Vampires...

The world was recently swept with Vampire Fever. It probably started with the TV series True Blood, but it really took off through the sudden fame of the movie Twilight and subsequently the mass consumption of the books it's based on. The entertainment media has suddenly flooded with variations on the theme. New series such as Vampire Diaries (also based on books) and a Twilight board game is the first that come to mind.
But the concept of vampirism has always been present in fiction. The first would probably be Dracula, but with the sudden surge of interest all the old dogs were reawakened. Moonlight, Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned, by extension Anne Rice books, the World of Darkness roleplaying system that I myself am so fond of, Vampire Knight... Suddenly vampires are no longer something to be feared, but something to be admired, adored, or even... worshipped... Why is this?

First I must state that this is written from a mostly male-vampire-to-female-human point of view. In many cases these points apply both ways, but my thinking is linear and heterosexual as I write this.

Now that it has entered the mass media, why does every other person find vampires so attractive? In many cases there's nothing special about them save for the fact that they drink blood. I think it is the element of mystery. People are afraid of what they don't understand, but they are excited and intrigued by the knowledge that there is something they don't understand. The same way you love rollercoasters even though they make you fear for your life. The risk is a rush.

Beside this stands the fact that these popularised vampires are elegant, sophisticated beings. They are the embodiment of suave. Usually they are financially secure to the point that it becomes difficult to judge their net worth. They have a strong lineage and family traditions. Their family and their loyalty towards it is of utmost importance. Essentially they appeal to everything our culture defines as a perfect partner. We find them attractive because they are, in all aspects of society, your key to a comfortable lifestyle.

But what about the fact that they can't go into the sunlight? First let me mention that for the sake of storytelling this detail is often skewed. Some can walk in sunlight for short periods but it makes them violently ill (Moonlight), others have certain artifacts that make them immune to the effects of sunlight (Vampire Diaries), others are quite comfortable under indirect sunlight, but suffer negative effects when exposed to direct sunlight (sparkling characteristic from Twilight). But the aversion to sunlight has a purpose: It shows a weakness. It is difficult to believe that a creature of such magnitude and strength can be brought down by something we find so commonplace that most of the time we barely notice it.

Not only do they attract us in their physical appearance, their strong personalities and financial or social fortunes, they also display a weakness, which our maternal and paternal instincts pick up on. We want to help the weak.

Last point I'm going to ponder on is the concept of immortality. Vampires live forever save for certain extreme conditions (fire, decapitation, sunlight etc). We find them attractive because we fear death and they provide something that can save us from this inevitable unknown.

So as a closing argument, when my friends swoon over a vampire character of some sort, I let them. There's nothing we committed companions can do to stop it. On a purely evolutionary level we are outclassed. Luckily these characters are simply that, fictional beings. All we can do is wait for the infatuation to end...





Words:
"There comes a time for every vampire when the idea of eternity becomes momentarily unbearable. Living in the shadows, feeding in the darkness with only your own company to keep, rots into a solitary, hollow existence. Immortality seems like a good idea, until you realize you're going to spend it alone."
- The Vampire Chronicles: The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice

Board Games

When I say board game the first thing that popped into your head is probably Scrabble or Monopoly. Though these are both brilliant games, it's not nearly an accurate description of the phrase. Before computers, TV or even radio, board games were one of the most enjoyed indoor pastimes. Some board games have prevented all-out war between nations. Some games have remained unchanged for millennia. And still today board games are a popular pastime in the slightly-less-than-mainstream circles, global sales climbing 23.5% in 2008.

Broadly speaking you can split board games into a few categories, which I'll cover one at a time.

Abstract

These games tend to focus on strategy more than story. Almost everyone can play Chess to some degree, but it's not nearly the only game of its kind. A personal favourite of mine is Go, a Japanese game that evokes the same strategic thinking as Chess but with far simpler rules and a certain degree of elegance that few games can achieve. Another 2-player game I enjoy is Mancala, an old African/Asian game of moving marbles or stones around little pots. For its simplicity in rules there is some amazing strategic depth.

Party Games

It happens every so often that I would be hanging out with friends and a bottle or two of wine, and someone would say "Hey let's play 30 Seconds!" This is a typical party game. Easy to learn, fun to play, with little downtime between turns. Another good example is Clue (I still have a copy called Cluedo, when it was British). Party games tend to finish in under an hour, before it becomes repetitive.

Family Games

Games that are easy to learn and easy to play, and often don't require quite as much strategy. Good examples would be Boggle, Scrabble and Upwords (pictured above). Most family games also make good party games, such as Pictionary.

Eurogames

This is where I got into board games. Eurogames derive the title from the fact that the first games of this style came from Germany and became very popular very quickly. The games tend to have a basic back story to give context and theme, but what makes them most intriguing is that each game has a unique gameplay mechanic that is found in very few other games if any. The most famous eurogame is Settlers of Catan, but Carcassonne, Ticket To Ride (links to video review) and the newcomer Dominion are all worth a mention.

Fantasy Games
These games sacrifice simplistic rules for depth of story and intense scenarios. The games tend to play longer (2-6 hours) and have a very thematic style, usually fantasy but sometimes based on a TV series or game. I wouldn't recommend these games to the beginning board gamer, but if you've played Magic: The Gathering or some form of roleplaying such as D&D you'll fit right in here. Actually, the World of Warcraft game is quite popular... My friends and I have been playing Runebound (pictured above), which is an RPG in board game form. There's also a game for Battlestar Gallactica that many people are raving about.

Wargames

Warning: Only for the hardcore. These games typically take months of buying units, painting them and researching combat strategies. The rules are complex enough to emulate real-life warfare. If you enjoy RTS games you can try this, but it's not for the beginner or even intermediate player, and you'll need quite a bit of cash to get started. The most famous in this genre is Warhammer 40,000 (pictured above). There are also boardgames that give the same type of combat style without the hassle of amassing an army, though the games can still take a few hours to play. I would recommend HeroScape(very pretty) or Warriors of God.

