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Grand Theft Auto stands alone

Given that I am far, far behind you guys in terms of gameplay (I managed to make a completely embarassing rookie mistake and erase all of my game progress), I have a couple questions inspired by GTA IV I'd like you folks to weigh in on.

GTA III came out in October 2001. While in some respects it's similar to a few earlier efforts (the 1990 Terminator game, Freelancer, and I suppose Mario 64 come to mind), it basically invented the third person "sandlot" genre. Particularly when it comes to realistic, populated worlds.

Here we are seven years later. And the genre is still, basically, Grand Theft Auto. Why the hell is that? This latest iteration moved six million units in less than a week. IIRC, it earned something like half a billion dollars in a matter of hours.

Zork spawned a thousand text adventure games. After Wolfenstein and Doom, we saw an explosion in first person shooters. I'm not sure what the first RTS action game was, but whatever it was, I'm sure there hundreds of copycats that appeared within seven years.

So what's going on with the sandbox genre? Off the top of my head: Crackdown, Saints Row, Mercenaries, Just Cause, True Crime, Godfather ... and maybe Assassin's Creed. That's all I can think of. That's a pretty mixed bag in terms of quality and economic success. Where are the rest of them? Why haven't we seen an explosion in offerings by now?

I can think of a few reasons why Grand Theft Auto is not only the best game in town, but pretty much the only game. None of them are wholly satisfying. I'd love to hear you guys weigh in:

1.)The games are too difficult to make; people who can, already work for Rockstar.

2.)Seven years is not enough time for a game genre to start blossoming, as fewer and fewer games are released each year (really?).

3.)There are tons of sandbox offerings: they're called role playing games.

4.) The Grand Theft Auto series is so effing dominate people don't want to invest the capital to compete; it's like launching a competing football franchise against Madden.

5.)I'm inventing a phenomenom that doesn't exist, as separating GTA style games from other RPG/adventure games is a false dichotomy. GTA does things differently, it isn't anything new.

Any other reasons? What's going on here? It seems like the market for this type of game can sustained more than one, maybe two titles a year.

The whole blogging thing.

Well, I started blogging the day after my 30th birthday (been putting it off for a while). I'm 157 posts in over the last eight months, which isn't nearly the rate that I was hoping for (I'm averaging a post roughly two out of every three days).

However, I have excuses.

1)No one really pays attention to this blog. I think I have maybe four readers. And they don't like me.

2)Writing for a fantasy baseball site attracts most of my attention during baseball season. Which is right around the corner.

I'll still be writing here periodically, but far less frequently. God speed.

Tony Dungy did what Tony Dungy does

Underachieve in the playoffs.

Why are people surprised the Colts went out in the first round? The Super Bowl win was far more surprising. Tony Duny has taken about six years of Super Bowl-caliber teams, between the Colts and the Buccaneers, and systematically underachieved. Tampa Bay finally had to run his ass out of there. What happens? They immediately dominate en route to a championship.

The guy doesn't know how to get his team ready to win playoff games. They come in with the same old game plans, and they consistently look outcoached. Last year was the aberration, not this year. No coach in the modern history of football has done less with more.

Border Security and Immigration are not bedfellows

Every politican who links border security with immigration, except in the most superficial sense, should be slapped. It's like saying that the need for secure prisons is predicated upon the need to make "INSERT CRIME X HERE" punishable with a minimum jail sentence. The two issues have nothing to do with each other. One is a substantive policy, one is a procedural concern.

Our immigration policy is a completely separate issue from the necessity of having secure, impermeable borders. Every nation-state has the inherent duty to protect its borders. Period. Even if we decided to have an open immigration policy, it doesn't mean we should have open borders. Particularly if we want any type of comprehensive national policy on guns, drugs, or nuclear bomb carrying terrorists bent on destroying CTU headquarters in Los Angeles.

So please: stop equating border security with being anti-immigration.

