Not many people (it seems) knew much about the original Aliens Versus Predator games. It seems it was a market restricted to 14-year old boys whose fathers had allowed them to stay up late and watch the films and soon Alien and Predator figurines adorned every spare surface in the childs room, while the boy sat up playing the game, nearly foaming at the mouth with the sheer excitement of being chased by a hives worth of slavering, spiny armour-plated Aliens, his ammo running short.
At least, that's how I remember the 1999 Radical title Aliens Vs Predator, the FPS game that kept me up at nights for a good long while. 10 years on, I was rather shocked to see this...
Happy days! More on this as it's revealed, for now not much is known about the new title, except that it's being developed by Rebellion again, which is exciting for quite a few reasons. They're British, for a start. They also released such gaming gems as the PS1 version of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Rogue Warrior and Call of Duty: World At War. Looking at their gaming track record shows a lot of ports to handheld systems, plenty of GBA games and some console work. It's almost as if they made Alien Versus Predator and went on holiday to develop in console land only to briefly return to the PC with Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death before vanishing into semi-obscurity.
One of the more overlooked features of Aliens Versus Predator was the multiplayer, at the time the multiplayer scene was pretty devoid of anything resembling a server browser, the closest thing available was crap and the connection issues were so bad for most people that playing online was hardly worth the effort. It's a shame they didn't put in the toil though, as the multiplayer in AvsP was actually a LOT of fun. They realised their characters well and while they took the old book/film into game route and sub-class everything, i.e. a predator that only had the disc and not invisibility etc. With the human and predator classes, the Aliens were just... Aliens. Killing machines. They were so much harder to play as they were fairly fragile and didn't have any form of ranged weaponry at all, but were lightning fast, could crawl on the walls and could kill in a few seconds if they were allowed close enough.
This is all idle speculation and geeky teen nostalgia of course but if Rebellion can pull the excitement of the 1999 version of Aliens Versus Predator into the 00's, there'll be some very, very happy fanboys and gamers alike out there. Watch this space...
Read More...
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Old leopard, new spots, same teeth (AKA: Get off mah lawn!)
First off, not a MacOS post despite the title.
Recently, after reading Abbe's glowing recommendation of The Tales Of Monkey Island Chapter 1: "Launch of the Screaming Narwhal", I downloaded the demo.
After playing all 15 minutes or so of the demo, I bought the series. I played through the first game and any review or opinion on the game from my perspective would be a carbon copy of Abbe's expectations and review of the game.
Just after I completed the first chapter however, as if Steam were reading my mind, the Steam news window appeared and within its hallowed frame, lay this little beauty. Fresh from my nostalgic journey to Flotsam Island(TM) and at only £7.99 GBP or $9.99 USD, I couldn't justify not getting a remake of one of the all time classic point and click LucasArts adventure games. See below for first impressions.
Reading about the special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island(TM) and getting the rush of nostalgia to revisit Melee Island(TM) and get out my rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, it was but a moments work to buy the revisitation of a classic adventure game. The first thing that struck me was the size of the download, nearly 2Gb! The team had obviously gone overboard on the special effects and true to claim, the artwork in this new version is pretty stunning, with some lovely water effects and all-new hand-drawn sprites, the spirit of Monkey Island was very much apparent.
On top of the new visuals, there is now a much-needed voiceover. The voice talents of apparently most of the team that made it went into the game and I have to compliment them on their work, they do realise the characters they play wonderfully.
I haven't had much of a chance to play past the first few screens but clicking around it seems very true to form of the original. However, if you're a purist at heart this new version (aside from adding compatibility with newer OS's or having to use SCUMMVM to run it in all it's pixelated glory) adds something a little bit special.
You see, with a tap of the F10 key, the new voiced over sprite animated special effects'd version fades and regresses back to the very original game it's based on! Voices dissapear, smooth animations fade and once again you're bombarded in the face with the pixellated fires and 2 frame animations we all knew and loved first time round. It really is good to see how the game has changed and also be able to compare the two in real time.
This merging of the versions is not absolutely perfect however. The new graphics feel, well, kind of like an overlay on the original, Guybrush slides across the floor in a way that, while very similar to older adventure games animation styles, just feels really strange in the new-fangled backdrops of the re-imagining. I can however let this go as everything stays the same when you switch into the original, so I suppose they had to adopt this method of movement to better incorporate the switching feature. The interface too has changed, for the all new version, gone is the reliable old verb menu at the bottom of the screen and instant access inventory, always displayed to help inquisitive minds figure out how to get rid of that sodding seagull to get the red herring from the end of the pier. Instead we now have CTRL for a pop up verb menu and ALT for a pop up inventory and a context sensitive cursor. While this in itself is not bad, it is kind of strange to get used to, and almost easier to hit F10 and use the original verb menu once that appears.
All in all, I am impressed with the Special Edition of The Secret of Monkey Island(TM). It's a faithful re-imagining of a classic adventure game. It retains all the humour and wit present in the original script, perhaps even enhanced slightly by the voiceovers. The art definately adds a lot and I can't wait to see how they've redone some of the set-pieces such as being fired from the cannon.
Survey says: Buy it now! If you're new to Monkey Island or just don't remember it, this is a great starting point if you were intriegued by the new episodic Tales Of... series, but had no idea what to expect.
Read More...
Recently, after reading Abbe's glowing recommendation of The Tales Of Monkey Island Chapter 1: "Launch of the Screaming Narwhal", I downloaded the demo.
After playing all 15 minutes or so of the demo, I bought the series. I played through the first game and any review or opinion on the game from my perspective would be a carbon copy of Abbe's expectations and review of the game.
Just after I completed the first chapter however, as if Steam were reading my mind, the Steam news window appeared and within its hallowed frame, lay this little beauty. Fresh from my nostalgic journey to Flotsam Island(TM) and at only £7.99 GBP or $9.99 USD, I couldn't justify not getting a remake of one of the all time classic point and click LucasArts adventure games. See below for first impressions.
Reading about the special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island(TM) and getting the rush of nostalgia to revisit Melee Island(TM) and get out my rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, it was but a moments work to buy the revisitation of a classic adventure game. The first thing that struck me was the size of the download, nearly 2Gb! The team had obviously gone overboard on the special effects and true to claim, the artwork in this new version is pretty stunning, with some lovely water effects and all-new hand-drawn sprites, the spirit of Monkey Island was very much apparent.
On top of the new visuals, there is now a much-needed voiceover. The voice talents of apparently most of the team that made it went into the game and I have to compliment them on their work, they do realise the characters they play wonderfully.
I haven't had much of a chance to play past the first few screens but clicking around it seems very true to form of the original. However, if you're a purist at heart this new version (aside from adding compatibility with newer OS's or having to use SCUMMVM to run it in all it's pixelated glory) adds something a little bit special.
You see, with a tap of the F10 key, the new voiced over sprite animated special effects'd version fades and regresses back to the very original game it's based on! Voices dissapear, smooth animations fade and once again you're bombarded in the face with the pixellated fires and 2 frame animations we all knew and loved first time round. It really is good to see how the game has changed and also be able to compare the two in real time.
