| Video Game News From Trotting Krips |
Old News - Now Archived
Well, a lot has happened in the dark quagmiric pit that is computer and video games since the last time I was able to update. Two weeks ago it was because of the dragon-comp, which I had wanted to enter. But I couldn't get my game finished. So I just shelved it, rather than, er, "ship" it and let people engage in choose-your-own-conversation and a very nice cabinet that I made using Hugo. Wheee, eh?
And last week it was because I flew home. I had a total of four flights -- Denver to Chicago, Chicago to Rochester and then it was all reversed for the flight back. United managed to delay me multiple times on EACH FUCKING FLIGHT. They were so incompetent that I don't even have the energy to write about how incompetent they are. That's how dizzyingly poor they are at running an airline. By the way, there is absolutely nothing more boring than spending twelve hours in a Denver airport. Except perhaps, an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. All I know is that I rolled into my bed at 4:30am today, showed up for work at noon and am trying, badly, to muster the creative juice to get this thing written effectively since I have given up the word "natch" for lent.
But. Anyway.
Imagine, if you will, that your own father was an astronaut. So immediately right there, ten seconds after the orgasm that made you the odds are stacked high and long that you'll ever amount to living a better life than he did. Well, young Richard Garriott was faced with just such a quandary. He, however, did not buckle into a tightly compact fetal sphere of hate and denial but, rather, wrote a bunch of fantasy, orc-laden games that got progressively better until he made Ultima VIII. He was known to the masses as Lord British and had himself a partner in crime -- Chuck Bueche, otherwise known as "Chuckles." They started the company called "Origin" which had also put out some truly excellent games -- Wing Commander, Privateer, Crusader... several series that had absolutely fantastic games within them. Origin was sold, a few years ago, to Electronic Arts.
And at the beginning of this month, EA fired Lord British.
It's unbelievable, really. EA started out, originally, as the type of company that would never, ever consider doing this. They were intended to be all about the designers. The best and the brightest making kick-ass games that they themselves would like to play. Today, EA is representative of what's wrong with many games today. Their sports division is a buggy joke, their original titles are uninspired and soft and when they do have a designer with a decent q rating they shitcan him. I wonder, though, if Chuckles received his own individual pink slip or if it was just generally assumed that he was canned as well, sort of like how Robin leaves the Justice League whenever Batman does.
I met Lord British at E3 a few years back. While it can sometimes be fun to rip on a guy who goes to work with a crown and lives in a castle, he was without question the most down-to-earth and, hell -- nicest -- guy I encountered at E3. Whereas the boys over at Gravis couldn't have been less interested in anything other than kicking their feet up and playing NFL Blitz, Garriott actually took the time to find out something about me before I could tell him how big a fan I was / am of his games. Unreal.
Of course, the other big event was that Daikatana went gold. While every gaming site on the universe has gone crazy killing each other to rip the demo to shreds you will not see that sort of tabloid, yellow "journalism" at Reviews From Trotting Krips. Mostly because none of us feel secure enough to put an Ion Storm product on our computers. So we take the high-road due to simple paranoia. I mean, Christ -- they fucked up the damn installer for, er, Christ's sake. But we are wholly unbiased.
I did cancel my subscription to Ultima: Online over the firing, though. I like to think that in my own, special way I took a stand and voted with my dollars but then again they will probably charge me for the next ten months so I guess it's easy on the viva la revolution, comrades.