Ode to a PlayStation 2  

Dark Chronicle

(30/09/2011)  Whilst digging through boxes during my mission to transfer all my worldly possessions to one place, I came across my dusty old PS2, and became a little bit nostalgic.  I also discovered my collection of PS2 games, and felt and immediate urge to go and play them.  I resisted, on account of there being so many shiny new modern games out in the next couple of months that I’m going to have scarce enough time as it is.  But once I’ve slogged my way through this years’s blockbusters, I’ll be firing up the PS2 again for some nostalgic time with some classic games.

God Hand

The PS2 era was something of a halcyon time in my gaming history.  It was the gaming era that dominated in my formative years, and coincided with me owning my own money for the first time.  I could go out and buy games indiscriminately, to start building up a library, free from the old ‘one for Christmas and one for your birthday’ constraint.  Not having to buy food, clothes, petrol or second homes for MPs meant that pretty much all my money went towards games, and not having a job or a social life meant that all my not-at-school time was devoted to gaming.

Okami

So I played a lot of PS2 games.  A lot of them were rubbish, but a few of them were great.  Properly, lastingly great, in a way the very few games of this console generation have been.  I’m inclined to agree with the people who suggest that the PS2 era represented the peak of console videogaming; where technology and creativity could perfectly intersect.  Consoles were finally powerful enough to render humans that looked like humans, with recognisable facial expressions and distinct clothing.  We could do audio that sounded proper, and have characters that actually spoke.  But at the same time, development costs weren’t so enormous as to restrict depth and creativity.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Modern technology can certainly render object with a fidelity that makes the PS2 look laughable, but it does so at the expense of the deeper experience.  Modern versions of older franchises are by necessity more linear and less interactive that their forbears; look at the original Deus Ex compared with the recent Human Revolution, or Final Fantasy XII next to Final Fantasy XIII.  And who could afford to take a risk like God Hand or Ico on a modern platform?

Dragon Quest VIII

None of this is to say that modern games are worse than those of the previous generation; they’re just different.  Games are moving away from broad, deep experiences and towards more controlled, cinematic ones.  This is fine.  And it’s worth noting that while I hold up the PS2 as the pinnacle of the videogaming experience, there will be people ten years my senior who would offer an equally informed opinion of why the Super Nintendo era featured the best games we are ever likely to see.

Persona 4

But, as we run full-force towards the always-online, digitally distributed and publisher controlled future, stamping gleefully on the shiny round plastic of our past, it is worth stopping occasionally and dusting off a trusty old companion.  It’s worth recalling a time with no installs, no firmware, no DLC or DRM, no online passes or pre-order exclusives.  It’s worth recalling, if only to remind ourselves that things haven’t always been this way, and to appreciate those games that have defined our tastes, and, by doing so, which define the impact we have on the future of our medium.

Now with that out of the way, back to Gears Of War 3.

The 3DS Issue

(30/07/2011)  So the 3DS is doing a bit shit in the sales department.  So shit, in fact, that Nintendo have implemented a massive price cut only a few months after the device went on sale.  It would seem that, for the first time since the ill-fated Virtual Boy, (incidentally, the only other gaming device to tout 3D as a selling point) Nintendo have misjudged the handheld market.

Good on trains.

Many voices are citing the runaway success of iOS and Android devices as a reason for the 3DS having such a hard time at retail.  The argument goes that with multi-functional devices now capable of playing games, there is no compelling reason to purchase a stand-alone handheld game device.  I don’t think this is necessarily true; I just think that Nintendo are missing the actual point of handheld gaming.

Handheld gaming is about minutes-long play sessions, something you can blast away on the tube to work and then shove back into your pocket without a second thought.  In the past, this is what Nintendo’s handhelds have offered.  The Gameboy offered Tetris, the seminal timewaster that offers pick-up-put-down value similar to today’s Angry Birds.  Even the bigger games of that generation, like Pokémon, were designed so that they could be played in batches of minutes as well as hours.

As the hardware power of handhelds has increased, with the advent of the DS, the PSP and now 3DS, the design of handheld games has moved more towards a console-lite experience, resulting in games that aren’t nearly as convenient to break out for a ten-minute bus ride.

Also good on trains.

The issue the 3DS is facing is that it’s trying to offer a home-console experience on a handheld; for evidence, look at its most-touted game, a spruced up port of an N64 title.  The limited success of the PSP, often billed as a pocket-sized PS2, seems to indicate that this isn’t the best idea.  Is there anyone out there who really wants to immerse themselves in Zelda whilst on a train journey?  It’s the kind of game designed to devote some serious time to, and if you’re going to devote so much time to a time, wouldn’t you rather do so on a sofa in front of your TV?

The reason games like Angry Birds are so well suited to the handheld experience is that they are just the right sort of thing to play on a reasonable-length journey.  You don’t have to commit more than maybe a couple of minutes at a time, perfect for a busy commute into work.  Zelda, with its checkpoint system that more or less demands you play for at least twenty minutes, is the less appealing option.

Not so good on trains.

