FELIZ NAVIDAD

Hello Everybody and a tip of the hat to you all, it is I the TopHatMan here for another blog post.
Its December and you know what that means.  Its Christmas time, the greatest time of the year.  Whether it be hot chocolate while doing your World of Warcraft dailies, or having a Christmas dinner with friends and family, or if you open up presents under a tree that you decorated just for the occasion.  However, have you wondered what Christmas is like in other places?  Me neither, but lets talk about how the Mexicans celebrate Christmas.  They incorporate the very bare essence of the Catholic Christmas traditions and add the spin of their own unique culture to make a very unique Christmas celebration.
Have you ever wanted Christmas to last longer than a single day, well Christmas in Mexico decided that one day was not enough, so Christmas is celebrated from the 12th of December, to the 2nd of February.  They hold a celebration called the Posada which illustrates the travel of Mary and Joesph trying to find an inn for the coming of the baby Jesus.  On the final Posada (the ninth one held on Christmas Eve) the baby Jesus is placed into the manger and then the community goes to midnight mass in commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ.  There is also a special name for the midnight mass, it is called the misa de gallor or the mass of the rooster, where they sing lullabies to the baby Jesus.
Besides actual Christmas, there is also a holiday celebrated on the 28th of December.  The Los santo inocentres or the Day of the Innocent Saints remembers when king Herod slaughtered countless babies in search of the baby Jesus.
There is one main difference in Mexican Christmas to an Americanized Christmas, and that is the children receive their presents on the Epiphany or the 6th of January.  The presents are brought by the baby Jesus or by Santa Clause.  Speaking of the baby Jesus, the Mexican Christmas also has the eating of the roscas.  the Roscas is a sweet bread where a plastic figurine of the baby Jesus is placed inside.  This symbolizes the need to hide Jesus from King Herod who actively sought to kill Jesus.  The knife that everyone cuts the roscas with symbolizes the danger Jesus was in during his birth.
The Christmas season ends on the 2nd of February where the Nativity is put away and there is one final dinner to commemorate the end of the Christmas season.
That's the end of this blog, Merry Christmas to all of you.
Sources
http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/mexico.shtml
http://www.santas.net/mexicanchristmas.htm

Terrible Game Launches

Hello Everyone and a Tip of the Hat to you all!  It is I the TopHatMan here for another Blog Post.
Alright let's talk about it.  This year video game launches have been some of the worst we have seen.  Assassins Creed Unity, WOW Warlords of Draenor, Farcry 4, Watch Dogs, Halo Master Chief collection, ESO, Fable Anniversary, etc etc etc.  This year we have had some of the worst launches we have ever seen.  Whether it be massive FPS issues, popin, crashes, glitches, or character model glitches, consumers have struggled through many problems when trying to play the latest games.  I am an advocate of waiting a bit before buying a new game due to these very issues, however the problem of horrific launches still lies in the hands of the developer.  It is completely unacceptable behavior if your game does not run properly or at all after the transaction.  Lets talk Ubisoft.
Except for Child of Light, name me one Ubisoft game that was released this year that had a launch free of technical complications.  Farcry 4 may be the least affected of Ubisoft's latest releases but there are still problems when trying to record game play and with the frame rate when in the main town.  Remember Watch Dogs, the game hyped up i the past couple of years to be the best looking and best game of all time, remember when it released?  Not only were the graphics on PC downgraded from the initial E3 reveal in 2012, but the graphics were found turned off in the murky depths of the games files, there were better graphics that were deliberately disabled.  Also the frame rate was nothing to write home about constantly dropping and struggling to achieve 60 FPS on high end rigs.  Assassins Creed Unity still suffers from frame rate issues, popin, and model issues.  When your game struggles to achieve 60 FPS on high end gaming PC's, your optimization was inadequate.
Warlords of Draenor with people getting stuck in the ground and your garrison bugging out, a necessary part of the questing experience didn't work.  Not to mention the 5000 person que to log into the bugged mess of the expansion.  While Warlords is easily the best WOW expansion ever made, the launch was also the worst launch WOW has ever had.  Halo the Master Chief's collection's matchmaking would not work with people searching for a lobby for hours to find the lobby had been bugged and thrown back into the que.  ESO, well that was just a bad game with multiple issues, seriously just watch the AngryJoeShow's angry review about the game he explains it perfectly.
This type of behavior is unacceptable and needs to be put down before it gets out of hand.  Devlopers and publishers will keep pushing out unfinished games to us if we refuse to show them that as consumers we will not stand for this.  STOP PREORDERING VIDEO GAMES, THERE IS NO BENEFIT TO IT, stop buying day one releases of Video Games, wait a month or a few and most likely the price will drop, it will go on sale, and it will have had plenty of patches (hopefully).  Vote for the business practices you like with your wallet.
Click this link for Angryjoe's channel

Video Game Review

Hello everyone and a tip of the hat to you all!  It is I the TopHatMan, here for another Blog Post.

Today I am going to discuss a subject that I talked about last week but I want to go more in detail about the effects and benefits of video game Review is.

Video Games are a new form of media, to most of us it may not seem new to most of us because video games have been with us for most of our life in one way or the other.  However literature has been around since ancient times with cave paintings, film has been with us since the 1890's, television has been with us since the mid 1900's but gaming has only been with us enmasse since the 1980's with the original NES of Nintendo.  Video games have only been with us for about 30 years and society is still working out the kinks on to how th industry operates.  One of the most crucial aspects of the industry is the review process.

Some people view people should not make money based off of someone else's work.  A reviewer by their logic should not be able to make any money for reviewing a video game.  This however is largely misunderstood as to whose work the reviewer's review belongs to.  Whether it be Jim Sterling's written reviews or AngryJoe's Angry Review on Youtube, the review is the work of the reviewer.  It is not the work of the developer.  No reviewer should be forced to give royalties to developers for reviewing the developer's game.  The review, the effort of playing the game, the effort of writing the review, and the effort of making the review belongs to the reviewer, not the developer.  Through this, there is also less room for bias by the reviewer because they are forced to give money to the developers.  Likewise developers should not pay the reviewer because the review may draw sales to the game.  In neither scenario should one party give money to the other.  

Review is a necessary aspect of the video game process.  I am pro consumer, I do not care about big or small industry.  I care about which will provide the better deal to the consumer because we are the ones spending the money and we are ultimately the ones who decide which industries succeed and which fail.  

Some developers also believe they should be able to censor negative review.  Some people defend these developers by stating that the negative review is impacting sales.  That is the point, if a game is bad and broken then there are others who will agree or disagree.  If people watch or read a review by Jim Sterling who believes a game is terrible and broken then most people will agree.  If a game runs well and has mechanics that make sense it will find its audience.  If a game is broken then consumers should be notified before the waste money on  game they would know beforehand that they would not enjoy.

Click this link to watch the AngryJoeShow as an example for youtube video game review.