Not from my house, but from my computer.
Because the lovely Jo has decided it is time, a new laptop will be arriving at my doorstep tomorrow while I serve the Retail Demons in Capitalistic Ritual. The beast in question is a Dell XPS with a 17.3 inch 1080P 3D monitor, a single TB hard drive, 8 GB of ram, a NVidia GeForce 555M 3GB video card, a blu-ray burner, and a lot of other things. I could paste the details, but hey, that's not really worth your reading time. In short, this thing is beautiful. The computer isn't the only piece of the puzzle. A Dell color laser printer/scanner is also in the setup, as well as Adobe Premiere Elements 10, Photoshop CS6 Extended, Dream Weaver, and a Wacom Bamboo tablet.
Needless to say, this is going to be an incredible machine.
But this is just a catalog of things that I need to get done on the new machine so that I can get rolling when it arrives. Software to install, files to move, things of that nature. So, this is, more or less, pointless to read. But if you clicked into this place to give me another blog view with which to fuel my ego that someone gives a crap about what I'm doing with this machine. Anyway, here we go.
Photoshop CS6
Premiere Elements
Dream Weaver
Sketchbook Express
ProTools
Diablo 2 and the GOG Library
MS Office
Focus Writer
A Media Player (Undecided)
Rhythm Rascal
Power Tab
Files:
All manuscripts
D2 save files
A nice dump of my entire music collection onto the HD
I need some source photography for PS experiments...I have an email out about that...
That about wraps it up. If anyone reads this and knows of a stylish and awesome media player that I can use to rip my music and then play it back without mucking up the file names images etc drop a comment. Thanks much three readers. I'll post pics in time. Possibly ones that are awesome.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Ways to Show Immaturity as a Video Game Journalist
If anyone has paid attention to the internet following E3, they have probably seen a number of articles deconstructing the recent announcements from the Big 3 and beyond. If you have looked for an article from me about E3, don't. I've decided no to make any comment beyond a long sigh. So, just go ahead and let one out for yourself, lasting about twenty seconds, and move on.
The other thing that is common are articles that just show how far the "video game journalist" has to come before they will have any level of acceptance as writers. And while I'm not here to defend my hobby, because it's not real journalism folks, I will say that we could at least act like professionals. This means that we need to let things take their course before we say that something doesn't work. Sure, we can speculate, and post our speculations. I've done that myself, saying that Microsoft has something to prove with their next generation. No console has blown everyone's minds out the gae on the third generation, so there is some history to the statement. That doesn't mean that Durango is going to be awful, or that it will have growing pains. It's a statment, based on history. Okay, let's move on.
1. "Franchises that Need to Die" lists:
This one is just immature. I've seen countless articles on N4G saying that various game series need to end. There are often some positive reasons for their statements, such as putting the spotlight on other franchises, or that some games over saturate certain markets. More often than not, it's a cheap ploy for page views by writers who want to make money off of site advertisement. We all want that, but writing unique content for your page helps more for this, or breaking a story before anyone else. Instead, we get frequent pieces about how Call of Duty has too many games, and that Final Fantasy is garbage now. Some go as far as to say that Halo should never have had sequels. Well, let me break it down for you folks. The video game industry runs on money. A lot of it. Millions of dollars go into these productions, and it's a nightmare trying to recoup the costs. Franchises help this more than it hurts. A new Call of Duty every year doesn't mean anything more than Activision grabs a quick million seller, and they even have enough of a creative soul to make it different. That can't be said for EA who could pretty much copy one set of Madden code into the next year and add whatever cheap new feature they have left to try, and shove that thing onto store shelves. But that's a different conversation. Final Fantasy is one of the most important role playing games on consoles, and to end that has dangerous repercussions. Taking away Final Fantasy would bring Square Enix to it's knees, and possibly mean a lot of lost jobs for a big named studio. As for Halo, gamers should be so lucky that there is a studio that cares as much about it's IP as 343 Industries, and Bungie before them. Halo has a rich, well crafted lore that is about to be explored in the games themselves. The single player campaigns have always been brilliantly crafted, and have even been the blueprint for FPS games since the series reached the public in 2001. Not to mention, the console shooter is now a standard because of Halo. Without it, we probably wouldn't have gotten The Elder Scrolls franchise on consoles. That's just the short version. I've seen a lot of other games hit lists like this.
