h. Play – Page 215 – That's about right.

I want a skip button too

Post author By harold
Post date September 21, 2009

Yes I want it. I want a way to go through games without having to fail miserably 50 times and giving up, thanks Rock Paper Shotgun to talk about it.

It’s a thing of the past now. Please.

Because to appreciate a game you need to play it. If a level is boring and you stop because it’s hard –or badly designed- so you miss an awesome experience next level, it’s really a loss for the player, for the game culture. I skipped countless boring chapters reading books, or skipping songs on a album. It’s easy. In games it’s never easy to do so.

Because hardcore gamers who actually do it over and over until the end would be proudly seen as people with balls and determination instead of being seen as dorky nolife gamers.

Because I hate the fact that if I passed three-third of the level, I have to restart over. Yeah I got it, merit and blabla but it’s a damn game people. Game developers were doing that in the 80s/90s because of hardware restrictions. Now, let me pause and save my game wherever I want. Whatever the game is. I demand freedom on my play sessions.

Because I’m a fucking adult and life is sufficiently hard. That doesn’t mean I want to play Peggle everyday. That means I don’t want your batshit crazy rules that make me fail all the time because the designer decided so. I don’t want something dull either.

Because I want to enjoy my games and if I pass this level, I don’t want to start it over everytime I launch my game.

Because I don’t have time for that. I have time to enjoy, I don’t have time to feel frustrated.

Because I would actually finish games, feel good and buy some more. What game developer doesn’t want that widely? A lot apparently.

Audio&Games

3D freedom my ass

I have to say it: I hate 3D third person view.

Hours of play like that… Mmmh, maybe not.

That makes 90% of AAA titles sort of meh for me.

From a player point of view I hate it because having your character stabbed in the back while you can’t see shit just sucks so much. Alone in the Dark was the first to fully demonstrate that.

Of course a lot of progress has been done since then going from static cameras to dynamic ones but still, it’s always that Third Person View (TPV) that makes some situation totally unfair and not fun at all.

Also as Kotaku was writing a few days ago, it’s really boring to have the back of your character for hours. That’s what you are going to see the most. His/her ass/back. You couldn’t see why there was a lot of bikini-style female characters starting with Lara’s 70s indy-ish shorts? Well now you know.

Hours of work.. Hours of watching pr0n too I guess

Also, that’s why there is a lot of cinematics in these games, so you don’t have this “corridor” view all the time. Problem is, cinematics are no games.

Now from a developer point of view, 3D camera is a bitch. Almost nobody got it right, except Nintendo. 3D camera is an insane mind fuck to code, shape and make it perfect in every kind of situation, everywhere in the game, without creating bugs. Of course there’s no generic way to do it well, it depends entirely on what your game is about. You definitely can say that this is a massive problem.

One of the trick is to do it ala “japanese”: make the camera quite far away so that the player feels a bit of freedom, use as much special effects as you can so that the player forget the camera rigidness in a 3D world and then you have Devil May Cry/God of War/Bayonetta.

It’s really something I hate in single-player games, it’s just too noisy for me. When aesthetic is special I can have it a bit (Madworld, No More Heroes).

In MMOs it’s different. There’s no fast action pace everytime or you don’t have complex task to do like sneaking around a fortress in a realistic way, so it’s less a problem. You’re only watching stats while chatting in a text box anyway.

That’s why I like 2D and First Person View games. In 2D you always know what is going on around you and in FPV you are supposed to know/remember because you have the freedom to look wherever you want.

Computer games allow us to be free like crazy and TPV is way too much fake freedom and a nightmare to produce to be the default game representation.

Damn, it is!

Me Myself&I

Contrast and mirror

Family time.

During that time, August in Paris makes you believe that the capital is at least half black, half asian demonstrating who can go on vacation, sort of. It makes me feel bad that my white friend after four years in China seeing that too is feeling “invaded” while at the same time he loves black pussies.

And then I see angry young black men at la Def. Usual stuff for a suburb parisian like me. Never had relation with french black communities. Not nerd enough for me I guess.

