Get The Parity Started

It’s amazing how the colour of a product makes such a difference in price. In our world where there’s often not much differentiating one product from another, the colour can make all the difference. Of course, I’m going to use examples from cars and technology, but you can find examples everywhere.

That’s the reason why cars have taken a turn for the gray in recent decades. It’s affected by what car buyers desire in their own cars, but also their concern for resale value. So they’ll prefer an inoffensive gray car that they can easily flip a few years later, not the green one that might turn off other buyers. I suspect it’s also that car companies know people are very choosy, and colour won’t win them many sales unless it’s absolutely perfect, but an offensive colour will lose them many, so they stay neutral. Personally, I think that’s a shame; I like colours, but I’m not married to any in particular. So I’d like to have a nice colour for the sake of some colour in my life, even if it’s not my favourite. But I seem to be in the minority on that, so gray it is.

I’ve also seen the colours having an effect on prices in the technology business. I’ve been looking for an external hard drive, and Samsung makes their external drives in traditional black, but also in blue and red. I’ve noticed that one colour is sometimes on sale, but not the others. They’re identical other than the colours, so I’m assuming that when one falls behind in sales, some algorithm somewhere decides it’s time for a discount. It’s hard to believe that colour can have that kind of effect on the purchase of something few others are going to see, but apparently it does.

But then I went looking for a game controller. They’re traditionally gray or black, but often available in other colours. So after my experience with the hard drives, I wasn’t surprised to find that the red XBox controller was five dollars less than the original black. I was set to order it and congratulate myself on my colourful frugality, but then I saw it: A pink controller, for fifteen dollars less than the original.

That’s ironic, because of this concept called, the “Pink Tax.” That’s the phenomenon where products aimed at women are more expensive than similar products aimed at men, even though they hardly differ. Often, the only difference is that they’re pink, hence the name. They aren’t really more expensive because they’re pink. After all, pink paint and dye is not particularly expensive. Instead, it’s factors like how much consumers want and need products. I’m assuming that because women are under more pressure to look good, their hygiene products are more expensive because of higher demand.

So in other contexts, pink might cost more, but the roles have been reversed here. You might be surprised to see them even trying to sell something pink in the world of video games, but let me remind you: 

1. Surveys show female gamers are now close to 50% of the market.
2. We are just coming out of The Year Of Barbie. 

Having said that, it appears things weren’t working out the way Microsoft marketing wanted, and the pink controllers were deeply discounted. I don’t know, maybe the Barbie-gaming crossover wasn’t as much as they’d hoped. But I suspect the real reason is that female gamers may choose the black or the pink, while the males will only buy the black.

(And if you’re wondering, I only saw one colour that was more expensive than the original black controller: a dark purple. Purple seems to be having a moment right now.)

For me, even when I put aside traditional symbols of masculinity, pink is not one of my favourite colours. I don’t mind it, as long as it’s taken in reasonable quantities. You know, less than the Barbie-aisle-at-Toys-R-Us levels. And whatever need I have to reaffirm my masculinity is tiny compared to my desire not to over-spend on electronics, so: I ordered the pink controller.

It’s not much of a consolation for high-priced women’s products, but there are times when the Pink Tax turns into, let’s say, the Pink Subsidy. And I’m pleased to be gaming with both confidence in my masculinity, and an extra fifteen dollars in my pocket.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #45

 You’ll read this headline and understand it:

Trans Ontario Express

As I've mentioned, there are an astonishing number of topics for video games these days. want to be a goose, a bird on a tiny skateboard, or Eastern European border agent? There's a game for each. (And, no, I haven’t bought all those. Well, I’ve only bought two of them.)

And there are plenty of games stimulating actual jobs. For instance, there's a few truck driving simulations. Many would consider that dull, but enough people find it fun, relaxing, or challenging that it's become a genre of games.

There's also a genre of train driving simulators, where you can control a train, from your choice of various types of trains, various eras, and different locations around the world. Though the games about building the trains and running the railway are more popular, so that tells you something about the world.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the latest selection from Humble Bundle. It's a non-profit that raises money for charity by selling bundles of older video games, software and e-books cheaply. Recently, one of their bundles was a collection of train simulators.

It also came with expansion packs that allowed you to add trains and locations from around the world. One of those caught my eye.

Yes, you can drive a Canadian National freight train from Oakville to Hamilton.

Of course, that struck me as odd. I assumed that if you wanted to drive a train, it would be one of the legendary trains of the world: the Orient Express, the Shinkansen (Bullet Train), or the Trans-Siberian Railroad. If you were going to choose a Canadian train, the Rocky Mountaineer would be the obvious choice, though you might also go with a line through Northern Ontario or Quebec, or into the far north. Or, if you wanted urban rail, you could go through a major city — hey, approaching Union Station in Toronto from the West, you go straight past the CN Tower and The Dome.

But no, they went with Oakville. It’s a chance to guide a freight train, slowly, through Canadian suburbs. Though you do get to pilot one of CN’s freight engines, which are kind of iconic in Canada. Though they’re iconic in the way a Coca-Cola bottle is iconic: so common, you barely even see them anymore. And that further contributes to the banal feeling. You’re doing a job that’s around you all the time. It would be like a taxi simulator. Oh, wait, they have those too.

Having said all this, I can kind of understand it. On the one hand, in our globalized world, what is mundane to some is exotic to others. I mean, I mentioned how the Shinkansen sounds exciting to me. But to a Japanese salaryman, it’s just a way to get to work. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for exploring your own world, but from perspective you’ve never seen. I have to admit that when I watched the preview video for the Oakville expansion, I was intrigued by the part where they show the perspective of entering the cab. Like most Canadians, I’ve seen about a million of those CN locomotives, but I don’t even know what the interior looks like.

So if this strikes your fancy, don’t listen to me condemning your fantasy. Have fun with what you enjoy, and don’t listen to the nay-sayers. That’s what’s great about modern video games: there’s something for everyone. After all, you’re living the wildest dreams of some kid in the 1950’s watching his Lionel trains go round and round.

Game Stop

In video games, there’s this concept called the “rage quit.” That’s when a player ends the game early in a fit of anger. Often, it’s referring to an online game, where a player quits in a moment of emotion, and is seen as bad sportsmanship. But it can also refer to quitting a single-player game in a fit of frustration, often to never return.

I think “rage quit” is a very useful phrase, because it’s a phenomenon we’ve all experienced, even if we’ve never played video games. I hope it gets broadened to use in all facets of life. Plenty of people rage quit jobs, but you can also use it in less-dramatic circumstances. You can talk about how you tried to learn piano, but rage quit while practicing the B-minor scale.

But back to gaming. Sometimes, I would rage quit online StarCraft games back in my university days (“Damnit, we agreed, no grunt rushes!”) And more recently, single-player games that mistook frustration for challenge (hello, Mirror’s Edge.) But it seems to me that there’s another type of game-quitting that needs a name. This would be something like “Apathy Quit.” You aren't angry, you've just run out of enthusiasm. maybe you don't even make a conscious choice to stop playing; you just don’t come back to a game. Actually, “apathy” isn’t the right word, because it implies that you don’t care about the game. Sometimes I don’t come back to a game that I do care about. I’ve just kind of, had enough.

For instance, I “had-enough quit” Hollow Knight. That might be a surprise, since it’s a widely-beloved indie game. And indeed, I loved playing it, and have no regrets about buying it. But, having explored pretty much everything in the game, the only thing left was to defeat the last few bosses, but that would mean hours of bashing my head against the wall, failing again and again, and I just didn’t have the enthusiasm for it. So I just stopped playing.

Another game I didn’t come back to was Mass Effect: Andromeda. I mentioned being a fan of the Mass Effect series before, And I’m enough of a fan that I was willing to slog through the much-unloved fourth instalment in the series. Indeed, it has all the flaws people have complained about: terrible animation, an awkward user interface, and a general whiff of budget cuts. But I found it had enough of what made the original trilogy successful that it was still enjoyable despite its flaws. So I played most of the way through it, and then…stopped.

That was particularly odd, because it was right around the start of the Covid lockdowns, when escape into another world would be a welcome thing. But I had — once again — had enough. Another complaint about Andromeda was that its length was padded-out by repetitiveness rather than genuinely new story, and I think that added to the feeling of apathy.

So, why this walk down Gaming Apathy Boulevard? Well, I don’t have a big hard drive, and I have these unfinished games just sitting there, taking up space, so I decided to go back and try to finish them. Hollow Knight looks like it will be a tough task to beat the last bosses, so I may leave it unfinished. But Andromeda is close enough to the shooter template that I feel like I can finish up the last few side-quests, then bumble through the final battle with the Kett or the Revenant or Angora or whoever the bad guys were.

What have I learned from the experience?

• This is the closest I'm going to come to the trope of the thief/detective/superhero coming out of retirement for one last job. Everything around me seems familiar, but I'm still a step slow, and feeling unprepared, and just generally feeling “too old for this shit.”
• Games are complicated. You don’t realize while playing them normally, because they’ve purposely dropped new concepts on you one-at-a-time, slowly adding to your knowledge of the various systems and tools available to you. But coming back and playing mostly-complete games is tough because you’ve already reached maximum complexity, and now there’s nothing here to remind you how it all works.
• It’s weird that no time has passed in the game. Other characters are referring to things that just happened within the game, but I don’t remember them, because they were four years ago. Maybe in the future, games will be so sophisticated that they’ll notice when you’ve been away for a while and update you appropriately, reintroducing you to characters and reminding you what’s been going on. But until then, I’m a reverse Rip Van Winkle.
• It’s sort of like riding a bicycle. I didn’t go straight back to feeling completely comfortable, but it didn’t take long. Of course, it helps that these games are just variations on popular themes, so using the controls is just a matter of remembering which buttons do what. 
• Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I rode a bicycle, so I could test that old saying too.

The McFlurry Is A Lie

I had a weird experience recently when I saw an ad on Facebook looking for McDonald's employees. That's odd to begin with: I'm a bit old for their employee demographic, and in general, Facebook is not a place to go looking for that demographic. But what was really surreal was that this ad came with a game. Click on the link, and you could play a game. What kind of game, you ask? Why, a game of working at McDonald's. It's a drive in Canada to hire 25,000 new employees with a game called Crush the Rush Crew.

In the game, you're looking down at a McDonald's kitchen, as new orders come in at the drive through. You then click/tap on the appropriate employees to have them make an item. And try to keep up. It was a bit dull, since you can only work on the next item in the order queue; you can't strategize by having the burger maker work on a Big Mac for the next order, while the drink maker works on the coffee for the next car in line instead of just twiddling thumbs.

