Archive for June, 2008
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
My Opponent Hates Puppies
Handful of things-
Doing a lot more in the way of tickets and shows and things lately. As I grow older, culture seems to be more and more a product that can be purchased and consumed. Going to check out Arabian Nights horse show, looking into the Orlando Science Center and potentially a cruise for an upcoming vacation. I’ve never quite been out of the country, and the Bahamas or Mexico would *totally* count.
I’ve been meaning to get back into cooking. The creation of a really awesome meal as a reason for family to get together and the exhilaration of trying a new recipe (or three) is something that really appeals to my nesting nature. Southern Fried Chicken (without cheating), fresh green beans with those little bits of bacon in them, seasoned red potatoes and a big boiled pot of super-sweet Zellwood yellow corn would make for a perfect summer “Just ‘Cuz” feast. Chalk this Normal Rockwellesque delusion of a Publix commercial style family get-together to a heat stroke.
The likelier outcome of an attempt of the above would be a war with blood pressure as I figure out how to precisely burn or undercook the chicken while fending off the dramas of the ol’ dysfunctional gang. Ah, but anticipated failure never stopped ME from doing anything! Something to brew about, anywho.
In other news, I’ve been playing a handful of newly released games here and there. The Guild 2 came out with an expansion, and it feels pretty close to a massively single-player game, something along the lines of a Port Royale and The Sims. Manipulating your dynasty for monopoly over the Hanseatic League is fun, until you run out of buildings to buy and towns to subdue.
Settlers 6: Rise of an Empire is a giddy-making game, and it has me mired for hours on end (when it works). Some of the scenarios are really quite well thought out, and it really took me back to strategy 101. My singular peeve is that in each scenario, you start with this hideously designed infrastructure with roads going every which way and all your necessary shops arranged in an insanely inefficient circle, rather than grid format. So you have to wait until you can safely kill off that first iteration or try to build around it. I’m sure that’s how regular old cities worked out, but ugh, annoying!
Supreme Ruler 2020 was an absolute abysmal failure in every single regard. It is as though someone took everything that could even be remotely classified as “global strategy” and shoved it without care into a hideous, unintuitive, mind-searing interface and slowed any semblance of time lapse to a crawl. Inflation is unexplained, nations gradually grow to hate you for no other purpose other than your continued existence, the supply chain from natural resources to finished products is obscure at best. Domestic and international trade are meshed together with no clear figures about what’s going to who or where or why, or how much of it. The resource progression is arcane and non-intuitive. Short on timber? Think making more Timber Yards will fix it? Think again. A horrible game that could have been a shining jewel.
As for Age of Conan, well, I haven’t touched that game since a few days after it came out. Yes, it runs on my machine, but it doesn’t run what I would classify as “well”. And I have a damned good machine. If your minspec is too high, it doesn’t matter if your game has content and fun - if I as consumer-player perceive the reduction in QUALITY as greater than 50% of what the game is intended to run at, you’ve lost me at the gate. I could probably run WoW on my blackberry. And I haven’t heard any word-of-mouth stories about Conan that would prompt me to overlook the initial 5 FPS tutorial barrier to entry. Eve Online also take note - reduce your “tutorial” to less than 48 hours of my life and we’ll talk.
The Political Machine 2008 was eh, alright I suppose. A fan of the 2004 version, I was really hoping the latest installment was going to bring a lot more features and fun to the table. Apart from the Bobblehead thing, umm, yeah, not much change. There’s a handful of new issues to take a stand on, like High Gas Prices and the Mortgage Crisis, but there are still no debates, still no primary season. As a player, what’s the point on taking a stand on any of the negative issues if there are no rewards involved in assuming that risk? I’m walking through the game as Joe Pishgar up against Giuliani to Lincoln and beating them squarely by 10% or more every time by simply coming out in favor of The Environment, The War on Terror, More Jobs, Social Security. If real politics is anything even remotely similar, I’m going to have an easy race when I run for congressbastard in a few years. Here’s how one of my ads will go-
America is a great nation, a nation of ideals and courage. As a person of ideals and with great faith in our country, I’ve always stood in favor of oxygen. It’s in the air we breath, the water we drink, and through it we have one of the most powerful rights in the history of the world - the right to free speech. Oxygen is an important resource and should be recognized for the pivotal role it plays in our day to day lives as Americans. Come November, you are going to have a choice in candidates - I’d be honored if you put your faith and trust in me. I’m Joe Pishgar, and I’m in favor of oxygen for America.
In other news, work is proceeding apace. I’m pleased as punch that I get to design a community infrastructure from the ground up. Who knew there was so much delight in affixing the nuts and bolts to a sequence of policies and initiatives? It’s fun, but very documentation intensive. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought this deep about how communities are formed from nothingness. Usually there’s a community already *there*. On the flip side, most of the major issues I’ve encountered in the past have been the result of missed steps or incorrect assessments during the infrastructure planning phases. So, I’m TOTALLY going to be the guy to blame if I accidentally miss a disciplinary policy or skirt a half-dozen less dynamic pylons of the infrastructure. On the other flip side though, if it works like a well-oiled machine, I’m absolutely going to patent the accursed thing. (Can you patent a process handling philosophies of formative relationships in a socio-psychological online group dynamic?)
Monday, June 16th, 2008
Pee Arr
Am I the only one that breaks out into fits of giggling when a commercial comes on TV advertising the “major breakthroughs” and “exhaustive hours invested into research” for alternative energy sources, and then the logo at the end comes up as an oil company? Investing in alternative energy sources, big oil? Aww, that’s precious. Of course you are!
It is just downright adorable that Chevron, Exxon and BP think that they can somehow convince the attentive public that they are pioneering the cutting edge of advanced non-fossil fuels technology by flashing a few “flower girl in the meadow” and overused Extenze “scientists working in a room filled with beakers and bottles filled with water dyed by food coloring” stock video clips. Right. We’re working hard to make every single aspect of our businesses obsolete! So remember next time you are at the pump, every 1/5,000th of a penny is directly invested into promoting alternative energy (public relations commercials)!
In other news, Phillip Morris would like you to stop smoking, Smithfield sells only the highest quality pork products, and ask your doctor if Astra-Zeneca is right for you. If you can’t afford prescription drugs, you may qualify for a program to provide them to you at little to no cost.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
The End of VMK
As promised, I’m going to try to write a little bit about the closing of VMK.
Firstly, it came as quite a surprise. The game had been doing quite well, and was in what I’d like to characterize as the “throes of new growth”.
Actually, I’m going to suddenly diverge for a moment here to mention the unique flavor of VMK. As far as social spaces go, it was specifically unique. Canned dictionary-based chat lead to a seperate language. I glove my duh.duh as “I love my daddy.” Language is the first icon of culture, and VMK’s culture took great pains for me to originally become inducted into.
The environment of VMK was Disney, but a softly dilluted Disney with alternate non-brand characters like the Yeti and Esmeralda the fortune teller. But, despite this dillution, the environment in which the players played was kept almost diabetically sweet through persistent high quality content updates. New clothing, items, rooms, contests, events - grand things and special attentions that paying subscribers of most MMOs would give their thumbs for were commonplace and free.
The players themselves coordinated events and room hosting, playing games in the freeform social space provided them in exchange for their increased brand awareness. Tweens, mostly female, occupied the bulk of the demographic. Coupled with this, I presided as Community Manager over the most professional ace team of Moderators and event Hosts I have ever known of. With pedigrees in AOL’s Community Leader program, the mods I had the pleasure of directing I have never witnessed before in any other MMO. And to boot, the staff itself was huge!
Due to COPPA regulations regarding kids in online spaces, moderation had to remain constant, and so my staff was a sizable 30+. One of the major aspects of sadness I have about the game’s closure is that I will likely never again see assembled a team of moderators as freaking awesome as these guys were. The majority have gone on to other projects, but I aspire to hire them back again in my next mod team if I possibly can.
So, we were talking about VMK’s unique “flavor”. Ever see that movie from the 80’s, Legend with Tom Cruise, before he went all schitzo? You know the one, with Tim Curry as the big red, black horned Satan creature. In it, there’s a few scenes with a unicorn running and bucking through a forest with insistent rays of sunshine blasting down in between windswept leaves. There’s a reverb synth riff playing by Tangerine Dream in stopping, high breathless pace over piano. It’s a dirty, brilliant light filled with dust and earth and good. That’s probably the most accurate way I can describe the flavor of VMK.