Tattered Page

We haven’t heard many public figures stand up in support of gaming, so we’ve come to expect the worst… particularly from someone that you’d expect to claim moral authority and judgment, as many see the Pope.  On January 24th, BENEDICTUS XVI released his message for the 41st “World Communications Day” and it briefly alluded to violent video games.

I’m a bit amazed to discover that anyone reading this document can come away thinking the Pope ”Dislikes Games”  like Scott did over at Broken Toys.  Then GU Comics runs their own rather defensive comment.  

Are we reading the same document? 

I think, if you’ll look again, you’ll find the game industry has an ally here.

I resisted the urge to buy Neverwinter Nights 2 on release, but over the holidays I had an extra incentive- a co-worker bought it only to find it too demanding for his system.  Unwilling to upgrade his PC for one title and unable to return an opened game, he let it go cheap. 

First impressions….  Despite many great marks for excellence, I will never finish this game and will likely keep playing my library of mods for the original NWN.

It was a headlong dive into the Uncanny Valley. 

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Although I’ve grown comfortable in my little Paragon City residence, I’ve been thinking of doing some MMO tourism starting sometime in February- hop a bit around the different gamescape out there. I’ll still be active in Cities of Heroes and Villains, but this is a chance to gain a fresh perspective on done, what’s being done, and what’s changed since launch.  If I want to intelligently write about the field, figure I’d better keep up with the changes. I’m avoiding the queues of WoW for a while… EQ2’s expansion piqued my interest, so maybe I’ll start there.

This is all still in the planning stages, though.

I just figured I’d toss out a notice- and an open invitation:  if you’d like to explore along with me, have a suggestion on where to go or what to see, or want to show off some of the worlds you call home, let me know.

Oz over at KTR has posted his “5 things” and #3 struck close to home.

I also learned spanish to impress a girl.  Mine wasn’t so successful.

Back in college, I roomed with a guy from Thailand that was attending an “Immersive English” program- he came to the states barely able to pronounce the school’s name & had one semester of intensive training to be ready for regular classes there.  One of his friends was a lovely Mexican lass  in the same program.  Despite the language barrier, we were fast friends.

I quickly changed courses (to fulfill my language requirement, of course) Problem was: after 4 years in the Army- touching four continents in four years- I’d picked up a smattering of phrases in a number of languages… and my mind was a bit of a jumble.  Heck, english still gave me trouble.  At that time, the easiest way I had to remeber things was through word association. As an example, the American Sign Language gesture for “pretty” involved a hand passing across the face, so I easily associated “pretty => face.”

Remember that.  It of course comes back to haunt me. So, as we struggled in one conversation in a mix of English and Spanish, I proceed to tell her how pretty she was.  That stupid word association popped into my head and my mind immediately inserted the first spanish word that came close to “face” : facil.

Some advice: in any language, “you are very easy” is not usually taken as a compliment.

Thanks to http://fireflychinese.kevinsullivansite.net

Yeah, I’m finally cursing in Chinese. That’s what happens after watching the Firefly DvD collection plus Serenety and realizing that there’s no more to come.

I’m a browncoat.  A bit late to the fight, but a browncoat. While I found “Buffy” smart enough to watch while channel-surfing, I was never a Whedon fan. Hearing about a sci-fi-themed project by him was not enough to get me watching- particularly when my weekly hours of TV watching can be counted on one hand. It didn’t even show up as a blip on my radar until the cancellation notice had already been made.

One pass through the collection isn’t enough to be a hardcore fan, but fortunately Jenn missed a few episodes, so we’re far from done with the series.

Once I’ve washed away the “unbeliever” stigma a little more with another round through the DVDs, I’ll be ready to talk about the challenges facing the “Firefly” MMO.

*Everyone under the heavens ought to die (Mal, Serenity, pt 1)

I didn’t forget the holiday, just had a bit more active one than I expected. I promised a bit more on the story, so here goes:

Jenn and I had just returned from visiting my family on the 23rd when we got the message that her grandfather had been hospitalized. He’s home now. Still not 100%, but he’ll get there: he’s a stubborn one. (more…)

I just finished reading the Escapist’s interview with Curt Schilling (thanks for the heads-up, Ryan). If the company and game philosophy plays out as well as he pitches it here, count me as an early fan. Here’s hoping they deliver.

One of the lines there serves as a lead-in to something I’d been mulling over:

The three most branded franchises in the history of the MMOG space were Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and, to me, Blizzard. Lord of the Rings had a century to brand their IP, Star Wars had three decades and Blizzard has had a decade of branding and franchise in the world of Warcraft. And they’ve done it so impeccably well, but at the end of the day, the thing that sticks out amongst those three is Blizzard stayed truer to their visions than anyone else, and fans got what they wanted.

I’m left wondering if maybe WoW had it a bit easier. They not only were the original source of the franchise, but it was built from the start to accommodate gaming.

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The observation’s been made before, but Moorgard explains it well: The ideal MMO customer isn’t one that practically lives in your game, it’s one that’s happy to keep paying the subscription fees while playing less.

I’ll let him explain it.

Moorgard lists a few alternate strategies to the somewhat flawed suggestion made on the Fires of Heaven board, but I’d like to add one of my own. (more…)

Probably Not’s brought up a note about the use of illusion in games.  I started a comment there, but by now, I’ve broken too many comment boxes on other blogs.

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Psychochild tagged me.  List 5 relatively obsucre things about yourself, then tag a few other bloggers to do the same.  I have to admit, I procrastinated by backtracking what others have listed, but I can’t stall any longer… so here goes:

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Well, we’ve survived 2006, wonder what 2007 has in store for us.