Recently I stumbled across The Guild on Xbox Live video market place. The mini episodes follow the mis-adventures of real life people behind the fictional"Knights of Good" MMORPG guild.For anyone who has been in a MMORPG guild, you will probably find it funny. Although, I must admit some of their dysfunctions really hit a little too close to home, even if taken to the extreme. For example, one episode is about the emergency situation created by a catastrophic 4 hour server shut down.

The episodes are are 5 to 7 minutes long. You can access them on Xbox Live in the Video Market Place, either as one of the feature content on the main page or in the Independent Videos sub-channel. They are free to download. The first two seasons are available and a third season is in production. The episodes are also available on the internet at The Guild website.

Today I watched a pretty good science fiction flick I had never even heard of before. Omega Man stars Charlton Heston. He plays the last man on earth, well sort of. The movie is similar in genre to the Night of the Comet. Except in Omega Man it is germ warfare, rather than radiation from space that turns most of the world into zombies. It has action, romance, corny zombie make-up, and decent story.

Best of all it is available for instant viewing on Netflix. Any way I liked it and I though I'd pass it along for anyone interested. Here is a link to its page on Netflix in case you are interested.

Perhaps, I have been spoiled by Netflix, but so far I have not been impressed with Gamefly. Given the cost, I have decided, at least for me, it's not worth the cost.

To begin with, Gamefly is substantially more expensive than Netflix. The 1 movie at a time plan at Netflix is $8.99 per month and the 2 movie plan is $13.99. In Contrast, Gamefly costs $15.95 for one game and $22.95 for 2 games. That makes the Gamefly one and two game plans 77% and 64% more expensive than Netflix respectively. In my mind, if you are going to charge between 2/3rd and 3/4ths more for a similar service, the value of that service should be substantially better.

One possible criticism of my view is that I am not comparing apples to apples, since renting movies and games are different business. The most obvious difference is on average games cost more than DVD, arguably justifying a higher cost to rent a video game. There are however some mitigating factors in this regard. While I don't have any statistics to support this, it is logical to assume that people return movies much faster than games. You can consume the content of a DVD in 2 to 4 hours, depending on the type of DVD. Whereas, to play through Oblivion for example, can take 100 hours. The financial impact of this, is that on average, Netflix is going to have higher operating costs per subscription, due to increased postage, and labor costs to process those returns and shipments. This doesn't even consider the additional cost (and value to the subscriber) of Netflix's streaming movie service.

However, that is another significant difference between movies and game that must be considered from the consumer's perspective. Other than as a collectible, or a few rare movies that a person just loves, there is very little value to a DVD from the consumer's perspective after it has been watched. However, many games, but admittedly not all, have significant replay value. So a consumer must weigh whether it is worth it to buy a game or just rent it. The higher the cost of renting, the more attractive buying becomes. For most movies, this isn't even a factor.

Consider Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga (Xbox 360), which I just returned to Gamefly. I kept this about a month. This cost me $15.95 plus tax. I could have bought it new for $37.00 on Ebay. I got most of the achievements and played through almost all of the game, but not all of them. I'm out $16, plus tax, but have no game that I can replay.

All that said, Gamefly might still be worth it, despite the high cost, if the service was good. Unfortunately, it is not. In the four months or so I have had Gamefly, I have never been shipped the movie that is at the top of my game list. In contrast, only once at Netflix have I not received the movie that is at the top of my list.

I have been dissatisfied with Gamelfy for a while. However, my experience today is the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Again, I didn't get game that was at the top of my list, despite my first choice, Civ. Revolution, being listed as high availability. They shipped me COD 4, which I think was no. 5 or 6 on the list, and here is the kicker, they shipped it from Pittsburg rather than Tampa! I understand that you might have to ship from a location that is father away to give me the game at the top of my list, but not on 4 or 5 spots down the queue.

I feel like have a given Gamefly a fair chance, but they let me down. I am cancelling my Gamefly account as soon as my subscription is up. From now on, I am buy most if not all of my games off of Ebay's half.com. If I like it, I will keep it. If don't like it I will sell it in a few weeks. Either way, I am better off than paying Gamefly for poor service.

I justed wanted to provide everyone a quick update on the status of our virtual union city. We have broken 100 citizens. Passing this landmark opens up a new option for the city. We can now improve MGUtopia's tranportation network, as well as adding industry to provide jobs, and new citizens.

Thanks to everyone that has helped MGUtopia develop!

Thanks to another Gamespot forum poster (that I cannot remember the username of to give credit to ) I stumbled upon an interesting website--myminicity.com. The concept of the website is that users create a city that grows, or stagnates, based on how often people visit the site.

City creation is simple and free. You need only pick a unique name and select which county the city is based in. When people visit the cities website additional citizens and other improvements are added. Initially, a visit to the city's website increases the population. Later as the city increases in size, other options become available, including adding industry, transportation options and security. Each user (presumably tracked by IP address) can make one improvement per day.

About a week ago I founded MGUtopia as a way for our Union--The Mature Gamers Union--to have a little collective fun outside of the forums and out normal game nights. Here is a view of MGUtpopia when we first founded it.

Less than a week later we have hit 50 citizens! As of today we have the option to add both population and industry. Admittedly, myminicity has its limits. It is not like playing Sim City. You don't get to zone areas or lay out cities. However, the fun is in collectively working to make your virtual city grow.

So check out our progress and add industry or more citizens to MGUtopia today.

The first time I saw a picture of Yoda, similar to the one I have linked, battling a fantasy type warrior in a Gamespot news article on Soulcaliber IV, I thought it was a joke. I assumed it was either a mockery of the Star Wars franchise or of the particular game. Since reading a couple of more articles, I have learned that Yoda will in fact be a playable character in the fighting game Soulcaliber IV's Xbox 360 version. Interestingly, Darth Vader will be a playable character on the PS3.

Once I realized what Lucas Arts and Namco Bandai had planned I was really annoyed. Simply put, Yoda and Darth Vader are iconic Star Wars characters and should not be placed in a game that is not set in the Star Wars universe as we have come to know it in the movies. I believe this degrades the integrity of the Star Wars story. It is crass commercialism at its worst. It is, or at least should be, beneath Star Wars.

It also has a negative impact, at least from my perspective, on game play in a game like Soulcaliber. The way Vader and Yoda have been portrayed in the movies, the lightsabers they wield are awesome weapons, able to cut through steel, flesh and bone like a warm knife through soft butter. That combined with their force powers, these two character posses, should make any match with the other warrior characters in Soulcaliber, a very one sided affair. But of course for the sake of balance, I am sure that will not be the case.

I can totally understand why Namco Bandai would want to do this. Many gamers love Star Wars. Playing a game where you get to use a lightsaber as your weapon is really fun! It enhances their game's appeal (at least to some) and they certainly have no duty to protect the integrity of the Star Wars IP. However, George Lucas created Star Wars and he should protect it though. Certainly, the Star Wars franchise is his property and he do with it what he wants, but the point is he shouldn't! It is not like there aren't plenty of opportunities for him to make a buck on the Star Wars IP, without licensing it for an inappropriate use.

While I am disappointed in George Lucas and Lucas Arts for allowing this, I am certainly not surprised. We have certainly seen this sort of disrespectful use of Star Wars story before. When the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies first launched, although not perfect, its design when to great lengths to preserve the integrity of the Star Wars canon, even when doing so went against the conventional wisdom for MMOs. For example, early in the game Jedi were rare and the most powerful player characters. This was consistent with the movies, because the game was set in a time when the Jedi were all but extinct, and as we all know the Jedi were badass. Later in the life of SWG, apparently with Lucas Arts' approval, follwing the NGE any player could become a Jedi, without any mechanism to limit their number or visibility to the rest of the community, and they were more or less equal to other player characters. This directly contradicted the canon on the combat power of Jedi and the description of the time frame in which the game was set, between Episodes 4 and 5. This, and a general unwillingness to preserve the integrity of the Star Wars story, drove me and many other Star Wars purists from the game. I am sure there are many other examples through the history of Star Wars video games.

Before fans of Soulcaliber flame me, please understand this should not be taken as a criticism of Soulcaliber IV or any of its first three iterations. I have never played any of the Soulcaliber games and probably wouldn't have played Soulcaliber IV, even if there were no offending Star Wars characters in it. Based on what little I have read about it, I am sure it will be an enjoyable game for those that like 3d fighting game, unless of course, you are a Star Wars purist.

The success of Sony's Blu-ray in the most recent format war has brought the question of whether to upgrade to the forefront for me. While the fight carried on, I saw no reason to risk investing in a losing format. (although I definitely leaned toward HD-DVD, mostly out of loyalty to Xbox). Now, I no longer have an excuse. It did not take me long to come to the conclusion that I am going to skip this format entirely.

The primary reason for this is that my wife and I hardly ever use our now "antiquated" DVD player. With two DVRs (one of each of our main TVs), there is rarely a time when we don't have some show already recorded that that we want to watch. In the event we really feel the need to watch a movie that has recently been released, we can most likely just download it on Xbox Live, with the added benefit of no late fees from the wallet busting video stores.

A secondary reason for my decision to skip Blu-ray is that I am simply tired of new formats. I'm just old enough to remember 8 tracks and the beta max section at the video store. In my short life time, we have had vinyl, eight track, cassette, CD and now two competing HD audio formats (DVD Audio and SACD). Certainly, some of these formats clearly have desirable advantages over the others. But the newest physical media formats seem only to have very marginal improvements over their predecessors. Whether it is intentional or not, it seems to me the movie and music studios are not content with just one sale of a record or movie , the industry wants to sell you the same media over and over again, albeit in a new format.. Incidentally, I heard on NPR a few days ago that vinyl, of all things, is coming back. Perhaps if we wait long enough, our collection of regular movies and TV shows will be classic!

I don't have a beef against Blu-ray. If there is a real need for one, such as if it becomes standard to release computer programs on Blu-ray discs, then I will upgrade then. I'm just not rushing into a new movie format I don't need either.