One problem with working at a video game company is that there are a lot of different games to play. That makes it tough to actually finish one as I often get bored with one and move onto another. Well this evening I actually finished playing Bioshock Infinite. There was a driving force to finish the game as another coworker just finished it and wants to have a conversation about it with others who have completed the game. Everyone in the office has been waiting for me to finish so we can talk about the ending. I can't say I was surprised as I figured it out before I got to the end of the game. Tomorrow should be fun at work though as we can finally have this long-anticipated conversation.
Finishing a game comes with a huge sense of satisfaction. It also comes with a bit of sadness as now I won't know what to do with my evenings. I have replaced all television and movie watching with game playing. Now what am I going to do with my evenings when I am alone on the boat in California?
Fortunately there are a number of video games to choose from. My own library is quite full of games that I own. There are also a whole group of games that I have started but never had the patience to finish. There are also a number of games I have that are still in the plastic shrink-wrap. Then there is even a larger of inventory of games in the game library at work. Finally there is the video game I have been writing over the course of several years that is actually getting close to being done. Of course I could also take a break from video games and do other things.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
Console Games vs. Mobile Games
When people find out I work for a video game company, the first question they ask is, "What is your prediction for console games?" This is because everyone seems to be playing mobile games and the mobile market has turned the entire video game industry on its head.
If I look at my own video game habits, I spend much more time playing mobile games than I do playing console ones. I always have my phone with me and so whenever I have five minutes to spare, I pull out my phone and play a quick game of Risk or some other casual game.
However for the past two weeks I have gone back to Bioshock: Infinite and it has been a lot of fun. Instead of watching television on my boat, I have put in a couple of hours every night playing on my PS3 console. It is tough to stop for the night and so I have a self-imposed hard-stop every evening at 10:30. Otherwise I will continue playing and never go to sleep. This isn't an every night occurrence but accounts for 5 or 6 hours a week of entertainment. If I were to add up all of the 5-minute mobile game sessions in a week, I am probably only at 2 or 3 hours total.
Mobile phones are getting much more powerful and we are beginning to see some complex games that far surpass early generation consoles. While it is possible that full-featured games will appear on mobile platforms, I think that Triple-A titles like Uncharted and Bioshock: Infinite are best experienced in the luxury of your living room with a comfortable chair or couch, large screen TV, and plate of nachos close by. Therefore I don't see console nor console games going away any time soon.
If I look at my own video game habits, I spend much more time playing mobile games than I do playing console ones. I always have my phone with me and so whenever I have five minutes to spare, I pull out my phone and play a quick game of Risk or some other casual game.
However for the past two weeks I have gone back to Bioshock: Infinite and it has been a lot of fun. Instead of watching television on my boat, I have put in a couple of hours every night playing on my PS3 console. It is tough to stop for the night and so I have a self-imposed hard-stop every evening at 10:30. Otherwise I will continue playing and never go to sleep. This isn't an every night occurrence but accounts for 5 or 6 hours a week of entertainment. If I were to add up all of the 5-minute mobile game sessions in a week, I am probably only at 2 or 3 hours total.
Mobile phones are getting much more powerful and we are beginning to see some complex games that far surpass early generation consoles. While it is possible that full-featured games will appear on mobile platforms, I think that Triple-A titles like Uncharted and Bioshock: Infinite are best experienced in the luxury of your living room with a comfortable chair or couch, large screen TV, and plate of nachos close by. Therefore I don't see console nor console games going away any time soon.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Problems with my Mac Laptop
Yesterday I went to turn on my Mac laptop computer and it wouldn't boot correctly. I have an encrypted hard drive in the event that someone steals my computer. When I turn on the machine, it asks for my password. I was making it that far and it was even working enough to know if the password entered was correct or not. After a few seconds, it would bring the login screen back up but not allow any input from the mouse or keyboard.
My hope was that once I got the laptop back to my office and on the network, the problem would fix itself. My flight from Salt Lake to the Bay Area was plenty early and I was in the office at 8:30 giving my hypothesis a try. Unfortunately it didn't work. Next was a call to our IT department. They asked if I had tried resetting the NVRAM and I had. There wasn't anything they could help me with over the phone and so I brought it to our IT department's walk-in office. Most of the company uses Windows laptops and I am one of the few with a Mac. That means I had to make another trip with the laptop to another office where the Mac specialists reside. I dropped the computer off and headed to a meeting.
It was a distraction to be without my computer and very difficult to concentrate during my meeting so I was very happy to get a call from the IT department telling me they figured out what was wrong with my Mac. It seems that the hard drive had somehow had permissions changed. They had to boot my laptop from another hard disk, change the permissions on my drive, and all was fixed. Unfortunately I wasn't there to watch how they did it so I can't give step-by-step instructions. It was a great relief to have everything fixed though and they didn't have to reinstall anything. Naturally the first thing I did when I got back to my office was to take a backup of the computer. Now should something go wrong again, I don't have to worry if they have to erase my hard drive to fix it. I have a backup. I should probably do that with all of my computers now. Furthermore, I should probably take backups on a regular basis. OS X includes Time Machine which is perfect for such a task and I plan to take advantage of it from now on.
My hope was that once I got the laptop back to my office and on the network, the problem would fix itself. My flight from Salt Lake to the Bay Area was plenty early and I was in the office at 8:30 giving my hypothesis a try. Unfortunately it didn't work. Next was a call to our IT department. They asked if I had tried resetting the NVRAM and I had. There wasn't anything they could help me with over the phone and so I brought it to our IT department's walk-in office. Most of the company uses Windows laptops and I am one of the few with a Mac. That means I had to make another trip with the laptop to another office where the Mac specialists reside. I dropped the computer off and headed to a meeting.
It was a distraction to be without my computer and very difficult to concentrate during my meeting so I was very happy to get a call from the IT department telling me they figured out what was wrong with my Mac. It seems that the hard drive had somehow had permissions changed. They had to boot my laptop from another hard disk, change the permissions on my drive, and all was fixed. Unfortunately I wasn't there to watch how they did it so I can't give step-by-step instructions. It was a great relief to have everything fixed though and they didn't have to reinstall anything. Naturally the first thing I did when I got back to my office was to take a backup of the computer. Now should something go wrong again, I don't have to worry if they have to erase my hard drive to fix it. I have a backup. I should probably do that with all of my computers now. Furthermore, I should probably take backups on a regular basis. OS X includes Time Machine which is perfect for such a task and I plan to take advantage of it from now on.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Classic MS-DOS Games
It is no secret I work for a video game company and so it is not uncommon to see people playing video games at work. Today someone showed everyone in the office a site where you can play about 2,300 old MS-DOS games in your web browser. Naturally everyone dropped what they were doing and spent a few minutes reliving the past. I went looking for an old game I spent many a night playing when I was back in college. Unfortunately I didn't find it, but I did find a number of other games that held my interest many years ago.
It is amazing to see how far video games have come in the past few decades. Increasing hardware performance has helped usher things along and it is great to see the progress. There are still a number of old video games that are a lot of fun to play even now. One of the guys at work confessed to only being able to beat a specific game one way even though there were four possible paths and he continues to work at the game. It was also interesting to see how simple even the most complex games were back then.
I have been trying to figure out what to do with my time on the boat this evening. There are a number of games I could play on my PlayStation 3. Perhaps I will search this game site and see if I can't find more of those old games I used to play. It could be fun.
It is amazing to see how far video games have come in the past few decades. Increasing hardware performance has helped usher things along and it is great to see the progress. There are still a number of old video games that are a lot of fun to play even now. One of the guys at work confessed to only being able to beat a specific game one way even though there were four possible paths and he continues to work at the game. It was also interesting to see how simple even the most complex games were back then.
I have been trying to figure out what to do with my time on the boat this evening. There are a number of games I could play on my PlayStation 3. Perhaps I will search this game site and see if I can't find more of those old games I used to play. It could be fun.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Ode to a Fallen Skier: Bryce Astle
This morning I got off my Monday morning flight in Oakland, California and turned on my mobile phone. Once it synced with the wireless network it started going crazy. There were a number of texts and voicemails from home. At first I thought my family was trying to reach me because there was a problem with my oldest daughter's car and they needed my help diagnosing it. Instead it was tragic news that one of my youngest son's teammates had passed away in Soelden, Austria after being caught in an avalanche.
Two promising young skier's lives were cut short today and my heart is heavy after finding out about the passing of Ronnie Berlack and Bryce Astle. I never met or knew Ronnie but Bryce skied with my son at Snowbird and was a great kid. I fear that any attempt to memorialize him will fall well short of what he deserves. The only comfort I can derive from the accident is that Bryce was doing what he loved when he passed away.
When I first heard the news, I wanted to believe it was a mistake. There were six skiers caught in the avalanche, all from the US Ski Team. Four of them survived without any injury. Maybe someone got the names wrong and Bryce was still alive. I got to my office and looked up information on the Internet. There were a number of stories describing what happened. Unfortunately a lot of them were just repeats of the same article. I still held out hope that there was a mistake.
Snowbird is hosting a race this week and my wife was there helping coordinate all of the gate judges and volunteers. She saw how devastated his coaches were when they discovered the news. Soon news trucks were arriving at the mountain to talk with the head coach of the Snowbird ski team. Never mind that he was the "Chief of Race" and had to delegate duties to one of his other senior coaches so he could speak with the press. When my wife related the events on the mountain to me over the phone, it sunk in that Bryce really was gone. He will be missed.
Two promising young skier's lives were cut short today and my heart is heavy after finding out about the passing of Ronnie Berlack and Bryce Astle. I never met or knew Ronnie but Bryce skied with my son at Snowbird and was a great kid. I fear that any attempt to memorialize him will fall well short of what he deserves. The only comfort I can derive from the accident is that Bryce was doing what he loved when he passed away.
When I first heard the news, I wanted to believe it was a mistake. There were six skiers caught in the avalanche, all from the US Ski Team. Four of them survived without any injury. Maybe someone got the names wrong and Bryce was still alive. I got to my office and looked up information on the Internet. There were a number of stories describing what happened. Unfortunately a lot of them were just repeats of the same article. I still held out hope that there was a mistake.
Snowbird is hosting a race this week and my wife was there helping coordinate all of the gate judges and volunteers. She saw how devastated his coaches were when they discovered the news. Soon news trucks were arriving at the mountain to talk with the head coach of the Snowbird ski team. Never mind that he was the "Chief of Race" and had to delegate duties to one of his other senior coaches so he could speak with the press. When my wife related the events on the mountain to me over the phone, it sunk in that Bryce really was gone. He will be missed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
