So allow me to center my interpretation around the book which is heavily referenced in the movie (especially the directors cut), The Philosophy of Time Travel.  If you take a few minutes to read this, the movie, and my interpretation will make a lot more sense as the entire plot of the movie can be explained by it.  I will segment my interpretation, chapter by chapter, to directory correlate to the above “book”.  All quoted items through this article are quotations from The Philosophy of Time Travel.

The Tangent Universe

… Incidents when the fabric of the Fourth Dimension becomes corrupted are incredibly rare.

If a Tangent Universe occurs, it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself no longer than several weeks.

Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence…

Shortly after the start of the film Donnie is awoken to a voice, the voice of the giant rabbit Frank.  From this point forward Donnie is living in the Tangent Universe.  The Primary Universe is the normal world.  The Tangent universe is the highly unlikely occurance mentioned in the above quote.  During his first encounter with Frank he is told that the world will end in approximately 28 days.  This is the length of time the Tangent Universe will exist for.

So this sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

The Artifact and the Living

When a Tangent Universe occurs, those living nearest the Vortex will find themselves at the epicenter of a dangerous new world.

Artifacts provide the first sign that a Tangent Universe has occured.

If an Artifact occurs, the Living will retrieve it with great interest and curiosity.  Artifacts are formed from metal…

The Artifact in this case, is the jet engine which crashes into Donnies house during his meeting with Frank.  The next morning when he wakes up and returns home, he sees that his house has been destroyed by this jet engine.  More importantly, it landed directly in his bedroom, and he should have been killed.  It is eluded to several times that the FAA has no idea where the jet engine came from.  Meaning that no plane crashed, nor landed, missing an engine.  This makes the item an item of great curiosity, as well as solidifying the existence of a Tangent Universe.

The Living Receiver

The Living Reciever is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for its journey back to the Primary Universe.

… The Living Reciever is often blessed with Fourth Dimensional Powers.  These include increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water.

The Living Receiver is often tormented by terrifying dreams, visions and auditory hallucinations during his time within the Tangent Universe…

Donnie is the Living Receiver, meaning he was chosen to “guide the Artifact into position”.  This basically means that he is responsible for making sure the jet engine crashes into his house after 28 days and kills him.  Though he does not realize this fact for most of the movie.  If he does not fulfill this task, the Tangent Universe will consume the Primary Universe.  Basically, the Living Receiver has to save the world, but no one will ever know he did.

He is tormented by dreams/auditory hallucinations, seeing/hearing Frank, and he exhibits some of the other prescribed traits.  He somehow managed to lodge an axe into a solid bronze statue, and he “conjured” fire and water when he flooded the school and burned down Cunninghams house.  Although I think they could have done a better job with the “conjuring” since you don’t need special powers to use gasoline to light a fire.

Also, the watery tubes he can sometimes see coming out of peoples chests are his way of seeing into the future, which also appear as water, what the book claims the the Fourth Dimensional (time) construct is made of.  As well as using his powers of telekinesis to guide the artifact back into position at the end of the movie by using his mind to rip the engine off the aircraft.

The Manipulated Dead

The Manipulated Dead are more powerful than the Living Receiver.  If a person dies within the Tangent Universe, they are able to contact the Living Receiver through the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

The Fourth Dimensional Construct is made of Water.

The Manipulated Dead will manipulate the Living Receiver using the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

The Manipulated Dead will often set an Ensurance Trap for the Living Receiver to ensure that the Artifact is returned safely to the Primary Universe…

The Manipulated Dead in the movie are Gretchen (Donnies “girlfriend”) and Frank.  This is because at some point within the confines of the Tangent Universe they die.  This is how and why Frank can contact Donnie, independant of time.  Gretchen also plays what seems to be a more subconscious role in setting the Ensurance Trap.

The Ensurance Trap is basically the Manipulated Dead’s way of making sure the Living Reciever does what he needs to do, and is essentially given no other choice.  In Donnies case, the series of coincidences which occur leading up to Gretchen dying, and him shooting Frank.  After those events occur he either understands his purpose in the Tangent Universe, or he simply has no other reason to live, so he sacrifices himself to guide the artifact into its position in the Primary Universe.  That position of course, is in his bedroom, while he is still in it.

The Ensurance Trap is the sole purpose of the Manipulated Dead, and is the only reason those two characters are in the plot.  Every interaction Donnie has with them leads up to the ending.

1. Frank tells Donnie world will end.
2. Frank convinces Donnie to flood the school
   1. Donnie meets Gretchen, due to this.
   2. Consquently, his teacher is fired due to the book “The Destructors” she had them read.
   3. When she is fired she writes “Cellar Door” on the chalkboard.
3. Frank shows Donnie the watery plumes from peoples chests, leading him to find his fathers gun.
4. Donnie finds wallet, which leads to him burning down Cunninghams house.
   1. Kitty stays home to defend Cunningham, forcing Donnies mom to travel with the dance team.
5. Due to Frank, Donnie becomes curious about time travel, science teacher gives him Philosophy of Time Travel.
   1. Donnie writes letter to “Grandma Death”
6. Donnies mom leaves, enabling him and his sister to throw a party.
   1. Gretchen’s mom runs off, leading Gretchen to Donnies house.
   2. Gretchen and Donnie further solidify their relationship via sex.
   3. Frank is driving to the party with Beer.
7. During Halloween party Donnie realizes how much time he has left.
   1. Suddenly something clicks in his mind, and he goes to Grandma Death’s house, notably into the “Cellar Door”.
   2. A quarrel happens with he and some thugs.
   3. Frank drives down the road, due to the quarrel Gretchen is in the street.
   4. Frank has to swerve to miss Grandma Death who is in the street, only to read the letter Donnie sent.
   5. As a result of swerving, kills Gretchen.
   6. Due to Frank killing Gretchen, Donnie kills Frank.
8. Donnie realizes what is going on and fully understands the book now, goes home, and sets everything right by allowing the aircraft engine to kill him.

The Manipulated Living

The Manipulated Living are often the close friends and neighbours of the Living Receiver.

They are prone to irrational, bazaar, and often violent behavior.  This is the unfortunate result of their task, which is to assist the Living Receiver in returning the Artifact to the Primary Universe…

The Manipulated Living are everyone else in the movie, other than Gretchen, Frank, and Donnie.   They play a seemingly unconscious role in the Ensurance trap, whereby they act “bizzare” because they are somehow alert of the fact that the world is ending, and are acting irrational in order to save it, even though they are not conscious of any of this.

