bill has left the building

Lots of places posting articles relevant to bill leaving microsoft, full of insight into the past and future of the company.

But when I close my eyes all I see is this.

So this rails thing sux then?

I stumbled across an interesting list just now, I suspect that it has solved a mystery that I have been curious about for some time.

My curiosity was first piqued by penny arcade, a popular gaming comic site. The thing that bothered me was how it managed to be somewhat broken and slow on occasion. I mean yeah traffic can kill a site, but penny-arcade is or should be mostly static content, we are not talking about running an application at most its serving static content that gets updated occasionally. Thats an easy to solve problem no matter what traffic you throw at it provided you have the cash and PA seems to have the advertising cash since well it also seems to have all the traffic. Yeah its got a forum but I don't frequent the forum so thats not the bit I'm talking about and the forum should really be running on separate machines anyhow. So how can this be borked? its a mystery so it is.

But today it all became clear when I discovered that kongregate was running on ruby on rails. Now I dont know anything about ruby or rails apart from noticing something of a fine rant about the fact that it doesnt really work. Not working is actually kinda normal with software, most of it doesn't really work but we do the best we can and mostly things get fixed and work out in the end but the blame here is pointed at the community developing rails. That's something of a unfixable problem, a nice schizim and name change is about the only thing that can sort that out.

Anyway, kong on rails, why that could explain why the site has this sort of not really working very well feel to it. Maybe, just maybe, rails really is a big problem here I wonder what else runs on rails. (Thinks jokingly: I bet twitter does, that thing is up and down like a whores knickers)

So then I find this http://rails100.pbwiki.com/Alexa+Rankings what an interesting list, oh look see theres twitter and there penny arcade. Why this may explain everything, it is in fact like a list containing every "web 2.0" site that doesn't really work very well. All the sites on there that I recognise and use have been chock full of technofail in my personal user experience.

So this rails thing sux then?

Sure some of these sites may work well, but good coders can make anything work well, that's how you know you have good people. There certainly seems to be some correlation here between rails and sites with issues and I'm always suspicious of peoples overly emotional attachments to such things as ruby on rails.

Yay, another mystery solved.

/me puts the kettle on.

My experience with the spore creature creator.

As you may be able to work out from the image, this is not a very happy experience.

I did however manage to get it to work for a little while, however it is back to refusing to work again. When it runs it is nice, I do feel a little bit insulted in terms of only being handed safe tools with very round edges. It could be so much more !!! :) maybe if it had an expert mode I would be happier but really its as perfect as can be when considering the audience.

The problem is however that of securom which I understand is the protection of choice by EA games.

A required security module cannot be activated.
This program cannot be executed (5024).

Thanks for the useful error BTW.

There are countless descriptions of this antipiracy measure causing problems for non pirates and very few complaints from the pirates. Could this be that as with most anti piracy measures that the only people it really effects are your paying customers?

I have perhaps more experience with reverse engineering other peoples code than most games programmers. So I do understand the problems that are faced and I have seen how people who make decisions feel that it must be possible to prevent piracy on this level. It is however a much more complicated problem than most people understand. There are solutions that work on another level and have been around a long time and although these solutions are not 100% effective they are still the best solutions available to an incredibly complicated problem.

The best thing to do is have a tethered approach where you are joining an ongoing service, (think CD keys and accounts, not just pay per month) this is of course perfect for spore. Although this is something they seem to be doing, what EA does not understand is that this is the *only* thing you need to do. This social fix to software piracy works as well as can ever be expected. Basically you are not trying to stop the game from being pirated you are trying to turn the pirates into customers by offering them more when they pay for it.

Having a poke around on the customers machine and refusing to run if certain blacklisted programs or whatever are found is by far the worst possible solution. Its hard enough to get anything to work on everyones PCs without adding this extra possibility to the things that can go badly wrong.

It is retarded to the max.

Therefore it is EAs modus operandi.

Now the people who sell you this software will of course tell you how wonderful it is and how it never ever goes wrong and how the evil pirates are quaking in their boots.

These evil pirates for instance.

The current "hack" seems to consist of simply copying paid for content to the demo version.

Thats the thing, most games these days don't even get hacked, its all just script kiddies copying files or installing generic fixes to the generic protection software that the people such as securom sell the publishers.

So I don't see much fear going on there, I do however have a non functioning game demo on my machine which has successfully dissuaded me from spending any money on it..

Such a shame, I was so looking forward to this.

How to solve every creative problem in the games industry.

First a link. This here is a surprise.

http://kotaku.com/5017065/tecmo-employees-sue-tecmo-tecmo-seems-fucked

Not because it happens, why no, I may have no direct personal experience with the yellow peril games industry but from what contact I have had and what I've seen in terms of code produced. It seems that the solution to any problem consists of simply throwing man hours at it until the poor salary men develop a sexual relationship with whomever is sitting at the next desk since it is the only human contact they now have.

I had simply assume that the work culture consisted of having ones arse wrapped in a lovely pink ribbon and at no point would you turn round and bite back.

So yes, that suit is a big surprise and I will guarantee that it represents only the tip of the iceberg in terms of screwing over employees. As I understand it, the increasing man hours needed to complete the epic games that are expected nowadays is pretty much killing them. The "design it better" rather than "work longer" approach, generally taken in the west, is something they now look at with increased jealousy.

But now for a simple revelation, which is of course related to the above.

Here is how you solve every problem in the games industry.

Wait for it.


You pay the creative people when they work on a title that makes money.


Yes, it is that simple.

I really don't know anyone in the last decade or so that's actually even received say a small bonus for finishing a game. It usually consists of large amounts of unpaid overtime followed by hopefully not getting fired. I do know plenty of people who have been screwed over one way or another. By plenty, I mean everyone.

You go back a bit further in time and occasionally the publisher would accidentally pay out a large sum, but nowadays they don't seem to make that mistake anymore. Around the mid to the end of the 90s for instance, there seemed to be a lot of money being thrown around, mostly stupidly, but it was at least out there.

The reason it is important to pay the talent well is that simply, the talent wants to make games. If after 8 years working on GTA8 they end up getting a lump sum after it succeeds, or residuals even. They are now in the position to feel more comfortable doing something that might not work out, you know, take a creative risk, work even harder for even less money but on a project they actually believe in. That sort of thing.

This of course doesn't happen.

To sum this idea up.

If you give an artist a million dollars they will spend it on making art.

If you give a musician a million dollars they will spend it on making music.

If you give a game developer a million dollars they will spend it on making games.

If you give a marketing droid a million dollars they will buy a yacht.

Assuming one of them is going to get the money, which one is better and which one do you think actually happens?

That is all.

PS: There is of course the chance that the idiots may donate it to scientology but I suspect the odds of that are the same no matter who gets the money.

Behold the truth, surrounded by more truth!!!



Adding a digg to the shit stream and seeing it come back instantly covered in wow gold spam just amused me. I shall go back to making more games now.

Microsoft "avatars" , do of course have two problems.

#1 the quotes around the word scare me, I'm not sure why but it just feels like microsoft are trying to claim the word avatar. No doubt putting quotes around a word helps them achieve this. These are the people after all that feel they own the word windows no matter in what context it is used.

#2 it already costs big bux to have random retarded bitmaps as your avatars, exactly how much they plan to charge for accesories and every pixel in these avatars will probably make the kid who thought up the million dollar homepage (no link for you cock fucker) hang their head in shame.

There is all, it also looks like too much body emphisis, thats not a smart plan. Focus on the heads guys, bodys are not recogniseable and should be mostly throwaway. You know, like on the wii where they know what they are doing, unlike the xbox live arcade random word marketplace place, where they have how you say, "Design issues of great incompetence."

Something I spotted in a newsgrounds comment and it relates to making games easy. My personal opinion is simply that you need to make gamers smarter not the games dumber.

This game, is nice, Pop_Pirates but its also designed to be retard proof as such it has that floating I will last forever feel to it and one doesn't so much lose the game as lose the war of attention attrition and become bored into submission. Still its a nice looking game, just needs some actual challenge and gameplay etc etc as per usual, please remember that I blame the audience for this not the developer.

The game design obviously encourages long play sessions simply by making it hard for them to end, unfortunatly they forgot to add a pause button ( apparently pause buttons represent 20% of a games value, along with mute buttons representing another 20% which only seems to leave about 60% or less for the actual game content)

Some poor soul suffered from this missing feature terribly, it turns out that after they started playing their body informed them in no uncertain terms that they needed to evacuate their bowels. The evil game then forced them to continue playing for who knows how long under considerable discomfort.

If only all games designers would remember that the audiences is at least 20% retarded this tragedy could be easily avoided.

Second preview of ItsaCoop!!!

Now featuring online drawing, you can watch the person draw :)

Some comments about difficulty in games ( http://vgbm.blogspot.com/2008/05/take-it-easy-on-me-difficulty-in-games.html ) that grew into what should really be a post so here it is :)

Difficulty should of course be kept low, as low as can be, however challenge must be kept high.

Difficulty and challenge, are not quite the same there should be a certain level of ability to play games. I don't mean that to be snobish. This level is not exceptional high and is similar to the need to be able to read before you can enjoy books. Or understand a language before you can understand what people say in that language. This is not an artificial barrier but an implicit one.

In fact let me put it in terms of books and reading. It is up to you, as the reader, to understand and apply these ideas to the medium of games.

---

It is expected for a reader to have the ability to read, however they do not have to be a speed reader. It is not expected that the reader has to read at 100 pages a minute or even understand every word perfectly to enjoy a book.

It is expected that the reader brings a sense of imagination and is willing to participate in creating the world with the author. It is not expected that the reader sits there turning pages demanding each page to bring them bigger and better pornographic delights than the last page.

It is expected that upon finishing the book the reader should feel that their reward for doing so is implicit in the act of reading. If anything finishing a good book should bring a sense of remorse that you will not be able to read that book for the first time ever ever again. It is not expected that the reader demands a badge because they beat the book.

It is expected that when a reader likes a book they may read it more than once. Simply for their own enjoyment. Every time they do they will increase their understanding of exactly what is contained within that book. Conversely if they do not like the book they may stop reading at anytime.

---

Not finishing games is OK, people buy books and then don't read them all the time too. Different people like different things and not every game is suited for everyone. For many games finishing or completing doesn't even make any real sense.

Please note that it is not impossible to make games without challenge and requiring almost no skill to play but still deliver huge rewards. These are called gambling games. They often hide behind complex rules to disguise their basic nature.

When people complain about overcomplicated games, this need to hide the lack of game tends to be why they seem so complex.

Personally I always choose Go over Chess and have no wish to smother simple random number generators in bullshit.

The problem is todays gamers refuse to accept any challenge, they must always win and win with little to no effort. Time sure, effort no. Making games feels a bit like playing monopoly with a spoiled brat where you eventually have to resort to cheating to make sure they win in order to stop the tantrums.

thats not really very healthy

I suspect most of them would be happier watching tv

Some obvious points to back this up is the way ultima online turned from an interesting dangerous world into the bland grind machine that players demanded.

Also all the reviews of shiren. Where the moronic gamer press reflects the minds of the moronic gamers. "WHEN YOU DIE YOU GO BACK TO LEVEL 1 AND THERE IS NO SAVE!!!!"

gamers really need to evolve or go back to watching TV :)

Yeah, I know, wishful thinking. But I'm not talking about become a super gamer god, just be prepared to accept *some loss and risk* and learn from it rather than throw an instant tantrum.

*sigh*

Preview of ItsaCoop!!!

you can click and draw and everything in this here test so go do it