Oh man I am little sore and feeble this morning. I normal feel the same as I did when I was eighteen until I crash and burn. My body lets me know within twelve hours that I am in fact not eighteen anymore. Sore ribs and a sore elbow is what I battle this morning. Saddest part of it is I basically tripped over a small piece of wire netting stumbled once or twice and boom. One of those times your supremely glad you work alone. Then again I was laughing pretty hard when I got up so I suppose that counts as pointing and laughing.

There was some question as to whether or not Wonderpod-Online will ever have forums. While I have no clue whether we will implement them at some point, I know my personal feeling on the issue. I would never have forum boards if it was left entirely up to me. I feel they are past they are past their prime in the landscape of the internet. They distract from the main attraction, which in our case is the podcast and the blog page. People should feel comfortable with commenting on the blog and nothing should detract from that. For those of you not happy about the lack of forums, don’t despair. Wonderpod-Online is a Democracy and there is a damn good chance I may be out voted at some point.

A guy I follow on twitter by the name of AndrewG009 linked an interview done by the crew over at IGN. It was supposed to be a hard hitting interview with a level designer from the video game HomeFront. While I genuinely appreciate  the gaming press asking tough questions this interview had more asinine questions than tough. The interviewer starts off the piece asking what sets HomeFront apart from other shooters and then proceeds to basically ask him why not make aiming tougher for players?

I can’t tell from the text whether the interviewer was being sarcastic or serious. In case he was being serious let me give an even better answer than he got from the level designer. Gamers don’t want things like how a gun aims changed. The amount of complaining and protesting the makers of HomeFront would receive if they did something like that would be enormous. It is the worst kept secret in the game industry, that gamers don’t really want innovation. They want to be spoon fed the same crappy mechanics they have gotten a hundred times before. Don’t believe me? Check the sales of COD Black Ops for yourself and then tell me that it isn’t true

The question in this interview that really pissed me off though was how the interviewer kept harping on how implausible the scenario of North Korea invading America is. I thought the question was answered brilliantly after much pestering on the interviewers part. I want to take it one step further and say who cares how implausible a story scenario is in a video game. It is what the writing team does with that scenario that is important. In fact one of the reasons I am looking forward to the game is because of the scenario. We have done the Russians and Chinese invade American a zillion times already. Make it something improbable and see what happens. Check out the interview and decide for yourself. I will link it twice just to be safe.

I have been struggling mentally with one aspect of running this blog. Gathering your audience and getting some spotlight on the place can be tough. In my mind it is a balancing act between marketing yourself adequately and becoming an attention whore. I am never sure where the line is and so I tend to be very cautious about promoting the site. Most of the time I leave it in the capable hands of our very own PatMan. Still while I want an audience of readers who enjoy our work, I hate the thought of coming by them cheaply. I am not sure I will ever become comfortable with the process and it is probably why I got a business management degree and not marketing.

Dipping my toes in acid just to remind myself I am still alive