There are not really a weath of examples of the “bizarre/violent” behavior without stretching, but here goes.  Kitty, the health teacher, is obsessed with two things, one, the cult-like “fear/love” system by Cunningham, which ultimately results in her leading his defense team when he is found out as a child pornographer.  Which in turn, leads to Donnies mom having to leave.  Also, she is obsessed with the dance team, Sparkle Motion, winning the talent contest.  Because if they don’t, the artifact cannot find it’s place back.

Other small things are how his parents act, father being glad Donnie got suspended, mother asking for a divorce which never happens.  His shrink giving Donnie a placebo pill (which further argues that he is not insane).  Teacher writing “Cellar Door” on the chalkboard, teacher making Gretchen pick a seat “next to the cutest boy”, teacher making them read/watch very questionable material in class.

A lot of people just act a little “strange” throughout the film.

Dreams

When the Manipulated awaken from their Journey into the Tangent Universe, they are often huanted by the experience in their dreams.

Many of them will not remember.

Those who do remember the journey are often overcome with profound remorse for the regretful actions buried within their dreams, the only physical evidence buried within the artifact itself; all that remains from the lost world…

The movie ends, with the key cast members all waking up from what appears to be a dream, or in some cases, a nightmare.  The teachers wake up happy, they still have their jobs, and feel somehow content with their role in setting things right in their dream.  Cherita wakes up happy having remembered when Donnie promised her everything would be better.

Kitty wakes up remorseful after realizing that she devoted herself to a pedophile.  Cunningham wakes up horrified, remorsful of being a fraud and a pedophile (whom, according to the cryptic Donnie Darko website later commits suicide).

Frank wakes up rubbing his eye.

Others, such as Gretched and Donnies mom, seem ignorant to the occurances other than having a strange familiarity with one another at the end of the movie, even though they never actually met.  The therapist also wakes up in the middle of the night but I am really unsure as to why.

Summary and Conclusion

To summarize the above:  A rift happens at the beginning of the movie splitting the universe into a tangent.  The movie entirely takes place within the tangent, where everyone in the movie is, consciously or unconsciously, working toward closing the rift to ensure the real world doesn’t end.  Donnie is the unfortunate individual stuck in the middle.  In order to make things right, he needs to make sure the jet engine kills him before the rift sucks the real world into oblivion.  The entire movie is centered around setting up/making sure, Donnie does just that.  By the end he understands fully what is going on, and fulfills his destiny.  He dies, and the world goes on as it was supposed to.

I believe that the writer/director have made it quite clear at this point that The Philosophy of Time Travel should be taken as canon.  As such, the movie is a pure sci-fi tale of time travel and parellel universes.  While I think other interpretations are interesting to read, I do not believe that is how the movie was meant to be recieved.  Especially with respect to the “emo” crowd.

I do not believe it was a tale of a troubled young man, who saw the future.  Saw the future and saw himself causing all sorts of damage to the world, due to paranoid schizophrenia.  Later killing himself to save the world from his dastardly deeds.  I believe the addition of the scene where his doctor talks of giving him placebo pills further solidifies the fact that even she did not believe him to be ill.  So please, emo kids, pick a different movie to love so I don’t feel gay when I watch Donnie Darko.

I want a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.

The types of features I am talking about are a very specific type.  I cannot in my right mind suggest that everything considered a “feature” is a bad thing, however, I can suggest that the vast majority of things both tangible and intangible, are by and large, useless widgets that appear to add value to a particular item.

When I was building this website, I had to resist the urge to add feature after feature to the design.  I, myself, am an admitted feature whore where I tend to want to do things because I can.  Some of that has slipped through in elements like the mostly useless expandable footer, while I somehow managed to resist the urge to add a color picker so the user could dynamically change the background color.  Similarly, when Ralphie finally got his Red Ryder BB-gun, how many times do you think he use the compass?  My money is on none, same as the average user on this site likely does not even realize the footer is expandable, much less care.

When I first saw the feature list on the release of the iPhone 3 GS I was somewhat releived.  Apple didn’t really go overboard on adding a ton of new features, for the most part, all they really did was improve something which was already pretty good.  They made the camera a bit better, made the device as a whole a bit faster, and tweaked and improved a few other elements.  What I could not understand is, why the hell did they add a compass?  The answer is, because most tech nerds, geeks, and gadget lovers all have one thing in common – just like little Ralphie, we love features.

To liken the addition of a compass to one of the greatest selling toys for adults in history to the compass in that old Red Ryder bb-gun just seems logical.  Imagine how useful it will be for you, here I’ll even help a bit:  You are out in the woods, lost.  No cell phone signal but conveniently you have your iPhone with you.  Nothing else, just your iPhone.  Oh, and it has a good amount of battery left.  You are paniced trying to figure out how you can get yourself rescued.  You break out your trusty Compass app and navigate yourself to safety!

Right.  Problem is, the above scenerio, will never happen.  What will happen, though, are things like this: TwittARound.  Some clever developers came up with a way to make the otherwise useless compass feature of the iPhone, even more useless!  Just what I always wanted, the ability to spin around in the circle watching the twitter activity of nearby people.

The iPhone’s compass, and the app that uses it in such a usless way, are the perfect embodiment of a misuse of features.  The age old addition of a compass to anything, makes us want it more.  Many times in my life have I been duped into buying things by getting sold on features which I ultimately never used.  Cell phones are not the only offender.  Computers, game consoles, cars, pretty much any product on the shelf has some sort of feature we either don’t understand, or don’t need.  Yet, that feature is the single thing that made us actually buy said item.

Everything right down to toothpaste and shampoo has usless added features.  I remember a while back “Herbal Essence” shampoo commercials touting that their shampoo’s now feature Hawafena!  What the hell is Hawafena?  I have no idea, and apparently no one else does either, but people wanted it.

Luckily for us, things will always have features.  The only thing we can do is become more conscious of what features we need, what will use, and what will will not.  It seems that product marketing is already making a return back to simplicity, if not good old minimalism – which will be a topic for another time.

Shows like Heroes, Lost, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and many other television shows, mostly in the science fiction genre, have a few things in common.  That is, high production costs, huge casts, extensive writing, and most importantly, a relatively low draw in terms of audience and ratings.  Shows of this magnitude are essentially movies, movies which are over 100 hours long.  Since network television produces these shows purely off of ad revenue, it is not hard to imagine an end to it all.

“It’s going to be one of the last huge television shows in terms of size of cast and scope of production,” predicts Bender, in town to lead a master class at the Banff World Television Festival.

“Given the fact that network television is changing, it may be one of the last great rides of this kind of big epic storytelling.”

This he attributes to a combination of factors: the collapsed economy, what the networks are looking for in new programming, and the sheer cost of mounting a show like “Lost.”

