When ever I play a really good game I can't shut up about it. Nobody can come for a visit without getting a tour through my latest discovery.

This is even more true when I know that person is sure to be interested in the game for some reason.

I've never been a good teacher though, as I lack patience. This sometimes hurts my demonstrations.

This happened when I was trying to get my father to play KOTOR. He plays games, and he was a real sucker for old school adventure games. However, I put him off the game by trying to teach him to much at the beginning. He felt it was just all to complex.

Now 2 years later or so, after I've given it a few more tries, he is finally playing it. Playing it, and loving it, just as I knew all along.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but this give me great satisfaction. Not as much as if he had played it when I initially presented the game to him, but still great satisfaction.

It must be about sharing the experience. I thoroughly enjoy talking about games with other gamers. This might also be why so many gamers play multiplayer games exclusively or almost exclusively these days. It's instant experience sharing. Also good company sometimes as well.

I still love good single player games though. But sharing the experience is still better :)

As every gamer knows, the big sports of the future will take place in the cyberworld. I myself believe this could happen today, just as long as someone would start showing cyber competitions on mainstream TV.

We've all heard stories about how popular Starcraft is/was on Korean TV, allthough I never bothered to check how true it was.

Each online game has it's own community. I can't remember how many matches I watched live online while I was playing TFC or downloaded demos of at a later time. In the end I spent more time watching demos, reading websites and forums, or talking to other players online than I actually spent playing.

I've talked about the media in relations to games before. I think it's quite clear they won't come up with the idea to show cybersports just on their own. They will certainly need some help, after all most reporters seem to believe games are nothing more than something you can use to market some more fear. But I can tell you right now, if you put this on TV people will watch. It's as simple as that.

Gamecaster seems to be one logical step in that direction. http://www.gamecaster.com/promo.html

Let's not forget how silly the reality TV fad has become.I'm sure most viewers would welcome something new, something fresh, hey something fun. I wonder if rounds would be shortened in order to squeeze more advertising in :). Nah, I don't wonder, I am sure.

Now, you may wonder what games would be most likely to succeed on TV. I think it's obviously fps games. They are action packed and easy to understand for beginners.

Who of the popular games of today would get selected really doesn't matter, allthough I myself prefer to watch games that don't aim for reality. I always thought TFC (or any other TF version for that matter) would make an excellent TV sport, as it has a goal that is similiar enough to most regular sports (cap a flag isn't that far from scoring a goal is it?), and complex enough in nature not only to captivate new viewers, but also to keep them coming back for more. But hey, I would watch a Quake DM on TV any day over Bachelor or Keep your house clean or whatever the great new reality TV show might be called.

Even if "just gamers" would sit down to watch in the beginning, it would still be a success, since "gamers" isn't just some strange minority group any more.

Ok maybe that should read "To play, or not to play" but since I've heard it's not politically correct anymore to use the word gamer, of course I have to stretch to somehow fit that word, or any remotely related version of it everywhere.

But my problem lies with games. I don't seem to be able to keep myself interested in any games these last weeks. I've started playing Quake 4, CoD2, The movies, (and HL2 DM, and HL2 CTF online) and even tried re-running some old ones.

But for some reason I am not drawn to any of those games. At least not long enough to actually finish them. I could barely finish one season of FM 2006, and that's a game famous for it's heroin like addictiveness.

This is the reason my blog posts are getting less and less frequent, and why the last one wasn't even games related.

Either I am getting "to old to play", or games aren't as appealing as they used to be. I know if I fired up HL2 once again I would enjoy it though, so my bet is it's a bit of both.

Everybody loves Google. Everybody loves Gmail.

There is an annoying bug in Gmail though (and Google as well). It doesn't recognize dots. For example, my Gmail address is www.D10.is@gmail.com. But if you send an email to wwwD10is@gmail.com I still get the mail. In this case it doesn't matter, but what if my address was something like john.j. I would then get the mail sent to johnj wich someone else might own.

