Category Archives: Computer Games

A Simple Story of a Little Jedi Girl…a review of Star Wars: The Old Republic

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As the crowd cleared before her, Zontara realized she was standing in front of her adversary, a gang leader who had stolen the holocron from the ancient jedi temple. She had tracked him to this planet, fought through bandits, thieves and hooligans until she finally tracked the device to this room. Her companion, a large lizard beast who had been at her side since she saved him from a fate worse than death when she was just a young padawan, training to be a jedi consular, fell right before her during this battle, succumbing to the blaster fire of one of the gang leader’s assailants before taking down the criminal himself in a final act of defiance, both bodies slumping to the metal floor.

This left Zontara, herself badly injured from blaster fire from the four men she and her companion had taken down previously before narrowing the odds to a simple one on one. As the gang leader raised his blaster to fire, Zontara raised her own hands and called on the Force, raising the ground as waves of debris fired as projectiles at the violent criminal. Then she called in on all of her energy to pull an entire boulder out of the ground, ripping up the earth around her, and fired it at the man, sending him flying back against the wall. Then the man rushed at her, planning to take the fight to blows rather than rely on his blaster.

For a second, Zontara was a padawan again, recalling the early fights on Tython, where she had beaten back flesh raiders and wandering wild beasts. Each fight back then had been a battle of epic proportions. And she had relied on her training saber, growing more and more adept with the instrument.

But that was then. And this was a different time. As the John Williams’ music began to fire all around her, playing that brilliant Star Wars action theme, she smiled. She wasn’t carrying a training saber now. As the man closed in on her, she pressed the button on her weapon and a green blade of flame emerged from the device, reminding her that she wasn’t just a padawan any longer. No, she was a jedi. And as the lightsaber reverberated in her hands, she rushed at the gang leader, the blade swinging before her.

No, she would remind him why she was a jedi. And only one person was coming out of this fight alive.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was now playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I have to say that it’s definitely living up to its promise of being a great game. Before, games attempted to recapture that Star Wars spirit, but finally a game puts you into the universe where you are experiencing the life of being a jedi, or a bounty hunter, or a Sith Lord. The possibilities are many, and they deliver on all.

Nearly a decade ago (2004, I believe), there was an attempt to do this with an MMORGP in Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. And in the beginning, they did a very good job. However, there was always something missing: The story. Basically, it put you in between the original movie and The Empire Strikes Back, or it might have been right after The Empire Strikes Back (don’t recall exactly). And you spent your time fighting as whatever you wanted to be, but you didn’t really get a choice of anything other than living in a sand box of the time period. There were no real quests. You just killed stuff and made stuff. And you flew around. And then you could fight space battles (eventually). But that was really it. And then they changed it to try to be more quest-like, except they had already destroyed the game before that point, and it just went down hill from there.

Star Wars: The Old Republic puts you 3000 years before Luke Skywalker started whining to Ben Kenobi about moisture farming. Revan was a great jedi that had gone to the dark side and then came back again (the original Knights of the Old Republic game) and he’s now a legend that has been gone for some time. That’s the universe you find yourself living in wit this game.

You can play on either the Republic side or the Empire side. I haven’t explored that much on the Empire side, although my friend Jason has, and he seems to enjoy the story they’ve developed. I look forward to trying it out myself when I exhaust the story lines of the Republic side. But right now, I’m having a blast.

There are problems with the game, including bugs that need to be fixed, but they’re not outrageous. I get the impression they’re trying to address them, even if they’re not addressing the community about the bugs being addressed. Unfortunately, community bases can be overreactive on these things, and reading the message boards is kind of dangerous if you use those as your gauge to figure these things out. But from me, I find myself enjoying the game and see many more hours of playing before I might get bored with it.

The graphics are excellent. The interface needs some improvement. Unlike World of Warcraft, there are no mods working on this game, mainly because Bioware hasn’t supported them yet. My hope is that they do support them so we can start add extra usability for this game. As a healer in the game, I can tell you that it is sometimes really hard trying to interface with the system as a healer, which can sometimes get a group killed faster than it should. Hopefully, they’ll work on that.

Overall, if I had to scale this game, I’d be giving it either 8/10 stars or 8.5/10 stars. But that is saying a lot because I’m extremely critical over games, and I haven’t played a game in a long time that I’ve given more than 6 stars on that scale. The original of this game is still one of the greatest games ever created, and I’d give that 9.5/10. The second of the series, KOTOR 2, I’d give about 7/10, as the story kind of went a bit down hill, almost as if it was written by the B team.

