Ah Steam. Steam, you have single-handedly cradled the PC games market in your hulking piston-powered arms and kept us safe and warm and oily. So, anyway, I was browsing the steam-store today. The deep steam store. You know, pages 9+ on the "Action game" section. Ever since finding "RUNE" was on the steam-store, I never know what other little gems are lurking under the black velvety sea....
So I look out.
Ever watching, ever hoping to find but a glimpse...
...I will...
...Some beautiful unearthly thing...
In
the
waves
Ahem, sorry. Anyway, I'm plodding through the depths and I see a game- I forget the name, but it has a rather low metacritic rating. Very low. 33, I believe. Out of interest- I click on it. Standard stuff, nothing to see here. It sounds like it might be a cool idea, but seems to be badly executed. So I look at the recommended games- maybe there will be something similar but with a more reasonable reception?
What I saw was very strange...
Instead of recommending me other games like it, Steam had decided the best course of action was to recommend me other poorly rated games. That's like going to a restaurant and ordering a lacklustre steak, complaining "This isn't very good" to the waiter, and his reply being "I am very sorry sir, would you like a shit steak tartare instead?"
Its just a bit odd, really. I didn't know poorly-received games were a genre.
Thursday 29 November 2012
Task 6: Reviews and lies.
I understand that the task title isn't entirely correct, but it gives you an idea of what my focus is going to be. I'm going to try very hard to not let this post become a rant. I promise. I'm going to kick off with a pretty sad story.
Last year a friend of mine passed away. His name was Stephen Bray, but everyone knew him by another name. He was a video-game reviewer in his spare time, using youtube as a platform for his reviews. Without a doubt, they were the most incredible, well done reviews I have ever had the pleasure of encountering- with a sultry west Yorkshire accent to boot. I will be stealing from him for as long as I write or talk about video-games, just because I think it's never been done better. I think first of all its important to ask: 'what is a review?' because a lot of people don't seem to know the answer. Ultimately its a decision-making tool for us as consumers. It helps us decide what to spend our money on- in a world where a game can set you back £50, its not a decision to be made lightly. So firstly we have to trust the reviewer to have our tastes- a game I hate he or she may love and vice versa. Films, games and books are all ultimately subjective things- if everyone loved and hated everything unanimously, we'd live in a much sadder place than we already do. So, considering that the reviewer is not an AI built around predicting and mirroring our exact individual desires in a game, what is his or her job? To an extent, its to explain, to describe. To help us make the decision for ourselves. There are objective factors that can be described, for example, the lip syncing in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is poor. That's a fact. Whether this undermines the entire immersion of the game is subjective. Yet, reviewers have to be the every-man. They are mankind condensed.
Reviewers have to give us scores, right? We love scores. Metacritic is big business, especially in the games industry. This is what Take-Two's CEO had to say on that subject: “Unlike many other entertainment business[es], ratings by Metacritic and others' reviews really can influence the success of a newly-released title… if your ratings go below a certain level, it can really hurt your ability to sell the title, and above a certain level can make a real difference in your success.” To me, the idea that a game (or anything else for that matter) can be rated on a numerical scale is insane. People are lazy, they don't want to sit through your boring review- give me a number! Give me a number now! They don't want to compare the individual merits and flaws of two games, they want to be able to see at a glance which is better. Its all about sales. You know who has money? Publishers. You know who wants money? Review sites.
Lets say I'm a publishing company, full of more money and willies than Boy George's house, and I'm paying a certain review site a lot of money for advertising. Review sites are very responsible for creating "hype", and nothing kills hype like a bad review. So I'm going to pay them loads of money to make sure nobody thinks badly of my new money-making baby. I pay for the review site to exist! Who would be stupid enough to bite the hand that feeds them? They don't even try and hide their bias! When you have a magazine called "Official Nintendo Magazine" or "Official Xbox Magazine" its akin to having a film review magazine called "MatrixMateys" and trusting their word on Reloaded and Revolution. Its corruption, Jim, but not as we know it.
Anyway, what does Stephen Bray have to do with this? He was by no means a large name in the reviewing world, but he was large enough to be bribed multiple times. Not even by large publishers, but by indie developers. Not only did he deny these bribes, but he explicitly revealed them in his reviews. If you've got to pay someone to give your game a better score, you're saying wonders for the game's quality. Stephen was all about showing the audience that he is one man, with one opinion. He presented his own, subjective experience with the game- and to an extent, the reviews were made for himself. Ironically, this made them more useful to me than anyone else's reviews. No numerical sliders, by the way. Just a guy telling me what he thought of a game. We didn't always agree- in fact we often didn't, but he was honest.