So to conclude, I believe there's a board game out there for everyone. And once you're hooked you'll keep looking for something "the same but different", that will slowly introduce you to the wonderful world of board games. Places to go for more information would be BoardGameGeek, Board Games With Scott and The Dice Tower.

What board games do you enjoy? Comments welcome.

Musicality And Everyday Life

I don't know a single person that doesn't listen to music in some form, whether it's the iPod in your pocket, on the radio or going to clubs. But music has benefits other than providing a backtrack to your daily life.

I'm a musician. I live for my music and I've noticed over the last few months that a sense of musicality helps you in an everyday capacity. You learn rhythm, timing, pitch... You even learn to listen.

Let's start with the basics. If you play an instrument you learn rhythm. This is an invaluable skill when you learn to dance, but is also handy in things like modelling, where you want even, smooth steps. You also learn to predict things more accurately. "1, 2, 3!" If counted at regular intervals, everyone knows when 3 is going to land because the gap between 1 and 2 is the same as 2 and 3.

Timing. The first example I can think of is knowing how long it'll take for a traffic light to change. It's an internal sense of how long things take to happen. It prevents you from jumping the gun, running a red light that changes moments later. It even helps comedians to pause for the exact length of time for comedic effect.

Pitch. If you can play an instrument you can tell when something changes pitch. Did you know that a flat tyre makes a lower sound than a properly inflated tyre? A glass or mug with a chip also produces a different sound.

And this brings me to my last point. You learn to listen. When you study music, they often let you listen to a song and pick out specific instruments or sounds. This skill is handy in all kinds of ways. I've been able to work out what's wrong with my car simply from the sounds it makes. Speaking of cars, I've saved myself from getting run over twice because I heard a car approaching behind me, even through the noise of other cars.

When I was younger, watching TV, I would often turn off the sound and listen for the sounds my mom were making in the house, then guess what she was doing. It was a fun game, but it taught me of the little sounds everyday objects make.

Computers also make sounds. When I sit in bed with my laptop, I sometimes position it in a way that cuts off the airflow into the machine, but withing a few seconds I would notice the hum kick in of the internal fan trying to keep the thing cool, and I know it's suffocating. You can hear the hard drive in a computer churning when it's copying things. When you think the machine has frozen you tend to panic and start pressing buttons. "But wait, the hard drive is still churning. Maybe it's just busy." And invariably it wakes back up when it's done with whatever it was doing.

Besides being a backtrack to your life, music is a skillset. I use my musicality on a daily basis and I'm very thankful to my parents for affording me every opportunity available to develop it.





Words:
"Seriously, we should give up on the idea of anything mainstream because pop culture has splintered into a thousand things and will never be put back together."
-Robert Ashley, guest on Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Ep 126

Encyclopedia?

I don't even remember when I first heard of Wikipedia, but in the last year it's become a part of every net-user's daily life. When you wonder about something, you go to Wikipedia. I've even got a shortcut to it on my phone's home page.

Why? Because it's reliable. Contrary to a certain spoof video (funny even though I disagree with it) the facts are almost always straight. For every user posting random information there is a hundred users correcting it and providing citations to support it. Wikipedia is famous because it's accurate, and it's accurate because it's famous. I've seen pages updated within literally minutes of something happening. Where else would you get this kind of information?

That's exactly my point. Without Wikipedia, where would we get our information? From a hard-copy encyclopedia that's incorrect the moment the editors are done with it? With the coming of the "Data Age", as I like to call it, internet access (and by extension access to information) is available almost anywhere. Are we leaving behind the encyclopedia? Is the process of validating information for print too slow for our needs?

Many blogs operate on the First Post principle. As soon as they catch wind of a rumour, they publish it on their blog. It's the internet. You can always go back and update it when you have more information, but the prestige of being the first publication to announce something makes it a risk worth taking. In a way Wikipedia is the same. As soon as something happens, a user thinks "I probably need to put that on the page" and off they go. If it's incorrect, another user (or the same user) will go and correct it. Because of this, you can go check how many people watched the last episode Lost, literally hours after broadcast.

So is Wikipedia the ultimate and only? No. Why is it the sole source of information on the internet, even maybe the world (because even newspapers now cite it as reference)? Because it provided the right service at exactly the right time. The problem with the internet was, yes there's all the information you will ever need, but are you going to sift through pages of search results pointing to news articles and rumour blogs to find what you're looking for? Wikipedia gives a single point of contact for information, which is then presented with definitions and basic information first, filtering into detail as you read.

As with everything, there is competition, other companies doing the same thing. Google launched Knol. It's essentially Wikipedia, but articles are based on topics and theses rather than defining a concept, and are supposed to be written by an expert in the field. There are some good articles, but when I want to know what films Stanley Kubrick(yes it's linked to the Wikipedia page) made, I'm not going to find it on Knol.

About now I usually make my closing argument. This time it's easy. To write this article, I opened Wikipedia 12 times to check references. That's all you need to know.

Also, if you're the type of person that gets involved in high science arguments over a few drink(happens every weekend), Wikipedia and a cell phone that can access it is an essential part of winning an argument.

Words:

Picture this time...

TV and Plugs

I first noticed it with Mythbusters. "We didn't only perform these tests. To see what else we got up to, go to your website on..."

It's a plug, like so many others. It's been there for ages. But ever since the internet can handle video, they've been hinting at further content. During season 4 of Battlestar Galactica the same thing happened, but they hinted that there are further scenes. Time Warp says that they performed more experiments than they can put in the disappointingly short show, which is quite believable.

However: At what point do they start depriving from the television episodes to bring traffic to their website? It's all fine if they put deleted scenes on the website, but did they purposefully cut those scenes from the episode to generate traffic to their website? Are they important? Are you still getting the full impact of the show if you don't go watch that part online?

It makes sense to drive people to your website. After all, when you have them there, you can sell stupid merchandise to them such as actual Cylon toasters.

What about webisodes? Battlestar Galactica had several seasons of between-television-season episodes. In my opinion the shows didn't greatly impact the way you interpret the next season, but are they a part of the story? Or simply fan fiction with publicity? All they really did was show a little more depth of the situation leading into the next season, to whet the apetite of a prospective audience. 

I think it's fine to have extra footage on the website, as long as it sticks by one of two conditions: The footage is not an integral part of the show, or is included on the box set upon release. When you buy the set, you want everything. In five years' time when you feel nostalgic, you won't be able to find those webisodes again.

We must be wary of this trend. I fear the day I watch Survivor and at the end of the show they say "To see who gets voted off, go to our website". It would mean the end of television as we know it...

Words:
This will be my first post without a relevant quote at the bottom. However, I read this during the week and found it funny:
"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died"
-Stephen Wright

Docs...

When I say I'm heavy on my shoes, I mean it. I get up in the morning, shower, dress, put on my shoes, and that's where they stay till I get into bed at night. The shoes I wear must go where I go, do what I do. If I want to walk 20 km up Buitengracht street, they take me there. If I want to break into a sprint across a wet field my shoes have to get me to the other side. If I want to stand my ground in a mosh pit I need something to keep me rooted to the floor.

I buy one pair of shoes and wear them until they fall apart. I don't want to waste time deciding which shoes to wear today. Foot goes in, tug on laces, maybe a knot, and off I go into the urban jungle.

On average my shoes last two or three months before they give up. It needs to be strong, comfortable and especially affordable. They will break. I will need to replace them. I can't afford the most expensive shoes every time. I've also figured out that shoes with ankle support is a better idea for me, so that's a requirement aswell.

I tried Converse All Star Hi-tops for a while. Though they are comfortable shoes they don't last very long and get dirty unbelievably quickly. Caterpillar shoes are strong but just don't fit the shape of my feet (slim at the heal, wide at the toes. Fighter's feet, I'm told...) Then one day I decided to try a pair of Doc Martens.

I bought the 8-up laced design. It had the ankle support I needed without being too complicated to lace up every time. I was told to buy them tight. Because it's made of leather they will stretch to fit my feet. The first two days I wore them around the house in the evenings but couldn't bring myself to give up the biker boots I was practically living in at the time.

After two weeks the leather had settled. These were officially the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned. As my foot slipped in it felt like one hand grasping the other. It was like a hug from a loved one, it fit that good. These shoes did literally everything I needed them to. The soles were flexible without being soft. They were a soft walk but I could still feel the road under my feet. The shoes are narrow enough to fit between the car's peddles (manual gearbox thank you) but wide enough to keep my balance when sprinting through crowds on a busy street.

These shoes are cool when it's hot. They keep my feet warm when it's cold. There's no pair of shoes I would rather wear.

I sit typing this with, you guessed it, those same docs on my feet. I forget exactly when I bought them but I'm sure it's been over a year now. The leather looks a bit tarnished but nothing a coat of leather food won't fix. The soles are still solidly part of the shoe thanks to this bright yellow stitching. There's a few indications of the underside thinning but nothing to cause worry.

I understand why these shoes have become such a staple of durability. It's obvious why they've become so famous in 50 years. Very few products are so famous that they make the brand. Moleskine. Converse. Ford. Boeing. Dr Martens.

"The boots and shoes have been especially popular among skinheads, punks, grungers and members of a few other youth subcultures."

-Wikipedia

So why are these shoes so popular in the frowned-upon part of society? I have no idea. We were at a gig last night(pirate party, Strident played) and I can distinctly remember twenty (yes 20) people wearing classic black docs in varying heights. And if you ask any of them, they will never buy another pair of shoes. If those broke, they'd replace them with the same.

It's inexplicable. Docs have become a part of the culture. It's an item of recognition. "So where did you buy your docs?" is a perfectly valid pickup line.

I think the answer is relatively simple: It's a really good, inexpensive, easy to care for pair of shoes. They are so simple, there's nothing that can go wrong with them.

As with any niche-market product, it has become increasingly difficult to find docs in South Africa. I fear the day these finally give out on me. Maybe I should try going barefoot for a while...

Words:
"There is no shortage of guys picking up guitars and trying to get chicks."
-Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Ep 121

Boredom

When I think back to my childhood (when I was about 13), the first thing I think of is the stupid stuff we got up to during summer holiday. Spending hours outside, walking from friend's house to friend's house, getting into trouble as often as humanly possible... Good times were had.

But why did we do this? Why did we mess around for days on end? Because we were bored. We had nothing to do.

A decade later, I have no time to do the things I want to. I realise that this is partly because I now have a job, but if I look purely at the list of things I want to get to, there's ten times more stuff on my list. When I was a kid, we entertained ourselves. We made stuff up. We pretended. These days, you don't have to imagine. If you want a fantasy story, you play a game with a fantasy story in it. If you want to pretend to race around, you go to the carts track and race.

In my day, we built soap box racers. I think I'm one of the last generations to actually do this. You didn't just get in and press the win button with your foot. You actually designed the thing, planned it out, built it, tested it. And when you ended up in a ditch you learnt from the experience and did it better next time.

Kids these days can buy their "soap box racer" at the store. It's plastic. It's made in a factory. And it comes with seatbelts and airbags, because heaven forbid you actually hit something and got hurt. And if somehow you did manage to get hurt, your parents sue the living daylights out of the manufacturor.

How sad is that? That you can't even get hurt anymore. It's an integral part of childhood!

Here's what scares me: Writers use their imagination to create worlds for their readers. Their imaginations are vivid because they played in the garden when they were a kid. They made stuff up. When the children of this generation grow up... where will their inspiration come from? Will they simply derive their stories from the stories they've read before? Will they base it on the inherintly crappy stories in games?

Are we the cause of imagination's extinction?

You don't have to imagine you're a jedi, running around with a broomstick going "woooooom! wooom!". You just play the Star Wars game. Don't get me wrong, the games are great. But at some point kids need to put down the game and actually use their brain.

Be creative. Try to solve problems. Get it wrong. Get hurt. This is how you learn. This is how you discover what it's like to lose. This is what shapes your future. Live it.

