TheRyanBurke(dot)com

Board Game Weekend

2012-02-12T22:15:00.000-05:00

Tons of board gaming this weekend! Almost as good as a convention weekend!

We played:
7 Wonders
The Resistance
Shadow Hunters
Falling (Goblin edition)
Agricola
Flash Duel: Second edition

First time playing 7 Wonders though I had heard great things about it at PAX Prime and Dragon*Con in 2011. I was definitely stoked to try a game that was described to me as "playing a Magic: The Gathering booster draft." That description is terrifically accurate. Great game length (~30m), strategies that must evolve every turn, lots of replayability, high decision density per minute.

This was our second sitting of The Resistance and the roles and strategies made more sense to our spies this time around. We only played a single game and spies took it on Mission 5. It's as yet unclear if the game can be perfectly deducted in a logical fashion. We also haven't tried putting in the Plot cards to mix things up. So far, still like it more than Werewolf due to lack of player elimination and no heads down time.

Shadow Hunters I had not heard of until today. It's another game built around masked roles and figuring out who's who. It's comparable to Bang! in that you get a role belonging to one of three factions, run around and shoot people while looking for new items and identity clues. After playing it twice, I think I can say I would never play Bang! again if Shadow Hunters is available. Turns go by rather quickly, but this is largely because of a low decision density. Still fun though!

Falling is a neat card game because it's played in real-time (like Spit, Slapjack, ERF, Jungle Speed). A dealer goes around in a circle, dealing cards to each player's stack, which simulates falling through the air towards the ground. At the bottom of the deck is nothing but ground cards and you're out when dealt one. Last person to be in the air is the winner. It's fun because you're frantically trying to move negative cards to opponents, prevent negative cards from playing on you, and queue up cards that make the dealer skip your turn. Hard to describe. It takes playing 1-2 games to get the idea. Fine because a game is 3-5 minutes.

Flash Duel! OMG Flash Duel! It's the last game of David Sirlin's to join my collection. I now own all three games in the Fantasy Strike universe (Yomi and Puzzle Strike being the others). Flash Duel is Sirlin's take on fencing game En Guarde. Players face each other on a numbered tile bridge and try to score points on each other. Sirlin's take adds additional moves to the game as well as specialized character abilities that add some much needed breadth and depth to the formula. Games take 5-10 mins and the box includes modes for 1v1, 2v2, and a special 4v1 "raid boss" mode!

I'm worn out... but I'm always glad to try out new games and think about what makes them fun, strategic, etc.

Risk: Legacy

2012-01-24T21:00:00.002-05:00

Lisa and I bought Josh Risk:Legacy for Christmas. This weekend was our
first game.

Gist: Risk gameplay, but player actions permanently alter the game,
including subsequent games.

Super impressed at all the ways the game changes permanently. Whoever
designed it seriously took that concept and applied it at every level.
Players get to pick a race at the start and immediately have to pick
one of two race powers that give the race a bonus. The other power is
destroyed (we burned ours). This happens before players even see the
game for the first time! Crazy stuff.

The core Risk gameplay is updated and basically solves every problem I
had with Risk. It's still possible to win by eliminating all other
players, but there's more of a built-in timer now. Players must
collect 4 "red star" points. As soon as any player gets a 4th, the
game ends immediately. There are a few ways to acquire them and no
visible way to reduce the # of red stars in the total game pool. So
players start acquiring and stealing stars and it's truly only so many
turns before the game must end on stars. This solves my biggest
problem with Risk: the lengthy play time.

The other problem I had with Risk was the tendency for players to
turtle, amass huge armies, and get fucking backstab the first player
to make a move. Terrible. In this game, players are rewarded for
taking risks, as it is technically possible to capture 2 red stars in
a single round. But, if you fail and get wiped out because of it, it's
possible to come back into the game, rather than sit it out. Great
changes that make the game fun and playable for me.

Last comment is about the unlockables. The game has sealed packages
inside that are only opened when certain in-game conditions are met.
So the players don't really know about all the game rules until they
play it a few times. The mystery of what's in those packs... it's
super enticing. It's a board game with secrets. Secrets I want to
unlock...

Great game and totally recommend if you have 3-4 friends you can
consistently play it with. I recommend it even if you don't like Risk
that much.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

2011-09-18T21:15:00.000-04:00

TL;DR: Highly recommend the PC version to old school PC gamers, fans of FPS looking for more plot/dialogue/RPG mechanics in their games, and anyone who likes a little ethical ambiguity or sci-fi in their games.

I spent most of my free time this past week playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution on PC. I wasn't terribly excited about it until very near it's release when it started to get several positive reviews. Did Eidos Montreal truly resurrect the spirit of the original Deus Ex?

