April 2012

This is a list of posts published in April 2012.

Year in consumables: 2011 games

Portal 2 cover artI love video games.

I hate video game publishers.

I guess that’s biting the hand that feeds you, but it is true. And, it is for a very simple reason. Their scheduling. The continued trend towards releasing new games in the Fall to capitalize on the pending holiday shopping season is killing me.

I get it. I understand that games cost a lot to develop, market and support. So they need to maximize their return on investment by releasing at the best time possible. But, I would argue it is the worst time possible. They are forced into competition with every other publisher and game doing the same exact thing. Thereby increasing the competition for people’s dollars. And games aren’t cheap these days, which has led to rising reliance on used game sales, which the publishers hate because they don’t get a piece of that. So then we get stuck with there attempts to curb that by adding on weak multiplayer experiences in games that should not have them. And... Continue reading »

Year in consumables: 2011 music

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.So, let’s dispense with the lame blogging to you and your future self theme for the 2011 posts. It was fun for one post and a little forced for another, so time to move on. Plus, it is just about another month later and I’m sure I have something better to use. Which is to say I do not have any ideas and do not want to keep up with trying to hold to a theme. Just going to do a dump of content.

I had a rough year with the music this past year. I went a very long amount of time at the start of the year not listening to anything new, at least in album format. Sure, the radio bombarded me with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes‘–I’m guessing that’s the spelling because I don’t care to look and find out–gawd awful single; in two versions. Yes, they must not have a single other good tune on their album. And I absolutely hated it the first time I heard it as much as the one thousandth. Of course, then there is the everlasti... Continue reading »