Enough!

By Matt | August 29, 2008

 

That’s the part that really hooked me on speech.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough!  This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.  Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third.  And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight.  On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

This speech didn’t shy away from anything. Barack stood his ground on every single issue, made the issues that separate us seem silly and things we shouldn’t be arguing about and absolutely destroy Bush and McCain. This may be the best political speech I’ve seen in my lifetime and maybe the best in generations.

May this speech convince people that paying attention is needed, that we don’t need more Bush bullshit and that not only can Obama lead this country, he may be able to do it with diginity. Scary fucking thought.

 

 

 

What Would Matt Do: I’m hearing all across the internet how people just stood and watched his speech at bars and resturants and other places and how people hadn’t seen anything like it before. Maybe this will be the changing point America needs. Maybe this will be the president we need. Maybe.

 

 

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Doom on thy MMO model!

By Matt | August 26, 2008

 

I can’t say I agree with everything Lum, the Industry Luminary™, has posted here, but it’s a good read. I do agree completely with the subscription MMO model being broken, but I don’t know if I agree with the proposed solutions:

They encourage bad design. You gotta keep those people subscribed somehow. Hey, I know, let’s jack up the XP curve, no one will notice. Oh, they’re max level? Crap, put in some other time sink - hey, “reputations” sounds fun, let’s see if that works. Now, free to play games also suffer from all of these problems. Which is kind of funny, because in a free to play game, if you’re not part of the 5% or whatever of players that is monetized, you are costing the company money when you play. Ideally your play time should be minimized, not extended! But old habits are hard to break. Jonathan Blow (the Braid designer) put this best. When his comments on MMO design first came out I was quite pissed off at what he had to say - but in the main, he’s right. It’s probably why I was pissed.

“I think a lot of modern game design is actually unethical, especially massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, because they are predicated on player exploitation,” Mr Blow says.

He believes players will naturally avoid boring tasks but developers “override that by plugging into their pleasure centres and giving them scheduled rewards and we convince them to pay us money and waste their lives in front of our game in this exploitative fashion”.

It’s a vast oversimplification - but that doesn’t make it less correct an observation. And that is encouraged by the revenue stream of the slow and steady MMO gamer.

Go there, read the whole thing and the links. It’s very much worth it if you’re into MMO design talk and the future of them at all.

 

What Would Matt Do: Didn’t I already say you should read it?

 

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Demos galore and Bionic Commando: Rearmed

By Matt | August 25, 2008

 

I moved recently and being severely lazy (I’m so lazy I’m not going to express how lazy I am beyond that), I hadn’t hooked up my 360 to the internets again until last Friday. I ended up with the Force Unleashed demo, the Too Human demo, Madden XX and a few others I can’t really remember (doesn’t bode well for them does it) and Bionic Commando:Rearmed. I did download the demo for BC:R, but after playing for 5 min, I bought the full game. With that in mind, lets start the destruction, er review, process:

Madden XX

I really liked the football test, though it wasn’t learning about football so much as learning about Madden, but it still interesting. The gameplay demo was shite. I couldn’t even play a full quarter, just a simulation of the last few minutes of the Superbowl. Bleh. I have heard good things about Madden this year and I may end up buying it, but the demo didn’t really do much to sway me one way or another.

Status: Deleted, may purchase later.

Force Unleashed

Did anyone else notice that I get force powers, a light saber and directions like "no one is to be left alive!"? That’s pretty much a win for me at that point. That gameplay reminds me a lot of a smoother flowing God of War, but with force powers and light sabers. Thankfully there are less QTEs than GoW and you’re destroying star war guys with awesome options of force lightning, saber or push attacks…OR, combining them into some awesome force of destruction of which the universe hath no name!

To be fair, the powers aren’t combined as well as they could be, the force power bar is a lousy mechanic in terms of inguenity (I’d might have to spend time coming up some options I’d like to see more later) and overall it’s not as smoothly tied together as it could be. Agreed completely. But even with it’s design flaws, it still has light sabers, force powers and fun.

Status: Will Buy and will play demo until I can do so.

Too Human

Hmmm…  I don’t really know here. I wanted to like it more I think. I also played it right after playing Force Unleashed, so it’s kind of unfair in that you can’t jump around crazy like and meld the powers together. I don’t think I’m going to make a call on this one at the moment. As crazy as Dyack is, I still think it’s got something to it. I’m going to give it another chance in a day or three.

Status: Undecided. Will give another chance.

Bionic Commando:Rearmed

I already bought this bad boy and will play it until I can’t stand it anymore…which ought to be a good long time. It has, and I kid you not, the exact feel of the first one, additions that don’t break but enhance the original, coop play (I can’t stress how awesome this is), amazing graphics, great feel and flair and it’s old school hard and unforgiving.

That’s a perfect mixture and the best way to recreate old games. I’m stunned by how well they did. I wish they would update all of the old games I played when I was a kid (starting with Ikari Warriors or River Raid) and make them as awesome as this one is.

