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Mobile phones are the opium den of the 21st Century

 As the title states mobile phones are the opium den of the 21st century. Dopamine instead of opium. The phone itself is like the pipe the addict smokes and the apps, games and everything else running on the phone itself designed to provide dopamine hits are the opium. Apple, Samsung etc are selling the pipes to smoke the opium and Zuckerberg, the google dweebs, candy crushing game developers, and the other tech douchebags are the actual drug dealers. %98 of the adult U.S. population is hooked. The first thing they do when they wake up and the last thing they do before they go to sleep is hit the pipe. You hit the pipe and waste your life while they make money from your wasted time and potential. When do you put the pipe down? When you're physically dying? I've never owned a mobile phone so I don't hit the pipe. I laugh when I see celebrities talking about the brave individuals they know who have a "flip phone" like its some kind of rebellious act- living out thei

Strange man on an Amtrak train talking to strangers: Part 1

I take the Amtrak train here in California once or twice a year for various reasons... One of the trains I take is the "Coast Starlight" On my way out I catch it at about 8pm and it arrives at the destination at 3am. On the way back I catch it at about 2am and arrive at 10am. I never sit in my assigned seat... I sit in the "observation" car... It's a car with tables... so I write/draw/work on my laptop... My open sketchbook on the Amtrak with a drawing I made there But most of all... I end up talking to strangers... So this train is usually running in the middle of the night... the observation car is quite dark... there's always a few people sleeping inside of it for some reason... the Amtrak crowd is usually senior citizens, young people, and people who cannot afford other means of transportation... its nothing like European or Japanese trains... Anyway... my wife will hang out with me for a little while then she'll go back to our seats

How to survive as an obscure creator?

DO SOMETHING ELSE FOR MONEY. That's it ^_^ If you are in it to make uncompromising personal work that does not arrange itself to fit trends or the market you are in for a world of HURT if you also try to make a living from your obscure creative works. I tried to do it for some time and it was destroying me. So I just flipped a switch and separated things. My creative work is my therapy, my calling in life, my passion BUT it's not going to make me a living. So I do other things for money. Luckily those other things don't require much of my time so my lifestyle didn't change very much except that it removed the CRUSHING pressure, anxiety and self immolating internal conflict when it came to my creative works and making money with them. So if you're struggling trying to make money with your creative works and are an uncompromising creator like me then just switch gears. Find or create a new thing that is designed for making money and leave your creative

Game dev thoughts while making God Machine

I've been posting some stuff in the Game Dev Grit discord as I work away on God Machine- I realized that Discord server is a walled garden and not googleable so I should post in here as well so that it can be found... This is a dump of random stuff- from now on I'll also post here in a more organized way- High Level Game Design 1:27 PM ] MdotStrange : Something I was doing wrong with my enemy design with my big game- I was designing enemies based on "cool enemy ideas" - So, since it was fun I designed all these enemies based on the areas they were in and "cool designs"- I realize now that the enemies should be designed on how they interact with specific player mechanics- [ 1:28 PM ] MdotStrange : So in the future I won't design any enemies until all the player mechanics are locked in- and then the enemies will be based on adding risk to certain player mechanics [ 1:29 PM ] MdotStrange : Sim

Strange scribbles inked by an algorithm on vacation

I've been playing around with this to ink my sketches I like the style it gives- its sort of like some haunted digital virus images or something? I drew most of these on the flights to and fro Maui, HI- as I was there for 8 days for my wife's birthday- we brought some friends along too- it was a good time- but you know me my favorite place is with my imagination and my tools of the trade- I also did this pixel art animation on the plane based on this funny photo I have of my wife from when she was a kid- its called the "sad baby" Anyway- I'm back home and back to work on GOD MACHINE+ some other things-

How to learn

Ask questions Ask other humans questions especially if they have experience in the field/area you are learning about *Even if they don't have experience in the same area if they are an expert/have a lot of experience in ANY area you can ask them questions about how they do things which can help you in your area Ask search engine's questions through queries- "how to do x" filter through the results and pull out and read the best material I'm always asking people questions- every time I encounter a person who is experienced in an area I know nothing/not much about I ask them questions about their workflow and how they do things- Read a lot When I want to learn something new I search out the highest reviewed books in the area and buy/read them- even old books can be really helpful Find the best articles online on the subject and read them all *READ in depth sources, not just click-baity articles that don't go in depth- you want an IN DEPTH un

I made a little game in 5.5 days for the 2019 SubZero festival

M dot me in front of my "booth"- a shabby table showcasing Shabby Town Breakball You can download/play the game here  It was a rush job as I only had a week to do it but it ended up being a fun little game that lots of people at the festival enjoyed- one kid played it about 30 times trying to beat my high score- he ended up taking spots 2- 5 ^_^ I made a youtube video going over how I made it which you can watch here- In addition to manning the "booth" with my wife I was shooting footage for a little documentary about the festival which I still have to edit etc- This week I'm off from my normal work hanging out with friends from out of town- I need the week off as I did about 80 hours of work in 5.5 days to make that game + 10 hours over the weekend manning the booth/shooting the doc + talking to people and all that- I went to the nearby beach town--> Santa Cruz on Tuesday to relax but as I was sitting down by the water an older woman su