Ultraviolet concerns

UltraViolet was mentioned here well over a year ago before it seemingly became a non-entity. In all honesty, I thought the idea had been dropped due to all sorts of concerns that should have been raised by consumer groups. Color me surprised to find that the service has launched with the releases of The Green Lantern and Horrible Bosses to home media. An additional surprise is that they launched the service with two movies that were generally dismissed by critics and failed to find a strong audience. I’m sure this bodes well for the service.

To clarify, I was being completely sarcastic.

Building a Better Review

Finding contemporary reviews disappointing, I’ve decided to take a different approach to reviewing media. Read about it here. I believe this is what reviews are supposed to be like anyway, void of overwhelming personal bias. Regardless, I would love input as to what would make reviews better and more informative. Please feel free to leave a comment on that page or on this post.

In the long run, I hope to generate discussion. The media is nothing if it fails to be a talking point.

Is Netflix the future, or will we suffer the wrath of cable companies?

This blog, I assure you, presents absolutely no bias

Netflix has certainly proven itself to be quite the versatile and progressive business in its mere decade of existence. Not only has it all but completely shut down the brick and mortar video rental chains Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video, but it has firmly entrenched itself among the most popular streaming video content providers online. It seems the company has recently become a threat to cable television and television networks because of its offering easy access to video content.

Ultraviolet Movie Locker doubts

Movie, Tech Powerhouses Team Up for ‘Ultraviolet’ Movie Locker | Epicenter | Wired.com

The story, in short, says that the purchase of a physical or digital copy of an audiovisual media may net the purchaser a token that imbues the right to access or use the media on a future device. It sounds good in theory and helps alleviate reservations about purchasing hardware- or software-specific media, but more information must be shared.

What this all suggests is that all content will be available digitally and therefore all media devices will have to connect to the internet. This works quite well in a world with freely accessible internet access in the home. That is not the world in which I live. Some families will be locked out of this, which is inconvenient. That is a strike against the proposal right there.

I question Sony's involvement based on this alone

There is also concern about the digital form of the media. If I purchase a DVD, will that lock me into 480 resolution? Will future formats offer it upscaled free of charge? Will it be streamed or will it be saved to hardware? These are important questions.

Finally, there is a question about the stored data. How can we be sure that our information will not be exploited? Facebook could not wait to sell user data. What hope is there for a service already supported by Best Buy and Comcast?

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

It seems to me that people in person as well as those reading this blog are generally dismissive of discussion of video games. No matter what strides the medium makes, people cannot help but to connect it to adolescent power fantasies – an immature notion of control in an otherwise uncontrollable world. By and large, it is true. Walk by any Game$top and find images of larger than life men holding larger than possible weapons, not to mention promises of quests that can only be completed by saviors. Despite these things, I urge people to give the medium another chance. Only with additional consumer input can it reach its potential.

I know that I am not the only one that sees what the potential of the medium is, but it feels like even those involved in the industry are still trying to figure out what toys they are playing with – along with being unnecessarily focused on a narrow audience. Games can be more than fantasies for asocial, weak-willed males. Games at their best are simulators conducive for problem-solving, not to mention an untapped source for interactive fiction. I long for the day when video games are integrated into classrooms for more than just game studies. I long for the day when the latest story craze is found on a console or computer first.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an example of the latter. The problem-solving is a moot matter. The game merely expects the player to think intuitively about interacting with common objects to find keys or open doors. (One of the last keys in the game is found by unvelcroing (not a word) the neck flap on a jacket, pulling a chain out of a shirt pocket, and then grabbing the dangling key.) The storytelling in the game, however, is above and beyond most other games. It does not take much, but I put this up there with Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid 3.

The game begins with a psychological advisory explaining that the game will be mining the player for data which then gets integrated into game play. After a short video, the game begins with a psychiatry session, the framing device of the story, and the player has to fill out a true-false questionnaire. Then traditional game play occurs after the psychiatrist asks you to start from the beginning. Your player avatar, Harry Mason, loses control of his car on an extraordinarily snowy day, crashes, and then starts searching for his missing daughter who was sleeping in the backseat. The adventure begins, and the only actions you have are shining your flashlight on objects and calling your daughter’s name.