Beats me! I never played past the second mission of the original. However, I did play the first level something like five times, so I have some concept of what the spiritual successor should look like.

I was impressed by most design decisions with the exception of the stealth gameplay. I was quickly sold on the game's atmosphere, audio design, voice acting, plot, and gun play in the opening sequence. They're all good... at least, what you'd expect from a brand new AAA title. Not going to elaborate.

I found the stealth gameplay to be sorely lacking. Is this really where we're at in terms of stealth AI and game design? No, thankfully we have games like Metal Gear Solid to modernize this classic game archetype. I just couldn't believe that the stealth culminates with static guard paths and security cameras. Seriously? That's all you have to offer? As soon as you get the optic camouflage augmentation, the game gets laughably easy. If I were to play the game again, I would either do a total no-kill, no-detection play through or go crazy with the gun play action side of it. I weep for the future of Thief 4.

Some dialogue scenes are more significant than others. They are significant in that the game's missions change because of the conversation's outcome. I thought the developer team did a great job with these scenes. I always felt engaged and conscious of my dialogue tree options. The situations were consistently more intense or intriguing. I *wanted* to get the information or outcome that *I* was looking for and made sure to carefully consider the dialogue tree options to anticipate how it would turn out. If you haven't played the game yet, I urge you to convince yourself not to reload a save game if a critical conversation doesn't play out the way you want it to. It makes the game that much more interesting!

The voice acting deserves it's own nod. Elias Toufexis either did his homework and/or received great direction from Eidos Montreal because he nails the homage to original protagonist JC Denton with his flat, gruff delivery and also reminded me somewhat of Keanu Reeves as Neo. Stephen Shellen, the voice behind the game's driving plot mechanic, boss David Serif, portrays an excellently sleazy company CEO who you never know if you should be trusting or arresting. I'd actually say all the voice actors outperformed the in-game models, which frequently failed to keep up with present emotions.

Thoughts on the story, spoilers ahead and possibly in the rest of this post.

After completing the game, I enjoyed the overall vision of presenting a world in moral and ethical grey territory. I believe the developers intended to show a world full of those influenced by the augmentation technology and present two major opposing forces, those for and against the technology. Through the characters you meet on your missions, the player starts to get a sense of where they stand in this world. The critical flaw in this plan is that the character you play is totally bad ass and has no draw backs from the augmentations. Only partially seeing those hurt by the technology and those who stand against it is insufficient grounds to convince the player that these enhancements aren't always beneficial. Had the writers introduced limitations to the player or more thoroughly invoked the dark side of the technology, the game's conclusion would bear more weight and personal takeaway.

Little stuff:

- Disagree with the design of the energy bar. If you use your last bar, it will automatically refill the last one. This makes it feel like the energy use is a crutch and the player can't complete the game with out the free bar of energy. Also feels abusable to just stay on one energy bar most of the time and not bother with energy restoring items. Would have rather it did not refill the last bar and make the player more conscious of energy use and energy restoring items. I *DID* however like that partially used bars would refill when no longer using energy abilities. This made the camouflage mechanic more interesting to me, because I always tried moving just so far that I wouldn't consume a whole energy bar and it would refill for free.

- Icarus landing system is awesome! Great visual design and fun mechanic.

- Reunion with Megan Reed was odd. Adam is concerned to find her the whole game, then you get a brief cutscene with her (which was good), and then you don't see her ever again. Wtf?

- Great implementation of a grid-based inventory. I never had to bother with rearranging items on the grid just to get something else to fit. They should open source the code that did this or do a community write up or SOMETHING and then we'll never have to worry about it again. Huge progress here.

- Ending was too abrupt. I like what they did at the end, but I felt robbed of catharsis. There just should have been some kind of wrap up.

- Malik's death was too underplayed. She was a main character and deserved more emotional impact in her death scene. It was too... "oh no! but back to the mission!"

- Game needed more consequences for your actions. It's partially a morality game, but there were no story/moral incentives to spare people and no penalties for blasting your way through.

- The only weapons vendor I ever found was in Detroit. Were there others? No idea.

- Loved the idea that your ex-cop character had a former CI on the street. Why wasn't this played up more?

I could say more on the game, but I'll end saying I had fun, couldn't put it down, and I'm sad that it's over. Surely that's all the recommendation you need?

Vaadin Inter-portlet Communication (IPC) for Liferay

2011-08-11T10:36:00.000-04:00

I recently started working on a project in Java built on the Liferay enterprise portal and Vaadin UI framework. There's not a TON of writing done on this combo, so I thought I'd write up anything remotely shmancy in case someone else can use it.

One of the tenets of computer science is Don't Repeat Yourself. When writing portlets for Liferay, we want to keep portlets small and modularized to increase their reusability. Unfortunately, when using multiple portlets on a Liferay page, they can't talk to each other without refreshing the page. With the IPC add-on linked below, you can add message listeners and events to your portlets to update other portlets without refreshing.

Check out this Vaadin add-on written by Artur Signell.
Add-on is here: http://vaadin.com/directory#addon/vaadin-ipc-for-liferay
Source is here: https://github.com/R2R/LiferayIPC-for-Vaadin
Demo portlets are here: https://github.com/R2R/LiferayIPC-for-Vaadin-demo

Gist of an implementation I wrote is here: https://gist.github.com/1139809

Games As Art

2011-07-28T21:43:00.000-04:00

I recently figured out my position in the "Are games art?" debate. For the longest time, my answer was a simple "yes," but never thought to elaborate as dozens of prominent people have voiced the same opinion.

First, my own synopsis of the state of arguments made for and against the issue.

The most common argument for games as art is The Transitive Comparison. Recently, Lesly Brezilien at Agora Games wrote about her stance on the company dev blog. It's a great example and well argued article using The Transitive Comparison. Simply put, if this thing over here is considered art and these games over there look a lot like that art, then surely games qualify as art. If similar emotional responses are elicited from both things, then games are art. It's a worthwhile argument, but is typically countered with The Trash.

The Trash is a standard argument against games as art. The Trash poses that games are in an infantile state and no game yet comes close to being a work of art. Roger Ebert goes so far as to say this transformation will never occur. The Trash refers to games about simplistic entertainment and not meant for deep emotional response, long-lasting value, or considered worthwhile. Typically, games referenced in The Trash argument are mainstream, high profile, and violent. In short, how could such an entity be considered art when it has no substantial value?

In my observation, the bulk of arguments around games as art revolve around these two positions. I'm ready to propose an alternative take on the matter.

Games aren't art as modern society defines the term. Games are actually an extension of the concept, which is what causes so much debate over the issue. To me, the interactive video game is a paradigm shift of the relationship between creator, medium, and audience.

In classical art forms, the creator has a vision for a message, recreates that message through a medium, and then submits it to the world. In many games, this is still the path of the creator. However, we have just scratched the surface of a new relationship. In this new form, a creator envisions a *medium,* and through that medium, the audience is left to find their own message. In this sense, there is no single message communicated, but several are developed by different users. The intentionally open interpretation is the key notion.

Sandbox games are an easy example, perhaps too easy. So, let me explain via Half-Life 2. My experience playing Half-Life 2 is unique. It's not like any other person's perspective of the game. Part of my persona fused with the character of Gordon Freeman and how he proceeded through the game. How I engaged enemies, puzzles, and levels was up to me, despite being a linear gameplay experience. Valve didn't just make a game with a start, middle, and end. They created a medium for players to explore and create their own story. It's the reason the game is so much fun to discuss with others. Each player had a different experience and the discussion of those experiences is how gamers talk about art. If the game had no substance, we would have just said it was good or bad and moved on, but there is a reason it's still talked about today. The reason is that Valve created an artistic medium which merits experiencing, discussing, and remembering.

My point could be boiled down to the idea that something is art if it's open to subjective interpretation. That's partially true, but my unique addition to the discussion is that games are evolving the classical definition of art. That evolution is defined by the relationship between creator, medium, and audience. Instead of defining a message to send to the audience, the creator delivers the medium itself, with which the audience finds it's own message. Art for a new generation.

Great News

2011-07-25T01:06:00.000-04:00

I have accepted a position with Isidorey Cloud Solutions! I will be advancing their Java API and getting some experience under my belt in the cloud computing industry. Can't say that I'm sorry to leave Dish... they just don't have their IT component in order.

Perks for me are 5 minute bike ride to work, start-up atmosphere, great learning environment, and freedom to pursue some of my own ideas!

Captain America

2011-07-25T01:03:00.000-04:00

I went with Kyle, Katy, Michael. Josh, Lauren, and Dan to see Captain America today. I wasn't super stoked about it, but when I learned the director (Joe Johnston) was part of the 1970s Spielberg/Lucas club, my interest level rose.

It was maddeningly average. I had average expectations and they were fully met. Nothing majorly disappointing, but nothing wow'ed me, either. I think The Avengers film next near could be a ton of fun, and all of these Marvel origin stories have done a good job of making me excited for an ensemble cast and a huge plot arc inspired by the canon.

