One small step for a man...

I've kind of neglected this blog over the last few months, but I do have what I think is a pretty good reason.

A few months back I set the ball in motion for me to hopefully attend university in 2014.  I had to get together all my previous academic stuff (no simple task when you think that pretty much all of it dates from 20 years ago.  I had to sign up with QTAC (Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre) and submit all that documentation along with my preferences for what course I wanted to do and what uni it was being run at.

Because I never finished High School (I completed Year 11 twice) I never got a rank or an OP or any other useful score that could be given to QTAC so I had to sit a STAT exam.  Basically this is a 3 hour multiple choice test of 75 questions across a variety of subject matter.  On completion your scores in the 3 areas they measure are calculated, then combined in order to give you an overall score which is then used to determine your Rank.  I needed to achieve a rank of 70 in order to be considered for the course I wanted to do.

I had to wait 3 weeks before the letter was sent out from QTAC telling me my result.  I'd done a selection of test questions prior to sitting the STAT that have been made available online, so I was confident that I would do ok, but even at the end of the test I really had no idea how well I'd done.  Turns out I'd done better than I had ever expected.  The highest rank attainable is an 88, any score on the STAT that exceeds this is assigned that rank.  I got a rank of 88.  To say I was a little bit stunned would be an understatement, but I was over the moon as well.

All this got lodged with QTAC and the "long wait" began.  The normal uni offers are not made until January, so I was expecting to have to wait till then.  One afternoon I was checking the QTAC site and noticed that the offer dates on the course I wanted to do had been updated and now included dates at the end of October and November as well as the date in January.  I mentioned this to my wife and she suggested I contact the admissions department at the uni to check it out.  They must have heard us as the following day I got a phone call from checking to see that I had received some promotional material they had posted out.  I told them I had and also asked about these new dates I was seeing on the QTAC website.  I was advised that these were the dates for "early offers".  If you had everything in with QTAC prior to those dates then there was a chance that you would receive an early offer from the uni.

So, I crossed my fingers, my legs, my toes and anything else I could cross and I waited.  On October 31 I received an email saying I had correspondence on the QTAC site.  I checked and there it was, an official offer from Griffith University in regard to my application to attend the institution to complete a Bachelor of Game Design course over the next 3 years.  Of course I accepted it straight away.

So there you are.  The reason I've not been sharing my thoughts here over the last few months is entirely due to putting my energy into attending uni next year.  I've told my employer and I finish up there at the end of January which will give me about a month before classes actually start.  We've been sorting out bits and pieces as we go along as well.  I got any early Xmas/congrats present yesterday when I got a laptop for use at uni.  Picked up an Acer Aspire S7 13.3" unit for just over $1100 and I spent most of last night setting it up and getting Office installed which was a bit of fun.

Next on the list is to get the bike back on the road, it'll need a service and tune along with a new battery but that should be about all.  I'll also need to replace my helmet (it's over 10 years old) and get some new gloves as well.  I'm sure there will be a few more things that I'll need to do along the way, but I just can't think of them right now.

It's a bit scary, going back to school after such a long time.  And I know it's only going to get scarier the closer to starting gets, but I think I have a couple of advantages.  Firstly, I have a wife that I could not do this without, her support and guidance will be invaluable.  Secondly, I'm not straight out of high school, I've been out in the real world and worked, and had a family and done "stuff".  That is going to allow me to bring a totally different perspective to this and in theory it also means I'm less likely to get sucked into some of the stupidity you hear about going on.  Finally, I know what I want to do, I'm not going there with wide eyes thinking I'm going to make a billion dollars and create the next monster video game.  Sure, that might happen, but I know that I want to make things, I want to create the characters, the environments, the building blocks if you will.  That might vary a little along the way, what path doesn't, but it gives me a big advantage out of the blocks as I know exactly which direction I want to head in and can tailor my classes accordingly.

So there you have it.  In 2014 I'll be at uni chasing my passion.  It's a very liberating feeling.

The Fate of the Galaxy...

Been about a month since my last post and thought it was time I dropped in a new one.  I've been quite busy with a couple of commissions I've picked up over the last couple of months and so my saving of the galaxy has been put on the back burner since I completed ME1.  Speaking of which - what an ending!  I had Garrus and Liara with me in the final confrontation with Saren and it took me by surprise.  I'd maxed out my charm so Shepard was able to talk Saren down...  Sort of.

