So, I made mention I was going to talk about some books, and I thought that with my last post, talking about how video games have been changing over the years, I’d go with an author who just recently jumped back into my mind.

I caught an appearance from Steven Johnson on The Colbert Report about 2 years ago when he was plugging his book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, a short, interesting piece talking about how new media, particularly television and video games, has been evolving since their inception. It’s wonderfully written and has what I find to be some solid reasoning and analysis to support his claims, although it is a little short on actual hard data, a lack of which is disappointing, as it would have made his arguments far more compelling. As it is, the book is more theory than actual hard data, sort of like a Malcolm Gladwell book without the use of studies done by psychologists, doctors, etc. I particularly liked the comparisons he did with shows from the 70s and the Sopranos, as well as his analysis of the early Zelda games with more recent one, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Johnson’s case is pretty much that the stuff that teachers, politicians and parents are worrying about ‘rotting’ the minds of the youth of today are actually doing the exact opposite, as television and video games are creating a kind of thinker that is different from ones that had existed before and is developing different thinking and learning skills. To go back to the Sopranos example, Johnson illustrates how abstract and sophisticated modern television has become, using the various plotlines, larger casts and (occasionally) abstract ideas and symbolism that is used when compared to the fairly linear television that existed in the 70s. From there, he goes on to show how modern media results in users who have to track numerous points of data and, essentially, multitask. What some people may qualify as ADD could in fact simply be an intensive form of time micro-management.

Johnson does the same thing with video games, talking about how games have become more and more multi-faceted since the early days of Pong. This is one of the reasons why I’m not convinced that games are becoming more and more ‘dumbed down’ as time goes on, as they are becoming far more intellectually intensive for folks, as there are far more things to track and take care of. I’m not going to resummarize all of his arguments, but his hypothetical argument that reverses the roles of books and video games was pretty funny, if not more than a little hyperbolic.

I should also point out that while Johnson provides examples of how things have changed, he is not trying to make blanket statements about pop culture and that folks are not instantly becoming smarter just because they watch The Apprentice over Wheel of Fortune, or that you are going to go from being a C+ student to an A student if you play a few more hours of World of Warcraft every week. Although Johnson doesn’t go into this, I’d like to think that people are like raw resources, and media and our interactions with said media, are a sort of refining of those raw resources. The issue is where those resources are used. To use a brain as oil analogy, imagine if your brain does the equivalent of a rocket ship going to colonize Mars, which is infinitely more valuable than, say, using the same resources to do doughnuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

I know I sound like one of those web 2.0 dipshits, a wide eyed snake oil optimist going on and on about how the sky is the limit with the World Wide Web, lawl, but I really do think that video games, television and other kinds of media are great at developing well rounded thinkers, it is simply up to educators and parents to tap into and utilize those thinking skills, along with the ones that are traditionally cultivated and developed, to ensure that students are realizing their full potential.

Anyway, enough rambling on about this particular book. I highly recommend picking it up and seeing what Johnson has to say. However, if reading about television or video games sounds like a dreary task for you, there are other works by Johnson that are equally interesting, one of which I’ve read.

The Ghost Map is an historical recount of the cholera epidemic that hit London in the mid 1800s and is a wonderfully researched affair. Johnson delves deep into the cause of the cholera epidemic, examining faulty infrastructure, popular opinion and environmental factors that led to a ‘perfect storm’ for cholera to thrive. He also looks into how medical minds of the time were able to figure out where the outbreak originated from and move away from the ‘miasma’ theory of disease, a revolutionary concept that helped to further our medical knowledge. Great stuff.

His most recent book, The Invention of Air, came out at the tail end of last year, and is another historical read, looking at Joseph Priestly, an exiled English scientist who fled to America, and the role he played in influencing the founding fathers. This is the book of his I have not yet read, but am quite keen on checking out. Based on his prior works, I should have nothing to worry about!

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Unrelated, but a funny sidenote: My first rant about Dumb Decision Designs was centered around the silliness of fighting games forcing characters to unlock half the roster before they get all the characters. While my post was centered around Street Fighter IV, there are other games out there that were worse offenders, such as Marvel vs. Capcom 2, a game which has a total roster of 56 characters, but (I could be wrong here, my memory sucks) only had about half that available, forcing you to unlock new characters.

Well, Capcom announced on Monday that there’s going to be a port of MvC2 onto the PS3 and 360, but with the entire roster already unlocked. Woo hoo! See? Not all gaming companies hate you!

Part 2. Time to rant about people ranting about video games. Woop woop. There’s a TL;DR at the bottom, by the way.

So, this:

Has been pissing off quite a few people as of late, for a variety of reasons, the least of which is, arguably, that it’s a horrible fucking show, at least in execution. In concept? Maybe not so much. I don’t know. At the very least, people seem to forget that there are people out there who will watch gamers. Particularly over in Korea and with Starcraft.

