That Geek Podcast Episode 3: The One That Is NOT Two Hours Long.

Sylvie, Stephanie and Randy merrily bounce through our planned topics with a broken track counter that keeps telling Randy they're over an hour into recording.

They start off talking about the shows they're NOT watching, asking questions like:

Are the Networks watching YOU?

How do you find your favourite shows without cable - LEGALLY?

Is Once Upon A Time better than LOST?

Is TV successfully making the transition to the INTERNET?

They eventually dig into the topic of comic book heroes on TV, in the movies and spend equal time on the ones that did well, and the ones that didn't. That leads to a review of the new Spider-Man movie, some nerd rage and coverage of many more flicks leading to to Iron Man, where many things changed.

With Stephanie nearly delerious from sleep deprivation but bolstered on tea, this gets interesting, even a little ranty!

Our theme tune this week is Pinball Spring, provided by Kevin MacLeod, of incompetech.com. We're thankful for his genius!

Spread the word if you like what you hear, geeks are much more fun when they share!

Thank you for listening!

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Fringe: CW Network Screws Up Big!

Fringe is a new science fiction television show created by J.J. Abrams that has been compared to the X-Files by pretty much everyone. I like it, it's a quality show with a diverse set of characters and built in conflicts that could stretch those interesting relationships for years while they delve into the strange, wonderful, terrifying and sometimes gooey realm of science fiction.

I think it's worth watching and they should give it a year.

There's a problem, however. The Nielson ratings system (which is a pointless, outdated, overpriced, bloated, service the television world worships as gospel), reported that fewer than ten million people tuned in for the premiere. This is a problem because J.J. Abrams is also one of the creators of Lost, which posted over eighteen million viewers for it's premiere and has done amazingly well every year since, even when the show had "lost it's way" according to most viewers it posted premiere numbers well above Fringe. (That was season three for everyone who isn't hooked into the Lost phenomenon).

Fringe had some serious obstacles to overcome on its premiere night and it's important to take them into account, though I doubt the networks will. Here's a few of them.

The full pilot episode was "leaked" on the Internet almost two months ago. I saw a clip of it and it was in high defenition, perfect sound and picture. You honestly couldn't do better on the quality. Piracy of this premere was so pervasive that it made it to the Russian DVD market, where thousands of copies were sold marked as; "created by the director of Star Trek". Even though the upcoming Trek film isn't out, it must have worked. Bootleggers made a fortune, there are even subs in a dozen or so languages available online. So perhaps the right phrase here is: "The pilot episode was projectile vomited across the globe" instead of "leaked."

The advertising sucked. I knew exactly what this show was about since I had read up on it but after watching the first television ads I couldn't imagine anyone on earth understanding the premise behind the show. The 30 second long ad was also very irritating. It told you nothing, looked like a badly edited clip show and there was almost no dialogue. Even I was turned off and I already liked the idea behind the show. Advertising following that terrible mess included more dialogue, more descriptive narration but still didn't tell anyone what the premise of the show was in a clear way that the common IQ 85 viewer could understand. That's your audience advertisers! Those are the only people left on the sofa when the advertising comes on, because anyone with an IQ over 85 is smart enough to have something else to do while your ads are rolling or they used their TiVo and don't watch the commercials.

Here's another problem: The audience most interested in this type of programming are also most likely to use their DVR (Digital Video Recorder, for those of you still living in the 80s), and those figures don't count in the Neilson Ratings system. They're lightly considered after the fact.

The critics generally didn't like this show. Considering most of them are out of date and no longer in touch with the general audience themselves, I don't respect their opinions much. The sad fact is that people see these bad reviews and are too lazy to tune in and find out for themselves whether or not the show is good for them. Three's Company got terrible reviews back in the day, but it had massive ratings. Eventually the critics gave it good reviews just so they could save face a little.

Anyway, hopefully the CW Network (what a terrible name), gives Fringe a season to show it's stuff. I'm sure J.J. will gladly give it his best shot and it'll be the best oddity show on television for a while. I will be surprised if they do give it a chance, however, since the CW Network is already in big trouble and they're sorely disappointed with Fringe's performance. Since the whole network is run by corporate hacks who don't care if it's a good show, only that advertisers are interested, I expect to maybe see 6-13 episodes of Fringe before they flush it.

I'm starting to think if I ever get an opportunity to produce my own intellectual property in a visual medium I might just want to do it on a straight to Internet and DVD basis. Sure, the advertising budget has to be pretty high, but hell, at least I won't have to deal with Corporate heads who would rather sit around and watch the commercials.

RL

This Generation: Graphics Are Awesome

I'm a gamer. There are a lot of us around. In fact, people over 30 who never played games are actually picking up controllers and loading all kinds of interactive software into their computers. They're even buying consoles. Let's face it, television audiences are getting tired of seeing shows they enjoy cancelled, seeing one formulaic movie after another, and they're happy to look to truly engaging interactive entertainment.

The audience is growing and what people can't help noticing is that the graphics in these new games are just amazing. Frankly, all around it's hard to find a recently released title without fantastic graphics. Even games that seem to have only the most minimal effort put into appearance look better than releases three years ago. You don't even need a $400.00 video card in your computer to take advantage of the upcoming games, a $150.00 graphics card will last you at least two years and play games that look fantastic.

I'm really happy that the technology exists to make our gaming experiences look better all around, but this should change the way games are reviewed in my opinion. I recently commented on the quality of GTA IV and as you may have noticed, I mentioned the graphics briefly and moved on. That's really about as much attention as we should pay to the graphics as commentators and reviewers unless the gaming title actually fails to use the existing technology that makes creating good looking games easier to develop.

I'd happily rake a company and it's title across the coals for a full paragraph or two if they manage to make a terrible looking game. With the development tools and other resources at their disposal this shouldn't happen anymore. Any game should at least look good even if it doesn't meet current standards.

How do commonly amazing graphics change our buying and playing experience? Well, forget looking at the pictures on the back of the box or examining screen shots, you can make a terrible game look great for less money and effort than ever. What's important is grabbing a playable demo! I saw a screenshot for the new Conan console game and it looked amazing. After trying the demo I came to the conclusion that the whole game would be time very badly wasted. The graphics were great, but it really played like a platform game from five years ago, there really wasn't even much point in making Conan a 3D rendered game. I even found myself missing an old Commodore 64 game called Barbarian. Now that was a fun game.


Severely disappointing titles like Conan are out there and there are dozens coming down the pipe as studios release licenced content from the film and television industries that sell based largely on the power of the title. The Lost video game is another title that is really only any good if you're a fanatic fan of the show. The only good point about this $50.00-$70.00 game is that for 20 hours you get to walk through a different point of view on events in the Lost story. That's it, there's no replayability here and no way to change the ending or course of the plot. Sadly I couldn't find a playable demo of the Lost game on Xbox Live!, I wonder why.

There's the other side of the coin here, and I'm not forgetting it. If you take a look at games like Word of Warcraft, whose design team is second to none you'll find another story entirely. They use a graphics engine that can run on four and five year old computers with no problems and thanks to superior design and forward thinking style, the world looks fantastic. Sure, I'd love to see a high definition, next generation, omg-so-pretty! version of the game but I really don't have to. The graphics we have are clear, allow for a lot of variety in landscape as well as character costuming and show us everything we need to see in a style that is unique in the industry. They worked hard and their 10 million subscribers don't care that the game doesn't use a next generation graphics engine. The game is fun, open and uses old and new ideas in combination to create a great gaming experience for everyone.

The expression "Next Generation Graphics" is so yesterday, we're inside that generation and it's a couple years old now. The future comes down to game play because everywhere we look the graphics are awesome.

RL