Bullet Points @ timlongo.com

Yes, for about a month or so my site may have been hacked. It seems to be clearer up now, but it wasn’t a great month, that is for sure. Sorry about the warnings on here.

There has always been a side of me that wanted to become a Hacker. A sort of technology spy who can infiltrate anyone in the world’s system from their own home and go behind the scenes undetected. There is a kind of fantasy in that. Now though, after being hacked even in a small way, I don’t see it as such an admirable fantasy to take on anymore. Here are some quick thoughts on my experience with Malware (which may or may not be over).

• Feeling of helplessness (sounds cheesy, but it is true).
• A supreme lack of understanding of how my own web site works. Seeing that I had no idea where to start to look for the Malware or which PHP files actually did what.
• A new understanding at how bad this problem really is. Probably why Google has started this new initiative to tag any site that may be hacked. It is so bad that someone big needed to step up and take control.
• There are services out there where you can pay a monthly fee to in order to have someone look over your site and keep tabs on anything suspicious going on. I have to say, though on first blush that sounds like a waste of money, I was so frustrated for a couple hours that I really considered doing it.
• You feel like a jerk. I put myself out there on the web via this site and then I could be partially responsible for spreading Malware to visitors? Not a good feeling at all.
• There are people who want to help. Even though I didn’t need them, I was pretty impressed at how many communities there are out there that want to help people with this insanity happening to them.

Ultimately, I didn’t have to do anything complicated. I never figured out how to really get into the deeper recesses of my site to find the specific issues, but I took some actions at least. Finally, when I asked Google to recheck my site, it seems that the issue had moved on and my site was no longer blacklisted. At least for now.

Yes, it may have been the movie where Angelina Jolie got her first big break, but being a Hacker is bullshit and if you are one, you shouldn’t be proud of it. It is criminal and unkind and unless you are saving the world from some computer A.I. gone rogue or an alien invasion, you should go get a real job for christ’s sake.

I wanted to share a pretty neat series of events that I recently experienced during the first week of a launch for a friend of mine’s game. Nothing can beat the feeling that you are witnessing someone’s dream come true in real time and you are even able to contribute to that dream with your own monetary support. Game Development is hard enough as a medium even when you have the backing of a big publisher. But when you can find a way to make a game under smaller more controlled circumstances and make it work for you and your team and actually have some success under that model, in this day and age, it gives you some hope for the future. The independent games movement is the obvious example here. No longer is there an explicit need for a removed executive group’s opinions on what sells needed to rule the destiny of a creative endeavor. There are other ways. Here is some potential proof.

• 11:45pm on March 16th I turned on my Wii.
• I immediately go to the Nintendo Channel to see what kind of news in there.
• The first montage video of all upcoming games shows a mysterious gameplay video of a retro game called Bit.Trip Beat. It is surrounded by other first party titles as big as the new Punch Out. Cool!
• I then go to the shopping channel to buy the game I saw on the Nintendo Channel, the game I know was released today. Luckily I have left over points from my R-Type purchase. Perfect!
• Within minutes I have a new game on my Wii menu. The animated channel icon shows an 8-bit pong-like paddle and the simple word “beat”.
• I click on the game and see Commander Video for the first time ever on my TV screen. Apparently he is only a man, or something.
• I lose. The game is damn hard!
• It is late so I go to bed and dream in 8-bit.
• The next day I read a review on IGN giving the game 8/10. They have valid points.
• I listen to one of my favorite podcasts on Friday of that week and they discuss Bit.Trip Beat and speak positively about it. They rarely speak of Wii Ware games. It was a nice surprise.
• The next week I go to the Nintendo Channel and a behind the scenes video of the developers of the game, Gaijin Games, is now on the front page. NOA loves the game and considers it a perfect use of Wii Ware so they sent a film crew to talk to them.
  
• I am at the Nintendo keynote at GDC and the NOA speaker is announcing the new SanDisk feature and scrolls over about 50 games he has on the disk and other than Zelda 2 he makes sure to point out that Bit.Trip Beat is on the Wii as well. In good company.
• Later that night I go home and play the game. It is still freakin’ hard.
• A good friend and his partners have finally taken their game developer destiny into their own hands and in only 4 months created a game worthy of the Nintendo partnership. Commander Video has become a reality.

The three guys at Gaijin Games have officially made me jealous. To watch them from afar go through this process over such a short time and have so much fun doing it makes it hard to come to work on some days and worry about the large scale of many projects today. I knew that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel with small scope gaming, but I hadn’t anticipated that it would be so close to home. Congratulations to Alex, Chris and Mike. We have lots to live up to.

P.S. And yes, I still owe those guys a freakn’ Tomb Raider slot machine. I have no idea how I will ever manage to pay up.

Plus, look at this crazy stuff…see what you can do when you don’t have PR breathing down your neck.

Just keeping an eye out for more of Commander Video’s exploits…

Only a Man from CommanderVideo on Vimeo.

Sorry for the delay, busy over the last 6 weeks. This is long overdue seeing that the winners of the Q.E.Y.S. contest from over a month ago solved the thing in about a week. A good friend of mine and his colleagues at Gaijin Games found all of the keys both in their own geek-like gaming memories as well as with some help from Google. Ironically the one that was holding them up was from a Tomb Raider game. Their tireless efforts have won them a Tomb Raider game of their choice. As you can see in their post about the contest on their very own site, they have found and requested quite an interesting Tomb Raider selection as a punishment for me taking up valuable work time for this damn contest. However, other than the one in our lobby at Crystal Dynamics, there is no way in hell I’m going to get them this one. So I’ve decided to shoot for this instead. Good job guys!

Also, they deserve a plug for their new game company as well. Alex and his pals have taken the plunge and started their own thing. I’m jealous and excited for them and I wish them the best on their indie game path to fame and fortune. The crew at Gaijin games were some of the people who worked on the Tomb Raider: Underworld DS game (while at another company) for the Crystal TR: Underworld team and there has been some great early buzz about that version. I have a lot of faith in those guys and I think Gaijin Games is going to be an indie studio to look out for.

So, thanks for playing everyone. Some of you got pretty close but Alex and crew got them all. I wish Gaijin Games the best!

A few weeks ago I finally got off my ass and uploaded the slides from my short lecture at GDC 08. Yes that was many months ago, but better late than never. I really appreciate all the interest in getting a copy of the slides from those of you who asked and I’m sorry it took me so long to share them publicly.

Here is a link to the slides on the GDC site itself. They are in PDF format for general consumption. I tend to keep my slides simple and clear and they really only act as a framework for the talk. So if you didn’t attend or listen to the audio you may not get much from them alone. Though I did reveal the slide notes in the PDF to provide some help.

The real reason I’m posting these slides though, is that I never got a winner for the “mini-game” that I had embedded in my slides. Forget the content of the slides, have fun just trying to figure out the answer to the mini-game! Each of the “10 Keys” had an image of a key from a different famous game throughout gaming history. The first one to send me an email with the correct names of all ten games will win a free copy of a Tomb Raider game of their choice! I think Morgan Gray was the one who has gotten the farthest with 6 out of 10 correct answers which he figured out during the actual lecture. Go Morgan!

Hope you have fun figuring out the keys and GDC 09 is right around the corner!

P.S. So is the IGDA Leadership Forum. Check for them…