I’ve been alternating between being wholly involved with school or Animal Crossing. I’d atone for being so one-track-minded, but I haven’t unlocked a “sorry” emote yet. Legitimately incapable or apologies.
Monday, September 30, 2013
From the Depths of Game Obsession
I’ve been alternating between being wholly involved with school or Animal Crossing. I’d atone for being so one-track-minded, but I haven’t unlocked a “sorry” emote yet. Legitimately incapable or apologies.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
SteamOS and Consolification
I've been so inundated with schoolwork that I didn't even know to look for the announcement. Thank god Twitter blows up at the smallest waves in the internetosphere, and that I feel no guilt in perusing the 140-character news bursts while dashing to class. (On that note: sorry to the bicyclist who must have thought I had some sort of bizarre walk pattern as I dashed out in front of you, stopped suddenly, did an excited arm flail, then looked terrorized before dashing off again, requiring you to swerve manically out of my unpredictable path. But, to be fair, us peds are known to be wily and thus why you aren't supposed to be riding on the sidewalk to begin with, so it's your own fault, really.)
I'm generally a Valve enthusiast, loving the games they make, supporting their platform.Valve has honestly tried new things without reserve. They support and market indie games, they embrace new distribution methods. Steam was ridiculously brilliant when it came out and continues to be brilliant. The Steam community is vast and varied, connecting gamers cross-genre. They seamlessly integrated the community into their platform, they make fantastic games, they experiment with new mechanics. They're hiring researchers to study their community. (They think that their community is something worth studying. And oh em gee it feels awesome to have my studies validated after coming up against derision for so long and so consistently.) Basically, they are super rad.
So when they announced yesterday that they are releasing SteamOS, for free, in 2014, my first reaction was to do the aforementioned spastic-arm-flail-of-excitement. And then, because I'm a worrier, I got worried. I feel no shame in the worry-- come, worry with me. But first, excitement justification:
Giddies:
Stream-to-TV: By including the feature to stream games from your PC to the TV, you feasibly give yourself the ability to choose how you want to play your game, at that moment. Feeling the need to be as horizontal as possible, perhaps in Batman footy jammies? Stream it to the telly and couch it. Want to capture one of Bioware's touching romantic scenes so you can finish your Garrus/Tali/Thane/Liara tribute video? Motivate yourself to your computer. That can be within the same day if your gameplay moods are as fickle as mine.
Resolution of the Romeo and Juliet Dynamic that is the Console/PC Divide but Without Tragic Circumstances: I've long bemoaned the rift between PC and console players of the same game. I play TF2 on PC, but my friends seem to be more comfortable controlling fine actions with the unwieldy flippers commonly found attached to a controller. (It's fine, I don't judge.) Even worse, we can't settle this in true gamer fashion as we've never been able to play together while using our respective platforms. On SteamOS, this divide is effectively removed, and the battle of which-is-better can actually be based on statistical win data.
One Platform to Rule Them All: My couch friends are my PC friends, and my couch achievements will be my PC achievements.
Worries:
Linux is Scary: For those used to buying a box and just having it work, SteamOS will take a bit more to implement. Choosing (or building!) a box and installing OS could be intimidating to those on the busier or less technologically inclined. I assume that Steam will be announcing just such a box to get around these concerns, but until then, I'm leaving this on the list. And while Steam already has tech support, there is the additional issues that arise from using Linux. Already, many people can troubleshoot their own problems on Mac, Windows, or even their consoles. Linux quite a bit less used, and hardware developers may not have had Linux in mind when creating their drivers.
A Question of Interest: Do Steam players want to play in front of the telly? Or are they part of the Steam community in part because the mouse-and-keyboard calls to them? If this is the case, how will they be incited to become couch converts?
Conversion usability: As of now, the only way to use a controller with Steam games is to plug it in as a peripheral and map the controls to your liking. This could be a deterrent to the plug-in-and-go group, and be difficult for devs to find time to pause work on the current projects to retrofit a new control scheme. (Especially all those lovely indie devs that have less manpower to reallocate.)
