The Future of Labels

Tell me, fellow Housegeekers, what comes to mind at the utterance of the phrase "casual gamer"? Perhaps the bored office worker, playing flash nonsense while avoiding whatever souless work she had arbitraily been assigned? Or the 17-year-old on the bus, matching colored jewels on their cell-phone?

When I met Pink, the only game had ever seriously played were the first two Age of Empires. Though fine and noble games in their own right, to be sure, much that is great and worthy had passed her by. Controllers felt alien in her hands. She knew nothing of the platformer, shooter, RPG, puzzler, racer. Consoles had long been banned in her family's home.

When we began dating we shared many interests, but my passion for gaming was not one of them. But, being the wonderful woman she is, she took an interest for my benefit. Now, one year and eight months later, I've convinced her to play such great games as LAN-favorite Warcraft III, Super Smash Bros., Soul Caliburs II and III, Katamari Damacy, Dragon Quest VIII, and a few others. Many of those she still only plays at my urging, but a few she genuinely enjoyed, notably DQVIII.

Pink describes herself as a casual gamer. She's not interested in high scores, perfect playthroughs, or collecting all 1,537 stars. She doesn't care about ambulance-chasing anti-game attorneys, performance stats on the latest hardware, and certainly not your level 63 zombie sorceress or whatever. She does like to have fun.

Even she is excited about owning a Wii. We plan to buy one (assuming we can find one) after we've moved to our new home. The little bit of Wii Sports we played with Squikin and Swift_Death had her hooked. It brought the Nintendo fanboy back in me.

I see so much potential for this little console, but it's in her excitement I see a chance to live up to its codename. The Wii is fun. It has an instant appeal to all spectrum of people. By drawing in a vast new audience, Nintendo has the potential to legitamize our chosen pastime on a massive scale. This is the machine that will win over the hearts and minds of the casual gamer.

I have hopes, foolish hopes, that "gamer" will become an obsolete term. We who play call those who are foreign to our entertainments non-gamers, but I envision a future where that phrase would have the same significance as non-movie-goer; awkward, unweildy, and lacking any real meaning. I think this little machine can bring us one step closer to that.

So to all gamers, no matter what you might call yourselves, spread the love, spread the joy, spread the Wii.

Do you hear that, mister Gates?

Whenever I'm asked if something has been hacked, or broke, or generally gotten-into, I always correct the inquirer.

"It's not a question of 'if', it's a question of 'when'."

Never has this been more true than this morning. Gradually waking up, and paging through the feeds at Digg, I come across this article. You may read the content if you see fit, but if not, I'll sum it up quickly for you.

A 19-year old reverse engineer (my 19th year was never so cool) is working on, basically, pulling DX10 components out of Vista and making them work with XP, bit by bit. The design calls for an external launcher application, and it's extremely early in development, but I digress.

Years ago, when Windows XP first came to the House, we all poked and prodded at it, and generally scrutinized it. That was nearly six years ago now, and since then, the operating system has matured, stabilized, and become the operating system of choice for the House (at least, so far as LAN-ready OSes is concerned). However, we were told that Vista would be the only operating system to support DirectX 10, in effect, a forced upgrade that has forced most of us to write off DirectX 10 games entirely. This project promises some relief from that, some salvation from the railed upgrade track that Microsoft is attempting to firmly guide us to.

Regardless of the success of this project, however, and the sudden press that threatens to draw the attention of that grand behemoth known as Microsoft, one thing has been proven. The sound, mister Gates, is that of inevitability. Independent of propriety, of closed source, of forced upgrade tracks, it is never a matter of 'if' the item in question will be broken, hacked, and generally worked around.

It is a matter of 'when'.

Alert!

Apparently, despite our resident comic fanatics' best efforts, we've been bamboozled.

Comics are not wholesome and good, nor are they anything that kids should be exposed to on a regular basis.

Comics are corrupting today's youth.

You heard me right. Congress and Jack Thompson must be informed!

That is all.

Why, Marvel? Why?

I am a nerd. I admit it, I love it, embrace it, etc, blah blah blah. My weapons of choice are PC games and comics. But goddammit, Marvel, why must you fuck up Ultimate X-men?


