Inkwell: Game-To-Movie Adaptations

Dark Horizons, a site which covers news on the film, television, and (increasingly) video game industries, recently reported that the film version of Tom Clancy's The Division was still in the works and recently had director Sean Gaghan attached to the project.  Gaghan's best known work was the movie Syriana, a Middle East political thriller told from multiple perspectives which made George Clooney go fat for the role and probably helped Alexander Siddig (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) stay going as an actor.  There is, of course, incredible noise over this.  Lots of hand waving and fist pumping and name dropping.  "Look at all these stars we've got!" is basically the message of every press release at virtually every stage of the production.

Rant: SolidEarth

Some years back, I attended a breakfast briefing at E3 regarding what was heralded as the next wave in video games: a streaming service called OnLive.  The premise was simple enough to grasp.  OnLive would stream a game through "the cloud" to any device, computer or otherwise, and let you play anytime and anywhere.  In theory, you could play Crysis 2 even if you didn't have a great video card, or Grand Theft Auto IV on a tablet.

Deus est Apparatus: World Building Basics

It's not a stretch to say that 2016 feels like The Grim Reaper was desperate to book new talent for his variety show and wasn't being terribly picky.  The Christmas weekend and the days immediately following saw the deaths of George Michael (singer), Carrie Fisher (actress and writer), and Richard Adams (writer).  For me, it was particularly eerie having gone to see Rogue One on Sunday and coming home to read Carrie Fisher had suffered a heart attack on a flight out of London.

Rant: Burnouts

(Yeah, yeah, I know, I've been slacking.  In my defense, a canister of See's Toffee-ettes and binge watching Preacher and Game of Thrones does tend to eat up one's time, however much fun it might be.)

Over the last few weeks, Bungie has been running an event in Destiny to close out the year called "The Dawning."  It was largely notable for the Sparrow Racing League activity which was introduced originally in 2015.  This one was rather longer than the first go-round.  Yet at the same time, it didn't feel like much of an improvement.  So a couple of new tracks were added.  Big deal.  New armor pieces?  Just another day that ends in "y" as far as I can tell.  "But you can recover these pieces at a kiosk!" The shapes, yes, but if they're discarded, the replacement pieces will be low powered crap, which in turn inhibits the rewards from the races.  "But we've got holiday armor!"  Yeah, holiday armor which you would have to be insanely lucky to get all the pieces for if all you're doing is the event activities.  Granted, there are some people who probably did just that.  But how many of the others did so by spending a bunch of money to make sure they got it?  Just as a basis for comparison, I still haven't gotten the Desolate Gauntlets for my Hunter toon after getting Radiant Treasure boxes two or three times a week for months before this, without paying extra silver.  So you can perhaps understand my skepticism and my deeply abiding frustration with the RNGesus.