How We Play: I've mentioned the player-gamer interface issue a couple times in my worry list, so maybe this is indicative of a broader question. Is there a new way we could consider playing in the living room? Something with the fine control of the mouse and keyboard, and the relaxed mechanics of the controller? Such a system would be perfect for the Steam Box, but I've heard absolute zero discussion on input device redesign with these goals in mind. I suppose all controllers are trying to be better versions of the one before, but they seem to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Steam has promised two more announcements this week which I'm sure will illuminate some of the specifics of the living room experience they have planned for us. But Steam has the ability to play with and redesign our expectations and perceived possibilities in how we play games. And judging from their history, we're likely to see something interesting. I'll try to be more stationary this time when the news comes out.
I'm generally a Valve enthusiast, loving the games they make, supporting their platform.Valve has honestly tried new things without reserve. They support and market indie games, they embrace new distribution methods. Steam was ridiculously brilliant when it came out and continues to be brilliant. The Steam community is vast and varied, connecting gamers cross-genre. They seamlessly integrated the community into their platform, they make fantastic games, they experiment with new mechanics. They're hiring researchers to study their community. (They think that their community is something worth studying. And oh em gee it feels awesome to have my studies validated after coming up against derision for so long and so consistently.) Basically, they are super rad.
So when they announced yesterday that they are releasing SteamOS, for free, in 2014, my first reaction was to do the aforementioned spastic-arm-flail-of-excitement. And then, because I'm a worrier, I got worried. I feel no shame in the worry-- come, worry with me. But first, excitement justification:
Giddies:
Stream-to-TV: By including the feature to stream games from your PC to the TV, you feasibly give yourself the ability to choose how you want to play your game, at that moment. Feeling the need to be as horizontal as possible, perhaps in Batman footy jammies? Stream it to the telly and couch it. Want to capture one of Bioware's touching romantic scenes so you can finish your Garrus/Tali/Thane/Liara tribute video? Motivate yourself to your computer. That can be within the same day if your gameplay moods are as fickle as mine.
Resolution of the Romeo and Juliet Dynamic that is the Console/PC Divide but Without Tragic Circumstances: I've long bemoaned the rift between PC and console players of the same game. I play TF2 on PC, but my friends seem to be more comfortable controlling fine actions with the unwieldy flippers commonly found attached to a controller. (It's fine, I don't judge.) Even worse, we can't settle this in true gamer fashion as we've never been able to play together while using our respective platforms. On SteamOS, this divide is effectively removed, and the battle of which-is-better can actually be based on statistical win data.
One Platform to Rule Them All: My couch friends are my PC friends, and my couch achievements will be my PC achievements.
Worries:
Linux is Scary: For those used to buying a box and just having it work, SteamOS will take a bit more to implement. Choosing (or building!) a box and installing OS could be intimidating to those on the busier or less technologically inclined. I assume that Steam will be announcing just such a box to get around these concerns, but until then, I'm leaving this on the list. And while Steam already has tech support, there is the additional issues that arise from using Linux. Already, many people can troubleshoot their own problems on Mac, Windows, or even their consoles. Linux quite a bit less used, and hardware developers may not have had Linux in mind when creating their drivers.
A Question of Interest: Do Steam players want to play in front of the telly? Or are they part of the Steam community in part because the mouse-and-keyboard calls to them? If this is the case, how will they be incited to become couch converts?
Conversion usability: As of now, the only way to use a controller with Steam games is to plug it in as a peripheral and map the controls to your liking. This could be a deterrent to the plug-in-and-go group, and be difficult for devs to find time to pause work on the current projects to retrofit a new control scheme. (Especially all those lovely indie devs that have less manpower to reallocate.)
How We Play: I've mentioned the player-gamer interface issue a couple times in my worry list, so maybe this is indicative of a broader question. Is there a new way we could consider playing in the living room? Something with the fine control of the mouse and keyboard, and the relaxed mechanics of the controller? Such a system would be perfect for the Steam Box, but I've heard absolute zero discussion on input device redesign with these goals in mind. I suppose all controllers are trying to be better versions of the one before, but they seem to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
Steam has promised two more announcements this week which I'm sure will illuminate some of the specifics of the living room experience they have planned for us. But Steam has the ability to play with and redesign our expectations and perceived possibilities in how we play games. And judging from their history, we're likely to see something interesting. I'll try to be more stationary this time when the news comes out.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Travel Preparations
I'm preparing to go to PAX. This is my single favorite trip I take every year, and as such, my pre-PAX schedule is specific to the point of absurdity. At this point in the travel process, I have packed twice, cleaned once, determined the point in time which I should be doing final checks, final FINAL checks, gathering bags, and walking out the door. Simultaneously, I am constantly taking inventory of what I packed to make sure I forgot nothing. (Clearly the worst possible thing. As there is no possible way to replace my Cthulhu Fluxx at a gaming convention.)
