Moving forward- some thoughts on Disney Infinity

We are a Disney Infinity household.

 

     

     I have a 7 year old son and a 9 year old daughter who absolutely adore Disney Infinity. We have the 1.0 & 2.0 editions, all the character figures and all the Power Discs. That's not to say 'Oh hey look we're so special!' but instead to say 'Oh hey I have a LOT of money and time involved in this game.'

      Also this is not an introduction to Disney Infinity- if you need that look elsewhere. There are plenty of great resources around for that. What I present here are some random thoughts that have been festering in my brain over the last two years of interacting with the game. I hope the development team and the community might take a minute to read over them; the thoughts may mirror some of their own or spark their imagination in new directions.

      Disney Infinity 3.0 has recently been announced and as with with 2.0 it sounds like the development team has been listening to the community and making tweaks and additions. Some have been great (Toy Box games, some character crossover in Play Sets, Toy Box builders) and some have fallen short (the mind-numbing survival game mode) but all the credit to them for trying new things.

      Here are some things I'd like to see as Disney Infinity continues to grow:

Complete Power Disc SETS available for purchase

      Power Discs add a lot of fun items, decorations and abilities to Disney Infinity. That said, buying them has been a royal pain in the rear. Thankfully the 'blind packs' are going away with 3.0 but details have not yet come out about the new method in which Power Discs will be sold. Let's make it easy- sell complete sets. Sure sell packs for people who don't want them all but I'm willing to wager that MOST Infinity collectors just want complete sets of the Discs. In fact Series 2 of 1.0's Power Discs WERE available in a complete set- only from Target and if you blinked you missed it.

      I'm not proud of the fact that I ended up paying eBay sellers too much money to complete our family's Power Disc sets. But frankly I felt I was pissing away money with the poor distribution of Discs in the blind packs. If sets aren't available to buy from Disney I fear even non-blind packs will have some discs in short supply and resellers and store employees will snatch them up for eBay. WE WANT TO GIVE YOU OUR MONEY DISNEY, NOT EBAYERS.

Online co-op in Play Sets

      Many people have asked for this since the confusion about it in 1.0 and it's already been announced that 3.0 still will NOT feature online co-op play in the Play Sets. I have faith the team can make this happen.

Larger Toy Box options

      Realizing of course the limitations of older generation game platforms and online storage for Toy Box saves I would still like to have an option for creating larger, more intricate Toy Boxes. Or, if not larger themselves, the ability to more seamlessly chain together multiple Toy Boxes and Interiors.

Raised level cap/ability to max out skill trees

      Disney Infinity 2.0 introduced skills trees for player characters and this was a fun, welcome addition. But even though players are allowed to re-spec their characters if they choose to there's still a level cap and the skill trees cannot be maxed out.

      Please remember the target demographic for Disney Infinity is young children and for many this is their introduction to the video game systems we adult gamers take for granted. Kids like to collect stuff and skill unlocks are no different. So having to explain to kids that the toys in their game can't possibly collect ALL their abilities and special moves doesn't make for fun gameplay- just frustration.

Ability to more easily unlock all Toy Box toys and items.

      In Disney Infinity 1.0 items in the Toy Box were unlocked through a combination of gameplay and 'purchase' using a lottery-like spin system. It took some work and some time but everything for the Toy Box could be unlocked through normal game interaction.

      DI 2.0 introduced a storefront method of unlocking Toy Box items with accumulation of 'sparks' (an in-game currency). This is great and allows for more specific choice of the items you want. The problem is unlike 1.0 some of the items are RIDICULOUSLY 'expensive' and, even after multiple playthroughs of the Play Sets AND hours and hours of Toy Box play, there STILL isn't a chance to earn enough 'sparks' to buy everything. This explains why many Toy Box creators have made levels that are nothing more than spark generators- ways of fudging the system to farm for sparks to buy Toy Box unlocks. Want to know what ISN'T fun for young kids? GRINDING TO EARN IN-GAME CURRENCY.

