#oneaday, Day 233: Keep On Movin’

I hate moving house. I really hate moving house. And yet it’s one of those things that becomes necessary at least several times during your life. Still, I feel like I have done it more than many people, largely due to the fact I moved pretty much every year since starting university, until I ended up in this current place, which I actually lasted about two years in.

I didn’t move every year through choice in most cases. Most of the time there were extenuating circumstances which caused the move. I moved after my first year at university because I wanted to live in a house, not a hall of residence. I moved after my second year because the flat I was in was a shithole and the cheeky bastard landlord put the rent, which was already expensive, up. I moved after my third year because my housemate was leaving town because she’d finished university and I was staying on to do my teacher training. I moved after my fourth year because I was no longer a student. I moved after that year because the beautiful, lovely flat I was living in was reclaimed by its landlord for her daughter. I moved after the next year because my housemate was, again, moving and also the house we were in had damp, mould and smelled slightly of gas. I moved after the next year because I was in Aldershot and was hunting down a job back in Southampton. Also, Aldershot is a shithole. I moved after the next year because the flat I was staying in had damp and mould. Again. And the circumstances under which I am leaving this particular place have already been well documented elsewhere on this blog.

So I’m pretty tired of it. There are a bunch of things that always, always cause stress to do with moving. First of all is never having enough boxes, and ending up having to spend more on boxes than on anything else you’ve ever spent money on ever. I remember when I was younger, our local supermarket used to have a little “pen” near its cash tills with hundreds of discarded boxes that you could just take for yourself. I haven’t seen a supermarket do this for ages. It’s probably some sort of Health and Safety Hazard. What if someone gets trapped inside a box? What if it’s used to carry a bomb? What if Solid Snake is around?

So boxes have to be acquired via alternative means, be it hassling friends for them, finding them discarded in disgusting places or actually purchasing them for vast expense from packaging stores. I went for the latter option largely for convenience more than anything else, and at least it means I’ve got some decent-quality, new boxes that (hopefully) won’t fall apart when I’m lifting the bastards into a van later.

Then of course there’s the packing process itself. Bundle things into a box, seal it up and then suddenly, inevitably, something catches your eye. Something which should be in that box you just sealed up. Something which could easily fit in that box you just sealed up. But it’s not in the box. It’s sitting there on the side, mocking you quietly. So you swear profusely, bundle the thing into another box, consider writing the fact that you’ve bundled said thing into the “wrong” box onto the side of its new home, figure that nah, you’ll remember where you put it, pack it in there and then six months later when you still haven’t unpacked half your boxes and realise you really need that thing that you put in the wrong box, you discover that you can’t, in fact, remember where you put said thing because you didn’t write it on the box.

As part of the packing process, you also reach the inevitable “small bits” stage. No, this is not a euphemism. This is a reference to the stage in the packing where you’ve pretty much cleared all your bookcases and cupboards and all that is left are hundreds, thousands, of small little bits and pieces, none of which can be justifiably assigned a complete box. So you end up with at least one box marked “JUNK” which contains miscellaneous paraphernalia of such diversity that should you ever dare dip your hand into it, you’ll come out with something completely different and unrelated every time. And inevitably, there’s too much “JUNK” for one box, making you think you should have perhaps organised it a bit better, but it’s too late now.

Then you have to move said boxes and furniture into a van. That’s today’s job. And the van will be arriving shortly. So I’d probably better get on with it.

#oneaday, Day 225: This Post is Controversial

Want to get your voice heard on the Internet? Then you’d better have something contentious to say, or at the very least something to say about something contentious.

I’ve seen it myself on this blog. The day I wrote about Kevin Smith’s experiences with Southwest Airlines (day 28, if you’re keeping score) was one of the highest-traffic days that I’ve ever seen. Granted, this being a personal blog which not that many people know about, that still wasn’t very many people. But it was enough to make a noticeable spike on that handy little pageviews graph that WordPress helpfully provides you with.

And today. I happened to tweet earlier that Xbox LIVE’s prices were going up by $10 a year. Thinking nothing of it at the time, I returned about an hour later to discover that this tweet, out of the other 16,740 that there are (I know, I know) was retweeted by something in the region of three billion people. All right, that’s an exaggeration. But you get my point.

And then, an article published by a colleague over on Kombo has seen one of our highest ever “temperature” ratings on gaming news aggregator N4G. The subject of the article? “Top Ten Most Overrated Games”. Compare this to an article I wrote on the subject of women in the games industry, which attracted ill-informed, stupid comments from people who obviously had read nothing more than the title, and you’ll see that at times, the Internet is not the place for reasoned discourse. Incidentally, this isn’t a slight against Lucas’ great article, which actually makes some fair points.

