<walks up to the mic to looks at the room before him, seeing a few more people than last time. Checks a clipboard he brought with him on stage, seeing the attendance of the last blog he made.

”Damn, didn’t even make double digits. Well, I’ll give it another shot just in case Sunday was bad…”

Throws clipboard to the side and off the stage. Hits cat. Apologizes to the clipboard. Clears throat to get attention…>

Hello peeps and peepettes, and welcome to another addition of “What I Learned From Video Games”, where I talk about what’s on my mind to hopefully spark a conversation, along with trying to be a little funny on the side.

First I wanna give shout-outs to Nil “Good Luck In Your Tourney” cam (Nilcam for short) for showing me what feet of flame can do and for giving me a new fear of cross-ups. Took me quite a few rounds to figure a way out of it. Also to my friend Y0j1mb0 for giving me some beatdowns with his Gouken and forcing me to start liking throws on SF4. It’s been a help and I can’t wait to fight you again. As for others, if you see me send me an invite and I’ll surely take more beatdowns/lessons from ya. I hear Nilcam give me word of a Balrog and Ryu player he sparred with that are outstanding fighters, so I want them on my list (forget their names at the moment).

Also, I wanna apologize ahead of time if there has been a cblog or front page article about this exact subject already. I know of at least one front page blog that talked about the why of the process… I’m talking about the why people may hate this process… I think.

TO THE POINT!!!!

So I’ve been around for a while. I have fond memories of switching from an N kid to a Sony whore with the PS1 because I saw Tifa jumping up and down on a cut scene on Final Fantasy 7. I remember getting the very first Gameboy and thinking I was the shit. Hell, I still remember playing the Smurfs on the Atari 2600 and playing Super Mario Bros with my friends when I was a kid… in the grass… in Compton, CA of all places. Yes, I’ve been around a while.

<feels old now>

So I figure that with all the 30 years I have lived so far and all the experiences I’ve had, including fighting Zangief on hardest in SF4, that patience was second nature to me. Most of my friends would say I have more patiences than most. If something had to take twice as long to get it done right, then I’d be one of the people that just says “Alright.” and waits the said amount of time. I’d also figure that people that was in a similar boat than me would be able to do the same.

But I’ve noticed something during this generation’s consoles… namely with the PS3. Seems that a lot of people think waiting should have been last generation and that everything should be instantaneous or it’s not worth it. The installation of games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Devil May Cry 4 has been painful to some. This kinda boggles my mind a little.


Samit Sarkar/Destructoid… please don’t kill me for using this pic again

Alright, let me explain me a little to maybe clear things up. I’m a busy guy, like I’m sure more of you guys/gals are. During weekdays, with work and everything I gatta do I get like an hour max to give my PS3 attention. Now, when Devil May Cry 4 came out, I was one of the peeps that got it on launch (give or take a day… been a while). I brought it home, popped it in my PS3, and noticed it started to install. Know what I did? Something else other than sit in front of it and stare. I got a little productive… made a little food and cleared out an episode of The Daily Shot with Jon Stewart on my DVR. Granted, the time I spent doing something else was a little overkill and I’m sure the install was done halfway during my episode, but time flew quickly, I got a little productive, and the install wasn’t painful at all. I do things like this with any and all games I had to install and there was no time that I was shaking my fist at the ceiling cursing the Goddess of Long Installs.

<Starts to imagine how the Goddess would look like… smiles… someone from the audience throws a can at him to get his attention again>

Where was I? Oh yeah…

So there is me and my mentality of all this. I’m thinking that other people have other situations way different than mine, and by no means am I saying that my way is the cure-all for this debate or is better than anyone else’s. I’m thinking that people like the reviewers on this fine website and other gaming sites HAVE to sit and wait in front of it to let others know if it has to install and how long, and I get that. I also take it that some people ain’t as old as me… and we know how kids want to just pop the game in and play… and I get that too. But if the reviewers didn’t have to stare and/or note the time it takes to install, and if the kids were able to clean their room or watch a cartoon episode while it installed, would it still be as painful? Would the install time and the fact of it’s existence still be that big of a negative if the time passed faster doing other things?



I understand that there’s more to it like the fact that the install is forced instead of having a choice of installing if you want to or not and running out of space. The way I figure it is that if you run out of room, that means you brought a decent amount of games that need it when you can also use the money to get a bigger drive, which I think if a system is not minding it’s own mod that it makes the system that much cooler. Also, with things like TVersity and WMP 11, you can leave all your videos, music, and pictures on your computer and still access them through the PS3 without taking space on your PS3 hard drive. As for the choice thing, I hate it as much as the next person when I’m not given a choice, but I take it as “If it makes the gaming experience better…” and brush it off my shoulders. I would do that with just about any patch Windows sent me for my OS, so why would I think differently for my games?

So, am I making this too simple? Am I dumbing this down too much? Is there someone out there with a similar life schedule than mine looking at this differently? Am I a little too submissive on this subject and how I think about the lack of choice with some game installs? I know there have been plenty of talks about the choice part and the hard drive installing and such, but I’m just zeroing in on the fact of the install in the first place. Well, I guess the previous stuff could still be thrown in there anyway… but all this just started wondering around in my head this weekend so I wanted to throw it out there.

As for what I learned from all this and the PS3? Ummmm… grilled cheese sandwiches made from the heat of the PS3 brings out flavor? No… wait…

<looks up while thinking… making thinking sounds>

What I learned from this is that different lifestyles is a bigger contributor to video game enjoyment than I first thought. On the one hand, with my patience and other factors the installs and other similar problems don’t effect me nearly as much cuz I’m waiting on things often anyway, but at the same time since I’m constantly waiting on thing it takes me a long time to beat games and such. Other people beat RPGs in record times cuz they have time while it’s impossible for me to find the time to play through RPGs that quick.

Yeah… that sounds like a good lesson. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!

Thank you… GOODNIGHT (or morning, considering when I’m posting this…)!