Pumping Irony

This month’s GameInformer magazine has an interview with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame, where he talks a bit about videogame violence.

My favorite snippet (since Syp already has dibs on “Quote of the Day”) is:

The truth of the matter is there have been so many popular songs that have been about peace and love, and they haven’t turned the world into complete peace and love. Violence still happens. So the bad news is, you can’t just put out “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles and get world peace, and the good news is that first-person shooters don’t turn people into killers.

The topic of violence in games and society continues for three paragraphs. Good stuff, and similar arguments to what gamers and anyone who knows what they’re actually talking about uses to counter the media and clueless conservatives who think all gamers are sociopaths in the making, but it’s nice to hear it coming from a celebrity and non-gamer too.

Sorry, this is not a post discussing the life-lessons of the 1986 Ralph Machio movie of the same name, although I will freely admit to owning the MP3 of the “Head-cuttin’ Duel” by Steve Vai and Ry Cooder from the movie. Good stuff there!

No, my lease is nearly up at Lunarpages.com for this site. I’m looking at how much I blog these days, the likelihood that will pick up next year, since I only plan on playing LOTRO and maybe a scant handful of other MMOG’s. I can transfer the LOTRO-specific blogging over to My.LOTRO if I want to. I’ll keep my domain name because I like it, but I’m very much undecided if I want to continue paying over $100 per year for this server space when I’m not using it as much anymore. I can easily save the money and move the blog over to WordPress or Blogger and transfer the domain name.

I don’t know. December 25 is the day I have to pay Lunarpages if I decide to keep the site here. Guess I have some decisions to make in the meantime…

It’s been years and years since I’ve liked this holiday in the slightest, mostly because of getting sick from eating too many olives and chocolate-covered raisins as a kid one Thanksgiving. But still, being thankful for various people and aspects in your life is a good notion. I wasn’t planning on writing anything like this at all when I clicked the link to my blog, but here is a quickie off-the-cuff (you have no idea how off-the-cuff this is!) list of what I am thankful for in 2009.

• My family and friends. I may not get to see you often in person (my mother raked me over the coals that I have to work both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year — same as every year, mom! — and haven’t been home in over 2 years) but I love you all very much!
• My girlfriend, (anonymous code name: L) who never ceases to be amazing and inspirational on so many levels. Love you, sweetie!
• In light of the high unemployment rate in the US, I am thankful that I have a decent-paying job at all, because many people unfortunately do not.
• My new subwoofer and I are thankful that the condo directly underneath mine is currently vacant! We’ve been enjoying that fact; oh yes we have!

Anyway, I wished all my friends, readers, fellow bloggers and tweeters a Happy Thanksgiving, but I wanted to have it here as well. Hope all of you had a great holiday and that you all have something to be thankful for this year.

I finally broke down and signed up for Facebook a few days ago after a friend and co-worker Tiffany kept harassing me about it. I’d seen (never joined) many a MySpace page and never saw one that look any better than the average Geocities or Tripod page from last decade and just figured Facebook was a MySpace clone.

Possibly it is, but at least it looks cleaner. Near as I can tell, it’s a sort of combination of Twitter and a (mini-) blog. Or something. I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what to do with it yet, or why I’d want to do whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing when I’m already using Twitter and already have a real blog. I’ll probably do like I did when I first signed up for Twitter and just stare at it for awhile and see what everyone else does then decide how or if I want to participate.

I really didn’t appreciate that just any Schmoe I work with can automatically add me, though. I already got added by a co-worker I avoid any and all contact with. Great, just great…

Ok, just for a second, I need to say something purely from a “guy” (read: shallow) standpoint. One of our flight attendants added me. Rather attractive gal. Now, some of the IM clients let you “nudge” your friends, which makes a little sound or sends a notification that you want their attention. Facebook, however, calls this a “poke.” I think it’s obvious what a guy’s first (shallow) thought is when he clicks [Hot Chick]‘s Facebook page and the first two things under [Hot Chick]‘s picture is “Send [Hot Chick] a message” and “Poke [Hot Chick].” Needless to say, the proper response is not the first response to that last one…

I’m just sayin’…

I recently added Twilight to my Netflix queue and it happened to arrive right around the Halloween / Samhain holidays this year, which Halloween-wise is perfect for watching vampire movies. I’ve never read any of the Twilight Saga novels, and the movie left me wondering why exactly this series is so popular. Of course, I lack the prerequisite of being an estrogen-overloaded and otherwise chemically imbalanced tween female who dreams of being Bella and in twue tween wuv with Robert Pattinson’s alter-ego, the glampire Edward Cullen.

Aside from the overall weak presentation of whatever story may have been in the novel, I was mainly left wondering why exactly Bella and Edward were “in wuv” at all in the movie. There was so little setup or interaction between the two. Even if it was the cliché “love at first sight” excuse, it wasn’t apparent. Perhaps it happened so quickly that I missed it during one of several protracted eye-rolling sessions.

Being a guy, reading or watching romance isn’t exactly at the top of my list. Or middle, even. Probably not on the list at all, truth be told. Sure, sure, I’ll watch a romantic comedy, no problem. I mean, what guy didn’t like The Wedding Crashers, right?

Fiction-wise (as in novels) in recent years, two series has stood out for me personally. First, I came across Sara Douglass’ wonderful and epic The Wayfarer Redemption, the first book in that series. I will easily put that series among the top few fantasy books I’ve ever read in my life. It has all the standard trappings we’d ever want in a fantasy epic, from skirmishes to all-out war, political and theological intrigue, magic and mysteries but at the same time it’s outstanding in that the author created a wholly unique world and lore, using none of the standard fantasy races (other than humans) or standard concepts of magic, etc. The action is choreographed and depicted on par with a scene R. A. Salvatore might construct. And yes, there are relationships and romance. None of this “love at first sight” crap, though. All the relationships succeed or fail based on the emotional strength, frailty or even momentary weaknesses, which makes them more believable and they are written in a way that is not only approachable as a male reader, but also appreciated.

Next is a series I happened upon completely by accident, C. L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul series. I bought the first book, Lord of the Fading Lands, out of curiosity since I liked the description on the back cover as well as the cover art. I still miss my late kitty Spaz, who was all black and the art had giant black cats with dragon wings flying and breathing fire, so yeah, I bought it despite a reservation causing a mild buzzing in the back of my mind that it was labeled a “fantasy romance.” Sure enough, the romance between Ellysetta and Rain is at the heart of the story, and a good deal of time is devoted to that, though there’s also action, intrigue, magic and villainy aplenty. Wilson does use the equivalent of “love at first sight” here, but gives quite a bit of lore as to why this specific type of “love at first sight” exists with the Fey race on the fantasy world she’s designed. More importantly, it isn’t “we fell in love at first sight and lived happily ever after.” Far from it. The characters have to work for each tiny bit of progress in their relationship. From this male reader’s perspective, it came within earshot of getting “girly” with a few parts of the whole romance thing, but much like the kid from Princess Bride, I started off being a little on the “ewwww kissing?” side of things but by the end it was all good and I was rooting for Rain’s wooing to finally win Ellie over. It never went totally girly and certainly never came close to what I remember of those Harlequin Romance books my mom used to read. Anyway, I enjoyed Lord of the Fading lands so much — romance and all — that I eagerly snapped up the second book, waited nearly a year for the third book and pre-ordered the fourth book (I’ve never pre-ordered a book before) which just arrived and I’m a few chapters into it.

Now, I’ve also read and enjoyed stuff like Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Baker novels and the first two of her Meredith Gentry novels, though I felt the last few Anita Baker (and all the Gentry) books were starting to border on soft-core porn when it came to the relationships (if we can call them that) between the main characters and their Lust of the Month. I like Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan books, too, which are more similar to LKH’s earlier Anita Baker novels that tended to be content with staying on the “naughty but sexy” side of things, rather than taking that next step into full chapters of near-porn.

Last week I read Dark Curse by Christine Feehan. I’ve never heard of the author before but the description sounded like the book would be right up my alley. The underlying story probably is, but the characters were rather on the unlikable side. The clincher was the romance. I use the word “romance” as loosely as I can with this one. Once more the “love at first sight” cliché rears its head, more or less. Feehan gave a cursory attempt at some backstory lore but it mostly fell flat. Part of this could be that, as I’ve since learned, this book is but the latest in a whole series of Carpathian “Dark” books, and perhaps the lore has been better explained previously, but Dark Curse served as a poor introduction to the Carpathian race and their way of thinking. The worst was the whole “romance” between Lara and Nicolas. First, Lara is portrayed in a very schizophrenic manner. One paragraph she insecure, then she’s strong and tough, then she’s suicidal. Come to think of it, that does describe an awful lot of women… I kid, I kid! Nicolas is essentially a douchebag who, were he not Carpathian, would most likely be driving a pickup truck with a confederate flag sticker on the back window, wear dirty jeans and wife beaters around the house and ordering Lara around with “Get me a beer, woman!” as he spits more chaw into a smelly styrofoam cup.

The little Carpathian lore that was passed along in Dark Curse makes it clear that Carpathian men enjoy sex. Hey, what guy doesn’t? The problem here is that Dark Curse goes into that realm of equating sex with love. The insecure Lara essentially feels that because Nicolas wants to have sex with her, therefore he loves her and therefore she apparently loves him back. Oh, sure, Nicolas tells her that she’s his “lifemate” (which she accepts all too readily, and the concept of lifemate is never explained other than being left as another way of meaning “soulmate”) and tells her that he loves her but there is never any true demonstration of emotion other than primal and raw lust. I’m being nice when I say Nicolas has sex with Lara. Really, the entirety of their relationship is Nicolas fucking Lara. And when he fucks Lara, Feehan devotes practically the entire chapter to describing it in full borderline porn detail. Lara comes across as if she feels Nicolas loves her because he wants to fuck her. The harder or more hardcore he fucks her, the more he must love her. The Carpathian way of life is described as being nearly Neandertholic, with women practically nothing more than the men’s playthings, yet at the same time they are supposedly extremely protective and devoted to their women because they “love” them so much. Lara is so insecure that apparently this is fine with her. The second time she and Nicolas are “together” she performs oral sex on him. It’s her first time doing oral, ever, but rather than being loving, patient or understanding, Nicolas decides to up the ante into forcibly making her deepthroat him. A few chapters later, Lara had been awake for untold hours, had used her newly strengthened “magic” powers to help save infants in the womb who were being attacked by mages and was so exhausted at the end she passed out. The ever-loving and understanding Nicolas decides to wake her up by biting and pulling on her nipples then practically raping her as she’s waking up. But hey, he wants to fuck her so it’s all good because fucking is love, right? He wants to fuck her a lot so he must love her a lot, right?

Sorry, but there is a huge difference between sex and “making love.” There is a difference between sex and fucking as well.

Maybe it’s that — no, not maybe, I’m quite positive it’s because I grew up with (and work with) so many girls from the Midwest region who were equally insecure and clueless to think just because some guy wants in her pants that he “loves” her, so she loves him and wants to get married, have kids and do the whole house with a white picket fence thing. Look, hon, he just wants to get laid. That ain’t love. It’s not even in the same ballpark. In Dark Curse, perhaps if only one character had been this way and some exposition described how the relationship actually matured, maybe I’d be OK with that. But it was not only the two main characters, but also the other characters in the book, which has caused me to transfer this misguided “sex = love” concept from the characters to the author herself, which in turn causes my opinion of Feehan as a woman to lower dramatically. Is that fair? Probably not, but there it is anyway. I can’t really say I have any interest in picking up one of the earlier Carpathian books because Dark Curse made such a poor, nearly offensive, impression.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a guy who can be quite callous and shallow at times and can easily separate the acts of hardcore fucking from the intimate emotional bonding and sharing during “making love” (I really need to find a better phrase for that, it sounds so old-fashioned) with a woman I’m in love with and committed to, so the irony that I was nearly offended enough by Dark Curse to write this is not lost on me. Then again, I’ll refer you to my blog’s title…

This actually comes from a console gaming perspective, specifically, but also something I’ve vaguely noticed in the MMOG crowd at times.

Why are co-operative games (let’s just call it PvE for familiarity’s sake, because that’s what it is) not considered multiplayer? It seems only the competitive (PvP) side of a game is “multiplayer” at all.

Whether I have 4 players playing co-operatively in Borderlands or 12 people raiding in LOTRO, is 4 or 12 not multiple players?

Taking it to the next step, would an MMO that had no form of PvP whatsoever in fact not be an MMO since apparently PvE doesn’t count, regardless how many players there actually may be doing it?

I’m just sayin’ …

Warning: This will likely be one of my meandering train-of-thought posts, so “hunker down” (whatever that means… you Southerner’s kill me) and bear with me.

As the frequency of posts this summer have indicated, my overall motivation for writing has dwindled. I’ve had a few in mind but never felt like sitting down and actually writing them. I’ve mostly been content to just peruse a few of my favorite blogs, make some comments and the occasional tweet and call it a day.

I’ve also not been doing any MMOGing (did I just invent a word?) either. Mostly because my PC is extremely unstable now and nothing — and I mean NOTHING — can be trusted to not crash. So far, Guild Wars is the only game of any sort that I have installed that I can eventually get to load up and not crash, however that doesn’t mean it will actually run properly. Random slowdowns and graphical glitches mar the experience there as well. I’m sorta-kinda in a mood to make a slow return to LOTRO but the client crashes immediately, which prevents me from even logging in just to pay the upkeep on my house there. By the time I build a Windows 7 system next month I’ll find out the hard way just how LOTRO’s esgrow system works and if I will lose any of my stored items or not.

I’ve found it nearly impossible to muster even an ounce of interest in the new batch of shiny MMOGs though.

Champions Online? Looks great but I remember in City of Heroes how I felt it was impossible to feel “super” when everyone was “super.” It was an even more pervasive feeling than in a fantasy game, for whatever reason. It goes back to “if everyone is special then no one is special.”

Aion? I’ve already played Aion, it was called every freakin’ Korean MMO in existence. I see no reason whatsoever to buy Aion for the exact same gameplay, exact same leveling + gear scheme as I’d get in any other fantasy MMORPG with the only differences being my adrogynous character performs some anime moves while I’m standing still clicking 1,2,3 on the hotbar and takes the wings off my elf from Perfect World so I can fly around. With restrictions on the flying, of course.

Even the MMOGs on the horizon seem like more of the same and nothing to excite me. The Old Republic? Straight-up DikuMMO with a mostly single-player leveling experience with the occasional multi-player content that filters us into the generic raid/PvP “end game.”

I have to say something positive though, so I’ll admit some interest in Fallen Earth because it’s the only one out there currently that had the balls to do anything whatsoever differently. That, and it seems mighty reminiscent of old-school Galaxies. So does Earthrise, which I’m still maintaining somewhat of an interest in, but I have a bad feeling the heavy focus on PvP will be that game’s downfall.

So what have I been doing? Obviously with a broken PC, my gaming has been exclusively on the 360. Ya know what? I’ve been having an absolute blast! Games can be fun! Who knew? I think all these years of DikuMMOs have altered my perception, so being forcibly removed from that scene has made it plainly obvious as to the sacrifices in gameplay and fun we have to endure for the sake of having (potentially) a few thousand other players on the server.

Aaron and Pete had mentioned Mercenaries 2 awhile back and I saw that it had drop-in co-op play so I picked that up too. Holy crap, is that game fun! Every time I play my imagination goes crazy with thoughts of expanding the game into bigger version of itself with persistence and more players, but it’s amazingly fun just with two-player co-op. I’m not overly fond of QuickTime Events (QTE’s) but Mercenaries 2 only has them when you’re hijacking a vehicle that is already manned by AI, so you fight them for control of the vehicle. The coolest part is that you get to watch the other player’s QTE from your perspective. If Aaron nabs a tank, I get to watch him crawl up the barrel of the cannon, yank the hatch open, headbutt the driver then drop in a frag grenade. How cool is that? It’s possibly more fun to watch than to do the QTE yourself. Oh and helicopters. Where else can you fire a grappling line at a helicopter in flight, climb up the line, open the door and wrestle with the pilot before overpowering him, throwing him out the door then piloting the chopper yourself? Also, unlike most MMOs, factions in Mercenaries 2 are often opposed to the other factions, so you have to plan out which missions you’ll do for which faction and be willing to take a (sometimes severe) penalty in your standing with one faction in order to increase standing with another.

I’ve also picked up GTA4 which I got last year but didn’t stick with it because of, you guessed it, MMOs! GTA4 in particular, but also Saints’ Row 2, Crackdown and to a lesser degree Mercenaries 2, have amazing worlds that seem alive. NPCs are having conversations with each other, sometimes they’ll get into a fight, sometimes they’ll mug another then the police get involved. Most NPC drivers are pretty conservative but occasionally one will get virtual road rage and go careening down streets and cause accidents. All this is without any input or stimulus whatsoever from the player. It’s just happening. Player stimuli can cause reactions as well. Bumping into fellow pedestrians on the sidewalk will get a “Hey, do ya mind?” reaction. If I peel out at a red light, nearby AI might react to that, even if it’s only making a snarky comment. Sliding around a corner towards a group of AI will elicit a panicked reaction. Beeping my horn or  aggressive driving can also get some interesting reactions from the AI. We’re always complaining of wanting more “worldy” worlds in our MMOs. Immersion? Right there it is. Make the world alive. What gets me is this type of AI behavior and world design has been around since the release of GTA3 in 2001! Possibly earlier than that, but GTA3 was my first real experience with it, and that was on the PS2 for cryin’ out loud! Sure, there’s no persistence in those games; drive out of rendering range and come back and that city block may be populated by totally different AI citizens doing totally different things, but that’s not the point. All this on-screen AI behavior is being rendered live on the fly  by consoles with limited resources while almost 9 years later MMORPGs that have persistent AI that are run on their own AI servers just stand there like mannequins or at best move in an extremely limited patrol path. I can see where we’d want to keep Quest NPCs in a restricted location so we’d know where to find them but all the other town citizens? Why can’t they just live their little virtual lives instead of standing there? If I ride my horse aggressively into the stables in LOTRO, why can’t they NPC’s react to that and rush out of the way, perhaps saying something about my crazy riding? Why don’t NPC’s decide on their own to walk out of Bree and go fishing or farming? Times are hard in Middle Earth, why are there no pick-pockets running from the guards? Why don’t the guards kill gold farming chat spammers after he’s been reported?

Why did GTA 3 in 2001 running on a PS2 with its measly 299 MHz CPU and 32 MB RAM have a world that seemed so much more alive and dynamic than modern AAA MMORPGs that cost three times the development budget, are played on more modern PCs with far more resources, and have AI running on their own dedicated servers? That’s just pathetic. And don’t even get me started on the sprawling urban layouts in GTA 3 or 4 compared to the pitiful “cities” we have in MMORPGs.

There’s a Wendy’s next door to the hotel I’m staying at right now and I noticed a promotion for their new Boneless Wings. Now, sure, I like Buffalo wings now and then but let’s be honest — there isn’t much meat on a wing. Wouldn’t a boneless wing be about the size of a popcorn shrimp? Looking at the pictures on the poster, no! Aren’t these “boneless wings” then actually just chicken nuggets (which are usually breast) covered in sauce? Yep! From the nutritional info on Wendys.com:

Boneless Wings (chicken breast, water, chicken flavor [salt, flavor, autolyzed yeast extract, maltodextrin, chicken flavor, chicken, gum arabic, sunflower oil, sugar, silicon dioxide, lactic acid, canola oil, modified corn starch, grill flavor {from canola oil}, citric acid, trisodium phosphate], modified food starch, sodium phosphates

I also love how they add “chicken flavor” to actual chicken breast meat. Oh, and some “grill flavor” too.

But hey, I’m sure the average American will drive right in and yell through the drive-through speaker in a redneck accent “Ah wahnts summa dem boneless wayngs, aind an extra lahg orduh of frahs” all the same. Fat, dumb and happy.

Friggin’ retards…

Oh, wait, you guys get upset if I don’t post game-related stuff so how’s this? I also love all the bloggers who say stuff like:

I love comic books and superheroes! I can’t wait to play Champions Online and… hey, wait just a gosh-darned minute here. What’s with this art style? How dare Cryptic make their comic book superhero MMO look like a comic book? Screw them, their game sucks, I’m going back to City of Warcraft. Now, where’s the latest issue of my favorite comic…?

Friggin’ retards…

I don’t know what my problem is lately, but this is taking “having problems with names” to a whole new level.

The past two or three weeks, I keep confusing SmakenDahead with Hudson. No idea why. Within the realm of blogs, no problem. But enter the Instant Message and Twitter spheres and I keep mixing them up.

Yesterday was the most recent example. Hudson kept sending me direct tweets asking questions about the DDO beta. I had Jerry from DDOcast on a Google chat to relay Hudson’s questions and answer them for him over Twitter when Smaken logs into his WLM account and I immediately got him confused with Hudson. Again.

Naturally Smaken is confused that I’m answering DDO questions out of the blue. Especially considering he pretty much hates anything associated with Turbine. But he was very gracious when he essentially said “what part of ‘I’m not Hudson and I hate DDO’ do you not understand?” At one point he even jokingly (or not?) changed his IM name to “Not Hudson” for me. I laughed and continued with “haha that’s funny. So anyway, Hudson…”

By the end of the whole IM/GTalk/Twitter party I finally got my head on straight and Smaken and I had a good laugh over it. I practically fell out of my chair laughing at myself so hard, especially since this was not the first time I’ve talked to Smaken thinking he was Hudson.

So just to help beat it into my head:

Another meme, this time bestowed upon me by Oakstout, who can now consider himself worthy of yet another headshot before we pin “Frag Me! I’m a Noob!” signs on our backs claim glorious victory over the capitalist Western Coalition.

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

I’m not sure that applies to the blog or the content I write, but I appreciate the sentiment. [Puts pinkie to mouth for a Dr. Evil impersonation] However, I’ve always told everyone that I was a brilliant genius and should rule the universe. They never listened, the fools… muhuhahaha!

Thank you for this award, Oak. [Summons melodramatic tears] I’d like to thank the members of the Academy, and…

Everyone’s been posting The Rules for this meme so I shall follow suit:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

The Seven

In the previous meme recently, I declined to pass it on because nearly everyone I would have tagged already had been and because while I love the attention and the sentiment behind getting tagged I also have a degree of chain-letter annoyance attached and I didn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s annoyance. This time though, screw it, you’re getting tagged whether you want to or not and whether you’ve already been tagged or not. In fact, I already saw most of you have already been tagged a few times but tough noogies, here’s another one!

When I was going through my Reader I noticed I am subscribed to so many feeds. Most however, are “just there” and I’ll read them if they post something new but I don’t really care either way and rarely, if ever, go to the actual blog to participate in comments. Then there are those for whom I’ll go double-check my Reader settings if I don’t see regular posts because I love reading anything new they write and I enjoy the participation and sense of micro-community there. Out of those, seven shall be the blogs I list, in no particular order. Oh, bonus points if you manage to recognize any bizarre and obscure references.

1. Oakstout. Yes, yes, it’s horribly bad form for the taggee to retag his tagger but, so be it. Back when I first started participating in blog comments and following commenters’ links back to their own blogs, Oak was one of the first ones I made sure to subscribe to. He’s also, to date, the only blogger I’ve ever actually gamed with! Despite Casualties of War being the equivalent of an Ocean’s Umpteen movie with its roster of star bloggers, I never actually got the chance to play with any of them. [Plays some Barry White and does a John Cage dance in a unisex restroom. “You’re my first, my last, my everything…” LOL]
2. SmakenDahead. He can be a moody ogre but it’s always an entertaining read. I can also be assured anytime I so much as mention Turbine, DDO or LOTRO that he’ll come over here to growl, break a few things and “Smaken Smash!” me upside the head. Then I get to reciprocate every time I watch him flicker from Live when his Dawn of War II and/or Games for Windows Live crashes! Every time he writes about his D&D group I get a pang of envy because, while I’m certain many of the flight attendants at work are adept table dancers, I no longer have friends who would be caught dead tabletop RPGing. [Sighs at fond Rifts and Cthulhu memories…]
3. John The Ancient Gaming Noob. Even though every once in a blue moon occasionally often he gets a little too technical with the jargon and loses me, John is my favorite EVE blogger. I’ve never played EVE and while heeding “never saying never,” I probably never will play EVE but it’s one of those curiosities of mine and a game I very much support for being unique. John has a great writing style and though Darren didn’t have any pre-recording “let’s get to know each other” jam sessions on either of the podcasts that John and I were guests on, he seemed to be a genuinely cool guy and I’ve enjoyed hearing every appearance he’s made since then. I felt bad on the last meme when John posted his sadness that no one had tagged him, so I retroactively edited my meme post to tag him. I saw someone else tag him for this meme already but here’s another. Oh and I’m still waiting for that article on why every time the “levels suck” cycle comes around the EVE players seem to have the mindset that you cannot have advancement without levels when EVE itself has advancement without levels…
4. Anyway Games. Aaron writes some very insightful articles, many of which I often scratch my head wondering how the heck he ever came up with that idea. He’s very good at taking elements of one genre (game or otherwise) and making analogies to how they could or should be included in MMOGs or other videogame genres.  I enjoy reading his content and while we’ve yet to actually game on Live yet (we almost did Crackdown once but I had to leave that day) I do take interest in some of the particular games he plays on the 360 that from reading his blog I perhaps would not have expected to see him play.
5. Simple Complexities. Openedge is blunt and never shy about his likes and dislikes. He’s another one who, like SmakenDahead, will rush over here and slap me down if I dare paint Turbine or their games in any positive light whatsoever, but (I think?) at this point it’s all in good fun. He went through a bit of a negative period last year and his Turbine (and other topics) bashing was reaching a “beating a dead horse” level similar to Syncaine’s current tiresome WoW Tourist tirade. After a bit of a Bitter Blogger Breakdown (for lack of a better phrase), he took a short break from blogging and came back better than ever. His current MMO focus is Age of Conan and in my opinion could be positioning himself as one of the premier AoC bloggers out there, and I hope he’s able to achieve that even though I don’t get the impression it’s a specific goal of his at all. I feel AoC is finally coming into its own but has fallen off the mainstream blogger radar. I enjoy reading about games I don’t play, so Edge’s AoC articles are right up my alley and even better, usually aren’t bogged down with terms only his fellow AoC players would understand. In addition, Edge writes about Guild Wars, a few other MMOGs on occasion, 360 titles, even delving into fiction, music and cinema. Edge is always a good read and definitely ranks among my all-time favorites.
6. Stylish Corpse. How the hell have I gone all this time and not known about Ysharros’ wonderful blog? Yes, this is bad form again. Not only did I tag my own tagger, now I’ve gone and tagged the originator of this meme! Tough! Ysh is freakin’ awesome and my mind boggles on a daily basis that I only discovered her blog completely by accident a couple months ago. If you don’t read her blog already then as Ruler of the Universe I hereby order you to do so! She’s always coming up with excellent and inspirational articles. Sometimes it’s eerie how much in agreement we are about certain things. It’s like she’s sifting my subconscious and stealing topics for articles I’d never even considered writing! Ha! Seriously, out of all the most recent additions to my blog subscriptions, I’m the most impressed with Ysh. I eagerly anticipate her posts and tweets every day. I just can’t say enough good things about her material. [Channels Wayne and Garth, chanting “I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!”]
7. Hmm. I know The Rules allow more than seven but I’m already going to bend things a bit for a #8. So for #7 I’m going to tag both Tesh and Wiqd. These guys often seem like two personas of the same consciousness and I immensely enjoy reading their posts and commentary filled with ideas of passive conflict, crafting, farming, and other topics that are just bursting from the seams with concepts begging to see implementation in an MMO. Tesh and Wiqd are also among those I’ve only discovered recently, within the past few months (probably from our mutual Ysharros addiction) that I wonder how I managed to go this long without knowing of them? Perhaps I’d just been lazy about clicking links last year or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket…
8. Crap. I actually had several more I wanted to tag. JoBildo, Hudson, Saylah, Pete, Syp, Makkaio and others. If I’d made this list on a priority basis they would have been tagged here but since I already did 8 links in my 7 entries and I saw they had already been tagged elsewhere, I’ll just leave it at that. My #8 entry will be the Shut Up, We’re Talking podcast. Yes, a podcast not a blog! [Breaks into Beavis and Butthead doing Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law”] I enjoy Common Sense Gamer but… well, this meme is about honesty right? I think I’ve mentioned a time or few how my friends and I used to joke and take bets every time we were about to login to Vanguard whether or not it would be (a) nighttime and (b) raining in Telon. (Hint: it usually is.) Similarly, every time I see my Reader light up with a new post from Darren, I smile and make a mental wager with myself over how many misspellings and typos I can expect. I know, I know… perhaps my English major rears its elitist head over something that arguably isn’t important but I’ve always been that way when it comes to reading. You all would not believe the anxiety levels I experience when I go back and re-read my own articles and find typos, misspellings and other mistakes after I’d already clicked the Publish button. Anyway, while Darren’s blog itself isn’t always chock full of lengthy articles, he has one hell of a following and the ensuing commentary makes the short posts (typos and all) worthwhile. But his podcast, Shut Up, We’re Talking is nothing short of genius. A podcast for MMO bloggers and players by MMO bloggers and players with topics taken directly from the blogs (and forums and newsbytes) themselves. Brilliance incarnate! If I weren’t already the Ultimate Brilliant Genius and Ruler of the Universe I would be tempted to elect Darren to that position solely on the basis of his show. It’s also the perfect counterpoint to Brent’s more serious and journalistic MMO news podcast. Out of all the podcasts I subscribe to, I only have a few that I honestly look forward to, wishing they had more frequent release schedules, and SUWT is #1 on that list. Well played, sir! On a side note, last year when I made my first guest appearance on the show I was in the Keys on vacation for my birthday when it came out. I let my girlfriend listen to it. She’s totally not a gamer and had no idea what the hell we were talking about. While I was sunning or swimming, every so often I’d hear her grunt an “ugh!” or an “argh!” I’d give her an inquiring look but she’d go back to reading and listening to the show. Finally, she clicked the pause button, took her earbuds out, and says “oh my gawd if that Darren guy says ‘and what not’ one more time I’m going to scream!” Maybe I’m so accustomed to hearing and saying “and what not” myself that I’d never noticed Darren doing it. She went back to listening and sure enough, a few minutes later she let loose with another loud “AAAARGH!”

