BioWare and sexuality

BioWare, this past week, came under a bit of fire from a player of their latest game, Dragon Age 2, for allowing homosexual relationships within the game. His biggest complaint seems to be that BioWare, in creating a game that offers players of all genders and sexualities to build characters and relationships that appeal to them (or, at least, closer to that than pretty much other game available), they somehow neglected straight male gamers. BioWare's official response was, essentially, "We didn't make a game for straight male gamers, we made one for everyone. Deal with it." Something which I applaud them for. I haven't played DA2, myself, as I'm still playing the first one, but the first one even offers a world with a fairly mature outlook on sexuality - some people are straight, some are gay, some are bisexual, and it's not a big deal.

Not that BioWare is unfamiliar with controversy related to homosexuality. When the first Mass Effect was release, there was a bit of an uproar over the fact that you could, potentially, have a relationship with another female (provided your character is a female) and then consummate said relationship. Naturally, the family values crew got a hold of this and started calling it a sex simulator or something despite the fact that there's exactly two points in the game where you can have sex, and only one of which is shown in any level of explicitness. I mean, if CGI alien asses are enough to get someone off, then so be it. Who am I to judge? It just seems like any level of anger over that is a bit, well, dumb. Especially considering it's an M rated game. It's not for kids.

At any rate, it's a bit refreshing to see a video game company take a relatively progressive view on sexuality. Not that it's terribly surprising from a company based in Canada started by a couple doctors, but still.

Usagi Yojimbo

For Christmas, I got a good chunk of Amazon gift certificates. Around the same time, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition came out. Coming in at 1200 pages, it collects the first seven volumes of the series (the most recent released being volume 24) plus some additional material at the end of the second book. To that point, I hadn't read any of the series, but had always heard good things about it. Other than a couple appearances in the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, I had little knowledge of Usagi other than that he is a samurai and a rabbit. (Usagi Yojimbo translates literally to "rabbit bodyguard.")

Usagi Yojimbo follows the story of Miyamoto Usagi, a masterless samurai, and his wanderings through Edo period Japan (so Wikipedia tells me) after his lord is killed in battle. He runs into all sorts of other characters, often inspired by (well, blatantly ripped off of is probably more accurate) Japanese film characters. There's several stories involving blind swordspig Zato-Ino, and he regularly works with a bounty hunter, Gen, modeled after an Akira Kurusawa character.

Usagi's world is filled with intelligent animals of all sorts of species, although some work better than others. Anthropomorphic snakes, for instance, do not work quite as well as some of the other animals he uses. At any rate, there's a pretty wide representation. Usagi is, of course, a rabbit. As mentioned above, Zato-Ino is a pig, Gen is a rhino, and Usagi clashes with some ninja clans comprised of cats, moles, and bats. Within the book this is treated as completely normal, and species is rarely mentioned except when it's relevant. Ninja that can fly (and have swords on their wings, even) is pretty important, while a bunch of cat burglars is not so much. Oddly enough, there are still animals that don't seem to have the level of intelligence of others. Sakai seems to love drawing tokage lizards into his panels - probably because they look like little dinosaurs and comic artists seem to love finding excuses to draw dinosaurs - and one briefly becomes an important character.

At any rate, I thoroughly loved the books. Sakai's stories are not very complex, often being having somewhat similar plots, but they're very well-told. His art is, simply, gorgeous. His characters are expressive, his sense of composition gets better and better throughout those 1200 pages, and the storytelling is clear and attractive. He never fails to fill a panel, but rarely enough to actually distract from the action. He's just as good at telling a long-form story over a few issues as he is at a done-in-one tale, and they never feel hurried or drawn out. I can see why it's lasted as long as it has.

On independent game developers

I'm going to start this by saying I'm in no way an expert on this subject matter. My entire programming knowledge is a semester of TrueBASIC in high school with a pretty bad teacher, followed by a semester of Java in college by, again, a pretty bad teacher.

