Hyper Magazine Interview

It has been a few months now so I feel like it should be okay for me to post my Hyper Magazine interview now. I don't think its right to scan in and post articles while the magazine is still fresh on the news stand. It is from issue number 173 pictured to the left.

I tried to clean the scanned picture up as well as shrink it down so that it isn't giant but is still readable. I also marked the "15 years" should be "23 years" correction. Click on the image to get a full sized, readable version.

This is a stick-up!

A few days ago one of the main featured stories on Yahoo's main page was something about how Blizzard's "World of Warcraft" ranked against the real mega corporations of the world. The story is here if you want to read it but that isn't what I want to talk about.

As I said this was one of the main featured stories on Yahoo's front page (U.S. version). It had a picture and small text blurb right in the center of the page and a few related links under it. One of these links said, "Search for World of Warcraft cheats." I had taken a screen shot of it, but then forgot to actually paste it into a picture and save it.

Maybe it was a generated link and its just based off the fact that the story was about a video game. But when we are talking about these kind of multi-player games cheating isn't the same as when you are just playing a single player game looking for infinite lives. Your actions in multi-player games, especially "pay to play" multi-player games like these modern MMO's, affect the games of other players.

If you're a WoW player you can imagine the things you could get up to if you had access to cheats like you can get in single player games. Cheats like invulnerability, flying or max damage cheats. Remember when the gold farms were able to teleport around the world and they just popped from one mine or herb to the next all over the zone? Remember how it felt to battle your way through a few mobs to reach that black lotus when suddenly there a level 3 gnome appears out of nowhere, picks it and then vanishes?

Having that link up there like that is almost the same as them having a story about the rise or fall of interest rates in the U.S. banking system and then having a link underneath the story that says "Search for bank robbing tips."

More fun with THQ

Oh look another one.

Dear Joseph,

We are complimented by your recent application for the Sr. Game Designer Level 2 (13523) position with THQ. Although we are impressed by your skills, we are unable to offer you an interview at this time. This job has been filled by another candidate who more closely meets the position requirements.
Your resume is on file with us for future consideration. Should an applicable position come available, you will be contacted.

Your interest in our company is greatly appreciated. Please accept our best wishes for your future successes.

Sincerely,
Recruiting Department
THQ

Note that they are still impressed with my skills. I still have to take issue with their innovative and creative use of the word "recent". Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe they got some new head HR person who look around and said , "WTF! Look at all these applications that have been piling up for months! Clear these out! Send these people reply emails so we don't look like one of those companies who doesn't bother responding to applicants."

Honestly though, I have no room to talk. I used to get applications on my desk back in the day that would get buried under other paper work until some poor HR person would have to come around and ask, "Do you still have those applications I gave you last month?" I really hope we wrote those people back even if it was months later.

Dear THQ

April 02, 2008
Dear Joseph,

We are complimented by your recent application for the Senior Designer (23684) position with THQ. Although we are impressed by your skills, we are unable to offer you an interview at this time. This job has been filled by another candidate who more closely meets the position requirements.

Your resume is on file with us for future consideration. Should an applicable position come available, you will be contacted.

Your interest in our company is greatly appreciated. Please accept our best wishes for your future successes.

Sincerely,
Recruiting Department
THQ

Dear THQ,

Thank you for getting back to me regarding my application for the Senior Designer (23684) position at your company; though I have to take issue with your use of the word "recent". Although I was impressed enough with your company to send you an application, I much less so now. That fact that it has taken you over four months to respond to a serious application for a position of this level leads me to believe that I would not find success in working for you.

Please accept my best wishes that you develop better business practices in the future.

P.S. I got a promotion today. I am now the Lead Game Designer of my current project. Please send Amazon.com gift certificates in lieu of congratulations.

Sincerely,
Joseph B. Hewitt IV
Lead Game Designer
Interzone Games - Perth

Can You Find a Wii?

I was reading through the latest various news sites this morning and two things caught my attention.

The first was Mr. Squinty guy, Hal Halpin - founder of the Entertainment Consumer Association, and his little dissertation on how the EULAs (End User License Agreements) are getting out of hand and that we should do something about it.

EULAs are a real and tangible problem for our business. Quite simply, they're out of control. The best intentions of lawyers in the business aside, these contracts have become so unwieldy that they regularly infringe on consumer rights. Many would likely be unenforceable in a court of law. Others, consumers would be shocked to find out what all of that fine print actually meant.

He is proposing a committee get together and discuss the problems and see if they can't work out some sort of standardization. At this point I would be happy if they just got them to the point that they are readable with requiring you to have a 4-year law degree and that they didn't require the sacrifice of your first born child. Anyway I guess will have to wait and see if he goes anywhere with this. I think it is exactly the kind of thing the ECA should be working on and that doing so will help increase its membership, legitimacy, and clout.

The second thing that caught my attention was KBC Securities Japan, which on Thursday downgraded Nintendo stock from a "Buy" rating to a "Hold" rating and cut its 12-month price estimate by 30 percent to 57,500 yen ($580), according to Bloomberg.com. The reason I latched onto this was that my friend Mike went through Perth yesterday trying to buy a Nintendo Wii. NOBODY had them in stock. How can they say Wii sales have peeked if they still haven't managed to catch up with sales demand 2 years after its original launch? Seriously, every console has always been hard to find during it's first Christmas season, but its 3 months after its second Christmas and you still can't find them in stock. Granted this is Australia. Anybody know the chances of finding a Wii in stores in the U.S.? Not just your local game store either, but in department stores as well.

Would you like fries with that?

Going through the drive through of a fast-food place here in Australia is a different experience than in the U.S. It has its own vibe and is missing the cadence one normally falls into with the voice in the speaker. They also don’t use the same lingo or assumptions. For example If you order a Whopper and you don’t specify “with cheese,” you get it without; which is the reverse in the states where cheese is assumed and you have to say “without cheese.” They also don’t recognize “diet” as a drink off the bat and sometime you’ll get asked, “Do you mean diet Coke?” I don’t get how a country that abbreviates even some one syllable words, doesn't get shortening “diet Coke” to just “diet.” Especially when that is the only diet drink they serve.

Once a friend of mine asked for orange soda and got the minimum wage stare combined with “umm… do you mean Fanta?”

“Do you have any other orange flavored sodas?”

“umm no.”

“Do you know that Fanta is the brand name and that they make many different flavors of soda?”

Defiantly, “yeah.”

“Then I’d like an orange soda please.”

The reason I bring this all up is that I have just come back from a quick trip to Hungry Jacks, the Australian name for Burger King, where I had to actually tell the drive through speaker girl to stop talking so I could finish giving her my order.

The normal problem is as soon as you rattle off the first item to the speaker box they are instantly telling you your total and for you to drive to the first window. Most of the time if you didn’t tell them what drink or size you wanted, they just assume no upsize and Coke. God forbid if you want more than one thing.

I was trying to order a Whopper with cheese combo, no pickle, no onion, with diet coke to drink for myself and a Bacon Deluxe with a large fries for a friend.

I got as far as “I’d like a Whopper combo…” when she broke in and started telling me my total. I raised my voice to continue, “no pickle, no onion” and again she started telling me my total and to please drive forward. I raised my voice more, “with diet Coke to drink please.” And again she started and I finally had to say “Stop talking! I’m not done!”

