Dear Microsoft: I'm Sorry

I'm sorry, Microsoft. Truly.

If we're being honest, I get it. Really. I do.

You had a lot of cool ideas for the Xbone, and I actually like most of them.

Being able to play games without a disc, being able to switch between games instantly to play multiplayer, being able to share games and subscriptions with family, guaranteeing Kinect support and improving it so that developers would actually use it, cloud processing... these are all pretty worthwhile ideas.

However, as soon as you decided you wanted to do these cool new things, you immediately went into panic mode.

"If we let them play without discs, how will we stop them from installing rented games? Or borrowed games? How will we stop them from just logging into friends' consoles and installing all of their purchases for them to play when they're not around? How do we prevent people from not using the Kinect?"

From a business standpoint, these questions make sense, and so you set out to address all of them. The console has to be online often enough that it might as well always be online, we have to go through Microsoft to buy or sell used games or rent them, the console needs Kinect to function, and we are limited in how many accounts we can share with. This easily prevents people from taking advantage of you in pretty much any conceivable way.

One might argue that this approach makes sense, but no one on your team apparently wondered if maybe it was a good attitude to find ways to "stop" your customers from using your console.

Sony, on the other hand, has rarely had this attitude. Honestly, you should have known they wouldn't play your game, even if it might have been in their best interest to do so. And I'm not saying this just because of the sassy remarks made during the PS4 conference, I'm saying it because of their past record with the PS3 digital downloads.

The PS3 tried very hard to get people more interested in digital downloads. Sure, they weren't the only one, but you guys made it very difficult comparatively. Purchases made for one Xbox 360 couldn't be downloaded on a different console -- or even on a different hard drive for the same console -- without remaining perpetually connected to Xbox Live. What's more, the Xbox had very few full games available for download, and most of them were indie titles or DLC packs.

So when I got a PS3, I expected a similar experience. I bought a couple digital games and thought that was that. Then a friend of mine got a PS3 and just for fun, I logged in with my PSN account and checked to see if I could download some of the games I purchased and install them on my friends' console so we could play them together. Much to my surprise, I could. Every game or DLC pack I had ever purchased was available to download and install. I figured that they would probably only be accessible if I was logged in, but no, even logged in as my friend, even offline, they could play those installed games that I had purchased on a different console. I figured there had to be some catch somewhere, but no. The games had been installed on both consoles, seemingly unrestricted. I researched it and apparently there was some kind of five-console restriction and supposedly it was eventually reduced to two, but I'm fairly certain that's not the case, at least not for me. I've played games I've purchased on multiple friends' PS3's to this day and I've never run into any kind of restriction even though I'm pretty sure I would have by now considering how many friends' consoles I've played my downloadable games on. Maybe it's because my account is old or because those games have been subsequently uninstalled from my friends' consoles, but in my experience, I've never once had difficulty playing a purchased game on a friends' console using their PSN account after the initial download and installation, and I was very happy with this.

I'm not sure if this was Sony's intention or not, but honestly, I think that this was an excellent policy. If it weren't for this policy, I probably wouldn't have purchased PSN games unless I had no alternative, much like I did with the Xbox 360. Because of this policy, I can play games I've purchased at any friend's house so long as they have a PS3 and a decent Internet connection (at least for a few hours for the download). It makes digital games more convenient than physical copies of games, at least in some respects. It encourages people to try it out in spite of the overwhelming time it takes to download and install, not to mention the amount of HDD space it can take up. The advantages are just too tantalizing.

Going away from video games for a minute, let's take a brief look at a different industry that was similarly consumed by the digital revolution: music.

Because of the earlier limitations of Internet connection speed and HDD space, music was pretty much the only form of media that was easy to download and enjoy digitally back in the day. Napster pretty much revolutionized the way we enjoy music.

Then the music industry freaked out and killed Napster. Then a bunch of other services popped up in its place and so the industry targeted the users themselves, trying to scare them out of it. This just made things worse. Then iTunes came along, gave people the option to buy their music digitally, and voila, problem solved. Then they started implementing DRM to restrict where you could download your purchases and how many computers you could have your account active on, and forcing you to play the music within iTunes or else, but since then, they've eased up a bit with the implementation of iCloud and DRM-free music that can be played elsewhere. Even so, it's difficult to share music with friends in a digital format, which is why some people still prefer to just buy the CD. The CD has no restrictions. You can rip it using a multitude of software as many times as you like and listen to the digital versions anywhere. You can give it to friends and let them rip it, even if it is technically illegal to do so.

That's not to say that the music industry was thrilled by this prospect. They tried to restrict CDs with DRM that prevented them from being ripped or by bundling it with software that spied on the user's computer to see if they had "pirated music", but these attempts just exploded in more bad PR and you basically don't see anyone try to pull this stuff anymore. They realized that making it illegal was good enough. So long as this was something people did and felt slightly bad about, it would be enough to keep it from being widespread.

Now the music industry has basically levelled out. The digital market has proven profitable, its restrictions are reasonable, and most people don't pirate music anymore just because they don't want to.

The film industry is slowly going through the same transition, though they're throwing a bit of a hissy-fit too. But with Netflix and other streaming services, they've made legally acquiring digital TV and movies more convenient than pirating them, so that's what most people do. They still want to cling onto their old model, but eventually they'll get over it, one way or another, or they'll suffer the consequences.

And that brings us back to you, Microsoft.

Like I said, Microsoft, I get it. You want to offer all of this cool stuff, but you don't know how to do it without either restricting the consumer or opening yourself up to abuse.

But the only way you can make this move towards digital work is if you embrace the parts that make digital convenient. If digital is restricted to a certain number of machines under certain conditions, then it might as well be a physical copy, and if your physical copy is similarly restricted, then there's no point in having a physical copy in the first place. You're shooting yourself in both feet here. If the only other option is to open yourself up to abuse from your customers, you probably should pick that option instead, because at least then you'll have customers.

Gaming is a social experience, and it's not limited to the kind of social experience you can have online. People still have real-life friends that they see in person and like to play games with. By trying to make online experiences more versatile, you are hamstringing peoples' capabilities of sharing games with people in a physical reality.

Here's your problem.

You tell people that they have to be online to play their games. They get upset, and then you tell them that it's because you decided to let them install their games on the HDDs and this was the only way you could offer them this feature. They tell you that they didn't ask for that and you have a pissed off customer.

But let's imagine a different universe. Imagine if you went out and said that gamers would be allowed to install their games on their console. That they could switch between games midstream. That their friends could install their games too. Then imagine peoples' surprise when they ask what the catch is and you say that Microsoft will not be implementing any restrictions outside of the obvious factor that you have to be logged into your Xbox Live account during the download and installation. To keep developers happy, you say that individual developers can implement DRM if they see fit, but by default, the Xbone would not inherently limit software installations.

Would this new system be abused? Almost certainly. But more importantly, this system would be used. Even people without friends would buy digital copies, just so they could share it with friends if they wanted to. Just so they could know that they wouldn't have to waste shelf space on a game.

The key to winning over customers is to make them feel like they are in control, and even better, by making them feel like they are smart. I don't mean you have to stroke their ego, I mean you have to let them think they're smarter than you. People would go in, feeling like they're about to get one over on you guys by buying games and sharing them with their friends, but before you know it, those people have bought waaaay more games than they would have otherwise, all because they think they can beat the system.

I mean, just look at Steam. Steam has a lot of restrictions. You have to login before you can play offline. You can't login on more than one PC at a time. But they currently have the biggest market share in software sales because they regularly make their customers believe that they are getting a major deal. Every Summer, gamers buy truck loads of games they'd never have bought otherwise, simply because of how cheap they are. I recently bought the "Alan Wake" series on Steam. I have no interest in playing it. But I bought it anyway because maybe one day I will and it was only $5.

It's not about tricking people. The Steam Sales don't have some kind of catch. You buy the game, you own the game. Simple. There's no dark secret about them. But gamers make all kinds of stupid purchases just because they like to take advantage of great deals and opportunities, just like anyone else. This isn't rocket science. Retailers have known this shit for years.

The Xbone's new features don't feel like great deals or opportunities. They feel like windows in a jail cell. You have to let gamers think they're the smart ones. That they can take advantage of you if they play their cards right. That they can game the system. But instead, you basically look at every possible way a gamer could take advantage of your new services and find ways to block them. And in so doing, you made a console that just can't help but piss people off at every turn.

"I can install all of my games on the HDD and the cloud? Cool! That means I can play my entire library anywhere!"
"Anywhere with a stable Internet connection."
"Oh... well, at least I'll be able to install rental games."
"No you won't."
"Oh... well, at least there will be no difference between new and used games since they install no matter what."
"Wrong."
"OK, then at least I'll be able to install the game and then give the disc to a friend."
"Haha, no."
"But I can share my games with family members right? So if I buy a game, we can play it together without them having to buy it."
"Nope. Only one person on your family list can play from your library at a time."
"Then why the fuck would I want to install games on my Xbox?"
"So you can switch between two games to play online matches with friends!"
"...That's it?"
"Yeah! Isn't that great?"

You've basically implemented cool new technology and then found ways to impose the same limitations that would exist without the technology, and then made the technology mandatory.

