Monthly Archives: August 2008

Efficient disappointment

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I used to browse to something like 10 or 15 different websites and check for updates, blogs mostly for friends. It passed the time. I used to get disappointed after about twenty minutes of browsing that none of my friends had blogged anything new. After another 20 minutes I’d forget and go and check again. Then someone reminded me about Google Reader. So I spent an hour setting it up so it’s got the feeds of all my friend’s blogs. Now it takes me 15 seconds and one click to get disappointed that none of my friends have blogged anything.

Technology in Action.

Comics

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I know it’s not very popular or cool to like Keanu Reeves, or at least it wasn’t, maybe it is now. Anyway, I like him, I’ve enjoyed a lot of the movies he’s been in and that includes Constantine (did I ever review it … apparently not). I knew it was based on a comic book (sorry, graphic novel, although no one ever goes to GraphicNovelCon2008) but I never really did graphic novels or comics. I read the Beano, Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake and that kind of stuff when I was very young, but I never really graduated onto 2000AD and the like and once I discovered novels I never got into ‘the comic scene’.

I guess it’s a bit odd because I did the other stuff comic readers tended to do, I was a tabletop roleplayer (sounds like a movie), I played computer games on my 16k and 64k spectrum (and atari 400), I even wrote software (I wrote a whole bunch of tools on the speccy for roleplaying, databases for stuff, loot generators, yeh I know how bad that sounds). I loved fantasy and sci-fi movies (and Lost Boys which even features comic loving geek heroes), novels, the whole deal, but I just never ‘got’ graphic novels. I passed up the chance to buy the two David Gemmell graphic novels when they were newly out, I just bought the books instead (although I own them both now), so it wasn’t even an issue with the material. Just the format.

Anyway, I like Constantine, I like the world setting and the general premise. It matches similar work by Mike Carey (Felix Castor) and Jim Butcher (Dresden), modern day anti-heroes almost using supernatural or mythical powers in a modern world to hold back some kind of generally evil evilness. Incidentally if you’ve not read Mike Carey’s “Felix Castor’ stuff you should. Odd kind of full circle here because Mike does a lot of comic book work himself.

I’ve slowly drifted away from high fantasy and heroic fantasy and into an appreciation of a very limited number of books around ‘modern crossover’ or ‘modern fantasy’ or whatever you want to call it, and Constantine fits that bill. So, I enjoyed the film, I bought a novel and it was ‘ok’, and so I thought I’d buy a couple of comic book anthologies and see what the buzz was about. They’re upstairs, one in the guest bedroom on a bookshelf and the other in the bathroom, I read it now and again when I’m in there for any length of time.

Maybe I’ll let you know if I enjoy it sometime.

Food Weirdness

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Do you have any weird food habits? I do. Many of them revolve around even and odd numbers, some of them revolve around an almost supernatural fear of not serving enough food and one of them relates to cutlery. I guess this post is not going to paint me in a good light.

I think, looking hard at them, that it may be mild OCD. Although (and this is without any disrespect what-so-ever to true sufferers of OCD which is a terrible illness) I think many of us think we’re ‘a bit OCD’ because people are more aware of the symptoms in recent times. Maybe I’m just plain crazy and it doesn’t have a name.

Do you find that you can’t just toast one piece of bread, and that you must in fact toast an even number of slices? Maybe because toasters have two or four slots (a quick search on google didn’t find any with odd slot counts). Certainly when I was young you had to put single bread slices into specific slots in our toaster, otherwise the universe exploded (or something). I mean, I don’t fall over if I have to eat an odd number of toasted products, but I certainly have pause to think ‘this isn’t right’. Our Tesco sells crumpets in packets of 6. There’s two of us in this house. That’s 3 each. Distressing.

I hate mismatched cutlery. We have a range of cutlery in our draw and I really don’t like having a mismatched knife and fork. Usually of course I only use a fork and don’t bother with a knife, I am after all a man and I can eat my food with only a fork thank you very much. But on the occasions where I do use a knife it has to be the same model as the fork (and if I bring cutlery in for other people, I make sure they’re matched as well). This isn’t even really different types of cutlery, we have two sets of stainless steel, one plain and one patterned and I don’t mix them.

Then there’s the deep psychological issue of not serving enough food. I really have no idea where this came from but I have no doubt it contributes to my weight issue. It goes hand-in-hand with serving up everything that gets cooked, and not being able to leave it or throw it away if I cook too much (and since I fear not serving enough, I always cook too much).

Lastly (for this far too revealing blog post) is the habit of eating the stuff you like least first and leaving the stuff you like most to last. I first remember doing that at school during school dinners, getting rid of the stuff I didn’t really like in the meal and leaving the nicest bits to the end.

Vanity, messing with technology or just functionally rich?

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I’ve added a ShareThis button button to the template so it shows up at the end of each post. I can’t decide if I’m deluded enough to believe people might want to actually share the garbage I spout (the Vanity option), or if it was just because I quite liked the idea of how it worked and wanted to play with adding it to the template (the messing with technology option) or whether I just felt the blog needed it to be technically complete (the functionally rich option).

Anyway – you decide. But make sure you tell your budies as well!

Favourite word today: Puckish (yes, watched Bones last night).

Two years

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It’s now over two years since David Gemmell passed away and I wrote this post. It doesn’t feel like two years.

You’re still missed David. Your writing, your storytelling, your force of personality.

Up or Sideways

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I’d been thinking about the problem of ever-increasing levels in MMORPGs recently. In almost every respect it’s a symptom of the source for those games, paper based RPGs and to some extent paper based wargames. Certainly traditional roleplaying games for the most part were built on the concept of skill or level progression where-in you became more powerful and hence were able to take on greater and greater challenges. That power improvement came from increased skills in skill-based progression games (like the original Call of Cthulu), or in lumps in level-based progression games (D&D being the most famous). On top of that you gained access to better equipment and tools which in turn augmented your ability to survive and overcome. MMORPGs have for the most part inhereted that feature set.

However, for anyone who ever ran a long running level based progression (and to some extent skill based progression) roleplaying game, or ever played in a long running campaign, you should immediately spot the flaw. At some point you are more powerful than anything you can meet – unless the stakes are raised. In a solid campaign with a good backstory and a lot of information, it may not be a problem being at the same power level without any way of improving it. Perhaps the increased power comes instead from increased knowledge or increased resources or contacts. But the base point remains, once you can’t progress in power, you can’t take on more powerful challenges and the whole feeling of progression and improvement that people seem to love is lost.

So for many of us, the results are familiar, the original D&D game moved through Basic, Expert, Companion and Master levels. But they couldn’t resist bringing out the Immortals boxed set so you could become a god. People wanted to stay with their favourite characters, the ones they had built up over time, and who they knew, so the first option was to pop the top off the limit and raise it higher. The other option was to retire your characters and start over, with a new campaign or more often than not an entirely new rulebase for a change.

MMORPG’s are suffering the same issue. Everquest will soon be increasing the level cap to 85 or 90, WoW has increased it and will do so again, Lord of the Rings Online is moving to a level cap of 60 with the latest expansion (Moria). Once most of your players have their favourite characters at the maximum level, and they’ve had time to sample most of the content, what is there for them to do? Fine tune their characters, fill in the gaps with whatever ‘alternative advancement’ options they have, finish off the quests they never did, explore the parts of the world they never saw. But then what?

Any new content has to offer people at the maximum level something new – and if what they crave is to grow in power and scope, then naturally the first choice is to raise the level cap and increase the power of the enemy. Eventually it becomes surreal, in Everquest the Planes of Power pitted the players against the very gods themselves, but then in the next expansion it turns out the gods aren’t all powerful because there’s some other guy in a temple who’s even more powerful and then of course he turns out not to be that bad when an even more powerful enemy is found.

Raising the level cap lets people progress, but the cost is mudflation, and polarising the player base. If you have to provide new content for the people at the top level, new content for those at the lower levels suffers. There are only so many resources. Of course the other issue is that over time, the distance (in power terms) new players have to travel to team up with their high level friends is immense, and so coping mechanisms have been added where-by high level players are encouraged to group with their lower level friends (mentoring, for example).

Eventually people come to realise that killing level 122 dragons when you’re level 121 is about as challenging as killing level 22 dragons when you’re level 21. That the improvements in power are shallow and repetative. Some games deal with this by adding functionality (Everquests’ AA mechanism) but that brings balancing complexity, further alienates low level characters and soon becomes simply a means to an end (earning alternate ability points to make earning more alternate ability points easier).

You may be wondering why the hell people play these games if it’s all so negative. Firstly, while this issue may not come as a surprise to many long playing roleplayers it does seem to be an issue the ‘industry’ is only just coming to recognise as a serious issue. Secondly, there is an addictive quality to progressing your character either through gear, levels or skills. Just making that last final improvement or getting that much needed upgrade can be a good driver for playing. Thirdly, MMORPGs are engaging because they are socially rich. People like working with other people, or against them. People like forming clans or guilds or kinships, people enjoy sharing time with their friends and making new friends to share time with.

While MMORPGs are games they’re also social environments, something roleplayers sitting around a table have claimed for many years. Problem solving is fun and challenging, doing it with 7 other people only increases the challenge and potential for reward. So we have a situation in which people like playing games, they like ‘getting better’ over time, they like developing a single character who they associate with and they like sharing that space with other people. But at the moment, the standard response to the problem of continuing to provide a challenge to long term players is to increase the level cap, throw bigger enemies in and hope people don’t mind.

There are other options, and while reading around (reading around being searching once, reading two blogs) I found this and this. These posts discuss the ideas of horizontal game design rather than vertical (what I’ve been describing above is mostly vertical game design).

I liked Tipa’s idea of multiple locations, all in the same small level range, but in which your gear or experience or whatever it might be from other locations counts for naught, levelling the playing field. I like this idea, but it does feel like it might end up in a ‘collect the set’ situation for gear. Everquest did something sort of similar in the early days, where you really needed a good set of resist gear for certain encounters instead of your normal every day gear. What differentiated your ability to survive against your peers was how much of this gear you collected, not what level you were. So this is horizontal design by collecting new gear or new skills that only really benefit you in certain locations.

I think this solution would certainly fit some game designs better than others, imagine a game based around Stargate, where each new world discovered has a broad range of attributes which can be wildly different to other realms. Such wide differences lend themselves to limiting your success with your existing gear or skills. In a low-fantasy setting or modern world setting it may be harder to justify why your sword isn’t as effective in the newly discovered continent as it used to be in your home land. I guess you could build an entire world system on it, perhaps creatures on particular land masses are vulnerable to particular minerals only found on those same land masses, and virtually immune to everything else. But that feels like a stretch, I think the ‘new world’ approach would work a lot better.

I guess if I could reel off a few dozen ‘better’ horizontal design options I’d be a games designer and not a sysadmin.

It’s just struck me that faction / reputation is an attempt at horizontal design. Your political stance or reputation provides access to more quests, more locations and more challenging encounters but isn’t based on your level or skill-based power. Perhaps that element could be expanded to enable progression and increased challenge, although Everquest players certainly complain about the amount of necessary faction work involved (emphasis mine to prove the point). Maybe it can be more integral to the game, less explicit and more naturally obtained. A complex political system of factions and alliances may allow you access to quests or adventuring areas which are challenging and new but you can still bring your friends with you as long as you vouche for them, and if they do anything out of order you may find your own reputation suffering.

What I do know is that Second Life has no power progression, no game in that sense but still attracts a huge following. Sure, you can make money and it has sex, but that can’t be all of it? It has people, it has people interacting and working together to build places and do stuff. If you get a game that fits around that and provides fun and challenge then bingo.

Anyway as usual I’m rambling by this stage, set off with a good idea, murder it by the second paragraph and then waffle my way to a slippery conclusion. Here’s what I see as the basic truth, MMORPG creators are going to need to answer this issue and soon, or they’ll find everyone retires their characters or gets bored when they turn into gods. Tabletop roleplayers have known about it for years – time to catch on.

The changes Google has wrought

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I’m sure that these changes aren’t all purely because of Google, but you have to admit that the market penetration it has, has pretty much changed the face of the Internet. There’s a bunch of stuff I love that Google provides (blogger – has it’s faults but for free what can you say, google mail – matches my needs perfectly, google reader, google talk, etc., etc., etc.) but the core feature that I love is how they’ve turned search into something else.

Search isn’t about finding pages any more, it’s about finding answers. In ye olde days, Alta Vista was about finding the web page you knew had the information you wanted to know. Someone had written something about China and you needed to find out, or someone had a page on the web listing time zone information and you needed to track it down. Now, Google tells you what you want to know if it’s something which is simply a fact or can be sourced and tracked.

Want to know what time it is in China now? Type “what time is it in China” into Google. It doesn’t just bring you back some pages, it’s flat out tells you the time.Wondering how many pounds there are in a kilogram? Don’t go searching for a website that lists all the conversions, now just ask Google. Wondering how to spell a word? Just misspell it with Google, and it’ll suggest the right spelling.

Wondering what the weather is like in New York, but don’t want to spend weeks trawling the web to find a web site which tracks it? Ask Google about the weather. Google does maths, it converts units, if you tell it where you live it’ll look up movie times for you. The list is huge and it’s not just about finding content any more, it’s about providing content using common search terms.

I don’t reach for a dictionary, I don’t reach for an atlas, I don’t reach for books, I just ask Google. It’s no wonder the verb ‘to google‘ has made it into popular use. People talk about the move to a semantic web, I really have little clue how the whole thing is going to turn out, but you can’t deny that Google’s so called search engine has changed how a generation of people look for information.

Bwahaha, now you’re going to suffer.

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So, I found an interesting web site (http://mysite.du.edu/~bkiteley/exercises.html) which has some creative writing exercises (from a much larger selection in the author’s book, The 3 A.M. Epiphany). Found it while I was searching for various creative writing resources. Anyway, it’s the kind of thing I’d been looking for, never having had any formal creative writing teaching, something to give me some actual exercises to have a shot at.

And of course, now you have to suffer the consequences. Since Brian’s exercises are from his book, I won’t post the full text of the ‘question’ here, but I’ll tell you which number I had a shot at (#2) in this case. I actually ended up writing a story which in no way had anything to do with the question, but it was fun none-the-less.

The little bell tinkled as Jane opened the door. She loved that bell, it meant somewhere warm and relaxing where she didn’t have to think about work or Ben, or any of that. Alice looked over as she set down two scones and a pot of tea, “Coffee? Usual?” She turned away again, not really waiting for the answer and caught the pot with her hand. Everyone scooted backwards as hot tea covered the floor.

The waitress looked more surprised than anyone and apologised over and over, “I’m sorry! Here, let me get a cloth and some more coffee, really, I am ever so sorry!” The man in the seat looked mean, but he just nodded.

Jane shook her head a little, watching Alice bustle about getting more tea for the two pensioners in the corner, before taking a seat for herself near the window.

Watching had always been a favoured pastime. Even during a wet drizzly today like today there were always people moving out there, rushing to be somewhere else or to get back to where they had already been.

Jane looked up as two young boys ran past, almost losing a football to a bus, laughing and enjoying another sunny day. Her coffee arrived, her usual. She nursed it for a while before adding sweeteners and watching the little patches of foam form on the top. She would ask Ben what caused that, and then reminded herself she wasn’t thinking about Ben today.

The door swung open, a little squall blowing in some rain and a gentleman struggling to hold onto his hat. She hunched a little closer to her mother, hugged her little bear a little tighter; nervous but not sure why. She got a pat on the arm, everything was all right.

The door swung open and the bell tinkled. Her eyes snapped from her coffee to the door. Two girls had come in and were ordering some sandwiches for a nearby office, Jane didn’t quite hear everything, enough to remind her of her time running around getting lunch for other people. Which led to Ben, and another lapse.

She watched as he walked over to the table next to theirs. She gripped her mother’s arm a little tighter, her bear tighter still. There was a bang, a scuffle, the man was pushed into their table, she fell to the floor and her mother’s arm was out of reach. Another bang.

Mother? But so much blood, even at seven she knew it was too much.

Jane snatched her phone from her bag, dialled her mother. “Mum?”

“Who else Jane?”

“You never told me how Gran died?” There was a short silence.

“Jane, are you okay you sound… has something happened?”

“How did she die?”

“Well, it’s been such a long time, are you sure? Okay, I remember it had been raining.”

So, now when I try out the various exercises on that page (and maybe if I buy the book and try a few more) you guys get to suffer! You can petition Google to add a feature to Blogger if you want, to filter out certain tags. I’ll tag all these as ‘Fiction’ so if they ever do add that feature you can avoid them!

Creativity

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I have what I think are creative urges every now and then. Sometimes they last a few days, sometimes longer, sometimes less. I can’t really explain why I feel like I have to create something, I can’t explain the feeling in my head that makes me feel like I have to make, produce or create. Over the years I finally came to realise what the feeling meant. When I was younger I would write roleplaying adventures for whatever game I was playing or reading at the time, or if I was running or playing a game at the time I’d express the urge during the game or while running it. Haven’t done any paper roleplaying for long time though so haven’t had a chance to write anything.

I used to paint miniatures as well, which was another way of expressing the need. Not particularly well I might add, but still, it worked. I also spent a lot of time writing little bits of random code in random languages to do random things. Writing code for me has always been more art than science and satisified my creative urges.

I guess the urge manifests itself now in the creation of random new websites (www.bookthing.co.uk, www.onelinemoviesreviews.co.uk), reviews, blog posts, forum/usenet posts and the like.

The main problem I have with the feeling is that I want to be creative, I want to create something, but I’m not always really sure where to direct the energy. Sometimes I think I want to ‘write’ (fiction) but I’m either too lazy or too scared to do it. Sometimes I think I’ll just write pithy and insightful blog posts but that doesn’t always suffice (and I usually fail). I envy people who can sing or play musical instruments, I’d love to be able to make movies or short videos of any kind of quality but have no clue really what I’d make them about (and certainly don’t want to be just another ‘ranter’ on YouTube).

I don’t know how common this sensation it, feeling like you want to create or write or do something but not really having much idea what it is you actually want to achieve, or maybe, feeling like the things you would like to create you don’t have enough skill to do them justice.