Money for nothing

October 23rd, 2008

 

I’ve had a Second Life account for bloody ages now. It must be two years at least. In total I’ve probably spent around 3 hours wallowing in the frustration that it has a habit of generating. 

Second Life has always had a bit of a problem in that it wants to be Social Networking but it also wants to be a game. In the end it has managed to achieve neither.

The essential problems with it are that it looks rubbish and navigation is a nightmare. I don’t know if it is a result of how long it has been about or if it is an attempt to give anyone access to it. Overall I reckon the graphics are on a par with Duke Nukem which I suppose isn’t in itself a bad thing. Duke Nukem was ground breaking when it came out. Unfortunately it came out in 1996. Second Life was launched in 2003 so it was hopelessly dated when it was released. Charitably Second Life is trying to achieve something different to Duke Nukem. It is trying to create an immersive world where people can interact much like a Massive Mutiplayer Online  Role Playing Game (MMORPG). Unfortunately Everquest started doing this four years before the launch of Second Life and it looked and worked much much better. 

At the end of the day we can all ignore shockingly poor graphics if the experience itself is immersive. Second Life is by no means immersive. I have never come across anything that makes me more angry than trying to bumble around Second Life. Everything is an obstacle. You bounce off the tiniest of objects. You can’t get over the smallest of bumps. When creating an environment surely control is the most basic thing to get right? I have played some very poor games in my time but Second Life has by far the worst control system.

It may not be a fair comparison but I’m going to make it anyway. Why have Linden Lab not looked at Warcraft? When Warcraft first arrived, three years ago, one of the claims they made was that to play the game you would not need to read a manual. This turned out to be very true. Walking about in Azeroth is just simple. Watch any of the numerous Youtube videos to see just how flexible the control system is. It takes minutes of playing to just forget how you are controlling your avatar.

If you compare the minimum spec for Warcraft and  that of Second Life  you can see that they are roughly equivalent. In fact you’d probably get away with lower spec graphics card with WOW. Warcraft also obviously deals with substantially greater traffic than Second Life but does it seamlessly.

I accept that this isn’t a fair comparison as Blizzard invested over $100 million in getting WOW right but it should be noted that the effort has paid off by creating an income stream that dwarfs many of the worlds real life economies.

Obviously I’m not banging on about Second Life because I suddenly think that it needs a good kicking after being about for four years. No, I’ve got a reason.

Today saw the launch of Birmingham’s very own Second Life Island.  

Why? I have no idea.

Digital Birmingham do ask the question “Is Second Life the ultimate digital experience?”. I could have answered that for them fairly easily.

No it isn’t. 

It certainly isn’t Half Life 2, It’s not even close to Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots. Admittedly the concept of Birmingham whoring itself in Metal Gear Solid would have been great.

This is one of those plans that clearly seemed good at the time but the practical application of it holds little value to the people of Birmingham who’ve ended up paying for it.

I’ve just logged onto virtual Birmingham. At the moment there are 68,000 people in the entire world logged into Second Life. Of those 68,000 there are 5 visiting the Birmingham island. I’m one of those 5. 

Having had a bit of a walk round the island I’ve noticed that essentially it is a bit of grass with a canal cut through it. Do you get it? A canal? we have lots of canals in Birmingham. No landmarks have been recreated and actually nothing that you would really think sums up Birmingham.

Overall 2/10. Two for…… having a go?

[edit]Since I wrote this last night I’ve come across a few things written by other people that I think I’d like to address.

Jon Bounds wrote this  before I started writing, if I’d bothered to read it I’d probably have realised he made most of my points only slightly better, and with more fact.

Dave Harte has posted a response to Jon’s post which makes some points but I don’t really agree with them. I do accept the point that a 3D representation of Birmingham itself wouldn’t be that useful but a tiny Rotunda would be nice. Something that instantly says BIRMINGHAM when you arrive.

There is a practical value to exploring the representation of Birmingham in virtual worlds. I think that Second Life is a poor vehicle to use to this end. It is flawed software with a frighteningly small user base.

