Fuck yes

There was maybe about 30 people when we got there tonight; about a hundred or so when we left.

Also: there was Eric. Eric was dressed as a banana for some inexplicable reason; defying the art of logic in a Dada like display of neo-post-absurdist joy.


He was cool.

Game on!

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Super Mario Galaxy is boring Grandma to death

If you've read us long enough you'll know that it happens once and awhile; sometimes there will be a game worshiped by many that Grandma just can't enjoy. It almost makes her feel bad to have to say she hates it. Almost.

But then she falls off another ledge because her fucking Wii-mote isn't cooperating and she comes back to her senses.

She's tried repositioning the sensor bar, sitting further away from the television, recalibrating the sensitivity, everything. With Super Paper Mario, everything came together nicely for the Wii.

But for whatever reason, Super Mario Galaxy, which has been called the must own Wii game and Game of the Year and all that just isn't fun to Grandma.

She thinks it's boring.

It's not that she hates the Wii style controller entirely, just its dependency. Think of all the reviews for Super Smash Brothers Brawl recently. Or even emails and comments made by some of you guys to Grandma recommending the game. It's alarming to think that one point that needs to be made in a review of what is being heralded as the best selling Nintendo game of all time is that one doesn't have to use the frustrating controller for which it was made.

"Use a GameCube controller and it's awesome" they say.

Grandma wishes she could have used a GameCube controller for SMG.

"I hate this fucking game. I feel so stupid playing it, it's a kid's game for fuck's sake and I can't.. get.. the fucking... CANNON to line up- GODDAMMIT!"

[vigorously shaking controller back and forth] "COME ON, DAMMIT! HIT THE BASTARD!"

"No sense talking to this guy.... I don't have any money to buy anything because collecting coins is a pain in the ass."

"Fuck this. I quit."

To her credit, she's said 'fuck this, I quit' many times while playing Super Mario Galaxy, but she keeps plugging away for some reason. There isn't a whole lot excitement about the current crop of games out there for Grandma right now, only for that which is to come.

It makes her worried about her poor Wii.

Super Paper Mario was the last game she played and really enjoyed for the system and she got into the plot; cared about the characters and had a generally good time with it. But she isn't apologetic about her hatred of SMG to its fans; it's just not a game for everyone, I suppose.

"I fucking HATE it. It's not the upside-down multi-dimensional aspect of it, hell Portal did that and it was brilliant. It's more of what it isn't, if that makes any sense. It isn't Mario 64. It isn't Super Paper Mario. It isn't Super Smash Brothers or even Super Mario RPG. You compare a game like Super Mario Galaxy to everything else I played just last year and it seems old already. And the weird part is I played a demo level at E3 in 2006 and I thought it would be a lot of fun. Oh well. Can't win them all, I guess. Goddamn, I can't wait for another good game to come out. There isn't shit out there."

So, in the past few months or so, she's bought more movies than games. Mostly on BlueRay, but she did take advantage of the HD-DVD firesale at BestBuy because.. well, the attachment for the 360 is only something like $40 now, and HD-DVD movies are cheap as hell. She knows it's a dead format, but what the hell- we're poor and we like movies.

It makes her sad that she and I talk more about the meaning of the ending to No Country For Old Men more than we talk about Super Mario Galaxy, for instance. She used to hate when the gaming magazines started reviewing DVD releases after the PS2 came out. "I subscribe to read about GAMES," she'd tell me. "Not about the different languages available on Pulp Fiction." And yet here we are in one of those gaming lulls where, honestly, what else can we do?

In a nutshell, Grandma's reviews of things she'd rather not review:

On HD-DVD...
American Gangster - "Not Ridley Scott's best, but it ain't bad."
King Kong - "Don't look at me, it came with the HD-DVD player."
Elizabeth: The Golden Age - "Sucked."
Zodiac: Two Disc Director's Cut - "Great movie. David Fincher is great."
Planet Earth: Complete Collection - "Great series, but we had to return it to BestBuy to get another copy because it came with scratched discs. HD-DVDs scratch really easily it turns out. And when they do, it won't even load up. You have to get a new one."
Ultimate Matrix Collection - "Pretty much the reason we got the player. used to be $100, then $90, then briefly during the firesale after the announcement that Toshiba gave up HD-DVD it was only $50. So you could get a player, all of the Matrix movies plus The Animatrix series for just $100. Awesome."
The Pianist - "Nothing like watching The Holocaust in high-def to make you feel like shit."

On BlueRay...
Weeds: Season One - "Hilarious!"
Weeds: Season Two - "Not as hilarious. More serious."
Letters From Iwo Jima - "Better than Flags of Our Fathers."
30 Days of Night - "Scary as fuck. I liked it."
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - "Really well done movie. Pitt was great it in."
Kingdom of Heaven - "Better than Gladiator."
Blade Runner: Complete Collectors Edition - "Awesome, but I don't even know why you'd want the original narrated version."
I Am Legend - "Thought the effects were done much better in 30 Days of Night, actually. I wish they wouldn't use CGI for everything."
Ocean's Thirteen - "Great, but don't get it on BlueRay."
Ratatouille - "Loved it!"
28 Days Later - "We've already mentioned this before. Don't get it on BlueRay."
Black Hawk Down - "If you're going to play Call of Duty 4, you might as well know why the story is compelling."
Close Encounters of the Third Kind - "Only reason to get this in high-def is the great audio. Otherwise, there's not much they can do to make it look any better than it did before. Great movie, though."

Grandma knows what to do. She posted a video (she'd like to do more, by the way, she likes talking directly to yas') and at the moment she's doing a lot of baking. Which is great for me because I fucking love her cookies.

She's been scanning the gaming magazines for exciting new releases each month, waiting with the anticipation of a vulture watching a rabbit try to cross a highway. She's just ITCHING to get the same experience she had playing Call of Duty 4 or Orange Box or actually- what she REALLY wants is another horror game like Fatal Frame, Resident Evil or Silent Hill. She talks about that genre a lot, now. Condemned 2 came out recently, but it hasn't been received well and she wasn't exactly a huge fan of the first game. I know she won't buy it, but if she does end up renting it, it will be for achievement point whoring reasons only, I'm afraid.

Grandma's on the search for another awesome game to get into; to get her fix before GTA IV, FFXIII, RE5 and other ambiguous acronyms are released.

Me, I've been working my ass off. I like working. Working means more money, which means bills get paid and I can save for better equipment which means more work, more money, better equipment, and so on...

It ALSO means that we here at OGHC are proud to introduce the newest member of our little family.

But first some backstory for those of you who weren't with us in the beginning. When I first started writing about Grandma, people thought it was fake or at best a funny sort of hoax. So I had to take pictures of Grandma to prove she even existed. The moment she discovered the site existed was when I asked if I could take her picture to put it online. Of course, that's wasn't good enough for the folks who thought she wasn't real and I wanted to give at least audio of her doing her thing while she plays because I felt no matter how much I wrote, people wouldn't understand why I thought she was so awesome until they heard it and seen it themselves.

So we got a little ol' webcam from Staples. A Logitec something or other. It was choppy but it worked okay. Then, after we finally relented to those calling for us to put up a PayPal donation button to get some better equipment to show Grandma, you guys bought us the Sony Handycam that we've used for all the videos of Grandma on YouTube. It's suited us very well. I can't thank all of you enough for helping us get it with your donations back in the day.

While we didn't feel quite right taking such a gift, you can imagine how stupid I feel not being able to use it as often as I used to; giving you guys new videos of Grandma playing all her latest stuff as it happens. I felt like such an asshole recently because of that. Here are you folks who loved Grandma enough to want to see her and talk to her and gave us money to help me do that and here is me not doing all I can after work to do that. And Grandma likes to talk to you guys too! That's why she made the last video.

So, I needed to give something back. I figured, well- if we're going to do videos we might as well DO VIDEOS.

So I got THIS:


This is Panny. Panny is a Panasonic DVX-100B MiniDV 3CCD ProLine Camcorder. It's also the same model camera used by MTV whenever they filmed Grandma at our house or at E3 or at the press-junkets.

I use it for work shooting video for the newspaper's website when I can, so it still pays the bills. I'm a still photographer by trade, but everybody wants video now. Still, Panny is my camera; not the newspapers. So I can use it to shoot anything else I like as well. Porn, Nature Documentaries, Weddings, whatever! So why not use it in conjunction with a decent audio set-up to give y'all some kick ass videos of Grandma being Grandma?

Game on!

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My first vcast while Tim is busy

I hope this works!

-Grandma

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Come to Mexico with Grandma and me!

Holy fucking shit, you guys.

Holy shit.

Dig this: let's say you have some free time this November, say from the 13th to the 18th. Let's say there existed a cruise that went from Long Beach, CA to Ensenada, Mexico that just so happened to fit into that schedule. Let's also say (hypothetically speaking of course) that on the first night of the cruise is a concert by VIDEO GAMES LIVE. Just to fucking START. Let's say this whole cruise is packaged for gamers. Let's say Cloris Leachman was a guest star, just to tag along for the fun of the thing. Let's just pretend for a moment that there would be a full casino, fine dining, Wii tournaments, handheld contests, the works.

