My background is in game development having owned the first (and largest at the time) game testing company for 13 years. On the personal side I’ve been a gamer in squads and clans going back to their birth. On the audio side I’ve been involved from the very first days of PC audio. I currently […]

Digital media is supposed to be better is it not? One of my biggest gripes about it is that the industry, across the board, refuses to acknowledge this fact and keeps trying to apply old methods to the new media. What I mean by this is that I’m tired of being told that songs, books, […]

The new PC version of Call of Duty 4 arrived today. The single player version of these games has always been exceptional while I have never liked the multiplayer version. The current game is no exception. It’s complete chaos. From the moment you land in a server it’s a mess. You take 5 steps and […]

Today I noticed a story from a European company that says they’re going to stop producing traditional “offline” games mainly due to piracy. They claim that for every single copy of game that was sold that 3-10 illegal copies are being played. They go on to say that if they continue doing any sort of […]

I don’t mean literally explode (assuming you’ve been reading too much about recent Dell laptop fires and Sony-provided batteries for them). I’m talking about the market suddenly being hit with multicore processors on the scale of 8-core, 12-core and possibly even 20+ cores or more. After attending the Microsoft Gamefest event I started making some […]

Over the years I’ve seen a surprising number of companies make claims that the computer is either nearing the end of its run or will no longer be necessary because of some other new device. Invariably this comment comes from a company that thinks it’s going to change the world with its latest product offering. […]

I’ve talked about the various problems I’ve had with my X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card from Creative Labs. I’ve gone through several cards that had difficulty and finally thought I’d found one that was trouble-free. I went away to E3 two weeks ago and when I returned I’d found that my computer was acting as if […]

I just returned from E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Exposition) at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Perhaps I’m just getting too old but this year it was a pretty mild event. Truth be told, I’m not a fan of L.A. I find many of the people I encounter to be very superficial. They smile and feign […]

Last week saw the release of information noting a record year for game sales in 2005. This week securities firms are recommending caution as they predict dramatic slowdowns for 2006. Even with the solid numbers last year, PC game sales have fallen off and many keep wondering why. I bought substantially fewer PC games in […]

Back in 1994 I managed to break free from the clutches of a tyrant that was holding my entertainment dollars and enjoyment hostage. That tyrant was Garden State Cable (soon to be absorbed by an even bigger tyrant—Comcast). In 1994 Garden State Cable offered 62 channels of television for $90 a month. The service was […]

I’ve been fighting the copy protection war since the very first days of my computing experience. In all that time I’ve never seen firm evidence that copy protection achieves the goal it sets out to meet. Instead, what I’ve seen are examples that stand in stark contrast to the perceived problem of illegal copying. Don’t […]

I have a long, love-hate relationship with Logitech. From the earliest days of using a Microsoft mouse I knew there had to be a better way. Logitech came along and finally gave Microsoft some much needed competition. It was during these years that Microsoft developed the infamous “Dove Bar” mouse that won vast praise at […]