Tuesday, August 26, 2008

What about me?

Writers block is the enemy of every professional tosser with ink in their pen and a blank page on their desk. To update this and make it a 21st century comment perhaps it should be 'Writers block is the enemy of every professional crybaby with a livejournal and their fingers hovering over the keyboard'


Now if I was someone important, i.e. a professional analyst, or a renowned critic on a specific subject, then anything I say would be eaten up for breakfast by the reading public. Alas since I am a nobody writing mostly on what is still deemed a 'niche' subject by the televised media the amount of people who will take my words to heart is minimal at best, and non-existent in reality. I've been bugged by this for several months now, but after being knocked back by my own teacher about not following 'standards' in writing I feel the need to bitch about it discuss the matter.

When starting up with reviews for Economical Gamer, the final review scheme was still undecided and open for discussion. Now it doesn't take a famous analyst to figure out that opinions on the current standards of game reviews point towards the entire system needed an update past the number based metacritic scores. Since the site is based off getting your moneys worth with games it seemed like a great chance to create a unique review system (or completely ripoff Kotaku's new setup ,whichever one is easier). Obviously this didn't happen and the site went with a traditional number rating, but hey who am i to complain? I'm still writing reviews and such so it would seem unfair to say the reviews all suck.

Next complaint stems less from the interwebs and instead from my own classroom. Complaints about my writing course almost completely passing up the subject of online writing/publications now withstanding, after almost a year in the course it feels less like 'developing your own writing' and more like 'learn to please the teacher'. Despite been given the OK to take a fictitious satirical view on space travel for a crummy travel piece (which I have no real passion for trying to publish) I still receive a talk about having to not trying to do anything different when writing for an audience. At least thats what I think teacher was trying to say, all I heard was "crush any unique creativity in your writing and stick to the standards you pretentious douche".

So here I am stuck in mundane writing position with nothing to brag about. But what do I have to do in order to make it 'big'? Obviously its either conform to the point where standard writing is referred to as 'doing a Steven .J' or do something so incredibly original that its concept will be stolen and driven into the ground faster than you can say Bullet Time. As a starting point for the latter, feature writing seemed like an easy way to express some ideas that are not typically expressed in gaming journalism. One heavily required point for most of my features that are still in the 'early planning' phase are interviews and comments from various important peoples/peoplettes. Of course after a couple months trying to get in contact with said people I now know that these features are a lost cause, since none of them care to return emails or messages I'm gonna have to face dropping these features and look at different ideas.

Now there are still ways for me to move my writing forward. Obvious methods would be to move past this small blog and create a whole website dedicated to sticking it to conventions and 'the man'. But since Eegra does that with more proficiency then I could ever hope to display by myself I'll leave that to those magnificent bastards. Then theres a more unique conspiracy to write/design my own video game; guaranteed press from any site claiming to give a damn about the 'indi' crowd and a promotion into the somebody crowd. However then reality slaps me in the face and I realize that I know nothing about coding up my own game, and my ideas would be impossible with a budget of $23 sitting in my bank account.

Guess all I can do is conform to the masses for a while longer while crying over a livejournal, fingers floating just 3mm over the keyboard letters D U M B A S S (yes there are 2 fingers over the letter 'S')

Monday, August 18, 2008

School's in session, should've learned my lesson...

Nothin' quite like a GTO marathon to stay awake instead of sleeping. Maybe its because I'm sick of constantly sleeping in and running late for morning classes, or that I'm just trying to become an insomniac for attention but I'm finding it pretty easy to stay awake instead of crawling into bed at 1-2am and trying to wake up in 6 hours. Of course by the time the sun starts setting I'm just about beat and ready to crash, but since I don't have morning classes on Tuesday IT'S ALL GOOD!

Anyways, its not like I'm doing anything important on Mondays. Oh sure I go to class and pretend to give a damn about whatever books we are looking at (this week its On The Road) but its just sitting in a chair for 3-4 hours. Not very fun, yet I still show up for every class. Sometimes it would be fun to have a teacher like GTO, but at the same time political correctness would keep this guy locked up forever. Note to self: If I ever become a teacher, make sure to be at least half as awesome as Onizuka!

Anyways, new stuff new stuff....well, I'm buggered! Oh yea, IGN got my hopes up for Madden 09 All-Play being available last week only for EB and GameFAQS to strike me down and tell me to wait a whole extra week. Since I'm not planning to pick up any new games until Force Unleashed, this was supposed to pass the time (and give me something new to review) for the week, but now I'll have to fall back on unpublished reviews. And if that fails, just download a couple small WiiWare games to bitch about. Sometimes it would be nice to have a 360/PS3 just to have some variety since WiiWare hasn't really won me over yet with the exception of Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People.

All hope is not lost though peoples! If lady luck is on my side I may be seeing paying holiday work within the next month or two. This of course means $$$ for my own PSP (finally stop borrowing other peoples) and maybe a PS3 if the price is right. Following some new toys, new games to expand my reviewing prowess and make me look more professional and less like a Nintendrone. Gotta look the part this week for the interview so its time for a haircut and to pull out the fancy suit.

Well thats it I guess for this little while. Its just after 3am and Nao is just entering the GTO anime! Why couldn't real life have super hot school nurses like in anime...

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Where the hell did this shadow come from!?!?

Google's new street view is pretty awesome, but the fact that they are trying to hide the googlecar is pretty funny. At other places they just smeared black over the car image, but they were dedicated about covering up their tracks at my place. Next time they should be sure to either do their stalking at night or blotch out the shadows to.

Anyways today I feel generous enough (as in I already did it and I'm looking for something to put on this blog) to share my gaming setup with the world. Its nothing to jaw drop over in this modern day of HD sets with Surround sound, but for something in my own bedroom I can't really complain. Enough talk, NOW TIME FOR PICTURES!

If anyone is interested I'll break down the feature list of the whole thing.

- 51cm Sanyo flatscreen television. Settled on a non-HD set for the sake of my Guitar Hero games on PS2 which lack decent HD calibration. Couldn't really go much bigger than this because of the wooden cabinet being pretty small but it gets the job done nicely.

- Slim Playstation 2. Not much to really say here so I'll just run off the list of stuff related to the PS2. Two Dualshock2 controllers, two controller extension cables, two 8MB memory cards (one Sony, one Devil May Cry 3 edition from Hori) and a 1MB memory card (from Futuretronics) for PS1 games and a noname brand DVD remote+reciever currently without batteries.

- Nintendo Wii. Thanks to this little contraption my Gamecube is now boxed up under my bed. Along with a second Wiimote and official component cables there are two Gamecube controllers (including a Wavebird) and a set of Bongo controllers. Also two memory cards (59 block and 251 block) for my GC saving needs.

- Otaku crap! The Japanophile in me is always kept at ease with a complete set of Great Teacher Onizuka books along with beginnings of other series such as Evangelion, One Piece and Yakitate!! Japan. Also you can see the MANY plushies/figurines from both Japanese and Western cartoons. I <3 my moogle plushie!!!

- Games!!! Obviously this is my collection. Not too shabby when you consider my budget (or lack thereof) but its still got a loooong way to go before I'm satisfied. If only I started reviewing every single game I purchased since day 1, but I'm pretty sure that would give me a portfolio to rival real writers. And we all know I'm not a real writer!

So in short, this is my 'work' over the many years. Opinions or comparisons from anyone are always welcome!