Brenda Brathwaite blew up the universe. It happened almost nine years ago. Well, actually, you blew up the universe – but Brenda made you do it.
Say wha-?
Ok maybe I confused you a bit too much. You see, Brenda’s a veteran game designer. She’s been doing her thing for over thirty long years, over which she has created the notable Wizardry series amongst many others. Still lost? In the eighth installment of the series, the developers decided to make the player do something drastic at the end of the game: blow everything up.
On the 20th of December 2009, Brenda wrote a post titled ‘Blowing Everything Up: From AAA to Freedom’ in her blog, ‘Applied Game Design’, which attempted to answer the question “Why, Brenda… why’d you do it?” This might seem a bit funny, but really when you get down to it, it’s almost like asking an architect why he asked the tenants of his building to knock it down for fun, or a sculptress why she asked her audience to leisurely smash her beautiful work of art.
“The whole universe – planets, people, long story lines, subquests, potential sequels and everything – turned in a giant cloud of cosmic particles,” she writes. Brenda’s aware of the emotional weight her fictitious world held; it seems like the list following the initial hyphen is floating through her mind as she writes the sentence. The fact that she brings up “potential sequels” makes me feel quite sad, despite never having played the series at all. There’s a notion of hope for the future being crushed.
But just when the emotion sinks in, man is she quick to get detached! Just two sentences away, she almost jeers at the memory, “There were a variety of ways it could go, but baby, it was going. BadaBoom.” Sounds kind of like a soldier telling stories about ‘nam, right? This juxtaposition in her voice gives her a tone of experience. Further on in the post (after she addresses the main issue regarding her world-destroying decisions) she mentions how “blowing up the universe was a radical solution, but it may have been the only one, and it serves as a decent metaphor for my return to full-time game development.” I’m sorry, blowing up the universe is only a decent metaphor for get back into your job? Geez. I can’t help but be impressed by the confidence that statement holds. I mean, you have to be thoroughly convinced that what you do is damn important, and that you’re damn good at doing it to be able to say something like that.
Hopefully you’re getting a taste of Brenda’s personality by now. I’ve actually heard her speak live on two occasions, and it’s amazing how similar the tone of her actual voice is to the one that’s being produced in my head by her writing.
A good example of another trait shown consistently in her writing can be seen in her most recent post named “Developing Self-Discipline,” which jumped online on the 16th of January. In this post, she recollects a time when she worked for Electronic Arts, and made a decision for the betterment of the project in spite of the fact that “had [she] not done it, NO ONE would have known”. Her use of caps lock here makes her words have noticeable presence. “Duh dude. The letters are larger.” That’s not what I mean. Normally caps locked words can be read as LOUD SHOUTING or AGGRESIVENESS, BITCH! I don’t think that’s what she’s going here.
From her writing, I perceive Brenda to be a really, really passionate person. When I read “I had it FINISHED,” or “It was going to affect EVERYTHING I’d already written,” I take the stresses on the words to be one of suggestive empathy. I know what she’s talking about – I can feel it. I’m thinking to myself “ugh.. it’s like that project where I knew I had an A… I knew I would make my professor happy… but I spent the whole damn night trying to fix a bug that no one would have ever noticed in a million years.” But you know what? It was worth it to me. And it was worth it to Brenda.
“I vividly remember everything about that moment. Where I was sitting, what I was doing, what work the decision would affect,” she writes. The weight of the situation still vibrant in a not too distant recollection comes through with her punctuation in the latter sentence, as her thoughts aren’t gathered and collected. It’s more like a jagged view at the images in her memory. The verdict? “My only responsibility was to do it right for the game. That is what I was hired to do.” The factual delivery of her resolution resonates so well with me. It’s like there was nothing to it. Her sense of justice is so prominent; she had to do it because it was the “right” thing to do. She makes it seem like once she got a clear passage to her “guiding conscience”, there was so second-guessing.
These attributes of confidence, justice, and experience just pour through all her writing. I feel good reading through it – it’s almost comforting. One day I want to write with the confidence she has, but I’ll have to earn it first. As for Brenda… well… she’s been there, she’s done that. She’s created universes, and she’s destroyed ‘em.
BadaBoom.