I think I liked the Chris Evans portrayal of Cap, but little else was interesting. Tommy Lee Jones played a very Tommy Lee Jones character. Most of the supporting cast had little to work with. I would have liked to see a better script for Howard Stark and Red Skull. Hugo Weaving did not disappoint, but the motivation for his character was minimal. It didn't amount to anything more than "he's bad, so... yeah".

Good job in the stunts of making Cap look superhuman, except whenever he jumped long distances. The SFX industry still hasn't nailed that look. Though, it's hard to criticize when there's no reference material! How will we figure out what that is supposed to look like?

Oooh and minor spoiler, but I did like the plot point that he became a super soldier yet didn't immediately go fight bad guys. Nice touch to the script.

Game of Thrones

2011-06-21T00:32:00.000-04:00

I finished season 1 of HBO's Game of Thrones tonight. The finale was light on plot, heavy on emotion. I think I would have intertwined last episode's close with the finale's close for one super season ending.

Season one is an incredible production by HBO. I love that they were able to make an entire season of high quality fantasy and make it appealing AFAIK to the general public. I'm glad that season two is already on the way, but I'm not sure if I can wait before I start reading the books. I'd love to know, in a spoiler-free response, how much the main plot points have diverged from the books, if at all.

Green Lantern

2011-06-21T00:28:00.000-04:00

While on a business trip, I saw Green Lantern in 3D in order to hang out with colleagues for the evening. You must know how much that pained me.

Evil 3D aside, I hadn't planned on seeing the movie since I know nothing of the Green Lantern and Ryan Reynolds has a habit of being a smarmasaur. The movie was trite and featured poor writing, characters, and action. The only noteworthy aspect was Peter Sarsgaard, who continues to be excellent in every role he plays. I loved his creeper look, emotional scars, and crippled-body/super-intelligent motif.

Tonight, I decided to look up some history on Green Lantern on Wikipedia, but didn't see much that interested me. I got a notion that there is some good lore and stories in the GL universe based on the tragedy that was the film, but the Wikipedia articles didn't back that up (in my opinion). Holler at me if you're a Lantern fan.

If only

2011-05-19T15:53:00.002-04:00

If you ignore the years on my posts, it looks like I was only gone for a week. :)

Returning to Blogger

2011-05-19T15:14:00.000-04:00

After taking a hiatus to play with Tumblr, followed by a hiatus of Twitter-only communication, I am returning to Blogger.

Tumblr doesn't have any export tools, so here's a snapshot of my entire Tumblr history thanks to this guy.

Huzzah!

Today is May 12th

2010-05-12T09:29:00.001-04:00

You know, in the spring?

Dominion Review

2010-04-01T17:17:00.000-04:00

Another set that Adam and I enjoyed:

Haven
Smuggler
Workshop
Throne Room
Gardens
Moneylender
Minion
Library
Upgrade
Witch

I didn't track the scores, but I won the first two games and tied the third, but Adam won because he had taken fewer turns! We enjoyed this set because there were several different ways to achieve victory. The fastest game was when we both took an early Smuggler and smuggled each other's Gold purchases over and over.

Never underestimate Haven or Gardens!

StarCraft 2 Replays

2010-03-31T17:37:00.000-04:00

Two games for you today. Both are ZvZ match-ups with valuable lessons to learn. I used to have a lot of trouble with ZvZ until I learned how to progress past Roach-fests. The answer, as I've discovered it, is committing to air. Pulling this off without alerting the opponent is key. When you show up to the next fight, or his base, with 6+ mutalisks, you've probably gained the momentum -- exactly what a Zerg player needs.

Control the pace of the game so that you can tech to tier 3 while he's scrambling to assemble hydras. While getting Hive and Greater Spire, pump out 2-4 Corrupters and harass Overlords. When you can, upgrade them to Brood Lords and mop up!

http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/569

This next game is a little different. My opponent was first to air, but I was anticipating it and had hydras ready to go. He completely backs off from going air and lets me take over the skies with Corrupters.

http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/574

Dominion Review

2010-03-31T17:21:00.000-04:00

Played three games of Dominion with Adam today. Here is a brief summary.

Game 1

Village
Feast
Island
Militia
Upgrade
Ghost Ship
Council Room
Library
Adventurer
Nobles

Ryan - 53
Adam - 38

Halfway into this game, Adam and I both commented on how much we liked the set. It was chosen at random, but we liked having Militia in a game with no defensive cards to limit the crazy Village, Nobles, Council Room combinations. Adam was particularly fond of giving me bonus cards with Council Room, only to then play a Militia to make me discard down to 3. We both loved the role of Island to let us remove Estates and Coppers early on.

