NickCummings.com

Now’s probably as good a time as any to look back on where I was two years ago this month. Much like it is on this beautiful June morning, the sun was shining, birds were chirping, and pollen was in full search-and-destroy mode, hell-bent on ruining my day. It didn’t, though, because I was graduating, dammit, and that’s all that mattered.

It wasn’t a clean break with the university like I’d hoped, thanks to a nasty incident involving my Honors College thesis and the last-minute set of expectations sprung upon me by a third party. I was looking at a summer mired in a painstaking, laborious rewrite of what I thought was a halfway-decent paper. Worse, I was moving back home for the first time in four years.

I’ve since moved out and back home a couple more times, so I’m getting used to the process of giving up the you-know-I-don’t-really-need-to-do-laundry-this-month joys of adulthood for the sake of being an amicable houseguest. But finding myself heading back to square one once again — moving apart from my girlfriend of a few years, without any promising job prospects or time-consuming life pursuits in mind — after two years of supposed self-improvement isn’t so great. It actually totally sucks.

But I promised myself I’d do it right this time. Being unemployed, I mean. And I think that, so far, I’ve done a bang-up job of going broke in style. I started running about a month ago with the help of a handy iPhone app called Couch to 5k (twitter.com/c25kapp), a $2.99 program that managed to accomplish the impossible feat of motivating me to exercise of my own volition. I’ve still got about half of the nine-week program to complete, but my weight’s the lowest it’s been in about eight years. Of course, it’s not getting me any closer to landing a job, but at least I feel like I’m accomplishing something.

I’ve been working on developing a system for getting stuff done, and I think I’m seeing some results. I’ve been trying out a program called Things (available on OS X and iOS only, unfortunately) that excels at intuitively categorizing and prioritizing tasks. It’s even helped me to launch a few personal projects that I hope will eventually see the light of day.

I’m also tackling David Foster Wallace’s immense novel, Infinite Jest, as part of the Infinite Summer challenge. It’s not too late to jump in! Check out an explanation and reading schedule at infinitesummer.org.

It’s not all good news, though. I’m still no closer to a fast-paced, jet-set life as a suave game designer, but I’m trying not to let that stress me out. I suppose I’m still young by most estimates; why worry?

I mean, besides the obvious.

So here’s the deal: I recently became unemployed after working six months as a legal assistant in the hopes of kindling a passion for legal work and, eventually, maybe even encouraging myself to apply to law school and make something of myself.

It dawned on me that that’s not the life I want for myself. For better or worse, I’m not happy unless I’m working in some creative fashion. I only feel good about myself when I’m staying up all night working on a layout, or writing about whatever comes to mind (hence this blog), or sketching ridiculous cartoons I wouldn’t dare share with anyone, or…you get the point.

I’m currently living in Eugene, Oregon, which doesn’t have a whole lot going on except for:

• An awesome library
• An abundance of affordable, healthy, local, organic food
• Plenty of bike paths
• A totally awesome girlfriend who’s got my back, even if she thinks I’m ridiculous

With that in mind, here’s the deal.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to dive head-first back into Flash. With the help of Lynda.com (the best learning tool I’ve ever used outside of a classroom), I intend to teach myself everything I can about making games with Flash with the eventual goal of…well, it’s hard to say. I want to be a game designer, and dammit, now’s the time.

I’ve got this nagging worry in the back of my mind that this is just me trying to justify slacking off and being an unemployed layabout, but I’m pretty sure the opposite is true. For the first time ever, I have no obligations aside from feeding, sheltering and clothing myself. This is the time to hunker down and learn everything I can and start creating things to share with people. I have no idea where it’ll lead me, but frankly, I don’t care. For the next few months, my life is my own and this is what I’m choosing to do with it.

There’s one cardinal rule I love breaking as a writer, and that’s editing. Maybe it’s just the way I approach a first draft, but I get so energized just seeing where my prose takes me that to go back and revise it seems almost criminal at times. Clearly it’s a necessary process for producing something polished and presentable, but it’s hard to liberate yourself to write what you want when you’re just thinking ahead to the next step where you’re going to go back and eviscerate everything. It’s hard to focus on step one when all you can think about is step two.

The next few months are going to be all about step one. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes in a general sense, but if you’d like to keep up with all my notes, sketches, observations, and other game-related details, check out nickplaysgames.tumblr.com. And, of course, I’m still actively working on Silicon Sasquatch for the more high-brow gaming stuff — and if such a thing doesn’t exist, we’re doing our damnedest to make it real!

Dear Reader,

Hi!

I haven’t been here in a while. I’ve been living this fascinating life where a lack of job prospects has lulled me into a significant creativity slump. Basically, nothing’s happening so I’ve got nothing to say. So yeah, I’ve broken a few pledges when it comes to writing continuously, but trust me on this one: the garbage I would have produced is a far more frightening prospect than the total lack of content I opted for instead.

But that’s all ending today. I’ve streamlined (deleted) the majority of my website and this blog is now the primary feature. In the coming days I’ll restore all the old stuff — contact information, my resume, a list of things I’ve done — through the WordPress infrastructure. At the same time, I’m vowing to update my blog at least once per day. I really haven’t planned how I’ll do it, and there’s a pretty solid chance it won’t be worth reading, but what the hell. What’s a writer without his shitty, off-the-cuff generic prose?

