shaneneville.com

Wow - it’s hard to believe that 2007 is almost over and that it’s time to look back and reflect. 2007 was a year of change for me. New job, growing family, new game, new home and new friends all culminated in a fundamental change in how and why I live my life.

In the past, I’ve wrapped up the year with a bunch of top 10 lists - movies, comics, games, TV, etc, but as long term readers will know - 2007 was not a year with a lot of spare time, so this year’s review will be wrapped up in one post. Here we go - 2007 in a nutshell:

Top 3 Changes

I’m a Dad

When Cassandra entered the world on April 13th, my world changed forever. She is my inspiration and my joy. Being a father is rewarding and challenging in ways I never imagined and I look forward to every moment I can spend with her.

Joining Relic

I’ve been a big fan of Relic’s since Homeworld and being back in development was exactly the change I needed. Being a corporate manager definitely had it’s perks, but my heart is in development. Spending every day with insanely talented artists, designers, programmers, writers and sound designers (audio hates it when I list them last…) has a tendency to inspire. Here are sites for a few Relic folk who inspired me over the past year:

John Tennant
Noah Stacey (Deviantart)
Stephen MacDonald

Drawing Every Day
I love drawing and missed it horribly. In my university years, I would fill up 3 fat sketchbooks a year. While I still run through a Moleskin or two a year - it’s mostly text and rarely pictures. Early in the year, Dr. 4est and I had a few sketch jams, then Stephen Mac (see above) rounded up some art minded people for drawing at work. These lit the fire. With a bit of warm up life drawing courtesy of Posemaniacs, I’ve started drawing every day. My beloved ‘grid’ Moleskin was replaced with a ‘blank’ Moleskine and is partnered with a pen/pencil 2-in-one pen thingy. I’m still a ways away from where I want to be as far as quality goes, but I couldn’t be happier.

Top 3 TV/Movies
(since I was so busy being a dad and shipping a game in 07, these two are blended into one, hopefully 08 will see me in the movie theatre a bit more)
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Avatar is simply the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen on a screen and it continues to inspire and amaze. Season three has built on the tradition of excellent characters, story and animation and continues to raise the bar in all areas. I continuously find myself saying ‘that’s one of the best episodes ever’ after watching each episode. One day I hope to spend an evening picking the minds of Bryan and Mike, the co-creators on their vision, their team and how some of the key moment in Avatar were conceived.

Superbad - Funniest movie I’ve ever seen? Possibly.

Pushing Daisies - I hopped on the PD bandwagon pretty late, but what PD does with narrative, characters, relationships and visual style is pure unrefined awesome.

Top 3 Games

Quality wise 2007 was simply the best year to be a gamer ever.

COH:Opposing Fronts - OK, so I’m totally biased here, but I can’t help it. I love this game.

Peggle - The most infinitely rewarding game I’ve ever played. If you royally screw up, you get a random free ball. Rainbows, unicorn guides, fireworks and more combine for a casual game mega-hit that has found a core audience. No matter who you are, you need to play Peggle. Mom - this means you!

Rock Band - While I may have spent more time with Bioshock, Halo 3, Orange Box, Mass Effect, Phantom Hourglass, Lumines 2 and a ton of other games in 07, it’s Rock Band that takes the third slot in my top 3. I didn’t even realize how much this game meant to me until a week ago, when I was at a party and Guitar Hero 3 was rocking in the corner. It felt like I was playing half a game. No drums + No Mic = No Fun. Co-op rocking is one of the best game experiences I’ve ever had. The first time the Doubt Nots (our band) nailed a set three song set of:Detroit Rock City, Tom Sawyer and Run to the Hills created one of the best video game highs ever.

A couple of other things I thought a lot about in 07:

The Sailor Moon effect - I have no idea what else to call this, but simply put, Sailor Moon’s reign in the 90’s has turned a whole generation of girls onto anime and manga - and as a result - onto video games, comic books and graphic novels. (I guess we could call Sailor Moon a gateway drug) At the Emerald City Comic-con this year, a local public school had a table for their comic creator club. There wasn’t a single boy in this club. Yep: All girls. Drawing and writing comics. At a comic-con.

Girls are not the new broad audience for media - girls are the new geek audience.

A new platform roadmap:
The simple fact is that everybody plays games, whether they admit it or not. New audiences, new platforms, new revenue models and new game mechanics have given the game industry new a much wider reach than ever before - just don’t try selling Bioshock to the Grandma playing Brain Age.
In 2000 the roadmap was: PC, Console, Handheld.
In 2005 it was: PC Core, PC Casual, Console, Handheld, Mobile
In 2007 it’s: PC Core, PC Casual, PC Social, PC Browser, DS, Wii, PSP, Console (360, PS3), Mobile, ARG, Facebook

And you can reach more than 1,000,000 players on each one of those platforms.

2007 was a great year - definitely the best of my life and 2008 promises to be interesting and challenging, both personally and professionally. I know my blogging wasn’t up to the usual frequency this year, so extra special thanks to everyone for reading - I promise to step it up in 08.