#oneaday Day 915: No, I Haven’t Seen [Insert Movie Name Here]

I haven’t seen The Dark Knight Rises yet. I’m probably not going to. I also didn’t see that new Spider-Man movie, The Avengers or any of the other films that people have been going apeshit over in recent months. (And, it has to be said, being extremely tiresome about. So you enjoyed The Avengers? Great. I don’t need to be kept up to date on how many times you’ve seen it. Also, quit retweeting your friends’ Foursquare checkins of when they go to see it. No-one cares.) (Sorry. Apparently I am grumpy tonight. Disregard all of that. A bit.)

I just can’t “do” movies. It’s not through a lack of attention span — I can happily sit and play a game, read a book or dick around on the Internet for hours and hours and hours — but I just find it impossible to sit down and watch a movie any more. There’s always a lingering sensation at the back of my mind that I’d rather spend two hours doing something — anything — else.

Actually, that’s true of watching movies at home. I sold most of my DVDs to Music Magpie a while back and I haven’t missed them since. I have a Netflix account on which I haven’t watched any movies (though I have more than got my money’s worth from all the TV shows on there). The idea of watching a movie at home is just… no. I don’t want to do it.

Going to the cinema is a marginally more appealing prospect because of all the associated “other stuff” that goes with it. Comfy seats, a nice dark room with a big screen and impressive sound system, a bucket of popcorn which looks like it will last forever (but inevitably only lasts until the end of the trailers) and an opportunity to Do Something With Your Friends. (Of course, that Something is sitting in a darkened room, in silence, in a straight line so it is impossible to talk to each other, so you might as well be there by yourself.)

But then at the cinema you have to deal with shite you don’t have to put up with at home. The scrotes who sit behind you and jiggle your seat with their feet. People who can’t eat quietly. People who won’t shut up. People who won’t put their bastard mobile phone away for five seconds. (I hate these people on planes, too.) People who think everything that isn’t funny is absolutely, massively, hilariously funny and turn a serious scene into some sort of farce with a laugh track.

None of these things represent specific reasons that I don’t want to watch movies. I simply… don’t want to watch them. I am fine with this. As such, if you ask me “have you seen [insert movie name here] yet?” the answer will almost definitely be “no.” You can also drop the “yet” because I’m probably not going to see it at all. So there.

I am grumpy. Now I am going to bed.

BALLS.

#oneaday Day 914: Chinese Whispers

Twitter was angry today. There was some degree of justification — the horrific shooting in Aurora at the screening of the new Batman movie had emotions running high, and I certainly don’t begrudge anyone that. But it demonstrated, once again, some of the dangers inherent in social media — a force which should, by all accounts, be a positive thing.

Misinformation spreads like wildfire on the Internet thanks to services like Twitter. People post things without thinking, without bothering to back things up with research and evidence. Journalists encourage this, with TV news being a particular offender, inviting people to contribute their own thoughts on a particularly pertinent story using hashtags. It thus becomes something of a challenge to determine exactly what the facts are, and what is simple hyperbole dreamed up by the increasingly-hysterical mass of people who suddenly all think that They Know Best.

I shan’t talk too much about the Aurora shooting specifically here because I haven’t read up on all the gory details myself as yet. I will refer to a couple of other recent incidents where this phenomenon became particularly apparent, however.

Most recently was the “Arctic Ready” campaign, in which Shell apparently made the amateurish misstep of opening up a slogan competition on a controversial subject — drilling in the Arctic — to the public. The “Let’s Go! Social” gallery page promptly became filled with anti-drilling, environmentalist slogans and it looked, by all accounts, to be one of the most colossal fuck-ups in social marketing history.

Except that it wasn’t. It was actually a genius piece of social marketing, but not by Shell. No; the whole thing was, in fact, a clever ruse by Greenpeace, who then went on to troll Shell even further by picking a “winner” from the supposed competition and putting it on a billboard right outside Shell’s Houston headquarters.

It should have been pretty obvious to anyone who stopped to think about the whole thing for a moment that this clearly wasn’t Shell’s doing. The kind of people who handle social media marketing are generally fairly savvy sorts (though there are exceptions) and would have stepped in to deal with the mass trolling of the supposed competition. In fact, they would have probably removed it altogether fairly sharpish. They certainly wouldn’t have left it up for several weeks, opened up a new Twitter account just to repeatedly request that people don’t retweet “offensive” adverts and generally keep poking the fire.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t obvious to a lot of people. It caught people out not once, but twice — first, when the “Arctic Ready” site first appeared, and again a few weeks later when the Twitter account appeared. People posted, retweeted and commented without stopping to think about whether or not it was real. Others who were wise to it posted, retweeted and commented about how it was clearly fake. But amid all the noise from both sides it became impossible to differentiate who was talking sense and who was simply repeating the digital equivalent of what they had heard down the pub while drunk.

