Category: INTERNETZORZ

#oneaday Day 962: Signal to Noise

We're reaching saturation point with social media. In fact, I think we got past that point a long time ago, meaning that we're at the "completely sodden and dribbling all over the carpet" stage.

There is too much social media. There are too many possible places for people to share things that nobody cares about with people they don't know. And it seems that every day some bright-eyed startup CEO decides that what we really need is yet another social network service of some description.

I've indulged in a few of these superfluous social networks over the years. GetGlue was a bit of fun, allowing you to "check in" to movies, books, games and even "topics" that you were interested in, leave comments and discuss things with other community members. This was at the height of the "gamification" craze, so there were plenty of achievements to collect, and you could even get some real-life physical stickers sent to you if you collected enough achievements.

Similarly, Foursquare and the now-defunct Gowalla proved fun for a little while. During the period of time when I was unemployed and quite spectacularly depressed, I made extensive use of Gowalla to "tag" various places around Southampton and assist with building up a crowdsourced map of places of interest. I even made some actual real-life friends through it, but since then location check-ins have lost their lustre — what's the point, really?

Then I tried Path, which promised to be a high-quality mobile-focused social network. But since you can access Facebook, Twitter and Google+ — the biggest social networks in the world — via your mobile phone, why on Earth would you need a mobile-specific one? Sure, Path had a lovely interface and the bizarre ability to track when you woke up and went to sleep, but it was ultimately pointless.

Today, I reviewed an app/social network whose purpose remained completely obtuse to me even as I made use of it — and even as an employee of the company frantically tried to convince me that the service was worthwhile via both Twitter and the service itself. (I'm not going to name it as I really can't be bothered to be chased further — I gave it a fair shot, I explored it, I found it to be a complete waste of time. Sorry.)

The service in question allows users to, like GetGlue, "Like" things. Any things. Like cake? Then "Like" cake. Like Tori Amos? Then "Like" Tori Amos. Not sure whether you like broccoli and stilton soup? Then add it to your "To-Do" list, then "Like" it if you like it. Great. Sure. Fine. One question: why?

This questionable usefulness was only further obscured by the fact that the app also, for some utterly unfathomable reason, allows its users to "plant" "Likes" at actual physical locations, meaning you can claim to have hidden, say, an iPhone 5 in your local McDonalds, or Jedward in your local sewage works. Fun for about five minutes again, sure — and a means of seeing who lives vaguely near you and likes Jedward — but again… why?

There's too much noise and not enough signal in social media these days, in short, and this fact is a big part of why I stripped back on all "non-essential" social apps a while back. I keep Facebook, Twitter and G+ around because there are people I regularly speak to on all of those, but outside of those "big three"? There's really very little reason for a lot of these services and apps to exist, but the amount of money being thrown at them by venture capitalists is terrifying.

Kind of makes me think that I should come up with an "innovative" idea for a mobile social network in order to attract several million dollars' worth of funding.

Okay… give me a minute.

Thinking.

Eureka! I got it. Everyone likes taking Instagram photos of food, right? Well, I propose a social photography network that is nothing but pictures of food with a selection of retro filters (some of which are available via in-app purchase). You can "check in" to the food you're eating, discuss it with other people and share photographs of your lunchbox. It'll be a big hit. I'll call it "füd", all in lower case, naturally.

That'll be two million dollars, please, Mr Venture Capitalist. KTHX.

#oneaday Day 958: Gratuitous Self-Promotion (And Promotion of Others, Too)

Hello! How are you? Great!/Sorry to hear that! (delete as applicable)

I have something to share with you that I've been working on recently. Some of you may have already seen what I've been up to; it may be news to some of you. I thought I'd share it here, though, in the hope that I can get more people looking at it.

I'm talking about the website Games Are Evil. I was a contributor there a while back in the post-Kombo years, but was then lucky enough to score my gig at the late GamePro. I kept abreast of what the team was up to during and after my time at GamePro, and always felt a certain degree of "attachment" towards it, even during the times when I wasn't actively involved.

So when it became apparent that the site was in need of a bit of a "reboot" and resuscitation, I was keen to step forward while I had a bit of free time on my hands. I'm lucky enough to have a flexible (and well-paid) enough day job that I have time to take on a "pet project" like this as well as fulfilling my other responsibilities, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to gain some experience in running a site as well as experimenting with some "alternative" directions and content strategies.

That "alternative" thing is key. Having had some interesting conversations with a couple of my friends in the PR industry in recent months, it became clear that a lot of representatives were becoming frustrated that the vast majority of gaming sites focused on the upcoming blockbusters, while "B-tier" titles (for want of a better term — I'm not saying their quality is lower, only their profile) went forgotten, or were barely acknowledged with a somewhat dismissive news story. As such, I felt that there was clearly a gap in the market for a site to cater to the "niche". Since Games Are Evil was not particularly beholden to advertisers or investors, the time was ripe to launch something of an experiment — a video games site that deliberately eschews stories regarding things like the Call of Duties and the Mass Effects of this world in favour of smaller-scale titles and interesting stories from around gaming culture. My original manifesto from when I took over can be found here, if you're curious.

