#oneaday, Day 93: Words Are All I Have

A complete stranger insulted me today. There was no provocation and no reason for it. The only explanation I can come up with is the fact that he was with two friends and wanted to play up in front of them, so he thought he’d pick on the fat guy.

It ruined my morning. I’d gone out for a walk in the glorious sunshine, but that one hurtful comment upset me. So did the knowledge that people exist so obnoxious that they feel the need to pick on other people, like 10-year old bullies. So I went home.

Fortunately, after talking to a few friends online, many of whom say they had experienced something similar at one point or another, I felt a bit better. And I started to think that I’d rather be the person I am, however I look, than the sort of arsehole who judges another person based on their appearance and then insults them to their face. You have to wonder how fucked up that person must be in the head to want to do that.

Rhiarti wrote a touching post the other day about being “the ugly duckling” and not fitting in. I sympathise entirely since I feel exactly the same way. There are times when I feel like I just don’t belong in “normal” society. When I go out to a bar – with friends, even – and find myself unable to think of anything to say, for example. Small talk’s never been a strong point of mine. When I find myself overthinking conversations I’m potentially about to have – and sometimes end up not having them at all. That’s another good one.

It’s strange. I sort of like it and hate it at the same time. When I went to PAX, it was, like Wil Wheaton said at the time, “like coming home”. I was amongst other people who obviously felt the same way, and it was a good feeling. But that made it all the harder to leave them behind and come back to the big wide world where strangers think it’s acceptable to insult you.

I know, I know, I should grow a pair.

But words are powerful. Words are perhaps the strongest weapon that humans have. Well, that’s perhaps not true. A nuclear bomb would probably kill more people than an expectorated obscenity. But when it comes to helping or hurting another person, words are definitely one of the strongest things that there are, and definitely the thing that sets us apart from animals. A kind or unkind word can have a huge impact on how someone feels, whether or not they show it to you directly – or indeed whether or not they’re right there with you. I know I certainly appreciate the kind and supportive words my “distant” friends have for me, whether it’s something serious and heartfelt, or sharing a private joke together.

So, people of the world, next time you’re going to say something, have a quick think about what the person you’re saying it to might think. And don’t be a dick.

#oneaday, Day 92: M.C. Tinny Distortion

It’s mid-morning. You’re sitting on the waterfront, looking out over the water, the slight morning breeze wafting through your hair and sending a slight chill over your skin. Not uncomfortably so, just enough for you to feel the wind’s caresses and appreciate the sunshine when it does hit you all the more.

You can hear the water sploshing against the wall down below as it sloshes back and forth, back and forth, never still, always moving. You don’t look into it too deeply as it’s almost opaque with green crap and the filth from a million motorboats passing through the area, but right now it doesn’t matter because this is your moment. You are, for once, at peace.

Then, a sound from over yonder. You can’t quite make out what it is. It’s quite harsh, and tinny, and… sounds a bit like Dizzee Rascal.

It is Dizzee Rascal. But a version of Dizzee Rascal that appears to be completely devoid of bass, just masses and masses of treble, so much so that the sound of the whole track is lost in a wash of what sounds awfully like white noise with a babbling idiot on top of it.

You frown at the tracksuit-clad young gentleman as we wanders past you with a similarly-attired companion. The sound seems to be coming from his pocket, and the two are talking and smoking. You frown a little harder, willing a pair of psychic daggers to fly out of your eyes and embed themselves firmly in the two boys’ colons. Sadly, the sharp implements do not manifest themselves so you are reduced to making a distinctly middle-class tutting noise.

One of the boys turns around and gives you a sneer that seems to say “fahk off mush, you is such a neek init lol”. You counter with a raised eyebrow which seems to say “I’m sorry. I don’t understand your illiterate juvenilia. Kindly return from whence you came. And throw that noise-making monstrosity into the Solent while you’re about it, you bally young scamp!”

