This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone…Mayday, Mayday…we are under attack…main drive is gone…turret number one not responding…Mayday…losing cabin pressure fast…calling anyone…please help…This is Free Trader Beowulf…Mayday….

Got home late tonight and found a package on the front porch.

AWW YEAH!

footnotes:

1, 2, 3

#old_school

I have been playing video games since Pong. I learned some rudiments of BASIC on the Commodore 2000 just to program incredibly rudimentary "games." I was video-game-obsessed. It was my main hobby. My father once barked at me "THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN PAC-MAN." (I said something very similar to my son on the streets of Seoul and could hear my father laughing in my head.) I enjoyed video games to the detriment of studies and social relationships.

But . . .

Now I am 43 and married with kids and a job and a mortgage and pick-ups at soccer practice every weeknight and soccer games every weekend and errands and making a gesture towards helping around the house and so forth.

Leaving aside games like Civilization V which I can "finish" by virtue of winning a scenario, I can't remember the last video game I "finished."

Now that time is a much rarer commodity than money, I buy games and barely start them, let alone finish them.

I frequently plan to take a serious shot at a game, only to drift off into idly surfing the internet, or watching Netflix.

Where I used to be intimately familiar with the leading games in my chosen genre (rpgs and Civ-style turn-based strategy), I haven't played most of the "big" games for years.

Increasingly when I look for games, I am looking less for graphics or gameplay, but for a feeling — the feeling games used to give me. That's why I often get the most pleasure not from big-budget heavily-promoted releases, but from obscure indies with 25-year-old graphics.

But my quest may be fruitless. There are many beautiful and innovative and genuinely artistic games coming out, some with improvements on classic gameplay. But it will never again be 1983. I will never again be playing Ultima III on my Apple IIe, windows open to let in a summer breeze smelling of honeysuckle and suntan oil, without a care or responsibility in the world, gasping as I found my way into the treasure trove in Devil's Gulch.

Screenshot courtesy of the fabulous CRPG Addict.

I have one of each of the following oldie-but-goodie games to give away within the Steam ecosystem:

• Half-Life 2 (taken)
• Half-Life 2: Episode One (taken)
• BioShock (taken)

Do you play games via Steam? Do you, for some inexplicable reason, lack one of these games? Would you like one of them?

If you have answered "Yes, Yes, Yes!" to these questions, then send an email to me, david at popehat dot com, requesting by title exactly one of the three games.

Each game will go to the first person who requests it, and each will go to a different person.

Enjoy!

Former Diablo 3 Director Jay Wilson discusses Diablo 3's Auction House

He thought they would help reduce fraud, that they'd provide a wanted service to players, that only a small percentage of players would use it and that the price of items would limit how many were listed and sold.

But he said that once the game went live, Blizzard realized it was completely wrong about those last two points.

No shit.

That, said Wilson, made money a much higher motivator than the game's original motivation to simply kill Diablo, and "damaged item rewards" in the game.

 

"I think we would turn it off if we could," Wilson said during his talk.

Blizzard, Wilson said, doesn't want to remove a feature that lots of players will be unhappy to see go. But he did say that the team is working on a viable solution, without giving any other details about what that would be like.

Buy Torchlight 2.

Do you remember with fond affection that masterpiece of PC gaming, Planescape: Torment? Have you never heard of Planescape: Torment? Do you wish you could dropstop everything right now and replay Planescape: Torment?

Well, you're not alone. But Big Publishing is too rational or terrified to make that sort of game anymore.

Happily, we can acknowledge the waning importance of what Big Publishing thinks about this or anything else, for we now have tubes full of Kickstarter. (What can change the nature of games publishing?)

Many of the folks who made Planescape: Torment now work at inXile, and they're making a new game: Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Not actually a sequel to the previous game's story, which is self-contained (and recursive), Tides of Numenera will offer the same kind of thematically rich content within the framework of Monte Cook's (already funded) Numenera RPG system.

Anyhow, the studio's Kickstarter campaign began this morning and raised its 30-day target of $900,000 in six hours. That should tell you something about how the fans of Planescape: Torment regard this franchise and these developers and this plan.

There's still plenty of time to buy in, and there are plenty of perqs for berks, so if this is the sort of thing you're likely to like, then you know what to do!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera

M.C.A. Hogarth is a writer of many things, including science fiction.

