Category: Editorial

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The PSN Outage and Gamer Entitlement

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Earlier today, I got into a rather lengthy argument on Twitter with a good friend of mine over the current PSN outage. For those of you living under a rock in the Australian outback, the Playstation Network went down last Wednesday and has been down ever since. PS3 owners have been up in arms for days, demanding information.

The timing of the outage is horrible for Sony, coming during the week of three major game releases that all use online functionality. Gamers who purchased SOCOM 4, Mortal Kombat, and/or Portal 2 are understandably perturbed that they can’t get online with their new games, but the outage also affects all online-capable PS3 games, the Qriocity service and the Playstation Store. As the outage continues, gamers are becoming more and more upset, lighting up the internet with complaints.

Sony initially identified the source of the outage as an “external intrusion”, and let gamers know that they shut down the services in order to identify the breach and determine a course of action for fixing it. This backed people off for a day or two, but then began the complaints of Sony’s vagueness in identifying the problem to consumers.

On Saturday afternoon, Sony posted the following update to the Playstation Blog:

“We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security. We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available.”

This time, gamers were not appeased. Since this post, people have been complaining about every aspect of how Sony has been handling this situation, but primarily about the perceived lack of details regarding the process of restoring PSN service. Many feel that Sony should be providing more information – on any number of fronts – and that we as gamers and Sony consumers are entitled to more information. But are we actually entitled to anything?

Absolutely not.

First, people want to know what caused the outage. Of all of the different aspects of this issue that people are complaining about, this is the least valid, and least likely to get answered in any meaningful way. Gamers don’t need to know exactly what caused the issue, and Sony is under absolutely no obligation to publicize that information. If the problem was internal to Sony, releasing that information does them no good whatsoever, and if the problem truly was caused by a breach, then that information just points other hackers in the direction of a successful hack.

Sony has to be very careful with what information they release, and whom they release it to. It is fair to say that the PSN is a selling point of many products, and that a lack of the PSN would constitute the removal of a feature integral to those products. This argument would be valid, if Sony were permanently removing the PSN. But they’re not – it’s just an outage, caused by external forces out of Sony’s control, which is something everyone should expect with any service. Sometimes shit happens.

Besides, Sony is still smack dab in the middle of dealing with this crisis. If their info is to be believed (and we really have no reason to disbelieve them), they’re working around the clock to restore service and plug the holes, lest another incident occur and cause another extended outage. Why should any of us expect to be spoon fed information about their processes? Giving gamers minute-by-minute updates of their progress would do nothing but open them up to further scrutiny by a community of people who have no real knowledge of the problem. They’ve told us they’re working on it, and that’s what we need to know.

Similarly, people are bitching that Sony has not offered any kind of timetable for the return of the service, and are vilifying Sony for it. This is like saying “My favorite restaurant closed down because someone blew up their kitchen with a pipe bomb, but the owners aren’t telling me how long it’ll take to fix or when they’ll reopen, SO FUCK THEM.”

I’m going to sound like a broken record here, buy how are they even supposed to have a timetable? Building an infrastructure like this from scratch takes months, if not years, and rebuilding, testing it, determining a re-launch strategy, and re-launching it is not going to be an instant (or even fast) process. They’re not just deciding to flip the switch mid-stream to sate our hunger for gaming – they’re going to put the service back up when they’re damned good and sure that they’ve done everything humanly possible to ensure that we, their consumers, don’t have to endure something like this again.

Then there’s the question of compensation. Most of the complaints lie along the lines of “What are you going to do for me?”. I won’t deny that Playstation owners are probably due some sort of compensation for lost time. As I said before, the PSN is an advertised feature and a selling point for the console and a great many games. Playstation Plus subscribers have the most valid complaint, since they actually pay for the service directly and can’t partake. Is now the right time to be asking that question, though?

The outage hasn’t even ended yet, and Sony likely doesn’t even know the extent of the damage or cleanup time. With the amount of work they’re doing to fix the problem – namely rebuilding the PSN from the ground up – they likely don’t even know when it’ll be fully back up and running again. If they don’t know how long the outage will last or what it will take to fix it, how exactly are they supposed to determine a proper course of compensation for the affected users?

