Blips: Energy Hogs

Source: Video Game Consoles Cost Americans $400 Million per Year — When We Aren’t Even Using Them
Author: Mandi Woodruff
Site: Yahoo Tech

At first, I wasn't surprised when I read the above statistics about the PS4 and Xbox One's gluttonous power consumption, but the more I thought about it, I wonder how they can get away with being so against the grain of the energy efficiency movement. As Mandi Woodruff notes in her report, the power usage during gaming sessions is to be expected, and runs on par with a PC, but it's the standby mode and energy drain during non-intensive tasks that's a bit bewildering. The PS4 uses 45 times the electricity of an AppleTV to run Netflix and similar video streaming apps. If console makers really want to push for their machines to be "always-on" and multi-purpose, they should really figure out ways to allow them to run at appropriately proportional power levels. Until then, all we can do is as Woodruff suggests: change your system settings to make the machine turn off when not in use and switch to a dedicated streaming box like Roku or AppleTV for simple video watching. Sheesh, even the PS2 used to have a full-stop power switch on its back. Whatever happened to those?

Blips: Your All-In-One Entertainment Hub Again

Source: The PlayStation 4: A Review in Four Parts
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

I wanted to sneak this plug in before the Xbox One launch. I was lucky enough to get to review the PS4 for Kill Screen, which I had no idea would be the case when I volunteered to go to a PlayStation event last week. At the review event, I sat through some hardware and UI demos before making my way to a dozen or so game rooms. I played The Witness, Octodad, Tiny Brains, Child of Light, Need for Speed Rivals, Infamous: Second Son, and Hohokum, among others. It was great to talk to developers and meet some folks in person that I'd only spoken to through other channels. It was a wonderful opportunity for me because I was there "reviewing" the PS4 from a more aesthetic angle, as if it was an art object. At the end of the event, I picked up a PS4 on behalf of Kill Screen and was able to spend a few more days with it before returning the unit to the office.

Soon, it became clear that I could actually write a real review of the machine, and that was the approach that made the most sense. However, I'd read some other hardware and OS reviews, and most of them are total slogs to read. Even despite Polygon's pretty layout, the text reads cold, as if written by committee. I wanted to write a hardware review that wasn't about covering every aspect of the machine, but got to the essence of what it does and how it fits into my own lifestyle. That I ended up dividing my PS4 review into 4 parts was total coincidence, but worked out pretty nicely. Anyway, I like the PS4; it's a better console than the PS3, but there's nothing I'm dying to play on it yet. Someday I'll probably want one for myself though.

Blips: It's PS4 Week

Hey, I know I just got back from a break little more than a week ago, but I'm going to have to apologize for an absence this week once again. With PS4 out this week, I've been attending events and diving headfirst into the console to see what it has to offer. Look for a piece forthcoming on Kill Screen that will act as a kind of "review" of the system, but it will be a bit more focused on the aesthetics of the console's UI options, controller and first-party games. I'm also playing a third-party game for review, so, busy, yes. To tide you over on the reading material side of things, here are a few links to articles worth checking out. Check y'all later (probably next week).

Ian Bogost on "Hyperemployment"
A deep dive into Tale of Tales' Luxuria Superbia
Art, authorship, and The Unfinished Swan
Crashtxt and the inclusive art practice of Twitter glitching

Blips: Video Games: Legacy: Origins

Source: How Long Can Video Games Matter?
Author: Mitch Dyer
Site: IGN

In a recent column on IGN, Mitch Dyer stacks up the historical importance of individual video games versus some of the time-tested, canonical books and films that have so much more staying power in the public consciousness. Dyer definitely has a strong point in that the video game industry consumes its own historical significance, leaving only crumbs in its wake for die-hard collectors to deal with. Only recently are we starting to get to the point where some games could have digital cross-generational longevity. That said, backward compatibility has been all but phased out of consoles (unless PS4 still plays PS1 games, which would be pretty great), and the essence of these games has become tied to their respective, soon-to-be-obsolete platforms.

Dyer's statements about gaming franchises being more recognizable than the actual games is also true. I've never played a Mega Man game, but I'm interested in trying some out. Now, I don't have a desire to play all of the Mega Man games since they're mostly the same, but some do certain things better than others and are more enlightening to their original historical context. Where then is the value of a game like Mega Man 5, which is overshadowed in every way by other games in the series? No one expects future generations to go back and play every Mega Man game to understand what they're all about. Those sequels were made for people who already loved Mega Man and want to play more of it in some slight variation, and the miniscule intellectual payoff of soldiering through all of them is undoubtedly not worth the time and energy.

I'd like to propose another way of looking at video games in historical context though: as part of the lineage of games in general. The value of one Mega Man game has its limits, but the side-scrolling action game has certainly had a profound impact on digital interactivity spaces. I'm convinced that World of Warcraft will be talked about well into the future as well in the context of its massively multiplayer online interactive systems. People might not play WoW 20 years from now, but perhaps they will play a game that follows that lineage (not necessarily the brand). Is it more important that we remember the Dallas Cowboys or football in general?