You would think that it is difficult to draw frivolous legal threats and demands writing science fiction. You would be wrong. Hogarth wrote a book called Spots the Space Marine, only to find it yanked from Amazon, apparently based on a claim of trademark infringement by I-can't-believe-they-still-exist gaming institution Games Workshop. Games Workshop, it seems, told Amazon that they own the trademark to "Space Marine," not withstanding that (1) they don't own a trademark to it in the context of science fiction books, and (2) they couldn't, because the term has been in wide use in science fiction for the better part of a century.

Unprincipled and frivolous trademark threats chill speech just like defamation threats. Companies that make them should face consequences. Regrettably, Amazon will probably continue to pull books first and ask questions later.

We (I say that cautiously, as I'm no longer really a part of "us") don't blog about games as we used to, which is sorta sad but people move on.

That said, one of the things I'd meant to be blogging about back when I was actively blogging here is Guild Wars 2, a "buy-to-play" (meaning no monthly subscription fee) massive, multiplayer online roleplaying game, which I think is the best game of 2012. I didn't, because I sorta ran out of steam on the whole blogging thing around July, but I have a few trial subscriptions for a free four day weekend trial of the game, which begins tomorrow night.

If you'd like one, say so in comments, using a real email address (in the email address field, not in the body of your comment), and as supplies last I'll provide you a free trial.  If you choose to play on the Ehmry Bay server in North America, you can even join the Popehat guild, which is pretty much just me.

Of course, if you try the game and like it, please consider buying it through the Amazon widget on the right sidebar.

Photo by Studio Valette, http://studiovalette.com

A Kickstarter quest! Back in 2010, with help from her many fans, the charmingly geeky Alaskan songstress Marian Call managed to pull off a tour of all 50 states and a dash of Canada. In the wake of her album Something Fierce, Marian is now aiming to play Europe.

She has the music. She has the armor and weaponry. She has the kickstarter video (see below).  She has the adorably dorky Adventure Quest game by means of which the supporters of her kickstarter may unlock cities across Europe (i.e., bring her to them to play). She has a FAQ. She even has the publicly accessible thumbnail budget, whereby she establishes herself as the most open administration in history.

All she needs is support! The initial kickstarter amount takes her, and her guitarist, to England and Wales. Resources above that level unlock other countries, as shown on the game's map. Especially if you're a Popehat reader in Europe and a fan of Marian's work, please follow the links and see whether you'd like to play her game:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mariancall/marian-call-european-adventure-quest (The kickstarter)

http://www.mariancalladventurequest.com/ (The game, rulebook, loot inventory, and adventuring opportunities)

Longtime readers of Popehat may recall my coverage of Marian's music– especially her lyrics– here (shallow) and here (deep).  I'll be supporting her quest, even though it means sending her far, far away to gives shows I won't attend. If you like her way of making, funding, spreading, and sharing art, then I invite you to join me!

Click to envidify!

You're probably wanting to hear about the one that intersects between "cheap" and "great", so I'll point out that Warlock: Master of the Arcane, which Ken praised highly in May, can be purchased for less than ten dollars through Steam. This is a sale that will last through June 11. Although Ken's not as much a strategy gamer as I am, I trust his judgment. I bought the game and all of its bonus content for twelve dollars and forty-seven cents.

Now, about that other great game. Distant Worlds released in 2010, terrifically ambitious and rather buggy. Like most ambitious, bug-filled games, it was easy to admire the concept while damning the execution. The game has since undergone a number of patches, and two expansions. To fully enjoy the game, you'll need to buy both expansions. That'll put you back almost seventy bucks.

What do you get for your seventy bucks? I'm glad you asked: You get one of the deepest and most enjoyable strategy games ever released. Distant Worlds is a real time (pausable, with option to control game speed) galactic empire simulator. Think Master of Orion in concept. But Master of Orion was small.

Distant Worlds is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think Master of Orion was grand strategy with its fifty star galaxies, but that's just peanuts to Distant Worlds. Distant Worlds allows the player to enter a galaxy with 1400 stars, each with multiple planets, to fight battles involving hundreds of ships against twenty opposing empires. It has everything you expect from such a game: espionage, ship design, colonization, aliens, planetary invasions, technological research, space monsters, interstellar trade, diplomacy, individual leaders such as admirals, generals, scientists, and governors. Did I mention battles involving hundreds of ships at a time?

And yet it never bogs down or overwhelms the player, because the game allows you to automate the portions of your empire you find less than stimulating, while setting parameters for the computer to follow, and to take back control at will. Typically I allow the computer to build ships and run the economy for me, while I concentrate on diplomacy, exploration, colonization, research, and really vast space battles between huge fleets.

It's not for everyone, but if the game clicks, you can play it for hundreds of hours without getting bored. Distant Worlds will occupy my hard drive for years. If you're interested, note that you'll need the two expansions to get the most out of it.