I didn’t mean to snap like that but it’s been building up. I meant to say, “Please stop talking” but didn’t. The whole process of going through the drive through here fills me with unaccustomed anxiety. I am used to the speaker voice waiting for me to pause before then asking, “anything else?’ Some times I’ll just go in and order at the counter to avoid the hassle. In the end though you should never be rude to people making your food. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

While I’m the subject there let me also tell you an important bit of information regarding the word “Burger” here. In Australia anything between two halves of a bun is a burger. It’s not a chicken sandwich it’s a chicken burger. This is really important when you see an item on the menu that reads “bacon burger.” This is not a hamburger with bacon; it is bacon on a bun and that’s it. The first week I was in Australia I ordered a bacon burger and then went up to complain that it was missing the actual burger.

Paying for Digital Download of TV Shows, Part 2

I just don’t understand why I never have time to write. Its like all I do is wake up, go to work, come home and eat, watch Daily Show, Colbert Report, Tonight Show, and Conan and its time to go to bed.

So starting up where I left off last. I have since bought 3 episodes of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." That does confirm that you can indeed buy shows from the American iTunes store even if you are coming from a non-U.S. IP address. All they care about is a U.S. billing address on the credit card.

As far as the show goes, believe it or not I’m watching them on my iPod screen. I used to laugh at the thought of watching videos on a little iPod screen. On one of my recent plane trips the guys next to me asked me how the video was on the iPod screen and I told him I hadn’t watched any. He said that somebody had told them that it was much better than you would expect. So long story even longer, I tried it and it is so watch-able!

I was lying in bed watching it and it occurred to me that from the distance I was holding it up it was actually be the same size as a decent sized television across the room. I tried to take a picture to illustrate this, but it didn’t work out due to lighting issues. In the old days I would have started dragging lights around, but I figured you guys would get the concept. To be honest, it was about halfway through dragging the lights around and taking some test shots that didn’t work out too well I figured you guys would get the concept.

I was explaining it to my friend Brad at work, showing him how good the video looked. He held it up to get the 'tv across the room effect' and then took it one step further. He held it even closer and "BAM! You got yourself a 40 inch plasma baby!"

Anyway, it’s so cool to have a portable television. I’m waiting for Jeremy to arrange to get his mattress delivered at the Ikea and am I bored watching some 5 year old bang his head repeatedly into the soda machine? Nope, I watching Summer Glau kick some ass! Granted the kid was kind of entertaining for a few minutes.

Oh and that reminds me… Cameron, not only is issue #12 of "Buffy: Season 8" out, but so is the first issue of the new "Serenity: Better Days" mini-series.

iTunes Artwork LIES!

I was going to write up part 2 of "Paying for Digital Download of TV Shows" but although I did succeed in buying and downloading the second episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles" (which the internet seems to have settled on the acronym "Terminator:TSCC" which I will adopt) with my U.S. iTunes account, I haven't actually watched it yet. I just checked that it played, which it did although appeared to be stuttering slightly. That may just because my machine needs a reboot after running and updating the giant memory hogging ComicBase comic book data base. Its also my older, less powerful machine as my newer one isn't working after the move to Perth. I looks like its the motherboard.

Anyway I copied the episode over to my new iPod and it appeared to run on that fine. Better than fine actually, it looks really good on the tiny iPod screen. Much much better than I expected.

Now as to why I haven't watched it yet is because all that messing with iTunes has got me looking into why iTunes can't import the album artwork for the CDs I've imported. I can find them on Gracenote (aka CDDB) , which is where iTunes gets its track and art information. But even if I copy the album and artist information over exactly, iTunes still complains it can't find the album artwork.

For example I have The Eagles - Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2 which I had entered originally entered as "Eagles Greatest Hits, Volume 2" -note the comma. I changed it to match Gracenote and still iTunes fails. I don't have a lot of CD's imported, maybe 35ish if you count each CD for some compilations and all the CDs included in the Monty Python Instant Record Collection CD version (which has different sketches than the original vinyl records). It wouldn't take too long import the artwork in manually for the 25ish it pretends it can't find artwork for. But its driving me nuts trying to figure out iTunes is lying to me and not working automatically.

Also Foxtel is up and working and The Daily Show and the rest of my shows are one. I still don't believe its actually working... in both rooms. The guy had to run new outlets for each AND he installed a phone line in my computer room which had an phone extension running across the hall from the bedroom. Now the only thing that I need to cover with one of those rubber "cord you are running across the hallway" protectors is the power extension cable because there is no outlet on the wall where I have the TV entertainment center set-up in the living room. The point being he did it all, wham bamm, done and he was out of here in no time. Installation in the apartment in Brisbane took all day!

Paying for Digital Download of TV Shows, Part 1

I am looking at a few TV shows online that I want to watch such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Burn Notice, Dirty Sexy Money and season 2 of Heroes and Dexter. These are currently running or have just completed their run in the states but are only few episodes into their run here in Australia. One of my many deeply seeded problems is that once I’ve missed an episode, which I have on all the above, I won’t watch any more till I can fill in that hole. The current over arcing problem I have having which is the genesis of this long winded rant is that there are quite a number of episodes of these shows available as digital downloads on Amazon and the iTunes store for $1.99 USD.

One problem I have with buying the digital downloads is that once I buy something I am an anal retentive pack rat that must collect and horde all my treasures. With digital downloads I don’t have anything physical to clasp my frequently washed yet still grubby little hands onto. I need something to put on a shelf and display for all to see and admire.

“Yes! Look in wonder at my collection, admire my Lord of the Ring extended editions and bask in the glory of my William Gibson documentary.”

I have sort of gotten over that issue with regard to buying unabridged audio books from Audible.com. I have acknowledged the glory of being able to sort through the book covers in iTunes. I also know that if something happens to my computer I can download the lost files again from Audible with no hassle. Something happening like say just for an example just off the top of my head: I have them all on my work computer and the company suddenly goes under and I don’t get a chance to copy them all off my hard drive; I won’t be screwed. For that peace of mind I am somewhat willing to jump through the hoops they make me, a legitimate customer, go through when dealing with the Digital Rights Management also known as DRM. I’m pretty sure iTunes doesn’t offer you the ability to re-download a file you may have lost and although I haven’t checked into Amazon’s policy in that regard I’m going to bet it’s similarly a one shot download deal. This is also one of the reasons I prefer to buy a music CD and rip it into iTunes rather than buy it from the iTunes store. Though, I hear that the RIAA’s new hard line claims that is actually stealing, but lets not digress this rant into that ramble.

I don’t know if I can make the digital leap with television and movies yet. With audio books I know I have access to them in all the places where I want to hear them. I copy them to my iPod which I can listen to via headphones or through the car’s stereo system. Copying them from computer to computer is easy; in contrast with anything else iTunes / iPod related where it’s a pain in the ass. With a DVD I know I can just pop it into any player; be it an actual player in the living room attached to the TV, built into the computer, or even built into the latest console gaming system (thought lets not get me started again on region coding). I also get cool extras like commentaries and deleted scenes with the DVD collections.

The main point of all that can be boiled down to the increased chance of failure the phrase “in my computer room on a monitor” has when added to the question “Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and cuddle up in front of the latest Dexter episodes?”

