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May 22, 2012

June 6, 2011

Screenshot Makes It Happen

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — Leave a comment

Ah, C’thun from WoW’s Ahn’Qiraj. How I missed your beam of DOOM that some people just somehow felt compelled to run towards.

While visiting my old WoW guild’s website I found the screen on the right on the front page. It brought  me back to a time when 16 hours a week to kill things didn’t seem like too terribly large of an amount for a bit of online fame, but more importantly, gave me a sense of nostalgia. I think that the memory and creation of a sort of archive of good times is why the saying among geeks of “screenshot or it didn’t happen” gains so much traction. Much like those old family photos of you when you were young, wearing what you shouldn’t have and doing what you shouldn’t have, a good screenshot is timeless and historic.

Not everyone takes screenshots, though. I honestly wish they would, because there are some moments in games, and especially in an MMO, where you can’t really repeat something or do again to make it feel the way it does when it’s best to take the shot. Sure, that wasn’t quite the last time C’thun felt the sting of our 40 man raid, but the shot on the right captures a bit of the elation felt when the deed was done. Not to mention the fact that games in general tend to have fantastic things happening with them – certainly a lot more interesting than getting a shot of Uncle Fred right before he trips and breaks his leg getting into the pool, that’s for sure.

Mostly, though, screenshots are a great shared experience when it comes to fellow geeks in the community. With a normal photo you sort of have to try to explain the context, why you were there, what you were doing, who was the person who totally pulled their pants down in the middle of the shot – things like that that help give context. While you have to do that with a good screenshot, for the most part, someone who sees it who is a geek knows where it’s from, what it likely took to get there, and of course, what exactly was done. Even someone not familiar with WoW could look at the shot I’ve provided and come up with the fact that we’d just killed something big and ugly in a video game, and that it was glorious (a little crazy, but still glorious on some level, right?). The screenshot spans genres, from MMOs, to FPSs, to even the classics, but it never gets old as a marker of someone’s gaming achievement.  Family shot? I’ll take a screenshot to put against that any day.

June 4, 2011

The Podcastastic Geek Community

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: — Leave a comment

Yeah, I’ll be the first to admit it – I’m a podcast addict.

There’s always that one person you know that owns an mp3 or other such media player that, when you see what they have stored on there, makes your eyes bug out more than a cartoon character seeing the sexy for the first time. Usually it’s the person who makes their media player groan under the weight of near triple digits worth of GB of music, or someone who worships at the fictional altar of one particular artist (I’m looking at you, dude who has the entire Backstreet Boys collection and associated remixes).  I’m that person, except I’m like that with podcasts. It’s a little comical, really – my music collection, or at least the collection I care to carry around with me, is in the single digits for gigs. But my podcast collection is a bit scary, taking up over 85% of my iPod space.

Why is it that I need my podcast fix so bad I’ve copied them to my phone to listen to? Well, there are a couple of legitimate reasons that I can get away with the behavior. One is most certainly work-related. When you work in Community, you tend to want to keep tabs on what the community is doing in terms of fan-created content – and depending on the community (the current one I deal with has at least 15 different podcasts), you get to hear a lot of unique takes on what they feel a podcast should embody. The other is that a talk radio aficionado like myself prefers the soothing sounds of a podcast when on the road, commuting, running errands, and buzzing away at busywork, If anything, podcasts provide material on pretty much any subject you want to hear about but are too lazy to read.

Mostly though, I’m just hooked. A lot of that has to do with the everyman feel of having podcasts. In a world when a lot of people seem like they are only limited to certain media outlets if they want to hear about something, podcasts, along with blogs, have claimed a sphere that contains individuals that mostly have no formal training or aren’t versed in the ways of media generation. You’d think this was a negative, but it actually produces a lot of creative and transparent content that people can identify with. Lots of people probably wouldn’t be able to deal with a news personality like they do their next door neighbor. Podcasters have an opportunity to become that familiar with an audience, and that’s cool. The lack of restraints on the way things are communicated, talked about, and featured means that podcasters can choose to follow a traditional media route to legitimize themselves or decide to use grassroots appeal to make themselves appealing – mostly for free. That’s awesome and interesting to hear about.

