Insert Credits

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I do write about the iPhone from time to time here. So if you’re going to take the time to leave a comment with a link back to your iPhone scam site then it would be a good idea to leave said comment on a post about the iPhone rather than one about Patch 3.3.3 for World of Warcraft. Sometimes it helps to take that extra step when you’re already going to so much trouble to siphon off a bit of my small audience.

Share This:

Visitors have probably noticed that the site is taking forever to load right now. MediaTemple is having some issues with the cluster that Insert Credits and Avallanath ate hosted on, but the problem should be resolved sometime tomorrow.

Updates tomorrow might be sporadic tomorrow as the slow load times are hitting the backend as well.

Share This:

I’m testing the image posting feature on Blogpress for iPhone. Please enjoy this picture of my cat being cute for you.

Share This:

This is the time of year when people arbitrarily decide that they’re going to make a change in their life for the better in the form of a New Years Resolution. The annoying longer-than-usual lines for weights and cardio machines at my local gym is one if the more obvious symptoms of this New Years fever. The good news for me (and the bad news for all those people huffing and puffing their way onto the treadmill for the first time in years) is that most people give up on theylir Resolutions pretty quickly, usually due to a lack of time or inclination and often due to a combination of both. People bite off more than they can chew and try to make too much of a change too fast.

Which is why I plan to keep my New Years Resolution short and simple: 2010 is going to be the year of the iPhone for me. Anything that I schedule on my calendar will be attended. Any task that I add to my list will be completed. No slacking, no procrastinating, and no excuses. So it’s time to get started and see how long I can keep up without going insane.

Share This:

Today I’ll be taking a look at the Battlefield 1943 review written by “jrturner0112″ over at E4G.info. I need to preface this by stating that E4G doesn’t appear to have any kind of editorial staff in place and appears to publish absolutely anything that gets submitted to the website.

The review opens up with a paragraph that doesn’t make much sense to anybody who may be coming to 1943 as their first game in the Battlefield series:

Battlefield 1943 is an exclusively downloadable online shooter set during the Pacific portion of WWII. It supports twenty-four players and does a decent job of sticking to the Battlefield universe. It would have been tough for developers to explain a WWII tale where a rag tag group of undisciplined soldiers in the Pacific had to engage in a gold heist, so 1943 is Conquest all the way. – jrturner0112

So who are these undisciplined soldiers? Why would developers need to explain an event like a gold heist in a first person shooter? What exactly is Conquest? What do any of these questions mean in relation to Battlefield 1943? With the exception of mentioning Conquest none of these have any relation to the game, and mentioning Conquest without any explanation of what Conquest is is essentially useless.

Battlefield 1943 is a strictly multiplayer first person shooter, complete with a set of four maps. On each map players are divided into two teams and both teams fight to capture specific points on the map. When a point has been captured the team that owns it can spawn there if they so choose and continue pushing towards the next objective. Each team has a meter which slowly decreases depending on how many flags the opposite team has captured — when the meter reaches zero that team loses the round. That is Conquest in a nutshell, but without that explanation knowing what it’s called is pointless.  And since it’s the only game type in Battlefield 1943 proper an explanation of it in the review would have been nice.

DICE…offers most of the franchise’s experience for around fifteen dollars…There are four maps total. I think. I can’t remember, and I’m pretty certain most players won’t keep track either. They all look and feel pretty much the same. Yes, I understand the game focuses on a few key battles in the Pacific, but more diversity would have been nice… -jrturner0112

Most players actually do keep track of the maps, to the point where most players participated in the event where achieving a cumulative total of 43 million kills unlocked a 4th map for the game: Coral Sea. While each of the maps do look similar in terms of the terrain, well, what do you expect? Four islands in the Pacific are bound to look similar, but this review glosses over the more important details on the maps.

Iwo-Jima is a straight shot from end to end but has steep cliffs around most of the back end, making it nearly impossible to attack from the sea. Guadalcanal, on the other hand has a similar layout but it much lower to sea level and much more open which means you can attack and be attacked from multiple points and from a greater distance.

On top of lazy research complaints about the maps, he also claims that playing a match of Battlefield 1943 devolves into a game of both teams choosing the Scout class:

Since the other two are limp as can be, Battlefield 1943 de-evolves to what nearly every other online shooter eventually falls ill: a boring, frustrating map full of twenty-four snipers. This game just does it much more quickly. It’s not just that the other two classes are too weak, but the sniper rifle is also much stronger! -jrturner0112

While I can only provide anecdotal evidence to counter this I will say that I have never found a game where every player is playing as a Scout. I’ve never found a game where even half of either team is playing as a Scout. Having just turned it on and played through a series of matches as a quick refresher I deliberately chose the Scout and was one of only four players in the entire game playing as that class.

While the sniper rifle is very strong, it isn’t always a one hit kill. A shot to the chest will not kill a fully healed player, but a headshot will. What the reviewer fails to realize is that despite the game employing regenerating health for every class the Scout is much, much weaker and dies much, much quicker. He doesn’t seem to realize that balance in a game like this isn’t just in weapon strength but in the character as a whole. Stronger gun, less health.

The reviewer makes a point of mentioning that the game is downloadable and set at a price point of around $15, but then turns around and complains that there isn’t enough diversity in class or maps. His entire review smacks of somebody wanting to pay out the equivalent of $15 and receive $60 worth of game; he doesn’t seem to grasp that as this is a downloadable game it isn’t going to have a plethora of classes and entire map packs in the product.

My final thoughts on this review lead me to comment on the reviewer’s final thoughts:

How do you judge a game when it’s blatantly not meant to sit on retail shelves next to the latest and greatest? -jrturner0112

You don’t judge a game. It isn’t a reviewer’s place to judge the games we look at. We review them. We talk about how the game succeeds and how it fails. We talk about what we liked about the game and what we disliked about it. We praise the game on it’s achievements, and much like I do with this feature we point out it’s failures.

Most importantly, we review a game based on the game. We shouldn’t review the game based on how  it compares to other games, especially games that aren’t a part of the same series. The “latest and greatest” games are meant for a longer, more fulfilling experience and carry a completely different tone — a game like Battlefield 1943 is meant for quick, fast, and fun action.

Share This:

I’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes work at the site this week creating pages, adding podcasts, and managing various feeds.  Here’s a brief rundown of some of the new things that have been added to Insert Credits that you might not have noticed:

1. Three new podcasts and three new pages for each: Book and Film, Bookcast, and Retroquest.
2. A new splash page for all of the podcasts.
3. All of the podcasts are now available on iTunes as well.  You can search in iTunes or follow the links in the sidebar or on the respective podcast pages.
4. I’ve put up a new sidebar to your right with links to the various RSS and iTunes feeds for the site.
5. A new staff page featuring Twitter links, contact information, pictures, and a brief bio.
6. I’ve removed my Twitter feed from the sidebar and put up links to our individual bios and Twitter pages.
7. I’ve also added a new banner ad across the top of the main page.  Have to try and pay the bills for hosting the site.

Share This:

I’ve been toying with this idea for a little while now, but haven’t acted on it for a few reasons:

1. I’m not sure if I have the talent to pull an idea like this off properly
2. I don’t want this to turn into “Review the Reviewers”
3. It could be perceived as a dick move to get hits for the website

Basically I’m not comfortable with the idea of writing something that takes the work of somebody else and critiquing it because I’m not confident that my own work is as close to infallible as it could be. I’m sure somebody with a degree in English could scan over anything I’ve written and pick it apart [Someone with a degree in English is scanning everything Erron writes and finds nothing to pick apart so far. -- Andrew]. So to deal with that I’ve decided to try and limit any criticisms relating to grammar, sentence structure or punctuation. If a review is written well enough that the message behind the message can be discerned from it then there’s no reason to dedicate several paragraphs pointing out why a comma should or shouldn’t be used where it happens to be used.

I don’t want this to turn into a commentary on specific reviewers either. It would be incredibly easy to pick out people on the internet who are easy to criticize and continue to target them — I don’t want that. If I find that reviews that catch my attention are showing a trend of being written by the same person I’ll eventually just ‘write off’ that writer and focus on different sources. I don’t want this to become a continuing statement of “This reviewer sucks and here’s more reasons why”, because I think anybody out there and look at something and decide that for themselves. People don’t need me to sit here and point that out for them.

