Rated M for Everyone

Hey,
Remember me saying I was going to expand on that little hypothesis of mine? Well there's something more important to cover today regarding rating systems.

Rating systems have been around for over a century now, whether it is the British Board of Film Classification, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, the Pan-European Games Information system or the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle. Their job is to tell minors what they can and cannot watch and while I am 100% against censorship I believe this is the right thing to do because I certainly wouldn't want my future son or daughter to be watching South Park at age 7, Y Tu Mamá También at age 9 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at age 12. As well as supporting what they do I also believe they should be enforced by law in any country in which they classify DVDs/Blu-Rays or games, which unfortunately is not the case in most places.

The board I want to criticize is PEGI, Pan-European Game Information which was formed in April 2003 making them 9 years and 7 months old this month, it has operated in the UK for most of that 9 years, I wonder when it became law in the UK, December 2003? May 2004? January 2005? 30th July 2012 not 2010, not 2007, not 2009, TWENTY FUCKING TWELVE. I've said before that I don't believe that video games are more likely to cause violence than any other medium but I still think that its disgusting that retailers have not been penalised for selling games like CoD: MW2 which allows you to massacre innocent civilians to an impressionable 11 year old (or similar).

Ahh, feels nice to have a rambly rant every once in a while, it's soothing in a way, at least it is to me.

I'll end this incoherent rant with this question, what if 10 year old Jimmy-Casual Shithead was allowed to buy Postal 2, Zog's Nightmare or Mortal Kombat 9 because they came under PEGI and the retailer he was getting them from only cared about the money and not the junk he/she was selling? Would you be ok with that?

More posts next week, now onto my weekend of Adventure Time, Ponies, Breaking Bad and Fallout: New Vegas.

I'll try push for the NSMB follow-up to be ready for Monday night, see y'all then, maybe.

TheWardy signing off.

Mobile gaming might just win (part 1)

Here's where I set aside my biases to praise mobile gaming and how it may be the way forward one way or another.
This serves as sort of an open letter to BiggestVideoGameNerd over his video as to why mobile gaming will never overtake console gaming (he might be right but his wording, uninformed statements and general attitude pissed me off so here we go!)

Few more things before I start:

1. I am NOT claiming to be an industry expert or even someone who is particularly clued up on the industry so apologies if I cock up once or twice.
2. I will be researching as I go along and will reference sources both in text in the form of links and at the end of the post in the form of footnotes.
3. I will be backing my argument in a number of methods that include budgeting and trans-gaming, this is NOT repeat NOT to take his arguments out of context but instead to provide mobile gaming a fair chance.
4. And finally my hypothesis (Which will be repeated as I get past the video breakdown): I believe that mobile gaming will outsell and/or become more profitable and/or attract more game developers sometime in the future (be it in 2017, 2025 or even 2062)

First I'll be pulling his video apart in the form of quotes and points gathered from analysing the video (I've altered his wording to make more sense of it but it's near enough the same context, I'll leave a link to the video at the end of the post for comparison of the quotes in brackes to prove I have copied word for word and such) in order to comment on the things said in the video and in part 2 I'll be arguing for and against the success of mobile gaming.

"Mobile game can't possibly outsell console gaming": (...first of all, why that's not even possible [sic]...) Focus on the can't possibly part, as likely as him being right may be, saying that mobile gaming outselling console gaming is impossible is somewhat foolish seeing how many times the industry has shocked us, a few examples of this being: The North American video game crash of 1983^[1], the recovery from said crash^[2] and the overnight success of Minecraft in 2010 (cannot find a working link to it, sorry) to name a few. There is not a single person I can name that has any right to dictate whether or not the industry will do A, B or C, for all we know Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 could shatter the console market by mid-December and leave mobile gaming to take over.

"The 3DS and PS Vita are mobile platforms": (...not the 3DS and Vita, because that's real mobile gaming [sic]...) while this is technically true in terms of semantics the Nintendo 3DS and Playstation Vita actually fall into the category of handheld game systems are defined as such:

"These lightweight, portable devices include in-built screens, games controls and speakers. The dominant manufacturers include Nintendo (Game Boy Advance), Sony PSP and Nokia N-Gage"^[3]

"The 3DS and PS Vita have no games": (...even though it has no games [sic]...) In a literal sense this is completely untrue but there might be some truth in saying they do or don't have any killer apps, I hate to bring opinions into this but I believe I've seen some games for the 3DS that I consider to be "killer apps" including Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Super Street Fighter IV 3D edition.

"Mobile gaming will never par console or PC gaming": (...mobile gaming can not even be on par with that technology [sic]...) Once again this requires estimation and opinion in order to make some form of conclusion so here's my 2 cents; I honestly believe that console/pc graphical capabilities have either already peaked or will peak in the next 5 years (my guess is they'll be spending excess budgets on better marketing and 3D technology, which is something Sony and Nintendo are already working on) and in accordance with Moore's law (which may or may not continue past this decade^[4]) mobile processors will get better and better until the gap between mobile devices and PCs either closes or becomes small enough to allow the multimillion dollar console and/or PC titles to be easily ported to mobile devices in one form or another.

"The PS3 and Xbox 360 will always be more powerful than mobile devices": (...the PS3 and the 360 will always be more powerful than the iPod or iPad or any freakin'- any of that mobile garbage...) I essentially covered this in my last point but might I point out that there is no way the aforementioned consoles will be able to catch up with mobile devices if they do indeed progress that far. If it was Sony/Microsoft consoles or even a specific model of a specific brand of phone he was discussing I'd agree with the notion but saying a single model with always be more powerful than a series of devices is horrendously uninformed.

"Mobile "games" are apps, not games": (...no, they're not even games, they're apps [sic]...) The second part of his statement is true, they are apps in the sense that the word app is just a shorthand for application but mobile games are also games as they fit the requirements for a "game" in most cases.

"Mobile platforms were designed for listening to music and downloading applications but not for games": (...mobile platforms are designed for listening to music, downloading apps, they're not meant for gaming, they're just not) First of all let me point out that PCs originally were not intended to double as gaming systems, even looking at the first few home computers such as Commodore PET and Apple II which were released in 1977, the same year as the Atari 2600, were not designed to play games as they were marketed towards medium-large businesses. Design intentions change all the time as demand for certain features increases, on top of that we now have mobile devices geared towards gaming such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and the OpenPandora.

He then asks us to explain how mobile gaming will overtake Console/PC franchises which I will do in the second part.

"Mobile gaming will not work because it does not have any online services": (...and, on top of that, um, mobile gaming ha- doesn't even have any online services [sic]...) From the start I can say this is untrue because I have played several games that had some form of online functionality within (be it leaderboards, social portals or even game matchmaking in some games) and even if it does, why does that even matter? there are great games without online and bad games with online, networking has never been integral to gaming, sure a lot of games with online have survived but, as I just said, there are games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls that have become AAA hits without online (save for downloadable content)

And that's the end of what I can pick at in his video which can be found here.

Anyway hope you enjoyed this part of the blog post, I will be continuing sometime next week with my opinion on the whole "console/PC vs mobile gaming" debate, also I may or may not be doing a follow-up to my NSMB review as I've gotten much farther since I last talked about it (I've now unlocked all worlds and gotten past the castles on worlds 1-6) so see you then, if not I'll be back next week, bye.

Plugging my YouTube channel, new videos soon, maybe.

And the FaceBook page me and my girlfriend run.

Don't miss me too much.

TheWardy signing off.

References:

1. Hunter, W, 'Player 3 Stage 6: The Great Videogame Crash', The Dot Eaters, weblog, accessed 23rd October 2012, <http://www.thedoteaters.com/p3_stage6.php>
2. Kohler, C 2010, 'Oct. 18, 1985: Nintendo Entertainment System Launches', Wired, newspaper article, 18th October, accessed 23rd October 2012, <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/10/1018nintendo-nes-launches/>
3. 2007, 'D 4.1 – Standards and technology monitoring report [revised version]', University of Maribor, report, 24th April, accessed 23rd October 2012
4. Kanellos, M 2003, 'Moore's Law to roll on for another decade', CNET, newspaper article, 10th February, accessed 23rd November 2012. <http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-984051.html>

Why you gotta hate on vidya

This is where I get to plug the shit I am listening to, Gabriel Iglesias- I'm not fat, I'm fluffy, go fucking watch/buy it best stand up I've seen in a while, absolutely fantastic.

As an avid gamer and a "video games are art" campaigner as well as a gaming blogger and a lets player seeing people spitting on video games (figuratively of course) makes me twitch uncontrollably. Now I'm going to ATTEMPT to go through all the problems I have with the most common criticisms people give about video games without removing my eyes with a spoon.

The first thing I hear people say, games make people violent/are responsible for certain acts,  yeah, ok, I'll agree with that, but you've gotta remember other forms of media can and have been responsible for violent acts, there are two examples I can think of off the top of my head relating to movies and, brace yourselves, BOOKS! That's right folks, books can be the root of violent acts. The movies example dates back a year or two ago, some bloke beheaded his spouse while on holiday and I read something some weeks after the incident happened that he was imitating something form Predator or something similar, its been about a year so the details are a bit hazy at this point. Now onto the true intellectual art form, books! This incident is very well known and dates back to 1980, the assassination of John Lennon, I assume you all know the story, the shooter was supposedly inspired by Catcher in the Rye, I don't really know much more about it though, really shoulda researched it before I started this and I cannot be bothered to do it now so I'm gonna leave it there. In a nutshell, video games can promote violence, but so can books, TV shows, movies, music, politics, religion, the list goes on and on ad infinitum.

The second thing people spew is video games are addictive, got a bit of news for you, EVERYTHING (literally everything) CAN BE FUCKING ADDICTIVE. People get addicted to all sorts of things, things like drugs, TV, sex, books, exercise, eating, dieting, pornography, violence, adrenaline, again, AD IN-FI-NIT-UM, its something you cannot control so why don't you push for bans on fucking treadmills while you're at it, the idea is moderation, if you really think banning video games is the only resolution then I do not want to share a planet with you, please kill yourself.

Third stupid BS, video games make you stupid, ok, lets examine myself (vain I know), I play video games constantly, I must clock at least 10 hours a day when I'm out of school or what have you and I've been a gamer since I was 6 years old, at the time of writing this I am 19 years old so yeah, avid gamer for 13 years, now let me run through my A-level grades which I got about 2 weeks ago, B, D, Distinction*, that may not seem too impressive but it is enough for me to continue onto a honors degree in game development, a career which demands advanced programming skills, consider your argument dismantled.

And now onto the fourth and final point, video games teach you nothing, ok firstly, some can, I know thats kinda bullshit without examples but fuck you go do the research yourself, and secondly I am currently reading a book by Gareth Roberts called Shada, it is a lost Doctor Who serial and the only novelized serial by the late Douglas Adams, it is entirely fictional, it's not like 11.22.63 which is based on true events and has genuinely taught me a thing or two about the Kennedy assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald, but Shada? Not a single fucking thing with the exception of what that serial was to consist of, does that make that book bad?

 Right that's all I can think of, I might come back to this at a later date and amend it but until then I am going to play Mother 3 or sacrifice a goat to the mighty lord Satan or something evil like that, buhbyee.

I'll be back later this week or sometime next week for another psuedo-review and a little revisitation of New Super Mario Bros. seeing as I've gotten a bit further and have new likes and gripes about it.

Until next time!
TheWardy signing off.

P.S. I have now jumped onto the community bandwagon and created my own Facebook page, not the best thing in the world but I think you should check dat sheeet out.

P.P.S. Here's another page that me and my girlfriend co-admin.

Review (but not a review): Super Mario Bros. Mashup (AKA New Super Mario Bros.)

Unfun fact: I'm listening to roygbivmlp's second Ponystep mix right now You should probably go fuckin' check that shit out.

OK heres my review (not a proper review) of New Super Mario Bros.
"But Tom, that game has already been out for 6 years"

And that's not exactly true, its only been out for 5 in South Korea and 3 in China, HA! 'Tards.

So yes, NSMB, been out in most of the world since late spring/early summer '06 and moved almost 29.1 million units worldwide. I bought this game less than a week ago and have since made it to world 3, do I like it so far you may be asking? Well yes and no at the same time, allow me to explain.

First let's start by saying what I like about the game, the concept seems fresh, it being 2.5D and whatnot, the music is pretty good too, everything about it seems new and exciting, as if it's only just been released, really love the new powerups in the game as well which are as follows:

• THE MEGA MUSHROOM

 

 The mega mushroom basically allows Mario to grow to a pretty impressive size and gives him temporary invincibility allowing him to kill/destroy anything in his path (including warp pipes) which eventually leads to Mario earning a certain number of 1ups depending on how much he destroys (the maximum being 5 mushrooms) and generally makes easy work of the more fiddly levels.

• The mini mushroom

Which is ironically a little bigger than the mega mushroom...not in-game though.

 The mini mushroom obviously does the inverse of the mega mushroom in that it makes you tiny and gives you the same damage resistance as normal sans-mushroom Mario has (i.e. 1 hit and its bye-bye Mr. Plumber stallion), it also allows you to jump a bit higher and the ability to climb into small gaps...also you have to stomp on enemies in order to kill them, think that's about it. And finally:

• The blue Koopa shell

Apologies for the pants-quality image, I'd find a better one but Wikia was the first site I found on my quest for images so I'm just using that.

It's a shame theres no real effect I could use for the blue shell, unless I just made the rest of the text blue, which is exactly what I'm doing. The blue Koopa shell allows you to sorta act like a normal Koopa shell in that you will slide when running and crouching/crouching on a slope (not too impressive mind you, you don't slide much regardless of what you do), crouching also grants you invincibility for the most part (some enemies will still be able to hurt you) and I've read that it improves swimming too but I've yet to use one in an underwater level so I cannot confirm that, I might come back at a later date and amend this when I've tried it.

So theres what I like about the game, now for what I don't like (or at least what I find to be a bit off). The one that's always there screaming at me, it looks like a bit like a Frankenstien'd Mario game (i.e. it seems like a lot of features have been borrowed from older Mario games). Examples include: The flagpole from the first game, the world map, item/1up hut and hammer bros. (they only seem to be relevant to 3 so I'm attributing it from there) from the third, the saved item from World (although you have to select it manually no matter what, also its touch only, which is a bit of a bummer cause there could have been a nostalgia factor to it if you could do it using select, which is unused throughout most of the game...I think...doesn't say anything in the manual about it so I assume it isn't used much, if at all) and the timed bits from Yoshi's island. Thats all imma list because this bit is already too long and under-punctuated (it's been a while leave me alone!). The other gripe I have about it is that it seems to lenient in terms of time, I've not played 1, 3 or World for a while but I'm sure the timers on those games tended to be shorter, I could be wrong though, and I cannot be bothered checking so this may very well be hideously inaccurate.

And now we come to the conclusion, as much as I want to hate this game I've gotta give this an 8/10, absolutely top class game, it has it's faults but then again so does Quake 2, Doom and Spyro 2, they're still fuckin' brilliant games.

If anyone's interested I will be doing a LP of New Super Mario Bros. 1 in a short while (Planning on starting Christmas Day 2012 and continuing from there every Saturday from there) so watch this space.

Anyway that's the end of a terrible review from a stale reviewer, sorry, I'll improve once I get back into the swing of things, I promise.

Buhbye for now!

TheWardy signing off.

I'm back.

I decided to look back here for old times sake, sure has brought the memories flooding back, some good like when I was proclaiming 2012 would be my year (it wasn't) and some bad like when I was talking about the bird escaping. I look back at everything I've said on this blog since its inception in January 2011, all the promises, all the poorly thought features that at least warranted a "you tried" sticker, all that sunny optimism, where the fuck did all that go?

If I were to look at the present me from 2011 when I was still 17 and saw all the cynicism, pessimism, depression, the "no I can't" attitude that has shattered my motivation I would have removed the sources of them with a fucking hacksaw. I truly am lost now, I want to help my blogs, I want to help my youtube channel, even if I'm posting less than once a month I want to make something of what the 17 year old me set out to do, but I don't know how.

I've said before I was unsure on whether or not I wanted to let this blog die but now I'm certain I want to nurse it back to health but I don't know how anymore, all the ideas, the motivation, everything has just disappeared, I don't want this to be another failed project, I want this one to be different, the project I decided to pour all my devotion into in order to get some sort of result, no matter how shit it is, I have the devotion but I see no way of transferring it into the blog anymore. I'm going to prepare a few posts over the next few weeks and hopefully have enough material to reboot this old thing in September. In other news my recording system is currently dying so I may not be able to push anything to the channel for a few months.

Heres to hoping this sticks.
TheWardy signing off.

Flash Game of the Week: 300 Miles to Pigsland

Happy new year guys!

Here is my first post of two thousand and twelve, a year in which I hope to blog consistently and inject new and exciting content (possibly with new authors joining as the year progresses), anyway without much more rambling (cause I'm running late on this) let's get on with it! Also I have an announcement at the end of this post so look out for that.

Right, the game I am reviewing today is called 300 Miles to Pigsland which is a cutesy little platformer with a hint of RPG elements (in that you can buy upgrades and eventually "level up" certain upgrades). The game was made by a developer called VladG, never heard of him but hope I do in the near future cause this game was great.

Ok now that I've got all the basic bits out of the way, time for the main story and gameplay. You basically control a set of pigs (though you start with a single pig) who have escaped from a farm and are on their way to Pigsland...I don't know either, anyway you jump on platforms and collect coins(1, 5 and 10)/gems(50) whilst avoiding all sorts of hazards and enemies. After each level you can buy upgrades and upgrade some of those upgrades you have acquired throughout adventure mode. As much as I love this mode of gameplay I have 2 complaints. The first complaint is that you grind for coins a little too much at some stages and I get enough of that from RS, although the grinding on this game seems to be more extreme than Runescape's, I can only assume its because you can just say "fuck it" and train a different skill. My second complaint is that the game is a little unfair, there are a few speed problems with the enemies here and there, sometimes the controls aren't responsive enough/you cannot react fast enough and in some places you can lose multiple pigs over one badly timed jump (much like with the spikes in Sonic the Hedgehog).

There is also a puzzle mode where you have to reach a certain distance on a limited budget, new puzzle levels are unlocked as you progress, it's somewhat a standard in games like this really. I cannot say one good thing about it, it is unrealistically difficult, not worth completing really.

Overall this is a brilliant game which can be played in short bursts but sadly means nothing unless you have at least half an hour to spare, not too good really, apart from that, seal of approval.

Kongregate link
And BigDino's link

Anyway that's it apart from the announcement!
Remember the super secret project I hinted towards in September 2011? Well that's been postponed until this September (I hope). I am now working on a new project with the working title Linews, basically a blog devoted to weekly Linux news updates, much like sites such as DistroWatch and ThisWeekInLinux, but with some of my thoughts included. This new blog will commence on Monday the 30th January 2012 and I shall link the blog to the side as soon as it is created (which will hopefully be tomorrow).

Anyway that's that out of the way, I shall see y'all on Saturday for the review and TOSG's Arcadia over on my YouTube channel.

See you then!
TheWardy signing off.

2011-A year in review/2012-A year to come

Hello one, hello all.
Apologies for not posting in quite a while, no real excuse really, more soon, promise...or something.
Anyways as 2011 draws to a close I thought it's be appropriate to look back at the year that was 2011 and a small insight into the year that will be 2012. Hope you enjoy!

2011

Ubuntu 11.04

I became a Linux user towards the end of April 2011, 5 days short of the Ubuntu 11.04 release if I remember correctly so as you can imagine I was pretty stoked to see the new Ubuntu in all it's glory. The day came, I didn't get it because I was in Wales, but then came the few days after...the day...yes. When I finally did get the upgrade, I was disappointed (to say the least) about this brand spanking new, all singing, all dancing or something interface Shuttleworth called "Unity". Don't get me wrong, I wasn't weeping to death over it like some of the Gnome vets you'd see out there. It's grown on me though but a turd is a turd no matter how attached you become to that turd, there ya go if someone wants to give me a billion quid for coining the world's worst phrase, you can, everybody wins! Except maybe Mark seeing as he fucked a lot of us over when he decided to abandon Gnome for the most part 6 months later.

Mortal Kombat 9

It was 19th April 2011 when we were graced with the ninth instalment of the 19-year old Mortal Kombat franchise. This game was observed as a homage to the 1993 game, Mortal Kombat II as shown from the redesigned levels from Mortal Kombat II, the inclusion of all Mortal Kombat II characters and the Mortal Kombat II style story tower. As well as these new features have been added which I hope we see in later instalments of Mortal Kombat, failing that, other fighting games. If you're a fan of fighting games with a particular liking to watching bones break, this is the perfect game for you, go buy it, NOW!

