Sparrow

House sparrow as described by The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; "these cheerful exploiters of man's rubbish and wastefulness, have even managed to colonise most of the world"
They are in decline, due to changes in the way we live and act - with less grain and seed laying around for them to enjoy. Their cousins in the country have an even harder time at it - so drop some crumbs the next time you are out and about.

More on Episodic Gaming

Gamasutra has a feature called "Episodic Gaming in the Age of Digital Distribution": "At the heart of the debate about episodic gaming, we believe there is a push toward Gaming as a Service"

It raises several interesting points - including the distribution of games content, risk-reward and the aspect of lock-in.

Distribution - almost a "must have" to make episodes feasible, from the days of short films every weekend, via tv episodes to podcasts with a dedicated rss feed. The attention of the audience and the cost must match up, which is why X-box Live is so cheap for low level membership and why Steam needed something huge like Half Life 2 and Counter Strike Source to get off the ground.

Risk - it is easier to get a spin-off from something popular than to start a new franchise from scratch. If you have to both create the world, characters and story - as well as educate the masses, and develop the core system, the episode is no cheaper than the original. But if you already have the fan-base (ref Marvel comicbooks minority of total revenues) then the episode or sequel is that much easier to do.
This can already be seen by the "adver-games" [1, 2]- small flash games used as part of a major advertizing campaign, where the concept and story is already created (sometimes the game as well, it is just reskinned for the occasion) and put before the audience.

Lock-in - with more and more content available; books, movies, tv shows online or on dvd, multiple games systems, tens or hundreds of MMOs - there is a much stronger case for building up direct consumer relationsships for all parts of the valuechain (ip owner/creator - developer - publisher - distributor - retailer). It is in part why Nintendo is still going strong (financially if not in terms of absolute marketshare for consoles) - they own the Mario franchise, so they can control how it is used and by whom, making it easy to come to market with new spin-offs or sequels.

With the improved X-box Live Microsoft is giving the 360 a better chance of being the first stop for consumers - and the stats show that short casual games are a (excuse the pun) "Killer App". Why pay a lot to learn something new, when you can test something just as captivating for five or ten minutes? Sure the hard core will still want their Halo 15 and Doom 2073, but for mass-market a short, risk-free and compelling piece of entertainment is key. Be that a "15 minutes weekly in-between episodes game" for TV hits like Lost - or a discussion forum with other fans...

In other words: the future is still wide open, and the chance of there being "one right and final solution" is a big in episodic games as in business in general: slim to none, but good for a rant or book

Grow up

Discovery Channel has a rather interesting piece (via /.) on our state of mind - aptly called Immaturity Levels Rising: "academics, teachers, ... are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence"

Partially because in order to always learn new ideas and adapt to constant change, the brain never "finishes" - sort of like when you burn a cd or dvd, and make it multi-session in case you need to add a couple of files later. At no time are you truly sure that you have found your place and the truth of life, it all keeps on going and changing.

So is there truly no end in sight? Do we know enough to say that there will always be something more to know?

A simply case in point is the stats in the latest issue of Wired on neutrinos:

• Estimated number of neutrinos detected: 725,000
• Rate at which solar neutrinos reach Earth: 60 billion per square centimeter per second

Which basically means that in 50 years we have "detected" just about one thousandth of one percent - of those that hit in a second. The numbers and scale are truly worthy of the term "mind boggling"

Maybe some day we will know and understand enough to be content, to fill our days in peaceful contemplation with no need to adapt to change - but for now, there are enough changes and challenges ahead to make it wise to be immature

More blood

BloodSpell Episode 1 is out (along with e2 - 4 currently, e5 coming in a week). It is a machinima made with NWN, and looks really good from the first few glimpses. The dvd quality movies wheigh in at around 70 mb each for Windows Media.

I'l update a bit more on how good, funny or over the top the story is later in the summer - after seeing a few more of the episodes, and having had some time to reflect on it.

Most fascinating tidbit? They made/adapted a program to override the textures and add in lip-sync, along the lines of Half Life 2.

"Gad of the Iron Arm, a ruthless Blooded leader, is performing what appears to be a human sacrifice. A force of Black Monks of the Angels, including the novice Jered, are poised to attack and capture him."

There is also an interview from Bioware - and apparently there is a 'real' movie with the same name, an "occult horror" from 1987.

Photo as art

With digital cameras it is easier to take pictures. So easy in fact that a lot of them are just left in a folder on the computer after being transferred over, never to be seen again. While a few might get edited or adjusted a bit, even fewer are eventually printed out.

But for that one great shot - maybe the service offered by ProFormat (as presumably others, I know HP had an in-house service for large prints) is just the thing: printing out the image as if it was a painting, and putting it up on a proper frame. Now, to find and adjust just that one great image...

Canvas for photo: "Den Canvas vi använder heter 'Water Resistant Art Canvas' och är som namnet anger vattentålig"

Step by step - tv and games unite?

Wired story on episodic gaming, having a new spotlight following Episode 1 for Half Life2; Tune in Next Week for Gaming Fun: "I got that satisfying sense of completion that I often miss in a normal 'big' game, when I realize I'll never have time to play the whole 50 hours, and reluctantly abandon it halfway through." (page 2 direct)

I would compare it to short modules for games like NWN - with many of the best modules splitting up the adventure over several parts. It has all the advantages mentioned in the Wired story - you can adapt from feedback, you reduce risk from spending to long on the wrong concept, you can improve over time and you can have minor characters and plots develop long term.

In short: you can do like the soaps (as Sheldon writes)

The best part about episodic content is the potential for disintermediation - that good old 1999 buzzword - digital distribution will give us global price, rather than inflated local prices. And shorter stories in an established framework are smaller and easier to download than full games, making it less of a 'gamble'.

Now, what remains to be seen is how broad the uptake will be, and if Valve is actually able to keep HL2 growing in a good way.

Don't bother?

Adobe has a "Pocket PC Exchange" they inherited along with the rest of the Flash related content. It currently holds 13 entries. 5 from the 30 th of June and 8 from the 29th - in 2005.
Contrast this with the number of entries on a place like Handango with 12 606 titles listed.
Sure, one is free and the other is commercial (but with 30+ free downloads), but I think it is a matter of lock in. The Flash player for the pda was not includd by Microsoft - nor is the development version included. While MS gives you hundreds of mb of tools, the Flash player is sold.

Talk about shutting yourself out of the market. Yes, it is a niche - but one dominated by two core groups for software: developers who like to hack their device and try new stuff - and excecutives, who often end up making decisions on tech choices.

And if you can get the first group to make something for fun and show it to the second group - how would that improve the chance for getting the go-ahead for making bigger solutions, either multi-device or pure online?

News not fit to print?

"That transition is going to happen, with or without newspapers. And how successfully that transition is managed will determine not only whether healthy newsrooms come out on the other end -- but also how well important newsroom values endure." (Poynter - Leading Lines)

What is news? Just something that you hadn't heard before, or does it need to be related either to you or the things you care about? If scientist discover something - say a new particle - which does nothing more than help fill out the blanks in some theories, is it news or just an event?

What is a paper? Just a random collection of stories, to fill time and become "tomorrows fish'n chips wrapping"? Or can it delivery some sort of total experience, giving you a bigger picture than the parts, even when it has no idea which ones you decide to actually read on any given day. Is it all about making a statement of intent - bringing you the news you ought to read along with the news you think you'd like to read? To challenge you and give you insights and angles you would not come up with on your own? For a tabloid newspaper, the income from the actual sale of the paper more or less covers the printing and distribution - which means that all the content (and any profit) comes from the advertisers...

What is the web? A huge collaboration or lots of deserted, stranded islands pumping out the same stories over and over? Why should there be 150 or 874 almost identical pieces on a major event? Why not have a networked, intergrated approach, where the only thing you do is add something on to an ongoing "conversation" rather than just rehashing wire stories or speculations from other sites?

meta comment: written in the compose mode, sacrificing 'proper' coding of bold and italics for ease of typing

...and the sun is great - a week of true summer, still going strong...

Blogger expand

Vampus is one of the more prominent and outspoken Norwegian bloggers. She has recently graduated to an additional blog on the website for on of the major "fashion" magazines, Henne (aka Her when translated from N.)

Quote: "Så VamPus smilte søtt til fotografen og sa; Takk, jeg klarer meg selv!"


So, for once actual "talent" wins out over generic celebrity faces - or does it? Would she have gotten the column without the previous spate in relation to thDanishsh cartoons? Maybe, but it is clear that the willingness to go above and beyond in terms of taking a stand - and most importantly voice an opinion loudly, is what will get you more exposure. If you can write, even better. If you can also supply some cred oexistingng readers - you're halfway there.

So, if you are looking for more mainstream exposure; make sure to fit into an easily branded niche - preferably an empty one, then take a stand for (or against) something everybody can relate to.

[just a disclaimer - this is in no way an attack on VamPus, she has been bloggin for a year and a half or so, and mainly has opinions on a lot of things - from shoes thorough politics to MTV]

And yes, there is a bit of an offline backlog that has yet to make it on here, looking for some time to edit and link up in the coming days (new laptop, ultra portable from Lenovo)

6-6-6

- double up day - and I had to backdate this to gt it right

3 years
3 months
3 days

into the millenium I started this blog

and that is how long it has been here on Blogger - and still the online editor does a rather stange job of the Norwegian characters æøå

so, hopefully summer will give some inspiration and push me back to posting some more thoughts here (rather than on assorted journals and forums all over the inter-web). Main themes lurking in drafts and notes include poverty, choice or fate, world and timezones and of course various books and movies/series

so stay tuned - or drop by once in a while, and I'll try to do the same

...and the sun tries to stay up all night, but hides for a couple of hours - but it doesn't get really dark ...