Burnt out and ready to go

Lately I've been obsessed with Burnout Paradise, and have been spending most of my free hours with controller in hand. On one hand I feel guilty for playing video games so much, on the other hand it feels good to enjoy something so much.

After playing the demo months ago, I was actually pretty indifferent to Paradise. What I enjoyed most out of the earlier games in the series was just smashing up cars for big points, and the open gameplay in Paradise appeared to have robbed the game of that joy. But after engaging in some online action and learning how the open city format bridges you between events, I began to get hooked. Now the pursuit of newer, better cars and a better record on my license has me enthralled.

Tonight I'm in forced retirement from the Xbox, though. I'm taking part in the 48 Hour Film Project, which makes its stop in Seattle this weekend.. One of my co-workers ponied up the cash for an entry and put together a crew. I volunteered to do the post (effects and titles) work. That's right, I'm a one-man ILM this weekend.

Since the game just started, we're hanging around in Tom's apartment, waiting for the writers to put the script in a decent enough state that we can start storyboarding and planning the next two days. What I hear from the writer's room is that we should be good to go soon. Even though I'm only the post guy, I want to be on set to prevent the crew from creating any problems, so it's gonna be a sleepless weekend.

But the wife made cupcakes, so I think everything will be OK.