Citation

I have never been a huge TV nut; I never sit down at 10pm on Tuesday nights to watch a show.  I either record it on my Tivo, or I buy/download it later on after the fact.  I would venture to guess that I am a part of the vast majority of television fans, especially fans of shows in this genre.  As such, it is not hard to figure out why the top rated shows on television are reality shows like The Bachelorette, talent shows like American Idol, generic sitcoms, and of course, crime dramas like NCIS, CSI, and Law & Order.  All of these shows are not only far cheaper to produce from the networks perspective, but they are far easier for someone to just watch at their leisure, without 5 seasons worth of plot and story line to worry about.

Bender says TV’s thematic pendulum is swinging away from serial television towards more stand-alone dramas. Procedurals are popular with networks, he notes, because it’s easier for audiences to drop in at any time.

Citation

But what will come of the good old-fashioned epic science fiction story, or drama?  The days of shows with long, intricate contiguous plot lines, I fear, are over.

I can only hope that cable networks such as Showtime and HBO can pick up where the networks are leaving off, and it seems they already have by giving us amazing shows such as Dexter and True Blood.  If this turns out to be the case, then I will glady pay to stay a subscriber, much as is the case with me and satellite radio.  You can’t really put a price on good entertainment.

Simulation games have proven excellent tools for training people in manual skills; for example, X-Plane, a flight simulator that runs on home computers, has been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. But accidental learning transcends intentional training. When role-playing gamers team up to undertake a quest, they often need to attempt particularly difficult challenges repeatedly until they find a blend of skills, talents, and actions that allows them to succeed. This process brings about a profound shift in how they perceive and react to the world around them. They become more flexible in their thinking and more sensitive to social cues. The fact that they don’t think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player’s behavior patterns and worldview.

So what is raiding?  What is a guild?  For the un-cool, I will tell you.  Raiding in WoW is the term used to define the act of killing creatures in the game which take many players to kill.  In the case of WoW, most raiding constitues 25 people.  A guild, is a group of players who play together in the game almost exclusively.  A raiding guild, is a guild which has a primary objective of raiding together.

As you can see, coordinating all of this effort, takes leadership skills.  This aspect of the game is what makes it fun for me.  Sure from the outside looking in, I am a full grown adult playing a cartoonish looking video game.  Spending countless hours of my time working toward intangible goals and virtual wealth.  The rewarding nature for the game, for me, has never been the item rewards, the virtual wealth, or the prestige of being the first guild on your server to kill the hardest boss.  For me, it is fun to see my hard work toward leading a group of players through a difficult encounter and seeing how excited people are when the hard work finally pays off in a kill.

It gets complicated here.  This is because these bosses in which you “raid” are generally very difficult, and this is why you need a coordinated guild to do it.  You cannot simply assemble 25 random people and expect to win.  You need a well balanced group of skillful players who are willing to die over and over together at the expense of their real world time, and in game money, toward the effort of learning how kill, and ultimately killing a boss, to reap the rewards.  The rewards, are the next layer of complexity.  Since these bosses generally yield 2-4 items each time you kill them, and 25 people kill them, you need to have a fair method of distributing the rewards to your players in order to motivate them to come back another day to kill another boss.

So does this have any real world value?  Do you actually need real world leadership skills to accomplish success in the game World of Warcraft?  My answer is yes, and the point of this post is to explain why.

Creating your guild

Creating and leading a guild in world of warcraft is quite easy.  All you need is a little bit of gold, and ten other players to sign your “charter”.  Once you have done this, you have a guild, you are a guild leader.  Anyone can do this, even a six year old.  However, if you want the guild to be anything more than a glorified chat room, it takes a bit more.  Most raid guilds start off by having a website, and something called a Ventrilo server used for voice chat based coordination during raids.  As you can already see, creating a website and managing a voip server is already above the heads of most teenagers.

I started by doing just what I outlined above.  I assembeled a few of my friends, formed my guild, and there it was.  My very own glorified chat room.  After I had established my guild, Solipsis, I had to make a website for it.  As an aside, having a cool guild name is always a plus, and my guilds name is totally badass.  At this point, two other things need to happen.  You need to recruit players into your ranks, and also establish a couple of co-leaders which are deemed “officers”.  You can compare an officer in a guild to something like a member of the cabinet in the presidency.  They assist the leader of the guild on all issues and provide additional leadership assistance.  Choosing capable, high quality officers is crucial to the success of a guild.  You cannot simply choose power hungry teenagers.

Now that you have the backbone of your guild in place (Leader, Officers, Website) there is some clerical work to be done.

Establishing Rules

While you could simply amass a ton of people and allow them to run amok, this was not my goal.  My goal for a successful raid guild was to maintain an active roster of as few people as possible, and also maintaining a level of maturity and respect around the server at large.  This means you need to establish many sets of rules and guidelines which denote the types of players which may be in the guild, how they should behave, and how they should always behave to remain a member.  Other rules are also in place to facilitate the raid aspect of the guild.  This includes a raid schedule, attendance guidelines, and a set of rules which describe how the loot rewards are to be distributed.

If you do not have a good set of rules at the onset which people agree with prior to joining your guild you will find yourself dealing with a lot of issues later when the expectations which you had build up your mind do not line up with the desires of your players.

Something to always keep in mind when making the rules for your guild is that it is just a game.  As such, you do not want to lay a strict set of rules upon people which will ultimately hinder their ability to have fun, which is the overall point in all of this.

Building a roster

Arguably the hardest part.  Once you have a guild and its backbone, you need to seek out players who not only wish to kill bosses, but want to agree to the rules you have set out in your guild.  You need to really sell your guild hard to get good players since there are literally thousdands of guilds for players to choose from.  The criteria for most players who wish to raid are simple:  How good is the guild, how capable are they of killing bosses?  What is their raid schedule, does it fit within the schedule of real life?  How is the overall atmosphere of the guild (serious, fun, mature, immature)?  How do they distribute their loot?  How is their reputation amongst the other guilds on the server?

This part takes the most time and patience, and can be very arguous.  Many times you will get very nice people who try very much, but simply lack skill.  You as a leader need to decide how to handle things like this.  On the contrary, often times you will find extremely great players who are very problematic attitude wise and very difficult to keep happy.  Hopefully after some time you will have weeded out the people who do not quite fit in line with what you are trying to achieve and wind up with a roster you are happy with.

For me, my goal is to have a group of players leaning toward the side of “hardcore” yet still do not take the game so seriously that it becomes a job.  I do not generally want too many players under the age of 18 unless they seem quite mature for their age.  I want to have at most 35 people in the guild who are looking to raid so that I do not have a huge pool of people to rotate through, and I want the guild as a whole to be pretty tight knit and friendly toward each other.  These are the types of things you will decide for yourself, should you ever try to lead this sort of effort.

Leading the raids

This job is not always let to the actual guild leader, as in many cases, a raid leader needs quite different qualities than a guild leader does.  Similar to the differences of the president vs the secretary of defense.  In my case though, I lead my own raids.  I enjoy this aspect of the game the most.  A good raid leader needs to be firm and strict, but not a complete bastard.  You also need a major heap of patience, which I generally lack.  I feel that raid leadership for me is an experiment in exercising my own ability to be more patient in general.

When you wish to lead a raid, you need to assemble your 25 players.  Decisions need to be made based on the players you have on hand, and in most cases you will have more than 25 people to choose from if you are doing a good job.  The people not chosen to raid on a given night will generally be upset by that fact, but again, if you are doing a good job with the guild as a whole they will be more than understanding of it.

Bosses in WoW can be quite complicated.  They require a lot of coordination and every player needs to execute properly for you to be successful.  This can range on a huge scale of responsbility and difficulty.  The responsbility of the raid leader is to coordinate this effort, develop and refine your strategy, and ensuring the players in the raid are doing their job.  It can be a real test of discipline to not get angry and upset during this process, especially if the same players continually make the same mistakes.

A raid kill.

Ideally though, if you have done everything right up to this point, your hard work will pay off and you will kill the magical internet dragon without making anyone too upset and it will drop magical internet swords.

Keeping people happy

The bread and butter of keeping people happy in a guild in wow is to keep feeding them boss kills and subsequently, loot rewards.  Sometimes a boss is so difficult that it can take many hours of the course of several days or even weeks, to finally kill it.  This can be very frustrating and if your guild suffers too much difficulty on a boss for too long you will ultimately lose players.  The easiest way to counter this is by keeping the best possible players around and making sure that you spend a signifcant amount of time killing the easier bosses which you can easily get loot from as often as possible prior to the nights which you plan to spend countless hours learning a new fight.

Tying it all together

So how does all of this apply to real life?  Well, in reality, it doesn’t.  But if you take the skills you learn in the game as a leader and apply them to your life, it absolutely can.  Think of what you are doing, and compare that to say the manager of an it organization.

• Coordinating a large group of people toward a common goal
• Recruiting capable people to fulfill a role and do a job
• Rewarding your people and keeping them happy
• Maintaining patience and professionalism at all times
• Resolving inter-personal conflicts in a diplomatic way
• Choosing others to assist you in your leadership
• Developing and executing plans, goals, and strategies toward the betterment of your organization
• Building friendships and relationships which can transcend the game, or work

And these are just a few of the things you can gain from something most people view as just a game.

For an interesting read on someone who made the transition from guild leadership in wow, to a real world management position, wired magazing published an article a while back about this very subject.

In this way, the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world training a manager can apply directly in the workplace.

If you are a World of Warcraft player feel free to contact me!  I play a warrior named “Disrespect” on the realm “Stormrage”.

XKCD is pretty good.

Some of the things I have learned which have helped me enjoy writing this blog, despite the fact that it does not get much traffic, are pretty obvious.  Others, not so obvious.  Most of them, I don’t even follow now, from a “lessons learned” standpoint.  However, I am aware of them, and I am slowly adapting my style to utilize the things I have learned to make this blog better.

Write often, keep a consistent schedule. This, I am really bad at.  I used to be much better with it but as of recent, I have had trouble motivating to write.  Since this blog is mostly for me, and clearly not for ad revenue, if I dont feel like writing, I don’t.  That being said, when I do write more often, I see an interesting increase in traffic.  Hmm.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a lot of traffic. Much in line with the above, building up an audience takes time.  Some blogs manage to become overnight sensations but there are usually a lot of other factors that play into that.  If you truly want to be successful and perhaps even make money some day, you need to just write, write, write.  Even when no one is reading.  I go through phases of becoming discouraged by this very phenomenon, but whenever I see a valuable comment on my blog posted by a complete stranger, it feels good.

Quality not quantity – or – less is more. This is not about the number of posts you make.  Clearly you should post like 100 posts per day if you can. (/sarcasm?)  It is more about the length of your actual posts.  I have a tendancy to be very long-winded.  I am working on keeping my posts a bit shorter.  It is easier to write short posts, and easier to keep the attention of your readers.  Oh, and, pictures are good.  People like pictures.

Would I read this if it wasn’t my blog? Meaning, is what you write interesting?  I try to keep my blog pretty interesting, and I try not write about what I ate for lunch, why I’m upset with my dog, or other personal nonsense that is best kept in a secret journal.  If you want other people to read your blog, you need to realize, most people don’t care that much about YOU.  If you have an interesting opinion, some valuable knowledge, or something else you feel is worthy of someone elses time, it is worth posting.  If you are going to write about some personal nonsense that only dear ol’ mom would care to read, save the internet some megabytes and don’t post it.

Anyhow, yeah.  50th post!  See you at 100.

Vote or Die!

Do I care about politics?  A little bit.  I mean, so far as it impacts me, or the worlds perspective toward our country, the economy, etc.  However, I really don’t care that much.  I care enough to watch the debates, then go out on election day and cast my vote.  What I don’t care for, is how suddenly, around this time of year, every four years, everyone is a pundit.  Everyone has their super strong views, and goes around spouting nonsense to everyone else.  Everyone has such passion toward their candidate.

I will go on record as saying, I do have passion toward my candidate, a little.  I do want Bush out of office quite bad.  What I don’t have passion toward is watching every asshole become an expert.  Having to bite my tongue around the office because my political views do not agree with most other white-collar peoples views, and having my precious twitter and wow chat rooms constantly full of political jargon.

I was thinking today, how many millions of dollars were spent on this campaign, and, how much of it will be filling our landfills tomorrow?  Well, according to this site, the total cost of the combined presidential campaigns this year was OVER A BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.  For what?  Travel, food, websites, stickers, signs, and various other things that will be in the collective countries garbage can tomorrow?

I wish the process in this country worked a bit differently.  Between the conventions, the debates, and the news coverage it felt more like watching a big sporting event with the two main event boxers constantly bad mouthing each other on some grand stage then it felt like choosing the next leader of our country.

Worst part is, that even with all the advertizing, I’m still not sure why I voted the way I did.  The issues weren’t clear to me, all I know is, tax-cut this, gay marriage that, pro-choice, etc.  But what about the issues that really AFFECT ME.  I don’t know what those issues are, nor do I know where our candidates stand on them.  What I do know is, based on all those commercials, McCain is one maverick who sure doesn’t like Obama, and, Obama likes the word change, a lot.

