All posts by cary

Food For Thought

Whaddya mean you don’t play games together??

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Image by dat: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dat-pics/4553277701/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Image by dat’: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dat-pics/4553277701/sizes/l/in/photostream/

My husband and I have bonded over lots of things during our years together. And early on, we found common ground in video games in that we each liked playing them. We’re both continually interested in games, new and old, and we do our best to stay in the news loop concerning games. But what we don’t really do is play games together. We do lots of things well together, but video games are not one of them. So when I tell other gamers that yes, we play video games but, but no, we don’t play them together, they seem to get very confused and something like the following conversation ensues:

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Food For Thought

My personal plea to those in the game industry

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Image by david_s_carter: https://www.flickr.com/photos/david_s_carter/3022538160/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Image by david_s_carter: https://www.flickr.com/photos/david_s_carter/3022538160/sizes/l/in/photostream/

(Above: Photo of exhibit at the Computer and Video Game Archive, Duderstadt Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.)

Save your records.

And no, I don’t mean those things that go on turntables and produce sounds — I mean your records. The paper and digital content you produce every day. The documentation of your work, your games, and your company. Your records.

Okay, before you think I’ve totally lost my mind, give me a moment to explain. I blog because I love it, but in real life, I’m paid to be an archivist  — someone who manages and makes accessible inactive collections of paper and digital records from various individuals and organizations for use by researchers, students, genealogists, etc. On occasion, I talk with these researchers to help them find items either in our collections or other collections in local institutions. Just last month, I spoke with two people who had been searching for collections of records that couldn’t be located. In both cases, it appeared most likely that the papers had been thrown out, discarded, trashed. Why wouldn’t anyone think to save their records, they asked. How terrible it is that all that knowledge has been (probably) lost forever.

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Food For Thought, General Commentary

The moral compass and where it leads (or doesn’t)

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Image by Colony of Gamers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/colonyofgamers/3253156781/
Image by Colony of Gamers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/colonyofgamers/3253156781/

If you follow my personal blog, you might have noticed that I recently finished Red Dead Redemption. If you don’t follow my blog, well…OMG go follow it now!  Haha…just kidding (mostly). Anyway, Red Dead Redemption. Simply put, Red Dead is a brilliant game. It’s wonderfully designed, beautiful to look at, and thrilling to play. And even as my mind fills with all the fantastic things that make Red Dead a fantastic game, I can’t stop obsessing over the one thing, the one, little thing that still bothers me about the game. It has to do with morals.

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Console, General Commentary

The Wiimote and Me: An Onerous Ode

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Image by yum9me: https://www.flickr.com/photos/yum9me/2252122910/
Image by yum9me: https://www.flickr.com/photos/yum9me/2252122910/

I hate the Wiimote.

I know people have been saying it for several years, but now I’m saying it. I hate the Wiimote. I don’t hate the Wii, just the stupid remote and nunchuck controllers. I can’t stand them. And only just recently, I caved. Finally. I bought a Classic Controller. And it is good. Oh, so, very good. Now, I still have and will regularly use my favorite, purple Gamecube controller, but not all games accept it. Heck, not all games accept the Classic Controller, but many do, and it has drastically changed my feelings about our poor, neglected Wii.

I didn’t always feel this way, about the Wiimote that is.

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General Commentary

Being Okay With Being Outmoded

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Image by LonelyBob: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelybob/2491088865/
Image by LonelyBob: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelybob/2491088865/

“Have you played Bioshock Infinite?” my co-worker excitedly asked me the other day.

“No, not yet.” I responded, “It looks great, though I’ve never played a Bioshock game.”

He looked confused. “You’ve…what?! They’re great games, well, maybe not the second one…but you should really give them a shot, especially Infinite.”

Yeah, well…” my gaze turned to the floor, “maybe someday.”

Later that day, at my computer, I sat and stared at a list of upcoming game releases, and I sighed. Some were games that knew I had to play; others I knew I’d pass on. I moved to another site to read a few current games reviews, and I sighed again.

Will I ever play these games, I wonder? Maybe someday…some…day…[SIGH]

Argh! My melancholy turned to sudden anger. Why did this even bother me??

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Commentary, News

Things are going to be so different 30 years from now…or are they?

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Image by tind: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tind/7533681980/sizes/c/in/photostream/
Image by tind: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tind/7533681980/

Following up on my previous post in which I looked back thirty years into the gaming past, for this post I thought I’d look forward thirty years to answer the very opinionated and speculative question: “What will video games be like in 2033?” And rather than think all fantasy and pie-in-the-sky as they did with prognosticating in the 1950s, this will be a more practical, less fantastical approach — mainly because I’m cynical and bad at making stuff up, and, probably, because I’m angry that I’m going to be really old in 2033. Anyway…indulge me as I set aside my sardonic tendencies and take a brief look at what’s possibly in store for video games.

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Commentary, News, Widely Read Posts

Things are so different than the were 30 years ago…or are they?

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Image by inju: https://www.flickr.com/photos/inju/
Image by inju: https://www.flickr.com/photos/inju/

Though we’re just a few months into 2013, it’s already shaping up to be quite a year for gaming. As we now look to the next generation of consoles, established companies have disappeared (THQ, LucasArts) or met with financial strain (Atari). A plethora of new sequels and new IPs have promised (and, in some cases delivered) nothing less than sheer gaming ecstasy. And new technologies continue to push the boundaries between gaming and reality, forcing the question “what is a video game?”

But 2013 also marks something else a little less spectacular (or just a spectacular, depending on your point of view) — the 30th anniversary of the video game crash of 1983. It was kind of a big deal then. And now that we’re in a time of gaming overabundance, I can’t help but ponder a few parallels.

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