Analog GamersGaming from a slightly different perspective.

Wow, it’s been a while since I had a chance to write anything here. Analog Gamers has basically turned into my personal blog, since the majority of my gaming-related words end up over at GameFront these days. Not that I have a ton of writing time there either, but I occasionally slip a piece into the mix.

Anyway, with this site becoming my personal blog, that means you’ll not only be subjected to random nonsense about tabletop and video games, you’ll also get everything else that happens to pop into my head. Let me apologize for that in advance.

I’ll also apologize for the chaotic update frequency. I’m currently in the middle of trying to prep my current house for sale, purchase another house, and manage to move myself and the family. Plus there’s work, Elks business, and anything that pops up along the way. Suffice to say that I sometimes don’t get a chance to update this for a while. I swear, I’ll try to do better once the move happens.

So you’ve been warned. Don’t act surprised later when you’ve seen two or three rambling rants separated by days. I told you it would happen.

Ah, Sony. You just can’t get a break, can you? Just as you’re all primed to have your best year with PS3 ever, you go and let PSN get hacked. Not only that, you let a ton of user data get compromised. You say that you have no evidence that credit card info was taken, and that’s great. I’m looking forward to hearing the details of that in your press conference tomorrow.

So, I guess that just leaves one big unanswered question: whose fault is this mess, anyway? Well, the answer to that one is not so simple, as there’s plenty of blame to toss around.

First, Sony is to blame. Obviously, they could have taken plenty of extra security measures. Now, if you know anything about IT, security, and the web, you know that there is no such thing as a ‘hack-proof’ system. No matter how high you build the wall, there’s always some asshole with a longer ladder or a bigger breaching charge.

Still, Sony apparently had user info stored unencrypted (credit card data was encrypted, according to Sony, just not user details) on the system. Really? That’s the best you’ve got, Sony? I picture some guy at PlayStation headquarters hunched over a keyboard filling an Excel spreadsheet with user info and just shake my head. This is bad, Sony.

You also decided to make a complete investigation of the hack before informing your users what had happened, and that their info might be at risk. Now, this one you need to think about. It’s easy for users to get bent out of shape over this, but there are two things that many people need to consider before they go getting their panties in a bunch.

1. If Sony believes this was a criminal act (and they obviously do), they are perfectly within their legal rights to withhold the info pending the commencement of a law enforcement investigation. I feel like this is the leg Sony is going to try to stand on in court, but that is nothing more than me guessing at it.
2. Sony wanted to be damn sure before they announced the severity of the breach. Think of it this way: How mad would you be if Sony had announced that your info may be compromised, and then turned around and said, “Oh, never mind, it’s not.” First, you wouldn’t believe them. The net would be full of posts howling at the “Sony cover-up.” Second, the bad PR would already be out there, and they’d have to fight it just like they are doing now. By investigating it first, they made sure that they were announcing the truth, and made sure that the PR war was necessary.

Now, I’m not defending the amount of time that Sony allowed to lapse between discovering the hack and making the announcement. A week is an inexcusable amount of time, and there’s no excuse for it. THAT is what I’m mad about. Investigate as much as you want, Sony, just don’t take days letting us know the extent of our risk. Had you managed this announcement in the first 24-48 hours of the downtime, you wouldn’t be hurting nearly as bad as you are today. If you can’t determine what’s wrong in that amount of time, you may want to re-examine your IT department.

You see, it doesn’t make sense to get angry about Sony getting hacked. Companies get hacked all the time. Some announce it, some don’t. Some don’t involve user information, and some do. Less than 6 months ago, Kotaku get hacked, and a ton of user info was freely available on the web. Already this year, Play.com user details were leaked, although they named a third-party marketing firm as the location of the breach. The government gets hacked, non-profits get hacked, it’s the price of doing business in the online world that we live in today.

Therein lies the second, and far more appropriate place to lay blame: the hackers themselves. There’s plenty of speculation that Anonymous may have been behind the breach, even though the group has denied being involved. However, it’s entirely possible that one or more of the many folks who make up that amorphous group could be responsible without the knowledge of the folks who speak for them. At the moment, no one knows who the culprit was.

What we do know is that a malicious person or persons illegally accessed private data on Sony’s servers, and that’s a crime. Yes, Sony should have secured it better. Yes, they could have hardened their network more. Neither of these things is up for debate. But if you review the facts logically, it’s difficult for me to understand how anyone can point the finger solely at Sony.

