The video of the IGF awards are up. As usual, it’s packed with amazing inide games that deserve your support. This year is rather special (for me) as the content directors are local indie developers Matt Wegner and Steve Swink of Flashbang Studios. Also, another local indie Dan Tabar won 2 awards for Cortex Command! Yay Phoenix indie game developers!
Oh my, drama in the Magic: The Gathering world! So here’s the deal. The Magic Sock host Ron Vitale was talking about how to make your money go as far as possible during hard economic times. He mentioned that if you’re selling your collection, such as to move exclusively to Magic Online, you would be ill-advised to simply plop down your rares binder to a store or a vendor at a big gaming event as they pay substantially lower amounts than “market value” for cards.
Original comment – at 29 minutes, 55 seconds
I don’t like the choice of “ripped off” as the description for what vendors pay for cards. Certainly they are purchasing them cheaper than they plan to sell those cards for, this is business 101 people! The reason you’re selling your cards for less than you could get on eBay or via CardShark or such is that the vendor is convenient, hand them a pile of cards and they hand you a pile of money. I don’t know who expects a vendor to buy a card at 100% of the market value, how would they make any money off that? Even at 80% there’s not a lot of margin there for holding onto an inventory. So how low do you go? 70%? 60%?
Looking around at other industries that are simlar, say the used video game industry, I expect to get about 40-50% of the price the game is being sold for in the store. Now I’m not much for selling my games to a GameStop, but I know people who are, and they seem to have no problems with the idea. They do not in fact regard their transactions as “rip-offs”.
In the Magic community we’re a little bit different with our wildly divergent prices between cards and constant fluctuations, but I think the general idea is consistent. The only place you can expect to get top dollar for your goods is selling directly to a consumer, and even then you’re not getting “top dollar” as in what a store can command. Why? You’re not a store with a big inventory of product conveniently located near a bunch of players who know and trust you. There’s a well deserved premium to be charged for maintaining a nice inventory and being reputable. This is not in any way unique to Magic or gaming or pretty much any industry.
So, I think Ron’s comments were misinformed. Most stores aren’t “ripping off” people who sell them their cards. In fact, those stores are doing those people a service, saving them days/weeks/months of work posting stuff on eBay, dealing with shipping problems, chargebacks, complains over missing or damaged goods, etc. There is a certain amount of each product’s cost associated with the business needed to get that product to the end consumer, perhaps quite a bit more than you might think. So businesses that buy cards in bulk save you all that trouble, and of course make a profit for their troubles. They’re not running a charity, nor should they be expected to act like they are.
Now, there are the unscrupulous few vendors who do in fact rip off the unwary. The kid with the awesome binder that gets pennies on the dollar at his first big event because he doesn’t even know that there are such things as chase rares. The individual who, desperate for another draft or entry fee sells at a rediculous price just for a few bucks. Unfortunately, although it’s a “I know it when I see it” sort of thing, defining getting “ripped off” is rather difficult. One vendor’s fair price is paying far too much at another. One would expect prices to stabilize based on supply, although the 11 year old with the shock lands he thinks are sucky because they hurt you will be a target for victimization no matter where he goes. So, I suppose it comes down to: know the basic value of your cards or you get what you deserve. Vendors are in business to make money, not educate you on the value of your cards. They don’t have the luxury of giving you the best possible deal they can arrange, that’s your job bucko.
Star City Games, a big company in the Magic space, has The Magic Sock episodes featured on their site. After hearing episode 160 they pulled the show and sent a letter to Ron. He reads it off in the next episode.
Peter Hoffling, President of SCG’s email response: – at 25 mintues, 10 seconds
So, Star City Games is pissed. They acknowledge that Ron’s probably had some negative experiences with event vendors. They also acknowledge that he can say anything he wants on his show. But, Ron slandered them and thus they are pulling the show? I think that’s taking things a bit far. Was Ron’s comment aimed squarely at the heart of Star City Games? No, I think not. Furthermore, Star City Games is happy to have a popular and long running show on their site helping bolster their content, as long as Ron doesn’t say anything bad about vendors in general. It really sounded to me like Peter was looking for an exclusion for Star City Games, “Don’t buy from event vendors, oh except for Star City Games, they’re teh awesome!”. If the Magic Sock is carried on Star City Games, doesn’t that indicate to Ron’s listeners that he trusts Star City Games and sees them as a reputable place to buy and sell to? I think Ron’s comments were “hey, that’s rather upsetting to us, here’s a our point of view, thanks and have a nice day” worthy, not, “you called us names so we’re pulling your show” worthy.
So clearly I believe Ron is mistaken about vendors. Not everyone is going to take the time to sell all their cards themselves and for the rest, vendors offer a great outlet and immediate payout, usually at a fair price. I think Star City Games overreacted by pulling The Magic Sock so fast and, to me, it makes the company look like an angry teen, flexing its newly aquired adolescent muscles. Star City Games has recently started up a lot of new ventures like their standard open events, and although I like seeing more non-WOTC events being run, I don’t like seeing them all being run by one company. Especially not one that seems to be so touchy about something that, to me, was a fairly innocuous statement of one person’s experiences.