A friend and colleague described services such as Digg and N4G as “places where lazy people go to yell at each other over stories they didn’t read concerning topics they don’t understand”. It’s sad, but it’s true. It’s also an awesome quote. Thank you, Brad.

So it seems that in order to get people interested and reading what you have to say, it either has to be a contentious opinion, or an opinion on a contentious topic. It’s possibly a side-effect of the celebrity culture I discussed the other day, where apparently our own lives aren’t interesting enough and therefore we must go look for scandal, opportunities to accuse “the system” of screwing us and chances to argue and flame at every opportunity. Are our own lives really that boring, though? Do people really have that little to say about themselves? Should I turn this into a blog about what the latest celebrity idiots have been getting up to recently?

No. Because if everyone goes about doing that, it just makes the situation worse. I’m writing here for me. I write about what I want to write about, when I want to write about it… so long as it’s still one thing a day. The fact that other people read and enjoy it is a happy bonus. And it gives me some faith that the Internet isn’t solely populated by dribbling spastics.

Just mostly.

#oneaday, Day 217: “Book? LOL!”

I forget the exact circumstances of when I came across the quote in this post’s title. It may have been on some form of social networking website, or dating site, or something like that. But it was a good few years back now.

The context of the quote was in one of those sections you get on pretty much all online profiles that asks you to list your favourite music, films, TV shows and books. This person’s favourite books were listed as “book? lol”.

That struck me as rather sad, but perhaps a little unsurprising given the general attention span of most people these days. Why sit down with a book which delays gratification and requires active use of the brain when you can be immediately bombarded with information via TV and the Internet?

It’s an age-old argument of course, and one which has probably been running ever since every new information-giving technology came along. However, it seems particularly ironic in the context of the Internet, given that much of it is, in fact, text. Sure, there are pretty pictures and buttons that fart when you click on them and pornography, but it’s still fundamentally built on text. You’re reading text right now. Is your head hurting yet?

The fact that everyone has a voice on the Internet is one of those things that is debatable as to whether it is a Good Thing or not. But as part of having that voice, everyone has the opportunity to give their thoughts and expand on them as much as they want to. The sad thing is, though, in many cases, people don’t feel like they have the time to read (or write) a full, well-considered argument. Instead, they denounce it as a “wall of text” and choose not to read it.

It happens in video games, too. A friend of mine once said that he couldn’t get through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney because there was “too much reading”. It’s a game about a lawyer. I’m not sure what else he was expecting.

As a writer, as someone who crafts language and bends it to my will in the name of pretentiousness, self-expression, catharsis and humour, this is sad. The English language is a powerful tool that can say many things. As, indeed, are other languages. But it seems that for many these days, the priority is for quick, snappy, “efficient” communication. And sure, there are situations in which this is entirely appropriate. But I say that shouldn’t be the norm. People shouldn’t be afraid to speak their mind in as much length as they wish.

My mind is particularly drawn to the early days of the Squadron of Shame. Long before we started producing our podcast, we ran lengthy discussion threads on a variety of games on 1up.com’s Radio forum. We’d started as a result of one of the 1up Radio features, so that was our spiritual home. Many of the people who populated that forum were articulate sorts who agreed with my thoughts above, so there were plenty of like-minded individuals there who enjoyed taking part in our discussions and posting their own “walls of text”.

But one day, the Powers That Be at 1up decided that it would be a great idea to merge all the forums into “Games” and “Not Games”. This meant that lengthy, in-depth discussion threads from groups such as the Squadron were crammed into the same space as “OMG HALO IS BETTR THAN KILZONE”. Naturally, this led to problems. In one of the last discussions we had on those boards—on the subject of the peculiar PS2 game Psi-Ops—the posting was almost immediately derailed by a particularly notorious troll who posted “OMG FUCKING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT” in giant red letters. Said “wall of text” was maybe six or seven paragraphs long and was interesting to read, but as soon as troll boy showed his face, the discussion went off track, not helped by many people (including myself) rising to his bait.

It’s a pity that to some people the desire to speak in detail, at length and to produce a coherent argument is seen as a negative thing. Personally I would have thought that a forum—by its very nature an asynchronous method of communication in which people can take their time to consider their responses—was the ideal environment in which to have these lengthy discussions. But apparently not.

This is perhaps an unnecessarily negative picture, of course. There are still people who read books. There are still people who like to post more than five words at a time. There are still people who don’t decide to ignore all the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar “just because it’s the Internet”—who came up with that stupid idea, anyway? It’s just a pity that, at times, they seem to be declining in number.

Oh well. If you read through all that, you can count yourself amongst the élite!

#oneaday, Day 216: I Wish The X Was Ex

So I believe the new series of The X-Factor kicked off tonight. I’m saying this purely based on a few comments on Twitter that I happened to witness earlier on, and not by having watched it at all. The reason I don’t watch it? The X-Factor incites the kind of burning rage and despair at society that is matched only by how I feel during major football tournaments. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t watch TV at all. Not The X-Factor specifically. But shows like it. And by God there are a lot of them.

And they’re always the same. It’s all very well saying that it’s Just Entertainment, and that other forms of entertainment are just as guilty of the offences that The X-Factor commits.

But no. The X-Factor is pretty much identical every year, bar a couple of minor alterations to the format and the inevitable fake “controversy” over who is going to be a judge.

We start with the auditions. Everyone who watches the show uses the auditions section as the main reason to convince people who don’t watch the show to watch the show. “It’s funny!” they’ll say. “There are really shit people sometimes!”

If I want to watch shit people singing, I’ll go direct a school choir. I don’t need it on my television. And it’s not funny. It’s just embarrassing. Yes, these people did it to themselves by signing up for the show. But there’s no need for the “clever editing” (hah!) that goes into the show to focus on them quite so much. And what are we supposed to think? The show inevitably builds them up with one of its famous sob stories, then knocks them down flat when the judges decide to brand them “awful”. What are we, as viewers, supposed to take away from that? “Hah! Look! This person’s had an awful life! But they’re shit at singing and quite ugly, so let’s laugh at them and their misfortune! They’re going to die alone!”

Then, as I recall, there are “Boot Camp” sections, where the judges get to show us all how obnoxiously rich they are out as a result of the clone armies they’ve built over the years. This is ostensibly the “training” section, where the performers get to learn how to, well, perform better. Funny how we rarely see much in the way of training. Instead, we see when they fuck it up, because that’s Better Television.

After that we’re into the interminable, never-ending live shows. Every week, the remaining grinning idiots, who have had all semblance of personality sandblasted out of them by this point, come on stage, sing an incredibly twee and wet version of an existing song, listen to some “criticism” from the judges (which inevitably involves one or more of the key phrases “I liked it”, “I think you could be the next big thing”, “You’ve got the X-Factor”, “You… could win this show” or equivalents towards the negative end of the spectrum) which doesn’t actually offer any constructive advice at all, and then bugger off the stage either crying or going “YES!”

During the live shows, the black woman with the incredibly powerful voice will inevitably almost get to the final and then not quite make it. The “novelty act” which everyone thinks is Really Funny will be kept in for an inexplicably long time, despite being a one-joke act who don’t actually have any talent whatsoever. During the final, the performer who is the better singer will be kicked out in favour of the performer who is more generic and boring. And during the final, the “Winner’s Single” will be revealed to be a dirge-like ballad that makes everyone who listens to it want to kill themselves.

After the show has finished, the Winner’s Single will be released, it will sell like the proverbial hot cakes for a few weeks then disappear without trace for at least six months, after which time the winner will then release their “Stunning Debut Album!” by which time the whole world has forgotten who they are, at least it would have had they not been in the tabloids and on Sky News every five minutes every time they pick their bum or scratch their nose. As a result of this, the obsessive fans become like the people I talked about yesterday, and the people who don’t watch the show and have no time for manufactured pop nonsense are about ready to commit an act of terrorism.

So there you go. I’ve saved you having to watch it at all this year. The X-Factor can fuck off and burn in a fire.

#oneaday, Day 215: Who?

Front page of ever-reliable rag The Sun today bore a story about David and Victoria Beckham sacking fourteen members of their staff. That’s a whole third of their staff! Disasteriffic! How terrible! How awful! How nightmarish! It must be so tough for them!

Bollocks, of course, and certainly not front-page newsworthy. The thing that comes to mind any time I hear any kind of celebrity gossip is one of those awkward conversations you have with your parents where they tell you all about someone whose name you’ve never heard before but you’re apparently supposed to know everything about, including their medical history, any past indiscretions, marital status and whether or not they or anyone close to them has died recently.

