… and quickly, might I add. In an attempt to move my social media properties to more appropriate locations, I’ve moved this Tumblr blog to Wordpress, and with it, all of its content.
All posts have been migrated to the new blog, landonbloginson.wordpress.com (for the time being). I might get a domain, but I might keep it fresh and simple like that with the dot and the wordpress and what have you. I’m not made of money.
But I’d love to be!
The optimumforge.com domain will expire, along with other properties of that name. For now, it will point to my new blog until expiration occurs.
So, if for some reason you like hearing what I have to say about video games or simply enjoy the plentiful cat gifs I share, be sure to follow my new blog-home listed below.
If you don’t involve yourself heavily in the game industry Twitter discussion, you might have missed the mess of a launch that SimCity, the latest game from Maxis/EA, has been and is currently suffering. It’s true, the poor game probably didn’t know what hit it — make no mistake, though, SimCity buyers are suffering a bit more.
From download authentication issues, to server login queues, to lost save files and hours of work thrown taken away by a connection error, the launch of EA’s always-online, Internet-mandatory, DRM-riddled mess-terpiece (copyright Landon Robinson, 2013) has been riddled with woes of all varieties.
Of course, all of these issues relate to the game’s requirement of a persistent Internet connection. However, leaving the issue at that would undermine the true problem: the game doesn’t just rely on the user having a connection, the entire game is dependent on the connection. After all, none of your saves are stored locally. None.
Your city is stored on one of several servers (separated by region), not unlike a modern MMO, where your character is glued to a massive world with other glued-on characters (until you move it). To look at it in a positive light, you could say it’s like a slightly-less-functional cloud service. Unless Origin has restrictions against it, what’s stopping you from playing SimCity on any computer you own? Aside from dysfunctional servers, nothing!
It’s been a solid two days since launch. Reviewers aren’t sure how to review the game, mayors can’t get into their cities and servers the world over are screeching in pain beneath the load of thousands and thousands of anticipatory players just dying to burn whole towns to the ground.
It could all be fixed tomorrow. It could also take a very long time to fix. There’s always the possibility of it always having problems, but that’s unlikely. Let’s hope for the former.
It’s a shame. SimCity is a blast to play… when it’s working. And so far, I’ve only had the good fortune to play it once, thankfully for about two hours or so.
But the reality of the situation is, SimCity has been built around the user having an internet connection, not a simple rule in the game’s script to check for a connection at runtime. No, SimCity needs Internet. It needs it something fierce.
The worst part is, I need SimCity too. I need it something fierce.
In this first segment of angrily playing through indie darling Super Meat Boy, I get frustrated with levels that really aren’t that difficult. But don’t get all judgmental — you weren’t there, you weren’t on the spot with a microphone in your face.
Enjoy!
… in favor of a binder. For a number of reasons.
After living in an apartment for the past three years (during college), I’ve started to accumulate a good lot of material possessions, most of them video game-related. In fact, an entire shelf on my wall was about 8 stacks (ten or so high) of video game cases. They were getting so high in fact that they were running up against my framed posters, knocking them off frequently.
I decided that, after having watched a video by Rev3’s own Adam Sessler (formerly of G4, TechTV), it was time that I part with these unnecessary clutter-forming space-hogs. Sure, there’s a bit of a collector in me when it comes to video game-related items, but not to the extent that I’d allow them to take up unnecessary space.
As I’m about to graduate from college this winter and move along with my life, I’ve been in the mode of substantially downsizing. Moving games to a binder simply made the most sense — they’re easier to organize, easier to find, and they’re all in one place — no more shuffling through cases.
While it makes some of my friends and peers cringe, I simply don’t have the desire to keep the cases. I did, however, keep all of the art and manuals, but the cases (empty and unmarked) were unnecessary.
Should I sell them back, sure, I won’t make as much money. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take over the space they consume. And that, my friends, is that.
Fallout 3. One of the few video game collector’s editions I’ve ever been enthusiastic about. Miss my bobble head though… :(