Always and forever,

- Nick

Being unemployed is somewhat like being trapped under a big, stinky weight. The more resumes and cover letters I carefully stitch together and polish to a sheen — only to receive no reply — the more difficult it becomes to keep at it. Of course, I need a job, so I’m keeping at it. But to break up the monotony and alleviate the pressure, I’ve been working on playing through a number of games I’ve either never bothered to finish or simply overlooked in the last few years.

I know a number of you are probably going through a similarly tedious experience right now, so I thought I’d take some time to post impressions of these games. Many of them are well-regarded, but my experiences have varied wildly.

World of Warcraft – I can quit anytime I want, gorrammit. I’ve flung myself wildly off the wagon, and it’s never felt better. Thanks to the new, smoother leveling progression and a few good friends to run with, I’ve been having a great time with the game.

Most WoW players argue the game’s only fun once you’re at level 70, the peak level. That kind of argument is the fabricated solace of the “hardcore” gamer: the sort of person who lives and breathes competition but can’t uproot himself from his swively office chair. Sure, WoW’s got some great end-game content and it caters to a variety of playing styles (including my casual approach) but I’ve never seen a reason to play a game unless I’m consistently enjoying the experience. For the first time in four years, I can honestly say that WoW has been enjoyable every step of the way. I’m currently level 45 and going strong.

Picross DS – Yeah, it’s a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS. It’s also practically the only game I’ve played on my handheld in about a year, and for good reason; I’ve never been this addicted to a casual game in my life. With more than 330 puzzles to solve (the later ones typically taking upwards of 30-45 minutes) I’ve spent many an evening in bed hacking away at the last picture-based puzzle before finally going to sleep. For $20, this has easily been the best value for my money in any videogame, ever. I’m finally down to the last five puzzles, and once they’re done I’m certain my brain will begin to atrophy.

You can check out my review of the game here.

Ico – Well, I need something to play on my PS3 until LittleBigPlanet finally arrives. The much-lauded game from the team that later created Shadow of the Colossus – one of my favorite games – has been sitting in my CD wallet for about five years now, and I’ve never had the patience to finish it up. For such a simple game, it’s got an eerie way of playing with your mind. It’s something I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around until recently.

Ico fools the player by looking and ostensibly playing like a Zelda-style game: you run around in a three-dimensional dungeon where you’re tasked with rescuing a princess while fending off swarms of bad guys. However, the controls are laid out in such a way as to intentionally disconnect the player from the experience. While two of the face buttons control jumping and attacking, the majority of your time is spent manipulating components that aren’t directly tied to your protagonist: examining the environment, zooming in on details, and –  most importantly — holding the princess’s hand.

The deaf-mute princess is consistently in peril, but as the player you’re never sure why. She’s a total mystery, and the communication barrier is thick and off-putting to a casual player. The only humanizing action in the game is grabbing her hand and guiding her from place to place, the controller shaking occasionally and abruptly as your strides fall in and out of step. More than anything, Ico is for videogames what John Cage was to modern music composition. It’s everything a game shouldn’t be, and by virtue of that it is a beautiful experience.

It’s a slow burn effect, but I’m realizing as time goes by that Ico is challenging me to shift my priorities as a gamer. It’s not about performing difficult combos to wipe out throngs of enemies as rapidly as possible, or sitting through cutscenes with half-assed one-liners and cheesy choreographed action. It’s about humanizing the experience by making the entire game focused on that bond between the characters, and emphasizing that bond by placing them in an austere, stark environment. Like any important work of literature, it’s often uncomfortable to confront, but the message is infinitely meaningful.

Ico is a cold and distant experience, but the longer I stick with it the harder it is to put it down.

Braid – This just hit Xbox Live today, and despite its relatively steep price point ($15) I know it’s a must-own title. Spend just a minute with it and it becomes clear the game has something special to say. Brilliantly understated writing, breathtatking visual and aural design and some seriously clever gameplay mechanics make Braid one of the most excitingly original — and endearing — games I’ve played this year.

So here’s the good news: I am now a college graduate!

Unfortunately, the bad news: My only directive in life is now obsolete.  The moment I printed and bound my thesis was when I signed away my academic career.  Now I’m faced with a whole mess of job listings on craigslist, Monster.com and JournalismJobs.com, none of which is particularly viable.

A few dozen job apps down and I still have yet to get any real feedback. You’ll forgive me if I’m beginning to sound a little jaded.

So in the meantime, I’m making money where I can (at least I’m not working the streets yet!) and taking this time to do what I do best as a writer: spew. I’m hoping to stick to a reasonable schedule with my blog and hopefully give the Internet something worth reading.

In actual gaming-related news, I’m attending the fifth Penny Arcade Expo in a month.  I’ve attended every year, and each year’s left me with a slew of ridiculous stories to tell.  Highlights have included:

• Playing Munchkin with MC Frontalot
• Sleeping on hotel room floors with eight other people
• Not really sleeping
• Being able to identify friends based on who’s actually wearing deodorant

Being at PAX is probably a little bit like having a baby.  It’s the rite of passage into a divine new light, a journey that could forever change your life; you just have to be ready for not eating or sleeping well, physical and sensory torment, and the occasional spontaneous bout of vomiting.

In the meantime, I’m examining my backlog of games and blazing through them ravenously.  Apparently I never beat Ico?  What the hell is wrong with me?

So that’s what’s up.