Jeux Sans Frontieres

The Importance of Being Santa

2011-01-04T17:02:00.000-06:00

I don't remember when I found out that there was no Santa Claus. It's one of those horrible truths that creeps up on you in the playground, or on the doorstep of a neighbor's house. One child uncovers the conspiracy, and she can't keep the knowledge to herself. Once you know the truth, it nestles in your heart, and troubles you. Do you tell other children? Do you tell your siblings? Do you let your parents know that the jig is up, or do you milk it for as long as you can? Or, do you struggle with denial? Maybe this other child was simply on the dreaded Naughty List. Spreading horrible lies about Santa would certainly qualify her.

Many years later, early in the pre-dawn hours of Christmas, my parents woke me and asked me to come help them wrap presents. I was the oldest of the kids -- probably a teenager by then -- and I had intellectually understood for many years, at that point, that there was no Santa Claus. Yet, for some reason, taking part in the whole ritual of placing presents under the tree, the night before Christmas, was a huge disappointment for me. It was as though I had somehow chosen to suspend some small part of my disbelief all of those years, and I was finally forced to let go of that last little vestige of it.

When I was at University, I played on a few text MUDs (Multi-User-Dungeons for the young'uns out there), and was particularly fond of a particular TinyMUSH (a species of MUD). After a few years playing there, I was made a "Wizard." Essentially, a MUD Wizard is an online game administrator, but the job also requires a strange blend of programming, game design, and customer service. When I took the position, and first started trying out the administrative features, and looking at the code for the "globals" (system-wide game commands), I felt the same creeping feeling of disappointment, from that Christmas morning, all over again.

There seems to be a very real psychological difference between knowing that there is a man behind the curtain, and being the man behind the curtain. Even when we intellectually understand that he is there, our brains still cling to wisps of magic, here and there. And yet, we need that man behind the curtain to be there. Indeed, even with our earliest forms of entertainment -- our myths, legends, and tall tales -- someone, somewhere, took liberties, and was fully aware of the artifice involved.

Magic is made by people. But why would we ever choose to be the ones who had to live with the disappointment of making it? Why do parents play Santa? It brings joy to others. There may be other reasons to pull levers, fabricate stories, apply makeup, and composite space ships into the sky, but the most important reason is that it brings joy to our audience.

I suppose that it is also true that some of us will always take the red pill, when given the chance. I once hacked a game save file just to fix up the eyeshadow color of my character. When her entire existence is reduced to so much data in a hexadecimal editor, it's hard to take her very seriously. Maybe I'll find magic again when I'm senile. For now, I'm still tinkering with the gears way too much.

Tools I Love

2010-05-24T17:40:00.000-06:00

Today, I'm going to talk a little about some of the secondary software tools that I use, that might be useful to other people. These are mostly Windows tools, since that's where I do most of my programming, visual effects, art, writing, etc., but a few of them have Mac and/or Linux ports, as well.

ExpanDrive - Mounts your unix shell account as a Windows or Mac drive, via SSH. I wish I'd had this ages ago.

TeraCopy - Have you ever asked Windows to copy 129 files, only to come back and find out that the copy died at SOME point, and you're not sure which files copied, and which ones didn't? Or Windows decided to prompt you at 3AM, after you went to bed, to ask if one of the 129 files should be overwritten? TeraCopy is a drop-in replacement for Windows' built-in copy tool that will make you less likely to throw your computer down the stairs, in a fit of rage. It also works well with ExpanDrive, for providing reliable uploads and downloads of large files or batches of files.

Frhed - This is my favorite hex editor, at the moment. Yes, there are still ethical, law-abiding citizens who find reasons to edit hex, sometimes.

Beyond Compare - Like bug-tracking software, I hate all the diff/merge tools I have ever used, but this is probably the best that I have used, to date. Also, OMG BINARY DIFF!

Celtx - Yes, your favorite word processor may have a screenplay template, but using it will never be as fun as Celtx.

7-Zip - Handle all those annoying compression formats that Windows doesn't normally understand.

Fences - This nice little utility from indie game developer Stardock is great for folks like me, who normally have really messy computer desktops. It lets you organize your desktop icons into little transparent rectangular docks, with labels. This is particularly nice if you're using a computer that switches display sizes a lot, because it doesn't lose all your icon placement settings when you switch back and forth.

XYPlorer - An artist I worked with first showed me this tool, when I was complaining about the extraordinarily poor default filesystem search capabilities in Windows XP. The searching in Vista and Windows 7 is much improved, but XYPlorer has turned out to still be useful. It is essentially a file manager for Windows, with tabbed browsing, and a lot of great power-user features that the basic Windows file manager lacks. I particularly like its catalog feature, that lets me make a set of shortcuts on the left side for things I need to run or access frequently. Because it is lightweight, and not a system-wide install, you can install multiple copies of it, in different parts of your file system, customized for the work you are doing in that area. For example, if you are working in multiple branches of the same project, you can use parallel installs, each customized to do the same things in their respective branches, so that you can quickly do things in familiar ways, without accidentally fumbling over into the wrong branch.

Data or Code?

2010-04-20T13:26:00.003-06:00

There has been much ado about Apple's decision to yank Scratch from the app store. The timing has led many to believe that this was precipitated by the much-maligned iPhone OS 4.0 SDK developer agreement change that forbids alternative development languages/environments. However, things like interpreters, executable plugins, and virtual machines have been explicitly forbidden by the developer agreement at least as far back as March 2008.

I am forced to wonder: Were the guys that developed the iPhone port of Scratch unaware of these rules, or were they simply hoping that -- given that Apple was founded on the ingenuity of two young guys in their garage -- maybe, just maybe someone there would think making creative software development tools for kids was worth making some kind of exception for. One of the guys behind the project posited that "Basically, Apple hates us." No, man, what you experienced was not hate. It was the blind scythe of consistency. It was -- in ye olde D&D parlance -- Lawful Evil.

But, the noise about this has reminded me of a bit of a conundrum I have over this whole rule. What the hell is "code," anyway? That may sound like a silly question for a programmer to be asking, but it is an important question. Most technical definitions I can find suggest that it is some kind of symbolic set of instructions or rules intended to tell a computer what the heck to do. In other words, the only thing that makes a recipe for chocolate chip cookies not code is that it is intended to be interpreted and executed by a human, rather than a computer.

We do use a considerable amount of data that contains instructions intended for computers, however. Most document formats (aside from raw text) include some kind of markup that informs a viewer or editor application of the intended presentation logic for that document. Isn't that code? What about the formulas in a spreadsheet? That's code, isn't it? Isn't MIDI a set of instructions for playing music?

Where is the line, here? If I make a game with monster AI that is driven by a state machine whose nodes and state changes are specified in an XML document, am I not running a program on a virtual machine?

Data influences how many non-trivial programs function. A great deal of data is code. Code is everywhere.

Ebert and Games, Again?