This merging of the versions is not absolutely perfect however. The new graphics feel, well, kind of like an overlay on the original, Guybrush slides across the floor in a way that, while very similar to older adventure games animation styles, just feels really strange in the new-fangled backdrops of the re-imagining. I can however let this go as everything stays the same when you switch into the original, so I suppose they had to adopt this method of movement to better incorporate the switching feature. The interface too has changed, for the all new version, gone is the reliable old verb menu at the bottom of the screen and instant access inventory, always displayed to help inquisitive minds figure out how to get rid of that sodding seagull to get the red herring from the end of the pier. Instead we now have CTRL for a pop up verb menu and ALT for a pop up inventory and a context sensitive cursor. While this in itself is not bad, it is kind of strange to get used to, and almost easier to hit F10 and use the original verb menu once that appears.
All in all, I am impressed with the Special Edition of The Secret of Monkey Island(TM). It's a faithful re-imagining of a classic adventure game. It retains all the humour and wit present in the original script, perhaps even enhanced slightly by the voiceovers. The art definately adds a lot and I can't wait to see how they've redone some of the set-pieces such as being fired from the cannon.
Survey says: Buy it now! If you're new to Monkey Island or just don't remember it, this is a great starting point if you were intriegued by the new episodic Tales Of... series, but had no idea what to expect.
Read More...
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Value of education
Went to Burger King (yeah, not my favourite place) for lunch today and one of the employees had a shirt that said "Too cool for school" on the back and some BK thing on the front. The back made me laugh, but then I realised that it's a perfect way to get more potential employees by making children (and parents?) think like that. Don't give the children any hope, let's aim for BK straight away, and they won't be as disappointed when they grow up.
Read More...
Time scaling as difficulty modifier
After having watched bullet-time in about a billion different scenarios over the last decade I got to thinking. What about having more than two modes (normal time/bullet time) and instead implementing a system for slowing down and speeding up time by percentages?
Let's say we create an action platformer with this system. The player always moves at 100% speed to have the controls be intuitive but you can change the speed of the world around you. When you get to a difficult boss fight, you can make him go slower and be able to beat the encounter.
This way, you can basically decide on your own difficulty since most of the difficulty usually comes from being swamped by enemies until you just can't keep track of them. Just a 10% increase in speed might be the deciding factor in some cases.
I'm not sure though if keeping this as some kind of power-up system would be better where it's limited or if you allowed the player to use it whenever he wanted and then just give a score at the end of each stage where you multiply your score by the average speed %. I don't really want to give points since I want good gameplay to be a reward in itself but I'm well aware that people seem to like trophies.
If you do create a game where you can speed up and slow down everyting, imagine running on top of trains, jumping on cars or seeing bullets or firewalls coming at you in slow-motion. The replays would probably look awesome with the player running around in a blur or actually being slower than the enemies themselves.
Read More...
Let's say we create an action platformer with this system. The player always moves at 100% speed to have the controls be intuitive but you can change the speed of the world around you. When you get to a difficult boss fight, you can make him go slower and be able to beat the encounter.
This way, you can basically decide on your own difficulty since most of the difficulty usually comes from being swamped by enemies until you just can't keep track of them. Just a 10% increase in speed might be the deciding factor in some cases.
I'm not sure though if keeping this as some kind of power-up system would be better where it's limited or if you allowed the player to use it whenever he wanted and then just give a score at the end of each stage where you multiply your score by the average speed %. I don't really want to give points since I want good gameplay to be a reward in itself but I'm well aware that people seem to like trophies.
If you do create a game where you can speed up and slow down everyting, imagine running on top of trains, jumping on cars or seeing bullets or firewalls coming at you in slow-motion. The replays would probably look awesome with the player running around in a blur or actually being slower than the enemies themselves.
Read More...
Monday, 27 July 2009
A bright future
According to an article on Times Online, women are getting prettier with every generation as beautiful women have more children and more daughters than plain women. This is of course good news for man-kind. If you would believe Idiocracy (which you probably shouldn't), they are getting less intelligent too! This would mean that in a few hundred years, there will be plenty of attractive and stupid women. And people say everything was better before.
If you don't believe this, you can easily verify it by yourself. All you need is a public space with women (preferably a bar) and a bottle of vodka (the size of the bottle is important as it will determine how far into the future you simulate. A good estimate is that 1 cl is ~1.5 year, which means that a reasonable bottle should contain between 70 and 100 cl). As time progresses (drinking vodka), the women becomes prettier and your intelligence goes down, proving my previous statement.
Read More...
If you don't believe this, you can easily verify it by yourself. All you need is a public space with women (preferably a bar) and a bottle of vodka (the size of the bottle is important as it will determine how far into the future you simulate. A good estimate is that 1 cl is ~1.5 year, which means that a reasonable bottle should contain between 70 and 100 cl). As time progresses (drinking vodka), the women becomes prettier and your intelligence goes down, proving my previous statement.
Read More...
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Girls are (also?) sexist
As you might have picked up by now, I'm working as a store clerk. Since I'm also fairly good at abstraction. To me it doesn't really matter if it's candy, baked beans or tampons, it's all cartons that should go on the shelf.
But apparently this is not the case. I have probably had remarks from girls five or six times now when unpacking make-up or women's hygiene products on the note of "are you sure you know what you're doing?". And this has been said with the same type of voice men use when girls start playing with cars, somewhere in the fifties.
If everyone in a store could only unpack things they used themselves, I can assure you the store would be quite empty. I think the only reason why the women seem to think men in the make-up section is a disgrace is because they have such a close personal relationship with it. If you're only thinking about what you're doing with it yourself, it might be hard to think of it as only boxes.
I haven't really run into those kinds of comments before so maybe make-up and hygiene are the last bastions where women can be women? Can't say for sure, but I don't think I have any subject where I would be surprised to find a girl at least as good as myself. Read More...
But apparently this is not the case. I have probably had remarks from girls five or six times now when unpacking make-up or women's hygiene products on the note of "are you sure you know what you're doing?". And this has been said with the same type of voice men use when girls start playing with cars, somewhere in the fifties.
If everyone in a store could only unpack things they used themselves, I can assure you the store would be quite empty. I think the only reason why the women seem to think men in the make-up section is a disgrace is because they have such a close personal relationship with it. If you're only thinking about what you're doing with it yourself, it might be hard to think of it as only boxes.
I haven't really run into those kinds of comments before so maybe make-up and hygiene are the last bastions where women can be women? Can't say for sure, but I don't think I have any subject where I would be surprised to find a girl at least as good as myself. Read More...
Saturday, 25 July 2009
Luxury
Let's say you had a crapload of money. Like football player style income (football, not handegg). What would you do to make your life better?
The only thing I can think of that I would really want right now (apart from a job) is someone that could take care of my bedroom. Having nice clean sheets, a nice temperature of 19-20 degrees and definitely no mosquitos every single night when you go to bed is a thing to pray for. Since sleeping is essential to my well-being, I would also like it sound-proof and no windows to let in sunlight in the mornings.
It's not quite a ball-washer, but it would do for me. Read More...
The only thing I can think of that I would really want right now (apart from a job) is someone that could take care of my bedroom. Having nice clean sheets, a nice temperature of 19-20 degrees and definitely no mosquitos every single night when you go to bed is a thing to pray for. Since sleeping is essential to my well-being, I would also like it sound-proof and no windows to let in sunlight in the mornings.
