So Pokemon Black/White came out and people are doing the "which one should I get" thing. I am aware of this because a number of the webcomics I read have alerted me to this.

I won't make too much fun of that because Mega Man Battle Network did the same thing for 3-6. Even though I put considerably less thought into "which version should I get", it makes me wonder. Is this sort of thing unique to Nintendo handhelds? I'm not talking about the whole special vs. regular edition. I'm not even talking about games for differing platforms that have a defining feature that the others don't such as Soul Calibur 2 or Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1/2. I'm talking about two games on the same platformthat are fundamentally the same except for one detail (Given the picture on the box, I imagine that each has an exclusive pokemon.). Has this happened for any other game on any other system?

Nov 10 edit: Microsoft listened to the people/developers complaining and have put the indie games section back in the MS games section. So cheers to them.

Recently, a call went out to write an E-mail protesting the new location of the Xbox Indie Games marketplace after the new update. You can read the blog here:

http://www.gamespot.com/users/TechnologoDoom/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25881058

I would do this if only because a 60 second E-mail seems like little effort even if I only have two games. (I would also point out here that writing or typing actual physical letters are a far more effective way to protest this. E-mail campaigns rarely work and are only slightly above internet petitions in effectiveness. If you truly want something changed, a company will pay far more attention to 100 letters than they will to 1000 E-mails or 100K Internet petition signatures simply due to the perceived effort behind the differing attempts.)

But MS logic can't really be denied ........ at least, not enough to immediately scream for it to be put back. I found the XBIG marketplace quickly but I was looking for it so that might not be indicative of how many people will find it. The problem is that I wouldn't have ever looked if GS hadn't run a video of Breath of Death VII (Since then, I've bought that and Shoot1Up). Even when it was in the games section, I didn't look at it. Putting it next to the Avatar marketplace may help it. If it does, I'd be loathe to move it.

As has already been said, XBIG has more issues hindering it than it's location. The problems and potential solutions are as follows:

1) These games don't even have the permanency of Arcade games. When Live goes down, so does the game. While this means the game doesn't have to go through the ESRB, it also means that people won't be able to play the game without a connection which is a problem in that:

a) People with shaky connections will be less likely to bother with the game.

b) It puts a timeline on howlong you can play the game. When the shift goes to the 720, those Indie games will be rendered useless.

c) It encourages developers to make a game with no replay value thus lowering the quality of the final product.

Solution: Much like what happened with the Dishwasher, allow the games that are rated as the best AND have the most downloads to migrate over to Arcade. This would mean some inconvienence for the developer (Jonathan Blow has already spoken of the difficulty of creating in-game achievements) and it would have to be run past the ESRB but the exposure would be worth it. MS gets their cut from the Arcade title. Developers get even more exposure. Gamers get a game that will survive the eventual demise of 360 Live. Everyone wins.

2) Inaccurate ratings: How many indie games are labeled inaccurately as a means of attracting people to try the game? Sex is often given a 3/3 usually by the developer and their friends in order to attract the unwary.

Solution: The community needs to step up and create a centralized review site much like Gamefaqs except for Indie games only. (Xbox indies was the closest that we had to something like this although Zeboyd Games and a few other sites also have XBIG reviews.) In it, hard and fast guidelines are given for the ratings. For example, using female nudity as an example (Yes, I know it's sex in the ratings which is different from nudity but female nudity is easier for an example):
3/3: At least one scene where you see a woman in the nude. Alternatively, numerous scenes of frontal nudity may also qualify.
2/3: Frontal nudity but nothing down below. A view of a naked ass might also qualify the game here.
1/3: Swimsuits/side boob shots/underwear/no actual nudity but implied nudity.
0/3: Dressed normally. This doesn't necessarily mean a turtleneck sweater or unattractive. It could be a T-shirt and shorts or an evening dress. Anything that a woman would go to the mall or a cocktail party could qualify.

This would give more information than the currently nebulous and often inaccurate rating systems.

3) Quality: As has already been said, there is just too much dross on XBIG to wade through. I have only tried a couple of the games because, frankly, I don't have the desire to wade through countless massage simulators and "Try not to fart" type games to find the few diamonds in the rough.

Solution: Once again, a community-run review site. This way, I can easily find reviews and information on gameplay without having to wade through and download a lot of junk. As it currently stands, "most downloaded" and "top rated" aren't very helpful. A lot of Most Downloaded games get there by saying "Look. An anime chick is jiggling in our demo." and, given some of the crap (For the record, "Crap" does not reflect whether I liked it or not. I didn't dig on the zombies game but I recognize why others might like it. I use crap to describe games that even Newgrounds would be ashamed to host.) that has hit Top Rated, the star system and who is possibly abusing it is suspect.

