The Long, Sad, Death Throes of Blockbuster Finally End.

There was a time, long before I was even born, when VHS tapes cost almost $100 a piece. In that world, a rental store made almost too much sense. For 20 years Blockbuster dominated, with lesser franchises like Hollywood video nipping at it's heels. That all changed with the advent of the great red menace: NETFLIX.

I love Netflix so, so, much. I've been a constant subscriber for over 4 years now. That's over $400 dollars at least. Though my story is hardly unique because all of the 300 remaining (really?! that many were left?) stores will close this year.

They tried, lord how they tried. They grabbed onto the mail side of Netflix just as Netflix realized the real future was in streaming. So we all knew that was never going to be enough and saw the end coming miles away. They filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Now, three years later, it's finally shutting down the vital organs. I honestly can't believe it hobbled on for so long.

But now I can't help but feel for Netflix's mortality. After Starz picked up all it's toys and went home, I've feared $8 a month will someday only buy you a shallow collection of entertainment, instead of the still pretty monolithic selection ol' Netty has now. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Rest in peace Blcokbuster, I always said $7 2-night rentals were bullsh*t. Now who's laughing?

Me! I'm laughing, by myself, in front of my computer... worth it.

*Update: I called them death "throws"... I hang my head in shame.

Bob's Burgers Returns! Seaplane Review.

After a baseball break that went on far too long (go Red Socks or... whatever) I've finally got my Bob back. It's no secret this is my new TV crush, it's been that way for quite some time. It's just been so consistently good for so long I want to shout my love from the rooftops. Baring that, this little blogspot should do the trick.

So what happened on Sunday? Will Forte guest starred as "Up Skirt Kurt" a seaplane instructor with less than admirable intentions for bored married women. After Bob refuses to spice up date night, Linda chooses to learn how to fly by herself and runs afoul of Kurt's master plan: a fake plane crash on "quickie-kiss-it" island.

One of the best things about Bob's Burgers is how each family member is strong enough to stand on their own, but somehow manage to be even better together. So having Linda being blissfully unaware of Kurt's advances is just as much fun as seeing Bob and the kids making a mad dash for aviation's make out point. That and Tina's musical fantasy about an Island all about kissing made me rewind at least three times. There was just really funny stuff from everyone this week.

From Gene's obsession with bread sticks to Louise commenting of Bob's belief that there has to be a boat for hire somewhere "This guy thinks every where's Key west!" to  Louise also commenting on Linda's infedelity "Don't get pregnant, I want to be the baby!" Not to mention some hearty Kevin Kline cameos as Mr. Fischoeder to bring it all home. This wasn't as brilliantly well structured as the Halloween special Fortnight (which was fantastic), or as heartfelt as some of the Tina centric episodes can be. But it was a rock solid episode nonetheless. Bob's Burgers continues to be the best show on fox by a mile these days. I honestly can't recommend it enough.

Why absolutely no one in the gaming community is surprised about Healthcare.gov

I don't like getting political, there's nothing I hate reading more than a partisan political sermon. But I'm not going to talk about politics. I'm not even gonna talk about health care. I'm going to talk about reasonable expectations for internet access and problem solving in this country. Both parties in America have collectively face-palmed over Healthcare.gov's inability to function. The tone I hear is one of complete surprise at something the pundit community seems to believe is almost unprecedented.

A website not working?! I understand how most folks can go through their professional lives and never feel the brunt of a really nasty connectivity issue. But here in Vidja Gameland, it happens all the goddamn time. Simcity is the most recent fiasco I can think of, and even in the long and storied history of video game launch disasters, it was really sumthin' special. EA had underestimated their sever load (how many people that it can support online at a time) by what seemed to be several million. The game literally didn't work for weeks.

Amazon pulled it from their proverbial shelves and critics (who had played it before release on private servers) updated their reviews to inform the public. Russ Pitts from Polygon had a particularly heavy conscience:

"Given this currently horrendous state of both accessibility and playability, and acknowledging the fact that even the drastic changes EA has made to the game in its attempts to address them haven't worked, it is hard to continue to recommend SimCity. The experience currently on offer is now significantly altered from what was reviewed, and there is simply no guarantee that the existing server issues will go away, nor what further changes may be made to the game in order to address them". - Russ Pitts, Polygon Features Editor and SimCity reviewer

Fans demanded an offline mode until the issues were fixed. But the developer assured the public that because of the way the game's artificial intelligence worked, an offline mode simply wasn't possible. It wasn't long before the game's more industrious fans discovered that not only did the game not appear to have any significant artificial intelligence at all (citizens only would work at the closest job and live in the closest home and a bunch of other embarrassing stuff), but eventually modded a perfectly functional (but very illegal) offline mode all by themselves.

It was plainly clear that the only motivation for the online connection came from upstairs. EA wanted an always-online Simcity no matter the cost. The funny thing was, Simcity was still a pretty big hit that didn't wind up costing them much at all.

