For those not in the know, the image to the left is of the original Warcraft. While I didn’t really play the first entry with anyone else it certainly prepped me for Warcraft 2, which I played the hell out of on many a LAN. My teenage years were full of hefting around beastly computers just so we could string piles of wires along the floor to play games like Warcraft 2, Quake, and Counterstrike. I’ve been playing socially since the early-to-mid 90s. Guess what? I never stopped playing single-player games.

I’ve spent a great deal of time since then playing lone wolf in games like Mass Effect and Final Fantasy. In fact, Final Fantasy XII has taken up most of my game time for the last several months. I’m a sucker for good story and I enjoy taking the time to flesh out and explore worlds like those found in Elder Scrolls.

That being said, I also consider myself to have sound business acumen. From the Kotaku article:

While successful, the addition of multiplayer to the multi-million unit selling BioShock may be illustrative of the changing expectations of consumers. If there’s little to do but replay a narrative-driven campaign, many gamers appear quite happy to resell their discs and move onto the next game.

What they’re saying is that BioShock 2 is pushing multiplayer something fierce. We won’t know if the single-player campaign is adversely affected until the game ships, but I prefer to put my faith in Bethesda. They made an awesome game in BioShock and I expect nothing less from the sequel.

However, I do understand the point-of-view of the publisher:

“The best way to combat people trading in your game is to simply make it better in whatever way works for you,” argues Todd Howard. “People trade in cars with poor value. Our DLC is a good way to add to the value of the base game and give folks yet another reason to keep playing.”

If your customer trades in that disc, then there’s one more used disc in circulation for someone else to purchase without having to purchase a shiny, new copy from the distributor – thus less revenue for the developer. Further, if the developer offers enough compelling content after the initial release then the more likely I am to purchase shiny, new downloadable content. Again, driving revenue for the developer.

In recapitulation, I don’t think single-player games are going anywhere. Nor do I fault developers for trying to blend cooperative modes with franchises or genres which are traditionally single player. So long as Sqeenix keeps making stand-alone Final Fantasy games, I’m all set.

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It’s 4:00-something in the morning. My twin boys just decided that I could have a few minutes to myself and I figured what better way to pass the time than crank out a blog post? I’m at the stage of stupid tired and didn’t want to think a whole lot about what to write… Then it hit me: What’s your favorite gaming quickie?

I haven’t yet mastered the art of playing while “on duty” and my on duty time is essentially nights and weekends. While I’d love to sit down and blow through some Mass Effect I have to understand that in all likelihood I’ll be called away (cried away?) from my console for extended periods.

I think some of the arcade titles are best suited for my prescribed scenario. Games like Uno and Turtles in Time seem to fit the bill pretty well. That being said, I’m interested in your take so sound off in the forums: What’s your 10 minute gamer craving fix?

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We wouldn’t be Nimrods if a week went by without one of us breaking something. D Eye used his regularly scheduled Nimroidic Effort to break his Playstation 3 (PS3?) and ship it off to Texas. Little did he know that the planet-swallowing, fear mongering, galactically evil UPS would curtail his receiving experience.

As the story goes, UPS tried to deliver the package to D Eye’s house while he was at work. Before you ask, yes, D Eye has a job and yes, his income primarily pays for after hours “services rendered”. That, and fixing Playstations. Anyway, D Eye wasn’t there to sign for his ordinary brown box so UPS left behind their humongous business card which they so tactlessly adhere to one’s front door.

He called UPS to request a hold at his local UPS depot so he could run by there on his way home from work. UPS obliged, and the local customer center called him at 5:45 in the evening to inform him that his driver had returned for the day and that he could stop by before 7:00 to pick up his box.

He arrived at the depot precisely at 6:00, just in time to wait in a long ass line! When it’s finally his turn the person behind the counter informs him that his package isn’t there. D Eye calmly (calmly!) explained that this depot had called him, telling him to come get the box. The lady person reiterated that his package was not available because his driver hadn’t yet returned.

