The Problem with Video Game Reviews

I don't follow game reviews at all. When I'm purchasing, I look at the game, look at the cover art, try to guess what the experience is going to be like and decide if I'm willing to spend the money to entertain myself. Many times I'll take the input of others who have already tried the game. At $60 a shot, I'm a lot more selective than a $10 movie, book, or really, any other entertainment event... and probably nearly equally selective to something like going to a concert (which in a lot of cases, costs about the same amount these days).



My take away, he's saying gaming review/media needs to achieve the level of sophistication that reviews for other "arts" do, because there are people out there (not me) who actually care about the art form, and aren't just going to buy the latest 'blockbuster' because a bunch of reviewers gave it a high score. Makes the thumbs up/thumbs down rating system, as symplistic as it is, more useful, because it forces you to figure out the nuance between those vastly different poles.

Thanks go to Shamus at Twenty-Sided Tale for his thoughts and posting this to his site.

Donate food, expand your vocabulary

Yanked from Green As A Thistle, this game is awesome for anyone who likes words, likes challenging themselves, and wants to donate food to the needy without spending money directly.

FreeRice is a vocabulary game, where the player is asked to choose the correct meaning of a word from 4 options. Each correct answer puts 10 grains of rice into a donation pool paid for by the sites sponsors. While I was playing the sponsors were American Express, iTunes, Macy's, TimeLife, Fujitsu, Liz Claiborne, Office Depot, and many, many others. The donated food is given to the UN Food program to manage. The site has been live for 21 days, and has already earned over 352 million grains of rice, and over 42 million on the 28th.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this estimate, but one source I found believes that a five gallon bucket can hold 1 million grains of rice and 1 cup is approximately 10,000 grains. That's a lot of food, if you assume that in combination with other foods, 2 cups of rice can probably feed an adult for a day.