“Oh?” Eric said, jumping to the immediate Hoffmann conclusion. “Did you bring home a new pet?”

“Close. We passed a big mud puddle, and so I talked to Harold about vernal pools for the next mile and a half!”

“Did he drive faster to make our lecture go by faster?”

“No, we were walking. Turns out, I learned quite a lot about vernal pools from Kristine.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Herpetology

Tweet this!

Eric: Do you want to come to Carolyn and Dave’s wedding with me?

Meg: Let me think about this…  Do I want to see your sister Kristine in a dress? A dress your fashion-design sister picked out for your swamp sister? With makeup and heels and everything? Of course I do!

The wedding was this weekend, and it was absolutely gorgeous. A glowing bride, perfect New England fall evening, classic fifties style. But it’s just possible that I took more photos of Kristine in girl clothes than of the newlyweds, the decorations and the ceremony site combined.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Girl Clothes

Tweet this!

I’ve been working at a Middle Eastern restaurant in North Carolina that used to be a Pizza Hut. When my cousins were visiting me, I dragged them in to see those signature trapezoid windows and brick walls, now decorated with sitars and hookah pipes. It was partly so they could eat some kebabs, and partly so they can back me up at future Christmas dinners when I’m accused of blog hyperbole.

Turns out there’s another ex-Pizza Hut that now serves korma and chicken tandoori,  because my friends introduced me to Monsoon in Acton. I knew I was going to like it because Tom is a curry connoisseur, and Eric is a foodie in general. It was pretty delicious, but it didn’t really matter where we ate, because I was so happy to see my friends and decompress after a couple interviews with possible schools.

After a lot of dinner and a lot of chatting, Tom and Tricia headed home, and Eric and I met up with some more of my second family, the Hoffmanns. Carolyn’s getting married in a few weeks, so she had a some pre-wedding advice for any brides-to-be: Elope while you still can! She also said something about hiring an Elvis impersonator, but I think she may have been exaggerating.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Hyperbole and Exaggeration

Tweet this!

It took about six seconds for me to feel at home again. A lot had changed, of course, but a lot hadn’t. These are still some of my favorite people in the world, even if we’re not talking about final papers and getting trashed (Note to parents and prospective employers: Don’t worry! I always did it in that order!) anymore. My college friends have, bizarrely enough, gotten married (There was a bit of teasing about whether I time my travels abroad to miss weddings. I swear I don’t! I love weddings!), bought houses,  got proper jobs, and settled in the Boston suburbs. Wow. I could never really picture that for me, and now is the time to build what is for me, and it’s simultaneously exciting and scary.

Then Bethie and I took the T back to her house. We were the only people in the car, so we got a little bit hyper.  Did I mention that my sister is awesome?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Ten Years

Tweet this!

In a lot of ways, New England is home to me. I love the saltbox houses and the town greens, and absence has made the heart grow fonder of ubiquitous Red Sox caps. I even like riding the T.  (If you’ve just tuned into Simpson’s Paradox, I feel about driving the way most people feel about visiting the dentist. Oh, not the dread and anxiety part, I just mean that driving is better than all my teeth falling out.)

As Eric said: Welcome back to the homeworld.

[PS I reread several years of Pie2K comics to find this one to go with the title.]

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

More Than A Feeling

Tweet this!

I ran into a guy in the elevator who asked who I was representing. I said I was freelance. He congratulated me on my successful BSing of the E3 media board.  That’s how I secretly feel, deep down,  about being a journalist, but sometimes I secretly feel like I’m gothly pale or a bit too pear-shaped, and I don’t think I want that pointed out by strangers, either.

I finally met my Twitter friend @CaptainCursor in person! His people over at Rifts went on Unattended Journalist Alert when I asked to see him, and then Nick came out and said hi and tossed me up in the air a couple times.

(Which was extra nice, because my friend who usually greets me by picking me up and swinging me around the room had the bad manners to move to Korea a few years ago.) The Rifts tour was pretty awesome too, thanks, Nick! And for a little while, I felt like one of the cool kids who already knew people at E3. Look, three full days of endless introductions can be pretty exhausting.

I ran into a guy in the elevator who asked if I was a booth babe. Aww! I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh hysterically or hug him.

I ran into another guy in the hotel coffeeshop, who saw my Triangle Games Conference bag, and asked if my husband was here for E3. I wanted to give him a one-finger salute,  but instead I gave him my card. And an icy glare!

