Days like these

Many technology companies like structure and planning. They invest time in creating detailed designs and specifications that will inform development, quality assurance, documentation and marketing. Other companies, even today, fly by the proverbial seats of their pants. Having worked for a number of software developers over the years, I've been in a position to see the industry from the inside. And what I've seen isn't very pretty.

It's days like today that make me regret ever accepting a ticket to this ringside seat. It's one thing to be a software user and to be frequently frustrated by buggy programming and poor design; it's another to be party to it and to understand how and why bad software makes it into the users' hands. Today my manager pulled our heads together to inform us about a change that was forthcoming in a program we've been testing for months--and to admonish us for not having raised a concern about the issue that prompted the change.

I resented the admonishment, not because it was not a valid concern; it obviously was. I resented it because we are one of those companies that make things up as they go. Crudely scrawled diagrams on a whiteboard or handwritten notes on scrap paper are the best planning documents we have. And those are never shared with the quality assurance team. No, the quality assurance analysts have to wait until the product is finished and the code is ready to be deployed to the lab environment before they even have an inkling about what it's supposed to do. We're winging it.

And we are expected to raise questions about design flaws. Never mind that once a product has been built it's a little late to be addressing design flaws. The only way to undesign bad design is to start over. That, of course, is out of the question. Around here it's damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

What's even worse is that most of the questions we raise about poor design decisions are dismissed. It works as we intended. That's what we hear almost every time we raise an issue with how something functions.

But my manager wants to hold us accountable for decisions over which we ultimately have no control. I understand why the issue is being raised, and I agree that it ought to be raised. Just don't dump this in my lap.

Adding injury to insult, I was then informed of the next testing project. The manager admitted knowing next to nothing about how the system is supposed to work and acknowledged a language barrier. But somehow I'm expected to be able to take on the testing for the system and make some kind of judgment about whether it's working correctly or not. Have you ever wondered why your software doesn't work correctly? I think I know the answer.

Once again, I feel like I've awakened inside a Franz Kafka story.

AMC's The Killing winds down to a whimper instead of building up to a bang

The conclusion of AMC's The Killing is one of the biggest TV disappointments I've experienced. The opening episodes were promising. I was encouraged by its grittiness and its realistic characters. The pain the Larsen family experiences was poignantly depicted, their emotions seemed real. Unfortunately, it began to meander at some point, and as much as I enjoyed the character studies, the story and the investigation seemed to be an exercise in jumping to conclusions, ultimately leading to a finale that was neither shocking nor logical.

The writers were going for ambiguity, but even ambiguity requires some kind of logic, never mind the fact that this is a conclusion that could very well have been arrived at several episodes ago. If you were to diagram the path detectives Linden and Holder followed to arrive at this resolution, it would look like a Family Circus cartoon in which Billy runs around the yard and the neighborhood, playing in the sandbox, riding his bike, enjoying the playset to arrive back home later declaring that he's bored.

The Killing opened like a classic whodunit and then engaged in a game of leading viewers on a wayward journey from one contrived red herring to the next, each suspect being easily dismissed, usually the episode after a cliffhanger ending intended to make the audience wonder, "Is this the guy?"

I eventually found myself feeling cheated by the series because I kept applying logic to the mystery in an attempt to determine who the real killer was. I pondered motives and looked for clues in the evidence that was revealed. I waited for specific details to emerge that would point in a specific direction. I was expecting a shocking twist ending that would make me realize that the red herrings had led me far astray. I was convinced early on that Rosie's death was directly connected to the ugly political battle that was supposed to provide an engrossing subplot to the story. I even contemplated that Mayor Adams had the murder carried out to deliberately implicate Councilman Richmond.

But The Killing is not a whodunnit. It was never about logic. It was about leading the viewer on from one episode to the next, grinding to an unsatisfying end. One episode was an interesting, albeit digressive, character study that followed Linden's investigation into her son's mysterious disappearance. It was finally revealed that he’d spent the day with his estranged father. Seeing a kind of turning point in the relationship between Linden and Holder was intriguing, but the entire episode felt out of place when the series was supposed to be building up to a shattering conclusion. It was like a commercial interruption before the big reveal.

I firmly believe that a good movie or TV series should leave the viewer feeling something, anything, at its conclusion, even if it's anger at a contrived ending. As the closing credits to The Killing scrolled after the screen faded to black, I felt nothing.

