At points, any Zelda game can be painstaking to get through. Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks can be downright embarrassing. Sitting on the plane or train blowing into the spirit flute does not usually make you look particularly cool. But I fought through the temples, bosses, and annoying puzzles.
Two temples away from the end, I accidentally erased my saved game. All of the progress…gone. Not sure if I will play again. Definitely need some time away from that game now.
Last spring, I made a recommendation about a service called Raptr. At the time, I thought it was an interesting way to combine social media with online gaming. I have not been doing much gaming recently, so the usefulness of the application was immediately reduced to near zero.
I think that we will see a continued integration of these two spheres of technology and social activities, but I’m not sure what form that will take. Services already often let you know whether your friends are playing when you are about to play. The question is whether knowing that your friend is playing via Twitter or Facebook, for instance, will that encourage people to turn on their console and make that connection.
Furthermore, there is a question about the capacity of social media applications to handle something like this. Currently, they don’t support that – instead posts take the form of micro-blogging or short status updates.
In the end, Raptr just took up resources on my computer and added very little.
Conclusion: Wait…I’m sure Microsoft and Sony will pull this off well through strong dashboard integration.
This looks like a lot of fun: http://www.zelda.com/universe/game/spirittracks/index.jsp
I wish I was more motivated to write on this subject, but I’ll just say the last Zelda game for DS was great. Hopefully, this follows suit.
Raptr is a website and a program that integrates features of social networking sites and gaming. On the social networking front this includes Facebook and Twitter. On the gaming front, it can recognize any game (to my knowledge). Specifically, it can link to WoW characters, Steam IDs, Xbox Live, and Wii.
The obvious advantage to this is having information about what games your friends are playing and when. For instance, if I see someone logging onto play Halo, I could start up my Xbox and join the same game. Similarly, if someone was on Steam playing TF2, I could join the game. Raptr informs other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (if you enable them) that you are playing a game, so people who are your friends on those sites can see. Recently, Steam friends has been much improved, Raptr functions to act as a cross-platform integrator.
I’ve only been experimenting with it for a few days and have no friends on it yet, but I think it is worth checking out if you play any sort of video game. The disadvantage is having another app running on your computer.
Any given day that I decide to play TF2, I am probably play more than I should have in a week. You can ask anyone from the Middlebrook days when I forced everyone to install Team Fortress Classic (TFC). There is something so addictive and entertaining about the game that I cannot put my figure on.
For instance, I should apologize to tschwab for texting him yesterday after I felt particularly victorious in a round of cp_gravelpit, my new favorite map.
A few things to note about gravelpit: 1) play on a big server 2) your team needs some coordination to succeed. These factors are explained quite simply by the lay out of the map. It is a triangle of three capture points. You spawn with easy access to two of those points. Therefore, you have to be coordinated to cap and keep all 3, while you also need enough people to cover the large map.
Yesterday, I had an amazing round as engineer. 7 dominations in one life…as engineer. (All gloating intended.) It was strange how honestly great I felt about being so successful. So strange to think that a video game inspired such strong emotions. All I did was click a few buttons and a few keys for about an hour.
I’m not sure the point of this post, but to reflect a little. Oh yeah, play gravel pit cap A + B, then build a sentry gun in the hallway to C. If you have 2+ engineers, you can be super-aggressive and build into the hallway. Seriously, it was a lot of fun.
This game has something addicting that continually draws me back to it. I am sure for many of you who play video games, you have a game that has a similar effect upon you. Freshmen year of college, I pushed Dan, kr3z, and Joe to start playing AOE2 again. I even persuaded Tony to put aside the graphically intense third installment of the Age of Empires Series. Arguably, that was my best game play. As a group we would play and toss around new strategy ideas.
I remember playing the demo for the original Age of Empires, it was a lot of fun, but took eons to download on my dial up line. Back then, a 200MB file seemed enormous. This week, I got Monica playing. She is enjoying it and learning pretty quickly. When will a classic game like this lose its entertainment value? Never, I hope.
