I have not been keeping up my personal blog and I feel really guilty for it. But I have put in all my efforts into the Call Yourself A Nerd website, so I have decided to go on hiatus here for the time being until I can actually commit time and effort here. So please if you like any of my writing please follow us at Call Yourself A Nerd. Yes, it may be a little less personal but it is still all the stuff I truly care about.
Thank you for your time.
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Yes, I know I have not had a real blog post in a few days. I will get to that…
eventually.
Anyway, if you remember I brought up the new site Call Yourself A Nerd. Well, now we have our own official podcast.
Listen to it here or you can go to the site to download the MP3 file. We will have iTunes and all that jazz set up soon.
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This will be a quick one because I can not think of what to write but damn it I have another song stuck in my head. This time it is Alex Clare’s Too Close. Yes, it is the song from the new Internet Explorer commercial. Fucking song got stuck in my head. But the more I listen to it, it is still good. I do not know what is about this song but I am in love with it. Dude has a killer voice, lyrics are pretty good and it is just a good song. Either way, this song got its claws in my head and will not let go. Who am I to complain though?
In case the dub-steppy sound is not your thing, then listen to this acoustic version. I still enjoy this one.
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I just finished playing the first episode of Telltale Games’ the Walking Dead. Definitely a Telltale game, but some differences. The one thing I do like is the story and the decisions you have to make. Which brings me to today’s subject, “story over play.”
I am a gamer. I play a lot of video games, mostly due to a social nature, but I still play a lot of different games. I am becoming more entrenched in story driven games. I have played a lot of Mass Effect 3 in the last month or so. Maybe it is because I am invested in the game due to playing the previous two. But I think even if that is not the case, I would have loved the story. The great thing about playing Mass Effect or even the Walking Dead was being able to make story-altering decisions. Do I save this person or that person? I am so intrigued at the variations of the story and how one thing can affect others. My brother recently finished playing the first Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. He had some decisions that did not align with my own. I became curious about how he arrived there. I wanted to play again.
Which brings me back to the Walking Dead which I partial finished last night. There are a couple of decisions that may alter the game. I was already curious to go back and play the game differently, but then after the end of the game a graphic comes up showing what percentage of people picked what. As of 8:00 PST last night, every decision was 50/50 (spoilers: those of you who did not save the kid should be ashamed!). After seeing that graphic, I immediately wanted to have another game save. I will probably get to that later this week.
These story driven games keep me enthralled for hours. I would marathon through these games just to find out what happens. Hell, I would pay just to watch the story. I enjoy these games immensely more than multiplayer focused games. The only reason to play Call of Duty or Halo is to play with some friends and laugh my ass off. I had barely played Halo: Reach these past few months, then suddenly a few friends decided to get back into playing the game. Now I am playing again with them.
Back to my point: I think story driven games are infinitely more interesting than multiplayer games. Especially decision-making games when I can talk to others about their own decisions. Do not be mistaken, I will still play a shooting game with no story but only if there are people to play with. At this point in my life, story definitely outclasses gameplay.
Filed under: Video Games | Tagged: Bioware, Call of Duty, Halo, Halo: Reach, Mass Effect 3, Telltale Games, Walking Dead | Leave a Comment »
Sometimes I am asked what would be a good comic book to get into, but that is a very hard question. There are so many genres of comics out there, ongoing series often are hard to jump into and on top of that there are so many stories to read. I generally have an idea what I love and would like to pass on to my kids in the future.
With that said, if you want to ask the opinion of someone who has read comics for two decades then I can give you some options to try. Before I start, I will say that these are in no particular order (just what comes to mind). Reading these books can take a lot of dedication, but I find it worth it. You can find most of these still being published as trade paperbacks in the graphic novel section in your bookstore, or you can even support your local comic store.
Those are a few series that I would recommend. I have more, but I will save it for another post. Let me know if you like them or disagree.
Filed under: Comic Books | Tagged: Fables, Joe the Barbarian, Locke & Key, Sandman, Walking Dead | Leave a Comment »
Remember my post three weeks ago about a potential podcast? Well my brother and me recorded two more tester episodes. I do not know if those will ever see the light of day but we are getting a rhythm. We have been talking about how we want to do this show and such. Eventually we came up with the conclusion that we will have a mutual blog about all our interests. I will still keep writing here, especially since I will be able to get a little more personal.
We created the Call Yourself A Nerd website. We will cover comics, movies, TV shows and other things that catches our fancy. We even have my girlfriend, Natalia, writing some stuff for us about music and books. I do not know when, but we will eventually have an official podcast by my brother and me. It is pretty bare bones now. I am not sure but maybe eventually we will have more writers and guests on the podcast.
Just wanted to have a quick post, instead of the last few wall of texts that I laid down.
Filed under: Random Thoughts | Tagged: Call Yourself A Nerd, Natalia, Ricky | Leave a Comment »
After writing four days and about 4300 words about internet drama, I thought I would post something a bit more personal and serious.
I would like to think of myself as a decent person. Of course, a decent person that has made mistakes and may not always come out looking his best. I would also like to think that as a decent person I have positively affected those I encounter. I was a martial arts instructor for three and a half years, I know not all of them are going to be good people but hopefully a few were able to follow my good examples. Then there are the six knuckleheads that I have as nieces and nephew. I hope that whatever I pass on to them is the best.
What does it matter if I am a good role model to some?
I am not sure, but I always want what is best for people. Sometimes the best way to ensure that is to lead by example.
What is my gauge for how I am a good person?
That is simple. I just need to try to be a hero, one day at a time. And there is one example in my life of me truly accomplishing that goal that I always strive to relive. If I do not live up to that model of a person then I have not been a hero that day (thankfully, not all days require me to step up like that).
What is this hero-defining moment?
Well, this all happened back in late spring of 2003. I was in my first year of college, learning new things and meeting new people. But let us be honest; I was out getting drunk and thinking about little else than having a good time. At this time, I do not think I was at my ideal.
Anyway, this happened on a random weekend with some friends. We had just visited Great America, the local theme park, in Santa Clara. In the evening, we would move to IHOP to enjoy a late meal. To be honest, it was probably an enjoyable day but I can not remember much about the fine details. After our late meal, some of the group wanted to go to Our Lady of Peace. Our Lady of Peace was a church nearby, which had a large statue of Jesus and a park/sitting area around the statue. It is actually a nice view when you consider the surroundings. My friends were pretty religious, mostly from a Filipino indoctrination.
Before I go on, I will state my religious beliefs. I am Catholic, I have gone to a Christian school my entire life before college. I believe in the Catholic teachings, in God and all that jazz. But I was jaded and cynical.
So when others in the group wanted to go look at the statue for a moment to reflect on their day, I was along for the ride but had no illusions of wanting to take part. As some knelt and prayed, I just stood in the background enjoying the evening air.
That is when I noticed a girl crying over to the side. No one had noticed her (or at least acknowledged she was there). I do not know what made me do it, but I went over and asked her what was wrong. Her boyfriend had broken up with her and she was thinking of killing herself. I attempted to comfort and talk to her. I lost track of time but soon enough the group had noticed what was happening. The girls in the group came over to help. Eventually, the girl left and we were on our own way. I never found out what happened to the girl, but I always hope for the best.
That is how I felt like a hero. I did not hesitate, I did not think about my own problems. I went to help someone I did not know. And sometimes that is all it takes to be a hero, give someone a shoulder to cry on. Every day since that day, I have measured myself against the person who stepped up. Some days I am proud, some days not so much.
Every day I just try being a hero to someone.
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Welcome back to the final installment of my grifball memoir. I will go into the eventual death of the AGLA and what could happen to the grifball community.
Remember that what I write here does not represent the opinions of anyone besides myself.
I left off in early 2010, going into the Summer League of ’10. With a brief stint on Bleep Bloop and a quick reformation of the Hard Liquor Chasers, I had the bug to finish out with something memorable before the community moved on to Halo: Reach. But I had my fill of leadership and opted to help form another team that would be under the leadership of BobbyBirdseed, a recent addition to the people who I would play with. We created the team Toonami, in reference to the programming block that used to run on the Cartoon Network. This team took a few pieces of HLC and added a few other members, including long time friend Toktyn. Playing with Toonami, I had another shot at success. Hell, it was probably my best played season in my career. Unfortunately, it would become another season of just falling short as we would lose in the quarter-finals (quick fact, no team I have played on has made it past the quarter-finals).
The first crippling blow dealt to the AGLA came before the playoffs even began. Previously; the league had a website that collected stats, recorded wins/losses and set up our schedule. Before the first playoff game could be played the website broke and would not allow the input of new games. The website became nothing but a memorial to past seasons. The website coded by someone employed by Rooster Teeth. Rooster Teeth had given access to administrators for basic use, but would not allow anyone touch the code. We have talented programmers within our own grifball community as well as the Rooster Teeth community at large. We just were not trusted to fix something that is broken. In fact we never received official word from Rooster Teeth, who had brought this community together in the first place.
