Fanbois the world round are brushing off their insults and lolcatz clipart. The biased insults have already started to fly as coverage begins. It’s like hunting season. Except the deer have guns and are shooting each other.

The comments I’ve read have got me to thinking about the state of gaming and where it could go from here.

—Break—

So I started writing this post a few days ago and I’ve picked it back up.

I would have to say that someone behind the curtain agrees with my thinking.  That is, that we have reached the limitation of our technology.  We can improve graphics, but we are already capable of entering the “uncanny valley”.  The “uncanny valley” is the point where a human representation on screen is so close to life like, while still missing “something”, that we actually start to dislike the character.  This implies that any increase in CPU and GPU power has extremely diminishing returns as far as the gameplay experience is concerned.

Nintendo certainly understood this.  The Wii is extremely underpowered for the technology that was current at the time of its release.  Rather than try to make a more powerful system, they created a new way of interacting.  This clearly is the future of gaming.  Microsoft and Sony are aware, as they have both announced efforts to create movement based interaction with players.  The downside is that Microsoft’s and Sony’s devices are not slated for market anytime soon.  Where as the Wii has an upgrade to movement detection that is to be released later this month.

Micrsoft has Project Natal which is by far the most ambitious and exciting.   If you haven’t seen this yet, you should certainly check it out.  It’s cool, freaky, scary and exciting.  The camera device is a 3D camera.  It is capable of facial and voice recognition.  It builds a live wireframe repesentation of your body.  It is also able to seperate you from background image noise.  I doubt it will deliver as that kind of technology would surely have shown up else where before being seen on a gaming system.

Sony has their upgraded EyeToy which looks to be much more feasible.  It involves a wand as the main source of tracking information.  This should be able to make it to market before Microsoft’s solution.

While all of this innovation is extremely exciting and certainly needed, I foresee problems…

I own a Wii.  I use a used gamecube controller to play every game I can on the Wii.  This is because using movement based inputs is an extremely annoying and inefficient input for many games.  The best example for me is Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart.  I use the Wii Mote as a form of handicap when playing with family members.  When it comes time to unlock tracks, I pull out the trusty game cube controller and proceed to dominate.

I don’t want to have to swing my arm or shift my foot for every little task.  Can you imagine playing an RPG (role playing game) where every time you interacted with a chest you had to literally open an imaginary chest?  It would get ridiculous.  You don’t have to look to a crystal ball to see this.  How many of you have resulted to flicking your wrist when playing the Wii?  How many of you play Tennis or Bowling while sitting back in your comfy sofa?  Being up and mobile is fun for a while, but it certainly gets to be a chore.  (If I wanted to simulate the real thing, maybe I would, oh you know do the real thing?)

Here in lies the challenge.  How can they create engaging, fun and quality games that use their interaction devices without coming off as gimicky?  My thought is that you will see certain genres transfer better than others.  As can be seen on the Wii, timing based repetitive games fare really well with this form of input.  A ton of crappy wrist-flicking-infra-red-sensor-pointing games have been released for the Wii.  I’d venture to say they are all terrible and not worth your money, but they are certainly out there.  These games provide short intense burst of “entertainment” in a few varieties and then rinse and repeat until you get bored.  Where as a friend and I would sit down and play a  video game for hours on end.  With the Wii you find yourself bored and tired after an hour.

I’m starting to ramble…

The controller will not disappear.  It is a fantastic input device for many many many genres.  Movement should provide growth in a number of genres and perhaps even invent its own genre.  As movement detection technology improves, at what point does the game stop being a game and move into a life simulation device?  That would be the main element I find missing more and more in games.  The “fun” or “game” element.  So many games that are brilliant in nature end up feeling like work or a pixelated version of real life.

I see this ending up in a cycle.  Humans use “Virtual Reality” to react to a virtual world as a means to escape their problems in the real world.  Before long, they will try to create a means to escape the pressures of their virtual world.  How long before we play pong on a simulated Atari in some virtual world that we are interacting with through Nadal/EyeToy/WiiMote?

A little too deep?  Here’s a Kitty.

Who is your Daddy and what does he do?

