Competition breads excellence

Pre-order Torchlight 2 via Steam.

I love when I see lots of options in one genre pop up around the same time. It means that all the competitors have to step up to really grab an audience, and consquently, it’s market share. It’s why I’m thrilled that the MOBA genre is finding new players, and returning old ones, all the time. The communal bar keeps getting raised with each release, and unique ideas or takes on any design is seen and implemented (not always for the better). Refinement and perfection as the grinding stones of competition make each game better.

Torchlight 2 looks very similar to the first one in terms of visual style, and I’m hoping not much has changed in terms of gameplay. There appears to be a bonus of multiplayer options, as well as a development kit, and some customization. Good steps for the game to make as long as it retains it’s level of execution.

Worlds Colide

I have a lot of hobbies. Gaming is just one of the many endeavors I enjoy pursuing, and easily in the top five of all my favorite activities. Also high up on the list of things I am interested in, is politics. So, it may not surprise you that I’ve been keeping an ear out about this whole SOPA (official) /PIPA (official) thing. As much as my two hobbies may thrill me on their own (I’ve listened to every GOP debate, half streaming while I killed dragons in Skyrim), I had an amazing laugh at the awesome combination of the two today.

Apparently, one of our U.S. congressmen (by the name of Jared Polis) plays League of Legends, and after seeing the “Help us Stop SOPA” thread on the forums, he decided to respond. Beyond it being a great moment of helpful reinforcements from those behind the lines, he agreed to continue checking in on the thread. Which then lead to this AMAZING troll FROM the representative TO a player.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bieberfever123  WHY DOES HE GET AN AVATAR AND l DONT???

u would just use Justin Beiber as your avatar anyway

I almost laughed my balls off. If the nerds of Colorado don’t get together to reelect this man, they are doing themselves a disservice.

As a last message, go here, to help stop these bills from passing.

 

Passing thoughts

Gamescon is over, and I missed a lot of it. My interest in the new and upcoming stuff is waning, or at the very least, not pushing against that wall of excitement the industry attempts to construct from hype and mystery to ensure a continued revenue stream (except for Battlefield 3 – that shit looks crazy yo). Sure, a few things were bound to catch my ear, only by sheer volume of the social circles I run around the perimeter of. Wrath of Heroes and Wildstar seeming to be the two that with the biggest foundation in place amongst my cliques, and I’ll admit – the giant robot that was fought in the raid of SW:TOR perked up my ears. I wouldn’t say that I have ennui towards the institutions or developments, more of a contented disinterest, as nothing really (again, except Battlefield 3) grabbed me by the genitals and dragged me down to the floor with it for a romp in the hay. I am at peace with my current gaming distribution, and calmly waiting for the few objects I see in the hazy distance. I understand now why a placated population is so much in demand by some, and can be so dreadfully dangers to others – then content make no demands, and demands drive innovation.

There’s the portion of my brain, nagging me to research and delve, and find out what all went on. The portion that craves knowledge and information to analyze and decide. To call judgment and declare that THIS is the side of the line that my opinion falls upon. Immediately afterward, the portion that controls the actual doing then points out InFamous, Wipeout, BioShock, and a stack of other games that I still have yet to play through and suggests to me that perhaps the new and exciting can wait, and that an opinion doesn’t always need to be formed early on, as if some type of posterity is at stake.

So, anything you think I should take a look at? What piqued your interest? What do you think I should keep my eyes on?

Oh, and seriously, go watch the Battlefield 3 trailer.

Directing Frustration

For whatever reason, for the last few months, I’ve had this concept bouncing around in my skull, and I’ve started to put it up here a couple of times, but have yet to follow through until now. As a person matures with any endeavor they tend to think about things beyond their immediate perceptions and understanding. A long-term view starts to be adapted as the fullness of involvement starts to be realized. For myself, part of that is acknowledging personal past behavior, comparing it to others, and analyzing those actions. Part of advancement in anything is reflection and analysis, and opinions should be shining examples of this. I say this because, like I said, I’ve had a thought/nagging/what-have-you bouncing around in my skull for a while, and it just won’t go away. That thought is simple:

Do we, as players, mis-direct our frustrations towards people who are undeserving of it?

I think the simple answer to the question is “yes” (the converse question of directing our praise to those deserving is a valuable question as well, though, of probable less importance given the disparity between the projected emotional spectrums). Any romp through most MMO forum’s will see a majority of people expressing frustration. Those people more deeply embedded in the social structure of the community will probably have a greater insight to the workings of their game of choice. In-as-much as they will likely know the names of some of the designers or the forum handles of the “devs” that interact with them on the message board. That “insight” isn’t as great as some of us would like to believe (I believe). This perceived greater insight lends itself to a higher sense of involvement, and emotional attachment to a product, which can be a very nasty two-edged sword.

 

Guess who’s back?

From outerspace (okay, Wisconsin – semantics!).

