Lunchie Munchies

I'm doing what I normally do around this time - eating at my desk.

Speaking of food, we're lucky to have vending machines in the building (food and soda) where everything is only a quarter. Sometimes we don't have much time to eat and I dislike companies who try to take advantage of that by making some extra cash on the side. I once worked for a company that charged 1.25 for a single candy bar...but a) that roughly *8* years ago, so subtract inflation and b) we *all* made next to nothing. Here we pay for things at cost and I very much appreciate that. Now if you are trying to watch what you eat and you see donuts AND cupcakes for 25 cents each, well, I guess it can be an evil thing too. I'll NEVER take some things for granted, whether it be 25 cent snacks or something more important as say...health insurance.

The Best Video Game Review Show *Ever*

I don't know if anyone remembers this show, but it was called Judgment Day.** I believe it was mostly on when G4 and Tech TV were independent from one another. When the channels merged it did stay on, but my joy was short lived. It's been off the air for roughly two years now.

Or so I thought.

I'm a *big* fan of wikipedia, and I was wondering what good ole' Tommy and Lucas were up to these days. Alas - the show is still around!

It's now called "Reviews On the Run" and it is only shown in Canada. There have at least been some *talks* of bringing it back to the US market, so there is hope:

"Specific details about the negotiations have not been disclosed. As of December 2007, the show has not returned to U.S. airwaves."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviews_on_the_Run

G4, please bring this show back to the US. I got nothing against Canada - in fact I like the country, and I personally don't want this jealously to get in the way of my feelings for Canada. Please don't let this tear two nations apart....

So why do I consider Judgment Day to be the best video game review TV show ever? (I say that like it's a big market to begin with, heh.)

It's simple. They wrote their own reviews. They didn't sound overly scripted and you can tell they actually played the game themselves. They are true gamers so they were rather passionate about their views. I have nothing against game industry folks who may not necessarily enjoy video games in their spare time (and yes, they do exist) but you can generally sniff them out. You can also tell that they have a lot of experience reviewing games on any platform, which is a big bonus. Many in the industry focus on console games ONLY despite the fact that PC online gaming is still huge. Their knowledge is simply well rounded.

And whether they like a game or hate it, you'll at least you know why. They did a good job explaining why a game may be frustrating to some (invisible walls do suck sometimes!) They also listed the pros and cons so you could get a feel as to whether YOU may personally like the game, even if they didn't. Naturally, every reviewer out there is going to have their own personal tastes. But they did seem to keep the general viewing audience in mind, and I liked that neutrality. So what's the bottom line when it comes to creating a game review: INFORMATION. And they supplied that.

They also made me laugh, and they truly seemed to enjoy themselves. And quite frankly, it was nice to see several reviews in a single show. I'm always trying to keep up with what's going on in the gaming industry and Judgment Day just made that process a little bit easier.

You know what I also learned from wikipedia?

"Lost cast member Evangeline Lilly's first job in television was as a "Hardware Girl" for Reviews on the Run."

That would be "Kate" from Lost. Ha. I never knew she was a hardware babe, which was their version of booth babes.

No matter what it's called, "Judgment Day" or "Reviews on the Run" or whatever, BRING IT BACK!!

PS: I'm jealous, Canada.

*shakes fist*

**This has nothing to do with the fact that Lucas gave CoH some really amazing reviews. I swear. Cough cough.

It's the day you don't believe anything you hear

Well, it's true :) Today is that ONE day I don't want to post any legitimate announcements.

It seems more and more gaming companies/websites are getting into the prankster activity each year. This is cool, but the more it happens the less likely you can get someone to fall for ANY of it. Bah. Too many pranks were attempted around the same time this morning....it's probably best to pull the pranks real early on April 1st or really late on April 1st. If you post it real late and they can't read it until the next morning it's not cheating, right?

On to other things.

I really can't wait for our new message board software. I just got admin access to an internal testing version yesterday and I do plan on putting it to good use this afternoon. We've been using the same version of UBBthreads for sooo long. It's time to get with the times!

