Blog2 Save the Sims2 (Alternate)

A place where people without a valid account can comment on the blogspot poll. Would you support development and distribution of new game content based on the Sims2 platform as published by EA Games

Orianthi

We are just learning about Orianthi. Eric sent me a link to a video by her, and I was hooked. A short minute and 1/2 of her just playing guitar. So I searched all over to find her CD. Finally found it, and it was definitely worth the search. We really enjoyed the CD. Too bad it’s so hard to find right now. So we looked her up and saw what we could learn about her. Turns out to be a good story.
We added her to Kandy’s Favorite Things here;
http://www.kandyskorner.com/orianthi_1.html

Things are moving very fast for Orianthi right now. Seems as soon as I get the page done, there’s more to add. She moved her videos to VEVO, I’m assuming this is a sub-channel of youtube for commercial artists. Here are the links to the new videos on VEVO, a sub-channel on youtube;

She’s also added a behind the scenes video. If you want to catch a glimpse of a young star at the beginning of catching a dream, check it out

We enjoyed it so much, I’ve all ready done a couple machinimas of her songs.
Check it Out

So what do you think? Can this girl rock? If there is any question remaining if the girl can play, watch this

Yeah, I’m impressed. This girl’s star will burn very brightly. We wish her nothing but success and happiness.

Making the Cut

Hey Gang,

Kandy Kaine here. Uncle Mike suggested I write a blog about the new band. Hey what the heck, why not. So I called up all my friends and they thought it was a cool idea. So we did.

We had to find something the band could do. I heard the Sim Idol show was holding auditions down at the park on Saturday, so I told the girls we should try out for it. All we had to do is buy some instruments. We were somehow able to scrape up enough gear to make a band. Stormy liked the drums, because she could hit them and not get in trouble. Meadow was given an old bass by Mr. McCartney that he didn’t use anymore. I borrowed Uncle Mike’s old guitar, and we were ready to go. All we have to do now is learn a song.

Here is our promotional video here;

So what do you think? Are we cool or what?

This learning song stuff is hard, but we’re willing to give it all we got. Every spare minute we had we were at practice. I went home and practiced by myself after that. Mom always said, if you want something bad enough, you are willing to do the work for it. Well, I want this. The Girls Want THIS !!! WE WILL SUCCEED !! We only have 4 days until the Audition, so we had to squeeze two weeks of practice into 4 days. Can we do it? Or will we just embarrass ourselves?

The Audition
Well, Saturday’s here. Time to see if all the practice was worth it. I’ll be happy if i don’t fall on my face. There’s going to be a crowd there. We’ve never played in front of people before, so that should be interesting. I hope I remember the words. I hope Sunny remembers the new part we added at the end. I hope Meadow doesn’t freak out in front of all the people, seeing as she’s so shy. Heck I hope Stormy doesn’t hit somebody. So here’s the video;

YEAH !!! WE NAILED IT !!!! Woooooo We Rocked.
We passed the audition, we made a spot in the Elimination round. Wouldn’t you know it, Zack showed up. He told me he liked me tonight. He’s cool and all, but what kind of problems will that make with Stormy. Those two fight a lot, even for a brother and sister. Will Stormy have a fit if I tell her? Better just not say anything for now. The Elimination round is Wednesday, so we only have 4 days to get ready. I’m all ready tired, but if I want to get into the Top 20 that means more work. Uncle Mike once told me that if you want something bad enough you won’t notice the hard work, you’ll only be focused on the goal.

Why we did it

Well, it had to happen. Kandy is now a teen. check out the eye-witness account here;