Words:
"1000 times I have accepted the drudge work and delivery jobs and assassination requests and diplomatic missions and more for every random person I've met in the game. And yet, I get resentful every time my wife asks me to take out the trash. Something is not right here. And while I'd love to ponder it more, I really do have to get back to the game now. Oh wait, no---I'm at work! Shit!"
-Jeff Green

Piracy Makes Games Suck

I'm a geek. I'm not shy about that fact. Being a geek means you have friends who are geeks. Having friends who are geeks means that when a new game or movie comes out, you're sometimes offered a copy before it's even been released. Piracy is big, especially in the PC gaming world. Less so for console games, but don't think it doesn't happen.

Games are expensive. It's a fact. If you take into account the level of quality people want in their games these days, and what it costs to make them, it's not surprising the unit price is so high. And don't tell me movies are cheap games should be. In movies they only have to worry about how it looks, not what'll happen if the player decides to do something ridiculous. 

So when you're offered an opportunity to play the game, no strings attached, before you pay for it (if ever), people tend to go for it. But what are you missing?

Many times the process of cracking the game breaks some aspect of the game. Things like online play or achievements. In some cases the game may crash because of the workarounds involved. Some people may seize the opportunity to plant and distribute their virusses through these "cracked copies". Often, in an attempt to crack the game before the official release date, an unfinished or reviewer's copy of the game is used, which may include critical errors. Cracked games can also not be patched, leaving it open to vulnerabilities or flawed gameplay. For the online play that did work with the cracked version, the fact that you can't patch it means that now you can't play online because the servers require you to have the latest fixes installed.

And worst of all, your experience of the game is tainted. 

As a programmer I know how it goes. You sit for days writing a small part of the game or program, but you can't get it perfect. You've been working so hard on the whole project that you think this little problem can be fixed later, or is really not so bad. So someone gets a pirated copy of your game. They didn't pay for it so they're willing to install it and try it for an hour or two. If they don't like it, they skip it. Or worse yet, they go onto public forums and discredit your game because of that small niggle in gameplay you decided can be left. They are in general more critical of the game.

If they had payed for the game, they would see the niggle, but think to themselves "It's really not that bad. The rest of the game makes up for it. It's a good experience in general." Because they payed for it, they want to get their money's worth so they give the game a proper chance.

Personally, I enjoy a game more if I have the physical package I can put on my shelf. Often the game comes with some special trinket, or there's a collector's edition. It makes it an experience instead of a pastime while you wait for your pizza to be delivered or whatever.

The last problem I have with piracy is DRM. I know it sounds backwards, but it's simple. When games are pirated, the producers don't get money for it. So they need to stop a game from being pirated. They end up licensing outside software to do it for them (Starforce or SecuROM). These methods are never perfect because no two computers are set up the same, so by doing so you introduce a margin of failure to your games: a number of buyers for whom the game will not work because something on their computer isn't how it should be. In some cases it also introduces an install limit. Someday I'm going to look at an old game and think "I want to try this again", but when I try to install it, the game will firstly require internet access to a service that may no longer be available. If that service is still there, it may tell me that I've installed the game too many times. How can this be? I'm sitting with the disc in my hands. I payed for it. The slip is still in the case, although the writing has faded a bit... If I pay these exorbitant amounts for my game, I expect it to work when I want it to.

Even games with DRM gets cracked. Sometimes the DRM is only there to stop it from being cracked on release day, but it will be cracked within a week. However, it ruins the game for years to come.

Unfortunately piracy is here to stay. Unless they can find a way to make sure you can't do anything without a legal copy (WoW did it) you can really only rely on people's good faith and support.

Words:
"In the case of pirates, say, I would like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows."
-Herman Melville

Isolation

Five years ago when I had just gotten my driver's license, I used to get annoyed at my mom. She would pester me with reminders such as looking for emergency phones when driving far, and keeping track of petrol stations and truck stops even if I don't stop at them. I found it very irritating. But if something were to happen to me out on the road, that was the one thing that could save me. Because five years ago, I didn't have a cellphone.

I didn't have a phone because if I needed to speak with someone, I went there and found them. If I wanted to buy something, I went to a shop where I spoke to a person. If something happened to me out on the road, I walked to the nearest truck stop or emergency phone.

These days everything is virtual. If I read (on the internet) about a game that I think I'd enjoy, I go to Take2 (on the internet) and order it. It then gets delivered to my house a few days later. You can buy literally anything online these days, even groceries. I even rent DVDs online. When you're out on the road, you drive with all your windows shut tight so the aircon can do its thing. You look out at the world like it's a movie, or some display in an aquarium. You don't interact with the outside world or with other people. It's your little adventure.

You don't go to someone's house, you hook up online. As I say this, I consider running Google Talk and checking who's at home.

I work for a company that sells services. Internet connectivity, websites, bulk e-mail, etc. Beside the fact that we don't have physical stock to put on a shelf, we don't need a shop front because no-one would ever come. People order services on our website. They pay for it with a credit card. If something goes wrong they e-mail us. If it really goes wrong they phone our support people.

It's sad, really. We all go on about going green and being environmentally friendly, but we isolate ourselves from the outside world. Not just from nature (heaven forbid a single bug should make it past the windowsill) but also from each other.

I think we prefer it that way because we don't have to deal with uncertainties. Facial expressions, body language and tone of voice are gray areas, open to be misinterpreted. If it's there in writing in my inbox, how can I get it wrong? For a perfect example of doing things online instead of going out and living it up, read the quote below. (Sorry Jeff, I love your posts but you're a geek)

Do yourself a favour. Next time you want to buy something, instead of just going online and ordering it, go into a shop and buy it. Walk in, find yourself a nice friendly store clerk that knows what they're doing, and communicate.

Words:
"I don't actually know a whole lot about animals now. Except that I like them. So now I'm giving myself a crash course in all sorts of things--which is also giving me a side course in geography (hey--Africa is a continent!)--through extensive reading, Wiki-ing, and watching of channels like Animal Planet, when they're not doing one of their 35 shows on dogs."
-Jeff Green

Casual To The Core

Casual games have taken over. I think it makes sense. People seldomly sit down behind a computer and say to themselves: "Right, now for a few hours of gaming." Only people that really enjoy games would do that. A casual game allows you to sit down for a quick game. Sometimes you end up spending hours there anyway, but the thought of dedicated a section of your day almost to the activity of inactivity is a daunting concept. 

That's World of Goo. I've been playing on and off for a few weeks now and it's always engaging. Casual games can be described in 3 words: Simple, repetitive, challenging. These elements, when present in the right quantities, will deprive you of hours of your day. And the hours that you don't spend playing, you spend thinking about the challenge you stopped on and how to defeat it.

But as much as I enjoy simple, addictive games something happens to me after a while. If I spend too much time playing these simplistic games, I begin to crave the depth, detail and immersion offered by larger titles. I want that imaginary world with its folklore and cultures. I want to feel like I'm in control of someone's destiny, that my choices have purpose other than the completion of an arbitrary task. I want to play something that will suck me in and keep me interested like a good novel on a sunday afternoon. As much as the gamer world thinks casual games are taking over, there will always be a market for the core gamers. There will always be lonely teens that need something to keep them busy over a weekend.

Just look at console games. A console used to be simple, addictive games with the occasional racing title thrown in. These days all the big genre games are coming out on console, catering for the "pop it in and play" crowd.

Like they say, the devil is in the detail...

Words:
"Not even halfway, but in the beginning it's like 'Oh there's Rosco Street Station! Oh there's those jittery bums, you know on the bench. There's the valkeer stuff painted on the... exactly like it is in the game.' You're like 'Alright the got the tone down! We're set to go!' And so it happens. He like shoots the doors open and then... you know... raises his voice..."
- In-Game Chat 27 October 2008, comparison of Max Payne movie with original games.

Good Old Days

It turns out that there are still many people that enjoy a good game of pen-and-paper roleplaying.

So I went in search of my old player's manual for Vampire: The Masquerade(pictured left). Upon finding my old character sheet the memories and nostalgia came flooding back, of late nights in a small theatre with a group of drama students pretending to be vampires. The epic adventures that played out there were the stuff of legend.

But what makes the games by White Wolf so amazing (and a little scary) is the fact that these future-changing revolutions could be taking place right under our noses, for real, and we would never know...

I called up a few friends and asked around and everyone seemed keen, so we all got together one evening with the player's manual and worked out our characters. We all then spent the next week thinking about our characters and developing them from mere pieces of paper to living (I use this term lightly) breathing members of society.

If you're familiar with Dungeons & Dragons you'll know how most roleplaying games work: The chronicler (a.k.a. narrator a.k.a. dungeon master) tells the story up to a point, then stops. It's the duty of each player to state what their character would do in that situation. A few minutes of stats-comparing and sometimes arguing commences, followed by a round or two of dice-rolling (with dice that have between 4 and 20 sides). Then the story can continue based on their successes or failures. What made The Masquerade unique in its day was focus on the theatrical more than the mathematical. Your character sheet was only there as a reminder. The real character, with full background story and entire family trees and political structures, was in your head. During play, when a challenge is presented a quick calculation and a single dice-roll is all that was needed to find out what happens. The story can then continue. It made for much faster paced gameplay and much more amazing stories. And indeed, the stories were told, because when you retell the tale of your adventure you portray it as if you are the person who experienced it, not the character sheet!

Over the last week I've been combing the internet for information on The Masquerade, but it was replaced by a game called The Requiem(pictured right). No longer are the vampires an entity on their own. They are part of a much greater and sinister system known as the World of Darkness in which anything can happen, from ghosts to werewolves, in the tradition of horror stories the world over. I'm doing my best to find the books required to start playing the newer game, but not before the adventure of our Masquerade has concluded, which can take up to 3 months of weekly meetings.

With PC and console games as sophisticated as they are these days, it's good to know that we can still enjoy a good old-fashioned game of pretend, even if it is with some help...

The games also encourage you to read, so I find it especially suited for players in their low teens who are still in touch with their imagination, but who get bored when reading a book like we old people (early twenties). Once you've played a few hours with friends, you start wondering about the story behind the story. And it's all there. Beside the player's manuals and a guide for storytellers, there's a whole selection of books that widen the fictitious universe. Some of them have nothing to do with how the game is played, but are simple storybooks that serve to enrich the mental image you have of this world beneath our everyday lives.

However, it's not for everybody. The whole theme of this genre is very dark and brooding. If you struggle to keep a straight face while telling a ghost story, you would be better off playing a science fiction or fantasy game. World of Darkness is for the goths among us. Serve with Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Anathema and especially Katatonia.

To Close: If you've never played a pen and paper roleplaying game, there's a very big gap in your education. In my opinion it's something that everyone needs to do at least once in their life.

Words:
"The cleansing astringence of rejection" is the most ridiculous phrase I have ever used in a comic."
-Questionable Content

When a Coder Plays Games...

I enjoy PC games. At the moment I'm playing Spore and awaiting delivery of Crysis Warhead. I buy between 1 and 3 games a month depending on releases. However, my day-to-day job differs very little from the work of the game developers. How does my knowledge of the internal workings of a game affect the way I experience a game?

We plan new features, build them in stages, spend much time messing with our own creations trying to break them, and when they break we figure out how to fix them. A rally driver can most probably tell you in quite boring detail how the internal structure of a car makes it drive the way it does, but it doesn't really affect the feeling of driving.

Also, like a rally driver, simply knowing how it works doesn't make you any good at it. I'll be first in line to admit that I'm not the best at any particular type of game. Actually I pretty much suck at RTS games. A quick glance at my bookcase tells me that the closest thing to RTS I own would be SimCity 3000 (in my opinion the best of the series) and Startopia, both more disaster management than RTS. Anyway, back to the point.

When I play a game, I approach it the same way I approach everything in life:
"What is my goal? How can I achieve it? Is there a better or simpler way of accomplishing this goal? Is this cheating?"
I don't go looking for every mistake in the game I can, and tell them how to fix it. All this does is deprive me of the pleasure of playing the game. I do notice the mistakes, the little glitch that nobody else noticed or was simply too small to devote time to this close to going gold. Some critics (reviewers?) will name and shame these little glitches like it's the end of the world, but in a world where games become increasingly complex and detailed, is it really possible to cover for every possibility? I think it's wrong to even expect developers to perform such feats. If anything, the fact that I understand the work that goes into a game makes me more lenient to the mistakes or oversights in games.

I heard a very nice analogy in a podcast today, either 1UP Yours or the last GFW Radio, not sure. Allow me to paraphrase it a bit. When a programmer plays a computer game it's like pulling the curtain away from a magic show to expose all the gears and pullies and tricks underneath. But the question is, now that you understand how the trick works, does it make the trick any less impressive?

I don't think so...

Words:
"We are united by a common element. Its not the color of our skin or our ideology or where we come from. No it's that we're a giant bunch of fucking nerds."
-Ken Levine, PAX 2008 Keynote(video)

Guitar Hero III Through The Eyes of a Guitarist

Being a guitarist of about 8 years experience, I always scoffed at the prospect of games such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I considered it gimmicky, air guitar with a high score even. But a few weeks ago when I was offered an opportunity to play my curiosity got the better of me, so I took hold of the plastic replica Les Paul and selected a difficulty. I chose medium but very quickly moved to hard, because I figured it can't be far enough removed from the basic mechanics of playing as to render me useless. What transpired was a nail-biting and elating few hours that ended in my purchase of the game. I now venture to compare the game with the real thing and how neither is like the other, but the one contributes towards the mastery of the other.

Firstly, I was right in my assumption that the game is like the real thing. You press a chord,and strum the note. You also have a tremolo arm(referred to by its fashionable name of whammy). It feels surprisingly like playing a guitar, although the lack of weight makes it a little tricky to keep stable. To play the songs a certain degree of timing is needed, especially on the more difficult songs where offbeat notes and different time signatures come into play, such as the intro of La Grange.

There are also elements that remove the game from the real thing. The fact that 6 strings and 22 or more frets with an infinite combination is reduced to 5 buttons with no open note(when no note is fretted). The strumming is also turned into more of a button being hammered than the actual motion of strumming. There is also no such things as palm-mutes, an integral part of most rock songs. But my main complaint is that the buttons give no feedback. You need to press them relatively firmly and the only thing telling you where your hand is on the 'fretboard' is a little mark on the middle button. On a real guitar, you can feel a definite edge where your fingertips move over the fret's edge. You know what the strings are doing under your fingers. But this is all a result of taking a fundamentally analogous action and turning it into computer inputs.

Now the bright side. I've come to the conclusion that Guitar Hero, besides being a very fun and addictive game, is also a very good stepping stone to learn to play the guitar.

When you endeavour to learn the art of guitar playing, there's a typical development curve: For the first few weeks you feel like you'll never get it right and it's a waste of time. Then when you get the hang of it, you progress very quickly and you can literally feel and hear yourself improve as you play. Guitar Hero helps to overcome the initial stupidity of learning the guitar. You're going through the motions of your first few guitar lessons, but you don't have to listen to the dull twank sound of your efforts. You're rewarded by a throbbing crowd of cartoon moshers. It's then relatively simple to shift over to a real guitar and 'fill in the gaps'.

I had to think twice about writing the next bit, because it could potentially insult many of my guitar playing friends: Guitar Hero can get you over The Wall. After a few years most guitarists hit a wall where just playing guitar isn't enough anymore and you need to start thinking about the technique and theory behind your playing to progress. Many guitarists are happy to stay by this wall, and turn into the sing-along players at the bonfire on the beach. The guitarists that commit to conquer the wall will end up the riffing superstar that you see in Guitar Hero. This is where techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, sweeps, arpeggio and chord structures become important. The hard and expert levels in Guitar Hero do a very good job of helping you onto this path. The main benefit the game provides is the timing between your hands. I struggled for many a lonely evening to get my right hand to pick at the same speed as my fretting hand presses the notes. The game makes it all part of the progression. When you turn away from the game and pick up a real guitar, you can feel that your hand-to-hand coordination has improved.

The game has it's gimmicky elements, such as the battles where you can break a string on your opponent's guitar, or get their bridge stuck requiring them to furiously manoeuvre the whammy bar. There are also elements in the game that seasoned guitarists will appreciate, such as your star power indicated by a row of valves lighting up as you play and the not-so-subtle placing of name brands such as Line 6 and Mackie.

All in all it's a very fun game that can be enjoyed by anyone with a relative ear for music. I expected the game to hurt my guitar playing by getting me used to buttons instead of strings, but it turns out the game actually helps your playing. Now the only thing I need to get over is the dent on my ego when my friends see me standing with a small plastic Gibson X-plorer(pictured right) draped from my shoulders...

Words:
"We both know that the promise of simulated rock stardom will always bewitch the pasty nabbish fantasies that are gaming's core demographic."
-Zero Punctuation

The Price of Quality

My mom always says you shouldn't buy cheap because it'll break, and buying twenty cheap frying pans (or whatever) is more expensive than buying a single, expensive one. But how true is this?

I was watching an episode of The Gadget Show where they compared high-end speakers with incredibly expensive speakers. The end result was pretty even, even though the expensive speakers were more than 30 times the price of the reasonably priced ones. So the question is, exactly how much do you need to spend to get the quality you're looking for?

What I usually do is compare the price with the relative quality of what you're buying, so step one is to find something solid and statistical that you can compare. In the case of cars look at reliability, fuel consumption, get the opinion of other people who own the cars in question on the styling and maintenance. (Don't believe the brochures. They don't lie, but they spin the truth) For something like speakers, look at impudence, response range, volume and sound-to-noise levels. For computer parts such as 3D graphics cards, find a reputable website and get benchmarks. Next, find out what each item in your list will cost. Remember to include setup fees or maintenance plans.