      I can only hope that DI 3.0 will strike a finer balance between gameplay earnings and the ability to spend those earnings for Toy Box enhancements.

Fulfilling the 'platform' dream.

      When introduced to the world it was stressed by the Disney Infinity team that Infinity was to be a platform- a starting point from which many things could grow. That dream gets incrementally fulfilled with each release but I hope this will be pushed further and further. That said I understand there are technical limitations with the game being on different generations of video game consoles, mobile devices and computers as well as different users' access to the internet.

      I'd like there to be a more seamless and less limited expansion plan for future characters and Play Sets- the main limit seemingly being that content for a given version of the game is locked at the time of initial release. I'd like to have the ability to purchase a Play Set pack at a retail store and, via a code, download the data for that set even if it wasn't previously coded on the retail disc. Same with characters. I understand this occurs to some degree with the PC version of the game but I don't find the PC a very family-friendly way to play this family game.

      I'm sure this is all part of the DI team's dream but our minds and wallets are ready.

Individual Disney accounts for all family members and less 'exclusionary' Toy Box challenges.

      Currently when playing console versions of Disney Infinity (and probably the PC/iOS versions but I haven't spent any significant time with those) the console owner's 'gamertag' is tied to an external Disney account. The Disney account allows Toy Boxes to be shared with the community.

      Yet a problem has emerged in this. This could be specific to MY household but I don't imagine that to be the case- the problem being that when my two children, separately or as a team, create a Toy Box that Toy Box is attributed TO ME. My Disney account, my gamertag. This might not seem like a big deal to an adult but for a 7 year old and a 9 year old who are intensely proud of the work they create it leads to frustration because no one knows THEY created it.

      If there were a simple way to create individual in-game accounts for users in the same household this wouldn't be a problem. I imagine this could be worked around by creating individual gamertags for each child AND creating (if possible) a separate Disney account for each child and linking the two. But there are many things wrong with that, not the least is that on our platform of choice (PS4) there are many features of online connectivity blocked from sub accounts.

      Individual in-game accounts would also help Disney get an even more clear idea of the demographics of players, time spent playing, modes played and characters used- invaluable information for future releases.

      In the second part of this is section's title I used the word exclusionary and though that might seem harsh it best conveys the feelings my kids have been experiencing over the last two years. During this time I've witnessed a disturbing shift in my children's view of the Disney Infinity community. Every week our family watches and enjoys the official Disney Infinity YouTube show- Toy Box TV. Almost every episode features a Toy Box challenge in which a theme is given and the community is encouraged to create a Toy Box within a two week period using this theme. There's no prizes involved other than exposure. Some of the winners are frankly AMAZING and from the beginning my kids would excitedly wait to see what the challenge was and want to create and enter their own Toy Boxes.

     But then week after week the same names would appear in the Toy Box Challenge 'winners' list. Over and over. This is not to take away from the abilities of these people- like I said their work is often amazing. As an adult I can appreciate all the hours that must have gone in to the creation of some of these Toy Boxes.

      As a parent I watched my kids go from wanting to enter the challenge every week, to saying sadly (despite my encouragement) that “we never win” to their current stance of “why bother entering because the same people- grown-ups- always win.” And you know what? They're kind of right. If my generally optimistic kids are feeling like that I have to imagine there are other kids out there who feel excluded in the same way.

      Let's see some community spotlight on Infinity's target demographic. Having those separate in-game accounts would give a chance for challenges for different age groups or even allow special showcases of kid-created content; kids who go to school and may not be allowed to play Disney Infinity more than a few hours a week. Isn't there room on the Infinity refrigerator to pin up the stuff kids create too?

That's all for now, at least until my kids' new daily question of “WHEN IS DISNEY INFINITY 3.0 COMING OUT?!?” is answered.

Feel free to comment to me directly on Twitter: @Greencapt

10 years of random movies I enjoy(ed)

I'm repeatedly taken to task about my being critical about films. I could care less as we all like what we like. I *do* refuse to give films that I don't enjoy a pass just because they're popular. Anyhow after a current round of critical comments via my Twitter stream I was asked the 'Well what movies DO you like?' question. More specifically I was asked by my friends Comfort and Adam (http://www.uniquescomic.com/) what movies of the last ten years I've liked.

The hardest part of that question for me was actually figuring out what came out in the last ten years. Since having two children (now 3 & almost 5) my film watching has come to a virtual halt or at the very least an extremely delayed trickle. There are TONS of films from the last 4 years or so that I have every intention and desire to see but just haven't gotten around to. Hell many of them I even bought on disc sight-unseen and STILL haven't had time.

The following list was culled from me looking at the top 150 grossing films each year for the past ten years. This list is far from inclusive especially because I often seek foreign films to watch and though I enjoy many of them I'm too lazy to go browse either my DVD shelves or more online lists.

There is NO order or ranking here- just films jotted down as they either came up on the lists or popped into my head.

Oh and naysayers? I actually enjoy the VAST majority of films I choose to watch. It's not MY fault you like crappy films. ;P

Lord of the Rings trilogy
Moon
Tron Legacy
Pixar (all of them)
A.I.
A Knight's Tale
Serenity
Zoolander
Amelie
Brotherhood of the Wolf
3000 Miles To Graceland
Ghost World
Spider-Man 1 & 2
Minority Report
most of the Harry Potter films
Blade 2
About A Boy
The Mist
The Descent
Dog Soldiers
Doomsday
Centurion
The Transporter
Crank
The Expendables
Frailty
Spirited Away
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
X-Men 2
Kill Bill 1&2
Love Actually
Shaun of the Dead
Hot Fuzz
Lost In Translation
The Devil's Rejects
Dodgeball
The Chronicles of Riddick
Team America
Open Water
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Sin City
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Zathura
Borat
Pan's Labyrinth
Children Of Men
Simpsons Movie
Grindhouse
Iron Man
Tropic Thunder
Rambo
Tangled
District 9
Inglourious Basterds
Drag Me To Hell
Piranha 3D
Repo! The Genetic Opera
The Devil's Backbone
The Host

Growing Up In A Haunted House

In honor of the Halloween season I'm re-publishing an essay that my uncle wrote a few years ago describing the house I grew up in in St. Augustine, FL and the strange occurrences that we were sometimes privy to.

In most cases that my uncle, the author, mentions a nephew he is speaking of me.
Enjoy!

 Growing up in a haunted house- The house at 272 St. George St.

My family moved to St. Augustine from my hometown of Daytona Beach in 1966 when I was six years old. Our first house was on the island in Davis Shores, but we were very cramped, with nine people in a 3 or 4 bedroom house. We had only been there a few months when a local lawyer, Mr. Weinstein, suggested he may have the ideal house for us, and invited us to have a look.

So one evening our parents loaded most of us kids up in the car, not telling us where we were going, and we went down to St. George St., the oldest street in the United States, lined with large old houses, many of which dated to the Flagler era. We pulled into one leaf covered drive of a huge, three story house, where my folks revealed they had been offered the house and we were going to go through it.

It seemed like home from the first. Us kids excitedly chose our rooms. Built in 1892 in the Queen Anne style, the old place had been an inn, so most of the rooms had bathrooms. After living ten people in a three bedroom house in Daytona, the luxury of it all was amazing. 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms (one more of each, if you counted the servants space up in the attic), 3 fireplaces, completely furnished with many fine antiques, all for just a tad over $20,000, even in 1966 dollars an astounding deal. My parents jumped on it, and in a few days we were moving in.

