Member of the Month April 2015 (futiles)

Well it's April the 1st and you all know what that means? Yup Time for another Community Interview!! This month we are treated to one of our more affluent members, who often provides his witty and often thought provoking insights to any conversation. He's not only a gamer but a real gamer taking the game to a whole new level, good news is that he divulges his secrets so that you too can take our game to whole new level. So let's all get to know him a little better and I'm telling you this is some pretty good stuff here..


Name:
futiles – Honestly, that is what I go by around gamers. Go to Achievement Fest, and that is what I am called. eBash was in town working a convention with me, and I was never called anything but futiles. Even my wife calls me that during events around other gamers.

What do you do for a living?
I work for AT&T doing video acquisition, mostly doing programming, scripting and web development for internal tools.

Tell me about your Gamertag?
It is futiles. It dates back to my time playing on MUDS in the early 90s. It is all lowercase, not capitalized letters, no numbers. And it is actually a word.

When did you start playing?
Sometime around 1983. My cousins had an Atari 2600, and my family got one the following Christmas.

What's your play style? Ex: booster? Completionist? How often and long do you play?
I play all the time. I play for fun. I usually don’t go more than a day without playing games, however, it isn’t always video games.

Tell me a good gaming story or experience? ex: Epic win/fail, marathon, accomplishment, a time you visited a game convention or met someone...or anything.
I am decent enough at Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. When I unlocked the “Survive 1 Million” achievement, I was playing it about 2-3 hours a day, every day, and got to the point where I could get that each time I played. So, I started a game, survived 60 seconds without shooting, then proceeded to survive to one million points, and since GeoWars is an original arcade game, it still shows you all the achievements you would have unlocked at the end, so, I had an end game info screen that showed all 12, which I took a pic of and texted to a few friends that would properly “appreciate” the pic.

What's your favorite game genre?
Worker Placement or Role Assumption (board game) | Western-style RPG, Sandbox, and Stealth (3-way tie on consoles)

What’s your favorite game on 360? ONE? Of all time (any system)
360: Saints Row 2 (absolute best drop-in/drop-out co-op ever), X1: Shadow of Mordor (for now), All Time: Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time (tie on consoles) but HeroQuest is what really made me into the gamer I am today.

If you were a Video Game or game character who and why?
futiles – the character that I make for me in any create a character system. I usually play as myself in RPGs, Sandboxes, or any game where you create a character.

Are you looking forward to any new releases?
Specifically, no. I will be in line for the next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. I have some Kickstarter board games pending shipment, but, I am not very anxious, so, they will get here when they get here.

Do you collect or not so much?
No, there is absolutely no reason to collect. When I am done with a game, I almost never go back to it. So, I either sell, trade, or give away my games. Achievement Fest is one of the places I usually host my video game swap meet.

I hear you have quite the collection of board games, can you tell us a little about that? (How many you have? When did this start? What’s your favorite and your oldest?)
Currently, there are 205 board games and expansions in my collection. I track my collection on boardgamegeek.com. In 1990 or 1991, I got HeroQuest, a Milton Bradley/Games Workshop joint venture, a game in which one player is the Game Master, and controls the board and all the monsters on it. The other 1-4 players are the adventurers, diving into the dungeon. Experience and gear carries over from one play to the next, with plenty of premade adventures in the box, but unlimited amount of adventures to be created by the players.

My collection: http://www.futiles.net/BGG/GameList....ername=futiles

How do board games differ from video games for you?
Endless replayability and user interaction. I have never been ultra competitive, and online deathmatch bores me to tears. But, cooperative play, or casual competitive is a lot of fun for me. I love sitting around the table working on a common goal with friends (new and old) to defeat the game itself, or, working out the best strategy to find myself as the leader of the current game. I play both Euro and American style tabletop games, co-op and competitive, heavy and light themed, card and board and miniature.

Extra Life is been a pretty big part of your life you do some really good things with that program, can you elaborate for those who don’t know too much about it?
Extra Life is the largest individual charity and fundraiser for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. It started in 2008, by a former radio DJ that wanted to do more for the hospitals after one of the kids he worked with passed away. In 2012 it raised $2M, 2013 raised $4M, and 2014 raised over $6.5 for CMN. My son is and has always been extremely healthy, and I want everyone’s children to be that way, so, I Extra Life. Like all charities, it uses a gimmick to raise awareness, and to get people involved. It uses the “marathon” idea, and you get people to sponsor your marathon. But, instead of running/walking a 5K or around a track, or jumping rope, or hulahooping, or any of those others, you play games for 24-hours. At the end of 2013, Extra Life decided to start a guild program, taking local Extra Lifers, and having them be the face of the organization locally in a market. It worked well, and they expanded, giving a guild to Kansas City in 2014. I was approached by my local CMN (KU Med Pediatrics) to be Guild President from July 2014 – Dec 2015. In 2013, KU Med had 250 gamers playing for it, and raised over $25,000 in funds. In the six months we had the guild in KC, we went to conventions, midnight game releases, major events, anything geeks might attend to get the word out. As a result, KU Med had 557 gamers playing in support of the hospital in 2014, and raised over $52,000 for the hospital. We also had an opportunity to send one of our major supports to Extra Life United (a competition between Extra Lifers supporting their local hospitals), and he finished second overall, winning a prize pool of $45,000 for KU Med, bringing our 2014 total to OVER $97,000. My 2015 year with Extra Life has started strong, having the organization at Planet Comicon (a 50,000 attendee convention in Kansas City) to kick the year off!

What's your favorite feature on GTN?
I don’t really use any of the features. Sorry.

What would you tell people about GTN if you were trying to get them to join?
I really don’t actively recruit for site. I am not sure how I would do that. Again, sorry.

Is there anything you would like added to the site?
A Badge Team. If GTN is going to use badges as the number one attracting feature, then, it needs to be run better. Badges need to have some symmetry across the board. A team of enthusiastic members would greatly facilitate that.

I did think of feature I would like later. I had asked in the past for GTN to support APIs (like 360voice) did of the data it stores. There are some cool tools to be made with that information.

I always find it fascinating to get an inside perspective on members. Futiles has always been an illusive and intellectual character I have admired, but we also tend to occasionally butt heads on things. I appreciate it though, as those interactions have sometimes altered my perspective or promoted my ignorance to slightly educated on some random topic. I find people who intellectually challenge me can offer the greatest growth for my life, and futiles has definitely expanded my coconut on a few occasions.

Thanks for opening up in this public space, futiles. I share your love of Link to the Past - it is sitting in my Gameboy AND SNES right now., and I all of a sudden have a hankering to play one of them

(And I am sure Dan appreciates it, Jeff.)

Excellent read! Congrats, futiles!

I couldn't help but read this in his voice.

I like that the link to "me" in the post is actually a link to Buckswana's page...

I couldn't help but read this in his voice.

Originally Posted by Hotdogmcgee

Funny, I did the same thing, but didn't even think about it until you mentioned it.

Thanks for sharing... Although I'm not sure if "futiles" is a world. Would that be many futile? Just wondering..

Thanks for sharing... Although I'm not sure if "futiles" is a world. Would that be many futile? Just wondering..

Originally Posted by Fshguy

English is one of the few Western European languages that does not make adjectives plural to match the nouns they are describing. In French, multiple futile things would futiles. So, les joueurs futiles....

I like that the link to "me" in the post is actually a link to Buckswana's page...

Originally Posted by futiles

My apologies on that, I should have double checked my copy paste rewrite... I normally do, but that day was a little hectic so I was probably distracted. I tried to fix it, but as I'm headed out of town for Spring Break activities I'm on my phone for the next few days and for some odd reason my phone sucks when it comes to editing comments, especially ones that are that big. So unless you can talk Eric or Fsh into fixing that, unfortunately it will have to wait. Good thing you commented though because now people have a direct link to you're profile just under the interview. Again my apologies.

Good read. Congrats on Mom, futiles.

Thanks for sharing... Although I'm not sure if "futiles" is a world. Would that be many futile? Just wondering..

Originally Posted by Fshguy

I didn't think plural futile was a word either but having conversed with futiles enough in the past, I knew I'd lose if I argued. He's not usually one to say things he can't back up with facts

Good read. Congrats on Mom, futiles.


I didn't think plural futile was a word either but having conversed with futiles enough in the past, I knew I'd lose if I argued. He's not usually one to say things he can't back up with facts

Originally Posted by SG Steelhead

That would be futile.

That would be futile.

Originally Posted by Fshguy

hehehe7890

That would be futile.

Originally Posted by Fshguy

So is resistance to assimilation by the Borg.

That would be futile.

Originally Posted by Fshguy

Why is there still no like button here? Another squandered opportunity to click something.

Why is there still no like button here? Another squandered opportunity to click something.

Originally Posted by SG Steelhead

Image if you tried that action more than once and you chose to ignore the rules of your primary language... But I digress. Honestly, English has so many borrowed words from other languages, somebody along the line decided what is proper and now we are stuck with rules somebody came up with 200 years ago.

Image if you tried that action more than once and you chose to ignore the rules of your primary language... But I digress. Honestly, English has so many borrowed words from other languages, somebody along the line decided what is proper and now we are stuck with rules somebody came up with 200 years ago.

Originally Posted by Fshguy

Well, English began as a constructed language (as opposed to a natural language), due to the Norman conquest of the Celts. So, it began as parts Gaelic, French, Latin, and others, and then evolved into what we have now. (But, it is a bit older than 200 years...)

Well, English began as a constructed language (as opposed to a natural language), due to the Norman conquest of the Celts. So, it began as parts Gaelic, French, Latin, and others, and then evolved into what we have now. (But, it is a bit older than 200 years...)

Originally Posted by futiles

I was referring more towards all of the rules that people have attempted to codify what is "proper" English...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...glish_grammars

As you can tell, I snub these rules on a regular basis.

I'm a big Bill Bryson fan(A Short History of Nearly Everything), we also wrote The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way.

Speaking of tabletop games...

I played Arboretum twice, Lords of Waterdeep, and Dominion today, while playing San Juan twice and Takenoko last night. Tomorrow is gaming day with some friends.

I was referring more towards all of the rules that people have attempted to codify what is "proper" English...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...glish_grammars

As you can tell, I snub these rules on a regular basis.

I'm a big Bill Bryson fan(A Short History of Nearly Everything), we also wrote The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way.

Originally Posted by Fshguy

We?? Are you Venom or one of the other Marvel created symbiotes? Or perhaps you've already been assimilated by the Borg.