Anyway, this wonderful show has been leading to a ton of people to stand up on their soapboxes and loudly bitch about how ‘The Man’ is exploiting gamer culture. Case in point. To which I have to say…what?

Okay, so it is fashionable to be a ‘gamer’ now, apparently. Video games are ‘cool’ and you’re no longer shunned for liking them. Err, well, yeah. That’s been the case for pretty much the entire time I have been ALIVE. Oh, but we’re talking about HARDCORE gamers, the ones who eat, sleep, breathe video games. The ones who will PLAY ALL NIGHT. Right, I don’t for the life of me understand why this sort of behavior would be looked down upon.

Look, I’m not mocking someone for having their own hobbies or interests…you could bring up crazy ass sports fans who wear thongs in -30 weather, slathered in body paint. Or music fans who follow artists around while they tour. I knew a girl who used to do that with a couple of bands. There’s nothing wrong with going to extremes, like camping out or whatever. People should be allowed to enjoy whatever the hell it is they enjoy (within reason.) But to get hyper defensive because other people are encroaching on your turf?

Seriously? Who the fuck cares. The crazy ass football fan isn’t going to get mad because other people like the Minnesota Vikings. I cannot think of a person alive who would not be THRILLED at getting someone else into a band that they adore. So why the problem with games? People act like this is the first time that “TEH MAN” has tried to encroach on their electronic fiefdom. Well, not exactly. You could point to Fred Savage’s lovely cinematic masterpiece The Wizard for proof of their attempts at trying to make gaming go ‘mainstream.’

Note to Ramsoomair: games have always been marketable and, more often than not, they’ve generally sucked when attempts are made at trying to appeal to the mainstream. As much as you may want games to serve as your own personal pleasure dome, they’re interested in making money.

Which goes to the second point most folks go on about when they talk about television shows like The Ultimate Gamer, and that’s how it is clearly pandering to the ‘casual gamer’ demographic. You know the type, ‘idiots’ who like World of Warcraft, the Wii or, gasp, play Bejeweled. These people are clearly ruining games, because games nowadays are complete and utter shit, right?

Well, no.

Games have always been shite. There has always been a healthy dose of crap out there. For every classic like Mega Man or Super Mario Bros. 3, there are horrible, horrible games like Bart vs. The Space Mutants. Or you get absurdist consoles like the headache inducing piece of crap known as the Virtua Boy. The oversaturation of video games was one of the main reasons the entire market crashed back in the 80s: the number of shit games vastly outnumbered the ‘good’ ones.

Yet people want to act as though there were never any horrible games released ‘back then’ and everyone got to enjoy some sort of magical gaming wonderland. I use the term back then in quotation marks because, really, the goalposts get moved to a certain period depending on who you talk to, which is what makes this all the more hilarious to me.

Take one of the sacred cows for gamers, Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. That, along with Starfox and Mario Kart 64, constituted a good chunk of my time spent on the 64 back in the day. It was fun as hell to play, especially with friends.

Fast forward a few years and you have Halo, a game that gets a lot of hate from gamers because it apparently appeals to the date-rape frat boy crowd and I honestly can’t sort out how Goldeneye is superior to Halo, once you move past from the personal attachment folks have, which is really all this is boiling down to: Scott R becoming the old man, yelling at the kids to get the hell off of his lawn. Why, back in my day…

You’d think folks would be happy that gaming is becoming more and more popular. To go back to my music analogy, I don’t know why people are getting mad over the fact that video games are more mainstream than ever before. It’s common ground you can share with other people, isn’t that a good thing? Who cares if someone got their start through Peggle or the Wii or whatever, you get to play gatekeeper and open other people’s eyes to the truly great games. Why bitch about something like that?

TL;DR: There has always been a glut of shit games out there, with the few rare good ones buried deep. Gaming companies have always tried to ‘cash in’ and market games to the ‘mainstream.’ The Ultimate Gamer is a stupid show because it is crap television, not because gamers are being romanticized. Scott R not only made a poor webcomic that screwed up Colbert’s The Word segment, but he, and people like him, are getting bent out of shape over something that should be seen as a good thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go watch old Video Power episodes on YouTube:

Yeah, okay. So, this was originally going to be a short post, but I decided to break it down into two posts. This is the first one, dealing with hockey. I’ll stop beating those two drums (and ONLY those two drums) soon, I promise. I’m working my way through a couple of books and will post some reviews. Also, maybe some ridiculous declarations of affection on albums I was listening to while growing up.