Let's just think about the notion that there exists a short, inexpensive vacation for gamers to just relax in the Pacific ocean soaking up that Mexican sun and talk about games for a few days. The very PURPOSE of this aquatic mobile congregation of like minded technophiles is for us to knock back a few drinks and argue on the virtues of Western vs. Eastern RPGs. Just for the hell of it.

And, just for shits and giggles, let's say Grandma was going to be there to bullshit about games right there with the rest of us.

Well goddammit, it's happening.

I'm not even kidding.

It's not some podunk rowboat fitted with a television and an N64 with a single copy of GoldenEye for us to fight over, no. This is a huge-ass Carnival line CRUISE.

Look at this shit:

Yeah.

Pools, spas, restaurants, and the best damn video games concert in the WORLD. This little cruise has been officially added to their world tour schedule, slated for November 14th, 2008. If you want to see them, this is truly the way to do it. You simply CANNOT do better than this, I SWEAR to you. Of the whole trip, this concert is what I'm looking forward to the most. YOU SHOULD COME, DAMMIT!

Grandma's not much of a drinker, to be honest. She wants to hang out with you guys deckside and talk gaming. I'm a responsible drinker (never the day before I have to work and never before driving) and I'll be completely sincere: I want to feel the pleasant buzz of Mezcal and Tequila with the Pacific wind on my face. I want to buy you guys a drink. I want to test the functional impairment of Wii playing after six shots of whatever Agave-based liquors they have to offer. It's a vacation. That's what vacations are for. I'm not an obnoxious drunk, I'm quite giddy in fact! So you can make fun of me right along with Grandma if you want to. Or join me! It's all good!

Let's go to Mexico, hang out with Grandma, watch what may be the most brilliant concert of this decade, bullshit about games and just have a blast doing it.

Seriously.

Sign up for this thing.

And, because you know us by now, here's some full disclosure: Grandma isn't getting paid to come to the cruise. I'm not getting paid to advertise it. She was invited and emphatically said yes. We're just thrilled to go. Grandma doesn't whore herself out to anyone, not even for a cruise. She and I both like to keep things honest. It's just easier that way. So let's be honest. Drinks and food are probably going to be expensive. You folks that have been on cruises before know what I'm talking about; it's a fucking cruise. That's how they are. I'm going to work on saving a lit bit to make sure Grandma has a good time. You should do the same for yourselves (but seriously, hit me up for a drink, I'm always happy to.)

It's a shorter cruise compared to a lot of the mega two-week cruises so you don't have to bring too much unless you intend to gamble, which- by all means do if that's your thing. I'll keep mentioning it throughout the year in case you forget where to register. If you don't yet have your passport, GET IT NOW. We aren't just parking outside Baja and looking ashore, we're GOING TO MEXICO. So you need a passport. The cruise is in November so you've got lots of time for the State Department to screw up your application and get it right.

Let's go! I'm serious! How often to you get to go away from things for awhile? Make an impulsive decision to treat yourself. This is going to rock.



Okay!

Grandma is currently tackling Veteran Mode on Call of Duty 4.

You have no idea how happy this makes me. It wasn't that long ago when Grandma was terrified of FPS games. Sure, she played them. But she never really counted herself as an FPS gamer. She dug RPGs and platformers, she'd tell the press, but apart from that she always said she liked some of the more difficult FPS games like Perfect Dark and Halo with the caveat that she completely sucked at them.

I cannot take credit for any of that. I never pressed her to play any game or genre, I just kicked back and watched her do her thing. As you could tell from some of the videos, like when she played Resistance: Fall of Man, I'm not much of a coach, either. I know fuck all about FPS strategy other than that which got me through the level. She did this on her own.

I'm pretty sure the progression of skill level went something like RE4 - Halo - Lost Planet - Resistance: FoM - Doom 3 - Gears of War - Halo 3 - Mass Effect - Call of Duty 4. She is getting through checkpoints on Veteran difficulty that I simply could not. It's a beautiful thing to see. So far she is to Act II: One Shot, One Kill. The last bit of sniping at the end of the mission is starting to make her, well.. let's say "frustrated."

You bet your ass we're going to have another video here in the next week.

She hasn't attempted multiplayer mode yet; hell, she doesn't even have a single achievement for Team Fortress 2. I think it's in part because she's intimidated by those online who know who she is and also because Xbox Live wasn't exactly cooperating in finding matches when she was deep into Orange Box. I think that's why she moved on to Mass Effect so quickly.

When Jennifer with Sony sent Grandma Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, she also included Heavenly Sword just in case Grandma was into that too. Grandma popped it in after she was done with Mass Effect so she wouldn't neglect any of her systems. She likes to give each console an even break when she's done with a game. To play a Wii game, then a 360 game, then a PS3 game seems to lower the wear on her setup and in some karmic way she's not hurting the feelings of any one of her soulless machines. (Don't laugh, I think we all do it to some extent.)

But Heavenly Sword and Grandma just did not get along. Sure, the graphics were incredible, but Grandma had difficulty with the timing of the attacks; treating the game as a button masher instead of another Devil May Cry. Add to that a rather over-the-top plotline with extraordinarily dramatic dialogue and some frustrating SixAxis controls for the flight path of projectiles and it was pretty much over for Grandma. She didn't like it. So I bought her Call of Duty 4 based on your constant recommendations online so that she might have a new challenge. I figured if she didn't like that either, no problem; she could get maybe 200 achievement points and I would have something to play on my own profile for those rare days when I don't have anything to do.

But she really got into it!

Grandma's main problem is that she battles her way through a checkpoint so quickly that often she doesn't pick up the right weapons to get through the next one, so she starts the chapter over again a little wiser and with more of a tactical plan. Through a combination of repetition, memorization of AI movement and locations, as well a healthy dose of emotional outbursts, she eventually gets through.

Sometimes I honestly don't know how. She's putting C4 in doorways and bottlenecking enemies into claymores and doing shit I could only get through on Hardened difficulty by running from cover to cover praying I could go prone by the time a bullet flew by. Apparently that doesn't work as well in Veteran mode.

So.. well done, Grandma!


Many, many of you have been e-mailing us and leaving comments on YouTube wondering about Grandma's holiday and what she got. Truth is, not much. We had a pretty modest Christmas this year. When I got her the television I said "well, that's your Christmas present. I'm broke!" I wasn't kidding :) She of course didn't care, she's cool like that. From the rest of the family she got some awesome gift certificates to one of her favorite local cooking-supply stores among other things. She did get a pair of pajamas with the Super Mario Bros. logo printed all over it, which she's probably rocking right now as I type this.

I got her the Close Encounters of the Third Kind Boxed Set on BluRay. She loves that movie. We're starting to rack up a little BluRay collection. Right now she has Weeds: Season 1, 28 Days Later, Kingdom of Heaven, Ratatouille (which is awesome in high definition), and I have the Blade Runner: Final Cut boxed set. Now that Warner Brother's has gone the way of the Blue, there's a lot of movies she has her eyes on.

Let me back up a little.

Grandma had a god-awful, shitty Christmas. I had a awful, no-good shitty New Years. Our holidays were just BAD. Not at all because of the gifts, we loved what we got. We're not the greedy type. Gifts were great.

No, it was something quite different.

Let me tell you a little bit about our holiday season. On Christmas Eve morning Grandma felt an incredible pain in her stomach. It was bad. REALLY bad. She later told me is was worse than childbirth. It had kept her up the night before and now it wasn't letting her do anything. She couldn't bake the cookies she wanted to, she couldn't sit down, she couldn't stand up, she couldn't do shit. If it was gas or something simple, it was the worst fucking gas she ever had in her life. She called her doctor who gave her the usual predictable answer: go to the ER.

So she did.

I drove her to Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna where she's pretty much a regular customer anymore. It just so happened that I was the only photographer on duty that day, but luckily the assignment was scheduled for later that morning in the same city as the hospital. So the plan was, take Grandma to the hospital, get her registered and attended to, go to the courthouse for the assignment, take the photo, go back to the office, upload the photos, go back to the hospital, see what's up with Grandma. It worked pretty well! But the day was filled with omens. That morning the windshield on the Jeep cracked from the intense cold as the defrosters blasted on the other side. The coffee machine at the courthouse spit out grounds into the water. The cell phone battery died. Lots of little things like that. Warnings, maybe.

When I got back to the hospital, Grandma told me she had a fresh round of CAT-scans and MRIs coming up, so we were going to be there for awhile. They gave her some morphine which helped the pain somewhat, and we were pretty sure that when the tests came back clear she would get to go home and that would be the end of it.

They kept her overnight.

Now, this is Grandma we're talking about. One might think of such a situation as an "aw jeez golly mister, but it's CHRISTMAS!" kind of episode, but that's not the case with Grandma. I was in the waiting room playing Lumines II when she finally called me back and told me to go home until they knew what the fuck was going on. She called that night, and she was PISSED.

We made the decision as a family that we wouldn't open the presents until she got home from the hospital, which we figured (and the nurses figured) would be on Christmas Day, sometime in the afternoon. It just wouldn't be cool for her to miss the thing, so we'd wait. Well, that pissed Grandma off too. She more or less said "goddammit, you don't have to wait for me to open your presents, that would make ME feel like shit!"

So we opened a few and brought Grandma up some of hers. They kept her overnight again. After the third day of this, she never really was told what had caused the most sharp pain of her life, only that "well, it's not there anymore, or at least not as much so.... you're cool. Followup with your doctor."

She's fine now, but that was one shitty Christmas. She came home, got back to gaming and we went shopping the next day so she could use her giftcards.

THAT was just a prelude for an even shittier New Years Day.

I can't drink New Years Eve. Not allowed. Personal rule. I'm working that night, driving to all manner of bars and restaurants photographing the celebrations for the big New Years spread. Drinking and driving isn't safe nor is it smart and drinking while WORKING is just downright stupid. Add both of them together and you can see why it's a pretty good rule to have. Being the third year in a row of doing this I don't mind, really.

So imagine the irony when, the next morning as I'm driving back from work to drop off the photos from the previous night, THIS HAPPENS:


Black ice. High winds. Blowing snow. Hell, I wasn't even speeding.

If you look close, you can even make out Grandma's special "OGHC" license plates.

Luckily, I was the only one in the car, I was wearing my seatbelt, and nobody else was in front of me when it flipped. But let me tell you, the people that stopped immediately to pull me out of the flipped vehicle and cleared away the glass and called 911 and got my camera bag well... those people are my fucking heroes. I hadn't expected that. THAT was awesome. The unexpected kindness and urgency I saw made me almost not even care that the car we had loved so much that had been through so much had just been destroyed by a thin patch of frozen water.

To whoever you are, thank you.

The time it took between the car settling in a ditch after the rollover and my ass being in a hospital bed was maybe 8, 9 minutes tops. Mantua-Shalersville police department were quick as a bunny out there, man. Lots of accidents that day and they were on top of them all.

Well, just fucking GUESS which hospital I went to.



The neckbrace and everything turned out to be an unnecessary precaution. I walked out of there maybe an hour or two later (following X-Rays and CAT-scans and all that jazz) without a scratch on me. I had some shattered glass in my hair. I think that was pretty much it.

How lucky was THAT.

The paper called me later that night to see if I had any weather related, car-in-a-ditch type feature art for them during my travels. They still didn't know I had been in an accident.

It just so happened I shot some pictures from the back of the ambulance before we took off to the hospital. (The paramedics must have thought I was goddamn insane.) I told my editors the story and it made front page above the fold the next day. You can read it if you like!

At the end of this messy story is as good of an outcome as I could have hoped for. The Jeep was totaled but insurance paid for everything. Grandma got a much more gas-efficient car with less mileage and less of a chance of rollover to replace the Jeep. I finally killed the fucking car, but maybe it was for the better.

So when I tell you that our holidays were somewhat lacking in that charming fireside spirit, even as bad as they were, slap me upside the head and remind me it honestly could have been worse.

A HELL of a lot worse.

I've thought quite hard on just how worse it could have been.

I could have lost my RT button finger, for instance.


Upcoming posts include a new Call of Duty 4 video, a whole post on Grandma's adventures with Dead Head Fred (by request), and Evan sent Grandma a couple of NEW games that Grandma is excited to try, so lots to come!

Game on!

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Video 22: Grandma plays Mass Effect

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The current state of things

Wii bowling teams at retirement homes, the Penny-Arcade guys having one of those moments, AARP trying its best to teach older folks about video games, a 95 years young Japanese woman playing Halo 3, the Brain Age phenomenon with all of its knock-offs and cheap imitations, pensioners becoming addicted to World of Warcraft... and what does it all mean? Where are we going? What is the significance? Are the older folks leading the games industry to new frontiers or is the gaming industry trying desperately to steer us all back into the comfort of the familiar? What will all this look like in ten years?

All questions being currently asked and answered by people much smarter than us, no doubt; a massive amount of purchasing data is being illustrated on the whiteboards and Powerpoint presentations in the offices of the curious executives and shareholders of the industry. Grandma wasn't a catalyst for all this. She doesn't influence these folks or hold some position of advocacy on behalf of her generation; she never did. As we have said before, Grandma is just a teeny, tiny part of an inevitability. The attention brought to her, however, has afforded us with the opportunity for a unique perspective on the future of things; to see the whole picture from different levels.

So let's do some predicting.

1. Media & Sales

Here's how it works for a lot of older folks today: Through news programs, newspaper articles and the front pages of websites like Yahoo and MSNBC that syndicate Reuters or AP feeds (before they check their email, they usually glance over the news a bit) they'll hear about Brain Age or about the Wii. When talking with their friends, they might talk a little about how they've heard it's fun and easy to play. The conversation tends to lead to one of three different ways: First, about how they know someone whose kids have one and really like it to which the subject switches to the kids and not the system. Second, about the mental health benefits of things like Brain Age to which the subject switches to homeopathy and the snake-oil promises of charlatans. Third, and most unfortunate, is how difficult it is to get one of those newfangled Wiis nowadays.

Now- of course this isn't everyone, it isn't even Grandma's personal experience (she's a bit of an anomaly), but give us the benefit of the doubt when we say it's the trend.

Next, it will be a day of shopping in a mall or big-box store like Best Buy, Circuit City, WalMart or Target (less typically a GameStop or EBGames or something similar). They will look at the displays a bit and the first thing they will usually see is a giant wall of games behind glass of all varying degrees of violence and cartoonishness. It's pretty overwhelming at first glance to an impulse buyer. You'll notice already that in some instances, a repeating video in the fashion of an short infomercial, rather than a playable demo, will play above the Nintendo section, which stands out from the rest of the wall because of the thick, white borders on all of the games. If they watch a bit or at least confirm that this commercial is talking about the same thing they heard or read about, they might stay a bit longer; completely abandoning the impulse buyer attitude and moving towards the behavior of a true shopper. Overcoming all odds, the person will approach a salesperson.

"Excuse me, is this the thing... the um... Nintendo something or other I heard about with the bowling and the math problems?"

Good Salesperson - "Yes! We've sold these for kids, for college students, parents, retirement homes, it's pretty much for everybody...."
Bad Salesperson - ".....yup. For your grandkids, right?"
Most Salespeople - "Yup."

If the salesperson manages to fish around to find out what the person already knows about it without sounding patronizing and rude AND doesn't overcomplicate things as they typically do around older folks to get a moment of feeling "man, old people don't know shit about electronics. I should ask her what it was like to ride a motherfucking horse to school" feeling of superiority (this isn't always out of malice, but some salespeople tend to overuse acronyms and spew technobabble so they can feel as though they are educating the customer), they will score a sale.

That's about how it works nowadays.

Here's how that's going to change:

Older folks are going to become a lot more web-savvy. They are already a lot more internet proficient than most folks give them credit, but the days of the newspaper and single-time-slot television news shows are coming to an end, for better or worse. This means in a decade or less you're going to have a hell of a lot more 60+ year old forum users. The older demographic will be courted the same way the rest of us are courted now, with PR plants, trusted review sites, and blogs. Sites like ours will do alright, I suppose, but it's going to be the large community sites like GeezerGamers and 2old2play that will hype the newer stuff and influence buying decisions (if hype is warranted; both sites are filled with honest folks who give honest opinions). Truth is, they probably aren't going to need to change their format much if at all, but the big dogs will be the community based sites linking the videos at GamesTrailers and articles on Kotaku and Joystiq and The Escapist and all the good ones that exist or have yet to exist. New blogs written by older gamers will appear and become popular and trusted.

It isn't a "new paradigm" or any of that bullshit, it's just a demographic shift. Today's 55 year old dad and VP of International Sales is the 65 year old bored-ass blogger of the future. It's possible that a mature gaming magazine might pop up and become popular, but the way publishing costs are these days, it's fairly safe to assume most opinions will be formed on the web first. Most of all, it's going to be about trust. Plants, carefully disguised press releases, and paid-for articles of praise for games and systems will always be a part of things, unfortunately, but they are going to have to get really sneaky. In ten years the whole Web 2.0 cliché user will be pretty seasoned, and it will be tempting to use the tricks of today, but god help the poor marketing folks of the future who try to fall into old habits. The older generations have a wicked bite when they've been played.

Because of this media change, the point-of-sale experience also changes. You'll see more of them in GameStops and EB Games-type stores. They will already know exactly what they want; everything else is just polite conversation. The box stores will no longer require the Brain Age kiosk or the repeating infomercial to stand out from a mosaic of choices. The older generation isn't a primary focus of the industry in the future same as it isn't one today; but they are assimilated. No longer will a salesperson immediately break out the casual game recommendation when a mature gamer asks for ideas for personal entertainment. It won't just be Brain Age and Card House, it will be the nineteenth iteration of Final Fantasy VII for the PSP 9000³ or whatever the fuck we're all playing then. A good RPG will be the new audio-book for many; a game that rewards you with a great story.

That's the good. Now for the bad.

2. Games & Design

There are some obvious adaptations we'll likely see in games; mandatory closed-captioning or subtitles (sometimes a pain in the ass for developers but long since overdue), newer accessibility options and an advanced, chock-full-of-ads social networking system that may likely become cross-platform; Home for the PS3 and XBox Live for the 360 will seem as antiquated as AOL web browsing is to us today, no- a truly powerful network will be accessible and changeable from all consoles. Like MySpace but more clumsy and full of achievements and successes and records and videos of all of your gaming travels.

But even this mystical beast will be overshadowed by something horrifying.

