I suck at Halo....and Madden, and any other online games

So not too long ago I got the Xbox 360, and with it I got a subscription to Xbox Live, which means I can play online games with my friends or random people and try to beat them at certain games. However, there is a problem, I suck. Not only do I suck, but I am extremely competitive, but aren't we all? No, not as much as me, and I am not video game nerd, but I have been playing video games for a long time, and when I get my ass handed to me on a plate in Halo I am pissed!

I like playing online poker as well, and I have been pretty successful with it, but not always. When I am on a losing streak, I stop playing for a while, even though it is hard because I know I can win it back just as easy, but there is something inside me that would be playing angry. So, I figured a couple days ago I would stop playing Halo because I let myself and my team down(I know I'm making this a pity story). But trying to stop was harder than trying to stop playing poker, which is unbelievable considering there is no money on the line.

So then this got me thinking and I tried to compare the two, video games and poker. Are video games more addicting than online poker? Well I guess it depends on the person you are. If you have been playing poker for a long time and you're good at it, and you go on a losing streak it is easier to stop. If you haven't been playing Halo and Madden and are trying to beat people who have been playing for a long time, it's hard to stop because you want to get better. I know one thing, if I was risking money every time I played Halo or Madden, I would have been done after day one.

video games are not movies

So another movie created from a video game was released last weekend. The movie is called Hitman, which the plot is exactly what the movie says, it follows around a professional hitman and he finds himself in trouble with political groups and other hitmen. Now I have not seen the movie, but here are some reviews of the film. (11% of critics like the movie-rottentomatoes.com)

"While Hitman is decidedly more watchable than Resident Evil and most previous video-game movies, it shares its forerunners' lack of interest in storytelling or logic".- Terry Lawon- Detroit Free Press

"There have been plenty of movies adapted from video games before, but Hitman may be the first one that actually feels like a computer wrote and directed it".- Ty Burr- Boston Globe

"Hitman is one of the best movies ever made from a video game, which doesn't provide you with very much information. That's like declaring the best meal you've eaten at a strip club, or the best love ballad by Kenny Loggins".- Peter Hartlaub- San Fransisco Chronicle

So all of these reviews have something in common. They all mention the fact that it is a video game first, movie second. And the video game didn't even get that good of reviews. Through time movies derived from video games haven't gotten good reviews. (Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider) Maybe the reason we don't like watching these movies is because we've already played them before, and playing or being that character is a hell of a lot more fun then watching them.

do virtual worlds want news?

The news company CNN is creating an I-report hub in the virtual world environment of Second Life. So what's the point? Aren't virtual gamers trying to get away from everything that is real life? Or maybe that's why I would play Second Life. But what makes it different is that CNN is allowing the gamers or as I like to call them "virtual worlders" to create their own news, which is occuring in the virtual world.

So my question then becomes are the virtual worlds starting to become more real world by the day. Sooner or later we'll have a President of Second Life and he or she determines what happens in Second Life and the world goes into oblivion when they go to war with the Sims Online for oil.....well maybe not oil, but you get my point.

Not only do I THINK Second Life is becoming a real world with advertisments blurged in them, I KNOW it after I hear this quote from Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services. "The thing we most hope to gain by having a CNN presence in Second Life is to learn about virtual worlds and understand what news is most interesting and valuable to their residents." Having a CNN presence! If I was a smart virtual worlder I would be insulted by this, and if I ever did watch the news again I would watch it on MSNBC....Kinda giving it the middle finger, nerd style.

Mario Still Super

I haven't had a Nintendo system since middle school ,with it being the Nintendo 64, and on that one I never owned a Mario game. And the game I, as we all do, enjoyed playing was Mario when I played some of the original Super Nintendo games. So I haven't had any form of Nintendo system since, as I have always found Sony and Microsoft systems to be more entertaining. The problem with these systems are that they don't have Mario games on them, as of course, they are on Gamecube, Wii, etc. So I like to see they still are coming out with more Mario games and it interested me to see how they were doing so I looked at some reviews for the new one, Super Mario Galaxy on Nintendo Wii. Here are some of the things they say.

IGN-9.7/10- Nintendo's Tokyo studio has created a platformer that deserves its place among the very best and will surely be remembered in another decade as a classic.

Gamespot-9.5/10- The stellar presentation and fantastic level designs combine to make Super Mario Galaxy the Wii's game to beat and one of Mario's greatest adventures yet.

