June Vintage Computer Club Meeting

 

State and stupidity of Xbox

 

I’ve been seeing some defenders of Xbox and Microsoft say that closing down the game studios whose games underperformed is the right thing to do.

I think this read of it infantilizes the executives and makes the people getting paid less than a percentage of what they make seem like they have real control. If an executive approves a game about a polar bear wielding samurai swords, then the executives will also make sure that their marketing department will launch proper support to sell the game, and their finance department allocate appropriate budget for the title based on market conditions and the expected timeframe the game will take to develop. The people making sure the polar bear can swing the samurai sword should not, at any point, be worrying about those other aspects.

Bad executive decisions tend to fail. Good ones don’t. There is more to being a game executive than micromanaging a game studio, in fact, if they are doing so, then that means they aren’t doing the rest of their job duties very well at all.

The mistake was not the games they released, the mistake was buying studios in the first place, only to realize you can’t afford them (if you can’t sell the games your studios make, then you can’t afford them).

The studio’s job is not to capture an audience, that’s marketing’s job, which is also under the executive. A studio being financially sound after development of a game is also not their job, that’s finance’s job, which is also under the executive. Both of those issues are the result of overspending and expecting unrealistic returns, which is also directly the executive’s job.

Remember, the studio has one job: to make the videogame. The executive oversees many, many things, including the studio.

These executives are choosing to layoff and close studios for the executive’s own incompetence and bad decisions.

For example, let’s look at historical examples of Nintendo: their executives had studios making games (Rareware making RC Pro Am 64 in 1990s, and EPD making Splatoon in the 2010s). They were games that those studios wanted to make. The executives read the market in 1996, and saw that RC Pro Am 64 would not give them the big holiday title they needed in 1997, so they had the studio rework the games into Diddy Kong Racing. They gave them appropriate budget and marketing to make this change, and the game was successful as a result of those decisions. In the second example, Splatoon was not an existing IP and was a new unproven thing; the executives read the market and considered the game the studio was making, and gave it the support it needed to work as it’s own thing. Splatoon came out, was a success, and now has a trilogy and a new single player spinoff on the way. The studios did their job: to make a good videogame. 

The executives did their jobs: to make the games succeed. Microsoft has a ton of amazing talent and studios making all kinds of amazing videogames, but their executives are not or can not make the decisions needed to make them succeed. And instead of fixing those issues, they choose to punish the studios instead. 

Absolute clown show of a company.

Over 100 hours of Mario Kart World

 

 

If there's a game that made owning a Nintendo Switch 2 worthwhile for me, it was Mario Kart World. I do love the Switch 2, simply because of how much better it makes Switch 1 games, but while I found Donkey Kong Bananza too overwhelming, and Tears of the Kingdom wonderful but still a Switch 1 game running at better settings, it was Mario Kart World that felt like a new experience for a new generation.

The mix of the fully realized recreation of the Mushroom Kingdom as if it had North American road infrastructure, the incredibly high skill ceiling, the high production values, all the easter eggs, and the music and visuals, combines to make a game that I'm really into. It doesn't get old, and it's calming and engaging at the same time. Every time I play, there's something new happening.

For now, I am waiting patiently for DLC. 

Been waiting a long time. 

Long, long time.

The Mandalorian Motion Picture

You know how the Star Trek movies at least tried to make it be more cinematic and do more, crazier, and important things compared to the TV show?

This doesn’t.

The Mandalorian and Grogu movie was indeed two-three episodes stitched together. I was hoping the critics and those who saw the movie before me were kidding, but no, they were right. There wasn’t even an overarching theme to the story. It was just three stories happening back to back, not even concurrently.

But the puppetry and art was cool, they even had stop motion animation. It was indeed lots of cool scenes in the movie.

Music was great too.

The live action cinematography was really bad though, felt like it was directed by George Lucas with how many bland shot reverse shots there were. Every scene with Sigourney looked awful. 