It’s easy to do, of course. We all do it. We all talk about our friends to other people as if they know them. Because we know them, we refer to them with a comfortable familiarity. It sometimes doesn’t cross our mind that certain people in one group of friends might not know who “Jeff” or “Calin” from another group of friends are.

But with celebrity, it’s a different matter. People who are into that sort of thing talk about celebrities as if they are their friends. They excitedly talk about their idols on a first-name basis, assuming you know who on earth they’re blathering on about. Worse, sometimes they use nicknames dreamed up by tabloids that make it even more difficult to work out who it is they’re on about. If they’re involved in football, it’ll probably be the first syllable of their surname followed by either “-o” or “-s”. Sometimes, it’s a reference to pop culture long forgotten, or never known about at all by some people. Does Victoria Beckham still get called “Posh”? I bet she does by someone out there.

I still find it difficult to understand the fascination with the minutiae of these people’s lives, though. Fair enough if you want to follow the career of someone who is interesting, or does something that you find particularly stimulating. But these people are not, in most cases, close personal friends. How is the fact that poor old Posh ‘n’ Becks are having to sack a whole third of their staff to “save money” newsworthy? What are we supposed to get out of that story? Envy? Because that’s a Deadly Sin, I believe. Are we supposed to feel compassion or empathy for them? Because the vast majority of us don’t have one person to sack, let alone fourteen. Let alone fourteen people being only a third of our “staff”.

David Beckham doing something exciting and footbally. That might be newsworthy. On the sports pages, not the front page. Victoria Beckham doing something exciting and pop-starry. That, too, might be newsworthy. On the entertainment pages, not the front page.

Also in the news today: A man saved his daughter from a bear pit. That’s pretty heroic. Why isn’t that on the front page of The Sun? Because people are more interested in the life and times of poor little rich kids.

#oneaday, Day 196: Things The World Needs Significantly Less Of

The world is full of “stuff”. Some of it is good. Examples of good stuff include trifle, Spotify, refrigerators, kung po chicken, those marker pens that smell of fruit, pianos (so long as they are in tune), friends, hot chocolate with whipped cream, people who are nice, digital cameras, the Squadron of Shame, Civilization IV, headphones with comfortable earpieces, that Original Mint Source shower gel (so long as you don’t get it on your bellend or up your arse), lamb tikka dhansak, Twitter, gin and tonic and, of course, the music from Space Channel 5.

But there are just as many—if not more—things that the world really doesn’t need any more of. In fact, some of these things I’d argue the world doesn’t really need at all. Because, in many cases, we got along just fine without them before they were invented.

Here is a selection of things the world could do with significantly less of.

1. Redundant information signs on motorways

“QUEUE CAUTION,” says the ungrammatical sign in bold, orange, backlit capital letters. Your car is not moving. Not because you stopped to read the sign. No, your car is stopped because it’s in a queue. You were aware of the fact your car was in a queue long before a sign informed you of this fact. As it happens, since the sign informing you that yes, you are in a queue appeared approximately two miles after the queue started, it feels somewhat like it’s mocking you. As such, you decide to shout at the sign.

The sign does not respond.

2. Suit jackets with fake pockets

Clothes either have pockets or they don’t. If you’re a girl and you like wearing pretty dresses, chances are you don’t have pockets very often. As such, you may well carry a handbag for the express purpose of carrying around your “stuff”. Said pretty dresses don’t tend to have pretend pockets for some unspecified purpose.

Gentlemen, on the other hand, are used to having pockets. The typical gentleman’s attire features pockets on the trousers at the very least, and jackets usually have pockets as well. So when a suit that looks like it has pockets but doesn’t comes along, that’s a sure-fire ticket to frustration city. Particularly when you try and put something in the jacket pocket instead of the trouser pocket because when you put things in your trouser pockets your trousers fall down because you forgot to bring a belt and you can’t put anything in the jacket pocket because it isn’t actually a pocket despite looking like one and ARRRGH HOLD THIS FOR A MINUTE WILL YOU?

3. People who talk about fashion as if it’s a science

Shut up. Just stop talking bollocks. People can wear whatever they want. Most people have a pretty good idea that wearing something in a fluorescent colour is probably going to make you stand out a bit, and wearing strappy shoes with big heels may well make you 1) fall over and 2) have hurty feet. When some jumped-up hussy comes on TV explaining to everyone that the particular shade of brown you see in front of you is the “perfect shade for summer” (despite it being purple last year, and yellow the year before) everyone should yell, as one, “FUCK OFF”.

Fashion is not a science. You know what is a science? Science.

