Their loss is my gain

May 27th, 2012

We’ve all been there, right? Just minding our own business when we find out that a store is going out of business right now, everything is some huge percentage off, and we just have to get there before they close today… forever!

Well, that happened to me today.

Found out that one of the used video game traders in town was going out of business at the end of the day today and that it was all 85% off, so I headed on down and made a couple of additions to the ol’ collection

Now I just need to find time to play these. Good thing it’s Summer, right?

Posted in blog, collecting, Dreamcast, Misc, NES, old school, relics, updates, video games | Comments Closed

Being a successful failure

April 16th, 2012

Alfred, Lord Tennyson once wrote (among other things)

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Which some folks have failed in remembering, attributing, and quoting as some variation of:

It’s better to have tried and failed, than to never have tried at all

I’ve even heard that Abraham Lincoln himself was some kind of colossal failure (which isn’t entirely true, by the way) until he became president. Which is, I guess, supposed to make me feel better about any mistakes I might make or hardships I might encounter, because some day I’ll be president! Then I’ll probably somehow stop making mistakes and be the most best president of all time… at least until some other joker gets elected.

But what does that have to do with this website, or video games, or anything else?

More than you might think.

For the last 11 years or so, the Crummysocks.com network of sites (including this site, this site, and this site, which have all been archived) have taught me a lot. Each of those sister sites that I’ve started over the years scratched a particular itch, and none of them became what one might call successful. But I have learned a lot, and if you don’t mind a little navel-gazing, some of the lessons I’ve learned include:

  • How to set up and run a web/email server in a non Microsoft Windows environment (Hello, all the website software that I tried to use)
  • How to restore your web/email server from a backup once it’s compromised
  • How to secure a web/email server and keep it up to date
  • How to create a blog post every day for 500 days in a row
  • How to set up and administer bulletin board software
  • How to capture and edit screen shots and videos to teach people how to do something they might not otherwise know how to do
  • How to run a collaborative blog
  • How to objectively talk about what I like and don’t like about video games
  • And more things than you probably want to read about here

But what does all of that mean? Not much. I’m not president yet, and nothing I’ve done on the Internet (with a couple of exceptions) made much of a ripple. In fact, it seems like the lesson might be that: You can’t have success without hard work and determination, but just those two things alone won’t make it happen. There’s a bit of luck involved in being in the right place at the right time.

Stated another way. It sometimes seems like it’s possible to have a dream, chase it for years, work as hard as you can, and still fail to achieve it because circumstances favored some other person with the same dream.

So it’s very easy to become bitter and jealous. To look to those who have success doing something you like to do and are good at, and realizing that no matter how many hours you invest in doing the same thing (or something related), you won’t be as successful (or famous, or rich, or paid), if you’re successful at all.

Which is kind of a bummer.

Until you start to reflect on the journey. Until you think back at all the things you’ve learned along the way. The ways you’ve honed your craft, the techniques you’ve discovered, streamlining your workflow, growing as a person, and finding what makes you happy and sticking with it. Most of the time you can’t force success. It either happens or it doesn’t, and most of the time it doesn’t. But it’s pretty obvious that success never comes to those who don’t try, and I’ll keep trying to have a successful website until the day I die. Or the Internet collapses. Whichever comes first.

Posted in articles, blogs, confessions, Misc, opinion | Comments Closed

Vidcaps

March 22nd, 2012

I mentioned recently that I’ve began to chronicle some of my backlog-clearing exploits over at Twitch.tv, but I left a couple of questions unanswered that nobody was really asking, such as, “I want to make videos of myself playing video games, too. How do I do that?” There are lots of ways to do this, ranging from pretty cheap to bowel-emptying expensive, but I’ve got nailed down what I think is a pretty good starting point.

First, the capture computer itself. It was tempting (and way cheaper) to just toss a video capture device (more on that below) into whatever existing computer that I used for gaming. But that would cause it’s own problems. First: if I wanted to capture video from my computer while I’m playing a game, performance would be dragged way down the toilet while I was trying to play and the capture card was doing its thing, and second: I would have to move my gaming PC into the room where my video game consoles are, and hook them up to the television (which has a lower resolution than my monitor, so it’s not ideal). So my happy medium was to build a low(ish) cost PC that would act as a dedicated capture station.

