Keeping Tabs on Travelling

My used Metcards - tells you a lot about me. These are my two latest used Metcards. If you don't already know, the prepurchasable tickets in Melbourne are called Metcards.

On the left is a 10 X 2-hour Metcard, and on the right is a 5 x Weekend Daily Metcard.

So - what does this tell you about me and my travelling?

The first most obvious thing - is that I (being the law-abiding, rule following person that I am) am not a fare evader. I pay when I get on - and get my money's worth travelling about the city.

The next thing you notice is there's a lot of 3:00am expiry times. This is because if you validate a 2-hour ticket after 6:00pm - the ticket is valid all the way until 3:00am. So - if you're counting, that's 9 hours of travel on a 2-hour ticket. That means I travel a lot more at night to maximize my travel time. There are caveats though - trains, trams and buses run at lower frequencies at these times (at best, they slow down after 8pm instead of immediately at 6 or 7.)

So what is there to do after 3:00am? I do a lot of things, like carry cartons of Coke home, go to Crown Casino for food, travel to suburbs far away for food... and the list goes on. Most recently, I had to go to the city to have a chat with potential employers, as well as fellow students that may in the future become my colleagues.

As for the others - there's always plenty of other random reasons, maybe I needed to travel a long way to a certain embassy, I was tramming down for some a huge sushi+sashimi lunch at Sushi Ten, or I just wanted to go shopping in the afternoon and planned to cart back loads of heavy groceries before heading back for home.

Weekend Daily passes are an awesome way to save money - a single use will last you the whole day - and since now it works on both Saturdays and Sundays - you can actually go to some places in Zone 2 which closed on Sunday that you couldn't go on a Sunday Saver for cheap.

It's fun to look back at these multiple use tickets - it's like a small log of your travels, your life and plenty of other funny things you do while in uni!

(Note - you might notice I am now posting larger versions of some photos now. Hehehe. As for why, let's just say - because it's something I couldn't do until recently.)

Trying to Get into Honours Year

Break is over, and I'm trying my hardest to be ready for the semester finals I always suck at so that I can get into Honours year. As of such, posts will be rare for the next few months. (Or to put it in cfgt's terms, posts will be whenever I want.)

The Value of a Video Game: Part 2

Now that the tangible is out of the way, let's talk about the game.So what value is there in the game? Since there is so much variety in games nowadays, let's look at the value of three possible portions of a game: single player, local multiplayer and internet multiplayer - and extreme examples of each. 1. Single Player

A lot of good games are single player oriented or have a solid single player element. Without them, a lot of games would get nowhere. It would take too much time to go through everything - so I'm just gonna talk about what I like in single player.

First, there's the story. Some single player games, such as puzzle games like Bejeweled, Lumines and Peggle, are completely lacking in single player storyline. Most of them, however, do - Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, Portal, Tales of Vesperia, and the list goes on. A lot of first person shooters and RPGs are filled with a good story to keep you playing. For some gamers, this is about the only reason to play a video game - a good story.

After the storyline, we have the gameplay - the central element of the game. You can have an excellent story, great graphics, but it doesn't matter if the gameplay just plain annoys you. For turn based RPGs, this usually entails plenty of menus, decision making and strategy. For action games, this usually entails mashing buttons until the enemies drop dead where they stand (while not dropping dead yourself). For platformers, well, there's a lot of jumping. :P

Of course - there's replay value. Some games have insane replay value - racing games are a good example. It's easy to replay most of the game multiple times - and you're expected to do so most of the time. Most other games don't have quite so much - action games tend to extend replay time by unlocking more difficulty levels to keep challenging the player, RPGs on the other hand try to push sidequests and the occasional New Game Plus. While some would claim otherwise, I think FPSes have little replay value in the single player department. Real time strategy would depend on the player and the game. Some people might see the joy in playing through Dawn of War: Soulstorm's campaign with every race, while most people just play it once and go back to multiplayer after that.

Then there is the rather ambiguous and difficult to define satisfaction from completing the game. This satisfaction increased the longer and more difficult the game is - seeing the ending is only part of the utility gained from finishing a video game. There is also the sense of achievement and euphoria - rewards of the past 5 to 60 hours of gameplay.

- to be continued -

Note: This was meant to be longer and include the multiplayer portions, but I've decided to push those to Part 3 in favour of getting Part 2 out to begin with.

The Value of a Video Game: Part 1

Often, one would wonder - how much is a video game worth? For the purposes of this post, and the many after it: let's talk about the value of Halo 3 Collector's Edition. For the first part, let's just look at the visible value your money pays for when you buy this particular game. When Halo 3 was released, the RRP for it's collector's edition was AUD109.95 (if I am not mistaken). Being the shrewd customer, I took advantage of certain market mispricings and a certain trade-in promotion to get hold of my copy for a lot less than that. But that's not the point.

So let's have a look at what you pay for:

  1. Nice plastic cover for the case.
  2. A painted steel case emblazoned with the Halo 3 logo.
  3. Halo 3 Game Disc (this is why you bought the game after all)
  4. A Halo Bestiarum - hard cover book with nicely laid out information on Halo 3's races
  5. Halo 3 Manual
  6. A folded controls cheat sheet/poster
  7. 48-hour XBox Live Gold Trial Membership
  8. Halo 3 Essentials Disc One (with Making of and other videos)

(The photo is just meant to give you an idea of what's inside :P )

So just look at the box, that's the tangible goods you pay for - 2 discs, a steel case, and many many printed sheets of paper - some more valuable than others.

Let's put aside the two discs for a while. Do you see value in the other 6 items?

Some people don't - but I do. The plastic cover may feel stupid - but it is the one with all the details, the nice artwork for the logo, and overall completes the package for retail sale. A lot better than Halo 2's plastic cover mind you.A lot of people are attracted to the steel case - and so am I. The steel case is black, which makes it look sleek - and it's got a big stylized number 3 on it so you know what it is. Ths case is what makes it special and stand out from all the other XBox 360 games in their typical green DVD cases.

The Halo Bestiarum is simply somewhat a small hardcover book filled with info and pictures of the races in Halo 3 and brings you a little up to speed with what's been going on if you haven't been to the world of HAlo before. The Halo 3 Manual is what you'd expect, the mandatory manual. As much as I make it sound like that - I value the manual highly. A game without its manual is significantly less valuable to me, since I buy games mostly for collection purposes. A manual gives it completeness - not to mention it is more often than not, good fun to read. Some games come with thin manuals which are extremely lacking - which I do not like. Thin manuals to me feel sloppy and convey a message that the game doesn't have enough depth or features to put into a manual, or that the company was just plain stingy. We paid for the game - we deserve a fair thickness manual together with it.

Controls cheat sheets are very normal nowadays - but this one happens to be a nice poster all well, which is a nice touch - I don't use it, I don't use posters, but having it around makes one happy that one bought the game. The 48-hour trial was worthless and still is worthless to most people - it's more of an advertising ploy - some later games came with a more generous one week or one month trial - which is a lot more valuable.

OK - back to the discs. Now, I'm from Malaysia. Piracy is rampant there. I am used to not caring about copyright, acquiring counterfeit discs, and all other nonsense normally associated with a typical Malaysian. If there's one thing you learn - it's that original games and discs come with nice fancy manuals - some people make take these for granted: I do not. I think it's extremely important that you make originals look nice and fancy.

Good looking discs make game publishers look good, they make consumers happy as well. The Halo 3 discs are no different - they look beautiful and well thought out. The discs are a pleasure to look at, not to mention play in my XBox 360 - carrying the Microsoft XBox 360 holograms. On the other hand, some original discs look like crap. Wii discs for one are usually ugly - and PS2 games suffer similar treatment. I find it unacceptable original discs look worse than pirated discs. Effort to make your discs look nice do go a long way to making people convert. I like having presentable discs.