Sunday Linking: Our Valued Customers

The best ideas are the ones where you look at something and say, "I can't believe no one has thought of that." Well, that was my first reaction when I came across the excellent blog, Our Valued Customers.

The site is run by an artist that works in a comic book store. As there are in almost every comics shop from here to OA, there are plenty of characters ...uh, customers...that walk into the artist's store on a daily basis.

And each of these customers says or does something...memorable.

So, to...memorialize...said actions, Our Valued Customers documents each case in a one-panel cartoon strip. Like I said--brilliant. And the strips are hilarious. And kinda scary.

But mostly hilarious.

I was given a head's up about this site by my buddy Gary, and I've been pretty much addicted to it ever since. I've passed the link on to several people, and they all have told me that they proceeded to open the link, and then kill the next 45 minutes or so, looking at each blog entry.

So, because I'm nice, and I wouldn't want any of you to spend your valuable work time endlessly checking out the site, I decided to post this up today, on Sunday. Go check it out. A warning, though, that the language is definitely not for the kiddies.

Go. Read.

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Happy Sunday, everyone!

Gaming By The Numbers

I officially have over 500 video games on my Backloggery. In other words, I either own, used to own, or have otherwise made a serious attempt at beating over 500 video games.

Breaking that down, my list includes about 5 games I borrowed, roughly 25 games I used to own, almost 70 I played on an emulator or online (but only the games I've reviewed in my Flash Flood column, to avoid unnecessary Backloggery bloating), and a whopping 400 that I own.

That last number should either seem pathetic compared to your collection, or wildly excessive. I'm a collector, you see, and after suddenly wanting to play Star Soldier and Blades of Steel several years after selling them off for pocket change, I made it a point to never get rid of any games, even if I was absolutely certain I would never play them again. If you've been an active gamer for two continuous decades and you can count on one hand the number of games you've traded in, 400 games really isn't all that big a number, if you do the math.

Looking at the numbers, that's 20 games per year. Let's assume I get five games per year as gifts--between birthdays and Christmas, that's pretty reasonable. That leaves me with 15 games a year that I buy on my own. One trip per month to the game store to pick up one or two items? Not bad.

Given that I gravitate toward older games whose prices have dropped by half (at least) since their release, let's say I spend $20 per game. Even in a big year where I pick up a few newer games, that's still $300-$400 I'm spending on video games per year. That's maybe two months, tops, of comics for an equally zealous comics fan. Considering video games are my pastime of choice, that doesn't seem that bad at all to me.

I acknowledge that not everybody has $300-$400 to blow on frivolous expenses every year, and that such a quantity of cash could be used for all manner of noble efforts. My only point in breaking down the numbers is to show that it may not be as insane as some people may initially believe to own the equivalent of 50% of the entire NES game library (including all the terrible games no one ever talks about).

Of the games on my list, I've beaten 60%, or about 240. Going by my numbers from before, that's 12 years of game collecting that hasn't gone to waste, and 8 years' worth of potential left to go (regardless of how long it might actually take me to beat the remaining games).

What's been particularly striking to me over the past few years is how much sway the numbers have had over my playing habits. I used to replay my favorite first-person shooters and SNES RPGs once every year or two, but I haven't touched them since some time in college, except to show them off to someone who hadn't seen them before. I've been too busy trying to finish more games than I buy so that my completion rate can increase. I've been too busy embarking on absurd sidequests to achieve the coveted Completed status on games I've merely beaten and won't ever want to play again after putting down.

On the one hand, it's terrific to experience so many new games, to find so many things I like, and to have so much geek reference material under my belt. On the other hand, every time I start up a new game I run the risk of jumping on board a 40+ hour mediocre experience that only reveals itself as such when I'm too invested to justify quitting. Especially when that fraction of a percent of my completion rate is at stake.

Thank goodness for Mega Man marathons and exposing other people to my favorite games--I think I need a regular dose of the old reliables to keep me sane if I have a string of bad luck with the new games I choose to play. Still, I feel that keeping track of my progress through my backlog has been a positive influence on my gaming habits, even if my mentality has shifted a bit.

500 games on my list, though. I don't know whether to pat myself on the back or have myself committed.

A Big Week

What a week!

Lots of major comics announcements--like DC releasing the scoop that Superman will be back from his walking tour of America and will return to the pages of his flagship title, Action Comics, with the landmark issue number 900.

That issues features an amazing David Finch cover (see below), and promises to be extra-sized and full of (sorry, I just can't help myself!) action.
There was also the news that Grant Morrison's now-mythical Flex Mentallo series--which was never released as a collection because of various legal issues--will finally be reprinted. This fall, we'll see a deluxe hardcover edition of the series that most comics fans know about, but have never read. (Mostly because no one's been able to get their hands on the thing.)

And, finally, there was the news that Marvel's Editor-in-Chief for the past decade-plus, Joe Quesada, will be moving full-time into his role as Chief Creative Officer at the company, and that longtime editor Axel Alonso will be taking his place.

And that's what I'd like to talk about for a bit today.

