Contracts, Hunger Games, and DOTA2

 Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 262012
 

Not the most original title in the world, but honest, at least.

So, first of all, I have a 30-day contract with a company here in NYC, starting tomorrow. This will be basically a try-out period; after the contract is up we’ll have an evaluation, and see if I could come on board as a full-time employee. Definitely good news on that front, and also good news in that it’s right back in to game design. And trust me, finding game design work is not exactly the easiest thing to pull off here in NYC. Also handy is that the new place is merely 1 stop further along the F train from my old place of employment. Before, I exited at 23rd street, and now, it’s 34th. This also means that I’ll be working right across the street from the Empire State Building. Sign that I am a New Yorker: I didn’t even realize this at first until I stopped to see what everyone around me were taking pictures of.

The company has headed up the Facebook version of “The Hunger Games,” a property that you “may” have heard about. Actually, from what I have heard, “The Hunger Games” books have now outsold the Harry Potter books, something that is not only impressive, but also reminds me that I really need to get cracking on some original IP tale of my own. In any case, I didn’t know anything about the series, having never read the books or seen the movie. Hence, I picked up the movie from Best Buy during a city excursion, and watched it upon my return home.

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I agree with another person’s assessment that the shaky-cam approach, at least in the beginning, was a little on the heavy side, but otherwise I enjoyed a lot about what I saw. I was reminded of “The Running Man” film, “Lord of the Flies” (which, actually, I never have seen), and “The Truman Show,” but not in bad ways. Rather, more like, “Oh, yeah, so it’s like ‘The Truman Show.’ Okay, got it.” I’m also more interested in reading the books now, as there were a number of side characters that I’m willing to bet have even more depth and robustness to them. Some of the things I enjoyed were that the movie doesn’t “talk down” to the audience; a lot of parts of the film are presented in a way that make you understand what’s happening without the need for heavy exposition dialogue. Likewise, the characters act in believable ways, and parts of characters back stories are explained in very simple, quick pieces, so you get the gist of things within a matter of minutes. Even better, the way that the movie is put together hints at more beneath the surface, hence my greater interest in the books. Suffice to say, I was pleased with my purchase.

Finally, after wrapping up the first 2 “Thief” games, I wound spending quite a bit of time playing DOTA 2 — Defense of the Ancients 2. This is a new game from Valve that, while technically free, is also in a closed Beta (of sorts). You can’t get in without an invite, but you can actually buy an invite for like $30. So, either you spend $30 to buy the game, really, or you can play for free. What really makes this weird is that that game already has so many players that they have been holding international tournaments the past month or so, with serious cash prizes to the winning teams. Not many Beta games do that.

This game is, as the name implies, a sequel. The original was actually a mod for the Blizzard game, “WarCraft III,” which was developed by one guy, and then later on picked up and really promoted & maintained by another guy. For like, the past 10 years. Valve then hired him to make this “official” game. This is another weird thing: the game started out in the Blizzard game universe that eventually brought us World of WarCraft: you have tinkering gnomes, tough orcs, water elementals, cat riders — I mean, you can really just look at the 100+ classes that they have and almost trace them all back to a WarCraft base. Yet, this game is being made by Valve. I can only imagine that there is some licensing deal going here, as otherwise, I would suspect that copyright injunctions would be flying.

Anyway, the game is mind-bendingly complex, as you have the aforementioned 100+ classes, plus around 80 different items, each which can give you extra effects, modify your abilities, increase your stats, etc. You earn gold for each “last hit” you get on a NPC or a PC, and then use that gold to spend on items. You also gain XP, and as you grow in level (to a max of 25), your powers increase. Like most spooky deep games, it could take days or weeks to learn the best “build” for just one character; each has their own play style (support, nuker, etc.), and their own quirks that you need to get familiar with before you even worry about the items to get.

So far I’ve played about 15 matches or so, most against a team of bots (you play as part of a 5-man team). I’ve mainly been experimenting with different characters, trying to get a feel for the ones that I enjoy playing, and the ones that I think are just too deep for me to think about yet (like The Invoker (who, by the way, looks a lot like a Blood Elf from WarCraft — funny, that)). I’ve started to experiment more with a couple characters in particular, and once I get them to a spot I’m not embarrassing myself, I’ll probably move on to another one to experiment with.

