Digital Unrest

Vintage Genes

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:17:31 -0700

Dismembered arms that retain the consciousness of their original owner are one thing, but claiming that all dominant genes are somehow powerful and beneficial - that's just going too far. I guess basic biology wasn't a part of the Les Enfants Terribles project.

I'm really excited about Mirror's Edge. Everything about it seems fresh and inspired. And an asian female in the lead role that's not presented as an overt sexual object - has that ever been done before?

Vintage Genes

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:57:11 -0700

News post coming soon.

Dare to Dream

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:29:00 -0700

"I just throw you away." Korn - Trash

I believe that song lyric sums up Nintendo's E3 mentality with regard to the so-called "core" audience, meaning most anybody who knows what E3 is. It's not so much that Nintendo isn't making games for this audience, they just have no interest in feeding them the information they crave. My only guess is that they take these gamers for granted. Despite their complaints, when all is said and done these people will still buy the Mario and Zelda games once they arrive. Although Nintendo has certainly drifted from the business model that first gained them a rabid following in the first place, I don't have a ton of complaints about the company itself. I can say, however, that their press conference was abysmal and ventured into the realm of creepy on several occassions. Gone are the days when Nintendo execs would have to routinely wait for applause to die down before moving forward with their presentations, when viewers wanted to clap and cheer. The new pattern seems to be something like this: 1. Speakers says something they feel warrants applause. 2. Silence. 3. Audience realizes they're suppossed to applaud. 4. Tepid applause. 5. Everyone feels the droning awkwardness. In fact, across all press conferences the only times I recall people actually seeming eager to applaud are when Final Fantasy XIII was announced for Xbox and when Sony brilliantly used LittleBigPlanet to display business data. I only wish the number of embarassing moments were few enough to be counted on one hand.

Business Lesson

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:45:28 -0700

This strip is true except for the implication that I am somehow surprised or dismayed at the fact that I'm a tremendous nerd.

So I have a guest strip up over at VG Cats, which is a sentence I never thought I'd be writing. I was pretty astounded when I got an email from Scott asking if I would like to make a guest strip. It was certainly a pleasure to contribute to a webcomic that I've been a fan of for years.

Chris, who helms RPG-TV (soon to be Indoor Heroes), has posted a tongue-in-cheek rebuke to Yahtzee's razing of gaming webcomics. I recommend heading on over to RPG-TV to check it out, it's incredibly well made in the style of Zero Punctuation.

Business Lesson

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:57:01 -0700

With each version of Soul Calibur IV featuring two Star Wars characters, which are featured prominently on the box art, it feels a bit like the Soul Calibur franchise is being hijacked. Link was a cool novelty to have around in SCII; even Spawn I could come to terms with. However, putting Star Wars characters into the Soul Calibur universe feels so brutally shoehorned there's simply no way to suspend one's disbelief. My complaints mean nothing, tough. And, in actuality, I'm willing to bet that this will be the best selling iteration of Soul Calibur yet, due largely to Yoda and Vader. Sadly, I predict this will provide positive reinforcement to this crazy trend. More and more characters from foreign franchises will gradually overshadow and displace the actual characters of the Soul Calibur universe. Here's to the Ninja Turtles in Soul Calibur V.

Long Shot

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:19:28 -0700

Xbox Live...interesting virtual world, it is. Asking up to 4 random Xbox Live users to band together and quickly execute a mission with precision, as Rockstar has kindly asked us to do in GTA4, borders on the impossible. Rockstar was gracious enough to make sure that all players start each round with a stock of grenades, which, coincidentally, are the perfect tools for derailing anything your teammates might be doing to try to complete the mission at hand. For instance, one or more members of a team are often required to drive to a location at the start of mission. Well, about 50% of the time a teammate will lob a grenade at our ride, ending any hope for a good round before it could even fully blossom. Other missions require a team to ride together in a helicopter. Oh you better believe people love to destroy a helicopter full of their teammates. At this point I just play these modes to see if crazy people can develop new, creative ways to utterly betray their team.

Bad Date

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:23:08 -0700

Don't let R.O.B.'s recent excursions fool you. Despite recent appearances in the popular Mario Kart and Smash Bros. series, his uses are few.

I don't know how many of you keep up with what we're doing on Mars. I try to stay up to date on what our Martian missions, the most recent being the Phoenix lander, unveil. I'm always blown away when I look at those images sent back from the various orbiters, rovers and landers and think about how we're doing research on the ground of another planet. Imagine the very real possibility that our work uncovers evidence that life once did or currently does exist on Mars. All of us would be present for perhaps the most significant discovery in the history of our species. A hundred and twenty years ago we marveled at the advent of the automobile, a machine that no longer required people to tether their vehicles to hairy animals and drastically reduced the amount of equine dung on the roadways. Now we send mobile laboratories to the surface of Mars. How far we've come.

One cool thing is that the Phoenix lander has its own Twitter page. I usually check it a few times a day to see what it's up to. Coincidentally, I too have my own (much less interesting) Twitter page.

Doing the Impossible

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:43:33 -0700

I'm really curious as to what arguments were made internally at Ubisoft to resurrect the Beyond Good & Evil brand. Somehow, I imagine, somebody had to convince people in charge of the company's money that a game that previously did not make money could be transformed into something that would. I'm no businessperson, but I'm guessing that was a tough thing to do. Whoever is responsible for making it work out, many thank them.

Now, I can't help but have some hope that other unpopular games I like will someday be given a sequel. That has to a be a recipe for disappointment.

Historical Landmark

Wed, 28 May 2008 07:44:35 -0700

Duck Hunt was a simple game, but at its core it was, in fact, a massacre of epic proportions made all the more twisted by an ever-snickering canine.

More news to come.

Common Language

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:37:11 -0700

This strip couples well with this one. Both stem from how woefully out of touch movie and television writers are with games. Regarding dialogue, it's clear that these writers feel that game design has not progressed since the mid '80s. Actually, this stuff was bad for its time even when it popped up 20 years ago. Let me quote a modern classic, The Wizard: "I don't believe this. I got the scroll weapon, and I almost beat Mecha-Turtle at the end of level three!" This is such a textbook example of this phenomenon that I don't even know what I can add by way of commentary. Videogames are so ubiquitous in this day and age I can't even posit any kind of explanation for why such outdated terminology has survived this long in popular media. Apply the phenomenon to any other topic and it becomes clear to anybody how ridiculous and jarring this stuff is when you encounter it. For instance, if there was a cinematic car chase set in modern New York and the pursuing driver exclaimed "Secure the door latch! We're nigh unto the time for pushing this horseless carriage to the maximum!" it might just take you a little bit out of the scene.

For the past week or so, the site has seen a tremendous boost in traffic. This is in large part to Scott Ramsoomair, who was extremely kind in adding DU to the VG Cats links section and even linked to a DU strip on the VG Cats home page. As someone who has long envied Scott's art and creativity, this has been a real honor for me.

For the better part of next week I will be at a conference in Washington DC. As a result, the next strip will again be a bit late. Sorry about that. However, after next week I will be ready to shift the site to two updates per week.

p=mv

Tue, 06 May 2008 22:35:49 -0700

I've had some spectacular wrecks in GTA. Many of them have resulted from merely grazing some usually inocuous item while careening down the road at mach 1. Alternately, if I'm racing online it may occur from touching any one of the many other drivers. This phenomenon is not a bad thing, as I greatly enjoy being on the other side of the scenario. There's nothing quite like nudging your opponent's fender, causing them to fishtail, brush the median, and then get vaulted off the road into the ocean.

So my qualifying exam is this upcoming Monday. As a result, it will be difficult for me to make a comic for next week. So please bear with me if the next strip is a few days late. Thanks.

