Things are looking up. The Twins are 4 games up in the wild card, a game and a half behind the Tigers for the Central, and leading the BoSox 6-nothing as I type this. Odds of making the postseason are up to 95%, saith Baseball Prospectus.
And the race for the Senate is looking up. Latest polls have a 50-50 split, and with the way the wind is blowing, I am hoping for a change.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Scoreboard-watching, in two ways.
It's the time of year when I watch the scoreboards, in two ways. Why do I think in twos? Dunno.
The first kind of scoreboard-watching is baseball. My Twins are currently embroiled in a fight for the postseason. As I write this, they're a half-game ahead in the wild card race and four back in the division race. The statheads (my peeps) at Baseball Prospectus have them at a 65% chance of making the postseason. So I'm watching the scoreboard, not just to see how well they do, but also the other teams they're competing against.
The second kind is electoral. The Votemaster has returned, and www.electoral-vote.com is back in action. As an unabashed Democrat, I'd really like it if we could get control of the Senate away from the Reptiles. Sadly, his projections for control of the Senate are not as rosy as the Twins' chances of making the postseason.
The first kind of scoreboard-watching is baseball. My Twins are currently embroiled in a fight for the postseason. As I write this, they're a half-game ahead in the wild card race and four back in the division race. The statheads (my peeps) at Baseball Prospectus have them at a 65% chance of making the postseason. So I'm watching the scoreboard, not just to see how well they do, but also the other teams they're competing against.
The second kind is electoral. The Votemaster has returned, and www.electoral-vote.com is back in action. As an unabashed Democrat, I'd really like it if we could get control of the Senate away from the Reptiles. Sadly, his projections for control of the Senate are not as rosy as the Twins' chances of making the postseason.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
City Clowncil. Yay.
Apparently, my City Council is composed almost entirely of 12-year-olds. Entertaining (from a schadenfreude kind of perspective) can be found here.
Friday, June 30, 2006
A tale of two demos
I play a lot of games. I buy even more games, although not as many as I used to. See my earlier post on the economics of MMOs -- I am still playing City of Heroes after two years, which reduces my interest in other games. But that's not why I'm motivated to post. No, I wanted to talk to my future self about why demos are important.
The first demo I want to talk about is a failure, in my opinion. I've been interested in Titan Quest for a while. I loved Diablo II, and TQ looks like a good D2 clone, with high-quality graphics. So when the demo became available, I promptly downloaded it, only to find out that the damn thing won't install on my machine. The demo installed was created and tested on machines that have Windows installed to the C: drive, and relies on that. In my case, my primary HD is G: (it's SATA, and I have no IDE hard drives), so the installer bombs. There is a fix, of course. All I need to do is go out and buy an IDE hard drive and reinstall Windows, and then I can install the demo. Or I could install it on another computer, copy the install over and edit my registry. Neither of those is a realistic scenario.
In my mind, this makes the Titan Quest demo a failure. The point of a demo is to get me enough of the game experience to make me want more, so I buy the full game.
One demo that worked really well is Armadillo Run. I got an email from an online acquaintance with the link to the site and a recommendation. It's somewhere between The Incredible Machine and Lemmings, but simpler and somehow more engaging. At heart, it's a puzzle game, but one with many possible solutions for each puzzle. You're presented with a simple scenario -- get the armadillo (which strongly resembles a basketball) safely to a target area. To accomplish this, you use simple construction materials to build a route it will roll along. The materials have physical properties and obey basic physical principles -- things fall if unsupported, heavy things will break under their own weight, and so on.
The demo installed fine, so the first barrier was passed. I played through the simple tutorial and the six demo puzzles in about half an hour. While I was doing this, my wife saw the game up and asked me to forward her the link. About 15 minutes later I bought the full game.
What's the lesson? It's simple -- If I can't see your demo, I can't tell how good it is.
Which, of course, leads right back to switches and dials.
The first demo I want to talk about is a failure, in my opinion. I've been interested in Titan Quest for a while. I loved Diablo II, and TQ looks like a good D2 clone, with high-quality graphics. So when the demo became available, I promptly downloaded it, only to find out that the damn thing won't install on my machine. The demo installed was created and tested on machines that have Windows installed to the C: drive, and relies on that. In my case, my primary HD is G: (it's SATA, and I have no IDE hard drives), so the installer bombs. There is a fix, of course. All I need to do is go out and buy an IDE hard drive and reinstall Windows, and then I can install the demo. Or I could install it on another computer, copy the install over and edit my registry. Neither of those is a realistic scenario.
