Whoever is in charge of Xbox Live over at Microsoft should have a bronze sculpture made.  His left arm holding onto a Xbox 360 and his right arm grasping towards the sky.  I say that because while the Xbox 360 games we saw weren't impressive, the plans they have for Xbox Live on the 360 are amazing.  They're so brilliant that in hindsight it seems obvious -- let people buy smaller games via Xbox Live and download them right away. They're starting their Xbox Live game purchasing...

E3 is such a mad house this year. And for good reason - three huge console announcements competing for our attention.  Microsoft has a bit of an advantage with their Xbox 360 being a little closer to reality than the Nintendo Revolution or Playstation 3.  On the other hand, there was a depressing lack of booth babes.  And what is E3 without booth babes? XBOX 360 or 1.5? Xbox 360 is going to be backward compatible with existing Xbox titles which may help make up for the rela...

This is my seventh E3.  I started coming back in the mid 90s to keep up with what's going on in the game industry.  For gamers, E3 serves as an exciting preview of things to come.  For a small game developer, E3 can be scary as you discover that "everyone else" has stuff far cooler than you could possibly imagine. Going to E3 as a indie developer is like playing the classic game Civilization. You've just produced your first musketman and think you're doing great when suddenly t...

This year's E3 promises to be one of the most exciting ones in years.  Not only will Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft be showing off next-generation stuff but the PC games arena should be a pretty exciting place as well.  With Civilization 4 and Age of Empires 3 and new first person goodies from iD and Valve, gamers are in store for quite a treat. On the other hand, E3 also takes place during the opening of Episode III which is a bit of a bummer.  But some of Stardock's game developm...

So you want to create a massively multiplayer strategy game.  How do you go about designing something that will keep players coming back. In a MMORPG, players are building up their characters. And those character die but they come back.  In an MMORTS like this where city creation and its customization are what the player is worried about, then losing a city becomes a serious problem.   Therefore, the first challenge is to narrow down what exactly the player will become atta...

Next week we're going to be at E3 showing off Galactic Civilizations II and giving sneak peeks at our upcoming MMORTS game, Society.  If you're going to be at E3, comment here, maybe we can organize some sort of get together.

My last article on inheritence taxes sure drew some controversy.  Surprisingly, much of it from conservatives.  Perphaps it's because I'm an only child or perhaps I just don't have the "correct" attitude on families but to me there are two types of income: Earned and unearned.  My problem with welfare is that it provides unearned income to people.  And so to me, inheritence isn't much better than welfare. Before you turn your flame throwers on, hear me out.  My view...

My wife and I are looking for lake front property up near Higgins Lake Michigan. There's not much lake front property now.  Not surprising given the law of supply and demand.  But the realtor told me something telling -- the reason there's not much land available is due to multi-generational inheritence.  That is, 150 years ago people bought land up there and simply hand it down from generation to generation.  Family land. How can that be bad? At first glance, such ge...

Pat Buchanan seems to be shaking off any sort of doubt about his sympathies for the old Third Reich. But Vodka Pundit has taken him back to the wood shed. Check out this article linked below..

I read an article this month in Car & Driver that Finland has passed a law in which traffic fines are now based on your annual income.  So a person going 5 over may be fined $10 or $100,000 depending on whom they are. This bit the CEO of Nokia recently when he received a $12 MILLION fine for going 15 over. Such a thing is, hopefully, unconstitutional in the United States.  In the US, we're supposed to be equal under the law.  Imagine the abuse a law like that could cause.&n...

Guilds are great except for when people argue with one another. The most common argument I see in MMORPGs is fighting over item drops.  Rogue gets some scepter of power that they can't use and other people assume that they should have to hand it over to someone in their party that can even if the Rogue won the "roll". It's a dicey thing - rare drops.  That rare drop might be worth 30 gold to the rogue.  Do they hand it over to some mage they're traveling with simply because ...

What is the right car for the person who wants a luxury sedan but also a sports car? Why can't you have both?  Well it turns out, you can have both -- for a price.  For those looking for a Sedan, the options are a bit limited if you want both luxury and power.  In about a year, the options will be much better. But for my needs, I looked at the BMW M5, the Cadillac STS-V, Mercedes S500, and the Jaguar S-Type R.  Some of these cars aren't generally available yet.  ...

My new car only averages around 17 miles per gallon. A few people I know have given me a hard time about that.  Here I am, polluting the environment. Making the US more reliant on foreign oil. Using up valuable resources. And so on.  What seems to get lost in those discussions is that it's not your mileage that should matter, it's how many gallons of gas you consume. I put around 6,000 to 8,000 miles on my car each year.  I don't drive very much.  Longer trips involve the ...

Every once in awhile you'll hear about a beloved website whose host has taken it down out of frustration with having to deal with Internet thugs. Internet thugs are, thankfully, not very common, but there are enough out there that they can wreck the experience in trying to admin a website. So what is an Internet thug? An Internet thug is basically a "griefer". Someone who gets off on trying to anger and upset other people. They do this in a variety of ways and the most common way is to take a...

If you've always wondered how light sabers work, HowStuffWorks.com has a thorough article outlining how light sabers work, various safety tips and practical uses such as defending yourself against would-be muggers.