NYC Games Salon

I was going to sum up the NYC Games Salon that I went to on 9 January, but: 1) I got into the Carnegie Mellon ETC in Adelaide, Australia which has thrown my schedule off-kilter with doctor's appointments, visa applications and the like, and 2) seeing as Gamasutra has already blogged it better than I would have been able to, I'll just refer you to that and point out two things that really, really bothered me:

The DWI Simulator's development started in Torque, until they decided it wasn't as good as they wanted, so they switched to a web-based Java app. What? As you programmers know, Java runs on OS X and Linux, and even Windows. As does Torque. The big difference? Java can run within a web browser, without installation. Torque, while required to run natively in a "full app" context, has significantly more graphical/input chops. It's better for full-fledged games, and could make the simulation that much more immersive, by not having to deal with the headaches of a browser paradigm.

As was evidenced when the Java-version of the game failed to run properly in his web browser. Now, he didn't say what, exactly, they didn't like about their Torque version, but I'd wager it has more to do with developer familiarity than any sort of defeciency in Torque. There's nothing wrong with being upfront about such unfamiliarity, but there is something wrong with asserting (without evidence!) that the pathetic Java3D toolkit could somehow make a better simulation experience than Torque.

And I realize that there was no actual Inspector Carbone game, it was still being designed, but I really don't like these non-material metrics for gameplay, we'll call them "Glue Points."

See, Inspector Carbone used a system of "Eco-Points" to represent several metrics: financial capability of residents, willingness to live greener, capacity for ecological responsibility education, et cetera. These nebulous points grew with time, but fell with upgrades. There's a flaw in the mechanics when a metric representing education falls after installing CFL bulbs.

I think that's just a symptom of the simulation being too simple. SimCity simulates urban development quite well, but it breaks simulation parameters up sufficiently to resemble real-life parameters. Taxes, energy, water, population, zoning. It all adds up to a realistic simulation, than if something like "City Life Points" had been used to "glue" several distinct aspects together.

Anyway, it was a great event and I wish I could go to another. Here's hoping one comes to Australia. :)

Off to Meet Jesper Juul

I'm heading to New York City to attend a game salon at The New School/Parsons, where Jesper Juul's a featured speaker. Expect a full summary here, but for now, just know that when flights are delayed at Little Rock International Airport, there's only one place I get my Cinna on:

Christmas Defcon: Everybody Gifts

I'm going to forgo my aversion to simply linking interesting stuff and point out an awesome DEFCON: Everybody Dies mod called Christmas: Everybody Wins.

Kudos to some very imaginative and skillful ASM hacking.

Guest Lecture Slides

On November 28th and 30th, I gave guest lectures at UALR and UCA on video games as interactive narrative.

I've reproduced the slides here in Flash. (The Flash version doesn't have the movies intact, sorry.)

Simply click on the presentation to advance the slides.

NULL as the Absence of Value

I'm quickly becoming a fan of SQL. Not just because of the revered database query language's utility (in all its incompatible dialects, natch), but because it reflects a well-thought-out design that makes sense beyond the usefulness of the language down to the philosophy of computer languages in general. Let's take, for example, IS NULL.

In C++, to check if something is NULL, you can compare it to NULL. Or zero. Or false. And, according to the language, these are all actual values: if "int a=0;" then "a==false", "a==0" and "a==NULL". I don't like this.

See, the null set, ø, is not just a set with nothing in it. It is, quite literally, the set with no thing in it. Comparisons between something that "IS NULL" and something that has a value shouldn't even make sense. Thus, in MySQL, Oracle et al, you have to use "WHERE a IS NULL" instead of "WHERE a = 0" or "WHERE a = 'false'".

"NULL IS NULL" is true.
"0 IS NULL" is false.
"NULL = 0" is also false.

I like SQL.

Album Artists in iTunes 7

Oh sweet, sweet iTunes 7. Aside from all the graphical glitz of its "cover flow" view, and gapless playback goodness, music can now hold three different authorial tags: Artist, Composer, and the brand-new Album Artist.

See, with the cover flow view, you get a bunch of duplicate albums in the display when you browse by album. For example, Tranceport by Paul Oakenfold contains a bunch of songs that aren't by Paul Oakenfold. Not only do you lose the Paul Oakenfold credit when you tag "Time" as being by The Dream Traveler, you make browsing by artist a nightmare.

Enter the Album Artist tag. Set all the tracks to have the same Album Artist, and iTunes will wisely group them together, despite being by different artists. Hooray, now your music collection sucks less.

Defcon on the Mac!

Want to play Introversion's latest hit, Defcon, on your Macintel but don't have the license nor the inclination to install Windows via Boot Camp?

Not to worry, Defcon works perfectly under the new version of the CrossOver for Mac beta. Just download the Defcon client installer, select "Install unsupported software..." and install it into a Win2K or XP bottle.

Viola, now you've got Defcon, the world's first Genocide 'Em Up, running natively on the Mac! (Well, "native" in that it's not being emulated.)

New Wallpaper, Three New Songs

What on Earth is happening with the weather here? Something big is up, because not only is it unseasonably warm, but I've updated Khakionion.com!

Head to the graphics page for a new 2D wallpaper, Numisma. At the music page, you'll find three new songs uploaded:

• Betwixt, a simple, soft piece featuring piano and guitar.
• Alien Elements, a song intended to be used for the game ContraBand (now sadly retired).
• The ContraBand Theme. Self-Explanatory, yes?

Hopefully, the next update interval won't be so prolonged. Check 'em out!

VaporStream Does Not Matter

Void Communications' VaporStream software is a "recordless" "email-IM hybrid." Although there are no technical documents or real demos on the site, VaporStream claims to send messages back and forth without ever leaving a record of your communication.

This is a cool idea. While corporate IM and email networks still leave the possibility of end users or peeping toms preserving messages that you'd rather not propagate, a VaporStream-like technology forces both parties to relent and accept a "stream discussion." One could consider this a true Internet-based substitute for personal conversations; if you need to hear what someone said again, you have to ask them to repeat it.

On the other hand, this is a silly idea. VaporStream claims that the message "never exists" on either end. How do you view it? The message is stored in your video buffer, and unless you're using hardware overlays, screenshots can preserve communication, and OCR will make it parseable. How about on the sender's side? Same problem, and the presence of keyloggers pose the possibility of third parties snooping in, too.

So, if this communication isn't as ephemeral as they're claiming, what's the benefit? It's not secrecy from network traffic analytics; encrypted email has been around for ages, and works fine. The only problem is that headers still let people know that Person A is talking to Person B. If this is really a problem, VaporStream could potentially serve as a mediator. At that point, snoopers will only be able to tell that Person A and Person B are using VaporStream (and not necessarily communicating with one another). For $39.99 a year, this may be an acceptable price, but something tells me a direct communication between users over pre-established lines of communication aren't going to be obviated by VaporStream.

Where Sony's Priorities Lie

Feast your eyes on a mockup of the PlayStation3's box art. Just gaze upon it, let the sheer Sony-ness of it all sink into your brain: Sleekness, minimalism, brand synergy...wait--brand synergy?

Yeah, what's going on here? What's with the intrusion of Sony's different divisions on our beloved PlayStation? Let's break it down:

• Their universally-recognized "PS" logo would easily fit behind a dime.
• The "PlayStation 3" text is in the "Spiderman" font, made popular by Sony's trilogy of movies.
  
• The whole case is blue, with a "Blu-ray Disc" bar that takes up almost as much real estate as the entire "PS" logo and "PlayStation 3" text put together.
  

Sony has truly reached that oft-postulated "souless conglomerate" state that your ultra-liberal philosophy professor reviled. The kind who's happy to sell you their end-all, be-all product, their crowning achievement. Just please bend over and accept all their other brands at the same time.

Maybe I'm giving Sony too much credit. After all, PSone didn't use MiniDisc. PS2 didn't use Memory Stick, although they did call their IEEE1394/FireWire port "i.Link." Perhaps Sony ran out of ideas. Maybe the launch/success of the Xbox360 and the foaming anticipation of the Nintendo Wii forced Sony's hand, before they could finish designing the public face of their future console. That was certainly my guess when the PS3 was first showed off.

"Screen captures of Spider-Man? Spider-Man font?" Surely it was all provisional, just like that boomerang controller of theirs. Something tells me it was all intended to be final, but the controller got such an acidulous reaction that they reneged on that front. Maybe this post is a couple E3s too late.

Either way, why has Sony suddenly become so insistent on cramming all their properties down our throat at once? Couldn't they have just used a clean, attractive font if they wanted to be cliché? Wouldn't it have been enough for me to buy their console? Did it have to push their next-gen DVD format? Did it have to advertise an upcoming sequel, for god's sake?

The answer, of course, is "no, they could have shown consumers some respect." However, Sony chose the other, more asinine course of action. Let's see what it gets them.

Thursday Hubris, Part II

Facebook, popular website for collegiate social networking, rolled out a "News Feed" feature a while back. On Facebook, you can view profiles, events and the like, see who's dating who, and who's saying what to whom. Think of the feed as a "delta" for Facebook. That is, out of the profiles and events you yourself have access to, the news feed summarizes recent changes to inform you of who just said what to whom, who is breaking up with whom, et cetera.

This, oddly enough, has caused an "outrage" in the Facebook community. This feature does nothing more than summarize public knowledge, making available in a more convenient form. Who would protest something that would keep you from missing new photojournals, or the latest happenings with your friends? Well, wonder no longer. The news feed has awoken the phenomenally bad writing skills of thousands of students who probably shouldn't be in college:

This new facebook is waaaaaaaaaaay too stalkerish!!!!

We want to feel just a LITTLE bit of privacy, even if it is facebook.

theyre saying this is our generation's first revolution, pretty fuckin sweet

r facebook stopin us from invitin more people into this group now

its kind of funny becasue i heard about this group through the News Feed...

Even the opponents of the news feed acknowledge its usefulness. Through the avalanche of excruciatingly poorly written posts, the main criticism of the feed presents itself: it makes "stalking" someone too easy. The problem with this criticism is that it's the same Facebook, but with a new summary feature. Anyone who wants to stalk someone could, and still can. If you have a tendency to attract stalkers, you probably want to stay off of websites like Facebook. The whole site is an invasion of privacy to which you voluntary submit.

So, while it's not hard at all to stage a protest online (in fact, it's much easier thanks to the Facebook news feed), this protest has marginal hubris thanks to the speed at which it has grown. Still, being upset because of a "delta" feature is not too smart, so the Facebook news feed protest gets one hubris point, for being phenomenally ignorant.

The Promise and Peril of Internet Hype

There are things that confuse me. For example, the popularity of Ann Coulter. The Microsoft monopoly's persistence. The media's fascination with the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey. The grossly anti-student vibe emanating from my university's housing and IT departments. For one reason or another, the explanations behind these phenomena are out of my reach. However, the linked article asks a question I thought everyone already knew the answer to:

Why didn't the snakes have legs?

Or, less metaphorically:

Why did Snakes on a Plane tank?

Of course, I may be putting the word "tank" in Hollywood's mouth. After all, $15.2 million (and the number one box-office spot) is nothing to sneeze at. But still, movie studios want to know why Snakes on a Plane, with all of the hype generated by bloggers (originating here), only garnered $15.2 million. Hollywood wants to know why their $36 million experiment failed to garner any profit. They're confused, because the huge amount of Internet hype (and there was a lot) didn't convert to ticket sales.

Well, let me enlighten you, Hollywood. Snakes on a Plane did poorly because Snakes on a Plane sucked. Snakes on a Plane was popular online because Snakes on a Plane is a terrible idea for a movie. I was part of that Internet hype, and I didn't buy a ticket. Nor did many other people. The reason is not cryptic: We were laughing at Snakes on a Plane, not with it.

I'll gladly spend 15 seconds reading a humorous webcomic or Photoshop that lampoons a terrible idea like this. I really liked the current-events-aware Liquids on a Plane. I'll even spend 5 minutes sending humorous messages to friends about it, or 15 minutes blogging about it, because it's funny. But I'll be damned if I ever pay $8 of my own money to go sit in a theater for 105 minutes of terrible cinema.

Hollywood was dumb enough to make this movie. That's why it was hyped.

Apparently, Hollywood is so dumb, they couldn't even realize this.

The Seventh Console War and Online Play

Reggie Fils-Aime, CEO of Nintendo of America, regarding Internet multiplayer with the Nintendo Wii:

We will offer online-enabled games that the consumers will not have to pay a subscription fee for. They'll be able to enjoy that right out of the box. The Wii console is going to be Wi-Fi enabled, so essentially, you'll be able to plug it in and go. It won't have hidden fees or costs.

This is good news for Nintendo fans. And in my opinion, this is the "tipping point" kind of feature that will propel Nintendo to a surprising, massively successful launch. Let's review:

• The Wii will cost half (maybe even less than half) what its competitors will/do.
• The Wii can play Gamecube games.
• The Wii will have a Virtual Console for (S)NES, N64, TG16 and Genesis games.
• The Wii has a simplified, wireless, motion-aware controller.
• Playing multiplayer games online with the Wii will be free.
  

All these features put Wii in prime position to, as Fils-Aime said, appeal to non-gamers and casual gamers. The Nintendo DS has proved that this approach can not only work, but that it can work incredibly well.

I, myself, am extremely excited by the prospect of free online play. When Xbox LIVE first came around, criticism started falling upon the PS2 for not having a centralized multiplayer gaming framework. I defended Sony's approach, saying that it promotes developer freedom, and encourages competition in service pricing.

Now, Sony has announced a centralized system for PS3, while retaining compatibility with third parties, while Microsoft has invested further in Xbox LIVE. For both Xboxen, Microsoft has mandated that Xbox titles use their service. This has two caveats: it locks players into paying for online play regardless of the triviality of the game (monthly fee to play Street Fighter II online? No thanks), and it forces developers to throw out their preferred in-house or middleware netcode, instead having to use Microsoft-blessed libraries. (For an example of why that's bad, see Final Fantasy XI's April release date, when FFXI itself was announced for the 360 before it launched in November.)

Nintendo has affirmed (ironically, with Sony's help) the superiority of a provider-agnostic gaming framework. With their increasingly impressive launch library, below-average price point and innovative control scheme, Nintendo looks to be developing a top-notch console launch. This latest development, a pro-consumer take on Internet multiplayer, should have their competitors shaking in their boots.

Thursday Hubris, Part I

Thursday Hubris is a recurring feature highlighting the gutsy (and sometimes foolish) hubris exhibited in the past week.

Video Game Media Watch has a very nice selection of quotes about E3, the annual trade show for the video game industry which was recently scaled down to a much more "intimate," business-oriented event.

ESA, the organization responsible for E3, feels that the hubbub of a massive, party-like atmosphere is the furthest thing from what a burgeoning game industry needs. I can't agree with them more, nor can many of the people quoted in the article. The only issue I forsee with the new format is over-exclusivity, to the point of censorship, and I really do think this will be a severe problem:

What does this mean for gameblogs like Kotaku and Joystiq? If publishers and platform manufacturers don’t like the site’s messages will they be excluded? The slope here is as slippery as its ever been.
--An extraordinarily lucid Luke Smith

While it's true that the new E3 will slough off lots of wannabes and me-toos, I think the real victims will be the likes of 1up.com, Kotaku and Joystiq who, for the first time in video game journalism's history, are starting to consistently look like a real source of critical game reviews and commentary. Here's hoping they stay in the game.

Changing E3 is a smart move. Still, breaking a years-old tradition, and the largest game expo in the world? That takes hubris, and for such a gutsy, insightful rehash, the E3 downsize gets an 8/10.

Age of the Remix (For Real This Time)

I and others scoffed at William Gibson when his July 2005 article posited that we're firmly within the Age of the Remix. In a way, he's right. These days, it's easier for your run-of-the-mill pro-am artist to release a book, movie or album thanks to the proliferation of computer technology. DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album showed that with a nice software set up, you don't even need original content to make...uh, original content.

But surely no one would think that "the record, not the remix, is the anomaly today." For the most part, people consume art and don't put more art back in the system. (Let DRM get entrenched and it will stay that way, but I digress.)

Since his article was published, however, a few interesting steps have been taken towards finally entering this much-lauded era of prosumerism, where there's not a clear differentiation between those who make art and those who "use" it.

Linked is Slashdot's new feature known as Backslash. Contrary to Slashback, where updates on previously posted stories are grouped in one big "update" post, Backslash takes a selection of insightful and varied comments from a previous post and summarizes the discussion in a brand spanking new post. Now, frontpage Slashdot stories are composed entirely of Slashdot comments.

While not as convincing as Backslash, YouTube has introduced an NBC-sponsored Make Your Own "The Office" Promo contest. Using a (notably limited) supply of promo materials from NBC, you make your own promo for The Office, and the winner will be aired nationally. Nice contest, not a great example, though.

I even touched on the Age of the Remix meme in my thesis defense, pointing out that video games are works created by both the producer and the consumer, since the user's input results in a different playthrough each time. This is especially apparent in games like Oblivion, The Sims and Second Life, where user-created content fuels the game experience (Second Life), and open-ended game mechanics help the user to either select their actions from a broad spectrum (Oblivion/Sims).

The fact of the matter in all of this is that, despite The Grey Album, despite Backslash, despite Second Life and despite cult remix favorites like Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Takeshi's Castle/MXC, there is too much of an IP cold war in American culture. The fear of rights-owners unleashing lawsuits on parody/remix artists (even when it's actually legal, like in the case of Weird Al Yankovic's Amish Paradise) creates a chilling effect on really cementing prosumerism into the American culture.

An Introduction to Site Syndication

Hi there, and welcome back to Knee of the Curve. It's been a long time since I've posted; hopefully I'll be able to keep my posting frequency up now that my thesis presentation is over with.

What I'm posting about today is the technology known as website syndication. Websites that are syndicated make their content available in a common format that doesn't make assumptions about what software is reading them. Thus, a syndicated website shares its content to be used by other sites, and by visitors without actually visiting the official webpage.

There are two popular ways to do this: via two different languages called RSS and Atom. Since the two are virtually identical to the end user, we'll just call them "feeds." For an end user, syndication works like this: you use a feed reader to "subscribe" to site feeds, and read their content as soon as they're updated.

So, first things first, you need to get a feed reader. For any operating system, Firefox and Thunderbird do the job nicely in their own ways. Thunderbird treats RSS feeds like emails, and Firefox treats them like bookmarks ("Live" bookmarks, to be precise). Mac users can try Safari out, but I prefer the exceptional NewsFire. Linux users, try Akregator (for KDE) or Liferea (for GNOME).

You've installed your feed reader, and subscribed to feeds, now what do you do? Well, just wait for the content to roll in. Soon, you'll be reading your frequently viewed websites' content without ever having to launch a browser window:



Post any questions in the comments, and happy feedreading!

Port 25

I'm a big proponent of interoperability in the computing world. To be completely frank, anyone who isn't in favor of interop is either a monopolist, or dumb. Apple has realized this quite well here in age of OS X, most recently made apparent with the launch of Boot Camp, a tool for running Windows XP on your Mac.

So it is with pleasure that I spread the word about Port 25, a Microsoft blog detailing the goings-on at the Microsoft Linux Lab. This lab was established by Microsoft for the purposes of achieving better interop with other operating systems, something they're currently catching a lot of hell for over in Europe.

It's a great sight to see when massive companies like Microsoft are not only working on interoperability, but actually publicly endorsing it. As has been pointed out, the questions Microsoft certification exams assume a nearly-homogenous Microsoft environment, which is almost never the case.

The admittance by Apple and Microsoft that their competitors' products will occasionally be selected over their own is a good step towards eliminating the absolutist culture in the computing business world. The American political system has shown us just how asinine this absolutism can get (just read the blurbs on the DNC's homepage), so any step we take away from that quagmire is applaudable, in my opinion.

What's Next: Will Wright

The description of Will Wright's keynote at the Game Developers' Conference was "Why are you still reading this? It's Will Wright." I'd say that was a fairly accurate synopsis.

Will Wright spoke to a packed Civic Auditorium yesterday, and blazed through a laundry list of topics. For example, tying astrobiology to his latest beast, Spore. The coolest thing about the speech wasn't actually any crazy revelation about Spore, or some brilliant insight into the myriad fields he touched on. Rather, his frantic speech showed "What's Next in Game Design" without actually explicitly stating it.

Satoru Iwata had a very different keynote earlier that day, but the two talks definitely resonated. Today's games (the ones that the industry complains about) are just pushing pixels to the screen. What's next in game design is tying fields together. Whether it's for kooky simulations like Spore, or the novel Brain Training series for Nintendo DS, games that show a level of competency beyond "Play-Win-Repeat" are what the industry needs to move forward.

Thankfully, game makers seem to understand this. One game that comes to mind is Cloud, an entrant into the Independent Games Festival that, as was mentioned at the Game Developers' Rant, concerns itself with emotion over scores, fraglimits, blue cardkeys, etcetera. It's also important to note that this game isn't some CPU-melting meterological simulation. You, quite simply, play with clouds.

Emotion, interdisciplinarity. That's what's next.

Serious Games Presentation

If you're here for the Serious Games slides, look no further.

You can download them in PDF format, or SWF (Flash) format.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, on March 1st I held a couple of workshops at the National EAST Conference in Hot Springs, where I talked (and talked and talked) about Serious Games. If you're interested, grab the slides, or follow these citations for more information.

Adage's HCI study with Shadowgrounds
Social Impact Games

Missing The Point

Linked is an interview with Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson), who details his affection for the fledgling art of the video game, and how the next-generation platforms are going to be fully buzzword compliant:

"I'm excited that with the new hardware and such amazing leaps forward in technology, I may be able to experience games that even I can't imagine," added Jackson. "I have such admiration for the video game development process and the talent behind these games, that giving them more tools, better hardware, and more budget will only lead to more fantastic adventures."

Please. This drivel is not the future. What Microsoft and Sony are doing with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 are nothing more than the next iteration in a silicon cold war. Bigger, faster, stronger, but not better. Throwing more hardware at this problem is not the way to make more immersive games, or more entertaining ones.

Case in point: the Xbox 360 launch titles. Amped 3? Quake 4? Call of Duty 2? It's more of the same, with higher polycounts. There are some titles with varying degrees of originality, but "games that even I can't imagine?" I certainly hope he's insulting his imagination, not lauding the X360/PS3.

Graphics definitely are one of the most important parts of a game, but we've gotten to the point where it's "good enough" for almost every situation. Graphics will improve as the hardware improves, but no one's doing anything different.

Save for Nintendo. The upcoming Revolution console will have better graphics, there's no doubt about that. But they're planning on sacrificing insane pixel-pushing for...wait for it...a novel interface! *gasp* The horrors! But really, that's where the future lies, is with novel interfaces to already-extant high-caliber graphics. The real game developers agree, as reflected on countless Revolution-centric interviews; it's how you play that counts, not how many polygons are on the screen at once.