Consider: For every Orange Box and Okami, there are 30 Kane & Lynches and Red Steels. The primary market focus isn't going to disappear with the inclusion of an older demographic BUT you are going to see whole shitload of horrible, god-awful games flooding the shelves at the big box stores that will try and desperately fail to make incredible claims about the broad reach of appeal. So, comparatively, for every Brain Age and Wii Sports, you're going to have 30 World Championship Poker IIs.

This isn't just because they want to exploit a new, older market. It's something more sinister. We, as a gaming community, young and old, have to prepare for a time when the Jack Thompsons of this country will win.

Gaming has always been an easy scapegoat of the publicity hungry politician. If the ESRB continues to handle them the way they are now, it is likely that those of us here in the states will soon experience the same kind of gaming iconoclasm that is already in place in Germany. That means banned games, harsher ratings boards, and extremely cautious retailers.

So: there will be a factioning of the gaming community. A broad spectrum of gamers of all ages who have been enjoying their entertainment for a time will try, and likely fail, to fight back against the censors. There will be older gamers who focus primarily on casual gaming that will feel as though they have won a moral victory and directed the industry into something more noble. Then there will be younger gamers who will blame the older crowd for spoiling the fun; isolating them in an attempt to return to the days where everyone, in a way, was represented in the market.

Shareholders of major publishers will panic and demand expansion rather than a costly lobbying battle. Think of it. Partridge Family Expansion Packs for Rock Band. New, downloadable house designs for The Swiss Family Robinson Adventure built of the Little Big Planet engine (fuck, I might just play that now that I think on it.) And yes, Biblical games out the ass. Maybe even a few good ones. ANYTHING to cater to the populist call for a new technological conservatism. And yet, it will come from both major political parties leaving everyone to congratulate themselves, and all of us to blame for the apathy that set it in place.

This is big money. We can't reasonably assume that the art is going to be protected at the expense of losing a corporation. Forget the masses of gamers who vote, forget the popularity, this is simply a war we cannot win if today's lobbying efforts are any example of our competence as an influential community. Chances are, this terrifying new world is exactly where we are headed according to Grandma.

Games are going to be quite different in a decade, but it's not just going to be improvements in graphics and audio and new input devices, it's going to be a whole different realm. The older folks are going to be blamed for it. And they will certainly not benefit from it.

This isn't what Grandma wants to happen. This isn't the gaming utopia we all dream about; the paradise we seem to feel is on its way. Things are great right now, but that doesn't mean they will stay that way. Could we be wrong? Maybe. I fucking hope so. I would be so happy to learn in ten years time that we were the crazy people who hoarded food for a Y2K disaster that never came. But as we all enjoy the current state of things, we have to think long and hard about what is to come.

Game on.

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'Goddammit, Josh': A reflection on the loss of Grandma's Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction save files

There is a certain phenomenon in the gaming world in which one's save files on a memory card, hard-drive, or cartridge are deleted by another, whether it be a friend, enemy or relative. The phenomenon is typically the product of accident or negligence, but on certain, rare occasions it is performed deliberately out of malice. Either way, it is unique to a certain classification of instances that transcend the personal relationship between a gamer and a single-player game, forming a new, multiplayer element to the experience above and beyond the intentions of its creators.

Most instances within this classification focus on distraction, for instance- a roommate yelling on the telephone in the chair across the room; a parent of a younger gamer scolding them for some infraction; a child of a gamer attempting to gain attention, or the common "HA, MOTHERFUCKER- YOU CAN'T SEE THE TELEVISION!" gag performed daily by persons waving their arms in front of the eyes of Guitar Hero players world-wide.

The file deletion phenomenon, however, is unique in that the damage can be easily and effectively measured with precision; the time one had invested advancing within a single-player game up to the moment of deletion is lost forever.

In our house this phenomenon is called the "Goddammit, Josh."

Our house hosted Thanksgiving again this year. When I woke up and came upstairs, I found that my brother had already arrived. He was sitting in Grandma's chair in the gameroom playing something on the PS3.

"Josh, what are you doing?"
-"I'm playing Ratchet & Clank!"
"Does Grandma know?"
-"Yeah, but-"
"Who are you signed in as?"
-"I'm playing on Grandma's profile."
"JESUS GOD, DON'T DO THAT DUDE!"
-"No, it's cool, I started a new save, I'm not messing with anything...."
"Create your own profile if you have to, but don't play on hers."
-"I'm not, I'm just on a new save! It's fine!
"......"

There's a few very good reasons we don't play on Grandma's profile. It's all networked so when people see Grandma's gamertag or PSN ID pop up and say "OGHC is online," it better ass be Grandma holding the controller. She has friends online who message her and talk sometimes and the last thing she needs is for one of the kid's friends to pop on her account and start mouthing off to people who then think it's her. It hasn't ever happened, but it's possible. Also, her achievement points are all fairly earned on XBL. She's not overly noble about it or anything, but if one were to casually compare gamerscores with Grandma one day and find that she had just obtained the "Right Hand of God" achievement on Guitar Hero III, they might think that she's capable of that kind of thing, then rumors start, things are posted on certain forums, charges of fraud are made and we get more hate-mail than Charles Guiteau on President's Day. She likes her settings a certain way. She likes subtitles to be the default. She likes her controller sensitivity turned just right. She doesn't like people fucking around with that.

All good enough reasons, but none more important than the fact that GAMES AUTOSAVE NOW.

Grandma hadn't had much time to play Ratchet & Clank this week because of all the cooking and baking in preparation for Thanksgiving. She was cooking pumpkin pies from scratch, which involves torturing a lot of rather tiny pumpkins. She had stuffing to make, which for her takes forever because she does things just her way. All of her save files were dated for Monday, the 19th. That's how busy she was. It wasn't until yesterday evening when she finally sat down with a full glass of Diet Coke and a few printed pages from GameFAQs to guide her towards the location of the last Gold Bolts when she discovered that every save in her profile was dated for Thanksgiving morning.

There exists a hierarchy of frustration for the Goddammit Josh phenomenon.

Level 1: 5% or less of the game complete at time of deletion.

Expected result upon discovery: "Man, now I have to go through all the opening cut-scenes and tutorials again... Goddammit.... This cut-scene really is cool though, look at this..."

Level 2: 6-15% of the game complete at time of deletion.

Expected result upon discovery: "Aw, this is BULLSHIT. I had JUST GOT the one weapon and things were getting good. God DAMMIT!"

Level 3: 16-40% of game completed OR the save immediately after the defeat of a particularly difficult boss.

Expected result upon discovery: "WHAT THE FUCK?! Aw.. you have to be kidding- aww.... no fucking way, no FUCKING way he deleted that. God DAMMIT, JOSH..... He's going to create his OWN goddamn profile if he wants to play, I can't believe he did that."

Level 4: 41-96% of game completed at time of deletion.

Expected result upon discovery: "You. Are. SHITTING ME?! Look at this shit. It's gone! Completely gone. You know how many hours I put into this?! How CLOSE I was?! That was the whole game!! I have to start ALL OVER. FROM THE BEGINNING. Look... Look at this shit... ALL the way back, and I do mean ALL THE WAY. That's it. He's not touching anything in here. NOTHING. How fucking CARELESS do you have to be?! GOD.. DAMMIT!!! Jesus... so many hours in- THIS FAR IN and I have to do it all over again. I don't even REMEMBER where I found half this shit. All the BOOTS. All the WEAPONS. All the ARENAS. I have to do that robot thing again, all that swinging/timing shit.... I'll fucking......YiiiieeeeeEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

Level 5: 97-99% of game completed at time of deletion, i.e., just before final boss battle / final item collection

Expected result upon discovery.....

Well...

This WAS a Level 5 Goddammit Josh.

I had never seen one before. Not a Level 5. I remember witnessing a Level 4 once, a long time ago. If I remember correctly it was an accidental Memory Card format on her PSOne, right around the time she was finishing up FFVIII. I remember her being so hurt, so frustrated, that I honestly didn't think she would even start the game over.

You think you can prepare yourself for a Level 5, but you can't. Not to go through one yourself, and not even to watch someone else make the discovery on their own game.

So, although I'm sure most of you can imagine it; most of us have gone through it at some point, I'll give you a recent game example to provide a little emotional context:

Imagine you have been spending the past week or so, a little bit at a time after work, trying to get that "Little Rocket Man" achievement in Half Life 2: Episode 2. You have been schlepping around a tiny little garden gnome on what would be your second playthrough of the game. Every time you face an enemy, you put the gnome somewhere you can find it, change weapons, attack the living shit out of whatever is attacking you, then go back, pick up the gnome, and trudge on. It's not the most difficult task, perhaps, but it's certainly tedious, and worth arguably more than that 30 points that's coming to you once you reach White Forest Base. You've saved responsibly. Every time you get past some tricky part, you save. You just have a little more ways to go; that was your last save. You're SOOO close.

So you come home from work, pour yourself a drink, fire up your 360 in anticipation of completing this thing when suddenly YOUR FUCKING HARDDRIVE CATCHES FIRE--SOME CAPACITOR INSIDE THE 360 EXPLODES SENDING YOUR CONSOLE FLYING THROUGH YOUR FRONT WINDOW AS THE GLASS SHARDS FROM YOUR AV RACK RIP LIKE SHRAPNEL INTO YOUR 60" SAMSUNG LCD HDTV SCREEN AND CUTTING INTO YOUR CHILDREN'S SKIN AS THEY RUN IN CIRCLES, SCREAMING IN PAIN, BLOOD STREAMING FROM THEIR EYEBALLS.