Probably the worst part of all of this, to me, is that the gaming media are fanning the flames of discontent. Gaming journalists repeatedly lambast gamers for their hot-headedness, even to go so far as to make fun of them (us) for flying off the handle at the tiniest little thing or for making entirely uninformed complaints. This is a time when users need to calm down and back off, and the media is a) making the PR hit that Sony’s taking from this even worse than it would have already been and b) acting just as reactionary as the gamers they make fun of.

What does this all boil down to? Under normal circumstances we, as consumers, are entitled to one thing: to get the product we pay for, as advertised, and to not be misled. That’s pretty much it. Sony hasn’t misled anyone, they haven’t engaged in false advertising, and – most of all – this is all out of the ordinary. Concessions must be made for off-the wall situations such as natural disasters or hackers or other situations out of Sony’s control.

We, as consumers, are not entitled to any specific amount or frequency of information from the companies from which we consume. How Sony handles its consumer service is entirely up to them, based on how they (not we) think it will affect their business and their consumers. Once the problem is fixed and they can take a step back and look at the big picture, they’ll determine a course of compensation and let us know how they are going to try and make it up to us. It would be stupid of them not to, because we are the reason they’re in business in the first place.

Complaining about the flow of information while still in the midst of the issue displays a frustrating sense of entitlement amongst the gamers making the complaints.  If, after all is said and done and we know Sony’s post-outage course of action, you feel that Sony has not treated you the way you want to be treated as a consumer of their products, the solution is simple: stop consuming their products. That is your recourse, and it is available to every single citizen of this wonderful capitalist society.

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Review: The Sixth Gun #11

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Story by Cullen Bunn
Art by Brian Hurtt
A few months ago, The Sixth Gun took me by surprise. It was recommended by friends but back issues were scarce, and some local shops hadn’t even heard of it. When I finally picked up the first trade paperback (entitled Cold Dead Fingers) I was introduced to one of the finest examples of graphic storytelling I’ve ever run across.

The book follows Drake Sinclair, a pitiless scoundrel searching for the last of six mystical revolvers in the years following the Civil War. The first story arc told of Drake’s fight against the undead General Hume and his encounter (and eventual partnership) with Becky Montcrief, the reluctant new owner of number Six. The second arc sees Drake, Becky, and Gord Cantrell holed up in New Orleans while Drake attempts to find a way to break his unwelcome bond to the four pistols he’s already acquired.

Issue 11 concludes the arc with a hairy confrontation between the trio and Marinette of the Dry Arms, a vicious loa who enters the physical realm through one of her worshipers to pursue Drake and the guns. Cullen Bunn seamlessly blends historical and fantastical, and his use of Haitian voodoo mythology adds a welcome and unique flavor to the conflict – a flavor I’m sure many readers (myself included) were previously unfamiliar with. Brian Hurtt’s artwork is a revelation of simplicity, evocative of ‘40’s Sunday comics (Dick Tracy comes to mind). Although verging on cartoony, his artwork never detracts from the book’s gravity, and smaller details (look for the panel inside the streetcar) add an immediacy that ramps up the tension nicely.

Although not the best issue to date, #11 is still an exceptional read and it continues to be one of the best books on the market. If you’re not reading The Sixth Gun, you should be.

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Semantics Rant: Retro vs. Classic

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In weeks leading up to building Geekerific.com and recording the After The Fact podcast, I did a lot of research on the online community surrounding classic gaming. I looked at websites and forums, listened to a few other podcasts, got some information about classic gaming shows & conventions, and spent some time just checking up on what my fellow geeks were up to. In that time, I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the gaming community has no clue whatsoever about the difference between “retro” and “classic”.

Retro, by definition, refers to something that is new, but is created in an old style. The 2010 Dodge Challenger, for example, is a retro car. A 1969 Dodge Challenger, on the other hand, is a classic. A game is not retro if it’s an originally from a classic era, even if it’s being played on a new system. Playing A Link to the Past on a Wii doesn’t make it retro – it’s still a classic game. New games made in an old style (i.e., Mega Man 9 and Gradius ReBirth) can reasonably be called retro games.