The fact that Saren realised how much of a mess he'd made and that the only solution was to end it there by putting a slug into his own head was not what I expected.  The fact that after that Garrus went down to check he was actually dead and added a couple more to make sure just added to it.  That was such a Garrus thing to do.  So Bravo Bioware!  You made a great game, with a great story that sucked you in and rather than the carrot of getting to the next level, you wanted to see what happened next.  I have a far greater understanding now of why there was such an uproar at the end of ME3, even if I haven't gotten there yet, purely from the involvement and investment you have in the characters in ME1.

Luckily, I found that ME2 was on sale through Origin just before I completed ME1 and was able to pick it up for $10.  Add another $10 to upgrade it to the digital deluxe copy which gives a few extras.  I've played about 17 hours so far, picking up some of my crew (Garrus, Jack, Mordin, etc) but still have the rest to get.  Also looking at getting some the extra DLC to flesh things out a bit as some of them have gotten really good reviews (The Shadow Broker DLC for example).

So all in all, the galaxy is still be slowly saved from The Collectors, I'm just not rushing headlong this time, taking things at a more measured pace instead.

Saving the galaxy - one planet at a time

As I've mentioned previously I have been playing Mass Effect 3 and have been enjoying it greatly.  After questions I raised regarding how people dealt with a particular situation, it became apparent that I really needed to play through this entire series from the start.  A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of the original Mass Effect (ME1) and started to play this, putting Mass Effect 3 (ME3) to the side for the time being.

Of course, like any older game I had a few issues getting it to run under Win7 which were resolved with a google search and finding the patch to resolve the issue (crashing when trying to start from the launcher).  Then I got into it.  So far, I've found the story as interesting as it was in ME3, and it was quite cool becoming the first human SPECTRE as well as running around and putting my crew together which I did quite quickly. Of all the characters, I like Garrus the most followed closely by Liara.  These two are the comrades I take on most missions, even if at times I should pick others (Wrex, Ashley, etc).

While graphically it isn't up to the ME3 visuals, it's certainly not bad, just a little dated.  I did find it odd that even with the patch it didn't support a 1920x1080 resolution, but in the end it's no big deal.  The story goes a long way to making you want to keep playing, just like in ME3 and ME2 I suspect.  I haven't gotten a huge way through on the major story arc yet, faced off against Benezia and found the Rachni Queen that was being experimented on.  And yes, I did save her.  Meta game or not, I would have done so regardless, and I'm kind of glad I didn't have Wrex along at the time.

So the plan going forward is to play through ME1, then pickup a copy of ME2 somewhere along the way and play through this, importing my version of Sheppard before restarting ME3.  Not sure how long that's going to take, and I'm sure I'll get distracted with Shadowrun when that comes out, but eventually I'll do it, I'll save the galaxy, one planet at a time.

The mass effect of Mass Effect

A little while back I purchased a copy of the new SimCity game when it was released.  We all know by now what a debacle that release was and I won’t go into it again here.  Part of EA’s peace offering was to offer people who had purchased it before a specific date a free game.  I ended up choosing Mass Effect 3 as I’d heard good things about it and the only other one that even piqued my interested was Need for Speed, and I already have a few racing games to get me through the F1 off season.

So, choice made, I eventually got round to downloading and installing it, and it sat on my hard drive for about a week before one Friday night I thought that it was about time I gave it a run.  I’ll just create a character and have a quick walk around, I thought, then I’ll log into GuildWars2 and play that.  This was at 9pm.  At 2:30am I finally stopped playing.  My “quick look” had turned into 5 and a half hours of playtime.  And it had gone passed in the blink of a digital eye.

After that initial play, I realised (to an extent) why people had gotten so up in arms about the ending.  Already, I was totally engaged with the world, the characters, and most importantly, the story.  Unlike pretty much every MMO, and to a large extent single player RPG’s that are on the market, the hook in this wasn’t getting a level so I was more powerful, or able to use that cool new ‘insert weapon/armour here’ that they seem to use.  Instead, the hook with Mass Effect 3 (ME3) was simply what is going to happen next?  The story is a powerful narrative, and it’s something that we don’t see a lot of in games anymore.  