Also, if MS did work the solution outlined in the first problem, that would help as well. If it makes it to XBLA, then I will download the demo and play it at some point.

In conclusion:

I can't get too hyped up over the location change. The change MIGHT honestly be good for the games. As it stands, the location is far less of a problem than the three problems that plague the XBIG marketplace currently.

So Tycho is talking about downloadable content ...... again.....and wonders why it is not the standard yet. As usual, he blames the brick and mortar stores. (For those who haven't kept up, he has been of the firm opinion that getting rid of the brick and mortar stores is the most pleasing outcome for the future of gaming) His post:

The fifteen dollar/1200 magic seed price point these games have is generally thought of as a mercenary act, and maybe it has that component, but it's also what attracts some of this stuff. When Sony delivered Warhawk digitally, I thought that we'd just be downloading everything from then on, and then when they did it again with Socom I thought for sure the future was here, and then when they released a handheld machine with no physical media I thought maybe, but no. It seems bizarre to me, truly bizarre, but fear of unnamed and undefined reprisals by retailers have publishers and platform holders both staving off the inevitable. I referred to it as the future above, and even that's not correct. Digital Downloads are literally the present, and the fact that we don't have access to them on dedicated game platforms should reveal to you the secret mechanisms of industry power.

As much as anything else, fifteen bucks is about carving a download specific region out of retail. In the same way that the new sixty dollar price point brought all the boys to the yard, "the yard" being next-gen systems, publishers want to create and ship products electronically but the margins can still be brutal in the southern end of that space. I'm in a position to know.

Iwon't go into whether 15 bucks is or is not a mercenary price for the XBLA/PSN titles but the whole idea of downloadable content being wholly blocked by the brick and mortar retailers is, at this point, completely blind to the truth. The truth is that DL-only games have some pitfalls.

The first is encapsulated in this thread: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/2000405-xbox-360-xbox-live-arcade-and-marketplace/55866298. This is a problem with DL games in that, if the service goes down, you have no way of recovering them if your console goes out. It's taken a few years but 360 owners are beginning to ask "so what's the future for all the arcade titles that I've downloaded once the next console starts rolling off Microsoft's assembly line?" The plain and simple truth is that your games will be dependent on your 360's lifespan when 360Live goes away. They may bring back some games on their next console but you will almost certainly have to buy them again.

Some games don't even have the luxury of being dependent on your console's lifespan. Steam games are dependent on Steam being up and, despite Gabe Newall's assurances, there has been no proof that those games will outlive Steam's demise.

Another issue is the consoles themselves. In Tycho's future, once brick and mortar game stores are eliminated, who is going to sell the consoles? What he constantly forgets is that most places that sell electronic hardware (Blu-rays, Consoles, etc) also sell the software for such products because they make most of their margins on the software. If you eliminate the software, a lot of the big chains will carry very limited space for the hardware because, for them, the margins just won't be there anymore. Shelf space is limited and, if a retailer has a choice between giving shelf space between something that they can sell software for and something they can't, guess which one gets the shelf space? Many won't initially carry it at all. (One of the reasons that a number of retailers don't carry the Go......other than it not selling well with the places that do sell it........ is that they realize that they'd be slitting their own throats if they sold a product that is designed to put them out of business.) So where does Tycho think we'll actually be able to buy the consoles?

There are many more issues and examples but I just wanted to say that it isn't just the retailers hindering the move to download-only.

I realize that he's pissed off that PA adventures didn't sell well enough for the third episode to be made (As someone who has made a living taking the piss out of corporate double-speak, it was amusing to watch them resort to it when they had to admit that Episode 3 wasn't going to come out.) but one would think that this would have made him have a more realistic view of the issues surrounding DLC rather than embrace it even more as the one true path

Yes, I realize that writing this on a gaming website is probably a good way to meet the banhammer but so be it.

A while back, I mentioned my irritation with the whole "Rosa's Journey" and how the advertising as well as some of the fans of this publicity stunt were lauding her as being "so brave" to go and meet her Facebook friends face-to-face. I found this to be a somewhat irritating thing as, to me, it indicates that we've become so cowardly and socially isolated from each other that we actually think that this is a big deal. Yes, it can be a little nerve-wracking to meet someone new but, from the way people were talking about this, it's as if Rosa was jumping into a burning bus full of C4 to save a kitten while a .50-caliber machine gun was trying to ventilate her.

Blizzard has actually managed to top this.

As has been covered, Blizzard was toying with a Real ID system where you would have to associate your real name with your posts in an attempt to make Battle.net forums a little less of a cesspool. This, to me, struck me as both irrational and legally problematic. If I were to do such a system, I would just link the accounts to your player account. Noone can access any board beyond technical help unless they have a level 5 and up character to do it with. If you get banned from the boards, your character gets deleted. It's neat. It has a varying level of consequences. (Ex: Even if you avoid the banhammer, the person you are antagonizing may gather his friends and kick you around in-game for a day or so.) It allows new players to get on the boards quickly while retaining enough of a requirement to avoid multiple accounts (Running the same quests to make "dummy" lvl 5s would get tedious.)

But it's the reaction from the fanbase that really gets me.

A large percentage of the fanbase kept acting like this system would expose your exact location to any stalkers in the world. Over in Gamefaqs, posters were comparing this to having the Government wiretap your phones, perform unlawful search & seizure, and go through your mail. The irony here is that many of these same people backed a system where you would give your basic healthcare history along with all the personal information that entails to a government that COULD do all of these things. It says something that people are more afraid of some random WOW player tracking you down with only your name as information than a government which has far more personal information and far more power over you but this type of Pavlov's Dog scenario is best discussed some other time.

Speaking as someone who has his real name linked with his Gamefaqs/spot name (I have a Time Crisis Project Titan FAQ) and who has discussed where he lives down to the city (Colorado Springs), I kind of side with Gabe on this one. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/7/9/ I see and even acknowledge Tycho's point but the overreaction of the fanbase strikes me as both overly paranoid and....well....cowardly. Back when the First Amendment was written, the Founding Fathers didn't feel that strict controls were needed because, even using pen names, it was nearly impossible to remain completely anonymous and avoid the consequences of your actions if you were bound and determined to aggravate people.This put a level of civility in public discussions if only because the other party mightpunch you in the face. Now, on one hand, we have people like Fred Phelps who uses the law to shield him from the consequences of his behavior and, on the other, we have people who go into a panic when the slightest bit of accountability will be attached to the behavior that they get away with while cowering behind a shield of anonymity.

I guess, in the end, that's what gets me about the whole thing..... that the Blizzard community has shown the yellow stripe running down their back. Even if you did narrow the person down to the country you live in or even the state and the "stalker" happened to live in the same state (Remember WoW/Starcraft/etc is played internationally), the odds of them being able to find you, travel to your location, and actually get close enough to take a shot at you (much less crawl in your windows at night) are astronomical. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while getting mauled by a bear. Hell, with the rise of the Smartphone and various apps that allow you to search for someone by picture, it's more likely that someone will take your picture at McDonalds and find you....presuming that you don't already give that information out on your Facebook or through tweets. Yet, for the Blizzard community, that was still too much of a risk for them.

It also makes me wonder if this level of paranoia/cowardiceis unique to the Blizzard community or if this applies to a broader range. It is wrong to characterize every WOW player as an agoraphobic shut-in but this whole thing makes me wonder if the WOW community has more of those. Then again, perhaps this is a gamer thing. Perhaps this is just a reflection of what happens to people who spend too much time on the internet. Maybe this is a reflection of a society that has become populated by timid mice whose lion-like self-image is so easily shattered.

I don't know.

All I know is that the cowardly overreaction of people to the Real ID system just got under my skin. Yes, as I said, at the beginning, there are reasons to not want this system. But, if you honestly think that you would have to live in fear because someone who puts Batman to shame in the detective arena is going to fly over from Korea to track you down over a post you made on an internet message board, then maybe you need to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror and step away from the computer......and possibly seek some professional help.

At the very least, maybe you should stop making posts that are just trolling others.

One of the things that keep getting to me about all the trailers for Just Cause 2 is the way it reflects American foreign policy a little too well. The gist of the trailers is always "One of our agents has gone rogue and he is a liability. We want you to terminate him but, since it would be expensive to use intelligence resources on this, we want you to destroy the entire island's infrastructure." Perhaps I'm being oversensitive about this but somehow reducing the population of an island nation to the point where they'll have to eat their own dead just so you can eliminate one agent doesn't scream "good guy" to me.

It's not like I haven't played games like this either. Saints Row does the same thing with American cities. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, while you aren't technically destroying the city, doesn't really have you improving the country either. Somehow though, Just Cause 2 strikes me as different. Perhaps it's the trailers of you blowing up civilian gas stations. Perhaps it's the sight of you knocking down skyscrapers 9/11 style. Somehow, this game is rubbing me the wrong way.

The whole thing reminds me of a conversation in Squadron Supreme when JMS was writing it. In #6, a disguised Redstone asks Hyperion:

"You and the rest of the squadron seem to have no qualms about using your power to bring down other nations even though, by doing so, you rip vast parts of their society and infrastructure apart. Some people seem to think it's okay since they're third world countries. Do you think they'd feel the same way if all that damage was being done right here in the good old U.S. of A? If, say, LA were being torn apart during a big fight?"

The next (and, unfortunately, final) issue has part 1 of that happening.

Now, I realize that a lot of this is just me, for whatever reason, being irrationally oversensitive to it. Yet, I can't stop thinking about it whenever I see a trailer. Perhaps part of it is due to gamers continually saying that games are art. It has long been held that, if you understand a culture's art, then you understand that culture. If games are art and art is a reflection of our culture, then what does Just Cause 2, the first Army of Two, and other such games say about our culture?

Then again, perhaps I'm justthinking too much about this. Perhaps I'm just getting old and hypersensitive.

So what are your thoughts? Has a game ever rubbed you the wrong wayfor a totally irrational reason? Do you think that the games we play are a reflection on oursociety for good or ill?

(Names have been blotted to protect my contacts within the Illuminati.)

The reason that I was on was to try to see if my XBL account applies to Xbox1 (it does) and, if so, to scoop up DLC for my 8 games (Only 4 had it and only 3 had stuff that actually applies to the SP.) I never had tried it before since I got the Xbox after I got the 360 but before I actually got into online.

Anyway, I was doing this because, on April 15th, the XBL servers for the original Xbox will be shut down. I suppose people should have seen this coming when they removed the very first XBLA game last year. As it stands, whatever marketplace they had is gone and you can only download stuff by putting in the game and going to multiplayer content.

It's a little sad. If ***** had an Xbox, I think he and I would have gotten into MechAssault 2's conquest mode. I thought of leaving it hooked up for a lil' while just to get a taste of the original community at it's best. (If other games such as Metal Gear Online are any indication, the last days before an announced server shutdown are some of the best and troll-free games you'll ever play on that service.) However, I eventually figured that was silly. Besides, I don't have a mike (I forego that for the PS3 because the only online I play is fighting games. If and when ****/***** and I get into Starcraft 2 online, I'll either improvise with the 360 or just go without.) and hanging around barren servers playing with the few people still left if they are on at the same time I am seems a wee bit silly. It would be nice to the few people on the MechAssault boards who are putting out a call to arms for last-minute play but still silly.

The other thing that I take from this is the awareness of DLC and Download-only content.**** and I had a lil' conversation involving not backing up console DLC recently. Given that (as far as I know) there is no way to back the Xbox1's DLC up, I have, in essence, just put another notch on the Sword of Damocles hanging over my console HDDs. If my Xbox1 croaks, I will never be able to regain the Loki for MechAssault. Worse, if my Xbox1 were a PSP Go or was operating under Steam/EA/Ubisoft's new DRM scheme for their PC games, it would be a paperweight in 8 days. I know Gabe Newell claims that, if Steam ever goes belly-up, they will send out a patch which frees all their games up from being chained to Steam. To the best of my knowledge, this claim has never been proven or tested in a "live fire" exercise. Given my previous experience with IT, if I were a Steam employee, my goal in the last days would be to get a new job as opposed to making sure that this patch gets out and works. I don't think people really understand that. A few people on the Xbox boards have mentioned this but I doubt anyone has listened. Given the percentage of people that keep yelling "Digital Distribution is the way of the future", perhaps many of them should take a look at this and think about how their position will look years down the road when servers inevitably shut down. I've come to terms with it for my 360/PS3 content but many don't seem to really look that far down the road or just presume that they won't want to play anything they buy by then (Not an unfair assertion in today's market.)

One wonders what people who do the whole "[old-time] collection" will do in console generations to come when physical media just goes the way of the dodo. Frankly, I've wondered what we'll do as a society given that an increasing amount of our creative works are no longer stored on any physical media. Not just with video games but with everything such as books switching over to Kindles and the like. Will all the works of our society just disappear over time? Will future generations look back and find the early 21st century as hard to study as the eras before written language caught on?

Looks like Blue Mary got modded. Finally found someone who is easily offended, I guess.

