E3 Upcoming

E3 2018 Logo (June 12-14 | Los Angeles).  Image Source: Slashgear.com (click for more info)

Word Count (What I’m Writing)

• Project Paradise Word Count: 357
  
• Project Skye Word Count: 1617
• Project Independence Word Count: 3041 
• Project Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel Page Count: 12

I didn’t manage any new words on any of my major projects–I didn’t even manage a blog post.  I realize this is where I’m sabotaging my writing, so I’m redoubling my efforts to write at least 250-500 words each day on at least one of these projects.

Currently Reading (What I’m Reading)

• For Fun: Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson (Fantasy Novella)
• For School: Rhetoric in the European Tradition by Thomas Conley (A Book on the History of Rhetoric)
• For Research/Personal Development: Great Aircraft of WWII by Alfred Price and Mike Spick (for Project Skye)

I wanted to read Oathbringer over the summer break before classes started again, but BS said that it might be helpful to read a Novella entitled, Edgedancer, before starting on Oathbringer.  I finally found a copy at MTSU’s library and I’m reading it now.  X gives a history of Rhetoric.  Great Aircraft of WWII is a book that I’ve had in my collection for sometime–I’ve glanced at it periodically, but never read it cover-to-cover.  Now, with Project Skye, I intend to do just that.

Game Mode On (What I’m Playing)

• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (Ubisoft Multi-platform): Open World, Third Person Tactical Shooter–About ¾th of the way through.  Special Ops/Military combat in a fictional Bolivia taken over by a Mexican drug cartel.
• Until Dawn (Sony PS4 Exclusive): Third Person, Horror– branching storyline game that features a variety of choices that affect the outcome of the story using a system call the “Butterfly Effect.”  My latest choice may have just gotten one of the characters killed.  😦

E3 is Here!

So, next week is E3.  If you don’t know what that is, it stands for the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) and is the major venue for video game (& entertainment technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR)) announcements and trailers.  While it used to be things that would be coming in the next 6-8 months, now its more like things that you’ll be playing in the next 1-2 years, although there are some exceptions where publishers will pull the surprise, ” . . . and its coming out in four months, in time for Christmas, but that is very much a rarity these days.

The E3 ship is Leaking

While I’m usually excited for E3, I feel this year (especially), the “leaks” as to what will be shown have been particularly revealing in terms of both the number and the difficulty in avoiding them.  More and more YouTubers are putting the titles of the “leaked” line-ups into their thumbnails, making it nearly impossible to avoid.  Yes, I know they do it to drive up their “traffic” (especially, in light of YouTube’s pronouncement that smaller channels would be “demonetized” if they didn’t meet certain thresholds), but still, just say “leak” so I won’t click on the video; please don’t splash the name all over your thumbnail.  Let’s retain some mystery for the show, if you please.

Shrinking the Backlog

However, there is a downside to being a student vs a worker: I can’t game as often as I just to do.  After work, I would often come home and refresh with an hour or two of gaming each night, making significant progress in whatever game I was playing weekly.  Larger games, while taking more time, were still manageable.  However, now I don’t bring my TV and system to school, so I only get to game on the weekends.  Longer games take forever (I’ve been working through Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands since basically Christmas and here it is June and I probably have at least another month/month-and-half to go before I finish it.  Other games have piled up on my backlog and I’ve just stopped purchasing new games entirely until I work down this pile of games a bit.  So its hard to get super excited for the next new thing coming out when you haven’t played the old new thing from last year because you were loaded down with school work.

Now that I’ve discovered video game rhetoric is a thing, however, I’m actually using my video game time as also research time and I’m investigating writing scholarship around whatever game I’m playing.  I’ll let you know how that works later in the summer.

Well, that’s all for me.  I hope that, despite the leaks, E3 still has some surprises left for me!  Happy Gaming!

Sidney

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• Read Skin Deep for Free at Aurora Wolf
• Read Childe Roland for Free at Electric Spec

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• Read Faerie Knight in the anthology Fae, Rhonda Parrish, Ed. or the Kindle Edition
• Read Ship of Shadows in the anthology Visions IV: Space Between Stars, Carrol Fix, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
• Read WarLight in the anthology Visions VI: Galaxies, Carrol Fix, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.
• Read Dragonhawk in the magazine Tales of the Talisman, Vol. 8, Iss. 3, David Lee Summers, Ed. or the Kindle Edition.

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I earn a small commission on the purchase of these items.

 

Player Unknown Battlegrounds

Two combatants with guns square off with one another. Image Source: Crave Online

I won’t get too carried away talking about games exclusively, but I will take a moment to highlight a game that has taken the “hardcore” gamer by storm.  You’d think it would be Zelda and/or the Nintendo Switch based on the amount of coverage that the media is giving both the game and the system (and while they are fun and/or unique), it is Player Unknown Battle Grounds (PUBG–known affectionately as “Pub–Gee”) that currently has the hardcore gamers’ attention.  It is coming to the consoles, but right now it is only available for computers.

