So it's my birthday... and according to the poll I am apparently older than Lavato itself... since the game was thought up by Asanuma-sensei 6 or 7 years ago, that means I'm at least eight years old.  Fair enough.  And now, a picture...

Yes, that is an awesome little stuffed animal of Legrye, hand made by Anna the Red!  Woot!  This is about the best thing ever. Don't you wish you had one?  Although, ever since she gave it to me, all the smaller stuffed animals on my desk vanished...

Time to take a break and crawl out from under the two lead weights of work I generally live under, those being Alteil and Huntik 2.

You'd think all this experience being responsible for a show and a card game (to some extent) would prepare me for real-world responsibility, but no.  You want to learn about the real world, try buying a house.  They key word is "try" because apparently, it's something you can fail at.  I've also learned this first hand.  The real estate market may have crashed, but no one has told any of the sellers.  They make you fight and negotiate for weeks just to get the price down in the neighborhood of what the house is really worth, forget trying to actually get a good deal.  The sellers of one house I was looking at got frustrated with everyone trying to negotiate him down (his price listed was 150,000 above its value), so he bumped the asking price UP another 100,000 to give himself some breathing room.  Clever!  I was actually under contract with another house (didn't work out in the end), and while I was there for the house inspection they showed the house to two other people. That was awkward.

Buying a house is one of those things only for people really motivated to own their own home, do whatever they want with it, and really plan out the next 10-30 years of their lives.  It's a lifestyle, not an act, and it really doesn't work within the normal rules of logic.  It does have it's own self referential logic, though.  I'm pretty sure.  You end up paying money for the priviledge of paying money on a consistent basis, and then you pay taxes because of that.  People are considered viable for a mortgage if they could conceivably pay it, as if they had NO other expenses, such as heating said house or food.  On the other side, when the State calculates what's affordable housing, they assume there is no mortgage and the only costs are upkeep and taxes.  Apparently the less money you have the more likely you are to buy an entire house in cash.  In nice neighborhoods, they squeeze everyone on taxes and drive up the home prices so the mortgages are staggering, then everyone complains that their neighbors don't have enough money to upkeep the outside of their houses.  Banks demand buyers commit to closing deadlines they know (and will admit) are impossible, so they have extra leverage later in the deal ("Well now, you're behind schedule, so...)  Amazing.

I find the world of Alteil, where rules are decided by a computer and followed religiously, where people are working around the clock on "balance", things are modified or regulated when they get out of hand, and fairness is an ideal (although an impossible one), makes me much less patient with real world rules and laws.  If your enemy has a card that says Start Skill: all Gran and copies of Chiruru and Cudgel in your soul cards are deleted from your account, then you can bet that's what's going to happen in the start phase.  In the real world, all companies would include that in all their contracts "just in case" they need to exercise it.  But if you ask, then: "Don't worry, that clause is NEVER used.  It's just standard..." Maybe if all lawyers and bankers were required to run an online game with an active community for 5 years before getting a job, our economy wouldn't be in this mess.

So the game is Japanese and the translation is in English, so why the heck do we have a card called Der Freischütz that has abilities called Freikugel?

First of all, you may already be wondering where you've heard this reference before.  Der Freischütz and the Freikugel or "Magic Bullets" probably sound somewhat familiar.  Both names make their appearances in popular culture, especially video games such as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.  However, I can't guarantee their all translated properly as Freikugel is in Nocturne.  

To find the real origins of the word, we can hit up wikipedia's article on Der Freischütz, which is pretty exhaustive.  It's an important German Opera by Weber from the 1800's.  

One fun fact is that during the Opera, our hero (who is of course a marksman) is persuaded by his friend, who is a Warlock, to use Freikugel or "Magic Bullets" provided by the Dark Hunter.  The Dark Hunter is clearly a devil-figure, and the Magic Bullets are able to unerringly hit and kill any target.  Of course doom awaits our hero if he uses the Freikugel, in the form of the Dark Hunter taking him away to hades.  Thankfully, a happy ending is possible thanks to the selfless acts of other characters, and instead of our hero being taken away, his best friend (who is a warlock, remember) goes to hades instead.

So let's get this straight, in order to unerringly kill his target, Der Freischütz lets his friend the warlock die.  It's almost as if he set one friendly Lawtia unit to HP=0 in order to set one target enemy unit within range to HP=0.  This has to be one of the 10 most accurate adaptions of a 19th century German opera into an online card dueling game skill I've ever seen.  And he totally cut out a song out of the last act about "spending 1 SP" during rewrites because too many of his listeners had no idea what that meant.

To add a final bit of coincidence into the mix, as our translator, aka GM Arakis was translating this, he was also working on translating the Manga Hellsing.  In Hellsing there is a German character who fights with a giant musket that shoots (you guessed it) Magic Bullets.  As she does so, she constantly sings entire verses from  Der Freischütz, word for word.

Since it's somewhat timely, I thought I'd use my Blog-space to talk about non-Alteil things I've been up to.  It has to do with a certain new TV show that may have something to do with the header of this post...

My background is in a variety of things, but I can say I'm the one with some kind of experience with Trading Card Games.  A long time ago, I did a little work on the American adaption of Yugi-oh, for example.  Slightly more recently I worked extensivly on the background, story and TV episodes of Huntik: Secrets and Seekers, which premired last Saturday.  The card game doesn't come out for a few months, but I hope some of you give the TV show a try.  Yes, it's aimed a little young, but in general thanks to the ambitions and tastes of the people working on it, I think it's a bit more than the average kid's show.

I know what you're thinking, 'no wonder nothing ever gets done around here, Logress is off working on another game.'  Well, actually, even though Huntik just premered, my part was done years ago (although I'm hoping Season 2 gets made).  The first three episodes were actually completed way ahead of the rest, so we'd have something to show TV stations and the like.  Because of that, they are a bit older than the rest and a bit less polished.  If you stick it out until episode 7, I think you'll really be impressed with the show.  Animation quality takes a big leap forward around then, too. At least check out the opening song on Youtube...

www.huntik.com

Is the website.  You can also find last week's episode on Youtube in parts (terrible quality) or a good quality one floating around torrent sites.  However, both of them cut off the ending credits, much to my annoyance.

Oh right, people like pictures.  Here's an image from the show...

Well, it's been a long night of error checking set 3 and generally trying to find bugs and take care of last minute things.  Before I turn in I'd like to remind everyone to read my post on RP if you haven't already, I don't want anyone to have a nasty surprise.

Also, I'd like to urge everyone to check out our Child's play Charity Card Sale if you haven't already.  Not only are we competing to raise more money than Alteil Japan and Alteil Taiwan, but it's for a good cause and you get some very cool mini-prints out of it.  If you were considering giving to charity anyway this year, please consider us. 

That's it for me, I'm going to pass out for a few hours.

Hmm... Haven't blogged in a while, not since the "Turkey Incident," but with a lot of things moving and shaking internationally, I thought I'd take a minute.

First of all, the World Alteil Festival is underway on Monday.  Actually, I'm not sure what to expect but I do know I really wish I could be dueling personally 24/7.  Unfortunately for me but fortunately for Alteil in general, the Japanese are going to be in town this week.  Takashi Miyamoto-sensei will be here in person once again, and that means there will be serious talk about the future of Alteil and what changes can be made immediately to insure that future.  Every time he comes into town things happen, and by "things" I mean things that are not sleep.  Last time he was in town I think I slept an average of 2 hours a night, and I'm certainly not getting a good start this time (since it's 3:00 AM EST right now...)

So I'll be spending most of next week in the meeting room.  I'll be trying to secure a good budget for our holiday ad campaign, hopefully our biggest yet.  We've been experimenting with a lot of different web advertising lately, and it has made a big difference in our numbers.  We've been getting 120-160 new users a day, which has rescued us from the slump we hit after cascade of competing new games that came out during Oct and Nov.  We're finally at a place where we can maneuver and grow and take things to the next level.

Anyway, while I'm at the table with the Japanese, I hope all of you will be challenging their users in the World Alteil Fest.  I have a good feeling we'll come away with 1st place in one or two of the events. I know that more international contests are on the horizon and I think it'll really add a new demention to the game.  If anyone has any message for the Taiwanese or Japanese Alteil players, go ahead and post them in the forums and I'll see what I can do about getting them sent out.

Discuss this post in the forums.

Since I can't compete with the others in terms of massive artistic skill, I have gone old skool.  This is MS paint, one try, no fancy extra drawings.  A totally, 100% normal hand turkey.  There is absolutely nothing weird or out of the ordinary about it.  I promise.

--Logress

Well, Otakon was an adventure.  We signed up a ton of new Icers, gave out a few thousand fliers and gave away some prizes. Continue for pictures, lots and lots of pictures.

The rest of the team is off at GENCON and GaoGaiGirl is laid up in bed, so I'm kinda here holding down the fort on my own.  The con was really great, and we met some new Iczers that I'm sure will have a big impact on the game and forums for a long time to come.  At the end of the con when things got really crazy and we were trying to get things set up for the raffle, some of our new Iczers even started helping out at the booth and teaching people for us!  A big thanks to everyone we met last weekend.  Now, on to the pictures.  Check out the Official Alteil Flicker Page for a ton of images.

Here is all of us at the booth.  We're trying to do the poses from each of our sphere's Alpha/Beta avatars, in case you're wondering.  I like this picture because for some weird reason, I don't look short in it.  Take a close look at the TEE SHIRTS by the way, the Japanese sent one for each of us.

Oh, and since this is my blog I should probably have something more personal, so here's a another favorite picture of mine. The hotel made a mistake, and instead of having multiple beds in our room, we got one giant bed.  That meant that Lupos and I got to each get our very own COT.  And not just any cots, either, but quite possibly the worst cots in the universe.  I call this picture:  WHAT OUR MAD FAT EX PACK MONIES BUYS US!