And if you were wondering who came first, the Dixie Chicken or the Garth Brooks egg, it turns out they all took a cue from Little Feat’s 1973 song “Dixie Chicken”. Thanks Misti. It’s kinda funny – I go and write some short novel and I’m always amazed that someone out there is actually reading it (though to be fair, I’ve met Misti in real life).

So it turns out I was kinda like those people who think that Rolling Stone magazine named itself after The Rolling Stones, or vice versa, when in truth they both stemmed their name from the Bob Dylan tune, “Like A Rolling Stone”. Of course that was something of an offshoot of “Papa was a Rolling Stone” by The Temptations, which itself was a mangling of the phrase “A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss”. Before that, there was darkness.

In College Station, where I lived for nearly eight years, lives a man named Don Ganter. Ganter is an A&M Graduate and his main claim to fame in the College Station area is that he owns an establishment known as the Dixie Chicken. I don’t recall if the Garth Brooks song of the same name is related, but it was definitely around before the Dixie Chicks rose to fame and infamy. The Dixie Chicken is primarily a bar and local legend has it that it holds the world’s record for more alcohol consumed per square inch than anywhere else. So popular is this establishment that during my tenure at A&M I knew of more than one devoutly religious, ani-alcohol person who would go there to play dominos. There’s even a tradition, “dunking your ring”, wherein you take a very large mug of beer, drop in your newly acquired Aggie Ring, and chug the beer until you can grab the ring with your teeth (this tradition shifted slightly when local law outlawed pitchers). I’m not much of a beer drinker and even I did this with a group of friends the night we got our rings.

In addition to the Dixie Chicken, Ganter owns the Dry Bean Saloon, a shot bar. And he owns Shadow Canyon, a dance hall. And the Hole in the Wall Saloon (another bar), the Chicken Oil Company (a restaraunt), Alfred T. Hornbacks (a pool hall), Satchel’s Bar-B-Q & Steaks, and Brazos Hall (not sure). In all he owns eight establishments and they’re all similar – made almost entirely of wood, rusted old signs nailed to the wall, exteriror signs with more or less the same old western fonts, etc. Really playing up the stereotypical Texan angle.

Now the interesting thing I remember hearing (though I must confess I heard it back before I had learned of the concept of the Urban Legend, so I believed more of what I heard back then) is that every one of Ganter’s establishments loses money. Every one that is except for the Dixie Chicken, which not only makes money, but it makes so much money that it sustains the other seven businesses and then some. When asked why he bothers to own so many businesses when the one is sufficient (i.e., if he shed the other seven he could be even more wealthy), Ganter’s reaction is that he just likes being able to tell people that he owns a bar, a shot bar, a restaraunt, a dance hall, etc. It’s this sort of eccentricity Aggies love (plus it’s good for the local economy).

Stick that little anecdote in your head while we switch gears for a minute.

It’s been a given for many years that the PC can get online. Though a lot of people still use dial-up, PC’s have also had the ability to connect directly to the Internet or to another network with an ethernet port. Consoles have had to take different paths to get online.

The Sega Dreamcast shipped with a 56K modem in tow. The joke was that it was “narrowband”, but in 1999 dial-up was considerably more prevalent than broadband. It still is, but less so. The Dreamcast included a web browser and could do some interesting things, but playing online never really took off. Sega even tried their hand at being an ISP – signing a 3 year contract with them scored you a free Dreamcast.There was a broadband adaptor which had an ethernet port, but few games took advantage of it – not even Phantasy Star Online Episode II, the game that really really needed it.

Oddly enough, though the Nintendo GameCube has an online adapter – two of them, either Ethernet or a 56K phone modem – and the only online title there is is Phantasy Star Online Episodes I & II. One game, and no real strategy. Well, Nintendo does have a strategy – their strategy is basically to not have one. To sit back and watch. To let others figure out what works. While I usually admire Nintendo’s innovation most of the time, this time they want to sit back and let the others do the hard part.

This is more or less the exact same approach that Sony is taking with the PS2. The PS2 shipped without connectivity abilities, but for the price of a Network Adapter, PS2 games can go online as well. The difference between Nintendo and Sony however, is that Nintendo isn’t very anxious to incorporate online connectivity in their games, whereas Sony is (though Sony makes considerably fewer and less popular games). Sony is content to let the individual developers do the legwork to get their game online.