What is PUBG?  It is a game where approximately a hundred players are all dropped on an island and must fight it out in a huge Battle Royale until there is only 1 player/team remaining.  You can have up to 4 players on a team and while they just added a first person mode (as if you are looking out the characters eyes), the game normally features characters in the 3rd person mode (as if you watching the character on a movie screen).

The actual design of the game is actually pretty ingenious–I’ll have to give it to the designer.  The map is not quite an open world–it is a fairly large island “sandbox” that has trees, scrubland grass, and buildings.  There are a couple of named areas such as towns, but there are also smaller areas such as “The Barracks,” etc., and other deserted buildings.  Players drop onto the island without any weapons and must scavenge weapons and gear from the deserted buildings.  What is so brilliant about the game however, is the design mechanic of an “electrified shield” that slowly restricts the play area every 2 minutes or so, forcing the remaining players into an ever smaller playing environment until there is only 1 winner.

A character parachutes into the map.  Image Source: Business Insider

I have seen “streams” pop up from more and more gamers as they play solo or with teams of friends/acquaintances in order to be number 1 and earn the game’s virtual prize of the catch-phrase “Winner, winner, Chicken-Dinner.”  While this game my not be a media darling like The Switch or the newest Zelda game, it is most definitely part of the gaming zeitgeist of 2017 and its design mechanics will surely be used (filtered) into other games in the future which is why I would have liked to have been able to talk about it during my Digital Rhetoric class.

Well, that’s all from me–I’m off to work on my project on Virtual Reality for the aforementioned Digital Rhetoric class–who knows, maybe eventually there will be a Battle Royal Virtual Reality simulator one of these days.

Comic-Con Week (Ready Player One)

Image Source: Collider

Okay, okay, I know I’m behind the times on this one.  This project made the rounds about 1-2 years ago (maybe longer) and everyone one was talking about it.  It is a book by Ernest Cline entitled Ready Player One (RP1) and it apparently is a “pop-culture” phenomenon in that it references a ton of things from “my” generation (those growing up in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s).  So, yes I knew about this project before the movie trailer debuted at Comic-Con.  And yes, I knew about the pop culture references and in-jokes that it was supposed to contain.  But here’s the thing: Game of Thrones. Now I’m going to catch heat (i.e., be flamed) for this, but RP1 had the same level of “hype” associated with as did Game of Thrones and I am NOT a Games of Thrones fan (I’ll do a deep dive into why at a later date).  So I figured this is probably just a Games of Thrones clone with VR as just The Expanse (another show I tried to watch) was just a Games of Thrones clone in space.

However, the trailer–Ready Player One Trailer–convinced me otherwise.  This is one of those where I had to “see it in order to believe it.” Steven Spielberg is the director and it seems (to me at least) a return to form.  It has an interesting world and the action seems like it is going to be amazing just from the brief look at it that we get from the trailer.  Also, try playing the “see what pop icon you can find in the trailer” game–I saw two obvious references–The Iron Giant and the DeLorean from Back to the Future.  Actually, I did see others, but that would be spoilers–see if you can spot them (hint look closely during the Iron Giant scene & during the robot fighting scene).  To steal a line from a 1970s commercial for the board game Connect Four: “Pretty sneaky, sis.”

I’m probably going to watch the movie first and then read the book–that tends to be the way I do things unless I’m ahead of the curve (rare, but does happen sometimes).  If the movie (& book) is as good as the trailer makes it appear, this is one project that I will be happy to have been wrong about.  I’ll take fun over depressing any day and this looks fun!

VR Hype!

Image Source: UploadVR

So this post is late for a reason–I went to the MTSU’s Library and to their Maker Space and scheduled time to use their VR Headsets (for a presentation on technology on Wednesday).  I scheduled 1 hour with Oculus Rift and 1 hour with the HTC Vibe.  These are 2 of the 3 VR Headsets that are currently on the market and after today’s demonstration, I want to get a PSVR (Playstation VR Headset).

It was incredible!

Image Source: Bestbuy

I tried Oculus Rift first and this was the best starting point.  It allowed me to get used to the VR space.  It is mostly a visual and auditory experience.  It is true and full 3D VR, but movement in the demos was limited.  You can mostly stand in one area or move one or two steps to see all of the content.  The content is fully 3D and moves all around you so that you can look up, down, around, and behind you.  I saw several demos that were really immersive.

Image Source: YouTube

Moving on to the HTC Vibe, it has a headset like the Oculus Rift, but it also has handsets that are tracked in realtime by two cameras and it allows you to have space to move around and this really opens up the “play” environment.  I was able to look at spaces, but I was also able to look in spaces as well.

Whereas Oculus Rift shows you the potential of VR, the Vibe allows you see how that potential will be realized once the technological limitations are addressed.

I’ll talk more about VR in upcoming post, but I just wanted give a quick impression of these two VR systems.  They look really awesome and change the nature of the interactive experience.  I’m looking forward to getting a PSVR sometime in the near future!