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By Mark D, September 9, 2012 7:34 am

The latest incarnation of Madden saw the absolute gutting of one of the most popular features, franchise mode. That EA would destroy something considered one of the core aspects of the Madden game, shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following the series. The reality is that Madden doesn’t like giving you the ability to edit rosters, or play multiple seasons on the same copy. They want you to sim and re-sim the one season they give you, and that’s it.  Otherwise you might not have a reason to pick up the next years roster update version of the game.

Madden had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add a franchise mode to the game. Since at the time they were actually trying to get PC sales of the game too, they had to respond to the success/critical acclaim of Dynamix’s Front Page Sports Football.  The game had not just a franchise mode, but allowed you to edit just about everything you could think of. It would allow you to setup anything from a 4 to 32 team league.  That there are still people playing FPS Football online today should tell you of the high esteem it’s held in.

But that’s part of the problem for EA. If people like a version of a game and can edit stuff, why are they going to buy the next edition? It doesn’t matter that for some reason people are sheep and buy Madden year after year. Seemingly with the game making hardly any year to year changes. You would think that Madden losing a monopoly lawsuit would turn them off to some people, but the Madden series is able to just keep trucking.

The sad thing is that as long as EA controls the rights to the NFL, there’s not much anyone can do about it. Most people agree that NFL 2K5 (Sega’s last release) was better then Madden at a cheaper launch price. The last 3-4 years though it seems there is something that upsets fans of the Madden series. Big changes that are relatively hidden under good PR from EA. Stuff that will be forgotten next year when the “latest and greatest” from the Madden series comes out. All the reviewers will give it huge ratings and promise you that THIS is the Madden that will solve all the previous problems.

Just talking about it makes me want to download Front Page Sports and give it another run through. It’s been years, but I remember how much fun I had printing out all the player ratings (and this was before the Overall Stat) and debating what was better to add to my roster. I would sim games instead of coaching them, so I had to draft well. It’s probably sad on some level that some of my favorite childhood memories are from the video games I played.

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By Mark D, April 26, 2012 4:17 pm

Sometimes I get informed of a really good foreign film before a lot of my friends or peers hear about it. I just have connections in odd places. One such film was Battle Royale. In short once a year a class is selected to go into a secluded area and for 3 days they fight it out. The winner is the final survivor. Given such a large cast, it’s rather easy to make connections with some of the children, and even those who don’t get much screen time it’s horrifying to see them die.

If you know where I’m going with this, then your already screaming that there’s a million differences between Hunger Games and Battle Royale. Fuck you and let me make my point. My point isn’t so much that the two films/books (BR started as a book) have surprisingly similar themes, but the general laziness it takes to basically steal something foreign and re-write it. When I saw Battle Royale my first thought wasn’t “This is a great movie, how can I get rich re-writing it?” but was instead to tell friends and people I know about it and how they were missing out.

I think that’s the biggest problem, is that too many people just want to cash in on someone else good idea. Now one of my favorite movies, The Departed, is a remake of a Japaneses film “Internal Affairs”. But at the very least they admit that it is a remake. Sure, maybe it was a cash-in on a popular movie in a way, but at least it was done with one of the best directors and best casts you could get. There aren’t too many directors in the world better then Scorsese at the very least.

The anger is just that any of us could have taken Battle Royale, turned it into a poorly written “young adult” book and we would be millionaires today. But a majority of us wouldn’t think like that. Most of us would look at Battle Royale, say “That was an excellent movie” and move on. People like Suzanne Collins are among the worst in the world. They find something old, slap a new coat of paint on it and cash in. The amazing thing is that this crap gets made, when there are so many other possible great movies/books to be made out there. Yet because these types of books are most likely to make a profit, they are made first.

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By Mark D, December 14, 2011 12:35 am

A few months ago I took to beating Bubba over the way he’s treated his fans, mostly riled up by his requesting the removal of his forum at SternFanNetwork because it was too negative. Well it seems that Howard Stern finally got his way and got Mutt to shut down the forum. Here’s what he had to say:

I don’t go on that SternFanNetwork,” said Stern. “I hate it, and Mutt, you know, that’s his whole life…People just get on there and talk about what a horrible person I am…They’re terrible to my wife…my parents, everything. It’s awful. You know what Mutt? If you have any love for me, close that f***ing thing down.

Of course it doesn’t take a genius to point out that if Howard doesn’t go on SFN, how does he know what they are saying? Why does he even care what they are saying?