To be honest, I was not a fan of the objective and projective tests employed by the psychiatrist, nor was I a fan of the choice of a psychiatrist over a more traditional therapist. After completing the game, having a psychiatrist makes sense. As for the tests, they could have been made to better resemble actual tests rather than exist to communicate bland binary data that can be deciphered pretty easily once the player knows what it affects.

But the effects of the data is pretty amazing overall. Decisions made at the very beginning of the game affect the atmosphere as well as Harry’s personality. The answer to “Does alcohol make you feel more relaxed?” will litter the world with soft drink or beer cans. Providing different opinions on sex will make Harry either an extremely nice guy or a pervert who comments on every picture (or mannequin) he stumbles across. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, as even thematic elements of the story change, resulting in completely different endings.

Maybe I my background is too heavily littered with Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I have been waiting for a game that changes based on user actions. Sure, many games have multiple endings. Sure, many games have branching dialogue trees. Few games, however, broaden both elements out and then make the multiplicity make some sort of sense in the end. (Eternal Darkness, I must say, brilliantly interwove its three endings together. That game still needs a sequel…) I just cannot get enough of Shattered Memories.

I hate to put up a subtle spoiler warning, since people might complain otherwise, but the greatest strength the game has is how the ending weaves the framing device and traditional game play together. Harry Mason makes his way to the lighthouse clinic where he finds his daughter in session – except Harry is not there. He died 18 years ago, but his daughter has not been able to let him go. Harry and the world are a reflection of how she wants to see and remember things. When she sees him, he tells her to let go. She is not cured, though, as the psychiatrist notes that further sessions will be necessary. As will starting back at the beginning.

Proudly, this is one of the few games out there that actually deserves a mature rating from the ESRB. Unlike most games that wear the M proudly as a badge for its juvenile approach to violence and sexuality, this game gets there by actually being mature. Well, that and some of the darker subject matter that gets explored, but what else do you expect to find in the psyche of a girl who is discussing the loss of her father figure?

The market and educational possibilities of Scribblenauts

One of the most anticipated handheld games of the current gaming season was Scribblenauts, an open-ended adventure-puzzler which allows you to type in whatever you want to see on the screen. When I first saw the title, I thought that I would scribbling in object and then the game would make them real. No, it’s too soon for that interface to exist. Instead we get the standard touch screen keyboard and 22K+ words with which to work in odd combinations. What sounds swank is actually disappointing, but there are so many reviews out there saying the same thing. I’m not reviewing the game because I don’t intend to complete it. Scribblenauts is ultimately a very neat toy but the lack of diversity in the puzzle stages and poor control overall for a touch screen game makes it somewhat a failure as a game.

What intrigued me most about the game was what I found at startup – the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment logo. The utilization of the Objectnaut engine is merely being tested in the game, but the applications within the WB library of copyrights and trademarks could be worth millions. Seriously, who cares about some kid wearing a rooster hat and making objects to appease four individuals of differing professions? I want to do more.

Duck Amuck

There’s already a Duck Amuck game out there, and it’s bad. It’s a lame Nintendo DS puzzle game with many mini-games within it. It’s neat in that the menu screen is simply Daffy standing thing and occasionally quipping, but aside from the nigh interactive duck it’s unremarkable. Instead, imagine a game/toy fully taking on the premise of the original Chuck Jones cartoon wherein you are the dastardly animator abusing Daffy. I can’t imagine this being a full-fledged game, but as a DSi download with a fully voiced Daffy who quips almost appropriately to objects it would be quite the amazing program.

