May 26, 2008
Sex and gaming.
10 minutes, but funny and interesting.
Posted by Andrew at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2008
I want this game...
Posted by Andrew at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2008
Game Green, save green
Last summer, we made the decision only to plug in our chargers when we needed them, and to connect the majority of our electronics to power strips. Now, when I'm not using the PS3 or the Wii, I cut the power to both, as well as my TV. When we're not watching anything in the living room, we turn that power strip off. All it took was the negligible initial investment in the power strips, and the presence of mind to switch them off when we leave the room. It's not hard.
The result has been a reduction of as much as $30 to our monthly electric bill. That's $360 a year! In gaming terms, the energy savings could buy me six games. Or an Xbox 360 Pro. Or more than seven years of Xbox Live.
Posted by Andrew at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2008
Least-fun Mario ever...
Posted by Andrew at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2008
Before I turn 30...
I wanted to A) be more social, B) read the Aeneid and the Iliad, and C) lose weight.
Well, 2 out of 3 ain't so bad. Those Virgil and Homer guys sure could write. And getting out of the house is fun. Perhaps I can start walking across the bay or something...
Posted by Andrew at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2008
That's _Ms_ Pacman to you
Posted by Andrew at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2008
In conclusion: I’ve been playing a lot of Zelda on my DS...
So: a couple months ago, I picked up Bioshock on Steam (no DRM). I went to play it and… was informed that my video card sucked.
So, this week I looked at my bank and said “hey, I’ve got some extra cash. I can totally buy a new video card.” Looking at the specs on my motherboard, though, it turns out that I’ve only got room for a PCI-E(X4), and any video card I get needs to be PCI-E(X16). So, I tacked on a new motherboard to my order.
The parts arrive, I go to install them, and windows wants to be reinstalled. Fine.
I format my C drive, go to reinstall windows, and… My RAM is bad– every time it hits a bad sector (often!), windows crashes. I had noticed this problem before, but didn’t quite realize it was the RAM. Now windows won’t reinstall.
So: I ordered new RAM. It should arrive today.
Posted by Andrew at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2008
Sins of a Solar Empire
No posting today. Playing Sins of a Solar Empire. It's a big game, very addictive, highly recommended. You can buy and download a copy and be playing right now...
Posted by Andrew at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2008
Tax Incentives.
So, a Wisconsin lawmaker wants to help shore up the juvenile court system. Worthy goal. Unfortunately, he's trying to do this by placing a tax on art. Not a luxury tax, mind, but a tax on mass-cultural pop art:
"The idea being that this is kind of a kids-kids thing, in other words, if we're going to do this for kids maybe this would be a good way to go about it. And if it's not the best way, I'm open to any other way."
The tax would apply to video games, and would be rather small-- only 1%. I'm a bit torn. The legislator is demographically wrong-- Games are played mostly by adults. It also seems bizarre to tax art in just about any form. And yet...
An extra 50 cents on a US$50 game seems like a small enough price for a rather important goal. So... thoughts?
Posted by Andrew at 08:57 AM | Comments (1)
November 17, 2007
Jonathan Coulton Sings "Still Alive"
End song to Portal as done by the writer.
Spoilers, obviously.
Posted by Andrew at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2007
Sins of a solar empire=awesome
Galactic Civilization 2 has managed to keep me up past my bedtime for more than a year. When Stardock works with another company to bring out a new game, I figure that must be worth my time. Sins of a Solar Empire it's still in BETA-- the game has a disclaimer explaining how it may not be fun yet. They're wrong: the game is a blast!
Starting from the beginning: the game is billed as a 4X, with RTS elements. It's actually the other way around. The game is simply too fast-paced to be thought of as a 4X, though it does have much of the depth we associate with the genera...
The game's controls and style took me about an hour to get comfortable with-- at this point the game literally demands the scroll wheel which I don't have. Nonetheless, even with that limitation, I'm having a lot of fun...
Just as an example of the thought that has gone into the game-- the game has the standard 3 RTS resources: "credits", which come from taxes, "crystals", which come from asteroids, and "metal", which comes from, um, other asteroids. I was noticing that I consistently had little to no crystals. I was literally on the verge of hacking the game files to increase the rate of crystal harvesting. That's when I remembered that the game has a "black market"; players can trade all 3 resources for each other. Best of all: price fluctuates with supply and demand. I'm hooked...