Now how cool would it be to have The Beatles play at YOUR Birthday Party. ( New digital remastered version.)
There seems to have set off a bit of discussion among Kandy fans about it. Most seem to agree it was about time, and I have received several positive comments about it. Some said they are looking forward to the next chapter in Kandy’s adventures. As a teen, there are so many different directions to go. And to be honest, I had pretty much run out of things for Kandy to do. We have all ready accepted the fact that we will lose a lot of support through the Sims community. With the Sims3 coming out, and all ready into it’s first expansion, many simmers will move there, and pack away Sims2 like they did Sims1. The Official EA channels on youtube and myspace won’t go near any video made with Sims2 now. In the long run, I think the Sims franchise is on it’s way out anyway, and the disaster that is Sims3 just hastened the decline. When people look back, they’ll see Sims2, like Civilization3 or Age of Empires, is a classic game showcasing the best of PC Gaming. But that’s another topic for another time.
I am still amused at the fact that Kandy has fans at all, much less as many as she does. The fact that her having a birthday even is seen as worthy of debate, humbles me. It was enough of a debate that I felt I should explain it. Most of you who will read this all ready know the who, the what and the why of Kandy Kaine, so I’ll skip that part. (Those that don’t can research her here on other posts.) So why, after 5 years is Kandy finally a teenager? It can be explained in two reasons;
One; most of the kids that Kandy was aimed at are getting older. My grand-nieces are 9 and 10. Almost to the age that Kandy is. The idea of Kandy for them, and the children of family friends is that Kandy is supposed to be a role model for them. So I felt Kandy had to grow up first to start experiencing things they are about to. This means that boys and emotions are going to be played out, and dealt with in her adventures. There are all ready girls writing in about boy problems at 10-11 years old, asking Kandy about what to do. I do not expect the questions to get easier, but the subject is not going to go away. The subject also has to be dealt with differently for a teenager than a child. School, the same thing. The subject has to be discussed differently to teenagers than with children.
Two; This opens up several story lines for her. I’ve got one cooking now that will be her first story video. Her song choices can change too. It’s very hard to find songs for her music videos as a child. As a teen, she can sing about things that were totally inappropriate for a child. The story lines can go further here.
So what will change? Kandy will fall in love, drive a car, and spend more time with her friends than with her family. The band will change to all teens, the song choice will change. Songs were always picked to expose the kids to more sophisticated music in most cases. Some were just silly dance songs, but some were selected to introduce several different styles of music to the kids. Trying to get them to see there is more to music than Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. This can be further explored.
What won’t change? Kandy. She may be a teen now, but she’ll still be Kandy. The off-beat mad-scientist wannabe. tune in and see.