But let's back up here. Depending on your experience with video games, this might seem like a bizarre game idea. But there's actually quite a history with these time management games. If you're my age, you may remember seeing Tapper in the 80's, and not believing that was a real game next to all its contemporaries. So let me shock you again: that genre has kept right on going, and there are now lots of people playing games based on seemingly stressful situations. So the idea of a McDonald's drive through management game is actually the least unexpected part of this scenario. But I would have thought McDonald's wouldn't like the idea of representing their work as a game.

So now I'm trying to wrap my head around this: we've created a genre of game about doing minimum-wage manual labor, and now a company is using one of those games to convince people to do those minimum-wage manual labor jobs. I don't know which surprises me more, that McDonald's embraced the concept to sell people on working for them, or that potential employees haven't just laughed at the concept. I looked at the comments under the Facebook ad expecting lots of vitriol, but there wasn't much. Some people complained about the difficulty of the game, and a few made jokes about how they already played the game in real life. But there was no how-dare-you-make-a-game-of-overworking-your-underpaid-employees. I didn't even see any comments about how unrealistic it was that the game's ice cream machine worked.

It all seems like something from a semi-humorous sci-fi dystopia like Ready Player One or Snow Crash. Though speaking of sci-fi, the idea of gamifying more serious things is not new. Perhaps McDonald's could specifically recruit those who do well in the game, like in The Last Starfighter. Of course, the next level would be if the game were the job; when you play it, your instructions are actually being sent out to some random McDonald’s somewhere in the world, like some kind of banal version of Ender's Game. Actually, that could be good: you do your part running a McDonald’s, and if you do a good enough job, you get a discount on your next purchase. Don’t have enough for a Big Mac Meal? Just take a few minutes to run up a new high score on the Decatur, Georgia drive-through.

Once again, it’s part of our weird future, where work is play, and play is work. I just wish they could find a way to make supermarket self-serve checkouts into a game.

Find An Ending, But Don’t Cheat

There’s a concept in storytelling called deus ex machina , which is when a conflict is resolved by an unreasonably lucky occurrence, rather than the characters overcoming the obstacle. I first became aware of it when I took drama in high school. It stuck out for a few reasons:

• It sounds cool in a way that other Latin phrases like habeas corpus and carpe diem don’t.
• It sounds even cooler when you realize it literally means “god from a machine”
• It allows you to condemn stories for a reason that would be too hard to explain otherwise. So many people want to a happy ending and don’t care how it comes about, and it’s a struggle to explain why these happy endings aren’t satisfying. But now I can just say it’s a deus ex machina, and they say, huh? But I feel better.

But I have to say to science fiction creators: please stop using this in titles. It started in 2000 with the cyberpunk video game Deus Ex. Okay, that made sense, since the blurring of humanity and machines gives the phrase new meaning, with the idea that what was once thought of as exclusively divine could now come from a machine. But then there was a movie about humanoid robots a few years ago called Ex Machina, essentially copying the same idea, but leaving out a different word sound original.

Now I see that there’s another game coming out called Daemon x Machina. Sure, that’s funny and appropriate to the subject matter (battling giant robots.) And old-school Unix users will appreciate the use of “daemon.” But really, can’t we come up with some new ways to describe stories involving robots, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics? It’s becoming a cliche and something should end it. I don’t even care if it’s something unanticipated that comes from out of nowhere.

The Best Games You Can Name

I just saw an ad for the video game Civilization VI. It’s been out for a while, but ever since it’s introduction, they’ve had difficulty getting players to upgrade from Civilization V. But I might be convinced thanks to a new expansion for it, which adds a number of new scenarios and new civilizations you can take on.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Civilization series has you controlling one of the great empires of history, exploring the world, expanding your territory, dealing with other nations. For the most part, the empires play the same, though they are each given unique abilities. For instance, the Iroquois are able to move their units through forests more quickly, and the Mongols can create powerful mounted archers.

What has me excited is that they’re adding Canada as one of the civilizations you can play as.

So what sort of unique abilities will we have in the game?

• Can get more production out of tundra territories, allowing you to use land that other civilizations ignore (more or less accurate)
• Your unique troops: the Mounties (You kind of had to go with that)
• Extra diplomatic abilities prevent allies from turning on you and pre-emptively attacking (a little stereotypical)
• You can build hockey rinks to improve your civilization’s morale and culture (okay, now you’re just making fun of us.)

So that got me thinking about what other video games could use a Canadian edition:

• Pokémon Go: the game is the same, but it’s presented as an episode of Hinterland Who’s Who
• Need For Speed: can you keep up with 401 traffic in a blizzard?
• Madden: renamed Buono and played with CFL rules
• Bioshock: It's a nice, orderly underwater community where everyone respects the law. Until the cod fishery is shut down, then all hell breaks loose.
• Asteroids: no guns; you have to grab the asteroids with the Canadarm
• Guitar Hero Rush Edition: for experts only
• Metal Gear Solid: the stealth classic is made more challenging by Snake’s inability to stop saying, “Sorry” and “Excuse Me”
• Red Dead Redemption: the Mounties show up and prevent the game from happening
• Frostpunk: if you're not familiar with it, this game is about building a city in an inhospitable frozen environment. Not only is no Canadian edition necessary, I think we should sue them for copyright infringement or something.

