Author: Erwin

I know I made a post earlier last week about the first day the Open but now that I’m back at home, I thought I would make a more detailed post.

The ticket package I bought for Joel and myself gave us reserved seats in the Arthur Ashe Stadium. Those tickets also got us access to first-come, first-serve seating on all the other courts. We essentially could see any match we wanted for the first two and a half days of the tournament.

On day one, world number ones Justine Henin and Roger Federer were scheduled to play in Arthur Ashe in the second and third matches of the day session. Since we didn’t need to get there right at 11am, Joel and I took our time getting some breakfast.

After a quick subway ride to Grand Central, we hopped onto the 7 train out to Queens. This particular subway line was made famous by former major league pitcher John Rocker. Anyways, this is the same train you take out to Shea Stadium which is right next to the USTA National Tennis Centre.

Once we arrived at our stop, it took us less than five minutes to get inside the grounds. We immediately headed to Arthur Ashe. Since I bought the tickets relatively late in July, our seats were in the nosebleeds, nearly at the top row of the stadium. It would turn out that we would never even sit in those seats. In the upper bowl of the stadium, there are no ushers to check your tickets as there are in the lower bowl. This means that if you can find an empty seat and no one comes along to claim that seat, you can sit there all you want.

We initially at least stayed in our assigned section but the sun was just beating down on us. The forecast said it wouldn’t be hotter than 83 F that day but with the humidity, it seemed much warmer than that. We were in the sun for perhaps ten minutes before we decided to move to a section which was in the shade. We luckily found two seats which would become ours for the rest of the day.

Once we were cooler, it became easier to focus on the tennis. When Justine Henin came onto the court for her match, I realized I was looking at the best women’s tennis player in the world. I was really at the Open! Henin then promptly destroyed her opponent and it took maybe a shade over an hour. It was lightning quick. When people say these are world-class players, it’s true. Henin hit the ball harder and with more accuracy than I’ll ever hope to.

Then it was Roger Federer’s turn to play his first round match. When Federer came out onto the court, you could tell he was the best dude on the planet at tennis. He was wearing this bright, electric blue shirt and the whitest socks you’d ever seen. Even from a million rows up, you could tell he was good at what he did and he had lots of money.

Federer was playing an American from Atlanta, Scoville Jenkins, an awesome name if I ever heard one. As I was impressed by Henin’s skill, I was equally impressed by Federer’s mastery of the court as well. The men hit the ball with so much pace, I’d like to see what that would look like right on the court.

Anyways, Federer took the match in three straight sets and at no time did he seem like he was in trouble. Near the end of the match, I noticed something interesting. Between points, kids would be racing down to the courtside wall, near where the players would walk past at the end of the match. Each kid, invariably, had with them a giant tennis ball.

When the match ended, the kids would hold out their giant ball for the players to sign. I took a mental note of this giant, over-sized tennis ball. I would have to look into this.

With the Federer match over, Joel and I had a few hours to kill before the night session started at 7pm. Rather than take in some other matches on the other courts, we decided to have an early dinner at this Cuban restaurant right on the grounds. It was there that I had a $12 US mojito, eclipsing my previous record of a $9 US mojito in New Orleans in 2003.

The night session is worthy of a separate post so I’ll get to that later. I’ve posted a small gallery of pics from the first day.

I have returned from my one week sojourn in New York City. I had a great time and I would like to publicly thank Joel for showing me a generous amount of hospitality while I was there.

As you might imagine, a week in NYC provided some excellent blog post material. I will slowly make random posts over the course of the next week or so, giving you the highlights of the trip.

Until then, I think I’m gonna get some rest and veg out for a bit.

Look, it’s as surprising to me as it might be to you but I got front row tickets to Letterman today. I attended tonight’s show with Joel. Ellen Degeneres was one of the guests.

Joel and I were both on camera when Alan Kalter aka “Big Red” did his dancing up the aisles. That happened within the first 15 minutes of the show. Look for me tonight!

So I attended my very first professional tennis tournament today. After watching the US Open on TV for well over two decades, I was able to go to the venue in person.