Instead, what we seem to get more and more often is a game with amazing graphics, high resolution textures and high poly models, smooth and fluid animations, and a distinct lack of intelligent story.  It all seems to have gone down the path of give the players something bright and shiny that plays smoothly with few glitches and you can just throw in any old veneer or a story to link things, no matter how incongruous, together.  Thankfully, Bioware didn’t do this, and instead gave us a story with some meat, something that you are invested in as a player.

This lead me to an interesting series of thoughts last night and this morning.  I don’t think I’m going to drop any spoilers by now given how long ME3 has been out, but, you have been warned.  

During the story, you head to a planet where there is a Krogan scouting party.  During your exploration of some catacombs, you encounter first some webbing, then what look like giant eggs, all of which lead you to conclude that there are Rakni on this planet.  A conclusion that very soon proves to be correct.  This comes as quite a shock to Commander Shepard as back in ME2 you believed that you wiped them out and killed the last queen.  Some may call this genocide of the highest order, others, a fight for survival.  What gives this the real twist in the tail is that once you reach the final part of the catacombs, you find a queen.  The last queen.  A queen who has been subjected to horrific and heinous experiments by Cerberus, that shadowy organisation you worked for/with in ME2 and managed to escape from.

At this point you have a conversation (of sorts) with this Rakni queen and are left with a decision to make.  Do you kill the Rakni queen, completing your mission of genocide against them and exterminate the species completely?  Or do you release the Rakni, who has been abused and broken by Cerberus, and gain their assistance against the Reapers who you are currently in a war of survival with, a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend to a degree?  A weighty decision indeed.  I won’t say I “agonized” over this, but it did stop me in my tracks and I did spend a few minutes weighing up each option before I made my choice.

I have to say at this point that I have not played ME2.  And while I know (basically) the back story through reading the codex entries and conversations had with various members of my crew, I, as a player, have not lived through that particular storyline.  So while I had the knowledge of what had gone before, I didn’t have the emotional investment in that particular arc.  Did that affect my decision?  I don’t know is the simple answer, but I suspect it did.  And this suspicion then made me wonder how other people had responded to this same situation.  I asked a colleague this morning how he’d resolved it and he responded that he’d done the same thing I had, but in discussing it, we found that while our final decision was the same, our approach and reasons for that decision were quite different.  

His reason was that we were at war with a species who was trying to wipe us out, just like the Rakni were before, and back then, killing them was a matter of survival.  Killing this one now, consigning the species to the annals of galactic history was an act of genocide and wasn’t something he felt he could do in good conscience.  I was a little more sympathetic to the Rakni’s plight.  The creature had been harnessed by Cerberus as a troop machine, nothing more.  In my mind it was a slave to an entity that I was fighting, and I needed all the help I could get, not only against the Reapers, but any thorn I could stick into Cerberus’ side was also of benefit.  My gut told me that I would probably pay for this later on, but I too freed the Rakni queen and gained their assistance against the Reapers with their help on the Crucible.

This led to a discussion of how other people would have responded who also had not played ME2 versus those who had played it.  I believe that those who haven’t played ME2 would be split pretty evenly between freeing the Rakni and killing it.  But what of those people who had played ME2, would they have considered releasing the Rakni, or would they have killed it dead with little or no thought, considering it the finale of something that should already have ended?

Which leaves me with this little survey.  Let me know if you played ME2 before playing ME3 and how you responded to that particular situation.  The results should make for interesting reading.

Chasing the lightning

I'm going to be a little self indulgent in this post.  I say that somewhat tongue in cheek given this whole blog is one bit self indulgence but hey, it's the internet so deal with it.

For those of you that don't know, I've been tinkering with 3D art for almost 7 years now.  I do look back at the first pieces I did, so pleased with myself for creating something visual rather than with words, which is somewhat ironic given here I am once again creating something with words.  And like when you are learning to write, those early pieces really do show just how little I knew.  But I stuck at it, playing around with ideas, trying new things, loading up scenes and moving stuff round to see how it changed.  I joined deviant Art (dA) not long after I started and almost 7 years later I'm still there.  I've posted things on other sites over that time, but dA I guess has always been my spiritual home in that regard and the one that I've been consistent with.  It's also where I've made some great contacts and friends as I've striven to become a better artist, asking questions, being active in various groups and watching other artists, learning from what they have done and what they have to say.

