This Guy is Stupid: What Wii Really Means

I read the three pages of this articulate, well cited article.

Quick Summary:
The tone of the article is a dismissive one. It attempts to show why the Wii's control scheme isn't really revolutionary (because, so far, we're really seeing the "same old games" with a new control scheme, forgetting the fact that the "same old" boxing game on a gamepad with buttons feels vastly different than the game with a Wiimote and Nunchuck) because evolutionary controls don't mean developers will make evolutionary games.

Well, duh. I don't expect 2001: A Space Odyssey from the new games, but I would prefer the new controllers to playing Fist Person Shooters with my thumbs.

Programmers should make New Games for Ancient Consoles?
Lastly, he says that the greatest asset the Wii has is its ability to play old gaming systems - such as the NES, Sega Genesis, and Turbo Grafix 16. Why? Because programmers could, in his mind, make games for little money and they would still sell because "These computers enthralled millions of people, people who were not merely biding their time waiting for better technology."

While that's true, given that the Wii has far less graphical fidelity than the XBOX 360 or PS3, it is not also true that flat, 2d graphics are more engaging to gamers than 3d ones. That was, after all, why games started moving in that direction in the first place.

The Personal Agenda that makes the whole article Wrong:
The last page really highlights that the author has a personal agenda: He loves old games. He loves nostalgia, and he would like to live in a world where programmers made new games for the 20+ year old Nintendo Entertainment System, and people bought played those games.

Given this, as accurate as he is about the notion that revolutionary controllers does not mean that revolutionary games will come out (it just makes it more likely, to a lesser extent as the onset of 3d gaming revolutionized games), the whole article is really a large, intelligent bend at an agenda the author has, and that's sad.

When good minds wrap themselves up in their feelings and then layer themselves in so much self-serving information as to believe themselves, when a few doses of the reality of how the world works tears it all down.

The Reality of the Author's Dream:
Wal-Mart has a great many "legacy style" game consoles in a controller that you can buy and put on your TV. Amazingly, my kids actually played these, but not very much. So while he's not entirely off his mark (folks can write simple games and people will play them) he's in the wrong market:

People who want games that simple will buy a $15 or $20 gamepad with a built-in console and a few games (that you can never add more to) and be happy, or put it on a shelf. People who buy a $250 or $400 or $600 console do NOT want these kinds of games, by in large, and their family members, having experienced what the Wii has to offer, probably won't care for the old push-button fests either, albeit the normal puzzle games may still apply.

Jose Francisco - the Luchador?

[General pictures, but not of Jose Francisco wrestling]

Jose Francisco loves to wrestle. It's not something I taught him, I think he just enjoys the feeling of grappling someone to the ground and getting on top of them. He has various ways he accomplishes this with his sisters. With the 4 year old Alejandrita, he likes to take one of her dolls and throw it on the floor. When she bends over to pick it up, he grabs her back and pushes her down and they start to wrestle. She's giggling the whole time.

With my 7yo, Dulce, he goes for her legs, which makes her get on her knees, and then he grabs her hair (which normally he never does), which gets her on her hands and knees, if not her side, and then he climbs on her.

Now Dulce is my sensative, skinny cuddle bunny, but I was still surprised when I heard her call me for help and found Jose Francisco had grappled one leg around one of her arms and the opposing arm around her leg, and she told me "I can't get Jose off of me..."

He's 19 months old. So I told her to tell him to get off without sounding like she was playing, which she did, and then I said commandingly "Jose! Escuchan tu hermana!" which means "listen to your sister" and he got off. Since then she's got safe words and thinks it's fun. Fun, for Dulce, is always knowing there's a way out.

Fun, for Jose Francisco, is proving that there isn't.

Outdoors he also likes to grab a fistfull of dirt and put it down their backs. I asked my 9yo, Maria, how he learned to pull open the back of their color and stuff dirt down their shirts, and she paused a while, and said "I taught him." The other thing he does is quickly points at Maria, who points at him, when my little girls look for whodunnit. Of course they know the truth — they were both in on it.