It's not quite a ball-washer, but it would do for me. Read More...
Friday, 24 July 2009
Tales of Monkey Island episode 1 - Surprisingly good!
I bought Tales of Monkey Island when it came up as a pre-order, being somewhat sceptic (the demos of the other Telltale games have been... mediocre...) of the quality and the level of funny in it. To my surprise I thoroughly enjoyed the first part.
Loved
It took me around 3 hours to finish and I really only got stuck on one puzzle where I had to use a FAQ to get me by. The rest of the puzzles were quite intuitive and you solve a bunch of them by just naturally using the items for what they were made for, while some are quite clever and funny. Thankfully there wasn't many -if any- puzzles that had illogical solutions, which have been the bane (for me) of adventure games since pretty much forever.
The voiceovers are good and definitely bring life to the game. But if you are on the fast-reading side, you have the much appreciated option of skipping ahead in the conversation if you want to speed up the dialogs. Something I sorely missed in the remake of Monkey Island 1.
Hated
The game requires quite a bit of clicking around, you need to click on everything to find different things, for example you find a vital piece of a puzzle in a pair of socks, which I didn't even knew I could click on until I did it by chance. To its defence it usually have a slightly funny response or action that happens when you click on the item, so you will do it willingly most of the time.
I'm not really a person that play a lot of adventure games, but the telltale version of Monkey Island were quite enjoyable and I am actually looking forward to the next episode. If you really dislike adventure games you probably wont like this either, but I can recommend at least trying out the demo (I think there is one).
Read More...
Loved
It took me around 3 hours to finish and I really only got stuck on one puzzle where I had to use a FAQ to get me by. The rest of the puzzles were quite intuitive and you solve a bunch of them by just naturally using the items for what they were made for, while some are quite clever and funny. Thankfully there wasn't many -if any- puzzles that had illogical solutions, which have been the bane (for me) of adventure games since pretty much forever.
The voiceovers are good and definitely bring life to the game. But if you are on the fast-reading side, you have the much appreciated option of skipping ahead in the conversation if you want to speed up the dialogs. Something I sorely missed in the remake of Monkey Island 1.
Hated
The game requires quite a bit of clicking around, you need to click on everything to find different things, for example you find a vital piece of a puzzle in a pair of socks, which I didn't even knew I could click on until I did it by chance. To its defence it usually have a slightly funny response or action that happens when you click on the item, so you will do it willingly most of the time.
I'm not really a person that play a lot of adventure games, but the telltale version of Monkey Island were quite enjoyable and I am actually looking forward to the next episode. If you really dislike adventure games you probably wont like this either, but I can recommend at least trying out the demo (I think there is one).
Read More...
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Why do people buy bad games?
I started playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines again, and I must say the game is awesome! The more I play it, the more I love it. Slowly rising to the top of my best-game-of-all-times list. Sure the game has its flaws, and requires unofficial patches to work, but what great game doesn't?
I took a look at Steam, and this is what I found.
GENRE: ACTION!?
Is someone retarded? Sure the combat is action, but if you define that game as an action-game, you have missed the point (you could wrongfully argue that it's an action-rpg). It's like calling Star Wars a romantic comedy because there happens to be a kiss and some "wacky" teddy bears in it.
And traces of this can be seen in other places also. Look at this trailer for a Fallout 3 DLC.
Is this what the sequel to Fallout 2 has been reduced to? A bland action game? Where were the dialogs in the trailer? The characters? Nooooo, the only thing kids want these days seems to be explosions. Fallout 2 is also one of the candidates for the top of my best-game-of-all-times list, and sure there was some combat, but that was not what made it fun (Fallout Tactics proved that point pretty successfully). It's everything BUT the combat that's important in these games, but still that's what they advertise (in Vampire) or implement (in Fallout 3). I sense a dark future, where everyone plays on consoles and everything is a sequel to some stupid game.
Read More...
I took a look at Steam, and this is what I found.
GENRE: ACTION!?
Is someone retarded? Sure the combat is action, but if you define that game as an action-game, you have missed the point (you could wrongfully argue that it's an action-rpg). It's like calling Star Wars a romantic comedy because there happens to be a kiss and some "wacky" teddy bears in it.
And traces of this can be seen in other places also. Look at this trailer for a Fallout 3 DLC.
Is this what the sequel to Fallout 2 has been reduced to? A bland action game? Where were the dialogs in the trailer? The characters? Nooooo, the only thing kids want these days seems to be explosions. Fallout 2 is also one of the candidates for the top of my best-game-of-all-times list, and sure there was some combat, but that was not what made it fun (Fallout Tactics proved that point pretty successfully). It's everything BUT the combat that's important in these games, but still that's what they advertise (in Vampire) or implement (in Fallout 3). I sense a dark future, where everyone plays on consoles and everything is a sequel to some stupid game.
Read More...
Sunday, 19 July 2009
I really want to play Diablo 3
I can't even remember the last time I was feeling this hyped up for a game. The only contender would be if I could erase my memory and go back and play Baldur's Gate 2 all over again. But the reason for wanting to play Diablo is quite different, it's just pure unadultered gameplay. None of that "what's my motivation" or "I wonder what will happen now", just killing small angry things over and over again.
And the thing is, none of that motivational stuff really matters. Nor do the character design, the universe or anything else. Sure, great feedback is one of the things that improves the core gameplay but if the game isn't fun to begin with, no amount of pretty monsters is going to make it fun.
I think I would have played Diablo 2 even if all the monsters were just represented by circles of different color, like in my amazing screenshot below:
Now sure, it's not very pretty. But assuming you get some kind of feedback on what your character and the monsters are doing, it could actually play pretty well. And this is not a screenshot per se, it's a representation of core gameplay.
Making sure the core gameplay is fun is probably one of the things game developers get wrong. A lot of the time, some Hollywood movie company approach a game developer and ask them to make a game out of their movie. Then the designers have to sit down and figure out what parts of the movie would make a decent game.
But that's not really how you make games is it? You're supposed to start with core mechanics that are interesting, then add art direction, setting and all the other shinies.
Adding another example, here's another example of core mechanics, in this case from Gears of War:
Now Gears of War is not quite a bad game. Even though I don't really like it, I can see that it's well-made. But the core mechanics are just totally uninteresting for me. You find a cover, pop out and shoot some ducks and then switch to another cover. It's prettier than duck hunt and usually half the screen is obscured by whatever you happen to be hiding behind, but it's still mostly the same gameplay.
I've never really been attracted to the cover-based shooters. Because once you force the player to be mostly stationary, you can't really create dynamic and interesting encounters. For myself, adapting to situations is what makes playing games fun.
World of Warcraft shows another problem though. The core mechanics are there to make the game interesting. Doing a 5-man instance where you don't have a pure tank or healing class is one of the most entertaining things (for me). Everyone has to be on their toes all the time and be able to handle more mobs, adapt to situations or simply just die a lot.
In 25-man instances this is no longer the case, at least not for my guild. Sure we're not on the edge of raiding, but therein lies the problem. Everyone expects the rest of the people to show up and kill new bosses but already knowing all the strategies and exactly what to do. So the difficulty only lies in learning and executing a strategy but there is basically no adapting. One person out of 25 is just not enough to make a difference and if everyone is constantly running around adapting, you can't really rely on anyone doing their job.