The trouble Nintendo have is that they are just doing what they always have done in the past – pushing out the best versions of their key franchises their hardware will allow.  The difference is that in the past, the limitations of the hardware actually played out in their favour, forcing the type of design that leads to a simple, accessible title.  In reality, a full-blooded Mario or Zelda title just isn’t that well suited to what the majority seem to want from a handheld game.

I don’t believe the real issue is iOS and Android devices rendering a new Nintendo handheld irrelevant; I just think the best developers for these devices understand how to make a handheld game better than Nintendo do.

 The Importance of the Demo

(02/07/2011)  The videogame demo is a useful way of gauging whether or not I want to buy a game.  Better than staring at a game’s inevitable 80-something Metacritic score, a good demo gives the player a taste of the game, lets them find out for themselves if the game suits their individual tastes.

I’ve been surprised by some great demos (I’d probably never have bought the rather excellent Bulletstorm if I hadn’t enjoyed the demo so much) and I’ve likely also been put off some pretty good games by a bad demo (I liked everything I saw about Dragon Age II up until I played the demo, at which point the gameplay came across as a stiff clunky mess.  This killed dead my desire to play any more of that game.)

But when it comes to PC games, a demo is vital, for the simple reason that I’ve no idea whether my PC will play the game or not, and I’m sure as hell not paying for a game that I’m not 100% certain will run to a reasonable degree on my machine.

The minimum/recommended specs are all well and good, but everyone knows these offer no real indication of how well the game is going to run, or if it even will at all.  You can specify your hardware details as much as you like, but every graphics card is unique, each with their own little quibbles and disagreements with every other part of your PC, and their behaving as intended is far from guaranteed.  Many times have I fallen foul of a game of such specification that my PC should have played it with relish, only to be met with an inexplicable error message that takes hours worth of internet trawling and software updates to sort out.

The only way to test if a game will run to the standards I require is to download a demo.  It should be compulsory for PC developers to release a demo.  How else am I supposed to make a purchasing decision?  I’d love to test if The Witcher 2 would work on my machine (and indeed if I’d actually enjoy the game), but there’s no demo out, and it doesn’t seem like there will be in the near future.  Know what I’m going to do?  I’ll wait for the Xbox version instead.

I understand that it takes additional resources for a developer to release a demo, but the fact of the matter is, if I can’t test your game, there’s no way in hell I’m going to buy it.  I can’t be alone in this, I’m sure.  I’m way past the point where I have the patience to download a pirate copy, go through all the software patches and registry fiddling involved with making it work, just to see if I can run the damn thing or not.

One of the reasons I’m far more inclined to play games on a console rather than my PC is the specification lottery.  The one thing that puts my mind at rest, and makes comfortable in paying out for a PC game, is a solid demo.  Developers, take note.  If you want to sell more PC games, then a demo is an absolute requirement.

PSVITA and The Console Port Trap

I don’t think I’ve heard anyone cheer a price announcement before.  Especially one that’s actually, you know, pretty high.  $249 isn’t actually cheap.  But it is competitive.  It would seem that Sony and Nintendo are switching up their standard hardware strategies this time around, and the fallout will be interesting.

Traditionally, Nintendo have always released relatively low-spec hardware with a solid software line-up, while Sony have fumbled around trying to cram as much hardware into their device as possible, then shoving it out at a price-point no one can afford.

This time things are different.  Nintendo, for the first time, has launched a handheld with graphics tech as the biggest new feature, and the resulting price-point is way above what their previous offerings have been.  Sony, meanwhile, have gone their usual route of cramming loads of power into a device, but this time they’ve priced it aggressively right next to Nintendo’s offering.

And with a currently pretty empty looking software line-up, a $249 3DS is looking a little hard to justify next to the Vita and ALL THAT STUFF it can do.  Nintendo need to announce a decent slew of NEW games for the 3DS at their conference; with the Vita hitting in fall, possibly with new Uncharted and LittleBigPlanet games and original IP, N64 remakes might not cut it anymore.

The trap that Sony have to be careful to avoid falling into with Vita is the same one the PSP fell into and stayed mired in for a couple of years after launch; with graphical capabilities comparable to home consoles, it would be all too easy for developers to fill the platform full of console ports, effectively stifling any actual creative efforts anyone outside of Sony might put into the device.

Remember when the PSP had nothing but poorly-executed PS2 ports, haggard by terrible load-times and crippling control schemes?  While the Vita looks much more capable of being able to handle accurate console ports, the platform needs games of its own, unique experiences that can’t be found on the PS3.

The cross-platform connectivity much touted by Sony is all well and good, and having what is effectively a PS3 you can fit in your pocket is certainly something.  But if Vita is simply seen as an accessory to the PS3, a device to play your PS3 games on while you’re on the bus, then it’ll miss the opportunity to be a great device in its own right.

It didn’t work for the PSP, and it won’t work for the Vita.  The only thing that saved the PSP from obsolescence was certain developers (Capcom) developing a keen understanding of the advantages of a portable platform, and designing an experience (Monster Hunter) that suited these specific portable traits.