A couple of years ago, I submitted a few of my images to the online gallery for 3D Artist magazine, a monthly publication out of the UK.  The magazine had only been around for about 12 months or so at that stage.  I got a couple of comments on my pieces in the gallery along with a few views, but nothing earth shattering.  Not until the day I got an email from the magazine editor asking if I'd like to submit one of my images for inclusion in the upcoming issue.  To put it mildly, I was blown away.  I'd had good comments at dA on my work before, even won a contest in one of the groups there, but this was something different.  This was a magazine editor, and he was asking me if I'd like to have my piece in their magazine.  A magazine that was printed, on paper no less.  Of course I said yes, I'd love to, and emailed them the .jpg and then waited.

That's probably one of the worst parts of living down here in Australia, the waiting for things to get here.  We were roughly 2 issues behind the rest of the world with this magazine as well as 3D World which I also used to buy.  So I waited.  I saw it released in the UK, released in the US, and still I waited.  Finally I got a call from the news agent who used to stock it letting me know that the issue I was waiting for was in.  I think I pretty much ran to the shop (it was a block from where I worked) and purchased my copy.  I knew my piece was going to be included in the readers gallery, so I flipped pages until I found it.  And boy did I get a shock.  Not only was it in the readers gallery, but it was in there as the Image of the Month for that issue.

I'm fairly certain I had gravel rash on my chin by the time I got back to the office as I think my jaw just kept hitting the ground, but to be honest, it's a bit of a blur.  All I could focus on for the rest of the day was that my picture was in this magazine, and the editors had picked it as the Image of the Month.  To say I was over the moon is an understatement, and when I think about it now, it still trips me out.  It was so unexpected, the whole thing, but it made me start to think that maybe, just maybe, I might actually be ok at this digital art thing.  And in all honesty, in my opinion, it is a bloody good piece.  I had it printed up as a block mounted poster (the kind you see in the art and framing shops) and it hangs on the wall of my office at work.

This all happened in 2010, which was a great year in that respect.  So I kept tinkering, kept rendering, kept on trying new things and learning with each step.  Over this time I guess I started to second guess myself a bit, that maybe my "success" was a fluke, one of those lightning strike moments when everything comes together and then you spend the rest of your life chasing the lightning, hoping it will happen again.


I've noticed that as time went on, I wasn't as prolific in my output as I had been.  This registered, but I didn't really think anything of it, just mentally shrugged and moved on.  To put it into perspective, in 2010 I averaged 1 piece a week.  In 2011 I averaged just under 1 piece a week, no really big difference there.  In 2012, my output went to roughly 1 image every 2 weeks.  And 2013?  Well, so far, I'm averaging roughly 1 image a month.  The reason for this I think is that because I know more, understand more about what I'm doing, this has translated into more complex pieces, more depth, more life, dare I say it, more lighting?

Funny thing about chasing the lightning, if that's your goal, to get that lightning strike moment, then it's a long a frustrating chase.  But once you let go of that, go back to doing what you like to do, use the tools you've learnt, either through study or trial and error, you start to find that it strikes on it's own, and it strikes more often and in ways that you may not have considered.  And it struck recently for me in a way that I had never entertained.

There are a number of people around who actively seek commission work, offering their services to the paying public.  I had considered this back in 2010 when I'd just been published, but dismissed the idea at the time as something that maybe I'd do later on "when I was good enough".  Skip forward to the start April 2013, when I got some comments on a piece I'd done.  A dA member asked if I'd be interested in doing a piece for them.  I hadn't anything on the go at the time so I said sure, tell me what you want and I'll see what we can do.  Turned out he was a World of Warcraft player who had just quit after 5 years and wanted a piece of his Bloodelf Rogue as a way to remember his time in the game.  I can understand how he felt given I'd played Dark Age of Camelot for about the same period of time along with a number of other MMO's since, and silly as it sounds but you do get attached in a way to these characters that you play in that virtual world.  I'd never played WoW but with the description he gave me of his character I said I'd work something up for him to have a look at and if he was happy we'd move on from there.

I'd never been commissioned before where payment was involved, and I had no idea what to charge, but in the end we came to an agreement on price and how it would work, which I'll use again in future commissions.  Work progressed with the client approving things at the critical points.  It took about a month but when the piece was completed and I emailed him to let him know.  To say he was happy with the final image would be an understatement, but the thing that really made it for me, was him asking if I'd be available in the future to do work for him again.  That was the lightning strike!  Right then, I stopped second guessing myself for the first time about my ability for probably 2 years.  Sure, I'll probably start doing again at some point, but that's ok, because that's part of what spurred me on to become a better artist the first time.   Right now though, I'm confident in my artistic ability, I'm confident I can do this, that I can get better at it, and more importantly, that I will.

