T w e n t y S i d e d
I want to try a little experiment, if you’ll indulge me. Take a look at these two screenshots from Lord of the Rings Online:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “LOTRO Screenshot”
Dragon Age: Twitter Review Pt. 5
While I avoided posting spoilers to Twitter, I’m going to talk openly about events in the third act here. This post is intended for people who have played through and want to discuss plot specifics. I was planning on tagging spoilers, but I don’t think there would be much of the post left afterward.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dragon Age: Twitter Review Pt. 5”
Announcements
Several people have asked when the Champions Online series will end, if I’ll do anything next, and what that might be:
1) The Champions Online series will end with part 15. This should go up the last week of December or the first week of January, depending on how much time I take off for the holidays.
2) Yes, I’ll be doing another Let’s Play series after this.
3) I can’t tell you any more than that right now.
Now, those of you following my Twitter feed know that I’ve been voting for The Escapist in the latest Web 2.0 popularity contest at Mashable.
Despite my mocking, this sort of thing is actually really important to web companies. Nobody ever talks about it because it would be unseemly, but scoring awards like this can give a publication a lot of clout when attracting advertisers and also in dictating what they can charge those advertisers. Winning stuff like this can help improve the fortunes of a company, particularly younger ones. Since I’ve hitched my wagon to the Escapist, I’d love for them to reap those rewards.
I’d also love for them to win because of the nice counterbalance they provide to the review-score hype mills that usually get all the attention*. I think a lot of us here like thoughtful articles as opposed to fanboy-driven ego-stroking, and so it would be nice if we could lift up the stuff we value.
Which is all a really roundabout way of me begging for votes for my friends at The Escapist, which is a thing you could do by clicking on this link. It’s all done through Twitter, so you have to have a Twitter account to vote. I’m sorry. It’s a web 2.0 thing. Didn’t you know? Web 2.0 is about connecting every social media site to every other one in a giant clusterfarg of account names and logins until the whole network collapses in on itself and forms a CSS-compliant singularity.
I’ll make a deal with you: If the Escapist wins, I’ll post a burning, hate-filled screed on everything that totally bugs me about the Mashable awards.
But not yet. Don’t want to tip our hand just yet.
But if you dig what I do over there, or over here, then please consider voting.
* And by “attention” I mean “money”.
A Star is Born:
Let’s Play Champions Online Pt. 12
Despite my better judgment, I return to Socrates for my reward and for another job.
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| It’s actually not a good idea to read these. |
So… our creepy 1984-style big-brother cybermind just saw an explosion that mutated a bunch of scientists. He has no idea what caused it or why, or if it mutation is contagious, but he’s got the antidote worked out and he wants me to go over there and whip up a batch of the stuff for the eggheads. Well, it’s rotten nonsense, but I have to say it’s a lot less crazy and shame-inducing than fighting Foxbat. (Of course, the same could be said of using baby seals as a melee weapon to beat up crippled orphans on Christmas Eve.)
I arrive at the scene of the disaster to have a look at the damage.
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There are the refrigerator-sized containers strewn around the parking lot amongst the burning cars, mutated scientists, and terrorist soldiers. The containers ostensibly contain the resources I need. The terrorists contain a deep hatred for the establishment. The cars contain fire.
The scientists do not look well:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Star is Born:
Let’s Play Champions Online Pt. 12″
Stolen Pixels #149: Approval Ratings
Morrigan disapproves of this comic.
Dragon Age: Twitter Review Pt. 4
I’ve been playing #DragonAge a week. Suddenly new EULA pops up when I launch it, and I have to agree to play? Pfft.
The discussion as to whether or not it’s enforceable or not is beside the point: This is simply no way to do business.
The whole thing has a sick, Kafkaesque flavor to it. Clumsy bureaucratic shackles are added to a simple economic transaction, presented in a way that most people can’t even understand. The company knows nobody reads the EULA, but they pay the lawyers to make one anyway. The lawyers know the thing is gibberish to the intended audience, but they write it anyway. The user knows it’s all a joke and it has no meaning to them, but they agree to it anyway. And the company knows that the user knows it’s all a joke.
Paying lawyers to draft unenforceable contracts for people who can’t understand them to perpetuate a system nobody takes seriously.
What a stupid waste of everyone’s time and money.
Except for the lawyers. I think they’re happy with the system.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dragon Age: Twitter Review Pt. 4”
How I Spent The Last Half Hour, An Autobiography
Starting yesterday I started getting spam comments on this site that would just be these lists (sometimes long, sometimes short) of random English words. A sample:
Enemy Natural,post hall gate significance experiment disappear later shout light what prepare slowly quite she
I guess it’s an effort to get past heuristic filters. (Spammers don’t care about the comment, they only want the link that goes on their name.)
I see all the comments on this site in a single admin feed that shows them in the order in which they were posted, regardless of what post they come from. (My old posts still see a good bit of hit & run traffic.)
I did not think of this when I made the earlier post asking people for silly words.
I just now sorted through a pile of endless unrelated words, reading them through and thinking, “Man, what’s wrong with these people? These words aren’t very funny at all.” I was looking at the lists of words, searching for meaning or patterns that would explain why people had chosen these mundane and un-funny words. Are these people thinking of skits I’ve never seen? Are they non-native English speakers with different ideas about what sounds funny?
And then I realized I was reading spam.
So, maybe that wasn’t the best use of the last twenty minutes. The only thing that would be more pointless than reading all my spam in detail would be to write a 250 word post about my experience reading spam.
From The Archives:
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Zenimax vs. Facebook
This series explores the troubled history of VR and the strange lawsuit between Zenimax publishing and Facebook.
PC Gaming Golden Age
It's not a legend. It was real. There was a time before DLC. Before DRM. Before crappy ports. It was glorious.
What is Piracy?
It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
Shamus Plays LOTRO
As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
Artless in Alderaan
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
id Software Coding Style
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.