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Me Myself&I

Tech threshold

So yeah the Hololens. Neat. I can see some cool games and apps (architecture hell yeah).

However I think people are not that ready or excited because we’re far behind what technology is capable of.

See it this way: if you haven’t moved from where you live for the past ten years and use a computer on a desktop, wired or wireless internet didn’t change your life. Traveling made you aware of wifi’s badassery. Skype is old as fuck but if you’re not using it to communicate with people very far away regularly, you still don’t see how big of a deal it is. And so forth.

So VR, AR “wearables” haptic feedback and all are out of our reality for like, years. I still don’t have a tablet and don’t feel like missing much years after the first one came out. I was waiting for 20 or 24” tablets –audio design on this? fuck yeah- but they’re not coming because you make more money selling loads of smaller screens, I always forget about profit rules (rule #3: fuck people’s needs).

I think there’s another problem: the experience, which barely changes. You can listen to music on your $700 phone with a $10/month subscription and fundamentally, it’s not different from my $20 USB key and my FLAC files. Firefox support the Oculus Rift but you’re still reading pages of text. The biggest change so far has been mobility and we already have it.

There’s also this fatigue. People are already hooked on tech, know it’s bad and now you want deeper connections? Add the NSA and that’s enough for people to chill and play a platform game. In 2D. With a gamepad. On a TV. Offline.

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Me Myself&I

Scale

I’m impressed by scale. Scale is an important concept because it’s easy to see 4 (2 power of 2) but way less to see 65536 (2 power 16).

Here’s a stupid example that shows how complex things can be:

So for some computers running Windows 8.1 or above, when you crank up the volume you get that annoying popup.

Damn it Microsoft, it’s all your fault and you suck and you’re the worst oh god why?

Where does that message come from? Well Reddit answered and a MS engineer confirmed that there’s no code in Windows that displays that popup.

This popup is a European Union requirement that manufacturers are free to implement or not at the audio driver level. So Samsung thought it would be cool to implement that on my laptop.

It’s not much of a deal –it’s loud enough before the popup shows up 90% of the time- but what’s interesting to me is that at the scale Windows and Microsoft work, there are tons of shit we don’t know about, things that as users we think are all about Redmond getting their shit together but it’s not. It’s WAY more complex there’s even countries chiming in.

Right there we have MS, computer manufacturer, audio driver maker, EU battling over the sound volume experience in an OS.

If you don’t know now you know.

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Audio&Games

Hollow

A quote about a professional game reviewer and writer’s feeling about games these days:

The time passes pleasantly, maybe even thrillingly at times, but it means nothing, there’s no sense of achievement other than Achievements. Maybe it’s more compulsive masturbation than Disneyland (or maybe Disneyland is masturbation? Discuss) – make the itch go away, risk a faint sense of guilt and self-disgust afterwards, then do it again anyway.

I’m perfectly happy for these things to exist, and even to spend some time with them myself, but I worry a) that this model is taking over, that the hollowness of Farmville is creeping into games on an intrinsic level and b) that I’m too lazy to resist playing them. I don’t want to miss out, and once I start playing I struggle to stop until most of those icons go away, because some reptile voice at the back of my skull tells me that cleaning up the map is essential to my wellbeing. That’s not what I want for myself.

Me neither and that’s why I block that reptile voice and don’t even start playing those games. As a commenter rightly says:

Unfortunately (?), that means I’m drifting away from mainstream gaming (and mainstream gaming culture) more and more with every passing month. I’m starting to look at itch.io with more interest than I look at Steam. Not that I don’t find some great gaming experiences anymore, among more “traditional” games. Transistor and The Talos Principle are wonderful, and Dreamfall Chapters is a thing. (just 3 games of 2014, off the top of my head) But they’re handpicked and unique games in a sea that mostly looks… uninteresting and unappealing, when not downright manipulative (Skinner Boxes, achievements, bars to fill, collectibles to find) and dedicated to the pursuit of escapism beyond repair. (Hollow is a good word for it)

Gaming is the only environment in which “addictive” is used as a positive term.

I’ve only played and finished KRZ last year and it was a really great experience.

We need so much more distinct look and feel to existent game designs and we need more risks taken but the vibe right now between political correctness, me-too behavior and development costs is not saying “it’s happening” at a large scale, sadly.

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Me Myself&I

Merci Charlie Sorry Charlie

Hello 2015. Damn, not a week in. The NAACP bombing was gross but that Charlie Hebdo tragedy touches home for me.

They were a big symbol across all media, for over four decades of freedom of speech in France. I would take the train and look at the newspaper stand and quickly read the front page like millions of people in Paris probably. It didn’t matter if it was brilliant or corny as hell, we all smiled or giggled before getting in the tube. We all took that freedom of speech for granted.  We got warnings but we’re so complacent about how we’re soft with everything, even fundamentals.

What trigger? A generation imploding under heavy unemployment with no upward social mobility: when people are not happy, even smart they become stupid. Religions scoop them all. Second, 9/11. Since then and the monumental hammered in message that it’s “us against them” -I guess Christians VS Muslims kind of vibe?- it’s utterly fucked up.

I see all kinds of messages. France needs more guns. France needs less Muslims. France needs to stand for freedom of speech.

I think France and obviously other nations need less religion. Separation of the State and the Church remember? It’s like we forgot. But as vital, we need to redefine how we get people together economically and how to redistribute our vast wealth. It’s just, it needs to happen.

And dear obnoxious media, you need to stop with “cool pope” and “Islamic terrorists” it’s not a sports game with teams. Fuck.

Categories
Audio&Games

On game culture and business

Last year has probably been the most challenging ever for most people working and living in the game development world. I mean hell, it’s been awful and I’m trying to see what’s the deal. Let’s go back.

Games on computers have been a boy’s club for the first three decades of their existence (70s 80s and 90s). Boys, not adults.

Then 2000 happened. For the first time of the existence of games and consoles it was hype, cool to be in your mid twenties and play games like GTA after work.

Then things got faster. By 2004 games were really entering mainstream with Popcap killing it in the PC downloadable business with their puzzle games for moms. WoW reaching out like crazy. The Nintendo DS. The Wii at the corner of 06-07.

In 2004 ten years ago I felt that game culture was maturing and finally showing to the world its tremendous power. But a major crowd –commercially speaking- was still a boy’s club.

Boy’s club means sexism in some form. It’s not tied to games, it’s everywhere like that. White boy’s club adds racism.

And we in the industry we fed them with everything they wanted, guns titties no diversity you name it. Those guys have enormous pockets and buy tons of games game developers have been making billions thanks to that crowd.

I thought that game design would change, cater to more different people but production costs rising exponentially meant that we had to make money instead of making the medium progress, smarter.

Don’t get me wrong for the past ten years the medium progressed and tons of interesting and different games that I couldn’t have thought being possible have been made but game culture still relies on the Original Gangsta game culture: the boy’s club. The videogame boy’s club, hardcore games and questionable aesthetics.

Like a fan of a band always prefers their first album, a lot of people in games players or developers value that OG side, we grew up with this! But that’s where I didn’t stick with it. It’s the past to me. I want something else badly.

Nintendo tried to avoid that crowd after the Wii, thinking that the market was big enough. They at first presented the Wii U as just an evolution of the Wii but sales made them quickly go back to cater to the boy’s club: big guns, pads with 4562467 buttons etc. Those guys have money. However Nintendo knows they nail the kid department so the boy’s club is just additional revenue. The blue ocean is a mirage, it’s more like millions of swimming pools and the boy’s club one is still the biggest and most reliable revenue-wise. Publishers have issues though.

I look at Watch Dogs by Ubisoft, 28 weeks to pull 3.4M units sold. That is bad. In 2010 they would reach that amount in 7 weeks. And it’s their only game in the top 20. By comparison Pokemon for 3DS, 3 weeks in the charts 5M units sold. That’s what all AAA publishers want and basically outside two publishers and two games (GTA and CoD), no one is making that kind of money with the boy’s club anymore. There are too many games out there and gamedev costs are insane in the brain. 20 gigs first day patches are the result of extremely complex game development scenarios.

From the programmer to the player everybody is like “fuck this”. We truly reached a point.

I think it’s going to give tons of people some room to redefine game culture and game business for real this time. I hope.