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Comments (0) · Permalink · General mischief · Not rated (0 votes)
May 13 2009, 05:02 AM
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Well, I don't know if anybody is reading the blogs, but here goes.

I am so sorry I suddenly vanished into the mists of cyberspace. In my own defense, you would not believe the year I have had! I don't even believe it and I lived it.

Last spring business in my company, Second Wind Co., Ltd., picked up astronomically. Unfortunately, it wasn't the profitable kind of business, just the busy kind. Our customers demanded some major revisions to the texts we use and I had to coordinate with the intellectual property right holder in California to get each and every revision approved. In the midst of all that, one of their European clients opened a customer service office here in Japan and wanted us to abide by the same financial and reporting contracts they had in Europe and America. It took some hard negotiations and explicit revealing of some internal numbers to convince them that we have a much different cost structure here in Japan and as a result, it simply was not possible to accommodate the limits and payment schedules they were used to. That also meant we had to negotiate a completely different system that would both meet their needs and cover our costs.

As if that were not enough, my father and stepmother joined my sister in Ohio and brought along my uncle, concentrating my surviving family members in a state I had never even visited. Then one of my sons decided he wanted to take a whirlwind tour of America and while he was at it, spend time with his grandfather in Ohio. At the last minute, my wife asked if I wanted to spend time in Ohio as well, so I agreed. Well, I got there and fell in love with the place.

Then the economy tanked.

Crisis brings with it opportunity, so after some delicate and time-consuming negotiation, I convinced my wife we should start planning on retiring in Ohio. We spend days and days combing the internet and assembled a list of nearly a hundred properties to look at, including several companies that build houses. We went back to Ohio together and viewed most of them. We finally settled on four acres in Wayne County and are now waiting for the paperwork to arrive so we can sign the papers and mail off the check. Once we receive the deed, then begins the long, laborious process of arranging to have a house built on the land.

Over the past year I have stopped in here from time to time to have a look-see, but did not have time to make a forum post or contribute additional material. I'm saddened to see the project finally had to be abandoned, but unfortunately, when team members must balance volunteerism with normal life, sometimes normal life becomes overwhelming; when that happens, volunteerism loses out.

For me, things are going to continue to be hectic for at least the remainder of this year, so I don't know if I will have much chance to stop in and chat. Whenever possible, though, I'll stop by and see how everyone is doing. Being able to contribute to this project was a great honor, and I have the highest regard for everyone here.

And in the end, no one knows what the future will bring. Maybe one of us will win the lottery or something.
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Comments (1) · Permalink · General mischief · Not rated (0 votes)
Jun 23 2008, 05:16 AM


Yes, I am still here, and yes, I am still alive. This year has gotten off to a very rough start and not a single plan has gone as expected, personal or professional. As a result, I am in the midst of rebuilding my plans for the second half of the year and struggling to find some way to work in time for Project Wish.

Although, if Miguel keeps messing around with templates even the time I can arrange might not result in anything creative getting done! sad.gif
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Mar 29 2008, 07:31 AM

Yesterday my son and I went to see the new Disney movie, "Enchanted". For me, it was as close to a perfect movie as the modern world has ever come. The balance of characters, events, places, scenes, transitions, music, story, so forth and so on was completely and totally flawless. It was hilarious, uplifting, satiric, sarcastic, serious, whimsical, and loaded with social commentary in the time-honored traditions established by Walt Disney himself. It was, hands down, the single most entertaining movie I have seen since the mid-eighties when Hollywood offered us "Back to the Future" and "Indiana Jones and the Search for the Lost Ark".

It opens in the kind animated world that Disney created the template for with Snow White and Cinderella. The first ten minutes are loaded with intimate and revealing allusions to so many Disney classics it is impossible to keep track of them all. The overall sentiment is intentionally over-the-board melodramatic and sickly saccharine. Then the evil-stepmother-disguised-as-an-old-hag pushes the princess down the bottomless well and the story really takes off!