XVIII

Just to point out this is the review of MY year so bitching about missing games or events is pointless unless I've played them/these events have affected me. So anyway I turned 18 this year yayyyy! (for our funny foreign friends, in the United Kingdom 18 is the adulthood age, the age of alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc. I believe it's different in other parts of the world for example the drinking age in the United States is 21) anyway, thought I'd share that with you :)

Driver: San Francisco

This is a game I had been anticipating since July-ish, only got to play it in mid-December, gotta say, very mixed opinion boiling down to a pathetic aspect of my view on gaming: If it's a GTA-style driving game, it must have an Open-world aspect. I am the kind of person who will completely shun a game of this genre if I cannot leave my vehicle and there is no open-world bit, hence why I don't like things like this, I can see myself liking games like Carmageddon though, that looks cool.

(K)Ubuntu 11.10

As I mentioned before I'm a Ubuntu user but had a stint with Kubuntu in October and parts of November due to the 11.10 upgrade breaking my distro so I thought "Ah what the fuck, might as well". So I installed Kubuntu when I reinstalled and really enjoyed it...for about 2 weeks or so, the novelty wore off and the entire interface became a massive eyesore, so I went back to Ubuntu, well Unity at least. I haven't been using Ubuntu as of late sadly, mostly because Wubi has been giving me hell as of late (in that it constantly crashes and is thus barely usable). I may be using Ubuntu on my laptop when I go down to university though (leaving /root to handle the procrastination side of my university work).

11.22.63

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas 48 years, 1 month and 8 days ago today, ending his short term of just 2 years as president of the United States. The novel shown to the left is about an English teacher going back in time to prevent the assassination and so far (I'm only 3 chapters in, why I'm talking about it now I do not know) it is somewhat based around the butterfly effect of time travel (seeing as there's 2 versions of this theory). The butterfly effect is the theory that if you went back in time and did so much as kill a butterfly you could change the world completely and thus they've been discussing how different US history would be had the JFK assassination never happened, seems really interesting so far, coming from a guy who usually only reads the metro on the train, I'll let you decide if I'm well read enough to provide an opinion or not. Anyway great read, I suggest if you're a fan of King and/or time travel, read it, you'll thank me. I was also gonna talk about The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington, but then again I was a pillock and left it on the train.


So that is 2011 summed up for me, it has been an overall decent year to say the least, now let's see what next year has in store so far.

2012


Skullgirls

Skullgirls is a game due for release in early 2012 for XBLA and PSN, it follows the style of Marvel vs Capcom 3 in that you can have 3 characters in your team and the characters are...cats...riight, another thing to add for those of you who watch Sanity Not Included, Ms. Fortune is voiced by the same person who voiced Amanda in Sanity. I'm really excited to get my paws on this game and hope you will join me in playing (my PSN tag: UnspokenEchoes).






Cast 2012 tour

For those of you who have bought a BBC DVD from around 2003 you may have seen an advert for all the DVDs that had been released from that year, the song they used in these adverts was Fine Time from a Liverpudlian band, Cast. So these blokes announced in November/December that they were going on tour in early-mid 2012, and I am going to see them, along with Tesni, at Liverpool University, on 31st March 2012. Fancy going to see them? The dates are in this article.



New OMD album

As well as a new Cast album we should be expecting a new album from another Liverpool (well...Wirral) based band, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, I don't really know much about this album seeing as they only started recording this month, hopefully more about that as it comes.





The year of TheOpenSourceGamer

Yes I am determined to make this year my year, I'm am going to start getting serious with my videomaking, I am going to script my videos, gonna get my hands on a copy of Fraps, I am going to edit my videos, the works. If my youtube career is new and fancy to you head over here, ta. See you there!






So there you go, 2011 is drawing to a close, I hope you've all had a brilliant year, I'll be back on the first Wednesday of the new year (4th January 2012) for the new year edition of the Flash Game of the Week, see you soon.
TheWardy signing off for the last time in 2011.