It's a lot like that.

Grandma:

".......Josh, if you-... .....I swear to god if he deleted my-...... IF HE FUCKING DELETED...... oh god! It's gone!"
-"What?"
"These aren't my saves- THESE AREN'T MY SAVES! I didn't... look..... these are all at the beginning..... I just... two more... gold bolts..... where are the saves?"
-"Are you signed into your profile?"
"Yes! OGHC! He didn't... oh jesus.... EVERY. FUCKING. FILE........They're just....gone......everything is..........Goddammit, Josh..."

And then she was quiet for a real long time just staring at the save list. I didn't expect that. Strange things occur during a Level 5. She was probably thinking. She was thinking about every difficult part of that game she would now have to repeat. She was thinking about how when she replayed it all of the plot up until the final boss would be something she already knew, how there was nothing more to discover or new weapons with which to play. She was thinking about what she could have done differently Thursday morning; maybe had been more assertive or just paid better attention to what Josh was doing when he walked into her game room to try some stuff.

Or maybe she was just plotting different ways to kill my brother. Maybe she was considering places to dump the body and how to clean up the mess from the hardwood floors. Maybe she was thinking about how to properly respond to the flurry of articles that would no doubt be written in vindication of those who said that gamers are a violent people, and maybe she thought her good buddy and best friend in the whole wide world Jack Thompson would offer his legal services in the murder trial that would be forever known as the "Ratchet & Clank Killing."

But I doubt it.

She was just pissed-off and hurt.

And sometimes when you're pissed, there's nothing to say.

But we gamers are a hardy people. She'll start a new save on that beautiful game and she might even catch some glimpse of something to which she hadn't quite paid attention before the same way we find new hints of the identity of Kaiser Soze every time we watch Finding Nemo. It was obviously an accident but... god DAMMIT, Josh...

Anyway: One way I think you can help Grandma is by sharing your own Goddammit Josh stories. This phenomenon is more common than any of us really think. It might help her to ease back into R&C.

Game on!

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Grandma's back, baby!

Grandma's health has gotten better. The bills are being paid early. The Jeep is back from the shop and running better than before the accident. My schedule is now fairly regular. Working longer weeks has finally paid off in spades for me.
Gaming for Grandma has become fun again; filling the time with Guitar Hero III, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Dead Head Fred, Halo 3, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, Heavenly Sword, as well as all the good backups: Catan & Texas Hold 'Em... well, she's overwhelmed with gaming awesomeness at the moment. This is the very opposite of the dry spells she's had this year. The question of "what are you playing tonight?" is met with
"Jesus... I don't KNOW!" No longer is it frustration that she has to fall back on something she's just not into, it's a huge buffet of the finest foods- and Grandma's appetite is endless.

Things are awesome.
There is so much to post about.
God damn.

Let me back up a little.

Halloween is a big deal here in our little village. While other towns have houses that compete over Christmas decorations; each neighbor quietly counting the strings of lights over the gables of the other homes on their block trying to appraise the cost to compare to their own, OUR village is filled with folks who try to out-perform one another in garage-based haunted houses, candy quality, lawn decorations, and overall tenor of the poor fool handing out the treats.

It's not uncommon to overhear the parents walking around, politely trading flames to light their cigarettes, say things like "oh well, Maple St. really killed everybody this year. Fucking... full-sized Snickers, man. It must be nice to have money" or "Jesus, did you see the haunted house on Spruce? Jesus GOD that man has too much time on his hands. Still... the lighting was well done, you have to give the bastard that."

This year, however, the folks around the village were talking about our house. It wasn't because we had elaborate decorations, hell we didn't even have pumpkins this year because Grandma wanted to use them all for pies. It wasn't because we had the best candy, pretty much everyone knows a Sam's Club membership and two or three 300ct Wonka & Hershey variety bags is an easy way to be liked. In truth, they weren't even talking about our house, still known around these parts by the name of it's previous owners; they were talking about the woman sitting in front of the house wearing perhaps the cheapest costume next to the dude on Main St with a sheet over his head.

Grandma.


"Don't point... look.. that's her. THAT'S FUCKING HER!"

"I heard she's like 90 years old and plays in Xbox tournaments or something."

"My son's friend went over there once to hang out with one of her grandkids, and he said it's true- she's got a game room and everything. She's in there screaming at the hard parts of the game and she's got like every gaming thing you can imagine."

"I bet she's got money. You know how many times she's been on TV?"

"Look... she's got a PacMan head on.."
-"No, that's a MS. PacMan head. It's got a bow."
"Whatever.

"My kids love that goddamn Guitar Hero game."
-"Is that what she has?"
"It's actually kind of fun...."

But Grandma didn't hear any of that. The parents were standing next to me on the sidewalk; smoking their cigarettes and fiddling around with their flashlights. There are trick-or-treat boundaries that are silently obeyed. It was the KIDS that got a kick out of Grandma.

"HEY!! I KNOW YOU!"

Kid - "Can you beat Free Bird on Expert Mode?"
Grandma - "No."
Kid - "My big brother can."
Grandma - "He sounds really good! Have you played Guitar Hero III yet?"
Kid - ".......THERE'S A THIRD ONE?!"

"AW MAN! I've seen like ALL of your videos!"

"Do you really play video games or do you just pretend to?"
-"I play them! I don't think it would be very fun to pretend, do you?"
"No. ....Do you like Naruto? I like Naruto a lot."

"Are you really Old Grandma Hardcore?"

"Who's your favorite Super Smash Brother character!"

"My mom says you say bad words."

"YOU'RE FUNNY!!"

Meanwhile, the high-schoolers either stuck walking their siblings around the village or picking up candy of their own could be seen outside our house snapping away pictures of Grandma on their camera-phones and comparing Gamerscores.

There were even a couple parents who made the obvious maneuver to avoid our house; either because of some moral disagreement with Grandma's habits or because they don't let their kids take candy from anyone they don't know or, even less sinister, because our house is on top of a huge goddamn hill and they were pretty much done for the evening.

Grandma had a ball talking about video games with the little kids who found it to be the coolest thing ever that a little old lady in THEIR town not only knows who Naruto is, but also agreed that Clash of Ninja 2 was really hard. To be honest, she didn't want to hand out candy this year at first, but Mom doesn't get home from work until late now and I was "conveniently busy." I offered to take her place but after the first half-hour or so, she was so into it she decided to stick it out until the crowds had died down. She loved it.


After the decorations around town were replaced by red wreaths and depictions of turkeys gleefully standing next to boring stalks of corn, Grandma was waiting patiently for a gunship to circle out from hiding so she could fire another rocket the relative safety of a concrete stairwell.

But then: disaster struck.

And disaster's name is Alyx.

"Goddammit, NO! NO! GET BACK DOWN YOU STUPID BITCH!! NO!!!!"
*Alyx has died*
"FUCK!!"

Whenever Grandma ducked down into the stairwell to wait, Alyx would push her way past her and stand out in the open to face down a rain of shattered wood and bullets holding a motherfucking pistol. Grandma isn't altogether unfamiliar with Half-Life 2: Episode 1, but goddamn if she wasn't having flashbacks to another "escort" type game.

"Why do they always do this?!"
-"Do what?"
"It's like they don't know what COVER is. They just STAND. RIGHT where they don't need to be."
-"Who?"
"THESE PEOPLE!! Alyx, Ashley, anybody who has to follow you around and NOT die. At least The Arbiter came back to life after awhile and could DO stuff."
-"Alyx does stuff."
"Yeah, like a handgun is going to do anything against THAT THING. This is BULLSHIT."

And yet, after enough tries, Grandma made it through. She beat Episode 1 sometime while I was working. When I got home, she was playfully jumping around the insane world of Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction. Needless to say, I was a bit confused.

"When did you get that?"
-"Isn't it beautiful! Look at this... WEEEEE!!!"
"Yeah, but when did you get it? I had the car all day today."
-"Jennifer sent it to me!"
"Jennifer? Sony Jennifer?"
-"Yeah! I e-mailed her to ask her something and she said she would send me copies of Ratchet & Clank and Heavenly Sword if I wanted, so I said sure!"
"Well what did you ask her?"
-"I asked her when the new Ratchet & Clank was coming out."
"......"
-"What?!"
"Well, I don't know- it sounds like a thinly veiled way of asking her if she'd send it to you."
-"It wasn't! Some places said it comes out on the 23rd and I called the GameStop and they said it wasn't out yet and I wasn't sure so I asked!"
"Grandma. You KNEW when it was coming out, we talked to the guys at INSOMNIAC on THEIR PODCAST about it. You could have looked at your own site!"
-"Yeah, but Jennifer was real sweet and sent me a copy. So it doesn't matter. She knows I'm not a begger. Seriously- check this out, it's cool as hell..."

But she wasn't really playing as she sped through from checkpoint to checkpoint; she was just seeing what it was like. She didn't pay attention to saving the game or reaching the objectives; Ratchet & Clank would have to wait until she was done with The Orange Box. So, the next day, she fired up her 360 again and began Episode 2. Witnessing her frustration with Episode 1, I knew I would have the perfect opportunity to make another video, but in the meantime- I was scheming.