Unready Player One

My very first post on this blog was a joke about Facebook games. I mostly stayed away from them, as they felt more like psychology experiments than recreation.

Since then, I've been playing a lot of mobile games. They have some of the same qualities, since free games need to make money somehow. But fortunately, they lack that hard sell you have to keep playing and paying to cheat. But they still have a structure that is built around at least the possibility of selling things. For instance, they’ll have some sort of power-up concept, because it will be easy to sell a power-up to the gamer when they get frustrated. And that’s becoming the accepted style for free mobile games.

It's weird how games can develop their own cultures. I first noticed this in university when some of us found out there was a 3d Tetris. Thing is, it was put out by Nintendo, and they had, well, Nintendified it. In contrast to the original Tetris, which was simple and minimal. When we tried playing it, it prompted the player to choose a character. That just seemed kind of childish. Sure, for a lot of folks this was natural, because they were Nintendo fans who were introduced to the original Tetris that way. But those of us who had loved the game as a work time-waster just felt stupid.

Now I sometimes find myself experiencing a similar clash of gaming cultures. For instance, I’ve wasted many an hour playing the Cell Connect game app. It's a simple abstract puzzle game. After playing it for a while, it was updated, and they've clearly decided to make it more in the style of app and social media games. The changes aren't too intrusive, but they are confusing.

Power up cards? Um, okay. Getting 5% bonus is nice, but it's not as exciting as invulnerability or something. The second card is a raccoon, what the hell does that mean? And now I've leveled up. This isn't an RPG, so I’m not even sure what that could mean.

In short, all these changes have made gaming rather complicated. Ironically, I just came across this article from Wired in which they examine the huge popularity of Fortnite, and argue that it is surprising since it is a fairly complex game,in contrast to lowest-common-denominator games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush. But it seems to me that even games aimed at the mass market have their own complexity, but it is within a culture of its own.

Mass Romantic

You know how May 4th has become Star Wars day? Well fans of the epic sci-fi video game Mass Effect are trying to do the same thing with November 7th. See, the top level that a soldier can reach in the game's universe is N7, so that code appears on a lot of equipment and clothing in the game. Gettit? N7 : November 7th? Okay, it's even flimsier than the "May the fourth" pun, but it gives me the opportunity to tell you about my insights from playing the game. Now don't worry, non-geeks, this entry will be full of social commentary, not esoteric nerdery.

For non-geeks, it might be hard to explain the game's appeal. After all, you're playing a future soldier defending the galaxy from killer aliens, which is about the dorkiest premise you could imagine. But you know how there comes a point in every child's growth when they realize that "action figures" and "dolls" are really the same thing, and it's your choice how you play with them? Well that's where Mass Effect is, at the border between the two.

In between shooting aliens, you get to talk to, befriend, or argue with your fellow shipmates. And you can even sleep with them - oh, I'm sorry, "romance" them, in the parlance of the game. This human interaction seems to be a big draw for the franchise.

I've gone on Pinterest, where I've found a lot of creative work based on the game: humour, artwork, headcannons, and cartoons extending the series. I've discovered a few things: first, I can read Mass Effect comics all day, and second, that the interpersonal relations between the characters are what fascinates many fans.

And that leads to an interesting aspect: Your character in the game is a "Commander Shepard," but you can choose to make that "John" or "Jane" Shepard. According to research by the game's maker, Bioware, more than 80% of players choose the male version. Yet, a look through The cartoons on Pinterest shows most of them with a female lead. So that tells you something Pinterest's user base, as well as who the hard core fans are and what they like.

I've played the game through as both genders, which has lead me to an interesting perspective. As a male, I could choose romantic partners based on my real-life preferences. But as a woman, the romantic side of the game offers a challenge. I could have decided she's a lesbian and approach it the same way as I did as a male, but that just seemed like such a cheesy, dorky, guy-thing to do. So I decided to make her straight, and just choose a partner that fit the character, like some interstellar yenta.

This brings up a subtlety of video games: do you regard the character you portray as an embodiment of yourself, or as a separate person that you are guiding through the game, sort of like you do in The Sims? Essentially, I was doing the former as a male, but the latter as a female.

Anyway, in the second game, I was going to match her up with Jacob, the brave but slightly bland soldier. But then while talking with Garrus, the gruff sniper, the game offered me some flirtatious dialog options, and I thought, actually, he makes way more sense with her. So I "romanced" him instead. Matching them together is kind of surprising, since Shepard is human, while Garrus is from a vaguely bird/reptile/insectoid race. So I thought this relationship was a rather bold and open-minded choice.

Until I see the cartoons, and find out that this pairing is what pretty much everyone did. It seems women can't get enough of Garrus. Now that came as a surprise for me. No, not because Garrus is not human (I know enough geek lore to be aware of Kirk/Spock slash fiction.) The reason for my surprise is that usually when media creates a love interest for a female character, I find him unbelievable or transparent (yeah, I'm looking at you, Jess from Gilmore Girls! )

But in this case, I totally get it. There have been a few explanations for this character's popularity, but mine is that he is a new character archetype: the Principled Badass. Usually badass characters wind up being just that: bad and an ass. But Garrus manages to project the "dangerous" image without it seeming fake, or revealing a lack of morals.

