GameStop Pre-Orders DLC, How’d They Do? November 30, 2010

I’m sure many of you have seen the commercials that have been running non stop on TV since last week about the Halo Reach Map Pack.  GameStop, in a new move, has been promoting pre-order of the map pack in their stores, and for incentive they’re offering a pretty sweet exclusive avatar item, a flaming Mark V helmet.

Now, in the real world, digital purchases actually go faster if you do them from home so you can get them either immediatly or the very second they’re released.  Going out to a store to buy something is slow and cumbersome, it always has been.  You have to get in your car, drive to your destination (and enjoy all the red lights and heavy traffic in the process), wait in line behind all the customers in front of you, place your order (time to do so depends on how much the clerk actually knows about what you’re buying), scan your member card (every store’s got one these days), pay, and then finally drive home (again with the traffic and red lights).

So what is your incentive to drive out to a store to buy the very same thing (and pay the exact same amount) you could buy directly at home?  Well, there is the incentive for people who don’t use a credit or debit card, and who don’t have any spare MS point cards lying around.  There’s also the Mark V flaming helmet offer, and that’s the big one.

How did GameStop do?  Well, despite e-mailing all their members on the 18th and starting a national advertising campaign on the 19th of November, GameStop didn’t actually allow pre-orders of the Halo Reach Map Pack until the 22nd of November.  That’s a pretty big problem, espessially given the fact that the content came out TODAY on the 30th.  You only had about seven days to preorder the content.  Also, you had to buy it up front in full, no minimum payment option like with physical games.  Third, you had to be a member of their rewards program in order to preorder, and we all know how I feel about that.

Well the codes were e-mailed out at about 3:12PM EST today, some time after the content was released to Xbox Live.  Anyone buying directly from their house would’ve gotten it much faster.  Of course the Map Pack codes were not actually e-mailed out, just the code for the flaming helmet.  If you want the code for the map pack you have to log in to GameStop’s Power Up Rewards website and navigate through it to find where your code is buried.  Of course if you never bothered to register your Rewards card online, you’ll have to do that and set up your online account and games list before accessing the site.

Meanwhile I’m pretty sure anyone who wanted to buy it online had probably been playing on the maps for at least a few hours.  Also, It’s not like they’re going to run out of physical copies of a digital download, kind of defeating part of the incentive to pre-order.  Well, for those who contributed to GameStop’s experiment, enjoy the helmet, guys!

GameSpy: The Lost Network November 24, 2010

As the rest of internet was just gaining it’s foothold as a gaming portal, they already had a site.  When Microsoft announced they had the first ever cross-platform console multiplayer service, they had developed the definitive online game server browser, which was what gamers used to play on their favorite Quake, Hexen and Quake II servers.  It was called the GameSpy program and it revolutionized the upcoming PC multiplayer gaming revolution.  With the Internet no longer a detached series of BBS boards, and servers no longer needed to be accessed by directly dialing your friend’s computer, GameSpy offered the best option for selecting a multiplayer server to play a game on.

In 1999, GameSpy branched out and created their own gaming site and became the definitive location for gaming news and editorials.    They had Dave Kosak, known as “Fargo” as a staple of the site.  Every Friday he would write a new Planet Fargo, providing the tagline “Your Parents are Wrong” and covering the hilarious side of being a gaming journalist.  He published political editorials written by Solid Snake to plead with Senators to “please stop making the Metal Gear”, he moved into a mall for a whole week hoping to be the first person to own Diablo II.  But the greatest article he ever wrote was the research thesis on the heuristics to making a kick ass LAN party.  He also worked with other GameSpy members like Chris “shaithis” Buecheler, because as we all know, in comedy, you must have a straight man to make the funny man funnier.

The domination started with the Planet Sites.  Starting with Planet Quake, a news website for all things Quake, the site quickly became the definitive site for Quake news, mod updates, and commentary.  Others would soon branch out, like Planet Unreal and Planet Half-Life.  Then it started to go a little crazy.  Pretty soon there was a planet site for everything, Planet Vampire, Planet AVP, and Planet Anachronox were just a few sites that took shape among the dozens more that popped up.  There was even a Planet Daikatana (I’m not shitting you).

