4iP Play Picks

New podcast: Shift Run Stop

Roo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:15:25 -0800

I’ve been working with Leila Johnston on a new thing. It’s a fortnightly podcast called Shift Run Stop and as she explains it’s “an ambient soundscape sort of production, an undulation of chatter and noise, ideas, games and food”. Editing it is a lot of fun, as are the weekly recording sessions.

It lives at shiftrunstop.co.uk and in iTunes for your subscribing pleasure. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Playful ‘09

Roo — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:06:45 -0700

Playful 09 was great.

I really enjoyed Playful 08 so was delighted to be asked back. Last year I demoed my Rock Band MIDI guitar hack. This year, rather than extend my P5 Glove project into another MIDI instrument, I decided to set myself the challenge of talking about games and films. This was perhaps a little foolish, as I know only a little bit about games and barely anything about films. However, the audience were mercifully forgiving of my ill-prepared nonsense and laughed in all the right places.

In case you missed it, here are my slides, complete with dodgy audio recording of the talk.

Playful 2009 – Roo Reynolds – Games And Films

Thankfully for all concerned, the rest of the day was much better. Here’s some of what happened:

Leila Johnston talked about Enemy of Chaos (“something for the aging nerd market…”).
Kareem Ettouney (Media Molecule Art Director) talked about being a servant rather than a director, and the importance of letting people pursue personal projects.
Daniel Soltis talked about physical computing and games.
Lucy Wurstlin talked about 4iP.
Matt Locke interviewed Robin Burkinshaw about his amazing creation Alice and Kev: the story of being homeless in The Sims 3.
James Bridle not only described but actually showed us a working version of MENACE, Donald Michie’s Matchbox Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine, a physical computer made of 304 matchboxes. (A similar machine for ‘Go’ would be “about the size of the crab nebula”.) His excellent presentation is now online.
Katy Lindemann showed us how fun and play drive change with some lovely examples (including Vinspired Voicebox, Chore Wars, Didget glucose monitor for DS, Fiat Eco:Drive, Thefuntheory (including the Piano Staircase, Bottle Bank Arcade Machine) and more.
Tassos Stevens talked about cricket.
Russell Davies made us agree the Four Square conventions for London (Parks: in, Outdoor markets: in, Small shops: out, Train stations: in, Tube stations: out, Supermarkets: out, Your home: out) and talked about and prototyped ‘barely games’. His presentation is here.
Molly Range talked about the serious games scene in Scandanavia.
Duncan Gough wondered what it would be like to play a game of ‘Kes’ (or ‘The Wire’…), and imagined fictive worlds which are somewhere between fantasy and casual games. He also pointed out the ‘the golden age of children’s story-telling’ (Press Gang, Running Scared) was at a time when broadcasters didn’t keep everything. Where’s the archive of those TV programmes? Lost forever?
Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu talked about Bus-Tops.
Rex Crowle did live scribblings on an Over Head Projetor and talked about selling his flock of sheep to buy an Amiga.
Simon Oliver explained that designing games is hard but you can discover the fun through prototyping.
Tim Wright talked about his Kidmapper project which involved following the route of Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped in real time.
Chris O’Shea finished the day by sharing a portfolio of his work.

A great day with lots to take home and think about. Thanks to Toby Barnes and everyone else at Pixel-Lab for making Playful happen.

More people who have written about it: Suw Charman-Anderson, Leila Johnston, Howard Pull, Adam Davis, Lawrence Chiles, Libby Davy, Daniel Soltis, Priyanka Kanse and more, plus the official record: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

‘Enemy of Chaos’ walkthrough

Roo — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:53:36 -0700

Spoiler alert: when viewed large, this is a complete map and walkthrough of the wonderfully geeky ‘choose your own adventure‘ meets ‘Fighting Fantasy‘ style interactive book/game, Enemy of Chaos by Leila Johnston.

You might have read her previous book, How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People. More recently, Leila’s reading from Enemy of Chaos was one of the forty very interesting things that happened at Interesting 2009. If you were foolish enough to miss that, I hope you’ve at least read Cory Doctorow’s review of the book on Boing Boing.

Earlier this week, Leila was kind enough to give me a copy. I loved it, and within a day I’d decided I absolutely needed to see what a map of every possible path through the book would look like.

I made this using the `dot` renderer from GraphViz, which does all the hard work of drawing the graph and laying it out. The source file only took about 20 minutes to create. I quickly flicked through the book from beginning to end, documenting all the ‘now turn to page x’ choices like so:

digraph g { node [ shape = plaintext, fontname = Tahoma ] 1 -> 166 1 -> 37 23 -> 201 24 -> 48 24 -> 178 31 -> 110 31 -> 191 // ... (etc)
}

Viewed as a graph, it also acts a walkthrough, revealing the dead ends and the various paths to the final page. It also highlights a few interesting things about the structure:

A six page loop between pages 201 and 23.
A glitch which means page 227 can’t ever be reached except by flicking randomly to it; it’s a reverse dead-end.
There are quite a few ways to reach the end, but a lot more ways not to. It’s very hard to win, and gets increasingly hard towards the end.

Below is the same map, laid out horizontally. As Leila points out, it “looks like a big Romulan ship”, which is quite appropriate for what must be one of the geekiest books of the year.

Recent Reading

Roo — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 10:57:40 -0700

Here’s what I read in September:

The Pythons’ Autobiography By The Pythons, Monty Python and Bob McCabe – pulled together by McCabe with care and loving attention to detail. Wonderful to see the personalities revealed via the history, the disagreements and differing perspectives. A rare thing: a top notch autobiography.
The Other Hand, Chris Cleave – the first book I’ve read for a while which I didn’t want to put down. I was instantly hooked (although not, I should mention, but the rather vomitous introduction by the editor) and wanted to eat it all in one go. I then lent it to my wife, who also, one she’d started, read it one day and had to finish it before she went to sleep. ‘Page turner’ isn’t the right term for it, but it begs to be finished and the characters are fascinating, three-dimensional and ambiguous as they get.
Incendiary, Chris Cleave – While it doesn’t quite match The Other Hand, it’s still an intriguing read which makes some interesting (if sometimes blunt) political points. Not quite a post-9/11 Nineteen Eighty-Four, but worth picking up. I will be keeping an eye out for more stuff by Cleave. I hope he gets some film deals too.
Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell – Meh. As always with Gladwell, there are a few central point here which can be made quickly, but he manages to labour them into pages of anecdote strews essays without the sense of any real underlying purpose. The essays that are interesting enough, but fail to really make you care. A bit better than Blink. (How’s that for faint praise?)
If it Bleeds, Duncan Campbell – Double meh. Laboured in so many ways. If you like good crime fiction you’ll probably want to avoid it. I wondered, more than once, how many times Campbell was going to use the is-that-my-heart-oh-no-it’s-just-my-mobile-phone-going-off thing.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller – Yay, yay and twice yay. I’d forgotten how good Heller is, at his best. This is it.

P5 Glove – Rock Paper Scissors and other fun

Roo — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:50:12 -0700

The P5 Glove is a consumer wired glove (tactile but not haptic). I bought one boxed as-new on eBay a while ago for not very much, and I’m glad I did as they now seem to be increasingly hard (and expensive) to get hold of.

It contains five analog bend sensors, 3 buttons plus in theory x, y and z coordinates and yaw, pitch and roll (it emits IR which is picked up by a big USB IR tower so it knows where your hand is in space).

Here’s the P5 Glove intro movie…

I say in theory because while the p5osc Mac drivers handle the bend sensors very well the x/y/z output is jittery and yaw/pitch/roll sadly non-existent.

I’ve been experimenting with bridging the outputs for the buttons, fingers and thumb into MIDI custom controls so that I mess around with them in ControllerMate. Here’s a demo of a simple setup which detects whether each digit is straight or bent, and uses that to determine whether your hand is describing a rock, paper or scissors shape. For now, it just displays ‘Rock’, ‘Paper’ or ‘Scissors’ in large type on the screen but it would be pretty straightforward to turn this into a simple game.

P5 Glove – MIDI Rock Paper Scissors from rooreynolds on Vimeo.

Here’s the ControllerMate patch I made to do it (click through for the annotated version on Flickr).

Lots more fun to be had here with virtual pianos and guitar strings too; arpeggiating the MIDI guitar, for example.

Too Thine Own Self Be True – Keep Wire In Correct Groove, Man

Roo — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:11:26 -0700

Conway Hall has a couple of iconic photographs that everyone seems to take…

Interesting 2009 – forty even more interesting things

Roo — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:54:24 -0700

As is becoming traditional (2007, 2008), I’ve made a very brief list of what happened at this year’s Interesting

Tom Loosemore on the race to sail faster than 50 knots.
Jessica Greenwood on why the least interesting things about sport is the score (football, with all its attendant drama, is a $500B industry).
Robert Brook spoke on being a gentleman (by birth, costume or behaviour).
Toby Barnes on a brief history of cheating in video-games (cheating, when it involves other people, is wrong).
Leila Johnston read some snippets from her very funny book, ‘The Enemy of Chaos‘
Cait Hurley talked about Arthur Jefferson (Stan Laurel’s dad and an awesome guy).
Alby Reid told us that everything we knew about nuclear power was wrong (How many people died as a result of Chernobyl? 56.)
Katy Lindemann enthused about robots (Tweenbots are especially adorable).
The very cute Bubblino made an appearance on stage (blowing bubbles across the stage every time ‘interesting’ was mentioned on twitter).
Dominic Tinley explained why we don’t see the colour violet on our computers and cameras, as well as what Radio 4 would look like if we could see sound.
Andy Huntington took us on a tour of keyboard instruments and explained ‘equal temperament’.
Alice Taylor talked about ‘merchants vs craftants’ (give some love back to the crafters).
Tim Duckett kindly taught us morse code in 10 minutes. For example: Z = Zinc Zoo kee-per = - – . .
Michal Migurski talked about maps and paper and a much-photocopied intersection map of San Francisco (paper wiki).
Josie Fraser talked about psychological violence in UK 1970s and 80s girls comics (’it can be dangerous to mock a monkey’).
Dan Maier talked about Sir Francis Galton (I now really want to read Galton’s book ‘The Art of Travel‘, and to a lesser extent his thoughts on ‘Africa for the Chinese’ (”one of the 5 most racist things I’ve ever read”, according to Dan) and ‘Arithmetic by Smell‘).
Asi Sharabi showed us 6-8 year old children’s ideas of interestingness (which centered around technology, friends, motors and animals).
Meg Pickard taught us about drinking rituals and associated customs (toast, cheers, your good health, chin chin, rule of thumb).
Alex Deschamps-Sonsino got us to make a very complicated origami box.
Tuur Van Balen talked about yoghurt and DNA synthesis (”I’ve never done bio-technology under such time pressure!”)
Jon Gisby taught us how to conduct a symphony orchestra (”It’s like riding a horse at speed; fun, but with a significant risk of abject and public failure”).
Jessica Bigarel discussed, and beautifully presented, her meta meta data data (capturing each flight of stairs travelled up or down was “an arduous dataset and it was very disruptive to my life”).
Craig Smith talked about his dad (”he sharpens a drill bit better than any man in Huddersfield”) and showed us the types of water wheels (under shot, breast shot, over shot and pitch back).
Tom Fishburne talked about innovation and cartoons.
Anab Jain talked about her Indian superpowers.
Naomi Alderman talked about greek tragedy and goats.
Gavin Bell talked about the writing of his new ‘Social Web Applications’ book (wifi is a blessing and a curse).
Emma Marsland shared the ponies she has loved, real and imagined, from since 1970
Nick Hand shared his ongoing journey around the coast of mainland Britain (5000 miles in 100 days).
We heard about the ‘BIL‘ unconference in Oxford next summer (BIL is to TED as Bar camp is to Foo camp).
Mark Earls and his Darwinian Display Team demonstrated random drift.
Robert Thomas demonstrated RjDj (’Music as Software’).
Gem Spear talked about electric trains and underground creeks (GM’s inglorious part in killing off the inter-urban railway systems in the US, and a rather nice discussion of running surface runoff water through gardens rather then through underground culverts).
Paul Hammond showed us how to win at Monopoly (if you can buy it, buy it; trade up to a full colour group asap; go for the oranges (stats!); unless it’s early in the game, stay in jail; create a housing shortage; don’t play house rules, as they’ll only make the game take too long; don’t play it at all, it’s a rubbish game. Instead, play German board games, which are not all German and not all board games).
David Smith gave a touching and powerful talk about teaching (you can’t teach children well unless you love children).
Richard Reynolds mentioned his Guerilla Gardening book and told a lovely story about planting sunflowers opposite Parliament.
We watched Jim Le Fevre’s beautiful astrotagging film.
Claire Margetts told us about the ‘Do’ lectures.
Matt Ward showed us why frivolity is important by showing his plans for watching a bullet reach the top of its trajectory (”Understanding comes through doing”).
Dan Germain talked about sunsets (”basically, when the sun disappears”, by which time it has apparently already happened) and asked why we persist in taking bad photos of them, pondering whether it’s because they remind us of death).

Another great job from Russell. Three years in a row, Interesting continues to live up to its name.

EZi Entertainment Zone

Roo — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:36:33 -0700

Simon Lumb recently spotted an amazing(ly bad) looking games console in a motorway service station which, shall we say, borrows heavily from the design of of the Wii.

I couldn’t resist trying it for myself, and picked one up on eBay for a little bit less than £20 including delivery. Quite a bit less than the RRP you’ll see quoted in some places online. A games console, complete with 87 games, for £20. Bargain. Right? Well, almost.

Observations:

The graphics are sub-SNES quality and many of the games are barely playable. The knock-off design is laughable and the bargain basement price reveals itself at every opportunity.
The two stick controllers each include four red flashing lights at the bottom, a-la the blue lights on the Wiimote, but these ones don’t do anything except flash irritatingly and constantly.
The stick controllers do include a very crude motion control. Certainly nothing like the Wiimote of course, but simply a basic (and flaky) movement detection, presumably through something like a mercury tilt switch. It just about works for the Tennis and Pingpong games but it it painful in the extreme for any of the others, especially baseball and golf where it’s practically unusable. You can turn ’sport’ mode off to disable the motion control and use the buttons instead (or just use the other game controller which you only get one of but is a much better bet for most of the games).

I have not tried all 87 games yet, but here are some highlights

Tennis

Bowling

Little Indian

While many of the other games I’ve tried so far have been predictably awful, other have turned out to be quite playable in a retro generation-before-last sort of way. Especially with the volume muted. The quality of the (18) games on the sports cartridge, while still quite mixed, is markedly higher than the (69) games on the arcade cartridge.

Some of the names are amazing. How can you not love a console that ships with titles including Cross Strert, Assart, Aimless, Polk, Grot Kid, Knocking, Ramming, Fish Journey and Girl.

I’ll try to continue to capture and review more of the games in detail. Rather than do it here, I’ve started an owners wiki where I’ve begun to document the EZi’s various games and hardware. It already includes the photos and videos used above, plus Pingpong, Boxing and others, and I’m sure it will grow as I (and others?) add more. I do hope anyone else who is brave/mad/foolish enough to buy an EZi Entertainment Zone will join me there.

Recent Reading

Roo — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:05:04 -0700

The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith – easily the best and least irritating Zadie Smith book ever. Hated White Teeth? Try this one.
Choke, Chuck Palahniuk – dark, disturbing and funny in that way that Chuck Palahniuk (and, in their own way, Irvine Welsh and Iain Banks) can sometimes be.
Dead Air, Iain Banks – reread it again, mainly for the very-tense-can’t-possibly-put-it-down bit about 2/3 through. You know, when he’s got to do that thing wearing the gloves. Brilliant!
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, Mil Millington – Very very funny book. You should read it. (Apparently I last did so in December 2007 and it was a pleasure to do so again.) You should really also read his searingly funny website which pre-dates the book.
Love and Other Near Death Experiences, Mil Millington – nearly as funny as the other one. (And it seems I last read this one on a trip to San Francisco in December 2006. I knew blogging my reading habits would be good for something.)

MIDIguitar patch

Roo — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:17:55 -0700

Remember the Rock Band / Guitar Hero MIDI guitar thing I made? I have not fiddled with it much since I presented at Playful 08.

However, since a few people have asked me for it, here’s the current version of the ControllerMate patch which contains two versions; one for Rock Band (Harmonix) Xbox guitars and one for Guitar Hero (Red Octane X-Plorer Controller) Xbox guitars.

You’ll need ControllerMate to use it of course, but more importantly you’ll need the MIDI-enabled version (which means you’ll need a registered copy) but honestly, once I’d tried ControllerMate I knew the MIDI addition was well worth the $15.

Enjoy, and do let me know if you make any interesting modifications.

Things that might help you get started:

Games Chatterbox Column Tuesday

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:15:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming and - pretty much anything else, too.

Tuesday's edition of Chatterbox.

Greg Howson

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Introducing... Jack Arnott

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:38:44 -0800

Like the heads of a mythical beast, when one Gamesblog contributor is chopped off, another crops up in its place...

Eagle-eyed Gamesblog regulars may have spotted that we have a new regular contributor on the site - and like a poor dinner party host, I've neglected to provide a formal introduction. So, Gamesblog readers, this is Jack Arnott, Jack, these are the Gamesblog readers.

Unlike me, Greg and Aleks (sob!), Mr Arnott is a full-time Guardian employee, coming to us from the world of actual news. He's a lifelong gamer, but is not a jaded old games hack like me and Greg, so will bring a fresh pair of eyes to the subject matter.