Since taking over the reins at GrE, I've launched a series of regular columns from a range of talented and enthusiastic writers keen to write about their passions. These columns are becoming the main focus of the site, supported by a few daily news stories and occasional reviews when we have code to hand. Each column has a tight, narrow focus and  concentrates on a specific genre or aspect of gaming culture, meaning that readers of Games Are Evil will be able to follow their favourite niche and get to know the writer of said column in the process rather than having to scroll through page after page of news which might not be relevant to them. The model which I wanted to follow with this was the way old-school 1up used to work — people came for the personalities rather than necessarily the specific content of the articles. It's too early to determine whether or not this has been successful or not so far, but I am very proud of what the team has achieved to date — we've seen some great columns ranging from comprehensive roundups of Minecraft news to in-depth explorations of obscure strategy games.

Here's some handy links for you to find your favourite column and follow it:

  • Distant Worlds — a weekly roundup of news from the MMO sector. What's new, what's hot, what's not.
  • FreePlay — a weekly delve into free-to-play and freeware games to sort out the "must plays" from the microtransaction-riddled crapfests.
  • Insert Coin — a weekly exploration of arcade machines, arcade restoration and arcade culture.
  • READ.ME — a weekly foray into the world of visual novels (I do this one!)
  • Swords & Zippers — a weekly roam through the colourful worlds of Japanese role-playing games (I do this one too!)
  • Tactical Tuesday — a bi-monthly deep dive into some of the most obscure, underappreciated and fascinating strategy games available for PC.
  • The Craft — a weekly roundup of what's new in the world of Minecraft.
  • The Vault — a weekly dive into the annals of history to rescue underappreciated or forgotten classics from obscurity. Fans of the Squadron of Shame will be right at home here.

It's early days for the site's new direction as yet, but things are starting to come together nicely. If you've been reading the daily new content, thanks! If you haven't, please feel free to check it out. Leave a comment on articles you'd like to discuss. And please, please share anything you happen to read that you find interesting, entertaining or just plain awesome. With your help, we can make Games Are Evil into the go-to destination for "alternative gaming".

Gratuitous self-promotion (and promotion of others) now over. Normal business will resume tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 945: Reviewing is Broken, August 2012 Edition

Game reviews are broken.

This is a pretty well-established fact by now, I would have thought, but the issue rears its ugly head any time something interesting but flawed such as Papo & Yo shows up and is, overall, worthy of praise but riddled with technical issues.

Let's stay with Papo & Yo for a moment to illustrate my point. (I won't be spoiling the game here, so read without fear.)

Papo & Yo is, technically and objectively speaking, filled with flaws. The frame rate is pretty poor at times, there's a lot of screen tearing and the collision detection is occasionally a bit off.

Does this make it a bad game, though?

No.

Does it prevent it doing what it sets out to do?

No.

This is ultimately all that should matter. And yet IGN notes that "poor design outweighs any interesting concepts", ultimately concluding that the game is "bad".

Well, yes, if judged next to something that is longer, more polished and designed primarily as a "game", I guess Papo & Yo is "bad". The problem comes when you consider the fact that all games are not created equal. Papo & Yo was put together by an extremely small team who did not have the budget to do more than they did. It succeeds admirably in telling its powerful, emotional story despite its technical flaws, which cease to matter almost immediately after starting to play. It was also not designed to be a "good game" — it was designed to be a vehicle for telling its story.

I'm reminded of a post I wrote a while back concerning visual novels and interactive movies. Back in the dawn of the CD-ROM era, if anyone dared to release a title like this that focused on the story at the expense of what would be traditionally called "gameplay," it was slated without mercy. The mantras of the day were "gameplay is king" and "graphics do not make the game".

To be fair, a lot of these "interactive movies" were simply poor stories, too, largely proving that (at the time) game studios simply did not have the budgets to compete with Hollywood. But some were enjoyable, and I can't help feeling that some of them may have had a better response had they been released today with better technology and storage capacities.

You see, gameplay isn't king. Not all the time, anyway. In something like Geometry Wars, sure, gameplay most certainly is king, though the beautiful neon presentation certainly doesn't hurt. But in something like School Days HQ or Papo & Yo, gameplay is not king. Gameplay is not even in the king's court. Story is king. And alongside this comes the necessity to judge a game based on how well it is achieving its objectives rather than how "good" it is compared to all other games. In no other medium do we judge individual creative works against everything else ever created in the same medium. No; we judge bestsellers against bestsellers; literature against literature; arthouse movies against arthouse movies; blockbuster against blockbuster.

Both School Days and Papo & Yo are "bad" if we're to judge them against other, more "gamey" experiences. In School Days all you do is watch animé sequences for 20 minutes and then occasionally get to pick between two options. In Papo & Yo all you have to do is navigate the environment and solve some fairly simple puzzles. But neither game is setting out to be a "fun" game. Both of them are setting out to do one thing and one thing only: tell a story. They accomplish this in completely different ways. And they both succeed admirably, regardless of their game mechanics and regardless of any technical issues.

Most gamers I speak to on a regular basis seem to recognise this fact. So why, exactly, do we persist in judging all games to the same standards? This isn't about giving a "free pass" to "art games", as I have seen a few commentators remark in the last few days. It's about judging a game on just one thing: how well it achieves its goal. Screen tearing (which, let's not forget, blighted the original Uncharted to a very noticeable degree) does not affect how well Papo & Yo spins its tale just as, to flip the argument around, the stupid, nonsensical story doesn't affect the fun factor of Call of Duty.