After checking around a bit, I settled on the AverMedia MTVHDDVRR. It had pretty much all I needed: HD capture, HDMI, S-Video, Composite, and Component inputs, and modest system requirements. As a bonus, it was (relatively) cheap at about $100.

Running total: $94.99

The requirements for running such a card weren’t too outrageous, and it’s no secret that I’m a fan of AMD and NVIDIA, but I wanted to also take a look at the other side of the fence, so to speak, and checked out the Sandy Bridge stuff from Intel. Staying relatively low-end, I settled on the Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2 with an Intel G850 stuck in there. And since RAM is cheap, I went with 8GB, and put it in the cheapest case I could find. This probably means that I’ll have to replace the power supply with something better at some point down the line, but that’s probably not going to happen for weeks.

As an aside, it turns out that this combination can be used as a Hackintosh if I ever decide to go down that road, so, you know, bonus for me.

PC Components: $211.12
Running total: $306.11

Well, this is turning out to be not quite as cheap as I thought. No time to think about that, though! Let’s press on!

Now it’s time to think about connectivity. To tackle problems such as, how to send the output of my consoles to my television and to my computer at the same time? (Otherwise I would be playing in a tiny, slightly laggy, window). The solution? Use an HDMI Splitter, of course. There are powered and non-powered kinds. I chose a powered one, and it seems to get the job done.

Splitter and HDMI cables: $36.95
Running Total: $343.06

At this point, my build was missing a couple of key components: optical drive, hard drive, operating system, and cable to hook my computer to the television. My television has a VGA input, so getting a cable was a piece of cake, however, if yours doesn’t, you might need to use one of the other connectors on your television, or just haul a monitor in the room with your capture stuff.

VGA Cable: $11.25
Running Total: $354.31

What about the rest of that stuff? Well, it turns out that I, for some reason, accumulate lots of parts and components from past upgrades (including mine and that of friends and family), so I was able to scrounge up a copy of Windows Vista (effectively $0), a 500GB hard drive (effectively $0), and I used this guide to turn one of the several freebie USB drives I have laying around from various IT conferences into a bootable Vista install drive. It didn’t seem worth it to install an optical media drive just to install the operating system, and then never use it again.

Drive and Operating System: $0
Running Total: $354.31

After all of that, assembly took place, and in one day of installing updates and drivers, it was time to move on to broadcasting software. The bundled AverMedia software works well enough for capturing, but if you want to broadcast out to the greater Internet there are several options. However, most people that I can find seem to be using either the Flash Media Encoder (free), or XSplit (free and paid versions exist). So far, I’ve just been using FME since it’s free and relatively straightforward to get configured with the Twitch.tv service.

And how well does it work?

You can check out the results here.

Posted in articles, hardware, howto | 2 Comments »

Community Building (a.k.a. Don’t Be A Jerk)

February 29th, 2012

If you missed it (like I did), there was some hullabaloo yesterday when a guy by the name of Aris Bakhtanians had a partial meltdown where he defended a few ideas including:

  1. Sexual harassment is a part of the Fighting Game Culture
  2. People who play fighting games are an elite club, and
  3. Deal with it, if you don’t like it, too bad

There’s a pretty good rundown here for you (and there’s a sort-of-apology available from Aris here.

In my pre-Intenret days (the 1990’s), I played a lot of fighting games, but I never really got to anything that could be considered a competitive level. I did notice that there were a few faces that I would see around my local arcades (back when my town actually had arcades) pretty regularly that were way better than I was. People who could play the fighting games like they were musical instruments. People who were so into the games that they would hang around the arcade and watch me play, newbie that I was, and offer tips on how to play better. Looking back, it’s pretty amazing that we created this ad-hoc community with a welcoming atmosphere without even knowing each others’ names.

I’m willing to admit that maybe this was a product of me living in the Midwest rather than on the West Coast. But around that time I also got into the XBand scene, which let me, for the first time, play fighting games against people from all over the country. I still never really got great at the games, but most of the people that I met who were better than me were more than happy to offer up pointers if I would just ask. It was hardly the ‘nobody will like you until you prove yourself’ scene that this guy is making it out to be.

But why is it different?

I can’t say for sure, but I have a few guesses.

My local fighting game community (and, by extension, the entire arcade game community) was (with a few exceptions) never really a group of friends. We were acquaintances with a shared hobby. Most people that I know, when they’re around people they don’t know well, rein in their behavior, slowly testing the waters, and gradually figuring out what’s acceptable.