As to this being a dick move to get hits for this website — hits aren’t what are important. What’s important is trying a number of different things to improve my own writing and having the ability to use this website as an indicator of what I can do. I want to be able to point at the things I’ve written on this website and say “Yeah, I wrote that.”

Having said all that, hit the jump to have a gander at my first attempt at Reviewing the Reviews. Am I way off? Is this a terrible idea? How’s my writing? Go ahead and let me know in the comments — constructive criticism and your own opinions are always welcome.

continue reading…

Share This:

Mr. Harris,

On behalf of gamers both casual and hardcore, lovers of print media, and aspiring game journalists everywhere I thank you for repurchasing the rights to EGM and for your plan to re-open the magazine.

For almost as long as I have been alive, and definitely as long as I have been a gamer there has been a monthly issue of EGM to help fill me in on the gaming industry. Before I had an income to spend on games, and long before there was an internet to keep me up to date on everything I could want to know, there was a certain comfort in knowing that all I had to do was stop by the nearest corner store and Electronic Gaming Monthly was there to sate my hunger for news about a world that I dearly love.

Living in Nova Scotia, Canada presents certain problems in chasing the dream of becoming a games journalist. My location is so removed from anything (both in terms of location in the country as well as the country itself) that it seemed almost impossible to ever become a proper writer in the field I want. EGM was always a beacon to keep working for it. “If my writing can evolve enough I might be able to see my name in EGM someday,” I often thought to myself. Your magazine was always the end goal for me.

Sure, in today’s age we have the internet and being a blogger is another path to follow, but there is a distinct difference between a magazine and the internet. I could write for a Joystiq or a Kotaku, and while blogs like those are a fantastic source for up-to-the-minute news they lack tangibility. I can’t pick up a monthly edition of Joystiq and flip through the pages while sitting on my couch or casually scrutinize a column in Kotaku just before I fall asleep.

When Ziff Davis closed down EGM back in January it suddenly seemed like the dream had come to an end. Here was another casualty of the information age, never to be seen again. It didn’t come as a surprise, really. Accounts from former Ziff Davis staff say that they saw the end coming a mile away, and I’m sure the fans saw it coming too. When we saw Ziff offering subscriptions at $12 a year we knew it wasn’t going to last, but there was always a hope that EGM would find a way to pull through.

During the period between the closing of EGM and the announcement that you had purchasing the rights and were planning to relaunch the magazine I had to look at my options, few as they were. I could give up on trying to break in to the field I had been aiming towards for years, I could start trying to land a position on one of the blogs, or I could start writing on my own blog.

They say we are our own harshest critics, and the truth of that is why I write on my own blog for the time being. I still don’t think my writing is good enough, so I publish as much as I can to make sure it keeps evolving. But the flame was starting to flicker after what I thought was the end of EGM. I still loved to write, but I suffered from a lack of focus. It felt like this dream I had been working toward for so many years had been snatched away, and I didn’t know what else to aim for. When I read the announcement that EGM was coming back I found the flame was burning strong again, and improving my writing had once again become my top priority.

It isn’t even just because it’s a magazine, or even the magazine. It’s the idea of EGM that keeps me writing. EGM isn’t just a monthly publication about video games to me, it’s home to some of the most talented writers in the industry. It’s the White House of games journalism, the end goal for all of us who love games enough to want to dedicate our lives to writing about them. It’s a family that I want to someday be a part of.

Thank you, Mr. Harris. Thank you for taking back the magazine you started years ago to give it a second chance. It’s giving me back the thing I’ve been working toward for almost half my life.

- Erron Kelly

Share This:

The consistent lack of stability and updates for the Wordpress iPhone app has led me to try out Blogpress as an alternative. I’ll be trying it out over the next few days and will have a review ready to go soon. I’m to the point where I’m ready to try developing my own app rather than continue to deal with the kludges currently available for the platform.

Share This:

Visitors to the site may have noticed a recent slowdown where it was taking anywhere from 5-10 seconds for the page to load depending on how recent your cache is.  We’ve been experiencing a heavier than normal spam load for the past week or so, but I’ve taken steps that I hope will get rid of most of the excess traffic and leave the site loading faster for our dedicated readers who aren’t interested in spreading the word about free viagra from Nigerian princes.

Share This: