Red Ring Of Death II

It happened again so right now my 360 is in the hands of UPS going to wherever 360s go when they die. That is two years of 360 gaming and two incidents of RROD.

Audiosurf

I was going through the Independant Games Festival Contenders for this year's Audience Choice Award (only now do they have download links up) and one of the games I tried was Audiosurf, a game that I had heard previously about, but thought the developer was doing the whole 'we are awesome speel' that seems to come out of the mouth of every sane developer in the industry (it is getting harder and harder to tell when they are talking BS or not). But in this case Audiosurf is awesome, and everything it was said to be.

You start by selecting an audio file on your computer, Audiosurf identifies the various musical aspects of the file, generates a level and then you play in that level while the music you selected is playing. You play the game either with a mouse or 360 controller by trying to connect coloured blocks on a grid while avoiding gray blocks.

It is awesome and supposedly out at the very end of next month, possibly through STEAM. But until then I highly recommend the Demo, even if it does yank the game from under you after a few songs.

Macbook Air's Reserved Reactions (Rant)

It has been a few days since the Macbook Air was announced and I have been very surprised at the reserved reactions from the announcement, because normally anything Apple announces is eaten up by Mac fans, but with the Macbook Air everybody has been very sober. Even the mighty Kevin Rose was like, meh:



Normally the reaction that I give to most things Apple is "I don't need it" or "I can get the same thing cheaper and better elsewhere", but with the Macbook Air I would have bought one already if I had £1,199 to spend.

When I saw the Macbook Air for the first time I envisioned being able to carry it around in my backpack, without feeling like I was carrying around a brick. And then being able to surf the web and do work wherever I wanted because it's so portable. So for me the fact that it doesn't have anykind of built in diskdrive or ethernet port doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Personally I find laptop keyboards to be horrible to type with, track pads and nipples are cumbersome compared to a mouse, the machines themselves are slower than a comparable desktop of the same specification, they are difficult to fix, break more often and will need to be replaced sooner than the same specification machine as a desktop. So the reactions that the Macbook Air has been receiving has reinforced my long held view that computer users in-general don't want a laptop because it is portable, but because it is somekind of status symbol and most people would be happier sitting infront of a Black Widescreen Brick than something you could actually take outside, carry in a bag or use comfortably like desktop computer. And yet with all the 'meh' reactions this for me this is the first product that has made me seriously considering a Mac (other than Windows 98).

XBox360 Ultimate

I have been editing the Xbox 360 page on Wikipedia recently and a user named Prothean (his name is a Mass Effect reference) tried to add some information about the 360 Ultimate and although his edit got removed as he didn't give any references I thought what was said, rather interesting.

Microsoft is working on a complete overhaul of the Xbox 360 console system. This new system will have an onboard HD-DVD player and wireless adapter, a hard disk of 320GB and a complete hardware revision. It is likely, due to the current preference of Blue-ray discs, the Xbox 360 Ultimate will have a Duel Hi-Def Disc Player that is capable of playing both HD-DVD and Blue-ray discs. Wether this is the result of the current project "Jasper" is unkown. Currently priced at $500 and scheduled to appear somewhere at the end of Fall 2009.

Now Project Jasper is an ADO.Net thing, but there where a lot of XBox 360 Arcade rumours before that was announced so maybe there is a grain of truth in this.

Architected Game Combat

Having internalised Jonathan Blow's viewpoint on architected gameplay rather than explored gameplay I realise I am so over exactly what Warhammer Online is doing with their combat system (see video). I know there are people that will watch this video and be excited about learning a new RPG combat system, but having learned and played several before, I am so over it all. I want something new and different, maybe even something that doesn't feel like work to play.

Why A Good Specification Is Important

The US Militery hired a few companies to help them complete the invasion of Iraq. To do this they setup service agreements with those companies so the Military became a paying customer to those companies, but it looks like they forgot to agree any levels of quality. The US Militery wanted warter, they got warter, but it wasn't safe to drink. Let this be a lessen to you if you ever setup a SLA (Service Level Agreement) with anybody because unless you specify what quality standard you need the work doing too, it won't be done to any quality standard.

And on the video they mention Cost-Plus, which is effectively the government telling the contractor to just bill them whatever the cost is. This is common is situations where price comparison or price negotiation isn't worth doing, but silly things happen when you give someone your credit card and tell them to buy whatever they want.

The Food and Drugs of Gamplay

Last Year at The Montreal International Games Summit, Jonathan Blow did a talk called Design Reboot where he talked about how we might enter a golden age of game design. He talks about how developers are conditioning players to expect predictable rewards thus turning them into reward junkies and that real rewards like a player achieving a personal goal in a game and deriving satisfaction from that, is being ignored because that is harder to architect.

His talk starts well-outside of current thinking, but he states all his points very well and then you will realise that all the best developers in the world have already been applying what he talks about.

I don't like being so cryptic with my writing, but if I cover what is in the talk. I will have written a very long post where I cover everything that is covered by his talk.

[Direct Link: montreal2007.zip ]

Ron Gilbert Announces A New Project

Ron Gilbert, one of Monkey Island's Creator today announced that as well as consulting on the Penny Arcade Game he has been designing a game called Death Spank, an RPG! And he now has a publisher and developer behind the project. Which is always a good thing.

I mention this because Monkey Island is one of my top three game franchises and His Announcement Post was written with such fantastic comic prose, I felt that I needed to blog about it.

I roughed out a game design for the first episode and started pitching it around and a funny thing happened. Everyone hated it. But the weird thing is the more publishers that turned it down, the more convinced I became that this was a great idea. Every rejection fueled me with excitement and the knowledge that I was right. Nothing says innovation and creativity like armed security showing up to escort you out of the building while saying "Let's not have any trouble". - Ron Gilbert 2008

When Wikipedia Errors

The Console Wars So Far

I found this site VGChartz.com thanks to Kim Pallister which has some awesome console sales graphs.



Comparing the numbers of units sold since launch puts the Wii in a very strong position, but look at the PS3 it isn't doing as badly as we all probably thought. The PS3 might have a dismal selection of games, but it is still giving the 360 a run for it's money.

So if the Wii is doing so well, how does it compare to the current king of all console wars the PS2, which has currently sold more than 120 million units:



The Wii does more than double the sales of the PS2 in the same period from launch. And as there is no sign that demand is going to lessen anytime soon it isn't unreasonable to predict that the Wii will sell more than 240 million units in five years.

However as Nintendo has been so successful in releasing second iterations of the GameBoy Advance and GameBoy DS everybody is expecting them to do the same with the Wii. Could we see everybody who has already bought a Wii buy a second one or people like myself who haven't yet bought one yet be swayed if Nintendo iterates on it's design!?

Clearly by the kinds of numbers we are seeing in this generation the market is easily large enough to sustain multiple console manufacturers.

Sin

Question:
Of all the things that is considered sin, why isn't the docile consumption of media one them?

Answer:
Because those people who call out sins are the same people who don't want their message questioned.

Abstraction:
If everybody was to appreciate the media they consumed then the world would be a place with a lot less sin.

New Wall.E Trailer

A New Trailer is out. And the film looks more stunning every time I see it.

Dates For Your Diary 2008

If you where wondering when the big industry events where taking place next year, I got you covered.

January
Consumer Electronics Show (Las Vegas) 8th to 11th

February
DICE Summit (Las Vegas) 6th to 9th

March
Game Connection (San Francisco) 5th to 6th
Games Developers Conference (San Francisco) 5th to 9th

April
MCV Awards (London) 19th

May
Northern Exposure (York) 10th
Nordic Game (Sweden) 15th to 16th

July
E3 (Los Angeles) 15th – 17th
Develop Conference (Brighton) 24th to 26th

August
SIGGRAPH (San Diego) 5th to 9th
GCDC (Leipzig) 20th to 22nd
Leipzig Games Convention (Leipzig) 23rd to 26th
Penny Arcade Exhibition (Seattle) 29th to 31st

September
Austin Games Conference (Austin, Texas) 5th to 7th

October
GC Asia (Singapore) 9th to 12th

Awesome Lecture: Copyright and Fair Use

I have been reading some stuff on Copyright and all the discussion that I have read so far feels beneath my understanding. Most of the time it is like watching two kids fighting over who gets to play with a tennis ball. And I owe that level of understanding to a lecture I once watched by Lawrence Lessig titled Is Google Book Search "Fair Use"?.

I am linking to this now because I only just realised how thankful I am that I watched this lecture. It is one of those things which I was happy with seeing at the time and have re-thought about again and again since.