The Evolution of Writing in Online Computer Games

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Recently, I started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, often shortened to TOR. Up until this time, I was a huge fan of World of Warcraft, as was practically every other computer geek on the planet. However, having always been a fan of Star Wars, I figured that when it came out, I would have to try it out. But part of me intended to pass on it until I found out my friend Jason was going to be trying it out, so I decided on a whim, so was I. After buying the Collector’s Edition for somewhere around a million dollars, I installed it, updated the patches and then listened as the infamous John Williams music started up, announcing to the world (you should hear my sound system on my computer) that I was now playing a Star Wars game, as I really like this type of games and other games I play online such as  Casino games which are easy to find in the olympic kingsway casinos online.

And I did. And still am.

What I did want to say about the game is that because it is made by Bioware, a company well known for some of the best games in the past, but also known for games with great storytelling, it should not be surprising that this MMORPG was one that focuses specifically on the story. Now, having said that, I should make a disclaimer. Not all the stories in this game are alike, meaning that some are better than others. I’ll get into that in a sec.

The game takes place thousands of years before the known Star Wars universe, which means that whiny Luke Skywalker won’t be born for many years to come, and the brooding Anakin Skywalker, badly acted by the lousy actor who played him, also won’t be along as well. This means that they have somewhat of a fresh universe to play around in, just keeping in mind that they can’t really become too inventive because it a) is part of the Star Wars universe and George Lucas would have a cow if you veered too far off from his IP, and b) it is based off a series of games created by Bioware called Knights of the Old Republic, which means that some of the elements in the game are based on events that have taken place in that IP. But having said that, they do a good job tying all of that together.

As a new player, you get to choose which side you want to be on, either the Republic or the Empire, which if you are familiar with the Star Wars movies, isn’t really all that different from the latter day period of the movies. Instead of the Empire of the movies, the Empire is one of the old Sith and the Republic is, well, the Republic. Except that in this Republic there are jedis. LOTS of jedis. Not just Luke, the old guy with the lightsaber and the Muppet guy.

So you get to choose your class then. Now, if you’re like every other Star Wars fan, you’ll choose a jedi, which is what I did. And a few days into it, I realized it was a mistake. The reson it’s a mistake is not because a jedi is not fun to play, because they are a great deal of fun. It’s a mistake because the story is exactly what you expect. You’re a jedi, you’re learning the Force, and you’re doing good for the Republic. Not much of a stretch. I can see how some people thought the story was kind of stilted. Because it is. It’s still better than 90 percent of the stories in other games, but it was still stilted.

So I then rerolled as a trooper, which is a fighter for the Republic, someone without jedi powers. And immediately, the story became Bioware’s and not George Lucas’s same old story. And it has turned out to be really decent, full of intrigue and betrayal, the kind of thing Bioware does extremely well. Let’s just say that I’m not looking forward to the rest of the story lines that don’t involve me being a jedi.

What I did want to talk about, however, is the whole concept of storytelling in games. Sadly enough, games don’t do these very well. Especially MMORPGs. World of Warcraft is a great game, and it has a huge backstory to it, but to be honest, every time I hear a bit of the story, I feel like I’m listening to something written by a ten year old who is trying to keep your attention while you’re driving and you’d rather listen to the radio. Every game I’ve ever played with Bioware has been one with a great story, even if the game wasn’t that great, although even that hasn’t been the case. Their games have generally been very good.

The problem is that it’s very hard to keep a gaming community based on storytelling alone. One reason WOW does so well has nothing to do with story but because it does gaming well. It’s a lot of fun, and it keeps people wanting to come back to the experience. With a game that is based on story alone, there’s only so long you can keep the player interested, especially if the story doesn’t change multiple times into the game. If you hit 50th level, and you have no new content to play through, the chances are pretty good you’re going to become very bored with the game, which means they either have to become like Blizzard and create a great gaming experience, or they’re going to have to keep reintroducing new story elements into the universe to keep up with their players. And keeping in mind that some of these players play 24/7, that’s a big order to fill.

I have great hopes for this game, mainly because I love the IP, and I love their storytelling elements. But if they can’t sustain it, then it will be one of those great footprints in the history of games, and that will be truly sad. So, here’s hoping they can keep it up, because if they do, they’ll always have me as a customer.

Learning to Code can sometimes be like learning to disarm nuclear weapons but harder

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A long time ago, I was learning the computer language COBOL. The first two books I went through were very simple. It was almost like learning to tie my shoes. And then the third book was like learning calculus right after learning subtraction. Nothing made sense. And everything before had almost no relevance to anything that came after.

I experienced that again today. I’ve been learning Objective C, Alice and XCode programming. It’s all been going well. As part of my learning, I’ve been following the Apple itunes demonstration lectures, and like COBOL, the first two were very simple, almost like learning how to plug in your computer. The third lecture started off with advanced algorithms that even Commander Data would have struggled with. And he went so fast, and the type was so small, and then out of the blue (due to time constraints) he decided to plug in predesigned code (to speed things up), and that’s right about the time I lost him (and it completely).

So I’m having to refigure where I am with this language, and now I’m discouraged. This happens a lot with computer languages. Something goes so easily, like they teach you how to program “Hello World” and then lesson two is how to break into the Pentagon and rewire their networks to get free HBO from the World Bank.

Having said that, I start teaching college classes again next week. I’ll try to make sure I don’t teach the same way I’ve been learning lately. I’d rather not have all of my students jumping off bridges.

Creating Apps, Programming and Just Plain Ole’ Creativity

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Recently, I mentioned that I had decided to start making apps. Originally, my thought was to program in Android, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Apple’s nefarious walled garden. But then I started to realize that all of my Internet stuff was involved with Mac/Apple, including my iPhone and my iPad, so I ended up buying a MacBook Pro and downloading Xcode to start using Objective C to write iPhone and iPad apps. So here I am.

What I discovered is that getting started is never easy. I think this is why most app designers never end up actually designing any apps. The learning curve is freaking huge. But once you get past it, you actually start to get somewhere. But man, what a journey that learning curve has been. I could give you an Odyssey-like journey of a story, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d rather just talk about creativity and design today.

You see, I used to be a computer programmer back in the day when there weren’t a whole lot of different languages for programming. I learned BASIC and then went to school and learned FORTRAN. Right after that, I taught myself COBOL. Shortly after that, I designed my own word processor and then one of the very first databases (in the days before Filemaker and Access were even considerations). That first database housed the Asian threat assessment for the US Forces in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. People from all over the Asian allied forces visited my office during that time just amazed that I was able to take a paper filing system of known threats and turn it into something that people could use to compare cases they were working on. At the time, there was no such thing as an Internet linkage system, so if you wanted to access the database, you had to come to my office and enter the names yourself. Or they’d phone me and ask me over the phone; there was no thought of phone surveillance back then. We were really naive back then.

Anyway, I had designed this back when few people had personal computers. At the time, I used a Wang computer system. Personally, I coded on a supped up Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV. Man, that thing was the shit back then. Now, it has less processing power than my $1.99 calculator I bought at Wal Mart.

But because I was in the military, the computer revolution quickly came and passed me by. I pretty much missed the whole thing. When I got out of the service, I had a few stints working for computer gaming companies like Maxis (working on Sim City and The Sims) and Electronic Arts, but it was pretty obvious that the programming world was changing quickly, and I was not keeping up with it.

For years, I kept telling myself I would get back into it. I created a bunch of games when I first started out, and I keep thinking that my way of coding is so much different than everyone else’s. I keep thinking I need to get back into it and develop something the way that only Duane might ever do. But I kept avoiding it and doing other things.

Then I decided to do the whole apps thing. And I’m learning. And right off the start, I’ve started to see a few things I would like to create that no one seems to be doing. And as I used to do back when I first started, I find myself wondering, why isn’t someone else coming up with these ideas, too? The self-indulgent part of me wants to say that I’m exceptional, but the cynic in me says that I’m not smarter or more innovative than anyone else. So why do I keep coming up with really bizarre ways to do things that other people aren’t? Some people look at Facebook and say, “wow, what a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.” I looked at Facebook when I first saw it (and just a few minutes ago) and think: Why would they have stopped with that? There were so many other things they could have done with it, things that could have enhanced these social communities, but instead they created an interactive business card model that keeps you informed what other people might be doing, kind of like a boring stalker who has nothing better to do. Anyway.

So, I’m starting to think this is the direction I should have been going a long time ago. Currently, as I learn to code through Xcode, Alice and Objective-C, I keep coming up with grandiose ideas of things I would like to do. And I keep finding myself wondering, why isn’t someone else already doing this? I sometimes feel like Socrates responding to the Oracle of Delphi who claimed he was the smartest man alive, and Socrates spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the Oracle. Well, the difference is: The Oracle never said I was the smartest guy alive. As a matter of fact, the Oracle would have had no idea who I was and would have shrugged his shoulders if asked about me in the first place. At least I have an easy task ahead of me because I don’t have to disprove anyone of anything, and no government will force me to drink hemlock because I taught society’s kids to question authority. Nowadays, Socrates would have been unknown as well, competing against people like Kim Kardasian and Paris Hilton and the whole concept of being famous for being famous. But I’m kind of rambling now as this wasn’t really the topic I wanted to discuss.