Game 2

Village

Feast

Island

Militia

Upgrade

Ghost Ship

Council Room

Library

Adventurer

Nobles

Ryan - 48

Adam - 42

We elected to play the same set again. This time I played an Upgrade heavy deck in order to shoot to Gold, Nobles, trash Coppers, and upgrade Estates. While functional, clearly it wasn't as great a strategy as the first game.

Game 3

Village

Workshop

Remodel

Militia

Throne Room

Bureaucrat

Smithy

Moneylender

Mine

Library

Ryan - 35

Adam - 30

"Throne Rooms!!!" we both cheered, as the new random set appeared. There was much Throne Room-ing. We each had a hand of nothing but Throne Rooms and treasure cards at one point. Fortunately for me, I caught on to Throne Room + Remodel before Adam did, allowing me to eek by and take the last Province before he did. For the record, Throne Room + Mine to take a Copper straight to Gold in a single turn is amazingly valuable.

StarCraft 2

2010-03-31T17:13:00.000-04:00

I am loving the StarCraft 2 beta!!! This third and most recent time that I've had to place into a ladder division, I made it into the Platinum ladder. There currently isn't anything better than Platinum. That means I'm awesome at an unfinished game. =/

I'm pleased with the overall balance of units. With proper scouting and foresight, any race can prepare and counter any attack. This game feels more hard-counter driven than some RTS games, especially StarCraft 1. I don't know if that means the game has been harder to balance. Because I play Zerg, I do feel like there are more limited starting options because of the Roach unit becoming such a staple.

The interface is a dream. I can do things I only complained about for ten years in StarCraft. Mixed building/unit control groups, tab-able sub-groups, visible attack queue-ing.... oh how much easier it is to control the game!

I'm going to start posting replays of interesting games here on the blog. I'll be using sc2rc.com to host them. Feel free to view them and post your thoughts here or on the sc2rc.com page.

PAX East

2010-03-30T16:06:00.000-04:00

Overall, the first PAX East convention was awesome, but somewhat of a mixed bag. I won't write about the negatives too much, so let me get them out of the way.

Downers
Each room of the Hynes Convention Center was undersized for its purpose. The main event room only held about 5,000 out of the ~45,000 present each day. The opening ceremonies (Wil Wheaton keynote + first Mike and Jerry Q&A) filled up and we still waited over an hour in line to get turned away at the door. Panel rooms were so small that attendance typically required 45-60 minutes of queue-ing. Tabletop gaming was split into eight rooms across two floors!

Coordination needs improvement. The enforcers need team leaders with walkie-talkies. The halls needed more signage about where you are going and what's nearby. Panels needed better organization, like the track system Dragon*Con uses.

The con should be open a full three days. Doors did not open until 2pm on Friday and things wrapped up around 6pm on Sunday. I would like to see doors open at 10am on Friday. There just wasn't enough time to do everything. Heck, I didn't fully explore the Expo Hall or even SEE the console and computer game rooms. I elected to skip panels altogether in lieu of better time management. I only briefly saw the Rock Band room, but would have liked to play a song or two with friends.

OK, enough dragging PAX East down. They are moving to a bigger convention center next year and will have all the feedback they need from this year.

Gaming
We brought an entire suitcase of games to PAX East. Not kidding. 3x Dominion games, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Race for the Galaxy + expansion, Hoopla, We Didn't Playtest This + Either, Battlestar Galactica, Mix-Up, and some Magic: The Gathering decks.

Mostly, we played Dominion, but there was also a game of BSG and some rounds of Hoopla and RftG.

Josh and I entered the Puerto Rico tournament. To prove how much we've played the game, we took second and third, respectively. About 25 players signed up, half were scrubs, and two significant players didn't make it to the final game of four. Josh and I both played Factory games in our first two matches to great success. In the final game, I took an early lead as a Corn Baron but lost momentum towards the end. The guy who took first place played a similar Indigo Baron strategy, but when pressured by coffee and tobacco ship blocking, responded with a Wharf where I responded with Harbor and crop diversification. In retrospect, I should have gone Wharf over Harbor. No regrets, though! We had a blast and I even got my medal signed by Wil Wheaton!

We befriended Chris from Asmadi Games and he played some games with us Saturday night and Sunday. Look forward to meeting up with him again at Dragon*Con this fall.

The classic console game room was a little eye-watering. They had several stations setup with functional consoles from Atari to Dreamcast. A vast library of games could be checked out for all the systems. So cool to see folks playing classics like Armored Core, Mario Kart SNES, Battletoads, Goldeneye, and so much more.

