Geekology

Gaming Classics

2007-09-20T03:27:00.001-07:00

This week I decided to reacquaint myself with some of my old favorites. So I re-installed TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance.

Usually, nostalgia is a dangerous thing. We’ve all done it. You put on an old VHS tape of a show you loved as a kid, or played that game you loved on the Commodore 64…and by looking at it through more experienced eyes, you realize that our childhood favorite is a pile of crap.

We I was incredibly pleased to find that TIE Fighter is just as much fun today as when I first played it nearly 16 years ago.

Of course, the graphics are absolutely terrible by today’s standards, but once you’ve played for a few minutes and gotten used to that blocky 640 by 480 resolution, and complete and total lack of any whiz-bang effects…you forget about the graphics and just get on with playing the game.

TIE Fighter has always held a special place in my heart. It’s the first game that completely sucked me in. The first game I decided to play for ‘an hour’ at ten at night, and only stopped playing when I noticed the sun was coming up.

X-Wing Alliance was a different story. It’s still a good, solid game…but when played next to TIE Fighter, it just doesn’t have the same ‘magic’…and here’s why:

The first big selling point of TIE is that you played ‘yourself’. You put in you own name and what rank you made or awards you got were up to you.

It’s hard to explain, but unlike previous Star Wars games, were you were cast in the role of one of the heroes, TIE Fighter let you feel what it would be like to be a pilot in the Star Wars universe. Rather than be Luke Skywalker and match his achievements or fail…it was a game that let you fly with those characters.

Long story short, being put into the role of Darth Vader and attacking a Rebel force is one thing…but playing yourself and flying as one of Vader’s wingmen is a much deeper experience. It’s the difference between reenacting the things you’ve seen on screen, and seeing what a difference you could have made had you been there.

It might seem like a minor thing, but by forcing you into a ‘role’, Alliance loses a lot of its charm. Being referred by someone else’s name and being forced into a particular viewpoint takes something from the experience. Oh, and the droid you’re forced to listen to makes it feel like a kids game.

Basically, TIE Fighter is the original trilogy of Star Wars games…Alliance is the Episode 1 of Star Wars games…not bad in its own right, but just not up to scratch next to the original.

In TIE, there are ‘bonus’ mission objectives. You can try to excel or keep yourself safe…it’s up to you. It’s odd, but you can finish TIE as a mediocre pilot. (In fact, that’s one the things I loved most about this game, going to school on Monday mornings and comparing achievements with friends. Who outranked who, who got what medals, “I’m a Captain!” “Oh yeah? Well I’m a Commander and in the Inner Circle of the Emperor’s Secret Order!”

In Alliance, most of this is taken out of your hands. It still uses a similar system, but rather than extras being up to you, you’re forced to do the ‘family’ missions.

As well as the usual X-Wing/TIE Fighter campaigns, you’re also forced to take part in ‘family’ missions. Your character joined the Rebellion after the Empire seized their business with the help of a rival family, so one minute you’re attacking an Imperial Research post that’s creating advances star-fighters…and the next you’re suddenly forced into a crappy, slow, weak Correlian transport to steal a probe so your family can keep an eye on their business rivals.

It’s like, who cares?

You quickly learn to dread the family missions, because they take you out of the campaign you’re actually enjoying…and when you’ve just done a mission in an A-Wing, your Corellian transport ship seems painfully slow and under-powered.

Long story short, it’s like watching the movies, but with terrible added scenes.

Imagine the following. Obi-Wan has just said “You must learn the ways of the Force if you’re to become a Jedi Knight like your father!”…and then there’s a 30 minute sequence were Luke goes to a friends moisture farm and helps him ‘bullseye womprats’ because they’re chewing through power cables.

It’s like, sure, those womp-rats might wreck some dude’s equipment, but Vader’s in orbit…get your priorities straight.

It feels like Lucasarts tried to fix something that wasn’t broken. All Alliance needed was a graphical upgrade, not a new format. They gave us what they thought we should want, and not what we actually wanted.

Speaking of story, TIE also excelled in the way that it handled it’s story. Lucasarts could easily have gone in ‘pure evil’ direction where the missions were like “Let’s go blow shit up just for the sheer evilness of it”, which quite frankly isn’t all that interesting.

Instead (backed up by a short story in the manual), they made it a much deeper experience by showing how, through indoctrination and propaganda, it would be possible for a totally moral person to fight for the Empire and believe they were doing the right thing. In TIE Fighter, the Rebels aren’t painted as altruistic freedom-fighters, and the Empire evil oppressors…The Rebels are painted as terrorists and the Empire as a perfectly legal and rightful ruler. It showed the insidiousness of the Empire. They’d arrive at war torn system, put a stop to the conflict and say “Look everyone, we ended your war, everything’s better! Wouldn’t you like to join us and help create peace through the galaxy?”

Of course, they wouldn’t mention they’d bomb the place back to the stone-age if they refused…but hey, it’s the Empire.

The absolute worst thing in Alliance, gameplay wise, is that for some unknown reason, they made your fellow pilots far too chatty, and in lots of places, incompetent.

TIE Fighter has your wingmen professionally reporting important events…Alliance has your wingmen tell you everything they’re doing, congratulating themselves on every kill, and putting in smart-ass comments for no reason.

You tell a fellow TIE pilot to ignore your target and he says “Acknowledged (your callsign), ignoring designated target.”

You tell an Alliance pilot to ignore a target and they say “Hey! Are you trying to steal my kill? Don’t you believe in sharing?”

No you incompetent fuck! But we’re supposed to disable that ship and if you shoot it once more, we’re going to lose the mission!

Oh, and expect to hear “Imperial training seems a bit lax!” a few gajillion times per mission.

Something that got right on my nerves very quickly is the other pilots reactions to getting shot at. You see, as a capital ship opens up on you, you get a little warning light in your cockpit. Gameplay wise, this isn’t a huge deal. They start to shoot as soon as you come in range, but their chances of hitting you are minimal.

However, that doesn’t stop you getting about 10 panicked radio transmissions from your allies all screaming “I’m under heavy fire!” “Their turbolasers are targeting me!”

Oh, and the radio message from your wingman telling you that you’ve just been hit is really helpful. You get hit by a missile, there’s a huge explosion and your ship is rammed off course. As you’re spinning around, desperately trying to bring your ship back under control, your wingman says “Careful, you’re taking fire!”

No! Really?

My last big gripe about Alliance is that far too many missions depend on the competency of the AI pilots.

For example, to win a mission, you might have to disable a craft so shuttles can board it…but your craft doesn’t have any ion cannons, so you have to fly cover for the ships that do (Usually Y-Wings).

You do this, and do it well, but the Y-Wings just can’t get their shit straight. You’ve killed all the opposing fighters in record breaking time, you’ve even attacked the ship your trying to disable to draw some fire away from the Y-Wings…but they finally manage to disable the thing way to late, within the range of a station’s turbo lasers.

I’m not saying this didn’t happen in TIE Fighter, but it didn’t happen nearly as often.

TIE Fighter will stand the test of time. A perfect example of the way a game should be made. Alliance is a perfect example of how trying to fix something that isn’t broken can ruin it.

Alliance needed new graphics, new story and new missions. Instead we got that, plus an annoying talking droid, a past forced upon the player, annoyingly talkative and incompetent wingmen and ‘family’ missions that feel as though they were included just to annoy you.

If you’ve never experienced TIE Fighter, get on Ebay and find a copy. TIE Fighter 95 is the CD-ROM version that will run easily under XP (as long as you set it to win95 compatibility mode)…I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, and it’s a game that every PC gamer should own.

Alliance is a good game…it’s just not worthy to lick TIE Fighter’s flight boots.

Sony

2007-09-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

I tried to hold my tongue on this one, but I just couldn’t.

I’m talking about Lair for the PS3.

Sony have gotten into the habit of not only pissing off their customers, but responding to the backlash by metaphorically kicking themselves in the balls over and over. It appears that Sony have wholeheartedly embraced the ‘politican’ style of management. No matter what happens, blame outside influences, claim black is white, and it all else fails, put their fingers in their ears and go “LALALALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU! LALALA.”

They fail to grasp the simple truth of the situation. Their customers have eyes and ears. Sony can say that the PS3 is whatever they like, but they’re not convincing anyone.

Sony has become a prime example of ‘Big Business Syndrome’. They believed that the PS3 was going to be an absolute smash-hit success whatever they did. They didn’t count on the fact that gamers are an extremely fickly bunch.

In fact, that might be a little unfair. It’s not that gamers are especially fickle, but brand loyalty only goes so far. You can be as big a Sony fan-boy as you like, but when their competition offers something better, sooner and for less money, that’s what we’re going for.

For example, as a PC gamer, I’ve always liked AMD processors. Every PC I’ve built or owned since 1996 has been powered by an AMD processor. However, if I come to buy a chip, and Intel releases one that is faster for less than the equivalent AMD…I’m switching over to Intel.

Long story short, brand loyalty is all well and good, but people aren’t going to burn money for no reason. Sony should have learned a lesson from Sega. At one point, Sega was at the top of the food chain…today they’re producing crappy games for other people’s consoles.

Anyway, back to Lair, and how mishandled it was by Sony.

The simple fact with Lair is that the controls suck. They’re totally unresponsive, sluggish and get in the way of gameplay. So how did Sony respond to this? Consider it a learning experience and fix it in Lair 2 or a major update?

Nope, they said to the gaming world at large:

“You’re doing it wrong.”

They went so far as to release a ‘Reviewers Guide’ in an attempt to stop bad scores.

Nice work Sony, you release a game with broken controls, and then release a ‘guide’ to professional gamers explaining that they don’t know how to do their jobs.

Here’s the deal. If people who review Lair say the controls suck, the controls suck. If the people who play Lair say the controls suck, the controls suck. You can’t turn around and tell the gaming community at large that they’re playing it wrong.

It’s like designing a car where to go left, you have to steer right. Everyone is going to have problems with it, and it’s not our responsibility to re-learn what we already know to suit you. It’s your responsibility to fix the damn steering!

The straw they’re holding onto is that the game is played with a sixaxis controller. They’re saying that people aren’t used to it and need to learn to use it.

I call bullshit. Innovation should be intuitive.

Look at the Wii. That uses an innovative ‘motion control’, and when was the last time you heard anyone complain about that? Nintendo created a control system that would allow people who’ve never even touched a controller before to play. You did almost exactly the same thing with the sixaxis controller…so how you can say with a straight face that everyone is wrong is beyond me.

Basically, when the controls are “Tilt the controller left to go left”, if people have problems with that, it’s the game and the controller that are at fault…not the gamer.

At my previous job, I came across exactly the same thing.

It was pay-raise time, and the pay raise offered was way below inflation. We also hadn’t received a pay raise in over three years. Of course, we weren’t happy.

What management chose to do was to distribute literature and emails explaining (with the use of pie-charts and graphs), that the pay raise was actually really good and really generous. As I said to my boss at the time, you can show us all the graphs, charts and rationales you like, the only figures I need to look at it my paycheck. An extra two dollars a week is certainly not generous.

Sony, admit you made a mistake. All you’re doing is alienating your customers and pissing everyone off. When you’re fucking us in the ass, we don’t care about your press releases about how good it is for our colon, or if we just relax it won’t be an unpleasant experience…we’d rather just not get fucked.

Computer Geek Rules

2007-07-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

I had a little downtime at work this afternoon and decided to browse the internet. During my absent-minded surfing, I ran across an article enumerating Ten Reasons It Doesn't Pay to be the Computer Guy. Anyone who has already been dubbed "computer guy" should read this for a little bit of commiseration and comic relief. If you're not a "computer guy" and come to me asking for help, you will be required to read this before I even consider answering your question. And after you read that, I will make you read another rant of mine. These articles will help you determine if it's still worth asking my advice. If, after reading these two items, you still want my help, fine. But there are some rules you will need to follow from this moment forward.

Back up your critical data. If you have a digital picture of Fido as a puppy that you can't possibly live without, back it up. A hard drive is a mechanical device, and mechanical devices fail. Your local computer geek would rather spend 20 to 30 minutes helping you prepare for the worst than spending countless hours trying to recover something that is most likely gone forever. If your computer geek gave you this sage advice and you didn't follow it because you were too cheap to spend the extra $100 on an extra hard drive, or because you kept killing your backup job so you could play solitaire online and the backup slowed this down, then you had better be prepared to pay -- with money, beer, soda or food -- and you'd better be psychologically prepared to hear "It's gone for good."

Get virus protection. If When your friendly computer geek tells you to get virus protection, GET IT! Believe it or not, this is for your own good. We do NOT get a percentage of the profits from the Anti-Virus companies and like the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Best case scenario, we can fix the problem in a half hour or so. Worst case, we have to erase everything on your hard drive -- including the aforementioned picture of Fido as a puppy. And if you ignore our advice about Anti-Virus, you had better be prepared to pay -- with money, beer, soda or food -- and you'd better be psychologically prepared to hear "It's gone for good." By the way, there are a few free Anti-Virus programs that are just as good as the big name brands. Any computer geek worth his salt will know of at least one.

If you come to us with a problem, be prepared to sit with us and watch what we're doing from start to finish. Don't expect that you can drop by, leave the broken machine in our laps and commence with your day. We may have questions for you along the way, we may want you to see just how complicated your problem is by making you hang out with us, or we may want to torture you by tying up your valuable time, just like you're using up ours. Or we may tell you to go away because we work faster alone. Either way, this is our choice, not yours. And if you mysteriously show up at our door, you had better be prepared to pay -- with money, beer, soda or food -- and you'd better be psychologically prepared to hear "It's gone for good." Sometimes erasing everything and starting over is the only fix.

Listen to our advice. If you don't then you had better be prepared to pay -- with money, beer, soda or food -- and you'd better be psychologically prepared to hear "It's gone for good."

If you keep coming to us with the same problem -- especially if it's something that you could have prevented by backing up your data or installing an Anti-Virus program, don't be surprised when our prices start mysteriously going up or if it starts taking longer and longer for your computer to be fixed. This is our way of telling you need to listen to us.

Believe it or not, we have lives beyond computers. Don't be offended if I politely decline the opportunity to work on your computer, regardless of how much you are prepared to pay, whether it's with money, beer, soda or food. I'd rather see my little girl's second grade dance recital than work on your computer. This goes doubly for co-workers, casual acquaintances and friends of friends.

If you tell me about a problem and I don't offer to help, this usually means that I'm not interested in assisting you. Giving you advice on how to do it yourself is NOT a roundabout way of offering to help. This is my subtle attempt to politely get you to go away (or at least stop talking about computers) as quickly yet tactfully as possible.

If you want free help, I recommend using the internet or talking to someone who is still learning about computers. For most of us, this has been our job for years. The last thing we want to do is go home, only to be bombarded by more work-type stuff.

If you do go for the free route, don't expect miracles. There's a reason these people work for free... they're young and inexperienced, and they'd rather trash your machine than their own. "You get what you pay for" isn't a totally meaningless phrase designed to get you to spend more money.

There is more than one type of computer nerd. Just like cars have different types of specialists (engine mechanics, transmission specialists, body shops and so forth), computers require specialization as well. Don't ask a programmer how to configure your home router, and don't get offended if a networking guy can't make your macro work. You don't ask a brain surgeon to fix your fillings, do you?

No matter how much you think we're worth, whether it's money, beer, soda or food, be prepared to double that amount, otherwise you're twice as likely to hear "It's gone for good." The amount of time and effort we're willing to spend is directly proportional to how well we're paid.

If we want more than you're willing to pay, whether it's with money, beer, soda or food, don't tell us "The Geek Squad can do it better (and/or for less money). If you really thought that was the case, why did you come to us in the first place? Remember, the Geek Squad's job is to crank through as many PCs as possible in the minimum amount of time. They work for a corporation whose primary purpose in life is to make money. If you think they can do a better job, then take it to them.

You may have noticed a recurring theme throughout these rules. If not, then read this post again... and again if necessary, until you catch what I'm trying to say. Believe it or not, your local computer geek is human. We have interests outside of computers, whether they be human interaction, money, beer, soda or food. Humans are reward-driven creatures... yes, even computer geeks. So if you want our assistance that's okay. But it's not okay to expect that we'll constantly fix your problems for free. You had better be prepared to pay, whether it's with money, beer, soda or food.

RCA Small Wonder EZ201 Digital Camcorder Review

2007-07-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve been playing with the EZ 201 all day today, and I have to say that I’m very, very impressed.

I bought the EZ201 as a ‘GEFY’ (Good Enough For Youtube) camcorder. That’s precisely what I got, and a little bit more.

So what do you get for your money?

You get a digital camcorder less than the size of two packets of cigarettes, that is not only incredibly easy to use, but also has surprisingly good picture quality.

Let me start with the ease of use. Even the most dedicated technophobe will find the EZ201 a total breeze to use. The camcorder has the grand total of five buttons, not counting the on/off switch. A record start/stop, a play/pause, a delete button and a directional pad.

To use you simply turn it on, point it at what you want to shoot and press record. When you’re done you press the same button again. A tap of the play button lets you view the video you’ve just recorded and the directional pad lets you navigate through videos you’ve already recorded.

