Month: May 2012

in which diablo 3 is played with my son

Posted on By Wil

Today, I'll wrap production on the latest series of audio books I've been doing. It's been ten long days, and though I genuinely adore the people I'm working with, I'll be happy when I get to the last word on the last page, because…

I'm going to start work on a different and awesome project on Thursday, before I head to Phoenix for Comicon late Friday night, and I have a crapton of homework and research to do before that gets started. 

Because I've been so busy with the audio books and a few secret things, I didn't have any real time to play Diablo 3 until this weekend. I put in 12 hours in three days (guess how I know I'm an adult? That felt a little excessive to me.) and though I'm only in the beginning of the second act, I really like it. The art direction is beautiful, the music and story are fantastic, and the gameplay is exactly what I want and expect. I think it also helps that I played cooperative with Ryan, who is on the other side of the country, and it felt like some good father/son bonding time, mostly because of the silly chat.

I'm playing a monk I named Alikka. She's so bad ass, when she punches people, they explode. Last night, Ryan and I took two monks on a couple quests, and we destroyed the bad guys.

"You know how I know these cultists are crazy?" I said in chat.

"How?" He said.

"Because they just saw us beat the shit out of this giant demon thing, and they still came running at us with their little knives."

"LOL. Stupid cultists," he said.

We were in some village, doing this quest where we had to free a bunch of prisoners from cells that were scattered all over the place. It wasn't a simple matter of walking up and unlocking the doors, though, on account of all the demons everywhere. So we're fighting the demons and the prisoners are all, "Save us! Save us!" so I typed, "Hey! We're a little busy right now FIGHTING THE FUCKING DEMONS." 

I almost wiped, but the resulting laughs were worth it.

Then, later, he used this skill where the monk summons a giant bell, kicks it, and wastes whatever happens to be in the path of the resulting soundwave (it's a cool looking effect that I'm not doing justice in the description.) I said, "It looks like you just … [puts on sunglasses] … rang his bell. YYYEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHH!!!"

It went on and on like that until it was time to go to bed. We got some nice gear, and it was really fun to play this character who feels like a super bad ass (I love this thing she does where she punches like seven enemies in a row and they're all "Hey what just happened? Oh we're dead.") even though she's only level 17.

It's not the deepest game in the world, and it isn't going to replace the experience I have when I play a tabletop RPG with my friends, but as a social experience with my son that was pretty easy to play for a little bit and then walk away from, it gives me exactly what I need.

I probably won't pick it up again for… gosh, probably not until I get back from Origins in two weeks, but I'm glad I spent some time playing it this weekend, even if I'm paying for it this morning because I stayed up too late playing it with my son, who I miss more than anything.

… god damn do I need another cup of coffee.

I really miss this place

Posted on By Wil

 

image from i.imgur.com

I took this picture on one of the last days of production.

Whenever I watch Eureka this season, and I see an advert on the network formerly known as Sci-Fi for one of their stupid goddamn are-you-serious-with-this-bullshit reality shows, I get angry and then sad. Eureka was and is such a great show, and it deserved better than it got from the network. I guess if we knew then what we know now, we would have put in more ghosts and wrestling.

 

Colin, Jaime, and Neil came over for boardgames and homebrew last weekend. We had so much fun, what was intended to be a few hours of goofing off turned into an entire day and most of the evening. 

 

image from i.imgur.com

Neil Grayston, Colin Ferguson, some nerd, Jaime Paglia

I love the stories and characters on Eureka, and I am really proud of the work I did as Doctor Parrish… but what I miss most about Eureka is getting to see these people (and others who are not pictured) every day.

Afterthought – In comments, Jeff L. makes a point that I agree with:

To a point, I recognize the reality shows as a necessary evil in the current cable marketplace. The much higher margin on shows like that is what enables the channel to put on the more expensive scripted stuff. And you can make the case that a lot of the reality stuff is at least tangentally related to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Genres (wrestling, on the other hand, pure money grab).

Based on the ratings for its scripted shows, if SyFy tried to run on a schedule of mostly original programming, it would probably be off the air in 6 months. So I've chosen to just watch what I like through the miracle of Tivo (and I try to do it within one day for max ratings bump) and I just ignore the ads for the shows I don't like.

Syfy may not be the destination channel it once was, but they still put out some quality programming, and as noted, they are a business so they can't really be blamed for making business decisions, as much as we personally may disagree with the whys and hows of them.

When I talk about how much I miss Eureka, and how much I want to kick certain NBC/Universal executives in the nuts for cancelling it, I readily admit that I'm not coming from a rational place. I am coming from an emotional place, because something that meant a lot to me was taken away.

I get it, it's business, and I'm not going to pretend that it's anything different… but I'm also not going to pretend that, for me, it isn't personal on some irrational level.

an example of the usefulness of bittorrent for entirely legal purposes

Posted on By Wil

I frequently find myself in an unpopular position in the entertainment industry: I believe in network neutrality, I don't believe that piracy is the end of the world as we know it (I particularly don't believe that a download or file shared automatically equals a lost sale*) and I don't believe in crippling the Internet to protect a business model that desperately needs to change.

One of the things that drives me crazy is the belief in Hollywood that bittorrent exists solely for stealing things. Efforts to explain that this is not necessarily true are often met with hands clamped tightly over ears, accompanied by "I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA."

As an example of the usefulness of bittorrent for entirely legal purposes, I present the following comparitive images:

Screen Shot 2012-05-13 at 10.39.50 AM
Screen Shot 2012-05-13 at 10.39.56 AM

So yesterday, I decided that I'd download Ubuntu and put it in a Virtualbox on my iMac, just to see how the distro is doing these days. As you can see from the images above, if I'd downloaded the iso straight from their server, it was going to take the better part of an hour, so I decided to grab the torrent instead. Turns out it was a good choice, because it was finished in about six minutes.

I was so happy with the speed and performance, I seeded it until I got to a ratio of 3.0, to give back, you know?

Some ISPs are blocking all bittorrent traffic, because bittorrent can be used to share files in a piratical way. Hollywood lobbying groups are trying to pass laws wich would force ISPs to block or degrade bittorrent traffic, too. Personally, I think this is like closing down freeways because a bank robber could use them to get away, which I know is an imperfect comparison, but is the best I can do after a night of not-especially-good sleep.

Anyway, my point with this post is to illustrate that the bittorrent protocol is useful for more than just infringement, so when you hear industry lobbying groups making a lot of noise about piracy, you'll remember that they aren't giving you all the facts.

 

*Longtime readers may recall that I did not always believe this, but I've, uh … evolved … on the issue.