Make sure the core game mechanics are fun to begin with but don't scale the game to where strategy becomes more important than skill.
Read More...
And the thing is, none of that motivational stuff really matters. Nor do the character design, the universe or anything else. Sure, great feedback is one of the things that improves the core gameplay but if the game isn't fun to begin with, no amount of pretty monsters is going to make it fun.
I think I would have played Diablo 2 even if all the monsters were just represented by circles of different color, like in my amazing screenshot below:
Now sure, it's not very pretty. But assuming you get some kind of feedback on what your character and the monsters are doing, it could actually play pretty well. And this is not a screenshot per se, it's a representation of core gameplay.
Making sure the core gameplay is fun is probably one of the things game developers get wrong. A lot of the time, some Hollywood movie company approach a game developer and ask them to make a game out of their movie. Then the designers have to sit down and figure out what parts of the movie would make a decent game.
But that's not really how you make games is it? You're supposed to start with core mechanics that are interesting, then add art direction, setting and all the other shinies.
Adding another example, here's another example of core mechanics, in this case from Gears of War:
Now Gears of War is not quite a bad game. Even though I don't really like it, I can see that it's well-made. But the core mechanics are just totally uninteresting for me. You find a cover, pop out and shoot some ducks and then switch to another cover. It's prettier than duck hunt and usually half the screen is obscured by whatever you happen to be hiding behind, but it's still mostly the same gameplay.
I've never really been attracted to the cover-based shooters. Because once you force the player to be mostly stationary, you can't really create dynamic and interesting encounters. For myself, adapting to situations is what makes playing games fun.
World of Warcraft shows another problem though. The core mechanics are there to make the game interesting. Doing a 5-man instance where you don't have a pure tank or healing class is one of the most entertaining things (for me). Everyone has to be on their toes all the time and be able to handle more mobs, adapt to situations or simply just die a lot.
In 25-man instances this is no longer the case, at least not for my guild. Sure we're not on the edge of raiding, but therein lies the problem. Everyone expects the rest of the people to show up and kill new bosses but already knowing all the strategies and exactly what to do. So the difficulty only lies in learning and executing a strategy but there is basically no adapting. One person out of 25 is just not enough to make a difference and if everyone is constantly running around adapting, you can't really rely on anyone doing their job.
Make sure the core game mechanics are fun to begin with but don't scale the game to where strategy becomes more important than skill.
Read More...
Saturday, 18 July 2009
More people say the darndest things
Since all I do is work, eat and sleep I need to pull more subjects out of our lunchroom conversations. This time I'm the one saying weird things apparently. While discussing sunbathing, I said that I find women who have it as their highest ambition to lie still in the sun for their entire four weeks of vacation, quite retarded. Instead of finding women in bikinis sexy (as I apparently should), they just look like people who have nothing better to do than lie around all day.
I think the difference between my own and their view of what is sexy has to do with that I don't think that less clothes = more sexy. Even though this is the way men are usually portrayed in media, it's not necessarily true. For me, it has to do with intentions. Someone taking their clothes off is just naked, but someone you like taking their clothes off for you is sexy.
Sure, while being out and around other people, I make judgements about how people look. Just because someone is wearing tight clothes doesn't mean they want me to see them. Same as at the beach. I really doubt women go out sunbathing to show their semi-naked bodies off to me. If they do, they can stop being so silly. I don't go to the beach anyway.
The sex-factor© of a certain outfit doesn't just depend on intentions though. You might want to wear something different going to bed together than you do when going out on a date. But both outfits can achieve the same amount of sexiness. Just that the going-to-bed one will imply sex sooner rather than later.
Just because you have to be wearing the right clothes don't really matter if you're wearing that silly screw-me-silly look (find a facebook-picture of a girl 18-21 trying to look sexy) that seems to be thought of as sexy but more makes you look like some kind of silly doll who don't really care about anything. Being sexy means being interested in the other person, not looking like you're on cocaine and about to be used for the umpteenth time by a man. You know what? Try to smile and look interested. Or try and talk about something you're actually interested in, then it comes naturally.
Take these examples from music videos. They're all trying to be sexy by being naked. But it doesn't work. The best parts of each video is when they smile.
Beyonce (smiles at 1.58)
Britney Spears (1:10, really nice headbendy-movement)
Christina Aguilera (is the second half is sexier than the first one?)
I would even go so far as to say this video is sexier than all of the above. Having someone smile at you when they wake up is infinitely better than having naked people in the vicinity. And as we all know, women are only nice when they're sleeping.
I never quite got the part about music videos where crawling around making weird hand-waving things were supposed to be sexy. Then again I seem to be wired in the wrong way where girls in bikinis are only naked people on a towel.
This reminds me of a study I read about personal ads a while ago (might have been Logic of life). Women getting help from their male friends helped them gain a higher number of responses per personal ad than the women who wrote their own ads. But men getting helped by women didn't show a significant increase in number of responses. Apparently even women don't know what women want.
But men know what men want and being naked in public shows up quite far down the list.
Read More...
I think the difference between my own and their view of what is sexy has to do with that I don't think that less clothes = more sexy. Even though this is the way men are usually portrayed in media, it's not necessarily true. For me, it has to do with intentions. Someone taking their clothes off is just naked, but someone you like taking their clothes off for you is sexy.
Sure, while being out and around other people, I make judgements about how people look. Just because someone is wearing tight clothes doesn't mean they want me to see them. Same as at the beach. I really doubt women go out sunbathing to show their semi-naked bodies off to me. If they do, they can stop being so silly. I don't go to the beach anyway.
The sex-factor© of a certain outfit doesn't just depend on intentions though. You might want to wear something different going to bed together than you do when going out on a date. But both outfits can achieve the same amount of sexiness. Just that the going-to-bed one will imply sex sooner rather than later.
Just because you have to be wearing the right clothes don't really matter if you're wearing that silly screw-me-silly look (find a facebook-picture of a girl 18-21 trying to look sexy) that seems to be thought of as sexy but more makes you look like some kind of silly doll who don't really care about anything. Being sexy means being interested in the other person, not looking like you're on cocaine and about to be used for the umpteenth time by a man. You know what? Try to smile and look interested. Or try and talk about something you're actually interested in, then it comes naturally.
Take these examples from music videos. They're all trying to be sexy by being naked. But it doesn't work. The best parts of each video is when they smile.
Beyonce (smiles at 1.58)
Britney Spears (1:10, really nice headbendy-movement)
Christina Aguilera (is the second half is sexier than the first one?)
I would even go so far as to say this video is sexier than all of the above. Having someone smile at you when they wake up is infinitely better than having naked people in the vicinity. And as we all know, women are only nice when they're sleeping.
I never quite got the part about music videos where crawling around making weird hand-waving things were supposed to be sexy. Then again I seem to be wired in the wrong way where girls in bikinis are only naked people on a towel.
This reminds me of a study I read about personal ads a while ago (might have been Logic of life). Women getting help from their male friends helped them gain a higher number of responses per personal ad than the women who wrote their own ads. But men getting helped by women didn't show a significant increase in number of responses. Apparently even women don't know what women want.
But men know what men want and being naked in public shows up quite far down the list.
Read More...
Thursday, 16 July 2009
The increase of pre-orders and collectors editions
I think I see an announcement of a pre-order or collectors edition at least every third day, often linked together with a special offer (excluding collectors edition, even though is a special offer in itself) that you only get if you pre-order it.
I think the pre-orders and collectors editions are the game industry's answer to the used-games market. The used-games market is huge, how huge? According to the Crackdown developers, about 40-50% of the market (although Michael Pachter estimated it to be around 1/3rd of the market). Those 40-50% are money they will never see the light of, thus they need to increase the first-hand sales of games. One way is to increase the online content delivered to the game, from Kotaku:
Even though it is risky to pre-order games, I see this as the right move to give the buyer a reason to stick with the game, or pay the slightly higher price for an unused version with extra goodies. The most successful of course being having an awesome multiplayer feature, as that both give players "new" content (new players, different each session, etc.) and requires them to hold on to the game to keep playing it.
Right now I'm personally eyeing the Collectors Edition of Dragon Age (with an additional item for a Mass Effect 2 character!) and probably Mass Effect 2 if it gets one, I also went out on a limb (spur of the moment) and bought the Collectors Edition of Aion.
Well, in the end it all comes down to price and how much I want it, time will tell. Read More...
I think the pre-orders and collectors editions are the game industry's answer to the used-games market. The used-games market is huge, how huge? According to the Crackdown developers, about 40-50% of the market (although Michael Pachter estimated it to be around 1/3rd of the market). Those 40-50% are money they will never see the light of, thus they need to increase the first-hand sales of games. One way is to increase the online content delivered to the game, from Kotaku:
The results seem to show that developers need to continue to concentrate on making ways to extend the life of their games if they want to increase sales and lengthen the time a person holds on to a title. New downloadable content, episodes and, of course, strong multiplayer elements all seem to help that.
Even though it is risky to pre-order games, I see this as the right move to give the buyer a reason to stick with the game, or pay the slightly higher price for an unused version with extra goodies. The most successful of course being having an awesome multiplayer feature, as that both give players "new" content (new players, different each session, etc.) and requires them to hold on to the game to keep playing it.
Right now I'm personally eyeing the Collectors Edition of Dragon Age (with an additional item for a Mass Effect 2 character!) and probably Mass Effect 2 if it gets one, I also went out on a limb (spur of the moment) and bought the Collectors Edition of Aion.
Well, in the end it all comes down to price and how much I want it, time will tell. Read More...
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Neotokyo
I have been playing Neotokyo for a couple of days now, and it's an abusive relationship. I love it even though it regularly beats me. It's an angry and unforgiving game with death waiting behind every corner and only the careful will survive for more than a minute.
A kind of summary of the game with pretty pictures (screen shots) and game tips.
The game is played in rounds like Counter-Strike (if you die, you have to wait till next round again) and the players are divided into two teams (Jinrai and NSF, but they are identical, so doesn't really matter). There are two very similar game modes available. The first mode is Capture the ghost where the two teams fight for the ghost ("flag"), and tries to bring it to the exit, which is located in the enemy spawn position. The other game mode is where only one of the teams has an exit, dividing the teams into attackers and defenders. You also win if all the enemies are dead.
You chose between three different classes (recon, assault and support) and one of many main weapon.
There are many reasons why the game is hard and unforgiving, and mention some of them here.
* Know thy enemy: The recon and the assault class can cloak and become almost invisible to the normal eye. This combined with the fact that you don't get any indication about the direction you are getting shot from means that you very often will start taking damage, you have no idea from where or whom, and then die without ever seeing the oponent or even knowing where he shot you from.
* Know thy friends: I mentioned above that 2/3 of the classes can become invisible which means that you need to heavily rely on your vision mode to see the enemy. The problem is that while in vision mode the hud is very hard to see (try to read the range), and everyone looks the same. This means that you will fire at friends more than usual, combined with how easy it is to kill someone you will kill friends many times when you don't mean to.
* Know thyself: Your health is very precious. A few well placed rounds will kill you, and taking into consideration that invisible opponents will be firing at you from behind while your team mates shoot you in the front makes your health very precious indeed. The ability to fire through some materials can also render your cover useless. So basically, you're very fragile, being shot at from every direction and walls might not stop the bullets. RIP.
All these factors (and probably more) adds up to a very hard and unforgiving game. But at the same time every kill is very satisfying because you have fought so hard to get it.
Read More...
A kind of summary of the game with pretty pictures (screen shots) and game tips.
The game is played in rounds like Counter-Strike (if you die, you have to wait till next round again) and the players are divided into two teams (Jinrai and NSF, but they are identical, so doesn't really matter). There are two very similar game modes available. The first mode is Capture the ghost where the two teams fight for the ghost ("flag"), and tries to bring it to the exit, which is located in the enemy spawn position. The other game mode is where only one of the teams has an exit, dividing the teams into attackers and defenders. You also win if all the enemies are dead.
You chose between three different classes (recon, assault and support) and one of many main weapon.
There are many reasons why the game is hard and unforgiving, and mention some of them here.
* Know thy enemy: The recon and the assault class can cloak and become almost invisible to the normal eye. This combined with the fact that you don't get any indication about the direction you are getting shot from means that you very often will start taking damage, you have no idea from where or whom, and then die without ever seeing the oponent or even knowing where he shot you from.
* Know thy friends: I mentioned above that 2/3 of the classes can become invisible which means that you need to heavily rely on your vision mode to see the enemy. The problem is that while in vision mode the hud is very hard to see (try to read the range), and everyone looks the same. This means that you will fire at friends more than usual, combined with how easy it is to kill someone you will kill friends many times when you don't mean to.
* Know thyself: Your health is very precious. A few well placed rounds will kill you, and taking into consideration that invisible opponents will be firing at you from behind while your team mates shoot you in the front makes your health very precious indeed. The ability to fire through some materials can also render your cover useless. So basically, you're very fragile, being shot at from every direction and walls might not stop the bullets. RIP.
All these factors (and probably more) adds up to a very hard and unforgiving game. But at the same time every kill is very satisfying because you have fought so hard to get it.
Read More...
Common sense in China?
Internet addiction must be a big problem in China, as apparently they have used shock treatment to treat it. There seems to be some common sense as they now have banned it from being used. I wonder if they perhaps could create some more universal law like "don't put electricity where it doesn't belong". Glad I'm not living there anyway.
Read More...
Sunday, 12 July 2009
"Swoopo" or how to make money off stupid people *update*
I only came upon a discussion of this site today, as well as seeing what I think is a swedish site before, Budson. What it does is it lets you bid (2c higher than previous bid) for the chance of buying an item (TV, digital camera etc.) for a low price. But you need to pay to get the opportunity to bid at all, unlike an ordinary auction site (like eBay). Every auction also has virtually unlimited time before it expires since every bid adds a few seconds to the total auction time, basically keeping people from just popping in with a few seconds left and then spam bids and whoever has the best internet connection wins.
And believe it or not, it is a brilliant way to make money.
I remember seeing this in a swedish version a few months back and thinking to myself "there's no way they're actually losing money on any of those items". And there isn't. Let's say a TV worth 500$ goes for 200$. To reach 200$ when every 2c bid costs 20c, Swoopo will make 10,000 dollars (plus winning offer of 200$). For a 500 dollar TV.