I met up with the rest of the guys from DIYgamer at the IndieCade party for drinks and mutual admiration society. Guys, if I didn’t tell you clearly enough, I love your posts.

I was in a taxi on the way to the Scott Pilgrim kegger when some basketball team won something or other, and the whole city started cheering. Oh, yeah, and when I got to the party, the line went down the block and around the corner, but the  line was fantastic, tarted-up girls and posturing guys, all texting friends and comparing how drunk they got last night to how drunk they’re going to get tonight.  I thought it would be fun to post about how I couldn’t get into the Hollywood party, so I went to the front of the line, and said who I was, and asked if I was on the list. I wasn’t, of course, but here, go in anyway. This is either because A) I am famous or B) There weren’t enough girls inside. You decide!

The thing is, that once you’ve gotten inside, then you’re just a girl at a party who doesn’t know anyone, and that’s a bit annoying. Sometimes, as a journalist, you have to look at the line of kegs and ask yourself “What would Hemmingway do?”

I added an extra day to my trip to see the Getty Villa, because one nerd-dom just isn’t enough for me. Seeing the Getty Villa has been a dream since I first read about the Villa of the Papyri and the reconstruction. It was an awesome day for me. Then I caught the bus back to downtown LA. The route runs along the Pacific Ocean, so there’s a bus full of tired commuters and dirty vagrants… and me, jumping up and down and staring at the Santa Monica Pier.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

E3 Run-ins

Tweet this!

I checked out Choice of Dragon, a free text-based adventure game  for a web browser or iToy.  The multiple-choice interaction gave me the opened-ended storyline I loved in text games, without the turn-key-in-lock frustrations of a game that parses text entry. (Hey, I wasn’t THAT nostalgic) You play as a dragon in a generic fantasy land, full of princesses to capture (or princes, your dragon can be an equal-opportunity kidnapper), adventuring parties to torment, and treasure to steal.

CoD is a solid IF game. Engaging descriptions of scenes and character never become long-winded. The story uses fun fantasy stereotypes, without going into the complete parody in Fantasy University or Kingdom of Loathing, and uses light sarcasm, but never takes on the unhelpful DM’s tone from Zork or Adventure. The game is fairly short, but reading the game is such a delight, it’s practically impossible not to play through a few times for different stories.

Each decision players choose has an in-game effect. You can fight or flee, split the booty or turn on your ally for the whole thing. Burning the village increases your infamy and treasure hoard, while letting the villagers live as your vassals increases your honor. Your stats continue to affect your abilities and choices, giving you more story options and personalization.

The game could be improved with a way to save the game. At several interesting crossroads,  I was sorry I could not travel both / and be one traveler, long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could. What works in poetry could be greatly improved with a saveslot. Right now, an incomplete game is stored for further progress next time, but there’s no way to return to a particular place besides restarting the game and trying to make all the same choices to lead back to that point. Knowing how way leads on to way, it’s a poor solution that could be solved with an option to save the game.

Choice of Broadsides, another similar game from Choice of Games, won my love with a choice of gender. Some games give you a female avatar, or swap some pronouns around to make the ladies feel at home, but CoB creates a world when young ladies sail the high seas and young gentlemen are sweet domestic angels. You encounter mutinous sailors, brave enemies and honorable sea captains, all female. Later, when one of your salty companions suggests you marry, and give yourself an attractive mate and the comforts of home life, you can choose a husband from an array of accomplished young gentlemen.

I didn’t enjoy the naval adventure quite as much the fantasy one, partly because I’m more of a princess-capturer than a vessel-seizer. I also felt like there were some choices that could be made in CoBroadsides that were just wrong, that in certain crossroads there was a distinctly correct and incorrect choice to be made, while in CoDragon I felt like different dragons and different choices led to different but equally valid stories.

If you also have fond memories of text-based games, both games are available online here or on the App store.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Choice of Dragon

Tweet this!

Joymax, an independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment for the global market, today announced the launch of a third “Clean Campaign” for historical fantasy MMORPG Silkroad Online. During the event, which will run until April 6, users are encouraged to unite against verbal abuse in-game and come up with ways that Joymax can encourage good manners in the Silkroad Online community.