The next time the game has an open beta, plunk down your cash and sign up. You may regret the time spent not getting to know your significant other and children, but you'll barely remember who they are...
Posted by Andrew at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2007
Oh what a difference...
Way back in 1994, a TV show called "Babylon 5" took to the airwaves. The show was notable for (Among other things) being one of the first shows to use solely CGI, rather than physical, models. Right about when the show went off the air, Relic created a game called "Homeworld", naturally fans created a modification of the game to use B5 ships and stations...
The amazing thing about this movie is that the graphics are at least as good as they were on the TV show-- a game had an engine as powerful as the professional quality had been only a few short years before. Granted, the camerawork of the game isn't nearly as good as in the movie, but that's the difference between direction on the fly (as it were), and direction over the course of weeks...
Posted by Andrew at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2007
Why I've not been around much lately:
Final Fantasy III for the DS is perhaps the most perfect RPG ever made...
Posted by Andrew at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2007
Things that make you go... wtf?
A more clever man would have made an Axis and Allies joke before writing
this post. A less lazy one would have reworked the post to include the reference at the beginning...
Director on board for movie | NEWS.com.au Entertainment
Clue. I get Clue. I just watched Clue. But Monopoly? How do you even begin to make a story on that?
Posted by Andrew at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 24, 2007
Go aggies!
Posted by Andrew at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
Wii Wii Wii wins against home...
For gamers, Wii is No. 1 / Low price, unique controller make Nintendo most popular
Nintendo's surprisingly popular Wii game consoles have pulled ahead of its competitors for the second month in a row. The company sold 335,000 Wii consoles in February, compared with 228,000 Xbox 360 consoles made by Microsoft and 127,000 PlayStation 3 consoles made by Sony, according to the NPD Group.
Posted by Andrew at 11:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 21, 2007
Wii Wii Wii all the way home...
Nintendo back on top as Wii named best-selling console - Business
See, I've got this idea that what makes games fun is interface. Nintendo revolutionized their interface, and are reaping the rewards for that. I almost feel bad for Sony and Microsoft...
Posted by Andrew at 10:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 06, 2007
The perfect video game?
Certainly the best idea for an exercise game I've heard
Instead of using the pedal for locomotion we use the pedals for replenishing health.At the start of the game, enemies do very slight damage. The player can fill it back up by pedaling very slowly for a nice, gentle experience.
But read the whole thing...
Posted by Andrew at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2007
Sometimes, Wii like porn...
Video games aren't for kids. At least, not just for kids. The median age of Video Game players is 30. People who are over 50 don't get that, but people who are under 40 do. The problem, of cousre, is that people who are over 50 make the laws and write the assnine articles about video games. Let me break it down:
I'm 28. I like games. I want a Wii. I also like porn. The ads aren't being targeted to kids. They're being targeted to me...
(Link via Ron Coleman, who sadly seems to think of video games as being for children)
Posted by Andrew at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2006
Spore!
The Long Zoom - New York Times
I am unconvinced that the AI is going to be good enough. Yet the concept looks promising as all hell.
Posted by Andrew at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2006
Buy me some peanuts and Crackerjacks!
The very cool Afaeyremaede took me out to a ball game this weekend. I had forgotten how much I enjoy that game. It didn’t hurt at all that my team (the Oakland Athletics) were playing the team I most despise (any team from south of Fresno). And even though the Good Guys in Green lost, I was still able to walk away with a smile...
Baseball is a game of yards in which all the important measurements are done with centimeters. It is this quality which leads to the improbable statement that “baseball is boring”. It’s true—if frenetic motion is the only measure of excitement a fan can understand baseball has very little to offer. Any pitcher can hurl a ball faster than a young athlete can force a Ferrari; putting it within a dime’s diameter of where he wants it requires the skill which allows him to only get community service for trying...
Pitcher battles batter ninety, or a hundred or more times. All the while the pitcher gets more tired, less able to put the ball where he wants it. He begins to give into the temptation of simply letting the ball go forward down its most predictable arc...