2010-04-19T17:20:00.003-06:00

Roger Ebert has once again attempted to tackle the whole question of videogames-as-art. I have a huge amount of respect for Ebert as a human being, and as a film critic. He is a giant of a man. However, let's be honest: He doesn't play enough videogames to judge whether they are or can be art. His analysis of games based on Kellee Santiago's talk is comparable to a non-classical-music-listener critiquing Dvorak's New World symphony, simply based on someone else's description of it.

Certainly, it is a critic's job to describe things in such a way that a reader (or listener) knows whether something is worth experiencing, first-hand. However, the audience needs an appropriate frame-of-reference to get any value from the critic's review. I don't expect people who don't play videogames to have the frame-of-reference they need to appreciate, from a critic's review, the artistic merit of a given game.

Why I Don't GPL

2010-04-19T14:10:00.003-06:00

What I am about to write may be controversial with some of my friends in the open source community, but it needs to be said.

For the most part, I won't make substantial contributions to any GPL projects anymore, as a matter of principle. I think that the license is, in many cases, self-defeating, and only delivers the highest-quality code for certain types of projects, under certain ideal circumstances.

Why is this?

To put it simply, the people you probably most want contributing to your project are developers who really understand the domain, and are going to give you professional-quality code contributions.

Many companies do not use GPL code, because they do not feel that they have the luxury of GPLing their own code. This is a practical truth, whether you agree with their reasons or not. Many of your would-be expert contributors work for such companies, and are bound by non-compete agreements that would prohibit them from contributing to your project in their spare time. If their employers aren't using your code, then they can't contribute to it.

In short, if you GPL your code, you may be missing out on some of your best contributors.

If I wanted to work on a piece of game-related code, and it was under the GPL -- in practical terms -- almost nobody will use it and no professional game developers will contribute to it, no matter how good or useful it is. I mean, really, it sounds like a horrendous waste of time to me.

One great success story of open source game development technology is the Ogre3D engine. This is an open source 3D graphics engine which is arguably as good as some of the expensive commercial ones I have used. It was originally released under the GPL, many years ago, and has gradually become more permissive over time (GPL -> LGPL -> MIT). Upon the transition to the MIT license, the project maintainer, Steve Streeting, notably observed the following:

While not requiring modified source to be released might initially seem like giving up an important motivator to contribute code back to the community, we’ve noticed something in recent years: 99% of useful code contributions come from people who are motivated to participate in the project regardless of what the license tells them they have to do. It’s our experience that a certain percentage of the user community will always participate and contribute back, and therefore encouraging adoption via simpler licensing is likely to result in more contributions overall than coersion via complex and restrictive licensing does. In addition, people who are internally motivated to participate tend to provide much higher quality and more usable contributions than those who only do it because they are forced to.

This is very consistent with my own observations of open source projects. I am curious whether others have seen the same.

Now, mind you, everything I just said can depend a lot on the domain of a given project, and also whether something is an API or standalone, and a number of other factors. Linux, for example, seems to be a perfect-storm of GPL-working-as-intended. However, there aren't a lot of professional operating systems developers in the world, and many of them work for companies that sell competing products, so one can make a fair argument that Linux probably gets the best contributors they are going to get, regardless of how permissive their license is.

The Tech Book Revisited

2010-04-08T16:01:00.004-06:00

I used to spend a lot of money on tech books.

As a programmer who is always expanding my horizons and trying out various technologies (and generally trying to keep my skills fresh), I spent exorbitant amounts of money buying fat tomes full of wisdom that would be obsolete, oh, about 15 minutes after I brought them home. Sometimes, they would already be obsolete, by the time the publisher managed to shove them out the door.

The web changed things... up to a point. I no longer need hefty API references, since most API references are published online, and it is considerably faster to search them electronically. If I have some obscure question about how to accomplish something or solve a problem, there is usually a forum or article somewhere that will address my concern. Still, there is usually at least one good "bible" on any given topic that was worth having. What C programmer doesn't have a yellowing copy of K&R on her shelf? What Perl programmer doesn't have the camel book? What webpage will replace our Stroustrup? Our Knuth?

When I was living in Australia, I couldn't take all my books with me from the States. That was when I discovered O'Reilly's Safari. In the beginning, it was most of the O'Reilly library, online, and you could keep a bookshelf, with a few books on it at a time that you could read on the web. Today, the library has expanded to many publishers, and you can buy a yearly subscription that gives you access to the entire library. The subscription is a bit pricey, but if I truly admit to myself how much I was spending on technical books per year before, the price is not unreasonable. It is access to a giant library of the most recent version of nearly every computer book you could ever want. How do you even put a price on that?

However, like all websites containing technical information, Safari presented an interesting usage-pattern problem for me. I can use a physical technical book without taking up any of my precious screen real estate. An electronic technical book, however, uses your computer screen. If I have a second screen up, I am usually already using it for some kind of work. There is a decent mobile version of the Safari site, but I usually only use it when I'm curious about something on-the-go, because my phone screen is just too small to be a practical display for a tech book. So, if I need to refer to something, I often end up with a laptop to my left or right, displaying a book. This is ultimately a waste of space and energy.

A few weeks ago, I won an iPad in a drawing (Thank you, PayPal!). It arrived yesterday. I thought it was pretty cool, but I wasn't sure yet what on earth I was going to use it for. Before the day was out, I was already browsing a tech book on my iPad, while I coded on the desktop. Well, now, there's a perfectly good practical use for my new gadget -- technical book viewer. I wonder what else it will turn out to be good for?

Save Frequently

2009-12-20T03:14:00.005-06:00

I always find reformatting drives to be terrifying.

It's not that it's difficult. I know how to burn an iso, set up my BIOS to boot off of CD, and run the manufacturer's drive re-initialization utility. It's kind of a no-brainer. The thing that truly frightens me is that when I was copying all of my own personal data off of that machine, it's entirely possible I missed a batch of photos, a program, a story, a piece of artwork, or a song. My fear is that I may have created something that will be lost forever. Some little piece of me will be irreparably overwritten by zeros.

I double and triple-check my backups, and then make extra backups. I make sure my stories are all there. I fish around for iTunes songs I won't be able to download again. I marvel about some of the things that were on that drive that I didn't realize were there. There are the photos from Portugal. This wasn't even the same laptop I had in Portugal. How did they end up here?

I make one last check before pulling the trigger. I skim a few lines of one of my stories, just to be sure that this was the copy that had ALL of the text in it, and not an earlier revision. The software warns me several times that I will lose everything -- as though I could possibly need to suffer more anxiety about this maneuver.

Finally, I do it. Gone, gone, gone.

At times like these, I sometimes think I should just start keeping everything in my Subversion repository. Why is my code the only intellectual endeavor worthy of this sort of care? Documents have revisions, too. Music notation is rarely perfect, the first time.

Life is dangerous: Save frequently.

Independence Day

2009-12-15T19:43:00.008-06:00

I know, I haven't been posting here much. It's hard to post about things when you're, well, busy doing them. But, it's time I spilled the beans in a more public way: I am, at long last, going indie.