4. The adjectival phrase “must-have”

If you took the term “must-have” at face value and immediately purchased everything described as such, you would be very poor indeed. “Must-have” items often tend to be expensive and/or pointless, and there is some crossover with the world of people who talk about fashion as if it’s a science.

No, that handbag is not a “must-have” item. It is something that someone rich who likes gaudy silver handbags might enjoy purchasing.

Genuinely “must-have” items for acceptable functioning in modern society include: water, underpants, trousers/skirts, shirts/blouses/t-shirts, shoes, a toilet (arguable, given the stench coming from some doorways in Southampton on a Friday night), soap, deodorant, food of some description.

5. Extremism

If you are a terrorist, you are quite possibly an extremist. You hold an extreme viewpoint, and in your case, you’re prepared to die for it.

But extremism isn’t just about terrorism. It’s also about the people who bring out the tired old “Britain is full!” line when talking about immigration. The people who believe that all Muslims are terrorists. The people who use the phrase “YOU’RE IN ENGLAND, SPEAK ENGLISH”. And on the other end of the spectrum, people who describe anyone with an opposing viewpoint to their own as a “Nazi”. People who go on a march for a cause which isn’t entirely clear to anyone except themselves. People who protest for the sake of protesting, rather than actually having something worthwhile to protest about.

All of you, just stop it. Shut up. You both sound ridiculous. And as for you, Captain Terrorist? Attention-seeking of the highest order. Grow up.

6. Companies whose purpose their own employees can’t explain

I’ve told this story a number of times before, but there was a time when I did some temping for a local “loss adjusting” company. On a side note, this was the only job I’ve had which literally bored me to tears on several occasions. And that’s not an exaggeration.

Anyway, the point is this: this company dealt with issues so boring that no-one else would ever want anything to do with them, let alone have a burning desire to enter that profession. But the sheer string of companies that charged exorbitant rates per hour that their “cases” went through was ridiculous. In one case relating to tree-related subsidence on a property adjacent to a Transport For London-owned railway, the clients made a claim to the insurance company, who contacted the loss adjusters, who sent in some engineers to look at the damage, who sent in some builders to give a quote for repairs who hired some solicitors to sue Transport for London for the costs and then hired some draftsmen to write up said costs who then hired some other solicitors to recover the costs from someone else who then… I fell asleep by this point.

Ask an employee of a company like this “what do you do?” and if they spend more than three seconds thinking or going “umm”, then that company doesn’t really need to exist.

7. Doorstep salesmen

“Hi! Would you like to…”

“No. Goodbye.”

*SLAM*

There are many, many more things the world could do with significantly less of. Evil people. Cheaters. Assholes. Murderers. Men who walk into shops with their shirts off. R&B singers. Jedward fans. Types of cigarette. Brands of bottled water. Rapists. People who flash their fullbeams at you when you’re in the right-hand lane going 90+ mph overtaking people on your left. Onions. County council employees. People who use the word “fuckin'” in spoken sentences the same way people use “lol” when writing. People who use “lol” as punctuation. Aniseed.

I could go on. But I won’t.

#oneaday, Day 185: Help Wanted

I’ve discussed this matter at great length before but goddammit it’s my blog and I’ll say whatever the hell I want to, assuming my Silent Hill-inspired dream/daydream/fiction/symbolism yesterday didn’t terrify you to your very core. So shut it!

Wait, you didn’t say anything. There was really no need to be rude and defensive. I’m sorry! Come back! Please?

Thanks. And I didn’t like the other people anyway. They think they’re all that. And a bag of chips. Whatever that means.

Right. I was going to say something, wasn’t I? Yes. Here it is.

I present to you a selection of what you’d get if job adverts were actually honest, based on some past experiences.

Drink Receptacle and Emesis Technician

Are you a talented, motivated self-starter? Well stop right there! This isn’t the job for you. You’ll be working in a busy environment that’s full of people who don’t want to give you the time of day unless you’re bringing them something they asked for. Yet your role will be considered essential to the smooth running of the establishment thanks to the fact that without glasses, no-one will be able to drink until they puke.

Key competencies for the role must include the ability to pick up a glass without dropping it, the ability to stack glasses without dropping them and the ability to operate an almost totally-automatic dishwasher. Must also not be averse to the idea of cleaning up sick with a mop.

Food Frying Specialist

Do you like food? Do you have ambitions of becoming a top chef in a fancy London restaurant? Well, everyone has to start somewhere! In this lively, exciting position you’ll be paired up with an actual chef who thinks you are complete scum and is more than happy to tell you so on a regular basis. You’ll be in charge of making starters for a busy pub. But don’t be afraid; pretty much every starter is created by deep-frying things! That’s right! Your love of boiling things in oil can finally be put to a practical use for the good of society. Doesn’t it feel great to know that?

