Hey, all. I'm still not dead, and I still am doing daily entries over at the new main site. My purpose here this time, sadly, is to raise awareness of another one of my crazy projects. Rather than tell you about all the technical crap that's been done so far, just watch this video where I ramble about the technical crap and show it off.

The ultimate goal is to make a visual novel. I am mostly done with the core mechanics of doing so. Now I need artwork and music... and to properly write the story. That's later, I think.

Anyone interested in drawing up a f$%#ton of art?

Hey, all. I aten't dead, just very focused on the new sites right now. Speaking of that, if you haven't been over to read the first chapter of A Civics Lesson as it's been posted, then now's a great time to start. I'm running a contest, and a short amount of reading and a little bit of hyperlink love could win you a $20 gift card to the gaming service of your choice (or Amazon if you're into that sort of thing). Please go over and take a look.

Please.

I'm kind of desperate here. I hate shilling myself like this but it's really kind of come down to this. Yes, I am essentially buying attention. I feel just as dirty as you think I ought to, really.

Next stop: corporate-sponsored tattoos on highly visible body parts!

Welcome to 2009, everyone. I'll make this short, because I still need to do the December Game Report at some point (short version: 40 games, fulfilled my goals, not doing it again), but also because I'm kinda hungry.

In 2009 I'll be using this LJ for private stuff. So, really, this is probably the last entry that's going to be public; everything else will likely be friends-only or completely private. I'm doing this to simply acknowledge the fact that I almost never use it.

It's also due to the fact that I've started two completely different sites; one familiar, one not so much. The familiar, then, would be johnzeitler.com, where my 'public' blog is going to live from now on. It's less scarring to a potential employer than, say, TheFurryOne.net (which has done nothing but become increasingly inaccurate since 2003).

The new project, though, is one I'm the most hyped about. Remember that novel that I keep blathering on about? Yeah, the one I've been trying to write for years now? Well, if you have about three minutes a day in 2009, you can read it. Linguankery.com is a site I created originally to be a writing-centric blog where people could get tips on how to write better. Then I decided that was a silly idea, and converted it into a place where I would post my novel, piece-by-piece, over the course of 2009. The novel is titled A Civics Lesson, and while it might be pulp, I think it's at least worth showing off.

Anyway, catch you cats sometime next week with the last Game Report, and then... we'll see.

So yeah, I just finished the last chapter of that story I was writing. That was the hard part, boys and girls-- the easy part is, over the next eleven days, getting all the infrastructure in place for the web site changes I want to do for the new year. But not this weekend. This weekend, I have only one thing planned: beautiful, glorious slacking.

(Sorry for the long, uncut diatribe, folks, but I am too pissed off about this to risk it going under the radar.)

This afternoon, I put up a post on the main page as a bit of a social experiment, under controlled conditions. The post was, primarily, only two words, with a sarcastic explanation shortly thereafter. I will be the first to admit that, at the time, it was not clear what the purpose of the experiment was, and I will further admit that maybe the explanation afterwards was inappropriately leading towards the response I expected to get. I never laid claim to being a serious social scientist. Still, as flawed as it is, the experiment proves the point I had coming into it: the gaming community is, in its current state, terminally ill.

Allow me, if you will, to set the stage for this revelation. Over the past two years, the release of the final two entrants in the current hardware generation has created a circumstance not seen since the days of the 16-bit rivalry between Nintendo and Sega. The key difference in this modern iteration of the so-called console war is twofold: first, the landscape has shifted to a three-way struggle for market share; and second, features previously considered outside of the normal purview of a home video game console have taken a larger role in the proceedings. However, stripping away all these externalities and all the circumstances surrounding what has turned out to be one of the most divisive periods in our hobby's history, the fact remains that, for lack of better phrasing, "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." The root cause of the current division among the former community can be traced back to simple hype.

Hype is a powerful force, and if mismanaged or allowed to run roughshod over the final product, it will destroy video gaming as both a hobby and as a for-profit industry. I cannot stress this point enough. The video game industry has developed nothing in the past decade as compelling or as saddening as their powerful, all-consuming addiction to hype.

I suppose that defining "hype" should be my priority before I continue. Hype goes beyond mere marketing and advertising. A company can plaster their commercials all over prime time television, making them as invasive and pervasive as their budgets will allow, and they can still be seen as not contributing significantly to the hype poisoning. Where promotion crosses the line into hype, however, is the content and the context of these advertisements. Hype is advertising that doesn't so much sell the product as it convinces a consumer that their particular demographic wants the product, and only their demographic. Hype is, without exception, exclusionary advertising.

However, it is difficult to find examples of advertisements which explicitly use such tactics. Print magazines and television sponsorships are still subject to editorial oversight and standards and practices boards, to a point where an ad explicitly espousing an exclusionary viewpoint will likely be killed before it airs. Instead, the Internet has provided all the unregulated advertising capability that the industry needs to feed its hype addiction. News outlets for the game community, as well as game-centric blogs, often receive press releases direct from the companies themselves, and these are also often presented without alteration direct to the reader. The language in these releases can sometimes have more of an effect to this exclusionary viewpoint than is immediately obvious.