The same bug is in fact active in Google search engine. It doesn't recognize dots at all. For some reason Google is convinced "." equals " " (empty space)

So, if you search for www.D10.is you get a reference to the website at top, as you should, but if you search for D10.is you get nonsense as it is mistranslated to D10 is (something something). This is true even when entering the string "D10.is".

I know for a fact Google knows about this and has for years, as I've talked to some of their staff about it. They refuse to fix it, as they seem to believe this is a feature rather than a bug. This can't be true regarding Gmail though.

Article about the bug

I did a brief search of mods for HL2. Didn't find anything new. Anything new that's out yet at least.

I've fooled around with Garry's mod, and enjoyed it. I was hoping to try out some multiplayer mods, now that there is over a year since the game was released. Are there any playable multiplayer mods out there?

While searching I suddenly remembered ToonLife. Back in 2003 I created a website for a mod team who were starting work on a mod for HL2, called ToonLife. It looks like the site hasn't been updated since... I guess the mod a stillborn.

Should I kill the site or do you still plan on releasing the mod?

You can't include a [ ' ] in a blog topic? Doesn't it mean you can't write proper English?

Blizzard faces a lawsuit from Chinese parents, who say World of Warcraft caused the death of their son.

Then comes more info regarding this:

Dead Chinese Gamer Wasn't A WoW Player

But it's just more juicy to blame the big hit mmo game, isn't it? It's still to weird for me that it's even possible to sue someone else for your own stupidity. Since when has it become a common standard that everyone else but the parents are responsible for a kids upbringing?

The masses are in a need of some games education. The only info they get is from some self declared experts, who most of the time don't have a clue.

I am growing seriously tired of the current status of this scene. Can we please patch it people. At least movie it to version 1.0 and out of the beta phase.

I've written a few posts on this subject. Wee87 posted an excellent addition.

Gamespot is getting truly paranoid, it seems I can't even add links to my post now, so go ahead and copy this to your address bar: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24202303&user=Wee87
(Or click on Wee87 in the right sidebar)

Where is this discussion headed? Doesn't look to me like it has a logical destination by any means. At least not the part that takes place in mainstream media.

Games related obviously.

I've had an unfortunate run the last couple of months when it comes to hardware. I bought 1 gb ram (2x512) because I couldn't find my other chips after moving (had been fooling around with the comp just before moving, so I just put the ram "in a very good place" when packing) and had been running only 512 ram. Which is just not enough as we all know.

Anyway, this ram of course had a lifetime warranty. This was good, because 1 chip instantly burned over as soon as I booted up my machine. As if this wasn't bad enough, the other one didn't work either!

Now, as the guy in the store told me when I went to return the ram, this is statistically impossible. So it had to be my fault somehow. He then told me the story of how I must have tried to force the ram down the wrong way :D

The end result, he paid me back half of the price. Anyway, I just put in the new ram (1x1024 because the slot that got burned doesn't look good) which I put in the primary of 3 slots. It runs perfectly. However, the old 512 doesn't work in the other unburned slot. So it seems I am stuck with a mobo that has only 1 ram slot.

The other bad news is that my 19" inch monitor freaked out as well, so I am stuck using (a much older yet still working) 15" one. This is of course not the ideal setup for games, nor work for that matter.

I've been planning for ages to get my hand on a combo monitor (serves at both your regular lcd computer monitor as well as a tv) but those are hard to get. Manufactors just can't keep up with the consumers. With any luck, I should get one in early Feb.

Well, that was my most recent hardware problems story, great fun eh?

This guy is weird

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/reader_review.html?id=153688

This one is worse, he needs some pills:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/reader_review.html?id=228585

This one has serious mental problems:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/reader_review.html?id=228585

This one tries to use some logic but fails miserably:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/reader_review.html?id=228585

This one actually has a point, but takes it way to far:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/reader_review.html?id=218111

This one finished the game in 9 hours and then complains about lack of story, how extremely amusing stupidity.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/reader_review.html?id=205731

And there are more to be found here if you like a good laugh:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/readers.html?page=1

My question is, do those guys expect to be taken seriously?