Rob Osterman's Blog, page 4

How to Do a Modern MMO

Here's the funny thing about being wiped out with a stomach bug: you can play video games but you can't write. Or rather I can't write. Perhaps it's because I'm a fickle artist, but there are specific circumstances I need to really get the prose flowing. So, unable to write and unable to indulge myself in Tomb Raider because I had to share the space with the family, I decided to try out the MMO The Secret World.

And I am so very impressed.

I have I admit I'm a little nervous about the classless an level-less system it uses. I like the whole idea of just picking skills I want to use and not being forced to get stuff I don't really get into because its part of a given class. There is somehow nice about knowing that a given level should be ready for a given content but I'll get I to it.

What I really like is the way the rest if the game world works with our own.


For example on quest requires you to hack into a doctor s computer. The password is no where to be found but there are hints. The suggestion is to, if you get stuck, is to open a web browser and search or hints. The power of this hit me today.

I was stuck this weekend on a quest where I had been given a clue but no guidance to go from. I tried Googling the the name of the town in the game and surprise there I find the Kingsmouth Municipal Home page.  It even has some nice pictures of it's sleepy New England feel, people shopping, etc.  Many of the "gallery" pictures are clearly taken from the game engine so there is, after a little looking, little doubt that the website is for the fictional town.

This strikes me as really driving home the power of the Internet to weave a world where you as a player can play on multiple levels.  It's not just a matter of having read this text or that text in the game; it's a matter of actually using the resources you have for more than just looking up walk throughs.

But, sadly, this is also part of the problem.

First, it's very very easy to find a spoiler site while doing research.  I admit that I thought I was looking up something about the Illuminati as part of a quest research and instead I was reading a spoiler page.  This is annoying but avoidable.

Second, I think it makes the writers a little too clever.  I've run into this with my own brain teasers and puzzles for students.  I've wanted them to have challenges and to have to think outside the box but sometimes when others have looked at my puzzles the repsonse has been "They were supposed to think WHAT?"  I feel that happens very early in TSO with one of the research missions where I worked at something for a solid day, finally gave up and looked at a spoiler only to think "I was supposed to do WHAT?"

So... good bad, I will say this:  It's unlike any MMO I've ever played.

Weekly Omens 3/23/13

I don't know how I do it but once again I got bit with a nice bit of writing bug and I'm really looking forward to posting my next chapter of Bastion: The Last Hope.  Sadly I also got a return trip from the stomach lower GI bug going around our house and had a wonderful time with two sick adults last night.  Seriously, this 4 people in one house is nuts.  By the time one of us gets over something we've passed it on to someone else and it literally is just moving around and around.  So.  Not.  Fun.

On Mind the Thorns:

The vote is in and Thomas is going to be "one of the guys".  I fear that I may miss the Monday deadline so please don't give up hope on me, Dear Reader.  It will come but this chapter has so much dramatic potential (shout out of thanks to the crew at Webfiction Guide for helping me brainstorm through this) that it will be worth the wait, I assure you.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

Before I even talk about the update I have to give props to Fiona over on Webfiction Guide for the very kind 4.5/5 star review that Bastion received.

I'm also really proud of this week's update.  It's from the documentary "I Survived" which is produced five years after the events of the story so far.  It features two awesome coworkers as historians commenting on the "end of days".  It's fun.  Check it out.

On Fictional Omens

Okay, I phoned it in by reposting a previous entry about being a Cover Band or Fan Fiction writer.  It's a post I originally wrote last spring but I think the sentiments endure.

At home:

I'm a little taken aback by the events of PyCon this weekend.  If you're not familiar with it, the short short form is that a woman was offended by some off color jokes and so she tweeted a picture of them with her complaint.  This set off a storm of events that ended with one of the two men, as well as the woman, losing their jobs.  It's been eating at me for a few days now as I think about what passes for "conflict resolution" these days.  Rather than bringing us together, it seems that technology has driven us further apart.

And.... your weekly video:

Repost: On Being a Cover Band

There's been a bit of a curfluffle as there often is over on Good Reads, this time about 50 Shades of Grey. For those of you who don't follow literary circles (using the term loosely), the 50 Shades series is a trilogy of novels that follow a dominant man as he seduces an innocent, loving, young woman. The works are getting a great deal of attention in part due to the history of the work (it began as Twilight fan fiction) and because it's become the new guilty pleasure: A saucy kinky steamy romance complete with handcuffs and blindfolds.

