The Louisville Mayoral Candidates at the Venture Club Meeting

Miscellaneous No Comments   

As I grow older, local politics seems to be more important to me for some reason that I cannot fully explain just yet.  Many of my friends couldn't care less as long as Calipari is recruiting good recruits at UK or their daughters are progressing along in softball.  You could have said the same about me as early as last October. (Ok not the Calipari part but you get the point.)  Perhaps it is because I failed to raise money for my company that I've become interested in local politics.  One of the reasons why I couldn't raise money was because the deal could not get done in Louisville.  There is exactly one firm here in Louisville that is large enough to fund a company with $15+ million and they met with me under the preconception that they were not interested in funding a video game.  The other reasons why I failed to raise funding are outlined in my post to the Ages of Athiria community

When I heard that the three candidates for Louisville's Mayor position were coming to the Venture Club, I immediately registered for what eventually became a sold out event.  It seems that I am not the only one interested in hearing how the next mayor will work to create jobs and empower small business.  I wasn't left wanting for more answers when the meeting was done and now that I've let the experience simmer for a day, I'm blogging about it for others to read. 

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Blizzard's Piercing the Alias Veil is a Bad Thing(tm)

Game Design 2 Comments   

I'm placing this topic under game design because I think that the ramifications of Blizzards decision to use their RealID system on the official forums is a massive change that will set a precedent industry wide.

Let's start off with a few assumptions.  There are two ways an individual can engage content on the Internet, Anonymous and Named.  Facebook is a Named service.  Everyone logs in with their real name and is identified as such when using the service.  Twitter is Pseudo-anonymous in that it's a little bit of both types as the service employs aliases but those aliases are easily connected to their named identities.  Internet based games, have always been the province of anonymity.  Everyone that plays an online game picks an alias and uses that alias for everything they do while engaged with the service.  Xbox Live, Steam, casual game portals, Blizzard's Battle-net and more all use aliases to identify community members.

For Blizzard's Battle-net and the games played through the service, this is all about to change starting with the release of Starcraft 2.  I believe that this will do more damage to the community than it will help even though Blizzard's intentions are noble and good.  Blizzard claims that this change will reduce the amount of trolling and flame wars on the forums and using your real name will most certainly do just that.  My problem is with the side effects this will have; all in the name of snuffing out trolls and flame wars.  For instance:

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When Your MMO Account is Hacked...

Video Games 5 Comments   

A couple of nights ago, it was late when I decided to log on and check my email.  I logged on to see an email from Blizzard telling me that I had been accepted into the Beta for Cataclysm.  A link took me to the battle.net web site and I logged in to see what to do next.  What I didn't see was that battle.net was spelled batt (one) e.net.  As soon as the marketing home page for Cataclysm was displayed, I knew something was wrong.  I looked back at the email, recognized the domain to be fraudulent and immediately logged on to the World of Warcraft client.  Only a minute or so had passed so I figured I could get online and change the password before my account was logged into.

By this point, my heart is beating a million beats a second.  My Internet connection has never been slower. 

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Snoopy Flying Ace

Video Games No Comments   

A few weeks back, I thought that this might be a fun kids game to purchase.  I hadn't looked at it more than a few seconds but when I saw the game I immediately thought of my kids.  What I didn't know was that this game is essentially a slightly dumbed down version of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge.  For me, that made Snoopy Flying Ace an instant buy.  At ten bucks, the decision was a no brainer as soon as I read Ben's Arstechnica.com review of the game.

I believe Ben understates the blatant rip from Crimson Skies.  It is uncanny how immediately comfortable this game was to me.  I jumped straight in to multiplayer and the controls came back to me after about two or three matches.  My only problem was that I knew I shouldn't have started to play this game at 11pm.  2am came around very quickly and I had to force myself away from the TV to go to bed.  Great game and it is a bargain at ten dollars.  I can't say enough about it.  This might be the best XBLA game this year.  Buy it for yourself and see what I am talking about.

At the very least, play the demo.  Click here for the Xbox Live Marketplace page.

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Hal Heiner, Jobs, Investment and Louisville’s Mayoral Race

Business No Comments   

HalHeinerLogo A while back, I posted a blog post about the track record for the Louisville Venture Club.  The results were not encouraging to new entrepreneurs.  While, It’s not published anywhere, the total 2009 investment dollars number presented at the January 2010 Venture Club Luncheon was just over $20M.  Mark Crane of GLI made it a point to state that he didn’t know about all of the deals in Louisville.  He was positive that there were more deals but that he knew of most of them.  I take “most” to mean at least half or more so let’s optimistically say Louisville VC totaled $40M in 2009.  That’s not enough.

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EPI, Venture Capital and Ages of Athiria

Business 2 Comments   

This post has been coming for a month or so now. I and EPI are no longer pursuing the idea of developing and producing Ages of Athiria. I'm sure there's quite a few people that will come out and tell me that they told me so. There's been plenty of naysayers along our journey over the past...

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Legend of the Seeker Needs a Season 3

Home Theater No Comments   

Call me one of the many fans of the show that think the series should continue.  Legend of the Seeker is in its second season and is perhaps the finest sci-fi fantasy show ever produced for television and yes, I’m including the HBO stuff.  Unfortunately, no one knows about the show.  Everytime...

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Ryzom MMO Server/Client is Now Open Source

Game Design No Comments   

http://dev.ryzom.com/news/13 That’s a very interesting development in the game industry.  Until now, no complete MMO server has been release to the public for free.  Big World and Hero Engine cost millions to license.  Many 3D engines are just that, 3D engines.  Some 3D engines have...

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Steve Jobs has Jumped the Shark

Miscellaneous No Comments   

With this press release from Apple, Steve Jobs is officially drinking his own cool aid and drunk from his overflowing cup. http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/steve-jobs-publishes-some-thoughts-on-flash-many-many-thou/ Let’s address his six points. 1) Flash is not open. This is generally true but...

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Couple of Quick Hits from Last Week

Miscellaneous No Comments   

Adobe isn't going far enough in it's war with Apple. On one side of the relationship, they have a blogger for Flash ranting about the new iPhone SDK rules. Then, in another division, all is well and good for Flash on the Mac using a new Apple API . I'm of the mind that Apple's new iPhone...

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