I missed the official trailer for The Last Guardian, the new game-in-progress from Fumito Ueda, that was shown at E3 last month. I'm a big fan of Ico and Shadow of the Colussus, and very excited to see what he's got in store for the PS3.

From GameSpot

It looks like a blend of the two previous games, with a Colussus taking on the role of the Princess. I'd guess that there's more to it than that though, considering Fumito's history of creative, emotional gameplay — and the way he's harshed on others for not showing the same inspiration.

I replayed Colussus last fall and, after defeating the first few, spent the rest of the weekend just traveling with Agro looking for all the apple trees and white-tailed lizards. It was relaxing and satisfying, much like exploring Hillys in Beyond Good and Evil. Here's hoping they find a place for that kind of open-ended exploration in Guardian.

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities--and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

From Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business on Wired.com.

Here's a fun discovery: Ubisoft has released the soundtrack for Beyond Good & Evil, as high-quality MP3s, for free. They must have done it some time ago as the original download page has disappeared, but happily it has found a home on MySpace.

Most people probably have never heard of Beyond Good & Evil, a third-person action-adventure that was released back in the 2003 holiday season — and promptly lost among the Maddens and Tony Hawks that dominate that time of year. A shame too, because it is an awful lot of fun, and remains to this day one of our all-time favorites. There is nothing particular about the game that stands out as great. Rather, everything just comes together — the characters, the environments, the voice acting, the music, the story — to turn what is essentially a sequence of mini-games into something compelling. Even now, several years later, we still occasionally fire it up, and it is still a blast. Playing the soundtrack at work is a surreal treat.

If you like the genre, and you can find a copy, it is worth picking up. Here are the Amazon links on the off-chance you can find a seller: for the Playstation2, for Windows PCs, for the Xbox, and the GameCube. PC users can also get it on Steam and Direct2Drive. If you do give it a try, be sure to let me know what you thought.

In case you don't believe me, here is a well-written retrospective on EuroGamer.

Update: Beyond Good and Evil 2 has a ship date! Woot!

I suggested earlier that I needed time to figure out my plans, to "gain clarity" after a long ordeal of undirected effort and a general loss of steam. Time to ask "what if?" and "wouldn't it be great?" and "how could it be better?" Put another way, now that I'm grown up, it is time to decide what do with myself (I take encouragement from academic evidence that, at 38 years old, I'm right on schedule).

What a struggle! I've read about the phenomenon: Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance, Martha Beck calls it Social Self. Steve Pavlina cuts to the chase and calls it fear. I have a recording of a Marc Allen coaching session (I can't find it online, too bad) where he talks about the day he made the decision to become a musician and publisher.

I remember it so clearly...the first thing I thought of was having my own company and writing books and doing my music and having a big white house...and then I was overwhelmed with all these doubts and fears. That I'm not capable of that, and that it's way too much...I remember dealing with those doubts and fears, pacing up and down...arguing with myself...and doubts and fears said it was absolutely impossible...and I finally said to them, "It's a worthwhile experiment." You guys all say its impossible (and it felt like a bunch of guys, a whole committee inside my head, saying "It's impossible to go for all these things...it's never been done. It's not possible"). But I countered that with saying..."Let me try this experiment..."

It would seem that we fear the most that which we want the most. How very strange. Steven Pressfield says, in The War of Art:

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North--meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

If all barriers were removed, my fears faced, and the world spread before me, I am pleased to discover that I would still want to do What I Do, which is write software, my chosen medium of creation. I would focus on projects toward which I felt a need or a passion, rather than financial or social gain. In that spirit, everything I created would be open sourced and available to all. There is a real joy for me in sharing my work, in seeing it picked up and adapted to new situations, becoming a foundation for something bigger and better. I don't have any particular project in mind -- or more accurately, I have very many. Instead of hanging my hat on a single effort, I would rather follow my bliss and see where it takes me, if I could.

Marc Andreessen (who you might remember from a little product called Netscape) has an interesting article up today, called Age and the Entrepreneur. At 37 years old, this is a topic that has certainly crossed my mind; a nagging feeling that the obligations of home and family make entrepreneurial expression much more difficult. You can't, after all, live on Ramen out of the back of a car (I'll tell that story later) while you create the next Great American Product. The article is basically a recap of a frightfully thorough study by Dean Simonton, professor of psychology at University of California Davis. Marc asks a couple of very relevant questions (for me anyway) at the end, and I am looking forward to his follow-up.

Interestingly, the findings are similar, though considerably more detailed, to what Napoleon Hill reported in Think and Grow Rich: as a general rule of thumb, the early 40's are the start of the most productive period of a person's life (unless you are a poet, apparently).

I am frustrated at the slow pace of my creations; much of the excitement of an original idea is lost as time ticks by and ticks by and ticks by with no progress towards reality. I am frustrated by my inability to respond to bugs and requests in a timely manner, by my inability to share knowledge as I gain it, by my inability to explore all the new areas that interest me. I stick with it, drawing inspiration from websites like StevePavlina.com and Escape From Cubicle Nation, and books like Finding Your North Star and The Diamond Cutter. I agree with their consensus: find what you love and do it; the rest is details. I've found what I love to do, and now I want to find a way to do more of it.

So I have given a fair amount of thought to "going pro" and building a self-sustainable level of income from my creating. I considered developing a commercial software product; I have ideas, but none that inspire the passion to justify putting myself through that wringer (except for one which is simply too big...I tried). Instead I am taking a cue from the bloggers: create many small streams of income -- such as AdSense and Amazon links -- duplicate them across many projects and articles, and repeat until...done, for some definition of "done".

My first automotive love, when I was still far too young to drive, was the Saab 99. That black 99T was a thing of beauty! These days I drive a 2001 9-3 SE. But boy oh boy would I love to have a day in the Aero X. I'll have to add it to my Blender project queue.

Brian Beckman, author of the Physics of Racing series (for which I am mighty grateful), has a video up on Channel 9 talking about the complexity of modeling vehicle dynamics, tires in particular. I had no idea he was working at Microsoft, on programming tools of all things, but apparently he's been there quite some time. If you've ever attempted to implement tire slip ratios (hasn't everyone?) this will all sound very familiar; it is reassuring to know that even a Very Smart Person like Dr. Beckman has the same troubles.

Late night (for me), banging away on odds and ends. Cleaning up documentation, tweaking the website while GIMP downloads off MacPorts. I'm sitting in my office with a beer and a breeze through the screen door and Lamb and Portishead on iTunes. The kids are in bed and Martha is off to her pottery class, trying to get her chops back. One of these days I'll figure out how to make a living at this, truly my labor of love when a twelve hour workday is a good thing. But for now I'm happy just to have this chance to sit and create.

I am going to have to rethink the whole idea of a roadtrip, as Bloomberg reports Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska.