Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I was so afraid of going back.

It would be hasty of me to say that Sins of a Solar Empire was collecting dust on my shelf -- being less than a month old in my own collection, despite its early February launch from Stardock.  While dust wasn't the culprit, some unknown fear was settling a thick, grimy layer over my ability to return to the 4X masterpiece.  And it wasn't fear of any one particular thing that kept me at bay for the past few weeks.  In fact, it was that intangible fear of the ol' unknown.

I didn't fear the start of a new game.  Possibilities ripe for the picking, you start every time with a developed home planet teeming with a populous that’s hungry for expansion into the stars.  I didn't fear developing resources on orbiting asteroids, striated with enriched mineral veins, my metal and ore extractors grinding and puffing away below the surface.  I didn't fear developing my home planet's gravity well with orbital research facilities, Gauss defense platforms and hangar defenses.  I didn't fear sending out my first Arcova scout frigate, the smoky-voiced captain culling, "If it’s out there, I’ll find it."  I no longer fear the surprisingly accessible research tree, a necessary evil and staple fixture of any self-respecting 4X strategy game, but this one so clean-lined and solidly-placed.  With a growing confidence, I no longer fear dealing a firm hand to pirates and the black market alike.  With money as their driving factor, they both become as easy to control and predict as any ship in your own fleet, any resource you trade within your own space lanes.  And, come to think of it, I wasn't afraid of confronting the enemy -- be it the computer-controlled AI, or those selfsame pirate raiders on the loose.  Sins knows how to hold its own in a firefight, and as guns-blazing frantic as they can grow to be (picture Battlestar Galactica-sized, with perhaps less shaky-cam) it's breezy and beautiful to seamlessly swoop in and out of the action like some omniscient, interstellar hawkeye.

No, I wasn't afraid of any one of those things in particular.  What I was afraid of was keeping all those plates spinning in the air at once.  And doing it successfully.  There's absolutely no way this much should be happening within the urgent pacing of a real-time strategy game, and yet?  Even as a band of incoming pirates ping'd on my PSIDAR, I plunked another 250 credits of bounty on my arch-rival's head, selected my home fleet and focused their fire on each member of the pirates' group, dropping them one at a time from the night sky, popping my head into the research tab to continue development of Titano-Ferric plating (rather relevant in my current predicament), while acknowledging that a third Gauss canon was brought online just in time for planet Liguria's current defense needs, pushing my Arcova scout to another unknown fringe nearly three jumps away from my home planet, and sending in my Protev frigate to colonize a recently-discovered backwater planetoid.

...Only then returning to the heated battle swimming around Liguria, pleased to note that my frigate-laden Kol battleship fleet was mopping up the last few pirate stragglers still putting up the remnants of a forceful, not unorganized attack.  Less than 12 minutes left until the next pirate invasion, only a few seconds to go until the Titano-Ferric plating would be automatically installed on all my ships and orbital structures, the backwater planetoid named and prepped for logistical structures to be erected on yet more delicious mineral finds, and my scout just discovered an empty, nebulous system that was wreaking slow-but-sure amounts of hull damage to the ship’s skin -- time to place it on auto-explore to keep it moving around the star, unveiling more pieces of this solar system and, eventually, settled systems from my computer-run nemesis.

Nope, it’s apparent that I wasn't afraid of any one of those things.  I was simply afraid of the fact that I could actually keep that many balls juggling in the air.  It honestly shouldn't be possible.  It should be too much to manage.  A minefield of tasks lost within their own intricacies.  An overbearing need to babysit each and every one of the game’s multitudinous functions.  That's essentially what I was afraid of.  Being able to, with Sins of a Solar Empire, accomplish what should by all rights be an undecipherable grocery list of impossible-to-manage administrative tasks.

But it’s not impossible.  Not with Sins.  And it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Conan didn't fail me.  I failed Conan.

 I'd drawn up a battle plan -- a sturdy one.  One that involved the upcoming MMO stunner, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and a marathon reading of Robert E. Howard's original and unedited Conan tellings, starting with The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.  Then, come the game's official release date, I'd bring (hopefully) literary-minded observations about the game world, thining the lines just that much more between the established entertainment arts -- movies, music, literature -- and the current pinnacle of interactive entertainment:  video games.  This would serve as an intensive compare-and-contrast from the page to the monitor.  From 10-point Times New Roman to 1920 x 1200 resolution.  From intellectual property to internet real estate.

