American Gangster: Unrated Extended Version (2007)
What is it with director Ridley Scott and his predilection for multiple edits of his films? Is he indecisive and a consummate tinkerer (like George Lucas) or a victim of studio politics? I suspect none of these are true. So how come there are always multiple cuts of his movies? Do his terms of employment always deny him final edit on a movie? I would think not. A film maker of his stature must surely get far more favourable terms when contract to make a film? Whatever the reason it leaves audience with a problem. How is one exactly to determine which is the best version of any of his films to see? For example, Kingdom of Heaven was greatly improved in its extended format. Yet his revised version of Alien is actually inferior to the original theatrical cut. And don’t even get me started on the plethora of versions of Blade Runner. His penchant for multiple edits therefore makes it difficult to debate his work.
13 Assassins (2010)
13 Assassins is one of Takashi Miike's most restrained and mature movies. Set in Feudal Japan and based on true events, a venerable clan suffers under the reign of the cruel young Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), who commits atrocities at will. Unable to break their oaths, the samurai are torn between duty and shame. Some of the masters in the clan even go so far as to commit Seppuku in protest. Unable to endure the status quo, a plan is formed to gather a small team of the deadliest samurai and assassinate Lord Naritsugu while he is travelling between clan territories. The responsibility falls upon Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho) to take on this potentially fatal task. The matter is further complicated by Lord Naritsugu’s personal bodyguard (and Shimada’s former rival) master samurai Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), who is a force to be reckoned with.
Star Trek Online: City on the Edge of Never
Out of the original seventy-nine episodes of Star Trek, one of the most respected and beloved is The City of the Edge of Forever. Written by Harlan Ellison the story is one of the more thoughtful and tragic in Trek Canon. It was also the first episode to feature a temporal plotline. Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) accidently receives an overdose of medication and flees the Enterprise while in a delusional state. Beaming down to an alien planet he uses a temporal gateway (The Guardian of Forever) to travels back in time to earth during the Great Depression. By doing so he accidentally changes history. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) follow him through the gateway to New York in hope of correcting the timeline. While awaiting the arrival of McCoy, Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) who runs the 21st Street Mission. However he and Spock soon determine that to restore the timeline they must allow her to die.
Personal Health
Personal health as a concept, refers to your overall well-being both physically and mentally. It is about taking charge of your health by making a conscious decision to improve and maintain it. It not only refers to your physical state but the respective wellness of the emotional, intellectual and even spiritual aspects of your life. Sadly it is something that many of us are not very good at dealing with or choose to ignore. All too often good intentions get sidelined by the realities of life. Sadly, physical and mental issues are usually only addressed after something bad has occurred. Furthermore, much of the most basic and practical information needed to improve our personal health is drowned out by the white noise of fads, quackery and those seeking to sell you a “solution”.
LOTRO: Thoughts on the Current Downtime
As I am writing this post, the popular MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online has been offline since 2:00 AM EST on 6th March (7:00 AM GMT). The game servers, website and account portal are offline for maintenance and it would appear that the actually physical hardware is being relocated within the datacentre that Standing Stone Games uses. Like any complex IT project of this nature there are always potential problems and it would appear that some have occurred as the initial 22 hours projected down time has now become nearly 3 days. Naturally this has had an impact upon the LOTRO community as Friday evening is often prime gaming time. From SSG’s perspective the extended outage is not good for business or community relations and so they have been using social media to keep players informed.
Learning How to Live Stream Part 1
Sometimes, it’s good to try something different and to learn new skills. I’ve been mentally restless of late and miss applying myself to technical problems and expanding my skills. It’s one of the few aspects of traditional “work” that I miss. So after some deliberation, I’ve decided to try live streaming. Whether I’m successful at it and maintain a regular streaming schedule is another matter altogether. But I’m going to give it a go and have already determined how I intend to approach it and what “my angle” is going to be. However, first things first. Matters such as style, tone and presentation are concerns for later. I spent today getting to grips with Streamlabs OBS and learning the basics. I thought I’d share my experiences because it hasn’t been as straight forward a process as I’d imagined.
Cryptic to Close the Foundry
Cryptic have announced that they will be removing the Foundry from both Star Trek Online and Neverwinter on April 11th. The Foundry was first introduced to STO back in 2011 and has proven a popular means for players to create and share their own missions, using in-game assets. Cryptic state in their press release that “the legacy knowledge required to maintain the Foundry at our quality standards is no longer available”. This is a roundabout way of saying that the member of staff responsible for curating and quality testing the service has no left the company. Naturally, Cryptic has stated that they will acknowledge those players who have contributed to the Foundry over the years by handing out various virtual trinkets and baubles. There has been quite a strong reaction of the STO subreddit as no one like to see content removed from a game. However, the isn’t a black and white as it first appears, because the Foundry has been broken for a while.
The Cost of Content Creation
Back in July 2017 I wrote a blog post about how monetising your content fundamentally changes the relationship you have with your audience and how that isn’t always a good thing with regard to maintaining ones creative independence. I then went on to describe how I see both my blog and podcast as personal “indulgences” and that I had no intention of using Patreon or having a virtual tip jar. This remains the case and I’m not looking to my readership for funding of any kind. However, it is spring and for me at least, that means that a lot of yearly costs associated with my content creation are up for renewal. Therefore I thought it an appropriate opportunity to discuss the subject of the cost of blogging, podcasting, streaming and other forms of content creation.
The Idiot Box
Thoughts on TV shows and my current viewing habits.
Tonight’s season finale of Endeavour was possibly the best episode to date. All the outstanding plot lines were resolved and despite my concerns that a tragedy may occur with regards to one of the central characters, the ending saw the prevailing status quo of previous seasons restored. This series has been exceedingly creative with regard to the subjects and themes it has explored and there have been some exceptional performances from Anton Lesser and Roger Allam. Writer Russell Lewis (a very interesting person in his own right) continues to embellish the proceeding with “metatextuality” which is always a source of joy for me. Recent references to Gordon Murray’s Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley were exceeding droll, yet if the causal viewer missed them, there is still plenty of practical story and historical referencesfor all to get their teeth into. I also thought that the final episodes exploration of a tower block collapse was particularly brave and relevant, considering that the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is still proceeding.
A Month in Gaming
Every other video game blogger I know writes a monthly summary of what they’ve been playing and then details what they hope to achieve in-game over the next four weeks. It’s a very effective example of blogging as it’s easily to relate to and it’s nice to see what everyone else is focusing their “gaming attention” on. So I’ve decided to do the same. It’s a relatively straight forward post to write and it also makes collating an end of year analysis of my gaming habits a lot easier. So here is a broad breakdown of what I got up to last month, gaming wise.
Death in MMOs
There was a post today over at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog, which raised the subject of “corpse runs” in old school MMOS such as Ultima Online. In-game death came with penalties back then and there was the prospect of XP loss or that your corpse could be looted, and you could potentially lose rare gear. It got me thinking because I’ve never played an MMO that has had, to my mind, such harsh sanctions. In fact game mechanics such as permadeath, corpse runs, and the loss of equipment will put me off playing any such game that has them. I suspect that unless you’re a player who is particularly motivated by achievement, competitiveness and challenge, then such systems are seen mainly as an inconvenience and impediment.
Politics and Video Games
I frequently read blog posts, forum comments and reddit rants that can be broadly filed under the heading “keep politics out of video games”. Actually, there’s a tendency to put a far more possessive inflection on the statement by saying “keep politics out of my video games”. It’s a rather unsophisticated response to a broader and more nuanced question about the whether it is both desirable or indeed possible to keep a socio-political subtext out of any gaming narrative. But as a lot of gamers don’t do “nuance” and there’s a growing aversion to thinking per se these days, debating such a position is often an uphill struggle. However, I saw a gaming news story today that addressed this issue head on, and it wasn’t the usual pussyfooting around the issue.
They Don't Work for Us
If you want a good quote to use as a starting point for a blog post then Bree Royce, the Editor-in-Chief and writer for the video game website Massively Overpowered, seems to have a good line in them. In the latest Massively OP Podcast, Bree and Justin Olivetti where discussing the recent round of layoffs that have seen over 800 Activision Blizzard staff lose their jobs. Like many others, Bree and Justin were far from impressed with these events, especially in light of the companies increased profits. When referencing the faux angst of CEO Bobby Kotick who claimed it was a “tough call”, Bree stated “they’ve definitely proven who they work for. It ain’t us”. A simple and inescapable conclusion about the triple A video game industry. Yet it is something that many gamers still struggle to come to terms with. Because so many do not see video games purely as a product, there seems to be an emotional blind spot associated with the game themselves, the developers who make them and the companies that publish them.
The Ongoing Gaming Divide
Love him or loathe him, Gevlon has been a fixed constant in the video games blogging community for over a decade. But he has recently seen fit to hang up his spurs and is no longer going to be maintaining his blog. Fair enough, if you see no value in what you do or feel that your pastime is no longer what it used to be, then I understand moving on. Gevlon likes games that offer challenge and then enjoys trying to find the formula for success. Many gamers do this enjoying coming to grips with a competitive game, mastering the underlying systems and then excelling in their gameplay. However, that is not the only approach to video games. Sadly Gevlon has always maintained a somewhat binary view on the subject and he cannot see beyond his own interpretations of what gaming is. The world has moved on and he has not. It is ultimately immaterial whether he or other gamers care for this or not. Life is predicated upon change and it happens in every aspect of our lives. Leisure activities included.
Taking It Too Seriously?
In the past I’ve often been left somewhat flummoxed when I’ve read stories about fans knitting baby clothes for pregnant characters in soap operas. I’ve also been bemused when reading about actors being berated in the streets by members of the public, who seem incapable of separating the person from the fictional character they play. Such anecdotes have always been met with tutting and shaking of the head from myself. However, I have recently had to temper this rationalist outlook, due to a sudden fit of emotional investment in certain TV dramas. This curious epiphany has led me to conclude that it’s not just a case of good writing and acting (although these are key reasons), but ultimately a question of identifying with a character and empathising with them. Furthermore, who we identify with possibly says something about us to.
Classic Movie Themes: Alien
Alien is a unique genre milestone. It challenged the established aesthetic created by 2001: A Space Odyssey of space travel being pristine, clinical and high tech and replaced it with a grimy, industrial quality. The space tug Nostromo is also a conspicuously “blue collar”, civilian venture, underwritten by a large corporation. As for H. R Giger’s xenomorph, it redefined the depiction of extraterrestrial life in movies. Director Ridley Scott brought visual style and atmosphere to particularly unglamorous and dismal setting. He also scared the hell out of audiences at the time with his slow burn story structure and editing style that hints, rather than shows. Overall, Alien is a text book example of how to make a horror movie and put a new spin on a classic and well-trodden concept.
Star Trek Online: Non-Combat Missions
One of the commonest laments you’ll hear from Star Trek Online devotees is that the game is too orientated around confrontation and combat; there aren’t enough diplomatic, exploration and general non-combat missions in the game. It’s a matter I have mixed feelings about, because if you watch Star Trek TOS, then Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise didn’t always live up to the ideals that The Federation extols. However, this did change in later shows. I certainly wouldn’t be averse to having more non-combat missions in the game, although they would have to be of some substance to merit my interest. The removal of the Exploration Cluster missions from STO, in July summer 2014 was justified in my opinion, as they were somewhat arbitrary. However, if you take content out of a game, then it would be preferable to see something else put back in its place.
LOTRO: A Lesson in Semantics
It’s always nice to know what a video game developer has in mind, especially given the currently volatility of the MMO market. Most of the MMO related news of late has been regarding studio closures and job layoffs. So the arrival of a new Producer’s Letter from Rob Ciccolini (AKA Severlin) is at first glance most welcome. Communication is not exactly Standing Stone Games greatest strength and there hasn’t been a great deal of news filtering down to the player base in the last six months. So this missive is welcome, as it does broadly feature this year’s road map for LOTRO. Furthermore, the details are interesting with further content and systems changes in development. As a long time LOTRO player who purchased the Legacy Bundle in December 2018, I want the MMO to continue grow and evolve.
Auto Manage
As someone who plays video games for fun, rather than competitively, there are many common mechanics that I don’t care for or that I’m broadly indifferent to. These usually tend to be fiddly, time consuming tasks such as inventory management or having to excessively (a very subjective term) fine tune gear. The Legendary Item system in LOTRO being a great example of this. I fully appreciate that there are players who really dig this sort of thing and I am not in any way advocating that they have their “fun” taken away. However, what I would like to see in more games, especially MMOs, is the ability to auto manage some of these systems. To be able to just click a button and have the peace of mind that the most relevant item in my inventory will be equipped by default.
MMOs I No Longer Play
I started playing MMORPGs over a decade ago, at a point when the genre was growing. It seemed at one point that every developer wanted to produce the game that usurped World of Warcrafts crown. I therefore ended up trying many of these massively multiplayer online games yet ended up sticking with few. All too often many of these titles were too generic or had an inherent flaw or flaws that killed my enjoyment. Sometimes it was just a case that the game just didn’t chime with me. Naturally over time, I have revisited some of these MMOs and a few have become a mainstay of my gaming activities. The Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online and The Elder Scrolls online are three such examples. Yet there are numerous other games from this genre that I have not returned to or if I have, I still found them to be problematic, so they have not become part of my leisure activities.