E3

So it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I’d like to get back in the swing of things.

So I’ll talk about my opinions of the showing at E3.  Thus far, I’ve really shyed away from purchasing a 7th generation console, because none of the three consoles have much that really appeals to me that I haven’t already beaten. I was hoping E3 would really push me one way or the other, but it hasn’t.

I felt all three consoles had fantastic conferences. Microsoft announced Crackdown 2 and Metal Gear Solid Rising. They also displayed a Natal tech demo, which was quite impressive (Although essentially EyeToy 2). Nintendo showed off some more with the Motion Plus, Mario Galaxy 2, and Metroid: Other M, the latter of which really blew me away. Sony discussed more stuff for the PSP, God of War III, Grand Turismo and Final Fantasy XIII and XIV. Oh, and the EyeToy 2.

So I’m still not sold on any of the systems. Or more accurately, I’m sold on all of them equally. It will still be a while until I have enough money for one of the three, so I’ll wait and see.

So I was dead for a little while.

Alright, I slacked off for more than 6 months.  I wasn’t actually slacking off, but bad things happened to me one after another and I became busier and busier to the point that maintaining a blog was no longer an interest or priority for me.  Part way through the summer the film project I was working with my friends on fell apart due to a lack of cast. I lost my job because the agency I worked for over-hired by mistake. My girlfriend gave up on the long distance relationship we had. I began to work on Crash TV as the main producer/director (something I mentioned before on this blog), but it really happened when I was at a low point psychologically.  All of my ambition dissolved and I no longer had a desire to run the show, but I had already signed the contract for the season. I worked on the show nearly continuously all the time and spent most of the semester hunched over a computer. While that kept my mind off my lack of money, lack of job and lack of ambition, the end result was not exactly what I hoped.  I feel I improved the show over what it was in the spring, but not to the point that was where I thought it should be.

In the end, I’m glad I now have the experience, but I don’t want to run a show like that again. Especially without a more reliable crew. Now I’ve gotten a bit better and have more time on my hands, so I will now try to update this on  a more regular basis.

On another note, my game review site will be shutting down.  I’ll still give reviews of games and such, but no longer on that site or in that form.  Sorry.

Blood example

I found a photo of the fake blood we used.  We tested the recipe by throwing it on stuff and seeing if we thought it looked good.  Personally, I think it feels about right, and I think it’s not bad looking either.

Updates (and fake blood)

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

Well, I’ve been a bit busy, but I’ll be working on catching up some the next couple days.  As far as the movie goes, we’ve not filmed a lot, but we have a lot of special effects up and rolling.  The most important being fake blood.  We’ve tried several recipes, but we ran into a couple problems we needed to over come: First, the blood needed to look realistic, Second, the blood needed to be cheap to produce. Third, mostly optional, the blood needed to be safe.

In the end, food coloring became really price prohibitive and very difficult to find.  I don’t know why.  When I didn’t need any, it seemed so cheap and easy to locate.  Our final mixture is actually dark corn syrup and cherry “cool splashers” which is basically kool-aid.  The mixture is not only good looking, but also delicious.  In fact, I would consider using it as a replacement to icing on a cake or pastry.

Missing Video

Alright, I admit it.  I said I would be uploading a video on Friday and it’s not here.  It ended up not being created.  With finals and stuff all going on, we eventually decided that we would make it for the fall semester when I’m leading the show.  I’ve also now filled out my contracts, so I’m officially in control of the show for the fall.

Net Neutrality and No More Virginity

I seriously didn’t think I would ever write something with that title.  But no, I ran across a strange website while I was surfing the internet and I have to say, it’s one of the weirdest things I’ve seen.  And I mean weird in a more or less harmless way and not weird as in /b/.  Apparently, Tania Derveaux will have sex with anyone who is a virgin and who demonstrates they protect Net Neutrality.  While I support net neutrality, I’m not actually eligible for the program, but I thought it was strange and interesting none the less. I am a bit sad that the site doesn’t feature testimonials.  I wonder how many neutrality members she’s gotten to?