Let’s get to hockey, really quick. The Flames and Sharks both went down tonight, getting thoroughly owned in the process. I honestly have zero idea as to what is going on in San Jose with the Sharks. They revamped the defense, brought in a new coach and new role players, have a solid goaltender and great talent up front. They’ve been a consistently good team for the last couple of seasons, so it is puzzling trying to figure out what exactly is the problem. Folks want to point to Joe Thornton who, for a Hart Trophy player, ought to be showing up far, far more. It’s a reputation he had earned in Boston, but people excused it because he was ‘too young’ for the captaincy and yadda yadda yadda. Well, Thornton’s a veteran now, no stranger to playoff hockey or ‘Western Conference’ hockey and he’s still not contributing at a high level. For a player of Thornton’s size and skill, it’s utterly baffling. He should be out there dominating, not looking disinterested and lazy. I’d say move him, but I honestly don’t think he’s the issue (no, seriously!) If I were the Sharks, I’d be looking at bringing in a veteran player, someone who truly does lead by example and would complement Thornton’s game. Yes, there are players that Joe works well with now, but, to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a player like that who is both a veteran AND complements Thornton.

Therefore, I’d take a serious look at making a pitch at Jagr (cue laugh track now.) Yes, Jaromir Jagr is playing in Russia. Yes, he’s been known to take games off for long stretches. But he’s also shown that he will show up if motivated. Playing in California on a strong Sharks team should be all the incentive he should need. Added bonus, he should work beautifully with Thornton, assuming he has enough gas in the tank.

Beyond that, I have no idea. I’d gut the core (Nabokov, Marleau, Thornton and Cheechoo) and move on. Seriously, I’m suggesting grabbing JAGR as a solution to the Shark’s problems. Shows how utterly stumped I am.

As for the Flames? Well, I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t upset at seeing them exit in the first round, [b]yet again[/b], particularly after Sutter chose to make some wisecracks regarding the Canucks pickup of Sundin in order to ‘make the playoffs.’ Har, har, Sutter. Stop trying to be a comedian and focus on running your team.

In all honesty, you have to wonder exactly how much patience Ken King has for Sutter. Beyond 2004, where they lost in the Finals, there hasn’t been a whole lot to show for Sutter’s ‘magic.’ The cult-like influence Sutter had on Flames fans, with ‘In Sutter We Trust’ and so on and so forth went beyond the usual adoration fans had of their GMs when the team is doing well. It was frightening. But since that fabled run in 2004, the Flames have had very little to show for themselves. Four straight years of having a mediocre start, an okay middle to the season and then fumbling to make the playoffs. I believe 05/06 they won the NW Division, but since then, they’ve lost (and/or squandered) opportunities for home ice to Vancouver and Minnesota. Kipper’s stats have been declining at an alarming rate. Sutter has had a revolving door of players, involving such talent as Mike Camellari, Kristian Huselius, Olli Jokinen, Owen Nolan, Todd Bertuzzi and Alex Tanguay to ‘help out Iginla.’ None of them have made a significant impact for the team and, depending on which Flames fan you ask, actually seriously cost their team, Bertuzzi’s stupid penalty (does he take any other kind?) being the most recent example of this.

Now, I know that some Flames fans would point to the devastating amount of injuries they sustained as proof that things aren’t as bad as I am making them out to be. The thing is, the Flames have been a relatively healthy squad for most of the past 4 seasons. Furthermore, aside from the loss of Phaneuf in the latter half of the Chicago series and Regehr for the entire duration of the same, the Flames’ best players have been more or less healthy. Iginla and/or Kipprusoff have come up short and have not shouldered the load when they were needed the most. This is particularly true the past 2 seasons…Kipper was stellar against the Red Wings in ‘07, while Iginla was great in ‘06. Much like San Jose, there are problems with the team. However, unlike San Jose, I think the issues are easily identified and can be fixed.

In short, here’s what I think the Flames ought to do:

- Get rid of Sutter. Look, I know that Sutter did some great things for the club, but it seems that he is past his expiration date in Cowtown. He gambled huge with Olli Jokinen, a player who is rumored to have personality issues, and came up short. This year was obviously Sutter’s year and he failed. Furthermore, his method of going after aging veterans and/or big, slow players, seems to me to be counter-productive. You need mobile players, not hulking brutes. His trades have also cost the team a lot of their defensive depth, which USED to be a primary strength of the Flames. Chuck Kobasew, Stephane Yelle and Jamie Lundmark are all players who have been traded off for (supposedly) better players, yet their inffectual PK and GA have become increasingly horrid. There are also the cap issues which plagued the Flames in the home stretch, leaving them to having to dress 15 skaters due to a lack of cap space.

To me, it’s clear that Sutter’s idea of what ‘works’ is flawed and he needs to go.