Finally, something that I’ve really been enjoying in the game has been to little details to the audio, in particular the voice acting of each character (called a “Hero,” in the game, which differentiates them from “creeps,” which are NPCs). Now, it’s not that each character has an array of comments to make when you move, attack, retreat, get coins, buy an item, etc. (as neat as that is), but no, I’m much more impressed with the fine attention to detail that they have put based on which characters are playing, and against whom.

Two examples:

The first is one that backs up the established story of each Hero. In one case, it’s 2 sisters who are magic-users, one who uses fire (the older one, Lina), and one who use ice (The Crystal Maiden). Because both sides pick 1 Hero each, you can easily wind up in a game where the two sisters are playing against each other. Once while playing, I saw The Cyrstal Maiden (with help from others) take down Lina. As Lina fell, instead of giving one of her standard lines of defeat (“My flame… snuffed out!”), she actually said, defiantly, as she fell, “You.. were… adopted!” And The Crystal Maiden, instead of given a standard line of victory, merely said, simply, “Sorry, sis!” I actually laughed when I heard that because suddenly, these Heros became a lot more like characters.

Another example is when I was playing The Crystal Maiden (a support Hero) alongside Juggernaut (a “carry,” as in “you carry them through the early part of the game so they can carry your team to victory at the end). As we were playing, I heard The Crystal Maiden make the comment, “Make them feel the cool of your blade Juggernaut!” So, in this case, the developers deliberately added some special dialogue options for when two players who work well together (support & carry) are fighting alongside each other. It’s little things like that which really tend to sell me on a game, and this one was no different.

I’ll be playing more of it going forward, but for now, I have real work to attend to. And I really mean that: I have “real” work to do which results in a paycheck. Here’s hoping that it easily goes beyond that first 30 days.

The Master Thief with a Brain of Lead

 Reviews  3 Responses »
Sep 242012
 

Back during the Steam Summer Sale, I stocked up on multiple titles at severely discounted rates, and included in that package was the “Thief” bundle, including “Thief Gold” (the original title with a few new maps and elements), “Thief 2,” and “Thief: Deadly Shadows.” Over the past week and a half, I’ve played through the first two games — “Thief Gold” and “Thief 2,” primarily because Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw of “Zero Punctuation” talks up “Thief 2″ a lot, and I generally agree with his take on things, so I figured I would give it a whirl. Especially when the whole package for all 3 games was something like 5 bucks. I mean, that’s about the cost of a medium hot chocolate here in NYC, so hey, pretty good value, right?

The following is what I took away from the 2 games thus far, both the good and the bad.