I guess what this long-winded diatribe is saying is that while it’s perfectly OK to be pissed off at Sony for their handling of this incident, it’s not OK to give the hackers a free pass. Go ahead, rail at Sony for the shoddy job they did protecting your info. They completely deserve it. Just make sure you save a dose of the same ire for the criminals who perpetrated the act. After all, they’re the ones benefiting from breaking the law.

So I was asked by a friend why I haven’t posted here in forever. Quite simply, I’ve been far too busy. However, I feel that there are things that I’d like to write that aren’t really fitting for the page at work, so I’m going to endeavor to write them here, assuming that I can get enough free time together to do so.

I was reading through one of my favorite tabletop RPG blogs today, when I came across this post. Its author, a contributor whose own blog I read regularly, posits that there is a dearth of roleplaying in tabletop RPG’s these days. He attributes this (at least in part) to the trend of publishers focusing heavily on the rules, and little to none on roleplaying.

While this may be true, I think it misses a fundamental point. Dungeons and Dragons never really told anyone how to roleplay. Sure, they provided articles in magazines like Dragon to give some pointers to players, but the responsibility for roleplaying always rested in the same place: the players.

As tabletop gamers, do we really need someone to write a book to tell us how to perform? Does the lack of what we might consider an appropriate mention in the core books preclude us from roleplaying entirely? I submit that it does not.

I have heard many people give voice to this same lament, and to them all I say this: Your roleplaying is up to you, and no one else. If you enjoy roleplaying, as I know many of you obviously do, there is nothing in 3rd or 4th Edition D&D that prevents you from doing it. In fact, your efforts to include roleplaying in your games may very well inspire and teach the next generation of roleplayers.

I am currently running a 4E campaign with two virtually brand new players, and they are quickly picking up the basics of roleplaying from the others in the group. They didn’t have to read it in a core book, or buy a supplement. They simply watched the group having fun roleplaying, and decided that it was something they wanted to do.

With the shift in recent game systems becoming more focused on the rules, it is up to us, the players, to educate the new players in the art of roleplaying, and to show them why it enhances the game so much. This more than anything will guarantee that they continue to roleplay, no matter what campaign they find themselves in.

In short, let Wizards, Paizo, or whoever provide the game. We’ll supply the roleplaying from our own stores.

Well, it’s been pretty slow around here. If you’re wondering why, I’m working on transitioning all my gaming-related thoughts into a new project with some friends and past co-workers. As soon as we get everything lined out, I’ll provide a link to the new project.

Since most of my gaming production will be transferring over there, I’ll be filling my blog with random thoughts on other things, like politics, current events, weird news, and just about anything else. I hope you enjoy the change!

Well, it looks like the E3 hype is officially kicking off, and it’s just barely February. The Entertainment Software Association has released a list of the attendees that have been confirmed so far, and there are a few folks on there that didn’t show for last year’s iteration.

Most notably, Activision Blizzard makes a reappearance. I’ve been speculating since last year that their decision not to attend in 2008 would either mark the end of E3, or would signal the need to transition the expo back to its original format. Obviously, the ESA has opted for the latter. Additionally, the rabid success of PAX (The Penny Arcade Expo) has basically backed the ESA into a corner. Either they improve, or they rapidly become irrelevant.

This should be a very interesting year to be at E3. We’ll have to wait and see how it all comes out.

The list of confirmed attendees so far is:

• Activision Blizzard, Inc.
• Atari, Inc.
• Atlus U.S.A., Inc.
• Bethesda Softworks LLC
• Capcom Entertainment, Inc.
• Disney Interactive Studios, Inc.
• Eidos Interactive
• Electronic Arts, Inc.
• Epic Games, Inc.
• 505 Games
• IndieCade
• KOEI Corporation
• Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.
• LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC
• Majesco Entertainment Company
• Microsoft Corporation
• Midway Games Inc.
• MTV Games
• Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
• Nintendo of America, Inc.
• Rebellion
• Sega of America, Inc.
• Serious Games
• Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.
• Sony Online Entertainment LLC
• Square Enix, Inc.
• Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.
• THQ Inc.
• Ubisoft Entertainment
• Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Inc.

