Monday, September 01, 2008

Once more, with feeling

Ok, I've become a bit of a Palin news junky over the last few days. It's led me to strange places... But consider the decision making process that led up to the fateful decision.

First, we find out that Palin was a rushed pick; the dark horse among a short list of 5. Then, we find out that Lieberman was the preferred veep, but McCain was forced to change his mind at the last minute. Then, this is attributed to generic "conservative" forces. Finally to Karl Rove.

But now, in an almost sinister-like fashion, references to the "CNP" are starting to pop up, and long with them the implication that they may have been inclined to reject Lieberman on grounds of his stance on abortion rights. Sometimes it pays to listen to references like this, as they pop up (here, for example) -- they may seem unconnected to events, but in reality these references are placed there, right before our nose, just to make us aware of them. To make us consider the possibility of a straight line connecting them, a line that would make the rational out of the irrational. Something too circumstantial to print, too obvious to stake a reputation on.

So, let's connect the dots. Is it conceivable that they, as they promised to do with Giuliani (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/30/giuliani/), blackmailed McCain with the threat of introducing a competing conservative candidate? Could they have been the force that changed McCain's mind at such a critical time?

Certainly, as this link reports, they're among Palin's strongest supporters.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/30/0559/95926/3/579681

The CNP is exactly what any good conspiracy theorist might hope it would be. It's a secret cabal of president makers (http://www.seekgod.ca/topiccnp.htm), the "Council for National Policy." It apparently has strong ties with powerful Christians and is modelled on the Council on Foreign Relations. Both of these are private organisations, that presume to act on behalf of the public good.

Ok, it's a conspiracy theory. And there's no one pointing the finger in this direction yet, and may never be. But, it's curious, yeah? And after all, this Palin thing is so other-worldly, how else are we supposed to process it, without imagining secret underground committees determining the world's fate with threats in smokey rooms.

If I come off sounding like a wacko, that's understandable. There are many possible reasons why we could have ended up with Palin in this position. And there's many ways in which Palin can succeed as VP candidate (that is, during the election campaign). Many possibilities, I've read about over the last few days and considered. However, it seems increasingly likely to me that something forced McCain to change his mind extremely late in the game; despite the fact that the's explicitly quoted many months ago said he didn't want to rush the VP decision process (sorry, no link). What could force McCain to change is mind? Perhaps his preferred choice refused (which, btw, is ironically and exactly the only reasonable action we could have expected from Palin, if in fact she had an appropriate mentality for the position)? Perhaps there was widespread panic after the success of the Democrat's conference. Maybe... Maybe... Or maybe someone forced his hand. Someone committed, and powerful, and with leverage.

Whoever that was, they've established a situation whereby, given a certain set of eventualities (not likelihoods, sure, but possibilities) we could be relying on a President Palin to play Reagan's part vs the powerful Medvedev and the self confident Putin to quell reoccurring tensions.

And if that happens, who are we going to blame?

Addendum:

BTW -- Who do you think Palin wanted to hide the identity of Trig's mother from? From Trig himself, of course. So, in all of this... Not only will immense pressure of the campaign very possibly end Palin's political career (that is, assuming Obama wins); but also will it lead lasting devastation on her family.

A hint, to all who read this... If John McCain rings you up in the middle of the night and offers you the US Vice Presidency... Turn him down, you fools!

God! Honestly, I really don't understand that... Why didn't she say no?

Saturday, February 16, 2008

It can only be attributable... to human error

Which shift to you like better?

The one from Armor Games...

or these other guys?

The second one made me think of the Sephirothic System. This is a document from ancient Judaism, one of the most ancient religious documents we have (or we have recreated). It shows the path from mere immoral soul to divine entity, in an uncertain number of steps.

Having recently heard that some early religions made board games depicting bible stories, and religious ideas with progression (I can't remember where I heard that), I began to wonder if the Sephirothic System was once a board game... See the similarities with the second shift? Subsequent challenges set before man within the promise of progression to divinity?


Bonus content:

In the Hitchhiker's Guide, one unfortunately short-sighted civilisation is wiped out by deceases caught from dirty phones. Douglas Adams was clearly, once again, before his time; no doubt this was a warning to all of us about what horrible dangers lay in store. Because in this day and age, these risks are out there. Take, for example, the case of the virus ridden photo frame. It's taking over the intanets!

Friday, February 08, 2008

Have you any clients from Saudi Arabia named bin Laden?

Decartes wondered if we could put the world in equation; clearly this is not an uncommon goal. The British have an excellent weather prediction system--they have simulate the atmospheric conditions over all of Great Britain, in one big fluid dynamics petri dish. As a result, they can tell when the rain will hit your part of London, almost down to the minute: just feed in the state of the world as it is currently, run the simulation faster than real time, and there you go. It’s your window on the future. The world remade in equation.


This, of course, is of interest to any game coder. Because that’s all a game is, really: the world remade. We make everything, from the dirt to the sun--you can’t buy it, you can’t pick it up and put in it frame, you can shift the camera to see it. You have to make it, and you do that with it’s primitive component types. Coding is a process of giving things names; games coders seek the true name of the world.


So, we want to see the world remade in equation. So do cognitive science researchers, and AI researchers. Map the brain; and make it anew in logic. Find the weights, connect the neurons, map out the algorithms.


But if we can make the brain with numbers, where’s the magic? Lost in the quantum uncertainty, perhaps--but let’s say it’s not. Let’s say, human behaviour is equation. Let’s say, the product of human behaviour is equation. Let’s say, any society is like physics: we can model it accurately.


