That said, HOLY CRAP I’M SO HAPPY. Mainly, because this never had a chance to bloom: http://www.eandppub.com/2008/11/fox-news-palin.html

I’m sure John McCain may be a nice guy and all, but the fact that he chose someone so incompetent as a running mate shows very poor judgement on his part. I would never want (another) someone like that leading my country.

At least Tina Fey can get maybe one or two more skits out of it though, amiright?

One thing that drives me crazy about people (collectively) is their need for attention. Sometimes I need attention, sure. I mean, look at me, I’m all over the place. It would be easy for me to say I don’t like or need attention because I’m in the spotlight (granted, a dim spotlight) every single day. However, for people who make their decisions based on what type of attention it will bring them, it pisses me off.

A great example of this is a term I’m calling Spotlight Voters. These are the people who want everyone to know who they’re voting for, because a certain candidate will make them look better as a person.  These are the people who make it a point to announce to the world their candidate of choice in their Facebook status, blog, Twitter, daily apparel, bumper sticker, etc. There’s nothing wrong with being proud, but that’s a completely different issue.

This year, the Spotlight Candidate is Barack Obama, for several reasons. You want all your friends to know that you’re  progressive and hip. You want your friends to know that you hated George W. Bush, because you heard on MTV that he’s bad. Let’s face it, you want your friends to know that you’re voting for the African American candidate so that later when it comes up in a discussion, you can say “Well I’m not racist, because I voted for Obama.” It’s that age-old “I have plenty of black friends” argument.

These are the people who annoy me.

Vote for whoever you like today, but please make it an educated vote. Don’t worry about what type of status your vote will give you, or what types of conversations you will have later with your pretentious friends at your faux-liberal parties where you eat “organic” imported food and talk about how we all need a change so badly, because you’re sick of paying $4 a gallon to fill up your Ford Expedition. Research the candidates, know who you’re voting for, don’t listen to what the TV tells you and make the choice that you feel most comfortable with, deep down in your heart.

If you’re reading this and thinking that I’m way off base because you actually DID research and vote for who you honestly believe is the best candidate, without forming a parade about it along the way, then you have my utmost respect. If you’re voting for a candidate because you saw on TV that McCain plans to declare war on the world or that Obama is a baby-killing Muslim, then PLEASE do some research. You still have a few hours.

First off, let me just preface this by telling you that this is something I’ve been looking forward to for a year, ever since I left last year’s PAX. Last year’s event could be called the turning point in which I decided once and for all that gaming journalism is what I want to pursue. Here I am a year later working at PAX instead of merely enjoying it. But don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it too!

Day 1: Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Sarah and I arrive in Seattle at around 10:30pm PST, which is way-past-our-bedtime-o’clock Eastern time. When we walked into our room, it completely blew us off our feet at how elegant our room was. We got it at a severe discount through a special PAX rate, because otherwise, there’s no way in hell we could have afforded that. The room was basically 3 rooms: a living room/office, bathroom and bedroom. There were also two lighted closets complete with a safe, shelving and an umbrella! The bedroom and living room both had large flat screen TVs, and the bathroom was covered in marble flooring, granite surfaces and the fanciest of the fancy shampoos, conditioners and soaps (all of which I snagged, tyvm). There was a glass shower AND an elegant bathtub. This room seriously had everything, but we were doubting that we were put in the right room. For the price we paid, we were expecting worse than what we had last year (which was a dump), but this was an amazing surprise.

Day 2: Friday, August 29th, 2008

After crashing into bed, I wake up bright and early the next day (4:30am PST) and begin writing a bit. At 7am we head out for breakfast in the Hyatt’s general vicinity, when who do we happen upon at the Starbucks downstairs? None other than Adam Sessler himself. Of course I didn’t talk to him because I’m always scared of bothering people, but it was a cool experience, and unknowingly, a prelude to what would later become a series of laughable encounters with Mr. Sessler.

We had a fantastic breakfast at The Dragon Fish (I think it was called) and get ready for the day. Soon we meet up with Junk, Crim, Astara, Kal, Louden, Rory and Rys. We then went out to a fabulous lunch and had a great time, but I had to cut my visit short for looming work activities.

I arrive at the convention center about 45 mins before it opened in what was supposed to be an exclusively allotted press-only time period. This was shortened by the fact that I had to ask 38738723557 people where the press entrance was, because standing in that line was not going to get me in early.

By the time I finally got myself to the exhibit floor, I had about 10 minutes to snap some booth photos before everything was covered in gamers. I got about 20 pics out and the announcement began, “PAX is now open.” The rush of people was frighteningly entertaining, but I was happy to get some good shots in beforehand.

I was able to meet up with a few key people like Regina Buenaobra and Amy “Critters” Crider before things got too hectic. My first interview of the weekend was with Jon Radoff of GamerDNA, which went off surprisingly well.

Later, I met up with a few good friends of mine from the LotRO kinship I’m in, and we hung out for a good part of the rest of the day. We got to see Meghan “Patience” Rodberg at the LotRO booth and somehow weaseled our way into helping her bring boxes of t-shirts across the street to Gameworks for the after-party later that night. In exchange, she gave us each a shirt earlier than everyone else, as well as letting us sit down and eat while everyone else stood in a line outside staring at us with envy.

After that party, Sarah and I headed on over to the GamerDNA party which was conveniently held at our hotel, 5 floors down. That party was smaller, but still packed to the capacity of the small Menzies Suite. Rockband was certainly entertaining and the free beer and t-shirt was an added bonus. A great end to a great first “real” day.

Day 3: Saturday, August 30th, 2008

We begin this insanely long day with breakfast at the same place (hey, it was great food and relatively cheap!) and head off to the expo. I had an interview at 10am with Starr Long of NCsoft, but he had to cancel for health reasons. Apparently, the previous night’s after-party held by NCsoft didn’t go so great for him. No worries though as later on I got to interview Dane Caruthers instead, and Starr seemed to be ok the next day. Dane gave a great little interview and I was on my way.

I also had my interview with Jeffrey Steefel, the executive producer for LotRO a bit earlier in the day. I must say, in retrospect, out of all of the interviews I had, Jeffrey was the most calm and collected of them all. He seemed completely oblivious to the insanely loud background noise all around him. He presented the game for almost an hour, showed us the features and hardly skipped a beat. Truly a professional at what he does.

Saturday night played host to the best PAX after-party I’ve ever attended (ok, so there’s only been 4, but still). ArenaNet’s party at Gameworks was truly epic, but mostly importantly was the company I was with. You guys rock! We played darts, drankmore free beer and played some great arcade games. I won myself a Guild Wars mousepad, as did Louden. Crim made out the best though by winning a 5.1 surround system for her computer. I wonder if Junk confiscated that by now or what.

Day 4: Sunday, August 31st, 2008

This was supposed to be a “light work day” as I only had one interview with the guys from Meteor Games at 1pm.  Sarah and I repeated the usual breakfast and Adam Sessler sighting (seriously, it was up to like 5 or 6 by then) and head off to the expo in time to catch a great panel called “Podcasting: the New Media” or something like that. It was a great panel, fronted by a few popular podcasters like Doc from the Sarcastic Gamer, but I learned a good bit. I must admit, even though I think Sarcastic Gamer is a ridiculous podcast with guys who do wacky morning radio as their day jobs (and hence, automatically have the very best equipment and instant fan-base), this Doc guy was an interesting listen. When he’s not trying so hard to be funny and all shock-jock or whatever, he’s actually a very intelligent guy with some great points about getting started and being successful in podcasting. He was hilarious too though, don’t get me wrong. Unfortunately, Godfrey was at this panel again, just like last year, and every time he talked, I wanted to slap him and rip my eardrums out.

The Meteor Games interview started off a little rough, as I couldn’t hear a darn thing anyone was saying (Thank God for my miracle mini-recorder) but after we got settled into a semi-quiet room away from the Rockband tournament held 10 feet away and I was shown the demo of this game in action, I was absolutely blown away. Mark my words people, Twin Skies is going to be huge. I was so enthralled by this demo, the guys giving the demo and the general atmosphere of the game’s ideas that I grabbed Sarah and we came back to sign up for the beta. We got some great little stuffed animals for our efforts too. The girls will love them!

We ended the amazing weekend with an unforgetable dinner with Teale & Co. ™. It was my first time eating vegetarian Indian cuisine, and I absolutely loved it. I just wish I could somehow take the leftovers home, because it was amazing and I was about to make myself ill with how much I ate.

Some other comments and tidbits of excitement:

• I was almost close enough to Felicia Day to require a restraining order.
• Seeing Will Wheaton in person will never get old.
• The stench of 58,000 gamers is repulsive.
• This is the way down, the only way down.
• I have some awesome friends.
• I think the final Adam Sessler sighting-count was 7 or 8.

Yes, it’s true. I used to think Guild Wars and ArenaNet could do no wrong. Everything about the game was perfect and I didn’t want to hear anything to oppose that mystical fantasy. When people would complain about how the game sucks because it’s instanced, or ZMG!1 it caters to PvE only, or PvP only, or whatever, it actually physically upset me sometimes.

Well now I realize that a) there are better games out there and b) attaching yourself to only one game is unhealthy. Not only that, but when you surround yourself with only one game, it closes your mind to the whole reason you play games in the first place: to have fun and experience new things. You can’t experience new things if you’re locked into the same farming run day in and day out, and you can’t have fun if you’re getting upset and flaming people on forums because they used the name of thy holy game in vain.

Are you listening, Warhammer Online fanboys?

Seriously, you people are the absolute worst. The game hasn’t released yet, a select few are actually in the beta right now playing the game and they are under NDA to keep their mouths shut, and you’re defending the game like this? Wha? Hengh?

This is simply a case of those people who want to claim they were into something before everyone else. “I used to play Warhammer pen and paper before all of this even came out” or “My dad invented Warhammer”. Shut. Up. First of all, you’re 14, so you didn’t play Warhammer pen and paper in the 80’s. Second of all, this transparent attempt at being an early-adopter is a waste of your time because no one believes you. I don’t care about your love for the Greenskins or whatever other buzzwords you read about lately. The game hasn’t released yet. The developers haven’t gauged player reaction yet, which will inevitably change the game a few months after release. You will cry when it’s released and you will cry again when they make all these changes to appease the initial crying.

Not only that, the word on the street is it will be heavy on the PvP (even though this isn’t entirely true, but people are idiots, which is the main point here anyway), so this means the bloodthirsty little 14 year olds whose entire lives revolve around killing another character on an effing computer game will finally have a place to call their own. At least until they find out the game sucks.

Rule #1: you can’t please PvPers. There, I said it. Let’s look back at GW for a second as an example. Once that game became so heavily PvP-oriented with tournaments everywhere, the forums turned into a Chuck-Norris-teabagged-your-mom-i’ll-eat-your-soul mess. I’m so sick and tired of complete idiots ruining my experience in a platform that is supposed to be fun and a change from normal life. If I wanted to interact with morons all day, I’d go work customer service at Walmart.

Take it from a recovering fanboy: you’re only going to embarrass yourself when the game ends up sucking. Right AoC fans?

That makes this year’s even even more special. When I realize how far I’ve come in regards to these dreams, it’s overwhelming, sometimes. This will be my first time going to PAX as something other than “just” a gamer and I can’t wait.

In other news, I’m in the process of developing an easy way to capture all “grey water” in my house to recycle in my garden. I already have a rain barrel for capturing rain water, but now I’m capturing water from one of my sinks, too. Next is the kitchen sink, because without a dishwasher, I waste a lot of perfectly good water doing dishes. Using that water on my garden will help save water (and money) tremendously. So the agenda includes eventual collection of all grey water into usable garden water and the installation of another rain barrel. Then for next year, more garden area! I just wish my yard wasn’t so shady.

I’m convinced that I’m using less water and certainly less electricity doing it this way, plus I’m giving my arms quite a workout in an attempt to replicate the little washer movements. Lord knows I need all the workout I can get. So I’m very excited about this Little House on the Prairie-ism I’m doing with my clothes now.

In other news, the job is going great and I’m enjoying it very much. My garden is rebelling against me, but I do realize that plants need sunlight. There’s just nothing I can do about the walls of trees that surround my yard. Oh well, I tried. I may postpone the large garden thang until I can get a house out of the suburbs (i.e. ghetto). Until then, container planting is my friend.

Also, R.I.P. George Carlin.  As inappropriate as it may be, I grew up on George Carlin. My parents were HUGE fans and I bumped into him once on an elevator at Bally’s Casino in Vegas. Good times.

