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the8bitNacho

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Feed Jeff Gerstmann

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Dave Snider sent out a call-to-arms just a bit ago via his Twitter account wanting to know what each of us would like to see in a Whiskey Media subscription service, and the idea sort of blew my mind. I know the community here has been discussing the possibility of such a thing off and on for a while now. I'm still a little iffy on the idea; I've never touched any of that weird give-them-money stuff that IGN and GameSpot have had going on for so long. But I have to throw some consideration Whiskey's way. This company is one of the most fluidly dynamic groups of people I've encountered with any organization within the greater media as a whole, and not just within the games press. They have been doing something genuinely unique over the last couple of years and I completely respect that. It even excites me that Whiskey Media could really take off and start a sort of shift regarding how people deliver and consume information, and it makes me a little nervous that there is still the very real possibility that they could fail.

The first thing I'd like to see from a Whiskey Media subscription service is quite simple: low cost. The problem with charging any site-visiting hobbyist any amount of money for web content is that dude, we're already paying for a lot of crap! We're buying games at $59.99 MSRP. Our internet costs us more every month than our car payments. We're paying for World of Warcraft accounts, Xbox Live service, Netflix, and extraordinarily overpriced AT&T wireless bills just so our iPod and phone can be the same device. Even the rich geeks are poor after all of these expenses, and the majority of us here are in college or high school, or working shit jobs just to get the bills paid. Money sucks, and so I hope whatever Whiskey has planned won't make in suck much harder.

My second pick is a feature I think the lot of us have been clamoring for since Giant Bomb launched. You guys need to get with the program and introduce HD quality to your video player here, and if charging me a modest subscription price every month or three months or year is what finally enables you to do that, then you have my money. It plays on my guilt-strings that I would rather hop over to YouTube and watch stuff like this amazing StarCraft II trailer in 1080p rather than service this site with an extra click. It would also do wonders for the fidelity of features like Quick Looks, where checking out the game is the primary objective of anyone watching.

Third, I'd definitely be interested in subscriber-only video downloads on Whiskey Media's original content. I think it would be all right for the downloaded files to be in SD, because we all know how expensive both streaming and offering direct downloading for HD content would probably be, and that alone might circumvent your subscription-collecting efforts. You might want to throw a brand-related watermark in the bottom-right corner (of the downloaded file only, not the streaming one) so dudes aren't throwing your videos up on YouTube or something.

A fourth feature that springs to mind is that paying subscribers could bypass the 5,000-point moderation barrier on Wiki Edits. This probably fits better with any new website prospects than the current line-up of brands, but I sure as hell don't even have 1,000 points on Comic Vine or Anime Vice. Getting past this limitation might spur more people to pay, and more people to edit pages. Then again, it could also inspire virtual graffiti all over your databases, so obviously this is one that would take require some serious consideration before implementing.

That's all that comes to mind for the time being. I'm anxious to see this company really take off, and I'm willing to lend a hand by whatever means my finances, waking state, or personal schedule (can I send you guys a portfolio and resume!?!?) will allow. Do this right and you've got my support. Do it wrong like, say, IGN of whatever, and you'll probably earn the scrutiny of many more users than just myself. Keep it clean, simple, and fresh, just like all of your sites are, and I'm sure you'll have done a good job. 

   


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The Next Fantasy

My history with the massively multiplayer genre doesn't go as far back as that Neverwinter Nights thing AOL put out back in 1991, or even as far as the EverQuest addiction that still plagues a couple hundred thousand people. Still, my background with these types of games is storied. I guess you could say that my gateway drug wasn't a game at all, but instead an anime called .hack//SIGN that ran for a while on Cartoon Network. From there I moved on to the games based on the series -- starting with .hack//INFECTION -- and found myself enamored with the entire concept. I tried to dive into EverQuest from there, but my crummy computer at the time just wasn't up to snuff for such a graphically intensive game.

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Unable to reach into these persistent online worlds, I sated myself with Diablo II instead while also frequenting the forums of the Ziff Davis website that pre-dated 1UP (Gamers.com). Folks there were on about this Korean MMO that was in closed beta at the time, and I kept checking in to see what they had to rave about almost every day. The game finally hit open beta, but I was on dial-up internet. I couldn't download a 700 megabyte (!!) game client without clogging the phone lines for something like two or three days. When launch time rolled around, a friend of mine ventured to his aunt and uncle's house with a blank disk, and a few hours later I signed into my first massively multiplayer game: Ragnarok Online.

Ragnarok Online was something of an oddity for its time. Before it, games like EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot required players to enter into large parties and grind endlessly on monster after monster to level up. It was an arbitrary way to gain experience, but the one thing "forced grouping" instilled into games as a concept was a real and true sense of community. Ragnarok didn't have any of the forced grouping stuff, but it retained a healthy and friendly atmosphere. The genre was still in its infancy, a real niche, and Ragnarok Online wasn't exactly well known at the time. A niche of a niche I suppose you could say. The masses weren't flocking to Rune-Midgard, and so things remained civil. Even with the implementation of guild wars down the road into release, there wasn't too much butt-hurtedness going on between people. Things were good, and it was easy to make a lot of friends.

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I abandoned Ragnarok Online in 2004 with the PlayStation 2 release of Final Fantasy XI. I know a lot of you just rolled your eyes and groaned, but hey, I'm going to shock you and say that it remains my favorite MMO of all time. Why? Final Fantasy XI was difficult. Many of the high level objectives were downright punishing at times, and much like EverQuest you were forced into a group of around six people to progress to any point past level 15 or so. This probably doesn't sound like fun, but it really was. Going up against a harrowing task with some friends and coming away from it victorious was so rewarding, and the game's focus on group dynamics made the forced grouping aspect worth it. The best part was, as I mentioned earlier for this kind of game, the amazing community. Final Fantasy XI is still filled with interesting, knowledgeable, and kind people. The tough learning curve drives out the trolls pretty quickly, and those that stick around are very light on the condescension. No one wants to be shunned by a server's community in a game completely centered around it.

And that's the problem I've developed with the World of Warcraft generation of massively multiplayer games. They're extremely casual friendly, which is awesome, but at the same time players are driven to accomplish only for themselves. The majority of veterans drive themselves from level 1 to 80 without ever sending or accepting a group invite. Crowds of people gather around quest mob spawns and compete for kills rather than bothering to band together for it. Trolls pollute every chat channel, and once they've exhausted the server's ignore lists, they transfer away or get paid name changes to start all over again. The random dungeon finder promotes anti-social behavior, making it nearly impossible to make new friends in the game without dedicating some serious time to a hardcore guild.

It's for that reason that I'm so looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV. Square Enix isn't shooting for the Warcraft crowd -- instead, they want the FFXI crowd. They want the folks that love to socialize and band together for challenges, level cap or not. They want the American and the Japanese to transcend language and cultural barriers to co-communicate just like in their previous online title. They want to inspire that sense of camaraderie that's been lost with the dawn of the solo-centric MMO.

I'm planning on starting a weekly Final Fantasy XIV blog when my collector's edition arrives on September 22, similar to what 1UP's James Mielke did with My Life in Vana'diel. I want to share my adventures with the Giant Bomb community, and maybe even reel a few of you in! I'm so looking forward to this game, and I hope to see you there once it releases.

I'm keeping the point of this post pretty short; I'm afraid if I go on to say too much more I'm afraid that I might break the non-disclosure agreement imposed by Square. But there's reason to be excited, and the closing weeks of September just can't come quickly enough. 

         
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Trading Luxury for Life

I've been pretty well-off the last couple of years from a financial perspective. I lived with my mom and worked a shitty retail job, but having no real bills aside from my cell phone, I was able to build up a rather substantial savings. Of course, things such as these change when one opts to stray from a mediocre life and dive into college. Suddenly I've found myself in debt to the government, carousing lots for a shitty used vehicle, and becoming increasingly aware of just how expensive a hobby gaming really is. The moral of this introductory paragraph? Growing up is hard, but at the same time it can be ridiculously exciting.

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Last night I pulled each and every video game I own -- with the slight exception of a couple I haven't beaten, and a couple more I often play online with friends -- and hauled them to GameStop. That in and of itself depressed me; I'm disgusted by everything GameStop stands for, from their outlandish prices on semi-new used games, to their shoddy trade-in values, to the way they treat their employees. Nevertheless, I'm not one to be bothered with listing dozens of games on eBay. Call me lazy, but this seemed like the most viable option. And it sort of was.

I'm recovering from an anxiety disorder, and so walking into a small game store with a air conditioner box loaded with around 68 Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii games was just a little nerve wracking. I got a lot of poignant stares, and though the manager who handled my transaction was pleasant and actually sort of excited about the number of games I'd brought in, I knew from the conversation happening behind the counter that he was just about to get off, and that I had just made someone else's minimum wage work day a lot more difficult. Respond with your quips about it being what they're paid to do, but dude, retail sucks, and I do what I can to avoid making it suck any harder for those stuck at that sort of job.

I traded a part of my collection in for cash, and the rest for credit. I paid off both StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and Fable III, and still had $208.91 left to put on my Edge card. I got $229.07 in cash; just enough with which to upgrade my computer's video card. Phase one of Operation: Cheaper Gaming? Complete.

My plan going into the upcoming school year is to take a lot of the cost out of gaming. How? That's pretty simple, to be honest with you. I'm going to be strictly purchasing 30+ hour games. I've begun this process already with Dragon Quest IX, Persona 3 Portable, and the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins. the next release riding on my wallet is Final Fantasy XIV, which releases on September 30. I figure keeping my games lengthy -- and in the case of FFXIV, unbeatable -- will drive down the cost of staying semi-current significantly. It was a hard decision to come to; I'm going to school with the goal of one day writing about games, and not keeping up on the latest releases goes completely against every instinct I have. Regardless, it needs to be done.  

Kicking Anxiety's Ass

As I mentioned before, I've been under the prolonged influence of a rather nasty anxiety problem for the last six years or so. It began shortly after my mom and stepfather got divorced, and escalated throughout high school and well into the present day. I'm not getting any sort of psychiatric help, but what I am doing is choking down a healthy dosage of generic medicine every day and forcing myself into situations during which I know I'll be uncomfortable. This has helped tremendously, and I started the process of learning to drive a vehicle about a month ago. Fast-forward to now and I feel that I'm just about ready to go in for my test.   Just a couple more days of practice with that pesky maneuverability thing and I should be set.

I sold my 15.4" MacBook Pro and accompanying 24" Apple Cinema Display to help build up some funds for a car. Obviously I can't buy anything luxurious; $2000 is pretty much my spending limit. If anyone reading this has any tips for buying shitty, cheap cars, hey, drop me a comment. I could use all the help I can get.

Gaming!

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Despite all of this I've found some time for games. My friends and I have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 since the release of the Engineer update. It's been a whole heck of a lot of fun when the game isn't ridiculously one-sided in a team's favor. I have very little skill aiming with the Soldier's Direct Hit alternate weapon, so I've had to switch to the slower, more area-of-effect friendly rocket launcher. It sucks because I was getting some pretty awesome kills whenever I managed to actually hit someone with the damn thing. But, whatever, I'm back to contributing to my team far more than I ever did using it.

I'm about ankle-deep into Dragon Quest IX, but I'm a little irked with the partying system. I was into the previous game's characters and all, but in this iteration you make your own dudes and set them up to fight alongside of you. Naturally this means they have no personalities or dialogue, and so apart from times when some random guest character aligns with me, I'm dealing with some soulless, mute puppets for the entirety of my adventure. I don't like it, and the game may have to take a back seat until I've played some more Persona 3 Portable.

Speaking of which, isn't the entire Shin Megami Tensei series just rippling with awesome!? Getting into the more dumbed-down portions of this mobile version of the third Persona game -- things like not actually walking about the school, and the removal of animated cutscenes -- took me some time, but man is the battle system so much more improved! I played Persona 3 before Persona 4, and got around halfway through before my PlayStation 3's hard drive crashed and a lost my save. I tried to return to it after finishing Persona 4 something like a year later, but I just couldn't. Now that the game has a lot of the improvements that Persona 4 introduced, I think I may actually see this one through until the end. Who knows? I hope I make it.

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