Joymax hopes that the event will remind players that their behavior in-game doesn’t just reflect upon their own character, it also reflects upon the character of their community and country. A large team of people has worked hard to make Silkroad Online the most welcoming world it can possibly be, and they ask that players around the globe help them ensure it continues to be a fantastic destination for online adventuring. [Emphasis mine]

I came into MMOs from MUDs, where the object of the game was to textchat with other people. Players spent the entire game was typing complete sentences into the chatchannel, and reading what other players had written, and interacting with other players. (Of course, it wasn’t called a chat channel, it was called an online game. Also, we had to walk to school in the snow. Uphill both ways. But we had boots, I mean, I’m not that old.)

But it’s hard to play any MMO now without dealing with some chatchannel aggression and rudeness. It’s just a function of the anonymity of the internet, the same mindset that creates nasty blog comments or forum posts. There are, of course, many great players, many friendships and relationships that come from ingame chat, and guilds full of fun and helpful discussions, but there’s also a strong streak of general rudeness. (Wait, maybe I am that old. Kids today and their lack of manners!)

Joymax is a Korean developer, which explains the Asian focus on community and face in this press release about curbing chatspam. At the risk of falling into blanket east-west stereotyping, I doubt that many American players will lay off the Chuck Norris jokes to improve the impression of Americans abroad.

But in-game behavior does reflect on nationality. When I was playing WoW from Yantai, I picked a username that took full advantage of my fledgling Chinese, but I eventually deleted the character because I was sick of Barrens chatters calling me a Chinese farmer. And I don’t know if chatchannel politeness will charge American gamers’ view of Chinese gamers –  it’s hard for good party members from China to cancel out the impressions left by auction halls full of farmed gold.

Pointing out that chat channels are full of abusive comments is just stating the obvious. Joymax is also looking for suggestions.

Talking about Asian games, internet usage and campaigns for better manners immediately brings to mind the harmonization of the Chinese internet. There was a movement in China to force internet users to register with their full names to make people accountable for their online actions. Obviously this had more to do with netizens causing political unrest or talking about three certain T-words, than gaming. I don’t think games have to take such a hard line, but I imagine that interacting online using one’s full name would also create a more polite, more responsible, more – dare I say it? – harmonious internet society.

Using a full name, like requiring a chat channel moderator, seems to force some accountability into in-game interaction. But it also seems to suck some of the escapist enjoyment from an MMO.

The new MMO Fallen Earth dumps new players into Help chat by default. It helps keep newbies from clogging up general chat asking where the trainers are, or how to open their inventories, which in turn prevents the annoyance for long-term players when the millionth new player ask where to buy recipes or how to repair armor.

This is also a moderated channel, which may explain why a player can ask how to activate autorun without the usual chat channel response from a half dozen wits suggesting CRTL-ALT-DEL. But is a moderator the only choice? I’m embarrassed to think that the only way gamers will be decent to other people who share the same hobby is if there’s a moderator watching.

Some open-ended adventure games, like Morrowind, offer a reputation value. As your character rescues innocent peasants and helps cats down from trees, he’s treated like a hero by the local NPCs. And, if a character commits heinous murders or thefts, he’s greeted with fear and NPC guards might even come to punish him. Perhaps some way to link chatchannel behavior with ingame reputation — merchants find you rude and overcharge you, for example — would encourage chat room politeness without breaking the illusion.

What would you do to encourage more friendly chatting, without ruining the escapism fun of MMOs?

You can find the full text of the press release here: Joymax Prepares to Clean Up Dirty Mouths in Fantasy MMORPG Silkroad Online

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Silkroad Society

Tweet this!

The zaniness we love about the Sims arrives in Castaway once you’ve gotten a handle on sleeping and not-starving. Your Sim can build an SOS sign for Dharma initiative-style airdrops of random things, like a victrola or a candy bar.  As you collect island items, you can cook tasty dinners (your Sim was getting tired of bugs and raw fish), make new clothes, make tools or decorations, build a new house, make a canoe and just create all kind of island crafts. You can even make and play an ocarina! And, as you explore more, you’ll also befriend the other island refugees, and check out the ancient temple. All tropical islands have an ancient temple, don’t you know?

I’ve written such angry things about sparkly pink shopping games as “girls’ games”, that I hate to admit when I fall into a traditional girl pattern, but, well, I love pretend cooking. I like it in World of WarCraft, too, if that make me sound any less like an eight-year-old girl. I also like making Sim clothes and playing dress-up. Castaway avoids being an unappealingly feminine game by also having survival puzzles and mini-games about fish-catching and fire-building. Oh, and the game’s not pink, which is always good in my book.