The Shell incident isn’t the only one either. The “Today Is The Day They Went To In Back To The Future Part II” hoax has been around twice, too. Both times it caught people out. Why? Because, again, no-one bothered to check. No-one took a moment to fire up the movie and take a look. If they had, they would have seen that the claims made by whoever started that ridiculous rumour on each occasion were patent nonsense.

It happens in journalism too, and particularly in games journalism. One site posts a “Rumour:” or “Report:” story, and others pick up on it. The content spreads and becomes somewhat distorted over time. It happened today with a story from MCV which, as it turned out, apparently misreported the facts in the first place (or rather, more accurately, posted a story with a misleading headline) and was then sourced by Destructoid and a ton of other sites. This then inspired Ben Kuchera, official unelected and self-styled arbiter of How To Do Games Journalism On The Internet, to pen this piece bemoaning the whole situation, and by God I hate agreeing with Ben Kuchera — but he had a point. With a bit of research (or indeed just carefully reading the quotes that MCV included in its own piece) it’s clear that the “story” (or, more specifically, the headline) that was going around simply wasn’t true.

It’s exhausting at times to keep up with all this stuff, and while it’s great to be able to tap the pulse of everyone at the same time on a hot topic, it’s less great to find yourself in the world’s biggest game of Chinese Whispers. So do me a favour. Before you blindly retweet something that seems a little “off”, take a minute and check to see whether or not it’s actually genuine.

#oneaday Day 913: Funny Bone

Nothing highlights the passage of time more than switching on a comedy show and see who is standing on stage, clutching a microphone in their hand and talking bollocks to an audience.

Also, nothing makes you sound more like you’re getting old than bemoaning the fact that “modern comedians” aren’t a patch on the standups you used to enjoy.

I’ve never been a particularly hardcore follower of comedy, but I do enjoy a good standup show, and over the years I’ve appreciated the work of a wide variety of comics. I’ve never quite got the reason that comics rise and fall in popularity like fashion trends — surely if something’s funny, it’s timeless and funny forever?

Well, actually, no. That’s not quite true. I recall vividly seeing a show about Tommy Cooper a while back and finding it utterly cringeworthy from start to finish. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but it simply wasn’t funny. Perhaps it’s because I wasn’t “of that time” that I couldn’t appreciate it — but then I look back at some of the stuff that Kenny Everett and Les Dawson did, and that’s still hilarious despite being a little out of what I’d describe as “my time”.

The earliest real standup I was aware of was a Lenny Henry video my parents had and which I decided to watch one day when they were out. (It was “15” rated and I was not 15 at the time.) While I didn’t understand everything that he was talking about — some of the stuff about marijuana went right over my head — I found it very entertaining. It’s not fashionable to admit that nowadays, of course, because Lenny Henry is now the guy who did Chef! and the man who advertises Travelodges, but I still find him pretty watchable when he appears on Comic Relief and the like.

The two standups I have the fondest memories of, however, are Eddie Izzard and Bill Bailey. I could watch these guys’ shows repeatedly forever. (Perhaps not forever.) Their comedy is distinctive, clever and rewarding — both in different ways. Izzard’s work rewards paying close attention to how he weaves the various chaotic threads of the things he is talking about together, while Bailey’s alternation between slightly-surreal standup and genuinely excellent musical numbers is just a pure delight to watch.

Going to Edinburgh a couple of times with the university theatre group was an eye-opening experience, as we got the opportunity to see a whole swathe of comedy acts — some great, some not so great. Some of the highlights included Daniel Kitson — aka the terrible DJ from Phoenix Nights — and Marcus Brigstocke, who now makes semi-regular appearances on various TV and radio panel shows. I can’t remember the names of any of the lowlights because in most cases it was just embarrassing to watch them fall apart in front of an increasingly-restless audience.