Now set up a little spreadsheet or something and pull a graph. This is the trick part. You'll see that from low-end to mid-range the price will rise slowly but the quality increases dramatically. This is because manufacturers need to make the initial buy-in to produce the item. With cars you don't really have a car unless you've put wheels on it, welded the thing together, gotten it tested, etc. You will then notice at a certain point it levels out, where the price increases steadily as the quality goes up. Then suddenly you'll hit a wall where it becomes very expensive for relatively little gain. This is the cut between mid-range and high-end. When you're looking at cars (once again) the price difference between the normal model and the sport model is often quite a bit, but the performance gain isn't all that major especially if you'll only be commuting with it.

Once you've gotten this graph figured out, you'll have a mental idea of what you're paying for in each iteration. You can then make an educated decision as to what you can afford and if you're getting your money's worth.

I need to mention two things here. Firstly, people tend to decide on a budget and strictly stick to it. I think this is the wrong approach. Many times once I've made up my graph I see that I've either grossly under-budgeted (not realising what things cost) or there's an item just a little more expensive with a quite considerable improvement. Be willing to shift your budget, otherwise you end up buying inferior goods because you're stingy. If you can't afford it right now, but you can wait a month or two and save up, do so. You'll be much happier with your purchase once you make it. Secondly, consider what you're buying for. If you're buying small speakers so you can hear your computer go ding when something happens, you don't need surround sound or a subwoofer. If you're buying speakers for a home entertainment system it's a good idea to look at slightly more expensive speakers, but maybe a better idea to stick to smaller speakers that don't fill your living room.

I find that buying just below the mid-to-high-end cut-off delivers the best results, where products work well but aren't flashy or over the top. On my computer games run reasonably well and I didn't shovel out a fortune for it.

Oh, one last thing. If you're planning on buying something quite expensive like computer parts, something that's in a quickly evolving market, take a look at upcoming products. What you're planning to buy might soon be replaced by a newer model in the same price range with better features. In this case you can either buy the newer model, or you can wait for the shops to drop the price of the current model in order to get rid of it and stock the new. A win-win situation.

Having taken all this into account, I suggest you step back, take a breath, maybe have a cup of something soothing, then buy what feels right. Your subconscious often picks up on little things that you're not thinking of. One of the products might feel cheap in your hands but there's really nothing wrong with it. It's a good buy, but you'll always feel cheated.

One last thing to consider. This item that you're planning to buy... do you actually need it? Or do you just want it? But that's a topic for another day...

Words:
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
-Stephen Fry on QI (Quite Interesting)

You're Overqualified

Many of us have heard this phrase. It's the excuse they use to get rid of you when there's someone with lower qualifications but greater potential. And by potential I mean influence, or a family member in the company (good read).

But what it really means, and how it became an excuse in the first place, is what I'm discussing here.

When you finally get out of high school and start studying, it's the greatest thing since your driver's licence. You're finally studying for your passion, not just subjects that "will help you later in life". If you're going away from home to study it also brings independence. You can do what you want, when you want. To some degree you can even own what you want because many bursaries and student loans include living expenses. The problem arises a few years later, when you receive your bachelor's. Now you have a decision: Go work, or study further. There are a few arguments to table:

1. "What if I'm unqualified? Is a bachelor's degree enough?" Many companies and/or lines of work require further study. The more technical it becomes, usually the more specialised your studies need to become. Maybe an honour's degree? Or how about a doctorate?
2. "I don't have to pay my loan until I start working." Especially if you're from a less privileged household your parents are unwilling to or incapable of paying your loan for you. In many cases the massive debt hanging over your head is a good enough reason to avoid the real world of the middle-class low-income young adult.
3. "But there's so much more to learn!" Many students get stuck in the academic, working their way up from undergrad to grad to doctor to professor. They then make their living from writing papers on ridiculously focussed and specific subject matters that have no real-world implications other than to advance science in an obscure direction. Many students become apprentices to a professor at their university and later replace the professor.

These are all valid arguments, but are they feasible in a modern world?

I'm a programmer so my knowledge of the work environment is limited to the IT sector, but I think my logic extends to other fields. The most important thing in work isn't theory, it's experience. You can study for years and think you've seen everything, but I guarantee the first day on the job something will happen that you never saw coming. The only way to learn the tricks of the trade is to actually be part of the trade. If your dream job requires more study, I suggest finishing your first qualification and then getting a part-time job in the specific sector to start gaining experience. You can then continue your studies in whatever direction you need.

Often you study something thinking it's your dream career, but as soon as you start working you find out that it's not as glamorous as you thought. If you start working early enough, you won't waste so much time and money studying something you're not really into.

Then there's the counter argument: If experience is so much better than theory, why study at all? Because without any theory you're the temp secretary in the high-tech laboratory. You have no idea what's going on around you. Besides, no-one will take you seriously unless you have something behind your name. If no-one will take you, you will never get your golden "two years experience" that so many of the big players require.

So, to summarise: You need to study something relevant before you start working, but once you have a qualification that can get you a proper job, start working even if it's only part-time. Continue studies if you're interested, but keep tabs on what's needed in your sector and what the big companies are looking for. It doesn't help studying something that you love if it's only going to get you unemployed.




Words:
"I don't trust Apple, I just like them. Very much like dating a supermodel."
-ZA Tech Show: Episode 20

Survival of the Smartest

If you spend a little time observing a pack of wolves, you quickly notice a hierarchy. There's an alpha male, considered the leader, and his followers. The followers all want to be the alpha, but unless they can challenge and defeat the alpha, they're forced to follow him. The females in the group would want to be with the alpha because he is the strongest or fastest of the males, and thus holds genes that would guarantee their offspring's future.

Humans were very much the same for a long time. The jock was the guy with the girls. He was the popular guy until someone appeared to be better than him, at which point he was replaced. Later this was shifted towards money. The richest guy was considered the popular one. He could make things happen. But recently, this balance of Survival of the fittest has shifted.

I read somewhere once that woman find Dilbert(pictured) attractive. Why is this? By all standards he's the lesser man. He's unhealthy and ugly. It's because he's a geek.

On a subconscious level, people realise that with the advent of the internet as a business and social tool, and a massive part of everyday life, the people who are involved in this sector are the ones with the reliable income in the foreseeable future. On the other side of the spectrum is the current sports star. Though they make millions in a very small time frame, their earning ability is directly linked to their health. And in this world of fast food and couch entertainment it becomes increasingly difficult to stay at the top of your game. It's no longer the survival of the fittest, it's survival of the smartest.

But don't think it's easy to stay at the top in the IT sector. The problem with a web-driven life is that it becomes susceptible to trend. Today people will love your product. Tomorrow they could be enthralled in someone else's product. Or worse, you could get sued for some repercussion that your product has in the real world, like what happened to Napster.

To stay on top in this environment, you need to stay up to date. And by date, I mean literally to the day. You need to know what's hot on the net, and what's the next big thing. This creates the problem that you might fall for a trend that lasts only a week. You could become a cloner...

Definition of word I just made up:

Cloner (noun)

A product or company that copies a successful idea almost to the letter, differing only enough to be distinct, but not enough to discredit the popularity.

On the other hand, cloners can often hit on an idea that makes their idea better than the original. You don't always get it right the first time. Take for instance MySpace. It allowed you to tell other people about you (and later about your band, company or whatever). You had a list of friends, but that's basically as far as you could take it. Then Facebook came along. In essence it was the same concept, but it was focussed on your real identity and your real friends. Not just that, but it shows you your mutual friends to help you figure out how you know someone. Later it also started showing you who you might know on Facebook that you didn't realise was on Facebook, by tracking who's friends are also your friends.

This simple link between the internet and everyday life made Facebook much more popular than MySpace. Not to mention more sophisticated. When you go to someone's MySpace page, you're bombarded by animations, video's, music, flashing banners, games... basically anything that you feel like putting on there. It's messy and noisy. Facebook has a rule: No active content on your profile unless the viewer activates it. It's much cleaner. They're also working on separating your profile into different areas, your critical information being the first thing you see. The rest of your content will be shifted to another page, so a viewer only has to see it if they're interested in it. (do I get my commission now?)

The internet and its relating technologies is where the sustainable income of the future will be. And if you're careful, you might be one of the lucky few to end up on top.

Words:
"First, I sit up. Writing is serious business for which your spine must be straight. I also lean my head slightly downward, looking up at my words as I write. Occasionally I mumble what I'm typing… no clue why."
-Rands in Repose

Computers Are Suddenly Cool

Having grown up a geek, I've always been seen as a bit of an outsider. My frame of reference was slightly out of focus with the rest of my friends. The same goes for my sense of humour. You find things funny that other, seemingly normal, people don't. It's what I like to call The Geek Effect. There's even been a comedy series made on exactly how debilitating the Geek Effect can be.

People with this disorder also tend to have the same type of general knowledge: "3000 miles wide but 3 inches deep". You know enough about everything to understand it on a very high level, but you're not really intimately knowledgeable on any subject. This causes dangerous leaps in relevance during conversation. I've many times replied in what I considered to be a perfectly rational manner and was answered "How the hell did you get to that topic?".

Your work environment also tends to influence this notion, as all work environments do. If you're a geek by day (superhero by night maybe?), you spend most of your day contextually shifting between a few tasks. By extension you can do the same during conversation. For instance, you would be discussing cars, then move on to movies, and you would suddenly say: "Hey wasn't that car in this movie?"

I also have the habit of interrupting someone as soon as I know what they're going to say. Not finishing their sentence for them, but actually starting my reply. I always thought it was a character flaw all my own, until I realised my colleagues and I do it all the time. Once the notion of your talking has been passed, there's no reason to keep talking, so why do you?

But back to the topic.

Whenever I mentioned a computeristic notion in general conversation it was received with a slight sourness. "Oh you're talking about computers right? I don't know about computers." I've since developed a method of explaining geeky terms to a laman with relative ease, but that's for another post.

A few years ago I noticed things start to change. MySpace tried to make people cool, but only ended up creating a slightly less geeky geek. But when Facebook arrived it all changed. You would hear seemingly pop-culture-driven people say "I'll add you on Facebook!" It shocked me the first time a non-geek asked me if I was on Facebook.

After this initial shock, I started noticing other things. I would watch a TV show and the people in the show would be playing a game. Several movies would, soon after the movie, release a game based on the movie. These games inevitably sucked, but in my opinion it went a long way towards acclimatising people to the idea that sitting behind a computer for a few hours constitutes a respectable form of entertainment. And when they played a proper game, oh my word were they surprised! The detail! The atmosphere! The plots! It was all so much better than they thought!

Another big help in this notion was the next generation consoles. You always had your Playstation 2 players, but not until the active advertising for the xBox360and Playstation 3 was it really seen on TV or the mass media. Now it's pretty common to see that shape of the controller lying on the coffee table.

In the relative beginning of the previous century, much the same series of events transpired. The subject was also technology. It was also initially used in business and later for everyday use, and now for entertainment. It was cars. Motoracing is such a large part of our culture these days that it's hard to think at some point your average person never even considered owning a car, much less afford one within their lifetime.

In South Korea, StarCraft 2 is a national sport. They have celebreties. It's broadcast on TV with advert breaks almost longer than the match itself, warmups, discussions, magazines...

In South Africa specifically, MXit also helped. This little java-based chat application that runs on your cellphone propogated many geeky acronyms into popular culture. Things like WTF, lol and rofl are now considered commonplace. Many geeks are actually offended by this, because it was something that they could call their own. The 'secret handshake' of the masses.

This train of thought was inspired by this article from a few days ago. Read and enjoy.

Words:
"So they're demoing the game... and he's like lighting the brush on fire because there are like japanese soldiers hunkered down in camoflage, you're like burning them, they come running out and everything... Then he goes over to the hut, he like flames the hut and burns the guys out of the hut... And the flames don't catch the hut on fire even though it's a wood hut with thatch roof. I'm like 'WTF is this'."
-1UP Yours Podcast 27 June 2008