Archive for the 'Asides' Category

Page 2 of 18

Malaise

Posted by Zubon on June 20, 2011 in Asides. 8 Comments

Melmoth ponders the fading of prominent MMO bloggers, while most of us merely huddle in the dark and wonder if there is life after the closing of The Pink Pigtail Inn.

If the people who are enthusiastic enough about a genre to take the time to write about it, for no tangible remuneration, are slowing down and slowly drifting away, then perhaps these are the ripples at the edge of the pool which reflect a deeper disturbance at its centre.

He later encourages us to engage in jelly-related projects while we wait to see if the next round of MMO includes the savior. Perhaps this is like the end of the Golden Age of Rant Sites, back when Lum and Tweety were angry malcontents rather than industry figures.

And now I feel old.

: Zubon

Tapped and Trackmania

Posted by Ravious on June 17, 2011 in Asides and General. 3 Comments

My first post over at Tap-Repeatedly just dropped where I ruminate on the Trackmania series. I will be writing over there about non-MMOs that I play, and I will hopefully be reviewing some of the indie games I also play. Fear not, valiant reader, my gaming heart is still in MMOs and Kill Ten Rats. Tap-Repeatedly is just a high quality outlet so I don’t bore Bhagpuss to tears with my Team Fortress 2 tales.

–Ravious

Living in the Sci Fi Future, Part VI

Posted by Zubon on May 12, 2011 in Asides. 9 Comments

Google Lobbies Nevada To Allow Self-Driving Cars

The autonomous driving function has been tested on California freeways. I worked in traffic safety for years, and these cars are what I said were about the only way to reach the “0 fatality” vision/goal that so many of our sibling offices had. I keep citing Rainbows End as the clearest vision of our technological near-future, and Sebastian Thrun’s quote at the end is a feature of the book.

: Zubon

via MR

Contrasting Review Philosophies

Posted by Zubon on April 30, 2011 in Asides. 4 Comments

Gamespot 2007: fire reviewer for trashing a game that was advertising heavily on the site. (Side note: 6/10 theoretically looks like “somewhat above average,” but that is really a 6 on a scale from 7 to 9. To get a 2, the game would need to physically damage your console with harmonic resonance, and even then a small ad buy could get you at least a 5.)

The Onion 2011: Dylan Dog gets a D+ rating while basically paying for the site for the month. As I type this, the main Onion AV Club page is running 4 ads for Dylan Dog at once. I don’t know what that does for their advertising revenue, but that sounds like buying a chunk of credibility. (Sadly, I rarely find the AV Club reviews helpful. A post on using reviews productively is coming up.)

: Zubon

Sinker

Posted by Zubon on April 1, 2011 in Asides. 9 Comments

Lightning strikes twice! Less than twelve hours after mentioning last year’s pranks, the New York Times has actually published… You know what? I’m not going to spoil the punchline. I will just refer you to Ted Frank.

I mean, sure, he was involved in lawsuits about Grand Theft Auto (you read that right, 5 years over “Hot Coffee”) and NVIDIA, so he sounds like a guy who would be a good source. Ignore the date, cut-and-paste, it’s news!

: Zubon

Follow the links if you are having trouble getting past the paywall. Spoilers allowed in the comments.

Hook, Line

Posted by Zubon on March 31, 2011 in Asides. 5 Comments

Tomorrow is one of the internet’s favorite holidays. I recall my first year in Asheron’s Call, when a fansite mentioned a bug granting a Darktide (FFA PvP server) character a GM flag that effectively gave him godmode. Last year, some friend sites were part of a small conspiracy that was re-blogged at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal after they made up a controversy that was “too good to check” before publishing. Curse that 24/7 news cycle. One hopes that a combination of caution and the new paywall will prevent embarrassment this year.

Read safely this Friday. Consider the comments on this post open for linking your favorite jokes and pranks of the year. Unfortunately, Poe’s Law applies generally: no matter how absurd your joke, we can find apparently sincere examples that are worse. Exaggeration is hard these days.

: Zubon

Step 4 Is Essential

Posted by Zubon on March 27, 2011 in Asides and General. 4 Comments

The game was updated!

  1. Ask question.
  2. Get answer.
  3. Reject answer.
  4. Take victory lap

: Zubon
repurposed from a friend’s Twitter

About

Posted by Zubon on March 13, 2011 in Asides. 9 Comments

This is Ethic’s site. Because I have the most posts, my name is above his on the list to the right, so I am the one who gets many of the e-mails from people who want to pay us $2/month to post flash ads for their casinos. But if you look at our traffic, we are mostly Ravious’s Guild Wars 2 news site.

: Zubon

Wrong Context

Posted by Zubon on February 3, 2011 in Asides and World of Warcraft. 6 Comments

All yesterday, I kept seeing headlines about like “Blizzard Cancels Hundreds of Flights Across the Midwest” and how many people Blizzard was forcing to stay at home. WoW has really gone mainstream. Was there a patch or something? I also heard about crashes and such, so maybe it did not go well.

: Zubon

Forward the Future

Posted by Zubon on January 20, 2011 in Asides. 4 Comments

The amazing thing about the modern day is not that computers can play Jeopardy against human opponents, in real time using natural language recognition (although not voice recognition?). The amazing thing is that the second comment on it is “Eh, not so impressive.” Because here in the future, we just assume computers do that kind of thing.

: Zubon