Free Sounds!

For those of you with weird senses of humor or who may be interested in making games like me,  I just found a valuable treasure to share, a repository of free sounds! Check it out!

http://www.findsounds.com/types.html

Happy Turkey Day!

To all my readers in the US, Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for giving me lots of insightful comments and for all your blogs I've enjoyed reading all year. For those outside the US, thank you too, campaign for thanksgiving to be instantiated in your country too! (Canada has it after all)

Gobble gobble gobble!

Rhuidia Sketches

Lord of the Rings Online gets Chinese Government approval

Lotro just got in where WoW is getting locked out. This means little in terms of revenue but a lot in terms of subscribers. 2.2 million Chinese were playing the open beta, with a high activation rate. But anyways they jsut got approval from the Chinese government to operate in China, or rather CDC games did. From Reuters: "The company's outlook is also being clouded by a regulatory spat over its operation of blockbuster online game World of Warcraft (WoW), which has seen a key Chinese government regulator quash its application to run the game due to "gross violations" of regulations. [ID:nN02450107]" Under gross violations of regulations see "lack of censorship and too much freedom" for details.

I am personally amazed at how long it takes these MMO's to launch in other languages compared to console games but I guess there IS a lot of text in an MMO to translate, and some countries (see China) have huge legal flaming hoops to jump through so I can understand the hold-up there. Still.. why doesn't Russia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brazil, etc.. all get it fairly fast is beyond me.

How to formulate an opinion.

Step 1: Learn about something. Read about it, both from the point of view of the people who love it, and the people who hate it. This applies to video games, critical writing, religion, politics, sports cars, whatever. Or if you are impatient, skip to step 2
Step 2: Interact with said thing. This involves playing the game in our case. It can involve a number of details such as

1. Use the thing a little bit, and then when you find anything wrong, leave. The thing is obviously worthless and not worth your time.
   
2. Use the thing a lot, whether you like it or not. Make mental notes of the things you don't like. If they stack up too high, see step 1. If the positives greatly outweigh the negatives, fall head over heels in love with said thing.
3. Upon falling in love with said thing, play it for a long long time until you either run out of things to do with it. Then see step 1, and then step 5.
   
4. Or upon falling in love with said thing, use it sparingly so that it will not get used up before it can renew itself, vary your efforts on a multitude of things (could be alts or different games in our case). Never fall out of love with it.
5. After having tossed said thing out the window 6 to 12 months ago, go back, pick up the pieces, tape them together with duct tape, and try to fall in love with said thing again because you miss it so much. (Some succeed, most have a hard time though)

Step 3. Formulate your opinion, you really only have two options here, you can base your opinion on whether you are in love with said thing (subjective) or you can base your opinion on the thing's inherent merits without regard to how much you personally loved it (objective). Most people go with subjective decisions, and since we're often talking about games, who can blame them? Which one has more weight with others though? Its actually hard to say since everyone is different. I personally enjoy hearing everyone's opinions. even ones that go against my own. It keeps things rounded out and gives me a better perspective, even if it doesn't necessarily change my mind all the time.

NDA dropped For Mirkwood

The NDA for mirkwood dropped today so we've gotten a flood of screen shots everywhere, a veritable flood of visual "info". I personally like this one which conveys little information but looks cool:

Nintendo makes good on one promise- Wiiware demos available

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/700748/Nintendo-Makes-Good-On-Downloadable-Demo-Promise-Rolls-Out-WiiWare-Demos-.html

Read there for more but I think the title says it all. Free demos of Wiiware games are now available so that you don't have to gamble for good games with your Wii points any longer.

The games they are demoing right now are Bit.Trip Beat, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord, NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits (I want to see this one), World of Goo and Pokémon Rumble