But as you get further along in the ranks, you find that there’s less turnover. You find that you see the same people all the time, those barriers that held your behavior in check start to crumble since you’re just playing with your buddies. And since your buddies are okay with homophobic remarks or racial slurs, then they’re okay, as long as they’re just joking.

And somewhere during that process, these people have become what I like to call “microcelebrities”. They have gotten to a position actually start paying attention to the things they say, but their filter is long gone. And their audience, which is now huge, will latch on to any stupid thing you say.

I have no doubt that most every other sport or professional endeavor is largely the same. That there are tasteless comments being made in locker rooms all over the world. But those comments stay in the locker room. You don’t see someone on commentary for an NFL game trying to guess the breast size of the person reporting from the field.

Another point he made was that he loved the fighting game community because you have to prove yourself to get in. Like it’s a kind of elite club, and if you’re not coming into it on a high level, don’t even bother.

To draw a parallel, let’s say you have an interest in geology and want to get involved in the geology community. But when you go to a gem and mineral show, everyone starts out hating you, and you have to prove yourself somehow to be a part of that group. It’s ludicrous.

“But that’s different,” I hear you saying, “fighting games are a form of competition and geology isn’t!” Fine, replace “geology” with “tennis” and “gem and mineral show” with “tennis club” and it’s equally absurd.

The defense to most of this, of course, is that the fighting game community is full of 15-year-olds, and that’s just how they act. This was probably more true 15 or 20 years ago than it is now, but any of those 15-year-olds who are still playing are now in their 30’s. And, like it or not, we’re the adults here. We have to lead by example and let newcomers know what is and isn’t acceptable. We need to encourage participation by casual fans instead of making them feel unwelcome at the outset, and we need to stop alienating females.

A lot of us have been playing games for over 25 years. It’s up to us to lead by example. To treat other gamers with respect, and to call out those who step over the line. I’m not suggesting that everyone become a paragon of virtue or the Moral Police, just don’t be a jerk. Think before you speak, and help out if you can. It’s easy to forget that we were all newbies once, and how useful it is to have an old-hand guide you along some of the bumps in the road.

Posted in conjecture, editorials, opinion, site news | Comments Closed

Finishing business

February 20th, 2012

I’ve written a couple of times about a problem that impacts a select few (i.e. “most”) of us video game aficionados as we get older: too many games, and not enough time to play them all.

The problem, really, is twofold: I, someone who is technically an adult, finally has landed a ‘real job’, and, thus, have real actual money to spend on games pretty much whenever I want to. And those games, as a consequence of a medium that’s maturing, are getting longer and more complex. But, as a consequence of having that ‘real job’ and ‘responsibilities’, I just don’t have the time that I used to have to dedicate myself to them.

As a result, I’ve been playing games less and less, and writing about them even less than that (hello down there, blog entries from 2010!)

I guess that means that I’m burned out. That I’ve said everything that I need to say, played everything I need to play, and need to move on to the next stage of my life, right?

Uh, well, no.

No, it would be really easy for me to throw my hands up, give up, and slowly lose whatever gaming and blogging mojo I have left. To reminisce about the days when I would get excited about a new release, or find a hidden gem in the clearance bin, or the times when I used to blog about silly things only tangentially related to video games.

But I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’m going to make time. I’m going to make time to do the things I like to do. Starting with that pile of games that I bought because they looked interesting and because I would get to them ‘some day’. To do that, I’ve started up a channel over at Twitch.tv where I can share my progress with the world.

And that should give me plenty of fodder to keep this little slice of the Internet going for a while longer.

Geez, given the sheer amount of blogs whose last post is some variation of, “I’m not dead”, you’d think I’d have enough sense to not make one here.

Pressure’s on!

Posted in blog, blogs, General, links, Misc, old news, site news, updates, zombie site | 2 Comments »

Blackout day

January 18th, 2012

As you probably have heard by now, lots of major and minor sites are blacking out at least portions of their content to protest a couple of proposed bills in Congress, SOPA and PIPA.

Among other things, passing these bills into law would give American businesses an insane amount of power to shut down any site provides or even links to content that facilitates piracy, this means that in the ten years this site has been around, if I or some Internet user posts something that pointed to a perfectly legitimate website way back in 2003, and that site has gone defunct, resulting in some spammer/piracy site has set up shop there, I’m still linking to it, and crummysocks.com could be taken offline, leaving me with no recourse, and no site.

