Video Game Review: Outlast

I watched a couple of my favorite gamers/personalities on YouTube playing through the indie game Outlast and I was immensely disappointed.

Outlast is a horror adventure game where the player/protagonist enacts a reporter who secretly infiltrates an abandoned mental asylum at night. The goal is to find out whether the private research firm/think tank that recently took the asylum over was actually using the inmates for horrible, inhumane experiments.

Whenever a topic as banal as mental illness or a mental asylum is made the background for a horror game, you can spell out doom pretty much from the get-go. It's a cop out. It would be fun and interesting if the writers/developers would stop throwing up on the screen and think story and resolution out a little better. I saw nothing more than a whole lot of conjecture, religious superstition, and blood splatter and guts mixed all up in a shaker for good measure. *rolls eyes*

As the amount of body parts, organs, blood pools and splatter, and horribly disfigured characters increase exponentially as you progress, the storyline gets weaker and weaker until it's just a whisp of smoke by the end. *sad panda face*

As you progress through the "levels," question upon question keeps piling up around the player--much like the body parts and guts. It's almost like the developers focused on the great lighting, background graphics, and character schematics first, then left the plot until last--when most of the money was already spent.

If the visual and auditory assaults on the player are not enough to keep them entertained/hooked on this train wreck you can't look away from, they threw in little bits and pieces of information which made the player hope against hope that things would get cleared up in the end. Sadly, that "a-ha!" moment never arrives. There's no payoff.

If the gruesome sights were not enough to shock the young male audience who is obviously targeted for this game, there was a lot of full male frontal nudity--probably harping on homophobia, claustrophobia, and helplessness to kick off the cheap thrills and chills. Any game where the player is unable to equip and defend his/her character, is another clue that the game won't end well. The player is definitely being taken for a ride. And not a fun one at that.

I was really disappointed. This game had so much potential. First of all, this is an indie company, and these are getting some amazing games out lately. They really work on details and they're a joy to play through. The graphics and backgrounds were well designed in Outlast, but imagine if the developers had done their research and interspersed some real, historical, or medical material and information a into a real plot and story line. What a difference that would have made!

I hope that if there ends up being a sequel, it's a lot more well thought out. And a lot less ugly.

The Addictiveness of YouTube Videos

I got hooked on subscribing to YouTube user videos in the summer of 2007. Today, suffering from a little cold/flu medicine insomnia, I picked up one of my short-time-to-favorite YouTube user series, Etho Plays Minecraft. Believe it or not, I've managed to watch 237 episodes now.

I don't understand half of the engineering and electrical circuitry that Etho, or many similar Minecraft "gurus" that I happen upon (such as Haydz or NoobSniper), work on for their amazing constructions in that little boxy world of Minecraft chunks that we all love to hate or hate to love. But it makes for a great source of ongoing entertainment.

Consider the snappy video tutorials of today versus the ye olde time printed walk-throughs for video games, that took forever to print out on dot matrix paper and cost a fortune in ink cartridges. No contest convenience-wise.

I started watching cosmetics application videos back in 2007, then slowly expanded to beauty gurus. I had my favorites, but a few really wore out their digital welcome mat with their unnecessary drama.

After that, I started adding to my visual collection by looking for magazine and news source channels and reviews of products and services.  I even learned a lot about stick shift driving before taking my first class by watching YouTube videos.

Then started on entertainment series. Anyone remember Chad Vader? What ever happend to him? Was he copyrighted to death? Simon's Cat took over his spot in my subscription queue and has been causing me the occasional spurt of giggles on slow Friday afternoons at work--while I work of course, in another tab.

Some people have a gift for explaining things visually as they themselves go through it. The serendipity of following someone ad-lib or look like they're ad-libbing is slightly addictive, slightly voyeuristic, and slightly sad in our attempt to connect with someone who doesn't know we're riding along with them on their way. It's v-blog-stalking. We all know those of us who blog stalk cause we love a person's style or learn a lot from what they post.

I think YouTube totally trumps reality TV. WAY trumps it. I don't care if many of these YT users are power partners or whatever they call them these days. They basically make a ton of money off views, likes, and subscriptions. They honestly earned it. They should make the money, they do a good job entertaining us from our digital/mobile devices. Kudos.

With time I've curated my subscriptions to a bare minimum of 29 channels. There's been tons more at times, and there's been tons less. Sometimes I don't watch YT for weeks or even months on end. Then need to catch up to my old so-called friends. Sometimes I neglect my old favorites for a brand new channel whose videos I simply must catch up with.

It's been an interesting experience, this effortless sense of entertainment and ability to reach out and touch our entertainers, even if it's just by leaving a comment or a thumbs up on their latest video. I'm liking what I'm seeing.

Fail of the Day: FeedBurner, No More

After reading in a couple of places that FeedBurner was on its way out (here, here, and here), I got severely ticked off. I don't often check my FeedBurner stats often, but that's because it's a set it and forget it type of thing. That was the whole point of using it.

If Google is going to shut off the FeedBurner service, a large majority of blogs will be left without a way to syndicate their blogs to those who subscribed to them via email or an aggregation tool such as Google Reader, and more importantly, those who monetize their blogs won't have that important tracking tool anymore.

I went into all my Blogger blogs and deleted the RSS and email links (and the redirect under the dashboard) I had been using with FeedBurner, which were on my blog's layout on the right-hand side. Then regretted it. I went back into my accounts, and found out there's an email subscription widget you can add to your Blogger layout. Guess what? It's FeedBurner. What are they going to replace this with when they take it offline?

