If you play MMOGs at all, and especially if you engage in player-vs-player (PvP) combat, you know that INC means “incoming.” I’m moving my hosting from GeneralHosting to GoDaddy. I have free hosting that comes with my domain registration, which will trim $8 a month from my online expenses, plus GoDaddy gives me more control over my site configuration, including DNS settings (CNAMES, etc.), MySQL database creation and control, etc.
There may be a short hiccup when I make the cutover, but otherwise I expect the transition to be pretty smooth. Once I have done mine, I will work on moving over my in-laws’ site, HowardsCustomFlatheads.com.
Someone linked me to the Alice and Kev blog the other day. A British game design student named Robin Burkinshaw is running an “experiment” in the game Sims 3. He created a man and his daughter, gave him the traits of inappropriate and insane, and made them homeless — they live in a park, they don’t have any income and must scrounge for food, or in Alice’s case, eat at school when possible.
Anyway, the writer does some literary interpretation of the events in the game, and of course is able to influence certain things if he wants, but all in all, it’s a very fascinating look into simulating something probably not intended in the game originally. And, it very likely will make you think a bit.
I subscribe to quite a few blogs in my Google Reader. I don’t always keep up with them all, especially the last few months after Caroline came home and my free time took a big hit. This morning, it occurred to me that I never write anything like real game analysis or strategy for a game. For example, Seth Owen’s blog Pawnderings tends to have a lot of wargame analysis, and a recent series on My Play has focused on Race for the Galaxy strategy.
I got to thinking about why I don’t write articles like that. I’m a strategic kinda guy. I like writing. I love gaming. So what gives? I think it’s because I don’t feel like I’ve mastered any particular game sufficiently to feel comfortable writing a strategy article about it, and for those games I do have a lot of plays on, they are already well-known and well-discussed already (Puerto Rico and Dominion, for example).
I think it is a direct result of my apparently insatiable appetite for new games. Sure, I enjoy playing games multiple times, but the low frequency of gaming I “enjoy” these days coupled with the large number of distinct games owned by me, my friends and gaming group, means repeat plays are few and far between. I even acknowledge this in the geekbadge on my BGG profile: Game Tourist.
I also tend to avoid reading strategy articles myself. A big part of the fun in gaming is “discovering” different strategies, and I’m especially known for trying things that are off the beaten path. If I don’t read strategy much, why would I write it?
Phew. I think I’ve settled on a blog name, a theme, and what I want in the sidebar. I entered a bunch of links, so I think I’m all caught up on setting up the site. Now, um… do I have anything worthwhile to say in the coming days? Months, years?
I’d like to get settled on a set of tools (widgets) and design (templates and themes) before I get too far along in this blog’s life, so prepare for an onslaught of test posts.
Here, let’s try out YouTuber for embedding video. I present to you: the Large Hadron Rap.
Next: crosslinking. I get my game info on over at BGG aka BoardGameGeek. (Those should be hyperlinked automatically.)
Okay, I’m finally pulling the trigger on a real blog, thus WordPress makes its entrance here.
NewBlog is just temporary, heh. I’m browsing themes and plugins and thinking about what kind of direction I want to take with this thing. I’ll probably make this the default home page on Jirel.com before too long, and then link to my ASP-driven game stats pages.