News You Can Bruise for 2012 April 10

Tue Apr 10 2012 09:18 Constellation Games Author Commentary #20, "Feature Creep": This week: Dana earns her paycheck, we learn the shocking (if you're a Farang) secret of Sayable Spice, and Ariel stresses out and gets a little stalkery.

I'm not sure who put a bunch of tags on CG's LibraryThing page, but they're pretty great. (and full of spoilers) Apparently CG is a bildungsroman about cosplay, douchebags, mecha-godzilla, real replicas, and vastening. I don't disagree!

Come for the Twitter archive, stay for the commentary. CDBOEGOACC contest winners will be announced as soon as I finish the post.

• Last week I mentioned that Svetlana Sveta did not exist in the second draft. There were a lot of scenes with Ariel or Bai carrying around and talking to a piece of paper. I think of the second draft as what "really" happened, the factual basis for Ariel's blog posts in the third draft.

  You can see that Ariel isn't trying very hard to conceal the truth. He left unchanged details like the way "Svetlana" dresses, and he added over-the-top winks like Svetlana boasting about supplanting Dana. Bits like "Svetlana held her smart paper against the TV screen" are minimal glosses on what happened in the second draft ("I taped the smart paper to the television").

• In SF that features humans among lots of alien species, there's frequently some BS idea that humans are special. I was going to write that TV Tropes probably has a name for it, and then I looked and yes, the name is: "Humans Are Special." This generalization takes many forms, none of which I like, but the one I dislike least is the one given in Babylon 5: humans are special in that they form communities.

  This one at least has some truth to it. Human cultures are all over the map, but almost by definition they involve a bunch of humans forming a community. I wouldn't go as far as B5's suggestion that humans form inclusive communities (TV Tropes: "Humans Are Diplomats"). But it is a real tendency which distinguishes humans from, say, octopus.

  Farang are more like octopus. There's nothing wrong with this, it's not time for them to learn a valuable lesson about what it means to be human, but it means their cultures have little in common with human cultures. A normal human put into a Farang body would be a misfit, the kind of person who produces offensive artwork like Sayable Spice. A human might be able to identify with such artwork, but probably not with its pugnaciousness.

  (nb. humans are not special in the Constellation universe; Aliens are very similar and they got there first. This is the subject of chapter 25's deleted scene, which I'll put up when the time comes.)

  

• We finally get the tense Ariel/Jenny scene I mentioned a while back, a scene that shows what Ariel thinks Jenny thinks of him, and hiding in between, a little bit of what they actually think of each other. "Found Objects" has an analogous scene from Jenny's POV.
• I've mentioned before that Tactical Nuclear Exchange is basically Twilight Struggle with the complexity dialed way up, but I really like that extra complexity: the ideology board with its traps, the simulation of the shortcomings of Soviet central planning where the Soviet player lays out a plan and the American player shuffles the plan cards. Most of all, the idea that the game can abruptly end and render all your setup time moot.

  In Twilight Struggle, the player who starts a nuclear war automatically loses. I sometimes find myself making decisions not to help me win, but to help the game go on a normal amount of time given how long it took to set up. I don't think this kind of decision-making is even particularly unrealistic in a nuclear context, but it's only half the story.

  Because really, who cares who started the war? You're both dead. In TNE the only thing that matters is who has more survivors. And although 90% of the time the name of the game is a lie and a "tactical" exchange will escalate until everyone dies, there's some mechanism in TNE constantly working to convince you that this time you can win but you gotta go for it now!

• It's a little Creative License-ish that people born in 1987 would be heavily into a board game about the Cold War. But maybe it's retro chic, and it does have all those cool expansions.

  

• Bonus mid-story Jenny facts: I discovered while looking at a very early outline that Jenny's name was originally Jenny Gallardo. I never explicitly changed it. Just, the first time I wrote her surname in the story proper, it was "Gallegos". Which I do like better.

