New Music Video

My latest Anima Tactics video project is complete:



Also, Anima Tactics gave me my first "Kitsune" model to paint. This was a major "leveling up" project of mine where I learned to use Sakura Micropigment art pens to do detail work. Actually I first learned to use them on the Church agent I submitted for the Cipher Studios agent contest, but I did better work with the pens on this model. I'll probably do more videos on how I painted her in the future.

St...Ubidsoft

Didn't realize two days ago I was going to be writing about the next big webcomic topic.

I have to strongly disagree with CAD and "But I think that the crucifying of these companies for even trying to combat pirates needs to stop."

What needs to stop is the companies crucifying their own customers in the name of "stopping piracy". Which it obviously doesn't. In fact there is an inverse relationship in most games. Pick any game with drastic DRM measures and you'll generally find it is one of the most pirated games.

Seriously, read the interview Ubisoft gave with PCGamer and tell me if that sounds like a company which cares as its customers anything more than a tap to the money supply.

Do Ubisoft understand that we don't want to be permanently online?
They've spotted the outcry, yes. "We know that requiring a permanent online connection is not a happy point for a lot of PC gamers, but it is necessary for the system to work.

So yeah, we know our paying customers hate it. But we haven't to stick it to our customers because they're people and people are also pirates... or some kind of logic like that I haven't figured out.

Personally I hope someone sues them for false advertising. They're still claiming to sell you a game, but you own nothing. All you're doing is paying to rent restricted access to their servers. As soon as they decide it isn't making enough money they'll pull the plug and you'll being holding exactly nothing.

Ubisoft... Uber soft in the head?

Ubisoft is following in EA's footsteps now with stupid Draconian DRM to punish you for being a paying customer and rewarding you for just pirating their games instead. I don't support piracy, but it seems some people at Ubisoft want to reward those pirateers for their work.

Looks like I may only be buying PC games from Stardock and its partners for the foreseeable future.

This just in... The Empire

Another Anima Tactics video. The Empire Strikes Back!

An additional blog

Because evidently this blog isn't enough for me to keep up on these days, I agreed to contribute articles specifically about wargaming at the Warmonger Gameday blog. If you're only interest is miniatures and not other types of games you might prefer to follow me there rather than here.

Oh, and a new Battle Report from my youtube channel:

Family Gaming

Things have mostly been pretty good and we've been getting in more gaming as a family. The Wii game "Pirates Vs Ninjas Dodgeball" has been a huge hit in my house. Also, the Wii game DDR 2 has added a second dance pad and now dancing has become a huge family activity. Having games that one can enjoy with your children really helps bring the family together. The Wii has seen a surge of activity and my body is feeling better for the extra exercise. My Shoulders have even been quite sore a few nights from boxing. Plus I can feel my heart getting stronger again from all the vigorous dancing as Dance Dance Revolution puts me through the paces. Meanwhile seeing my kids get more into gaming as they get old enough to enjoy it has me very excited for the future.

I look forward to when my kids are old enough to introduce to roleplaying games. It is still years off, but the linked article makes me look forward to playing Shadowrun 3rd edition or Anima: Beyond Fantasy with new generation of gamers. Sooner than that we might get into the minaitures board game "Descent" if my kids are interested in it.

On my birthday I finally got to try out my copy of Runebound: Frozen Wastes expansion. It was a good expansion. I'm not sure if I like it more than the base game, but it was a lot of fun to mix it up and do something different. The Frozen Wastes expansion makes movement much, much more important. The game is also more competitive as you actually feel driven to keep up with others so the weather doesn't kill you and they don't beat you to winning the game or getting the good treasure. If you're a Runebound player it is definitely worth getting to get some more life out of your Runebound game.

For those of you interested in a good debate about gaming you can go have a debate about Violence in Video games. Worth checking out though both sides of the debate are getting very stale to me in my opinion.Honestly, this isn't new territory. Video games just seem to be a new emerging media to target.

Spammers be gone

Okay, I've disabled anonymous posting because I'm tired of filtering spam. Not that anyone ever had anything worthwhile to say while anonymous.

Play nice!