As for his gaming tastes: "My favourite console was probably my SNES, favourite game: A Link to the Past or FFVII. At the moment I'm playing an Evo 2010 Master League, finding it a bit frustrating, and FFVII Crisis Core on the PSP. I like RPGs and football games best."

But of course, the question on the lips of all Gamesblog veterans will concern our new writer's weapon of choice in the event of a zombie apocalypse. "Perhaps a paint can at the top of the stairs like in Home Alone," he ventures.

Hmm, ineffective, but nostalgic... Jack, you'll fit right in here...

Keith Stuart

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World of Warcraft celebrates five-year anniversary

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:55:24 -0800

World's most popular multiplayer online game boasts more than 12 million subscribers from around the world

World of Warcraft, the world's most popular multiplayer online game, is celebrating its five-year birthday. The game first saw the light of day on 23 November 2004.

When the game was first launched, it was seen as a big risk for its makers Blizzard, who had enjoyed previous success with games such as Starcraft and Diablo. The gamble looks to have paid off, however, as the game now boasts over 12 million subscribers from around the world.

The game lets players control avatars such as orcs, elves, or even the undead, through a vast virtual fantasy world called Azeroth.

Players can form in-game guilds, or band together to attempt dungeons known as 'instances' in order to obtain better equipment for their characters.

Its popularity has spawned a lucrative industry in China, where players known as 'farmers' play constantly, in order to obtain in-game gold. This is then sold for real money to players, though the practice is strictly against the terms and conditions of the game, and could result in players being banned.

Concerns have been raised over World of Warcraft's addictive qualities. Real-life divorces have resulted from some players' addictions, and some have expressed reservations about the amount of time players have spent in special events known as 'raids'.

There have been two expansions since its launch - the Burning Crusade, which introduced a new area called Outland, and last year's the Wrath of the Lich King. Players queued through the night to buy the latest expansion, which brought the new continent of Northrend and introduced the new class of Death Knight.

Blizzard announced at BlizzCon, the annual Warcraft convention, that the next expansion will be called Cataclysm. Whole areas of the original game's continents are to be changed forever after the emergence of the Dragon Aspect Deathwing.

The anniversary is being marked within the game, with players being presented with a special pet called Onyxia Brood Whelping, and Blizzard is said to be planning other ways to mark the milestone.

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The UK top 10 games chart

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:20:00 -0800

Modern Warfare 2 continues to kill the opposition, but it had better watch out for that assassin sneaking up behind

Leisure software charts compiled by GfK Chart Track
© 2009 ELSPA (UK) Ltd

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The Sims 3: World Adventures for PC | Game review

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0800

PC; £29.99; cert 12+; EA

It's a sign of the PC's diminishing influence that Sims 3 was not the all conquering force it had been in previous years. Which is a pity, because World Adventures is an original and inventive expansion pack that makes previous efforts seem decidedly lazy.

The idea is to take your Sim around the world on a series of extended holidays, stocking up on new items, costumes and furniture to match your new surroundings – hardly surprising, perhaps, given the glorified shop window the series has become in recent years. What is more unexpected is how much new gameplay has been included this time round.

As you'd expect from the title, the emphasis is on exploration and puzzle solving, with China, Egypt and France being the key locations each with their own distinctive style and challenges. When you touch down in each location you can set about your usual pursuits of eating, shopping and socialising. Indigenous shops come packed with eclectic new items, some of which can be useful in the next part of the game – adventuring.

Each location has a bulletin board where you can pick up a variety of adventure-based tasks. These could be retrieving objects scattered around the landscape or negotiating tombs and caves filled with hazards and traps. There's also two new skills to learn; martial arts and, bizarrely, nectar-making, which helps raise the mood of other characters, provided you make a decent plonk as a result. The adventure elements, though initially incongruous, are particularly welcome, with genuine thought and skill involved as the game takes a more RPG-like influence in how you use inventory items to survive the challenge. Naturally, there are rewards for completing these tasks, including Visa points to extend your stay. However, if you fail there are penalties too – most notably a mummy's curse that sees you returning as a mummy (complete with undead social activities!) if you can't cure your malady in time. Taking photographs of particular locations or items, earns you rewards and is a skill you can upgrade as the game progresses – a gentle twist on the usual arcade adventure trick of hunting for bonus icons.

World Adventures is easily the best add-on we've seen for The Sims and one that does more than just add new items to purchase. Yes, you're stuck with the usual finicky movement and limited interaction, but it does add something new to a game that appealed more to escapists and shopaholics than genuine gamers before. At times, it has an almost Shenmue look and feel to it, perhaps heralding a very different kind of Sims 4.

Mike Anderiesz

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Best of Chatterbox - w/e November 13. MW2 apocalypse special

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:30:43 -0800

In which Modern Warfare is very much declared - and then incessantly chatted about...

Well, what a week that was. Not last week, of course - we'll get to that eventually, I'm sure. No, the week before last - the one with the Modern Warfare 2 launch in it. You remember? Sainsburys at eight in the morning? Shooting innocent people in the airport? All coming back now is it?

To celebrate the devastating effect this launch had on the cultural diversity of the Chatterbox, Beardofbees has lent his summation of the week an apocalyptic tone. We are all, it seems, now living in the nuclear winter of the MF2 launch, a grim landscape populated by haunted-eyed gamers in their pants, moaning about perks and care packages.

There was, still time, though, for some Dragon's Age chatter, worries about state-sanctioned mass grief, the science of yawning, and what it is that Dizzyisanegg keeps in his pocket to attract cats...

Apocalypse indeed...

...Transmission source: Beard of Bees
Date of transmission: November 13
Subject: Chatterbox comms...

We have only pieces of information about what happened. What we do know is this. It was Monday the 9th of November. Things were different back then. The gamesbloggers rolled up with mouths full of chatter about weekend games of FIFA, Pro Evo Soccer, Uncharted and even old classics like STALKER. How we laugh now to remember those times, when people actually played and talked about other games. Because on Tuesday the 10th of November, an agency known only as Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare 2, and everything changed.

For the moment, then, let us cast our minds back to that calm before the storm and fondly remember the simple pleasures: the gamesblogger PES league fixtures; whether Dragon Age was worth buying on a console rather than PC; the decision of blogger Crispycrumb to share his home with an actual girl; and why the Guardian commenting feature still refused to work properly. Mysterious blank posts were coming through thick and fast. "Anyone else tempted to start recommending all of these," asked onedaveofmany, "or is it just me?"

However, scarcely was the week underway when the looming shadow of Modern Warfare 2 began to obscure all notion of discussing anything else. Ever. Rumour had it that Sainburys would be piling high and selling cheap; credit goes to foolsgold for the early spot on this bargainous nugget. This quickly instigated a debate about where best to obtain the game, the chatterboxers planning all sorts of elaborate schemes involving returning pre-orders and touring the supermarkets at the crack of dawn. It's truly a turning point when you realise that those individuals, the ones you see on news reports being mocked by a sarcastic reporter for queuing up for the latest computer game, are actually you and your peers.

Combating this revelation with a brief episode of maturity, the Gamesblog pondered the economics at work here. Limni pointed out that the supermarket pricing strategies were loss-making, and designed mainly to harm their specialist competitors. "It's a drop in the ocean to a supermarket chain, but losing their release-day sales of a title like MW2 will significantly dent GAME's bottom line," he concluded. Supersmashin was on hand to offer the counter-argument: "Sainsbury's are indeed selling it for £26," he confirmed. "Kerching!"

Labour MP Tom Watson raised himself instantly to hero status amongst gamers as news broke late in the day that he had stood up to fellow MP, anti-violent-games campaigner, and general all-around buffoon Keith Vaz in Parliament. The media frenzy around this and the other launch headlines inevitably eased us into Tuesday where it was like an early Christmas for the gamesbloggers. Excited stories were shared of morning purchases of Modern Warfare 2 and, predictably, this set the tone of the chat for the rest of the day.

"As I have no interest in the Call of Duty games," said Riadsala as the juggernaut got underway, "I think I'll sit today's blog out." With hindsight, perhaps writing off the whole week would have been more sensible. Talk was dominated by who'd bought the game, how much money had changed hands, when they would get together to play multiplayer matches, and how one could go about joining the gamesblog Modern Warfare clan. "There is something you have to do," explained cameroon95 darkly, "and it involves me wearing a pig mask."

Painful as it is to recognise that shopping was the most exciting thing discussed by the Gamesblog that fateful morning, if we must go down this route then Uncle3en takes the prize with his tale of arriving at the supermarket till with nothing in his basket but a copy of Modern Warfare 2, two packets of tobacco and some rizlas. At seven in the morning. Meeting a jealous stare from the young man behind the counter with the explanation that he was off work until Friday no doubt helped spread the joy in the checkout aisles immensely.

As if retail experiences weren't an exciting enough topic of conversation, the blog soon raised a fresh and innovative new query to chew over: what's better, the Xbox 360 or the Playstation 3? Sadly, a friendly and balanced discussion erupted, the gamesbloggers coming together in a frenzy of mild-mannered and amiable contention. "I am very disappointed," chastised onedaveofmany, "that this has once again sunk into a rational debate about the genuine merits of both systems as providers of home entertainment. Where are the fanboys?"

Into Wednesday and the day after the MW2 release, where the instant topic for morning conversation was, of course, the human rights and freedom of speech abuses currently suffered by the people of China. Oh, who are we kidding? It was a frothy-mouthed babble of wargame word-slinging as expected. A major topic was the controversial airport level of the game, which sets players among a group of terrorists conducting an attack on innocents in the terminal. "Joined in with the massacre and outdid Markov by using grenades," enthused one gamesblogger, but then what did we expect from a poster named Jihad? MI6 have logged the comments and are on the way for a chat, no doubt.

Trying to fight the Modern Warfare talk, Dragon Age did what it could. The gamesbloggers are, it seems, generally enjoying Bioware's latest with gusto. General opinion seems to be that this is a nicely written and carefully plotted game, with excellent characterisation and mature dialogue. More or less the polar opposite of MW2, then.

The date being the 11th November, a minute's silence was observed around the country that morning in memory of our fallen war heroes. Gamesblog being Gamesblog, of course, this didn't happen before a spirited argument about the justifications for this practice was fought across the comment boxes. Are we as a nation becoming over-sentimental and is this fueled by the media? Is it used by the government to help reduce opposition to conflict overseas? And is it appropriate to levy these suspicions on a day that is about remembering the fallen and not the political reasons for war?

None of these questions were a concern for TonyHayers, who had more zoological issues to tackle. "Pelicans are savages. Vomiting out half-digested, still alive birds is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen," he offered, followed by the underwhelming (if accurate) condemnation: "Animals."

Joining in with this brave attempt to derail the Modern Warfare 2 chat as the week sped on, RobLindsay posted his thoughts on the entire 2010 BBC2 programme line-up, CBPodge asked about the physiological and social theories on why we yawn, and in a simple act of desperation EnglishRed posted three blank comments in a row. None of these stratagems did the trick however, and we rumbled into Thursday unabashed.

As we did so, a few cautionary tales began to surface regarding the single-player campaign of Modern Warfare 2. "Distinctly underwhelmed" said EnglishRed; "The story is a disgrace" offered FerrisSaved; and "I seem to have lost the ability to drink and have spilled tea down my shirt twice," explained OfficePest, though it wasn't clear whether this was related to the game at all. Either way, it transpired that Infinity Ward's tale of conflict and betrayal had to be approached with a caveat – the plot is less well-rounded than the menu at a Kate Moss dinner party. Nonetheless a general spirit of enthusiasm for the title prevailed, especially as the gamesbloggers began to move over to the glorious multiplayer portion of the game. Talk of perks and weapon unlocks abounded.

A determined few gamesbloggers tried to resist the prevailing chat and a strong rival for conversation was Demon's Souls, a Playstation 3 exclusive of extraordinary popularity given that it hasn't even been released in Europe yet. Talk of Tower Knights, falling through holes, hunting for keys, and fire resistance washed over the blog and between this and the ongoing Modern Warfare babble, poor Lazybones' plea for posture advice—"I'm feeling slumped; like a bipedal tortoise", he explained—almost went unnoticed. Luckily a few generous posters came to his aid: PhilosopherK1ng suggesting "Stretching", "More Stretching" and "Yoga at Work"; TonyHayers chiming in from the seventies with "Lie on the floor and get a chick in high heels to walk on your spine"; and some elegant but simple advice coming from Crispycrumb in the form of "Sit up straight."

There was also a great deal of chat around "Games of the Year", or even "Games of the Decade" lists, and many carefully considered Top 10s were posted. However, tallying up all such results in addition to compiling a weekly Best-of being the ludicrous concept that it is, we find ourselves being transported past all these by the magic of narrative authority to the closing hours of the week, where an energetic debate on a thread discussing morality in computer games threatened to rival the Chatterbox for weight of comments.

Aside from this, and the predictable Modern Warfare 2 chat, the gamesbloggers mused over whether Spurs goalie Carlo Cudicini would continue to receive wages after being injured whilst motorcycling, something his contract expressly prohibited. Taking the practical approach, eMTG pointed out that it's, "not like he's on the breadline is it?", trusting in jealousy from the working classes to add force to his argument.

As the day ticked along, Dizzyisanegg tried to come to terms with a self-discovery: "Demon's Souls is turning me into a Fantasy loving spod," he confessed, and CompanyCalls shared a story about needing a replacement for a bicycle puncture before work. "I was complaining to the guy in Evans about the rising cost of bike tyres and he simply said 'Inflation'."

Finally as the week drew to a close, the chatterboxers looked back on what they had discussed (Modern Warfare 2), what they would discuss the week after (Modern Warfare 2) and what they planned to play during their two days of weekend freedom (Modern Warfare 2). Starting to realise what was happening, they searched desperately for news of something, anything, that would restore their faith in the continued existence of, you know, other games, and a sign that one day the spell would be broken. So it was that HiddenAway arrived like an Internet messiah, offering tales of Final Fantasy 13 and a March 2010 release date. As the gamesbloggers' eyes lit up at the news, however, the prophet had one further addition to make. "Oh, and Leona Lewis will be the one doing the theme song", he said. "It's called My Hands."

That was when we knew all other gaming was dead. Long live Infinity Ward.

Quotes of the Week

"Sitting around in my undercrackers at 3am, drunk, playing games doesn't seem so bad now. I just need to do it at home instead of the 24hr Tesco."
SuperSmashin describes the joys, and pitfalls, of a bachelor lifestyle.

"I used to know a lad who was in the Muslims and he worked as a driving instructor - The only difference I remember is that he had a glow in the dark Mosque air freshner on his dashboard"
Alfienoakes embraces multi-culturalism with flair.

"I read once that cats are more likely to like you if they see you yawn - it gives them an affinity with you, shared experience or something. I keep bacon in my pockets too, that seems to help."
Dizzyisanegg finally explains that distinctive aroma.

Keith Stuart

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Jak & Daxter and LittleBigPlanet - who said platform games were dead?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:35:00 -0800

PSP sees two high quality platformers bolster release schedule

The "iPhone as games machine" hype is clearly justified. Dungeon Hunter is just the latest – and rather substantial – gaming treat I've enjoyed on Apple's gadget. But in amongst all this noise it's easy to forget about Sony's PSP. The Go may have got off to a slow start but the last month has seen two very welcome PSP releases – Little Big Planet and Jak and Daxter: The Last Frontier.

The original Jak and Daxter was a gorgeous and rewarding platform adventure that got the right balance between challenge and universal appeal. In many ways it was the Mario game the Playstation never had. It all went horribly horribly wrong in the sequels though. For some reason – probably due to a marketing edict that games needed to be edgier post GTA III – the charm of the original was replaced by a darker setting. The tightly honed action was replaced by free-roaming and the series became an also-ran. Thankfully The Last Frontier sees a return to the original vision and is fantastic return to form for the series.

The action is fairly standard platform stuff – think ledges, double jumps etc – but also throws in a stack of interesting weaponry. Jak gets a pile of upgradable abilities to play with and using them in the right situation is key to progress. The other main gameplay feature is air combat. Traditionalists may grumble about the inclusion of this and they'd have a point – there really is too much of it here. Not that it isn't enjoyable in small doses mind. The controls are responsive and the dogfights satisfying. But the main fun is down on the ground, with numerous moments bringing back happy memories of The Precursor Legacy. Heck, it's even better than Daxter's excellent solo PSP game from 2006.

The other recent PSP biggie is LittleBigPlanet. As you probably know LBP was released last year for the PS3 to general critical acclaim. Now we have an excellent miniaturisation of the gorgeous PS3 platform game/creative tool.

Some compromises have been made. The Sackboy character is less iconic on the smaller screen while the graphics are understandably rougher around the edges. But the charm of the original game still comes through and in many ways this is the more playable game. The controls are tighter for a start. Also the checkpoints seem more lenient – the game is still a challenge though.

Like the PS3 original, playing the game is only apart of the appeal. Creating your own levels is where the potential of the game really takes off. However, like the PS3 version, it takes a long time and lot of skill to create anything even half decent. Or maybe I'm just lazy? The creation tools for the PSP version make the process fairly straightforward for the committed but it still feels a little overwhelming, especially when you think of the time-constricted chunks normally associated with handheld gaming. Luckily then the ability to download user made levels is easy and as addictive as the original. There is no multiplayer but otherwise this is a perfect example of how to port a PS3 game to the PSP.

So there you go – two decent platform games in one month and the PSP release schedule back on form. What do you think then? Pleased that Jak and Daxter are back? Tempted by LBP? Or just too busy on the iPhone or DS?