References and links:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/game_culture/2005/03/ten_unmissable_examples_of_new_games_journalism.html
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18393883
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/87176/metacritic-catches-games-reviewers-taking-bribes/
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/07/16/is-metacritic-ruining-the-games-industry
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6470855/1
Image links:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/09-23-2010/200dantecheck.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/PlayStation_Official_Magazine.jpg
Last year a friend of mine passed away. His name was Stephen Bray, but everyone knew him by another name. He was a video-game reviewer in his spare time, using youtube as a platform for his reviews. Without a doubt, they were the most incredible, well done reviews I have ever had the pleasure of encountering- with a sultry west Yorkshire accent to boot. I will be stealing from him for as long as I write or talk about video-games, just because I think it's never been done better. I think first of all its important to ask: 'what is a review?' because a lot of people don't seem to know the answer. Ultimately its a decision-making tool for us as consumers. It helps us decide what to spend our money on- in a world where a game can set you back £50, its not a decision to be made lightly. So firstly we have to trust the reviewer to have our tastes- a game I hate he or she may love and vice versa. Films, games and books are all ultimately subjective things- if everyone loved and hated everything unanimously, we'd live in a much sadder place than we already do. So, considering that the reviewer is not an AI built around predicting and mirroring our exact individual desires in a game, what is his or her job? To an extent, its to explain, to describe. To help us make the decision for ourselves. There are objective factors that can be described, for example, the lip syncing in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is poor. That's a fact. Whether this undermines the entire immersion of the game is subjective. Yet, reviewers have to be the every-man. They are mankind condensed.
 |
| Totally unbiased. Definitely. |
Reviewers have to give us scores, right? We love scores. Metacritic is big business, especially in the games industry. This is what Take-Two's CEO had to say on that subject: “Unlike many other entertainment business[es], ratings by Metacritic and others' reviews really can influence the success of a newly-released title… if your ratings go below a certain level, it can really hurt your ability to sell the title, and above a certain level can make a real difference in your success.” To me, the idea that a game (or anything else for that matter) can be rated on a numerical scale is insane. People are lazy, they don't want to sit through your boring review- give me a number! Give me a number now! They don't want to compare the individual merits and flaws of two games, they want to be able to see at a glance which is better. Its all about sales. You know who has money? Publishers. You know who wants money? Review sites.
Lets say I'm a publishing company, full of more money and willies than Boy George's house, and I'm paying a certain review site a lot of money for advertising. Review sites are very responsible for creating "hype", and nothing kills hype like a bad review. So I'm going to pay them loads of money to make sure nobody thinks badly of my new money-making baby. I pay for the review site to exist! Who would be stupid enough to bite the hand that feeds them? They don't even try and hide their bias! When you have a magazine called "Official Nintendo Magazine" or "Official Xbox Magazine" its akin to having a film review magazine called "MatrixMateys" and trusting their word on Reloaded and Revolution. Its corruption, Jim, but not as we know it.
 |
| This was found with review copies of Dante's Inferno. Seriously. |
Anyway, what does Stephen Bray have to do with this? He was by no means a large name in the reviewing world, but he was large enough to be bribed multiple times. Not even by large publishers, but by indie developers. Not only did he deny these bribes, but he explicitly revealed them in his reviews. If you've got to pay someone to give your game a better score, you're saying wonders for the game's quality. Stephen was all about showing the audience that he is one man, with one opinion. He presented his own, subjective experience with the game- and to an extent, the reviews were made for himself. Ironically, this made them more useful to me than anyone else's reviews. No numerical sliders, by the way. Just a guy telling me what he thought of a game. We didn't always agree- in fact we often didn't, but he was honest.
References and links:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/game_culture/2005/03/ten_unmissable_examples_of_new_games_journalism.html
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18393883
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/87176/metacritic-catches-games-reviewers-taking-bribes/
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/07/16/is-metacritic-ruining-the-games-industry
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6470855/1
Image links:
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/09-23-2010/200dantecheck.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/PlayStation_Official_Magazine.jpg
What John thinks- episode 1
 |
| 3 Johns are roughly 3.1198 times better than one. |
http://www.techspot.com/news/49111-john-carmack-isnt-excited-about-next-generation-gaming-consoles.html
Video game history- This time it's personal.
 |
| My favourite babysitter |
Let me tell you, first of all, that I love video-games. Mmmmhmmm! I've always loved video-games, even before I could actually play them. You see, I was always one generation behind when I was a kid. My first console was older than I was by a very, very long way. It was a NES, and I can't remember too much about it, to be honest. The first game I ever played on it was "Gyromite", but let's not talk about that. No seriously, don't talk about Gyromite. My library consisted of many cartridges; the most frequently visited were Mario Bros 3, The Legend Of Zelda, Castlevania and Metroid. You could call that the beginning of my Nintendo fanboyism. Now, I'm not going to try and prove to you that the big 'N' is any better than anyone else. It wouldn't benefit you or I. What I can try and explain to you though, is how much fun I found those games. At this age, I was kind of unaware of the world. Let's be honest, I still am- but I just wasn't interested in everyone else's playstation's and nintendo 64s. The NES was alright by me, between the pervasive and isolating caverns of Metroid, to the rolling deserts of The Legend Of Zelda I was having a brilliant time. Bleep bloop bleep. Bleep bleep bloop bloop. Then one Christmas my father bought me a playstation. There were disks, little rubber stick things, soldiers, cars, 3D, my god! It's like the films, daddy! It's like the movies! But something was missing. The whirring of the disk drive didn't instil the same feeling of warmth that the slamming of cartridges did. The following January, a family friend gave me their Nintendo 64. Hey, I know this. I know this! That sturdy plastic, those stickered boxes- that Italian plumber! That green-clad fairyboy! As sad as it was, those familiar faces were my childhood friends and I was joyous to attend the reunion. I never owned a Gamecube, Xbox or Playstation 2. I skipped that generation for my love of the cartridge. Ignorant, stupid maybe. But definitely happy.
