I’m playing Fallout 3, and it’s captured my imagination like few other games have.  So instead of writing about the game in a standard “journalist” way, I want to capture my impressions in a more “immersive” way.  Every time I fire up the game, I can’t help but envision myself as a survivor of a post-nuclear world.  How would it feel to roam the wastelands?  How would I respond to the strange, terrifying, and brutal world?  Would I choose to remain faithful to God?  Or would I respond to the horrors around me by becoming a monster myself?

All of those reactions are captured in these diary features. 

Today was a hard day.
 
I had a long hike today.  Frankly I never thought I’d make it.  I ran out of water a few clicks back, and I am starting to feel the heat of that thing the upworlders call “the Sun”.  I have to admit, I miss the comforts of the vault.  Living underground wasn’t great, but at least I had food and water. 
 
Eventually I made it to a place called “Germantown police HQ”  I’m not really sure what that means, but it looked like I might be able to scavenge for some parts.  That was a mistake.  Instead of finding parts, I found supermutants.  With clubs.  Why must supermutants always have clubs?  With nails?
 
It took some work, but I found through trial and error that my shotgun was pretty effective.  It only has 2 rounds, so I have to let them get pretty close before I squeeze off a few rounds.  I’m glad my dad taught me how to shoot back in the Vault. 
 
In many ways today was the most disturbing day yet - I hacked into an old computer terminal.  Looks like it was an old abandoned medical facility for people immediately following the nuclear blast.  I found myself surprisingly disturbed by what I read.  For some reason it made all of this miserable wasteland feel more personal.  All those people who died.  Are we humans destined to kill one another for ever?  Am I destined to kill people to survive?
 
Today was a hard day.

This has nothing to do with video games.  It’s just cool.  And if by cool I mean utterly terrifying…  Although if you squint really hard you could pretend you were playing Age of Empires or something. 

“Mark Peroff Wins ‘Final Fantasy’ Maker’s Law Business by Discounting 20%”

To me this said a lot!  Bloomberg is an established, respected source of business news and they could have titled this article “Mark Peroff Wins Square-Enix Law Business…”  I wonder if the Bloomberg news team expected higher click through rates or google search hits by including ‘final fantasy’ (hey, why not!)  Or, did they expect that more readers would be familiar with Final Fantasy as a franchise than with the company that produces it? 

Either way, this is a nice call-out for gamers in the business world.  You are not alone!  Or maybe it’s simpler than all that - now more than ever finance professionals need an escape, and what better way than a good RPG?  An excellent suggestion, and I think I’ll act on it right away!

There’s two things I love - video games and good deals.  That’s why I am very excited about a new site called GOG.com. 

GOG.com has taken it upon itself to update classic games (think 1990’s) to make them DRM free and Windows XP/Vista compatible.  Right now they have a limited selection of titles.  With most games costing $5.99.  Which frankly is a steal.  Or as they say, “for less than the cost of a lunch at some lousy diner you can own some of the greatest games of all time.”

Now I haven’t bought any games from this service.  I don’t know if their customer service is awful, or if something fishy is going on.  But I am encouraged by this.  I’ve long thought game companies should distribute old games for cheap prices. 

I also notice that they have a pretty limited selection of games.  But the games they do have are all worth playing.  Here’s hoping Gog.com is everything it’s supposed to be!

Here I was, all set to write about something serious.  But I can’t.  This is way more important.  This is bigger than the economy.  It’s bigger than the election.  It’s bigger than the World Series.  (Not as big as the Steelers).  What is it you ask?

It’s a bacon Tuxedo!

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an environmentalist. 

I am, however, someone who likes to squeeze every last ounce of efficiency from everything I do.  I may not be an engineer, but I really appreciate a clean design.  I especially like this in my computers and gaming systems.  Because of this philosophy, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to improve the usage of my time, squeeze out some extra gas mileage, or get a bit more performance from my PC. 

Frankly, it’s more fun to me to take an old PC, car, office and see how efficient I can make it than going out and buying something brand new.  But there’s one area that I’ve really been neglecting: power usage.  While I’ve always turned out the lights as I leave the room, I never really decided to get “energy efficient.”  It just wasn’t a major concern for me.

But as the economy tanks, and job prospects look grim, squeezing every nickel out of our lifestyles is becoming more attractive.  So while I may not be an environmentalist, I do like money! 

So how do we get more energy efficient?  Well a good place to start is Google’s power calculator.  According to this calculator, I could save close to $300 just by making a few changes to how I power down my computers and consoles.  Which means I could buy 6 brand new PC games, 30 used games, or 1 new console by this time next year. 

What’s not to like about that?

A couple of useful tips from Green Home Huddle:

• 1.  Unplug your devices
• 2.  Plug your devices and chargers into a power strip
• 3.  Remove chargers from the wall when you’re not charging

And then a few not so much from Climate Savers:

• 1.  Turn down the brightness setting on your monitor
• 2.  Use a laptop instead of a desktop
• 3.  Trade in a computer for a rock and some crayons

Ok, so maybe that last one wasn’t really their suggestion. 

If you want to turn down your monitor’s brightness or use a laptop instead of a PC, go for it.  But that’s just not for me.  Energy is made to be used, and so I intend to use it to power my entertainment.  I’m all for saving money and reducing the impact to the environment, but not at the cost of my gaming experience. 

How about you?  Do you have any good power saving techniques? 

When I first read that headline I thought, “great just one more game some yahoo’s (yes I actually use words like ‘yahoo’) pirated for the PC.”  Much to my surprise though I realized someone pirated a copy for the 360.  After months and months of executives telling us that the reason the PC market is in decline is because of piracy we see that the same can be said of the Xbox market.

The problem isn’t the system, the problem is the people.  But I’m not going to write about why piracy is no different than theft.  And why piracy is most certainly immoral.  What I’m more interested in today is the vast number of gamers who are not pirates, yet sit around saying, “I never would pirate anything, but I understand why they pirate it.”

How can you hold such a position? 

Let me ask a simple question: Do you believe software piracy is wrong?

If you do, why do you support it?

If you don’t, why don’t you actively engage in it?

I hear a lot of justifications for piracy from the “I would never pirate, but I understand…” crowd.  Yet none of them are particularly satisfying.  If Microsoft is the epitome of greed, how is being greedy ourselves going to teach them a lesson?  If EA is evil for using DRM, how is stealing their game going to solve the DRM issue?

We will never change the structure of DRM and corporate pricing if our answer is to steal.  We need a better solution.  Martin Luther King Jr taught civil disobedience, but he emphasized nonviolent methods.  He didn’t advocate breaking into “the man’s” bank and stealing “his” money.  He offered wisdom, visible protests, and boycotts.  While the issues of the computer industry can never be compared to the serious stakes in the Civil Rights movement, King knew that repaying violence with violence was not a winnable solution.

That’s why I don’t see how stealing to prevent piracy will ever improve the situation.  I don’t like DRM any more than anyone else.  But as the cliche goes, two wrongs don’t make a right.

 
Well it was bound to happen.  The economic meltdown has finally hit us close to home - one of the GAUGE staples (animal cookies) are no longer going to be made.  The company that baked them is going out of business due to increased costs and an inability to get loans from the bank.

This is truly a sad day for all…

Here’s an interesting video from the original Diablo that I forgot about. If you look closely at the guy laying on the floor after Diablo “dissolves” you can see that he did the same thing you end up doing – cramming the soul stone into his head.  Which makes me wonder, why would you do it in the first place if that’s what you saw?

Do you do it because you think you are stronger? Or do you do it because you feel there’s no other choice? Or is the soul stone possessing you already, and thereby forcing you to do it?

It raises some interesting questions about just how many times a warrior has “saved” the world from evil, only to become that evil himself.

I wonder if they will address any of it in Diablo 3.

For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to decide if I want to upgrade my DS.  (Currently I have an original DS.)  Which, of course, as you can see by the picture is a bit clunky.  But I’m not the type of person to upgrade when I have something that’s working perfectly fine.  Oh sure I can’t really see screens if I’m within 100 yards of a candle.  And it ways as much as a small car.

But otherwise it works perfectly!

Despite all this, I still couldn’t shake a desire to get a new DS.  Now with the DSi launch, maybe I’ll have enough justification to go out and purchase new hardware.  

So what does everyone else think?  Is the DSi worth it?