It’s hard to imagine that Microsoft could stumbled in the game world at this point. Since the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2005, they’ve been on fire. It wasn’t until more recent years that Sony even made a run at them with the PS3. Now as we inch closer to the next generation of consoles, it almost feels like Microsoft could lose the next ground of console wars.
The truth is, they already have.
When the curtain fell on E3, I nearly shed a tear. Although it wasn’t the strongest show they’ve ever had, it was still good, and very fun to watch. I enjoyed throwing on my headphones at work and listening to the interviews while I did my work. I’ll miss that for the next year.
Walking away from the conference, I must say there was some buzz around two particular coming PS3 exclusives.
The Last Of Us had us all thinking a new Uncharted was on the way. What we thought was Drake, was simply Joel. Along with Joel, his daughter Ellie. Set in an postapocalyptic type world, the trailer opened up with Joel leading his daughter through some buildings and ruins of their city. We got a glimpse of the combat system, and how the AI driven Ellie interacted with you. The graphics were stunning, as most games of this caliber are these days. If you haven’t seen the gameplay video yet, you can check it out here: E3 Last Of Us Gameplay Demo
Another game that completely blew me away was Beyond: Two Souls. Staring Ellen Paige, this game starts off with Ellen at the Sheriff’s office. He had found her on the side of the road, and was trying to help her. She was speechless, and that’s where the suspenseful, well executed cinematic story began. The visuals in this game are completely unreal. Ellen’s character looks just like Ellen. The other character models look like real people. You can see it here: E3 Beyond: Two Souls Gameplay Demo
I watched some of the “Best of E3” awards go out as well. I wasn’t particularly impressed with GameInformer giving one to Hitman. I always feel that GI is the hype machine for established names, giving no real value to content, innovation, or just plain awesomeness. They’re looking for the safe sale, which is understandable.
If I was in charge of passing out a “Best of E3” award, I’d break it into categories. I don’t really see how you can claim a shooter is better than an MMORPG, or that an MMORPG is better than a shooter. In truth, they’re apples and oranges. They don’t compare. So here are my “Best of E3” choices based on category.
MMORPG: The Elder Scrolls Online
Adventure/Action: Beyond: Two Souls
FPS: Halo 4
Portable: Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation
Hardware: Wii U
Keynote: Sony
Those were my favorite of the favorites. Best of the Best. I found E3 2012 to be the year of sequels, but I also found it to be the year of Sony withstanding the knock out. They race between the Xbox 720 and the PS4 should be a great one. We could see more and more high quality games between the two. I’m anxious to see what they offer at E3 2013.
Until then, keep on gaming!
I was intrigued by the Wii U more than I was when they first talked about it at E3 2011. What I saw last year was a big giant controller with a screen, and the same old under-achieving Wii system. And while I’m not completely satisfied with their hardware upgrades, they’ve at least met the level the Xbox hardware is on, and that might just be good enough for a while longer.
If you haven’t seen it yet, the Wii U is Nintendo’s next-gen console. It’s assumed it will be released during the holiday season this year, but they’ve yet to set a date. The controller is a combination of a controller and a tablet like touch screen. You can use it as a portable type system, or you can use it as an extension to the game playing on your TV. It’s quite a concept. So good, in fact, that Microsoft and Sony stole their idea already.
Aside from the Wii U itself, Ubisoft and others are lining up a host of games to release for the system. Far Cry 3, a revamped Batman Arkham City, Rayman, and more. From a personal stand point, I hope some good RPGs are coming. It should be a nice launch for the system.
I was really excited to see some video of The Elder Scrolls Online. This is a game I saw coming 5 years ago when ZeniMax started hiring LUA scripters for a UI interface. To me that screamed MMORPG game client. It’s the same scripting technology behind World of Warcraft and other MMORPG clients. The world looks vibrant. The character models are smooth as always. Set 1,000 yrs before the events in Skyrim, it should be a great game. I’m very anxious to explore all of Tamriel.
Speaking of Elder Scrolls, they gave some insight and a first look at Dawnguard today. If you haven’t heard, Dawnguard will be the first expansion for Skyrim. Its due out June 26. You’ll find yourself with another 20+ hours of storyline, more weapons, mounted combat, and the choice to join the vampires or fight them.
If you haven’t yet, head over to gamespot.com and watch the replay of the interviews, the press conferences, and all the latest E3 trailers. Starting at 10 AM PST tomorrow, they’ll have a live stream until 5 PM PST. It’s a good show. They’ll show off some more game trailers, they’ll report from the floor, and you won’t be disappointed. Their coverage is excellent.
Enjoy the rest of E3!
I really want to thank G4 TV for having a live stream of the press conferences. I was sitting in my cube at work, without a TV, and was able to watch/listen to the Microsoft event. I have some thoughts from them, EA, Ubisoft, and Sony.
Microsoft…
Halo 4 was a fitting open. The trailer was epic, exciting, and showed the upgraded graphics and game play from the last Halo release. The new story arch looks exciting, and I loved the new bad guys. This looks to be a winner.
After that, I saw more trailers for more upcoming games. Nothing else really excited me, but I was glad to see some of them. EA Sports is completely embracing Kinect, and it shows in Madden 13. Watching Joe Montana call plays was a great step forward for a franchise I felt needed a kick in the pants. This is a good start.
Dance Central 3 is another title that caught my eyes. It’s not my personal kind of game, but my wife loves them, and I’ve always felt it really shows off the Kinect’s ability to scan and follow a person’s movement. The on stage performance of Usher, though, I felt was a distraction to showing off the game. Still, it was a good moment for Microsoft, among a mediocre start.
Smart Glass came up, and I perked up. The idea of extending the Xbox to my iPhone or my iPad completely drew me in. The ability to pause HBO GO on my iPad, and pick it up on the Xbox is there now, but not nearly as smooth. I loved the seamless transition. Still, the biggest draw to me was seeing the Madden playbook on the tablet, and the game being playing on the TV. My first thought was “Take that, Wii U.” I second thought was “Wow, this could be huge.”
Imagine playing Skyrim and you have your character sheet, quest logs, and world maps up next to you on your tablet. You’re at your friend’s house playing Madden, and you can pull out your phone and call a play in secret. Imagine pulling up a puzzle game on your TV, and controlling it through your phone or tablet. Let’s take this a step further. Imagine a live action RPG that would send you out into the real-world with your phone or tablet to scan items, explore point, and then return to your console. The possibilities are endless.
After that they showed us that Internet Explorer is coming to the Xbox. It looked to be Kinect controlled, and not completely a traditional browser. This is a good edition, something wanted by the players, but it didn’t do much for me. I agreed with them when they said a keyboard doesn’t fit a living room scenario. I’d rather use my tablet or laptop for surfing.
Other games worth mentioning are Gears of War: Judgement, and Fable: The Journey. Both looked like great additions to the franchise, and should not disappoint. The same could also be said about Resident Evil 6, although I’ll admit, the whole Zombie movement is losing my attention. Black Ops 2 is also on the way, although admittedly, I didn’t play Black Ops.
One thing I keep hoping every year I’ll see is a portable unit. Perhaps that will be accomplished with a Windows 8 tablet, and the ability to play certain Xbox games on the tablet. How cool would it be if your wireless controller worked with the tablet.
EA…
This is one I didn’t get to see much of. They showed off their sports games, Fifa and Madden, they talked about the coming expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the next Sim City is coming. Hopefully with a Mac Client.
Ubisoft…
I know everyone liked the boobs shot. They seemed to think the guy host was hilarious. Personally, I thought the boobs, and both hosts were awful and dull, respectively. Still, Far Cry 3 did look like a quality title for the franchise.
Something else to note with Ubisoft is they’re developing a lot of titles for the Wii U. One I’ll talk about is Rayman. This looked pretty cool. They had it playing on the tablet-like controller, and the graphics were smooth and colorful. The gameplay looked fun. It’s a winner for the Wii U.
Sony…
I’m already declaring Sony the winner of E3. It started out with the President, Jack Tretton, handling himself amicably on stage. the interaction between the Vita and the PS3 was outstanding, and they seem committed to making more and more titles work together through both systems.
There are two games that I need to talk about in-depth.
Beyond – Developed by David Cage, this game hosts the acting of Ellen Paige, and looks to have a strong story behind it. The opening scene shows a girl in custody of the local police. The sheriff is trying to talk to her, but she’s sitting in silence. In comes the swat team after that, and the girl disappears. From there they show various scenes of her running. Inside her appears to be two souls as well. The graphics were some of the most amazing I’ve seen. At times, you could mistake the rendered models for real shots.
The Last Of Us – I thought I was watching some kind of new type of Uncharted game. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a new game coming. You appear to be a father that is walking thru a postapocalyptic type setting with his daughter. There are some bad guys that you have to over come. The story was intriguing, the graphics were good, and it seemed to have a pleasant draw to it.
One last game highlight is Assassin’s Creed 3. There is also an AC3 game coming to Vita. Set at the time of the revolutionary war, Connor will fight with George Washington and others. The Templars are still the bad guys, but it seems to have a revolutionary war twist to it. It will be worth checking out on both the PS3 and Vita platforms.
That’s my take on opening day of E3. Tomorrow morning Nintendo will have their place in the spotlight. Bethesda looks to be readying some Elder Scrolls Online viewing on the various online outlets as well.
I can’t imagine how hard it is retiring from a job you dearly love. It must be even harder to have to shut down your second career’s company right after its first product launch. Over extending your finances. Over anticipating your sales forecast. It’s all a recipe for disaster.
Ever since the 80s and 90s days of Sierra On-line’s “Quest” games, I’ve been a big fan of PC and Console RPGs. Cinematics and crisp graphics add to the fun fo the game, but the exploration of the world, and the unravelling of a good story are the two main things that keep me going back to the genre.
About two months ago I joined twitter. I honestly only wanted to follow the local sports writers, and possibly interact with some of my friends. Soon after that I expanded to following Stargate actors. Then I got the idea that I could market myself a little better in case I needed to find a new job really quick, or wanted to pick up some freelance work.
I began to follow everyone who was following @VoodooPuppy, a game developer, experience designer, story-teller, and ruler of worlds. Oh yah, they also like gummy bears. I was following 500, then 800, and made my way up to 1500. I noticed that lots of people started following me back. Some were normal people, others were marketing companies, the rest were anything you can imagine. Something I did notice, people were starting to respond.
I’m now followed by almost 700 people. I have a few regulars that I interact with. We all started discovering that we had similar interests. After that, we found out we liked the same video game genres. We started talking about RPGs, JRPGs, and finally started swapping game titles and companies around.
That’s when I decided to compliment @mistwalker on a fine job with Lost Odyssey, an RPG for the Xbox 360. To my surprise, Mr. Sakaguchi himself responded. It was exciting to make a connection with someone who I’ve admired for so long.
There are now six of us that are starting to tweet daily. We’ve even moved into the direction of doing a little Zork styled RPGing with a new hash ‘#twitterpg’. We tossed around a few ideas, sat undecided, and @mistwalker cast the final vote to go with it. A new age in tweeting was born.
Currently, us six adventurers have just slain a mighty beast with our bare hands, and are deciding which bridge to take. I can see myself, @bendavischicago, @RogerReinhardt, @Dan_Tsukasa, @DawnRivers, and @mistwalker looking around this world. It is our’s for the taking, and we’re marching forward into the unknown to battle evil, save the world, and live as heroes.
I now invite you all to start using and following this hash. While we may not be ready to pickup another adventurer quite yet, 140 characters go quickly, I am interested in what other worlds people will come up with, and what adventures you will embark on. As I sit here on my porch on a mild late summer night, I can see the hash in the trend area in the near future. There are thousands of people tweeting and exploring virtual worlds running through our minds.
Imagine the stories that will come out of all of this. An innocent exchange of tweets praising a genre, complimenting a designer, new twitter friendships coming to life, and it is now ballooning into something more. A creative exchange building new personalities and places, inspired by the greatest games ever written.
I invite you all to partake. Form your party. Set a course. Launch your adventure. #twitterpg is your’s for the taking.
Dan Joseph is the CEO and head of Software Engineering of Familiaris Games. Aside from my personal flash game projects, I am collaborating with Ben Davis on multiple future projects, and writing the story and script for an upcoming AAA level RPG, modelled after the same type of game play you see in Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy, and other Japanese-based RPGs. When I'm not developing games, I'm working as a Web Developer on various major brand web sites. You can follow me on twitter @iamdanjoseph. If you wish to contact me, please click the contact page, and fill out the form. I will get back to you as soon as I can.
I realized today that I’ve pretty much disappeared on everyone. Sorry about that! Real life got in the way, and my duties as a web developer were needed 2.5x more than normal. Its been kind of fun, but stressful at many points. I’m about done though, and piece 10 of my Flash Game Dev 101 series will be released after this week.
In the meantime, I’d like to take the time to talk a little bit about HTML5 and project planning.
I recently was brought into a project to help with. It was as simple set of html/css pages. No programming. No databases. Just static pages. All the art was done, so I just had to come up with the html and css code, and let ’em loose. The only issue, they wanted it done in HTML5/CSS3.
One of the things that makes building a html5/css3 only site is Internet Explorer 8. It is still widely used, and will be for some time. Windows XP users can’t upgrade to IE9, and many of them have no interest in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Sure, you can download a hack, such as PIE.htc, but that doesn’t solve all the problems, and you’re still left with some quirkiness about your pages.
One of the reasons for the decision to go the html5 route was the ability to embed custom fonts into the web pages. Creative people shy away from the standard fonts so they can use “prettier” fonts, or even just something that is fresh.
I can fully understand that.
The issue we ran into was we were converting a single web site, into a new landing page web site, and then many pages embedded into a facebook application and placed on their fan page. We needed something trackable, SEOable (that has to be a word!), and so we (thought we) couldn’t just go the route of static images with links laid over the top.
Personally, I liked the idea of all of this. I still do. But looking back on it, the headaches of trying to make IE8 look right, and function right, and the client expecting things to be perfect, it just was a no-win situation for us developers.
The moral of this story. If you’re going for cutting edge, you need to understand and plan that your IE8 customers won’t see the site as you want them too. You either have to accept that, or scrap all the html5/css3 elements. Animations will have to be flash, rounded corners will have to be images, and fonts will have to be standard.
Familiars Games Update
Ben Davis and me are still working on getting our second game out the door. Ben has been patient with me while I’ve not had enough time to work on Priority Delivery, and has begun sketching out his next personal project. So far he has a winner, and he’s still working towards improving it. We’re looking at September releases for both of those games.
The story of Johnny that I’ve been talking about has moved forward a bit thanks to my iPhone’s notepad app. I’ve been writing down notes and developing characters in places such as restrooms, conference rooms before meetings, and in traffic jams when the roads are closed for a wreck (yes, this happened last week!).
Thank you all for keeping in touch via twitter! I always thought it was a stupid platform, but have realized its power and entertainment. Thanks for following!
Video Game Endorsement
If you’re looking for a GREAT Xbox 360 game, go grab Lost Odyssey. It’s a couple years old now, and harder to find, but you can order it online if nothing else. The game has 100+ hours of game play, terrific cinematics, excellent graphics, and a strong story. The game play itself is also very good. Controls are smooth, and movement is smooth. I have put it on my personal Top 10 RPGs of all times, which I’ll be posting here on DanJoseph.me eventually.
That’s it for today!
Dan Joseph is a Software Engineer/Architect. You can follow him on twitter @iamdanjoseph. If you wish to contact him, please click the contact page, and fill out the form.
As I started laying out the world in which Johnny lives, I kept wonder if I should make it all green. Should I put mountains throughout the whole thing? Perhaps I should put trees all over the place. I was trying to make it mesh, but was missing the point completely.
As you look around planet earth, you don’t see a giant forest. You don’t see a giant a mountainous spread. There are differences that come out of no where, yet they always seem to blend right in. That’s when I realized I was going about it all wrong.
I decided to write down all the different places I wanted in my world. I wanted forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, an ocean, and flat lands. I wrote down a few more elements over the course of a few days. After that I drew a rough outline of how I wanted my world shaped. Did I want the river through the middle, or just here and there? Where do I want to put my ocean?
These are all questions you should ask yourself. When you come to the answer, ask yourself if each element would work in the real world. Rivers need a water source, but do they have to come off the ocean? Do they have to come off a body of water at all? The answer to that is yes, they need to get a source from somewhere.
What about mountains? I don’t personally believe they have to be in a general spot in the world, but you should decide if you want a mountainous world or not. In my case, I didn’t want a mountainous world. Sometimes designers will put them in the middle of the world. Other times you’ll find them at the top or bottom of the world.
The next part I focused on was the placement of my forests. It would have been really easy to make the rest of the world filled with trees, and then cut out the trees for the cities. Instead I opted to scatter the forests around the world, leaving some areas open with large green flatlands. In other areas, I textured the ground with rock, gravel, and dirt. I found it was ok to all of a sudden have a line where grass was growing, as if I’d crossed over a fence into someone’s yard.
After I laid out my terrain, I then placed my lakes, and drew rivers out from that lake. I decided on which side of my world would have the ocean, and drew some rivers and channels out from that. Before I knew it, I had a nice world laid out. It meshed together really well, and I didn’t have to section it off and feel awkward about it.
So the next time you’re drawing out your world, take a walk outside. Get in your car, drive around the area, and pay attention to where different things start and end. Take notice of water sources, don’t just put a river in and have people wonder where its fed. You’ll have a real world that people can relate too, and feel at home in.
Dan Joseph is a Software Engineer/Architect. You can follow him on twitter @iamdanjoseph. If you wish to contact him, please click the contact page, and fill out the form.
I can’t say this enough to people. If you truly love doing something, go do it. Don’t just settle for something else because it was easier, or available. You won’t be happy, and you won’t do a good job no matter how hard you try. Ultimately you will feel like you’re rolling a rock up hill, and no matter how hard you keep pushing, eventually you’re going to run out of energy and you won’t be able to move forward any further.
I was talking with my brother in law on Friday night after my softball game. He is a currently-laid-off-Jr Architect working at his Alma Mater teaching and helping with co-op positions. We were talking about what if he never became a licensed architect, but had a healthy, happy career doing something related with his skills. Would he be a failure? Would he be unhappy?
I was 16 years old when I went to summer camp in NY with my Church Youth Group. We were assigned a counsellor, who I remember being a great guy, but I can’t for the life of me remember his name. One of the things that I can vividly remember is him going around cabin asking everyone what they wanted to do when they get older.
It was a time in my life when I had a clear vision of what I wanted my future to be. I wanted to own a video game company that developed games. I wanted people to walk into an arcade and not be disappointed. I wanted their “nintendo” experience to be unique. I wanted to create PC games and pretend I was Ken Williams, head of the now gone Sierra On-line, Inc., creator of some of the greatest games of my childhood.
Don’t get wrong, its not that I dislike what I do for a living. In fact, I like what I do. Sometimes it can be a little dull, but then there are times when I’m engineering code, or architecting a new section of a site or system that I remember how much I enjoy the creative part of my job. That part is what keeps me doing what I do. Without it, I have a hard time moving the rock up the hill.
Getting back to the questions presented by my brother in law. I don’t think it really matters if he becomes a licensed architect or not. If he received a phone call tomorrow from a small city asking him to take on the job as the city planner, he’d most likely take the position. At that point, fast forward 30 years, and you see him retired, happy, and looking back at his life with extreme satisfaction. He original set out to get a degree, and a license, but ultimate he found the path that made him a living, and more importantly, happy.
I’ve been heavily analyzing my life lately imaging what I would think if I looked back on 10 years of working where I am now. I’ve found myself feeling a deep sense of unrest, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to miss so much more. But does that really mean I find a new job and hope the next one pans out? In my case, I don’t think so.
I’ve always had an interest in video games. Going back to the late 70s when I received my Atari 2600 on Christmas. Soon after I received my first computer, a TI 99/4a. Since then, I’ve had an interest in not only playing the games, but also creating games of my own. I’ve had the pleasure of making basic games for a poetry community. I also had the pleasure of working on a BBS door game back in the early 90s. Still, it hasn’t been enough to satisfy my creative side. It has fueled it even more.
This is where I am at in the crossroads that life has presented me. I have a job that pays my bills, but leaves me little sense of satisfaction, even if I get the occasional sense of accomplishment. I’ve also always looked at accomplishment as a temporary peace in life that won’t last past the next day.
I’ve decided to venture into the game development arena. Ben and I have been working on concepts games, mostly his ideas so far. He’s also a creative thinker, and he’s tapped a stream of ideas. Ideas that we’re going to slowly turn into tangible games.
The journey has been a little up and down so far. First there was much containment, then we decided to take a trip thru all the eras, and now we’re at a full tilt. I’ve been working on concepts for a flash game with my friend Ben of PixelVolume.com for the last month or so. We’ve often wanted to build a game together. He’s even joined a local game design group out in Chicago trying to find a project to latch on to that will give him his first published game. So far nothing has worked out.
We’ve been pretty focused on basic concept items so far. We’ve made plans, and divided up the tasks. Mine is is multipart. First, I need learn more Flash and ActionScript 3. After that, I need to learn how to work better with classes. Finally, it is my task to implement the physics aspects of the game.
Thanks to a nifty framework, I think I’m finally on the right track. It has all the elements that I need built in, and will help me learn, and help our project advance in a timely manner. I decided since this is my first project in Flash where I’m under some time constraints, and its been a little while since I had to use my fancy math portion of my brain, I could use a little help.
My immediate goal isn’t necessarily to release a game that will bring retirement to my doorstep, and have me traveling around the world. Its the satisfaction of completing something that people on a mass scale will enjoy. In the interim, its also the satisfaction of being able to use my creative part of my mind, build something fun, and get back to what brought true joy to my work.
My ultimate goals are a bit more ambitious though. I wrote in a previous post that Ben and me had started to develop an RPG several years ago. We took on an enormous project with no hopes of finishing it. It was just too big, too over our heads, and we didn’t have a story in place.
That piece of the project ultimately doomed us more than the programming aspect of the game. Sure, I could have spent another two years learning Direct3D and Ben could have taken a physics class while he was still in college. I’m sure at that point we could have written several PC games that did about nothing.
A well developed story is the essential key to a good RPG. Games like Oblivion, Final Fantasy 13, Lost Odyssey, and White Knight Chronicles haven’t seen huge sales volumes because they looked pretty. They had fully developed worlds, characters, plots, and stories. One could even be bold enough to say they would be best selling fantasy novels.
So what does that have to do with our RPG adventure? I’ve spent the better part of five years developing a world, characters, and six ages/generations of history. I haven’t even told my wife, Michele, about it. I’ve been carefully jotting down notes, and writing bits and pieces as I go.
I’m currently in the process of writing a story based around this world, and six key characters. The main character, Johnny, is an archeologist and hunter. He lost his parents in an attack from something called the Duroogai, and he thinks he has enough information to get them back. Still, the problem remains, no one believes him.
Half way through 2012 I’m planning on a taking a trip to E3. I’m going to have a detailed map of the world, and a book laying out all the characters, their history, history of the world, a briefing of each age/generation, and the story itself. By then I will have a detailed list of items, a battle system, drawings, cities, and everything else you’d expect from your favorite RPG.
Every time I talk to Ben about an aspect of the Flash game, or physics, or anything game related, it makes me feel alive again. Its the part of me that I lost, and I’ve finally found it again.
If you’ve found yourself in an unsatisfied state, or just feel that you’re at that point up the mountain where you want to push on, but you simply can’t, take a step back. You need to analyze yourself, your past, and find out what that missing piece is. Whether it be something that you’ve added to your job that is interfering with your happiness, or something you’ve eliminated all together, you need to take action.
Be careful in your next move. Don’t change jobs for the sake of finding change. Don’t make a lateral move to something else that you’re unsure of. Don’t take on extra work just to see if it can fill the unknown void. You must identity your path, where you went off, and where you can get back on.
If you don’t love what you’re doing, change it. If you can’t change it, look at it, analyze it, and find out what’s missing. Until you do that, you’ll be burning energy, and ultimate the rock you’re pushing will fall back down the hill, and run you over.
Dan Joseph is a Software Engineer/Architect. You can follow him on twitter @iamdanjoseph. If you wish to contact him, please click the contact page, and fill out the form.
Every year I watch the Home Run Derby. As a baseball fan, its one of those traditions that I hope never dies, but still wish they’d revert to the previous format. Still, I found myself in amazement at one more thing they’ve found to improve on technologically. This year they’re showing graphical tags of how far the ball traveled where it lands.
I don’t think I’m amazed personally at what they’re doing, or how they’re showing it. I’m amazed that sports has come this direction. There are so many purists in the broadcast booths today that I’m amazed they even let them run a radar gun or show instant replay.
Tagging home runs isn’t the only thing they’ve started doing this year. A couple days ago I watched a special on FSN Detroit about the angle of the bat in relation to how far the ball will travel, and where it will land. Have we really come to the point in pro sports where we have to condition our players to understand the angle they’re swinging the bat? Do we really need to be that intricate to squeeze 10 more feet out of a hit?
And let’s not forget the Pitchers. They have people on staff with some ball clubs now to analyze the movement of the pitcher, and push them to the very brink of where the body can handle the hard jarring motion of a pitch. Imagine if Nolan Ryan had this type of guy working on his motion. 105-108 MPH could have turned into 115-118 MPH.
But does it really need to come to this? Have we focused too much on technology? I think in some cases we have. I understand the desire to want to strike out more people, or get more multibase hits, but I also understand why the purists want to keep it a game, and not evolve us into machines.
There is an episode of The Twilight Zone called “Steel”. Simply put, Boxing is an outlawed sport for humans. You must use a robot. These robots are stronger and more durable, and there are different models to upgrade to. If we keep overusing technology in sports, could this become reality? Quite possibly.
Still, even if you’re not a fan of over technologing (is that a word??) sports, you have to admit, some of the byproducts are exciting to watch. We all love to see the 100 MPH fast ball, and there is nothing more exciting than the triple. I just hope this doesn’t saturate that excitement.
Here’s some news stories I found interesting today…
I can’t imagine why anyone would write a negative article on something that is enjoyable, let alone one about an incomplete social network. C-Net’s Jessica Dolcourt does a good job breaking down the aspects of Google+, but it gives an early looker a false sense of what Google+ will evolve into. Maybe you’ll agree with some of it, but I’d keep an open mind.
Secret Service uses Twitter to find bike mechanic
I have no words for this. I am speechless. Just read it…
Finaly Fantasy XIII-2 Screenshots
I loved Final Fantasy XIII. If you’re a fan of RPGs, and haven’t played it yet, you should. I am looking forward to XIII-2. The early reviews and screenshots are very promising that Square won’t repeat another X-2 debacle.
I’ve never been into comics, but recently read the first 3 Jericho Season 3 comics. I really enjoyed them. Aside from the fact that I’m thinking about looking for a new Comic series, this is the 2nd biggest gaming event of the year. This is also a great look at some Sci-Fi.
Finally, congratulations to Robinson Cano, 2011 HR Derby Champion. He didn’t use technology. Just a bat.