I think I'm definitely voting straight-line Republican until the Republicans take either House/Senate/or Governor in the Colorado State legislature.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14369187

I would discuss everything that's wrong with this from a tax/legal perspective. However, the thing that really stands out for me is the way he wants to go after the customers and why. He doesn't want to go after Amazon because heknows that New York is having trouble with it's own "Amazon Law" because Amazon doesn't have nexus in the state. He doesn't want to go after the affiliates because, as is pointed out at the bottom of the article, Amazon would just sever ties which would create a politically unpopular upswing in unemployment. So, the only thing left is to go after the customers.

This is why I say that our form of government just doesn't work when one party is holding all the reins, be it Federal, State, or Local.

(This is from XKCD. You should read it. As a former IT geek as well as someone who has dabbled in anime, I may get more out of this strip than you will. Plus it looks better when you don't have to resize it for sidebars.)

Not just from a philosophical point of view but from a practical point of view. After I die, how do I "wrap up" my internet presence? How do I delete all my porn.....I mean, "important files" from my hard drive? That can be more problematic than it seems because, when my father died, a supposed friend of his got on his computer and wiped all evidence of a loan that dad made to him.

When I initially did my will, I made inquiries in this direction but I was told that any instructions to wipe such things aren't legally binding. I haven't checked since even when I updated my will but I understand that this hasn't changed. The obvious answer would be to write/download a script to erase my drive if I don't check in after X amount of time but, ignoring that I've been out of IT for over 2 years, such things are unreliable and wouldn't handle the internet "wrap up". (I wouldn't have as much internet wrapup as I don't do social networking sites but still....)

A year ago, I talked about how Namco needs to step away from the Soul Calibur franchise and figure out what they want to do with the story. At the time, I blamed a lot of Namco's woes with storytelling on the inclusion of Anime characters and Star Wars characters as well as the fact that there's only so many times you can eternally retell the same story.

Gamefly sent me Tekken 6 a while back. I've been playing through it and I take back what I said.

Namco needs to just fire it's entire storytelling department.

I could go on and on about the entire story but I'll just say that this wasn't written so much as somebody just made a mess with a pen while other people interpreted the doodlings. I realize that Tekken stopped telling a story after the third one but this one also really scrapes the bottom of the barrel. From the concept of "Jin decides to have the Mishima Zaibatsu attack the entire world" (It's a large corporation but c'mon now.) to the individual character endings which have hit a new level of asinine to .....Azrael, this whole thing sets a new standard of awful in storytelling.

I realize that fighting games aren't supporsed to have a deep story but, when you FORCE us to go through your scenario campaign mode, you should probably put a little creative thought into the adventures of Captain Lars Boring and his robotsex toy, Alisa.

Also, here's a list of commandments that Namco will have to follow if Namco expects me to buy another Tekken game.

Thou Shalt make an easy mode that people without fighting game experience can beat. This is not necessarily for me but has been a common complaint with 5 and 6 as well as Soul Calibur 3 and 4. I can see how, if one of those were my first experience with fighting games, I'd write off the entire series.

Thou Shalt Not make a final boss that has projectile weapons. None of the other characters have them and it becomes irritating to have to dodge this sort of thing from across the screen with no method of retaliation.

Thou Shalt Not make a final boss with a disproportionate hit box. If you want to make a critter that big with that kind of reach, then you give him an equivalent hit box. If I have to get so close to him that his massive arm obscures my character, that just leads to a lot of cheap hits.

Thou Shalt make your sidestepping more fluid. Right now, the controller continually has the issue of interpreting sidestepping as crouching/jumping which usually leads to death. You have a good sidestep in Soul Calibur. Why is the Tekken one so bad?

Thou Shalt playtest your game with people from outside the project. It is difficult to believe that none of your playtesters haven't said something about having everyone fight the Apprentice in SC4 or the Scenario Campaign in Tekken 6 being required. I'd go into the online portion of Tekken 6 or the glitched save system in Soul Calibur 3 orother notable bugs but enough people know about the crappiness of those items that I don't need to bring out the laundry list.

As it stands, Soul Calibur used to be a "Week 1" purchase if I couldn't get it on the first day. Tekken wasn't quite up there but it was still something that I consistently bought. At this point, Soul Calibur is now down to a "rent first" and I don't know if I'll even do that for the inevitable Tekken 7. I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps the company needs the same type of overhaul that investors are claiming is needed at Take 2. I just know that, when you add the willful destruction of the Time Crisis brand, the blatent rip-off attempts at DLC,and the other failures with franchises like Warhammer, Namco has started to become a brand that I see as something to be avoided instead of embraced. (I never got into Ace Combat so no comment on that series.)