I was planning to talk about our company retreat and how us nerdy game designers ended up breaking our poor facilitator’s team-building game…
… but Russell already beat me to it. So, yeah, what he said. About the only thing I can add is that I proposed a system where everyone was the spy (in order to communicate the same message), and my team actually got the problem wrong because we all suck at math.
Martin Livings did a mini-review of “Close Encounters of the Urban Kind,” including a nice nod for “Gloomy Sunday.” (Thanks, Martin!)
[T]he best compliment I can pay this one is that it ended too soon. I could see a novel growing out of this tale of genetically-implanted musical melancholy.
And since I’m on the topic of my writing, I’m working on a series of essays about the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes canon tentatively entitled “Tour de Holmes.” It’s going to be slow going, and there are going to be a lot of them, so for now let’s just see how it goes.
At work last week, during one of the rambling intellectual discussions that tend to come up in our office, one of my coworkers dropped a bomb and said that “there’s no such thing as modern noir.” Said person then followed up with “I might go so far as to say that noir isn’t a genre, but rather an aesthetic” before walking out of the room, leaving me flabbergasted. In this person’s defense, there was a great follow-up conversation (mostly involving me and Russell explaining why this is quite wrong), but it’s not the first time I’ve heard this.
First, let’s get the second question cleared up: noir is a genre. Specifically, it is a genre of crime dramas, primarily in the 40s and 50s. Hollywood crime dramas from the time are more formally “films noir,” and literature in the genre is more often called either “hardboiled fiction” or “American detective fiction,” but such movies and literature can be correctly categorized as noir.
The first question, the existence of modern noir, is a bit trickier. In poking around, it seems the generally accepted term is actually neo-noir, and it’s loosely applied. Basically, if a movie or piece of literature has a detective, moral ambiguity, or even a dash of the stylistic tropes of noir, people try to classify it as neo-noir. This extends to, essentially, most fiction ever.1 I would personally require that a piece of fiction be a crime drama at core before there can even be a consideration of whether it qualifies as neo-noir or not (which is why I still think that Inception qualifies, although perhaps just barely), but the value of the label has certainly been diluted.
For a month or so, I’ve been scrapping personal projects, pulling away from potential commitments, and generally rearranging my personal life. I mentioned in passing that I had a couple of work opportunities pop up that I was really excited about, but I needed to make my personal life more flexible to better plan around them. At GenCon, I was able to announce one of those opportunities. I realized that some people who read this blog might actually be interested in the news as well, so here goes.
Previously, my title at White Wolf had been “Alternative Publishing Developer.” As the stuff I work on moves from being the alternative to the way we do business, we realized that my title was a bit of a misnomer. I suggested a few options (including just “Developer”), but my boss surprised me by giving me a much bigger title.
As of August 1, I am the World of Darkness Developer for White Wolf Publishing.
My job duties haven’t really changed as such – they’ve just increased in scope. I had already been shepherding a number of World of Darkness products in my time with the company, and over time the other guys have trusted me more and more to make my own calls on things. In retrospect the title is making official something that’s been happening unofficially for a while, but it’s still an amazing vote of confidence to even be offered the chance to call myself the World of Darkness Developer.
So, that’s a lot of the reason why I’ve been crazy busy lately. The post-GenCon rush is starting to die down a bit, so things are settling a bit more, and hopefully I should be able to get back to my backlog of topics to blog about. Plus I do have another (much less time-intensive) personal project in the works that I’ll serialize on this blog at some point – I want to make sure I can build up a backlog before I announce it, so if I get hit with workworkworkworkwork again, there won’t be a pause in the project.
I’m back from GenCon. Well, actually, I got back Monday night, but I’ve been catching up on work since I got back. Overall, I had a great time catching up with friends, talking with fans, and making new memories. I always find GenCon to be a great way to recharge my inspiration tank – I left the con with a million different ideas. Thanks to everyone who made me feel welcome, challenged me, made me laugh, or just said “hi.” I hope we can all do it again next year!
This week I will be at GenCon, pimping the upcoming digital awesomeness coming from White Wolf from Wednesday evening until Monday morning. However, unlike previous years, looking for me at the White Wolf booth probably won’t get you good results, as I’ll be running around a lot this year. But there are some points in which you can track me down.
WEDNESDAY
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