The vacation was good. There was much drinking of beer, much eating of brats, and the lighting of fireworks, with the occasional dabble of family visitation, and a picture of my 93-year-old grandmother surrounded by her 9 great-grandkids. And the whole thing got capstoned by some terrible mucous plague that infected me about 5 minutes before the plan left the tarmac – a nice parting gift from the lovely midwest. While I was away, I stayed mostly out of the loop of the goings-on of the digital and gaming world, but I still tried to check my twitter feed once a day to see if anything amazing, fun, and cool happened.

There were a few things, but nothing monumental. The same-old drama of the interwebz.

Drama and Resolution.

Someone’s new job got me a Tee-shirt (in return for a Haiku)!

EA keeps gobbling up different territories of gaming.

Warhammer had another round of Blogger-invasion (not enough words for links!).

SoE’s FanFaire landed with some insight at upcoming games (finally), and a new graphics engine called Forge Light.

Relatedly: Planetside 2 looks pretty darn spiffy.

I’m sure there was tons more than that I missed in my drunken revelry, but that should be enough to keep any sane person busy for at least 15 minutes, more if you link-dive like I do.

Musical Interlude

I am sitting in the buliding for the college of computing at our local university right now. In my lap (well hands now) my phone is streaming a drum and bass channel for me to listen to. I’m killing time because the suggested 45 minute lead time was a serve over estimate.

But while I’m sitting here, enjoying some REALLY good electronic music, I can’t help but remember some thoughts I had rattling in my skull as sleep dragged me into its playground of unconscious hallucinations. My last gaming of the night for me was spent in Wipeout HD. I remembered thinking of how strong an asset to the game the music is, and how unique that is in the industry.

Yes, there are some games where the score will forever be inscribed into the gamer collective consciousness (I’m looking..at you FFVII “fanfare”), but the large majority of games audio fades to, at best, a dim and whispy memory. Leaving no lasting impression on the player emotionally.

What will it take to have that change in games? Is it something that can even be applied across all genres of games? To take the thought through the capitalistic lense: is music in games at the state it currently is because, as consumers, we just don’t care/value/want it?

Bah, I still have 15 minutes until this thing starts.

Nomnomnom

My actual teeth.

I’m getting the last 3 of my wisdom teeth yanked out today! It means a short sedation, and mushy soft foods for the next three days or so. I will also, most probably, be not partaking in any blogging-ish activities. However, I may get the loratab in me and just go nuts on here, you never know. I was REALLY hoping that with the removal of my wisdom teeth, Sony would have updated their PS Store in time for me to get my freebies and play them, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Instead, I’ll be playing along on some other older games I need to finish from the comfort of bed. Or, if I can do it without the overly-protective wife finding out, I may just hop on to one of the many MMOs in SOE’s stable I can now play for free.

Have a good weekend!

Hm? Really? That’s interesting. Pass the jam.

Atari and Cryptic are seperating.

I’ve been noticing a handful of posts about this around on some blogs. Oddly though, I’m getting the impression these posts are being made because it “should be a big deal”, but really, noone seems to overly care, or be too invested. Which is kinda what I’m doing here myself – but I’m honest about my disinterest!

Not so rock steady

If you’ll think back to way back when (or just follow this link), you’ll recall that I recently had some technical work done on my DSL like to improve stability. Shortly after, I got a new video card to reduce the awful noise coming from my tower. With the two big issues resolved, I settled into a happy routine – for about a week. After that blissful time period, performance degradation started to be apparent. Not of my video card, but in my internet connection.

Typically, I’m a very easy-going guy, and the type of customer that most companies probably want. I try to fix things as much as possible by myself, and if I am unable to do so, I’ll usually put off calling for a while. I’m sure this procrastination is a result of any companies carefully crafted plan of making customer service/tech support as bothersome, repetitive, and completely unhelpful as possible. Every call is a painful rehashing of the previous conversation, often with someone who speaks a different native tongue from you. The experience is worse in technical support, because each step/layer you get accelerated to, they try to walk you through the exact same “solution” procedures as the previous representative.

So, after going through every step that my understanding could handle, I dithered for a few weeks, dreading the eventual vocal battle of congeniality I was soon to have with AT&T. Yesterday though, I did it, I grit my teeth, and picked up the phone, and dialed the number. It was almost every bit as hellish of an experience as I thought, with one silver lining: the representative sounded like a native speaker. I still had to repeat everything to him, and go over the entire situation as I had to before, I was able to stop him from trying to convince me that I should power-cycle my modem  – further interrupting my service to fix interruptions isn’t a solution if it’s not a permanent fix. The good news after the whole ordeal, is that he was able to see that there were faults, or errors further up the line that are causing my disconnects, and that they would send out ANOTHER tech to try to fix it. Yes, Saturday works.

Shit, Saturday doesn’t work, and then I had to call them back for a reschedule and go through the whole process again…

Probably Spam – but funny

Via: Online Schools – from a random emailer that was probably spam, but I enjoyed it anyway.