Damsels in Distress

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 1, 2014

Even with my various quibbles over her “Tropes vs. Women” videos, Anita Sarkeesian managed to open my eyes. It’s hard to watch her videos and not feel like we need to do better as an industry. I worry about creating a lens through which you are viewing everything looking for offense (because you will find […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 18 Comments to Read

Last Year’s Treasure, Today’s Trash

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 26, 2014

My new computer arrived last Tuesday. In a confession that might lose me geek cred, I’ve been so insanely busy that I didn’t even get it out of the box to test it out until the weekend. Statwise – it’s got a quad-core Intel i5-4690k (which I admit, doesn’t mean that much to me anymore), […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Dark Dungeons: The Movie Takes Us Into Dark Imaginations…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 25, 2014

When I was a kid and first starting to get into Dungeons & Dragons, it was riding a double wave of fad-like popularity and backlash from certain quarters for being dangerous or downright evil – which only added to its popularity. While I didn’t face too much direct opposition from authority-types over playing the game, […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Movies - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Comic Con Upgrade

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 14, 2014

I remember back in the 90s when a computer upgrade was almost a mandatory bi-annual thing… on odd years I’d replace parts to keep it kind of up-to-snuff, and then on even years I’d replace the whole machine.  Man, I don’t miss those days. PC gaming was an expensive hobby. Nowadays, PCs cost half as […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Salt City Steamfest 2014

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 5, 2014

This weekend I donned my top-hat and goggles and went to Salt City Steamfest. This time around, I was a somewhat more active participant – I was involved in two panels with my publisher, Xchyler Publishing, and periodically assisted at the booth selling (and even signing!) books with other authors and editors. I guess in […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: Comments are off for this article

“Go-To” Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 9, 2014

Yes, I use games to waste time. I use games to procrastinate stuff I’m supposed to be doing. I admit it. In particular, I tend to have one game – sometimes two – that becomes my brain’s release valve. I gravitate to it when I don’t have anything in particular in mind other than just […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

“Valence Electrons, First-Person Shooter”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 7, 2014

I vaguely remember high school chemistry. I remember working out the formulas, figuring out how you got molecules sharing electrons or whatnot. I guess I better remember the term “covalent bonds” rather than really understanding what it means. It’s been a while. So, sadly, I haven’t been much help with my daughter’s homework for that class. […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

E.T. Exhumed from New Mexico Desert

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 29, 2014

I suppose everyone has heard about this by now. I was knee-deep in getting this website put back together, and even I heard about it over the weekend. I’d heard it was happening a couple of weeks ago, but then promptly forgot about it. It seems Microsoft and others got permission to exhume (and document) […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Evermore – An Adventure Theme Park?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 23, 2014

Anybody remember the “Dream Park” series by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes? It was basically about a massive high-tech theme park for LARPing (before that was such a thing). Since then, we’ve seen variations on that idea in real life come about in small ways. But it looks like somebody’s going for it in a […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Twelve Things I Learned at the Salt Lake Comic Con FanXperience

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 22, 2014

I went to the Salt Lake City Comic Con FanXperience (or “FanX”) over the weekend. With over 100,000 people there on the final day (Saturday), it was crowded but fun. The emphasis for FanX, as I understand it, is more on the broad spectrum of pop-culture fandom, whereas the Comic Con event (to be held […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Overwhelmed By Choice

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 21, 2014

This weekend wiped me out, and kept me going almost constantly. I have a couple of unfinished larger posts, but I didn’t want to leave you empty-handed on a Monday. So here are a couple of things continuing to make me think: “An Algorithm for Discovering Hidden Gems” by Lars Doucet talks about putting in […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Comic Con FanX Thoughts: Making It Real

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 18, 2014

I’m hitting the Salt Lake City Comic Con FanXperience this weekend. I just got through the first day, and only a few hours after-work at that, but I had a pretty good time. I was pondering on the whole geek-gathering thing while sitting in the hall munching on a sandwich for dinner. I have coworkers […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

The secret of level thirteen…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 7, 2014

I just discovered this over the weekend. It’s one part of those ‘movies’ of the 1980s which were actually three or more stand-alone short films. This one was apparently entitled “Nightmares,” and the segment was called, “The Bishop of Battle.” Young Emilio Estevez stars as a video game hustler in the apparently thriving practice of […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Movies, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Gaming Group Lore

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 2, 2014

Over the years, our dice-and-paper gaming group (which hasn’t remained constant – we’ve had a few changes in membership over the years) has its own lore, and a short-hand vocabulary for referring to certain kinds of events. Some people in our current group weren’t even there when some of these events happened, but we refer […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, General - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Deep Game Sales: Awesome or Terrible or Both?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 28, 2014

Cliff “Cliffski” Harris contends that the deep game discounts and massive bundle sales are a horrible trick played on gamers that will be the downfall of the industry in the long run. In his rant, he does acknowledge that in spite of flaws (devaluing of games, emphasis on quantity rather than quality, nobody finishing games, […]

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Indies, Integrity, Reputation, and Crowdfunding

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 5, 2014

I’ve warned about Kickstarter before. I’m hesitant to throw any support behind crowdfunding campaigns here unless I know the creators, either personally or by reputation. And reputation is an interesting thing. It usually originates in personal character, but it also makes good business sense. A good reputation is something that’s very hard to build up, […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



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