So I’m making apps now. And I’m writing my first post on my iPad’s Word Press app. It might not even make it to the server. Hell, if I designed it, it would do all sorts of fun things, but knowing my attention to detail, “publish” would be the one thing I’d have forgotten, never thinking that was all that interesting to begin with. I guess there’s something to be said for practicalities. I hear they can be useful.

What it All Comes Down to

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I guess it’s time for another update on what’s going on, what’s on my mind, and where I think things are going.

1. My Readership. I suspect I really don’t have anyone reading this blog (my main one). It gets printed also on Open Salon, which might grant me a few readers there, but even there it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not anyone actually reads (or cares about) anything I have to say. I also import my blogs to my Facebook profile, and even though I have a bunch of “friends” there, I suspect practically no one reads anything I have to say there either.

It’s a real problem for a writer who wants to be taken seriously when no one reads anything he has to say. It gets really frustrating. I mean, Snooki can write a book and it becomes a bestseller based on her outrageous behavior alone, but a consistent writer generally has to kill someone in order to get anyone to read his stuff. And they wonder why so many literary types kill themselves before they ever become famous, often discovered after they blew their brains out over the frustration of trying to actually make it as a writer or an artist.

This means when I post my blog, I get tons of traffic, but I suspect it’s a bunch of bots that are trying to get people to buy their shit rather than actual people reading my blog. My spam filter logs dozens of spam messages a day, which are all the type that say something like: “Read your posting, and I completely agree with you. You should try out this new version of sex medication which can be found at….” Yeah, it gets really annoying and frustrating.

But just because I suspect one of my stuffed animals might be reading this by tapping into my wifi at home, I’ll continue….

2. Snow. I really hate it. I do. I’m not from Michigan, even though I live here. I’m from California, and if I could afford to live there or could have ever found a job there, I would be there right now. I hate the snow. I hate the cold. I turned on my heater two nights ago for the first time (been using an electrical set of heaters all Winter long), and it was so much nicer than just being able to heat up one small room, and not very well either. Even though my electrical heater could get the room up to about 70 or so, it felt like it was 45. I’m now using my real heater, even though it’s expensive as hell. But I can’t take the cold any more. I really hate it here.

3. The Whole Nook vs. Kindle Debate. I’ve written a few articles on this because I bought both a Nook Color and the $189 Kindle 3G + Wifi. I’ve completely given up on the Nook. I had two subscriptions to magazines with the Nook Color (Consumer Reports and the New York Times Book Review). I gave up trying to get the Nook to download Consumer Reports. It would start to download and then just stop. I would check the wifi signal, and it would register as fine. After three days of trying to download a magazine I already paid for, I gave up, cancelled my subscriptions and I will never use the Nook again. Contest over. The Kindle wins. It might not look as nice, but at least I can actually get content onto it. The Nook Color is a piece of shit that should never have been sold to people. I will never recommend it to anyone ever again.

4. Egypt. Things are probably going to get really interesting now that Mubarak went on the air and basically told the protesters: “I hear you, but I just wanted to say go fuck yourselves. Have a nice day.” He’s decided that even though people are out in the streets risking their lives, he’s not leaving. The Army has now backed him, which means that one of two things are probably going to happen. They’ll crack down on the protesters, and this will be one of those sorry moments in human history that people try to forget when talking about how great a people we are, or the people are going to end up going the way of the French Revolution, overthrowing the government and killing Mubarak if he doesn’t escape out of the country first. If you’re a dictator, and you pretty much give the finger to your people when they demand you step down, you really don’t have a lot of options that can play out from that moment on. I mean, all sorts of things can happen, but right now, it’s going to be a slaughter of people unless a whole lot of people back down, and when people are backed into a corner, they usually strike back instead of back down. Unless they’re Americans. Then they either sue you or back down and say that they want to spend more time with their families.

5. Relationships. I don’t know anything about this subject. I’m not in one. I don’t recognize one when I am in one. I don’t even know what women are, although I see movies with them in it, so I do believe they might exist, although I can’t verify it in person.

6. Politics in the USA. We’re going to be heading towards another presidential election with no electable people in the Republican Party, a current president who has done nothing to be reelected, other than make arousing speeches that don’t translate to actual action, and a whole lot of self-important politicians who think they deserve to be the next leaders of the free (in theory, at least) world. Right now, the front runners for the Republican Party seem to be Sarah Palin (the joke that keeps giving), Newt Gingrich (a pompous airbag that comes installed as standard equipment), a just-announced “I’m seriously considering it” Donald Trump (another rich buffoon who thinks that being rich translates to leadership potential), and a bunch of other people no one knows, has ever heard of, or cares one iota about whatsoever. So, right now, I’m calling it a boring presidential election where we reelect Jimmy Carter, um, Obama.

