April
2005
TECHNO-CORNER
E. B. Games’s Don
Lynch describes the retail side of video games
Podcasting is sweeping the
nation
by C. H.
Ah, video games. Where you can come back to life
with the push of a button. Where you can fall off your
skateboard while grinding on power lines, plummet head
first into the road, and despite having no helmet,
get up five seconds later and be perfectly fine.
Video games are a gateway to a whole other reality,
that with today’s current technology, can feel
completely realistic, no matter how far-fetched it
is. Video games aren’t just for fun, though.
Many people have a career that revolves around these
wonderful sources of entertainment. Gaming fanatics
everywhere, I present to you: Don Lynch, manager of
the E. B. Games in the Arsenal Mall, one of the many
stores in the biggest game store franchise ever.
DAYTIME : Many
kids take heat for the amount of time that they spend
playing video games. All things being equal, how much
time do you think middle school students should spend
playing video games, like per week?
DON LYNCH: Well that depends on
the student. If the student’s doing what he’s
supposed to be doing and is a good student and gets
good grades and basically has a good relationship with
his parents, that’s entirely up to the parents.
And as far as I’m concerned, and I speak from
experience, as much as they want is my answer, as long
as they keep their end up.
DT: Do you think there’s
a connection between violent video games and people
who commit violent crimes?
DL: No, I think there’s a
connection between people who commit violent crimesand
people who commit violent crimes. If somebody is going
to be of that personality, then the video games may
have some effect on them, but they certainly can’t
teach anyone to do that. You’ve got to be a pretty
sick person to begin with to do that.
DT: Yeah. How did you get into
the video game business?
DL: I’ve been playing games
all my life. I was last working as a computer programmer
and the whole business fell apart, and all the jobs
got outsourced to India, and places like that, where
there’s no jobs around, and I knew that because
I had been playing computer games and whatnot for years
and I knew some of the people here (at E.B Games) and
I just came in and asked for a job. So that’s
how I got into it.
DT: What does it take to be successful
in this business?
DL: I’d say…you have
to be able to work with your customers. Find out what
they want. Just work well with the customers. Interact
with the people, listen to them, you’ll find
out what you need for your store. Sometimes your ideas
aren’t necessarily the ideas that are going to
sell.
DT: If you weren’t doing
this for a living what would you be doing?
DL: Like I said, I was laid off
in the computer business industry. I was a programmer,
so [I] might be still doing that. And on the other
side of the fence I might be designing games too; I
don’t know.
DT: In your opinion, what’s
the best game out there, and the worst?
DL: That’s hard to say. It
depends on the person, everybody has their own favorites.
One of my all time favorite games is a series called ‘Total
War.’. They’ve used the graphics for that
on the History Channel. It illustrates some of their
battles. It’s an amazing sequence of things.
I give them high marks. I don’t know about the
worst game, I’d hate to actually mention anything
in particular, but I could easily see something that’s
very offensive to everybody being the worst game out
there. But actually the worst game is the one you just
don’t have any fun at.
DT: In your opinion who’s
the best character today and what’s the best
boss battle?
DL: Character’s hard to say
because sometimes characters can sell a game all on
their own with sequels and everything else. I was thinking
of Jak, and Daxter has created a couple of sequels.
Ratchet and Clank. Obviously Zelda and Link and all
the various ones. I think that of Soul Caliber on Gamecube.
The Link character in that. And the Link/Zelda thing
might be one of the strongest out there. Possibly Mario
is, also...lot of tie-ins there. They have Mario this
and Mario that. I’d say those are right up there.
And, best boss battle? I don’t know. The one
you can’t beat. That’s the best boss battle.
The one you come back to a week later and you beat
it. The one that’s satisfying to you.
DT: What was the first game you
ever played?
DL: The first game
I ever played? I don’t know. Monopoly (laughs)?
DT: (Laughs) You know what I mean.
DL: Video games you mean.
DT: Yes!
DL: First video game I played was
probably Pong believe it, or not. That was one of the
early video games. I go back a ways with these things.
I got an Atari 2600, but I think the first arcade video
game that really drew me in was called “Battlezone”.
It had a bunch of tanks and things on line drawings,
and in the arcades it was amazing.
DT: What advice would you give
a student at F. A Day who wants to go into the video
game retail business?
DL: I would say…work in
it for a while and see if it’s what you really
want, and find out and learn about the business and
find out what it is. This business is very similar
to…in fact they made a comparison to Hollywood,
because this industry now makes more money than Hollywood,
and I think that’s an apt thing there because
it’s very much an instant gratification industry
now. You go to the movies and you’ll see the
movies change almost weekly a lot of time. The ones
that don’t make money, that go out in a hurry.
Now video games are very much like that. We’ve
seen titles come in and some of them we sell out and
we never see them again because they didn’t make
many and basically over the course of time they didn’t
sell well, and then there’s some others that
we sell quite a bit, especially some of the sports
games. They keep selling for months. So I think you
have to really get a handle on what the whole business
is and get a taste of it and you’ll see it’s
not quite what a lot of people think it is. So that’s
my advice. Try it, and see if you like it.
DT: Okay, thank you very much for
that.
DL: You’re welcome. Thank
you.
By R. C.
What’s the newest techno craze? Podcasting.
Owners of iPods can download their favorite radio
programs right to the iPod that can be listened to
at anytime. Podcasting is also a way of posting random
chats online for others to hear.
All one needs is one iPod, a computer, and a microphone.
People can post chats with friends, music, or just
random noise for others to hear. The microphone captures
the chats or music and downloads them into the computer
then onto the internet. The iPod comes in when others
want to download it, and when the creators of the chat
or music want to have it for themselves.
Podcasting is not to be confused with regular radio
downloading. They differ in two major ways. If one
wants to download traditional radio from the internet,
one has to tune into the website at a certain time
or one has to download it from individual pages which
takes time.
Podcasting, however, does not need to be downloaded
at any special time because people subscribe to the
particular programs they want and they are automatically
sent to their computers. This means there is no extra
time wasted downloading programs. Podcasting is much
like subscribing to a magazine. Podcasting is quickly
taking over how people download music and radio programs.
|