Your games look fine, but they're not all that different from what we have right now. I was paying attention 7 years ago. I remember how big of a leap it was from the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube generation to the present one. It was major. The difference was staggering. But what I saw today was not different enough to sell an entire console, and you know it. You've tried to distract people, but it just makes you seem even more deceptive. And as nice as some of your new features are, every single one comes at the price of convenience and trust.

And speaking of price, $499 is ridiculous. You know who knows that? Sony.

They launched their lowest-end PS3 at $499 back in the day and even though their system was technically far better than yours, even though it offered the same features at a lower cost (free PSN, rechargeable controllers, built-in WiFi, high-def video disc player), and even though it had the biggest following from the previous generation, Sony still got their butts kicked by you and Nintendo almost entirely because the system was too damned expensive. How can you not remember this?

What's even more baffling to me is that you're throwing out this price point even though your new software restrictions would basically guarantee a huge boost in revenue by maiming the used game and rental markets. Even though you have a massively successful subscription service. Even though you are fucking Microsoft and have the best connections in the industry and could easily afford to take a hit on console price even if you didn't. Even though you had no substantial pressure to release a new console this year and could have taken the time to reduce production costs before announcing a price. You decided to act like this was the best you could do.

Guys, your two competitors are selling at $349 and $399. That's it. Game over. They win. Even if average consumers can tell that the Wii U is technically inferior to the PS4 and the Xbone, they will probably not be able to discern a major difference between the PS4 and the Xbone and will probably just buy the cheaper one.

But I know what you're probably thinking. Xbox has brand recognition. Average parents shopping for Christmas don't pay attention to things like DRM or sharing restrictions. They just want to get the newest Xbox for their kids. And that may be true, but if you think they won't notice these restrictions, just you wait. I can imagine the Christmas morning now...

"Yay! The new Xbox! Thanks, Dad! Can I set it up now?"
"Sure! Go right ahead!"
*An hour passes*
"Yay! Let's play the new 'Kinect Sports'!"
*Puts disc in*
"Dad, why isn't it playing yet? What does 'installing' mean?"
"Oh, the lady at the store said that you have to install the game on the Xbox now."
"Why?"
"She said it will let you play the game without the disc."
"Oh, cool! That's great!"
*Plays "Kinect Sports Rivals"*
"That was fun! Hey, can I play some 'Viva Pinata'?"
"Sure! Go right ahead."
*Puts disc in*
"Hey, it's not working."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. They said it won't play Xbox 360 games."
"Oh. OK, I guess that's... whatever."
*Turns off Xbone and plugs back in the old Xbox 360 to play games.*
*A few hours pass.*
"Hey, we're going to go to your uncle's house. You want to bring the new Xbox to play with your cousins?"
"But there's only the one game. Can we buy some more on the way?"
"I'm sorry, but 'Kinect Sports' was the only one that seemed appropriate for you."
"Oh well. I guess that'll be fun enough."
*They pack up the Xbone and go visit their relatives and start setting it up on the TV in the basement. Her cousin arrives.*
"Hey Alice. You got a new Xbox too?"
"Yeah, though I only got the one game for it."
"Oh, well my mom got me 'Killer Instinct'. I brought it with me. You wanna play it?"
"Sure! Just don't tell my dad."
*Turns on Xbone, but it throws back an error*
"Hey, it won't start."
"You didn't plug in the Kinect."
"But we're playing 'Killer Instinct'. It doesn't need Kinect."
"The console won't start without it."
"Well... OK."
*Plugs in Kinect. A different error pops up.*
"Oh, it has to be online, too. Go ask Uncle Bob what his WiFi password is."
*Bob comes down*
"Oh, I don't have a wireless router. But I can run a cable down from the living room for you."
*Finds a massive ethernet cable and runs it down to the basement for the kids to play with the new Xbox*
"OK, let's play."
*Puts in "Killer Instinct" and installs it. They start playing. A few minutes later, someone trips on the ethernet cable and Bob unplugs it since the kids aren't playing online. One hour passes.*
"Hey! It stopped working! It says connection lost or something! But we weren't even online!"
"This sucks. I'm tired of this. Hey, I think Carl set up his PS4 upstairs. Want to play that instead?"
"Sure!"

This might seem like a relatively contrived dramatization, but it's really not. I remember what it was like to be a kid with a new console or a friend of a kid with a new console. Gamer kids love to show off their shiny new toys and share them with friends and family, and the holidays are a great time for people to get together and do just that. But if you bring along your new toys and they don't work or they require a massive amount of work to get working properly, not only does it give you instant buyers remorse, it pretty much tells everyone else at the get-together how incredibly lame that new toy is.

You know why the Wii did better than the Wii U? Both consoles had about the same level of software support. Both consoles were roughly within the same price bracket. But the difference was that the Wii was a bigger novelty. People who brought the Wii to their holiday gatherings became the talk of the evening. Everyone played Wii Sports and everyone had fun. So everyone wanted one of their own. But the Wii U just didn't have that wow factor, so after the holiday boom, sales plummeted.

A console's best possible advertising is word of mouth, and if you can't get people excited about your console without giving them a list of rules and requirements, that word of mouth is going to be mumbled at best.

And that's not even considering the fact that a lot of parents are terrified about their children playing games online. A lot of them just leave the system disconnected because they can't be bothered to figure out your asinine parental controls. But now they won't be able to, and that alone might be enough to make them change their minds about which console to get.

Frat boys who love playing Halo and CoD will probably throw a hissy fit when they realize they won't be able to bring their Xbone into the lounge (a lot of college dorms don't have free WiFi in the common areas).

You may think that you can get away with pissing off gamers, but gamers aren't the only ones who care about being able to play games the way they like to play them. This trait is pretty much universal. Even if you're just targeting parents and frat boys, you'll still find ways to piss them off, and they'll probably be even angrier since they probably won't see it coming.

Microsoft, I'm not saying your new restrictions are unreasonable. Well, actually, I take that back. They are completely unreasonable, but I can understand why you made them. Each and every decision has a thread of logic behind it that I can follow and comprehend. I can see why someone in a board room thought this was the best way to move forward.

I don't believe you've lost your minds, but you have definitely lost sight of the bigger picture. You are about to release the most expensive console on the market, you've pissed off the core gaming market, and you will make casual consumers go completely insane with frustration on launch day. Early adopters will be disappointed, their friends and families will have been given a terrible first impression of the new device, and your competitors will be laughing their way to the bank while the pissed off gamers drink your salty tears.

Even if some people do enjoy your console in your pre-determined, overly-calculated, incredibly limiting environment, that's not what you want. You want people playing Xbone everywhere. You want them bringing it to every party, sharing games with every friend, bringing it along on long road trips. You want your product to be ubiquitous, you don't want it exiled to one room in one house. You might think that if people can't move their Xbone, they'll just buy another one, but you're wrong. People who want to play Xbone at a friend's house won't buy their friend an Xbone. They'll return their Xbone, buy a PS4, use the leftover money to buy another game or two, and bring THAT to their friend's house instead.

So I'm sorry, but you've fucked up. You've fucked up big time.

Don't worry, I'm not going to dance on your grave, because if we're being totally honest, I actually love some of your ideas. I'm actually a little disappointed that the PS4 doesn't really seem to be doing much that's really all that innovative. I really like the potential and the technology of the new Kinect and I know the PS4's new Eye won't be able to come close to matching it. I like the idea of being able to install games directly on the HDD from the disc since the 10GB download through PSN can be arduous. I like the idea of sharing games with a short list of family members on different consoles. I like SmartGlass, though it needs a lot of improvement. I like your app variety (I watched the PS4 keynote through your GameTrailers app since the PS3 just directed me to their crappy built-in browser). I even liked that IllumiRoom thing from a while back, even though it is apparently nowhere to be found in the new console (work on that).

I'm a technophile and I want to favor innovation. I genuinely feel bad that I can't support the most innovative console of this generation. But you've set the cost too high. And I'm not just talking about the cost of the console, I'm talking about the cost imposed on all of your customers. You're asking them to give up things that they've come to expect and that never goes well unless you offer a better alternative.

Along with many other gamers, I have already made my decision. I'm sorry, but I've pre-ordered the PS4. I'm typically the sort of gamer that likes to wait and see how things play out, but there seems little point this time around.

Still, I'm open to reconsidering. If you drop these restrictions without also dropping the features, I'll probably change my mind. I'll cancel my pre-order and change my allegiances. I've changed sides in a console war before and I gave up brand loyalty long ago.

But I think we both know how likely that is. Ever since Windows 8, you've proven to have no real comprehension for what your customers want. You believe you have the power to dictate the rules we play by, but forget that we always have the option to simply refuse to buy your shit. I honestly wonder if you'll learn your lesson before the Xbone fails miserably.

I've been a gamer all my life and I've witnessed every console war since SNES vs. Genesis. In those days, it was frenetic gameplay and third-party support vs. beloved mascots and familiar pixels. It was blast processing vs. mode 7. Then Sony got in the game a generation later and it was 32-bit vs. 64-bit. Disc vs. cartridge. Cost vs. power. Then you guys came along and it was fighting games and FPS's vs. Everything Else. Then a generation later it was cost vs. power again. Online play vs. console versatility. No matter the generation, there was always an argument to be made for either side. There was never a clear winner until the market had spoken.