7. The Academy Awards. A bunch of movies I didn’t see, don’t want to see, and don’t care about, are competing for the top honors this year. As you can guess, I’m holding my breath in anticipation.

8. SyFy Becomes Shark Attack Channel. I don’t know when this happened, but my favorite channel (I remember actually asking a television station provider if they carried the SyFy Channel and not caring about any others) went from being a station with original science fiction programming with shows like Stargate SG1. Atlantis, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Battlestar Galactica (then Caprica), some variation of Star Trek, and lots of that sort of stuff. Now, it’s Man-Killing Shark and really bizarre movie of the week crap that stars Erik Estrada as a small town sheriff who is fighting a shark that has grown feet and chases people on the beach, but Estrada, who plays Skip William, is afraid of sharks because a shark killed his family in a drive-by shooting in Compton. Okay, that’s not a real show, but it should be. Who stole my SyFy Channel?

9. The Federal Budget is Out of Control. Um, when has it ever not been? We’re approaching the debt ceiling in February, when they told us that if we didn’t do things right, we’d be hitting that debt ceiling by September. Um, it’s FEBRUARY and we’re already arguing for having to increase the limit. And this is the government that’s trying to FIX the economy? Really?

10. Facebook Went Public. I laughed my ass off when I heard it was going to happen. If ever there was a bubble corporation that has absolutely no value whatsoever being sold for so many billions, I couldn’t find one. At least GM makes cars. At least Microsoft puts out a browser or operating system every now and then. But what does Facebook actually produce? Your content. Your friends. Your information. In other words, not a damn thing. Yet, they’re bad boy of leadership is now a multi-billionaire, and they’ve been launched as a fake IPO (a real one wasn’t done because the SEC would have hit them with all sorts of legal injunctions, which should automatically tell everyone something’s not on the up and up, but even that doesn’t cause people to take notice). Yeah, I use Facebook, but it’s such a non-entity in the grand scheme of things and is really only as important as it is at any one moment, knowing that it can go the way of Myspace in a second. Or like AOL, which still tries to regain some importance. Or sadly, like Blockbuster, that sad commentary of a video rental store that hasn’t realized it was obsolete ten years ago.

11. Verizon’s iPhone. Finally. Not that I want an iPhone on Verizon, but now I don’t have to read 10,000 stories manufactured by CNN about how great it would be to have the iPhone on Verizon. It’s there now. Leave me alone and stop hyping the stupid thing on your news site. Nobody really cares, as we discovered when no one lined up at the early Verizon Store openings that day, letting the event come and go without much fanfare. Nobody really cared.

12. Groupon’s Super Bowl Ad. All of the people who are upset about this incident don’t want to even deal with the ramifications of what really happened. First off, they all got upset at the ad where Groupon poked fun at itself by using the controversy of China and Tibet as its canvas. Well, here’s what they’re not getting, won’t get, and especially won’t ever own up to. The humor went over their heads. Not that they didn’t get it. It went OVER their heads, meaning they had to be smart enough to realize what was going on. Consider the source. It came from the direction of Christopher Guest, who is well known for creating comedy that not everyone gets, mainly because it pokes fun at people who are on stage and represents entire groups of people who when they watch it don’t always realize they’re being seen as the morons they really are because they’re so locked into their own little worlds that they are incapable of realizing the rest of the world sees them as ridiculous. It was the exact same humor used with Groupon, and of course, the people watching it were not Christopher Guest fans. They were Super Bowl fans, which I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we’re talking about two completely different intellectual mindsets here. Fill in the blanks to figure out which one I’m probably insulting here. I don’t really care. I’m not selling ads. Those people just didn’t get it and went nuts against Groupon. Why am I not surprised? I’m also not surprised that no one else is either.

13. Lindsay Lohan’s Theft Charge. Okay, I’ll admit it. I enjoy reading about the many demises of Lindsay Lohan. I don’t know her, I’m not a fan, and I probably shouldn’t care. But it’s like watching a train wreck happen in front of me. I probably should call 911 for help, but I can’t stop watching. I don’t get the same trill out of Charlie Sheen. Nothing about him fascinates me, nor does his drama. Lohan’s, on the other hand, completely fascinates me because I keep thinking that ir probably won’t get any worse, and then it does. I don’t even think she stole the thing, but that’s not even what keeps me interested. What keeps me interested is how someone can take her fame and continue to destroy her career, her future and any support from the community that she might ever have. Just the other day, her legal team says that it’s not going to deal with the allegations in public; they’ll deal with it in court. Then the first day of the trial, Lohan tweets her whole ordeal to the public, trying it out in the public again, even though that’s exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.