You know, I’ve found myself in a strange state of mind over the past few days. I was using this blog as an outlet for my meager creative urges, when I realized that it was still lacking something. In my years writing for gaming sites, I always had that most effective of measuring sticks, the audience.

The readers will always tell you how they feel, and often, they will feel like you’re an idiot. In some cases, they may even be right. I never realized how much I would miss that until it was gone. It’s ironic. I find myself somehow wishing for a reader to comment on my blog calling me some sort of fanboy, or a whore for some company or another.

With that thought fresh in my head, I felt another thought bubbling up from the muck-ridden swamp that passes for my mind. What if I was writing for a gaming site? Why couldn’t I? I mean, why start one of my own? Everybody’s doing it, right? I could even resurrect my old podcast, assuming I could find someone to talk to.

Well, I don’t know where to go with this thought. I feel that I could definitely make some small contribution along those lines, but I don’t know who would join in, what they would be willing to do, or even how I would pay for it all. I just know that I’ve got that old itch to make my thoughts available to the general public.

If it actually matures into anything concrete, I’ll let you know.

Well, since I still have a little bit of my hated XBox Live Gold subscription left, I thought it would behoove me to check out the Resident Evil 5 demo that became available for download. After all, I had heard some really good things about it.

I have to admit, the game looks great. The graphics are smooth and well done. Enemies look appropriately menacing, and the environments meet the recently enacted ‘grittiness’ standards.

Unfortunately, my positive impressions end there. The control scheme is an absolute nightmare. Down the sight aiming is a great feature in games, but it’s sadly missing here. Instead, Capcom presents us with a laser sight of dubious value, and the ability to move it at what could generously be referred to as a snail’s pace.

The co-op actions feel forced, such as having my partner hit a button to punch the enemy that has me grappled. Haven’t we all about grown tired of quick time events, no matter how they’re structured? Just give my partner the ability to punch, and allow them to determine if my sorry butt is worth saving or not.

I understand that people feel the need to ‘innovate’ in the shooter genre. After all, if they don’t try, they get to hear critics say “This is the same old thing.” Unfortunately, this often leads to change for the sake of change, instead of change for the better. This appears to be the case with Resident Evil 5, and the game suffers for it.

RE5 may turn out to be an excellent game at release, but this demo is a lackluster showing at best. At this point, I can only recommend it to absolute die-hard Resident Evil fans. In good conscience, I can’t ask anyone else to subject themselves to it.

I must admit to a healthy amount of skepticism surrounding F.E.A.R. 2. After all, at E3 2007, Warner Brothers was showing off Project Origin, which was developed by Monolith, the developer of the original F.E.A.R. At the same time, Sierra, the owner of the F.E.A.R. IP, was showing F.E.A.R. 2. A few months ago, when Activision closed down Sierra, Warner Bros. picked up the IP and rebranded Project Origin with the F.E.A.R. 2 name.

Now, I was excited to hear that Monolith would be continuing their work on this franchise. I’ve always loved their work in the past (No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0, F.E.A.R., and Condemned, to name a few), and I have high hopes for their future releases as well. Still, I held my enthusiasm in check pending the arrival of the PC Demo of F.E.A.R. 2.

Well, it arrived shortly after lunch today. After a quick download (1.76 gigs – about 35 minutes from FileFront here), I jumped right right in. I was quickly rewarded with the type of gameplay one would expect from a F.E.A.R. title: gunplay with slo-mo and a variety of specialized grenades.

On the hardest difficulty, the demo is still fairly simple to complete. There’s only about 25 minutes of gameplay, but what is there is all the tension, fun, and goose-bump inducing interludes that you’d expect. Nothing gets the heart rate up quite like having a flash of light reveal a zombie-like female stalking you and eventually grabbing you, only to vanish again.

Combat remains virtually unchanged. You kill a variety of Replica soldiers, all of whom seen genetically enhanced to take massive amounts of damage before succumbing to your assault. Of course, you’ll get a chance to peruse a wide range of weaponry, including shotgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, and even a handheld laser gun. They even toss in the powered-armor mech suit that has been featured so prominently in the trailers.

All in all, this demo is just a small taste of the game, but I have to admit that it has assuaged a lot of my trepidation about F.E.A.R. 2. Now, I’m looking forward to the game’s release on February 10th with anticipation instead. Hey, isn’t that what demos are all about?