As always, then, the best way to judge whether or not a game is something you want to play is simply to try it for yourself — or at the very least discuss it with your friends and get the opinions of people you trust. "Good" and "Bad" are relative, arbitrary and ultimately quite useless descriptors when referring to creative works, and so I firmly believe the sooner we get out of the habit of judging all games against some ill-defined "canon of greatness", the better.

#oneaday Day 938: Stop Shouting, Start Talking

As I have said before on a number of occasions, I do not enjoy conflict, disputes, arguments or anything that gets a bit "heated". My own social anxiety tends to make me overthink it and repeatedly go over it in my mind and worry that it's "personal", even if it isn't. And the sort of passive-aggressive comments that inevitably come up when one of these situations arises inevitably make me paranoid that they're talking about me, even if they aren't.

But that's a little off the point of what I wanted to talk about, though it does involve conflict.

For those who weren't following the debacle on Twitter earlier, Gearbox Software, developers of Borderlands 2, chatted with Eurogamer about an addon character that would be following the game's launch. The developer in question (Hemingway? I'm writing this on my phone so can't be arsed to multitask) commented that this character had a skill tree called "Best Friends Forever" that provided a number of significant boosts to a less skilled player, allowing them to play alongside someone very familiar with first-person shooters and still have a good time. Things like being able to ricochet bullets into enemies if you aimed vaguely near them rather than having to be properly accurate — real noob-friendly stuff, and actually a really good idea to make the game accessible to less skilled players, or two co-op partners of uneven skill.

The trouble arose when the developer referred to this particular set of abilities as "for want of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree". This was misquoted by Eurogamer in its own article as "girlfriend mode" and the whole thing then spiralled out of control through the usual game of Chinese Whispers, making significant proportions of the Internet very angry indeed and effectively tainting what was actually a very good idea with the distinct whiff of sexism.

The dude's words were ill-considered and stupid and Gearbox should have apologised for them rather than poncing around trying to do "damage control" like they instead chose to. The fact they were said at all is symptomatic of a large sexism problem within the video games industry, and this is an issue that should be addressed.

Addressed calmly and rationally.

Unfortunately, that latter part is what is escaping commentators on both "sides" of this debate. One side starts yelling about how awful this is, making increasingly over-the-top arguments, then the other strikes back in exactly the same way, leaving everyone looking rather foolish. I of course understand that this is something that people are passionate about — particularly feminists who work hard to promote a much-needed female equality agenda — but "passionate" should not mean the same as "angry" or, at times, "disrespectful". Any time either side descended into all-caps sarcasm (and BOTH sides were guilty of this several times throughout the day) it just ruined the point of what they were trying to say and ended up looking rather childish, really.

I'll reiterate: I believe sexism is a problem in society, particularly in the video games industry. But spitting feathers, swearing, making false comparisons, wilfully misquoting things and taking a "who can shout loudest" approach is just counterproductive, surely. I accept that it is frustrating every time something this stupid happens, and I agree that it should be talked about — there were plenty of people out today just wishing everyone would shut up, which isn't a helpful attitude to take — but yelling isn't the right way to go about it because it just leads to a downward spiral of both sides becoming more and more defensive.

Instead, what is needed is rational, sensible, calm and honest discussion. Those upset by the comments should be able to point out that they were upset — and why — without fear of reprisal. Those who didn't see why there was a problem should open their minds and see the other side's viewpoint rather than immediately going on the defensive. And the hidden third faction who just wanted everyone to shut up should calmly accept that different people hold different views, and just because they don't want to hear about something doesn't mean that no-one should talk about it.

Unfortunately, the very nature of the Internet means that immediate, passionate knee-jerk reactions are the way most people go — and once someone gets up on their high horse it's very hard to get them down again, regardless of what viewpoint they hold. It becomes exhausting for everyone involved and everyone observing, and just ends up leaving a distinctly bitter taste in the mouth — one that could have easily been avoided had the issue been addressed promptly, calmly and rationally by everyone involved.

Instead, we get what we had today, which was a bit of an embarrassment for everyone involved. I sincerely hope that one day we can sit down and talk about these things without all of the RIGHTEOUS FURY, because then we're much more likely to get something productive done about it.

Because seriously, people, it's 2012 and we're still discussing gender issues. Surely the human race should have moved past this sort of discrimination by now?

At least there are certain corners of the Internet where sexism is tackled effectively, calmly and rationally — just as it should be. Check out this great story to see How It's Done.

#oneaday Day 937: The Olympics Are Closed

The Olympic closing ceremony finished not long ago, a little late, and now it's back to normal for Britain until the Paralympics start, at which point everyone will suddenly get interested in sport that isn't premier league football again for two weeks and then forget all about it when that is finished. (Incidentally, people, you can stop saying "don't forget about the Paralympics" any time you want. They're still quite a way off. I doubt anyone is going to forget they're happening — and more to the point, I doubt the media will let anyone forget they're happening, either.)

The closing ceremony was… well… uh… a bit poo, really. After the genuinely impressive spectacle that was Danny Boyle's opening ceremony — noteworthy for its greatest achievement, which was stopping British people from being snarky for two whole weeks — the closing ceremony just couldn't match up, and seemingly made no effort to.