He and I spent the next forty-five minutes in the car talking all kinds of dirty smack and mumbo jumbo about everything we dislike in the world, pressing time right up to UPS’ 7:00 closing time. Again, D Eye was informed that his box wasn’t available, but that he’d be allowed to wait a little longer despite expired office hours.

Around 7:15 a young lady from the back office moseyed to the front to enquire of this box that was sitting right behind the office door leading out into the unloading docks. Lo and be-effing hold, it was D Eye’s magical Sony shipment! The witch person behind the counter was quick to reassure the both of us that she “knows her job” and that it must’ve just been dropped off.

Apparently this UPS Customer Center has some interoffice politicking going on because the lady from the back office was swift to slap down the counter person’s claims. She whooped out a piece of paper saying “No, see? The driver was in at 5:45. Says so right here. This box came off his truck at 5:46.”

So the lessons learned this day are:

1) Never trust a UPS person to ask for help from another office that’s less than 10 feet away.

2) Sony uses superior grade cardboard coffins to that of their competitors.

3) Take a picnic lunch when visiting UPS.

4) Never trust D Eye to pick up stuff. It was his bad karma that almost set the place on fire.

Of all the wonderful things I enjoy in this world, changing diapers and doing homework are not among them. One thing that is among my most-favoritists of all is watching my Dallas Cowboys play football. The NFL preseason is among us, which leads us to the fourth (fourth!) annual Team Nimrod Football League. I, for one, look forward to all of the mystical powers brought forward by getting rid of T.O. a mighty new stadium and crisp, fall air in the Dallas area. Something feels good about this season, and it isn’t the sweaty practice socks of Marion Barber that I keep under my pillow when I sleep.

A brief update on the Prime household, just to fill everyone in on the last few months. The two young-uns are coming along quite nicely. They’re pressing three-and-a-half months and continue to be every bit the handful any other parent can imagine them to be. They both have good reports from the doctor and are growing like weeds.

My schooling is coming along well. I’m officially a sophomore (!) and am continually grinding away at whatever class will fill a little checkbox on my school transcript as I march slowly towards obtaining a degree. Finding the appropriate amount of time to study and do homework has been quite the challenge between work, and the twins at home.

Lastly, my family and I had the disheartening task of burying my father in early July. Among the many blessings he gave to us, one I am very thankful for is my love of the Dallas Cowboys. My father was a lifelong Cowboys fan, and raised his children to be the same. The Cowboys were an institution in his house. So to him I tip my hat, and hope – right here on the front page – that the Dallas Cowboys can make something happen this season. I’m looking forward to kick-starting the TNFL for the fourth year. Best of luck to everyone participating.

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Google is kicking strong with the announcement of their privately sponsored version of Skynet CADIE.  Microsoft, or multiple entities including “Enigma software”, seems to have generated some concern over  the conflicker virus/worm.  The Bread Art Project is something I’ve never heard of before, yet is being rather conspicuously advertised in a few key places.

I can go on further at a number of interesting things that are popping up on the web as server-times clock over to 4/1, but verfifying them all is just so much work!

So pop into the forums and share your favorites (or at least most suspicious) and I look forward to seeing what we all can find.

For now, Happy April Fools Day!

The Winston-Salem Nimrod Chapter had the pleasure of heading over to Raleigh on Valentine’s Day for a meet-and-greet with Troyski. We decided that the best way to deliver Troy’s GameStop gift card – his prize for winning our Super Bowl pool – would be to hand it to him in person! Horribly shocking, yet utterly refreshing.

Troy suggested we meet at a place called Rush Hour Karting just south of Raleigh, not too far from his home. Us Winston Folk hadn’t driven Go Karts in a great long time. Funk, D Eye, Aezuriel, and ParadoX piled in the back of my truck for the ride down I-40, all the way to a quaint, fairly nondescript warehouse-looking building. Troyski brought along two of his brothers making for eight in our group; which was perfect for a Sprint Series. The Sprint allowed for a warm-up and qualifier, followed by a 10 minute race. We went through a brief orientation (Safety First, D Eye…) before helmet selection. They gave all of us “head socks” to wear with the communal helmet, and required that we all wear neck braces. Aezuriel topped out the XXXL, but had to make do as XXXXL helmets are a special order kind of thing.