Wal-Mart. The very name of the company can either strike the inner chords of a Midwestern snob as they lift their nose into the air or pass over the register completely; just another place to shop. Grandma and I live in Ohio, which- for better or worse, goes apeshit over the opening of Wal-Mart Supercenters. It's just a store for fuck's sake- you can buy food and shit their while shopping for clothes or taking your car in to have its tires rotated. But as much as we hate to admit it, the call of a new store opening close by intrigues us as much as any other out here. It's front page news in the local papers when a Wal-Mart is closed and replaced with its uber-cousin: the SUPER Wal-Mart. Our new iteration of the latest in retail shopping opened last Wednesday in Streetsboro.

Grandma wanted to go see what the new store was like (and so did I, to be frank.) But I had another reason for wanting to go.

We pulled up to this monstrosity of a store; just a few acres shy of the hyperbolous Costco depicted in Idiocracy- it's MASSIVE. A few weeks ago, it seemed like it was just woods and grass and a construction driveway heading out into the wilds. But now it was a pristine palace of asphalt, security cameras and new, faux-wood panels on aisle endcaps that presented an illusion that this place was anything more than just a plain ol' Wal-Mart. Despite Grandma's handicap parking permit, we still had to walk quite a ways to enter the beast. Apparently everyone else in town had the same idea (and yet each of us are convinced that we're not like all the other morons...)

There was some guy in a giant dancing tiger costume or some shit that would pat you on the head when you entered the store. He was unavoidable. Beyond that there were no less than five, trained and at-the-ready greeters to accost you will welcoming smiles before you can even grab a cart and enter into the fray.

We headed straight for the place we and everyone else goes when they first enter the place- The electronics section. Nothing ever changes back there, there aren't any new CD's or DVDs in the bargain bin, it's just a curious habit we seem to have. You enter a store, any store for browsing purposes- you head to electronics. They had a giant wall of televisions; all flat panel. Plasma. DLP. LCD. Projection. HD. 1080i. 1080p. 720p. Cheap. Expensive. Unknown brands. Trusted brands. Some were pretty awesome. Some had a contrast ratio so low they might as well have been shitty lightbulbs.

As we stood before this display like characters in a Normal Rockwell painting eyeing the first Zenith color televisions to hit the store windows at Higbees, a dutifully prepared, first-day Wal-Mart employee asked us if we needed any help.
I tried to drag out the moment a little.
"So... uh.. tell me because I always forget- which is better for video games: LCD or Plasma?" (like Grandma and I didn't know)
-"Oh, LCD. Definitely. You don't have the burn problems and all that." I couldn't take it anymore.
"Great! We'll take that one. And that stand over there. Grandma, your stand won't hold one that big, I have to get you a stand, too."
Grandma just stared at me with a look suspected sarcasm. "Hey, I can afford this! I've always wanted to get you a decent television, now I can, so I'm going to get it for you."
The Wal-Mart guy was still standing there.
-"So, you're serious then? You want that one?"
"Yes. And that stand over there."
-"Okay... um... look, it's a new store so I don't know where everything is yet so I'll go um... find those."
"That's cool, we'll wait."

Grandma's look changed from suspicion to "you're a moron and can't afford this" to finally "...are you sure?"

I was sure.

When we got home I busted into project mode. My motivations were two-fold and it showed. This wasn't just for Grandma. If Grandma finally got a big-screen HD television, then Mom would get the big TV from Grandma's game room. One of the kids would get the television currently in the living room and the circle of life continues. Grandma's happy, Mom is happy and the kids are happy. It also means I would have to dismantle two, possibly three rooms in a single evening.

We busted ass and got it done.

BEHOLD Grandma's new game-room setup:



I don't have a lens wide enough to show you everything from the front unless I use a fish-eye :) She deserved it. Ever since I started this thing she's laughed at comments saying "Jesus, get her a better TV" and "She has a 360 and a PS3 and she's NOT playing in HD? What's the point?!" etc.,.. Well, Microsoft and MTV gave her the 360. Nintendo gave her the Wii. She's gotten games from everybody. I keep feeling like I was the only one not doing all they could do to make her gaming life better. This is a tiny contribution to the overall effort in the grand-scheme of things, and I love making Grandma happy.

So is she happy?

Hell YES.

"Oh my fucking GOD."

Both of us were staring at Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction with our mouths open. It's like we were staring into a solar eclipse just after being told by a Mayan high priest that the Sun-god was angry. It was AMAZING. I honestly don't know why I waited this long. She put in Half-Life 2. Halo 3. Resistance: Fall of Man. Lost Planet. We watched every game with new eyes on this huge screen pointing and laughing in the ecstasy that we weren't fooled; HD was real. The differences were obvious. It wasn't the slight color shift we experienced when we first started using composite cables instead of a coaxial. It wasn't the slightly improved sharpness we experienced when we moved on to S-Video. It wasn't even the 'wow' when everything became saturated once we switched to Component cables.

It was as though we had been nearsighted for years and only just NOW discovered what the world looks like through prescription eyeglasses. How could we have been so stupid for so many years to think anything less than this was cool?! We felt as though we had wasted a good portion of our life on standard definition. It's so beautiful it's depressing.

As Grandma played on her new TV, she found that sometimes she would have to choose at which part of the screen to look. It's that big and that close.


Life continued. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was kicking Grandma's ass, although she never failed to tell me how much better it was whenever I was around.

"Hey! I can read the words now!"
-"What? You could read the subtitles before."
"Yeah, but now I can read the shit on the walls, on the suits, on the car, on everything! Like here- look... that says 'Restricted Area,' right?"
-"Sure."
"I couldn't tell you what that said before!"
-"Yeah but you could guess."
"Sure, but now I know!"

It went on like that for awhile. Last night she was approaching the end of the game. I sat on the computer in the game room just listening to the euphoria that is quality game audio. Tension was building. Striders were spotted by the water tower. Then the saw-mill. I heard Grandma reload her weapon and drive away after it; listening to the explosions in the distance. I won't give you any spoilers, but Grandma has determined that Half Life 2: Episode 2 probably has the most perfect ending to any video game in recent memory, if not ever.

The battle is incredible. It's powerful. It's difficult. Everything about it is perfect. The game as a whole might not reach perfection, but the ending certainly does. The alarms. The sound of the panic in the radio transmissions and PA speakers. The immensity of it all.

But by the time I pulled myself out of the experience of watching her do it to grab my camcorder to capture some great video of her at this, her finest moment in this beautiful game... it was over. She had done it. I had just finished rewinding the DV tape when I hear "Was that all of them? Is it OVER?! DID I MAKE... I MADE IT!! FUCKING HELL!! Jesus GOD that was a bitch! Wooo! CHRIST!! .....what do I do now.. oh, I follow this guy...."

Grandma:

This is probably a longshot because I've seen so many of you on my friends list playing it, but if there is any of you who have NOT bought The Orange Box yet, do it. Do it right now. Get it for your Xbox 360 or your PS3 or your PC, it doesn't matter as long as you get it. TODAY. I'm not even kidding with you. Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, fucking PORTAL... JESUS, it's just a beautiful, awesome, wonderful game. The last time I felt this way.. I don't even know. It was better than Bioshock and I LOVED Bioshock. You HAVE to buy this. It's just fucking gorgeous. Sure, it has some little problems with AI and it WILL freeze on you occasionally if you've been playing for a few hours and there are a lot of enemies on the screen, but it doesn't happen TOO often like it did in Lost Planet. It's going to be extremely hard to top this. Either they have to come out with Half-Life 3 or Episode 3 or SOMETHING in the next year or so or I might have to personally go down to Valve and do one of those hunger-strike things until they do. It's just that good. God DAMN it was good.

And now, Grandma is playing Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction. She goes back sometimes to play the original Half-Life 2 some nights, but I think it's safe to say she's done. The next post is going to be chock full of Ratchet & Clank goodness, and going by what I saw today, there will definitely be videos.

MOVING ON!

As I mentioned in the last post, Grandma made an appearance on Australian television, specifically ABC's Good Game during a segment that featured mature and senior gamers. You can watch it right here! The show made ABC's front page last week as well. The segment highlights the universality of the mature gaming phenomenon and repeats its inevitability. In other words, Grandma was proud to be a part of it. Cheers, Australia!


Grandma's friend and all around awesome games industry guru Vic Ireland sent Grandma a copy of Dead Head Fred for her PSP. It's a surreal thing that's kept her occupied on the little screen for a little while now, so she has lots to say about it in the next post. Prepare for brutality.


Also- do not forget that those of you who sent in postcards will be getting a little something from me in the post, so watch your mailboxes.

I can say with complete confidence that we are back on schedule. Grandma is engrossed in her own private gaming theater just waiting to talk to everyone about what she's playing. If you see her online, don't hesitate to send her a message. She loves to chat! (Although I wish she'd use her headsets more often.)

More to come!

Game on.

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Grandma not dead, doesn't want to go in the cart

It's not the first time something like this has happened; in 2005 I actually received a sympathy card. A single anonymous comment in a thread somewhere can trigger that sort of thing whether it's a joke or a misunderstanding or ...something, but allow me to clear things up right now by stating that Grandma, in every sense, be it biologically, cognitively and philosophically, is still alive.

She is not dead.

She's doing Science and is still alive.

She feels fantastic and is still alive.

Which brings me to the game Portal...