Really, though, the reason why I’m a podcast freak is because of the community vibe and feel. You can get so much out of a podcast that you might not expect if you know where to look, and even better,  it’s inspiring and enables you to think about creating your own. Does this mean that every podcast makes it? Some are less popular than others – but that shouldn’t and doesn’t stop many aspiring geeky folk from trying their hand at it and putting themselves out there – which, I think, is a great reason why I try to listen to as many as I can cram into my player.

June 3, 2011

The Silliness Of Cynicipation

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet, Social Geekery — Leave a comment

While I took my little break from blogging on the site, there was a bit of a curious trend that I’ve been seeing. Maybe it’s more than likely been around longer and I’ve only noticed it recently, but there sure seems to be a lot of managing expectations among geekery lately. By managing expectations I of course am being completely delicate and using it as a term to describe the crushing angst I’ve seen from folks when they anticipate events, new releases, new tech, and other such geek arts-related media. You know how they call hype anticipation on steroids sometimes? This is sort of the opposite – something I call cynicipation – assuming the worst and expecting to be disappointed.

You’ve all seen the signs. The latest bit of tech, for example, is on the cusp of coming out, and the truly optimistic and excited people are tempered by an Eeyore-like bunch of wry replies that proclaim failure before it starts. The usual preparation for the trials and tribulations of first adopters are magnified tenfold into an assumption that things will crash and burn, that people will gnash their teeth in frustration, and the cynicipators will feel pain they think they know is inevitable. In fact, the only happiness a cynicipator gets is from seeing that they’re even the slightest bit right, and that they were proven to be correct in their gloom train.

You know me, guys and gals – I’m the eternal optimist, and even for someone who is a cynicipator, I get why that might be a worthy and good way of looking at things. After all, when you start out with lower expectations, anything else might seem like a ray of sunshine. The letdown of a hyped person seems to be a much worse scenario than someone who wants a piece of tech, likes a certain game, looks at a specific TV show, and thinks it’s going to drop like a rock. I hear that, and in some cases even understand it. But for me? I’d rather be excited and then perhaps let down or deflated than start off that way. Why? Because at least then I’d have felt elation, even if the feeling is short lived.

I think people who partake in cynicipation may have lost sight of the excitement and rush that expecting a geek sexy thing brings with it. The voracious reading of articles, the excitement shared among friends over text and phone, the final wait to get your hands on it or see it – all of it is an amazing experience that brings us back to being kids, when we’d come down for the holidays and unwrap gifts, or see what was around the corner waiting for us on a birthday or other special day. Even if you do end up inevitably disappointed, who wouldn’t want to feel that way again? I think that there’s a lot of reason to have hardships and trials these days – whether work, personal, or otherwise. Getting your little bit of joy out of that latest video card or new season of sci-fi or amazing game series – I’ll take that any day over the cynicipation that they’ll be bad.

June 2, 2011

The Geek’s Version of “The Dog Ate It”

by Frank — Categories: Site Related — 2 Comments

I know what you’re thinking, dear tiny reader base. “What the heck happened? Where did my regular dose of positivity about geekdom run off to?”, followed by “what the heck kind of breakfast should I have since it was sugary kids’ cereal the last couple days?”

As far as breakfast goes, I can certainly advise you that eating marshmallowy Lucky Charms for the 6th day in a row is your right and you should exercise it every single day. But as for that other question – well…errr…if you’ve ever run something online, you can identify with the fact that there are just times that you have to admit to people that you’ve been a little lax lately on the internet – that maybe playing Angry Birds Chrome instead of updating your online space isn’t very productive.

But this isn’t one of those times, right? Don’t worry, I’ve got a whole list of ready-made explanations that us geeks have for missing out on keeping our content current:

It’s the Internet’s fault: If the internet is anything, it’s one giant time sink and a perpetual temptation to be unproductive. The siren call of random articles on Reddit, hilarious imagery at Fmylife, and of course, Youtube makes updates a particularly hard thing to do. I mean c’mon, hitting the replay button on Lady Gaga videos which you find strangely compelling and catchy is totally keeping your brain entertained to do other tasks.

Had to beat that game, man: A lot of geeks like games, but the problem with a particularly good game is that it sucks you in like a black hole of productivity-absorbing nonsense. A simple need to have an hour session with your favorite title turns into “how the hell did it turn into 3am in the morning?!” with alarming frequency, which pretty much means you don’t have the time to do your updates. And with the advent of achievements in games, it’s made all the more likely that instead of updating you’re trying to beat that one boss on the ultra-hard-Icrushyourhopesanddreams difficulty level so you can have virtual street cred. Hey – you have an image to live up to online, am I right?

…and of course we can’t forget:

The dog ate it: Yep, that’s right. The dog ate my cable modem, my network cables, my power plug, and my wireless mouse. Then he went after my speakers, my printer, and made a sandwich out of both my monitors and power strips. I tried to stop him but he was just relentless and he looks so cute you can’t stay mad at him. Isn’t he a cute doggies? Yes you are. Yes you are, Doofus, I forgive you for chompin’ my desktop in half like a pretzel.

Uhhh…in other words, there’s a totally legitimate excuse for me not to update – and they’re all life-enriching, positive experiences that have totally grown me as a person! The important thing is that I’m back, and back with some regularity, so you’ll be hearing more of your dose of geek sunshine on this blog. I’ll even keep the dog away from my keyboard. Promise.

March 10, 2011

Anticipating The Geek Con Right

by Frank — Categories: Conventions, Gaming — Tags: , , — 1 Comment

It’s a little odd to be sitting, of all places, in an airport on wi-fi waiting to meet up with people and yet feel excited about a future event, but here I am. This weekend, I’ll be hitting up PAX East in Boston for various reasons both professional and personal, and if the talk on Twitter, Facebook, and the internet at large is any indication, it’s going to be a mighty good time.

This is a direct function of an event and its organizers creating the right kind of anticipation for the event itself. I think it’s good to mention that I don’t mean hype. Hype is the kind of over the top craziness that you expect when it comes to pushing the envelope for extravagant and sweeping, and while it has its benefits, it is not anticipation. Anticipation is created from properly ensuring that people know your event is going to be a great time – that it will have what you want and give you some surprises as well. This is what PAX East has done, and done to successful execution.

How does it do this, even in the midst of a pool of geek cynicism? Part of it is the preparation tools and tech. PAX East went through a single vendor for hotel reservations, for example, and put up a bunch of neat little features like measuring distance from the hotel and one-click easy ordering to make reserving things a blast. Their registration process involves a third-party service that easily generates barcoding and efficient sending of badges through mail. They have an arrangement with Conventionist, an app that aggregates information about events and updates them in real time while giving people the chance to plot their con course. All of these kinds of tools, that make the process of getting ready for a con easy, also make getting ready for it more of an exercise in anticipation. People aren’t having a hard time with systems that should work but don’t. They are instead having a hard time with the things they’re supposed to, like deciding on two kick-ass events that are at the same time. Take away the tech trouble, build the hype.

The other way is through subtle little conveniences. Releasing the schedule a little early. Providing an ongoing map of confirmed vendors and develoeprs. Putting in periodic updates about attendance and badge sales. These are things that while subtle, build anticipation and excitement for an event. Organizers know that you can’t really shove what is supposed to be a fun event on attendees. You do little nudges and pushes, little winks of the eye, and the rest sort of takes care of itself – given that you’re organized, efficient, and know what you’re doing.

Ultimately, as it should be, the ones who are the best manufacturers of the anticipation for an event are the people attending. Geeks are the most passionate people around in many respects, and even though the pain of their discontent can be severe, the benefit of when they are satisfied, excited, and happy is well worth the risk. It isn’t a surprise that an event like PAX East is driven by fan and community support, but to get it to a hotly anticipated point, it takes just a little sly bunch of pokes to do so. It is, in many ways, a validation of the adage “if you build it, they will come”.

We’ll see if I can keep up my post-a-day New Year’s resolution at PAX East!

March 9, 2011

The New Hotness In New MMO Classes

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — 1 Comment

Today I woke up to a rather distressed post by Syp, who is confuzzled about the recent Thief class in Guild Wars 2 being not the class he was expecting when invoking the iconic master of stealing and stabbity goodness. He admits a bit of difficulty in reconciling the two, seemingly clashing images.

I too was a bit surprised at the idea that Guild Wars 2′s Thief would be a dual pistol wielding bunch of blammity goodness, but then again, I have to applaud folks for coming up with classes that are new, interesting, or even an alternative look at a traditional class. We’re quite far from the old days of warriors, clerics, mages, and thieves, so I’d say anything that takes a different tack on things is definitely a refresher for the class itself. If there wasn’t a modern sort of take on these classes, pigeon-holing would be more of a problem than it is today. While deviating from the norm is a calculated risk, sometimes you end up with a couple of new hotness classes that people tend to love.

There’s a couple of outcomes from thinking of the box when it comes to your MMO classes. One is the hybrid. We’ve seen these applied to varying degrees of success in other MMOs (WoW’s multipurpose Druid, WAR’s melee healing Disciple, Guild Wars’ buffing, attacking Paragon) but the more than people have to play with in a hybrid, the more interesting the traditional class roles become in terms of dimensions. Sure, there’s a lot to balance when it comes to a class with a dual role and at times, you might even see it as a bit overpowered, but when it works, it works extremely well as a new choice for prospective players. The other is brand new classes – RIFT is perhaps the most recent example of people taking a class system and running with it to create different, interesting, and innovative builds that can work for what’s needed. Anything new and interesting that works, is discovered by the players, and is used to great effect is a potential template for a new class in another game down the line. It’s definitely something that lends itself towards taking a fresh look at what people want to play.

Still, I do think Syp does not need to worry as much – despite hybridization and the creation of new classes that seem to be a departure, most of the classes made do tend to have a core and archetype in the expected, traditional roles that people tend to put themselves in. There are elements of warriors, thieves, mages, and clerics in tons of other classes, and looking hard enough you can see the influence those archetypes have on the class that comes out. I think that we are all going to be understandably jarred at times like Syp has been, but I think once we’ve seen what’s fleshed out in a “new hotness” class, we’ll be believers, too.

March 8, 2011

The Appeal Of Tricking The Game

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Leave a comment

Today I read a rather whimsical little post from someone who attended GDC 2011 this week about someone who’d played the attendees and panelists of a social game rant event for a bit of fools, while also grabbing a bit of the spotlight themselves. The gist of it was the author took advantage of a lack of clarification in the rules to win a mini-game that was supposed to grant the winner a chance to speak. I won’t spoil the specifics, except to say that raining metal was involved.

Anyway, there’s the usual folks that might think that exploiting a bit of the game might be in poor taste, but there are also people like me who can laugh and applaud someone for tricking the game into giving him what he wanted, too. Aside from the irony of doing this during a gaming-related event, the whole thought of doing a bit of an end run or a bend of the rules seems to be a bit of a non-traditional way of having fun or achieving game goals. Some people do end up hating on people who do this, too – they level all kinds of accusations and barbs of thievery, cheating, and all sorts of unsavory commentary.

I think it should be made clear that out and out cheating is not really what I’m advocating, nor do I think that is what happened here, either. No, the kind of gamer run-around that this panel attendee gave to the entire room is trickery that does not destroy rules but instead adapts to and shapes them to their will. It’s the kind of mischief that does have a positive benefit on games in general because of the fact that flaws, exploits, bugs, and unintended behavior will quickly be patched or fixed to make things a bit more fair. It’s the kind of tricksy-ness that allows for revisions in the rules and addendums to be added. These are things that wouldn’t normally be uncovered unless someone tricked the game into a method of win that wasn’t thought of before.