  I saw The Middleman while finishing the second draft of Constellation Games, and I was a little upset to see Natalie Morales playing Wendy Watson very close to how I imagine Jenny: kind of ticked off all the time at how not everyone is as smart as she is. But I got over being upset.

• The launch of the Mars mission was the trickiest scene in the book to write. This scene has to do a ton of exposition about the mission itself, the way the Constellation uses ports for space travel, the star-draw ritual, and the evolving use of patches to display fluid overlay affiliations. It's got the first onscreen Gaijin and the first appearance of Colonel Mason. And the narrator's nowhere near the action! He's really stressed out and he's watching the action on the Internet as a way of taking a break. Which, believe me, I've been there, and it's not a good state of mind in which to write coherently.

  In the second draft this scene was also the introduction of the star-draw, and it was just too much for one little scene. So I had Curic introduce the star-draw back in chapter 8, and now this scene just has to remind you of it.

• I go back and forth on whether Ariel is being creepy in the mission launch scene. I mean, he does have a romantic relationship with Tammy, just not quite the one he thinks he has. But he is being kind of obsessive about watching that video (and notice the name of the chapter). It works either way.

Part Two's plot kicks into high gear next week, with the terrifying chapter 21, "Her". The chapter in which Tetsuo will say (but not demonstrate) "Sexual pair bonding!" Also next week: you can get a paper copy of the book and read the whole rest of the story! Then complain about how I'm not putting up this commentary fast enough.

Photo credits: US Army, US Department of Defense, Flickr user my_eye.

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Tue Apr 10 2012 09:56 CDBOEGOACC Contest Results: I was worried that no one would enter the CDBOEGOACC contest and it would be like a party where no one showed up. But ten people put in 29 entries, which is a pretty good party. I'm pretty sure all the entrants are Constellation Games subscribers, so I gotta work on my crossover appeal, but I'm happy with the turnout.

Once again, the grand prize is a galley copy of Constellation Games which will hopefully be delivered a few days before the paperback comes out. Even I don't have a galley copy, so you know it's exclusive. There'll also be a random drawing, and the winner will get a free basic-level subscription. Although since everyone who entered is already a subscriber, I don't know if you want that. Maybe you can give it to a friend, maybe you can negotiate a different prize with Kate, the publisher.

Anyway, let's take a look at the entries:

• First, you gotta check out Andrew Perry's nerdtastic entries. He took little bits of worldbuilding I'd scattered around the novel and created (AFAIK) the first piece of Constellation Games fan fiction, featuring realistic Farang, Alien, and Wazungu games, plus one created for humans by a Smoke submind. I especially liked the "Flase Daylight".

  In a non-ironic twist, Andrew's fidelity to existing Constellation Games canon was what cost him the award. Since I wrote the stuff he was stitching together, reading his CDBOEGOACC entries didn't make me feel like I was on a flight of fancy. But, I have asked Kate for dispensation to award Andrew the special CDBOEGOACC Jury Prize.

All the other entries were short concept quotes posted to Twitter. I've archived all of them here because I really hate the way Twitter's UI consigns the past to a dark, eternal oubliette.