Then there was the E3 presence.  They dominated it.  The proud few who freely contributed their time to operate their planet sites would get free invites every year, no questions asked and no reason needed to that year’s E3 in order to cover the show.  They had a local headquarters set up in the center of the show, not only to court other developers but to provide a lounge area for their contributors to kick back and relax after checking out the show floor.  They also had David Lawrence streaming a live video webcast (unheard of at the time!), interviewing the major game developers and getting previews out to people unable to attend the show.  Anyone at the show was welcome to sit and watch the live stream as it was being broadcast, or just hang out at the makeshift GameSpy HQ for a massage and some Tony Hawk.

GameSpy was on top of the world and it was looking prosperous for everyone, and then they made the decision to merge with their biggest competitor, and it would bring about their destruction.  By 2005 the company merged with IGN.  Slowly the greatness from the site started to leak.  Loyal Planet contributors were no longer being asked to go to E3.  One by one the sites stopped being updated, yet their domains were still being renewed.  Since they were no longer supporting their Planet Sites, each individual Planet site would basically run until the contributor lost interest, and since they would not be taking on any new people, once the site’s contributors stopped (or the site broke), it would mean the end for the site.  For a while it was a network lost in time (2005 to be exact), a monument to a once great revolution.  Not too long ago, the DNS entry broke on most of them, and nowadays if you try checking out one of the sites, it’ll incorrectly redirect you to a random 404 page.

Nowadays GameSpy has become just a blip on the radar of the internet.  Microsoft and Sony both use their own personal networks to handle multiplayer with their own first party server browsers to play, making the need for a third-party game browser unnecessary on a console.  On the PC side, the side where they dominated for so long, most game developers have migrated to more comprehensive developer tools which integrate into the game and act as DRM, like Valve’s Steam or Microsoft’s Games for Windows initiative.  Fargo left the site in early 2009, but some of his old articles are still accessible.  The really old ones require some serious digging with Google.

As a former GameSpy contributor, early GameSpy adopter, and frequent Planet Fargo reader, I felt a serious connection with the company that goes beyond what I can type up on this page.  The one token I kept was the letter written for me to serve as proof of industry identification, signed by Dave “Fargo” Kosak.  I have it framed and it will always hang on my wall, an honor not even my College Degree has.  It got me into my first E3, an experience I will never forget.

Tron’s Legacy November 23, 2010

Ten years ago I was at a LAN party being held by a bunch of Open Source Users in my area.  Let me tell you something, Open Source guys REALLY know how to have a LAN.  Every few months, the Southern Connecticut Open Source User Group converted the computers in their offices to a Red Hat distribution that contained only one program, Unreal Tournament.  They also had a full projection system with surround sound able to broadcast whatever they wanted.  Since having a virtual camera on the match playing on the projector usually made everyone sick (it did, I asked) they would instead play classic movies which were staples of nerd culture.  One night in 2001, this was how I was first exposed to the movie Tron.

I’m ashamed to say that for a movie made in 1982, which has been considered by most of my compatriots as the movie which ignited the digital revolution and inspired gamers the world over, gamers who would later become game makers, I had not seen Tron until I was 16 and knew nothing at all about it.  I think I remembered seeing a few previews for it playing occasionally on the Disney Channel back when it was a premium service channel back in the early 90s, but the previews could not do justice to what the movie truly was.

This was the most imaginative depiction of the world behind the computer screen I had ever seen before.  Kevin Flynn was the guy I wanted to be at 16 years old, a cocky self-taught computer genius and he had something happen to him that is an unfortunate reality of such a cutthroat business, his work was stolen from him.  But he wasn’t going to take it sitting down, he was going to do everything he could (legal or otherwise) to prove he was the original designer.  He just had no idea that he was tangling with an artificial intelligence capable of putting him on the game grid he created.  Now the best gamer in the world is forced to play the games he created from the inside or die.  What an epic concept.

Within no time I picked up a copy of the 20^th Anniversary DVD for my own personal home theater collection.  I think I watched the movie so much I wore the DVD out, even the second disc with the feature length making-of documentary got a lot of play.