 My dad didn't introduce me to the Conan stories as a youngster (he was more of a Tom Clancy/Clive Cussler fan, which loses a little in translation during story time) -- nor have I entertained the Conan movies and/or comic books that have endlessly spun off over the second half of the 20th century. Many times, if I'm that late to the party, I'd rather just not show up. 

 But Conan, I realized, would be different.  Conan would be a resurgence, a rise from the ashes of obscurity and irrelevancy.  Not like that other Fellowship that's never actually left the forefront of the world's consciousness.  Conan, I'd heard, and certainly found certain truths in, was a gratuitously violent, mysoginistic world populated with beheaded warriors and naked, fawning women.  Don't worry:  Funcom, developers of Age of Conan, know when it comes to blatant chauvanism and racial stereotypes (oh yes, plenty of those in Howard's stories, too) that we're nearly a decade into the new millenium now -- it ain't the 1930s anymore.  And there are plenty of old school domineering and damaging social structures that just don't fly nowadays.  In Age of Conan, female player characters won't be running around in a chiffon tabard, clinging desperately to sweaty alpha males for sex and security.  A woman swinging a battleaxe can cleave your head from your shoulders just as efficiently as a man-wielded one.

But this plan was to conduct a purist's study of the source texts (themes, motifs, symbols!),  bounced off the most realized and interactive construction of Hyborea ever beheld (instances, grinding, pixel shaders!).  But my plan was far from foolproof.  What I didn't anticipate was a hyper-dedicated, overzealous group of game developers that would create one of the most beautifully-rendered MMO worlds that I will never be able to run at a decent framerate on my current gaming rig.  In fact, I pass more hardware benchmarks for Crysis than I do with Age of Conan.  So, as the Search For America's Next Top MMO continues, expect Age of Conan to always be struggling to keep a decent subscriber population around.  At least for the first year or two, which is a timeframe that, with incredibly few exceptions, makes or breaks an online world.  And not because it won't do anything better or worse than MMO's Current Top Dog.  But because so few people in the gaming world will actually be able to access it.  And of the people that can access it at a playable framerate (remember, Age of Conan is unapologetically PvP/RvR-centric; a bad time to see stutter-stop frames-per-second) even fewer of those people will be interested in such a niche universe as well.  And if the Mature rating is such a gigantic draw, remember:  videogame nipples and blood splatters across the user interface will operate by the same Law of Diminishing Returns as everything else.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

So, with the sad news that my duo-core Dell Inspiron E1705 isn't up to the task of rendering a competent online version of Hyborea, I'll have to curb my enthusiasm until it's released on Xbox 360 this holiday season.  But I'm a tad flaky when it comes to MMOs ... and there's always, always, always The Next Thing.  Am I right?  This holiday season I might be entirely too enamored with Spore, Fable 2, and Warhammer Online by then.  And Age of Conan might become an already fading memory, before it's even had a chance for people to catch up to its future-proofed graphics-hog dimensions.

OK, this is pretty cool. Here's a guy playing the Mario theme using an RC car and wine bottles.

 

Doing web program, I spend a lot of time writing javascript as well as other things. Well here's a cool little javascript proof of concept. It's Super Mario and it actually plays well. While it's far from the full blown game, it shows what a little programming talent, time and motivation can do with a language designed for web browser interaction.

With the evolution of the gaming market these days, it's hardly a surprise to hear of another shop closing down. But this time, it's a bit sadder than normal, as it is Saitek that is rumored to be closing it's doors at the end of the month.

Purchased a few months ago by Mad Catz, purveyors of middling quality console hardware , it was speculated (and hoped) that Saitek would operate as an independant arm of the conglomerate, infusing some quality into a brand that frankly puts out a lot of crap. Sadly, it looks like Mad Catz will be absorbing a few chosen folks from the makers of such products as the X-52 Pro Flight System and the soon to be released Cyborg Keyboard, and letting everyone else move on.

I just find it confusing when a company like Saitek does so much right that a larger company wants to buy it, but then immediately begins jetisoning many of the people who helped make the company so successful. It's particularly misguided in this instance, where Mad Catz could clearly learn a lot about putting out, selling, and representing quality products from some of the people that aren't being brought over.

While the Saitek brand name will likely live on as part of the Mad Catz product line, it's unclear if the products will follow Saiteks quality processes, or simply wind up being the name brand Mad Catz uses to lure high end gamers into buying their run of the mill products. While I hope for the former, I won't be the least bit surprised by the later.