I was curious about how the 100+ comment post affected our readership numbers. Yep, double the number of readers on Friday and over 1,000 unique views. I was surprised, however, that it is not winning on the month. Ravious’s latest Guild Wars 2 post is about 50% higher, despite only having 4 comments; his posts that are actually news consistently get a lot of hits. The winner, though, apart from the front page itself? “A Fable,” a year and a half old, but still periodically rocketing up our stats whenever it has a big day on StumbleUpon. “Game Developers and Porn Stars” also keeps getting hits, largely on the strength of search keywords. Sorry if you were one of the hundreds looking for “game porn,” “game porno,” “porn game,” “games porn,” or “porn games.”
This is also the first time I have not seen Ethic’s Asheron’s Call 2 closing ceremonies in the top 10. People may finally be emotionally moving on from AC2. I never did make that Lugian Tactician.
: Zubon
A friend of mine has dolls that she treats as children. They each have personalities, wardrobes, adventures, etc. She posts about them on the assorted social networking sites. I sometimes find this odd until I remind myself that we are doing the exact same thing, probably for more hours per day, only our dolls our imaginary, digital, and gated behind a monthly fee.
: Zubon
HBO is going to have one more sub soon thanks to this news:
Winter is, indeed, coming.
HBO has greenlighted highly anticipated fantasy series “Game of Thrones.”
The premium network has picked up the project for a first season debut next spring (below is the first released photo from the series). Nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered. Production will begin in Belfast this June.
Awesome.
- Ethic
I like The Onion, but I rarely find myself reading much of it because the full text rarely improves on the headlines. You might need to read the first paragraph to see where they are taking the joke, but stringing it out for 1000 words does not add much to the first 5 seconds. (I might take this as an object lesson, but look at me go, still typing.)
Syp finds the same problem with Star Trek Online, I said the same thing about LotRO skirmishes, and many of us have said the same about Borderlands and Torchlight: it is great at first, but there is not all that much improvement or variation over time. (I do credit the two single-player games for having interesting boss fights mixed into the repetition, where MMOs tend to rely on even more repetition, even in tank-and-spank bosses.) I appreciate being able to get 95% of the benefit in 5% of the time. Portal did that brilliantly and then ended.
: Zubon
Non-MMO inspiration banished to the first comment.
That MMO break has been working out so well, it merits an extension. This is a good time for it anyway; the only interesting MMO release announced for this year is Cataclysm (I already beat WoW, done), and last year’s only sign of promise was Fallen Earth. This is a point in the industry when Raph is reduced to copying Farmville, and while that is probably a good financial decision, it is a bad sign.
To help make the break clean, I have uninstalled a bunch of “just in case” MMOs, deleted bookmarks, decimated my RSS feeds, and will be mostly absent from here unless I have something to say about any other games I might be playing. I had considered queuing up some previously written posts and ending with this on an Ozymandious note, “I did it [a week] ago,” but this is already pompous enough.
Don’t worry about me. No matter how many times you clear that boss, the villagers will still need me to deal with him if I come back.
: Zubon
One thing I’ve picked up from everyone’s favorite stable of bloggers at the George Mason economics department is that you should be willing to bet on your beliefs. If you really believe in what you are saying, it is taking easy money; if not, shut up. I think this would be useful in our world of interminable online arguments. It improves the accuracy and precision of your beliefs, and it forces others to face up to theirs.
The heart of it is nailing down just what it is that you (or others) believe. Many of your ideas exist as fuzzy generalities that have no application to the world because they are insufficiently well defined for there to be any counter-evidence. If mutually exclusive options are both consistent with what “you know,” you don’t really know anything. Continue reading ‘Bet or Change Your Mind’
I’m pretty much out of reasons not to have played this game.
: Zubon
From His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem:
The inflation of the printed word has been caused, no doubt, by the exponential increase in the number of those writing, but in equal degree by editorial policies. In the childhood of our civilization only select, well-educated individuals were able to read and write, and much the same criterion held after the invention of printing; and even if the works of imbeciles were published (which, I suppose, is impossible to avoid completely), their total number was not astronomical, as it is today. Today, in the flood of garbage, valuable publications must go under, because it is easier to find one worthwhile book among ten worthless than a thousand among a million. …
… It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of imposters, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?
We will note that similar complaints against the masses have abounded since before the printed word, back when any danged fool thought he was the next Sophocles. I am mollified in the pointless narcissism of blogging every book I read by the Victorian tendency to do something very similar in print, so as to circulate with their friends what they were reading and what they all thought about it. The Victorians were strong in introspection but had terrible latency.
: Zubon
“Talking” with a friend on chat last night, I mentioned that, despite how I appear online, I am rather quiet and reserved in-person. (Ethic also seems to be the strong silent type, so you can imagine that our occasional get-togethers look like The Adventures of Dour and Taciturn.) You may have noticed a bit of logorrhea here, too.
It later struck me: given the ebb and flow of chat, it amounts to maybe a sentence or two per minute. You might read 1000 words from me here, but that is 1000 words per day. Even when I am being chatty, it is mostly silence.
: Zubon
