It must've been on my old, old, old blog that I posted this, because I can't find references to it on this one, but I know I've mentioned it before! But, since I got a confirmation message again, I'll say it again.

Long, long ago, I got a confirmation message from Sony Station, that division of Sony that likes to screw game developers out of their money and take over the development for themselves hosts online games. I ignored it at first, because I had previously subscribed to Star Wars: Galaxies, after the ill-fated cancellation of Uru Live by the dimwitted Ubisoft. *ahem* ...Anyway. It went without notice for a few months until I got another message stating that they were confirming the purchase of an Everquest expansion pack. Uhm... Hold on now!

I hate Everquest. I've played a demo and the graphics are so old, they distract me. I realize that people who've been playing since the beginning still enjoy it, but I wasn't there at the beginning and I don't enjoy it. So why would I buy an expansion pack to a game I don't play? Well, the answer was quite simple. Someone else created an account with my email address. I dug up the old message I got so long ago and it was an account creation confirmation message, for some guy called "Gary D George". I am a wolf of integrity, so I won't tell you his account name or password, but yes, I do have them. They were in the confirmation message. I even downloaded, installed, and played Everquest for a couple minutes, just to see if I could do it with his account... Yep, I could. I found his players, too. Really creative names like "GerShep" or "GerDog" or "ShepDog". A ton of characters all named variations of that. That... Would kind of explain why he used my email address. Whatever makes him think he has the GMail account "germanshepherd", I don't know, because I've changed the password since then, and have been using it since GMail was invitation-only beta.

I bring this up again because he has once again purchased something, as up 1:19AM yesterday morning. Same name, same account, same password... I just checked. If I wanted to, I could play Everquest to my heart's content for absolutely no cost! I can even see the last four digits of his credit card number. How can someone go so long without coming to terms with the fact that... You gave an MMO an email address... THAT ISN'T YOURS?! But, I guess... Someone who goes around playing a character named "GerDog" isn't very quick on the uptake of things. This would be someone I'd report in World of Warcraft for such an abominable name.

So let this be a lesson to you folks! Make sure you use your email address... Wow... It pains me to say that. This would be like making sure you're wearing clothes before going to Wal-Mart. "Now, Gary, make sure you're properly clothed! I don't want you going to town naked again!" / "Yes, mooooom!"

If I had written as much on my NaNoWriMo story as I've written in these last few posts... I'd probably be caught up by now!

There's a game out there called Second Life. People will argue on and on for days and days on why it's NOT a game, or why it IS a game. But this is me talking, and I consider it a game, so a game it shall be called when I write about it. In this game (yes, I also enjoy saying it to annoy people who take it too seriously), people of all kinds connect to a massive user-operated game world. Basically, there's a big huge empty world, and people buy, with real life money, plots of land with which to build stuff. Anything you can imagine, you can build.

Anyway, there's some group of scientists out there trying to find out if people protect their "virtual privacy", and this is the job I want. I want to play a game, write a robot, and send it out after the people taking the game too seriously, and see how they react to a digital avatar walking up to their digital avatar, record the responses, and present the responses as valid research. That's the job I want. Heck, I'll even PLAY the game manually to see how the people react! You'll get faster results out of me, because I don't need complicated scripts!

Anyone who's actually played Second Life will tell you... Yes, people protect their "virtual privacy". Let me tell you a story... Actually, let me tell you a couple of stories!

Once upon a time, three avatars were exploring with a Stargate device that someone built and scripted. It would even randomly dial another gate, open a wormhole, you could walk through it and BAM! You're on the other side. Awesome way to kill the time. So these three avatars went through the Stargate and found themselves in a very large shop on an industrial coast. Slightly off the shop grounds, there were two other avatars making out in a little gazebo. I am being generous with the terms here... Such as, this "gazebo" was pretty much a blue sphere carved out in the middle. Not very creative. One of the Stargate travelers promptly put on a Goomba suit and sat on top of the two avatars making out. The two avatars got incredibly upset, verbally raked the Goomba suited avatar over the coals, and left.