Where things begin to get murky is the community-driven nature of these blogs and the concept of gaming culture. By creating an exclusionary atmosphere, by synthesizing these cliques and congregations, the video game industry subdivides its market base into genres. Ten years ago these genres were diverse and discrete, with little overlap: action, adventure, RPG, sports, etc. Within the past two generations, however, little by little developers have mashed genres together, in efforts to create games which appeal to larger and larger bases of players. Going back to the past, many action developers started including RPG elements into their games, because they saw the small pool of RPG players to be a desirable amount of players to add to their potential customers. Development was gearing towards making a game that could be projected to have XX number of purchasers, because it had elements from genres A, B, and C, where XX was some ratio of the estimated population of gamers who played A, B, and C-genre games.

The end result of a decade of mashups and genre-crossover games was a nebulously-defined "core" gamer. This is someone who, if the advertising is to be believed, spends most of their disposable income and free time playing the latest, most graphically-intense, most familiar-styled video games. They play many games per month, and so they prefer shorter games so they feel they can go and buy new games without neglecting the ones they have. Their games are impossibly-complex hybrid first-person role-playing driving games with strong simulated sexual content and true-to-life physics engines, as well as explosions every five minutes and guns coming out of other, larger guns. Story is irrelevant, or if it is the focus of the game, a half-hearted attempt at wrenching some emotional expression out of a hackneyed concept which is only as pretentious as the number of sequels the developer projected the not-yet-existent "franchise" could support. Graphics and gameplay mechanics differ only when and where the developer chooses to make a change to the pre-packaged, pre-developed, licensed middleware engine, so that they have something to put on the back of the case as a bullet point differentiating it from fifty other games slated to be released that week.

Now if it sounds like I'm being unfair, let's take a look at the (false) direct opposite to the "core" gamer, the "casual". Casual gamers are soccer moms, small children, or people who would be in the "core" gamer demographic were it not for the blatant lack of a Y chromosome. They play only a few games per year, usually web-based, due either to a lack of disposable income or time in which to play. The games invariably chosen by these players include mini-game collections where repetition of simple challenges, over time, earns social rewards within the game (such as badges or avatar clothing). When they are presented with console games, the controls are simplistic and obvious. Again, the games are derived almost without exception from pre-existing middleware engines, but more care seems to be placed into the art style for these games as that is usually the only place where the games actually differ. When a game becomes tiresome, "casual" players do move on to different games, but this process can seem glacial to the "core" players and often to the developers themselves; so, planned obsolescence or intentional flaws are introduced to force the "casual" player to upgrade to the next iteration once sufficient time has passed.

What you should notice about these two stereotypes is that both are, in essence, genres. In fact, I hypothesize that the "core/casual" divide has done absolutely nothing but create two cores. They are wildly disparate in the disposition of the games being offered for each demographic, creating a situation where they are perceived to be mutually exclusive: a game must be placed on one side or the other of the casual/core coin. There is no room on the edge. The advertising for these games, as well as the individuals espousing preference for these games, must be clearly identified.

This is a fantastically stupid tactic for the video game industry to take.

By narrowing gamers down from multiple genres and pigeonholing them into one of two "sects", the industry runs a very real risk of alienating those people who do not fit so neatly into the categories presented. Alienating these people causes them to rethink their game purchases more-- the more you burn someone, the more wary they become. As they become further disabused that the game industry is not paying attention to their preferences, they will stop buying games altogether, and the core market they were part of-- either the "traditional" or the "new player" market-- erodes away until, ultimately, there's no market left on either side of the divide.

A consumer who feels that he is not being serviced properly will take his or her money elsewhere. In any other industry, when a consumer feels the need for a change within the bounds of a product, the industry provides sufficient diversity, as well as an inclusive atmosphere, such that the consumer can feel reasonably confident that they can branch out.

Take, for example, books. Let's say that Alice reads a lot of murder mysteries-- the kind of Jessica Fletcher-type cozies which get pumped out en masse. After a while, she starts to realize the tropes within the genre, and they're not engaging her as much as she would have liked. One book in particular had some concepts she did like, though, and in seeking out other books that had that concept, she found herself looking at legal fiction-- courtroom dramas, John Grisham-type tomes. It might be a little daunting to get into at first, but she has a reasonable expectation that she can get into it. The genre remains accessible to her, even if she's not had any experience with it at all.

Let's contrast that with Becky, who's been playing games on the school computers during study hall. She's had a lot of fun with the usual fare such as Pogo, Neopets, Yahoo Games, and the like. She's seen advertisements on these services, however, for home console and portable versions of these games, and after getting them and going through them, she starts to look into other games she might like. Neopets in particular piqued her interest, and she's been hearing that Pokemon is kind of close to that, but with more stuff to do. The door, however, is shut to her; the Pokemon games all assume that the player has familiarity enough with the game before she even picks it up. She can't even buy the game, because she's stuck wondering whether she should get Diamond, Pearl, Ranger, Explorers of Time... Going into other genres is even worse-- heaven help her if she saw her friends playing Soul Calibur and wanted to get to know how to play that, or any fighting game!