  • The stealth mechanic is still a refreshing change of pace from today’s standard model of in-your-face shooters and over-the-top action. Both games adhere strongly to this motif, with a lot of emphasis placed on how well you hide in shadows, and also a huge amount of importance on how you move over different surfaces and the noise thus created. Likewise, this is also a game of patience, something else that is a major change from games like “Gears of War,” or even the “Madden” football series. A lot of the game can be watching and waiting for the time to move, or strike. There are some moments of quickness, but overall, I tended to be the silent lurker, waiting to get a sense of the guard patrols before making a move.
  • In the game, you have a variety of arrows that you can use; standard, water, fire, gas, etc. A lot of the arrows have one main function, but a nice game design touch is how most arrows can be used in multiple ways. The water arrow, for example, is mainly for dousing torches, making it easier to hide in shadows, but in the first game, you can “bless” them with holy water, and take down the undead with a couple of shots. Likewise, in “Thief 2,” you can use them to take out the various mechanical creatures from behind, shorting them out. I’ve even used the standard arrows to make noises away from me, distracting guards, and even to set off a mine or trigger a secret button. This sort of flexibility allows for a lot of different strategies to emerge, depending on the play style.
  • Still, I found the games to be, at times, incredibility frustrating. The biggest annoyance that I ran across was that it was very hard to tell if I was close enough to blackjack someone or not. It might take a swing or two before I would connect. In some cases, when I was behind the target, this was not a big issue. But there were multiple times when I only had one shot — a miss and I would be noticed. Part of this was just the graphics of the time — mainly the first game, released around 1998 — but still, for such an important part of the game, it got under my skin that I be whiffing at air so often.
  • Another pet peeve was that when people are alerted to your presence, but can’t see you, they always — always! — walk right into you the very first time they start moving. You could be in Candlestick Park in total darkness, not making a sounds, and still the guards would always just happen to walk right to walk 3F every time to start their search. What got me about this was that through experimentation, I realized that it really was that they homed in on you; no matter where you hid, even if they had zero visibility, they would always first walk directly at you, which was just really damn annoying.
  • Speaking of which, sometimes it seemed utterly arbitrary as to when someone detects you; sometimes you can sneak right in front of them without them noticing, but other times you’re 300 yards away in total shadow and walking on moss carpeting when they suddenly spot you and come charging. I can only assume that this is due to some type of programming that goes into the awareness factor of the guards, but come on; if I can’t trust my UI to tell me when I’m hidden, then there are some serious flaws with the UI system.
  • The combat mechanic I never got a hang of; keep the sword on the side of the person you want to hit, space to block, etc. It was cumbersome and flowed like dried plaster. This didn’t phase me too much, since I generally avoided combat, but there were other times that it would have helped to have had a better combat system.
  • In the first game, by the way, the controls themselves were weird. I don’t know if this was because the standard WASD control scheme wasn’t fully implemented at the time across all games, but here you had “w” as run forward, and “s” as walk forward. “x” was walk backward. This royally screwed me up for a long while as when I kept trying to move back, I would actually move forward and fall off a ledge, or run into a guard.
  • The main character, Garrett, is an idiot. Maybe he is a master thief and the best in a century or something, but gadzooks, this guy is inept beyond belief at common sense. First of all, the man can’t keep his finances in any semblance of order. He always seems to be in need of rent money, despite the fact that he can break into any place and steal pretty much anything. Plus, you see his apartment in Thief 2, and man, it’s really pretty modest, so it’s not like he’s spending his cash on home decor or even buying his own place. Maybe it all goes to food, drink, and entertainment, but the guy speaks in that smarmy, self-satisfied manner which doesn’t portray him as possessing any hint of a personality besides self-confidence.
  • He also is blind to the embarrassingly obvious danger of stealing the eye in the first place. Let’s see, here’s this eccentric, unknown, new noble in town who has hired me to steal a unique gemstone called “The Eye.” This thing just happens to be in the center of a section of the town that was obliterated in some catastrophe that happened 50 years ago. It was then sealed in a cathedral by a group known as the Keepers, who have vowed to (apparently) safeguard mankind. They decided to seal the eye by placing the keys to the cathedral in the most God-forsaken places they could find, and have them guarded by traps and creatures. In short, they really, really did not want anyone to get the eye. Oh yeah, and The Eye also apparently has its own intelligence and talks to Garrett, then, when Garrett basically frees it from its prison, it shows its gratitude by sealing the doors, trapping Garrett unless he can find another way out. I mean, how much more of a hint does this guy need? This is like a modern thief being hired by a shadowy group to steal them all the components that they need to make an atomic bomb, but strictly for “their private collection.” Even if the person hired is not in any immediate danger from the bomb itself (which, in Garrett’s case, is not true), anyone with a working synapse is going to realize that the first step to ensure secret is to get rid of the person who stuff the stuff in the first place. It’s the first rule of successfully concealing an assassination: assassinate the assassins.
  • Buying tips is kind of silly; you can buy them, read them, then immediately restart the level so you don’t have to pay. You, as the player, still retain the info, after all.
  • Why 2 lockpicks? There’s really no need for more than 1. Often you have to switch between the two, but so what? All you do when using them is hold down the right mouse button, so it’s not like one is better than the other. All it really does is add unnecessary steps to the process for no real reason.
  • Thief 2 tended to have the better levels of the 2 games. In particular, the rooftop part of the level where you break into a Mechanist sanctuary and the part where you have to steal a series of masks from an exhibition were the parts were this game really shined. In both cases, I truly felt like a master thief, traveling over rooftops, sneaking over the guards on rafters, and climbing down ropes to swipe the goods without ever touching foot on the ground. It really made for the most fun of the games.
  • By contrast, the end level of “Thief 2″ was, in my opinion, too big, and didn’t feel nearly thiefy enough. It also took a long time to get through; this may be the point, as it’s the end level, but when have the time is just running for 5 minutes to get from one end to the other, that felt more like busywork than gameplay.
  • Oh, yeah, and the main villain of “Thief 2,” Karras, really needed a different voice. When I first heard it, I thought it was supposed to be a joke, because the guy sounds like Droopy Dog. I mean, it really sounds like someone is deliberately trying to make as goofy-sounding voice as possible, and it’s hard to take your main opponent in a game seriously as a result.