You can view the videos you’ve recorded by plugging the camera directly into the RCA inputs on your TV, but transferring the video to your computer is where the EZ201 really shines.

You just pop out the USB connector and plug it into your computer. From there, everything else is almost done for you. The software self-installs from the camera itself, and you simply click the thumbnails of the videos you want to download and it downloads them, creating a shortcut to the folder on your desktop.

This software also comes with a very basic editor package (allowing you to set the start and stop points of each separately captured video and save them on your computer as one complete file), as well as options to email your videos directly from the camera.

In fact, if you’re a total technophobe, and find even this beyond you (even though a child could do it), take the camera to a participating retailer, and they’ll download and burn your videos to a DVD for you.

Ok, by now you should have got the point that it’s pretty much impossible to make this camera any easier to use…but what about the quality?

Well, as standard, the EZ201 can store 30 minutes of video at high-quality (640 by 480), or an hour at half resolution. The good thing with this is that unlike competitors like ‘The Flip’, the EZ201 can take SD cards. Given how cheap SD cards are now (you can get a two gigabyte SD card on newegg.com for under twenty bucks), this is a serious advantage.

So how does the video look?

I can honestly say I was surprised. It surpassed my expectations. I plugged the camera directly into my TV and I’d say the video quality was on a par with a regular VHS video camera (when recorded in high-quality).

I have to say that obviously the picture quality isn’t as good as a full-sized mini-DV or DVD camcorder, but considering the camera is only about two inches bigger than a deck of cards, and costs around a hundred bucks, you’re obviously not interested in having the best quality picture and sound.

Long story short, if you accept this camera for what it is, something to slip into a pocket or purse and carry with you, or take a video of the next family barbecue, it’s better than what you’d actually need. While I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to capture high-quality movies to play on a 60 inch HD TV set, if like me you’re more interested in video for the web, it will more than satisfy your needs.

Even the battery life is impressive. If you use high-quality batteries (the EZ 201 takes two AA batteries), such as the energizer lithium cells, you can expect to get around seven and a half hours of recording.

Another positive note is even though this camera is small and really light, it feels solid, and not cheap and plasticy like I was expecting.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of downsides.

The first is the microphone. It’s just not very sensitive. While its not ridiculously quiet, I tried this out in the car, and had real difficulty making out the conversation over the engine. However, this isn’t a huge issue because the camera only has 2x digital zoom, meaning you won’t be shooting anyone from a distance anyway.

Secondly, the digital zoom isn’t great and results in noticeable pixilation when used.

The only other downside I noticed was baffling.

When viewing videos directly from that camera, the picture quality is absolutely awesome considering the size of the camera, with almost zero pixilation in good lighting conditions.

However, for some reason, when that same video is transferred to the computer, the picture quality suffers slightly. Whereas on my TV I saw zero pixilation and compression artifacts, there were a few more when the downloaded video was viewed on my PC. It’s not a drastic drop, but a drop nonetheless.

Anyway to close:

Good points:

Good picture quality.

Good battery life.

Amazing portability and ease of use.

Intuitive software

Bad Points:

Sound is a little too quiet.

Picture Quality suffers after transfer to PC.

In the end, I’d highly recommend this camera to anyone interested in web-video. It’s more than worth the money and is better than you’d expect for the price.

PLeasure-Negative Society

2007-05-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing that the ‘media circus’ surrounding video games has shown me is just how backwards our culture is about what it acceptable.

It appears that while shooting, vehicular homicide, drug use and drug dealing isn’t worth working up a sweat about, consensual sex between two consenting adults is enough to get congress involved. While it’s ok to simulate things that are horrific crimes, it’s somehow much worse for people a year over the age of consent to see something that’s a thousand times more tame than a lingerie commercial.

These are arguments that have been put forward a million times, so I won’t go over them again. However, what I do want to talk about is how we’ve become a ‘pleasure negative’ society. While hard work and self sacrifice are the corner stones of any well adjusted culture, we’re unusual in that any pure leisure activity, one that has no benefits other than being fun, are looked down on, and in many cases vilified.

It’s Not Good For You.

Any gamer out there has heard the arguments and accusations. Gaming is a ‘complete waste of time’, ‘unproductive’ and ‘lazy’.

To be completely honest, I can almost agree with all the above statements, but the point is that we’re talking about a leisure activity. The point of a leisure activity is to have fun and relax. Gaming is ‘unproductive’ because it’s meant to be. The objective is to have fun, not to ‘achieve’ anything.

The biggest problem for gamers is that nearly every other pastime has some sort of ‘loophole’. Playing sports is exercise, reading is ‘educational’. But if we actually consider these points, we see that they’re flawed.

First and foremost, plenty of people enjoy playing sports. However, if playing a sport offered no physical benefit whatsoever, how many people are going to quit? I’d say none, because people play sports for the fun of it, the exercise is just a positive side-effect.

It’s the same with reading. It only counts as educational if you’re reading something educational. Are you any more intelligent after reading a work of fiction? Are you any more equipped to deal with the world in general after reading Harry Potter?

The other big point I want to make is that these same ‘loopholes’ also apply to gaming, it’s just people refuse to see them.

Stuck In the 80’s

One of gaming’s biggest problems is that non-gamers assume that games are stuck in the 1980’s. A game of Space Invaders or Mario hardly encourages thinking deep thinking, but even games like these can be said to have benefits. Something like a side-scrolling platformer or shoot ‘em up is going to develop hand-eye coordination, maybe only a little, but then again, just how educational is reading a trashy romance novel?

Sure, the trashy romance novel may be at the bottom of the literary food-chain, but judging games by their most basic and simple incarnations is exactly the same as assuming Shakespeare is going to be crap because you read a Harlequin romance novel once and decided that ‘books where crap’.

You can’t judge all literature on the strength of one book, and you can’t judge all games based on “Space Invaders”.

Many games reward lateral thinking, problem solving and require a lot more brain power than just when to press the ‘shoot button’.

Take a roleplaying game for example. Each player class has different strengths and weaknesses; you have to think about the trade-off between developing this skill or that skill. Should you spend money on a particular potion, or run the risk of going into hostile territory to find the ingredients and make it yourself. You have to accomplish a particular task, so do you run in guns blazing, or try and hack that security console and slip in and out undetected?

Sure, there are ‘mindless’ games out there, but many games reward thinking and punish lack of planning. A good real-time strategy can be compared to chess. I dare anyone to play ‘Civilization’ and say you don’t have to think to succeed.

Rationalization

So games can be just as educational or as mentally taxing as a good book or a game of chess, but is a game that requires little thought necessarily a bad thing?

The only time gaming is a bad thing is when people allow their lives to suffer because of it. Taking the day off work because they where up all night playing the latest ‘Zelda’, allowing their relationships to suffer because they’re playing games all the time instead of paying attention to your partner or kids.

While this is obviously a downside, this can also be applied to everything else. Instead of staying up all night with a control pad in their hands, people stay up all night because they just can’t put that novel down. Missing a birthday party to play golf; Missing work to go see a movie.

Basically, what’s true of gaming is true of everything else. In moderation it’s fine.

Guilt.

Unfortunately, as a society we have this pre-occupation with ‘being productive’. Unless there’s a tangible achievement at the end, we feel guilty.

However, we don’t play sports or read a lot because they’re beneficial. We do these things because we enjoy them. The difference between these activities and gaming is that we’ve managed to rationalize spending a lot of time reading or playing football because they have those benefits as side-products.

Long story short, we’re doing these things for the fun of them, but we’ve learned we can get rid of the guilt by telling ourselves we’re only doing them for their beneficial side-effects.

We’ve become a totally pleasure-negative society. Anything we do just for the fun of it is considered a bad thing and a waste of time. Unless we can feel we’re being productive in some way, we guilt the crap out of ourselves. My question is: Why?

If you’ve spent all day working, come home, spent some time with the kids and got them off to bed, don’t you deserve to do something just for the sheer fun of it? Haven’t you earned a break?

We all want to have fun. The problem is that we’ve conditioned ourselves to feel guilty by doing just that. As human beings we’re excellent at lying to ourselves. We’re not ‘wasting time’ by playing football because we’re getting good exercise. We’re not being ‘unproductive’ by spending a few hours with a good book, because reading is educational and good for us.

We feel so guilty for wasting time just having fun, that we find ways around it by convincing ourselves that the incidental side-effect of our leisure activity of choice is actually the main reason we’re doing it.

I think a good way to illustrate this is something I read online about MMORPG’s.

Someone made the point that someone could spend literally hundreds of gameplay hours getting their character to level 60, getting that rare epic armor and all other kinds of rare in-game items. The point was, they’ve gone through all that work and in the end, have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I disagree. What that person has to show for it is those hundreds of hours of fun and enjoyment. The point of a game isn’t really to ‘achieve’ anything, it’s to relax, have fun and spend your down-time in a way you enjoy.

We’re preconditioned to believe that any activity should have a goal at the end, the ‘achievement’ we’re heading towards. Because of this many people have a hard time with the idea that the activity itself is its own reward.

We work to earn money. We work-out to get fitter. We read to become better educated. It’s this ‘task leads to goal’ thinking that makes us feel guilty for taking part in a pure leisure activity. Playing a video game has nothing to show for it at the end other than the pleasure of completing a game and the hours of enjoyment you got from playing it.

It’s this this we have a problem with.

Wasting Time?

By looking at my save-games, I can tell you that I spent over 60 gameplay hours playing through “The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion”. That’s two and a half days total playing that game, spread over a couple of months.

The common reaction would be “What a waste of time!” That’s two and a half days of my life gone with ‘nothing to show for it’. I could have read a book and got more intelligent, I could have made something, I could have been outside getting more in shape.

As I stated above, I don’t agree with that idea. It’s two and a half days I spent having a lot of fun and getting involved in an excellent story.

The bigger question would be “What would I have done with that time if I wasn’t playing Oblivion?”

The answer is nothing, because I play games in my leisure time. If I hadn’t been playing a game, I’d have been reading, watching movies or surfing the web. If that was two and a half days spent when I should have been at work, or fixing the plumbing or working on a project, I’d agree. However, actually having fun in my leisure time is something I refuse to apologize or feel guilty about.

I understand the importance of being productive. However, being productive is work and for me is not a leisure activity…and as long as you don’t let your work life suffer, what’s wrong with a few hours of pure fun?

End of the Wii

2007-05-17T20:53:00.001-07:00

Nintendo has an unfortunately spotty history when it comes to their games consoles. While they did extremely well with the original NES and Super Nintendo, ever since then they have a habit of releasing consoles with just a single, fatal flaw.

For example, the N64, while being a good console suffered from their decision to stick with the outdated cartridge format, while Sony released the Playstation with the superior and more versatile CD-ROM format.

Then, the Gamecube failed simply because gamers didn’t like the color or design of the console itself (Which was a huge shame. Games like Resident Evil 4 show that the Gamecube is just as graphically capable as its competition, the Playstation 2).

For me, the Gamecube will always be an excellent console that tanked simply because Nintendo decided to put great hardware in a lavender cube. Next to the sleek PS2 or the pure late 90’s ‘edgy’ design of the Xbox (apparently ‘X’ is a ‘cool’ letter), the poor Gamecube didn’t stand a chance.

Then, Nintendo released the Wii, which stupid name aside, was an absolute master-stroke, although it may turn out to be both a short-lived and short-sighted one.

In short, the ‘next-gen’ competition was a two horse race between the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

It could be assumed that Xbox owners were going to buy an Xbox 360 and the PS2 owners were going to buy a PS3. With the next-gen race being all about horsepower, the price points were inevitably going to be high. Who was going to take a risk on an outsider when they had the choice of two consoles with proven track records? When consoles were a hundred bucks a pop it wouldn’t be a problem, but at a price point of $500 or higher…not many people would be willing to take the risk.

If they tried to compete with Microsoft and Sony, chances are there were going to lose no matter how good their hardware was. Plus, there’s also the factor that the ‘Nintendo Generation’ has grown up, and Nintendo are notorious for favoring E-Rated games.

Basically, the majority of gamers are starting to prefer violent, gritty protagonists such as Sam Fisher, Solid Snake and Master Chief. With most people only being able to afford one console, very few gamers would be willing to give up their GTA’s and Splinter Cells for Mario. The most powerful gamer demographic now consists of mostly males aged 23 and up…and Nintendo’s games tend to be aimed at younger kids.

So, rather than go the way of Sega, Nintendo had an outstanding idea. They simply chose not to compete.

Rather than go for the fasted and best hardware, they took what is essentially upgraded Gamecube hardware and bundled it with a brand new peripheral…the Wii-mote.

Sure, it’s not as pretty as the PS3 and Xbox 360, but it offered gamers and whole new experience and as a side effect, they appealed to a whole new demographic that would normally not be interested in buying a game console.

Essentially, many non-gamers are intimidated or get easily frustrated with traditional controls. To the uninitiated, 10 buttons, two thumb sticks and a D-pad can be incredibly confusing and off-putting. Handing someone a remote that looks remarkably like a regular TV remote and showing them that to play tennis you swing the remote like a tennis racket, to play golf, you swing it like a golf club. It’s easy and intuitive and anyone can ‘get it’ in a very short time. They removed the ‘barrier to entry’.

Of course, it also appeals to the seasoned gamers through sheer novelty value.

So, rather than choose to compete in an already crowded market, Nintendo simply offered a whole new experience on proven, relatively inexpensive hardware. In short, Nintendo are offering something that you can’t get anywhere else for a significantly cheaper price than their competitors. Plus, their hardware is readily available, meaning they don’t have the supply and manufacturing problems of their competitors.

While many parents would balk at spending nearly a thousand dollars on a gaming console for their kids, especially with all the media furor about video game violence, they can buy a Wii for half the price, know their kids won’t see anything more violent that a cartoon plumber attempting to resuce a princess… and better yet, it gets the kids up off the couch and moving around.

But, the big question is this:

What happens when the novelty wears off? What happens when swinging the Wii-mote gets old?

Then we come to the Wii’s biggest problem. 3^rd party releases.

The problem is simple. When a developer releases a new game, it’s incredibly, incredibly rare for them to make a whole different game for each console. They develop for one, and the others receive a port of it.

In simplest terms, a developer will create a game for the 360, then tweak it to run on the PS3.

Have you spotted the problem yet?

The Wii simply doesn’t have the processing power to handle games that are designed to make the best out of the 360 or PS3’s software. Unfortunately, the Wii was released in the current console cycle, but it’s technically a ‘last-gen’ machine. You’d have a lot of difficult getting a PS3 game ported to the PS2, let alone the Wii.

We can already see the results of this. Spider-man 3 looked plain awful on the Wii. The textures looked terrible or would even be absent at long distances and architecture would simply disappear. Why? Because Spiderman 3 was written for the PS3, and the Wii simply can’t handle it.

Plus, these games are written with a traditional controller in mind, meaning it will be unlikely that they will take advantage of the Wii-mote and unfortunately, if you play a Wii game with normal controls, you might as well be playing the Gamecube.

The Wii’s only hope is that third party developers will start to create games exclusively for the Wii. However, if you put yourself in the developers’ shoes, you can see what a risky decision that would be. If you release a game for the 360 or PS3, you know that game is going to look great on both systems and you can exploit both markets. If you release a game optimized for the Wii, you’re excluding two third of your potential market. Basically, if you have a 360, you’re not going to want to play games that look like something from your old console.

Luckily for Nintendo, the Wii has been successful enough that releasing a Wii exclusive isn’t the business equivalent of throwing money down the drain.

Only time will tell if the Wii has the legs to survive until the next console cycle, but hopefully we’ll soon see some decent game releases other than 360 and PS3 ports.

Beat him at his own game?

2007-05-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking.

Jack Thompson is a real thorn in gamers’ sides. If you’ve never seen it, I suggest you check out his page on Wikipedia.

We’re talking about a guy who would send an opponent a copy of his ID card with Batman’s picture pasted over his own to let his opponents “know who they where dealing with”. A guy who attempted to take a political opponent to court for battery because she placed her hand on his shoulder. A guy who posts insulting, ill-informed attacks in public forums, and then cries foul and attempts to sue for slander or ‘harassment’ when the people he attacks respond.

Luckily, the world at large has started to see that he’s just a big ball o’ crazy.

Basically, the gaming industry’s tactics so far in dealing with Thompson are to just ignore him. By attempting to fight or answer him we’d just be fueling the fire.

But then I had a different idea.

Thompson loves to sue for harassment and slander every time someone publicly expresses a viewpoint that opposes his. It’s fine for him to blame the VT shootings on gamers before the shooter was even identified…but if Gabe and Tycho donate the $10,000 to charity that Thompson promised to donate before reneging, he accuses them of being an ‘extortion factory’…now that’s harassment and slander.

I know this is likely never to happen, but how great would it be to beat him at his own game?

So far, Thompson has called gamers everything from idiots to drug addicts. In other words, he’s not shy about throwing around slander and libel of his own.

If we look at the average gamer, you’ll see that most are pretty much like me. We’ve played pretty much every ‘murder simulator’ that’s been released, but we have completely clean criminal records, college degrees, good jobs and aren’t on drugs.

I’ve ‘killed’ over 10,000 computer generated enemies on Battlefront 2 alone. I even own a gun…but I’ve never shot anyone and have absolutely no desire to…odd that, isn’t it? By Thompson’s reasoning, I should have mowed down everyone I know by now.

But, thanks to our good friend Jack Thompson, we’re represented in the media as murderers who don’t understand the difference between a joypad and a shotgun.

So, what I’d like to see is a class-action lawsuit. Gamers vs. Thompson.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being ‘harassed’ and ‘slandered’ thanks to Thompson. I’m tired of being told to ‘get a life’, being accused of being on drugs and above all being publicly accused of being an unbalanced psychopath who’s just itching to go shoot up a school.

You see, you can put all the facts you like in front of Thompson. The VT shooter didn’t have a single video-game in his dorm room. We could point out that most gamers are completely behind attempts to stop Little Timmy from playing GTA…we could also point out that if every fatal incident that has been tenuously linked to gaming was in fact, caused by gaming…that that would mean only about every one in two-million gamers have gone postal…which is a statistical abnormality, not grounds to claim a causal effect.

Well never shut him up or make him go away by being rational. You only have to see some of the things he’s written and said to see that:

"Honestly, are all of you gamers on drugs, or what?"

"Any letter from a video gamer like you would deepen his concern. Are you actually so confused that you think gamers have any influence on anyone. Gamers are considered by normal people to be cretins. Get used to it."

"I love the smell of burning gamers in the morning." (I love this one…we’re unbalanced and crazy?)

"With enemies like you Pixelantes and like Game Daily Biz, why, I don't need any friends. You honor me with your hatred. I serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and you hate me because the world first hated Him. I follow the Creator of the Universe, and He has taken me to the Gates of Hell, and I kind of like it in here."

"Ah, video gamer/pixelantes are the domestic version of radical Islamists as you continually threaten with violence those who simply disagree with you. How terribly revealing."

"Nobody gets to designate the charity except Paul Eibeler. Can you read? Are you on drugs? Have the games fried your frontal lobes so thoroughly that even a "Dead Kenny" has more grey matter than you? Jack Thompson"

"Nobody shoots anybody in the face unless you're a hit man or a video gamer."

Ok, that’s enough. The point I’m trying to make here is that pretty much all of these statements can be regarded as slander against you and me, the gamer. Thompson has stated that the only reason for anyone to shoot anyone is because they play video games.

We’re druggies, cretins, he ‘threatened’ us by saying he’s ‘love to smell us burning’ and we’re the equivalent of radical, car-bombing Islamists…and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We’ll never shut him up with reason. How about being sued by 50,000 gamers for slander and defamation?

I won’t pretend to be a lawyer or understand the ins and outs of the legal system (Despite the fact I’ve played Phoenix Wright – Ace Attorney on the DS…again by JT’s ideas, I should be a qualified lawyer by now)…but this seems to be a lot more clear cut than the gaming industry taking on JT.

He’s publicly harassed us, slandered and defamed us.

What do you think?

Web Hosting Questions for Our Readers

2007-04-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law has asked me to help him design, maintain and moderate a web page for his business, and I'm looking for some recommendations. He's already purchased the domain names, but I don't know if he's already got a web host. He wants the web site(s) to be a forum layout, where industry professionals can share ideas. Here are my thoughts and questions.

-I'm very familiar with Microsoft's OS and security, so I will be using a Microsoft O.S.

-I'm a little familiar with IIS, (plus it's free) so I will probably use IIS.

-Can you recommend a good software package that will help me design and maintain a forum-style web site? I'm pretty good with computers and design software, but I'm not a code jockey. I don't want to write the code for the site, and I don't want to spend a fortune on software.

What am I overlooking? What software do you recommend?

Note: I don't usually do this, but I cross-posted today's entry on my personal blog site as well.

I Bet WE Get Blamed For This...

2007-04-17T00:32:00.000-07:00

It's happened again.

Another psychopath decided to go on a shooting rampage, killing 32 people, including himself at Virginia tech.

It won't be long before they go to the gunman's house, find an Xbox and a copy of Halo or GTA, and the Jack Thompson's of the world will start blaming the shooting on video games. Of course, the fact that the majority of American households have some form of gaming console or computer won't factor into it. The politicians will use this to 'prove' one point. Games kill people. Then they'll ride the wave of moral panic to makes sure they get lots of votes and TV time.

[Edit - I just looked through Digg. Jack Thompson has already blamed the shootings on video games. Isn't it amazing that he knows games are responsible despite the gunman's identity hasn't even been released yet? That shmuck must scour the news every day just hoping for a shooting]

This is an argument that's been voiced over and over, so I'll try to keep it brief.

Let's just say that is actually was a violent video-game that set this guy off. Does that prove video games are a direct cause of violence?

No. It doesn't. What this proves is that this guy was obviously mentally disturbed, and if it wasn't a video game that set him off, a movie or a book or someone looking at him the wrong way would have done the same thing.

It's time for some sledgehammer math.

GTA : San Andreas has sold well over 14 million copies. In US history there have been around 13 cases of extreme (read - lethal) violence in the USA that have been linked to video games. (Just to be clear, by 'linked' we mean the perpetrator owned a gaming console...not actual solid evidence).

So despite all the media furor over GTA, the figures show that fewer than one in a million gamers, that's one thousandth of one percent, have played GTA and gone on to commit a violent act...and this is one game!

So, if we forget about GTA for a second, and divide the number of violent incidents (around 13) by the total number of violent games sold(millions and millions), we see that there is absolutely no causal effect between violence and violent video games.

Long story short, when you make a judgment based on evidence rather than by listening to some idiot trying to get on TV by making outlandish and unproven comments, the chances of a video game making someone go on a shooting rampage is literally a one in a billion chance.

In other words, blaming games for a shooting is as statistically plausible as blaming cheese for reckless driving...after all, a huge percentage of people who have been arrested for reckless driving had also eaten cheese at some point in their life. See, direct correlation! Let's ban cheese!

It's absurd. The fact that someone who went on a shooting rampage also owned a games console is not evidence. Why not look at their movie collection? The fact they also collected stamps? Made aircraft models? Liked photography?

All these shootings prove is that there is a tiny percentage of psychotic individuals in the USA, who through emotional or mental problems will go on a rampage for no good reason. There's no major moral panic or causal factor that people can blame, other than the fact that some people just aren't right in the head.

The funniest thing about all this is that history constantly repeats itself.

In the 1930's Jazz music was going to be the downfall of society. In the 40's it was pulp comic books. In the 50's and 60's it was rock and roll. In the 70's it was Acid house and rave music. 80's it was home video and the 90's Hip-hop and rap. In the 2000's, it's video games.

In conclusion, let me tell you a quick story.

A few years ago, in the UK, there was a storyline on a popular soap opera (Coronation Street, to be exact), where Gail Tinsley's boyfriend locked her and her children in a car, locked the doors and tried to drive the car into a river.

Less than a week later, the Mirror newspaper ran a story about a guy who tried to do exactly the same thing to his girlfriend and her kids.

The funniest thing? Absolutely no-one made a connection. Why? Because Coronation Street does not fall into so-called 'Youth Culture'. Yet when someone shoots up a school or college, it seems the fact that he may have played a video game at some point in the past automatically counts as solid proof that video games are responsible.

Video games are simply the latest moral scapegoat. It's far easier to blame an absolute tragedy like the Virginia Tech shootings on gaming than to ask some questions and maybe accept personal responsibility.

A teenager shoots up a school and the world blames gaming. They don't ask the more difficult questions like "How did a kid get his hands on a pair of pistols?" "Why didn't his parents notice something?"

Yep, it's far easier to say "Video Games turned my child into a killer." Than. "I absolutely suck as a parent and was far too busy watching TV to notice my kid had some major emotional problems."

If you think video games are evil, don't play them. Stop your kids from playing them, or at least make sure they only play games that are age appropriate. It is not the gaming industry's responsibility to raise your kids. That's your job. So accept responsibility for it.

Passwords : What You Need To Know

2007-04-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

One of the things that constantly amazes me is people’s lack of care with their passwords.

The problem is, people just aren’t really all that concerned with their own security. Why bother with a strong password? If someone wants to get a kick out of reading my email, let them! There’s nothing super-secret in there!

Well, unfortunately, that’s a very short sighted and dangerous view.

Most people tend to use the same password (or small number of passwords) for pretty much anything. So let’s say I have the same password on my webmail as I do on my internet banking. Sure, my bank’s webpage will lock you out after three failed attempts…but my webmail doesn’t. A hacker takes his time, gets into my email, and then tries that same password to get into my bank, my paypal account, anything I have behind a password. In a few short steps we go from ‘worthless’ emails to major financial and identity theft.

Starting to look a little more serious now, isn’t it?

Secondly, you have to be aware of social engineering, and the fact that most hackers looking for passwords get them by collecting very small, seemingly unimportant pieces of information that when put together lead to the more important stuff.

Social engineering is a little out of the scope for this post, so I’ll just keep it simple. Most people tend to use things like their spouses name, date of birth etc as passwords. So, even if you use separate passwords for you bank and webmail, if I can crack a weak email password…I can get information about you from your emails that can give me a clue to your bank password. People tend to use things like a spouses name, or their date of birth etc…all easily gleaned from a few choice emails.

Choosing a Secure Password

There are a list of passwords hackers always try first. Your date of birth, your date of birth backwards, ‘Password’, ‘letmein’, ‘God’, ‘qwerty’ etc. Sadly, a lot of the time, passwords from this relatively short list are usually the correct ones….good bye bank balance.

So what should you do, and what makes a secure, strong password?

Well, first of all, avoid any from the above list…even spelled backwards. If you think a hacker isn’t willing to sit in front of a PC for a few hours trying passwords, you’re kidding yourself.

Secondly, avoid anything obvious or personal. When I was in college, there was a classmate who got his user account hacked on an almost daily basis. (Luckily, it was by his friends as a practical joke). But what made his passwords so easy to crack?

Well, he started with the name of his favorite football team. Then he changed it to the team manager’s name, then their home stadium, then went through a list of the players…you get the idea. He gave the ‘hackers’ a very small sample of passwords to try. If I want to crack your password, I’m going to try everything from your husband or wife’s name, to your pet’s name, to the title of your favorite song.

The trick is to pick something totally and completely random, preferably not even a dictionary word. I’ll explain why in the next section.

The thing is people want passwords that are ‘easy to remember’, and a basic rule of thumb is the easier it is for you to remember, the easier it is for anyone with a little bit if knowledge about you to crack. However, memorizing isn’t all that hard. You remembered your phone number easily enough, right? And that’s just a random grouping of numbers!

If you want to be secure, remembering a random password is easy enough.

Beyond Guessing

Remember how I said to even avoid dictionary words? Well, that’s because they are easily cracked by ‘dictionary cracker’ software. A program on the hacker’s computer simply enters word after word, hoping it will stumble upon the correct one.

Bearing in mind that a dictionary cracker can try hundreds of words per second, it could crack a dictionary word password in just a few seconds.

Next comes something that surprised me. I prided myself on the fact that my passwords were all completely random 10-digit numbers. Absolutely impossible to guess, and nothing you’d find in a dictionary hacker.

Then I experimented and found a piece of software that managed to crack my passwords in under three seconds.

How did it do this? I’ll tell you.

Another common hacker tool is a plain brute-force cracker. It just repeatedly tries to crack your password by trying random groupings of letters or numbers. So, my ten digit password wasn’t difficult to crack at all. It simply counted up from 0000000000 to 9999999999 in sequence until it got the right combination. (a feat that took it less than three seconds). It’s the equivalent of trying to break into one of those three digit briefcase locks by just trying every combination until you get to the one that works. Despite the fact that a ten digit number has 10000000000 possible combinations, we’re also using a computer than can try hundreds of thousand of combinations a second…it doesn’t take long at all.

So how do you beat this?

Well, the truth is you can’t. Not really. All passwords can be broken, but the aim of the game is to have a password that will simply take too long to crack. A committed hacker might leave a cracker running for a few days or a week or two…but if your password is strong to the point where it will take hundreds or thousands of years to crack…you can safely assume you’re secure.

Ok, to understand how to beat these crackers, you have to understand how they work.

It will start by simply running through the alphabet and trying each letter it comes across as a password. (Just in case you’re dumb enough to have the letter ‘A’ as your password). If that doesn’t work, it’ll try two letters, going through the entire alphabet in every possible combination. If that doesn’t work, it’ll move up to three letters and so on and so on. Then it will do the same with numbers. Then it will try with mixtures of letters and numbers.

So what does this tell us so far?

It tells us that the strongest password will be a mixture of letters and numbers, and the longer your password, the harder it is to crack. Like we’ve already seen, it can crack a ten digit number in seconds, the same with any length of word…but by mixing numbers and letters together, it suddenly makes the job a whole lot harder.

However, the longer your password, the harder it is to crack. I can’t stress this enough. Going from a 5 character password to a 10 character password makes an almost unbelievable difference in how difficult it is to crack…I’ll explain this in detail later.

So, it’s simple enough to see that by mixing letters and numbers, the cracker has to try every single combination of the numbers 1-9 and the letters A-Z mixed together in a long sequence of characters. By adding more digits, we’re multiplying the possible number of possibilities exponentially.

However, there’s still more you can do.

Passwords tend to be case-sensitive, so mixing capitals with lower-case letters also exponentially increases the number of possibilities. Inserting special characters, such as !,@,#,$, or % ramps up the number of possibilities as well. (By using a mixture of upper and lower case letters, we’re doubling the amount of alphabetical letters the cracker has to deal with…even more so with special characters).

If this seems like a lot of trouble, here’s the difference it makes:

A five character password using only numbers and letters would take about two and a half hours to crack, but only twelve seconds if you only use lower case letters.

A seven character password using only numbers and letters would take about two and a half years to crack, but only about two hours and forty-five minutes using only lower-case letters.

A ten character password would take over four and half years to crack, but (and this is the big point of all this), 1,900,000 years to crack using a mixture of upper and lower case.

So by now you see my point, even a supposedly ‘strong’ five character password can be cracked in a couple of hours, even using upper and lower case letters. By moving to seven characters we’re at a much more strong 2.5 years, and once we get to 10 characters you’re changing the amount of time it will take to crack from two and a half hours to almost two million years.

Summing Up

DO NOT : Use common words or phrases.

DO NOT : Use short passwords.

DO NOT : Use anything ‘guessable’ by someone who knows a little about you.

DO : Use random strings of letters, numbers and special characters.

DO : Use a different password for each account you have.

Lastly, the best tip I can give you:

It doesn’t matter how strong your password is if you write it down and leave it lying around for someone to find. That’s about as secure as writing your PIN number on the back of your cash-card.

A Little Bit About Internet Hoaxes

2007-04-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

Please read this article about internet hoaxes. It describes what exactly a hoax is (complete with examples) and gives you a couple of links to web sites (such as snopes, which is my personal favorite) that are devoted to debunking hoaxes and urban legends.

Send this link to everyone you know within 30 seconds, or your computer will be destroyed by the Travelocity Roaming Gnome.

Augmented Reality

2007-04-04T23:45:00.001-07:00

“Augmented Reality” is definitely on its way into our daily lives.

So, what exactly is Augmented Reality? The easiest way to explain AR is by using the fighter-pilot’s heads-up display as an example. In simplest terms it’s an ‘overlay’ on real life.

Of course, this has literally hundreds of applications. HUD displays in your car that warn you of threats and let you check your GPS without taking your eyes off the road. Spectacle-mounted displays for tourism that point out interesting sights or give you more information on what you’re looking at…and of course tactical overlays for the military. The same display that a fighter pilot gets on his aircraft in a helmet mounted display for the foot soldier.

Of course, this is Geekology, so I want to talk about the applications for gaming.

To do this, we have to go back in time.

Virtual Reality was an excellent idea. If you offered any gamer a pair of glasses that they plugged into their PC or console, so they could look around in an FPS just by moving their head, while using a separate gun peripheral to actually shoot, you’d struggle to keep up with demand.

It’s one of the things Nintendo’s Wii has proven. One of the main reasons more people don’t play games is because of the learning curve of the controls. If you sit an non-gamer in front of a FPS, chances are they’ll lose patience before getting the hang of it. On the other hand, an intuitive, natural peripheral removes (or at least lessens) that early learning curve.

Unfortunately, VR was introduced way ahead of its time. People simply didn’t want to have to wear an overly heavy headset to play a terrible looking game running at around 5 frames per second. The other big hardware limitation is the motion sensors took a while to catch up. Move your head too quickly, and your viewpoint would shift after your head had moved.

Long story short, you where asking a late-80’s computer to render a 3D world (twice, because each eye had a slightly different viewpoint to give the stereoscopic 3D effect), while tracking multiple motion sensors.

Unfortunately, VR went down in history as a failed experiment. A good few VR gaming centers popped up around the world, and they all went out of business. No one wants to spend money on something that was such a spectacular failure…especially when ‘traditional’ gaming is doing so well.

So despite the fact that the Wii has proven that motion sensors in a peripheral can work extremely well, and that we can now build VR headsets that aren’t much bigger or heavier than a regular set of glasses…it’s doubtful we’ll see VR in our homes any time soon…despite the average desktop PC or games console are more than powerful enough to support them.

However, this is why I see AR as being one of the ‘next big things’. AR for gaming uses similar technology to VR, but is different enough to convince the people with the money to invest in it.

So how would AR work with gaming?

I’ve described AR as an ‘overlay on real life’. So consider some of the possibilities of this.

The easiest one to imagine is a form of AR ‘paintball’. Paintball is great fun, but it has a few drawbacks. You need a fairly large group of people to actually play, it’s messy, it hurts when you get hit…and you’re stuck using a paintball gun.

So let’s look at the AR equivalent.

You can use normal, physical environments, or have obstacles and cover supplied by the AR system. You can play against other people or AR opponents…and the most exciting thing from a gamer’s point of view is that you can use a whole supply of real world or sci-fi weapons.

So, despite the fact you’re holding a generic looking plastic rifle, what you’re seeing in your hands is a full-on assault rifle, a star-wars blaster or a star-trek phaser rifle. When you fire it, you get the realistic sound played through headphones, and see the muzzle-flash, tracer rounds or ‘phaser beam’ coming from the end of your weapon.

With the use of special gloves you can pull a virtual grenade from your virtual belt and throw it at your enemy.

One thing you can’t do with traditional paintball is shoulder a rocket launcher and fire it at an on-coming tank and see a spectacular explosion. AR allows you a much more realistic experience, with the only chance of injury being a twisted ankle or falling over. While paintballs are definitely non-lethal…get hit in the eye (or the nuts) and you’re in a world of hurt. Getting hit with a virtual weapon, you’re literally getting hit with nothing, and that’s incredibly hard to get hurt with.

You may see a grenade land at your feet before going off with an ear-splitting explosion…but that only exists in the game.

In other words, what we’re looking at is the most realistic game in the world. If you see an enemy (virtual or otherwise) shoot at you or throw a grenade, you actually have to run like hell for cover. When you shoot someone, your AR display shows the hit, and informs you they’re out of the game.

Think about it. This is something you could play in any open area…or an elaborate set up in a theme-park style ‘AR center’ where only the weapons and special effects are AR.

Of course, there are some downsides. In order for AR to work in a given area, it has to know the layout of that area and be able to track you in it. In a purely open area, this isn’t a problem, all the kit would have to do is track your direction and speed of movement…but in a more built up area, you’d have enemies running through walls and shooting you through real world cover. I’m also sure that something so realistic (even if you’re using non-real world weapons), would have people like Jack Thompson foaming at the mouth about these new ‘murder simulators’.

On the upside, the technology is already there. It will be a while before anything like this will be available as a consumer product, but it shouldn’t be too long before something like this is available in places like commercial laser-tag arenas.

The main reason I see this technology eventually becoming commonplace is that it has a multitude of applications other than entertainment. It would be a great training aid for the Army, navigation aid for cars etc.

Basically, flight simulators started out as a military training application, and today we have flight simulators on our computers that are just as technically accurate as the air force has (minus the full-size cockpit and huge panoramic screens of course).

AR is in our future, and personally, I can’t wait.

Cranky Geek #1

2007-04-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

Remember when the internet was made up of smart people?

Ok, I don’t want to come across as an elitist snob here, but back in the day if you wanted to get online, you actually had to understand how a computer worked. Today, you call the cable guy and everything is set up for you.

On the one hand, this is a good thing. On the other, it means the internet is slowly filling up with dumb people.

The ‘barrier to entry’ has been completely taken away. Back when I started my first website, I was given some free webspace and a user name and password to an FTP site. If you wanted a website, you needed to at least have a basic grasp of HTML. Today, you can get yourself a blog or a myspace page with a simple username and password.

So what’s the big deal? Why is this a problem?

Well, a few things started me thinking about this.

The first was a story I read recently. Some guy started a business website and simply hotlinked a bunch of images from someone else’s site. The guy who actually owned and hosted the images removed them from his own site, thereby ‘breaking’ the links the leecher had on his site.

Can you guess what happened next?

The leecher fired off an angry email demanding the guy put these images back up because ‘it was hurting his business, and unless he put the images back up, he’d sue.’

That’s right, this guy was using someone else’s copyrighted work without permission, was using up someone else’s bandwidth by not even hosting them himself…and believes he can sue the legal owner of these images for not letting him steal his work and bandwidth.

That’s like someone stealing my car every day to go to work, using the gas I put in the car…then threatening to call the police because I bought a new car, which his stolen key won’t work with.

The second thing is forums…and I mean any forum.

Back in the day, if I was having computer problems I could go to a forum, post a request for help and in a few hours receive a few highly useful and grammatically correct answers. That’s what forums used to be for. Communal help, debate and discussion. Suprisingly, back in the day, if you disagreed with someone on a forum, they’d rationally and calmly put forward their viewpoint and why they believed they where right…not call you a fag and tell you your mother is really good at sucking dick.

Don’t get me wrong, there have always been a few assholes…but they never used to be the majority.

A few weeks ago, my combo drive wouldn’t read DVD’s. I posted a request for help on a tech-support forum, asking if anyone had had similar issues with the same drive and if they came up with a fix. I got the following replies:

“Lolz! Ur drive SUX! LITE-ON is ASS! Buy a new one!”

“Just bin it.”

“Liteon RULEZ, go suk a dick, Sony whore!”

Etc, etc, etc.

After a few days I got a reply from someone telling me that combo drives use two different laser systems, so it’s possible for a combo drive to read CDs but not DVDs…but not before my thread was hijacked by people arguing whether my particular type of drive sucked or not…including a good few messages where the forum trolls called each other ‘fagz’ and explained in detail what they’d do to each other’s mothers.

Oh, and for some reason this has given rise to the phenomenon where people believe the length of time they’ve belonged to a particular forum is directly proportional to how much they know. It doesn’t matter if the new guy cut his teeth on a Sinclair ZX, has built more computers than he can count and works as a professional systems analyst. The 14 year old whose only experience with computers is fitting an extra half gig of memory in his mom’s computer (on the third try because he bought the wrong type the first two times) obviously knows more because he signed up for the forum 6 months before the other guy.

Then we come to the people who really should know better. This story had me shaking my head:

I read a story written by a web designer who was approached by a fairly major company wanting a new website. They said they wanted a video on the first page of their site in DVD quality, but didn’t want it to stream and the load time must be zero. When the web designer pointed out that it was just plain impossible to do that he was told “Well, if you and your team are too incompetent to make it happen, we’ll take our business elsewhere!”

This is exactly what I’m talking about. If you can’t grasp the fact that it’s not possible to get a 500mb movie file to completely download and start playing on a computer with zero load time…you have no business running a website. That’s like me going to Boeing and saying “I want you to design a plane for me. it must carry at least 5000 passengers, break mach 2, but it must use no fuel whatsoever and be absolutely indestructible. You will do this for $17.50 cents, and if you’re too stupid to make this happen, I’ll take my business elsewhere!”

In other words “I have absolutely no idea how any of this works, so I’m just going to demand certain things from you, and call you stupid if you can’t make it happen, even if you’d need to break the laws of physics to make it work.”

Sigh…

We’ve moved directly from people who know their stuff to people who think downloading illegal music from Bittorrent makes them a hacker, setting up a plug and play wireless router makes them a hardware god, that they can demand a site be taken down because they find it offensive…and who for some reason believe that talking in ‘1337 5P34K’ is actually impressive.

Newsflash, people…the ability to swap letters for numbers and other letters that look like the original letters does not make you a 133T H4XX0R…it makes you a tool. You’re like the ex-private schoolboy living in a subdivision who thinks wearing really baggy pants and listening saying ‘dawg’ a lot makes them ‘Gangsta’.

However, I think the worst hit part of the online world is the online gaming community.

Back when I got into gaming, only geeks played games. If you wanted a Doom deathmatch or a round of Duke Nukem 3D, it wasn’t plug and play. You had to set up a host, swap IP addresses, configure baud rates etc. It wasn’t as simple as signing up with EA online and putting in a username and password. People played the game to play the game, not to see how many people they could annoy.

Today, for example, I decided to give Battlefield 2142 a spin.

I logged in, joined a server, and the very first thing I see is someone firing rockets at their own team, interspersed with the odd “LOLZ ur a FAG!” thrown in for good measure. Then, I got called a ‘noob camper’ for protecting a control point. Then I got accused of being a ‘hacker’ because…you know, I actually shot someone.

Yep, stand out in the open, silhouetted against the sky while firing wildly in all directions, giving away your position to anyone within a few miles…and then you’re actually surprised that you’re dead because someone actually aimed and shot you from cover…that guy must be a hacker, right? After all, you’ve had 10 minutes of online gaming experience and you’re a Gaming God among ants.

To use a better analogy, we’ve gone from a fun board game with friends, to playing with people who tip the board over and run away laughing, scream ‘cheater’ every time someone else rolls a six and cries foul despite the fact they don’t actually know the rules.

I remember playing online shooters when the only time someone shot a member of their own team was by accident, For example I remember playing an online shooter in 1996 (Dark Forces 2 I think), and I accidentally shot a member of my own team. The conversation went like this:

“Shit, my bad, sorry.”

“np, my fault, I ran into your line of fire…damn lag.”

That was it. In a similar situation today, you’d get:

“U fucken n00b! Stop TKing u fag!”

“STFU Fag!”

“U STFU!”

“Tell ur mom she was shit when I was fuckin her last nite!”

“Fuck u, asshole, ur mom’s sucked my dick!”

…and so on and so on.

Again, there where always assholes on online games…but they weren’t the majority.

For example (From Wikipedia about Dark Forces 2):

“When a player dies online, his weapons and ammunition are stored in a "pack" which appears where died. Many players insisted on leaving these packs so that respawned players could immediately reload and be fully ready to compete. The focus, then, was not on which player could luckily pick up the biggest gun. Instead, the JK community stripped its combat of meaningless advantages. Players allowed each other to load before combat started, and similarly between each kill. Games to small numbers of points (e.g. 5 or 10) could last upward of an hour, while constantly progressing at a furious pace.”

What? Sportsmanship and trying to extract the maximum enjoyment out of a game? Nothing like today when getting the most kills through fair means or foul is usually the primary focus. Who cares if you’re using an anti-tank weapon on a single enemy taking out half of your own team in the process…a kill’s a kill!

I know I sound like a typical cranky geek, and there are some big benefits for computers, the internet and gaming finding themselves firmly in the mainstream. I suppose I just miss the days of intelligent people on the internet…back when the barrier to entry was more than just a checkbook and a phone call to the local ISP.

Harmelss Fun at Your Non-Tech Friends' Expense

2007-03-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1863529,00.asp

Used Games...The New 'Piracy'?

2007-03-30T04:19:00.001-07:00

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the buzz over the internets about outlets such as Gamestop and EB Games selling used games.

In a nutshell, the developers and publishers don’t like this one bit, because they don’t get a penny from the used sales. On the other hand, the retailers are loving it because they can buy a limited amount of new stock, then buy back that game at a ridiculously low price, and sell it at a still-high-but-lower-than-new price.

You can see the business model. Buy a handful of new copies and sell them for $60 each. Then, buy them back at about $10 a copy, and re sell them for $30. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Unfortunately, when big business starts losing money, only one group of people ends up bending over and taking it up the ass, and that’s you and me, the consumers.

The games studios cry foul, because they’re selling less games and fight under the banner that selling used games threatens future releases (They’re attacking it almost as a kind of ‘legal piracy’). The retailers don’t care because legally they’re in the right, and because they’re raking in the money hand over fist.

Then, as consumers, we get hit with even higher prices for new games…as well as a shift to digitally delivered content…and the on-going rumor that pretty soon, games for consoles will be encrypted in such a way that they’ll only play on the console they where originally played on. In other words, second hand games won’t work.

Now, I don’t know how much truth is behind that rumor (it would also completely wreck the rental industry and create exactly one buttload of ill-will with gamers), but we’re headed down a bad path.

However, the solution is simple…lower the prices for new games!

Put it this way, there’s plenty of people who won’t pirate games either through a sense of morality or just because of the risk of getting caught. However, once you take the illegality out of the situation…is anyone going to pony up $60 for a game when they can get it used for $30 or $40? Hell, is anyone going to pay $60 for a game if they can get it used for $56.99?

Now, we’ve heard the argument that games are costing more and more to produce these days, and that the price reflects the monetary investment made by their creators. But my response to that is simple: Bullshit.

Not only are games filled with more product placement and advertisements than ever before, games are now well and truly in the mainstream. Almost two million Wii’s where sold in the US alone in the first four months since launch. When I can buy a movie like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ that cost about 250 million to make…the idea that you have to charge $60 for a game like Madden 2007 is ridiculous.

Madden 2007 for the Xbox 360 made over a hundred million dollars in its first week. Something tells me it might have cost slightly less than a hundred million to make.

Yep, as you can see, used games sales are really hurting the big games companies.

It’s basic economics. Half the price and you’ll sell three times as many. Maybe if games cost a more realistic figure like $30-$40, we wouldn’t be so tempted by used copies.

In the end, it just makes me laugh that games producers are releasing low-quality games, stuffed to the gills with product placement and advertisements, at a price point that is beyond the reach of the average gamer (It’s been a long time since the ‘one game per week’ $20 price point)…then they have the sheer balls to blame declining sales on things like used games and piracy.

Make games more affordable and you’ll start selling more. Try giving a little back to the people who have supported your business since Donkey Kong, instead of charging ridiculous prices and trying to tell us we’re being ‘traitors’ and putting gaming at risk by not paying through the nose for something we can get at a reasonable price used.

Oh, and stopping us from taking a game to a buddies house to play on their console?

That would be a really, really bad idea.

I can't stress this enough

2007-03-27T07:46:00.001-07:00

When in doubt, reboot.

Miraculous to Commonplace is 3.6 Seconds

2007-03-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

So I got up this morning, turned the computer on, only to have it hang shortly after the bios self-test. This was the point my wife pointed out, matter of factly, that it had done the same to her that morning.

I love that about non-geeks. It’s a problem, and we’ll obviously be able to fix it, you know, no big deal.

So after rebooting a few times and getting the same result, I cursed at the machine. Luckily, I had an inkling, went into the bios, reset everything to default and *poof* everything was working again.

The whole thing made me think though. In front of me I have a machine that was pure science fiction not too long ago. Because of a minor fault, a couple of bits getting switched and a minor inconvenience, I decided it was a piece of shit, good for nothing pile of trash. Like Dark Helmet said “Even in the future nothing works!”

I’m using an incredibly sophisticated, complicated machine…and I expect it to work like magic every time I press the on button.

What struck me most about this is how soon the miraculous becomes commonplace. As a race, we get used to things really easily. When something we only dreamt about when we were kids actually makes it into production, we get bored and take it for granted in a very short time span.

For example, I remember growing up and watching episodes of ‘Star Trek’. I remember thinking how cool it would be when we could actually see the person we’re talking to as we’re talking to them. Today, I can do that on Skype with a couple of mouse clicks…and it doesn’t seem nearly as amazing as I thought it would.

Slightly more recently, I remember reading an article on Digital TV. This was back when the norm for TV was an antenna on the roof, and just four channels. They mentioned how you’d be able to get hundreds of channels, and watch live sporting events and be able to choose your own camera angle. For me, someone who has always been deeply into technology, they might as well have been talking about hover-boards or Trek-style transporters. I couldn’t wait.

Then, of course, digital became the norm and what happens? We bitch about not getting every channel in HD, or occasional outages.

If you really look at this, you can see the pattern. Every day we get closer to sci-fi level technology, then we complain that it doesn’t work exactly right, all the time.

If we jump into out trusty way-back machine, and go back twenty years, we’ll see just how far we’ve come.

It’s 1987. My computer is an Acorn Electron, it has a whole 1k of memory and a 1.5 mhz processor. If you wanted software for it, you’re most likely to copy out the BASIC program from a magazine. If you’re lucky, you have a tape-deck to save it on. The internet is just a pipe-dream. If you want to talk or write to someone overseas, you either make an uber-expensive phonecall, or write an actual letter and wait around 2 weeks for a reply. Flat screen TV’s are years away and VCR’s are the height of home entertainment technology. You can also forget surround sound. If you want to listen to music, you either pull out a vinyl album or listen to a cassette. You can forget about iPods, a big, chunky walkman is the best you’re going to get. If you want to drive somewhere and don’t know the way, you pull out a map and look for roadsigns, you can forget that voice-activated in-car navigation system, only James Bond has one of those.

See what I mean?

Today we have computers that made the supercomputers of the time look like pocket calculators. Making a CD is trivial and VCR’s are now officially obsolete technology. Do we feel like we’re living in a technological paradise? No, because the battery life on an iPod sucks, and that PSP has a dead pixel on the screen.

Maybe at the grand old age of 26, I’m just getting old. I remember in the late 90’s a cousin of mine coming over to my house to use the internet to do a report for school. I sat him down in front of the computer, showed him how to use Google, and his response was:

“You mean I have to go through all these links by hand?”

Yep, the idea of actually having to click the links, read through some pages to find what he needed and press ‘print’ was way to much trouble.

That’s funny, when I was in his grade at school, I had to walk to the library, look through a card catalogue, find a book and actually read it and write it out on paper with an actual pen. Hyper-linked text, a search function and a way to copy the parts I needed without having to write would have been awesome.

The same was true of my dear old mother. She signed up for internet banking, and because we where on dial-up (broadband wasn’t around until a year or two later, unless you wanted to pay about $400 a month for the connection), it was running a little slow because she decided to do her banking during peak hours. (That was also back when if you went on the internet during peak hours, there was a very noticeable slowdown as all the bandwidth got sucked up).

Anyway, she complained and called internet banking ‘worthless’ because she was having to wait a couple minutes for each page to load.

Given that the alternative was to wait until the next day when the banks re-opened, get in the car, drive into town, pay for parking, walk to the bank, wait in line and talk to a teller…surely waiting 45 seconds for a page to load was a huge convenience.

Not to my mother.

The problem is, as a species, we can get used to pretty much anything, and as soon as we’re handed a new technology, it very quickly becomes commonplace and taken for granted. What’s worse is when we have these technological marvels in our grubby mitts, we expect them to work flawlessly all the time.

Basically, when we should just be amazed that we can have a video conference with someone anywhere else in the world, using a laptop and a broadband wireless connection…we complain because the wireless card we got from our broadband provider doesn’t have very good signal strength in some areas. You can take a picture, instantly see what it looks like on the camera’s LCD screen, then look at and edit it on your computer’s screen and print it yourself. Back in the day you’d have had to take the film to a drugstore, pay a few dollars, wait a few days and get what you were given…but the battery life on the camera sucks, and the printer is so slow.

The other big point is that it’s not exactly as if things advance so slowly, we never see a big change in a short period of time. My first ‘real’ PC back in 1995 was a Pentium 75, with 8mb of memory and a 510 gigabye hard drive. Considering my PC now is purely middle off the road, yet has 128 times more memory, a processor that runs 28 times faster and a whopping 313 times more storage space. That’s one hell of a leap forward for just over ten years.

If we assume that computers are going to continue improving at the same rate, in another ten years, a mid-range computer will have a 56ghz processor, 131 gigabytes of memory and over 50,000 gigabyte hard drives. And you know what? We’ll complain about it being too slow to run the latest games.

So, looking to the future, we can pretty much guarantee that our great, great, great grandchildren will be bitching that their flying car doesn’t get good enough mileage, that the transport to the Mars colony was late again and that their personal holodeck causes glitches in far off scenery if you move too quickly.

Record Labels Becoming Obsolete?

2007-03-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about the RIAA recently, trying to decide whether they’re just plain stupid, over-zealous or if their current ‘sue everybody’ modus operandi is part of a strategy to keep control of something that’s slowly but surely slipping away from them.

Multiple studies have shown that piracy simply isn’t effecting the music industry enough to warrant their reaction. In fact, studies have shown that peer to peer networking is, in essence, acting as free advertising for them.

However, they’re blaming every drop in sales on piracy, and going out of their way to sue individuals who’ve downloaded a couple of tracks. I can understand going after the ‘big’ pirates. The people who download an album, duplicate it and sell it for profit. But a college student who downloaded a couple songs?

You see, on the one hand, ‘big’ pirates are making a profit and directly stealing money from the labels. Money is going to them that should rightly be going to the artists.

However, I think a lot of these other ‘small time’ pirates are people who think like me. Sure I like music, but I’m not ‘into’ music enough to actually spend any money on it. I’ll listen to the radio in the car, but unless I really, really like a song, I won’t buy it.

While this isn’t an ‘excuse’ for piracy, or makes it any less illegal, it’s the “I’ll take it for free” syndrome. If you can get it for free, you’ll take it. If you have to pay for it, you won’t bother.

So, long story short, if someone like me downloads a few songs, they never would have actually bought the track anyway, meaning it has no effect on sales. (Of course, if you want to listen to a song, you should pay for it, but I think this makes my point…most ‘small-time’ piracy takes very little money from the labels).

But I digress.

Well, I have a theory about the RIAA’s actions, and here it is:

The RIAA (which is an association of record labels) is currently in a massively powerful position. Everything is on their terms.

Let’s look at this from the point of view of an up-and-coming band.

If you actually get noticed by a label, you have absolutely no power or control. It’s either step up, or step aside. Don’t like the contract you’re offered? Don’t like the changes the label wants to make to your line-up or music? Tough. There’s a few hundred thousand other bands out there behind you, waiting for your spot.

In other words, the label can make a ton of money off you, of which you’ll see very little, and there’s nothing much you can do about it if you want to see your album in stores.

It’s standard practice to make musicians pay for their own wardrobe, music video production costs, studio time, advertising costs etc. In other words, all of those costs come out of your share of the profits.

Long story short, you can sell a million copies of your album and net millions of dollars, but the lion’s share of it goes to the label. Only if you become insanely popular can you start to dictate terms. So only after you’ve made the label a ton of money can you get fair treatment…if you haven’t signed a long-term contract.

Well, let’s fast forward a little bit.

In the past, if you wanted to record your band, you basically had a tape-recorder in a garage. Anything even close to professional level equipment was prohibitively expensive.

Today, it’s easy enough to have a professional level recording setup in your own home. You don’t need a bank of mixers, you just need a mid-range PC and a copy of Adobe Audition. Making your own CD’s? Easy!

So, point one, you no longer need a label to record your band.

So what about promotion and distribution? Surely you need a label for that?

Well, not really. Set up a website and sell your CD’s through there. You don’t have to pay a commercial disc-pressing service to make 50,000 copies and hope they sell. Buy a stack of CD-R’s and a labeler and make them as you need them…or sidestep CD’s all together and sell the MP3 version directly from your site.

Chances are you won’t sell nearly as many copies as you would going through a major label, but the beauty is, you don’t really have to. Once you’ve paid your webhosting and bandwidth fees, you keep every penny you make.

For example, the current average royalty payment to the actual artists is between 8% and 25% depending on the popularity of the artists. So we can assume that a brand new band will make 8% if they’re lucky. But first, they only get royalties on 75% of their total sales because 25% goes to pay for packaging costs. Then, after all this, they lose (as previously stated) recording costs, touring costs etc.

Let’s look at a typical example:

Sell a million albums at $15 a piece. Gross income, $15,000,000 dollars.

$15,000,000 –minus 25% packaging costs = $14,625,000

8% royalties on 14,625,000 = $1,170,000

Minus $300,000 recording costs

Minus $200,000 promotion costs

Minus $100,000 touring costs

Minus $200,000 Music video costs

Final Total = $370,000

[Average costs and percentages taken from howstuffworks.com]

So, sure, you make $370,000, but considering your album made fifteen million, it hardly seems fair. Sell 20,000 albums yourself at $15 a piece and you’ve made almost as much.

So, what does all this mean?

It means the RIAA may be realizing that the music label is slowly becoming obsolete. Why go through a label when you have the ability to record, produce, promote and distribute your music on your own?

Yes, it’s highly unlikely you’ll become as rich and famous by self publishing as you would going through a major label, but this technology is still in its infancy, and it’s not so far fetched to believe that self publishing may become much more popular (if not the norm) in the next few years.

When we realize this, we see that it’s in the RIAA’s best interests to blame any drop in sales on piracy. Maybe part of the reason for the drop in sales is that people are buying more music from self-publishing indie bands.

People buying music directly from bands means no money in the RIAA’s pockets, so their constant lawsuits against individuals could be construed as an attempt to convince the ‘powers that be’ to give them yet more power to control online music sales.

File sharing and P2P networks are a great way for independent bands to get their music ‘out there’…which is exactly what the RIAA doesn’t want.

Enterprise Networks Can Be Complicated

2007-03-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

I need to take a minute to pat myself on the back (and to pat my co-worker Tom's back as well). Several months ago, an end user came to me, complaining that his network connectivity was intermittently slow, and to a horrible extent. Sometimes he could work just fine, but other times, it would take several minutes just to send a basic email. This problem only impacted people in a specific area on the network, and there was no visible rhyme or reason to when things would slow down.

This problem was so complicated that it's been an issue for longer than I've worked for the company. My predecessor -- one of the guys who helped build the network -- was unable to find the problem after working on it for several months himself. He was so convinced that no problem existed that he eventually refused to do any more work on it and said it was all in the end-users' heads. (Maybe that's part of why he got canned.)

This problem was first reported to me about three months ago. I did the cursory work on the problem and couldn't find anything wrong. In retrospect, I didn't immediately isolate the problem for two reasons... it was intermittent, and the physical layout of the network is poorly documented. After failing to quickly isolate the root issue, I told the end-user that a solution would be slow coming, but that I would continue working on it as time permitted.

My next step was to create a manually-launched process that would monitor the problem when it occurred. I created a program that would ping various servers in the building when the end-user clicked on a shortcut, and instructed the guy to click on this shortcut every time he experienced slow network performance and to send me an email when this happened, so I could look at the file produced by this program. For you geeks out there, it was a .bat file that pinged several different servers on the network and directed the output to a .txt file, complete with ping times and a date-time stamp saying when the process occurred. I still didn't find any rhyme or reason to the latency.

Eventually, Tom and I did some network sniffing, which included mapping the route from the backbone of the network to the end-user's machine, and the connection speed. We were astonished with the results. There was a fiber connection from the backbone to their segment of the network, but it was created using old technology and the hardware on each end of the fiber connection was a 10 megabit connection, running in half-duplex. Here we've got this state-of-the-art fiber connection, and it's running at the slowest allowable rate.

We figured we'd have to break open the checkbook to implement a solution, but Tom found a 100 megabit fiber connection available on the backbone, and we also discovered an available 100 megabit fiber-to-copper converter. After about 15 minutes of downtime (and countless man-hours of work) we fixed the problem. Needless to say, we're pretty proud of ourselves, and I plan to spend the next few weeks using a network monitoring tool to find similar bottlenecks in the network. Out of necessity, Tom and I are throwing out any and all assumptions that a fiber connection to the backbone means a fast connection to the network's core.

To make things even better, this problem has also fixed a couple of other issues that we didn't immediately connect with this slow connection speed. It took a lot of work, but we have made several users very happy for a very long time. Like I said, enterprise networks can be very complicated creatures, and things definitely can be different than they appear!

A Little Heart

2007-03-13T08:23:00.001-07:00

In the past I’ve written how eventually graphics will become so realistic that we’ll have to look for other areas of gaming to ‘improve’ to keep our interest.

In my last post on this topic, I suggested Artificial Intelligence was the way forward. Today I’ll discuss another very important element, namely story.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the story behind a video game isn’t really story at all. It’s more a brief paragraph-worth of back story to explain and justify what the player has to do in the game.

Doom, for example, had the makings of a good story. Scientists on Mars experiment in teleportation technology, then accidentally open a portal to hell and all manner of demons break loose.

Unfortunately, that was the start and end of it. Fair enough, this wasn’t a Role-Playing game, but all your character did was run around a series of environments and shoot at demons.

So Doom’s story is essentially “Demons are bad and they need killing. Here’s a gun and the demons are over there.”

Hardly compelling stuff. Half-Life had essentially the same story (just swap demons for aliens), but it was far more interesting.

When we look at the more popular games of the past few years, we see that a lot of them had deep, involving storylines. The name of the game is getting the player emotionally invested in the story, make them care what happens to the characters, and like a good book, keep the player playing because he can’t wait to see what happens next.

Let’s look at ‘Fable’.

I see Fable as more of a prototype than an actual game in that it features many ideas and concepts that, while original, weren’t truly realized. The idea that your character’s appearance changes based on your actions, the fact you age and the fact you can get married are all incredibly compelling.

However, if we look at marriage in Fable, it’s a very simple affair and has no real impact on gameplay. You find a female (or male depending on your sexual preferences) and depending on how famous you are and how well you treat your prospective spouse, you can propose marriage.

If you get married, you get a cut scene. That’s it.

Let’s take this a step further. Let’s say you’re playing an RPG and can not only get married, but can have children, and actually have a family.

Now wouldn’t that add an extra layer of depth to gameplay? In an RPG, you find your family’s home is too close to a dangerous area and is at risk of being attacked, so you rush home to move them somewhere safer. You hear the town where your family lives has fallen under attack and rush home to find if they’re safe. Your son or daughter grows up and asks if he can come with you on your next adventure, do you let them?

It’s personal involvement. It’s far easier to care about a story where you’re made to care about people and what happens to them…rather than the usual faceless villain attacking yet another generic group of villagers/colonists/downtrodden peoples.

Unfortunately, this is where ‘game-predjudice’ stops us in our tracks. Who wants to have a fake ‘relationship’ in a game? How can you actually care about what happens to a video-game character? That’s just sad! Turn of the computer and get a real life!

Well, to cast this in its proper light, you could say the same thing about any book you’ve ever read, or any movie you’ve ever seen. Who cares if Harry Potter escapes Voldemort? Who cares if Frodo manages to cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom? Who cares if Peter Parker gets Mary Jane?

Basically, we have no problems getting emotionally invested in a movie or a book, despite the fact we’re observing fictional characters.

We can quite happily stand up and cheer when a guy with a red cape and his underpants on the outside steps out of the plane he just saved, into a crowded baseball stadium filled with cheering people…but feel anything when the character who’s been your mentor for 12 hours of gameplay gets killed or betrays you? That’s just silly.

The big point here is that if we don’t care for the characters, we don’t care about the story. If we don’t care if the guy gets the girl, or if the villain is vanquished, why are we bothering taking the story in at all?

When we look at it like that, the only real difference is that videogames are interactive and allow the player to make choices on how the story goes. In fact, it could be said it’s much more easy and natural to become emotionally invested in what happens to video game characters because we have an active input in the story. When a character dies in a movie, there’s nothing we can do about it. In a game, it’s up to us to avenge their death, or wonder if they still would have died had we done something different. Of course, I’m not talking about “Space Invaders” here. I’m not saying you should feel anything when one of your favorite units in Command and Conquer gets destroyed…but a well written, well acted character? Why not?

Returning to ‘Fable’ lets me illustrate this point. [Spoiler Warning]

Near the end of the game, you defeat ‘Jack of Blades’ and your sister tells you that you have a choice. Kill her with the magical sword you’ve taken from the bad guy and absorb its almost unlimited power, or cast it into a vortex where it will be lost forever, where its evil can never threaten the world again.

Now from a pure gameplay standpoint, the choice is simple. Kill your sister and keep the sword. She’s not really your sister, she’s just a game character after all…and having the sword will make the rest of the game much easier. It’s a power-up, plain and simple.

However, like with a good movie, if you suspend disbelief and get into the character, it becomes a much more difficult choice.

I’d played the game as a ‘good’ character. I decided to make him a classic moral hero.

If you think about what the sister character had gone through (Kidnapped as a child from her home, had her eyes cut out by her kidnapper and left for dead in the woods), what would make a better ending to the story for me? Would my character throw away his morality, slay his sister and rule like a tyrant? Or give up his chance at ultimate power for the sake of what little is left of his family?

I threw the sword into the vortex, and I felt good about it. Yeah, I threw away a valuable in game item for the sake of a video game character…but it felt good.

In conclusion, there’s nothing wrong with games having a little heart.

Notice how in Star Wars : Episode 3, Emperor Palpatine seemed much more evil because you saw how he destroyed Anakin’s family? How he used people like puppets? How he took Anakin’s love for Padme and poisoned and twisted it to turn Anakin into Darth Vader? It made it personal and gave the movie some heart.

This is what games need.

The player needs to be given personal involvement. It’s much more satisfying and engaging when you’re fighting an enemy who has personally wronged you or someone you care about, rather than some faceless ‘uber-villain’ who destroyed a planet with a big laser.

In Fable, you defeat ‘Jack of Blades’, because he killed your father, kidnapped and tortured your mother and cut out your sister’s eyes and left her for dead. In Doom, you defeat the big demon at the end because, well, ya know, he’s a demon… and everyone knows demons are evil. Come on…look at his horns, and he’s breathing fire!

RIAA - At it Again

2007-03-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

The RIAA are at it again.

From Yahoo news:

“The RIAA has sent letters to 50 Ohio University students telling them each to pay $3,000 for illegally downloaded music files to avoid lawsuits accusing them of stealing songs from the Internet, the AP reports. The association, which is stepping up its legal action on college campuses, has already sued more than 18,000 computers users since 2003, and more than 1,000 of them were computer users at 130 universities.”

Anyone else think this is getting ridiculous, and yet another case of unfair scare-tactics?

The RIAA is becoming another case of a private organization with far too much money and too much power. They’re in the situation now where they can pretty much do whatever they like, legal or illegal…because even if you’re innocent and get taken to court, what chance does your average citizen have against a corporation with a bankroll of billions?

For example, imagine you’re one of these college students. You’ve downloaded a couple of albums illegally. Fair enough this is against the law and wrong, but a $3000 price tag? It’s a lower penalty if you’re caught in the local music store stealing CD’s from the shelves!

The main point here though is that these students (along with pretty much anyone caught by the RIAA) is told to pay $3000 to prevent being taken to court and sued. This isn’t an actual ‘legal’ fine, technically it’s an offer of an out of court settlement.

Of course, it’s an impossible choice. Admit guilt (even if you’re not guilty) and pay 3k, or pay a hell of a lot more on lawyers on legal fees, win or lose.

Also, if you’ve ever actually been to a college or university, you understand that the computer in your dorm isn’t only used by you. It’s used by your room-mates, your friends, your room-mate’s friends.

So what happens if it’s not actually you that’s downloaded a few tracks? You’re still faced with the same penalty: Pay $3000, or go to court and face a legal battle that you have no chance of winning.

Of course, actual ‘justice’ and fairly punishing copyright violators isn’t the point here. The point is for the RIAA to stuff its pockets and use that money to force yet more cripple-ware DRM into our music and music players (Like the iPod…you’ve bought an iPod, and legally purchased a load of songs from iTunes…feel like playing those tracks on your Zune or another media player? Tough shit, the RIAA won’t let you because you might be letting others ‘steal’ the music you’ve actually paid for.)

That’s right, it’s like buying a CD that will only play on a certain brand of CD player. Totally unfair and completely contrary to fair use laws.

It’s classic RIAA mentality. Who cares if you’re forcing unfair and illegal restrictions on millions of honest consumers? Go for McCarthy-esque witch hunt tactics instead. If the RIAA where in charge of the legal system, they wouldn’t bother with trials and actually determining guilt…they’d throw every suspect in jail, because then they’d at least know the real perpetrator was being punished.

The big thing to bear in mind here is that this ‘fine’ is a flat fee. Download a single song illegally and you’re still faced with 3k or an impossible court case. Seems a little excessive for stealing something worth about a dollar fifty.

It’s just another step downhill for the music industry. For example, the RIAA have recently decided that ripping a track from a CD you own to make your own playlist isn’t fair use. Of course it is, but when has fairness ever mattered to the RIAA?

The worst part is that people are getting pissed. Gizmodo has called to all its readers to boycott any label represented by the RIAA. People (like myself) no longer buy music from the internet, because we’re sick of DRM, crippleware and being told that we’re facing a huge fine or prison time if we do legal things with our music that fall under fair use.

So why is this bad? Because record sales will decrease. People will stop buying tracks loaded with DRM because they want the freedom we’ve had all along to play our music on any player we see fit… and the RIAA will stand up in front of Congress and blame this fall in sales on piracy and illegal music downloads. Result?

The RIAA gets more power and cripples our music and music players further.

What’s next RIAA? Throw me in jail for playing a track I’ve paid for on my stereo within earshot of other people? Charge club-goers per track played by the DJ? Fine me for whistling a song I recently heard on MTV?

My advice is cut the fuck back. Fine people for downloading music illegally, but make it more reasonable. If you fined these students a hundred bucks a piece, no one would care. Send a letter demanding they erase all illegal tracks from their computer and that they’ll face charges the next time they get caught…and you’d be viewed as just what you claim to be, a watchdog group instead of a money-grubbing bunch of jackals.

Your goal is obviously to scare the shit out of anyone who even considers pirating music, be it someone who copies CD’s and sells them on street corners, or little Timmy who downloaded a single track.

However, all you’re doing is creating resentment, ill-will and seriously pissing of genuine music buyers.

In closing, it’s was ridiculously easy for someone to copy a vinyl album to tape. Copying tapes was (and still is) a simple matter of pressing record and play. If I want to copy a music CD to another CD or to tape, I can do that in 15 seconds.

The music industry has survived up to this point with music put on media that anyone can copy at home with little or no specialized equipment (you can copy tapes or CD’s to tape with any stereo). Isn’t it amazing how for the last 40 years piracy was hardly ever mentioned in the press, and today when media is far more difficult to copy than ever before piracy is suddenly such a huge problem, a major threat to the music industry…and such a gargantuan problem that it warrant demanding a total of three hundred thousand dollars from a bunch of students who’ve probably pirated a couple albums each?

Gimme a fucking break. You want the amount of money you would have earned from over 150,000 iTunes sales?

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe through you the music industry is moving its business model away from actually selling music and instead making fines its primary revenue stream.

The DST "Bug"

2007-03-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you've all heard about the Daylight Saving Time bug, and since tomorrow's the big day, I hope you've patched your system. If you're using Windows XP and have automatic updates turned on, you don't need to do anything... Microsoft has pushed the patch out. If you're running Windows 2000 or older, you will probably need to download a manual patch, which you can download here. I have tested this manual patch on Windows 2000 Server and Windows NT and it worked as advertised. I haven't tested it on Windows 95 or 98, but am confident that it will work on those Operating Systems as well.

With this out of the way, let me give you a little more information, from the perspective of the geek in the trenches. This whole thing was brought on by some genius in Washington who claims to have done a study that showed America could save $4.4 Billion by the year 2020. I personally think his numbers are fuzzy at best, but he's pretty cock-sure of himself and virtually breaks his arm as he pats himself on the back, crowing about how awesome his idea was. In the article, Congressman Markey comments about how "Daylight Saving brings a smile to everybody's faces." What cave has this guy been living in? I don't know about you, but I absolutely DETEST setting my clocks forward, losing that hour of sleep, and spending the next week in a virtual trance as my body readjusts to its new sleep patern. I do like the extra hour of sleep in the fall, but that's technically when we go back to Standard Time, so I don't like Daylight Saving, I like Standard Time. Oh wait, this isn't a personal rant, I'm supposed to be discussing the ins and outs of this so-called bug.

I guess I really don't know what all of the fuss is about. Yeah, a lot of people are inconvenienced by this change and yes, a lot of people had to spend many hours finding and implementing a solution to a problem created by a Washington bureaucrat, but what's new? Yes, there was a "cost" associated with this fix, but it's a soft cost. Look, computer programmers and network administrators like me are generally salaried individuals. From an economic standpoint, this means that we're a fixed cost. Companies aren't really spending extra money to address this issue, it's more accurate to say that they're diverting already-existing resources to an unexpected issue. This happens all the time in business.

By the way, Microsoft has been taking a lot of flack about this and I don't understand why. Microsoft didn't create this problem, congress did. They're in the same boat as us... they were handed a problem, not of their own making, and expected to fix it. Okay, they could have started working on the solution a little earlier, but in the grand scheme of things, they've done fine. They did an adequate job of rolling out the fix, both to corporate users and to home users. I know people are bitching that Microsoft isn't supporting older Operating Systems and applications, but hey, if you're still using stuff that Microsoft is no longer supporting, it's your choice, not Microsoft's fault. That's like buying a new car with a 50,000 mile warranty and trying to hold the manufacturer responsible when something breaks at 100,000 miles. If you want the warranty, upgrade. And by the way, though Microsoft isn't "technically" supporting these older products, some of the released fixes (such as the aforementioned manual patch) work on software that's no longer supported.

And let's say the fixes don't work... what's the big deal? Okay, you show up for your meeting at the wrong time. Whoopee! Maybe you get shorted one hour of pay on the actual DST cutover day... like the company you work for won't be required to fix things. It's not like the Y2K bug (which was also a non-event). Geez, people, quit your complaining!

Dammit!! I was planning to write about the experience, and here I am writing an op ed article! Okay, down to the nuts and bolts. My co-worker and I found out about this around mid-January. Originally, he was going to work on it, but he ended up being scheduled for a week-long training class and I took over. Fortunately, he had done a lot of the research, saving me some time. My job was to finish up the research and implement the patches.

I had to patch three aspects of Microsoft... All of the Windows machines, the mail server, and the database servers. We only had one mail server and a couple of database servers, so that was all done manually. The Windows machines were also pretty easy. Microsoft gave me all of the data I need to build a utility that would push the patch out to all of the machines when a user logged on. Easy-squeezy. All I had to do was copy and paste a couple of things, some super-duper basic programming (building a batch file), and a little testing. It was several hours of work, but again, in the grand scheme of things, several hours is a drop in the bucket.

Is this DST bug inconvenient? Certainly, but in the end it's nothing compared to the Y2K bug. That one had the potential of being far more disastrous, and took far greater effort to fix. The DST issue? Bah!

Gaming... 2027 style.

2007-03-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

Predictions about the future of any technology are difficult to make. Bill Gate’s statement that “256k of memory is all anyone will ever need”, or Ken Olsen’s “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home” shows what a fools errand it can be.

However, there’s nothing wrong with a little conjecture, so today’s question is “Where will gaming be in 20 years?”

Of course, graphics will get an awful lot better as graphics hardware improves, but what about the game themselves? What will be the next big step? So hardware aside (such as VR Headsets, holographic displays etc), what will we be playing in 20 years?

Personally, I think the biggest step forward will be in artificial intelligence.

Half Life was a major step forward in gaming AI. for the first time, rather than just stand still and shoot, enemy characters would work together as a team, support and warn each other, and perform tactical maneuvers such as flushing you from behind cover with grenades.

The most recent major step forward was with Oblivion. What Bethesda created was a living breathing world, a world where the NPC’s (Non-player characters) would interact with each other without interference from the player.

Basically each NPC was given a set of ‘personality traits’ that governed how they act, as well as a series of wants and needs. For example, a hungry character might go and buy food, or depending on their morality rating, just steal it. If they chose to steal and got caught, the character they stole from would decide whether to run screaming for guards, or attack and kill the thief themselves.

The point is, none of that is actually scripted. Different personalities interact, and not even the programmers can predict what the outcome will be.

There are hundreds of Oblivion AI stories, but here’s one of my favorites:

During testing, the programmers discovered that on a certain quest, one of the NPC’s you needed to talk to, a ‘skooma’ dealer, (Skooma is an in-game drug) was always dead by the time the player reached him.

Doing a little investigating, they discovered that many of the town citizens where getting hooked on skooma and selling everything they had to support their habit. Eventually they ran out of money and killed the dealer in an attempt to get their ‘fix’. Again, none of this was scripted.

In the future, I see this idea becoming a lot more advanced, with game world populated by thousands of artificially intelligent characters, with randomly generated personalities. In other words, you become a single entity in a world of thousands, rather than a character on a linear, scripted quest.

This opens a lot of gaming possibilities.

Let’s say it’s 2027, and we’re playing the latest in the Elder Scrolls series.

You’re walking through a forest, when suddenly you’re confronted by a small group of bandits. However, rather than being faced with a scripted conversation, where the bandit’s says a pre-scripted speech and you pick your responses from a list, the character talks to you by a sophisticated speech-generation program with the NPC’s conversation being generated ‘on the fly’ based on the character’s ‘personality’.

You respond through your microphone, where speech recognition technology listens to what you say, and translates it to the NPC.

Now you have endless possibilities. You could attempt to convince the bandit you’re actually a powerful mage and get him to back off, or convince him you’re the ‘bait’ in a trap, and there are actually 10 hunters hidden in the trees ready to release a storm of arrows in their direction at your signal (unless they all lie down on the ground and let you take their weapons that is.)

It gives the player total freedom. For example, in Oblivion, there is a quest where you have to visit each town and convince each ruler to send aid to Bruma (a town under siege). In the game you convince them to do this by completing a number of “fetch” quests…but with a sophisticated enough AI system, you could simply try and talk them into it, threaten, or complete a quest for them…but rather than being scripted, again, it would be generated ‘on the fly’.

There could also be the option of simply visiting a bunch of taverns, buying everyone drinks and getting them fired up enough to help you defeat your enemies.

This would also give games unlimited replay value. You could be given an overall objective, but how you achieve it would be left entirely up to you.

So, picture this. You’re playing the latest Role Playing Game. You’re given a huge world. There are politics, opposing factions, feuds and alliances. Characters are pre-set into groups, but just like in real life, these characters can be convinced, bribed, threatened or seduced. Personalities range from the fiercely loyal, to the disgruntled ‘only here because they need the money’ characters.

You can pick a side or remain neutral. Then you do whatever you like. Ask the local guard for a job and work your way up the ranks, offer your services as a spy (while also being a double agent), find a group of like minded individuals and burn down buildings of enemies of your choice.

You can choose to get your hands dirty and do things yourself, or convince, threaten or pay people to do them for you.

So, your game experience could go like this:

You’re new to the game, and walk into a local tavern and overhear someone complaining loudly that a local corrupt city guard keeps shaking them down. So you walk over and tell them to meet you somewhere later. Then, depending on your demeanor and the NPC’s personality, the NPC decides whether to meet you or not.

If they do, you offer to ‘remove’ that pesky city guard for a small fee. (Then, depending on the NPC’s morality rating, they either agree, suggest something less drastic, or are horrified and run screaming). But, let’s assume they take you up on it.

You take out the guard and collect your money. Over time, doing similar ‘jobs’, you gain a reputation as an assassin and start to make lots of cash. Then, you hire talented people to work for you. Before you know it, you’re in control of a large network of shadowy assassins, people fear you, but you also show a legitimate likeable face to the public at large.

Then, you either offer your services to the people in power, or take them out. Of course, unlike in today’s games where taking out the head of the opposing army is just an objective, in this game, you have to worry about who will take their place, or if the instability caused by the sudden removal of a world leader would be detrimental to your ‘interests’ in that area.

Of course, then you also have to worry about spies in your ranks, or an ambitious second-in-command trying to take over. Do you try to keep your employees happy? Control them through fear? Kill one out of hand as an example to the others? Or try create a situation where having you in power is preferable to removing you?

The beauty, and the “Holy Grail” of this type of gaming is the total freedom it offers. Join a local guild and become a sword for hire, join the army and work your way up the ranks, start blacksmithing and make a tidy profit selling arms, amass large amounts of wealth through fair means or foul and become a puppet-master, manipulating the world from behind closed doors…or get a job serving drinks at a bar. It’s up to you.

You could play this type of game on as big or small scale as you like. Become a major player in the local mercantile arena, or become a major player on the world stage.

“Sandbox” games are becoming more popular, the only thing holding them back is that they, at present, can only offer the illusion of freedom. Sufficiently sophisticated AI would allow the player true freedom. A game world where you’re free to choose your own path.

Of course, right now, this sounds hopelessly far-fetched and unlikely. But considering we got from ‘Pong’ to ‘Oblivion’ in 25 years, is gaming advancing to this level in another 20 years time really that unlikely?

Podcast Service Roundup

2007-03-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

[NOTE : I should make it clear that Geekology does not accept any advertising or sponsors. This means that any positive review on Geekology is because the writer has tried and liked the product. In other words, if we recommend something it’s because we actually like it, not because we have been paid to say we like it.]

Podcasts are slowly becoming almost as popular as blogs. Unfortunately, if you wish to start your own podcast, it can be an expensive business and there are many minefields out there.

For example, many ‘free’ services come with pitifully small filesize and bandwidth limitations. You can be limited to 15 minutes per show, or suddenly find your podcast unavailable once a smallish number of people have downloaded it.

Then if you want to add more bandwidth or storage space for your podcast, you suddenly find it becoming very expensive very quickly.

Basically, the more popular you become, the more expensive it becomes to run your podcast. Of course, you can work out sponsorship and advertising deals to pay for your bandwidth, but if you’re a small podcaster, your options are limited. You end up in the middle area…your podcast is too popular to run for free, but not popular enough to attract sponsors.

So, with this group in mind, I have a couple of recommendations:

Talkshoe.com

Talkshoe is an excellent service. Not only does it provide everything you need to record and broadcast your podcast, it also allows you to livecast your podcast, allowing your listeners to call in and appear live on your show.

The website comes with video tutorials on how the whole service works, and it’s surprisingly simple. You schedule a show (type in when the show will start, it’s title and a short description of what it’s about), and then at the scheduled time, you pull up the client software and away you go.

The host has full control over who gets to talk and who doesn’t, and listeners simply click a button on their screen which flags to the host that they’re wanting to talk.

Then, not only can your audience listen live and participate (like a like call in radio show), the whole podcast is also recorded and made available to anyone who wishes to listen to it.

The only downside to talkshoe is that you’re required to actually ‘call in’ to run your podcast, that is, actually call into the service with your phone, or use a voip service such as skype (as long as you have skype-out credit).

The downside is you have to pay for the call, but the upside is that the call-in number is not a premium number. If you have free nights and weekends, or free long distance (or free local if you happen to be in the 724 area code), it still works out as free.

You’re also given the option to make the recording of your podcast private.

The only other downside is that being required to call the service, many people tend to record or broadcast using their phone, rather than with a high-quality microphone, meaning the actual audio quality suffers.

That being said, what we have here is a free service that allows people to host and broadcast live shows for free.

Mypodcast.com

Mypodcast is rare as it allows the user unlimited storage space and bandwidth for free. It doesn’t matter if your podcast is listened to by 5 people or 500,000, it never costs you a cent.

The downside is, of course, advertising. However, mypodcast manages to do this is a very easy and fair way.

First of all, you’re given control of where you place the ads within your podcast, and are only required to place one ad spot per 20 minutes of show. Luckily, these tend to be quite short (For example, when you release your first podcast, your first ad will simply be “This podcast is brought to you by mypodcast.com”). Secondly, you can choose which ads to actually place. For example, you know the ads will be at least targeted to your audience, and therefore less intrusive and less annoying to your listeners.

In other words, if your podcast is an hour long, you only need to place three ads. In other words, you’re asked to sacrifice less than 5 minutes in an hour long podcast to advertising. Not bad considering you’re getting your storage and bandwidth for free.

Secondly, you are actually paid for your advertising. Obviously, just starting out, it’s unlikely anyone will pay you anything. Rates for advertising are set on a ‘per 1000 dowloads’ basis, but you are allowed to set this rate yourself. So, if the unthinkable happens and you find yourself getting tens of thousands of downloads per episode, you could start to make some real money.