Here's the problem: they switched artists. The old artist (Greg Land) drew detailed, realistic characters in the much more modern trend toward realism (and in my opinion, better art). As of issue 79, there's a new artist, and it feels like I'm stuck in the '80s with stylized comics that really aren't as entrancing as I want them to be. The better the art, the less writing needs to be done, and that's how I judge a comic- how much reading I have to do. I can't even begin to express how disappointed I am with the new artist for the Ultimate X-men.

So after reading issues 79 and 80, I picked up "Phoenix: Endsong" to sooth my saddened soul. Just for the record, "Endsong" is quite possibly the best character-focused comic book in the world. Yes, I know I rave about "Wolverine: Origins," but "Endsong" is just stunning, both graphically and plot-wise. So many story-lines twist together into a graphically beautiful and thrilling comic. But it did remind me how much I'm going to miss Greg Land's artistic abilities.

Luckily, my feelings of depression were smothered some-what by the reminder of how awesome my 18th birthday is going to be. For those who don't know, I'm getting myself a tattoo. What tat, you ask? The Phoenix logo. The cool one. On Jean Grey's outfits. Yeah. That one. Ain't it sexy? It's going on my left shoulder blade and holy crap I can't wait.

That is all.

Amy out.

Waste not, want a lot.

Humanity is stupid. But the good news is, a lot of the time this can benefit me. Take for instance right now. I just got back from Value Village (which has really gone downhill in recent years) with a true treasure. Namely, the hardcover compendium of the revolutionary DC Comics arc Identity Crisis. A fantastic book in its own right, but ALL sorts of better. Why? Well, namely, because IT'S SIGNED. By Brad Meltzer.

Guhfuhbwahduh.

This is sort of awesome right now. Hooray, serendipity.

-G

dammit Logitech

Headphones are nice. As a matter of fact, a good headset is absofuckinglutly beautiful. So why is it that when I replace my current one with a set of the same model only not held together with duct tape, my computer won't play sound through em? I'm definitely blaming the USB aspect of these things. Seriously, why make usb headsets when we all know they're going to screw with the minds of our computers?

But dammit, despite my current loathing for Logitech headsets, I love the brand. They've got some of the best customer service I've yet to find (next to Samsung who still has brownie points for replacing my monitor for zero hassle or charge when I had two dead pixels) and, as a rule of thumb, superior products.

Except my headset. The mic works in all the programs I run that use one, but still no sound. I'm not missing any drivers, volume control is correct, all my trouble-shooting is leaving me increasingly bitter and a ton of cookie crumbs just fell down my shirt. Oh, wait, that last one is okay. Anyways, if I don't get these things talking to Gopher properly soon, I'm gonna be out $40. Drat.

Amy out.

A day late, but who's counting?

Ladies and gents of the House, it's my pleasure to announce to you the new favored operating system of choice.

It's not Vista. No, not XP. It's not OSX. Good try, but it's not even Ubuntu Linux.

My friends, the operating system I'm going to be pushing from now on is OS/2 Warp.

Let's face it. Every other next-gen operating system, each and every one of them, is a huge disappointment. Vista is a pretty face over an evil humanity-hating Cylon. XP is exceedingly dated. The very existence of OSX causes a rift in the House by merely discussing it, and Ubuntu, like most Linux distros, isn't quite ready for prime time.

OS/2, however, has years of proven reliability, a truly secure and stable operating system from top to bottom. Hackers don't come anywhere near it (and don't even try to say it's because nobody uses it), and viruses/spyware for OS/2 are effectively nonexistent.


Awwwww yeah.

Really, by continuing to use XP, we're clinging to the past, and if we're going to cling to the past, let's not be half-way about it. OS/2 is the shot in the arm we've needed since forever. The desktop effects even exceed those of the latest Apple and Microsoft releases.




Look at the shading!

In short, I recommend everyone take the plunge to OS/2 as soon as possible, be it upon your next reformat, or your next new system. For the hesitant, there's a release of VirtualPC for OS/2, which will help you migrate over your favorite Windows applications.


So what are you waiting for, you pussy?