It wasn't long before we heard that we now lived in a haunted house. The previous owner was a woman from New York named Helen Firestone. She had bought the place around 1950, running it as The Old Magnolia Inn. She had a reputation as a good inn keeper, known by critics for her accommodations and fine cuisine. But she also had an equal reputation as a crusty character.

Finally, in the early 60's, depressed, she went to a neighbor and asked a rhetorical question. If a person wanted to kill themselves, what did he think was the best way. He replied that for his money the old garden hose from the tail pipe into the closed car just couldn't be beat. Obviously she agreed, because soon after she did just that in her garage.
The stories that her ghost haunted the old house started soon after. One man, a well respected local judge, would spend the night there on occasion after her death. He woke one night in the master bedroom to see Mrs. Firestone standing at the foot of the bed. I'm told he speaks of the experience to this day. I witnessed first hand local school children who would not walk on the sidewalk in front of the house, crossing to the other side till they were past. There seemed far more than the ordinary incidence of something coming up missing, and the house being torn apart, only for the thing to turn up in the middle of a table in plain site. (Maybe Helen bought a night in the White House). Lights seem to go on and off by unseen hand. We started to speak to Helen, only half in jest.

THE MASTER BEDROOM/DINING ROOM-This is the room where the judge saw Helen, and it became my parent's room. One night in the late 60's or early 70's my father, a baker, was getting up at his accustomed 12:30 AM. He was in the kitchen getting a cup of coffee before going to work. My mother was half asleep. Suddenly she heard a light thud in the room. It was enough to wake her. She turned on the light, looked around, and saw nothing at first. Then she realized something was most definitely wrong. There is a fireplace in this room, and atop the mantle my mother had wall-to-wall glass knickknacks, a good 8 inches deep. Above this hung a large mirror with an ornately carved frame, very heavy. Somehow this mirror had fallen, coming to rest propped up in front of the fireplace. Neither the mirror nor anything on the mantle was broken. The wire holding the mirror was not frayed, but appeared to be cut clean through.
Not long after, my sister Karolee was staying home sick from school. As was custom, she stayd in my parents bed. That evening, she told us a story. My father had placed a board in front of the hearth to blunt drafts. My sister swore this barrier had, on a windless, quiet day, begun to rock violently for several minutes before stopping. Of course we all chalked it up to an overactive imagination. But some years later, after the house had been remodeled and that room had become the dining room, I was home sick from school. In those days my friends and I had a Strat-O-Matic baseball league. I played all the games solo, and that day I was feeling better later so I decided to play some. I was sitting at the dining room table doing just that, on a sunny, calm day, no machinery running in the house, no heavy trucks running nearby, when the same divider, just a few feet from me, began to rock, slowly at first, then more violently. It did this for several minutes, then the rocking slowly faded and ceased. Perhaps Karolee wasn't full of shit after all.

MY ROOM-At first I shared my room with my brother Gary. In the late 60's he would go out with his high school buds on weekend nights. Typically I would read in bed for awhile, then go to sleep. The door to our bathroom was right by my bed, the knob was brass and glass cut to look like crystal. It was old, and very noisy in action. One night as I lay there reading, I heard the noise of this knob turning very slowly. I looked from my book and actually saw it turning. Then it stopped. I waited and watched, unable to look away from it till my brother came in some time later, but there was nothing and no one in the bathroom.

Years later, graduated from high school, one Sunday afternoon Karolee and I were the only people in the house. Again it was a sunny, calm day. I was sitting on the crapper in the same bathroom doing my business, taking my time with a good book. Suddenly over my head in the attic I heard the cliched sound of a ghost. If you've been to the Haunted Mansion in the Magic Kingdom you've heard it. Ooooooo. It was laughable. Then I heard what sounded like an empty mayo jar rolling on its side across a wood table, slowly at first, then picking up speed. Then an instant of silence, then the sound of breaking glass. By now I know Karolee is jacking me big time, so I shout, "All right, asshole, I know it's you up there!" She answers me from downstairs, and I know when she's bullshitting me, and this time she's not. We went upstairs but found no trace of broken glass.