So I recently just bought an Xbox 360, and I would rather have one over a Nintendo Wii, but this almost makes my want to buy a Wii as well. (Which is exactly what Nintendo wants) I love Mario games and I hate that I am abandoning my childhood memories, and even though Wii has some "kiddy games", if I bought one I think some of the other games on there could played with my family, and I can't ever remember playing a video game with my family before. (Although my dad does want to kick some of the Flood's ass with me on Halo)

Another One Bites the Dust

So I was watching one of my favorite TV shows....still, South Park. And the whole show was about the somewhat video game somewhat virtual game, Guitar Hero. Two of the main characters and kids, Stan and Kyle, played the game so much that they got caught in the rock star life, and the two separate. At this point the game is lost, but at the same time it is still making fun of the game, as we all want to be rock stars so we like to play it through a video game.

I have never played Guitar Hero, and I feel like I am missing out. My sister, who is 24, never plays video games and has played it before, but she also called it Guitar Heroes, what a loser right! But I think everyone wants to be a rock star so they play colored buttons at the top of a plastic guitar in which they then rock out on a stage. I love rock, and I think it's a good step to see people playing the guitar, except for the fact that it's not an actual guitar. It all seems to be a little fun, but a little ridiculous.

At the end of the South Park episode Stan and Kyle reunite to get up to the 1 million point level on the game they are playing. Then everyone gathers around and watches them do it, and when they do the game says!....Congratulations! You are.....fags. Now I realize that is a little harsh, but it is South Park, and it is funny in that it sends a message, if you want to play the guitar, play an actual damn guitar.

Video Game Technology finding Oil? Now find Gold!

The company IBM is supporting the UH Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program (M-OSRP) and its petroleum industry sponsors with a Cell Broadband Engine(Cell/B.E.) to find oil. The engine was originally created for the Play Station 3 and it is able to process different types of data at once.

The chip is used for the Play Station 3 for better imaging for the HDTV users. The main processor in the chip is the the Power Processing Element (PPE), and is capable of running an opearting system by itself. With this, the chip can't find oil on it's own. It is built into a "supercomputer" that is able to analyze many types of data at once. According to Merriam Webster's dictionary (because I had no clue what it meant) an algorithm is a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer. This is important because in the M-OSRP there is an algorithm that is able to supress a form of coherent noise, and to locate hydrocarbons, such as oil and gas.

Now, the data that that these chips have in them are able to find different material that is difficult to find in the earth, including some forms of oil and gas. University of Houston Professor Arthur Weglein is the director of M-OSRP. "Our research purpose is to provide new, high-impact seismic capability, methods and algorithms – the ‘what to compute.’ However, many of our algorithms are extremely computer intensive and their new level of effectiveness requires a matching new computing vision and capability," said Weglien.

This is really the beginning of what could be a futuristic machine. The producers of this machine are really using this as a stepping stone to see how the chip and the supercomputer handle the environment and the elements it can find. “Our partnership with IBM contributes to an effective and comprehensive response to the pressing challenges faced by the petroleum industry in locating and producing hydrocarbons. Located in Houston, the center of the petroleum universe, UH is the ideal place for this partnership to flourish. The success of this initiative has important implications for both our nation’s and the world’s energy and security interests," said Weglein. Well, if a chip created for a video game system has this much ability, who knows what the future holds for advancements.

Bitter Bushnell

Atari was a video game console created 25 years ago. The founder Nolan Bushnell apparently thought that those games were never going to be updated. Bushnell, who is now 64 is not fond of the new style of video games. "Video games today are a race to the bottom. They are pure, unadulterated trash and I'm sad for that," Bushnell told the tech magazine Electronic Design in an interview.

Ouch. That's a downer for new video games. Bushnell is revolutionary in the fact that he created the original Atari, which was a pioneer in arcade games, but c'mon stop living in the past. It sounds like to me he thinks that Atari would last forever and there would be no other life form of video games again.

So what is he doing an interview in a magazine for? He has a new system in restaurants, a touch screen at tables in which you can play casual games with the family, called uWink. As of right now there is only one restaurant that has uWink, in Los Angelas...once again ouch. "A lot of video games today are very isolated. You don't see mom and dad, sister and brother, sitting down like they used to play, say, Monopoly. That represented good mentoring time for families that just isn't happening now," said Bushnell.

I do agree with Bushnell that families don't play as many "family" games anymore, and their kids are shooting aliens and bad guys in the other room, but that is the age of video games today. We don't live in the 70's anymore, and there are educational games today, most likely not the shoot 'em up games, but it is a form of entertainment, just like movies are different today than they were 90 years ago. Let's face it, as time passes, so will our form of entertainment.

In this corner movies, in this corner Halo

I have been blogging on Halo 3 and the impact it has had on the entertainment world, and I apologize because I don't want to sound like a Halo nerd, but this game has been so huge around the world, and now it has maybe taken the majority of movie goers.

According to Advertising Age Total cinema ticket sales in North America for the weekend of October 5 were a relatively meager $80 million--the worst results for an October weekend since 1999, and who are they blaming, lazy people. Well, they are blaming people who play Halo 3 rather than going and seeing a movie. Mike Hickey, an analyst at Janco Partners, commented, "The audience on this game is the 18-to-34 demographic, similar to what you'd see in cinemas. This could last for several weeks." And don't think Bungie, the creator of Halo 3 isn't happy. "We marketed it like a film," said Josh Goldberg, a "Halo 3" product manager at Microsoft, adding, "and now, we're just as big or bigger than film." He said "Halo 3" was marketed as an event film in terms of its partnerships, with beverage, automotive, fast feeders and mobile-phone companies all joining up.

This is what I put on my first post, on how much advertising Halo used to try to sell its game, and this shows how important video games are in our culture. This surpased any one day sale in entertainment ever, and it doesn't spend nearly as much money as the big name movies like Spiderman. The stereotype for the hardcore gamers, especially Halo players, are that they just sit in front of their TV, and don't socialize or go out anywhere, and you know what, they may have just been proven right.

News Flash!....Video Games are Violent!

I know other countries are behind the U.S. in advancements, but the United Kingdom seems to be too far behind on their new study of violent video games.

Tanya Byron, who presents television shows to the U.K. audience is conducting the research for the study. She is trying to figure out how kids (1-18) react to violent video games. (which seems wrong in itself) The study is also trying to find the effectiveness of video game ratings, to see if they are appropriate for each age range.

Video games are violent, sexual, and crude, but you can't hold the company or designers responsible for making the game. The game rating is on the game for a reason; So parents don't allow their kids to get games out of their child's age range, and if they do the blame is on them. If the U.K. needs to revise the rating system a little bit then so be it. I know this argument has been used plenty of times, but I'm going to use it anyway....aren't there more important issues to be discussing then this? Children are not forced to play violent video games, if the parents allow them to play them, it's on them.

Virtual World, Second Life.....Virtual Life

What is the point of virtual worlds? Why do we like to play virtual worlds on our computers when we have a life of our own? Well, after doing research for my pop culture class, I have found virtual worlds to be decently intriguing.

Before coming to this class I thought virtual worlds were just something for the people that were attached to their computers, and they are. But I didn't realize just how extremely popular they were, and that you can make money through some of the things you make. For example in Second Life you can trade properties you created for actual money through a different website. Also in virtual worlds, like Second Life, you have the freedom to be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do. Just like in real life you have to work hard to earn a nice life, you can make new friends online, even though you never see their actual face, but you're still socializing.

So maybe I do now understand why people love virtual worlds. You have the chance to live another life, maybe a life you would ideally want to live. Would I ever want to play in a virtual world? Probably not, but I have a feeling if I start it will be hard to finish.

What Have Wii Come Too?

Video gamers are lazy enough. There is no need to add things into a video game that causes us to be more lazy. But Atlantic Inc., manufacturer and distributor of media storage products, and Wii have made something that will indeed make us more lazy.

Atlantic Inc. is making a line of gaming accessories—the Wii Bag, a portable Wii case designed for active, on-the-go gamers, and Wii Straps, which secure the Wii Remote to the gamer’s wrist, allowing them to play their favorite game, with a more secure, comfortable grip. “The Wii is a very interactive and physically demanding gaming console, and with the Wii Straps, gamers can enjoy their favorite games, such as bowling, baseball or boxing, without worrying about letting go of the controller and damaging their TV or injuring their wrist", said James Dardashti, chief operating officer of Atlantic, Inc.

OK, I somewhat already take my original statement back because have you ever seen that commercial where the remote flew out of that kids hand and it broke the high def TV, right? That seems reasonable, but I still think this is rediculous. No offense to whoever would buy this, but it seems like a waste of money. Carrying your Wii around in a portable bag seems a little out of line to me, and practiclly taping a controller to your hand...wow. But you know what, for the hardcore gamers out there, if you want to spend your money on this, go ahead. Who am I to criticize?

Video Games Reach New Level With Halo 3

In one of my previous blogs I wrote about Halo 3 advertising, and obviously the advertising helped. According to Microsoft Halo 3 became the highest selling entertainment launch in history. In a one day total it sold 170 million dollars.

I understand that a game sells for more than a ticket to the movies or a book, but I never ever thought that Halo 3 would be the most successful one day entertainment sale ever. The sterotype of people playing video games, and Halo, are that they are nerds who sit in front of the television screen and are attached to their seat. But obvioulsy there are alot more nerds out there than we thought there were.

Dance, Dance, Shrink Your Pants

We have been talking about the importance of video game culture outside of the entertainment value in our pop culture class, and here is an interesting example. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (still can't believe I'm saying that) is trying to combine video games and fitness together.

As Los Angelas is opening a new fitness center, Schwarzenegger is featuring Dance Dance Revolution within it, in which you can dance those calories off! The game is designed for kids in the age group of school grades K-9. For those unfamiliar with the game, it is another Japanese game import, in a somewhat arcade game style, in which the game is played with your feet on a dance pad, with four arrows. There is also a screen in front of the players and they try to repeat the arrows on the screen with their feet, and you can make some sweet sweet moves without needing to be a dancer.

I think this is a great way to get kids to lose weight. Kids seem to love the game, and they probably won't even think about losing weight. Obviously eating healthy and having some other form of exercise won't hurt, but I think if parents want a new way to get their kids in shape they should try.....A VIDEO GAME...quite amazing.

The Halo Phenomenon

The new Halo game comes out in the U.S. on Tuesday at midnight. I know why gamers love Halo, because you get to shoot creatures with the best weapons ever created. But how does the hype for this game become larger than any other game, possibly ever?

For example, their is a new Moutain Dew called Game Fuel that has a Halo 3 picture on it. This made me wonder, was this whole new drink created just for the Halo 3 game? Did Bungie (designer) pay for advertising for a new soda? So I went to my second brain, Wikipedia, and searched Game Fuel and it brought me to Halo 3 advertising! So I instead searched Mountain Dew and Game Fuel is only available for 12 weeks, so my assumption is yes Bungie did create a whole new brand of Mountain Dew just to advertise Halo 3!

Also, what seems to be the ultimate advertising spot of late, Burger King, is going to have Halo 3 promotions on their larger drink cups and french fry cartons. To my knowledge this is the only video game I have ever seen advertised on Burger King cups and/or Mountain Dew cans. This is amazing to me that a video game has this much hype. Only the Simpsons movie has had more hype of late. Halo 2 sold $125 million worth of copies its first week. So lets see how this version, with its mass advertising does.

Play Station 4, Xbox720?

I am not one to go out and get the latest version of a video game counsel because I don't feel like shipping 400-500 dollars of my own money just to have a new system come out two years later. In 2004 my PS2 that I originally bought broke and I paid $350 for a new one. Then that one broke and I paid the same amount for an Xbox. I still have that Xbox today, but no good games come out for it anymore! So this made me wonder if, IF i bought the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 soon, when would I expect the new system to come out for it.

Well, Ken Kutaragi, the chief executive officer for Sony, says, ""As a matter of course, I have the vision of Playstation 4, 5 and 6, which will merge into the network." Not only that, he sees the sixth version coming out around 2018. He already has PlayStation 6 in the works 12 years down the line! That means one every four years, if it goes according to plan.

I like playing video games, and i think video game systems are better than computer games (takes up too much space). So in order to keep playing video games I have to get the new system, pay about $500 every four years or so, and that's not including games and accessories that I will need to pay for...it makes you wonder if they don't already have more plans than Kutaragi has mentioned....maybe they already have version seven made!?

Post 1

For my first research paper in my Pop Culture class, I wrote my paper on the history of Final Fantasy. I am a huge fan of Final Fantasy games, but in doing my research I learned alot about the game. For instance it was rumored, the designer Hironobu Sakaguchi, named this game Final Fantasy because it was going to be his last game. I also learned the highest selling Final Fantasy game of all time was the seventh installment. You would think after all these years the first one would have sold the most, but it's not even close. Final Fantasy I has sold 1.3 million copies to date, while Final Fantasy VII has sold 9.8 million.