Good flick. Been a while since there’s been an espionage flick that doesn’t through out a lot of pretentious nonsense to justify itself. This movie doesn’t even need to be funny.

That said, it would have been nice if the action scenes weren’t so fast that no one could see what happened. They’re so few and far between the chase scenes where it’s just Matt Damon running, running, running.

Anyway. Got to get me one of those Russian taxi cabs.

All Newell, all the time. I have to guess that they’re trying to make some kind of statement with this.

Apparently I’m the center of the MMOG universe, again. It’s been almost five years since that happened, when I actually didn’t do anything.

Guess I’ll have to start writing more about MMOGs, or something.

Edit: I updated my links at left to reflect more about what I actually read and have been considering reading more often. Don’t ask me to explain. No, this is not just to screw with the above, and no, I’m not taking any of this seriously, so neither should you. Now go to sleep.

Scott continues to experiment with his blog, which is now sort of yellow. WTF. That’s my color.

I followed the link to Steyn Online, home of multi-national columnist Mark Steyn. Never heard of the guy before, and he’s published in at least four different countries in two continents and one sub-continent.

He writes for a living. Go figure. I immediately imagine him as one of the pricks in Forensics class who had an opinion on everything and wouldn’t ever hold back. Which of course isn’t fair, because at a glance, Steyn’s opinions are at least more finely wrought than say, the latest Mallard Fillmore comic strip.

Is it wrong to have a problem with someone who gets paid to come up with a new opinion every day of the week? Is it a problem if said someone had to self-syndicate himself in 13 different newspapers to do it?

I can’t even hate him because one of them is the Washington Times. Hell, Joe Bob Briggs is UPI-syndicated. Never mind that Rev. Moon is the son of God.

Maybe I should try and sleep again.

Edit: I decided to go see what ole Joe Bob is up to. Turns out he’s doing a column called “Despot Watch” for The National Interest, and his latest piece is on Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov. (In the former USSR, the terrorists win for you!) Meanwhile, he’s starring in a film version of a Stephen King short story, “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away,” opposite Harvey Pekar. No, not the guy who played Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, the real Harvey Pekar. It’s a small entertainment world after all.

I just noticed that Terra Nova has a link to my site as “J (aka DV)” in their unending list of hyperlinks on the right-hand side of the page.

I guess I have my own link on the page, but I have a confession to make — I hardly ever read them anymore. They’re supposed to be a compendium of authorities on the academic approach to what makes MMOGs tick, but damned if every article on there lately isn’t something that pisses me off a little more each time.

For months, it’s either been a plug for Second Life or There and how somehow neither one is a horrible bastard union of noncombat MUDs, 3D graphics, foolish venture capital and recreational drugs, or some random treatise on player dynamics that manages to define them in more specific terms without ever hinting at a viable solution. And don’t get me started on what they said about that rape game.

It’s like the only reason to have academics about MMOGs are to remind everyone that most of the people who have ever been involved in making them had no idea what they were doing. Well, we already knew that, guys. I know it’s not really about trying to be gee-golly-gosh all the time and oversimplify everything about what makes MMOGs interesting and successful to their most bloodless states, but that’s how it sounds, sometimes.

I really need to update my links list. There’s some comic strips in there that I don’t update anymore, either.

I’m tired.

Somewhere there’s a review of this movie that includes the phrase, “turn off your brain.” After seeing it, I’m thinking whoever said it, meant it as code for “all you Isaac Asimov fans, stow your federal cases for how much this movie took liberties with the original novel, and let yourselves be entertained for once, you nit picking sons of bitches.”

I definitely enjoyed this movie more than Spider-Man 2. It’s the smartest film Will Smith’s ever been in (enough to make him not regret passing up the lead on The Matrix,) and he plays smart enough to seem like he belongs in it. Besides being an awesome action flick, there’s excellent dialogue. It manages to be well-paced and funny throughout, and though the premise is relatively simple, that’s not obvious until there’s robots climbing all over the U.S. Robotics building.

Oh yeah, U.S. Robotics. They make modems, not robots. I’m thinking this is why they allowed association with the similarly-named company in the film. Watch for shameless product placement of other obscure products, like Converse All-Stars.

Sorry about that. I’ll try harder.

Brady Games is apparently going to appear at that Penny Arcade conference next month, apparently so Gabe will have something to beat people with.

World of Warcraft might not be too bad a game, reliable fellation and convoluted ESL brain twisters notwithstanding. People are still asking me how to get into beta. I don’t know. Leave me alone about this.

Want to know what made me root through my poorly-organized collection of jewel cases for my Dungeon Siege CDs? My childhood. I might talk more about this later.

Someone asked me the other day if I still played games. I said, “Infrequently.” Which to me, means I squint at my GBA screen trying not to get my characters killed in Fire Emblem. Now I know what Lum means by “his pixel people.” When you stop having fun, it becomes hard to recognize, but once you find it again, you know. Immediately.

God, I hate summer.

This actually happened early yesterday, but it only occured to me to post about it now. Summary: I risk getting electrocuted all for the sake of having light, TV and my computer working in my bedroom at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
Continue reading Overload!…

Sam Raimi has been repeating himself a lot in interviews lately, saying that all Sony/Columbia told him to do for his Spider-Man sequel is just “get more.”

Unfortunately, Raimi apparently took that to mean “more pathos.”

It’s a good movie, but I liked The Punisher better. At least it didn’t take itself so seriously or fill out the time slot with lots of sequences that made no sense. (Having cake and milk with the neighbor girl? The “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” sequence?)

Whatever. It’s a record-breaking summer blockbuster, and mad props to Alfred Molina as Doc Ock. But I doubt it’s getting great word of mouth.

Heather of PlayersLunch.com finally put up the pictures she took of the one and thus far only Shadowbane Player’s Luncheon, held Nov. 17, 2002 at the Texas Renaissance Festival near Plantersville, just four short months from the game’s release the following March. My own report is still available via Web archive.

What a difference two years makes. I still remember that day. Meridian deciding for solidarity in non-costuming after realizing Nazgul had forgotten his pants. Belthior, who had asked Heather to do the lunch in the first place, showing up even though he’d quit Wolfpack several months before. How nervous and distant Rustoleum looked. How pleasantly drunk Warden got on high-quality mead. Heather plugging the Massive Online Gaming book that Incan Monkey God put out and was hoping to make into a quarterly book. (Their partner, Versus Books, declared bankruptcy before they could get out Vol. 2.)

But more importantly, I remember a whole pavilion crammed with fans of Shadowbane who weren’t just looking forward to playing it, they anticipated it like it was going to be the highlight of their lives. I mean, there was this guy, Wolfhart, who rode a bus all the way from Minnesota to South Texas and crashed on the Fairegrounds with no place to sleep for the night. (The Queen of the Faire reportedly took pity on him and let him stay … wherever Faire Queens stay.)

Apparently these photos were up on the old site at one point, but only just got added to the new playerslunch.com site format. If people wonder why I sometimes get wistful thinking about Shadowbane, here’s a good example of why.