Insulation Over

The first three days of my temp work have been a somewhat humanizing experience, assuring a great deal of face-to-face customer interaction.  Considering my naturally introverted nature, this kind of interpersonal gauntlet is probably the best possible practice I can get.
I wanted something to break down those insulation layers I built up between me and [...]

Cynicism Over

I have to say, a lot of my bitter tirades against the state of society come from one little thing: as a long time unemployed fellow, it seems society found little value in me and (as a fellow who maintained some semblance of self-worth) I consequently found little value in society.
Well, having landed a job [...]

Incentives

A lesson that keeps coming back to me is that, while humankind in general may seem quite complex versus the apes in which we apparently descended, the reality is that we’re very much driven by incentives.
If any major difference can be found between us and the apes, it’s only that the complexity of these incentives [...]

City of Heroes Fusion Guide

It’s not long after you’ve delved deep into City of Heroes character customization that you come to realize that there’s more to powers than just all the different kinds of things the different power sets can do. A truly comfortable character has to do more than have a batch of effective powers: they have [...]

“The Now Habit” Strikes A Nerve

An unusually empowering day for me today. I cracked open “The Now Habit,” which was given to me a few Christmases a back, and I find it to be incredibly insightful and on-target as to why I’m not getting to work on BYOND or other things I’ve been wanting to do lately.
A new definition [...]

“Reality TV” MMORPGs versus “Game” MMORPGs

In terms of developing games myself lately, my motivation has been poor. Forging a virtual world is a painstaking endeavor. You get to a certain point when you suddenly realize there’s no way around it, you’ve got to figure out in excruciating detail how exactly to set up a situation that generates enjoyment [...]

BoB’s Real Killer… Simple Boredom

I’ve been participating in this thread lately with all the single minded focus of a obsessive compulsive.   It’s all about Band of Brothers recent dismantling in EVE Online.  Basically, thousands of players who put years of man hours between them into this player organization have been ousted because one player pushed a few buttons and [...]

Boring Semantics: “Gaming Purist”

Soon afterward, it became clear through the course of a thread that calling myself a “gaming purist” was inviting trouble.  Much as how I am annoyed when somebody asks “what is the best” of something, calling myself a “gaming purist” was futile because it failed to define “in what way?”
No, when I called myself a [...]

Purism and Paragon

Lately, I’ve realized us gaming purists are a weird bunch.  We’ve played so many games that we come to realize what we truly enjoy about them is neither the pretty graphics nor the company we keep but rather the core game mechanic itself, and through practice alone we can recognize it when we sense it.
It’s [...]

Stalking Champions

Over the past few days, my attention has turned to Champions Online, the upcoming Cryptic Studios MMORPG, with all the focus of a serial stalker.  I’ve been visiting the forums lately for the same reason everybody else is: I’m hoping somebody over at Cryptic sends me a beta invite.  However, at the same time, I [...]