The ideal candidate for this position will know that when things turn black they’ve been in for too long, will be able to produce a prawn cocktail using the very cheapest and worst possible ingredients and will also be aware that mixing tomato ketchup and mayonnaise is an adequate substitute when all the seafood sauce has run out. Must also not be averse to occasionally having their hat filled with apple sauce, gravy and/or jam.

Important Document Consultant

Do you know where the “Print” function in Microsoft Word is? Perhaps you even know what the shortcut key is! You’ll be in charge of receiving emails from other members of this busy office who are too lazy to print things for themselves. Your task will be justified under the name of “top copying”, which still means “print”, don’t worry. And don’t worry about proofreading; these people are professionals! Any mistakes they made are entirely intentional and are probably the fault of the audio typists anyway. Those bastards.

The perfect person for this position must have an exceedingly high boredom threshold and must not carry any sharp objects with which they might be able to slit their own wrists. They must also have a sense of self-esteem so low that they don’t mind doing something which clearly the person who wrote the document in the first place would be able to do. They must also not be easily susceptible to papercuts, eyestrain, backache, flatulence, dysentry, gangrene or AIDS.

Classroom Shouting Representative

Do you like children? You won’t once you’re finished with us! Have you long been frustrated that too much knowledge is imparted in classrooms? Then come and show us how it’s really done! We’ll put you into a classroom full of 9-year olds who act like they’re stroppy teenagers! We won’t tell you anything about the colourful backgrounds that their families have! We’ll let you get threatened by parents who believe that their way, not the way of polite society, is the way to go! Polite society is boring, anyway!

Key competencies for this role include low self-esteem, a low threshold for irritation, a loud shouting voice and the desire to not actually pass any knowledge on at all! Even if there are maybe one or two kids who obviously want to learn something! No. Working in a classroom is about bad behaviour!

#oneaday, Day 176: Real-World Spam

A while back, when I was feeling rather more positive and “I can do anything!” I was hoping to support myself through a combination of freelance writing, music teaching and computer tuition. As such, I set up some websites, I took out some adverts with Yell, Thomson and the like and waited for the customers to come rolling in.

No-one did. I got one pupil for some GCSE tuition and a couple of timewasters on the music front, and nothing at all on the computer tuition front.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I have got one thing out it all. MASSES AND MASSES OF FUCKING HARASSMENT FROM TWATS.

I had no idea that advertising one’s services on Yell would lead to such a bombardment of crap from people who obviously haven’t read your advert. Every single day, I get a ton of identical bullshit through my letterbox, all informing me that “recruiting a new salesman is difficult” and that I should clearly defer to their superior judgement. The bizarre thing is that all these “salesman finding specialists”, or whatever the hell they are, seem to have written the exact same letter. And none of them have considered the fact that someone offering “IT tuition” probably doesn’t need a salesman, because he probably isn’t selling anything.

It didn’t stop there, either. The phone calls! Jesus Christ, the phone calls. One woman from Yell phoned me regularly. The first time, I woke up to her phone call on the sofa the morning after my wife and I had split. Not recognising the number, not thinking particularly straight and hoping it might be something job-related, I answered it. I was immediately embroiled in one of those sales pitches that it’s impossible to escape from, or get a word in edgeways. I placated her with a promise that I’d “think about it”. Foolish. I should have just said “no”. Because “I’ll think about it” translated to “Please phone me! A lot!”. Funny thing about a five-year relationship coming to a sudden and unexpected end; you don’t think particularly straight immediately after it has happened. (Or months afterward, as it happens. At least if you’re me.)

Then there was “Nathan”. Nathan represented some local school who was nowhere near my potential “catchment area” for music pupils. He wanted me to pay him £200 for two years’ exposure in the school’s brochure. Said exposure would take the form of a tiny little advert that was, as I say, only visible to a select group of people who were nowhere near me. But Nathan wouldn’t take no for an answer. Nor would he give up after two weeks of me not answering the phone at all. I dialed “1571” to check my messages one day, and there were ten new ones, all from Nathan, all starting in the exact same way. Get the hint.

In some ways, the tenacity of these people is admirable. But it’s also extremely irritating. You can be a good marketer without pissing people off. These people failed miserably.