Rooster Teeth abandoned the community. The company’s only tie to grifball would be a t-shirt they sell, one of their most popular.
In hindsight, we all knew this but were hopeful things would change. The constant demand from the community for change in leadership, upgrades to the website and our own in-fighting would paint the league as a toxic place. Earlier that year I had started friendships with people who were outside the grifball community but still part of the Rooster Teeth community. Everyone hated us. Everyone would see our in-fighting and scoff, thinking us as children. Much later I would listen into a conversation Burnie, CEO of Rooster Teeth, would have with grifball players at an event. I will paraphrase: Burnie had said that they could not keep up with the demands we wanted, the company had become so far removed from the grifball community that they would rather pass the buck and really it would be because the grifball community could not stand together.
Thus the AGLA would begin to die.
But wait, there was another league hosted by GrifballHub. The GGL and the Hub staff would make great strides forward during this time. The GGL would be the first league played using Halo: Reach as the AGLA would be in off-season. There were things the Hub staff did that went far above anything I would see from the AGLA. The publicity gathered in these early months of switching game formats really helped the GGL. The Hub staff was even able to garner front page articles on websites outside our community. The GGL would have the largest league turnout since the first year of the AGLA.
The only downside to the strides the GrifballHub made would be Halo: Reach itself. Switching from Halo 3 to Reach had left a lot of people disenfranchised with the game. The mechanics of Reach appeared much different than anyone had expected. The effects to grifball would be too many to name. Halo: Reach would be Bungie’s last game in the Halo series and it showed. The game showed a mentality of walking away from a community they had fostered for so long. Dialog with Bungie had become stagnant. Thankfully 343i would eventually take over and strengthened their connections with all communities including grifball.
Several seasons of the AGLA and the GGL would be played in the next couple of years. I would play in most of those seasons but never committing or having as much success as earlier seasons; playing both for HLC and a team used to help interest 343i staff in grifball, We Roll LASO. And honestly these past two years would be just moving through the motions for me.
For many players including myself, this will be four and a half years of playing grifball. The Grifball.com website that had been broken for so long finally went kaput, showing a 404 error. The site once stood as a memorial of those first couple of years, but now all that history is gone. The AGLA would move from the Rooster Teeth community and host its own site, which unfortunately lacks the touch of Ben from Rooster Teeth or Mike from the GrifballHub. The AGLA has seen almost three dozen commissioners, admins and committee heads, while the GGL has only had two commissioners and a few supporting staff/moderators. I have been part of four teams, been to the elite eight six times and maintained a 57% batting average (the logic of this would take too long). I have helped start the GrifballHub as a community site, wrote quite a few articles as well as starting the Hubcast (the GrifballHub podcast, known as In Lobby when I started). I was the head of the events committee in two separate seasons.
Grifball itself may never die as long as there is a new Halo game, but the communities may whither. I spent a lot of my time contributing and enjoying the grifball community. If the leagues succeed when Halo 4 comes around, I will be proud and proven wrong. I just wanted to remember my time as a player without having the tint of being politically correct, which let us face that I really am not in the first place.
If you ended here, thank you for reading this four part series. There is a lot more I would have said but time, space and my sanity would not allow. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did I hope you stick around for more of my rambling. Thank you, grifball.
Filed under: Video Games | Tagged: Grifball, GrifballHub, Halo, Hard Liquor Chasers, Red vs Blue, Rooster Teeth, Xbox | Leave a Comment »
Continuing my grifball memoirs which again are not approved by any other community or persons.
I left you with information about the Spring League of ’09 in the last post. Before I go into the actual history, I wanted to say something. A lot of what I am writing is coming across as my anger rant over the past four years, but I also enjoyed my time in the community immensely. Otherwise I would not have stayed for so long as so many others wandered off throughout the years. Seriously the people I choose to associate myself with are some of the best people I have known. Just a little call out to my friends, you know you are, you guys have given me some of the best times of my life hanging out with you knuckleheads. Holmcross, Puppy, Seanzie, Tex, Tortoise, Bynum, Redbeard, Toktyn, Bobby and a few others are really awesome and funny people. I would go into more about these guys but that would take a few more posts.
2009 also saw the inception of the website that would be known as the GrifballHub. Previously, the Hub was a site that Mike (Puppy) had opened for our team to talk and formulate plans without it being through private messages or out in the open for everyone to see. Eventually Mike and I formulated a plan to turn the site into a fan site of grifball, containing all the news and information that was not posted on the main site. Mike set up everything. He would honestly build one of the best amateur owned website that I have seen. There may be some bias to that, but I do believe it. Everything the Hub was and would become really goes to him, I just brainstormed the idea with him as we hung out. Either way I proudly represent the Hub when I can just because of the great people involved.
