I couldn’t help laughing a little when I read this article just now. Not because of the people getting banned, though. Rather, because of the silly analyst who commented on the banning applying to consoles rather than users:

Microsoft, he said, “needs to find a way to address this, or else it risks annoying the modders who make up 1 percent of their audience and the second-hand purchasers.”

Would someone care to explain to me why in the world Microsoft would care about this? Modders are violating the terms of service, without question. And second-hand purchasers are the core reason why developers lose money these days. This is so ridiculous I can’t even begin to explain. Allow me to try.

GameStop is evil. There, I said it. I wholly admit that I say this as someone from within the industry. Their business of buying and selling used games is pure 100% profit for them, and developers see NOTHING out of that. It hurts developers when the day after a game is released, you can buy the same game for $5 less used, because we see none of the money from that sale. Now, on a personal level, I’m not willing to buy a used game just to save $5. I like ripping open the packaging for the first time. But on a bigger level, this strategy is hurting development of games.

So when Microsoft is “hurting second-hand sales” of Xbox consoles, why shouldn’t they be? Do they see a cent of money from the selling/buying of used consoles? Of course not! This is probably intentional, and it should be!

Whew. I’m spent. Those comments in the article really got my goat.

I know this is super exciting for everyone, but I’m excited, so you’re going to have to deal with it. White text on black backgrounds just doesn’t cut it anymore. Five years ago it was COOL and EXCITING. Now it hurts my eyes. So I’m changing it up. What do you think?

I also updated my Blogroll (actually, I didn’t even know I had one) with blogs that I regularly read. A few are just my friends who happen to be excellent writers, and the others are all a bunch of industry people I’ve never actually met. But they’re all very excellent blogs to read, especially going back through the archives. If you’re bored (or if you want to see my taste in writings), check them out!

It’s kinda fun to have started blogging regularly again. And I actually have pageviews this time, too! Twitter never ceases to amaze me.

I have a lot of problems figuring out exactly what I prefer to do when showing a company I disapprove of something they do. On the one hand, I wholly support that idea that you should vote with your wallet. You can scream and shout as much as you’d like in any public venue you can think of, but at the end of the day, it’s your money that they care about. But what happens when you know your bit of cash isn’t going to make a difference in the end?

I’m kinda beating around the bush here, but really I’m talking about the whole Modern Warfare stuff that’s been going on over the past few weeks. I’ve mentioned it before: I don’t approve of their tactics. The whole Fight Against Grenade Spam PSA was not only offensive, but the company offered nothing by way of apology. That bothers me a whole lot. But at the same time, we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this will be one of the top-selling games of 2009. Maybe ever. And I know that my measly $60 means nothing to them in this case. So, I have trouble justifying not purchasing the game for myself.

Modern Warfare 2 will be a good game. Again, no one’s doubting that. And yes, I do want to play it, because I wholeheartedly enjoyed the first outing. Am I so bothered by their company’s marketing tactics that I will withhold my purchase? Probably not. But not because I think they deserve the money, mostly because I know they’re not going to notice the hole my non-purchase would leave. And I’m part of the problem by deciding this, I know. But I can’t get myself to decide that boycotting a company is the way to go with this.

Look at the stupid stuff that’s been going on with the MW2 community and the L4D community. All those damn petitions and threats to boycott are some of the dumbest campaigns I’ve ever seen. Listen, folks. Internet petitions mean NOTHING. You need to get over thinking that a million signatures means anything anymore. Just because the Internet gives you the ability to connect to everyone around the world doesn’t make your petition any more viable. All petitions do is cause a bandwagon effect. Everyone’s got this “Me too!” mentality these days that just drives me nuts. How many of those people writing petitions are actually going to refuse to purchase those games when they come out? My guess is ZERO. People just love bitching these days about whatever’s got their panties in a bunch.

As I drift off-topic, my point is that I don’t think in this case holding back is going to accomplish anything. Nor do I feel that writing about it on the Internet will solve anything. I have no solution to this, it’s just something that’s been bothering me lately. Yeah, I’m probably going to buy MW2. But I’m not excited about it anymore.

• World of Warcraft – I hit 68 this week, which finally allowed me to experience Northrend. The quest chains as soon as you get there are so well grouped together that you really can see yourself making progress in the overarching storyline. It’s extremely satisfying. I’m looking forward to seeing when the “Phasing” tech gets used out there, so far I’ve only seen it in the Death Knight intro. Anyway, I think the WoW bug finally bit, and I’m so close to 80 I can taste it.
• Half Life 2 – This got put on hold while I played WoW, but I really want to get through it.
• Warcraft III – I stopped on one of the “Survive for 30 minutes” missions, and I’m afraid to go back. I hate timers. I have no doubt it’ll be easy, but I hate being timed. HATE IT.
• Champions Online – It took me a while to get some momentum, but I hit 17 this week and new areas are now opening up to me to do some missions in. Plus, it’s the final weekend of Blood Moon, so I wanna hit up some more perks. I also like that I can go back to lower-level missions and get significant amounts of XP for doing them.

