Month: August 2010

Lineage II Lawsuit and The Bigger Discussion About Video Game Addiction

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A few days ago, Wired’s Threat Level blog reported that a man from Hawaii was suing the makers of Lineage II because the virtual-world game supposedly made him “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.” The man claims to have played 20,000 hours of Lineage II between 2004 and 2009, which breaks down to 80 hours per week for 5 years. A federal judge is allowing the lawsuit to proceed, in spite of Lineage II developers NCsoft asking for it to be dismissed.

Game addiction can be devastating to a person and the loved ones around the addict. I feel bad for the guy that has grown dependent on this game. However, I don’t think this case should see the light of day in court because I think the fundamentals of his claim against NCsoft are based in flawed logic.

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GODSGARDEN 2.5 Stream Right Now!

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I know it’s really early on a Saturday morning (at least in my part of the world), but if you’re a big Street Fighter fan and you’re reading this shortly after I post this, you should definitely check out the GODSGARDEN 2.5 live stream, featuring some of the best Japanese Street Fighter players. Hit the “Read More” button to grab the link.

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Impressions on Predators for the iPhone and iPad

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Predators is a universal iDevice game that I’ve actually had for a couple of weeks now. I’m sort of a fan of the Predator franchise, and judging by what I had seen in trailers, I thought it looked pretty good. It also didn’t hurt that it was a $3 game that worked with both the iPhone and iPad. I just past half way through the main campaign, so I don’t feel comfortable enough to pass final judgment on it. But I have played enough to at least share some thoughts on my experiences so far.
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4 Reasons Why Daigo Umehara is the Street Fighter Champion and I’m Not

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Daigo Umehara is one of the most popular and successful competitive video game players on the planet. For well over a decade, he’s been the Michael Jordan of Street Fighter. Long before I ever took fighting games seriously, I still knew him by name.

As I continue training for my first-ever fighting game tournament at FanExpo, I realize that I am nowhere near Daigo good and probably never will be. Forget about being the best in the world right now; I may not be the best player on my block. Instead of being positive and spending the time to get better, I spent my time writing this post that highlights 4 reasons Daigo is better than me at Street Fighter.

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About You: Current Hot Topics On In Third Person

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Ever since I wrote the Top 5 All-Time Most Viewed In Third Person Posts post, I’ve been kind of a metrics junkie. I’ll frequently log in with the sole intention of viewing the numbers and picking out the trends. I don’t envision a day where I’ll ever give away all my numbers to you, but I think it could be a neat exercise to talk about how you, the readers, use In Third Person. I’ve already covered the Top 5 Most Viewed In Third Person Posts of All-Time and now, I want to talk about the three topics that In Third Person readers can’t get enough of within the last month or so.

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Game Nerd vs. Movie Watcher: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

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A few nights ago, my girlfriend and I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Walking out of that theatre and thinking about how much I enjoyed that movie put me in a weird mental space. On one side, the gamer in me was really happy to see video games represented with a level of love and respect that movies have failed to deliver on. On the other side, the movie watcher in me wasn’t so sure I enjoyed it for the all the right reasons.

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Tennis in Hell: The Virtual Boy is 15 Years Old

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Long before the August 14th, 1995 release of the Virtual Boy, I was excited to get my hands on one. Up until this point, Nintendo had never let me down. I had read all the preview coverage about the system and even entered a contest from a local newspaper that was giving one away. If that didn’t pan out, I was going to buy the Virtual Boy the moment I had saved up enough money for it.

Last week was the Virtual Boy’s 15th anniversary and I still don’t own one. I’ve had opportunities in recent memory to pick up up after the fact, but I’ve passed on it every time. Even if I did pick one up, it would be more for the humour in it than anything. The fall of the Virtual Boy is well documented, so instead of looking at the big picture, I wanted to talk about my personal experiences with one of the worst video game platforms of all-time.

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Street Fighter Concepts That Made Me a Better Basketball Player – Part 4: Exploiting Weaknesses

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This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing, Part 2: Punishing Mistakes, Part 3: Resource Management

Exploitation of Weaknesses

When I play the computer in Street Fighter IV as Akuma, regardless of difficulty, I can almost always land a Raging Demon. I don’t know what the guys at Capcom did about the AI, but 99% of the time when I input that command, the computer just stands there and eats it. Human opponents in general are tougher to fool, but virtually everyone has weaknesses of some sort. When I play an opponent, one of the very first things I check is my opponent’s ability to block a cross-up. It’s a tactic that most casual players don’t understand and won’t figure out how to counteract it within the span of one match. When I notice that my opponent doesn’t have an answer for that, or any other tactic that I throw at them, I will repeatedly use that tactic until I win or until my opponent finds an answer.

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Early Impressions on Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night

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As someone with no affinity towards the Castlevania series, picking up Castlevania Encore: Puzzle of the Night seems like a weird move. Up until I played it, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to regret the discounted price I paid for it.

While I haven’t played enough to pass a final judgment on it, I’m really digging this so far.

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In Third Person Passes 200 Posts: Here’s 5 You May Have Missed

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200 posts is a fairly big milestone for a blog. I don’t have the stats to back this up, but I’m pretty sure the majority of blogs get abandoned after a handful of posts. I love In Third Person, and I think creating 200 posts by myself in just over 13 months says a lot about my love of games and my commitment to this site.

During that time though, I also switched platforms from Blogger to WordPress. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that the majority of my Blogger readership didn’t make the jump to WordPress and that my WordPress following never dug into the older Blogger posts. If you don’t fit into either use-case, then 200 blog posts is a lot of content to catch up on.

If you’re looking to go back through the In Third Person catalogue, this 201st post highlights 5 posts you may have missed.

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