Now the question I am asking myself is this: am looking at this all wrong? Should I just view the $1.99 like the fee for renting a movie or even seeing it in the theatre? Of those TV shows mentioned above, several of them are shows I know I’ll only watch once. If I was watching them as they aired during their regular season I wouldn’t even be thinking twice about them. So what if I spend two bucks to catch up with season two of Heroes. And lets say I do delete the files in a week, a month, or when I’m upgrading computers should I care? It’s only 2 bucks an episode to watch them NOW and I can still buy the damn DVD box set later when it comes out. Though looking at the prices for Dexter’s first season on Amazon: 12 episodes that would be $24 dollars for all the downloaded episodes versus the discounted price of $28 dollars for the boxed DVD set. I do see there is an option for $19 dollars to download the entire season, but this doesn’t really count for the stuff I am talking about since most of their seasons aren’t complete yet. Amazon doesn't appear to offer digital downloads of shows whose DVD boxed sets aren't available yet or at least not for Burn Notice. iTune's "buy all episodes" button is the same price as buying all the episodes individually for the incomplete 7 episode season of Terminator but does have a discounted $19.95 "Buy Season" button for all 12 episodes of Burn Notice.

I should throw in a couple of other issue such as living in a third world internet country known as Australia where there is no such think as an unlimited internet plan. You either pay out the nose for going over your download limit or they knock your internet speed down to dial-up speed for the rest of the month. Let’s also not forget the issue of storage space. These files tend to eat up hard drive space pretty quickly and become more and more unwieldy to try and transfer from computer to computer where DVDs sit nicely on the shelf and look pretty.

Minor Update

I just had a little time to kill since the new Perth Ikea isn't open on Sunday. So I updated my profile with cropped picture from the Hyper magazine article which is only a few months old and shows me with the more up to date short hair. I also moved some stuff around on the sidebar, added an Amazon Wish List link, fixed a spelling mistake, and got rid of a non-relevant link. I'm also looking into putting a RSS link up so poor little Cameron doesn't have to go through all the work of actually coming here to read these exciting updates anymore.

Zero Punctuations goes to GDC and mentions FURY!

Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame was invited to help host the Game Developer's Choice Awards at GDC this year with one of his videos. The coolest thing about it... he mentions FURY! Not much point drawing that intro out since I mention it in the title of the post. So without further ado here is said video:

Share and enjoy.

UPDATE: looks like the embedded video doesn't work anymore. I suspect that the guys at the Escapist finally realized that everybody was embedding the Zero Punctuations videos into their own sites. So they appear to have disabled the link or something. Anyway here is the actual link to the video.

I'm never gonna do it without the Fez on

To quote Brad, my new desk neighbour at work, "This is hot!"


In case you were wondering WTF while waiting for it to load, its a trailer for the upcoming independent PC Game Fez by Kokoromi that was shown at the 2008 Game Developer's Conference.

Its the long version which builds up to why this is a cool. You're thinking, another silly 2D platform game but its not. Stop reading this and watch the damn video!

It was also just announced that it is the winner of the Excellence in Visual Art award at the 2008 Independent Games Festival.

Hyper Magazine - Collections Interview

A couple of months ago I told you I was interviewed for the Collections column for Hyper Magazine. Well the issue (#173) is now on the stands.

I don't have a copy yet myself, but a friend at work has a subscription and he brought in his copy for me to read. Erin writes that my career in the game industry has only lasted 15 years so far which isn't true as I started at Unicorn software in 1985 (maybe even in 84) which would make it 23 years. Even if you don't count educational software, bad educational software at that, I started at Westwood in 1988 that would be an even 20.

Anyway I have to get back to work. I do want to point out though that the wireless Internet in the hotel room as gone from poor (losing connection for 30 seconds ever 10 minutes) to almost unusable (2 minute connection followed by... well at last check down since sometime last night.

Edit: fixed the cover picture as I appeared to have linked it from their site instead of uploading it from my hard drive. It had updated to the new issue cover. Whoops.

Interzone in Perth

So here I am in Perth. I started at Interzone today. The details about our current project haven’t been released yet so I can’t give out any more details about it. Connie stayed behind in Brisbane to deal with the majority of packing, the movers and all that. She will be coming over next week on the 11th.

How did my first day go? Well it turns out today is the day that we are moving offices. Not far, just across the parking lot to another building in the same complex. My day was basically getting my computer set up, reading a bunch of design documents and wiki pages, putting up a Watchmen Windows background, having lunch and then helping move a bunch of crap in the burning Australian summer heat. Well at least Perth’s heat isn’t like Brisbane heat with the God awful humidity. I hate humidity. Perth heat is more like Vegas heat, still sucks but at least you don’t have to peal your cloths off with a butter knife at the end of the day.

I finally figured out my iPod radio adapter doesn’t work in the rental car’s cigarette lighter. It was hard to tell at first because after sitting in the hot car for over a year the digital display that shows what station it is broadcasting on has fried. The display is now always blank. So you have to step through the stations slowly while it is hooked up to find the iPod’s broadcast. I finally noticed that the battery on the iPod wasn’t charging. Luckily I also brought the last Harry Potter book on CD so I am finally getting to listen to that while driving around looking for an apartment or house to rent.

Speaking of which, I’m not having much luck with finding a place. It isn’t like the states where you just grab a For Rent magazine and cruise by the various apartment complexes over the weekend. No here you have to contact which ever real estate agent has the listing, find out what day the 15-30 minute window they are showing the apartment is on, fill out an application and then hope the owner picks yours. Every apartment is individually owned by somebody or a investment company. There aren’t any evil giant corporations that own entire apartment complexes. (As we all know all corporations are evil and 9 out of 10 corporate CEO have murdered at least one person. Really, Hollywood wouldn’t lie to us.) Even the brand new giant skyscraper apartment complexes have each unit individually owned. Anyway on top of all that I don’t really know the city so I don’t know where the good and bad neighborhoods are.

Oh well, at least I got the internet connection working in my room.

Entertainment

Thankfully The Tonight Show, The Late Show, Daily Show and The Colbert Report have returned to the air, all be it without writers due to the on going writer’s strike. They are my connection back to the United States while I’m down under. I used to make fun of people who only got their news from late night talk shows and in a way I am one of those people now.

Watching them again got me thinking about other movies and shows I’ve been entertained with lately so I thought I would go on about them. It started out as such a little post but somewhere along the way it ballooned up quite a bit. Sorry.

I am Legend
I saw I am Legend recently, right after having finished listening to the audio book literally as we were driving to the theater. The book and movie are very different. The book by Richard Matheson was written back in 1954; and although it still holds up quite well, you can feel it's age in some parts. It actually takes place in the distant future of 1976’s. (note: I could have sworn that the book said 1996, but the wiki says '76 so I'll just go along with them.)

There was one part in the movie that stuck out as odd, and I mention it because my friend Drew also noticed it. It leads me to believe there was another story element that may have been cut from the film that delved more into the society of the creatures. The main character appears not only miss it but actually goes out of his way to contradict it.

Now I am also okay with the main character just being wrong and missing the point. It has always bugged me when one of the main characters says “according to my theory yadda yadda” and that’s how things all work out in the end. For example Doc Brown in the Back to the Future movies with his theories on time travel and how if they do this series of things the timeline will fix itself. It comes across as too convenient. I would rather the characters build their theories based on evidence presented as the story unfolds, modifying and honing it as it progresses. When the writers give us the clues as the story goes along it helps pull us into the story by letting us figure it all out along with the characters.

