I think we can all sympathize with Tevye. At least, those of us who know who he is.
You may have noticed that I haven't posted in a bit. Maybe not. It's not like I get a lot of traffic. Which suits me fine, since this is very much a vanity project. But, at the very least, I should explain my absence. I've been going through a burnout period with my games, and I haven't watched any movies/shows worth blogging about, and as I want to keep this focused on entertainment, well, if you got nothing to blog about, kind of hard to blog.
Another factor though, is that I've been trying to dive back into creative writing again. I think I may have struck upon something that will work, at least so far as my being able to write it consistently. I'm going to be starting a serial. It's brilliant (for me) for a number of reasons.
First, I suck at finishing a story. I get caught up in re-editing, tweaking, going back and re-writing until I get so burnt out on the first 30 pages that I just walk away.
Second, serialized storytelling is THE medium of this generation, and has been for some time. Comic books, soap operas, prime time television, all of these mediums use serialization in one form or another to tell stories. A properly done serial will leave you with a longing for more of the story.
Finally, my goal is not to seek a profit. If, by some chance, it's deemed good enough to publish, then great, but storytelling, to me, is something that should be shared with the world anyways. It's one of the reasons I'm pursuing a degree in Information and Library Services.
So, right now I'm wrapping up the first part of my story, trying to think of a name for the serial, trying to decide how I want to go about publishing it (I'm thinking a secondary blog devoted to just the serial would be best), and if I want to try for some advertising. My goal is to have everything in place by the end of the month, and start posting bi-weekly beginning in April. I'm actually extremely excited about it, and I hope those of you who do follow me will enjoy it as well.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
I have to be careful not to get too distracted, or I may end up forgetting about this project altogether. So, here are my thoughts on some of the events of the week, at least the ones I deem noteworthy.
Playstation 4: I'm disappointed. I have been a devout Sony supporter for years. I don't own an Xbox 360. I use my PS3 for everything from movies to games to streaming media. I have spent hundreds of dollars on the PSN on games, DLC and add-ons. I even owned a PSP for the longest time. But if what they are saying is indeed true, I will not be purchasing a PS4. It's not the lack of backwards compatibility. I get that, gotta try and keep the cost low. It's not the push for everything to be connected to social media. I'm OK with that, because if I'm being very, very honest with myself, most of my social interactions are through media.
No, the biggest issue for me is that it will be able to stream PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. I take issue with this, not because I think it's a bad idea, but because, according to Sony, I will have to re-purchase all of the PS1, PS2 and PS3 games I already bought on the PSN if I want to play them on the PS4. I'm not talking physical media. Digital media. I'm sorry, in a world where Steam exists, I fully expect my digital purchases to carry over to all the devices that are compatible. I can load up Steam on ANY computer and access my library of games. Why the hell shouldn't I be able to start up a PS4, put my username and password in, and access my library of PSN games? Between this, and the Vita last year, I almost think Sony doesn't want to be in the game business anymore.
1UP and Gamespy are no more: I have mixed feelings about this. Frankly, IGN having 3 different sites dedicated to gaming was a bit much, so I get the downsizing. Neither site has been worth reading in ages, as they're too obsessed with pageviews and keeping the corporate people happy to properly do games journalism. I do think the respective editors farewell letter shines a light on maybe why it's a good thing they're going. Gamespy's is a self-congratulatory piece of shit that goes on about how awesome they were, and then points out why they were awesome, completely ignoring the legacy of the original staff. Fuck them, and good riddance. 1UP's is a different beast altogether. Not surprising, since I've always respected Parish's writing, even if I abhored the pageview, ad obsessed site he ran. He all but admits that the site has been crap for a while, primarily because of the issues I've been going on about. He mentions some of 1UP's history, and gives credit where credit is due. It's sad for the people employed by these sites, but maybe games journalism might benefit from learning that pageviews aren't everything if you're putting out shoddy material.
Playstation 4: I'm disappointed. I have been a devout Sony supporter for years. I don't own an Xbox 360. I use my PS3 for everything from movies to games to streaming media. I have spent hundreds of dollars on the PSN on games, DLC and add-ons. I even owned a PSP for the longest time. But if what they are saying is indeed true, I will not be purchasing a PS4. It's not the lack of backwards compatibility. I get that, gotta try and keep the cost low. It's not the push for everything to be connected to social media. I'm OK with that, because if I'm being very, very honest with myself, most of my social interactions are through media.