In case you're thinking that this game has woken either latent homosexuality or a weird birdman kink, I want to be clear that this is nothing more than a bromance to me; If I were in the game's universe, I'd be happily playing the Archie to Liara and Tali's Betty and Veronica. But the game has given me insight and understanding of female attraction, and all it took was defeating a race of giant, unstoppable robots.

Wiikipedia

Well, that's it, I've finished reading Wikipedia. Yeah, I'm one of those people: look up something simple, see a link to something interesting, and then five hours later I'm reading about the history of Armenia and can't remember how I got there. After years of doing that, I've read the whole thing.

I may be exaggerating a bit. If I had read all of Wikipedia, I'd go on Jeopardy before telling anyone about it. And if you're interested, I did once look up how long it would take to read all of Wikipedia, and the answer is: you could never finish it, because people are adding to it faster than a person could read.

Wikipedia has been a great thing for looking up answers quickly. As I've mentioned before: I'm a great proponent of the idea that the Internet is better for curing ignorance than displaying it. But there's still a lot we could do to reduce the world's ignorance.

Okay, reading that last sentence over, I realize it's painfully obvious. I mean, even if we write-off people who don't notice or don't care about their ignorance. It would be nice if there were more tools like Wikipedia that are useful for our tiny minority that wants to learn.

For instance, Wikipedia is great for answering the who, what, where, and when, but we also need something to answer the why.

Right now, what I'd like to answer is: why are people so excited by the new Nintendo Switch? Yes, I know, it's a game console that's got a portable screen so you can play it anywhere. But that's just like Nintendo's Wii U, which was a sales disaster.

It would be great if there was a Whykipedia where you could look up the Nintendo Switch and it would tell you why it's happening, and why people think it will work this time. But there is no such thing right now, so I tried googling, "What's the difference between the Nintendo Switch and the Wii U" and I got a few articles comparing them. All I really got out of it is that it comes down to the idea that they've thought it through better this time.

I realize, for the generation that makes up most of tech journalism today, they grew up with Nintendo, so they have warm fuzzy feelings towards it that I don't truly understand. But there seems to be a general problem with technology, that we keep falling for the same ideas that don't work. I mentioned this with Microsoft and their continuous effort to make a smooth transition from the Windows interface to the Surface that hardly anyone uses to the Windows phone interface that no one uses.

So in a world where even the smart people in the tech world are unpredictably nonsensical, there's no way to understand people's motivations. A wiki repository of explanations would be really useful. I wonder why no one has done that yet.

Ad Rock

In the past I've mentioned how video game ads often have incongruous music. But previously this has usually been to contrast beautiful music with gritty fighting. For instance, there's a Playstation ad now set to a choral rendition of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This.)"

(Off topic, but has anyone ever successfully performed that song to make it sound like "made of this" rather than "made of these?" Since "dreams" is plural but "this" singular, the correct lyrics don't even sound right spoken, nevermind in the song.)

But the latest head-scratching musical combo is the ad for Battlefield 1 - a WWI game - with Smashing Pumpkins' angst-rock classic, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings." I've tried to figure out how a song about the exhaustion of unfocused anger could be applied to a hellish conflict that changed how the world looks at war. Sure, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" could be a poetic description of a WWI fighter plane, but that's stretching it. Online I found ads set to "Seven Nation Army" which at least makes sense in a super-literal sense. I don't know why they didn't go with that song for the TV ad. I guess they decided their demographic needed to be a decade older.

For that matter, who wants a game set in World War I? If it's realistic, it will be hours of trying to avoid rat bites in the trenches before going over the top and getting gunned down to end the game. My condolences to history teachers everywhere who are currently trying to figure out how to convince kids the war wasn't about dramatically batting people off horseback.

Personally, I've never been a war game guy. I'm not trying to put the concept down: I'm open to the idea that you can make a game that both entertaining and respectful of the reality of war. But going all the way back to the Platoon tie-in game, I've been skeptical of the game industry's ability to deliver them. I'm inclined to keep that opinion, since someone at Electronic Arts thinks war is comparable to Billy Corgan's angry pet rat.

Let's Pretend I Looked Up A Pokémon Reference And Made It Into A Headline Pun

While I was in Kitchener's Victoria park today, I decided to count people playing Pokemon Go. No, I wasn't spying on people, I just looked for people walking along holding out their phone, glancing between it and their surroundings, looking slightly confused. I counted forty in less than an hour, and that's not counting everyone gathered around the Gazebo which must be the local PokeStop (didn't even have to look that word up - I'm actually learning the game by osmosis.)

I've never been into Pokemon, personally. I was a little too adult when it came out in the late nineties, so now I can't really be one of the adults who are currently playing it. It's unfortunate, because I'm intrigued about a new style of gameplay. But having said that, I signed up for Ingress, the previous agumented-reality game from the same company. I never really got into it, because it seemed like a lot of work to get into. Okay, I have to join a faction, mod my resonator, collect more items, and then maybe, just maybe, I can claim the local portal, that is the statue in the park down the street. So maybe it's not for me. I guess I like my reality either virtual or straight-up.

I find it amusing that people aren't really sure how to react to the game's success. It's a video game, and it's popular with Millennials, so everyone's gut reaction is to hate it. And yet there's a surprising amount of positivity coming out of it. From encouraging people to exercise, to helping them to meet people, It's forcing people to look at gaming in a new way. And anything that pushes Candy Crush off the top of the charts must be a good thing.