So the moral of this story is twofold. 1) Don’t advertise anything with “IT” in its title unless you want to be bombarded with mail from pricks who don’t read your ads. 2) Say “no” when you mean “no”.

#oneaday, Day 171: Cracking Down On Crackdown 2 Decracktors

Right, you. Yes, you. The one who’s been saying nasty things about Crackdown 2. Or should I say, all of you who’ve been saying nasty things about Crackdown 2. I’m going to say why I think you’re wrong. I respect your viewpoint, and I still love you, but you’re wrong. Actually, no, that’s harsh. You are, of course entitled to your own opinion. I just happen to disagree with most of the Internet, from the sound of things.

Here’s the deal. Crackdown 2 is an open-world game, but Ruffian themselves have said that they want to distinguish the game’s play style from games such as Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed 2 and the like. And it’s true. RDR, AC2 and numerous others purport to be open-world games but actually end up having a rather tight, linear mission structure when it comes down to it. This isn’t a bad thing; as everyone knows, linear games are more inclined to have stronger stories since it’s a lot easier to script something when you know your player isn’t going to run off somewhere completely random.

Crackdown 2 takes the complete opposite approach. Yes, there is a flimsy justification for the Agents’ presence in the city. But it’s not intended to be the primary purpose of the game. The primary purpose of the game is nothing more than having fun. Producer James Cope described the experience as being like “playtime at school, running around and shouting BRILLIANT!”—and if you approach the game in this manner, then yes, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

On top of this, there’s the fact that it is a true example of an open-world game. The whole world is open from the outset. Agents can go anywhere and tackle objectives in any order. Sure, some places will be harder to access without appropriate levelling-up. But it is indeed possible to run off in any direction at the opening of the game and tackle things in any order desired. This is a good thing, particularly for a game built with co-op fun in mind. There’s nothing worse than being stuck with co-op buddies and having to sit through cutscenes and lengthy conversations. When you’re playing with other people, you want to be able to jump straight in. And in Crackdown 2 you can do that.

Then there’s the criticism about the missions all being the same. Sure, the objectives are the same thing over and over again: activate three absorption units, defend a beacon, lather, rinse, repeat. But this means that anyone can jump into anyone else’s game and not feel “left behind” or unclear about what they are supposed to do. What people complaining about this also don’t mention is the fact that part of the challenge that is different each time is navigating the way to the beacon itself. It’s normally hidden underground behind a selection of obstacles which require negotiating. Sometimes working out the best route is an environmental quasi-puzzle in itself.

And then the defense event which occurs while you wait for the beacon to detonate has a considerable amount of variation in the enemies which approach. Sometimes there’ll be swarms of close-combat enemies. Sometimes there’ll be a few ranged enemies. Sometimes there are massive enemies who take one hell of a beating. There’s variety there. Sure, you’re still defending a point against a swarm of enemies. But people do that all the time in Team Fortress 2, Gears of War and Halo and don’t complain. So what’s the problem here? Let’s leave aside the fact that there are also races to complete on foot and in cars, Freak Breaches to close, orbs to collect, audio logs to find and, if you don’t feel like doing any of those things, a limitless swarm of enemies on which to take out your aggression. There are also a wide selection of creative and fun Achievements to attempt and, let’s not forget, a huge and detailed city to explore.

Now, onto the graphics. The one thing that is rapidly starting to grate about this generation of games consoles is the level of obsessiveness over the superficial aspects of games’ presentation it has produced. It used to be that people could appreciate a game even if it had graphics that didn’t look as “good” (and that’s such a subjective term anyway) as titles perceived as “benchmarks”. Now, it seems, if a game doesn’t look as good as Assassin’s Creed 2, it looks “crap”. Crackdown 2 has a distinctive, clean visual style that is light on the detail but heavy on the draw distance. Yes, there are times when the frame rate drops a bit. But it does the important job for an open-world game set in a high-rise city; it has a sense of scale. Crackdown and its sequel are two of the only games I’ve ever played where I’ve felt vertigo—proof if proof were needed that the game is doing its job very ably in representing the size of the city and the Agents’ seeming insignificance within it.