Judge excoriation: not fun

So, I had a judge tell me "your case is the worst of this type I've ever seen" last week. It's not a good case, but an hour of lambasting was a bit much. Plus, I had to dance around the borderline malpractice of the attorney who had the case before us. Rule of thumb: if an attorney wants you take over his file, the file sucks. Even if it looks good, there's something horribly wrong lurking in the background. I learned this in my first few years of practice. I am, however, usually ignored.

I was told that my theory of primissory estoppel was bullshit because my client shouldn't have reasonably relied upon the promises made. I was told that attorney malpractice wasn't going to fly because my client admitted that he never believed the Defendant to be his attorney, and the Defendant was known to be representing the other party. I was told that the escrow holder theory would fail because the promises were to vague to constitute escrow instructions.

Also, the biggest element of damages in the case is the 47K my client spent on his former attorney trying to recover a 50K debt. The judge laughed in my face and said that even if I could recover those fees, I certainly wouldn't be getting anywhere close to that because as a matter of law, no "breacher of a contract" could be reasonably expected to assume that someone would spend that much money in an attempt to enforce the contract.

Message to the NFL: PULL YOUR CAMERAS BACK!

Basically, every NFL broadcast appears to have been designed for an era in which folks watched games on 19 inch television screens. They continuously zoom in on the QB and offensive line, leaving us in the dark as to what is going on with the other 12 or so players.

Well, times have changed. The average television size has to be 30-35 inches by now, and with HD broadcasts, picture quality is less of a concern. Pull the camera back! I want to see what defensive backs and wide receivers are doing. I don't need a foot high Peyton Manning occupying the entirety of my glorious 65 inch Hi-Def screen.

Why do they do this? Are they intentionally trying to change the home viewing experience (by making it worse) to encourage folks to go to the game?

U.S. Grant and Ronald Reagan

When I think of the least intelligent presidents we've had, Ulysses S. Grant usually pops up at the top of my list. The semi-senile Reagan (he may have been a bright guy once, but not by the time he took office) is also way up there. Plus, Reagan's kooky religious ideas were just plain moronic.

Still, these guys had one thing in common: they were the right man, in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea. Grant wasn't a particularly good general. He didn't know much about tactics. His idea of attacking a fortified position was wait until you gathered every soldier you can and then attack on every available front. You'd think this would make him unpopular, but it didn't. His men loved him. He rose through the ranks while fighting ancillary battles west of the main lines, and eventually commanded the Union armies. He recognized that neither he, nor his subordinates, were going to outthink or outmaneuver the Confederates on their own ground. So what did he do? He threw every men, weapon, and bullet at his disposal at them. No other strategy would have worked, particularly in so short a time. He got a lot of men killed, but at least they died accomplishing something. Sadly, Grant was an idiot who didn't make a very good president, but unlike his myriad predecessors he knew what was needed to end the war.

Similarly, the U.S. was in a unique position vis a vis the Soviets when Reagan took office. Nuclear weapons made actual war impossible. The U.S./Soviet cold war also represented the greatest threat to humanity ever faced. It's amazing we didn't blow ourselves up. If actual war was impossible, and cold war had proved futile, what could be done? Economic war. Reagan's economic policies were disastrous in a lot of ways, but he did spend the Soviet Union and its affiliate nations into oblivion. Deficits can be erased (in theory ...), but nuclear explosions are forever.

The "War" in Iraq

Folks like to say we aren't "winning" the war in Iraq. These people need to look up the definition of the word "war." The war in Iraq has been over for quite some time. What we have now is a reconstruction/peace-keeping mission. So, all you candidates out there; stop commenting on the war as though it's still going on. Small scale guerrila insurgencies and an occupying army do not a war make.

I figure we had three explicit purposes for going to war with Iraq:

1)Remove a murderous tyrant (Hussein) from power: Mission Accomplished.
2)Destroy the Iraq regime's power to make war (including destroying any existent WMDs): Mission Accomplished.
3)Enforce U.N. and U.S. sanctions (and, perhaps, send a message to the rest of the Middle East, if not the world, that you better tow the line or face destruction): Mission Accomplished.