Yes, we could debate whether Richmond is the killer, but I can't help feeling that it really doesn't matter. If Richmond is in fact Rosie Larsen's murderer, then he's a really bad criminal, and Linden and Holder are incompetent detectives for not having found and followed the evidence trail to his door starting back in episode 1.

Again, this kind of speculation doesn't matter because it was never meant to make any kind of real sense. The only real shocker was Holder’s evidence manipulation. The moment his action was revealed, I wanted the whole series to be a reboot to focus more on his character so the entire story was built around leading up to what he did rather than leave the viewer speculating suspects from week to week. Now that, I believe, would make for a compelling story.

One could argue that the ending is all part of the realism, that in real life detectives botch investigations, that incorrect conclusions convict many innocent suspects, that real life mysteries often don't make sense and don't fit inside logical boundaries. But, then again, good fiction manages to depict the illogic and the mistakes in a way that makes sense. If the point all along was to show how human error leads to false conclusions, then why disguise that exercise as a whodunit?

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale: First Thoughts

It was some months back that I first heard about Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, a cooperative action RPG for consoles and PC. I was excited about it because I enjoyed other games in the same vein that bore the Dungeons & Dragons license, games like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes. I particularly enjoyed Heroes for its four-player co-op mode, which yielded many nights of drunken fun. My hope was that Daggerdale would carry on and fill the same niche on the 360 that Heroes did on the original Xbox. In spite of some rough edges, my early feeling is that Daggerdale will not disappoint in that endeavor.

Admittedly, I am a D&D fanboy and a sucker for action RPGs. Those looking for a deep roleplaying experience should look elsewhere. Daggerdale is not that kind of game. It neither intends nor attempts to be that type of game. It's purely hack and slash. My only real hope for this game is that it will be the successor to Heroes, and after my initial foray, I am convinced that was indeed Bedlam's directive in developing Daggerdale.

From the character creation screen, it even feels like Heroes with the race and class offerings: Dwarven Cleric, Human Fighter, Elven Rogue and Halfling Wizard. There's little in the way of customizing the characters, but, like Heroes, you choose starting abilities and feats and then you're on your way.

Gameplay is also very similar to Heroes. Enemies swarm and you slice and dice your way through them. Yes, this kind of gameplay isn't for everyone, but for players like me, there's something very satisfying about a good, button-mashing slasher like this one. And, yes, there are plenty of barrels to bash and chests to open, yielding up gold, potions and other loot.

It's a very linear game that sets the heroes on the path to confront the villain Rezlus who is holed up in the Tower of the Void. To get to the tower characters must first help out some dwarves who are being overrun by goblins. Okay, so it's not the most compelling plot in the D&D universe, but it sets the wheels in motion. I went in fully expecting this, so I am not in the least bit disappointed. I just want some good co-op hack-and-slash fun.

Daggerdale is not without its occasional technical glitches. Players interact with doors and levers by walking up to them and pressing Y. Unfortunately, the objects are often not selected when the character nears them. Players must occasionally try a couple of times to select them and be able to interact.

The same goes for attacking enemies. I played single-player as a ranged fighter and found it sometimes difficult to target enemies for ranged attacks. Most of the time, however, enemies were auto-targeted, and I never had any problem mowing them down. Yes, the fighter has both ranged and melee attacks: Throwing axes and short sword. Players can also choose to give the fighter the Shield Bash ability for close encounters as well as Knee Breaker.

Mowing down hordes of goblins was a lot of fun.

Another glitch I saw was that two goblins remained on screen, frozen like statues, after I killed them. But none of the issues I encountered were showstoppers.

My biggest disappointment so far with the game is the lack spoken dialogue. You speak to a number of dwarf NPCs in the initial levels and, aside from some grunts, there's no real spoken dialogue; it's all scrolling text. Granted, the game is meant to be a small XBL download, so perhaps this was left out to minimize the footprint. Without speech it feels kind of empty. If the developers can do more to make this game a better experience, it's in the sound department.

Another disappointment is the lack of local four-player co-op. It's two-player local co-op, four players online. As my successor to Heroes, this is a small shortcoming. There was nothing more fun than getting four players together for some hack-and-slash mayhem in Heroes. That won't happen with Daggerdale, but at least we can join up online for a reasonable facsimile of that local chaos.