Thoughts on Project Management and Scrum

Heads up. This is not exactly Internet or Computer related, but it has to do with it in a relevant way. Or...at least, I seem to think so.

Back in 2005 I became interested in project management. I must have discovered it was an actual science or career by reading something online, somewhere.

The fact is, after purchasing a membership in the Project Management Institute, and a copy of the Body of Knowledge to begin studying it, I found it intensely terse and process focused.

When you overemphasize tools and processes, you focus 90% of your time and attention to the tools and processes and only 10% on deliverables and end goals/objectives. That's a no-win in my view.

Half-hartedly I stepped up to take the CAPM exam, and failed with flying colors. It was a big setback, both economically and emotionally, because I had seen a glimmer of hope in my skill-set and career prospects. Yet, obviously, hoping against hope that a new, trendy career path would work out for me was the wrong mindset to have, to begin with.

When you're looking at expanding your skillset, the financial aspect is usually what makes or breaks the decision. It's also important to path out the decision and the work required after the decision takes place to make it where you're heading.

When I went to take the CAPM exam in a specially-designated testing center, I realized immediately upon the third or fourth question that the test was rigged to fail people rather than to test knowledge from the study materials.

Many associations with certification programs make it seem like their certification is the only thing between you and your next paycheck/promotion/crown of laurels. They throw your way a membership requirement ($), then the prep material ($$), then the user study group ($$$), then the prep test ($$$$), and finally, the actual test ($$$$). Don't forget the annual coursework to keep up the certifiacation ($ⁿ).

They urge a candidate to participate in online communities and in-person networking events. I can't imagine having that much time in my life, to be honest, to be spending supporting an organization with my time, money, and presence--just to sort of validate their sales objectives.

The PMI certification is pretty much irrelevant and unknown EVEN in IT circles. It's a "heard of it before" "nice to have" kind of thing, but no one really has it as a job requirement. To be honest, I've yet to see a job description where that's even mentioned anywhere.

It's so document focused, you basically have a total encyclopedic bible by the time you're halfway through your project, imagine what it looks like when the project's completed! People on these sorts of teams will actually spend valuable meeting time arguing about which tool, software package, or document template is better. Instead of focusing on the deliverable, which is probably two years down the line.

So now, seven years after, we have agile workplaces and workspaces--a.k.a. insane project timelines, team members thrown together at the whim of superiors, and no concrete project plans because everything is done on the fly.

Agile working environments go along with Scrum: what have you done since yesterday, what are you doing today, what are your challenges in getting it accomplished? Scrum is the latest flavor in collaboration and efficiency for the management of products and projects. It's almost the exact opposite counterpart of Project Management.

Scrum is all about daily face-to-face meetings (the bane of most office workers existence), ownership and hard work, and story-boarding things to death--then jumping right in to the project work to provide periodic deliverables which are as complete as they can be--until they come up with new cool features you should have added and that they forgot they wanted. Changes are welcome in a continuous stream and must be available in the very next reiteration.

The Scrum philosophy, to work in a practical application, relies on on capable product owners and independent, stimulated, enthusiastic workers. I know I'm being sarcastic (no! you? really?), but very few team members have all three qualifications (independent, stimulated, enthusiastic).

Self-centered moochers company jumpers abound. Most teams I have had the pleasure of being a member of, seem to just want to do the bare minimum to get by, prefer to dump work on whomever in the team they respect the least (for whatever reason), and make a big deal out of team bar hopping building at the beginning of each project and at the end of each project--and at birthdays, anniversaries, departures, new staff member welcomes, and any other similar money-out-the-window-let's-get-drunk celebration. Apparently, there are some drawbacks to working in an office full of 20-something-year-olds. Go figure.

This is when motivation theory may kick in and discuss the financial rewards of a job versus the intellectual rewards of a job, especially in IT, where you're likely to have both and no spare time to sleep and brush your teeth. Family? What's a family? Vacation time? Mwahahahaha!

I think I like the working environment of Scrum and agile better. People are actively involved in verbal communication and have a sense of community and team-manship (yes I just made up a word). People are stimulated intellectually and have a healthy list of assignments aligned with their skill sets--unless they lied on their resume and now the project and the team are screwed.

Ideally, people may be in "the zone" most days, working away and building usable iterations for their customer or product owner. Never mind the drumbeat and whip background noises...keep rowing kids!

There's also very little hierarchy, and more focus on staff with the skill-sets to get results in products as fast as possible. Even the lead and product owner are in the same cubicle layout as the team members. These elements seem to set up a fair and equitable foundation for lots of work that creates efficiency and gives employees a sense of belonging and of achievement. Then again, middle and upper management may get bitter that they have to share their working space with common serfs on a daily basis.

I want to learn more about Scrum. I think it suits the Millennial attitude a lot better than the stodgy Project Management philosophy. There's more face-to-face time, there's more communication all around, and there's a sense of achievement and progress with each iteration.

Having said all this, I can't shake the feeling that this is just another "latest flavor" of the same old thing: the industrial cubicle farm. Just rosier for now. What will tomorrow bring? Well...besides the 10 am Scrum meeting.

You can learn more about project management from the Project Management Institute, and you can learn more about Scrum from the Scrum Alliance.

Social Media Haters

What do you do when you're faced with another interaction in the "real world" with a social media hater?

You know those people. They talk about Facebook like's a weird sex position that Cosmo featured in their last issue, but that it's not really "socially accepted" yet.

Or people who say they're too busy to play online with Facebook. Or who wants to know what I ate for breakfast on Twitter anyway?

What's your approach for handling people like that?