If nothing else, please read about the bills, and take appropriate action.

Posted in site news | Comments Closed

New server

November 9th, 2011

If you’re reading this, then I can confirm two things:

  1. I remembered my password to log back in to this site and
  2. I have moved the Crummysocks family of sites to a new server, hosted by Linode.
It’s almost like Christmas has come early.

Posted in about, site news | Comments Closed

Pardon the post

June 3rd, 2011

I think that’s a long enough break for now. It’s been far too long since I’ve done anything meaningful here, and for the three or four of you still checking on this site regularly, well, you’re in for a treat!

First! You’ll notice that there’s a new post up here for the first time in six months. That’d be this one here.

Second! You’ll notice that the site looks different. After five years, I decided that it wat time to give Drupal the old heave-ho and migrate back to WordPress. It will take me some time to get around to fixing the broken links and such. If you come across one, don’t panic.

Third! Ah, well, my notes seem to stop at Number 2, and nobody likes Number 2.

Tags:
Posted in General | Comments Closed

Video Game Awards 2010 Reactions Entry

December 11th, 2010

The Spike TV Video Game Awards are just hours away. Stay tuned to this space for my up-to-the-minute commentary on the proceedings.

7:07 PM CST Whew! a few minutes late to the show, so I missed the opening number. Shame. But I do see Neil Patrick Harris bombing in front on the audience and announcing one of the GOTY nominees, COD:BLOPS

REMINDER: Refresh this page frequently to get updates.

7:08 PM CST Another Arkham Asylum promo

7:09 PM CST This looks like Sam Fisher infiltrating the Batman universe

7:11 PM CST I have to admit the set looks pretty rad this year

7:12 PM CST Bioware gets the nod for Studio of the Year, kind of going for the big awards early, eh?

7:13 PM CST Dane Cook? Seriously? Were they looking for someone less funny than NPH?

7:14 PM CST Oh dear Lord, Dane Cook is absolutely bombing out there. No laughs at all.

7:15 PM CST Who is Chris Hemsworth?

7:18 PM CST this seems like a long commercial break with no real video game commercials. Do they not realize who is watching this thing?

7:20 PM CST Lots of robed folks entering the stage. Looks like an Undertaker intro. Oh, it’s Tom Howard.

7:21 PM CST Bethesda’s new game is… A new Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim. Very nice trailer

7:22 PM CST NPH trying some puns on some game titles. They’re all pretty awful.

7:23 PM CST Mortal Kombat isn’t dead yet?

7:25 PM CST Kratos in Mortal Kombat? No.

7:26 PM CST 90210, eh? People watch that show?

7:27 PM CST A game about a guy with a hammer? Are we getting a Hammerin’ Harry remake? No? Thor? Psh, whatever.

7:28 PM CST Thor looks a lot like that Castlevania game from earlier this year.

7:29 PM CST These jokes are falling flat for everyone

7:29 PM CST Best action game? Looks like the Wii finally getting some notification. Too bad they won’t win anything unless it’s “Best Wii game”

7:30 PM CST Assassin’s Creed wins. Shocker. These Ubisoft guys are French, which is why they sound like they’re tired and drunk.

7:31 PM CST Strongest character, Master Chief, Samus (pronounced “Same Iss” for some reason), and then Mario. Not sure how that worked out.

7:31 PM CST Army rangers, eh? Guess they’re big sponsors for this year’s event.

7:34 PM CST Denise Richards? Sounds like she’s haltingly reading from cue cards. Yuck.

7:35 PM CST My Chemical Romance with the first bathroom break musical number.

7:39 PM CST Nick Swardson. Yeah. No.

7:40 PM CST Mass Effect 2? Yeah, I bought that, need to start it, and then finish it.

7:42 PM CST Mass Effect was expensive? I think he meant ‘expansive’

7:43 PM CST Sounds like Alistair from Dragon Age, but this isn’t Dragon Age.

7:44 PM CST Mass Effect 3? Already? Even Holiday 2011 seems soon.

7:45 PM CST You know, I like video games and everything, but I’m not buying a car that’s a ‘special video game’ edition, no matter what the game is.

7:48 PM CST The “It’s Always Sunny” cast. Whooppee. I’m guessing that this is some kind of schtick. Not the funny kind.

7:50 PM CST COD:BlOpS getting the shout for best shooter. Props to my buddies at Treyarch.

7:51 PM CST Olivia Munn is not NPH.

7:51 PM CST Does this show have writers, or are they getting these jokes from Laffy Taffy wrappers?

7:52 PM CST Yay, boners!

7:52 PM CST Is it normal to want to punch NPH in the mouth at all times?

7:53 PM CST Resistance 3, probably another game I’ll never play. Sorry, guys.

7:54 PM CST Nearly halfway home and we’ve seen what, one title that’s not PS3/XBox 360?

7:55 PM CST I really don’t want to see any more Dane Cook Photoshopped into pictures with video game characters.

8:01 PM CST Nick Swardson sucks. I know I’m not the first to say that.

8:02 PM CST Hades and Kratos? I guess they’re “live via satellite”?

8:04 PM CST God of War 3 looks pretty good, but since I don’t have a Playstation, I probably won’t be playing it.

8:06 PM CST Best performance by a human male? “That’s what she said!” Yep, that fell as flat as… something funny that’s flat.

8:07 PM CST My problem with this category is that they pretty much only recognize established movie/television actors and not professional voice-over guys.

8:09 PM CST Whoops, first missed bleep of the night. But that accurately describes this skit.

8:10 PM CST Tony Hawk? He looks tired and stoned.

8:11 PM CST Prototype 2, eh? Could be good.

8:12 PM CST A look at the hottest mobile games? Uh a tiny video in the middle of the screen for two seconds. Yeah, good use of that airtime, Verizon.

8:17 PM CST Angry Birds Live? Ugh, this could be funny, but it’s pretty stupid.

8:18 PM CST Yeah, all video games are about violence and child abuse, right?

8:19 PM CST Another missed bleep, or “sh*t” is an acceptable word on Spike.

8:20 PM CST Best Indie game? And no clips from them? Lame.

8:20 PM CST Limbo wins. I guess that’s good, but I don’t see anything about the game, so I dunno.

8:21 PM CST Deadliest Warrior the game? This looks pretty awful. Kind of like the show.

8:22 PM CST “Jengis Khan?” The board game guy?

8:23 PM CST Portal was pretty good, but Portal 2 is the most anticipated game of the year? Yeah, Okay

8:24 PM CST Yeah, that promo tells me absolutely nothing.

8:25 PM CST Ah, yeah, a terrible song about characters that died in games. With fictional causes of death. Blech.

8:25 PM CST And now for the awards that weren’t important enough to make it to television

Best driving game: Need For Speed Hot Pursuit
Best Adapted Video Game: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Most Anticipated Game: Portal 2 (Duh, we just saw that)
Best RPG: Mass Effect 2
Best Music Game: Rock Band 3
Best Soundtrack: DJ Hero 2

I’d hate to interrupt these ridiculously unfunny sketches at an awards show by giving out awards during it.

8:31 PM CST Red Dead Redemption won Best Original Score and Something else (the Michael Chickless mumbled it). Good thing we’re wasting time with another song instead of giving out awards. We have a lot to go (including another My Chemical Romance song), and only 29 minutes to go.

8:36 PM CST Ooh, a Top Gear America promo. This show is taking a nose dive. Oh, it’s tangentially related to Forza 4. Still dumb.

8:37 PM CST It looks like we’ve seen the same previews for the same games a few years in a row.

8:42 PM CST A TMZ crossover. And mentioning Kratos again, and Assassin’s Creed and Halo. There were more than three games released this year, right?

8:44 PM CST And more Halo stuff.

8:45 PM CST Why are we waxing about Halo: Reach?

8:46 PM CST Does this violinist have a name? She did a pretty good job.

8:47 PM CST These backstage interviews really serve no purpose.

8:48 PM CST More porn titles? No.

8:48 PM CST Another World Premiere of… SSX? What does a helicopter have to do with SSX again?

8:49 PM CST What the…? Are they trying to make SSX look like some kind of snowboarding / extreme climbing / Medal of Honor hybrid?

8:54 PM CST More Dane Cook. This is last appearance. Thankfully.

8:55 PM CST More love for COD:BlOps. Good for them

8:55 PM CST We’re running out of time. This is going to get real quick.