It’s obvious he visited the forums and read them. Although in the past he had played off the hate coming from SFN, I think it had easily reached it’s boiling point now. There was seemingly no one defending Howard for a multitude of reasons. From his Imus like behavior when it came to his wife, to his attempts at suing Sirius in order to get out of his most recent contract, this is no longer the Howard Stern many of us have been listening to for more then2 or 3 decades.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been a pretty fervent listener of Howard since the early 90s. I was borderline about switching over to Satellite Radio when Howard did, but after listening to a few shows I was hooked. Before we even consider my subscription rates, I spent over 400 dollars on two different radios and all the different gear I needed. The worst part was that everything eventually broke down, even my 200 dollar Sirius Stiletto 2. But I was still able to listen to Howard, so it was fine.

But the problem became Howard himself. Personally, if there’s any moment the show jumped the shark, it was when Artie left. He was the last guy bringing any kind of energy into the studio. Even if he was telling the same story for the 100th time, at least he was excited to be telling it. I’m sure part of the refusal to replace Artie with anyone is because the person would be paid out of Howard’s pocket (That 500 million you heard he makes is actually the budget for the show). Howard now cares more about money then putting on a show.

That really should be easy to see though. He starts the news at 9 on the dot so he can be out the door at 10 on the dot. The whole time he no longer discusses or really interacts with Robin, it’s just “Anything Else, Robin?”. The program breaks feel like they take almost as long as the commercials used to at his old building, as they pad them out with the same old phony phone calls you’ve heard a million times by now.

While there are people on SFN who take the hate a bit too far, the problem for Howard (since we know he reads the board) are those somewhat sane people that have given up on him. Because he knows it’s true that he’s only a former shell of himself. Combine the fact that he now rotates 3 day weeks with 4 day weeks while taking off almost 2 whole months in the summer now and that for most Sirius susbscribers have seen a raise in their subscription rates ever since Sirius bought XM. So your getting less and less show for more and more money.

And don’t try to argue that most subscribers do more then just listen to Howard. I’m willing to bet a good majority of the people who subscribe listen to Howard and the music is a nice extra. But they wouldn’t be paying what they pay for just the music. It’s a different world out there now, and why pay for Sirius when my smartphone (well not mine, but you get the point) has built in wifi and I can go to Pandora for free?

In the end, it’s probably for not. While Mutt (the owner of SFN) and his mods worked to control some of the insanity that was going on.  While there is http://realbubba.boardhost.com/index.php which I work with somewhat, unfortunately for Howard there is already SternFanSNetwork.com which has none of the mods getting rid of anything. It’s basically what SFN was but completely insane given how Howard got SFN taken down. Silencing the voice of people is never a good idea.

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By Mark D, July 29, 2011 2:41 pm

Gotta give Wiki (pedia/Media) credit. Last time they were running a campaign they recognized that splattering Jimmy Wales photo all over the place was attracting a ton of bad publicity (quote “This is exactly why we cannot leave Jimbo up for 2 MONTHS”). The laundry list of abuses by Jimmy Wales is amazingly long:

• Using Wiki money to pay for his flights/expenses to personal speaking engagements
• Editing his girlfriends wikipedia entry both while dating and after they broke up
• Editing his former partners wikipedia entry in order to make it seem like he was the sole founder of Wikipedia
• Taking in 5 and 6 figure sums for public speaking engagements, while claiming to make no money from Wiki media/pedia. The only reason people want to talk to him is because he was the cofounder.

Is just a taste. So it’s time to go with someone who can actually relate to the people that work/read Wikipedia instead of a smug douchebag. Ryan Kaldari is the opposite of Jimmy Wales. At least so much as he comes off as a hipster, a gentle person who isn’t about to take your money and waste it.

Even so, the same issues that exist with Jimmy Wales exist with Ryan Kaldari. Wikimedia Foundation is spending far too much money on everything else. For a not-for-profit organaztion, Wikimedia is sitting on more then enough money to allow it to survive for at least 3-4 years. The biggest problem currently? The amount of money the Foundation is sinking into the ever ballooning employee payroll. Hiring 32 people should not cost as much as it does for them.

The reality is that I’ve done these rants at least twice before, you can read the first one and then the second one. I beg you, if your really going to donate money donate it to someone that does good like wikileaks. Also take a trip to Charity Navigator and realize that they give Wikimedia a horrible efficiency review of 26.50. Hell, you’d almost be better off donating money to Encyclopedia Dramatica then Wikimedia.

It ends up after a little more searching I found out this is an ongoing thing. They are comparing different people and wording to Jimmy Wales appeal to see if they can use other people instead of Wales and still get the same amount of donations. If you see any of the ads, I’d say click through them, but donate nothing just to screw with their results.

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By Mark D, July 13, 2011 6:54 pm

I happened to look at some ads lately for game consoles, and this jumped out at me:

One of these, might not be like the others. I wonder why Sony might be having trouble with sales?