Compare all of this to Microsoft with the Xbox console. Microsoft made big headlines when they announced that they were going to ship the Xbox with a hard drive and an ethernet port, making for the first broadband (only) game console. However, while many games shipped with the ability to network via a LAN connection, none worked over the Internet. It wasn’t until a year later, when Microsoft unveiled Xbox Live, that the ability to play online was realized. Many gamers were mad that, after buying the one console which didn’t require a hardware purchase to get online, they now had to pay to get online anyway.

But Xbox Live affords several things that the other approaches don’t. For one, XBL ensures that there are servers to go to. The work to make games XBL compliant ensures that they all function the same way. And XBL allows gamers to go to one specific spot in which to find other gamers willing to play. For all its differences, XBL is a more sensical way to get online.

EA, however, has decided not to support XBL in any of its games. This is significant, since EA is one of the biggest game publishers in the world. Their Xbox port of Battlefield 1942 was cancelled for this reason, and their Madden franchise is fanatically popular. The reason boils down to simple economics and gamer mentality. Since gamers pay $50 per year to be on XBL, they don’t usually want to pay any extra for other games online. That being said, the Xbox port of Phantasy Star Online Episodes I & II requires an $8.99 monthly fee to Sega, so it remains to be seen whether this will work at all. The financial reasoning is that it’s not clear whether the expense to add XBL support to a game is worth it.

Pretend that EA’s Madden 2004 costs $1,000 to develop, manufacture and publish (we’ll keep these numbers easy to manage and completely unrealistic). And pretend that they sell 1,000 copies at $2 each. By this I mean, pretend that there are 1,000 Xbox owners who will definitely buy a football game, and Madden 2004 is the only football game on the Xbox. These 1,000 gamers buy the game at $2, meaning that the game makes $1,000 after expenses.

Along comes Sega’s new game ESPN NFL Football, which also costs $2. And let’s say that, unlike Madden 2004, Sega’s game is XBL compatible. And let’s also pretend that these 1,000 football Xbox customers won’t buy two football games. So let’s say that 150 gamers would buy Sega’s game instead of EA’s. This means Madden 2004 would only pull in $700 profit instead of $1,000 – due to XBL incompatibility.

So EA does the research and figures out that it would add $400 to the development costs of Madden 2004 to add XBL compatibility, meaning that if they could lure those 150 gamers back they would make $600 profit. In this case even though it sucks to lose those 150 gamers and the $300 profit associated with them, it’s still more beneficial than losing that $400.

That is, unless Sega lures 250 gamers to buy their game, in which case EA would lose $500 by not being XBL compatible, making XBL compatibility, at a mere $400 loss and in fact additional $100 profit, financially worth it.

So that’s one of the reasons EA has decided not to support Xbox Live. The other is that EA doesn’t stand to make any money off of XBL itself. Microsoft, who has undertaken the task of creating XBL, isn’t sharing any of the profits. Part of this is Microsoft business sense – they just don’t want to share profits. But the real reason is: there aren’t any profits. Microsoft has not made any money off of XBL. Actually, I don’t know that, but I do know that Microsoft hasn’t made any money whatsoever off of Xbox. In fact, they’re predicted to lose $2 Billion on Xbox before they start headed back to the black. Like manufacturing cars (again with the automobile analogies), the console business is prohibitively expensive to get into.

So why then is Microsoft in the console business at all? Well one would say that Microsoft plans to eventually turn a profit with Xbox (witness how PlayStation accounts for 45% of Sony’s income as a corporation), but a seemingly authentic memo leaked from Microsoft last year which claimed/admitted that everything Microsoft does or makes loses money. Everything except for Windows and Office, which not only make money but make enough money to keep just about everything afloat.

Sound familiar? Yes, it sounds like Don Ganter. Microsoft really just likes to have a console, even if it loses money. They want to have certian markets cornered, even if they lose money. Ever notice how you wind up paying $10-$15 for Microsoft Money every year after rebates? There’s things Microsoft’s not worried about losing money on, both on the vague premise of eventually turning a profit, and also because they just can.

So what does this afford Microsoft? The ability to innovate with less fear of going out of business. Namely, they won’t be. So they can try something crazy like XBL. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. Even if it tanks, they’ve got Windows and Office to fall back on.

Which leads back into Nintendo. Microsoft makes software, hardware, services, etc. Their game console is just one business of theirs. Nintendo makes games and game systems. Period. They do have some money in the bank and, to be fair, they make a mint off of all things Game Boy, but Nintendo doesn’t have tons of other businesses to fall back on. They’re not interested in losing billions in the quest to have their hardware in every home in America – they’re interested in doing what they know or at least strongly believe will work. And they can’t be convinced as of late that online gaming will work as a business model.