In all, the story didn't have much going on at all. Even bad Star Wars movies like Rise of Skywalker and Attack of the Clones had stuff going on, even if I didn’t like and actively hated those things. But this movie actively lacked…well, a story. It had a premise (which was not interesting enough to even be a memorable episode, let alone a movie you pay a ticket for), and I liked the Rotta the Hutt character in principle, but there was absolutely no character work going on in this movie.

Everyone was an action figure that didn’t change at all from the beginning to the end. I was thinking that maybe they were setting up some interesting twists with Sigourney being upset that Rotta was saved, or that they were going to do anything at all with Grogu, but nah.

I think kids would like it. It’s a good movie for kids, I think, assuming they don’t get bored. The show itself is cool, but I think one should expect more for something you have to buy a ticket for. 

 

The end of the Gamespot forums

Gamespot is moving to a new CMS (Wordpress), which is good for them, but bad for everyone who used the social stuff from the old custom made CMS that was made for Gamespot in the early 2000s.

Aka, the forums.

They are keeping the accounts and usernames for the new site, but any user generated content does not seem to be coming along, as they said they will be sunsetting them. At the very least, it's not happening immediately, they said there's a window of time, and they will let us know when it will be sunset.

I don't think there's anyone at Gamespot left that even knows how to handle all the code that runs the social component of the site, which is why the new site doesn't even have them or link to them. It will likely be replaced with Fandom software (if anything).

I’ll miss the social media aspects of this site like the blogs, user videos, and forums, it’s what I grew up in since 2005. I found the site through a Bellsouth directory when looking for videogames. I used the same username as the automatically generated one I had on lego.com, because why reinvent the wheel.

I was here for the generational transition between PS2/GCN/Xbox -> PS3/Wii/360, and it was very fun to see all that. Lot's of big news and discussions and arguments and amazing games. I loved the community events that System Wars had like Iron Shop and System Wars Bets.

There was so much drama on the board that I created a zine for the forum to cover it and talk about it. It ran for seven years and helped spawned many amazing game journalists that are still in the industry today.

Outside of that, this place was my blog and where I uploaded videos to before Youtube (through Gamespot User Videos), and participated in various communities through the Gamespot Unions. I miss all those people, I wish I could track them down and talk with them again.

I backed up my blogs and all of SWM a while back already, so I will be fine. For me, the worst things to have lost were all the User Videos and the Unions, which were lost when Gamespot did their 2013 redesign. I uploaded most of my videos to Youtube, which is what kickstarted my Youtube channel.

Gamespot was very ahead of its time with their social features during the 2000s, if they had made a few different decisions, they could have made their own gaming-focused social media network just from the tools they had.

Nothing lasts forever though, and they have been abandoned by the different site owners for over a decade at this point, so I hope for the best for the new Gamespot.

Late 1900s - Early 2000s technology

 

The electronics era I grew up with!

It may be old, but this was back when the computer was fun and interesting to use, and it wasn't hostile to everyone who uses it.

Phoenix Downtown

It’s 107 degrees and the food is super expensive, and this is the farthest west I’ve gone (so far). Very cool.

And bonus one:

Self driving cars

 

I was able to use a Waymo in my trip to Phoenix. It was the first time I ever rode in a self-riding car. I have cousins that worked on these cars, and they certainly didn't think highly of them. 

At the very least, I found them very impressive how they were able to navigate the busy airport and downtown commute. Their user experience was also very well thought out, from calling them in via the app, to the experience riding them. They were also cheaper than Uber, which was a plus.  

Why would they do this?

They would do it as an honest attempt to bring Star Fox back from the dead.

Upon first impression, I did not like the new art style for Star Fox at all. They seemed intentionally designed to be unappealing and somewhat grotesque. The new designs are very opinionated, but now I think that’s very respectable. I don’t mind the designs anymore, but I believe the Illumination movie version design was a lot better.

Other than the character art style, the game looks gorgeous at least. Nintendo really put a lot of money on it. The new cutscenes seem extensive and the online multiplayer mode could be interesting. I wish it was a remake of SNES Star Fox, since that one is the hardest to go back to, but it looks like a lot of work was put into it.