Greg Howson

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Games Chatterbox Column Monday

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:10:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming and - pretty much anything else, too.

Monday's "did you play Assassin's Creed 2" version of Chatterbox

Greg Howson

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Lego Rock Band for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS | Game review

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:37:48 -0800

Xbox 360/PS3/Wii/DS, £29.99 - £39.99, cert: 7+, Warner Bros

Someone at Lego really deserves a bonus. They're not the most obvious toy company to embrace the world of video gaming but not only have they done it, they've done it well and continue to put their own highly endearing spin on family gaming.

After the successful film franchises, they've now turned their attention to the Rock Band genre. The results are typically Lego: cute, funny, involving and with an emphasis on (e)quality. Those expecting a dumbing down of the frantic fretwork won't be surprised to hear that you can complete the game just by strumming. However, that's only on Super Easy mode. Select Medium and above and even the most adept Guitar Hero will find something to challenge their hand/eye coordination. This means, of course, that the Rock Band dexterous can play alongside smaller siblings / less competent parents without anyone getting frustrated.

The other obvious difference between Lego's interpretation and the existing titles is the music. Thrash metal is notable by its absence and, instead, you've got crowdpleasers, mainstream rock and straightforward pop, from Queen to KT Tunstall, via the likes of Tom Petty, Bon Jovi, Lostprophets and the Ghostbusters theme. They've clearly missed a trick – what, no Blockheads? – but make up for it in Free Play mode with their Lego interpretations of the original artists. Like the movie franchises, these are charming and oddly accurate – particularly Lego Iggy Pop, Blur and Let's Dance era David Bowie. Iggy even gets to voice the Tutorial stages.

Story Mode is the main event here. Create a character, choose your instrument, recruit a band, then take them from humble beginnings to stadium success. You do this via a succession of gigs and challenges where you earn "studs" – Lego bricks – to spend on transport, management, clothes, instruments, record production, etc. This comes with a sensible learning curve, great variety, daft challenges – from being the entertainment at a birthday party to saving a ship from an angry octopus with the power of Rock – and, as you'd expect from these chaps, very funny cut scenes. Even the random facts on the loading screens provide frequently silly laughs: for example, did you know that if you stack Lego bricks in a certain way, you can spell the word Lego?

The obvious downside is that you have to focus so hard on the game that you can't watch the lovely accompanying animation. Still, that's another reason to get more friends / all the family involved. Chalk up another success to Lego then. Any chance of a football sim next? Just think how satisfying brick-crunching tackles would be.

Neil Davey

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The magic of Mario

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:30:00 -0800

Almost 30 years on from his arcade debut, the plucky Italian plumber's still going strong

The creation of Mario was, most likely, one of those moments of accidental genius which warrant little scrutiny or examination. A small sprite needs a few distinguishing features to mark him out from the plethora of similar arcade characters, red and blue clothes with a natty 'tache is easy to represent in pixels - hey presto, you have everyone's favourite mycophile.

In fact, the plumber's humble origins are just as prosaic. And it's this simple genesis that marks Mario out from so many of his platform-navigating colleagues - what game series today could launch with a character so simply devised, or set in a world with such bizarre charm.

Jumping on turtles in order to kill them, smashing blocks with your head to retrieve golden coins, eating huge mushrooms with eyes to gain power - all gaming lore we're more than familar with, yet all ideas which, devoid of context, would seem more appropriate for a Clive Barker novel than a universally popular videogame series.

Even the likes of Sonic reflect some level of crass pandering to valued demographics. He's a hedgehog, with attitude. He rescues cute animals from an evil robotic genius. Charmless, irritating and ultimately doomed. Crash Bandicoot, Zool, Rayman, Bubsy the Bobcat, Spyro - the list of similarly failed attempts to wrestle away Mario's crown just goes on and on.

While we could try and analyse Mario's success on a deeper level - I'm sure he taps into some kind of hirsute water supplying male archetype - he has, of course, been helped by the astounding consistency and success of the games in which he's starred.

Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy - all been held up as the greatest examples of their genre, not just on Nintendo consoles but of any platformers ever made.

My first Mario experience was, in fact, with Super Mario Bros 2 on the NES - a regrettably rushed, though often fondly remembered, port of a Japanese platformer called Doki Doki Panic. It was, with hindsight, really quite rubbish.

What this meant however is that I succumbed utterly to Mario 3, and all the hype that preceded it. Warp whistles, racoon ears, Toad's minigame - all distinctive facets of a gaming experience I look back on just as fondly as any childhood book, or film.

With the release of New Super Mario Bros Wii today, a new generation can fall under his moustachioed charms. Meanwhile the classics are still more than playable, and Nintendo can rest assured in the fact that there will likely never be a gaming hero more well-loved or endearingly idiosyncratic.

I can forgive Mario is Missing. I can forgive Hotel Mario, Mario Paint. Hell, I can even forgive Bob Hoskins. Mario, I salute you.

Now you've read Jack waffling on why not add your own fond Mario memories beneath the line there? Go on. It's good to talk

Jack Arnott

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Games Chatterbox Column Friday

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:10:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming - and just about anything else, too.

Friday's edition of Chatterbox

Greg Howson

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The Friday question: the three games that explain humanity

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:22:15 -0800

Select the games that tell us most about mankind...

Last week's semi-philosophical question prompted a wealth of fascinating responses, so here's another along similar lines.

An alien arrives on Earth and wants to know all about mankind - there's just one problem; the visitor will only accept the information through the medium of videogames, and will only play three. Which videogames do you choose?

Fundamentally, you have to decide what you want this extraterrestrial being to understand about humanity and then select the games that will illustrate this. You must provide only three options, and you need to briefly explain each of your choices.

Here are mine...

The Sims
The perfect primer for understanding human relations, ambitions and petty habitual obsessions. Plus, our new alien friend can gain a useful foundation in childish humour - "my avatar has urinated in the kitchen - why does this amuse you?"

Civilization
Shows how mankind has used a combination of science, weaponry and grain storage to progress. Also, plenty of information about social and economic structure. And how to lie effectively to foreign statesmen.

Grand Theft Auto
As a race, we like shooting stuff, driving really fast and making money. This game shows that some of us like to do all three at the same time.

Okay, your turn...

Keith Stuart

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Is Xbox Live ban the ultimate answer to piracy?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:13:35 -0800

Yes, it's another Modern Warfare 2 blog. I touched on the piracy angle in a post last week and expanded upon it for an article in the paper today:

Modern Warfare 2 has shifted more than one million copies in the UK alone and is likely to sell many more before Christmas. Its controversial terrorist section is what's got the headlines. But the real story here is online. The huge appeal of Modern Warfare 2 is primarily driven by its online modes. The single-player section of the game – as splendidly over the top and visceral as it is – is over in six or seven hours. The multiplayer modes will keep you entertained for six or seven months – or, looking at the number of people still playing the original 2007 Modern Warfare, probably longer.

It's not just Modern Warfare 2 that is driving the popularity of online gaming on consoles. Throw in the thousands of gamers regularly competing on sports titles such as Fifa and Madden, as well as action games such as GTA IV and Gears of War 2, and it's clear that online gaming has gone mainstream.

This is especially true in the case of the Xbox 360. Xbox Live, its online service, costs around £40 a year but is slicker and more integrated than similar offerings for the PlayStation and Nintendo Wii. So Microsoft's recent banning of up to one million modded Xbox 360s from access to the service is big news.

Owners of the modded consoles, which in many cases are used to play pirated games, will still be able to play offline, but will be banned from signing into Live.

Clearly the timing is everything. It can't be a coincidence that this news was announced the day after the release of Modern Warfare 2 – the game certain to be the most played title on Xbox Live for a long time to come. The ban is the next step in the games industry's ongoing battle against piracy. Any gamer – really, any boy – who grew up in the 80s will have memories of tape-to-tape copies of the latest Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum games being passed around the playground.

It was similar in the early 90s with Amiga and Atari ST games. Those formats died away but piracy on the PC has remained an issue ever since.

The growth of the internet and torrent sites has only made it easier for PC piracy to grow. But this isn't just an issue that affects open platforms such as the PC – the consoles are also heavily hit. R4 flash devices for the hugely popular Nintendo DS are just one example. Modding the Xbox 360 so it can play cracked games is another.

Pirate copies of games have always been around and probably always will be. High prices, greed, technical challenges – the reasons behind piracy are many. Deterrents have always failed. Could this online ban be the first to actually succeed? Barring access to online services from modded consoles – especially when, as with Modern Warfare 2, such access is a game's primary attraction – is potentially a huge deterrent to piracy. This is especially true on Xbox 360, where so many games are built around online play.

Microsoft may be the first to do so but you can expect all console manufacturers to impose similar bans in the future. Piracy may never be stopped, but this online ban could go a long way to making it far less enticing.

What do you think? Will the strategy work?

Greg Howson

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Game Chatterbox Column Thursday

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:15:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming - and just about anything else, too.

Thursday's edition of Chatterbox

Greg Howson

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Quick mobile gaming round-up

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:06:29 -0800

Teeny news snippets from the world of phone games...

I haven't covered mobile games on here for a while, not because there's nothing interesting going on – far from it – but because juggernaut-like releases such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon's Age and Modern Warfare 2 have been taking up all my gaming time. Regular readers could probably do with a break from Infinity Ward's blockbusting FPS, though, so here's a quick dash through some interesting new and forthcoming titles…

First up, two whole-hearted recommendations, both available on a variety of mobile platforms: Bubble Town 2 and Dictator Defense. The first is an excellent sequel to I-Play's engrossing Puzzle Bobble variant, which has been a huge hit on Facebook. The idea is to shoot coloured balls - or 'borbs' - up the screen to bring down two or more balls of the same hue. Similarly to Peggle, you begin each round with only a certain number of borbs, and if you run out, the game board shrinks. However, by dropping more than three balls with one shot, you earn extra ammunition – once you've cleared the screen you go onto the next stage. Simple.

Naturally, there's a range of power-ups to collect and later stages introduce novelties such as sleeping borbs (which have to be struck twice before they can be dislodged), and boss characters who must repeatedly 'borbed' in a weakspot. So to speak. It's not revolutionary, but as with all massively successful puzzle titles, it's beautifully designed, deceptively deep and filled with neat little ideas. It's available on Facebook, iPhone and most current mobile handsets.

Dictator Defense (various Java handsets), meanwhile, is a brilliantly judged take on the 'Tower Defense' casual gaming phenomenon. You must defend your base at the bottom of the screen from enemy soldiers invade from the top. You do this by building gun posts, protective walls and other measures, while also constructing banks, which allow you to amass funds for your military projects. Essentially, as with all titles of this ilk, it's sort of RTS micro-management writ small – except here, there's an element of Tetris, too, as the action is entirely vertical and your role is to constantly monitor and tend to the needs of the bottom of the screen by observing 'falling' objects.

The visuals are lovely, the units are varied but not overwhelmingly complex and the array of enemies (soldiers, tanks, helicopters, etc, all with different strengths and attack patterns), provides plenty of variety. There are lovely comic touches too, with giant grinning, cartoon-style boss characters charging at you at the close of each stage. The Digital Chocolate chaps are absolute masters of miniaturised tactical game design, and this is no exception.

Elsewhere, National Geographic, which has been quietly nudging its way into the casual gaming space, is bringing its PC hit Plan It Green to iPhone. It's a sort of environmentally-minded take on the likes of FarmVille, in which players must transform burnt out industrial wastelands into thriving sustainable communities by constructing eco-homes and parks.

EA Mobile has a busy November planned. It's bringing the soap opera-style adventure title Surviving High School to iPhone, allowing wistful graduates to re-experience school life as a jock, preppie, nerd or outsider through a series of episodic instalments. The publisher also has iPhone versions of Battleship and Connect Four on the way, both with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity for two-player action, and Tetris Revolution, yet another fresh take on the classic puzzler, this time allowing you to virtually test yourself against, and learn from, the tactics employed by some of the world's best Tetris players. You should also check out Auditorium released on iPhone earlier this week, a hypnotic music game in which you construct various tunes by deflecting particles around the screen. It's in the finest tradition of audio sims like Rez and Vib Ribbon and will delight closet composers for hours (Pocket Gamer have a review here).

Veteran European mobile developer HandyGames (another favourite of mine) has just launched Silent Hunter: U-Boat Aces, a Java version of the PC-based WW2 submarine battle series. It's a top-down viewed strategy title, providing would-be captains with a range of missions, from stalking battleships to salvage operations.

Finally, if you're feeling charitable, download the sturdy 'match-three' puzzler, Memory Wiz from App Store, before November 30: publisher Real Arcade is donating 100% of the proceeds to the game industry's Child's Play charity organization.

Oh and feel free to recommend any mobile, iPhone or Google Android games you're currently enjoying…

Keith Stuart

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SG.biz - A Message From Your Editor

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:38:16 -0800

Morning chums, a quic update to let you know that Scottishgames.biz is currently undergoing something of an update? Upgrade? Some kind of change anyway.

For the last three years, we've been using Typepad and had domain registration/redirection through 1and1.co.uk.

However, recent changes mean that those two specific service providers are not as compatible as they should be, so we're currently exploring new providers like Ning and Tumblr - and maybe Google sites, as alternatives.

Plus 1and1 are going to get kicked so far into touch, they may end up biting the back of their own heads. Seriously, don't use them...

So, there may a little up and down, or general changes to the site. However, if you could bear with us, we promise that normal service, such as it is, will be resumed as soon as possible.

In the meantime, love you all dearly, BB [editor]

Ruffian Expands Design Team

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:30:24 -0800

Ruffian is expanding, with the appointment of two new members to it's design team. Steve Iannetta and Ed Campbell have joined the company as Lead and Senior Designer respectively.

Gaz Liddon, studio head is quite delighted...

“We’re delighted to have these guys on board. These days most games are technically competent and look great but it’s a lot rarer for them to play well. We only want to make the very best games and you can only achieve that through great design. Steve and Ed joining is another step towards that goal.”

You can read the full story over on Ruffian's website.

Pocket Gamer Would Like To See Firebrand On N-Gage

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:09:08 -0800

Another day, another Scottish developer quietly picking up plaudits...

Pocket Gamer outlined it's list of the five development studios it would like to see creating games for Nokia's N-Gage platform.

Glasgow's Firebrand Studios is on the list because of their:

unique ability to squeeze memorably robust and fully featured racing games onto what might be considered unsuitable, underpowered hardware.

As Pocket gamer points out, the N-gage still lacks a genuinely awesome racer (and since we can no longer use our beloved copy of Glimmerati), so Firebrand, the ball would seem to be in your court...

Ruffian's First Interview!

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:05:59 -0800

Ruffian Games' Billy 'Billy' Thomson, goes on the record with Edge Online, to tell the site about the new studio and his views on the games market in today's financially unstable climate.

Edge circles around the question of content very gingerly. They ask about online gaming and content, but you can practically hear the question "JUST TELL US WHAT YOU'RE BLOODY WORKING ON!" in the background.

Thanks to his long association with talented PR people, Billy handles this with aplomb and gives away nothing.

Definitely worth a look. You can have a gander here.

Tag Boss On iPhone...

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:33:37 -0800

Paul Farley, Tag's casually glamorous managing director spoke to Casualgaming.biz earlier this week about the disruptive potential of the Apple iPhone App Store, compared to the 'WAP decks' of the main mobile networks...

"Apple have single handedly turned the system on its head by allowing content producers to circumnavigate the entire value chain and go to their customers direct for the first time and pay them a fair revenue share in the process. In doing so they have solved many of the key barriers to market growth in this industry. Depending on who you listen to between 30 and 50 per cent of iPhone users are downloading games – that’s a huge increase on the 3-4 per cent that are downloading Java and BREW games."

Amen! If you're an iPhone owner, a developer who's even remotely interested in the potential of the massive (and growing) iPhone audience, the interview is well worth a read.

You can find it all here.

New, Softer, Stronger, LONGER EIF Announced

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:19:33 -0800

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival is back for 2009 and it's promising to be longer and stronger than ever before.

This year's event will take place from the 10th - 16th of August in 'Edinburgh's City Centre'.

Dare to be Digital's Protoply event will be part of the lineup, as will the trade conference. The event is already calling for content for the conference AND screenings.

Chris Deering makes a return as chairman and had the following to say:

EIF Chairman, Chris Deering said: “Edinburgh is electric with creative energy at during the Festival, which enhances the spirit of networking that attendees always cite as their reason for returning to EIF each year. The Content Committee is organizing the most creative and enlightening line-up of Conference Sessions in EIF history, looking at new frontiers in game design, and new mobile game devices as well as the expanding role of community in on-line gaming. There will be some amazing demonstrations as part of the ever popular and unique EIF Screenings and the some new business issues discussed in panels. Edinburgh attracts "thinkers" and the "vision seekers" from all facets of the interactive industry and stimulates ingenuity, which is critical in the new 'post bubble' age”.

We're not sure what 'Post Bubble' is exactly, but it sounds like a great idea for an exciting new iPhone game!

If you have an awesome idea for Edinburgh, get in touch with the snappily named edinburghinteractivefestival.com.

Dynamo: New Series Gets IGF Nomination

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:35:35 -0800

Dynamo Games' latest title: Football Tycoon is to be the first in a whole series of sports games from the mobile company, according to a press release we received this week.

A press release, we note, sent from their new PR practitioner - and very professional it was too. Not quite Indoctrigreat, but very creditable...

Dynamo is also cook-a-hoop to tell the world that Football Tycoon is also the ONLY java game to receive a nomination in this year's Independent Games Festival Mobile Awards.