I will always have a soft-spot for improvisation. At university, we played improvisation games as warm-ups for rehearsals, had a weekly “Improv Night” and hosted an occasional “showcase” event known as Count Rompula, which tended to be largely improvised. (The Web of Dan still leaves me with shivers.) At Edinburgh, one of my favourite memories is seeing improv troupe Boom Chicago (or Boom Shit Cock, as one of our number who was constantly forgetting their name kept calling them) and marvelling at how quickly they picked up on suggestions from the audience and ran with them.

One of the things I like about Eddie Izzard’s comedy, in fact, is that it has an air of improvisation about it — though it becomes clear when he successfully weaves all his threads together that there actually is a significant degree of planning that goes into one of his shows.

I did have a point to all this somewhere. And that is that — yes, I’m an old man now — modern comics seem to be a bit rubbish, although I am using BBC Three as my yardstick here, which may not be particularly wise. (BBC Three, for those outside the UK or simply unfamiliar with the channel, is the dustbin of television, incorporating some of the most asinine documentaries you’ll ever see, a show called Snog Marry Avoid — which is exactly what you think it is — and what they call “experimental comedy”. I call it “shite”.) In recent weeks, I’ve seen a guy whose entire shtick seems to be just shouting at the audience (to be fair, Rhod Gilbert does this too and I find him hilarious — the difference being that Gilbert shouts with passion and righteous fury, while this other guy whose name I can’t remember simply seems to blurt out obscenities), a sketch in rather bad taste regarding death, and a guy who sang a song about a fridge. (All right, that last one actually was quite funny.)

Perhaps I’m just looking in the wrong place for my comedy kicks these days. As I noted, BBC 3 is a big steaming pile of poo at the best of times, so I should probably start by not using that as a means of judging modern comedy. Suggestions for fun and entertaining stand-up shows to catch would be most welcome, then, so please feel free to share!

#oneaday Day 912: Blood from a Stone

I’m pleased to confirm that, after several days of wrangling, arguing and repeating myself over and over and over again, CeX finally relented and gave me a full refund. (Context.)

I hate complaining. I feel like an asshole. Normally because in order to complain effectively, you have to be a bit of an asshole. I hate it because I’ve been on the other side of things, receiving those complaints. It’s frustrating for both parties in the whole situation, because in many cases the person receiving the complaint really does want to help but their hands are tied, and the person complaining just wants things to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Such was the case with this whole debacle. It took two days of talking to someone on CeX’s Twitter account and subsequently emailing their customer service team, then going in to the store where I bought the item in the first place to actually claim the refund. It would have been easy to just give up, but that would have left me £70 down and, while I don’t like complaining, it was the whole principle of the thing here.

The thing that infuriated me most about the whole experience was the blindingly obvious things CeX could have done along the way to help me out. As I said in the original post, it would have cost them literally nothing to help me out and just issue me a refund. The item was already second-hand and open, so it was in the same condition as when it was sold when I returned it. It was also returned within about an hour of me having purchased it, so it’s not as if I could have been using the shop as a quasi-rental service, which is — presumably, anyway — what this policy is designed to discourage.

I grant that, since there was nothing technically wrong with the item, I wasn’t entitled to a refund under the various laws and regulations that govern this sort of thing. But when making an honest mistake — as I did — I don’t expect to be punished for it to the tune of nearly a hundred quid.

So I complained. And I persisted. I remained polite — though clearly frustrated — throughout the entire experience. I didn’t swear, I didn’t insult anyone, I didn’t cast aspersions on the sexual preferences of anyone’s mother. I simply repeated the things that were upsetting and frustrating me in the hope that it would sink in. And I kept a close eye on the people around me on Twitter who were taking an interest in the case. There was the potential for some serious damage to CeX’s brand here, and while I had no particular desire to cause trouble in that manner, the longer it went on the more it looked like being a potential PR disaster for the company — which is why I was so confused that CeX appeared to be in no hurry whatsoever to help me.

Customer service is actually relatively simple. Follow your business’ policies as appropriate, but when a customer complains, review the situation carefully and determine how you can help them. If bending the “rules” slightly doesn’t impact your company and does help the customer, then doing so builds considerable goodwill because it makes it look as if you’ve gone out of your way to help them. Apple stores are really good at this. Very often a customer will enter the store frustrated and angry that something or other isn’t working, and leave with a smile on their face because they’ve been pleasantly surprised by an employee apparently going out of their way to do something nice. (In actual fact, said employee more likely than not knows exactly the situations in which is is appropriate to bend the rules and simply set the customer’s expectations accordingly.)