I think the thing that I’m objecting to most, though, is the assertion that the game is “bad”. People are saying that they “hate” the game, that it’s a “failure”, that it “sucks”. But it does what it was supposed to do, which is provide a solid, co-op friendly, bubblegum-pop experience that is fun. Nothing more than that. It’s not trying to be high art. It’s not trying to have a great narrative. It’s not even trying to be hugely different from its predecessor; it’s simply trying to do “the same, but more so”. That does not make it a bad game. Remember Doom II? That was pretty good, right? But do you remember the fact that it only added one new weapon and a handful of new enemies? And yet people still liked it. How about the bajillion military first-person shooters out there? There’s not a lot to distinguish them from each other in many cases. And yet people still play them in their millions without complaint. What about racing games? Arguably the biggest innovators in that genre recently were Split/Second and Blur, both of which suffered very disappointing sales figures. Many gamers prefer the comfortable familiarity of Forza 3 and equivalents, which still follow the same gameplay model that Gran Turismo set thirteen years ago. Yes, thirteen years.

The fact is, despite what I said in the introduction, I’m not saying that people who don’t like Crackdown 2 are wrong. Quite the contrary, in fact. The game is not something which will appeal to everyone; what game is? The thing which has disappointed me about the critical reception to the game is the fact that the subjective “I don’t like this” has become perceived as an objective “This is bad”. The two statements are very different.

The only real way to be sure, of course, is to try the game for yourself. Take it in the spirit in which it is intended; it’s not Dragon Age, it’s not Red Dead Redemption, it’s not Oblivion. It’s Crackdown. It is its own thing. It wants to provide a shallow, entertaining experience that isn’t intended to be taken the slightest bit seriously. And in that respect, it succeeds admirably. It’s not an experience which will appeal to everyone. But that doesn’t mean it should be branded as a bad game. It should be accepted on its own merits. I’d even argue that it shouldn’t be compared to its predecessor.

So if you’re one of the people who has read one of these reviews and thought “Oh… that’s a shame”, because you actually quite liked the idea of a city-sized playground in which to jump around and have fun? I’d encourage you to give it a chance. It’s a vapid whore that just wants your love, and it doesn’t mind if you cheat on it with cleverer games.

So go on. Call her. You know you want to really.

#oneaday, Day 165: I’ll Job You In A Minute

The astute amongst you will have noticed from the frequency of my tweeting, Facebook updating and the fact I had time to draw several cack-handed Paintbrush portraits of a few friends today that I still am not in possession of gainful employment. The supply teaching seems to have dried up, too—and yes, I am chasing them up before anyone even thinks about nagging me about it—so there’s not a lot to do each day except do the rounds on the Internet desperately trying to see if there are any jobs worth doing.

Job hunting, as I’ve said before, is a distressing, depressing experience. Jump onto a jobseekers’ website and you’re confronted with the possibility of “OMG THOUSANDZ OF JOBZ 2 CHOOSE FROM!!” and only then do you realise you have absolutely no idea what sector you’re qualified to work in. A huge list of job types appear in front of you, and not one of them seems to quite fit with what you want to do. Am I interested in “Printing and Publishing”? Or “Media”? Or “New Media”? Or “Web Content”? Or “Information Technology”? God knows.

So you tick all the boxes. Then you get told you’re only allowed to tick three at a time. So you pick the three that you think are most relevant and tell it to search. It soon becomes apparent why you’re only allowed to tick three boxes. That’s because ticking just three boxes gives you roughly thirty-two thousand listings to look through, the vast majority of which are miscategorised. That’s not a word, according to the spellchecker, but I’m officially coining it here and now.

I digress. The fact is that there’s a ton of jobs listed that have nothing to do with the categories they’re listed in. How is an “IT Sales Executive” anything to do with the “Travel and Tourism” sector? Answer: it’s not. Bored or underhanded recruiters simply inserted the job listing into EVERY category to ensure it gets seen, thereby making the whole category selection process in the search procedure utterly meaningless.

“Use the keyword search!” you may say. But the truth is, I have no idea what keywords to search for. I look for “writer” and all manner of unrelated nonsense comes up. I look for “journalist” and all the PR jobs which say “this post is not suitable for a journalist” come up. I look for “KILL ME NOW” and a job in Asda comes up. I may have made that last one up.

It occurred to me today that a lot of the work I’ve done recently—paid and otherwise—has come about via social networking. My current regular gig writing news for Kombo came about through a friend who worked on the side – the fine and hairy Mr Jeff Grubb – and my past work on promotional materials for Good Old Games also came about via responses to tweets.

Are we getting to the stage where the traditional job advertisement is becoming meaningless? It’s entirely possible. They’re already filled with nonsensical jargon that is presumably designed to sort out the people who can do the job from the people who can’t. But in these days of easy connections between people online, that personal connection is much more important, it seems.

So with that in mind, you have over 165 days of material with which you can get to know me pretty well. Who wants to hire me?

No? All right. Here’s a video of a cat.