R.I.P. December 27, 2011

Rest in Peace Go-Daddy (who thought internet censorship was a good idea) and Ocean Marketing (Customer service shouldn't belittle their customers) which are both companies circling round the toilet bowl today. 

Lessons for any company that wants to stay in business. Learn who your customers are, be nice to them and don't try to screw them over with government intrusion. Also, treat your customers with respect. Word of mouth was damaging to companies a couple thousand years ago. With the invention of the internet, Word of Mouth got a lot more powerful.

This doesn't have much to do with Gaming

... but you should watch it anyways.

What games do you want?

It is almost Christmas time so lets see some wishlists. Even if you know you won't get it, what do you want that is currently out? For me it is these in no particular order:

• Serious Sam 3 (PC)
• The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild (Tabletop RPG)
• Those Who Walked Amongst Us (Tabletop RPG)
• Kirby's Return to Dreamland (Wii)
• Deus Ex (PC)
• The Oregon Trail (Wii)
• More models for Anima Tactics
• Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)

Feel free to post some of your own lists.

This is how you stop online "Piracy"

Serious Sam: BFE "Begone Freeloading Enemies" has introduced a clever way of dealing with pirates. Stick an unkillable foe that follows them and torments them in the game. Way to go Croteam!

He is done

Natakue is done with Greed Workshop and I think it is about time. What do you think?

A Touch of Evil

So for the last two months "A Touch of Evil" has been the game of choice for my local group of gamers on a friday night. This game by Flying Frog Productions seems to hit all the key points for use to enjoy it. Wonderfully thematic like Arkham Horror, "A Touch of Evil" is very hammer horror movie inspired. It has the roleplaying feel of an in-depth Fantasy Flight game but is far simpler to setup and play so that the Eurogame fans in our group are willing to play it. It has competitive, cooperative, and team play to satisfy all of us. In fact we have so far been playing almost entirely team based.

For the Anima Tactics fans

Here is another little Black Sun sneak peek. You are free to repost it and discuss it, just be sure to mention you saw it here first!

Cool stuff from PAX

Okay, barring any bad things from Google here is my long overdue post about PAX. So I'll break out the Geek Chic bell display and hope to keep away all the bad things.

Updates coming again!

Yay! Google got pictures working again. So now in addition to the below blog entry I can get caught up on a host of blog entries including PAX, A Touch of Evil, D&D, and a lot more.

Oh, and the job situation is looking very good for a change. So look for a lot more goodies in the coming weeks!

The Hunter: An Anima Tactics sneak peek

I got the permission from the guys at Cipher Studios to show this beauty off!

What do you think?

Blogger bugs

Well, I wanted to post some PAX updates with lots of pictures. But Blogger is bugging out and all my pictures get miscolored. Fix it Google!

Also, my posting time is pretty well limited to Sundays as I'm working 6 day weeks. I still want to talk about all the awesome stuff which happened at PAX this year and fun and excitement to come!

PAX Exhaustion

Oni outside PAX

Still too tired and things are too crazy to really write up everything that went on at PAX. So detailed reviews are going to take some days or weeks to get published. Initial takes though was that this PAX was bigger than ever before for good and bad. I do not know how they will cope in future years as PAX is already busting at the seems for all the convention center has to offer.

I wasn't as impressed with the PC and video game offerings compared to years past. That isn't to say there weren't still a few real gems to be found there. I was more impressed with the board game offerings even though I wasn't as impressed with some of the game companies like Fantasy Flight which didn't seem to have anything to show off post Gencon. They didn't even have some of the things they had at Gencon like the new Anima Beyond Fantasy RPG book.

(I feel asleep last night writing this blog, so I'll end it here)

This is PAX weekend!

I guess I will be blogging a lot in the near future.

Presenting: Maria

The latest addition to my Church force is Maria, and the latest addition to my useful Samael advantage cards is Chaos!

Gamefly Review

So I recently finished a 6 month subscription to Gamefly. I've heard a lot of other reviews of Gamefly both positive and negative so I thought I would throw in my own.

I got the service initially because there were a lot of Wii games I was interested in, but I knew that a lot of them were just garbage and I did not want to buy them unknown or pay blockbuster video's expensive video rental. For the price of two blockbuster videos a month I could simply have gamefly mail them and not worry about blockbuster's availability. Unfortunately at the beginning due to living in the Seattle area I only got two games a month. Initially they didn't have a service center west of the Rockies but this was remedied a few months in with a new distribution center right here in Seattle. This changed the service from waiting a week to a week and a half to get a new game in the mail to getting a new game within 2 mailing days. Vast improvement! 

