-From 2008-

“Left 4 Dead?”

It’s all he said, but I had to hold the wince on the inside. Really?

The other two were very excited; visibly jittering in their seats. The holidays are the best time for them to catch up on some of the M rated stuff their older cousins are playing. J stares at me a little longer while I ruminate. It’s more time that I don’t get to play all of the other stuff I’m trying to finish, plus something in the back of my head was saying play something else. The previous years it was Halo over the LAN. Two in the basement, two in the living room.

“Alright.” Grudgingly.

The younger two are up and out of their seats before J and I; trying not to run to the basement. We were going to hold off on opening presents since E was taking a nap. By far the youngest in the house that day, he was dictating a great deal of the events. But now the other ones at 11 and 14 were really deciding the activities.

We get to the basement. M and L in their excitement have taken the prime seats on the couch. J takes a perch on a barstool. I boot up Entertainment Central with the Harmony. The interlopers have changed my mood to the opposite of “harmony” within a few minutes. J hands me the copy of L4D and I put it in the 360. My dark cloud reminds me it’s only two player. Ah. I hand J and L, the oldest two, some controllers. “I need to go help clean up lunch,” I sigh. “I’ll come back down to play later.” I’m used to this kind of thing now.

So asking me what I wanted to play was moot. More than likely I will get a few hours to myself after everyone leaves or goes to sleep for the night. What I don’t get is why I was so disappointed to play L4D after enjoying it so much at Thanksgiving. The missus told everyone that would listen over the following weeks how funny it was when J and I were tooling around the zombie apocalypse. As I washed dishes I thought of the things that bugged me about the newest games.

Left 4 Dead, while excellent an experience in co-op, really loses something on the couch. Sure, J and I could play over Live or Steam with some others, but on one 360 only two of us could really enjoy it. The experience I had enjoyed so much a few weeks earlier had suddenly turned negative. Was this really the state of the couch co-op that I had enjoyed so much when I was younger? Or even last year? It seems that so many of the games that the core were really into only have a great on-line multi or single player experience. The casual stuff is what people were meant to play together when Ethernet or fiber wasn’t involved. It mostly dwells on the Wii, or requires more crappy plastic accessories to fill my sanctuary. To top things off I had heard numerous gamers complain that single console split screen was probably ruining their experiences.

“Grabbin’ Pills!”

The meme is working its magic when I return from my self-imposed exile. The cousins have drawn a crowd of the non-gamers in the house, and they’re all cracking impressions of the computer player’s dialog. My scrooge heart grew some sizes watching for a few minutes. And I was sure that I would get my turn before too long, but I kind of understood how it might be fun to just watch. Things could have been worse, but watching the two cousins get owned may have been just as fun as playing myself. Maybe there is some hope for couch co-op yet. Or I just need to buy another 360.

Ah, deals on physical purchases. Originally posted on Cheap Ass Gamer, reposting here for posterity. Links removed and a couple of edits included:

For short-time Cheap Ass Gamers the forums appear on the surface to be the best place to find the best video game deals on the Internet, but the pros know that you need to go that extra mile sometimes to get the most out of your cheap ass dollars. This blog series will help the community get the most out of a deal with only a little effort.

Arguably, the most important weapon in the CAG's cache is the price match. While the forums provide a litany of straight-up great deals, it is possible to get a little extra value by using retailers built-in price matching policies. On the surface it may seem insignificant, but saving some time and gas money can be enough to make the wait for a manager to do a key-turn for that extra 10% off. Popular retailers that have price matching policies that are well known are Best Buy and Walmart amongst others. Each of the stores have their own little nuances, but understanding the policies will save you some money with some easy tips.

Let's look at Best Buy first. One of the most overlooked policies at Best Buy is the ability to get an extra 10% matched when the product is bought at Best Buy, then matched at BB from another retailer at a later date. Using the forums, you can usually get a day or two heads-up on what games will be on sale the following week. So, for example, I have purchased a game for $59.99 at Best Buy because I know it will be on sale the next week at Target, for instance, for 39.99. When Target's sale goes into effect, I return to Best Buy and request a price adjustment. Not only will I get the $20 difference, but the Best Buy Policy is to match 110%, meaning I also get an additional $2. This makes getting the game at Best Buy an even better deal than the original retailer. See the Best Buy in-store policy at (links removed).

Sometimes Best Buy's Policy doesn't cut the mustard, many stores require that an item you are requesting a PM on be in-stock at the competitor and that the Best Buy you are standing in have enough on-hand product. I have found that Walmart, while not having a 110% policy, does have a more liberal set of requirements. My local Walmart in the past used to only match grocery items and ads from grocery stores. Now they have begun matching for exact items in movies, music and games. Walmart doesn't research the prices much, while Best Buy will call the competitor or do an item look-up on-line before satisfying the PM. The policy on Walmart.com states the following:

We strive to provide you with the lowest prices possible on Walmart.com as well as in our stores. However, sometimes a price online does not match the price in a store. In our effort to be the lowest price provider in your particular geographic region, store pricing will sometimes differ from online prices. Our local stores do not honor Walmart.com pricing or competitor advertisements from outside of a store's local trade territory.

Local trade territory is usually defined by the store, and commonly is around 30 miles.

A few tips will save you some heartache when doing the price match at your retailer of choice. First, always have the ad ready. One of the best investments you can make is buying or subscribing to your local Weekend/Sunday newspaper that includes the ads, or get printouts of the actual ad pages from the on-line stores. The CAG community is great for this as well. Best Buy, Target, Toys R Us, K-mart and Sears etc. all have on-line printable ads. Most stores you choose to PM at will require that they see the ad, and may want to keep it. Interestingly enough, my local Walmart has made price cuts shortly after seeing a competitor ad used for a PM.

Next call ahead! One of the biggest complaints I see on the boards is that "ShaqFu-ing Store X didn't have the item I wanted in stock!!1! It's all their fault I wasted gas and my time to go and get my item of choice only to not be able to get it." While it's not 100% effective in making sure your item is there, it is better than wasting money on gas and nullifying the savings you would have seen. On-line item stock availability is also not very accurate, but calling and asking the employee to set the item aside for you is good practice.

Lastly, keep your receipts. When your retailer of choice has a price match policy, they will likely PM something for the entire refund period. I have had Best Buy price match things WEEKS after I originally bought the item. Losing the receipt can be disastrous, and in the volatile world of games, prices drop, sometimes dramatically, in a couple of weeks.

Next week: Store Rewards and clubs

I get it, NFTs are bad. For the environment, for creatives, legal currencies, etc. If this isn't a way for somebody to own some data, then what is the solution?

Interesting read for the weekend: http://www.theendofownership.com/

Here is a good piece from Cory Doctorow. It's funny in the context of two huge companies arguing over consumer benefit over App Store margins and Fortnite. I wish others would think about it. Shamelessly I'm going to block quote 4 of these paragraphs, but recommend reading the entire piece.

"Then came a fabulist named Robert Bork, a former solicitor general who Reagan appointed to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and who had created an alternate legislative history of the Sherman Act and its successors out of whole cloth. Bork insisted that these statutes were never targeted at monopolies (despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, including the transcribed speeches of the acts’ authors) but, rather, that they were intended to prevent “consumer harm” — in the form of higher prices.

Bork’s theories were especially palatable to the same power brokers who backed Reagan, and Reagan’s Department of Justice and other agencies began to incorporate Bork’s antitrust doctrine into their enforcement decisions (Reagan even put Bork up for a Supreme Court seat, but Bork flunked the Senate confirmation hearing so badly that, 40 years later, D.C. insiders use the term “borked” to refer to any catastrophically bad political performance).

Little by little, Bork’s theories entered the mainstream, and their backers began to infiltrate the legal education field, even putting on junkets where members of the judiciary were treated to lavish meals, fun outdoor activities, and seminars where they were indoctrinated into the consumer harm theory of antitrust (emphasis mine -x.). The more Bork’s theories took hold, the more money the monopolists were making — and the more surplus capital they had at their disposal to lobby for even more Borkian antitrust influence campaigns.

The history of Bork’s antitrust theories is a really good example of the kind of covertly engineered shifts in public opinion that Zuboff warns us against, where fringe ideas become mainstream orthodoxy. But Bork didn’t change the world overnight. He played a very long game, for over a generation, and he had a tailwind because the same forces that backed oligarchic antitrust theories also backed many other oligarchic shifts in public opinion. For example, the idea that taxation is theft, that wealth is a sign of virtue, and so on — all of these theories meshed to form a coherent ideology that elevated inequality to a virtue."

There is a certain sleazy feel when someone like Tim Sweeney posits everyone down the line, smaller devs and consumers, would benefit from the monopolistic break-up that is badly needed in this area, but like many executives he tells consumers they should have faith prices go down with competition. Meanwhile these corporations have an incomprehensible amount of money by which they can forward their agendas. For example Epic has such deep pockets and time to be nimble they can create marketing materials in anticipation or within hours of pushing their agenda and tripping the App Store trap.

Also both companies have the ability to play a long game here as well, it will be well into 2021 before any of this will be resolved. Plenty of time for both to make a case with the public for months and encouraging "fringe ideas into the mainstream orthodoxy".

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

I listen/watch to The HotSpot this week, and I just get frustrated with the ownership discussion. Nobody actually ever says what they WANT, just how the situation IS. I WANT TO OWN the stuff I pay for. Why is it that hard? It doesn't have to be "noble" like @jeff puts it.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/the-hotspot-episode-366/2970-20364

"On r/Datahoarder, you’ll find people storing data on everything from YouTube videos to game install discs."

I read this article on Ars Technica by David Rutland and it made me think about games and software in addition to the print, audio and video as the focus of the article. Will there be any of us in 50 years wanting to play something and bookmarking a subreddit to find it? Then what are the chances that some other soul will have thought to keep it?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/digital-hoarders-our-terabytes-are-put-to-use-for-the-betterment-of-mankind/#p3

Rip all of the Red Book audio from my Saturn and PSX games

This was kind of an interesting read regarding microtransactions:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-03-18-the-developer-of-journey-bucks-the-trend-of-predatory-monetisation

James Batchelor

"As such, Thatgamecompany spent two years in the middle of development prototyping business models for Sky, which was originally designed as a premium title. The studio soon realised there was no way they could make a profit and sustain the business by charging for a game in the free-to-play dominated mobile market. This meant seeking an alternative, but Chen was all too aware of the growing scrutiny around monetisation in games.

"The most successful models are very predatory and aggressive," he says. "The other type of gacha monetisation is very much like gambling... Parents don't want to see their kids throwing dice and pulling gachas, they don't want to see people fighting each other." "

" "The more I played these games, the more I felt like the developer was like an arms dealer," he [Jenova Chen] says. "They're selling weapons for whoever wants to pay to win. The conflict is what drives spending. That's definitely something I don't want to associate with."

I had to put something together when the crew was describing the PS5 audio slide deck reminding them of the Death Star.

Here's a great example:

Why 'Destiny 2' Isn't Working, And How to Fix It

VICE US by Doc Burford

"Luke [Smith, Director, Destiny 2] makes repeated comparisons to Magic: The Gathering and its new card sets, but he forgets that this is extremely exploitative, that cards are something you can collect and sell for real money, and that most players actually play the legacy modes like Commander. Magic’s players don’t want to be exploited, so the majority of them don’t, and the stress is lessened by the fact that it’s a trading card game—you’re not meant to form a connection to the cards the way you do with your gun. If Destiny 2 were to offer Commander-equivalent Raids and Pinnacle Raids, I’d be willing to be more players would stick with Commander Raids. Why give up the gun that’s been by your side for years? Guns are characters, like Chun-li is to Street Fighter fans; Capcom learned how bad it was to remove popular characters back with Street Fighter 3, and they haven’t repeated that mistake since. Bungie has held weapons back twice, once during The Taken King and once with the release of Destiny 2. Both decisions were wildly unpopular."

I disagree with the connection to the cards, decks are the equivalent. But I wholeheartedly agree with the comparison between a physical and digital collectible. When the server shuts down what will you have left?