We were seated in the following karts:

One of the cool things I really favored is that they kept us in the same whips from qualifying to our race. We really didn’t have any komplaints complaints about the rides, except one minor nibble from D Eye, which we’ll discuss in a few… Oh, and the Dumba** listings above are Troyski’s brothers Tim and Chris.

For these races, the only thing that matters is time. Rush Hour uses your single-best lap time to determine placement. Our qualifying fell out like this:

Troyski really was hard to catch! Funk was riding his rear almost the entire qualifier, until I T-Boned him on the rib crack* corner. We were both on a hot lap, so that little mishap really dragged us down. Also, I can’t write this post without pointing out the irony of D Eye besting ParadoX. For non-Nimrods, y’all needn’t read too far into it. For Nimrods, though, I expect y’all are rolling on the floor right about now.

The Sprint Race results a a wee harder to decipher, so we’ll be posting the final results as soon as they’ve been clarified.

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Chalk up another unashamed victory for money grubbing lawyers and stupid teenagers. In 2007, 17-year old Daniel Petric shot both of his parents – killing his father – after they took away his copy of Halo 3. The good news is that the judge dismantled his insanity defense. The bad news is that the judge ruled there to be a serious mental defect of another nature:

And I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea, at the time he hatched this plot, that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever.

This author would like to make note that Microsoft has sold well over 8 Million copies of Halo 3. There’s no way to accurately measure the number of trade-ins and subsequent re-sales. Bottom line is that tens-of-millions of people have played (and continue to play) this game, myself included. A teenager acting out of gross negligence isn’t anything new, either.

While this story has a tragic ending, I’m dismayed to see our judicial system conclude its findings the way it has.

[Image courtesy of Joystiq]

[Full story on GamePolitics]

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On January 16th 2009, electronics superstore Circuit City issued a press release gavelling another nail in the coffin of the current economy.  Beginning Saturday January 17th, the company will begin liquidating its assets in order to pay its creditors and pass quietly into the footnotes of business history.  The announcement does not come as any great suprise, However, it potentially signifies what may be the official beginning (and the first overt casualty) of the U.S. recession on a blue-collar level,  a downturn that has been flagging the economy since early 2008.

Circuit City had hoped to use the Christmas Season, and Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, to reorganize itself sufficiently to stay in business, a feat that pudits hoped would buoy concerns about a consumer level recession.  While Circuit City will not have been the first company affected, or even bankrupted, by the recession, its closing foreshadows the future of Economics and expectancy for 2009 and perhaps the next 3-7 years.

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Mike Shaw Retrospective

1/13/08

The following comes from guest-blogger, Old East Cross:

Ypsi’s last Shaw at Café Luwak

Café Luwak has on display, through the end of January, a collection of artifacts as significant to the subtext of the city’s history as anything you’ll find in the Historical Museum: the art and personal effects of Mike Shaw, the last Shaw in Ypsilanti.

Mike’s ancestors reached Ypsilanti in 1823, the same year the city was founded. They owned the land many our homes rest on, and Mike’s great-grandfather, a mason, laid the stone foundations for many of our homes.

Mike died this past August in his final Ypsi apartment, reportedly of heart-failure, and someone anonymous to me, rescued a portion of his art and belongings from the curb as his apartment was being cleared for the next tenant. What was salvaged is now on display at Café Luwak and includes Mike’s art, hand-stitched coat and journal.

There’s no sugarcoating that Mike was not always an easy person. Mike served as a Huey helicopter gunny chief in Vietnam in from 1964-70. Ninety percent of combat casualties airlifted out battle were carried in Hueys. As Mike relayed to me once, “Sweeping their shit out of my Huey…ya, I’m a big hero now.” That’s how Mike summed up his contribution to the war, sweeping out the dead. Reports conflicted that the Vietcong bullet that sent Mike home was still lodged in his head. Figuratively, anyway, it was.

Mike wore his memories everyday — an oily green army hat snagged with various pins and parachutes, army boots, fatigues. Somedays he’d belt on a six inch bowie knife, its handle, like Mike’s rings, was plastered with approximations of semiprecious stones and colored glass that he stuck on with epoxy. One item never absent from Mike’s uniform was a hand sewn pouch, draped over his shoulder and resting at his belt line full of peanuts habitually tossed at squirrels.

In what always seemed to me to be an act of penance, Mike became Ypsi’s protector of trees and squirrels. He was convinced both were under attack. He took note of cars and kept track in his journal. Putting an end to the violence was his obsession. “This shit has been going on since July,” Mike explained to me once. “It’s not so much the squirrels as it is the presence of death day after day. No one is safe. You also should take measures about nightcreepers, they begin at sundown and only stop when caught or run out of victims.”

Mike came after me with a bat once because a squirrel had disappeared and he thought I must have snatched it, since he hadn’t seen any cats. (He’d threatened a previous neighbor with an axe for trimming low-hanging branches, i.e., squirrel escape routes.) The next day he delivered a large bag of his limited coffee rations to me with an apology note. Mike’s fluctuation between kindness and conflict was constant. He was a violent pacifist; an intelligent, introspective, paranoid; meekly overbearing with a winking wit; and a hermit socialite. Groundhogs ate out of his hand and he trained his dog to bite. He was the type person you could never anticipate, but always, ultimately, trust. He knew many in town and dropped in for long conversations that he would decide when would begin and end. He also spent days-on-end alone in his apartment. He was eventually evicted from the Kircher-owned property after the city condemned it, a year after Kircher had turned off the heat and electric on him in Jan/February (for “repairs”) even though Mike paid the utility bills.

After the property was condemned for neglect, Mike spent a few winter weeks homeless in Ypsi, living in a neighbor’s garage, the Harmony Hotel, and finally, the woods. He ended up in Sumpter Twp for a time before finding his way back to Ypsi a year or so before his death. “Damn it, I used to like it here,” he told me once. Mike always served as a reminder to me to ask who we’re creating a new Ypsi for. As the town slowly gentrified around him, Mike found fewer and fewer places to call home among the homes his ancestors laid the foundations of. As we relative newcomers sweep into town, I think it’s worth considering the history we’re displacing. Maybe with Mike’s passing the last trace of living history is gone. I suspect it’s not. Mike was a caution, for me, to not casually sweep out the dead and call ourselves heroes for a fresh coat of paint. As Mike said, “They say they want to renovate the park. How do you renovate a park? Cut down the old trees and plant new ones?” I’m glad Mike persevered to find his last breath in the same place he’d taken his first. Few of us will be that lucky.

I’m also personally grateful to whoever rescued some of his artwork and to Café Luwak for displaying it. Mike was proud of his art, although, often apologetic for there being say, too much green or orange, which happened frequently when he’d run dry of all other colors and was forced to make do with what was left until an art student donated more. He spent most of his time, as he would say, “Doing whatever it is I do,” which, other than maintaining a census of neighborhood squirrels, was gluing, painting, and creating with old paint, rocks, cement, and epoxy.

Whether or not you knew Mike, I’d encourage you to stop by Luwak and pay your respects. It’s a fitting memorial for Mike. I’m not being haphazard or patronizing when I say I think he’d be proud to have his art displayed. And, it’s the final page of what may be the last family story as old as our town.

Again, to whoever collected the display, thank you. And to Mike, rest and peace.

And thank you, Old East Cross. This is a beautiful post.

[If someone doesn’t already have plans for these pieces, please let me know. I would hate to see them lost. It might be a long shot, but I’m thinking that maybe the American Visionary Art Museum or the Museum of American Folk Art would be interested in them. I’d be happy to make a couple of calls and see.]

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