Ok, probably a bit overdramatic in the title there. But how does it get better than Steve Job vs Bill Gates?
Partake of the awesome sauce - The Animation
Then decide their fate – The Game
Mark DeLoura posted a very interesting article about a survey he conducted regarding licensed game engine usage. Some interesting parts are that 50% of respondants that use a scripting language are using Lua and that most people using a licensed engine would rather not be. This probably ties into the 30-ish % of respondants using a custom scripting language (the second highest value). So, scripting languages are still something you can get away with building yourself, (even though yours will probably suck), but game engines have moved off into the “don’t build here” realm. One encouraging thing was tha together, Lua + Python comprised about 65% of the scripting market, with “custom language”, (aka major suckage), and C/C++ variant clocking in at almost 30%. It’s great to see Lua doing so well but in reality I think its integration into most C++ apps is as a veneer over the C++ classes the developer wishes to expose. So in the end it can often turn into “a nicer syntax for C++ classes”. This was a multiple selection survey response so there is perhaps some overlap in the two camps but the overall usage of Lua over a C++ inspired script is encouraging and the decent showing of Python (the only general purpose language on the list) was very encouraging. No Ruby in the linup yet, but it’s still pretty raw in the embedded space so that’s not a big surprise. Hopefully 1.9 and (more likely) Rubinius will change that situation and make Ruby scripting in games a reality.
You may be eagerly anticipating the 3/6/09 release of Watchmen like I am. However, there are a few things any good fanboy can do before donning your Night Owl costume and going to join the crowds at the midnight release. You are dressing up and going to the midnight release, right? Anyway, before you head off to the theater there are a few things you can do to spread the love.
1) Re-read Watchmen. Yes, break out the book and soak in all the goodness. The movie looks to be incredibly true to the original so all the little details you see in the movie will be that much better as you remember the details from the original. Don’t have your copy because you loaned it to someone? Well first bug them to finish reading it so they can give it back, then go to your local comic shop and buy a second copy, just in case. Don’t forget to geek out about the upcoming film amongst people who can appreciate it. While you’re at it you can probably belabor a few innocent comic shoppers to buy Watchmen as well.
2) Buy the Watchmen animated comic from iTunes or via X-Box Live. Have people over and watch it as a group. It’s totally faithful to the original and very well produced. This is a fantastic way to get people who you’re not going to convince to read the graphic novel to “read” it in an unadulterated form. If you buy all 12 episodes as a group from iTunes it’s only $20, vs $1.99 for each episode.
3) Talk about Watchmen with everyone you know until everyone is sick and tired of hearing about it and will refuse to go just on principle. Be sure to go into uber-fanboy mode talking about all the sneak peaks you’ve viewed and how the authenticity of the sets is almost unparalleled in an adaptation. You’ll turn them around eventually. On second thought, maybe we should skip this one.
4) Pre-order tickets for everyone who might be going. That way they’ll feel obligated, plus you’ll help run up the opening weekend numbers. You did buy the Watchmen on HSX like 3 years ago right? This is your time to cash in!
Ok, so perhaps a few of these suggestions are a bit more silly than others, but you really should re-experience Watchmen one more time before seeing it on the big screen. My suggestion is the animated comic as it allows you to invite new people but which ever way you decide to experience Watchmen you know it’s as good as ever.
Yes we all know the saying, those who ignore history.. yada, yada. However, it’s another thing to be in the middle of one of these “we’re repeating history, and not for the first time” events. I would direct your attention to the Panic of 1837, a precursor to the more well known Great Depression of 1929. Both had similar causes to today’s American woes, namely overspeculation and overextension of credit. The panic of 1837 even included a real estate boom. Based on this cycle, I guess 90 years from now will be a pretty good time to start short selling everything in sight.
Several months ago a survey was started to find out what people are using for GUI development and what they’re looking for from the various toolkits. Well the results have been published and you can look them over for yourself. Apparently JRuby/Swing aren’t exactly taking over the GUI development landscape, although I’d like to see the results from just developers pursuing commercial applications as I believe many of the GUI toolkits (such as Shoes) simply are not usable for this use case.
Saw The Lion King at ASU Gammage last night. I’m a pretty big theater fan for anyone who knows me, especially musicals.
Four things.
- This is the same old tired Lion King story you remember from the movie. Same Disney obsession with monarchies and the perfect societies they usher in. Same silly gazelle bowing down to the lion who will eventually eat them.
- This version actually showed the lions hunting (and killing) the gazelle. Props to whoever inserted that scene.
- Costume design and set design still has space to be insanely innovative and stunning. I saw some of this at the Tony’s last year and sort of knew what to expect but it’s entirely different in person. Wow.
- Never underestimate the emotional impact of a big-ass drum and the lights going out at the same time. The end of the opening number with the drum had much of the visceral emotion I thought made the end of Act 1 of Wicked the best bit of theatrical theater I have ever seen.
Emerging from my primordial 2003-era Internet hipness I’ve finally jumped onto the podcasting ship (woot, I’m in 2006 now!). The podcast, named “Damage on the Stack” is for a game I play called Magic: The Gathering (sort of a mix between poker and chess) and is hosted by the fine folks at the MTG Cast network.
