I've been watching some of the Olympics so far and whilst exciting - especially the swimming (how has there suddenly been such a big change? Have humans or training sessions really changed that much the last 8 years?) - the events are really depressing.
I'm British and so that probably explains it. We have very poor sports funding in this country and the level of the sportsmen we field in the non-professional, hell... even the professional sporting events show this lack of funding. Considering our population and the lack of funding from government-level we do fairly well in the world arena compared to the larger, better funded countries (e.g. USA and China).... but it's not good enough. In fact, it's embarrassing. I'm not looking forward to the track and field events next week when i'm fairly certain we're going to struggle to get many medals.
Now, all of this isn't surprising when you look at our general performance over the numerous Olympics in recently but we're supposed to be hosting the Olympics in 2012!! What the hell are we going to do? Basically, we're going to host the Olympics and hardly be a contender for a portion of medals because of the chronic lack of funding.... not only that but it's being hosted in London which is so overcrowded and untenable as a hosting city that it's stupid. The event should have been somewhere more central - sure, people don't like Birmingham but it could have hosted the events with more ease than London can.
I feel embarrassed about our performance in this Olympics, i'm afraid that i'll feel ashamed when it comes to our turn to host. Summary - why did we apply to host the games only to be shown up? The Chinese were ready for it and we're not. I mean, we didn't score a single gold in the equestrian events! The English are known for their horse riding.... what the hell are we doing? And what the hell will we be able to do in four years time?
They can blame the weather all they want but they should have been training in the right temperature and humidity for at least a year or six months. I don't know if they have been... maybe they have? Then why have people mentioned it?
**EDIT**
Well, i posted this near the beginning of the games when i hadn't realised that the medal table represents the total number of medals awarded - not places in events... i.e. some events you can win 4 medals but you only get one first place team. Which i think is misleading. I feel like it's cheating. If you win a team event for four people it doesn't mean that you country's score should go up by four but by one. Otherwise it's unfair to the people who win an event by themselves and only add one point to the country's tally.
I'm not ashamed of my team anymore and i realise now that i was posting too early into the Olympics and before our stronger events came to pass. Hopefully we can build on these successes for 2012!
12 August 2008
8 July 2008
The music industry...
Normally i wouldn't write on things outside the game industry but i'll make an exception here for a topic i feel fairly strongly about. Basically the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) are trying to clamp down and ban 'file sharers' (inverted commas due to the fact that the person paying the bill might not be the one file sharing music, also IP spoofing etc). I wrote this as a comment to the BBC article that i had read but i doubt it'll get published due to the length and number of responses they'll get.
I haven't received a letter and I don't download music - nor do i buy it due to my disgust over the music industry's actions over the last few years. There is only one thing that i believe is true about their campaigns - they're shooting themselves in the feet.
Historically music demand and distribution is down to social sharing of that music. You go for a night out and hear a good song at a club - you listen to the radio and again, hear an artist you like. You visit a friend and they share their own collection with you so you can see if you like the music. It's called the playground effect: people see things they like that other people have and they go away and buy them. It's the cheapest and most effective type of marketing and is highly sort after by marketing campaigns... i.e. good word of mouth.
The music industries are stopping all of this with their constant litigation and persecution of their customers. They are displaying a serious lack of understanding of how the music industry became so powerful and rich - which wasn't really until this last century.
They're suing people in garages for playing music too loud - god forbid people hear music! They're stopping file sharing rather than offering alternatives. They're stopping internet radio from being profitable by asking for exorbitant fees... Next thing you know they'll require music to be listened over headphones only so that every person has to pay to listen to the same track (much like the cinema industry likes to do). Pretty soon, without any way of being able to find new music for free, no one will buy music and we'll be back to the pre-industrial times of local musicians and stage performers.... or we would be if the goverment hadn't made that law stopping the ease of bands performing in pubs and stuff.
I hate to be a doomsayer but we're potentially on the edge of a dark age of music and the musicians and publishers in their mindless greed don't seem to see that.
I haven't received a letter and I don't download music - nor do i buy it due to my disgust over the music industry's actions over the last few years. There is only one thing that i believe is true about their campaigns - they're shooting themselves in the feet.
Historically music demand and distribution is down to social sharing of that music. You go for a night out and hear a good song at a club - you listen to the radio and again, hear an artist you like. You visit a friend and they share their own collection with you so you can see if you like the music. It's called the playground effect: people see things they like that other people have and they go away and buy them. It's the cheapest and most effective type of marketing and is highly sort after by marketing campaigns... i.e. good word of mouth.
