I Finally Understand Post-Modern Irony

Such potential

I also discovered that Kokanee Mountain Size cans taste better when poured into a glass.  And that was only by accident when mom had somehow managed to puncture one on her way over to babysit.  Only now, having sent Grandmama home, do I have the opportunity to reflect upon my revelations concerning Post-Modern Irony and king-sized beer, best served in a glass...

I don't get it

My lovely wife, Lyndsay, and I had embarked upon a date, which is a privileged luxury seldom afforded to those who find themselves with child.  Our date, conveniently enough, was at the behest of Brad, with whom we were both acquainted, having spent several years in each others company whilst attending Ambrose Seminary in the service of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.  It was, while in the attendance of said institute of higher learning, that I first learned of Post-Modernism, and, perhaps of more import, the fact that discussions of the era are taken quite seriously in some circles, in all sincerity, and without a trace of irony.

Having dumped our progeny off upon her unwitting ancestor, Lyndsay and I found ourselves in the company of two fetching older women, well-manicured, and suspiciously without escort.  The establishment was dubbed Cafe Koi, and perhaps it was due to my coyness that I failed to confirm if our neighbour was, none other than, Catherine Ford. Lyndsay insists that I was right to shy away.  Perhaps, though perhaps I’ll never know for sure.

Ugh, I'm actually thinking Arby's

It was while Lyndsay was in the washroom that Catherine Ford and I griped about having been sat at the bar, despite having made reservations two days in advance.  After all, if dignitaries such as ourselves were denied our appropriate seats of honour (Ford, having been featured in editorial pages across the land, and myself, having been photographed with Joe Clark, but never with Batman) then surely we must be in the presence of royalty.

After what seemed like half-an-hour, Brad’s band finally took the stage.  The singer’s velvety-smooth voice swept me away into an introspective dream-scape wherein I could contemplate such lovely things like love, art, and the Post-Modern flavour of irony.  It was, perhaps, when torn between this dreamland and the skeletal ugliness of its source that I finally got the point.

How ironic!

But why rush to the point?  It was, after all, long after what three years of seminary could never drive home, that I actually shook the strangely insubstantial hand of the man who first drove me to contemplate such things.  He, whose voice couldn’t help but to inspire, was a mere specter.  Fleshy, but skeletal, like he had no bones at all.  A Crunchie Bar... firm upon your initial grasp, but something that soon melts away when confronted with the menacing heat of your hand.  Stranger still, he had a haunted look, as though he’d lost his soul to antidepressants, LSD, or the Irish Potato Famine. 

It was, in fact, long before I shook the hand of this incorporeal being that I came to terms with what the most ridiculous amongst us term Post-Modern Irony.  Three years!  Three years of being immersed in such pretense!  Mine is a church so fearful of something so prone to self-destruction.  Something possessed by a ridiculous, thoughtless spirit, whose final defensive recourse is, and always will be, Well, that’s just your opinion!  As though the thought, that observation, having originated from my brain and being dispensed through my lips, needed clarification.  Thank you, very much... Not.  Idiot.

But there I was, gripped by the spirit of something for which I held nothing but contempt... I finally understood how I had been corrupted by the spirit of the times.  How my own Aspergers-like retardation was not the consequence of genetic chance, but by the fact that I was never allowed to empathize with those around me, let alone those who came long before me.

Let me say plainly what no one did, or could, say to me before: satire ruins some things.  I actually realized this long ago, having had the privilege of watching the Grapes of Wrath, only to know the ending in advance because of my beloved, The Simpsons.

Stellaaaaaaa!

Ohhhhhhhh! Bemoan me, bretheren!  Is this what Ray Bradbury was bitching about?  Has television become the only medium through which us intellectually impoverished proles can become acquainted with that which once was considered refined?  Don’t be stupid.  Yes, obviously... stop pretending that’s a bad thing, jackass.

I know only that which was delivered through a lens for purposes far flung from the author’s original intent.  And here I sit, poured beer in hand, confronted with a lifetime of explanations... Explaining why something so obvious is true.  Explaining that yes, the author actually meant what he said.  Explaining how things are exactly as they seem.  And finally, contending with a retardation most profound, just trusting that everyone can at least accept that some opinions are better than others.

Yet Another "Future of Gaming" Prediction

A couple of weeks back I learned about a group called the Independent Game Developers Association.  A few nights after that I had the privilege of meeting with some members of the local chapter.  Only four guys showed up my first night (including myself) but it was an experience that I look forward to repeating.

The IGDA conversation mostly revolved around console and PC games, which is a world largely unknown to me.  This is mostly because I haven't had the time to play them since the Super Nintendo was cutting edge.  For this reason, and others, my interest in games and game design is academic, primarily, and commercial, secondarily.  Despite being on the periphery in many respects, it was fascinating to listen to the conversation drift back and forth between developer talk and gamer talk. Being on the outside gave me an interesting perspective... all the while I couldn't help thinking that these guys were pretty old fashioned when it comes to gaming.

Pwnd!

For any IGDA guys who might be reading this, I mean no disrespect when I say old fashioned.  It's just that when I'm thinking about designing games and potentially making money from them, I don't see much opportunity in the whole console-PC arena.  Maybe I'm pessimistic, but for a small-time sucka like myself, there's not much room to break into that hyper-competitive billion dollar industry.  If there are trails to be blazed and money to be made, it's not going to be from putting new titles on the shelves at Best Buy.

So what does the future hold for those of us looking to make our mark on the gaming industry?  There's no shortage of opinions on the subject (ask Google), though it might be said that there is a shortage of originality.  In general, those looking toward the horizon see this:

1. Games will be increasingly social (whatever that means)
2. Virtual goods will be an important source of revenue
3. Game data will go online so that play may resume from any computer
4. Mobile device development, like the domestication of the dog, will continue unabated

There it is... the future of gaming in a nutshell.  Mind blowing.  Sarcasm aside, Point 3 is actually a really good one.  The idea of being tied to a PC or console will become increasingly antiquated as the need to install game software on your local machine declines (attribute this to the cloud, or whatever other dumb buzzword is currently in fashion).  Similarly, do not necessarily think cell phones when reading Point 4, because iPads are actually pretty nifty. They hold a lot of gaming potential, especially for the board variety I loathe so much. 

Now, can I interest you in a virtual coffee table?

So where does this leave us?  Well, it leaves me wondering what kind of sucker would actually pay for virtual goods.  I don't doubt that people do it, but I have a hard time picturing myself plunking down real-world cash to upgrade my avatar or obtain some super-awesome weapon essential to advancement in the game.  If I can't progress in the game without spending money, then that's where the game ends for me (I'm looking at you Tower Madness for iPhone).

This also leaves me in the sheepish position of wondering if the overall future of gaming is too obvious to state.  Maybe, but I'm going to do it anyway... we're going to see a lot more targeted advertising within games. Of course, this already happens to a limited degree, but not nearly to the extent it could.  For the most part, game designers have not yet been able to properly exploit what Facebook does best: collect demographic data.  With Facebook, advertisers can effectively target a group of people with an unprecedented degree of specificity.  Contrast Facebook with radio advertising, by way of example.  Radio stations gear themselves toward a gender and a generation.  The 25-34 year old female demographic, for example, is the most coveted in the industry.  Facebook, on the other hand, is capable of narrowing that range to the point where a person's stated interests may be considered when placing advertising within the game.  Facebook's own advertising reflects this fact, though they still don't share the revenue  third-party developers generate, for some reason.

Ooooh! 30% off Canesten!

It sucks that Facebook doesn't give its developers a piece of the advertising action, but don't hold that against them, because they offer something of value for free: the demographic data developers need to make money with targeted advertising!  With that data there's really no limit to how such advertising might be integrated into a game.  It may be as simple as putting a product on a virtual billboard, or as complex as constructing a Pampers display at a virtual grocery store because the advertisers know that a certain new mother likes to play The Sims while on maternity leave.  This kind of targeted advertising only works because of the broad gaming trends named previously... especially the social aspect, without which the demographic data would not be generated.

For game developers there isn't anything particularly challenging about constructing a profile of your user and inserting new ads every time he signs in.  The challenge will lie in not allowing that integration to compromise the structure or playability of the game itself.  In-game advertising must be as ubiquitous as real-world advertising, while being similarly inconspicuous.  It's like selling virtual goods without placing the financial burden on the user.

Socializing Stock Ticker

Remember Alf? He's back! In pog form!

My very first video board game ever, Stock Ticker Classic, is finally in a near-finished state (from which it may never emerge).  Stock Ticker, for those who don't know, is an old board game many people say they love, but for which their affection was never strong enough to motivate them to actually go to the store and buy a copy.  The original Copp-Clark version hasn't been in print since at least the mid '80s, and the latest version, by the Canada Games Company, has a copyright date circa 1992.  Incidentally, Canada Games is no more... bankrupted by a tepid Stock Ticker fan-base and the fleeting appeal of Pogs.  And, Copp-Clark now publishes calendars, or something... I'm not actually sure.

Rest assured, I won't repeat the failures of past Stock Ticker publishers.  No sir, not me!  Why?  Because we've got this "new" thing called social gaming, all courtesy of that nerd in The Social Network.  Now, thanks to social gaming, the same people who professed such deep love for the original Stock Ticker board game can now post their game earnings on their Facebook news feeds.  This, in turn, will attract the attention of other Stock Ticker fans who want to reminisce over fond childhood memories of family game night and to demonstrate their superior game technique to their snotty Facebook friends.  This process will repeat itself until every one of Facebook's 6 trillion users has installed Stock Ticker Classic, clicked on some Google ads, and made me rich enough to finance my own nerdy movie... Freddy Got Fingered II.

And that, in a nutshell, is the extent to which Stock Ticker Classic has been socialized (and really, I haven't yet been able to determine if there's any more to it than that).  Stock Ticker Classic is still, at its core, a solitary game, but now it's plugged into this wondrous self-promoting feedback loop, which will inevitably spread it across the globe until the lives of every man, woman, and child have been touched by its magic.  So, let's see... it was released yesterday, where it quickly gained two new Facebook users (myself and my wife).  Today there are six users in total (my mother-in-law, brother, and a couple cousins).  That means there are three times as many users today as there were yesterday.  At this rate, Stock Ticker Classic will have 137,260,754,729,766 users in one month's time, which is pretty good. 

The Origins of Poker - Shrouded in Mystery

Tabernac!

Poker and the guillotine are France's only two worthwhile contributions to humanity... or so I thought.  If you'd asked me last night (up until about 11pm) I would have sworn by the moon and all the gold in the temple that the glorious game of poker was French in origin.  This may not be true, however, as the most reliable source of factual information currently available, Wikipedia, tells a different story.  It is a story of deep intrigue, mystery, and drunken boredom. 

This tale takes place after a delightful evening of fine sushi dining and Japanese beer chugging.  Having consumed one bottle of every kind Japan has to offer, me, my wife, and entourage, decided to cleanse our palates with the cheapest swill we could find at the local liquor store.  Given that my entourage consists mostly of computer jerks, it goes without saying that we are a socially retarded lot with mildly autistic tendencies.  Alcohol alone is not enough to lubricate sensible social interaction within a degenerate group such as this.  As such, we all felt compelled to play a game, which is a practice I loathe, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Poker was our only option, because I hate board games and don't own any.  But matters were complicated somewhat when it was discovered that none of us had any cash, an element, without which, makes poker totally pointless.  Without a cash incentive and the cognitive wherewithal to maintain focus on a standard game of Texas Hold 'Em, things got goofy.  Since no one cared anyway, I suggested we kick it old school and play the game in what I believed to be its most primitive form: poque, which is a dirty French word for faire l'amour.

With that, we all unleashed our abrasive French personae, complete with French accents and obnoxious French laughter.  The only thing missing was the oppressive, lingering body odour, thinly veiled by stale cigarette smoke and Axe Body Spray.  Correction: we were still missing one thing... the rules to poque.  This didn't turn out to be much of a problem though, because there were no Frenchmen around to look down their noses and tell us we were doing it wrong.  The rules we cooked up actually made the game pretty fun, and fully comprehensible to our unsettled minds. 

Here are the rules, in a nutshell:

1. Standard poker hand ranks and dealing practices apply.
2. Players all place their antes in the pot before the cards are dealt.  The ante doubles every 10-15 minutes, as with the blinds in Texas Hold 'Em.
3. Five cards are dealt to every player.  There are no draws and no community cards.
4. The player to the left of the dealer is the first to bet.  Subsequent players may check, bet, raise, and re-raise, as appropriate to other poker derivations.
5. Once betting is complete, players reveal their hands.
6. The best hand takes the pot!

That's it!  So simple that even a group of culturally insensitive drunkards can conceive, dictate, and master the rules in minutes.

Although the assumed origins of poker were incorrect, it is not difficult to suppose that the most primitive form of the game would have been structurally similar to that described above.  (Also, it should be noted that these rules are basically mirrored by a poker derivative Wikipedia calls Straight, but for which it offers minimal background information).  Supposing incipient poker was similar, it is interesting to observe how the game has evolved from a form that reveals a very limited amount of information to the players, into something where more and more is made available.  For example, compare Five-Card Draw to Texas Hold 'Em, which is arguably the most popular form.  The latter affords much more data, which in turn gives the player much more information to work (or contend) with.  Does the availability of game data contribute to its popularity?  If so, what new forms of poker are on the horizon?

Stock Ticker Classic - The last 10%

Stock Ticker Classic is my very first video board game and it won't be my last.  There's nothing ground-breaking or remarkable about it.  In fact, anyone with even moderate programming skills could easily implement their own version.  It took me about five days to get the beta running, and I've spent five months working on what has been called the last ten percent.

I took the phrase from a chapter in Developing Games in Java by David Brackeen, et al.  The book is about seven years old, and not especially helpful.  Check it out from the library, if you can, but I don't recommend buying it.  If I'd bothered to actually read the chapter, and not just glance over the table of contents, I probably would have learned that the last ten percent is the most tedious, but perhaps most important part of getting a game ready for market.  Stock Ticker Classic in its current form is totally playable and true to the original board game, but it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles people have come to expect in their games (and software in general).  If a game designer doesn't meet those expectations, no one but supportive friends and family members will give the game any attention. 

Bells and whistles can mean many different things.  Here, of course, I'm referring to visual and auditory feedback, but I'm also including game deployment in the mix.  It's the visual and auditory cues that are going to get people hooked.  I don't have any quantifiable evidence, but judging from the traffic on the Stock Ticker Classic site, I'd say you have about thirty seconds to grab a player's attention or he'll just bugger off.  As for deployment, I've already stressed its importance in a previous article... make it easy and give the user every assurance that the software is safe to run, which it usually is anyway when loaded as an applet in a browser. FYI, some of that JNLP stuff is kind of weird.  I'm not sure real-world users will appreciate its security benefits, especially when the whole installation procedure looks fishy in and of itself.

Finishing the last ten percent is an onerous task, indeed.  Right now I want nothing more to move on to a new project.  It's taken a lot of restraint to stay focused on what's currently on my plate.  Given my vague commercial aspirations, I suspect the discipline I've gained from this experience will pay off in the long run. 

Social gaming - repackaged RPGs?

Here's a post by Brenda Brathwaite, a professional game designer based in San Fransisco:

Some Forming Social Game Theories 

This is confirmation that the notion of social gaming is being made up as we go along.  This is not a bad thing, per se.  New phenomenon, be they cultural, technological, or whatever, emerge all the time.  People recognize something unique and then invent the vocabulary to describe it.  This is the natural order of things.  When it comes to social gaming, however, we have yet to establish if it is, in fact, something new.
 
The list of forming social game theories provided above was started on Twitter and then moved to the author's blog for safe keeping.  It is intriguing because it appears to be the product of real industry professionals, as opposed to amateur hacks like myself.  Several of the suggested theories fall into the category of interface design, and are thus not peculiar to the social gaming phenomenon.  The bulk of the theories, though, lend credence to the one recently postulated by myself: i.e., social games do not draw to any natural conclusion.
 
This broad theory is fleshed out quite nicely by Brathwaite and her colleagues.  Here are a couple of the more poignant observations quoted directly from her blog:

Players should:

1. Have short-term problems to solve (in a session) and long-term problems to solve (multiple sessions). Longer term problems/desires may be aspirational goals, collections or quests to complete.  
2. Feel like they have agency in the game. Through their direct action, something happens. Without them, it doesn’t happen. If you never plant crops, you never get results.
3. Feel good about posting something in their feed. They believe what they’re posting will help them and help their friends playing the game, too. 
4. Have clear dailies including friend grind, playspace grind and bonus progression, if applicable. What do I do everyday when I come back to the game? Do I know that I have finished what I needed to do? How do I know that I need to do it (and no, your last play session isn’t enough).

These four observations best complement the interminable nature of social gaming without encroaching upon or muddying the distinctive elements of what might be called traditional gaming.

So then, what's new about social gaming?  Still nothing that I can see.  Dungeons & Dragons, which has been played for decades offline, so to speak, may possess all those characteristics, as per the will of the dungeon master... well, all of the characteristics except for the feed-posting, which no one really likes anyway.  In any case, it doesn't take much effort to pair this characteristic with a loose analog (e.g., D&D dorks talking about D&D, much to the annoyance of everyone else riding the bus). 

Still, I remain optimistic that there is something new in social gaming worthy of interest.  Any suggestions as to what that elusive new element actually may be?

Pokemon - Deploy!

Number One Pokemon Trainer

Pokemon, evidently, still has a substantial fan base.  I never jumped on this particular fad because I was sixteen when they first appeared and was still too obsessed with the Ninja Turtles to be bothered with anything new.  According to Wikipedia, Pokemon, or "Pocket Monsters", is the Japanese version of "Trouser Snakes", a common Western game with which all sixteen year-olds are well acquainted.  It has now been fourteen years since the Pocket Monsters were unleashed on the world, and the sedentary six year-olds who spent all their allowances on playing cards have lived well past the expected middle age of that demographic. Interestingly, the crises of midlife have manifested themselves in home-brewed computer versions of this once wildly popular card game.

Let's play Pokemon, mon!

This recently came down the Facebook pipeline courtesy of one of those original Pokemon gangstas.  Given his enthusiasm for the project promoted on the site and my new-found interest in bridging physical gaming and video gaming, I thought I'd check it out.  What I found is a surprisingly professional looking site with two valuable Don't-do-want-Donny-Don't-does-type lessons in video game deployment.
 
Lesson #1: make your game easy to access
It's not that this so-called Pokemon Online Battle Sim is necessarily difficult to get a hold of, but it is 16.5 MB and hosted on a server somewhere in the European Union.  From where I'm sitting, that's a download that can take anywhere from three minutes to three hours, depending on traffic.

Lesson #2: I don't know you and I don't trust you
I immediately grew apprehensive when I discovered that the Pokemon game is only available as a downloadable, installable executable.  That's right, you actually have to download and install it.  If you don't understand my apprehension, I invite you to install the software yourself.  Be sure to let me know how it works out.  If you're a Mac user, better still... there's a version for you!  Macs can't get viruses, right?

My first foray into video board game design and distribution, though modest, taught me some interesting lessons about software deployment (world multi-player coming soon, FYI).  But, even being the amateur that I am, I would have thought the lessons listed above would be no-brainers.  The real shame is that I actually want to play the Pokemon game, but the reasons listed in Lesson #2 are more than enough incentive for me to run screaming in the opposite direction. 

What the heck is social gaming?

Last night, I stumbled across an article about something called social gaming.  The phrase strikes me as somewhat tautological, because game-playing is, quite often, a social activity.  It's kind of (but not quite) like when people say software program.  Software and program mean the same thing.  No one would ever say, "You've got to try this program program I downloaded", or, "This software software really makes filing my taxes easier".  Likewise, you'd never hear someone say, "Scrabble is my favourite social game".  The game itself is necessarily social.  And while it's true that the term social gaming doesn't really suffer the same redundancy as the term software program, the inherent social aspect of many gaming endeavours does make me question what the term is supposed to mean.

Certainly, there are categories of games that can be described as antisocial.  Single-player video games are an obvious example.  Also, solitaire is antisocial by definition, because if you needed two players, it would no longer be a solitary activity.  Social and antisocial gaming has been around since the invention of free time, so why the sudden need to make the distinction?  The most probable explanation stems from the advent of social networking, which, if understood in strictly human terms, is a definite tautology.  Networking would be impossible if people didn't come together to socialize.  In computer terms, however, social networking does describe a new phenomenon: the integration of computer networking into human relationships to create, maintain, and facilitate said relationships.

The advent of social networking may partly explain where the term social gaming came from, but it does nothing to justify its existence.  Once upon a time I had a high school teacher ask me if Street Fighter II was interactive.  Uhhhhh, yeah...  If I was 15 years younger and that same teacher was similarly curious today, he would probably ask, "Is Call of Duty: Black Ops going to be social?"  The questions may come from different centuries, but they are similarly retarded. 

All that being said, it's fairly safe to assume that I'm missing the point somewhere.  Though a quick search of the internet basically confirms my suspicions that the term social gaming is just a buzzword that came about as the result of a broader social trend, a discussion with my friend and colleague produced some food for thought: we decided that the games some might consider to be social (e.g., Farmville, World of Warcraft), seem to have one common characteristic: they don't draw to any natural conclusion.  You could potentially play these games your whole life.  As such, you're given the opportunity to add a new dimension to what might otherwise be considered a conventional human relationship.  That is, you might have a friend with whom you interact through conventional human means like meeting for dinner or chatting over coffee, but you also engage via the relationship defined by the game in which you share a common interest.  But I'm still left to wonder if this really is any different than people who would only otherwise associate because they enjoy playing Chess or Hungry Hungry Hippos.  I'm not sure about this, but there is one thing of which I'm certain: the only way to win at the game of life is to stop playing Farmville.

Artificial Ignorance

The worst part of playing board games is, hands down, the other players.  A computer player doesn't bail when it starts to lose at Monopoly.  But then computer players usually aren't as challenging as human players.  Go play Monopoly on Pogo.com and you'll see what I mean... the computer is always up for making a sensible, mutually beneficial property trade.  Human players, on the other hand, are belligerent, mean spirited, and incredibly short sighted.  These are the challenges I miss when playing against computer opponents.  Though it may seem strange,  I take no satisfaction in winning a fairly played, completely rational game.  It is far better to relish the demise of a dimwitted human opponent who only knows to express his frustration with misspelled expletives.

Scew u!

Making artificial players less rational is not only good for board games, it may also prove vital for the survival of mankind.  After all, in most science fiction it is the computer's cold, passionless logic that invariably concludes humanity is not only a threat to the computer, but also to itself.  It sees the only rational course of action is to obliterate or enslave the human race.  By instilling in our AI creations the same malicious stupidity that ultimately prevents us mere humans from getting our collective acts together, we may be preventing our eventual enslavement by bad-ass robot overlords of our own design.  And, more importantly, we'll have jerky robot slaves who will play Monopoly whenever we want.

HaHAA!

The bulk of my day is spent pondering how to mechanize human behaviour.  It seems to me that making existing computer players seem more human might not be that difficult.  I'd keep them greedy and cutthroat, but limit their ability to make rational decisions and plan ahead.  That way, they'll never recognize a good Monopoly trade, and they'll be incapable of remaining focused long enough to make us their slaves. 

Step away from the Ouija board!

I've known Ouija boards are bad news ever since my friends and I contacted Kurt Cobain.  It turns out he's a bit of douche, and in retrospect I wish I'd thought to ask him about the weather in Hell.  I'm surprised Courtney Love didn't cap him sooner.

Where do bad folks go when they die?

Now, it's my Christian duty to remind y'all that few things make the Virgin Mary's baby's daddy angrier than Rock 'n' Roll and teenagers with Ouija boards.  What so many consider a harmless distraction is, in reality, an $11.95 unlimited data plan, streaming text messages direct to Satan's iPhone.  It comes bundled with hell fire, demonic possession, and an eternity of anguished heavy metal torment at no extra charge.  And if you're not running out the door to go buy one now, then I'm not describing it right.

Uhhhh... save me, Jebus!

In any case, this got me thinking about what the internet might have to offer in terms of online Ouija boards and how I might rig my own to teach Bible verses and be way less fun.  It turns out that there are tonnes of online Ouija board games.  I clicked the first link on Google (Shop of Little Horrors), got spooked, and decided to watch America's Got Talent instead.  This did little to ease my spiritual turmoil.

Why, Kurt?  Why?!

Nostalgia is Dumb

Like most computer jerks, I've got boxes of old console systems stored in my parents' basement.  Unlike most computer jerks, I don't actually live in my parents' basement.  Why do I bother hanging onto them?  Because they're my parents and I love them.  As for the systems, I have no idea, and I'm not going to worry about it until I'm forced to confront my issues on national TV (e.g., Hoarders, Intervention).  But of those systems slowly succumbing to time and toxic mold in the basement, one will forever remain conspicuously absent:

My parents were too poor

I first became aware of the Atari when I was three years old, and from the moment of that initial awareness, I begged my parents to buy me one.  They didn't, of course, partly because I was too young, and partly because of the $15,000 price tag.  Instead, my brother and I had to settle for a discontinued Vectrex system (which actually was pretty awesome).  As such, I have no emotional attachment to that particular Atari system.

Nevertheless, this really warms my cockles:

Cockles: getting toasty...

That's right!  It's Halo for the Atari 2600. And just like Halo on the XBox, this game is way too hard for me. Of 64 levels, I've made it all the way to Level 3.  This is not all for lack of skillz, per se, as the controls stick sometimes.  Most of the time my guy gets smoked when he waltzes into an electrified pillar or something (this problem seems to happen less with IE than Firefox, but I may be just imagining things). 

Bored Games

I really don't like playing board games.  They always get pulled out at the times I least want to play... usually it's after dinner at a dinner party when all I want to do is get drunk and make fun of TV.  But inevitably, someone always asks, What should we do now?  And I always want to say, Whatever it is, I hope it's not Cranium or any of the other lame games you've got piled up in your basement.

Still meh

So then, you might ask, Why are you blogging about board games?

Well, sir or ma'am, it's really none of your business, but whatever...

Basically, my priorities are as follows: God, family, TV, and guns... so whenever I'm not thumping my Bible or shooting the hell out of some old TV with my family, I'm trying to hustle a quick buck.  Board games seem pretty lucrative, especially the ones you can play online.  And while I'm far too sophisticated for such trifling amusements, I'm certainly not going to judge how others choose to waste their time.

So with that, I introduce:

www.stocktickerclassic.com

This is my first foray into the world of online board games.  It's playable, but it's not done yet.  I hope to have multi-player up and running in a few weeks.  In the meantime, I'll trawl the web for other home-brewed video board game creations.  Check back soon.