Next week is Modern Warfare 2. I’m hesitant to buy it due to the drama surrounding it. I have no doubt the game is good, but I just don’t appreciate the company culture they’ve established for themselves. You are welcome to purchase the game. I have some qualms about supporting a company that posts ads like the above without a second thought.

• The Orange Box (360) – I already owned HL2, Portal, and TF2 on the PC, but after so many times having to reinstall my OS without an adequate back-up, I’m tired of having to restart my HL2 game. So I got the 360 version, and now I never have to worry about losing my save again. Plus, apparently I’m way better at console FPS’s than PC ones.
• Warcraft III – Never got the chance to play this when I was younger. Now I’m taking the opportunity to do so. This game sets the stage very well for WoW.
• World of Warcraft – It finally bit me. I’m becoming slowly addicted. When I’m not playing, sometimes I think about things I want to do later when I have time. Uh oh.
• Brutal Legend – I really want to continue playing it, but everything else keeps distracting me.
• Torchlight Demo – I only have the demo, but it never ends! I’m gonna keep going till it stops me, but I’m shocked at the length of the demo so far. And yes, it’s awesome.
• Champions Online – Well, duh. I’m still working my way through the content, albeit very slowly. This is still my first time naturally leveling from 1-40 (without using dev commands, that is). So even though I’ve seen most of the content at one time or another, I’m trying to experience it for real.

Things I’m watching:

• Battlestar Galactica – Watched the miniseries this weekend, now it’s time to watch the whole series. Hells yeah.
• Mad Men (Season 1) – Still not completely hooked, but the show is good, for sure. I watch it casually when I want to imagine myself being disrespectful to women in the 1960’s.
• Glee – Not having an episode last week was painful.
• Dollhouse – Why is no one watching this this year? The show is AWESOME!

Whenever I find myself enjoying a game, I always take a step back to figure out what it is about the game that attracts me to it. I’m by no means aspiring to be a game designer, but it’s cool to look at what I like in a game, to be able to compare it to upcoming games and see what I might like. For example, I loved Bioshock. And what I realized I liked most about it was that every time you were given a new goal, it seemed to be an easy, short path to that goal, so I’d go “Okay, let’s just do one more ‘mission’”. And then when I’d be about to complete the objective, some obstacle would get in my way, forcing me to do an entirely different mission before I could complete the first one. In theory, that sounds frustrating, but it really wasn’t. It was the dangling carrot that hung so close to my face I could lick it, but it’d get pulled away at the last second because I had to do ONE MORE THING. And so I’d say “Okay, I’ll do this, and THEN complete the objective.” So these small goals added up to one amazing experience.

I saw the same style of objectives in Arkham Asylum. I was shocked to find out that the director of the game had never played Bioshock before, because I noticed a lot of similarities in how the story played out. Get some seemingly easy objective, go to do it, get waylaid and have to do some other mission first. It keeps you hooked. I love it so much.

And now we come to the crux of my thoughts. World of Warcraft. I’ve tried to play it on and off for years now. I mean, no matter what your thoughts on it are, you cannot disagree that their system works. I’m sorry, does your MMO have 11 million subscribers? Yeah, exactly. This time around, I’ve been playing with coworkers. That’s what’s keeping me playing this time, actually. That, and I’ve finally made a commitment to get to level 80 to see what this endgame fuss is all about. Everyone always talks about “the game begins at the level cap”, so I want to see that actually happen. I even paid to transfer a level 64 character over to the right server, which is something I’ve never done before, and never imagined myself doing. So, let’s break down what’s keeping me in this time:

1. Achievements – Like I always mention, achievements are the bane of my existence. I’ve spent the last three nights playing just to earn the Explorer achievements for Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms. It’s insane.

2. Social – I wouldn’t go so far as to call WoW an interactive chat room, but that is definitely a factor in keeping me there. After a long day of work, I like being able to chat with my friends outside of the office atmosphere. Plus, once I hit 80 I’ll actually be able to play with them on an even level, so that should be fun.

3. Curiosity – Still haven’t visited Northrend yet (halfway to 67, though, so I’m almost there!). Still haven’t ever seen what a Raid looks like. Still haven’t gotten a flying mount. These are things I definitely want to see for myself, instead of peering over a friend’s shoulder.

Will I stay subscribed forever? Probably not. I’ll pay for a few months to finally see everything that I should see. The difference in content quality from “vanilla” WoW to Outland was pretty impressive, and from what I’ve seen of the Death Knight intro, the WotLK content is even better. So I’ll stick around, see the sights, and probably move on to other things. I’m an Explorer at heart, which means I tend to be unable to sit in a single MMO for too long.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not a typical gamer. A lot of the most popular games ever created just don’t interest me very much. I bought Oblivion and returned it the next day, because I got too bored too quickly with it. Fallout 3 fared a little better, but it’s still sitting on my shelf and I’ve barely played a few hours of it. Still haven’t beaten Half Life 2 (though I’m working my way through it, I swear!) And don’t get me started on WoW. I try that game again every few months, and at some point I get bored and logout. But recently, I’ve learned what it is I play games for: achievements.

I love and hate achievements. They’re evil little tools to squeeze extra replay value out of a game, but that arbitrary number that is my Gamerscore has become this ridiculous thing in my head. I NEED 20 more points! I need that one last achievement! When Beatles: Rock Band came out (best music game ever, for the record), I started playing, and refused to stop until I finished it because of the damn “beat the game in 24 hours” achievement. I would’ve gotten at least 2-3 more hours of sleep that night if that stupid achievement wasn’t there. But noooooo. I needed to prove to the world that I was enough of a loser to stay up all night and defeat a game in 24 hours.

Achievements are important for our ADD generation, I’ve decided. I can’t play a game and see that I’m 30% through and push forward. What I want is a small reward for playing another 2% of the game. Most single player games are good at that these days. Bioshock, Modern Warfare, Fallout 3, are a few obvious examples. Get a reward for beating the next level, for beating the next boss, etc. I bet I’d have a level 80 character in WoW right now if there were more achievements to earn while leveling. All I have are the every-10-level achievements to look forward to, and that’s definitely not close enough to keep me going. Doing all the instances as I level is good, because I get achievements for them, but there’s really no sense of major accomplishment until you actually choose an achievement and work towards it. I don’t want that. I want to play the game the way I want to play it, and get rewarded every 5 minutes for it.

I know I’m being demanding, and I know I’m being childish and stupid. But it’s just the kind of gamer I am, for some reason. Achievements have ruined my ability to enjoy a game for its story. I’ve been having trouble recently picking up Wii games again, because I feel like I won’t be able to show off my accomplishments to anyone. I love Okami so much, and I still need to finish it, but my stupid brain won’t allow me to boot it up because there are no points to be gained. How ridiculous is that?!

Champions has perks in it. Awesome. I wouldn’t even be able to play my own damn game if it didn’t have those small perks to keep me going. I hate what this world has done to me.

Oh, and yeah. I’m back. I like talking out loud, what can I say?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and I’ve thought a lot about whether I even want to keep up this charade of a blog any more. It’s not that I don’t like the blog idea, because I really do. It’s just that…this can no longer be a personal blog. It wasn’t so personal to start, but now that I’ve got a job that takes place in an online space, I’m a sort of online public figure, in a way. I know that people in my community have discovered this blog, so it’s not like I can pretend to hide it. It’s sad to admit it, but I’m just not sure that I’m going to try to stick with this blog anymore. The sacred few friends who I know read this (Yes, I’m talking to you, Ron and Jackie) I keep in touch with anyway, so I don’t feel so bad about that. And for all my “real life” friends, there’s still Facebook. I still proudly admit that I’m legitimate friends with everyone on my Facebook, and that I refuse to accept random friend requests. My Facebook profile is still my personal private bubble. Sort of. I mean, nothing’s private on the Internet.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you’re reading this, and you want to keep up on my life, just give me a call. Don’t rely on this site anymore, just be my friend.

Yours truly,

Me

Oh boy. I don’t even know where to start.

I’ve been a fan of Upcoming Pixar, a blog that keeps track of all Pixar news, for a while now. It began with my love of computer animation when we first saw it become mainstream, with Toy Story, and then grew and grew over the years. I eat up any slight tidbit of news regarding Pixar’s feature films, and I am the one all my friends turn to with questions regarding the films. I admire Pixar for staying true to themselves, and putting the emphasis on a good story every time. Can you name another studio that has hit it big on every single one of their movies? Didn’t think so.

Anyways, Upcoming Pixar reported that the Disney Senior Vice President of Animation Marketing, Donald Evans, grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, and therefore was hosting a screening of Up in Hartford today. I did a quick lookup of the distance from school, and saw that it was about an hour and a half away. That’s basically the length of a trip from my home in New Jersey to New York City, a trip I’ve done plenty of times. So a chance to see a movie that isn’t out yet, from my absolutely favorite company? Count me in. I phoned up my closest friends, asked them to accompany me, and we made the road trip this morning.

We left at 9AM for a 2PM showing. If I was going to this, there was no way I wasn’t going to get inside the theater. We arrived at the theater at 11AM, the first in line. Guess we could’ve left an hour later. Better safe than sorry, though, right? Anyways, it was like we were famous or something. Random people popped out of the museum to visit us in line outside, saying, “Wow, you came all the way from Boston?” Yes, yes we did. Is an hour and a half drive really that ridiculous? Donald even came out to talk to us for a bit, which was great. I definitely want his job someday. Marketing for Disney and Pixar animated films? I already basically do that, I just don’t get paid for it yet. After another two hours of waiting in line, we were brought inside, picked up some bags of popcorn and candy, and grabbed the first seats in the house.

Let’s get right down to it. First, we were shown the Toy Story 3 teaser. It was excellent, of course. It was great to hear all the old voices again, for sure. Nothing actually involving the plot or anything, though Donald did mention that it was about Andy growing up and going to college. Already a sad start, but I don’t doubt it will be good. Also, release date: June 10, 2010. Next, we saw that trailer for “The Princess and the Frog”, the triumphant return to Disney 2D animation, plus the movie musical! Disney’s definitely pushing the fact that this is the first ever African-American princess. The movie, plus a behind-the-scenes featurette we were shown, really capture the excitement at Disney over the fact that they’ve reopened the old studios for handrawn animation. I’m caught up in the excitement too, so I’ll have to check out that movie at the end of the year.

Lastly, we were treated to an UPisode, a short extra clip about Up that has been making its rounds on the web. Nothing new, but still funny. Then, the movie started! Oh wait! Actually, it was Partly Cloudy, the new short! No spoilers here, but it was awesome as usual. Okay, THEN Up started!

The movie is amazing. I don’t really know how else to explain it. If you’ve seen any other reviews of it, one thing you see a lot is that the movie is both the funniest and the saddest Pixar film yet, and that is definitely an apt description of it. I’m not ashamed to admit I cried multiple times throughout the movie, both from happiness and sadness. But some moments were funnier than anything I could have ever thought possible. There were so many references to other films, that I really hope the majority of audiences pick up on, from Indiana Jones to Star Wars. And it really all came together so well, I couldn’t be happier.

Lastly, we got to have a Q&A with Donald. There were a lot of questions of sequels, and he kept pointing out (like they do) that sequels come out of having a good idea for a story, not out of wanting to make a sequel. Interestingly, though, he flat out denied that there were any discussions of a sequel for Up 2 or The Incredibles 2, but never did the same for Monsters, Inc. 2. I really hope that’s part of the plan. Also, in case you were curious, his favorite Pixar movie is Finding Nemo.

I’ve given up on trying to determine how much I like a Pixar movie the day I see it. I tend to overestimate how much I love it that day, so I’m gonna give it some time before deciding. Plus, I have to go see it in 3D when it comes out for real. My initial reaction is that it’s my second favorite, to Ratatouille. I’m not sure anything will ever top that movie. But Up brought out so many emotions, that I really enjoyed the experience more than most other movies I’ve ever seen. So, those of you reading this from California, be ready. I’m dragging you all with me to a theater on May 29th.

I had a great time the other night having dinner with Sam Houston, Community Manager of GamerDNA. (Check out his Twitter) I had a great time talking with him about Community Management and what is really was, and where it seems to be going. I’m young, as is pointed out to me a lot these days, and therefore inexperienced, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t talk about how I see Community Management. Actually, I think it’s a plus that I haven’t been in a Community role for very long, because I haven’t yet stabilized into a day-to-day role, and therefore my view of the Community team is constantly changing.

When I get asked what my job is post-college, I always have to explain in more depth what I will be doing as an Online Community Representative. Currently, in order to keep it simple, I just say “It’s a little bit of marketing, a little bit of PR.” It doesn’t really explain what an OCR is, but it is enough to keep my family satisfied. But Sam and I got to talking about whether a CM really belongs under a Marketing/PR umbrella, and I came out of the conversation really thinking that it does fall under it. Public Relations is exactly that: forming (and maintaining) a relationship between the public and the company. In my mind, that’s EXACTLY what the Community team does. We are, in some respects, the “face” of the company, in that the majority of players interact directly with us on a day-to-day basis. When people run to the forums to post about something, most of the time (with various exceptions depending on which company you are talking about), you’ll be interacting with the Community team. At Flying Lab, most of the posts on the forums were from me (Community Liaison), Dani (Forum Administrator), Aegir (Community Intern), and Rhaegar (Community Lead). There were various other developers who posted when a response was necessary, but besides that, we were the ones the community tended to know the best.

Some people get pissed off when you describe Community Management as a Marketing/PR position. I can’t understand that. Maybe someone can explain it to me. How can you deny that a position which is required to interact with the public on a regular basis doesn’t have anything to do with Public Relations? I’m not saying that the job doesn’t extend beyond PR. I’m just saying that I don’t see how a person can deny that it falls under that category of PR in the first place.