Hasbro and the Death of Magic the Gathering

For anyone that doesn’t know, Wizards of the Coast has been the biggest name in trading card games and tabletop RPGs, namely Magic the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.  Even people who aren’t tabletop gamers know of these two brands.  For quite some time, Magic the Gathering was a very balanced and very effective card game, something that no other could boast.  It was balanced and more fair than any other card game, and it is still the longest running game.

For non-players, or new players, the game as it is today is not like it was when I began playing back in the dark ages (Eleven years ago).  After Hasbro bought Wizards, the game slowly began to change. While the effects were not immediate, in fact, not for a few blocks, some of the long standing rules began to decay.  Where the balance shift was easily noticed was Scourge but far more in Mirrodin.  Mirrodin is where I really draw the line, because it’s plainly visible to anyone who looks at it.  Even the card format changes there.

Mirrodin took artifacts, a card type that was less common and typically coveted by old players, and turned it into something extremely common.  This made artifacts widely used and almost a nessity to continue playing.  It made some cards that were bad from old sets fantastic because they could single handedly destroy decks built around artifacts.  The block following that, made legends extremely normal and common.  I remembered when legends were something rather special to casual players.  Now there are several of them released for each set.  Richard Garfield said Legends would never be reprinted, nor would storyline related cards.  This rule no longer exists.  Legend re-printing is common.  The lore behind Magic is gone.  Gerrard is dead. The elegant powerbase is shattered.  Originally, skill and luck made Magic a complex game that took a lot of thinking and skill with deck building. With each new set the game gets closer to Yu-Gi-Oh, a game that can only be won by owning the most expensive cards and requires no skill.

I have a decade of experience with the game, and have always been a skilled player.  Now it doesn’t matter.  I can easily be beat because I use pre-mirrodin cards. Anyone owning cards from Timespiral can easily stomp me into the ground simply because they’ve bought cards more recently.  This is why yugioh and card games like it are bad.  Because the powerlevel increases with each set, it forces players to spend much more money.  It makes old cards worthless.  While Magic isn’t nearly at yugioh level, the depth of the game is gone.

And as a person who’s been playing it since childhood, someone who has played the game for more than ten years, I feel betrayed.  Legends, which were something special, are no longer special at all.  The lore of the game has been violated and destroyed.  Promises Richard Garfield made have been broken. Many valuable cards that were collected over the years were “Timespiraled” into the game, reprinting them and destroying their value.  For these reasons, Magic is doomed.  The powerlevel can’t be repaired after it’s broken, and all it can do is continue to go upwards until is spirals out of control like yugioh. I may be misguided in my finger pointing, but I blame Hasbro for the betrayal.  Most cardgames exist as fads that don’t have any hope of lasting, but pull in money from fans really quickly, and then burn out (specifically anime based card games) due to faulty mechanics and fucked up powerlevels. While these games are sometimes fun, it becomes an expensive hobby that finishes with you holding a shoebox full of worthless cardboard.  Unfortunately, the most stable card game lost it’s stability.  I’ll continue to play casually with friends, but I’ve been betrayed.  I won’t buy another Magic card ever again.

CrashTV for the Fall

Well, as things are going, I should become the new producer/director for CrashTV (which airs in Chattanooga). I’ve submitted the paper work that I needed, and the previous director is aiming for me to take over.  But I don’t plan on running things like he did.  He didn’t enforce deadline and never produced enough content to actually serve as a gatekeeper.  He also rarely pushed the envelope.  Naturally, I’m not bashing Chaz, I think he did a tip top job.  Other than that Cloverfield parody. Ugh, I’d like to pretend that one never happened.

As for the final episode of the Spring 2008 series, me and Morgan are making one of the sketches that we mention the idea for in our “Think Tank” sketch.  I won’t give away the surprise, but we actually came up with some idea during that brainstorming sketch.  The time limit is set for Wednesday, so it should theoretically be online at the end of the week.