More years later, and I'm sleeping, and I wake in the middle of the night. Now I know when I'm awake, and when I'm asleep and dreaming, and I was definitely awake. My bed was positioned so I could look out into the hall, where a big green mirror was framed on the far wall. There was a light on in the hall. As I watched, it looked like someone was fading the regular light down, and fading up a red one. I saw a mist clinging to the wall, drifting from both sides till it covered the wall thickly, except over the mirror. Then, after a minute or two, the mist pulled back and the light returned to normal.
OUT OF TOWNERS-Early on my cousin and her husband arrived for a visit from Louisiana. The husband is a big, burly guy who went on to be a New Orleans cop and is currently a federal agent. But he's also an old Mississippi country boy, and we told him the stories, and we laid them on thick, so he was primed by the time he went to bed. Well, the next morning found them packing to go, ahead of schedule. He told us he'd never sleep in the house again. We asked why, and were told that during the night he watched the door on the guest room open and close of its own accord. We told him it was only a draft. He asked if it was a draft that lifted the bed. True to his word, he never slept there again.

Many years later the same cousin was coming through town, this time with her mother (my aunt), and her husband's cousin, a 13 year old girl no blood kin to me. Again, I told the stories and laid them on thick, plus she's heard them from her cousin, so by the time I showed her to her room she was good and primed, too. I took her upstairs, showed her where the towels and toilet paper were, then left her to go to my room. She headed back downstairs. A moment later there was an ear-piercing scream. My mother hollered from downstairs, "Dean! What did you do to her?" I proclaimed my innocence. We find her a quivering mass. To get downstairs she had to pass a dark landing leading off to my brother Dennis' room. She swore she had seen a pair of red eyes glaring at her from back in the darkness. That night she would not even sleep in a bed alone, bunking with my aunt, and the next day she was gone, which brings us to...

THE "SPOT" ON THE STAIRS-Even as very, very young children, I and my next two sisters were scared to walk by this spot at night. To go upstairs in that house, you went up two steps to the first landing, then 13 steps (for you numerology freaks) to the next, off of which led a small, dark hallway to Dennis' room. He says he never experienced any uneasiness there, but he was never there too long, and besides, I think you had to be a child to really feel it. Me and my sisters would arrange to go to bed together so we wouldn't have to go past the spot alone. It's almost comical to contemplate it now, the three of us sitting up late, watching a TV show, then looking to each other, "So, you ready to go to bed?" "Yep, how about you?"

My nephew, who grew up in the house, also experienced this uneasiness at that spot, as did nearly all of the grandkids, regardless of whether they had been told any scary stories or not. And I know for a fact I never told any "spot on the stairs" stories to the young girl from Mississippi.

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY-Got an e-mail from my sister Karolee after she had checked out this site. She wished to make some corrections and addendum’s, which follow herewith. First, she claimed she fearlessly walked past the "spot" on the stairs, though the rest of us, as well as her children, cowered in fear. Seems some of Karolee's best friends are spooks.

Then she went on to add some more personal anecdotes.

"I was home alone and watching TV up in my room, and all was quiet. When all at once someone called my name out, quietly at first. I hollar down, "What!" and no one answers, and I go back to watching TV. Again someone calls out my name, and again I called out "What do you want!" and nobody answered. I figured that somebody had come home and was just pulling my chains. So I ignored it and kept watching TV. Finally my name was called out very loudly and like it was being called this time from the stairs instead of downstairs, I get mad and jump off of the bed and start to scream at whoever is calling my name and at that very moment the ceiling over my bed crashes down onto the exact spot that I was lying on. If I hadn't moved I could have been hurt badly or killed, according to Dad. There was NO ONE in the house except me, everyone was either at the bakery or school."