In L.A. it’s different. Black people are quite rare where I live but they all share the streets and card boxes. A large part that I saw for now are homeless or poor with shitty jobs. Last night I paid a vegan taco to a big black man with a guitar before he did go to Mc Donalds.. “Black man.. Guitar..”

They all have this “sympathy by default” bro’ thing with me, always smiling with the classic “how’s it going?” coming out from their mouth shortly after. Sometimes I want to talk and share.

Then of course there’s Barack the Boss. Health care debate on TV. Openness.

And then I read that, here’s an excerpt:

“People of all races got sucked into subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages, but even high-income blacks were almost twice as likely to end up with subprime home-purchase loans as low-income whites — even when they qualified for prime mortgages, even when they offered down payments.”

Something that follow the analysis of the End of Work which explain how technology has killed millions of jobs for minorities since half a century:

“In October 1944 the first mechanical cotton picker was successfully demonstrated in the Mississippi delta.vIt could pick 1000 pounds of cotton an hour, thereby doing the work of 50 seasoned pickers. 1949 only 6 percent of the cotton in the South was harvested mechanically; by 1964 it was 78 percent. Eight years later, 100 percent of the cotton was picked by machines.

More than 5 million blacks migrated north in search of work between 1940 and 1970. The fortunes of black workers in the North improved steadily until 1954 and then began a forty-year historical decline.”

“In the mid-1950s, automation began taking its toll in the nation’s manufacturing sector,” he wrote. “Hardest hit were unskilled jobs in industries where black workers were concentrated. Between 1953 and 1962, 1.6 million blue-collar jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. While the unemployment rate for black Americans had never exceeded 8.5 percent between 1947 and 1953 and the white rate of unemployment had never gone beyond 4.6 percent, by 1964, blacks were experiencing an unemployment rate of 12 percent while white unemployment was only 5.9 percent.”

It seems like the economic race is always lost twice as much by the same people. For no reason. Just History and slow progress.

I’m fortunate enough to be in the tiny knowledge and high profile economy,I’m lucky enough but I know that without my unique experience and “white legacy”, I would probably not be here. It hurts. It fuels me too.

In the game industry where there’s less than 2% of black people (yeah, less than women can you imagine?), it’s just not the representation of western societies today. Didn’t see a change in ten years. On the consumer side of it, I read that and I feel sad that people just don’t get the solution (Valve totally got it with L4D, Sega totally got it with Streets of Rage in 19 fucking 91) and get angry instead. And sure thing is, there is never been a time more multi-cultural than now.

These gigantic contrasts between what I live and what I see around me, what should work and doesn’t make me contemplate all that shit. I’m in the middle. No sides, nothing to say except that everybody’s to blame. Not very useful.

Also, there’s the fastest man ever. Coming from the country more known for its slow tempo music and slow motion grass. You can’t invent that.

Sometimes I want his legs. I want to run. Run away from you, society you are so slow! I want the Future Now.

Me Myself&I

Nerdy choices

Watching everything that goes on in the tech and computer world –well as much as I can-, here some thoughts.

Just so nobody can’t say nothin’

Closed/Open technologies and monopole.

It’s an endless loop I guess. Usually at first we use the closed ones because they are better and when the technology is mature enough –when people really need it while the tech reaches stability- we move to alternatives to the point where we’re almost totally free to use this technology seeminglessly and endlessly. And then a new closed tech comes etc

So there’s nothing wrong using closed tech. Opera offers a great browser experience and it’s a closed tech. The only thing to do with closed technologies is to not giving up everything on them. Using them to get things done and have a boost of productivity is fine.

Adobe Flash is an excellent example of a great productivity tool for which we tend to give up everything, building a monopole based on a proprietary technology where only a giant company like MS can compete with (Silverlight). But Flash is cool –though not as fast as the Grandmaster-, it is used by visual designers. They are the coolest guys of the entire universe they can’t be wrong!

That’s weird. The stability of the open source alternative should be here and competing. I can’t wait to have the open source equivalent of the PDF format, without any restriction and gazillion of devices capable of reading it while offering perfect performances, feeding great apps.

I see some people complaining about the monopole of iTunes these days and people going away from a market so tightly controlled by the California based company that apps are refused arbitrary.

Well, Apple is known for that –just having to install iTunes to see the music catalog is the first step-, it’s closed closed closed. The size of the iphone market is now enough to make people think twice before being stuck.

It’s like the cooler you seem, the more you can fuck people. Open or closed technology doesn’t even count. That’s why I don’t want Chrome. Way too nice Google, and you already have me with mail and rss.

OS/Apps and updates.

They all fail at some point. Whatever it is, from Snow Leopard to WordPress to Windows, a major update on a major system has to break some stuffs. That’s why 7 is impressive for me, it didn’t break anything and everything worked out out of the box on three very different computer. Because doing an operating system is one of the most complex task in the world, sometimes it doesn’t deliver. Hopefully it’s less and less the case whatever the flavor of what is running your computer on.

Also the more the app is used, the more it’s vulnerable and needs updates. WordPress and Firefox come in mind. It’s just like that. And no system is unbreakable so.. All this noise on news about what is normal in the software world is pretty annoying because during that time, they don’t talk about great apps and services that would be worth the word.

Patents & lock-in.

Well, I agree with Raph Koster on this one. You have a great idea, you did work hard on it, it seems fair that you want some revenue from it. The point is to what degree. It seems that people always want to abuse that, largely. The lack of competition because of abusive patents especially on hardware is slowing the spread of progress so hard (multitouch mess).

Anyway the only way to prevent abuses or slow generalization of great tech things seems to make sure to be in the middle of it. No sides, just going here and there, getting the one that fits your need without compromising your freedom.

Audio&Games

Word sound design

Post author By harold
Post date September 4, 2009

Chocobeam Sound Lab. The beginning.

So I founded my company and called it Chocobeam (Sound Lab). I find that it’s interesting to come out with a word to imagine a name because at some point, it’s pure sound.

When you hear the name of something, the brain converts audio to words to meaning. So the audio layer comes on first, even if it’s for a micromillisecond so you are not even noticing it (because the meaning is really what the brain is searching for).

Anyway this sound is what people are sharing and spreading by word of mouth about you, first. It also can be repeated in the case of a success, billion times everywhere. You’d better sound good when there’s competition, it can make a difference.

So my references are for most of them japanese: Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Softbank etc or from the web and computer world: Twitter, Vimeo, Amazon, Google.. What I found is that:

They are easy to say for a lot of people around the world. Of course based on english.
Contraction of two words (Capsule Computer seriously, it’s genius) works good. I personally find that it’s better to have a cool name that having a perfect description of the service/product.
Three syllables is always a win because it’s like a story: there’s a start, a middle and and end. People love stories. UPS sounds finished, Fedex not much. Two syllables is dangerous, too fast for people to remember it and after three, the more you have the more it’s boring to say. The more you have, the more you can describe and give meaning though. It still often sounds boring or pompous.
People need to be able to read it and pronounce it well at first try. Super not easy. I remember the first time I heard about Nintendo I thought it was hard to say. And weird to read.

With that in mind, considering my values and what my business is about, I came to Chocobeam. Sounds cute (Chocobo anyone?) and kind of edgy even pronounced ala française (without the Ch dynamic). Some people just want to read Chocobean but I can’t do nothing for them. Get back to school? Kidding.

The meaning is quite simple: contraction of chocolate and beam, chocolate being me and the beam being my audio. Be kind, to get this brainstorm done I almost had a phlebitis.

Beam has two others meaning though: in french beam is “bim” and it kind of reminds me of the slang in the suburbs of Paris. “BIM! dans ta sale face lààà!” meaning “BAM! motherfucker”, adding a comics-related and active sound while reminding me where I come from.

BEAM is also an acronym and means Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics (BEAM robotics). I think it fits well my work in the interactive design and computer games field.

