The Professional Gamer - April 18, 2015

Hi readers! This week has been another busy one at the office.  With the boss gone, I'm responsible for keeping things moving along on a lot of projects.  In spite of that, I had managed to have some geeky fun this week.  I'm thinking more about the role of media in the world and how comics work.  I also played some video games.  And I, along with Crystal and Chris, will be ComicFest tomorrow.  Come over to the artist alley and say hello, and maybe buy something?  Regardless, read on to see how I spent my geeky week.

Watching: I have again spent most of my week watching episodes of the PBS Idea Channel.  At this point, I've watched 100 of the (currently) 145 episodes.  The most interesting episodes this week have been the discussion about what fiction is and whether it exists.  Crystal and I had some fun discussing the issues brought up in these episodes.  My opinion is that fictional realities are as real as any other cultural constructs that we deal with everyday like the nation-state or money.

Reading: I'm still making my way through Understanding Comics.  I'm now in the last section and should be finished early next week.  I'm really enjoying the book still, and every page provides a new revelation on the craft of comics.

Playing: My gaming has again been limited to Fantasy Life and Hyrule Warriors.  Crystal and I are now concentrating our efforts on the Termina Map in Adventure Mode, which frequently requires you to compete against an AI team to collect more keeps, KO's, or rupees.  This competition adds an interesting twist to keep the game interesting.

That's all I have for this week.  We'll be at the ComicFest portion of Denver StarFest tomorrow, so please come by and say hello.  Have a great week and game on!

The Gameslave Podcast - Episode 207

We have another great podcast episode for you all this week.  We ended up recording at Chris's house this week, which made for a good change of venue.  Show notes and relevant links are below the audio stream.

  • The Weekly Happenings
    • Chris - Murdered: Soul Suspect, Majora's Mask
    • Crystal: Majora's Mask, Hyrule Warriors, Reinventing Comics
    • Jim: Understanding Comics, Fantasy Life
  • News
    • Being vs. Controlling Avatar in Game (link)
    • Yoshi's Wooly World and Amiibos (link)
    • Fire Emblem (working title)
    • StarFest is next week

The Professional Gamer - April 11, 2015

Hello everyone! This week I managed to survive some tight deadlines in my professional life (hooray for working 24 hours in the past 48), and still had some fun.  Or at least, I managed to have some fun earlier this week when the deadlines were not quite so crushing.  I spent some more time watching some more cool YouTube stuff, playing some games, and reading the comic book of comics.  If these sound like fun things to you, read on to get the details.

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The Past Returns

All the way back in the year 2003 I took a sociology class. In this class we were assigned a paper where we had to write about how a class of people is viewed in society. I, being the person I am, wanted video games to be my research material. The paper was written, submitted and graded (got an A on it by the way), and then lost, or so I thought. I was rather sad about this as I also met my wife in the class I wrote this paper in. Well recently, when doing some clean up of old hard drives, I found the original paper. So here I give you, the readers of The Gameslave, my sociology paper titled "Woman's Role in Entertainment: Does Time Matter".
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Borderlands 2 Review

Shoot.  Loot.  Repeat.
 
After playing the crap out of the original Borderlands, I have been anxiously waiting to get back to the world of Pandora.  Gearbox and 2K Games have created a sequel in a way sequel's are supposed to be made, it's better.  Borderlands 2 improves in every aspect over its predecessor making it a truly enjoyable experience.  Fans of the original will no doubt want to check out the sequel.  If you never played the original Borderlands, that is okay, you can still jump in with two feet.  If you are a fan of shooters and loot driven games, do yourself a favor and buy Borderlands 2, you will not be disappointed.
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Conversations with IrishPride Episode 23

Curse the Steam Summer Sale!
 
 
After cranking out two CwIP's in less than a week, I seem to have taken a brief hiatus, but now return with episode 23 of Conversations with IrishPride!  Today I'm going to talk about Steam and more specifically the Summer Sale that Steam is currently running.
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This Weeks Geek - The First

A few months ago I got out of a long relationship. It had been pretty exclusive for about 5 years when I started to waiver. The relationship started going on and off and I started seeing others. Finally, after 7 years I broke it off and canceled my World of Warcraft subscription.  WoW was my first MMO, and as such I was a bit infatuated with it. That has now passed and I am with SWTOR, and while I am enjoying it, it is not the same as my first.
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This Weeks Geek - Hobby Overload

Image © Wizards of the CoastEveryone has a hobby or two that they enjoy working on in their spare time. But what happens when you start taking on several time intensive hobbies all at once? That is when you reach hobby overload my friends, and that is the focus of This Weeks Geek.

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