
UNLV managed to pull off one final, pleasant surprise this year by actually beating Cal in the L.A. Bowl. After the news that head coach Barry Odom left UNLV to take the head coaching job at Purdue, UNLV went from being a 4-ish point favorite to being an underdog in that game. Things started out shaky, with the offense having difficulty moving the ball in the first quarter. But the defense played well, and the offense eventually got its footing just enough to seal an 11-point victory.
Credit to interim coach Del Alexander, who kept the team focused, and called a pretty good game, including a masterful fake punt on a 4th and long inside UNLV's own 40 yard line! UNLV's scouts did their job and identified that Cal would be vulnerable to a play like that, and Alexander had the guts to call it in a completely surprising situation to steal all the momentum back in UNLV's favor.
This fake punt from UNLV was an example of masterful scouting and coaching!
In any case, I was pretty sour on the idea of the bowl game. I wasn't going to be able to attend the L.A. Bowl in person anyway, because it was in the middle of the week on a Wednesday, and I couldn't get the time off work, since I had already committed all of my remaining time off to the week between Christmas and New Year. But after Odom abandoned the team, and offensive coordinator Brennan Marion was snubbed for the head coaching promotion, I was kind of mad at both UNLV and the NCAA for allowing this collapse to happen. Though I did end up signing up for a 7-day free trial of Fubo in order to watch the bowl on TV, out of a sense of obligation.
Complete changing of the guard
Dan Mullen seems like a fine hire. He's had success in the SEC, which is the most difficult conference in college football. If a coach can win there, they can win anywhere.
I was really hoping for some consistency in terms of the team's identity. In that regard, I was rooting for Brennan Marion or defensive coordinator Mike Scherer to get the head coaching job. Marion's offense was as much a part of UNLV's recent success as Odom's head coaching was. And Scherer's defense was the best defense I've ever seen from this team. Odom, Marion, and Scherer successfully turned a perennial basement-dweller into a potential powerhouse that proved it could compete in a big boy conference like the Big 12. I wanted that identity to become fundamental to the team's DNA in the way that the Flexbone Triple Option is fundamental to the identity of the service academies. I wanted the Go-Go Offense to be "the UNLV offense" to the layman and casual college football fan. That success should have been rewarded by UNLV. Honestly, I thought that Marion would be a shoe-in.
But it seems like Marion may have some personality issues that make him difficult to work with. He may have been the one who promised NIL money to Matt Sluka, which the university couldn't actually afford to pay. I've read that he was almost fired for that. Maybe Odom wanted to fire him, but Harper over-ruled that decision, and maybe that's part of the reason why Odom seemed like he couldn't get out of Vegas fast enough. More generally, I've heard that Marion has a very abrasive personality, and that's not a good quality in a head coach.
Odom did not invite Marion to follow him to Purdue the way he invited Scherer. Instead, Marion is going to be the head coach of the Sacramento State Hornets in the Big Sky conference of the FCS. It doesn't seem like there were too many FBS schools banging down Marion's door to invite him to coach their teams. And maybe that is for very good reason. If that's the case, then the Sacramento State football team is a powder keg waiting to explode.
UNLV passed on OC Brennan Marion [LEFT] in favor of former SEC coach Dan Mullen.
So in summary, UNLV has lost is entire winning coaching staff, and it will be losing a majority of its starters to graduation (including a few potential NFL draftees). Ricky White, Jacob De Jesus, Jackson Woodard, Tiger Shanks, Jalen Catalon, Cameron Oliver, Hajj-Malik Williams, Jett Elad, and others will all be graduating, with White, Woodard, and Oliver having already declared for the NFL Draft. Some of UNLV's top recruits have also already switched their commitments to follow Odom to Purdue, and who knows how many under-classmen will follow suit and transfer to Purdue? Will Jaiden "Jet" Thomas still be a Rebel next year? Or Antonio Doyle? Or Fisher Camac?
Mullen will certainly have to do a lot of building through the transfer portal.
The NCAA needs to regulate in-season talent poaching!
This story is also bigger than just UNLV. The NCAA should really be paying close attention to what's going on here. You have a team that was 1-game away from making the inaugural College Football Playoff, and they had their head coach poached out from under them the week of a conference championship game. That should not be happening!