Reading the movie’s wiki right now I see the ending was redone and the first ending was related to what I just mentioned. It was also how I was expecting it to go down as I was watching it.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Speaking of one of my favorite story premises, Time Travel, I see that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has finally aired. I’ve had the opening 2-parter episode since it was ‘accidentally’ leaked out onto the internet a few months ago. I’m surprised to see that it is getting mixed reactions from fans. I even read on one forum post with somebody complaining about the good terminator saying the “come with me if you want to live” line. Of course it said that! It HAD to say that and if it hadn’t said it, the fans would have stormed the studio!

Don’t you love the way I said “it” instead of “her”? As if there is anybody who doesn’t know by now that Summer Glau is the Terminator. Look at the ad, Summer's robotic torso... Hmm I wonder if she is the... hey NAKED torso! drool.

Sure the 2-part episode is kind of limited and is basically the same story as Terminator 2; but it does everything it has to. It sets the background, introduces the good & bad terminators and brings them all up to date at the end. Yes it introduces even more questions about how the whole time travel thing works; but like I said I like it when things like that aren’t tied up nicely in some stupid “if my theories are correct” crap. I certainly don’t expect that all to be revealed in the first episode.

If you step back and look at the time travel from the perspective of the first two Terminator movies, it was never really nailed down. Skynet sent the terminator back in time to kill Sara Conner before she can give birth to John who in turn sends someone back to stop the terminator. That man then becomes John’s father. So how did John get born the first time… before people in the future started sending things back through time? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The second Terminator movie just tells us that destiny isn’t pre-written and that the future isn’t set. We also learn that Skynet was built using technology learned from a piece of the terminator defeated in the first movie. So again which came first? Alternate time lines maybe? We don’t know and I like it that the story can keep building on top of that. By the way, the TV series is ignoring the 3rd and the supposedly upcoming 4th movie. Though with the whole changed and/or alternate time line theories, it could easily fit in without destroying anything. Because of the time travel changing events, the things that take place in those movies don’t happen.

Anyway, I personally loved the first episode and can’t wait to see more. They have said that time travel is going to feature heavly in the show and it isn't going to have the 'terminator of the week' plot. I saw an ad for the show on the side of a bus the other day so I know its coming to Australian TV real soon.

Dexter
I finished watching season one of Dexter and am now listening to Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, which is the first novel of at least three that the TV series is based off of. The first season appears to be based on just the first book and so far there are only minor differences.

Dexter is a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police. He is also a serial killer but he only kills other killers. That being said it still probably isn't what you are expecting. He knows he a bad man and he doesn't try to justify his killing. He also doesn't feel any remorse, he actually doesn't feel much of anything at all. He is completely disconnected and has to fake being normal. Much of the story is told through his internal dialog which gives it a very interesting perspective. There are flash backs to his childhood where his adopted father,Harry - the cop who found Dexter as locked in blood filled shipping container where he mother was murdered, that helps give you much more of a sense of who Dexter is.

It is really very good and I recommend either the TV series or the novel... or be a wild man like me and do both.

Cloverfield
And finally I just got back from seeing Cloverfield. I really like that type of character driven sci-fi story. The entire thing is presented as if it was filmed by the characters using a hand held video camera ala Blair Witch Project. I agree with some critiques that they could have toned down camcorder shake a bit more.

If you haven't seen it yet, I beg you not to let the camera shake thing scare you off because it is solidly on the list of movies that must be seen on the big screen. Also I will give you one warning, it is a movie about the characters told as it happens to them. It is not a movie about the monster. Don't expect an overview of what is going on, how it all started and most importantly how the whole event ended. It starts as a government tape explaining that is a video found at what was once known as Central Park and when the video ends so does the movie.

Aurealis Awards 2007

I have another post I am halfway through writing but haven't got a chance to go back and finish. I thought I had better put this out before it isn't relevant anymore. As you may remember I was a judge for this year's awards. If you arn't doing anything this Australia day and happen to be in Brisbane...

Get dressed up to the nines to celebrate the nation’s best science fiction, fantasy and horror of 2007 with us this Australia day weekend!

This lively event will be teeming with all your favourite authors, not to mention publishers, literary agents and readers. Rub shoulders with our hosts, Kim Wilkins and Sean Williams.

All are welcome at this celebration of Australian achievement in speculative fiction, brought to you by Fantastic Queensland.

Tickets include post-ceremony cocktail function where drinks and food will be served.

6:00pm for 6:30pm, Saturday 26 January 2008 at The Judith Wright Centre Of Contemporary Arts,420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Queensland

All tickets only $33
Online:
www.jwcoca.qld.gov.au

In Person at:
Judith Wright Centre Box Office, 3872-9000

Pulp Fiction Bookshop, Brisbane, 3236-2750

For information about the awards, go to www.aurealisawards.com

New Job in a Sun Burnt Land

It looks like we will be staying in Australia as I am just working out the contract details for another company. The new project hasn’t been announced yet so I can’t go into any details.

I am finding that it cost a whole lot more to move across Australia that I thought. I guess it could because of the big, deadly, no-man land that is the center of the Australia which despite what you may think, is about the size of the U.S.

At first I wanted to just take the time to drive across the country, stop and see Uluru on the way (it’s on my list), and have a bit of adventure. Well turns out that isn’t such a good idea even if the hamster mobile does have 4-wheel drive. It’s not like driving across the U.S. were you’ll at least get AM stations the entire way and are guaranteed to find a Motel 6 and a 7-ll every 20 miles. Middle of summer, the outback, and road trip actually has a fatality rate. Not that I’ve really taken any time to do that level of research, just heard many stories about people breaking down in the middle of nowhere and their bodies being recovered several days later.

I have also learned a new lesson about having short hair again and that lesson is "hats." I got into the shower the other morning and quickly learned I had gotten a sunburn. At first I was going to say that the top of the head is bad place to get a sunburn, then I thought that there isn't a really good place to get a sunburn, and then I thought of some REALLY bad places you could get a sunburn, and that's when I decided to stop thinking about it.

Happy New Year MMVIII

Just thought I would put a quick post to show the view we had of the fireworks above the Brisbane River. We were up at my friend Anna's new apartment on the 54th floor with a panoramic view of the city. As you can see we were a very good deal higher than the fireworks.

We could also see the fireworks they were setting off at South Bank which would have made for a cool picture too as they were coming up from behind other office buildings. But the battery in my camera was just about dead when I started taking the pictures. I would take one picture and it would close the lens and shut off the camera. I just kept turning it back on and taking another picture. I got about 6 shots before it didn't even have enough power to shut the lens. If I hadn't waited until the last minute to get dressed and head off to the party in the first place, I would have taken my tri-pod and done some longer exposers. I'm just glade that out of the 6 I got one decent shot with a hand-held camera. Most of them had a lot of movement blur.

Since I was already in Photoshop I also took the opportunity to expand the background image to 2400 pixels so the left blue edge doesn't repeat again on the right when viewing the site on wide screen monitors. I actually started futzing around with a new background image that has a jumble of my game box covers down the left instead of the blue smear. First attempt didn't quite work out. The scale was wrong and I need to shrink the box covers down some more. I'll do another attempt later this week.

Oh I almost forgot. I also found a wallet on the way over to Anna's. It had driver's licenses and other cards for two girls along with about $100 AUD. We managed to find a phone number for them and call them. One of the girls just came over and picked it up. So there you go, first act of the New Year is a good deed. I think thats a great start for 2008.

Lay On McDuff

The job search is still on going though it is completely stalled since it is the middle of the holidays and everybody is on vacation. I’ve taken advantage of the situation by not doing much myself except trying my best to be up and in the shower before noon. I do have several projects I’ve been wanting to get started on though, some writing, a few t-shirt ideas to put up on café press, taking that new picture of myself with short hair and reorganizing my audio book collection off my iPod and back onto a computer. I had been buying, downloading, and storing them on my work computer and am still thankful that my new iPod is was big enough to store all the ones that I had not already copied and taken home.

We do have to be out of this apartment by the middle of February though, as the owner sold the place and the new people plan on living here. Hopefully I will have at least some idea of what is going on by then. My mother has dropped more than one hint that we could always move in with her back in Vegas while I look for another job back in the U.S. I do miss the states a little. I somehow was found myself watching an episode of Cops that came on after one of those FBI profiler shows where I was too lazy to change the channel. I was glued to the TV watching the guy in the patrol car drive around Vegas trying to pick out landmarks I knew including one excited shout of “Look! A Wienerschnitzel!” Oh chili cheese dog, how you haunt my dreams.I do want to thank Pandemic Studios; another Brisbane based game company, for throwing a Christmas party for all the ‘retrenched’ Auran people. Somebody over there found out our Christmas party had been canceled as part of the whole company being insolvent thing. They stepped up and managed to put together a party for us at the last minute. I won a $50 Myer gift certificate as one of the door prizes.

As 2007 draws to a close amidst a dark cloud where I am out of work, will cease to have a daily excuse for writing 2007 with a little hanging bit and the cross through the center of the 7 that I learned from David Copperfield back in the early 80’s and we find that Spider-Man’s continuity has been rewritten so that he was never married to Mary Jane. I’m sorry if I’m spoiling the end of the “One More Day” storyline for you but we pretty much expected that’s how this awful arc would come to an end.

To 2008 I say this:

Lay on, McDuff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold, Enough!’

Looking for Work

It’s been a wild four years, but Auran Developments has been declared insolvent and officially let everybody go today. There is talk of re-hiring a core Fury team to move the game forward to its release in China where I expect it will do very well. I don’t know if I am going to be offered a place on that team or not but as of now officially looking for another job.

So if anybody is looking to hire a game designer let me know. I do interface design, specs, world building, writing, quests… content designer sort of stuff. I have a good deal of experience with MMO games and generally enjoy all aspects of multi-player gameplay.

Resume and full list published titles available in the link over on the right, under my picture that I still haven't updated now that I cut my hair.

Korean Predictions for WoW from April 6th 2004

Way back in the deep dark roots that eventually became Fury, we were originally working on a completely different game, a full blown MMORPG for a Korean publisher. One of the problems we had was trying to push them to moving forward, to innovate, and to just be different from the others Korean MMORPGs. You know the old saying, seen one Korean MMO you’ve seen them all. Green fields of monsters with very little depth of gameplay.

I’m not trying to put down Korean game companies. Despite anything bad we can say about their MMO games, they seem to be doing okay for themselves. But the question is, would they know a good thing when they see it? 3 years later WoW is now an unqualified success in Korea with about 2 million of WoW's 9 million world-wide subscribers coming from the Korean market. But how did they think WoW would do back at release?

Well here is an email from a guy at our Korean publisher written Tuesday, 6 April 2004. I found it while cleaning out some old folders in Outlook.

Subject: World of Warcraft feedback from Korea

Here is some feedback from 10 industry insiders(developers and marketing managers).

Overall, Korean developers released their initial tension on WOW.
Many forecast WoW will be end just like other western games in Korea.
It is only good game for hardcore target but not more than that.
They are expecting maximum concurrent users will be 20,000.

The Biggest weakness is keyboard movement, Character look and weak characteristic of items.
Also weak party play elements are mentioned many times.

● Strong Points
+ Well optimized. Geforce 2 friendly, good game play on Pentium 800
+ Overall world design and atmosphere is good.
+ Fun quest and every efficient
+ There are many ways to get XP, feel like enjoying real adventure
+ Efficiently managed packet data
+ NPC is very active, which give alive world feelings.
+ Sound support is great, easy to notice and handle when error occurred
+ Light and fun PVP
+ Maintained strong point and improved weak point from Diablo

● Weak Points
+ Movement, it is not mouse point and click. Have to be adapted
+ Character taste is quite different, which make obstacle to immerse in game world.
+ Item collection is not convenient. One more step to collect them.
+ Unstable balancing. Colouring for level difference is ambiguous.
+ Item system is not stable. There are many items are abandoned in game world.
+ Uneven HP recovery for each races
+ Weak item identity
+ Not strong party play leading.

First thing: he says 20,000 "maximum concurrent users." He doesn't say "subscribers" nor does he say "online users" which is good because giving that English is his second language we wouldn't want to pass too much judgment on what may be a translation issue. But even giving them the benefit of the doubt, at 2 million subscribers you can bet WoW's concurrent online users is still much higher than 20,000 players. And he does clearly say that the game will only do well with hardcore game players and will fail like other Western games that have tried to penetrate the Korean market.

Take what you want from the strong points they are pretty straight forward. Lets jump right to the weak points:

Point and Click movement, the bane of our existence back then. Blizzard did eventually capitulate and put in an optional point and click movement system. It went in during the final stage of the beta and was in the game when these guys were playing. If what I’ve been hearing is true, nobody uses it even now.

Character taste, they hate the ‘cartoon’ characters, fair enough lots of Western players said the same.

The item collection thing, what he is talking about is having to click on the mob’s corpse in order to loot them. In most of the Korean MMORPGs when you kill something all the items drop directly to the ground. I should note here that in most of those games they drop right to the ground where anybody can pick them up, not just the player who defeated the mob. So he is saying they don't like the extra step of having to click on the corpse and then loot.

Coloring again refers to items. He is saying they are saying the game’s itemization is unbalanced and they think the way they color the names of items to show its power/rarity is ambiguous.

The item system being unstable is his comment on the vendor trash items found on mobs. He is saying that useless items liter the game world. I assume at this point that they didn’t get far enough or didn’t understand the trade skills to take those items into account. But there are "grey" items which are just meant to be sold to vendors. It is actually a very good sub-reward system on top of straight coin reward. Coins add nothing to your inventory; you can just keep getting more. Items on the other hand take up inventory space and you can run out of room. It is a way of giving you money, but you have to manage your inventory and go back to town and sell them to a vendor to actually get that gold. I’m trying to remember what Korean MMOs I’ve seen with vendor trash items; they do tend to blend together after awhile but I’m sure the vendor trash thing has never really been just a Western game design element.

Uneven hit point recovery. I think they didn’t follow that one of your character’s stats affected your hit point recovery rate. Actually I have a hard time believing that is what they meant here. Maybe that two different character from different races had different hit point total, which again is still based on your character's stats. I dunno.

Weak item identity I don’t understand.

Not strong party play leading I don’t understand either. If you measure it up against something like Lineage they might be talking about the Prince/Princess class who are the only characters who can create a blood pledge and lead their followers to take over castles in game.

After he wrote that email he linked us to a Korean site that tracks games played in PC cafe's in Korea. I watched it for several months and Lineage, Lineage 2 and WoW were always right up there together with very little difference in numbers of players between them. Note that is Lineage 1 and 2 as two separate entries. I don't think I still have that link but I'd be interested to see how that data comes out today.

Take what you will from all that, I'd ramble on some more but I really do need to get to bed.