From the press release...

Available early Summer 2009, Football Tycoon follows a similar format as the popular Rollercoaster Tycoon series, while adding a unique twist to the standard football game genre. Moving away from traditional management simulator gameplay, players step into the shoes of a wealthy business owner and live out their dream of running a football club. From hiring managers, controlling finances, developing your stadium and orchestrating intense media campaigns, the game gives players an unprecedented degree of freedom.

The title boasts two expansive single player modes; The rags to riches 'Grass Roots', which tasks players with taking a small team to the top of the Tycoon Owner Rich List within 30 years and 'Scenario Mode', which allows owners to tackle a variety of challenges, such as taking over a small club and pulling them out of administration.

How gamers achieve these goals is entirely up to them. Will you give some of your hard-earned cash back to the local community or save the spoils to fund your fight to the Premiership and elite European competitions? The shift away from traditional management simulator gameplay, an unmatched wealth of player options and a rich, detailed visual style makes for a winning hat-trick.

Brian McNicoll said: "That Football Tycoon has already been short-listed for an industry award is testament to the creativity of our team and their ability to consistently produce fun, innovative titles for the thriving mobile market."

"We will also be creating versions for Baseball, American Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey, Golf, F1, NASCAR, Cricket & tennis. We are also looking to take the series to different handheld platforms such as BREW, iPhone, Android, Nintendo DS and as such, we are on the lookout for potential distribution partners to take these games to market."

Dynamo will be manning at stand at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. If you'd like to catch up with them, then get in touch with the company via their website.

These Guys Sound GREAT!

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:39:46 -0800

The next piece from Keith Stuart's whistlestop tour of Dundee has just gone live. Today's piece covers Denki and the mysterious new projects they have underway:

Very few game developers have a philosophy about design, a philosophy that's clearly and completely applied in everything they do. You get companies like Ubisoft, which have rigid and rigorous approvals processes, ensuring a certain amount of innovation, but you really have to look to Japanese veterans like Nintendo or Treasure, to see a truly over-arching creative theory at work.

Or you can look to Denki, the small Dundee-based studio that's spent the last couple of years firing out brilliant casual games for Sky's interactive TV service. By the end of 2008, the team - all 20 of them - had released 180 titles, most in the last two years. Sure, these aren't PS3 first-person shooters, they're usually cute puzzlers with cool ideas and solid interfaces. But 180. 20 people. The mind boggles.

It's both amazing and great.

Check it out.

[Disclaimer: ur ed. now worx 4 denki]

Do you Tweet?

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:19:08 -0800

Twitter is like Facebook was about this time last year. Everyone's there, darling. You simply MUST join in.

Actually it IS a fun and useful tool and we'd highly recommend it for everyone. There's a whole host of tools which let you check, post and update from your PC and of course mobile access is as simple as texting.

A growing number of companies, publications, organisations and individuals are now using Twitter for personal and business purposes.

It would probably be a good idea to gather them all in one place and ensure that everyone who's remotely interested in the games business in Scotland, can find the most fascinating and useful people.

We're already friends with Stephen Fry (it's mandatory to follow him when you join), Jamie Oliver (true), Wil Wheaton (acting ensign Wesley Crusher) and media luminaries like Stuart Dredge, Keith Stuart and Aleks Krotoski.

If you - or your company - Twitter. Post a comment or drop us an e-mail and we'll round them all up at some point soon.

Here are a few to get you going...

Tag Games
Denki
Brian Baglow

Realtime On The Telly

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:59:05 -0800

Thanks to industry website, Spong, we've just discovered a link to Realtime Worlds' appearance on STV last week. For those of you outside the wilds of Scotland, that's Scottish Television. Before you ask, yes, it is all documentaries about sheep. In Gaelic.

However, the station broke with tradition last week and their flagship news programme (Scheapsch Dhu!) ran a piece on the the long-term wellbeing of Scotland's games sector and tax breaks for developers.

Not only do you get a peek inside the plush HQ of RTW, but you get to see more than two hundred people, spending millions of pounds, to create an international standard computer game.

No sign of APB, sadly, but STV's graphics department have really pushed the boat out with a side-scrolling platformer used to illustrate the concepts of 'crunch', 'tax breaks' and 'game over'.

Super Better - or how to turn recovery into a multi-player experience

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:29:00 -0700

CryptoZoo Game Trailer... and Behind the Scenes

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:49:00 -0700

New York City - CRYPTOZOO games this weekend! WITH PHOTOS

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:55:00 -0700

Play CRYPTOZOO! SAN FRANCISCO games June 5, June 7

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:45:00 -0700

Prototype a new outdoor game with me this Saturday in downtown San Francisco!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:34:00 -0700

INTERN with me and Top Secret Dance Off!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:00:00 -0700

Have you had the dream?

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:23:00 -0700

Take the Outlier Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:02:00 -0700

This is my Free Space future. Show me yours!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:16:00 -0800

Free Space is coming...

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:28:00 -0800

I need to game-ify writing my book

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:22:00 -0800

UPDATED: I am not a game evangelist.

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:29:00 -0800

The Secret Guilty Sign

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:53:00 -0800

I'm Throwing Down a Dance-Off Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:21:00 -0800

Top Secret Dance Off Playtesting

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:22:00 -0800

I am on a ninja quest (to clean my apartment)

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 09:45:00 -0800

These Games are Experience Grenades

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:17:00 -0800

Special Mission: Inventing the Future! UPDATED with 300 micro-forecasts

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:24:00 -0800

SUPERSTRUCT CELEBRATION!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:32:00 -0800

While I await 2008 results, I live in 2019...

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:56:00 -0800

Superstruct: We're half-way to saving the world. Here's the Story So Far...

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:48:00 -0700

MISSING OUT ON THE YEAR 2019? Go on a whirlwind tour of Superstruct now!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:33:00 -0700

RAVENOUS!! grrrr - plus, the Superstruct Meetup (you can still come!)

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:17:00 -0700

Time to bring back Best Sentence of the Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:03:00 -0700

Invitation! Superstruct party/meetup in Palo Alto October 20!

noreply@blogger.com (Jane) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:21:00 -0700

Pac-Man xmas stocking

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:20:21 -0800

Glittery, stockingy and with Blinky on the front!

There's a zombie one, too.

Spies Wanted ads on XBLA

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:16:03 -0800

Well, GCHQ employees, the majority of whom are of course not spies per se. My pal used to go out with a fella who worked for GCHQ, and it mainly meant lots of agreeing to the house's occasional phone tapping, and having to sign lots of disclosure documents all the time. He said he worked in defense; we reckoned he was the janitor :-)

Here's the blurb:

GCHQ's recruitment campaign will appear through a range of Xbox Live games, including blockbuster franchises such as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed II.
The government agency is running the six-week campaign using recruitment firm TMP Worldwide and said that many of its recruiting criteria are "reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work".
Xbox Live's main demographic, 18- to 34-year-olds, is also a good fit for GCHQ.

Might be a bit male-skewed if it's XBLA, I wonder where else they're advertising?

Also, the thought of the ad in L4D2 is really making me grin.

(Thanks Dan!)

BIMA wins

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:16:26 -0800

Channel 4 Education's output - which is currently in its entirety produced by UK-based independent production companies - has been nominated for a clutch of awards recently, in the children & teen BAFTAs and the BIMAs. Matt and I commission these things and then the blood, sweat and tears of the creative work is done by some locally-produced brilliant minds.

Last night we won four BIMAs: Best Game for 1066, Best Content for Routes, Best Video for Year Dot and Best Client for Channel 4 (aw).

Routes is a large, ambitious "playful experience": minigames, a documentary, an ARG/drama, competitions, all rolled into one - and on the theme of genetics and DNA.

Routes worked amazingly well at reaching our target audience of UK-based teens with an emphasis on females; during its live run, it had over 600,000 visitors, views were over 50% UK teen girls, and the games racked up millions of plays: 19m to date. Try your hand at SNEEZE, the most popular of the lot. It's a splatterfest!

Oil Productions.

Nominated for:

BIMA - Online - Content - WON
BIMA - Online - Website
BIMA - Informational
BAFTA - Children's - Interactive (Nov 29)

1066:

1066 is a thing of beauty and a joy to play! It's also now the top result in Google for 1066, above both wikipedia and the BBC, which is an amazing achievement. Watch out for the historically-accurate taunting - and there's multiplayer too. Play it now.

Preloaded (with Hardy Pictures).

Nominated for

BIMA - Games - Online Game - WON
BIMA - Special Award - Talent - Sound Design
BIMA - Special Award - Talent - Visual Design
BAFTA - Children's - Interactive (Nov 29, and up against Routes, heh)

Year Dot:

Year Dot is a huge project, following teens as they go through their big life changes. Learning from peers! Produced by So TV & Holler.

Nominated for:

BIMA - Online - Video & Podcasts - WON
BIMA - Social Media programme

Well done (again) to the teams involved in the making of these lovely projects. It's wonderful to see you rewarded for your amazing work!

Mandelson: his secret plans, leaked.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:16:19 -0800

BoingBoing is breaking this astounding news of Peter Mandelson's leaked secret plans to run copyright the way a few fatcat Hollywood types would want him to:

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright.

My bold. Let's not forget that Mandelson is unelected to his post, has already declared that he'd happily change parties to the Tories, and that his copyright-related decisionmaking is done whilst on holiday at the expense of Hollywood bigwigs.

He's buyable, he'll turn colours given a cheque, and he's out to hit the majority - because we'll all be accusable, whether or not we fileshare - for the benefit of the (mainly Hollywood-resident) minority.

In direct contrast, we have Martha Lane Fox heading the Digital Inclusion taskforce, whose job it is to try to help the last 11m currently offline Britons onto the internet. Life online is provably more economically and intellectually beneficial to citizens and government alike. It's a Human Right in Finland, and Mandelson wants the right to take it away if someone near or in your house has downloaded the odd tune off the internet.

Bring on the petitions!

Links for 2009-11-18 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Virtual Worlds News: CrowdStar Promotes Happy Pets, Co. Launch
Will this pet meme NEVER end?
Funcom Q3 Revenue Down 69% - Virtual Goods News
Age of Conan devs. Boy that must be depressing.
Modern Warfare 2 By the Xbox Live Numbers - Call of duty: modern warfare 2 - Kotaku
"More than 2.2 million gamers logged more than 5.2 million multiplayer hours playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the first day alone, a new one-day Xbox Live record. Those gamers managed to unlock more than 11 million achievements in that day as well." No wonder XBLA's been so laggy all week!
Gamechanging and Change Through Play – Playful 2009 // katy lindemann
Katy's brilliant Playful09 presentation.
Government lays out piracy battleplan | Games Industry | MCV
Clearly most of Government *doesn't understand how the internet works*. Shameful, just SHAMEFUL.

Play makes you a good citizen

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:18:39 -0800

It's (apparently) true. I'm not sure this can be directly extrapolated to playing videogames, mind, but this is a wonderful read: The Science of Fun.

But the best argument for fun and play happens when you take it away.
Deny play to young mammals and the consequences are colossal. This has been demonstrated powerfully in rats, with some of the most significant new science coming out of Canada.
"What's been shown repeatedly," said University of Lethbridge neuroscientist Sergio Pellis, author of The Playful Brain, "if you prevent juvenile rats from engaging in rough and tumble play, you get animals who have cognitive problems, emotional problems and they're socially incompetent. "

In short, stop rats from horsing around and you get socially-awkward, troubled, dumbo rats. Worse still, male rats who never play become bad lovers.

Read on. It gets better.

Fun is the brain's workshop.
"If you look at countries with the lowest amount of recess time, and scholastic achievement, there's almost an exact correlation," says Pellis. "The U.S., which has the lowest recess rates, often does the worst" in scholastic achievement.
It might even be the brains of children grow more at recess than in the classroom.

I'm not in the least bit surprised by that last bit!

Now I am actually really curious as to whether the brain can extrapolate out to fun like (heh) co-op L4D, or teamplay in MMOs. Is it the physical interaction that counts more, or the social interaction - or both equally? Does physical interaction extend to "mirror neuron" stuff, so that what happens to your avatar is effectively also happening to you? So many questions. I'd better buy that book.

Space Invader car

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:55:40 -0800

Parked in my street this morning...!

Cute.

I love battered old cars. Even better when they eventually get converted to electric, super sweet.

Links for 2009-11-17 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

RPS Left 4 Dead 2 Review | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Wonderful, wonderful stuff. CAN'T WAIT.
Mass: We Pray - The Video Game
ROFLMAO

Left 4 Dead 2

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:06:11 -0800

I don't have it yet. I have it on preorder from Amazon, for the Xbox 360, and it hasn't arrived yet. So I'm reading reviews, like a kid with her nose pressed up against the sweetshop window, and they're making the anticipation worse because the reviews are mouth-watering. If you haven't planned on getting this, or a 360, now is the time. Don't worry about thumbsticks being lame for shooters, the fumbling somehow makes L4D even more shrieking fun.

It’s those moments that made Left 4 Dead so much more than just a four-player zombie shooter. It was the stories, the individual tales of terror and derring-do. Left 4 Dead 2 is not just a bigger, better, more involved sequel to the original game. It’s an opportunity for more of those shouted celebrations of success, or cries of betrayal on defeat.

This is RPS' review, and do read it for its joyous, infectious, total delight in the game. This is why people play videogames, this level of laughter, and extended, repeated fun - no other screen-based entertainment comes close.

For me Hard Rain was the most outstanding part of the game. The four new Survivors have to make a return trip on an errand, eventually making their way back to the boat that brought them there. It means the level is traversed twice (which rather than meaning they halve the effort by using each location twice, it’s instead just enormous, and played differently on the return leg), which also means you might not want to collect every item you find on your way out there, whether in safe rooms or scattered around levels. You’ll need to save stuff for your way back – which is frightening.

Join usssssss....

Links for 2009-11-16 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

WGGB - News - Guild Awards shortlists
Routes up for a Writers Guild award for best writing in a game..!

Links for 2009-11-15 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

iPlayer honoured by RTS | News | Broadcast
"The BBC iPlayer has been compared to innovations including the steam engine, jet engine and Viagra by the RTS judges who honoured its creators at an awards ceremony last night." Errr... it's just television, on the web??
Labels may be losing money, but artists are making more than ever - Boing Boing
For posterity.
The Rise & Fall of The Nintendo Wii
Good thoughts..

Russell Davies on Pretending

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:38:03 -0800

For me, the highlight of this year's Playful was Russell's laugh-out-loud talk on Pretending. It made a lightbulb go off in my head, one of those duuuuh of COUUUURRRSE moments that are so wriggly-joyful. It's better when he presents it, of course, but he's done a neat job with the picture footnotes.

A sample:

I listen to a lot of chat about games and hear lots about story and play, but very rarely hear about pretending, when, of course, pretending is central to the whole business. That's how video game reviews should start - "In this game you are pretending..."

And a sample slide, possibly my favourite, because of the gag that goes with it (I won't spoil):

Wonderful stuff.

Odd Xbox errors: Modern Warfare 2 & Borderlands

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:54:43 -0800

Anyone seen anything like these before? Pawla was trying to play her mint copies of both Borderlands, and Modern Warfare 2, and got some corker error messages from her XBox. Rebooted and "tried everything": it keeps repeating.

MW2:

Borderlands:

This person thinks it's a gamesave error.

These people think it's the hard drive, the laser in the DVD drive and a cache problem.

Googling isn't very helpful on this subject...

Space Invader mailbox

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:47:05 -0800

Geekcrafter Nim has finished her Space Invader mailbox.

Spiffy!

Links for 2009-11-14 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Girls should be 'realistic' about careers and motherhood – schools group head | Education | guardian.co.uk
It would help if they told the same stuff to boys, and women and men had equal parenting rights/leave. Wouldn't it. Sigh.

Links for 2009-11-13 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Bradford Rant Institute of Cosmic Kinesis
This is a LEGO ARG, apparently!
The Digital Economy's Coming Subprime Crisis (And What You Can Learn From It)
How adertising-based media is copying toxic finance
Best websites: Education - Telegraph
The best educational websites ...

Roomba Pac-Man

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:08:54 -0800

I'm amused at the need to speed up the video to make it like the game. Roomba, blessit, is not exactly efficient.

Millenium Falcon fascinator

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:01:44 -0800

The best thing to come out of the Stitch Wars IMHO, although the whole shebang is one of the modern wonders of our time. Crafted Star Wars stuff (and no lawsuit in sight), just glorious.

(Via Superpunch)

Links for 2009-11-12 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Penny Arcade! - The Minutia-men
HAH!
BBC boss's £834,000 pay package (plus 70p for parking) | Media | The Guardian
Can they publish audience research (paid for with public money) and website traffic figures (ditto) too?

Boom! Headshot

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:00:48 -0800

Boom! Headshot
Originally uploaded by mugla.

Margaret's very amusingly-titled picture of pingos.

Posted by Crys from Flickr.

Beautiful Bioshock syringes

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:32:11 -0800

Usually you have to go to a craftant to get this sort of quality look (and the craftant's version kicks arse, still), but these are pretty good for ordinary merchant output, no?

Purchasable from the ordinary Play.com for an ordinary fourteen quid.

(Via technobob)

Mario gloves

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:49:30 -0800

I love the colour scheme on these:

Found over at Crafty Crafty.

Links for November 24th

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:00:07 -0800

STM8S-Discovery: Microcontrollers reach a new low – Hack a Day

"The ST-LINK USB programmer/debugger comes attached, but it’s easy to crack one off and use this for future STMicro-compatible projects; clearly a plan of giving away the razor and selling the blades." $7 for a microcontroller which also has the usb connector/debugger attached; snap it off when you're done.

