The most recent one I found was an arcade that had 125 games, 30 of which were old. And those classics did on average of about $1 a week. I still think this is a matter of mixed demographics. You can’t expect people going to an arcade full of new games to partake in classic games, these are completely different demographics. One is young and only cares about newer games, the other is older and likes it for nostalgia. Nostalgia guy isn’t going to go to the new arcades because they are full of crap games. ¹ I don’t think this is a game breaker, there are several classic arcades throughout the country in different formats that are doing quite well for themselves. It is just a little disheartening.

I have come to several decisions on the arcade though that I wanted to share:

1. It will be a bar. I didn’t really want to own a bar, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Alcohol and games go together. I am looking for the 25 to 45 crowd so I don’t mind sacrificing the teens. And with an arcade that I am looking at $0.25 per play, I feel that I need to make a solid secondary service, alcohol does that in spades. Still I don’t want to have people coming just for the beer, so I want to only serve micro-brews and maybe some specialty drinks themed on arcades.
2. I have picked a name, I’m not going to announce it here as I’d like to actually get a domain that it works with. However, the base domain is not available. Not sure if I should just go with the name + arcade.com or not. I like the name, it sounds trendy, it doesn’t have the word arcade in it which could both either be good or bad.
3. At the beginning, I want about 40 games, 4 pinballs, and preferably two air hockeys, though I think this last one will get lowered to just one. In order to do this, in addition to a bar, I think I am looking at a 3,000 sq ft location minimum. I have already begun looking at potential places.
4. The places that I have been looking at have been geek friendly. What this means is that they are near other game stores, comic shops or similar type retail outlets so that I would get a good natural foot traffic from them. I am also considering places that have nearby food, such as pizza joints because although I will have drinks, I am not planning on having food at launch, I think that adds too much to the table and actually feel like I would need to increase the size of the place to do it.
5. Arcade games would need to be at least 20 years old. I toyed with the idea for 25 years for awhile given that a car needs to be 25 in order to be considered a classic, so I feel this is a good number for the classic moniker. The problem though is that I wouldn’t get to 1990 until 2015 which means it would be awhile till I got to those good silver age games. 1992 allows me to get some of the good early 90s titles with having some good ones waiting down the road. I still might hold onto 25 if I am only able to hold 25 games as I’d be more limited in number and putting limits on what arcades to use helps here.
6. Still trying to figure out how to fund this baby, that’s the hard part. I don’t think that I’ll get more than $25,000 from a small business loan (though if I do that’d be great), and I don’t even think that’d really be half the cost even. I’m going to need some creative ways to come up with the rest. I’ve already started putting money aside, though it is hard because I am also saving money for a new car which is a more immediate need.
7. I think I want to get about 15 arcade cabinets before I started seriously looking for loans and such. This is a lot, and considering that I am not planning on renting additional storage and that it may take awhile to gather these arcades, this will be difficult. The first games I get will likely be older games, especially if I worry that I might go with the 25 year plan above as I don’t want to have a game that is sitting around for 3 years.
8. The arcade will be going the route of the quarter. Originally, I had toyed with the idea of charging $5-7 for unlimited playtime. I have also toyed with tokens. But I want to create a space with little to no price of entry. I don’t want people to feel forced into buying X amounts of tokens, or have a high upfront cost. If you want to go in and check it out, you can. Spend $0.50 cause you come during lunch to check it out but don’t have time, fine. It needs to be easy to come in and play.

I actually think that I am getting to a point where I want to look into starting an LLC. Once I register an LLC, I can go out and look for a domain name and open a business bank account and then start moving funds there. Small steps, but I think it is small steps that I need to make. At the pace I am looking at right now, I don’t imagine that I’d get the arcade open before 2013. At this point if I were to pick a start date I would look at May 1, 2013, but even that may be a long shot. I may actually be looking at August or September.

Matt Flynn: This is the easy one. Matt Flynn is an unrestricted free agent that is going to demand a big pay day this off-season. The Packers aren’t going to pay two different QBs starting money in a year where the salary cap isn’t going to raise much, if at all. I am surprised they paid Jordy Nelson and James Jones like they did, I would be utterly shocked if they did something similar with Flynn. The only real question remains is whether the Packers slap a Franchise tag on Flynn and then try to trade him for a first round draft pick.

Donald Driver: I love Driver, and most people do, I think the Packers organization amongst them. But the fact remains that he isn’t what he used to be, he has a decent-sized salary, and we have a plethora of other receivers to fill in his place including one on the practice squad that the Packers are really big on. I hope that the Packers win a second Super Bowl and Driver retires on his own while he is on top. But if he doesn’t retire on his own, I think the Packers will approach him and tell him that they intend on letting him go, and I then hope that he retires with his nudge. I hope it doesn’t turn into another Brett Favre, and I don’t think it will. But I do think regardless of what happens, he won’t be a Packer next season.