A part of me was leaving behind boyish things. A very different side of me was stirring. My father has never been a gamer- but there was a game that caught his eye. Whilst I was jumping Mario over turtles, he was building bases and manufacturing troops and sending them to their deaths with the click of a mouse. No, it wasn't Command and Conquer. It was Total Annihilation. To this day I have never found a better strategy game. Never. When my dad showed me the overwhelming sight of hundreds of robots marching unto death, I was hooked. It was deeper than anything I'd ever played, it was engrossing. It didn't make me laugh, reminisce or cry- it made me hungry to blow shit up. This was my big-boy time. When Zelda and Mario were tucked up in bed, out came the war-robots. For the aforementioned reasons, I will always enjoy Nintendo games. And you know what? I like that they're different in a somewhat-stale industry. But since sending my first tank onto the battlefield with a right-click, there was no going back. Call me an elitist and paint me Aryan- because I'm a PC gamer.
 |
| War is really fun. |
Mm, your glass is empty. Want a refill? Let me just stoke the fire a little, there we go... that's better... So you want to know some more about me, do you? My predictions and dreams of the future? Oh where to begin, where to begin. Get comfortable, because I'm about to tell you.
I'm not excited by the next-generation consoles, I'll be honest. Maybe they'll come out with some cool titles, I'm sure they will, but the consoles themselves? Nah. It seems that "next gen" means "more polys", in which case the new consoles aren't going to be doing anything I haven't already played. Seriously, you want next gen? Buy a fucking PC. We have more polys and HD textures than you could shake a Crysis stick at. I'm pretty interested in the other routes gaming might take, better AI, immersive headsets, that sort of thing. If we're going to go really Philip K Dick on this, then I like the idea of removing controllers altogether. No, not kinnect. I mean mind-reading games, extension-of-your-body games. Imagine not being restricted by input at all! I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I just think that graphics can only go so far. It seems that the master-work, the magnum opus of the industry has always been photo-realistic graphics. I honestly don't think that it's worth the trouble. AI is a term thrown around way too much in the video-game world. In gaming, all it really means is the set of commands a non-player character follows. Shoot this one. Run behind this thing. Help him if he's hurt, etc etc. What about real AI? You know, Yale university shit. Something that actually thinks and learns. There are some really amazing avenues that gaming can travel in the future. I have faith in humanity- as long as enough people reward steps in that direction, I think some very cool stuff is coming. It might take 10 years, it might take 50. But hopefully I'll be around whenever it does.
 |
| "Is 50 years a long time?" |
Image links:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LtvBfDnr8nk/TP2nGJWjz1I/AAAAAAAABZA/TDtefhz2JQo/s1600/600full-a.i.-artificial-intelligence-screenshot.jpg
http://megagames.com/sites/default/files/game-content-images/tatm.jpg
http://satoshimatrix.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/nes-system.jpg
Wednesday 28 November 2012
The History of Video Games: Part 3 (2000-present)
My last post was a bit of a slog. I know that. I'm sorry. You're a busy man, you've got a lot of stuff to read. You don't need endless pages of text to sit through- So I'm cracking down. You'll see. This post, this post is going to be sleek. Swoosh. Woomph. Badda-bing-badda-boom. Job done. Let's crack on.
So, videogames, videogames, videogames. Nowadays, the world is all about videogames. Big industry, I hear. Lots of money to be made, I hear. Gone are the days of developers in geek-shirts. No, no, no! Now developers wear suits! Its a big business now, and theres no time for dilly dallying. We live in a world where everything is connected. Connections mean networks, networks mean lots of people, lots of people means lots of money. In the 90s we returned to our houses. Arcades were dead, its all about the solitary gamer. We seem to have gone the other way, now. Now we can't get away from people, but instead of seeing them in the real world we see them online. One of the most successful game franchises of the modern age is call of duty, and lets face it- its not for its imaginative and rivetting story. Its for the multiplayer. In this day and age we can pwn n00bs like never before. As of November 2011, the Call of Duty franchise has sold over 100 million copies. We can safely say that most of those players play online. If the average player dies 15 times a match, and the average amount of matches played in a game's lifecycle is about 200 (probably more for the fans, but I reckon there's quite a few people like me who are so shit at the game that i've played maybe 10 matches in my life). Thats 300,000,000,000 deaths. Thats one hellish fuckball of a war.
So games are big now, bigger than ever. Production costs are through the roof- so sales have to be massive in order for games to survive. But lets face it- games aren't going anywhere. We love them too much. Whilst a disdain towards the industry still exists, its dying. Gamers aren't just pizza-faced, cheeto-fingered virgins anymore. They're the everyman, and that gives them power.