But if that’s the case; we can model the behaviour of society so long as we know the correct input to the algorithm. Sample the collective conscious, feed it in, and run it faster than real time: we’ll see when the spreading Obamaism hits Washington.


If we can do it for the weather, then why does it feel wrong to say we might be able to do it with people, also? Perhaps it’s because it feels like capitalism, and we hate capitalism.


If we assume that all agents are equal, and have equally free options, and work for selfish but mutual beneficial gain: then we can build an economic model of the world. We’re still working on that model, the study of economics is slower than physics, but it’s coming. We’ll feed in an easily sampled initial state, and find out the future.


But; if we assume that all agents aren’t equal, and do not always work for selfish gain, then it won’t work, right? We can’t model the individual will of people; we can’t model diversity and ingenuity, right?


Of course we can. Why not? Historians arrive are predictions and conclusions through rational models. Sociology does, also. The most primitive forms of statistics and social models are in daily use. We can model large scale social behaviour, even when our subjects are active, involved and intelligent. And what’s more; we can do it with economics. Because economics, above all, is the quantification of society, our way of counting the uncountable.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Putting the World Into Equation

It may be propaganda, but I have to post this because it's extraordinary. It's the soul of the web and the strength of the mind; the product of a modern will. They may be famous, but it's talent and skill that gives it credibility. Here they're all just voices, no more or less than Lessig (for example). He just wants to say something, and would otherwise have no particular means to do so.




Karl Rove tell us the web changes politics because it opens up new and quicker channels to source donations. But that idea just grows his incredible infamy, and leaves a taste of sickness in our mouths: because we know the real reason the web changes political. It gives us ways to talk about it; clearer and sharper and stronger than before. We start to break free from the horrible minimalism of television journalism, the constriction of complex concepts to misconstrued simplifications.

The web breeds rationality because, at the very least, we understand better why we make crazy decisions. We can take delight in contradiction. We can watch the video and say that general rhetoric and oration are the very cheapest of tools of the politician. But we can point to Lessig and say that the president is a symbol. The president says something about the people of America--and the people of America have something they want to say.

Lastly, we can listen and laugh, as they say on the TV, that "Obama inspires young people": and call that the dieing rasps from the self-strangled throat that for so long filtered meaning; that which we brought to life by our now forgotten need to convince ourselves of a limit to our reasoning.

And yet, this is all contradiction fundamentally, isn't it? Can Will.I.Am do any more than highlight the genericness of Obama's rhetoric? Are we not replacing a society that is complexity-deluded with one that is meaning-deluded? Is the web not full of the most words with the least information, a tide of amateurish thought? Who is Will.I.Am to put forward an opinion on politicians, anyway? Doesn't he say on his site that he isn't interested in politics, and doesn't he suggest he was dragged into supporting the Kerry campaign? Isn't he the perfect model of the web author who believes his opinion counts, and perhaps sees it's impact caused, but is least qualified to fill our hearts and minds? The danger of voice is the propensity to use it.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Intangible celebrity

This is very good:

http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/20_minutes_or_so_on_why_i_am_4.html

Lessig is a lawyer who is well know and respected on the internet and has, for a long time, been at the forefront of technology law and the modern outlook on intellectual property. In the video, he talks about Obama and Clinton and why, as it seems to me, that he shares a certain scene of solidarity with Obama.

Lessig talks about Obama being an inspirational leader, and being a leader in the traditional sense: as someone who shows us the moral and ethical path. I've always wandered what it would be like if there were a political leader like that in Australia. But, our Westminister-style of government doesn't really allow for that kind of leader to rise to the position of Prime Minister. Instead, to get to PM, a politician needs practical "survival" skills, you could say. Either political wit and guile, like John Howard or Paul Keating, or knowledge and education, like the "bookish" Kevin Rudd, or an exceptional practical talent, like the treasurer Peter Costello. You can't just engage with people and become prime minister, you can just have a brilliant vision or approach. Hmm... I've been meaning to write a rambling piece on, in part, the executive branch of government. Maybe soon.

California Done By the British

Will the economic situation in the US effect the Australian games development industry? Well, I guess we generally expect it to do so, but how much, exactly? I’ll use my modest understanding of economics to make some guesses and some analysis.

Of particular interest in the local development industry are the US:AUD and GBP:AUD exchange rates, for obvious reasons. Almost all Australian development is funded by investment from overseas, and the product is sold on international markets (predominantly to the classically highly consuming Americans), which means that both the initial investment and the returns on that investment are in foreign currencies. This is related to the developer/publisher model of the industry. Though the developer is responsible for the majority of the “intangible” elements of our newly intangible economy, though the abilities of the developer are what makes the difference between a successful and unsuccessful product (at least, in our idealised imaginings), the developer is still generally just a client of the publisher. As such, developers are subject to only being paid in the currency of the publisher, and so suffer on the whim of exchange rates.

The Australian dollar has been appreciating recently, of course. Just a few months ago the dollar was at it’s record of 92 US cents, up from less than 60 US cents just five years ago. To quickly put this in context, let’s imagine a project that might have been budgeted about one year ago for a US publisher wanting to pay a moderate 5 million US. Let’s imagine that 75% of the budget is in the form of milestones, of which there are 12, paid out every 2 months. So, each milestone payment is around USD$312,000. At the start of 2007, when the dollar was at the higher end of a trend that had lasted for a few years, that equates to about AUD$400,000. Today, at just over 90 cents to the US dollar, that’s AUD$346,000, about 15% lower. So, it’s not necessarily catastrophic, but over the course of just one year, it’s the equivalent of several years of strong growth. Over the past year, we’ve also seen a similarly dramatic appreciation against the pound, and so we see the same pressures from both of our two major sources of funding.