Green Lantern

You were aware that a Green Lantern movie was on its way with the  ever amusing Ryan Reynolds as the star, right? Now is the time to hit hard with a game starring the Green Lantern and fully showing off the power of his ring. Anything he imagines can be created by the ring, so the same should be done in the game – with obvious limitations. You probably don’t need more than 1,000 words with a superhero who fights supervillains and can fly. Still, the idea of creating your own objects to be your own unique Lantern Corps. member would be enticing enough for many DC fans to jump for a purchase. It does help that there has never been a real Green Lantern game, given the complexity of properly translating his power to games (same for the Flash). This would be a good start, so long as WBIE realizes that controls need to be fixed and the game needs to be more action than writing.

Children’s games

And ultimately my heart is set on using the Objectnauts engine to create a game to help facilitate children’s spelling ability. The game, as it stands, doesn’t provide enough reward for figuring out one of hundreds of objects that would work in a given situation. It works well enough as a toy, but some kids might not care to try much else out after they realize they can give their character a sword and then attack any creature they desire. It makes for a good family puzzler, but who wants to be huddled around a DS?

I’ve tried Scribblenauts with the higher functioning of the two autistic kids with whom I work. I left it on the pre-loading screen – essentially the demo area created for horsing around and trying new combinations. I asked the kid to give me an object he wanted to see, and then I asked him to spell it. With such broad instructions, the kid came up with objects he wanted to see but ultimately got frustrated that he couldn’t spell them. I asked him to spell more simple objects, but he refused. The game by itself would not help promote better spelling ability, which is a shame. I could never leave the DS with him as a learning tool, lest I want to find it impaled in the wall across the room.

I do know how to implement the game as a learning device, although I have not yet tried it. Encouraging him to write down words as he reads and then transposing them into the game would probably be a brilliant strategy. I don’t like it, though, because it requires constant supervision and turning a game like this into work would likely diminish the entertainment value (and therefore the subversive learning mechanism). I have come to understand the purpose of edutainment games, and it’s not so that parents can leave their children with virtual teachers and essentially be hands-off with them – babysitters we can trust. It’s because we want to instill children with some sort of agency in regard to their own education. Entertainment plus proper usage is bound to help in development.

For Scribblenauts to be an effective tool in learning, the solutions need to be less open-ended, the dictionary needs voice, and the weapons need to be removed (except where appropriate, like when asking what a police officer holds in his hands). The graphics and interface don’t require a change at all, but the purpose needs to be tweaked. Insert a WB-owned character for maximum sales value if necessary. Buster and Babs Bunny Present: Scribblenauts Kids! I honestly don’t see how this could fail.

Hopes for Web 3.0

Web 1.0 is classified as a nebulous era that simply existed prior to Web 2.0 with no real significance, save for the fact that it existed and facilitated the birth of the latter period.

Web 2.0 is classified as the period during with the social networking and video sharing web-based applications were created and overly exploited. The significance is that information on the web is now no longer at the whim of those with the money to invest in their own servers but at the whim of users at large who wish to post information in the cloud. Everyone, more or less, shares similar labels as users and content providers – just in varying degrees.

What does this mean for the future Web 3.0? I doubt that we will see the absolute dissolution of the differences between user and content provider, especially since we still have provider strongholds locked into major sites like those based off of old newspapers and magazines, not to mention the Gawker Network and other virtual fortresses in the blogosphere. (Note: Blogosphere was in Micro$0ft’s Live Writer dictionary but success required my manual entry.) There will always be those fighting for some sort of hierarchy, and those in control of the strongholds will certainly maintain it.

The impending release of HTML5 will change everything, I’m sure. The idea of applications that exist in the cloud regardless of your computer’s power allows for so much more creativity than you can probably imagine. In thinking about that, not to mention looking at a friend’s blog (which included a screenshot of mine), I realized what Web 3.0 should be:

User Defined Content

Not in the traditional sense of our determining what it is that we read, what is popular, etc. We already have that. Hit counters, ads, etc. already give some indication that users determine what stays around and what does not. I mean in a more literal sense, right from the browser.