I have put up my shingle here: http://pixelsea.biz/

Let me be clear: This does not mean that I am looking for a job. I have a full-time job, working for me. I keep myself very busy, and I would be very cross with myself, if I were off interviewing for other jobs, when I have so much work to do. However, if you have any short contracting gigs, I may be willing to consider having a stab at them, as I am a bit of a scrooge, and don't pay myself very well, yet.

Nerd Nation

2008-05-20T20:09:00.006-06:00

Every time I hear "Handlebars" on the radio, when I hear the line...

I can make computers survive aquatic conditions.

...I just feel like saying, "Oh yeah? Well so can I. BRING IT!"

Crime and Punishment

2008-05-17T16:38:00.004-06:00

The hypothesis: When we make it more convenient to be a pirate than it is to be a legitimate customer, otherwise legitimate customers will turn to piracy.

We should not be punishing our customers for the actions of those who are not our customers. This makes absolutely no sense. When a legitimate customer has to suffer more inconvenience, frustration, or worse -- degraded content quality -- because of our anti-piracy mechanisms, they will turn to circumvention and non-legitimate sources for our content. The more they have to do this, the more familiar and comfortable they will be with doing so in the future.

We must always strive for a quality user experience at all levels -- including access to our content, installation of our content, and day-to-day use of our content. Remember: Our customers are the ones who paid for our content. We need to take good care of them, and let them know that we appreciate their business.

Merriam-Webster 2007 Word of the Year: w00t

2007-12-12T15:53:00.000-06:00

In a nod to the power of gaming in modern culture, Merriam-Webster has chosen "w00t" as their 2007 Word of the Year. While I'm not especially fond of l33t (and, in fact, tend to use the number-free spelling of the word), I am thrilled that "w00t" beat out the alleged verb, "facebook." Personally, I feel embarassed for all eight people who submitted (largely differing) definitions for "facebook," and I think that they should be damned to a special hell where they must spend the rest of eternity listening to conference lectures by Web 2.0 evangelists.

Dear Open Source Projects...

2007-09-21T15:01:00.000-06:00

If you run the main webpage for a piece of open source software, there should be a very clear, concsise explanation of what that software is on the front page, prominently displayed, where anyone can find it. I appreciate that a lot of open source developers like to maintain a development blog on the front page. That's fine. But, there should be something on that page that immediately indicates to a newcomer what on earth she has found. Release notes aren't of much use to someone who has never touched your software before.

Some Good

The first text on the Firefox webpage is:

"The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better"

That's not great, because it assumes previous exposure to the product, but at least I can figure out what Firefox is, from that sentence. B

The first text on the GIMP website is:

"GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."

That's excellent, except it should probably include a link for "GNU," since that assumes knowledge that a naive reader may not have. B+

How about Blender:

"Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License."

That's great. It concisely explains what the product is, and also links to a FAQ about the GPL specifically tailored to their would-be-users. A.

As for Audacity:

The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity...

Flawless victory! A+

Some Bad

Bugzilla:

"Bugzilla is server software designed to help you manage software development."

That's pretty damn vague. Luckily, they follow this up with a "More about..." link. C+

What about jMonkeyEngine:

"jMonkeyEngine 1.0 release candidate 1 has been released."

This means absolutely nothing to a new would-be user. I have to hunt around for a "What is jME?" link to figure out what this software is. D

Yafray:
There is nothing but news, here. There are many links to other areas, but none of them link to an "About," or a "What is..." section. If you look up on the title bar, you will see "Free Raytracing for the masses - Y A F R A Y . O R G." Okay, so it's a raytracer. And it's free. But, is that "free" as in Stallman, "free" as in FreeBSD, "free" as in beer, "free" as in free love, or "free" as in Aretha Franklin? (Freedom is so very complicated, these days.) D-

Let's look at GForge:

"GForge helps you manage the entire development life cycle
GForge has tools to help your team collaborate, like message forums and mailing lists; tools to create and control access to Source Code Management repositories like CVS and Subversion. GForge automatically creates a repository and controls access to it depending on the role settings of the project."

It slices, it dices, it even purees! But, what IS it? Maybe you can figure out what it is from the feature soup (It's a, uh, development lifecycle, uh, manager, uh, thingee, with, um, meta-revision-control management stuff. Or something.). Ah-hah, the title bar says that it's a "Collaborative Development Environment (CDE)." If only that were on the page! But, still, that doesn't quite express what it is very well. It's a software project-focused collaborative development environment, like SourceForge. (In fact, it was built upon a branch of the SourceForge codebase.) C+

Xfig:

"The purpose of this site is to provide a central Xfig repository for the diverse documentation and programs available on the web. All the components and libraries will be available at this site, in addition to Xfig drawings."

So, that's what the website is for. But what about the program? D-

The Care and Feeding of Game Designers

2007-09-12T16:13:00.000-06:00

We programmers like to think of most game design information as just data. Game design tools are just glorified data entry tools, when it comes down to it. Most of this stuff could be done in a good spreadsheet program. We like to think that as long as you provide all the means they need to put the data in the appropriate places somehow, it hardly matters what the path was like. This is a mistake.

I discovered a few years ago that my writing -- regardless of whether it's fiction or nonfiction -- is drastically better when I type my words than it is when I write them on paper. The reason for this is because I type faster than I write, I can change my words with greater ease, and I am afforded a greater latitude for writing in a non-linear fashion, as it suits me. Ultimately, a text editor in a computer provides a better flow for me than pen-and-paper does. Because of that flow, I am able to produce better work.

Game design is not just data entry. It's a creative process. It's like composing music. If the game designer has to spend a lot of time fighting with a clunky interface, it's going to disrupt her flow. She will produce less work, and it will be of lower quality. This lowers the quality of the resulting game, and reflects poorly on the entire team. We programmers should be providing opportunities for our team-mates to do the best work they possibly can. The tools we provide them should be a delight to use.

Now, if only someone cared that much about the tools I have to use...

Have two, they're small.

2007-04-19T18:20:00.000-06:00

Well, I must admit, I wasn't quite fair to Mr. Matthews, in this case. He not only got a clue, but he promptly turned around and tried to share it with Jack Thompson.

Digging in the Dirt

2007-04-18T21:44:00.000-06:00

Earlier today, I listened to an interview between NBC's Chris Matthews and Karan Grewal, one of Cho Seung-Hui's apartment-mates. I was genuinely interested in what light Grewal could shed on the matters at hand, but unsurprisingly, Matthews was more interested in interrupting him, and pursuing his own agendas. Among other things, Matthews asked utterly irrelevant leading questions, in some kind of bizarre attempt to establish some kind of video game connection. I've provided a partial transcript, so you can see just how ridiculous this truly became:

Chris Matthews: Let me get into this video game thing. Do you know anything about Counter-Strike, as a video game?

Karan Grewal: Yes.

Chris Matthews: Was he into it?

Karan Grewal: But I, I never saw him play any videogames on his computer. Most of the time, like I said, he just WROTE on his computer. He had a word document open, and he just kept on typing away for... sometimes, you know, I'd see him typing at ten o'clock in the morning, and I'd come back at twelve, and he would still be there.