Note, however, that this isn’t a flat out 15% reduction in overall funding for the project. Milestone payments are paid out gradually over time, and subject to the exchange rate at that time. There are even financial tricks to makes sure the payments go through when the AUD is weakest. Given that our project cycles are 2 to 3 years, one project can see extreme appreciation or depreciation, and as a result the exchange rate is one of the key factors in success of lack of success of our local industry.

So will the dollar continue to appreciate? I’m no expert, and I’m somewhat out of touch, but there seem to be at least some continuing pressure for the Australia dollar to appreciate. In particular, the extraordinary interest rate cuts in the US, and the almost as extraordinary interest rate hikes in Australia have produced (and may continue to produce) a particularly significant variation in the economic situation between our two nations. The higher relative domestic interest rate is likely to naturally attract more foreign investment here, pushing the exchange rate up further. Note that this extra investment doesn’t have an affect on our industry, because our returns are always from global markets, anyway.

It will be interesting to see the impact that the new government has on exchange rates, also, after the poorly valued dollar of the middle Howard and Costello years. The primary economic goal of our new treasurer appears to be a reduction in inflation. This, presumedly, might bring a rise in unemployment, and it would seem logical that it might also cause appreciation pressures. After all, a less inflated dollar should naturally be a more valuable dollar, and a low inflation economy is likely to import less from a high inflation economy--however, economies don’t always work logically.

Apparently, the reason the Australian economy can support interest rate changes in the opposite direction from the US Federal Bank is due to growing shift to a more Asian-focused economy. This may even allow us to avoid following the US into a recession. But how would it affect our industry if the US, and perhaps Britain, were in recession, and Australia was not?

Well, if the US were in recession, you would naturally expect 3 things: US publishers would be less willing to make risky investments, particularly of the long term kind; US consumption of entertainment media would go down (though, from memory, this hasn’t occurred in past recessions); and, US developers would pitch at lower prices.

The first two have fairly obvious negative consequences (particularly when you consider that Australia developers are seen as, if anything, risky investments), but it is the third that is perhaps the most devastating. The reason for this is also the cause behind the domestic industry’s critical focus on economics, in general. For any developer, or group of developers, to survive in the worldwide market, they need to have some competitive advantage. For a long time, the key competitive advantage of Australia developers has been cost. It has been cheaper to make medium sized games down under than anywhere else in the world, without a drop in quality quite so extreme as that associated with India or eastern Europe. In other words, publishers don’t come to Australia for a product they can’t get elsewhere; they come for the same product, just cheaper. So if our projects are sold on the merits of their price, the possibility of our costs increasing while US costs are decreasing squeezes out our advantage. It should be noted, also, that readjustment of costs doesn’t actually need to occur for us to loose ground--it only has to be expected to occur. As long as publishers expect that at some time over the next 2 or 3 years, Australian costs will go up and US costs will go down, they become more attracted to the less risky prospects in the heartland of game development in the US.

Many Australia industries must have to deal with the same kinds of pressures, I guess. However, many of our export industries have a clear course of action in response. That is, they can change their focus to the growing Chinese and Korean economies. However, this is not a reasonable solution for us. For Asian economies to work for us, we would need to sell product there--it doesn’t matter if the publisher is Chinese or American or British. However, it’s unreasonable to expect that would be able to produce games that have any great credibility in a Korean or Chinese market which, like the Japanese, traditionally reject western entertainment media in preference for their own (furthermore, there is a hesitation associated with the widely accepted perception of IP-lawlessness in some regions). Though Australia is geographically close, and in some ways feeling more Asian as every year goes on, we’re still fundamentally western; if perhaps to our great detriment.

On a side note, perhaps this phenomenon may help put some weight behind the growing industry in Singapore, however.

So, the exchange rate, and the economic situation in the US are of particular interest and focus to Australia game developers. US politics, also, can play a roll. For example, 2008 is an election year, and it looks like many Americans are going to be particularly anxious about this one. Consider if there’s one candidate, later on in the year, that comes to be considered an “unsafe bet” in regards to the economy. Think of McCain’s recent admission that he knew little about economics, or Obama’s relative inexperience. I don’t know how the US election is going to turn out, but it seems like economic will be a major issue, and an election like that can cause publishers to hold off on new investments around for a time, which can have run on effects down here. Generally, we’re bound to the temporal boldness of the American publishers, even if there is no direct local economic effect.

So what happens when the exchange rate is out of our favour? Well, one answer is to say we need to tighten our collective belts. Another is to realise that different solutions can start to look more economical. For example, it can become more economical to use more foreign outsourcing and middleware components. That is, more economical, but not necessarily cheaper. This is the case for middleware, because many major middleware companies are in the US or Britain, and they can be paid directly by the publisher, without any currency exchange. It also holds true for art outsourcing, audio outsourcing, QA, contracting off site programmers, and other similar arrangements.