So, I guess I will go back to not being all too concerned with it.  To all those of you who are feverishly refreshing election results websites.  Take a break for a few hours and put on fox news.  The Black Panthers are forcing all republicans to vote Obama.

Remember that show?!

Over the years I have followed the best of the best guilds in World of Warcraft quite closely, it is almost like following the rankings of the teams in your favorite sports, who will kill what first, who is the best at the time, what the best players are up to, who is using what strategies, etc.  One thing I have noticed which seems to be becoming a popular trend is a “No Girls Allowed” policy enacted in many of the best guilds in the world.  But why?

While this might appear sexist, I do not believe that to be the case.  I believe it is merely the leadership of said guilds recognizing the weaknesses of their players, and avoiding any unnecessary conflict.  This weakness being, girls.  The average male MMO players are single males in the age range of probably 18-30.  Generally lonely, and horny.  When you introduce a female into this environment, they become an immediate distraction.

Many people probably assume, wrongly, that these guilds are full of sexist assholes who think girls simply aren’t as good of players as men are.  This is not the case though.  Many girl gamers are just as good if not better then men are, and if you had to take a survey, I would be willing to guess that a better ratio of the girl players are actually good players then the men are.  This is of course probably due to the fact that there are so few female gamers vs male gamers, that there is much more room for suck with so many men playing.

To quote the VANQUISH recruitment policy (VANQUISH is a top 10 world guild):

Due to our history and experience we’ve had with female gamers, we currently do not recruit players that lack a penis. This can be taken another way but in this case, we mean literally lack thereof. Some of you may think this is sexist, but you have to understand, when you put a female in an organization with a bunch of sex deprived World of Warcraft nerds, their hormones get the best of them. Women in World of Warcraft guilds cause more drama than ‘TNT’ and this is a no-drama organization.

So, is this the fault of the women?  No, I don’t think so, but I also do believe the above is an entirely true statement, and that it should be a guilds peroggative to not allow girls in it.  So, exactly what impact does having no girls in a guild have?  Well, severeal of the top 100 guilds in the world do not allow girls, explicity, others perfer not to have girls, but will make exceptions, but most, do not discriminate.  So obviously, allowing women does not stop some of the best guilds in the world, from being the best.

What it boils down to, in my opinion, is simply wanting to avoid the all too common drama associated with guilds in wow, and the desire to remove any possible cause of said drama.  So, do girls cause drama?  Yes.  Absolutely.  By no fault of their own, though.

So what sort of drama and favoritism are we talking about?  Quite trivial things really, but usually enough to cause a stir.  These things range from: girls being flirty, or accused of flirting with other guild members to get what they want, girls being given “gifts” from other members, leadership being overall nicer and more forgiving toward girls, girls being given special treatment with regard to loot, or other things like this.  When exposed, it usually pisses people off.

Case Study

As an example, my girlfriend is a wow player, in fact, I met her in wow.  (Relationships starting in games will be an entirely separate post).  When we met, I was an officer and raid leader in the guild she was in.  I should mention though, and she will back this up 100%, that I for one, never gave her any special treatment, ever.  This did not stop the drama though.

Going backwards a bit from the above, we were in the guild together for over two years before we even spoke, I was just the mean old raid leader, and she was just another member who I treated just like everyone else.  She will tell you stories though, about some of the other leadership.  Before my guild adopted an open bid/fixed price DKP scheme, it was a closed bidding, highest bid wins, system.  This means, you send a message to a leader about how much you want to pay for an item, and if you bid the highest, you win.

She can tell you first hand, that many times, she and the other girls would bid on items just to have the officer taking the bids reply simply saying “bid more”.  Essentially awarding the loot to the girls to be nice.  The girls did nothing to expect this behavior out of the officers, did not ask for this treatment, yet, accepted it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg really, in the past year sitting next to her playing together, I cannot even being to count the amount of items, gold, or other sorts of help my girlfriend gets inside of an mmo, just because she is a girl.  She is not outwardly slutty, or flirty, just her cute female self, and men just feel compelled to help out or be nice.

So where does the drama start with regard to my experience?  It is quite simple really.  Once it was openly known that myself, and my girlfriend were seeing each other, members began to assume that something fishy was going on.  Simple things like treating her special, awarding her DKP which was not earned, giving attendance credit where it was not due, etc, etc.  While this was not the case at all, we began to have every aspect of everything we did in the game inspected under a magnifying glass and treated as if we were under suspicion.  This annoying drama, is what eventually lead to her and I both quitting the guild, and wow.

So as you can see, it is the fault of women that my old guild lost two of its best players, right?  All sarcasm aside, obviously it was not her fault, however, in a guild absent of women, this will NEVER happen.  Can you blame certain guilds for wanting to avoid this?

Some things are just never acceptable.  A club full of only white men, with only white men allowed, people automatically compare to the KKK, and assume it is a racist group.  A club full of only women, is perfectly okay, and no one will complain.  I feel it is the right of the guilds leader to allow women or not, and no one should complain about it or find it sexist.  Some feminist groups have even gone to extremes, such as hacking the guild websites of guilds which do not allow girls, even though there are probably more guilds in mmo’s which are girl only guilds, who never get bothered by anyone.

Further Reading

An editorial arguing for the girls

A blog post against women in guilds

A child named Violence roams the streets.

• Princess Tiaamii (Jordan / Peter Andre)
• Audio Science (Shannyn Sossamon)
• Camera (Arthur Ashe)
• Fifi Trixibell (Bob Geldof and Paula Yates)
• Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily (Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence)
• Kal-El Coppola (Nicholas Cage – Kal-El is Supermans birth name)
• Lark Song (Mia Farrow)
• Moon Unit (Frank Zappa)
• Dweezil (Frank Zappa)
• Ahmet Emuukah Rodan (Frank Zappa)
• Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen (Frank Zappa)
• Sage Moonblood (Sylvester Stallone)

So apparently this trend amongst celebrities has begun to trickle down into average homes.  This is the reason for my writing this as I found a recent news report where New Zealand had made certain names illegal.  Some of the names which were made illegal are:

• Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii
• 4Real
• Fish and Chips
• Sex Fruit
• Yeah Detroit

It should be noted that these names were made illegal after they were used, which means that people actually tried to name their kids this shit.  What is even better is that some names are not illegal, and are apparently in use:

• Number 16 Bus Shelter
• Violence

I honestly wish my name was Violence.  I would love to name my kids something funny for the sake of humor. Hell I named my dog “Dirk”.  But they need to realize that the child needs to live a, hopefully, very long life with the name you have given them and that naming your child Sex Fruit is simply not cool. Should it be illegal though?  I tend to think not.

If some crazy ass parents want to name their kids stuff like that, let them.  I know the kids shouldn’t suffer but the courts didn’t have a say in my name so why should they have a say in anyone else’s.  If my legal name was Sex Fruit Eugene Chain, I would tell all my friends my name was Bob or Joe, and when I was old enough, I’d get it changed.  No need for the courts to intervene.  I’m not a law expert but doesn’t this violate free speech?  I understand they don’t have a Bill of Rights in New Zealand so they aren’t held to those rules, but I would hate to see anything like that ever happen in america.

I thought of some cool names for kids while writing this, and I only hope I am legally allowed to use them:

• Chest
• Miller Light
• Rothschild
• Enhance
• Picard

Feel free to name your kids any of the above, I won’t get mad.

It sounds like Central Collections has become a black hole.

Obviously this was intended to imply that their ticket collections system was comparable to a black hole where things which enter it, never escape.  I do not know much about the Dallas municipalities and their issues with ticket collections but when seeing this statement, no matter what the context, I do not see any semblance of racism.

Simulated Image of a Black Hole

However, commissioner John Wiley Price felt that this sort of language was unacceptable, and racist. (You can view the original video of the conversation here.)  This is all fine and good, I suppose he is entitled to his stance that a black hole is a racist construct.  However, after watching the follow-up interview, it is clear that he is either just being an asshole, or he is truly ultra-sensitive to race issues.  I will transcribe a portion of the interview below:

Fox:  Tell me again why you took offense to what Mr. Mayfield Said.

JWP:  Well, first of all I probably just took offense to Mr. Mayfield.  That’s number one.  Number Two, its back to the culture, you know.  The culture in terms of blackness is negative.  It doesn’t make a difference if, you know, it becomes a scientific phenomenon, you know because a scientist could have just as easily called it a white hole.  Why didn’t they?  You know, and in this society anything that is black is seen as negative.  So you name one comment “Oh, it’s in the black”, that’s one positive.  But you tell me one thing in this society when you say white and get a negative connotation.

So if its Angel Food Cake, it’s White, Devils Food Cake, it’s Black.

If you’re the black sheep of the family, then you gotta be bad.

You know, white could be ok.

Fox:  So should people be extra careful now, what they say?

JWP:  Well you know I think people should always be careful.  You know, I’m ok if I’m bartering with you, so.  But if I try to Jew you down, oh is that racist?  I thought it meant the same thing.

(continued on this video)

So lets analyze the racial connotations of some of the things he mentioned.

Black Hole vs. White Hole

A black hole is a phenomenon in space where gravity has become so intense focusing on a singularity that nothing, not even light, can escape it.  Black is a color, or the lack of color which can most easily be defined as describing absence of light.  If a black hole was called a white hole it would simply make no sense, at all. A “white hole” might be more likened to a sun, or something extraordinarily bright.  But of course, white people get good things like stars and suns, and black people only get black holes, these terrible destructive things.

Angel Food vs. Devils Food

Angels are something believed to exist in heaven.  Heaven is perceived as a very bright, cloudy, white place. Angel food cake is very light, airy, and white in texture.  It would not describe the cake well to call it devils food.  Devils are something believed to exist in hell.  Hell is a very dark, sinful place.  Devils food cake is a very rich, dark, and sinful food.  To me, these descriptions simply make sense.  In fact, I like devils food cake better, I doubt many people would tell you that dark devils food cake is terrible and that it was designed in order to further oppress black people.

Black Sheep of the Family

The term “Black Sheep” originated back in the 18th century.  In flocks of sheep there is always a chance that the babies will be born with black coats.  When you are raising sheep on a farm for profit, black wool is worth much less than white wool, and as such raising black sheep was undesirable.  This got taken out of context to describe a troublesome or undesirable human child.  There was never a racial implication to the expression.

Bartering vs. Jewing Down

To take Mr. Prices example of a similar expression to the above, but not related to the african-american race, he used Bartering with someone vs Jewing Down.  Since Jewing down would be usage of the perceived stereotype that Jews are cheap, I see using the term Jewing someone down as racist, without any doubt in my mind.  It does not fit with his other examples at all.  He was obviously stretching here.

What have we come to in society?  I realize that racism is still a huge problem in this world, and that there is a need to be aware of it.  I realize that some people are more sensitive to it then others.  Does this sort of extreme sensitivity really exist though?

I tend to think not.  I believe that he simply was unaware of the scientific construct of a black hole during the meeting and as a knee-jerk reaction took offense to it.  After he learned what it was, to save looking like a moron during the second interview, tried to maintain his stance and make off the cuff supporting examples which just make him look like more of a dick.

If there are more people like this guy out there, then I truly feel sorry for them.  They must not be able to go even a few minutes without becoming offended by something or someone and probably live an angry and miserable life.

I really don’t understand people who are so sensitive to these issues, just let it roll off your back, the less it bothers you, the less people will use it against you.

1. Currently I have Sprint, which has terrible coverage in my area.
2. My current phone is a Palm Treo 700wx, which pretty much sucks.
3. I have been shopping for a GPS Unit for my car for a long time.
4. iPhone is $199, GPS units cost at least that much by themselves.
5. AT&T has great coverage in my area.

So, to me the decision was easy.  I mean, don’t get me wrong I do like apple products, but I didn’t run out and by the original iPhone, it just wasn’t worth it.  The 3G iPhone is feature rich and very competitively priced.  To be quite honest I don’t see why there is so much animosity toward iPhone fans/owners.  Many people have smart phones which are just as expensive if not more.

Another point I would like to clear up is that I did not camp out for it.  I simply called the Apple Store in my local mall, they told me they had plenty of inventory, so I went.  I went at 2PM.  The line was very long and I stood in it for about 3 hours, but what else was I going to do?  Here are some shots of the line taken using my Treo.

The line was very calm, lots of conversations going on, kinda fun actually.  The problems started happening once I got into the store, which was at about 5pm.  I had heard there were lots of problems apple was having activating the phones.  This was the case for me.  I suppose I was asking for it though when I decided that I would get two iPhones on a family plan porting one number from Sprint, and one from a Pre-paid account.  The problems seemed to come from the number porting part of things for me.  They actually had to send two 16gb iPhones back to warehouse because they got “half-way activated” and could no longer be sold.  So I formally apologize to those two people who couldn’t get a phone because of me.

All in all, the process was pleasant, I left the house in the afternoon, and got back home in time for dinner with a shiny new iPhone.  Whoever camped out for it, I feel sad for you.  I took some obligatory shots of the unboxing process for your viewing pleasure, sorry they came out like crap.  Even though it is against the grain of the normal topics I write about I plan to write another article this weekend outlining the process I have gone through setting my phone up to sync with my various computers, windows and mac.