I don't like Chocolate

I have a dreaded dark secret that I’ve been trying to keep hidden from everyone for years. You already know what it is because it’s the title of this post: I don’t like chocolate. I like white chocolate with my favorite being the White Toblerone bars, Mmmm. I’m okay with chocolate cake, brownies, tootsie rolls, and even peanut M&Ms; straight up chocolate however is right out. The purer the chocolate the more I hate it. I bought Connie a 99% cocoa gourmet Lindt chocolate bar once and she had me try some. It was the second worst thing I have ever had tasted. I was going to say ‘had in my mouth’ but that just conjured up all the wrong associations.

When people, especially women, find out about my strong dislike for this revered confectionery they treat me like some kind of alien. They seem to find this whole admission even more offensive being that I was born on Valentines day thought they don't seem to be bothered by the fact that I don't run around in a diaper with a little bow and arrow. My only defense on the chocolate issue is to say that if I were to buy them some chocolate... say as a gift; they can rest assured that I won’t try to steal any. This usually grants me a temporary reprieve until they realize that the times I do happen to buy them some chocolate are few and far between. Its not that I’m not a loving, gift giving kinda guy, it’s just that I would rather get them something I can steal some of.

Now however, I have found any ally who understands my plight.

2007 Aurealis Awards

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but I’m a judge on the fantasy short story panel of the 2007 Aurealis Awards.

Nominations were just closed with 159 stories submitted this year in the fantasy short story category. The awards ceremony is January 26th at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts here in Brisbane and is open to the public.

I mentioned this is because I just think it’s so cool to sit in the middle of a pile of manuscripts and I wanted to share. I am just such a big geek for that sort of thing.

Okay the real reason I brought it up was because I wanted to help spread the word of this:

A Christmas Conversation with Fiona McIntosh

Get ready for the holiday season by joining us for a special festive chat with internationally best-selling Australian fantasy author, Fiona McIntosh.

Fiona will share her experiences on becoming a full time writer and the trials and tribulations of being a published professional in what promises to be the perfect preparation for the holiday season.

She will also be signing copies of her books (which make the perfect Christmas present.

Profits from this relaxed and intimate evening will support the Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier speculative fiction celebration. Tickets are available now from Pulp Fiction Books or at the door on the night.

Where: QWC seminar room, Metro Arts Building, 109 Edward Street, Brisbane
When: Monday 3rd December, 6:00pm for 6:30pm
Cost: $10 (includes finger food)

Brought to you by Fantastic Queensland and Pulp Fiction Books.

I haven't actually read anything by Fiona McIntosh but I like to listen to writers talk about writing. Or maybe I have... her website look familiar but I don't recognize any of the titles.

New Picture with Short Hair

I was going to wait till this weekend to take a new picture of myself with short hair. But then I was set up to do Erin Marcon's "Collections" column in Hyper Magazine.Left to right on the monitors is Fury, the original Command & Conquer, and Eye of the Beholder. The 5 characters on the Eye of the Beholder screen are all old Westwood Studios employees - left to right: Myself, Frank Saxon, Aaron Powel, Phil Gorrow, and Paul Mudra. The statue between the monitors is from the comic book Invincible by Robert Kirkman. You can also see Sergio Aragonés Groo statue sitting on top of the Nintendo DS games. The figures on top of the computer are from Homestar Runner.

It was a last minute thing so I had to quickly take a new picture and answer all his questions. I was up till all hours of the morning trying to get a decent picture.

I remember when I was taking photography classes at College of Southern Nevada in Vegas. One of the girls asked me for advice because I was getting A's on all my assignments. I asked to see her proof sheets for our last assignment. She had taken 5 pictures for the assignment. First I showed her one picture that showed what I had done to set up the picture, lights hanging off cloths racks and stuff like that. Then I showed her my poof sheets. I used 7 whole rolls of film just to get one picture that I could work on for few hours in the dark room to get it looking good enough to turn in. Then I asker her out and she turned me down. :-(

I'll still try to take another picture this weekend to make a new profile picture.

Back from Melbourne

Here is a picture of the Fury booths at GCAP, eSports and eGames in Melbourne.










I would like to point out that the girls in the last picture were kicking ass. The guy sitting across from them kept standing up and looking over the computers as if to assure himself that yes, he had in fact had his butt handed to him by a 8 year old girl.

While we were setting up all the computers at eGames, I noticed that our friends over at Australian Gamer hadn't arrived and set up yet. So decided to have a little fun. Now when I showed this picture to Yug he game me such a hurt look as if I had just stolen his last beer. I felt so bad. I would also like to point out that in the end, there was in fact cake. It was some kind of fruitcake covered in nuts, so really, no big loss.



The first night we got to Melbourne I talked everybody into going to the Hardrock Cafe for dinner because I wanted to get a pin for my collection. I had been too lazy to walk the few blocks to get the pin when I was in Melbourne last year. From our hotel this year it was all the way on the other side of the CBD. Once we got all the way over there we found out that it had closed 2 weeks ago. Sigh.

So thats about it for my trip to Melbourne. Well except for the part where some guy picked my pocket and I chased him down and tackled him to the ground. That was kind of fun except for the part where he ran off and when security got there they yanked me off in to the back room for some spit in your face yelling type interrogation.

Oh, and I cut my hair off. Pictures to come in the next few days.

eGames & GCAP in Melbourne

I will be heading down to Melbourne Wednesday for the eGames Expo. I feel Auran's official press release for the topic covers all the points nicely:

We're sending some of our unwashed* staff to the eGames Expo in Melbourne, which starts on the 16th of November and runs through to the 18th. If you're in the Melbourne region, get along to the expo and visit the Fury stand to have a chat. We'll have copies of Fury for sale at special show prices as well, so come with some cash to pick up a copy for you or a friend.

* Staff will be patched before the show to remedy this bug.

If you have yet to sign up as member of my rabid legion of followers and you happen to be near Melbourne next weekend; stop by eGames and bring your own pen. I swear newbie legion members steal more pens from me.

I will actually be switching between our booth at eGames and a booth at Game Connect: Asia Pacific (a.k.a. GCAP), an industry conference event also being held in the Convention Center; but I shouldn’t be that hard to track down.

Ashwin also just let me know that the Electric Playground video of me interviewing Connie and Baxter here in the office for is up on their site. I won't linking to said video because I look like shit. This is what happens when you live somewhere with high humidity, fry your hair by bleaching it blond and not know when you leave the house in the morning that you are going to be doing a video shoot.

I have dyed my hair back brown as you can see from the picture to the right, but half that length is fried. The natural curl is starting to come back but unless I use excess hair product it frizzes out halfway through the day. I am probably going to cut the damaged length off when I get back from Melbourne.

If you really want to see how bad it looks, feel free to go find the Electric Playground site yourself, but just remember. I warned you.

Richard Garriott's Pain in My Ass

As a game designer I tend to take a very critical look at how other game companies do things. ...and then I complain about them. That second part doesn't have anything to do with being a game designer, that's just me. I’m not saying I, the company I work for, or the product we just put out is perfect either, it’s just that it isn’t very professional to complain about those things in public so I’m forced to pick on other people and their products.

It is day 4 in my attempt to play “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa”. I have now given up on my attempt to get my normal account name back and am trying to use my other account. At this point I am also trying to act like some average consumer when faced with problems. For example I am now pretending I know nothing about the connection between the game and NCSoft, specifically the fact that I have to use a Master PlayNC account to then add “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa”.

The little card with my “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” Serial Code that came in the box simply says to launch the game and follow the instructions. I click the “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” icon on my desktop, it loads the PlayNC launcher and I click on “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” under the Installed list and then press “Play Now.” It goes through a patch check, EULA, logo screens, skips the movie because it already played it once when I first installed and updated and I am eventually faced with a login screen and asked for my account and password.

It has not yet told me that how I should go about making an account. The only options I can select are Options (Video/Audio/Game/Key Bindings), Cinematic, Credits, and Exit.

I type some random stuff in the account and password fields and press return. The computer is now locked up and both ALT-Tab and CTRL-ALT-DEL do nothing. I know what the problem is. They blew test number one. They didn’t take software firewalls into account and Zone Alarm’s little dialog is blocked behind their screen and they won’t let me ALT-Tab out to say that it’s okay for “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” to access the Internet. I have to force shut down my machine at this point because it doesn’t appear to be timing out.

Luckily Zone Alarm now remembers incomplete failed software access attempts so I just have to open up its menu and say allow “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa”. Before Zone Alarm did this if you never answered the ‘Allow’ or ‘Block’ dialog the program wouldn’t show up in the list. Granted if you aren’t familiar with stupid launcher programs that do crap like this, you still wouldn’t know why your computer is locking up.

Okay so I get back to the password screen and type random stuff and it just tells me to check my spelling etc. It does say that if I need help retrieving account information I should go to www.plaync.com/us/account/ for more information. But it has never told me how to go about creating an account in the first place.

I go back to the PlayNC launcher and press the Help link. It loads up Internet Explorer which is NOT my default browser. I use Firefox. For a moment I shake my fist at the computer while pretending I’m a ranting, anti-Microsoft, computer guy. I yell and scream for a few minutes about the “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” sullying my computer with Internet Explorer and probably downloading viruses as we speak. Seriously, if you are going to launch a browser, launch the default browser on the machine.

Lets look at the link on the Serial Code card, www.rgtr.com. RGTR stands for “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” and it yes, every where they print the name of the game they have to spell out the whole thing. Kinda like the old Virgin Game’s “The 11th Hour: The Sequel to the 7th Guest.” Same thing and I swear it made the manual twice as long. It’s so stupid. Marketing feels that putting Richard’s name on the title like that might help sell the game. He’s a famous guy, we all love Ultima. I get that, I get putting it on the box, but the extra step of bonding his name to the title is annoying. It is ridiculous to read when used in a sentence. And they obviously don’t want you typing that whole thing out in the URL so they shortened it to RGTR which now isn’t connected to the either his name or the game anymore! You might have noticed I’ve gone back over this post and replaced everywhere I had Tabula Rasa with “Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa” just to drive the point home. I do wonder if I could legally put out my own game called “Joseph B. Hewitt IV’s Tabula Rasa”?

Anyway the official game web site… going to look through their forums to see if anybody else has this problem. Community link to Forum & Fansites link… to umm no official forums. They are all fansite forums.

Okay I give up. I didn’t mean to write another really long complaining post. I was just going to post a small thing about them locking up my computer with Zone Alarm and it somehow blew up into this whole thing. I’m going to turn my brain back on and log in with my PlayNC account. I really don’t know how a casual, non-technical, person would ever figure out how to actually log into the game. Going to the PlayNC site, creating an account there, adding the game through that site, THEN logging into the game isn’t a natural process. You would think they would put all that on the Serial Code card but instead they link to the official game site. There do seem to be people online right now playing "Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa" so maybe it’s just me.

Don’t PlayNC

NCSoft has got to have THE WORST help system of any on-line game service. Okay, probably not anywhere near THE worst. SoE certainly wasn’t an award winner for SWG at its launch, but NCSoft certainly does love making you jump through hoops and they have had over four years to actually get some tools in place.

I recently bought Tabula Rasa. In order to play it I have to have a Master PlayNC account. I do have a Master PlayNC account that I created almost four years ago in early 2004 when I played City of Heroes. Unfortunately, none of my standard passwords seem to be correct. I also love how they get you with the too many attempts thing right off the bat. You know how most systems allow you to attempt to enter your password a few times before they say something and make you wait awhile before you can try again? Well PlayNC does that after the first try.

Too many failed login attempts, login temporarily disabled. Please try again in a few minutes.

Granted the wait time is only like 2 minutes before you can try again, but what a pain in the ass especially if you just made a typo.

I try to use their lost password feature. It pops up two security questions that I am assuming I picked way back when. It also has one of those annoying ‘type in the letters you see that are distorted, hard to read and partly hidden on this noisy background image’ things that all appear to be coded to just reject your first attempt out of hand. The questions are “What was the color of my first car” and “What was my childhood nickname.” I enter the answers and am told I’m wrong.
Funny that I have a color picture of said car right here and am still haunted by that cruel nickname. The only recourse I am given is that I have to contact support. No link, just told that is what I have to do.

Under the ‘Help’ link on the side menu I find a ‘Support Center’ link, enter ‘Lost Password’ in the search field and get an entry titled “PlayNC Support - What should I do if I think I have been hacked?”

Okay, lets try, “Forgot Password”… okay that came up with a few, one of which is “I forgot my PlayNC master account password.” It gives me the same spiel about going to the lost password link and if I have updated my account and added the security questions that I need to answer them but if I haven’t updated it then I need to just enter my date of birth. Note to self, in the future don’t update and add the questions I won’t remember the answer to in four years.

At the bottom it has another link. “I can't use the FORGOT PASSWORD feature because I cannot remember some of the required information.” Why this link isn’t included on the actual Lost Password page I don’t know.

That page tells me to use the “Ask a Question” link and paste in the following into the form:

Subject:
I forgot my PlayNC master account password and I can't reset it using the FORGOT PASSWORD feature.
Question:
Here is my account information:
PlayNC master account name: ENTER ACCOUNT NAME HERE
First and last name: ENTER FIRST AND LAST NAME HERE
Physical Address: ENTER POSTAL MAILING ADDRESS (not e-mail address) HERE
Date of birth: ENTER DATE OF BIRTH HERE
Serial codes/access keys: ENTER CODES/KEYS HERE
Unique Account ID(s): ENTER UNIQUE ACCOUNT ID(s) HERE

Now the problem with all these is I have moved around a bit and there are 5 possible postal addresses I may have used when I first signed up for the account: My house in Vegas, my mother’s house in Vegas (my main U.S. mailing address), my work address, my original apartment when I first moved to Australia or my current apartment.

The Serial Codes and Unique Account IDs are the game code and account names used on previous PlayNC games. I haven’t a clue. I played several of their games but when I stopped, I canceled the accounts. I don’t have that information. (Actually I do as I am very anal about that sort of thing, but let’s pretend I’m a normal person who doesn’t keep game boxes for more than a few years after they’ve stopped playing them. And that they don’t keep game activation code emails buried in some folder in their inbox. Or at least pretend I’m just too lazy to go out into the box in storage where those old game boxes are which is probably a lot easier.) I wrote that I have no active accounts for those two entries.

I got back an email saying that some of my information in incorrect or inaccurate. To assist them further I need to provide them with additional information. They do apologize for what appears to be additional steps. I am told not to reply to the email but rather to go to a link to update my support reqest. This link takes me to their Knowledge Base support page. At this page I am asked for my email address and a password. I wanted to write back, thanking them for their time but informing them that I was going to return Tabula Rasa to the store.

