War of the Worlds

Unfortunately, I missed Stephen Spielberg's War of the Worlds in the movie theater. Thanks to DVD (and my recently purchased 42" Plasma TV), I can get a fairly accurate theatrical viewing right in the comfort of my living room. I've seen the movie 3 times now and I have a few observations.

That it was a return to horror film style by Mr. Spielberg helped this movie. Science fiction movies tend to be more action oriented today. Scary sci-fi is an untapped genre; it's good to see someone trying to make it work. I say trying because it wasn't particularly scary.

I'm reminded of the Orson Welles 1938 radio show. It was so scary, that people killed themselves in fear.

It's interesting to me that Spielberg spent 132 million dollars making this movie. Industrial Light and Magic made the aliens look about as good as you're going to get on a movie screen today. The sound shakes my house when the giant alien machines destroy a city block. Decent acting and cinematography round out a fairly well made and enjoyable picture. Why wasn't it scary?

I mean, Orson Welles scared the crap out of people talking on the radio. This movie shows the aliens spraying ground up humans as a sort of fertilizer, and all it registered with me was "Hey, that's sorta cool."

The thing Spielberg and pretty much every film maker today has lost touch with is IMAGINATION. The aliens looked pretty cool, but there's really nothing he could have put on the screen that would have done your imagination justice.

I enjoyed the movie: 3 out of 4 stars. Even Tom Cruise did an OK job. However, the people who made this picture could learn something from that 1938 broadcast.

Interactive Movies

In the nineties, video games made a radical shift. Super Mario started it, and the advent of CD-Rom finished it. Games now deliver stories where-as before they were about competition. High scores have given way to beating "bosses" for bragging rights. Game developers fancy themselves as movie makers...

Unfortunately, they are usually bad ones.

Quake 3 was a retro game when it was released (around) 1998. In 1998, games are squarely in the story telling camp. However, Quake 3 rolled in as a multiplayer only game, mostly sidestepping the story for points based competition. A few other games gained popularity around the same time: Unreal Tournament and any other FPS that hit the counter. These games proved that competitive games have "legs" and do not get boring quickly. Quake 3 functioned just like the Atari games of the early '80s.

Just last year, Id Software, the makers of Quake, abandoned their multiplayer paradigm in favor of story telling. What we got was Doom 3- a great game that I no longer play. Once you complete a story based game, there is usually no point in revisiting it.

Does this mean that all story based games are inherently bad? No, some are worth playing more than once. Here is a top ten list of what I consider to be the cream of the crop of story based games:

10: Baldur's Gate Franchise: A classic Dungeons and Dragons tale which ends with the main character turning into a deity. Classic stuff.

9: Gabriel Knight 2: A werewolf story, and the only interactive movie on the list. Decent acting for a game and a fantastic movie.

8: Myst: The story is made more compelling by the way it is presented. A God like character writes worlds into existence via his books. His sons burn the books, and trick the player into freeing them after they are imprisoned by their father. The movies are not detatched from the gameplay, making it seem more real.

7: Metal Gear Solid 2: Few console games have great stories, but the Metal Gear series rarely disappoints. The cut scenes are too long, though.

6: Final Fantasy 7: Easily the best in the series. Watching a main character die halfway through was shocking - as was losing the equipment on said person!

5: Myst 3: Easily the best in the Myst series - with fantastic acting to boot.

4: Planescape Torment: Who is the nameless one? Planescape is such a strange world, making you want to discover your character's identity!

3: Ultima 7: The Guardian storyline is one of the classic RPG yarns. I argue that 7 is the best in the series.

2: Warcraft 3: The first act is a little slow... Until Arthas starts laying the smack down. Arthas kills his father, the king, in one of the greatest cutscenes in gaming history.

1: Halflife 2: Halflife is genius - The story is mostly standard scifi fare, but it's the storytelling that makes this one great. No cutscenes and a nice, slow pace. Everything is presented to the character in game, never taking you out of the world. Come to think of it, you never actually see you character in the game!

The Monkey Turns Into A Man

There is a story in the New York Times (Link) about a trial going in Harrisburg, PA. The board of education is being sued by 11 parents because the biology teacher at said school is teaching "Intelligent Design" instead of straight up evolution.

Intelligent Design is a sort of neo-religion that has spawned out of the collective small talk of people who are questioning their faith. Followers of ID beleive that God created the earth and universe as a sort of scientific experiment and that evolution was a part of His grand plan.

Someone who was semi-knowledgable once asked "Well, if science has all these answers and they don't match up with the bible, what's the deal? The bible is the supreme truth, right? Why doesn't the bible mention 325 million years of dinosaur domination, 8 billion year old earth, or the hominids that scientists know humans have ancestry with? (we have the bones for goodness sakes). If God created man in his image, does that mean that God looks like a hominid (a short, hairy, ape-like person)?"

To answer these questions, we have to warp the "supreme truth" - God's words - to fit the new paradigm. God meant to do that, in other words. People in Biblical times had no concept of hominids, dinosaurs, the roundness of the earth or even the countless cultures on the other side of the world who had no concept or knowledge of what was going on at the time (as it turns out, they'll wish they never did) - since the bible doesn't mention these things, we have to conclude that it was written by someone who did not have the knowledge i.e. man. ID is by people clinging to beliefs - not wanting to abandon the concept of God and subscribing to evolution at the same time.

I have a problem with made up religions. ID is no more beleivable to me than a Stephen King novel; it's completely fictitious and therefore not worth teaching. It's spreading ignorance, which we definately don't need any more of in America right now.

For the record, I can assure you that dinosaur bones were not planted on the earth by the devil to confuse people.

Dragon Con

Me and my girlffriend just recently returned from a trip to Atlanta, GA. Over Labor Day weekend, The Hyatt Regency, Marriott Marquis and (to a certain extent) The Hilton in downtown Atlanta hosted Dragon Con 2005. If you've never been able to attend Dragon Con (or any convention) I highly recommend you do so.

For the uninitiated, Dragon Con isn't some loser business convention. It's the largest Science Fiction / Fantasy convention in the Southeast. It encompases Labor Day weekend, starting with Friday and somewhat ending on Monday (Labor Day). What you'll find there are many people dressed as their favorite characters, many of the actors who play said characters, and a lot of tired geeks having the time of their lives. They have upwards of 50,000 attendees at the show.

What makes us go to Dragon Con? People who know me know that I have an anxiety problem, but I go every year and have no problems there at all. Something drives me and everyone else to attend these conventions...

As I watch Hurricane Rita crawl towards the coast of Texas, I realise what is intoxicating about convention life. With all the wars, Katrinas, gas problems, and overall suckyness that life provides us from time to time, it's nice to hide in fantasy.

Everyone who attended was part of the same clique - including the "stars". The actors we geeks look up to for playing our favorite characters are more than happy to talk and "hang out" with attendees. One irony of the show is that most of the photography and attention goes to the regular joes who work tirelessly on their costumes - overshadowing the fame of the actual actors who played the characters - for one short weekend.

It's our superbowl, or our rock concert. Dragon Con gives geeks a sense of community. It's very much like a family - you can talk to or hang out with anyone there, including Kevin Sorbo or the cast of Firefly. Book your trip to Dragon Con this year, you won't be dissappointed.

Goodbye Asheron's Call 2

If you're a fan of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), then you've no doubt heard of Asheron's Call and it's sequel Asheron's call 2 (AC2) by Turbine.

Asheron's Call was serious competition for Everquest (EQ) when it launched. Turbine wooed lots of dissatisfied EQ gamers to their world by running live events and actually offering updates every month. Asheron's Call was a success.

A few years later, a jaded MMO community is looking for something new. Anarchy Online bombed. WWII online was bug ridden. Then the community heard about a sequel to AC in the works. Ads started appearing in magazines - the graphics looked awesome. The magazines touted it as the next great MMO. I, at least, was excited.

AC2 landed on peoples hard drives with a thud. I bought the game on release day, and even bought my girlfriend a copy. We installed it and played it like we do every MMO that launches. The graphics were fantastic, and it ran smooth as silk on my box. After completing a few quests, we left the newbie area and began to explore the real game - and discovered that nobody bought AC2.

The first town we ran to had 5 people in it, I'll never forget. They were all standing around playing virtual music on virtual instruments. We laughed and joined in the band, however we all knew the game was dead out of the gate.

Somewhere down the line, news from the BETA had leaked to the community. Scuttlebut on the net was that the game wasn't finished, and having played it I can tell you they were right. What a lonely place AC2 was, not just with subscribers but non-player characters too. The cities in the game were not populated at all, giving players no reason to go. The entire world felt like a ghost town.

We played for a few months and my experience with the games is one of my fondest gaming memories. The design was sound, and the world was fantastic albeit empty. AC2 was the only game I can remember to have a narrative woven deeply into the gameplay and cutscene movies that played after you completed a dungeon. Every month, content updates made seasons go by and events happen, but no one was there to see it.

Today I read that AC2 is closing it's doors on 12/30/05. It's another chapter in MMO history finished. Turbine is working on Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online (both set to be major releases), but Aheron's Call as a franchise is finished. Here's to a good game that no one played.

On a side note, MMO sequels appear to be terrible ideas. AC2 killed both AC and AC2, and more recently, EQ2 hurt EQ1 while EQ2 is slowly and painfully dying.

World of Spycraft

A Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMORPG) is a game in which a large portion of the players play on the same game server. Usually, they are built more like a persistent world rather than a more traditional game, creating an environment to live out your virtual fantasies.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a great MMORPG. Me and my girlfriend have been playing WoW for 7 or 8 months now, and we've enjoyed every second of it. However, there's a bit of controversy in WoW's world of Azeroth.

Recently, it was uncovered by the gaming community that the game executable was scanning the end users computer for hacks used to cheat in the game. Blizzard, the game company that created WoW, issued a statement to quiet down the backlash. Here's a shakedown of how things transpired.

A post appeared on the WoW General Forums exposing that the scans were taking place. In the same post and many others, the players often refer to the End User License Agreement. Basically, the EULA is a contract that the player must sign in order to play the game.

Hidden deep within the Terms of Service, which is part of the EULA that the gamer has to agree with, I found these:

B. Blizzard Entertainment has the right to obtain certain identification information about your computer and its operating system, including the identification numbers of your hard drives, central processing unit, IP addresses and operating systems, for identification purposes without any further notice to you.

C. Blizzard Entertainment has the right to obtain "non-personal" data from your connection to World of Warcraft in order to make certain demographic assumptions regarding the users of World of Warcraft without any further notice to you.

D. In order to assist Blizzard Entertainment to police users who may use "hacks," or "cheats" to gain an advantage over other players, you acknowledge that Blizzard Entertainment shall have the right to obtain certain information from your computer and its component parts, including your computer's random access memory, video card, central processing unit, and storage devices. This information will only be used for the purpose of identifying "cheaters," and for no other reason.

Blizzard is a game company that I trust wholeheartedly. The company itself has nothing to gain from stealing anything more than what they say they are looking at; heck they already have our credit card numbers. However, this sort of practice is something that makes me uneasy.

Even more disturbing to me than the scanning (hell, EBay and Amazon do this sort of stuff every time you log on) is the EULA itself. Here's the scenario that I have lived many times: The new hot game I have been waiting for arrives on store shelves. I drop up to $60 of my hard earned cash on the counter and walk out with a shrink wrapped box. After driving home, I pop the cd into the drive and install the software onto my PC. Once that's finished, I start the game for the first time and I'm presented with a bunch of legal crap. What is this? I wanted to shoot some aliens not go to law school. After NOT reading the EULA, I click accept and begin playing away.

There's several problems with the way this is working. I'll list them out in EULA format:

A. No game player in his right mind ever reads this stuff. We don't ever know what we're agreeing to. Why don't we read it? Because it's silly to have to sign a contract to play a game, and gamers know this.

B. The EULA isn't printed anywhere on the box. Lets say I just paid $50 for a brand spanking new copy of WoW. Once I get it home, I open the shrink wrap, install the game, and input the special code that's printed on the cd case or manual to "register" this copy of the game. Once I boot the game for the first time, I'm presented with the EULA. OK, I read the damn thing and decide I don't agree with their scanning policy. Guess what folks, you can't return the game. Either you accept their terms, or you ain't playing their game. Once the shrink-wrap is broken and the code is entered, the game cannot be returned. Blizzard just walked away with your $50 and there's nothing you can do about it.

C. How are they enforcing these things when minors are involved? Thanks to our good friends at the ESRB, I know that WoW is rated T for Teen - meaning that someone under the age of 18 can purchase this game without parental consent. Correct me if I'm wrong (jm11744@hotmail.com), but I don't think a contract signed digitally or otherwise by a minor is legal.

D. How does this work when the player of the game doesn't own the computer it's being played on? Little Johnny who's 15 just bought WoW at Wal-Mart. He brings it home and installs the game onto Dad's home office PC. Dad sees little Johnny playing a harmless game and thinks nothing of it. Johnny agrees to the Terms of Service, giving Blizzard permission to search a PC that doesn't belong to him. Blizzard scans some things on the PC without Dad's permission - but dad wouldn't want his computer scanned because it has all of his personal and business information on it. This seems like it should be illegal somehow.

E. Blizzard and any other game company has the right to change the contract at any time (and they do). Here's the words right out of their mouths (warning - this may be a bit long)

10. Our Administration of World of Warcraft; Changes to the Terms of This Terms of Use Agreement.

Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right, at its sole and absolute discretion, to change, modify, add to, supplement or delete any of the terms and conditions of this Agreement at any time, including, without limitation, access policies, the availability of any World of Warcraft feature, hours of availability, content, data, software or equipment needed to access World of Warcraft, the amount of, or basis for determining, any fees or charges for World of Warcraft, and institution of new fees or charges for World of Warcraft, effective upon prior notice as follows: Blizzard Entertainment will post notification of any such changes to World of Warcraft on the World of Warcraft website and will post any revised Terms of Use in this location, and may provide such other notice as Blizzard Entertainment may elect in its sole and absolute discretion, which may include by email, postal mail, pop-up screen, or in-game notice. If any future changes to this Agreement are unacceptable to you or cause you to no longer be in compliance with this Agreement, you may cease to use your World of Warcraft account and terminate the Account. The continued use of World of Warcraft by you following notice of changes to this Agreement will mean you accept any and all such changes. Blizzard Entertainment may change, modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of World of Warcraft at any time. Blizzard Entertainment may also impose limits on certain features or restrict your access to parts or all of World of Warcraft without notice or liability. You have no interest, monetary or otherwise, in any feature, content or availability of World of Warcraft, any Game Data (defined in Section 13(J), below) or in any terms or conditions of access to or use of World of Warcraft.

Of course, you could terminate your subscription. I'm sorry, but in the good old days when you bought a game you got to play the damn thing.

There are no real regulations or even unwritten laws concerning this stuff. Every time a game company is taken to court, it's heard by several judges each handing out different verdicts while a: not understanding what's going on or b: not knowing what to do even if they do understand.

I mean, it's a contract signed and delivered, right?

Steamed Boy

Steamboy arrived on store shelves this week and of course I bought it like the sheep I am. Akira was the first anime movie exposed to me, and it changed my perception of animation. Steamboy was directed by the same director (Katsuhiro Otomo) as Akira, so I was excited to see what he's been doing with his time (10 years, so the back of the dvd case reads).

The art was beautiful. Hand drawn animation in Japan is being mixed with computer animation, and they're really starting to get it right. No doubt this movie took many man-hours to perfect, and my hat goes off to them.

Unfortunately, all the drawings and doodads aside, no one involved with the picture bothered to proof the script. There was some decent ideas in there (mostly anti-war, eerily familiar with current events), but they were buried in fantastic explosions and people turning cranks.

3/4s of the characters could have been cut out all together. The most notable example is Miss Scarlet (Ray Steams quasi-love interest). I understand the concept behind her; she was a stereotype of Americans played through a character from Gone with the Wind who was herself a caricature of American culture. Great, I know a lot of people who need to be brought down off their pedestal, but this wasn't the movie for it. She served no purpose other than to stand around and bitch at everyone. What am I supposed to think about Ray Steam when he makes googly eyes at some hussy who beats her dog? No kidding, there was a 30 to 45 minute stretch where she wandered around a floating steam castle that was wrecking into London, all while yelling some dude's name. Watch the movie, and you'll see that most of the characters seem to ignore her (which, honestly, may be part of the metaphor).

While I'm at it, movie directors need to hire editors for God's sake. This movie was the longest 2 hours and 6 minutes I've ever slogged through. How long can you sit on a couch and watch people flip switches and turn cranks? How many impressively animated steam jets can you watch burst out of pipes, and never seem to burn anyone standing right in the middle of them? This isn't a problem just with anime directors; actually I think it's a habit they picked up off of Hollywood dribble like Michael Bay. End movies for Pete's sake. Yes, your animation is superb and I'm sure you are proud of it, but my ass is getting tired. Everyone thinks that because Lord of the Rings was excellent and long that endless movies are the magic ingredient to success.

I've got news for the suits responsible for movies these days - there was a reason the Dukes of Hazard TV show wasn't 2 hours long.

Mazes and Monsters

Me and my Dungeons and Dragons crew have been playing a Forgotten Realms campaign for over a year now. Recently, we've been playing and finished an adventure called City of the Spider Queen. I was curious to try a book adventure to a: give me sort of a little break and b: try out another Dungeon Master's material. 6 MONTHS LATER, we finally finished it, and the results were, well...

Just to give you a bit of background, I've been trying to feel out my DM style for the duration of our adventuring. I started off as more of a storyteller DM than a Referee DM, but I've completely made the transition now. The fun in Dungeons and Dragons is the players being the lords of their destiny rather than me leading them by the nose. City of the Spider Queen taught me how to build an adventure in the referee style.

The adventure itself was very cool and well written. It's always been my dream to coax the players into an epic underdark adventure. Besides, Drow are what the Forgotten Realms are mostly known for.

6 months go by and we're having a lot of fun. I did a really good job, in my mind, of setting up the main bad guy (Ira tsarina) as a really evil person (or elf). The players are progressing and the party becomes level 14. Finally the day arrives, the players have conquered the Undying Temple and they face Irae.

6 months they've been playing to get here, and they beat her without so much as a scratch. The disappointment in the room was so thick, you could cut it with a butterknife. They've killed epic encounters before, and after a harrowing victory they jump up screaming and excited (no lie on this one, remember the shadow dragon guys). Here they killed the ultimate leader of a drow cult and nothing. No screaming, no excitement. I had failed at a Dungeon Master's number one priority - to ENTERTAIN.

The unpredictability of D&D is what makes a true role-playing game irreplaceable. In this case, unpredictability was it's biggest weakness. What's a DM to do when 20's get rolled 75% of the time? LOL (Grats Vogl with the "loaded dice")

We'll be moving on now, and I'm going to construct my own adventures like I used to - using what I've learned in this adventure to strengthen it.

PS - The title of this post refers to an awful anti-D&D after school movie called Mazes and Monsters. If you get the chance, watch it and laugh.

Grand Theft Auto Continued - and The Sims 2

In Grand Theft Auto related happenings, an 85 year old woman in New York is suing Rockstar over the Hot Coffee Mod (Link thanks to Blues News). She bought the game for her 14 year old grandson (apparently ignoring the Mature - 17 years or older label on the box) and thinks she's got some money coming to her. We live in a funny old world these days - where people don't take responsibility for their own actions. Our own mistakes can turn out to be profitable, and she'll probably win this bogus case given the media storm surrounding it.

Now lets talk about the Sims 2, which I jokingly referred to in my last post. Unfortunately, this stuff is being taken all too seriously. Mr. Jack Thompson seems to think that a pedophile can practice his art using the Sims 2 video game and some third party mods to erase blur effects. Fortunately, Electronic Arts has released a statement regarding these accusations -

“This is nonsense. Reasonable people understand there is nothing improper in the game. Reasonable people recognize what mods are. A consumer who chooses to use a mod does so without any kind of agreement with the company. There is no nudity. There is nothing improper or vulgar in the Sims 2."

I could not have said it better myself.

Imaginary scenarios are not a basis for any kind of court case. Who are these pedophiles and where do they live? Have any been arrested for using The Sims 2? Is abusing imaginary people a crime? Is anybody answering these questions in any other way than "Well, so and so COULD do this" and "It's possible that (insert scenario here) can happen"?

I could have choked to death on the bran muffin I had for lunch today, but I'm not going to sue the Bi-Lo bakery people for making it.

Hot Water Over "Hot Coffee"

If you watch CNN, no doubt you've heard of the "Hot Coffee" Mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Here's the scoop for the uninitiated...

Grand Theft Auto is a mature rated video game released for the Playstation 2, X-Box and PC. The game got its mature rating by the ESRB for some pretty serious violent content. Having played the game myself, I can tell you it's not presented in any serious fashion. Basically you play a street thug trying to gain rank in organized crime. This requires you to go on missions which involve stealing cars and killing people.

The Hot Coffee Mod was, as far as I can tell, written by a fellow calling himself PatrickW. The mod unlocks some pornographic content in the game. The content was hidden in the game code - perhaps as a joke, or perhaps abandoned game code left in there for whatever reason. The only way to access it is by unlocking it with a third party mod.

The ESRB changed GTA's rating from Mature to Adults Only. Wal-Mart, Gamestop and several other large retailers have pulled the game off their shelves (at an estimated 50,000,000 dollar revenue loss I might add). Rockstar Games has not fought any of this, and they have agreed to pull the content out of the game code making it suitable for a mature rating again.

The only reason Rock Star is getting hammered is because the content was buried in the game code somewhere. The content is NOT ACCESSIBLE without the Hot Coffee Mod. I'm not sure why Rock Star is responsible for 3rd party software, but it is nice of them to remove the code.

Enter Jack Thompson, who runs www.stopkill.com. Jack Thompson is a Miami attorney who has it out for video games. He brags about being voted one of the ACLU's "top ten" censors of the year. Jack Thompson believes that violent video games cause kids, or anyone playing them for that matter, to act violently. Since GTA is one of the most violent games out there, he's jumping all over this one.

I recently found an interview with Mr. Thompson on CBSNews.com's GameCore column. In the interview, Thompson states that GTA series "has sold 30 million units, with San Andreas expected to hit 20 million on its own." Fair enough, apparently the game is popular.

Next question:
How many hate or violent crimes would you say are linked to or directly related to violence in video games?

I have no earthly idea, and no one can guess at that. I can tell you that some crimes would not occur but for the violent entertainment. For the families of the deceased, that is the only statistic that matters.

OK, Mr. Thompson has stated that he has no earthly idea how many violent crimes and linked to video games. How does one get anything accomplished in court without any proof?

Next Question:
According to the Center for Child Death Review, 1,242 kids were murdered with guns and 174 children died from accidental firearm-related injuries in 2000. Aside from stories that get covered in the news [like Columbine], there are few, if any, actual statistics that show how many children's deaths are directly linked to video games. Do the facts speak for themselves? Or is it just that nobody is really keeping tabs?

The federal government found that in the school year 2003, there were 48 school killings. The year before that there were 16, and the year before that 17. Something is going on. I submit that the video game generation is coming of age.

Despite the fact that he just solved child violence issues with no information to back up his claims, I want to spend some time dealing with numbers here. Grand Theft Auto is the number one selling video game series and the most violent to boot (I'll admit to that) selling a record 30 million units. 30 MILLION is an awfully big number. AT LEAST 30 million people are playing GTA and that not including roommates, siblings, friends, and people who stole the game. Over 30 million people are playing the brain rot that is violent video games and, what's this? 48 school killings? Lets see, how many times does 48 go into 30 million... 625,000 times. Man, these games are working slowly. 625,000 times more people are going to have to jump on their PS2's and get angry!

The point I'm trying to make is that, numerically, there is no evidence that games are making kids violent. People like Jack Thompson are loud, and people listen to him even though he doesn't know what he's talking about. By creating an outlet for violent behavior, violence in video games could be helping the problem instead of hurting it. I know I feel better when I blast a few demons on Doom 3 after a hard days work.

Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Hillary Clinton are jumping on the political bandwagon. The government is surprisingly good at regulating imaginary violence, but they're not so good at regulating the actual violence they are responsible for. Maybe the kids are sick of getting picked on at school. Maybe they're watching too much CNN, where they show hours and hours of real violence (every time a bomb goes off on TV, someone is DYING).

I understand that Jack Thompson is attacking The Sims now due to a third party mod that removes the naked Sim blur effect, exposing The Sims for what they really are: anatomically incorrect Barbi Dolls.

What happened to Comic Books?

Like a lot of geeks my age, I had a substantial comic book collection in High School (the jewel of which has to be my nearly complete Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection). High school for me was 1992 - 1996, though I started collecting in 1990. There's a couple of hundred books in the back room, all bagged, boarded and never read.

When comics were introduced, they were marketed to kids and cost something like 25 cents a copy. They were printed on newsprint - sometimes in color and sometimes not - and children would buy them, read them and roll them up for easy carrying in their back pocket.

The dark ages for the industry had to be the early nineties when the "collecting" craze was in full swing. Somewhere down the line, the artist became the most important person in production and not the writer. Comics started to be printed on glossy paper with fancy coloring jobs, bagged with collector cards, and they displayed super holographic covers. 25 cents per copy was replaced by 2.75 per copy. Grocery stores lost their racks and specialty comic book stores jacked up prices. Collectors, like myself, immediately stuffed comics into plastic acid free bags and stored them dark closets while retiring rich in our minds off of selling our collections.

X-Force #1 hit the market like a freight train. Marvel printed more copies of that book than they could possibly sell. It was bagged in clear plastic with some sort of "rare" card. I have 3 copies of the book myself, seeing as how it was the book to have at the time. Recently, I opened one of them, introducing the comic to the air in my house for the first time. Tossing the collector card aside, I opened the comic and READ it. The artwork was blah and the story was worse.

I had lost my way, just like the comics industry had. Any time you MARKET something as collectible, it's not collectible anymore. If there's more copies of X-Force #1 than collectors to buy it, it holds no worth at all. Marvel and DC also alienated their core fans by delivering sub par stories and jacking the prices up 200 - 300%.

Comics need to return to their roots. Children can't afford to buy a comic that costs $3.00 per copy. Likewise, how does glossy paper (which drives up printing costs) improve the story and characters? Comics need to go back to newsprint and cost 25-50 cents per copy. Grocery stores need to get their racks back.

My friend Matt introduced me to a comic artist / write named Scott McCloud. There's a resurgence of comics happening right now on the internet, from Scott's work to the PVP comics. These guys are making comics for their enjoyment and for dedicated readers.

Will Marvel and DC ever return to the glory days? Unlikely. Seems as if they're making more money off of movie licenses than comic books, which is fine. Perhaps it's time to pass on the torch to a newer generation of creative minds.

PS - If you get the chance to read Scott McCloud's Understand Comics, I suggest you do. It's a fantastic read!

Gamespot's E3 2005 Collector's DVD Set

This week, I received in the mail my E3 6 Disc DVD set from the good folks at Gamespot (www.gamespot.com). Their coverage is fantastic, especially the 200 or more game previews. Being one of the poor souls who is unable to attend the show, this set is a God-send for me. Here are my thoughts on what I saw:

THE GOOD:

Thanks to Gamespot for putting these DVD's together!

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion is looking fantastic! I have been a huge fan of Bethesda's work since Arena, and having beaten Morrowind and it's three expansions, I am definately hungry for more. This game will be a plus for the X-Box 360 launch, however I'm sticking to the PC side of this release.

The Sony Press Conference. Playstation 3 has already won the next generation console wars in my opinion. Insterestingly, the demo that made the biggest impression for me was the ducks in a bathtub demo. In explanation: The fellow running the demo had an Eye Toy hooked up a PS3 and held up two drinking glasses. Two identical glasses, albeit digital, floated up from the side of the virtual bathtub and reproduced the movements Mr. Demo was making in real life. The amazing part of the demo was how the glasses interacted with the environment; Mr. Demo was able to scoop virtual water out of the bathtub and pour it back and fourth between the glasses. It's exciting to think of the gaming opportunities here. How about instead of pushing button A to spin Tetris peices, you could reach out and spin them by hand? Unfortunately, the Sony reps didn't seem as excited about these prospects as me and only spent a few seconds on the demo; they proceed directly to some Unreal engine graphics demo that, while beautiful, didn't bring gaming into the next level. Hopefully, a game designer in the audience was just as impressed as I was and is working on something to utilize this technology now.

The Killzone 2 demo rocked. I cannot tell if this was really game footage or a pre-rendered lie. I guess it's a testament to the system that noone believes them ;-). Sony has some big promises to live up to with that demo. If they fail to deliver that level of quality in the real product, it will sink the PS3.

Age of Conan is an MMORPG dream come true. Impressive on every level, I am deifnately looking forward to this one.

After reading the PC Gamer article on Prey, I was convinced this was going to be the dumbest game ever to grace a CD (or DVD for that matter.) I'll admit a mistake and say that game looks fantastic! If you get the opportunity to download the trailer, please do.

Quake 4 surprised me! Getting to play a Strogg is going to be awesome. The Doom 3 engine is aging well (see Prey above) and looks as spooky as ever.

THE BAD:

X-Box 360 unimpressed me. Every demo shown looked great graphically, but nothing really looked all that different from anything we already have. Microsoft needs to realize that will live in a post Doom 3 and Halflife 2 world, and nothing they showed tops those games. As I said, I don't know if Killzone 2 was a lie or not, but next gen gaming had better look that good.

Nintendo was a no-show. Period. They will deliver Revolution late and finish third once again.

Two games I was really looking forward to seeing unimpressed me. Lord of the Rings Online looks horrible. Dungeons and Dragons Online looks better than LOTR, but it still didn't do anything for me. I don't know if MMO developers are playing World of Warcraft or not, but these guys need to buy subscriptions. I can't imagine the developers comparing these games and seeing them taking over the market. LOTR looks like Everquest 2, but worse. Ugh.

While I'm on the subject of Blizzard, Starcraft Ghost's demo was pathetic. That game has been in development FOREVER. It seems like past demos I have seen looked much better than this one. I'm keeping the faith for Blizzard, but this might turn out to be their first flop.

The PC market was mostly absent from the show. I'm a PC man, and there's not a whole lot in development right now. I guess we're slipping into one of those PC game slumps that is always ushered in when a new console is in the works. They'll come back. They always come back.

Square needs to either make movies or games. The Final Fantasy demo was nothing but a bunch of cut scenes, albeit good looking ones. What happened to PLAYING Games instead of WATCHING THEM.

Welcome to my Blog!

Howdy everyone in cyberspace! Welcome to my webblog. Hopefully you'll find what I have to say interesting.

I'll be covering movies, games, computers, comics and anything else nerd related. If you agree or disagree with my opinions, please e-mail me at jm11744@hotmail.com and let me know!