With Jim Henson long passed, the Sesame Street and Muppet brands have really felt the loss. Some people feel Elmo epitomizes a Henson-less Sesame Street (in fact, Elmo was sanctioned by Jim, and even shared some skits with a Henson-performed Kermit). i’m not a big fan of modern-day Sesame Street’s more child-like Zoe, Rosita, Abby Cadabby, and Baby Bear (versus the old school street’s grown-up Herry, Kermit, Bert & Ernie, Sully & Biff and Grover), but the inclusion of more female Muppets is probably a change for the better – even if most of the new characters annoy the piss out of me.

What i found unforgivable, though, was the flagrant rule-breaking the crew engaged in, where one hard-and-fast law of the Sesame Street Universe was trodden and sullied for fans everywhere (even as Sully himself was nowhere to be found). Outraged, I conjured up four other examples in which the “laws” of certain children’s entertainment brands have been broken, and the caretakers of those franchises have yet to be brought to justice.

1. Showing the Interior of Oscar’s Can

The crime committed by the Sesame Street writers in Elmo in Grouchland was filming the interior of Oscar the Grouch’s garbage can. Longtime fans (or anyone even casually acquainted with Sesame Street) can tell you that the magic of Oscar’s Tardis-like garbage can home, which houses (among other things) his pet elephant, was a silly unsolvable mystery and untouchable canon in Sesame Street lore.

Why untouchable? Because if you show the inside of Oscar’s can, the elephant jokes of decades of Sesame Street seasons no longer work. Watch Elmo in Grouchland, and then go back and watch a gag where Oscar tinkers with his grouch jalopy somewhere inside his garbage can. You’ll say to yourself “oh yeah – that’s entirely possible. i’ve seen the inside of his can, and it’s quite spacious.”

It was a wretched, wretched idea to break this law, and worse – it was entirely unnecessary to the film’s fiction. As per usual, Elmo could have described the inside of the can in an echoey voice-over, and tell the viewer how he discovered a portal to Grouchland inside. But “show, don’t tell”, right? There’s apparently no room for imagination in a post-Henson Sesame Street.

2. Poochifying Paddington Bear

The original Paddington Bear adaptation was an unbelievably charming and unique blend of stop-motion animation and classical 2D, where the very Pooh-like title character would interact with paper cut-outs of the show’s less interesting supporting cast. Here’s an episode, in case you don’t remember or have never seen it:

Recently, Cookie Jar Entertainment produced an unnecessary and awful Paddington Bear upgrade. They stripped out the narration, the stop-motion, the wit, the charm, and the Britishness. We’re left with a vanilla Paddington show that looks and feels like any other daytime filler material built to keep the little brats entertained. Watch, if you dare:

Ugh. After that, sticky Paddington and i both need a shower.

(For the record, the intervening Hanna Barbera take on Paddington was also crap.)

3. Naming the Man with the Yellow Hat

The Curious George series of children’s books chugged along for sixty bloody years being content to call the monkey’s friend “the man with the yellow hat”. When the film version came out in 2006, the geniuses in charge named him “Ted Shackleford”.

Why? God only knows.

4. Voicing the Peanuts Teacher

The adults in Peanuts teevee specials are voiced by a muted trombone. Is this a law? Yes. Yes it is. And is it a crime to deviate from this? Yes. It most certainly is.

And why? Because we never see grown-ups in Peanuts, and teachers sound like muted trombones. That’s the way it is. The kids are important – the adults are not. This creative decision, paired with the decision to hire real kids to voice the Peanuts characters, cleverly conveyed that a child’s domain is often worlds apart from an adult’s, to the point where they even speak a different language. This helps to make the Peanuts characters’ adult-like antics, like Lucy’s psychiatry booth and Sally’s obsession with Linus, even funnier.

And … oh – what’s this? Here comes She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown to dump all over that.

5. Making the Cat in the Hat a Safe, Friendly Science Tutor

Dr. Seuss’s bastion of kid poetry, The Cat in the Hat, was recently adapted to television. The book is about two young children who are who are conspicuously abandoned by their mother, and who find themselves bored out of their skulls on a rainy day. They are visited by the titular cat who barges in and promises them a good time. He then proceeds to trash the house, alarming their neurotic pet fish who constantly warns them that their mother is going to lose her shit when she sees the place. With every destructive suggestion the Cat puts forth, he assures them that “your mother will surely not mind if you do.”

And just when the kids think things couldn’t get any worse, the Cat unleashes his two frat buddies, Thing 1 and Thing 2, who demolish everything in sight. The Cat is not a nice, friendly character. For 3/4 of the book, he’s a villain, and the story builds towards this impending doom as we draw nearer and nearer to mom’s return. The Cat in the Hat is essentially a horror story for preschoolers.

Sounds like a fun concept for a teevee show, right? So what’s the premise for The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That?

First of all, the boy is brown. Whatever. i’ll let it slide. i always thought that “Sally and I” were brother and sister. If you’re going to muck with race, why not make them both brown? Because it would alienate white kids? Then why didn’t they make the fish Asian? i dunno. i don’t care too much about it.

What i do care about is that the Cat in the Hat, anarchist, tormentor of fish and destroyer of private property, is now a friendly character who teaches the kids about science. Naturally. The show is so-titled because the Cat is ever-so-knowledgeable about aquatic life, the water cycle, the seasons, and any number of other natural phenomenon.

You know what Seuss’s Cat knew a lot about? Flying kites inside the house.

The most awful part of this show is that the kids’ mom is always home when the Cat shows up, and when the Cat suggests they “go go go go … on an adventure” to learn about colour theory or some bullshit, he says (as in the book), “your mother will surely not mind if you do!” And you know what the kids do? They ask their mom for permission. i can’t think of anything more antithetical to the spirit of the book than taking the teeth out of it and making it that safe. It’s a true testament to modern-day paranoid parenting.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 make an appearance in every episode, usually to help the kids when they’re in a jam. Because, as we know from the book, that’s what Thing 1 and Thing 2 love to do: help little children get a grasp on science.

No. You know what? NO. Thing 1 and Thing 2 are not preschool science teachers. They’re here to FUCK SHIT UP, and that’s ALL that they’re about. If you want your kids to watch a kids’ show that teaches science, the pickings aren’t exactly slim. You’ve got Curious George (makes sense – he’s curious, and he’s a monkey, and we use monkeys in scientific experiments), Peep and the Big Wide World, Sid the Science Kid, Dinosaur Train, Wild Kratts, and Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies. Thanks to a big STEM push by the US government (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), we have preschool science shows in spades.

If you’re going to teach anything using the Cat in the Hat, you might try ethics and morality as a more brand-appropriate topic. Or teach kids what to do when people – particularly grown-ups – put them in situations that make them uncomfortable. i’m not suggesting every episode be about molestation, but rather assertiveness, communication, and self-awareness. Here’s how Seuss ended his book:

Then our mother came in
And said said to us two,
“Did you have any fun?
Tell me. What did you do?”
And Sally and I
did not know What to say.
Should we tell her the things
that went on there that day?
Should we tell her about it?
Now, what SHOULD we do?
Well…
what would YOU do If you mother asked YOU?

The US government doesn’t have a vested interest in preschool shows that teach morality or self-awareness. Being tops in science helps the country subjugate the rest of the world and remain a superpower. But being a morally sound or independently thinking nation doesn’t pay.

Crapping on the Shoulders of Giants

Henson, Schulz, Bond, Geisel and the Reys. We can posthumously mess with their creations and make everyone completely forget what was charming, subtle, and valuable about their work to begin with. This is what we get when men and women in ties have say over the creations of men and women with pencils.

The Alaska Airlines logo.

i cannot be the only one.

My last experience with a Fiverr seller from New Jersey had him supposedly driving the ZombieGameWorld.com logo around on his car for a week. i spotted another seller on Fiverr who vowed to shoot a “Jersey Shore-style testimonial”. i took a look at his sample video, and was impressed with his confidence, glasses, and hilarious accent:

i decided to buy this guy’s gig, which meant i’d have to write a ZGW-style script for him. i didn’t know much about Jersey Shore, except that it was a) popular with the kids and b) deplorable. i took a quick spin around YouTube and, after watching a few highlights, felt i had the show pretty much figured out.

Here’s the script i sent to the seller:

What’s up, everyone … it’s The Happenstance comin’ at you with a comPLAINT, for real. The zombie apocalypse is cramping my style. This shit’s gotta get SOLVED.

So i’m at the club, straight-up guido, you know – killin’ it – dancin’ all up on these two girls like them bitches like it, and the living dead come busting ass through the dance floor cuz some asshole forgot to barricade the back door. I was about to get with these bitches, and then these zombies tear their heads off and start eating their livers out of their bodies.

ZOMBIES BE UP IN MY SHIT, and I’m SICK of it. Go get a shovel, ima go get my hair gel, and we’re gonna kick these motherfuckin zombies in the TEETH, if they got any.

For real. We’re gonna kill it. Literally.

i can’t tell you how badly i wanted to hear this guy say “zombies be up in my shit”. Many Fiverr sellers will clarify in their gig description whether or not they’ll perform a script with profanity in it. This guy stayed mum, so i figured it was alright. What he delivered to me was not only profanity-free, but stripped of every single Jersey Shore nod i’d written into the script:

A Buyer Scorned

i asked the seller if he could do a re-shoot, because he was way off the script. i explained that profanity, the hair gel gag and the guido thing were all bits i’d gleaned from watching Jersey Shore clips. “The Happenstance” was a spoof of the Jersey Shore character “The Situation”. i said if the profanity or anything in the script bothered him, i’d gladly work with him to do a mutually acceptable re-write.

As with many other Fiverrers, i didn’t get a response. Once these guys get their five dollars (four dollars after Fiverr takes their cut), there’s no incentive to respond to a buyer. Best to just wait out the twelve days beyond which a buyer’s customer service complaint will be ignored.

If you’re planning on working with people on Fiverr, my best tip is this: if the seller doesn’t deliver the goods to your satisfaction, request a redo. Give the seller a maximum of three days to respond, and then hit up customer service. The whole process favours Fiverr and the seller (except for the fact that it’s a measly five dollars). You need to get your claws out to keep from being bilked out of your money – even small amounts of it.

Blood from a Stone

Continuing along on this trend of milking the most value i possibly can out of these videos, i gave this one a long think. i decided that if it was truly a Jersey Shore-style video, it needed Jersey Shore-style profanity – otherwise, what’s the point? Was it a funny or entertaining video as-is? Not really.

So taking a tip from Jimmy Kimmel, i jazzed the clip up with a little unnecessary censorship:

Down to Shiggity

My return to Jersey dented The World’s Most Meager Marketing Budget to the tune of another five bucks. Here’s the shopping list as it stands:

Original investment: $100

Spent:

* ZombieGameWorld tagline voiceover – $5
* Show Us Yer Bewbz! – $5
* Zombie Funk – $5
* Advertising on Some Dude’s Car – $5
* Zombie Self-Defense: American Version – $5
* Zombie Self-Defense: Russian Version – $5
* Zombies Attack the Jersey Shore – $5

Remaining: $65

Spielbergin’ It Up

With my Fiverr video experiment, i expected to be able to post the clips as-is with no need to doctor them. Things changed dramatically when i found i had to add animation and sound effects to make the movies halfway watchable. The next Fiverrer i contacted told me she could shoot in front of a green screen. Without considering how much work i was about to create for myself, i said “sure!” The resulting video is in the next post.

The PenIs Mightiter

“Who writes the plot for porno movies?” Nobody cares. That’s an old joke anyway. People who produce pornography obviously put a lot of unnecessary energy into their “craft”. i’m more interested in the people who don’t work in porn, yet have to somehow dignify pornographer’s efforts within a more respectable framework.

To be more specific, i noticed in passing (in PASSING!) that the adult titles in the pay-per-view listings all had plot synopses written for them. Forget the guy who has to write the plots for porno (he’s also the lead cameraman, and the horny mechanic from Act III). i want to know what poor schlub working at Rogers head office has to write the SYNOPSES of those already paper-thin plots – and partciularly in cases where the movies have no plots. i mean, how do you summarize a movie that’s just an hour of straight-up porking?

Here’s a selection of adult movies and their synopses from Rogers Pay-Per-View. One interesting thing to note is that while the movie titles are completely crass, the synopses are as (needlessly) puritan as they possibly can be.

5 Raunchy Rock Tails

Groupies give rock stars a backstage pass to their bodies.

5 Horny Blondes

Fair-haired beauties (Monique Alexander, Alexis Malone, Gen Padova) entertain randy men.

A Train 4

Hardcore harlots ride the rails to backdoor ecstasy.

American Cream Pie 2

Gorgeous women prefer sexy threesomes.

An American in Prague

Wild men enjoy intimate moments.

Anally Yours … Love, Rebeca Linares

Hot young women crave carnal encounters.

Asian Beavers

Exotic harlots find plenty of wood to devour.

Ass Deep 2

Juicy strumpets (Sandra Romain, Trina Michaels, Isabel Ice) take the plunge through the backdoor.

Bang on De Drum All Day

Here’s a secret about programmers: they are inherently lazy. The less typing a programmer can do, the better. Programming is all about dreaming up complex tasks that programmers don’t want to do, and delegating those tasks to a computer so that the programmer can blow off and watch cartoons the rest of the day.

Many programming structures are designed to make a programmer’s life easier. And a programming rule of thumb is generally that if you have to type something twice, there’s an opportunity to make your code more efficient.

Functions make your code more efficient. Let’s imagine a game where we need to create a bunch of monsters. If you’ve read Understanding Loops, you know that you can set up a loop to run an action multiple times. i’ll use a combination of pseudocode (in comments) and real code to demonstrate:

// Make 50 monsters.
var totalMonsters:int = 50;
var i:int = 0;
for(i=0; i<totalMonsters; i++)
{
    // make a monster
}

So far so good. But there are a few other things we have to do with these monsters we create. We need to put each one on a hill. Then we need to dress each monster up in a Power Hat. Next, we need to hide a key to each monster’s hilly domain. Let’s modify the loop:

// Make 50 monsters.
var totalMonsters:int = 50;
var i:int = 0;
for(i=0; i<totalMonsters; i++)
{
    // make a monster
    // put the monster on a hill
    // put a power hat on the monster
    // hide a key
}

Mmmm … we’re almost there. Now we need to create a portrait for that each monster and put it inside the castle, so that when the hero defeats a monster, the portrait gets a big checkmark on it. Then we need to create a magic gem that will kill each monster. Each gem needs to be buried somewhere underground. Finally, we need to create a villager for each monster in the game. Each villager will give you a clue as to where to find the monster-killing gem.

// Make 50 monsters.
var totalMonsters:int = 50;
var i:int = 0;
for(i=0; i<totalMonsters; i++)
{
    // make a monster
    // put the monster on a hill
    // put a power hat on the monster
    // hide a key
    // create a portrait
    // put the monster's face on the portrait
    // put the portrait inside the castle
    // create a gem
    // bury the gem underground
    // create a villager
    // give the villager a gem clue
}

Oh man. This loop is getting real ugly, real fast. There’s so much STUFF in there. It’s getting out of control.

If we take a close look, we see that we’re running a few tasks that can be grouped together. All the monster stuff goes together. All the key stuff goes together. The gem stuff goes together. The villager stuff goes together. That’s four separate bundles of tasks that, like a pile of sticks, we should be able to wrap up with twine in a tidy little package.

I Have a Tiny Little Package

That’s one of the things Functions do for us: they allow us to group related tasks together into a little package, and we can refer to that package over and over again without having to repeat any lines.

A Function declaration looks very much like a variable or array declaration. Instead of the var keyword, we use the function keyword. In ECMA-based languages like Actionscript 3, Unity javascript and C#, functions are followed by round brackets. Then you open up a statement block between curly brackets, just like in a For Loop or a conditional (If) statement:

function doSomething()
{
   // statements go here
}

Note: If you’re using Unity javascript, best practice is to begin a function name with a capital letter.

So doSomething is our function name. That’s a custom name that we came up with. It makes a lot of sense to use verbs (action words) when naming your functions. We’ll see why in a moment.

Let’s carve out the statements involving the monsters and put them in their own function:

function initMonsters()
{
    // make a monster
    // put the monster on a hill
    // put a power hat on the monster
}

(the “init” here is short for “initialize”, which means “set it up”)

Now, back in the loop, we can substitute those three statements with a Function call. A Function call always uses the name of the function, followed by round brackets, with a semi-colon to end the statement. Take a look:

// Make 50 monsters.
var totalMonsters:int = 50;
var i:int = 0;
for(i=0; i<totalMonsters; i++)
{
    initMonsters(); // We removed these three statements and put them in their own function.
    // Now, we just call the function.
 
    // hide a key
    // create a portrait
    // put the monster's face on the portrait
    // put the portrait inside the castle
    // create a gem
    // bury the gem underground
    // create a villager
    // give the villager a gem clue
}

In common programming parlance, this is called calling a Function.

To understand how a function call works, we need to put ourselves back in the role of our code interpreter, which is a lot like Pac Man.

Pac Man hits the first statement in the loop. It’s a function call. So he jumps out of the loop to wherever the Function is declared, and chews through all of the statements in that Function. When he reaches the bottom of the Function, he bounces back to the loop again, and resumes chewing through code at the very next line.

This works very nicely. Now we can go through and offload all of our chunks of functionality into their own Functions. When we write it all up, i looks something like this:

// Make 50 monsters.
var totalMonsters:int = 50;
var i:int = 0;
for(i=0; i<totalMonsters; i++)
{
    initMonsters();
    initKeys();
    initPortraits();
    initGems();
    initVillagers();
}

Look how much easier to read that loop is now. It’s very clear that we loop 50 times, and each time we make some monsters, some keys, some portraits, some gems, and some villagers. The details for each process are buried in their respective functions. Now, when we look at the initKeys function, we only have to worry about tasks related to initializing those keys.

This bouncing around that the Pac Man-like code interpreter does is the reason why i say that Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is like taking multiple plane flights through time portals.

There are two more very important things to learn about functions: Arguments and Return Values. These are detailed in two additional articles. Once you read through those, you’ll know almost everything there is to know about Functions, and you’ll be ready to start putting that knowledge into practice by building your own stuff!

For more Flash AS3 Tutorials and a pile of other useful stuff, check out our Flash and Actionscript 911 feature.

A few years later, i landed a bit part in a community theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Who’s That Guy in the Background Trying to Grow a Beard?. It looked as though i had once had a full beard, but was then tragically mauled by a mountain lion and patches of it had been eaten.

Flash forward to today. It’s the end of Movember, the month when dudes grow beards to raise awareness for Cancer of the Balls and Cancer of That Other Thing, and mens’ health in general. The folks at my church are holding a creative moustache growing competition tomorrow, and the prize is a pair of Leafs tickets. i couldn’t care a fig about hockey, but the moment someone says “creative competition”, i’m in, and i’m in deep.

The Foundation

A creative moustache growing competition is more of a creative moustache grooming competition if you think about it. To that end, i figured it would be wise to grow as much hair on my face as possible, without risking the townspeople loading up their shotguns with silver bullets. So i decided to lay some follicular groundwork – the raw slab of marble from which my masterpiece would be hewed.

An hour later, with the help of my wife and resident manscaper, armed with scissors and a safety razor (NOT electric clippers, which would be like winning the Olympic 100-meter dash with a bionic leg), we gingerly chipped away at it until we got exactly the effect we were hoping for.

i call it “The Blustery Day”.

December 1st is my birthday, at which point the moustache goes out and the presents come in (i am registered at Toys ‘R’ Us, in case you’re racking your brain trying to think of what to get me). It was an amusing adventure, and while the beard gave me a distinct confidence boost after the first two awkward weeks, it still felt like i was being stabbed in the face by thousands of microscopic men with tiny little spears. A face phalanx. A facelanx. i dunno. i’ll be glad to get rid of it, anyway.

The Results

For the entire month, Untold Entertainment’s team of one has raised exactly zero dollars in the name of mens’ health. We didn’t take donations. (It’s not too late to kick a couple of bucks over to people who did!) But consider this a promise that in future years, the Untold Entertainment team is one you want to get behind with your pledges, because we’re bringing our (hairy) game faces. An Untold Entertainment moustache is money well spent.

Join us next year. And in the mean time, make sure to give the boys a jiggle at least once a day to avoid Cancer of the Cajones (AKA Huevos Canceros). Or better yet, get your loving manscaper to do it for you.

Can’t get enough of moustaches? Check out our game-in-progress Putty Crime: On the Tail of the Foxy Badger, in which every single character (including the pigeons) have lip sweaters. Good show!

Further Reading:

• Movember 2011 – “Balls On Chin”

Credits are those long, scrolling pages of text at the end of the movie that you watch just to see if the filmmakers added a special jokey tack-on scene at the end of the flick. If you read closely, you’ll see that they are the names of people who worked on the movie, listed alongside their job titles. In film, there are credits for the big people – the executive producer, the director and the principal actors – all the way down to the little people – the sandwich grip, the second-line gaffer, and the assistant schloob.

If you look closely, you’ll begin to see credits everywhere. They’re tacked on to the beginning and end of teevee shows, they’re inside album liner notes, and they pop up at the end of your favourite home console or computer video games. But the one place you won’t find them is in online free-to-play Flash games – partly because Flash game developers decide not to put them there, and partly because developers are actively blocked from adding credits to their games by corporations with selfish interests.

Flashsploitation

More than just being a token kind gesture recognizing the hard work and effort people put into an entertainment product, for mature industries like film, television and music, credits are actually a key cog in the machine. The CVs and resumes of performers and technicians rely on the credits system; often, your ability to land future jobs is based on the credits you’ve amassed on earlier projects. Because of this, there are unions and guilds strictly guiding the practice of giving credit, in order to protect entertainment professionals from exploitation.

The Flash game ecosystem is notorious for being packed with non-professionals, but we boast our fair share of pros. Many game developers do what’s called “service work” to pay their bills. A company will approach a known game developer, and will contract him to build a Flash game to certain specifications. My own company, Untold Entertainment Inc., is just such a developer. We survive on service work, largely building Flash games and Flash websites for clients like kids’ television production companies. If a prodco has a teevee show, especially if it’s targeted towards kids, they’ll also want someone to build them a web game to help promote and extend their brand. Companies like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney regularly contract Flash game developers to build their arsenal of online games.

If you wanted to find out which developers built these games though, you’re largely out of luck. Try fishing through the games on the sites i mentioned and look for production credits – even a single logo of the developer who built the game. With a few rare exceptions, you’ll come up empty-handed, game after game. Before founding Untold Entertainment, i worked at a media conglomerate serving a number of kids’ teevee stations. Throughout my time there, i made over fifty games. i was not credited for a single one.

Keep it Secret, Keep It Safe

Once out in the “real world”, i began to actively ask my clients for credits in the games i produced for them – a logo, at the very least. Credit is one way to boost morale and mutual respect among your developers, and beyond that – it just seems RIGHT, you know? When teevee and film are crediting their most important people down to the very guy who tapes the pylons to the road, it just didn’t seem right that the team or individual who created the entire game wouldn’t be recognized. And having my logo feature in the game somewhere could be a compelling driver for future business. All a prospective client need do is cruise through Cartoon Network’s site, for example, see my logo, and call me up with a contract offer.

Aye – there’s the rub. That’s exactly the situation that a client like Disney or Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon wants to avoid. They don’t want anyone else contracting out “their” developers. More competition for developers means that the devs will be more highly paid, and it may be more difficult for them to get their games made if the best devs are in higher demand.

No Promo

The second excuse i hear for not allowing credit is that these companies don’t want to let on that they didn’t do all the work themselves. There’s this strange macho corporate pride in pretending that all of their interactive work was done in-house – or at least, that’s the excuse they all give me. But a quick look through the credits of any special effects-laden film, for example, shows that individual effects shots are farmed out to numerous different special effects houses. This serves the special effects team in two ways: they can say they worked on Blockbuster 2: the Awesoming, and prospective clients can see their name in the credits, which both increases their brand recognition, and enables clients to contract them for new work.

But surely, a Flash game developer can at least SAY he worked on a given project, right? Actually, no. Many of these clients specify in the contract language that the game developer cannot even say he worked on the game. That means no screenshots on his site, and no link to the game. The developer must disavow any knowledge that the project ever happened, Mission: Impossible style. On one of my contracts, the client forbade me from ever mentioning i worked on the project. This became a sticking point, and when i fought for the right to promote, the client struck a bizarre bargain: i could promote my involvement in the project anywhere but online. Of course, the web is the only place i ever promote my work with Untold Entertainment.

It Doesn’t Ad Up

You could argue that the work we Flash game developers do for these companies amounts to advertising. Creating a game to promote The Family Guy or the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse shows is tantamount to creating an interactive advertisement online. And since teevee commercial spots don’t credit their creators, games promoting shows don’t need to either.

This argument falls down for two reasons: for one, there’s really no room in a teevee spot to credit the creators, but there’s plenty of room in Flash games, as they’re not temporally limited to 30 seconds. On the second count, advertising agencies promote their work all the time. Visit any agency website, and you’ll see the logos for the brands they’ve repped displayed proudly and prominently on the main page. Many sites actually do list credits for the commercials they created. Industry awards like the Clios list teevee commercial and print ad credits in full on their websites.

Credits are important. They serve as proof that a developer completed the work he said he did. They help to increase a developer’s brand awareness, and they help new clients reach Flash game developers that they otherwise may not have known about. Clients who refuse to credit developers, and who actively block developers from promoting the work are preventing the industry from maturing in the name of their own selfish interests.

Resistance by Insistence

So what’s to be done? When I started hearing from new clients that they wanted to use me instead of my more well-known competitor, i asked what he’d done to lose their business. Their answer? “He started getting pushy about credit.” Asking for credit, or even demanding credit that is rightly due to us as developers, is apparently hazardous to your health. It can harm your business. It may even be possible to land new contracts simply by forfeiting your game credit. Clients really seem to go for that type of thing.

But you know what i say? Screw that. The solution is for ALL Flash game developers to demand the credit they are due on ALL projects. Even if you’re not in this fee-for-service racket, you should add a Credits link to the main page of your Flash game as a matter of course. You need to create a logo and preface your own game with it – or simply use your own name (e.x. “A game by Ryan Henson Creighton”) Build your personal brand so that if clients come calling, you’ll have established a credit expectation in all of your games.

If ALL Flash games have a credits page (just as ALL teevee shows, movies, album liner notes, gallery installations, operas, stage plays, and nearly every other mature form of artistic expression or entertainment already has), then it will be simply unspeakable for a client to ask that you remove your name from the game. You can also support the IGDA in their efforts to create a Credit Standards guide, and point your clients to that guide during contract negotiations. For our part, Untold Entertainment now requires credit and promotion rights on all of our contracts – otherwise, we simply don’t take the job. If we as developers band together and demand recognition for our creative efforts as they do in so many other entertainment industries, together we can drag online games kicking and screaming from adolescence to adulthood.

Credits: this article was written by Ryan Henson Creighton, assistant schloob.

Recently, the battery power on the iPod has been dropping dramatically. This week, it stopped charging altogether.

i took the device to the Apple Store, where the Genius™ in the back told me that the iPod’s battery “is consumable”, and that two years is pretty much the upper limit of use that i could expect from the device.

He offered me exactly one option:

1. Pay $69 (about a quarter of the price of the device) to swap it for a new one with a fresh battery.

All-Consuming

These two devices are the first Apple products i’ve ever purchased. i’ve been hearing for years about how user-friendly the company’s products are, and how they have a mind toward building green products (i believe their latest laptop is made from wood chips and rabbit pellets).

i can’t think of anything less user-friendly than a 21st century device which does not allow its owner to replace its battery. The battery is “consumable”, yes … but consumption implies that i can replenish the consumable, and consume it again.

i consume food on a daily basis, but once the food in my fridge runs out, i replenish it with new food – i don’t pay a quarter of the price to buy a new fridge.

Imagine a world where we were unable to replenish the power supplies in our devices. Car’s battery died? Pay a quarter of the price to trade it in for a new car. Video game controllers? After a few weeks, you need new ones. Watches? Remote controlled cars? Hearing aids? Despite it being a simple process to swap in a fresh power source, all of these devices would become defunct.

Green and Greed

There are two angles to this issue: green and greed.

Apple’s design decision to prevent users from being able to replace the battery is an environmental no-no. i’m sure they’ll do all sorts of wonderful things with my traded-in device (like throwing a new battery in it and selling it as refurbished, or planting it to grow an Apple tree or whatever), but because i feel like Apple is ransoming my use of the device, i have half a mind to throw my defunct iPod into the ocean, specifically aiming it at a dolphin’s face. Perhaps i’ll dip it in crude oil a few times first? Apple’s locked design of the device is environmentally unfriendly.

Perhaps more transparently, this is planned obsolescence at its ugliest. To specifically design a device that lasts only two years is irresponsible at best – insidious at worst. Apple knows darn well that after two years, an iPod customer will likely have made a significant temporal, financial and emotional investment in the device – purchasing iTunes apps and songs, sinking time and money into certain iOS games, and integrating the device into his lifestyle (public transit and toilet time, most notably). Squeezing another 25% of the device cost from the customer every two years is a solid way to pad company coffers.

Not a Fan

When i slide the back of my Nexus One Android phone open, there’s a replaceable battery staring back at me. When it gives up the ghost – hopefully beyond the 2-year mark – i can choose to purchase a new battery from either Google or a third party, at significantly less than 25% of the phone’s price ($10 or less on eBay – that’s 2% of the device price).

Apple has its fans, to be sure, but i’m not willing to sacrifice basic consumer control over the utility of my devices for a few shiny logos and a high-profile (yet environmentally irresponsible and ultimately consumer-hostile) brand.

UPDATE

i didn’t mention it in the original article, but things started to go South once i installed the iOS4 update for my device. Suddenly, the battery lasted one hour instead of the days of juice that it used to provide. i mentioned this to the Apple Store guy, who swore up and down that iOS4 has no effect on battery life. He actually made me feel like a bit of a fool for even bringing it up.

Enter the Internet:

• iOS 4 Severely Affects iPod touch Battery Life
• iOS 4 Causing iPod Touch Battery Problems
• iOS 4 drawing complaints about poor battery life from iPod Touch users
• iOS4 Battery Issue?
• iPod Touch Battery Issues in iOS 4
• iPod Touch battery life dwindled after installing iOS 4

So it appears that, non-replaceable battery notwithstanding, the iOS4 upgrade may have devoured whatever juice the “ancient” 2-year-old battery had left in it. i’ll pay another visit to the Apple Store tomorrow to see if i can’t get this sorted out.

ANOTHER UPDATE

Today i returned to the Apple Store, ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth. Craftily, i told the salespeople that i wanted to buy an expensive iPod Touch, but was concerned because the battery wasn’t replaceable. How long would the device last? One guy said “WELL over 2 years … possibly 4 or 5 years.” Hmm. But then a girl i spoke to said that it depends on my usage.

Me:Very well – i pay $400 for the device. How much usage does that get me, at maximum abuse? 3 months?
Her: Probably more than that, but i can’t say for sure.
Me: You can’t say for sure that i’m going to drop $400 on an iPod Touch, and it’s going to last longer than 3 months?
Her: Okay – probably longer than 3 months.
Me: How long? 6 months?
Her: i can’t say for sure.
Me: So $400 won’t even buy me 6 months with the device?
Her: It all depends.
Me: Depends on what? Don’t you have any benchmarks?

By that point, the “Genius” at the back was calling my name. As a (fake) new customer, though, i don’t think i would have made a purchase with such a non-committal answer. At least lie to me, lady. You’re in sales, after all.

i went in hollering and carrying on and telling them that the iOS4 upgrade had destroyed my battery. One Genius had to step in and, in his smoothest “i’m a very very cool dude who works at the Apple Store and check out my awesome tattoos but they’re too obscure for you to understand” voice, he asked me to calm down. Said that iOS4, while very hard on the battery and probably a bad idea for iPod Touch owners to install, had nothing to do with my device’s battery dying. Completely unrelated.

i asked him how an ill-advised upgrade that destroyed battery life could possibly be unrelated to a battery-destroying issue. He said it was pure coincidence that my battery happened to die after i upgraded. i reiterated that after i installed the iOS4 upgrade, my battery life began to rapidly decline over a period of two weeks, going from holding a charge for days, to holding a charge for an hour. He said that when the batteries degrade, they do so very quickly. i called bullshit.

They gave me options. A battery replacement was $99. The other guy jumped in and said they don’t actually replace the battery – they give me a new device, and that would cost me $89. Both numbers were a chunk higher than the $69 mystery figure the “Genius” had offered me one day earlier. i felt like i was paying The Price is Right.

The other “Genius” offered to wipe my device and install iOS 4.1 on it. “Genius” #2 told me that any time i used wifi on the device, i’d have to shut it down by putting the iPod into airplane mode before i pushed the Sleep button. There was still no option to disable the “always-on” wifi problem that iOS4 introduced.

“Genius” #2 also mumbled something to his colleague about there being a software bug on the recharge screen when it showed one red stick, which mine did. Funny – it was the first i was hearing of it.

So i told the guy to go ahead with the reset. He wiped the device, and upgraded to iOS 4.1. Suddenly, the device started to hold a charge. i went home and plugged it in, charging it fully. It took much longer to charge this time, instead of the half hour it took when it was suffering from iOS 4.0. Wifi is off. The battery is draining at a normal, pre- iOS4 rate.

Apparently, iOS4 is not an issue for older iPod Touch devices until Pope Steve says it is. Until then, ranting and raving and demanding satisfactory service in the face of a conflicting and ever-changing customer service response is the only way. You need to be a modern-day Galileo to convince Apple that the universe does not revolve around their company.

But now that my months-old Pocket Frogs saved game file is lost forever, there’s very little compelling me to use my iPod in the near future, charged battery or otherwise.

The State of California wants to ban violent video games. That’s the take-away many gamers are carrying around with them after entirely misunderstanding and misinterpreting the latest news about violence in gaming.

There’s an incredibly ugly and empty-headed collective knee-jerk reaction among gamers that you can provoke by stringing the words “violent” and “video games” together in a sentence. The moment you do that, comment threads and boards fill up with angry, reactive comments from gamers shouting down the argument, denying up and down that real-life anything is connected to the video game world … unless of course video games are shown to produce positive benefits like improved hand-eye co-ordination and visual-spatial skills.

Relax, gamers: no one’s trying to take your video games away. California does not want to ban violent video games. If you’re the age of majority, you can purchase and play all the violent video games you like. You can smoke, drink, lease a house, rent a car, and crank your joystick to an alarming array of pornography until you pump yourself into a pulp on your rec room floor. If that’s how you want to live your life, go nuts. The world is your sleazy oyster.

[watch local news outfit CityTV interview me on a segment about aggression and gaming]

Wait Until You’re Older to Destroy Your Brain

California figures that perhaps allowing minors to purchase products that essentially have them chainsaw-murdering innocent bystanders and hookers for forty hours straight may not be such a hot idea. They’re looking to prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors. Prohibiting the sale of harmful materials to minors and outright banning it for all citizens are two very different things.

Are Violent Video Games Really Harmful?

But wait – are video games that have the player ripping characters’ heads off with their spinal columns still attached, setting other characters on fire and urinating on them, and dry-humping the corpses of their amputated enemies really harmful to impressionable minors whose brains are still forming?

Yes. Yes they are. Now let’s move on.

Sex Kills

i think what’s really interesting about what California’s trying to do is that for seemingly the first time in their blood-soaked history, Americans are waking up to the idea that maybe violence should be treated like sex? They prohibit the sale of Nasty Cumsluts 4: The Sluttening to little kids, because it’s harmful to minors. Maybe a game where you kill a guy bare-handed with a plastic bag, or one where you punch someone in the face so hard his head explodes, is similarly detrimental to our youngfolk?