I would have liked to see Digital Birmingham explore the opportunity of Playstation Home.

Alright I’m talking about a virtual world that doesn’t exist yet but that means it is an untapped opportunity. Sony are frantic to promote the PS3 as more than a games console. To do that they need to work with partners to add that extra element. You can probably see where I’m going with this. If Birmingham had approached Sony at an early stage they could well have got all of this done for free and demonstrated an innovative approach.

This raises the issue of access to a Virtual Birmingham based in Home. It is true that market penetration of the PS3 is small. It is also true that with worldwide sales of around 14 million, all of which will have Home installed for free in the next few months, you will suddenly see the largest Virtual World developing. There have been 1.4 million PS3s sold in UK to date. On an even spread across the country that would give an estimated sale of 2000 units in Birmingham. That is surely far greater than the number of active Second Life users in Birmingham. There were 5 last night.

Well, that’s what I think.[/edit]

 


Posted in Birmingham, Games | Comments (3)

Otter man tragic chariot death

October 22nd, 2008

When writing a news story there are certain ingredients that through fate occasionally come together to create something truly odd.

 

If only you could combine:-

 

 

Oh great, someone has already done it.

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WOW : Terror Plot

October 19th, 2008

According to Wired the Pentagon have developed a theory on how World of Warcraft could be used to plan terrorist attacks.  

The ludicrousness of this claim is truly incredible. In fact the underlying factual basis of it is somewhat reduced by the quote:-

There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. 

So basically there is no evidence to to support it whatsoever and it’s people like me propagating this nonsence that give it credance. Oh, I hadn’t really thought that through.

It does look like there are a number of spies that quite fancy being paid to play Warcraft all day. Good luck to them, it’s probably good work if you can get it.

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Only 3 days to go

October 17th, 2008

There is literally only 3 days to go before Ringo Starr will implement his threat to stop signing “things”.

I’d sort of forgotten Ringo Starr even existed. Which does make me wonder what sort of person has things that they think will be better things if they’ve been signed by Ringo Starr.

In fact the whole thing has raised a number of questions in my mind:- 

  1. What sort of “things” are people sending him?
  2. Why the 20th October? It seems a bit arbitrary.
  3. What is he too busy doing now that he wasn’t doing before?
  4. Is he drunk or mental? His video certainly doesn’t seem to be that coherent.
  5. Does he appreciate the irony of being portrayed in the Simpsons as the Beatle that always replied to every letter?

Having just read that last question back to myself I think there might be some sort of line of causality there. Though that episode of the Simpsons was shown 17 years ago so it’s taken him some time to reach this level of frustration.

Oh well, if you have anything that you want him to sign I’d get it in the post today.

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Global Financial Meltdown: My Role in it All

October 14th, 2008

You can’t read anything these days without it relating to the global financial apocalypse. All in all it’s getting a bit dull now. The prospect of war with Iceland seems to have receded, which is fairly disappointing and all the news consists of flashing red numbers and doom laden graphs.

 

As everyone seems to be cheering up a bit it might be a good time to begin to apportion blame.

 

Many people believe that the root cause of the root cause of the collapse of the world economy has been the lack of liquidity in bank lending as a result sub prime mortgage lending in the US. The de-regulation of US financial services would be an easy target when looking for someone to blame but I believe this is too simplistic.

 

In truth much of the responsibility for the situation we now find ourselves in sits firmly on the shoulders of the Guardian.  I know this because I saw it happen before my very eyes.

 

For the last couple of years I’ve been a fan of the Gamesblog run by the Guardian. The Guardian has really gone for the whole blogging thing but the one about video games in particular is the one that I look at everyday. Mainly because I like video games but also for the people that comment on there.

 

The main reason for its success is down to the fact that used to use pretty ancient blogging software. As a result quite a few people found that it was one of the only sites that they could look at whilst they were at work. Over the years a little community grew up of people that found they could avoid doing any work by using the comments section of the blog to have discussions about the types of drugs they used to take and biscuits.

 

As a result of the number of completely arbitrary comments the Guardian agreed to put a post up everyday just for comments. I haven’t really looked around the rest of the Guardian site but I’m pretty sure this was unusual. At its height this post could get over 500 comments in a day which just made up a very weird conversation.

 

It was quite obvious that of the 50 odd regular posters quite a few of them were from the banking sector. Particularly Lloyds TSB in all parts of the country. Over the last few years I’ve learnt quite a lot about Lloyds TSB.

 

This was all working fine until the Guardian decided it would be a really good idea to update its blogging software. Unfortunately this has meant that the comments now rely on java script and can’t be accessed in many work places.

 

It seems unlikely that it is any coincidence that the day after numerous Lloyds TSB employees were forced to go back to working for a living that our banking system collapsed. It also says quite a lot for their recruitment policy if when their employees do a full days work for a change the share price falls through the floor.

 

I hope this can serve as a warning to all those organisations out there that want to begin using draconian monitoring software. There can be unintended consequences. Sometimes those consequences can be worldwide recession.

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A win with the arrows and an outrageous misfortune

October 9th, 2008

If you cut me I bleed darts. Ever since devoting much of 1986 to the Red Lion’s dart board I’ve had a passion for chucking little bits of metal at walls. To be honest I’ve never really been that good at it but I think I must have a genetic link with the game.

After all, my Dad looks quite a lot like Bobby “Bobby Dazzler” George and I look quite a lot like my Dad. It doesn’t take great deductive reasoning to figure out that one day I too will look like Bobby which means that at last I could be mistaken for a serious athlete.

The fundamental difference between me and Bobby George is that whilst he is the greatest world champion we never had, I have actually won an international darts competition.

I went on holiday a few weeks ago. It was all right. Like any self respecting middle class Englishman I poor scorn on the concept of manufactured “entertainment” that characterises the package holiday and see it for the contrived jollity it actually is. Well I did until I found out they give you certificates if you win things.

We stayed in a pretty nice hotel, as it turned out, and one of the things provided to keep us happy were daily games and events designed to keep us hanging around the hotel. Having said that I quite fancied the prospect of the KILLER DARTS competition as I hadn’t played darts in years.

It was looking a bit dodgy to begin with as I was the only person that bothered to enter. After being patronised by the frighteningly happy entertainment man for a few games I finally got a proper competition. Actually this was a bit of a disappointment as I’d noticed I was easily going to beat the bloke paid by the hotel as he always missed the board if there was any danger of me losing. Ah well.

Donald was clearly a much greater challenge. He hadn’t played for years either and neither of us appeared to have much ability to score much more than single figures. That’s in fact pretty hard with darts.

I’d have thought that somebody out there must be asking the question, what the hell is KILLER DARTS? A very good question.

The odds that I’ll remember all of the rules is remote but I’ll give it a go.

  1. Each player has 4 lives
  2. The first player throws three darts and must beat the score of 31. If he/she doesn’t then he/she loses a life. The opponent must then beat the previous score set by the original player or also lose a life.
  3. The first player must then beat the score set by the second player with 10 added to it. So if the second player got 45 in the first round then the first player must beat 55. The second player must then beat the score set by the first player or lose a life.
  4. The first player must then get a score of less than that set by the second player (in the previous round) without missing the board. The second player must then get less than this.
  5. The first player must only hit odd numbers. The second player must also only hit odd numbers but get a higher score.
  6. The first player must get three different colours for example white, black and green. The second player must do the same.
  7. If at any point a player loses all of their lives the sudden death round begins. In sudden death each player takes it in turns to get three 20’s, three 18’s and three 19’s. Theoretically someone could get this in three darts by getting trebles in each but it takes a bit longer……..in fact much much longer.

Anyone can see that the creation of the last round makes this game complete nonsense to play. Both myself and Donald had great difficulty in figuring out what the hell we were supposed to be doing but the only thing that really matters in all this is that I won.

Winning the KILLER DARTS has to be one of the proudest achievements in my life to date. Obviously something as important as this needed to be marked with a certificate and fortunately the hotel did not let me down.

I was told that all I had to do was go to the bar at 9:15 where they would have gathered most of the hotel residents to clap and generally applaud my dart throwing ability. I was very excited.

By the time my moment of glory arrived I was on my way to the bar thinking about how people were going to hoist me on their shoulders and parade me around. That was until I got to the bar and realised the horrible truth.

I have no idea why anyone thought this would be a good idea but they had decided to organise the certificate giving ceremony at the same time as the reptile show. Why would you even have a reptile show in a hotel? What if they escape and eat people?

I can’t stand seeing snakes on the TV so there was no chance that I was going to go in the same room as one. As much as I hate snakes I also really love getting certificates. This created one of the greatest dilemmas I have ever had to contend with. I dealt with this by walking about in a small circle looking a bit mental.

Before they announced my achievement they gave a certificate to some kid called Sam who had apparently won the memory game (I was watching through the doors). This made me really angry. If I’d known there was a memory game I could have probably have won that as well. I can easily remember more than a 7 year old. Mainly because I’ve seen more things……

As they announced my certificate I decided I had to confront my fear and strode into the bar looking straight forward. I reckon that bit must have looked quite good as the electric doors flew open in front of me. Unfortunately I ruined the affect a bit by walking into a pillar.

I made it onto the stage where they asked me if I was pleased to have won and all I could think to say was “I’m scared of snakes”.

Sam then tried to show me up by stroking an iguana in front of me. His dad was there so I couldn’t punch him.

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My favourite people in the world

September 18th, 2008

I’ve given this a remarkable amount of thought and I’m now in a position to clarify that my two favourite people in the world are He PingPing (the samllest man in the world) and Bao Xishun (the used to be tallest man in the world). Apparently Bao has been usurped by some Ukranian bloke but I’m not fickle.

At the end of the day if you had a dolphin in a tricky situation then you’re not going to ring up some random Ukranian are you? No, of course not.

I still wonder how they came to the conclusion that the only way to solve a dolphin’s life was to find a bloke with really long arms. Surely you’d just try a coat hanger with the end bent round first. I would but I’m very far from being a vet.

Anyway, imgaine how happy I was to see Pingping in the news this week having his photo taken with Svetlana Pankratova. She, apparently, has the longest legs in the world. For a woman at least. A remarkable achievement, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I have no idea why they were having their picture taken together. I couldn’t be arsed to read the story. I’m just content to know it happened.

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Aces High

September 16th, 2008

Every now and then you see a story that just could have been taken straight out of Viz. Yesterday was just such a day, or Sunday, dependant on whether you want to be really pedantic.

Of course I don’t mean the fantastic story of the woman who bought a bunny thats ears weren’t floppy enough. That was a great story and I’ve thought at length about what I would do in her situation. The only conclusion I’ve come to so far is that it was a clear case of criminal deceit and calling the police is the only rational course of action. Otherwise people will think they can palm off erect rabbits with absolutely no come back.

Clearly that wouldn’t have got into Viz as there is no substantial double entendre in the whole story. Having said that the one I’m thinking of hasn’t really got any sexual content either so my entire theory is in danger of being rubbish.

The most outstanding story of the last couple of days has to be the humanitarianism of Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson single handedly mounting a Berlin style airlift to rescue stranded holiday makers.

It is a fantastic example of how when events go truly tits up we can only really rely on celebrities to make everything better.

I love the idea that Bruce works a few days a week as an airline pilot just because he can. I have no idea how much money the bloke has got but as The Maiden have been pretty well constant for well over 20 years he must have a few quid in the bank.

In their seminal single Aces High, Iron Maiden demonstrated a truly in-depth knowledge or air to air combat. I imagine that this has come in really handy in the last couple of days as he skirted Israeli air space with a boot full of tourists from Egypt.

I doubt it happens but I’d love to believe that every time he takes off, Aces High blasts over the PA.

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