And while a great deal can be said about the transitory nature of the book and how they've brought a good number of people out of their shells, or rather lead them to think thoughts that they thought only "those people" would think, I'd like to focus on the first of those two, the origin story of the novels.
But first, let's talk about Cover Bands and Harry Potter.When I was in college, I had many friends who were in bands. Some were quite talented and some were, not so talented. But there seemed to be a wider line between them than the Talent/No Talent one. It was the Original vs Cover.
The cover bands always scoffed because they were the ones getting the paying gigs, getting the chance to be one stage with people shouting and dancing, and basically doing the "band thing". The original bands scoffed right back, as they gathered to brainstorm, compose, write, and create their own "art". Now to be fair, some were indeed talented songwriters and their music was pretty good. But if we're being honest, getting booked to play original music was incredibly hard in a college town when everyone and their sister was in a band of some sort.
"What does this have to do with Harry Potter?" I wager you're asking. Well, it has more to do with Fan Fiction than it does with Harry Potter himself.
Writing is a very challenging process all on it's own. Taking the images in your head and converting them into a meaningful, readable, context takes work, takes time and it does take some talent. It's a bit like writing original songs. Now, one thing you can do to focus on your prose and plot writing is to take an established world, with established characters and simply drop them in novel situations and then write. You're still writing, but you're doing it with ideas that are partially pre-formed. I don't have to define Hermione Granger's reactions to core wizarding concepts because I know them. I can simply write her honestly and let the story go where it shall. Quite a bit like not trying to write a power ballad but instead playing rocking rendition of "Any Way You Like It" and then letting my artistry come out in the way I play and sing.
And there are whole communities dedicated to writing, sharing, and consuming fan fiction.They provide, like a cover band, a pre-set group of fans. If I like Queen, then a cover band with a solid rendition of Show Must Go On will get some good reviews from me. Or at the least I'll enjoy listening to it.
I bring up Harry Potter because once upon a time I had the idea for a RPG which I then worked into a rough novel outline: Harry Potter: Upon the Threshold. It was to be the story of a muggle girl, smuggled into Hogworts to hide during the 1940's and the expanding Nazi control of Europe. I wanted to play the themes of being a stranger in an even stranger land, with the wizarding world's reaction to Nazi-ism and the impending war, and perhaps even delve into the war itself as fought by wizards.
It's a writing project I never pursued. Part of was that it was, at the time, totally unsaleable. I could write it, maybe even get a name for myself, but at the end of the two years or so working on the manuscript I'd not only have no money in my pocket but nothing that I could exchange for money.
And so it was, to a degree, with 50 Shades of Grey. It was published online as Twilight Fan Fiction, which became incredibly popular. Eventually the author took it off the sites, changed many of the cosmetic details, but left the story and characters mostly the same, and then published it to great success.
And part of that success was from people who read it in Fan Fic form first, and wanted to own a copy in print form of that story, accepting that the Twilight characters had new names and locations. The community was very supportive of "One of its own" striking out and becoming a published author. And that was nothing but success.
Which gets me back to Harry Potter and the idea of doing time as a cover writer before trying to write my own stuff. Would I be better off after 10 years to have spent 3 or so just writing fan fiction to build up a name by riding on the coat-tails of another author? Given the popularity of the HP franchise I am quite certain I would a good number of eyes on page if I published (and was able to advertise) good fan fic. Then in a year or two I could come out with my own original work.
Perhaps that would have been a better course. Or a course I may still take once I've gotten through these other writing projects I seem to laying on myself.

Weekly Omens 3-15-13

St. Patrick's Day looms close, and again I find myself without any engagements for it.  I miss playing the pub scene and letting people here real Irish music rather than another re-tread of Danny Boy or The Unicorn song.

On Mind the Thorns:

This week's chapter ends with a tough spot for Regan.  Stacy has agreed to build an entourage of men for Regan to have around her at the grand Vampire Ball by rounding up Regan's lovers over the last few months.  At the same time Thomas has asked Regan to be his escort for the evening.  Currently leading the polls is for Regan to ask Thomas to join in with all the other men she's slept with and be part of the party.

Dear Reader, I've got to tell you, that is not something I'm confident Thomas will sign on for.  Just, ya know, sayin'.  But, it is Reader Directed so we know Regan will make the offer to him, provide the current trend continues.  If it does, I have to admit, I'm rather looking forward to writing that chapter as I already have some wicked fun twists planned.

Related, Mind the Thorns remains in the top 600 of all Vampire stories on Wattpad, and is consistently a front page story in the Romance subsection of Vampire on that site.  If you're a Wattpad reader, feel free to leave comments there as well as on the main page.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

Continuing to cycle through the open story threads, we return to Dr. Spenser at Georgia State and we find out what has happened to his sister during the Biohazard Security event.  It's a fun challenge to keep all of these threads running seperately, while at the same time creating individual voices for each character.

I've also gotten some additional traffic through the Web Fiction Guide, so if you're a user there, feel free to drop a comment, review or rating.

On Fictional Omens

So this week I reposted a pair of blog posts I did about Merida, the heroine of Brave.  For the most part it was a discussion about the discussion of Merida's sexuality, specifically that I was shocked there ~was~ a discussion in the first place.  Then I was outraged.  It was brilliant blogging, folks, and you need to read it.

I also posted a link to another blogger who recounted an event she had with a caveman on the bus to work.  Seriously.  Caveman.  Also worth the read.

I started and stopped several blog posts about the contact that the new Randomhouse E-Book Only imprint Hydra was offering but it seems that most of that story has come and gone on its own.  If you're curious read up here.  I may weigh in on the larger picture next week.  Mostly I feel like it's odd that most of the conversation about what's right for small and budding authors is coming from established authors who don't seem to have as much skin in the proverbial game because they already have loyal followings of fans to support them and their craft.

At home:

The stomach bug that hit Kaylee moved on to Xander and now has done a full round robin of the house.  It made for a horrible Thursday but otherwise things are clipping along.

Speaking of.  Smash.  Watch it.  I'm serious.  Best show on TV.  It's like Glee for Grownups.  It also reminds me of the fact that we may be cutting the cord soon but we're both nervous about losing our favorite shows during that sweet spot that most people are watching them.  Of course we ALSO have all of this season's Once Upon a Time on the DVR waiting for us.

And.... your weekly video(s):

It's St. Patrick's Day Weekend.  You think you get away with just one?


Ireland Boys Hurrah
 
The Irish Rover


There were Roses



You and I in the One Bed Lie

Cross Post: What not to say on the subway/ bus.

This little gem came from a blog I follow and I really just have to share it here.  "Stories about my Underpants" is a light comedy blog where a woman recounts all the kinds of wackiness she encounters day to day.  She's got a gift for story telling and I can very much relate to her style of Stream-of-Conscious speaking.  But today's post got my dander up, not because of what she said, but because of the guy she encountered:

Today’s guest appearance by said guy all started with his observations of various individuals boarding the train.

Upon noticing that someone was wearing rain boots and carrying an umbrealla :

“Woah, someone didn’t get the sunshine memo.” 

Upon noticing that there was an attractive woman on the train (shockingly, not me):

“He-l-oooo…..” and then creepily looking too long at the poor woman.

Upon reading the various news items that flashed across the tv screen on the train:

“They’re letting some woman run Facebook? Now I’ve seen everything.”

And that’s when I made the mistake of chiming in.

You need to read the rest of the story By Clicking Here.

 BTW:  Yeah, I did find the whole "Go all Detroit" a little tacky but I'm willing to forgive it in context.

Repost: Does Merida being Gay Matter?

This post is a repost of my thoughts after the release of Brave last summer.  They struck enough of a chord that I am reposting this, along with my follow up, to go with the release of the movie on DVD.  Which I cannot watch as my BRDVD needs a firmware upgrade. Grr.

Some disclaimers:  First I'm going to spoil the end of the movie, just a little bit, but no more than I've been spoiled myself in reading reviews and commentary on the sexual preferences of Disney/Pixar's latest heroine. I also have to confess I've not seen the movie first hand.  My wife and son have (they both loved it) and I've read a pretty good number of reviews, and honestly what I have to say about this issue has very little to do with the movie's over all plot.

Which gets us to the question at hand:  Is Merida, Heroine of Brave, a lesbian?  And if she is, does that matter?

Frankly I think that's one of the dumbest questions raised about this movie.  It ignores what actually does matter:

That people are asking the question in the first place.


Okay, let's go over the evidence first:

Merida likes to do boyish things and rejects womanly things.  It follows that she is a standin, then, for butch gay women.  Of course, Mulan also did boyish things, while wearing boy's clothes and pretending, believe it or not, to be a boy, but her sexuality is above reproach because at the end of the story she ends up with her prince.  While we don't have a "Disney Kiss" between Prince and Princess, we do have some assurance that the two love birds will run off into the sunset.

But I'll come back to that in a second.  For now we're going to stick with the idea that being boyish means being gay.  Which, what does that make Jessie from Toy Story?  She's a cowgirl, sure but if the movie wasn't for kids, you know, dear reader, that she'd be swearing as much as the prospector.  Belle in Beauty and the Beast is more into her books than the "girly" thing of chasing boys, though I will grant that books can be seen as a different kind of girly.

Thing is, being into boy stuff doesn't make one gay.  I've had many students who excelled in athletics, liked cars, went bow hunting, and I'm quite confident more than a few of them were not gay.

Second major data point, as the critics show and I alluded to above, is that Merida is single at the end of the movie, with ne'er a prince in sight.  She even gives a moving speech (I told you'd spoil you, but no you had to read anyways) about marrying who she wants on her own terms, not who her parents (or society) tells her to.

Now, this would be a great beacon of her counter-culturalism except that being true to yourself is a hallmark of Disney and children's films.  In fact the closing titles of Mulan (back to her again) are indeed the song "True to Your Heart" performed by former Mousketeer Christina Aguilera.  Seeking to marry for love carries all through classic as well as modern Disney, from Aladdin to The Little Mermaid.  It's just that in those stories the perfect ending happens right now.  None of those princesses have to wait for their perfect prince.  So Merida has to wait a little.  Big deal.

And lastly the movie just happened to premire during Gay Pride Week.  So clearly it's all a conspiracy.  After all, there are Gay Days at the Disney theme parks, right?  Of course while those are not sanctioned officially by the parks, surely they're going to plot to release a movie with a tomboy of a heroine just in time to show their true colors, the whole rainbow if you will.

Or....... it could just be that time of year where you vie to release your summer blockbuster.  Tough call.

Now, dear readers, I promised you that I'd tackle the real question.

I believe, fundamentally and as a parent, that it should bother you that this question is being asked.

We have a girl who likes to play rough, prefers bows and arrows to bows and flowers, wants to pick her own partner for life (never saying either way which it is), and demands to live her life on her own terms.  And what does the "media" do with it?

They question her sexuality.

What kind of message does this conversation send to our daughters?  What are we telling them as they decide they want to ride racing bikes around the neighborhood rather than host a tea party?  What are we telling them when they don't want to play the "wife" in a game of house?  What are we telling them when they say they want Legos (and I mean real legos not those pink knock offs designed "For girls") instead of Barbie?

We're telling them that those choices will lead to questions about them.  Those choices will be examined for "deeper meaning."  We're telling them that they should prepare to defend their choices because anything "not normal" demands defense.

I'm not a paragon of this.  When my son started at day care, it was mostly boys and yes, he played with dolls.  I used to tell the woman, a lovely person who I love dearly as a member of our family, that my son did not "play with dolls"; he was a solider doing relief work and there was administrating humanitarian aid.  I always thought that I did so with a wink and a nod and that it was a little joke that I didn't really believe that boys couldn't play with dolls.

But, maybe I failed.  Maybe I failed to make it a joke enough.  Maybe I made a mistake in even joking about what boys and girls play with.

I don't think my daughter (or son) needs to grow up with people telling her (or him) at every turn what is expected of him because of the accident of his birth.  If it's not biologically related, then it's a societal construct and as much as we built up societial rules, we can tear them down.  And once in while we have to.

I have nothing but pride (yeah... pride) and support for what Pixar has made, even having yet to see it for myself.  I don't doubt at all that they continued to push the envelop for technological innovation and story telling.  And even if they simply put out a typical movie, that is still pretty good by most measures.

But what does concern me is the sheer number of bloggers, pundits, talking heads and otherwise Do-Nothings who are making a carreer not only out of fabricating controversy, but doing so in a way that puts the hearts and minds of our daughters at risk.

Grow up, people.

And then what I had to say after I saw it:


I finally saw Brave.

Wow.

Just Wow.

From a gripping story (for me at least) with well done characters, amazing animation, and a musical score that should be a gold standard for all future Disney releases.  I was practically in tears with joy during the opening third of the movie as Merida embraced her passions and chased after her loves.  It was heart lifting on levels I cannot put to words.

But let me try:  I can only pray, and I mean Pray, that I see that kind of joy in the eyes of my beloved little Kaylee.  I can only hope against hope that she feels so free to be the woman she knows in her heart she is.

But before I really get into a review I'd like to revisit something I posted on several months ago, specifically the scandalous implications that Merida might be the first Gay Disney Princess


SHAME ON YOU PEOPLE!

I'm serious.

How slow of a news day was it that you decided that you needed a scandal so you could bash on something and have a topic of discussion?  What is wrong with you that you would take a wonderful story about a Princess who wants to chose her husband rather than be forced to marry one that happens to be a good shot with an arrow and try to tar it by saying that it was all some big leftist agenda?

We can fix a lot of things, folks, but we can't fix blind hate nor can we fix stupid.

How many times have we seen those same stories, of a Princess forced to marry against her will only to soften the heart of her father so that he relents and she is free to marry for love, rather than tradition?

"I decree that from this day forth the princess will marry whom ever she chooses!" - The Sultan in Aladdin

It's not a new trope and the only difference is that at the end of Brave we don't know who that Prince will be.  But we do have a woman who is not afraid to follow tradition and establish that she will marry for love and for no other reason.  Then we add to it that she also has to learn that there is more to life than just following whims.  Tradition has its place.  Family has a place.  Supporting and loving each other has its place.

At the end the story was powerful and compelling and showed surprising depth.

I've often defended the talking heads as having a "point of view".  I admit that once up on a time I wondered about The Little Mermaid glorifying teenage defiance.  But this time, no.

Merida was portrayed as a real woman would, with real conflicts and real choices.  To claim it as anything else, I'm sorry to say, is nothing but ignorance.

Bastion Poll: Who would you like to see?

Over on Bastion I posted the poll below.  I'm reposting it here.

Which minor character from Bastion: The Last Hope would you like to featured in their own chapter?

Weekly Omens 3/8/13

So the blizzard that slammed Montana, Minnesota and Wisconsin decided to turn hard south and skip Michigan.  Thanks.  It's been a fun week of work, sorta writing (curse you ME3!) and the like.  Even so, I did manage to get a lot of stuff done, I think, and I only have a small pile of stuff to work through this weekend.

On Mind the Thorns:

The polls closed and Regan has opted to head out in her vampire finest to the party.  She's going to strut through the doors like a woman to be respected, rather than slipping in the back to quietly watch.  I'm also very happy that I slowed down my posting schedule because this week has been a very active week for musing and I feel like a lot of good things have fallen into place over that time.  Now will I manage to get the next chapter written for Sunday?

On Bastion: The Last Hope

This week's update to Bastion is the first real flashback to before the meteors fell.  I'm planning more of these to help flesh out the back stories of the main characters.  I really went back and forth on including the subtitles because I do think there's something fun about having a hidden story in the French, but I'm not sure I'm ready to hand over an entire video to that.

On Fictional Omens

Marketing.  It's all about the Marketing.  Over on Stop the Good Reads Bullies as well as countless other Meta-review sites there always seems to be some kind of drama brewing about who's out to get who and threatening who.  After reading ChibiNeko's comments on the never ending font of drama, and efforts from the StGRB to get more of "their side" out, I decided I would weigh in a bit on why reviews matter so much to people trying to make it happen.

At home:

In gaming I'm still plunking away at ME3 but I'm annoyed at my own lack of abilities as well as how far behind the equipment curve I am.  Because the more times you play the more chances you get to unlock cool weapons (all randomly), I'm very far behind on the equipment curve for Multiplayer.  Plus what you get is random so there's no "I'm working towards X".  You just roll the dice and see what you get.  If you don't usually use a shot gun, or a sniper rifle you can easily find yourself progress.

Kaylee's sleeping through the night again (yay!) and her lower GI stuff seems to be sorting itself out (you know you're a parent if you've ever thought "Yay, Poop!").  And Xander, the 5 year old, is now sleeping on the top bunk.  He likes it.

And.... your weekly video:

I've been playing around with iMovie as part of my work on Bastion.  It is functional for the layman but for any real Power-Editing it totally doesn't have the tools to do much beyond lining up clips for play back.  Either way here's a montage of last week sledding:

Goodreads, STGRB, and Marketing

How is that so much drama can revolve around a single website such as Goodreads and from it mature adults who should know far better than they appear to can think it appropriate to so such horrible things to each other?

Review bullying, arguing, websites like Stop the Goodreads Bullies, and with it personal attacks, threats to reveal personal information online, accusations of illegal behaviors and inappropriate relationships: the list goes on and on and on.

It has reached levels that go beyond just words and is well in the realm of harassment and endangerment if you take them all at complete face value.  These are things if done in person would lead, quite likely, to blows or worse, yet they seem to come hard and fast on the internet.

And the obvious reason is: Why?

One word:  Marketing.



First let's remember that most of the drama attached to GR and reviews is tied to Self Published or Independently Published authors.  It's tied to people who, for whatever the reason they have, are going it alone and doing the brunt of the work themselves.  It is almost always tied to reviews as they appear on the GR website or on Amazon.com, and on occasion other sites, though those two are the big ones.

So let's talk about that effort but forget writing for a while.

Let's pretend that my friend Bob just opened a new burger joint.  He's going on his own, not a franchise and he's self financing all of it.  He's the one taking out the loan, paying the rent on the store front, printing up the fliers and the menus, and hiring the staff to run and promote the place.

But he's not going to sell a single burger until he tells people there are burgers to sell.  He's not going to sell one item off the menu unless he can convince someone that they are worth the time to come to the burger joint and the money to pay for them.  In short:

Marketing.

So Bob gets things going and one day he comes in to see that some one has painted "These burgers suck" on the front window in poster paints."  It's easy enough to wash off, of course, and it's probably just some kind of teen age prank.  But the damage is already done.  There are people who had to have seen it, and it had to be a factor, if even a small one, in whether or not they took the chance on the place.

Now, if Bob has enough money he can Out-market the graffiti.  He can pass out some more fliers, and he can give away more free samples.  He can get sales back up.

But then one day he comes in and someone has cracked the main window with a rock.  There's a nice big crack in the glass running left to right across the storefront.  Can he still sell burgers?  Yes.  Are they same quality burgers?  Of course.

Will some people decide not to take a chance on buying the burgers because the store has a broken window?  Yep.

And there's a limit on how much money Bob has to keep throwing at repairs and marketing.  At some point he's going to be out of money and have to rely on good word of mouth and repeat customers to stay in business.

Only books don't have repeat customers themselves.  An author might, but in the seas of available media, that is harder and harder to garnish as far as followings go.

So let's talk about GR, STGRB and all that drama.

A book's page on Amazon or GR is effectively its store front.  The description of the book, the author bio, and the cover art are all part of the Marketing Campaign for the book.

And so are the reviews.

At the end of the day, every single review is part of the marketing of the book.  They are part of what makes people decide to buy it.  They attract readers and they drive them away.  To say that they have little impact on what people read isn't accurate nor is it realistic, especially for self published authors. This is why there are "pay for review" programs out there. Oh sure, they say that you're not buying the star rating, and that they'll review any material, fairly, for free. But if you want that review within the next 12 months, you'll pony up the cash for an "expedited" review and get it sooner. And they're usually pretty nice reviews. But why are reviews so critical?

Because they don't have any ~other~ marketing.

A main stream author has things like book tours, signings that people want to attend, talk shows, other authors, and thousands if not millions of dollars thrown into the mix for marketing.  They also have a brand that is established, where one or two kurfuffles really are easily drowned out by everything else out there.  Even when things go pear shaped, they can easily rise out of it by the sheer critical mass of their fan base.

For a new writer who is starting out there is none of that.  All of their marketing money is focused, usually, on getting eyes on their Amazon page, their GR page, or their homepage.  A bad review in those locations is effectively like having graffiti painted on the front of the store or having a rock thrown through your front window.  There is no other way around it.

Mathematically when you have hundreds of a reviews, one or two does little.  But when you have four reviews, that one negative can destroy your average.

Now I know that many people will insist that they don't read reviews, and for those who say so, I believe them.  However for every one person who makes a point of saying that, there are 10 more who will not even consider an independent author with anything less then a 4.75 average simply because "why risk it?"  At the end of the day there are countless new authors trying to make a break in the world, and they can find someone who will have a near perfect average just as easily.  It's the nature of the beast.

So what's this got to do with drama?

