Nerdfest 2008 Photos

Here's our lovely accommodation. It really was perfect for getting away from the craziness of the convention at the end of the day. Mmm... Jacuuzi tubs.



Indianapolis is a beautiful town. It had some interesting buildings, and it was clean and well laid-out. The conference center was right smack dab in the midst of everything. The older building is a playhouse. Maybe we can see a play next year when we go.




Tomas the Lapidary was milling away on various lovely pieces of jewelry. He was good fun to talk to, and I always love watching craft like that. He does historical pieces. This was a copper headpiece for a bride-to-be.



Ed, Alex and some aviator dude talk to Andy K. about Japanese/English translation. Andy and company's book is the first Japanese RPG to be published in English.



Rebecca Guay makes really neat Wyeth-inspired paintings. She also did a couple lectures.



A lot of the fun was not of the type you take photos of--lectures and interesting chats with people from around the world, etc. One definitely photoable and fun part about Gen Con was the cosplayers. Sure, there were a few people in outfits that they reaaally shouldn't have left the house in, but for the most part, it was good fun, and there were some really well done ones. Star Wars seemed to dominate a bit, probably because Peter Mayhew was there. There were also at least three Captain Jack Sparrows walking around.

Boba Fett and Obi Wan totally hang out when they're off-duty. They're best buds. Seriously.



Darth Vader spent the whole time complaining about convention center food. "I find your lack of cheesy pretzels disturbing." Fun fact: Vader looks about ten feet tall only because the storm trooper was about five foot one. Also, YES. This is a storm trooper in a kilt behind them. Heh!



Speaking of costumes, this lady has maybe the most perfect original series Star Trek costume ever. Simple, but perfect. As for the gentleman--the costume was great, but I'm not sure where it was from. The bag says Torchwood, but isn't that a sci-fi series? He looks rather steampunk, or old west. Huh. Does anyone know?



The Empire is recruiting them young---This adorable storm trooper almost made my head explode. He took off his helmet because he was drinking a juice box. Hey-that's not against regulations!



This girl is cosplaying a character from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. It's a pretty decent costume, but I don't think she put all that much work into it.

Gen Con Highlights, Day Three

1. We played in a scheduled session of the game, Hot War, with Malcolm Craig, the writer and designer. The game is another semi-historical one, set in post nuclear war London, after the Cold War of the fifties "went hot" and nuclear bombs were detonated in various areas. The mechanics of the game are really interesting. It revolves around relationships to determine conflict resolution--whether it be a heated discussion between characters, or an all out melee. Relationships and goals affect how many dice you're able to roll against who or whatever is opposing. Narration is not only done by the GM, but there are also opportunities for other players to either smooth the way or throw a wrench into the works by adding bits to the story. It's fairly simple once you get the concept down. Malcolm was incredibly fun as a GM. Wonderful Scottish accent aside, he was clearly excited about running the game, and it translated into all of us having a great time, with some surprising twists.

2. I got to meet and chat with Emily Care Boss, the designer of some really interesting relational storytelling games. Did some walking around the dealer hall, chatted with a bunch of nice folks.

2. The Brazilian Steakhouse in downtown Indianapolis. Words cannot describe. I was practically full after the amazing salad bar. Yes... I coupled the words "salad bar" with "amazing." On purpose. Not to mention the meat, meat, and more meat, they brought from table to table. There's a little card by your plate, and green means, "descend upon me with various wonderful meats!" while red means, "Oh God... Please let me digest. *whimper*" It really was as much entertainment as it was a meal. Next year we will fast the day before we go.

Gen Con Highlights, Day Two

1. Played through a Godlike module headed up by Shane Ivey, who is the publisher of the book, and the co-writer of that particular adventure. Godlike is a game set toward the end of World War II, and is essentially a history narrative game, with the added interest of both The Nazis and the Allies having "talents," or super powered people at their disposal. This creates a whole slew of interesting conflict resolution options.

For example, in the campaign we've just begun with Alex, the character I came up with not only is proficient with hand to hand combat, but she has the ability to rust metal. All the metal in her vicinity slowly rusts, and if she concentrates, she's able to create an accelerated blast of effect in a wide diameter that causes metal to turn to dust in seconds. This is a very handy skill, however, some thought has to go into using it, since it will affect her own party as well, leaving them without weapons etc.