Don’t call real classics “retro”. The ones we truly love are classics – the ones that got us into this silly hobby in the first place. It’s the true classics that inspire the retro games that come out now, and it’s the classics that built the foundation of the industry. Don’t confuse the two.

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Not enough time.

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When I read a part of an article that asked the reader to describe themselves in a single phrase, my immediate thought was “I don’t really have time.” As it turns out, this was not only appropriate for the situation, but a surprisingly accurate answer to the question. I’ve come to realize that the amount of time different parts of my life occupy is startlingly disproportionate to the relative importance of those parts. This isn’t a new idea, nor is it a revelation to anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed. I know that everyone, at one time or another, feels as though they’re spending too much time at work, not enough at home, and not getting shit done that they want to get done. For me, it’s the first time that it has slapped me so coldly across the face.

In 2002 I was laid off from what now qualifies as the best job I’ve ever had at a company that – at the age of 23 – I would have sworn I’d retire from. Afterward I was completely aimless – I had all but given up most of my creative pursuits because, frankly, I loved my job so much that they lost importance in my life. You’d think that losing a job like that would encourage me to pick them back up, but it didn’t. I was so distraught at the loss that any other pursuit just faded to an ugly gray-brown at the edges of my vision. That was, I know now, the point in my life when my priorities had become muddled, and I started losing sight of the things that were truly important. Priorities shifted around in my mind and my life, and my primary focus became pulling down as healthy a paycheck as I could manage.

All I could think about was how badly I needed a new job. I freelanced for a year until it dried up, then ended up getting another job through a friend. Temp work desk job, but overall pretty fun stuff, if at times monotonous. It paid the bills, which reigned as supreme priority, and so I stuck around. I spent four years working ungodly amounts of overtime and striving to get hired on full-time. I’d apply for jobs and get denied, and it would eat away at me just a bit, but somehow drive me to believe that I just needed to try harder to make it happen. Trying made me grow more angry over time, but each time I’d take a break I’d think of it as time to reset and come back with renewed vigor. By the time I reached one of those breaks in the middle of 2007, I was ready to quit (and maybe I should have). I left with the intent to decompress, and my wife and I decided to take a vacation: 9 days in the northwestern corner of Glacier National Park – the middle of nowhere. 3 days in, my mother unexpectedly passed away at the age of 59.

The next two months of my break were spent dealing with my mother’s death. By the time I returned to work, I was more frazzled than when I had left, and quickly decided that I was either getting hired right-the-fuck-away, or getting out. I started pushing, and at the end of 2007 the “dream” finally became a reality: I got hired. The job was a huge boon financially, as it roughly doubled my pay and included full benefits (holy shit! health insurance!!). I rode a wave of euphoria, again giving me a reason to ignore the fact that I still hadn’t regained my priorities. The job, in all fairness, was pretty great at the start, and I was well suited for it. It still wasn’t really what I wanted but, fuck, who cares, right?

After the glow of the first year wore off, the job got worse and worse for me; each day became a bigger bundle of frustration and apathy. I began to resent not only the job, but people I worked with and the organization that employed us all. I haven’t yet been able to determine how much of that worsening was real and how much was perception, but there are countless arguments about perception vs. reality that I could use to prove or disprove whatever interpretation I feel like supporting at the time. The key was that I was growing steadily more dissatisfied with where I was, and I couldn’t readily identify why.

Outside stresses definitely contributed: in 2008, my father told me that he had been diagnosed with ALS – Lou Gherig’s Disease – a degenerative nerve disorder that would eventually rob him of his motor skills, speech, his ability to eat and drink, and finally his life. Over the course of that single year, he went from being the strongest, most self-sufficient man I’d ever known to having to quit his vocation of 40 years, pack up shop, and move in with my wife and I so we could take care of him. 2009 was even harder, as I watched his condition deteriorate until he was beginning to lose his ability to walk, speak, and perform some simple tasks. On Christmas Day of that year, he mercifully passed away in his sleep, well before the disease could place him into the motorized wheelchair he had received just the day before. My dissolution with my job got worse and worse in the year after his death, to the point where I went home grumpy every night and woke up to a sense of dread every morning.