This is what CeX wasn’t willing to do for me. I was repeatedly quoted store policy and made to feel like an idiot for not knowing it before purchasing the item. But how was I to know? It wasn’t explained to me at purchase, I’ve never returned anything to them before and the only place in the entire shop their return policy is mentioned is in a single sentence of roughly 10-point text on a small mat near their cash till — a mat which, I might add, is more often than not covered up by items that are being bought and sold at the time. The fact is, I wasn’t aware of the policy, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the risk on the item in the first place. Repeatedly quoting it at me after the fact was just making me more and more angry, and the people who were doing so just didn’t appear to notice this — or care. It became something of a battle of attrition — me repeating how annoyed I was and what I wanted out of the whole situation, them repeating their policies over and over. Something had to give.

It was them. I certainly wasn’t going to back down, and the situation was looking worse and worse for them as they continually refused to acknowledge my concerns and upset. I can imagine I was probably called some fairly unpleasant names behind the scenes. But I prevailed in the end. For fairness’ sake, I should say thank you to Raj on CeX’s email support team and Jackie, the store manager of the Chippenham store, for making it happen.

Complaining works. It’s not a pleasant thing to do, and it often takes time, but it works. We’ve seen plenty of examples of it Getting Things Done recently — whether or not they’re “important” is neither here nor there — and people should know when it’s appropriate to step up and say “wait, hang on a minute, that’s not right.” It’s all too easy to just allow yourself to get screwed over and then feel completely powerless. So don’t be afraid to complain, and remember it’s different from whining.

If you can’t remember the difference, perhaps this will help you out:

#oneaday Day 911: Drizzt’s Big Adventure

As promised at some point in the near past, we got to play The Legend of Drizzt as a larger group tonight, and it was fun.

The thing with a lot of dungeon-crawlers is that they often take a long time to set up, a long time to play and only tend to become especially rewarding if you have a group of players who can commit to a long-term campaign with player characters gradually increasing in strength through acquired treasures and levelling up.

The thing with The Legend of Drizzt is that it ignores all that, creating an experience very friendly to a board game group more normally accustomed to self-contained experiences. Each adventure in the Legend of Drizzt book is playable within an hour or two (less if you mess up particularly badly!) and is constantly moving forward thanks to mechanics that minimise “downtime” and help prevent the age-old Advanced Heroquest problem of a randomly-generated dungeon becoming so sprawling it covers the entire table.

Play is much more strategic than I was expecting, too. With multiple players, positioning and turn order becomes much more important as you carefully consider how to tackle the situations you face. Do you kill every monster you come across? Do you spread out and push “forward” in as many directions as possible or focus your efforts? When victory is in sight, do you race for the goal or play it safe?

The high level of difficulty in the game helps matters enormously. Because it’s highly likely you’ll get to each scenario’s “endgame” with a sliver of health and a selection of depleted abilities, securing victory becomes a matter of making some very difficult choices as a team and determining whether or not taking big risks is going to pay off. In the case of the adventure we played this evening, we scraped victory by the narrowest of margins — one of our number was down for the count, and if the turns had come around to him one more time, we would have lost with the finish line in sight. Fortunately, we prevailed.

I’m very pleased with how the play session went this evening and look forward to playing it again in the near future. It’s a great game that I can highly recommend to anyone who enjoys the dungeon-crawling experience but who doesn’t have the time (or inclination) to commit to a lengthy campaign. I’m curious to try the other two games in the series — Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon — and see how it’s possible to link the games’ various components together, as the core system seems very much designed to be expanded and experimented with.

For now, though, bed, and dreams of being able to play games with friends on a more regular basis in the near future…

#oneaday Day 910: Continued Adventures in The Secret World

I’m still playing The Secret World and still enjoying it. Generally a pretty good sign for an MMO is if it can maintain my attention through the first month and convince me to continue paying the subscription fee (if applicable) past that point. The Secret World is certainly keeping me occupied and entertained, and I’m enjoying it a great deal.

I’ve progressed somewhat since the last time I discussed the game. I’m in the second of the game’s main “adventure” areas, which is another part of the Innsmouth-style Lovecraft town. Rather than the more “towny” area that you start in, the second part is more like a forested outskirts area. There are fewer houses, streets tend to wend their way into the depths of the woods, and there are creepy Twin Peaks-style lakes with mist rolling off them (and monsters lurking in the fog, of course).