2. "Why X-Console/X-Idea is Going to Fail"
I'm slightly to blame here, considering that I never had any faith in the Playstation Move. But hey, let's face it, Sony hasn't ever had that much push for their peripherals (remember the Pocketstation). So, take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt if you must.
There are dozens of naysayer articles about the WiiU and the tablet controller, and people have every right to believe that Nintendo is nuts for doing this. However, none of us own the WiiU yet, and not even the mightiest of crystal ball will tell us the fate of this device in gaming. Obviously, someone thinks this is a good idea. Look at Microsoft's Smart Glass technology that is going to be launched on the X-Box 360 this generation. That is Microsoft experimenting with a similar concept to Nintendo, doing a preemptive take on what could be their own tablet control. If Nintendo pulls it off, expect Sony to rush their way into some overly complex design of the exact same thing that may somehow involve shoving a Playstation Eye into the box because they still have warehouses full of the stupid things years after that toy died on the PS2.
In reality, there is no way to determine how successful a product is going to be at an early stage in its life. If we did that, then we wouldn't be looking forward to new 3DS games right now. The PSP wouldn't have...had...an...acceptable run. The PS3 definitely wouldn't be the giant it is in the industry. Speculate, but be realistic. Some things work out, and the rest fall by the wayside and end up on the shelf of a collector who likes weird obscure things. The WiiU is a risk, taken by Nintendo. As a business, they believe in it. Microsoft believes in Smart Glass, and they believed in the Kinect. Sure, I hate the Kinect, but I'm glad it has panned out for them. It puts revenue in their pockets, and keeps them in R&D to prepare for the next move.
3. "Top 10 Best Games Ever."
People have been playing home video games for almost forty years. That's a lot of games. When you factor the amount of consoles, iterations of home computers, hand held consoles, cell phones and tablets, you have an enormous library to pick games out of. These might be your favorite games, but that doesn't mean that you should toot your horn on the internet with a blog about it, post it to N4G to get attention, and, at times I have seen this phenomena, get angry when someone points out that you putting Super Mario Bros. in your list means you haven't played anything.
Opinions are just opinions, and fighting about them doesn't really get you anywhere. State it, be prepared to back it up, but it doesn't mean that someone is wrong when they say you haven't played enough games. It's disgusting how people act when they are trying to put themselves out there as professional writers. Sure, if this piece gets circulated on N4G I'm going to probably see two year old blog posts of mine brought up where I may have said something that contradicts this article, but who cares. That was two years ago. I've changed since then, and so has my opinion. Just like the opinions of those ten best games out of the thousands that exist, it's flexible.
As for why it's detrimental to your writing career, it's just not creative. If you break out your top ten games, then you are writing a piece about yourself, and you don't have anything else to talk about. It's filler. Your top ten NES games? Equally weak. Everyone has a pretty good idea about the best titles in the NES library, and even the best obscure ones. Web celebrities can get away with this because we are already interested in their opinions anyway, but even then, it's a quick thing. Screw Attack does decent top tens, but they also put a comedic spin on things. Top Ten Games that Make you Want to Bone? That's a brilliant list to put out on Valentines Day!
People do enjoy a good list, and maybe they will even enjoy this rant on the poor state of content generation for blogs on my website that has an incredibly small amount of entertaining content on it. I understand why people do it, and I even think that I will stick some of my favorites on a list some day just for the fun of it. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to run that list right over to N4G so I can pick up some views of it. N4G is a great resource for up and coming writers and websites to build a viewer base. Don't exploit it for your Top Ten Genesis games not Starring Sonic the Hedgehog. The five viewers you pick up is not worth as much as the review of Pier Solar, which is a recent homebrew Genesis game actually programmed onto a Genesis cartridge.
If you disagree, fine, but I'm tired of the cheap shots made on video game websites. I've been watching the Vita not do so well, but even I know that I will pick one up if they ever get some games I care about on it. I don't see it crashing and burning, and even if I did, I have the intelligence to realize that spilling a list of reasons why it's doomed is counterproductive. Think forward, to what's coming, or just write retro columns. Negativity in the gaming community is part of why we all seem to have so much trouble getting along. I exist in a great spot in the middle. I'm well played on many genres, even thundering my way through most of those Call of Duty games that it's fun to hate these days. I've got a few Madden titles, but only one per console at maximum. My JRPG collection contains some obscure titles, and my interest in shmups is only hindered by my inability to drop several hundred dollars on Saturn imports. Just think before you crack open that WordPress editing screen to show why you think Nintendo is mad to put money in something for kids again. Remember, you were a kid once. Didn't you have enough fun to still be playing games twenty years later?
The other thing that is common are articles that just show how far the "video game journalist" has to come before they will have any level of acceptance as writers. And while I'm not here to defend my hobby, because it's not real journalism folks, I will say that we could at least act like professionals. This means that we need to let things take their course before we say that something doesn't work. Sure, we can speculate, and post our speculations. I've done that myself, saying that Microsoft has something to prove with their next generation. No console has blown everyone's minds out the gae on the third generation, so there is some history to the statement. That doesn't mean that Durango is going to be awful, or that it will have growing pains. It's a statment, based on history. Okay, let's move on.
1. "Franchises that Need to Die" lists:
This one is just immature. I've seen countless articles on N4G saying that various game series need to end. There are often some positive reasons for their statements, such as putting the spotlight on other franchises, or that some games over saturate certain markets. More often than not, it's a cheap ploy for page views by writers who want to make money off of site advertisement. We all want that, but writing unique content for your page helps more for this, or breaking a story before anyone else. Instead, we get frequent pieces about how Call of Duty has too many games, and that Final Fantasy is garbage now. Some go as far as to say that Halo should never have had sequels. Well, let me break it down for you folks. The video game industry runs on money. A lot of it. Millions of dollars go into these productions, and it's a nightmare trying to recoup the costs. Franchises help this more than it hurts. A new Call of Duty every year doesn't mean anything more than Activision grabs a quick million seller, and they even have enough of a creative soul to make it different. That can't be said for EA who could pretty much copy one set of Madden code into the next year and add whatever cheap new feature they have left to try, and shove that thing onto store shelves. But that's a different conversation. Final Fantasy is one of the most important role playing games on consoles, and to end that has dangerous repercussions. Taking away Final Fantasy would bring Square Enix to it's knees, and possibly mean a lot of lost jobs for a big named studio. As for Halo, gamers should be so lucky that there is a studio that cares as much about it's IP as 343 Industries, and Bungie before them. Halo has a rich, well crafted lore that is about to be explored in the games themselves. The single player campaigns have always been brilliantly crafted, and have even been the blueprint for FPS games since the series reached the public in 2001. Not to mention, the console shooter is now a standard because of Halo. Without it, we probably wouldn't have gotten The Elder Scrolls franchise on consoles. That's just the short version. I've seen a lot of other games hit lists like this.
2. "Why X-Console/X-Idea is Going to Fail"
I'm slightly to blame here, considering that I never had any faith in the Playstation Move. But hey, let's face it, Sony hasn't ever had that much push for their peripherals (remember the Pocketstation). So, take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt if you must.
There are dozens of naysayer articles about the WiiU and the tablet controller, and people have every right to believe that Nintendo is nuts for doing this. However, none of us own the WiiU yet, and not even the mightiest of crystal ball will tell us the fate of this device in gaming. Obviously, someone thinks this is a good idea. Look at Microsoft's Smart Glass technology that is going to be launched on the X-Box 360 this generation. That is Microsoft experimenting with a similar concept to Nintendo, doing a preemptive take on what could be their own tablet control. If Nintendo pulls it off, expect Sony to rush their way into some overly complex design of the exact same thing that may somehow involve shoving a Playstation Eye into the box because they still have warehouses full of the stupid things years after that toy died on the PS2.
In reality, there is no way to determine how successful a product is going to be at an early stage in its life. If we did that, then we wouldn't be looking forward to new 3DS games right now. The PSP wouldn't have...had...an...acceptable run. The PS3 definitely wouldn't be the giant it is in the industry. Speculate, but be realistic. Some things work out, and the rest fall by the wayside and end up on the shelf of a collector who likes weird obscure things. The WiiU is a risk, taken by Nintendo. As a business, they believe in it. Microsoft believes in Smart Glass, and they believed in the Kinect. Sure, I hate the Kinect, but I'm glad it has panned out for them. It puts revenue in their pockets, and keeps them in R&D to prepare for the next move.
3. "Top 10 Best Games Ever."
People have been playing home video games for almost forty years. That's a lot of games. When you factor the amount of consoles, iterations of home computers, hand held consoles, cell phones and tablets, you have an enormous library to pick games out of. These might be your favorite games, but that doesn't mean that you should toot your horn on the internet with a blog about it, post it to N4G to get attention, and, at times I have seen this phenomena, get angry when someone points out that you putting Super Mario Bros. in your list means you haven't played anything.
Opinions are just opinions, and fighting about them doesn't really get you anywhere. State it, be prepared to back it up, but it doesn't mean that someone is wrong when they say you haven't played enough games. It's disgusting how people act when they are trying to put themselves out there as professional writers. Sure, if this piece gets circulated on N4G I'm going to probably see two year old blog posts of mine brought up where I may have said something that contradicts this article, but who cares. That was two years ago. I've changed since then, and so has my opinion. Just like the opinions of those ten best games out of the thousands that exist, it's flexible.
As for why it's detrimental to your writing career, it's just not creative. If you break out your top ten games, then you are writing a piece about yourself, and you don't have anything else to talk about. It's filler. Your top ten NES games? Equally weak. Everyone has a pretty good idea about the best titles in the NES library, and even the best obscure ones. Web celebrities can get away with this because we are already interested in their opinions anyway, but even then, it's a quick thing. Screw Attack does decent top tens, but they also put a comedic spin on things. Top Ten Games that Make you Want to Bone? That's a brilliant list to put out on Valentines Day!
People do enjoy a good list, and maybe they will even enjoy this rant on the poor state of content generation for blogs on my website that has an incredibly small amount of entertaining content on it. I understand why people do it, and I even think that I will stick some of my favorites on a list some day just for the fun of it. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to run that list right over to N4G so I can pick up some views of it. N4G is a great resource for up and coming writers and websites to build a viewer base. Don't exploit it for your Top Ten Genesis games not Starring Sonic the Hedgehog. The five viewers you pick up is not worth as much as the review of Pier Solar, which is a recent homebrew Genesis game actually programmed onto a Genesis cartridge.
If you disagree, fine, but I'm tired of the cheap shots made on video game websites. I've been watching the Vita not do so well, but even I know that I will pick one up if they ever get some games I care about on it. I don't see it crashing and burning, and even if I did, I have the intelligence to realize that spilling a list of reasons why it's doomed is counterproductive. Think forward, to what's coming, or just write retro columns. Negativity in the gaming community is part of why we all seem to have so much trouble getting along. I exist in a great spot in the middle. I'm well played on many genres, even thundering my way through most of those Call of Duty games that it's fun to hate these days. I've got a few Madden titles, but only one per console at maximum. My JRPG collection contains some obscure titles, and my interest in shmups is only hindered by my inability to drop several hundred dollars on Saturn imports. Just think before you crack open that WordPress editing screen to show why you think Nintendo is mad to put money in something for kids again. Remember, you were a kid once. Didn't you have enough fun to still be playing games twenty years later?
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
More Coming Soon
Okay, so it's time for me to propose things that I'll try, and possibly not come through on. However, given the circumstances that have befallen me as of late, I think that I'm in a better spot to move on some of these ideas.
Alright, the first is the previously mentioned overhaul of my blog. I don't know if I will be moving it into another site, but it will be sectioned off into different things based on whatever I am writing about. There will be a visual element to this. And that leads to another thing:
Working with a friend of mine (you know who you are), I have put together some of the basic ideas behind a shmup which borrows ideas from the Metroid series, and even games like Mass Effect to make an interesting variation on the traditional scrolling shooter.
I've written the base of a script with which to review Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which I consider an absolute blight on the series name. I will be reviewing this once I have access to some of the toys I'm going to bring up below.
Next, given the mention of toys, I am getting ready to record a couple of songs. I have two songs ready to record, and a few other things in mind. I might try to get an EP together, and maybe even sell it. This would include artwork and liner notes, prepared by the idiot whose blog you are currently scoffing at.
I would like to launch a blip video thing on the new site, and on that, I would feature the review, possibly a "making of" type thing for the EP, and whatever else came down the pipe, including a fake PSA that has been boiling in my brain for the past few weeks. Video game reviews are part of this consideration, but I don't have anything concrete in mind just yet.
Before the power supply to my net book bit the dust two weeks ago, I was gathering steam to continue work on The Alternative, and I think that it's going to be moving at a pretty decent rate once (again now) the new toys arrive. I would like to see it finished by the end of August, with work starting on book two by October. There are a couple of short stories that need to be finished as well, but I suck at composing short fiction in a decent time, so I make no promises.
Some that read this might remember a short lived video game podcast called Z-Trigger which I co-hosted. This idea is not dead to me, and some of my (yes I'm getting to it) toys will allow me to find a new form for this concept. I just hope everyone is still interested when I finally get to it. If you are reading this, go ahead and shout about how incompetent I am at the end of this post.
There is an idea floating in my mind about an e-mag genre literature journal. This idea is in embryo stage, and I'm not sure if it will make it anywhere. I would build this site, moderate, be the editor, and possibly even make collections out of the stuff I publish. This is very low on the list, given its ambition.
I'm trying to think if there is anything else coming up in the queue before moving onto the supplies that are going to make these projects more likely. There is a lot in my head, and I'm always adding to it, mostly because I'm completely mad. The way I see it is that if I have a lot of prospective projects to work on, I'm never bored when I sit down before a computer. Especially when it is...oh, you know, a Dell XPS laptop with eight gigs of ram, a terabyte hard drive, blu-ray, possibly even 3D, Photoshop CS6 Extended, a newer version of Premiere Elements 10, and the most up to date version of Dreamweaver.
Yes, all of these things are coming soon, and the trimmings just don't stop there. I am also looking into a Wacom tablet to make them all more possible. This is all part of a long winding path that might even lead into more school, but more importantly, a new set of experiences that will flesh out my creative portfolio. Having a working knowledge of Photoshop and Dreamweaver paired with a growing knowledge of HTML and CSS would do wonders for me. Now if only I can get those pesky weak art skills off the ground. But, regardless of the hideousness of my line work, I have ambition, and that is always number one in my book for having a great time.
There is a bit of time before all of these things can really kick off, but some of the basic tools are already in my hands. The new laptop, Dreamweaver, and especially the tablet, are still a bit of time off. I don't even know when the tablet will be confirmed, but given the nature of such a device and how it can be integrated into the all of the other tools, it's almost essential.
I don't know where I will begin exactly. Given how many different things I could do, and how they all tie into one big plan, I have options. Time is of the essence, and unfortunately there is never enough of it. I see the music option to be a viable one, given the nature of what I already have invested there, and, not to mention, how much easier it would be to put together a decent documentary about the process. Short, but, hopefully, interesting. These are all pieces, and the big picture is far too big for even me to see. Mostly because there is an idiot painting this portrait. And it's time for the idiot to stop typing.
