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The agony of anticipation

Posted on November 14, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I am not someone who gets hyped for much of anything. Let me back it up a bit before diving in. Marketing doesn’t work very well on me. I am not swayed by the newest, the latest, or the shiniest. Clothes-wise, I wear sweats/shorts and sweatshirts/t-shirts most of the time. I have three shoes. One pair of tennis shoes; one pair of sandals; and, one pair of boots. I did buy a bunch of things for winter–baclava, gloves, coat, socks, etc., but that’s something that you can’t really get around in Minnesota. We are having our first snow–and it’s sticking! Snow is the best and it’s properly falling down.

Anyway, the last time I actually bought regular clothing was for a wedding–so not normal clothing. A dark red flowered tunic on top and black pants on bottom because that’s pretty much all I wear on bottom. Normally, I wear all black, but I wanted something a bit more festive for the wedding of one of my two besties. Sadly, it was a Zoom wedding because of the pandemic, but it was still beautiful.

Anyway! I got the clothes at Amazon, where get most everything. I don’t look by brand–I look by what I want. In this case, I put in ‘tunic’ and just chose half a dozen shirts I liked. I’m a big person with big boobs, which means that I have to have clothing with generous give–especially in the chest area. I’m a 2XL if I want to be comfortable. At fifty, I finally stopped giving a fuck about the number on my labels. I’d rather be comfortable than squeezed into a smaller size. And I think I look better when I’m not worried about splitting seams. Or constantly tugging down my shirt because it won’t stop riding up.

I have very little brand loyalty. When I used to drink pop, I was a Diet Coke person. I was a Coke Zero person for a hot second, but then they changed the formula and made it sweeter. I went back to Diet Coke before giving up pop completely. I also have some affinity for Logitech products, especially their mice and earbuds. Hm. What else. Microfiber. I know that’s not a brand, but my brother tipped me off to how incredible it is and now I’m a big fan.

I’m the same with most pop culture . I know how this sounds, but I don’t care for movies and TV programs in general. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve thought about it in depth and have come up with some tentative conclusions. I have a really good imagination and I find movies and TV programs limiting. Again, I know that sound s pretentious and bullshitty, but it’s true. I’ve been a voracious reader from when I was a young child. I taught myself how to read when I was four and was reading the dictionary by the time I was seven. Whenever I read novels, I would picture the scenes in my head. It would be much like a movie with moving scenes that changed in a seamless fashion.

Waiting in breathless anticipation with Sekiro pre-loaded

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which hereafter shall be known as Sekiro because that’s what it was intended to be called until Activision shoved its nose into the–I’ll get to that in a bit–is coming out tomorrow (or today by the time you read this). Or rather, tonight since it’s coming out at midnight EDT (are we DT or ST now?) which means 11 p.m. here. I had to uninstall Dark Souls: Remastered (the current DS game I’m replaying) to make room for Sekiro, which I bought last night. Pre-ordered it. At full AAA price.

If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m cheap as hell. I don’t mind waiting for a game to go on steep sale before buying it, which means I’m usually playing a game a year or two after it’s released. I bought the original Dark Souls a year and a half after it was released, the Prepare to Try edition, for ten bucks, I think. Maybe twenty. I did play Dark Souls III in real time, but that was because Ian bought it for me along with the season’s pass. After DSIII, I said that any future game by FromSoft was an auto pre-order for me, and this is also amazing because I am very against pre-orders for a few reasons.

One, before Steam instituted its return policy, you were SOL if you bought a game and didn’t want it for whatever reason. Now, if you buy a game after it’s released, then you can look at reviews and whatnots of it in order to get a better feel if it’s for you or not. With the sheer volume of games being released these days, it can be overwhelming if you’re not the type only to play, say, Collar Duty games. If you are the type to only play COD BlOP or whatever, then I can absolutely see pre-ordering the next iteration. I can also see paying full price because console games don’t go on sale nearly as often or as steeply as do PC games.

Two, I don’t like this move to making games a service thing rather than a one-time product buy. I hate that a game can be released broken with the idea that it’ll get patched in time. Honestly, I would rather wait until a game is fully functional before it’s released, even if it means the game is delayed months. I will say that waiting for Eitr to come out has tested that theory, though. I first heard about it…I want to say three years ago, but it might have been six months more or less. Anyhow, they are the exception, and I would rather the game come out later fully intact than to be released a broken mess.

In other words, I don’t want to reward companies for bad behavior. Continually pre-ordering games that turn out to be broken, incomplete, or just downright bad gives said companies no incentive to do better. If they’re going to make the same amount of money either way, why not just released a broken game? I’m not even blaming them because it makes business sense. I also know I can’t make other people wait to buy games, but I don’t want to play into that system.