Jermichael Finley: I don’t think anything says “Your job is on the line” more than keeping 5 TEs on the roster, and 4 of them I believe have gotten TDs. I think the Packers want him back, but I don’t think they want him back as much as he wants money. There is no doubt that Finley is a tremendous talent that has a ton of upside. However, it hasn’t been a good year for Finley. He’s only really been effective in two games (the last game of the season and @Chicago), he’s shown an attitude problem by being the only member of the receiving corps who says “give me the ball,” and yet when he gets the ball he drops it. This has been the first season in which he hasn’t gotten injured which means he probably will get injured in the future, and probably often. And yet, despite not living up to his potential, he is going to come out of the gates demanding huge money, he’s already made a stink about how he believes the Franchise tag should use WRs money for him instead of TE. I don’t think the Packers are anywhere close to signing him, and I think they’d rather Franchise Flynn and go for the trade than waste it on someone who they can replace. At best they transition Finley so that when tests the market that they can just match it. I do think that they are going to let him test the market, I don’t think that he will get what he wants, but I don’t think he will be back. ¹ I think at best, Finley may settle for a 1 or 2 year deal that gets him between 2.5 and 3.5 million a year and hope he plays better to get a better contract then.

Chad Clifton: I love Clifton, and actually at this point I think he’ll be back due to Sherrod’s injury, but I still believe he is a bubble player for next year. He has been seriously injured over the past three seasons and at some point they need to move on. There is no doubt that he is still a talent, but he can’t be relied on and he isn’t what he was. I don’t know if he is going to retire or try to find another place to go, but I think there is a chance he won’t be back. Packers drafted Sherrod to be Clifton’s heir and Newhouse came on pretty well in Clifton’s absence this year. I think the Packers take another Tackle in the draft to give them more depth and go without Clifton. But like I said, I lean towards him staying. I think the Packers keep him around for one more season just to make sure the future comes round.

Other thoughts on the Packers Offseason

I actually think the Packers will make a play in the free agent market. Thompson isn’t usually one to do that, but he has made attempts at in the past with defense in particular. ² The defense was a shamble this year and I think Thompson is going to try to fix it a little more instantly. On top of that, it is a rich market this year and there isn’t a lot of room in a lot of teams pockets. I don’t think he is going to go after a big name, but I think he’s going to make a stab at the value mid-tier market to try to fix the defensive line or even the defensive backfield or outside linebacker.

Online Life
I do believe my blogging has gotten better this year. I think that I generally average one blog a week, though I could get better! With my new job giving me a couple of later mornings in order to write, I am hoping to be able to chug out the occasional second post out in a week. Hopefully, I can get up to at least 6 posts a month. In other regards to the blog, I’ve long had it in my interest to speed up the blog a bit. To that end, I want to do some house cleaning on old drafts I have laying around, get rid of some old plugins and maybe find a couple of performance plugins to make it run better.

I never did get back into Twitter like I wanted to, and to be honest I am ok with that. I am so over twitter. More and more this year, twitter seems to be about advertising than anything else and I have lost all interest in the app. I am currently giving Google+ a shot, though i don’t see that making the grade either, I just don’t like these social websites.

I have started playing Lord of the Rings Online with some work friends casually now that it has gone free to play, but I still don’t foresee my MMO life growing any. For a time, I was interested in KOTOR online, however it looks lame to say the least. It is a shame. There are a few games I have my eyes on that are coming up but I don’t have hopes that 2012 will bring me back to the genre. I think my best shot is the F2P market which has gotten a lot better. Besides LoTRo, I also now have Lineage 2, EQ2, and CoH to play for free, all of which I may return to for various points.

Gaming Life

I do think I was able to finish off a few more games this year. I definitely started gaming a bit more than I had towards the end of this year and I am hoping that continues. I currently have a score of games that I have purchased at deep discount, most of which are indie games like Magicka, Cave Story +, and Terraria, but I also have some Wii games now like Mario Galaxy and Lego Indiana Jones 2 to play.

My Work Life

Major success here! I actually did get a new job! Well it doesn’t get me out of the company, or even the department, but it pays more, gets me off the phones more, gets me researching more and is just a general improvement over where I was. I am much happier with where I am now. I do hope to still use this position to rebound me into a new job in another department/company. But that isn’t as high priority, at least for now. I was able to continue building documentation, but now that I am the team lead of my department I want to get into that more hardcore than I had been previously. I think this was one of the things that got me promoted and I don’t want to quit now, we don’t have that great of documentation.

I am putting this as part of my work life because it is part of a work I’d like to have in the future, even though I don’t want to now. I want to work more on my arcade and my writing more. I would like to be to a point this time next year to at least be seriously moving forward with one of these two things. I don’t know what exactly that is, but that’s what I want.

My Personal Life

Weight. If anything, I gained even more weight this year thanks to my work trip to Ohio, where a lot of the food that I ate was junk food, and even if it wasn’t I was just eating more. Right after that came holidays so pretty much from August on I was eating too much. Was I gaining ground before that? Hard to tell, probably not. We were struggling monetarily and didn’t have the luxury to always buy the right foods. I try to eat at least one really healthy meal a week and have been trying to work out good diet foods to eat. I want to get a new scale and start weighing myself daily to help me get a better sense of my progress (or lack thereof). Over the course of the year I actually had stopped my sit-ups as well and I just started getting back into that over the last month and will continue that. Other than that, pretty much everything from last year I still want to do. I still want to use Wii Fit more, go for more walks, and lower consumption. I also recently started drinking more water as a way to get more full for less calories.