Since I've been studying some game theory lately, there is actually a perfect example of this, the dollar bill auction. Basically, you bid on whoever gets to buy a dollar. The difference is, second place has to pay whatever he bid as well. How much do you think a dollar would go for? Apparently 3-5$. So if one person bids 5, the other one stopped at 4.95, letting you get 9.95 for your single dollar bill.
As if this wasn't enough, Swoopo has additional ways of keeping the game interesting. For one, you even get to have your own bot, basically bidding for you while you go do other things, keeping things simple (I think eBay has this as well). There are also a bonus. If you don't win anything for a week or so (didn't read very carefully), you will get a day where if you don't win anything, you will get all your bids refunded. Basically Swoopo has people who are raising the prices of every auction, because if they don't win they will get their money back and if they win they got something cheap instead.
It doesn't surprise me that people fall for these things, people do stupid things all the time. What surprises me is that it's legal. Stealing cash from retarded people is wrong, why isn't stealing digital dollars from stupid people and where do you draw the line?
*update*
Now, I hear you saying "well you being such a smarty-pants man, why don't you make a system that beats this site?". The thing is that there are basically only three ways to come out ahead of this game.
1. Have another site, where members can contact eachother and agree on which items they are going to bid on. For this to work, everyone needs to also be a member on that other site and actually tell the truth as well. And when you gain benefit from betraying other members, it turns into a prisoner's dilemma, where the only correct strategy is to betray everyone else.
2. Find some way to track every auction going on and see what prices similar items go for. Then you only ever start to bid when the item gets close to the limit you think people are willing to offer for it. Once you start bidding, you should never back down, making people stop bidding against you. If you run into someone else with the same strategy, it turnsinto a game of chicken.
3. Simply don't play. When all the alternatives are bad, you still have the option of quitting.
Remember these wise words someone has probably said before: "If you can't instantly see how much the thing you want is going to cost, it will probably cost more than buying it off someone who shows his prices.".
Read More...
And believe it or not, it is a brilliant way to make money.
I remember seeing this in a swedish version a few months back and thinking to myself "there's no way they're actually losing money on any of those items". And there isn't. Let's say a TV worth 500$ goes for 200$. To reach 200$ when every 2c bid costs 20c, Swoopo will make 10,000 dollars (plus winning offer of 200$). For a 500 dollar TV.
Since I've been studying some game theory lately, there is actually a perfect example of this, the dollar bill auction. Basically, you bid on whoever gets to buy a dollar. The difference is, second place has to pay whatever he bid as well. How much do you think a dollar would go for? Apparently 3-5$. So if one person bids 5, the other one stopped at 4.95, letting you get 9.95 for your single dollar bill.
As if this wasn't enough, Swoopo has additional ways of keeping the game interesting. For one, you even get to have your own bot, basically bidding for you while you go do other things, keeping things simple (I think eBay has this as well). There are also a bonus. If you don't win anything for a week or so (didn't read very carefully), you will get a day where if you don't win anything, you will get all your bids refunded. Basically Swoopo has people who are raising the prices of every auction, because if they don't win they will get their money back and if they win they got something cheap instead.
It doesn't surprise me that people fall for these things, people do stupid things all the time. What surprises me is that it's legal. Stealing cash from retarded people is wrong, why isn't stealing digital dollars from stupid people and where do you draw the line?
*update*
Now, I hear you saying "well you being such a smarty-pants man, why don't you make a system that beats this site?". The thing is that there are basically only three ways to come out ahead of this game.
1. Have another site, where members can contact eachother and agree on which items they are going to bid on. For this to work, everyone needs to also be a member on that other site and actually tell the truth as well. And when you gain benefit from betraying other members, it turns into a prisoner's dilemma, where the only correct strategy is to betray everyone else.
2. Find some way to track every auction going on and see what prices similar items go for. Then you only ever start to bid when the item gets close to the limit you think people are willing to offer for it. Once you start bidding, you should never back down, making people stop bidding against you. If you run into someone else with the same strategy, it turnsinto a game of chicken.
3. Simply don't play. When all the alternatives are bad, you still have the option of quitting.
Remember these wise words someone has probably said before: "If you can't instantly see how much the thing you want is going to cost, it will probably cost more than buying it off someone who shows his prices.".
Read More...
People say the darndest things
While having my lunch break at work this friday, I was trying to ignore all the nonsense going on around me (as usual) and eating my food. But some things can't be ignored.
There has (not unsurprisingly) been a lot of news about Michael Jackson lately. And apparently women are supersticious. When I was eating we were seven in the lunchroom, five of which were women. All of them agreed that it was likely that MJ had risen from his grave and had been watching (and enjoying) his own funeral.
I was dumbstruck. I wanted to stand up and shout at them for being silly but couldn't bring myself to saying anything at all. I can agree that one or two of the girls at work aren't quite the brightest apples of the bunch, but everyone agreeing that MJ was important enough to get to be a ghost or something?
Now this was not a statistically significant sample or anything but if this is how "normal" people view the world, I'd rather be a nerd sceptic any day. Read More...
There has (not unsurprisingly) been a lot of news about Michael Jackson lately. And apparently women are supersticious. When I was eating we were seven in the lunchroom, five of which were women. All of them agreed that it was likely that MJ had risen from his grave and had been watching (and enjoying) his own funeral.
I was dumbstruck. I wanted to stand up and shout at them for being silly but couldn't bring myself to saying anything at all. I can agree that one or two of the girls at work aren't quite the brightest apples of the bunch, but everyone agreeing that MJ was important enough to get to be a ghost or something?
Now this was not a statistically significant sample or anything but if this is how "normal" people view the world, I'd rather be a nerd sceptic any day. Read More...
Guilfest
Visited Guilfest yesterday and watched Motorhead which was pretty awesome.
What I found a bit weird was the stalls selling legal "drugs". It sure was legal, but I'm not sure if it was that much drugs. Didn't notice anything, but that might have been the alcohol working as an antidote.
Among all these people, alcohol and legal "drugs" there were children running around too, what can go wrong with mixing teenagers, alcohol, drugs and music? Presumably they check IDs or something, but never saw it myself. To be fair people seemed pretty sober as there were quite a bit of families there (i.e. old people, presumably parents and similar).
And with the above paragraph I'm officially old. Get of my lawn stupid kids! (The festival is in a park really close, so it's kinda my garden) Read More...
What I found a bit weird was the stalls selling legal "drugs". It sure was legal, but I'm not sure if it was that much drugs. Didn't notice anything, but that might have been the alcohol working as an antidote.
Among all these people, alcohol and legal "drugs" there were children running around too, what can go wrong with mixing teenagers, alcohol, drugs and music? Presumably they check IDs or something, but never saw it myself. To be fair people seemed pretty sober as there were quite a bit of families there (i.e. old people, presumably parents and similar).
And with the above paragraph I'm officially old. Get of my lawn stupid kids! (The festival is in a park really close, so it's kinda my garden) Read More...
Saturday, 11 July 2009
No quitting, just rage
So the one day this week I'm not working, I'm looking forward to a nice day by the computer maybe playing some poker, maybe some World of Warcraft. But was that meant to happen? Apparently not.