In Canada, we have a history of restricting violent material more vigorously than sexual content. Growing up, any movie that had as much as a single boob in it would get an R rating in the USA. In Canada, a movie like Road Trip, where Amy Smart flashes her funbags for a solid five minutes, gets a 14A rating. (That means if you’re 14, and your name begins with the letter “A”, you’re good to go.) In the USA, Road Trip was rated Restricted. i think it’s because Canadians recognize that handguns and chainsaws are far more dangerous than a cute 20-year-old’s tits.

The Yanks haven’t quite reached that conclusion yet. In a country where a teenager was shot to death for egging a guy’s Mercedes on Hallowe’en, they’re still puzzling over the concept that racking up a high score by murdering pedestrians with your car may not be such a hot way for an 8-year-old to spend an afternoon.

Pubic Enemy

There are no bewbz in gaming. Game developers don’t draw nipples on their character models, because breasts are deadly weapons, and guns are sexy objects of adoration. Seems a bit backwards to me … in real life, breasts are life-giving, and guns are life-removing. Game developers are clearly terrified of landing an ESRB Adults Only rating for their title, which means that 8-year-olds can’t buy their game in Wal Mart or other major retailers, and their games won’t be made available on major consoles. They’re so afraid of that punitive rating that nipples are furtively doled out like notes being passed around in class. God of War has nipples, but the sex is off-screen. No on-screen simulated Skinemax-style gyrating for poor old Kratos. There are a few other exceedingly rare examples of nudity in other titles. i don’t know if i’ve ever heard of a dude’s wang on parade in a mainstream video game title. Anyone have an example? (Oh, wait – i just came up with one. And surprise – it’s in a Grand Theft Auto sequel.)

[read about how the FTC got their knickers in a bunch when they discovered ta-ta's in virtual worlds]

You also rarely hear a video game developer say “we really had to tone down the violence, because we were worried about getting an AO rating.” It’s never the violence – always the boobs. Manhunt 2 is the only example i can really bring to mind where the team received an AO rating due to violent content. There was also a big stink over Bully. For the most part, it’s business as usual with swords and guns and dismemberment, but heaven help us if Lara Croft lets slip some sweater meat. And vagina? Vagina is right out. Don’t even ASK me about vagina.

(Note that both Bully and Manhunt 2 were by developer R*, creators of Grand Theft Auto. The Manhunt 2 AO debacle was likely due to the company’s Hot Coffee scandal in GTA: San Andreas which shook confidence in the industry’s ESRB self-rating system. What happened with Manhunt 2 was political – a response engineered specifically to restore confidence in the ESRB system, and to keep the ratings power within the industry. The industry doesn’t want the government involved in legislating content, because they will not be able to peddle as many copies if fewer people are able to buy games. It’s also worth noting that the Hot Coffee mini-game contained absolutely zero nudity – just low-poly character models grinding against each other like those puppets in Team America: World Police. More on the South Park guys later.)

[read about gory game sameness at Microsoft's Christmas preview event]

Here’s the Part You Scrolled Down to Look At

Just to compare the film and video game industries with respect to their content ratings, here’s a screengrab from a movie that was released twenty six years ago that was rated PG in America:

i would have liked to have embedded a YouTube version of that scene from Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, but you won’t find any nudity on the American-owned YouTube. That shit gets banned. What you WILL find on YouTube, and in abundant supply, is stuff like this montage of gore from Fallout 3:

Show this video to almost any teenaged boy, and what reaction will you get? Smiles.

[read my condemnation of Fallout 3]

Currently, any kid in the second grade can walk into a video game store, plop down sixty bucks’ worth of birthday money and, if the store so chooses, that kid can walk out with a copy of Fallout 3. He can’t do the same with the Blu-Ray re-release of Ass-Eaters in the Sexth Dimension. He’s too young. The State of California wants to make it illegal for stores to sell this kid harmful content like Fallout 3. Any store that breaks the proposed law can be fined up to $1000. An ill-informed parent could still buy the game and give it to his child. That would still be legal.

I Reject Your Parental Responsibility Argument

Please, folks: before you pipe up and troll out the ancient argument that parents should be responsible for monitoring the content that their children blah blah blah, please look around you. i grew up in numerous poor neighbourhoods, and spent some time as a child in a women’s shelter. i am the son of a father who abandoned his family, the child of a physically abusive stepfather, and the product of single parent mom who worked for 25 years with the Children’s Aid Society (child social services), the clients of which saw far worse things than i ever did. It doesn’t take a rational thinking person very long to recall that there’s no such thing as a parents’ license, and that not all parents can be relied upon to raise their children responsibly. It takes a village. Often, in matters of public protection and the protection of minors, the government acts as our village.

[read about how kids wished their parents would play video games with them]

Excessive Violence is Beneficial for Teenaged Boys Only

The gamers who argue the most vehemently against perceived attacks like California’s proposed law, i suspect, are teenaged boys who really want to be able to play these games without restriction. They don’t want adults to know what really goes on in these games, because they won’t be allowed to play them any more, and instead they’ll be forced to play horrible bargain-basement titles like Super Mario Galaxy 2, Braid, Rock Band, Geometry Wars, Puzzle Quest, Portal, and any number of garbage games that aren’t worth their time or money. Their minds are fully formed, they argue! They’re not impressionable! They won’t be psychologically screwed up in any way, shape, or form if they play an overtly violent video game.

[read about a study that found gore does not make a game more enjoyable]

There was an episode of South Park called Ginger Kids in which Cartman decided he was prejudiced against “gingers” (red-headed kids), and spent the episode tormenting them. It was satire. It was funny. The aim of the episode was to lampoon racism and bigotry.

After the episode aired, numerous schools across the country reported that red-headed kids had been physically assaulted on “Kick a Ginger Day”. The movement was led by a 14-year-old with a Facebook page, and it had 20 000 followers. Kick a Ginger Day was an idea that minors, their brains not yet fully-formed, cooked up after watching South Park. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t piece together that the show was satirical, and that the creators were hoping to effect the opposite behaviour.

No adults were reported to have participated in Kick a Ginger Day.

[read about how a violent video game cost one game development team its Sigourney Weaver voice over]

What Have We Learned?

In summation:

• Certain gratuitous depictions of violence are as age-inappropriate for minors as certain gratuitous depictions of sex.
• Love triggers AO ratings, not war.
• According to vocal gamers on the Internet, video games are only allowed to affect people in positive ways. Spatial reasoning yes, murderous rage no.
• Teenagers apparently can’t be trusted to understand satire, or to grasp the difference between a content ban and a prohibition to protect children like themselves.
• It’s better to have a loaded penis aimed at your face than a loaded gun.

We followed up on allegations made by CultureGET, a news blog that covered the event, and found that last year’s Vortex winners, Alex Quick and John Josephson, likely had nothing to do with the creation of the winning game.

The Facts

Here’s what days of online research turned up:

1. Colour-Coded, the winning entry, was created and developed by a team of five developers in the UK called the Pixel Pirates.
2. Colour-Coded won the UK-based Dare to be Digital competition in August 2009, two months before the game was entered at Vortex. As a result, the game was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA award five months after Vortex 2009, and also appeared at the Scottish Game Jam in early 2010.
3. Neither Alex Quick nor John Josephson are listed as members of the Pixel Pirates team on the Pixel Pirates front page, team page, or team photo. They are not mentioned at all during the team’s year-long development diary.
4. The plan by Alex and John to continue developing Colour-Coded in Toronto with a team of five developers, and the Pixel Pirates’ alleged sale of the game IP to Alex and John and detachment from the project, is similarly never mentioned on the team’s very public development diary.

Eligibility Doubts

These were the Vortex Competition 2009 eligibility guidelines:

II ELIGIBILITY AND APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

1. Eligibility

a) An Entrant is:

i) An individual person or team of persons (with the majority of the group being Canadian citizens), who is or who are Canadian citizens or residents; or,

ii) A legal partnership or a corporation established under the federal laws of Canada or the laws of a Canadian province or territory, and which is resident in Canada.

If the two Canadian winners are (generously) considered team members, despite having no apparent involvement in the game, the team is still comprised of a majority of UK citizens, and so does not meet the first eligibility criterion. Of the five Pixel Pirates, only Murray now lists a Canadian address, in British Columbia. Vortex organizer Sari Ruda confirmed for us that Murrary is a UK citizen.

The Question of Incorporation

Failing the first criterion, the team needed to have a Canadian corporation or legal partnership to be eligible for the competition. I asked Alex and John whether such a corporation existed, and neither winner laid claim to one.

In asking the two winners and the competition organizer about the apparent eligibility error, I received conflicting responses. Alex told me that at the time of the competition in October 2009, he and John were speaking “on behalf of” the Pixel Pirates team in the UK.

For his part, John claims that he and Alex had been working with the Pixel Pirates to commercialize the Colour-Coded prototype for nine months, when development was supposed to continue in Toronto with five local developers. Given that the game’s prototype development cycle ended in August 2009, and that Vortex was two months later, it becomes difficult to see where these nine months could have fallen.

John said “The original members of the Pixel-Pirates had moved onto other projects and job opportunities, and would not be involved in the production of the game.”

I contacted Pixel Pirate Liam Wong to verify this. Liam initially agreed to answer my questions about Vortex, but later failed to respond. Liam’s Twitter message, in which he agreed to be interviewed, seems to have been deleted.

A Year is a Long Time to Remember

Vortex organizer Sari Ruda said, surprisingly, that Alex and John did have a Canadian corporation that actually owned the Colour-Coded IP. This is information that neither Alex nor John offered when I spoke with them, despite each being asked the question directly, twice. On my second request, Alex pleaded memory loss:

I’ve told you everything I can remember about the vortex competition last year. As I mentioned in my last email, I have been out of contact with John and the Scottish team (with the exception of my friend, Murray) since shortly after Vortex ended.

Despite having “moved on”, the Pixel Pirates managed to maintain the Colour-Coded production blog for an additional year, showcase it at the 2010 Scottish Game Jam, and appear in person to accept a Scottish BAFTA nomination for the game.

Responsibility

All of this raises the question of who was ultimately responsible to ensure Entrants’ eligibility. The 2009 guidelines state that by entering, Entrants warrant their own eligibility. As a check and balance, the competition organizers may request proof of eligibility from the Entrants. After organizers confirm eligibility, the competition’s judges have the final authority in declaring an Entrant eligible. Alex said:

“At the time of presenting Colour Coded at Vortex, we made it clear that we were doing it on behalf of the ‘Pixel Pirates’, which was the name of the UK team I had contact with. This didn’t seem to be an issue for judges and everything went ahead.”

In the email response from Sari, where she asserted that John and Alex had both a Canadian corporation and ownership of Colour-Coded, and were therefore eligible to enter, Sari unnecessarily added:

“We (the organizers) were not involved with the choice of the winners in any way. Only the judges were and we were not on the panel and had no influence on any of them during the whole of Vortex or spoke to any of them while they were deliberating at any time.”

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. If Alex and John were eligible, as Sari claims, I can’t fathom why she would then try to wash her hands of the responsibility to confirm the eligibility of the Entrants in her competition, leaving the high-profile final judges, including UbiSoft CEO Yannis Mallat, holding the bag.

Possible Outcomes

The worst case scenario, and the one that the online record and Alex’s own admission suggest, is that Alex Quick and John Josephson were not eligible to enter the 2009 Vortex Competition.

If Sari and John’s claims pan out, then the best possible outcome is this: in the six weeks leading up to Vortex, two Canadians bought an award-winning Scottish-developed video game prototype and presented it as their own game, and subsequently won the competition.

For a competition that Sari Ruda increasingly strives to align with the business affairs side of the game industry, this best case scenario may be acceptable to some. But for the small and struggling game developers of Toronto who, based on the site’s misleading promotional materials, expected a game design competition, Vortex is at best a profound disappointment, and at worse, a disorganized sham.

Limited Resources

Taxpayer dollars fuel the funds that made the 2009 Vortex Game Competition possible. These funds are limited, and should be spent on cultural events and activities that enrich and support the local and provincial game industry, including TOJam, the Hand Eye Society, the Toronto chapter IGDA, the Artsy Games Incubator, and newcomer GamerCamp.

The facts brought to light by the CultureGET article and which I expound in this article beg three results:

1. The results of the 2009 competition must be revisited by the event organizers to ensure that the $4000 first place award and accompanying benefits are re-awarded to one of the five finalists who met the event’s eligibility criteria.
2. Prospective entrants should give very careful consideration to their participation at this year’s event, which was rumoured yesterday to be canceled.
3. Where applicable, the involvement of the City of Toronto, the Ontario Media Development Corporation and other sponsors in the 2010 Vortex Competition should be strongly reconsidered.

UPDATES

Wednesday October 20th 2010

In an interview with Pixel Pirate Murray Sinclair, Edge Magazine reported in March 2010 (five months after Vortex) that following the game’s ProtoPlay debut in August 2009, the Pixel Pirates team received “an offer to buy the IP,” and that Murray had moved overseas and was “in talks to found his own indie studio”. Contrast this with John Josephson’s claim that as of Vortex 2009 he, Alex, and Murray controlled a Canadian corporation that owned the Colour-Coded IP, and were continuing production with a team of five Toronto developers. Since the article was posted in March 2010, well after Vortex (and indeed, mentions the Vortex win), one wonders why the article didn’t say that the Colour-Coded IP had been purchased, and a studio had been founded.

Thursday October 21st 2010

Alex Wiltshire, Online Editor of Edge Magazine, confirmed that by the time the article ran, Murray “had already moved to Canada and was working with a local company.” Looks like the Edge article had some future-tense responses about events that had already occurred by the time the article went live.

Thursday October 21st 2010

i had a chance to speak with the Vortex organizers in person today. They are aware of the issue, and are working to resolve it. i’ll be sure to post their conclusions once i hear about them.

It never used to be this way. Canada, the friendly and primarily Englsih-speaking neighbour to the North of the USA, used to get all the same stuff that they got stateside, at roughly the same time. Movies would be released on the same weekend, Canadian stations would broadcast big teevee shows on the same night, and all was right with the world.

Lately, though, this wonderful system has been falling apart. It became personal when the hotly-anticipated video game Rock Band was delayed a number of months in Canada – ostensibly so that the company could produce the bilingual French and English print materials. (i never bought that excuse … the game was published by EA, who have had ample experience writing French and English game manuals over the years). CTV, the primary Canadian carrier of American teevee for the masses, started pre-empting and re-scheduling certain top-tier shows like LOST, because they’d ordered hit shows from two competing American networks. Geo-blocking is rampant; Canadians can’t access Comedy Central, we can’t watch Hulu, and we don’t have TiVO. And the biggest cultural carrot that’s been dangled in front of our noses for years has been Netflix.

Netflix is a video rental service that charges a flat monthly fee, and provides subscribers access to a library of DVDs. More recently, they’ve added a video streaming service. As this service has been rolled out to numerous gadgets and gizmos that we Canadians own (iPods/iPhones, Xbox 360′s, PS3′s, Wiis), and the Yanks have made a huge fuss over it, we’ve been positively salivating at the prospect of the service coming to the Great White North.

Well, Netflix is here now. And what do we have, after the long wait? Imagine if, for just eight dollars, you could watch any movie – ANY MOVIE YOU WANTED – from that discount DVD bin next to the cash register at Home Hardware. ANY MOVIE. You’d just have to pay Rogers or Bell the extra fifty bucks a month to increase your bandwidth cap, and this world of Earthly pleasures would open up to you.

Supreme Netdown

i haven’t counted the number of movies on the Netflix Canada service, but i think it’s roughly twelve. Twelve movies, and i’ve already seen three of them. The movies are grouped into pretty granular categories, with a LOT of repeats between genre listings. Let’s take a look at the Netflix Canada offering of “Classic Sci-Fi & Fantasy” movies. But before we do, quick: what are the top ten Classic Sci Fi & Fantasy movies that come to your mind? i hope you could name ten, because Netflix Canada only offers seven. Seven movies. And classic, they ain’t:

• Mad Max (no Road Warrior, no Beyond Thunderdome)
• Godzilla’s Revenge (no original Godzilla, which has an IMDB rating of 7.3, to Revenge‘s 4.0)
• Ghidora: The Three Headed Monster (i’m no monster movie fan, but where’s Gamera? Mothra?)
• Fahrenheit 451
• Silent Running
• Red Planet Mars
• King of the Rocket Men

Did you perhaps think of Metropolis, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or THEM? Or did you conjure up more recent classics like Blade Runner, Alien, Willow, The Abyss, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Well tough nuts. They don’t have ‘em.

BONUS: Can i get an American subscriber to list the movies in this category on American Stream Instantly Netflix? Kthx.

The Hits Just Keep On Failing to Come

Netflix Canada’s twenty-two selections in the pure “Fantasy” section include stinkers like The Golden Child, Bewtiched (the Will Ferrell bomb), Cool World (??), and the Uwe Boll schlockbuster In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.

“Cult Comedies” (thirteen movies in total) has a few decent picks like The ‘Burbs, Being John Malkovich and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but really stretches the category with Teen Wolf (which is also inexplicably found in “Teen Horror”) and Big Top Pee Wee. No Election, no Rushmore, no Living in Oblivion, Ghost World, The Big Lebowski, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Heathers, Very Bad Things, or any other cult comedy I can think of.

(You’ll find Jeff Dunham and Joe Rogan in the Stand-up Comedy section, incidentally, which also stretches the genre category beyond its reasonable limits)

Flame On

i’ve complained about it a bunch on Twitter, so i think i should just post this last rant and shaddup about it. Here goes: Netflix Canada perfectly recreates the depressing feeling you get when you go to a Blockbuster Video store closing to buy some discounted DVDs and the place has been picked over, and all that’s left are twelve copies of Jim Carrey’s The Number 23. You try to convince yourself that your wife will really like the romcom Picture Perfect (starring Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Bacon), or that $6.99 is a small price to pay for all the fun your kids will have watching the animated feature film The Missing Lynx, with the voice talents of … no, seriously – WTF? The Missing Lynx? What the hell is that? MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes don’t even have entries for it, and the IMDB folks put it at a 5.6. Based on my viewing preferences (i spent an hour or so rating movies on the Netflix site – movies that Netflix Canada doesn’t even have in its library), Netflix itself thinks that i’ll rate The Missing Lynx at about a 2.4/5.

My American friends to the South speak of a land flowing with milk and honey – of a Netflix that has absolutely everything you could ever want to watch, streamed to every digital device you own short of your pocket watch. Now either the Yanks have a peculiar predilection for bargain bin trash, or we hosers are, once again, gettin’ hosed.

1. You Could Use a Hole Punch to Double Your Disk Space

The Commodore 64 was an immensely popular home computer in the 80′s. My family didn’t own one because we were dirt poor, but i used to play with one at the twins’ house (the twins’ mom would babysit me after school). Copy protection was almost non-existent on C64 games, so most kids (the twins included) had one or two enormous troughs of 5 1/4″ floppy disks that were mysteriously labeled. Sometimes up to three games were crammed on a disk. i remember the first time i ever saw a C64 game being sold new in the box in a computer software store and thinking “Oh … so THAT’S where they come from.”

These 5 1/4″ floppy disks were, by their very nature, double-sided. You could buy blank floppy disks, or you could pay extra money for double-sided floppies which you could flip over and insert into the disk drive upside-down to write to the other side. The way the drive knew that a floppy was double-sided was by a square notch cut into one side of the disk sleeve. By using a simple hole punch, you could pop a divot into your supposedly single-sided disks and voila – twice the space, half the money!

Bonus Fact: When 3.5″ floppies came out a few years later, many people took to calling them “hard disks”, a term which actually described a hard disk drive array where the disk media and read/write head are combined in one unit. If you cracked a 3.5″ disk open, you’d see that the disk inside was just as floppy as its larger-format forefather ever was.

2. Loading a Game Required Typing Skills

The common routine for loading a single game on the C64 went like this:

1. Fish the disk out of the trough. The hand-written label says “Dallas.” No idea what that is. Let’s try it.
2. Put the disk in the drive and flip the door lock down. It goes “caCHUNK.”
3. You’ve got a blue screen in front of you. The prompt says “Ready.”
4. Type LOAD “*.*”, 8, 1 (sometimes LOAD “$”, 8, 1; depending)
5. Type LIST .
6. The directory listing comes up. Cursor up to the name of the file you want to load. i think that the up/left arrows shared a physical keyboard key, as did the down/right arrows, so you’d actually have to hold a modifier key like CTRL in order to cursor up the screen.
7. Type LOAD before the name of the file. Cursor right to the end of the file name and type ,8 ,1;
8. With any luck – and sometimes it WAS just luck – your game would (slooowly) load. The actual loading process could take up to five minutes, depending on the game.
9. You discover that the game you chose was Dallas Quest, the text adventure based on the popular prime-time soap opera. (Yes, this is an actual thing.) A winner is you! Watch out for that conniving Sue Ellen.

3. Blowing on a Nintendo Cartridge Could Damage It

The Nintendo Entertainment System was not a very well-built machine. To play a game, you would flip open a little door, slide the cartridge inside a hinged carriage, and press the housing down until it clicked into place, making contact with the system’s guts. This mechanism wore down over time – a very short time, if i recall correctly – and the system’s innards were like a dust magnet. Most of us would try to fix the lurking problem of interior dust clogs by blowing on the cartridge contacts. This was a bad idea. We were actually blowing spit onto the metal contacts, making them vulnerable to corrosion.

The very best plan if you want a working NES these days is to eBay yourself a top-loader like i did. (note: “top-loader” is not to be confused with “top-shelfer”, which is where you take a crap in the toilet tank.)

4. Loading a Saved Game Took Five Minutes (And You Could Be Arrested For It)

1986′s The Legend of Zelda on the NES deserves a place in gaming history first for being awesomesauce, and second for being the first home console game cartridge with a battery back-up to store a saved game. You’d think that would be the end of it, right? Unfortunately, due to the added cost to integrate this feature, the vast majority of games did not have a battery in the cartridge, relying instead on very long passwords that described the variable state of your game progress. You’d usually get one of these passwords only when you passed a level, and they were often about forty characters long. Due to some lousy font choices by developers, you’d usually have an ass of a time distinguishing between 1′s and lower-case L’s, and zeroes and upper-case O’s. Entering one of these codes could take five whole minutes. Early game reviewers took to warning gamers about games using these clunky systems.

The one upshot to this was that you could enter passwords to get to later levels in the game that you’d never reach otherwise, if the game was too difficult or you couldn’t be arsed. These were pre-Internet days, so you’d usually only find these codes in gaming magazines and paperback books. i distinctly remember being chewed out by an uptight bookstore owner who caught a friend and me copying a 40-character password from a video game book in her store. “Do you know what that is, boys? That’s theft of information, and i could have you arrested for it!” These were also the days before mega bookstore chains like Chapters|Indigo here in Canada – if you were caught giving books more than a lingering glance, you’d get the old “EXCUSE ME SIR THIS ISN’T A LIBRARY.”

i quite like the future.

5. Pause or Die

Even worse than password-enabled games were games with no battery and no password system whatsoever. This was the pinnacle of lazy development, and it would force you to put your game on pause to go eat dinner, or sometimes leave it on for days while you were grounded. You were always paranoid that Mom would cruise by with the vacuum cleaner and nudge that exposed Reset button on the front of the NES. Systems like the Atari 2600, the joystick for which had only one button, actually pre-dated the convention of the now-ubiquitous “Pause” feature.

Weren’t no pausing, weren’t no saving. Thank goodness those games were such shorter experiences. Except …

6. The Atari 2600 Had an RPG on Cassette Tape

i remember my mind being officially blown when my friend came over to my house with a DragonStomper cassette tape. DragonStomper used the Starpath Supercharger add-on to milk more out of the startlingly limited Atari 2600 system. You’d jack the Supercharger into the console, and then feed the line into your ghetto blaster. You’d insert the DragonStomper cassette and press “Play”, and what unfolded on the screen really opened my eyes to the possibilities of the medium of video games. You played a little white dot, and on the Atari 2600 – yes, the Atari 2600, famous for its dead-simple single-screen games and rudimentary goal structures – you had to roam around the countryside buying supplies and assembling a small army to take on a ferocious dragon. What? It was a far cry from fighting that yellow duck thing in Adventure.

Wikipedia has a great article on DragonStomper. It’s a good read if you want to find out how developers were really pushing the limits of the hardware when every bit counted.

7. Per-system Game Ports Were Radically Different

Quite often, when a game like Pac Man came out for the Intellivison, the Coleco Vision, and the Atari 2600, three completely different dudes worked on the arcade port in complete isolation. The result is that Pac Man could be a completely different experience from console to console – a fact that we tend to forget in the days when the only palpable difference is often which exclusive Star Wars character you unlock in your system’s version of your favourite fighting game.

8. Games Cost Money

When you played a game in the arcade, you had to pay money. It was 25 cents per play, and it’s quite likely you would lose like an asshole in the first two minutes. It was like slot machines for kids, with no chance of ever earning your money back. When ports of popular arcade games hit home consoles, it was like a dream come true: i can play all i want, and i don’t have to insert any quarters!

These days, we’re adverse to shelling out a lousy dollar for an entire game experience on the iPhone. (But dadgummit, Apple’s doing its best to charge rental fees for teevee shows with its new set-top box, and i foresee a future where companies start abusing digital distribution to the point where we’re back to paying per-play again. Hell – WildTangent’s already doing it.)

9. Games Were Bitching Hard and Absolutely Unforgiving

Slowly, certain saving graces have developed as standard video game conventions: the saved game, the password, the battery back-up, the concept of lives (three strikes and you’re out), the extra life, the concept of a limited number of Continues after your lives were used up, earning extra continues after passing a score threshold … but in the Wild West of early video games, you were lucky to get just one of these features in your game.

The rest of the time, you were subjected to super-twitch gameplay that required the reflexes of Mr. Miyagi on uppers if you wanted to survive past the first level. Shadow of the Beast, Solstice, the Peter Puppy escort level from Earthworm Jim, Zaxxon, Zorro, and that bloody f*cking Turbo Tunnel race from BattleToads all stand out as games that i desperately wanted to see more of, but couldn’t, because i wasn’t all that excited about popping bennies as an eight-year-old to increase my alertness.

If you wanted to take it easy (like i often did) and kick back with something more cerebral like a text adventure game, you’d be confronted with a text parser that made you talk like Tarzan (TALK MAN! TAKE GEM! HIT HEAD!) with such a limited vocabularly that the game was impossible to play because you were too intelligent for it.

Chip, I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew!

Any other gaming grandpas wanna weigh in on the so-called glory days? Leave a comment and tell me all about it, before we all get wheeled away to a retirement home and forced to stand up to play Wii Sports.

Note: While i didn’t use the LinkBait Generator this week, this article is still a proud part of LinkBait Tuesdays! Please enjoy responsibly.

• Forgive Us Our Facebook

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal interviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who had similar ideas. Schmidt’s vision of the future allows all young people to change their names when they reach adulthood, as ReadWriteWeb reports:

• Google CEO Suggests You Change Your Name to Escape His Permanent Record

My wife and i are keenly aware that “adulthood” is on a sliding scale – a scale that is increasingly sliding towards age 30. It seems to have taken a very long time for the media to catch on to this trend that we’ve seen going on for years, but at long last, here comes the New York Times with a meaty article on the subject:

• What Is It With 20-Somethings?

(btw, the show Big Lake that they mention off the top of the article is one of the worst teevee shows i’ve ever seen. Work that laugh track, fellas.)

And finally, to add context to this discussion, here’s a cockatiel singing Tequila:

What do YOU think? Should Spike the singing cockatiel be legally allowed to change his name to Eric Schmidt on his thirty-second birthday?

This was my second time at the conference, and like most repeat visits to places, the show lost a lot of its lustre for me. i’m just going to offer my Monet-like, impressionistic view of the show without going into gory detail like i usually do, because you’re very busy and you have awesome things to do.

Hive Mind

Casual Connect is a conference of singularity. The show itself hosts mostly casual game industry companies – these are the folks who pioneered the “pay $20, download a match-3 desktop game” model in the early aughts. They were essentially riffing on the shareware model, where they’d offer a free time- or feature-limited trial, and the customer would pay to unlock the full experience. Companies like Big Fish Games, Pogo, and GameHouse/Real Networks became content aggregators, the game-centric equivalents of TUCOWS and Download.com, and they grew massive audiences of mostly soccer moms who lapped up games and genres that are largely derided by “real” gamers. These were games like Match-3 (Bejewelled), HOGs/Hidden Object Games (Mystery Case Files) and other light, friendly and very dumbed-down puzzle games engineered to have wide appeal to the lowest common denominator of players.

i say the show is singular, because the casual games industry really gets on these kicks. Once the industry is riding a wave, it’s all you hear about. Five years ago at GDC, it was the casual downloadable model that i just mentioned. Last year, everyone was nuts about social games on Facebook. It’s all i heard.

This year was interesting. The conference had one common focus: lack of focus.

Agreeing to Disagree

The buzz this year, even more than last year when social was exploding, was that the casual downloadable payment model is either dead or dying, depending on who you talk to. Companies like Big Fish Games, who made their millions on that model, naturally begged to differ. They attempted to show that the model was actually growing by 20-30% every year. In one talk, Big Fish’s Sean Clark interestingly turned it back around on social, reminding everyone that in there was a massive disparity between the money Zynga was raking in, and the money that the other 9 companies in the top 10 were earning … and that once you leave the top 10, the drop-off is precipitous. Big Fish’s corporate line is now to call social a “red herring”, or as two Big Fish employees repeated to me, a “distraction”.

That’s actually how i’ve long felt about social. You hear these fantastic success stories about the space, but you really only hear them about three or four companies. i don’t run one of those companies. My best strategy there is to release something on Facebook, trump myself up and hope to get bought by Playdom or some other social company. That’s not what i want out of this life. Very early in the show, i had a brief chat with Erik Bethke, whose company was bought by Zynga. i’ve heard Erik talk about his game GoPets for years at GDC and elsewhere, and i found it really sad to see him swallowed up by Zynga, and to have his game shut down. When i expressed that sentiment to a few folks at the conference, they said “it must have been worth the money.” i remain conflicted about it.

The gatekeeper issue is the single largest factor keeping me from charging into Facebook game development. Just before production stalled on Interrupting Cow Trivia a few months ago, we were working on adding Facebook Connect integration to the game. Not long afterward, Facebook yanked the feature entirely. And enough articles have been written on the 30% drop in traffic social games receive in what the Casual Connect crowd dubs the “post-viral era”, after Facebook changed its policies around how game devs can tap into the graph to spam the users about their games. Very shortly, we expect Facebook to cut out all external payment providers and force devs to use Facebook credits. i run a really small shop, and simply lack the money and time to constantly tune my games according to the whims of a gatekeeper.

Robotic Game Design

Beyond downloads vs social, the other big argument going on this year was data-driven design vs what i’ll call “organic” design. If you can coin a better term, please let me know. Data-driven design is like flying a plane by the dials. You release something half-baked to the audience, load it up with tracking hooks, and build out the rest of the game using heavy A/B testing to figure out what they players are interested in.

Organic game design is old-school. You come up with an idea for a game that you think people would like to play. Then you build that game and hope for the best.

Nowhere was this issue laid bare more than at the six-person panel i attended on day two, which was stacked with head honchos from Sandlot Games, Playrix, Large Animal, HipSoft, Last Day of Work and Shockwave/MTV. The panel was called “Taking Your Games to the Next Level: Investing In Your IP”, but it should have been called “Sassy bitch slap-fight”. i like a contentious panel discussion, and this one didn’t disappoint.

The thread running through the talk, punctuated by the terse exchanges between George Donovan of Gogii Games and Last Day of Work’s Arthur Humphrey, was this data-driven vs organic design debate. George is all about spending as little money as possible to develop games that ride the wave of whatever his metrics tell him is most popular on the casual games portals. Arthur is about developing games passionately, and sinking a lot of money into them to make them the best experiences possible.

i assume both approaches have merit, because both of these girls remain in business. It won’t surprise you to know that i side with folks like Arthur on this debate. i make video games because i like video games. i don’t want to fly by the dials and develop dramatically dumbed-down experiences to please Midwest soccer moms desperate for an escape, for whom casual games have become a substitute for Harlequin Romance paperbacks. No thanks. Design-by-data has made a lot of money for a lot of people, but it’s also ruined a lot of stuff (read up on the test audience that demanded a happy ending for Little Shop of Horrors. Why i oughta …).

Call me a terrible, irresponsible bidnessman, but i’m led by my passion. i would much rather create build games by my gut, intuition, and love of the medium, hoping that i find that perfect mix of creative ingenuity and luck, than to deliver rote me-too experiences according to what the top ten charts told me was popular a month ago. If i wanted to do that, there are plenty of service jobs that demand far less time and mental energy from me.

Buy Our Crap

i may as well raise this post to full-fledged rant status by calling out the (many) speakers who used their sessions solely to promote their companies (Joel Breton of Addictinggames, i’m looking at you). Google ran a Trojan horse session where they roped everyone in ostensibly to talk about their upcoming Google Chrome Marketplace, and used scant information on that to house a long-winded ad for HTML5.

This is starting to annoy me far more than speakers who leave the mouse cursor in the middle of a video during a presentation. i don’t spend thousands of dollars and fly across the continent to attend hour-long commercials for your products. Put in a quick plug, point me to the brochures at the back of the room, and then tell me something useful. Or shut up.

In Summary

So there it is: Casual Connect Seattle left me with the impression that the chinks in the industry’s armour are showing up all over the place. Confusion, conflict and uncertainty reign. It’s an industry dominated by business types paying passing lip service to the creative work that fuels the money flow, and whatever scant creativity does exist is being eroded by a hit-driven, top 10 sales chart mentality.

And then we die.

Over the weekend, I was speaking with someone who was working construction on the building. i asked him if it was a positive experience, and he said “nah – the whole place is built on a graveyard. All the wires and stuff.” i didn’t know what he meant. “You mean it’s built on outdated technology?”

“No,” he said, “the Bell Lightbox is built on a literal graveyard. Stuff would be working one day, and then, inexplicably, it would stop working the next.”

Who You Gonna Contact on the Telephone?

Is it true? Does the new Bell Lightbox have a poltergeist problem? And on what kind of burial ground is the the new home of the Toronto International Film Festival situated? Are these spirits harmful or helpful? Will they launch the career of a hot young starlet, like they did with Christina Ricci in Casper? Will they wreak havoc on the box office, like Bill Cosby in Ghost Dad? Will they give everyone raging boners by doing sexy pottery like Patrick Swayze in Ghost? Or will they be insidious boner-shrinkers, like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost?

My Bell Lightbox source said that the building was erected on the earthly remains of Irish potato famine victims who arrived in Toronto fleeing the crisis, and promptly died. i remember hearing a similar story about Holt Renfrew in Yorkville – that the ritzy uptown shopping district is built on the mass grave of Upper Canada settlers who died of cholera in the 1800′s. i live a few blocks from Yorkville, and i can only offer that a few of these elderly ladies get facelifts so extreme that they merely look like scraps of skin stretched across terrifyingly re-animated skulls.

So! Could the ghosts of Irish immigrants be tampering with the new theatre equipment?

Well – could they? i’m no expert in spooks, so i’d like to crowdsource a definitive answer on this by the end of the week, folks.

TOJam, you may know, is the Toronto Indie Game Jam, where sweaty nerds spend a weekend building games. The fifth anniversary of the event was my fourth time attending. If i could go back in time, i’d definitely attend the first one. i’d also give Hitler a purple nurple.

A month or so after TOJam, the organizers put together a public exhibition of the games called the TOJam Arcade. The game creators can use that time to fix whatever didn’t work by the end of the original weekend (which is usually everything.)

Beer.

This year’s arcade was held last Saturday night at the Imperial Pub near Yonge and Dundas Square. We succeeded in putting out the older barflies, who were pissed at not being able to watch their horse races, and the inebriated college crowd, who came precariously close to sloshing house draft on the data projectors.

Prizes.

At the end of the evening, they held a raffle with prizes comped by Big Blue Bubble, and some guy named Andy. They called my ticket number, and i was stunned to find i’d won the big prize of the evening – an Xbox 360 Elite bundle with Halo ODST, Forza 3, and a copy of Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia. It’s been over a decade since i’ve won something in a raffle, so it was a nice surprise. Thanks, Big Blue Bubble!

Soon after, they announced the People’s Choice Awards. Our game Heads was voted “Best Use of Theme”. The TOJam 5 theme was “missing”, and Heads is about a guy who wakes up to find that he’s literally lost his head. It was a really nice and unexpected win, but i think some other teams came up with far more subtle and clever uses of the theme. (Don’t get me wrong, though – i’m not complaining!)

After struggling to balance the Xbox home on my bike through rain-slicked streets, i went to lock up in the bike room and found a ten dollar bill on the floor. True. That actually happened. It all made me feel bad for kicking that kitten in the face earlier in the day.

Other Non-Me Winners

The top three Peoples Choice games included Nom Nom Nom Nom (a Hungry Hungry Hippos clone with three cats and a goat), MonoClimb, the black-and-white co-operative platformer by prize-donating Andy and friends (i mentioned it in my last TOJam article), and Last Hadron Collider, a two-player simultaneous obstacle race with randomly-generated levels and great-looking character sprites. You’ll be able to play all these games and more at the TOJam site once everything is uploaded.

Once the games are up, i’ll write another post listing my own People’s Choice picks with some undiscovered gems. In the meantime, i’ll try not to let our productivity on Spellirium take too much of a hit, now that we can finally put those extra Rock Band instruments to use at the office.

These are the notes for the mid-term that the students followed. They had to build this game:

To date, the students have received 20 classes (60 hours) of Flash instruction. i’ve taught 6 of those classes. i haven’t marked the assignments yet, but i have the distinct feeling that very few of the 30+ students, if any, finished with a working “game”.

An End to the No-Fail Generation

i mentioned in another post that these students are the No-Fail Generation. They have been given breaks and second chances left and right. Since they were completely inept at emailing files, at least one teacher took pity on them and would pass around a keydrive for them to upload their finished exams. i decried this as so much spoon-feeding. i was bound and determined to require the students to email me. Here were their instructions:

HANDING IN YOUR MID-TERM EXAM:

Add ALL of your files to a zip archive file. This includes your fla, your swf, your .as files, and your FlashDevelop .as3proj file if you have one. Name the zip file using your first inital and last name.

Example:

My name is Ryan Creighton, so i would name the zip file rcreighton.zip.

Use your own name. DO NOT send me a file called rcreighton.zip.

email the file to profryan ~at~ untoldentertainment ~dot~ com. (i had the actual address available – obscuring it here to foil the spiders.) If you want to be sure it reaches me, add your own email address to the cc (carbon copy) line. If you receive the email, I’ll receive the email.

Failure to email your properly-named zip file to me by the end of class at 6PM will result in a zero grade – no exceptions, no extensions.

Read that last part carefully for me. i wanted a properly-named zip file. That’s all i asked. One simple thing. And screwing that one simple thing up would result in an Insta-Fail, and a loss of 20% of the final class mark.

So! What did i receive in my inbox? A number of students sent me zip files that were called “monsterGame.zip” or “midTermExam.zip”. Those students, i’m resolved to fail. i have to. i will mark their exams and show them the grade they could have earned. But despite the instructions being clearly stated, and despite having spent 20 minutes on how to zip, name, and attach a file to an email in the previous class, i still got monsterGame.zip from some students. If that’s not a fail, i don’t know what is.

Oh – So You’re a Hard-Ass?

No, i’m not a hard-ass. i’m a realist. i want these students to succeed. And if the most careless students want to waste their time and tuition money learning how to follow a simple instruction and send an email attachment, and that’s the ONLY skill they possess when they emerge from college, then at least i’ll have taught those students something.

The LAST thing i want is for these students to embarrass themselves in the workplace by being completely useless, telling everyone “Ryan Creighton taught me Flash!”

Your Opinion Required

My dilemma is what to do with a student like Bob Smith, who emailed me a file called bsmith_monstergame.zip. Technically, Bob Smith did not follow the instructions. i did not receive a file with ONLY his first initial and last name. i got a file with his first initial, last name, an underscore, and some other nonsense that he thought might be helpful.

i haven’t checked all of the files, but i know there are at least three Bob Smiths in the class who messed this up in a similar way. So i open the floor to you, dear readers: knowing that i am going to award a zero grade to students who did not follow the naming convention, what do i do with the students who named the file properly, but appended some extra jazz to the end?

Take the poll and let me know!

And if you’re one of my students and you decide to vote, please identify yourself in the comments! :)

This series is called “What’s Wrong with Ontario Colleges?” A number of you have pointed out, on Twitter and elsewhere, that what i’m describing is what’s wrong with all colleges. But now, i want to shine the spotlight on perhaps an unexpected target, and suggest that not only are colleges flawed, but so too are their customers.

Part 2: The Students

In order to discover why Ontario colleges can’t seem to produce workplace-ready graduates for the casual games/rich media content industry, i went deep undercover as a fledgling teacher at a Toronto college that shall remain nameless: Hernando Velasquez School for the Digitally Inclined.

i went to … oh, damn. i just said the name, didn’t i? Unfortunately, the backspace key on my keyboard has been rigged to issue a low-grade electrical shock every time i press it, so i have no choice but to speak to you about this frankly and honestly.

So i completed 200 one-armed push-ups on my knuckles, and then accepted a part-time position at the school. i’m teaching a second-semester Flash course. Owing to my sense of self-preservation, i won’t identify any one student. There’s enough trouble to go around for me to treat the entire student body as one collective asspain. Game Development is the type of program that attracts a certain type of person, and the blame for that is shared by both the institution and its customers.

Everyone Can Get a Job Making Games

Colleges are businesses first and foremost. They need to offer desirable products. The perception is that purchasing their product will provide you with sufficient training to seek and (hopefully) land a position in that field. This is not the stated goal of all colleges, mind you – i remember clearly that when i recommended to Durham College as a member of their advisory panel that they increase their Flash offering to improve their students’ employability, the school’s teacher rep said “oh – we’re not here to get the students jobs. We’re here to facilitate their exploration of their art, of their chosen pursuit.” Yes – that actually happened.

But Hernando Velasquez School for the Digitally Inclined is a different story. They proudly proclaim in their literature that 90% of their grads get jobs within the first six months of graduating. Note that they don’t say 90% of their grads get jobs in the industry for which HVSD trained them. They just claim that the students were employed within six months. Now, really, since we all need to get a job doing something, this is actually an alarming stat: Hernando Velasquez is tacitly admitting that 6 months after graduating, 10% of their graduates are either unemployed or dead.

So the college is under pressure to put together an attractive offering in its course calendar. Nothing’s hotter than a job in the oft-heralded video game industry, so colleges across the province (country, world) are now purporting to train students in the video game industry.

Who Applies?

Now, let’s assemble a profile of the average teenaged male in high school to whom this offering might appeal. He’s tall. He’s gawky. He plays video games all the time. He masturbates to the underwear pages in the Sears fliers. He’s not bright enough to be a doctor, or he’d apply for in pre-med. He’s not bright enough to go to University at all, in fact. Ontario high schools are usually streamed, and it’s generally accepted that kids in the upper stream go on to University, and kids who take the lower general-level courses wind up in either college or prison. This is not by rule, but by reputation.

So this college-bound gamer has two options to him: he can enroll in the college’s programming course, or he can take their video game development program. Programming likely has grade 12 math prerequisites, and he’s not nearly smart enough for that. The video game program is an art program. So is this guy a fabulous artist? Probably not, or else he’d be taking a fine arts program somewhere. So he’s a gawky, hairy-palmed male gamer with perhaps no remarkable drawing skills and no great ambitions to use his grey matter in post-secondary education. This – THIS is the student who enrolls in the game development course at XYZ college. And THIS is the only type of kid who gets a shot at learning Flash, because we’re not teaching Flash very much in University, and we’re likely glossing over it in college-level programming.

And THIS explains why most of the Flash shops i know are trying to hire, with no luck. As i mentioned in the previous post, it’s a ten-year-old problem.

The No-Fail Generation

There’s another important thing to understand about our game dev program applicant. He hearkens from a generation of kids who, as of the late 1990′s, were unable to fail. It’s true: changes to the high school curriculum brought about by the Ministry of Education forbade teachers from flunking grade nine students. No matter how truant, lazy, or downright dumb a student was, he would sail on straight through the ninth grade. In my experience working as a part-time youth pastor at my church, i found there are even more cracks for these kids to slip through. i’ve known more than a few kids who should be failing, should be held back, but are repeatedly promoted to the next grade by an education system that doesn’t want to bruise their egos. Anecdotally, my friend who works at a major Canadian chain of retailers for young people tells me that when these kids get part-time jobs, screw up, and get fired, it’s an absolute shock to the system. They’ve never failed.

i was invited by colleagues of mine to lecture at a game development program at Humber College here in Ontario. The course outcome was to complete a Flash game. The class was divided into two groups of about eight students. The students had four months to collectively complete a flip n’ match memory game in Flash. And they were struggling.

Let me just punctuate that for you: it wasn’t one game per student. It was eight students working as a team to complete one game.

They were taking the typical college-level token Flash Actionscript 3 course along side their game dev course, and were swearing a blue streak at what they called an impossible task. A game, they said? A full game in four months with only eight people?? They told me it couldn’t be done.

i told them that for an experienced solo Flash developer, a flip n’ match memory game was the work of a single afternoon. They didn’t believe me. So for the next three hours, i sat down and walked them through the process of building the game from scratch. Along the way, i pointed out all kinds of programming shortcuts they could take, dropped sparkling gems of advice that would speed up their workflow, and built a functioning flip n’ match game before their very eyes.

Or it would have been before their very eyes, if any of them had been watching. For the most part, they futzed around on their computers with other projects, chatted to their friends on Windows Messenger, or surfed the underwear pages of the online Sears catalogue.

One particularly slimy student who had been glued to Facebook for the entire lecture slithered up to me after class and held out his keydrive. Like a greasy lounge lizard trying to pick up a chick in a low-rent bar, he said “Yyyyyeah, uh … do you suppose i could just … put that finished game on my kkkeydrive?”

i had two words for him. The second word was “you”.

Playing Games vs. Making Games

This week, i arrived early to teach class. The group has another class before mine in the neighbouring room. That room was blasting with machine gun fire, swearing, and the stench of gym class. All of the students were in there playing games. i wondered where the teacher was. One of the students told me he was a no-show. So, of course, that’s how they decided to spend those three hours – playing games.

Every time there’s the briefest pause during my class when i go to help a flailing student, the monitors light up with Team Fortress 2 and Quake and online web games. So a few weeks ago, i dropped this truth-bomb on them:

Listen, everyone. i know you probably go home to Chatham or Barrie or wherever it is you’re from and brag to your dumb buddies that you play games at school all day, but that’s not why you’re here. You’re in a game development program, not a game playing program. You’re a different breed of person now. You’re behind the scenes, not in front of them. You’re a creator, not a consumer.

It’s like you’re trying to get a job in a cake factory. Cakes are fun and enjoyable and people like to eat them, but a factory job is a factory job like any other. You don’t get a cake factory job to sit around and eat cakes all day. Turn the games off. It’s time to put some blood, sweat and tears into learning how to make cakes.

Email: The Insurmountable Challenge

i had to write a mid-term exam for the students. When i asked him to show me the ropes, the guy who teaches the same course to three other classes imparted some advice: the best thing to do, if i want to make sure i get all of their finished tests, is to pass around a keydrive. Whenever a student finishes his exam, you pass him the keydrive and he puts his files on it. i asked why the students couldn’t just email their files. He said that when you ask the students to email their completed exam files to you, there are problems. They type your email address incorrectly, they send you shortcut files as attachments, and they forget to include files.

And my response? Forget it. Not on my watch.

If you can’t competently email an attachment with your name on it, you’re not only going to fail my course, but you’re going to fail life in modern Western civilization. To make sure that everyone knew the score, i told the students in no uncertain terms that i expected a zip file containing their completed exam files with their first initial and last name emailed to me at the correct address. Then i would go down the class list and start checking off names. If i didn’t receive their file, they’d flat-out fail the test.

There’s one exception:

No – i’m just yanking your chain. There are NO exceptions. No email, no mark.

So we actually took 15-20 minutes out of the class to learn how to right-click a folder, add it to a zip file, and attach it to an email. It was embarrassing. i was embarrased.

At break, one of the students piped up to tell me that in another class, their teacher had asked for the same thing – zip files with students’ names on them. He provided a sample naming convention – the teacher’s name was Gord Smith, so he wrote gsmith.zip on the whiteboard as the example.

And what do you think happened? Dear friends, his inbox filled up with multiple files called gsmith.zip.

The Chain of Irresponsibility

i don’t actually blame this all on the students. Somewhere, someone let them down. If these kids don’t know how to use email, it’s not the Colleges’ fault. That burden is squarely on the high schools. So in conclusion, the problem with Ontario Colleges is not the students, but the high schools.

EXCEPT that i recently had dinner with a high school English teacher. She has to administer the grade 10 standardized testing to her class. In order for her school to score highly on the testing (and it does), she is encouraged by her department head to hand out IEPs – Individualized Education Plans – to students left, right and center. It’s a loophole. With an IEP, any student who wants an extra hour on the standardized test, gets an extra hour on the standardized test. (Make no mistake – the department head can and should be fired for this.)

So the English teacher is no longer able to teach high school English. She has to teach to the standardized test. If you’ve seen the excellent HBO series The Wire, the same shenanigans went down in that show. The burden of standardized testing put on the high schools is the Ministry’s fault.

So the problem with Ontario Colleges, conclusively, is the Ministry of Education.

BUT … what about the fact that these teachers are at the mercy of the students’ parents? Everyone in high school gets a passing grade these days, and that’s largely because if you try to give a student less than a passing grade, you find yourself on the phone having to justify your decision to the kid’s parent. i have many friends who are teachers, and the stories they tell about parental interference could curdle your milk. The CBC recently ran a documentary about these people called Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids. You can watch it on their site for free. It talks about, among other things, parents who call up their kids’ places of employment to negotiate their pay raises.

In … Conclusion?

i’ve traced the problem with Ontario Colleges through the institution to the students, back to the high schools, up to the Ministry of Education, and back around to the kids’ parents, who demand it be that way in the first place. These parents, to have teenaged kids, were likely born some time in the 60′s. So my penultimate conclusion is that the problem with Ontario Colleges is children of the 60′s.

Because i’m a lousy researcher, the trail runs cold there. If you want to take up the torch, i welcome you to it. Here’s where we left off: what the Hell is wrong with children of the 60′s, and are THEY the reason that nobody in Toronto knows how to make games in Flash?

The first thing that may come to mind when you think of the word “pad” is “menstrual pad”, which is a spongy mesh-covered product that ladies put in their underpants to blot the flow of blood from their periods. Nearly all post-pubsecent, pre-menopausal women experience their menstrual period approximately every twenty-eight days. Over half of the world’s population is female, so menstrual periods are experienced by, were experienced by, or will be experienced by about three billion human beings on this planet.

This is a picture of a menstrual pad:

So my question for you, world – and particularly the nerdy male tech press that will cover the iPad – is this: are you over it? Can you get past the fact that one definition of the word “pad” describes the rag that women put in their underwear?

Resist the Urge, Funny Man

Or do you want to be funny? Do you want to make a joke about it? Do you want to make some attempt at humour that points out the association between “iPad” and “menstrual pad”?

And if you want to be funny, i understand that. It’s very rewarding to tell a joke and to have people laugh at it. i try to be funny all the time. It makes things more interesting, and it makes me feel good when people laugh at my jokes.

But if you’re new to humour, here’s a hot tip: jokes about menstruation aren’t particularly funny. They’re actually kinda sleazy. Women, generally, don’t like them. And more evolved men don’t tend to enjoy them either.

Why You’re Not Funny

Here’s another joke-telling protip, if you’re still keen on unleashing your iPad/menstrual pad zinger on an unsuspecting world: the more obvious the joke is, the more likely it is that people have already heard it, and the less likely they are to laugh and consider you clever.

Example: Michael Jackson and the Pope walk into a bar, and … SOMETHING ABOUT MOLESTING CHILDREN!!! KA-POW!!

… Ha ha ha?

On Being a Three-Year-Old

We went through this when Nintendo released the Wii. In English, “Wii” sounds like “wee”, which is infantile slang for “urination” or “penis”. Wii jokes were old the moment Nintendo revealed the name, and iPad/menstrual pad jokes will be doubly so.

So my advice for you, fellow men – as i am a dyed-in-the-wool humourist, and someone who’s dropped more than his fair share of unfunny bombs, is this: do not make menstrual pad jokes about the iPad, or i will list you at the bottom of this post in my Unfunny iPad/Menstrual Pad Joke-Telling Douchebag Hall of Fame.

To recap: obvious jokes about feminine hygiene products are not funny, and make you sound like a dim-witted sleaze. Exception: “douchebag”, which remains both useful and hilarious.

Unfunny iPad/Menstrual Pad Joke-Telling Douchebag Hall of Fame

(go ahead – publish an article with an iPad/menstrual pad gag. i will put your name here, because you’re an idiot.)

• MadTV (a bastion of classy humour) used the iPad gag well before the product was announced (or perhaps even designed). These guys have set the sleaze bar quite high. Let’s see if anyone can top them:
  
  
  

• Congratulations to (apparently) everyone who uses Twitter, for making the oh-so-witty “iTampon” a trending topic:

  

  It’s subtle, but i … i *think* i get it …

• Jezebel.com has a list of individual Twitter offenders
• npr’s Shereen Meraji apparently finds it hilarious (thanks, Amy)

UPDATE

i received a concerned email from Chella over at Adventures in Menstruating. At AIM, the entire schtick is built around period jokes, but Chella helped me put a fine point on it: i think what really bothers me about menstruation “jokes” is that they’re often a thinly-veiled jab at women. If Chella wants to run a thoroughly disgusting, poop report-style site starring Aunt Flo, more power to her. i hereby grant Chella amnesty from the Unfunny iPad/Menstrual Pad Joke-Telling Douchebag Hall of Fame.

i will do the same for you, if you can produce some sort of documentation proving that you are mentally challenged, either due to a birth defect or some sort of boating accident when you were younger. Otherwise, prepare to see yourself on that list. Resist the urge!!

You Are Sooo Samrt

And to those who repeat, incredulously, “iPad?? How did that escape Apple’s marketing department? Golly, they were really asleep at the switch,” i say puhLEEEZE. You must honestly think that 1. you were clever enough to come up with an iPad/menstruation joke on your own before anyone else, and 2. the marketing department of a publicly-traded, multi-schnillion dolar company that has spent millions of dollars developing this new product and building an insane amount of hype around it, never once, in all the weeks and months they spent preparing this press conference and devising their brand and marketing strategy, considered that the word “pad” also describes a feminine hygiene product.

Really? Really?? You honestly think that the lame joke you cooked up after a few minutes of grinding your grey matter gears actually evaded the attention of an entire corporation full of people? You think you’re really that brilliant? Well then … i’m not sure what to say. i’ll only assert that those who end up on the list deserve to be there. ;)

Further Reading

• CNN Covers the iPad Naming Issue

This article has nothing to do with video games, and for that, please forgive me. i was enrolled in a bona fide University at one point in my life working toward a degree in Cultural Studies before Opportunity knocked and suggest i actually do something with my life instead. Here’s what my ramblings could have looked like if i had stuck with Cultural Studies.

These are two very important pop culture observations: one about how and why Star Wars was ruined, and the other about werewolves and vampires. First up, Star Wars.

“Menace” is Right

At the recommendation of one member of Get Set Games (it doesn’t matter which one – i can’t tell those guys apart cuz i’m white), i watched a seven-part YouTube review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. i hated the movie when it came out, and all of my prejudices came bubbling to the surface when i watched this damning video review. If you can’t afford the 70 minutes (!!), watch the segment on character beginning at 6:41:

To ruin the ending for you, the review concludes that adversity – tight budgets, time constraints, creative differences, etc – help an artist to produce excellent work, while an artist like Lucas working carte blanche with no constraints will produce The Phantom Menace.

My comment is about the nail in the coffin during that flick – the revelation that the Force, an “energy field created by all living things” which “surrounds us, penetrates us and binds the the galaxy together”, is actually owed to certain living things … namely midi-chlorians, which are apparently some sort of bacteria that give people magical powers. The concept of midi-chlorians dashed all hope that the newest Star Wars movies were going to be good, and i turned off my brain for the rest of the movie and crawled back into that special place i inhabited as a young Star Wars enthusiast – you know, back when things didn’t completely suck.

So here’s my outrageous claim: more than any other element in that awful movie, midi-chlorians ruined Star Wars. And midi-chlorians were written into Star Wars lore because present-day audiences don’t go to church.

The Hell You Say

Western audiences, like it or not, hail from the Christian tradition – mainly Protestant and Catholic branches. The Force has more in common with Zen Buddhism than Christianity, but sci-fi audiences of the 70′s and 80′s, being much more recently connected with the church, were more likely to accept a supernatural explanation of certain concepts in the Star Wars mythology. Now that we have stores open for business on Sunday (this was not done when i was a boy), and the majority of moviegoers are Godless heathens (Transformers tops the box office!), we need a suitably scientific justification for the Jedis’ magic powers.

Midi-chlorians are like super-powered white blood cells. They’re even described by the characters in The Phantom Menace as having a “count”. Instead of “the Force is strong in this one,” it’s “this guy has a high midi-chlorian count. i recommend professional development seminars on Dagobah.”

Whether or not spirituality-rejecting, science-loving existentialist modern-day moviegoers would have gone on accepting the original concept of the Force is immaterial. Lucas pro-actively anticipated the need to update his lore. And when he did, my Universe (and the tiny bacteria holding it together) came crashing down.

Werewolves, Vampires, and 1970′s Porno

On to werewolves, which i am not nearly as passionate about, so i mention this only as a triviality. With the New Moon saga heading into lycanthrope territory and Universal dusting off its Wolfman franchise after pocketing some coin with The Mummy, i’ve heard more than one entertainment reporter ask “are werewolves the new vampires???” Just like that. With the same obnoxious emphasis and everything.

i’m here to tell you that no, werewolves are NOT the new vampires, and here’s why: because ladies started shaving their public regions in girly magazines in the 80′s.

Manscape my Meat

We Westerners live in a sanitized society. Our pooping, puking and dying is largely kept out of sight. We don’t kill our own food – we buy clinically-packaged cuts of meat in white styrofoam trays that is as far removed from any semblance of a dead animal as we can muster. i was in my early teens before i realized that meat was dead animal muscle tissue (slow-witted, i know), and once when i was out to dinner, my friend sent his order of chicken wings back because one or two wings still had tufts of feathers on them. It thoroughly repulsed us.

Our sex is sanitized, too. Men aren’t allowed to have hair on the most likely spots on their bodies, and women, following the cue of men’s magazines, shave their pubic triangles down to velcro-like landing strips. And porn stars are even more extreme: every inch shaved, waxed and smoothed so that they resemble living plastic Barbie dolls.

That’s why vampires are so super-sexy. We like our vampires sanitized, like our porn – our bloodsuckers are pale, smooth, and carefully preened. Male vampires’ chests are hairless, because they’re largely portrayed by young men.

Werewolves, conversely, are like a bad 70′s skin mag where the ladies don’t “clean” themselves up. Hair everywhere. It’s revolting. And they’re all animalistic – grunting, panting, howling, and ripping people to shreds. Vampires go in for a clean kill, with two sylized and sanitary rivulets of blood that stream perfectly down a victim’s alabaster neck. Werewolves? Hell – werewolves will tear your head off its shoulders and spill your intestines out your bellybutton. They’re unrefined, boorish, and downright gross.

Werewolves don’t wear heirloom cameo pendants and crushed velvet vests. Their clothes are all ripped and junk. That was fashionable for, like – what? Four months in the 1980′s? Vampires are timeless, while werewolves are all Teen Wolf. The 80′s again, when women still had hairy genitalia.

In Conclusion

So kids, if you’re stuck on the “werewolves vs. vampires in the context of pornograhy” question on your GED test, here’s the right answer:

vampire is to Jenna Jameson as werewolf is to OUI Magazine circa 1971

With brilliant and useful insights like these, it’s a shame i never finished University.

He

That’s right, He – none other than Yannis Mallat, Chief Executive Officer of Ubi Soft Montreal. Yannis, with his lush beard and flowing mane of silky shoulder-length shampoo commercial hair, riding on a cloud against a blinding host of heavenly flood lights, to the blast of a thousand heralding trumpets. Yannis – with an olive branch in his left hand and a Wii controller in his right, a halo of light framing his face. Yannis Mallat, draped in the finest gowns, with sandals of bronze and a crown made of tickles. This is the very saviour who’s bringing his multi-bazillion dollar juggernaut game studio into Toronto some time soon, his way made smooth by a path paved with hundred dollar bills, courtesy of the Ontario Government. Yannis! Angels sing! Yannis! Elderly women lose all bowel control! Yannis! And every game developer in town swoons at the mere mention of his name.

Stop: Mallat Time

The Vortex Competition landed Yannis Mallat as one of their top-tier judges, and the excitement is palpable. And disturbing. Palpably disturbing.

Since the Vortex “grand” prize of $2500 is nothing to write home about (and indeed, a drop in the bucket of the many thousands of buckets it takes to fund game development these days), many of the people i’ve spoken with about the competition say the same thing “i don’t care about winning – i care about the networking. i get to present my game concept to Yannis Mallat. You know – the Ubi Soft CEO? And if he likes it, well … this could be my big break.”

For serious. Grown men are actually saying this to me. And not just idealistic, adorably naive students – i’m talking grown-up professionals who should know better. There seems to be this sense that Yannis Mallat, who heads a company packed with video game professionals, all of whom have at least ten game ideas that they’re dying to make – that this guy is going to show up to a low-rent competition like Vortex, watch a presentation, and say “This guy. This guy’s our next STAR.”

i wish i could say that i hate to burst everyone’s bubble, because i actually really enjoy bursting bubbles – especially big, ridiculous and implausible bubbles like this one. Yannis Mallat is not judging the Vortex Competition so that he can fill a senior-level game developer position at Ubi Soft. The 2007 competition felt a lot like the first round of American Idol, except that it was filled with people who were too retarded to even make the first round of American Idol.

Hollywon’t

This desire to “get discovered” betrays sort of a disturbing hidden desire among the game developers in this town. As video games resemble Hollywood more and more, these folks seem to think they can hang out at Schwab’s Pharmacy (Vortex) and look pretty (have a good game idea), when in walks Cecil B. DeMille (Yannis Mallat) who sees that they have that spark – that je ne sais quoi – and he signs them to a multi-million dollar ($80k/year) contract at Paramount Pictures (Ubi Soft).

Of course, we all know how that Hollywood dream really ends up. Some pretty young thing hops a bus from Idaho to Los Angeles in the hopes of being discovered and making it big, and she ends up doing porn.

Here’s where my analogy breaks down. i’m not too sure what the video game industry equivalent of porn is. Gold farming? Interactive bar-top poker games? Something like that.

i hate to say all this. i really do. But it just blows my mind that everyone i’ve spoken with who’s entering this competition thinks they’ll be hob-nobbing with Yannis, his buddies, and a couple of loose broads over martinis at the Boom Boom Room after the competition is over. It’s like getting tickets to a Rolling Stones concert and thinking you’re going to go backstage and meet Mick and Keef, and they’re gonna do a few lines with you and listen to your demo and set you up with a sweet record deal. It … holy crap. i can’t express this to you. It boggles my already mostly-boggled mind.

Back to Reality

Here’s what i think is a healthy outlook for the Vortex Competition, and one that a sane person can hinge his hopes on. You’re going to go there, and you’ll have ten minutes to speak. This is a golden opportunity to practice, practice, practice, distill your game idea in a VERY tight presentation, and have it evaluated by someone other than Mom. And keep in mind that you won’t be evaluated solely on the merits of your game concept. Your manner of speaking, your grooming, your preparedness, your graphic design (if you choose to use slides) – in short, your personality and work ethic and branding – will all be judged with far more scrutiny than your game idea.

i dare say, your game idea is not what will make you stand out. Your ability to present, your market research and budgeting legwork, your fact-based revenue projections – all of these are part and parcel of an excellent and prize-worthy presentation. Any schmuck can have a game idea – and that’s exactly what you’ll see at the competition: a parade of schmucks with game ideas. The extra preparation, practice and personality you infuse into your presentation will set the doers apart from the dreamers.

And if you put in that required amount of effort – that level of hard work, effort, intelligence and professionality – then maybe at that networking event after the competition, Yannis Mallat will come to you?

But seriously, don’t bet on it.

This week saw the removal of a post on monetizing Flash games by Russian developer Vadim Starygin (AKA Badim), whose tips included using a spritesheet of Mega Man or Legend of Zelda character animations for use in your own game, or producing an unauthorized sequel to some other developer’s game.

i shit you negative.

Due to pressure from many members of the community, who disagreed with MochiMedia’s stance that they were just airing alternative viewpoints (no – they were tacitly endorsing copyright infringement), Team Mochi decided to axe the article. Badim continues to earn advertising revenue on sites like Nonoba.com with his game Elite Forces: Clone Wars and its sequel:

The background behind the game is a stolen image of characters from the Star Wars property. The logo Badim uses in the game is the almost completely unmodified Star Wars: Clone Wars logo, which i reproduce here purely for the purposes of review and comparison:

So while MochiMedia showed good faith by removing the post, we still have a Nonoba problem.

The Nonoba Problem

i know it must be next-to-impossible to police every single game on your distribution system. And while this is hardly a subtle infringement, i emailed Nonoba to let them know what was up. That was a few days ago – no word. i’m not sure a company would even respond if the complainant was not the original IP owner. Should they?

Apparently a buck’s a buck to Nonoba. And if not, i’ll call them out publicly right here: Nonoba, please honour the well-lit corners of the Flash community by following these steps:

1. Remove Badim’s copyright-infringing games from your service.
2. Reclaim any and all moneys paid to Badim for those games.
3. Cut a cheque with your portion and Badim’s portion to LucasArts and mail to:
   

   LucasArts, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd.
   Attention: Legal Department
   P.O. Box 29908
   San Francisco, CA 94129

   Or call Yoda’s Help Desk. That dude is hilarious when he talks tech.

   

   Check your video card manufacturer’s site for the latest driver updates you must.

   And while we’re on a roll, what’s up with GamerSafe featuring Badim in their latest newsletter last week? Regarding Badim’s post on MochiLand, the GamerSafe guys said “hey – leave us out of it!” on Twitter while this whole thing went down, claiming that they don’t knowingly support games that have copyright-infringing material in them. i explained that allying their service with devs like Badim invited a negative association that their company could do without. He may not perform a ritual killing on-camera, but nevertheless, you still don’t invite Charles Manson to guest-host the Oprah show.

   

   Everybody gets a caaar! (and a swaaaastika on their foreheads!)

   Why Not Just Let it Slide?

   So what’s the big deal? Devs who steal stuff aren’t hurting anyone. If IP owners like LucasArts cared enough, they would ask for the games to be removed themselves. We don’t need anyone policing our industry.

   Here’s the issue in a nutshell: i make no bones about the fact that i want to make money from my own original games. The game creation tool i know best is Flash. The Flash game dev community is packed with young hobbyist boys who don’t see too much of a problem with yanking assets and code from wherever to create their own games and make a quick buck through ad revenue sharing.

   As a result, the Flash platform is synonymous with low-quality, piratey IP rip-off games, and badly-animated 2D pornography. Many of the people who play the games are the people who create the games. Those people don’t have credit cards. The people who do have credit cards – the people whose money i want to have – are more likely to spend their cash on a more reputable segment of the entertainment spectrum. But Flash is always good for a laugh – as long as it’s free.

   

   A quick trip to the Newgrounds front page today turns up an unauthorized Pac Man sequel, a fat anime collaboration promising larger breasts, two Legend of Zelda rip-offs, and something called “Dick Neck”. Wait right there – let me run and get my credit card.

   My plan: to encourage the more professionally-minded Flash game devs to make a bigger noise than the hobbyists – to set the tone for the industry that the young among us strive to emulate. i’d like to see some semblance of mentorship in our industry. i’d like to see the more mature developers modelling behaviour that the younger devs aspire to.

   And once we’re all resolved to improving our entertainment offering, we may change the attitudes of the customers we want to attract. When we change those attitudes, our audience expands to include players with both money and taste.

   Money and taste: two things the free-to-play Flash game industry could benefit from.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/08/28/flash-game-industry-the-clone-wars/feed/ 31 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/08/07/the-igda-vs-tim-langdell/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/08/07/the-igda-vs-tim-langdell/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:29:50 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=1455 i recently received an email from some “concerned members” of the International Game Developers Association:

   Dear Ryan Creighton,

   The actions of IGDA board member Tim Langdell since his election in March 2009 have raised questions regarding his suitability as our elected representative. As you no doubt know, the IGDA’s mission is: To advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community.

   Tim Langdell’s company, Edge Games, has trademarked the word “edge” and they leverage this trademark against any media that contains this word–threatening legal action should their target not enter into a licensing arrangement with the studio. Such targets have included David Mamet’s film The Edge, Marvel’s comic book Edge, EA’s Mirror’s Edge, and Namco’s Soul Edge, which was released as Soul Blade and later, Soulcalibur in the west as a direct result of Edge Games’ actions. Most recently their actions have resulted in the removal of the indie game hit, Edge, from the iPhone app store.

   Meanwhile, Edge Games has not been associated with the direct production of an original video game in the last fifteen years.

   After his election to the IGDA board, in a lawsuit against Cybernet regarding Edge of Extinction, Tim Langdell presented himself to the court like this: “Dr. Tim Langdell is considered to be a pioneer in the field of computer gaming and is widely publicized on the Internet and has been engaged as a legal expert in the field of computer gamin.” He adds “He presently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Game Developers Association, which is the largest game association worldwide”.

   Many of us believe that this is a gross misrepresentation and feel that Tim Langdell is able to use his position on the board of the IGDA to work directly against the mission of the organization. As IGDA members with voting rights, it is our responsibility to elect a board that we can trust to represent us. But no election system is perfect and sometimes corrections need to be made.

   We are asking that you take some time to consider this issue, do a little research online, make up your mind how you feel about it, and take action.

   Under the IGDA bylaws, we are able to call for a special meeting of the membership to vote on the removal of Tim Langdell from the board of directors. In order to do this, we need 10% of the membership to request the board call the special meeting.

   Thank you for your consideration,

   Concerned Members of the IGDA

   The Plot Can’t Get Any Thicker

   

   Srsly?

   It’s definitely an interesting and currently-evolving story. If your interest is piqued, here’s some additional reading:

   • Derek Yu’s Summary of the Controversy
   • Langdell’s Threats Prompt Gamasutra to Remove Their Article
   • The Edge of Reason? (Eurogamer)
   • Tim’s Hotly-Disputed Wikipedia Entry
   • Adam Saltsman claims further evidence of treachery

   There are two ways we could go here –

   1. Is the IGDA a relevant, effective organization?
   2. As with America’s 2nd Amendment granting citizens the right to bear arms, is current copyright law an inflexible artifact of history that needs to change with the times, or is it effective in protecting the financial and creative interests of content creators?

   If you feel passionate about either of these questions, let’s get a discussion going!

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/08/07/the-igda-vs-tim-langdell/feed/ 6 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/05/28/when-logic-goes-out-the-windows%c2%ae/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/05/28/when-logic-goes-out-the-windows%c2%ae/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 14:48:04 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=1310 Some days, computers are like George Milton from Steibeck’s Of Mice and Men, ushering little old me through a brave new world of terrifying technology that i scarcely understand. Other days, computers are like Lennie Small, the idiot man-child who just wants to stroke things that’s soft.

   This morning, we tried to create a 301 redirect to fire http://untoldentertainment.com traffic to http://www.untoldentertainment.com. i hit the non-www address in Internet Explorer, and the browser decided it would be a good helper and pop up this message:

   

   Wait … what?

   Apparently, Microsoft hired Douglas Adams to write a few of their warning prompts before he died.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/05/28/when-logic-goes-out-the-windows%c2%ae/feed/ 21 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/22/inexplicably-jesus-rocks-out/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/22/inexplicably-jesus-rocks-out/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:08:44 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=174

   The opinions expressed in the following post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Untold Entertainment Inc., its employees or its affiliates.

   i’ve been closely following the Little Big Planet recall fiasco with a few opinion articles. Let me make my stance crystal clear:

   1. Sony should not have recalled the game to avoid offending Muslims
   2. One year earlier, Sony dealt with the Church of England’s much weightier complaint unevenly, effectively telling them to take a hike
   3. It’s okay to speak up when something offends you
   4. It’s NOT okay to demand changes to media when it offends you, except in cases where that media is in your face and unavoidable (ie subway posters, billboards, etc)
   5. If the offending media is avoidable, do your best to avoid it
   6. Burning the mother down is not okay
   7. Burning the mother down is not the sole prerogative of one particular religion
   8. Sony handled the two cases unevenly because they feared that one religion, and not the other, would burn the mother down
      OR
      Little Big Planet is a very important game for the company, and Sony needs as much publicity as possible

   A Strongly-Worded Letter

   In an effort to demonstrate how a game company should handle a complaint from a religious adherent, i complained to Harmonix on the Rock Band message boards that some of the songs in the game were offensive to Christians. As predicted, the forum thread survived about fifteen minutes in the wild before being locked by a moderator, who vowed to pass my suggestions on “to the proper channel.” (By that, i think he meant the channel that shows over-tanned preachers with impossibly white teeth mugging into the camera for an hour on Sunday mornings.)

   User ElPinko echoed my earlier statements:

   Bah, What’ll the christians do if we don’t do things their way? Write a letter? Hold a fete?…

   and later, proving him/herself to be someone after my own heart:

   Guys guys, religion is not to be laughed at. No seriously, don’t laugh. They’ll slaughter your family.

   Early forum posters were divided between those who caught on, and those who didn’t. Those who understood the reference called the post satire and found it kinda funny. Those who didn’t were a smidge upset.

   A few of them recommended i take my appeal to the (deceased) song lyricists.

   User Dovanon hit our site and complained to me about my offensive sea monster game. Good one.

   Push That Boundary

   i thought that to push the envelope a little, i would actually snail mail a letter to Harmonix and EA, asking them to pull three songs from their game that some Christians may find offensive. What i found really interesting is that Nintendo has had a long-standing history of not allowing religious imagery in games on their consoles. Crucifixes, for example, were a total no-no. From the above-linked citation of Nintendo’s content policy:

   Nintendo will not approve games for the NES, Game Boy or Super NES systems which:

   reflect ethnic, religious, nationalistic, or sexual stereotypes of language; this includes symbols that are related to any type of racial, religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group, such as crosses, pentagrams, God, Gods (Roman mythological gods are acceptable), Satan, hell, Buddha;

   

   THQ’s new mascot, Pointy the Pentagram, is in trouble

   Clearly, then, a game with the lyrics “I’ve never been a sinner / never sinned / i’ve got a friend in Jesus”, or “Jeeeeeee-susssssss Chriiiiiiiiist / deny your maker” would never fly on the Wii. Sadly, the age of 8-bit censorship has come to a close, opening the flood gates for pernicious filth like the Mario Party series. (Let me clarify: Mario Party doesn’t actually offend my moral sensibilities. It’s just a terrible bunch of games.)

   

   Mario Party: Corrupting innocent youth with rotten gameplay since 1998

   i was honestly worried that if i did write to Harmonix, copying Nintendo, and demanding a patch for Rock Band 2 on the Wii, there was a sliver of a chance they’d take me seriously and pull the Alice in Chains song out of the game. Then, of course, you’d have Rock Band players (and many more people who don’t actually play the game) complaining that “Man in the Box” was the absolute best song on the disc, and how dare i, etc etc … until some religious-esque fervor might be stirred up in THAT group and something would get burned down. Probably me.

   Jesus Saves … Rock Band

   The odd twist is that Harmonix just announced (through IGN) twenty new add-on songs for Rock Band 2 that players can unlock using a code shipped with the game disc. Pay close attention now:

   • The 88 – “Sons and Daughters”
   • Authority Zero – “No Regrets”
   • Between the Buried and Me – “Prequel To The Sequel”
   • The Cab – “Bounce”
   • The Chevelles – “Get It On”
   • The Cocktail Slippers – “Give It To Me”
   • Dealership – “Database Corrupted”
   • Endeverafter – “I Wanna Be Your Man”
   • The Ghost Hounds – “Ashes To Fire”
   • Hollywood Undead – “Young”
   • Kutless – “The Feeling”
   • The Len Price 3 – “If I Ain’t Got You”
   • Lesley Roy – “I’m Gone, I’m Going”
   • Opiate for the Masses – “Burn You Down”
   • Semi-Precious Weapons – “Magnetic Baby”
   • Shaimus – “Like a Fool”
   • Thenewno2″ – Crazy Tuesday”
   • Tickle Me Pink – “The Time Is Wrong”
   • Underoath – “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures”
   • X Japan – “I.V.”

   Wait … what was that? Did that list include Kutless and Underoath? My Jesus sense is tingling …

   By cracky, those are two Christian bands!

   

   Christian metalcore band Underoath rocks the house – GOD’S house.

   My only explanation for all of this is that in the two day turnaround since i posted the message to their boards, Harmonix/EA did the right thing and decided to make amends by including two Christian bands on this free song roster, to offset the offense brought by “Man in the Box” and “Let There Be Rock” (or “Spirit in the Sky”, depending on your level of sensitivity).

   i hereby applaud Harmonix and EA for responding so immediately to my outrageous and ill-founded complaints about their game, and on behalf of all Christians everywhere (because we all think exactly alike), i accept the companies’ apology.

   (Oh … and to the seething and riotous crazy Christian mob that’s been waiting in the wings: you can extinguish all your flaming you-know-whats and call off your plan to [hrm hrm hrm] the Harmonix headquarters this weekend.)

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/22/inexplicably-jesus-rocks-out/feed/ 3 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/17/islams-choke-hold-on-video-gaming-etc/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/17/islams-choke-hold-on-video-gaming-etc/#comments Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:32:17 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=160

   The opinions expressed in the following post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Untold Entertainment Inc., its employees or its affiliates.

   Pursuant to our comparison of the Church of England’s complaint against Sony for depicting a bloody violent shoot-out in a digital Manchester Cathedral in Resistance:Fall of Man, versus some guy’s complaint about two Qur’an verses being sung in Somalian on a background track in Little Big Planet, i have decided that as a concerned Christian, i should take similar action.

   Offensive? Take Your Pick

   So which game offends my Christian sensibilities? Gosh – there are so many to choose from. That’s to be expected, because few game companies would heed a similar complaint from a Christian, while a Muslim’s complaint causes them to bend over backwards ordering a worldwide recall.

   For the sake of this illustration, let’s go with Rock Band 2. Just like the offended Muslim gamer, i posted this message in a public forum related to the game in question:

   Subject: very urgent about Rock Band 2

   To: Electronic Arts and Harmonix

   While playing your latest game, “Rock Band 2″, I have noticed something strange in the lyrics of some of the game’s music tracks. When I listened carefully, I was surprised to hear some distortions of very familiar Bible verses, as well as some questionable content regarding Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity.

   The words are:

   1. In the track “Man in the Box” by Alice in Chains: “Jesus Christ, deny your maker”
   2. In the track “Let There be Rock” by AC-DC, the vocalist repeatedly sings the refrain from Genesis 1, “Let there be”, but replaces the word “light” with the words “guitar”, “drums”, “sound” and “rock”.

   I asked many of my friends online and offline and they heard the exact same thing that I heard easily when I played that part of the track. Certain Christian hardcore gaming blogs are already discussing this, so we decided to take action by emailing you before this spreads to mainstream attention.

   We Christians consider altering the sancitifed words of our holy scriptures deeply offending. From the Word of God:

   I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. – Revelation 22:18-19

   Further, to suggest that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, should “deny [His] maker” (denounce his Father), is particularly sensitive for many of us.

   We hope you would remove these tracks from the game immediately via an online patch, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.
   We hope you act immediately to avoid any confusion and unnecessary controversy, and we thank you for making such an amazing game.

   Regards,

   Ryan
   XBox Live id : UntoldEnt

   Granted, this is not a perfect experiment. We’re talking about two different world religions, two different games, and two different publishers. We also have Sony, who need some serious publicity to boost their system-selling game’s profile to bail out their flagging PlayStation 3 console. EA/Harmonix are not in such dire straits with Rock Band 2, but who can say? When the first Rock Band was released, i imagine they spent a pretty penny refurbishing or replacing broken peripherals to avoid public outcry about the toys’ shoddy workmanship.

   And with the impending release of competitor Activision’s Guitar Hero: World Tour, this controversy may be just what they need to draw all eyes to their title. Sales of Resistance: Fall of Man spiked during the Manchester Cathedral controversy.

   My Hypothesis

   i’ll put money on the forum mods locking the post or, more likely, deleting it, mere moments after it goes up. If the post stays up, i’ll be widely accused of trolling. No one will be afraid that certain radical Christian factions will torch EA head office. Absent of the vague threat or fear of violence, the Christian concern will fade into the background.

   Let’s sit back and watch it unfold, shall we?

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/17/islams-choke-hold-on-video-gaming-etc/feed/ 1 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/17/total-recall-little-big-planet-gets-yoinked/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/17/total-recall-little-big-planet-gets-yoinked/#comments Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:32:36 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=144

   The opinions expressed in the following post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Untold Entertainment Inc., its employees or its affiliates.

   Video game news sources everywhere are reporting that Little Big Planet will be delayed after publisher Sony issued a worldwide recall of the game. The trouble is that the vocals in one of the background music tracks contain phrases from the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. One player pointed this out in a forum post, explaining:

   We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending.

   

   The ESRB is forced to adapt their rating system

   The trouble i have here, and it should be obvious, is that like the forum poster who complained about the game, i am also an adherent to one of the world’s major organized religions. And, like the forum poster, i take also offense at certain game content. But unlike the forum poster, i am a Christian.

   In order to progress through EA’s new game Rock Band 2, i have to repeatedly play through a song by Alice in Chains called “Man in the Box,” which contains the lyric “Jesus Christ, deny your maker”. Being a Christian, if i were to complain about the song to EA, do you suppose they would issue a worldwide recall to pull all of the games out of stores a week before street date so they could remove the song? Hardly. And why not? What’s the difference?

   The difference, friends, is that Muslims have funny predilection towards burning shit down.

   A History of Violence

   If Christians, Hindus, or Buddhists were to complain about Fun Video Game and the publisher didn’t pull the product, the most they could expect is – what? A stern prayer vigil? A strongly-worded letter? A weak and short-lived retail boycott?

   But Allah forbid if you offend certain Muslims. Certain Muslims, if provoked by – oh, i dunno – a few doodles of their prophet (blessings and peace be upon him), tend to get up to the following shenanigans:

   

   A Muslim cleric tries to calm the crowd as his less level-headed Muslim friends torch the Danish consolate in Beirut

   There are plenty of things in video games that offend me – as a Christian, and as a decent human being. You can pay a hooker for a handjob in Grand Theft Auto, and then subsequently murder her with a chainsaw and take your money back from her corpse. You can punch an innocent human being’s head off his shoulders in the upcoming Fallout 3, and keep it in your inventory as a trophy, or decorate your room with it. And these games are mainstream. There’s tons of this stuff out there.

   What’s the solution? Will any of these game companies modify their game content to suit my sensitive sensibilities? Doubt it.

   What if i tell them that their games offend me as a Christian? No dice – they won’t budge.

   But what if Christians reinstate the crusades and start burning shit down again? Apparently, that is the salient difference between the way comparitively moderate Christians are dealt with, and the way Muslims are dealt with, owing to the fact that their ranks contain violent consolate-torching radicals.

   To counter this point, you could take the example where Sony was petitioned by the Church of England over the game Resistance: Fall of Man. Sure! That’s fair. Let’s compare, shall we?

   The Complainants

   Christian case: The Church of England, the official representatives of the Christian faith for an entire nation

   Muslim case: Some dude in a web forum

   The Complaint

   Christian case: Sony released, as its flagship title for the launch of its new PlayStation 3 console, a game where players engage in a bloody gun battle inside a digital replica of Manchester Cathedral – an active, functioning real-world church where real Christians can go every Sunday to worship their God – in a real-world city plagued with real-world gun violence where real people are getting really killed.

   Muslim case: Two passages from the Muslim holy book are sung in Somalian in a background music track.

   The Recourse

   Christian case: The Manchester Cathedral level is integral to gameplay. The player must play through this level to experience the remainder of the content on the disc.

   Muslim case: The player can – and this is pretty crazy – push the MUTE button.

   The Reaction

   Christian case: Sony shows considerable “resistance” by issuing initially obstinate statements, saying

   Resistance: Fall of Man is a fantasy science fiction game and is not based on reality. We believe we have sought and received all permissions necessary for the creation of the game.

   and

   Historical buildings are often used in entertainment…[such as] iconic movie scenes involving Godzilla and the Tokyo Tower and King Kong in Manhattan.

   Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sides with the Church of England, saying

   I think it is important that people understand there is a wider social responsibility as well as an interior responsibility for profits.

   Muslim case: Sony’s Director of Corporate Communications issued this statement:

   We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense that this may have caused.

   The Result

   Christian case: Sony issues a so-called apology:

   We do not accept that there is any connection between contemporary issues of 21st Century Manchester and a work of science fiction in which a fictitious 1950s Britain is under attack by aliens. It is not our intention to cause offense by using a representation of Manchester Cathedral in chapter eight of the work. If we have done so we sincerely apologize.

   The game remains on store shelves, unchanged.

   Muslim case: Sony issues an immediate recall of Little Big Planet in the United Kingdom. A short time later, the company commits to a wider recall and worldwide delay of one week while the offensive content is removed from the game.

   My Conclusion

   i can only infer from this fiasco that people are afraid of Muslims, and perhaps rightly so. Anger them, and their radical minority (a minority large enough to form an enraged mob rampaging through the streets of Beirut), will take violent, aggressive action against your publishing company, publication, or country.

   The forum poster who originally complained about this issue did so irresponsibly. As a Christian, i wouldn’t dream of asking EA to remove “Man in the Box” from Rock Band 2. And if my religion had a very recent history of radical, rampaging mobs burning places down in protest, i would be even less inclined to complain. i would be embarrassed that a violent minority represented my faith on the world stage (as it has in Christianity’s history).

   The read i get from the poster’s intentions are “Hey Sony: please fix your game. If you don’t, i can’t be responsible for what my obscenely muscular and emotionally unstable cousin Tim-bo over here might do to you.” It reeks to me of renouncing radicalism on one hand, and wielding the radical minority like a seething, violent silent partner on the other.

   So what’s the solution? i have a few ideas.

   1. Muslims gotta calm that action down. If the content offends you, don’t purchase the content.
   2. Companies gotta stand up to this simmering threat of extremist Muslim overreaction by refusing to be bullied.
   3. Christians gotta start burning more shit down.
   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/10/17/total-recall-little-big-planet-gets-yoinked/feed/ 3 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/07/24/flash-games-the-latest-craze/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/07/24/flash-games-the-latest-craze/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:25:30 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/07/24/flash-games-the-latest-craze/

   

   SRSLY?

   i don’t mean to TOTALLY BLOW YOUR MINDS or anything, but apparently “flash games” – ie “games that have flash in them” – are sweeping the nation.

   The child heart lurking inside you feels great satisfaction when playing new and exciting flash games full of immense animations and sound effects.

   i’m impressed with the liberties the author has taken with the English language (and/or Alta Vista Translator). He has truly raised the bar for prose in my mother tongue. Never before have i heard of a child being described as “lurking.”

   No, really – go back and re-read that quotation, and ask yourself if you could string a more subtly perverse sequence of words together.

   Anyway, i’ve decided that quote is going on our new business cards.

   

   (i wonder if we should put “animations” in quotes?)

   Thanks to Gavin for the link.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/07/24/flash-games-the-latest-craze/feed/ 2 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/05/29/nintendo-wii-fit-body-sheath-helps-limit-injuries/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/05/29/nintendo-wii-fit-body-sheath-helps-limit-injuries/#comments Thu, 29 May 2008 16:26:37 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/05/29/nintendo-wii-fit-body-sheath-helps-limit-injuries/ Game history repeats itself. North American gamers who rushed to buy Wii Fit, Nintendo’s new exercise game, are reporting damages and injuries that the company did not anticipate. Gamers are getting carried away with the stretching, aerobicizing and wobbling that the Wii Balance Board peripheral prescribes. Some enthusiastic gamers are flying off the board and crashing into potted plants and furniture, while other gamers have posted pictures of themselves smashing head-first into their expensive LCD teevee screens.

   “We didn’t expect this amount of zeal from Wii Fit players,” says Yoshi Fakeymoto, Nintendo’s Vice President of Artificial Affairs. Nintendo experienced a similar issue with the release of its Wii console, first issuing sturdier straps for its Wii controllers, and later repackaging the controllers with soft sleeves to mitigate damages when the devices slipped from players’ hands.

   

   The rubbery Wii controller sheath provides added protection

   Fakeymoto-san says the company considered creating a leash to help tether people to the Wii Balance Board, but has instead opted to produce a full body-sized soft rubber sheath so that rambunctious Wii Fit players will cause fewer damages to themselves and their surroundings.

   

   An online update to Wii Fit includes this pre-game warning

   Nintendo is keeping mum about details of the product’s availability, but the company has released this video of its prototype Wii Fit body sheath:

   
   
   
   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/05/29/nintendo-wii-fit-body-sheath-helps-limit-injuries/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/28/hands-on-super-mario-bros-theme/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/28/hands-on-super-mario-bros-theme/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:31:38 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/28/hands-on-super-mario-bros-theme/ It’s very important that you all watch this video today:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/28/hands-on-super-mario-bros-theme/feed/ 4 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/22/ray-kurzweil-vs-the-flood/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/22/ray-kurzweil-vs-the-flood/#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:46:32 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/22/ray-kurzweil-vs-the-flood/ i just came out of the second GDC 08 keynote by Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is an acclaimed inventor instrumental in creating scanner technology, text-to-speech and optical character recognition.

   

   Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, c. 2005

   Last year, i made the mistake of suggesting i was going to skip a keynote speech. The guy i was talking to gripped me by the lapels and, wide-eyed and frantic, said “you DON’T MISS THE KEYNOTES.” i asked him why, and in reverent, hushed tones, as if we were sitting around a campfire, he recounted the legendary tale of a Microsoft keynote a few years back where they gave out free HD-teevees to a quarter of the audience.

   There were no free teevees at Ray Kurzweil’s keynote, but one could argue that he gave away something much more valuable: the promise of immortality for those of us who could hang on long enough.

   The premise of Kurzweil’s message was that information technology grows at a predictable, exponential rate. He blithely flipped through a series of graphs and charts demonstrating how all of the significant advances in human history, including the actual evolution of the species, fall along a predictable line that extends through an exponentially-stacked axis.

   In his talk, Ray singlehandedly eased the audience’s minds about the energy crisis, famine, disease, mental illness, language barriers, obesity, forgetfulness and nearly every other ailment affecting mankind:

   The Energy Crisis

   According to Kurzweil, improvements in solar cells thanks to nanotechnology are increasing at an exponential rate. He says that the energy output from the sun is 1000 times greater than our energy demand. Installing enough of these solar panels will negate our need to burn coal and oil as fuel.

   One thing he didn’t account for was the increase in energy demand as irresponsible initiatives like A Laptop for Every Child and building infrastructure in developing nations will increase our appetite for electricity. Is that appetite also exponential? Dunno. i’m no Kurzweil.

   Disease

   One of the speaker’s most interesting points is that thanks to DNA indexing, we now have the “source code” to our own biology. As genomes are mapped at an exponential rate, our understanding of how our bodies work also grows exponentially, as does our ability to create nanobots and genome inhibitors to zoom through our bloodstreams and cure disease. He talked about inhibiting the gene that causes Type 1 diabetes, thanks to the fact that we now have the “code” for how that gene behaves.

   Mental Illness

   Kurzweil also discussed mapping the human brain in a similar way. The more we’re able to replicate, with exponential growth, the way the brain behaves, the more likely we’ll be able to sort out mental health issues like schizophrenia – again, creating cures and solutions at an exponential rate. He talked about pea-sized processors that are implanted into Alzheimer sufferers’ brains that augment or replace the brain tissue forfeited to the illness. This is already happening? i was unaware. Or perhaps i heard that somewhere and forgot about it due to Alzheimers.

   Language Barriers

   Midway through the presentation, the speaker talked about how, using a combination of text-to-speech and translation technology, he had a conversation with a native German speaker. They both spoke in their own language, and the technology translated on the fly. He went on to back this up with an actual demo. Douglas Adams’ babel fish came immediately to mind. More on Babel later.

   Obesity

   Ray’s cure for obesity involves nanobots that strip the body’s propensity to hang on to calories, which will enable us to eat as much as we want without getting fat. And by “us”, he means wealthy members of the Big Seven richest countries in the world, for whom i believe obesity is a just penalty. The idea of negating this consequence for the minority who are hoarding food from a starving world turns my stomach, so to speak.

   Forgetfulness

   One interesting prediction Kurzweil made that’s been echoed elsewhere at the conference is that the virtual reality spaces that exist only on computers today – World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, Second Life, etc – will some day (soon) go with us throughout the “real” world. He said that you could have some sort of processor in your brain, interacting with some jazz in your eyeball, so that when you see someone at a conference or a party, you’ll see his name floating above his head.

   i wondered if we’d see a yellow exclamation mark above the heads of real-life people who were offering us jobs?

   And Then There’s God

   As a Christian, i found some of Kurzweil’s talk to be at odds with my beliefs. i guess i see myself as a bit of a catastrophist. The Bible tells the story of Job, a man who had everything – a wife, kids, a kingdom, an iPhone – until one day God decided to test his mettle and instantly wiped out everything he had. A little earlier, He flooded the entire Earth when human beings got on His nerves.

   We also have the story of the tower of Babel, after which Adams’ fish is named. In that story, mankind was getting a little uppity with its tech and decided to build a very large skyscraper so they could push the button for the top floor and go poke God in the eye.

   God looked and this and said “if they’re already up to this, so early in their history, what else could they accomplish?” Being omniscient, God of course knew. He was just thinking out loud. Nevertheless, He waved his hand and suddenly everyone on the construction project started talking funny talk. Such is the Bible’s explanation of different languages.

   Kurzweil’s talk, while fascinating, brings to mind a present day tower of Babel. There are enough volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and meteors out there to keep me from getting too smug about the inevitability of our so-called evolution.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/22/ray-kurzweil-vs-the-flood/feed/ 2 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/15/wikipedia-list-of-fictional-beverages/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/15/wikipedia-list-of-fictional-beverages/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:46:10 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/15/wikipedia-list-of-fictional-beverages/

   

   Duff beer

   i’m not sure why i woke up this morning feeling driven to write a Wikipedia entry on fictional beverages. A similar page already existed, but it was bare-bones and poorly organized. i tooled up a nicer looking entry, borrowing code from the excellent List of fictional music groups, and redirected the original entry.

   There are, of course, hundreds more fictional beverages to mention in the entry. Instead of donating time and money to your local community organization or favourite charity, why don’t you help stall humankind by sinking your attention into this pointless effort?

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/02/15/wikipedia-list-of-fictional-beverages/feed/ 2 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/01/02/mammoth-ontario-govt-title/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/01/02/mammoth-ontario-govt-title/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:47:09 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/01/02/mammoth-ontario-govt-title/ i met many interesting people at last year’s Game Developer’s Conference, and i thought i should thumb through my business card collection in case i run into any of them this year. While there, i tried a new technique for putting faces to the names so many months later: i just wrote a memorable item down on the business card, like “met this guy in a cab” or “has giant orange hair.”

   So i came across one plain-looking card on which i’d written “spit sushi at me.” Oh dear. It’s not the most glorifying epithet, but it worked. i remembered the man instantly, down to every detail.

   He worked for the Government of Ontario as their Silicon Valley liason. But this was his exact title:

   Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US.

   

   That’s one heavyweight title.

   You probably just skimmed that line. Now i want you to go back and read it. Read it aloud. Read this aloud, right now:

   Hello, my name is [your name]. What do i do? Well, i’m the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US. It says so here on my card.

   That’s my Ontario tax dollars at work, folks. HARD at work. i wish more of that money went toward his hors d’oeuvres decorum and less toward his big impressive title. (i’m kidding – he was perfectly nice.)

   After finding his business card, i had half a mind to call him up.

   [ring ring]
   Office of the the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology: Hello?

   Me: Hello! Yes – i’d like to speak to the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US. Is he in?

   Office of the the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology: Yes, one moment please.

   [light jazz music]

   Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US: Hello?

   Me: Hi! Is this the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US?

   Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US: Yes, i’m the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US. How can i help you?

   Me: Erp! My mistake, Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US. i was actually trying to reach the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – East Coast US. Do you have his number?

   Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US: Yes, I think I do. Now let’s see here … Business Development Consultant … to the … … Ministry …. hrm hrm hrm … Trade Information … uhm …. East Coast Us. Ah – here it is.

   Me: Oh – did you find the number for the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – East Coast US?

   Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – West Coast US: Yes! i’ll patch you through to the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – East Coast US now. One moment please.

   [Musak version of Enter Sandman played on soprano saxophone]

   Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – East Coast US:Hello, this is the Business Development Consultant to the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade Information & Communications Technology – East Coast US. How may i help you?

   And so it goes.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/01/02/mammoth-ontario-govt-title/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/12/11/dear-resource/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/12/11/dear-resource/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:59:15 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/12/11/dear-resource/ Subject: (company name)
   Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:56:50 -0500
   From: (headhunter address)
   To:

   Dear Resource

   (Headhunter company name) presently has a Flash Developer opportunity that is in sync with the skills outlined in your resume. If you are suitable, available and interested in applying for this opportunity you may do so directly by sending your resume to (email address) or by applying on our website at (website address). Please ensure that the job is first added to your cart, then you may respond to all the jobs in your cart.

   Take care

   (headhunter name)

   ——————————————

   From: Ryan Henson Creighton [mailto:ryan at untoldentertainment.com]
   Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 10:08 AM
   To: (headhunter address)
   Subject: Re: (company name)

   “Dear Resource”? Are you serious?

   ——————————————

   From: (headhunter address)
   Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 10:12 AM
   To:
   Subject: Re: (company name)

   Hi Ryan

   Sorry about that it is a automated response to all candidates in our database with the Flash skill set. We just got a new requirement it is perm position what is your current situation?

   (Headhunter name)

   Resource Manager
   (company name)

   ——————————————

   From: Ryan Henson Creighton [mailto:ryan at untoldentertainment.com]
   Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 10:14 AM
   To: (headhunter address)
   Subject: Re: (company name)

   My current situation is a desperate desire to distance myself from anyone addressing me as “Dear Resource.”

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/12/11/dear-resource/feed/ 1 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/16/bollywood-engrish-hits-applecom/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/16/bollywood-engrish-hits-applecom/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:47:03 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=38 Every so often i’ll hit up Apple’s Trailers site to watch movie previews. Most of the trailers are from the big studios. Lately, there have been many more independant and foreign language film clips on the site, which will inevitably lead you to this:

   You can watch the Saawariya trailer from YouTube or catch it in higher quality on Apple.com. Either way, one thing is for sure:

   Her world was the wait for love.

   True.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/16/bollywood-engrish-hits-applecom/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/13/xbox-360-markets-to-stay-at-home-moms/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/13/xbox-360-markets-to-stay-at-home-moms/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:20:58 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=35 i turned on OMNI 2 today during my lunch break. You can usually expect a wild and woolly assortment of programming from the OMNI family of stations. Today, after enjoying a swing-style steel drum rendition of Amazing Grace, i stuck around for Merv Griffin’s Crosswords.

   My first though, of course, was “Merv Griffin? Isn’t he dead?” i expected either a re-run of an old gameshow, which would work well with OMNI’s style, or some macabre presentation with old Merv propped up in the corner a la Weekend at Bernie’s.

   (okay – i actually only expected the re-run. )

   What i got was a syndicated game show with a generic front-man who studied from Guy Smiley’s School for Game Show Hosts. He was very definitely not Merv.

   
   

   Merv.

   
   

   Not Merv.

   The show is the typical fare for bored work-from-home moms and dads who aren’t interested in watching Guiding Light. So imagine my amazement when THIS happened:

   
   
   

   Brought to you by WHO?? i nearly did a spit-take.

   All this talk of Microsoft trying to expand the audience for their console is evident. Their latest bids to put grandma onto the video game machine include last week’s Word Puzzle, Viva Pinata: Party Animals, the upcoming family-friendly Scene It, and now a Merv Griffin’s Crosswords game if Wikipedia can be believed:

   “Advertisements during recent shows have announced that a new Crosswords game will be available on Xbox Live in the near future.”

   Still, this small dabbling in audience expansion is nothing compared to Nintendo’s aggressive marketing juggernaut, which seeks to replace granddad’s daily medication with a Wiimote. If Microsoft hopes to compete, they have to find ways to match the value of the Wii. Uncle Rumply is not going to be swayed by the system’s graphics capabilities. He wants to know how many crosswords it has, and whether buying a system will convince his grandchildren to love him.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/13/xbox-360-markets-to-stay-at-home-moms/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/07/frigorific/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/07/frigorific/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:50:06 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=32 The Free Rice game is a vocabulary test where every correct answer sees the site sponsors donate rice to the United Nations.

   

   That fact is secondary only to this: the English language employs the word “frigorific”, which i am keen to mispronounce and use out of context everywhere i go.

   i can now die a contented man.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/11/07/frigorific/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/31/best-halloween-costume-ever/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/31/best-halloween-costume-ever/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:49:23 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=30 Here’s what you can do with a terrible costume idea and an hour and a half to kill:

   

   

   

   The idea, naturally, is a robot that changes into pants to blend in with his terrestrial surroundings. i can picture such robots waging fierce battles against each other – say, a necktie (the evil “Neckotron”) vs. a pair of pumps (the sass-talking “Heel It”). i’m not sure what my Pantsformers name is.

   Perhaps “Pantaloons Prime”?

   Post your favourite Pantsformers name!

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/31/best-halloween-costume-ever/feed/ 4 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/20/ad-warfare/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/20/ad-warfare/#comments Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:34:51 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=27 i snapped this pic down a back alley here in Toronto:

   

   i love the fact that Open Book Toronto’s ads are entirely dependant on the singles ads that are reliably plastered all over town.

   My dream, my Holy Grail of ad warfare, is to see a third ad campaign contained within or wrapped around the first two ads. Maybe in this case it could be a boxing ad that says “Wanna see two real opponents duke it out?”

   i dunno. Submit your best idea, and i’ll send you a pen.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/20/ad-warfare/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/15/chamber-of-the-sci-mutant-priestess/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/15/chamber-of-the-sci-mutant-priestess/#comments Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:12:52 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=23 KULT: The Temple of Flying Saucers, or “Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess”, as it was called in America, is a graphic adventure game from the late 80′s.

   i mention it now because it had a really neat twist that has stayed with me throughout my career in game design.

   

   *** HERE BE SPOILERS ***

   The game is crazybizarre. You play a Tuner, a being with magical mind powers. You are imprisoned by the Protozorqs. Your task in the game is to pass the five Ordeals. Your first time through the game, you go into each Ordeal room, and solve some relatively benign puzzles. Once you pass all five Ordeals, you are sent up to the titular Chamber where the Sci Mutant Priestess kills you. Game over.

   Of course, that’s not how the game has to end. Game with multiple endings are nothing new, but there was something so satisfying about the alternate path in Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess. You really felt like you were defeating, or outsmarting the game.

   At the outset, you can kill one of the prison guards and take his weapon. Then you crawl through the ducts, bypassing the five Ordeals. This path eventually leads you into a backdoor in the Chamber, where you assassinate the Sci-Mutant Priestess. Score!

   By giving the player the chance to outmuscle the guards, skip past half of the game, and kill the ultimate baddy, Kult’s designers indellibly etched a chunk of game bliss into my brain. It excites my richest “escape from prison” fantasies, and i admit that i am eager to “pay homage” to this twist in one of my own games.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/10/15/chamber-of-the-sci-mutant-priestess/feed/ 2 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/09/30/sony-ces-highlights-rolly/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/09/30/sony-ces-highlights-rolly/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 05:42:24 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=14 i checked out the Sony Consumer Electronics show this afternoon. The big press show was on Thursday. This event seemed like more of a bid for Sony to show Joe Public that they’ve purchased and renamed the Sony Centre …. formerly the Hummingbird Centre … formerly the O’Keefe Centre … formerly a large empty field where cows liked to romp and moo.
   
   
   

   Announced in Japan today but not available to us unrefined North Americans is the Rolly, an MP3 player shaped like a thermal detonator that dances while playing music. As the suppository-shaped device gyrated ly, proclaiming that its “hips don’t lie,” the crowd stood mystified, wondering why anyone would buy it.

   “Where’re you s’posed to use that thingy?” asked one guy in the gathering crowd. The demo jockey said “You can have this in your home, or at your cottage … or in your chalet.”

   IN YOUR CHALET. You can purchase the Sony Rolly for your chalet.

   i don’t know what this guy was thinking. My only explanation is that Swiss Chalet is a very popular chain restaurant unique to Canada, and this guy was a visiting yank who was trying to contextualize the Rolly’s brilliance for the locals using words they’d understand.

   The dumbfounded man stood slack-jawed as the Rolly spun around a few more times. Then he said “Well what’re you s’posed to DO with it?”

   The demo jockey, undaunted, said “Well i have one of these, and i showed it to my friends, and they were entertained by it all night.”

   i couldn’t resist. i asked “Did you entertain them in your home, or in your chalet?”

   When the Rolly shimmies its way to Canada, it’s expected to cost $400. Also in this price range: lighting $400 on fire.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/09/30/sony-ces-highlights-rolly/feed/ 0 http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/09/28/habeas-corpus/ http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/09/28/habeas-corpus/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:16:50 +0000 Ryan Henson Creighton http://untoldentertainment.com/blog/?p=9 i turn up a lot of strange stuff using Google image search.

   When i was browsing “passport” photos for reference material, i came across this page.

   
   
   

   The gist: in an effort to cheat someone out of an order of dried insects (??), this scammer sent a message purportedly from his wife saying that he had been killed in a motorcycle accident. The email goes on to provide pictures of the corpse as proof!

   Methinks the scammer doth protest too much.

   
   
   
   ]]> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2007/09/28/habeas-corpus/feed/ 0