When I was a kid, my father taught me to be a good sport. “Nobody likes a sore loser.” he told me, “And nobody likes a sore winner, either.” At the time, this wasn’t any great revelation; that was how the world was. People were expected to be gracious about both winning and losing in competition. Now I’m not saying everyone was gracious, but that was what society expected.

Over my years of gaming on the internet, I’ve sadly grown to accept the fact that sportsmanship was dead, replaced by ‘trash talking.’ When you win, you’re expected to berate your opponent. When you lose, you’re expected to accuse the other guy of cheating or something. And this isn’t limited to the internet, I should add. We see it in sports of all levels as well.

This is, in my opinion, a sad, sad part of our current culture.

And so it is with delight that I can say, sportsmanship and healthy competition does still exist! As I said in my last post, I’ve been playing a lot of board games online lately. Mostly Go and Backgammon, but also Shogi, Xiangqi, Chess, Pente and a few others. At this point I’ve played (or am currently in) hundreds of different games against people from all over the world. And the ‘rudest’ exchange I’ve had is the lack of pleasantries. That is, some people who play silently rather than wishing their opponent ‘good luck’ at the start of the match, and ‘good game’ at the end of it. Again, let me emphasize that these silent opponents are the most rude I’ve encountered, and I think you’ll agree that this isn’t very rude at all.

The vast majority of opponents I’ve played against have varied from cordially polite to pleasantly chatty. I’ve had much stronger players take me under their wing to teach me a few tricks. I’ve had people apologize for playing too slowly, even when they really weren’t slow at all. In all, its been such a pleasant and encouraging experience that I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall!!

And the cynic in me wonders if nationality has a lot to do with this. I’d say that at least half my opponents have been from countries other than the US. Perhaps sportsmanship is still alive and well inside foreign shores…

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time playing various board games on various sites, and I just have to say that I am totally enjoying the experience. I’m trying to learn Go & Xiangqi as well as some more obscure games (Dvonn, StreetSoccer), and I’m playing old favorites as well (Backgammon). Even though it is all “PvP” so far I’ve not met a single “jerk.”

A lot of folks are quite silent, but I have encountered a few of my fellow chatty types, and wishing your opponent “Good luck” and ending with “Good game” seems to be the general trend, and that applies equally to Dailygammon, IYT, DragonGo and Little Golem. It just seems like these kinds of games draw a nice sort of person.

Its just such a nice discovery! I’m still looking for a site that lets me easily play Shogi. If anyone knows of one, I’d love to hear about it!

Here’s an interesting article at Space.com about Venus. Ignore the sensationalist headline. The story is more about Venus’ history and whether it was similar to or different from earth’s. I learned a bit about earth, too.

All in all, a good read.

Was Venus Alive? ‘The Signs are Probably There’

I was looking for software to learn Shogi with and not having any luck, when I stumbled upon Zillons of Games. Its a package with some kind of a ‘universal game engine’ in it. I d/led the demo and before too long shelled out $25-ish to unlock the whole game. Messed with it a bit last night but didn’t get too far.

Well at lunch today I d/led it to my work machine (and registered it…which technically might be evil but I know I’ll never be playing both copies at once).

I’m pretty happy with the purchase now that I’ve had more time to mess with it. Granted the interfaces can be a bit clunky since they’re generic, and its isn’t a gorgeous game. But there’re a ton of games I haven’t played since I was a kid and its fun to go and revisit them. Lots of solo games, too, like Towers of Hanoi, Knight Chase, that infuriating game where you have to toggle off all the lights but you can only turn them on/off in clusters and so on.

Go, however, seems pretty clunky I’m afraid. You have to use a drop-down menu to pass, and often the AI opponent moves behind the menu and it can be hard to see where it went. Also, at the ‘PushOver’ difficulty level, it doesn’t know when to quit, but maybe its ’smarter’ at higher levels.

Basically, I’m pretty confident I’ll get my $25 worth of fun out of it, even if I don’t d/l any extra games or make any of my own.

You can probably find many of these games elsewhere, either on websites as Flash games or as freeware/shareware downloads, but having them all in one package is pretty convenient. Zillions-of-Games gets the DC Seal of Approval.