Going back to the store, think about the emotional state of Bob as he comes in and sees the vandalism.  Consider the frustration at having all that hard work smashed in a single night.  It is completely rational to realize that these things do happen.  It is rational to just repair the glass and resume marketing the business.

But at this point rational thought is hard to find because emotional reactions start to well up.  This burger joint is an investment.  Thousands of dollars worth.  And here someone is actively trying to destroy it, to hamper it, and in doing so putting the entire affair at risk. Maybe it's based on a legitimate concern about the quality of the product. Maybe they really don't like burgers at all, or at least they don't like the way he makes them. Whatever the reason, the graffiti, the broken glass, whatever is done to mar the store front is going to have an impact on sales, and it's going to encourage an emotional reaction out of Bob.

And that risk goes past the burger joint.  What's going to happen to Bob's family when the business goes belly up?

So granted, a review is meant to be a review.  It's meant to be someone's impression of a work and if they think other people should buy it or not. But it should also be honest.

I understand, though I do not condone, people taking reviews very very personally.  They are trying to feed their families with this work.  They are trying, desperately, to get as much marketing as they can get going so that people will buy their product.  But every bad review, deserved or not, hurts that effort.  It's Anti-Marketing.

I have a family member who is in Marketing and he shared an ancedote he heard in college. Making this truly third hand, he had been told that car dealers would go out, buy a rival's car, and then leave it abandoned on the side of the road along a busy stretch of highway. This would give the impression that this new car had broken down and thus was unreliable. That vehicular billboard would sit there with thousands upon thousands of eyes on it, racing past daily, saying "Don't buy this car." The alternative? Well, the other guy's of course.

I also very much empathize with people who go off the rails when the reviews are not honest or fair.   "I usually hate Sci Fi and this book is another example of why."  If that's the case, why'd you read it?  What do you expect someone to do when you paint "this burger sucks" on the front of their store when you are, yourself, a vegan? More than anything I think that websites such as GR and Amazon have done a poor job of policing this because it is, frankly, hard to police. However, the "review about something other than the book" is probably the most drama-inducing of the kinds of things that can come up. There is so much room for things to go off the rails as it becomes about what the reader likes, what the book is about, and the genre more than it is about the quality of story, the quality of writing and so on. It is much easier for someone to get emotional and irrational when a 2 star review is as much about a dislike of Vampire Fantasy than when it is about the fact that main character is as flat as the nation's employment numbers.

While I don't have any real fix or suggestion I do think that the "problem" is real and more importantly that it's not just going to go away on its own.  In the era of self-publishing more and more writers are putting up a larger and larger personal stake in their works.  They're going from having a BBQ party for friends and family once a month to trying to open their own burger joints and taking financial risks along the way.

These risks involve great deals of money and time spent on marketing, marketing that can be competely undone in a matter of moments by a bad review or two, bad reviews that may or may not be deserved.  And then we all seem surprised when things go completely irrational.

This is the new era of publishing.  This is the future.

Weekly Omens 3/1/13

You'd think I'd have done more work this week (I say that a lot) as I was home sick on Monday and we had a snow day on Wednesday.  Wednesday was pretty cool, spending the day playing with the kids, sending Xander off to go sledding with Mom (his preferred sledding parent), and continuing to recover from the flu that knocked me out Monday.

On Mind the Thorns:

The new chapter is up and Regan is trapped in a well.  The votes are still open about what she should do once she escapes and if you haven't voted you should hop over there and do so.  Also, no Collies were involved in the writing of this episode.

On Bastion: The Last Hope

Finally we are looping back to revisit characters we had introduced earlier in the story.  That's right, folks, no new characters this week!  That is unless you count the passengers on the 717 that our Marines have joined up with.  Curses.....

On Fictional Omens

I've been playing a lot of ME 3 and took a few minutes to muse on the nature of romance in story telling within video games.  I've often defended video games as a story telling medium, and so I thought I'd look closer at the way these stories unfold when not in the middle of playing them.

At home:

Last night I finished the Geth/ Quarian story arc.  I felt very guilty because at the end of the arc there is really only one choice:  Save one race and sacrifice the other.  There is no "make them live in peace" option.  It was glorious, emotional and a little "wow".

And.... your weekly video:

It's March so it's time to break out all the cool Irish music and we begin with the best one no one knows about:  A Biologists view of Beer: