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Is there a filthy critic of the game world?

There used to be. By all accounts they'll be back but I stopped holding my breath about 6 months ago.

Anyone know more?

Ravi

A lot of people died when the stock market "shut down" in 1929.

Tell me about it. I'm gonna throw myself off the roof if Old Man Murray doesn't come back online by the end of the week.

I don't know what I'd do if the entire *Internet* shut down...

=)

The Fallacy of the Woman Gamer

There are no women gamers, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. They don't exist. In the '80s there was one, but she died. The women that you see competing in Quake tournaments are paid employees of id. If you meet a "woman" in an online game such as EverQuest or Tribes, there's a pretty good chance it's either one of us or a 40-year-old man. And if you're sure it's neither of those things, then maybe it's the government testing a robot or a poltergeist because it's not a human female. Some of you may complain that you're positive you've met a woman on one of the various MUDS. Perhaps, which brings up a point that didn't make the list: MUDS are not games.

Crime Encouraged:

Since impersonating a woman isn't a crime unless she's also a police officer, we're going to have to fall back on Chet punching Lord British.

There is definitely an element of truth to that: The net has lost a lot of its joy. Between watching hilarious ads on AdCritic (sidenote: I submitted an article today mentioning http://www.ads.com, which almost fills in for AdCritic, but the story was rejected in a record 10 seconds), reading hilarious articles on http://www.suck.com (which had absolutely brilliant writing, and defined the earlier Internet), laughing to Mirsky's Worst of the Web (this was back when I had a little ecommerce sites on Turnpike Emporium, a host I chose because it was Mirsky's host. My little computer configurator was, some 7 years ago, more advanced than most computer store configuration utilities today), hell even reading sites like Old Man Murray. Other great sites like Quarter to Three simply stopped updating (though if you read the Shoot Club archives, you'll see that it was some great stuff).

I still believe that the ideas I presented in this article (which was linked by a Slashdot story some time over a year ago) still hold true now more than ever.

Well, the way I interpreted it, and we all know interpretations can vary among people, was that without the PC, Roberta Williams and her game design compatriots can no longer make those shitty "Adventure" games which are more of "guess the obtuse logic some crazy chick came up with" style game.

For those of you too young to remember Trespasser: The Crate-Stacking Puzzle Game, check out the following links:

Trespasser Hype Review

Trespasser's Start-to-Crate Rating

For those of you too young to remember Trespasser: The Crate-Stacking Puzzle Game, check out the following links:

Trespasser Hype Review

Trespasser's Start-to-Crate Rating

Anne McCaffery's game has been proven to cause hardware damage.

http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/freedom/de fault.shtml

If the person ignores family/friends/all responsibilites and quits his job... the person is supposed to take a warning label to heart?

Besides.. the dude probably got Britished

... or any other 'hard' swear words for that matter. Check out Chet's philosophy on swearing here. In fact, this article was many orders of magnitude less funny than OMM's typical fare - there has yet to be a site that can imitate the OMM word salad such as this gem:

In my ongoing quest to read everything ever written about my new favorite game Giants - a product that, while it does have a few bugs, hasn't caused any part of my computer to actually literally physically explode - I ran across this review at Gamepen, a site for which I have no snide comment because I don't know anything about it other than the fact that its name sounds a little like "gaypen", a fact that could potentially be used against it if you absolutely couldn't think of anything else, and, hey, what an epic journey this sentence has been - welcome to the end of it.

Or my personal favorite:

If I was Human Head's coach, I'd be grabbing them by the neck right now and screaming "Less whining, more less caves!"

Of course, the last link includes fuck twice, but I don't think it's gratuitous (beyond the fact that all word choice in satire is gratuitous to one extent or another).

-BbT

... or any other 'hard' swear words for that matter. Check out Chet's philosophy on swearing here. In fact, this article was many orders of magnitude less funny than OMM's typical fare - there has yet to be a site that can imitate the OMM word salad such as this gem:

In my ongoing quest to read everything ever written about my new favorite game Giants - a product that, while it does have a few bugs, hasn't caused any part of my computer to actually literally physically explode - I ran across this review at Gamepen, a site for which I have no snide comment because I don't know anything about it other than the fact that its name sounds a little like "gaypen", a fact that could potentially be used against it if you absolutely couldn't think of anything else, and, hey, what an epic journey this sentence has been - welcome to the end of it.

Or my personal favorite:

If I was Human Head's coach, I'd be grabbing them by the neck right now and screaming "Less whining, more less caves!"

Of course, the last link includes fuck twice, but I don't think it's gratuitous (beyond the fact that all word choice in satire is gratuitous to one extent or another).

-BbT

... or any other 'hard' swear words for that matter. Check out Chet's philosophy on swearing here. In fact, this article was many orders of magnitude less funny than OMM's typical fare - there has yet to be a site that can imitate the OMM word salad such as this gem:

In my ongoing quest to read everything ever written about my new favorite game Giants - a product that, while it does have a few bugs, hasn't caused any part of my computer to actually literally physically explode - I ran across this review at Gamepen, a site for which I have no snide comment because I don't know anything about it other than the fact that its name sounds a little like "gaypen", a fact that could potentially be used against it if you absolutely couldn't think of anything else, and, hey, what an epic journey this sentence has been - welcome to the end of it.

Or my personal favorite:

If I was Human Head's coach, I'd be grabbing them by the neck right now and screaming "Less whining, more less caves!"

Of course, the last link includes fuck twice, but I don't think it's gratuitous (beyond the fact that all word choice in satire is gratuitous to one extent or another).

-BbT

You SAY they are bad games, but what are their start to crate scores?

• AD 1354: Gravity is introduced to the West, pioneering the gravity/mead trade routes
  
• AD 1803: Industrialization allows the mechanization of textile, farming, and prostitution industries
  
• AD 1952: Colorization of the world; Invention of Violence
  
• AD 1958: First video game written by Higinbotham. Cites the recent invention of "Violence" as inspiration
  
• AD 1969: Lunar landing televised
  
• AD 1982: Man actually walks on moon
  
• AD 2004: Revealed that same company owns both Coke and Pepsi, Republicans and Democrats
  

OMM has been one of favorites for a long time.

A parody of one of the worst games ever made, "John Romero's Daikatana." A game that was notoriously late, terribly designed and without any redeeming qualities... except... when the characters' dialogue is taken out of context and laid over a trashy 70's waka-chika porn groove, the game suddenly becomes _much_ more interesting. A must-have for Romero bashers and FPS players.

Rune has to be one of the worst, most frustrating and most boring games ever. The only objective review of it I saw as at Old Man Murray.

This is definitely the kind of games Linux doesn't need (I think Rune is actually a perfectly valid argument against Windows). I'd much rather see conversions of Chris Sawyer's games (Transport Tycoon Deluxe, for example) or the Ultima series (up to Ultima VII / Underworld II anyway, Ultima VIII and IX were crap).

All I'd say is, why would anyone want to waste precious hd space on rune anyway? Run around in a few hundred different sewers with a dull axe for about 6 hours. That about sums up rune... See oldmanmurray's review here: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/runepage1. shtml

Sometimes, when you see some beatyfull software design, the tears start to fall.

I've certainly worked with software that made me want to cry, but not because it was well designed.

To steal from the Murray boys, if good code makes you cry, stay the hell away from anything on the Lifetime network. 'Cause you'll have to go on Zoloft to get over Steel Magnolias.

Pussy.

Your friend,
--Shoeboy

Although Seanbaby is on the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge, I'm surprised Katz didn't mention other sites. Old Man Murray, Portal of Evil, Something Awful, Jerkcity, hell even my site, Gamer's Angst, are all sites offering a more cutting view of the world.

Seanbaby is just one of a hundred sites out there offering not just pop culture commentary, but honestly some of the more cutting edge humor available today (except for our site. Our Tshirt slogan is "They're not funny"). Seanbaby just happens to be the best at it.

More disturbing is Katz weekly trumpeting of the impending AOLTW/Microsoft/Whoever else takeover of the Internet.

Of course we should be aware about these things, of course we should celebrate sites like Seanbaby that, frankly, rock. But can we tone down the "DEAR GOD QUICK EVERYONE READ SEANBABY TO STOP THE AOL YOU GOT MAIL MONSTER OMGWTF!" hysteria?

S.

Something a lot more funny that I can come up with to be sure.

---Romero, try not to be such a goddamn fruit!---

I posted it because "major gaming sites" are biased, non-interesting crap.What Lowtax had written was funny, interesting and well-written, which is hard to find. That's part of why I like OMM. I used those links because, IMHO, that was the best stuff I've seen on AO anywhere. It's too bad about his bandwidth - I didn't know that, and would have cheerfully removed, or reposted his links. But instead, we have this.

Wasn't the Internet designed to provide an easy way to communicate and share information?

For the most part, all Slashdot offers is a bunch of links to stories written by other people. Is this a service? Me thinks not; And don't even think about charging for it. Why? I call it a 'hobby site' and we're all a bunch of geeks sharing the same interests.
Go ahead and take this personally Mr. "I'm a professional and I don't appreciate...blah." BS. We're all professionals, but this is our passion, and our hobby.
Let's see CNN, MSN, BBC, etc. start charging for their content, hell, they even own most of it. Count how many seconds it takes for their site to dissapear faster than Napster. They're web sites are simply a supplement, or 'additional feature' to their revenue generating machines.
So how do you start charging for a site? Well, money is often exchanged for goods and services. So smart guys, offer a #$*@'in service. Make sure it doesn't suck, most small business ventures fail you know...
Best example in recent history goes to, believe it or not, Old Man Murray. Rather than begging for PayPal, they went out and made something, silly as it may be. Nevertheless, I'll bet they've raked in more $$ than all of the "Please make a donation to keep us alive" sites combined. Kudos hombres, good work.

That's my two cents worth. Hope this post has maintained continuity through various phone calls.

This is my sig; There are many like it, but this one is mine

__
Mmm, I love the smell of a dead Democrat in the morning.

__
You went down like Princess Di.

__
Winners don't use drugs, scumbag, and caffeine is a drug, so stop drinking that coffee and you might play better, or something.

__
I'm sorry.

__
You're such a pussy I just might fuck you.

And BTW, no fair going to these guys for help on how to insult Duke Nukem...err, help Duke Nukem insult others..

____________________

"Coming with a hefty pricetag of $99, is this tiny sucker worth it? Hell, it even a whole keyboard. It's half of one!"
- You may think I being picky here, but this contradiction comes in right at the start of the review. Did the author re-read his review even once?

It's [dimensions are] about the size of a scientific calculator, or 1/4 the size of a laptop. It's also a keyboard.
- Funny that.

Like any other keyboard the Half Keyboard plugs in via a PS/2 port. It's compatible with Palms, Handspring Visors, PCs, as well as Macs.
- The depth of the research carried out here speaks volumes about the reviewer.

While there were no drivers I had to install via a cd, I thought the overall package that came with the Half Keyboard was very well done.
- You don't need Old Man Murray to tell you that when a review starts describing product packaging it's in big big trouble.

Weighing about 1/5 the weight of a calculator, I've got to say kudos to Matias for making the Half Keyboard compactable.
- Dubya would be so proud. It's compactable!

The tutorial then goes on to introduce how to use the other features such as characters and numbers.
- The feature bloat on this keyboard puts even Mozilla to shame! Yes, that's right characters AND numbers. Stop the madness, please.

--

First of all, God forbid someone uses sex to sell a product. Unless of course that product is Salon itself, which advertises as one of its subscription services " Premium-only galleries of erotic art and photography in Salon Sex."

are you talking about OMM or OMM?

There are new "news" items once every other week, including the most recent gem, a complaint about a Windows messagebox without a message attached. No, not in a game they were playing - in the driver update to their sound card.

Here's the list of shame:

Last "news": 4/27/2001

Last Feature (Serious Sam Interview): 3/27/2001

Forums ("Shack Attack", complaining about Steve of shugashack asking for donations): 3/06/2001

Long Review ("Freedom", review of Freedom, the First Resistance - it blows up your monitor): 12/21/2000

Short Review (8 Quickies - Including Rune, No One Lives Forever, and Gunman Cronicles): 10/27/2000

Rants (Pop-Up Apology - a letter about something that happened on a different portal of evil site): 8/12/2000 (Last true OMM rant, about Paul Steed(!) , 2/10/2000)

The site is dead. If they are playing games that companies send them, then they are not telling us about them. Their latest contribution to the world was publicizing Serious Sam, which is a good thing. However, the lack of updates is a Bad Thing. Eventually, people will stop coming by to see if it is updated, even the hard-core OMM worshippers will stop coming by the forums, and the site will be another link in someone's link list that never got updated (OMM! That must be a dead link by now - Wow! Chet posted a complaint about philips-head screws!)

Maybe it's a money thing. Maybe they have budgeted bandwidth, and, when they reach the monthly quota, they stop posting new stuff. Maybe they need ad-banner click-throughs, saving up enough money for a modern machine to play the new games. Maybe they moved, and forgot to tell game companies the new address, so some undeserving college kid is getting all the cool new games. Who knows. And, increasingly, who cares?

IMHO, the whole Slashdot Cool Links box displays a bad trend toward the unneccessary, starting with the OMM link. Who would use Everything2 as a resource, or sees it as other than a interesting idea unfortunately turned into a Community? I think themes.org is up there because Rob Malda once posted a Enlightenment theme that never got updated to new versions. The list doesn't change, but stays a testament to what the Slashdot editors were thinking about a year ago, much like the other static content on the site (the FAQ, etc.)

Wow, that's a lot of bitching for a Tuesday. That Karma Kap makes you old and bitter pretty fast...

• Gamers.com - Not too much info nowadays (they got bit too)
  
• The GIA - Fairly good coverage of major events. Very review and gameplay heavy, rather than industry news.
  
• Gamasutra - Industry news in a simple format, though more finance and 3rd party tools related
  
• FGN Online - Pretty good coverage. It's now an IGN affiliate.
  
• SegaDojo - Fairly good SEGA related coverage
  
• MS Xbox - For the people who can get past the fact that Microsoft might just have a kick ass gaming machine
  
• Final Fantasy Online - For any Final Fantasy freak. The site's down at the moment, though
  
• IGN Games - Coverage of anything and everything in gaming
  
• GameSpot - Okay, so it's GameSpot. At least they publish all their media in downloadable MPEGs
  
• Core Magazine - All the random things that other people don't cover, including interviews and stuff straight from Japan.
  
• US Famitsu - Currently down, with no plans of coming back up, but it's the US branch of the standard gaming press in Japan - Famitsu
  
• Stomped - Lots of coverage of gaming in general, with some focus on FPS.
  
• Blue's News - Blue keeps going, and it's always focused on FPS for the most part.
  
• OMM - And of course, Old Man Murray.
  

"My experience leads me to know the Daily Radar as an "organization" that frequently misinterprets (whether it is intentional or not is not for me to decide) games news."

Thats why I read Old Man Murray instead!

Doom was all about destruction and mindless carnage, but it was actually pretty bright. People complained about Q3A's bright colors, but in fact I think Dooms bright colors helped the game be more fun. I think if Doom 3 is as dark as shown in those screenshots (and that's a relatively big "if" for a game still in development), it will be a snooze unless the gameplay is totally unprecedented.

for more on the shades of black palette, see here.

Nah- gamers just blow up EVERYTHING- who cares if you hide a medkit in an oil tank or in a dog.

I think the OMM guys said it best with their little "Crate Expose"
or erik's wry observation upon seeing a screenshot of KISS Psycho Circus: "Is that a big square room with crates? Nice. The thing I like about crates is that they're so mysterious. What's in the crate? Is it ammo? Is it health? It could be either!"

There was this story, where OldManMurray was claiming to sue ID for unauthorized use of their image in QuakeIII Arena.

If this happens, Metal Gear Solid will be seen as a milestone in videogame art and Hideo Kojima as the electronic Buster Keaton. Metal Gear Solid already has better plot, character development and action then a good percentage of movies today.

American McGee's Alice has levels that rival any film I've seen this year. The gameplay is mediocre at best, but the backgrounds rival anything I've seen on the big screen in recent memory. Old Man Murray called it "the first pretentious art house video game". The description's not far off.

Other notable games that have more atmosphere then most Hollywood prouction include Silent Hill (which is creepier then your grandfather naked), Street Fighter (which has developed an excellent backstory), and Resident Evil (B-movie atmosphere, but atmosphere none the less).

In any case, it should be interesting to see Romero handle the e-paparazzi.

-Jeff

...masterminded by the good people at Old Man Murray.
---

George W Bush is stating that he's not for big government.
What is big government really? Is it a government that spends a lot of money? Yes it is.
Do we already have that? Yes.
Is a President going to be able to shrink it? Probably not. That's more in the hands of congress and they don't want to when it all comes down to it.
Is it also a government that's telling you what you can and can't do? Yes. It's that too.
We're always worried about Big Brother. We should also be worried about the government trying to act paternal with us. Parents should be allowed to raise their children. That means if I want my child to be able to read oldmanmurray the government should not be able to override me.

These guys say soul-destroying stuff like about Roberta Williams and cancer and what not. Serious? I doubt it. I think they are very self-aware people who flame for entertainment.

Btw, this is the best Jon Katz article I've seen. I've been flaming your posts for a long time as AC, Jon- too bad when I get my nick I have to post something positive! Wait, that makes me look like a pussy: dear Jon, fuk u.

I've been waiting for this one myself. Funcom, the same people making the SFMMORPG, Anarchy Online, also made the Longest Journey from the same engine. I understand L.J. has finally found a U.S. distributor, and should hit the shelves in November, though I couldn't tell you who is putting it out.

The state of adventure games is miserable otherwise. Does anyone else think story telling and interactivity are basically at odds with each other? I really didn't have the patience for Grim Fandango, I liked the story but got really pissed at how contrived the puzzles were. It got to the point that I wished I could click the "I give up, show me the rest of the game" button.

LOL. I don't think the moderator realized this was satire.

To the uninitiated: VoodooExtreme is a news collection site. While it produces some of its own content, much of it is just links all over the web. You know, like slashdot. They excuse it by giving credit to all the contributors.

It's a thin line, though, between performing a service by seeking out cool stories, and just ripping off other sites' news. This point was best made by OldManMurray, who just linked to all of VoodooExtreme. It used to be at this link to "marvin sedate", but that gave me some odd redirect to here, so they probably stopped doing it back in February, which is what the latter links to. Still funny.

LOL. I don't think the moderator realized this was satire.

To the uninitiated: VoodooExtreme is a news collection site. While it produces some of its own content, much of it is just links all over the web. You know, like slashdot. They excuse it by giving credit to all the contributors.

It's a thin line, though, between performing a service by seeking out cool stories, and just ripping off other sites' news. This point was best made by OldManMurray, who just linked to all of VoodooExtreme. It used to be at this link to "marvin sedate", but that gave me some odd redirect to here, so they probably stopped doing it back in February, which is what the latter links to. Still funny.

I am an artist working for a major video game publisher. I've been in the industry since, oh, about the time the CD-ROM appeared on the scene. When that happened, intro movies and "in game cut-scenes" became the standard, and almost all high profile games are compelled to include them to this very day.

I've noticed something about all the cutscenes and intro movies. They all have two things in common- they are all very expensive to make, and they are all crap. With a few exceptions (fer instance the stuff from Starcraft), I've never been moved to admire any of that effort. The stuff is always too stiff, phony looking, poorly written and cornily voice-acted.

IMHO, this has proved to be a big problem in the industry, I'd even venture say that 'cinematics' are ultimatly the number one reason so many game companies fold. See, these cut scenes end up accounting for a huge chunk of a games budget. It generally takes 8-10 people a whole project cycle to wrangle these movies together, sometimes as many as 15 or 20! That's translates into 18 months of paying those big salaries, buying all that 'bitchin' equipment, office space and outrageously expensive software packages.

But that's just where the trouble begins. Due to the commitee-like arrangement of a software project, work is slow and prone to revisions. Several months of work can be undone in one email from marketting. Imagine how it is to be the executive that makes the decision whether to delay a game because the cinematics have fallen a bit short of spectacular, to pay that much more while going that much longer without revenue, because some primmadonna (that btw isn't 'hot' enough for pixar, disney or real films) insists that just a few more weeks of rendering volume search lights on the Nebulon Battle Cruiser will make or break the game? Of course your going to let crap out the door at that point.

Stress really begins to mount towards the end of a project. ship date begins to really loom on the horizon. maybe a competitor beats yoou to the market with a similar game, but then it flops! People are always saying very mean things about you at places like Old Man Murray and Fatbabies and there's the almost ever-present threat of the numbers just not adding up this month. And cinematics are taking half the entire budget!?!!

I hate to admit it, especially since I have a professional interest, but I almost always click through cinematics after I've seen the first couple. I am always eager to get back to the action, in my mind, like a real gamer. I am rarely hooked into the story, almost never interested in the setting enough to sit idle for 2-3 minutes to see obscure details. I'm satisfied with the gameplay I guess, and maybe I'm soured to them by the process- but I can't think of many games that would have been lesser for their lack of cinematics...

Great change is always rocking the industry. But there has collected a sediment, an entrenched school of thinking that is slowly entrenching itself out of business. This school of thought that says that 'cinematics are in' also says that 'consumers like crates and jumping puzzles' and 'let them eat bugs'. The industry is crowded and stuck, everyone is chasing the sequel, (franchise), investor dollars and the reviewers. (The PS2 is promising a sort salvation for all (in that the sales will be high enough to support even the gluttonous lifestyle of a contemporary software studio) though it is a shaky bet at best considereing the N and X box/cube FUD and all the negative PS2 info floating around...)

Which all sorta leads me to my point: A fantastic thing is happening to videogames lately, and it has almost nothing to do with the industry. Level Designers, Artists and Programmers are all creaping out of the woodwork, out of the nooks and crannies of the Internet. The game industry is headed back into the garage, at last, though we may as well start calling it the 'bedroom' as that's where most people keep their computers AFAIK. They are putting together some great stuff- just think of all the mods and skins for UT and Q3a. With the adoption of the term 'machinema', another crucial element of gamemaking has reverted to the hands of the ameteur. With half a gig of warez audio and graphics apps, an open-source engine and a little bit of scripting magic, a near-professional quality game can once again get hacked together by a couple of geek comrades-in-arms on their summer break from High School. It is only a matter of time before machinema and all the other elements come together and spontaneously create the next Doom2 or even a Final Fantasy and capture the attention of the gaming public in a #1 hit kinda way.

And I want to participate! I will begin browsing heavilly after I post this. Hmmm, I wonder if I can participate in something like this. I signed my name to an awful lot of intimidating legalese during the course of my rather short career, I imagine I could get fired or sued for something like this. All the [free software] triumph in the world isn't going to pay for my Dual P4 or 60" HDTV.

:)Fudboy

And it's on Old Man Murray. Seriously.

OMM

Scroll down the page till you get to the bit titled "Who really killed Looking Glass Studios."

It discusses the circumstances that led to Eidos losing lotsa cashola, and the truth is, the 30 Million they dumped into Ion Storm was chump change.

Whoever wrote "The irony was, their publisher, Eidos Interactive, was pumping all their money into Ion Storm's effort to finish Daikatana." should really have done a bit more research.

Let's face it, the moderation system gives too much power to a bunch of idiots. The best idea so far for a moderation system overhaul is to hire away the Helpful Daikatana Monkey and give him unlimited moderation points.

Old Man Murray Reading thier "walkthrough" of Deus Ex was the funniest thing I've seen in months.

C'mon if any of you haven't been there the "The world's first gaming portal has to the most crazy and cynical BCFH(Bastard Critics from hell) in the business.

someone's gonna have to check out what the boys at Old Man Murray have to say about this.

I have to say that i usually agree with them on their not-so-respectful opinion of Steed. I believe they equated his last article to something along the lines of having your testicles stapled to a belt sander.

Either way - check OMM out for a counter-perspective.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

www.oldmanmurray.com/images/cgw.gif

Killcreek wrote the strategy guide. I saw it in the store and joked, gee I wonder how they're gonna sell that, with a centerfold of Killcreek? I opened it up and sure enough there it was. On the new doom front Old Man Murray in response to the Id announcment had a link to a group of Croation developers developing a game called Serious Sam. It looks like it has promise.

What's this page now, Old Man Murray or something? While you're over there, look at the SWAT 3 Strategy Guide, it's funny.

A good, "non-biased" review of Daikatana can be found at Dailyradar.

-jpowers

What's this page now, Old Man Murray or something? While you're over there, look at the SWAT 3 Strategy Guide, it's funny.

A good, "non-biased" review of Daikatana can be found at Dailyradar.

-jpowers