The scenario with Shane was load of fun, and the characters actually not only all survived, but we accomplished our objective.

2. Indie publishing and writing seminars. Excellent---we spent all morning listening to interesting people who've written interesting things. I believe some of the separate seminars will be podcast online. If so, I'll like it for those of you who are interested.

3. Indie Game Awards. It's really neat to become familiar with the faces of people who've written things I've been thrilled about. The awards were short, sweet, and informal. Reign won Best Game of the year, and The Blossoms are Falling took home several nods as well. The Blossoms... is a supplementary setting for Burning Wheel (one of the most beautifully packaged books, in my opinion). It's set in Heian era Japan (794-1189).

4. Lots of chatting with the Indie folks over at the Small Press area. Some really fantastic and very interesting people.

5. A tiny two year old storm trooper pushing his own stroller, while his mom walked along beside. He was alternately dragging and gnawing on his blaster. My head almost exploded from the cuteness. Pictures to come.

Of Customer Service Nightmares

Actually, if you get NO customer service at all, does that count as a nightmare? It's maybe more like insomnia. Hmm.

Well, the Culprit Company of the Day is Gamefly.

I would first like to say that the idea of Gamefly is great. You make a list of video games you're interested in playing, and then they send you a couple at a time with return paid envelopes and you send back and get the next ones on your list, etc etc. It's basically Netflix for games. Except that Netflix is both competent and reachable. If nothing goes wrong, Gamefly is just fine, but the moment there's a glitch...good luck.

Now is the winter of my discontent:

A couple years ago, we subscribed to Gamefly and were completely satisfied. It didn't even matter that they had a longer turnaround than Netflix. No biggie. We got the games we wanted, and everything was dandy.

It was after a hiatus in our membership that things went sour. I signed up again with an email address I'd created specifically for Gamefly. We have the benefit of being able to create as many subdomains for our email as we want. When I sign up for a site, I use the site's name in the email address I enter, ie: gamefly@myname... etc. that way, if I begin getting spam, I know exactly who sold me. Handy!

Well, shortly after reopening our account with the new address, I suddenly began receiving vast quantities of spam to that address. What does that tell me? My email information is not safe with Gamefly. If my email is not safe, what more of my personal information is not safe?

I know there isn't anything I can do about this but make emails coming to that address bounce. Gamefly would just deny that information was compromised or sold. Whatever. I moved on. Spamfilter, activate!

I was only mildly perterbed about the email thing until recently, when I needed to actually contact customer service about a login error I'm getting. Here's the scoop:

I submitted a query through the "Contact" page on the Gamefly site. I waited. And I waited. Though it said I would receive a reply within 24 hours... a week later, I hadn't heard anything--not even an email saying my question was recieved.

So I looked through the Gamefly site for another way to contact them. What did I find? NADA. "We are an internet company, so we deal with customers through email" the site says. What bullshit. There are only about a million internet companies that also provide phone customer services. There's not a phone number posted anywhere on the website. The only other option is to send an email to customer service, which I did. Again, no confirmation that anything had been received.

Finally, I got frustrated and Googled for a customer service number I knew HAD to exist. What I found was a plethora of people relating their fruitless attempts to get in touch with the company, along with one lone super-secret phone number.

(888) 986-6400, for those interested.

I called it, and got a message from a chipper woman saying that customer service is open for a whopping four hours a day on weekdays (9-1 PT), and that she recommends customers try emailing or "live chat" customer help on the website.

At the time I called, it should have been 9:30 PT, so I have no idea what was up with that.

There was a grain of hope, though--live chat support on the website? I might just get my answer after all! Sadly, my hopes were dashed when I went to the website and found... absolutely no evidence that there is any kind of chat or live supprt at all.

At this point, I was ready to gnaw off my own arm. This elusiveness is usually characteristic of fly-by-night scam companies that take your money and then make it impossible to contact them. If we hadn't actually received games from Gamefly the past, I would have been worried that's what I was dealing with.

