Well Founded Conspiracies theories

I got to admit, Its not that big of a year for gaming, if you compare it to last year. We were rocked by a bunch of major titles—ranging from Portal 2 to Skyrim, and some titles I forgot about (and didn’t necessarily play) like dead Space 2. So, I’m looking at this New Year, and I’m think: what is there to really look forward to? Halo 4, which I’m really not going to get into, I don’t really count a December release as part of 2012’s glamour, I’ll be into 2013 when I really like it. I can really only think of Bioshock: Infinite as the main title that’s in October, but still that’s all I can really think of. So, I’d like to speculate some titles which are wholly possible—and might be announced at this year’s biggest game show.

For all of you who don’t know what the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3) is, then you’re either a casual gamer, or maybe a new gamer; but let me summarize it like this: it’s the biggest nerd-fest outside of Comic Con. E3—which used to be a big, wide-open, sweaty gamer’s paradise is now closed to the public. This however does not mean you can’t go (you can if you have $995 burning a big hole in your pocket) you can watch the events on G4 (the “video game” channel) or via YouTube (Machinima streams it.) E3 is filled with wondrous tables of the biggest gigs in gaming. Everyone goes to flaunt what they’ve got—from Nintendo to Telltale Games to Valve. Companies like nVidia and IGN come out as well; they’ve got a big pull in this market. The biggest events lay in the biggest companies. The big 3 (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) hold a gigantic press conference, showing what we can expect in the year to come, this is when consoles are unveiled (like possibly the new Xbox this year) and some new flagship games (like Halo games, Reach was announced a few years ago here).

Conferences are what make it—it’s not just the big 3. Activision and EA come out to show their superiority. Last year, Valve was slanted to make an appearance, but they canceled their conference at the last moment (probably since Gabe Newell was already showing up at the Sony conference.) but, this is what I’m predicting as the 3 biggest players of E3 this year.

3—Nintendo: I’m hoping to see something like Pikmin 3, or a new Smash Bros., something that can make the Wii U look more impressive than it already is.

2—Microsoft: This is the big year for Microsoft—announcing Halo 4 was big, but they need something bigger than that, Kinect kind of flopped out, but that doesn’t mean they can’t build off of it. We’re going to see a large ceremony, some pomp and circumstance, with a new console, maybe not a release date, but a new face to put both Nintendo and Sony on edge.

1—Valve: Yes, they have released that they aren’t giving us any games at E3, but there is still hope yet for our truly beloved. Valve’s been giving cute little signs, like a photo in their employee handbook, the joke of Half-Life 3D, the 7 years since Episode 2, its all coming up to this. Valve is going to show us something so magnificent that everyone at whichever game conference literally explodes with anticipation. I’m not expecting a release date, if it comes with one, it’ll be in 2014, but I’m expecting a little tiny tease. Gabe Newell controls the world of PCs with Steam, and since new consoles are being slated for release, I think it’s logical to have the most wanted game in all of recorded history there as a reminder.

Am I being a bit on the hopeful side? Oh yes, but why shouldn’t I be. For me, this year will have something from Valve—they’re changing their image from the company of few games to more and more. We’ve had constant releases from them for a long time now: Alien Swarm, Dota 2, Portal 2, left 4 Dead 2, Counterstrike: Global offense it’s been very constant, so why stop now? I’ll be honest; I don’t care as much about the whole new consoles business as I do care about the new Half-Life idea.

--Santa

Soapbox: Customer's In Need of Support

Installing means NOTHING to Microsoft

This blog post is going to need a bit of background before its completely understood, but here's a fairly long story shortened. At the time of writing this post I'm trying to install Microsoft Office 2010 (Professional Plus Edition!) on my laptop via the use of downloading through a computer. Upon completion of this 2 1/2 hour download, I launched the wizard and was confronted by the little bit of joy that you can see to your right. And so begins my epic quest of trying to install Word 2010 on my laptop, this is being written while in progress, so this is being written live.

So, naturally I decided that Microsoft Support, but that in itself took much longer than it should have. I started out by calling the old reference number, seeing that I was having problems getting the download to start in the first place, (yeah, I know, I'm pretty lazy) I went through the options to go to "download help" because I wasn’t having any luck launching the download. After 5 minutes of soft, classical music, I was greeted by the sound of my new helper, who I will code name as "Jessica." From there, and after giving my own name, phone number and prior number for assistance, I got the unfortunate news that I needed to be re-directed, and so my journey was sent off into a new perilous land, with a 10 minute wait.

I landed in Microsoft's land of Technical support, in other words, Jessica didn't want to help me because even though pushing "3" on my phone was supposed to be for downloads, I was patched through to sales. I gave my information, and now a case number to my new friend, "Bob." bob had a very heavy accent, and after about 10 minutes of going back and forth, we decided that it may be in my best interest to go to the installation part of Microsoft's help desk, because we know what'd happen if we had experts who could help customers in more than 1 field.

After another 5 minute wait period, I was patched through to my last helper, who I call "Frafrin." Telling me that my internet connection (which just so happens to be wireless when I’m using the laptop) is no good, and that I would need to spend another couple hours downloading the 650 megabytes again at my fantastic download speed at 150 kb/s (and that’s fast for me, folks) I tried to stay calm, which leads me to the point of what I started this post about.

I’ve heard that customer support is a pretty bad job to have, putting in the notion that you have to put up with idiots who don’t understand why their computer won’t turn on (and then will blame the person who they called to help them when it doesn’t work) and I can understand the customer. Americans can be stupidly independent, and I can say that as I am one. We don’t want to call support until we’ve tried every method we can think of and we’ve got veins popping out of our necks that we’re so mad. But, my biggest problem is that customer support isn’t good at helping. It would be one thing if they employed people with accents that weren’t thicker than Jell-O pudding, but in some cases, that isn’t always true. I try my best to be patient, and when I get the feeling that I’m not getting anywhere, then I may just ask to talk to a manager, or perhaps go cry myself to sleep.

If big companies could grasp the fact that people heavily prefer to talk to people (I’m talking about you, automated systems) and to people who don’t have a heavy accent (if I live in America, I’d like to talk to an American. It’s easier, (this isn’t knocking on foreigners, if they set up a customer support center in the UK or Australia, it would be just as stupid.) What always floors me is the wait time. I can understand that big corporations are greedy and don’t want to put in money to buying better support, but that’s a fundamental thing to capitalism and all, but if you release a product with flaws, or to the general public (who will find flaws, and get lost in said product) then you have to expect that they’ll need help, otherwise, companies miss the point of selling a product.

--Santa