They’re working on Mario Kart: Double Dash, the GameCube incarnation of the venerable Mario Kart franchise. However, while it will be LAN playable with a network adapter, it won’t be playable over the Internet. Not all hope is lost however, since like they did with the Xbox, GameSpy and others are working on “tunneling” software which will allow people to play LAN games over the Internet. It requires a fast connection and it relieves the game developer of having to program the game with lag in mind, but I hear it works.

In any event, a lot of people can’t understand why Nintendo doesn’t want to go online with GameCube. Many can’t understand why EA doesn’t want to be on XBL. Maybe now people will instead wonder why Microsoft wants to be online at all.

I’m a Coke drinker. And not in that generic “everything in the South is called Coke” sense, I mean I drink Coca-Cola. I don’t drink Pepsi. I occasionally drink Dr. Pepper. I think at one point in my youth (and by youth I mean like when I was 10) I drank Dr. Pepper exclusively, but since then it’s always been Coke. I think at one point I was so adamant about Coke instead of Pepsi that I would refuse to drink Pepsi at all and even avoid restaraunts due to it, which isn’t so hard to do. I’m not so nuts about that anymore but there are still places lower on my “go to” list because of it.

I forget if Pepsi owns them or they’re owned by the same company or just exlusive or what but the same company owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. This is why you’ll often see in newer places two or more of these three grouped together, like a Taco Bell with a Pizza Hut Express in it. These three serve Pepsi products exclusively. So when I go to Taco Bell I had to drink Pepsi. Of course if I go to a place that serves Coke, I drink Coke, but when the options are Pepsi products, I decided to experiment a little. So I tried Mountain Dew, and I found it goes real well with Chalupas and the like. Then I tried Mountain Dew Code Red. I liked that, too – it basically boiled down to Cherry Mountain Dew. That worked so well that there’s now Mountain Dew LiveWire. It’s orange, so I figured it was Orange Mountain Dew, but it’s basically Tang with caffene. Oh well.

What I find odd about Mountain Dew LiveWire is that the bottles and cans of it proclaim “Only Available Summer 2003!”, so I presume that after August it will become scarce and disappear entirely. What I don’t get is why. Back on the topic of Taco Bell, I notice that they oftentimes introduce a new product, like the Gordita or the Frito Burrito, with the phrase “for a limited time only”. Since some items like this never go away and others do, I can only assume that it’s a proviso – that way when it doesn’t go over well and they pull it, it doesn’t look like a failure. But unless they’ve got something up their sleeve, Mountain Dew LiveWire is going away no matter what, since it’s clearly marked that way.

I’m not sure if my perception is right, but it always seemed to me like the cola market was one whose products rarely changed. This may have something to do with the old new Coke and Crystal Pepsi fiascos, but with rare exception Coke and Pepsi sold what they did and tried their best to sell more and more of it. Then at some point they figured out a couple of things – first that there was more profit to be had if they could successfully unveil more products, and second that new beverages that were unable to tie into the existing brand names were pretty much ignored. So in the last few years we’ve seen new cola products that are either variants of existing ones, like MD Code Red, or just use the name, like MD LiveWire.

I think the first for a long time was MD Code Red, which was so popular it had a computer virus named after it (the guys who found it were drinking it at the time). Coke followed with Vanilla Coke, which was their first variant since Cherry Coke. Astute and older observers usually note that these are the sorts of variants that were available at soda fountains and are still done at places like Sonic. Vanilla Coke was so successful that Coke changed the Cherry Coke labelling to match and later unveiled Diet Vanilla Coke and Diet Cherry Coke. Pepsi then decided to unveil Pepsi Blue, which was “berry fusion” or something. I never had it, but apparently it was like blueberries mixed with Windex. I think it’s pretty much been phased out. Coke has pulled together Sprite Remix, which is Sprite with citrus flavors. I had one once – they were handing it out at a movie theater. No thanks.

I was surprised to learn that Dr. Pepper is actually owned by Cadbury/Scweppes, so it doesn’t matter how bad chocolate eggs or gigner ale sells so long as there are people like my cousin-in-law Richard in the world. Dr. Pepper is like that rock group with the smaller but fanatical cult following. They unveiled Dr. Pepper Red Fusion, which, like MD Code Red, is pretty much Cherry Dr. Pepper. Not bad. And with their 7up line they unviled dnL, a drink whose logo looks like 7up upside down. Whereas 7up is clear in a green bottle and caffene free, dnL is green in a clear bottle and caffinated, so the Bizarro 7up. It’s not bad, but I think it’s destined to be a fad drink.