There are a few points to make here. One is that land can be isolated. You can block people from visiting if you REALLY wanted your privacy. This land was public. The making out avatars had no control over this. Two is that Stargates have to be on publicly accessible properties. Check and check. The two avatars failed to take into consideration these things, and the fact that since it is a game, people will be silly and do what they can't bring themselves to do in real life. If you REALLY wanted your privacy, you'd go somewhere that didn't have a Stargate on it.

Let me tell you another story! Once upon a time, three avatars were exploring the Stargate network! They came across an island out in the middle of an ocean, with no signs of civilization besides the island itself. The island was densely populated by empty houses, so the avatars decided to explore. They examined the house from the outside and, deciding that it was empty, proceeded to explore the inside, because, after all, it was a game that you could explore places and things built by other people! The fact that the land was publicly accessible and had a Stargate means that you are free to come and go by the rules of the game. Inside this house, however, was a man. A very angry man. Without any words, he proceeded to shoot the three avatars with a weapon none had seen before! It would, simply, encase the avatar in a bubble and rocket them skyward, many, many, many kilometers into the air. Hey! That was kind of fun! So the avatars kept returning to get shot, and they got flung into the air, and returned, and got flung into the air, until suddenly... The three explorers were slapped with a rejection and were booted from the island and back to their home location. The person with the gun was the owner of the island, and he didn't want the avatars there at all.

There are a few points to make here. One is that the island in question was publicly accessible. Two is that the island in question had a Stargate on it. The builder and creator of the Second Life Stargate made a rule that all Stargates must be on publicly accessible land. The owner of the island failed to take into consideration these two things. It also brings up the question... Why have publicly accessible property and not want anyone looking at your handiwork? Are you building it to impress your online girlfriend? (Who could also just as easily be a man on the other end.) If so, lock the property! If not, expect people to explore. The avatars were able to return by setting foot on just a sliver of the island in question. The rest was blocked. From their vantage point, they could see that the Stargate had been removed from its resting place.

Yes, mister scientist robot building man, people protect their "virtual privacy", and I could have told you that for free, provided you mentioned me in that fancy article written about you. I could have told you that people who play Second Life take the game far too seriously and get uproariously upset when people invade their "virtual privacy". The very term "virtual privacy", in the sense of a populated game world, is like saying "I'm going to drink some evaporated water" or "I think I'll wear this invisible shirt today". It just ain't gonna make any difference with that many people who are rightly treating the virtual reality as virtual, and are there to have some fun. Of course they wouldn't do those types of things in real life, but this isn't real life, is it? It's a game!

I found another Leopard gem. Sorry, but after getting so much flak from people because I bought Vista, I enjoy these articles very much. Especially when they show up on Slashdot. (Although the comments are more along the lines of, "Ah, Apple will fix it, no problem", but with Microsoft it's "Haha! M$ r luzers and ned to be purged from society for this clear violation of... I don't know, but they violated something!")

Basically, the problem is when you move a folder from one Leopard machine to any remote or removable drive, there's a high chance of data loss. If you unplug the target drive before it's finished moving, you'll lose both copies. How any OS can consider doing that is insane... Is it a Unix thing? Making it an immaculate choice on behalf of the free peoples of the Open Source community? Is it a Mac thing? Making it an immaculate choice on behalf of all cultured anti-Microsoft antagonists? Windows preserves the source data until after the target data has been successfully written. It always has! At least in the versions I've used, and I know it does this in XP and Vista, because it's happened before! Move a file... Network goes down. Movement doesn't complete, you get an error, and... What next, you ask? Well, you fix the problem and start again! Because the file you were moving is stiiiiiill there. This is quite clear in my mind, because I moved a massive file I'd downloaded over the network from one Windows machine to another, and the destination drive got full, and my heart sunk because I was sure it had erased the source file, but nope! It didn't, and before you say that such an error isn't a catastrophic error and that it must be handled, well, let me tell you, with a hard drive I use being inside the family computer, every now and then, someone will reboot while I'm moving a file... If that's not considered a catastrophic error of the destination, dropping off the face of the network without any warning, then I don't know what is.

Now... If you can, imagine how the world would react if Windows did this. I know I can.

