My nerd dreams

We all spend time inside our heads in (literally) "My Space." I imagine the inside of our heads being like a space that is furnished with anywhere from the romantic to the hectic to the nerdy and so on. If you ever wanted to get inside my head and take a peek I'll give you a hint at what you'd likely see. It would look like a combination between an Apple ipod commercial, Metroid videogame, and SportsCenter's studio. Everything would have a nice shine and would show off a slight reflection of your image. It would be very organized, feature an open design and little to no clutter. A sterile color scheme of greens, whites and charcoal colors to saturate your visual palette.

Now let you tell you my ultimate dream, and I must issue a cautionary nerd alert before I proceed. If you don't like sci-fi, videogames or cool gadgets and technology this may not be appropriate for you. Did I lose anyone? Good. Let's continue. Ever since I played my first videogame I've always had a dream of creating my own game world filled with characters and creatures from my imagination. Developing a high end AAA title these days rivals that of a blockbuster Hollywood production in cost and manpower making this dream a distant one. Enter Wiiware and the iphone.

These two mediums have brought development back to the garage. They offer the tools to create a game on a shoestring budget. Sure it may not have the epicness of a new Halo or Metroid game but it can still be a heck of a lot of fun. It's brought the industry back to full circle if you will. Enter Flitch Games (my own small development studio.) Big Matt and I will sometimes discuss simple game ideas that we could bring to life. My idea now is to design a game where the entire purpose is simply to blow things up. You want to see what 1000 lbs of dynomite will do to a fire engine? try it out. You want to drop napalm on a football stadium? Go for it. Don't worry no people or animals would be featured in the game. Just inanimate objects. I would want a dynamic physics engine that could process user generated content to give accurate and satisfying explosions. I would create a forum where you could upload your chaos and have others rate it or download it themselves, then modify and execute their own experiments. Simple in design and limitless in possibilities. Obviously there are other details to be ironed out and feature sets to add. But who doesn't like to blow stuff up? who hasn't wanted to shoot a propane tank with a rifle to see it shoot like a missile? OK maybe that's just me (-:

In other news, my son Jaron now can officially make it around the track in Mario Kart Wii all by himself. No help from me. He runs into walls and falls off edges, but eventually he completes the lap. His dad is so proud of him.