the-inbetween.com

The Failures of Game Retailers

In my eyes, there are four key factors that are hampering the mainstream acceptance of this hobby that I love: the content of the games themselves, the lack of any quality mainstream cultural writing about games (this is improving), bad marketing, and horrible retailers. Retail is the one that baffles me the most.

You'd think that dedicated game retailers would be knowledgeable, well stocked with the proper releases, and, uh, dedicated. But no. They're a hormonal wasteland of pandering Xtreme Gamerness™, managed by clueless dumbwits and higher-ups with questionable business practices.

Not just questionable, but baffling too.

In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, we have the biggest game of 2004 (perhaps debatable, but the install base of the PS2 is far greater than that of the XBox and Halo 2). Game retailers should thrive on releases like this. Sales should be through the roof. So why does the following happen?

Hi, you got Outrun 2?

*checks* We should have it in two days. (more on this aside later).

Ok, can I get San Andreas then?

Preorders only.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Here's a game expected to sell 15 million copies and is expected to gross over $200 million in revenues over the first week, and Microplay has the brilliant foresight to get just enough copies to sell to the people that already paid for a part of it. I'm sure Rockstar pressed enough copies; it's all thanks to the brilliant planning by retailers. Nevermind the lost sales to people coming into the store off the street. Like I did.

These retailers are stringing together a nice pattern of incompetence and shortsightedness, which was even more visibly apparent with Katamari Damacy.

To paraphrase. The biggest game of the year and... Microplay? Preorders only. EBGames? Preorders only. GameShack? Sold out. Selling games is the only thing they do, and they can't do it right. Fuck em. I headed down to Futureshop (an electronics chain with a modest gaming section) and -- surprise, surprise -- they had STACKS of them.

Why the hell are dedicated game retailers the worst kind of game sellers around?

(The aside. Here's another -1 for Microplay -- they must be at -38 by now: that Outrun 2 that they won't get for two days? Well, guess what I bought at the much smaller and non-major chain backed GameShack? Score two lost sales for Microplay today! Keep it up and you'll be even more irrelevant.)

Also, talk about pulling the company line... by its dick. I quote: How can IGN give a game that has NO online component a review score of 9.9 ? Yes, because sticking an ethernet cable into a pile of shit automatically makes it not stink. Sluuuuuuuuurp.

Fake Snow

It was fake snowing on Yonge Street today as a chick was snowboarding on top of a Mini down one of Toronto's busiest streets. While I'm sure that creative bit of creativity will be all over the televisions in a month or two, the scary realization is that the fake snow will also be present and all too real.

Seems like a lot of game shops around town are going to be open midnight Monday for the launch of Grand Theft Auto 3: San Andreas (remember the old Capcom joke that said that they can't count to three? Well, seems as though Rockstar can't count to four.) I'm looking forward to playing GTA:SA too, and I will likely pick it up after work on Tuesday, but if you have to go to a game store at midnight just so you can get it first (got news for you, some people already have it before you), then you have some serious priority issues.

The same applies for movies.

Buying movies or DVDs at midnight is something that unemployed nerds living in their parents' basement do. *I* can make this stereotype because I was one; like a dentist making dentist jokes.

Dream On

Some smart-ass put Freddy Got Fingered into the Criterion Collection section of the downtown HMV. I was amused.

Suffice it to say, I was in the store for a reason; that reason being that I'm a media whore. Dream On is what I bought, so that debating, in a previous post, about nostalgia and retro tv was all for naught.

It's weird how the mind remembers things. Two days ago, the show was a blur to me. I remembered vague plots, the two main characters (Martin and his ex) and, of all things, the scene from the pilot where he gags on the whip cream on the naked chick. It must have been a decade since I saw that, and yet that's my clearest memory of Dream On.

Once I started watching the pilot episode, it all rushed back to me as though I was watching a rerun that I saw just last month. The minor characters, the plots, the dialogue, the women Martin dates. All of it. And now I find myself wanting to see more episodes because I know what to expect, and I expect quality.

Also, this Windows error is across the street from that very same HMV... and also across the street from another billboard, on which I saw another error dialogue this evening. If I had my proper camera, I'd have taken a photo too. Oh well. (PS. Pictures)

Random bytes

When someone says something along the lines of "tell me, I won't be offended", they are 100% guaranteed to be offended.

If Jesus Christ came to Earth in the modern age and was executed using modern means, like with an electric chair instead of crucifiction, would future generations of followers wear little electric chairs around their necks? Would they place small electric chair replicas behind their altars and on top of their churches?

I always found it odd that one of the primary symbols of Christianity is an execution and torture device.

Currently listening to King of Woolworths' L'Illustration Musicale, which I'm digging. It is also the first CD that I ever bought because it was playing in the store at the time and I thought it was cool so I asked the guy "that's cool, what is it?" and he said "King of Woolworths - L'Illustration Musicale" so I bought it. The first.

Also bought Blur's The Great Escape because, seriously, it has the three best Blur songs ever: Country House, Charmless Man, and The Universal. Not surprisingly, they're also some of the best britpop songs ever.

And now Videodrome is on tv. Oh yeah.

View to a Kill

The above title might be overly dramatic, but in this area you never know. The view? Well, sticking with the recent theme of very large images, here's the new view. It was taken about a week and a half ago, when the weather was considerably nicer, the sky considerably bluer, and the trees considerably greener. Considerable changes for a week, but this is the nature of fall in Toronto -- no fall, just a sudden jump to early-winter.

Check out the trailer to "Flatout". It's like Burnout 3, but with driver-flying-through-the-windshield rag-doll physics. Some of the goals of the game basically involve launching the dude as far as possible from the car. Sounds briefly enjoyable!

Dream On, the old HBO comedy series, is out on DVD. I have a lot of nostalgic memories about this show so I thought long and hard about picking it up, but the sense that nostalgia is often misplaced kept me away. There's just something about buying old tv shows that I haven't seen in a decade. It feels risky. The fear is that I will come to the realization that they sucked, and then I'd realize that I paid money to have my fond memories shattered. This is why I have not bought Transformers, or Batman: The Animated Series, or The Ben Stiller Show, or, now, Dream On.

Photos from the WRPS Championships

Here's a largish photoset, with commentary, of tonight's Rock Paper Scissors Championships. [~380kb image].

It was fun.

The bachelor life

I am back on the internets!

Well, I wasn't truly gone as there was always some spare time at work, but home is where it counts. Anyway, before I get to my petty moving in thoughts, I'll first get to this reminder:

The 2004 World Rock Paper Scissors Championships are tomorrow (Saturday). Register now or get your tickets at the door tomorrow (if available).

ahem. Yes. As of last Monday night (Thanksgiving), I am less of a loser. I'm no longer living with my parents and, instead, living the lonely bachelor life. Hello ladies.

There's still a massive amount of things to do around here and many more things to buy, but at least my priorities are taken care of: internet and cable. Well, the cable isn't much of a priority, but I did manage to cojole 2 months preview of all the specialty digital channels, which is nice. I'm watching G4 Tech TV for the first time ever. It's not so great. Mostly, though, I just set it to Much More Retro and leave it as background noise while I catch up on my internets.

So last Tuesday was my first full day here, and by Thursday I'm already wired up. That's some fairly quick service.

Unfortunately, though it came quick, it came with added complications. As I live in a crappy building in an equally crappy area, it is fitting that the apartment -- the whole building, really -- has crappy wiring. Long story short, there is a cable coming from the roof through the balcony under the door and into the apartment, where it is split into three cables that spider-web around the place. ugh. At least it works.

Now that I have access to the internets, I can focus on other priorities... like, food and drink.

Rules of Thumb

The general rule of thumb is as follows: when you are out of work, work is hard to come by; when you do get work, you then are greeted with multiple job offers. When it rains, it pours.

The corollary to this is that new and great opportunities always tend to show up when you are otherwise occupied. Like, say, with a move.

So when you have a new job and, at the same time, you are moving -- you get overloaded with offers for work that you simply can not do. It's even more frustrating when some of the work is cool. Or, at least, far more interesting than the work that you are currently doing -- like, for example, reading long-assed documentation and technical documents and scopes and other such dry material.

Hypothetically speaking.

What isn't suppositional, however, is the annoying state of during-move-limbo that I find myself in. Because of previous freelance commitments (arg), the move proceeded at a slower pace than anticipated. It also forced me to sit by my computer, with its dev files and internet access, and do actual work. Unfortunately, while said computer and my bed are here, everything else is a full city away. So while I'm in Mississauga, my tv, my consoles, my games, my DVDs, my books, my radio, my CDs are in Toronto.

Boredom is setting in.

So the sum of my gaming indulgences are reading: the latest news (mostly the DS+PSP feud) and watching the latest trailers. A few particular trailers worth watching:

Okami [mpg] - a very stylish but very Japanese game based on some old myths or something. It's by the makers of Viewtiful Joe, so it does share some stylistic similarity, but the feel of the game is markedly different. Other than that, I can't say more because I simply do not know what is going on in the trailer.

Psychonauts (you have to register first and then go to the "gray matter" page to view it). Can't say that this game ever hit my most wanted charts, and this trailer doesn't really change that, but I'm more curious about it now than before. Definitely has style and charm, but by the time the game comes out it might already be dated. Who knows. (And yes, good gameplay doesn't age, but as far as platformers go, it has some heady competition).

Lastly, there's Konami's Oz. It's a sort of Japanese American McGee's take on Wizard of Oz but with Final Fantasy-like androgynous characters in some sort of rhythmic, but Devil May Cry-styled team action game. Yeah. I really don't know. It's about as bastardized as a Western cultural icon is going to get at the hands of a Japanese game maker, but hey... at least the gameplay looks somewhat interesting.

(This post has been sitting in limbo for a week now. oi.)

The Last Saturday and The View

Here are photos from last Saturday's paintball event, taken by someone ten trillion billion times better than I will ever be.

On the crappy picture front, here's a really low-resolution photo of my new view. It's hard to tell, but that big blurry thing is the lake. The view would be a hell of a lot nicer if the ugly residential buildings weren't obstructing it.