My desktop apparently committed suicide and after four or five different bluescreens it doesn't even go into Windows safe mode any more.
There are very few things as frustrating as things going boink and you have no idea where to start troubleshooting. Sure, I was on the lookout for a new CPU and GPU anyway and since I've been working so much money isn't really an issue. It's just the getting home after work on tuesday, putting everything together again, installing a million different things and then hoping it will work again that bugs me.
On a more positive note, I actually managed to backup all of my mapping and python projects to four different harddrives. If none of those ever work again, you will probably see me running down the street somewhere trying to bludgeon people to death with the blunt instrument that used to be a computer. Read More...
My desktop apparently committed suicide and after four or five different bluescreens it doesn't even go into Windows safe mode any more.
There are very few things as frustrating as things going boink and you have no idea where to start troubleshooting. Sure, I was on the lookout for a new CPU and GPU anyway and since I've been working so much money isn't really an issue. It's just the getting home after work on tuesday, putting everything together again, installing a million different things and then hoping it will work again that bugs me.
On a more positive note, I actually managed to backup all of my mapping and python projects to four different harddrives. If none of those ever work again, you will probably see me running down the street somewhere trying to bludgeon people to death with the blunt instrument that used to be a computer. Read More...
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Mechwarrior series getting a reboot
So yeah, the stoneage series Mechwarrior is getting a reboot, IGN have a video and an interview, havent read the interview, why? Because the game looks fucking boring.
Just go watch the video and try to tell me you liked that.
There's a reason why I like power-armors like the ones in Section 8: The power of a tank combined with the mobility of a human = awesome. If Section 8 will be good or not I have no clue, depends on how fast players move. Read More...
Just go watch the video and try to tell me you liked that.
There's a reason why I like power-armors like the ones in Section 8: The power of a tank combined with the mobility of a human = awesome. If Section 8 will be good or not I have no clue, depends on how fast players move. Read More...
Chocolate = honorable death?
I dont know, but drowning in a vat of chocolate is kind of degrading...
Tasty, but degrading.
Man Dies in Vat of Chocolate [PhillyD.tv] Read More...
Tasty, but degrading.
Man Dies in Vat of Chocolate [PhillyD.tv] Read More...
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Pirate Bay going legal
I doubt theres anyone that doesnt know about the acquisition of Pirate Bay. Today a bit more of it came up. But something that I missed last time (or didnt understand) was that the site will work as normal, except that the copyright holders will get payed for the downloads of their products.
Its an interesting way to "combat" piracy, while not stopping it, it ensures that the companies get their fair share of money, of course not as much as they would have gotten otherwise, but its at least something.
Two questions pop up from this:
First, how will they finance this? I'm just curious in how they will run the show and make money from the site, ads are one way, but not really that effective I think.
Second, wont people start downloading MORE because of this? While I think at least some people might stop and think once before they click the download button, I think that many will now start downloading more because "they get paid if I download". While the new owners of Pirate Bay aren't actively trying to stop illegal downloads, I suspect this might actually increase it, however only slightly.
Personally I will keep with my own model of downloading.
My Pirate, My Friend [Kotaku] Read More...
Its an interesting way to "combat" piracy, while not stopping it, it ensures that the companies get their fair share of money, of course not as much as they would have gotten otherwise, but its at least something.
Two questions pop up from this:
First, how will they finance this? I'm just curious in how they will run the show and make money from the site, ads are one way, but not really that effective I think.
Second, wont people start downloading MORE because of this? While I think at least some people might stop and think once before they click the download button, I think that many will now start downloading more because "they get paid if I download". While the new owners of Pirate Bay aren't actively trying to stop illegal downloads, I suspect this might actually increase it, however only slightly.
Personally I will keep with my own model of downloading.
My Pirate, My Friend [Kotaku] Read More...
Monday, 6 July 2009
Rocktober indeed
It's no secret that Tim Schafer is a minor genius, which adds some hype to his upcoming title Brutal Legend. How awesome it would be I did not know, until I saw the first 17 minutes of it. It looks so good! I don't know what it is, if it's the humour, the presentation, the music, the balls-to-the-walls awesome world, or all of the above. The need for a console grows larger yet again...
Clip after jump.
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Clip after jump.
Read More...
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Taking pride in what you do
As both of our long-time readers might have noticed, I'm not quite inspired by the job I do. While I guess not every job has extremely difficult tasks to perform, I think I have learned a quite effective way to open boxes and put things on shelves by now. Sure, I could learn to be better at interacting with other humans but that's not the subject for todays post.
Today I want to talk about taking pride in what you do. No matter what your job is, you still want to live up to people's expectations and do it well. At least I do.
It doesn't really matter what job you have to take pride in it. And it's not just about doing one thing well, it's trying to improve your situation as well. If you will be spending about half your hours awake at your job, why put up with things that bother you? Taking five minutes to clean up something that looks like crap and then have it look great for several days might actually be worth it, even if it isn't quite "your job".
In the current book I'm reading there is an excellent quote from a man working at Cape Caneveral. The president of the United states asks a cleaner what he does, his answer: "I'm working here to put a man on the moon."
Even if it's not true, it's one of those things that should be.
While working at my current job, I have come across several persons who I would consider hiring for any type of job. If you hire someone who is a good worker and takes pride in what they do, as long as they are interested you can always teach them a new craft. You can't hire someone with a degree from x university and turn them into a hard-working person just because they happen to know their craft.
Unfortunately the place where I work does not reward hard work over just clocking in your hours. Since the management is quite unprofessional and can't distinguish between a the person and the worker I'm not sure if they would do it even if they could.
Do I consider myself to be one of the ten or so hard workers at my job? Yes. Does everyone else do it as well? Probably. I might be terrible and it's all a big Dunning-Kruger effect. But at least I'm thinking about it and constantly question myself. Being humble is not everything, but it is one step of the way.
Read More...
Today I want to talk about taking pride in what you do. No matter what your job is, you still want to live up to people's expectations and do it well. At least I do.
It doesn't really matter what job you have to take pride in it. And it's not just about doing one thing well, it's trying to improve your situation as well. If you will be spending about half your hours awake at your job, why put up with things that bother you? Taking five minutes to clean up something that looks like crap and then have it look great for several days might actually be worth it, even if it isn't quite "your job".
In the current book I'm reading there is an excellent quote from a man working at Cape Caneveral. The president of the United states asks a cleaner what he does, his answer: "I'm working here to put a man on the moon."
Even if it's not true, it's one of those things that should be.
While working at my current job, I have come across several persons who I would consider hiring for any type of job. If you hire someone who is a good worker and takes pride in what they do, as long as they are interested you can always teach them a new craft. You can't hire someone with a degree from x university and turn them into a hard-working person just because they happen to know their craft.
Unfortunately the place where I work does not reward hard work over just clocking in your hours. Since the management is quite unprofessional and can't distinguish between a the person and the worker I'm not sure if they would do it even if they could.
Do I consider myself to be one of the ten or so hard workers at my job? Yes. Does everyone else do it as well? Probably. I might be terrible and it's all a big Dunning-Kruger effect. But at least I'm thinking about it and constantly question myself. Being humble is not everything, but it is one step of the way.
Read More...
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Do unto others?