Concerts
Oh my God, the concerts. First off, I was sure I wasn't getting into either night of concerts based on the size of the event room. However, I got insanely lucky and was able to walk into the room on both nights, just in time to see the acts I wanted to play. Both nights, technical difficulty and other delays turned into brilliant timing for me.

On Friday, I saw The Protomen and Anamanaguchi. I had heard The Protomen's self-titled album once or twice and figured they were worth checking out. Holy hell, they were. I was completely blown away by The Protomen's showmanship. Make-up, costumes, atmosphere, choreography... total mind blowage. I've never seen so much fist-pumping in my life. Definitely check out their work and see their show if you like their style.

Anamanaguchi was fun to see live, but I think the sound levels were off. My favorite part of their act is the chip tune music, but on stage their guitars were way overpowering. The front man was very cheerful and it was easy to tell he was as happy to be there as we were. They played some new tunes and it's clear they have a bright future. Absolutely check out their cheery chip tune rock if you haven't yet.

On Saturday, I showed up just in time to see Paul and Storm hit the stage with Wil Wheaton for this magical sketch- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_IRwTtkZEI I had never seen Paul and Storm or Jonathan Coulton live before. It was definitely a treat. Paul and Storm are superb musical comedians who write catchy folk music. Their ability to engage the audience was inspiring and entertaining. I've been listening to JoCo songs for years now, but seeing him live was also a treat. I didn't get anything super special outside live performance of his work. OK, OK, the Distract-a-tron was cool.

Wil Wheaton
As most of you probably know, I'm a big fan of Wil Wheaton. I've been reading his blog for years and love him to death. I won't call him the Jesus Christ of Gaming, but he is absolutely the King of Gamers. Even though I missed the keynote, I did get to see him every day of PAX. He walked right in front of us in line for the keynote on Friday. He came through the Sheraton lobby as we were playing Battlestar Galactica and talked to us for a bit about the game. Then on Sunday, I waited in line to see him and get my Puerto Rico medal signed. Lisa had a slightly different experience with him...

Like I said before, we all had a great time, the con was a blast, we will certainly be going to future PAXs, but this new one has some kinks to work out, which I have full faith in Penny Arcade to resolve.

Guitar Hero chief exec boo'd off stage

2010-02-02T19:12:00.000-05:00

I was originally going to tweet this with a short comment, but it deserves more than 140 characters. First off, skim the LA Times article to catch up.

I'm in a tricky position to discuss the state of the Guitar Hero franchise. I haven't purchased a GH product since GH3/360 in 2007. That's a long time and there have been almost a dozen releases since then. Being such a proponent of music games, why haven't I purchased any more of the Hero games? Because I'm a Harmonix fanboy.

To me, Harmonix is the reason America was swept up in music game frenzy, dating all the way back to 2005's original Guitar Hero game. These guys just get music and what it means to enjoy it as a game. When they left Activision to pursue Rock Band with EA, my heart and wallet went with them. Activision replaced them with Neversoft, a brilliant developer, but one or both teams lost sight of the Harmonix mantra.

Oversimplifying, Activision makes music games for people who like video games. Harmonix makes music games for people who like music. There is absolutely market space for both to co-exist.

Fast forward to 2009. We're in a damn recession and newcomers to the music genre are faced with spending $99 to $199 in order to enter the domain. It really is equivalent to purchasing a new game system. It should surprise no one, especially the market analysts at Activision, that the music games genre was going to take a hit when people started cutting back their budgets. That's not even taking into account the saturation of the genre.

There's too many different games now! Once you've established a sale of your platform, be it Guitar Hero or Rock Band, it's time to hunker down and continue the cash with attractive songs in downloadable add-ons. It's much easier for me as a consumer to justify song additions in $1 to $20 increments than $60. I also get to pick and choose which songs to add to my collection. Harmonix and EA grasped this concept better than Activision.

Let's talk about Rosensweig. It could have just been bad luck with the recession, but how does this guy think they are going to make great sales when they have too many games? Smash Hits, GH5, Band Hero, Metallica, and Van Halen are all add-ons to an existing platform (World Tour), but have the costs associated with a new game. Can't you see where this is wrong? Rosensweig was picked to make the right decisions for the franchise. Looking back at his year, I can't see any other option than to let him go. I only wish I knew more about Activision's brass to know if Rosensweig is even the right person to punish, or if he is just a scapegoat.

