Writer's Block?

I've long desired to write. Ever since I was little, I dabbled in fiction and poetry and the like. Turns out I'm god-awful at poetry, but I can come up with some decent story-telling when the mood strikes me.

And that is the problem. The mood generally strikes me when I'm busy working... far away from a computer, with no time to even jot down ideas. (Interesting note: did you know that people once wrote things down on paper? How bizarre!) By the time I get home, my ideas no longer inspire me, or I've forgotten them, or I'm too tired to think straight and just go to bed only to repeat the miserable cycle!

But I don't actually consider it writer's block, mind, because I'm certainly not a writer. Not yet. I need to be writing stuff before I can call myself a writer!

Yet when the desire is there, and the free time is available, I always find myself staring at a blank word document. What gives!?

Where did the summer go!?

Obviously, blogging is one of the first things to go when my life gets too busy.

I'm meaning to get back into the habit of posting, if for no other reason than that I desperately need more practice at writing.

Sidebar: I've been debating the idea of getting augmented, if such a thing was available. I think I'd go with minor neural augmentations while retaining all my limbs and organs intact. Maybe then I could finally learn to play more than a few children's tunes on the violin?

I love that my job involves lots of travel. I've been able to see the four seasons of my beautiful Mountain State like never before, and consistently stumble upon cool things to see and do that I never knew existed.

If nothing else, my time in Japan helped awaken the inner tourist within me. Plus, my time away has helped me to really see West Virginia with fresh eyes - Always before, I took its beauty for granted.

And yet I possess a thirst for a more urban existence. Inexplicably, I long to replace my green hills with steel ones, my sleepy towns with bustling crowds. I've always longed for "the city", ever since I was a kid. I remember saying I'd live in NYC someday. (Since then, I've found out how grungy NYC can be... especially if you don't have a lot of money!)

I'm not sure where I'll end up in the next few years, but I know that my time in my home region is a brief rest before setting out on my journey once more.

The Video Game Dream

Upon occasion, when I'm indulging in a game with a determined (read: obsessive) focus, I'll have dreams of the game after finally succumbing to that pesky need for sleep.

Sounds fun, yeah? My enjoyment of the game doesn't have to end just because I'm not playing it anymore! Unfortunately, these dreams are invariably exhausting, repetitive, and boring. I can only seem to enjoy game-dreams when they come randomly, such as my recent Skyrim experience.

Another interesting situation is when you've been playing a game with such dedication that you begin getting confused in real life, either seeing things and interpreting them as things you know from the game, or else trying to utilize functions of the game's UI in your daily activities.

For example, I distinctly recall one sleepy Sunday morning from my childhood: I sat in a pew at the Baptist church my family attended, and my half-dozing brain tried to figure out how to "right click" my preacher to /con him.

If you never had the joy of a stolen social life thanks to EverQuest, allow me to explain: to right click, or "/consider" something, was to see how strong it is compared to you and whether or not it is hostile. This was something that wise players did obsessively, because unlike the MMOs of today that coddle our youth, EverQuest was brutal in its design and had all sorts of very powerful, very hostile creatures seeded throughout low level areas.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how much time I spent playing EverQuest. That was one brutal MMO by today's soft standards.

Pneumatic Dreams

The other night, I had a dream that I was playing Skyrim. It was vivid, too: I felt the rain on my face as I raised my sword and slew Daedra. I could smell the lush flora mixed with the muted decay of an ancient stone fortress. (Obviously, my subconscious didn't quite get the climate of the frigid northern province.)

My dream so moved me that I literally woke up out of breath, such was my desire to play the latest chapter of the Elder Scrolls. That, or else I had some sort of serious respiratory infection.

Upon catching my breath (which was disturbingly hard to do), I dutifully began installing Oblivion. "The next best thing," I vowed to myself. Truthfully, this has been a long time coming; I had meant to play through Oblivion more than three times previously.

Twice I gave up after my characters became unplayable due to the game's inherent design, and twice more due to Alienware's dubious hardware. (I've told that story before, haven't I?)

This time, though, I imagined myself carefully analyzing the skills I could control and leveling up in a rigid pattern that would net me the maximum attribute bonuses possible. Oh yes, I'm that kind of nerd.

I realized how serious my illness was when I woke up three days later, with Oblivion installed and ready and yet steadily neglected. I had spent the entire intervening period in bed, coughing all the while. Oh, there was a brief sojourn to the doctor's office at some point, followed by x-rays and super antibiotics. Its sort of a haze for me, to be honest.

All I know is that when I have time off from everything but bed-rest, I ought to be playing games. That I couldn't muster the energy to sit in a chair is testament to the severity of my indisposition.

Today's the first day that I actually feel up to sitting in my chair, though sadly I'm not sure I can do all that much else quite yet.

Do you ever dream of video games? That's something I'd like to further explore, but I think that it'll save for another post.

Stay healthy!

Portal 2's Pre-Release ARG

So initially I was really pumped for Portal 2's ARG.
The set-up was intriguing to begin with; trying to figure out wtf regarding the Potato Sack games, then realizing the connection and finding new Portal related levels in some of my games. All of that was masterfully done.

The puzzle solutions of the ARGs were fun to read about, which is generally how I participate in those sorts of events. (I'm strictly a wiki "the events so far" kinda guy.)

Once the potential for an early release was announced (as foretold by some clever soul), I became very committed to doing what I could to aid the cause. I tried recruiting my friends as well, but of the five who could participate, only one was dedicated.

Another two were spotty with their help and refused to leave the computer running overnight. (They are obviously traitors to the cause, and in fact were likely sent by the Combine to keep tabs on what's happening.) The other two didn't even pretend to participate. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

As of 10:45 on Monday morning, current projections show that we're only shaving a handful of hours off the release.

Now that I'm a working stiff, I'm no longer in a position to stay up until 4AM for a new release; especially on a weeknight!

In other words, it would appear that this "early release" event has turned out to be a spectacular failure. True to their word, the developers put the game's release into our collective hands... Turns out that most people didn't want it bad enough, I suppose.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think this is what the developers were wanting when they envisioned this cooperative event. What started out fun ended up transforming into frustration and disappointment. Were I a game designer, that's not what I'd want my core fan-base to be associating with my new sequel.

All I know is that this weekend ended up having a pall cast over it by mid-Saturday, and I'm left feeling quite despondent going into my very busy work week. It is doubtful I'll get more than a few hours of play-time a day until the weekend, which is exactly why I was so excited that Portal 2 could have been released over the weekend.

Do you think the event back-fired? Perhaps it is still too early to say. Some miracle might still cause the game's early release at a reasonable time, like say 5:30 this evening?

One can still dream...

Portal 2 Early Release!?

Who called that shit?

Portal 2 ARG Excitement

Is this what I hope it is?

I'm left wondering what the connection will be between Portal 2 and potatoes...

If it is indeed going to be released early, that would be so amazing given that I've actually completed more than a week's worth of work and could take a three day weekend! Whew...

(What is an ARG, you ask? A very good question!

Basically, think along these lines.)

Unfortunately, I really doubt that they would just plain release it early. What's more likely is that there will be some sort of connection with the Potato Sack games.

Theory: We're going to be given a task to play those games until we collectively log enough hours, at which point Portal 2 will unlock early.

Corporate Dinosaurs and the Internet Comet

Why is it that I go to wikipedia to find out when new Futurama and House episodes are going to air?

I've been to the respective official homepages of both of these websites all of once each; I either could not find the information I wanted, or had to search to the point that it was a pain in the ass. Sure, there's plenty of fun and interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits, trivia, and cast interviews, and I would positively watch those things every time I visited the respective sites.

But you see, I don't visit the sites. The only reason I ever seem to visit official sites like that is in search of schedule information. I would then be sucked in by the extras, and spend hours at their site, seeing their advertisements, even watching promos for other shows on their networks.

Working in a job so intricately tied to marketing has really made me more aware of various marketing related subjects. One thing that I continually return to is how the big media companies just do not seem to get it. There is a legion of consumers who would happily part with their disposable income in exchange for music, movies, and TV shows, if they felt like they were getting a fair shake...

Yet corporations have let greed and fear alienate the consumer masses. Greed prevents them from offering prices that are conceivably fair, considering how easy it is to illegally obtain the same product for nothing. Fear prevents them from letting consumers truly own their digital property, which is truly its own topic and something I've mentioned before.

Though I am against piracy, I can understand where the general consensus justifying it comes from. My own personal frustrations trying to utilize lawfully purchased software have left me with a very bad impression of DRM, and serves as perhaps the most effective argument against its use; DRM punishes the legitimate consumer, while serving as a delaying strategy at best when it comes to piracy.

And so the big media corporations continue to alienate their legitimate consumers while remaining wholly ineffective at stemming the piracy tide. They also continue to make their official websites cumbersome and annoying, giving ground freely to alternative sites that have information displayed more readily.

I'm left to wonder if it isn't the end of days for media corporations struggling vainly in a post-internet world that daily becomes less hospitable for bureaucratic red-tape giants.

Bullshit DLC

I don't know why I'm surprised. Is it really even a little bit unexpected that corporations would see DLC as an easy way to nickel and dime gamers into paying three times as much as they would for a proper expansion?

Don't get me wrong; on the whole, I like the idea of DLC. It offers a steady stream of new content to gamers, and is a much safer investment on the part of developers. Win-win, right? Except when they offer us bullshit DLC.

I think the first shining example of this was the horse armor for Oblivion. Sadly, that nonsense is fast becoming the rule rather than the exception, and that's ignoring the new trend of having to buy DLC to actually play the complete base game.

What's a gamer supposed to do?