Well I'd blame E3 demos - but that's only partially true. Blaming City of Heroes is more accurate. First off, I think CoH is a really good game - a nice fresh take on MMO's. Secondly - it hit a real sweet spot in my gaming psyche. Final Fantasy's leveling system is brutal, and it is really unfriendly to hanging out with friends. Right around the time I figured that all out is when I got access to CoH. So I was still in an online groove, but unhappy with FFXI. Anyway, if you think you might like CoH I'd recommend giving it a shake. I can post more about why I like it if there's interest. I play on Guardian server, stop by and drop a line to VoidStar. If you promise to be nice he'll even let you join his supergroup - The Sans Pantalones Society. They are protecting freedom and justice - Sans Pantalones! :-) (BTW, E3 demos are a pain. But all my readers probably already knew that.)

I think I'm going to buy Luke Hohmann's book. Here's an excerpt from an interview with him: "One of the exercises I like to do as a consultant is to give everyone on the project a blank, 8.5x11 piece of paper and ask them to draw their architecture. I find that the members of a cohesive team will each draw a similar architecture, and the members of a dysfunctional team will draw wildly different architectures." Here's the link for the quote, although it begins here. I can think of a few projects where I'd love to time travel back and present this exercise. :-)

OK - so I'm still not posting much. I blame Chuji. Still playing a LOT of Final Fantasy. Josh made it online for like 20 minutes on Sunday - and he did in fact take the catgirl thief - who we promptly outfitted with the "bondage special" strappy armor. Here's a pic of the group: Here's a better shot of Josh's character: And here is the fabled shot when I remember that I could go into first person mode - this is SasquatchUA from Charrock's POV:

OK, so it's been a while since I posted. Several things have conspired. 1) GDC was last week and took up a bunch of time & energy. 2) I've been playing a fairly high amount of Final Fantasy XI. I blame Chuji. 3) I've got some allergy thing - for the last week or so I've been nursing this sinus headache. That means I've had several nights this week where I've just vegetated in front of the TV as opposed to doing anything socially constructive. GDC was the same as always really - seems like it's getting smaller, but I still went to a couple of really good talks. I also took the opportunity to try out the Palm Reader ebook software - read Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning, There Was the Command Line and Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe Both good reads, and it was neat to have good reading in places/times I normally wouldn't. Lastly: a quick web link. This essay is an awesome explanation of the cardinal sin for a programming lead. I've said similar concepts before - but Vince says it more eloquently and cleanly than I've ever managed. Good stuff to read.

Wednesday was the first time I had played Magic Online in a month or so. We've been playing at work - so I've been getting my fix via physical play and MTGO has been fubared all over the map with the new set release. Anyway, I won a draft. As in "took the good medal - got the packs and crushed the opposition" won. I often win the first round in a draft and winning the second isn't unheard of - but this was the first time I went the distance. Go me! Ninja Gaiden is out of the pool. It's too hard, and I don't have the gaming time to fuck around with that kind of nonsense anymore. That's two strikes against Tecmo - enough to spend the goodwill Dead Or Alive 2 and 3 generated for me. I'd be totally in DOA Online - except for the need to spring for Live as well. Of course, I might decide I want Pandora Tomorrow on Live - so if I spring for the cost then maybe I'd feel better about DOA. I picked up Lifeline this week - the voice activated game from Konami. It's got some interesting tricks, but the voice recognition is flawed enough to be frustrating. And the designers inexplicably made "guess the noun we used for this" part of the game - which has a nasty synergy with dodgy recognition. The voice stuff definitely makes for an interesting intersection with survival horror. The best parts so far have been the horror movie moments with interaction. The heroine actually responds to yelling "Don't go in the door!" at the screen. :-) The jury is still out on this one - maybe I'll decide this weekend.