So whats actually happening in the 2000s as far as videogames are concerned? Well, theres the console wars. Theres always the console wars. When you buy a console, you're not buying an entertainment device. You're enlisting to join the video-game army! And you must fight for your console-of-choice's right to dominate. To the flame-wars, my brothers! Or you can stop being an idiot and play some games. But seriously, its competitve. It always has been, though- remember back to the sega megadrive days "SEGA does what Nintendon't!" but its definitely a driving force in the industry. Maybe a little bit like the space race, only fewer dead monkeys in spacesuits. But the real divide isn't between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Its between the casual gamer and the hardcore gamer. The tablets, the ipads- thats where its headed. But game companies are always trying to find new ways to expand their medium. Graphics are better than ever, of course, but what more can we do to evolve an indutry? The wii brought motion controls- which, let's face it, weren't great. But they did more than that- they got your grandma playing games! Considering granny has seen it all come and go, the megadrive, the SNES, the atari 2600- and never touched one with a barge pole, the Wii was a pretty undeniable achievement in that field. The Xbox 360 pushes with its superior online services (again, connections) and the Playstation 3 tries very hard to do everything. Games can now be downloaded, you know! No boxes, no shopping, nada. The internet is a mighty beast where gaming is concerned, and is probably the most definitive factor of the past decade of gaming.
A big question is: in a world where everything can be accessed on-the-go, where we never stop save for a 15 minute tube journey, is there place for the triple-A mega-title to be enjoyed on your couch? People want something they can whizz about with, play 5 minutes here and there, don't they? I don't know enough about this at all, but there are people who think that larger titles like Call of Duty, Elder scrolls and Uncharted are reaching their end. The future is small, sleek, touch-enabled, they say. We'll see. But don't stress! If you don't like the sound of that future, there are probably millions just like you. You'll get together and sort something out, right? Gamers are ingenious little creatures. Chin up, kiddo.
references and links:
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/322976,why-the-future-of-gaming-is-100-pc.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323551004578122881824183870.html
http://www.callofduty.com/message/205584716
http://uk.gamespot.com/features/the-future-of-gaming-tech-looks-brighter-than-ever-6383547/
Pictures:
http://www.gameplox.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/consolewars.jpg
http://www.dmfiat.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/fat_gamer_kid.jpg
So, videogames, videogames, videogames. Nowadays, the world is all about videogames. Big industry, I hear. Lots of money to be made, I hear. Gone are the days of developers in geek-shirts. No, no, no! Now developers wear suits! Its a big business now, and theres no time for dilly dallying. We live in a world where everything is connected. Connections mean networks, networks mean lots of people, lots of people means lots of money. In the 90s we returned to our houses. Arcades were dead, its all about the solitary gamer. We seem to have gone the other way, now. Now we can't get away from people, but instead of seeing them in the real world we see them online. One of the most successful game franchises of the modern age is call of duty, and lets face it- its not for its imaginative and rivetting story. Its for the multiplayer. In this day and age we can pwn n00bs like never before. As of November 2011, the Call of Duty franchise has sold over 100 million copies. We can safely say that most of those players play online. If the average player dies 15 times a match, and the average amount of matches played in a game's lifecycle is about 200 (probably more for the fans, but I reckon there's quite a few people like me who are so shit at the game that i've played maybe 10 matches in my life). Thats 300,000,000,000 deaths. Thats one hellish fuckball of a war.
So games are big now, bigger than ever. Production costs are through the roof- so sales have to be massive in order for games to survive. But lets face it- games aren't going anywhere. We love them too much. Whilst a disdain towards the industry still exists, its dying. Gamers aren't just pizza-faced, cheeto-fingered virgins anymore. They're the everyman, and that gives them power.
 |
| I am your future. |
So whats actually happening in the 2000s as far as videogames are concerned? Well, theres the console wars. Theres always the console wars. When you buy a console, you're not buying an entertainment device. You're enlisting to join the video-game army! And you must fight for your console-of-choice's right to dominate. To the flame-wars, my brothers! Or you can stop being an idiot and play some games. But seriously, its competitve. It always has been, though- remember back to the sega megadrive days "SEGA does what Nintendon't!" but its definitely a driving force in the industry. Maybe a little bit like the space race, only fewer dead monkeys in spacesuits. But the real divide isn't between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Its between the casual gamer and the hardcore gamer. The tablets, the ipads- thats where its headed. But game companies are always trying to find new ways to expand their medium. Graphics are better than ever, of course, but what more can we do to evolve an indutry? The wii brought motion controls- which, let's face it, weren't great. But they did more than that- they got your grandma playing games! Considering granny has seen it all come and go, the megadrive, the SNES, the atari 2600- and never touched one with a barge pole, the Wii was a pretty undeniable achievement in that field. The Xbox 360 pushes with its superior online services (again, connections) and the Playstation 3 tries very hard to do everything. Games can now be downloaded, you know! No boxes, no shopping, nada. The internet is a mighty beast where gaming is concerned, and is probably the most definitive factor of the past decade of gaming.
A big question is: in a world where everything can be accessed on-the-go, where we never stop save for a 15 minute tube journey, is there place for the triple-A mega-title to be enjoyed on your couch? People want something they can whizz about with, play 5 minutes here and there, don't they? I don't know enough about this at all, but there are people who think that larger titles like Call of Duty, Elder scrolls and Uncharted are reaching their end. The future is small, sleek, touch-enabled, they say. We'll see. But don't stress! If you don't like the sound of that future, there are probably millions just like you. You'll get together and sort something out, right? Gamers are ingenious little creatures. Chin up, kiddo.
references and links:
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/322976,why-the-future-of-gaming-is-100-pc.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323551004578122881824183870.html
http://www.callofduty.com/message/205584716
http://uk.gamespot.com/features/the-future-of-gaming-tech-looks-brighter-than-ever-6383547/
Pictures:
http://www.gameplox.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/consolewars.jpg
http://www.dmfiat.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/fat_gamer_kid.jpg
The history of videogames- part 2 (80s-90s)
Awwwwww yeeeeeee- a, ahem, hello. It is time for us to delve into the wonderful world of recent history, specifically, the 80s and 90s. A lot of things were going on in the 80s you know. Some good, some bad. I'm no historian, nor am I particularly good at writing about things like history. And- just between you and I, I don't know a great deal about much of anything. Thankfully, you don't have to listen to me pretend to know about the 80s. I could just go and get someone more capable right now, but that would be much too easy. No, no, for you- I go one better! We're going back to 1989 to hear about history right from the horse's mouth! In this case, the horse is called Billy Joel. So Billy, tell us a little about the history of the 80s, please.
"Wheel of Fortune" This, I believe, was a very popular gameshow. It involves a wheel and fortune.
"Sally Ride" The first american woman in space! Look at all this equality. Now women leave the world, too! A right we can all agree was denied to them for the longest of times.
"heavy metal suicide" Metal is bad, you see. Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica are acccused of hiding pro-suicide messages in their songs. A bad business move, if you ask me. Sales plummeting in future albums? Coincidence? I think not. But this does present a taste of the media's xenophobic view of new and scary things that kids like. Like videogames. More on that next time...
"Foreign debts" How times have changed... NOT (See: Waynes world)
"homeless vets" Really? But I've seen 'Animal Hospital', those guys are minted! Oh, you mean veterans, Billy? After the barrel of laughs that was 'Nam, a lot of soldiers found themselves sans legs or housing. Think Forest Gump's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know enough on this to make a valid point, really, but I hear this had a lot to do with America's inability to deal with it's failures. Sounds about right.
"AIDS" First recognised in the 80s, this became a pretty major problem. Nowadays, HIV isn't the one-way-ticket it used to be, but AIDs is still pretty bad news.
"Crack" Cocaine use surged in the 80s and a great time was had by all, until they died. Rest in peace, John Belushi. Seriously. So few people know how funny that man was.
"Bernie Goetz" was a man who shot four men and was charged with attempted murder. Standard stuff in the US, right? He got let off, though, despite being convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun. I don't even want to talk about America's gun laws, I really don't. Just take it up with someone else, it makes me too cross. I mean... fuck...
"Hypodermics on the shores" Environmentalism! New Jersey beaches found themselves slightly more sticky and syringey than usual when medical waste graced its shores. People weren't too happy about it. Prior to this, illegally dumping waste in the sea wasn't too much of a deal.
"China's under martial law" China declares martial law, allowing them to use arms against protestors- a slightly pointed move aimed at students at the Tiananmen Square protests. I'm afraid that I know very little about these protests, other than they were crushed by Chinese Military force in something resembling a massacre.
"Rock and roller cola wars" possibly definitely the largest and most influential war of the last 2,000 years, the giants of PEPSI face off against the titans of COKE (making them both seem normal sized). Rock 'n Roll was used to appeal to the younger demographic. Fun fact: Did you know that Santa's red jacket is primarily the creation of the Coca Cola campaign.
"I can't take it anymore!" Don't worry, Billy! We're almost out of time anyway, so you can head off home and do whatever it is you do. Boating or something.
Christ, this is going to be a long post. Maybe we should take a breather, catch our breaths, enjoy some orange juice. I'm actually writing this in Starbucks (shut your mouth) so that's what I'm going to do. Mmm. It's innocent orange juice. Boy, I love innocent orange juice.
So, videogames. Video video videogames. Actually, for those of you enjoying this blog on the internet (now I think of, thats all of you) I'll link you to a nice relevant song. God it's awful.
So, you want to talk about videogames, eh? Pac man. Pac man was big video games. That doesn't make much sense, so let me explain it to you. My mother loved pacman. She lived in Daule, Ecuador, and she hung out at the local arcade. Odd places, these arcades. I mean, these places are odd in the US, imagine a South American one! Anyway, her favourite game at the arcade was Pacman. She played it so much that she held the top score. MON it would read. MON for Monica. Friends would cheer her, lift her up onto their shoulders and parade around the dingy room 54,000. A score to never be bested. But this untouchable glory was not to remain untouched. One day, a stranger came to town (come on, picture it) his hat brought down firmly over his brow, his boots clanking underneath the equatorial sun. Clank. Clank. Clank. He burst into the saloon- I mean, arcade- and challenged my mother. Confidently, she backed away from the Pacman machine, arms folded, waiting to bask in his tears. But boy, did he play. He played hard. The machine was shaking under the fury of his fists, his knuckles pounding the faded, rounded buttons. 10,000- 20,000- 50,000! No! This cannot be! 56,000!? He had beaten her to the ground, her hands clawing the dusty earth for pieces of her broken name. She ran from her former castle. She ran all the way home. Under the shade of a mango tree, she wept.
From the heavens- a ray of light! A fairy god mother with a faux wooden finish. The Atari 2600. "Plug me in to your TV" it said "And you shall have Pacman right in your home!" Surely not. Surely this is witchcraft? This was the ace up my mother's sleeve. She could practice pacman in the dark of the night, after Arcade closing time. She would be the best once again. Weeks went by, the game consumed her. 55,000, damn it! Again! 55,500! Again! 57,000! Yes! But I don't want to beat him, she thought, I want to destroy him! Again!
In the arcade, a once familiar face returns... She approached the Pacman machine.
INSERT COIN. PLAYER 1 START.
A fury like no other, a whirlwind of button mashing and joystick twiddling. WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA. On and on and on. Grab the cherry! Eat the ghost! WAKA WAKA WAKA! When the night was through, the machine was all but in ruins.
High Score: MON - 64,000
The eighties saw a shift away from these arcades and towards home consoles. They were simply more convenient- kids could stay inside, crash on the couch and play video-games without the coins, the dingy carpetted rooms, the smell of smoke and teenage sweat. Convenience and ease are key. Whilst my mother used it to train her arcade skills, she, like other teenagers, would stop going to the arcades at all. It did take a little while for home consoles to replicate the visual fidelity of arcade machines, but once that was done they were superior in every sense. In the west, the Arcades are basically dead. They just sort of faded away, like a broken CRT screen. It wasn't so much a shift in what we played, although the 80s did see the birth of the shooter- a genre set to spread like duracel rabbits on heat. No, the real change was in where we played, or how we played. Controllers got refined- they became sleeker, trendier. Big and bulky was out of style, and so were the arcades. Maybe somewhere out there, in the basement of some cartel's drug-bank, there is a dusty old Pacman machine that still reads "MON - 64,000".
Links and references:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SNOAcD3ak
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/01/30/the-25-greatest-breakthroughs-in-video-game-history\
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html
http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-didnt-start-the-fire-lyrics-billy-joel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_Wars
http://geography2020.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/rock-and-roller-cola-wars-1964-89.html
Images:
http://macabroniandcheese.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sotg-arcades.jpg
"Wheel of Fortune" This, I believe, was a very popular gameshow. It involves a wheel and fortune.
"Sally Ride" The first american woman in space! Look at all this equality. Now women leave the world, too! A right we can all agree was denied to them for the longest of times.
"heavy metal suicide" Metal is bad, you see. Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica are acccused of hiding pro-suicide messages in their songs. A bad business move, if you ask me. Sales plummeting in future albums? Coincidence? I think not. But this does present a taste of the media's xenophobic view of new and scary things that kids like. Like videogames. More on that next time...
"Foreign debts" How times have changed... NOT (See: Waynes world)
"homeless vets" Really? But I've seen 'Animal Hospital', those guys are minted! Oh, you mean veterans, Billy? After the barrel of laughs that was 'Nam, a lot of soldiers found themselves sans legs or housing. Think Forest Gump's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know enough on this to make a valid point, really, but I hear this had a lot to do with America's inability to deal with it's failures. Sounds about right.
"AIDS" First recognised in the 80s, this became a pretty major problem. Nowadays, HIV isn't the one-way-ticket it used to be, but AIDs is still pretty bad news.
"Crack" Cocaine use surged in the 80s and a great time was had by all, until they died. Rest in peace, John Belushi. Seriously. So few people know how funny that man was.
"Bernie Goetz" was a man who shot four men and was charged with attempted murder. Standard stuff in the US, right? He got let off, though, despite being convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun. I don't even want to talk about America's gun laws, I really don't. Just take it up with someone else, it makes me too cross. I mean... fuck...
"Hypodermics on the shores" Environmentalism! New Jersey beaches found themselves slightly more sticky and syringey than usual when medical waste graced its shores. People weren't too happy about it. Prior to this, illegally dumping waste in the sea wasn't too much of a deal.
"China's under martial law" China declares martial law, allowing them to use arms against protestors- a slightly pointed move aimed at students at the Tiananmen Square protests. I'm afraid that I know very little about these protests, other than they were crushed by Chinese Military force in something resembling a massacre.
"Rock and roller cola wars" possibly definitely the largest and most influential war of the last 2,000 years, the giants of PEPSI face off against the titans of COKE (making them both seem normal sized). Rock 'n Roll was used to appeal to the younger demographic. Fun fact: Did you know that Santa's red jacket is primarily the creation of the Coca Cola campaign.
Christ, this is going to be a long post. Maybe we should take a breather, catch our breaths, enjoy some orange juice. I'm actually writing this in Starbucks (shut your mouth) so that's what I'm going to do. Mmm. It's innocent orange juice. Boy, I love innocent orange juice.
So, videogames. Video video videogames. Actually, for those of you enjoying this blog on the internet (now I think of, thats all of you) I'll link you to a nice relevant song. God it's awful.
 |
| Not seedy at all. |
From the heavens- a ray of light! A fairy god mother with a faux wooden finish. The Atari 2600. "Plug me in to your TV" it said "And you shall have Pacman right in your home!" Surely not. Surely this is witchcraft? This was the ace up my mother's sleeve. She could practice pacman in the dark of the night, after Arcade closing time. She would be the best once again. Weeks went by, the game consumed her. 55,000, damn it! Again! 55,500! Again! 57,000! Yes! But I don't want to beat him, she thought, I want to destroy him! Again!
In the arcade, a once familiar face returns... She approached the Pacman machine.
INSERT COIN. PLAYER 1 START.
A fury like no other, a whirlwind of button mashing and joystick twiddling. WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA. On and on and on. Grab the cherry! Eat the ghost! WAKA WAKA WAKA! When the night was through, the machine was all but in ruins.
High Score: MON - 64,000
The eighties saw a shift away from these arcades and towards home consoles. They were simply more convenient- kids could stay inside, crash on the couch and play video-games without the coins, the dingy carpetted rooms, the smell of smoke and teenage sweat. Convenience and ease are key. Whilst my mother used it to train her arcade skills, she, like other teenagers, would stop going to the arcades at all. It did take a little while for home consoles to replicate the visual fidelity of arcade machines, but once that was done they were superior in every sense. In the west, the Arcades are basically dead. They just sort of faded away, like a broken CRT screen. It wasn't so much a shift in what we played, although the 80s did see the birth of the shooter- a genre set to spread like duracel rabbits on heat. No, the real change was in where we played, or how we played. Controllers got refined- they became sleeker, trendier. Big and bulky was out of style, and so were the arcades. Maybe somewhere out there, in the basement of some cartel's drug-bank, there is a dusty old Pacman machine that still reads "MON - 64,000".
Links and references:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SNOAcD3ak
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/01/30/the-25-greatest-breakthroughs-in-video-game-history\
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html
http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-didnt-start-the-fire-lyrics-billy-joel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_Wars
http://geography2020.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/rock-and-roller-cola-wars-1964-89.html
Images:
http://macabroniandcheese.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sotg-arcades.jpg
Tuesday 27 November 2012
The risk and the reward: My view on indie games
Most people who know my videogame tastes know that I'm a pretty big fan of indie games. Thats a pretty odd thing to be a fan of, really, because its akin to saying "I like the taste of cheap ice cream". Indie games aren't a genre. Not really, anyway. Just like AAA games, they come in many different flavours- first person shooter, puzzle, real time strategy and mint-choc-chip. So what is it that defines an indie game? Indie is independent, independent is usually small and cheap. So indie really means budget, right? That surely cannot be reason enough to single out this selection of games and to say I 'like' them. Why then, are indie games such a different kettle of fish to their big budget brothers? When you're an indie developer, you've got to take risks. You've got to get noticed. There is no better way to make history than to do something differently- the irony being that there is no better way to make money than to repeat what made money last year (see: triple-A games). But fuck money! You're an artist! Be different, be controversial, be poor and then pretend that its what you were trying to do whilst secretly weeping into your pillow over the success you never found. Its no overstatement to suggest that the indie market is heavily populated by a lot of bad games. They're not even always bad ideas, they're just bad games. But you've got to break a few eggs to make a few omelettes! For every million indie developers that starve to death, one grows a beard and builds Minecraft. Its sort of a collective effort, really. If enough people have crazy ideas, one is bound to be good. Thats where the gold is, you see. In risk taking.
God knows the industry needs a little variation now more than ever. Its getting bad. Really bad. There was a point where I'd play indie games just to appreciate the variety in the ways they failed. Its been said a thousand times, but grey/brown/modern/gritty/regenerating-health/grenade-out!/shooters are getting a little dull. Its not like these two schools of gaming are warring, either. AAA breadmakers might like to dabble in adding a little dash of indie tomato to their proverbial foccacia, but at the end of the day they don't care. Why should they? They make a hell of a lot of money- telling them to "shake it up a bit, baby" is a futile and pretty ridiculous request. And lets face it, as much as indie's hate to admit it, their existence relies on the big bastards being bland. They wouldn't have it any other way.
 | |
| Money, fame and women are just three words. On a seperate note, here is the developer of Fez. |
God knows the industry needs a little variation now more than ever. Its getting bad. Really bad. There was a point where I'd play indie games just to appreciate the variety in the ways they failed. Its been said a thousand times, but grey/brown/modern/gritty/regenerating-health/grenade-out!/shooters are getting a little dull. Its not like these two schools of gaming are warring, either. AAA breadmakers might like to dabble in adding a little dash of indie tomato to their proverbial foccacia, but at the end of the day they don't care. Why should they? They make a hell of a lot of money- telling them to "shake it up a bit, baby" is a futile and pretty ridiculous request. And lets face it, as much as indie's hate to admit it, their existence relies on the big bastards being bland. They wouldn't have it any other way.
Sunday 4 November 2012
You know what I do sometimes? I review VIDEOGAMES!
This is my review for an indie title called "Cave Story". I thought this might be a good place to showcase this kind of thing. I'm in talks with DMU's Radio station at the moment about doing something similar for them. That would be cool. You'd better tune in.
Early Video Games
 |
| "Baby". It makes sense later. |
So who was the first person to have fun with computers? Well people have been building machines for amusement for a very, very long time. "Automatons" are mechanical constructs comparable to the world's first robots, self-operating machines. These things were clearly built for amusement's sake, but they lack a defining feature of computer-games: interaction. Once the automaton is set whirring away, there is no interface between a person and it. So, as amusing as a wind-up monkey is- it's not a game. "The Turk" was an automaton built in 1770, a machine capable of playing chess against a human opponent. Its mechanical, interactive, competitive- it was also a hoax, and was controlled by a poor sod in a box who worked out all the equations for it. So close, yet so far. Some would argue that had this not been a hoax, it would not have met the criteria of a "computer-game". Even the Analytical Engine (1837) designed by Charles Babbage wouldn't really fit the bill. If you want to get picky, electronic computers were invented in 1936 by Konrad Zuse. It was electronic, it was programmable, it was binary. Whilst I'm sure that much fun was had with the machine (titled Z1) I can't find any hard evidence that it was ever used for amusement's sake. We all know it was, though.
But we don't want switches and lights, little motors that make funny noises or computers that are amusing only in that they're really weird. We want programs! Software! That, surely, is where the very first computer-game was spawned. EDSAC was British computer generally accepted to be the first "stored program" computer. It completed its first calculation in 1949. Would you like to know what it was? THE FIRST GRAPHICAL COMPUTER GAME, nicknamed "Baby". A bit weird, but we have our man (thing) !
So, we got there in the end. EDSAC is short for Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, and was developed by the University of Cambridge. It wasn't built to crack German code, it wasn't a test in mathematics or theoretical physics calculations. It was built as a general purpose computer to 'help out' around the university. Yet, the first thing it did was play a video-game. It was made of vacuum tubes and was rather large. Despite its size, it could only run 650 instructions per second- that's not very much. For comparison to modern hardware, take this: Given that modern games run at 60 frames per second, it would take the EDSAC 43 days, 19 hours and 16 minutes to run a single frame of a modern game. And you thought the N64 was laggy.
Its safe to say that the professors of Cambridge University probably didn't see the beginning of a new medium when they ran their game on their EDSAC. They probably weren't aware that their ugly, ugly creation would hark the dawn of an era of immersive worlds, networking on a global scale or ruthless competitive play. We live in a world where the gaming industry is making leaps every year, better AI, real-time reflections and maps larger than ever before. But you've got to start somewhere.
"Baby" steps.
References:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/317437.stm
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/conference/EDSAC99/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Delay_Storage_Automatic_Calculator
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=77026
http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/automat.htm
http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts=instrumentation
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/game
Images:
http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/edsac.htm
Tuesday 30 October 2012
The left and right sides of the brain
Tuesday 16 October 2012
Extra-terrestrial in isolation. 35 minutes.
This was a quick concept sketch of a human-ish thingy. I need to start working from references, this just isn't on. Trying to calculate lighting mentally is very tricky... The pixelation on the eyes isn't laziness, honest. I promise.
Monday 15 October 2012
About me
My mother was always very fond of video-games; she effectively brought me up on them. She held the top score on the local Pacman arcade machine in her hometown of Daule, Ecuador, and her battle to maintain this glory for four consecutive years instilled her with a passion for the games in general. I'll tell you more about that some other time. This fascination was passed on to me on the day that I received my Nintendo 64. I would say it was a day I'd never forget- but I've forgotten it, so I won't. What I do remember, however, is the two following years spent playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and feeling a little bit lost once that journey was over. I've never been more involved in something in all my life. When I was nine, my worries were very small- this left me able to appreciate and obsess myself with Zelda entirely. Maybe its a little limited but I'm not going to lie. Although I have enjoyed many video games in my life, Zelda is the reason they're my favorite medium.
When I was younger I spent a lot of my time creating things. Usually this manifested itself in the form of artwork- it seemed like a quick and powerful way to convey what I was thinking to my friends. I also wrote (very bad) stories and pretended to hunt trolls in the woods near my home in North Yorkshire- there is no richer sustenance for the imagination than living in a very beautiful part of the world devoid with people. As I grew older, my little hobbies grew into ventures; I began to sell my art, write short stories and act in stage productions, but ultimately I just really enjoyed creating things. I'm not particularly interesting and so a chance to define myself through something I've made was always a goal for me. But the one thing that I couldn't create was a video game. I'm not very mathematically minded and I struggle with interfaces, so I'm terrible at coding- I could never bring anything to fruition. Its something I'll always regret.
To lend whatever skills I have into creating an experience would be fantastic. To be a part of the production of a game is something I wouldn't pass up- but in an ideal world, I think I'd like to start an independent studio, to direct something creatively. I'm not nearly learned enough to make an accurate observation, but it seems that indie developers are growing stronger than ever. I've been told that its easier than ever to put something together, and that gives me a little hope. One day I really hope to get something out there. If it flops, if people hate it, then the studio will crumble and I'll regret everything I've ever done and then I'll die. But people will have defined me by my creation. If my creation brings a hand-full of people a fragment of the happiness and inspiration that Zelda: Ocarina of Time brought to me, then I'll die happy. Poor, but happy.
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