Catching up on Gaming

I started off the morning by trying to finally get completely caught up on the unread e-mails in my inbox -- most of which are Gamasutra newsletters. I didn't get all the way done 'cause... I didn't. I had koto class at 4:20, then went food shopping. Came back, sat down, and some mormons came by. Tenacious, they are.

After that, I started poking around the Photoshop Phriday archives on Something Awful. There are some really good ones recently (as if they weren't good all the time). You should all definitely check out the most recent one, Honest Game Titles.

So yeah, today wasn't very exciting for people who are interested in reading all about what I am doing in Japan. I did discover that the local grocery store has a small selection of youkan. And I beat Ozymandius twice at Tolouse on the Asobrain website. Tolouse is an online version of a board game called Carcasonne. The site also hosts online Settlers of Catan, as well as Set and some other game I've never played.

So, if you care, here's...

My Take on Slightly Out-of-Date Gaming News

As games get more popular, scientists find more ways to study them. Recently, there seems to have been a boom on studies of games such as DDR and their value as a form of excercise. If you've ever played it yourself, you already know that it has exercise value. I've also seen videos of some of the DDR exhibitions and tournaments that have taken place around the country, in which you'll see people doing 2-player co-op and occasionally doing things like having one guy leap over the other so they can switch pads. I've also personally seen a 9-year old in a Pokemon T-shirt take on the hardest song on a machine on the hardest setting... I don't know how he moved his feet that fast. However, you don't have to be a DDR master to get excercise out of DDR, and Konami is starting to really push the exercise aspect of the game.

Some time ago, someone told me (Kyle, maybe?) about a project to create a first-person shooter game for blind people, in which everything is based on sound. I later heard something that made me think the project had been abandoned. I don't know if it's the same project or not, but it looks like there's an early version of such a shooter right here. Another site, Audiogames, has a whole list of games made for blind people. I dunno if they have graphical interfaces or not, but I intend to try to play this stuff without looking.

Someone comes up with the latest good idea in virtual reality technology, and the military gets to use it first. Go figure. Side note: I want one.

WotC is taking a new tack with D&D advertizements. I like this because it also pokes indirectly at people who try to argue D&D as a bad thing for promoting anti-social natures. It also happens to be kinda funny.

There are a lot of people out there who don't pay much attention to news. Some of those people are not paying attention to the news because they're too busy playing video games. I present Kuma\War, a really good idea. These guys have made a completely free first-person shooter that gets new missions on a monthly basis, and every mission is based on something that actually happened recently. I don't see myself playing the game, but it's still an excellent idea, and I'd be willing to bet that the general concept of turning current events into video games could easily be broadened to include other areas of news and other genres of games.

Ever heard of Project Entropia? It's an MMORPG that is free to download and has been around for like 10 years. It's based around the idea of buying in-game money with real cash. However, you can also turn money gained in-game back into real cash. Some insane maniac recently spent $100,000 of real money to buy a space-station in the game. Sure, he has spaces to rent out to other people, potentially being able to make his money back, but damn. I mean, just damn.

My next bit can be summed up in a single sentence: "LOL, Vin Diesel is going to star in a Hitman movie." (However, a search to find a link to the Hitman web site brought this petition up on Google.)

Do you like good old-fashioned text adventures games, also sometimes called interactive fiction? They arose from D&D, and from them rose the point-and-click adventure games (like the Monkey Island series) and RPG video games. Well, someone's decided that the history of these old fashioned games is really interesting, because he's making a documentary called Get Lamp. It's something I look forward to, actually.

Realizations of the Period

1) It's fun to riddle a blog post with links.
2) I'm so gonna miss having a washing machine in my bedroom. It's one of the most convenient things ever. When your laundry hamper is full, just add soap and pick a wash cycle.