Oh, but Ryan, what about The Beatles: Rock Band? Touche, but Harmonix took the add-on pack to a new level with The Beatles. I don't see any of those other games come with custom instrument replicas, impossible-to-find fan services as bonus materials, and exquisitely faithful reproduction and homage to the source material. Harmonix did it right and justified their separate product. Activision's only innovation to the space has been DJ Hero, which is a fine game and not "just another Guitar Hero game." I don't see how 789K units sold is paltry either, when the total Activision music game sales for Q4 amounted to ~1.4M units.

To sum up, it wasn't as great a year for the music game genre as years past, but with such high precedence to follow, a publisher over-saturating the market/clogging up store shelves/confusing customers, and an economic downturn, what was supposed to happen? So long, Rosensweig.

Apple iPad Impressions

2010-01-27T18:05:00.000-05:00

You must really like me or respect my opinion in tech if you're reading this in addition to or instead of the dozens of tech/gadget blogs. So... thanks for reading!

What kind of device was I expecting today? Based on the plethora of rumors, the device in my head was a 10" touchscreen Macbook. A device running an OSX kernel with a modified interface modeled after iPhone OS. The purpose? A handheld extension of your desktop environment. Priced around $999.

The iPad is not that device.

Revealed today was a larger iPod Touch. A device for casual Internet surfing and media consumption. Great for travel. Great for e-mail. Great for entertainment outside of the home environment. And that's where the device gets into trouble.

Steve Jobs made it painstakingly clear that the iPad fulfills a role between that of the smartphone and the desktop/laptop environment. It should fulfill it's role better than the efforts of the iPhone to be a computer and the laptop to be mobile.

In my best sarcastic and cynical voice, it sure does a great job of not being a smartphone or a computer.

I am positively struggling to identify the demographic for this new device. Who is iPad for? The only person I can think of who it really fits is the consumer without a smartphone AND a laptop. Owning one or the other distracts from the feature gain. Particularly the 3G if you own a smartphone; it's completely redundant to pay for 3G service twice. Why can't I tether my iPhone's 3G connection to an iPad over Bluetooth? What a great reason to own both devices that Apple is missing out on.

No multitasking. I.e. no simultaneous chat apps or Pandora while you surf or read.
No USB port for your own keyboard or flash drive access.
No camera for video conferencing.
No wireless extension of your desktop. Media must be dumped to the device via cable + iTunes. In this regard, ORB might make a kick-ass way to access your desktop media.
Book pricing looks more expensive than Kindle books.

Negatives aside, why *is* the iPad still an attractive device? Compared to netbooks and e-readers in the price range, it has a lot of desirable functionality and a package without being too much more expensive. Less than 2x the price of Kindle, 100x the functionality. Less than 2x the price of netbooks, better mobility. There's enough here to be attracted to, for sure. I just don't know who's buying.

iPad has more interest to me in terms of what it means for the future. Steve Jobs' vision for the device is not just another platform for the same old media, but a new way to present media. Newspapers with instant delivery and context-rich data association, like related videos and stories. Books with links to inspired art, music, poetry, movie adaptations. Games designed with a multi-touch interface in mind. The bottom line is that iPad is poised to be the device that ushers in a new paradigm in media interaction. For that reason alone, I'm happy iPad is here.

I'm definitely up for discussing implications and impressions of the iPad. Leave a link in the comments to your blog or email me at theryanburke(at)gmail.com.

Too Many Games

2010-01-06T01:07:00.000-05:00

The other day I had to sit down and compose a list of games I've missed that I've wanted to play. It took me awhile and I don't know when I'm going to get around to them! In no particular order-

Games to Play

Uncharted 2

Demon's Souls

Wolverine

Resident Evil 5

Prototype

Infamous

Batman Arkham Asylum

Killzone 2

Assassin's Creed 2

Darksiders

Wet

Ghostbusters

Star Wars Force Unleashed

Valkyria Chronicles

Devil Summoner - DS

Eternal Sonata

Bayonetta

Games to Play More

Left 4 Dead 2

Modern Warfare 2

Republic Commando

Mario Kart Wii

Torchlight

Borderlands

All of these games either got stellar reviews from press, from friends, or had demos that had me wanting more. The games in the second list I presently own and need to play more of. Has anyone played through any of the titles above and recommend I not even bother?

This topic brings me to a bigger picture complaint of mine. There's too much media! I'm currently working one weekend a month and I can't put a dent into playing through all this stuff. And that list is mostly the big-budget, AAA-titles I've missed. What about all the great indie stuff that is under my radar? Without actually playing the games, how do I know which ones I can safely disregard or live without? As an example, the general reception of Brutal Legend was only OK, but the game was basically designed for me specifically.

The light side of this problem is we are just now pulling out of the heavy winter season of game releases. After January, only a couple must-have games will come out between then and next winter, giving me time to catch up on all the gaming goodness.