The moment passed, the two boys wander into the distance, muttering something about “fahkin’ neeks”. Your little mental haven of calm shattered, you reluctantly get up and head for the ice-cream parlour in an attempt to drown your sorrows in a wash of soft ice-cream and crumbly chocolate.

Then you go home and cry.

Oh, why do people persist in doing this? Other than to annoy people like me, of course. There is no reason on God’s green Earth for mobile phone speakers to exist. With GPS technology being what it is now, if your phone detects that you are outside, you should not be allowed to use its speakers.

I’m not just saying this to be a miserable bastard, though that is of course a big part of it. I’m saying this to encourage people to give music the respect it deserves. I hate Dizzee Rascal, shitty hip-hop and whiney R&B singers, but those artists spend a lot of time and money producing their work, so to completely remove any degree of production from the track by playing it through a 0.5 watt speaker roughly the size of one of your pubes seems rather… disrespectful, somehow.

And have you noticed that no-one is ever playing good music through their phone speakers? I’d still feel the same if I heard someone blasting some Maiden through their phone – that shit need to be loud, yo – but it’d be nice to hear something that isn’t just for pasty white tracksuit-wearers to pretend that they’re badass black gangstas from the hood to.

The cream of this, of course, is when said pasty white tracksuit-wearers decide that it’s time for them to start their own rapping career and feel that a mobile phone provides an appropriate amount of rhythmic “oomph” to put behind their sorry attempts at rocking some rhymes. Sorry, buster, but you just look like a twat babbling crap in front of your pyjama-clad friends.

#oneaday, Day 91: Hipstamatic-o-matic

It’s been a while since a photo post, so I thought I’d treat you all to one. (As if you care.)

Now, we all know that mobile phone cameras are crap. Put that hand down. All mobile phone cameras are crap. You can have all the megapixies in the world painting the little pictures inside your camera, but if you have a lens the size of a pin head and a sensor to match, you’re going to get crap pictures. You might get slightly bigger crap pictures, but still crap pictures. You may well have a flash, which means you can take crap pictures in the dark. But they are still crap pictures. If you want to take good pictures, buy a proper camera and stop pissing about with phones.

With this in mind, some enterprising young individuals have created the Hipstamatic app for the legendarily-crap iPhone camera, promoting it with the tagline “Digital photography never looked so analog”. The app simulates the titular 80s camera, complete with a selection of virtual lenses, films and flashes available for use. A few are included with the app, and others are sold via microtransaction within the app itself – though a friend discovered that by using the “shake to randomise” feature, you can actually make use of the premium equipment without having to pay for it. Sometimes it takes a bit of shaking to get the effect you want, though.

Anyway, the fact that the app is deliberately trying to simulate a thirty-year old camera means that the normally-crap cameras of mobile phones can be put to good use for once. Namely, rather than being in denial over the fact the iPhone camera is crap, the app embraces its crapness to produce a selection of stylised shots, most of which are way too dark, or overexposed, or coloured completely wrong, or have burnt edges, or too much vignetting, or… You get the idea. It basically gives you the opportunity to create the sort of pictures you see all the time on Tumblr at the touch of a button.

With that in mind, I went out for a little walk in the glorious sunshine today and ended up spending an hour taking pretentious photos of absolutely nothing of note whatsoever. But, should you be interested in the results of this clever little app, take a look at the gallery below:

There’s more info on the Hipstamatic app here, and it’s currently available from the App Store for the very reasonable price of one-pound-somethingorother.

#oneaday, Day 90: Ebert in the Lions’ Den

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression.

– Wikipedia

Roger Ebert gently and gracefully lowered his gazelle-scented testicles into the lions’ den that is the world of video games a couple of days ago. It’s pretty fair to say that he got a reaction. But was it the one he was after?

His contention was that “Video games can never be art”. A strong opening hypothesis. One which has been debated amongst gamers many a time too, with little agreement on the subject. Some feel that yes, games can be art, others feel that no, games can not be art – yet. There are very few people I know who are interested in the world of games – whether or not they think there is currently any evidence of artistic creativity in the medium right now – who would stand up and proudly announce that their chosen form of entertainment will never be art. As Ebert points out in his own article, Rick Wakeman once reminded us that “never is a long, long time”.

