It's remarkable how much career-oriented progress I'm making after just a couple of days of real-deal school. I needed an answer to the extremely frequent question "what's your career goal?" and the answer of "video games" just became habit.
Everything else is just falling into line. I'm exploring game-related work for next summer and letting it shape the work I'm doing here, from research to topics for Japanese assignments.
I was so busy doing all that that I missed the real-world culmination of what I wanna do: the Tokyo Game Show, or Japan's E3. I went back and caught up on the news this morning, and I have a few observations:
-Final Fantasy 13 will be fantastic, following the theory that every FF game on a new platform is a classic: 4, 7, 10. Wow. If you just keep counting by 3s, you get the original Final Fantasy (unarguably a classic, look what it spawned) and, of course, 13. Maybe we should update the theory.
-Hideo Kojima is Japan's best export. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker will be fantastic. See for yourself:
-Microsoft Natal came to Japan! People are playing Katamari Damacy with it, by kinda doing this retarded swimming motion, and now I understand the skeptics. Buuuuuuut...
-Natal could have some really broad implications. MS had another fantastic showing in Tokyo this year, and they had a panel where a trio of famous Japanese designers just started tossing around ideas for what you could do with the technology. Kojima was on the panel, and while he of course stated that he has some fantastic ideas for games that recognize your appearance and interact with you that way, his thoughts on the device itself were more telling: Medical imaging, or security cameras, could benefit from the tech.
That's huge. Suppose the technology works well enough to identify you from a relative distance away, say 15 feet. Tie that into the cloud, or Facebook, and you've instantly established a working surveillance society.
In short, TGS has had some really fantastic timing in terms of my life here. Professors, who I'm meeting for the first time, ask what I want to do, and now I can point a finger to this show and say "this." By which I mean "games industry + business development + exciting new technologies + big companies like MS + Japan." They may not get it themselves, but the important thing is that I'm able to answer the question.