MicsWorld

I had an idea a couple weeks ago and FINALLY had time to write about it. Before getting into that, a quick apology. We are in alpha at the moment, so it's been kind of hectic at work and when I get home I'm usually too mentally exhausted to do anything. I've been using as much of my mental fortitude as I can to get myself at the gym so I can fight back my fatness. ANYWAYS. I was thinking about MMOs in anticipation of Guild Wars 2, and I had what I thought was a cool idea.

At work today, one of my coworkers asked the group a question that confused me. I've noticed this happens a lot with programmers; even I've done it a handful of times. I don't remember those times because I repress any evidence of my own inferiority, but I know for certain I've done it before. Anyway, programmers tend to oversell themselves on a solution because they are missing some information, and rather than asking a question relevant to the problem their solution solves, they ask questions relevant to the problems with their solution.

So the project I'm on right now is in alpha, and I came across a piece of code that I found really interesting. More specifically it was an interesting comment attached to an uninteresting piece of code that's been giving me a headache, and I wanted to share some philosophy on a huge red flag that you should not submit a piece of code.

So for those not in the know (nobody), there's been a petition to have the ending of Mass Effect 3 changed. There's also an FCC complaint, and rumors of a potential class action lawsuit. Apparently the ending was not satisfying. I haven't played the game yet, but I have to say this is ludicrous.

I was talking to a friend of mine about an interface problem I had with a game. It really only became a problem on the hardest difficulty, and he brought up the point that it was part of the difficulty. I think that argument is a straw man and stupid--not to be confused with ignorant.

I just wanted to give a quick update on what's been going down for the time being. I've been really busy for the past month or so for a lot of reasons, but the good news is that those reasons will probably manifest in much more interesting blogs. Just to summarize what's been going on, I had the opportunity to go to GDC earlier this month (great time, highly recommend), and we've got a milestone coming up at work. This adds to pretty much 0 free time to come home and blog!

A couple weeks ago at the DICE conferences, David Jaffe gave a presentation with a controversial message for game developers (watch it here). The core of his presentation talked about how detrimental stories can be and have been He makes a bunch of good points, many of which I agree with, but I think he missed a very important factor in why video games can be excellent storytelling devices.

I was messing around on IGN today and stumbled on their "IGN Opinion: The War on Used Games" video-torial. I let myself do something I rarely do, and I read the comment section. This was an admitted mistake, but a couple arguments struck me as missing the mark and I've heard them from sane people that don't rant spam the IGN comment section. So here goes my pointless post on why the IGN comment section and parts of the video itself make no sense.

Something that always strikes me as odd is people always saying they want a simple way to lose weight quickly. It's odd because losing weight is inherently simple. For some reason nobody is ok with losing weight simply; they want to lose weight in the most optimal way possible. I think this is a, if not the, major downfall of weight loss psychology.

I've been following this election cycle somewhat loosely, and it gave me a decent idea for a blog. The reason I say I've only been following it loosely, rather than following it closely as any American citizen should do, is because the American political machine is so frustrating that I find myself not being able to pay attention for more than 15 minutes lest I start breaking shit. Most of the shit around me is mine, so I'd really just be hurting myself twice by breaking my shit and putting up with the politics.