Now for the worrisome part of this meme. Ten honest things about myself. I joked to Oak when he first tagged me that when I made the decision to, after all these years, finally step out from behind my Talyn alias/persona and start writing as Scott, that was being honest enough. But ok, I’ll try to come up with a list of ten things about myself the you most likely wouldn’t know. I read everyone else’s entries on this meme and some have been sort of cutesy answers while others have bared their souls. Rather than making a list ahead of time, I’ll just go with it and do this with a more stream of conscience approach. Be afraid. Be very afraid. I don’t know where this is going or just how honest and open I will end up with any given topic. I can only hope I don’t cross a line or that this doesn’t come back to haunt me…

The Ten

1. I’ve been a techie gamer since childhood. I have vague recollections of a Pong unit at some family member’s home. Oh and let’s not forget arcades! Do those even exist now? Like everyone else on the planet, we owned an Atari 2600. My father got so mad once trying to play Centipede that he threw the joystick into the tv! Ugh, I just remembered being in an arcade in Richmond, IN playing Battlezone with my dad. Remember how they let you enter your initials for the high score leaderboards? My father’s initials were F.A.G. Yeah, you can see where this story is going. I think I was just young enough that I’d barely learned what that word meant and I didn’t catch it until I’d clicked the G on the score. I can still feel the heat from my embarrassed little red face as the horror set in. I clicked the button, grabbed his arm and walked quickly in silence out of the arcade to find my mother and prompt her to finish shopping so we could leave the store. I remember an uncle had an Intellivision. Someone had an Odyssey, too but I can’t remember any specific games. Then came the Colecovision (Donkey Kong and that Smurf platformer!) and the Vectrex (now there was a fun little console). I had a NES back in its day but… Nintendo is for children and I was growing up so I have avoided every subsequent Nintendo console to this day. My sister owns a Wii for her family and while it’s a unique and friendly unit, it merely reinforces my decades-old “Nintendo is for kids” mantra. Let’s see, there was the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast! I still think Nights into Dreams was one of the more unique and memorable games ever created. I’m certain I’m forgetting some others. Then came the 3DO systems. I still own a Panasonic 3DO unit. One of my favorite things about that was that 3DO embraced developers of some really unique games. I mean, where else would you find hilarity like The Horde which was actually a really fun, quirky game with video footage starring Kirk Cameron! The 3DO was also my first-ever first person shooter that I owned myself: Demolition Man. As I write this, I can still hear Wesley Snipes laughing, taunting me. All my years gaming and Demolition Man gave me video game motion sickness crawling through those tunnels. Thankfully, I persevered and have never been affected again. From there, my second FPS was also on the 3DO, Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, which also served as my introduction to the Warhammer 40K universe. From the 3DO console, I moved to the original PlayStation (don’t even get me started how gamers ignored masterpieces like Ico because they “didn’t get it” in favor of mass-produced EA trash), the PS2, Xbox and finally my current Xbox 360.