I do feel I did much better at meeting new people this year. My department grew by 6 and many of them I have started talking to outside of work on a fairly regular basis. I also started going to an outting with people from work usually about once a month. And there is the aforementioned lord of the rings online outtings that I do with people from work. I think these have really opened up my scope of friendships. I want a goal for this year to be to hang out with at least one new friend on a regular basis (big goal I think for my age).

JAPANESE! Good lord I totally forgot about that goal. Needless to say, I didn’t get far on it. I mean I was looking into Japanese language more, but not for any end goal and I didn’t do well. I will need to schedule some time in order to do this in the next year.

My last goal is a new one. Organization! I want to get more organized with my life. I think that if I had a cleaner household and if everything were more organized that I would have a more efficient life. I could get more done with less time. I have started reading up on how to be more organized and I think I found a series of books that will help me do a little more a little bit at a time and hopefully by the end of the year I will just be better overall.

Probably the weakest present this year sadly came from my brother, he usually does better so I was a bit disappointed by this. He gave us a package of Christmas themed table decorations which included a table runner, a platter, towels and some paper plates and napkins. This isn’t really us, though I appreciated the attempt. Reminded me of a similar attempt at this my sister made several years ago. Trying to get me decorations I think may be awfully difficult unless you are pretty freaking sure I’m going to like it. Heck, most decorations tend to take me over 6 months to decide alone, I wouldn’t expect someone else to take that type of thought into getting me stuff.

My mom got me a Badgers watch. She likes to do themes where she gets everyone the same type of thing. She was going to get me a crock pot but I opted out of that earlier because we don’t really have room for appliances in our kitchen so she tacked me into the grandkid’s theme of watches. This also didn’t work for me, and she took the watch back nearly right away. I felt bad, but I don’t like to wear watches, they bother my arms and then I always know what time it is which is disturbing. It makes time go slower which I don’t like. She also got me a couple of books on the Lombardi Legacy, both of which were signed by the author, one was also signed by a dozen of the Lombardi Packers. Pretty cool

In addition, my mom got my roommate and I some kitchen stuff that I asked for. A cookie pan, 8×8 pan, 13×5 pan, and a spatula. The 8×8 and 13×5 are weird, they are ridged which I’m not entirely sure if I like or not, we’ll see.

My sister actually did better than I can remember her doing in recent memory. She got me a pasta machine after a brief discussion about how I’ve always wanted to make my own pasta the week before. She also gave me some pasta flour and homemade tomato sauce to go with it. Outside of the aforementioned appliance build-up, this was great. I can’t wait to try making my own pasta!

My roommate continued her streak of great presents as well. She got me a Nook Touch. In getting this present, she did ask me to make sure what I wanted and I did some looking into the Nook vs. Kindle debate. I decided that Nook had a couple of features that I liked (in-store support, better pdf support, better library support, more memory and expandable memory) that I tended to lean that way.  On top of that, at the end of the day I decided that I wanted to give my support to the only physical bookstore left, given that even B&N has been having hard times of late due to Amazon. And not to mention that I really don’t care for Amazon either. Well it made it a fairly easy choice.

She also got me the Blu-ray edition of Firefly which I was super excited by and have already begun re-watching the series. And she bought me a recipe book called From Asparagus to Zucchini. It is a book that is meant to help CSA subscribers make meals with the food they get from their CSAs, and it is a book that was written locally. I was really excited about this because I had looked for this book everywhere and had a hard time finding it. She didn’t even realize I knew about it and thought she was finding a new book for me. She was a little disappointed that i already heard about it, but to me it makes it better that she found it without even being remotely guided by me!

This year was unique in that I traded gifts with a couple of friends at work. I’ve never done this before but was fairly happy to do. From one side, I got an Ultimate Matrix Blu-Ray set which is great because I was considering buying it when it was on sale for Black Friday week, but didn’t. The other side i got a book that outlines the history of computer RPGs. Another great gift as I love RPGs and really do appreciate the history in them. I look forward to getting time to reading this book.

Overall this was a really good year for presents I think. There weren’t a lot of duds which is really the most I can ask for. I hope others enjoyed the presents that I got them as much as the ones they got me.

Like I said,  I got a job promotion recently to be the unit lead in my department. We work in a tech-supportish call center where we help medical professionals get claims sent in electronically. The main reason that I went for the job was largely because I wanted off the phones. I hate being on the phones. And I got the job largely, I think, because I’m good at figuring out the problems and I’m personable with the department and the people who are in charge of us.