My car was broken into last Friday. They must have been watching and waiting to see specific activity because they knew exactly what they wanted out of my car and where to find it. Pity they weren’t elegant and had to force their way in through my passenger side window.

Happened near Quigley’s residence. So keep your eyes open for suspicious activity. It’s a very upscale area, but I guess that’s why criminals patrol there.

Quigley was amazingly helpful in covering up the window. Thank you quigley for helping out during the sad situation. I’m going to try and post some photos, but I’m on the iPhone so we will see.

Anyway it’s deductible city now. The car should be in working order by the weekend.

1) After a long and tiring day of skiing, it is a moment of complete peace and satisfaction as I drive home. I’ve just had a wonderful day. The heater in the car is starting to kick in. The music on the radio seems to be always what I want to hear. There is rarely another car on the road. It’s nothing but me, the car and the road to reflect on how great life really is.

2) Taking a much needed nap by a fireplace. The world melts away in front of the light and warmth of the fire. Nothing truly gives the mind and soul a break like a nap in front of the fireplace.

What are your perfect moments? They don’t have to be long or descriptive, just moments that are truly perfect to you.

Who drive, when I am driving.  Seriously stay off the road.  You suck at driving.  Being in the left lane does not make you cool.  Sorry, but I thought you should know.

Fall is a terrible time in my life now.  It’s championship of musical chairs and I am deaf.  (Don’t ask how I got there in the first place.  Blame the French judge.)  In no particular order (ul vs ol), here are the chairs:

• Fallout 3
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles
• Saints Row 2
• Fable 2
• Far Cry 2
• Quantum of Solace (Think Goldeneye in a COD4 engine)
• Shaun White Snowboarding
• Need for Speed Undercover

In addition I’ve been having issues with my spanking new computer.  I get an ATIKMDAG crash/recover when playing World of Warcraft.  It’s fairly annoying and I’ve tried everything short of RMAing stuff.  I’ve decided to just live with it and hope new drivers will fix the issue.  Very naive.  I should RMA the card before it’s too late.  Only issue is that WoW is the only application (including desktop) to cause the issue.  I did get the issue on the desktop when I went to the Cat 10 beta drivers.  That means very little to me considering they are beta drivers.  I have a feeling my sound card may be to blame.  The crashes seem to happen when new sounds or spell effects fire off.  Either graphics or sound related in my book.  (The card is definitely not underpowered.  I’ve got a 4870.  I could run 4 sessions of WoW and still be fine.)

iPhone has worked well since I traded in the POS one for this new one.

New Jack’s Manequin album is out: The Glass Passenger.  Pretty darn good.  My favorite track is American Love.  It’s got some kind of poppy 80s like beat to it that I love.

The wonderful new car broke 2000 miles today.  It received a chip in the windshield about a week ago.  I let a semi merge in front of me, being nice and not 1 second later up comes a rock.  That was a bad morning.

Back to the waterfall of work.  If anyone needs help with Hyperion Financial Management, Data Quality Management or Financial Reports, I’m available.  At the discount rate of $250 an hour plus expenses.

Wish me luck as I try to maintain my youth while I dive into the maw of adulthood.

If I seem a bit down, it’s because it’s near midnight and I’m doing work and not reading, playing games or sleeping.

I have to hand it to apple, they know how to provide one sexy GUI. It is a pleasure to use the device (for the most part.) I was worried about the on screen keyboard, but the phone has a wonderful system for predicting what you want. In most cases I don’t have any issues getting the message across. Only in username and password fields is it an issue.

Microsoft Exchange is up and running with my Accenture email. It is fantastic. I feel so important now. Too bad Best Buy is against, but I can still use webmail to get at my best buy email.

My only gripe so far is that my vibrate switch broke. This seems to be a common problem for some of us and it looks like I will have to take it into one of these so called “genuises” to get it sorted out.

Other than that, I’m so impressed by the apps. Pandora and Twinkle (Twitter with so much more than just tweets) right now are just friggen cool. AIM is functional and there are plenty more free apps to try. I’m tempted to start programming some of my own. We shall see.

