...Ok maybe not live live, but the channel is open! 
 
For those of you who didn't catch my last blog post about it, LAGTV is a youtube channel ran by myself and a friend. We're doing SC2 commentary and strategies, game previews/trailer talks, reviews, and more if we can squeeze it all in. Here's the LAGTV 101 video: 
  
      

DISCLAIMER:  I apologize ahead of time for the walls of text below. I did my best to make it short haha.  
 
Hey there ladies and gents, 
 
I'm not entirely sure how many of you may know me, or even recognize my avatar for that matter, but I've been around since the dawn of the site. Regardless, I come to you asking for some assistance. First though, some explanation:
 
A friend of mine and I are in the very early stages of putting together a youtube channel / podcast under the name LAG TV, or Life's A Glitch TV. I had used the name for a video series I did years ago on Gamespot before Giantbomb was around, and figured since I had ceased to make the videos after GS stopped putting featured user videos on the homepage that I might as well use it for this. If you know the videos, awesome, if you don't  you can actually google Life's A Glitch and the most viewed episode should come up near the top.  

    

A good friend of mine was kind enough to wake me up before noon the other day just because he "was in the neighborhood." I sluggishly pulled myself out of bed and let him in.

After playing some games, we got to talking about Halo Reach. He says he's gotten over Halo, which I don't believe (for Halo 2 he blasted the Halo theme song all the way to EB). I explain how Reach is sparking my interest in the series again, and he tries to convince me that it's going to tank.

He of course quickly retracted that statement because even he knows if Halo is on the cover it's going to sell well. I continue hyping it, and he's convinced it's not going to sell very well. In fact, he figures it will sell less than Halo 3 did. I of course told him he was mad, and he responded with "well it sure as hell won't beat MW2's sales."

Now I thought about that for about two seconds before agreeing, because how can it compete with a multi-platform game? He took it a step further then, and said, "well it won't even do better than it on the 360 alone."

He had me there. I quickly ran some numbers in my head, and logic told me that it was possible. He laid down a bet saying that if Reach beats MW2's first week numbers on the 360 he'll buy my copy. If it doesn't then I have to buy his. I shook on it immediately.

Without taking into account any forces of nature, the odds are in my favor. Halo 3 had a ridiculous attach rate, somewhere around 30% if I remember correctly, in its first week. At that time there were only about 12 million 360s on the market. Right now (so not including sales up to the release of Reach) 360 sales sit at damn near close to 40 million. That means that in order to beat MW2's first week sales (about 4.9m) I only need Reach to have a 12.5% attach rate on week one. I then thought that the xbox live user attach rate might be more important. The latest numbers I could get were from 2008, where unique users sat around 20 million. Even just using that number, I'd only need a 25% attach rate, which is still lower than that of Halo 3. I'm sure they will sell another few hundred thousand 360s by Reach's release date. I'm also sure that Microsoft will release a special limited super ultimate edition Reach 360 with a 250 gig hard drive to push even more 360s out the door than the game will alone.

On top of that, I'm confident in a couple more things. Come November, I'm sure MW2 will release a new map pack in and around that time to try and retain as many players as they can. This will be necessary because players will probably start to burn out a bit on MW2. Luckily for Bungie, the audience is all but identical for Reach and MW2.

Lastly, Microsoft plans on spending even more money on marketing for Reach than they spent on Halo 3. I don't know if you remember how ridiculous the advertising campaign was for Halo 3, but needless to say Reach's campaign will have to be insane.

So what do you think? Will Reach hit the magic 5 million unit mark in week one? Personally, I think if the marketing is done well, and the Beta is very well received (which I'm sure it will -- aside from maybe those jet packs...blah), Reach could push 6 million units in the first week -- maybe more.

That's all for now! Back to studying....last final on Thursday.

Have a good one!

CP1

As I sit here listening to my favourite gaming podcast, dreading the coming days before final exams tackle and pound me into submission, I think about something that perhaps many gamers haven't before. Maybe I shouldn't say that, I can't just assume I'm the only one thinking about the oddities of the gaming community. Perhaps many of you who read this will have already thought about it at length. For conversation sake, I hope you have. If you haven't, then hopefully this will make you take a step back and look at things a little differently. Am I getting too deep already? Humor me a little more than usual if you can, it's getting late.

I've been thinking about the celebrity that game reviewers have built up around themselves, as well as blog writers and those who defy classification. Specifically, I've been thinking about how many of them are now getting older, and how the cycle of the next generation of celebrities will come to be.

It probably won't surprise many of you if I bring up Jeff Gerstmann. I've followed him since nearly the dawn of his career on Gamespot. He has perhaps unintentionally become one of the most famous game reviewers on the internet (yes, even before Gerstmann-gate). His popularity allowed him so much that upon starting up his own website it exploded and has quickly become a hub for a huge community that grows continuously. Of course Ryan Davis, and Brad Shoemaker carry their own celebrity as well, albeit perhaps not on the grandiose scale of Mr. Gerstmann. What gets me thinking is that these guys (and others, don't think I'm forgetting about anyone) are getting older. They've grown up (as much as a gamer can). They aren't grandparents or anything, but they're not youngsters anymore either. I wonder how long they will continue their careers as reviewers. Can we expect to see a Siskel and Ebert-esque band of hyper-popular reviewers 15 years from now? 25 years from now? How will the generation who grew up and followed these guys closely for their whole careers react to a new generation of reviewers coming up? Will those reviewers even be able to reach the celebrity that we see in many today? I've pondered these questions for a long time, and to be honest I'm not sure if there is a real answer to any of them as of yet.

But we're seeing other things crop up in the community now. People who have been part of the out-group are creating their own celebrity. The name that instantly comes to mind is Michael Pachter. If you don't know who he is, he's an analyst for Wedbush Morgan that has been a regular guest on Gametrailer's Bonus Round for a long time now. He's slowly become popular, and now has his own show on Gametrailer's that's become wildly popular. It almost pulls in as many views as Bonus Round itself, which he still appears on regularly. It's great to see things like this happening within the community. We're not exactly known for accepting great change, which is part of why I'm so interested in this topic to begin with.

As much of a jumbled mess this all might seem, it has interested me a great deal for some time. Watching people rise in popularity to almost legend status (Greg Kasavin, anyone?) has been fun to watch. It makes me think about what the hardcore gaming community will sit 10 or 20 years from now. Will the older generation of gamers tell their kids stories about favourite videos, reviewers and podcasts? Will we compare future reviewers and gaming celebrities to the new groups that will inevitably rise in the ranks as the older group moves on or out? It excites me and scares me at the same time. It's hard to imagine not having the mainstays around down the road. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not a fan of change myself. I'll suck it up, but I'll be damned if someone ever replaces Jeff as my most respected reviewer.

What do you think about all of this? Has this stuff ever crossed your mind on a boring, rainy day?

Have a good one,

CP1

Probably one of the funniest lines I've ever heard in a video game. Virtual high five for those who heard the conversation that inspired me to make this macro...

God this game is good!
 
EDIT: This thread has quickly become epic thanks to many stellar contributors. I'm now converting it into a Mass Effect 2 image Macro mania! ALLITERATION!

Have a good one,

Well it's offically begun: the 2010 winter olympic games. Man have we kicked !@$ so far. Let's sum it up:

-Luger tragically dies in a training run

-Vancover decides to be super warm and rainy (great for skiing!)

-hydrolics in the opening get stuck...just wow

Killin' it!

In related news, a U.S. snowboarder was interviewed and asked how it felt to be in the olympics. His response quoted:

Graham Watanabe told reporters Wednesday that his second Olympic appearance was like "Pegasus mating with a unicorn and the creature that they birth I somehow tame it and ride it to the sky and clouds and sunshine and rainbows,"

/olympics

Have a good one,

After a fairly lengthy gaming session talking with a good friend of mine on private chat over XBL, we got to talking about just how much time we've put into games over the years.

We started with Starcraft which was hands down the longest played game we've ever had. After some quick calculations we figured we spent a total of 2,320 hours. That was a scary figure alone so we decided to chalk up all the games we could think of that were lengthy off the top of our head (Morrowind, Oblivion, the Final Fantasy series, etc) and the number rose to 5,810 hours.

Finally we counted up all the games we have beaten (we have played almost all games together or at the same time so our library of beaten games are almost identical). The list is huge (somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 games). We estimated that another couple of thousands hours should be tacked on.

All told the estimated time spent playing games was 365 days. Yes, one whole freaking year worth of gaming. This would be over a 13 year period as I only really started playing games with the want to beat them at the age of 8.

This made me think about what else I could have done with a year of my life. Then I quickly realized that I didn't care because games are awesome and are 100% a part of who I am. As scary as that number is to me on some level, I'm also kind of proud to say I've done it and still managed to live a normal, social, academically successful life. I think that's proof enough to dismiss those nasty gamer stereotypes.

What game has taken up the most time for you? If you had to guess, how many hours of gaming have you done in your lifetime?

Well it's the start of a new year (yah I'm a couple of weeks off, but work with me here). Technically speaking, 2010 is the future, and so what better way to kick off the future with a quick little guide to staying healthy.

The problem for many guys (girls too! Don't think all of this can't apply to you) is that they assume that simply hitting up the gym and slamming the weights around will net them results if tied with unholy amounts of advertised weight gain/muscle juice products. Even if you don't fall into this category, and you just simply want a little bit of help, continue reading for my VERY bare-bones guide to getting in shape. If you want a more detailed one, and it's highly requested, I'll go into greater detail in another blog.

That's me at the end of August (right before I stopped working out due to school – I have horrible time management skills sometimes haha). It's probably the biggest/most ripped I've ever been. In 4 months (from the end of school to the start of the next semester) I gained roughly 10-12 pounds in muscle and had about 8-10% body fat. Was it really easy? Not terribly, but it wasn't the end of the world either. For those of you who don't know me that well, I'm about 6'5 and hover around 200 pounds when not in the gym. I'm a lightweight for my size, so no, I wasn't really big to begin with lol. As I mentioned before, the key to this is eating well, sleeping well, and putting in some effort in the exercise department.

Eating Right

Ok now this point has been argued by everyone under the sun forever and ever. I'll tell you what I consider to be the best way to approach this, but don't take it to be the be all end all answer. Take it, do some research on the side, and if you feel it necessary, talk to your doctor.

My philosophy and healthy eating is this: Know what your body likes, do that, and do it in moderation. What that means is you need to find out what eating schedule your body likes, such as is it better eating 3 big meals a day, or 5-7 smaller meals spread over the day. Once you've figured that out, just start eating healthy balanced meals at those times. For me, healthy doesn't mean steam everything and avoid butter. For me, healthy is keeping with variety and never ignoring butter Butter is actually better for you than you might think, but again, in moderation. Your doctor can probably give you a hand here if you want to get super serious about a diet. The power of google can also be a great help.

Sleeping Well

As with eating right, sleeping well is another case of knowing your body. You can google until your eyes bleed and find lots of studies on what the right amount of sleep is but the truth remains that everyone is different and so you can't just go on statistics. Some people only require 4 hours of sleep a night (like my father) while some require 9+ hours to be truly rested (like me). Some of it will have to do with age, some with activity level, and some with just being you. Odds are, you probably have a good idea what your body needs in a night, but just don't always do it. Keep on top of it, and you'll love yourself for it later.

Exercising

Now this one is the thing everyone hates. Ok, maybe not everyone, but it's normal to despise having to do routine exercise. Depending on what you want for a body type (lean, muscular, Arnold) you're going to have drastically different exercises to do. I could write another entire blog on all three body types (and I might have already), but I'll give you the general stuff and you can ask me about the finer details if you so wish. What I really want you to get out of this are as follows: always do some form of cardio before you stretch, always stretch before you pump iron, and always stretch after you're done. Run, walk, bike, whatever you want until you are just at the brink of breaking a sweat. Do a good stretching routine that hits all your muscle groups (even if you think you won't use them for your workout that day) and then go about your workout. I like to do cardio before every workout; some people like to designate an entire workout to cardio. Again, it comes down to preference. As long as you're doing it, it'll be beneficial. You aren't going to see much result without cardio so don't ignore it!

When I was in the gym (or working out at home) I would generally do it Monday through Friday and give myself the weekend to rest. I can't stress enough how important giving yourself a day or two is when working out. The length of the workout will vary as well. I personally feel like I get a good workout, cardio included, in about an hour or hour and a half. It's of course a good idea to make it at least a half hour – don't be THAT lazy!

Arguably the most important thing to remember when working out is to know what you are doing and how to do it properly. Form can mean the difference between results and failure, failure and serious injury. Google away or ask your gym's resident experts how it's done!

There you have it. The super lean guide to being healthy. Probably the largest amount of common knowledge thrown into one blog ever, but nevertheless I think useful information that everyone should know. Whether you hear it from me, or someone else, it's always going to be a good idea to stay healthy, and stay fit.

Again, if you'd like me to go into greater detail or provide links to helpful information sources, just request it and I'll do my best either by pm or another blog post on the topic.

Have a good one!