But this time? Well, this is the first time I've seen a community so universally in favor of one console over the other. On every blog post talking about the PS4 announcement from last night, I see no arguments over which console is better because there's really no argument to be had. Unless you really like Twitch, Halo, or Fantasy Football, I'm having a hard time figuring out how someone could favor the Xbone at this point. It's more expensive, more restrictive, more unwieldy, more pompous, and offered a very narrow view of what kinds of gaming experiences we can expect. The system specs are practically identical and yet the Xbone costs more, probably because of the required Kinect that most people (myself not included) want nothing to do with.

Though I'm not just getting the PS4 because it's better than the Xbone. I'm not just settling for it. I'm getting it because during that press conference, it was the first time I felt excited during E3 since I was a kid. I felt like Sony was listening to me. Like they cared about more than just my money. Besides which, the PS3 has been a really satisfying product and I feel like Sony trusts the gaming community. As much as I want to reward the Xbone's new ideas, I don't want to reward the way you treat your customers, and I'd much rather reward a company that at least tries to treat its customers with some amount of respect.

I'm sorry Microsoft, but you've been having a pretty lousy year. Your Windows Phone OS continues to fail to get a market share that can even be considered moderately competitive with iOS or Android. Windows 8 has gone over like a lead balloon and anyone who has upgraded to it who isn't using a tablet thinks it is terrible. Most people who buy tablets still get iPads. The desktop PC market continues to stagnate (though it certainly isn't dying). Your new server OS is equally ridiculous and annoying, implementing the same ridiculous UI even though no admin in their right mind would use a touch screen for a server. And now that you've also screwed up your gaming division, I think you've only got darker times ahead.

I don't think there's anything left for you to break.

Album Review: Daft Punk - "Random Access Memories"

Let me just get this out of the way right now, before we even talk about music. "Random Access Memories" is quite possibly my favorite album title of all time. It's clever, it fits with the theme of the band and the album itself, and it's a computer joke. As soon as I saw the ad that ran before my theater's showing of "Iron Man 3" (though most people apparently saw it on SNL) I knew I had to buy this album for the title alone.

I was also struck by how different it was from Daft Punk's usual sound. I grew up with Daft Punk, first exposed to their music in the same way a lot of nerds my age probably were, through the music video for "One More Time" that aired on Toonami a lot.

Aside from just being really catchy and cool, the ending of the video was incredibly maddening. I was a high schooler at the time and my Google Fu was still too weak to find out that this video was the beginning of the larger project, "Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem". Still, Daft Punk were more or less my first exposure into electronic music, and despite my love of technology, I'm generally not all that fond of electronic music outside of Daft Punk.

And to be perfectly honest, while I liked a number of Daft Punk songs, I'd never really say I was a "fan". When I was younger, I tended to listen to mixes of popular singles, so I tended to pick a very narrow sampling of Daft Punk's music. "One More Time", "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", and "Technologic" were pretty much their only songs that I heard more than once.

Once I got into college, I started listening more to entire albums rather than just playlists. I'm not sure what changed about my tastes, but if I had to guess, it probably had something to do with my sudden appreciation for "Coheed and Cambria". As I said in my review of "Afterman: Ascension" (and I'll review "Descension" eventually, I promise), the best way to listen to CoCa is to take in each album as a whole thing. That's the only way to absorb the story, the emotion, the themes, and things like that, and most of the songs don't really stand particularly well on their own. And as I started moving back to artists other than CoCa, I found that I suddenly liked listening to full albums of other artists for some of the same reasons. Not all albums hold together quite as well as others, but most good albums have a central theme or style that I like to marinate in. Plus, some songs are hidden gems that never get any radio play because they show up towards the end of an album and maybe require a number of listens before they work their way into your soul.

So it was during this time that I finally found "Interstella 5555" and got to see Daft Punk try to tie a narrative through the entire album of "Discovery". And while the narrative itself was a little... dull in parts, the album itself was really solid and cohesive. It also made me realize just how far down electronic music had fallen since Daft Punk left the scene.

"Human After All" doesn't hold together quite as well, but I give it a lot of slack because I really, really love "Technologic".

I just love how completely in-your-face this song is from beginning to end, how it's repetitive without being maddening, and how the video is a literal depiction of the most uncanny-valley-looking robot ever designed becoming self-aware of how horrifying and soulless it has become.

This video is actually kind of how I imagine Daft Punk felt about electronic music in the 2000's. As electronic as some of their music got, it always had a really solid foundation built on disco and pop. Mostly disco. But as years went on and auto-tune became trendy, electronic influence began to be used as a crutch by people who didn't understand it. Instead of being its own thing, it started to homogenize pop music into this perfect-pitch synth slurry of stupid. And by the end of the decade, things only got worse.

When we needed them most, Daft Punk were nowhere to be found. Instead, they were working on the original soundtrack for "Tron: Legacy", and I am still pissed that they didn't even get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score that year. A lot of people went to see that movie almost entirely for the soundtrack. And it was an amazing soundtrack.

But after 8 years, Daft Punk finally put out another album. And here we have "Random Access Memories".

If I were to put into words why Daft Punk's use of electronic sound works while will.i.am's doesn't... it would have to be like this:

Daft Punk are robots trying to be human.
will.i.am is (purportedly) a human trying desperately to sound like a robot.

Daft Punk are trying to find the music in what most would probably consider to be "noise". will.i.am just took music and turned it into actual noise.

So when they decided to come back, it's not surprising that they decided to tone down the electronic. It's still there, but most of the songs involve a lot more music from normal singers and standard electric instruments. This was to be their "back to roots" album.

This isn't unusual. After they've been around for a while, bands like to create albums to explore their roots. However "Random Access Memories" is different.

See, Daft Punk never forgot their roots. They've always loved disco and they've always paid homage to it, even in their most electronic music. No, we are the ones who needed the reminder. We are the ones who forgot that electronic music was not supposed to be this over-produced shit.

In a world where "artists" use technology to make themselves sound more talented than they are, Daft Punk decided to take them on with an album that used as little technology as possible to prove that good electronic music (and good music in general) is built on a solid foundation of musical understanding and ability.

The goal of "Random Access Memories" is very plainly stated with the very first song on the album: "Give Life Back to Music".

As for the album itself... it's good.

I'm not going to lie, much like Daft Punk themselves, I think I like the concept better than the music itself. That's not to say it's bad, far from it. I actually really enjoy this album, probably more than any of their other albums. But I can't say I love it. I love what it stands for, I love the band that produced it, and I love the title and the aesthetic. And I love a number of the songs.

"Giorgio by Moroder" almost feels like a documentary in music form and it's probably my favorite track on the album. "Touch" is trippy and almost feels like it belongs in a stage musical, and I mean that in the best possible way. "Get Lucky" is a great single and probably the best disco track in decades.

But I found that almost all of the songs I really loved on this album were the collaborations. The few songs that don't feature other artists simply aren't as good as some of Daft Punk's earlier work. "Motherboard" in particular feels like an empty void. It's not bad, just forgettable.

Also, when they do dip back into electronic, it almost feels too familiar. Like, I love the vocoder interlude of "Get Lucky", but it feels very musically derivative of some of the parts of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". Maybe that's part of the point? To show the underlying disco roots of some of their songs? I dunno.

And I'm not saying that Daft Punk have run out of talent. Not even close. I think they just work best when they have a mission. With "Tron: Legacy", they had a narrative to build around. With their collaborative tracks, they had other artists to merge styles with.

To speak in more technological terms, Daft Punk are machines (metaphorically-speaking) and machines work best when implemented by people. If left on their own, they tend to produce the same patterns and are fairly easy to dissect and predict. But while collaborating, they show a very powerful understanding of what their music is capable of and use it to enhance the quality of whatever they're collaborating with without diluting it.

It really does raise this question of the fate of electronic music. What merit does the human element truly have? As much as Daft Punk clearly love technology, they clearly don't want it to replace what they consider to be the soul of music. But are they right?

I certainly think that a lot of artists are abusing technology without fully understanding it, but I do think that there's nothing wrong with throwing out the rulebook and making an entire song through bits and boards. For some reason it all reminds me of this little speech from Battlestar Galactica:

Regardless of the place technology has in the music to come, this album still reminds us of the place music of the past had in influencing it. For that reason alone, I would highly recommend this album, even if it's not something I necessarily love completely from beginning to end. But even saying that, this album has more than enough great music to make it worth the purchase.

Kinectophobia: Xbox One and the End of Privacy

In the wake of Microsoft's disastrous reveal of the Xbox One, there are certainly a lot of things to hate. Not only did they leave out backwards compatibility, they seem bizarrely proud of that fact. The console requires an Internet connection in spite of how much a required online component has kneecapped the launch of several recent games. They appear to be leaving indie developers out in the cold. You don't need me to tell you that the Xbox One looks really dumb and that Microsoft has an uphill battle ahead of them.

But there's one complaint that keeps popping up from both commenters and industry writers that I find a bit... extreme. Or at the very least a bit reactionary.

Specifically, a lot of people are overreacting a little about how the new Kinect is apparently a required component in the Xbox One. It comes with it, it's always on, and the system doesn't function without it.

Now, I actually agree with this criticism for the most part. Requiring Kinect does seem a bit excessive and daunting. The Kinect can be a pain in the ass to set up. If you're just bringing your console over to a friend's house for a party or something, being required to also set up the Kinect might be enough of a reason to leave the behemoth at home. Also, as a Kinect owner myself, I'm curious if the new Kinect has gotten better at detecting people who are sitting down or people of varying body types and shapes. Will people without four limbs be able to use Kinect? The biggest barrier for the Kinect in my opinion is how it seems to work best in very limiting situations: In big, spacious rooms, looking at averagely-proportioned humans standing upright and in full view. So I'm less interested in what new tricks the Kinect can do and more interested in whether or not it can do those tricks under most reasonable circumstances.

But questionable functionality and cumbersome implementation aren't really the reasons why some people appear to be upset about the Kinect requirement. No, some people are merely upset that the Kinect is always on, even if the Xbox One is off, so that it can wake the Xbox One with your verbal commands.

On top of that, the Kinect doesn't just see you with standard IR and RGB cameras anymore. No, it is way more sophisticated now:

People seem to see the always-on Kinect as some kind of Orwellian nightmare.

If you have concerns about Microsoft installing an always-on microphone and camera in your living room, better invest in a veil for the camera and some way of muffling Kinect's "ears." Owners of the next-gen console will need to accept Kinect is watching thee and there's little privacy. [Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq)]

I’m not sure I like the idea of a piece of hardware that’s hooked up in my living room listening to me on an ongoing basis. [Ben Kuchera (PAR)]

And these are both actual journalists who I imagine use an above-average amount of technology in their daily lives. These aren't tin-foil-hat-wearing octogenarians who think that iPhones cause cancer.

Look, I don't have to explain why this particular complaint is more than a little bit paranoid. If the Xbox One is off, it likely won't be able to communicate over the network, so it's not like there will be a direct feed that would be accessible from the Internet for people to spy on you with. It also probably wouldn't be able to store any data to the hard drive to send later. Besides, Microsoft barely has enough time to respond to technical support questions. You think they have the time to perpetually observe Xbox customers, even if it were possible? I can pretty much guarantee that anything the Kinect sees/hears while the console is off is strictly between you and the Kinect.

However, I get the impression that this is more than just concern over what the Kinect sees when it is off. I feel like this stems from a much deeper concern over why Microsoft wants the Kinect to be omnipresent.

Specifically, even if they aren't exactly saying so, I think people are probably more concerned about how this technology might be used while the system is on, not while it is off. They just choose to express that concern in a very limited scope in order to not sound technophobic. Rather than say, "I'm frightened over how invasive Kinect seems to be," they merely say, "I'm not sure why Kinect needs to be on all the time." It's like if you suspect your friend's brother is a drug dealer, but you don't want to come right out and say that without evidence, so instead you just say, "Your brother sure has a lot of cash on him. What does he do for a living again?" You ask a smaller question with weighted implications to get your point across without seeming irrational. But even if that smaller question has a plausible answer, that doesn't do much to change your deeper suspicions.

Honestly though, I wish more of the people who are bothered by Kinect would just come right out and say that the implications of a ubiquitous Kinect make them uncomfortable, because that's actually a pretty reasonable fear, even if there isn't really anything to support it other than speculation. They're nervous that game developers and Microsoft will use the Kinect to basically collect information from the players, even if Kinect is not required for a particular game. A device that can detect the mood and engagement of a player? Their heartbeat? Probably also able to estimate things like age, gender, living arrangements, number of pets? AAA game developers love their metrics and Kinect will allow them to collect metrics from literally everyone who uses their games. If Kinect and the Internet are both required for the console to function, they can know for certain that anyone playing their game on the Xbox One will be visible to the Kinect and that they can collect whatever metrics they like from it, within the limits and parameters set by the law and by the Kinect SDK.

And if you think you'll be able to just put blinders on Kinect, I wouldn't be so sure. After all, it seems like the Xbox One uses Kinect in order to identify and log in specific users, so I wouldn't be surprised if obscuring its vision would cause various gameplay issues. I could be wrong about that, but at the very least, now that developers know that all of the Xbox One owners will have a Kinect, they'll probably start using it more, if only for things like optional voice commands.

Don't freak out too much, though. They probably won't be able to collect actual sounds and images, at least not without explicit permission in one of the EULA's for the game. Your house is private property and it is illegal to record individuals without their permission on their private property. But they really don't need to. They just want the data that Kinect gathers. Images and sounds take space and time, but statistics and metrics are easy to transfer and compile, and you can bet your ass that every marketing department in the industry will want to take advantage of this.

I can imagine the meetings now:

"Our metrics show that 95% of players expressed visual shock and increased heart-rate after the jump scare in the first level, but subsequent jump scares seemed less effective, increasing overall disengagement and only rendering visible shock in 45% of players by the end. Furthermore, our demographic..." yadda yadda yadda. Numbers! So many numbers! And we aren't talking sampling sizes anymore. We're talking everyone. Everyone will have a Kinect, everyone will have an Internet connection, and everyone will be counted. And they don't have to ask you how you feel. They can just read your expression. It might not be 100% accurate, but it'll probably be much more informative than what they rely on currently.

And that's just off the top of my head. Honestly, there's probably no reason why game developers couldn't use the Kinect to know just about everything about their player base, so long as it is something Kinect is capable of determining.

What's more, with Microsoft trying to push the Xbox One as a ubiquitous portal for TV and streaming video, you can bet that cable networks and advertisers will be interested in these metrics too.

To put it simply, Microsoft can't and won't look at you while you play video games in your underwear. However, they will probably know that you play video games in your underwear. They will probably generate spreadsheets and pie charts saying that you and 34,216 other gamers played "Call of Duty: Ghosts" in your underwear, and that those gamers also had a higher than average probability of drinking Pepsi rather than Coca-Cola.

I'm pretty sure that's what people are really terrified about, and I understand that. Privacy and anonymity can be comforting and anything that trespasses that comfort-zone tends to be repulsive. It happens all the time and it's a very human reaction, no matter how comfortable with technology you might be.

Even recently with Google Glass. In Engadget's review of the first released version of the device, they dedicated a whole section to discussing their privacy concerns, specifically with the video recording capabilities:

The point can certainly be made that it's possible to take a picture or video of someone these days without their knowledge, but the situation here is a bit reversed: nobody knows if you're not taking a picture or video of them. This will, at first, result in some good-natured "Are you recording this?" comments in conversations but, as time goes on, as a wearer, you'll notice that people will be acting a little more cautiously around you. [Tim Stevens (Engadget)]

Again, this is a journalist who writes for a website dedicated to news regarding technology and gadgets. This is not a technophobe, and you don't have to be one to find the idea of someone with Google Glass walking into a locker room with the video feed turned on more than a little skeevy.

But this is the world we're moving towards. And we've been moving towards it for generations.

Privacy is a luxury and a privilege, but I think a lot of us actually take it for granted. When something invades our privacy, our displeasure is expected and inherently justified. But why? Why is our privacy so important to us?

Well, that's usually when people start bringing up Orwell and Huxley and Bradbury. If governments and businesses know everything about us and we can't hide anything from them, what's to stop them from controlling us absolutely? And this is perfectly reasonable, but the inherent problem in these fictional dystopias isn't just that the citizens have no privacy, it's that the citizens have less privacy than the ones in charge. Big Brother sees all from the shadows, but if Big Brother is as exposed to the citizens as the citizens are to Big Brother, suddenly the dynamic shifts.

The future we are moving towards isn't a future where the government or the corporations know everything about us. It's a future where everybody knows everything about everyone. My congressman might be able to see my embarrassing Facebook photos, but Congressman Weiner will never live down his infamous crotch-tweet. Do you think Orwell imagined a world where a picture of Big Brother's erection would be immortalized in the public consciousness? Our future is a future where privacy isn't a luxury possessed by the ruling class, but a luxury possessed only by those who refuse to embrace technological advancement. If you don't want people with Google Glass to record you in the locker room, you'll either have to get them to take them off or you'll have to somehow change the way they function in certain rooms. Either way, the only way to protect your privacy is to find some way to prevent this technology from being used. And if the technology becomes more and more popular, that might get harder and harder to do.

Sure, we might create laws that make it illegal to wear AR glasses in areas with specific designations. But what happens when it becomes harder and harder to distinguish between AR glasses and normal glasses? What if they develop AR contact lenses? What if everyone starts using AR glasses? How do you enforce that sort of thing? Do you turn all locker rooms and bathrooms into dead zones that scramble all wireless communication? Would people be willing to stop using their mobile devices in the bathroom if it meant knowing that they wouldn't be recorded by someone with AR glasses? Would the next generation be willing to? Would the generation after that?

Similarly, we might create laws that say that companies can only gather metrics based on information gathered by Kinect with the express permission of the owner of Kinect, but how many of us actually read EULAs? And what if I agree to an EULA but my Kinect gathers metrics about my roommate who never agreed to anything? How would Kinect be able to distinguish between us? Would our government even care enough or understand technology enough to try and pass this sort of law? Would any judicial body care enough to enforce it?

This is why I think that even if we initially resist these sorts of technological advancement, we won't be able to stop the tide from coming in eventually.

In the course of history, when has new technology ever been completely resisted and done away with? When have we ever invented something and then decided that we shouldn't have it, and thus outlawed it and gone back to the way things were before? Have we ever done that? We invented a weapons defense system that can literally kill the entire planet, and as much as we all seem to want to, we cannot do away with it.