"The same sort of thing happened to Dennis, I think, he was showering in your bathroom and someone called his name out and he got out of the shower to see who it was and the ceiling fell into the shower, again nobody was in the house except him."
"And finally just before Anders and I got married and I had taken Charlene and Eric up to Wisconsin. Anders had come down to St. Augustine from the Coast Guard base in Jacksonville and get some music that he left in my room. He decided to take a shower before he went back to Jacksonville. I started to get ready for his shower and had shut the door and the windows and he had turned on the bathroom light. Suddenly the bathroom light shuts off and the windows open and finally the bedroom door flies open. He figures that it is an old house and it had settled or something and he recloses the door and windows and again turns on the bathroom light. The light this time goes on and off continually and the windows slide up and down and the door to the room slams open. Anders then stands in the middle of the room and yells, "What the hell is this! I have the right to be in this room, Karolee said I could be in here!" Slowly the door closes and the windows stop going up and down and close and the light in the bathroom comes on and all goes quiet. He showered and then headed back to Jacksonville and I get to hear about the story 2 weeks later when we came back home."

Also, my brother Dennis reminded me of an incident a few years back. He, my nephew Eric, and a few other people whom I don't recall were sitting in the living room with me, watching TV during the reception after my father's funeral in the summer of 1994. I turned from the TV to speak to someone, and my eyes fell on the dining table in the next room. I had to do a double take, because I could clearly see waves rippling through the heavy oak table top. I said aloud something like, "Look at the damn table! There are waves in it!" Everybody turned and looked, saw nothing, and began to look at me very strangely, but I could still clearly see these waves, which looked like sine waves. Now the logical explanation would be I was under severe stress, and that watching TV had somehow effected my eyes. But I'd only been watching for a few minutes when that happened. And later that day, also while sitting watching TV, all of us clearly heard someone outside on the street shout my father's name "Ralph!" very loudly. We ran outside, but saw no one on the street.

THE OWL AND THE OSPREY-This, for me, is the final episode of life in a haunted house, at least this particular one. The yard of the house was filled with many beautiful trees, and was always a haven for myriad birds. A few months before the passing of my father, a large owl suddenly appeared. It would sit like a statue til dusk, then fly off. My father became very interested in this bird, and he would take his binoculars out and look at the bird. All very cool, aside from the mess of his crap, which looked like big
chunky globs of white paint with bones and hair in it. Then my father passed away, and the owl was seen no more.

A year or so after my father passed away, I began to hear a peculiar bird call, a sort of a skreeling noise. Finally, I saw the source. An osprey had begun to use the tallest branches of the various trees, often eating its catch on high. This had not been a good time for me, but somehow the appearance of this bird made me feel better. For some reason I almost identified it with my father. During this time I would often take an afternoon nap at the house, rather than drive back to my place in the country. Many times, as I lay in bed, I could look up through the window and see this osprey sitting quiet in the top branches of the old pecan tree. Sometimes it would not be seen for stretches, but it would always come back.

Then came the time when my mother's health deteriorated, and finally she passed away, almost three years after my father, and I tell you I never saw or heard that osprey again, even though I was often at the house in the months after. I am a Christian, and I know my parents are in heaven, where one day we will be reunited, but I'm not a slave of dogma, and no human can limit the methods God uses to bring comfort.
(PS-I despise the song "Wildfire"!!!)

 EPILOGUE-In later years the odd occurrences pretty much came to an end, as far as I know. We all moved away, and my parents passed away, necessitating the sale of the house. The new owners are well along in remodeling it, something it desperately needed. Bought for a bit over $20,000 fully furnished with antiques in 1966, it sold in run down condition, unfurnished in 1998 for over $200,000. Ghost stories no longer depress the value of a house, and school children no longer avoid walking in front of it. But from time to time a person with a copy of a book from a few years back about haunted places will walk up to look. And sometimes I wonder if the new people have kids, and if so, will they feel uncomfortable walking by that spot on the stairs?

Copyright 2000 Allen Dean Peterson