In my mind, this makes the Titan Quest demo a failure. The point of a demo is to get me enough of the game experience to make me want more, so I buy the full game.
One demo that worked really well is Armadillo Run. I got an email from an online acquaintance with the link to the site and a recommendation. It's somewhere between The Incredible Machine and Lemmings, but simpler and somehow more engaging. At heart, it's a puzzle game, but one with many possible solutions for each puzzle. You're presented with a simple scenario -- get the armadillo (which strongly resembles a basketball) safely to a target area. To accomplish this, you use simple construction materials to build a route it will roll along. The materials have physical properties and obey basic physical principles -- things fall if unsupported, heavy things will break under their own weight, and so on.
The demo installed fine, so the first barrier was passed. I played through the simple tutorial and the six demo puzzles in about half an hour. While I was doing this, my wife saw the game up and asked me to forward her the link. About 15 minutes later I bought the full game.
What's the lesson? It's simple -- If I can't see your demo, I can't tell how good it is.
Which, of course, leads right back to switches and dials.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Okay, I suck at this
It would seem that I suck at blogging. I'm not finding the time to devote to my own projects. I need to regain some balance.
So, is this a commitment to trying again, or an admission of failure? Good question. I don't like giving up.
I do want to write up my thoughts on switches and dials, and the importance of applying interaction design principles to game UI design (which ought to be obvious, and yet is not). So the chance I will do so is pretty good.
It would seem I must link. Increasing the connectivity of the Internet is a good thing.
I found this recently, and it caught my interest. I'm familiar with Tog as an influential member of the UI design community, and have read his stuff before.
First Principles on UI Design
So, is this a commitment to trying again, or an admission of failure? Good question. I don't like giving up.
I do want to write up my thoughts on switches and dials, and the importance of applying interaction design principles to game UI design (which ought to be obvious, and yet is not). So the chance I will do so is pretty good.
It would seem I must link. Increasing the connectivity of the Internet is a good thing.
I found this recently, and it caught my interest. I'm familiar with Tog as an influential member of the UI design community, and have read his stuff before.
First Principles on UI Design
Saturday, August 13, 2005
A brief intermission
But before I get back to talking about games, a brief blogroll for my brother. He's blogging his trip to Europe with his pipe band, and it's great fun to read about.
Annoyingly enough, even with all the typos, it's fairly obvious which of us is the better writer. :)
The Road Less Traveled
Annoyingly enough, even with all the typos, it's fairly obvious which of us is the better writer. :)
The Road Less Traveled
Friday, August 12, 2005
The sleeper wakes
Long dormant, I rise from my slumber...
Not really. I've just been busy doing various things other than blogging. Although I must say I've been better at this than at any diary I've ever kept. I think I work better with a keyboard than with paper. Plus, being able to get to it from anywhere helps.
The main problem is that I have either nothing to write about, or far too much. I'm not interesting in creating an E/N livejournal sort of thing, so blogging about the various events in my life holds no interest for me.
So I need a topic... and it's games. The theory and design of them, and what makes for goodness in gaming. I'm going to try to get out some of my own thoughts, and then work on reacting to some of the things I am reading on game design.
Next up: switches and dials.
Not really. I've just been busy doing various things other than blogging. Although I must say I've been better at this than at any diary I've ever kept. I think I work better with a keyboard than with paper. Plus, being able to get to it from anywhere helps.
The main problem is that I have either nothing to write about, or far too much. I'm not interesting in creating an E/N livejournal sort of thing, so blogging about the various events in my life holds no interest for me.
So I need a topic... and it's games. The theory and design of them, and what makes for goodness in gaming. I'm going to try to get out some of my own thoughts, and then work on reacting to some of the things I am reading on game design.
Next up: switches and dials.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
A flurry of activity, although not here
I've been more active than usual of late on the SDMB. I'm not entirely sure why. I've actually been choosing to read and post there over playing City of Heroes, which is surprising. I think my CoH addiction may have peaked. I'm still addicted and still playing, mind you, but I think I may be past the most obsessive, must-play-all-the-time point.
