| have become comfortably numb

The night Roger Waters took over Vancouver

By Angela Espinoza, Arts Reviewer

ll alone or in two’s, folks

from all over coiled

themselves around what truly was Rogers Arena on the night of December 10. As the promptly stated 8:00pm edged ever nearer, fans icing over in their anticipation began banging on the doors and windows. As if a dam had broke, people flooded into the arena from all sides; in the blink of an eye, everyone was in their seats and yet another set of everyone was buying merch.

From a speaker came a voice

demanding the crowd identify which one of them was Spartacus. The screams and cheers of “I am Spartacus!” were soothed by a lone trumpet building up to an explosion of red fireworks shooting up from the stage. An overtly cheery Roger ran out, stealing the trench coat from a lone mannequin and before you could say “Yeah”, had a pair of shades placed upon him. At that moment, and for the rest of the night, the 67-

year-old Roger sang just as he did thirty years ago. Marching men rose from behind, carrying giant flags of the hammers as searchlights began swarming around the room. The stage was surrounded by a flurry of further fireworks, and then, a plane suddenly fell and crashed, bursting into flames. This was all within the first five minutes.

“The Thin Ice” was played along to pictures of fallen soldiers and family members from various wars, starting with Roger’s father. For the unaware few, The Wall is partially based around the theme of war’s consequences, and the live show has been styled to play more heavily upon these themes. The pictures then began to melt into a sea of blood by “Another Brick in the Wall, Part I’, transposed with footage of children with empty eyes and shattered homes. Another searchlight appeared before “The Happiest Days of our Lives”, and amidst the graffiti covered wall, a giant Schoolmaster appeared, starring down the audience as he pranced about menacingly, followed

eventually by children running out and screaming at him with the audience in adorably fake English accents.

As “Mother” came about, Roger opened the song by introducing his ‘experiment’ to have his current live self sing along with footage of “that poor, miserable, f—ked up young Roger from all those years ago”. Near the middle point, a large, frightening moving statue of Mother appeared in the back — her burning red eyes and shaking head taunting the audience for the remainder of the tune. “Goodbye Blue Sky” was played with a video of planes dropping bombs in the shapes of various corporate images and religious symbols, to the audience’s delight. “Empty Spaces” was paired with beautifully graphic hyper-sexualized and ultra-violent animation taken from the 1982 film.

As you can tell, the show went on like this, one spectacular performance after another. By the middle of the show, the wall separating the audience from Roger had been built, one brick at a time. This act stresses

Burd.

how important the show is as a whole; we don’t need to physically see Roger to know he’s with us for the ride. Three weeks later, and still I’ve never felt such disbelief towards seeing anything. The beauty and complexity of the live show layered on top of the album is an experience burned permanently into my skull. When a DVD version of the show is eventually released, I beg all of you to see it.

Roger Waters

| want to make video games

...and I’m going to

By Simon Staszkiewicz

t started when I was six years old, fighting with my brother for my

turn to play Super Mario Brothers.

A few years later my dad told us that he sometimes set the clock ahead

an hour and sent us to bed early so he could play too. Fast forward to my final year in high school where my computer programming courses were my GPA boosters; it was there, after creating a fun little tank game for a final project in programming class, that I decided that a career in video game programming would be awesome.

It only took me four years to realize it that I should have pursued that. I’ve talked to a few industry professionals since then and I’ve learned a few things that I thought I should share:

There are three main kinds of “game makers”. There are designers, programmers, and artists. Obviously this is quite a generalization, but

it’s important to realize that finding your place in the industry starts with deciding what path you want to take. Suffice it to say, there are many

different kinds of jobs available in the

video game industry and you should study up on what you want to do.

Programming is a safe choice because

if you’re finding it very hard to find a

job in the video game industry, you’re still very employable as a programmer

elsewhere. Employers are looking for somebody who’s passionate about

games. That passion will separate you

from the competition. Marching into an interview for a position as a junior programmer with EA or Ubisoft and telling them that your only real experience with games is your time spent with Farmville and Sudoku puzzles is probably not going to impress anybody. Let it shine through that you love games and that you’re proud to be a gamer.

If you’ve never made a game before, you should do it. Now.

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WORLD TIME Bats ‘

i PLAYER GAME

#2 PLAYER

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Working with a friend, or going it

alone, you should take the time to start

a side-project. It can be as complicated ~ or as simple as you like. The idea is

to get a sense of whether or not you enjoy actually making the game. If

you find yourself still just as interested

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as when you started after a few days, you can say with confidence, “I want to do this for a living.” The next step is planning out your future in such a way that you can confidently say “I am going to do this for a living.”