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/developing-self-discipline/
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/blowing-everything-up-from-aaa-to-freedom/
Say wha-?
Ok maybe I confused you a bit too much. You see, Brenda’s a veteran game designer. She’s been doing her thing for over thirty long years, over which she has created the notable Wizardry series amongst many others. Still lost? In the eighth installment of the series, the developers decided to make the player do something drastic at the end of the game: blow everything up.
On the 20th of December 2009, Brenda wrote a post titled ‘Blowing Everything Up: From AAA to Freedom’ in her blog, ‘Applied Game Design’, which attempted to answer the question “Why, Brenda… why’d you do it?” This might seem a bit funny, but really when you get down to it, it’s almost like asking an architect why he asked the tenants of his building to knock it down for fun, or a sculptress why she asked her audience to leisurely smash her beautiful work of art.
“The whole universe – planets, people, long story lines, subquests, potential sequels and everything – turned in a giant cloud of cosmic particles,” she writes. Brenda’s aware of the emotional weight her fictitious world held; it seems like the list following the initial hyphen is floating through her mind as she writes the sentence. The fact that she brings up “potential sequels” makes me feel quite sad, despite never having played the series at all. There’s a notion of hope for the future being crushed.
But just when the emotion sinks in, man is she quick to get detached! Just two sentences away, she almost jeers at the memory, “There were a variety of ways it could go, but baby, it was going. BadaBoom.” Sounds kind of like a soldier telling stories about ‘nam, right? This juxtaposition in her voice gives her a tone of experience. Further on in the post (after she addresses the main issue regarding her world-destroying decisions) she mentions how “blowing up the universe was a radical solution, but it may have been the only one, and it serves as a decent metaphor for my return to full-time game development.” I’m sorry, blowing up the universe is only a decent metaphor for get back into your job? Geez. I can’t help but be impressed by the confidence that statement holds. I mean, you have to be thoroughly convinced that what you do is damn important, and that you’re damn good at doing it to be able to say something like that.
Hopefully you’re getting a taste of Brenda’s personality by now. I’ve actually heard her speak live on two occasions, and it’s amazing how similar the tone of her actual voice is to the one that’s being produced in my head by her writing.
A good example of another trait shown consistently in her writing can be seen in her most recent post named “Developing Self-Discipline,” which jumped online on the 16th of January. In this post, she recollects a time when she worked for Electronic Arts, and made a decision for the betterment of the project in spite of the fact that “had [she] not done it, NO ONE would have known”. Her use of caps lock here makes her words have noticeable presence. “Duh dude. The letters are larger.” That’s not what I mean. Normally caps locked words can be read as LOUD SHOUTING or AGGRESIVENESS, BITCH! I don’t think that’s what she’s going here.
From her writing, I perceive Brenda to be a really, really passionate person. When I read “I had it FINISHED,” or “It was going to affect EVERYTHING I’d already written,” I take the stresses on the words to be one of suggestive empathy. I know what she’s talking about – I can feel it. I’m thinking to myself “ugh.. it’s like that project where I knew I had an A… I knew I would make my professor happy… but I spent the whole damn night trying to fix a bug that no one would have ever noticed in a million years.” But you know what? It was worth it to me. And it was worth it to Brenda.
“I vividly remember everything about that moment. Where I was sitting, what I was doing, what work the decision would affect,” she writes. The weight of the situation still vibrant in a not too distant recollection comes through with her punctuation in the latter sentence, as her thoughts aren’t gathered and collected. It’s more like a jagged view at the images in her memory. The verdict? “My only responsibility was to do it right for the game. That is what I was hired to do.” The factual delivery of her resolution resonates so well with me. It’s like there was nothing to it. Her sense of justice is so prominent; she had to do it because it was the “right” thing to do. She makes it seem like once she got a clear passage to her “guiding conscience”, there was so second-guessing.
These attributes of confidence, justice, and experience just pour through all her writing. I feel good reading through it – it’s almost comforting. One day I want to write with the confidence she has, but I’ll have to earn it first. As for Brenda… well… she’s been there, she’s done that. She’s created universes, and she’s destroyed ‘em.
BadaBoom.
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/developing-self-discipline/
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/blowing-everything-up-from-aaa-to-freedom/
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