What's changed over the past decade is that games developed for each core audience-- "traditional" versus "casual"-- are starting to assume that players are not coming in from the cold, but are familiar with the tropes and traditions of their core already. By creating this air of exclusivity in the games, moving from one core audience to the other becomes an insurmountable obstacle. You're expected to know, for example, that the Ice Beam kills Metroids, or that you have to play 50 rounds in order to earn the Peggle Proficiency badge (or whatever).

The community does nothing to ameliorate this matter. Players congregate in forums to discuss their preferred genres or systems. The amount of abject intolerance shown to newcomers to said areas no longer surprises me nearly as much as it disappoints me. Impatience with new players is the rule, rather than the supreme act of discourtesy it should be considered. A player looking for even the most basic of information about a genre unfamiliar to them will be met with a wave of irritation that they, with their independent ideas and preferences, do not automatically know the "correct" way to play the game. As an example, go to any forum dedicated to a fighting game and see what characters are considered the "top-tier". If you express any indication that you play as, or even admit to liking, any character not inside this tier, you are considered beneath contempt. Players never get the chance to learn, and therefore they will either go back to the genre that spawned their ennui, or simply abandon gaming altogether.

This is not an acceptable behavior pattern.

Let's go back to the social experiment I set up. The post I made consisted, in its primary text, solely of the phrase "The Wii". The idea I had in mind was that I did not need to express any opinion one way or the other about the Wii; I simply had to mention it in order to attract someone who would tell me I was wrong for liking it. As it turns out, my assumption was correct. Rob made a comment stating that it was "totally irrelevant... to most gamers". The implication, of course, was clear: "real gamers" don't have Wiis anymore. Someone who does have a Wii, or God forbid admits to enjoying games for it, is likely to not be considered a "real gamer".

I assure you that if I had tried this experiment on any major gaming community blog, the responses would range to the far more vitriolic; I would not need to resort to reading things into Rob's comment which he will undoubtedly deny he means. You can then substitute any topic whatsoever into the comment, and the result will be the same. Someone, somewhere, will compose a response saying that you are wrong in your opinion-- even if you don't express an opinion one way or the other! Just mentioning the topic of the required hatred, not even in a negative light, is license enough to go on the warpath.

This trend towards antisocial hostility and intentional, exclusionist elitism will destroy the very notion of a video game market. It is already doing so.

What seems to be the most overlooked part of the current trend, is the amazing response that re-releasing older games is getting. A "rehash" will often pull in numbers rivalling a new game release, depending on the game. The more cynical among the community will claim that the sales are due solely to nostalgia. I don't think that's nearly cynical enough, in point of fact. I think that, if you want to assume the worst in humanity, then the reason a game that's been out for over ten years outsells the latest and greatest five-hour full-price game is because the players see something in that older game that no longer exists in the new one. The new one tries to appeal to everyone in the homogeneous, uniform, 'universal' core, while the old one did its own thing and stood out enough to warrant the rerelease. It might not appeal to everyone in the core, but it's not trying to. It's not declared as the "definitive core game", it's not necessarily part of the "core syllabus required playing". It is what it is, take it or leave it. When you try to please everyone, you wind up pleasing no one.

Look at high-profile games such as Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, etc. These games are being declared, prior to their release, as "core" games without qualification. Players who identify, or are identified (even against their will), as "core", were expected by both the developers and their fellow gamers to buy the game in droves simply because "it's a core title amongst the casual cancer that is killing gaming". Obviously, this was flawed because some people within the "core" audience simply don't like first-person shooters. But no, it's a "core" game, you're a "core" gamer, if you don't like it, then you're not a "core" gamer. On the flip side, Puzzle Quest is a "casual" game, and if you play it even once, you're indelibly stamped as a "casual" gamer. (For some inexplicable reason, "casual" has higher priority than "core". Once labeled "casual", a gamer can apparently never be rid of the designation.)

This, at its core (no pun intended), is social Objectivism. A is A. Core is Core. Casual is Casual. There is no gray area, no middle ground, no compromise; to even suggest as much is anathema. Heresy. Forbidden.

Bullshit.

I'm making a declaration right now. I don't expect anyone else to follow me on this, but this is what I believe. This is what I'm going to say from now on. I recognize that there are now two core audiences for video games: the traditional market and the new-player market. These markets have their strengths and their weaknesses. However, I expressly reject the notion that I must fall on one side or the other of the traditional/new-player coin; I choose instead to ride the edge. I reject the labels that marketers and my fellow gamers would choose to place on me, even the label of "gamer"; instead I will define myself by playing what I want to play without regards for outside appearances. I reject the concept that gaming is a necessarily exclusive hobby, and that those who come to it with no foreknowledge are unworthy to participate; I choose instead to learn what I can, to share with those who ask me, and to welcome newcomers to the hobby which has brought me such fun. Finally, I reject the idea that anyone can tell me what I should or should not play; instead I will play what appeals to me, and ignore what does not without passing judgment on the people who play the games I choose not to play.