From that point on the humor and social commentary does not stop. Every single frame is loaded with philosophical conflicts, biting social criticisms, and familiar Disney themes presented in a thoroughly modern and realistic social context. Walt Disney theaters have not made a movie like this since Walt stepped down from the top chair. In whatever technicolor paradise he finally landed in, Walt is surely smiling.
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Comments (1) · Permalink · General mischief · Not rated (0 votes)
Mar 8 2008, 07:21 AM

Well, it's been nearly a month since my last blog entry. My apologies. In addition to several additional maps and descriptions of the Kandonda region, I came back from a 10-day vacation to find a stack of work on my real-world desk and an all-new standard for cataloging story information here at Project Wish. Now, in addition to preparing story material, I actually have to organize and catalog it in the Project Wish Wiki! blink.gif My, oh, my.

It was inevitable, I suppose. Now that I have dived into Wiki tags and whatnot, it's not near as difficult as I'd imagined it would be, but it also means that almost every internal document I've prepared now has to be rewritten and reformatted for easy access by everyone! laugh.gif I guess I should have seen that one coming. cool.gif

So, in short, nothing new to report here, but that certainly doesn't mean I'm not busy! biggrin.gif
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Feb 1 2008, 03:29 AM

Since I plan to be here for awhile, starting a blog seemed like a good way to keep whoever is interested appraised of the storybuilding progress I'm making, even when I stumble and have to backtrack.

For starters, let me say upfront what a privilege it is to be welcomed into the Project Wish team. Mutable Realm's "Wish" remains the most unique game I have ever played and to be part of a team dedicated to reviving the qualities that made the game memorable is exciting beyond belief.

I encountered Wish halfway through Beta 1.0. To be honest, I am not at all certain how they found my e-mail address because I had never heard of the game until the day an invitation arrived in my inbox. Expecting the worst, I went ahead and applied. To my great surprise, I was almost immediately accepted into Beta!

When I logged in for the first time I made a female gnome, partly in jest. Almost immediately I discovered I had stumbled into a truly unique game. Over the next few days my little gnome became a powerful Wizard specializing in Elemental Fire magic. In addition to throwing fireballs at enemies, I grabbed up a double-bladed axe at first opportunity and set about hacking down every tree I could find with viable resource potential. The combination of Wizadry and Lumberjacking also made her a potent fighter who could take off the majority of an annoying monster's life with a series of firespells and then finish it off almost casually with a couple axe blows. Wish's unique, interlocking, open skill system meant that with every tree I chopped down, my little gnome became that much better of a warrior.

The open skill system also meant I never encountered game time where I had nothing to do. As long as she carried the right tools, she could mine simple minerals, harvest fruit and flowers, chop down trees, hunt for meat or animal products, and even make simple cloths or refine basic metals! Since I decided I did not want to spend time Taming a mount, I told everyone she encountered that she was afraid of horses because they were so much bigger than her and had such huge teeth. Even walking, she was able to travel far and wide and visited many different cities and lands. Every day became a new challenge of finding out what lay over the next hill or around the next bend in the road. And every step she took contributed ever so slightly to her strength, constitution, and so on, improving her combat skills another notch.

I remember in one human town far from her home a human player asked her if she had any palm wood, a rare commodity in his lands. She sold him some. The player then began shouting for Belladonna, so she interrupted him and offered to sell him some of that, as well. Ever so casually, he then mentioned that the only thing he still needed was some sulfur for a reagent, so she dug around in her pack and added some to the trade window. All of those resources were items she had gathered on her own during her travels. No other game I have ever encountered allows such diversity of harvesting skills. Granted, without masteries Foraging and Mining were never as successful as Lumberjacking, but they were still possible!

I still vividly remember the day Wish suddenly shut down shortly after the start of Beta 2.0. Crazy as it might seem, that remains as one of the most disappointing, shocking moments of my life. I had already started asking how retail would be handled and begun arranging my budget so I could continue playing when Beta finished. It is hard to believe the closure of a game could have made such a lasting impact. No game cancellation before or since has hit me as hard, not even the closure of Auto Assault which I deeply enjoyed playing both in Beta and in retail.

And now here I am three years later. I owe a million thanks to Jerky who has done more than anyone to keep the dream alive. I owe a million more to the writers, programmers, artists, musicians and so on who have followed his lead and left a lasting mark on the current project. Maybe it sounds soppy and melodramatic, but I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to add my own meager contribution to the ongoing vision of the Project Wish team.

I will do whatever I can to make the next three years even more successful than the first three!
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