I am so glad you asked!  

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, with hindsight. (from wikipedia)

I have been seeing so much of this going around over the past couple of years that it has essentially turned digg.com from one of my favorite sites on the internet, to one of my least favorite.

I discovered Digg back in probably 2005.  As you can see from my member profile, I have been a member since 2005 and I have clicked “digg” on a very small handful of stories.  When I first discovered it I thought it was the best site ever.  Constantly updated with interesting and relevant posts which were always sure to entertain.  It completely replaced Slashdot for me, and solved most of the problems I had with slashdot.

Since that time it has become…something different.  The first time I saw an issue with Digg is when it was quite clear that the top stories were submitted by the same people, all of the time.  It was later found that the algorithm used to decide the promotion and demotion of stories could be easily abused.

What basically happened is, groups of friends submit stories and digg each others stories.  It is also believed that people who have more friends, and more frontpage stories, have the ability to digg something with a heavier weight.  So essentially what was going on is, people with large groups of friends got large amounts of “automatic” diggs from everyone on their friends list, leading to almost anything they submitted hitting the frontpage, and anything they bury, not.  (see more here)

It was also believed that this power was easily bought and sold, as the amount of traffic you receive from a digg front page story is massive, and obviously quite valuable from an advertising perspective.  

This has since been resolved and there is now a much more diverse set of stories reaching the front page, except now I have a new problem.  It seems that the entire site is ruled by the tendency for its users and their opinions to be governed by the laws of groupthink.  Essentially the uses of digg can be quite easily categorized and the types of pages that reach the front page can be easily predicted.  I have even heard of trends where advertisers, or simply people with ulterior motives could wrap their content in something which might interest digg users.  For example, write a blog entry about some sort of iPhone gossip but have that page intentionally spattered with ads or other sorts of links to a completely different type of product.  Basically duping users into going to their site to read false gossip about one thing and being tricked to get information about a completely different thing.

So onto the groupthink, and why I personally have learned to hate digg.  It basically boils down to the immaturity of its user base.  Everyone who submits a story, wants it to reach the front page, so as such, people follow within whatever is the hot trend at the time.  Digg used to be a news site, a tech related news site.  It has since devolved into a place where people will do anything to make the front page.  As a user of digg I see several trends, of which, I have no statistics to back up, but I will mention them anyhow.  I will make each point with the percent hit modifier bonus to get digg front page.

1. Follow the Leader.
   This mostly relates to politics.  For about 4 months half the stories on digg were about Ron Paul.  Shortly after which, it was a quick focus shift to Obama.  Whoever is in the lead on the left wing, everyone on digg loves.  Whoever is right wing, they all hate.  So, articles which talk down to the right, +25%, articles which talk good about the left +25%.
2. Apple is God.
   Submit a story about the iPod, iPhone, or anything else apple related, you have a +50% chance of getting front page
3. Linux = Ubuntu.
   Have an interesting story about linux, a cool new app, or some interesting how-to article?  Replace every instance of the word linux with the word ubuntu, +30% chance of front page.
4. [PIC]
   Doesn’t matter how old it is, post it up!  +75% 
5. Misuse of the words Web 2.0 or AJAX
   Hey if its dynamic it must be web 2.0, or ajax, or something right?  +10% 
6. When all else fails, post an old video.
   Got a video from break.com, or youtube which is already on the front page there?  Might as well be on the front page of digg too right? +20% 
7. BREAKING NEWS.
   Who are you, Ted Koppel?  Here is some breaking news:  Posting a story to digg which links to another actual news site, is not breaking news.  Thanks for trying, you get a +90% modifier. 

All of the above, I feel are the results of a massive groupthink epidemic.  The types of stories which make the front page form a trend, and as such the submissions begin to follow that trend.  Digg is no longer about sharing news and information, it is about submitting whatever you can to make it to the front page.  The problem is, the subject matter which makes the front page anymore is getting dumber and dumber, and I check the site less and less.  What is funnier though, are the problems people run into when they try to submit an actual worthwhile piece of news.  As seen in this recent parody, it is as if the power goes the users heads, and almost nothing worthwhile ever gets read.

When you take a group of like minded people, you’ll get a set of like minded opinions.  The stories which make it to the front page of digg are an approximation of the relative intelligence and opinions of the users who post stories there.  I only wish that one of my submissions might one day make the front page so that I may be a part of what I am apparently missing out on.

Gaming is:  A waste of time.
Watching TV is:  A waste of time.
Watching Movies is:  A waste of time.
Sitting around drinking beer is:  A waste of time.
Reading Magazines is:  A waste of time.

Now that we have that out of way, when people look at me as an adult gamer, they find it hard to understand why I play games.  It is such a waste of time after all, right.  However, if I sat home watching re-runs of Law and Order for a few hours each day after work, I would be a perfectly normal adult.  So unless you come home from work each day and build shit, work on some sort of constructive project, spend time bonding with your kids, or something else relatively constructive and good for you, what are you doing.  Wasting time.  I simply choose to play games vs. the other things on my very short list above.  So, take that into account when reading the rest of this article.  

I have some friends who simply refuse to play Guitar Hero.  Why?  Because they feel gay, or silly sitting there with a plastic guitar.  However, they will sit and play sports games with a little plastic controller, or play the Wii with a little plastic steering wheel all day.  Why must it be so different.  ”I’d rather just play a real instrument” is another common answer I hear when people decline to play Guitar Hero.

Now I understand that everyone has their preference when it comes to games, even if that preference is to not play games at all.  That is fine, everyone is entitled to that.  I rarely hear anyone say “Meh, I just don’t like that game too much” when it comes to GH though, its always something about feeling stupid, or playing a real instrument.  Now, I can definetly understand not wanting to look like this guy:

But in reality, who cares what you look like when you are just hanging out at someone’s house around some friends?

Lets make a comparison.  On the left is the game, or type of game, and on the right would be the real life equivalent.  I am going to try to use games that tons of people play in this list, as to save myself having to explain that further.  I am also going to avoid fictional genre games like Halo, since you can’t go and shoot aliens in real life.

Guitar Hero -> Playing Guitar
Dance Dance Revolution -> Going to a club and dancing
NBA/NHL/NFL Games -> Playing real sports
Call of Duty -> Joining the army and killing people
Splinter Cell -> Becoming a Secret Agent
Tony Hawk -> Skateboarding

These are what I will call “reality games” as they simulate things you can actually go outside and do!  Unlike Mario, or World of Warcraft, or Halo, which simulate things you can’t do.  Many people will argue that the purity of video games is to put you into some sort of fictional world doing things you can’t do in the real world, thats why they are fun, and thats why they are acceptable.  Much like reading a great science fiction novel, you do it to enjoy simulating things which you could never actually do.