Sims 2: Castaway seemed to make much better use of the DS interface than Sims 2. In the regular Sims 2, you’re forced to ignore the stylus, and use the clumsy buttons to navigate, but you can’t put the stylus away completely, because you need it to select menu options that really should be hotkeys or at least accessible by arrow keys. Sims 2: Castaway takes better advantage of the DS-specific interface, using either the stylus to move, and even creating minigames that require use of the microphone. The top screen is used to display the meters that are very familiar to Sims players.

One interface annoyance is the crafting book. When crafting, your Sim cannot create multiples of the same item. You need to select the crafting spot, tap Craft Things, then click the item you want to make,which leads to a screen showing you what materials will be reguired. On this screen, you must click Make. Then you’ll see a picture of what you’re making, and you must click OK. Then you see a picture of what you made, and you’re forced to click OK one more time. If you want to make a duplicate (or a second item), you’re back at the crafting book, and you need to do it all over again. And if your item is on the second or third page of the crafting book, it can be even longer. And if you need three of one item to make something special, well, seems like EA figured out how to most of the suck the fun from a crafting game.

I was a big fan of Sims 2 for the computer, so I expected to like Castaway. It was even better than I expected, with the exotic island theme, a zany but cohesive storyline, and all the adorably realistic animations we expect from the Sims.

Sims 2: Castaway on the DS was originally published June ’09 on Thumb Gods

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Game Review: Sims 2: Castaway

Tweet this!

Heaven, in The Lovely Bones, is a non-religious afterlife where everything is just as you want. Susie encounters a heavenly intake counselor, a former non-profit caseworker whose heaven is working for people who thank and appreciate her, and a heavenly roommate, a Vietnamese girl whose heaven includes speaking accentless English and having an American name. Unfortunately for me, Susie’s own heaven was the least appealing one described, involving a townful of dogs (I think this proves I have no heart but I can’t really get into all the maintenance required for slobber machines), but the details here, like the 14-year-old reading of Seventeen or the smells she most loved on earth, make any reader imagine their own heaven, without harps and angels, but perhaps the smell of new plastic and endless brand-new scenes in the Harry Potter movies. At least for me.

Susie leaves heaven to watch her friends and family. She watches her sister learn of her death, and grow up as dead Susie’s younger sister in school and around town. She visits her siblings, parents and school friends, watching them live their lives for years, and appearing, now and then, in a reflection or for a second at the corner of their eyes.

She also watches her high-school crush, Ray Singh. The relationship between Susie and Ray is absolutely perfect. High school relationships in books and movies tend to appear as whirlwind perfection or unwatchable awkwardness. (I do pull the embarrassment pillow over my face when this happens, but this isn’t always effective, since my father and my boyfriend both like to narrate movies as they unfold.) The Lonely Bones perfectly captures the awkward beauty of teenage connection without turning either Ray or Susie into a caricature.

Susie also watches the man who killed her. She learns his habits, and his history, even meeting in heaven a collection of other girls and women murdered by this man.  Descriptions of him are almost sympathetic, which is the most disturbing part of the book, far creepier than Susie’s rape and murder. As Susie is almost omniscient in heaven, she looks through his life. In a book like this, with characters that are so fully developed, it seemed weird to track the killer’s life back to his mother’s abandonment, transferring the blame for all the deaths (and Susie is one of a long line) not on the killer, but on his mother.

Without giving too much away, Susie’s father and sister determine her killer,  but readers are brought not to revenge or retribution, but to healing. The story ends with a satisfying conclusion, a conclusion that’s more of a beginning than a resolution.

I have to wonder how this story will translate to a film. I can read about Susie’s death and be moved by it, but I don’t think I want to see it. This is entirely different from my usual skittishness towards movies based on books I enjoyed, I’m not worried that the filmmakers won’t show it the way I pictured it in my head, I’m worried that the filmmakers will show it at all. Tragedy and violence are moving on the page, but usually gratuitous and messy on the screen.

I also wonder how Susie’s appearances to her family and friends will translate to a movie. I’m reminded of the topiaries in The Shining, which terrified me in the book, tickling that creepy sense that something is moving just beyond our field of vision, but somehow killer shrubs just looked goofy on film. I found The Lovely Bones gentle and disturbing by turns, and it will be interesting to see how it appears in a movie.

The folks at Ology asked me to write a book review as part of their Lovely Bones Book Club, and, once I was assured that I could bash it if I hated it (What? I’ve been known to trash a bad book), I agreed happily.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The Lovely Bones

Tweet this!