In the daytime, Joel and I saw both Roger Federer and Justine Henin play. Each number one seed dispatched their first-round opponents in short order. It was kinda surreal seeing them play with my own eyes. They’re actually real people!

At night, we were there to see a special ceremony honouring Althea Gibson, the first African-American woman to win the Open. As part of the ceremonies, Aretha Franklin performed live!

The night matches featured both of the Williams sisters. Venus defeated her opponent easily while Sarena had a bit more trouble with hers but came through in the end.

I have movies and pics from the day but I’ll have to wait until I get back home to post those.

Look, I think it’s bad form to blog while drunk, so it’s a good thing I’m completely sober right now… no seriously, I am. Joel showed me a good time tonight. At 2:30am in the morning we went to a 24 hour drug store, part of the Duane Reid chain. Upon entering the store, he commanded me to:

“Find me a poof!”

Joel wanted a shower poof because it lathers so well. I found one but it was purple, he didn’t like that so I had to get a blue one for him. He said the purple one was too feminine.

That is all.

I didn’t do too much in my first full day in Manhattan. Joel and I both woke up late. By the time we went out for breakfast, it turned out to be almost noon.

Joel had some work to do at the home office, so I was going to spend the afternoon by myself. After “breakfast”, we came back to Joel’s place so I could get my stuff. I briefly lied down to read my guidebook and promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours. I knew I was exhausted.

Anyways, I got up in time to head over on to the “Museum Mile” or Fifth Avenue, where a lot of museums are located. First up was the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which appealed to my engineering background. Several of their exhibits were closed, however, which was unfortunate.

Next up was the iconic Guggenheim Museum, except it didn’t look too iconic to me since the outside was covered in scaffolding. Nevertheless, it was several floors of interesting, thought-provoking, and beautiful art. I rather enjoyed the Richard Pousette-Dart collection.

Tonight, Joel is promising to take me to Times Square, which should be fun. I hope we go to Red Lobster!

So I’m blogging from Joel Manor tonight. I made it safely to Manhattan after a less than ideal flight. People might complain that flying with babies is bad but I think sitting next to two kids, about four and two is worse. While babies can be loud, they can’t spill drinks on you, like this little girl did. She also had no clue about personal space and loved to kick my leg. Luckily, she slept for half the flight.

Let’s hope that’s the worst part of the vacation.

Well, I’m flying to New York City today. It’s day two of my “imposed” vacation. At the end of almost every EA project, managers will strongly suggest you take some paid time off. Most people don’t argue. I’ll be in Manhattan for one week. I’ll staying at Joel’s place, just blocks away from Central Park. Joel is of course, everyone’s favourite lawyer in the Big Apple.

Given how exhausted I am, I’m considerably less energized about this trip compared to my initial adventure in NYC back in 1997. Nonetheless, it will be nice to see Joel and to catch a few matches at the US Open tennis tournament. If you add in a few nights of restful sleep in there, I’d consider it a successful trip. It’ll be a bit different compared to my last trip where I tried to cram in every touristy NYC thing you could experience. I might go see Rupert Gee one more time at the Hello Deli.

It will also be the first time I’ve been on a plane since 2003 when I went to New Orleans. Man, I travel a lot less as an adult now compared to when I was a teenager or in my early 20s. Despite the fact I’m stuck in economy for the outboud leg of my journey, I’m looking forward to these new fangled personal video displays they have on planes now. I’ve already picked out my first movie to watch… Blades of Glory, starring funnyman Will Ferrell. On my way home to Vancouver, my mom managed to snag me a business class seat. Check out the crazy configurations Cathay has in their business class section. I get an ottoman to put my feet up on.

Anyways, I still have some stuff to pack. Blog posts will be infrequent over the next seven days. I am sure I’ll check in every couple of days. Stay tuned!

So before I went to sleep last night, I setup my Xbox 360 to do an automatic download of the skate. demo. When I awoke, my powered down 360 indicated the download had finished. I wasted no time in launching the demo straight out of bed, leaving myself in my Spider-Man pyjamas.