Only time will tell, of course. I seem to recall going through the same kind of cycle with Diablo II, where I got away from playing it at times, only to be drawn back in by the endless cycle of leveling and acquiring new cool stuff. CoH lacks stuff, though, which makes it a bit less compelling. But it offers more skill/power choices than D2, and it's superheroes, which are the stuff of my boyhood fantasies. So it's got that going for it.
I've been doing some more actual working at work, as well. That is, more time spent doing the things I really should be doing, like longer-term strategy, instead of short-term reactive stuff. It's a nice feeling, but hard to sustain. I need uninterrupted time to focus on what I am doing, and that doesn't come easily. Now that I have my team handling most of the issues, it's starting to happen, though.
In fact, what am I doing posting here when I should be either working or going home?
Only time will tell, of course. I seem to recall going through the same kind of cycle with Diablo II, where I got away from playing it at times, only to be drawn back in by the endless cycle of leveling and acquiring new cool stuff. CoH lacks stuff, though, which makes it a bit less compelling. But it offers more skill/power choices than D2, and it's superheroes, which are the stuff of my boyhood fantasies. So it's got that going for it.
I've been doing some more actual working at work, as well. That is, more time spent doing the things I really should be doing, like longer-term strategy, instead of short-term reactive stuff. It's a nice feeling, but hard to sustain. I need uninterrupted time to focus on what I am doing, and that doesn't come easily. Now that I have my team handling most of the issues, it's starting to happen, though.
In fact, what am I doing posting here when I should be either working or going home?
Thursday, January 13, 2005
As long as I'm here... the economics of MMOs (from the consumer side)
Been rather a while. I need to set a regular time for this or something.
City of Heroes is now well past 6 months and shows no signs of abating. My "main" (the character I play most often), Thermocline, is now level 40, with just under 500 hours of playtime (I think, might be just under 400, I was tired when I was checking).
I basically have a part-time job worth of play in this game. It works out really well from a cost-per-hour perspective. For $15 a month, I get a hundred hours or so of playtime -- that's about 15 cents an hour. Compare with $8.00 for a two-hour movie, or $2.25 for a comic book that lasts perhaps 10 minutes.
Of course, to enable that low cost, I do need to have an internet connection, which has a cost. And a computer. But I used those things for other purposes. Besides, the real comparison I wanted to make was with other games. I'm getting really good value for my money comparing CoH with, say, Half-Life 2. HL2 is a great game, and will probably take me 40 hours to finish. So it'll have cost me about a buck an hour. If I replay it, or play it online, that'll be extended... but for every half-life, there is a Pirates of the Caribbean (cost, $40, actual playtime, about an hour, total time including install and reading manual maybe 90 minutes, time spent enjoying it 0 minutes). That was an expensive one.
So the point is... MMOs are a great value for the consumer, if you play them. If you don't play them, of course, then you should stop paying for them.
City of Heroes is now well past 6 months and shows no signs of abating. My "main" (the character I play most often), Thermocline, is now level 40, with just under 500 hours of playtime (I think, might be just under 400, I was tired when I was checking).
I basically have a part-time job worth of play in this game. It works out really well from a cost-per-hour perspective. For $15 a month, I get a hundred hours or so of playtime -- that's about 15 cents an hour. Compare with $8.00 for a two-hour movie, or $2.25 for a comic book that lasts perhaps 10 minutes.
Of course, to enable that low cost, I do need to have an internet connection, which has a cost. And a computer. But I used those things for other purposes. Besides, the real comparison I wanted to make was with other games. I'm getting really good value for my money comparing CoH with, say, Half-Life 2. HL2 is a great game, and will probably take me 40 hours to finish. So it'll have cost me about a buck an hour. If I replay it, or play it online, that'll be extended... but for every half-life, there is a Pirates of the Caribbean (cost, $40, actual playtime, about an hour, total time including install and reading manual maybe 90 minutes, time spent enjoying it 0 minutes). That was an expensive one.
So the point is... MMOs are a great value for the consumer, if you play them. If you don't play them, of course, then you should stop paying for them.
Firefox autocomplete
Shamelessly stolen (from someone who himself shameless stole it):
Memo to myself:
To turn on inline autocomplete in Firefox…
1. Enter about:config in the URL field
2. Right-click on the page and create a new Boolean value
3. Enter browser.urlbar.autoFill as the preference name (note, case-sensitive: ‘F’, not ‘f’)
4. Set the value to true
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