What did you expect?

Half Life 2 is a great game, at least in the opinion of the hordes of fans who waited years for it, and most of the "industry" - from retail to reviewers. But perhaps what we enjoy is the contextual change from Wolfenstein and Doom, the improvements that make sense within the FPS "paradigm" (or frame of reference).
A feature in Gamasutra; "Constraint is Design" interviews Katherine Isbister and Nicole Lazzaro, and gives the following quote
"Students who were not already fans of this genre felt really frustrated interacting with the Half-Life 2 characters. They expected even more interactivity and lifelikeness from them because of how good they looked"

So, what did you expect when you picked it up? And how did that change and mold your impression?

Burn out or fade away?

Article by D Pink in Wired (14.07) on the economist
David W. Galenson: "By examining the careers not only of great painters but also of important sculptors, poets, novelists, and movie directors, Old Masters and Young Geniuses offers a profound new understanding of artistic creativity."

Interesting topic - at least as long as you keep it "tabloid" with "there are two types", rather than what it says inside the article;

"In his later papers, as well as in the book he published this year, he has refined his theory to make it less binary. He now talks of a continuum Â? with extreme conceptual innovators at one end, extreme experimental innovators at the other, and moderates in the middle."
apparentlyy Malcom Gladwell (of Tipping Point and Blink, the last of which I'mcurrentlyl almost done with) also wrote an article but had it rejected by the New Yorker. There is an pdf link at Galesons site, 24 pages.

But, back to the subject: is it true that some people find their "way" early, while others need time to find their inner genius? Or is it simply that we appreciate different things from (in/by) various creators - be they artists, authors or poets? Maybe we enjoy Cezanne because he doesn't try to give answers, while we celebrate Picasso (too much, some argue) for having to go beyond the norm to findchallengee and a separate voice?

What would you rather do? Find the formearlyy, then spend the rest of your days in "decline" (or dead... only the good die young) - or spend years and years refining, learning, exploring - until finally one day you had the golden touch?

Art across borders and time

An exhibition and two artist - first off there is major photo exhibit in Milan (Italy) at the Forma

Life: "till 29 August 2006 features the best in LIFE photography. 140 photographs specially selected for this show, including some of the best known pictures taken by LIFE photographers – such as Eisenstaedt, Bourke-Whitre, Mydans, Parks, W. Eugene Smith, Robert Capa."

Then in keeping with the times, perhaps a different look at Iran might be suitable; enter stage left Farhad Moshiri, a painter miing classical potteryshapes with more modern graphical design styles. Or perhaps Rokni Haeri, whos art falls somewhere between Picasso and religious drawings.

All this and a lot of other ideas and impulses come from this summers edition of Intelligent Life, a yearly dose of summer reading courtesy of the staff over at the Economist.

And so the vacation is over, the net is online again and tomorrow the small laptop will bring up a series of post from last week.

What are they fighting for?

The world as we knew it is still hobbling along. Death toll in Iraq is up; daily reported average crossed the 100 mark. Israel abducted Hamas politicians and Hezbollah took two soldiers alive.

But what really shocked me, above and beyond the excessive use of force – was a picture of three young Israeli girls. One standing in the background with her digital camera, having taken or planning to take pictures, whilst the one in the foreground is writing messages on the bombs destined for Lebanon. How can we maintain hope a peaceful co-existence when even the next generation thinks it is right to drop bombs all across a sovereign neighbor, killing UN peacekeepers and chasing out thousands of foreign nationals there on vacation?

Oh, they probably had their reasons and explanations – perhaps their parents or older brothers had been killed in fighting or by a suicide bomber. But isn’t that exactly the problem? Sticking to the Old Testament and “an eye for an eye” is not likely to solve the myriad of conflicts. Unless they truly are looking for an “ultimate solution” all parties involved need to reexamine both the rhetoric and (most importantly?) their actions. Easy? Not by a long shot. But far, far better than the alternative; insecurity, insurgents and irreplaceable losses.

Someone looking at the world through new eyes – or at least delivering their lines in a new voice is al-Qaida (the most common spelling used here in Norwegian). In early July they release a video featuring their new “dude”, the reportedly 28 years old American national Adam Gadahn. The son of a goat farmer in California, he is listed on the FBI site with a variety of aliases, but no “real” crimes as of yet. Jessica Stern of Harvard wrote in the NY Times, over here Morgenbladet picked it up and now here it is online.

The interesting thing about the speech was his focus on the American atrocities – Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, as well as the body count in Iraq. Thereby he was not just preaching to the converted masses, but linking “his” struggle with popular opinions; it is not alright to do as you please if the goal is good – for the ends do not justify the means. In a way it is the 50-ies and McCarthy all over again. You can not support and promote liberty and justice by taking away the rights and safeguards that thousands and millions have given their life to protect. It is difficult and hard to take the higher ground, but it is the only way to come out with your hands and conscience clean.

Too hot to think, too cold to care?

Starting up again after the summer… even if it is still hot enough to sit outside on the balcony on this, the last day of the holiday proper. Tomorrow is Saturday, and the last weekend before it is back to work on Monday. For all of July I’ve hardly done a thing. Some reading, a little bit of news and sports, and for the last three or four days gently getting back online. And today the laptop got booted up again, and here I am sitting outside in the shade trying to arrange and structure various thoughts and ideas from the summer.

Four main themes in the posts to come – probably mixed, but maybe a bit split up if things work out (and from an IT standpoint they’re not right now, the editor won’t start without an online connection to verify my account so this is good old MS Word doing the job for now).

1. Media and content – just finished reading Watchmen, currently almost done with volume 1 of Crying Freeman, saw Pirates of The Caribbean – Dead Mans Chest last night
2. World and politics – not to much, this is not the place for it, but some words on a picture of Israeli girls writing messages on the bombs for Lebanon and the “new” al-Qaida “dude” (Adam Gadahn)
3. Art and culture – Gaarder and Ballard, PlayMusicMagazine.com, Berman on NYC, Khaldun on civilization, Hirst redone
4. Mind and perception – Blink, SciAm Mind, some memories from the corporate retreat and NLP

So on that mixed and ambitious statement of intent – I guess it is time to get to the matters at hand and put some of my summer thoughts out there. Most likely there will be a large number of smaller post over the weekend, and then some follow-up and longer thoughts during next week.

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.