This is nothing new for Olympic closing ceremonies, of course, which always tend to be a bit poo, particularly when compared to the opening counterparts. But this was just… bizarre, really. And not especially good. There was a lot of celebration of British music that wasn't that good — Jessie J, Tinie Tempah, Taio Cruz (no, I didn't know he was British, either) were particular lowlights — and some utterly sacriligeous bollocks in the form of Jessie J butchering Queen with her characteristic out-of-tune caterwauling. Apparently the Spice Girls were involved at some point, but since I had left the room to go for a dump as soon as a video of John Lennon came on whining his way through "Imagine" showed its face, I missed them. And I'm not sorry. The Spice Girls never were good live. They were, however, responsible for this .gif of David Cameron clapping on "1" and "3" (twat!) and Boris Johnson dancing like your embarrassing uncle at a wedding:

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the closing ceremony was the palpable sense of relief as 60 million British people all unlocked their underpants and let rip with one of the biggest waves of snark I've ever seen. Everyone was obviously backed up from two weeks of genuine pride in the country, the achievements of our athletes and the fact that holy shit you guys, we did an Olympics and it didn't suck! It was obvious that everyone felt a lot better after ripping the shit out of the closing ceremonies, so it is, of course, entirely possible that the whole event was designed with precisely this in mind. In which case the whole thing was a wonderfully-crafted work of art that managed to get two weeks' worth of clogged-up snark well and truly ejaculated from the British public just in time for us to go back to the humdrum mundanity of everyday life tomorrow.

Or perhaps it was just a bit poo, really.

Still, regardless of how it ended, the Olympics have been an impressive spectacle and it's been nice to see people taking pride in athletes who obviously do what they do for the love rather than the money. There have been many comments over the last two weeks concerning the obvious differences in attitude between the (mostly) very sportsmanlike Olympians and the whiny, overpaid, spoiled little crybabies that are premier league footballers, and it's true. I hate football precisely for the attitudes that are typically on display from the oafs who are at the top of their game, and there was not a trace of that throughout the Olympics… well, for the most part, anyway. Winners often appeared to be genuinely humble and proud of their victories, while those who missed out on gold didn't tend to blame the referee, the other team, the other manager, the fans or anyone — they simply remained gracious in defeat and, in many cases, promised to come back fighting even harder at the next opportunity.

That's the true thing that should be celebrated from these Olympics. The opening ceremony was cool, sure, and the closing ceremony was entertainingly bad, but neither of those two things are what the whole experience is about. It's about taking pride in the sporting achievements of one's country, and if it can even crack the jaded, cynical old heart of a curmudgeon like me then it's truly something to be applauded.

#oneaday Day 936: Biggest != Best

No, I'm not talking about penises.

Let's talk about Facebook.

Facebook is massive. Facebook has taken over most people's daily existence on the Web to such a degree that there are plenty of people out there who genuinely believe that it is the Web. Like, all of it.

It's not. But then you probably knew that already.

But the fact stands that it is a massive global phenomenon, and something that has happily grown and evolved over time from its humble beginnings up to the multi-bajillion dollar business it is today.

Thing is, though, as it's grown, it's sort of lost sight of what it's for.

"Facebook is a social tool that connects you with people around you," the login screen used to say. When adding a friend, you used to have to indicate how you knew them, and the recipient of that friend request had to verify your story. It was actually quite a good idea that got around the MySpace "friend collecting" issue, whereby people would just add and add and add each other and then not talk to any of their 40,000 friends. Facebook's systems ensured that you 1) were actually friends with the people you marked as friends and 2) didn't fall into the "popularity contest" trap.

Whizz forward to today, and the Facebook of 2012 is a very different place. Now we get people promising "2,000+ friend requests" if you Like one of their pictures. I don't want two thousand friends. I want my online friends to reflect people I actually know, and occasionally give me the opportunity to meet someone new who is relevant to my interests and/or knows people that I know. Give me two thousand newcomers from all over the world, all of whom are vying for my attention simply to make some arbitrary number higher than everyone else, and you sort of lose that.

Part of the reason for this change is the different in what Facebook thinks we should use it for these days. I first joined the site quite a while after many of my friends had — at the time, I assumed it was going to be one of those passing fads like MySpace, and would quickly disappear into obscurity. But I found its value while on a trip to the States to visit my brother — while abroad, I could share the photographs I'd taken and easily stay in touch with my friends as a large group rather than emailing them individually. It was nice.

Over time, things started to shift. Facebook's big change to something a bit closer to its current layout upset a lot of people, and the addition of "applications" marked the beginning of how the social network looks now. At the time, I was of the attitude that the people complaining about it were bleating on about nothing, but in retrospect they may have had a point. As everyone's news feed started filling up with FarmVille brag posts, the signal to noise ratio started getting worse.

Then came the brands. Facebook undoubtedly thought they were doing everyone a favour when they opened up the previously "personal" social network to companies and businesses who wanted to grow their social presence. And in some cases, it worked well, with companies able to engage with their customers and post important information as and when needed.

