I was really thrilled to hear this. So much so, I think I might put it on my blog and break into the world of using my blog to comment on current gaming events.

So I’m a little behind the 8-ball here, but the Tokyo Game Show for 2010 was announced recently, and will be held from the 16th of September. Of all of the game shows out there, TGS is probably the best of the high profiling ones that I can actually afford to go to, and so this year, if all checks out, I’m seriously considering going.

After a little bit of Googling the topic though, I’m a little wary of one interesting tidbit that Kotaku raised… it seems that being held in September, TGS is less than a month behind the Gamescom event in Germany, which will most undoubtedly force the majority of games companies to choose between presenting at either one or the other. Since Gamescom is much higher profile, it is quite likely that TGS may get shafted by a lot of companies as a result of this.

That being said, I’m still happy to give it the benefit of the doubt. Since I’ve been hearing that Japanese games companies do prefer to announce new projects in their own motherland events more often, I would bet that a lot of those companies will still be presenting at their main content at TGS. And even if many companies decided to pick Gamescon over TGS, I would still assume the event will be huge, and definitely worth the trip… especially since I can’t really afford a ticket to Germany haha.

And, there’s always the off-chance that all of this discussion about Gamescom might convince the TGS organizers to push the date back as well. To that end, I’ve decided to hold back and wait before doing any bookings.

Either way, I’ve already spent my life up until now not going to any huge game development events. This is something I definitely want to change.

Is anyone else considering doing TGS or Gamescom or both?

Way back in ye 2007 after I arrived back in Perth from Japan, I did some looking around for a job. One place I got an interview with was Perth’s ‘flagship’ game development studio Interzone games. The position was a junior programmer and the pay rate was going to be an epic 13 bucks an hour. Slightly small I know, but it being games programming, I didn’t care.
While the guys were all cool and they were impressed with my demo of RPG-X, they told me that without being awesome at Python scripting, there’s not a lot I could really do for the company. They said I could come back later after I’ve learnt Python and try again, but the very next day, I got a job at Tourism WA (which paid a LOT more) so I let it rest.

Turns out I dodged a major bullet there.

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This is a little follow-up to my hospital escapade. After this, I’ll let it rest. Honest.
It’s something I was thinking about in my last day in hospital and I thought I’d share it with you.

So, as much as I’d like to sugarcoat it and pimp it out, I really can’t;

Being in hospital is boring as hell.

Aside from watching daytime TV (*shudder*) or staring at the ceiling, there’s not much else you can really do in there.

To that end, I am very, VERY happy that I made sure to take my Nintendo DS along with me, and I can probably justify the integrity of my current sanity to the fact I was able to play on it during that time. 

On the last day of my stay, I had a thought. How many other people younger than me were in hospital, going through the exact same thing as me, but didn’t have access to anything like I had? How many other people were in hospital for reasons beyond their control, and were just silently tolerating it without any fun at all…?

So my mind started to wander towards Child’s Play (@CPCharity) and I thought, the stuff these guys are doing are a blessing to all people in hospital. They must be bringing so much happiness to so many people who started off with very little. Video games are a great thing to kick back with and enjoy, and their relative immersion factor usually means you can even forget about your predicament for a few hours, and just, have fun.

So if you haven’t already donated to Child’s Play, I urge you to please do. A couple of DSs and maybe a Wii in a hospital can definitely bring more joy than most people realise.

I’m also hoping that one day (or if I can even help it along), we can get a Child’s Play branch here in Perth as well.

As it stands, since I spent nearly the whole weekend playing it, I figured I’d do at least one thing constructive and write a blog post on this game.

So, the official open beta for Star Trek Online came out last week. I tried and failed to pick up a beta key from several sources, and so originally didn’t really pay much attention to it.

But then, as the week progressed, as a lot of friends online had picked it up (through beta keys or just by pre-ordering), I started to hear a lot of good things about it.
After several chat sessions on IM and forums, I figured what the heck, and on Friday, pre-ordered it. I figured at the very least, even if I hated it, I’d be helping to continue currying some interest in the Star Trek games franchise. Since my little games group and I have been responsible for one of the only other Trek-based roleplaying experiences around, I was going in with a very stern view on the entire thing.

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So just for those of you who missed it, Steam had a holiday sale over the Christmas holidays where they sold the majority of their games catalog at price discounts of up to 75% off.
Me being the stickler for bargains that I am, I couldn’t resist and bought every game I had been holding out for at that time. I probably spent something like 150 bucks, but I ended up with over 100 new games in my account. And these weren’t just small indie or casual games, either. I’m really looking forward to trying out Prototype, GRAW and Arkham Asylum… after I’ve finished playing Dragon Age.

So while I was settling down to playing my new games, I started to actually ponder the concept of digital distribution a little bit. I was feeling a lot happier and excited about getting and playing these games that I had downloaded, rather than bought from a store and was trying to figure out why.
I guess in its simplest form, it’s merely just buying digital content online and downloading it to your hard drive, as opposed to going to a shop and buying the exact same data on a physical form of media. On it’s own, this seems pretty uninspiring, so I started to think more about why I was feeling more satisfied about it. Here are some of the reasons I came up with.

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