Again, I searched the web, and this time, I found that by pressing "5" during the chipper woman's message, I would be rerouted to voicemail. Otherwise they disconnect you at the end of the message. Should you have to do all this spy work and secret handshakes and codes in order to talk to a real person at a company? My inclincation is NO. Not unless it's the "Super-Secret Spy Nonexistant Fun Espionage Club" you're calling. Then it might make sense.

Though I was tempted to leave an expletive laced tirade, I instead left a polite request for a call back (as the message told me to do). A few days later, still nothing.

So here were my attempts thus far to get a response over the past couple weeks:

2 submissions though the Gamefly website
2 emails to the support email address
numberous calls to the secret customer service number
1 voicemail message left at said number

That's a lot of trying to get in touch, don't you think? The happy (?) ending to this story is that I FINALLY got a hold of someone on the phone today, and the issue was fixed in about 2 minutes. That's two weeks it took to fix a two minute issue.

Nice. *golf clap*

Magic Pen

Here's a very clever little flash game... In it, you use a crayon to draw shapes that can affect the environment--bumping into each other, rolling etc... The idea is to move a little ball to the flag. Sounds easy enough, right? What I like, though is that there are literally hundreds of ways to accomplish it. It can be as simple as dropping a circle out of the sky to bump the ball along, or as complicated as drawing a little car with two wheels and an axle, and then a crane, with a heavy piece that swings down to hit the car to bump the ball. It's ridiculously fun, and doesn't punish you for just trying things out. You can always restart the level, until you can get used to the physics of the game.

The key is thinking creatively and trying everything.

The other thing I like is that the soundtrack to the game is a pleasant little indie guitar ditty, rather than the frenetic and annoying soundtracks that tend to sometimes happen with flash games.

Enjoy!

There is also a video walkthrough if you get stumped.

Regarding the post below

It's also worth mentioning that you should take the time to go to the site and see the trailer for Cougar Interactive's flagship title, uh... Zoo Race.

It's... eh, forget it. There's just nothing I can say, except that you probably thought nothing could be more random or weird than that last clip. Well, you were wrong. So very wrong...

PS. It's noteworthy that all the "awards" won by Zoo Race are either a stamp indicating it doesn't contain any viruses, or are the "five star award" that's given to every item on a various download sites regardless of quality. Kind of damning with faint praise. :(

PPS. *sigh* "Oh great... I'm a horse now."

The Cusp of Autumn

For those of you wondering, my dad came through heart surgery well, and is making a good recovery--which makes me very very relieved. Life can be pretty sucky at times, but mercies like that can make all the other stuff seem pretty irrelevant and small.

I realize I'm a worrier a lot of the time, but I hope I'm not a pessimist. It's only because I forget to remember the things that are good. Er...unless that's the definition of a pessimist. I think of them as someone who's aware of what's good, but manages to imagine everything is going to be awful anyway. I'm working on encouraging my tiny, withered seedling of optimism to grow up into an oak tree or a skunk cabbage or whatever.

Yes, I know. It's been for-freaking-ever since I've blogged. As an apology, I would like to offer these tasty morsels:

• What do you get when you combine Johnny Cash's vocals, Led Zeppelin's drums, Beastie Boys bass, Ted Nugent's guitar, and the Beatles lead guitar? No, not an apple streusel, silly--It's quite possibly the BEST MASHUP EVER.
  

• When it comes to storytelling flash games, many times they're a digital cacophony of crappy animation and awkward gameplay. However, Samarost is different. It's essentially a beautiful interactive children's book with lovely music, interesting art, and engaging puzzles. I've linked to the walkthrough, because I did get stuck a couple times. Point and click adventures force you to think a little differently, and it takes a bit to catch on. There is a second installation of the game as well.
  

• Also, who doesn't like a simple game that basically just involves Japanese Victorian ladies slapping each other?

• This is a concept I can get behind. "The more unhappy you are, the more ice cream you need."

• For those of you with small dogs, this is valuable info. And it's darn cute.
  

• Here's a highly entertaining look at what the world of 1910 envisioned the year 2000 to be like. The page was originally in French, and I've linked to the Google translation, so the text may be a bit awkward. The ideas are an awful lot like we used to dream up for the future as children. Machines that put on your makeup! Pills for dinner! Ah, the glorious future...

• And if you'll excuse me now, I have to go take my daily chocolate supplement.