The Death of the Traditional Book

Last week, my mom got a Kindle. Although it took her a few days to start using it (she says new technology intimidates her at first) she is now extremely into it and has been reading up a storm. I've been thinking lately about traditional paper books, and whether they have a place in the future. I'm going to just weigh out some pros and cons here between paper books and electronic books.

Storage Space
No doubt about it, this is one of the biggest reasons to get a Kindle or some other e-reader. If you're limited in terms of storage, a single tiny machine a little bigger than a novel but much thinner is much more attractive than shelves of books. It's also the way to go for portability. My inner collector still loves having lots of books, though.

Cost
A lot of ebooks are being sold for almost as much as - or even more than - physical copies. This is greed. An ebook requires no publishing, no shipping or handling, no warehouses to be stocked in. It's a digital file, and has far, far less overhead for the company. They should be significantly less expensive.

Other ebooks are cheap or free. Free is always a good price. You can get paper books free (or incredibly cheap) as well by visiting libraries, yard sales, and the like.

There is also, of course, the cost of the reader itself. A Kindle can be bought fairly cheaply (Amazon makes their money on ebooks, not readers) but it's still a pretty decent investment to make before you can start reading. Something to keep in mind. 

Visibility
This is something most people my age don't think about. My mom loves to read, but she has difficulty with small type. The Kindle came to the rescue with an adjustable font size, allowing my mom to read clearly once more. It made her very happy to be able to read again, and it's something I thank the Kindle for. It's also something paper books utterly fail at, because A) not every book has a Large Print edition and B) you can't make your existing books into Large Print books with the press of a button. 

Book Selection
The number of books that only exist as ebooks is growing and will continue to grow. Think back to the early 2000s, and how movies were released on both DVD and VHS for a while, but more and more movies were DVD only over time. However, at the same time, there are movies that came out on VHS in the eighties and nineties but were never rereleased on DVD when the new technology came. I think this will be the case with books - there will never be an electronic version of every paper book ever made, therefore paper books are not completely irrelevant and may be very useful in certain situations.

The Cloud
For those who don't know, "The Cloud" is shorthand for storing things on the Internet instead of on your own computer or owning a physical object.

This is something I've been hung up on for a while. Something I think is very important - if I pay for something, I want to own it. I don't want the company to be able to edit or remove it. I don't want to be charged a fee for continuing to own something. I want to be in control, not the company and their cloud. After they sell something to me, I should have the right to do as I wish - to lend it out, to read it over and over, to resell it.

For the same reason, I've been wary of the recent popularity of digital game downloads (although I've bought a few I couldn't get any other way). Services like Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade and Nintendo's Virtual Console are neat and all, but should something happen to my video game system, the games stored on it are gone. I want to have a physical object, like a cartridge or disc. It is much more reassuring and solidly mine. I also hate that digital books and games can't be resold. I can't go to a garage sale and buy a used ebook. This movement towards digital and intangible things can crush the resale market, a market I have frequently relied on for both books and games as a way to buy things cheaply.

Conclusion
I've said before that I generally embrace new technology. This is true. I think ebooks have great potential. But I want to be the sole owner of things that I pay for, and so I personally believe that paper books will remain relevant to me as long as I live, even if they don't to anyone else.

That said, I may browse my mother's Kindle and see if there's any free nonfiction books about animals...

Holiday Surprises

I know it's a little late to be writing about Christmas (or really, REALLY early, depending on how you look at it) but I wanted to share a few memories of the holiday season that showed how my mom can occasionally get the best of me and surprise me with a gift I didn't expect.

Christmas 2000
It was customary during the great unwrapping of gifts for my mom to direct me to certain presents and steer me away from "the big one" that was to be saved for the end. The "big one" this year was a Game Boy Color video game system. However, as I was looking it over, I was hit by a horrible realization. We had gotten video game systems in the house before, and they had always come with a free game included so you didn't have to buy anything else. However, the Game Boy Color was packaged alone. Not only that, but the video game I wanted the Game Boy for in the first place wasn't here, and there were no more presents under the tree. I tried to explain the situation to my mom, and she just casually strolled over to the tree, reached into the branches, and pulled out another present. It was the game I wanted. You win, mom.

Christmas 2007
This year I was very interested in getting a game for my Nintendo Wii system. My mom said she'd try to get it. Along the way, she decided to try the old "they were sold out" trick. When she opened a conversation with me by saying "About that game you wanted..." I jumped to conclusions.

