Here’s a summary of the Halo 3 “ARG” up until the present. This article claims a Microsoft spokesman says the campaign is called “Iris”, and is written by Bungie’s Frank O’Connor – 42 Entertainment, the creators of “The Beast” and “I Love Bees”, isn’t involved. In a week, Iris has had an AI posting on the bungie.net forae, mysterious poetry being emailed out, lots of glyphs in image files, a comic strip, a MySpace page, and real-life demonstrations in various cities staged by The Society of the Ancients. The speculation is that the aforementioned group will show up at Stonehenge for the solstice on the 21st. Fastest moving ARG ever?
The issue of whether third-party developers would be allowed to write apps for the iPhone is a heated one. Steve Jobs threw some wood on the fire by announcing to Mac developers today: sure you can! Make web apps with AJAX!
Frankly, I consider that a better answer than many do, since I’ve been of late pleasantly surprised by Google’s excellent posse of apps. And hey, there are some nifty widgets out there, and those are just li’l web apps too (sorta). And we assume there is some work being done on getting web apps to work offline. Which is one of their huge disadvantages, and if it’s solved in some meaningful way, one would have even less reason to hate Jobs’ latest statement.
But isn’t it a bit odd for a maker of platforms (PC, iPhone, iPod) to argue in favour of web apps? Aren’t web apps the things that make platforms increasingly irrelevant? If you made an awesome web app for the iPhone, people could conceivably use it on their PCs or Windows Mobile phones. Wouldn’t Steve be better off advocating iPhone-only apps?
Yes he would, and he will. This is only a stopgap. But its presentation leaves something to be desired. Presumably the motivation for the AJAX announcement is to give developers something to work with now – having heard them clamouring to develop for the iPhone, he threw them a bone (kinda). But the way he announced it, without stating that a proper SDK is on the way, makes it sound like he lamed out on them.
So, news clips may fare better on the web, but live events will still play better on TV.
The report gives some reasons why the industry is far from a state of collapse: people are investing heavily in HD sets, indicating they’re not abandoning TV for internet video any time soon; cable and satellite subscriptions are very high in Canada compared to other countries; while some ad revenue is leaking to the internet, the overall ad-market pie is still growing; and Canadian broadcast companies and producers may be able to themselves earn back some lost revenue by building web properties themselves.
Part of the changes happening are the same as in the US – the growth of internet video, a move towards on-demand viewing, whether over the internet, cable pay-per-view, or iTunes. And the more general spectre of people spending more time online than watching TV, whether they’re on YouTube, Facebook or just emailing. In the US, the broadcasters have already responded by putting their shows on their websites (with ads, natch) and selling them on iTunes. In Canada, that’s not so simple – they must buy the online rights to these programs from the US companies, who are at the moment charging too much for any Canadian broadcaster to want to buy them. And that’s because of the much larger issue here: Canadian channels make their money airing the big US shows, and are forced by law to funnel some of the money they make into Canadian production. So with the growth of internet distribution, they are in a much more precarious situation – no longer the only way to get to the content.
The other Canada-specific issue is the role of government. Our government regulates TV and film to support domestic cultural production; it does not regulate the internet. So if people increasingly go to the internet instead of TV, the government cannot use Canadian content requirements any more.
The report wisely suggests government intervention on the supply side: tax credits and more funding for Canadian new media. This is essential. But on-demand programming still needs CanCon requirements. On-demand portals (whether Rogers on-demand or, say, iTunes Canada) should be required to carry a certain amount of CanCon. That’s not enough, though, as they could simply let cheap shows languish in the long tail. They could be required to spend a certain amount of their marketing budget on Canadian properties.
Of course, that does nothing about sites like YouTube, the sixth most popular site in Canada. So I’d like to just raise this one issue, although in somewhat of a half-baked state. US channels use geo-blocking (based on the physical location of your IP address) to prevent Canadian viewers from watching shows on US sites. Also, US magazines of a certain size are forced to create Canadian versions that have some CanCon and carry Canadian ads. There are similar laws in place to force Canadian ads into US programming on TV. Why would something similar not be possible for big US sites? First, YouTube and Facebook could be forced to sell Canadian ads to Canadian viewers. Secondly, a portion of that ad revenue could be required to go into developing Canadian content, just as we require of Canadian TV channels.
Now, I’m not saying every US blog with AdSense should have to do a blog post a week on Canadian issues. But we should think about it for the top-20 internet properties.
Anyway, for those of us in the TV, film or internet industries in Canada, that report is definitely a must-read.
It’s a little off the topic of this blog, but hell, if you can’t self-link on your own site, where can you? Anyway, the first new work from skitfaced in a couple years: Knifekowski. WARNING: much swearing, violence and ambient pornography.
Neato. “The game allows players to take control of one of Canada’s early European or Aboriginal civilizations, making important decisions ranging from planning their settlement and crops, to determining when to wage war or make peace.” It’s a free download here, if you already have Civ 3.