I can’t stop watching.

14. Writing. I’m taking a break from my current novel and working on a screenplay. Then I’ll be working on a word text game app that I’m designing for the android platform. I realized recently that there aren’t a whole lot of word text games out there any more, and I think it would be fun to create a new one. I remember how fun they were to create back when we were first designing computer games for the early systems, before graphics took over the industry.

That’s really it for now. If you’re actually reading this, let me know. I’d really like to know that there are people actually reading the blog.

Revisiting Old Computer Games

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Over the last weekend, I was taking a break from writing, and I found myself looking for a computer game to play. I was already tired of the current crop of games out there, so I was looking for something new, different, or just not the same old game. So I went onto Steam’s site, looking for a game to download, and that’s when I came across an old gem of a game I played the crap out of in the day. It was a game called Space Rangers 2.

Space Rangers 2 is a weird, quirky game, which is about the best way to describe it. It takes place in the year 3300, or something like that, and the galaxy is pretty much ours to explore. You play a space ranger who has been recruited to the, oh I don’t know, the space rangers? and it is your job to pretty much do whatever it is you want to do, and you get paid to do it. You run around space either doing good, doing evil, doing errands, or just doing stupid things. It’s really your choice. In the end, you fight a race of computers called The Dominators, and as you get more powerful and stronger, you wage better war against them. It’s that sort of game.

The interesting thing about the game, aside from the usual playability, is that it was created by the Russians. So it’s an import, and it’s not the best import ever either, which adds a bit of flavor to the game. There’s some voice acting to it (very little) and it sounds like someone trying to not sound like Arnold Schwarzeneger. The writing is actually pretty good, but the translation is sometimes absurd. There are word text games in the mix, so whenever you end up with one of those, it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not you can complete the mission because sometimes the answers you have to give just don’t make any logical sense. There’s one mathematical puzzle that sounds something like: “Hey, you space ranger guy, you needs to tells me the answer to the question some that I tell you so that kind of you know sound like a fifteen that takes the eighteen for the hopscotch ritual. So which has you? A. 254, B. 738, C. The Continent of Praxmire, D. Yodeling. Answer correctly or we kills you!” You probably get the idea that sometimes “quirky” is a kind word.

But the game is fun. I played it all weekend long until I just exhausted myself and had to go to bed at night. And then I’d start playing it again in the morning.

So, there’s something to be said for some of those old games. I just wish I could find more of them that are just as fun to play as that one has been.

Bioware is Ripping Off Gamers Again

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Last year, one of the better games to come out was one called Dragon Age, and it was created by famed game design company Bioware. I’ve been a huge fan of Bioware for many years, mainly because they created some of the best roleplaying games known to mankind, like Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. Well, they’ve recently been working on the sequel to Dragon Age, appropriately called Dragon Age II, and like most gamers, I’ve been looking forward to it. But part of me has been a bit apprehensive, and let me explain why.

When I was playing Dragon Age last year, there was a point in the game where I found myself staring at the computer, wondering if the game was actually taking me seriously. Let me explain futher. You see, a lot of games have what’s called downloadable content (often abbreviated as DLC). This is almost always new content designed for the game after the game has been released, where the developer has figured out new ways to expand the adventure. Sometimes, it’s new armor or weapons, and quite often it’s completely new quests and adventures. For someone who has played through a game, when new content like that gets released, you jump for joy, enter your credit card information, pay a nominal fee, and you’re off slashing at enemies again.

Well, in Dragon Age, there’s a certain part of the game which is considered a rest area, where your characters set up a camp, and you can go talk to the individual members of your group. It’s often a neat way to explore the quests that exists with secondary characters. If there’s a new quest, Dragon Age had a way of showing you this which was blatantly stolen from World of Warcraft, but you see an exclamation point above the character’s head and go talk to him, or her. Well, one of those characters had that exclamation point over his head, and I went to talk to him, but his conversation was different from the others. Unlike the others who gave me more information, he was essentially telling me that if I wanted to explore his adventure, I would have to buy downloadable content from Bioware first, and he even offered me an opportunity to exit the game and go buy that DLC. Yes, it was very tacky. But I was interested, and it wasn’t that expensive, so even though I felt dirty entering my credit card information, almost as dirty as some woman on the other end of the phone asking me for my credit card information before pretending to be a naughty schoolgirl. Okay, not as dirty, but definitely not as fun.

