Televised racing is awesome

In the last month or so, I've fallen in love with telecasts of Formula 1 and American Le Mans Series races. You should too, and here's a few awesome reasons why:

An amazing team sport. Winners often credit their teams (that is, their crews and engineers), while the crews and engineers treat the driver like another part of the car. That's not a lack of respect, that's chemistry to an extreme. A football team specializes only along the range from huge and fast to huge and faster. A racing team ranges from PhD mechanical engineers to dudes who can lift serious weight using their necks.

Travel the world. Formula 1 hits a new destination in the world about every two weeks. Gaming career, what? What's a startup? I totally want to do something menial for Red Bull's F1 efforts just so I can follow the team around.

Way less advertising. Advertising in American sports has gotten way out of control. The first down line is sponsored. The line of scrimmage is sponsored. The scoreboard is sponsored. The commentators' predictions for who wins are sponsored. Individual clever comments or identifications of key plays are sponsored. The halftime show is sponsored. The two-minute warning is sponsored. Instant replays are sponsored. Oh, and the postgame show is sponsored too.

ALMS? In two and a half hours of continuous racing I've seen maybe 2 minutes of commercials and a 2-minute shameless plug interview with someone from Mobil 1. F1? Can't recall any shameless plugging, at least on the BBC broadcasts. Sure, there's plenty of logos all over the cars and drivers, but that doesn't detract from actually watching the action. Nor do commercials, because there really aren't any.

Decent announcers. You might enjoy Charles Barkley's trrbl talk but I could use something a little more intelligent. Racing announcers aren't always MENSA members, yes, but they're capable of taking complicated engineering talk and reducing it down to pedestrian levels. Pretty cool.

Plays nice with new technology. F1 fan? BBC's iPlayer has you covered. Le Mans fan? ESPN3 lets you watch entire races, commercial-free. No blackouts, no regional nonsense (unless you're British - I torrent F1 since there are no US sources to my knowledge), and no other such silliness deriving from American cable TV monopolies. 

So join me and start watching so we can talk about the races!

RIP Music Games, 2005-2010

Today, I finished DJ Hero 2.

(Yeah, I'm way behind on my gaming backlog, school is utterly demolishing me lately). 

It was the best music game I've ever played. When Guitar Hero came out, it was widely loved for how it enables 'power fantasy' - the ability to suddenly be awesome at guitar, without all the work and calluses. I always, always wanted that for turntables, a symbol of the music that more appealed to me, whether hip-hop or electronic. Getting to imaginarily play the part of DJ was as appealing to me as electric guitar is to white people.

DJ Hero came out in 2009 and lived up to the promise, just. It was a flawed game, a 3-out-of-5 in most reviews, but I was just happy that the thing existed. But DJ Hero 2 seriously tightened up the graphics on level 3 - better visuals, yes, but more gameplay depth, more difficulty depth, and much better music. Out of all the tracks I played, I'd only give about 2 tracks less than a 3 out of 5. Most were very good, and a large number were seriously awesome. This game is, objectively, a 4 out of 5. 

For me? Subjectively? A 5 out of 5. I'm ready to buy this game for good and keep it on the shelf forever. I love it.

But sadly, today was also the day that Activision put the final nail in the coffin. Its entire music game business is done, as are 500 employees, meaning no more Guitar Hero or DJ Hero. The train stops here. It's only shocking when viewed in light of statements from annual reports and conference as recent as two years ago: that the music genre was one of (only mildly paraphrasing here) "three pillars" of Activision's business.

Not that Activision is some sort of unique bad guy for getting out of the music games business. Harmonix (the geniuses who made this whole thing happen) was put on the block over the holidays and they've already begun shrinking. The only 'bad guy' move here was irrational overinvestment.

Anyway. It was truly a good run. Harmonix wowed and amazed us with the original Guitar Hero during the 2005 holiday season. Let's not forget that sensation of the first time we all played it. And let's face it: Rock Band was the superior product all throughout its fight with Guitar Hero, because it was Harmonix's baby. Activision was just along for the ride. 

Want proof? Look at the tie-ins when things started getting skinny. Activision looked at some spreadsheets and came back with some big, mass-market names: Metallica, Aerosmith, Van Halen. Harmonix dug into its heart, looked at the stars and came back with the trump card, the ultimate tie-in: The Beatles.

Activision was just along for the ride... until DJ Hero. Acti dug through its large organization, its celebrity Rolodex, and put together a new and original entry for a whole new set of gamers. And all the muscle that that development exercise built up was fully and satisfyingly flexed for DJH2. 

That was for the holiday of 2010. The whole genre has risen and fallen in five neat years. During that time there were some great moments for me, and for everyone I know who's played the genre. The first "oh holy wow, this is cool" moment. The axe battles with friends. The drunken band nights. The stage events. 

From here, plastic toy instruments will fade out of use but not out of existence. They'll start going for clearance at game shops, and then stores will refuse to buy used ones, and like the crazy gaming peripherals of our past they'll fade into closets and garage sales. But there are tens of millions of them out there, so they won't become eBay token rarities like some oldies from the 80s and 90s. 

So in ten years' time we'll all have old, incompatible plastic toy instruments in our closets and when nostalgia strikes we'll say, "Remember Guitar Hero?"

It was a really good run.

Go read this website

Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits

It's true. I worked as one. It's a crappy job.

Also, it's very convenient to simply read their aggregation of actual journalism done, the not shit journalism tag. Interesting articles are highlighted and idiots are called out. This is what games blogging is supposed to be.

No wonder everyone's making Facebook games. You can rely on viral effects to spread games instead of insidious marketing types and the hordes of barely-educated, blog-publishing automatons they command.

Shut up Internet, the iPhone 4 is good

In my experience, the iPhone 4 is pretty great. Relative to my 3G, which was on the verge of collapse after two years of software updates, undone jailbreaks and loads of intensive apps, it's way more stable. Not being on AT&T's California network is a refreshing reminder of what cell phone service can actually be like. Everything is way faster, which makes me appreciate how fast the network can actually be when things like Facebook updates load instantly. (Who knew that was a hardware limitation?) TomTom loads and operates quickly and navigates more accurately.

Games are great with the new processor and screen. Between Nike+ and another new Nike app, I'm back to working out with my music. The new glass is more precise and less smudgy. And I haven't taken advantage of the improved camera much yet, but I'm excited for the first time I'll snap a quick picture and think "I'm glad that got updated!"

It's smaller than my old model. And fighting with my car to get it playing music has made me discover that Bluetooth audio works flawlessly, even when I put navigation on top of the audio. It's amazingly cool getting voice navigation and music over my car stereo with the phone in my pocket.

The antenna thing is, in many ways, its Achilles heel. But in the Age of Internet Criticism, people tend to forget that except for that spot, Achilles was an all-around badass.

New rule, amigos.

New rule, effective immediately:

No directly addressing days of the week. All statements like the ones below are officially verboten:

"Dear Monday: We didn't get along last week. Let's try harder this time, eh? Love, Me"
"Friday, how I love you more than your nearest brethren."
"Tuesday: Stop being so rainy. I'm le bored."

Those who continue to post such statements will be penalized 5 Twitter followers for each subsequent statement.

Look sharp, friends. The Cool Police are watching - and they beat my ass like Rodney King just last week.