Games

Games are magical. I have recently started playing alot of flash games which i had always thought would be complete rubbish. However, alot of the simple flash games are infact some of the most enjoyable games available. Examples of this are alot of the Playfish games available to play on Facebook, twitter, myspace etc. The game play itself is generally similar in most of these games (Restaurant City, Country Story) in that the general premise is to continue to frequently return to the game inorder to reach goals, complete quests, gain more experience and continue to develop throughout the game. This is where the real gold mine is for these 'basic' games.

Restaurant City is a fantastic example of a fairly straightforward game which has become extremely popular with some 12 million active players monthly. The game itself revolves around a player setting up his or her own restaurant with basic options to begin with, from window and door layout, to outdoor decoration and signage. As the player develops their restaurant more options become available such as more tables meaning more potential diners.
As added incentive for a player to frequently return to play, each day they return to play a new ingredient will be added to their kitchen for free. This may enable new menu options to be selected by the player, creating new dishes worth more money and experience, thus enabling even more options for renovation and upgrading of their restaurant.

Such a simple concept clearly works well in this instance as the game is free to play and has continued to steadily grow in popularity worldwide. 12 million regular players and climbing indicates that a game developer need not necessarily require a vast budget such a Blizzard have for such games as WOW and Diablo inorder to make a successful game. There is much truth in the 'KISS' concept of 'KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID'.....The future holds great things for the gaming world.

GI JOE RULES

Totally kick ass!! I was overwhelmed with feelings of elation and joy when I witnessed the fitness of the latest 3 3/4" figures...The memories of the originals came flooding back to me from childhood and what a rush that was!!!
Bring on the second installment of what will hopefully become a massive saga of star wars esque proportions!!

Other films I anticipate many good things from are District 9 and Avatar which looks awesome!

AND all going well and with as little input from Hollywood Executives as possible the next glorious 80's legend to hit the big screen shall be HE-MAN!!! Here is hoping its not another Transformers Michael Gay atrocity!! I among many 80's children, live in hope......

Wacky Wonders

I recently saw the kiwi comedian Te Radar do his current show which was (quite aptly at the time) titled "eating the dog"! He started off by mentioning that it was sheer coincidence that the title had such relevance, as there had been a news report just days earlier around the country about a family in Auckland literally eating their dog...That is very messy and I shant dwell on it in this particular post..

However, I would like to mention a couple of real doozys I learnt of while at the show. The first of which was that back in the day in our tiny little country we managed to build and launch a submarine of sorts. Now before ya'll get to excited it must be said that this particular vessel was made for the sole purpose of getting to the bottom of a rather shallow lake in the Otago area to retrieve some gold deposits inorder to bring riches to the nation...Great idea you may be thinking...Alas, the manner of retrival left much to be desired. The idea was to delve down to the bottom of the lake and once there, open a hatch on the underside of the vessel and as quickly as possible extract the gold from the lake bed pop it in the sub, re-seal the hatch and bobs your uncle we would have all been rich

Of course this idea had a reasonable flaw which is to say, it was rather better at retaining water inside it than keeping the water out...Stay tuned for part two of this blog

GIJOE

I saw GI JOE and it was in my opinion, brilliant! I have googled GI JOE the film and I found about 50 million people criticising it. Infact, some have said it was the worst film of the American Summer Box Office season. You know what these people are? Morons

Stay tuned, I have a rant to fuel the fires of hell itself on this one . . . .

Bring Krombacca followers

So the stag do went well. However, my laptop is in the shop for a couple of days (graphics card troubles so i'm told). I shall therefore put up a detailed blog of the event later in the week.

Today I shall briefly touch on a the topic of the psychology of getting hits to this site and in due course, a large number of those hits shall become blog followers.
A site was pointed out to me today and for those of you reading this and interested the link is http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html
This chap has endeavored to test the psychology behind how and why people click links. He does this over a period of a couple of hours via his twitter site. The test is simple and consists of him 'tweeting' a short sentence and gradually changing small portions of the original tweet, then taking note of the change in hits he gains from the tweet to his site.

I am curious to try this myself and shall now attempt (via facebook) to do a similar test and see if I can achieve a similar result.

watch this space.....

Battle Vulture and upcoming blogs

People I thank you for slowly flocking to the site and spreading the love. I am currently in Tauranga awaiting a most excellent stag do for a most excellent man. Bring on Saturdays boozed golfing glory!!

Stay tuned for upcoming blogs in the next week on topics such as the new Peter Jackson film District 9. The New Zealand relevant topic of the "anti-smacking" referendum. The joys of the internet and its plethora of extraordinary information. And at least 2 other topics, one of which will quite possibly be the best cures known to man for the HANGOVER muahaha

I leave you with this absolute pearl of comic genius, which I was lucky enough to witness, courtesy of a brilliant, almost mythically legendary fellow...I was hysterically weeping :)
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=235974183
Enjoy

And please, take the time to visit my links at the bottom of the page, all of whom are good, hard working people

Ciao

Hollywood Regurgitation

In my life I have watched many, many films and long ago I came to a rather obvious conclusion, Hollywood Studios fund and make a very large number of totally crap movies. The regurgitation of the same plots with multi-million dollar budgets, mainly for over done special effects and far too highly paid actors seems to be the ultimate goal of the studio money making machine.

Gone are the days of films actually revolving around strong plot/storyline. Of film makers with actual talent. Of special effects that do not base themselves of ridiculously overdone computer graphics. A plethora of films made in the last ten years had such great potential and yet....FAILED to deliver to the heart and soul of the target, the consumer. Two perfect examples of this are the obscenity that is Predator vs Aliens and the abomination of Michael Bays rendition of Transformers. To say that these films were let downs is an understatement. To say that these films broke the hearts and souls of many a viewer and fan is oh so very true.

Hollywood has a responsibility to the viewer to make sure that adaptations of well known stories stay true to the original concepts they have been taken from. Simply making money should not be the soul purpose of creating a film of this nature. Hollywood has proven time and time again that it is not difficult to get punters to pay to fill theatres world wide, but I leave you with the question, how many are content when they exit the theatre?