I would love to be optimistic enough for people to join with me on this, but I realize that the exclusionist nature of video gaming is far too entrenched to ever change now. For the longest time, I have comported myself to serve as an example of how a gamer should be perceived-- I have tried to be accepting, calm, a peacemaker, and to correct those who would disparage others based on their preferences. It has become clear to me that I have failed, and that my efforts are in vain. There can be no change, because the problem is not seen to exist. The "core"/"casual" divide is so deeply indoctrinated into gamers today that it is seen as how things are done. Nobody sees that it is so nihilistic, so self-destructive.

Because of this, I'm at an impasse as to whether or not I want to identify as a gamer anymore. If I have to qualify that with "Oh, but I'm not the rabidly psycho type who'll berate you for liking something I might have found a slight tiny flaw with", then it's not worth calling myself a gamer. It's not the games I'm becoming disenchanted with. It's (some of) the people who play the games. I don't want to be a loner gamer. I just wish that people would pull their heads out of their asses and realize that other people playing games is not a bad thing.

Food coma over, folks! It's December now, and that means that we've got a game completion report coming in. ( So, then, November's games are... )

December's already spoken for; I'm going to try to get through Chrono Trigger DS, and later in the month start up one of the major 360 RPGs on my plate-- either Tales of Vesperia or Infinite Undiscovery.

Delays have savaged what I was looking forward to in December; DJ Max Fever got pushed forward "indefinitely". More than that, some of the titles I looked forward to in November got lukewarm receptions-- Mirror's Edge in particular wound up being somewhat short, so it's more a rental now. Only Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories looks good for December, and that's a delayable purchase until after the holidays anyway.

Let's take a look at the current numbers:
Overall List: 32 completed of 51, 62.7% (UP 3.9%, was 58.8%, Goal 40%) with 19 remaining.
Prioritized List: 32 completed of 42, 76.2% (UP 3.0%, was 73.2%, Goal 50%) with 10 remaining.
2008 Goal: 32 completed of 25, 128% (UP 8%, was 120%, Goal 100%) with 0 remaining (Perfect Clear Accomplished).

As a personal challenge, I'm making an effort to clear three more games in December, to bring my year-end total to 35 or more. (Chrono Trigger doesn't count.) If I accomplish this, I'll permanently remove all but a select few retro games from the 2009 Backlog list (mostly GBA and PS1 games).

Finally... Last month I said I wanted to give more of an idea of what I wanted to do with the LJ. The bottom line, really, is that I don't know. I've really stopped doing a lot of game-based thoughts, and eleven months later, the whole "division of content" thing has turned out to flop hard. I figure that, to do daily updates, I have to make them as easy as possible to do... which I am going to try to do, of course, but that means this journal might wind up being a "sometimes" thing. I might start locking entries a bit more often, to give me a bit more freedom with what I say (because I don't much care for blasting out personal stuff unprotected) but the gaming and anime focus here might get diluted a bit. Really I went about this the completely wrong way; this should have been the personal news site, and the main page should have been where I did my geekery. Ah well.

There's no anime report this month, folks, because I didn't watch any. I saw just enough Bleach to realize that it had to go; it's just not my cup of tea right now, and the manga is starting to look like it's going to drag on forever without any progression or point. In any event, I should be back here before or around Christmas. Ciao until then, folks.

Hey, so, we've got a bit more anime to cover this past month. No fancy pants intro this time, let's just ( get to what was seen in October... )

Don't let this bind me or anything, given that I'm going to be writing a crapload here in the next month to month and a half, but I think I'm going to take a stab at Bleach set 1 next. At the very least it will give me a much-needed injection of raw mantosterone before I go back into the weepies with Air and Moon Phase. And yes. Bleach creates words for sheer hot-bloodedness, like "mantosterone" and "testicutude". It is that damn shonen.

As for purchases this month, I might get around to picking up the first box for School Rumble Season 2, but I'm trying to reduce my purchases for the time being, for a very good reason.

Finally... I tallied up the amount of unwatched anime I have on my shelf. The running time for everything that I have planned to watch, counting a couple of re-watches, is just under a week. That's a week straight, as in just shy of 168 hours, doing absolutely nothing else. Granted, if I drop a couple of long-form rewatches off, I save maybe a day or so, but that's still a hell of a lot of anime to watch through. I've been trying to pare that down bit by bit, watching a disc a night here and there, skipping openings and closings; but the fact is that, up until recently, I was getting new series faster than I could watch them. I set up a schedule for the start of the year, assuming that I would spend weekends watching series all the way through, and that still carried me through March. Ordinarily, the answer would be simply to stop buying anime. The problem lies in that the second-hand market for games is a bit stronger than for anime, and games tend to be readily available for far longer than anime and manga do. Anime literally can be a blink-and-you-miss-it scene, too-- how many times have I said, "I'll get it when the box comes out" only to find that the box might not be coming (I lucked out, seriously, with Fate and Shana in that regard)? Given that the anime market is a bit more volatile, I'll probably be stopping game purchases come the first of the year and reducing anime purchases to a minimum until and unless I clear out the backlog a bit more.