Unfortunately, this too lost the plot somewhere. Now, pretty much every brand page uses the same obnoxious "engagement strategies" to keep people commenting, talking and Liking — the worst of which by far is the fucking awful "fill in the blank" status update that invites commenters to give their own meaningless opinion on something utterly asinine and irrelevant to the company's product. ("My favorite color is ____________!" proclaimed the Facebook Page for The Sims 3 on one memorable occasion. Over four thousand people replied.)

You see, people seem to absolutely love posting things that have absolutely no value. People love thinking their opinion is important, that they are being listened to, that the things they say are somehow valuable to someone.

The things you say are valuable to someone. The people they are important to are called your family and friends. Not the PR representative for The Sims 3. They don't care what your favourite colour is. They just want you to keep giving them page impressions and comments and Likes.

Likes. Fuck Likes. The Like button is Facebook's most enduring legacy, and one of the biggest blows to actual communication in today's connected world. Why comment any more when you can just click "Like"? It means nothing, particularly when it's connected to a sentence for which the verb "like" is completely inappropriate. ("My grandad died. So sad right now." "Insensitive Twat likes this.") It's a meaningless metric designed to measure how many people have seen something you have posted and want to interact with it, but are slightly too lazy to actually write anything.

The diminishing sense of Facebook's usefulness for actual communication is perhaps best exemplified by the current way someone's profile looks. Known as "Timeline", the theory behind it is that it is an easy to navigate history charting everything interesting that has happened in someone's life.

It's a sound plan. Unfortunately its implementation is just terrible.

The problem is that there's no consistency in how posts show up, and seemingly no understanding of how people read content. Leaving aside the fact that one's profile cover image and fairly pointless basic information takes up over 500 lines — or nearly half of a 1920×1080 display — there's seemingly no rhyme or reason as to what gets posted at the "top" of one's profile.

The conventions established by blogs and earlier social networks dictate that the most recent things go at the top, so anyone checking in on someone's page doesn't have to scroll around or search to find something new. Yet with all the sources from which Facebook can pull information these days — games, external sites, apps, Spotify, Netflix —  there is no consistency in what goes where. For example, at the time of writing, this is what the top of my Timeline looks like:

What a mess, and very little of it is stuff that I 1) actively shared and 2) feel people really need to know. I deliberately shared the RunKeeper stuff because I like sharing my fitness achievements because it helps keep me honest, but I have no need to show people who eight of my friends are, nor do people need to know that I achieved Bronze Level 2 in Five-O Poker, a game I reviewed earlier in the week and specifically told not to share shit on my timeline. At the other end of the spectrum, pages that I have "Liked" elsewhere on the Internet — and thus wanted to share with others, perhaps because I wrote them or just found them interesting — have been unhelpfully collected into a single box that shows just four of them. This behaviour changes seemingly daily, with Liked pages sometimes showing up as individual posts on one's Timeline (useful) and sometimes being collected into that box (not useful). At the time of writing, Facebook appears to have decided that "not useful" is the way to go on this one.

Let's scroll down a few "page heights" and see what else we have:

The left column? Sort of all right. The right column, though?

SO MUCH IRRELEVANT CRAP.

Including posts from games that I 1) didn't press a "Share" button in once and 2) have since removed from my Facebook account.

There. After five screen-heights worth of scrolling, I finally get to one thing that I actually want to share with people — my recent WordPress posts, aka a feed from this blog to my Facebook Timeline. Again, though, like the Likes, they have been collected together into a box that displays very little relevant information and, in this case, is put in a stupid, stupid place. Why stupid? Because the most recent post in that little WordPress.com box came considerably after the RunKeeper post at the top of my Timeline — and certainly considerably after all the spammy crap those games have plastered all over that infuriatingly useless right column.

"Facebook is a social tool that connects you with people around you" my arse. "Facebook is a digital scrapbook maintained by a five-year old with ADHD," more like.

I'll see you on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

#oneaday Day 934: Stop, Check and Check Again

The social Web is an incredibly frustrating place to be at times. I'm aware that I've commented on this subject a number of times before, but it's important: the spread of misinformation is at best irritating and at worst incredibly dangerous.

The most recent example was a result of this image:

This image has been doing the rounds recently — first on Twitter, where the supposed exchange took place, and subsequently, as tends to happen, a day later when Facebook's denizens caught up with the rest of the Internet.

It is, of course, bollocks. This exchange took place, oh yes, but it was not between Piers "Cuntface" Morgan and Bradley Wiggins. No, instead, this is what happened:

 

You have doubtless noticed that the person who replied to Piers Morgan was not, in fact, Bradley Wiggins, and was instead one Colm Quinn, who just happened to mention Wiggins in his tweet, which is where the misunderstanding came from — probably from someone who doesn't quite understand how Twitter works. (Ending the message with "@bradwiggins" could look like a "signature" to someone not familiar with the way a typical Tweet is structured.)

As usual, however, the fact that "BRADLEY WIGGINS GAVE PIERCE MOREGAN AN AWESUM COMEBAK" makes a better story than "SOME DUDE YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF GAVE PIERS MORGAN AN AWESOME COMEBACK" struck, and it struck hard. The (inaccurate) story spread like wildfire, of course, with no-one bothering to actually check Wiggins' timeline to see if he actually said the things that were attributed to him. And it spread. And spread. And spread.

Over time, some people got wise to the truth of the matter and pointed this fact out. But more and more people continued to post the inaccurate details — and then it spread to Facebook, and the whole thing started all over again, with both sides getting increasingly frustrated with one another.

