Category Archives: Geek

Jeff Freeman has more users than Second Life, and it’s all the fault of those credulous bloggers for not checking on Tobold’s figures.

It must be true, he has charts.

Freeman also links to the mainstream media blamestorming bloggers for not holding Second Life’s numbers up to scrutiny. Speaking for all bloggers who have been totally credulous about Second Life, I’m sorry about that, but we’ve been sort of busy with figuring out Enron’s books, and we still have Halliburton to hit. Oh, and solving the whole Middle East thing, getting middle-aged women in New York dates, understanding the divine mystery of God, and… uh… hm, what else were we responsible for? Oh yeah, mainstream media oversight. REALLY FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB HERE, sorry. Been busy with computer games. We’ll do better.

As seen on Sara Jensen’s blog. I found it funnier than she did… perhaps reading Second Life press releases has increased my histrionic tolerance!

So Europa Universalis III is out. And everyone knows what a Paradox fanboi I am, so clearly I should be raving about this!

My initial impressions aren’t that good.

It’s UGLY. This is using a new 3D engine for Paradox and… it’s just bad. Sure, the screenshots on the website look fine, but most of the time? This is what you’ll be looking at.

Let’s play GUESS THE UPGRADE
On the left, EU3. On the right, EU2. Considering that EU2′s core engine is seven years old (and can run quite well on old laptops), this isn’t much of an improvement. Sure, this series isn’t about eye candy, but the entire enterprise’s user interface just feels slapdash. And this doesn’t just extend to the look and feel. Many automation features seem to have gotten lost in translation, such as the ability to autosend merchants to centers of trade when they come available. Sure, it’s *better* to micromanage that, but just removing the option to have the AI do it… this is an upgrade?

More seriously, the underlying event model, which is really kind of the point with this series, was completely redone. No longer are you competing against the march of history as represented in deterministic events, the primary attraction for history boffins who enjoyed this series and didn’t play it merely to try to see if they could conquer the world with the Duchy of Modena. Instead, the game tries to model cause and effect. Instead of having a hardcoded Hussite Revolt in Bohemia in 1589, you might, if you have a peasant revolt in Bulgaria, and you don’t send troops in time, then you’ll maybe get an event that says “The Bulgarian minority is revolting!” In case you, you know, missed it. And it’s not just minor things that are left to this model. Say, the Protestant Reformation. Better hope somebody in Germany eventually gets a good religious advisor or Europe may be stuck paying indulgences to Friar Tetzel for a while.

This is obviously based on the Crusader Kings model, which worked to a degree for that game. But for modeling 400 years of European History? Not gonna happen. History is just simply too complex to be effectively modeled by an AI script without the human intervention of deterministic events. The fact that EU3 stops at 1792, whereas EU2 goes on to 1820, is illustrative. Because in EU3, how would you ever model a Napoleon Bonaparte? Either you try, and every so often the player is given a free gift of SUPER RULER, OWNER OF THE WORLD — or you don’t. Napoleon was one of those historic leaders that simply can’t be created by a random dice roll.

So instead of a game which could go a long way towards teaching you why history happened (which EU2, and the Hearts of Iron series both do very well), you get – a sandbox. With a multiverse – an infinite variety of Europes, all of which sort of vaguely resemble the one in books. Which tells you maybe that England was a bunch of right badasses, and the Ottomans were hard to throw out of Europe. But it doesn’t tell you squat about, say, the War of the Roses. Because it’ll never happen. If it does, it’s “Oh, Random Leader Zed decided he’d take half your empire.” Not really the same echoes of history there, really. It’s more of a sandbox, and thus becomes less interesting.

There are some improvements, to be sure. Military tradition is modeled, so England is a mother of a powerhouse starting out. I messed around with an Irish fiefdom, took out some loans and recruited about 10,000 mercenaries (in EU3 a monster army) and threw them at the 2000-strong English garrison in Meath. Which promptly laughed and picked its teeth with the pikes of the few survivors. OK, so conquering the world as Ireland may pose a few issues. Diplomacy is richer. The Victoria system of modeling government types makes an appearance. Stuff like that.

Again, this is just a first glance, the result of a few hours of gameplay. But dear god, the gameplay better get better soon, because this game sure got ugly. And I don’t just mean the map colors.