No, the biggest issue for me is that it will be able to stream PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. I take issue with this, not because I think it's a bad idea, but because, according to Sony, I will have to re-purchase all of the PS1, PS2 and PS3 games I already bought on the PSN if I want to play them on the PS4. I'm not talking physical media. Digital media. I'm sorry, in a world where Steam exists, I fully expect my digital purchases to carry over to all the devices that are compatible. I can load up Steam on ANY computer and access my library of games. Why the hell shouldn't I be able to start up a PS4, put my username and password in, and access my library of PSN games? Between this, and the Vita last year, I almost think Sony doesn't want to be in the game business anymore.
1UP and Gamespy are no more: I have mixed feelings about this. Frankly, IGN having 3 different sites dedicated to gaming was a bit much, so I get the downsizing. Neither site has been worth reading in ages, as they're too obsessed with pageviews and keeping the corporate people happy to properly do games journalism. I do think the respective editors farewell letter shines a light on maybe why it's a good thing they're going. Gamespy's is a self-congratulatory piece of shit that goes on about how awesome they were, and then points out why they were awesome, completely ignoring the legacy of the original staff. Fuck them, and good riddance. 1UP's is a different beast altogether. Not surprising, since I've always respected Parish's writing, even if I abhored the pageview, ad obsessed site he ran. He all but admits that the site has been crap for a while, primarily because of the issues I've been going on about. He mentions some of 1UP's history, and gives credit where credit is due. It's sad for the people employed by these sites, but maybe games journalism might benefit from learning that pageviews aren't everything if you're putting out shoddy material.
Monday, February 11, 2013
You've already won me over, in spite of me
Yeah, I went with Alanis for this one. It fits.
I spent the weekend with the Wii U. I truly wasn't prepared for how much I love it. I don't own a Wii. Never really had an interest, and the majority of the games released for it just didn't appeal to me. I thought it was an interesting novelty, and I completely understood it's mass appeal, I just didn't feel the need to own one. It's not that I dislike Nintendo. Far from it. I have owned every single handheld system they've released, and I still have a working Gamecube kicking around somewhere.
The Wii U has an impressive line-up of games, and the developer support being tossed behind it bodes well for the future. The ability to purchase full games online through the console is a blessing in a rural area, where it can be hard at times to find physical copies of games, especially when one refuses to shop at Gamestop.
The online functionality is interesting. When constantly connected to the internet, the initial screen (dubbed Waruwaru Plaza I believe) shows what games are popular, little Mii's from other people, comments about some of the games that are updated seemingly daily, and overall just gives the appearance that I am part of a larger community of gaming. Netflix capability means that this has a very good chance of replacing my PS3 as our entertainment device of choice. If only it had a Blu-ray player.
My favorite function though, is the ability to play most Wii U (and some Virtual Console) games on the gamepad screen, sans television. As a parent who shares the TV with 5 other people, this function is worth the price of admission alone. Let's say I really want to play Tekken Tag Tournament 2, but my kids want to watch My Little Pony. Well, with a couple of button pushes, they can watch their show on the TV, and I can continue my losing streak on the pad as if it were a high-powered handheld system. It even has a headphone jack and volume control built right in. This functionality now guarantees that any cross-platform title that comes out will be bought for the Wii U over the PS3 or computer.
It's also backwards compatible with the Wii, so now my kids and wife are thrilled to have access to all the casual and family titles that are on the Wii, and I can finally play some new Zelda games, as I did not care for the control scheme on the DS ones.
Overall, I'm completely thrilled with my new system, and it's the perfect start to the new console generation.
I spent the weekend with the Wii U. I truly wasn't prepared for how much I love it. I don't own a Wii. Never really had an interest, and the majority of the games released for it just didn't appeal to me. I thought it was an interesting novelty, and I completely understood it's mass appeal, I just didn't feel the need to own one. It's not that I dislike Nintendo. Far from it. I have owned every single handheld system they've released, and I still have a working Gamecube kicking around somewhere.
The Wii U has an impressive line-up of games, and the developer support being tossed behind it bodes well for the future. The ability to purchase full games online through the console is a blessing in a rural area, where it can be hard at times to find physical copies of games, especially when one refuses to shop at Gamestop.
The online functionality is interesting. When constantly connected to the internet, the initial screen (dubbed Waruwaru Plaza I believe) shows what games are popular, little Mii's from other people, comments about some of the games that are updated seemingly daily, and overall just gives the appearance that I am part of a larger community of gaming. Netflix capability means that this has a very good chance of replacing my PS3 as our entertainment device of choice. If only it had a Blu-ray player.
My favorite function though, is the ability to play most Wii U (and some Virtual Console) games on the gamepad screen, sans television. As a parent who shares the TV with 5 other people, this function is worth the price of admission alone. Let's say I really want to play Tekken Tag Tournament 2, but my kids want to watch My Little Pony. Well, with a couple of button pushes, they can watch their show on the TV, and I can continue my losing streak on the pad as if it were a high-powered handheld system. It even has a headphone jack and volume control built right in. This functionality now guarantees that any cross-platform title that comes out will be bought for the Wii U over the PS3 or computer.
