of story, it kind of enhances the idea that the toys are parents to the children. Anyway, we never found out what happened to Andy's dad. It;s interesting.

2.Who made "The Rules"? Where do they come from?
In the Toy Story movies, there's one basic rule that all toys must follow. Good toys, evil toys, even toys that think they are real... all obey this rule. Do you know what it is yet? Woody mentions it once in the first Toy Story: "We'll have to break a few rules, but if it works, it'll help us all out." The rule is: All toys must not come alive around humans. We know that they can-it's not some sort of magic spell or anything like that. Woody came alive to scare Sid.at the end of the first Toy Story. But they must at all costs maintain the pretense. It's kinda weird if you think about it. Too much.


3. What's the story with Woody's empty holster?
Woody never uses a gun, even though it's a big part of cowboy lore. He uses lassos and the like, he has all the other cowboy accoutrements, but no gun. He has a holster, but it's always been empty. They even drew attention to the empty holster in Toy Story 1 by having Sid put a match in it. No gun. Why?
You could say that Andy lost Woody's gun- i think that's very realistic. But remember that Woody was stolen by a rare toy collector in Toy Story 2. Al McWhiggin seemed to believe that Woody was 'complete'.
But i think it's a conscious choice: to make Woody a character who solves problems with cleverness instead of force. Maybe.

That's all i got for now.

Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader

Yeah so i was going to tell you about how i started thinking of my job as a game.

Well, i also think about it a lot in military terms. There's no ranks in private industry, well, there's of course jobs, but they're not so stratified and uniform as the military. More in terms of this guy leads a group of guys, (keeps tabs on them, is responsible for them). He has levels above him, that keep track of a group of guys like him. And so on up.
And the guys he leads, interface with the actual "stuff". The job itself.

I've been thinking a lot lately about being a leader. What good leaders do, bad leaders, what they do.

Thinking a lot about games. I said iphone games are a lot different. They are. In some ways they're better. They've had to simplify and so have honed in on essences of gameplay experiences, building blocks, of games.

it's interesting.

games,

Some high-level observations about games, and observations about the gaming industry. Because i'm actually inside it, at a low level. Front line, in the trenches.

metaphorically speaking.

It means i at least see decisions being made, maybe have a hint about why. See the high-level decisions, and they affect people all down the line. their effects on the game. It's interesting. What else is interesting is i see a little bit more of this now because i'm a part of the process.

try to explain. One thing that's great about smaller companies and start-ups is that you move up fast. I call it "battlefield promotion" but that's not quite right. This is not when someone is fired and you get their job, but just that the company is expnding so rapidly that jobs are being created and shifted around all the time. People getting promoted, getting more responsibilities all the time. It's cool. i like it. There's a lot of things great about start-ups. Remind me to tell you sometime.

But anyway, so now i'm in charge of a group of testers.

It's weird.

So hey i uh

Am working, now, in QA, at a game company. I am back doing QA again, not too happy to be kind of back where i started, down at the bottom, but i am working in the game industry. i think that's the important thing really, to be working in the same indusrty as where you want to be, ultimately.

They're called ngmoco:). They make games for the iphone and ipad. It's a whole different set of circumstances from what i'm used to( which is console game testing, PC game testing) iphone game testing is different from all of those. So i've had to learn a whole lot of new technical stuff. But at some level, it's testing, which i know how to do. Experience tells you where programs are likely to fuck up, what areas of the software to hammer on.

metaphorically speaking.

i hope to maybe share some of my ideas about

working from home

about working in games

as i guess i do now.It's almost possible. What we dreamed about has become possible.

marvel at the complexity of it all.

shirow masamune

as an aside

, I think that was PIXAR's success with the sequel to Toy Story(a monstrously successful movie in it's own right) , was that they took the same approach as a video game company would which is to save unused ideas for use later and to keep improving the product.

From what i've been able to glean from listening to commentary tracks, most of the characters, situations, gags, etc. were things planned for the original Toy Story movie but were cut for various reasons. Mostly time. One thing that always amazes me about Toy Story is how fast it moves. snap snap snap It's a short movie, but you feel like you've been a lot of places.

I've seen it a lot lately. My kid loves it so... i've seen it a lot. it's good, it really holds up.

when you see a whole series and are deciding which one to get...

For video games, always get the "2"

For movies, always the first one is the best.

There are notable exceptions, though, actually i can think of a lot of sequels, movie sequels that are better than the original.

But with video games, almost always you want to get the second one. That's how games are, they improve. For the sequel, the developers put in all the stuff that they had to cut out to make the deadline on the first game.

Oftentimes, by the third in a aseries, the game is larded down with features, controls, super-moves(meta-controls) and and is overall less fun to play.

im not sure i made that clear enough

Valve circumvents piracy with Steam. They do it by making it almost as easy to go legit. Click a button and the download begins, it's just about that simple. And they throw additional features into the bargain.

Also i believe the Steam service is free. It costs money to buy games of course but measure that against having to go out into the real world to a game store, buy a physical media, come back, install the game, update drivers, and play the game.

The downside is not having a physical media for the game. i can see that being a big deal for some people. it's completely virtual. You don't 'have' anything. Which is true.

But the upside to that downside is that it's not constrained to any one computer anymore. You can go to another computer, download Steam, install it, give it your password, and have access to all your games, with the correct drivers to work on the new computer.

This is really pretty cool and a true shift in the way we do things.

Steam

is wonderful. I think i 'get' Steam now. Or maybe they've added so many features that they're useful to somebody.


I think of Steam as my "Game Job"

It's so well-organized. Everything is cross-referenced. And worst of all, buying games is easy. Of course that's best for them. What Valve did is they made they're system slightly less easy than pirating games. They realized that's their competition. And they also realized that most people- probably the mass of people, won't pirate software if a legitimate, and equally easy system exists.

And, actually, itunes is a pretty successful example of that. but Steam. They actually seem to offer a lot of features- friends list, achievements, etc. I actually like that Steam takes care of updating your drivers automagically- the games just run.

and they make it so darn easy to buy games. You have to exert self-control.
Also, having all the demos available in one place for games. You used to have to go hunting all over the web.

in the old days...
of the internet...

Anyway, Steam is your "Game Job" You belong to workgroups, You can arrange meetings in different games, your own avatars remain. A meta-level game...
It shows you all your friends' status in real-time.

It's an insanely well-organized Job, i myself have worked at plenty of jobs that could have benefited from this kind organization, or any organization at all.

But it seems something like a Job. i don't know. maybe it's a 'Leisure Organizer'.

This is one of those things

That makes Valve such a top developer as they are.
These two stories:

119!!(

andthis


The fact that they're going this far to put new (completely free by the way, once you have the game) content into Team Fortress 2, a game that is so old as to have had 119 updates.

It seems like they consider it a responsibility to keep people happy. or something.