Play Forumwarz

OK. We have all had this idea. As Warren Specter said in a recent 1Up podcast, "Ideas are cheap."
So I can't very well complain that I have design documents and a forum set up for my game, "Flame Wars," which would have allowed gamers to flame each other and then rate, at the end of the week, the best / worst poster. This is an idea anyone in the last ten years could have had... but now that Robin "Evil Trout" Ward, Mike "Jalapeno Bootyhole" Drach, and Jason "The Other Other Hole" Kogan have realized it in Forumwarz, nobody else can create it and pretend to be original.
That's okay with me.

I understand when MIT comes up with its working death ray powered by cold fusion, I might as well burn all my nonworking plans for said death ray. I didn't have a working prototype, so I can just shut up and sit outside.

OK, angst aside, this is a really great game and everyone should play it. Go to the link in my first paragraph and get playing right away - if you read one of the newspaper articles about the game, they mention one of the innovative ideas there is you can start without having to log in. This is a great, inclusive idea - I'll spare you the rant for today on why newspapers shouldn't have protected content. Suffice it to say the fewer roadblocks the better.

Anyhow imagine an RPG where you meet the internet memes you know and love, and get to destroy them utterly. I have more complete thoughts on this game I'd like to post, but I've already gone on too long and I don't want to turn new players away. Think of this as the preview, and since buying the game involves spending a few minutes of your time (obviously abundant if you're still reading this drivel) then I have no shame in recommending your purchase.

You Tube: Better than Walkthroughs?

Note: This was originally a long response to Chris Dahlen's excellent post "You Tube: Better than Walkthroughs?" I've reprinted it here so it won't get lost.

Why do I like to view the 'bad' ending of a game on You Tube rather than play through it a second time? Yes, I understand I'm missing the entire experience. However...

Most of us don’t have the time or our interest flags before we can play through a 50 hour game a second time (talking about modern RPGs, not Bioshock). We have a lot of good games on the shelf!
Plus it was tough for me to kill one little sister, I couldn’t stay interested in playing through the whole game a second time just to see the bad ending.
That’s why I Youtubed the bad ending of Bioshock…

And you’re forgetting the games that are so bad / broken we can’t make it to the end. That’s how I felt about Jericho. After being stuck at the same annoying part for hours, then getting on to the next part, and then losing all my progress due to a crash, I said ‘forget this,’ Youtubed the ending (which was awful!) and was glad I hadn’t made it there myself.

So, sometimes you Youtube an ending because you love the game but don’t have time to play through it a second or third time, sometimes you Youtube an ending because it’s awful and you can’t force yourself to get to the end. My personal opinion is that it’s great we have these options these days and we don’t have to feel bad at ‘missing out’ on part of our $50.00 purchase…

ps. Playing through a 50 hour RPG with hint guide in hand to make sure you don’t miss anything is one of the most dull experiences known to man (or woman). The fact that you can miss a little dialogue or an item near the beginning and get a bad ending at the end because of it… this is just poor design.

Welcome

I don't plan to make this a regular event, but if you've come here by accident, then welcome.
Although I'm interested in The Invisibles and King Mob is an Invisibles character, the idea is to talk about games and education rather than comic books.

I might use this as a repository of some of my longer comments, so they're all somewhere I can find. In that case, if you've linked here from somewhere else, sorry there isn't more content :)