Keep watching. Something is coming. Even if it is just bizarre and cool looking photoshop art.
Alright, the first is the previously mentioned overhaul of my blog. I don't know if I will be moving it into another site, but it will be sectioned off into different things based on whatever I am writing about. There will be a visual element to this. And that leads to another thing:
Working with a friend of mine (you know who you are), I have put together some of the basic ideas behind a shmup which borrows ideas from the Metroid series, and even games like Mass Effect to make an interesting variation on the traditional scrolling shooter.
I've written the base of a script with which to review Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which I consider an absolute blight on the series name. I will be reviewing this once I have access to some of the toys I'm going to bring up below.
Next, given the mention of toys, I am getting ready to record a couple of songs. I have two songs ready to record, and a few other things in mind. I might try to get an EP together, and maybe even sell it. This would include artwork and liner notes, prepared by the idiot whose blog you are currently scoffing at.
I would like to launch a blip video thing on the new site, and on that, I would feature the review, possibly a "making of" type thing for the EP, and whatever else came down the pipe, including a fake PSA that has been boiling in my brain for the past few weeks. Video game reviews are part of this consideration, but I don't have anything concrete in mind just yet.
Before the power supply to my net book bit the dust two weeks ago, I was gathering steam to continue work on The Alternative, and I think that it's going to be moving at a pretty decent rate once (again now) the new toys arrive. I would like to see it finished by the end of August, with work starting on book two by October. There are a couple of short stories that need to be finished as well, but I suck at composing short fiction in a decent time, so I make no promises.
Some that read this might remember a short lived video game podcast called Z-Trigger which I co-hosted. This idea is not dead to me, and some of my (yes I'm getting to it) toys will allow me to find a new form for this concept. I just hope everyone is still interested when I finally get to it. If you are reading this, go ahead and shout about how incompetent I am at the end of this post.
There is an idea floating in my mind about an e-mag genre literature journal. This idea is in embryo stage, and I'm not sure if it will make it anywhere. I would build this site, moderate, be the editor, and possibly even make collections out of the stuff I publish. This is very low on the list, given its ambition.
I'm trying to think if there is anything else coming up in the queue before moving onto the supplies that are going to make these projects more likely. There is a lot in my head, and I'm always adding to it, mostly because I'm completely mad. The way I see it is that if I have a lot of prospective projects to work on, I'm never bored when I sit down before a computer. Especially when it is...oh, you know, a Dell XPS laptop with eight gigs of ram, a terabyte hard drive, blu-ray, possibly even 3D, Photoshop CS6 Extended, a newer version of Premiere Elements 10, and the most up to date version of Dreamweaver.
Yes, all of these things are coming soon, and the trimmings just don't stop there. I am also looking into a Wacom tablet to make them all more possible. This is all part of a long winding path that might even lead into more school, but more importantly, a new set of experiences that will flesh out my creative portfolio. Having a working knowledge of Photoshop and Dreamweaver paired with a growing knowledge of HTML and CSS would do wonders for me. Now if only I can get those pesky weak art skills off the ground. But, regardless of the hideousness of my line work, I have ambition, and that is always number one in my book for having a great time.
There is a bit of time before all of these things can really kick off, but some of the basic tools are already in my hands. The new laptop, Dreamweaver, and especially the tablet, are still a bit of time off. I don't even know when the tablet will be confirmed, but given the nature of such a device and how it can be integrated into the all of the other tools, it's almost essential.
I don't know where I will begin exactly. Given how many different things I could do, and how they all tie into one big plan, I have options. Time is of the essence, and unfortunately there is never enough of it. I see the music option to be a viable one, given the nature of what I already have invested there, and, not to mention, how much easier it would be to put together a decent documentary about the process. Short, but, hopefully, interesting. These are all pieces, and the big picture is far too big for even me to see. Mostly because there is an idiot painting this portrait. And it's time for the idiot to stop typing.
Keep watching. Something is coming. Even if it is just bizarre and cool looking photoshop art.
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