I'm putting this under a spoiler tag, just in case... Nothing I've written here is a spoiler if you play Uru or keep up with the news surrounding it. If you know what areas are released, go ahead and look. If you don't know and don't want to know, then don't...

(more...)

So tonight I had a choice... 2,000 words for NaNoWriMo tonight... or find the last Stray Beads in Okami. After a couple moments of deep thought, I picked the right choice! I collected the last Stray Beads and tacked 2,000 words onto tomorrow's (today's) 2,000 words! Lemme tell you... If you decide to hunt the beads, even if you use a location guide, be prepared for some pretty intense fights and maneuvering and some might fine-tuned brush strokes. And racing. I hate racing. Why are there so many races in these types of games?!

So... Tay asked, in short, what makes Okami an excellent game. Well, I wrote a sort of review a long time ago, but that's a bit long, so, hmm... Well, if you're like me, you buy games with wolves in it, and anything else that comes in the package is just a bonus. But... I'm going to assume that's not going to be high on the list of reasons to get it, soooooooo...

I'm going to have to say, if I can only pick one thing, that the Celestial Brush is what makes Okami an excellent game. Pretty much push a trigger button, the world kinda tips back, freezes in time, and turns into a canvas, and you can draw basic shapes on it to fire off different moves. There are 13 primary brush techniques, each with some sub-variant that you have to unlock by finding the side quest. You literally use the brush for everything. Exploration, interacting with characters, combat... It's just reeeally neat. It's what sets Okami apart from any other game out there.

Second, it's a huge world, with a huge storyline, with so many side quests that you lose track and/or can't find them all the first time through. Just when you think the game's getting close to the end, it doesn't end... And it keeps wrapping up, but not ending, that you just kind of give up guessing when it's going to end, until that moment where it's suddenly very clear that it's ending soon! Let's see... I have about 80 clocked hours in the game, but I've run through it almost twice now. So 40 hours going through the first time, and then snagging New Game +, which starts you off with all of your items (not the brush techniques), so the game itself was a lot easier, but I went and did a bunch of the side quests, and just hit 40 hours again. So, if you're like me, where you buy a game that advertises a certain amount of play time, and you blow through it in a third of the time... This is for you!

Without the Celestial Brush, Okami turns out to follow Zelda, as far as gameplay goes. Sort of... action/adventure with a bit of RPG elements. You start out weakened, follow the storyline, kill some baddies, get stronger, upgrade your stats and weapons... There are some obvious puzzle quests, and a whole crate-load of moments where you have to use your brain to figure out how to get through an area with your limited brush techniques. If you're not big on fighting, you're in luck, since the combat is usually pretty quick and straightforward. (Unless you start hunting the Stray Beads.) The roaming bad guys are shown as different colored scrolls that float around while you explore. Sometimes they'll chase you, but most of the time you can avoid them, and there's an artifact you can buy to ward them off. Whenever you do fight, though, you can buy all sorts of overpowering power-ups that'll make battles excessively easy if you stock up. (Like a scroll that makes you immune to all attacks for around 5 minutes, sheesh.)

So, in a nut-shell (but... probably too late to fit in the shell), Okami is a Zelda-type game with a Celestial Brush that takes the genre to an entirely new level. If you don't like Zelda-type games, though, you probably won't find Okami any better. Pretty much the same thing... Running around a big world, doing quests, building up your strength to fight the final boss.

Plus... You get to play a sun goddess in the form of a wolf! I'd like to see anyone top that! Bwahaha... Oh, and did I mention the stellar storyline and dialogue and characters? (It can be sad, too... Man, I'm at a certain part, right now. I know exactly what comes next and I don't want to proceed.) And the really cool peek into Japanese mythology. (As far as I can tell, every character is straight out of mythology. All I know is that Wikipedia had a trove of links all crisscrossing around, listing mythological people that recognized from the game.) If you're into that sort of thing... I enjoy mythology and fantasy.

So, uhm, there's... a lot more than a short and sweet explanation. I say you should at least try it! (It's going to come out on the Wii in spring, too! You can try it twice! Celestial Brush with the Wii Remote... I'll never shut off my TV again.)