So what I’m really curious to see is if they follow through with the LiveWire bit, and how long we’ll still be able to see Pepsi Blue in stores. In the meantime, I have a dentist’s appointment next week – anyone care to guess why?

It would appear that our good friends Blogger went and implemented themselves a new site. It’s got many things that are much nicer about it, and it looks like their acquisition by Google is going well. Except for the fact that at the moment it chokes on long posts – which is of course a big problem for me. I had this incredibly long post ready and Blogger wouldn’t take it. I guess it’s a good thing I compose them in w.bloggar first. In any event, for the time being, I decided on the compromise of splitting the post into three separate posts (and I had to post them in reverse order so they’d look right here) so please read the three posts below as if they were the same post.

Hey, at least I can fix my template now. Still, if they don’t fix this soon I’m writing my own blogging utility – something which doesn’t make me pay for RSS.

Last week saw the launch of Star Wars Galaxies, an MMORPG so long in the making that it predates The Phantom Menace. Or maybe development didn’t but speculation did. I think it went along the lines of Lucasarts thinking of making “an MMORPG” and everyone naturally assumed it would be Star Wars related.

The MMORPG has evolved from text-based MUD’s but the first graphical milestone came with Meridian 59, which is apparently being relaunched by Near Death Studios. The first “MMORPG” termed as such was 1996’s Ultima Online, which is still going on to this day. The first MMORPG to hit critical mass was EverQuest, which was developed and published by Sony/Verant/989, the same basic entitiy that is publishing SWG.

The basic premise of an MMORPG is that of a massive, persistent online world in which people log on and play as an ongoing character. For this the players pay a recurring fee. Early MMORPG’s launched at just under $10 a month, but more recently most go in the $12-$13 a month range. SWG is setting a record by launching at $15 a month (or $12 a month if you pay a year in advance). This is in addition to the $50 for the boxed product (though that price does include a month of playtime).

A looming problem with the MMORPG concept which has already started to manifest itself is with the notion that the market is simply not going to tolerate them all. By this I mean – you can go and buy a “regular” game for around $50. You can play that game as much as you want, or as little as you want, it still costs $50. People on the whole don’t seem to mind the concept of buying a game, playing it for a bit, maybe even a lot, and then shelving it. The nice thing about “unattached” games is that you don’t have to commit to how much you will play prior to purchase. However, buying an MMORPG means that you fully intend on playing it a lot – enough to merit a $10-$15 hit per month. This is more than some people pay for some of their individual utilities.

A buddy of mine bought SWG to try it out and apparently has every intention of playing for the first month and then not subscribing until much later, if at all. This kinda blew my mind, to which his retort was that it’s not unheard of to buy a game for $50, play it for a month, then put it on the shelf indefinitely. I suppose that’s true, but the difference to me is that if I put the game on a shelf and then decide to pick it up much later, I don’t have to go pay again to play it. For that matter I don’t like the idea of having to decide within just a month whether or not I like a game. I lost interest in Neverwinter Nights but I’m starting to pick it up again. To me, this concept of paying to continue to use something you already own is the sort of thing that killed Divx (the DVD variant, not the codec). Still, to each his own.

But still, even $15 a month isn’t too much in and of itself. However it does limit you somewhat. There are dozens of MMORPG’s in existence vying for your money, and dozens more on the horizon. The looming problem is that many or most of these games are destined for failure, simply because they’re competing for the notion that they are the game which is worth the money you might be willing to spend on them. Some games, like Motor City Online – based on the thin premise of racing – have already folded. Sony has already unveiled a $22/month service wherein you can play all their MMORPG’s like EverQuest and PlanetSide (though SWG isn’t included). However, the prevailing theory is that the MMORPG’s that survive will have some compelling reason for doing so – such as having been around long enough to have an impact, or having a popular license. EQ and UO fit the first bill, SWG fits the second.

But then again a good license isn’t always enough. The Sims Online launched and since the original Sims game sold some 8 million copies, it was thought that a million people would buy SO. However, initially only 110,000 bought the game, and only 40,000 stuck around for the second month. Complaints about the game mostly centered around the notion that it was essentially a very graphical chat client. Speculation by analysts seems to indicate that most of the copies sold of The Sims were to casual gamers and less likely gamers (like women in their 30’s) and few of them are interested in the MMORPG concept.