Oh, but sadly its only available for Windows.

Check this out! I want one!
radioShark is essentially Tivo for your radio. Hook it up to your Mac and set it to record Car Talk (or whatever) every week, then dump it to your iPod for listening to at your leisure!

Playboy undressed video game women

Looks like BloodRayne isn’t the only one that’s going to show up in October’s Playboy!

Y’know, its just weird enough that I’m going to have to find a copy of the magazine… for the accompanying article, of course.

Rayne Makes Her PlayBoy Debut
If you felt teased by her sexy Girls of Gaming cover, then this new feature art is going to blow your mind! Rayne is 100% topless and smokin’ hot in the October issue of Playboy magazine. This is a first in videogame history and trust us when we say that Rayne does not disappoint. The magazine hits newsstands in early September so here’s a great excuse to get a copy!

Bah! Who cares! Now if it was Astra, the hottie ghost chick from Ghosthunter then I’d be interested.

BugMeNot Gets Booted, Restored

Site registrations suck. I don’t mind logging in if I’m paying for a service (and I will pay for a quality service) but all these ‘free’ registrations are just annoying as hell.

(And I say that as someone who works on a site that has just instituted free registration…trust me when I tell you I voiced my opinion about this idea loudly, but of course was ignored).

So BugMeNot is my friend, and I’m sure glad to see that its back online!

Boring Game? Outsource It

Y’know, the real problem here isn’t that these virtual goods sellers are hiring some poor Russian dude to farm in-game cash for $100/week.

The problem is that the games are so damned TEDIOUS that people would rather BUY their way to the good stuff than play the games.

If the journey was fun, then everyone would be happy doing it.

Paying to play a game, and then paying more to a third party to get to the good stuff? What’s wrong with this picture?

I have to promote Legacy a bit. What a fun game for your PDA (versions area available for PalmOS, PocketPC & Symbian). Remember back when we were playing Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder on our computers? Well Legacy will take you back to those days, with a first person perspective, turn-based RPG dungeon crawl. Magic users, clerics, knights and adventurers…they’re all here (up to 4 in your party at once). Highly recommended, if you enjoyed those RPGs of old!

Demo: Artificial Retina

Neat stuff. I was just reading about this project in Rodney Brook’s Flesh and Machines, but that was before they moved the project basically outside of the eye. Its amazing how fast technology progresses!

Teleportation goes long distance

I’ve read about this entanglement stuff in Hawking’s Universe in a Nutshell but I still don’t really understand it.

But it sure sounds like an interesting experiment!

Parallel Park Game - Time yourself parallel parking

This is just too silly and fun!

I finished Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood today. I’m still trying to decide if I liked it or not.

The premise is that the titular wood is the home to creatures of myth, but that these creatures are created out of a kind of race-memory of people. So for instance if enough people truly believe in Bigfoot, Bigfoot would be found in this wood.

It was an interesting premise but it made it all feel kind of artificial. Like it was one huge delusion. And the fact that the protagonist took everything pretty much in stride when he learned about what was happening in the wood made it all feel even more so. There was very little time spent on disbelief and coming to grips with what was going on. “Ah, so Robin Hood and King Arthur’s Knights and some kind of proto-druid tribe all live in the 6 mile stretch of woods? OK, I’ll buy that. Let’s go explore it!” Umm…?

If you can set those two facts aside, then it was a really enjoyable book. What added a nice layer to the whole story was that ‘present day’ for the protagonist was 1948 or thereabouts. Shortly after the war, in any case. So even the non-fantastical portions of the book had an air of ‘other-worldliness’ to those of us too young to have lived through that time.

I guess I can best sum it up this way. I liked it enough to add the next book in the series (Lavondyss) to my Amazon wishlist, but I’m not going to run around raving about the book. On a scale of 1-5 I’d give it a 3 or a 4. Holdstock’s voice is what makes it worth reading. I’m hoping the next book has just a tad more polish. If it does, it should be truly great.

Activision CEO predicts second PSP delay in U.S.

June ‘05? Fine. I’ll still buy one.