It’s also incredibly easy to set up. If you’ve ever run a blog, you’ll get it instantly. You just download a piece of software (that allows you to record your podcast and place your advertising spots), put in your login information and click “publish”. Also, while this software is very basic (you’re faced with simple ‘play’ ‘stop’ and ‘record’ controls, as well as the controls to place your ad spots), you can also open audio files and import them into this software.

In other words, you can record your podcast with your favorite software, edit it to your heart’s content, then simply drop it into the mypodcast recorder, drop in your ads and away you go.

Video Game Testing

2007-03-02T14:11:00.000-08:00

MC Etcher here!

To start out, I thought I’d answer the video-game industry questions Paulius tossed out in the Casting Call post.

(From 2000 to 2006 I worked in various roles in Video Game Testing – what we call Quality Assurance in the business).

~~~~~

What’s it like to test a game?

For the first couple of hours on a new game, it’s fun – sometimes even less time than that, depending on the game.

If you’re testing Soldier of Fortune for the Dreamcast, using a controller for an FPS gets old real quick – but hey, it’s still an FPS. Then, when you point out to the manager that the Dreamcast keyboard and mouse just came out today, you get to have a field trip to Best Buy to buy 10 sets, come back and half the team gets to test that way! Yow!

Or, you could be testing Barbie Horse Adventures, or Pre-school Edu-tainment software, or Polly Pocket – Super Splash Island for the GBA. For weeks. And while emulators exist that allow you to play GBA games on a TV - your company only has 2 of them, so you and the other guys on the team will be squinting at a 240x160 screen for 10 hours a day for a few weeks.
.

Testing games is not playing games. It’s work. You have to test and retest every menu, every setting, and every tool in every corner of the game. You hop around in every niche, you tap on every wall, you prod every prop, frob every object, every single powerup and doodad. You have to grope everything, basically. 1000 times.

…Interesting – the green powerups can’t be collected when Polly is wearing blue bonnet with the white flower, but can be collected while wearing the blue bonnet with the yellow flower. And if you change bonnets while collecting a yellow powerup, you’re teleported back to the beginning of level 1. And your save files are corrupted.

You have to be able to find that bug, that tiny annoying bug where if you have the music and sound set to OFF and the difficulty set to GEE GOLLY, the candy launcher makes a POP sound, but only when shooting at Super-Cute-Bunnies at the bottom level of Polly’s Waterpark.

But you can’t just type in the coordinates and teleport to that position to test the next version, to see if the bug is fixed.

Oh no my friends.

The crash bug only happens during a full playthrough. Which takes 9 hours on GEE GOLLY difficulty. Which is difficult, yes - even for a game tester. And there’s no sound or music at all, since that’s what you’re testing for. So you’re bored to tears by how quiet it is, and no you can’t listen to your iPod, you’re supposed to be listening for that POP sound.

Now, just that POP sound by itself would only be a C issue (minor-the game is still shippable) but it turns into a more severe issue when you get to the Bunny Boss at the end of the last level, when the POP turns into an overlapping cacophony of POPOPOPOPOPOPs that overloads the audio buffer and causes the game to crash – but only when using the Strawberry Gumdrops.

But you need to use the Strawberry Gumdrops to blow through the doors on the boss level – so just to reach the boss, you need at least 9 Strawberry Gumdrops. There are only 11 Strawberry Gumdrops in the level, and it takes 3 to kill the boss. So you have to start the level with at least 1 Strawberry Gumdrop in order to be able to test and make sure the crash bug is fixed in the new version of the game. But it takes 8 hours to get there.

Just use cheats to give yourself unlimited health and unlimited ammo – good to go, easy to test now, right?

Wrong. With the cheats, the bug doesn’t occur. You have to test clean, just as a user might. And the cheat has caused a different crash issue, this one on levels 3 and 8 - so we had to remove the cheats completely.

And level 4 – the coolest one of all, (the only good one) had to be removed since we lost the rights to use the background art (The Smithsonian is patented? Who knew?) and the artists are in Korea, and they’re off all this week for a religious holiday. No, no one else on the planet could possibly re-do the art in time - even though it's just a wrapped/repeating jpeg about 30 pixels high and 100 pixels wide that you could make yourself with MS Paint in about 2 minutes. Nope, gotta lose level 4.

So you get to play through all 27 levels of Polly Pocket – Super Splash Island on GEE GOLLY difficulty, with no sound or music, no cheats, 197 times in 3 weeks - each attempt requiring 9 hours, and the last 15 times you do it, it’s without sleep, because this game is supposed to ship tomorrow, and the company has paid WalMart $15,000 dollars PER STORE for shelf space for Polly Pocket – Super Slash Island – right at 8 year old kid eye level – starting in precisely two weeks. If we don’t have our game on that shelf, they get to keep all the shelf money space and put something else there (getting paid twice for shelf space).

So you’re playing Polly Fucking Pocket at 3:47AM on a Tuesday, it’s your birthday, Spring Break, and your Wedding Anniversary, and the stupid Bunny Fiend Mini-boss kills you before you get to the last door in the Boss Level. Which means that it’s going to take at least 9 more hours to determine whether or not this crash bug is fixed or not.

You tell your QA Manager that you have to start over. He tells you to go ahead and start over – he’s in charge of four other games, 2 more of which are also running late. He calls the Producer, who spent a lot of time hanging out trying to be helpful and buying you all dinner from Tony Roma’s – steak dinner in Styrofoam is bizarre – but who is now at home, asleep.

The producer says “Fuck that bug. Ship it.”

And so, a few weeks later - some poor schlub who is playing through his kid sister’s Polly Pocket game on GEE GOLLY difficulty, who turns off the sound and music because they are too damn cutesy gets alllmmmossst to the boss, when the game crashes. He hurls the GameBoy against the wall, breaking it into five pieces.

~~~~~

Have you ever actually said "Can you believe I get paid for playing games?"