Well, that's enough self indulgence for now.  But remember this, always remember this...

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur!

Printing the Human Upgrade

Evolution is something that humanity has been going through for however many hundred thousand years we've been kicking around this planet on the outer edge of a spiral galaxy.  It's been a long, slow, laborious process.  We've gotten to where we are now, and it may now be the time that evolution picks up speed.  3D printing, the ability to create almost any object that you can imagine in plastic, metal and various other high tech substances is now something that can be done not in a giant factory, but from the comfort of your own desk, to your own 3D printer sitting next to your desk.

What intrigues me is where this goes from here.  To be able to print parts for a car, a machine, a printer, is one thing.  But what about printing parts for the ultimate machine - the human body!

What if we could print, not plastic or metal, but bone, skin and flesh?  Where would that leave us in the short and long term?  A lot of work has been done, is being done and will be done in regard to organ transplant and replacement.  There has been some success in “vat grown” replacements for skin and tissue.  And while it sounds a bit “Dr. Frankenstein” it’s a very important step forward in respect to human evolution.  William Gibson, the “father” of the cyberpunk genre unwittingly chose the japanese city of Chiba as the centre for a large number of vat grown body part replacements, sitting side by side with the more mechanical “cyberware”.  And these vat grown items are now starting to become a reality.

If we go a little further down the rabbit hole, we can see this expanding.  Firstly, if we take the idea of the vat grown parts but instead of growing them from stem cells or the like, we inject that raw material into a printer.  Then, using a pre-determined "plan" we can print the required part.  Let's start simple, something like an ear, or least the outter part of one.  Close proximity scans can be taken of the patients existing ear structure.  This is then fed into the computer, allowing it to generate a 3D mesh of the design.  This mesh is then sent to the printer, and layer by layer it builds the required part.  Once completed, this can then be surgically attached to the patient.  To add to this, if the structure is built using DNA provided by the patient, then there should (theoretically) be no rejection, which means no lifelong drug therapy.  Heart transplants, liver transplants, kidney transplants then become something that while still major, no longer have the added requirement of a compatible donor.

Of course, the drug companies probably won’t be too happy to see their profits disappear, so they’ll have to come up with something to bolster them.  Perhaps, drug therapy that can be applied directly to the printout?  Want stronger bones, just add some additional elements to the print queue.  Want denser muscle fibres for increased strength, pump in the appropriate agents during the print job.  But it doesn’t stop there does it.  Let’s delve a little deeper, to the point where we are able to print some of the more delicate structures in the human body.  Lets say you are unfortunate enough to work in an environment that is full of airborne toxins.  Rather than waste money on external filtration apparatus, gas masks, all that sort of thing, why not have your lungs “upgraded”.  Have a new set printed up that have been modified to stop absorbtion of those toxic particles?  Maybe the company will even pay for them up-front, and you’ll just have a small amount deducted from each pay.  Of course, if you leave then your severance could be more severe than you realise.

And if we go further, that dicky knee that’s been giving you trouble since you got creamed playing street footy can be rebuilt.  Totally rebuilt, better, stronger, and using all your own DNA.  Now, at some point someone is going to want to “improve” what they already have.  Maybe they just want to be able to see better.  Today, we have laser corrective surgery to resolve visual issues, but take that a step further.  Instead of attempting to repair the damage (with the risks inherent in that), just print a new eyeball to replace the faulty one.  Work in low light?  Have low light amplification or thermal vision installed.  And all these replacements have another effect on  us.  We’ll live longer, in theory.  Everytime we replace, update, upgrade an existing body part, we let the body continue to function beyond it’s normal limits.  Vanity could quickly take centre stage as people have complete body overhauls, replacing skin, muscle, bone with new upgraded versions.  So just be aware, that hot guy or girl you’ve just spent the last hour making eyes at across the bar, could be old enough to be one of your great grand grand parents.

DRM - The SimCity Fiasco

Well, it’s been a week since SimCity was released to players in Australia and there was every expectation that there wouldn’t be the same issues that the US players had encountered with servers going up and down more often than a yo-yo.  EA made all sort of apologies.  And then March 7 arrived, those of us that had pre-ordered copies picked them up, got them home and started the install.

Everything went smoothly to begin with.  Origin accounts created if you didn’t have one, patching (a bugbear of mine that will be covered at another time), and then the server selection screen.  At this point, everything promptly fell over.  Select a server that stated it was “Available”, attempt to connect and either you got a message saying it wasn’t available or you got nothing.  Try again, different server, same result.  If you were really unlucky you might actually get connected to a server before everything fell over.  Then you were in for a new form of torture.

If you did connect to a server successfully, the next time you ran the launcher it would try to connect to the same server again - and of course it would fail.  But you couldn’t select another server until it was finally able to connect to the previous one.  So you either had to wait, or as one person found, you could “roll back” by replacing some files which cleared the server setting, but also meant you had to download the patch again.

Now, all of this wouldn’t have been quite so bad if it was only related to authenticating your product.  There are plenty of companies (Valve for example) who have required this.  But EA had gone down the same path that Ubisoft took with Assassins Creed II, and instead required a constant internet connection.  Now, their reasoning I’m sure is because they have implemented a multiplayer component to what has always been a single player product.  And now that it’s playable, it is still to a large extent, a single player product.  The “multiplayer” component could easily have been done in a way that doesn’t require an “online” connection.  

And this is where we come to the DRM, or Digital Rights Management.  Plenty of software companies have implemented this sort of thing in the past, from code wheels, to page/line/word questions where you have to find a specific word in the manual, requiring the CD to be in the computer when you start the game is in my estimate, the most well known form.  Probably the most diabolic though was Sony’s attempt at DRM that installed a rootkit on the users computer without their knowledge.  It was universally recognised as the worst possible blunder any company had made, or would likely ever make in regard to DRM.

Why’s it there?  In theory, it’s there to stop people from illegally downloading copies of the games to play.  Does it stop them?  Not really.  Most DRM is broken fairly soon after release.  And the funniest part of the whole thing is that DRM broken titles usually have less issues with things like server authentication, because these functions have been disabled by the people who broke the DRM.  

It’s a double edged sword for these software companies.  They spend millions of dollars to create these triple-A titles, and as such they want to realise as much profit from them as they can.  So they put in the DRM, or authentication requirements and have massive issues on release as things don’t work.  With SimCity, it got so bad that Amazon pulled the product from sale stating that they couldn’t sell a product they knew didn’t work and didn’t know when it would work.

All up, it took EA and it’s partners about 4 or 5 days to turn around the situation to the point where players could logon successfully, complete tutorials and start to build their cities without fear of servers crashing and wiping out all the work they’d done (which did happen).  Will this, and things like Blizzards “Error 37” have any impact on the sale of products that suffer through these things?  No, in the long term it won’t.  It should, but it won’t.  People will complain about it while it’s happening, and the twitters will be a-flood with complaints and vitriol, and then things will go quiet as those same people can logon and immerse themself in whatever world it is.  It should be a wake up call to the companies as well, but again, it won’t have an impact as they already have your money and that’s the real crux of it.  You paid, you’ll get to play, but it probably won’t be on day 1.

Is privacy the new currency on the internet?

With the advent of “social networks” over the last few years, privacy has become the “buzzword” surrounding them.  What do they do with the information we give them, how securely is it stored, how much do we need to provide in order to get what we want and is it a fair price?  There have been multiple instances of people asking these questions of companies like Facebook, MySpace, Google, Twitter, etc.  This in turn has coined phrases like “big data” to describe what is going on with all that information.

Now of course I’m involved in this “big data” as well, through my Google+ account, this blog, deviant Art and various other social networks dotted around the internet.  In most cases, I don’t pay a monetary fee to use these services (though in the effort of full disclosure I do pay an annual fee for my upgraded deviant Art account).  But just because I don’t pay cash, doesn’t mean I don’t pay in some way.  And that way is with my privacy.

In order to blog on Blogger for example, I need to have a Google account.  Now, I already had one, and I thought long and hard about using this platform over a couple of other well known blog sites.  In the end, I decided that Google already had the information about me through my Gmail account and my Google+ page.  So rather than trade my privacy (even if it’s only a few personal details) to another site, I’d use the one that already had them.  That’s a double edged sword of course.  It means that I can’t anonymously just blather on about a topic or say something inflamatory just for the sake of it, because my name is on this.  Of course, it also means that if I say something insightful, clever or amusing (or possibly all three at once) then people will know that I said it and not some nameless net denizen.

Now this got me thinking, about privacy and personal information in general but specifically how this information has become commoditised, and then down the track monetised by these services we use.  In essence, our privacy, our personal information that for so long was only known by friends and family, has become the currency we use to access services on the internet.  We barter this information about ourselves, about what we like, about where we go on the internet in order to “belong” to a social group.  And we all make decisions on this every time we post a comment, a picture, a status update, etc.

Recently, a new player came into what some might see as an already overcrowded market - App.net.  The big difference between App.net and Facebook was that you paid to join App.net.  There was no “free” offer.  You paid something like $50 per year and you got an ad free social network, where the idea was you could “network” from what I understand.  It was a bit of a surprise that someone would be so bold as to say “Sure, you join, it’s $50 a year” as opposed to “Sure, you join, we’ll just take your personal information, your browsing habits, any other information we can get hold of, distill it and then sell it on to marketing agencies to they can target their advertising at you”.  App.net have now changed their model slightly, there is still the $50 per year model but I believe they have now added a “free” account that has a limited set of features offered in the full one.   

Now in no way am I having a go at the companies that do that.  They are in this to make a buck and they’ve found a way to do it.  Sure, you might say it’s underhanded.  You could call it unethical.  You could rail against it as a perceived invasion of privacy, but in the end, each one of us who uses these services makes a decision on what we feel our privacy, our personal information is worth.  And then we use that as currency with the Facebook’s, Google’s and others to get access to the services we want to use.

Information is knowledge.  Knowledge is power.  In this virtual world we inhabit, the most powerful information is your own.  Know it’s value to you and to others so you can get the best deal you can by spending as little as possible.  

Applying sandbox ideology to MMO architecture

A Casual Gaming Approach to the Power Gaming of MMO “Questing.”

or

Applying sandbox ideology to MMO architecture.

The casual gaming space has exploded over the last few years, in no small part to giants like Facebook, but also with the advent of “browser games” that plug straight into things like Chrome and Firefox.  In some aspects this is a wonderful thing as it brings more and more people into the fold of “gaming” even though they may not consider themselves gamers.  Of course, the MMO scene while not taking a direct hit, has suffered from the number of casual games that are now available.  Why?  Simply because they are very low entry point and you don’t have to invest hours at a time to get anything done.

A big attraction with casual games is that you can play them for 15 minutes, get something done which gives you that feeling of “completion” and then off you go to do something else. Or, you keep playing, completing the next step, or quest, or journal entry, another 15 minutes or so.  There are people out there who play these casual games in a way that would scare the so called hardcore gamers with their dedication and the amount of time the spend in these browser based environments.  I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of the high flying executives who have to quickly duck out of a meeting to take an important call - only to head back to their office so they can logon to Farmville and harvest their crops in order to plant more so they can get that new shiny limited edition something or other.  And then they head back to the meeting, no one any wiser.

The other big attraction of the casual game is the social aspect.  You jump in, you can see all your friends listed who play (along with a number who don’t which you are prompted to invite).  You get little notes about who has been at your location and helped you out, messages offering you a gift or asking for your assistance with a particular item.  This sort of help costs you nothing, it’s a simple click to accept and then you are into your farm, or city, or kitchen to do your own thing.  The real advantage of this is of course that you don’t have to be active in the game at the time the message is sent in order to receive it.  Hell, you don’t even have to be online!  Of course if you’ve been anywhere near Facebook you are already well aware of this.  But how does this relate to the world of MMO’s, fetch quests, fedex quests and kill 10 rats and I’ll give you this rat fur cap quests?

To address this I think we need to look at some of the core mechanics of MMO’s (in general) and make some changes to that architecture.  

I think we can all agree that the quest system in the majority of MMO’s today is pretty simple.  It’s also pretty dull.  In essence, you find someone with some sort of indicator on them (be it a ? or ! over their head, a glowing ring around their feet or something of that nature) and you interact with them.  They give you some flavour dialogue and then present you with the option to accept their request or deny it.  And that’s it. You may get options to continue the dialogue, but in the end you either accept what they want you to do and do it, or you don’t accept it and you go in search of someone else to give you a job.   In some cases you may encounter something out in the big wide digital world that will start the process, but once started the steps remain the same.  You do this job for an NPC and they reward you with something - money, an item or that rat fur cap I mentioned earlier.

What I’m suggesting is a system that reduces the “linearity” in the MMO quest, and instead replaces it with some sociability.  This proposal would work best I believe in a current day/sci-fi/cyberpunk style MMO though there is no reason why with a bit of tweaking it couldn’t be implemented into your (non)standard fantasy universe.  In essence it is simply this - what if instead of you searching for the NPC’s who would give you your next job, they came to you with a proposal of work.  And so did your fellow players.  Radical I know, but stay with me.  

Picture this...  You are a character living in a dystopian cyberpunk environment, you work and travel in the shadows between the shining lights of the rich and powerful and the cesspit at the bottom of humanity.  You have a very important role to play in this society.  You can do the things that the people in the steel and glass towers cannot - you can deal with the sludge of society to get done the things they need.  You can get the information they want, you can find the goods and provide the services they need, you can break the rules in order for them not to.  Sure, you might not ever get to live in one of those steel and glass towers, but that’s ok, cause the people who do live there pay pretty well for the skills you have or have access to.

You get a message from some guy calling himself Johnson or Johnston or something.  Seems he heard your name from some local fence and a couple of quick financial incentives later said fence passed on your number.  This guy has a job that might interest you.  The pay’s not brilliant, but it’s been a while since you had more than a few Yuan to rub together.  You watch the fuzzy  recording with the obvious voice masking.  It’s a simple job really, go to a local neighbourhood, collect a portable trideo unit that has been stolen and return it.  Of course, your employer has neglected to tell you that the neighbourhood you have to go to is run by one of the wildest “go gangs” in that part of the sprawl.  So you make your way over there and how you get the trideo back is up to you.  Of course, there will probably be a few firefights and some hand to hand combat  - this is an MMO after all.

You get the trideo and return it for your payment.  Unfortunately for your employer, the memory chip that was supposed to be in the trideo has been removed.  Seems they have another job for you.  Go back to the ganger's and find the chip.  And while you are there he’d like you to teach them a lesson - that while stealing is bad, stealing from him is infinitely worse, and far more painful.

Hang on a second though I can hear you saying.  That’s just a cheap fetch quest, followed up by another fetch quest with a rat quest tacked on the back.  You go back to the neighbourhood, get to the chip from the gang leader in whatever way you deem suitable and take it to the drop.  When you get there you are approached by someone who passes on a message from your current employer asking you to destroy the chip as it is “no longer viable” along with your payment.  Now you can destroy the chip and move on, but knowledge is power in the sprawl and obviously this chip must contain something pretty powerful that your employer would send you in twice to get it and now wants it destroyed.  Depending on what archetype you chose at the start, you may be able to slot the chip into your deck and check it out yourself.  If not, then you need to find someone who can - and that’s where the social aspect of casual gaming collides with the MMO world - you can do it all yourself, but you can do it faster if you get help.  

We’ll say that you didn’t choose a tech class and you can’t see what is on the chip yourself, so who are you going to get to help you find out what is on it?  Well, you could do it the hard way, by yourself, slogging through the sprawl until you can find an NPC who’ll talk to you and can, for a price, slot the chip and check out what it contains, of course, the price may be more than you are willing to pay or can afford.  Or, if one or more of your friends has started a tech class, then maybe they could do it for you, all you would need to do is send them a message which they would get next time they logon.  The message could contain a self deleting copy of the chip which they could slot to identify and extract the contents before sending them back to you.  Depending on their skill level, their hardware and the programs they use, this could take only a few seconds for rudimentary encryption or longer if there is high level encryption and ICe (Intrusion Countermeasures).  If you don’t have any friends who are able (or willing) to help you and you can’t find an NPC who will either, your last option may be the UnderNet.  You logon through one of the many shadow servers that are throughout the sprawl and post a message with the job you have, what you need and how much you are willing to pay.  Anyone else who logs into UnderNet can accept that job offer, making you their employer.  Once the job is completed you get your information and they get their money.  Simple, and social.  Offer up enough of the right work and you could start to make a name for yourself in the sprawl.  Of course, sometimes being known could get you the wrong sort of attention from the cops, the corps or someone else who just doesn’t like you.  You could also use UnderNet to take jobs yourself to earn some quick cash.

I believe that a mechanic of this kind would give the MMO genre a significant “social” boost and has the potential to revolutionise how we not only play the games, but what else we do in them
once we log in.