Exposing my socks to the world

It’s pretty clear to me that while people know, remember, and often respect the digital legacy of games, more and more players, particularly the neophytes do not. They’re accustomed to the ‘pretties’ in current games, and the old ones just look like crap by comparison. Gamers With Jobs has an interesting article exploring this idea.

“Myst was a brilliant game. So was Doom. But beyond the nostalgia, they simple do not stand as “classics” in the same sense that Prufrock does, because they must necessarily be judged against a modern sensibility. To much of the Myst experience, or the Doom experience, is delivered to eyes and ears which have now been accustomed to higher-fidelity. It is for this reason I can’t call Beowulf a “classic.” It’s a work of historic significance to be sure, but most people will only approach it through layers of translation, and still find it interesting for it’s place in the canon, not for itself. Few delve back into the 78RPM recordings of Enrico Caruso but to learn of a curious foundation — to iPod ears, the recordings are grating, belying the brilliance his voice clearly held. Similarly, comparing video games to literature is difficult because the standard the measuring stick we use for electronic entertainment is fluid, changing in both length and metric.”

I’ll admit that some of the games I loved to play as a youngster just don’t do it for me anymore. I’m not sure if I’m becoming accustomed to better graphics/sound/glitz or if like a narrower swath of games because my tastes have become more mature and refined.

Link! (Gamers With Jobs)

An article on Kotaku just made me remember that five years ago today I bought a copy of the original Neverwinter Nights. Technically, since I pre-bought the game, I bought it 5 years ago as of a couple of days ago, but let’s not split hairs. I still have the spiral-bound manual and cloth mapkin. Five years later, I’ve repurchased the game and some expansions, and still haven’t made it past Act 2 (out of 5) of the main Quest, and haven’t touched any of the expansions’ content. But I did fool around with the campaign editor for several hours before I realized that I would need to learn a second language to make the scripting work.

Link!Bioware’s NWN Site
Link! (Kotaku)

Back in 1993 Hard Drivin’ introduced a ‘Ghost Mode’ feature that would allow you to race against your previous run. Since I never liked the game all that much, I was not aware of this. I was also not aware that a patent was filed and subsequently granted for the now ubiquitous feature, which must be licensed to anyone wanting to use the feature.

““It’s more of a unique [patent] than other things I’ve seen,” said Debbie Minardi, vice president of corporate development at Global VR. Minardi acquired one of those dozen or so ghosting patent licenses for a “Shadow Attack” mode in the arcade version of Need for Speed: Underground.

While Minardi acknowledges that the ghost mode is more original than some of the “you’ve got to be kidding me” patents she’s come across, she says it still probably doesn’t deserve full legal protection. “If it was me I’d never have given them a patent on it,” she said. Taking that conviction to court, though, is another matter entirely. “Patents like these probably are easy enough to argue against, but it’s expensive,” she said.”

Link! to the full Gamasutra article.

Apparently Scott Steinberg from Sega issued a statement to the press that he was “”concerned” about the “creative depth of the Wii pool.””

He’s since clarified his statements:

“That said, it’s a shared responsibility and opportunity for the whole industry to take advantage of the possibilities of the Wii. If we don’t realise its true potential, we will have missed a great opportunity to expand creatively and that is what I was cautioning against in the Reuters interview.”

Sounds like sufficiently vague backpedaling.

Link! to full article. (Gamesindustry.biz)

According to an interesting interpretation of an interview over at Spong, it’s being alleged that Mr. Miyamoto views Link from the Legend of Zelda series as somebody he’d like to hook his sister up with.

“Speaking in a recent interview, Miyamoto, the game’s general producer, said, “Finally, some words to my sister (laughs). Link is cute, really; particularly this Link with cat eyes.””

That’s not really what I got from those words, but I am also not a linguist.

Link! (Ha!)

The International Herald Tribune has an article up exploring the recent trend toward less violent, more all-ages friendly video games. The article is poorly written, but does bring up some interesting points.

“A number of top manufacturers recently created special departments to chase after potential family players. And they will stop at nothing to make a breakthrough, even using their own mothers, as one game developer, Igor Manceau, confessed.

“When my mother played our game she was fine and had fun,” said Manceau, who is developing “Word Coach” for Ubisoft from the company’s Canadian studios in Montreal. “But she needed me there to go through the game and select each one. So we started to focus on accessibility after that.””

Link! (via GoNintendo)

I’ve gone through and culled some of the more obviously fake users from the database. Yes, that includes you, ‘carinsurance’. If you were a real person you might want to think about choosing a new online identity.

In the midst of the spam-fest that is my Inbox, I found this gem (irrelevant bits removed):

******************************************
Your refund for ICANN Fee overpayment
******************************************

Dear basscomm,

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN(R)) recently agreed to reduce their Registrar Transaction Fee from $.25 to $.22. What does this mean for you?

Good news. You have been credited $.03/yr for each domain name you registered or renewed dating back to July 1, 2006* — $.03 has been placed into your Go Daddy(R) account with this customer number: xxxxxxxx.

Your in-store credit will be applied to your purchases at GoDaddy.com(R) until it’s gone or for up to 12 months, whichever comes sooner. If you have any questions, please contact a customer service representative at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

<link removed>

As always, thank you for being a Go Daddy customer.

<Signature, disclaimer, etc.>

Copyright (C) 2007 GoDaddy.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To put that into context, I have two domains registered through GoDaddy, but only one that fits the criteria, which means that I have a grand total of $0.03 in credits. And while I both understand and appreciate that someone hopes that this is a gesture that is going to generate loads of revenue, I think it’s a bit silly. I’m not getting back the $0.03 that I overpaid last year, I’m getting credited $0.03 on future purchases (until the credits run out, of course).

And yes, I’m being silly about the whole thing. I still use and have no issues with Go Daddy’s services. I’m sure that this credit is going to be a greater boon to those who hold large quantities of domain names. Heck, with this credit, if I had 299 domains I could renew one of them for free. Well, for free plus the $0.22 ICANN fee.

Since I don’t already have enough to do, I’ve started to use one of my other domains as a gamesblog (the link is to your right. That’s where I’ll post shorter updates while I’m working on the next story for this site.

Way back in 2004 I created a video (also viewable here) that celebrated the death sequences in some classic (and some not so classic) video games. It seems that the video was so good that GameTap created a similar video and used it in some of their marketing (“Live to die another day” or some such).

And today we have the 8-bit Death Montage. Similar, but different. Both are worth watching, but the one on this site might be a bit more entertaining.

But that might just be me.