So how is Ebert, a respected film critic, so sure on this subject? Well, of course, he’s played some games to back this up, right?

Given the substance of the article, I’m not entirely convinced. He certainly talks about a few games – specifically Waco Resurrection (which I’d never heard of), Braid and Flower. I can’t comment on Waco, having never heard of this game until today, but Braid and Flower are both games that I have played and enjoyed, and I take exception to the manner in which Ebert responds to them – or doesn’t, as the case may be.

When discussing Braid, he mentions the game’s unique selling point – the time rewind mechanic. He even cites the justification for it – the thematic concept of “what if you could go back and fix your own mistakes?” He then spectacularly misses the point by comparing it to cheating in chess… or rather, “negating the discipline” of chess. I agree that taking back moves in chess is counter-productive in developing your own skills, but Braid is a game that is designed around that whole concept. Rather than being a sore loser’s way out, the time rewind mechanic in Braid is a key part of the experience. More to the point, it’s not used purely as a way of avoiding death, as he seems to believe. Instead, use of time and your past self is key to solving the puzzles in Braid, making apt and clever use of the main theme of the story in a practical sense.

It’s his comments on Flower that got me, though. It’s immediately apparent that he hasn’t even played the game at all from this:

We come to Example 3, “Flower”. A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is “about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural.” Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn’t say. Do you win if you’re the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?

“Can you control the flower?” Seriously? I would have thought that a respected critic would bother to actually experience the things he is commenting on before judging them. Flower is one of the most unique experiences there is on a games console – love it or hate it – and it eschews most traditional game mechanics in favour of being a piece of experiential entertainment. The experience you have playing Flower is entirely what you make of it. If you want to play it as a “game” and try to beat the levels as quickly as possible, you can. But most people who have spent any time floating on the wind and listening to that game’s gorgeous soundtrack will agree that there is definitely a sense of narrative to the whole thing. But unlike most games, this sense of narrative is entirely personal to the person playing it. I played it feeling enormously melancholy, feeling an inexplicable sense that someone or something had died. Nothing on the screen suggested that, but that’s what I felt while playing, to an almost overwhelming degree. Others have taken the rather more simplistic – but just as valid – interpretation that “flowers hate steel”.

The problem with Ebert’s comments is that they smack of condescension and arrogance. Ebert is a respected expert in his own field – justifiably so, I might add – and he clearly knows it. Therefore he seems to feel that this gives him the right to judge something which he very obviously knows very little about and has very little interest in pursuing further thanks to his own preconceptions.

Are games art? I don’t have an answer for you, but Justin McElroy’s excellent response to Ebert’s piece raises a very good point – the medium of “games” has evolved so much in such a short space of time that to call the diverse experiences we have with our computers and consoles today simply “games” is a complete misnomer. We interact with these pieces of electronic entertainment for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s escapist fantasy. Sometimes it’s role-playing. Sometimes it’s wish-fulfilment. Sometimes it’s a social activity. Sometimes it’s competition. Sometimes it’s to feel an emotional response.

There are as many reasons to “play” as there are “games”, so to damn the entire medium with a blanket statement – “games will never be art” – is misguided and short-sighted. They may not be art now in the eyes of some people, but that is not to say that they will not be in the future. If you take Wiki’s rather broad definition of “art”, listed at the top of this post, games (or whatever you want to call them) are already there.

I will leave you with two tweets from Cody “NintendoTheory” Winn, whom I think sums up the problem with debating this whole question pretty succinctly in the space of 280 characters:

#oneaday, Day 89: No, It’s Like “Poke-A-Nose”

I played poker for the first time tonight. Specifically, the Texas Hold ‘Em variant that became inexplicably popular a few years back and has shown no signs of going away ever since. I never quite understood why it suddenly shot to prominence, given that it’s surely a game that’s been around for a long time. Anyway, at the time I first noticed a growing national obsession with the game, I put it down to just a fad and never bothered to get involved or learn how to play.