Husband, by contrast, is setting up his webcam so he can spy on the cats.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
100% Rational Fears
I hate city birds.
Not so much for the noise or the hygiene, those are pretty standard forgivable bird-things. Their calls sort of bring a sense of natural peace to an area. Similar to fountains, the sound of wind through the trees, and the silence of the conspicuous lack of children. And I can't expect them to politely order their food from french-inspired bistros, but the food there is good, so I don't blame them for pecking at yet-to-be-bussed dishes.
No, what I hate is their flight.
They swoop around with reckless abandon, as if the entire z-axis from the earth up is their personal territory, and by god they will use every damn piece of it. Diving around bicycles, parked cars, power lines, and pets. Near-missing trees, and barely-dodging buildings.
I don't trust them.
Every time I see one of these birds flying toward my face, and here in Texas, it's usually Grackles, I raise my arm to protect my face. Better to sacrifice my arm to beak-impalement, than my cheek. I fully expect them not to pull up in time, and will find myself with a psychotic flying disease machine embedded in my flesh. Seriously, I prepare myself for lancing every time I exit a building. Seeing one of them dipping and haphazardly making its way in your direction is a terrifying experience. There's no pattern to their madness. Their path cannot be predicted. I drive the Mako with more sense after consuming two-thirds of a bottle of wine.
Husband thinks this fear is hilarious. But he hasn't seen the frenetic, stomach-dropping panic of a pedestrian when one of these flying death beings didn't quite pull up in time, and one claw grazed his scalp. I have. And he looked at me with wild eyes, fight and flight experienced in equal measure. I couldn't help him. There was nothing I could say to ease the trauma of the moment. Still, I had to say something. Reach out as one human being to another, and give comfort in shared understanding of the war between birds and men.
"Oh my god. That bird was an asshole."
He turned and walked away as, what I image to be, a sense of peace and rightness washed over him. I do what I can.
And as I, now many months later, felt the breeze of a very near miss on the back of scalp, and heard the resulting caw that I assume roughly translates to "fuck off," I pulled out my phone to issue a single text.
"My fears are not unfounded."
Not so much for the noise or the hygiene, those are pretty standard forgivable bird-things. Their calls sort of bring a sense of natural peace to an area. Similar to fountains, the sound of wind through the trees, and the silence of the conspicuous lack of children. And I can't expect them to politely order their food from french-inspired bistros, but the food there is good, so I don't blame them for pecking at yet-to-be-bussed dishes.
No, what I hate is their flight.
They swoop around with reckless abandon, as if the entire z-axis from the earth up is their personal territory, and by god they will use every damn piece of it. Diving around bicycles, parked cars, power lines, and pets. Near-missing trees, and barely-dodging buildings.
I don't trust them.
Every time I see one of these birds flying toward my face, and here in Texas, it's usually Grackles, I raise my arm to protect my face. Better to sacrifice my arm to beak-impalement, than my cheek. I fully expect them not to pull up in time, and will find myself with a psychotic flying disease machine embedded in my flesh. Seriously, I prepare myself for lancing every time I exit a building. Seeing one of them dipping and haphazardly making its way in your direction is a terrifying experience. There's no pattern to their madness. Their path cannot be predicted. I drive the Mako with more sense after consuming two-thirds of a bottle of wine.
Husband thinks this fear is hilarious. But he hasn't seen the frenetic, stomach-dropping panic of a pedestrian when one of these flying death beings didn't quite pull up in time, and one claw grazed his scalp. I have. And he looked at me with wild eyes, fight and flight experienced in equal measure. I couldn't help him. There was nothing I could say to ease the trauma of the moment. Still, I had to say something. Reach out as one human being to another, and give comfort in shared understanding of the war between birds and men.
"Oh my god. That bird was an asshole."
He turned and walked away as, what I image to be, a sense of peace and rightness washed over him. I do what I can.
And as I, now many months later, felt the breeze of a very near miss on the back of scalp, and heard the resulting caw that I assume roughly translates to "fuck off," I pulled out my phone to issue a single text.
"My fears are not unfounded."
