Various items that may be relevant to your interests begin … NOW!
* I talked to the Marketplace Tech Report recently, and our two interviews are now online.
I'm sure it will surprise you to learn that I'm a huge NPR geek, so getting to talk to John Moe for Marketplace (I did my side of the converstaion from KPCC) was pretty cool.
* I am doing a show at Largo with Paul and Storm on Tuesday, March 29th! I'm going to perform stories with and without musical accompaniment, and Paul and Storm are going to play music. Then we'll sing about pirates for two hours. Los Angeles always asks me to do a show, and then nobody ever shows up when I do one here. Don't fucking let me down, Los Angeles; I'm getting tired of defending you to Chicago.
* I know I'm way late to the party on this, but I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum recently. It's sort of like being in control of an episode of the Batman animated series, but there are a couple of things that keep taking me out of the experience.
First, there is just way too much backtracking. I really hate it when games do this, because it feels like a cheap way to make a game appear longer than it is, and it's just boring. I already did the complicated zipline batclaw jumpglide across the poison gas room thing, guys. I don't need to do it again.
Second, It's incredibly fun to pretend that I'm Batman, but it's a little silly that I my progress is constantly thwarted by 5-foot high brick walls. And by a little, I mean goddamn fucking ridiculous. I AM THE GODDAMN BATMAN FOR FUCKS SAKE.
Still, those complaints aside, it's a lot (or alot, if you prefer) of fun. Beating up on bad guys requires timing and precision, so it doesn't turn into a button masher (you can try that, if you want, but you won't get very far). There are also two extra games that parallell the main storyline where you try to solve puzzles posed by The Riddler, and you try to find these tablets that reveal the history of Arkham Asylum.
Huh. I just sort of reviewed the game without meaning to. I guess I should grade it, then: B-
* I think it's really important that the story of HBGary, Bank of America, Wikileaks and The Chamber of Commerce doesn't die. This is serious ratfucking and is pretty much a perfect example of the war the ultra-rich and powerful are successfully waging against the middle class in America.
* Digital: A Love Story is a computer mystery romance that is set "five minutes into the future in 1988". You read it by using an emulator that looks an awful lot like the Amiga, and it recreates the old BBS experience when 2400 baud was all the baud we needed. The story unfolds via messages. It's just amazing.
* A friend of Anne's makes and sells organic, eco-friendly clothing with positive messages. I really love it, and from time to time I remind the Internet about it, so people will check it out and tell their friends. It's called Capable Arts. Tell them Wil sent you.
* Many people have asked how HUNTER is selling. Without getting into specifics, I'm delighted that so many people have chosen to give me donations for the story. Most are giving between 1 and 5 dollars, and close to one thousand readers have paid for the story. I stupidly set it up in a way that doesn't let me track individual downloads, so I have no idea what the ratio of downloads to customers is. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and I'm inclined to revisit the world at least once in the future. I'm calling this a success, and I'll do pay-what-you-want again in the future.
This goes on its own line because I want to make sure it gets seen: Thank you to everyone who read Hunter, left me feedback about it, paid something for it, and told friends and Internets about it. This wouldn't have been a success without you.
* Finally, Anne found a home for Velvet Wesley Crusher's Moustache:
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An alot of fun sounds awesome, I want one of those.
You have not done back tracking in a game until you’ve played the Metroid Prime games. That is some serious back tracking, and it’s rarely optional (unlike the collectibles/puzzles in Arkham Asylum that cause most of the backtracking and are often optional).
I can’t think of any 5-foot walls you couldn’t climb past in Batman: AA. Unless it was maybe the edge-of-the-world in game. A little unforgiving to the designers for not making an infinitely large world?
Maybe the secret is that you’re not batman, even when you are.
Batman AA was my second favorite game I’ve played recently after Mass Effect 2. The back tracking didn’t bother me so much as the environment was so richly detailed. Starting the battle with Poison Ivy over and over got a little tedious, but at least I know the right way to throw a Bat-o-rang. LOL
Any news on that new con you’ll be doing this year? I’ve been waiting on pins and needles to find out if it’s DragonCon. I’d really love to have my copy of The Day After and Other Stories signed!
Wil Wheaton, I just wanted to let you know that you are my hero. That is all. End transmission
It isn't D*C, but the con that I was talking about decided not to have me this year.
“I AM THE GODDAMN BATMAN FOR FUCKS SAKE”
I just want this on a t-shirt.
Win for posting to Allie’s Alot post.
I’m realizing now that I never finished playing Arkham Asylum and probably should at some point.
The mustache has indeed found the perfect home.
I’m glad that your read-my-story donation trial run thingy was a success. Kudos. 🙂
Thank you for telling us about Digital: A Love Story. That looks amazing. My first computer was an Amiga 500 (I was a late starter) so that brings me back.
That’s an excellent home for your ‘tache. 🙂
Thanks for helping keep the HBGary story alive, and for accurately tagging it for what it is: a war on the middle class by the elites. They won’t stop until we’re destroyed.
I just want to say that that picture of Ferris is beautiful! I remember that photo. I thought it was wonderful then, and the painting of it seen here is just so touching.