- Get a freaking backup. This, to me, is the BIGGEST issue with the Flames problems in regards to the actual players. Kiprusoff plays WAY too many games, which affects his play. Why does he play so many games? Because the Flames have consistently fielded crap for a backup and cannot afford to give him any nights off. Flames fans are proud of Kipper’s win record this year, but they should be concerned with the fact that he was obviously playing fatigued come playoff time. That is Not Good. Look at it this way: if you have a backup that allowed the Flames to have won just ONE more game this past season, you’d have a division title and a (potentially) easier opponent with the St. Louis Blues.

- Trade Phaneuf. Yeah, more blasphemy on my behalf, but hear me out. Phaneuf is a strong, solid player, but he is a member of the team’s ‘core’, is young, and has great value, as he is signed to a pretty reasonable deal. Calgary’s blueline needs to be upgraded and you cannot gain something without losing something. As it happens, there is a great, young blueliner who is going to be hitting the market come July 1st. He’s also reportedly interested in signing in Calgary and is having a house built for his girlfriend there. Yeah, Jay Bouwmeester is, in my mind, the kind of player the Flames desperately need on their backend. He can skate, he’s got a solid two way game and can play a ton. Phaneuf, despite the Red Mile’s proclamation that he is the next Scott Stevens, is not, nor ever will be such. He’s a great offensively minded d-man, but he doesn’t play ’smart’ hockey and can be slow. Bouwmeester can log huge minutes in any situation, which would take some of the pressure off of Calgary’s other solid d-man, Regehr. Make a move for J-Bo, akin to the Malone trade Tampa Bay did. Phaneuf for Bouwmeester, straight up, on the condition that Bouwmeester signs with the Flames. As a Canucks fan, I’d be incredibly pissed were this to go down, as I’d rather have Phaneuf than Bouwmeester to play against.

- Look into trading Iginla. I can hear the angry mob with torches and pitchforks assembling outside my house as we speak, but hear me out. I am not advocating ‘getting rid’ of Iginla, but having the GM look into what options are available and going from there. Look, Jarome Iginla is a hell of a player, you’d be an idiot not to want him on your team, but there are some things that the Flames faithful need to realize with Jarome.

One, he’s 32. Or will be by the start of next season, to be more accurate. Jarome plays a very physical game, a game which, unfortunately, cannot be held up as players get older. Case in point: Mike Modano and Jeremy Roenick. I think there are some signs that Iginla is starting to decline and, if there is an option to replace Iginla with someone younger, they should go for it.

Two, the Flames’ cap situation is ridiculous. They have something like $29.3M assigned towards five players going into next season. That is more than half of your cap spent on FIVE players. Unless you’re looking to fill your roster up with pluggers, which would hurt your overall team depth, this is NOT GOOD. Look at teams that have won the Cup recently: they were strong teams with depth on all four lines and usually on D. Sure, there are exceptions (San Jose) but depth is always good. The Canucks had issues in the post season when they were a top heavy team, the Flames are experiencing the same pains now.  Jarome could fetch a handsome return and would help bring some stability to the Flames’ cap situation.

Three, and this is probably going to be the most contentious point, Iginla hasn’t exactly shown that he can get it done at the top level. 4 years of first round exits, plus a rather embarassing stint in Torino as a focal part of Team Canada isn’t exactly a strong record to rest on. It’s possible that the reason why the Flames don’t appear to be mentally ‘up’ come playoff time might rest on their captain. If so, it would be useful to move Iginla. Yes, I know, I’ll take my place at the stake so you can roast me alive now. But, before you do, just think about it.

So yeah. Those are my thoughts on the Flames and what I think needs to be done to ‘fix’ them. I’d also argue that Keenan ought to go as well, but I believe that if you’re going to sack the GM, move your captain and another of your team’s leaders, you need some sort of stabilizing force. Keenan, I believe, has one more year left on his contract. Let him play out his contract and let the new GM select a new coaching staff once he has had an opportunity to familiarize himself with the club.

http://www.observer.com/2009/style/hipster-grifter?page=0

This is just hilarious. Hipster grifter swindles her way across the United States, ripping off Vice Magazine and other gullible folks in the process.

Okay, welcome to my second iteration of Dumb Video Game Design Decisions. I gotta give thanks to my little brother, Mikey. He caught my post where I was talking about having the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics and he helped a brother out, hooking me up with a PSP. So…thanks!

That said, I have had some time to sit down and play around with Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, a game that was ported over from the Playstation and onto the PSP. For those who aren’t familiar with FFT, it fits into the FF family on the same branch as Chocobo Racing and Dirge of Cerebeus: games that deviate quite strongly from the JRPG formula that the Final Fantasy Series is known for. Tactics, as the name suggests, is a tactical RPG. You build a small army, using the FF job system to give them new abilities and access to different kinds of equipment. It’s very similar to Tactics Ogre, another tactical RPG, which isn’t a coincidence, given that both games had the same development team.

