From the Archives: games
February 27th, 2010
I’m still around, if anyone’s wondering. Last week’s delay wasn’t my situation, per se. A friend of mine has been floating around in a bad roomie situation lately, so I made a one-night reservation at a hotel nearby and went up to visit. It got her out of the house for one night to destress and get her head on straight.
That was the idea, at least. In the grand scheme of things, I know, one night isn’t much.
When I got back, I cancelled my preorders for Assassin’s Creed II and Settlers VII. In case you haven’t heard the news, Ubisoft has developed a copy-protection system that requires a continuous connection to their servers. As interesting as the games are, that kind of disconnection yoyo is more trouble than it’s worth, and I don’t trust Ubisoft to keep their servers online once the game stops selling. There are plenty of other games to keep me occupied, and even when there aren’t, I should spend more time writing. Even with the weekend out, I shouldn’t be this far behind.
After I make myself some lunch, I’ll go work on First and Last and Always again. We’ll see. Given the complications that keep coming up, I’m going to stop announcing specific posting days. Right now, all I’ll say is “soon”. Poke me and see what I’m up to; I’ve pretty much been asking for it.
July 29th, 2009
This game was harder, between the pressure of having come so close, and the nagging feeling of Rio watching my every move. It felt like a year, trying all at once to dominate the machine and to cradle it in my arms, wrestling with it for control of the ball’s manic, rebounding energy. I lost count of the plays, of the points scrolling past as the bumpers came alive and the machine’s synthetic voice begged me to keep going, just a little bit more.
It was getting hard; the game mattered too much. At the very least I wasn’t about to let Rio beat me just by playing around. The tension started building in my muscles, winding me up tight, from my hands up to my arms, from my shoulders down my back, and I started to welcome the drain, the precious few seconds of rest before I sent another ball up the ramp.
Eventually I had no more, and I slumped over the machine, exhausted, staring at the scoreboard. The numbers continued to spin, catching up to my last bonus points. Rio laughed, delighted, as he walked up behind me. “That’s very good! You’re very intense when you want to be.”
Still trying to catch my breath, I barely managed a smile.
“Close your eyes,” I heard him whisper. “Your score isn’t going anywhere.”
March 31st, 2009
One day, long ago, in an era now lost beneath the sands of time, a fledgeling wizard by the name of Snickt remembered the stories his grandmother once told, of her grandfather, a hero and a decorated soldier in the Great Rebellion. Growing tired of his studies, he went into the attic and opened the chest of his great-great-grandfather’s things. His ancestor must have been a modest man in his old age, for he was no ordinary soldier, nor even any ordinary hero; young Snickt recognized in that chest the armor and weapon of Feared Erdrick the Kingslayer, the greatest terror of his generation, and indeed of any living memory.
They said that he was part demon, that he had slain even great and noble silver dragons and forged armor from their hides. When finally the last of the old royal line lay exterminated at his feet, they said, he had spat in disgust, turned away, and walked into legend.
And it was true. Even now, the Rebellion turned into a new royalty for over a hundred years, Erdrick’s armor still glittered, bright with malice and enchantment.
In the second room Snickt visited, even before the first combat, he found a chest with a fully-loaded Wand of Wishing. He wished for blessed scrolls of charging, blessed +2 silver dragon scale mail, and blessed fireproof +2 speed boots, then recharged the wand and made some more wishes, for a blessed rustproof +2 helm of brilliance, a blessed +2 Magicbane, and +2 blessed fireproof gauntlets of dexterity. For storytelling purposes I decided that this should be his “starting” equipment.
The fabled Magicbane gleamed in his hand, elemental chaos black. Blood rushed in his head, and he heard the voice of Anhur calling to him.
“Serve me,” it said. “Go forth into the Dungeons of Doom. Bring to me the Amulet of Yendor and you shall become more powerful than Erdrick even dared to dream.”
And Snickt knew then his destiny. For nearly a week he prepared himself and said his few goodbyes. Then, one evening, he looked up at the bright, full moon for the last time, and he slipped into the unending, subterranean night. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
August 30th, 2008
LiveJournal entertains me, and not only because so many of users throw fits of hysteria at the drop of a hat. For a very long time, it survived entirely on selling subscriptions to about 5% of its users, upgrading their accounts for extra avatars, picture upload space, and a few spiffy (if rarely-used) extra features. Every so often, it sells permanent upgrades, typically for $150.
This five percent is, by definition, LiveJournal’s most profitable five percent of users. Out of these five percent, permanent accounts are, I suspect, the best deal… for LiveJournal’s coffers. $150 buys five years of upgraded service, not counting the interest earned by not paying up-front. I suspect that a Permanent account actually stays profitable more or less forever – on a commercial scale, a gigabyte of bandwidth costs about fifteen cents, a gigabyte of storage about the same – but they get less so if they’re active for more than five years. For comparison, LiveJournal has only existed at all for nine years this March, and as a paid service for eight this September.
Unfortunately, once a user buys a permanent upgrade, that user immediately and forever-after becomes deadweight to the company, an expense that has no hope of bringing in future revenue. Let me repeat that – permanent account holders are not LiveJournal’s customers. LiveJournal has precious little incentive to care what they think. Customers write checks. Once LiveJournal cashes the user’s check, a permament account is a liability, pure and simple.
In 2006, though, they found a way around this problem, which recently became the default for new users: the ad-supported upgrade. I think this was a brilliant decision, in this twirling-moustache, corporate-Machiavelli kind of way. The advertising program means that permament and basic accounts, which ordinarily generate no revenue, are still financially valuable – LiveJournalers (LiveJournalists?) maintain extensive lists of interests and associations in their profiles. This giant database can be mined, and the interests and demographic information mined to target advertising to their friends.
I suspect that people willing to pay $20/year or more for LiveJournal are probably pretty good at keeping their profiles up-to-date, people willing to pay $150 up-front even more so. That’s good, and very important in this business model. Targetting is money in advertising-land.
I have a point in this long and rather unwieldy setup, a reason for this little Gedankenexercise.
July 24th, 2008
Rio started… happening, I guess… in my life, a few times a week, sometimes with Jacqueline, sometimes alone. Maybe he’d always been there, curled up in that particular way of his, and I’d only just started noticing. Either way I was always happy to see him, and he always had some new, unpredictably wonderful fascination to share.
One night at Pilades, he slid up beside me and took a seat on the edge of my table, smiling just a little too much. I tried to ignore it, but he tugged insistently at the top of my newspaper, like a kitten who’s done something endearingly naughty and very much wants you to know. “Hello again,” he said, practically singing with happiness. “The Times? That’s a very good paper. I approve. And I have something to show you.”
“Rio, you are a strange, strange human being.” I folded my paper back together, shaking my head. “What do you want?”
Still smiling, he stuck out his tongue at me, then nodded over to the pinball machine. “I think she likes me.” The Billionaire’s Club listings began to scroll, glowing orange in the dim corner of the room.
I ran over to look.
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