I can’t however as I have no password for their knowledge base page. I am pretty sure I was never asked to create one. Just now in writing this post I have actually retraced my steps to creating this customer service request. I have looked at the original email they auto-sent me when I entered the customer service request and all over this current one. Both say that if I need to update my request to go to that link but neither give any indication of a password. And this email also says if they don’t hear back from me in 72 hours they will assume the issue has been resolved. Not letting the customers answer back is a nice way to get their customer support resolved issues scores up.

Looking back through the PlayNC email crap I have kept. I do have one regarding why I quite City of Heroes. Petition: “Falling Forever: Walked into a building for a mission and fell through the world. I am still falling. /stuck does nothing.”

I remember that I waited online for quite awhile but never got a response. Tried logging off and back on and was still falling. I got this email three days later, “My apologies, but I am not able to find your hero online at the moment. Unfortunately, we can only assist you on this issue while your hero is logged in. Next time you log in with this hero, please reply back to this email letting us know that you are online, and we will get to you as quickly as we can. You may continue to play, and we will find you in the game when we get to your petition.”

This is why I was working to get macro programs banned from SWG customer service. I may not continue to play as falling forever is not what I consider ‘playing’ and I certainly wasn’t about to spend three more days doing it. If somebody had to actually type an answer to that it would probably have more to do to address my problem than suggest that I log in, write them email, then sit there for hours while waiting for them to come to my aid.

The real end to this story is I have another PlayNC account. I created a second one way back when because of this same problem. I was only jumping through these hoops because A. I wanted to complain about them and B. I would prefer to have the other account name as it is my standard one I always use for MMOs. Seriously, if they want you to maintain a master account and not make a new one for each new game, they need to smooth this process out.

It does annoy the piss out of me that they don’t just do the standard “mail the password to the email address on file” like the rest of the world does. I would only need to contact customer support if I had changed my email address or something. They certainly don’t seem to have a problem spamming my email with crap about how they keep re-activating my various game accounts for their ‘special’ weekends to get me to come back.

I wonder if my CoH character is still falling?

All your XBox 360 faceplates belong to me!

As a follow up to my "I post all my own ideas" post regarding the Australian Gamer forum, it turns out that my reply post to El Taco was nominated for the October Post of the Month. So get on over there and stuff the ballots voting for me so I can win another XBox360 faceplate. Never mind the fact that I don't own a XBox360. Its those region coding issues I've gone on about numerous times before. Anyway, the "I do all my own stunts" t-shirt is pretty cool, I'd wear that.

Speaking of the Next Gen Console systems (shouldn't we call them 'This Gen' by now) I did try to rent a PS3 from Blockbuster Thursday night. They rent them for $50 bucks a night. $50 bucks!!! And they only have one, which was already rented and not due back till Monday. With that kinda of return on investment why do they only have one?! And Mr. PS3-Renter... if you are going to spend $200 bucks, assuming it was Thursday that you rented it, just go and buy one!

What has he gots in his pocketses?

I was dumping all this stuff out of my pocket the other night and was marveling so much at the pile I created that I thought I would share.

Swiss Army Wallet
I prefer what I think is called a business card wallet. It is just a simple one fold wallet with a driver's license window on the top half and two pockets on the bottom. Wallets with too many separate pockets are just too thick even when you don't have anything in them.

Black & Crimson Nintendo DS
This color isn't available in Australia so I like to show it off and impress all the women. I bought it in Seattle when I was back in the states for PAX. I have the wireless browswer cart plugged in there but I has of yet been able it to connect to my wireless router. The game in there is the new Zelda. I normally have Picross too but I think its in my camera bag.

Notebook
Before I moved to Australia I had an old Palm Pilot. It was in need of replacing and I realized I wouldn't have an Australian adapter for it when I moved so I just planned on getting a new one. To tide me over I bought this notebook and still use it four years later. To be honest though I was really only using the Palm Pilot as a calendar and to play old Infocom text adventures.

Earphones lanyard
I remember when I saw this in the store for $60 dollars (Australian) and wondered what idiot would pay that much for cheap ear-bud style head phones. But it turns out to work really well. I don't have to worry about digging my iPod out of my pocket to access it and no more accidentally tangling up in the headphone cord or catching it on something and unplugging them. The iPod plugs right into the lanyard which the headphone wires go up into. That black band tying it up is a hair band for those annoying hair emergencies.

Card Wallet
Its kinda hard to see in the picture, but its in-between the notebook and the money wallet. When you buy some card tricks that require special cards they come in a little plastic wallet like this. I started carrying this around a few months ago when I was teaching a friend how to do this trick called Color Monte so he could show the magician his mother had recently started dating. The special cards aren't 'trick cards' as such just a pre-prepared surprise card for the finale. The trick itself is all slight of hand.

Oakly Sunglasses
Usually, I wind up buying a new pair of sunglasses every year either because I have lost, broke or simply scratched up my previous pair. I've had this pair for 3 years now. I scratched up previous pair pretty bad and had them in the car glove box as a back up pair till somebody broke into my car and stole them. They didn't seem that impressed by the music CDs in the car which must mean they have really bad taste or that I do.

Money Wallet
I used to have a money clip but I don't know what became of it. It was actually a Swiss Army money clip that matched the wallet and a little notebook that I also lost. Connie got me this wallet which you may have seen advertised on late night TV. It has those crossed bands of elastic so you can open it either way. You just open it, toss in a fold of money and then close and open it from the other side and the bills are now under the elastic.

iPod Nano
Its a small one compared to the larger memory sizes you can get today, but it just the thing for my unabridged audio books. It is actually a rebuilt one they replaced my previous one with when it froze up. I started having problems with this one last week but luckily they were able to fix it up without having to replace it again. Have you ever noticed that people who work at an Apple store are all way to hip? The girl there was pretty impressed with my "I don't work here." t-shirt.

Cellphone
I was a very early cellphone adopter. A friend of mine worked at Radio Shack in the late 80's and he let me use his employee discount to buy a car-mounted cell phone. I didn't really call that many people with it, but would hold it up as if I was talking to somebody and sing along to the radio. A few years later somebody broke into my car and stole the handset for it not realizing that the actual phone was this giant brick mounted under the seat. I replaced it with an early Motorola handhold and basically started using it as my everyday phone. For a number of years I didn't have a land line until I got a TiVo and needed a line to plug it into for program updates.

Keyring
So whats on the keyring besides keys? LED flashlight, 4gig memory stick, and a little hook thing that I sometimes attach my ring to so I don't loose it when I take it off. I bought this little dangly robot thing thing down in Southbank when we had a BBQ there last weekend, but I just know it won't hold up for very long so I think I'll try attaching it to the rear-view mirror of the car instead.

Shrapnel
Otherwise known as spare change. No one dollar bills in Australia so on top of the normal array of change you also have the 'gold' one and two dollar coins. I have a large jar I fill up with everything but the gold coins and then cash in at the bank. I've always wondered what they do in strip clubs if they don't have one dollar bills. I can't really believe the types of guys who hang out in strip clubs would stuff five dollar bills down a girl's g-string but I also can't see them using one dollar coins either. I keep saying I'll go investigate but haven't as of yet.

Swiss Army Knife
Its the really geeky version that not only has the scissors but also has a little pair of pliers. I really need to replace it but I haven't found a similar one or one I like.

The only thing missing is that I used to also have a pocket watch. But ever since I lost the really cool chain my brother got me for Christmas many years ago I haven't consistently carried one. I consistently keep buying new ones, getting new chains, but the other chain was just the right size, was actually two chains so it didn't run the risk of breaking, and had a really good clip to attach to my pocket.