Game of Chance

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:15:23 -0700

Don't get me wrong, Mario Kart Wii is a fun game to play. However, it seems to me that the series continues to push actual racing, as in the skillful movement of vehicles, to the wayside in favor of dice rolling. As long as you can stay on the road and do the odd power slide on the big turns, well, you've essentially met the base requirements to win the race. Everything else, namely the insane assault of items, is out of your hands. This fact becomes most apparent in the higher levels of grand prix mode. In no other game have I ever seen the position of first place so horribly punished. This is one of those games that just simply hates you. Nevertheless, I keep playing it.

Realm of the Absurd

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:55:30 -0700

It's pretty easy to make the pitch for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe sound awful. The actual game may very well fall in line with that ill possibility. Alternately, it may be game of the year. Regardless, I'm willing to bet it will sell well. It just seems like one of those games that people will buy based on the premise and brand recognition. If the fighting game vs. comic book trend continues, what's next? Soul Calibur vs. Archie Comics? *fingers crossed*

I must say I'm pretty excited about some of the older survival horror games getting new life in the coming months. Both Silent Hill:Homecoming (not SH 5, do they think numbers alienate new players?) and Alone in the Dark are looking good in my estimation. The survival horror genre is certainly one of my favorites and while I've played most of the hallmark survival horror games, until recently I'd never set foot into Silent Hill. Strangely enough, I do own them all. I've just never gotten around to them for one reason or another. My goal is to get caught up to speed before the next Silent Hill game arrives at summer's end. I've completed Silent Hill:Origins, which, although chronologically first in the series, is not meant to be played without knowledge of the other games. I found this out as I was mired in confusion during the game's ending. Currently, I'm playing the original Silent Hill on my dusted-off PS1. As always, I'm enjoying the nostalgia of bad voice acting, muddled textures, and non-articulated hands.

Gamer Revisionist History

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:38:08 -0700

Just a weird random strip this week. Maybe I just wanted an excuse to make an archaeopteryx reference. Afterall, it is one of the most compelling transitional forms between traditional reptiles and modern birds. It basically looks identical to what you'd expect to get after a mad scientist combines a lizard and a crow in some terrifyingly awesome machine. Also interesting is the fact that Archaeopteryx was scampering around some 150 million years ago, when mammals were just establishing themselves on the planet, which just goes to show how long feathered creatures have been air-bombing the heads of furry creatures with droppings in the history of the world. If you never have, crack open a biology textbook (might I reccommend Biology by Miller and Levine) and read about evolution. It's fascinating, elegant stuff.

Kris Straub has no idea who I am, but he's a guy I admire. You might know him as the creator of Starslip Crisis and the recently debuted chainsawsuit. Kris is about to transition into making webcomics for a living. If you already follow his work then you may know that he has tried this once before and it didn't work out exactly as planned. However, I'm glad he's giving it another shot because he's a talented guy. Additionally, he's mobilized his readers (of which I am one) to help support this new venture. So in the chance that I can send even one new reader his way I'm kindly hoping you'll check out his webcomics. chainsawuit is pretty accessible to new readers, but if you're reading Starslip for the first time you may glance over one strip and think "well, I have no idea who these characters are or what they're doing. I'm out of here". I had that very reaction at first. To that I'd say give it a chance. When you have the time, check out the archives and the new readers page to get some perspective on what the comic is all about. It's worth it.

From ancient lifeforms to sci-fi comedy webcomic plugs, this site lacks any kind of logical direction.

Ball Hog

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:43:15 -0700

I toyed around with the way the strip is colored this week. I think all I achieved was making everything look really dirty.

The above analogy was the first thing that came to mind when I read Penny Arcade's Wired interview, in which they reveal that GameStop refused to stock their upcoming game because the game was also set to be distributed digitally through Penny Arcade's own distribution service. According to Penny Arcade, GameStop wanted a cut of the profits from the digital distribution and Penny Arcade would have none of that rubbish. It takes a lot guts to ask a business to just give you money for a service that you had no part in creating or running.