I know it's a seemingly silly little thing to get riled about, but like I say, consider the potential implications if the "fact" that started spreading was something that could actually put someone in danger, or ruin a person's reputation. When the entire social Web starts acting like Daily Mail reporters by just blindly reposting things without even bothering to see if they're true or not, we have the potential for a real mess. Just look at the reactions of Facebook-bound idiots who don't know what The Onion is for a preview of what might be.

Fact-checking isn't just for journalists. Of course, there are plenty of journalists out there who seem to think it doesn't apply to them, either, but that's another matter entirely. It takes a matter of seconds to check something like a Tweet is the genuine article. You should be immediately skeptical of anything posted as a screen grab of a bit of plain text that looks like it was written in WordPad, or anything described by someone as SO AWESOME/FUNNY/HILARIOUS/LMAOOOOOOO etc. And, most importantly, if something sounds like it was too awesome to be true, it probably was.

Respect to Mr Colm Quinn for his excellent admonishment of Piers Morgan's twattish behaviour. Disrespect to all of you out there (you know who you are) who fall for this crap every time, whether it's "OMG TODAY WAS THE DAY MARTY MCFLY WENT TO IN BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II!" (for the last time, it is October 21, 2015) or "OMG! PIERS MORGAN GOT BURRRRRRRRNED BY BRADLEY WIGGINS".

Simple routine: before you retweet or share something, stop, check, then check again. It's not that hard.

 

#oneaday Day 932: Take Control

I'm generally a pretty disciplined sort of person. I'm good at prioritising, and if I have something that I have to do I'll make sure that I complete it before I do things that I want to do.

It's when it comes to prioritising the things that I want to do that things go a bit pear-shaped.

It's easy to stumble through your days as normal and just let things happen. But if you do that it's easy to fall into routines and patterns and then wonder where the minutes, hours, days go. Those things that you want to do sometimes get forgotten amid your default activities, your comfort zone, the things that you do without thinking.

In order to fit in all the things that you want to do, sometimes you have to take drastic steps. Steps like scheduling your time.

This approach doesn't work for everyone. Some people are terrible at sticking to schedules, others simply don't like the lack of flexibility. But I've discovered (and rediscovered) several times over the years that I actually seem to work better and be rather more efficient if I plan out my time carefully rather than simply taking things as they come. It's a hangover from quite enjoying the sense of "structure" from school and university (even if — ssshhhh… I didn't always show up to my university lectures and seminars) and it's something that I should really start doing more of in my daily life if I want to fit everything in. Because even with scheduling, it's sometimes tricky to squeeze all your desired activities in, and that's when you have to decide how to make compromises and sacrifices. Thankfully, with the things that I want to do at the moment, I haven't had to make too many of the latter.

The ironic thing about people not wanting to organise themselves these days is it's so easy to do so now thanks to technology. You can make your phone remind you to do things, set email-based nags to pop up in your inbox, create task lists that synchronise between devices, take snapshots of things and store them "in the cloud" (urgh) for future reference. You can even get social and be public about the things that you want to do, making use of your friends as a means of browbeating… sorry, "encouraging" you to actually get on and do stuff.

I use a few simple tools to sort myself out. Firstly and most simply is Google Calendar. I use this in favour of iCal on my Mac because it's easier to sync between devices, is stored online rather than tied to a single device and works with iCal and iOS anyway. Google Calendar is a decent tool with enough features for what I need to do — multiple colour-coded calendars, email reminders, the ability to invite people, time zone support — and it proves valuable when I have taken on lots of things and only have a limited time in which to do them. It was especially valuable this time last year when I was going to Gamescom in Germany and every developer and publisher in the world suddenly wanted a bit of my time. (Apart from EA. They ballsed up my appointment — their fault, not mine — and wouldn't let me in to their stupid high-security compound. Fuck them. I went to go and see Larian Studios instead, which was much more fun.)

Alongside Google Calendar, I've tried several other tools over the years. Evernote is pretty neat, for example. Epic Win was a cool idea that gamified your own productivity, but development seemed to stop quite a while back and it's still lacking a few features that many other task manager apps offer. Most recently, I've been playing with Springpad, which I like a lot, despite a few rough edges.

Springpad is quite a bit like Evernote, but with a few interesting twists. It's based around the concept of "notebooks", which are ways of grouping related content together. Within a notebook, you can create a wide variety of different notes, ranging from simple text notes to checklists (mini to-do lists, essentially) via tasks, recipes, books, product information (scannable via the RedLaser barcode-scanning interface on the mobile apps) and all manner of other stuff. A webclipper bookmark allows you to easily clip things into your notebooks, and the interface generally does a pretty good job of figuring out what kind of content you're trying to store — I tried it with a recipe from BBC Good Food earlier and it successfully recognised it as a recipe, though failed to import the ingredients list correctly.

Springpad also features a "social" component which allows its users to make its notebooks public, too. While I'm not entirely sure that this has been particularly well thought out, it does provide an interesting alternative use for the service, effectively turning it into a kind of blogging platform. Notes can be used as entries, the more specific types of notes used to provide specific information, and the site's in-built commenting facility allows users to build up a community. It's a neat idea. I'm not entirely sure how useful it is, of course, but it's a nice idea.