Looking at that sometime I really believe that how the name of your service/brand/product sounds has a big impact. I wrote about it two years ago when there was so much web 2.0 services with stupid names. Who made it through time? None with weird silly sounding names and difficult pronunciation. Facebook fits my points above. Three-four syllables, good dynamic between consonant and sibilant, easy to say around the world, easy to write and have some meaning (and humor). Instant interest, instant good feeling. Perfect.

Counter example: Aka-Aki. The service is interesting and promising. The name is awful. Freaking not appealing at all. It sounds complicated. It sounds boring (“can you spell it to me?”), you can’t hardly get it the first time you hear it (and I had to search the web to be sure of how it’s written even if I already was aware of his existence!). It’s like people creating this service found that it was a fun and cool name. It’s already killing them outside Germany where they are quite successful.

If you want some consulting on this issue, if you need advices to help you find the timeless name of your product, brand, application, feel free to send an email at info@chocobeam.com.

Me Myself&I

Overload

Post author By harold
Post date September 2, 2009

I feel like I’m overcapacity. Too much information, I can’t process them all. Facebook was not a really good idea for that. I am officially scared to launch the website. It’s a time-elapsing hemoragy.

I have some trouble to find a way to filter, priorize all this digital social information creation thing. The more I create, the more I get feedback. The more I get feedback the more I need to answer it. The more I answer it, the less I create. Then I switch for another period, endlessly.

Quite exhausting. A blog comment appears in the mail, I click, read it, prepare my answer then see 4 tweets with 2 links with one to a picture. Internal dialog:

“RT the article? Haha funny picture. Where was I. Oh I didn’t read this tab yet, good 5 pages article. Let’s see. Oh, it blinks in the taskbar, the discussion is on. Correcting, the three conversations are on. Another link ok but quickly then because I was doing.. Oh damn the answer to the blog comment. Oh. I was writing an email at first and needed a starred rss item. Let’s see. Oh new items. And new tweets. And it’s blinking again. And it feels exciting.”

This little reward loop in my brain is saying to me: “yeaaah, encore”. I’m a fucking mouse in a laboratory. With a scroll-wheel in the forehead.

I have around 400 streams of information to check everyday, some of them are enough alone to occupy my brain for hours. Videos. I now avoid them widely, so time-consuming.

I know. But the Internet is so addictive. Especially when Gmail is down.

I guess we all are in the same shit.

Audio&Games

It’s shifting

Post author By harold
Post date September 1, 2009

But first, we need to stop a bit this BS around.

Like the bullshots. We exactly know how they are done, we all know this is pure bullshit compared to real gameplay in-game, with opponents, AI inputs etc

But still, Kotaku for example is full of them more than ever. And people jerk off on it. We had to when we were young because game news were only on paper. In 2009? I don’t even understand.

It’s like this crazyness about figurines and movie adaptation of games. Come on even at 11 years old I knew Doom or Wolfenstein stories were not serious, just here to wrap some outstanding and groundbreaking 3D engines and gameplay. Now they try to make it as if the story was really the core of these games, using the IP to some extreme. Ridiculous.

Sony is launching the PS3 Slim and still loose money on it. As everybody knows, it’s all about software and the PS3 has already lost this battle: games are either multi-platform and sell or Sony exclusive and don’t. For the BR player? Yeah maybe. We sell 1To hard drives for 100$ now and media centers like crazy but yeah, maybe.

I think the public is tired of having to go all the way for a manufacturer, or having no choice but to buy them all. The trend seems to be to go away from closed platforms. Always have been the case: after some hegemony from closed platforms (Amiga, Atari, C64), they suddenly die.

For developers and consumers it’s a win/win. In the Scott Miller ind-depth interview on Gamasutra, we can see that it really has always been the case: the more you aim your game to a large crowd -technically, making sure it runs on the largest chunk of people’s computers- the more you make money. It seems stupid I know.

“Obviously all your Kroz games were text-based, and you said they sold extremely well. So graphics weren’t a prerequisite at that time to have a successful game for the IBM PC, right?

SM: That appeared to be the case. Most people back in those days when I was doing the Kroz games had CGA cards. EGA was up and coming, but you really couldn’t count on it. These disk magazines like Softdisk wanted the kind of ASCII-based games I was making because they felt like everyone could play them. They didn’t want games that could just work on ten or twenty percent of people’s computers.”

When a developer goes exclusive with a very specific theme in his game –like, WAR- he’s aiming an awful little market. Really juicy ok but with no growth expected. That is what are aiming a lot of publishers these days: 10% of the overall computer market maybe less.

Talking about growth, netbooks sales are up by 40% from last year this quarter. Just sayin’

So to resume: publishers and big names are trying to make sure that we are partying like in 2003 with AAA games and exclusives deals while developers are getting laid off more than ever from that kind of game productions –canceled games every week- with veterans going indie –Chris Hecker man!-. On top of that, consumers are buying games on mobile platforms and tend to enjoy fast and quick game sessions. They use closed platforms when it’s good and different –DS, Iphone- but they know they don’t want that in the future.

They want the fun and the freedom. Developers, don’t forget the freedom part. Oh by the way,

Ron Gilbert’s last game. Very curious to see this one. I mean, to buy it.

Me Myself&I

Citizen fail

Post author By harold
Post date August 29, 2009

LAX Immigration and Customs, first time:

“Have a nice stay, enjoy California!”

Second time:

“Are you on vacation here? Allright”

Third time:

“What are you doing here? Where’s the plane ticket to get back to your country? What are you doing here? Why staying for so long? Let me see your card. So why are you coming here?”

Immigration. It seems fair until you’re on the other side.

Me Myself&I

Love it or quit it.

It was the french president Sarkozy talking to suburbs and saying that about France.

Well I’d rather do both.

I’m stupid: I started working with this idea that it always seems to be greener there while it seems shit where you actually are, but that is on average (well in the western world) the same wherever you go. There’s down and upside. So I believed France and Europe would be a good playground to do stuff, no need to go away in Canada or CA. There is plenty of good things in here and a cultural melting-pot quite unmatched on Earth. Paris is amazing for that (and weird, I’d talk about it). I was thinking about the challenges and the potentials. There are still here.

But nothing big happened. Or it’s so slow it’s invisible.

No real good signs of society improvements just some willing to move forward but nothing happens really. France is lagging. In so many ways it even goes backward (wtf is this religious vivacity these days?? or Hadopi or this amazing rampant bigotry..).

People don’t give a shit. Globally, French don’t give a shit. Progress is difficult in this context.

Wherever I am, since I’ve been living outside a bit, I can’t believe how France don’t care from the airport to sidewalks to services, whatever. It’s not that it’s bad behaviors, it’s more like it’s dull and selfish ones (boss kidnapping I mean, come on!). It’s even more irritating when people apologize. Sometimes I want to stab the dude in the eye and say “SORRY I DIDNT KNOW IT COULD HURT I MEAN I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLAY WITH A KNIFE RIGHT?”.

I love the independence state of mind of France, questioning everything, all the time. I think it’s good to be not sure of anything, because that’s what life is. I hate the careless rude, rough, mean side of it.

We don’t have to have them both. We could have the positive one and ditch the stupid side but no, that would be totally not french to do so.

I guess.

Anyway, I feel angry against myself for giving up, against french people for having all the pain in the ass to believe, adapt, build and finish stuff instead of always talk and criticize it (because if they are not like this, they usually are not in France anymore) against California for being so awesome despite its own downside.

I hate waste in every way and I can’t stop thinking about it when I remind myself of these last years or when I listen to my friends or public transports conversations. Social, society opportunities falling and failing.

And then I just have to see some smart witty funny french people and..

Man I feel weird. But I’m doing it. Both.

Me Myself&I

Sunset Submarine

Post author By harold
Post date August 13, 2009

Après un mois et des poussières sans nuages, ça fait bizarre quand même. Juste après le Groenland, mer de nuage. A 10 km c’est magnifique, j’ai même vu un château dans le ciel. A 3 km sur Paris, on plonge doucement dedans. C’est doux, c’est gris.

C’est du moisi.

N’empêche le lever du soleil sur la planète blue en altitude, c’est le pied.