Yarn Samples
On March 7, 1960, Paar returned to The Tonight Show and began the night's show by saying,"As I was saying before I was interrupted, I believe my last words were that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well I have looked, and there isn't."
I feel like Jack Paar must have felt on March 7, 1960.
In spite of GameSpot's ethical issues, both known and alleged, there is no better Web site for video game coverage. I have looked, and there isn't.
Blatant opinions (not just bias) in news stories, a lack of fact-checking, reviews that do not give readers enough information to decide if a game is for them, snarky comments and generally unprofessional writing and attitudes.
These things are to be expected from almost every video game Web site.
But not GameSpot.
This is why I have returned.
Regarding GameSpot's alleged ethical issues, I do not know what to believe anymore. I am not an insider, but I have heard stories from credible sources claiming that Jeff Gerstmann's firing was deserved and that the aftermath was nothing but a public relations disaster.
But a public relations disaster is still a disaster. People believe what they want to believe, regardless of the truth. If a public relations crisis is not resolved quickly and in a satisfying manner, perception becomes reality.
There was never a satisfying resolution to this pubic relations disaster. GameSpot parent division CNET never gave people a good reason to believe that Jeff Gerstmann's firing was not due to pressure from advertisers. No executive took the fall (CNET Entertainment Executive Editor Josh Larson was let go as part of a downsizing months later, but by then it was too late to change opinions), a commitment to editorial independance and integrity was never proclaimed and half of GameSpot's editorial staff quit, some mentioning Gerstmann's dismissal as the reason.
I have trouble trusting all I see and hear on GameSpot as a result.
Take the changing of Grand Theft Auto IV's review score, for example. When the score first appeared on this site, it was 9.5 out of 10. When the review was posted, the score changed to 10 out of 10. If not for the Gerstmann fiasco, I might have believed, without question, GameSpot Editor in Chief Ricardo Torres' claim that 9.5 was never intended to be the game's final score and that its appearance on the site was an accident, but due to the Gerstmann fiasco (and rumors I have heard of Grand Theft Auto series publisher Rockstar Games and parent company Take-Two Interactive pressuring media outlets to give Grand Theft Auto games the highest review scores possible), I will forever wonder why the score changed.
Prior to Grand Theft Auto IV, GameSpot had given 10 out of 10's to four games, the last in 2001. Since then, GameSpot had gotten tougher in its reviews, and review scores overall had dropped.
GameSpot awarding Metal Gear Solid 4 a 10 out of 10 so soon after Grand Theft Auto IV's 10 out of 10 does not help. Maybe their reviewers and GameSpot's editorial staff genuinely believe that these games deserve 10's. Maybe they don't. I would have trouble believing anything that someone from GameSpot or CNET had to say about them, whether defending the scores or claiming that they (the scores) were inflated due to pressure from management, publishers and/or advertisers.
In short, I am back, but I am not enthusiastic about it. Do not expect to see much, if any, content from me on this site unless GameSpot offers to pay me to write it. If you are interested in seeing my writings, about video games and other subjects, you will find them on my personal blog, pentagen.org. (Yes, "pentagen" is intentionally misspelled.)
It's much, much harder to build trust than to squander it. I think the trust our readers have in us is really all we've got, so I'd much sooner leave my job than give it up.
-- Greg Kasavin
High Definition, I don't hate you, but I was hoping to go a little longer without you.
I found excuse after excuse to put you off until later. First I was waiting for your thin CRT television sets to drop to reasonable prices. By the time that happened, all CRT TV sets were terrible.
Then I waited for your LCD sets to drop to then CRT price levels. That happened, but shortly before that I decided that I wanted an LCD television set with a CableCard 2.0 slot so I would be able to take advantage of two-way services offered by my cable operator such as on-demand video and an interactive program guide without a cable box.
After it became clear to me, HD, that the cable companies, consumer electronics companies and the United States Federal Communications Commission would not come to an agreement on a standard for CableCard 2.0 for years, I started looking at your LCD television sets again.
But then I decided that it would make sense to wait for sets compliant with HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) version 1.3. I didn't want to have what would soon be an obsolete version of something.
And when HDMI 1.3 became common, I was waiting for one of your good television sets to have four HDMI inputs. (Oddly, only your budget sets seem to have four now.) A PlayStation 3, upconverting DVD player and one of your cable boxes would take up three of those inputs. I wanted a fourth just in case I needed it in the future. Sure, there are HDMI splitters, but those things take up space and aren't as convenient as having enough inputs built-in.
A few days ago, all of my excuses became moot. Attempting to play Assassin's Creed and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on my standard definition television set was just that: attempting to play them. These games were designed specifically for you, High Definition. Too many things in these games were barely visible in SD, making them frustrating to play and straining my eyes.
My vision was poor already. I didn't want video games to be the reason why I became legally blind. So on Friday I connected my PlayStation 3 to my computer monitor.
Much better. 1080i is a whole lot easier on my eyes than standard definition.
If only I didn't have to sit at my computer desk in my less comfortable than my bed computer chair to experience you.
The just announced for Europe less expensive, 40-gigabyte PlayStation 3 is not backward-compatible with PlayStation 2 games. (It is compatible with most original PlayStation games.)
This model has not yet been announced for North America, but it is only a matter of time before it is. And this opens the possibility that in the future no newly manufactured PlayStation 3 will be able to play PlayStation 2 games.
This makes me more paranoid about my PlayStation 3 breaking than I already was.
I bought a PlayStation 3 earlier than I would have preferred because Sony announced that the then upcoming PAL-territory version would not have an Emotion Engine (PlayStation 2 processor), making the console less backward-compatible with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games than the already released NTSC model. The Emotion-less (read: less expensive to produce) PlayStation 3 would surely find its way to the rest of the world and replace the existing Emotion-al models, and probably sooner rather than later, so I "needed" a PlayStation 3 immediately, despite few worthwhile PlayStation 3 games available at the time.