And I also I have to congratulate Nintendo. Yes, I usually resent them for overwriting my childhood gaming experience out of the pop-cultural collective memory. But I also have to respect how many times they can get up off the mat by embracing something new. We'll have to remember this ten years from now when their latest console has been a failure and we're still waiting for the latest Zelda game: Don't worry, they'll find a way out of it again, probably with MarioVR.

But Pokemon Go has got me thinking about what other classic games that could be turned into an augmented-reality game. How about:

• Pac-man

  - Streets make up the maze, and you - as Pac-man - go down the street, eating the dots, and avoiding ghosts. You have to get up early in the morning to get to the dots on your street before anyone else, then wander the back streets looking for power pellets. And just imagine the confusion for non-players when dozens of people suddenly turn and run away down a city street when they see a ghost coming.

• Mario Kart

  - Your daily commute will be so much more entertaining when you can fire virtual turtle shells at people.

• Tetris

  - Blocks fall from the sky, and you have to slot them between your city's buildings. The great thing about this game is that it will encourage people to go downtown because play will be pretty boring in the suburbs.

• Any MMORPG

  - They involve a lot of wandering around exploring, so why not do it in the real world?

• Civilization

  - You try to build a little civilization around your home or workplace, and try to conquer your neighbour.

• SimCity

  - Instead of zoning a hypothetical city, why not fix the city you actually live in. You don't have to walk throuth your crappy neighbourhood anymore, just look in your phone and it will show you what the place would look like if you were in charge.

• Grand Theft Auto

  - This would have to work with an Uber-style service. Getting a ride will be so much more exciting when you have to stage a virtual carjacking to get it.

• The Sims

  - Create a Sim and then escort it through its virtual day. Take it to an actual workplace to do a job, then go to a restaurant to get it virtual food. Now, you hate your life, you can create a better one and actually live it.

Vengeance Is Mine

I've seen several jokey references to Minesweeper recently, specifically jokes about how no one knows how to play it.

Um, well, I've played Minesweeper since it came out a quarter-century ago.  And actually I do know  what I'm doing.  I see "1-2-1" and "1-2-2-1" combos in my sleep. I completed the expert level in 2:19.  In that one game in the image that just started, I can already see where half the mines are without even thinking about it.  It's all I can do to stop myself from instinctively clicking on the image.

I'm not bragging, nor am I making fun of anyone who isn't very good at the game; I'm sure you instead used your early adulthood to acquire social skills.  I'm just kind of surprised at how these jokes are so confidently assuming that everyone is with them on this. Yeah, I know, they don't literally mean that "no one" knows how to play; it's like if you say no one understands their tax return, it doesn't mean that you are oblivious to the existence of tax accountants.

If someone were joking about frustrations at golf, they wouldn't imply that everyone is just randomly choosing clubs and hoping for the best.  Sure, many people do struggle, but it's well known that some people are really good at golf. Minesweeper isn't televised (despite my letters to ESPN on the subject) but I thought it was well known that there are a fair number of people who are good at Minesweeper - I knew a guy who did the expert in 1:39. And the one time I did try to brag to a friend about a new personal best, he shot me down saying patiently, "yes, I am aware that some people have very fast times on Minesweeper."  I wasn't offended - I was quite impressed at how efficiently defused my attempt at one-upmanship.  I've used that technique many times since then when people attempt to brag about achievements at something I have chosen not to pursue, such as golf or social skills.

So if you try to reassure yourself about your Minesweeper skills by seeking company in that concern, realize that it's just not going to work.  Just accept that for pretty much any challenge, someone out there is good at it or obsessed with it.

Blog Features Giants

There's a new movie out called The BFG, based on the book by Roald Dahl. So apparently Dahl is going to be the kid's version of Philip K. Dick, with Hollywood grinding-out every one of his books eventually.

Of course, there's a problem here. The book came out in 1982, so for someone my age, it would have appealed to slightly younger people. So when I hear "BFG," I think of the weapon of that name from the Doom video game. It came out when I was in my second year of University, close to its target demographic, so I'm sure I'm not the only one. Just the association with a violent video game is an unfortunate thing, even before you consider what the word between, "Big" and "Gun" is.

The hilarious part is, you know someone at the studio did research on this, studying just what percentage of the population associated the three letters with each media property. I guess it makes sense: it's a fight between Generation X and the Millennials, and the latter wins on both numbers and likelihood to go to movies.

But here's something I never thought of before: I can understand wanting to put "friendly" in the title, since that's not how giants are usually portrayed. But "big" though? "Big giant" is redundant, since giants are, by definition, big. So it should just be "The FG," or, "The Friendly Giant." Well, Mr. British author and American director, that's a concept we in Canada pioneered, and we didn't even need any CGI to do it.

What A Fool Believes

A lot of people seem to hate April Fools day. Today I saw many people on social media lamenting its arrival, and the many half-assed jokes they'd be dodging over the next 24 hours. But personally, I enjoy it. True, many of the hoaxes and pranks are bad. But in a world where goofy broad comedy rules, it's nice to have a premise that forces everyone to use a deadpan delivery that we normally don't see outside of The Onion.