Is it morally defensible to treat people as they treat you? I've been thinking about this a lot lately since I've been working and spend too much time in my own head.
While in service business, you're supposed to treat people nice and help them out. This does not come naturally to me, I have a tendency to want to treat people as they treat me. If you ask stupid questions, you probably deserve stupid answers. This might have something to do with my personality type, INTJ, but it might have more to do with my sense of fairness (whether personality types are reliant in any way will not be taken into question here).
While interacting with people I tend to apply a grim trigger strategy to the closed-loop repeated game that is human interaction. It basically goes like this: as long as you're nice to me, I will be nice to you. If you treat me like shit once, I will treat you like shit forever. But I'm not sure if it's a morally correct way to do it. And it only works if people know you won't take shit from them.
At work a couple of days ago I was on the slightly more logical side of this dialogue with an old lady (L):
L: "Duuuuuuuuuuh!" (It was actually döööööö, a bad way to pronounce the swedish "you" but it's pronounced about the same way)
I: "Yes?"
L: "Are you here?"
I: (I thought about stopping here but couldn't help myself) "It would seem so."
At this point the old lady herself didn't look quite happy but another old lady she was shopping with started laughing.
L: "Do you work here?"
Now that the DYWH question had been popped, I realized there was simply no stopping her. So I gave up, even though I would really liked to have said "me putting boxes onto the empty shelves, you might think I did".
I: "Yes."
L: "Do you have that blue milk that I usually buy?"
And here my brain has stopped remembering this conversation because I wanted to strangle kittens.
While doing unto others seems like a good way for them religious types to handle their affairs, killing eachother over who's got the right religion and all that, I would actually like if people told me when I said stupid stuff. Humans are a self-correcting system but if you get helped with the corrections, you will improve faster.
Just because someone grunts at you as a greeting doesn't mean you can grunt back, but I would like to live in a society where saying "that was a stupid thing you just did" is ok. Human society as a whole would definitely be better if people could hear that sentence every once in a while, reflect upon it and do better next time.
Read More...
While in service business, you're supposed to treat people nice and help them out. This does not come naturally to me, I have a tendency to want to treat people as they treat me. If you ask stupid questions, you probably deserve stupid answers. This might have something to do with my personality type, INTJ, but it might have more to do with my sense of fairness (whether personality types are reliant in any way will not be taken into question here).
While interacting with people I tend to apply a grim trigger strategy to the closed-loop repeated game that is human interaction. It basically goes like this: as long as you're nice to me, I will be nice to you. If you treat me like shit once, I will treat you like shit forever. But I'm not sure if it's a morally correct way to do it. And it only works if people know you won't take shit from them.
At work a couple of days ago I was on the slightly more logical side of this dialogue with an old lady (L):
L: "Duuuuuuuuuuh!" (It was actually döööööö, a bad way to pronounce the swedish "you" but it's pronounced about the same way)
I: "Yes?"
L: "Are you here?"
I: (I thought about stopping here but couldn't help myself) "It would seem so."
At this point the old lady herself didn't look quite happy but another old lady she was shopping with started laughing.
L: "Do you work here?"
Now that the DYWH question had been popped, I realized there was simply no stopping her. So I gave up, even though I would really liked to have said "me putting boxes onto the empty shelves, you might think I did".
I: "Yes."
L: "Do you have that blue milk that I usually buy?"
And here my brain has stopped remembering this conversation because I wanted to strangle kittens.
While doing unto others seems like a good way for them religious types to handle their affairs, killing eachother over who's got the right religion and all that, I would actually like if people told me when I said stupid stuff. Humans are a self-correcting system but if you get helped with the corrections, you will improve faster.
Just because someone grunts at you as a greeting doesn't mean you can grunt back, but I would like to live in a society where saying "that was a stupid thing you just did" is ok. Human society as a whole would definitely be better if people could hear that sentence every once in a while, reflect upon it and do better next time.
Read More...
Voddler
So apparently Bredbandsbolaget's Voddler service is about to show up for real and not just as a publicity stunt. You can register at their website for a chance to become a tester.
Maybe the day has come for a internet-wide (well, within Sweden) film streaming service. While I doubt the first generation is going to be the most intuitive one but they have several years' worth of music streaming services to look at.
I really do want this to work assuming they have a big enough library of movies and are able to distribute fast enough that you're not going to see pirate dvd releases several months before you can actually buy them legally. Price is only one of the issues here, if you can't beat the pirates in time between cinema and dvd release, people will still watch the pirated versions.
Make the movies available in high quality before the pirates and have a reasonable pricing (8$ for one movie, for 25$ you can see it as much as you want forever?) you will beat the pirates hands down. And I wouldn't mind at all, I definitely think the cinema industry needs to compete with something and not just blame piracy for their stagnation. Read More...
Maybe the day has come for a internet-wide (well, within Sweden) film streaming service. While I doubt the first generation is going to be the most intuitive one but they have several years' worth of music streaming services to look at.
I really do want this to work assuming they have a big enough library of movies and are able to distribute fast enough that you're not going to see pirate dvd releases several months before you can actually buy them legally. Price is only one of the issues here, if you can't beat the pirates in time between cinema and dvd release, people will still watch the pirated versions.
Make the movies available in high quality before the pirates and have a reasonable pricing (8$ for one movie, for 25$ you can see it as much as you want forever?) you will beat the pirates hands down. And I wouldn't mind at all, I definitely think the cinema industry needs to compete with something and not just blame piracy for their stagnation. Read More...
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Stupid ice cream truck
An Ice Cream truck has made a habit of coming around the office which is unfair. I tend to spend the lunch out in the blazing sun, and the ice cream resistance is considerably weakened at that point. The fact that they sell "soft ice cream" doesn't improve the situation. It's bloody good I tell you, but an Ice Cream a day doesn't keep the doctor away :(
Read More...
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Starcraft 2 to not have LAN?
Interesting news popped up yesterday, Starcraft 2 will not have LAN, which is interesting and strange. The official reason is that Blizzard want more people to use BNET to play and probably to increase the community and get stats.
While it personally doesn't bother me too much, I just find it strange, I wonder what the Koreans will say, as the SC pro-scene is big and quite thriving. They also rely on LAN in their matches to ensure 0-ping (theoretically) environments and completely fair games. Having it all run through the net will always add some latency.
There are a few things to consider though:
Maybe you only need a connection to BNET, but don't have to run the game through the internet (direct-ip connection).
They might add LAN at a later stage. This whole thing can just be temporary to slow down the massive piracy at the beginning of the games life. A later patch for LAN will also boost interest and piracy again and thus also (most likely at least) bring in more customers.
Time will tell, I'll still buy it day 1. Read More...
While it personally doesn't bother me too much, I just find it strange, I wonder what the Koreans will say, as the SC pro-scene is big and quite thriving. They also rely on LAN in their matches to ensure 0-ping (theoretically) environments and completely fair games. Having it all run through the net will always add some latency.
There are a few things to consider though:
Maybe you only need a connection to BNET, but don't have to run the game through the internet (direct-ip connection).
They might add LAN at a later stage. This whole thing can just be temporary to slow down the massive piracy at the beginning of the games life. A later patch for LAN will also boost interest and piracy again and thus also (most likely at least) bring in more customers.
Time will tell, I'll still buy it day 1. Read More...
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