After that the Summer League of ’09 came around. HLC would move up to the Pro League. It was not a great season for us. Barring that, the Pro League is a bunch of horse manure. It always favored teams that were online all the time. And with the neutral host being allowed in regular season games, sometimes it would talk 30-60 minutes just to get a game started. It was bad enough when you played for long periods of time, but when you had to wait it become much worse.
This was also the time that I took over as the head of the events committee, although I was representing the Hub who had won the office. I believe I ran the most successful time in office. No other events head had held as many events as I did, nor was committed. Previous heads had dropped out before the end of the season. But as the season progressed criticism had become severe for anyone associated with the Hub. Tex, who was an admin at the time, and I were obvious targets for the barrage. Heated words were exchanged many times in the last weeks of the season. For reasons that are still beyond me, the Hub had become the enemy.
During my time as head of events, I saw a bit behind the curtain about how the league was ran and what the website moderators thought about our pocket of the community. I can say that certain admins took their jobs seriously while others may have abused or ignored their offices. And the Rooster Teeth moderators were sick and tired of dealing with the drama that our forums ignited often. There was not a favorable opinion of the grifball community at this point.
I slowly began to pull away from the community at this time, still kept my ties within certain circles.
Personally, I had become aggressive in trying to win. I was still out to have fun, but there seemed an urgency to make my mark . In the Fall League of ’09, for the first time I would play on a team that was not named the Hard Liquor Chasers. I decided to join some of my other close friends on Bleep Bloop. It was a weird season, but I still enjoyed playing with new people especially some that I have only played against.
Mentioned before, the grifball community had an aggressive stance that would not really allow people to have as much fun as they wanted to and closed off to newcomers. Grifball had become insanely competitive. Certain players would insist that trash talk was essential, even if it was homophobic or inappropriate. Funny side story about how people forget their history: the people who enjoyed the trash talk said that it was an inherent part of the game even if it become personal, but they seem to have forgotten that the original players had instated a rule where the trash talk would not become personal or offensive. Anyway, the Hub staff had concluded that we needed another place to gather for games. The Hub would open up the first Good Games League. At first it would be only six teams, all with very close ties to the Hub staff. Eventual seasons of the GGL would include more players but would enforce a stricter rule upon the players. Believe it or not, barring certain players from joining ended up welcoming even more players into the league. Currently the GGL had become a staple of the grifball community.
After that recharge of the first two seasons of the GGL, I came back to HLC in the Winter League of ’10. We moved down to the Amateur League for less of a hassle (at this point neutral host had become mandatory for all Pro League games). We were often criticized for going down for being too good for these teams (another funny fact: we were also often told that we never really accomplished much as a team). But we were rusty, we also enjoyed having a set time to play instead of free-scheduling. Having a set schedule, not having to wait for finding a neutral host and just relaxing is ultimately a better option for a team of 20-somethings that all had jobs/school/significant others. But we began to have some more fun again and began ignoring what occurred elsewhere in the league.
The next few seasons blur together now because of the AGLA and GGL running on alternating seasons, but I will try to remember as best I can. The GGL implemented Achieveables, which were tasks to complete during a league game that would give points as a team (allowing teams without winning records to be in the playoffs). Achieveables had to be one of the best ideas ever to be allowed in grifball, thanks to Goose and Kal. It allowed teams to play games unlike they would normally. This “thinking outside the box” mentality brought me back to the shenanigans that started HLC’s career. HLC and I missed the Spring League of ’10 and a couple of season of GGL, I honestly forget why. It may have been for the best as massive cheating had becoming even more clear to the league. It only took them almost two years to really find out. Having an alternate account for several to people play on to help win games really should be a sign that you have mental issues.
In the next post I will regale you with the first major fall of the AGLA, the rise of Reach and finally the death cry of grifball.
Filed under: Video Games | Tagged: Grifball, GrifballHub, Halo, Hard Liquor Chasers, Red vs Blue, Rooster Teeth, Xbox | 1 Comment »
On to the next part of my little memoir of my grifball career…
Remember my views are not to be considered those of anyone else in the community. This is my own personal blog.
I left off yesterday by talking a bit about the Winter League of ’09. Like I had said before: nothing really new happened. HLC had become the goofball group with the place in the forums to just shoot the shit about anything. Before us the 9th Wonders held that job, but it fell to us when personalities left or changed.