After tonight, I’m wishing I’d started playing sooner! That game is fun. We weren’t playing for big money – a £5 buy-in got us 8,000 chips, and the last man standing would get everyone else’s fivers. But the money didn’t matter. It was the game itself that mattered. I found it pretty amazing how a simple game largely dependent on luck (or card-counting) can have such moments of drama and enormous satisfaction in it. Obliterating opponents with a hand that is just better enough than theirs to screw them over completely is enormously satisfying. Perhaps not for our gracious host, who was one of the first out, quickly relegated to a “kiss of death” advisory role.

I came second in our game. Considering I’d never played before, I thought this was pretty good going. I managed to bluff my way through to some storming victories on a few hands, but was ultimately defeated in the last few hands by a straight vs my two (high) pairs.

I’m not sure if I was just getting lucky, or if I was actually “playing the game” correctly. But there were a number of occasions where the choices I made paid off bigtime for me, in some instances even allowing me to knock another player out. I’d be curious to try again to see if it was just beginners’ luck. I know it certainly wasn’t the others going easy on me. Although perhaps the fact that none of us were particularly experienced helped me out somewhat!

The best thing, though, was to find a game that I was actually good at. I like stuff like Agricola and Power Grid, but as I wrote a short while back, I am generally pretty terrible at them due to something of a deficiency in the strategic parts of my brain. I don’t know what it is. But apparently, it seems, I have a decent poker face. I’m not sure how to take this news. Is it such a good thing to be a good liar?

Well, in the case of a game like poker… of course it is!

You look great in that shirt, by the way.

#oneaday, Day 88: The Leaders’ Debate

Our potential leaders had their first ever American-style televised debate tonight. And, for the most part, I think it was a resounding success as a format. There was every possibility that it would become car-crash television – ITV’s cheap, nasty sets that looked like they were recycled from a 1980s episode of The Krypton Factor didn’t help – but it wasn’t. I was only half-watching due to being over at a friend’s house, but the parts I saw looked pretty interesting.

Sure, the three party leaders continually came out with their favourite soundbites (so predictable were they, in fact, that Dave Turner came up with the Official Drinking Game of the Leaders’ Debate right here) but as an opportunity to see the three of them at work in a non-Parliamentary situation it was a good thing. Nick Clegg, in particular, who has been the butt of numerous comedians’ jokes for being the “third place” candidate, doomed to obscurity by not being leader of one of the “big two” parties, came across rather well. And opinion polls conducted after the programme aired suggested that well over 40% of viewers felt that Clegg “won” the debate. Of course, there are two more to go yet, and some have suggested that Cameron and Brown were too concerned with getting their claws into each other to consider Clegg a threat this time. Perhaps it will all change next time and be more of a fight for the LibDem leader. But, importantly, this debate showed that he is indeed a contender in the coming fight.

Twitter was fun to watch. The #leadersdebate hashtag had an entertaining mix of jokes but also some decent discussion and commentary, too. A large number of tweets seemed to be very positive towards the LibDems, too, so could this perhaps be taken as an indication that change is a-comin’? Or is it just a sign that most people on Twitter are LibDem supporters? Who knows.

One thing’s for sure: this election is actually going to be worth watching for once. Many of our politicians are stuffy, boring, corrupt arseholes and this fact normally switches me off entirely from the whole thing. But this time around, it’s going to be quite a fight for the top spot, I think. (He says, from his woefully ill-informed position.) It’s certainly not a foregone conclusion by any means, and many people are already talking about the possibility of a hung Parliament. I can’t even begin to imagine how they’ll get anything done if that happens, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how things go.

And, you know, vote.

#oneaday, Day 87: Staying Up The Latest

I don’t know why I like staying up late. Perhaps years of doing so have buggered up my body clock beyond all recognition. But I know for a fact that I can happily occupy myself until two, three in the morning without feeling any ill effects. Okay, sure, sometimes actually getting up the next morning is a traumatic experience, but for the most part there are few ill effects.

