Or don’t, as the fancy strikes you. I haven’t been posting much because a) I was on vacation. It was both grand and annoying. b) I’m working on starting up another site with a friend. With actual articles and shit. Scary.
When more info is available, I’ll post here.
And if for some reason it doesn’t work (who knows), I’ll be back here. So, my two loyal readers, hold out, I’ll be back soon enough. I can’t go very long without ranting about something.
Yeah, it sounds stupid to me too. WotC thinks otherwise though. Yes the site looks pretty silly, is focused around a fictional alien named gleemax that… I don’t know, does some shit. And speaks to us:
THE PIXSW50ZXJlc3RpbmEL PROcgb2JzZXJ2YXRpb25JECT IS PROCEEDINzIHdpdGggXCJPcGVyG AS PLANYXRpb24gUG9wcHljb2NNED. I AM AWrXCIgZnJvbSB0aGlzIHZARE OF THE FACTIOpZGVvIHByYWN0aXRNS ALpb25lciBvZiB1IGNED AGAINbnVzdWFsIHByST ME. YOU ARE ON MY RAYW5rcw0KDQo=DAR.
ERROR CODE 64^$64. BEGINNING PHYSICAL MEMORY SCAN>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I know that kind of thing really makes me interested in a site and makes me want to find out more. All I know at this point is that Gleemax is fucking rad, dude!
So my real question, why does WotC hate us? Rumor is this site is why their magazine no longer exists. Lovely replacement.
More notes from ICv2:
“Our read on the core hobby industry is that it’s stable, but it’s aging,” WotC VP of Digital Games Randy Buehler told us. “We’re slowing down in terms of recruiting that next generation of hobby gamers. Today’s 15-year-olds have such a different experience than a 15-year-old did five years ago or 10 years ago, or when I was a 15-year-old. So today’s 15-year-old is online and doesn’t necessarily have any reason to leave his computer because there’s so much to do there.”
And this is their solution to that perceived problem?
WotC, if you want to know what your problems are, I’ll help you out.
1) You release way to many books these days and most of them aren’t up to any sort of quality level.
2) You have no idea what a roleplaying game is like. Yes, I love D20 and I love the 3.5 system. But do I love the way your books and system are laid out so as to discourage roleplaying? No.
3) You really have no idea what today’s kids are into. Let me just tell you, it’s not retarded sounding sites run by fakes aliens. If it were a real alien you might have something, but since it’s not. FAIL
Please, please do me a favor. Call me up. I’ll tell how to fix things, which books are good (Dungeon Master II) and why you should stop flooding the market with random stuff and diluting your brand.
What Would Matt Do: I’ll continue to make up house rules and help players with character creation so I’m not running pure hack and slash games when I play D&D 3.5. Also, lack of recent updates might be a good thing if all comes through. Watch this space for more info.
A friend pointed out this site to me this morning (thx jjz!). I didn’t read more than the front page, all with stories from June 5th. Now to be fair, some of those stories are about older instances, but that might actually be a worse thing. Let me give you an example:
I foolishly asked if any of their Logitech 5.1 speaker sets had optical input, because I was looking at something for surround sound gaming and the XBox supports dolby digital via optical… I got a lecture on how I didn’t need optical for 5.1.
“That’s just it you see, they have lots of RCA ports in the back… you don’t need 5.1, just go down to Dick Smith and get these things called “splitters.” Plug the cables from the PS2 into those and you turn your two RCA leads into four! And plug in another set, and you get 6, and that’s enough for 5.1 sound. I have this setup at home and it sounds awesome! It makes such a difference!”
Or maybe this one:
My old boss would say anything to get a reserve. I once listened to him tell a customer the following lies about Spider-Man 2(Before it Came out): “I went to a special retail conference and got a chance to play Spider-Man 2, (He didn’t) it’s just like GTA and KOTOR combined, you can walk all around the city and if you beat up the pedestrians, your evil meter goes up. If you get enough evil points, you TURN INTO VENOM! You can even infect people with your symbiote to make them fight for you!”
Both of these are a load shit, one of them purposely so, the other purely from ignorance. But the point is this, if you’re a gamer, you’ve had something along the same lines happen to you. You’ve had the EB/Gamestop/BB/etc guys tell you bullshit. You’ve had to deal with crappy policies (pre-order only!). You’ve probably seen/heard crappy shit happening to those around you and since they weren’t gamers, they didn’t know they were being screwed over.
So I think we can all agree this is a pervasive problem in the industry. Be it because EB type shops pay so little and go through so little training that retards are the norm or because customer service in all industries is where cuts go in, it happens.
This is nothing new, I just started thinking about this morning because of reading that site and being disgusted. Why? Because it’s fucking up the game industry. People are being sold shit they have no idea about. They are being burned and it’ll make them less likely to come back in the future. So no matter how good a game the publisher and developers put together, it can still be completely screwed at the store front by people not being well trained enough or just being plain assholes. This isn’t the same as movies or say furniture. Movies are advertised, they are reviewed on TV and people often see previews when watching other movies. Furniture is even easier…people just sit on that shit and see if they like it or not.
Games though, console and PC games, they don’t have shit. Lots of people walking to EB/BB/etc haven’t heard anything about the game they will purchase by the time they walk out. And who’s filling them with this information? Asshats who aren’t well trained, aren’t required to be educated in what they are selling and have numbers they have to push, not knowledge of the industry. And it’s hurting the industry. I guarantee it. People are missing out on the gems in the rough because the employees have no idea, games that are the biggest budget are being pushed the most and overall, it’s becoming more and more about how much money EB is paid to push a game, not the quality of the game.
As I said before, this is nothing new. It’s been happening for years and years. I’m saying it’s time for it to stop. Here’s what needs to happen.
1) EB/BB/etc need to educate their employees in what they are selling. This is where the rubber meets the road. If the employee has no fucking idea what they are selling, they will continue to schlock shit out.
2) Developers/Publishers need to get involved. Because if they don’t push EB types to do it, they won’t. They will continue to tell shit to prospective customers, treating those that aren’t hardcore as less and overall making the game buying experience very intimidating for most people out there.
I realize I’m asking for the moon here, but damn me if it’s not a good dream.
What Would Matt Do: You know what I do now? I visit whichever store where the employees leave me alone the most. They are completely and totally useless. I can get away with that because I’m an educated gamer. I fear for the n00bs out there.