Mithrandiryod Productions

Could this be the future of gaming?

The Glue:

This news may be about a week old now since “The Glue” posts weekly only (at least for the time being, I’ll explain next week maybe), but I thought it a good topic to take a look at. Well, I couldn’t in good conscious not blog my thoughts about this topic…especially when it’s been on my mind a little. As you may have noticed on my twitter on Tuesday, I was up watching the live press conference announcing On Live, the new gaming service that according to IGN may pose a threat to the giants of console gaming very soon. While IGN’s commentary regarding the new service were certainly enlightening as in the article it was constantly being pumped up due to its great potential (Read the Article Here) I was of course, and still am, a bit skeptical. So I set out to see if I could find more information about it around the web, wondering if it was some sort of hoax. I found a site with a countdown timer, for Tuesday, and decided to revisit to see what the fuss would be, and perhapse to sign up to beta test a new “revolutionary” system. When the countdown timer went to zero and the site kept giving me 503 errors, naturally I assumed that it was being crashed by gamers world wide, and thought, “So this is the future of gaming huh?” I chuckled a bit and as I finally got through, was able to sign up to beta test, and found the live news conference feed. The press conference itself was interesting in that their presentation scheme was fairly standard. There were powerpoint slides, and of course a bit of a demonstration of their service. I found myself glancing around the screen a bit wondering how many people were actually in attendance as some of the seats (at least in the beginning) seemed empty, though with the camera angle it made it difficult to tell the size of the room itself. From the press conference though, I have a few thoughts regarding On Live itself, as well as a few questions of the developers themselves.

My first honest thoughts were….”Wow, this could actually be cool….if it’s real, and actually works.” Skepticism seemed to cloud my mind however, and though the developers , who had a hand in developing the quicktime player and codec for Apple, seemed fairly knowledgeable about video codecs and how the data is converted and streamed, I was left to wonder, about one fact they left us with. And that was the fact that this has been in development for seven years….in secret. If true this could, as a concept, become a great leap forward in that ever broadening subject of cloud computing. The thought of actually being able to stream a live game to a computer, the thought of avoiding costly hardward purchases, and the thought of how the internet seems to be restructuring to be the major media outlet of the absolute future (more than likely replaceing TV, Film, as it has already replaced the newspaper and most magazines) the idea becomes insanely intriguing. The system itself, during their brief demonstration, appeared to be functioning very well, indicating that the upcoming Beta testers, may be about to experience something special.

But should the current console giants be overly nervous? Not just yet, I see a few problems that Onlive may face, for at least the time being. Most gamers, who would be serious about this service, have already invested themselves into their particular console and games. After sinking that much cost into your current gaming, shelling out more cash to purchase the digital copy of the game is a big turnoff, at least to me. Another factor to consider, what happens if the internet is out, or the service is offline. The availability of gaming only through the net can be a semi deterrent, especially as console gaming allows you to OWN a physical media copy of the game that can be used regardless of internet condition. An additional barrier to entry could be whatever costs are set for this service. Onlive has stated that in addition to digital software purchase costs they would likely charge a monthly subscription fee to access their service, and while many may argue, that gamers already purchase subscriptions via XBOX live, this does not necessarily mean that gamers would easily be willing to switch…without serious benefit.

As for me I’ve signed up for the beta, and would gladly welcome the opportunity to field test this new service. If I’m admitted to this beta,  you can be sure that you’ll here about how the service is, and what you can most likely expect from it, at least from this gamers perspective. Until that time though, I have to reserve judgment and wait to see if this service is all that they claim it is, before I start giving up on buying my console games, and finding solace in On live (Though with the Red Ring of Death and E75 issues that plague XBOX360 consoles….will consumers become fed up?).

Just a quick side note, next weeks glue may have some announcments as to whats going on with “The Glue” in general, as well as mithrandiryod.com, in my never ending quest to tweak until I’m satisfied for a while. Till next week….

admin The Glue Cloud Computing, Gaming, IGN, On Live

The Glue:
For Today’s Glue, and I know it’s late I’m sorry, I’m releasing another episode of Tango Squad for your enjoyment. I know, perhaps, some of you have been waiting for it, I do hope that you enjoy it.

I have a quick commentary to make regarding the first episode, and it pertains to all the episodes from this series. I’ve received one or two comments regarding how my series joke style delivery, the Sergeants voice, and a few other Misc items remind them of Red Vs Blue, and how they feel that I should not do that. First of all let me say I appreciate all comments, keep them coming, I don’t make any money for this and comments and critiques are what keeps me going. Second is that I hold Red Vs Blue in an insanely high regard. What they’ve done for the Halo community is unbelievable, and they deserve all the respect and accolades of all the fine work they’ve done and continue to do. Thirdly, I will admit that much of my witting for this series, as well as the desire to do a Machinima at all is influenced by the guys at RVB as well as a select few others. I in no way wish to steal from their ideas or hard work they’ve done. That said, while my writing and delivery may seem similar or vaguely similar (I’m using this phrasing lightly, because I can’t even begin to stack up to what I believe their talent level is) I still came up with the ideas, script, voice acting, and work to do this series. Any ideas or points from RVB while they may seem similar, are honestly a coincidence. There is maybe one joke I’ve taken from them, that I’ve scripted for another series I’m writing, and I gave them all due credit for it in the script. So with that said, I do these episodes with all due respect to RVB, but this is my storyline and any similarities you may find may have been influenced by RVB, but are from my own writing, and not from directly ripping off their show.

That concludes the commentary portion of this post. I more than likely won’t address this again, and am still planning on releasing all of the episodes I had planned for this year, so stay tuned for all of that. Again thank you for watching, listening to my rant, long as it may have been, and if you have any comments regarding it, please don’t hesitate to post them.

I’m not going to go on a major rant about THIS episode so I’ll just go ahead and introduce episode 2 of Tango Squad – Guard Duty: “Callsigns” available here.

Again as always, thanks to the greatness of Bungie and Microsoft, for the license to create machinima and to use the Halo soundtrack as well. I hope you enjoy.

admin MYP 2009 Season, The Glue

I was thinking the same thing these past five day
s…though I’d like to say “NO INTERNET = Hell.” LoL not really.

The Glue:
Ok….I think everyone deserves an explanation as to what the F happened to “The Glue” posting for Monday the 18th. Well here’s what happend during my weekend. Alright, everyone should know that I’m in the middle of busy season at work, so imagine how fun it was to discover that late Friday, our service router dies and internet, phone, fax, email are now all dead. No problem right? It’s only the weekend. Wrong, I work from home, so not only does that effect work (we’re working through Saturday and Sunday) it effects other little things too, like oh I don’t know, personal phones, and XBOX Live etc. *Smiles* It was an interesting experience to say the least. From dealing with my service provider, to having to wait till Tuesday for a replacement router because of the late nature of the problem. Going through a few days without internet seemed fairly interesting. I was able to get away from the computer, and realize wow, what a dependence I have on internet in my life. It really drives that South Park episode of no internet home. On a positive note, without the distraction I did manage to get a crapload of work done, and that always helps for the continuous procrastinator. Anyways that wasn’t my only little adventure, read on.

It turns out when it rains it pours, so even without internet, my XBOX decides now is the perfect time to give me the dreaded red ring O’death. LOL as if the weekend couldn’t get any worse, my extra form of distraction has now gone up on smoke. But funnily enough I had a contingency prepared, and set out to attempt repair on my 360. Ever since purchase I’d had an article in my back pocket (don’t ask me why, but now it should be obvious) on an optimum way to deal with the issue. Seeing as how my box was out of warranty, I opened it up and performed the fix. Success, around Sunday night I was able to play on it and seemingly avoid the Ring O Death. For how long? Oh the fix worked, but now as of Last night it seemes to have come back. *Sighs* and to think I was all excited that I’d done something right this weekend. Anyways, for those who want to try the fix, and believe me it does make sense, from someone who builds his own PC’s, here is the link. Follow the instructions, and take your time, believe me it’ll work. For how long I don’t know, but it seems results vary. I’m either going to have to try to work with it some more or but a new Arcade and port everything over. I’ll have to try this before I completely give up, but hey at least I’m having fun, no?

Alright now on to Tango Squad, it’s finished, it was supposed to be released last Monday, but I want to hold off, seeing as how it’s late already. So just so you know I’ll be releasing episode 2 formally next monday the 23rd, however for those of the impatient nature, keep an eye on my twitter and Youtube page this weekend, as I’ll likely post it and give an update there, when I get some time.

Anyways I hope you missed me alot and that my internet outage didn’t alarm you too much. I’ll be sure to be back in the swing of things this weekend.

Till next time stay tuned…

admin The Glue

The Glue:
I thought I’d break in on the regularly scheduled blog musings to give you guys an update on whats been going on. For those of you who’ve been scratching your heads wondering what all the up time, downtime, and moving around has been about, in the past while, I’ve been contemplating moving the blog onto my website, mithrandiryod.com to consolidate my work into one location. I’ve felt previously, that it was rather confusing to have a blog in one place and a website in another. Then I started looking into consolidating the two, and integrated them. So now, at least if you’re reading this, the blog you see is now apart of mithrandiryod.com proper. What does this mean for you? Not too much really, I’ll still be delivering a posting every Monday on news or general interest, but it will just be available on mithrandiryod.com instead. One change I should point out though, is that there will only be one post available at a time on the front page of The Glue, but the archive should contain any postings you may have missed. Also I’ll try to do a better job on the front page of the site to updating when a new video is available.

Well that’s it for now, I’ll hopefully see you next week with the release. Till then, stay tuned.

admin The Glue

Just a quick note, and I’ll pull this when I’m done…The Glue is going to be undergoing a few look changes, as it is integrated into mithrandiryod.com. I’m hoping that the consolidation goes well, and that the site will be something to be proud of.

-mith

admin Uncatagorized