This, to me, was a pretty tacky way to do it, but I figured that this was how they had added some of their extra content, and it was probably patched into the game a few patches after the game was released. Pretty tacky, but I was willing to go along with it.

Well, on Tuesday, January 7, Bioware announced new DLC for Dragon Age II. Great, except there’s one caveat. Dragon Age II hasn’t even been released yet. In other words, Bioware has announced downloadable content that will cost $7.00, and the game hasn’t even gone gold (been released). As many gamers are sure to immediately think, this is ridiculous, as this is something that should have been released with the original game because this isn’t “after the game has been released after thought material”. This is material being released WITH the game.

Part of the problem is that Dragon Age II isn’t some game that is going to be released for $19.99 and this is a way of making up some of the lost cash. No, Dragon Age II is going to be released and charged at the maximum a game can be charged. This is straight out greed in the name of stupid profit. It’s looking at the gamers and saying, hey, fuck you and give me more money.

What’s really also happening is that every other developer out there is going to be watching this to see what happens, and next thing you know, games are going to be released half done, and then they’ll charge you for the other half of the game. But they’ll release the game at full price the first time and then like a blackmailing girlfriend with pictures of you and her and a midget, she’s going to charge you to get the full experience.

I may not buy Dragon Age II because of this. As much as I respect Bioware, this is a line that shouldn’t have been crossed. It’s not like they’re not going to be making insane profits anyway. This is just a way of them saying, we know you’re all a bunch of stupid kids, so pay up or we’re not going to let you play our game.

Well, there are always other games.

Civilization V Review–A Lot Like An Old Friend Who Can’t Remember Your Name

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I’ve been a big fan of the Civilization PC game series since the very first one came out. Sid Meier is considered one of the gods of computer gaming, and there’s a good reason for it. He completely understood what gamers like, and he brought that experience to each and every one of us who paid money to pay that series of games.

Civilization I was a great game that introduced us to the idea that you could make a great board game into a wonderful computer game. It literally invented the term “just one more move” for gamers who realized it was getting late, and they had to stop or they’d never get any sleep.

Civilization II pretty much redesigned the game from scratch and realized that there was no way it could just rest on its laurels. It had to do much more, and it did. Most gamers who are familiar with the series will argue that this was the zenith of the series, and the game just didn’t get any better.

Civilization III didn’t do a lot for me. It was okay, but I still loved Civilization II.

Civilization IV was the real successor to Civilization II. It really enhanced the graphics engine, and when they released the expansion pack, Beyond the Sword, the game was just amazing.

And then they released Civilization V. I’ve played it now for a few days, and I have to say that it’s obvious that it’s a sequel, but at the same time it’s also somewhat obvious that the designers of this game were not the designers of the previous games. Or they are, but they all had Alzheimer’s while designing it (apologizes to anyone who suffers from, or knows anyone suffering from, Alzheimer’s) because it’s like they forgot some of the elements that made the originals so great. They really dummied the game, and I couldn’t believe they did it. It’s like somewhere down the line some executive at Firaxis decided that they had to appeal to the console crowd with the new game. They weren’t happy being one of the greatest selling game franchises ever; they wanted to do so much more. And they did it by doing so much less.

There are so many places in the game where I found myself thinking, why would you do this? When I was having conversations with world leaders, I kind of expected that there would at least be a tool tip or something explaining to me what the hell a Treaty of Secrecy might mean before I had to decide yes or no whether or not to grant one. Civ IV did that. But not Civ V. Instead, you make a blind choice and then look it up on the Civilopedia, where all the information is contained, and suprisingly, it’s extremely vague. It’s like they had Todd, the guy who goes to get sodas for the group when they’re busy making the game, decide on what to put in the game information and then they forgot to let him play the game first to at least be able to fill in some of that information.

The whole game feels that way sometimes. And some of the bigger issues that happened in the earlier games are just glossed over. Religion is not an issue any more. Most stuff is gone. Now, you just gather up culture, like you’d gather health ups in a first person shooter, except they just kind of gather on their own over time. Yeah, it’s really dummied down.

The game is somewhat okay, but there are no real ways to customize a game. The interface for customization appears almost as if they decided to release the game and then fill it in later. There is also no way to design the world, like the famous World Builder in Civ IV. The fans on the message boards say that Firaxis is going to release that at a later date. That’s really ominous, the kind of thing I’d expect from a money grubbing company like EA, rather than Firaxis.

The game’s okay, and wonderful if you’ve never played a Civilization game before, but I’m somewhat underwhelmed. I’m sure the patches and addons will add more, but honestly, we’re purchasing a game on the assumption that the designers and the game community will fill in the blanks. That’s a horrible situation to be in, and I’m very disappointed in the whole Sid Meier franchise. I used to believe they were a lot like Blizzard and Bioware, in that they could do no wrong.

I hate to be proven wrong.

All Common Sense Aside, a Virtual Girlfriend Sounds Like a Great Idea

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I know we like to rag on the Japanese for adopting really ridiculous concepts like having virtual relationships with cartoon characters from computer games, but after thinking about it a bit, I’m starting to think that maybe they’re onto something here.

I mean, let’s face it. I haven’t done all that well with human girls/women. The few I’ve dated have either been completely nuts, strippers, professional dominatrices, or hell-bent Asian martial artists who have been bred with the sole purpose of destroying both my physical and immortal souls. And I’ll even admit that I’ve dated a few women who fit ALL of those categories. (the sad thing is, I’m not kidding)

So, I started thinking that perhaps I might do better if I just started dating fake women. You know, computer generated women who are designed to be what a real person might actually be looking for.

And then I started to realize that I’m not a normal person either. I have no idea what it is I’m looking for. To be honest, I was looking for exactly those crazy women I already mentioned previously when I found them, so I’m not sure I’m really the best judge of what’s best for me. Because they were pretty damn hot when I hooked up with them. You would have thought the ominous Satan music always playing in the background (when there was no actual music playing) should have been a dead give-away each time I was on a date with them, but when you’re out with a woman who looks a lot like a supermodel, you sort of overlook little things like cute animals keeling over dead whenever she comes near. I mean, a relationship is a compromise, right?

But a virtual woman seems like she’d be that much easier to handle. Okay, having seen movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, I should probably know better, but it sounds like such a fool-proof plan, kind of like that big ocean-liner they made in the early 20th century, or that awesome plan to get into Afghanistan and Iraq overnight, but I’m not really one who learns from earlier mistakes. I mean, I went back to a woman three times after she dumped me twice for “something better that just happened to come along”.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to move to Japan, buy a gaming device that they use to court this imaginary girlfriend. I mean, what can possibly go wrong with this plan?

Lawsuits May Destroy Future Creativity of America

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I know people don’t think about these things, but I was just reading an interesting news story about how NAMCO, the creating company of Pac-Man, has sent a take down order to a bunch of students at MIT who were using Scratch to re-create Pac-Man. In other words, while teaching themselves out to create games, they created a simple game and then used that learn how to make more complex games. Makes sense. But if NAMCO has its way, no one will be able to re-create Pac-Man, even if it is for the sake of learning how to program.

Think about that for a moment and then think about the ramifications. Well, let me put it in other terms that might help point out the significance. I’ll use the TV show Survivors, or the movie The Road, or the Book of Eli, or any other dystopian disaster flick, to explain. Imagine that you had no more technology left and had to learn from scratch (for lack of better word). Well, if you did it the normal way, you would have to learn by reinventing the wheel, so to speak. Well, imagine if some company had made it impossible to reinvent the wheel, but wanted you to have to invent a brand new car without having to learn how to make a wheel first. Start to see the problem?

Computer programmers learn by adding on to what was learned before. That’s innovation in the software world. They don’t arbitrarily just create new code out of the blue without first knowing what has been done before them. It’s like an architect who is expected to develop post-modernism without first understanding modernism. Okay, not a great example, but you probably get the point.

This is the problem we’re running into with a lawsuit mentality in this country. Patents, trademarks and lawsuits make it so that people are running around claiming common ground so that no one else can possibly duplicate anything that is so basic that it needs to be used in order to do something else. Imagine if Ford had patented the “car” so that no one else could ever make a car. What if the Wright Brothers had patented the “plane”? Same thing. Or if Random House had patented the “book”. While these patents are designed to reward the inventor, at the same time they stifle the innovation of future creators.

Recently, LucasFilm attempted to stop a company from making an industrial laser because it looked too much like a Star Wars lightsaber. Finally, after a media storm kind of made Lucas look REALLY STUPID, Lucas turned around and declared that it felt the company making the lasers was apologetic enough to be left alone to make their–not like Star Wars in any way–lightsaber…I mean, laser.

Hopefully, NAMCO will wise up. If not, I hope they get as much ridicule as they deserve because that’s exactly what they’re going to get by going after MIT students with a desist order in order to protect intellectual property that has stopped making money decades ago.