When my first PlayStation 3 broke a few hours after I purchased it, I became paranoid.
If my second PlayStation 3 broke (after GameStop's seven day period in which it replaces one's newly-purchased game console with another new console), and Sony decided that my system was beyond repair, I could be sent a new or refurbished PlayStation 3, possibly one with no Emotion Engine, making a portion of my PlayStation and PlayStation 2 game library useless.
Now I fear that I could lose the ability to play all of my PlayStation 2 games if my PlayStation 3 breaks.
Maybe this is for the better. This generation of game hardware is likely the end of the line for backward-compatibility. Sony and Microsoft have hinted that all content for their next game consoles will be distributed digitally. Digital-only distribution means no need for an optical disc drive, which is necessary for the (primarily) disc-based games of this and the previous two generations of game hardware. Removing backward-compatibility now prevents consumers from being shocked and angered when the next generation of game hardware cannot play previous generation games from the start.
(This has nothing to do with video games, but when I break news, I want someone to read it.)
One of the random images to appear on watchmaker Nooka's Japan Web site is of a man, naked, at least from the waist-up, wearing a watch never before seen by the public.
The watch has a white, especially horizontal face not centered on its white strap. 12 dots in a circle, presumably representing hours, are in the upper-left corner of the face. The Nooka logo is to the right of the circle of dots. A horizontal bar, likely for minutes, is on the bottom, centered. Three more dots; probably a.m., p.m. and alarm; are just above the right side of the bar and directly below the logo. This watch does not appear to display seconds, unlike all other Nooka watches.
This watch has not yet been announced. It does not appear on Nooka's English-language Web site, nor on Web sites that sell or cover timepieces.
Zirc: unannounced, currently unavailable watch from Nooka
Additionally, Internet-based furniture retailer 2Modern is now selling Nooka's fall 2005 line of leather-strapped digital watches (Zot V2, Zoo V2, Zen V, Zen H) with blue or gray faces and matching leather straps. These watches do not appear to be available in these colors elsewhere.
Zot V2 watch in blue
Nooka has not yet responded to a request for a comment.
Nooka, founded in 2005 by designer Matthew Waldman, specializes in digital watches that display time in non-traditional ways, often using dots or bars. Prior to Nooka the company, Waldman collaborated with Seiko to produce a watch called Nooka, which is similar in appearance to Nooka the company's Zoo line of watches.
[UPDATE] Nooka estimates that the new watches will be added to its English-language Web site by the end of the week and start shipping next week. The company does not make it clear whether this applies to the blue and gray versions of its already known watches, the unannounced watch on its Japan Web site or both.
[UPDATE 2] The unannounced watch is named Zirc. It will be available in late November or early December.
Few were more excited than I when Sony announced at its pre-E3 2006 keynote address that the PlayStation 3 controller, the Sixaxis, would be motion-sensitive, or have "tilty support," as the cool kids call it.
Superior visuals and audio are expected from a new game console, and intelligent artificial intelligence, realistic physics and more simultaneous characters on screen are not immediately tangible. Motion-sensitive controls are an unexpected, major, immediately noticeable change to the way we play video games.
Motion controls on the PlayStation 3 came at the expense of vibration--that might change--but after years of using Nintendo's vibration-free WaveBird wireless GameCube controller and wireless PlayStation 2 controllers from Hori and Logitech with options to disable vibration to increase battery life, I discovered that I didn't miss vibration.
But in the 10 months since the release of the PlayStation 3, we have yet to see a good PS3 game that relies on motion-sensitive controls.
Tony Hawk's Project 8, available at the PlayStation 3's launch, could be played almost entirely with motion-based controls. It didn't work well, but we let it go because it was a launch game, and new concepts rarely work perfectly on the first try. Besides, the game could be played the old-fashioned way: by pressing buttons, triggers and thumbsticks.
Three months later came flOw. The required motion controls worked, and it was fun, but it was fun only for a few minutes. flOw was a tech demo, and like most tech demos, there was not enough to it to hold interest for a significant period of time.
Another three months later, we got Super Rub a Dub: another tech demo. The motion controls in this one were broken, somehow managing to be simultaneously too sensitive and too loose, making the game not fun, not even for a few minutes.
And now we have Lair: the first full-fledged game designed from the ground up to make use of the PlayStation 3's motion-sensitive controls.
You would think that almost a year after the release of the PlayStation 3 that game designers would have figured out how to properly make use of the Sixaxis' motion control ability, but no, Lair's required tilty controls are broken. Some disagree, and insist that Lair's motion controls work well, and a recent PlayStation 3 System Software update is rumored to have fixed them, but controls are not the only issue bringing Lair down, so fixed (or never broken) motion controls alone do not turn Lair from an awful game into a good one.
And that's just four games. Beyond those, motion-based controls in PlayStation 3 games have been token, and often out of place or awkward, if they exist at all.
The PlayStation 3 does not rely on its motion-sensitive abilities like the Wii, the other game console with a motion-sensitive controller, so it is not as big a disappointment when a PS3 game has token or no motion controls than it is when a Wii game has token or no motion controls, but motion controls are one of the things that differentiate the PS3 from the Xbox 360, its closest competitor, so not having a single good PlayStation 3 game that relies on or makes good use of motion-sensitivity makes this advantage moot, especially since the Xbox 360 Controller can vibrate and the Sixaxis cannot--again, this might change.
By now there should be multiple, full-fledged games (not tech demos) for the PlayStation 3 that rely on its controller's motion-sensing abilities, and countless others that make good use of it. That this is not the case almost a year after the PlayStation 3's launch should be an embarrassment to Sony Computer Entertainment.