But how the hell can I talk about Portal when I haven't mentioned everything else for the past few weeks first?!

Dig: Evan emails Grandma to see if she'd like a copy of Halo 3. She was playing the copy of Blue Dragon he sent her so she's on sort of a Microsoft kick at this point; her poor Wii and PS3 just patiently counting down the days until she picks up copies of Metroid Prime 3 and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, respectively. Of course, she quickly gets back to him to say something on the lines of "fuck yeah!" It came about a day after that. Seriously, it was quick. Evan, you're very much like Santa Claus, I hope you know.

As Grandma sat listening to inane dialogue spoken by the most annoying English speaking voice actors towards the end of Blue Dragon (which was a phenomenal game, otherwise) she noticed her friends list exploding with Halo 3 requests. Her friends list on Xbox Live is at capacity, and she hadn't seen nearly as many people play BioShock upon release as she saw Halo 3 begin to saturate the entire list, and she thought BioShock was pretty dominant. Even that one guy who only ever seems to play Texas Hold 'Em for hours on end was now available in Social Slayer. Simply put, she was as excited as the rest of us.

Now, here's the funny part: literally the DAY that Halo 3 arrived, as she was playing Blue Dragon, her 360 died.
Her second Xbox 360. No red-rings-o-death this time. It would just sort of... freeze then fizzle away. She tried a different controller. She tried resetting it. She tried letting it sit and cool down for a few hours. Sure enough, five minutes in, *poof!*
At least it was consistent. She tried Halo 3, thinking that perhaps the third Blue Dragon disc was just wonky. It got all the way past the opening cutscene for the single player campaign, but after just a few moments, the same digital-artifact laced frozen screen was all she could see, rather than the texture rich helmet of the Arbiter leading Master Chief's squad through a jungle to attack some Brutes.

Well.... shit.

To their credit, Microsoft got this Xbox 360 to the repair center in Texas and back to Grandma in about two weeks.

In the meantime, Grandma had some money in the PS3 wallet since buying flOw awhile back, so she downloaded the worst online poker game in the history of online poker games. I don't even know what it's called. All I know is that it's on their online store, and Grandma fucking hates it.

"You can't turn off the goddamn animations, so whenever somebody calls or checks or folds, you have to see them scratch their chins or look at their nails- I swear to god they must think all women who play poker want to be portrayed as bimbos or some damn thing. I mean, it's fucking POKER! It's a CARD GAME! I don't give a shit about the graphics, there really doesn't need to be much more than some decent looking cards and a table. What's all this other shit?! And even THAT sucks. I remember being able to character customize better on old Xbox games. And there's hardly enough people on there to play, although at least it doesn't cut out as often as the 360 did. I don't really like it."

When her XBox 360 arrived from the repair center, I was lucky enough to be the only one home (she was out shopping, I think). Shiloh barked at the door, which was unusual for Shiloh because he's not really much of a guard dog. FedEx guy had me sign for it, and in about two minutes I had the power supply, ethernet and AV cords hooked up and was signed in under my gamertag playing the first level of Halo 3. I remember finishing Halo 2 around the same time as the rest of the world, but it all came rushing back. The Covenant, the Flood, Truth, Cortana.... I completed Heroic later that night.

I think Grandma let me take over just that one day. It had been awhile since I really had time to get into a game; I'm always worried that if I start one I'll play into the night too late as she does and feel groggy and shitty the next day at work.

After that- it was all her. It took her a bit longer to finish a Normal campaign, but that's because Grandma deals with The Flood a bit differently than regular people. She can't just run through and get to the next checkpoint, she has to blast every last one of the fuckers until there's no little red dots on the radar, which isn't always the best strategy. She was pleasantly surprised that the online demeanor of folks in ranked matches has matured a bit. There's less body humping and people calling nobody in particular "faggot" and the match playback system is the stuff of genius. If you find someone who's really good in a match and want to see things from their point of view afterwards, to study it; learn from it- you can! That, and seeing newer players unfamiliar with different maps run repeatedly off ledges to their deaths is sort of enjoyable in some sick, voyeuristic way.

She's still trying to plow her way through the rest of the game.

But she has something else in her cabinet that's causing distraction: The Orange Box.

She's been waiting for that thing for a looooong time. She bought the Xbox 360 version because hey: Achievement Points are good.

It didn't take long to get through the infinitely wonderful Portal, although she still has a lot of medals and advanced maps to get through (without using YouTube to cheat a solution, as I shamefully did.) "What's the point of playing a puzzle game if you're just looking up how to do it?" she told me. She's worried that her reflexes aren't quick enough for some of the Momentum based jumping sections of the advanced levels, but I think her problem is that her frustration shows and affects her game (if it didn't I don't know how interesting this website ever would have been.)

She's started in the middle of the Half Life series, opting to play Episode 1 first, then Episode 2, then Half Life 2. Why? Who knows. I'm still trying to get her to play Team Fortress 2 as well.

We'll be talking quite a lot about Halo 3 and The Orange Box in the coming days, I promise you that.

Let's see, what else...

Ah: you've sent Grandma lots of links and videos recently of other older folks getting into gaming and to say the least, she's thrilled! We're going to be talking about that too.

And to our Australian readers (one in particular, you know who you are ;) Grandma will be appearing on the ABC television show "Good Game" here pretty soon, so watch for it- I'll be posting more about this as it comes in! Grandma and I are both huge fans of The Chaser's War; so we're all about ABC.

Also: the Jeep is back and repaired, the insurance covered everything, we found a hell of a body shop that did an incredible job, and that nightmare is over. My work schedule is much more structured now, so hopefully these long gaps in between posts can be eliminated.

We have lots more to talk about but if I try to cram it all in one post it's going to be bad. More on the way!!

Game on!

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Sitting around, playing video games in the dark

The past month has been brutal. Grandma, stoically leveling up different classes in her Blue Dragon party, is waiting for me to come from work to tell me about something she read in EGM, about an e-mail from one of you, tell me about a part of whatever she's playing or to pass along a message from someone who called about a job- someone needs senior portraits done before some yearbook deadline; someone else liked a photo in the paper and looked me up for a copy, etc.,. and just to talk a little and find out about my day. She's waiting to tell me how, yet again, her doctors can't tell her what's wrong with her shoulder, why she was sick, when chest-pain is severe enough to call 911, which prescription drug is deteriorating her nervous system, and various other things about which they seem to have nothing to say.

I know this because Grandma is consistent. When I leave for work at 7:30am and finally come into the game room sometime around midnight, 1:00am, 2:00am, Grandma is always in her chair, listening for the sound of the keys hitting the desk; waiting for that thump of my camera gear hitting the floor, to arch her head around and say "hey! You made it home!"

She's always there, playing whatever she's into at the moment, waiting to say hello.

Lately, it's seemed as though we both had cause to worry that, when the day was over, one of us wouldn't be there to complete that perfect little ritual.

Earlier this month, on the way between assignments, a car pulled out in front of me on a back road. The thing cut out into the street like a deer from the woods; bolting from hiding the moment the beam of the headlights cuts away from its field of vision.

This was the result:


After the police had been called and my fingers stopped shaking, I was able to dial the house on my mobile. The first question my mom asked- "are you okay?"
-"Yes. I think so. The car is fucked up; Jesus Christ- it's gone. The wheel well, it's just.. Jesus fucking Christ..."
She didn't even hear anything past the word 'yes,' that's all she wanted to know. She didn't give a shit about the Jeep. While I was bawling into the phone about the car; the Jeep- that beautiful SUV that was the very first newish, non-clunker, dependable vehicle we had ever been fortunate enough to finally scrape enough together each month to afford- destroyed now no matter how careful I had been- she was talking to Grandma.
"Tim has been in an accident, said the car is gone."
-"Fuck the car, is he alright?" (like daughter- like mother)
"Yup."
And they were on their way.

With the Jeep awaiting insurance approval for repair, mom secured a rental car so she could get to and from work while I drove her car to my often sunrise to early morning shifts. Meanwhile, Grandma was stuck at the house without a vehicle until everything was resolved.

Being without a vehicle, especially for Grandma, produces a feeling that goes beyond boredom. She feels trapped. She can't go for walks because we live in a big house on top of a big goddamned hill that she wouldn't be able to ascend on foot on her best days. The kids are in school, mom is at work, I am at work, all she had left was her Wii, 360, PS3, broadband internet access, and a telephone. She needed a friend to talk to; or at least something to break the monotony.

So she got a dog.

She fell in love with a cream-white husky taken in by a rescue and made her decision that day.

Meet Grandma's dog:


Now, you know Grandma. You know her very well. You see a beautiful animal like that with its wolf-life back and kind face and you know of a recent, magnificent PS2 game featuring such a creature and you're already figuring out what she named it. You know EXACTLY what she named it. You would think you would, and so would I.

But you and I are wrong.

She named it fucking "SHILOH."

Shiloh! EVERYONE knows a dog named Shiloh. Neal Diamond wrote a song about it for fuck's sake. It's about original a dog name as "Sadie" or "Shadow." When I saw it I was about to playfully scold her for naming it Amaterasu or Shiranui or even just 'Okami' even though she didn't understand Japanese, but then she laid it on me. SHILOH.

Nevertheless, Shiloh is a great dog just perfect for Grandma. They love each other. He cries when she leaves the house. He's a powerful dog but he doesn't fight her. He is, without a doubt, Grandma's dog.