Now, on to the expensive game that, well… It's unfair to say that Diablo III sucks. It's simply dull, drab, boring, and awful. I bought it on release day, and already I never want to play it again. Leaving aside common complaints such as the auction house trivializing the acquisition of loot (the point of Diablo is that shiny loot falls out of monsters if you beat them hard enough) and the mandatory internet connection, something isn't there. And that something is fun. Oh, the game plays like Diablo, but this isn't the year 2000, and all of Blizzard's "improvements" are distractions, side-tracks from the important work of beating monsters so hard that shiny loot falls out of them.

Technology is change, and usually for the better. But not in this case. You wouldn't want a twelve year old car if you could have something brand new. With Diablo III, Blizzard has given us a 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis, stuck a huge tail fin on the back, and tried to sell it as this year's model.

1. Game of Thrones on HBO. We're several episodes behind. I'm savoring them.

2. The Abbado recording of The Magic Flute. I treated myself to buying a few recordings on iTunes before vacation, and chose this based on the Penguin Guide recommendation. On the one hand, I don't love the pacing — it's authentic, but a little jumpy for my taste. However, the voices are simply spectacular.

3. To End All Wars, a book about England in World War One. Two themes were well-portrayed and resonated. The first was how hubris and uncritical devotion to traditional tactics led to disaster. The second was how, in wartime, nominal critics of government will become uncritically pro-war to gain and maintain power.

4. Warlock: Master of the Arcane. I've been looking for a game in this genre as satisfying as 1994's Master of Magic since — well, since 1994. This, as far as I am concerned, is it.

5. The iPad. My precious.

6. Patron tequila.

7. The Bloggess' new book. She's like the result of a genetic experiment involving Dave Barry, Dorothy Parker, Erma Bombeck, David Sedaris, and [think of some writer who says "fuck" a whole lot]. Hilarious, and in consistently surprising ways. She's one of those writers who makes me say "I want to be a writer."

And it will be, from last Wednesday night until forever.  Or until Patrick and I tire of the lot of you.  Or of Diablo 3.

We'll be in the Popehat Steam group chat lobby at 9pm EST sharp and we'll just arrange games based on how many people show up.  Last week we had enough for two games until the servers wet the bed.  Things should go more smoothly this week.  Everyone rolled a level 1 and some progress was made and we'll just keep trucking that way.

You can become a member of the Popehat steam group by sending me a PM on our forums or an email (our names at popehat dot com)  with your SteamID.

You are free to bring a friend as long as the following conditions are met:

1. Patrick and I do not actively dislike this person.  Sorry, you'll just have to roll the dice here if you are unsure.  But there will be consequences if you bring the wrong person.  Oh yes.

2. This person does not annoy the shit out of Patrick or me.  See above concerning consequences.

3. Conditions 1 and 2 are null if and only if our sometime co-blogger Derrick shows up, in which case Derrick will create funny cartoons about the annoying person using Microsoft Paint. Additionally, you will be awarded bonus points, redeemable for fabulous merchandise, in Hell.

This has the potential to be at least as much fun as a weekend in Ottawa, which I learned today is the capital of Canada. But only if you help us to make it so. Won't you join us?

Addendum: If you are a member of the popehat group, in steam you can go community -> groups and then in the list "Popehat" should appear.  Further, there should be a tiny little link saying something like "0 in group chat".  Click that and voila, you are in the popehat chat lobby!  You actually don't need to give me your SteamID (I forgot about this, and that's understandable) though it should appear in the upper right under "JoBubba's Account".  You can click on your profile and select edit profile (right side) and see your profile name.  Just remember if you choose something rather generic there, say "Chris" (pulling an example out of my ass), when I search for you to add you to the group I'm going to come up with 100 people and I'll have to determine which one is you.  This will annoy me, and it will annoy Patrick by proxy.  So don't be affraid to let your inner script kiddie/goth-overlord/juggalo loose and give your profile an awesome name like "Lord Doomspike Souldrinker".

"THE TIME WOULD BE EASY TO KNOW, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."

As is often the case, the game sounds more enjoyable than the reality.

AT AMAZON, a celebration of all things Diablo. I recently dusted off my copy of Diablo II, and while it may not be true that you can't go home again, sometimes you don't want to stay very long. Diablo II was one such case.

Bad marketing is one of our favorite topics here at Popehat, and one of our favorite precepts about marketing is Eric Turkewitz's "outsource your marketing, outsource your ethics," to which we generally add ". . . and your reputation." Though we generally discuss this concept in the context of bad legal marketing — for instance, legal comment spam — the principle applies to every industry.