I will take this time to talk about the best and worst thing about the grifball community, the community itself. By this time, the community had grown to include a couple thousand people. Not to mention around this time Bungie, the creators of Halo, started to release monthly events on weekends that would allow people to play grifball with complete strangers. Previously you would need to gather at least seven other people to even think about playing, although this was at the height of popularity and it was easy enough. Anyway, getting away from what I wanted to say. The community has some of most awesome people around, kind and giving; but with the anonymity of the internet there was the other side. There were trolls and they did their damn hardest to make the world a living hell for anyone in their way. And with thousands of players, personalities would clash and we would have constant bickering and fighting on the forums. The community itself became a small clique with smaller cliques. People would argue it was for the best to use trash talk and close off our community to newcomers by bombarding them with jokes and sarcasm. These same people had the mentality that if they could not deal with then they can not deal with playing with us. Then there would be people who took the game too seriously and would fight in the forums for days on end. Now I have been known to throw down venom-filled posts when angered by a person, but I would still try to help and forgive. The grifball community became the bane of the Rooster Teeth community as well as the Halo community.
Either way, the community itself is another reason for the downfall of grifball.
Moving along we arrive to the Spring League of ’09. This season would do be one of the most harmful seasons in league history. Again the league saw a change of leadership with the addition of different league administrators and committee heads. There was the failed introduction of the Elite League, which would add a third tier to the earlier two tiers of Legacy and Rookie. Then there would be the controversial introduction of neutral host to playoff games.
Let me go into more detail for each of these.
The previous season would have two commissioners to split the workload. One of them left, but instead of bringing one new commissioner we brought into two new administrators to help the remaining commissioner. Moocow was the commissioner he would delegate the workload. To help the workload of the administrators, there was the introduction of committee heads. These committee heads would be responsible for certain aspects of the league; stats, rules, events and disputes. I have already made my position about the disputes committee clear in the last post. The head of rules was a useless job as they had no authority other than to rewrite and update FAQs and rule sheets, which would never be done on the website. Then there was the stats committee. At the time we had a working website to catalog stats for teams and players, but it was career long and would not show just a single season. I assisted the stats committee but that fell apart when the head left without notice. None of the administration replaced the position or gave log-in information for work to continue. The events committee would help promote the league by having events anyone could join, but they never did anything. Honestly, I believe all of this was Moocow trying to stay popular and supplement his own ego. In the time he stayed on as commissioner, I have never seen an inkling of what he had accomplished. Each of his so called accomplishments were on the backs of others.
Before the season began, Adam Pisani wanted to introduce an Elite League (probably to supplement the ego of teams that thought they were so far above everyone else) in addition to the Legacy and Rookie Leagues. But this was halted when the numbers of teams signing up had dropped off from previous seasons. Thus the idea was scrapped and instead the format changed from Legacy/Rookie to Pro/Amateur. The Legacy/Rookie was flawed from the start as teams would circumvent the roster rules to allow them to play in the Rookie League that was meant for brand new players. Now Legacy/Rookie would be joined to form Amateur and the Elite players would get their Pro League. The Pro League was a joke from the start as it supported a free scheduling system and teams would abuse the hell out of this, aiming for times and days that certain players would not be available. The Pro League also become home to the “squeakiest wheels” in all the community. Every complaint came from entitled players that resided in the Pro League.
Then there was neutral host. In the previous post I mentioned what host was and how it affected the games. Now there was an attempt to add another player that would remain neutral but would attempt to gain host through their better connection or some magic. Thus a placebo was created. Players clamored for neutral host any time they thought they knew they could not pull host, and even then the neutral host was not guaranteed. An example of this comes from HLC’s last playoff game of the season. We had a successful season and made deep into the playoffs only to be stopped by another team’s play using his university’s internet to his advantage. I must also state that this player, Diamond, was a genius in network manipulation. He knew a great deal about the intricacies of internet connection and he knew what to do. After a non-neutral host where HLC team members suffered unusual lag due to Diamond’s host, we disputed the results of the game. Another showing of the failure of the dispute committee when the game was overturned but only because of the stats and not the game film. Either way, a neutral host game was then scheduled. Guess what happened. Diamond still pulled host and we suffered lag. I will not say that the last game was our best game, but I can say had the non-neutral host game been an actual fair host then we would have won; probably winning the championships for that season.
This had gone long enough for now. To be continued…
Filed under: Video Games | Tagged: Grifball, GrifballHub, Halo, Hard Liquor Chasers, Red vs Blue, Rooster Teeth, Xbox | 1 Comment »
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