The common effect of all of these things is they reduce the amount of any given game’s budget that is being spent in Australia. While this may get the game done quicker, it also shrinks the size of the Australia industry, just as effective as reducing the number of projects. Furthermore, we can see this is as a big barrier of entry for any Australia middleware companies, particularly since publishers are used to paying for middleware in their own currencies. There may be an angle here, however, as while there are no Australian publishers to buy Australian middleware, selling middleware to Asian companies has been met with some moderate success.

So, what can we do to avoid impending disaster if things get worse? Well, I hate to say it, but no-one should be particularly surprised to find publishers becoming even more risk adverse. This presents opportunities in itself, given that a project idea that is particularly risk-free is a competitive advantage. It will be interesting to see if this turns out to be an advantage for Nintendo; given that their business model seems apparently significantly lower risk. That is, Nintendo can claim many quarters of profit, with few exceptions, and the games market appears to be less hit-focused. That is, a higher percentage of games are successful, though a lower percentage of games are extremely successful (I haven’t got access to the research figures to back this up, though). Furthermore, Nintendo’s very short hardware life-cycle and the very minor evolution of components we might expect from Nintendo in the future (as demonstrated by the step from Gamecube to Wii) are inherently less risky. To contrast, each hardware generation from Sony and Microsoft throws the entire industry into an extended period of uncertainty and risk (for both hardware and software companies)--it’s something we’ve come to expect and live with, but it can still be scary if you’re money is riding on the back of the success of one of the two. Lastly, and critically, Nintendo don’t have a direct competitor. They’re blessed with a market all of their own, and don’t currently run the risk of becoming marginalised by an upstart.

It seems unlikely that Australia would be able to gain a cost advantage on a level playing field, due to the economies of scale that are enjoyed in the core development areas. However, perhaps breaking free of the low-cost mould might allow an Australia developer the opportunities to market itself based on something else--perhaps appeal to a niche market, a unique approach or style. And yet, that’s just fashion--right? That’s where everyone wants to be.

So; the exchange rate and economic and political health of the US and Britain are of vital importance to any member of the Australia games development community. As long as we don’t have a domestically owned and funded publisher, we’re bound to the whim of overseas interests. Over time, this plays a large part in determining the periods of growth and contraction we see domestically. Eventually, we’re drawn back to the question of: what is it that’s unique about being an Australian game developer? What can we do here, that can’t be done elsewhere? And, from there, inevitably we’re draw to the even less answerable question: what’s so unique about being Australian, anyway?

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Scacchic Sages; or the King is Greatly Discommoded

While working with the the Android API, I've found that it's impossible not to wonder where Google is going with this, even if only for a moment. Generally we expect that Google's major projects are focused on one of two goals: to organize the world's information, and to facilitate advertising on the web. Generally their major web apps, research projects and acquisitions fall into one of these two categories, if sometimes, a little loosely. However, Android appears to be not only Google's biggest new initiative; but also the one that falls least clearly into Google's general business goals.

In the past, we've seen large companies make what appeared to be giant leaps sideways, but in hindsight now appear to be nothing but brilliant innovative leaps. Apple's ipod is a clear example, and a particularly relevant example--here Apple revived their core business by heading off in what originally seemed to be a completely unrelated direction. Now, however, the ipod is so caught up in the identity of Apple, it's hard to imagine a mac computer without it's little consumerist side-kick. Now, Steve Jobs can confidently refer to the music industry and music retail as part of Apple's traditional business domain. Could it be, that in five years time, we'll see Google and Android is the same way?

About half a year ago, now, Google acquired a company called PeakStream. They were working on an API and virtual machine that is designed around a steam processing model for massively parallel processing. There's some diagrams here. Now this feels like very familiar territory for me, because, as it turns out, the games industry is somewhat in-front of the field in this regard. In the PS3 and XBOX 360, we've already been forced to turn to various forms of stream processing technique in order to get peak performance out of the hardware. In a way, we've seen in the industry a bit of a regression to an older style of hardware, characterized by the term "NUMA", something that's I've come to associate with the very oldest Cray supercomputers.

Just as Cray gained a competitive advantage by levering the possibilities of NUMA, so to does the PS3 (at least, potentially), and so to will other performance maximizing sectors. Generally we've seen processors move away from this architecture because it's considerably more difficult to program; or, perhaps more accurately, it required use of considerably more advanced techniques and methods. And yet, as computer science evolves, those advanced methods become easier and easier to grasp, and the advantages of NUMA massively parallel architectures become of more general benefit.

PeakStream, I imagine, is trying to capitalize on that concept. But the thing that catches my attention, right now, is two key words: virtual machine. Something there rings a bell, because we know that Google is working on their own virtual machine. It's a key competitive advantage to Android, in fact--it's what can potentially set Android phones apart from traditional Java supporting phones. That is, Google's "branched" Java VM, called Dalvik. Dalvik supports a lot of the Java bytecode, but has certain performance advantages. Those advantages are curious hardware-focused (as opposed to being algorithmic advances): in particular, Dalvik is register based, and it allows for sharing of some system memory components.

So; I can't help but wonder if there's a cross-over here, somewhere. Dalvik with PeakStream, Android for NUMA architectures? NUMA architectures (that's a bit like saying "ATM machine", btw...) tend to be great for getting very high levels of theoretical performance out of relatively few transistors, as well as being particularly scalable. There seems to be very little information about Android hardware about, though I've come across some rumours to the effect that we may be seeing some new processors that execute Dalvik bytecode directly. We might expect, though, that at least the first generation of devices will be ARM or XScale based. As far as I know, there are no massively parallel versions of these on the horizon... But, you never know. At the very least, ARM seem to have a multi-core version of their Cortex processor.