As users who read media content with our browsers, the most power we can exert over our reading of a page is changing the text size or the eternal battle of opening in a new window or tab. Sites occasionally allow the posting of comments. Mine does, too, by the way. But what else is there? Sometimes I absolutely loathe how elements on a page are setup and wish to see them in some other format. I feel like I deserve the right to change it as I go.

I was previously interested in the world of publishing, and I did aid in the overall layout of a newspaper eons ago…in high school. I understand the meaning of format and layout and how the author or publisher should be able to exercise control over it, hopefully to explicate further meaning from the written and pictorial content. It makes sense, and I’m not knocking web publishers for doing a horrid job. I just look at users as individuals with individual tastes who might get more out of the presented content if they were able to reshape it into something more easily ingested by the eyes.

Take the above picture, for example. What if, instead of clicking on it to go to the page proper, you could just highlight it and use the scroll button on your mouse to increase or decrease just the size of the photo? What if the placement was in such a godawful area that you felt it hindered your reading, so you clicked and dragged it elsewhere? What if it were an embedded movie clip? If it were not the right size for you, you could expand or contract it to your liking within the page – or unhinge it and watch it somewhere to the side, even outside of the browser window. When you want the page to go back to how the page’s author intended, simply refresh. In essence, everyone has layout control – but only one person’s control has permanency.

Admittedly, this is only one idea for the future of the internet, and it’s not nearly as revolutionary as user content-driven Web 2.0. I just like the idea of increased usability before we get to possible further complication. Anyway, now is the time to think about and create the future of the web. What are your dreams for Web 3.0?

And, come to think of it, this idea would also possibly save MySpace. Horribly gaudy user pages would once more be made accessible through the ability to turn off the visual noise. Maybe they should incorporate that feature anyway, before Web 3.0 hits…

Hello, Pluff – controller innovation without the use of a camera at E3

This should technically be a very games-heavy week here at Let Me Say It, but I haven’t found it in me to care too much about this year’s E3. The show just seems rife with sequelitis and me-tooism. Microsoft announced a new control scheme, a Metal Gear sequel, some other sequels, and realistic looking brown games. Nintendo demonstrated an enhancement to its alternative control scheme, a camera input option method, and nothing but franchise sequels. Sony also announced an alternate input method, a Metal Gear sequel, other sequels, and realistic looking brown games. Tell me why I should care.

While sifting through the various reports of the show and hoping to find a nugget of info that did not continue the brown trend, I found a report on GameSetWatch of an innovative game created by someone I actually know! (This report also links to the LA Times Blog.) Yes, Pluff is another game with some odd input device that isn’t a standard controller, therefore I should consider it more of the same, right? Not really. This touch controller/stuffed animal wasn’t introduced with abstract promises for its application but instead with an actual game showing it off. Plus it’s beyond intuitive for anyone who has ever owned or at least interacted with a pet.

Diana Hughes basically states that in her years of gaming, the controller is the enemy. When breaking into gaming or moving to a new game console, the initial hurdle is the hardware instead of the software. If a gamer isn’t familiar with the buttons, their placement, and their sensitivities; then the games, especially as they increase in complexity, will be filled with unnecessary frustration. This is especially bothersome for new gamers. People who have been around since the 80’s were able to experience the natural evolution of the controller and how the buttons somehow procreated. What about the people who pick up a PS3 controller and realize that there 10 buttons, two analog sticks that double as buttons, a digital pad that can also function as four additional buttons, and the power button? Why would anyone want to pick up that thing?

I’ve also recently noticed that most games I play focus heavily on only two or three buttons, with the other buttons performing seldom-used functions like changing my view of the automap or grabbing ledges. Sometimes a button locks onto enemies, which is more just a matter of simplification and reorienting one’s character.

Hughes has created a controller that one would like to pick up – and hug and squeeze and name George. But no, it’s name is Pluff, and it loves you. Players interact with Pluff by petting, hugging, covering its eyes, bouncing it, and ultimately being decent to it. Obviously, the kinds of games played with the device will be fairly simplistic in nature, but something tells me the goal here isn’t super realistic gameplay. This is an experiment analyzing the relationship between player and controller.