Overall, I did enjoy the games. Despite the many annoying parts, and there were a lot, the over stealth mechanics, level design, and even the main story arcs worked well enough for me to get into the game. Some parts I thought needed some serious work, but other parts were perfectly set up, and those spots more than made up for the shortcomings. I would not include either game in my top tier of games, but I would definitely include some level parts as great examples of perfect game design.

Marples and Basketballs

 Life in General, Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 122011
 

Over this past Christmas, I received a box set of Joan Hickson “Miss Marple” mysteries on DVDs. I’ve managed to catch up on them all, and have definitely enjoyed them. Not surprisingly, I liked some more than others, but overall, Hickson’s performance was a lot of fun to watch. I still need to get some more, as some of my favorite episodes are actually still only found on YouTube.

Now, having been around for awhile, there has been more than 1 version of Miss Marple wandering around. My mom mentioned that she had always been a fan of one of the earlier versions (Margaret Rutheford, I think) who had been in a few films as Miss Marple. Also, recently, they have been making a recent set of Miss Marple mysteries featuring Geraldine McEwan, and then Julia McKenzie in the starring role.

I have not had a chance to really watch the new Miss Marple mysteries that much, so while at the moment I definitely prefer the Joan Hickson version of character (more on that later), I have watched bits and pieces from the two versions of the Agatha Cristie novels, and noticed something that says more about the time and place that these shows were made.

First of all, in the most recent incarnation, all of the characters just look “better.” Part of this is due to technical aspects – make-up, lighting, video quality – but the main difference is that the people in the early 1980s BBC series just look more, well, “normal.” People look more frumpy, humdrum, and simple. In short, they look very much like the simple folk of the English village (I’m thinking in particular of “A Murder is Announced”). Even the more “attractive” people in the tales look more like someone that you could see meeting on the street, as opposed to just coming out of an all-day spa treatment. The only characters in the old series that I’ve seen, so far, who look better than their modern day counterparts are Blake and his S.O. from “The Body in the Library.”

But it’s not just the people who look more appealing; the sets, as well, seem to be far more like spacious IKEA showrooms then places people actually live. Part of this is, again, due largely to technical issues: more room to place and move cameras opens up a lot of possibilities for camera shots and angles. Nevertheless, moving from the modest yet cozy surroundings of the older settings to the more grandiose versions of the new settings makes me feel like a piece of the humanity was left behind. Like the difference between your grandmother’s living room and the lobby of a Holiday Inn.

I should note that the Poirot mysteries of the more recent years often do the same thing, with highly attractive people wandering around in spacious and lavish settings. But in those cases, it makes sense. Poirot has always been a lover of creature comforts, and hangs around the rich and powerful within pre-WWII england. Miss Marple, on the other hand, has always been a simple and modest village woman, so it seems a bit different when she’s wandering around the dressed-up areas.

The biggest difference, though, between the Miss Marple of Joan Hickson and recent incarnations (and, to be fair, earlier versions as well) is the style in which they play the character. The recent Miss Marple is shown as a sweet, kindly, elderly lady that is always sharp as a tack and always on point. And while I haven’t seen a lot of the recent episodes, I also get the feeling that she is always on top of the ball, and doesn’t get side-tracked. Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple, on the other hand, plays a character that acts, like, well, an elderly, gossipy, village woman. And it’s brilliant. For one thing, Joan Hickson’s version of the character strikes me as more realistic, in that she gets distracted, makes slightly wry comments, and often makes comments that confuse others, mainly because she just assumes that they have already come to the same conclusions, and so rarely bothers to explain before talking. And underneath all of this apparent scatterbrained front, as others have pointed out, is the best criminologist mind in all of England, derived entirely from her life with people within that sleepy village. It’s this contrast that makes the character stand out so well: she is funny, harmless, and totally irrelevant. But when the time calls for it, her insight shoots home like a arrow, and the fact that it’s coming from the person that you wrote off as irrelevant makes it all the more astounding. Very similar to how Columbo operated, and it’s just as much fun to watch.