I only hope that I can get to bed tonight at a decent hour.

Apps I have and look useful:

• Twinkle
• AIM
• Facebook
• WordPress
• Google Mobile App
• Pandora

• GRiD Racing for Xbox360
• Xbox Racing Wheel for Xbox360
• iPod Classic 80gb
• A rolling garment bag
• A carry-on luggage piece with suitor
• Dress Shirts
• Ties
• Eat out more often

Currently I am in the process of purchasing a 2009 Toyota Corolla S. (Blue Metallic)  I am on the list and in about 40 days it should arive.  This to me was a very wise decision.  While I was looking at and almost purchased this, I decided against it due to a possible house purchase and other purchases in my near future. (Plus gas is expensive and I would burn through it quick with that kind of car.)

With money still left over and not yet sacrificed to any materialistc god…these still remain in my sights:

• iPhone 3G or HTC Touch Pro ($300-$900)
• [Camera+lens] Canon EOS 40D (w/ 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6) ($1200)
• [lens] Canon 50mm f/1.8 ($90)
• [filters] ES-72U (Polarized, Neutral, UV) ($115)
• Build a New Computer ($2000-$3000)
• A Waterski ($600-$1500)
• A sailboat ($3500)
• Other ($6000-$10000)
• Vacation ($1000-$2000)
• Slew of games in the fall (X * $60) [Prerequisite = New Computer]

So as you can see, it never stops.  There is always something else to buy.  Most of these things I don’t need and won’t end up being purchased.  I rather like ratching my various accounts grow.  Now if only the market would turn around, things would be better.

I was training at Oracle University and as such was the only Accenture person in my small training group of 5 people.  The training went really well.  I managed to get ahead of the class and finish all the activities a full day and a half ahead of schedule.  This allowed for me to get a “review” session.  I found that this better reinforced the knowledge that I had gained in the class.

This means that I will be starting at Best Buy this Monday and be there for a good 9 months.  By the end I should be an expert in Hyperion.

This trip was my first experience traveling completely alone both ways.  Also my first experience renting a car and checking into a hotel for myself.  I was able to navigate my way around the New York and Connecticut road ways.  My initiation occurred around midnight after a day of traveling.  In my rented ’08 Eclipse it was a rather interesting experience.  The Eclipse drives well enough, but one has very limited visibility.  EZ-Pass is also the only way to deal with toll roads.  Wow!  Amazingly easy!

Downtown Stamford was pretty cool.  I’ve never seen a Target in a downtown environment.  There were elevators between floors and the first 2 floors were parking only.  Definitely different from the way suburbs have their stores laid out.

Most of my free time was spent in my hotel room just watching TV and relaxing.  There really wasn’t much to see or down in Stamford.  At least, nothing was open when I had free time.  The food was good in the surrounding area and in the Hotel.

Pretty uneventful week (and that is just fine with me), but certainly gained a good amount of knowledge.  Now it’s just time to apply that knowledge on the job site.

I started a facebook group for CAS and some of the people are talking of playing sports.  This further complicates my packing issue.  I’m not sure how much to bring or what.  I also have no idea what to wear on the way there.  I’m thinking that I’ll just go in my usual attire, jeans and a t-shirt.  I can’t see any repercussions for wanting to be comfortable on the airplane.

This will also be the first trip where my backpack is not my carry-on item.  In fact it won’t even be making the trip.  It saddens me because that thing has been with me everywhere.  It must feel abused being replaced by my laptop bag.  This will seriously hamper the amount of “fun” stuff I can bring with me.  Pretty much space for only one book.  So to help myself I made a purchase.  I purchased an Ipod.  One of the 80gb classics.  The 32gb touch was incredibly tasty, but for $500 I had to pass.  I’ve spent the majority of today with it syncing.  Oye, it’s annoying, but Sync Must Occur!

I think over the course of the week I will try to update a bit on what new toys I got since starting my job.  It’s expensive getting a job.

I’ve been playing a lot of poker this week.  Standing in for Justin and then some for myself.  I’ve made the money in every one so far.  No big amounts (all freerolls or $1 entry fees), but still many hands of poker.

Time to pack.  These next 2 weeks should be a blast, but I sure am gonna miss a few things.  Mainly getting to spend time with E.  Love you hunny!.

Second week of SDF training is up this week.  We’ve made it past the difficult stuff in my mind (classes.)  Only one more week until we head out to the Q center.  That should be a pretty good time.  Due to some interesting bowling on “First Friday” Greg (from work) and I have lunch paid for on Monday and Tuesday.

Once again, thanks for all the birthday wishes.  Let’s hope this rain lets up!

Three gentlemen give the manager of a hotel $30 to rent a conference room for the afternoon. After the gentlemen leave to the room, the manager realizes that the room only costs $25 and that he has overcharged them. The manger grabs a nearby bellhop and gives him $5 and instructs him to return it to the three men. Not knowing how to divide $5 evenly the bellhop decides to give $1 to each of the three men and pocket the remaining $2 for himself. Later on the bellhop realizes that each man paid $9. Thus since $27 (9×3) plus the $2 he took for himself add up to $29, he wonders what happened to the missing dollar. Where did it go?

NO GOOGLE CHEATING!!!!

Happy April everyone!

Important things first:  I purchased Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii) and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (X360).  SSSB is an amazing game with a surprisingly very enjoyable single player and co-op.  I recommend it for any Wii owner.  (We even got Elizabeth to play and she seemed to be having a bit of fun once she found a character she liked.)  RSV2 is a lot like RSV1 with sprinting and a RPG aspect not unlike COD4.  The single player story is fun to play but ridiculous.

Hockey has been down right amazing.  The Gophers went on a streak to beat Mankato 2 out of 3 games that all went into over time to get into the Final Five.  The Gophers then went on to beat St. Cloud State and Colorado College to make it to the championship game.  Ultimately Denver won but The Gophers put up such an amazing effort that it is impossible to be upset.  If they continue to play this hard they have a great chance in the Frozen Four.

This past Tuesday I made crab cakes.  They were pretty good and with some tweaking they could be great.   Perhaps I’ll share the recipe if there is any interest.

I leave on my Ski Paradise vacation soon.  A whole week of water skiing in wonderfully warm and sunny weather.  It should be an absolute blast.  I only hope that my body can survive 4 sets a day for 5 days.  I leave on the 5th and come back on the 12th.

I had a slight cold this past couple of weeks, but nothing Halls cough drops couldn’t fix.

Visited the family on Easter.  Really strange when only half the family is there.

Gas is expensive ($3.10+) and influences me not to drive anymore.  I have the feeling that when I look back and read this post I will be jealous of the low price.

It appears that a lot of my favorite shows are starting to air new episodes again.  Reaper is on, South Park has been on for a while and I think the office should be coming back sometime soon.

The snow is melting and things are heating up.

I got a job.

…

Wait what?  Yup   I have been offered a position at Accenture as a Consulting Analyst and I have accepted it.  The start date is May 27th.  Meaning, I’ve got a couple of months to wait.  However, as an entry level job I would be hard pressed to find anything better in this line of work.  The job will require hard work, networking and perhaps frequent travel, but at this time of my life that sounds incredibly exciting.

The last week or so I’ve spent going through the interview process.  I first was contacted by the recruiter and communicated with her.  After that it was a phone interview.  Having success in the phone interview led to an office visit.  At the office visit I had a couple of interviews and lunch with a fellow potential hire and three employees who were in our position a year or so ago.  Even though it was an interview and interviews are supposed to be huffy, I had a great time and met some very wonderful and interesting people.

I had originally been informed that I could start in April.  This date has be canceled for some unexplained reason.   My guess is that they don’t have enough new hires to warrant batching the training process.  This means I will be starting in May with all the new college graduates.  That’s fine and waiting the extra month while I live on a budget is fine.  Where things get complicated is the 2 weeks of training at Accenture’s campus in Chicago.  This will likely occur at the end of June.  Right about the time Becky and Brad get married.  I can only hope that I’m allowed to fly back, if even on my own dime for that, or that the training wraps up on Friday and we leave Friday night.  If anyone has any thoughts on this I’d be happy for any advice.  What if I’m not able to come back?  For now it’s as the old adage goes, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

I now have about 2 Months (minus vacation) to spend on a side project or catch up with friends, because once I start working I have a feeling I will fall off the face of the earth.  I kid, but seriously during the week I will be a ghost.  You will only be able to catch me on the weekends.  Weekends are pretty sacred at Accenture.   I’d be happy to share more details in person.  I don’t feel comfortable expunging details on the internet, never know who is listening.

That leaves us with today.  I’m going to be picking up the parents from the airport after their two week long cruise.  They have yet to hear about my job, so that should be good news for them.  I’ve got laundry that needs to be done and some other misc. cleaning to do in preparation, so have a great weekend everybody!

Shatter expectations and conquer the world!

Things I’m looking forward to:

• Starting training for my Job
• GTA4
• Spore
• Water Sports

Things I’m not looking forward to:

• Juggling personal and work life
• Commuting/Driving

The link: http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php?movieID=7&play=hi

If you liked “The Sims” this game will be worth a look.  If you like being creative, this game is worth a look.  If you have ever heard of Will Wright, this game is worth a look.  If you like being on the bleeding edge of programming technology, this game is worth a look.  All I know is that I need to get a job soon because I need to build a new computer by September 7th, 2008.  (You don’t have to get a new computer to run this and in fact, it will be coming out for the MAC and various game consoles.  It’s going to be an epic franchise.)

As tomorrow is Friday, it’s looking to be more hockey.  If you are available between the hours of 1pm to 2:30pm, you are more than welcome to join us.  We will be at Bielenberg for open hockey.

1. A Space Case: One man’s crazy journey in developing a computer game

While this topic will continue to haunt me daily and I find myself putting in small efforts here and there, it is an unrealistic goal at the moment given other priorities. Expect to see little snippets of work I do for this project as the days progress. (An example can be seen at the end of this post.) I feel that this topic would be best suited to be “blogged” about after I have more work to show or more experiences to share.

2. Building a Better You: A recent college graduate quests for a job

Hmmm…a topic that is….topical (har har) and is relevant to the majority of my reading audience.  This certainly seems like it would be a good choice.  How many posts could I really write on job hunting?  Answer: Lots.  People have written books about all kinds of aspects of job hunting.

3. Building a Better Body: The Great Ski Paradise Workout!

Another well suited topic given my situation.  Who wouldn’t like more information about working out specifically for waterskiing?  There certainly is a lot for me to write about this considering I am one month into the three month process.

4. Building a “Better” Tomorrow: The State of Politics

Just no.   I realized how much work I would have to put in to this topic to make myself happy.  This is a task I certainly would like to accomplish but right now I just don’t have time with everything else I should be doing.  When I do finally approach this topic, expect me to explain in detail my thoughts, feelings and supporting data.  This will likely end with me announcing my candidacy for presidential office.

5. Two for the Price of One: The joys of owning a Nintendo DS

Another easy topic to write about.  It doesn’t have as wide of a scope as some of the other topics, but it does have a lot of potential.  (Especially when I get into homebrew.)

6. Spending Money I Don’t Have: The process of building the computer of tomorrow! (All hypothetical.)

Specing a computer that I could possibly build in the future is too much of an emotional process.  I did it about two months ago when the 45mm processors were announced and I could barely contain my excitement.  It became easier when I noticed the $5000 price tag. My current rig is turning 5 this summer and in computer years that means it’s time for assisted living.  However, until the 45mm processors and DDR3 memory comes down in price…well I’ll need a better job than the one I have currently. (har har)

There you have it.  The options re-evaluated.  And the winner is…..

After the commercial break.

Damn you American Idol(itry)

I’ll tell you tomorrow who wins by making the first post.  It’s still not too late to really lobby for your favorite candidate.

As promised here is an image sample from the game I’m developing.  It’s a practice piece.  An experiment if you will in creating backgrounds and splash images.

I like what Justin did with his Christmas series.  (Even if it stirred some jealousy within:  I want a camera!)  I figured that I would do a series but I would like to poll the audience and see what topic would be preferred.  Here are your options:

A Space Case:  One man’s crazy journey in developing a computer game

Building a Better You:  A recent college graduate quests for a job

Building a Better Body:  The Great Ski Paradise Workout!

Building a “Better” Tomorrow:  The State of Politics

Two for the Price of One:  The joys of owning a Nintendo DS

Spending Money I Don’t Have:  The process of building the computer of tomorrow!  (All hypothetical.)

Ok, that should be enough choices for now.  I have a feeling that the decision will be the result of a vote of maybe 3 people, so choose wisely.

So relax we did.  My dad and I sat down today to watch the first disc of Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0.  It is a great series for anyone who enjoy sci-fi or quality interpersonal development.  (Weird combo but it works.)

This was after I had gotten up at 8:30am this morning to go play Hockey with JJ and his friend Drew at Bielenberg.  We played for a good hour and a half.  JJ is getting considerably better in goal and as for myself, well I had a big break through in my shooting today.  I feel that I was able to gain 25% accuracy increase along with a 15% power increase all by completing the shot motion.  I thought I had been doing it all along but not until I made a conscious effort did I realize what I had been missing.  After ourhockey endeavor I stopped at Anytime Fitness and put in a good hour workout.  That’s two and a half hours of exercise today.  I’m glad that I forced myself to workout after hockey even though I was already dead tired.  In fact, I’m surprised I’m awake right now to type this post.  I’m fairly certain that I am getting a second wind, hopefully it will die right as I finish typing.

Elizabeth was in the market to get some new glasses today so I tagged along to share my uninformed opinion on everything eyeware.  Our destination, Pearle Vision, was quite possibly the brightest store in the entire world.  I certainly looked like crap in all the mirrors, it’s no wonder I’m a night person, the dark suites me.  We were fortunate enough to find a pair of glasses that really had that “Wow” factor.

After that it was back to my house to watch some TV.  Reno 911 is back on, so “wizard” to that.  Oh yea, Elizabeth and I saw Juno last night.  Great flick.  Everyone should see it.  Also I’m 99% sure that it takes place in Minnesota.  Elizabeth and I kind of narrowed it down to being in Bloomington or somewhere around there.

That’s all the rambling I can think of now.  Ramble on children….ramble on…

Hockey games.  We swept Wayne State.

Resume is 90% done and in final editing stages.

Did laundry, twice.

Worked out and played hockey yesterday.

Saw Elizabeth for a week and a half straight.

Researched and purchased a DS homebrew device.

Set up Elizabeth’s new MP3 player.

Now it’s time for me to get back to getting things done.  Laundry, workout, cleaning and Life Development work needs to get done.

Spent this New Year’s Eve relaxed.  Instead of driving downtown to a party that might exist or to a bar where they would charge too much for one of us to drink, we decided to stay in and watch the ball drop form Elizabeth’s house.  It was a good evening except I ate too much candy and got a headache.  Dick Clark sounded really ill and looks none too happy that Ryan Seacrest is going to be his replacement.

New Year’s day was also spent relaxed.  Elizabeth and I watched Hairspray, a charming and funny movie.  I made some Cinnamon Rolls I found in the freezer.  They were crap.  I refuse to buy anything but Pillsbury brand from now on.  Still hungry, we decided to order a pizza from Papa John’s.  It arrived pretty dang fast but it was smaller than I expected.  I still prefer Papa Murphy’s to just about every pizza out there.  (Don’t worry Davanni’s Deep Dish, I still love you the best.)  Elizabeth played Zelda on the DS while I watched Illinois throw a perfectly good comeback into the toilet.

Parent’s came back from their up north adventure and we all sat around and watched Biggest Loser.  I really don’t think they should kick people off that show.  They should award points on a decreasing scale and allow teams to stay on so that more people can loose weight.

I took Elizabeth home and played some Halo with the guys.  JJ apparently purchased a nice new HDTV.  It’s a good thing he has a job now or he would be back out on the street corner.  Now it’s time for bed and some exercise in the morning.  No need to shower twice in a day, that only wastes water and I’m trying to be eco-friendly.