You see, this game was made for more than one system. I thought she had accidentally bought the PlayStation 2 version of the game instead of the Wii one, which was useless since our house did not have a PlayStation 2, never mind that I'd heard the Wii version was much better. I imagined she may have gotten the PlayStation 2 game because it was ten dollars cheaper, not noticing that it was for the wrong system. When I asked as much, she agreed. "Yeah, that's what happened. Sorry. You'll have to wait until after Christmas when I can return it." Of course, she'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for, and I wound up getting duped again. By a plot I'd come up with FOR her, no less.

I have to stop assuming my mom is a complete dullard when it comes to video games. She is generally aware of how they work and what you need to play, but she's tricked me more than once by feigning ignorance.

Stores I Can Never Visit Again

I'm only 22 years old, but that's still old enough to have visited places that no longer exist. As I've grown up, my home town and the surrounding towns have changed. There are a number of places I visited as a child - some very frequently - that closed their doors later, and I genuinely miss some of them.

New England Video
This was a local video rental store that was a very popular destination for me and my brother from the mid-90s up until the early 2000s. While I enjoyed renting the occasional VHS tape from the kid's section (most frequently a Disney film or Garfield cartoon), the main reason for me to visit New England Video was the extensive collection of video games for the Sega Genesis system. I grew up with the Genesis, and it was a big part of my childhood. There are a number of games for it that I closely associate with New England Video because I rented them so frequently. Later, around 1999, my family got a Nintendo 64, and we rented games for that very frequently as well.

In the mid-2000s, New England Video began to falter from my perspective. They started selling off their collections of Genesis and N64 games, and my brother and I took advantage to pick up some of our old favorites. However, their selection of games for the next set of video game systems was lacking. It was a stark contrast to the all-star lineup of awesome games they had for older systems, and it was worrying. Another problem was that I wasn't and have never been a huge movie buff, so their VHS collection and their new DVDs weren't attracting me either. Without game rentals, I cared little for the store, and we stopped visiting around 2005. New England Video technically still exists (although they've moved twice, once when I was still visiting and once after), but I haven't been inside in years and it's not the store I grew up with anymore. I have, however, passed by it frequently, and it has one of those signs out front with the interchangeable letters that talks about movies you "won't find at RedBox". Exclusivity or not, RedBox and NetFlix are killing the video rental store, and I can't imagine New England Video hanging on much longer.

BlockBuster
Another video rental store. Blockbuster was late to the game, showing up around 2006, just in time for the launch of the latest wave of video game systems (The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii). Like New England Video, game rentals were what I cared about. I rented from Blockbuster a few times and discovered some good games, but I never got into it as much as I had New England Video. Within a couple years, the Blockbuster franchise was sold and renamed the incredibly silly "Moose Mountain", which sounds more like a mini-golf course or a hunting supply store than it does a video rental shop. Predictably, Moose Mountain folded in under a year.

Ames
This is the big one. This is the greatest shopping tragedy of my childhood. I loved Ames. Loved it like you wouldn't believe. It was the only full-fledged department store in town, and it was the de facto destination whenever my family needed something. Clothes? Go to Ames. Toys? Stop by Ames. Holiday decorations? Ames again. They had just about everything. This was the place my family bought a lot of things that were near and dear to me. I remember the time my brother and I came here with our savings and bought the Nintendo 64. I remember walking through the holiday aisles around Christmas time, seeing the displays of those little Christmas town figurines. I remember reading a Pokemon comic book while relaxing on a chair in the furniture section. And speaking of Pokemon, I remember buying pack after pack of Pokemon trading cards, eagerly collecting as many as I could.

In my mind, there was always going to be an Ames. It was a constant presence. Tons of people shopped there. It was the biggest fish the the small pond that was my hometown. And it was a chain - there were Ames stores all over the place, in other states, across the country! Truly, it was too big to fail.

It was in 2002 when the news spread. Ames was going out of business. Not scaling back to just the profitable stores (ours had to be profitable, there's no doubt in my mind). Going away forever. I was distraught. Ames was the best place in town for so many things! How could it vanish? Where would we go? There wasn't anywhere else in town that sold video games, and the selections of other merchandise left much to be desired. As it turned out, our town would never see another department store. Fortunately, my family eventually discovered the wonders of buying things online, and we've had little difficulty finding things to buy since.

The liquidation sale was a fun last hurrah. I was able to get a bunch of stuff for cheap. At the time, I was a big Spongebob Squarepants fan, so I got a bunch of Spongebob toys. I also remember getting a Halloween CD and Pac-Man for the Sega Game Gear. A year or two after Ames' demise, the space was filled by a grocery store (Shaw's). I still miss Ames even now, and if I had the chance to go back in time and visit any store again, this is definitely the one I'd pick.

Funny thing. I hadn't realized this until now, but this year is the tenth anniversary of Ames' demise. On August 14, it will have been 10 years since the announcement that every remaining Ames would close. Isn't that something else?

Here's a commercial Ames played to advertise their going-out-of-business sales. I only wish I'd had more money to take even better advantage of the liquidation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yr8fhtM4lk

And here's what Wikipedia has to say about Ames:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Department_Stores_Inc.

Internet Advertising - The Hilarity of Evony

Back in 2009 a series of ads began to make their way across the Internet advertising something called "Evony". Evony is an online video game where you are placed in charge of a medieval village and are tasked with building it into a robust community that can then wage war on other players' towns. But Evony's reputation is not for its gameplay, but rather its advertisements, which are among the most ridiculous attempts to get people (specifically men) to click an ad that I have ever seen.

Evony's ads were originally fairly up-front, depicting a medieval landscape and a knight in armor. The implications were clear - Evony was a medieval fantasy game appealing to people who like that sort of setting. But then, things got strange. Evony's next advertisements featured a girl in medieval dress with the message "Save the Queen!". As it turns out, "the Queen" was wearing a fairly revealing dress. From this point on the ads began sliding into increasingly false and tasteless territory, depicting women that were more and more scantily clad and eventually ditching the medieval theme altogether. Most of the later ads come off as being for a dating site, and certainly not a strategy game. A common phrase (and one the Internet mocked mercilessly) was "Play now, My Lord", which appeared on many of the ads. Further adding to the saucy implications of the ads is the claim that you can "play discreetly". The ads reached their nadir with a banner that consisted of nothing but a closeup of a woman's breasts, covered only by lingerie. It's one of the most ridiculous cases of false advertising I've ever seen, and the resulting widespread mockery they received in the gaming community was fully deserved.

Oh, and to add insult to injury? If you actually play Evony, your computer gets tracked and spied on. Lovely.

Here's a link to a progression of Evony's ads. (contains scantily clad women - think magazine covers)
http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/a-history-of-evony-ads-the-insanity-continues/

It's Okay for Guys to Like Purple

(In all posts like this where I am discussing a news article, I'll have the article linked at the end of my post so you can research the topic further and draw your own conclusions.)

I just came across this article, and I could not kick off my blog any better. It's perfect. This is the tale of a brave and smart older brother, his special younger brother, and a father with a few things to learn. It's not my tale. But I hope I would have done the same if I had been in the older brother's situation.

Two brothers, one in his mid teens and the other a preteen, are shopping. The older brother is going to buy a game as a present for his younger brother. The younger one is adamant about one thing: The main character of the game must be female. Now, games with female leads are unfortunately difficult to come by, but with the help of an employee they found the game Mirror's Edge. Next, the boy wants to know if there are any "girl controllers" that he could play Mirror's Edge with. He selected a purple controller, excitedly telling the clerk that purple was his favorite.

Enter dad.

The "man of the house" is not impressed with his son being so in touch with his feminine side, and he has a different game idea: Dead Island. Dead Island is one of the many horror zombie games out on the market today, and there's lots of guns and gore. However, the kid was steadfast in his selection, and things began to escalate. The father began threatening his son over his choice of game.

Now, if that wasn't bad enough already, consider this: Mirror's Edge is an action-adventure game. The protagonist can wield weapons (including the guns Dad was so insistent about), although it isn't about shooting all of your enemies into oblivion. In fact, the game congratulates the player if they manage to finish the whole thing without shooting anyone. The important point is that Mirror's Edge is a far cry from, say, Hello Kitty Roller Rescue in terms of "girly games". And it doesn't look like any sort of "barbie game" from the box art. It seems that what Dad was so stuck on was the fact that you play as a girl and that he wanted a purple controller to control her with. That's all.

Fortunately, the older brother didn't feel the same way as his father. He chose this moment to step in. "It's my money, it's my gift to him. If it's what he wants, I'm getting it for him, and if you're going to hit anyone for it, it's going to be me." Little brother was crying now, but the employee (who saw the whole thing and wound up writing the article I've found) helped comfort the child. She said, "I'm a girl, and I like the color blue, and I like shooting games. There's nothing wrong with what you like. Even if it's different than what people think you should."

We have been moving towards a more tolerant future for all types of people for a long time. Incidents like this show that while we may have a ways to go, there is hope for a future free of bigotry - or at least with so little of it that it's no longer a major issue.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-wolfe/dear-customer-who-stuck-u_b_1190690.html