State election law requires a winner to then be determined by lot, Burlington Town Clerk Heidi Streif said Wednesday. That could involve a coin toss, draw of a card or putting the candidates’ names in a hat, she said.
Somehow, yet again, I have fallen out of the blogosphere. It is interesting how life has a way of doing that to everyone I know who has a blog that does not make their living (or some of it) from blogging.
Anyway, the last post considered how law will intervene in virtual worlds, specifically video game based worlds. Initially, to me it seemed that the game should just be a game and work itself out. If anything, as financial incentives enter the picture that will be a check on people’s actions.
I started thinking about how many games require a monthly fee be paid to participate. This financial investment month after month is justified by the constantly changing and updating nature of the game. Maintaing the virtual world and the server it runs on is paramount to having a gaming experience at all. More over, it seems that part of this fee is to set up a healthy gaming experience. That is why there are corporate employees playing the position (adopted from paper and pencil RPGs) ‘Game Master’. If people are experiencing detrimental effects as a result of playing the game, should the Game Master be responsible to intervene? I think the month to month investment necessitates an affirmative answer. I am fairly certain that it is not part of the Terms of Agreement, but I think the results speak to this. Abusive character names, guilds/clans, and offensive language all result in a ban on one’s account. This tells me that it is an issue taken seriously as a result of companies wanting to provide a high quality and healthy experience.
As video games have become more popular it seems like the government has always wanted to intervene at some point. Now the ESRB rating system is fairly widespread and some retailers are preventing the sales of certain games to minors. As content becomes increasingly interactive the future role of government may be a guiding force the same way it has been for ratings and retailers. Demanding game providers take proactive actions to foster a healthy gaming experience may be the future. It seems like they are already doing that now, but I am certain some politicians will want to add their stamp of approval and pass a bill with their name on it.
In my recent obsession with reading and compiling news feeds. I happened upon an interesting article about what role law, specifically criminal law, might have in online games. It is an interesting question. Anyone who has played any type of online game knows that they can be addicting and foster a sense of attachment to in game accomplishments. The latter is also true of games that are not played online. I think Everquest typifies the beginning of the Massively Multiplayer Online game. From my personal experience with people that I know, Blizzard’s Diablo II is a perfect example of how online worlds transcend their online limitations when they enter markets that exchange for actual money. The basis of this in the aforementioned game was selling items on EBay. Thus, players actions in the game would translate into material gain outside the game. I imagine almost every news story that frequented the press several years ago about violent video games causing violence or depression included a story about Everquest. The addicting nature of that game apparently caused people to become emotionally disturbed and even (if my memory serves me correctly) kill themselves. If anyone reads this and can do a quick websearch on it, please post a comment.
The question is then whether or not the effects that take place outside the dominion of the virtual world are under the authority of the government to regulate?
The way I would like to answer this question is in the negative.
I would like to explore the above question a bit more…look out for Part II soon.
Through many crazy events somehow I have ended up in Chicago, Illinois (ill-eh-noiz). My close friends know that I lived in Iowa for sometime.
As you can see, I lived on the Iowa/Illinois border. I can honestly say that I never imagined living in Illinois and for the most part do not associate Chicago with Illinois. In fact, I had to pause and consider with Monica what in fact the capital of Illinois is (Springfield). Funny how those things slip your mind over time.
I wish I had some pictures of the apartment and the move on my computer because right now I am not feeling in the mood to snap any photographs. Hopefully, by the end of the week I can have a photo-based entry on the move! The move was quite an adventure. The story will tell itself once I have the pictures up. It is hard to escape the feeling of isolation. There is so much to do to get settled in, but I think minds naturally wander to the greatest perceived threat, however irrational. For those of you at Perkins after the night of imbibing you know what I am talking about. I cannot deny either that my personality lends toward dwelling a bit, but back to Chicago and the move.
September 18th is the beginning of Northwestern University Orientation. Craziness, huh? I always wondered to what extent I should have tried harder right out of high school. If the reputation of this school is an accurate measure of its worthwhileness, then it took me a while, but I am exerting more effort toward my education. It will be fascinating contrasting the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University.
We beat the Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time today…with that I am going to delay any more thought on Chicago.
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