Multi-season television series are a problem of a greater magnitude. I need a Time-Turner.

12/31/1999

2010-01-04T02:40:00.000-05:00

Keeping up with Katie inspired me to write about what I was doing on the eve of Y2K.

I was at my high school best friend's house watching TV until the ball dropped. We definitely held our breath as the clock struck 12:00, with the notion that the end of modern society was an ever-so-slight possibility. Then, we wondered how much some company had to have paid to have the first advertisement at 12:01 and marveled that it didn't even start with "whew, glad we're still here! now let me sell you something..."

Quickfire Challenge

2010-01-04T02:28:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to all! I haven't yet written the date with 2010 in it, I know it's gonna be weird when it happens. I can't seem to fall asleep and I've run out of tweets and RSS feeds to catch up on. Rather than type out a proper detailed post, all I can bring myself to do is some quick updates.

Christmas was great! It was wonderful to see my family and get to spend some quality, leisurely time with them and Lisa in Poland. Interesting country, too. Couldn't help but wonder why my entire seventeen years of education skipped it over with the exception of being invaded in the war. Warsaw and Krakow are spectacles in their own ways and I consider myself lucky to have visited them.

My big Christmas present this year is guitar lessons. I've been meaning to dedicate time to learning an instrument since last Christmas. Lisa knows me well and understands that we both benefit from the structure of a lesson and I look forward to starting up the rocking soon.

Borderlands is a slightly different approach to both the RPG and FPS genres. I only recommend playing it if you can secure a few friends for an entire campaign. I enjoyed the mix of gear hunting, talent progression, and use-based skills with the Halo-esque tactical assault missions. Good stuff.

Steam's annual holiday sale was again splendid this year as the year prior. Games added to my collection: the complete Star Wars collection (mostly secured for Jedi Knight series and KOTOR), Beyond Good & Evil, the Space Quest series, the Max Payne series, Torchlight, Indigo Prophecy, and the guilty pleasure that is Zombie Shooter. Most of these games I've played through before, but for whatever reason don't currently own. The sale prices were so good that I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to own them now and through such a robust system as Steam.

I was poking around the archives and thought this post was funny for one reason: the hardly-mentioned Felicia Day. It was my first exposure to her work and I had no clue I'd be standing in line to meet her at Dragon*Con in 2009!

The house is still coming along, but not yet worthy of pictures. I have some cable management to complete, we need a few more items of furniture, and some stuff needs to go on the walls. Once we accomplish these goals, we will be very happy to show your our home! I used a power drill to mount something to a wall today. First time I've ever done that, but I can build a computer from parts in under sixty minutes. Sigh.

Changing domains next week

2009-12-02T10:20:00.001-05:00

Heads up to all my readers: I will be changing domains from
the-unexamined-life.com
to theryanburke.com next week. Be sure to update your bookmarks and
RSS feeds when the change goes live!

Sent from my mobile

Moving Time AGAIN

2009-11-22T09:33:00.002-05:00

We found a house rental two streets away from Josh and Casey, so we took it! It's a great looking 4 bedroom, 2 full bath, detached two car garage, and a finished basement to boot. Huge kitchen, which we're both very happy with. There's not much to see yet, we only just moved everything in boxes yesterday. We have a ton of new furniture to assemble before I want to snap any pictures for us to show off!

Send me an e-mail for our new address.

Yes, I'm a Jerk

2009-11-09T19:06:00.004-05:00

A blog jerk. I just said on the 25th that I would be returning to regular blogging. That happened to be two days before we lost Internet service for the move to the new house AND a trip to Atlanta for work.

Nyehhhh, sorry about that. I'm home again now, with speedy Internets, and full of topics to blog about. I've even been invited to write for a new gaming blog, gamesforbreakfast.net. So much to write about!

A recent dream gave me an idea for a story (too late to start a NaNoWriMo project). A sleepy Texas town lucks out and gets a stop in the World Wrestling Entertainment tour. It's the talk of the town for weeks and is guaranteed to sell out the local venue. Main character works for the venue, is either a prankster or lambent entertainer and decides to alter the ticket date and shock the town's redneck demograph with a secret project of his own... Alternatively, main character is revealing his big project at the venue the day after the WWE show and it is random chance that alters the ticket dates, securing him a large audience, which shocks not just the crowd, but the main character. Thoughts?

In other news, I'm thoroughly pleased with my upgrade to Windows 7. I like the new Apple-esque taskbar and love being able to hit the Windows key and type the name of any program or file I'm looking for. Faster than navigating Explorer or the Start Menu.