Quesada's run as EIC was, for me, the definitive run with the company because that's the era in which I started reading comics. And, I think like most people, i started by reading mainly Marvel and DC books.

I was definitely spoiled early on, as the quality of the writing and art at both companies in the 2000s was at an all-time high. And, in the case of Marvel, Quesada deserves a lot of the credit in that regard.

During his tenure, Quesada brought in big-name, non-comics people (like Kevin Smith and Stephen King) that helped gain attention from the mainstream press, but he also brought in relative no-names in the industry--formerly indy-only creators like Brian Bendis and Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker.

And those are now the names that shape Marvel--and, really, modern comics.

While I was still in school, I listened to a lecture/question and answer session that Quesada gave at MoCCA, and it was clear just how much comics meant to Joe.

As an artist, Quesada is one of the most dynamic pencillers in the industry, and his classic run with Kevin Smith on Daredevil brought that character back to relevancy.
But it's his eye for talent, and his willingness to try something out of the norm that will make Joe's run as EIC one of the best in the company's history.

He recognized the force that is Mark Millar, and the writer unleashed hit after hit on the comic book public. He allowed Grant Morrison to go wild on the X-Men, which culminated in one of the most memorable runs in those characters' history...and that's saying something.

Not since Stan Lee has an EIC been as fan-friendly as Joe, and his presence at conventions is always felt and always appreciated. He was the face and the voice of my Marvel Comics--in the years of Bendis and Millar and Jeph Loeb and Alex Maleev.

So, even though there's pretty much zero chance he'll ever read this--thanks, Joe.

Back to Episodic Gaming

This may come off sounding like a filler post, but sometimes the first thing that comes to mind is the best thing to write. I've just completed Back to the Future: The Game's first episode, and I'll have to wait until next month to keep playing. Which is fantastic.

Quick background for anyone who hasn't been reading GameCola's rabid fanboy news articles over the last several weeks: Telltale Games, the people behind the most recent Sam & Max and Monkey Island games, began releasing a point-and-click Back to the Future adventure game that effectively plays out like Back to the Future: Part 4: The Interactive TV Show. Five self-contained episodes, a new one released every month, which form a complete story.

My initial reactions to the game were threefold: One, it felt like Back to the Future. I kept drawing parallels to Star Trek 2009, which seemed to shoehorn in as many classic quotes and situations as possible to appease fans and say, "Look! We're really Star Trek!", whereas BTTF:TG incorporated and adapted quotes and situations where the story really called for them. Maybe it's just the self-referential nature of the movies that made it work, but I never once felt like the developers were stretching or trying too hard. The main plot and the events therein were perfectly believable as a logical part of the franchise.

Two, the game truly felt like a movie where I had some sway over how things happened. I normally gripe about games that are too cutscene-heavy, but this isn't your average licensed game--this the next installment in the Back to the Future story, told through the video game medium. There's not an absurd amount of exploration--the game offers a limited number of locations to visit, and breaks areas down into linear sections where you can't really run around in all directions. You've got a handful of inventory items, almost all of which are very clearly not going to be helpful except where it's very obvious you need an item.

Instead of feeling restricting, these limitations keep the story moving along. Enough of the challenges are sufficient enough to appease veteran gamers, but a well-designed incremental in-game hint system keeps less-puzzle-minded adventurers from getting hopelessly stuck. There are other games with more brain-bendingly clever puzzles, but I wouldn't hesitate to say that BTTF:TG's first episode contains the most consistently coherent puzzles of any adventure game I've played, and that is a satisfying thing indeed.

Now, back to my list. Three, I finally understand the appeal of episodic gaming, and even episodic television. At the end of the game, I was excited for more. And I will have more. In February. I have to wait. Now I know what I put my YouTube fans through when I take a month to produce my next video. In an age where I can go online and order absolutely anything to be delivered the next day, that sensation of anticipation is exhilarating. This is especially neat for me, because I abhor spoilers and have been let down by every new geeky thing I've even slightly anticipated in the past year, so I really don't keep up with the Next Big Thing aside from possibly knowing that it will exist.

Name virtually any new game I've played over the past...oh...three years, and I can guarantee you that even the absolute most fun ones in the bunch had frequent stopping points where I'd say, "Alright, enough of that; time for something else." Not so with BTTF. I only stopped playing to give myself time to cogitate over the next solution, and to go to sleep at a halfway reasonable hour, after having stayed up more than half an hour later than anticipated.

The last time I was so eager to continue playing a game was in my senior year of college, when I replayed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I wanted to know what happened next. I wanted to try out more solutions and hear more dialogue options. I wanted to keep enjoying the fun. No stupid gimmicks, no grinding for XP, no excessive backtracking, no nothing. Nothing to put a dent in my enjoyment of an otherwise terrific game. Plain ol' fun. Where has that gone?

Whoa, this not-filler post turned into a real review.

I like the thought of having to wait for the next installment. If the next episode is even half as fun, it'll be worth stretching out the experience over a few months so I can savor a flat-out fun video game.