Catch you all later.

Well, here we are. Did you guys have a good month? I sure did-- got through a game or two that's been sitting on my shelf for too long. So, let's take a look at ( what was finished in October... )

Like last month, November is Special, being National Novel Writing Month. As such expect my gaming time to go down to whatever comes right before zero. Granted, if I'm somehow done early, or if I'm just burned out on writing for the weekend, I'll likely play something-- probably Disgaea, as it's a long enough haul by itself.

There's really only a handful of ( games coming out in November worth mentioning... )

Let's take a look at the current numbers:
Overall List: 30 completed of 51, 58.8% (UP 6.0%, was 52.8%, Goal 40%) with 21 remaining.
Prioritized List: 30 completed of 41, 73.2% (UP 4.9%, was 68.3%, Goal 50%) with 11 remaining.
2008 Goal: 30 completed of 25, 120% (UP 8%, was 112%, Goal 100%) with 0 remaining (Perfect Clear Accomplished).

Finally... I took another look at the 2009 Backlog, since last month, and (though I discussed this in brief on the main site) came to what I think might be the best way to handle things. See, I ranked a game's priority on the list pretty arbitrarily. There was little to no rhyme or reason as to which games would be considered "high" priority or "low". Because of the caprice with which I assigned my list, I wound up not paying the slightest bit of attention to it. I wanted to play games that were more recent, but which had been somehow assigned to the slow lane. It was, to say the least, frustrating. Anyway, the new rule is that games on systems older than the current generation (with the exception of the PS2) are automatically relegated to the slow lane, and that I'm going to make a greater effort to follow the guidelines of that priority system. I also changed the other column in my list from "quick clear" to a more sensible at-a-glance look to see what games were on portables and what were not. Hopefully, I'll be able to take greater charge of what I'll be playing.

Wednesday, we'll take a look at the anime I watched over the past month. At some point I'll try to detail what's going to happen with this here LJ... probably by December. Sorry for staying quiet so long.

...yeah. Nothing. Sorry.

I did take a second look at Shakugan no Shana, and in all honesty I think I was just in a bad mood when I first watched it. Shana's still bitchy, but that's because she's still planted firmly on the tsun end of tsundere. At the very least, it's playing out in a different manner than the novels-- which is good, because this looks to be far more interesting. Also, Rosario + Vampire is turning out to be an interesting manga, but I don't have enough time to go over it right now. Long story. Anyway, I'll try to have a stronger writeup next month.

So this month wound up being dominated by one game and one game alone. Fortunately, I managed to get through it and a couple others, so ( here's what moved to the completed column in September... )

Those of you exclusively on the LJ side are largely unaware of this, but every October I organize a little "game rush" thing based on a theme. Last year it was with Pokemon games and was, appropriately enough, entitled "Poketoberfest". This year, however, we have a few more participants-- but since we're predominantly in a Zelda mood, the month has been dubbed "Octorok". You can check out the loosely-defined rules on the TFO.net forums (the thread is here), but don't feel that you have to follow any strict dogma or anything. Just pick a game, start on October 1st, and try to get through it before Halloween.

It's not that October doesn't have games I want to play. Quite the contrary, Little Big Planet hits near the end of the month, literally the same week as Star Ocean PSP-- oh, and Sam and Max Season 1 for the Wii. But I've made a conscious decision that I'm not doing myself any favors by making the 2009 Backlog larger at a far faster rate than I'm completing them. I'll probably make a firm decision on it closer to the end of the year, but as of right now I don't think I have any new purchases planned until December at the very earliest (except Star Ocean, which is more a political purchase than anything).

Speaking of the Backlog, how about those numbers?
Overall List: 28 completed of 53, 52.8% (UP 5.6%, was 47.2%, Goal 40%) with 25 remaining.
Prioritized List: 28 completed of 41, 68.3% (UP 4.2%, was 64.1%, Goal 50%) with 13 remaining.
2008 Goal: 28 completed of 25, 112% (UP 12%, was 100%, Goal 100%) with 0 remaining (Perfect Clear Accomplished).
Quick Play Count: 7 uncompleted Quick Play games.

Finally... I hinted at this before the numbers, but the size of the Backlog is starting to worry me just a tad. At last count, I'll be starting 2009 with close to at minimum 70 games untouched or unfinished, and that fails to take into account that this last quarter most certainly has a few games I want to get, to say nothing of 2009's promises. Now, earlier on I had said that I wanted to try to have one portable and one home game going at once, which is a reasonable goal. The problem is that, because there's no navigation path via buses from my house to my place of work (currently) that does not include a mile walk up the steepest hill in Robinson Township, I don't actually get to use my portable machines as portable machines. If I had a bus ride each day, that could be two hours where I relax and work on that game, on my way home to the main game. Instead I'm unproductively stuck in traffic for two hours each day. My issue isn't so much the length of the trip or the gas used (though those are also very good reasons to take public transit), but the fact that the time is usually completely wasted. I really only justify it anymore by listening to podcasts in the morning, and calling my folks in the afternoon (something that, given the schedules involved these days, would probably be far more convenient if I did it once I was home). There is a solution to the problem, of course-- well, two solutions, but I really don't want to walk up that hill-- and by February (or sooner) it won't matter anyway, but it still wears on me somewhat.