Like most remakes these days, War of the Lions has a bunch of new features and I have to say that unlike other remakes, WotL actually does have a bunch of new features thrown in, moreso than some other remakes, such as Chrono Trigger for the DS, or the Gameboy Advance remakes of Final Fantasy IV and VI, which basically had bonus dungeons thrown in at the end, like some sort of weird afterthought. There’s some nice stuff thrown in: fully animated cutscenes done in the game’s original art style, several new characters and 2 new job classes. There’s also some additional quests you can go through in the game, as well as some new battles involving Delita (who didn’t have as much of a role in the original game, despite him being one of the major players.) Although there were some minor complaints, such as the lag with some abilities, it’s not huge enough that it dampers my spirits.

For the most part, it’s a good game and it was a fun distraction going through and playing through Ivalice again. I know, big surprise that a self-professed FF geek is going to like an FF game. However, there is one pretty significant beef I have with the game and the decisions Square-Enix decided to make with War of the Lions. Specifically, the multiplayer features. There are two types of multiplayer available in War of the Lions: Melee, which is a sort of PvP option, where you can fight your party against other player’s parties, and the Rendezvous mode, which is basically a Co-Op mode that has all sorts of weird and wonderful battles. Oh, also, there’s tons of new gear, some of which is incredibly useful for the 2 new Job Classes that are available that can only be obtained in these 2 multiplayer modes.

See, this is a trend that is becoming ridiculously annoying with games nowadays: a focus on multiplayer functions, even if it’s not needed or necessary. More than that, though, is the insistance of tossing multiplayer features into games in a completely slipshod and random fashion. I don’t get it. More to the point, I do not understand why Square decided to shoehorn a multiplayer feature into a game that is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. It’s like fireproofing the hull of a submarine: sure, it is a beneficial feature, but the practicality of said feature is questionable at the very best.

What I’m specifically talking about with WotL is the local multiplayer option that is available. Actually, I shouldn’t say option, as it is the ONLY way you can use the multiplayer mode in this game. There’s no official way to play this game say, online. I say official, as there are ways out there to jury rig your PSP to play with other people online, but this requires more work and you having to then find people who own a copy of the game and have gone through the same efforts as you have, which is a frustrating endeavor for the sake of simply enjoying the new content that comes with the game, a fact made all the more frustrating as the other new fights and battles that are in the Story version of the game aren’t anything particularly special. The Delita battles I mentioned earlier? Delita is specially equipped to pwn the characters you face, meaning they end inside of a minute of starting. That said, the lion’s share of the new fights are in the multiplayer mode…and they’re also the most challenging and interesting content thrown into the game.

As a sidenote, I’d like to also issue a hearty fuck you to the spectacular bastard who thought it’d be a great idea require you to finish the game in order to fully unlock all the missions available in multiplayer. For the unitiated, the final portion of the game is a sequence of battles at Orbonne Monastery that prompts you to save before continuing onwards. The game prompts you to save right before you go into these series of battles and most experienced players will NOT save the game before going on to finish the game, as there is no way to get out of these fights once you’re locked in. Basically, if you save at that point, that’s all you’re going to be able to do with your savefile.

However, the multiplayer works on a tiered system: as you progress through the game and plod through the storyline more multiplayer missions will become unlocked for you. In order to unlock the last set of missions in the game, you have to finish the game, creating a ‘Clear Game Save’ on your save file. However, to continue with the mindfuckery, you have to have not saved your game once you’ve started these battles. If you have, you’re screwed, as the game doesn’t bump you back to the world map once you’ve cleared the game, unlike virtually every other game I’ve played that unlocks new content once you’ve finished the game. It’s like Square is actively TRYING to keep you from experiencing this new content by trying to construct as many hurdles as possible.

So, again, in order to play the full multiplayer features in this game you have to:

• Own a copy of the game (DUH)
• Know someone else who owns a copy of the game who lives close enough to you so that you can set up a LAN game
• Not save your game before fighting the final boss

Why would you lock out this content for what is admittedly a rather niche game? Why would you not provide an easier method of allowing users to use the multiplayer feature you provided? I honestly don’t get it.

And okay, maybe this is something that is huge over in Japan, and there are hordes of Final Fantasy Tactics fans that congregate at Final Fantasy Tactics Meetings and have tournaments and so on and so forth. Maybe I, the ungrateful gaijin, should just shut his cracker mouth and be satisfied that Square was able to port over a non-FF7 related game without laming it up too much. To that, I have to say fuck off. Final Fantasy Tactics was a cult hit on both sides of the pond and it wouldn’t have been impossible to have made the Rendezvous crap available in single player mode. I mean, fuck, they provided VOICE ACTING for the North American localization, something which didn’t happen for the Japanese version. Clearly, Square was willing to spend money on this game, so why not spend a few more dollars and make the game playable online (making it easier for people who live in Podunk, Alabama, say) or simply make the multiplayer features accessible to single players as well?

Long story short? Don’t fucking try to cram multiplayer features (or other, similarly needless features) into games that REALLY don’t need them. And if you must insist on such a course of action, make them as accessible as possible. From a marketing perspective, I can see why it’s supercoolawesome to have a laundry list of ‘features’ for the game to slap onto the back of the box, but at least make them features that people are going to be genuinely interested in.

Okay, so this will hopefully be the last post talking about GU Comics for a while now. To recap, I gave a bit of a history lesson regarding GU and some of the problems plaguing the comic that, in my eyes, make it look unprofessional, lame and unfunny for someone whose primary job is to be working on the comic. I talked about how artwork has been recycled repeatedly, the reliance on guest strips in lieu of his own content and lazy-ass comics that feature literally no artwork or show that the cartoonist is too damned lazy to actually do his job. There’s more to it, though, that rankles me with regards to GU and its owner, so, let’s get into it, shall we?

To add to the problems with the comic itself, there’s Woody’s Garfield-esque tendency to overuse jokes in lieu of providing actual content. To use video game parlance, it’s the equivalent of a palette swap. That example? Not the only time it has happened, as it should be painfully obvious that he loves going to the well again and again. The sad thing is that I haven’t even touched on one of Woody’s favorite old standbys: the game zapper. A quick search shows that he’s made over 50 comics referencing “TEH ZAPPER”, with a good chunk of them being in the last couple of years. Another quick look shows that, over the course of 2008, guest strips, ‘poopy’ strips and zapper comics made up 12% of the GU’s content. That’s not including comics that were ‘written’ by someone else, strips that used recycled gags or artwork or were just speech bubbles with zero artwork.

Can I repeat that one more time? For a full calendar year of updates, GU Comics consisted of, at most, 88% original content. Again, not factoring in comics with recycled artwork or recycled gags. I’d imagine if one were to go through and catalogue all of that, that number could be brought down to roughly 75%, if not more so. I don’t have the time to pour through a year’s worth of comics, though, so bugger that.

And this is someone’s full time JOB? Amazing.

Yes, out come the knives. Speaking of original content, why is it that Woody loves drawing characters as though they are fans of the Rock? This is a silly criticism, perhaps, but it again indicates just how lazy Woody is when it comes to his artwork. Much like how Buckley’s artwork over at CAD consists of a vacant stare with a half opened mouth, Woody’s default facial expression for characters consists of pursed lips and a raised eyebrow. Once you see it, it is everywhere. What was that I saw in the last 3 strips? Gee, it looks like more recycled artwork.

Let’s stay focused on those last three strips for a second. Woody has come across as a prude more often than not, not wanting to use foul language and keep a ‘PG-13′ rating for his strip. He’s also highly sensitive about stereotypes, at least, when it concerns him. Yet it doesn’t stop him from making a cocked eyebrow strip using foul language or using prostitution as punchlines to his jokes. Look, I have no problem with wanting to have a ‘PG-13′ strip if that is what you want to be doing, but if you’re going to bitch about how ‘rednecks’ are portrayed or get on your moral high horse and look down upon people who are media pirates, you shouldn’t be using demeaning, dehumanizing treatment of women as a source of humour in your comic strip.

That’s not the least of the depths of Woody’s hypocrisy, though. While he himself hates being characterized as a redneck, because he grew up in the south, it doesn’t stop him from taking potshots at people who really don’t deserve it. Nice incredibly thinly veiled ‘censoring’ there, too. How risque! Let’s take a crack at someone who took the time to speak about a project they are working on and bash him because, I don’t know, Uwe Boll is a horrible director or something. Wonderful. But let’s also talk about how ‘great’ the film about Watchmen is while admitting you haven’t seen the original source material.

Does anyone else see the complete hypocrisy going on here?

It gets better, though. Woody HATES being criticized. The post I just linked is attached to the comic that I posted up above. The comic would have been funny enough and shown that Woody doesn’t let what anonymous people on the Internet have to say about his comic get to him. The subsequent rant where he runs down Wikipedia saying he doesn’t ‘like’ it (why, because they didn’t ‘check their sources’ like he whined about in his post?) and then runs down the vandal who made the original changes just screams insecurity and bitterness. Especially since this isn’t the only instance where this has happened. The rant that’s attached to that comic in particular (scroll down) starts off with praise, trying to show that, yeah, Woody’s not bothered by the comic, before going into a totally unfunny passive-aggressive rant against Yahtzee.

I guess Woody didn’t get the memo that Yahztee had his own webcomic, thus making his self-cognizant, self-depreciating stabs in his original rant all the more barbed? Okay, okay, enough mocking Woody’s own passive aggressive responses to criticism.

