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Tag Archive for Videogames

*Begin Rant*

I think I’ve just about had it up to HERE with independent contractors.  Part of this project I’ve been working on has gone through no fewer than FOUR contractors, each of which presented great experience, each of which was a working professional, each of which had the PLAN clearly laid out for them, then they ditched us after spending a few weeks doing pretty much nothing.  To be fair, there’s been some slippage from other areas of the project which has unjustly affected the contractors getting started like they should, but by the time contractor number four came up to bat, those elements had been taken care of.

So what’s the deal? I admit, there’s a bit of professional pride here, I’ve been a full-time freelancer (and paid reasonably well for it) for almost a decade in the videogame field.  I paid my way through school managing freelance gigs and schoolwork at the same time.  If you can’t take a gig, you don’t BID on the gig.  If you can’t handle the gig, you bow out gracefully and early so you don’t shaft the client (and ruin any chance of future work from that source).  Have I been doing this wrong?  Is there some unwritten rule of contracting I’ve missed somewhere that says signing a contract is only valid as long as you’re not bored?  Have I been a sucker, busting my a** on behalf of clients instead of signing things willy-nilly, then jumping ship when something cooler comes down the line?

Contractors have long had a dicey reputation in videogames, I know at least a couple of producers who’d rather have a root-canal than work with someone on a contract basis.  I used to think it was just a matter of personal preference.  Now I’m starting to see the light :P  And it looks an awful lot like a train…

Techno-girly

So, as a parent, and particularly a parent involved with the creation, care and feeding of media/videogames, I get a lot of opportunity to study how children grow and evolve and I pay particular attention when it comes to the learning process of play.  Now, I am by no means an expert, and my observances are limited to my kids and their friends, which gives us a pretty piss-poor sampling if we are looking at children in the greater sense I suppose, but then, I’m not a scientist and these observations are for my own edification and modification of the way I handle my kids and their peers.

So this a couple weeks ago my daughter (5.5y) discovered a newfound love of Pokemon, and in particular the cartoon that goes with the game.  Being the media-loving parent that I am, I hunt up the only play on demand movie that’s available on Netflix, through my XBox 360.  She is delighted and, by my count, has now watched through the thing at least once per day since I first downloaded it.

Now, She and I have an understanding.  I won’t try to *teach* her in any formal sense and she won’t scream at me and get all grouchy and frustrated.  It works for us.  It doens’t mean she’s unteacheable, by the way, she takes instruction from her teachers and other adults with a smile, even her father can walk her through “lessons” in a more formal sense.  This is between her and I for some odd reason.  Instead from me she learns through observation.  I can “show” her things that I think are cool (or that I pretend are cool so she’ll want to learn them) but I have to simply execute the action while she watches, I can’t give her instruction or ask her to copy my outright.

The point to all this parental rambling is that I wasn’t able to set up the movie for her this afternoon, I had my hands tied up in something little brother related.  So, in true form, she set it up herself.  She’s never asked one question about the order of things.  It’s a complicated setup, you have to turn on the TV, make sure the channel is set to the proper input, login to my XBox Live account (but that does not require a password) find the NetFlix function, then find the movie she wants and start it up.  My husband has a hard time executing all these steps sometimes, my babysitter won’t even try.  My daughter just went and did it after observing me do it on her behalf dozens of times already.

Damn, she’s a smartie!