But today I realized that there is a modern problem with April Fools. I realized when reading an article about a Japanese Virtual Reality simulation of trying to save a cat on a plank: I couldn't figure out if it was a joke. Yes, it sounds like a joke. But then, we live in a world where there's a game called Goat Simulator. It started out as a joke, but then became quite popular. There's also a game where you play a slice of bread trying to get toasted. That wasn't even a joke. So when products are so light-hearted, how can we even tell which are real?

We already passed the point of Saturday Night Live commercials becoming real products, now April Fools pranks too. The trouble is that it's so easy to make things that we can now make them on a whim.

Surprisingly, for all my musings on the future, I never suspected this. Sure, people have speculated about what would happen if we perfected nanobots, microscopic robots that could do incredible work in their teeming millions. Even if that didn't lead to an apocalypse of nanobots consuming all resources as they endlessly reproduce themselves, giving everyone god-like powers of creation could be devastating. I wouldn't be surprised if some people used the new technology to carve entire mountains into sculptures of their own genitals, but that would just be one aspect of a bigger disaster. What I didn't expect was a long period of time where advanced humans leisurely produce one odd creation after another. But that looks like where we're going.

This is yet another way Star Trek lied to us. Their replicators and holodecks have the characters incredible powers of creation, yet only ever used them tastefully. Sure, we all speculated about what was in Riker's secret holodeck files, but generally everyone used their powers responsibly. Of course, I can see how unrealistic that is now. If you had the power to make a giant pink rhinoceros when you feel like it, you probably will.

At least this answers one question I have had about the future: if humanity does survive for millennia, what are we going to do with all that time? I mean, once we've cured all the diseases and figured out all of science. I guess we're just going to fill out time doing weird, frivolous stuff. And I guess writing an article about April Fools Day that somehow links to the destiny of the human race is a good start.

This Is Hardcore

Is the whole world turning into a video game? For instance, I'm thinking I should carry bandaids and a random amount of ammuntion with me at all times. That's in case I die: I'm just assuming that whoever finds me will naturally expect that when searching a body.

Games are infecting sports too. It used to be that sports video games played quite unrealistically, because you could find an abnormally successful strategy. For instance, football teams would score 200 points a game, just by running the same play over and over. But now, that's been flipped backwards: A great performance in real-life sports is often described as "like a video game." So rather than games wishing they could be more like reality, we have real people wishing they were more like games.

And now movies are going gamey. There's this new movie Hardcore Henry, which is an action movie filmed entirely from the point of view of the protagonist. So it's essentially a First Person Shooter movie.

It appears it's not just the perspective that is borrowed from games. I'm only going by the ads and a few early reviews, but it appears to have the same outlandish backstory that's just to set up a simple action story. It also seems to have the same awkwardly one-way conversations, and arms and legs that only occassionally show up and don't really look like they're attached to you. And that title: although modern games have movie-sized budgets that ensure names are cleared by a hundred focus groups, "Hardcore Henry" is the sort of let's-leave-it-up-to-the-programmers title we had to get used to twenty years ago. Even "Hardcore Hank" would have worked better.

The irony is that this movie is out at the same time that the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is coming out. Movies are reducing you to one perspective, like older games. Meanwhile, the games are going to try to give us the chance to see more perspectives, like movies.

Take The Star Wars Challenge

The world premiere of the new Star Wars movie us tonight, with wider opening this Friday. Are you reading this on your phone while you're in line? If not, then you won't be seeing it until a week from Wednesday.

But it's it any good? It seems like people just asked that question, since I suddenly noticed "Will this be a disappointment?" stories appearing today. That's pretty late in the game to be asking that question, especially given the disappointment with the last trilogy. Of course, that brings up the point that it may not matter; even if it is disappointing, movie-goers will probably keep watching the sequels anyway. People are already talking about how the franchise may outlive it's original fans; with large-scale timelines like that, it doesn't really matter if they need to pause the parade of new Star Wars movies for a decade to wash the bad taste out of viewers' mouths. It's sort of reminiscent of the aliens from Contact, where we don't understand its strategy because these beings are thinking much longer term. Ironically, sci-fi franchises have become like sci-fi beings.

It's not necessarily a bad thing that Star Wars may never end, spawning several movie series, TV shows, video games etc. But I would hope that if it's going to go that far that there would be some competition. The market is big, why not have a competing science fiction world to create a never-ending series of movies, TV and other media? In other words, this Coke needs a Pepsi. Star Trek would be an obvious possibility as the other big sci-fi franchise, that has always been the yin to Star Wars' yang. But I'm not really sure it can reach the same audience numbers. Well, not without making it more like Star Wars.

Perhaps some media conglomerate will try making a Star Wars competitor from scratch. I know that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Or at the very least, a recipe for Go-Bots.  But consider the amount of creation, art, world-building and promotion that goes into a Massively Multiplayer Online game. They're practically building a complete science fiction/fantasy franchise right there, and might be paying the cost of a movie or three to build it. If you're making that investment, and intend to stick with it for years to come, you might as well make some tie-in movies to further cash in.

It's something to think about if you're a media company out there that's not part of the Disney/Lucasfilm empire. And if you need any story ideas, call me, I've got plenty.

Sticking Around

Here's something I've always wondered:

When they were making the first video game consoles in the 1970's, they needed a device that could be a generic control for any type of game.  So they borrowed the concept of the "joystick" from the world of aviation, where it had been used for close to seventy years.