Batter battles pitcher—Casey stands ever ready. Perhaps this will prove more explicable to baseball foes. The difference between a game winning home run and a game losing pop fly is less than a single inch—a half an inch before the ball is even released. The entire less than one second the batter has for the ball to travel 726 inches is eaten up in hauling the bat into position. Imagine pool played out at 85 miles an hour! It seems remarkable that batters are ever able to connect by more than accident...
And then a rally gets going. These are the rare moments of electricity. The pitcher throws a rock and the batter is all over it with paper. The next batter chooses sees paper forming in the pitcher’s mind and so brings forth scissors. The pitcher has now been dominated; both the bat and ball are now instruments of the batter’s will. The pitcher tries to shake himself out of it, slam his algorithms into new pathways. He can’t take too long between pitches, though—the runners might decide to advance themselves. The pitcher either gets himself out of it, or is replaced by someone who hasn’t been owned by the opposition...
Baseball plays itself out in small increments. On any given pitch any given outcome might occur. It may not—and probably won’t. Over the course of an entire game, though, it will. When that happens it is because everything was in simple and perfect alignment. Few things in life are more beautiful than watching everything work out perfectly...
Posted by Andrew at 02:13 AM | Comments (1)
May 29, 2006
State of the Art Gaming
This article about gaming really seems to nail it. O’Brien even does enough research (or is a big enough geek) to mention Stardock, who’s Galactic Civilizations 2 is currently on my Hard Drive...
His lament is not about the death of indies per se, but rather the death of innovation. As such, when he misses another 4X title, Sword of the Stars, it is almost forgivable. This game, after all, is a revolutionary execution of a by-now-standard gameplay. Less forgivable is that he misses an entire philosophy which has no outlet in Gamestop.*...
I am referring to games such as this one, which are designed to kill a few minutes on the web. Distribution is simple, the graphics don’t have to be profound, and they can make money simply by selling billboard space on the side of their site. It seems clear to me that this is where the next great idea in game play will come from. That, or the Nintendo Wii, which is the first system in a long time to offer something genuinely new in gaming.
*disclosure: I work for Barnes and Noble, which owns Gamestop. As a result, I get a nice discount at Gamestop...
Posted by Andrew at 11:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2006
I want to stop playing...
Posted by Andrew at 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 31, 2006
Grand idiocy Legal
Imagine you’re a game maker. You have this fabulously complex world, built on fabulously complex code. You decide that your game would be improved by having a character try to get laid. The system you come up with turns out not to be much fun, and so you cut that part of the game...
Now, because that code is so fabulously complex, you don’t cut the code itself, (which might inadvertently damage other parts of the code) you just cut all the links to it. The game is still there, it’s just inaccessible to the player. Well, players are smart. Some of them are desperate for any kind of sexual gratification. And if hacking the game to reestablish those links is what is necessary to get their character (and them) pseudo-laid, well, that’s just what they’ll do. It’s not like porn is available on the internet or anything...
So, hackers hack the game, and make programs that allow others to hack the game. And then some people realize that OMG, this game about cop-killing has consensual sex!, and a higher rating gets slapped onto the game. (All of this leads me to think Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick! What the fuck is wrong with you people? The game is called Grand Theft fucking Auto! Why is this not enough to get your ire up? Why is the inclusion of consensual sex with the non-consensual murder so bad? but no one asks me)
Even that isn’t good enough for the city of Los Angeles: The city is now claiming that the makers of the game “hid” the code, and that by not being forthcoming about the mini-game (game inside the game) they were able to stealthily obtain a more permissive rating than they otherwise would have. Which might be true— were it not completely wrong...
Gamers hacked the program to insert code that the company did not include. This is what allowed teh sex to exist within the game. It is, in fact, illegal for the gamers to do this; but we don’t see anyone going after them. Instead the company is being sued for failing to disclose to anyone that sex was possible in the game...
And what really compounds my annoyance about this whole thing: This article in SCI-Tech magazine which seems to completely misunderstand the nature of gaming and also the nature of journalism. There isn’t even a single line in the article which would be out of place in a DA’s office press-release...
Some day when the boomers are dead, and my generation is the one which writes the news, we will be able to have an honest and realistic look at the roll of games in our culture. Until that day, however, we are going to have to suffer this bullshit...
Posted by Andrew at 01:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack