Living my best in 2025

A reminder that only I can be the best me.

A list of seven ways to live better in the coming year.

• Live in the moment, and listen to your heart.  Feel the compulsions that you can't ignore.

• Use luck, serendipity, and perspective to decide the positive or negative story you tell yourself.  

• Focus on the immediate task at hand.  Your priority is always in the present.

• Let go of static self-labels, life is a continuous remake and rebirth.

• Create and share meaningful experiences.

• Tune into the ultimate internal compass: compassion.  

• No matter how far you go or how fast you try to run, there you are, with your shadow in tow.

4 Years Jamming

Last month marked the end of my 4-year journey at Jam City. What a length of time to reflect on and be grateful for!  When I started on the Panda Pop team in August of 2020, I didn't know what to expect -- given lockdowns, I had to take interviews calls in the backyard, under the shade of our fig tree, and take preparatory walks along the neighborhood creek.  There was a hint of fresh uncertainty to the world.  It was a time of constant transition, really. 

Work was different, with the fully remote setup, the cross-continent collaboration, and the new responsibility of a popular game.  Each in-person team conference was an exciting event with a trek to San Francisco or a drive to HQ in Culver City.  Life was also different: I gradually lost some personal labels and found new ones. No longer was I wearing the title of a student, no longer was I based out of California, no longer was I in my 20s. 

And so it goes!  With the recent industry layoffs, I'm onto the next game. 

In my 4 years jamming, I got to PM, operate Live-Ops, run tests, create features with everyone past and present on the talented Panda team and JC teams and much much more!  It was fantastic and unimaginably so. 

The next 4 years are certainly going to look very different from the last.  Yet there is an air of familiarity to it, too.  Of uncertainty, transition, and opportunity.  I'm not sure what the next big project for me will be (open to suggestions!).  But I've a few, tiny, personal ones in progress or in consideration that will be quite fun.

Anime Impulse OC 2022

We set up a booth in the Artist Alley at Anime Impulse OC this year, featuring a meowinverse t-shirt, stickers, and some anime/game prints. The Meowinverse website is under test launch here as well: meowinverse.com, with a Shopify service.

The Donut cat design is representative of a cat leaping through a hole connecting  universes together.  The hole carries a deeper purpose in the full perspective of the world, as a tunnel, path, and focusing point of an oculus.  Without the donut, there would be no sweetness to life.

Of the prints my most popular were the ones of Miku and Orange Girl.  The highlight of this year's trip was getting to meet Suzie Yeung!  I loved the genshin cosplayers as well, was able to snap a few pics, but missed a memorable Hu Tao and Eula.

I've highlighted a few of my favourite booths below as well.

Caught up on JRPGs FFVIIR and P5

Wrapped up playing Final Fantasy VII Remake last month and Persona 5 over the last week. I think what I'm left with is the imprint of the character designers at the pinnacle of their work.

25 years on, Cloud and crew are iconic as ever. Kept in the zeitgeist by Square Enix's dedicated investment into spin-offs and media. I'd actually mostly familiarized myself this cast without playing the original FF7 (only made it a few hours in). I read the lore, script, and watched the animated OVA and movies. The characters somehow hit the sweet spot of being a fresh archetype for gamers in that generation. In the remake, they aren't as wordy as they would be in a text-based classic RPG, but I think it works to the advantage of letting the characters express themselves through motion and just showing themselves as visual marvels on screen. They 100% brought these characters to life again. Though Yuffie wasn't in the main campaign, she's naturally my favourite character here.

Persona 5's another story altogether. I started playing this one about 4 or 5 years ago, and was immediately enthralled except for the challenge of its length. After nearly finishing the second Palace, I put it on the shelf until 2021 when I picked it up again on the PS5, easily accessible in the Plus Collection. This is another game oozing with cool, filled with unique, recognizable characters that slowly opens up the more time you spend with them. It wasn't until continuing the game that there was a wave of introduction of confidants and I found the motivation to build relationships with them. And it was rewarding, too, to follow each of the character's struggles as they tried to better the world, and as they tried to overcome their own self-doubt and weaknesses. The game was a heartfelt reminder that change is achievable with support and resolve. My favourite addition to the party was Makoto.

2021 A Year in Games

Quick list of games played in 2021:

Genshin Impact, Cyberpunk 2077, Artifact, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Seek Etyliv, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Dyson Sphere Program, Final Fantasy XV, Valorant, Concrete Genie, Control, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, God of War, Knockout City, Virtua Fighter 5, Wild Rift, Industries of Titan, Naraka: Bladepoint, Hunter's Arena, Florence, Superliminal, DotA 2, League of Legends, Battlerite, Runeterra, Hitman 3, Bright Memory: Infinite, Legion TD 2, Titanfall 2, MageQuit

In progress:

Pathless, Persona 5, Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Sampled:

Timelie, Shadwen, Loop Hero, Rhythm Fighter, A Plague Tale: Innocence

Thoughts:

This year, I've had more interest in classic JRPGs and shooters.  Both in the style of high fidelity experiences, action cutscenes and a clear throughline story with memorable set-pieces.  The music in FFXV set the tone of a grand epic.  That followed with a lot of focused, fun time in FFVII Remake and Persona 5  Voice acting went a long way to make the character drama come to life.

The weakest genre as of late has been stealth.  I did play Cyberpunk 2077 with a stealth build, so perhaps that covered my needs there.  Maybe the military backdrops of that and Metal Gear / Splinter Cell franchises are more compelling to me.   As for the other, more traditional hard stealth games, I found that there was a tradeoff where the designs had a lot of tutorializing of stealth mechanics that I did not have the patience to get past.  The puzzle-like elements of early stealth games felt restrictive and bland, as I'd have seen these before from past experience.

Competitive games were fun (as always) but a bit of a struggle this year.  Without dedicated time to study and master the strategies, it was harder to keep up across multiple multiplayers games.  These are still very fun, I thoroughly enjoyed Hunter's Arena, Virtua Fighter 5, Knockout City, MageQuit, and Naraka a lot, especially in the early learning curves just after each game's launch.  I'm happy to play out a season in each one and see how I rank compared to other players.  But there's no chase to be the top 1% for me here.  Mastery is a bit out of reach without focus.

Biggest surprise and enjoyment was Superliminal.  It spoke directly to me as a game developer, by showing the backstage elements of creative work.  

Ultimately, I'm reminiscing on Nier: Automata.  This is the masterpiece that come back to me a lot, especially through the soundtrack.  I've picked up the prequel remake Nier: Replicant ver 1.22474487139... and it's going to be my focus for 2022.

Anticipated games of 2022/23:

God of War: Ragnarok, Elden Ring, Sifu, Final Fantasy XVI, Astrea: Six Sided Oracles, Endless Dungeon, Citizen Sleeper

Liberating Wind

Fresh starts are the freeing from the shackles of the past and every day, every moment could be one.

2020

2020 was a landmark year, one of those that we eagerly look forward to in the past but upon arriving discover it was less than the ideal future.  Now that the year has come and gone the collective focus of humanity will be on the promises of 2026, or 2049, or 2077, or any another number with significance.  

13 Years on Steam

I've been gaming on Steam since 2007, when Valve launched the Orange Box.  My christmas present that year was a PC that could play it!  That first Winter was filled with exploration in Half-Life 2, solving the mind bending puzzles of Portal, and gibbing in Team Fortress 2.

Today I'm almost up to the milestone 1000 games in library (given the Pareto distribution I've only played 20% of those). I've had many of my favourite gaming moments and great times playing with friends on Steam.  It's really succeeded in making PC gaming the most accessible platform.  A large storefront, community tools, a place to play with friends, and instant access to my games on my laptop or desktop, whichever was nearest to me.

Losing Streaks and Winning Streaks

Sometimes you get stuck in a rut and perform poorly for a long while.  Last week my 8-game lose streak in league of legends was difficult to get through.

But situations like these come in waves.  Losing can put you in a poor mentality that is difficult to come back from.  

The momentum can go both ways!

Once you get over that hump and change your mentality, you can find the start of a winning streak.  That first win can give you the push for you to outperform your own expectations, and maintain it consistently afterwards.

Losing!

And then winning!

Scheduling Breaks

Just as important to scheduling time to be productive is to schedule time to recharge.  I think thanksgiving and the week after will be that time this year, near the end of November, for me to circle back and reflect.  By then I'd have over a hundred posts in 2020, and a lot of things to just let my mind sit with.  Just planning a bit ahead here!

20GB a day

My home's current data network consumption rate is about 20GB per day.  This is about half the 1.2 TB cap that comcast has on the line.  It's a reasonable number, if we streamed more shows everyday, or produced lots of video content to upload or stream we'd probably get closer to the limit.

The 1080 recording setup that I have ends up using about 2GB of disk space per hour of recording.  So, in terms of producing new content I'd have the bandwidth to do about 100 hours?  That's including backing up the project files.  Not bad!

21900

Sixty years translates into 21900 days.  A rather round number, but to fully count I'll have to include the 15 leap years and their extra days for 21915.

UBER's Forced Mobile UX

I used UBER today to try out a promotion.  It was a challenging experience trying to use the service from my computer, and my patience was tested.  Here are the steps, in case your account doesn't have a mobile number associated (mine did not):

-> Can't login to UBER Eats because my account doesn't have a phone number associated, so I cannot verify via SMS

-> Login using the regular website using Google Authentication

-> Switch back to Eats to become logged in by association to the regular UBER site.

-> Place an order

-> Cannot place order because I don't have a phone number associated with the account

-> Cannot add a phone number via the website

-> Download the Eats app

-> Cannot log in to the Eats app, because again, I have no way of verifying via mobile number

-> Download the UBER app, login with Google (again), and add a phone number

-> Switch back to desktop to try and complete my order.  Error.

-> Login to Eats app and complete my order.

In the end, I really wasn't able to do anything from my computer.

Play Has No Limits

 

Success!  It was a nearly smooth pre-order experience!  The only issues being... that the queue for the store led to a queue in the store (and the UI for each queue was exactly the same, leading me to think my queue timer reset).  In actuality there was so much demand that I had to wait an extra half hour after the first hour in line.  The other issue was a technical one... the purchase page for the consoles would not show up in certain browser conditions!  I got stuck on my browser until I figured out that it would not let me switch to a different one without clearing my cart.  Now I'm ready for my PS5 (a.k.a upgraded PS4) in November.  The first game I'll be playing on it is Monster Hunter: World.  Super excited for FFXV, too.  And planning to continue my progress in Bloodborne, God of War, The Last Guardian, and Persona 5.

PlayStation

I got my first PlayStation (the PS3) in high school, after earning some teaching fees through tutoring. What a day when I received it at my doorstep! The first few games I picked up were Valkyria Chronicles and Flower. It also let me play the latest Street Fighter, Assassins Creed, and God of War games. I took it with me to university as my laptop was just not powerful enough to really game with. Funny enough, my first laptop actually died because I tried to run Deus Ex: Human Revolution on it!

Gaming with the PlayStation back-catalogue was great, and I even had the chance to try out some PS2 games, my favorite being Metal Gear Solid, and Ico. PlayStation really became my home for gaming from 2009 to 2015. The final few PS3 games that I played before packing it up were Metal Gear Solid 4 and Shadow of the Colossus.

For the PS4, I picked up the Pro on launch, and planned only to play a few select titles: Bloodborne, God of War, Death Stranding, Uncharted. The great bonus was that I subscribed to PS Plus and had a few new titles to try out every month. This introduced me to games like Infamous: First Light, Resogun, Wipeout, Nioh, and more. It was a great way to get fresh variety of games!

In the past decade, gaming has evolved so much on all fronts. I have a desktop PC that's capable of running the latest games reasonably well, and have grown a huge digital library. It seems less necessary to jump into the next generation ASAP, as my options for gaming are so much more vast than before. Sony and Square Enix are adopting a multiplatform strategy. And ultimately, my free time has become more limited and focused.

So looking forward to the PlayStation 5! I'm eager to play Demon Souls and the next God of War. And even catch up on some of the exclusives from the current gen. The PS Plus Collection is a golden trove the best titles on the platform. I have faith that the PlayStation gems will continue to grow and show us how games can really tap into our sense of wonder and emotions.

I'm playing on so many different platforms now, that I won't be able to call PlayStation my main place to game. But it will still be the console that brings endless unique and innovative experiences to my living room floor.

Found some data

I dug through my hard drives doing an update to my June 2020 backup. This week I converted all my old recordings of photoshop drawing (from my college days), and popped those onto the external along with some of my new work. In total, the full backup of my data was just a little over 3 terabytes.

That's with most of it dedicated to a huge backup of a few AVID projects.

With cloud storage being rather plentiful nowadays, my workflow has been to work from a cloud-synced folder. Most types of work (illustration, gamedev, writing) are fine in this situation, except for video for it's huge data sizes.

I did find some unsorted data lying around, and it drew a big comparison between the internet of old and the one of today. There's just so much stuff online now that can be consumed within the browser that downloading is pretty much unnecessary. In the past, I would fill up hard drives full of downloads and interesting media in case the servers disappeared or if I lost track of the source. Today that's hardly the case with the endlessness of the net that's just a search away.

In the unsorted data were some videos of a peacock from my family vacation. There's still data that's not on the internet that is slowly being forgotten and left to hide on old drives.

A Month of Blogging

 August was my first attempt at one month of daily blogging. It's certainly the first time that I have consistently delivered on a resolution for a whole month!

What happened this time around?

I expanded the type posts that I make, allowing myself more freedom to create whatever I felt like for the day. I graduated from school, leaving behind my student self which was focused on learning. I set a new goal to share and connect with others. I updated my website!

The month-long blogging experience taught me a few things:

-> A new day, everyday. The wonderful thing about a daily activity is that you can wrap it up and get it done within the day. I try to focus on my new experiences and even though much of my day is spent at work, I'm able to find time for myself to read, play, and think.

-> A million distractions minus one. It's too easy to habitually look for news or excitement on social media. I still do it when the time permits, to my detriment. At the end of the day, its transient and immaterial unless you're valuably engaged in it. Having a small daily ritual helps me turn the phone off and focus on the task at hand.

-> A journey takes time. There's a ton of other projects on my mind that deserve attention, too. But it takes time and a lifetime's worth of work to navigate and figure out how to do it. What's worked best for me is looking ahead 20 years for some really long-term goals and building that path one step at a time.

Not every day is going to be a super amazing and productive one. But putting a bit of effort into blogging each day let me feel the nuances of the ups and downs, between which I hold a worthwhile balance and incessant self-examination.

Pop up Covid Testing

 

Last week we visited this site on Tully. The sky was hazy from the nearby fires, and all the nearby attractions were closed.

Luckily, testing was simple and only required driving up and a swabbing of the nostrils.

Repairing a Room

Take care of the spaces that you spend your time in.  Your surroundings have a subtle impact on your mentality, and the better maintained, comfortable spaces will give you productive energy instead of sapping it.

I repaired the room in the house that I spend my down time in.  The floor is partially carpeted, a large bookshelf sits under the window, and I can relax there at the end of every long day.  Though it's not quite perfect (missing curtains and a new coat of paint), it still gives me a sense of personal comfort.

Jam City

Started today with the awesome Panda Pop team at Jam City!