Once we have a decent version running internally we'll have a better idea for a live publish date :) My goal is to give as much advance notice as possible since some downtime is inevitable. I dread the actual conversion process but I want to get it all done and over with. The quality of life features alone are to DROOL for. The only thing it doesn't have right now is a Dev Digest, and that is a concern of mine. It doesn't necessarily have to be a Dev Digest but we need SOMETHING just like it. All red name posts need to be flagged...we have to make it so official comments don't get lost in the mix. We'll get something worked out. I've seen the difference a Dev Digest can make now that Exteel doesn't have one. The Exteel one broke, and rumors (intentional or otherwise) run more rampant now. They are easy to debunk, but I would prefer it if we could remove that problem all together. And we will. I have the faith and the determination needed for that :)

ACC Video Game Seminars

This news really only applies to those who live in the Austin area (sorry!) but I still thought it was worth sharing...

Austin Community College regularly holds a variety of Video Game Seminars that are free to the public. The next one focuses on "ActionScript for Casual/Web Games" and I urge any interested Central Texan to go check it out. It is free, and we all know that "free" is quite possibly the best damn word in the universe.

More info on ACC Video Game Seminars

With all the bad publicity video games seem to get in general I feel very blessed to live in such a pro-game industry city.

Inconvenience.

You know, it's a shame, but such is life - the things I think you all would find interesting are generally the things I cannot go into details about. Maybe one day I can write a juicy "tell all" book and pray I don't get sued. All the names could be changed to protect both the innocent AND the guilty...HA!!

Okay, new topic.

I've seen this too many times - several business oriented software programs use imported spell checkers that are completely whacked. And there is one particular program we use here likes to auto-correct by default. I'm the typo queen, so I love spell checkers. But I'm not a big fan of auto corrections. When I used to write Knowledge Base articles for CoH it would drive me crazy.

But it's not even so much that. Businesses tend to use the word "inconvenience" a lot, yes? Well you can mispell it *oh so* slightly and it will switch to a COMPLETELY different word, and why it is ALWAYS this word, I don't know.

And that word word incontinence.

"We apologize for the incontinence."

WHY oh WHY?

Busy Bee

I've been quiet...I've just been really busy lately so I had to slack on posting for a bit.

I'd also like to add that daylights saving time is a pain in the you-know-what.



You know, I really wish I had a flat panel monitor at work, but at least I can put stuff on top of it. Here we have Butters from South Park, (my fav SP character) an official Lineage II Coke can from Korea, and Heroclix piece of Lockjaw, who is the coolest superhero dog EVER.

Speaking of dogs...Houston, we have a problem.



Charlie the forum avatar dog is now apparently a movie critic, and he is NOT a fan of the movie Sean of the Dead. I'm still not sure how he got his hands on it, nor do I really understand why he did this. He's normally a good dog. You can also see what looks to be a somewhat cluttered living room. We have my sneakers, a PS3, a Wii, a Wii controller and a laptop case, amongst other things. The PC and my laptop are just out of sight ;)

Back to work. I'll post again soon.

NCsoft GM Interview

I did want to draw some attention to this one because it is VERY RARE for a GM to speak publicly. I wish they did it more, but I've been in their shoes and I completely understand why it is the way it is.

Here we have LemonCobra (Lineage I) discussing about his GM duties:

Q&A with GM Lemoncobra

"I NO BOT!! I NO BOT!!"

MMOFury and Dungeon Runners

"Dungeon Runners certainly deserves a pat on the back for a great content update to a game that we feel was already a blast to play. This patch is also a reminder that NCsoft is committed to keeping fresh content on this free to play title, which adds value to any gamer that invests the time to level a character."

- Quote from http://mmofury.com/

MMOFury was gracious enough to award Dungeon Runners their "Patch of the Week" award. Sure, it was for last week and I'm slow, but hey, we seriously feel very honored here :) Thank you, MMOFury!

*bows*

Read all about it here:
http://mmofury.com/gamingnews/news.php?extend.14