Also, since this is a remake of Star Fox 64, which was a remake of SNES’s Star Fox, let’s see: 

1. 64

2. 3DS

3. Zero

4. Switch 2

So counting SNES, it’s 5 versions of the same game.

20 years of my YouTube channel

I set up my YouTube channel on Apr 24, 2006. It has since grown to be around 220k subscribers, but I never intended it to be popular. 

I originally created it to post my videos. I originally made videos for myself and friends, and would post them on Gamespot User Videos, back when that site allowed users to upload their own videos. They would be silly little animations about videogames that I made on my computer. 

Some of my videos uploaded to Gamespot User Videos (the thumbnails were not saved by the Wayback Machine). The Paper Mario one is still available because I put it on YouTube, but the Star Fox one is lost forever.

At the time, YouTube was already one year old and gaining in popularity, and since Gamespot User Videos was simply giving the same service as YouTube, I decided to start uploading some of my videos to YouTube as well.

The first video was a reupload of a Paper Mario animation I had made for Gamespot User Videos:

However, although nowadays my channel is practically exclusively animated videos, at first that was not the intention. It was my personal YouTube channel to upload my interests. I also uploaded gameplay videos of games like Sonic Robo Blast 2, Roblox, and Microsoft Flight Simulator:

I would typically upload two or three videos in a month, and then nothing for the rest year and a half, since this was done for my enjoyment as opposed to any other reason (Being a Youtuber was not a career at a time).

I'd occasionally return to experiment making animated videos, such as stop motion Brickfilms:

Eventually I realized I could make short films, so I spent much of my time making them, and posting them on YouTube once they were done:

I experimented with livestreaming, and making videos for other channels, like the Video Game Movie Store webseries for Point Insertion. Inbetween those episodes, I'd make random cartoons that I thought were funny.

Eventually, once the pandemic hit, as millions around the world were at home watching videos on the internet, my videos took off, exploding the channel from a few thousand subscribers to where it is now.

April Vintage Computer Club Meeting

 

Saw a bunch of cool stuff at the Tallahassee Vintage Computer Club, mostly from the 70s and 80s (such as the Apple Lisa, a Commodore 64, and some Heathkit computers). 

 

I also saw a Sony Viao which was my favorite thing to see, it was in such good condition. Back when Windows was cool....

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

I admit, it is a nice feeling being pandered to. This movie heavily pandered to me during its entire run, filled with a never-ending barrage of expertly animated and produced nostalgia-bait. However, that got old around the halfway mark, and the movie shows you for what it is; a collection of short comedy skits that are only slightly connected to each other, with their only purpose being to show you something you liked about Nintendo videogames, a bunch of jokes featuring those things, and then ending it with a Smash Bros-style fight scene.

It's like having someone else play a really pretty remake of the best Mario games ever made. It's nice to see, nice to hear, but there is no substance at all, because you aren't playing it. This is a movie, there should have been a story, a narrative, something to make this movie watchable to anyone who *didn't* grow up with these games, but that is not the case. 

Illumination did improve in various aspects compared to the previous movie though. The humor was improved, the visuals are outstanding, the number of out-of-place pop songs was reduced to basically zero, and the lack of story means it will work better when rewatched millions and millions of times in separate out-of-order Youtube clips.  

 

Liam Neeson's The Naked Gun

 

 

The script was a really good remix of a lot of the Zucker movies of the era. A lot of really great gags (and some that flopped), but it was more of a nostalgia piece for older folk than something that can work as a new revival.

The script also called for lots of really clever visual gags that the cinematography couldn’t cash. The decision to film it as if it was a contemporary thriller was clever on paper, but it made the visual gags awkward and forced, unlike the cinematography of the original show and movies that allowed for the viewer to seek them out in the background of shots.

Liam Neeson was inspired casting, and he did an okay job in general; he actually seems a lot older in this movie than Leslie Nielsen did in his.

I think it really could have been better, but in the end it was just in-between fine and good.