Today's example: an truly epic flameout by Ocean Marketing.

Ocean Marketing is apparently responsible for marketing and distributing a ludicrous-looking X-Box 360 controller. A guy named Paul Christoforo is apparently the head of Ocean Marketing. On his LinkedIn profile, Paul has this to say about his company:

Our professional, highly skilled staff has the knowledge and expertise to help your business increase exposure on major search engines and portals.

Paul's right about the "increased exposure" part, though perhaps not in the way that his customers anticipate. John Biggs at TechCrunch has the story. In brief, when a customer complained about this controller not shipping by Christmas, and suggested he would complain to various tech sites, Paul Christoforo reacted with a bizarre rant, including the following:

You just got told bitch … welcome to the real internet check kotaku in 2 weeks when they are reviewing free PS3 Avengers we send them as well as G4 and all the other majors hell yeah , don’t forget to check Amazon, gamestop.com, play n trade , Myers , Frys and a ton of other local stores coming your way you think you speak for billions son your just a kid you speak for yourself no one cares what you think that’s why were growing and moving 20-50 thousand controllers a month. We do value our customers but sometimes we get children like you we just have to put you in the corner with your im stupid hat on.

When the customer included Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade (one of the most prominent figures in gaming culture) in the thread, Paul Christoforo doubled down, insulting Mike in a rather deranged fashion:

OK Mike whatever you say lol , are you sure hour not in Boston I spoke to the person who ran the show in Boston last year. If you let some little kid influence you over a pre order then we don’t want to be a your show ,Ill be on the floor anyway so come find me , I’m born and raised in Boston I know the people who run the city inside and out watch the way you talk to people you never know who they know it’s a small industry and everyone knows everyone. Your acting like a douchbag not that it matters pax east pax west , e3 , CES , Gamer Con , SSXW ,Comic Con, Germany I’m all over the place.

Penny Arcade posted the exchange, and it has gone viral, appearing at Kotaku and all over the place. Paul Christoforo had already doubled down, so I guess you could say what came next was quadrupling down: when someone at IGN demanded that he stop citing them for support, he lashed out and suggested that he expected good reviews because he had sent free copies of the controller to them:

In short, Christoforo showed he had learned nothing from BrandLink's skirmish with The Bloggess.

Penny Arcade's story has been slammed all day. It's gone live on Reddit. It's all over the place on Twitter, where Christoforo maintains an account called @oceanmarketting [sic]. The result is not merely extraordinarily bad publicity to Ocean Marketing and its client over this incident, but widespread inquiries into past incidents — like a prior incident of Christoforo acting like a douchebag towards a customer, and inquisitors determining that Ocean Marketing, supposed SEO and web experts, are using a template for their site (and an ass-ugly one, I might add).

There are no lessons here for the Paul Christoforos of the world. Paul Christoforo and his ilk are uneducable. However, if you run a business, there is a lesson for you: when you outsource your marketing, you hand your reputation and ethics over to someone who may or may not be just like Paul Christoforo. Now, not every marketeer is like Paul. But can you tell the difference up front? Do you know how to supervise your outside marketeer? When you wake up one morning after the Christmas holiday and find your company or product in the center of an internet shitstorm caused by your deranged marketeer, do you have a strategy for repairing your reputation?

Remember: outsource your marketing, outsource your reputation and ethics.

Edit: Possible plagiarism, too! What a shocker!

Edit 2: Looks like Paul closed the @oceanmarketting account and someone else snatched it up.

Edit 3: One source reports a conversation with Paul, in which he suggests this is no big deal and will all blow over, after which he offers an apology to the customer. It's likely to be too little too late — also, I'd point out that Paul's claim that he doesn't normally get into these communications with customers, and this was a one-time loss of temper, is contradicted by the earlier incident discussed above.

Edit 4: An apology to Penny Arcade. Sort of. "I didn't know how big your site was" is saying, in effect, "I now regret I picked on someone with power, instead of just the weak."

Edit 5: Caught on tape!

Note my update about his "apologies," and comment on "internet justice."

As Derrick has shown, the Tea Party movement has upset the Republican Party establishment, ruthlessly Zerging their way through the 2010 primaries and elections into 2011.  Whether the Tea Party's Zerg tactics have the stuff to match [DEM] in the 2012 Diamond League remains to be seen.