Understanding the real draw of portable gaming is something Nintendo have always been best at.  This time, however, they seem somewhat unsure of how to move forward, and there’s a real opportunity for Sony to take a larger stake in the handheld market.  But it will require something other than ports of WipeOut and Ridge Racer, and ‘Uncharted-lite’ entries into existing console franchises.  

Thinking Outside of the Controller

So Microsoft has done their E3 press conference, and damn was there a lot of Kinect in there.  Kinect games for kids.  Kinect games for adults.  Kinect games for Star Wars fans.  And while they all showed off the power of the Kinect hardware, it seemed to me that – bar Dance Central 2 – they didn’t look all that much fun.  And it showed somewhat in the increasingly muted applause.

Let’s forget the kid’s stuff, and look at the more grown-up title, the ones being targeted at a ‘hardcore audience’.  I won’t deny there’s a certain pleasure to leaping around and watching the game match your actions, but – like that one game of Wii Sports too many – the physical joy of control will eventually wear off.  What you’re left with then is the game itself.

It’s something like the inverse of the learning curve with a standard game controller.  Instead of having to learn a complex control layout, the game responds to your every swing and gesture.  Brilliant!  But only brilliant for a while.  As with a standard control scheme, eventually the actions will become second nature.  You’ll stop thinking about them, and thus stop enjoying them.  The actions themselves become irrelevant.

When the novelty of shouting your lightsaber on and off has worn thin, when 1:1 motion-tracked sword-swings are no longer fresh and exciting, what are you left with?  From the impression given by those demos, you’re left with a slightly precision-lacking on-rails shooter.

This seems to be a big problem with this ‘new generation’ of motion control.  The games are designed entirely around the technology; every one of those demos was basically screaming ‘look how fun it is to wave your arms about in Fable/Star War/ancient Rome.’  And it will be fun.  For a while.  The trouble is when the novelty has worn off in a game based entirely around novelty, you’re left with something that’s of little entertainment value.

It’s worth noting that the most successful Wii games are those that weren’t based entirely around the Wii’s new technology.  They were traditionally designed videogames enhanced (or detracted, depending on personal preference) by subtle use of motion control.  This is why I see a lot more mileage in stuff like Mass Effect 3 – using voice commands to control squad-mates frees up a whole button! -  than I do in an endless stream of swing-the-sword games.

However gritty/fantastic/Star Wars-themed you make your Kinect title, what you end up with looks to be the equivalent of Wii sports; fun for as long as it takes the novelty to wear off, then effectively worthless.

A good test is to watch the demos and imagine them being played on a standard controller.  Do they still look fun?  Is that something you’d be interested in playing?  If not, then developers need to start to think of ways to use Kinect to enhance the experience – and the ME3 and Ghost Recon demos could be a good place to start – rather than building the whole game around the controller itself.

If I must be the controller, then I want to be controlling something decent.  Make it happen.

Today, I Feel Spoiled

(20/05/2011) For the last couple of years now, I’ve been getting the feeling that games companies just aren’t that interested in making the sort of games I like anymore.  Cerebral, slow-paced solo experiences seem to be in the process of being filtered out in place of loud, action-centric multiplayer games.

That’s fine, of course.  That’s just the direction the industry’s taking; it just doesn’t happen to fit my tastes.  I’ve lamented this for a while, and resigned myself to playing and enjoying the 2- 3 genuinely great games that come out per year.  I resigned myself to months-long dry spells with little to play but the next big shooter, which I’d play through to alleviate boredom, enjoy to a point, then chuck aside when the next one comes out.

In the last few days, I’ve changed my outlook.  Firstly I finished off Portal 2, which I expected to be great anyway, and delivered exactly what I was looking for.

Then yesterday, I finished the excellent Don’t Take It Personally Babe, It Just Ain’tYour Story.  More a piece of interactive fiction than a ‘proper’ videogame, it felt a little like the game was built purely to give me hope.  This is interactive fiction done right.  This is videogames writing that outclasses most anything put out by the big companies.  And it’s a free indie title.  It sucked me in in a way few games do these days, and I came out with a massive grin on my face.

Then I picked up SuperbrothersSword and Sworcery EP on my aging iPod Iouch.  It’s as if the developers got inside my head, took a look at all the things I really like, and made a game about them.  It’s a little bit like Another World.  It’s a little bit like Zelda.  It’s also completely unique, in a way you can’t possibly understand until you play it.  I’m engrossed.

And today, Rockstar’s L.A.Noire was released.  It’s pretty much what I’ve wanted since I first played GTA, the kind of game I really wished Heavy Rain had been.  It’s a blockbuster title with brains, where wits and conversation take precedence over shooting things in the face.

So far it’s wonderful, and I hope it does really, really well.  The game is a big risk on Rockstar’s part, a huge divergence in formula, and I hope it sells a trillion copies because I want to see other developers try and make this sort of game.  This is just the sort of shit I want to see out of AAA titles.

Today, I feel spoiled.  I feel as though the videogame world at large has given me a great big present.  I should certainly cherish the feeling – four great games at once?  I doubt that’s going to happen again for a while, especially as the year grinds onwards towards its blockbuster-filled, Modern Warfare 3-flavoured climax.

