May 10th, 2010 : We Are Robots  

I used to think of the internet as an open world where I could embrace anything and anyone without any boundaries to get in the way. It’s where I could find people with similar interests and hobbies, no matter how obscure they might be, and enthusiastically discuss them or find out a great deal more. Sure I’ve had some really good times with great friends in my own town, but without access to the internet and my online friends, I might not have been able to fully define who I am today. It sounds dramatic, I know, but while some folks are trying to forge new, separate identities in cyberspace, all I’ve wanted is the opportunity to fully explore the person that I’ve always been with other like-minded folks.

Lately though, it feels like something is missing. Most of the unique personal homepages and detailed fan pages have disappeared, replaced by impersonal vanilla Wikipedia entries, carbon copy blogs run by paid staffs (whose content is obscured by advertisements), and Facebook profiles full of Farmville feeds and cries for attention. It’s kind of like mass manufacturing the plaster hand prints or macaroni art of children. Everything has been reduced to templates. It looks nice but has no substance or personality. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the latest meme or that everything I post on here is super thought-provokingly original… but I keep wondering, are we more connected now… or have we lost touch? Because despite seeing a ton of talent radiating from the world, it seems like at some point thoughtful communication was replaced by mass messaging meme links and empty one-liners.

  May 9th, 2010 : Super Mario Crossover  

Jay Pavlina of Exploding Rabbit is responsible for creating a super cool crossover of the original Mario Bros world but with your choice of other recognizable 8-bit Nintendo characters such as Simon from Castlevania II or Link from The Legend of Zelda. Each character retains their original weapons and fighting abilities, but they are applied to the Mario world instead. Check it out at Newgrounds for a new twist on old classics

  April 23rd, 2010 : Oooh! Sparkly!  

A week ago, Blizzard made MMO microtransaction history with the addition of a special mount that could be purchased by World of Warcraft players for 25 US dollars. The webstore queue filled up with thousands of eager account holders who waited hours just to make their purchase, which earned Blizzard a few million in just a few hours. While many are up in arms over this, disbelieving that Blizzard could get away with charging so much for a single virtual item that exists only within the realm of Azeroth AND which does not enhance player characters in any way, plenty of others (including myself) are thinking what Blizzard did is, in some way, kind of impressive really. Why? Because of how they went about it.

Yes, $25 is a large sum of money for a mount and nearly the cost of most expansion packs. But the thing is, players have a choice here. They can decide it’s not worth it and their character won’t suffer for it one bit. Thus it’s a very smart move to sell companion pets and mounts for cash versus gear that could make or break a player’s ability to perform their role well in a raid. I simply don’t see how Blizzard could garner hostility untainted by hypocrisy from their player base over something like this. It’s like anything else really… is this one sweater worth $200 when it took very little man power and material to create? I’d stay just as warm with a $20 sweatshirt. So I decide… and maybe my decision will be completely superficial. And everyone else decides too. Some folks bitched as over 140k WoW players rejoiced, “OMFG YES, a horse made of stars is TOTALLY worth $25 to me and I must have this thing I didn’t know I needed–right now!” And as far as comparing virtual items to physical products you can touch? Well I would think that by now, most of society places a great deal of importance on virtual items, whether particularly useful or not, so it seems kind of moot point to act like all these pixels we see have ever been free.