Also, to be honest, the recent version of Miss Marple really comes off more like David Suchet’s portrayal of Hercule Poirot (not nearly as OCD, mind you), so that take on Miss Marple seems to have less of a personality; Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple is entirely her own, and it lends a lot of gravity to the character.

I should actually try watching a few more epsiodes before making final determinations, but overall, I prefer Joan Hickson’s portrayal of Miss Marple. The presentation of the character is subtly brilliant, and the character and settings make it feel like you really are hanging around in proper, yet deadly, England in the 1950s.

[ S H E I L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

So we had basketball last the other night. Well, actually, we had a game scheduled – it was the wildcards for the playoffs. We were squeaked out of second place (and a first round bye) by 1 point in the standings. So we showed up at 9:30 PM for our game. Now, this is really late for a game – the way that things run, I was entirely expecting not to get finished until around 10:45 – 11 PM, which would mean that I wouldn’t get home until shortly after midnight. Not so great.

In the end, however, the other team never showed – not a single player, and nobody called the league to let us know, so that was rather annoying. Nobody likes traveling out there that late only to find that there is no game. At the same time, I’m not complaining too much, because it’s still a win, and gets us to the semi-finals next week. We did a light scrimmage for maybe 5-10 minutes – until Joanna banged her finger, and we decided to call it a night.

It was also good that the other team didn’t show as our best player was currently out of town, so now we’ll at least have him back to help out.

This week’s TMQ complaint

 Life in General, Reviews  Comments Off
Feb 032011
 

TMQ was better than usual this week, returning to the form that first drew me in years ago: good football insight mixed with humerous observations about modern life. Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a decline in quality of his columns with more and more space being devoted to his rants than anything actually informative (mainly because he often doesn’t due any good research before ranting; more on that below), but it’s columns like these that remind me of the reasons why I started reading in the first place.

This time around, the thing I found to be rather silly to be ranting about was the fact that, apparently, too many standing ovations are being given. Okay, fine, I understand that he was saying this during the State of the Union address, when congress will applaud anything that signifies movement — or shout out “You lie!” at any rate — but TMQ, as per usual, travels into his own personal La-La land of conspiracy theories:

Members of Congress know that when the president speaks, standing to clap is a way to get television cameras to pan off the president toward them.

More likely, those applauding are the Democrats who want to show support for Obama every chance they get. I bet you that very few Republicans were jumping out of their chairs to applaud, regardless of TV time it may have given them.

But it gets worse, as TMQ thinks that giving a standing ovation for a high school play is pure philistine behavior:

Standing ovations are supposed to acknowledge a remarkable insight or moving performance — not merely that a politician spoke, or a curtain closed. Here, theater critic Terry Teachout argues that the rising frequency of standing ovations “devalues their significance.” Once, performers dreamed of the day they would earn a standing ovation. Today, they expect standing O’s for walking across stage. And though it’s fun, as a high school kid, to see your parents standing to clap, realistically, rare is the high school musical or play that merits an ovation.

Note that this is from the same man who rails against colleges for fielding teams that display bad sportsmanship; apparently, it’s perfectly fine to not show support for your kid upon completing a high school play. Heck, I would think that in most high schools, just completing a play could be considered a moving performance.

And as for Broadway shows?

Why has the standing ovation proliferated? Your columnist thinks it’s a form of self-flattery for the audience, a way of saying, “I picked a great show.” If you pay $250 for a Broadway ticket for a musical version of “Hedda Gabler,” and the show is wretched, you leave feeling like a fool. If you leap to your feet in a standing ovation, as if you’ve just attended a work of art, you don’t feel so bad about that $250. When audiences stand to applaud, they are applauding themselves.

Again, I have to wonder if TMQ really thought this out. Most people who see something bad are going to be cheesed off, esp. if they spent a lot of money. Some will ever leave the theater. But applauding because this justifies the expense of the ticket? Sorry, that’s a leap of logic that misses the ledge and plummets to its death.