But I’ve learned from this.  It’s reaffirmed my conviction that the indie scene is the way forwards for me, but also taught me that there are still big companies out there who’ve got my back; they’re willing to take risks to create the sort of game I want to play. 

I want to give a big personal ‘thank you’ to the people who made these games.  Thanks, guys.  Now get back to work; make me more videogames!  

 Why Doctor Who Is Good For Science Fiction

Science fiction has a reputation to being difficult to digest.  It is considered maybe more than any other fiction genre to be something that can only be enjoyed by a specific audience.  And yet a decidedly science-fiction show, airing at BBC primetime on Saturdays, regularly enjoys viewing figures of over 6 million.

I'm not going into why (or whether) Doctor Who is good science fiction (I think that it is more often than it isn't) but rather why Doctor Who is good for the science fiction genre.

Almost entirely this is because it gets people who don't usually enjoy science fiction watching a science fiction show.  There are a lot of people who claim that they don't like science fiction - possibly due to the stigma that's become attached to the genre over the years - but will still watch and enjoy Doctor Who. 

Purists might argue that this is because the show is targeted towards the mainstream, and in many ways it is - but this is no bad thing, and remember, we're not going into discussions about the quality of the fiction.

The fact that the show is so easily digestible makes it a great stepping-off point for those who may wish to delve into the science fiction genre - one of the most difficult to penetrate genres of fiction.  I know that Doctor Who, along with the first Star Wars films, were what I watched at a young age and certainly must have fuelled my later forays into science fiction.

Doctor Who is good for the genre because it's the only science fiction show on TV that has such a widespread and diverse audience.  A lot of viewers won't even realise that they are watching often fairly dense sci-fi - to them, Doctor Who is like a genre unto itself.

It's a similar effect the way audiences took to the film Inception.  Inception is a fairly dense (it could be argue too dense) fairly complex science fiction film, and yet it was presented in such a way that people who would never dream of going to watch a sci-fi film watched it and were completely blown away.

This is when science fiction works at its best; when it's not so absorbed in its own genre trappings to become impenetrable to new viewers.  When science fiction works well, it's not a question of genre at all; it's a question of good fiction.

Science fiction can be complex and absorbing whilst still being accessible and digestible, and Doctor Who's viewing figures make a good argument for this case.  Whether the fiction is good or not is only half the issue - the other is to get audiences watching science fiction in the first place, and its at this that the show excels.

Currency of Opinion

Today is the first time I tried to load some music on Facebook, only to find that the content was locked until I clicked the 'like' button on the Facebook page.

Thinking about it, I realised that this is becoming more and more common; videos that won't play until you like them, or that trigger and automatic 'like' status when you play them, thus gluing them to your profile.  This just happened to be the first time I personally felt pressured into 'liking' something.

I didn't click the 'like' button for a fairly simple reason; how am I supposed to know if I like something if I haven't heard it yet?  Locking the music until I press 'like'; isn't that sort of defeating the point?  I can't have an opinion on something I can't listen to, and the term 'like' most definitely infers an opinion.

When did the Facebook 'like' status become some sort of currency?  It's like when 14-year-olds used to their MySpace friends lists as a digital popularity contest, except now on a bigger, corporate scale.

Now businesses have been courting consumer opinion since business first became a thing.  But previously they've always courted opinion in order to extract currency from their consumers.  If people 'liked' a particular company, then they'd spend their money on products made by that company.  Simple.

But now companies seem to be courting consumer opinion for the sake of the opinion itself.  They're offering actual content to consumers in return for the assurance that the consumer 'likes' their brand.  They don't make any money from this; they're treating Facebook 'likes' like they used to treat pounds and dollars.

Maybe this is the future of marketing.  Maybe businesses can secure profit from investors by proving that a huge number of people 'like' their brand and are therefore likely to put down actual money for their products.  And the consumer gets some free content in return; all they have to do is click a 'like' button.

The result is the result is that the 'liker' becomes an effort-free advertising affiliate for the company; their friends can now see that they 'like' a particular brand, and are therefore more likely to 'like' the brand themselves, securing a higher potential consumer base for that brand and a greater possible chance of investment for the producer of that brand.

This could be great; it could lead to real peer-assessed marketing, taking a cross cut of the whole of society.  However, judging by the fact that the whole of society seems to transform into a collective moron when allowed access to the internet, it could be terrible.

We'll just have to wait and see.  But regardless of the outcome, I'm not ever going to claim that I like something, even when it's online, when I don't know what it is, and can't find out what it is until after I claim that I 'like' it.  That's just stupid.

Completely Arbitrary Protocol To Cause Horrific Aggravation

One of the things I'd most like to see banished from the internet is the CAPTCHA, a chirpy acronym that stands for Completely Arbitrary Protocol To Cause Horrific Aggravation.  I'm pretty sure it's that, anyway.