I got the job initially three and a half years ago, and really I thought it was going to be a stop gap until I got a real job in a field that I wanted to get a job in. Be that game development or writing somewhere, I didn’t really care. In fact, this job did get me some opportunities into the writing field which I didn’t get. ¹

Now more than three years later, and after a job promotion that can in fact open doors into other departments.² It really isn’t looking like a stop gap anymore. I think part of the reason that it has turned into more than just a stop gap is the economy. There just aren’t as many jobs out there as when I originally went shopping for a job. Those few that are out there are being hunted by many other people and many of them are temp to hire. I’ve never felt comfortable enough with where we were to risk going to a temp to hire job and then not being hired. So far, that just hasn’t been in the cards.

I feel in the next year, I really need to get to work on one of my ultimate life long goals. I feel like I am running out of time to make any serious stake in my life to be above what I have been so far. After all, wasn’t the purpose of me going to college to get a better job type? Well honestly, I am currently in a better job than where I started school, but this still isn’t the league of job I was looking for. I was wanting to be more comfortable living than I am. Sure I want to be rich, but that wasn’t really the goal, the goal was to be comfortable.

Over the past few years, I’ve had many ideas. Ideas for books to write. Ideas for my game and game design. And ideas for a classic arcade. I think all of these were great and worthy ideas. Somehow, I need to get seriously started on at least one of them, if not all. I need to find a way to get it done. I feel that my first book will sell well,  I think my MMO would sell well, I’m not 100% on the arcade but I do think it would do ok and more importantly would be fun.

There have been many roadblocks along the way. A lack of funds not the least of which. I think in the next year my money situation will be getting better. My roommate is no longer dealing with school herself and has found a steady job to help get us through the months. My job promotion will likely come with a pay increase at some point and that is likely going to help as well. Unfortunately a lot of this money early on will be used to get myself out of debt and to build new debt (I need a new car pretty badly). But I still think this will be less of an issue next year as it has been this year.

Another problem I’ve had has been time. A problem I think will also get better, although the current Christmas season is making it hard to judge. I am moving from 4 -10 hour days to 5 – 8 hour days and this I think will afford me less tiredness and more time throughout the week, even if I do sacrifice the one day off. I am also making it a priority to teach myself how to organize my time and life better. I feel like part of my problem with time is just that I am a disorganized person and I just don’t do things in a correct fashion, and then when I do it takes longer than maybe it needs to.

I also clearly suffer from ADD which I hope organizing will help fix. But the reality is that when I sit down and write a book, I need to kick my gear into place and just focus on the one thing, no matter how difficult that may be. I am actually being inspired on this front from someone else in the department who has it in his brain to be a writer. The difference between him and I is that he is actually doing it. And doing it hardcore. He actually makes sure he doesn’t do anything else at night during the week, he sits down and does it. I can make a whole lot of excuses as to why it is easier for him. He doesn’t have a roommate, a kid, responsibilities. But the reality is that he probably has just as much stuff as he could do, but he does his writing instead and I need to do the same.

Because ultimately, something just needs to change in my life. And the sooner the better.

This experience exemplified the continued issue with PvP. The guy didn’t even actually kill me, he demanded some trinket off me (my robe) and then let me go. That’s it, but it still did what he needed it to. It ruined my otherwise fine day, and actually I haven’t even returned since then.

You may think me as a carebear or what not, and I guess to a certain degree I am. However, I have played many PvP games in the past. I played Shadowbane, Dark Age of Camelot, and when AC2 came out I went to the RvR server. Truth be told, I really do enjoy PvP every now and then and think it offers and extremely fun dynamic to a game that the developers just cannot design if they wanted to.

So I want PvP around. But doing an all out PvP game, like Ultima Online, is just too off-putting to too many people. And so far there have been few games to implement the RvR system well. The best has been DAoC and everyone else seems to be a “meh” experience.

PvP needs to mean something first and foremost. Developers can’t just throw it in and hope it works. Or even throw it in with a couple minor prizes for those who partake. There needs to be real purpose in it. To me, the best PvP game thus far that I have played was Shadowbane and this was largely because it involved warfare and city building. When you fought someone, it was usually under the context of war with that country, honestly I don’t remember too many instances in that game where I was actually killed just to be killed. It always in the context of nation vs nation instead.

You need to give the player something to fight for. In my mind, I think that the best idea is to make the PvP aspect incorporate both city building and resource control. City building helps cover a secondary thing that players have wanted in an MMO since the inception of the genre, and resource control just makes sense.

People need to be able to have the control to build their own cities, and then turn around take control of other people’s cities via war. It shouldn’t be an easy thing or even something that every player and/or guild should be allowed to do. It should take great effort to build a new city, and then even more effort to turn that city into a nation of cities. This needs to be something that does’t happen often, and because of this might be something that works as an expansion as great wealth would be need to do it.

Once cities and nations are built, armies and guards are needed to defend it. This is where PvP comes in. Players should be able to choose to join these armies and guard units. The rulers of the nations would have the ability to reward these troops as they see fit, be it from salaries, lower dues, bonuses that the nation can buy into, or access to special smiths that can help the troops improve themselves.

Now the troops could only attack other nations armies they are at war with. So this isn’t full out PvP. Not only do you have to choose to be PvP orientated, but there is another level of control that says you have to choose to be at war. War doesn’t need to be consensual, there should always be the danger that you are going to be attacked if you are a nation, but I don’t think it is in the best interest of the game to let anyone declare war, I think just leaders should have that capability.

Of course there needs to be a prize still besides just building the city for countries and pvp to exist, and that is the resource control. The country would have control over various mines in its sphere of influence. They can do with those mines as they want, leave them open and free, charge a levy for any who enter, or shut them down to a select few people. Perhaps other countries might raid the mines promoting a need for a guard or two at the entrance, but by and large the leaders would have control over it. If resources are done right in the first place, this in itself is a big enough prize without the need to throw up arbitrary prizes to the player like a special suit of armor for any who PvPs enough…

Would this system even work? I don’t know. It isn’t perfect, far from it. For all its trying to leave non-pvp’ers alone while having a strong pvp end game, it still begs the question… If one nation takes over a lowly crafter’s nation over, and doesn’t want lowly crafter in that nation… How is that not affecting the crafter who wants nothing to do with PvP?

So I went and took stats from NFL.com from both Favre and Rodgers and put together a spreadsheet to compare these two. I actually broke down more than Silverstein did, adding in rushing capabilities and fumbles as well. Favre’s streak started in 1995 vs. the Chicago Bears and Rodger’s starts with 2010 vs. the Detroit Lions.

Favre: 343/517, 66.34 comp %, 4243 yards, Avg 8.2 yards/attempt, 49 TDs, 7 Int, 32 Sacks. QB Rating 117.52, 41 Rushes, 128  yards, 3.12 yards/rush, 1 rushing TD, 8 Fumbles, 5 lost. Record: 13-3

Of note in this string of stats is really his interceptions. This was one of the lows of his career and really caught my interest in the article. I do agree that it is really easy to forget how good Favre was in his prime considering he how bad he was outside that 3-4 year stretch.

Rodgers: 356/503, 70.78 comp %, 4642 yards, 9.23 avg/attempt, 42 TDs, 7 Ints, 37 Sacks, 121.55 QB Rating, 68 Rushes for 274 yards, 4.03 yards/rush, 4 rushing TDs, 6 fumbles, 1 lost. Record: 14-1

So looking at these numbers, Rodgers has fewer attempts, more completions, a higher percentage, more yards, same INTs, better QB rating (By 5 points), nearly 1 yard extra per attempt, 3 more rushing TDs, 4 less fumbles lost, more wins, and a super bowl. Favre has more TDs, fewer sacks, and ummm… oh yeah that’s it. Yet Silverstein still thinks Favre is better? He does note that Favre never missed a game, whereas Rodgers did miss the Patriots game. Ok, there’s that point, but you failed to mention that the worse game was that lions game where Rodgers only played a couple of really bad series against a tough Lions defense before being taken out of the game. Luckily for these stats, Rodgers gets to drop that game after what is likely going to be another strong game against the Bucs.

I think these stats prove to me that Rodgers is better, but ok not for Silverstein. So why don’t we just cut the crap and look at this season because when people talk about how good Rodgers is playing we are talking about this season. So here’s the stats for that. For Favre I shortened it to be his best 9, starting with Chicago in ’95 ending with San Fransisco in ’95.

Favre: 211/299, 70.57%, 2544 yards, 8.51 yards/att, 26 TDs, 2 Int, 13 sacks, 122.54 QB rating, 24 rushes for 63 yards, 2.63 yards/rush, 1 rushing TD, 4 fumbles, 2 lost. Record: 8-1.

Rodgers: 215/295, 72.88%, 2869 yards, 9.73 yards/att, 28 TDs, 3 Int, 23 sacks, 130.74 QB Rating (8 points!), 43 rushes for 148 yards, 3.44 yards/rush, 2 rushing TDs, 2 Fumbles zero lost.

Comparing just those best 9 from each, we are looking at Favre only having the Int advantage surprisingly enough, however Favre actually has 1 extra turnover because in addition to be interception prone, he also fumbled a lot. In every other category Rodgers is better. And this after winning a Super Bowl so that teams are actually gearing up for him. No one geared up for Favre in ’95, they knew he was good but it was different than playing as champ.

Just to compare Favre’s complaint about Rodger’s better team:

RB: Neither team was known for great running games. 95-96 had Bennett and Levens, 10-11 have Starks & Grant. Grant I think overall is the best RB, but not right now. He didn’t even play in 2010 during Rodger’s streak, and Starks really only came on in the playoffs to help out. Even this year, Grant has been a shade of his former self and Starks has struggled. Both Bennett & Levens I feel are better natural pass catchers than Starks/Grant. EDGE: Favre.

WR: This is more interesting to me than people give credit. No doubt about that including all 6 WRs, Rodgers has an edge over the group of 95 and 96. Still Driver isn’t exactly what he used to be and Freeman and Brooks were not bad receivers. I personally considered them one of the top tandems of the league (though not the top as during this time frame there were a lot of top notch tandems). Still… EDGE: Rodgers

TE: Chmura is one of the all-time great TEs in Packers history. Given talent alone though I would say this would be Finley’s game. But Chmura rarely got injured (until his career ended due to one), was a better run blockers, and Finley wasn’t around for half of the time we are looking at this. If we look at 2011 only, I might be inclinced to give the edge to Rodgers. EDGE: Favre

OL: 95-96 starting unit consisted of an aging Ruettgers, John Micheals, Aaron Taylor, Frank Winters in his prime, Harry Galbreath, Adam Timmerman, and Earl Dotson. 2010-2011 squad consisted of an aging (and oft absent) Chad Clifton, Newhouse, Daryn Colledge, TJ Lang, Scott Wells, Josh Sitton and Bryan Bulaga. Interesting mixes. Clifton is the clear winner at LT, Taylor I think is the winner at LG, Winters is winner at C, Timmerman and Sitton I feel are about equal, I actually tend to think that Timmerman beats out Sitton a tad at LG, and Bulaga beats Dotson largely due to injury. Overall… EDGE: Favre, but not by much.

Coaching: This is kind of an intangible. Holmgren was known for running a brilliant west coast offense and one of the great offensive minds of the day. On top of that we are looking at Steve Mariucci and Marty Mornhinweg being QB coaches for Favre. Perhaps Tom Clements doesn’t yet get the recognition that he will but I don’t think he is Mariucci by a long shot. At this point I would lay Holmgren and McCarthy about equal, with a slight advance toward Holmgren although I think that might be unfair to McCarthy, this is a tough one but the QB coaches dictate the… EDGE: Favre

Other notes about this time period… Favre did win MVP in 95 and 96, Rodgers will undoubtably get it in 96. Favre couldn’t beat the Cowboys in Dallas to get to the Super Bowl… Rodgers beat all the teams in the playoffs on the road and then won the Super Bowl. Favre never won a Super Bowl MVP despite going to the Super Bowl twice, Rodgers has won it.

Overall, I gotta say that I think that these examples show that Rodgers was very much better than Favre, and this is just using Rodgers’ current state which may not even be his best 16. Heck after tomorrow, he likely is going to have a much better comparison as his worst game will get dropped from the averages…. AND he won’t have missed a game in his last 16 so you can’t even really use that argument anymore either.

The first thing that I’d have to say is attendance. This show did not sell well, and I can’t imagine it ever coming back to Madison. Heck, this show actually proved to me why Madison has such a hard time attracting these types of events. There were probably only between 500 or 600 people there. I think it is unfortunate too because I feel this sort of show would resonate well with Madison. It is a hip and techie city, with a couple game development studios, as well as a games & learning program at the UW. I think it is a perfect town for this. The unfortunate part is that they did very little advertising, I only saw commercials the week of and only a couple. Honestly, had my roommate not bought the tickets for me, I very well may never have known myself that this had come to town even though I had always wanted to go.

The concert was actually pretty interesting in how they put it up. They got the Madison Pops (or chamber orchestra, they seemed confused by this) and local singers for the choir. So really the only people who do the travelling is Tommy Tallarico, the conductor, the link flutist, and probably a dozen or two production crew. This means it is probably a fairly cheap show to put on, but it also means that Tommy is supporting local music programs which I very much liked. I did question at times whether they were providing all of the music or had a backdrop of professionally recorded music, but overall I think they did very well considering this isn’t their full time gig.

The show itself had a very wide array of video game music, leaning towards classic series more than modern, but it did have modern interspersed. They also broke the music with funny videos, game play segments (people coming on stage to play games for the crowd like Guitar Hero), and game inspired skits (like the link flutist or a skit with a thug with a gun while Solid Snake goes across the stage in a box). The show had a great variety and changed it up enough so that you wouldn’t get bored by just listening to the music. It was very well thought out.

My favorite part of the event was really the Megaman music that headed up the show. Megaman always had a really solid music score for the 8-bit generation and it was a pretty rockin way to start. It is also a series that isn’t exactly mainstream anymore so I was more than a little happy to see it. My daughter’s favorite part was oddly not music at all, but the Sonic vs. Pac-Man video that they showed, her favorite music was probably the Sonic music.

All-Star Western
It doesn’t seem promising to me that I don’t particularly remember this comic and it was in the last week of the second month. Still it wasn’t a bad comic and I really like the theme and that it reads like Sherlock Holmes. These things alone are likely enough to keep me for another month even though it is slightly more expensive. I like the concepts. If the third month has the same issue as the second, I will be done.

Animal Man
This was easily one of my favorite comic books from the first month largely because it concentrated on a hero who had to deal with real life issues as a hero. I thought it was hugely interesting and really well written. The second month totally lost me however. It just became really really weird and I lost all interest in it. They didn’t really concentrate on the family at all. I mean Animal Man does go off with his daughter… but it’s just strange. It is hard to explain. I won’t go for this one anymore.

Aquaman
I still really like this one, and it is amazing to me considering what Aquaman has been. I think it really comes in the jokes of the comic making fun of itself. I don’t particularly like the monsters looking for food (people) and this has turned me off to the point that I won’t buy the next installation, but it is a really good book. If you can get past the monster villains, I highly recommend this one. 

Batman
As mentioned before, the red woman shows up in this comic, though I don’t know why just this one, it didn’t seem particularly special. I have gotten confused by the Batman storylines. They all seem to be happening at about the same time with no crossover at all and I just end up getting confused between the books. I think there are too many Bat Books out there and unfortunately this one may be dropped by my buy list largely because it is fairly forgettable.

Batwoman
This comic continues to hold on to being a great beginning. It gets a little weird so I don’t like it quite as much as the first comic. But she definitely has a ton going on in her world with her father, her girlfriend/sidekick, Batman being on her case, and some weird agency trying to out her. Again, great art and great story. I generally don’t like alternates of other super heroes but this ones is stellar.

Birds of Prey
I wanted this one to pick up in the second book, because I really love the concept. Instead it slowed down. It is too bad. I have decided I don’t like this one.

Blue Beetle
This book has similar issues to Birds of Prey. I like the concept with the internal struggle with the suit and this leads to some funny parts. But overall the story isn’t grabbing me like I would like it to. I still have hope on this one more than Birds of Prey and this might lead to a third purchase, but I also tend to think it isn’t worth it. Another series that it is too bad that they just can’t pick it up a notch.

DC Universe Presents
Not quite as good as the first book in the Deadman saga. I am still curious enough to pick up the third. The first book had a lot going on, but this book almost seemed like filler which seems sad to me considering how early in the series it is to me. Unfortunately nothing really happened here, and many points of the second book were made in the first book. Very redundant, I hope it rights its coarse for book 3.

Detective Comics
Another solid showing for this series. The series continues to be dark and brooding. A new villain shows up and yet another “Wait what?” happens at the end of it. I am very intrigued by the series. Good writing, good art, just all around tops. This is very much my favorite of the Bat books.

Green Lantern
I have to say, I love Sinistro. Like Atrocitus, he actually thinks about his place in the universe and his powers and his duty. He is very insightful and intelligent. I like him far more than Hal Jordan who seems to be nothing more than a tool. Unfortunately, I am sure that the series is leading towards Sinistro joining the Sinistro Corps again and becoming a villain again. But so far, I don’t see him as a villain, even as I watch him controlling Jordan. Just great really.

Green Lantern Corps
This remains my least favorite of the lantern books and I won’t be picking it up for a third month. This is disappointing to me because I am very interested in the concept of seeing other lanterns in action, in particular non-human ones. You would think this might be the place for that, but sadly even though the team contains non-humans, only the humans get the right to say more than a sentence and develop character. Even the story of some never ending force that is out killing worlds to collect elements seems overly bleh.

Green Lanterns: New Guardians
This remains my favorite Green Lantern comic. Focusing on the most interesting human green lantern and he is actually doing really cool things. I also like that there is a representation from each of the ring corps in it which allows them to explore other sides of the ring universe. I find this one extremely compelling and look forward to it every month. If the different ring holders started acting like a team I’d say this would also be my favorite team comic, but I kind of like that at the moment they are at war with each other and that there is a tension there

I, Vampire
I checked out I, Vampire largely because I like vampire stories and I heard this one was good. This has a great concept and I am interested to see how the vampire’s war with the super heroes works out. It isn’t a bad concept, though I often found myself lost. It wasn’t overly cohesive, but the art was cool.

Nightwing
I actually like this series. You got Nightwing inheriting a circus which could be really interesting, a villain who knows his true identity and seems to match up well with him, and him struggling with life after being Batman. It is a good story, but it isn’t blowing me away. That my friend is buying it and I can read his for free, and that I don’t feel very strongly about it means the end of the line for me. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good, it just isn’t great.

Red Lanterns
My friend who pointed me towards Green Lantern in the first place won’t even read this book without paying for it. I am not sure why. The second month was even better than the first. It was full of introspection and thought. The main character Atrocitus is great. So far the main failing of the series is the lack of any sort of character for him to really interact with or villain for him to deal with. Although it seems like both of these might change very soon. I really do like this series and definitely suggest picking it up if you haven’t already.

Suicide Squad
This remains my favorite “team” comic book from DC and it continues its streak. As they promised, someone did in fact die and they actually promise another death next month too. They really are keeping to their name, but I feel that they are going to have to start adding more to the team if they are going to keep this rate up. I don’t think anyone in the DC Universe would allow Harley to get offed by this series. Unfortunately Shark dude is not one of the ones who got axed, but there is always next month (I don’t think he will die next month either but I do hope).