Now I had played the demo several times over at work, so I wasn’t really sure what was driving me to play so eagerly at home. Perhaps it was because I simpy could play at home that did it. Anyways, it was a bit surreal, as I had expected, to see the game on my home system. It was work mixing with home life, worlds colliding as George Costanza once said. When I got to the parts of the demo I helped write, I realized that was indeed my code being executed by my 360 at those moments. Weird.

I didn’t have time to finish the demo as I had to get my butt to the studio to see if there were any emergencies. When I rolled in, there were a lot of empty desks. A large part of the team had been at work until the wee hours of morning. Some people were overseeing the demo launch, while others were applying critical fixes to the final game.

I wasn’t needed for anything so, like most of the team, I began forum and web site surfing to find out what people were saying about the demo. My first stop was a site called Planet Tony Hawk. For a web site that caters to the Tony Hawk series of games, I wasn’t expecting a even-handed analysis. I was wrong. In a short article about the demo, here were some interesting bits:

“The SKATE demo did amaze and impress me.”

“I think SKATE does skateboarding simulation very well. The best so far without a doubt.”

“Could [THPG] be the game to challenge SKATE when it lands? We can only hope so because as of this moment…Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground does have a lot to prove.”

Reading that made me feel good about what we were offering gamers. I also checked the official skate. forums on the EA servers. There was a lot of praise there, almost universal. There were a few complaints about the camera but not a lot of negatives. Several times, I read that we exceeded their expectations.

I decided I wanted to read what was being written on a more neutral site, so I headed on over to the skate. forums on Gamespot. Here, there was again lots of positive comments but more people bitching compared to the EA forums. The biggest complaint was that they didn’t like the controls because they couldn’t master them in the first five minutes of gameplay. Of course, posters with those complaints got immediately flamed by others with the general message being “the controls aren’t bad or broken, you just suck at the game.”

Finally, just for fun, I took a look at the Tony Hawk Proving Ground forums on Gamespot to see what Hawk fans thought of our demo. It was there that I encountered an outlandishly fanboy style post. The poster decided right then and there that he would purchase Proving Ground sight unseen because he didn’t like the skate. demo. He didn’t like how you can’t get off the board in skate. and he was absolutely convinced you would get stuck in lots of places in the world because he was the first guy to realize this. He also didn’t like how there’s the possibility you might not do every trick perfectly the first time you attempt it. The game is just too complex for him. He also didn’t like the music (which you can turn off or play your own).

I expect stuff like this but I’m also not blinded to the fact there are a hell of a lot of skate. fanboys too who rag on Proving Ground any chance they get.

Overall, it was a great day for the skate. dev team. People were excited and they really enjoyed the demo. The awesome thing is, we only gave them a small slice of what’s in the full game. There’s so much more they don’t even know about. I don’t want to count my Jennas before they get anorexic but I think we’re gonna do ok. We just need to get the final game out the door smoothly and we’ll be ok.

In approximately two hours, the demo for skate. will be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for download. It will be a small taste of what I’ve been working on for over for a year. I’m quite pleased with what we are offering the public in this demo. It gives them a good feel of what the game is all about. There’s enough depth to keep people interested and entertained but when it’s over, they’ll want more… all signs of a good game demo.

There are some hardcore people waiting for this demo. If you read the message boards, you’ll find some dudes who have had very little sleep in the last two days. They’re all waiting for 2am PST to drop. One guy said he’s gonna to take some Nyquil so that he can sleep the remaining time away. Didn’t I see a similar strategy in a South Park episode? Anyways, it’s exciting for me to read all of that. People actually care about the stuff I’m working on and that’s kinda cool.

So the interesting question is, will I download the demo for my own Xbox 360? Keep in mind, I have access to the full game at work and have played it for many, many months. The answer interestingly enough, is yes, I will download the demo. The reason is because it will be absolutely surreal seeing and hearing that tutorial skater on my home LCD. It’ll be just completely odd but at the same time awesome that I’ll be busting out 360 flips at home.

I may not start my download at the stroke of 2am but I’ll probably start it before I go to work on Tuesday morning. If you own an Xbox 360, I invite you to download the skate. demo. It’s the best game I’ve worked on by far. You don’t have to like it but at least give it a try!