Alright! Big news this time! First and foremost,  I have acquired a job. A really good job. It is an internship at Idaho Transportation Department. The pay is good and I know several people there already. What does this mean for the comic? I have no fricking Idea. I'm predicting a 90% chance of no change in comic and a 9% chance of this thing not being updated and about a 1% chance of this being stopped in it's entirety. While I would hate to have this thing end,  we all have to grow up sometime.  I am no longer just an average college student. I have a job to do and a career to start thinking about. It happens all the time. Makes me think of Marcy Playground's song "Cloak of Elvenkind". Chances are that this will continue on it's chaotic path, randomly updated and me always feeling that I have let you all down somehow, despite my general apathy towards making comics or doing anything productive.

Next Item on the menu today is where I would usually place my gaming achievements. However, a very interesting discussion was started on the topic of next generation games and consoles. This is my response to This post on Naz's Blog.

"Ok, I agree with Naz on this to some extent. While I would love to see videogames with much more story (oh god, would I), I just don't really see this happening. I think one of the next trends will be to re-release all the older videogames from our childhood-teenage years with graphical and mechanical touch-ups. It's already happening. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. No, if you have played the original games, and yes if you have not. People who haven't played the old ones, assuming they try the oldies, will find the graphics unbearable and can not handle the numerous flaws that we had to deal with when the game is first released. It is those flaws and how to bypass them that made the game such a piece of nostalgia.
 
However, I am Glad to see some really great games re-released, but it seems that doing such things is all some companies are planning for some systems ( Nintendo's GBA for example). It is stopping any 1st party ingenuity by just throwing out all the games we played 15 years ago. Why is this important? Because 1st party companies have the most money to throw into game development (Plot, Music, etc.) and have the greatest ability to work within the limits of the Consoles capacity (Graphics, sound, interface). Essentially, with the exception of a few 3rd party companies, 1st party companies have the ability to produce the best games

The other trend I see is the continued emphasis  on graphical enhancement over content. This is what makes consoles marketable. Would a noob to the gaming world look up what genre they might like and research which games and console would be best for them? HELL no. We might, but the average user would consider two different things: Graphics and cost. That's it. That has ALWAYS been the struggle in the console wars since the beginning of time. Then once they have made a choice, they stick with that company until the end of time, or somebody slaps some sense into them. I used to be a Nintendo fanboy myself, but the recent generation of consoles really slapped me out of it. Few gamers, if any, ever come to that realization. Until such time as the companies who produce the consoles decide that the market is no longer graphically driven, the emphasis of content over graphics will never come to be. People who want to see the change occur (myself included) have very few options to take. We can pay the console companies a hefty sum for a development packet to produce new games, which would inevitably suck due to our lack of formal training in many departments of game development. Actually, some companies (cough*NINTENDO*) don't even sell the development packs to people. You have to be a well known and world renowned game producing company to get them. Due to this there have been people and companies who have even tried to create an open source console. How cool would that be? If you ask me, really awesome. However, support for those consoles are negligible at best. Anybody remember the Indreama project? I sure do. I also remember it tanking. Badly. The real problem with performing the necessary events to produce change are covered by my next argument.
 
My next and final argument against this is the simple fact that we as a society are on a trend of laziness and stupidity. Statistically, the common person has read 1 book in the past two or three years, or something close to that. Most people these days don't want to read or hear a story, they would much rather be dazzled by polygonal vectoring or watch something explode or see some sort of soft core pornography. Anytime there IS a story that people "enjoy", it is generally very boring and intellectually shallow, even by the general populace's standards. Most people who play videogames these days (generally the playstation generation) don't want to "slog" through text or story. They would rather virtually disembowel something with a knife (not that a virtual stabbing is such a bad thing, as long as you are 18 or older) or play virtual sports, than play 15 minutes of any thought inducing game genre. VIRTUAL SPORTS for Christ's sake!! I believe this due to the uncoolness of being smart and/or reading that has been developed in our culture for a long time (possibly as long as 100 years). Videogames are rapidly becoming a lot like television in that respect. How many people in the general populace watch the history channel? Or the Discovery channel? How about just watching the news? I would guess not many. They are all probably watching Who wants to marry a millionaire, or Outback Jack or some Bullshit like that. The same thing is happening in videogames, or already happened, depending on your stance.
 
However, RPGs, Strategy and adventure games will always have a plot. It is almost a requisite for these types of games to have one. Perhaps, with the increased graphical capability of the next generation consoles, these types of games will have a much better ability to convey both plot and emotions, but the general videogame player isn't likely to play them.

Essentially, I don't see the end of the current trends anywhere in the near future. Due to the laziness of society and greed of  production companies, we will be on this trend for a long time. Until we manage to make a open source game console which would be cheap to manufacture and produce games for it, or force change of games by boycott or whatnot (like that will happen) Game companies will have no reason to listen to our complaints or even feel the need to change."

Like I said, this is a very interesting conversation. Both sides have many good points. If you feel the need to comment on it, post something on Naz's Blog, or perhaps in the forums, but preferably the blog.

Alrighty! See you later!

PEACE!