1. Crafting can be really fun: At its core, Minecraft is all about crafting and mining. There really isn’t much more to the game, I mean there are zombies and creepers that can kill you, but a lot of the game is spent doing things in order to avoid these creatures in order for you to get back to business. This is a stark contrast to MMOs where you do crafting to get back to business. I think the fun of the crafting comes in the unique dynamic of shaping what you are making. I think it works especially well with the simplistic blocky graphics, but I do wonder if this crafting type could work well in a more complicated MMO crafting. The plus side of it is that the crafter actually feels like they are doing something instead of just pushing buttons which has always been a problem previously.
2. Farming is fun: This is kind of a reiteration of the first point, but it is particularly important because actual farming is rarely tried in MMOs. The only other place I might think has farming is Rune Factory/Harvest Moon where it is all about farming. This game’s farming is very simple, but not terrible. You get seed, you hoe an area, you plant seed, it grows with light and water. Getting water near your crop can be strategic as is protecting it because if anything walks on it, it could kill your crop (yay fences!). You can also farm trees, and in 1.9 they are adding animal breeding. It’s all good stuff and I enjoy it in the game. MMO devs should take note.
3. Strip Mining is NOT fun: I’ve seen videos of people strip mining in Minecraft and this seems to lead to a fairly big design problem in the game. People like looking for more and new resources, I think it is part of the thrill of the game. But it is kind of a grind to do so and so in order to get a bunch more resources quickly, people resort to it. There needs to be some sort of tracking method or maybe some sort bonus to not strip mining, or maybe if they just made the act itself somewhat more exciting. Generally speaking there is a better method in looking for caverns as caverns tend to have a bigger chance for veins, but at the same time it still takes awhile to even find a cavern sometimes. Maybe just a cavern tracking tool would work.
4. Graphics don’t need to be SOTA in order to be great: I’ve never been a huge graphics whore so this isn’t a new deduction or even surprising. However, when I first started looking at Minecraft even I was saying blech. I do have to say though, that the graphics are far better in game than in screenshots. That being said, it seems to be more computer intensive than I’d think which is a bit surprising.
5. Mistakes Can Be Good!: I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard the story, but in pre-alpha tests, the developers somehow messed up their pig model and it somehow ended up standing up. They liked it so much that they gave the model a different texture and a special power (blowing up) and thus was born their most famous monster: The Creeper. This just goes to show that you don’t necessarily need to throw out mistakes, some mistakes are worth keeping around.
6. Rewards can be craft based: Everything in Minecraft is really revolved around crafting which is the exact model that I think needs to be implemented into MMOs. You kill something, you get something that can be crafted into something useful or sold. You kill something rare or hard, you get something rare or hard to get. In fact, Minecraft goes above and beyond in that everything gives something different and everything is useful somehow (well for the most part). You get bones from skeletons which you can use to make bone meal which you can use to instant grow plants. You can get gunpowder from creepers (which blow up) to make TNT. And the list goes on. If you want to make a bow, you need to find a few spiders to get silk and this is a great dynamic. Heck they even added little easter eggs such as killing things in a weird way will actually get you ultra rare items like music discs.
7. Everything has its own thing: Relating to the last part is that when designing monsters they actually thought about what each monster brings to the table. In most MMOs, there is little difference between the mobs except whether it is aggressive/non-aggressive… the level (which dictates health)… and ranged or not ranged. These things are still there in Minecraft (outside of level), but not repeated over time a lot. Zombies are your melee toughy, skeletons shoot arrows, creepers blow up, etc. But it isn’t even just what they do, it is how they take shape in the physical world. The above are all 2 high, 1 wide, but spiders are 4 wide and 1 high so they can go places the others can’t. Endermen are 3 high so are often restricted in where they can go but can teleport if they like. I really like this. It feels like a chess thing where every piece has its move.
8. Increasing Difficulty is Important: One particular problem I have with Minecraft is that there does seem to be a lull in enjoyment of the game. This lull occurs when you usually get a ton of iron and enough diamond to make your base tools and armor. The monsters are all about the same level, though better armor helps some more than others. But basically once you get a decent amount of iron, you can make most anything in the game without getting into the more tricky bits, there is an alternate dimension that might change that in 1.9, but as of yet it isn’t there. This lack of ramping difficulty/discovery shows in minecraft quite a bit.
9. Affecting the world is good: Whenever you look at youtube videos for Minecraft, you will find people doing strange and cool things in the world, this is a product of the foresight by the developers to let you. Granted many are not things that are actually being done in game but are instead being done with the tools of the game instead. But stuff like the redstone acting like circuit breakers with pistons were a genius move by the devs to allow players to toy around with fun in game things to do. It basically allows the player to entertain themselves which is the whole point isn’t it?
10. Finish your base game before you move onto more exotic aspects of the game: This was the biggest problem I think with Minecraft. The developers I think wanted to come up with something different for the player to do so they created an alternate dimension, and it looks like they are going to be adding a third soon enough. However, I don’t feel that they totally finished the original game in the first place and there is a lot left that they probably could/should do. They are still adding to the main game, the breeding system in particular looks great. I can understand one alternate dimension, but two? Meanwhile there is a setting to allow villages and NPCs to created but there doesn’t seem to be either of these and I feel it totally could use them.
11. Spiders are Scarey!: Ok, this one isn’t entirely real but gosh I hate them! They come from the sky it really freaks me out!