I forgot to post on Monday about what I was planning to work on with UECA! this week. It just hasn’t been on my mind in a while. It’s been two weeks since I did any significant work on the game, and while I feel really guilty for not putting any time into it, I don’t feel the anxiety I used to feel when I was behind on comics. I’m not entirely sure that I miss the anxiety part.

When I was still doing TMABB, drawing every morning was a habit. I didn’t always enjoy it, but I ground away at those strips anyway, because I generally felt like shit when I didn’t. Yeah, that’s obviously the wrong reason to do something, but it kept me working and I rarely missed updates because of it. That’s a good thing, right?

I don’t have that same motivation with this game thing. There are no deadlines, no obligation to the readers. I don’t imagine many people are offended that I’ve missed a few UECA! posts. Yet, nothing is getting done. It’s retarded. I like doing the work once I start doing it. The only problem I have is the starting. I’ve always been like this. I just have this weird anxiety about getting to work on something. It’s the main source of my procrastination habit. And so here we are, thirteen weeks into the project, and I barely feel like I’ve done a week’s worth of work. I don’t stress about it like I did with comics, sure, but I’m also a lot less productive.

How can I get my producitivity back without reintroducing the constant worrying that came with having a webcomic?

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One of those most insightful game-related sites on the Internet, The Escapist, is focusing on sex in games for this week’s set of editorial features. One article in particular stood out for me: Pressing The Right Buttons.

The author presents some mid-to-high level game concepts on how sex might be worked into a game context. He contends that, thus far in games, sex, in those rare instances where a developer is brave enough to weather the political backlash that always follows its portrayal, has been limited to either non-interactive cut scenes, such as in Mass Effect, or timed sequences of button presses, such as in God of War (which is a terrible example, but the best I could think of). His argument is that this removes the emotional involvement from the encounter, furthering the already cheap perception of sex that pervades the major gaming demographic of teenagers and young adults.

The author’s ideas for how to create in-depth gameplay around sex are quite interesting, and I’ll leave those points to his article. What I want to present here is a minor counterpoint to his argument against the way sex is currently presented in games. I say minor because, while I agree with his main point, I want to give a justification for why sex shows up in such a noninteractive context. I don’t necessarily believe it to be right.

Let’s look at sexuality as what all things as emotionally charged as sex fundamentally are: biological imperatives. Just as we get depressed and uncomfortable when we don’t get enough food, so too do we get when we don’t have enough sex. Remember that emotions exist to provide an instinctive impetus for us to perform certain beneficial actions, such as fighting for one’s life, sleeping, and eating. In the case of sex, we tend to form emotional bonds with sexual partners because it increases the likelihood of reproduction (or rather, those of our ancestors who did so tended to reproduce more effectively).

How are biological needs handled in games? You walk over a plate of food to eat it. You click a button to make your Sim go to the bathroom. You choose a menu item to have your character rest for the night. If we look at sex as just another biological imperative, then it makes sense that it show up in the same manner as the others, by viewing the act as given and moving on to the more interesting and less ordinary parts of life.

On the other hand, perhaps the Escapist author’s idea could be applied to other biological mundanities. We could use shoulder triggers to move a character’s jaw up and down while using an analog stick to make the character’s tongue move the food in his mouth around to improve chewing. We could time changes in sleeping positions during the night to optimize the amount of rest the character gets. We could use rhythmic button presses to relax the character’s bowels so he can go to the bathroom. Okay, maybe not everything needs to be a game.

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So I guess I forgot to post on Friday. Gerp.

I’m starting to feel like I should separate these UECA! posts from the main content somehow. Not completely sure how I want to go about that, but they’re just so boring most of the time. I guess it would help if I posted anything but them anymore. I’ll figure something out.

Anyway, same deal as last week and the week before.

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11th verse, same as the 10th. More brainstorming, followed by more cleaning up of brainstorms.

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I did stuff this week!

Unfortunately, I can’t really talk about one of the biggest developments. It’s just a game mechanic idea that I’m really proud of that I think will add a whole new layer to the game.

I did a lot of brainstorming this week. I actually opened up my design document and just started typing out a stream of consciousness style rant. That lasted for two or three mornings. Thursday morning, I went back and started cleaning everything up.

Progress, is what I’m saying.

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