I’ve even pulled a couple of all-nighters in the past, but usually only when necessary. Okay, sometimes when I’m alone in the house and there’s a really good game/film/DVD box set to get through. But mostly when it’s necessary. The last one, I think, was before a trip over to Toronto to meet several members of The Squadron of Shame. We’d recorded a podcast shortly before our trip, so being chief edit dude, I took it on myself to get it done before the trip. And I did.

I think my favourite staying up late memory, though, is the time I was at university and received a text message from a friend at approaching 2AM.

“Are you awake?” it said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Good,” came the message back. “Because we’re downstairs. Want to come to the beach?”

I turned off my computer – I think I was playing Baldur’s Gate II at the time (a game I am yet to finish, incidentally) – and headed downstairs. Sure enough, there was the car, ready to go. And we did indeed head to the beach.

Now, those of you who know Southampton will know that, despite being on the waterfront, there are no beaches. So “going to the beach” involves a not-inconsiderable drive through the New Forest, which gets rather dark at night-time. Still, we made it safely in the end, and found ourselves on a completely deserted beach after 2AM.

It was strangely eerie and beautiful at the same time. The night was cold but clear, so the moonlight lit up the beach quite nicely. It wasn’t the nicest beach in the world – very few beaches in the UK are any more – but it was our private little hideaway for that short amount of time we spent there.

No-one had the guts to actually go for a swim, but a few among our number had a paddle before running out rather quickly due to the extreme coldness. Eventually, we tired of the dark beach and went home having not really achieved anything, save putting a memory in our minds that will last for a very long time.

There’s a How I Met Your Mother episode called “Nothing Good Happens After 2AM”. It is nonsense. Awesome things happen after 2AM.

#oneaday, Day 86: Tuesday Night Tweetup

Brief post tonight as it’s late, I’m tired and a little drunk.

Went out to meet strangers tonight. This is weird, as it’s something I’m not good at.

Fortunately, said strangers and I had something in common: Twitter. Yes, this was a “tweetup”, a fine example of some Web 2.0 shit happening all ova yo’ face. Or something. Numerous Twitter types from all over Southampton came together in the pretentious purple basement of “Dock Gate 4” to exchange polite greetings, drink things and gradually divide into “the iPhone corner” and the “not-iPhone corner”.

I had a great time. I’d just recently started chatting to a couple of very fine and lovely ladies known as @neicey and @Amy_Walker thanks to our mutual love of pointless but super-addictive geocaching game/tourism thing Gowalla, and they convinced me to come along. Actually, for once, it didn’t take very much arm-twisting. I often have a spaz attack at the last minute when presented with social situations – particularly those involving strangers – and decide that no, I don’t really want to put myself in that uncomfortable position, thank you very much.

Tonight was a bit different though. I arrived and people were chatting. People chatted to me. I had things to say that people were interested in. (At least they seemed interested, anyway.) There were enough people there that there was a nice mix of different interests, but not so many that it turned into a Heavy Rain crowd scene with me having to hold down R1, X and batter the Triangle button to keep my cool. Which was nice. Apparently sometimes there are a lot more people there, but I feel that now I’ve gone to one and met some of these people (and now follow them on Twitter, naturally) I could face that same experience with a few more people there. Which is good!

Funny stories were told. Private jokes previously confined to the online realm were shared. And everyone was in agreement that the urinals in Dock Gate 4 are spectacular. They have a damn water feature behind them, for God’s sake. One shudders to think where the water to produce this effect is recycled from, however. Perhaps it’s best not to think about it too much.

Anyway. I feel it is time for my bed now, much as I would love to beat @neicey in another game of #stayingupthelatest. My eyes are closing of their own free will and the amount of Strongbow I drank is causing a pleasantly cloudy sensation in my brain. So on that note, good night to y’all.

#oneaday, Day 85: The Artist Formerly Known as Top Searches

I was all set to do a post on the top search terms on my blog today, after Rhiarti did such a good one the other day. But it turns out that they’re rather mundane, sadly. Still, I’ve started now, so let’s get this over with.