There you go. We won the Iraq war pretty handily. Unfortunately, we suck at reconstructing a nation of hostile foreigners. Which should come as no surprise, as it's impossible. We shouldn't have even have tried. Maybe establish a base in Iraq or in neighboring countries to keep an eye on things, and get the hell out. Maybe not the right thing to do, but attempting to rebuild a foreign nation's infrastructure just isn't feasible.

**Also, soldiers are not the appropriate people to police and manage a civilian populace. In fact, I'm pretty certain they are exactly the wrong type of people, as training for war and training for reconstruction are polar opposites.

Rock Band!!

For those of you who think Guitar Hero and Rock Band are dorky, shut up until you've played it. For those of you who think we should pick up real guitars, shut up forever.

As to Rock Band, here's the scoop: the instruments suck. I actually just have the game, as the two people I know who bought the kit had broken guitars,
and in one case a drum set, within a week. It's a physical problem with the guitar design. They shipped anyway, knowing that the guitars would fail. Nice
job! I use the wireless microphone (normally it's for Halo) and my Guitar Hero wireless and wired guitars. Singing is hard! I'm lucky to manage 20% on a song.
It's the greatest party game ever. New Year's Eve was phenomenal.

Sadly, it's not as good of a solo game as Guitar Hero. Primarily, the game is too easy on Medium, and when I am passing every song on Hard, there's a serious issue. The song list isn't as good as the Guitar Hero series (they chose songs that had a
medley of instruments, rather than guitar-centric).

Still, hard to imagine passing up. The downloadable content, at least, is already worlds better than Guitar Hero's. The graphics and animations also blow GH out of the water.

The RIAA's last stand.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/29/riaa-suing-citizen-for-copying-legally-purchased-cds-to-pc/

If there is one place the RIAA has feared to tread, it's the legality of making copies of your own media for your own personal use. And for good reason; they might very well lose. Well, looks like they're now desperate enough to roll the dice.

When you purchase a CD you technically agree to numerous restrictions; including making backup copies (there are several lobbyist induced pieces of federal and state legislation that make backing up your own CDs illegal). But, record companies and other copyright holders have never (IIRC) actually challenged the legality of anyone backing up copies for their own personal use, rather than distribution. Why? Because such a lawsuit, if unsuccessful, would be catastrophic. They must be truly desperate to attempt to put an end to personal copying technologies (an old adage about barn doors and cows comes to mind). If the black letter law is on their side, you would think this would be a slam dunk case. However, it certainly isn't.

Why, you ask? Simple: the ability of Congress to pass copyright laws is not unfettered. The copyright provision in the Constitution states:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

While broad (for example, it has been used to retroactively extend the copyrighted works of dead creators), this is not a limitless provision. At some point federal copyright law is going to run afoul of the three hundred pound gorilla of the United States legal system: the 1st amendment.

While it may seem counterintuitive, an unlimited copyright monopoly, including the ability to make backups, utterly guts the longstanding theory of jurisprudence known as "Fair Use" (wiki it if you're interested). The power to dominate the distribution and copying of a media is also the power to deny others the ability to use that work for non-commercial, classic "freedom of expression" uses. For example, if you want to compare on your blog images of Star Wars and The Triumph of the Will to demonstrate Lucas's borrowing of Reifenstahl's imagery, but you are forbidden from every duplicating or copying any image from your DVDs, that non-commercial method of expression is barred.

We've never had a decision that solves, once for all, whether Fair Use and current "copyright" laws preventing copying purchased media are incompatible. Now we will. And if the RIAA loses, many of those federal laws are going to be declared null and void (right now, we're not sure if they are or not), and the RIAA is going to lose perhaps the biggest coercive threat it has available to it.