On paper, [DEM] would seem to have all the advantages: an energized clan base coming out of the 2008 general election, no primary opponents, and a wizard clan leader [OBM] who demonstrated his micro to flawless effect, easily defeating [HIL] and [MCN] to top the ladder.

But how have [OBM] and [DEM] spent the past three years since revolutionizing the way politics is played?  Have they neglected the essentials in favor of booming toward the end game?  That may well be.

Ask any veteran Starcraft player and he'll tell you that it's a different game at the top of the ladder.  You have to know not just the common strategies, but to be prepared, in advance, to adjust to patches and changes in game balance.  And in order to react, you need to have the funadmentals memorized to the point where they're second nature.  This means balancing offense with defense where required.  And defense means towers at the base perimeter, else how are you going to survive that newbie Zerg rush as you boom to battlecruisers?

A solid Terran bunker defense

Before [OBM] came along, the [DEM] clan had been hurting.  They'd lost track of the fundamentals, which had been drummed into their heads by former clan leader [BIL], in favor of easily countered stunt attacks like those favored by ANSWER and Code Pink, or been distracted by what they should have seen were feints, like the time in 2004 when Swiftboat microed [DEM] into wasting the entire midgame chasing one Protoss Zealot half-way around the map.  By endgame Cheney had built a wave of High Templars, and it was no contest.

While [BIL] could be erratic in the endgame, his mastery of fundamentals, and of defense, enabled him to survive everything [GOP] threw at him.  Defense, in politics, means a strong economy.  So how is [OBM] set for 2012, compared to where [BIL] sat in 1996, the last time the [DEM] clan defended a Diamond League level tournament?

Not too pretty.

Where [BIL] enjoyed a sound economy, with a balanced budget and unemployment at or below 5%, in other words, a strong base ringed with towers and lots of resources gatherers at the close of the early game, [OBM] has squandered a good start in an attempt to boom straight to battlecruisers.  He passed an extravagant health care law that the country can't afford while already engaged in two wars.  He pushed for a stimulus plan that was wildly unpopular, hoping that it would allow him to jumpstart his tech. He's left his base wide open and undefended, and utterly neglected his economy.  Where [BIL] could afford to stunt around with Lewinsky in the endgame of a second term, [OBM] will be lucky to have an unemployment rate below 9% in 2012.

With no economy and no defenses, [DEM] is in serious trouble.  A fleet of six battlecruisers can annihilate a ground attack of twelve ultralisks, but they can't kill zerglings any faster due to slow rate of fire.  And [GOP], amateur as they are, will be sweeping through the [DEM] base with dozens of zerglings.

Why has this happened?  It's a dirty little secret that  [OBM], who demonstated pro-level micro and mastery of the fundamentals when we were all playing original Starcraft, didn't get around to buying Starcraft 2 until September 2011.

He's been fucking around with World of Warcraft instead.  And he's an awful WoW player.

Naturally, as a member of a minority group, Obama gravitated to Horde. No pussy night elves or shit-eating gnomes, thank you very much.  He started strong too, leading a raid into Stormwind on a pvp server that killed the human king in 2008. This happened hours before Wrath came out, when the city was packed with veteran level 70 Alliance players trying to form or rejoin guilds or auction off herbs before the rush on Northrend.  He got a lot of recognition for it too, because the raid ganked so many old-timers who'd griefed Horde n00bs in the past, like John Kerry and Al Gore. He even earned a title for killing George W. Bush in record time.

But he hasn't moved his game past that. While the raids these days are focusing on new content in Cataclysm, Obama is STILL hanging around in Orgrimmar, typing "/strtin raid 2 kill gwb – no n00bs!!! – checkin gearscore!" every thirty seconds, and getting no replies.  The Horde has killed GWB hundreds of times since 2008.  They've moved on to new content.

Maybe the most pathetic thing about Obama is that as he doesn't realize the reason he gets so few replies in Orgrimmar is that lots of Horde have dropped out of the game. He's convinced the reason is that he's schooled the n00bs, like Kosguild, into silence, and Horde who aren't srsly hardcore, like the Bluedogs of Thunder Bluff, onto carebear servers.

In fact, they've given up on WoW entirely, in no small part because they can't enjoy the game with Obama shouting LOLNOOB! any time anyone says anything in /general, /pvp or even /trade. They won't be playing mmos at all until the Diablo 3 beta ends, in November 2016.

Can Obama be bothered to stop bunny-hopping in the Orgrimmar auction house, and dust off what used to be ninja-level Starcraft skillz? [DEM] had better hope so, because they only have one other top-level player: [BIL] has retired and [HIL] has made it clear she's waiting for Diablo 3.