The technology in Kinect is simply too useful not to be used. We can and should do everything in our power to prevent it from being abused, but this technology will be used, and it will probably be used in the earliest of launch titles.

If this scares you, don't worry. This future without privacy won't come quickly. But it will come, generation by generation. My generation was the one that discovered Facebook, and when it became ubiquitous, we feared for our privacy. But we didn't stop using it. Even so, we coined terms like Facebook-stalking, customized our settings so that only our most trusted friends could see our personal information, and immediately started freaking out when our parents and employers started friending us.

In stark contrast, the younger generation seems to have a different relationship with Facebook. They seem to generally like the idea of having all of their information out there for the world to see. They don't care about seeming clean-cut or particularly intelligent. They are much less filtered and seem to embrace it. Maybe that will change as they grow older, but I think it may prove to be a major generational difference.

Really, this is the way it has always been. With each new generation, clothes become skimpier, sex becomes wilder, words become shorter, and lines become blurrier. "Kids today" will always disregard the things we always just assumed were universally sacred because they approach the world without our preconceptions.

While you and I might feel that the concept of a camera in our bedroom or our bathroom to be terrifying and violating, I can't guarantee that the next generation will feel the same way, particularly if that's the world they grow up in. "So what if there's a camera in my bedroom? There are cameras everywhere!"

And frankly, there are parts of this somewhat troubling future that I find intriguing, exciting even. Yes, Microsoft and EA will probably know far more about their customers than ever before, but you know something? I expect they'll probably be surprised at what they learn. What they might have always assumed was conventional wisdom about their audience will probably prove inaccurate. I expect a lot of executives will sit around a table, look at charts and be surprised at how many gamers are women, or African-American, or middle-aged, or physically disabled. With this wealth of information, they'll know exactly what their audience is like without having to assume. They'll know what their audience responds to, both positively and negatively, without us having to write incredibly overwrought diatribes on our blogs that they'll never see. And while some people find this creepy, I think that it's exactly what the industry needs right now: A better understanding of the diversity of its audience.

Too much of the industry is focused on a very specific kind of gamer within a very conventional demographic, and it's been hard to change that because there's no reliable way for a game developer to know what kind of people are buying games these days. They bank on the same tired and out-dated demographics because anything else involves too much risk. They don't want to target niche demographics because they don't know enough about them.

And game developers are already using a lot of metrics in their games and learning things they might not have initially expected. For example, BioWare tends to collect metrics based on what sort of relationships their players choose in their RPGs. This led them to implementing a lot more LGBT options in these games without feeling the need to apologize to "offended" straight male gamers. To quote:

We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant… [David Gaider (BioWare)]

This is the sort of thing that I like. Gaming will no longer be represented exclusively by idiots and 17-year-old white boys who think that their money is worth more than the money of the people they supposedly outnumber. Each gamer's voice will be heard and hopefully represented in turn, not out of compassion, but out of the same capitalistic greed that foolishly ignored them in the first place.

I know a lot of people take issue with the idea of targeted advertising. Even Microsoft itself has used this to try and bash Google in a painfully stupid advertisement for Outlook:

Obviously there is no creepy, blue-faced individual at Google who goes through all of your e-mails and sends you ads, like this video implies. It's all done anonymously through computers and algorithms.

But still! It's creepy! It's an invasion of privacy!

Maybe so, but you know what? Advertisements are a lot less annoying when they're for products I actually want. And it also makes them more effective, which makes them more profitable for the people using them, which means people who rely on advertising for a living (basically anyone who makes a living on web-based content) get paid better. And Google, who make almost all of their billions of dollars through advertising, use their capital to also fund innovative research and development that benefits the world on a daily basis. You may not like Google, but few could imagine an Internet without them.

A lot of us have been around since the Internet first exploded in popularity, and part of what we tend to find appealing (or at least reassuring) is anonymity. To us, anonymity is an intrinsic part of the Internet, for good or ill. But I'm here to tell you that it probably won't be that way forever.

That might be disturbing to think about, but there's a positive side to it as well. As we become more and more visible on an individual level, each and every one of us has a more significant impact on the world we inhabit. Rather than make us all homogenous, we'll actually become more distinct. More varied. Each voice will be heard and processed and added to the pie chart. And most of us won't even notice the difference.

Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? It will probably be both. Technology is inherently neutral and people are capable of both good and bad. All we can do is try and minimize the bad without sacrificing too much of the good.

So sure, let's all be skeptical. Let's all be critical. Let's find out exactly what Kinect will be used for. But let's also understand that just because something crosses a line, it doesn't necessarily follow that the line was important. And let's also understand that caution and hesitation is not always the same thing as wisdom.

Shadow of the Eternals: Why It Deserves a Chance (UPDATED)

Since I have a bad habit of burying the lead in my blog posts, I'm just going to come right out and say what my intended goal is here. There is a Kickstarter for "Shadow of the Eternals", a spiritual successor to "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem". A lot of people are unwilling to give it their support for reasons I'll delve into here. While I think they have some merit in their skepticism (again, I'll get into that), I ultimately think that if you've ever considered yourself a fan of "Eternal Darkness", H.P. Lovecraft, or video games in general, you owe it to yourself to chip in $5. It's only $5, it gives you access to the first episode of the game, and if it comes out and you hate it, then go ahead and write this project off. Even if I don't convince you to give Precursor Games the benefit of the doubt by the end of this blog post, I can't imagine that $5 is really all that much to ask, even for a company that you might not have any faith in. Think of all of the crap you spend $5 on everyday. Can you tell me the possibility of another "Eternal Darkness" game, even if you believe the possibility is slight, is worth less than that?

Anyway, let's get this show on the road.

Whenever anybody ever talks about the best games developed for the Nintendo GameCube, almost everyone always jumps to "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem" as their #1 choice. For a system that was largely written off as "just for kids" or a vehicle for sub-par third-party titles, "Eternal Darkness" stood as a shining example of the opposite. A thrilling horror title with a complex, mature plot developed by Silicon Knights. It was heavily-steeped in the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, it had a unique and interesting magic system, a complex meta-narrative, and a brilliant system of demonstrating the loss of sanity within the game by messing with the player.

For years, gamers have begged for a sequel to the game, and while Silicon Knights often seemed interested in developing one, it never came to fruition.

However, earlier this month, a new company primarily composed of previous Silicon Knights employees called Precursor Games announced its intentions to crowd-fund a game called "Shadow of the Eternals", a spiritual successor to "Eternal Darkness".

Now, given the still-popular nature of crowd-funding in the gaming industry, and given the massive cult following of "Eternal Darkness", one would imagine that even with the game's lofty goal of roughly $1.5 million, it would achieve funding within no time at all. After all, Double Fine achieved twice that amount with their Kickstarter and they didn't even know anything about the game they were fundraising, simply that they wanted to make an adventure game.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that this game had raised only a few tens of thousands of dollars, and even at this point, about two weeks later, it hasn't even raised one quarter of its intended goal. As someone who often follows Kickstarter projects, I know that most projects receive the highest volume of donations at the beginning and at the end of the fundraising period.

At first I thought the reason was because the project was being funded through PayPal rather than Kickstarter, but for nearly a week the project has had a Kickstarter page and it has only managed to raise about $75 thousand. Something is clearly wrong.

Why People Are Skeptical

I couldn't help but wonder why. Why was a game that everyone wanted getting so little support? Was it because the intended goal was too high or because the company itself was a new start-up comprised of employees from the now-defunct Silicon Knights? Well, that seemed insufficient since the recent Kickstarter for "Shroud of the Avatar", the successor to the "Ultima" series, also had a high target goal and was being developed by a new, unproven company. Was it because Silicon Knights put out two very crappy games, "Too Human" and "X-Men: Destiny", forever smearing their reputation? Well, again, before shutting down, Origin put out the embarrassing "Ultima IX: Ascension" before floundering for another 5 years solely surviving on the revenue from "Ultima Online", one of the first majorly popular MMORPGs ever (and actually the first one I ever played). Richard "Lord British" Garriott attempted to release another MMO called "Tabula Rasa" that was critically middling and shut down two years later due to lack of interest. None of this apparently deterred the loyalty of "Ultima" fans who doubled the project's intended goal.

So what made this game so special? In an age where gamers will willingly crowd-fund games and gaming hardware with dubious prospects, what about "Shadow of the Eternals" went over the line?

Well, first of all, "Too Human" and "X-Men: Destiny" were very recent failures, at least comparatively. Also, while "Too Human" can probably be compared to "Ultima IX" and "Duke Nukem Forever" as a game with high ambition that got continually shifted between teams, platforms, and engines so many times that the only possible result was miserable failure, "X-Men: Destiny" shared a different, more complicated fate.

Recently detailed in an exposé published by Kotaku, it is said by a number of anonymous sources that Silicon Knights was suffering under shady mismanagement at the hands of Denis Dyack, the creative force behind "Eternal Darkness" and "Blood Omen" as well as the founder and CEO of Silicon Knights. As shown in the video above, Dyack is also an executive at the new Precursor Games.