Wii Cannot Decide

Well I admit to being confused. I am a gamer and gaming things interest me. As much as I hate to admit it, I like how the Wii plays on video. But I'd also like to upgrade my old computer and make it a more capable gaming device to multiplay with my 9yo daughter.

Maria/Lupe, my eldest, wants a Wii. She says so because it's a casual game system that features controls you move around (not buttons you press - as much), supports four players (a magic number at our house) and doesn't cost a fortune (initially).

I told her that my friend Kevin advised I upgrade my old gaming rig (now my wife's PC, and Maria's multiplayer gaming platform) and she said "I don't mean to be rude, but Kevin thinks everyone enjoys what he does."

Actually he doesn't, but she's right that his advice is colored by that. I concede to his point: a PC can do loads of things. However, every time I come home and my baby boy feels left out, or my 2nd and 3rd daughter, I feel like a jerk every time I think about spending a few hundred dollars on something exactly one in four children can enjoy.

On the other hand, I hate consoles for their cyclical games and high-upkeep costs, and as a gamer things like graphics matter to me, not just visually but spacially. Now that I have experienced Operation Flashpoint and (more famous) Morrowind and Oblivion, I want more of these open games. Can the Wii's hardware deliver? If it's a toy for my kids (like their two GBA's) will it matter?

Wii are, as of yet, undecided. All that I know is a PS3 is just too expensive for too little gain.

Nolan Bushnell's smart commentary on the PS3, Wii, and Gamers

Nolan Bushnell, Atari's founder, founder of Chuck E Cheese, both of which I despise in their current incarnations... is a "good idea" man. Like any idea man, he seems to move quickly after an idea's time has passed.

Here's the full interview.

I found his commentary on his new restaurant franchise "uWink" interesting, but y'all might be more enticed to read his thoughts on the PS3, the XBOX 360, the Wii, Sony's past successes, and Atari as it stands today.

I colored the parts that are most profound red.

---

Q: (About his restaurant chain that combines touchpad screens at every table with social games and ordering food, he touches on core history of videogames)

"I saw a very large and untapped market, which is the entrepreneur’s dream. There was no real venue for social games. Games got violent in the mid 1980s… that lost women. Then they got long-form and complex. That lost the casual gamer.

There’s always been this desire to play games. What you really want when you’re out and about is a social [experience] using games... [snip]"

Q: (About his thoughts on the game industry)

"I’m very curious and interested in the Nintendo Wii. I think it may expand the market beyond the hardcore [18- to 24-year old]. Xbox Live is interesting because it potentially becomes the platform for the living room."

Q: (About his thoughts on Atari)

"[Atari] really isn’t a part of today’s gaming world in any meaningful way. They lost the cachet of being a leading technology company in the games space."

Q: (His thoughts about the PlayStation 3)

"I think Sony shot themselves in the foot… there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable. For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base. They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live… a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don’t buy hardware, they buy software."

Q: (About the success of the PS2 and the PSX)

"It wasn’t anything brilliant that [Sony] did. With the PS and PS2 it was timing. They had the right pricing at the right time [and were] almost the accidental winner. It would not surprise me if a year from now they’ll be struggling to sell 1 million units. [Factoring in the PS3’s price], I think in the U.S. the number of early adopters you have is actually around 300,000."

---

(Source RedHerring.com)

Gaming hasn't just lost women (and found them again in games like "The Sims"), it's losing actual gamers who grow up - like me.

"Casual gamer" is such a maligned term because all American males seem to want to think that, at their core, they're really a manly man waiting to bust out of an unmanly body. Saying "Casual" is akin to saying "not serious" or "loser." Everyone loves a winner in America.

But somewhere, someone is going to find out that casual games, that is to say, games that don't require my twenty four years of experience to handle, is a lucrative area. We see it pop up with things like Tetris, sandbox games (Railroad Tycoon series, Rollercoaster Tycoon series, Sim City, etcetera) and -- perhaps -- the Wii.