• Ornithopter:
  • The Way Arounding: hide your shameful underscale color from your husband's husband while negotiating a wedding contract with him
  • "An invading army is coming. You have 3 days to store fat for hibernation and to bury yourself deep enough to avoid detection."
  • Young-Time Architecture: Design a nest for your eggs of sufficient complexity to prevent yourself from eating them.
  • Fish or Other Fish?: You are captured by Roetus. Arrange patterns of color to convince them you're sentient before they eat you. (The title "Fish or Other Fish?" comes from an event in Dolkoan history where a fish and its twin competed for war-minister.)
  • No Never Negation No No!: Find the lost start-card to your transport shuttle in a series of exotic locations. #cdboegoacc
  • No Never Negation No No No!: Sequel to NNNNN! You are the transport-shuttle's start card. Hide to extend your owner's vacation.
• George Buckenham:
  • Thermal Vent Orchestrator: Intended as a test of vent-controlling verisimilitude, but usually played for laughs with cheats on.
  • "When Catastrophe Strikes, Emulate the Octopus" [he adds: "this is actually the title of a Wired article"]
• Benhimself:
  • Xarthru: "Falling shapes composed of four blocks descend from above, arrange them in lines to clear them and score." Wait, what?
  • Squigglers III: Eat delicious parasites off the tentacle monster on which you live without becoming a meal yourself!
  • Launch asteroids at a planet using the gravity wells of other orbiting planets to save energy.The other player will return fire. [This is very similar to "Occluded Occlusion", an Ip Shkoy game mentioned in chapter 33. -LR]
• Gus Andrews
  • Pentathlon: Behemoth bowling, cotyledon racing, flailing, cube dancing, bluntshooting
  • Aesthetics-driven, unscored "doing-the-dozens"-style attempt to outdo other players by producing the most nuanced cloud of gas
• Tikitu de Jager
  • Bloom: Rediscover the excitement of first pollination. Only this time YOU decide where the seeds fall.
  • Society: Out-game negotiations influence in-game status, and (where not prohibited by applicable social strictures) vice versa.
• Adam Parrish
  • one player must communicate a terminal semantic taxon to others without using distal mouthparts or pheromone glands
• Brendan Adkins
  • "Largely Automated Testimony Extractor:" Only a game inasmuch as one can play to lose.
  • "Hit The Button Before Anyone Else Hits The Button:" Popularity declined after players began using relativistic time dilation.
  • "My Friend The Modular Dissent Repression System:" Hacks a hunter-drone's neural core to prioritize cuddling.
  • "Inferior Gasband:" Created to defame a rival pseudofamily. Rivals later ate the designer and produced a successful sequel.
  • "If You Outscore This Game's Designer At This Game Her Agents Will Implode Your Home Village With Hydrocarbons:" No longer true.
  • "That's Enough:" designed for slowphase, an innovative anti-cheating system emits UV flares if the player displays life-signs.
  • "Meatchild:" An innovative control scheme allows up to 4 million of Her hive-units to cooperatively guide a single biped.
• Mirabai Knight
  • A long-scope evolutionary commerce game in which shoemakers must adapt to the cyclic disappearance and reappearance of feet.
• Evan Baer (who entered after the deadline, but I'll at least put his entry up here)
  • Stop, Memmings! subvert attempts of adorable figures to prevent access to Constellation drop boxes, which are empty when opened.

I thought all the entries were really good, although Adam may have been phoning it in. C'mon, Adam, this ain't Apples to Apples. Anyway, I'm excluding Adam and Brendan from consideration because they were beta readers. Here are my three favorites (apart from Andrew's, which I've already spilled the beans that it didn't win):

• "An invading army is coming. You have 3 days to store fat for hibernation and to bury yourself deep enough to avoid detection." [Ornithopter]
• Pentathlon: Behemoth bowling, cotyledon racing, flailing, cube dancing, bluntshooting [Gus Andrews]
• A long-scope evolutionary commerce game in which shoemakers must adapt to the cyclic disappearance and reappearance of feet. [Mirabai Knight]

And the winner of the Constellation Games galley copy is... Ornithopter! I loved their game concept because it tied into a theme I don't really explore in CG: the repurposing of really awful historical situations as entertainment simulations.

But don't give up yet, non-disqualified entrants! We've still got the random drawing. And here's some Python code to perform it:

>>> import random
>>> entrants = ["Andrew Perry", "Ornithopter", "George Buckenham", "Benhimself", "Gus Andrews", "Tikitu de Jager", "Mirabai Knight"]
>>> random.choice(entrants)
'Andrew Perry'

OK, well, that worked out. Andrew Perry will receive the random drawing prize, and we'll just call it the CDBOEGOACC Jury Prize.

And that's it for the gala CDBOEGOACC giveaway contest! I hope it was a fun time. I certainly enjoyed watching people come up with this stuff.