On Wednesday, the Anime Report will strike, and unless I've watched something since I wrote this, it's going to be hella short. At least I have manga to talk about. Ciao.

Last night and this morning I took a little bit of time to watch the openings or play through the first few minutes of a handful of games that have yet to be put into any of my machines. Ten games, most of them PS2 titles, were played in order to make sure I wasn't putting off something really compelling in favor of Twilight Princess, and the verdict is... below. (Ha! Figured I was going to let the only other September LJ post be a shortcut, did you? I've had these words building up for a long time and they are coming out now whether you like it or not. Well, okay, so I hope you like it, but if not that ain't gonna stop me.) Lots of cuts for this entry, so be warned.

So, each one in no particular order:

( Steambot Chronicles )
( GrimGrimoire )
( Grandia II )
( La Pucelle Tactics )
( Radiata Stories )
( Tales of Legendia )
( Tales of The Abyss )
( ICO )
( Shadow of the Colossus )
( Bioshock )

So that's the list. The Game Completed report is coming tomorrow-- I probably ought to put it up today, but there's no real rush. Just a heads-up, the Anime report is going to be really short this month, too, as I spent the majority of my time gaming, but I'll have some remarks on a couple of new manga being read. Ciao, folks.

Sorry for the profound silence here, folks, but I'm close to the end of FF Tactics A2 and I'm hoping I can get it wrapped up by the end of the weekend. I don't want to skip GASP if I can avoid it but we shall see.

Incidentally, if anyone's interested in learning these things, I was through the original FFTA in about 45 days, while A2 is at 66 days and counting. For my next trick, I'll probably do a four-year run through Disgaea.

While I didn't finish any series so far, I did encounter quite a few more series this month. Attending one of the largest anime conventions on the East Coast will do that for you. Let's dispense with the introductions ( and just get right to what I saw in August... )

Hey, I also decided to get into some more manga (at long last). I picked up the latest issues of a couple of manga anthologies, specifically Shojo Beat, Yen Plus, and (of course) Shonen Jump. (As an aside, I really don't much care for the fact that Shojo Beat prints its series in alternating pink and blue ink... it's a neat way to separate the series, but it gets really hard to read after a while.) There were a couple series in each which I really wanted to get a look at, ( and in no particular order, they are... )

September doesn't have much in the way of new releases, but near the end I'll be picking up the Avatar Book 3 box set. Everything really ramps up near the end of the year anyway, so it's probably for the best that I take it easy for a bit.

Finally... After learning that the first episode is not entirely indicative of the rest of the series, I may need to give Lucky Star another look-- I dug out the fansub disc again and set it to convert to a mobile format. Oh, and you might wonder why I would look into Yen Press with any kind of real interest. As it turns out, they're the studio translating the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels, so I figured it would be a good idea to scout them out ahead of that project. Given what I've seen of the manga and manhwa in their periodical, I can say that things are looking up. I only hope the Scrapped Princess and Kino's Journey rights die off from Tokyopop soon, because I've waited long enough on those.

I'll try to post more here this month, but... well, it's a ways off. I'll keep you all updated as more decisions are made.

What a rush: four Clears this month takes me to my initial goal of 25. There's going to be more analysis here in a moment, but for starters, let's ( take a look at August's conquests... )

I also decided to ( Abandon one game in August... )

How about we take a look at ( the plans for September's gaming... )

It's been a while since I could say this, but the ( planned purchases for Spetember are as follows... )

And just in case you were hankering for a look at this month's progress numbers:
Overall List: 25 completed of 53, 47.2% (UP 7.6%, was 39.6%, Goal 40%) with 28 remaining.
Prioritized List: 25 completed of 39, 64.1% (UP 5.8%, was 58.3%, Goal 50%) with 14 remaining.
2008 Goal: 25 completed of 25, 100% (UP 16%, was 84%, Goal 100%) with 0 remaining (3 for Perfect Clear).
Quick Play Count: 7 uncompleted Quick Play games.

Allow me to ( explain the numbers a little... )

Now, let's detail very quickly ( how the Backlog List is going to work in 2009... )

Finally... I would like to just toss off a little word of thanks to those people who are reading this and encouraging me to do this silly little endeavor. Ultimately it's a personal goal, and one which I'm probably overcomplicating greatly, but then again I over-plan anyway. I genuinely love planning and over-planning, and for me, these lists and numbers are almost as much fun as actually playing the games themselves. I've noticed that the numbers, on a long enough scale, remain more or less consistent. This basically means that I will never have "all my games completed". Most people would expect that to horrify me, but in reality it's quite comforting to know that there's always another challenge, another game, another system to learn and another story to enjoy. I did have a period where I had no games to complete, where I had sold off all but the most personally valuable titles in my collection, and it drove me crazy. I don't foresee myself being in that position again for a very, very long time to come.