8:56 PM CST I can honestly say I haven’t really been anticipating Uncharted 3, since I haven’t played 1 or 2.

8:58 PM CST Red Dead Redemption got Game of the Year? Really? And a few more awards (best original score, best DLC, and something else that the announcer mumbled)

9:00 PM CST Lots of awards going to get lost due to time constraints, I’ll have to check out the site later. And no second musical number. Yep, good thing we wasted all that time on the pointless piano songs and idiotic sketches. The show ends rather abruptly. The crowd looks utterly baffled.

Best dressed assassin, Assassin’s Creed
Biggest Badass: Kratos

And the rest get cut off because of time constraints.

This show is in some ways better and worse than last year. It’s like the industry is trying to put on heirs of being a serious industry, but sneaking in bathroom humor, poop jokes and sexual innuendo, just brings the show down to a ridiculously lowbrow level.

Posted in news, reactions, video game awards, zombie site | Comments Closed

Final Fantasy XIV team gutted

December 10th, 2010

Back in October, I bought a copy of Final Fantasy XIV on release day. I really liked Final Fantasy XI, but didn’t really have the time to dedicate to it, and since XIV was to be more geared to solo/casual players, I figured it was time to dip my feet back into the Final Fantasy MMO scene.

Oh, how wrong I was.

It turns out that the game in its released state was broken in so many ways (not including their baffling decision to not process credit cards domestically for us users in the United States) that it resembled alpha-level software. Features were incomplete or nonexistent, the game was unstable, and it was not much fun to play. I lasted about a week and a half before I gave up (logging in twice).

So the guys at Square Enix rallied, apologized, gave people an extension on their complimentary month of game time in anticipation of some big fixes that were around the corner, including implementing such features as “can scroll map with mouse in PC version”.

And, true to their word, a patch was released in mid-November that addressed some of these issues, free game time was extended again, and more big fixes were promised, though some major game-breaking issues remain. For example, the decision to not have an in-game auction house means that buying and selling items between users is so time consuming and tedious that you can spend all night looking for something that may or may not be available.

That’s not fun.

So, even with the Big Changes(tm) that were coming down the line, I had given up hope on this game ever being good. But, then I got an email update with some surprising news:

Thank you for your continued interest in and support of FINAL FANTASY XIV.

While more than two months have passed since the official launch of FINAL FANTASY XIV service, we deeply regret that the game has yet to achieve the level of enjoyability that FINAL FANTASY fans have come to expect from the franchise, and for this we offer our sincerest of apologies.

After thorough deliberation on how to meet those expectations, it was decided that the most viable step was to approach improvements under new leadership and with a restructured team.

To realize this vision, and in doing so, provide our customers with a better game experience, we have assembled our company’s top talent and resources. Taking over the role of producer and director is Naoki Yoshida, a passionate individual for whom customer satisfaction has always taken top priority. Not only is he one of our Group’s most accomplished and experienced members, Naoki Yoshida is also a charismatic leader possessing the skill to bring together and effectively helm a team which encompasses a wide range of responsibilities. We also welcome several new leaders handpicked from other projects to work with the existing talent on FINAL FANTASY XIV.

We realize time is of the essence and are fully determined to provide our customers with quality service. It is because of this that we ask our customers to be patient until we are able to confidently present them with a concrete plan outlining FINAL FANTASY XIV’s new direction. The free trial period will be extended until that time.

Regarding the PlayStation 3, it is not our wish to release a simple conversion of the Windows version in its current state, but rather an update that includes all the improvements we have planned. For that reason, we have made the difficult decision to delay the release of the PlayStation 3 version beyond the originally announced date of March 2011.

The FINAL FANTASY XIV team is working hard to bring our customers an unparalleled adventure, and we ask for your continued understanding and support as we march ever diligently towards that goal.

President and CEO, Yoichi Wada

You can read the rest of the announcement here, which includes an apology from Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer who is stepping down. I have to admit that I’m flabbergasted that this shakeup is being made so public. It’s clear that Tanaka is being made the scapegoat here for the mountain of problems this game has, but I don’t know that changing the programming and art teams is going to be enough to save this game. Once the free trial eventually ends, unless the game is radically reworked (and their payment system fixed) I expect a mass exodus no matter what they do.

Posted in ffxiv, MMORPGs, news | Comments Closed

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