Last I heard, EQ had some 200,000 active paying users. If each of them pays $10 a month, then the game pulls in $2M a month. Of course at $10 a month, it was claimed that EQ wasn’t covering costs at that rate and the price has shot to $13 a month. This, if it is true, means for the most part that these games are not as profitable as was initially thought. It also explains why most MMORPG’s won’t forego the initial boxed product. The boxed product price cover the initial development, the subscription covers the maintenance of servers and such.

If a typical game sells some 200,000 copies then it’s considered a hit. Each of those 200,000 people might never go home and play the game, but it sold anyway. However, an MMORPG that goes on to sell 200,000 copies and sees few of those people actually playing is considered a dud. Worse yet, the MMORPG might go under – in which case you are in the possession of a game that you can no longer play – not even offline. This is also something of a problem for other types of games – shortly after launch it was complained that despite selling over 800,000 copies, few people were playing Unreal Tournament 2003 online. Offline games have quieter demises.

And there’s other problems with MMORPG’s as well – such as launches which are usually disasterous. UO was even launched way back when most people were on 28.8K modems, so lag was a major issue. Games like Anarchy Online have had nearly textbook cases of maddening issues. World War II Online was shipped extremely early due to the major investor threatening to pull out. Some games, like Dark Age of Camelot go off without much of a hitch, but they’re generally the exception. And now I see that most people today are unable to play SWG due to server issues – especially disasterous due to the large number of people who probably have been holding out on MMORPG’s until SWG.

There was a time in which Star Wars games were impeccable. X-Wing set the standard for space shooters, and Tie Figher raised it. The Dark Forces line of FPS games were magnificent. Even Rebel Assault games, in the despised category of rail shooters in CD-ROM infancy, were the gold standard. Games like the ill concieved Masters of Tera Kasi (a PSX fighting game – imagine Chewbacca beating the crap out of Princess Leia) were rare.

Then again all Star Wars games were rare back then. My theory at the time lied within the fact that, unlike other movie tie-in games, the Star Wars games didn’t have deadlines. The movies they were based off of were twenty years old. If you want to make a movie tie-in game you basically have three options. Option one is to develop it ahead of time, which allows you enough time to make a good game (or at least it should), but you run the risk of the movie being a flop and therefore your game is virtually unsellable (see the Judge Dredd games). The second option is to wait until the movie comes out and then quickly make a game before the hype wears off. The problem here obviously is that it doesn’t leave much time to make a good game. The third option is to wait until the movie is a hit, make the game, and spend as much time as you need. The problem here is of course that the hype and therefore your potential sales have worn off before the game ships. In this case the movie can no longer carry the game, so the game just has to be good. This can work (Goldeneye being the textbook example) but it’s rare (on in the case of Goldeneye, developed by Rare). The Star Wars games were this third option taken to its extreme.

But then again, there was a time in which Star Wars in general was impeccable. Or at least untouchable. Then George Lucas decided to revamp the original three films and while the results (the “Special Edition”s) were mostly harmless, it nevertheless ruffled lots of geek feathers. Then he decided to make a trilogy of prequels and fans everywhere were elated – until their 19 years of expectations were deflated by The Phantom Menace. TPM wasn’t a horrible movie, but it was marred by characters aimed at children, a horrible child actor, and cynicsm over marketing hype. Attack of the Clones fared better – for the forgiving geeks who bothered to go see it. Now Episode III is on the horizon, so we’ll see. Perhaps the prequels will hold up better as a trilogy, but perhaps it was best left alone. Still, just about every geek who thinks they should have never made Episodes 1-3 still thinks they should make Episodes 7-9. Go figure.

In any event, the existence of new Star Wars movies to tie into meant that Star Wars games went from games allowing people to re-enact old movies, to tie-ins of upcoming films. At some point Lucasarts completely turned to the new prequel games (though nowadays OT games do still get made). Games went from a rare occurence with amazing quality to a frequent happening, with spotty quality. Episode I: The Phantom Menace was a spotty top-down RPG for the PSX, Episode I: Racer was a decent pod racing game with an unimaginitve name, Jedi Power Battles was essentially a 3-D side scroller with jumping issues, and Demolition was for all intents and purposes Vigilante 8 with Star Wars characters. And not very good either.