I know for a fact that this is not the best way to secure information on the internet.  How do I know this?  Common sense.  No bank website I've ever used uses CAPTCHA for security.  Nor do big businesses like Amazon, PayPal or Ebay.  These are the websites that deal with the information that it is most vitally important that hackers don't get at; your bank account details.  They don't use CAPTCHA, and they seem pretty secure to me.

What does use CAPTCHA?  Hotmail.  Hotmail uses it.  And this has got to be the only piece of evidence required to demonstrate that CAPTCHA is an utterly useless method of security.  Hotmail has got to be the most hacked site in existance, effectively demonstrated by the time some internet badman managed to spoof my account information and enlist me as a proxy viagra salesman.

What was Hotmail's solution to this horrific web-crime?  Make me enter a CAPTCHA.  And guess what?  My account continued to be spoofed on a daily basis.  Well done Hotmail, well done CAPTCHA.

Know how I stopped my account getting spoofed?  I changed my password.  Hey, The Internet, remember passwords?  Those little memorable combinations of letters and numbers that people use to stop everyone on Earth being able to get into their information?

Those are perfectly good for securing my damn bank details, so why don't we all use those, and quit making me copy out a list of goddamn squiggly-ass letters I can't bloody read?  Thank you.

Oh, and if this wasn't a compelling enough argument that CAPTCHAs are bloody useless, here's more evidence.

Fantasy-Themed Accounting

There are lots of reasons why I don't play MMORPGs.  One is that I don't have enough friends who would want to play with me, and am unwilling to 'make' online 'friends' while playing the game.  Another is my fear that should I start playing, I'll get sucked in, be unable to stop, and my productivity will be reduced to zero.

But one great big reason that I never even want to try to get into these games is this:

This a screenshot from World of Warcraft.  Just look at it.  Look at all that stuff.  There's so much interface on screen that there's possibly actually more interface than there is game.

This is something of a problem I have with a lot of PC games; developers seem to think that because they have a whole keyboard to work with, they ought to spread their controls over every single damn key.  I can never remember the controls for a PC game if I stop playing for more than a day, and I find this massively offputting.

That WoW interface is like the ultimate conclusion of that theory of design.  If there were any more interface there, you wouldn't be able to see the game.  Now I'm sure each tiny bit of information and little icon thingy has its use, but I find it hard to believe that it's absolutely necessary for all of it to be onscreen at one time.

I like menus in games.  Maybe a bit too much.  I think designing the interface is one of the most important considerations of game design.  Good game interfaces are brilliant.  Remember the menus is FFXIII?  Say what you will about that game, it had some beautiful menus.

But I strongly believe that a game's interface should be as streamlined as possible.  Because you're there to play the game, and when navigating the menu becomes a big part of playing the game, I feel the developers are missing the point somewhat.  That's not gameplay.  Menus are an unfortunate but necessary break in flow that facilitate higher-level gameplay, and as such should be kept as minimal and unintrusive as humanly possible.

This is the major, all-pervading reason I can't get into MMORPGs; outside of interface management, you pretty much don't do anything.  You click on a place/person/monster, and your dude walks over there, maybe starts a fight.  Everything else in the whole game seems to be an exercise in juggling that stupendous interface.

I get that this is a draw for some people, a system that symbolises strategy over twitch-reaction.  And I approve of this; most my favorite games are the ones where you pause the action and assess your next move, prioritise strategy and watch it carried out, proper RPG style.  But looking at that WoW screenshot, I can see that that's way, way too much for me to deal with.

To me, that's not playing a game, that's doing fantasy-themed accounting.  And until someone comes up with an MMORPG that doesn't end up resembling a very fancy Microsoft Excel document, I'm going to stay the hell away.

 CJMM2-6YYC9-MYMM6-REALLY?

One of the things that always drew me to prefer playing videogames on a console rather than a PC was the ease of it. On PC, however, you'd have to input a 400-digit code, install the game, register online, download the latest patch, download the latest graphics card drivers, download the latest version of DirectX, and after all that there was still a good chance the game would hate your graphics card and either refuse to play, or play in super-cripple mode.

With a games console, you just put the game in and play the damn thing.  Whoosh, easy.  Except that now you don't.  Thanks to both console manufacturers and games companies like Ubisoft and EA, making the damn videogame play on your damn videogame console is now a 20-minute-long loading-bar festival to rival the most tedious of PC piracy protection.

The first problem is that consoles are now expected to be online the whole time, which means the fabulous process of patching has become an integral part of the console experience.

Now I have no problem with patching when necessary, to fix genuinely game-breaking glitches that were only revealed after the game's release.  But it seems that almost every game at the moment comes with a compulsory patch on goddamn release day.  Hey, people, why are you releasing your damn game if it requires an online update before it's even arrived in shops?  Test your games better.

The second problem is that current gen consoles (I'm not counting the Wii, obviously) pretty much require harddrive installs to make the games run properly.  The PS3 actually genuinely requires installing almost every game, because its Blu-Ray drive is so horrendously slow it can't actually read games well enough.  Remember how Sony were telling us that Blu-Ray would revolutionise the way we play games on consoles.  Well, they were right; it added 20 minute installation times to every damn game.

And the Xbox 360 isn't much better, as while it's disk drive can actually run game properly, it also sounds like a jet engine flying through a bigger jet engine, and has a habit of chewing up any games it finds particularly challenging, thus making installation the safest bet to ensure your console doesn't a) explode or b) eat your game.

And the third, most recent and most annoying problem is the big companies bid to curtail used game sales.  They do this by locking an integral feature of the game, such as online multiplayer, and only letting you play it if you enter a bloody code that comes with the game, or buying one for $10 from their website.

It doesn't matter if you don't even want to use the locked features; the message asking you to submit the code is still going to come up every single time you start the game.

Now I'll probably go into how malicious I feel locking an important part of game to encourage buying a new copy is another time, but the bottom line is, after you add up all the above, you're looking at a wait of anything from 10 to 30 minutes before you get to play that videogame you just paid money for, in the games console you also paid money for.

Is it annoying?  Yes.  Is it necessary?  Nope.  Is it going to improve?  Almost certainly not, not in the near future at least, what with voracious patching becoming standard and the major companies shitting themselves to an increasing degree about the used game market.

The only reassuring part about the whole thing is that the level of bullshit PC game publishers are pushing on customers in vain attempts to stop piracy have been steadily growing even more ludicrous, so despite all of the above, it's still a load more bloody hassle to play a game on PC than it is on console.  Oh wait, that's not reassuring at all...

 Bad Websites Are Bad

Dear People With Bad Websites,

In case you hadn't noticed, Bad Websites are not very good.

Now, if it's for promotional purposes, such as a personal website or a website advertising your business, then I don't care if it's bad.  The only person suffering from your Bad Website in this situation is you.  Everyone else will just not use your Bad Website.

But if you are, say, employing many thousands of people and the only way to apply for a position is through a horrendously lengthly web form, then you seriously need to sort out your Bad Website.

If you are employing on such a scale that a web form is mandatory, then you can probably afford to hire a better web designer to make sure that the boxes on your form line up properly with the questions.  Or that your web form doesn't ask for contradictory pieces of information.  Or that it doesn't take a full half-hour to notice that you've completed it.

Oh, and if you have to include some sort of condescending multiple-choice exam/interview thing, please take the time to ensure it doesn't include questions that are actually wrong. 

Or if you can't be bothered about this, how about letting candidates talk to an actual person, letting them give the correct information in roughly half the time it takes to fill out your broken web form.  That way, you might even get answers that reflect a candidate's competency at something other than hammering the 'next' button.

 Wouldn't that be nice?

The Glass Tower

My latests short story, The Glass Tower, is now avaible online.  Go and read it, let me know what you think!

Thanks to Rachel Emily Taylor for the artwork.

A Videogame Called Me Dicktits

How many of the videogames you've played recently have actually been fun?

I just played the Bulletstorm demo.  Bulletstorm is pretty shallow and pointless.  It also calls you rude things that I'm pretty sure it made up.  But as I was playing the demo, I realised something; I was actually having fun.

This made me think about the last few games I've played, and I realised that with a lot of games, I don't actually have fun.  I'd go so far as to say that most modern videogames aren't fun.  They may be challenging and they may be enjoyable, but I don't think they're fun.

Fable 3 wasn't fun; it was funny, and immersive, and ultimately a bit disappointing.  But it wasn't fun.  Assassin's Creed Brotherhood wasn't fun; it was huge and compulsive, impressive and diverting.  But not fun.  Dead Space 2 isn't fun; it's scary and absorbing, with a killer atmosphere and (mostly) great design.  It's really very good.  But still not fun.

The trouble with a lot of modern games is that they take themselves very seriously.  They are enormously self-conscious about their presentation and the value of their content.  And when they take themselves so damn seriously it's very easy to jump on any tiny flaws that pop-up.

When Fable claims to challenge your morals, it's all to easy to notice that everything is broken down into big glowing GOOD or EVIL options, which rather kills the whole idea of 'choice'.  When Assassin's Creed is trying very hard to envelope you in the sprawl of ancient Rome, a horse charging through a cliff and a man teleporting onto a roof stand out quite a lot.  That and that the whole future-storyline thing is batshit insane.  And when Dead Space 2 is trying to immerse you in a tense atmosphere, it pisses me right the hell off when it eventually devolves into a clunky shooting gallery.

Note that I'm not confusing 'fun' with 'enjoyment' here.  I enjoyed all of the above games to varying degrees.  But I didn't have fun with them.  For me, a videogame is 'fun' when I can sit down and enjoy a chunk of gameplay regardless of motivation, presentation, or narrative context.

Bulletstorm isn't a serious game.  It knows it's not a serious game.  Hell, it sells itself on the fact that it is not a serious game.  It's a game about grabbing some dudes and kicking them, then sticking a bomb on them then kicking them again only into a thing this time then shooting them with a fucking gun or something.  I don't know.  But it's fun.  It's fun whether you're doing on a space station, in a desert, or in the sea, whatever.  The controls respond tightly and everything goes whoosh and then explodes. And I can overlook a whole lot of minor glitches so long as it carries on being fun.

It might not actually be fun for more than 10 minutes.  Who knows.  But I like that a big-budget modern game has the ability to laugh at both itself and the player.  The demo called me a dicktits.  I don't think that's even a thing, but because of that, I may well give Bulletstorm some of my money.  And I might even have fun whilst playing it.

The Computer Illiterate

I forget that there are people in the world who still don't know how to use a computer.  Okay, not the world, I'd figured Facebook probably hasn't made it to the poorer parts of, say, Africa yet, but I figured that in our sexy interwebbed bit of society at least, everyone would at least have a basic understanding of how a computer works.

Turns not everyone does.  Certainly not everyone down the public library.  And this is completely unsurprising when you actually think about it.  I imagine that most people don't have much need of a computer, so why should they automatically know how to use one?

But this is still baffling for me as I'm part of a generation of people that might as well have an ethernet port built into the backs of their necks.  It's a little strange to think of people not spending roughly 50% of their time connected to the internet through some device or other.  What do these people do all day?  Well, they probably have real jobs, and families, and other things that leave them little time for blog-writing and similar internet time-wastery.

I salute you, the computer illiterate.  Obviously, by your very definition, you won't ever read this, but I'd like to take the oportunity to congratulate you on having better things to do than stare at a screen all day.  Good job.  Also, it's properly funny when you don't know which way up a mouse goes.

On Writing A Novel

I don't often write about the novel on which I am currently working, but a recent plot re-structure/heavy planning session has brought home exactly how much work is left to do on the damn thing.

There are a lot of words left to write.  I knew this already, of course, but now I've finally finished a proper, conclusive outline (after writing over half of the first draft), I've got an idea of how much of a lot it actually is.  It's a lot.

I am aware, of course, that I probably should have planned better ahead of time, and given myself a better idea of what I was letting myself in for.  I'd written a few short stories and a couple of novelettes, and figured that this made me more than ready to take on a full-blown novel.  However, I think if me-of-nine-months-ago realised exactly how much work it was going to take to get this thing done, I'd probably have given up before even starting.  The projected final word count is that daunting.

The advantage, or disadvantage depending on how you choose to look at it, of only realising the size of the project half way through is that I've already got way too much of it written to give up on the bastard now.  The amount of time I've spent on it is pretty enormous, and to stop now would be to write off a good part of the last nine months of my life.

So I'm going to finish it.  Having an actual end in sight, however dauntingly far-off, is somewhat liberating.  So I'll keep hacking away at it until I have a finished manuscript.  And if it's still not done by the end of this year, then I'm going to become a hermit, locked away with my computer, for the duration of the time it takes to finish it.

In conclusion; I'm going to finish this bastard novel if it kills me.  Look for it in a store near you sometime in the distant future soon!

Psychic Idea-Theft

They say good minds think alike, and I'm often inclined to agree, but I sure do hate it when I come up with a brilliant idea for a thing, only to find it's either been done already, or someone is in the process of already bloody doing it.

This week I had an idea which I thought would be great for a short story or a film.  Scientists have found a way to control the human aging process, and as a result time has become the new currency.  People spend time on commodities and services, trading years of their lives for luxuries.  They work to earn these years back.  It's possible for people to live entirely opulent and stress-free lives, the only catch being their lives will be very short.

This, I thought, is a pretty good premise for a sci-fi story.  There would be conflict between the people who work hard and live longer, trading quality of life for quantity, and those who squander their lifespan on lives of excess.

Pretty cool, no?  Trouble is, that's almost exactly the plot for upcoming sci-fi film Now.  Now (ha), I swear I had never heard of this film until a few days ago, and a few days after I came up with what I thought was a great original(ish) idea.  But reading the synopsis for the film, it couldn't be more similar to my idea if it tried.

Now is directed by Andrew Niccol, the man behind films such as Gattaca and The Truman Show, and will therefore hopefully be great.  It'll probably be better than whatever I'd have done with the idea.  But I still want to accuse Niccol of stealing my goddamn idea, likely with some sort of psychic time-travel.

This sort of psychic idea theft happens to me quite a lot.  I swear I'd thought of the basic idea for Inception years ago.  I was going to make it into a videogame.  It wasn't exactly like inception, but it was close enough that if I released it now, I'd be accused of ripping off Inception.  Chris Nolan is also guilty of psychic idea-theft.

This train of thought leads me to believe that perhaps I am solely responsible for all good ideas in the world, and other people just steal them from me with powers beyond my comprehension.  Hey, the idea of psychic idea-theft is a pretty good concept for a story itself.  I bet someone somewhere is already making a bloody film about at this very moment.

 Fashion or Some Such Shit

Bearing in mind I know nothing about fashion, nor do I particularly care to, can someone kindly explain to me the purpose of this site?

Because to me it looks like a site where pictures of people are literally scored by a numerical value according to how cool and sexy other people think they look.  Is that fine?  This would be creepy enough in its own right except that these people actually upload the pictures themselves.  For other people to rate.

How did this get to be a thing?  I get that the whole Facebook thing is kind of a way of people rating pictures of other people, but at least there are limits there.  People have to be your 'friends' before they can 'like' your pics, to start with.