Digital Dilemmas in the “New” Economy

We’ve all seen it, an advertisement offering digital downloads right to your PC for the newest games. Some even offer special content or exclusives for purchasing on-line. For the manufacturer it makes great sense, no packaging, no distribution, and a higher selling price than they get through wholesalers. Seems like many companies are going this route.
I had always viewed this with great trepidation, spending $30.00 + for a bunch of bits streamed across the internet. I may be old-fashioned, but I was concerned about having a hard back-up of my purchase. To me, it seemed too many things could go wrong. For instance, what if I purchased a new computer, and wanted to put the game on it. The old way, I’d just pop in the disk, and away I go. The new way was to get to the game server, hope it’s still up, and go through the process. In an ideal world, it would work great. You always had access to your product and can get it on your new computer.
But as we all know, this is far from an ideal world. From a recent experience that I will detail, it appears my initial reluctance to embrace the new digital economy is well founded. So allow me a few words to the wise.
I’m a Simmer. OK I admit it. I really enjoy my little pixel family, and spend a lot of time with them. Most of you know about Kandy, my digital daughter. Like any proud parent, I spoil the heck out of her. It was a way to use my free time, and was my hobby of choice. I’m an active member of the Sims community, and for several years have forged friendships with many members of the community. Most of you all ready know, Kandy’s Korner was born from the Sims2, and to this day, the game is integral to what we do. I’m a respected creator in the community and my creations have been downloaded thousands of times. Kandy is running around PCs all over the world. I have spent hundreds of dollars getting all the expansion packs and stuff packs. The Sims titles became to me like Sid Meier’s titles. I would buy them on the day of release, and feel pretty confident I was getting my money’s worth out of my purchase.
With the release of Sims3, the Sims2 has been pushed to the back burner by EA. There will be no further Sims2 releases. I was OK with that, the game has been around since 2004, and produced 7 expansion packs, and 9 stuff packs (just items, no game-play changes). Yeah, I bought them all. They opened an on-line store for people to get more items for their game. It was pricey, but I reluctantly went along. You could go to any store, get a sim point card, and get new items for your pixel progeny and on it goes. Sounds great right? Everyone happy right? EA got my money for a few bits streamed through cyber-space, and Kandy sleeps in a new storybook bedroom.
Well, since we know we don’t live in this ideal world, too many things can go wrong. The store has been offline since at least early August, actually since the release of Sims3. I’ll delve into the conspiracy realm a bit later, but for now I want to detail what I’ve been through this week. I report, you decide. (sorry to a major news outlet, but what the hey). What I’ve been through reveals a very ugly side of the new digital economy, and should serve as a warning to others thinking of making direct-download purchases.
After finding out there was a problem, I did what most of us will do, I checked the forums and the tech help boards. The Sims site said, if you’re having problems, uninstall the Store Edition game, and then reinstall, and all your purchases will magically come back. So I did this. Uninstalling of course erased everything I had previously bought, paid for and installed. All gone. So I went to download again. Same problem. No connection to the server. Loses internet connection while trying to download. Checking the boards I see many, many people having this same issue.
So I go to the next logical step. I sent an email to tech support. I state specifically that I’ve checked everything on my end, and the problem is theirs. I get an answer back telling me that my ports are turned off, and I needed to check this. I did, and of course there wasn’t any problem there. I emailed the results back in, and ask for an escalation, as I know the problem is theirs. I was assured it would be escalated. I get to a “level 3″ tech rep, and her answer was to ask for my dxdiag notes. Again blaming my computer, or connection or something. I wrote back, polite but firm, and stated this is not an issue with my computer. Their reply to that was, yes we know the store is down. So after several e-mails back and forth, and an escalation to the “highest level possible” in tech support, their answer was to tell me what I told them in the first e-mail to them. Whoa, what support.
So me being who I am, I then called. I got a tech who told me, yes the store is down. They know it’s down, and there really is no idea when or even if it would come back up. This didn’t sit well with me, so I asked him to escalate this issue out of the tech department, and over to marketing and sales. He told me this is impossible, but he would refer me to senior level tech support. He assured me a “senior level” tech would be in touch within 48-72 hours. So again, me being who I am, I found the email address for the PR director of Sims titles in the US, and sent a query there. In the mean time, I did get a response from the “senior level” tech, basically telling me yeah it’s down we don’t know if or when it’s coming back up. He did mention that if I didn’t like his answer I could reopen the complaint in seven days. Okay, I know, he blew me off.
So I get an answer back from the PR director asking me if I’m talking about a Sims2 download, or the micro content from the store. I replied that it’s the micro content issue, and haven’t heard back yet. After digging into this, the lack of caring and abysmal response from EA, has got me to the point that I have to comment, and get the word out.
It turns out EA had known for a few weeks the store didn’t work when I read the instruction to uninstall the game and then reinstall. So I feel this was over the line, it doesn’t work, they know it doesn’t work, yet their first step in solving this problem is still telling people to uninstall the game, wipe out what you DO have in the game, then wait while we hem and haw and decide if we’re going to fix it or not. The tech rep, I’m working with on this even asked for a link to the post telling you to do this. I sent it. She answered back that the instructions were posted before they realized it was a store wide issue. Yet here it is 72 hours later, and the instructions are still there front and center. Knowing it will erase everything you have all ready bought and paid for, and knowing you will not get it back, it seems they don’t think this is enough of an issue to remove the posted instructions. Does this strike you as a company that cares about it’s customers? But wait, it gets even uglier.
I was still going back and forth with my “tier3 rep”. I should state here, I think she did all she could do. I’m not mad at you Laurie, I do appreciate all you tried to do. But if you look at it, all you could do really shows the true ugliness of this situation. After all said and done, I was offered a refund. Laurie couldn’t send me my items on a disc, against company policy. She looked into sending me my items as an attachment to an e-mail, but she couldn’t get the items from the servers either. The only recourse is a refund. We’ll see how long that takes. This will rectify my account, but again me being me, I’m beginning to get angry. I was offered a refund, which is more than most people have gotten so far, yet I’m still angry. Why?
As I’ve said, I’ve been a member of the Sims community since day 1, and I have formed cyber-friendships with several of the members there. I know some of them quite well. Some of these members are kids. When I read the post about one of them spending their allowance on Simpoints (the store currency) and getting nothing for it, I decided it was time for action. Most of the adults on the Sims board know who the kids are, and we watch out for them. The modern day equivalent of keeping an eye on the kids while they played in the park. We pride ourselves on having a place safe for kids, and helped them when we can, answered questions, gave advice. Simmers make great community, and is probably a major reason I’m still active in the community. Me, I’m a grizzled veteran of the consumer wars, and know how to get redress when things like this happen. The kids don’t. As the picture turns out, EA is taking advantage of the kids, and I won’t stand for that.
So here’s where we are so far. The store is down, EA knows it’s down. They know they can’t deliver the product. There is no public announcement, the store is still there offering no warning whatsoever that you will not get anything you pay for. Yet you can still buy points. I checked, I went to purchase 1000 sim points ($10). I canceled out at the last second, but it was going to allow me to do this. It was going to allow me to spend my money, without so much as a caution that the store is down, and I wouldn’t be able to get what I’m paying for. This situation can only exist in the digital economy, as in a real world transaction you usually get the product, pick it off the shelf, then pay for it. There’s a word for selling something you know you cannot deliver. I have decided that the state AG here needs to be aware of this and I will be forwarding a complaint there. The BBB will also hear from me on this. When it becomes apparent to me someone is taking advantage of the kids, I’m hell on wheels. I read posts from the kids using birthday money, and losing it. I read a post from a kid who saved their allowance, and used it on Simpoints, and doesn’t know what to do. I’m not the guy who will stand by and let this happen. Becky doesn’t know what to do, but I do. And I will.
We’ve all heard lately about companies that are too big to fail. What about companies that are too big to care? In all this, in all the correspondence, in all the phone calls, in all the responses, or lack thereof, the one thing missing is caring. The attitude I catch is that they really don’t care. Yeah they’re down, they know they’re down, and they’re working on it. They don’t know when, or even if the store is coming back, but they are more than willing to take your money. A brick and mortar who acts like this would not be in business very long. But this is the brave new world, EA will probably be just fine. Of course, for the conspiracy theorists here, is it a plot to get everyone off of Sims2 and buying into the new Sims3 franchise? All ready, there is no new news on the Sims2 site, and ads and news blurbs for the Sims3 is all we see now. In my opinion, Sims3 signals the death knell for the franchise, it will slowly wither and die now. I bought 3, played it, don’t like it, and planned no further purchases of Sims titles. After this episode, now I’m positive I will purchase no more Sim titles, and actually, I will never buy another title from EA. I cannot support a company that will knowingly take advantage of people like this. I cannot support a company who cares so little about their customers. In the old world, in the days of hard currency for goods, customer reputation is how companies survived and prospered. If you didn’t take care of your customers, you lose them. Have we gone so far beyond that now? In this “new” economy, have we seen the end of customer service? Since face to face interaction isn’t happening here, is it too easy to ignore customer complaints? In the old days you had a customer looking you in the eye, and complaining. This made a resolution much more imperative, if nothing else to get the customer out of your face. Now it’s all e-mails, phone calls, and escalation to levels where you get lost in the jumble of complaints. Don’t want to deal with a disgruntled customer, send them a form e-mail saying we’re working on it, and email back in seven days if you don’t like my answer. It appears something is being lost here, something tangible. Is EA too big to care? It seems so.
I’m going to link this to the board and encourage members to tell their story here. I told Ms. Newman, the PR director that I would give her a chance to respond with an official policy statement on this. I’m hoping she does. I want to be fair here, but my patience is over. I told her I would wait until 12:00 PM Monday before I start shopping the story to the major outlets, and getting this story into the hands of people who can make a heck of a lot more noise than I can. I’m hoping to be able to include the “official” EA response to this. The tech rep I’m working with, she offered me a refund. This was after several back and forths, and she knows, that I know what my rights are. I do know it’s not her fault, and she did all she could. In the end, there is really little else she can do. Is this where we are going in this new digital economy? Excuse me while I opt out. If you can’t put the product in my hands, I’m not going to part with my money.

And in the End……

the love you take, is equal to the love you make.
How true. Hard to believe the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road is coming up. 40 years!
We chose the final medley of side2 as our tribute finale. I had read somewhere that The End was the last thing the Beatles recorded together, so it is a fitting finale. I think the video came out really well. It’s posted on YouTube and the website. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.

Check out our tribute here;

our Beatles Tribute

It was 40 Years ago today..

That Abbey Road was released, 40 YEARS

Hard to believe. To me Abbey Road was the best the Beatles did, the jewel in the crown of their music. I was driving across West Texas this week, and part of the ride included side2 of this masterpiece.

So what makes the Beatles keep ticking? They enter the digital realm this month, as the digitally remastered LPs are being released. Next month they release Beatles Rock Band. It’s expected to be a monster smash. So after almost 50 years, how do they do it?
Kids from 7 to 70 love them, and enjoy their music. They still are one of the most popular bands in the world 40 years after their last original recordings. Abbey Road wasn’t the last album released, but it was the last recorded. They didn’t want to have their legacy ended by the disastrous Let It Be Sessions. One more for posterity. I’d heard it was pressed pretty much in the order it was recorded in, making The End the real end. the last thing they recorded together.

ANYWAYS, to celebrate this landmark in Rock History. We are having Beatles Week at the Korner, featuring videos we had made over the last year using Beatles music, and some of the best we’ve seen on YouTube. Check it out here;

Our Beatles Tribute

Checking this out too

trying to connect the accounts. I got a new question in, all about secrets and betrayal, and torn loyalties. It will be posted tonight.

On the Road Again

Now I’m checking to see if I can post to this thing while I’m on the road, on my antique laptop. Yeah it’s old, REAL OLD
The Beatles tibute has started on the Korner, and so far, it seems to have started well. The new video got more watches in one day, than any other I can remember. But that could also be because I’m REAL OLD too. My memory is shot. So goes aging.
If all this works, then all I need to do is figure out what I’m going to make this blog about

Added to the Beatles Tribute

I’ve updated the Beatles page, mostly just to fill the pages for now. This is the attempt to push name recognition beyond sims2, which is tough because Kandy IS a SIM2.
Anyway, to start the tribute, I posted a new video.
It is here;

Followers of Kandy should note that Randy Rogers makes her first appearance in this one. At the sock hop, she asks Zack to dance, and this video gives his answer.