Back at the Game Developer's Conference, Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata went on what I gather was a pretty long discussion of why mobile gaming is bad for the business. The entire business. He didn't mention any specific culprits, but Apple was his pretty clear target due to their increasingly popular iOS (for reference, a quick Google search tells me that as of September of last year, Apple had sold 120 million iOS devices). Google's Android is similarly rising (as of January, they were the top selling mobile platform in the world, more than doubling iPhone sales the previous quarter). His specific point mainly centered around his belief that cheap mobile experiences were devaluing games. That is, that being able to buy a game for $1 (or, very often, free) is bad for everyone. I'm not sure I agree. Ask the developers of hit iOS and Android game, Angry Birds, how bad they're doing. They'll probably be happy to tell you that they're doing quite well.

Nintendo's position largely comes from the from the fact that they want to sell you, first, a rather expensive piece of hardware, followed by a bunch of  cartridge based games for $40-50 depending on platform and so on. Their digital distribution model has, unfortunately, been pretty bad. Go listen to the Giant Bomb podcast, Nintendownload Express, for the one and only person even pretending to be excited to talk about new My Diary software (from his description, I don't think "game" is the right word for this). It's unfortunate, too. Nintendo continues to release new, innovative hardware that often has tons of things for developers to play with, but their near refusal to offer somewhere for a small developer to put games means that . On top of that, we're missing out on what Nintendo's amazing first and second party teams could do when tasked with creating something small and fun. Or we get it, but it comes on a disc, but that's not very common.

More recently, Nintendo of America's president, Reggie Fils-Amie basically mirrored Iwata's statements telling Gamasutra that Nintendo is "not looking to do business today with the garage developer," functionally separating the "real" independent developers from everyone else. And that's fine if that's what they want to do - I just think that Nintendo is missing out on a huge opportunity to bring aboard new developers who might not have the talent or money to make a huge game, but just might be able to make something small centered around a new idea no one else thought of. Portal, one of the highest regarded PC games in recent memory, started out as a school project up at DigiPen. Minecraft was started out as a single guy's project, and he's now hired multiple people after earning (and continuing to earn) oodles of money despite having only recently entered the beta phase of the project. Angry Birds costs all of $1 and has two versions in the Apple App Store's Top 25 listing (presumably by sales but I have no idea).

I don't really know where I'm going with this at this point. I guess I just think Nintendo is being extremely short-sighted and at the same time, I question how much they truly have to fear. I think a well-cultivated ecosystem of downloadable games would offer their platforms games that can't be found elsewhere and generate revenue they probably wouldn't be making otherwise. As it is, I suppose we'll have to be happy with whatever drizzle of games from "real" developers they let through, which if WiiWare and DSiWare are to be the model, won't be a whole lot.

The perils of baldness

I shave my head. As it is, if I don't, I'm halfway there, anyway, so what the hell, right? It's something I do every other day, but maybe should so on the daily. But I don't because I'm lazy, mostly. It comes with a pretty big hazard, however: razors are sharp. A little slip and you're gushing blood all over the place. The head, encasing one of the body's most vital organs, naturally has a lot of blood vessels in it, so any cut bleeds for a bit. This is what happened to me this afternoon as it does every so often. Usually when this occurs, it's on the side of my head behind my ears since it's somewhat of a difficult area to get to. Today's cut was on the top and felt pretty deep going in. And the bleeding lasted probably a half hour even with compression and such. It still hurts a bit, but not a lot. It's mostly a little bit of a mess. Other concerns include being cold - the body loses a significant amount of heat through the head, again, to keep the brain alive. Bald people also have a greater tendency to hit their heads on things. Having hair is apparently just enough to warn someone to move out of the way. Still, I'm lucky enough to have a nicely shaped head and it's a better look than letting it grow, I think. Just gotta watch that razor.

First ride of the season

The weather here has finally started warming back up - it's regularly in the 50s and higher during the day, which is fantastic. I prefer the mid 70s, but I'll gladly take the 60s. Most importantly, it means I can get the bikes back out, which is exactly what I did this past Friday. (As an aside, I've already failed at my goal of regular posting, but so it goes.)

Since I had everything I needed to get the DRZ running again, I went ahead and changed its oil and replaced the battery. It's a bit cold-blooded, and it probably doesn't help that the gas was a bit old, but some Seafoam and a fill-up (I spent over $4!!! This is an outrage!!!) helped out tremendously. Changing the oil on the thing is not very fun, I should note. Most bikes are pretty easy: remove the fill hole plug, remove the drain plug, unscrew the oil filter, wait. Plug drain, screw on new filter, refill, plug filler, run for a couple minutes, check the level, add more if needed, done. The DRZ is designed with a dry-sump system so it carries its oil in the frame sometimes. Essentially, it has all of its oil in the engine when it operation, which then drains into the frame over the course of a few days. It also has a cartridge filter rather than a spin-on one. What this all means is that it has two drain plugs that have to be dealt with, and a filter cover on the side of the engine that spills oil as soon as you open it. It's messy to say the least. There's also an internal filter I should clean next time I do this. All said and done, this took a lot longer than I wanted, but I got it done.

The ride itself was uneventful. I didn't go out too long; just enough to make sure everything was running fine, and it seemed to be. I wasn't the only one out, either. It was just too nice for the bikers to be inside. I would have done it again yesterday, but a few too many drinks the night before kind of prevented that. Oh well. I still need to get it inspected, since it's been expired for several months at this point. It's not that big a deal, though, since the gas station inspectors basically don't look at much more than the lights and horn and those work just fine.

My cycles

As I mentioned in the intro post, I'm a motorcyclist. Not as hardcore as some people, but I certainly enjoy my bikes. I started two years ago, taking the MSF course with Apex Cycle Education over the course of two days. (Their typical courses run three, but for the first weekend or two of the year, they don't have the morning class since it's a little chilly.) Shortly before taking the class, I bought a lightly used 2007 Suzuki SV650 from a vaguely local dealer for probably a bit more money than I should have.

 

Not my bike, obviously. It served me well, and I liked it quite a bit, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. So later that year, I got a brand new Suzuki DR-Z400SM. Buying new was, again, a stupid idea, but so it goes. I continue to pay for it now.

That said, I rather love the thing. It's not the fastest bike (hell, it's objectively slow as far as these things go), but it's light, handles like a dream, and can take a pothole like it's nothing. Oh, and insurance is dirt cheap. I wish I had just gotten one of these to start. Well, at any rate, fate would take the SV out of my hands. I had a bit of an incident involving another car making a left turn in front of me because they couldn't see me (or so the driver claimed). I didn't hit the car, just the ground, but I ended up with a slight fracture in my elbow, and a skinned knee. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. Insurance required a quote, of course, so I had it taken to the local dealer who appraised fixing it at more than I had paid for the thing (although had insurance not been involved, I would have done it myself as the damage was largely cosmetic). I got cut a check, and used it to buy a 1998 Honda VFR800FI, Honda's sport-oriented sport tourer (as opposed to its touring oriented ones).

It has some rather interesting features, such as a V4 engine, which is fairly uncommon, a single-sided swingarm, also uncommon, and a linked brake system (pulling the front lever actuates four of six brake pistons in front and one of three in the back while the rear level actuates two in front and two in back, making brake maintenance a lot harder than it normally would be). It's also pretty heavy, but it handles nicely and is incredibly comfortable to ride. And it's fast - I can easily cruise at highway speeds in third gear.

And that's where I am today. I'm thinking of getting rid of the VFR since most of my riding is in and around the city where the DRZ excels, but that remains to be seen.

iPad 2

Back when the new MacBook Air came out I said to myself that it was exactly what I wanted from a laptop - enough power to view the web, watch movies, and not a whole lot more in the lightest package available. Truth be told, my current MacBook from 2008 still more than meets the first two requirements, and at 4.5 lbs. (according to Wikipedia) isn't too bad in the third (compare to the venerable Lenovo T410 at a bit more than a pound more). I didn't get one since that current MacBook is still under warranty until Thanksgiving, and runs like it was brand new. A bit better, actually, after doubling the system RAM. I got to thinking and realized that an iPad would actually meet my needs almost as well as the MBA while being cheaper. I'd lose a bit on power, but it's still enough to do what I want from it. By that point, I was well past the halfway mark of Apple's product cycle, so I decided to wait it out for the second version.

It was worth it.

I'm not going to bother to explain the differences, since any tech blog out there has done that to death and probably better than I can. I will say that since I bought it on launch day, I haven't touched my laptop. It's become a 4.5 lb. paperweight. Web: check. Music: check. Videos: check. It's there. Except Flash, of course, but since overuse of Flash is one of my biggest pet peeves on the Internet, I'm not really put out by it. (Virtually any web developer can tell you that what people use Flash for can very often be done by other methods that aren't anywhere near as system intensive. The quickly gaining HTML5 standard only improves that.) Granted, I can't play Flash games, but with the rather enormous App Store, of which many apps are free or cheap enough that I don't care, it's barely a concern.

Oh, and about launch day. I spent the morning running some errands, after which I started checking Twitter to see what the line was like. By 2:30, there was 50 or so people for the 5 PM on-sale time. I left home a little after 3 and got there around 3:30, by which time I would estimate that that number had tripled. That said, it wasn't a big deal. About an hour later (by which time the line had almost doubled again), the store's business manager came by and assured us that anyone in line at that point would be able to get one, although she didn't make any promises about which configuration. I wanted the top of the line - 64 GB, black, with Verizon. White looks cheap. All the while, they had people bring hot coffee, cocoa, and cider to anyone who wanted it, which was a godsend on a slightly chilly, windy afternoon. At 5 on the dot, the doors opened, and they started letting people in and they sent out a couple associates to hand out vouchers for the specific units people wanted. By the time they got to me, black AT&T models were gone at both 32 GB and 64 GB capacities. The one I wanted was still available, and I got my voucher. From there, it was another short wait until I got to the front of the line where I got my own associate to help me. He took me to the rack of Smart Covers (I went for black leather), of which they had many, although they were down to the last orange one. It's a shame the poly covers aren't better colors. I would have gladly taken an attractive shade of orange or royal blue (Go Gators!) rather than the Dreamsicle orange and UNC blue colors they were selling. I was given the option to set it up in the store, but I declined, preferring to take it home and deal with it there.

Setup was a breeze, especially since I had my iPhone backup to install to it. My desktop's USB ports even offer enough juice to trickle charge it, which it gets done overnight from around 50% charge, which is convenient. One major problem, though, is some ugly light bleed showing through the screen when it's dark. Looks like it's fairly common, too, so I'm hoping Apple acknowledges it and offers replacements under warranty. It's not as bad as some photos and videos of other units I've seen, but it's enough that my $900 purchase probably shouldn't have it at all. If not, I'll be unhappy, but not too much. All in all, it's a really amazing piece of tech, and as more and more apps are built specifically for it, I can see it become all that much more amazing. As it is, I don't see myself buying a new laptop in the near or even distant future. Not that I wouldn't take a free MacBook Air. (Anyone?)

Back in the game...

I've tried this blogging thing before. At least one time it went for awhile (for certain definitions of "awhile"). Last time...not so much. I'm not sure what going to do with this just yet, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be solely focused on gaming like the last two attempts (and almost definitely not a personal blog like my long-deleted LiveJournal). I don't think I have the focus to do that. That said, I'm giving myself a goal to write something at least every other day. We'll see.

As for the title -  I couldn't think of anything better. Sue me.