My mom’s death came with a shock of perspective: that time was short, and not even remotely under my control. Two-and-a-half years later, my father’s death heaped on another revelation: that I needed to use what I’ve got while I’ve still got it. I began searching in earnest for a new position, looking for any opportunity I could find just to make a change. My creative juices also picked up again, my brain shifting into high gear, pumping out idea after idea. I started writing, drawing, and designing games again. I started a podcast and a novel, and began to feel like my priorities were starting to return to their natural state, but now they no longer meshed with my time. When one’s focus shifts away from family or free time or creative projects and settles on work, time tends to warp around the career. Work time slows and every minute extends to stretch around the top of the bell curve, and “free” time rolls off the top of that curve and rockets past us, full of raised hands and screams of all the fun and happiness that we can’t seem to find the time for.

After busting ass on job interviews, I finally got that new position (at the same company), only to find that I’m still disgruntled, acutely feeling the effects of time as each minute of work leisurely ambles by. My new job is a gigantic improvement over the previous, and I (actually) love the day-to-day. The job has shown me, however, that I’d likely be disgruntled at any job that isn’t of my own creation. While you’re at the bottom of the corporate food chain, the job demands more of your time because you physically need to be there to get it done. As you rise through the ranks, the paradigm shifts so that you’re no longer required to put in extra time, but you’re expected to, whether that rule is spoken or not. And in both situations, the expectation is that the job comes first. After all, that’s what they’re paying you for, and what would you be without the corporation?

All this has finally led to me regaining my sense of priority. My job, awesome as it may be, has to begin taking a back seat to my family, my free time, and my creative pursuits. Will this lead to me having more time? Probably not. In fact, the shifting of priorities has already extended the middle of that bell curve and made me feel like I’m floundering in the quicksand of my job. It has, however, caused me to stop letting the rigors and frustrations of my workplace follow me home, and has begun to wash away that gray-brown muddle, revealing the goals underneath:

– To start a blog. DING!
– To finish my first novel by the end of 2011.
– To finish at least two of my current game designs, and potentially work on getting them published.
– To make steady progress toward one of my ultimate goals. More to be revealed on that in the future.
– To write more. All the time. Even if it’s crappy, overlong blog posts.
– To draw more.
– To design more games.
– To play more.
– To never let my priorities shift away from the things that truly matter to me again.

We’ll see how this all holds up to reality.

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Welcome!

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Welcome to my blog! If you’re wondering what it’s all going to be about, you and I are in the same boat. As with most blogs, the intent behind this is to be a (hopefully) steady stream of consciousness that will (again, hopefully) be entertaining to some degree. A little rundown of my brain-pan might help define what things I’ll post about, and the categories I intend to separate everything into:

First and foremost, I’m a geek. If there is a geeky pursuit, I’ve probably done it, primarily in the form of games. I play games, and that occupies most of my free time. I play video games, card games, roleplaying games, board games, poker (lots of poker…), and I’ve even spent a good chunk of my life LARPing and playing live-combat games. I’m a gamer, in both the purest and broadest sense of the term.

I’m also a husband, a game designer, an artist, and a writer. I’ve just finished the first draft of my first full-length novel, and I’ve got several traditional game designs in the works.

The posts on  my blog will be split into one of the following categories:

EDITORIAL, which is further divided into:

Thoughts:
thinker_feature

Rants:

and
Reviews, which doesn’t have it’s own image because it’ll usually be tied to one of the categories below.

ENTERTAINMENT, which is further divided into:

Books (including my own):

Comic Books:
comics_feature
and
Movies:

and GAMING, which is further divided into:

Poker:

Video Games:

and
Traditional Games:

Hopefully you’ll find it as entertaining as I find it cathartic. I’m not here to take you on a journey, I just plan on putting myself out there and seeing what people think. Let me know, okay?

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Hardware Review: Super Famicom Classic Controller

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I’ll start this simply: If you own a Wii and play Virtual Console titles, you must own this controller.

The Super Famicom Classic Controller is exactly what it’s name implies. It’s a Wii extension controller (it plugs into a Wii Remote) designed to exactly replicate an original Super Famicom (SNES) controller. It is, in every way, a Super Famicom controller. The control pad and shoulder buttons all have the same squishy feel, the face buttons have the same responsiveness, and it’s even made of the same plastic.