Researchers in Osaka have just inventedTHECREEPIESTROBOTYET. Man-child that barks like a seal… take your hand away, researcher! Robot or no, that’s not appropriate.
Jokes aside, it’s pretty fascinating. Be sure to watch the videos.
How about a little Halo 3 news? Yeah, I thought so. Looks like people have figured out how to get into the custom game menu, which reveals a boatload of options. Adjustable gravity, powerups, speed, etc. People have also figured out how to actually play custom games, which seems to require having already joined a custom game – and it has spread like a virus.
Right when the beta launched there were modders poring over code and finding all sorts of weird stuff (that is by no means guaranteed to make it into the final game.) An upcoming issue of gamepro yields some images that appear to prove some of the modders’ finds true: customizable Spartans, a Brute vehicle.
Having used other, similar apps before, most notably Backpack and other 37signals apps, it’s also notable just how quickly Google rolls out new features. Obviously one of these companies has a staff of eight and the other is a behemoth, and it makes me uncomfortable when a huge corp uses its size to outclass competitors, but yeah. Google Calendar, for free, gets you SMS alerts, instant map links, a bitchin’ ‘quick add’ feature, and a nice mobile interface. Seems like every couple weeks there’s a handy new thing being rolled out, and it’s hard to complain about that.
I can imagine that the benefit to a small business is remarkable. I mean, google docs & spreadsheets are a lot, well, freer than Word and Excel, and considering how often the email at work has problems, it’s a lot handier having google worry about all that jazz than either having an IT person on staff, or trying to make do without one.
(Worth adding: I’m actually not the hugest fan of web apps. Obviously they have their advantages, but I’d still like to use a desktop app whenever feasible. So I love it when I can sync between the two, as I do with Google Cal and iCal thanks to spanning sync)
(Also worth adding: I still love backpack and use it for organizing projects, I just don’t use the calendar anymore.)
IGN has it right, when you first learn about The Xbox 360 “Gamerscore” aka Achievement Points, you’re like what’s the big deal about some nerd count. But that’s before the obsessions and compulsions kick in. I try and keep them under control, and I’m not about to play a shite game just to raise that number. But that doesn’t keep me from checking every game’s list of achievements, or being thrilled when I got about 100 points just for Nadine and I playing a half hour of Viva Pinata. Why do we care about such things? I mean, we know money and power are but illusions, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting to drive a solid gold mech and rule the world. It’s like a suspension of disbelief.
Let me filter GreenCine Daily for a moment. (I wish someone would do that, actually. There’s so much good stuff every day on that site that I can’t keep up. That’s a common feeling; I can’t keep up with MetaFilter either. Online content needs filters, but apparently now even the filters need filters…)
Right, Cannes. To sum up interesting films: Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, Spanish thriller The Orphanage, Friedkin’s Bug, the animated Iranian Persepolis, and of course the Coen’s latest, No Country for Old Men. Oh wait, Bug isn’t at Cannes. Anyway. Speaking of things not at Cannes but mentioned by GreenCine, Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.
There’s a great post at 37signals that nicely summarizes the technology behind, and the interface of, Negroponte’s $100 laptop (which I thought had gone up in price, but perhaps I’m wrong).
Here in the NYT is another in a long series of articles heralding 3D filmmaking as a potential saviour for cinemas. CinemaTech mentions:
in 1953, the peak year of the original 3-D boom, there were 23 movies released in 3-D, including ‘House of Wax’ and ‘It Came from Outer Space.’ (I’d be surprised if we see a half-dozen 3-D releases this year from major studios.) By 1955, there was just one movie made in 3-D.
The question is, what’s to save the present recurrence of 3D film from the fate of the original, 50s incarnation? In the Times article, proponents argue that this time around, they have Cameron, Jackson and Spielberg on their side – the A-team of spectacle filmmaking. I’m not so sure that more spectacle is what Hollywood needs, or if it’s even possible. But at least they’re trying. In the 50s, in response to the rapid growth of TV, the film industry evolved many variants in an attempt to differentiate itself. Most failed. (Insert smell-O-vision joke here.) But eventually, film found its place in the ecosystem – albeit a smaller one than it had enjoyed pre-TV. Film will adapt again, but is it too late for the theatres, I wonder? Will TV (in the form of HDTV home theatres) finally eat film?
Interesting article from Saturday’s Globe about the movement to build a new internet infrastructure, now in the research stages. A couple key quotes:
The Internet was not designed for Second Life or “adult entertainment” videos either – high-volume, resource-consuming uses of the network. If just 1 per cent of the DVDs that NetFlicks [sic] sends to customers every day were downloaded, we would need a tenfold increase in the current core capacity of the Internet.
And:
In fact, he wonders if the only economically sustainable model for the Internet may be a nationally funded or regulated infrastructure – or some sort of government monopoly. (Though he adds that, “in the current economic and political climate” of the U.S., proposing this idea “is nearly suicide.”)