The Wii is severely underpowered , so much so that I doubt "hardcore gamers" need apply. But "no loss" there as hardcore folks will probably own an XBOX 360 (if they don't already). The Wii could still be something else they pick up at its price-point, something Bushnell cited the inverse of with the PS3. But I have serious reservations as to its ability to satiate the hardcore gamer who, when he comes home, finds a videogame to play and sits down. I doubt the Wii will have enough titles to handle the load; from what I have seen, Red Steel will bomb and only the new Zelda game can hold down a hardcore gamer. No matter -- that's not what it's designed for.

Like Bushnell, I think Nintendo has struck upon an idea that is centered around "untapped consumers."

Bushnell thinks uWink will tap some hidden consumer group, folks who want food and fun in a more adult setting; that's great, but I think the Wii stands a better shot (link to a Japanese family trying out baseball).

Of course, no console or restaurant can withstand the might of the Personal Computer, but once again - that's hardcore.

So will the Wii be, as early Atari was, a stepping stone to get the rest of the population into games? There will always be more casual gamers, I think, and there are folks who just aren't us, which is to say, they will never be hardcore gamers. Whether or not I ever get one, my main hope is that the Wii's control scheme puts an end to the decades-old handheld gamepad (which is really a mini-version of an arcade desk with a stick and buttons that we suddenly found we liked to hold rather than place on the floor [source]), that twenty years from now, all games I play will involve motion, not my touch-typing skills or... thumbs.

Let's face it, we use our thumbs to grab things. They are not meant to be dexterous.

My points? I'm forcing myself to have those lately:

1. Sony is stupid. The PS3 will fail.
2. The Wii has the potential to rid me of my hated enemy: the thumbstick!
3. There's a real market for unmanly men and women who play games sometimes but not all the time.
4. Nolan Bushnell is fairly smart, and has insightful comments on these subjects:
1. How we lost women gamers
2. How we lost casual gamers
3. Sony isn't as smart as they think they are
5. Having a great family means you're not as compelled to log in those hardcore hours into games.

- David

I love my PureXS!

I haven't been well motivated to post because I have my computer (see below) and we're in the middle of Election season. But I'm happy and doing well.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PureXS Arrival Photographs

It's here!

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PEEEUUUUURRRRE EEEEX EEEESSSS

Maria (my lovely lady) just called and told me something has arrived. Baxworld's shipping information still doesn't show it but who cares! I'm on my way home for lunch. So sad we'll be so soon to part. I probably won't open it so I can open it with my cousin Paul tonight.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

Urban Dead

The dead rise to consume the living?

Okay, this is my kind of MMO - quick, easy, appealing, and I have yet to meet the mighty grind beast. It's web-based, which is to say it's story-driven, which is to say "it's mostly just text."

Once you die as a human, you come back as a zombie (duh). As a zombie, you have to gain separate XP to learn to make sounds, and once you can, you can use a new language (well, heavily based on English). It's fascinating, Captain. There's a Lexicon of words as well.

Maria's 19" Widescreen LCD arrives!

I'll post pictures tonight. It's a tad bright, so I turned the brightness down to 5/100 instead of the default 100/100 and that seemed to work. It is not a $400 Dell LCD but for the price ($200) it's large, crystal clear and great. I can see that a Graphic Designer would hate this LCD because it just can't do what the more expensive LCD's can with color but then - it's not an expensive LCD!

Good buy. More on that later.

PureXS arrives in ORLANDO, Florida

See the tracking information page.

Yes, it's true! My PureXS is in Orlando, FL. I doubt it will arrive at my place today, which is sad.

Ironically, my PureXS will be closer to my friend Chris Brown, in Kissimmee, who is South of me and farther away from its origin (Indiana) than I am. Maybe the plane flew over Alachua County or the City of Gainesville before landing there... it MUST have come by plane to have such a wierd route.

THE BIG E-MAIL
I sent the guys this e-mail.

FRIDAY before SATURDAY'S LAN PARTY
Since my cousin Paul is stuck at home guarding the house and tending the aging dog, Yogi, with his folks gone, I plan on taking my system over to his place and messing around there, getting stuff installed, going "Wow" and making "whooping" noises. I'll get to bed at a responsible time for Saturday, but I'm going to ask him if I can sleep over.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PureXS to arrive in Atlanta tomorrow...

Shipping update (see my Google Page for complete info) Oh well. I suppose 10:30PM versus 9:37PM today is about the same to me as "ETA ATLANTA 0712/14" which I would guess is 7:12AM tomorrow? I have no idea. I can't imagine them guessing the minutes like that but there you go. Hopefully it will be here tomorrow evening.

Mmmm mmm can't wait. Sitting here doping around with Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Glee. Yay. Bleh.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

BEST OF ALL, NO MULTIPLAYER

Concerning what a few friends have told me about OBLIVION: The Elder Scrolls IV, I found on www.GamersGoneBad.com a rant I made about multiplayer gaming that speaks true still. The topic then was Galactic Civilizations II, but it might as well be any well-made single-player experience...

"For years, I have thought that any game that could, should be multiplayer. It all started back with the original ZELDA on the old Nintendo. I recall thinking "If I could edit this game and create my own overworld and underworlds and watch my friends play, I'd never stop playing this game." I then thought "And if we could play together, each criss-crossing whatever screens we happen to be on independantly across the world, or working together in the same area, that would be cooler than is imaginable."

That was, what? 1987-1988? Nearly 20 years later - I have news. Playing with your friends is fun, but unlike when we were kids, and games were so simple an affair that all you needed was a second controller and a friend to invite over, we now have to pay $50 per game. Most of your friends probably don't own the same games, and even if they do, both of you wanting to play the same game at the same time is like errant asteroids finding planet Earth.

This is why Internet match-making is what it is, and let me tell you - "...those you encounter online, almost as a rule, are complete and utter cockmongers ." I've been in the 5th ranked guild out of 16,000 North American Guilds in Guild Wars. I was the Captain of the Monk team, 3rd in teir. I've been ranked 20th in Dawn of War's "2v2 players" list, fighting alongside my cousin Paul. I have proven that PC gamers who've been around since Castle Wolfenstein can, instantly, do as well as the 90th percentile in Halo 2 using a Lik-Sang keyboard/mouse adapter (all it took was learning where the gun drops were), and again in the PC port of Splinter Cell: the one where you only have versus mode.

The only place you can go from the top -- is down. And quite often, getting there is a struggle more than an adrenaline rush -- after over 10 years of competative gaming, I really don't give a flying fuck anymore. There's always a new game and ever-younger than you pricks who think that, somehow, dominating other people online is akin to kicking other cave-men in the jaw and breeding with the women while they lie there and bleed. It's a primordal attitude that reveals itself eventually for what it is.

No one plays together as a team. Axe ZELDA with your friends, and you are left with ZELDA, the Editor. "

PureXS Shipping Update 1

"2148/13" my PureXS is arriving in Atlanta sooner than 10:30PM? The time changed.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

PureXS is SHIPPING

The copy/paste won't fit here so check my Google Page on my PureXS shipping!

My Computer Ships Today, to arrive Friday!

David with AAC called me (called my house first and got my 6yo) at work and said the shipping price comes to a whopping $100.89 (ouch - that's over half the cost of Maria's new 19" widescreen LCD) and will arrive no later than Friday at 5pm.

So now all I have to do is... WAIT MORE.

Ooh and Kyle just called me and is going to sign my PureXS with his scrawl and printed name! Oboy! He says the guy who is going to take it is due any minute so he has to sign it and box it up right now. Fun fun!

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

"All Circuits are Busy Now" - I can't reach AAC

I can't reach All American Computers by phone. I get the message "All Circuits are Busy Now" in a woman's nasal tone from the phone company. The call never actually gets to them. If they've got major phone problems up there in Indiana they might not be able to reach me, either. Curse the phone conglomorates!

I am going insane. They need me to give them Maria's credit card information so they can charge me shipping so they can ship the PureXS so it can arrive in time for Saturday the 16th, when my big, bad LAN Party is, so the guys and I can have fun so I don't have to call them all and say "Sorry no party" after four weeks of planning. Aaaah!

I'm okay, I'm okay.

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

Maria and I buy a 19" widescreen LCD

Check out the Google Page I made about our Acer widescreen 19" LCD.

I called All American Computers

The LAN Party is a Go
The bottom line is good: My PC will be with me in time for the LAN Party on Saturday, September 16th!

Kyle says if the LIAN LI side-panel doesn't arrive by Tuesday he'll ship the case with the default panel and ship the clear side-panel later.

The RAM issue hasn't been resolved, it's still running at 677MHz, however, a BIOS revision will probably fix that later, and as he put it "The motherboard is built to have RAM at this speed. When folks overclock their RAM they can actually mess up their timings and slow their system down. I don't think that would happen here but the point is the benefit is negligible and probably not worth waiting for (with an update down the road)."

So I'm a stickler and I want that 800MHz - at the very least I want to try it out and see my 3dMark 2006 scores to check for what difference it makes - but I'm content to do that on my own and not let it hold up my system any longer.

One More Weekend with Mrs. Chop-Fest
I guess I have one more weekend with Clara, my 4yo gaming rig, humdrumming around, trying to find games made between 2001-2003 that I might actually like to play. I'm so sick of low-frame rates.

I tried Star Wars: Empire at War, which is actually a fun little RTS due to its "conquer the galaxy" mode where you collect planets, have them build stuff and send those fleets places to invade other planets. Super keen. As an RTS it's very bland, standard "overwhelm the enemy" and "watch out for air power" when on the ground, instead of space. Anyway, it was running all right on Clara, until I had a lot of planets pumping out stuff, and then just the UNIVERSE map was slow, never mind once I got big fleets of ships going, even with a unit cap. Talk about stupid! So I stopped playing it.

Future Gaming
I got Call of Juarez but I can't play it on Clara - so I'll have to wait for my PureXS, and when I get that I'm pretty sure all I'll be doing is playing Oblivion, so I'm not sure why I got it. It looked Western.

I also want to try out X3, Rise of Legends, F.E.A.R. multiplayer and... a bunch of other stuff.

In the mean time, I have the Soundtrack to Oblivion (awards), and I listen to that almost daily at work. I dream not of Oblivion, but of Draco, Shila and the lands of the Ancient Dragon, not dissimilar in setting and genre.

Hearing my Baby Humm...
I had a very odd sensation while on the phone with Kyle. He asked me to listen and then he said "I'm turning on your (PureXS)." I heard the switch and then her jump to life, all fans ablaze. One immediately died down a bit, and the other waited longer - X1900's in Crossfire, only one will immediately slow down, the other waits for Windows to post back to it. I heard her quiet way down once Windows was at the login prompt.

It struck that cord in me, not nearly as sharply, as when I've seen my children in ultrasounds, or heard them thumping and felt them moving about. It was oddly surreal, and I was kind of disappointed in myself for feeling that way - but there it is. Granted, my children made me cry with joy when hearing them - this did not. But I did feel the pangs. It struck the same cord.

Wierd, huh? He was just trying to demonstrate the minor differences between the X1950's and the X1900's (in Crossfire, both X1950's slow down immediately, whoopdiedoo).

Update:
The Fate of AAC Direct / All American Computers

I kind of WANT MY COMPUTER

I have no more pictures to lavish upon my Internet Shrine to my future PureXS, and now I'm worried that I will have to cancel the Sept. 16th Saturday LAN Party.

Kyle at All American Computers is still working on the RAM issue and waiting for the side-panel from LIAN LI, the case manufacturer. I'll call him after lunch today.

Why World of Warcraft is Successful

Rob Pardo's keynote speech gives all the management details that shows how they thought up and executed WoW's production. Great read.