Perhaps, one day, we'll see a phone with a low end Cell chip in it. That's what I'm waiting for.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Stand Alone Complex

I've recently come across the idea that the Christian laws against incest were put in place in order to stop the practice of rich families marrying internally (see post below). Families would do this in order to keep their fortunes, dowries and inheritances within the family, rather than see their heightened economic status slowly dissipate into the surrounding general society. Perhaps they also had some interest in keeping the growth of the family down to a minimal level, so that each share of the fortune was kept large.


The church's was they found that, with restrictions against incest in place, more money would flow to the church itself. As the families broke down over generations, loyalties to immediate groups like clans and caste diminished in favour of a sense of belonging to larger groups; like the state and the church. In other words, through this mechanism, was a long-term attack against one of the church's competing centres of power.

Apparently, this idea is put forward in J. Goody's The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, and Deepak Lal's Unintended Consequences. In the meantime, I'm so taken by the concept, and so willing to see it slip, oh so smoothly and cleanly, into my personal mythos of man, that I'm almost willing to believe it on pure principle. Unintended consequences, indeed.

In the news today, the two suicide bombers in iraq, who have been reported my many sources as having blown themselves up in crowded markets, killing many people, didn't actually do that. Apparently, in truth, someone else blew them up--by remote control.

Presumedly they knew what was strapped around them; but, as they wandered around the crowd, keeping to the middle of the most dense areas and battering between people, they must have been thinking: when is it going to happen? Meanwhile, whoever it was that bundled them up in explosives and told them that this would redeem them from whatever dreadful sin caused them to be punished with their mental illness; whoever it was that claimed providence over death, picked their preferred time and place, and lived to do it again.

UPDATE: it turns out the reporting around the above described incident was error prone and unreliable. And so, the above two paragraphs are hereby pronounced Completely Invalid!

Monday, January 14, 2008

Sins committed while inside the womb

It turns out that the Clinton win in the greatest show on earth is actually impossible to explain using modern statistical methods, after all. More anomalous incompetence associated with Diebold machines and their handlers, perhaps.

As with things of this type, there appears to be at least a little misinformation and confused statisticians floating around; but the above link seems a little more reliable than most.

Alien of Extraordinary Ability

I'm posting this because it says "tempus incognito." That is all.

Except for this:

The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

The School of Athens


Recently there have been some reports floating around about a married couple who found out, in a classic and horrible twist of Oedipusian fate, that they are actually twin brother and sister, separated at birth. It must have been terribly traumatic for them, something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. After, all, one of the most important social taboos disallows incest, it's also outlawed in the bible and, of course, there are the detrimental generic consequences. The couple have since separated, and and I'm sure we all hope they learn to come to terms with the revelation and get on with their lives happily.

Social taboos are a bit of an interesting thing. Clearly, this one is very positive for society, due to the need for genetic diversity in reproduction so that the gene pool adapts and strengthens. But have you ever wondered how this taboo came about? Presumedly it has been around for a long time, if there is a ban in the bible. But, even though I imagine the church would have been a very forwarding thinking and culturally advanced institution back in the early years AD, the study of genetics and the theory of natural selection were still along way off. So what inspired this brilliant leap of logic? How did we end up with such a reasonable taboo? Were genetic defects in the first born incestuous generation so immediately obvious and attributable that there was no question of cause and effect? And if so, did anyone stop to ask why?

My best guess is that this was early Christianity's way of distinguishing itself from other societies of the time that were perhaps heavily inbred. It seems that Christianity imposed a number of precepts to social change away from behaviours it saw as counter-productive. For example, the religion initially outlawed all idols--because this was the preferred mode of worship of Roman pagans. That law seemed to only last as long as it was useful, however, and as paganism in the west declined, idolatry became an important part of the church. Similarly--and I'm speculating here--homophobia in the early church may have been a reaction against all male societies of the time, such as some very early groups of Jewish men, around the time of the writing of the dead sea scrolls.

Now; the proper form of Japanese discourse involves never actually mentioning what you're really talking about until you're almost done. The Japanese are much more skillful with it, but I'm just going to jump across to another topic.

Modern online games have become a bit of a microcosm of real world societies; and following that, they tend to start to display strange habits that seem somehow familiar. For instance, in World of Warcraft, many social rules that developed, above and beyond the rules of the game. These come from no specific source, seem to develop independently on different servers, so that they sometimes exhibit discrepancies from one place to another. There is no central authority (that is, assuming playing with a group composed of the general public, rather than an internal guild group), so these rules are not maintained and recorded in any place; instead they are just accepted by convention, and there is an unsaid expectation that everyone knows them, agrees with them, and will abide by them. This leads to a certain vagueness, and sometimes contention. As a result, the game can sometimes be an exercise in diplomacy. Furthermore, since they are not enforced by the game, the rules can be broken. When that happens, there is no clear recourse, except to publicly condemn the offender before a generally disinterested audience.

And yet, despite the lack of enforcement, the general vagueness, and the location specific; these rules, these taboos, as followed surprisingly well. But the truly surprising thing is, they don't tend to benefit the powerful or well connected. Instead, they tend to even out the playing field. The purpose of the taboos is to make the game more fair than even the "hard-coded" rules would do, and given everyone an equal opportunity to profit. In short, these social rules, which have sprung up naturally and uncalled for universally and across cultural and language boundaries, have not done so to benefit any specific group or social strata. They're there exclusively to make the game more fair for one and all.

The types of rules that fit this form are things like: the "all pass" rule, rules that determine was is appropriate use of "need" and "greed", rules about which classes can legitimately bid on which items, legitimate and illegitimate tactics in AV, and others. One of the most important is the taboo against paid leveling services and use of real cash to purchase gold. These shouldn't be confused with another class of rules--those that determine guild behaviour. Extra-game mechanics such as "DKP," "Suicide Kings," and "Loot Councils". These are very different because there is a central authority. They have been developed to meet specific goals, and are actively researched so that their relative benefits are understood at a conscious level. As a result, these rules are written down, and actually have names.

Now, what's curious about these online taboos is that some people do break them intentionally. It's habitual racism to label some of these people Chinese, but the reality is some are actually Chinese. Being culturally distinct, there are some things they just don't agree with. Or, in the (fondly-intentioned) words of the link below...

on group missions they do not like to respect the tacit rules of profit division. For those "pedantic" European and American gamers, Chinese players are like fearsome pagans...Chinese gamers are better suited to jungle-style gaming.

So imagine my delight to discover that some bright types have found a way to capitalise on that tendency. And in this case, "capitalise" is the right world, because it seems in the Chinese online game "ZT Online," character progress can and must be bought with real money. In other words, the more you spend, the better your character is and the more you enjoy the game. Combine that with a overtly competitive gameplay and desirable social rewards for the powerful, and you've got a compelling, addictive money sink where anything goes.

Here's the link from danwei.org. I haven't read it all, but it's worth a scan.

Ah, here we go. This sound more like the society I know! A game for the wealthy, by the (soon to be) wealthy. These guys know what side of the bread has the butter on it.

This isn't the first example this type of real-wealth sponsored gameplay, either. One of the particularly curious aspects of online games is they open the door to many different funding schemes. A few years back there was a humble web-based space trading style massively multiplayer game that required people to buy fuel for their space craft using real money. Again, the more your spend, the more mobile you are and the quicker you can progress and compete. Straight from the pragmatically capitalist minds of a couple of young American entrepreneurs.

Well, then. So much for socially responsible taboos that arise organically and inexplicably from a diverse society. Clearly it's time for some game developers to step in with a bit of reality of their sleeves, is it not?

That then, brings me finally, and happily, to the last paragraph. Because, as well as delighting my sense of incentive-based economics, these games highlight very clearly what might become a very serious issue for all online games in the near future. That is, at some point, it's difficult to distinguish between an online massively multiplayer game and an online casino type game--even without further innovation in the field. Once that line is blurred, the legislation surrounding online casino games could very quickly bring the oh-so-critical massively multiplayer genre to an abrupt halt. This is, as I understand it, the fundamental reason why Blizzard doesn't allow trading of World of Warcraft items and characters for real money, why tournaments with cash rewards are regarded cautiously, and why in-game simulated casino games between players, for virtual game currency, are strictly banned. The mischaracterisation of WoW as an online casino game is the spectre haunting the massively multiplayer segment of the industry; it seems inevitable that sooner or later there will be public debate about what these games can and cannot do; and, regrettably, every passing quarter it seems more likely, and more worrying. Because exposing children to adult concepts is another taboo, be it within the microcosm, or without.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Big Sleep Hotel

Apparently, the recent result of the New Hampshire caucus voting is so astonishing, that it's beyond the realms of modern statistical understanding... Or so it would seem. Anomalies like this tend to make me wonder about the effect polling has on the voting process. Presumedly there's an observer effect style influence caused by the polls on voter behaviour—and perhaps, in this case, it wasn't fully accounted for. That is, did New Hampshirites, on seeing the results from Iowa and New Hampshire polls, decide that the relative success of the candidates did seem right, and therefore tried to, on an individual basis, balance it out?


I sometimes, in idle moments wonder what the majority of people think about when deciding how to vote, generally. I can imagine that there are two primary approaches one could take—that is, a voter could either ask “which candidate would benefit the country more,” or “which candidate would benefit me more?”


If everyone considered on the later, we would expect to end up with the candidate that was most focused on the interests and morality of the majority of people. It would seem logical that this would lead to each voter having a smaller range of issues to considering, making it an easier choice, which hopefully equates to a decision better made. Similarly, you might also expect this method to be less susceptible to anomalies on the campaign, and other unexpected occurrences.


But, we end up with a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, in that we only get the best result if everyone votes this way. Furthermore, and perhaps most worryingly, if everyone voted this way, no consideration would be taking into account of the relative significance of the decision for different people. That is for some people, the outcome of an election might have very significant and long term consequences on their lives—particularly when there are major issues at stake (you know the ones; in the US this might be abortions, healthcare, gay marriages, war, and plenty others). However, you would expect that the people who are most effected by policy change will always be a minority. That is to say, for the majority of people in a stable country, the difference between one candidate and other will have only relatively minor impact on their lives. And yet, while in many government schemes votes are effectively weighted by various means, we would never expect them to be weighted to meet this ideal of consequentiality.


On the flip side attempting to vote in the best interests of the country is, presumedly, error prone, open to subjective judgements and vulnerable to aberrations and overly powerful rhetoric. I wonder if we misjudge the ways in which the interests of the majority can often benefit the minority. History has a cruel sense of irony about it; perhaps the indecisiveness of society comes from the realisation that sometimes our benevolence only makes things worse.


A depressingly extreme example involves a chap named Malthus who, at the end of the eighteenth century, proved that the Poor Law (in which donations were given to the unskilled poor) could never, ever improve the living conditions of the English poor. It should be noted that the beneficiaries of the Poor Law, as I understand it, were far better off than today's homeless. Malthus even came to the gloomy conclusion of eternal subsistence for the great majority. Fortunately he was proven wrong by the industrial revolution. However, ironically enough, this may not have occurred in England at all if it wasn't for the inequality of income and living conditions.


While the Malthusian Trap isn't yet a thing of the past, let's hope that its own observer effect, and the fact that we can recognise and understand it, will soon lead to it being so. But, it's got to make you wonder what other great ironies might lie under the surface of voter and government behaviour. Perhaps, back in the modern world, we end up with a compromise between both schemes--wherein those who do not feel compelled to vote for strong personal reasons, instead take on the overwhelming and massively challenging task of deciding which minority group deserves their attentions. Do we then inherit the worse of both sides? Does every voter then have to deal with the uncertainty that is central to the prisoner's dilemma?


The economy is perhaps a special issue in many elections. They say that it's the primary issue in the American presidential election at the moment--which I assume means that people will vote for the candidate they believe might correct issues with the economy, even if don't believe in that candidate's other policies, even those those seen as morality issues. In Australia, the liberal government retained power for many years, despite considerable animosity, apparently based on its economic promises. But that style of voting brings with it other worries, particularly if you consider that we can't reasonably expect the majority of voters to understand macroeconomics and government fiscal and monetary policy to the extent required to correctly decide on the policies that will most benefit themselves, or the country as a whole. Are we then forced to rely on analysis and opinion from the media? Or do we pick the candidate who blinks less? Furthermore, do we fully understand what controls the different houses and branches of government have over the country? Are we at all concerned that we can't, in the US or Australia, pick out our favourite people to run the central bank? Is it more true the the system of government and the private sector control the economy, rather than any particular elected individual or party? Is it the system as a whole that truly determines prosperity, in such a way that the system's ability to ensure that various powerful people's capabilities and education are up to standard is a far more important determiner of economic prosperity than any decision the general public might make? Surely we would prefer that to be the case.


Ok, perhaps it's not enough to make me lie awake at night, or delve deep into studying democracies; but at least it might serve to help feed the voice in the back of my head that sometimes says, when it comes to election time at home, “surely this can never work.”

Sunday, January 06, 2008

The long, dark teatime of the soul

I'm not sure who Teclisen is, but his slagging off of the developers of Vanguard here is pretty classy.

To prove that it's worth the click, a quote:

Brad Mcquaid didn't do shit. (News Flash?) He's had an opiate addiction for years now, which only got progressively worse as the project failed. His cumulative face time with sigil designers in the most crucial final years of development? Approx: 15 minutes. And some of the time was spent begging for legitimately acquired narcotics (Or in times of desperation, jacking them from people's desk).

You know, people say that game developers need to lead more glomous and exciting lives to being to appeal to the public conscience. I guess Brad's getting a head start on us.

The invincible palatial empire of Mycenae

In the south of Australia there is a little state, about the size of England, called Victoria. This state, and it's local games industry, makes for an interesting little case study. Here almost half the game development in Australia takes place, largely a result of the 27 year old legacy of the greatest Australian game ever produced. Much of the rest of the Australian industry is located in Queensland. These two local industries are quite distinct from each other. Somehow the many thousands of kilometres between them has created a divide over which very little travels.


There are many curiosities about the Victoria industry, and many ways in which it appears different to the Queensland industry. However, one particularly crucial idiosyncrasy comes to mind, and that is this: the Victorian industry is very fragmented. There are many small studios, each hopeful, energetic and optimistic about their own grand future. Consequentially, there is a lack of large, established studios.


One obvious cause is the long culture of splinters companies and off shoots—this isn't unusual in the industry worldwide, but seems particularly common in Victoria. The experienced local players seem to have a habit of gravitating away from each other, as if caught in magnetic fields. The end result is fairly easy to predict: a situation in which most of the experienced talent in the state, after having cordoned off their own little personal section of the local industry, doesn't have access to the infrastructure and resources needed to compete on the world stage. In other words, it requires large teams with big, long term, budgets to make a mainstream game; but when everyone ends up starting their own little studios, no one ends up with enough collective credibility to reach those heights. So while the Victorian industry as a whole probably has the wealth of talent and experience to make a top five blockbuster, in the last twenty years it's never even got close.


I imagine that the reason behind this is fairly straightforward: the local industry has never had a leader strong enough to unite the most talented and convince them to work towards the same goal. Perhaps one person came close once—but he, in the grandest of ironies, is also the most hated person to ever work in the local industry.


Another possibility is that were missing a component in the works, and upon recognising that, we become disillusioned. Game design, for example, has been typically underwhelming locally. Or perhaps the lack of a local publisher with global ambitions—this has been pointed out as a glaring inadequacy.


One of the reasons that this splintering has caught my attention is it highlights a basic conflict in the industry. That is, a conflict between our practical needs and our creative needs. On a practical level we need to join together in groups and work as a single unit; because this is what is required to compete for the shelves in Wal-Mart. This is the very hardest thing to deal with in the modern industry: teams are massive, and each team member must bring with him or her much skill and love for the project. No one is simply a labourer, each gives his part, and each must give of himself with the most wholehearted belief of the project and of those around him.


Unfortunately, no group of people works so well together: it's just the nature of us. So conflict arises and must be resolved in some way. And while some conflict can lead to great creativity, unfortunately it tends not to. Conflict can also lead to the arrival of great leaders; but again it appears it hasn't in this corner of the world, and instead we somehow end up with a system whereby, to my great dissatisfaction, leaders who cause conflict percolate to the top.


Hence, it's our creative needs that drive us apart. Each of us has our own god-forsaken idea for a game, our own mode of expression, our own reasons to despite and ignore the ideas of others. Sometime our sense of creativity is strengthened by our sense of being lost in the medium. We don't understand our path through this darkness, can't apply rational reasoning to it, so we light our way through arbitrarily, and call whatever void we arrive at “art.”


And so, our creative needs cause us to splinter. While the ways in which we got here might be despicable, the end result is right for the cause. We need an industry of many small time independent developers if we are to start to understand the medium. Shotgun style experimentation and a massive variety of ideas competing for attention is a great way to expand the industry and discover the medium more fully. This is the simple social Darwinism that leads to a meritocracy; that is, after the flood of failure, disaster and chaos in which our hearts become predominantly broken and trodden over.


The disaster of Victoria is that we don't have this, either. In reality, we're caught somewhere in between. On one hand, our practical needs encourage us to clump into groups and attempt to compete for production quality. On the other hand, we're encouraged to splinter, to compete with the creativity of our souls. The end result is many studios that are too small for top five games, and too big to operate purely out of love for the medium. We're caught in dissonance, unresolved conflict and misplaced aggression. Our spirit is gimped and our talent is crippled, and we can muster neither the sweat of our brow, nor the spark of our minds.


So, how do you solve it? Not so long ago, I would have sad that the only solution would be for the local industry to finally, out of mutual need, resolve its differences and consolidate together into fewer, larger, studios. This is, of course, the pragmatic, practical course of action. Not so long ago, I would have said this was the only reasonable course of action, and that any other course would simply compound the issue, and drive us closer and closer to the inevitability of total collapse of the local industry. This excessive splintering is—I would have said—both a symptom of, and cause of, our great failure. These were my thoughts, for example, when Evelyn Richardson appeals to the industry to put aside their differences in her last speech before leaving the industry association.


However, what if there was another possibility, at the other end of the scale? After all, I'm sure many of us hope that, one day, the “boutique studio” model will become dominant in the worldwide industry. Could it be, that by splintering the industry we're foreseeing this change? Perhaps I've been looking at this the wrong way; perhaps our small studios just aren't small enough? What if the problem with our small studios is they see themselves as big studios in the making? Perhaps, rather than missing our chance at the top-shelves, we're actually missing our opportunity to be a cultural focus of the world industry?


There's an obvious problem, however. How do we reasonable appeal to a mainstream gamer audience without big-studio production quality? How could we attract the already dubious attention of international investment? If the industry isn't yet really for a larger presence of boutique studios, there's no using in attempting to force it into that mould.


Well, perhaps this would be a question better answered by Infinite Interactive, or SSG. It strikes be now that they are perhaps the model of a small developer.


It seems, however, that mobile phone games aren't the answer. And WiiWare, Xbox Arcade and the rest are, as yet, still questionable propositions. The indy industry doesn't seem to work; whatever hopes we may have had for it are unfulfilled, as it's fallen on its face. How could we ever possibly hope to reach even the somewhat shallow levels of sophistication and emotional intensity of the big studio industry?


Well, it's a heck of an anticlimax, but I don't quite have the answer to that. But if the answer is anywhere, it's hidden within the nature of the product itself. Ico is the example to point to here. That game was thoroughly accepted into mainstream gaming; and though in truth it was made on a largish budget—it looks like it wasn't. It seems to have exactly the right sense of minimalism you might expect to see in a creative work that has been crushed by an impossible. At the time, it shined for me as a kind of distant hope—a sign of a more agile industry on the horizon. Yet no one took on the bold opportunity that the game seemed to so clearly hint at.


We can also point to the work of the local government, and particularly the Digital Media Fund. A fund like this seems tailor made for sparking off a boutique industry—in fact, its very existence may work against the large established industry. And yet, contradictorily, the goals of that fund seem to be to spark large scale growth.


One things for sure, though. Victoria is a great place to run a developer services company. By that I essentially mean professionals who work on short term contract. This aspect of the industry has been growing recently, and we've seen a number of successful enterprises—I'd like to see more. As there are so many small studios, there is very commonly a demand for some time of expertise on a fixed term basis—perhaps to meet a difficult milestone, or develop a pitch, or polish one final aspect. This type of model suits the prevalence of small studios, because these studios can't reasonably afford to keep staff for all specialisations on full time. I'd really like to see a greater amount of contractors about locally—I think this is a great way for the industry to smooth out some of the bumps, and grow.


All in all, even if we accept the possibility of a functional boutique industry, we're still faced with a great challenge, a great problem. But, in this industry, we're never that far from the next impossible mountain to climb. We might wax fanciful and declare that art only arises when presented with an impossible challenge; without that we become too lazy and indulgent to really stretch our thoughts and our spirit to new places. But we're so beset by difficulties in the industry that perhaps we've somehow misjudged the economies of strife. Maybe after all our hardships, we've forgotten what's truly difficult? Could we have mistaken a valley for the hills? Or as Seneca had it: It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.