Update

I have missed my Wednesday and Sunday post (well, sort of for Sunday, but I will not cop out).

I have been busy and tired from work.  I had to do a 18 hour trip for work on a bus with a basketball team, so I have been recovering from that still.

I have 1.5 posts written to be posted.  I will get one up tomorrow, and then post one again on Wednesday to make up for things.



Thanks for support all!!

Demo Time Baby!

As I have gotten older I have found myself playing more demos for games.  I cannot recall playing a lot of them when I was younger, but now I look at my PS3 and Steam and there are at least 15 waiting for me.  I will most likely purchase maybe one if any, but it is my downloading of them that startles me.

I was talking with We$$ the other night and we were talking about some demos that I had.  I told him that I had written up a quick draft of this post and we had a nice conversation about how things have changed since we were young in the world of demos.

I don't know why in the past I did not partake in them.  Maybe it was because I was young and did not want to waste time on something that was not the full product.  Thinking that if I liked it great, and if not I wasted my time.

I hate wasting my time.

I think another part was I felt games that were not going to make it big went out on demos.  These were inferior products.

I think about it and I also realize that availability played a big role in things as well.  When we were young the internet was only a small fledgling of what it is now.  Downloading grainy porn pictures was a 30 minutes process for just getting one.  Dial up was king.  The idea of sending music, or even videos, over the internet to someone else was there, but most of us didn't pay too much to the notion.  We were happy with our fuzzy, low resolution pictures.

We$$ reminded me that it used to be that demos only came in gaming magazines.  You would get your issue for that month, and in the middle of the magazine, or in the sealed bag that contained the issue, there would be a disc (I cannot remember any demos for cartridge games, correct me if I am wrong) that you could put in your PC/PS and that was that month's demo.  I didn't really buy any of the gaming magazines.  I got my info through word of mouth and made my gaming purchase decisions based on company that made it, series it was in, genre, and the box art.

It was hard to get demos this way at home.  Yeah you could go to the store and play the game when it was at the kiosk, yet you always ran the risk of some little jackass hogging all the time in this mortal realm playing the game on an infinite loop.  I do remember FFVII being on a full game play at a MediaPlay back in the day that I played at.  In fact, I now remember a lot of full games that one could play.

Anyways, back to the point at hand.  All of this has lead me to talk about just finishing the Journey demo.  Yeah, I am quite late to the Journey game (DON'T START SINGING!!).  The game is absolutely beautiful. Simply amazing.

From thatgamecompany.com

I mean really, look at that screenshot.  That just blows me away.

The wordless story as you adventure alone with the seldom help of a mute stranger, who is someone in real life, is such an appealing, grand idea.  You get to interact with others without having to worry about being shy or taken aback by talking with them.  There is no judging in this realm.

Maybe because of money or some other reason I did not pick this game up.  I have heard about it a lot even before the release.  Even then it seemed appealing to me.  I just did not take the bait of it.  Part of me wants to now.  Amazing how a short, maybe 20 minute demo will do that.

I have other demos on my queue waiting for me to get to them.  Some I will, some I will not.  I think my outlook on them now is that I hope demos really start to kick some ass.  Start bringing in a lot more people to games.  Maybe I was distracted by one amazing one in a haystack filled with crap, but it only takes one to make you want to experience more of them.

It only takes one of make you use it as a viable way to purchase new games.

So here is to good demos.  May they bring good companies more sales.

Extra Life

I may have talked a little about this in the past, but I have decided that I am going to participate in the Extra-Life charity event.

For direct information on it, you can click here.

Extra-Life (EL) is a charity event that was started in 2008.  The Sarcastic Gamer Community helped a young lady named Victoria Enmon in her fight against Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia by sending her video games and gifts to help her with her stay in the hospital.  She tragically died in January 2008.  The Sarcastic Gamer Community however decided to put on a 24 hour gaming marathon that would raise money for the Children's Miracle Network hospital Victoria was at.  Over 2 years they raised $302,000 with all of the money going to the hospital.

-all of this information, and more is found here

EL last year raised ~2.2 million dollars to help the Children's Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals.  Thats an amazing amount.

I heard about this event the day it happened last year, and said I would take part.  Here in Savannah, GA we have the Backus Children's Hospital which is the only one within a very large area.  I am currently working on getting more firm details about Backus Children's, however I know only what I have experienced by growing up in this community, and working for Memorial University Medical Center which is what Backus is affiliated with.

This is an amazing center that we are very fortunate to have in this community.  Thousands of children every year are better because of Backus Children's Hospital, and hundreds of thousands at least for the entire CMN community.  Finding out how I can give to this wonderful cause filled me with so much excitement.  Cue sentiment.

So the question is how does this work?

Its simple.  On November 2, 2013 I will be participating in a 24 hour gaming marathon.  Starting at 8am and going until 8am on November 3, I will play games nonstop.  Everything on my PC I will be able to livestream at my site.  I am going to work on getting the needed supplies to try and livestream my stuff on the Wii and PS3.  Anything handheld though will be problematic.  I know there are ways out there to broadcast it, but I don't know if I want to get the supplies for that since I haven't done too much livestreaming lately.  I know I would do a lot more if I could hook my consoles up, but my handhelds I usually play on the couch or just resting somewhere.  Even on the road.  That will just complicate matters for me.  I hate complication.

So I am going to play games for 24 hours.  Great.  Now here is where you all come in.  You can donate money to my cause @ my extra-life fundraising page.  I have a message up for all those interested and will work on updating it more and more as time goes on.  To donate, just click on the SUPPORT ME! button.  You can pledge as much or as little money as you want.  Extra-life has this thing where you can say to pledge $24, which works out to be $1 per hour that I play.  Do however you want.  My goal is $2000 and I am going to work my butt off to get that.  These kids deserve all the money that I can raise for them.  I am going to toss my own money into this as well to help things along too.

Oh, and your entire donation is tax-deductible.  Thats good for all you line item tax return people.

I will be adding a link to the site so you can always go to the page and donate without having to find this particular blog post.

So please join with me to help raise money to fight the evil villains that attack children: sickness, disease, cancer.  All of it.  Cause I will be damned if things will get worse for them on my watch.

Its time to stand up, put your credits in, and help make sure that all kids get to hit continue cause we got them extra lives.

My Plan From Now On

I am going to redo some of my rules for the blog.

I am going to try and do at least 1 post a week, no more than 2.

It has been quite daunting for me to try and come up with something everyday.  I have ideas that float around my head and I am starting to write them down.  From those notes I will make entries and I will post them up.  Hopefully I can make a back log of entries that I can set to auto upload when I need to.

I am going to promise that posts will either be on Wednesdays and/or Sundays.  This week there might be one posted between those two dates, but we will see.  

I thank everyone that has been sticking around to read what I put on here.  Maybe all I get is bots, maybe all I get is silent people.

To all of you I say Thank You.

And to the bots I say "I humbly accept our new overlords"