They go on to talk about some other things, but Matthews inexplicably feels that it's necessary to bring up Counter-Strike again, for no apparent reason:

Chris Matthews: Let me ask you about... You have... Is there any culture at Virginia Tech about video games? Anything that guys talk about like video games like this Counter-Strike game?

Karan Grewal: Well, there's a lot of, uh, tournaments that, that, uh, people do by themselves, but... uh, there's no formal club, uh...

Chris Matthews: [interrupting] But what about the informal? The sub... Is there a SUBCULTURE around video games?

Karan Grewal: Not really. Uh, people are... some people are interested in it, some are not. There's no big culture about any kind of violent games or anything, no.

Chris Matthews: [interrupting] Let me ask you about...

Karan Grewal: [finishing] Mostly sports, I would think.

Chris Matthews: Mostly sports. So, mostly, if you talked about stuff, you'd talk about basketball, and stuff like that.

Karan Grewal: Exactly.

What a pathetic fishing expedition, Mr. Matthews. When confronted with the ever-so-disappointing news that Cho was not a rabid video game addict, you were determined to beat that dead horse some more. As a card-carrying member of the dreaded video game subculture on the internet, I'd like to say, "Get a grip." Charles Joseph Whitman never played a single video game before picking up his gun. Sometimes, a psychotic is just a psychotic.

Old Comments

2007-04-16T20:42:00.000-06:00

Now that Blogger has improved their comment system somewhat, I've gone back to using their comment system. Rather than lose all the comments on my old posts, I've added an "Old Comments" link at the end of all posts that had comments on them. Happy posting!

Bad Capchas

2007-04-11T10:24:00.000-06:00

Okay, I understand why we have capchas. I have come to accept that they're a reality of a web that has been destroyed by the unethical. But, I would really appreciate it if in our effort to keep up with the 'bots, we didn't make capchas so difficult to read that even large numbers of humans are failing the tests. I have, on multiple occasions, failed, when I thought I had the right answer. I have above average spatial skills, so I know I can't be the only one having problems with these things.

Today, I finally had to say something about it, because I ran into this one:

So, what, exactly is that second letter? An upside-down L?

Old Comments(2)

EULAs are Broken

2007-03-17T10:37:00.000-06:00

We need better end user license agreements.

We, the users of software, understand the consequences of not reading EULAs. We all know we could be agreeing to some damn thing we find unpalatable, at best. Yet, who has budgeted time in her busy day to read 2953 words of dense legalese? (That's not even an exaggeration. That's the actual word count on the last EULA I saw.)

This is legalese! Even when it is trying to convey a relatively simple idea, it's obnoxiously palaverous. Consider:

"If you do any of the foregoing on behalf of a company or organization, you represent and warrant that you have the requisite authority to bind such company or organization to the terms and conditions of this Agreement."

That sounds pretty scary, but it's just another way of saying, "If you accept this EULA, you are claiming to have the authority to accept EULAs on behalf of your company." By the time you're done reading it, though, you're feeling like you need to call the company lawyer. Lawyers are good at keeping each other employed.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say: I think the average English speaker lacks the literacy level to slog through one of these things and understand every minute bit of it. How can we reasonably expect her to legally consent to it? Moreover, what is the responsible thing for her to do, under these circumstances? Realistically speaking, she can't call a lawyer up to come over to her desk every time she's installing a piece of software.

Worse, if we somehow miraculously manage to wade through and fully absorb a EULA once, for a given piece of software, some software forces us to agree to the EULA again, with every patch. We are neither told whether the EULA has changed since the last time we read it, nor given any way to do a diff, and see exactly what changes were made. Does Blizzard, for example, actually expect anyone to read the entire EULA from top to bottom (not to mention the Terms of Service), every single time we install a patch? I'd bet that not a single one of their 8 million subscribers has read the entirety of the EULA every time she agreed to it. This is not because the entire human race is irresponsible. It's because we have unreasonable expectations of them.

I understand the value of legalese. That which is vague is open to interpretation. So, it is best to spell everything out in excruciating detail, so there is no room for doubt. Legalese is, in this way, like a programming language that just happens to use a vocabulary and grammar similar to natural language. Lawyers even reuse sections of legalese, like programmers reuse code, just passing in different values to the variables -- company name, date, etc. Over time, they tune, and tweak, and make contracts increasingly difficult to challenge. However, as this boilerplate text becomes more impervious to challenges, it also becomes increasingly impenetrable to the average reader. Honestly, I don't expect the general public to be able to wade through legalese any more than I expect them to be able to wade through my source code.

We need to be more reasonable about what users can realistically consent to, while they are installing software. At the bare minimum, I think software publishers should provide a clear, concise "translation" of the EULA into plain language, for the convenience of those of us without law degrees.

Some companies are starting to see the light. Microsoft has recently started adopting plain English EULAs. They're still too damn long, but it's better than legalese, at least. Have a gander at the new Vista license, for an example. (I hate PDFs, incidentally.)

Here's a passage from the Windows 98 EULA:

"NO OTHER WARRANTIES. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Manufacturer and its suppliers disclaim all other representations, warranties, conditions or other terms, either express or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties amd/or conditions of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with regard to the SOFTWARE, the accompanying written materials, and any accompanying hardware. This limited warranty gives you specific legal rights. You may have others which vary from state/jurisdiction to state/jurisdiction."

Woah nelly. Check out that run-on sentence near the top (and middle, and halfway through the bottom). I'd hate to have to diagram it. It's the kind of sentence that just makes you want to put hot sauce in the underwear of the guy who wrote it.

Compare that to the equivalent passage from the Vista EULA:

"NO OTHER WARRANTIES. The limited warranty is the only direct warranty from Microsoft. Microsoft gives no other express warranties, guarantees or conditions. Where allowed by your local laws, Microsoft excludes implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. If your local laws give you any implied warranties, guarantees or conditions, despite this exclusion, your remedies are described in the Remedy for Breach of Warranty clause above, to the extent permitted by your local laws."

Well, it's not great, but it's a breath of fresh air, compared to the other one.

Old Comments

Signal to Noise

2007-03-17T10:04:00.000-06:00

It would be fair to say that I've been to a lot of conferences. My first game industry related conference was CGDC 1998 (back before GDC took the "Computer" off the front of their name). So, I guess that makes it 9 years now I've been attending (and sometimes even speaking at) industry conferences, on two continents. I reckon I'm entitled to an opinion or three.

I have a big beef, but it is, in most cases, not with the conferences, themselves. No, my beef is with the myriad parties that inevitably pop up at these events. Don't get me wrong -- I'm grateful for the parties. I'm an extrovert, and I love a good party, honestly. I've had some fun times.

Now, I'm going to make a radical statement, which would seem to defy the expectations of every party organizer who has ever organized a single party attached to any of these conferences: Most people come to these parties to talk. Yeah, I know, geeks aren't supposed to be social, but it's true. You look around at any of these parties, and people are talking. Or, at least, they're trying to.

You see, the trouble is that it feels like most of these parties have been organized for 21-year-old club kids from Amsterdam, only with less drugs.

Now, dear party organizers, you should understand: I love dancing. I was dancing at industrial clubs when DJ WhoeverTheHellYouHired was learning his ABCs. I was at illegal raves under bridges, back before the US club scene discovered techno. I have even been known to dance at some of these conference parties -- but I must tell you, it's because it was too goddamn loud to talk to anyone, and I was honestly getting rather bored.

I have seen parties where every single person at the party was trying to shout over the music, and inexplicably, someone turned up the volume. Why? This makes no sense! I have seen friends and colleagues lose their voices from these events. I have heard people complain of their ears ringing after leaving a conference party. Ears ringing! That's hearing damage, people. I'm sorry, but your party is not worth anyone permanently damaging their hearing.

So, I'm making a plea: Turn the music the hell down. Stop making us miserable. Pay attention to your party-goers, and what their needs are. If we want to talk, then by all means, let us talk.

Geek Love

2007-01-31T23:10:00.000-06:00

For those of you who still use vi/vim on the Windows platform, hang on to your hats. I know you're used to nothing ever changing, but there is, in fact, news. There's a new, less ugly user interface available for your old favorite text editor.

Yes, I know, user interfaces are superfluous. Yes, I know, you don't even know what those silly icons at the top of your vim window are for, and you can't even remember the last time you actually used one of the menus. Yet, I do have to recommend the upgrade. Check out the feature list. Macro recording! My God, we are marching boldly into the 1980s here, my friends. If you love vim, you should have a looksee. I'm taking it for a spin, myself.

Old Comments

Screenplay Workshop

2007-01-04T11:27:00.000-06:00

This may be of interest to designers and other writers in the Austin area:

An film-maker acquaintance of mine runs a free screenplay workshop. Game developers are welcome. I'll be at the one on January 13th.

I Hate Memes

2007-01-03T15:01:00.000-06:00

Sara at We Can Fix That with Data has tagged me for the ubiquitous 5-things-you-don't-know-about-me meme, probably as some sort of sinister plot to try to get me to stop ignoring this blog. (As some of you have noticed, I keep another one elsewhere, which is updated more frequently, but it's more personal, lifey stuff.)

I admit, it's hard to think of things that people don't know about me. I tend to talk about bloody everything, if you get me started. But I'll try my best:

1.) I find it almost impossible to listen to lectures -- I zone out after about five minutes, tops. I once took an astronomy course with no textbook. Instead of going to class, I went to the library, and studied every book I could find related to the items on the syllabus. It was honestly easier for me to absorb the information that way than it would have been for me to sit through the lectures.

2.) I hate learning new games -- This is one of those things that becomes gradually apparent to anyone who hangs out with me long enough. This holds true of board games, card games, and video games. No matter how fun something looks, I find it frustrating learning the new button combos, or the obscure rules, or the meanings of all the various pieces and symbols. My well-meaning friends will try to explain everything, but #1 comes into play, and I miss half of what they're saying.

3.) I once won a talent contest -- When I was 10, I won a talent contest at my elementary school. I sang the theme song to "Flashdance." Is that embarrassing enough for you?

4.) I was originally an Electrical Engineering major -- I thought they'd let me tinker. Instead, I spent two years solving circuit equations, and doing dull math. Boring!

5.) I've helped out with the Special Olympics before -- Pin the Tail on the Donkey has never been this riveting.

I don't tag anyone. I hate memes.

Old Comments

No Rest for the Wicked

2006-06-29T19:22:00.000-06:00

I don't post anywhere NEAR often enough to be putting plugs for anything in, but I have some good friends who have started up a small pen-and-paper game biz, and I couldn't resist putting in a word or two. I'm really looking forward to their Dresden Files RPG (based on Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels), but in the meantime, they have just released a new product, and have yet another one on the way.

Their new offering, Dont Rest Your Head is a game for those of you who complain that generic systems are what killed pen-and-paper gaming. This is an all-custom system, heavily integrated into the game's theme. The concept behind the game is that the player characters are all insomniacs, and that their sleep deprivation has allowed them to see things that other people can't -- while also making them vulnerable to sinister elements that couldn't reach them before. This is a good game for folks who appreciate Grant Morrison, or Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, or heck -- anyone who just likes unusual original game systems.

Old Comments

Are Electronic Games Art?

2006-06-28T20:18:00.000-06:00

I was once disconcerted to hear John Carmack state to an entire auditorium full of game developers that electronic games are not art. Film critic Roger Ebert famously chimed in on the same topic at the 58th Annual Conference on World Affairs, resulting in an ongoing debate on his own website, and elsewhere. The debate has spilled over in many places in recent months, sparking all the usual arguments over whether one can even define art, and what the hell "art" means, anyway.

Yes, you can define art.

This is not to say that everyone (even informed academics) will agree on what it means, or that even after establishing a definition, you will be able to abolish all grey areas. Whatever definition you finally settle on, there will always be some Marcel Duchamp ready to gleefully come along and piss on your party.

Because it is the very best fabric I have to work with, I choose to use the classical definition which was taught in my Art Theory course, years ago: Art is recta ratio factibilium. What the hell does that mean? Well, at the very core, art is about making. But moreover, it is the recta, or right making of a work. Making without art is merely brutish labor. "Time to make the doughnuts." When you hear a critic complain that an actor was "phoning in" his performance, that is a perfect example of artlessness.

So, what about games?

The question is somewhat complicated by the fact that games are a compound work. Games are comprised of numerous sub-works, many of which are easily classified as being art, or potentially art. Music, visual assets, writing, voice performances, and many other sub-products within a given game are obviously art. In fact, we call our visual assets "art," and the people who make them "artists." However, I think that this is a red herring. Film is also a compound work, comprised of many sub-products (costumes, sets, writing, music, etc.) which are classified independently as art. However, the completed compound work, film itself, is also a recognized art form. So, we should not let the compound nature of games distract us from the real question -- whether the completed work is art.

Given my working definition, the only clear answer, for me, is that games absolutely have the potential to be art -- every bit as much as movies do. The question is not whether games are art, but rather whether we developers are being true to our work. Are we just churning out fast food? Or do we have the courage to make things right?

For better or for worse, the answer to the infernal question lies in our own hands.

Old Comments

Et in Austin ego.

2006-05-26T17:33:00.000-06:00

For those who haven't heard, I left Australia last month, and I am now working for an MMO developer in Austin, Texas. I am settling in and doing well, and generally excited to be embarking on a new project. I just had internet hooked up at my palatial (and currently quite empty) flat this week, so I should be posting more regularly soon, assuming I can tolerate sitting on the floor that long!

Old Comments

I Hate Hungrian Notation

2006-04-11T20:41:00.000-06:00

I hate Hungarian Notation. It's true. I'm willing to stand behind this one. When I'm reading code, the alphabet soup at the start of the variable names just slows me down. Moreover, it's often misleading. Take, this example from a real piece of code:


string m_pcResourceName;

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that notation is saying that the variable is a char*. But it's not. It's a std::string. While std::string and char* are used for effectively the same things -- storing string values -- their usage is completely different.