The music industries are stopping all of this with their constant litigation and persecution of their customers. They are displaying a serious lack of understanding of how the music industry became so powerful and rich - which wasn't really until this last century.
They're suing people in garages for playing music too loud - god forbid people hear music! They're stopping file sharing rather than offering alternatives. They're stopping internet radio from being profitable by asking for exorbitant fees... Next thing you know they'll require music to be listened over headphones only so that every person has to pay to listen to the same track (much like the cinema industry likes to do). Pretty soon, without any way of being able to find new music for free, no one will buy music and we'll be back to the pre-industrial times of local musicians and stage performers.... or we would be if the goverment hadn't made that law stopping the ease of bands performing in pubs and stuff.
I hate to be a doomsayer but we're potentially on the edge of a dark age of music and the musicians and publishers in their mindless greed don't seem to see that.
21 June 2008
And so it rears it's head again...
The resident evil issue of race has reared its ugly head again. Luckily, it's just someone who's misinformed about the subject and has come late to the debate... unfortunately i can see this happening more frequently as the due date of RE5 draws nearer.
The comments are a mess - primarily because Kotaku (and probably other blogs) linked to the site - but there are a few commenters who get the point across and don't cross the line to being rude. In particular there's a guy (Tubatic) who writes over on destructoid about the trailers and the issues involved in a more constructive manner.
Personally, i'm sad about this whole issue. I fear that when someone takes this much offence against an event that there's little you can do to change their opinion - and the amount of effort involved to do so is incredible. But along side this problem is the reaction of people on the other side of the opinion spectrum. You see the anger and the passion involved on both ends of the spectrum but i wonder if each time this happens if people in the middle, just on either side of the equatorial region don't become more polarised to their sides... and if those people who are further towards the extremes also become more firmly entrenched in their standpoint.
Ugh... that's a little difficult to understand. Basically i'm worried that people who aren't racist against black people will become more polarised against the more extreme 'anti-racism' black people and vice versa by these angry exchanges. However, is there any middle ground to be had on these issues?
Maybe one day in the far future when no one cares about the events in the last 200 or so years.
The comments are a mess - primarily because Kotaku (and probably other blogs) linked to the site - but there are a few commenters who get the point across and don't cross the line to being rude. In particular there's a guy (Tubatic) who writes over on destructoid about the trailers and the issues involved in a more constructive manner.
Personally, i'm sad about this whole issue. I fear that when someone takes this much offence against an event that there's little you can do to change their opinion - and the amount of effort involved to do so is incredible. But along side this problem is the reaction of people on the other side of the opinion spectrum. You see the anger and the passion involved on both ends of the spectrum but i wonder if each time this happens if people in the middle, just on either side of the equatorial region don't become more polarised to their sides... and if those people who are further towards the extremes also become more firmly entrenched in their standpoint.
Ugh... that's a little difficult to understand. Basically i'm worried that people who aren't racist against black people will become more polarised against the more extreme 'anti-racism' black people and vice versa by these angry exchanges. However, is there any middle ground to be had on these issues?
Maybe one day in the far future when no one cares about the events in the last 200 or so years.
15 June 2008
The importance of humanising...
I was just thinking about technology - software and robots specifically (though it applies to all appliances) and why we, as a race, humanise the things we create a use. I came to the conclusion that we do it to make ourselves feel better. Let me explain.
Humans face a massive obstacle to being happy in life: life ends, we die. What happens after is a big source of distress or comfort to people depending on what they believe and what they do with that belief. If we believe that there is an afterlife (in whatever form) and that we have a soul then that belief can sustain us throughout life.
In parallel with this thinking we humanise robots in life and fiction. We give them the opportunity to be more than their programming and it is a recurring theme seen throughout science fiction. On a more mundane level we give names to our cars, believe that appliances could have hurt feelings if we upgrade to something else and throw them away. They are just machines or objects - they are without a feelings or desires. In the same way, we could just be described as 'meatbags' with no souls...
Trying to achieve something outside of operational parameters for things that we consider to be below ourselves allows us to achieve something similar for ourselves - immortality. Tending to want to find things that are more than what they seem could be just an artefact of our genetics... increasing the chance of survival for those genes.
It's a sad thought in some respects. On the other hand, it allows us to add this thinking into games. How many gamers end up placing inordinate priority or care into a very minor aspect of a game? The little things make a difference but perhaps designers could begin 'humanising' their games to allow that emotional attachment between gamer and game to form. It's important to remember that rewards are not always of the physical type in life and by primarily focusing on tangible in games we dilute the potential experience.
Humans face a massive obstacle to being happy in life: life ends, we die. What happens after is a big source of distress or comfort to people depending on what they believe and what they do with that belief. If we believe that there is an afterlife (in whatever form) and that we have a soul then that belief can sustain us throughout life.
In parallel with this thinking we humanise robots in life and fiction. We give them the opportunity to be more than their programming and it is a recurring theme seen throughout science fiction. On a more mundane level we give names to our cars, believe that appliances could have hurt feelings if we upgrade to something else and throw them away. They are just machines or objects - they are without a feelings or desires. In the same way, we could just be described as 'meatbags' with no souls...
Trying to achieve something outside of operational parameters for things that we consider to be below ourselves allows us to achieve something similar for ourselves - immortality. Tending to want to find things that are more than what they seem could be just an artefact of our genetics... increasing the chance of survival for those genes.
It's a sad thought in some respects. On the other hand, it allows us to add this thinking into games. How many gamers end up placing inordinate priority or care into a very minor aspect of a game? The little things make a difference but perhaps designers could begin 'humanising' their games to allow that emotional attachment between gamer and game to form. It's important to remember that rewards are not always of the physical type in life and by primarily focusing on tangible in games we dilute the potential experience.
14 June 2008
The difficulty of being... in games.
There was a post recently on one of the forums that i frequent about one of the member's fathers. This person had been tempted by World of Warcraft. He tried out a demo of it and came to this conclusion:
There's too many damn buttons. Why do I have to bind any goddamn thing? And how come there's never any brothers in this stuff? I remember seeing Lord Of The Rings, not a damn milk chocolate elf. They coulda put in one, give us one high yellow brother, give us something.
Now, you may have noticed from other posts that i'm a white male so my perspective is different... but reading that comment i was worried. I was worried about all the opportunities that are being wasted currently in gaming.
First off, yes there are a load of buttons to memorise, get used to etc. It's a big and confusing step even for veteran gamers - let alone people who haven't played many control-complex games over many years - and all of this is alongside learning the game mechanics as well. Making a game that is open to both learners and advanced players is a difficult enough task in itself, but making it a deep experience while retaining a shallow angle to allow players who want to stay at that level is almost impossible.
But let's leave that topic alone for the time being. I'm not in any position to be going into the depths of difficulty curves... however i would like to address the person's second comment. I mentioned above that i'm white. I'm male. I'm also middle-class. I'd like to leave that all behind but if we're being realistic no one can get away from their upbringing and stratum of social history. I've never played a game and thought,
"Wow, where are the white people?" and my immediate response to this comment was,
"Elves are a different race. Maybe they never lived in an environment where darker skin became a predominant biological evolution. Kind of like how you don't get blond Asian people. It's just an imaginary game world so what does it matter how the creators imagined it?"
Then i thought again and it got me wondering, "Why have i never considered it before and what other parts of society does it apply to?"
Thinking about the reason he felt the way he felt - although i had never experienced it in game form before - i decided that it must come down to feeling excluded. We define our physical selves by what we look at in the mirror or down, from our heads, towards our feet. I realised that if every game i played or race i tried to play in a game excluded my physical being from being recognised that i'd probably start to feel maligned and excluded from existence. It's like being ignored on a mass scale. It's important to feel included in the activities you partake in and, through no fault of the creators of WoW (and Lord of the Rings) they had excluded a whole section of society.
From that point i began to explore what other parts of society have been 'included' or excluded from the archetypes and tropes of gaming. Women were the original excluded populace. There were little to no mainstream female protagonists and even when women were portrayed in gaming they tended to be one of two stereotypes: helpless and sexually prolific in their appearance or strong, Amazonian, man-hating, warriors - some of which would eventually fall into the former category during the progress of the game. All of that came to a climax when Lara Croft became the first mainstream, strong but sexy (overly so) woman to be a useful character. Thinking in this way i realise how Lara (who is fairly two dimensional in some respects) has become the icon that she has.
Moving on from there i thought about obesity. The rising levels of obesity in the world have brought this physical form into the general concious mind and as a result many games have included the option to be fat - or physically big-boned (see games like City of Heroes). Apart from having a laugh, i can't see the appeal of being obese - even in a game... but sticking to the theory that people define themselves through their physical presence that i came to above, it makes sense that this has been included. Indeed, many of these same games also include the ability to be Asian or black.
Gay people have also been pretty maligned in society and i would also pose that female gay people tend to have it harder than male gay people due to the heterosexual masculine affinity for objectifying women. There have been certain games that have capitalised on this mentality with Fear Effect 2: Double Helix being a prominent example. The protagonists fell easily into the strong amazonian archetype which also has the possibility of being 'turned' by the right man.
The two remaining questions for me are:
When will there be a positive character for other parts of society to latch onto? Has there already been one? I can't think of a single game where i played a black or Asian character - in fact i'm really looking forward to Mirror's Edge, partly because of this interesting aspect of the game.
The second is more of a research type of question. Would white gamers feel maligned in the same way as other parts of society if there was a hugely popular game were you could play every different skin colour but not white. Does our social history preclude us from feeling this way or is it just down to individual personalities?
If anyone reads this, i'd love to hear what you think about this subject.
There's too many damn buttons. Why do I have to bind any goddamn thing? And how come there's never any brothers in this stuff? I remember seeing Lord Of The Rings, not a damn milk chocolate elf. They coulda put in one, give us one high yellow brother, give us something.
Now, you may have noticed from other posts that i'm a white male so my perspective is different... but reading that comment i was worried. I was worried about all the opportunities that are being wasted currently in gaming.
First off, yes there are a load of buttons to memorise, get used to etc. It's a big and confusing step even for veteran gamers - let alone people who haven't played many control-complex games over many years - and all of this is alongside learning the game mechanics as well. Making a game that is open to both learners and advanced players is a difficult enough task in itself, but making it a deep experience while retaining a shallow angle to allow players who want to stay at that level is almost impossible.
But let's leave that topic alone for the time being. I'm not in any position to be going into the depths of difficulty curves... however i would like to address the person's second comment. I mentioned above that i'm white. I'm male. I'm also middle-class. I'd like to leave that all behind but if we're being realistic no one can get away from their upbringing and stratum of social history. I've never played a game and thought,
"Wow, where are the white people?" and my immediate response to this comment was,
"Elves are a different race. Maybe they never lived in an environment where darker skin became a predominant biological evolution. Kind of like how you don't get blond Asian people. It's just an imaginary game world so what does it matter how the creators imagined it?"
Then i thought again and it got me wondering, "Why have i never considered it before and what other parts of society does it apply to?"
Thinking about the reason he felt the way he felt - although i had never experienced it in game form before - i decided that it must come down to feeling excluded. We define our physical selves by what we look at in the mirror or down, from our heads, towards our feet. I realised that if every game i played or race i tried to play in a game excluded my physical being from being recognised that i'd probably start to feel maligned and excluded from existence. It's like being ignored on a mass scale. It's important to feel included in the activities you partake in and, through no fault of the creators of WoW (and Lord of the Rings) they had excluded a whole section of society.
From that point i began to explore what other parts of society have been 'included' or excluded from the archetypes and tropes of gaming. Women were the original excluded populace. There were little to no mainstream female protagonists and even when women were portrayed in gaming they tended to be one of two stereotypes: helpless and sexually prolific in their appearance or strong, Amazonian, man-hating, warriors - some of which would eventually fall into the former category during the progress of the game. All of that came to a climax when Lara Croft became the first mainstream, strong but sexy (overly so) woman to be a useful character. Thinking in this way i realise how Lara (who is fairly two dimensional in some respects) has become the icon that she has.
Moving on from there i thought about obesity. The rising levels of obesity in the world have brought this physical form into the general concious mind and as a result many games have included the option to be fat - or physically big-boned (see games like City of Heroes). Apart from having a laugh, i can't see the appeal of being obese - even in a game... but sticking to the theory that people define themselves through their physical presence that i came to above, it makes sense that this has been included. Indeed, many of these same games also include the ability to be Asian or black.
Gay people have also been pretty maligned in society and i would also pose that female gay people tend to have it harder than male gay people due to the heterosexual masculine affinity for objectifying women. There have been certain games that have capitalised on this mentality with Fear Effect 2: Double Helix being a prominent example. The protagonists fell easily into the strong amazonian archetype which also has the possibility of being 'turned' by the right man.
The two remaining questions for me are:
When will there be a positive character for other parts of society to latch onto? Has there already been one? I can't think of a single game where i played a black or Asian character - in fact i'm really looking forward to Mirror's Edge, partly because of this interesting aspect of the game.
The second is more of a research type of question. Would white gamers feel maligned in the same way as other parts of society if there was a hugely popular game were you could play every different skin colour but not white. Does our social history preclude us from feeling this way or is it just down to individual personalities?
If anyone reads this, i'd love to hear what you think about this subject.
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