The Case for Used Games

Soren Johnson has come to the defense of used games.

I am glad to see another perspective given from someone in the industry. Most people are quick to throw Gamestop under the bus and use it as a scapegoat, but there are far worse things that deprive developers of money. The industry needs to rid itself of the publisher-developer relationship. The sooner this happens, the better off the industry will be.

Game Review: Oiligarchy

Freeware Flash Game
Play Oiligarchy

Oiligarchy is probably the best persuasive game I have played to date. You essentially take control of Big Oil right after orld War II, and turn the oil business into a global scale pillagefest. The game mimics real life in the fact that you can give the government money to allow oil drilling in Alaska, or to wage war in Iraq so that you can drill there, too. In this sense, Oiligarchy does a great job of turning real aspects of the oil industry into game aspects. For example, I understand that real oil economics isn’t just basic supply & demand, but, for the purpose of the game, it gets the job done while keeping it simple.

The best thing about Oiligarchy is its message, and how the game almost plays itself. The oil industry is a horribly flawed one, and is definitely not sustainable. The better you exploit resources and make money, the sooner you will become unable to meet demand. Oiligarchy really nails this point, because even if oil is used at a sustainable level, it is still not a renewable resource. One of the largest industries in the world is becoming obsolete, and all the people in charge can do is delay the inevitable collapse.

The odd thing is that when making a game like this is that the ultimate goal is for the game to become irrelevant. The creators made this game to expose the oil industry for the horrible scam that it is, and if we ever reach a point where we are independent from oil, this game will serve as only a reminder of what once was. While the game will still contain the same message, any contemporary relevance will be gone.

Game Review: Retroverdeo

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Download Retroverdeo

Retroverdeo is a neat little game that has you avoiding an increasingly overwhelming barrage of attacks. The game was made for a limited graphics game competition, and I think the creator has really done a lot with a little here.

The game is played like a standard platformer, and you jump around avoiding enemies on the ground. Jumping over them is pretty easy, so the game steps it up and adds a legion of other things trying to kill you. Carpet bombing and what look like orbital strikes are also added to the mix, making it hard to stay alive for long. I really like Retroverdeo, and will definitely keep it around for when I need a quick five minute video game fix.

Also, let’s see if anyone can beat my high score of 52. (View Online High Scores)

What if Sarah Palin caused a civil war?

Now, I am a big fan of discussing alternate timelines and histories, and yesterday I read an article about Sarah Palin’s Address to Republican governors. She basically attempted to unite the GOP governors, and pretty much failed horribly.

Now, in my alternate timeline, I like to think that Sarah Palin would end up uniting a bunch of states under her banner, and seceding from the union. She has a record of socializing / marrying members of semi-secessionist groups. What a shitty alternate reality that would be. I have to give the GOP governors some credit for not going along with Palin. I am really looking forward to a period of cooperation between both sides of the aisle, and I really feel that Palin, and anyone crazy enough to back her, just doesn’t represent anything that we need in politics right now.

In video game related news, I have officially decided that Fallout 3 is mediocre. It’s not a bad game, but it’s not Fallout.

New Star Trek Movie Coming Soon

My love of Star Trek is probably one of my “nerdier” characteristics, but I honestly believe that Star Trek conveys a deep message of hope in the future. Humankind in the Star Trek universe has really ascended to a higher plane of thinking than our society. There is a well-known story of someone asking Gene Roddenberry why Patrick Stewart’s character was bald, claiming that by the 24th century, a cure for baldness would have been invented. Roddenberry’s response was, “By the 24th century, nobody will care.”

I feel like that statement really sums up what makes Star Trek great. If our society turns out to be anything like the Federation in Star Trek, I think we will have done well.

I found out today that JJ Abrams, writer of such classic movies as Armageddon and Mission Impossible: 3, would be directing a prequel to the original Star Trek series. JJ Abrams is also the main person behind Alias, the incredibly sub-par “Chick Spy” show, and The Fringe, a combination of CSI and The Twilight Zone (no, that’s not a good combination).

The first images I have seen of the Star Trek prequel are definitely disturbing. It appears that JJ Abrams is trying to do a Gap commercial / Scifi crossover film now.

Also, I’m pretty sure they are just flying around in space while inside a gigantic iPod.

Now, I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but come on. Pretty much everything that JJ Abrams does is pretty mediocre at best. He is making a half-assed career out of turning science fiction into something that is about a cool and stylish future. We need to worry about real societal issues when looking toward the future, not about what we’ll be wearing. While Gene Roddenberry meant for Star Trek to contain some legitimate commentary on the future, JJ Abrams is simply using it to showcase “cool looking shit” and special effects.

At least there’s Battlestar Galactica.

Universal health care, here we come.

Well, 95% is close enough to universal for me. Obama’s health plan is being speculated to cover 95% of Americans and cost about $75 billion.

Now, I’m not going to go into numbers, because this isn’t that type of blog (and numbers don’t mean shit anymore when any asshole can Google a term and get “facts” from some crackpot website, left or right), but $75 billion for health care for almost everyone is a fair deal. $75 billion is a very large amount of money, but I don’t feel like it is too frugal. Of course, cheap is not exactly something I want my health care to be.

The bottom line is, that under the new health care system, a lot of injustices in our current system would be fixed. There are many people out there who get sick and end up not being able to keep up with medical expenses, and eventually end up becoming just sort of abandoned by the health system. There are seniors out there living on fixed incomes that have to choose to buy food or medicine, because they can’t get insurance to cover the costs. I am by no means a bleeding heart liberal, but that is not something I want to happen in my country, especially not if we have the power to stop it.

I usually take my Michael Moore with more than a few grains of salt, but I really agree with him on the health care issue. His proposal is pretty straightforward, and pretty much follows the model set my European universal systems. I think we, as Americans, really got the whole idea wrong, and it definitely needs revising. This new plan seems like the first step in the right direction.

Game Review: Flowers of Error

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Download Flowers of Error

I’ll start this off by saying that I am a big Jonathan Mak fan. I have played Everyday Shooter countless times, and I would play Gate 88 a ton more, if I was any good at it.

Flowers of Error is slightly reminiscent of Everyday Shooter in that you play as a nondescript glowing ball of some sort. You must avoid enemies, or you die. This is where the similarities stop, though. In Flowers of Error, the focus of the game is using the mouse to drag and drop objects in the game. If a particularly nasty wave of enemies is headed towards you, all you have to do is drag a few of them out of the way, and slip through the whole you created.

Some enemies explode after you drop them, causing chain reactions of explosions, and dropping letters, which can be collected to form what appears to be a poem, or writing. You can even drag and drop yourself, which makes avoiding enemies much easier.

The graphics and music really add to the game, giving it a very complete feel. Probably my favorite part of the game is that it is easy to play a quick game. This is definitely something that will stay on my computer. As far as short games go, I think Flowers of Error really gets it right.

God will show Sarah Palin her next political move

“You know, I have — faith is a very big part of my life. And putting my life in my creator’s hands — this is what I always do.”

“I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is.”

“Even if it’s cracked up a little bit, maybe I’ll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it, but don’t let me miss an open door.”

I really hope Sarah Palin does not run for president in 2012. My guess, though, is that she will. All she would have to do is run for Senate (Ted Stevens’ seat may be up for grabs earlier because he is a greedy asshole) to answer any concerns of her experience on a national level.

With George W. Bush, I think we have seen enough of what a conservative Christian president would do. Hell, the man put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden has openly stated “George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.”

Is it just me, or is this type of attitude, especially when held by senior military and governmental figures fucking crazy?

The conservative right is a very powerful group. They got Bush elected twice, against tremendous odds. My main fear is that Sarah Palin will run for president and play the same card. Many Americans would rather be called a socialist than have their belief challenged, so if Sarah Palin does run for president, and does play the whole “God told me to” thing, we will be in for a tough election. Luckily, that’s four years from now.

“God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,”
-Sarah Palin

The Darker Side of MochiAds

I have recently been toying around with Flash, and looking at the ways Flash games make money. The biggest player in the monetization of Flash games is MochiAds. Anyone who has ever played a Flash game has probably seen the ads that popup before the game loads. This is a pretty simple to integrate, and generally easy way to make money. Or so I thought until I read the terms of service…One part in particular bothers me.

By submitting User Submissions to Mochi Media, or displaying, publishing, or otherwise posting any content on or through the Service, you hereby do and shall grant Mochi Media an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, modify, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform, and otherwise fully exploit the User Submissions in connection with the Service and Mochi Media’s (and its successors and assigns) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

In non-legal terms, that means that MochiAds can do pretty much whatever they want to do with your game. Say some big company buys MochiAds…that would mean that the big company in question would have free license to use your game however they see fit.

This means that I could make a Flash game, and have it be a huge hit. I could make some decent money off the Flash version of the game, but MochiAds, or whoever buys them out, could go to Nintendo and make ten times the amount of money I made on a Wii port. That is a purely hypothetical situation, but it is not impossible, and due to the terms most developers agree to, entirely feasible.

Would I like to make a living making games that I want to make, yes. Do I want to put my hard work at risk of being stolen from me, no.

Activision Blizzard CEO tells us to bend over for exploitation

Here’s a quote from a recent interview with Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard.

“With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform, with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of, over time, becoming $100 million-plus franchises, that’s a strategy that has worked very well for us,”

So, basically he is saying “We don’t want to make a game if we can’t make $100 million dollars from it.” This is exactly the reason the industry is a joke. We have the CEO of the largest game publisher in the world openly talking about exploiting games for profit, and somehow people are not going to be offended by this. People will still pay their $15 a month for a WoW subscription, and buy whatever game gets shoved in their faces.

I’m pretty sure any self respecting consumers would get a little upset at being told that they were being “exploited,” but this is an everyday occurrence in the AAA games scene. Why doesn’t everyone go buy a real game, and not give these greedy snakes any more cash.