   Computer-wise, I started with an Atari 800XL where I learned the BASIC language, even programmed a few cheesy games, and the Action! language in that bright orange cartridge. The language was a cool concept and probably way ahead of its time but since it was (if I recall) exclusive to the Atari platform and the Commodore 64/128 series was more popular by far, it faded into obscurity. I stuck with that until around ‘90 or ‘91 when I got a glorious Amiga 500 (with upgraded 1MB RAM and HDD!), which I still own. Amigas were awesome! Sorry for you PC purists, but I was not putting up with the utter shite that was DOS or Windows 3.1 when I had such an excellent OS that could truly multitask and provided such awesome (for the time) multimedia experiences as well. I never hooked up with any of the tracker or demo guys, they were mostly in Europe, but I did learn tracking (both MOD and MED) and made several tunes. I never did learn the cool graphic programming they did though. I did dabble in some hobbyist programming on the Amiga but I cannot for the life of me remember what or why other than I recall doing some work in ARexx. I wish I could remember why. The Amiga was also my introduction to online multiplayer games. My former brother-in-law and I (and a few other friends who owned either an Amiga or Atari ST) would play Fighter Duel: Corsair vs. Zero for hours and hours over dialup! Countless hours of Populous and Populous 2 as well. Then I signed up for the GEnie online service and had my first massively multiplayer experience (that term did not exist yet) of Air Warrior, playing with hundreds of people from around the nation at once. I think it was a cross-platform game, too, for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC. I was living in Dayton, OH at the time and I suppose a valued-enough member of the community that Kesmai asked me to visit the archives at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base to make photocopies of some specific data on some of the aircraft that the game modeled. That took several hours to go through the list Kesmai gave me and get all the copies of all the files from World War II but I proudly finished every item on their list!GEnie was before “the internet” as we know it, or at least before publically available ISPs. Compuserve, GEnie and AOL all ended up having a separate internet section to their otherwise closed online services. Before GEnie though was BBS’! Remember those days? Ha! Jeez… being a kid with that Atari 800XL and a 300 baud modem. I had no idea there was a such thing as long distance until my parents got the phone bill. I think my ass-cheeks are still blemished from that whoopin’… A friend and I made several alternate accounts on one particular local BBS and posed as other people, having very controversial conversations with ourselves just to get other actual people riled up. Virtual psychological PvP? Nah, we were just being little punks because we were of the age (late teens) to be little punks. Later, the sysop of that BBS was arrested for child pornography. It went away and I think that’s roughly the time I found other BBS’ then learned of GEnie and later the internet.

   It wasn’t until the Windows 95 era that the OS and various PC technologies finally matched and then surpassed that of the Amiga, so I built my first PC which was a Pentium 166 (which cost $600 or so!) and a Matrox video card. Then I had a 3dfx card, also upgrading the CPU to… was it a 266? I forget. Let’s see, PC games… Doom sucked. There, I said it. Even now I don’t see the appeal of Doom. I sorta-kinda enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D but more from Indiana Jones nazi-killing glee than actual enjoyment of the game. Duke Nukem 3D on the other hand, was by far the superior shooter. Rise of the Triad? Yeah, those old 3D Realms shooters had some chutzpah. id finally took the world into full 3D with Quake, though they royally botched the IP netcode. The LAN (IPX) networking was flawless but I seem to recall John Carmack saying something like it didn’t occur to them to test the IP networking over actual modems or something. In short order, QuakeWorld saved the day and online gaming was here to stay. I was a FPS whore back then, and spent so much time practicing my “skills” it wasn’t even funny. But I had to, I tell you! I was on 56K dialup competing against college kids with T3 lines in their dorms…

   Holy crap! This has become a wall of text, so let us move on to the next! (Ah, the poet who didn’t know it… )