Daggerdale is expected to be a multi-chapter game released in installments, so there's plenty of room for future chapters to improve upon the initial episodes.

In spite of these shortcomings, I'm looking forward to playing Daggerdale with friends online. If you're a D&D fan and an action RPG lover, it would be difficult not to derive some enjoyment from the game. Although you can play Daggerdale single-player, as I just did to get a taste of what it has to offer, it's in multiplayer that the game will really shine. I'll post an update as soon as I've had the opportunity to jump into an online session.

Ding, Dong

Ding, dong the witch is dead. The celebration from the Wizard of Oz is now being re-enacted across the Western world, but mostly in the good ol’ U. S. of A. Though this announcement may very well do much to ease the minds of a people who have lived in fear of one of the biggest boogeymen in history, the victory seems terribly hollow.

Many are already denying that he’s really dead. Some argue that he was already dead a decade ago. Many deniers reject the idea because they see conspiracy in everything. If the government says something happened, they are the first to jump on the idea that it was actually something entirely different. Others, however, deny the death of Osama Bin Laden for purely political reasons—the idea that he was taken down under a president they oppose is just unacceptable, so it didn’t happen.

And that’s one of the many reasons this “victory” is so hollow. Bin Laden could easily have smiled and whispered, “Mission accomplished” as the final breath escaped his lips, for his death is a very small thing compared to the impact the attack he masterminded had on the American people.

It’s time we asked ourselves, was it all worth it? Was it worth two wars and the millions of lives lost? And while one of those wars will forever be inextricably linked to the 9/11 attacks, it had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. Though we may long speculate about why that war was even declared, the real motivations behind it may never be known. The justifications for it changed nearly on a daily basis.

While more easily justifiable, the war in Afghanistan in retrospect seems of dubious merit. Was it worth all the bombing and destruction? The cost in human life? In the end it wasn’t brute force that took down the weasel; it was intelligence gathering and a targeted strike. In light of how it was finally brought about, the war seems the equivalent of killing a mosquito with a cannon. If you see a snake in the basement, do you dynamite your house?

We celebrate his death, but America has suffered the far bigger blow. The “United” at the front of our country’s name seems embarrassingly hollow. The wars have divided us, the political manipulation associated with the wars and with the terrorist attacks have divided us, and now the economic fallout from our investment in those wars has further divided us. Would we even be having the bitter budget debates at this time had we not invested trillions in war?

We are a splintered people whose political allegiances dictate the truths we believe. Forget red and blue; we are a nation of black and white. There are few shades of gray these days in the American social and political landscapes.

We see boogeymen around every corner. We check our freedoms at the airport to feel safer from the boogeymen. We sacrifice our privacy to feel safer from the boogeymen. We spy on each other to feel safer from the boogeymen. We build walls along our borders to lock out the boogeymen. We define more strongly the boundaries between Self and Other. We have sacrificed rationality and civility for hate and anger.

We point fingers, we accuse, we look everywhere but in the mirror. The real boogeyman, after all, isn’t out there; he’s inside each and every one of us. We define the boogeyman. We make him real.

The biggest threats to us and our much-touted freedoms come not from scheming bombers thousands of miles away, but from ourselves.

Now the grand schemer is dead. Whether the wounds that have fractured the nation can be healed remains to be seen. It will no doubt be a long recovery. We have lost our identity. Can we find it again? Do we care enough to try?

Ding, dong. The witch is dead. But America still bleeds from its wounds.

Magicka: Big Name Fun at an Indie Label Price

I’m going through one of those jaded-gamer phases again. It’s cyclical. Major game publishers tend to keep shoving the same ideas into the meat grinder to churn out one money-making rehash after another. If it’s not a sequel in a long-running franchise, it’s a formulaic archetype that’s been done and redone many times before. “But we’ve got better graphics now! And ragdoll physics!”

I even went back to WoW for a while, lured by the new Worgen race. I really enjoyed it for about 35 levels, and then I found myself back in the same tedious grind that put me to sleep before.

It’s times like this when I am more receptive to indie titles, games that could easily fall off the big radar into bargain-bin oblivion. Thanks to Steam, these games can stand on nearly equal marketing footing with the big guys. And when the heavily hyped titles carry price tags as high as $59.99, the searchlights of the little guys seem to shine a bit brighter.

