Levar Burton's Six Degrees of Scary.

The Boyfriend showed me this awesome image.

Cyberpunk Costume Update

It's almost Halloween and I barely got this thing going at all before yesterday!

The Boyfriend was a super help in being crafty and assembling stuff, along with helping me cannibalize much of his old equipment.  With that, I am going to post some pictures of what I have so far.  I would love to add more but this might be it for this year.  Next year I will build on this design.

So the first thing I worked on was the glove.

I took a black glove and took off the finges, add some the inside elements of a keyboard to the glove and then added the wires.  I wanted it to look like my fingers had some input as well as buttons on my glove. I added the wire to go up my sleeve so that way it looked like it connected to my body.

Up close and personal.

I just with I had a detail brush or something for the fabric glue, which is shiny and makes everything look bad.  I'm a little sloppy when it comes to crafts like this.  Unless it's props for a show.  Then it is something I definitely go the extra mile for.  This was just something that I thought would be cool and fun to do.

Now the goggles.

Her you can see them with the wires.  At first I tried to glue some circuit board capacitors to the edges but that didn't work.  I also didn't get some LEDs like I wanted to but I hadn't given myself the time to get some.  However, the Boyfriend had some other cool stuff to add to the goggles.

I took parts from a broken webcam and attached them to the right side of the goggles.  I put one of the button parts from the keyboard and put it on my goggles so I could ad something to it later.  Maybe buttons without holes or something like that, maybe paint it.  I put a little external wire to make it stand out more.

And I also have a while from that side that will actually plug into the right side of...

the vest.  It took forever to find any kind of cheap clothing that I would be willing to glue random stuff over, but this had the right material, even if I don't like the white button.

Here's the point of interest on the vest, with some old connectors.  Again the keyboard parts show up, along with a couple cards of RAM and some cable for flair.  I forget what the connections for that lower left thing is but it helps bring a lot of the costume some life.

Here's the whole thing together.  Not super impressive but it gets the idea across.

And here is the cord of the goggles connected to the vest, but of course since everything's black you can't really see it.

I think I may put some more stuff on it today or tomorrow, but I think for randomly hunkering down without much of a plan and very limited budget, I think I did pretty well. Ninety percent of this was done yesterday, and once again I want to proclaim to the world I have the best boyfriend, who delayed working on stuff for his company to help me piece together all of this.  He even filed things down and used "dangerous" equipment to help get things apart.  It was fun to do together.

We'll see where this goes, as times goes on I may work on this to make it better for next year.

Need to be PC on the PC? Enemies in video games.

Alright, this isn't a topic I have thought about too much and I might not write much since my arm has decided to spazz out on me this week.  But it's something I was thinking about, and I want to apologize for the dry spell of writing.  Now to get back on track.

I am sure a number of you are aware of the controversy Medal of Honor suffered because they were going to use the Taliban as the opposing force in their game.  Many politicians and families of those lost in the U.S. Army's recent conflicts, were offended and outraged by that possibility.  They said it's "too soon".

So what the Medal of Honor do?  They just removed the name Taliban.  But it didn't remove the characteristics.  They're still insurgents in the Middle East.  You could argue that you're still fighting the Taliban even if they're not called that name.

I can understand the alterier motives for the army officials to some extent, but as a consumer I get screwed over.  I think a good number of us do.  Sure, I love fighting enemies in space or in fantasy settings or in alternative universes or even in the past.  But sometimes you want something more in the modern day.  Games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty try to provide that, but because of public perception and feelings you can't make it too realistic.

I'm an empathetic person.  If I were grieving a loss of a family member that served in the army, I wouldn't want to see any of these games.  I am not sure if I would be as publicly outraged or scorned as some of the people speaking out in the articles linked above, but that outrage can hurt sales.  You don't want your consumer feeling guilty when they go to the local store to buy his or her copy of Modern Warfare.

However, sometimes the better stories are soaked in truth and realism.  Video games cannot grow as an artform if public opinion is going to alter what's produced.  There are plenty of books, movies, and pieces of art that are offensive.  Some of them were created with the full intention of offending, and most of them weren't.  To have video games become a full part of art, we have to be willing to make games that will make people angry, even if you might lose a customer or two.

Another random point entirely--I would like more realistic enemies and organizations in general.  Call of Duty has a problem with bringing in the russians when they're no longer relevant.  To be fair, a good number of companies have a similar issue.  But if you want to tell a modern story, make it relavent to current events!  America is probably more worried about whatever China is doing than Russia these days.  Just a pet peeve.

Anyway, back to the original point-- there are a lot of people who want video games to be considered art.  It's an impossibility if we continue to conform the "artform" to the expectations of our culture's morality.

Quick Question for the Masses.

My writing for my trilogy is going slow.  Was able to quickly type out two chapters, and ending the one I'm on now is hard.  But I'm suddenly re-inspired by my DeWitt on Titania blurb I did.  And for once, I'm hoping I'll get a response from you guys.

Would you, my dear readers, like to read more about this universe?

I may have an idea in the works which would be more immediate satisfaction for you, dear readers. Please let me know if you would at least like to see more.  If you don't want to comment here, email me at d20sapphire AT gmail DOT com.

And for those of you who respond--thanks.  I appreciate it.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION! Or how I will support developers with my money.

I woke up late this morning because LAN Sunday went late last night, ate a pancake, and then decided to see what the sites I usually kept up with were doing.  I saw Game Overthinker had a new episode, and I love his rants, so I watched it.  And then I got dragged into a revolution.

Watch this (about 17 minutes long) to see what I'm talking about.



For those of you who may not have time to watch it, the Game Overthinker points out the direction that the gaming industry is going right now--in the direction where only games that they know will make bajillions of dollars will be sold.  The blame is going to one mega giant corporation--Game Stop.
I used to work at Game Stop, so I don't see it as evil.  But I can see how it's business model is threatening game developers everywhere.  If any company has a bright idea for a game, it either has to fit into an existing franchise, be so solid that publishers will know it will sell, or it will never get published.  Why?  Because the used game market prevents the previous profits that publishers knew they would get over time from happening.  
I think I stated earlier in the blog that the game companies only own the ideas and intellectual properties that they sell continuously.  Once they sell a complete game in the fancy box the first time, the person who owns that physical copy of the game is the consumer.  Since many consumers will now sell their games when they're done playing them, which then get resold at Game Stop, there is a huge consumer base that is willing to wait the week to get a resold game at a cheaper price, even if that price is only a 5 buck difference.
This is bad for developers who are up and coming and want to try something new, like the Boyfriend and his small company who will be looking for investors in the next year or two.  We want to support the little guys, not just because they are little, but because they have more incentive to promote innovate ideas that gamers will love.  If you don't want more of the same, help these guys.
You're allowed to not like the big guys like EA or Activision.  But everyone has their favorite developers--personally I have been a fan of Maxis, Valve and Bioware a lot these days, and those are just the big names.  Luckily with the PC gaming market it's easier to get the little guys in there too. But you still have to go out of your way and try to find them.  If the developers who do new and interesting things don't get support, we're never going to get new and interesting things.  
Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to buy new games when I can.  Right now it's easy for me to do that since I use Steam for my PC gaming.  But it's going to mean saving up for stuff on my Wii.  I got my eye on Kirby's Epic Yarn.  That's going to hurt my meek pocket book.  But if I really want it and I want to support the right people, I will.  And I'm not going to buy used games.  Easier said than done, but that's what I want to do.
If you guys want to support developers, listen to the suggestions in the video above and see what you can do.  Any little step is going to help the video game industry listen, especially when it comes to where we'll be spending out money.

Recap, Session 6: Good Spy, Bad Spy

Today's game was short because of previous obligations by players. Real life does come before game, which is something that you have to do if you want to be a functioning adult. But we did get a lot done.

Again, regarding the world and characters that I created:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Before the party could leave the capital of Vidrigez to investigate the disappearance of Prince Aeriche, Escrow the druid came down with a horrible stomach ailment again, unable to join his associates in the trip to Everterre.  After a random attack by some wandering trolls, the party was able to get to Everterre mostly in tact, although the trolls certainly weren't.

Atreyu confirmed that the man they were looking for was actually the head of the guard, who's named Ingard.  He proceeded to find the man and tail him for a while.  Dreamtar took another approach and actually filed a missing person's report with the guard, giving the exact description of Aeriche.  In the process of revealing himself and some of his assignment, the guard ended up arresting him, telling him they needed to protect him as a witness while telling Bram and Atreyu that he had been arrested due to implicating himself in that crime (that they were also investigating).

Atreyu continued to follow Ingard into the night and saw that he with another fellow guard went back into his home's cellar.  Atreyu quickly went back in town and roused Roto and Bram to see if they could catch Ingard and his coworker in the act.  Instead they came back to an empty cellar, where amongst the stored food were the leavings of someone living there.

The three went back to the inn at the night, knowing that Ingard had been keeping someone in there.  In the morning Atreyu scolded Dreamatar for putting Ingard on their trail.  Dreamatar defended his tactics.  Meanwhile Atreyu also received a note from the guard's office...

________________________________________

I am sad that we were only able to get three hours in, but we're hoping to find a new space that is less restricting on time than the local library.  If any of you know of any place where gaming for long hours is acceptable in Chicago, leave a comment.  We have some ideas in mind. the question is convenience at this point. (we seem to live in totally opposite corners of Chicagoland)

Next time, will we figure out where Aeriche was?  Did Ingard have him?  Will the PCs go to King Aust empty handed? Find out next game session... which is going to be a while from now.

Sonic 4 Fail

I have heard a few things where people are excited for Sonic 4 and think it's fantastic, but occasionally you get the one person who gets a bizarre glitch.

The Sims 3 Is My Skinner Box.

I have finally figured out exactly why I keep on playing the sims to almost legitimately addictive level--It's a self made Operant Conditioning Chamber.

Doesn't that sound like an apparatus from an villain in a sci-fi film or something like that?

You might be asking yourself "what the hell is that?"  Well, an Operant Conditioning Chamber, or Skinner Box, is a structure where a subject being studied, usually a lab animal, is given some sort of lever system for either a reward or punishment.  Common applications include a lever for food, or a lever to prevent electric shock.  The nature of some motivational tools was discovered while using these structures in tests.

One thing that was noticed was that if pulling the lever always gave food, the subject (let's just call it a mouse) wouldn't worry about food.  The mouse would just pull the lever whenever it was hungry, knowing that the food would be there.  However, if the lever would only sometimes provide food, and sometimes nothing would happen, the mouse would press the lever all the time.  Therefore, it was discovered that if a reward was random, the mouse would repeat the action again and again to make sure it would receive it's reward.

Now, we all know food is a more important reward that many other things, but the Sims 3 is doing that to me.  Its making me press the lever again and again!

"But d20 Sapphire," you might respond, "the Sims 3 has no goal!  You can't be getting any reward from that game."

Au contraire, my dear devil's advocate, that's what makes this worse.  You see, although the Sims 3 may not have concrete goals for gameplay, it allows the player to decide what goals he or she wishes to obtain.  And they make sure there are plenty of goals.  Other than just the usual happy family model to make, or doing scandalous stories like I do (because an affair from time to time makes things pretty interesting), there are tons of things to do like wishes, lifetime wishes, collectables, careers, skills, points to spend on rewards... and as the expansion packs continue the list goes on.  Essentially I am the mouse, and I am deciding what reward will come out of that lever, even if I have to pull it hundreds of times to get the desired result.

It's almost like I'm convincing myself I'm customizing my experience because I can choose my goals, but to be honest reaching each goal puts me back in that Skinner Box.  Different bait, same trap.

I'll be nice to the sims though, it's not as bad some other games.  Cracked.com had a list of how games will get you addicted using some of the Operant Conditioning Chamber discoveries.  A good amount of games will do this, partly because it's more effective and consistent way of profits than say, oh I don't know writing a good story and creating an engaging world?  Yeah, it's cheaper to do it the brain washing way.

Think about it the next time you play your game.  Are you comfortable as a player with a designer thinking of you like this:

And are you really getting enjoyment from your game if you're playing it like a mouse in that chamber?

No shame if you do, but it's a legitimate question to ask yourself.  Because if you like these types of games, the market is going to put out more of them.  Do we want to encourage game developers to think of us as mice in a Skinner Box?