I'd originally said that the Anime Report on Wednesday was going to be more interesting, but, well, I suppose it's kind of a wash now. See you then.

Sorry for the childish title, but that really about sums it up. The Otakon 2008 Report is complete and live on the main site, so enjoy.

I'm currently struggling through an overabundance of entertainment options-- leading to slacker's paralysis as I lose the ability to decide on what to do next-- but I think I'm going to put in SZS tonight and watch through some more of that before bed. Sounds fun.

The festivities for Otakon begin tomorrow, with my flight leaving somewhere in the noonish area. Yes, flight. I don't normally care for flying, but it's a fair shade cheaper than driving, and far less stressful. There will be much watching of anime and playing of games, of that you may be assured. The anime report might be the one getting the most love this month, seeing how as the majority of the games I'll be playing this month are ones which can't be completed or are too far away from being completed. If I dedicate myself to it, I could probably wrap up FFTA2, but don't count on it-- I've only put about seven or eight hours into it, and I've already claimed the remainder of August as noveling time.

One thing I am going to say is that I tried the demo of Braid (Xbox Live Arcade). Holy crap is it garbage. Now, certainly don't misunderstand me. The game itself is not unplayable by any stretch of the imagination; it's well-developed and there's no point at which you say, "This can't be done because of (technical problem x)". Mechanically, the game is solid. Aesthetically, it's gorgeous-- the animation is fluid and smooth, the artwork is glorious, and the sound is pleasant. Fundamentally, it will drive you up a wall with fury. I normally try to give developers the benefit of the doubt when they're trying to do "games as art" but this is just too god damned pretentious for me to stomach for a single second, and because of this I'm severely afraid it's going to taint whatever enthusiasm I have left for Eternity's Child (after seeing it get blasted to hell and back for gameplay issues). Maybe I'm just not getting the story-- in this case, maybe it's because the game does everything in its power to prevent me from understanding the story. There's Tim and there's a princess, and she apparently beat him with her hair. Whales Take Flight?!

Braid doesn't even bring anything interesting to the table in terms of its gameplay mechanics-- Blinx and Price of Persia did the "rewind time" thing first, and Chronotron does it far, far better. I will admit that the puzzles seem interesting at first glance, and that understanding a couple of things that aren't explained to you at all god dammit help the player to understand how to solve them. But at times it feels like the developer listened through the entire commentary for Portal, took studious notes on exactly how Valve coaxed the player along and made learning the game mechanics transparent and fun... and then said, "Well, they're retarded, I'm going to do the exact opposite!". Braid isn't hard. It is instead monolithic, unforgiving, and completely unfair.

I read some of the interviews with the developer. When he didn't make himself sound completely self-righteous and pompous, he raised the point that a game should not lead players along with hollow, meaningless rewards. He specifically mentioned gold coins or their equivalents in many games. The coins, he said, were empty rewards for little to no effort-- you simply pick them up and move on. I have no idea what he was smoking to come to the conclusion that being instant gratification was the only purpose that a well-placed gold coin could serve. Take a game like N. In that game, the only collectible objects-- in fact, the entire point of the game-- are gold. The gold serves no purpose other than being there to collect; you can exit the level without collecting all of the gold if you choose. However, going after the gold often puts you at considerable risk, particularly when the gold appears to be an easy target. The gold in this case serves as a learning tool-- you have to figure out how to get the gold without being killed, and the placement of the gold is usually a clue to help you figure out just what fancy trick the developer wants you to pull off. It's the bait that the level designer puts in in order to reinforce a concept that will come up later in the game, as well as the subtle hint giving you the insight you need to learn said concept.

I have to admit that when I read the interview with the developer of Braid, I started thinking, "Well, let's see how the whole no-cheap-thrills thing works out." Then, during the demo, I came across a level where I had to kill six enemies to get a puzzle piece of dubious value, with two of them being across a nearly impassable gap, and I realized the developer of Braid is full of something unpleasant that rhymes with "fit". Only now, an hour after I've deleted the demo, have I come up with a concept that might be close to what he's thinking of, but probably isn't-- the only other time during the demo that I 'caught on', it took me twenty trial-and-error attempts after which I basically started cursing at the screen with extreme volume.

I played I Wanna Be The Guy once already, and it infuriated me. I don't need some pretentious overblown craptacularly bad emo fanfiction screed shoved in my face every five minutes while trying to get through the developer's homage to Mystery Quest. That's about the most polite way I can sum up my thoughts on Braid. Oh, and it's overpriced. If you like it, more power to you, and I certainly won't begrudge you your enjoyment of it... just don't talk to me about it unless you want me to give you the less-polite and more profanity-laden Extended Mix of my opinion.