And all this from someone who makes a living from criticizing and making fun of developers, gamers and pop culture in general.

It gets worse, though. Make any sort of comment that gaming could have a negative connotation to some people and Woody’ll be there, histrionics at the ready. Don’t believe me? Here’s another cocked eyebrow strip with Woody working himself into a frothing rage over someone daring to insinuate that World of Warcraft has addictive qualities, a rage that’ll occur anytime someone speaks ill of gaming in general. If one were to speculate, I’d daresay that he’s taking such comments about gaming personally, which either speaks of a guilty conscience or…insecurities of some kind or another! It would help to explain why he decided to make fun of Yahtzee when his comic was blatantly targeting CAD in particular and not webcomics in general. You know, outside of trying to hitch his wagon to people who are actually funny.

Here’s another example of ANOTHER popular (and funny) gaming critic saying nothing about Woody or GU Comics, yet Woody still somehow takes it personally. Again, he goes on to say that ‘oh, no, I know he’s not talking about ME’ but then goes on to personalize it at the very end ‘we’re not all bad.’ Make up your fucking mind, alright?

Of note is the line “I don’t use a lot of symbolism or visual metaphors but I use my comics to poke at the very industry that supports me.” Yeah, continually using a bug zapper or representing gaming companies as pieces of paper aren’t modes of symbolism or kinds of visual metaphors. Suuuuuure.

In closing, I want to say that I used to read GU quite frequently, but started to cut down on how often I’d visit the site until I was no longer reading the thing at all. Someone linked one of Woody’s cartoons on another website, which made me think about why. So, these 2 blog posts are basically examining why I don’t find GU Comics to be all that particularly interesting or funny anymore. Woody is a talented artist, but his laziness, both with his work ethic and his creativity has led me to tuning out GU Comics. There’s no grudge, no blood feud, nothing like that, really. His comics are unfunny to me and these are in large the reasons why.

“I don’t know how much “Moses” Sundin will impact… joking aside, says “he’s one of the 3-4 highest-paid players in the league and just hopes to help them (Canucks) make the playoffs… Is that what they’re doing over there?”- Darryl Sutter, general manager of the Calgary Flames

“He’s a big, first-line centreman who scores and plays tough. He can play against the big guys on the other team.” – Darryl Sutter, general manager of the Calgary Flames.

Funny how one’s fortunes can change so quickly, isn’t it?

It’s official: the Calgary Flames just blew a 13 point lead to the Vancouver Canucks. This coming after GM Darryl Sutter made the decision to pick up Jordan Leopold and Olli Jokinen at the trade deadline, a call that clearly indicated that he was going all in and making a run towards the ultimate prize, Lord Stanley.

But, coming off of a horrible January, the Vancouver Canucks regained their star goaltender, Roberto Luongo and ‘Moses’ Sundin, as Sutter liked to call him, started finding his groove. The Flames, on the other hand, lost games to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Atlanta Thrashers and the Tampa Bay Lightning, all teams that are in the bottom depths of the Eastern Conference. They were also shut out in back to back games, blew a huge game against the Canucks that essentially decided the division and also lost a number of bodies to injury, among them, Rene Bourque, Cory Sarich, Todd Bertuzzi and, more recently, Robyn Regehr and Dion Phaneuf.

So what happened?

Many would like to say that it was simply a matter of injuries catching up to haunt the team. While injuries did play an impact, just ask the Colorado Avalanche or the St. Louis Blues, they don’t tell the whole story. For one, the Flames top players for most of this season really haven’t been their top players. As I alluded to before, the Flames were shutout in back to back outings post-trade deadline. Flames captain Jarome Iginla wound up going without a goal in 12 of the last 20 games of the season, had no points in 9 of those 20 games and was a -5 in that span. Kiprusoff, the Flames goaltender, had goaltending stats that didn’t even rate in the top 30 in the league. While he did amass an impressive number of wins, his win percentage was horrible, ranking in at around 59%. Dion Phaneuf, the apple of Pierre McGuire’s eye, had a horrible season ending up a -11 and just being bad in general defensively speaking.

Olli Jokinen, the much celebrated ‘big centerman’ that was going to help out the club, went without a goal for 13 consecutive games and only had 5 points within that span and was a -7 during his brief tenure with the Flames.

The point of all of this? It’s to show that the issue with the Flames can’t really be pinned on one specific problem or issue. Their top players, from ‘Kipper’ to ‘Iggy’ didn’t show up. Their big deadline move, Jokinen, has been horrible for them. The Flames are set to face the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round of the playoffs and, if the regular season matchup between the two teams is any indicator, the Flames are looking to be bouncing out of the first round of the playoffs yet again.