Lastly, I think Dyer is giving those famous books and movies he speaks of too much credit. How many Best Picture Oscar winning films have you actually seen? How many of those do you have vivid memories of beyond vaguely recalling the plot and some cinematic themes? Probably not near all of them, yet at the time they were released and evaluated they were highly praised in a way that said, "These are movies that future generations should know about." Yes, it's great that some masterworks of various mediums have be lauded and institutionalized to stand the test of time, but games like chess, go, and various sporting competitions have arguably had as much, if not more cultural impact (an immeasurable value, I'm aware). There's nothing to make me doubt that certain video games will eventually be added to that list someday too, and it wouldn't hurt if the industry kicked in a little effort to help while we're at it. The next generation is going to be faced with an even larger pile of media that adults think they should know about, and certain things will invariably be pushed to the side, but I believe the best games will stick around in some form.

Blips: Photographic Memory

Source: The Great and Secret Gaming Photographer
Author: Evan Amos
Site: Unwinnable

You're probably familiar with Evan Amos' photography, but you're probably never heard his name before. Amos' current passion project is documenting video game hardware with clean, high resolution images, and making them publicly accessible and royalty-free. He's already taken quite a few pictures and uploaded them to Wikimedia's database, replacing the small, low-quality images that were there before. Because of their immaculate quality and the ease of access to them, Amos' images show up everywhere. I myself used them when I was putting images together to make joking comparisons between consoles and characters from Game of Thrones. Amos' photos are hands-down the best images of video game hardware available online, and the exciting news is that he's looking to expand his collection.

I'm not in the habit of promoting Kickstarter projects, but this one is different; it's educational. Amos is documenting historical objects and releasing his work for free, and he's even donating all of the consoles he buys to NYU's Game Center after he's finished taking pictures of them. At a time when video game companies themselves seem to be dismissing their own past when it comes to preservation, it's great to see someone stepping up to tackle at least one archival aspect of gaming history. My only regret is that I didn't know about this Kickstarter before I used Amos' photos, otherwise all the people who saw that post would have known about the story behind the pictures. Even if you don't want to donate to the project, it's worth knowing that someone has taken up this task. Kudos to you, Evan Amos, and best of luck!

Blips: Indulgence

Source: Game of Thrones Characters as Video Game Consoles
Author: Dan Solberg (as Gold_Skulltulla)
Site: Giant Bomb

So, a cool thing happened earlier this week. I posted this comparison of Game of Thrones characters to video game consoles on my Giant Bomb blog, and it proved to be quite popular. It's currently received over 125,000 pageviews and about 150 comments, almost all of which are extremely positive. The ball started rolling slowly when I originally posted the piece at about 4am EST, which meant that the initial batch of viewers were probably European (i.e. some commenters addressed me as "mate"). Eventually the Giant Bomb mods took notice and liked my post enough to promote it in the Community Showcase slot on the front page. If things had stopped there I still would have been quite pleased, but it was only a matter of time until some outside sources started picking up the story.

After some tweets and retweets, Luke Plunkett reposted a couple of my comparisons on Kotaku, along with some nice words of his own. Then things really took off, and my original post was racking up around 1,000 views and hour. Also, since Kotaku has such a wide reach as a publication, reposts of their repost began popping up all over the place too. I even got a shout-out from Bill Corbett who was a writer for MST3K and voiced the robot, Crow, for a couple seasons.

Here's a list of all the citations I've been able to track down so far:

Original Giant Bomb blog, Giant Bomb User Community Showcase, Giant Bomb Community Spotlight, Kotaku, Koatku Australia, Vinny Caravella tweet, Bill Corbett tweet, Snackbar Community tweet, a ton of other tweets, Reddit Gaming, Reddit Wii U, NeoGAF, Groupthink Jezebel, Imgur, TOR, IGN forums, Winter Is Coming, GameFAQs forums, Xerq forums, High Def Digest forums, PakGamers forums, Otaku Helpers forums, Retrovia Ireland forums, Funny Junk, Video Game Lab, Gee Willikers Batman, LOL Shed, Mordicai!, Gags and Fails, Chez Geeks, Cheezburger, Randomization, P1 Luck, Garotas Nerds, and Nerd Approved.

I'd never made a "listicle" before, and genuinely thought it would be fun (it is, or at least this one was). After the initial idea came to me, I looked up whether this had ever been done before, because it seemed sort of obvious. Turns out there was a meme that got passed around before, but it was limited in scope and lacked polish, so I felt like I was in the clear. I've been listening to the Game of Thrones audiobooks after making my way through all 3 seasons of the TV show, so this stuff had saturated my mind at a certain point. I had a tentative list going for about a month or so, and then I just realized that some of the jokes I'd written wouldn't work once the new consoles were released, so I stayed up and put all of the images together, applied the finishing touches, and sent it out the door.

What a relief it was that people actually seemed to like it! I didn't expect the level of positive response that this post got, and ironically, it seemed like a bunch of people went in expecting to hate it. In fact, I think "surprised praise" is the most pervasive sentiment in the comments. Well, that and people wondering where the SNES is (note: as a character, the SNES is boooring). I wish I could have worked in a ton of jokes and Game of Thrones references that were left on the cutting room floor, but I didn't want to force anything; that's why there's no Robb or Catelyn, for one. All in all, even though it's just a list of pop culture comparisons that gives the initial impression of being "click-bait," I'm really proud of it and glad so many people gave it a chance.

Thanks everyone!