(tags: microcontroller programming electronics hardware )

Links for November 22nd through November 23rd

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

Digital economy bill: A punishing future | Comment is free | The Guardian

"It boils Digital Britain down to three Ms – media, music and movies – myopically ignoring the pioneers of new technology, and ?
showing a blind spot for all creativity outside the so-called creative industries… Instead of empowering digital Britons, the bill follows the lead of music and movie corporations, who already apply a presumption of guilt to their customers. Instead of treating the web as a platform of possibilities, it recasts it as a tool for mass theft." Excellent, excellent leader from the Guardian on the frankly scandalous digital economy bill.

(tags: uk politics government threestrikes digitaleconomy economy copyright )
Fullbright: The middle child at peace

"…maybe this is the best of both worlds. An audience that, having crossed the barriers to entry, is by its nature more invested in our work; a public profile by which we have the means to occasionally reach into the mass consciousness, but which affords us the freedom to continue experimenting with subject, form, and style; an industry which is truly international; which is capable of producing both multi-million dollar blockbusters and single-creator labors of love (and releasing both on the same platform); which manages to be neither too big nor too small, and is the more vital, unique and exhilarating for it. We are a medium for us, and while there are more and more of us every day, we'll never be for everyone. In a way, that's beautiful." I think Steve's about right.

(tags: games criticism comics culture stevegaynor )

Links for November 21st

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

500 Internal Server Error

500 Internal Server Error

(tags: none)
I Played Through Left 4 Dead 2 Holding A Goddamn Gnome, by Tom Francis

"In the Dark Carnival campaign of Left 4 Dead 2, you can win a garden gnome at the fairground near the start – and there’s an achievement for carrying it all the way to the end. It is, in fact, the same goddamn gnome I carried through Episode goddamn Two, for the same goddamn reason: there was an achievement for it. By the end of that ordeal, I prayed I’d never set eyes on his (”stupid fucking”) face again – but here he is, and here I am, and here we go." Tom Francis gets the gnome achievement in L4D2, and lives to tell the tale.

(tags: games achievements writing tomfrancis l4d2 )

Links for November 20th

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

Blackbeard Blog – 2. The Process Is The Story

"…we’re still in talking-dog territory here, where the fact of socialness matters more than the outcome. This won’t last forever, of course. It probably won’t last out 2010." Tom is sharing some notes from that "140 Characters" conference; he's got some sharp insight/ideas.

(tags: marketing twitter tomewing analysis 140conf )

Links for November 19th

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

Four Walks

"I did a set of four walks in Austria; two long ones, two short ones. I did some "daystreaming" where using bits of technology I was updating my location, status and pictures as I walked." Ambient information gathering, whilst taking in the outdoors, and all for charity. Lovely.

(tags: walking streaming ambient data hiking christhorpe )
Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog » Blog Archive » Finally, Geoencoding in Lightroom! Announcing my GPS-Support Plugin

And it just worked first time. Awesome!

(tags: lightroom gps geotagging photography plugin )
SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: 'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die' – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International

"The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries." Eco on lists.

(tags: lists cataloguing umbertoeco interview )
Learning Vehicle | Edge Online

"Today, the UK government's Department For Transport unveils a new browser-based MMOG, created by New York-based developer Area/Code. Designed for early teenagers to learn principles of traffic safety, it's probably the largest 'serious games' project ever to be created for the UK. Code Of Everand is the result of over two years of work with the Department For Transport by Area/Code principals and designers Frank Lantz and Kevin Slavin, not only because of its size and ambition, but also because of the complexities of developing it for a government body… We spoke to Lantz, Slavin and Simon Williams, who led the project at Carat, the Department For Transport's media agency, about what Code Of Everand is, how they pulled it off, and why they think it could prove that games can be a powerful platform for learning." Edge interview.

(tags: edge games areacode franklantz kevinslavin online mmo transport uk )
Design With A Purpose, An Interview With Ralph Eggleston

Wonderful, wonderful interview with Eggleston. So much care and attention in the work and the way he describes it; so many lovely illustrations. The "color scripts" alone are great, but really, it's all worth your time.

(tags: pixar design illustration art animation films walle interview colour ralpheggleston )

Links for November 18th

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

Scroll Clock

It's a digital clock made out of scrollbars; divs being resized to force overflow and generate a scrollbar make up the seven-segment display. Bonkers.

(tags: javascript css clock programming absurd )
MIGS: Is Good Marketing Better Than A Good Game? | Edge Online

"Using a simple correlation scale comparing marketing spend and sales against Metacritic rating and sales, Divnich found that marketing influenced game revenue “three times more than game scores”… “There is no compelling reason to focus on quality, you should literally just spend that money and time on marketing.”" I'm not sure he's suggesting this is a /good/ thing, but he is pointing out that it's what the numbers say. It's still depressing.

(tags: games business marketing quality review metacritic migs )

Links for November 17th through November 18th

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

Grackle68k – Twitter Application for Classic Macintoshes

"Grackle68k is a twitter client for early Macintoshes running System 6 through OS9."

(tags: retro mac software twitter application classic )
VJing with Steel Battalion Controller(鉄騎コントローラー) on Vimeo

Does what it says on the tin. Blimey. But also: awesome.

(tags: steelbattalion interface ui video vjing vj controller )

Links for November 17th

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

“You’re a Great Boyfriend, Tommy, But I Think I’m Safer With Coach, Ellis and Nick,” A ‘Dear John’ By Rochelle | Hardcasual

"Tommy, I appreciate you. You do so much for me. You make an excellent vegetable chili. And that time I was on a trip for work and you caught that mouse all on your own, you were really brave. On the flip side, Nick, Coach and your brother Ellis, they offer the security of a well-oiled killing machine. We cover each other. We share health packs. And we don’t cook vegetable chili."

(tags: l4d2 hardcasual games humour )

Links for November 16th

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:00:03 -0800

On Auteurship in Games – Click Nothing

"SoI think it's not unreasonable to read that the article is presenting the stance that the evolution of the status of games from 'toys and entertainment' to 'art' is fundamentally linked to the idea of authorship coming from the singular creative vision of an individual. For the record, I strongly disagree with this stance – and furthermore, I feel it is treacherous ground in which to plant the 'games are henceforth art' flag, as I suspect it is ground that will quickly be lost to (or surrendered by) the first generation of artists who even attempt to question it (in fact – for those of us 'in the know' it has been and continues to be, questioned all the time)."

(tags: games authorship clinthocking art auteur )
The Brainy Gamer: The servant and the someday song

"…sometimes I fear our endless preoccupation with making the case for video games is self-defeating. It feels defensive and, at its worst, produces a kind of micro-culture obsession with analysis: a 24/7 bloggo-Twitter tilling and re-tilling of the same small plot of dirt. In this self-absorbed environment, each new game's worth is measured by its ability to move the needle on emergent narrative, artistic expression, genre refinement…or whatever criterion we're applying this week to prove games matter to people already convinced." Yes. Not the reason I've been taking a break from writing about it, but something that plays on my mind before I put fingers to keyboard.

(tags: games writing criticism michaelabbott blogs navelgazing )

Links for November 14th

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:00:04 -0800

This week's internet reviews | Technology | The Guardian

In which the Guardian links to Noticings – hurrah! – and describes it as "Random I-spy for grown-ups."

(tags: guardian noticings reviews vanity )

OggCamp (2009)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:05:04 -0800

Two weekends ago, I, with the rest of the Ubuntu-UK Podcast team and the Linux Outlaws podcast team, was in Wolverhampton to run a new one-day open source community unconference called OggCamp.

A few people have asked “why Wolverhampton?”. Which is a fair question considering that four of the organisers live in Hampshire, one in the South-West, one in Liverpool, and one in Bonn.

Well, Wolverhampton is the location of the annual LugRadio Live open source community conference. The organisers of LugRadio Live (the LugRadio podcast presenters) are, or were, based in Wolverhampton. While there are many things you could say about Wolverhampton, one thing that always impressed me was that, to attend LugRadio Live, people flew to Wolverhampton from all over the UK, from all over Europe, all over the States, and even from Hong Kong and Australia at times (see my blog post about past LRLs for more).

Last year, after four hugely popular LugRadio Live events, including one in San Francisco sponsored by Google, the team announced that the fortnightly LugRadio podcast was going to end, and so the fifth LugRadio Live (in July 2008) would be the last ever LugRadio Live.

And then, under pressure from Popular Demand, they agreed to do another last ever LugRadio Live – in October 2009. This last ever LugRadio Live, though, would only be one day, the Saturday, like their first ever LugRadio Live. Which left a whole Sunday to fill. Which is where OggCamp comes in.

When we decided to organise OggCamp, we had no idea how it would go down. We figured that, between the two podcasts (Ubuntu-UK Podcast and Linux Outlaws) we’d had enough positive feedback that we could get at least 50 people along. Because it would be the day after LRL, there was a chance that enough LRL attendees would stick around for the day on Sunday and coming to OggCamp too. To make extra sure of that, we decided to hold OggCamp in the official LRL hotel (so that the geeks could just roll out of bed and into OggCamp), and to make the event free to attend.

In the end, about 130 people came to OggCamp. Which was brilliant!

The sight of people queuing up three flights of stairs to come in at 10.30 on the Sunday morning left us briefly gob-smacked.

We kicked off at about 11am with a quick introduction from all the presenters in which we explained how there was no pre-arranged schedule and that to sign up for a talk you just had to write it on a sticky note (large notes for full-hour talks; half-sized notes for half-hour talks) and stick it in a slot in the grid on the wall.

First up was Andy Stanford-Clark who did a brand new talk, specially written for OggCamp (and completed the night before while the rest of us were at the LRL kareoke party), about the geekier details of his Twittering House (the stuff the BBC didn’t get!). By midday, the schedule was getting pretty full (something of a relief!) and the planned topics included web services, how to prove identity on the Net, how to encourage young people to use Open Source Software, politics and geeks (from ORG), translating Playstation 2 games, and how to explain programming to non-programmers!

At 3pm, everyone gathered in the main room to watch a live joint recording of the Ubuntu-UK Podcast and Linux Outlaws. This started with a live raffle draw (surely a first in open source events?) for some very cool prizes donated by our sponsors, including a couple of Viglen MPC-Ls, some Ubuntu laptop bags and hoodies, an O’Reilly book, and an Arduino Mega. After the raffle, we did two segments: one about producing media using Open Source Software, and one about whether or not the Open Source community spreads itself too thin by creating so many different distributions. The segments included a lot of audience interaction, and also real-time twittering from the audience on to the TwitterFall screen behind us on-stage.

The live show was something that we had been nervous about because six is a large number of people to be talking anyway but also because the two podcasts (UUPC and LO) are quite different in style so we had no idea how well we would integrate. The two podcasts released their own versions of the live show during the following week and, if you’re keen, you can compare and contrast the two: UUPC (family friendly) and LO (includes the naughty words). I don’t think either podcast did much editing of content, which drew this comment from a UUPC listener.

So, all in all, I think we can say that OggCamp was a success. :)

It was certainly a lot of fun – if exhausting!

We also sold enough raffle tickets and OggCamp limited edition souvenir mugs to financially break even on the whole event. Which was good from our point of view. And there has been a load of positive feedback from the attendees, including questions about whether we’ll do it again next year. Although we’ve tried to not to commit to anything, by now I think we can safely say that there is likely to be another OggCamp next year.

(For more photos, see the OggCamp group on Flickr.)

Augmented reality for Hursley mobiles

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:17:32 -0800

On Wednesday, Chris Book was kind enough to invite me to join the mobile developer panel at openMIC 3 : the third Mobile Innovation Camp.

The theme for the day was location and augmented reality.

A particular highlight was a talk by Paul Golding on Augmented Reality & Augmented Virtuality, covering a variety of topics such as the state of Virtual Worlds today, and the potential of mobile augmented reality apps to move us from a “Thumb Culture” to a camera-led “Third Eye culture”.

A number of mobile augmented reality platforms were discussed, such as Nokia’s MARA research project, the QR-based Insqribe, the real-world / virtual-world mobile mashup platform junaio, and the ‘world browser’ Wikitude.

Another platform that got several mentions, including a developer’s crash course in the afternoon from Richard Spence, was Layar.

I had a quiet afternoon in the office this afternoon, so I thought I’d give the Layar API a quick try for myself.

Layar is a mobile app for Android and iPhone that lets you display location-based information overlaid on a real-time camera view.

For example, the screen normally shows a viewfinder-like view from your mobile’s camera.

Search for “coffee” and a bunch of markers appear on the view, showing you where the nearest coffee shops are.

As you move the phone around, the markers follow the approximate location of the places they are showing you.

That’s assuming you want to search ‘Google Local’, but that’s not the only option. Location data is provided through “layars”, and there are layars available for location-tagged Wikipedia articles, Flickr photos, brightkite users, and more.

The interesting thing talked about at openMIC was the Layar API which lets anyone create a new Layar with their own information.

So I decided to spend a quiet Friday afternoon in the office creating a Layar for around Hursley. :-)

This means a phone with the Layar browser installed can browse and search for points of interest around the site.

It was really very easy, so I’ll quickly outline the steps involved.

Step 1 – Get an API key

Visit dev.layar.com and click on ‘Request a developer account’.

Once approved (it took a few hours), you get a developer ID and key.

Step 2 – Define a new layar

Once you’ve got an account, go back to dev.layar.com and fill out the ‘Create Layer’ form, describing the layar you want to create.

There are a ton of options here. These range from the obvious like a name, description and tags to display to users choosing a layar to use, to neat customisations like uploading custom colour schemes and icons to use as map markers on the phone screen.

I just filled in a brief name and description and left the rest as the default values.

Step 3 – Define a source of Points of Interest (POI)

Layar wants to support real-time location information.

A good example of this is the brightkite layar. Users choosing the brightkite layar see a view overlaid with the current location of their friends or other brightkite users.

To make this possible, you don’t create a Layar by uploading a static database of points of interest.

Instead, you have to provide a web service that Layar can query to get current locations. (When defining the new layar on the dev website, one of the steps is to provide the URL of where you will put this web service.)

The API doc for this web service is at layar.pbworks.com and details the parameters that your web service will be invoked with (e.g. the user’s current location), and the format for the response that your web service must return to Layar.

The Layar browser does perform client-side filtering to only show markers relevant to the user’s location. However, if you are writing a Layar like the Wikipedia one, it’d be best not to just return your entire database of POIs, burning the mobile’s battery both in the data transfer and the processing needed to do the filtering.

For my quick first test, I was a bit lazy and ignored the input location parameter and just return all of my Hursley POI markers regardless, leaving the mobile to do the filtering.

Parameters are provided as URL variables, and the response format is a pretty straightforward JSON interface.

It took no time at all to knock up a quick bit of PHP to return this…

$currentLat = $_GET['lat'];
$currentLon = $_GET['lon']; $place1 = array('actions'=>array(array('uri'=>'http://maps.hursley.ibm.com/showmap.html?q=reception', 'label'=>'view on map'), array('uri'=>'tel:01962999999', 'label'=>'phone now')), 'id'=>'00000001', 'title'=>'Main Reception', 'imageURL'=>null, 'lat'=>51026570, 'lon'=>-1397964, 'line2'=>'A1101', 'line3'=>'', 'line4'=>'', 'attribution'=>'ETS demo', 'distance'=>distance($currentLat, $currentLon, 51.026570, -1.397964), 'type'=>0); //  ... bunch of other places here ...  $allPlaces = array('errorCode'=>0, 'errorString'=>'ok', 'hotspots'=>array($place1 ,$place2, $place3, $place4, $place5, $place6, $place7, $place8, $place9), 'layer'=>'ibmhursley', 'morePages'=>false, 'nextPageKey'=>null); echo json_encode($allPlaces);

Obviously, hard-coding all of the locations is a sloppy way of doing this – in a real system, you’d want the PHP to be retrieving this from a data store of some sort.

There is open source code available from a bunch of places to get you started in doing this – PorPOISe looks like an interesting example.

Interestingly, the mobile client doesn’t calculate the distance from the user to the POI – you have to return that from your web service call. This is the only reason why I didn’t just write a static text file with JSON data for my “web service”, as I had that one dynamic bit needing to be changed.

The other bit worth highlighting is that each POI can include one of more “actions”, that get offered to the user if they click on a point of interest on their mobile. I added a few examples such as launching a web page or making a phone call. E.g. you can see where Main Reception is on your screen, and choose to call Reception if you want.

Step 4 – Test the web service

It took a couple of tries to get my PHP right… mainly because several of the parameters described as optional in the API doc are actually required :-)

Fortunately, there is a nice test service available at dev.layar.com/api20test.

You plug in your developer ID and key, give it a location of where your mobile should be, and click “Load POIs”.

It tells you what is wrong or missing with the JSON response it gets back from your web service, which for me was either which required value was missing, or a numeric value that I was returning as a string. The errors are clear enough to help you fix your service.

Step 5 – Try it for real

layar.pbworks.com has a link to the installer for the Android app.

This app is a developer version of the normal one available in the Android Market.

(If you already have the normal app installed, you need to uninstall it first. I didn’t, and the developer app didn’t work properly until I uninstalled and started again).

The developer app gives you extra options in Settings to provide your developer ID and key. This lets you access your unpublished layar for testing (until approved by Layar, your new layar isn’t available to other users).

(It also lets you override your phone’s current location – useful for testing indoors!)

Once you’ve done that, your new layar shows up in the mobile’s list of “Featured” layars.