When I started writing at Massively, and even before that, I’d had my eyes set on making that a full-time gig eventually. I thought it’s certainly doable in a few months, or maybe a year, right? Well after I’d been hired, I learned of the potential to write even more for more money. They’re always looking for more feature articles or news stories. Plus, I discovered they have “sister” sites with various topics. The one that caught my eye was GreenDaily.com, because, as you may know, I’m way into green living. So I emailed the lead at GreenDaily and I’m happy to say that I’m now writing for them as well.

With all of this potential for more work looming overhead, and my day job getting more and more stressfully busy, I finally took the plunge and left my day job for good. I didn’t work out a notice. I didn’t tell them anything. At the end of the day (or what was supposed to be the end of the day, but with that job, you never knew when the end of the day really was) I told my manager that I’m going home, and not coming back.

He laughed at first, then when he saw me walking towards the door, not laughing, he asked me if I’m serious. I told him I was, and walked out. They called me as I was driving home, to let me know what a terrible mistake I was making, and how badly I was screwing them over, but I figured it was par for the course.

I’ve only quit one other job ever in my life, so this isn’t exactly a regular practice of mine, but I knew it had to be done. In order for me to better myself and live the life that would make me the happiest, I just went for it.

So currently I write for Massively and Green Daily, plus I am the editor and co-host for the Massively Speaking podcast and soon-to-be editor for the MMOG Nation Broadcast.

I’m finally getting paid to do what I most enjoy, and I don’t regret anything.

A few weeks ago I got hired by Massively.com as a blogger. This means I actually get paid to blog about MMOs. I mean, seriously, they pay people to do that? Apparently they do. But the drawback to this is that it’s not exactly enough to quit my day job over, so I’m doing both jobs still, just as we’re entering the busy season for my day job (i.e. 12-16 hour days ftl). Plus 2 other podcasts. Plus a weekly audiobook. Yes, I know, QQ moar noob, but I’m not really complaining. Well, I am, but in that special Shawn way of complaining where I’m so extremely happy and grateful that I’m at this point in my life, but it’s not easy.

I’m enjoying the Massively gig more than anything, and I am so enthralled with how all of this works. I won’t give out any trade secrets, but I feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, to use an over-used analogy.

We have some projects we’re working on, and I’ll be very excited to officially announce those, but until then I will continue to shoot for the sky and hopefully one day make this gaming journalism thing a full-time gig.

BUT.

Yes, there’s always a but. Lately, podcasting has taken an ugly turn. It’s an inevitable turn, but ugly nonetheless. I’m talking about the corporate influx of podcasts. Now, I don’t care if Ford has a podcast about their upcoming cars and trucks, or Nestle makes a podcast about their newest line of dark chocolate truffles or whatever, I’m speaking of major game developing companies doing their own versions of what the average-Joe gamer has been doing for years.

Here’s what gets me the most about this, it’s the progression of events that led up to this.

Step 1. Enthusiastic Gamer starts podcast about their favorite MMO.

Step 2. Enthusiastic Gamer (now Enthusiastic Podcaster) contacts the developer team of his favorite game for interviews and any exclusive breaking news regarding said game.

Step 3. Game developers pat Enthusiastic Podcaster on the head and comments on how cute it is that some random guy with a microphone is talking about their game.

Step 4. Enthusiastic Podcaster continues to be ignored for interviews, and generally seen as not real media or journalism.

Step 5. Enthusiatic Podcaster reaches a unique download count of nearly 10,000 for each episode.

Step 6. Game Developers notice that this new-fangled podcasting thing on the interwebs might actually be something afterall.

Step 7. Game Developer’s publisher gets the ball rolling on their own podcast, featuring inside reports from the devs themselves, top quality audio with top quality equipment and an automatic listener-base of hundreds of thousands from the start. Who cares how enthusiastic they are.

Step 8. Enthusiastic Podcaster loses most of their listeners, resulting in the dreaded podfade.

Sony did it. Blizzard did it, and now NC Soft is doing it. We all knew it was coming, and quite honestly, I’m surprised it took them so long. But it’s here.

Does this mean the end of grassroots podcasting? No, of course not. There will still be people who enjoy the real opinion from the real gamer. And to be quite honest, I think in a sick twisted way, this might be a good thing for podcasters. It gets the word out that podcasting isn’t some strange cult fad, and it’s growing.

All I ask of the devs is… don’t forget who started it.