The missions continue to display an excellent amount of variety. There are a few more “kill [x] of [y]” action missions than I’d perhaps prefer there to be, but they generally have more of a narrative incentive to progress than in other MMOs. For example, in one mission I completed tonight, I was tasked with killing a bunch of draugr and then burning their bodies. This attracted some more powerful draugr, which I then had to kill and impale on some spikes. This attracted a draugr queen, which I then had to kill and splay out on a pointy rock. This attracted a draugr berserker, which I… you get the idea. This process continued through several steps, with increasingly more difficult fights along the way. At the end of the quest, my “handler” and I reached the conclusion that the draugr had an organised hierarchy and chain of command that could potentially be exploited in the future. Much cooler than simply returning to a questgiver and them going “thanks for killing all those wolves”. (Praise should also be given to the fact that, this being the modern world, you turn in quests simply by phoning your handler rather than having to return to whoever gave you your quest.)

The fact that most missions incorporate something a little more than just plain killing is the best thing, though. In another one I completed today, I had to gather mushrooms from various areas around the map (guarded by horrible slobbering things from the depths of the ocean, natch) and then mix them together according to a recipe on a scrap of paper I had to remember I’d been handed at the start of the quest. The Secret World assumes a certain degree of intelligence on the part of the player, and doesn’t remind you that, say, the instructions you need to complete a quest are safely in your journal — or, indeed, that sometimes you have to use the crafting interface to complete an objective.

Speaking of the crafting interface, it’s a surprisingly cool approach somewhat reminiscent of Minecraft, of all things. Disassembling equipment you don’t need rewards you with raw materials, which can then be combined together to make various objects. The twist is, you have to arrange them into the correct formations to produce the things you’re after. You can then add things like glyphs to give them special abilities and bonuses and customize them.

I even tried a bit of PvP the other night. I normally hate PvP in MMOs because in most cases it’s a horribly unbalanced afterthought that simply isn’t any fun whatsoever. It is terrible in Star Wars: The Old Republic, for example, and I’ve never really been a fan of it in World of Warcraft, either. The Secret World has some interesting ideas, though, that make PvP well worth engaging in.

There are currently (I think) three PvP areas in the game. Two of these are instanced battlegrounds in which players take part in timed team-based matches according to whichever faction they’re on. The other, though, is a large map which has persistent PvP going on at all times. A number of facilities cover this map, and it’s up to each faction to capture (and, ideally, hold) each of these locations. There’s a strong incentive to do so, because all players of a given faction receive ongoing buffs according to how many facilities their secret society is in control of.

And people are playing it well. The chat channels in the PvP areas are full of people actually bothering to talk to each other, strategise and coordinate their efforts. The Templars appear to have a bit of a numbers advantage, but that certainly hasn’t stopped my faction, the Illuminati, from having a bit of fun — especially during quiet periods. Which is nice.

All in all, then, Funcom have done an excellent job in shaking up the very stale MMO space and creating something that it distinctive, entertaining and downright compelling. Its writing is good, its world is beautifully crafted and the whole experience is wrapped together with some unconventional but very effective game mechanics that successfully distinguish it from the million and one World of Warcraft clones out there. I strongly suggest you give it a try if you get the chance.

#oneaday Day 909: The Internet Is As Big As You Make It

Over the years, my Internet habits have changed significantly. This has been at least partly due to changes in technology over the years, but I still find it an interesting observation to think back on how times have changed since I first “got online.”

My earliest experiences were with CompuServe which, for the unfamiliar, was somewhat like an online “walled garden”. It included much of the things we take for granted on the Internet today — email, topic-specific forums, places to download stuff, real-time chat and probably, if you looked hard enough, something which could be used by someone as porn. Initially, you were limited to talking only to other CompuServe subscribers, but over time access opened up: firstly to allow emailing to Internet email addresses, and eventually to access the Web proper. I remember vividly trying (and failing) to get the browser Mosaic to work with CompuServe.

At this time, since I was just a kid and living at home, my Internet (or equivalent) access was severely limited. I had to plan out what it was I was going to look at (usually the Gamers’ Forum and occasional delves into the “CB Simulator” — aka real-time chat rooms — to try (and fail) to pick up girls. (a/s/l?)

Over time, the Internet opened up to all, and we were all able to gain access to the information we wanted and some we didn’t. The best free porn sites were (apparently) passed around in the schoolyard; the best sites to download shareware games were common knowledge; little communities started to spring up as people figured out things like “forums”, “personal homepages” and “search engines”.

Fast forward to today and, with an Internet that is growing at a frightening rate, I find myself limiting what I’m doing to a very small number of sites. Despite becoming increasingly irritated with it, I check Facebook. I check my GMail. I check in on the Squadron of Shame Squawkbox if there’s been a new post. I write this blog. Occasionally I might check a gaming site for news of something I’m interested in, but that’s really about it. I tweet from my phone and everything else that I really want to do is covered by those sites — and Google if I can’t find the information I’m looking for straight away. I find myself going around and around and around the same sites over and over, hoping that something new and interesting has come up in the five minutes since I last looked. (It never does.)

One thing I’ve found myself not using anywhere near as much as I used to is dedicated, specific communities. Every time I find a forum that looks vaguely interesting, I might check it out and post there for a few days and then promptly forget all about it — even if it’s a community I have little doubt that I’d really enjoy being a part of. This is kind of sad, since it limits my contact with people who are specifically in to the exact same things as me, but it’s primarily a result of the fact that forum software tends to not play overly-nice with mobile devices — which, nine times out of ten, is the place where I want to be casually browsing. (Okay, a lot of forums bring up that annoying popup about Tapatalk, which I’ve never tried and might be the best thing ever, but still.)

It’s mostly a time issue. I have lots of things I want to do every day, and I rarely (no, make that never) get to do all of them. So far as “priorities” go, checking forums, posting things and getting to know yet another online community is not particularly high up the list.

Perhaps it should be. There are a lot of things I am into that I would like to talk more about with others. Without thinking very hard, I can immediately point to both My Little Pony and The Secret World as communities I would like to be more involved with. And there are doubtless more out there. When I think about how vapid and pointless 95% of the conversations on Facebook are, I do sometimes wonder if my “social” time online could be better spent in a more focused community rather than browsing creepy baby photos posted by people I haven’t seen since school.

Perhaps I should leave my own prejudices at the door and jump in to one of these communities to see what will happen. You never know where new friends are lurking, after all.

#oneaday Day 908: Customer Disservice

I wanted to share a customer service experience I had today as I found it immensely disappointing. It was partly my fault, I accept that, but the way in which it was handled left me with a very sour taste in my mouth and a feeling of disillusionment in a company for whom I had previously had nothing but good things to say.

After purchasing a copy of Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition in the currently-running Steam Summer Sale, I decided that the time had come for me to get an arcade stick and see if I could actually improve my generally-dreadful fighting game skills. I took a trip into town to my local CEX — they’d opened recently so I wanted to support them — and was pleased to see that a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick was in the window for half its usual “new” price. A bit of preliminary research online had revealed that this stick from MadCatz was one of the best ones out there, and to see it for half its usual price was a deal too good to pass up.

The stick in question was designed for PlayStation 3, but uses a USB connection. I looked online and consensus said it worked with some PCs, though the chipset the computer in question was built on determined whether or not it would actually work. Intel chipsets were fine, apparently, but nVidia or AMD ones were not. Having been poking around inside my computer recently to fit a new power supply, I was pretty confident I had an Intel chipset.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. I brought the stick home, connected it up to the computer, Windows recognized it and then… nothing. No response from the stick in Control Panel, no response in game, no means to get it to register any inputs whatsoever. I tested it in the PS3 to make sure the device wasn’t actually faulty, and sure enough, the PS3 had no issues with it whatsoever. Unfortunately, I don’t have any fighting games (or even “arcade-style” titles) for PS3 that would necessitate the use of an arcade stick, so I had essentially wasted £70.

Or had I? No, I thought, if I head straight back to town now I’ll have time to return it, get my money back and be home in time for dinner. So off I went, back to CEX, and queued up in an attempt to return it.

“I’d like to return this,” I said, explaining the situation. Being an honest sort of guy — curse that particular character trait — I said that the stick wasn’t faulty, but that it didn’t work with my computer. (To be fair, lying and saying it was broken wouldn’t have achieved much — CEX has a rigorous policy of testing things to prevent shysters trading in broken crap.)

“This isn’t the selling till,” said the woman behind the counter. “You need to join that queue.”

I was taken aback by the bluntness for a moment after she had been helpful earlier in the day when I had purchased the thing. Fortunately, her colleague jumped in and pointed out that I wasn’t trying to sell something to the shop, I was simply trying to get a refund.

She took the stick and scanned it, then explained to me that CEX’s policy was that since it wasn’t faulty, all she could do was give me store credit.

“Well, do you have an Xbox 360 stick available?” I asked. (Xbox 360 sticks work with Windows no problem.)