I will say that the nice thing about TMQ is that he often prints comments from readers who (often, honestly) point out how wrong he is when speaking on topics that he doesn’t know. Last week, he railed against a new hybrid car/airplane, and the fact that it only took “20 hours of training time” before one could get their pilot license. I suspected that we weren’t getting the full story, and that TMQ had likely read this in a magazine, got his hackles raised, and quickly wrote a piece bemoaning the fall of Western Civilization. Sure enough, this week, a reader pointed out TMQ’s error:

Chris Walker of Monroeville, Pa., a private pilot, writes, “Flight time minimums are much different than driving time minimums. You have to fly with a certified instructor until you show you are proficient enough to solo, after which you may make short training flights alone or with the instructor until you meet the requirements to take your checkride. The hours required are minimums, and rarely does one take and pass a checkride close to the minimums, which I bet is the opposite for driver’s license minimums. The checkride is much harder than passing a driving test. I was more competent to fly an airplane when certificated than I was to drive a car after getting my license.”

Will this temper TMQ’s apprehension? I doubt it — once he picks a side, he tends to stick with it, regardless of what evidence is presented thereafter.

Ah well, still a fun read.

Looking for a job with a low success rate?

 Life in General, Reviews  Comments Off
Jan 102011
 

I saw this posted on cleveland.com today, and thought it was a pretty nifty oppurtunity. Sure, it’s pretty thankless, highly stressful, and everyone who has tried it in the past ten years has been fired, but the plus side that you get paid kooko-sized bucks, and they pay you even after being fired! Talk about awesome!

And besides, all Cleveland Brown fans have all said the same thing at some point: “I could do better than this.”

http://www.cleveland.com/pdq/index.ssf/2011/01/heres_the_job_application_for.html

Comments on Tuesday Morning Quarterback’s column

 Life in General, Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 302010
 

I often read TMQ on espn.com’s Page 2 section, and have for the past several years. It’s actually been one of the few things that I’ve followed for so many years, although I admit that these days I tend to skim over a fair amount of each column — he tends to fall into the same tropes and repeat them past the point of being informative — but hey, it’s his column, and it’s still a (mostly) fun read. Anyway, here’s some thoughts as I was reading:

My All-Unwanted roster celebrates those who got where they are based on hard work and determination. In most of life, hard work and determination are more important than social status or God-given talent. That’s why Tuesday Morning Quarterback lauds hard work and determination on the part of football players who were not born into success but reached success through constant effort. They set a good example.

Consider: This season’s NFL leading rusher, Arian Foster, was undrafted, and he has outperformed dozens of high-choice, big-bonus glory boys. This season’s NFL sack leader, Cameron Wake, was undrafted and has outperformed dozens of high-choice, big-bonus glory boys.

I agree with the sentiment, here, but I also wonder if things aren’t a bit unfair. After all, he often uses the term “high-choice, big-bonus glory boys,” a phrase which does not exactly endear us to such people. And, often, is it really the player’s fault that they are a “high-choice, big-bonus glory boy?” They are usually drafted high because they were very good in college, and being picked high automatically results in big-bucks these days. The “glory boy” aspect you might be able to make a case for, but I actually think that’s more of an exception than a rule. And also, aren’t some of the best players in the game, like Peyton Manning, Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, etc. “high-choice, big-bonus glory boys?” Well, maybe not the “glory boy” title, but the genera thrust behind TMQ’s assertion seems to be more on the aspect of being highly-drafted and highly-paid.

In the end, I would like it better if he just celebrated the achievements of players who have worked their way into the system, rather than feel like they can only be held in admiration if their counterparts, those who were drafted high and paid well, are presented as me-first divas that don’t do any hard work at all.

Using a seeded NFL tournament would mean winning would be rewarded and losing penalized — isn’t this what fans want? The current system rewards luck of the draw in division affiliations. The only possible effect of a seeded format would be ensuring the best teams reach the playoffs!

A seeded tournament would in most cases eliminate those awkward late-season games in which teams have locked their best playoff positions and start practice-squad members. If the playoffs were a seeded tournament, even the top teams usually would have incentive to win their final regular-season games.

A seeded tournament would eliminate most late-season absurdities, such as Sunday’s situation in which the Seattle-Tampa game meant nothing to Seattle. Although the loss dropped the Seahawks to 6-9, the team knew, before kickoff, that it would play for the division title the next week regardless of the outcome. Seattle coach Pete Carroll seemed to call lots of mega-blitzes against Tampa hoping to fall behind quickly so he’d have a respectable reason to pull starters and let them rest. A seeded format would prevent most such nonsense.