Then in 2003 I went to my very first E3.  Twenty-one years after the release of the original Tron, I caught a glimpse of what was going to be (what I believed at the time) the closest thing to a sequel the movie Tron was ever going to get, the Tron 2.0 video game made by Monolith Productions (who later went on to make F.E.A.R.).  All of the staples of Tron were in place in the game, the art style, the actors.  I could play on a lightcycle match or match discs against viruses and intrusion countermeasure programs.  When I got the final version of the game, I played through it at least three times.  I hoped Monolith would have made a sequel (they never explained who F-Con’s CEO was), but they never did.

I’m eagerly anticipating the Blu-Ray.  Director Steven Lisburger has confirmed to the press and fans that he has finished the 2K digital restoration of the movie, and knowing that the movie was made to be viewed on 70mm film projectors could make Tron’s BD release the next major industry staple.

Then this came out.

Bring your Encom Group 7 access badges, Tron Legacy comes out December 17^th.  Flynn lives!

I Game, I’m Healthy, Live With It November 22, 2010

I read a question recently on the Halo Waypoint forums that a user asked the group how they kept healthy and kept up with the gaming lifestyle.  While I’m sure he was just asking for tips on how to keep fit and meant nothing disrespectful about it, it reminded me of all the times in my life I’ve heard people tell me if I kept playing games and didn’t exercise I’d be stupid and unhealthy.  Well, you’re reading this article off of a webpage I designed and maintain myself, so I’m not stupid, but believe it or not, I am actually quite healthy as well.

If there’s a smaller slightly-less annoying sister to the “all video games are evil and will make you violent” crowd, it’s the “video games will make you fat” crowd.  I’ve had it with these completely false prophets who claim to know more than I do about my own body’s health.  They claim that by not constantly doing repetitive physical activity instead of sitting for hours in front of a screen interacting with a game, coupled with a high-fat, high-calorie and high sugar fast food diet is driving this entire country into becoming an unhealthy overweight lot and only by allowing them to pass laws to protect ourselves from…ourselves because we’re too dumb to know what’s good for us (and they somehow do), can we become healthy, happy people.

Allow me to remove all the bullets from their points right now.  At 26 years old I am 5 foot 9 inches tall.  I weigh about 135 pounds and have weighed around that much since I was about 15 or so (give or take about five pounds here or there).  I do not exercise, other than regular human movements, (walking from place to place, going up and down stairs, etc) and my only recreational activities as of late (other than posting up here for all of you fine people) are watching movies, TV and playing video games.  My blood tests are perfectly fine, with no trace of diabetes.  I have perfectly fine health expectancy.

Now you’re probably going to say I probably don’t eat very much.  That’s not true, I eat and I eat plenty.  Since I can’t cook, a lot of what I eat is either ready-made ramen noodles, or food I can buy on the go (oh no, fast food).  However, it’s not all bad.  Since my mother can cook, she does make me dinner occasionally (and she makes ingredients from scratch) so I eat about a fifty percent good, fifty percent bad diet.

If half of what “health” experts said was true, I should be a 400 pound diabetic.  I’m not.  I’m sure you can see me in any of my videos, other than the fact I grow facial hair faster than Grizzly Adams I’m a healthy individual of average build.  Do they have any explanation for that?  Well I do.

The reality behind weight gain is actually all about the amount you eat on a regular basis.  The human body is quite adaptable.  If you regularly eat the same amount of food at around the same time, you will not gain any weight.  It is only when you throw a wrench into the works and heavily alter your eating habits by eating larger portions of food than you usually do, that you will start to gain weight.  Also there’s been concerns that stress and other emotional factors can affect weight gain, as the chemicals your body produces during these periods can affect the rest of your body.  This is usually why crash dieting is a bad idea, it’s unhealthy and harmful to your body.  Also any kind of physical activity you’ll do on a normal basis will maintain your body weight.  A lot of college students or city inhabitants will walk (a lot!) daily, and by continuing to do this activity their body weight is maintained.  If it’s stopped, the body will react and you may gain some weight, but it again will eventually even back out.  Also, many health experts and doctors believe genetics plays a lot in the factor of weight, although it is a debated topic.

The nanny brigade won’t tell you any of that.  Maybe they should write it all down.  Granted, I don’t drink or smoke, but that’s a separate can of worms.