Ironically Star Wars games ran the “version of” gamut with good luck for a time. X-Wing and its offspring were the Star Wars version of dogfighting flight silmulators, with no pesky ground or gravity. Dark Forces and its sequel Jedi Knight were the Star Wars verions of a FPS, etc. The version of an RTS was supposed to be Force Commander, but at the last second they tacked 3-D into the game (it was originally 2-D, ala Command & Conquer) and ruined it. Rebellion was their version of Master of Orion, so if you “got” it, then you loved it – otherwise you totally hated it.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is an entire Star Wars universe beyond Return of the Jedi – in the early 1990’s George Lucas allowed for others to write books continuing the Star Wars storyline. Dubbed the Extended Universe, there have been hundreds of books, comics, and even an occasional game in this storyline. Some feel that this would be the best fodder for future Star Wars games, especially the New Jedi Order series. The unlikeliness of the general public to agree though makes it unlikely. Oddly enough the game Knights of the Old Republic, a Star Wars RPG in development at Bioware, takes place hundreds of years before the original trilogy.

Things have started to look up recently, mostly coinciding with Lucasarts’ decision to not rely totally on internal game engines and to outsource the development of some games. They licensed the Age of Empires II engine and made Galactic Battlegrounds, a proper RTS. They tapped Factor 5 to make the Rogue Squadron series of games, culminating in the amazing Rogue Leader on the GameCube. And they had Raven do Jedi Outcast, the third Dark Forces game.

Remember how at the beginning of this latest season of South Park, Kenny returns with no explanation?

Here’s something I see a lot of people getting screwed up and/or confused on, so I’ll shed some attentive light on the subject.

id Software’s 1992 shareware smash Wolfenstein 3-D spawned a lot of sales, and a lot of imitation. Suddenly everyone wanted to clone the first person shooter. Some created their own engines and others licensed the Wolfenstein Engine for the tune of $50K. Most of the games were bad, and the ones that did come out based off of the Wolfenstein Engine (like Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold) took on the order of two years or more to make, whereas Wolfenstein 3-D took between six and eight months to write, including engine coding. By the time Blake Stone came out, DOOM had been released.

And the process more or less repeated itself with a vengance, even giving rise to the term “DOOM Clone”. And again, none of them came close, even the ones that had licensed the DOOM Engine. Pretty much the coda to this period is the title Duke Nukem 3D, which pretty much bested DOOM, but Quake was right around the corner.

About this same time game developers/publishers realized that their games would not have to best the current game on the market, but rather be competitive with the next game on the market, since that was the timeframe most were thinking of. Also they realized the potential was with the “game with single word name and groundbreaking graphics”. To this end many started work on their next game with their sights set on id. The two big ones were 3D Realms’ Prey and Epic’s Unreal.

Unreal‘s big claim to fame was to be its use of MMX, a set of added instructions Intel had added to the Pentium chip, but this idea was ditched in favor of the rapidly-progressing 3D graphics card market. Unreal came out some time after Quake II and blew everyone away with its 3D accelerated graphics and visual style. Despite the fact that it had been delayed numerous times, it delivered when it finally was released. So impressive was it that 3D Realms, who had since killed off their Prey switched their Duke Nukem Forever project from the Quake Engine to the Unreal Engine.

Which is another lucrative practice id Sofware begat. They licensed out their engines to those who were adept and could afford it. id Software has always re-written their engines more or less from scratch for each game. Wolfenstein 3-D and Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny shared the same engine, as did DOOM and DOOM II (both of these were shareware games with retail sequels). Quake was a new engine, and Quake II was a revamped Quake Engine game. Quake III was a new engine, and DOOM III will be a new engine as well. Ergo, when you license an engine from id Software, you license “the Quake Engine” or “the Quake III Engine” – a particular version of a particular engine named after a particular game.

Epic, however, went a different route with the Unreal technology. Instead of starting over, they added to it and expanded it. However, since id Software set the trend of the engine being different with each game, people figured that the same thing happned with Unreal, i.e. – Unreal Tournament uses the “Unreal Tournament Engine” and while this was harmless enough for a while, it’s not true. It’s all the Unreal Engine. Whatever game comes out with it doesn’t use the “Unreal ____” engine, they just use the latest code drop of the Unreal Engine. Tim Sweeney admitted in an interview that it might have been a mistake to call the first game simply Unreal.

So here’s a recap:

Unreal (1998) – The first Unreal Engine game, it had single and multiplayer components.

Unreal: Return to Na Pali (1999) – single player expansion to Unreal, developed by Legend.

Unreal Tournament (1999) – The follow-up to Unreal, it was a multiplayer-only affair. Coincidentally it came out around the same time as the also-multiplayer-only Quake III Arena. Also on the Sega Dreamcast and the Sony PlayStation 2.

Unreal Tournament 2003 (2002) – Sequel to Unreal Tournament, stirred controversy due to its faster pace and naming scheme implying a yearly series. Also available on the Macintosh.

