Tattered Page

Scott over at Broken toys has a few things to say about EA’s new “pay to unlock” strategies. Essentially, there are alot of extra features in many games- extra courses or golfers in Tiger Woods Golf, for example, that are only available once a player “unlocks” them by some achievement in-game. They might have to beat the game, complete X courses, or some other mind-numbing act of repetition to gain that “reward.” Until now.

Now, all you need to do is pay $3-4 more to unlock all that extra stuff.

This is a reprint of my old Veteran’s Day writeup two years ago.  The blog apparently ate it, but when I was thinking about what to say today, this seemed more appropriate now than ever.

Veteran’s Day.

Many of us have grown up in an era with few- if any- family members that have worn a uniform.  This holiday must seem distant and oddly strange to them.  Who are we remembering? and why?  An unpopular war only makes the confusion worse. 

I’m asking that, no matter what you think of the war- and even if you don’t know any veteran- you take the time to recognize this day.

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Ok, I decided to play around with Comic Book Creator this week.  It’s a fun tool that lets you make comics from clipart, screenshots, or virtually any image file you have at hand.

I made a City of Heroes 36-pager.  It’s something of an “origins” tale, I guess.  There was alot of bungling, and it still has some rough edges, but I figured I’d share it in “Beta format” and see what people think.

You can  download the pdf here (7.5mb). 

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Seems everyone’s commenting on something Jack Emmert said at the Serious Games Summit.  I was there too, but since most of the meat is being discussed over at Raph’s, I figured I’d reply to the topics there.

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The Grouchy Gnome’s appearing a bit grouchier than normal lately- that’s good- he’s at his best when bitching about something.  He’s taking issue on all the “all new, never done before” stuff that… well… really has been done- sometimes rather frequently- in the past.

I don’t disagree, but I don’t want to discount the effort that the “new” developers might be making.  Many of his examples were game elements with significant flaws that really needed hashed out.  Some were easier on a certain platform (2d vs 3d) or more easily controlled by certain underlying mechanics.

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