What this monstrosity seems to be about is letting anyone in world decide if a picture of you is worth a mouse-click or not.  The only thing that makes me feel a bit better about it is that the only people who upload pictures there look like tremendous posing idiots, and presumably need the social comfort of people clicking on a picture of them to help them sleep through the night.

Now obviously I just don't get this at all, but what are we (not actually us, the people who actually frequent this balls) actually supposed to be judging these people on.  Judging may sound harsh, but that's literally what's going on here, so some guidelines would be nice.

Are we judging these people purely on hotness?  Because, subjectivity of personal taste aside, that's not what appears to be happening.  Are we judging their clothes?  Or the composition of the photo?  Or the trendy lens effects they've used?  Some of them just appear to have whacked some opacity on their photo for no real reason.  Maybe it makes them look mysterious and alluring, how the hell should I know.

This kind of fashion balls simply baffles me, because is it me or is it not proper fashion?  Maybe I'm wrong, and assigning an arbitrary score to pictures of people wearing some clothes in a place doing a thing at 20% opacity is now the literal definition of fashion.  I know shit all about fashion, so I just find it hilarious and also a bit worrying.  I'd feel sorry for the people in the photos except they did it to themselves, so lord knows what rational people are supposed to think about it.  Um, good for you, 500 people clicked on a picture of you in a sweet dress?

Turns out there is an FAQ which you can read for a bit of a laugh if you want, otherwise I'll summarise:  it's about Fashion or Some Such Shit.  And karma.  And inspiration.

Crime

So the other night some criminals broke into my house all took all my stuff out of it.  Luckily, chunky desktop PCs appear to be crime-proof, so I can still write stuff which is nice.  The lack of pretty much everything else I used to own is less nice, obviously.

It's not so much the loss of stuff that's pissing me off at the moment.  Obviously it's annoying that I don't have that stuff anymore, and the loss of monetary value of it is also a pain.  But what really gets me, what makes me feel kind of disappointed, more than anything, is that it's possible for people I don't know to get into the place that is supposedly mine, take the stuff that's supposedly mine, and leave, and there's bugger all I can do about it.

Now this sounds stupid, and obviously I've always been aware that crime is a thing that happens.  But it's the sort of thing, a bit like serious illness, that unless you've experienced it, you don't ever really believe that it can happen to you.  You are aware of the concept of crime, but not of the actuality of crime.

It's made me think a bit about the concept of ownership.  I decided that I own stuff because I paid someone some money for it and put it inside a place which I also pay someone money for.  Therefore I am now entitled to this thing which I have paid the money for.  This concept works while everybody plays by the rules, but it all goes down the shitter when someone decides that they want a thing, and being as it's there they might as well just take it.  No amount of me paying anyone some money is going to hamper anyone's ability to pick up a thing and stroll casually off with it through the big hole they made in the side of my house.

I suppose what I feel is a sense of outrage along the lines of 'how dare they do this to me when I'm doing things properly?'  I'm playing by the rules.  I pay people money for the stuff that I want because this is the way things work.  The criminals are doing it wrong.  They're not playing by the rules.  And yet they have my stuff and I don't.  And there's exactly shit all anyone can do about it.

Now obviously, if they get caught, they'll end up in jail, and if this becomes the case I am going go personally to visit them in jail and laugh directly into their faces for the duration of the visiting time.  However, the chances of this actually happening are basically none.  Sure, if they keep on robbing then they might get caught eventually, but by then it'll make no difference to me.  Right now they're probably sitting in the their flat, most likely only a couple of streets away from here, enjoying the huge pile of drugs they bought with the money they got from selling all my shit.

And yeah, there's shit all anyone can do about this.  In this sort of situation the police are of about as much practical use as the homeless guy sat outside the tube station.  And it's entirely not their fault; if the police aren't there at the exact moment the crime is happening, then how can they be expected to realistically do anything about it?  Obviously, turning up in under four hours might be nice, but hey, it's London, and it's Crime Central around these parts.  There are clearly a load more criminals to deal with than there are police to deal with them.

One thing, I suppose beneficial, that I've realised from this is how pointless most of my possessions actually are.  I say they took all my stuff; in reality, they took all my stuff that wasn't clothes, books, this computer, or furniture.  But all the stuff they did take was basically just shiny entertainment equipment.  Expensive, enjoyable and desirable, but basically pointless.  I can function completely effectively without any of it.  I've got fewer ways to entertain myself, but that's it.  In fact, it turns out that over 80% of the things I own exist purely to stop me from ever becoming bored.  This probably says something about me.  Maybe it says something about our generation as a whole.

One final festive note is that from what I can tell, robbery is the exact polar opposite of Christmas.  At Christmas, you spend ages looking forward to it, you get brand new possessions, and you end up with more things than you started with.  At Crimemas, it you don't expect it at all, all your possessions disappear, and you end up with less stuff than you started with.  Way less stuff.  Except I suppose both scenarios involve men (fictional or otherwise) breaking into your house, so they can't be exact opposites after all.