My only complaint at this point is that it’s really hard. Really really hard. And that’s not really a complaint so much as a statement of fact. I loved the original, but I forgotten over the years how hard it was. And we still only get three guys per level, but we do get to save inbetween levels, so it’s not so bad when you have to turn your system off (I used to have my nintendo running for days to keep my game saved).

Oh, and if anyone knows a cheat for more guys, that would be great. My brother is a thief and won’t stop stealing my guys. :D

Status: Bought and love it.

 

What Would Matt Do: Apparently I’ll play a lot of games. It was a good weekend.

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The internet is alive with the sound of idiots.

By Matt | August 21, 2008

 

That’s not particularly new I know, but it’s not everyday a presidential candidate decides to take on the geek nation…

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement

Wow, way to be retarded. This is from McCain’s official blog site. Impressive. Michael Goldfarb (the original poster of quip) did try to take it back later with this:

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.

Apology for idiotic comment or not, Lum deftly states the realities of the situation:

Someone needs to let Granddad McCain know that since he left the military in 1937, quite a few of today’s Generation Kill actually not only play Dungeons and Dragons - THEY PLAY MMOs. One of the things Sanya Weathers made a point of doing at Mythic (you know, when not disparaging McCain’s memories from her mom’s basement) was making sure that military DAOC players deployed to Iraq had all their subscription worries taken care of. You know, since they had other things on their mind and all, like bullets.

But, you know, it’s typical of the pro-McCain Sarsparilla and Goofy Golf crowd to disparage a fellow politican’s reputation from the comfort of Karl Rove’s basement.

Ok, so Goldfarb takes a shot at the internet geeks in general and then realizes that’s probably not the best idea in today’s culture. As a matter of fact, since McCain has no idea how the internet or technology in general works, you’d think Goldfarb would be trying to bring them into the fold, not alienate them. That takes the cake for this months You’re Just Dumb Award™.

 

Only by a close call did Goldfarb win the award though. Apparently Dennis Dyack is on the move…away from neogaf. He’s been banned. I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised. Dyack, much like some other developers out there, likes shoot his mouth off and make random comments about people and the like when his game/company (or just for shits and giggles) is called into question. It’s both hilarious and sad. Well, more hilarious than anything. It reminds me of things like .plan updates from back in the day.

 

And while not an asshole (well, it depends who you ask), Bill Roper gave a serious run for the award with his interview on 1UP:

GFW: At what point did you guys feel like maybe you shouldn’t have done the hybrid model? Was it before or after you launched Hellgate?

BR: Before we launched.

GFW: So you already knew…

BR: We knew before we launched. There was enough feedback from people where we realized, yeah, we probably made a mistake. But at that point…the train had left the station.

It does sound like there wasn’t much choice at that point, but there had to be something. It’s lacking in responsibility at best to release a product you know is broken, sell lifetime subscriptions and go around pimping the game and pretending everything is hunky dory even though you knew it wasn’t before the release. I know time/money/resources constraints often lead the way, but Roper and company killed not just his company, but two others (the hosting company and an art company or something like that) when they released a product they knew just wasn’t up to snuff. They put countless people out of jobs, including themselves, and disrespected a lot of people by releasing a knowingly b0rked game.

 

What Would Matt Do: There you have it. The internet is still full of idiots and while my heart goes out to all of the people that lost their jobs with Flagship going down, I can’t have that much pity for Roper himself or his top level guys that knew. I’d pretty damn upset if I had been working there and they released the product in such a state.

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Dear Valve, stop making TF2 so god damned good!

By Matt | August 13, 2008

 

I saw the Team Fortress 2 official blog updated again…

We thought the Pyro pack was the biggest we’d be doing for a while, due to the large changes to the Pyro, but the Heavy update has turned out to be even bigger. In addition to the three unlockable weapons and thirty-five achievements for the Heavy, we’ve got a new game mode with five new arenas for it, a new Payload map focusing on more open spaces than Goldrush, and another popular community-made map.

Why won’t they stop? I can’t be expected to ever give up TF2 if they just keep releasing updates for the game (and usually good ones at that). I can’t go a week without playing at least a few times, if not more (ask wisefool, he knows) and the Pyro updates actually got me to play a Pyro (and like it) where as in the past I hadn’t done much with them.

The Heavy updates? I can’t wait since I’m already a huge fan of the Heavy (and a dominator with him if I do say so myself). It’s not just Heavy updates though, it’s a new map, a new map type with five new arenas (they must not mean five whole new maps, right?) for it and a new community map.

For the love of all, I’m never going to be able to stop playing this game. It’s replaced BF2, CS:S and every other multiplayer FPS I’ve played or was playing. It’s that good and they are only making it better.

I’m going to go ahead and declare TF2 the best Multi-Player FPS ever and just succumb to the love.

 

What Would Matt Do: My only question at this point, beyond why won’t Valve quit making it so good, is how are they making money on this? Are they getting more and more sales as time goes on? Not that Valve really needs it, but money often decides where the content goes and they can’t keep updating TF2 forever if they aren’t making anymore money from it…can they?

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