Turtles in Time Reshelled

I wrote one post about this. One post about this game and it’s been consistently in the top search results for my blog ever since. You really want to read it? Knock yourself out – it’s here. Actually, you know what? I remember being quite pleased with that post. I guess I should be flattered that so many people are looking for it. Thank you for your support, everyone.

Pete Davison

My name! Amazing. I was genuinely surprised to see that the second-to-top search result was actually my name. Apparently people are looking for me. Given that I am looking for work, I assume that this is a good thing. That or my mother is taking an over-active interest in Googling me.

Divine Divinity

I was something of an evangelist for this excellent PC RPG a while back. It’s excellent. Read more here. And then go buy it on Good Old Games. Avoid its sequel though, which is less good.

no.one.lives.forever

I don’t know why the searcher put dots in the name. But this game is another that I wrote a few posts about a while back, and the term has stayed in my search results in various forms ever since. Also a great game, and a reminder of when first-person shooters had remembered what “fun” meant.

divine communication tumblr

Now this one I have genuinely no idea about. It’s a kind of hideous cross-breed of several different posts – most likely this one, this one and this one. But quite why someone felt the need to search for those three words together is anyone’s guess. Maybe they thought God keeps a Tumblr. Probably called “fuckyeahomniscience.tumblr.com”. I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually existed.

The next three are search terms just from yesterday. These are much more interesting.

doctor who spitfires won’t work in space

Of course they won’t. That doesn’t stop it being awesome.

farmville co-op what happens if you let

No! Don’t stop there! I want to know what the rest of that question was. Don’t be shy. “What happens if you let…” what? Your sheep run amok? Your crops wither and die? Your child have easy access to your credit card for the purchasing of premium items?

highest lvl in borderlands

50. You’re welcome.

Right. Enough. Good night!

#oneaday, Day 84: Eternally Questing

Giant Bomb recently launched a quest system on their site. It rewards participants with experience points, badges and a sense of “yay” for exploring the site, looking at different pages and taking part in various activities. Some of the quests are as simple as setting up your profile. Others are more complex “puzzly” ones that require one to solve some cryptic clues about games and game culture. It’s a lot of fun, and it actually convinced me to sign up to the site and make greater use of it.

This echoes the thoughts of social game designers at GDC a while back, including Brian Reynolds from Zynga. The idea of getting Achievements for things you do in “reality”. It sounded stupid, but given the amount of fun I, and numerous others, have had with Giant Bomb’s metagame, it may not be so dumb after all.

It’s not the first time it’s been tried, either. A very long time ago I posted about a site called PMOG, or the Passively Multiplayer Online Game. This game, actually a Firefox addon that sits atop your normal browser interface and re-christened The Nethernet a while back, allows players to earn experience points, achievements and items for exploring the web. More than that, though, other players can leave stuff on web pages for others to discover. These could be malicious (bombs, which make your browser shake about a bit and cause you to lose some points) or helpful (crates with money in them). They could also be mysterious portals, which lead to random places on the web, the destinations of which are only known to the portal’s creator. It was an interesting concept let down only by the fact that it only worked in Firefox. Since Chrome came to Mac, I haven’t touched Firefox since, the Mac version not being the greatest piece of coding there ever was.

Then there’s Shuffletime, now sadly defunct – although the developers claim to be working on the “Next Big Thing”. Shuffletime was a great idea – it was a collectible card game where the cards were websites. And you only got to collect the card if you correctly answered a question about the site it was showing you against a strict time limit. It was a fantastically addictive game, and a fine way to get people looking around the web at things they wouldn’t normally. I’m sorry to see it go, but I’m sure something interesting will come out of it.

Like them or loathe them, Achievements and Trophies are here to say. And it’s entirely possible that their influence will spread out of the world of core gaming and into the collective awareness of the web at large. Let’s face it, it’s always nice to get some encouragement isn’t it?

Now, how many Gamerscore is hitting 100 One A Day posts worth?