So anyway. Armed with these simple (and free) tools, I'm attempting to organise myself a bit better. After two days, I've already managed to do a bit more than I would have done otherwise, which is pleasing. I shall continue with this system for a little while and see if it's something that I want to make stick. It will be an interesting experiment if nothing else, and it might actually spur me on to get some things done that I've been meaning to get done for a while.

Further updates on exactly what when I have something to share.

#oneaday Day 930: Conditional Philanthropy

I will never understand people — particularly famous types — who are deliberately obnoxious, and who clearly get off on negative attention, conflict and repeatedly proving what an arse they are.

There are a number of people I can think of who fit into this particular category, but the one who springs most readily and frequently to mind is Piers Morgan, erstwhile editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror and presently dripping his own peculiar brand of slime over American television sets thanks to CNN.

Piers Morgan's crimes against common decency are too many to enumerate, but his recent behaviour regarding the Olympics has drawn the ire of a number of people.

For those unaware of what he has been up to, it started here:

And continued:

And continued…

AND CONTINUED…

Morgan, it is fair to say, had something of a bee in his bonnet over the fact that some members of the British Olympic team didn't sing God Save The Queen after winning a medal. He appeared to think that this was incredibly important, and that it was worth putting down their impressive, world-beating sporting achievements for.

Then came the bribery and guilt-tripping:

Generous, non? Well, it could be argued as such, yes — he has no obligation to donate anything to Great Ormond Street children's hospital, after all — but dig a little deeper and this whole thing just becomes a bit sleazy, really. By not donating a proportion of his undoubtedly vast wealth to Great Ormond Street simply because of an athlete not singing the anthem — not taking into account the fact that winning an Olympic event is probably a pretty emotional moment for any sportsperson — Morgan is implying several things: firstly, that his apparent philanthropy is, in fact, conditional, and secondly, that athletes who do not sing the national anthem after winning a Gold medal are somehow child-haters.

The gloating didn't help.

Neither did the inconsistency:

Or the abuse:

Basically, there was just something incredibly distasteful about the whole thing. Morgan was clearly just trolling for responses, and he got them by the bucketload — and yes, I'm aware I'm part of the problem here. We don't even have any guarantee that Morgan is actually going to cough up the £15,000 he currently "owes" Great Ormond Street.

He probably will, of course, because he then gets to look like the hero who donated £15,000 to a children's hospital — and also gets to rub how much money he has in the peanut gallery's faces, of course — but I can't help thinking that it is for entirely the wrong reasons. If he feels that strongly about supporting Great Ormond Street, he should just donate the money, not hold his contributions to ransom based on something completely unrelated — something that could potentially make the non-singing athletes look like child-hating dicks in the hands of an unscrupulous (read: Daily Mail) reporter.

Morgan's not making a point here. He's simply waving his willy around in an attempt to make us all feel bad in one way or another. Don't sing the anthem? You're unpatriotic. Don't have as much money as him? HAHAHA YOU'RE POOR. Criticise Morgan's true motivations for this little exercise? YOU HATE SICK KIDS AND ARE A PIG-IGNORANT VACUOUS LITTLE TROLL.

There are several things that remain a mystery out of this whole thing. 1) Why is Piers Morgan still relevant? 2) Why are there people standing up for him? 3) Why does he have to be so fucking infuriating and get off on all this "controversy" he's stirring up? He's like that school bully who would just shrug off any insults you threw at him then punch you in the face and still, somehow, end up being the most popular kid in the school despite being the very worst kind of odious cretin imaginable.

Fortunately, this being the age of social media, at least one good thing has come out of this whole debacle: this JustGiving page aiming to make up the difference in donations that Morgan has refused to give due to athletes not singing God Save The Queen. It's a lofty goal, but if the world can harness its hate for Piers Morgan to raise £14,000 for sick kids… well, admittedly that's not the best reason in the world to give money to charity, but it's sure better than holding the donations from your own incredibly deep pockets to ransom.

#oneaday Day 928: Begun, The Clone Wars Have

EA has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Zynga. The reason? The uncanny resemblance between Zynga's latest "invest-and-express" game (their term, not mine) The Ville and The Sims Social. I won't cover the case in detail because my friend and colleague Mr Mike Thompson has already done a fine job of doing so over at Inside Social Games.

Despite the clash between EA and Zynga looking to many like Darth Vader fighting Sephiroth (I know that would actually be awesome, but it's more the "evil" thing I'm going for) I'm actually sort of glad that this is going ahead, even if EA is actually on shaky ground due to, as Zynga's general counsel Reggie Davis noted, the uncanny resemblance between EA's own SimCity Social and Zynga's CityVille.

But then Zynga doesn't exactly have the best track record. FarmVille, one of the company's biggest hits, was accused of being a clone of Slashkey's Farm Town on its original release. Its iOS title Dream Heights was rather publicly called out by Tiny Tower developer Nimblebit for being a ripoff. CityVille's roots can be traced back to a number of similar titles. And… you get the picture. Zynga is good at one thing: marketing. They are not good at thinking up original ideas, as we've seen a number of times previously.

Zynga is by no means the only one to blame in this situation, however. It is a widespread problem that is simply brushed under the carpet by developers, publishers, press and public alike. Clones are taking over the market and oversaturating it. At some point, we are going to reach critical mass, and there's the potential for a real mess when that happens.

