Still Alive

It’s been a few months. And as the days decompress and the hours return, my mind’s pulling back towards updating, analyzing, writing. I hope to have some great content for you guys over the coming weeks and months, including updates to my reel, game audio discussions and whatever personal reflections I need to put to paper.

In the short term, here’s what’s new:

  • It’s been a long summer. Back in May, I resumed my work with Microsoft and Team Dakota on Project Spark, which is now nearly out to sea. It’ll be on store shelves on October 7th. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, and especially hope that we can keep it in the water long enough to realize everything else we’re dreaming of. The game screams potential for awesome, reactive sound at every corner, and it’s just about squaring those ambitions up against the realities of development. Lots in store if we can get to it.
  • The WUIS lays dead (or still) in the water for right now–resuming work at such a brutal pace didn’t leave a lot of time for self-improvement outside of it. Now that things are settling, though, it’s on me to start filling the time with pursuits outside the routine, doing things worth remembering. That may be a return to Unity jamming, or something else.

There’s another thing I wanted to mention before I sign off.

Last year, I participated in Extra-Life, an annual fundraising drive where gamers around the world tap friends, family and loved ones for pledges supporting children’s hospitals and cancer research around the world. In tribute, they put themselves through the ringer and ruin their sleep cycle on an unbroken 24 hours of playing games. I broadcast this last year on Twitch.tv, and it was great to have people tune in and keep me going with live donations and support while I slowly lost my mind.

I’m doing another fundraiser this year a few weeks in advance of the main Extra-Life event. Two weekends from now, OCT 4-5, I’ll be online for a 24-hour marathon, and am collecting pledges for a special and personal cause: the Ann K. Cresswell Memorial Fund.

Ann was the mother of one of my close friends and a beautiful human being who left us a few weeks ago. She’d battled and triumphed over breast cancer over the past few years. Her sudden departure at the hands of what might’ve otherwise been a routine sickness is a reminder that our methods for treating cancer ravage the body even as they restore it; moreover, a reminder that life is precious and always rushing by.

Donations to the Cancer Research Institute via the Ann K. Cresswell memorial fund go towards furthering cancer understanding and treatment, that our loved ones may live full and healthy lives outside of the horrible shadow it throws.

You can contribute via my group’s GoFundMe page here: http://www.gofundme.com/Berns-ExtraLife.

I’ll be forwarding all pledges I collect to the Ann K. Cresswell Memorial Fund. If you’d like a direct link or to contribute anonymously, you can do that here: https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/donate.aspx?eventid=155912&langpref=en-CA.

Additionally, the friends I’m doing this with are raising for local children’s hospitals, if you’d like to support them (or both).

Talk more soon!

Some mood music for a rainy Seattle evening. I miss this game.

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