Also, I have not read Hunter yet (because I suck and forgot about it), but I will remedy that shortly! Thanks for the reminder!
Well, their loss, right?
You know, I had a conversation with Jeff Lewis and Sandeep Parikh last year at Dragon*Con about this very thing. (You attending D*C, that is.) And we all agreed that it was “never” going to happen and that we totally understood why. Dude, PAX is your, well, PAX. Go in peace, Wil Wheaton, and get your game on.
(Note-quotes used around never, because we all know never is a big, big, big word.)
Eh, I knew it was a long shot, but an Alabamian can dream, right? I’ll just have to take a very long roadtrip one day since you don’t do cons in the Southeast. 🙁
So far, your TNG brethren (that always attend D*C) aren’t even on the guest list. I sincerely hope that changes soon.
1) So where is this place? I know where the Henry Ford is, The Paladium, The Palace, The Arclight and The Holloywood Bowl. LA is pretty big. Any hints? LOL
2) We dont play any games that don’t have Legos in it. That being said we do have Batman for PS3.
Hey Wil are you planing on coming out to Phoenix Comic Con in may? If not, any plans for any Wil-centric events in the Arizona area in the coming year?
So many things I want to say. I also want an alot of fun, but that is another issue for another time.
And it is interesting that you are doing a show on the first day of my new school term. Hmmm, show with Wil Wheaton…first day of classes. Decisions, decisions.
Thanks for all the stuffs to check out, so here is one more. Have you seen this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/deaa/ ? It’s obnoxious! I love it!
Thanks for spreading the news about hbgary fiasco. Arstechnica.com has several several very thorough articles and I highly recomend reading them.
Wil declared:
I’m a huge NPR geek, so getting to talk to John Moe for Marketplace … was pretty cool.
That brought back memories. I did a phone interview with Noah Adams back around 1990 – what a mix of excitement and terror at the same time (I was getting used to public speaking and had done a bunch of interviews and talks, but this was frigging NPR!!!).
[Wil: I was being interviewed about the book I gave you at a book reading/signing for _Just a Geek_ in San Francisco many moons ago. You signed one for me and I signed one for you. You were great at sharing my excitement at this.]
RE: the LA show. Grrr. No fair complaining about us not showing up when you end up having the show the only week in March I’ll be out of town. Reading the tweet about it yesterday was a super fast roller coaster of emotions; first excited as hell because of the LA show announcement, then super grumpy sad when I saw the date.
I just spent a couple of hours playing Digital: A Love Story. It was incredibly well done. What a great little game! Thank you so much for posting about this – I never would have discovered it otherwise!
Oh Please come help Paul & Storm with thier Portland concert (March 25th) I finally got hubby to agree to come along. Besides, I want him to see who wrote that song he hates to play on RockBand. Can you tell he is not a Geek.
As a fellow NPR geek, I’ll remind you that Marketplace is on American Public Media, which is a competitor to NPR in programming. Most public radio stations play programming from both.
I like Wesley (and his sweater was not ugly)
have you seen the new videos/screen shots of Arkham City? they’re sweeter than wesley crusher’s motherfucking bouffant… and that’s saying something
your are that bad word bouffant yourself, mean boy
After playing Arkham Asylum, I asked my very young daughter what Batman does.
“He just walks around.”
Wil, my shop just got in the Leverage Roleplaying game book. Colin “Cha0s” Mason is featured on page 147, joining Jim Sterling as “Significant Foils”. Can’t wait to play this system.
Oh, and I see TypePad “corrected” my Cha0s with a zero “typo” 🙂
It’s still a zero, the zeroes in the font used on this page are funny. Copy your “Cha0s” from your comment into a plain text editor and it’ll show up correctly. You can also see the difference between 0 and o when you look at them closely. Why the font designer chose to make zeroes more circular than o’s is mysterious, though.
I shouldn’t be surprised since the people who own most media outlets are the super rich and/or large corporations that this is not being reported widely. But since these same people who hired HBGary and Aaron Barr, the obviously overly arrogant semi-hacker who played with fire and got burnt, it is no surprise that they are willing to do anything, including highly illegal things, to hurt everyone who isn’t willing to sell into their world-view. Anything that might cost them money is attacked viciously. Are they any different from Mubarak’s regime? Not substantially.
Wil, have you seen this:
http://www.urlesque.com/2011/02/18/angry-birds-star-trek-next-generation/
?
I really enjoyed listening to the Marketplace. Thanks for posting that!
BTW – I’m not sure if I am the only person ever to post this, but I really appreciated not having to wear headhones or worry that the content wasn’t family friendly beause of the under age crowd.
Thanks for the mention of Largo and the link to the Nerdist podcast. What a great bunch of guests to while away the time until your appearance!
re Batman:AA. I guess I’ve been playing computer games so long I hardly noticed that. Once you’ve accepted that your RPG character can’t lift his feet enough to step over a wall that’s one brick high, you can accept anything.
I have to say, though, the Assassin’s Creed games are awesome in that respect. Since you’re playing a character who’s reliving an ancestor’s life through an incredibly powerful computer system, all the “strange” things about playing a computer game are explained (like coming back after you’ve died, and why you can’t step out of the boundaries of the game world).