Moon Plants

I read recently that there was a successful experiment to see if plants could grow on the moon. This is good news to me.  The sooner we can colonize the moon, the sooner I can buy a house there. I think NASA needs some people up there on the moon doing some research on growing plants and essentially terraforming the moon. If they could start getting crops going, they could become self sufficient. Fine, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

J.K. Rowling is a Greedy Bitch

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Harry Potter as much as the next guy. Well, I at least like the three I read. I couldn’t quite get into the fourth book. But that’s not the point. The point, is that the author is a bitch. Seriously.
She wrote a brilliant novel that actually got kids to read and she created a marvelous fantasy world that surpasses a majority of children’s books, while remaining interesting enough to adults that they can share in the interest. But Rowling seems to believe that it’s a world that only she can play in.
While the final book was still being finished, J.K. Rowling said in an interview, that she was contemplating killing Harry Potter in order to prevent anyone from continuing her work and she had playfully hinted at this fate several times in interviews. While, I think that she should be able to finish the book however she wants, to change her creative vision to prevent others from continuing her work is stupid and selfish. It’s a betrayal of the creative process. [I can't find the interview because it's so out of date. If you run across it toss me a link]
While that irked me because I’m a creative person, it didn’t irk me as much as what she’s doing now. She’s suing a Harry Potter fansite that wants to publish an encyclopedia of Harry Potter terms and characters. For copyright violation. She praised the website for being amazing, but that the book was theft. Her main concern is that she’s lose sales on the lexicon she hasn’t written yet. Bullshit.

Star Wars has lexicons. Star Trek has lexicons. Tolkien has lexicons. Hell, I’m pretty sure that someone has printed a Halo lexicon out there somewhere. These a books that fans make for the community. In fact, I think if I wrote a book and someone compiled the information, I would be flattered.

Especially because it won’t even slightly effect her sales. Not even alittle. None. Zero. No change at all. All she has to do is add more information on a couple topics that are not included in the lexicon. Harry’s favorite color or a few entries on new spells. Just a couple pages of unique material not available elsewhere and she’ll sell more copies. She controls the Harry Potter world after all.

Yet she won’t let a 50 year old librarian who loved the series and compiled a fan resource to make a single penny. His goal isn’t to piggyback on her success, he made the lexicon out of love. And she’s ruthlessly attacking a man that loved her work and was one of her biggest fans (as obvious from the amount of time he spent.)

Even worse, the media is sympathetic to Rowling. So are many of her fans. Why? I would imagine fans would be defending Van Der Ark. After all, next Rowling will be suing fan-fiction writer for not paying royalties or attacking fan-artists. As an artist and writer, I understand being protective of your work. But at a certain point you become overprotective. And then some point far after that, you become a huge greedy bitch. I wonder if she even likes her own work. It seems to be more of a cash cow to her instead of a living breathing world that awakened the imaginations of millions. It’s like building the most amazing playground in the world, but only letting people look at it. No one can play on it except Rowling.

One commenter didn’t want to talk about this and just insulted me.  So here’s some more evidence which might help people out with seeing my point of view:

Someone that agrees with me!

Someone who has a different example of Rowling’s over-protective, hyper-controlling Nature!

Being a Harry Potter fan doesn’t mean you agree with everything the writer says.  That’s just poppycock.  I’m a gundam fan, but Wing Gundam and 00 Gundam were total shit.  I’ve loved Star Wars for as long as I can remember, and George Lucas regularly does stuff I don’t like.  But at least he doesn’t sue people that make useful lexicons and writers who have expanded his universe in several ways he might have never thought of himself.

For the sake of argument, lets say that Rowling is totally right for a second.  If she really loved her fans in anyway, she’d collaborate with Van Der Arc and take a cut of the book. As opposed to vocally insulting and brutally crushing him.