Autosave Podcasts Ep. 3 & 4: Home Theater Systems; Plus explination for the lack of posts

Autosave Podcasts Ep. 3 and 4 are now availiable (#3 has been up for a while, but it’s never been mentioned here). These podcasts are a two part series on setting up a Home Theater System, including talk about HDTV’s, sound systems, Blu-ray players, and gaming systems brought to you by Autosave Blogger Skyler Dowling and movie fanatic and former ReelLife blogger Kevin Haugen.

Link to podcast Ep. 3

Link to podcast Ep. 4

Also, to check out all of The Autosave’s podcasts, click here. There may be one more podcast before the end of the academic school year, so stay tuned.

Speaking of the end of the school year, the final few weeks of classes have made it difficult for either me or Skyler to update the blog. However, my semester essentially ends next Tuesday, so I should be able to write/podcast soon after. I (and likely Skyler as well) plan on updating the blog frequently over the summer.

I know I plan on continuing my “Changing Demographic of the Gamer” discussion that I started here and continued in podcast form here. Also, I plan on purchasing Grand Theft Auto IV this coming Tuesday (along with most of the gaming world I assume), so expect impressions, and an analysis of Super Smash Bros. Brawl: What they did right, what they did wrong, and what they should have done but didn’t do at all.

Also, our first request will be answered as Skyler and I decide what game we would create if we had the money/time/ability to create a video game.

Expect those pieces within the next month or so, and expect updates throughout the summer. With so many big releases and industry news, there will be plenty to talk about.

Organization Anyone?

Most gamers sit and play video games for countless hours more for personal enjoyment than anything else. However, in the back of every gamer’s mind there is always the hope that someone will have the motivation to organize a tournament. Nothing pleases a gamer more than being able to test their skills against the best and be rewarded for their endless hours of time in front of the television

Needless to say when tournaments do actually get created gamers run around for several days in advance honing their skills preparing to showcase their talent in front of the crowd. Sleepless nights and undone homework are not uncommon in my experience with hardcore gamers preparing for a prize-offering tournament.

All those ideas in mind, is it any wonder that when a tournament turns out to be a disorganized crap shoot that does little to reward the best players, participants tend to be more than a little ticked off?

Recently USD played host to a Microsoft sponsored Halo 3 tournament (what else), and I can honestly say the thing was as much of a disaster as any tournament could be.

I was asked shortly before the tournament to participate by some friends who were missing a teammate, and I reluctantly agreed to play. I arrive in true nerd fashion carrying my own controller (don’t laugh almost everyone was) to a room full of confused people trying to figure out what was going on.

The guy running the thing was about as confused as it gets – especially for someone who said he had done this sort of thing more than once. The prize system turned out to be a lottery, where winning games got you raffle tickets and prizes were raffled off to winning ticket holders over the course of the evening.

Rather than systematically sift thorough each problem I saw in the running of the event I will simply say the event did little to reward the most talented players. Every match was a 16 player event involving 4 Xboxes. Less than no skill is required to win such a game. Players had no chance to demonstrate their ability or accuracy with various weapons; everyone was constantly being mowed down by the starting assault rifle (side note – who plays a tournament with assault rifle starts in Halo??). Victory involved little more than a team pairing off and cutting down the high school kids who had the misfortune to step into a tournament that was way over their heads.

The majority of the prizes ended up going to a team that was beaten several times by the team I had the good fortune to be asked to play for (I was not a major contributor to the teams success) which made the whole tournament look like it needed a little more planning. Luck of the draw seems like an odd distribution system for a “tournament.”

If you are going to spend the time setting up a tournament event at least have the common courtesy to provide the people who show up with a well organized talent based tournament.

~Skyler Dowling

Podcast Ep. 2: Continued discussion on “The changing demographic of the gamer”

If you’d like to listen to the podcast, just click the link right here.

The first written post is a sort of general overview of the topic. For the next few podcasts, I’ll be delving into the specifics of why certain types of people are playing video games, why the market has changed to accommodate them, and how the industry will change because of them.

In this first edition of the series, I talk about why females have become gamers, and how the industry might be scaring the next generation of female gamers away.

Again, to listen to the podcast, click right here.

- Drew Quandt