I review mobile and social games every week. In any one week I can guarantee that I will come across at least one of each of the following:

  • An isometric-perspective citybuilding game where you have to complete quests and construct buildings to increase your population cap. More effective buildings either cost real money or require you to bug your friends for "materials" before you can construct them. Usually involves farming.
  • An isometric-perspective ranching game where you have to complete quests and construct buildings to allow you to expand your territory in several directions by clearing mist/chopping down forest/"exploring". Usually involves farming.
  • An isometric-perspective farming game where you have to complete quests and construct buildings to allow you the ability to plant and harvest better crops. Almost definitely involves farming.
  • An isometric-perspective pet/monster care game where you have to complete quests and construct buildings in order to attract various different pets/monsters, which you can then care for and/or sell by clicking repeatedly on them. Usually involves farming.
  • A slot machine simulator where you can pay real money in order to win virtual money which cannot be used for anything except playing that particular slot machine simulator. Does not usually involve farming.
  • A "match-3" puzzle game in which you create horizontal or vertical lines of three or more like-coloured gems (always gems) in order to make them disappear and score as many points as possible in 60 seconds. Rarely involves farming.
  • A "match-3" puzzle game in which you create horizontal or vertical lines of three or more like-coloured gems (always gems) in order to make them disappear and complete a linear series of levels. Almost never involves farming.
  • A "match-3" puzzle game in which you create horizontal or vertical lines of three or more like-coloured gems (always gems) in order to make them disappear and either score as many points as possible in 60 seconds or complete a linear series of levels. (Yes, some games feature both modes!) Does not generally involve farming.
  • A "match-3" puzzle game in which you click on groups of three or more contiguous like-coloured gems to make them disappear and score as many points as possible in 60 seconds. Usually free of farming.
  • A "match-3" puzzle game in which you click on groups of three or more contiguous like-coloured gems to make them disappear and complete a linear series of levels. Generally lacks a farming component.
  • A "match-3" puzzle game in which you click on groups of three or more contiguous like-coloured gems to make them disappear and either score as many points as possible in 60 seconds or complete a linear series of levels. (Yes, some games of this type also feature both modes.) Usually lacking in the farming department.
  • A "bubble shooter" puzzle game in which you fire coloured bubbles from the base of the screen in an attempt to attach groups of three or more like-coloured bubbles together and make them disappear in order to score as many points as possible in 60 seconds. Generally farming-free.
  • A "bubble shooter" puzzle game in which you fire coloured bubbles from the base of the screen in an attempt to attach groups of three or more like-coloured bubbles together and make them disappear in order to complete a linear series of levels. No farming here, no sir.
  • A "bubble shooter" puzzle game in which you fire coloured bubbles from the base of the screen in an attempt to attach groups of three or more like-coloured bubbles together and make them disappear in order to either score as many points as possible in 60 seconds or complete a linear series of levels. (You're getting the picture now, huh?) Farming? Nope.
  • A hidden object game where your uncle has gone missing in time and/or space and the only way to save him is to build a mansion and then repeatedly search the same rooms over and over for a selection of arbitrarily-discarded bric-a-brac which, for some reason, you need to find as quickly as possible.
  • A hidden object game where your uncle has gone missing in time and/or space and the only way to save him is to repeatedly search the same rooms over and over for a selection of arbitrarily-discarded bric-a-brac which, for some reason, you need to find as quickly as possible — but hey, you don't need to build a mansion.
  • A hidden object game in which your uncle has not gone missing in time and/or space, but in which your mansion has become invaded by ghosts and the only way to get rid of them is to build a mansion (again, presumably) and then repeatedly search the same rooms over and over for a selection of arbitrarily-discarded bric-a-brac which, for some reason, you need to find as quickly as possible.

Of course, you can probably boil most of gaming down to a selection of basic formulae like this, but for some reason the issue of cloning is always particularly apparent in the social and mobile gaming space. Perhaps because the developers of these titles generally make no attempt to hide the fact that they're simply cribbing from the unwritten template. (Currency, energy and experience meters go at the top. The Shop button goes at the bottom right. You must start your game with a non-skippable tutorial that treats the player like a complete idiot. You must present map screens from an isometric perspective. GOD HELP YOU if you go top-down or — heaven forbid — 3D.)

In mainstream gaming, the closest we get to a "cloning" problem is the number of similar first-person shooters we have on the market, but in this case, these titles do enough to distinguish themselves from one another with their aesthetic, narrative, gameplay modes and general "feel" to make them unique from one another. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 may both be brown-coloured manshoots, for example, but play them both and it's clear that there are marked differences between the two of them, because they're different games that just happen to be in the same genre, not clones.

Play something like CityVille then SimCity Social, however — or indeed The Ville then The Sims Social — and you'll be hard pushed to tell them apart.

This is not a positive direction for one of the most exciting, creative industries in the world to be moving. There's a huge amount of potential in both the social and mobile gaming markets, and only a few developers tap into this. Most, sadly, choose to take the path of least resistance and make one of the games on the list above.

Come on, folks, we're better than this. Stop trying to tell me that your isometric-perspective FarmVille clone is somehow "innovative" and make something that actually is innovative.