While I'd encourage everyone read the article in full, I'll summarize briefly for people who don't have time to read it. Essentially, the impression given is that Denis Dyack was having Silicon Knights develop "X-Men: Destiny" solely for the financial support from Activision, secretly siphoning off resources to develop a sequel to "Eternal Darkness" and putting very little effort into actually developing XMD. It would appear that Dyack was hoping that Activision would cave and give them more time and money when faced with a sub-par product and a looming deadline. However, Activision was more interested in shipping the game, regardless of whatever state it was in, and by attaching the Silicon Knights brand to the game in plain view, they essentially made it clear that if SK was going to deliberately half-ass the game, they'd be the ones to suffer for it.

In a desperate attempt to salvage the game and their reputation, the company worked their developers to the bone, put the work for ED2 on hold, and drove a significant amount of their staff out of the company. They discredited a number of those employees, giving them only a "Special Thanks" credit on the game itself. In the end, the game was universally derided and was the last game SK would develop.

Within that exposé, we get a brief glimpse of how far SK got on ED2 before Activision forced them to abandon it:

Yet despite this reportedly split effort, the ED2 demo also failed to come together in a satisfying way, sources said. "The farthest they got with it when I left SK was, literally, one two-level church interior," says one former employee. "It was really bad, as I recall. It took the side-team a long time to even get that far. Bad tech, combined with a team composed of people who had not shipped a title since Metal Gear really hurt that demo. Other than that, I can't explain why things went so poorly for them [except that] a lot of key people responsible for the original Eternal Darkness are long gone."

So when Precursor Games released an 8-minute gameplay demo of "Shadow of the Eternals", a lot of eyebrows were raised regarding the content.

As you can see, the "gameplay" consists largely of a character walking very slowly through a two-level church interior, interacting with a very limited variety of objects and characters, before reaching a horrifying hell dimension and collapsing. While everything looks very shiny, it comes off as a video that merely shows off the game's assets without showing any combat.

On top of that, there was the legal battle regarding Silicon Knights and Epic Games over the Unreal Engine. Towards the end of the very troubled development of "Too Human", it was decided that the game would be redesigned to work in the bleeding-edge Unreal Engine 3. However, difficulties with the early build and lackluster support for the official release build caused a number of development issues that further impeded the development of the game, causing Dyack to deprive Epic of their royalties and sue them for their failed support. Epic counter-sued and eventually bled Silicon Knights dry.

So to the majority of the gaming community, here is what is largely believed to be going on:

Denis Dyack went crazy. Drunk with power, he turned "Too Human" into a boondoggle that left his company in danger. Desperate for money, he threw together a smoke-and-mirrors demo to court Activision into letting them develop "X-Men: Destiny" solely to keep the company afloat long enough to develop "Eternal Darkness 2", which he hoped would save the company. After the series of failures regarding XMD and the suit with Epic Games, Dyack faced a large number of financial issues and no one in the industry would bail his company out, so he started a new shell company, hopped onto the crowd-funding bandwagon, and is now attempting to extort money from the gaming community by showing them a glossied-up version of the crappy demo his team developed years earlier and promising a sequel they'd been wanting for years, when in reality, Dyack is just trying to rob his fans of money to get him out of his financial situation.

Given the evidence that has been made public, and how Dyack is generally not big on making public statements about the nitty-gritty of his company's inner-workings, it's not surprising why people are skeptical.

However, even knowing all of this, I still decided to back "Shadow of the Eternals". Why? Well that's what I'm here to write about.

Dyack Is Not the CEO

Despite being the founder, President, and CEO of Silicon Knights, Denis Dyack is not the CEO of Precursor Games. He fulfills the role of "Chief Creative Officer". The role of CEO actually falls on a guy called Paul Caporicci, who used to act as a major developer and programmer for Silicon Knights.

As I'm sure many of you are eager to point out, he's still a former Silicon Knights employee and therefore his presence supports the belief that this is just the same company with a new paint job. Well, there's one rather noticeable hitch in that theory.

Remember earlier how I said that during SK's disastrous push on "X-Men: Destiny", a lot of employees were laid off or left voluntarily and were summarily discredited from the game, mentioned only in the "Special Thanks" section? Well, one such individual was Paul Caporicci.

That's right. One of the guys who was fed up with the horrible mismanagement of Silicon Knights is the guy with supreme control over this company and this game in question.

In his own words in a recent statement:

"I can't comment on Silicon Knights. I can only comment on me. I was laid off...I was really disappointed and I just wanted to turn that into a positive, so I reached out to other people to see if they're interested in doing a brand-new company, and it kind of snowballed from there."

So there you go. This isn't some yes-man sock-puppet that will bend to Dyack's every whim. He clearly is the one who approached Dyack and Dyack is pretty clearly the one answering to him.

More importantly, almost all of the negative things I can say from what I've learned about Dyack is that he was very bad at managing his business. He wanted to focus on his pet projects and his own creative work and disregarded the business aspect of it as the unpleasant side that he had to do to make it possible. He half-assed it as much as possible because it's not what he wanted to do.

But it should be said that Dyack has always been talented. Even in what I've glimpsed from "Too Human", the concepts of the world and the gameplay were very good in theory, but executed with staggering incompetence.

So really, making him Chief Creative Officer is the perfect role for him. He can focus on thinking in broad strokes and leave the programming and business side to people who are actually interested in those aspects.

This Is Something Precursor (and Dyack) Clearly Care About

Another part from the "X-Men: Destiny" story that really stuck out to me was how Dyack was essentially scamming Activision to get "Eternal Darkness 2" made.

While this is obviously a bad way to run a business, I can sort of understand what Dyack was thinking. Having burned his bridges with Nintendo and after failing to make "Too Human" a success, really the only way they could have managed to make ED2 a reality was to make a demo to show to publishers. Since this was before crowd-funding was a thing, Dyack likely took any high-paying job that his studio could get, and so he landed XMD. He used the funding to produce an unfinished ED2 demo before being forced to abandon it to do the thing he was being paid to do.

Aside from painting a very unflattering picture of Dyack, it does make one thing very clear: He REALLY REALLY wants to make another "Eternal Darkness" game. He wants to make it so badly that he basically extorted money out of Activision to make it happen. So badly that even after his public humiliation at seeing his life work crushed by his own hubris, he was still willing to come crawling back to a man he severed ties with in order to make this project happen.

He knows there is an audience waiting for this game, so he sees this as the only way he can make it happen, particularly now that his own company is pretty much comatose. All of the people worth a damn had left and without the ability to make any revenue from "Too Human" and "X-Men: Destiny" after losing the lawsuit, he basically had no choice left but to go through Precursor Games and crowd-funding.

That may not seem like a good thing, but it means that the guy is humbled and desperate. If the rumors of his unrealistic approach to development are true, he doesn't have the power or the means to really pull that shit this time around. They have no publisher to extort. No ultimate authority. If I were him, I'd count myself lucky that I was being given this chance at all.

While I can't say with certainty that the game will ship in a satisfactory state if fully-funded (that possibility always exists in crowd-funded products), I have little doubt in my mind that the people at Precursor Games, Dyack included, are not interested in taking our money and running. They desperately want to make this game and have wanted to make it for years, and they know that if they fail, they basically will have nowhere left to turn.

This Is The Only Way We'll Ever Get Another Eternal Darkness Game

This is probably the biggest reason I'm still willing to put my money down on this game, even considering Dyack's checkered history. The fact remains that this team produced a number of very good games, including the original "Eternal Darkness". These people understand the game better than anyone and are probably the only ones truly equipped to make it. We cannot change the past. Dyack will always have done a crappy job in managing Silicon Knights. But if we want another "Eternal Darkness" game, that's something we're going to have to forgive, even if we never let him forget it.

More importantly, this is a company that is essentially rebuilding from the ground up. It's been suggested that people might be more willing to support this game if the team proved itself with a different title first. Well, that's pretty much the strategy that Crystal Dynamics took with "Too Human" and "X-Men: Destiny". They tried to establish new relationships with publishers in order to get enough capital and interest to develop projects they were passionate about and they failed. "Too Human" was what they hoped would be a new major franchise that would get them back in the black and prove themselves to Microsoft, but for a number of reasons, it was a non-starter. In the case of "X-Men: Destiny", the main reason they failed was because at the time (and to this day), the only game they were interested in making was "Eternal Darkness 2". If we tell them to make a different game first to earn our trust, it will inevitably turn out bad because it's not the game they want to make. And even if it was good, it probably wouldn't be successful enough to support a game as ambitious as "Shadow of the Eternals". There's no sense in them beating around the bush. This is the game they want to make, and this is the game we want to play, so this is the game they are pitching us.

While it's certainly possible that Nintendo would be interested in giving the license to some other team, and they could conceivably do it well, I frankly don't want to play that game. At best, a fan developing a successor to a franchise they had no hand in developing is like a chef trying to replicate a dish they've only tasted. They may be able to make something similar enough to satisfy fans, but it will not have the insight necessary to take it in new and interesting directions. Only Dyack and company can do that.

More importantly, while "Eternal Darkness" was critically successful and has a dedicated following, it was not exactly a big seller. The GameCube didn't have a major adult audience and wasn't a big seller to begin with. It is one reason why Silicon Knights eventually dissolved its relationship with Nintendo and was picked up by Microsoft, much in the same way Rareware did (and then subsequently turned out terrible games).

If Nintendo did find a developer interested in making another "Eternal Darkness" game, they would probably attempt to give it a broader appeal to attract a wider audience than the original game. Even if the developer did have interesting ideas, Nintendo would probably be very creatively limiting.

Silicon Knights is dead, and that's probably a good thing. What we have is Precursor Games and they are actively interested in continuing this franchise. All they need is additional support from the people who want it.

I get that people are skeptical, and that's perfectly reasonable. But honestly, this is probably the only way we'll ever get another "Eternal Darkness" game. If it fails to get funding, then we'll likely never even get the chance to see if it might have been. If it gets its funding and still fails to get off the ground, then Precursor will be obligated to reimburse the backers and we'll know for certain that this team is no longer capable of making decent games.

But if it gets funding and Precursor fulfills its promises, then we'll have exactly what fans of "Eternal Darkness" have always wanted. To me, that possibility is more than worth the risk.

Am I entirely convinced? No, not really. Like many of you, that demo doesn't inspire a lot of faith in me and is pretty clearly just smoke and mirrors. But they are very, very pretty smoke and mirrors, and if this demo is based on 5-year-old work, they managed to polish that turd to a mirror shine with the CryEngine. To me, that shows at least some level of competence and understanding of the engine they're working with. If they could take 5-year-old assets and make them into that with next to no substantial funding, I'd say they've got something worth investing in. It's certainly more than what Double Fine gave us when we supported their Kickstarter. They didn't have concept art, a title, or even a premise. Yet we gave them more money than they knew what to do with. The Ouya's potential was questionable and the company had little to support its high ambitions, yet they received overwhelming support and have generally produced exactly what they said they'd give us. Kickstarter gave us "FTL", which turned out to be an excellent title.

Of course there's risk involved here. Possibly more than usual. But this is "Eternal Darkness". I'm willing to potentially lose $25 just for one last shot at seeing it. Hell, can't you guys even throw down $5? Then you get to play the first episode of the game and if it fails your expectations, you've earned the right to say, "I told you so" and it only cost you about the price of a McDonald's breakfast.

I can't say for certain that Dyack deserves another chance and I can't say for certain that Precursor Games deserves a chance. But it should go without saying that this property deserves this chance. In an industry where survival horror is all but forgotten, I think that if nothing else, it's important for us to show that even if the developers cannot inspire a terribly large amount of confidence, the desire to play another "Eternal Darkness" is enough to earn the slightest bit of our attention.

UPDATE: It seems that Precursor has finally come out to address (some of) the controversy:

While I'm not sure I necessarily believe him (at least not regarding everything), the mere act of him coming out and making a statement pretty much proves that he's not the guy in charge and that he's capable of taking orders. While I doubt this video will convince many people that the Kotaku article is fictional, I hope it will at least convince people that Precursor is not simply a shell company invented and controlled by Dyack.

That said, the fact that these anonymous sources apparently described the ED2 demo to a tee suggests to me that the anonymous sources were probably actual ex-employees. I wouldn't be surprised if they provided the Kotaku writer with information they heard rather than things they themselves experienced, but I imagine not all of the negative things they brought up were completely fictional.

Comic Book Adaptation: Betrayal and Fidelity

First things first, this post involves MAJOR SPOILERS for "Iron Man 3". This isn't a review of "Iron Man 3" mostly because I don't really think writing a review of "Iron Man 3" would be much fun. It was a rather good film, but it didn't fill me with an overabundance of glee or excitement as I left the theater, not necessarily because of any specific failings, but because it was altogether a rather nice, self-contained film without any major lingering plot threads or big questions that are meant to resonate.

But the reason I bring up "Iron Man 3" and the reason I'm going to spoil it big time is because there's a twist in the film regarding one of the characters that is a very substantial deviation from comic book canon, and it has a lot of comic book fans up in arms. Really, that's what I'm here to talk about today.

When is it OK for a movie or TV show based on a comic book to alter the source material and when is it unnecessary?

OK, here we go. SPOILER time.

New Who Reviews - "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" (And Everything Else Before It)

Yeah, I haven't done one of these for a while, but the reason (other than the fact that I've been blogging less in general) is mostly that I didn't really have much to say about the episodes since "Asylum of the Daleks".

To be perfectly honest, the first half of Series 7 was a bit of a waste in my opinion.

"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" was fun, but mostly in a gimmicky way.

"A Town Called Mercy" was great, but I'm not going to lie, Tennant was way better than Smith at showing the ruthless, merciless of the Doctor. When Tennant did a face-heel turn, it felt surprising, but scarily believable. Like when your funny friend suddenly gets very serious and angry. Smith sometimes has a hard time being believably cold.

"The Power of Three" had an excellent build-up, but a really underwhelming payoff and a really doofy last line. That said, I liked how it forced the Doctor to stay in one place for a long time and showed how incredibly difficult that was for him. It was an interesting exploration of his character that hadn't really been explored before.

Finally, we reached "The Angels Take Manhattan" and while I personally think it was a satisfying conclusion for Amy and Rory, I also think it was one of Moffat's weakest episodes to date, mostly because paradoxes almost always make a terrible plot-device in Doctor Who, especially when you never establish their mechanics before they become important. In one episode, a paradox just releases a giant reality-destroying creature, in another episode a paradox would blow a hole in the space-time continuum the size of Belgium, and in this episode, a paradox allows them to defeat the weeping angels and jettison themselves back to their original time. See? Not terribly consistent.

Since the Christmas special, I find I have to keep reminding myself that all those episodes were part of the same series. It really doesn't feel that way to me. "The Snowmen" and the episodes since then have all felt like their own separate series. The only thread connecting them is Clara's appearance in "Asylum of the Daleks", but the rest of the first half just felt like Amy and Rory's parade of death. Now that they're gone, the series finally seems to have taken shape and feels more distinct.

"The Snowmen" wasn't particularly memorable, but I love Vastra, Jenny, and Strax, and I was pretty OK with Clara's reappearance. I think that the introduction of the Great Intelligence is promising, but more on that later.

"The Bells of St. John" was pretty good and as an IT person, I appreciated a show warning the masses about unsecured WiFi networks. It was plotted rather well and continued the Great Intelligence thing, which made me happy. Again, more on that later.

"The Rings of Akhaten" was admittedly rather hokey and cliche and sickeningly sweet, but I honestly really liked it because it felt so refreshing to have an episode that was more interested in sentiment than in acting clever.

"Cold War" was OK, but "Dalek" from the first series did something very similar far better.

"Hide" was excellent and like "Rings" (which was written by the same person) it felt very different from other recent "Doctor Who" stories. It had a very solid emotional foundation that has often been ignored since Moffat took over.

I don't think I really noticed how cold and generally over-intellectual "Doctor Who" had gotten since RTD left, but I think that's partially because RTD's run quickly became overly-emotional and almost anti-intellectual, so I was happy to change gears.

Still, it's been a few years now and it's good to see that Moffat's trying to mix things up a bit.

Which brings me to "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS".

Let me just say that I don't love this episode. I like it, but there are parts I really dislike. The subplot regarding the brothers seemed pretty forced. Why exactly did the Doctor need their help? It seems like all they did was create more conflict. I liked that we got to see more of the TARDIS, though it seems like the only times we get to see the inner workings of the TARDIS is when we're running through it at top-speed and can only have enough time to throw in one or two in-jokes for the fans. Beyond that, it was a fun episode, although I still feel like Clara hasn't established much of an identity for herself yet, probably because her identity is a very critical plot-point, which is potentially great for later on, but kind of sacrifices a certain level of investment in the here and now.

Still, the reason this episode made me feel like blogging about "Doctor Who" again is because it made me realize something about this second half of Series 7 that kind of defines its current direction.

You see, up until now, RTD and Moffat had been more than content to completely ignore Old Who. Oh sure, they might bring in a well-known adversary every season or so, but the Doctor in New Who has generally been very tight-lipped about his old escapades. He might bring up the fact that he had children, but he would be very vague and just give silent looks whenever the subject was brought up.

To get to the point, RTD and Moffat were always afraid of alienating new fans by referencing material they know next to nothing about. If they were going to bring in something from Old Who, it would be rebooted and re-contextualized to the point where it might as well be completely new. This was something they more or less admitted to, by the way. They intentionally didn't want to dig too deep into the recesses of the Doctor's ancient history because they were more interested in telling their own stories and creating their own monsters.

And that's fine, really, but one thing Old Who fans are often quick to point out is that it often seems like anything "new" they create tends to have something almost exactly like it from the already established and obscenely overly-documented canon. The sliver of effort required to take an idea and fold it into the vast well of canonical material would generally have been worth it just to throw in a little fan-service.

However, starting with "The Snowmen", the show has taken a very interesting shift towards acknowledging Old Who in almost every episode.

"The Snowmen" and "The Bells of St. John" both involve the Great Intelligence, a lesser-known villain from Old Who during the Troughton era, and he appears to be the Big Bad for the remainder of this series. In "The Rings of Akhaten", the Doctor openly and freely states that he had a granddaughter that he used to travel with, something he had always danced around in New Who. In "Cold War" we see the return of the Ice Warriors, another monster from the Troughton era (with some additional appearances in the Pertwee era). While "Hide" doesn't incorporate any direct references, its general tone and style feel incredibly different from almost any other episode in New Who, though I wouldn't say it's particularly Old Who-feeling either.

And in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS", we have references galore, mostly through little artifacts scattered about and ghostly voices of previous doctors and companions.

More importantly, the Doctor himself feels older. From Series 5 through the mid-point in the current series, Smith's Doctor has been very bouncy and excitable. He felt surprisingly wise, but still very spry and adventurous. After the loss of Amy and Rory, however, he became a lot more crotchety. Not quite in the same way as Eccleston's Doctor. Honestly, he seems very reminiscent of Hartnell's Doctor. Deliberate, a little grouchy, a bit obstinate, and just plain old. For the youngest actor to ever play the Doctor, I don't think anyone else has ever made the character feel quite as ancient as Smith has during these past few episodes.

There's no reason to ask why there's been a sudden fondness for the good old days. We all know that this is the year of the 50th Anniversary of "Doctor Who". We have an episode bringing back the Cybermen, a finale supposedly revealing the name of the Doctor, and a special somehow bringing back Rose Tyler and Handy (the half-human Doctor clone regenerated from his hand).

Still, I find this shift in direction fairly promising. Even if the episodes haven't been terribly excellent, if there's some master plan at work, it could really pay off in a big way, particularly for some jaded old fans.

That said, I also was willing to give Moffat some rope during Series 6. His first episode was stellar, but hinged on the promise that the Doctor would die, which was one hell of a pickle that Moffat wrote himself into. I truly believed that he had already worked out his plan, but when the series ended, it was relatively clear that Moffat had no idea how he was going to write his way out of it, and so the end was a pretty massive disappointment, especially since the supposed death of the Doctor has been in no way consistent with his behavior in Series 7.

So it's entirely plausible (and even probable) that Moffat set himself up to reveal the true name of the Doctor with no real plan on how exactly he was going to handle it. I fully expect him to cop out at the end or give us something massively unsatisfying.

Then again, it's important to note that the identity of the Doctor is the one plot point that Moffat has had brewing since "Girl in the Fireplace" in Series 2. In that episode, Madame de Pompadour reads his mind and remarks on how he's hiding something behind his name. Then in Series 4's "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", we find out that River Song knows his name and that there's only one reason she would. Much later on when the Doctor marries River, he supposedly tells her his name, but he actually just gave her a clue to make it clear that he would survive her attempted murder. Now it's clear that "Doctor Who?" is apparently the first question ever asked in the history of the universe and that its answer is somehow very dangerous. I would not be surprised if the identity of the Doctor is something that Moffat had spent a lot of time pondering as a life-long fan and eventually thought of an answer that excited and satisfied him enough to make a part of his own head-canon, and once he started getting brought in to write more and more for the show, he started leaving in bread crumbs just in case he ever got the opportunity to make it actually happen. Once he got the opportunity to act as show-runner, he decided that this would be his claim to fame and that he would dedicate his entire run to build up to the moment when he would finally reveal the Doctor's name and blow all our minds.

Or he's just making this shit up as he goes along.

I guess we'll find out in a few more weeks.

The Anti-Popularity of Superman

It's common for people to dislike something that is typically perceived as popular simply because they feel that its popularity is disproportionate to how cool the thing actually is. These sorts of things can sometimes even have a bizarre sort of anti-popularity, where it almost seems more common to dislike it than to actually earnestly like it, yet it still remains fixed in popular culture in spite of this. Pop music, reality TV, Tom Cruise... all of these things that apparently a lot of people really like, but we often find ourselves wondering where these people are, because it generally seems like more people make fun of them than actually enjoy them.

Probably one of the most well-known examples of this kind of anti-popularity is Superman.

Everyone says Superman is this big iconic superhero, possibly the most popular superhero of all-time, but it's incredibly rare -- especially among actual comic book fans -- to find people who actually give a shit about him.

More often than not, people say he doesn't deserve his notoriety. That he's too boring because he has no internal conflict, no serious weakness, and he's completely overpowered. With the exception of Lex Luthor and MAYBE Zod, his rogues gallery is mostly unknown to the general public. He's just completely uninteresting when compared to heroes with less power and more personality.

And while it's rare to find people who are genuinely fans of Superman, he still somehow dominates the public consciousness. Some say it's because he was the first of his kind, that it's because he's been around for so long, or that it's because he's basically the point of reference that we judge all other superheroes on. Superman is the default and all other superheroes are essentially tweaks on his general heroic persona.

In that light, I guess it's not surprising that Warner Bros. often has a hard time making Superman movies. On the one hand, everyone knows who he is, so brand recognition is through the roof, but on the other hand, apparently no one really likes him so they often try to redefine his persona to be more accessible to general audiences. Long story short, things often dissolve into executives trying to get Superman to wear black leather.

But seeing as today is the 75th anniversary of Action Comics #1 and how the pretty cool-looking new trailer for "The Man of Steel" just came out...

...I thought this might be a good time to share my feelings on Superman.

To get right to the point, I think Superman is way more interesting than most people give him credit for. No, he isn't interesting for the same reasons that Batman or Spider-Man are interesting. He's far too powerful to be interesting in those ways, which is probably why so many writers have a hard time with him. They focus too much on trying to disempower Superman in order to get him to fit into the mold of other superhero movies.

But Superman is an empowerment fantasy through-and-through. Forcing him to be weak through kryptonite or putting Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane in danger often comes off as hackneyed. There's no way to make him interestingly disempowered.

Those kinds of stories are what movies like "Iron Man", "Captain America: The First Avenger", and "The Dark Knight" are for. Stories of (mostly) ordinary human beings discovering what is exceptional about themselves and using it to benefit the world they live in. They struggle with personal problems and have most of the same weaknesses we do. They don't need a glowing rock or an imperiled loved one to be interesting. They are inherently interesting because they are like us.

Superman is not like us. Superman cannot be like us. Superman will never be like us. Giving him kryptonite doesn't make him seem more vulnerable, it just puts the plot on pause until the kryptonite goes away. Putting his loved ones in danger just disempowers and reduces his supporting cast.

But really, Superman's limitless power isn't actually the biggest problem with his character. Plenty of superheroes are overpowered simply because audiences believe they are never truly in danger. Batman always has a plan and a gadget, Spider-Man has his spider-sense, Wolverine has a healing factor. Even if a character does die, it probably won't last for very long.

No, the sticking point most people have with Superman is that he's a boy scout. That he's lawful stupid.

And frankly, that's kind of understandable. We as human beings always bend the rules once in a while during exceptional circumstances, so when we see Superman let Lex Luthor live for the billionth time, we wonder how much trouble he would save if he made an exception just this once. That with all his power, he was wasting his potential behind moral black-and-white bullshit that few people can honestly relate to.

But that's exactly what makes Superman interesting. While most superheroes are limited in their power and devote their lives to doing everything they possibly can within the realms of their power, Superman has the opposite problem. This man can protect Metropolis, the USA, the entire planet, and even planets in other galaxies, all while still holding a steady job as a reporter. He has no limits, so he has to define those limits for himself.

He lives in a world made of cardboard, controlled by ants. If he wanted to, he could crush all of us and rule as a king and say he did it for the good of mankind. And in fact, in many stories, he does exactly that.

If Superman decides that just this one time, he'll kill Lex Luthor because he's proven to be a threat and that he can never change, then it forces him to second-guess every decision he's ever made. Why not kill ALL the supervillains? Why stop at supervillains? Why let corrupt governments exist? Why let any governments exist?

Superman has to live every day consciously deciding what he can and cannot do with his unlimited power, and his faith in humanity is so strong that he refuses to let himself be anything more than a beacon of hope for these people.

Superman isn't just an empowerment fantasy. He's a constant reminder that those with power don't merely have a responsibility to use their power for good; they have a responsibility to understand what "good" truly means. Many of us wish we have the power of superheroes, but heroes like Superman remind us what we want that power for.

I think that's why Superman tends to resonate more with the underprivileged, particularly during times of crisis. While a lot of the time we indulge in empowerment fantasies because we think it would be cool to beat up bad guys and fly around the city, we are also attracted to empowerment fantasies because many of us thirst for people with power who hold themselves to a higher standard, and we like to believe that such a person exists in all of us.

In a way, Superman reminds me of the late Mr. Rogers.

Fred Rogers was not exactly the most interesting person in the world, or at least not the most entertaining. I was always more of a Sesame Street and Nickelodeon kid, myself. Mr. Rogers was just a little too slow-paced for my hyperactive brain. A little too consistent. After all, the man was kind of terrifying in how perfect he was. He never lost his temper, always stood up for what he believed in, wore the same damn outfit every day, and never once complained... Legend has it that he always maintained the exact weight of 143 lbs. simply because he really liked how that arrangement of numbers matched the number of letters in each word of the phrase "I love you". He paved the way for fair use laws and convinced cold-hearted politicians to fund PBS by appealing to their better nature. This man probably could have ended wars with a stern letter. So while "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" may not have been everyone's favorite TV show (and in fact many of us might have made fun of how corny it was), pretty much everyone agreed that Mr. Rogers was basically a saint. He held himself to a high standard because he cared so much about the rest of the world. He would spend nearly every day of his life looking out to millions of children and reminding them that they were special and that they belonged to a community that loved them for who they were. Maybe it's not the most he could have done with his mega-popularity and enormous audience, but he felt it was the most important thing he could have said, so he never stopped saying it. If you asked me, that is what a Superman truly is.