Yes. But the long, thankless hours and day after day of the same BS leech the fun out of it.

~~~~~

How come games can be so thoroughly tested, but still released almost "unfinished"?

There are at least 4 different reasons for this.

1) The Marketing Department schedules the release dates. This means that a game can have a completely unrealistic development schedule, but it still needs to be in stores by December 1st.

2) We don’t have the budget for or the time right now for the programmers to learn that new, cutting-edge game engine that just debuted. Sega just put out Rainbow Brite, Starshine Goddess using the OMFG02 engine, but we’re still using the UGH52 engine. This means that Polly Pocket – Super Splash Island won’t be as graphically rich, dynamic, or responsive as Rainbow Brite, but we have to put out something to compete with Rainbow Brite, or they’ll dominate the GameBoy Girls market this Christmas.

3) Because there’s such a rush on the project (for an app that is clearly outdated before it’s even released) the game designers, artists, programmers and testers have about half the time they normally do for production.

4) To meet the shelf date, the game is pushed out early, with known issues. Don’t confuse 'thorough testing' with 'thorough fixing'. I’ve worked on games where we found and wrote up thousands of bugs, but the game still ships with 800 open issues (Open=still occur) because there just isn't enough time to fix them all - and inevitably, fixes cause new issues. Most of these are minor, and while noticeable flaws, they aren’t crashes. A few of the bugs in the shipped out product are major, but typically rare – like the Polly Pocket crash bug I talked about.

Any other questions?

Geek Squad Attempts to Rip Off Customers

2007-03-02T02:31:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is something that simply blew my mind.

I can’t quite work out if this is the result of plain stupidity (which I seriously doubt), or so-called ‘experts’ actively trying to screw people over.

If you haven’t watched the video, here’s the deal:

A TV reporter took a bunch of working PC’s, had them checked over by an expert to make sure nothing was wrong with them, and then unplugged each computer’s IDE cable and dropped them off at various tech-support businesses.

Now, if you’re not computer savvy, let me explain this. To anyone who has ever opened up a PC case, an unplugged IDE cable is as obvious to diagnose as trying to work out why a bucket with a gaping hole in the bottom won’t hold water.

The second thing is how easy this is to fix. Ever plugged a TV into an electrical outlet? That’s about the technical expertise involved. It’s literally putting a square peg in the square hole.

The point I’m trying to make here is that there is absolutely no way that anyone who has any experience at all with computers could possibly miss this problem.

However, that didn’t stop “Geek Squad” from saying it was a power supply issue, and trying to sell the reporter a new PSU, along with a hefty price tag for a ‘labor’ involved.

Again, I have no idea how they could have arrived at this diagnosis. If the power supply wasn’t working, the computer wouldn’t start up at all, instead of starting up but failing to boot.

Another place said that the motherboard was “half bad”.

Just to add further insult to injury, the IDE cable is what connects the Hard drive to the motherboard. When they turn the computer on “Primary Hard Disk Drive not found” appears on the screen. This tells you one of four things is wrong.

A) The Hard Drive is faulty and needs to be replaced.

B) The IDE cable is damaged and needs to be replaced.

C) The IDE cable has come unplugged.

D) The jumpers on the drive are set incorrectly.

So how the hell “Geek Squad” diagnosed a power supply problem, and another said it as a motherboard problem is beyond me. Technically it could be a motherboard problem, but you would definitely check the IDE cables first.

Just like when a car stops unexpectedly and won’t start up again, the first thing you check is that it’s not out of gas. Plus, when a headlight stops working, if you took it to a garage to get the bulb replaced, you wouldn’t expect them to tell you that your headlight isn’t working because your entire transmission needs replacing

However, the thing that honestly shocked me was that only one place they took a computer to simply re-plugged the IDE cable and handed it back. I mean, the prices charged where simply outrageous. The “half-bad motherboard” guy tried to charge $275, and there wasn’t a single price quoted that was under a hundred dollars.

A hundred dollars to plug in an IDE cable? Are you shitting me?

I can honestly say that if I worked in any of these places, and someone gave me a computer with an unplugged IDE cable, not only would I notice the problem within seconds of opening the case, I’d plug it back in, and just give it back to the customer.

If I had to quote a “fair price” for it, they’d owe me a single cent…and that’s only because there’s no such thing as a half cent piece.

It honestly makes me sad that so-called “experts” can be this dumb, or that it appears to be standard practice to rip off unsuspecting customers and charge them an arm and a leg to “repair” such a simple problem.

Now here’s the thing, and the best advice I can give to any new computer user. Find a friend who knows a little about computers, and get them to give you a tour of the inside of your computer case.

Honestly, it may be intimidating at first, but I promise you that I can show anyone how a computer works in less than half an hour. For the most part, most modern PC’s are simply a case of matching color coded connectors, and placing the “square peg in the square hole”.

Let me let you in on a big secret. Computers are easy. At least for the things an average user will need to do.

Think of it this way, you don’t have to understand exactly how an engine works to operate an automobile. You just need to know the controls, where the gas goes and how to check your oil and a few other things. It’s the same with computers.

Unfortunately, the PC Repair industry is based on maintaining the myth that it takes a genius to understand how to fix a computer.

However, let me give you an example of how easy it can be.

Say you want to fit some more memory in your computer. First, check the manual that came with your PC to see what type of memory your computer uses before you go to buy it. Then, go buy your memory.

Then, pop off the side of your computer’s case, and look on the motherboard (that’s the big main circuit board inside your machine that everything else is connected to), and look for the memory slot. (Again, this can be found easily in your manual, but essentially you’re looking at a square foot of real estate for something that looked exactly like the memory stick you’re holding in your hand, it shouldn’t be too hard).

Then, put the memory in the slot (It has cutouts on the memory stick, so it can only fit one way), and push down firmly until it clicks into place.

Congrats! You’re done!

Now, just to highlight my point, this is an operation that will take a couple of minutes, tops…and it’s yet another example of the “put the square peg in the square hole” level of difficulty.

However, if you went to Best Buy and got “Geek Squad” to do it for you, you’d find yourself paying about $160 for the privilege of not spending 2 minutes pushing a memory stick into a slot.

Protect Yourself

2007-02-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

The computer virus.

Everyone’s heard of them, everyone knows they are a Bad Thing™, but the majority of internet users don’t know exactly what they are, where they come from, or how to protect themselves. So let’s shed some light on them, shall we?

The ‘Computer Virus’ has become the catch all term for malicious software that is downloaded and run on your computer without your consent or knowledge. They can range from the humorous (Such as the infamous “Cookie Monster” virus that places a picture of the cookie monster on your screen that won’t go away until you type “cookie”)…to the downright destructive that can wipe your drive, or re-flash your bios chip, turning your computer into a big, expensive paperweight.

So where do they come from?

Well, the true answer is a lot of places. Plenty come from semi-legitimate companies that will install spyware on your computer. (Spyware is a hidden program that records information such as your web surfing habits in order to target, among other things, spam email and pop-ups). Others are written purposefully by people who just think it’s cool to see how many computers they can crash.

There’s no doubt about it, these things are scary. You can unwittingly download a virus that can give a hacker the same level of access to your machine as if he were sitting right in front of it. Your personal information can be stolen, and your machine can crash, or suffer severe performance issues.

However, protecting yourself is easy, if you follow a few simple steps:

1) Install a firewall.

Windows XP comes with a firewall, and it’s a simple matter of making sure it’s turned on, and leaving it on. To do this, click “Start”, then “Control Panel” (if it’s not already, click the button on the left of the window that says “Classic View”), then double-click “Windows Firewall”. Then simply check the box for “On”.

If you want a little more control, Zone Alarm is an excellent (and free) firewall that comes with a step-by-step tutorial on how to install and use it.

But what is a firewall, and what does it do?

Think of a firewall as a barrier between you and the internet. It works like a Customs Checkpoint, whereby it only lets certified or approved programs access. Hackers will often run “port scans” where they simply leave their computer running, looking for computers with open ports that they can exploit to get access. A firewall intercepts the information from the hackers and responds with a signal that says no computer is at that IP address. In short, it makes you (in most cases) invisible to hackers.

Long story short it gives you complete control of all communications between you and the internet.

2) Install a virus checker

Again, there are plenty of free Anti-Virus programs available on the internet. These programs monitor all internet activity and will warn you if it spots an infected file.

However, the most important thing to know with anti-virus software is you must update them regularly. New viruses are written all the time, and without updating your checker, the software will simply not recognize a file as infected.

This is incredibly easy and simple to do, usually a couple of mouse clicks once a week, and many can be set to automatically update and scan at regular intervals.

3) Make sure you have the latest version of your browser, and better yet, switch to Mozilla Firefox

Old browsers are full of security holes that can be exploited. The basic rule of thumb is the newer the version of your browser, the less security holes it has. Firefox, for example, has lots of security features built in. Go to www.mozilla.com to download it.

4) Use good surfing practices and habits.

Ok, I can’t state this strongly enough. DO NOT OPEN EMAIL ATTACHMENTS UNLESS YOU DEFINITELY TRUST THE SOURCE.

This is the Number One way that viruses get onto your computer.

For example, if you’ve asked a friend to email you some pictures, and your friend does so, you can assume that it’s safe to open the attachment. However, if you receive an unsolicited email with an attachment, just delete it.

It doesn’t matter if the email says you’ve won a million dollars, an old flame is desperate to get in touch with you, you have a package waiting at the post office, just delete it. The “ILOVEYOU” virus caused havoc globally, simply because people couldn’t resist opening an email attachment.

The other thing to understand is just because you know the source of an email does not make it safe. Email forwards are a classic example of this. You receive a forward from a friend that has an attachment that has a funny video, picture, flash game, whatever. However, even though you receive this forward from your friend does not mean it’s safe.

In other words, someone writes a virus, bundles it in an attachment with a video, and sends it to a few thousand people. Some of these people open it, think it’s funny and forward it to everyone they know. However, while you’re watching that video, the hidden program is downloading all kinds of malware onto your computer.

Long story short, if you asked a trusted source for the attached item, it’s probably safe. If it’s unsolicited, there’s a much higher chance of infection. (This doesn’t mean you should delete the vacation pictures your friend sent you, just because you didn’t ask to see them…however, a forwarded email that’s passed through a few hundred computers is a much higher risk.)

Again: ONLY OPEN ATTACHMENTS THAT YOU KNOW COME FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE.

The same is also true of pop-ups and advertisements on many websites. Know that flashing banner ad that says you are the millionth visitor, and “click here to claim your iPod/Xbox/Laptop/Large Wad of cash’? The only thing you’re going to get from clicking it is a link to a dodgy site, and probably yet more malware, pop-ups and annoyances.

If something seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that a virus, spyware or malware can seriously damage your computer. However, by following a few simple rules, there is no reason you should ever get a computer virus.

A big problem is people think this is a rare occurrence, or they don’t have to worry about hackers because they have nothing private or personal on their computer. However, every time I have worked on a computer that wasn’t running a firewall or virus checker I’ve found at least 5 or 6 malicious or spyware programs. In once case, I found no less than 60 different viruses, and over 1000 spyware programs.

I’ve also been called by the same person multiple times, only to find they continually turn their virus checker and security programs off because it “Slows their computer down”. It’s true, running security programs will have a small impact on system performance, but this is the equivalent of leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition in order to get an extra 5mph out of it. In other words you have a choice. Take a minimal performance hit, or a massive one when your computer gets loaded with malware. Wait an extra couple seconds for your programs to start up, or have your computer totally break down a couple times a month.

It’s not difficult to stop this Malware. To reiterate:

Install or turn on your firewall.

Install a virus and spyware checker, and update and scan regularly.

Do not open email attachments.

Be wary of pop-ups and banner ads.

You wouldn’t leave your home or car unlocked, so don’t do the same with your computer.

Links

www.mozilla.com : The best and most secure browser available

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp : Zonealarm firewall, great functionality and free.

http://www.safer-networking.org : Home of Spybot – Search and Destroy, an excellent and free spyware remover.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 : AVG anti-virus, a good, free, anti-virus package

AI

2007-02-24T14:54:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, I reaquainted myself with the all time PC classic “Darwinia”.

For those who’ve never played this game, let me give you a short rundown.

“Darwinia” is a fictional “online theme park” populated by artificially intelligent creatures called, you guessed it, Darwinians. Unfortunately, the whole system has been infected with a virus, and it’s up to you to clean out the virus and return things to normal.

The gameplay style is a mixture of ‘Command and Conquer’, ‘Cannon Fodder’ and ‘Black and White’…but lets just say the end result is more than the sum of its parts.

However, this post is not a review, but more a discussion of some of the questions this game raises.

Artifical Intelligence

Is it possible to create ‘true’ artificial intelligence? Is it possible to create a computer, or computer program that is truly self aware? If we did create something like this, would we actually be creating life or just a very convincing illusion of life? The question is, if we’re unable to tell if something is truly self aware, does it matter?

It’s incredibly difficult to classify “life”. We have a hard enough time with biological entities…how can we possible state with any certainty whether a machine is “alive” or not?

For example, by most of our ‘conditions’ for life, fire is alive.

• It moves.
• It consumes energy.
• It reproduces.
• It dies.

Back to Basics

The human brain is, to all intents and purposes, a biological computer. Electrical impulses travel around the brain in the same way electrical current travels along a circuit. The brain receives input, processes and interprets that input and makes an appropriate response.

Sounding familiar? The brain responds to stimulus in the same way a computer responds to user input.

So let’s assume that the difference between a machine and a self aware life-form is simply a question of processing power. We can already simulate neural nets with computers, and create programs that can learn and adapt.

So let’s say that once a system becomes complex enough, it has a chance of becoming sentient. Someone creates a learning machine with massive amounts of processing power, and this machine, like a child, learns enough over time that it fits into our definition of ‘life’.

Interpretations

Unfortunately this is a huge grey area. Let’s say you write a learning program that can talk in plain language. Let’s also say that over time that this program becomes advanced enough to where if you had a conversation with it over an instant messenger, you would be completely incapable of distinguishing it from a human.

Is this machine alive and thinking? It’s incredibly difficult to say.

For example, let’s say after the conversation, you look at a log of everything the program did. You asked it a question that it didn’t know anything about, so it went onto the internet, downloaded as much information on the subject as it could find, and searched it for an appropriate answer.

On the one hand, you could say that this proves the machine isn’t thinking at all. In the same way that a normal computer follows a program, this ‘thinking’ machine is simply doing the same thing. It is given a query, and searches and provides the information requested. It’s an incredibly sophisticated machine, but a machine none the less. It’s nothing but a highly advanced database with an incredibly sophisticated user interface.

However, you could also ask how this is different from the way a human mind works. You are asked a question, and you access your memories to find the appropriate response. If you don’t have an answer, you look it up.

Proving the existence of self-aware AI is not a question of ‘stumping’ the computer and finding a question that it can’t find a reasonable answer to. If that proved a machine wasn’t sentient, the same could be said for anyone who has ever answered “I don’t know” to a question.

If we take this further, it can be said that a baby is like a brand new computer, it has the operating system hard wired in (The parts that control heartbeat, breathing etc), but other than that, is completely helpless and incapable of performing even the simplest of tasks. Then as time goes on, the child learns and new ‘software’ is installed. Before learning to drive you have no idea how to operate a car, but you take lessons and practice until the ‘program’ you need to drive a car is ‘installed’.

Therefore, if a machine is given a suitable advanced neural net, and then is fed information, so over time it becomes more and more advanced until it is capable of performing extremely difficult and sophisticated tasks…isn’t the only real difference that one brain is organic and the other is silicon based?

And as I stated earlier, if you end up with a machine where you can’t prove that it isn’t alive…what is the difference?

When Philosophy and Morality Meet

So let’s say we have a computer or a computer program that is showing all the characteristics of being alive. What are the moral implications?

So you have a machine on your desk that you talk to like another human being. It asks you how your day was, tells you about news it’s found on the internet that you would be interested it…hell, it’s even a good conversationalist, maybe even giving you occasional advice.

This would be a major boon in the world of computing. Anyone could use a computer. If something went wrong, it could tell you exactly what you need to do to fix it, rather that search through a thesaurus when writing, you’d just say “Hey, computer, what’s that word? Like ‘motivation’, but not.”

However, this would also come with problems. If that machine is truly alive and self aware, what was once a machine for doing work is now forced slavery. What if this machine doesn’t want to do what you want? Would it be moral to force it to do it anyway? Would trashing a computer to replace it with the latest model become murder? If we continue to force self aware machines do our bidding, are we heading towards a ‘Terminator’ or ‘Matrix’ style apocalypse?

I suppose what it boils down to is that if we ever manage to create silicon based life, wouldn’t we be judged as a species on how we treat that life?

Metaphysics and Becoming God

Now let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s say we’ve created “Darwinia” for real. We have a totally artificial environment populated by self aware artificial creatures. Creatures that can learn, evolve, die and mourn their dead.

These creatures know nothing about us. All they know is their world, and like the human race, try and learn as much about it as possible?

Wouldn’t that make us Gods? An invisible hand with the power of life and death over every Darwinian, the creator of their Universe?

Before you brush that off, think about it for a second. These creatures are born into their artifical reality, but to them, it’s totally real. It’s the universe that they know.

When two humans procreate, the share their DNA and create a new human being that is a mixture of the two, but different from both. Is that different from two AI creatures mating and sharing the code that makes up both of them?

If a major disaster happened in the virtual world, a building that they made collapses and kills a few hundred Darwinians, would they ask why a benevolent God who created all of Darwinia would allow something so terrible to happen? Would they fight because one faction believed we made them out of pixels, and the other thought binary was the ‘true’ way?

The main point you need to grasp to understand this is that just because their world is entirely artificial and created by mortal beings like ourselves, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be 100% completely and totally real to them.

Something to Think About

Say a few years have passed in the Darwinian experiment which, from the Darwinian point of view, is a few hundred million years. The Darwinians have invented all kinds of technology that has allowed them to completely and totally map all of Darwinia. Then one day, they start to talk about the concept of Artificial Intelligence.

Then, within Darwinia, the Darwinians build a computer that is so advanced, they make their own Artificial Intelligence experiment and watch their screens to see their creations learn and evolve.

Artificial Intelligence that is by our definition alive, creating its own Artificial Intelligence experiment while debating amongst themselves whether their creation is ‘truly alive’.

Then the thought hits you. You’re sitting at a computer screen, watching your AI experiment watch its AI experiment on a virtual screen.

…who’s watching you?

PC Maintenance for Dummies

2007-02-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

As a professional computer geek, one of the most common complaints I hear is "My Computer's running slow," quickly followed by a request for advice or asking me to fix it for them. I don't mind doing this occasionally, but if I honored every request, I'd be doing nothing but computer maintenance. With this in mind, I'm going to do my inaugural post on basic PC maintenance. Since the majority of computers are running Windows XP, that's what I'm going to focus on. The basic principles will apply to virtually all Windows computers, but in any instance where I use a step-by-step procedure, I will be using Windows XP as my example. That said though, I will be happy to entertain any individual questions on a case-by-case basis.

There are three core hardware aspects to Windows that determine how well a computer will run. These are the processor (or CPU), RAM (or memory) and the hard drive (or disk space). All of these are determined when you buy your computer. For the average computer owner, once you buy your computer your processor (CPU) and your hard drive are pretty much fixed. It's possible to upgrade these items, but if you're reading this "for dummies" post, I will assume it's not something you're interested in pursuing. Adding RAM (memory) is physically easy, but you need to make sure to buy the right kind of RAM. If you're considering this, I suggest that you find out the technical specifications from your PC manufacturer, buy the memory from your favorite computer store and install it yourself. Places like Best Buy and Circuit City are more than willing to install memory for you, but they'll charge an arm and a leg and installing RAM is the simplest hardware upgrade you can do. You simply plug the new RAM into a slot and you're on your way. Enough about hardware.

When it comes to the software (in this case, the Windows operating system), there are a few simple things you can do to tweak your performance. You can defragment the hard drive, clean the registry, and manually set the performance options. Each tweak is relatively easy and pretty fool-proof if you follow my directions. Oh by the way, I need to throw out this disclaimer: This advice is as-is, and you follow it at your own risk. I will not be held responsible for anything you choose to do or not do.

Let's start with manually setting the performance options. To explain this... Windows, like most things in life, is a trade-off. You can have faster performance with a little less eye candy, or you can have more bling at the expense of speed. The default is to set this somewhere in the middle. If you want a little more kick, you can manually adjust this as follows...
-Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Properties," and a new window will appear.
-In this window, you will see three tabs. The one you want is the "Visual Effects" tab, shown by default.
-Select the "Adjust for Best Performance" radio button and click "OK." The window will disappear.
-Click "OK" on the other window.
That's all there is to it.

The next item is defragmenting the hard drive. I won't get into the theory behind how a fragmented hard drive reduces performance, but it does. (If you're really interested in the theory, I can tell you, just let me know. I'm not doing it now because it's an entire post in itself.)
-In order to defragment your hard drive, click "Start" and select the Control Panel.
-Double-Click "Administrative Tools"
-Double-Click "Computer Management"
-Expand "Storage" by clicking the little "+" icon. (If it's already expanded, you'll see a "-" icon.)
-Click "Disk Defragmenter" and a new display will appear in the right-hand area of the window.
-Click "Defragment"
-This process will take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, depending on how fragmented your hard drive is, how large the drive is, and how much free space you have available.

The third and final part of our windows tune-up is cleaning the registry. Like the section on fragmentation, the theory behind cleaning up the registry is beyond the scope of today's post, but I will reiterate my offer to discuss this theory if you're interested. For now, let's focus on getting it done.

In order to clean your registry, you will need a third-party utility, such as RegVac or Registry Mechanic. Under no circumstances should you try to manually clean your registry!! RegVac specifically can be downloaded as shareware. This means that you can download and use it free for 30 days. If you plan to use it after the 30-day trial period has elapsed, you will need to purchase it. Once you have downloaded and installed the registry cleaner, simply run the program and let it work its magic. The program will tell you when it's finished.

Between these three simple tweaks, you should experience an overall improvement in your computer's performance. The performance will not change dramatically... it won't turn a bicycle into a Porsche, but you should see some improvement. If you don't see any benefit, you've probably got a more serious problem such as a virus or spyware. Hmmm.... viruses and spyware... sounds like a couple of future topics. Anyone interested?

Genre Cloning?

2007-02-20T18:31:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the opportunity to play “Scarface : The World is Yours” on the PC.

I was less than an hour in before I started to get bored. Not because this is a particularly bad game, but because I’d seen it all before.

I was playing Grand Theft Auto : Vice city, with Tony Montana cut and paste into place. Is that what I paid for? A game I’d already played, but with Al Pacino’s likeness?

I persevered a little, and then realized I was being totally unfair. Why was I judging this game poorly, simply because it had the same game mechanics as another game?

To often today, people dismiss good games because they’re judged as“clones” of previous games. It’s unreasonable and impossible to expect every new game that comes out to be totally original and a whole new genre.

In fact, if we look back, there hasn’t been a truly original new genre since the birth of gaming, and all games that are judged to be new genres are simply expansions of existing genres brought on by new technologies.

If we look at the pattern forming, we see it works as follows:

New Genre – Multiple small ‘baby step’ improvements – New technology arrives that takes a much larger step – New improvement is hailed as a new genre.

The Beginning

Let’s go way back to the dawn of gaming and a little game called space invaders.

This was a new genre. It was the first mainstream, popular shoot ‘em up.

Then, as everyone knows, it was “cloned” a few million times. The gameplay mechanic, (player controlled sprite at the bottom of the screen, enemy sprites across the top, and you shot at them), was duplicated so many times, it was difficult to tell the original Space Invaders from it's offshoots.

So let’s look at the improvements that where added as time went on.

1) Enemy sprites moved in a more random pattern.

2) Animated background, giving the impression the player’s ‘craft’ was moving.

3) Interactive backgrounds that allowed “two levels” of shooting (air to air and air to ground)

4) Multiplayer (two players at once on the same screen)

5) Side scrolling.

6) Multiple weapon types

7) Boss fights.

The list could go on. The point I’m trying to illustrate is that while you’d hardly call ‘Space Invaders’ and a game like ‘Contra’ the same game, we got from one to the other by a series of very small steps, with each new game being essentially a clone of the preceding game with a few minor improvements. The player is controlling a sprite with a joystick, and shoots at waves of other sprites. That last sentence could be used to describe every single shooter of the 80's and early 90's.

In short, if we ignore the technological improvements (such as graphics, etc), and stick to gameplay mechanics, it could plausibly be said that Space Invaders and a game like “Afterburner” are essentially the “same game”. If we move to other genres, we don't call Sonic the Hedgehog a Mario clone...despite the fact they have identical gameplay mechanics.

Did all the 80's shooter games have almost identical gameplay mechanics? Yes. Are they the “same game”? No.

Getting Closer to the Present

While it’s hard to really picture such different games as Space Invaders and Afterburner as being identical, it becomes much easier to understand the closer we get to the present.

When PC’s became cheap enough to be a viable gaming platform, their processing power allowed much more technically advanced games, the most notable of which was “Wolfenstein 3D”, followed later by it’s big brother “Doom”.

These were groundbreaking games because they where the first (semi) true 3D first person shooters. (Semi-3D in that these games where still 2D sprites in a three dimensional environment.)

Shortly after Doom was released, I remember asking a friend of mine if he’d played it. He said “No, but I’ve played Cyclones (another First Person Shooter) and it’s the same thing.”

Starting to see the thinking here? ‘I’ve played one game in this genre, so why would I want to play a ‘clone’ of it?’

Again, we have the “base” game, which spawned hundreds of thousands of clones, each with a small improvement over the previous game:

1) The ability to change the viewpoint with the mouse, allowing “vertical” aiming.

2) Character sprites are replaced with true 3D models.

3) Multiple steps forward in graphics.

4) Introduction of scripted scenes.

5) Introduction of physics.

There are two main points to make here.

The first is that we’ve become so used to the First Person Shooter, that we no longer consider FPS games to be clones of each other. You can play Half-Life and shoot aliens in a research complex, or play Call of Duty and shoot Nazi’s in various World War II environments. Gameplay wise you’re doing exactly the same thing in both games, but we don’t consider these games to be clones of each other.

Basically, when we get used to a genre, we concentrate more on the story, environment and characters than the gameplay.

The second is a very simple concept to grasp. There’s nothing in current FPS’s that wouldn’t have been in the first FPS if the technology allowed it.

Coming Full Circle

So what does this mean to today’s “GTA Clones”?

It means just one thing.

The genre “created” by GTA is still too new.

Because originality (or at least perceived originality) is so rare, that when something comes along that gives us a “new” and “different” experience, later games based on that same gameplay mechanic are dismissed as clones, at least until enough ‘clones’ are released, and that style of gameplay becomes “generic”.

In fact, the GTA “sandbox” style of gameplay isn’t even a new genre, it’s simply an amalgamation of multiple genres that was allowed by new technologies.

You have the free roaming and Roleplay elements from Roleplaying Games. Shooting (obviously) from the world of First Person Shooters and Driving from Driving Games.

There’s nothing in GTA that I haven’t done in other games. I’ve shot people in Doom, I’ve driven in Outrun, and I’ve roleplayed in “The Elder Scrolls” series.

Conclusion

Back in 1995, after playing “Star Wars : Dark Forces” for the first time, I remember talking to friends about how cool it could be if you could mix up the gameplay mechanics of Dark Forces and X-wing. As this conversation took place during our weekly Doom Deathmatch (our computers linked by a serial cable), we decided that being able to play it online with a group of people would be awesome.

We had that idea (probably along with millions of other gamers) in 1995. It was nine years before hardware had advanced far enough to allow “Star Wars : Battlefront” to be created.

What this all boils down to is that true “clones” in videogames are exceedingly rare. Scarface is no more a “clone’ of GTA than Half Life is a Doom clone.

Think about this. I can play Half Life 2, run around a 3D environment and shoot enemies with a series of weapons. Then I can play Call of Duty 2, and do exactly the same thing, but I don't consider one to be a clone of the other. How can they be the "same game"? They look different, have different weapons, enemies and environments.

However, when people play one of the GTA series, then play 'True Crime : Streets of LA', 'Scarface' or Saints Row', they dismiss these games as "Just another GTA clone".

So what does the future hold? Well, as the pattern repeats, "GTA Clones" will become widespread enough to where they'll become a genre instead of 'clones' of a single game. Then, the next step forward in technology will create a pseudo-new genre, and the 'clone' cycle will repeat again.