Sure, we may get mad or angry at those who we might feel are exploiting a game for their own benefit, or who might be robbing you blind winning through mechanics that weren’t supposed to do what they make them do. In the end, however, part of you does have to have a little grudging respect, if not admiration, for the things that don’t quite work as intended but which people find, think of a way to use, and ultimately employ to win. Ultimately, games are a bit better for it, even though they have to be tricked to do so.

March 7, 2011

Cheap Update – Conan Still Rules Angrily

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , — Leave a comment

There might be a trend in the updates this week – most of them cheap, because of my impending trip to PAX East. Til then, however, there are some entertaining vids on the internet – like this one where talk show host Conan O’Brien creates a life-sized Angry Birds set and proceeds to destroy furniture. I knew there was a reason to like the guy.

March 6, 2011

Cheap Update – Minecraftin’ Impressiveness

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: — Leave a comment

I’m not typically a Minecraft player, but I do get the whole idea of creating things that are yours in a persistent world. Lots of people have tried to re-create certain things in the 8-bit-ish world of Minecraft, but this one sort of takes the cake if you’re a Chrono Trigger fan. It’s accurate right down to the textures. Enjoy!

March 5, 2011

The Silly Setup Of Failure

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Social Geekery, TV and Movies — Tags: , — 1 Comment

A trend I tend to see in my travels across the world wide web reading about games and their release is a certain subsection of  geek that’s always piqued my interest. No, I’m not talking about that strange guy who likes to refer to himself in the third person when he posts or that one girl who has to write in pink text every time as it it was breathing. This time, I’m talking about the ones set on ensuring that they are looking for a complete failure when it comes to a game or a show or a movie that is upcoming.

The reason why these folks are so curious to me is because as an optimist, there’s a level of intrigue as to the polar opposite of my outlook on things. What must it be like to be expecting failure all the time, even when it comes to the things that might most likely be a success? For geekery, where there is always something new and interesting around the corner and there’s a high amount of intelligence that suggests it might be decent, it’s even more of a surprise. Sure, there are cynics out there, and there are pessimists, but having a negative outlook on something is different than expecting something to fail. It’s easy to spot these folks too. They make forum threads predicting doom and gloom, blog about how the next best thing isn’t quite as good as sliced bread, and are always quick to insert an oppositional, Eeyore-like shrug into conversations that excitedly talk about what’s coming up.

If I had to take a guess, it would have to be that the people who want to anticipate failure are afraid of the feeling that it gives to them when they see something they like go down the crapper.  Perhaps hurt by having high expectations, a failure-thinker lowers them to the other extreme figuring that when the inevitable success happens, they will be pleasantly surprised.  It’s a sort of defense mechanism against high ideals and immense like for something no matter how popular it is. But why, as a geek, would you allow your self to be disappointed prior to the disappointment having any teeth to it? The thing that I would think is that setting yourself for failure basically means you’re never feeling like something succeeds. You’re denying yourself the anticipation and feeling, and good vibe that can lift a day just by being there. And low expectations that are met are still, in the end, low expectations, no matter how far above the bar they might go.

Not everyone can see a silver lining like me all the time – I can get that and understand it. But I’d also hope to think that not everyone can see just a rain cloud when they look at the sky, either. It’s a sort of grey view of things and a method by which you’re always going to be sad about anything and everything. The elation of success felt when your low standards are met is temporary and only leads to the next thing that you think isn’t going to cut the mustard. It’s just not a good way of thinking. I think that being genuinely excited about something, whether it is a game with great features you like, or a tv show that really seems to speak to you, or a movie that you’ve been waiting to be made is worth feeling a little down if it doesn’t ultimately pan out. At least then, you’d only be temporarily sad, instead of temporarily happy. I’ll take the happy any day.

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