That was barely six months ago, and a game that was reasonably anticipated, but not necessarily a blockbuster. But let's wind the clock back bit to summer 2012, and talk about a game that had fans clamouring for over 12 years...

How well did it launch? Well, you could make the argument that for hundreds of thousands of it's customers, it never launched at all. The problem went on for at least two more weeks. Customers couldn't reliably use their product because the demand was too great. So why does this happen? Why can't websites and online games just be "better?" To accurately answer that question I'd need a whole semester of an eerily specific telecommunications class, but here's the issue as I understand it.

Renting servers is expensive and you never want more server space than you need. But no one can see the future and you can never truly know how much you'll really need. "So just buy enough servers to feed the demand." Good point disembodied straw man! But what if you break the bank on enough servers and the demand goes into a freefall? Then you're only doubly screwed.

The whole point I'm driving at here is that the American government doesn't necessarily suck at running a website. Or at the very least, some of the most powerful entertainment companies in America and Canada (whose profit margins are almost entirely based around connecting to the internet) screw up just as spectacularly. This may be a humongous embarrassment to the Obama administration, but he's got so many more important things to do and even other more important scandals to worry about. The best and the brightest of the private sector don't seem to be any more competent.

Why Steam users are exeptionally smug today.

It seems like Steam is snowballing into quite the console competitor. Not really though, Sony and Microsoft could take Newell with both hands tied behind their backs GTA V sold 39 million copies without a PC version at all, but the number of active users under Valve's belt is staggering. There are 65 million of us now, at least 30% of which joined in the last year.

This whole "Steam Machine" business may have a better shot than I dared hope. And this is all coming from a guy who couldn't wipe it off his hard drive fast enough. A guy who only saw Steam as the epileptic gatekeeper that would only let him play New Vegas between the hours 1:00 and 6:00 AM. Fast forward 3 years later and I've saved at least, at least, $300 dollars off of Steam sales alone. I'm not logging off anytime soon.

Hey! So Mike Rowe was in this crappy 90's video game...

Everyone's favorite blue collar emcee and opera singer (seriously) went through some pretty lean years... come to think of it, he may be there again. But either way, we need to talk about "Radio Active." In that, I'm gonna let Rowe talk about Radio Active:

"And so it came to pass that I auditioned for and won the coveted the role of Bobby Arpeggio," Rowe wrote on Facebook, "the central figure in what the producers called 'the first truly interactive gaming experience designed exclusively for the personal computer — the music trivia adventure called Radio Active!" (I called it 'Name That Tune,' but whatever.) I packed a bag, flew to San Francisco, and slipped into the wardrobe that was waiting for me. A week later I had a check in my pocket, and was off to the next gig."
 
What prompted all this? A fan showed him a screen grab of him in the game and got him to open up about it a little.

Don't look directly at it. You actually need one of those mirror boxes they make for solar eclipses.

"When I saw this image, mixed in with all the other kind expressions of support, it made me laugh out loud, and reminded me that when a man can't deny his past (or his outfit), he might as well embrace it."

Thanks Polygon!

So it's been a while...

I have been reasonably busy the past week, what with a new night job and other nagging responsibilities... I kinda forgot about the crackpot. But no more! I guess I could talk about Netflix shows I'm trying to get into. Scandal is shaky, soapy, and ridiculous. But I can't shake the fact I kinda like it. In Bruges just popped up and I highly suggest you all watch it. It's both the funniest and most sympathetic performance of Colin Farrell's career. Plus he punches out Zeljko Ivanek. It's delightful.

Gaming wise I'm back on a self destructive Civilization bender. It's taken me almost 8 years but I've finally got one of these:

Weee!

I  managed to pull off a science victory on normal mode. I feel like I finally "get" Civilization. Again, it's taken me quite a few years to get here. Game after game of me stumbling around in the dark tripping over feature after feature and slowly figuring out what to do with it all. Diplomacy? the hell do I do with that? Why do I have so many spies? Why is my entire empire represented by a red frowny face? But I think I get it now, maybe in another 10 years I can give hard mode a spin.

Games for Windows Live is irritating even in death.

I hate GFWL. I've hated it ever since it made Fallout 3 run slowly, locked me out of dlc in Bioshock 2 seven times, and just generally acted like a fidgety piece of garbage designed by people who live in a place that just rains bandwidth. But thankfully Microsoft is finally driving a stake through it's desiccated corpse.

Good news right? Well it turns out all GFWL save games are encrypted... so all of your saves are going to get wiped. Three days after I got back into Arkham City, BAM! The 30 some-odd hours I put into it's riddler trophies and challenge rooms evaporated. I love that game, but there was no way I had the patience to go through all that again. Thankfully my save files were still there, but I'd have to do some coding back flips to get steam to read them again.

The wages of sin in pc gaming is hexadecimal... and death.

After a solid three hours trying to untangle GFWL's wires I had nothing. But the great thing about PC gaming is there's always someone more talented than you out there working on the same problem. That person's STEAM id was Andrew and he patched up my files good as new.

Thanks buddy. I won't forget this.

He's one of the good ones, folks.