And that’s how I found Magicka. After playing Dragon Age II until I hit the proverbial wall in the form of a show-stopping bug, I threw up my arms and decided to give one of the little guys a chance. I’d had my eye on Magicka for some time. I’m always looking for fun co-op games for my son and I to enjoy together. It’s a lot more attractive to spend under $20 for some co-op fun instead of $100.

This is one game that delivers a fair share of enjoyment for the money spent. It is well worth the measly $9.99 investment.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the graphics and the gameplay. I had expected something that looked several years old, but Magicka is a beautiful game. What it lacks in story, it more than makes up for in humor and gameplay. My son and I enjoy co-op play, and this was just the kind of thing we were looking for.

Magicka includes a variety of gameplay modes, including a single-player adventure, online adventure co-op, where players can work together in completing the various chapters of the campaign, challenges, in which players fight waves of enemies—single player and online co-op, and, naturally, PvP.

In adventure mode, players are led through the game’s 13 chapters by a pale, dark-haired, cape-wearing character named Vlad who repeatedly insists he’s not a vampire, even after players stumble upon him in the act of munching on a peasant, whom he then summarily tosses over a cliff. The game is little more than a linear romp from one enemy to the next in increasingly more difficult battles. Mastering the many spells and all of the key combinations is, naturally, critical to one’s success.

And what a wide spell selection the hooded mage has at his or her disposal! The tutorial teaches you the basics, giving you the core elements and showing you how they can be combined to form completely different spells. One of the game’s biggest appeals is that instead of handing you a manual showing all of the hotkeys for a set list of spells, players are left to their own devices to find out what combining different elemental powers does.

For example, one of the first spells you learn is fire, which can be sprayed like a flamethrower to light torches or catch enemies on fire. When combined with earth, the shooting flames become a fireball that can be hurled long distances to do area effect damage on enemies farther away. You can amplify the power of spells by queuing them up multiple times before unleashing them on your foes.

Combining the elements in different ways can provide a variety of advantages. For example, if you soak a monster with water before using lightning on it, your lightning will do more damage. And never, never cast lightning if your character has just stepped out of a lake. Bad things will happen.

The spells in Magicka can be very powerful and have dramatic effects. This is both an advantage and a liability. If you’re playing co-op, it’s easy to damage your friend as well as the bad guys. In fact, you almost certainly will be a victim—and perpetrator—of friendly fire at some point when you’re playing with friends. My son and I both earned the achievement “Killing Your Friends You’re Doing It Wrong.” Yes, that is in fact an actual achievement in the game. At one point our co-op adventure temporarily devolved into a contest of retaliatory friendly fire incidents.

The friendly fire achievement is just one of many present in the game. You earn them for defeating the level bosses, for finding hidden treasures and for performing different feats with your spells. My son and I also earned an achievement for crossing our spell beams, pooling our attacks into a super-powered combo.

In addition to this fun and mayhem, geeks will also enjoy the many references in the game. I laughed aloud at many that my young son didn’t understand. “Only goblins are so precise.” There are Dungeons & Dragons references—the first “boss” you defeat is one of the most recognizable icons of D&D—as well as Star Trek, Star Wars, and others. And, yes, one of the enemies you face is named Khan. ‘Nuff said. One of the “swords” you can get in the game is a lightsaber.

If I have a complaint about Magicka, it’s that the game becomes frustratingly difficult at times. It takes multiple attempts to get past some bosses, and on some levels my son and I found ourselves overwhelmed too quickly to react. It’s a game definitely aimed at the quick-twitch younger generation of gamers. My son can hold his own, but us old farts are used to the more cerebral RPGs. Heck, even Diablo and Diablo II, the veritable lynchpins of the action RPG genre, were easily manageable compared to Magicka.

My son even resorted sacrificing me, his dear old dad, to get past some bosses. He did this by firing off in rapid succession area-effect spells that would decimate the surrounding enemies as well as my character. I learned very quickly that shield is my friend. If I accomplish nothing else in this game, I will become a master of the shield. And then, yes then, my son will pay for his insolence and disrespect.

Magicka is definitely worth the $9.99 purchase price from the Steam store. Easily one of the best gaming bargains I’ve had in a while. The Vietnam and Marshlands expansions are also tempting. But I’m just going to practice up on my shield work first.

The Killing

Tonight I found myself wondering, what if all television was like AMC's "The Killing"?

Compared to "The Killing" other television seems like shrill, birdlike cries, cries that seem empty, meaningless.

At this point in the mystery, I'm not sure where "The Killing" is going. We've been served up many possible suspects--two politicians engaged in a bitter competition, at least two drug-addled youths and one high school faculty member who may have an unhealthy attraction to the younger student body.

In a typical mystery, "The Killing" doesn't really offer much that is new to its audience. What it gives us is a gritty depiction of a murder investigation from multiple, parallel perspectives. One perspective is that of the detectives investigating the case; another is that of the family members experiencing the loss, a third is that of the political candidates engaged in a no-holds-barred battle to win the upcoming election.

To the family members, this is the case of the loss of a loved one--a loss that comes under the most frightening circumstances. Not only do the parents learn that their daughter was murdered, but they also find that their daughter likely suffered terribly before she died.

To the political candidates whose campaigns are linked to the investigation, the death of the girl is either a political asset or a liability--depending on the campaign with which you are aligned. The girl was found in the trunk of a car used by the Richmond campaign. Perhaps this was a campaign tactic by the current Mayor Lesley Adams to smear the name of challenger Darren Richmond. At this point, the viewer has no idea.

What makes this series really work is its gritty realism. None of the key characters can trust their comrades in this mystery. Even the lead detective Sarah Linden (played by Mirelle Enos) looks into her partner Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnamen). Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) has a leak in his campaign, but he has no idea who that leak is. And the audience has no idea whether Richmond himself could be the killer.

Each episode follows Linden and Holders' leads as to the identity--or possible identity--of Rosie Larsen's killer. Each episode eliminates--or seemingly eliminates--one or more of the suspects. The viewers cannot help but conclude that her death is somehow linked to the ongoing political battle between Richmond and the current Mayor Adams.

Occam's razor would have the viewers cleave to the simplest premise, but the events depicted move the audience's thoughts to the political backdrop as well as the social realities depicted in the series.

AMC's "The Killing" is compelling as much for the mystery with which it confounds its viewers as for its realism and the detailed character analysis. The viewers come to realize that all of the characters depicted in the story are complex and detailed. Each individual is drawn with an attentive brush. It's up to the viewer to see where the descriptions lead.

I can't say with any certainty who the killer is at this point. All I know is that I'm hooked and I can't stop watching.

Amazon.com: The Girl in the Window eBook: G. Ross Key: Kindle Store

My new ebook is now live in the Kindle store! This is a short story in the horror genre.

Amazon.com: The Girl in the Window eBook: G. Ross Key: Kindle Store

New ebook on its way

A new ebook will soon appear on my Amazon author page. It is currently in the process of being reviewed prior to publication, but I expect it to become available sometime today.

The new ebook is a horror short story in a conventional suburban setting.

Live Bait

I recently published my story Live Bait and Doughnuts: A Kakanoe Mystery as a Kindle ebook on Amazon. It's actually been ten years since I first wrote this story, but back then ebooks didn't really exist yet. It's been sitting around gathering dust ever since, waiting for me to do something with it. I decided to just throw it out there and see what happens.

Interestingly enough, the story is actually a joke aimed squarely at the writer's group of which I was a founding member.

It all started like this: One day we were talking about doing some collaborative storytelling, and somebody--pretty sure it was Herb--mentioned some writers who had worked together to develop characters and settings and that each then wrote their own stories using those characters and settings. Each person in our group came up with a setting and then the group voted on which we would use (two were chosen) for our stories. Once the settings were in place we each created characters that would go into the grab bag of sorts from which we could all choose when creating our adventures.

Since I was really excited about the setting I'd created, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't one of the two chosen. That was fine. I created a couple of somewhat outlandish characters around which to build stories in the chosen settings--one of which, I was determined, would be far different from any other character in play.

Meanwhile, a little idea had taken root in my mind. One of the chosen settings had opened the door for it, and since the opportunity was there, I was going to use it.

I was going to cheat.

I would write my story in the chosen setting, but I'd found a loophole that allowed me to sort of pull my setting into the mix and to introduce one of my original characters to the pool.

And thus, Live Bait and Doughnuts: A Kakanoe Mystery was born. I'm not sure, but I think only one other group member knew that I'd cheated.