Lawrence is an awesome speaker with excellent presentation skills. If you have ever had a passing interest in Copyright or Intellectual Property then I highly recommend watching this lecture because he covers the basics and then takes the debate to a much higher level.



[Direct Link]

Tuesday's XBox360 Dashboard Update

On Tuesday a new version of the 360's dashboard is going to be released. In this release the big new features are "Friends of Friends" where you can view who your Friends have as Friends on their Friends list. A timer so that parents can dictate how long their offspring can play games for. And the much requested DivX and XviD video codex support is being added so that you can brows and stream AVI video from a PC to whatever large television you might have connected to your 360. If you want to see the complete list of changes Click Here.

GamerScoreBlog (which is run by Microsoft PR) has put together a rather good video preview of the whole thing.

Inclusive Vs Exclusive Groups

As Humans we are programmed to seek our place in the world, to question ourselves and to never be happy with what we have. So that's why groups be them religions, political, school fraternities or people of similar ideals like Neo Nazis come together because it makes them feel apart of something and more whole than if they weren't in that group. This is partly because Human instinct is towards running in a pack rather than alone, but ideologically it makes us feel less alone.

In my life I have experienced many such groups and is occurred to me while watching Accepted that exclusive groups where membership is filtered to only allow the "right sort of people" in normally feel hollow because when you join such a group you are buying into the group founder's vision and not something you can influence yourself.

Inclusive groups are groups of people who all try to get along. And since everybody in them puts effort into getting along, being part of the group feels more whole as everybody has a viewpoint that is heard. A lot of inclusive groups like sports clubs, music and other groups are so inclusive that they transcend any physical place and become an idealogical movement like Wikipedia (the open source encyclopedia), The Skeptics Movement (critical thought in search of exposing truth), Parkour (be strong to be useful) or any number of civil rights movements.

However the biggest inclusive and exclusive groups in the world is society itself. In some parts of the world people actively segregate themselves in order to find their place in the world and in other places people pay for services like national health so that everybody is more equal.

So what I am trying to say is that there are a lot of people in the world that try to find their place in the world by excluding other people or ideas. Even to the point where they suppress freespeech and commit hate crimes against people who they consider to be apart of another group, this is probably a natural instinct for Humans, but I think if we all tried to be a little bit more inclusive by helping others, listening to others and giving others our time then the group that we are already in, society, becomes a much better place.

Narbacular Drop

I was going to post this earlier in the month, but I am finding it very difficult to manage a full time job and my hobbies.

So anyway before Portal there was Narbacular Drop a Digipen student project that was seen by Valve, the students that made it where hired by ValVe and they then created Portal.

ND is nowhere near as good as Portal, but what ND lacks in quality it makes up in originality, it is interesting to see where the team came from and nice to have a good look at a student project that actually got someone a job.

TimeShift (Not Completed)

TimeShift has some of the most generic boring levels that remind me of a few WW2 FPSs that I forget the name of because they where so generic and Red Faction. The AI is boring and the time powers that allow you to stop time and such just don't feel special because the combat is so mediocre.

The level design is dull and linear. The weapons are all FPS standard eqips and the whole thing feels like one big wast of time to play. Not even the story is a saving grace because it is so shallow.

If you haven't played an FPS before then you might like TimeShift otherwise you have practically already played it.
1/5

Kevin Smith Protesting His Own Film

Writer and Director Kevin Smith does tours where people can ask him questions about being an independent director stuff and it's all very amusing because he is an interesting guy who isn't afraid of putting himself out there. So amusing are these talks that you can get them on DVD, titled as An Evening With Kevin Smith. One of the things Kevin has talked about (I think on the first Evening With Kevin Smith DVD) is when he went to a protest against his own film, Dogma. These is a video of him talking about that below, but he talks about being interviewed on TV about the film he was protesting as a protester which I thought was funny, but it is only until recently that I seen the second video that I am linking to, which is the actual news footage of that interview with him protesting his own film!

University Talk


TV Interview


[via Digg]

I Got A Job!

I started at my first full time job last week. I am supposed to be working as Admin in a hotel, but since it is a new hotel and it is short staffed I am having to do a lot of other things at the moment. So things seem to be looking up.

Currently playing TimeShift and Naruto Rise of a Ninja both on the 360. Naruto is a lot of fun, but TimeShift despite being able to control time has boring level design so the levels all feel very slow.