The one constant in all of this, though? The same man I quoted at the beginning of this post: Darryl Sutter.

Sutter gets a lot of latitude from Calgary fans and media because of that 2004 playoff run. Hey, as a Canucks fan, I can understand it. Pat Quinn did great things for us and he took the Canucks to the Finals in 1994. Totally understandable.

The problem, though, is that Sutter can apparently do no wrong. This, mixed with his inability to recognize the problems that are plaguing the team means the Flames have been squandering great opportunities. More on that in a later post.

My advice? Get rid of Sutter and bring in someone else who isn’t stuck in the paleozic era of hockey. As a Canucks fan, I have the perfect candidate for new GM of the Calgary Flames:

Sorry about that, folks. Life sometimes gets in the way of things and causes all sorts of HILARITY.

So, I think before I get right back into the swing of things, I’d like to take a minute and talk about web comics. Specifically, video game web comics.

No, I’m not going to go after the easy target that is CAD. That’s already been done to death by people much funnier than myself. Rather, I’m going to look at the tragic headcase that is GU Comics’ Woody Hearn and his rather horrid comic…which will hopefully segue into a larger indictment of creative types in general.

For those who aren’t aware, /gu (as it is ‘properly’ called) is a comic that initially started off as a comic strictly about the dinosaur of MMORPGs, Everquest. It was a one panel strip that dealt strictly with the game’s ‘in-jokes.’ I’ll admit, even as someone who didn’t really play EQ all that much (I dabbled in it before going ‘fuck this shit’ due to the inane time constraints the game had and the fact that, well, I wasn’t exactly on the most stable of internet connections ‘back in the day.’) some of the jokes were funny. It didn’t hurt that it was one of the few well drawn webcomics out there, and one of the few webcomics about video games that didn’t consist entirely of recycled Megaman sprites or were drawn by people who were suspected pedophiles (hi2u CAD)

This strict devotion to Everquest, and ONLY Everquest, was a huge deal. However, there are only so many times you can make jokes about how women in fantasy games wear skimpy clothing, lol, before it got old. So, when Woody decided to switch over to do comics about non-EQ stuff, it was ’serious business.’

Over the years, GU has seen a number of scheduling changes and has devolved to provide some of the stupider cliches that permeate gaming comics. Namely, the man-child character who, were anyone sane actually living with said individual, who have killed him or had him committed to an asylum. Yes, I’m talking about Ted the hee-lar-ious ‘wacky’ character who does all sorts of zany things while Woody’s Mary Sue plays the straight man to him. Ho-fucking-hum, ain’t this a tune we haven’t heard a million times before. Other transgressions include multiple caricaturizations of Jack Thompson, something, which, again, every single gaming webcomic out there has done, making ‘Ted’ an employee of a gaming store (I think, I’m not what you’d call an ardent follower of GU…) and so on and so forth. Enough with the history lesson.

The problems with GU, though, are many and varied. The first is the art style, where Woody seems content on recycling artwork over and over and over. The particular example I provided, of the orc, whose only real differences consist of the odd change in facial expressions, can be found in other examples. It’s not necessarily a problem, per se, other cartoonists have have their characters in a default ‘costume’ (eg, Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade, Charlie Brown’s iconic shirt) but when you’re relaying the exact same drawing over and over? That reeks of laziness.

Especially when you look at the number of guest comics that he uses in lieu of his own content, or his own self-professed throwaway comics. Or artistic gems such as this one. There’s also his use on the Stickman ‘Poopy’ comics, which are essentially Woody’s way of going ’sorry, no comic today!’ To me, it screams of someone doing the bare minimum to scrape by, which is funny, given that he has taken other game companies to task for being lazy, either in releasing a title, or for releasing crap games. Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour can be seen as a sort of an epidemic amongst web-cartoonists. ‘Guest’ comics, to me, are ones that are done by another, well known artist (or writer, in some cases) and are not done by rabid fans. Somewhere along the line, though, accepting the offerings from your fanbase has become an accepted practice and is one that is done by other webcomics as well. The worst example of this, off the top of my head, would be VG Cats, which has a horrid release schedule and has been using ‘guest comics’ as a way to staunch the bleeding. The difference, though, is that VG Cats, which is run by Scott Ramooholycraphisnameisworsethanminetospellar, is a side thing and Scott isn’t doing this as a full time gig. Woody, on the other hand, has GU as his main job and when you write comics that are of a stickman going ‘Sorry, too busy playing [Game X] to make a comic, piss off.’ Well…I’d like to know what employer would tolerate that sort of behaviour if given a similar response when asked why they weren’t doing any work. Have a little bit of professional pride, for pete’s sake.

Okay, this is getting sort of long, so I’m going to do some more ranting about GU Comics in a later post. I’ve got other things I want to talk about.