“No,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Then that’s no help to me, really, is it? I’ve spent £70 on something I can’t use. I would like my money back, please.”

It was at this point that the cashier in question — Emily, her name was — decided that she couldn’t handle this and called her supervisor who then launched into an obviously-rehearsed speech.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work for you,” she said with an incredibly patronising tone of faux-understanding. “I appreciate that it’s frustrating, but unfortunately we’re only able to give a refund as store credit.”

I was really not in the mood for argument — I hate confrontation at the best of times — so after asking whether or not the voucher could be used online — apparently it can, but only through an unnecessarily convoluted process that involves paying the full price for the item then claiming a rebate — I grudgingly accepted and was on my way. I left immensely disappointed with the poor service I had received from CEX, and thinking that I would be considering things very carefully before making use of their services again.

Here’s the thing that annoyed me most about the whole thing: there was no sense of the staff wanting to help me. I was quoted policy and simply shut down without any discussion. No consideration was given for the fact that I had bought the item that same day and had returned it in the exact same condition in which it had been sold to me. No consideration was given for the fact that I had wasted £70 and was being offered store credit in exchange when there was nothing I wanted to spend it on in said store. No effort was made to make me feel better about what I freely admit is my own mistake. Rather than doing something that would have built goodwill and allowed me to leave satisfied and happy while leaving them no worse off than they had been before I bought the thing in the first place, I was simply the recipient of a speech that had obviously been given many times before.

Customer service is a fine art, and CEX in Chippenham is clearly sorely lacking. CEX’s return policy as a rule is unnecessarily harsh on those who make honest mistakes, and leaves no room for employees to “surprise and delight” a customer. I don’t think this case is actually in breach of the Sale of Goods Act as the goods do work as described — the stick worked fine on PlayStation 3 and the people at the shop didn’t explicitly tell me it worked on PC — but the fact is from a customer service perspective, CEX let me down. Store policies shouldn’t be so inflexible that they leave a customer walking out of the store dissatisfied, disappointed and upset. Apple are good at this, often exchanging items for free simply as a means to, as said above, “surprise and delight” their customers. Head into an Apple store with a pair of dodgy iPod headphones, for example, and the store team will usually swap them straight out for you, no questions asked. Go in there with a broken iPhone/MacBook/whatever that’s just out of warranty, and if you ask nicely they’ll often help you out as if you were still covered. And on those occasions when they do turn you down, there’s usually a good reason for them not being able to help you.

It would have cost nothing for CEX to help me out today. Had they refunded me and taken the stick back, they would have been no worse off than they had been this morning, and I would have left satisfied and confident in purchasing from them again. Instead, I am left with a piece of paper worth £70 and, currently, nothing to spend it on, as the Xbox 360 version of the stick is not available online. I am also writing about my poor experience on the public forum that is the Internet rather than praising them or simply keeping quiet.

So basically, CEX Chippenham, I’m exceedingly disappointed in the service (or lack thereof) I received today and will be thinking very carefully before I buy anything expensive from you again. You had the chance to surprise and delight me; instead you stonewalled me and flipped the bird. THANKS A LOT.

#oneaday Day 907: A Party Game for Horrible People

I had my first chance to try out Cards Against Humanity tonight. If you’re unfamiliar with Cards Against Humanity, you can find out more and even print your own copy here.

Cards Against Humanity is a project that was initially funded through Kickstarter last year, but which has since gone on to make its money via direct sales of its core set and expansion. Unusually, though, the game is distributed under a Creative Commons licence, which means you’re free to download and print a copy yourself if you have the appropriate equipment to do so. It also means that you’re free to tweak, change and otherwise mangle it as you see fit so long as you don’t then decide to sell your modified version as an original work. Which is nice.

Cards Against Humanity is a very simple concept. The Onion AV Club described it as “Apples to Apples for the crass and jaded” and indeed the concept is almost identical: each turn, the “card czar” player (which changes every turn) draws a single black card that features a question or fill-in-the-blank phrase — this is the equivalent of Apples to Apples’ green cards — and players then submit a white card, each of which contains a word or phrase that could potentially fit whatever is printed on the black card. The card czar then shuffles them around so they have no idea who submitted what, and then reads them all aloud. After this, they choose which one is “best” by whatever arbitrary criteria they wish, and give the black card to the winning player as an “Awesome Point”. Play then continues until… whatever you like, really. You could play to a score limit, a certain number of cards or, as the game suggests, until the “Make a Haiku” card comes up. The exact rules are deliberately open-ended to encourage experimentation and a feeling of simply having stupid fun rather than rules lawyering. It’s a party game, not SRS BIZNZ.

It’s extremely simple and easy to play, and works with groups of four or more people. While the rules that determine who “wins” a hand are deliberately vague and arbitrary, after a few turns it becomes clear that there is a degree of psychology in play rather than simply everyone rushing to put down whichever card has the word “penis” on it. Does the current card czar find dick jokes funny, or would they rather you tried to do something clever? Would a surreal and incongruous answer make them laugh? Assuring victory is much more than simple luck, and sometimes you need to know when to give up on a hand and just submit your “worst” card for consideration in the hope of getting something better next time.

Cards Against Humanity is gloriously politically incorrect, but only occasionally explicitly obscene. A lot of the dark humour in the game comes from certain combinations of cards and the interpretations thereof rather than cards that are simply outright offensive. That said, there are plenty of white cards that are deliberately provocative — “Firing a rifle into the air while balls-deep in a squealing hog” is one particular favourite — but these are spread throughout more “mundane” offerings to balance things out rather than making the game a tiring journey through everything taboo. There are plenty of amusing pop culture references in the cards, too, though a few are a little too American for international audiences.

Cards Against Humanity is a great party game, then, that deserves to sit alongside titles like Balderdash and Eat Poop, You Cat! as a Fun Thing To Do After (or perhaps Before, depending on how late your host cooks) Dinner. I recommend getting some friends together and giving it a shot yourself as soon as possible, as there was plenty of mirth and merriment tonight, to the extent that one participant (whose blushes I shall spare) laughed so hard their drink came out of their nose.

#oneaday Day 906: Drizzle Bizzle

I recently acquired a copy of one of the Dungeons & Dragons boardgames: The Legend of Drizzt, a game based on everyone’s favourite Dark Elf and the one character from D&D lore that most people can remember.

I’ve given the game a couple of goes so far — twice solo and once with Andie. I’ll be playing it with a larger group next week, all being well, too.

If you’ve not seen the game before, here’s the deal. It’s not really a conventional dungeon crawler in the mould of Hero Quest and its various expansions and sequels. It is, however, a challenging cooperative game that I anticipate will require at least a small degree of working together to survive.

Basically the flow of play goes like this. Each hero may move and attack, attack and move or move twice on their turn. If they end their turn on the edge of a dungeon tile, a new one is drawn and a monster appears on the tile more often than not. Some tiles also cause an “encounter” to occur, which more often than not is detrimental to the players. After that, any monsters that the current player “controls” (i.e. revealed on their turn) make their moves and attacks according to the logic on their cards, then play passes to the next player and continues until either the players have completed the objective for their chosen quest or a single hero is defeated without any remaining “healing surges” to restore them.

Combat uses a loose interpretation of D&D 4th Edition’s “Powers”-based system. Each character has a hand of “Powers” to use when they attack — some are “At Will”, meaning they may always be used, some are “Daily” meaning they may only be used once, and some are “Utility”, some of which may only be used once and others of which provide supporting abilities. Combat results are determined by dice rolls with bonuses according to the Power chosen — some have a greater chance to hit, some hit more monsters simultaneously and some do more damage.

It’s a simple, elegant system that keeps the game flowing well at a good pace. It captures the feel of D&D 4e’s excellent combat system without getting bogged down in scenario design — or the requirement to have a human “dungeon master”. And it’s considerably more accessible to non roleplayers than even a basic D&D module. At the same time, it doesn’t have the complexity of a lot of dungeon crawlers, doesn’t take nearly as long to play and encourages cooperation between players.

I’ll be very interested to see what the dynamic is like with more people as I feel it has a lot of potential. As a cooperative game, it looks set to have plenty of the usual brutal difficulty factor without the Byzantine rules of a title like Arkham Horror — much as I love the ol’ Lovecraft-em-up, I think pretty much every time we’ve played we’ve forgotten at least one rule.

It also comes in an absolutely humongous box and is packed with cool figures and lots and lots of cardboard tokens of various kinds. It’s a veritable nerdgasm to open up that box, and closing it makes the best “box fart” I’ve heard for a long time. So kudos for that.

I’ll offer a full report on the game following our play session next Tuesday; for now rest assured that if you’re the slightest but interested in low-maintenance dungeon crawling and monster bashing, you could certainly do far worse than check out any of the three D&D Adventures games.