Miskatonic University Student

I was going to wait until my next game of Arkham Horror to write this, but I decided to get in my first impressions of the new Miskatonic Horror expansion while it is still fresh. The idea of an expansion for the base game and all the expansions of Arkham Horror is a bit off-putting. In practice I think it actually works great and it is a fix for all the Arkham Horror expansions that have been out for a long time and are well known (The revised Dark Pharoah being the exception).

I feel much better now

It has been a long while, so here is a badly done unboxing video of Miskatonic Horror

So tired

The good jobs just doesn't last long enough. I'm so tired of a really long commutes for poor pay to work with unpleasant people. More blog posting will hopefully come with the next job.

Wow, I need to support this game company

I'm really encouraged by how many in the gaming community are coming together to support Japan and the Japanese in its crisis. Square-Enix is giving 100 million yen to support the recovery effort in Japan, in addition to shutting down its massive reveneue generating online game servers in Japan for Final Fantasy 11 and 14. I just can't picture very many american or european companies shutting down their ability to make money for the greater good of the country. Nexon is also donating millions to the cause of japanese relief.

But the most impressive to me was NCSoft who is donating 500 million yen, about 1 months revenue to them to aid with the Japanese recovery. More importantly, NCsoft is a Korean company and Korea and Japan do not have a friendly history towards each other. Many older Japanese and Koreans still bear major grudges towards each other. Japan occupied Korea prior to WW1 and held onto it until the end of WW2. So for NCSoft to send a huge some of money of say their thoughts and prayers are with them is a huge deal.

Way to go NCSoft, guess I'm definitely going to have to buy Guild Wars 2 and give it a try. Because that is the type of company I want to support.

I'm glad someone said it...

From Game Politics:

Minecraft Creator: Piracy Isn't Theft

Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson told attendees of the GDC Indie Games Summit that the notion of piracy as being theft is incorrect.

"Piracy is not theft," said Persson during the session. "If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world. There is no such thing as a 'lost sale.' Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?"

Persson suggested to attendees that many developers see pirates not as "inherently evil, but as potential customers." Persson also took on comments made by Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata, saying that his criticism of small and rampant mobile and social games excludes the fact that games such as Minecraft are more of a service than a one-time purchase. Persson said that games such as his creation and Angry Birds are constantly adding updates and new content and that both have incredible sales numbers.

"Treat game development as a service," he said. "Make a game last longer than a week. You can't pirate an online account."

It is amazing how well it works for business when you treat your customers better than than the pirates. One of the reasons I believe piracy is so rampant, is that there are often more rewards for being a pirate than an honest customer with many companies. That DRM (Digital Rights Management software) which can destroy your computer is no risk on a pirated version, which is only all the more reason to pirate what they put the DRM on!

I would hope this attitude would catch on, but I've worked too long in the corporate world. Power corrupts, and it is as true in the business world as it appears to be in the political one.

PAX is good for families

So I haven't posted in... way too long. I'm surprised I still have loyal readers who keep coming back to check! I keep changing jobsand throwing my life into disarray, which takes precedence over blogging for me.

Anyways a while back I read Scott Jennings rant on Penny Arcade and PAX.

Scott Jennings:

But the problem is PAX. PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, has fairly quickly become the primary go-to convention for gamer culture – what everyone who tried to sneak into E3 thought E3 was supposed to be. Lots of lan parties, game demos, 2nd tier science fiction actors, and Jonathan Coulton concerts. Geek nirvana, essentially. And game companies have embraced PAX because of that critical mass of success.

Basically "the problem" is he doesn't think people should support PAX because the people behind PAX are also the people behind Penny Arcade. Like maybe we shouldn't support whatever company he works for because of his opinions on his blog? Penny Arcade is an adult and often offensive webcomic. It is my third favorite webcomic and I can firmly say it is third because as much as it sometimes makes me laugh it can not infrequently gross me out and much more frequently offend me. Not as badly as "Saturday Night Live" has a penchant for grossing me out and offending me (i.e. Ambigously Gay Duo), but still all the same Penny Arcade does. So should I boycott every Dan Akroyd movie because he was one of the creative minds behind SNL?

Maybe Scott Jennings would like to denounce Child's Play too? The charity which raises millions of dollars to help out hospitalized children all around the world on behalf of gamers, typically the youngest generation who are normally less likely to be involved with charity?

Here is my take. You don't want to support evil, but Penny Arcade is in no way evil and it is the free expression of a couple of artists which you don't have to follow if you don't want to. PAX and Child's play are entirely separate entities. There is no good reason not to support them if you feel like it.

So just because I go to PAX every year and take my two daughters, doesn't mean any of us are supporting over endowed wolves or sex offending fruit juicers. It does mean we support gaming and having fun!