It's also backwards compatible with the Wii, so now my kids and wife are thrilled to have access to all the casual and family titles that are on the Wii, and I can finally play some new Zelda games, as I did not care for the control scheme on the DS ones.
Overall, I'm completely thrilled with my new system, and it's the perfect start to the new console generation.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
If I'm a Muppet, I'm a very manly Muppet
Banshee. It's a new show on Cinemax, and I can't seem to stop watching it. It's an awful, horrible show though. I mean, I've read better fan-fic written by a tween.
The series is written by a man.
I don't need to go check imdb.com to know this, nor do I have to pay attention to the credits. Everything about the series screams "This is how men should live!". The main character has had sex with a different woman in every episode thus far. Random, irresponsible, unexplainable sex with strangers with no visible effort spent on his part to get the women, they just throw themselves upon his dick. There is a gratuitous female masturbation scene, interposed with flashbacks of her receiving a necklace from her ex-boyfriend. I could be completely off base here, but is that seriously what you women think about when you feel the urge to self-abuse?
The action, if you can call it that, is similarly ridiculous. Genuinely unbelievable violence, like a bus coming out of nowhere to flip and slide down the road in the pilot. It feels like it's there simply because the writer (who in my mind at this point is either a teen frat boy, or some pathetic simp trying to overcompensate) put it in because "Hurr, hurr, that was cool." The physical acts alone that the lead performs stretch the boundaries of belief, especially since we're supposed to believe he's been in prison for 15 years.
The plot, God help me, is just convoluted. The premise alone is hard enough to swallow in the Information Age (ex-con impersonates sheriff), and the plot never seems to coalesce properly around the concept. The twists are either broadcast well in advance, or take you completely by surprise because there is no plausible reason for the twist to exist beyond the writer trying to prove he's smarter then the viewer. With the exception of the main character (who's so 2 dimensional it's impossible to screw up), the characters are inconsistent from one episode to the next, which just further adds to the confusion. This is painfully clear in the female lead, who swings between terrified mother and wife trying to stay in hiding and hardened ex-con with full use of her skills over the course of each episode.
Somehow, even after listing it's flaws, I just can't bring myself to stop watching though. It's reached train wreck status for me, where I just have to see how much worse it can possibly get.
The series is written by a man.
I don't need to go check imdb.com to know this, nor do I have to pay attention to the credits. Everything about the series screams "This is how men should live!". The main character has had sex with a different woman in every episode thus far. Random, irresponsible, unexplainable sex with strangers with no visible effort spent on his part to get the women, they just throw themselves upon his dick. There is a gratuitous female masturbation scene, interposed with flashbacks of her receiving a necklace from her ex-boyfriend. I could be completely off base here, but is that seriously what you women think about when you feel the urge to self-abuse?
The action, if you can call it that, is similarly ridiculous. Genuinely unbelievable violence, like a bus coming out of nowhere to flip and slide down the road in the pilot. It feels like it's there simply because the writer (who in my mind at this point is either a teen frat boy, or some pathetic simp trying to overcompensate) put it in because "Hurr, hurr, that was cool." The physical acts alone that the lead performs stretch the boundaries of belief, especially since we're supposed to believe he's been in prison for 15 years.
The plot, God help me, is just convoluted. The premise alone is hard enough to swallow in the Information Age (ex-con impersonates sheriff), and the plot never seems to coalesce properly around the concept. The twists are either broadcast well in advance, or take you completely by surprise because there is no plausible reason for the twist to exist beyond the writer trying to prove he's smarter then the viewer. With the exception of the main character (who's so 2 dimensional it's impossible to screw up), the characters are inconsistent from one episode to the next, which just further adds to the confusion. This is painfully clear in the female lead, who swings between terrified mother and wife trying to stay in hiding and hardened ex-con with full use of her skills over the course of each episode.
Somehow, even after listing it's flaws, I just can't bring myself to stop watching though. It's reached train wreck status for me, where I just have to see how much worse it can possibly get.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
I'm trying to reason but you don't understand
This is still a new project for me, and as such I'm still learning and deciding what, exactly, I want to do with it. I'm probably going to try to be more focused on certain topics, like entertainment, as opposed to odd rants and opinion pieces unrelated to entertainment. I've started a Twitter account, I'm trying to clean up my Facebook and G+ accounts, basically just trying to set myself up as a, well, brand, for lack of a better word.
There's something that I miss in gaming journalism, and maybe it's something I can add back in, at least in my own way. I miss some of the old gaming sites. Gamespy for instance. Note, I did not link to them. They haven't been worth linking to in years, not long after Dave Kosak left actually. There was an editorial restructuring, and suddenly the site was full of juvenile articles which seemed geared towards page views and controversy. I blame IGN honestly. Not long after, a lot of the same things started happening to 1UP. Incidentally also owned by the same company. Hell, even now you can check with 1UP, and see that in the last week they posted a series of inflammatory video game violence articles which really add nothing to the discussion, but I bet they drew in the page views.
I've become very disillusioned with the gaming press overall. Ben Paddon, of @gamejournos, seemed to really understand a lot of the same issues I had, and started a great blog about it. However, the blog is more or less defunct as he's moved on to other projects, and one can't blame him, you can only spend so much time focusing on the shitty things before you burn out or get bitter. No High Scores is another blog, done by former and current gaming journalists that gets it as well. They try very had to give a no spin zone environment where their genuine love of gaming drives the articles.
So, where do I get my gaming news? Oddly enough, Joystiq is my primary source of info. I happened upon it quite by accident really. I started frequenting Massively, one of their sister sites, for MMO info after MMORPG.com started becoming more and more of a shill site geared towards inflating page views while trying to keep the game companies happy. If your site is more concerned with keeping a game company (or it's asshole lead, in the case of Dr. Derek Smart) happy then it is with giving honest opinions, you're a shill. Doesn't hurt that the community of posters, for the most part, was also extremely toxic. Gamespy seems to be improving, so I've been checking in on them from time to time as well, but I have my doubts about the new editor, so I honestly don't feel comfortable endorsing them.
You'll note that I haven't mentioned the PA Report. This might seem surprising, considering I do consider myself a bit of a fan of Penny Arcade, but the simple fact that Ben Kuchera works for the PA Report is enough to keep me away from it.
What I'm saying is, that I'm going to try and bring more focus to the blog going forward. I'll be focusing a lot on gaming, especially of the MMO variety, although expect to see some articles related to other entertainment mediums. No more sounding off about guns, the weather, or waitresses. What this does mean is that my posting habits will probably be a little more sporadic. But, it's time that I start taking this a little more seriously. You can only say you want to be a writer for so long before you either have to start taking it seriously, or give it up. Shit or get off the pot as it were.
There's something that I miss in gaming journalism, and maybe it's something I can add back in, at least in my own way. I miss some of the old gaming sites. Gamespy for instance. Note, I did not link to them. They haven't been worth linking to in years, not long after Dave Kosak left actually. There was an editorial restructuring, and suddenly the site was full of juvenile articles which seemed geared towards page views and controversy. I blame IGN honestly. Not long after, a lot of the same things started happening to 1UP. Incidentally also owned by the same company. Hell, even now you can check with 1UP, and see that in the last week they posted a series of inflammatory video game violence articles which really add nothing to the discussion, but I bet they drew in the page views.
I've become very disillusioned with the gaming press overall. Ben Paddon, of @gamejournos, seemed to really understand a lot of the same issues I had, and started a great blog about it. However, the blog is more or less defunct as he's moved on to other projects, and one can't blame him, you can only spend so much time focusing on the shitty things before you burn out or get bitter. No High Scores is another blog, done by former and current gaming journalists that gets it as well. They try very had to give a no spin zone environment where their genuine love of gaming drives the articles.
So, where do I get my gaming news? Oddly enough, Joystiq is my primary source of info. I happened upon it quite by accident really. I started frequenting Massively, one of their sister sites, for MMO info after MMORPG.com started becoming more and more of a shill site geared towards inflating page views while trying to keep the game companies happy. If your site is more concerned with keeping a game company (or it's asshole lead, in the case of Dr. Derek Smart) happy then it is with giving honest opinions, you're a shill. Doesn't hurt that the community of posters, for the most part, was also extremely toxic. Gamespy seems to be improving, so I've been checking in on them from time to time as well, but I have my doubts about the new editor, so I honestly don't feel comfortable endorsing them.
You'll note that I haven't mentioned the PA Report. This might seem surprising, considering I do consider myself a bit of a fan of Penny Arcade, but the simple fact that Ben Kuchera works for the PA Report is enough to keep me away from it.
What I'm saying is, that I'm going to try and bring more focus to the blog going forward. I'll be focusing a lot on gaming, especially of the MMO variety, although expect to see some articles related to other entertainment mediums. No more sounding off about guns, the weather, or waitresses. What this does mean is that my posting habits will probably be a little more sporadic. But, it's time that I start taking this a little more seriously. You can only say you want to be a writer for so long before you either have to start taking it seriously, or give it up. Shit or get off the pot as it were.
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