I’m excited for this because of my evening job with severe autistic children. I not only witness their difficulties in social relationships but also with technology. They love to play video games, but the inputs are too cumbersome for their poorly controlled digits. Managing to jump the first goomba and then the first pit in New Super Mario Bros. on the DS proved challenging for the higher functioning child, and they both struggle with timing and not getting hit by rude blue robots on the V-Smile’s Alphabet Park Adventure – despite the controller’s oversized control stick and giant orange action button. The kids are mostly fine with animals, and sensory play with different fabrics and textures is a recommended stimulation for them. This device, whether Hughes realizes it or not, was made for them.

I imagine a version of this device plugging directly into the TV or through some control deck with mandatory buttons for scenario selection and preferred cooing sound. Pluff should include some means for downloading additional scenarios and probably customization features of the creature’s on-screen form. The scenarios could focus on relationship-building, mostly. As a tactile stimulator with an on-screen form with a huge face for conveying exaggerated emotions, this could work to train young people on the autistic spectrum to care for something in the outer world. At the very least, it could be a stepping stone toward that.

I can’t pretend to know where Hughes plans to go with this device, but its mere existence implicates a multitude of applications. Let’s hope this goes somewhere and doesn’t get caught up in the same short-lived world in which Furby was once caught. Hopefully she caught the eye of a keen developer so this story will not die.

Diana Hughes’ Pluff site can be found here.

Project Natal is Project Bullshit

The Electronic Entertainment Expo started Monday morning with a presser from Microsoft that was all about their breakthrough in fighting the Wii’s grip on electronic entertainment’s ease of use. They call it Project Natal:

I read about their conference on MTV Multiplayer, and it seems impressive at first glance. We all know that the video is a gross exaggeration of what the technology can do. Hell, I would be surprised if that little camera could do half of what is promised. Facial recognition is fine, but what about the rest of the body? How does it discern one moving object from another? If we have access to that technology already, why the hell is it being wasted on video games?

Don’t even get me started on voice recognition. There are several good reasons why voice recognition isn’t already heavily used in our every day lives – the most prominent of which is the fact that it takes forever to train software, and even then it remains fairly inaccurate. Don’t peddle that shit to me, Microsoft, or else Windows 7 would already be boasting it.

A release date and price point were not discussed, with many speculating that the camera accessory would be released late in 2010 at the earliest. But what about price? I’d expect Microsoft to take a hit on it just to move units and perpetuate further console and software sales – so let’s expect them to sell the thing for less than $150. If it’s as good as it claims to be, I expect it to be the new must-have web cam after it’s release, especially since we know it’s going to be USB.

One thing I don’t like about the video and the existence of this video-based control mechanism is the fact that it requires one’s gaming area to be less intimate. What’s great about consoles as they are now with controllers is that you’re as fine playing in a tiny closet-sized apartment or dorm room as you are in a huge living room. This accessory requires wide open spaces, which I supposed helps to promote its use in social gaming. Still, DDR was bad enough. This also makes gaming a bit more cumbersome than it needs to be.

Y’know, the gaming world is becoming more clueless and more like all the other dumb corporate entities out there. Instead of making games more accessible from the ground up or improving gameplay, the solution is always to throw more tech out there. Larger hard drives, better processors, high end graphic cards, and HD capabilities don’t make games more enjoyable – they just trick simple gamers into believing that they’re getting something more when they’re sold the same they bought last gen. New interfaces don’t necessarily change the mindset behind the software these people schlock. Nintendo isn’t doing well simply because of the controller but rather what the controller does in gameplay, specifically for the games. Even then, they don’t always get it either. They just get it better than the others. But Nintendo is trying to sell video games. Microsoft and Sony are selling entertainment experiences.

MySpace needs to grow up

Journalist Liz Colville on PopMatters posted a great commentary on MySpace and its existence relative to the other social networking platforms.  If that’s your fancy, check it out here.