Unreal Championship (2002) – Xbox-only Unreal Engine game, multiplayer-only and capabale of playing over Xbox Live.

Unreal II: The Awakening (2003) – Single player only sequel to Unreal developed by Legend, regarded as marriage of specacular graphics and unremarkable gameplay.

Each one of the above games used a more advanced version of the Unreal Engine (except for the expansion pack and to some degree the console versions). A version of the original Unreal was planned for the PlayStation but never completed (it likely would have been horrible had it been completed), and early in the pre-life of the Dreamcast, Sega boasted how Unreal compiled and ran with no difficulty on their console, but never released.

The Unreal Engine has powered too many games to fully list here, but amongst them are Splinter Cell, The Wheel of Time, the free America’s Armygame, the two PC Harry Potter games, a TNN deer hunting game, a Nerf game, and a horrible Klingon game. To say nothing of games like Duke Nukem Forever which have yet to be released. Ironically Epic’s eagerness to license the engine has resulted in a larger number of bad games using it as opposed to the Quake Engine.

Up next is Unreal Tournament 2004, the realization of the fear of gamers once Unreal Tournament 2003 was named. It is known that it will incorporate everything from Unreal Tournament 2003 and at least 100% more content and reverse compatibility, but whether gamers will have an “upgrade path” or have to fork over from scratch remains to be seen.

Also known is the title Unreal Warfare, but it remains to be seen what this title means – it may be another Unreal game, it may be the abandoned name of Unreal Tournament, it may be some new concept (like a PlanetSide-esque MMORPG).

So that’s the Unreal Engine in a nutshell.

Our good friends Metallica are releasing their new album, St. Anger, on Thursday. St. Anger will be the band’s first all-new studio album since 1996’s Load.

The Metallica releases since 1996 have been mostly of the “right before Christmas” variety, annoying otherwise dedicated fans who really wanted new studio material. 1997’s Reload was really the leftovers from the Load sessions, a distinction muddied by the fact that the CD had videos and a tour supporting it. 1998 saw the release of a 2-CD set, Garage, Inc.. The first disc was a series of cover songs recorded over the previous year. The second disc contained the limited edtion and widely bootlegged The $5.98 E.P.: Garage days re-revisited from 1987, as well as cover songs recorded in the 1980’s which never saw the light of day. In my opinion this is an underrated release. Then in 1999 we saw S&M (Symphony & Metallica) which was Metallica performing live with Michael Kamen’s orchestra. In my opinion this is a terrible album and concept. They contributed a new song, “I Disappear”, to the 2001 Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack, but that’s the last we’ve seen of Metallica material until now.

“I Disappear” was also the first Metallica material to be released after the departure of Jason Newsted, their bassist of fourteen years. Newsted left for “personal and physical reasons”, but shortly after formed a new band. Newsted himself had replaced original bassist Cliff Burton who was killed in a tour bus accident. In light of recent revelations (see below) it’s likely that Newsted left due to differences with the band.

Also in the years since a new studio release Metallica became caught in the MP3 crossfire. They were one of the few artists to speak up against MP3 piracy and the rise of P2P networks, most notably Napster. With drummer Lars Ulrich as their moutpiece, they obtained a court order ousting some 30,000 Napster users with Metallica songs for download. While other artists were silent, indifferent or even supportive of MP3 downloads (viewing them as publicity), Metallica was adamantly against them – many believe it was due to their better-than-average record contract, meaning that lost sales affected them more. In many ways the move backfired, since it led to the viewpoint that Metallica was “suing their fans” and “greedy”.

Which leads into the other thing angering Metallica fans. Metallica’s sound has changed and evolved over the years as most groups’ will. However, many view Metallica’s earlier material as their best, labelling anything after 1991 as substandard. Metallica was one of the few artists to be able to thrive in the 1980’s despite not releasing music videos. In 1989 they released their first video for the lengthy song “One” off of their fourth album …And Justice For All. The song was from the viewpoint of a man whose limbs were claimed by a land mine in a war, which also claimed his face. He discovers himself in a hospital unable to do anything. The video laced images of the band performing the song with those of a movie named Johnny Got His Gun whose plot was the same (and likely the source for the song’s inspiration).

Their 1991 album was named simply Metallica and was recorded at a cost of a million dollars (mostly due to the triple-digital recording process). It’s usually referred to as “The Black Album”, due to it’s nearly pitch dark cover and the fact that it was confusing to some newer fans since artists usually self-title their first album, not their fifth (it also tied nicely into a joke in the movie This is Spinal Tap). As part of subsidizing the costs, the group gave up their self-imposed ban on music videos (since videos help sell more copies). It’s the most successful album the band has done yet.