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Tags:UNLV, football, college football, Erick Harper, Barry Odom, Brennan Marion, Mike Scherer, Purdue, Del Alexander, Dan Mullen, Hajj-Malik Williams, Ricky White, Jacob De Jesus, Jackson Woodard, Tiger Shanks, Cameron Oliver, Jalen Catalon, Jett Elad, go-go, NCAA, coach, regulation, transfer portal

Settlers of Catan is a monument in the history of tabletop board gaming. I've even heard people talk about Catan as if it is the "Jesus" of board games, and that the history of board games can be broadly divided up into "before Catan" and "after Catan". It was the first German game to receive mass commercial success and popular acclaim in the United States. In a time when most American tabletop gamers were still playing Monopoly, Risk, and Stratego, Catan almost single-handedly popularized the "Eurogame".
But I've never, personally, been big into Catan. I own a Star Trek version of the game, which was gifted to me, but I've never owned the original Settlers of Catan or any of its themed expansions or revisions. I've only ever played Catan with friends who own the game, and I've always felt very "meh" about it.
Players will build power plants and must manage pollution and climate change.
But when I saw the announcement earlier this year of a renewable-energy-themed edition of the game, called New Energies, I was a lot more interested. I'm very enthusiastic about environmentalism and renewable energy. In fact, for those who don't know, my day job is a software engineer working as a contractor with utility companies regarding energy efficiency, renewable energy, and demand response programs. You know when your thermostats sets your air conditioning 2 or 4 degrees hotter on the hottest days of the year? Yeah, that's what I do. (It's intended to reduce the demand on the grid and prevent brownouts from excessive air conditioning use, so that you don't loose power entirely and have to go without any air conditioning at all!). So I have both a personal and a professional interest in the subject matter of New Energies.
I actually bought this game the week of its release, and made a concerted effort to play it promptly, instead of letting it sit on my shelf, still in its shrink-wrap, collecting dust for 2 years. Actually, it can't sit around in its shrink-wrap, because it doesn't come in shrink-wrap. In keeping with its environmentalist themes, Catan: New Energies does not include any plastic in its components or packaging. All the pieces are bio-degradable wood and cardboard, and all the tokens and cards came wrapped in recyclable, bio-degradeable paper sleeves and bags. And there was no shrink-wrap; the game was sealed with 4 pieces of circular industrial tape on each side of the box. So Catan Studio gets brownie points from me for walking-the-walk in regards to its environmental theming!
New Energies commits to its environmental theme, and include no plastic in its components or packaging.
And the components are generally very good. There's a cardboard insert for all of the game components that helps speed up set-up and tear-down. My only complaints (components-wise) is that the draw bag for event discs might be a bit over-sized, and there aren't any player aide cards that outline the turn sequence, environmental event effects, or endgame sequence. It's always helpful to have something like that for player to follow along with while I explain the core rules. Yes, the costs of all the player actions are shown on the player boards, but it's real easy for new players to miss certain actions, or not understand what the symbols mean without any kind of textual description. Thankfully, the general turn sequence for Catan is relatively simple and straightforward, so it's still fairly manageable to explain the rules without such player aides.
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ad75b3a6-925a-4eb8-9358-1fccc98f92e4|1|5.0
Tags:Settlers of Catan, Catan, Settlers of Catan: New Energies, Catan Studio, standalone expansion, Klaus Teuber, Benjamin Teuber, Ian O'Toole, Michaela Kienle, Az Sperry, Eurogame, island, colony, fossil fuel, renewable energy, pollution, climate change, carbon footprint, disaster, regulation
I recently played an indie sci-fi game on the PS5 titled Deliver Us The Moon. It was alright. I rather liked the story, and most of the methods that the game uses to deliver that story. It's very similar to Tacoma in terms of how it tells its story, but with a greater emphasis on player-driven problem-solving and puzzles. It's biggest problem, however, is the surprisingly poor performance and frequent technical problems. Even on the PS5, this borderline walking sim was barely able to keep a steady framerate, and I experienced multiple hard crashes.
That being said, I still recommend it for gamers who happen to be fans of hard science fiction, because our options in that particular sub-genre are fairly limited. We have butt-loads of fantasy sci-fi games about space marines shooting aliens or robots, or about dog-fighting in outer space. You know, you're Mass Effects, Halos, Dead Spaces, StarCrafts, Colony Wars, and so on (remember Colony Wars? Man that would be an excellent candidate for a reboot on modern consoles, especially if it includes full VR support!). These are the games that are "sci-fi" in the same way that Star Wars or Transformers or pretty much any comic book movie are "sci-fi" movies.
But as far as the video game equivalents of harder sci-fi movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Arrival or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the well is considerably drier, and most of what we do have is relegated to smaller indie titles. Don't get me wrong, we have some great options! Games like Soma and Outer Wilds are some of my favorite games ever.
So when I see a hard sci-fi game like Deliver Us The Moon pop up on a gaming storefront, I try to make an effort to play it. There's plenty of total flops in this sub-genre, but there's also some real gems. And I think that if Deliver Us The Moon could have its performance stabilized, it might qualify as one of those gems. But this video isn't a review of Deliver Us The Moon. I have a full written review on my personal blog at www.MegaBearsFan.net, if you want to read it. Instead, I want take a few minutes to dive into one particular aspect of the story and premise of Deliver Us The Moon that just kind of grinds my gears. It's a problem that I've seen repeated multiple games and movies that try to address this particular socio-political topic, and I worry that it might be doing more harm than good to the public's perception of this issue.
A big issue that I have with Deliver Us The Moon is its near-future depiction of apocalyptic climate change.
This essay was released early to Patrons in video format.
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ed171323-1344-4cf6-951f-5afe7ab65827|1|5.0
Tags:climate change, science-denial, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gas, desertification, regulation, Deliver Us The Moon, The Day After Tomorrow, oil, tobacco, acid rain, ozone layer, potholer54, Peter Hadfield, Health In Harmony

Dang, I was really hoping to get this one out before the end of the year...
Thanks to previews, journalists, and complaints from beta users, this is yet another game that I knew better than to buy on launch day at full retail price. Even before the game came out, beta players and gaming websites were already condemning Battlefront II for its pay-to-win multiplayer system. When the media finally got their hands on preview builds of the full game, they were quick to attack the online progression system. Once the game was released, public outcry forced EA to literally neuter the game's online economy.
Slot machines are legally required to disclose
their paytables -- and sometimes their RTP.
EA started damage control by slashing the prices of heroes so that they supposedly weren't as much of a grind to unlock. However, the sneaky bastards also reduced the rewards for various in-game activities (such as completing the campaign), so as to render the cost reduction virtually moot. Then, EA disabled micro-transactions altogether. So by the time I finally started playing the game (over a month after launch), it was a totally different experience than it was intended to be at launch.
Star Wars license-holder Disney was furious with EA for potentially tarnishing the Star Wars brand (especially with the pending release of The Last Jedi). EA's stock prices fell as a result.
Battlefront II has actually caused law-makers and regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe to consider whether loot boxes qualify as "gambling", and whether they should, therefore, be regulated as such, including banning their sale to minors. Corporations are also starting to hop onto the bandwagon of self-regulation. Apple announced that all iOS apps with randomized micro-transactions must disclose the odds associated with rewards. This is the same disclosure that is actually legally required for actual gambling, such as slot machines.
For the record, I do not object to gambling per se. I actually bet every week on college and NFL football. Don't worry, I live in Nevada; it's legal for me. I spent almost three years working as a game developer for a slot machine manufacturer, and the only reason that I'm not still at that job is because the entire department in which I worked got laid off in the wake of a corporate merger (I'm actually very bitter and opposed to corporate mergers, by the way, but that's a discussion for another time). So I don't have a problem with gambling. I just think that it has a time and a place, and I don't want that time or place to be in my video games that I'm already paying $60 just to play. This is why casinos don't generally charge a cover fee.
I personally feel that Shadow of War and Destiny 2 are much more egregious examples of corporate avarice.
Also, for the record, I think that Battlefront II's micro-transaction controversy is a bit overblown. It's an online multiplayer shooter in which there is no win condition or end state. Whether you want the extra hero characters, and whether you're willing to spend time or money to get them is entirely up to the player's own whim. The game is perfectly playable without those heroes, and you can play through the campaign completely without spending an extra penny. It's a bit sleazy that EA markets the game by advertising these characters, and then locks them behind a grind/pay wall, but fighting games have been hiding unlockable characters behind grind-walls for decades.
Battlefront II isn't even the worst micro-transaction / pay-to-win system to come from EA! EA Sports titles like Madden and FIFA have been getting away with much worse pay-to-win systems (via their respective Ultimate Team modes) for years. Personally, I also think that Shadow of War (review coming very soon) has a much more offensive micro-transaction model because Warner Bros actually tied it into that game's campaign. If you want to finish the story, you either have to sit through the grind, or pay to speed it up. Though all of these pale in comparison to Activision and Bungie locking formerly-accessible end-game content behind the pay-wall of a Destiny 2 expansion pack.
In any case, it's sad that a review of a video game has to turn into a political op-ed, but that's the sad state of things right now.
Controversy and public outrage forced EA to completely disable in-game purchases.
So, if I knew that the game was controversially terrible, why did I bother to play it? ... [More]
ca397aec-963c-441f-946e-73a4ac8e54dd|1|4.0
Tags:Star Wars, Star Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Battlefront II, loot box, micro-transaction, multiplayer, shooter, single player, campaign, Galactic Empire, Imperial Raider, Star Wars: X-Wing, Disney, EA, Electronic Arts, DICE, Motive Studios, Criterion Games, gambling, regulation, casino, eBay
I haven't had a good rant on this blog for a long while. At least, not one that isn't part of tearing apart a terrible game in a review. But I have something that's been really grinding my gears throughout all of 2016, and I need to say something about it: I really dislike advertising. I have an especially intense dislike of internet advertising practices. It's not the ads themselves that get on my nerves; it's the ways in which websites and advertisers chose to deliver them. So many websites are crammed full of ugly, intrusive, and obnoxious ads that really hurt the experience of the user trying to actually view and navigate the website.
Streaming services like Comedy Central insist on crashing the video in the event that there's even the remotest hiccup in loading one of the five advertisements that it must play during the four advertising breaks that it includes in its half-hour episodes. I routinely run into issues in which the pre-episode ads fail to load, and so the whole episode refuses to load, and I have to ctrl-F5 to reload the page until it selects a set of five advertisements that actually work. But then it gets to one of the mid-episode commercial breaks, and even if the advertisements do load and play, the actual episode refuses to continue. Sometimes, I can hit the "rewind 10 seconds" button to fix the problem. Other times, I once again have to ctrl-F5 to reload the page, sit through the pre-episode ads again (hoping they don't cause yet another failure), then skip past the ad break in the timeline, watch the mid-episode ads (and hope that they don't also fail), and then maybe I can continue watching the content. This is why I haven't seen an episode of The Daily Show in a couple months and have no idea if new host Trevor Noah has finally hit a stride yet. I have similar issues with CBS steaming, which is why I also haven't been able to watch much of Stephen Colbert's new late night talk show. Sorry Stephen, I love you, but CBS apparently doesn't want me to watch you.
Issues with Comedy Central's ad-delivery abound: ads play over the actual content, their failure to load
prevents the content from playing, they have multiple ad breaks and not enough unique ads to fill them, etc.
To make matters worse, Comedy Central and CBS often doesn't even have enough distinct ads to fill up all these advertising breaks. I often see the same three or four ads in every ad break. Sometimes, the same exact ad will play back-to-back during the same advertising break!
Is this supposed to be punishment for not watching the show on cable TV? I actually do (at the time of this writing) have an active cable subscription, and that subscription does include Comedy Central and CBS. I could easily just DVR episodes of The Daily Show or Late Show with Stephen Colbert and watch them at home, but I prefer to watch them during my sit-in lunch breaks at work because it's just a more efficient use of time. Or at least, it would be, if it ever actually worked. Heck, on the DVR, I can just skip past the damned ads. I can't do that when streaming on the internet.
Comedy Central is far from unique in this regard. I've already pointed a finger at CBS as well, and this is one of the reasons that I'm not happy about Star Trek: Discovery being exclusive to CBS All-Access. I really don't want to pay for a streaming service to watch one show! Especially if it's still going to contain content-breaking advertisements that prevent me from even watching the show that I'm paying to watch... [More]
94497a0d-abb4-4a08-bedb-b4a985a495ef|2|5.0
Tags:advertising, advertisement, internet, streaming, video, content providers, internet service providers, cable, television, AdBlock Plus, The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, the Late Show, CBS, all access, NFL, ESPN, Chicago Bears, football, Zero Punctuation, Disney, Disneyland, Amazon, Amazon Associates, Patreon, Kickstarter, crowd-funding, government, regulation
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