Category: Useless knowledge

Information you have no need for. Ever. Usually about me, but possibly about other trivial crap in the world.

What are the lessons of MMORPGs today?

Lessons learned from MMORPGs.

  • You never, ever, ever change jobs. If you want to, you probably need to die.
  • You can be the best in the world at your job.
  • But so can everyone else.
  • And you will all do it exactly the same way.
  • Many, if not all, wild creatures are highly aggressive and will attack on sight.
  • Evil is not redeemable; good is not a choice. Your morals are innate.
  • Killing is the only real way to gain people’s admiration.
  • Well, you can make stuff too, but you won’t earn the same kind of admiration.

There are tons more. Read the whole list. (via BoingBoing)

[tags]MMORPG, lessons learned[/tags]

Study reveals unsurprising result

Let’s cut right to Newswise the article:

If women want the best possible service at a clothing store, they had better be looking fashionable and well-groomed before they hit the mall.

A new study found that well-dressed and groomed women received the friendliest and, in some cases, fastest service from salesclerks.

So, women who dress better are more likely to get good service. Am I crazy to think this is an expected result? Much like when my wife and I go to dinner without out kids, we usually get better service than when we go to dinner with the kids.  The unfortunate reality of the world is, better dress does tend to indicate a tendency towards better manners, better verbal communication, better tips (in interactions where tips are necessary), and a generally better experience for consumer and provider.  Sure, there are exceptions, but over time, I suspect that most service people learn to expect a certain behavior from customers based largely on appearance and maybe initial verbal communication.  (via The Consumerist)

[tags]Customer service[/tags]

MAKE blog link dump

So many interesting projects that I can’t write up an article for all of them. Check these out for some pretty neat projects.

Now that’s a lot of reading for you to catch up on.  And me, too.  I’m so far behind on my techie/geek reading.

[tags]MAKEzine, MAKEblog, MAKE, link dump[/tags]

If I were king II

People who listen to their radios so loud that you can’t hear your own radio when you are next to them at a traffic light would have their radio removed from the car.  If they want to get a new one, that’s up to them.  But another offense will result in another radio removed.

[tags]If I were king[/tags]

Dead or Alive – the movie

Oh please, please, please say it ain’t so!  I don’t think movies based on games are inherently bad – I just assume the directors, writers, actors, producers, distributors, and/or others are incapable of making them good.  I suspect a large part of it is that the people responsible for spewing forth this bile think gamers are too stupid to know when they are getting something bad.  Sadly, they seem to be fairly accurate in their beliefs to date.

Dead or Alive movie still

[tags]Dead or Alive, game movie[/tags]

New game patch site

I’ll be splitting my time between this site and launching another site of interest to me – Gamepatches.info.  Posts here may slow for a while as I get in to the swing of keeping the patch information site up to date.  I’m already finding that site to be more work intensive than I envisioned, so I’ll be working to balance the number of patches and patch details I provide versus the number of available patches each day.  Feel free to leave feedback on either site as to how you think either site is doing and what I can do to improve what I provide.  Please visit Gamepatches and provide let me know how I’m doing.

[tags]Game Patches, New site[/tags]

XFire sure seems popular

While trying to catch up with all kinds of geek/techie/gaming news today, I found this article at TwitchGuru about the XFire instant messenger/gamer tracker.  After reading the article, I’m actually a little surprised to see how popular XFire is.  I used the program about 3 years ago, maybe even 4.  Perhaps I just didn’t have enough gaming friends to appreciate it, but I didn’t find it particularly useful or in any way more outstanding than ICQ/MSN/AIM/whatever.  That said, I can see the usefulness – maybe I got in too early to benefit from the unique twist XFire offers.

If you haven’t tried XFire, and you have a lot of gaming buddies, try downloading it and using it.  Once installed, you can see what game someone on your buddy list is playing.  You can get stats on your buddies.  You can use the program to send snapshots if you see something in-game that makes you think you just have to grab a picture.  I may even install it and try it again.

How fast has Xfire grown? On average, nearly 300,000 new users register and download the software each month, which means Xfire adds approximately 10,000 new customers every day. Xfire has become so hot so quickly that Fortune Magazine’s David Kirkpatrick recently wrote that Xfire “could be the next MySpace.” It’s an accurate comparison. The best way to think of Xfire is as a combination of a social networking site and an instant messaging platform. In addition to allowing users the ability to text message or voice chat with other Xfire members, the software allows users to create an entire online community. “We wanted to find a better way for people to interact through video games and be able to communicate with one another,” Fong says.

[tags]XFire, Instant Messaging, Social networks, gaming[/tags]

Amazing high quality game renders

If you ignore the obvious “I’m a geek and can’t get a real chick so I’ll totally scope out fake chicks” sadness in the lives of so many of us, you’ll probably be impressed with these King of Fighters renders of Mai Shurinai and others (and excuse me, but is that pronounced like “My Sharona” by The Knack?  No?  Well, it sure looks like it would be close).  I’m assuming these are press-release quality, and not in-game renders, but I could be wrong.

I’d provide an in-story image, but the page owner has right-click disabled with a copyright notice.  I know how to get around that – it isn’t really hard.  But I’ll not snag someone else’s pictures if they want me to leave them be.

[tags]King of Fighters, Game renders[/tags]