Once the video game industry got its hands on the concept, it took about 25 years to mutate into this:

Meanwhile, aviation still uses this:

detail from "Airbus A380 cockpit" by Naddsy - http://www.flickr.com/photos/83823904@N00/64156219/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons.

That picture is from the Airbus A380, the super-jumbo flagship from one of the world's biggest aerospace companies, and yet it's being controlled by something that looks like it plugged in to my old Commodore 64. 

So one industry must know something the other doesn't. We'll have to see if over time gaming's innovations leak back to aviation, and pilots of the future will be hunched over grasping a controller with both hands, hoping they don't drop it during a landing.

A Troll Sense Of Humour

Twitch is a web site that specializes in videos relating to video games.  In particular, that means videos of people playing games. It's been quite successful, with Amazon buying it for almost a billion dollars.  Of course, YouTube wanted a piece of that, so they started their own competing service, called YouTube Gaming.  Jimmy Kimmel did a few jokes about that, and then a short skit parodying it.  That video was posted on YouTube (the original YouTube) where it received a great deal of criticism.  Yes, I know, everything on YouTube gets lots of criticism, but this seemed to be more than the usual trolls, and was actually an expression of the gaming community calling Kimmel on being out of touch.

When I heard about this, it connected with something I've been noticing.  I'm amazed at how behind-the-times nightly talk show humour is.  Being on late at night, they're supposed to appeal to a younger, more adventurous viewership, yet the basis for their gags is usually tired old ideas. So I was all set to write a post about this, much of which would be criticizing Seth Meyers for his almost obsessive need to turn any news story about gaming into a all-gamers-are-virgins joke.  Of course, I don't think geeks or gamers are above ridicule, I just wish those jokes weren't so out of date.  At a time when poll after poll shows that the gender breakdown is close to 50/50, the gamers-that-haven't-met-a-woman concept just makes you sound old.

But then I watched Kimmel's video, and I found that actually, it wasn't that bad.  If you're not willing to watch it, I'll just tell you that it's about a new service in which you don't just watch other people playing games, you can watch people watching people playing games.  And then there's another site where you can watch people watching people watching... etc.  So it's mildly amusing, and a fairly reasonable thing to make fun of.  Definitely not the most insightful satire of the Zeitgeist, but it's much better than a nerdy comic making desperate clichéd attacks in a thinly-veiled expression of latent self-hatred. (Seriously Seth, call me if you need to talk.)

So I gave up on the post idea, and forgot about it for a few days.  But now I'm reminded of it again, because it turns out the anger the gaming community has for Kimmel has boiled over, to the point that he posted another video, in which he goes over some of the over-the-top insults he's received in the comment thread.  And then another.  And that brings us to the ultimate irony: Here I was ready to complain that talk shows were out of touch for stereotyping gamers, but instead it turns out that gamers went out of their way to confirm the stereotype of gamers as angry, immature boys.  At least future talk show hosts now have some easy and authentic targets.

Half-Dialog

Dialog in video games is an awkward issue. One day, voice recognition and artificial intelligence will be advanced enough that you'll be able to just turn to any character and start a conversation, and they'll respond intelligently. But until then, the game designers have to do something to cover for the fact that language - one of the defining aspects of the human experience - is missing. There are a few ways to do this:

• If the game is a dumb-enough violence-fest, they can ignore it entirely.
• They can concoct a setting where the player gets all their info in one way communications, like e-mail or recordings. Say, you're the lone cop fighting your way into the criminal's compound, Die Hard style. That's a neat solution, but it may require a really contrived plot.
• Have the player character say certain fixed lines. That can make the game seem more complete, since your character talks to others like a real person, but it can be frustrating if the character acts in obviously bad ways.
• Give the player a small menu of possible things to say. That gives the player more of a feeling of participation, but it still doesn't seem like a real conversation.

But there is another way: have other characters talk to the player, but not give the player a chance to respond. If the other characters give all the info the player needs, and never call attention to the fact the player is not talking, this approach can work.

That's the system used in the popular Half-life games. Main character Gordon Freeman never says a word. Others talk to him, but never seem to notice that Freeman himself stays silent. Well, there is one quick joke early in Half-life 2, when another character notes that he doesn't say much. It's a funny, self-deprecating joke from the developers, but it would have been better at the end of the game, so that you don't spend the whole game noticing how weird it is that everyone is talking to you without expecting any response.

The lack of speech would be easier to believe if your character were some underling that gets commands from more important people, without a chance for input. But Gordon Freeman is a physicist-turned-action-hero. Surely everyone would want to talk to him wherever he goes.

I suspect a lot of players don't really worry about this problem of game realism, since many of them try to break out of the story's reality anyway. In his book, Designing Games, Tynan Sylvester describes what he calls "desk jumping." It's when a player does something out of the ordinary in a game just because they can. For instance, you could jump on your commanding officer's desk while he's giving you your next assignment, just to see if he's been programmed to notice. I generally don't do this, and instead play my part: I want to get my money's worth out of the experience. So I've done what I can to try to make Half-life's conversations seem more natural. Unfortunately, that's usually limited to nodding or shaking my head in response to what others say, since that's the only way I can feel like I'm an active participant.

But it's occurred to me that Gordon Freeman has my ideal situation. As a person who is introverted but not antisocial, my dream is to have people care about me and pay attention to me, yet not require me to talk or start any conversation. I'd love to be in his place, even if I had to single-handedly repel an alien invasion to get there.