(I found that it only showed up if I also changed the Country setting from “Auto” to “GB”… not sure why, although when I defined the Layar, I did specify that it was a GB layer.)

And that’s it… I had a fun excuse to go wandering around Hursley this afternoon to test it out and collect the screenshots for this post. :-)

September Equinox

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:12:34 -0700

Hursley is a culturally as well as a technically diverse place, so we’ve got some great opportunities to learn from each other. This lunchtime I popped along to one of the events organised by the lab’s Chinese Connect team, which was all about Understanding the Chinese Calendar (the title of the post refers to a significant date this week in that calendar, September 23rd).

Previous talks in the Chinese Culture series, which is organised by Hursley’s Jenny He, have covered subjects such as the evolution of the Chinese languages, how to understand Chinese names, and Chinese music and instruments. I’m embarrassed to say that this is the first of the talks I’ve been to, despite working here for some time… I really should take more advantage of the range of activities and opportunities that Hursley has to offer!

Today’s talk was delivered by Darren Beard, who was particularly interested in the astronomical background to the Chinese calendar (having published a paper on the same topic several years ago). Darren covered the scientific background of this lunisolar calendar, and the changes that have taken place to it historically over the ~3500 years it has been around – particularly interesting to me, since I’m a historian by background. It’s a complicated system which takes account of 19 year lunar cycles, requires things like leap months, and has a set of rules which specify how it works… but it is certainly more comprehensible once you understand those aspects. It was interesting to realise just how much my own perceptions of time are based on the calendar system I’ve grown up with!

Linux Users descend on the House

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:46:03 -0700

[thanks to the brilliant Laura Cowen, producer of the Ubuntu UK Podcast and uber UX god at Hursley, for writing up this event – it’s a shame I wasn’t able to make it!]

As is usually the case when I’m attending a HantsLUG (Hampshire Linux User Group ) meeting, it was a lovely sunny day on Saturday. It’s like as if it knows that I’m going to be spending the day inside, geeking in front of a laptop screen. This meeting, however, we put the sun to good use, first of all showing off Hursley Park at its best, and then lunching out on the decking at the Clubhouse.

When I was a more frequent attendee of the HantsLUG bring-a-box meetings (where I installed my first Debian distro, and later my first Ubuntu), I’d often thought how cool it would be to host a meeting at IBM Hursley. But I never got as far as investigating the security and wifi hassles I’d have to overcome. Fortunately, Anton Piatek was a little braver and sent some emails to nearly the right people (who helpfully forwarded them on to really the right people), and suggested his plan to Adam Trickett, Chair of HantsLUG. Adam says he nearly bit Anton’s hand off and so it happened.

HantsLUG is one of the biggest LUGs in the UK and is our local Linux user group but has surprisingly never really (in the 7 years I’ve known them) had a huge amount of interaction with IBM Hursley. For a long time, though, there has been a good pool of Linux skills and interest in the Lab, and over the last couple of years the number of people around the Lab voluntarily using Linux as their desktop OS has risen (as has the number of Ubuntu lanyards to be seen as you walk the corridors of Hursley).

Image courtesy of fluffydragon

So what makes Hursley a good place for a LUG meeting? Well, for a start, it’s just a really nice place to be – and Hursley House as well as the Park are very impressive to show off to visitors :-)

On Saturday, we were mostly in the Auditorium (where Spitfires were built during WWII), then when we led everyone down to the Clubhouse for lunch, we took the usual site tour scenic route via the Sunken Garden and fish pond. Although Hursley is out in the country, seemingly the middle of nowhere, it’s actually on the bus-route from Winchester so we had an excellent turnout of about 30 people. IBM Hursley also has a lot of cool people who do cool things that we can tell people about (although one piece of feedback I heard from a LUG person was that they thought we didn’t talk enough about what IBM does!).

Although we had the House to ourselves, and everyone was free to stand around and chat in the Main Hall, most of the day revolved around talks in the Auditorium. It all kicked off at 11am with an introduction to IBM Hursley (and, of course, directions to the fire exits and toilets) from Anton. The inimitable Andy Stanford-Clark, fresh from a week of press interviews, enthused everyone till lunchtime with tales of mouse traps, MQTT, twittering houses, twittering ferries, water meters, and energy monitoring. I say ‘enthused’ but there must be a better term to describe the way the audience rushed the stage when Andy offered to sell Current Cost monitors at a discount…

After lunch, we had a collection of shorter talks on a range of topics:

I talked about InfoSlicer, the open source software that my Extreme Blue student team developed last Summer and IBM released under the GPL
Anton described the anatomy of Ubuntu packages (he’s the guy that provides Ubuntu users in IBM with the flawless packages we’ve come to rely on)
Tony Whitmore related his experiences of producing the popular Ubuntu UK Podcast – and pimped the upcoming OggCamp unconference
Adam Trickett, Chair of HantsLUG, gave out free books in return for promises of book reviews on the HantsLUG wiki

Then everyone just hung around chatting for ages.

It was a really enjoyable and relaxed day; kudos to Anton, Stephen, and John for organising it from the IBM end. Thanks also to the IBMers who came along and to the many HantsLUG members who turned up. I’d say it was a success and we should definitely do it again.

Technical Recognition

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:24:00 -0700

[A guest post by Hursley’s Ben Fletcher. This was originally written as an internal blog post – Ben recently received the award for External Honours at the IBM Corporate Technical Recognition Event. Here, he reflects on his experiences]

I believe it is important to leave it entirely up to the individual to recognise the positives of IBMers they work with, and go from there – you can’t do any better than this, but, there’s a bonus: sometimes IBM wants to recognise you too! To make it all look good, to customers, or to make people happy, and to maintain the technical and innovative reputation or brand IBM has, they’ve built title names or award names as follows:

IBM Fellows
Corporate and Patent Portfolio Awards
Distinguished Engineers
Members of the IBM Academy of Technology
External Honours
Major Outstanding Innovation and Major Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards

Lots of different names, but of course IBM is so diverse that it’s difficult to recognise things in a systematic manner. Looking at the titles, I think the key points here are: if you love corporate technology and/or innovation, you can’t go any better!

I did. As a result, I fell under the External Honours category, primarily for the RADAR Young Person of the Year award that I received last year. Thereby I got into the book and, more excitedly, to meet other people and learn more about IBM. What did I learn from the other IBM attendees?

I would firstly ask where do you work? If it’s GBS [IBM Global Business Services], I would ask if they’ve heard of SWG [IBM Software Group]? If yes, have they worked with SWG before? With either answer, I would then ask if they’ve heard of Lab Services [which is where I work]. With these answers, I started coming up with questions I’d love answers to – for example:

how to improve the awareness of what Lab Services can do, across into GBS?
does the linkage between Lab Services and GBS have any room for improvement?
have people from Lab Services moved to GBS?
is Research well connected with UK? With Research being in Switzerland?
is the market for deaf-related and/or blind-related technology too small to be of interest?

I also met with Brendon Riley [the IBM UK General Manager], who I was very keen to talk with, particularly as my wife is also Australian. I was thrilled when he told me that he was from Perth – where my wife was from! Brendon very kindly took the opportunity to ask me to do something for him – clearly he was keen to demonstrate that the planet was flatter, as he could ask me directly like a colleague sitting at the next desk might, rather than passing the request down through a hierarchical organisation. The fact that he’s from Perth, my wife’s from Perth, the Country General Manager asking me directly to do something for him, as our CEO would say: the world is becoming smaller and flatter!

Ben

An unconference and a little bit of history

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:08:36 -0700

Yesterday lunchtime the auditorium in Hursley House became the venue of an internal “unconference” of sorts – a very relaxed session with a bunch of short, snappy 5 minute presentations by folks from around the lab who related their experiences from different tech conferences.

Dale Lane spoke about Hackdays and Barcamps; Alex Hutter talked about last weekend’s Barcamp in Brighton; Robin Fernandes talked about user groups and his involvement with PHP; Iain Gavin from Amazon Web Services told us about external views on IBM; and Andy Stanford-Clark was, well, Andy :-) I think he may have mentioned something about some service called Twitter, I was’t really paying attention… ;-) Most of it was Ignite-style high-speed babble, and mostly without slides.

It was all the brainchild of the brilliant Zoe Slattery, who also had some exciting announcements to share with us (more to come on these once I get clearance to post!). There were guest appearances of photographs by Alice, too.

Oh, and my contribution? I gave a potted, high-speed history of eightbar from the perspective of someone who jumped in to the Hursley world from the outside. Here’s a pictorial tour. You’ll note few mentions of virtual worlds – not because that’s not something eightbar does anymore, but rather to remind people of the breadth of our interests. Oh, and guess what, the blog has been around for nearly 4 years – just a week or so to go!

eightbar – a brief history

View more presentations from Andy Piper.

(dunno what happened with the bizzaro blank slide #12, it’s not supposed to be there…)

Tribe 2.0

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:22:24 -0700

What is eightbar? As the About page for this blog states:

We’re a group of techie/creative people working in and around IBM’s Hursley Park Lab in the UK. We have regular technical community meetings, well more like a cup of tea and a chat really, about all kinds of cool stuff.

That’s all still true. That’s who we are. Over the past four years this blog has featured lots of cool things. It started with an small group of folks into emerging tech talking about life at Hursley (who remembers Roo’s post about the dome of cups, in his pre-metaverse days?!). It continued to grow to cover virtual worlds topics as we began to explore those spaces. eightbar became a bit of a tribe and expanded to include many others who were into interesting technology. Increasingly we’re seeing the technologies that we talked about in the early days of this blog hit the mainstream – take 3D printing and augmented reality as just two examples.

eightbar is more than just a group of people. It’s a mindset, a grassroots culture. If you asked me to sum it up, I’d use phrases like “the frontier spirit”, “bleeding edge”, and “Web 2.0 is Web Do” (with a very definite nod in the direction of epredator for the last one!).

We’ll be including more folks from the lab as authors and guests here over the coming months – eightbar has always been a kind of “shop window to the world” for the things we are up to. The kinds of people you’ll find writing and contributing here are also likely to be found out and about at unconferences around Southampton, London, or other places. There may be a few changes to the look and feel as well as to the content, but the spirit is absolutely going to remain the same. Oh, and by the way, check out the links in the sidebar – you’ll find that many of the contributors have great content out on their own sites, too.

Why is this post entitled Tribe 2.0? Simple: fresh thinking and fresh ideas FTW! :-)

IBM Demos at the TEDGlobal Conference

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:03:31 -0700

Posted on behalf of Bharat Bedi…

The TEDGlobal Conference was an amazing week of learning, taking inspiration from and connecting with 700 of the world’s thinkers and doers. The speakers at TED gave excellent talks on subjects ranging from how humans might have evolved from aquatic apes to jumping from the edge of space.

IBM’s smart planet vision fits in well with TED’s approach of ideas worth spreading and IBM sponsored the Innovation Lounge and the 25 TED fellows at the conference.
The fellows are an amazing group of world changing innovators from around the world.

IBM created two demonstrations for the TED and I had the opportunity to lead the effort around putting these demos together. The demos incorporate a number of technologies including Zigbee, messaging, ambient devices, mobile phone based remote control and monitoring, SMS, RFID, web & AJAX, current cost and home automation!

The first one of these was around using RFID technology to help facility interaction and conversations between the TED fellows and the other attendees at the TED Innovation Lounge . Each fellow was given an RFID tag that detected their presence in the lounge and displayed their profiles on 3 large screens. At the same time wireless ambient devices changed colour to highlight the presence of the fellows.

The second demo was about being smarter about our energy consumption and home automation. This was a good example of the smarter planet principles of an instrumented, interconnected and intelligent in action. We set up a home lounge environment with appliance such as lamps and fans whose electricity consumption was being monitored. These appliances could be remote controlled via SMS and a mobile phone application. The amount of energy being consumed by the appliance was conveyed in subtle ways again using an ambient device which changed colour.

Huge thanks to Dave Conway-Jones, Andy Stanford-Clark and Andrew Nowell for all their help with creating the demos.

Revising relationships

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:43:24 -0700

I’ve just done a sweep through the eightbar blogroll and links. From the look of what was there, I reckon we hadn’t checked it in a while, as a few of the links were dead or pointing at blogs which have long since relocated. I also updated a few of the About pages to reflect recent changes.

We’ve got two main categories of links – Blogroll broadly covers “former eightbar and sites of interest” and Hursley bloggers contains links to current active bloggers from the Hursley(ish) community. Check them out over towards the bottom of the sidebar. If I’ve missed an active Hursley person that I should have included, then it should be pretty easy to find me and let me know ;-)

Protests?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:36:31 -0700

A misguided individual at a recent meeting in Second Life :-) it made me smile so I thought I’d post this – no significance!

Recap: DIYDays Fireside Chat with Jan Libby and Steve Peters

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:39:55 -0800

Freshly triumphant from their most recent transmedia projects, Steve Peters of No Mimes Media and Jan Libby, recently of Levi’s G.O. IV Fortune campaign, took the stage at DIYDays LA to talk about their experiences designing Alternate Reality Games.

Steve and Jan began as players in the emerging genre that we call ARGs. Both made the transition from player to puppetmaster through their work on independent games, which led to careers for each of them in the newborn industry of transmedia entertainment. And both acknowledge that their roots in the player side of these games and experiences now inform their choices as designers. “Sure, we do this for money,” Jan said, “but our hearts are indie.” Whether they are designing an ARG for a client or for an indie game, they consider not only the story and its characters, the protagonists and antagonists, but also the audience. Jan views the audience as a character, one that will interact and possibly shape the story as it plays out.

Steve notes the importance of determining how to tell the story of an ARG. ARGs tend to distribute the story everywhere they can possibly be, he observes. It’s not just the surface story of the characters and what happened to them – it’s the residue of the story they leave behind for the players to find. For example: what did they carry in their pockets? What might be hidden in their desk? Do they (did they) have a Twitter account, a Facebook account? The audience, Steve says, finds the story and puts the pieces together, and they tell the story to each other in a way that makes it more interesting than if someone were just telling them the story in a linear fashion.

Telling these kinds of stories is a “back and forth,” Jan says. Just making a chat room for players to hang out in and talk about the story is not an experience. The question becomes: can the audience touch the story? More importantly, can it touch back?

Designing a game is like a balancing act, according to Steve. Designers have to consider their own goals for their story along with the goals of their audience and often the goals of a client, all of which can be very different.

“We started as players,” Jan says, “so we really pay attention to the player experience.” She believes that anyone wanting to create an ARG should play ARGs and learn how they work.

Talking about his work with Elan Lee, Steve mentioned that they would come up with cool ideas for experiences and games, only to have Elan end with, “that’s really cool, but how is it fun? How is it engaging?” It’s a point that designers and storytellers have to carefully consider when making decisions on how to put their story together. An ARG, Steve believes, should have that fun and engaging layer for the casual player, leaving deeper layers for people who want to dig further into the story world. Discovery, he says, is an important component of ARGs.

Jan believes in the importance of designing for both types of ARG players – the fans of the genre, the hard-core players that stick with the story day and night, and also the casual players who come and go throughout the game. She suggests that designers create an entry character or some other entry device where players can “check in” with the game, with a deeper experience for the more avid players that enriches the story without creating impediments to the enjoyment of more casual players.

In response to an audience question (apologies, readers – I wasn’t able to hear the actual question through the livestream) Jan spoke about meeting goals in terms of client goals versus storyteller goals. For advertisers, the objective is not necessarily to tell a story; rather, the goal is to draw attention from the audience. In working with clients, it’s important to convince them that an engaging story is a valuable tool, and it rewards the audience for paying attention. Some projects, she observes, are only rabbit holes with nothing at the bottom. An exciting rabbit hole can draw people in, but can also create disappointment for an audience that followed a trail hoping for something amazing.

Steve likens this to the infamous advertising moment in “A Christmas Story”, when Ralphie finally gets his decoder ring and decodes a secret message from Little Orphan Annie, only to discover that the secret message is really an advertisement for Ovaltine. It’s a question of trust, he believes. ARG designers are designing artifacts to be discovered, and they’re making a promise that the audience can trust them.

He also illustrates the power of engaging an audience by telling about his experience taking his daughter out in the rain to look for something buried in a park as part of Enitech Labs, an Alternate Reality Game created for the Sarah Conner Chronicles television series. They looked around at the designated GPS coordinates for quite some time until his daughter finally found the thermos they were looking for, which contained a camera. When they got back in the car, dripping wet, Steve’s daughter turned to him and said, “Dad, I felt like I was in a movie!” That’s a moment, he says, that defines the pot of gold all transmedia storytellers are looking for. You want people to feel involved in the story you’re telling.

Someone asked how ARGs without corporate sponsorship find their audiences. Both Jan and Steve agreed that the answer lies in first determining the target audience, then find the communities where they congregate. Find the community influencers, and target them and the communities as a whole with the rabbit holes.

Jan spoke of the need for artists to push the boundaries of the genre, to jump in and tell new stories in new ways, taking us to new places. One example she provided was the idea of projecting a film in a park and then seeing the story come alive as it moves off the screen and into the real space of the park itself. The genre, she thinks, is feeling limited and needs to be expanded by people who can look at this type of storytelling in a new way, from new angles. “I’m intrigued with people stepping over the line, into the fiction,” she says.

LEGO: We Come in Pieces

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:32:27 -0800

Two weeks ago a set of mysterious signals from deep space led to a startling discovery. On November 7th a group of Scientific Researchers from the Bradford Rant Institute of Cosmic Kinesis (B.R.I.C.K.) were the first to intercept and decode the signals, which contained detailed coordinates. Following the coordinates, the researchers soon found themselves within Legoland: Billund where they located a tiny crash site, complete with an alien pod lodged in the brick-filled crater. The pod contained an extraterrestrial visitor short on words but high on bricks. Piecing together the mystery, the researchers soon realized that other signals from deep space represented the future landing sites of six additional space-faring pods, providing quite the rabbit hole for a nice LEGO ARG.

Players have already been treated to some code-cracking, LEGO-style, along with the promise of more coveted pods scheduled for dispersal around the world, presumably near Legoland sites. The second pod is still transmitting coordinates and has yet to land, but it would seem our newest visitor will be touching down somewhere near the site of the future Legoland: Fort Worth amusement park. Undoubtedly, B.R.I.C.K. will have no short supply of North American assistants when the final set of signals for the second visitor are transmitted and triangulated.

So what does it all mean? Who are these mysterious visitors and what brings them to Earth? The game took off a week ago following a mysterious tweet from Brian Johnson. Brian’s Twitter bioraphy includes an interesting tid-bit, noting that he is the producer of the upcoming massively multiplayer online (MMO) title LEGO Universe. Digging a little deeper using this newfound information, an article detailing the arrival of the afore-mentioned pod in Legoland: Billund was discovered on the LEGO Universe main page, further eliminating any doubt as to the purpose of the tiny pods.

B.R.I.C.K.’s newly discovered seven visitors have come to prepare mankind for the pending release of LEGO Universe and build up buzz for the widely anticipated MMO. If the start of this ARG is any indication, there is no shortage of LEGO fans in the ARG world, and LEGO Universe has captured their attention. If you count yourself among that group there is still time to join in the adventure. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you might even take one of the tiny astronauts home with you.

After all, they do come in pieces.

Exoriare: Exploring the Darknet

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:02:43 -0800

BoingBoing suggested it. The Guardian praised it. Jay is Games recommended it. And now, I’m adding my voice to the resounding chorus: if you like alternate reality games, you should check out Smoking Gun Interactive’s new transmedia experience, Exoriare. While the experience has only recently launched, it has already drawn together successful elements from a wide array of alternate reality games to create a compelling narrative.

Smoking Gun Interactive introduced their world through a graphic novel created by Douglas Rushkoff and drawn by in-house artists Cheoljoo Lee and Younger Yang. Rushkoff notes that the graphic novel serves as both the trailhead of “at least” one alternate reality game and as a back story for an upcoming videogame series. As he explains, “[t]his is a big big universe – a giant war for the future of humanity, of course – with maybe one overall timeline but many different pathways through the material.” Smoking Gun CEO John Johnson told The Guardian that Exoriare’s story involves “hundreds of pages of backstory documentation, mixes ancient technologies, military conspiracies and that old favourite, covert alien invasion…[i]t’s sort of X-Files meets Dan Brown, with a dash of academic research.” Sold? Head over to Exoriare.com and begin the adventure. Still not sure? Read on to find out what to expect.

Secreted on the thirteenth page of the graphic novel’s online preview, a glowing computer screen serves as the portal to an intense alternate reality gaming experience. By clicking on the computer screen, the player is taken to a text-based homage to Zork called White.House. After navigating the short interactive fiction story, the player is presented with one of three different red buttons, and provided with a simple decision: do you press the red button and fall further down the rabbit hole?

After pressing the red button, players are taken to a rather difficult DNA splicing game called GEN.HAK before gaining access to the Darknet, which serves as the alternate reality game’s interface. Thankfully for players like me who are atrocious at puzzle games, failure is rewarded with additional splicing time for the next attempt. Embracing the spirit of darknets, players are assigned usernames rather than choosing one for themselves. Under this alias, players are charged with completing a number of tasks centering around a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Gideon Marconi. By accessing ECH.LON (Echelon), players can track Marconi’s story through a series of brief telephone conversations. Audio files located at D.MUX.R. (Demuxer) reveal further snippets from the Exoriare universe.

After completing enough tasks, players gain access to GL.BAL FORAGER* (Global Forager), an online puzzle game designed to infiltrate network grids across the globe, binding them to the Darknet. The game mechanics for Global Forager are reminiscent of those used in Chain Factor: while the game itself is played individually, the collective efforts of the playerbase as a whole are necessary to unlock the next step. There are three modes of gameplay with increasing difficulty levels: Soft Target, Hard Target and Black Echo. According to Jay is Games, some of the people at Smoking Gun Interactive worked on the award-winning strategy defense game Company of Heroes, so I don’t have to feel too embarrassed when I say I can barely beat the game on Soft Target mode. As some players decode documents written using characters taken straight out of the Voynich Manuscript, others piece together the story unfolding through a series of audio files. Still others focus their efforts on infiltrating network grids across the globe by playing Global Forager.

Douglas Rushkoff reports that a print version of the graphic novel X will be available in the next few months, clocking in near 120 pages. The online preview of the graphic novel will continue to roll out over the next two weeks. Smoking Gun’s approach to the franchise is ambitious, as Johnson explains: “[o]ur perspective is, if you can interact with it, then it can be part of the experience we deliver. And if you cannot interact with it, then we will evolve it to the point where it can be part of our universe. There are no boundaries to where we can go or what we can accomplish.”

Click Here to start the experience with the online preview of X.

ARGNet on “The Digital Edge”

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:06:06 -0800

ARGNet’s own Associate Editor Marie Lamb appeared on South African marketing podcast The Digital Edge this past week to discuss alternate reality games. Marie was joined by alternate reality gaming developers Ken Eklund (World Without Oil), McKinney’s Chris Walsh (Art of the Heist), and Cherryflava’s Jonathan Cherry (Can You Twist). The Digital Edge produces weekly podcasts on topics related to digital marketing.

Marie provided a succinct explanation of what alternate reality games are (and what they are not). During the podcast, she noted that “a real ARG has to have two crucial elements, in my opinion, to succeed. It has to have a really good story, and it has to have a strong community of players. In the best ARGs, these two are interlinked.” Then Ken Eklund, Jonathan Cherry, and Chris Walsh each described the rationale behind launching an alternate reality game along with brief explanations of their respective projects.

Click Here to listen to the Digital Edge episode on alternate reality games.

Ditch the Tech: Potential Dollhouse ARG for the Hiatus

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:45:49 -0800

In its second season on air, Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse has reportedly been averaging fewer than 3 million viewers per episode. In light of these figures, Fox decided to put the show on hiatus until December 4th, after November sweeps. Undeterred, Whedon posted the following commentary on Whedonesque:

“Howzabout that schedule? Well, I’m not as depressed as everyone else. We weren’t about to rock sweeps anyway, and though there’s a chilly November, December is CRAZY. It’s like an Advent calendar of episodes! We get November to try to spread the word (which I’ll be leaning on Fox to do, though it’s hard to imagine them doing as good a job as the WhyIWatch guy) and then December is pure gluttony. Plus the episodes line up extremely well in these pairs, and we’ll have an absurdly appropriate lead-in.”

It appears as though people desperate for more Dollhouse content will not be forced to wait until the show returns from its hiatus December 4th. Yesterday, Dollhouse fans noticed a new website for Rossum Corporation, the organization responsible for Dollhouses around the world. In addition to advertising an attractive 5-year paid internship for “candidates of superior genetic disposition,” Rossum Corporation provides details about its ongoing Senate investigation. Even the website’s Terms & Conditions strives to establish its authenticity, noting that “all agents shall remain the property of the Company at all times.”

Digging a little deeper, fans who called Rossum’s phone number received a short phone message instructing them to “ditch the tech,” leading to DitchtheTech.com. The website includes a video alongside a message from the future world of 2019 depicted in the episode Epitaph One. The website’s source code notes, “[c]ivilization will fall apart in the year 2019. The Rossum Corporation is responsible. It is already beginning at the L.A. Dollhouse right now. Don’t let them wipe the future!” The source code also provides a reference to WipetheFuture.com, indicating there may be more to discover soon.

While Fox never aired Epitaph One, the show’s 13th episode, its dystopic look into the show’s future provided some of the show’s most compelling moments. By returning to the show’s future plotline over the coming weeks, Joss Whedon’s hopes of using November to spread the word about the show might turn the show’s November hiatus into a blessing in disguise.

Last February, February, 20th Century FOX Television and the Fox Broadcasting Company partnered with The company P to produce Dollplay, an interactive participation drama exploring the show’s mindwipe technology through interactions with a girl named Hazel.

Click Here for our previous coverage of Dollhouse experiences.

DARPA Network Challenge: Celebrating 40 Years of Internet

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:25:07 -0800

On October 29, 1969 at 10:30PM, UCLA student Charley Kline sent the letters “LO” from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park using the ARPANET. Forty years later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is celebrating the birth of the Internet with a contest that tests its capabilities to bring people together. At 10AM EST, ten moored red weather balloons will be released across the continental United States for six hours: the first person to submit the latitudes and longitudes of all ten balloons in degree-minute-second (DDD-MM-SS) format will win $40,000. Balloons will be accompanied by DARPA representatives at readily accessible locations visible from nearby roadways.

The DARPA Network Challenge opens for registration on December 1, and will accept submissions until December 14. The Secretary of Defense is authorized to award prizes under 10 U.S.C. § 2374a for “outstanding achievements in basic, advanced, and applied research, technology development, and prototype development that have the potential for application to the performance of the military missions of the Department of Defense.” To achieve this end, DARPA notes in its contest rules that it “may contact individuals to discuss the means and methods used in solving the challenge.”

The Rules state that DARPA will only issue a single check to the winning individual registered on the event website. Thus, successful entrants will have to find an optimal incentive structure to receive timely and accurate data from the crowd. Even assuming the balloons will be visible from Interstate highways, combing almost 47,000 miles of roadways in six hours will be a daunting task. Verifying that data will be equally difficult, especially if people refuse to share their successes and failures or post falsified sightings.

Games like Vanishing Point and Perplex City have previously tackled the challenge of crowd-sourcing tasks that involve a financial reward to a single individual. Therefore, it’s somewhat fitting that Perplex City developer Adrian Hon has provided an in-depth analysis of the challenges this contest’s winner must overcome. Adrian notes that he is planning on running a similar challenge in London with Philip Trippenbach before Christmas.

Click Here to visit DARPA’s Network Challenge contest page.
Click Here for a partial list of groups participating in the DARPA Challenge.

PICNIC ’09: Day 3, Rebuild

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:27:49 -0700

The final day of PICNIC’s three day conference was themed “Rebuild” and focused on world-changing developments and the visionary people behind them. The day started with Start Breathing, a short presentation by independent writer and consultant Linda Stone. Stone told us about the importance of breathing and the dangers of a phenomenon called “E-mail apnea.”

E-mail apnea refers to when people hold their breath while reading and writing e-mails or text messages. Stone put a lot of research into this common condition, and was told by several medical specialists that irregular breathing can contribute heavily to stress-related diseases. Stone suggests that we do not suffer from information overload, but rather from information overconsumption. If you want to know more, check out her op-ed on the subject for the Huffington Post.

Next, Nicholas Negroponte delivered his keynote speech, which served as the highlight of the third day and possibly even of the entire conference. Negroponte is co-founder of the MIT Medialab and spearheads the One Laptop Per Child program. He’s considered a true visionary and, especially with OLPC, has been working on projects that literally change the world. Although it has been over 15 years since Negroponte asserted “computing is no longer about computers, it is about life,” the sentiment remains highly relevant today.

He started by talking about the reasons for founding MIT Media-lab. While photography was invented by photographers, television was created by engineers. And yet, creativity has always been expected from the creative users instead of the scientists behind the medium. Media-lab brings together scientists, artists and other creative minds to help push the medium forward by innovation and creative use. For instance, while newspapers may be dead in their paper incarnation, innovation and creativity can still keep the medium alive.

He went on to explain that at some point in his life he started believing that his role is to do what normal market forces cannot or will not do. One day, he asked himself “am I actually doing something that market forces are not?” and had to answer no. This is when he came up with the idea for the OLPC program. What is the market doing, in this case? To compensate for projected drops in sales, the market keeps adding features and gadgets. This also keeps the price of laptops up.

Meanwhile, in an average village in India, children often work for a meager salary of $45 a year instead of going to school. Negroponte believes that children in third-world countries don’t stop going to school because they have to work, but because school is mostly boring. Providing them with the right tools to make education interesting would help encourage them to continue their schooling.

When he explained his idea for a $100 laptop, everyone told him it wasn’t possible. Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Craig Barrett all laughed at him for thinking he could pull it off. At this point in his presentation, Negroponte casually took out an OLPC laptop. After throwing it onto the stage, he casually tossed it around, and asked the audience “…can their products do this? I don’t think so!”

When designing the OLPC laptop, Negroponte recognized that it had to have some unique properties making it suitable for use in third-world countries…properties that mainstream laptops did not have. For example, the OLPC needed to be able to operate in low-power environments, so it had a crank that can be used to generate power by hand. It also needed to be sturdy enough to survive being an object of play, so it was built tough enough to withstand Negroponte’s dramatic demonstration.

Another great aspect of the OLPC is its ability to store one hundred books, enabling the shipment books into Indian villages without incurring the expense of shipping so many physical copies. When they rolled out the program in India, not only did they fit every laptop with 100 books, they fit each laptop with 100 different books. Negroponte pointed out that not many people in the conference room had 10,000 books available to them when they attended school. Thanks to the OLPC program, children in Africa and India now have that access.

The next speaker was Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University and author of a book called The Time Paradox. To explain what The Time Paradox is all about, Zimbardo showed a video of the “marshmallow temptation study.”

The study demonstrates how people react in situations when delayed gratification provides rewards. It also shows that there’s a basic difference between orientation on the present or on the future. Zimbardo, through many underlying studies, found that everyone has their own personal time orientation, and that this influences everyday decisions. He considers the single most important thing you can teach your kids to be the concept of delayed gratification, noting that people who are more future oriented are generally more successful and social than people who are not. According to his conceptual time orientation model, people are categorized into different classes based on their behavior: these classes are then linked to behavioral patterns such as criminal behavior.

The reception of Zimbardo’s speech was overwhelmingly positive. And while I thought Zimbardo conveyed a number of interesting notions, at times the presentation sounded like it was primarily an advertisement for his book. While this detracted from the presentation, I would love to read more about the subject, particularly the scientific underpinnings.

The conference continued with the award ceremony for the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, a competition encouraging people to come up with ideas that help the environment by awarding $500,000 to help the winner execute their idea. This section was introduced by Niklas Zennström, the founder of KaZaa, Joost and Skype. Zennström briefly discussed the subject entrepreneurship with social impac by providing a summary of his own career, pointing out the choices he made along the way. Englishman Dean Gregory won the Green Challenge Award for his proposal of small, low-cost rooftop wind turbines.

The final part of the conference schedule was reserved for Ben Ceverny, a strategist and advisor with Stamen Design who presented a series of speakers discussing The City as Interaction Platform. The premise of this central theme is that 21^st century cities will be built collaboratively, which will require an “operating system” for the built environment. Cities are becoming social objects, as the examples that followed demonstrated.

Take the example presented by Greg Sibiski who works for Sense Networks, a company specializing in processing location data. Their approach to cities is from an individual point of view: how can it be made relevant for its users? They developed Citysense, an application that projects where people go in downtown San Francisco on a map based on GSM/GPS data. It shows where people are arriving and departing, providing up-to-date information on current hotspots. Another interesting application of the technology involves plotting data of when people in the financial district leave from work against the level of the Dow.

The application allows users to divide the city into different districts based on the hour of the day: for instance, there is no financial district over the weekend, and there is no clubbing scene on Wednesday morning. Not only can you divide the city using these datasets, you can also divide its inhabitants into different groups, or tribes, by putting together a ‘lifestyle matrix.’ This way, you can predict where a person is likely to be at a particular time based on his geographic behavior.

Finally, conference host Matt Costello invited PICNIC co-founder Marleen Stikker on stage for some closing comments. As part of the the closing comments, the two briefly discussed some of the post-it notes that were left scattered around the conference area on whiteboards asking people what they would like to see for next year’s PICNIC. I was rather thrilled that my note was one of five picked to be read on stage: “Tell us more about narrative!”

A lot of the presentations this year were focused on means of entertaining and engaging people, and even means of propagating narration, but personally I’d love to hear more about actual narratives and the brilliant creative minds putting them out there. So here’s a short elaboration on my post-it note intended for the PICNIC people: please take heed of people like Steve Peters, Jan Libby, Andrea Phillips, Elan Lee and Sean Stewart as they would be amazing additions to the PICNIC program. Congratulations to all the organizers and speakers on an impressive PICNIC, and see you in 2010!

PICNIC ’09: Peter Molyneux on Innovation in Entertainment

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:11:55 -0700

In our previous coverage of day 2 of the PICNIC conference, I skipped over Peter Molyneux’s session called Innovation in Entertainment because it warranted additional attention. In case you’re unfamiliar with his work, Molyneux is a computer/video games mogul who has been working in the games industry for over 20 years now. His work pioneered several genres of video games through projects like Populous, Theme Park and Syndicate for Bullfrog Production, now integrated into EA UK.

Molyneux later moved on to Lionhead Studios, where he created ground-breaking games including Black & White and Fable. Molyneux is currently the head of Lionhead Studios, which was acquired by Microsoft Game Studios in 2006. Since June 2009, Molyneux has also been head of the European division of MS Game Studios.

Molyneux started his speech by showing his passion for games and the games industry. He declared that games are one of the most creative endeavours in existence because they take technology and use it to present a story in the most engaging and immersive way imaginable. For Populous, this involved using a 5×4 pixel grid for a characters face, making it rather hard to show emotions. Molyneux noted that the distance between the screen and the player is still huge: current resolutions are still far from reality. Moreover, games today mostly seem to be for one of only two categories: either for corporate use, or for the hardcore gamer. Games require a lot of manual dexterity, use complicated controllers and create other barriers that prevent players from having an enjoyable experience.

This is where Project NATAL comes in. You have probably heard of NATAL, the new technology allowing you to use your body as a controller, from Microsoft’s showcase of at the 2009 E3. NATAL is not just a motion detection technology, however. It also offers the possibility of facial and voice recognition. Molyneux and Lionhead have been working on taking these technologies and combining them with advanced versions of the AI and adaptive learning systems used in games like Black & White to create a whole new entertainment experience called Milo. Milo is a little boy that lives in your Xbox who interacts with the user in several very interesting ways. The best way to get an idea of what Milo can do is to watch Molyneux discuss the project.

I was truly blown away by what technology paired with creativity is capable of achieving. It was stunning to see Milo work. Unfortunately, the demonstration was not conducted live on stage, but through an extended version of the demonstration given in the Youtube video linked to above. I’m very curious to see if Lionhead and Microsoft will manage to make this into an even greater experience. Molyneux’ greatest challenge has often been to turn a brilliant, visionary concept into a fun and entertaining game. He’s been quite successful with it in many cases, while other attempts failed to fully realize thier full potential.

Afterwards, the folks at Fais Moi Jouer offered to let me tag along for a lightning-fast 2 minute interview with Molyneux. FMJ’s Julien Aubert asked Molyneux to comment on ARGs and how they could be used to extend the experience of NATAL/Milo beyond the console. After explaining the concept to Molyneux, he expressed skepticism about the idea, noting that ARGs can be good as long as they are not just there as an excuse not to have an entertaining experience with the actual game. You can view his response here.

During his presentation, besides being very impressed, one other thought crept into my mind, which I even tweeted about during the conference: “isn’t Milo ‘just’ a surrogate for making actual friends, and isn’t that a bad thing?” While I had the opportunity, I thought I’d ask Molyneux himself. Julien was kind enough to record his response. While I’m not sure the Theme Park analogy covers quite the same ground, I agree with the ambition: focus will be on augmenting interaction rather than replacing it. So keep an eye out for Milo’s release.

Pictures courtesy of Danceinthesky and Julien Aubert

Puzzles for the Apocalypse

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:36:48 -0700

A little birdie recently pointed me in the direction of a puzzle trail called Third Realm. The site has a labyrinth of puzzles and an apocalyptic countdown ending on November 2nd. The players’ goal is to free the Yellow King with the help of a self-proclaimed “Prophet in the Wild” through his twitter account, thirdrealm. The Prophet has been dropping cryptic clues, and there is a possible London deaddrop that has yet to be investigated.

If you’re in the mood to flex your puzzle solving muscles before the November 2nd apocalypse, head on over to the unfiction thread here.

Prank Marketing and the Toyota Matrix: How Far Is Too Far?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:17:22 -0700

In 2008, Toyota Motors paired up with Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles to release Your Other You, an advertising campaign promoting the Toyota Matrix. Targeting male twentysomethings, the campaign crafted an elaborate transmedia prank experience to overcome the demographic’s strong aversion to advertising and corporations. Saatchi’s creative director told OMMA Magazine that the campaign was all about “empowering the customer…we wanted them to be involved and to feel like they were part of the process.”

According to a complaint filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court on September 28 of this year, Amber Duick did not feel empowered after experiencing the campaign firsthand. The complaint accuses Toyota, Saatchi & Saatchi, and fifty individuals associated with the campaign of: (1) intentional infliction of emotional distress; (2) negligent infliction of emotional distress; (3) negligence; (4) unfair, unlawful, and deceptive trade practices, (5) false, deceptive, and/or misleading advertising; (6) violation of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act; (7) fraud; and (8) negligent misrepresentation. Duick is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages.

Starting in February 2008, print, outdoor and banner ads drove traffic to yourotheryou.com. There, users were encouraged to prank a friend by providing personal information about them including their address, phone number, and alma mater. According to Nicholas Tepper, Ms. Duick’s attorney, the prank’s target would receive an email with a “personality test” containing a link to an “indecipherable” consent form. For the next five days, one of five maniacs would contact the target with personalized texts, emails, phone calls, and videos. The user could track the prank’s evolution through a dashboard indicating which messages their target received over the course of the campaign.

According to the complaint, Duick was contacted on March 29 by an individual claiming to be Sebastian Bowler, a soccer hooligan on the run from the police with his pitbull, Trigger. Bowler informed Duick that he was planning on staying at her house for a few days, providing Duick’s prior address. Between March 29 and April 2, Duick was contacted on numerous occassions with regards to Bowler’s exploits, and received an email from the Coronett Motel claiming she was responsible for a television Bowler smashed. On April 2, Bowler provided Duick with a link to a video of an old man who explained that the entire experience was a prank, while laughing continuously. A picture of one of Amber’s friends was on the desk. Tepper contends that this “Terror Marketing Campaign” was not intended to encourage the targets of the prank to purchase cars: rather, “it was designed to create publicity and ‘buzz’ at the expense of those subject to it.”

This isn’t the first marketing campaign to come under fire for blurring the lines between fiction and reality. In 2007, the digital advertising agency Ralph launched The Dexter Treatment to promote Showtime’s television series Dexter. Visitors to sliceoflifetv.com could provide the name, gender, age and occupation of a target, along with a personal message. The target would then receive a link to a customized news report. Also in 2007, some people exposed to CourtTV’s Save My Husband campaign complained that the campaign’s fictionality wasn’t labeled clearly enough. Most recently, Nestle Butterfinger launched its Dude Where’s My Bar campaign by posting footage of Seth Green freaking out over getting mugged, followed by security camera footage of the incident. Although the campaign’s main page clearly states its fictionality, the initial videos made Gawker and The Examiner question whether the initial mugging videos were real or a hoax.

Christy Dena authored a short article explaining why ARGs aren’t hoaxes. In the article, she makes a distinction between experiences that intend to deceive its viewers and those that strive to trick people. With Your Other You, there appears to be a difference of opinion on whether Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi did enough to indicate the campaign’s fictionality. While Conor Brady of Organic thought the fictionality was obvious enough that he wouldn’t be fooled, Christine Champagne noted that “Saatchi went to great lengths to make the prank Google-proof by providing fully realized lives for these characters online.” Moreover, while the campaign was targeting a traditionally media-literate demographic, some people are less likely to pick up on cues of fictionality than others.

Whatever the eventual disposition of Duick v. Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. may be, Toyota’s Your Other You campaign raises a number of design concerns for developers working in the alternate reality gaming space. When you employ a viral mechanism to promote the game, how overtly should it indicate the game’s fictionality? How much information do you disclose about the nature of the campaign? Finally, how do you allow for players to opt-out if they no longer wish to continue the experience?

Click Here to download Tepper Law Firm’s press release on the case, including the original complaint filed September 28.
Click Here to read the experiences of another individual subjected to Sebastian Bowler’s antics.

Games Chatterbox Column Tuesday

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:15:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming and - pretty much anything else, too.

Tuesday's edition of Chatterbox.

Greg Howson

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World of Warcraft celebrates five-year anniversary

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:55:24 -0800

World's most popular multiplayer online game boasts more than 12 million subscribers from around the world

World of Warcraft, the world's most popular multiplayer online game, is celebrating its five-year birthday. The game first saw the light of day on 23 November 2004.

The game lets players control avatars such as orcs, elves, or even the undead, through a vast virtual fantasy world called Azeroth.

Players can form in-game guilds, or band together to attempt dungeons known as 'instances' in order to obtain better equipment for their characters.

The anniversary is being marked within the game, with players being presented with a special pet called Onyxia Brood Whelping, and Blizzard is said to be planning other ways to mark the milestone.

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The UK top 10 games chart

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:20:00 -0800

Modern Warfare 2 continues to kill the opposition, but it had better watch out for that assassin sneaking up behind

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The Sims 3: World Adventures for PC | Game review

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0800

PC; £29.99; cert 12+; EA

Mike Anderiesz

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Jak & Daxter and LittleBigPlanet - who said platform games were dead?

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:35:00 -0800

PSP sees two high quality platformers bolster release schedule

Greg Howson

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Games Chatterbox Column Monday

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:10:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming and - pretty much anything else, too.

Monday's "did you play Assassin's Creed 2" version of Chatterbox

Greg Howson

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This week's games reviews

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:05:19 -0800

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 (reviewed)

After last year's mediocre Call Of Duty: World At War, developer Infinity Ward is back in the driving seat for Modern Warfare 2, which brings back a couple of grizzled soldiers from the first game for another fearsome round of machine gunning, this time in opposition to a Russian terror gang. From the outset, the sense of danger and confusion is palpable with the intense single-player campaign clocking in at around eight hours. You can tackle a significant set of challenge levels on your own or co-operatively, but, as with older brother Modern Warfare, it's the vast and detailed multiplayer modes that millions around the world will still be playing in six months' time. The early scene involving an airport massacre is probably the most disturbing in any game, displaying a rare seriousness of intent; however, the other hundreds of hours of entertainment it provides are just that.

Activision, £40-£55

Assassin's Creed II, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 (reviewed)

Like its predecessor, Assassin's Creed II takes place in the future, but is almost entirely played out in Renaissance Italy, with your character inhabiting the simulated body of a 15th-century playboy whose life turns serious when he discovers his family's involvement in an ancient dispute between the Knights Templar and the Assassins. Unpicking the game's conspiracies is mostly a case of killing all those involved, with your job turning from that of multiple blade-carrying delivery boy to hired killer as formative fetch-and-carry missions give way to the story proper. Most of the game is spent either in combat or free-running the game's rooftops and alleyways searching for or escaping from foes, and while the action isn't quite as smooth as the recent Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed II is a sprawling and absorbing adventure that's a world away from the lame original. Also available is the impressively detailed Official Guide (Piggyback, £12.99) to help you wring every last florin out of your purchase.

Ubisoft, £40-£50

A Boy And His Blob, Nintendo Wii

A Boy And His Blob is a remake of a game first released 20 years ago on the Nintendo Entertainment System in which a young man befriends a gelatinous creature from another world. Helpfully, your blob can be fed special beans that make it transform into a range of objects from an anvil to push on to the enemies' heads to a trampoline for reaching high platforms. Each level forms an elegant, self-contained puzzle, which, if solved correctly via the right platform hops and choice of beans to feed your blob, gives access to three secret treasure chests; collect all to unlock a new challenge stage. With a charmingly innocent art style almost reminiscent of the original Winnie The Pooh, it also features a hug button that triggers an animation so adorable you'll be using it despite the fact that it has no impact on the course of the game. Warm, welcoming and gentle, A Boy And His Blob is a mellow haven in a gaming universe thick with sharp knives and big guns.

Majesco, £28-£35

Nick Gillett

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Lego Rock Band for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS | Game review

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:37:48 -0800

Xbox 360/PS3/Wii/DS, £29.99 - £39.99, cert: 7+, Warner Bros

Neil Davey

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Government intelligence organisation targets recruits with Xbox Live ads

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:58:45 -0800

GCHQ to run ad campaign within Xbox Live online games to attract 18- to 34-year-olds to its ranks

Government intelligence organisation GCHQ is to run an ad campaign within Xbox Live, to attract quick-thinking 18- to 34-year-olds to its ranks.

The campaign marks the first time that GCHQ, which reports to the foreign secretary, David Miliband, and works with MI5 and MI6, has run ads through Microsoft's internet-connected Xbox Live platform, which connects gamers all over the world.

GCHQ's recruitment campaign will run on the Xbox Live platform, home to games including Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed II.

The government agency is running the six-week campaign using recruitment firm TMP Worldwide and said that many of its recruiting criteria are "reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work".

Xbox Live's main demographic, 18- to 34-year-olds, is also a good fit for GCHQ.

The campaign will include ads on the Xbox Live "dashboard" and within games through streamed video banners.

"As well as tackling 'traditional threats' GCHQ's work is also about helping government departments, such as the Ministry of Defence, to protect their information and communication systems," said a GCHQ spokeswoman.

"This means we can offer excellent training and careers for people with specialist technical skills. However, the fact remains that many potential candidates remain unaware of GCHQ and what we do. Using video on Xbox LIVE helps carry our message to the right people in a creative and innovative manner," she added.

GCHQ ran an ad campaign with Microsoft in 2007, although this was only in online games on PCs.

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Mark Sweney

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The magic of Mario

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:30:00 -0800

Almost 30 years on from his arcade debut, the plucky Italian plumber's still going strong

Jack Arnott

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Games Chatterbox Column Friday

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:10:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming - and just about anything else, too.

Friday's edition of Chatterbox

Greg Howson

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The Friday question: the three games that explain humanity

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:22:15 -0800

Select the games that tell us most about mankind...

Last week's semi-philosophical question prompted a wealth of fascinating responses, so here's another along similar lines.

Here are mine...

Grand Theft Auto
As a race, we like shooting stuff, driving really fast and making money. This game shows that some of us like to do all three at the same time.

Okay, your turn...

Keith Stuart

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Is Xbox Live ban the ultimate answer to piracy?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:13:35 -0800

Yes, it's another Modern Warfare 2 blog. I touched on the piracy angle in a post last week and expanded upon it for an article in the paper today:

Owners of the modded consoles, which in many cases are used to play pirated games, will still be able to play offline, but will be banned from signing into Live.

It was similar in the early 90s with Amiga and Atari ST games. Those formats died away but piracy on the PC has remained an issue ever since.

What do you think? Will the strategy work?

Greg Howson

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Game Chatterbox Column Thursday

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:15:00 -0800

The place to talk about gaming - and just about anything else, too.

Thursday's edition of Chatterbox

Greg Howson

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Is the Xbox Live ban the ultimate answer to game piracy?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:05:02 -0800

The social nature of today's best console games gives manufacturers a potent weapon against pirates

Owners of the modded consoles, which in many cases are used to play pirated games, will still be able to play offline, but will be banned from signing into Live.

It was similar in the early 90s with Amiga and Atari ST games. Those formats died away but piracy on the PC has remained an issue ever since.

Greg Howson

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Do We Have Mathematical Instincts?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:20:30 -0800

At our Health Horizons conference earlier this week, we spent some time discussing the challenges of communicating future risks to every day people and noted that one of the key challenges in the coming decade will be to understand how to explain fuzzy genetic probabilities to people in ways that help improve their health.

Health Horizons

IFTF Comments on Senate Bill for Science Park Grants and Loans

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:54:03 -0800

Respectfully submitted by Anthony Townsend
Research Director
Institute for the Future

Science In Action

REMINDER: Join us for our first FutureCast

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:13:44 -0800

Guest expert: Arthur Brock on the future of alternative currency and open money

Date & time: Friday, November 20 at 11:00 am, Pacific Time

Two ways to join the call:

1) If you're Skype-savvy, friend Jerry Michalski at "sociate" anytime between now and the call. Tell him you want to join the call and then he'll call your Skype address a few minutes before the call. (Please "get there early."

2) If you're more comfortable with land lines, call the conference call line:

Toll free: 1-800-868-1837
Direct dial: 1-404-920-6440
Participant code: 548723#

IFTF Staff Posts

IFTF announces new FutureCast series...starting November 20

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:14:31 -0800

teaser:

IFTF is happy to announce that we will be introducing a new FutureCast podcast series, starting Friday, November 20, at 11 am Pacific Time. Our first podcast will be hosted by Jerry Michalski, and our guest expert will be Arthur Brock of The Metacurrency Project.

Promote to what's new on front page:

Promote to what's new on front page

image:

metacurency.jpg

IFTF Staff Posts

IFTF announces new FutureCast series...starting November 20

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:43:51 -0800

IFTF Staff Posts

Betting on Risky Genes

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:42:18 -0800

A provocative feature in this month's Atlantic on a new way to think about genetic variations: Not as switches that confer or protect against disease risks, but as something closer to behavioral investment strategies that might offer more risk and more reward through greater sensitivity to the environment, or instead might offer more conservative strategies.

Health Horizons

Scratch and Computational Thinking

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:53:37 -0800

I've been thinking a lot about the growth in programming and computational skills that will be required in a world in which Everything is Programmable, and I was really surprised and heartened to see an article by Mitch Resnick et al. about Scratch in this month's Communications of the ACM.

IFTF Staff Posts

Mapping Kenya's largest slum

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:24:51 -0800

Kenya has begun an impressive project to map Kibera, it's largest slum. Although Kibera has an estimated 1 million inhabitants, the sum is a big black spot on any map. This makes the process of community development projects next to impossible as no one can begin to plan improvements on a big black hole.

Technology Horizons

When Everything is Programmable Digital Stories

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:34:13 -0800

The Technology Horizons program created a digital story in three parts to accompany their research for their 2009 Fall exchange, When Everything is Programmable. We are proud to present them here for your viewing pleasure.

The story follows Omar—a doctor working at Seattle Grace in about 2019—as he moves through his day and interacts with our programmable future. Each of the videos represent a different segment of Technology Horizons fall map: Part 1 embodies forecasts around Self, Part 2 for Society, and Part 3 for Environment.

Technology Horizons

Behavioral Genetics in the Court Room

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:00:55 -0800

A court in Italy has shortened the prison sentence of a convicted murderer due to the prisoner's heightened genetic predisposition for violence, according to Nature News.

Health Horizons