Thoughts & Fiction

Gennaro Grazioso is a character modeller and a concept artist working in the video game business. Which means we're getting a nice mix! Normally the work I post here is rather specialised, but there's both 3D and 2D stuff here, and it's all excellent.

I have a confession...

I am rubbish at posting on my Tumblr. So rubbish in fact that my last post was way back in October before my birthday and it is now December. Although the new year is not quite here so resolutions cannot be made I am certain that one of them is that I should be using this page more to talk about all the things that I am doing and what I am up to post Ether One. 

So, in this first post, I have some new short stories to share with you all that I have been writing for a friend and colleague at Futureworks for one of his modules. 

The basic idea, without going into to much detail, is that students get to choose a short original story (written by myself or Mark Penman) and then get to create an illustrated picture book interpreting the story. 

I really felt like writing something that continued some of the themes in Ether One as well as playing around with something a little darker. These short stories are currently in a state of self editing so may have things to be amended and could be a little tidier - I wish I had some more time on 'Black Ice' and had a million other ideas for 'Lost Leaves' but in general I am simply happy to just be getting something written out there. 

So as a quick break down there is 'Lost Leaves' which is about letting go, and 'Black Ice' which explores the thoughts of an other worldly creature that watches us. I hope you enjoy them as they are - I will be posting some of the students picture books up here later in the year!

If you have any thoughts please comment and let me know!

LOST LEAVES

"I... I don't really know how long I've been here anymore. I mean... in this place, sat here with you."

Fear escaped my throat, my chest and heart failing to catch it in time. I knew that it had been noticed. She looked across at me, her eyes full of sorrow and guilt. Pushing her weight forward I heard the sound of the chair scrape the splintered wooden floor as she leaned her elbows on the table. She propped her head up with her hands.

"Well..." she paused pondering her words, "how long do you think you've been here?" Her voice was smooth and round but with an earthy hardness to it, like a pebble on a beach subdued and changed by time alone. I momentarily looked up and gazed into her loving yet piercing eyes. It burned intensely and I looked away ashamed and afraid.

In a hushed voice that could have been mistaken for silence she whispered to me, "If you do not know how long you have been here then tell me, is there anything that you remember before you were here?"

Glancing away I looked out to a sea that was, at a guess, around a thousand feet below. It reached as far as my eye could see and in all directions, my prison a tower of memories most of which I cannot recall. There was a moment of quiet between us as I listened to the sea breeze and the creak of the tower, taking the moment in.

She did not pressure me to answer, she knew that I had no choice.

I looked down at my open palms resting in my lap, hesitating.

After a while I looked up."I remember the garden" I said, the words effortlessly leaving my mouth. "I remember sitting and looking at the garden through those clear patio windows. It was summer, the colours vivid and unreal. I..."

"What can you smell?" she interrupted me, urgency in her voice. "What can you hear?"

I thought about the murmur and the sweet smells of food that I had recalled. I thought about where they were coming from and I felt a hole open up inside of me. I felt it all slipping away, the sounds drifting into obscurity, the beautiful smells becoming stale, the garden dying in my mind.

"I'm - I'm not sure what you mean.." I began to panic. Somewhere in her questions were answers that I did not want to know. "I'm afraid..." I said, "Why do you ask me these things!?"

Her hand reached across the table and she placed it on my own, gently squeezing it. "It's okay David." The certainty in her voice was powerful. "You must know that you are not the first and you certainly will not be the last". Far below us a memory cracked, the sound rolling up the sides of the tower with the fury of a thunder storm. Her eyes darted downward.

"Listen... we do not have much time. I need you need to remember." The gentleness in her voice turned hard and cold like granite.

"I... I can't... I don't know what to remember."

Angrily she snapped, "But David you need to remember! Everyone has to remember!"

"Why?!" I shouted at her, frustrated. "Why do I have to remember?"

Tears brimmed in her angelic eyes, she was pitying me for who and what I was. Looking down on me sorrowfully she let out a long and deep breathe. The cracking of the tower was growing and I heard a memory fall into the sea with a colossal crash.

"We remember because this is the end... and because it is the end it will be the last thing you ever remember." Her words cut deep like a diamond knife.

I closed my eyes and began to cry, sobbing as I sat; tears streaming down my face, flowing into my lap, cleansing my soul. I then felt something touch my forehead. A soft and gentle kiss, vibrating my life to the center of my being. My heart exploded.

It was then that I remembered, and I remembered it all for the very last time.

BLACK ICE There are places that no man should go, that no men should live or lurk or love. Yet in the darkness of night and the blackness of ice I lay waiting and working, mixing and making, boiling and distilling, creating, creating ,creating.

A drop of star light and a slice of a love. A morsel of dreams and a crumb of fate. A pinch of anguish and a cup of fear.

Swirling, smashing, bashing and whisking. Mixing all your individuality into one, watching you like ants - all of you blind as bats in the clearest of days. I know your type - the human. Standing proud - self labeling yourselves as the chosen. The ones who know the right way of things,the way things should be.

Poor little blind bats, how wrong you are.

I am watching. My concoctions stacked on frozen shelves, deep, deep, deep underground. I hear the vibrations from above, discerning every move you make.

I dice and slice, chop and snap, mash and grind. Everything into the pot, oh the glorious pot! Boiling and bubbling away.

A sprig of hope and a leaf of despair.

Drip, drip, drip. I feel the ice melt just as it did before, before any of you existed. Black and cold, thick like blood. Crisp and pure it drops and drops.

Oh! How I wait to meet you all, my children and wards. Every last potion or mixture is for you - every last tear to be shed just for you.

Do I hear it crack above? Is it time? It could be another hundred years or maybe a hundred minutes. Yet it matters not as it will always happen.

It always does.

I steam and boil, bake and fry, grill and smoke. A little soul is all I need to make this whole, to make this real.

That my love, is why I need you. Soon enough the rest will join you and once again we can all return to where we belong. So let the ice melt, let it shed its skin and let it dissolve.

The sweet black ice.

"Alien: Isolation is an interesting game. It is the latest entry in a lineage of games that I refer to as horror simulators. It does an excellent job at creating tension and uses a lot of the knowledge built up over the years to great success. But, because it has such a laser focus on a certain type of play, a bunch problems arise and other parts of the package suffer. It is a great game in many ways, truly excellent really, but there are some fundamental problems. These lead to – for me at least – a devastating flaw: At its core it fails to be a faithful emulation of the original Alien (1979) movie."

Found this an interesting read to ease my bleary eyes this morning - I haven't had the chance to play Alien: Isolation yet so cannot comment on the discussion wholly but the areas covered are indeed food for thought. 

Hello all,

Back in July 2011 merely months after graduating from my MA, Pete Bottomley and I founded White Paper Games and started to begin early work on a game title that would eventually become Ether One. Since then my life has been crazy and beautiful, exciting and manic. In March 2014 Ether One was released on PC and was met with critical praise, something everyone in the team is immensely proud of and likewise, I am proud of all in the team.

Yet today I announce that I am stepping down from my position as Director at White Paper Games and leaving the studio to pursue some personal ventures creatively and academically. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions let me elaborate further.

My time with the studio that I founded with Pete has been some of the best in my life but also some of the most emotionally tough. Every word written and narrative or design decision made on Ether One was immensely important to me and working with everyone involved has been the greatest of pleasures. I guess you would describe us as a family rather than a group of developers and even though I have made this decision I still feel very strongly that way.

Yet as the project for Ether One came to a close and the grand vision of the game dreamt up by everyone at the studio came to fruition, my creative interests in story-telling within games began to sway and move in a different direction – a direction that at first I was unclear about but as the weeks went by came into focus, ultimately becoming a draw that I could no longer resist and needed to explore.

Although I am not quite ready to divulge further details about this direction (this will come at later date and in another post) it made me re-evaluate my career path in the games industry, subsequently leading me back into academia to pursue a doctorate that will explore areas in my professional field of narrative games design and writing for games. Unfortunately with this there was no clear way to continue at White Paper Games as well as pursue the doctorate, leaving me with a hard decision to make, especially after the critical praise received for the game.

As with all my decisions in life I try and weigh up my head and my heart and make the right choice, this decision was no different and ultimately has led to my departure from the very studio I wanted to create.

Going forward I will be embarking on my doctorate with the aim of exploring theory through practice and creating interesting, narrative-focused game content. I will also be writing as a freelancer, working and collaborating on personal and professional projects whilst continuing lecturing at Futureworks: The Manchester School of Media. I am excited and hugely optimistic for my future in games development but am also excited and optimistic for what White Paper Games will achieve with Pete and the rest of the team – the first step on that road being the PS4 release of Ether One in Unreal Engine 4.

I wish them all the best in their journey and will always be there if they need me. I unfortunately don’t have a magic call out or bat-like-symbol for such an event but I think a phone call or email will do just as well. Thanks for all the loyal support that Ether One’s fans have shown me, Pete and the studio over the years. I am indebted to you all – for without your enthusiasm I would not be where I am today.

Keep playing games.

Another interesting Polygon article that I discovered this afternoon. This is very much up my street and presents some interesting ideas on 'Writerly Games' and how designing for interpretation can allow for greater meaning in our games.