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Self-referential
Did you catch what I did there? Collect all my old posts from three different blogs I started in the past few years and backdate them and post them all in rapid succession, only to not post again for a week? It has the effect of making me look like some of blogging machine, a blogbot, a homo faber blogis. A call back to the great ponderers of ancient Greece, endlessly spinning and turning concepts and finding their various pathways. Escher in vocabulary. Then I disappear for over a week.
I like to disappoint early. It sets less threatening expectations.
Will I make every attempt to be better? Of course. Will I spend nights awake, kicking myself, for not spending the minimum 20 minutes writing something, anything at all? Absolutely. But if history is any indication (and when people use that phrase, they are telling you that it is), I will come up with many, many excuses to do anything else. Writing, in my personal world segment, is both an unquestionable necessity, and a complete and utter chore. In no other case have I been driven so furiously to do something and simultaneously found myself stretching the limits of my brain to find anything else to do.
Is this how statement of purposes were discovered? Some sort of written treatise with the self to force a change in behavior? I'm fairly certain self-help clinics, workshops, and activity books exhibit this exercise, which makes me think this whole thing has taken a terrible turn. Not any sort of correlation I was interested in making. And not at all the direction I thought it would go. Uhg.
I don't know why I'm still surprised to find that my brain is my own greatest nemesis. With superpowers and everything. The power to distract me from my own intent. How is that even possible? It's like there's another, evil me hidden inside of the greater me. A manipulative me I never knew me to be. And now I'm forced to consider the possibilities of how many mes can fit inside a me. It's a bit daunting actually.
I like to disappoint early. It sets less threatening expectations.
Will I make every attempt to be better? Of course. Will I spend nights awake, kicking myself, for not spending the minimum 20 minutes writing something, anything at all? Absolutely. But if history is any indication (and when people use that phrase, they are telling you that it is), I will come up with many, many excuses to do anything else. Writing, in my personal world segment, is both an unquestionable necessity, and a complete and utter chore. In no other case have I been driven so furiously to do something and simultaneously found myself stretching the limits of my brain to find anything else to do.
Is this how statement of purposes were discovered? Some sort of written treatise with the self to force a change in behavior? I'm fairly certain self-help clinics, workshops, and activity books exhibit this exercise, which makes me think this whole thing has taken a terrible turn. Not any sort of correlation I was interested in making. And not at all the direction I thought it would go. Uhg.
I don't know why I'm still surprised to find that my brain is my own greatest nemesis. With superpowers and everything. The power to distract me from my own intent. How is that even possible? It's like there's another, evil me hidden inside of the greater me. A manipulative me I never knew me to be. And now I'm forced to consider the possibilities of how many mes can fit inside a me. It's a bit daunting actually.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Morning Ritual
Every morning upon waking, I promptly disentangle from blankets, husband, and cats in a frantic search for my phone. Half blinded by the light, and yet to achieve verbal coherence, any outside observer would categorize my existence as that more closely related to any number of burrowing, slithering organisms as I groan and ineffectually throw my mass at the direction of my bedside technology. When I have, by determination alone, grasped the phone and unlocked the screen to look into the depths it can reveal to my hungry, information-starved brain, I'm so exhausted that I fall asleep again. My fingers wrapped gently around the device as I pass into slumber.
Every morning.
It's so ingrained, so automatic that it's passed into the realm of near ritual. I can't get my post-sleep nap without going through all this. My mind worries at it like squirrel with a nut. Or me with Myst before I realized there was an Internet with walkthroughs on it. (Lies. I didn't figure out the walkthrough trick until Riven.)
And this whole thing makes me deliriously happy. I'm now even unconsciously making decisions that lead me to my eventual full-technological integration. I may look ridiculous with my HUD goggles, and I may move awkwardly, laden with too-many technologies. But I'm going to live in the future, dammit, and it will be awesome. Also probably lit in blue.
Every morning.
It's so ingrained, so automatic that it's passed into the realm of near ritual. I can't get my post-sleep nap without going through all this. My mind worries at it like squirrel with a nut. Or me with Myst before I realized there was an Internet with walkthroughs on it. (Lies. I didn't figure out the walkthrough trick until Riven.)
And this whole thing makes me deliriously happy. I'm now even unconsciously making decisions that lead me to my eventual full-technological integration. I may look ridiculous with my HUD goggles, and I may move awkwardly, laden with too-many technologies. But I'm going to live in the future, dammit, and it will be awesome. Also probably lit in blue.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
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