Wil Wheaton reviews Star Trek: Next Generation. Holy triphasic dilithium, this is good stuff.

One of Geordi’s first stops is to visit his good pal Wesley Crusher, who shows off one of his science projects (a mini tractor beam,) and one of his toys, a device that lets Wesley recreate speech from anyone on the ship. Any doubt that Wesley is a complete weenie is removed when we learn that he uses this device to have Captain Picard say things like, “Welcome to the bridge, Wesley,” instead of having Counselor Troi say things like, “Smack my ass, Wesley, I’m a naughty, naughty bitch.” To entirely erase any lingering doubt, Wesley spends the rest of the scene whining that the captain won’t let him on the bridge, even though Wesley is so obviously smart and cool. (On a personal note, I’d like to thank the writers for making such a great first impression with my character. In addition to this spectacular scene, I also got to say lines like, “So you mean I’m drunk? I feel strange, but also good!” In fact, John D.F. Black — who I didn’t realize at the time hated me — also wrote Justice, where he gave me the awesome line, “We’re from Starfleet! We don’t lie!” Thanks for that one, too, Mr. Black.)

You know, when people have been demanding your character’s death for 20 years, that resentment just sort of builds up!

It may be the holidays but the metaverse drama never sleeps… from the ongoing war between Prokofy Neva and Something Awful (my bets are on Neva, the USSR was far more grieftastic than any goonfleet) to the article that may well have some ramifications into the new year: Clay Shirky analyzes the funny numbers Linden has been spoonfeeding the uncritical media, based in large part on his earlier Terra Nova pieces. Second Life brings back MMO investigative journalism – whoulda think it!

Something Awful writes about how all the Web 2.0 lusting PR firms jumping on Second Life are discovering the joys of… Something Awful, would be my guess. Or, as CNet put it,

Unfortunately, as the interview was commencing, the event was attacked by a “griefer,” someone intent on disrupting the proceedings. The griefer managed to assault the CNET theater for 15 minutes with–well, there’s no way to say this delicately–animated flying penises.

Chung refused to continue the interview in the CNET theater but agreed to go on in her own space.

Once restarted, the interview was attacked again, and the protester even managed to crash the entire server on which Chung’s theater is held.

So the takeaway: don’t hold press conferences in areas where people can, um, conjure virtual genitalia to rain from the heavens.

However, CNet managed to move beyond the VICIOUS PR0N ATTACK and actually ask a decent question of the former Shadowbane guildmaster:

There are plenty of skeptics about Second Life who simply can’t accept that someone could have a million dollars’ worth of virtual assets. So how do you come to that figure?

Graef: First, you need distinguish between three different things: real money in Ailin Graef’s bank account. There’s no million dollars in any bank account now. Second, the value of Anshe Chung Studios. That number was independently assessed in August by (some) investment firms and was already clearly more than $1 million.

The third thing is the value of what actually is owned by the avatar, which is 550 simulators–some unsold, some with profitable business tenants earning money every month–and the far more difficult, to assess value of content, content rights and stakes in other Second Life businesses.

To liquidate everything without leading to the price of Second Life land or the value of Linden dollars (the currency of Second Life) dropping by more than 10 percent would require up to eight weeks. I am very confident in saying this because in February and March, we cashed out $150,000 because of our investment in setting up shop in China, at the same time that IGE sold off about $100,000 Linden dollars.

At that time, the LindeX volume and the size of Second Life economy was much smaller. Yet even such large liquidations of Linden dollars did not lead to any serious issues. The Second Life economy is so large that I would not be surprised if, in two years, somebody has a net worth of $10 million.

HURRRRRR

(May not be worksafe in parts. But are YOU going to tell him that? I didn’t think so.)

Users are reporting that the Nintendo Wii causes people to flail around and break random things.

Fear not, Zeldans, for Nintendo is ON THE CASE.

“We are investigating. Some people are getting a lot more excited than we\’e2\’80\’99d expected. We need to better communicate to people how to deal with Wii as a new form of entertainment.”

The message is clear. Stop being excited.

Now, see, if the Wii taught you discipline? This wouldn’t be happening.

Well, I certainly hope they don’t store nuclear waste there because that would be unfortunate.