white space, white noise

For all that I dabble with in the gaming world, I really mention too little of it. It's time for that to change though, and the trigger came from something that I'm a couple weeks late to mention - but still relevant nonetheless.

Halogen is a mod for Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour, well, it was in any case, because the team has been ordered by Microsoft to cease its operations on the basis that they're infringing intellectual property (IP) copyrights on the Halo franchise. Nothing wrong with that one would think think, law is indeed law, but this happened three years into production with hardly any trough in quality or attention, weeks away from a first limited beta release. There was no profit motivation, no danger posed to Microsoft (though there's speculation on an official Halo RTS in the works at Bungie), no reason to make this mod other than the fact that they loved the Halo universe and saw an opportunity to expand on it in a way no one else has.

I shared this view and offered a little help in the form of illustration and texturing while the mod was still at Derelict Studios. The team eventually splintered to form Slipstream Productions in early 2005 and I can testify that the quality of work produced by this handful of individuals has never let down since and remains some of the best in the C&C community. It was pure dedication at work, nothing from the actual Halo game was used, all assets were original and this included over half of the unit designs and all the structures which did not exist in the two Halo games. Even music was fiercely debated over in-team as they managed to garner the aid of professional sound artists. Indeed, it was art, people noticed, loved it, yet no cease & desist letters came; it is a pity that I have to repeatedly use the past tense here.

In the wake of the announcement of closure from the team, a certain level of controversy ensued and commentary followed. Why did Microsoft do this? Why was the team so stupid to even pick such an IP? Be original. Microsoft sucks. Serves them right. Get over it. The team has already offered explanations on where they stand, but I suppose I can never give an objective perspective to this, and I don't plan on doing so because I still think the move by Microsoft was uncalled for.

I believe the contention is that things like that aren't meant to happen; so be it if Halogen has suffered this fate, but I'll be damned if it happens again to another ace mod team simply because they thought something someone else created was mighty cool. The way I see it, it's fan art taken to a whole new level, it's a public display of respect and gratitude, of professionalism and creativity. Some make "taking another's IP" out to be the world's greatest evil, but why is it? In art, it's called appropriation, if a song, it could be a cover, why is there no such affordability when it comes to games?

It doesn't happen to Star Wars mods or fan films, a franchise many folds more expansive than Halo. It doesn't happen to fan art or fiction for numerous IPs, so what is it that made them choose to do it to Halogen? What is it with the laws which permit it to happen to a mod? As I don't live in the States, I'm not about to go into a detailed analysis on its laws, but observing from the ground with simple common sense and logic, it'd seem Halogen would only serve to increase popularity for the Halo games, it's interestingly ironic then that it is Microsoft/Bungie taking the action rather than Electronic Arts - which holds the license to the Sage engine that Generals, Battle for Middle Earth I & II, as well as C&C3 are based on - because the Halogen team is also similarly doing something technically illegal by modding Generals. Yet it never happened, not to the thousands other mods out there for numerous games either. I think it is dispicable and disgusting, both the move and also comments that put down the team for even trying something like that.

I think people have missed a crucial part of the picture, and it's that the team was actually contacted by Bungie first by email, in a friendly, respectable, yet apologetic gesture to inform them of the sad truth. I think it illustrates a developer-community relationship being soured and manipulated by the middleman publisher that actually owns the studio, which also happens to be where the salary comes from. In a time where electronic and video games are beginning to be recognised as a valid artform and interactive storytelling medium, with its creative process becoming encouragingly accessible to the individual and independent developer, and also at the same time becoming an ever more lucrative industry, it's high time that developers and multinationals got responsible with their actions and really review how copyright and intellectual property laws are written and enforced.

Back from three days of field ops deployment at - I'm not sure if I'm allowed to disclose the location, so I'll just say it's in the western part of Singapore - (which happens to coincide with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meet here), did just about nothing that amounted to sentry duty and sleeping. Definitely boring stuff but it also at the same time felt like some twisted manifestation of a vacation - the horizon beyond the sea that brings wind, brilliant lights and serene quiet paradoxically placed amidst a deadly polluting metallic and artificial landscape - I wouldn't deny that it sure was good to get some time away from the scripted mundane of everyday, just maybe not with the whole not bathing for three days thing.

Speaking of the IMF/WB meet, I don't have as many comments on it as I have on the Singapore 2006 campaign, which I shall straightly say is a national censorship programme. If Singapore were all that wonderful, there wouldn't be any need to put up this show to the world. Telling people to smile implies that we don't. Designated protest areas and road closures implies people can't be trusted. I'm not alluding that we are either naturally, but there aren't wholes and you can't see the world in black and white. It isn't censoring of words or opinions, but what this country and what life breathing through it in actuality is. Rightly so, because Singapore, economically, has matured much quicker than it has societally, and we do require a certain kind of guidance to watch over our growth. Yet doesn't that also mean we won't be ready to handle things which those in governance imagine and dress ourselves up to be? There wouldn't be so much complaining over so-called foreign talent or fussing over dignitaries and delegates if there weren't so much focus placed upon our differences - ie. as opposed to our similarities. If we learned to see things beyond dollars, borders, and melanin, we may not need to embark on nonsensical campaigns to cover up our own shortcomings in a run to praise those which we place our aspirations and contracts in, because that then would truly signal the maturing of a people.

Updated and edited some points on 220906 because I didn't have the time to do so in the original post, which is archived below.

Off on a Monday from my weekend guard duty, I've decided to upload some of the (more presentable) things that have gone into my sketchbook in the past month and a bit more.

Figurines
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Self-explanatory, exactly what it is - sketches of my bunkmates. I think I actually did this all in one night, which is a shame because there's really only one page of figure/portrait sketching in the entire book when there ought to be more. Well there's time, there's time.

Weariness
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This here's an incomplete attempt at comic-styled panel-driven visual storytelling. I sort of gave up because I didn't plan any story and it was so tedious to work this way, but the general idea was to create something fictional which paralleled my real-world experiences, evident is my weariness of conscripted service. Included was a frame with the above soldier shooting up half a city block in anger, but then I thought, naah.

04-10
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And lastly, my bunk, which interestingly is the fourth in this year, and will be my second home until December of the next. Drew this just yesterday during guard rest.

Ah indeed there is rest to be found inbetween duty shifts, but I got to enjoy (or suffer, depending on how one wants to look at it) copious amounts of it away from the guardhouse because I was serving a different nature of guard - part of an immediate reaction force on stand-by, ie. I did not have regular shifts and was liable to being called up (down, rather) at any moment (for turn-out, or when extra manpower is needed). Needless to say spending close to 24 hours (minus three or four on duty) in camp on a Sunday, stuck in bunk with no one around grows pretty torturous, and apart from the above hour-plus sketch, most of it was spent in slumber. That may be useless-information-which-no-one-gives-a-flapping-damn-about to you, but life as a V200 driver encompasses more guard duties, menial work, and the extra-manpower-the-unit-may-need than actual driving, and thus so.

That said, I may be going on my first field exercise in this coming month, depending on whether the senior guys planning orientation still want to push me to it. I have no qualms anyway, I just ask for fairness, as always.

Happy People
Photoshop 7
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You could draw links to the "four million smiles campaign", but that was not at all my original intention. The existence of said campaign though serves well as a transparent showcase of the fake things inherent in our society.