I did a lot of re-watching over this past month-- a bit premature, given the amount of new material I have yet to see, but when you have guests, it's not always a good idea to show them an unproven property. (Yes, Pez, believe it or not I did learn from the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna disaster.) So how about we ( go over what got gone over in July... )

You know what? I'm going to just dispense with the Watch List for the Anime Reports. I never hold myself to them, and I'd much rather be more free-form in my viewing. Still, I'm feeling Gundam SeeD a bit more, and maybe some Moon Phase or .hack//SIGN.

As for the purchase list... well, August brings me to Otakon, and you can bet I'm going to make an effort to pick up some of the more elusive boxed sets. ADV's stuff should be getting into the lower price ranges now, and Geneon's stuff is at that sweet spot between "we have to get rid of it" and "you'll never find it now"; overall, though, I really ought to consider taking another risk. Last year it was Bottle Fairy, and the "time" before it was Risky Safety. I'm wondering what exactly I could take a jump at-- maybe Rozen Maiden, or perhaps an attempt at tracking down El-Hazard finally? We shall, as always, see. Oh yeah, apparently Kanon Vol. 6 has been delayed to October. RAGE.

Finally... really, that's about everything. Nothing particularly special going on-- summer doesn't see me watching too much TV, in favor of more interactive pursuits or travel. You can be assured that next month, like April, this Report is going to be really, really long.

Catch you all whenever.

Doing this up the night before it's technically due, partly because I want to and also partly because I'm a little bored. I doubt that I'll finish anything in the next four days; if I do, they'll just have to go on the August report. Anyway...

July is a month of celebrations, and here we are at the end of it, celebrating four game clears! We're moving into a month that's traditionally been heavy with upheavals for me, so I'm not expecting being able to get through too many in August. But right now, ( let's go over what was finished in July... )

Not bad, not bad at all. Still, like I said, this month could be rough-- or it could be just fine; last year saw one of my better months in the dog days of summer. How about we take a look at ( the lineup for August's time-passing... )

While money is still somewhat tight, I'm in better shape then I was before. While there are still no planned purchases, August is a convention month, so I might be persuaded to pick something up at Otakon. Maybe.

Fancy a look at the Backlog numbers? I thought you might:
Overall List: 21 completed of 53, 39.6% (UP 7.5%, was 32.1%, Goal 40%) with 32 remaining.
Prioritized List: 21 completed of 36, 58.3% (UP 9.7%, was 48.6%, Goal 50%) with 15 remaining (17 exempted).
2008 Goal: 21 completed of 25, 84% (UP 16%, was 68%, Goal 100%) with 4 remaining.
Quick Play Count: 8 uncompleted Quick Play games.

Finally... June saw the start of the endgame for the Reclamation List, and July saw the beginning of the end for the Backlog Project. I've reached the first goal for the Backlog, clearing 50% of the games I declared as "high priority". By my best estimation, if I manage to get one more Clear, I'll meet the 40% overall completion goal for 2008. (I've already put together the 2009 Backlog list; not counting anything from this year that's unfinished on New Year's Day, I have 31 titles there even now.) What's more, getting the last four Clears needed for the Resolution Goal would put me well over the limits for both the Overall and Prioritized lists. Far be it from me to rest on my laurels, though; I'm taking this train to its end, and nothing's going to stop me. Ultimately, I want to try to push myself to 30 Clears by the end of the year-- with the better part of five months left, I think I could do it. Dare me to try?

Catch you folks on Wednesday with the Anime Report.

Because Bert and Ernie were not nearly awesome enough.

Okay, folks, I'll try to make this quick. I have not forgotten about the Love Hina ficlet I owe to prevenger, so expect that at some point next week (the biggest hurdle is getting Shinobu to stay in character... the temptation to have her go crazygonuts is too strong, and wouldn't work with what I have in mind anyway). Also of note, no writing's been done on Harvesting Blueberries since, oh, June. That's bad.

Two weeks from right now I'll be at Otakon, relaxing with friends and enjoying what could possibly be the most peaceful time of the year for me. Yeah, there's always a lot of chaos surrounding it, but in all honesty it's a time when I can really let the world fall away and just do my own thing. I don't get times like that terribly often. It's the getting to that point which is going to be interesting, and with any real luck I'll have accomplished a little bit more in terms of "real work" than I have right now.

I don't have much in the way of plans for this weekend; next weekend is GASP, and the weekend after that I'm out of here. So time is at a bit of a crunch point from now until then. My nights after work will likely be consumed with the usual efforts of getting this place respectable before I leave, assuming I don't decide to slack off and/or write. Or watch anime! I haven't sat down to do that since Rick left. I really ought to do that-- otherwise the Anime Report next week is gonna be really slim.

That's all I got. Until and unless there's a Livejournal client for the iPhone, updates here may be a bit more infrequent. I'm no longer in the habit of carting the Basroil around unless I know or hope I'm going to be doing some writing-- it's still coming with me to Otakon, of course, but it's not something I'm tied as much to anymore.

Ciao for now, folks.