Blog 13: From Dusk Till Blog

Okay folks, here it is... the long awaited DOOMBALLS ANTHOLOGY! Just in time for the holidays, too!

Makes a great stocking stuffer!

I'll try and have some downloadable pdf soon.

Blog 12: Curse of the Blog

Blog 11: Superblogs

Listen to these rave reviews!

"As always, I [am] ... impressed by your ... truly ... superb photocomic presentation."
-Anastasia Salter

Blog 10: The Fall of Blog

So... final thoughts...

Well we've all shared some good times together every Wednesday from 2-4ish, it's a damn shame that the semester has come to an end. We laughed, we cried [more so the latter]. We made life-long friends, and to the same extent, enemies. Good times were had by all, and if the class was later in the evening when drinking is more socially acceptable, I'd take everyone out for some drinks!

my favorite time

Is there much more to say about this class? Stay tuned: we'll see what wacky shenanigans we get into tomorrow!

Blog 9: Blog Harder

Games in the future... hmm... well my favorite kinds of games are multiplayer games that can be turned into drinking games. Roll your eyes all you want, but Mario Party 8 is by far the greatest game for wrecking your liver. [Even tho these assholes disagree]

the quintessential drinking game

Granted, I haven't played many party games [after discovering the fun that can be had in MP8, I didn't need any more party games], but from what I HAVE played, this game is the best.

Why? Because everything that happens in Mario Party happens like, 20 times. Land on a red space? Take a shot. Can't pick up any more candy? Take a shot. Lose to Birdo? Take two shots.

also, if you even think about playing as Birdo, take a shot and go home

The possibilities are endless. A few summers ago my friends Ben and Lissa penned out our own user-generated content:

this is just page 1

I see this genre of games becoming more and more common in the years to come, since kids love party games and adults love drinking. Gaming companies cater more and more towards younger gamers, but are recognizing the "alternative" ways of playing the games they make. Basically, there will be more games like this [except they'll be, you know, fun]

Blog 8: Blog vs. Mechablog

Aight, so here's my comparison of the level editor in Little Big Planet to this crazy video by Bruce Branit called World Builder:

Little Big Planet gives you the potential to build almost anything, I think. I don't know for sure cause I didn't get to try it out, but from what I've seen on Youtube, you can make your level look like anything. It's very similar to World Builder, starting with basic shapes [a cube] and then stretching and molding it out to look like something else [like a building, or row of buildings]. Just as the world made in World Builder had a small European town theme, the levels in Little Big Planet can be themed as well.

Having not played LBP I could not tell you what you cannot do, just as I can't tell you what cannot be done in World Builder -- I don't think you can add other people into the level, only because that seems increcibly complicated. Then again, I'm not a game developer and I don't know what can and cannot be done with today's technology.

As to whether or not the worlds created in LBP and World Builder were actually "worlds", that depends on what your definition of the word is. What is created in LBP is a physical space with objects for a character to interact with. World Builder presents a virtual simulation of a physical space.

Blog 7: Future Blog

What does the future hold?

Probably nothing as spectacular as we'd like, at least not in our future. The things were were promised -- flying cars, cancer pills [or, rather, anticancer pills], sexbots -- we were all supposed to have these things by the year 2000.
The stuff we're now promised in the near future -- cerebral-implant video games, teleportation, sex bots -- will probably be close to coming to fruition shortly after we're all dead. I don't care how close we are to these things; we're not going to advance technologically as fast as we hope.

the best we've got

I think the government won't be too much different then it has been for the past decade, or the decade before that, or the decade before that. There will probably be more laws tho, so we've got that to look forward to.

The one place that will still be uncontrolled by government regulation will be the internet. I predict that there will always be a way to express yourself on the internet, no matter how many unenforceable rules are set in place. I also think that by 2019 over half the internet will be pornography, tho a significant amount of that will be fetishes so weird that they won't even be sexual in any way at all [expect a lot of tentacles and feces].

In 2019, I will probably be taking some quasi-futuristic electric-powered bus to the unemployment line. Not a flying bus or transporting myself thru a wormhole, but a bus not completely unlike the ones now. When I'm done spending my unemployment check on scotch, I can imagine myself entertaining passersby under the overpass for spare change. I can't imagine what my friends' jobs will be; I have no idea who I'll be friends with in ten years.

probably this guy

For my fellow classmates who go on to get jobs in the video game industry, they will be pretty busy, as game development is not going to slow down any time soon. Advancements in gaming will be limited only by our imaginations. Well, that and physics; we can't really get around the laws of physics.

What do some esteemed authors predict about gaming? I don't know, but I can tell you what Castranova thinks! Castronova made a bunch of predictions that have either already happened or are in the process of happening. For example, he predicts games will be EVERYWHERE -- but they already are. I can't think of a single modern-day electronic device that doesn't have some gaming capabilities.

He also spoke of these wildly imaginative things called AVATARS that will be implemented in all games, and will be fully customizable in their appearance and attributes. These kind of "predictions" make me wonder when he last actually played a video game.

this is some futuristic shit right here

Blog 6: Kingdom of Blog

Here's my ideas for my MMO presentation:

Since I don't really play any MMOs, I'm going to discuss the closest thing to an MMO that I do play: Facebook games.

Mostly I play Scrabble, but I've also played a ton of Facebook Wrestling; my wrestler, Bonegina Brawler, has one many a championship over his year-or-so career.

You can make all kinds of interesting stuff for your Facebook wrestler, like signature moves. Like mine, the Ball Sack Delight:
Bonegina lifts the opponent over his head with one hand and, with his free hand, pulls the waistline of his underwear forward. The opponent is then shoved headfirst into the sweaty, smelly crevice between Bonegina's fat gut and his dreadfully stained underpants. Once the opponent's face is smothered in ball sack, Bonegina plops down on his ass. Opponents usually die from drowning in ball sweat.

There is some drama that goes on between the wrestlers' human managers, which I will discuss in the paper. So, uh... look forward to THAT!

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Here's that awesome presentation, by the way!

Blog 5: Beyond Bloggerdome

Real quickly I'd like to say that I hope Anastasia recovers quickly from her sudden illness. I know they are pretty horrible, I succumbed to a rather sudden illness myself Sunday morning and probably will this next Sunday as well, and it's no picnic.

[making "drinking" motion with hand]

But back to the topic, which was about game developers and morality and being responsible or something like that...
I don't see how game developers wouldn't be responsible for the morality of their games; isn't that like asking if directors were responsible for the morality of their movies, or if authors were responsible for the morality of their books [are they? It's been a while since I actually read a book, and I don't know if most books are as preachy as that one was].

That's not to say that they have to make a game with good morals -- they're free to make whatever kinds of games they want -- but ultimately the developers are held accountable for the quality their games. I think that a developer can make it as bloody and gory as they want but still maintain a certain level of morality. They shouldn't make the players choose between two horrible situations -- there should be the option for the player to do the morally right thing.

On one hand, games like Fable and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic offer the player the chance to make the morally right decision in most situations [sometimes you still may have to steal things, but in video games that's often unavoidable] and keeps track of how many good or bad deeds you have done.

Then there are games like Grand Theft Auto.
Some might say that it is a highly immoral game [possibly referring to such activities such as running over people with stolen ambulances and killing prostitutes] and actually, they're absolutely right. You are required to kill people and steal things in order to complete a mission, it is essential to progressing beyond the first level.

I read Julian Dibbell's article A Rape in Cyberspace -- or as I like to call it, Dibbell's Driv-el because I am super clever and I was annoyed by the pretentiousness of his writing. Honestly, is there any reason to use words like "oleaginous" and "simulacrum" when "greasy" and "image" or "representation" would suffice? You can just imagine this smug douchebag proof-reading his own article on his MacBook in some super-trendy "underground" cafe while listening to indie music, getting a hard-on thinking about how vast his vocabulary is. And I bet he'd be twittering about doing so shortly thereafter.

But I digress...

It took me hours to do so but I read his article and, chock-full of pretentiousness as it was, it was an interesting story. Kinda horrifying, what Mr. Bungle had done, but interesting at how the community had grown so much because of it.

I feel that the developers held no responsibility for Mr. Bungle's immoral behavior because the option to NOT rape other players was always there, and odds are the option to do so was not intended in the making of the game.

I also feel that Julian Dibbell is douchebag, in case I was not clear before.

Blog 4: Bloggers of the Lost Blog

Aight kids so this week I'm supposed to talk about the game Flux and why I hate it. The game was centered pretty much entirely around the concept of ever-changing goals -- sometimes the goal of the game is to have three specific cards, sometimes it is... well I can't remember some of the other goals, but they weren't much more than just have cards X, Y, and Z in your hand and you win.

As far as the card drawing and dealing goes, I never fully grasped [or partially grasped for that matter] how that process is supposed to work, and the instructions were kind of long. A few minutes ago tho I found this picture that clears some stuff up.

The full list of rules is explained here. Probably the most interesting part of the game was when Anastasia said that we had to stop talking and could only communicate non-verbally, but that really had nothing to do with the game. This game reminded me of a less-frustrating version of a game called Mao.

Don't know how to play Mao? Well idiotically enough, that's the point: you go into the game without knowing how to play, drawing and playing cards, and being penalized for not performing a given action after playing a card. Oh and if you say "What? Why am I being penalized?" or "Why are you making me draw cards?" or "This is stupid get out of my house" then you have to pick up even MORE cards until eventually you call the cops and kick everyone out of your house in a drunken rage.

Also, the version we were playing was the Monty Python edition, with all of the cards referencing something to do with Monty Python and the Holy Grail [there may have been other Monty Python references in there but Holy Grail was the one that I recalled]. This is fine, but any game referencing that movie carries the risk of some idiot yelling "We are the knights who say NI!" which then carries the risk of me punching said idiot in their stupid face. This is because the knights who say ni are NOT FUNNY.

Seriously, they aren't! So STOP QUOTING THAT PART OF THE MOVIE!

I am also supposed to talk about what the designer attempted to do, and why it failed. However, I'm so sure he did...

It looks like the designer of this game [Andy Looney] was attempting to make a card game that require you to pay such close attention to the ever-changing rules that you forget that you're not having very much fun.

By and large I'd say that Mr. Looney succeeded since his game is somehow still popular after thirteen years. So congratulations Mr. Looney; you may have fooled a large number of people into thinking that your game is fun, but you haven't fooled me.

Blog 3: Blogs in Space

Ok, so my last blog entry wasn't entirely on topic, but in my defense I didn't bother to write down "RISK" as a reminder for what the entry was supposed to be about. I took more thorough notes this time, and if they are accurate [really kind of a 50/50 chance that they are] then I'm supposed to write about cheating in board games vs. cheating in virtual games, and if cheating works in an uncontrolled virtual environment. If that's not accurate then email your complaints to suckit@idontcare.com.

Cheating in a board game can be easier than cheating in a virtual game in some aspects, but harder in others. For example: holding extra cards in Munchkin vs. playing Halo with "god mode" activated [does Halo even have any kind of "god mode"? I don't own a 360 so I haven't played the last two Halo games very much.]

Cheating in Munchkin requires you to a stealthy hand and a good poker face, whereas cheating in Halo requires some kind of code [usually a pattern of button presses -- X Y X Y Left Up Rt Lt, etc.]. So if you do not know the code, or are just lousy at remembering button patters, Munckin would be an easier game in which to cheat. If, however, you do NOT have a good poker face and are as subtle as a shopping cart with one bad wheel, button combination in Halo would be more your thing.

If an environment is uncontrolled, like WoW, cheating "works" in the sense that it's possible to do, but requires a certain level technical prowess. Having only played WoW for the 2-week trial period about two years ago, I have not pursued any mods or whathaveyou that allow me to be invincible or let me start out with the golden gun and therefore have no idea how hard it is to get those cheats. But I'm sure it is possible and I'm sure it cheapens the experience for everyone playing with [or against] him.

You could also cheat by purchasing a high-level character, tho whether or not that's considered "cheating" is debatable. Some would argue that it's not cheating because somebody legitimately earned that character, regardless of the fact that it wasn't the person who now owns it.

Cheating in general I am opposed to, unless it's one of those victimless crimes [you're not playing against other people, or in competition with other people]. Doing so really cheapens the experience because it is often impossible for the non-cheating player to beat the cheater. It'd be like a child playing a game of Scrabble with an adult [who can spell, and takes no pity on children].
Or me playing any kind of sport against, well, anyone.

One game that I always cheat in, and never intend to stop doing so, is GTA [only when free-roaming, not the missions]. There's NOTHING more fun then just speeding thru the city, running over people, causing major pile-ups, blowing up vehicles with an insane arsenal, and jumping out of helicopters with absolutely no repercussions [that is, not losing your money or weapons].