Trailblazer

Next up on my journey through my game collection is Trailblazer, a small game from the early '80s about making money in space. Seriously. The setting is a generic future where interstellar engines have been invented, and mankind takes to the stars to find its fortunes. Each player controls one of four corporations, trying to make the most money. You do this by buying items and then selling them. Each star system only creates a small number of items (there are 12 total in the game), and systems want to sell what they do make, and buy what they don't make. The player corporations are the middle-men, building fleets of ships to travel between systems, trading goods.

The underlying system is actually fairly simple. Each turn, players bid money to purchase items at each system. The order in which this is done matters, in that money spent to purchase items at the first system isn't available to purchase items at other systems. The bidding is fairly simple, with players bidding how much they want to spend per item, and how many items of the good in question they want to purchase. For example, if system A has 3 drugs for sale, and player A bids 6 money for 1 unit of drugs, and player B bids 4 money each for 2 units of drugs, and player C bids 3 money each for 3 units of drugs, then player A gets 1 drug at a price of 6, player B gets the remaining 2 drugs at the price of 4 each (total 8), and player C gets nothing because none are left to sell at 3 money each.

Once items have been purchased, players put them on starships and transport them to other systems, where they are sold. Charts that come with the game detail what price different systems will pay for goods, and this changes over time. To use the previous drug example, a system that doesn't produce drugs may pay 8 money for drugs. Once they have some, they don't need as many anymore, so the price they are willing to pay goes down. If nobody sells them any drugs, they might then raise the price they are willing to pay. So, you have to balance scarcity against plenty to get the best price for your goods.

There are other complexities to the game, but not many. You must have a starship in a system in order to transport goods offworld, which especially early in a game limits who gets involved in goods auctions in each system. You can build what the game calls "factors" in systems, which basically means you open a branch office of your company, which allows you to store goods from turn to turn, so you can buy goods at a system even if you have no ships present. Players can also purchase scout ships, which let them explore more of the galaxy, perhaps bringing new systems into play, increasing the opportunities to sell goods to more systems, and thereby make more money.

And that is pretty much it. Players can play as long as they like, but there are suggested ending points based on earning certain amounts of money. Being a game that is over 25 years old, the graphics design is very minimal. The galaxy map is just a blank grid with words in the spaces where starting systems are. The counters are simple pictures of starbases, buildings, or spaceships, all in a two-color pattern. There are no dice, as nothing is random except drawing newly discovered star systems out of a cup. This is a great example of what I like to call a "spreadsheet game." I call it this because gameplay is enhanced by creating spreadsheets to track everything, rather than writing it all down on paper charts, which was the only option realistically available when the game was designed. Being a professional accountant and auditor, you might think I would like this kind of thing. Well, I did. Back before I became a professional accountant, and just had dreams of being such, I loved games like this, because it let me pretend I was an important business person doing important business things. Now that I crunch numbers and track data for a living, I don't have much desire at all to do the same thing in my spare time. Thus, I kind of doubt I will ever play this game again. In fact, my copy has never been played, as the counters are all unpunched and pristine (my plays of this game many years ago were with my brother's copy). Anybody want it?

Vocaloid

A couple months ago on an art site on the internet I stumbled across a picture in a category called "Vocaloid." The picture was of what appeared to be a robot that looked like an anime-inspired young woman. It was kind of interesting, so I started googling the term and found out that it was way more than just a picture. It turns out that Vocaloid is a piece of voice synthesizing software developed originally by Yamaha Corporation, but popularized by a Japanese company that produced a series of releases featuring different "characters" with different voices. The following video does a great job of explaining the basics.



As can happen when things get posted up on the internet, Vocaloid seems to have completely taken off in certain geekier areas of the web. I do find the basic concept fascinating, especially as someone who has written and home-recorded songs before using Guitar Tracks software. Software like this lets people who can't sing, but can play an instrument (especially a synthesizer), produce songs and even entire albums on their own. Then, people who know animation software can produce music videos of the songs. They then hit YouTube (generally after hitting Japanese video-sharing sites), which has hundreds of Vocaloid videos, of varying quality and scariness.

One of my favorites, created using the freeware MikuMikuDance (MMD) software mentioned in the documentary video posted above, is posted below. As a guitarist, I am amazed that all of the guitar work in this video is completely accurate. That had to take many hours to do, but the results are totally cool.



Some creators are more into traditional animation, though, and use standard key-framing techniques (mixed with CG background work fairly often). This probably takes more time than just using existing animation software like MMD, but provides for a greater range of creative expression. I really like the video below, just don't ask me why the lady is choking a younger version of herself halfway through the video, because I have no idea why she would do that. Or why she flies through the middle of some kind of strange construct. Remember that music videos aren't supposed to make sense, or MTV would be a center of logical, constructive discourse on the nature of society.



Edit: No, I don't know how to widen the column on this thing, so that the HD videos don't span too wide and look stupid. We're just going to have to live with it.

R.I.P. Peter Zezel

Well, it turns out that my favorite Blues player of all time, Peter Zezel, has died. I didn't even know that he had a blood disorder. You never would have guessed it the way he pounded players on the other team. Peter was a fearless competitor, and the kind of player that first drew me to ice hockey. He taught me that hockey players (mostly) weren't a bunch of pretty boys out to make tons of money live crazy. Hockey players were stand-up guys that played fair, but hard. Well, except for Bob Probert, but he's a putz. God speed, Peter.

For My Brother Mark

From Board Game Geek

LolEconz

You may remember a while back when I blogged about the joy that is lolcats. Well, it turns out that someone found a way to combine lolcats with witty commentary on the state of the economy. Admittedly, it could have a better name, but there sure are some funny things at the loleconz site. My favorite so far:

Get it? The cat is falling, just like Gross Domestic Product! It's funny!