But then 1996’s Load came, weighted down by some ballads and more experimental material. Older fans didn’t go for it, and newer fans didn’t go for in en mass either (especially those who had since discovered their skateboard-fan-era earlier material). Then with 1997’s Reload came the aforementioned confusion that it was a followup album – while the CD had some gold on it, it had more chaff then the typical Metallica release. Couple all of this with the declining place of hard rock and Metallica’s attitude and you get today’s situation – a lot of former Metallica fans who would prefer it if they sounded a lot like their former selves.

And apparently internally Metallica wasn’t faring much better either. James Hetfield went into rehab and Lars let it slip that his problems might spell the end of the group. But in recent weeks it came out that the band actually went to therapy together to try and sort things out. The result was a hug between James and Lars and a resolve to record an album that returned to Metallica’s roots. Early word is that, while it’s not the second coming of …And Justice, St. Anger is easily the hardest album Metallica’s ever attempted and the best since The Black Album.

Its release date was originally June 10th, but it was bumped up to Thursday (the 5th) to “thwart piracy”. I’ve never understood the logic behind this – my best guess is that there’s a subsection of people who would only pirate it if they could do so prior to its release. This is following similar moves by Eminem and Beyonce Knowles. Some analysts say it’s really to make first week numbers look better.

The CD will come with a DVD with the band performing the entire album in the studio. This, too, is a recent trend. It gives the consumer “value added content” and extra incentive to purchase what you could otherwise download. While there’s nothing stopping anyone from ripping the contents of the DVD into a DivX file, most people don’t have the ability to burn this onto a DVD and recreate the experience, so it makes sense to incluide it.

Of course I can smell what’s coming. If the album sells less than they anticipate then it will be blamed on piracy (the piracy they think they’re avoiding). If it breaks records it will be “blamed” on the DVD (saying they have to now bribe consumers to buy what they used to buy ordinarily). I can’t help but wonder if it chaps the ass of the recording industry that now they have to include freebies from a (currently) more successful industry to entice people to come back to their product.

So I can’t decide if I want to buy this album or not. On the one hand I want to since I’m not really opposed at all to compensating artists. On the other hand, reinforcement of the physical-product industry is not something I’m sure I want to do. Plus if I do buy it, it means I went for their DVD bait hook line and sinker. However, a vote for Metallica is a vote for hard rock, especially this album.

Couple that with the recent reintroduction of Headbanger’s Ball on MTV2 (which I get now) and things are looking better for hard rock. I’m listening to 97.1 The Eagle in Dallas, which is the station KTSR used to be, and better to boot. Plus apparently there’s a lot of rock acts touring this summer (Ozzfest, Metallica, etc), and of course Dallas is one of the stops on every tour. Perhaps there’s hope for music after all. I guess the ultimate irony would be for music history to repeat itself and this wave of hard rock lead into a new alternative wave of the second coming of Grunge. And that would be just peachy, too.

Now all that needs to happen is for St. Anger not to suck. One way or another I’ll know soon enough.

Alrightythen, it’s been a few weeks since I blogged here. In the meantime, I got a new job, quit my old job, moved, started my new job and moved this site to non-Tripod hosting. Quite a bit.

I don’t like harping on personal bits here but the gist is this – my Wife moved to her new job in Plano in April, crashing with her dad in Addison. I finally got a job in Lewisville (for non-Texas types, these cities are all near Dallas) about two weeks ago, so I served notice and moved in the meantime. We found a rental home in Frisco, and that’s where I am now. I’ve only been in this job for two days now, both of which consisted of training, but I already can tell I like it better. Life is pretty good at the moment.

Ironically the hosting service I went with (the guy I know) lives some three miles away from me. There’s still some kinks to work out (and Blogger is acting up lately) but I kinda like it better this way (the “hard way”).

What else? I finally got an Xbox, making my console triumvurate complete. I must say, I am impressed by the console itself. I like the way the wires give way in case you trip over them, I like the games on the bundled disc enough (Sega GT and Jet Set Radio Future) and of course I like Halo. I also like that they went with the smaller Controller S. I’ll comment more later.

Anywho, I’m sure I have more to say but at the moment I still have a crapload of boxes to unpack. I never realized I had so much crap (confession time: I had to have my parents roll into town to help me).

The banner is gone. Read into this what you will.