For Virtual Console games, this controller just feels right. The buttons aren’t quite as clicky as the standard Classic Controller, and the control pad isn’t quite as responsive. Normally, those would be condemnations, but in this case it’s a benefit. For a number of classic titles, the Classic Controller is almost too responsive. When playing a fast game like F-Zero, it actually becomes significantly more difficult with the faster responses and looser control pad on the Classic. Remember, these games were originally designed around the (comparitively) mushier controllers of the era, so using an updated controller on them isn’t always the best thing.

That is not to say that the Super Famicom controller feels slushy or in any way inadequate. Quite to the contrary, actually; it only took me a minute or two to fall back right back into that familiar feeling from my youth. In every way, this controller feels like the real thing, and that feeling is amazing when you’re trudging through the Mushroom Kingdom or working your way through Dracula’s Castle. (On a side note: I found out after getting this that the control pad and button placement on the new Classic Controller is identical to the placement on the SNES controller, in spite of the different overall shape. Who knew?)

Here’s the catch: This controller was only released as a Club Nintendo bonus offer in Japan. It was never released for retail sale, nor was any version of it ever released in the States. In order to get one, you’ll probably have to resort to eBay, where they run between $50 and $65. That can be a bit of a wallet-shock, and I haven’t found one cheaper anywhere yet.

That’s $50 well spent, though, specially if you’re into classic games and download a lot of VC titles. Admittedly, playing non-SNES games with it was a little odd, at first (playing Sonic with a SNES controller is… interesting), but it’s still head and shoulders above the standard Classic Controller. If you see a lot of plumber jumping in your future, do yourself a huge favor and find one of these today!

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iPhone Review: Video Game Trader

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Which games do I own again?

So you’ve started collecting games and before you know it, you’ve amassed so many titles that you can’t remember whether or not you’ve purchased a title. Eventually, you’ll find yourself purchasing duplicates and unless it’s an especially cheap purchase or a variant, that’s not good for your wallet or your collection. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to start cataloguing your games. There are numerous ways to accomplish this: the spreadsheet, the database, the checklist and the portable app.

The Video Game Trader iPhone app can be a useful base tool for cataloging your collection while out on the road. The app covers most systems released in the US and lists two prices per title: loose and complete. These prices are only updated once a month so they are often not completely accurate but can at least give an idea of an acceptable price to pay. The prices listed will generally at least give an idea of the rarity and desirability of a title so that you can decide whether or not the game is worth the given price. I rarely use this feature as I tend to pay the price that I think a title is worth based on experience but in checking it right now, I’d say the prices are fairly accurate if you plan on using normal eBay prices (I wouldn’t recommend it). In checking, I chose three of my favorite NES titles and compared the prices within the app to the current eBay prices (I know, I know… I hate eBay. But it currently has a broad selection of these particular titles from which to pull an average so I’m doing it).

First, the prices from the app:

Wall Street Kid: $10.75 (C) and $5.00 (L)

Wizards & Warriors: $18.50 (C) and $7.00 (L)

Uninvited: $31.25 (C) and $17.00 (L)

Averages on eBay including auction prices + shipping cost:

Wall Street Kid: $12 (C) and $6 (L)

Wizards & Warriors: $20.00 (C) and $6.00 (L)

Uninvited: $45.00 (C) and $20.00 (L)

The most important part of the app for my purposes is the “Have It/Want” it feature. This addition lets you mark whether or not you have a title in your collection or if it is a title you are currently looking for. The main drawback is that you can only mark items as “loose” or “complete”. This causes quite a few issues when your collection has grown to a point where you can no longer remember the state of your games. For instance, I have several games that are semi-complete (either missing a box but has the instructions or missing the instructions but owning the box). I also wish that I could tag each item with a phrase so that I would know the condition of the item. I have several items that I would love to find replacements for so having a tag of “replace box” or “rental manual” would be extremely helpful.

Currently the app has a price of $4.99 in the app store and, while I can’t recommend it wholeheartedly, if you’re looking for a basic app to catalog your loose carts, this might do the job for you. I contacted the developer and he has stated that they might add a note feature in the future but that an update is not currently in the works. If this “tag” update is ever released, this app would become one of the best tools a collector on the road could have.