2. I saw Back to the Future thirteen times. In the theater. That’s what a silly competition between best friends who’d just gotten their drivers’ licenses will get ya! At least it was one of the all-time greatest movies from the 80’s…
3. I have two recurring dreams. I’ll explain the first. When I was an infant in the crib my mother apparently thought it would be cute one day to take a wig off the styrofoam head on the closet shelf and put it over my face. To this day I cannot sleep if the closet door is open. Seriously. I end up having nightmares of evil wigs flying around, whispering and taunting me, then suffocating me like those facehuggers from the Alien movies. The second dream I have no explanation for but I’m able to recall it vividly every time I’ve had it for the past oh… 15 years or so. I’m sitting in a very brightly colored (as in World of Warcraft or Runes of Magic) forested area with a sparkly brook bubbling nearby. I’m sitting on the ground just a few feet from the running water of the brook with my back against a tree. Sitting next to me is Death. Not the creepy skeletal dude in the black robes coming to take my soul, but the red-robed Death from the Robin Wood tarot deck. (Google an image) The two of us are sitting there against a tree enjoying the sunny day in the forest, each of us playing acoustic guitars while singing a duet of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” I can’t carry a tune in a bucket but in that dream I do just fine. That Death fellow certainly has a set of pipes on him!
4. Speaking of dreams, I used to have fairly frequent “falling” nightmares. I eventually learned just enough about lucid dreaming to control the falling so that I could catch myself in the dream and either fly or hover. Enough times of that and the dream-falling fear was removed and I haven’t had falling dreams in years. I’m woefully out of practice with the whole lucid dreaming thing though; I just remembered it as I was writing the previous item.
5. I used to be heavily into art, music and writing. I don’t know what happened or when it happened, but I cannot even express my disappointment at my seeming lack of creativity these days. I have piles of notes dating from the early 90’s for novels I want to write but I keep putting them on the back burner. I used to play and write music but once I was divorced I never returned to retrieve all my guitars and other music gear due to emotional rifts over lies she’d told her family. I’m constantly coming up with music in my head but no way to express it now. I suppose I should have learned to play piano as a kid so that now I could hook up a MIDI keyboard system or something. Sooner or later something has to give, the bubble must burst so I’ll recover from my writer’s block. This blog helps in the sense of at least sitting down and writing something, but I intentionally write in a more conversational tone here rather than attempting fiction. It’s just different and requires exercising a different set of creative muscles, so to speak.
6. I was once a third degree brown belt in Shotokan! I would have been a black belt but that was the year I left for college/flight school in Colorado and I never returned to the same area to return to my dojo. Sure, I could have sought out another Shotokan dojo but it wasn’t just the martial art itself, it was the people there. As a brown belt, we were expected to also teach in addition to continuing our own learning. I enjoyed the time with some of the students there but those who made the biggest impression on me at that time of my life were the senseis, the sempei and his wife. When I left for Colorado, I was more emotionally upset at not seeing them again than anyone else, including my wife. The day I left was our four-year anniversary, in fact. I couldn’t be bothered waiting one day to celebrate my anniversary. Ah, the myriad red flags that were literally in my face… forests and trees and all that jazz… Anyway, I do still retain some of the habits from my Shotokan training, although I’m certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that my reflexes are dulled to the point that placing myself into a position of physical altercation would be folly.
7. When I graduated my GPA was actually 5.0 but unfortunately the college used a 4.0 scale so the grade had to be reduced and the extra 1.0 vanished into the ether. Still, yay me!
8. I’m not a morning person. At all. Not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. My early morning conversation skills consist of a grunt or two. Especially before coffee. I’m exaggerating, yes, but still… On the occasions where I get a crewmember (usually a flight attendant, why is that?) who’s one of those cheery, chipper morning people who is determined to let the world know it… oooooh if only they knew of the daggers coming from my eyes. One of my co-workers still laughs over me losing my cool with a dispatcher at 430am a couple years ago. My girlfriend knows better than to try to get me into a lengthy conversation in the morning. I’ve noticed over the past couple years that my morning grumpiness also shows up in my writing. Not that I am intentionally being nasty, I think I’m just being short or blunt about things and not really considering how what I say will look on a cold read. I’ve said things in forums that when I went back later in the day I was a bit shocked at how they sounded. Hudson jokes that he enjoys my “Morning Scott” outbursts that I never intended to be outbursts but apparently he finds entertainment value in them. My most recent, and most unfortunate, pre-coffee outburst was a couple weeks ago over on Pete’s blog. I made a very blunt comment first thing in the morning which caused a Chernobyl-like nuclear meltdown from Pete and every single one of his readers. When I came back later and read through the furious commentary I couldn’t believe what I was reading; what had happened. Then I scrolled up and read my initial comment and it was plainly obvious that none of the intent and context of what I meant translated into the brief words I’d written in any way, shape or form. Pete was so angry that in addition to his scathing comments he removed me from his blogroll and un-followed me in Twitter so that I could not send him a direct message to apologize. When it comes to what the average person on the street or a forum thinks of me, most times I couldn’t care less. But Pete is one of my favorite bloggers. I respect and value the opinions of all my favorite bloggers, including their opinion of me personally. I have felt absolutely horrible about the whole ordeal and I’ve dwelt on it every single day. It’s a lesson that I will take to heart in the future but I regret this lesson came at such a harsh consequence.
9. I still miss Spaz. He was my cat, all black except for a few stray white hairs in his front armpits. I rescued him from a flood when he was just a few weeks old. He’d been discarded and apparently ill-treated by whomever had tossed him out. He was my best little buddy. Mom wouldn’t let him in the house at first, but he always stayed near the house or wherever I was. I’d built a shelf for bird seeds onto my bedroom window so I could watch birds really close. Spaz would jump up on that in the evening and I’d let him in to sleep on my bed. Shhhh… mom still doesn’t know about that! When I got married, I was gone for several days and when I came back home he was gone. My parents said they’d been looking for him but he never showed. I was heartbroken and afraid he’d gotten lost or hurt in the woods or hit by a car, any number of bad things. Everyone was outside looking all over for him but once I got there and called for him, out he ran, straight to me! He always knew the sound of my car when I’d get home from work and, almost like a dog, would meet me at the door to rub against my leg, purring and meowing to me. He was usually scared of his own shadow but for a short time we had a little all-white kitten named Chigger that he befriended. I regret giving Chigger to another couple; she was a cool kittie. She and Spaz would curl up and lie together, looking like a yin-yang with their opposing colors. Spaz was with me through pretty much my entire formulative years and early/mid adulthood. In November, 2004, while I was in Montreal being trained to fly the regional jets my airline had recently acquired, Spaz passed away. My girlfriend called and told me of his passing and that he must have known it was happening. He normally hid under the bed on my side of the bed during the day but she came home from work and stopped by my condo to check on him, and Spaz had positioned himself under (but partially exposed) her side of the bed, so that she’d find him. All those years together with my best little animal friend and the one time something happened, I wasn’t there for him. I’d been in Montreal for a few weeks and I can’t help but think if the timing had been different and I’d been home that maybe I’d have noticed he’d gotten ill and taken him to a veterinarian. Something. Anything. But no, in his ultimate moment of need, I let him down. I was not there when he needed me. How’s that for a self-imposed guilt trip? I know the logic and reality but there it is anyway. Even now sometimes I wake up at night because I could swear I’d just felt him jump onto the bed and felt his little paws walking up the blanket to lie next to me on the comforter.
10. At the risk of having my Man Card revoked, assuming it already hasn’t been, I will unveil a final truth: I hate beer! I’ve tried, even going so far as to stop at one of the local microbreweries and order a flight of beer. Lights, darks, domestics, imports… it all tasted like beer. I’m not sure if it’s the hops I don’t like? I’ve been told it might be the yeast. Whatever is so damned bitter, I just don’t like it. I’ve asked friends and co-workers who fancy themselves beer connoisseurs and they tell me that beer is an acquired taste, give it time. Huh? If it tastes this bad why the hell would I ever want to spend the ludicrous amount of time it will take to kill every functioning taste bud in order to acquire the taste for it? Riddle me that, Batman! I’ll take a mixed drink or cocktail, sweet or sour, any day over that bitter swill they call beer. I’ve been told I should try a wheat beer but haven’t gotten around to it yet.