Now, you can say that this is just the bad habits of one person -- that he should've called it m_strResourceName, or some such. But how do you know what string library he's referring to. Heck, traditional Hungarian Notation insists on using an "o" in front of all objects. But, that's not meaningful or useful. The problem is, when you are doing object-oriented programming, your world is full of new types. A full game project could have hundreds of types. Do you call them all "o"? Or are you going to come up with some clever acronym for every single type in the entire project? And will everyone remember what the heck all those acronyms mean?

Variables should always be named very clearly, in a way that makes their purpose readily transparent. In the event that I need to know the exact type of a variable, there happens to be a very good, authoritative place to find out: The variable declaration. It is always right and meaningful, unlike Hungarian Notation.

Old Comments

Ten Things I Hate About Visual Studio 7.1

2006-02-22T02:35:00.000-06:00

1.) When I try to attach to and debug an already running process, it often mysteriously crashes.

2.) It occasionally just starts ignoring all breakpoints, for no apparent reason, and the only way I have found to fix the problem is to restart Visual Studio.

3.) If you place a breakpoint in one file, and just happen to have another file with the same name, it often triggers the breakpoint on the other file, instead of the one you requested.

4.) Sometimes, it decides that it can't write out a new binary file, because the old one was in use. However, the only thing that was using it was Visual Studio, and the only way to fix this is to restart Visual Studio.

5.) Updating your project/solution files from your version control system while Visual Studio is still open sometimes results in the updates not actually happening correctly.

6.) It makes terrible use of screen real estate. Why can't I look at two source files side-by side?

7.) It habitually forgets the working directory for projects.

8.) Searching the source code in one solution, it might find a string I'm looking for in five minutes. If I'm lucky.

9.) It constantly reports that it has successfully built N projects where N is the total number of projects in your solution. Yet, when you go to run an executable associated with one of the minor projects, it tells you some of the files have changed, and they need to be rebuilt. Why couldn't it have told the truth, the first time?

10.) Whenever it feels the least bit busy with anything, the user interface becomes completely unresponsive. Whatever I'm trying to do is probably more important than whatever it's cogitating about, but it doesn't care. Heck, I might be trying to CANCEL whatever it's doing, but well, that's just too bad.

What are your pet peeves?

Old Comments

Lack of Perspective

2006-02-16T22:25:00.000-06:00

In Australia, any 15-year-old can buy games where they beat people up, shoot people, violate all manner of road laws, sell drugs, and heaven knows what else, but graffiti -- that's the scourge of civilization:

Australia First to Ban Graffiti Game

Now, this may come as a shock to some of the folks in the US who have quietly assumed that all the graffiti in their cities was the work of certain ethnic minorities prevalent in North America, but I can assure you that there is a hell of a lot of graffiti in Australia. It is, indeed, a problem here. I see graffiti in neighbourhoods I would never expect to see it in -- neighbourhoods where one would otherwise feel completely safe walking at night.

I'm from Washington, DC. I remember Cool "Disco" Dan. I remember Surrender Dorothy. We always had graffiti around us. My elementary school had to sandblast it off. Nonetheless, I'll tell you, there's a lot of graffiti here in Sydney. I'm simply shocked at the amount of graffiti on the trains, sometimes. No, I'm not just shocked. I'm angry. I feel bad for the poor shopkeepers who have to stay late to repaint their walls. Nobody is paying them for that. They'd rather be home with their kids. I want to grab the kids that mark up the trains, and yell at them, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU IDIOT? NONE OF US CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID, MEANINGLESS BULLSHIT TAG."

But in spite of all this, I can't, for a moment, see any reason to ban a graffiti game. It doesn't make any sense that you can buy games where you kill people, but not games where you spray graffiti. Why is spraying virtual graffiti more harmful than killing virtual people? I'd honestly rather taggers were inside, playing video games, than outside, scribbling incoherent, pointless nonsense on my front gate.

Really, there are three separate issues that trouble me, with respect to this:

1.) There is a double standard between movies and games. If this were a movie, rather than a game, it would not have been banned.

2.) The reaction to this game has been wildly out of proportion with its danger. Playing this game will not make anyone a graffiti artist any more than playing hours of "The Movies" has made me into a movie mogul.

3.) Australia desperately needs an R18+ rating for games. They have historically had to deny classification to numerous games, because they have no equivalent to the ESRB M and AO ratings. It's not possible to sell a game in Australia, if it is deemed inappropriate for fifteen-year-olds to play. This is not only bad because it causes some games to be effectively banned, but also because there are games available to all fifteen year olds that were originally designed with mature audiences in mind (since the alternative would have been banning them). The lack of an R18+ rating really isn't helping or protecting anybody.

Gamers or Game Developers

2005-10-26T02:57:00.000-06:00

My laptop brick is completely dead, and thus, I am without a computer. Sadly, the brick in question is nowhere to be found in Australia, so I am waiting for it to arrive from the US. I am, as one might imagine, going completely insane. Also, because I do not like posting to pixelsea during business hours, my posts are a bit thin. I do apologize, and I promise some good, meaty posts when everything is back in working order.

In the meantime, I couldn't resist bringing up a particular pet peeve of mine, because I just saw it rear its ugly head, once again.

Please, please, please don't ever call game developers "gamers" when talking to the media. Yes, I know, "game developer" may be a long, cumbersome thing to say or type. I, as a game developer, will understand, from context, what you mean when you use the term "gamer," in place of "game developer." However, I guarantee you the mainstream media will conflate the two and/or will report about it in such a way as to confuse the public.

It has gotten so bad that when I see any headline about "gamers" earning money, I don't know whether it's going to be an article about professional game developers or professional game players (two very different things). You wouldn't say that "patients" were gathering at a medical conference, would you? Yes, certainly, all those doctors ARE somebody's patient, but that's not the capacity in which they're gathering. Yes, most of us game developers are gamers, but that's not the capacity in which we conduct business.

The same holds true for "gaming." We game developers don't earn money by gaming. Or, at least, I sure as hell don't. That is strictly the domain of professional gamers. Game developers earn money by making games. We should only say that someone is "studying gaming," if they are, in fact, studying the act, nature, psychology, or characteristics of gaming -- not studying game development. While some amount of studying gaming may be useful for game developers, the disciplines are not the same thing.

The 2001 Wired Article, Gaming: Too Cool For School? is a complete train wreck, with respect to this. Consider this quote:

"One gaming company head was enthusiastic about the program."

When I hear "gaming company," I think "gold farmers." Language, people!

Old Comments

Six letter word and starts with "P"

2005-10-10T21:03:00.000-06:00

In his latest diatribe to politicians, Jack Thompson said, "The best entity, then, to determine whether a video game is harmful to a minor, by virtue of its sexual and/or violent content, is a jury."

WRONG. The best entity to determine whether a video game is harmful to a minor, by virtue of its sexual and/or violent content, is a parent. Sorry, Jack, your ulterior motives are showing.

But, pointing out what's wrong with Thompson is merely raising a small voice in a very large chorus, at this point, so I really shouldn't waste the keystrokes.

I swear, I have a longer post coming. I just haven't had a moment to collect it.

Old Comments

Verb: Acquire

2005-10-05T00:36:00.000-06:00

So, Autodesk has bought Alias. Imagine, for a moment, if Coke bought Pepsi. That's what we're talking about here. Sure, there's Fanta and Softimage out there. You've got RC Cola and Lightwave. You've got Ramune and TrueSpace. You've got Jones and Milkshape. You've got that hippie stuff they sell at the organic food store and Blender. There's other stuff. But, we're talking about the big two.

It makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

My favorite question from the acquisition FAQ:

"Are there areas of duplication in Autodesk’s and Alias’ product lines?"

Gee, ya think?

Old Comments

Manifesto

2005-09-28T19:52:00.000-06:00

I would like to congratulate Greg Costikyan and Dr. Johnny Wilson for their new venture, Manifesto Games. I have a lot of respect for people who are willing to put their money where their mouths are. I applaud their pioneering spirit, and wish them the very best.

La Mort de l'Ordinateur

2005-09-22T04:54:00.000-06:00

My laptop is quite dead. Long and thoughtful posts will be delayed until I get it back in working condition -- which hopefully will be very soon.

Old Comments

The Case For Pink

2005-09-21T04:58:00.000-06:00

A lot of women hate pink. I am one of them.

Pink represents traditional gender roles. Pink represents segregation. It's that Pepto Bismol ghetto in the toy store where all of the Barbies and incontinent baby dolls hang out. It's that horrible dress you wish your Aunt hadn't bought you. It's froo froo and poodles and cheap perfume and Mary Kay ladies.

When I talk about the "pink ghetto" sometimes, my complaint is largely that it is a place where boys (and certain girls) won't go, largely because of the aforementioned connotations. I don't like the fact that I, as a girl, felt perfectly comfortable walking down the aisles with 4x4 trucks and action figures, but that it would've been a crippling taboo for my straight male hairdresser to have walked down the pink aisle to look at a hairdressing-related toy, as a boy. I think someday, men need to be liberated, too. But, that's not what I'm here to complain about today.

I frequently hear women game developers complain that something is "too pink," or "too girly." They complain that they hate pink things or girly things, and behave every bit as much as though they cannot comprehend that anyone else on the planet could possibly like them. A friend of mine was horrified when her little girl wanted to wear frilly dresses.

Let me tell you something: There are girly girls out there, and there's nothing wrong with them. They aren't traitors against feminism. They aren't 1950s housewives. They aren't weak. They aren't stupid. My younger sister -- who played with Barbies, Strawberry Shortcake, and My Little Pony, as a young girl -- is a Lead Programmer, a mother, and a gamer. Women don't need to belong to the tomboy's club to be cool. Women who like pink aren't unworthy of my breath, my time, my consideration, and my marketing.

I've seen pink game consoles, pink hand-helds, pink toolsets, fictional pink case mods... all kinds of things. And I say, make more. When I was a teenager, I had a pink skateboard. Yeah, I hate pink. But -- you must understand -- pink is the grand territorial pissing of the female. The boys who so cheerfully tried to run off with our bicycles over the years didn't dare abscond with my skateboard. Pink says, "Damn it, this is MINE." A girl's brother will not fight with her over her pink Gameboy. He won't tell her it's for boys. He has no power over the pink. It renders him entirely toothless in his competition for resources.

Many years ago, when I was a young thing, I was at the county fair, and a bunch of folks were down on one end of the field, launching model rockets. Being the consummate geek girl that I was, I wandered over to see what was going on. There was only one woman there. She had a collection of beautiful rockets, all subversively airbrushed in pink and lavender. I remember thinking, "That's the coolest woman on earth."

Old Comments

Update Soon

2005-09-20T12:43:00.000-06:00

I apologize for my recent silence. Hurricane Katrina blindsided me, and I buried myself in other creative endeavors to clear my head. I'll be back soon. I have a few axes to grind, and some kettles on the stove.

Old Comments

Words, words, words.

2005-08-25T09:04:00.000-06:00

I think that schools teach us to hate books.

When I was a child, books were my constant friend. By the time I graduated from high school, I didn't even want to look at the things, anymore. I have met many people in my adult years who either don't read at all, or tumble into that incestuous morass that is modern fantasy reading, never to escape again.

What happened?

We do not learn to appreciate wine by performing a chemical analysis of it. If we are to dissect a piece of music or a movie, it is only after appreciating the whole, and it is only to better understand the craftsmanship behind it, the influences that shaped it, and the ontological classification of the work.

Yet, we are handed our books with a pair of forceps and a scalpel. With cold calculation, we are to dissect every nuance, every image, and every motif. We are performing an autopsy on a cold corpse, carefully excising each organ, and weighing it upon a scale. Where is the beauty? Where is the life? How are we to appreciate this ruined carcass -- this butchered beast? The carrion birds have picked it clean of its meat. We are left with nothing but the bones, and a ghost of what it might have been. We have a vague impression of how we might have felt for it when it was alive, but we were never given the chance to know it.

It is a grave thing to lose one's love of reading. In this line of business -- making games -- it leaves us with a vile deficit. Our horizons become pinched at the edges, growing ever smaller. Perched in our rolling chairs in the wee hours, gorging ourselves on legal stimulants as we try to claw ourselves free from the bugs that clutch and gnaw at the edges of our creations, what windows do we have into the human condition, beyond those afforded us by the few like-minded creatures within rubber-band shooting range? Do we really know what it's like out there? Can we see with the eyes of the strangers on the morning train, and the hearts of the children drawing on the sidewalk with fat stumps of chalk?

We must open our blinds and let the words in, when we can. The time is there, if we remember where to look for it.

Old Comments

Using Women to Advertise

2005-08-22T06:28:00.000-06:00

I recently took two photos with my telephone in Central station in Sydney, Australia. They're crappy and low resolution, but you should get the general idea of what is depicted.

First, let's look at the Maxtor ad:

That's a woman, hugging a laptop. When I first saw this ad, I thought, "Wow, I don't think I've seen an ad more targeted to me in my entire life." I've definitely never seen an ad for a technological product which aimed so squarely at me.

Yet, nonetheless, though it's hard to tell from my low resolution mud, she's pretty cute. I can see her appealing to male viewers, as well. Either way, I felt damn sure Maxtor gives a damn about my money. Hell, I was even curious about their product.

Our second ad is for MAD Academy, a computer graphics school based in Australia:

Their website says, "MAD Academy graduates work in creative environments all over the world in game, TV, film and advertising production houses." All of the students profiled on the front page are men. With advertising like this, I don't think we can expect this to change anytime soon.

Why was this necessary? They're a graphics school. They could create all kinds of nice eye candy. This isn't even good looking.

We can put beautiful women in advertising without alienating half of the human species. Unfortunately, that requires more class than some people have.

Old Comments

The APA hits you for 1 point of damage

2005-08-18T07:19:00.000-06:00

Today, the American Psychological Association decided that we shouldn't put violence in games marketed to children:

From the press release:

Based on an examination of the research that shows the negative influences of violence in interactive media on youth, the American Psychological Association (APA) today adopted a resolution recommending that all violence be reduced in video games and interactive media marketed to children and youth.

First of all, apparently, the APA doesn't keep up with current events. Second of all, I can't think of a single modern violent game that's rated less than Teen. The vast majority of games marketed towards children are, for the most part, far less violent than most of the cartoons I grew up with.

The APA goes on to recommend that we:

Develop and disseminate a content-based rating system that accurately reflects the content of the video games and interactive media.

Say, what a clever idea.

Now this recommendation is interesting:

Encourage the entertainment industry to link violent behaviors with negative social consequences.

I will, for the moment, set aside the disturbing echoes of the Comic Book Code in this recommendation, and instead bring up an old pet peeve of mine. For years, television stations in the US have had to edit blood, death and other consequences out of television programs that children or adolescents were likely to watch, because these things were deemed inappropriate for young viewers. This always annoyed me, because I felt that it was socially irresponsible on the part of the censors to allow untold amounts of empty gratuitous violence to play out on the screen, while at the same time, sheltering everyone from any of the the consequences of that violence. The American editors would -- I kid you not -- go so far as to edit new scenes into some Japanese shows, just to retcon the death of a deceased character. What the hell social good was this doing? Why hasn't the APA ever taken them to task about consequences?

However, the APA did say one thing I can get behind:

Teach media literacy to children so they will have the ability to critically evaluate interactive media.

I can't argue with this. Only, I would remove the word "interactive." Adults should be helping children develop the ability to critically evaluate all media. We could even develop a game...

Old Comments

2005-08-17T22:09:00.000-06:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

I was rather hoping that Haloscan's clever automated Blogger converter would be so kind as to copy the old comments into the new system, but no such luck. I suppose I should've known better. I'll see if I can dig them up and copy them back in, soon.

Random News Roundup: Down on the Farm

2005-08-17T02:26:00.000-06:00

Recent globe-trotter Bill Roper popped up in Leipzig this week, at the awkwardly named Games Convention Developer Conference. In his pre-conference keynote address, he had this to say:

From GamesIndustry.com:

"I'm going to get on my PC soapbox for a few minutes," he told attendees. "PC games are on the verge of a major market shift, as PC developers and publishers start to move from selling CDs of single-player games to retail outlets, to selling online games to those with broadband connections. We're already seeing primitive multi-platform games on the PC... Players want to get online and play."

Personally, I've never thought the PC platform was dead. If the larger game companies decide to ignore the PC, it doesn't matter. The fact is, the PC is the platform with the lowest barrier of entry for new developers. If the big guys ignore it, there will be dozens of smaller fish scrambling to take their place. A console's market penetration will always be dependent on the games available for it. PC market penetration is not dependent upon this. Moreover, PC hardware is not subject to the violent ebbs and flows of console hardware release cycles.

Well, that, and I'm a shameless PC gamer. Maybe I'm a little biased.

Fun with Scalpels

The British Heart Foundation has released a game in which you can perform heart surgery. Far from the Microsurgeon game I played on my Intellivision untold aeons ago, this is a little education Flash game that demonstrates various heart procedures, complete with a detailed set of surgical tools. Unfortunately, from a quick play-through, it doesn't seem that the gameplay is very challenging or deep. In fact, I'm not entirely sure how you can screw up, short of running out of time. I'm sure that they intended this to be fun and accessible for as wide an audience as possible, but I can't see many people over the age of six staying interested in it long enough to learn much.

Barney Backhoe

Bold Games is making two kids' titles based on the John Deere license. Yes, that's John Deere, all-American tractor manufacturer.

From the press release:

Bold Games’ new Welcome to Merriweather Farm game shows Johnny Tractor and his friends plowing, harvesting, and taking care of the animals on the farm, while Busy Days in Deerfield Valley features Danny Dozer, Barney Backhoe and friends hard at work digging, lifting, and helping out around town.

Now, believe it or not, I'm not posting this here to make fun of it. On the contrary, I've been wanting to see more construction-related games for kids. I think, if done properly, they can be very positive and educational. But more than that, kids -- even many girls -- are totally fascinated by construction. Many of the construction-related games that have been released so far have been problem-solving games. I think it'd also be good to create games where kids can actually, well, build things. Yeah, I know, crazy idea.

Old Comments

Game Head: Sam Spade

2005-08-16T06:17:00.000-06:00

As an exercise to stretch my brain, I often look at things in the world around me, and wonder, "How would I make this into a game?"

Chris Crawford has said:

"Verbs are all-important in game design. They are the allowed actions, the permissible commands that are available to the player. A good set of verbs allowes players to do everything they would need or want to do."

Last night, I watched "The Maltese Falcon." A Sam Spade game should be more than just punching and dialog trees. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought, if a player were Sam Spade, what verbs are available?

I quickly brainstormed a (partial) list:
Walk, mock, fast-talk, punch, slap, kiss, argue, threaten, smoke, flirt, confront, dirty-trick, demand...

Why on earth do I have smoking in there? Sam seems to smoke when he's flirting, or when he needs to calm his nerves. Sam is a passionate, very id-driven guy. Suppose Sam has a passion-meter. When he's arguing or feeling threatened or used in some way, his meter would go way up. When his passion meter is high, he's more likely to threaten, confront, punch, or slap someone. When his passion meter is low, he's more likely to mock, fast-talk, dirty-trick, or flirt. He kisses women, regardless of his spirits, though he seems most fond of going for the bracing, passionate kiss.

So, Sam is investigating his case, but the options available to him will vary by mood. A player can control his mood by the choices he or she makes. More than one approach is likely to get a player around a certain impasse, though there are a few dumb things you just don't want to do. Sam can mock and fast-talk the police, but it's a really bad idea to threaten them. One way the player can deal with this is to light up a cigarette when the cops show up, so Sam can mellow out, and not blow his top. Amusement also calms him down, so a little playful mockery may be in order, as well.

Are you angry Sam or rakish Sam? Or are you somewhere in-between?

Welcome

2005-08-15T03:49:00.000-06:00

At the prompting of a friend, I have decided to bite the bullet, and begin a blog about game development. Yes, yes, I already have a blog elsewhere, but I usually avoid talking shop there.

So, I may as well introduce myself:
Hello, I'm Tess. I'm the Lead Programmer for a small game development house in Australia. I'm not originally from Australia, but for some reason, they put up with me, anyway.

I am not a designer. I am also not a sociologist, a psychologist, an ethicist, an economist, a criminologist, a doctor, or a lawyer, but I am an insufferable know-it-all, so don't be surprised if I have something to say about these topics on occasion.

Mostly, I'll be talking about the game industry, game development, women in the industry, machinima, and game engineering. I will also occasionally be ruthlessly regurgitating material from other game development blogs, so I can comment on it at length, without crowding the spotlight. I will try to post something every day, when I can, but crunch time is crunch time.

So, kick your shoes off, while I put the kettle on. We've got some things to talk about.