Most important, a seeded format would ensure better playoff matchups. Isn’t this what every NFL viewer and spectator wants? And yes, a seeded format could result in an all-NFC or all-AFC Super Bowl. If the pairing is the two best teams, their conferences shouldn’t matter. Do you know, or care, which conference currently leads the NFC-AFC Super Bowl results rivalry? Neither do I.

Personally, I really don’t care if a 7-9 team makes it into the playoffs; if they are truly a bad team, they will be eliminated quickly. And if they aren’t, they can go on to win the Superbowl. I can understand the idea behind the seeded approach, but there are some things that get lost in the shuffle:

  • Currently the format makes sense in that the Division winner gets to go to the playoffs. If teams know that by mid-November they have no hope of making the playoffs, why would fans care anymore? Why would players care? Sure, you can still play to win each game, but you just as well might see (ironically enough) teams playing their practice squads, just to see how the players do in an actual game.
  • I think rivalries would lose a lot of their punch in a seeded tournament. Currently, you can still have a lot of drama at the end of the season as two division foes battle it out, knowing that the loser will not get into the playoffs. In a seeded tournament, it’s more likely that the final games will still be meaningless for a lot of teams: some won’t have any hope of getting in, and others will not have any adjustment in their seeding.

Suffice to say that I just think that a seeded tournament might solve the “problem” of one 7-9 team getting in to the playoffs, but would introduce a whole new set. And personally, as I mentioned before, I don’t care enough about that one 7-9 team to tear the whole thing down.

But let’s not forget the Crabtree Curse, which TMQ sees as all too real. In 2008, Singletary fought to make his players buy into the notion that no one is bigger than the team. It worked, and San Francisco began to win. Then the 49ers used a high first-round draft choice on me-first Crabtree, watched him stage a prolonged holdout, then rewarded him with a $15 million bonus for going me-first. So much for the team commitment business.

I’m not a fan of Crabtree’s antics, either, but this is one of those tropes I mentioned above. TMQ has hated Crabtree since the holdout, and has since has gotten as petty as to ascribe all of the 49ers problems to a single player. No, it can’t be that the 49ers have a whole host of issues, like a coach that was in over his head, or uncertainty at the QB — no, if only they had cut Crabtree during the holdout, they certainly would be in the Superbowl by now!

And, you can bet that if the next coach manages to make the 49ers winners with Crabtree, TMQ will gloss over his “Curse.”

But this section is the one that really made my jaw drop:

Practically everyone believes Christmas has become excessively materialistic — too much focus on piles of junk recipients don’t even want, much less need, coupled with (for Christians) hardly any mention of the original spiritual significance of the day and (for those who celebrate secular Christmas) hardly any mention of the less fortunate.

Cash gifts solve the economic objection, but flunk on sentimental value. If family gift giving consisted of everyone exchanging boxes containing $50, economic efficiency would rise but the gift ritual would seem a waste of time.

So here is TMQ’s suggestion for the 2011 holidays — give the gift of receipts for charitable donations. Give money in your recipient’s name to any charity, school or arts organization. Wrap the receipt in pretty foil paper. You’re not wasting dollars on some hunk of junk your aunt doesn’t even want; you are doing something good for the world. You can feel good, and the gift recipient can feel good.

I mean, seriously? Hey, charity is great and all, but has Mr. Easterbrook really thought this thing out? Let me list the ways why I think that this fails on many levels:

  • Okay, for starters, the whole point of giving a gift is that it’s something that the recipient wants. Call it greed if you like, but if I give a gift of pork rinds to a vegan, they probably are not going to be happy about it, regardless of my intent. So, unless someone has asked for a charitable donation in their name, or is really into a particular charity, this is just bad gift idea.
  • I will wager you anything that you like that TMQ, for Christmas 2011, will not follow his own advice, and will not buy solely charitable donations in the recipient’s names for all of his family and friends.
  • Likewise, I will wager you anything you like that Mr. Easterbrook would not feel good if, in Christmas 2011, all he received was charitable donations in his name from his family and friends.
  • I’m guessing that Mr. Easterbrook does not have to get gifts for any young children. I can say with certainty that the vast majority of children will not “feel good” if all of their gifts are charitable donations made in their names.
  • The whole gifts as charitable donations approach has often come off, to me, as actually self-serving for the buyer; you should feel good when giving a gift to someone else because you know that you have given them something that they will enjoy and/or cherish. If that’s what they want, great. But don’t just assume that others want that because you think it would “better” for them. You can donate money any time of the year — why wait until Christmas? Better yet, why not donate money to charity *and* give presents to those that you love? Nothing says it has to be one or the other.
  • This piece was inspired by an article Mr. Easterbrook read about a company that was devoted to helping rich people who got a lot of gifts dealing with the “problem” of storing them. I suspect this piece was a knee-jerk reaction to the article, and hence why it wasn’t thought out at all, because he also missed a key aspect of gift-giving: being thoughtful about what you are getting. If you’re actually, you know, paying attention to the person or even, heaven forbid, ask them what they want, you’re much less likely to get them something that they don’t want. This Christmas, I watched a lot of presents exchanged, and all I heard was how much the people loved what they got.
  • Finally, how exactly do charitable donations do better by the criteria that Mr. Easterbrook himself set out? Maybe my aunt doesn’t want to get a slip of paper saying that I made a charitable donation in her name. It’s not sentimental, either, unless it’s a cause that she’s deeply involved in. So here’s an even better idea — give $50, and let the other person decide if they want to made a donation, and if so, let them choose which one.

As Mr. Easterbrook himself often says: “Ye gads.”

I realize that it’s odd to take a stance “against” charitable donations as gifts, but to me, it smacks of both laziness and thoughtlessness by the gift-giver; laziness, because it means that the gift-giver hasn’t even taken the time to find out where I usually shop and gotten me a gift card, and thoughtlessness, because while giving cash may be “lazy” as well, I love getting it — it’s something I can use, and for any variety of purposes (like, oh, I don’t know, making a donation of my own?). Charitable donations, on the other hand, (esp. those that go to the gift-giver’s favorite charity, and not your own) is nothing that I can use; it’s a memory that belongs to someone else.

Believeland

 Life in General, Reviews  Comments Off
Dec 012010
 

ESPN.com has a rather nice “Outside the Lines” report on Cleveland. It’s suppose to be about the reaction the city had to LeBron leaving, but LeBron’s departure is really more of a subplot, as the writer actually “goes native,” and gets rather attached to my old hometown. It’s actually quite a touching piece, and is something that I think that a lot of people who are from these old-school, blue collar towns can appreciate. It certainly talks a lot about the love the town has for its sports, but also about just what it’s like to grow up in a city that has been struggling and looking to turn the corner for the past decade.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=101201/Cleveland

Another Nice Point from Terry Pluto

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Jun 142010
 

Tom Izzo should take money out of the equation as he ponders Cavaliers | cleveland.com.

For the 23 people on the planet who are not aware, LeBron James is currently a free agent. Lesser known outside of the NBA is that the Cavs are also looking for a new coach, who may or may not have LeBron as a player.

Terry Pluto has written a nice column about why the potential coach, Tom Izzo, should not be looking at the money when considering the job, and brings up a truism that I’m reminded off often in my line of work:

I once took a project for the money. But I made a list of all the non-financial reasons that I wanted to do it. The idea was to convince myself that I wasn’t doing it for the money.

It was self-deception.

The project also was a disaster. Because money was the ultimate bottom line, and my heart wasn’t in it. When challenges came, I wanted to bail out. I finished the job, but it wasn’t anywhere close to my best work.

I had a discussion with my mom last night about whether or not I had made the right choice with my current job, as opposed to the offer from the larger company, which would have paid more.

But in the end, everything else about my job is great: the people, the work, the working climate. As a small game company, money is always going to be a concern, and it’s something that I knew going in.

Of course, I suspect that I would have really liked the people and work at the other company, too, but I doubt that we’d be having nearly as merely discussions about Team Fortress 2, The Disney Afternoon, or why Captain America could totally take out Batman in a fight.

From the Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench

 Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 092010
 

Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench.

I ran across this today, and it’s one of those cool graphics that basically puts things into perspective that deals with height/depth — I knew the Grand Canyon was deep, but not that deep.

And just why the heck do Sperm Whales have to dive that deep in the ocean? What secrets are they harboring down there? Someone should investigate!

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