Now that Grandma had at least some companionship that didn't come from the speaker of a headset during a game of Catan, we kept up with our routines, undaunted by the accident; the kids drudgingly back in school, Grandma with her new friend plugging away at Blue Dragon, mom in her rental car plugging in her work week and me in her car plugging away at mine. Of course, when we're all so focused on keeping things as normal as possible with only one car of our own until the storm passes, a nasty wave is bound to toss our ship.

The inevitable occurred at last about a week ago.

On this particular day, Grandma was in pain. Severe pain. As our long time readers will know, she knows the drill. Chest pain = a trip to the emergency room, no questions asked. They see her immediately, do bloodwork, hook her up to heart monitors, eliminate the worst of scenarios one by one until they reach that shallow end of that Spectrum of Cause, at which point they shrug their shoulders and pass her along for followups with family doctors and a re-analysis of any prescription drug interactions and complications. She was tired of this predictable and often useless pattern of repetition. Pain, ER, tests, home, wait, doctor, nothing. Pain, ER, tests, home, wait, doctor, nothing. Pain, ER, tests, home, wait, doctor, nothing...

I was unreachable, on assignment somewhere that required quiet; the vibration or ringing of a cell phone would be enough to disrespect some politician or speaker or lecture. My cell phone was on silent. Not that it mattered, because instead of calling 911 and commencing the familiar pattern, she called her doctor first and asked what to do. No surprise there: "go to the ER!!" Then she called mom. "Call 911!" On chance, I arrived home to get some flash batteries just as the decision to finally call 911 was made.

Emergency vehicles arrived quickly (the cities and villages around here have excellent response times) and she was taken to the same hospital she's been to many times since the creation of this site, Robinson Memorial Hospital.

Like the other times, the time before a heart catheterization where we brought up her Xbox so she could play Psychonauts, or the time she played Size Matters on PSP so much that her stay seemed to fly by, everyone knew her name; the doctors, the nurses, everyone. Unlike those times before, however, it made her nervous. She didn't know if it was because of her small bit of fame or her familiar laugh or unique last name.. she began to think of it another way. She remembered stories from nurses about hypochondriacs, about how everyone at the hospital knew them because they were there so often, how sometimes they were there because they convinced themselves they were ill, or they did it for attention, or for company, or to debate with medical professionals to make themselves feel smart...

She got scared.

The pain she felt was real, she's had the surgeries, bloodwork, stress-tests, and a medicine cabinet filled with legitimate non-placebos sanctioned by many people who confirmed her medical problems, all of it vindicating her honesty to anyone who lazily raised their eyebrows to ask "well maybe it's psychosomatic..." But they had no answers. They couldn't tell her what was wrong, really. And everyone knew her name. She's been brushed aside to specialists, been prodded, poked, and scanned in more ways than is possible to view an environment in the entire Metroid series, and yet they only had a list of maybes and perhaps and possibly. And everyone knew her name. "Hi, Barb! Back again, huh? Still playing your video games?" "Hey! It's Old Grandma Hardcore again! Back to see us?" "Oh, I remember you! You're Barb!"

And everyone knew her name.

"I wonder what these people think of me" she said flatly as I sat next to her hospital bed, wondering if I read the schedule right; that my next assignment was in the same town as the hospital and that I had time to be there with her as she was going through this; and wondering who I would call if I didn't. Fucking hospitals with their 'no cell-phone' policies... "They do the same stupid shit every time I come here, and every time it's the same."
-"They're just as frustrated as you are when they can't figure out what's wrong."
"Yeah, I know. Still.. I wonder if they think it's all in my head."
-"Did it hurt today?"
"Yes I hurt today! It hurt like hell!"
-"When did it start happening?"
"When they put me on that fucking medication."
-"Did you tell them that?"
"I don't know if they even listen. I don't know anything about this shit, they're supposed to know."
-"Still. You should tell them."
"I know."


That night when I got home from work, she wasn't there waiting for the sound of the keys or the thump of the camera bag. It's not uncommon for the omission of something expected is just as jarring as something explicitly surprising. It was especially strange for her not to be in her chair that night. They had admitted her to the hospital proper. Apparently, she told somebody. They were looking into it. In some kind of misplaced sense of priorities, I knew that now would probably be the only time I would have to play any games I had missed over the weeks, but ironically enough- I was too tired. Besides, I knew that once she got out of that place, it would take her a little while to get back in track with where ever she was on the Blue Dragon second disc. RPGs are notably difficult to regain one's orientation within the story after a break. I didn't want to fuck around with that even further by putting BioShock or the Darkness in.

I was able to see her again the next day and again it was in between assignments. When I finally found the room up on the third floor, tucked away behind a bustling nurses station, I found her holding her arm, bleeding.
"What the fuck?!"
-"Forty goddamn minutes" she said, her eyes tearing up in panic. "I told them the thing had come loose or something and was spurting blood but she just said to put pressure on it. It's been forty minutes and no one has come in here to help me or clean it or anything." Her IV lock was still sticking out of her arm, a stream of slowly drying blood staining the blanket under it.
"Don't they know you're on fucking blood thinners?! Jesus!!" I went to find the chief nurse for that floor. I explained that she was taking motherfucking Coumadin to prevent blood clots, that she had a motherfucking alert tag hanging around her motherfucking neck explaining this and was told by her motherfucking doctors that if she ever had so much as a slightly deep cut on her motherfucking hand she could bleed to death. So here she was, after the idea that the smallest of cuts could be a big deal with that particular medication was pounded into her head, being told to hold her hand on the needle in her arm in an uncomfortable position, in pain, for forty goddamn minutes without anyone coming in, lest she bleed herself into shock.

They sent someone in right away, removed the IV and cleaned her up. I found out later that very soon after I had left, they said her stress-tests came back alright and she could go home to followup later with her doctor.

Pain, ER, tests, home, wait, doctor...

Now she is home. She just finished the second disc of Blue Dragon and is quickly approaching the end of the thing. Vic Ireland called to make sure he sent her a PSP game he had. She's been emailing Evan about Blue Dragon and Halo 3. Playstation Magazine UK wants to do a story on her. As we sit and talk for a few minutes every night about Halo 3, Metroid Prime 3, the new PSP, Jack fucking Thompson, how David Jaffe should be allowed to say that he hates Utah without getting pounced on, etc.,. etc.,.. I realize that this time we have isn't enough. We'll take it, but it's just not enough.

Time together is a difficult thing to procure right now, it's true. Time to update the site after we do talk is even more difficult, but it isn't forever. This month has been brutal, but it's just a month, and another, hopefully better one will follow. So no, to respond to some one of the comments on the previous post, we're not going to give up on the blog. The function of this blog is sharing this wonderful, cool woman with everyone. I'm not about to give up on that, no matter how hard it gets ;)

Grandma sits still in her chair, waiting for me to come home from work, playing video games in the dark; waiting to tell me all about them.

And just like you guys, I can't wait to hear what she has to say.

Game on.




---
The winner of the "One Year Xbox Live Gold Subscription Giveaway... Thing" is.... Gamer Named Tim! We sent Tim his subscription card so he'll be getting it soon (California mailing address, so it shouldn't take that long.) Thanks for the postcards everyone, and as a way of saying thanks- I'm sending everyone who sent us a postcard a little somethin-somethin to show my thanks. Grandma LOVES getting postcards and e-mails and letters and photos and it just makes her feel awesome so I really, really need to say thank you to everyone in my own little way. I haven't been much of a grandchild recently with the work schedule, so you have all acted as her extended family by proxy of the United States Postal System, and that's damned cool.

So if you sent her something, expect something from me in the mail in the next few weeks. It won't be much (I'm poor) but it shall be awesome :)

More posts on the way!

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GAH!!

What's going on! Where are we?! What's Grandma doing?!

Well I'll tell you.

Lots of gaming goodness has been going down at our house, I just haven't had time to post anything. My hours have been increased at work. I recieved a promotion and now I'm rarely at home. That will change when schedules settle down, but at the moment, I'm just happy if I can grab a few hours of sleep. We have been getting your postcards and letters for the contest (and you still have plenty of time to get yours in, by the way) and Grandma has been reading everything. I, however, have been busy as hell.

So has Grandma, just in different ways...

Breakdown:
Thursday, August 30th
Me - "soooo..... tired......."
Grandma - "These GOD DAMNED LITTLE SISTERS keep stopping for GOD DAMNED Adam and keep getting KILLED. I swear to Christ this is RE4 all over again."

Monday, September 3rd
[Achievement Unlocked - 5pts - Two Fully Upgraded Weapons]

Tuesday, September 4th
Grandma - "Hey! Welcome home! Did you hear that Lair sucks?"
Me - "Well that's..... bad, I guess. I want to go to sleep."
Grandma - "No, it's great. I don't have to waste $60 to find if it's horrible. It's not even a debate, everyone- and I mean EVERYONE fucking hates it. I'm almost relieved."
Me - "Panzer Dragoon Orta was good. You could always play that again."
Grandma - "Yeah, but the S-Controller feels weird now. I'm used to the 360 one. I don't know. I'm thinking Metroid."

Wednesday, September 5th
[Achievement Unlocked - 10pts - Three Fully Upgraded Weapons]
[Achievement Unlocked - 10p