Yes, that is a Nintendo Wii at Home Depot.

Is this bizarro world?

As “Berry_Jive” has noted in my comments (and as other friends noted during our recent bowling trip), I haven’t been posting as much lately. Part of that is work-related. I’ve been really busy lately, and I’m more likely to come home and just relax than I am to come home and surf around on the net looking for something to write about.

Still, I didn’t want anyone worrying that I’d abandoned the blog or anything. I have every intention of coming back and writing more, either when new television starts early next year, or when work slacks off and I have the patience to read about current events and politics (though, honestly, other people, like Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards do politics and current events much better than I could).

You Don’t Know Jack was a great series of computer games that I remember playing far too long ago. They’re (sort of) back, with a Daily DisOrDat on the website. Here’s my favorite one so far (I scored 7/7 and had 22.73 seconds left):

[Sorry. I had to take the embedded DisOrDat out because it wrought havoc with my new layout. It was the "Mars Loves Women" one if you want to try it out.]

… It is not a response to whining about my prolonged absence.

Last week, I walked from my office to the nearby mall’s food court for lunch. As I passed the Gamestop in the mall, I noticed that they now had Wii boxes on display, just like their little display boxes of Xbox 360s and other systems. Even though I suspected they’d gotten my hopes up through false advertising, I walked in and asked if the fact that they were displaying Wii (with a price, and no signs that said “Coming soon” or anything of that nature) meant that they had some for sale. The response, of course, was no.

Apparently my experience isn’t unique, as I’ve had at least one friend share a similar experience, and Penny Arcade parodied the game store experience with a recent strip. The newspost from the same day covers the topic as well:

There have been numerous instances over this densely packed holiday season where I would be rebuffed by dedicated gaming retailers for not preordering popular games, only to go across the street to Best Buy (a store I utterly detest) where a young woman simply opens a locked case, and inside this case is a stack of Dead Risings (or whatever) twenty deep. At no point was I required to thumb-wrestle a cashier, bow my head in contrition, or leave the store empty-handed.

I could never make sense of it, until my last visit. When it comes to the management of a business, as long as people are not shot, drugged, or enslaved in the course of its standard operation I understand that a certain amount of ruthlessness and treachery may enter in. I put together the idea that they pushed pre-orders to the extent that it allowed them to truly refine their margins. That may be a part of it, but I think it’s a side-effect: I think they sell just enough product to maintain their fabulously lucrative used business, and no more. No other theory resonates so completely. I love the store I go to, because the men and women who operate it are genuine enthusiasts with an encyclopedic knowledge of the medium. But the corporation’s strange aversion to new product has made them a poor choice for the true, day one devotee. They tend to buy new, they don’t need a disc cleaner, and they often eschew strategy guides – opting instead for online assistance. It’s the worst sort of customer for their model.

Try to imagine another shop working this way, and you may find your mind’s normal operation interrupted. There is, of course, one other business that operates in this fashion: a pawn shop. All they need is a couple firearms and a sketchy m***********, and the illusion will be complete.

It’s an interesting take on the concept, because I’ve noticed something similar. If all of the Gamestops in town are sold out of a game, I can usually just make a quick stop at Toys ‘R’ Us and get whatever game I was looking for. I’d attributed this to the location of our Toys ‘R’ Us, which isn’t the most convenient one, but this theory, which allows me to blame the people who buy used games (and worse, the people who commit the unthinkable sin of selling their video games) for all of my problems, is my new favored one.

On the one hand, the idea of a Firefly MMORPG makes me very excited. In a lot of ways, Firefly is the perfect sort of inspiration for an MMORPG. Unlike a lot of the other universes that’ve inspired MMORPGs, the main characters of Firefly weren’t running the flagship of an interstellar federation. They weren’t chosen to end oppression because of their unique abilities in the world. They weren’t, in short, special — except in the fact that their characters resonated with us. They were everyman, which is exactly what a character in an MMORPG should be (with a lot of players, it’s difficult to justify seeing all of them as “The One”, after all).

The Firefly universe is an interesting one, and if done right, this could be far more addictive than World of Warcraft ever was.

To some degree, the Multiverse concept appeals to me as well. Conceptually, it almost seems like the MMORPG answer to GURPS. I haven’t seen the implementation, though, so I’m reserving judgement on how well it works.

I’m afraid, though, that this MMORPG might be done very poorly. I have trouble seeing how you could truly capture the feel of Firefly in an MMORPG, and I fear that the failure of an MMORPG would be seen by people who aren’t fans as yet another reason why the Firefly story wasn’t a good one, instead of just being a good story that just didn’t have time to find its full audience.