Reality games though, which are increasingly popular, simulate things you could actually go do, but in a more grandiose way.  In Guitar Hero you aren’t a shitty guitar player in your house, you are a rock star god.  In NBA games you aren’t shooting hoops in the local park, you are an NBA super star.  So the essence of fantasy is still there.  The fact that they are still a waste of time, is there also.  I think the perfect joke against all reality games, even though it was aimed directly as a stab at guitar hero, is heroin hero.

The thing is, when is the last time you heard someone say to you during a session playing Call of Duty “Why don’t you go join the army and kill arabs?”, or when you are playing NBA 2k8 “You should just go play basketball all day and become a pro”.  Are these valid things to say?  Of course they are.  If kids these days spent as much time doing the real life equivalent activity to they game they play, maybe they could become rock stars, pro athletes, or super spies.  I will never argue that.  Just like I won’t argue that parents might be better parents if they didn’t spend so much time watching television.

So why so much ridicule for Guitar Hero?  Its just a fun simulation of being a rock star.  You press on little colored buttons at the right time to win.  Same as any other game.  Sure the little plastic guitar is silly looking in the hands of a 6′ 6″ adult, but in reality it is no different from any other video game in the world.  An entertaining way to pass the time.  

The bottom line here is, no one who plays Guitar Hero actually thinks they are accomplishing anything.  No one thinks they are getting better at the real guitar when they play it.  Just like no one who plays Madden 2009 all day thinks it makes them any better at football.

This article is a perfect example of the mentality I am trying to argue against with this post.  Much like theGuitar Queer-O Episode of South Park.

This game is making people spend hundreds of hours in front of a TV and make pretend that they are playing actual guitar whilst being damn good at it. It really reminds us of the time when we were little and made fun of girls to have a make pretend tea party. Yeh, it is probably more faggish than dolls because females actually learned and practiced how to be housewives. This is due to the reason that people who actually play this game have absolutely no skill with the real guitar yet think of themselves as cool because they can rack up a score of a million in an hour.

Entertainment people, thats all it is.  Now playing the drums in Rockband, thats a whole different story.

Metal Gear Solid 4

So I started the game out on “Big Boss Hard” mode and it took me about 4 hours to get about an hour into the game.  Even though I generally play every game I get on the hardest skill level, it got so frustrating that I finally just kicked it down to the normal difficulty level.  It became a lot more fun after that, since the game is about sneaking around everywhere and the only way we were able to succeed on hard was to shoot everything, really took the fun out of it.

After I finally got a chance to play without dying every 10 seconds, it didn’t take long for me to realize just where the rumors of the game possibly requiring more than one Blu-Ray disc came from; cut scenes.  In fact, as the title of this post says, my friend and I quickly realized that we might have been spending more time watching cut scenes then we were actually playing the game.  Each day after dinner one of us would say “Hey wanna go watch some Metal Gear?”  And watch metal gear is what we did.

I searched high and low and I was unable to find exact figures, other then this, which is highly argued about what “running length” they are talking about in the article.  According to everything I can find, the best estimates of total cut scene length in the game is 9+ hours.  When we finally finished the game we had logged approximately 19 hours of game time.  We are still unsure if the total time we get at the end includes the length of the cutscenes, or if it was only timing us during actual gameplay.  I honestly can’t even take a guess as to weather we played the actual game for 9 hours or 19, which I believe is a testament to how good the game actually is.

So lets just assume there is actually 9 hours of cutscenes.  This sounds totally crazy right?  Well, I can say from experience that it certainly felt like there was 9 hours, if not more.  I will also say, that I was never bored, not even for one minute, during my time playing the game.

This game truly impressed me and made me finally realize the potential the PS3 actually has.  Prior to Metal Gear I never felt that the PS3 was superior to the Xbox 360 in any way.  I have owned an Xbox much longer then my Playstation and when a game comes out on both consoles, I always get the Xbox version.  However, I feel the PS3 will be a lot like the PS2, meaning it will LAST.  Games are still coming out for the PS2 and it is almost 10 years old.  I don’t want to get on too much of a tangent here but I must also say that contrary to much criticism, putting a Blu-Ray player in the PS3 was absolutely the right choice for Sony.  Not only did it essentially win the format war for them, but it also gives them a lot more potential for games that wont fit on a conventional DVD.  Games like Metal Gear.  I also just want to mention here real quick that while I was also an avid HD-DVD supporter, after it finally lost the format war, I invested in Blu-Ray, obviously.  Watching a Blu-Ray movie on my 1080P 60″ TV is absolutely the most pleasurable and impressive HD viewing experience I have ever had.  It completely blows anything you’ll ever see on an HD tv channel.

So back to the game.  I have always been a huge Metal Gear fan.  I have to admit though, I never actually owned a Playstation 2.  It is the ONLY console I have not owned, ever.  I am still not sure why I never got one, I think I was just too busy in college, and too broke, to get one.  So you can say, well, you missed the two best Metal Gear games ever by not having a PS2.  While I am inclined to agree with you, that didn’t stop me from reading a lot about the elements of the story which I missed out on by not playing those games.  Going into MGS4, I was totally caught up on the story.

The gameplay is phenomenal, the controls work wonderfully, and there are many elements of humor throughout.  While it has many many unique features which the other games did not have, the game still feels extremely familiar, and easy to get the hang of.  I have seen a lot of people complaining about the excessive length of the cut scenes, but to be perfectly honest, I enjoyed every minute of them.  It was nice to essentially watch a movie between each mission.  A welcomed break.  Not to mention the story line flows like an epic trilogy all rolled up into one long ass movie.  The plot of the game integrates perfectly with all of the other titles and it is very interesting to watch it unfold.

While there were a lot of cut scenes, I still feel like there was more then enough gameplay.  Surprisingly, there also seems to be a great amount of replay value.  It is very seldom I play any linear single player type game through more then once, and yet I fully plan to play MGS4 again.  Maybe I’ll even play it on hard mode this time!  I haven’t even begun to explore the online component, and I missed almost every secret item during my first play through.

Basically, to sum it up, Metal Gear was an extremely fun game, and had a very captivating plot.  The length of the cut scenes was not a problem for me at all, and it finally made me realize just how powerful the PS3 is.  If there ever was a “killer app” to come out for any console in history, I’d say this is one of them.

If you get a chance, I highly suggest you watch Metal Gear.