I’ve wondered the same thing before, but in the context of Rogers (a huge Canadian ISP) and their tendency to stifle innovation through things like bitshaping and extortionate wireless data plans. Let alone the paltry bandwidth of their “high speed” cable plans. I’m of the mind that real high-speed internet access should be made available to all, at reasonable rates; and if Rogers et al can’t do it, the govmint should make ‘em!
So we did a podcast, Nadine and I. Starts off with general gaming nonsense and then is all Halo 3, all the time for the rest of the half hour. This one is pretty rambly and chaotic, we’ll figure things out better next time, hopefully. Also, we recorded it on wednesday, and then I took forever to cut it down to a listenable length. But hell, you learn on your feet. I’ll update this with an iTunes link when it shows up.
Male pattern baldness and convertible automobiles are correlated. I don’t know that baldness causes convertibles; it could be that convertibles cause baldness. Nor do I mean, “ha-ha, that balding dude is having a midlife crisis and therefore he bought a corvette. Look, he thinks he’s teens.” If anything, driving a roofless vehicle is an expression of the acceptance and celebration of one’s own cranial rooflessness. Why, after all, do we celebrate the cool rush of wind and sleek aerodynamics in cars, but not on male heads?
So what kind of computer does the balding man buy? Computers, like cars, are sold on speed and power. (I suppose there are some of each which are sold on safety and reliability, but that’s not our concern here.) Sports cars – and I know of no convertible minivans – are performance vehicles first and foremost. They are often ludicrously impractical (bad gas mileage, no space, thief magnet1). While they tell you they are this way for sports purposes, they are this way to attract attention – like the peacock, or the weightlifter. Their rooflessness, though, signifies a very real appreciation for the art of driving, a willingness to embrace rather than block out the whip of wind, the roar of the engine, to agree with Vanishing Point that “speed means freedom of the soul”.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 20-inchlaptop. In all its back-breaking, battery-eating glory.
1 Spoken from the point of view of someone who seriously considered purchasing a 1983 Pontiac Trans Am V8.
So, originally my friend Nadine and I got on splitscreen-style and played against random strangers. That was not a great experience, which I suppose was unsurprising because I hate matchmaking – as I’ve mentioned here before.
(We actually recorded a “podcast”, which should be up here soon – and parts of it may appear on the Space podcast. Next week though.)
Anyway, we played again last night, this time in a group of eight friends (and friends of friends). That causes the system to not add any random strangers since you already have enough for two teams, so we played against each other for a couple hours.
It was so much better. Freed from the incessant radio chatter (and superior skills) of southern children, we could learn the maps a little better, try out the new weapons, and see what uses ‘equipment’ can be put to.
I still only managed one kill with the laser. It’s impossible to use at short range. But the sound it makes is rewarding.
While Valhalla is similar to Blood Gulch / Coagulation, it’s a huge improvement. Despite the size, the man cannon and the vehicles move you around quickly. Also, the rockier terrain makes it easier to avoid being sniped. And makes for some great vehicle jumps.
Again, still very little dual wielding. This might be different when there are more maps, though. Two of the three in the beta are quite large, and the other (Snowbound) is too good for grenades on the inside, while too long-range on the outside.
Team oddball on snowbound is a great gametype.
Team Crazy King on High Ground is a terrible gametype. Hill move times need to be extended for it to work.
The new territories gametype works fabulously. In Halo 2 territories could be reclaimed; now the capture of a territory is permanent, and teams take turns on offence and defence. It’s almost like an introductory strategy game. On offense, do you send one player to four different territories? Or do you form up as a team and capture them one by one? On defense, two groups of two seemed to be effective, since it could work against either offensive strategy. Eventually, you’d figure out good positions from which you could quickly travel to any challenged territory.
As for the equipment, other than the obvious – throwing the power drainer into a group of enemies, dropping a shield bubble when your shields are depleted – gametypes and maps will determine some interesting possibilities. The gravity lift will probably have specific uses. Also, let’s say you were defending the High Ground base from the wall – could you drop a shield bubble so that it covered you, but not the tip of the turret?
Generally, snipers are not dominating maps like they used to. Possibly this is because good snipers don’t yet know where to find the rifles, I dunno. But the terrain and the equipment helps to offset the power a good sniper can project.
the movable turrets are GRRREAT. Again, great innovation.
when you take damage, glow on screen now indicates the direction from which comes the pain. I have a feeling that the glow is blue for shields and red once shields are down, but I could be wrong. I know a couple times, seeing a blue glow from the side of the screen, I thought I had been stuck.
I liked the assault rifle at first, now not so much. It really isn’t a long range weapon, like no fussin’. You need to be close, close enough to already have been killed by anyone with a carbine or battle rifle. Also, you have to pretty much empty a clip into someone to kill them. A pair of spikers seem to beat that thing every time.
I dual-wielded the spikers, but that was it. I just realized that in the games I played, I was the only one who ever dual-wielded. Which is strange because I really don’t think much of dual-wielding, to say the least.
vehicle behaviour is different. I thought the mongoose was fragile and dying too easily, but what’s happening is that it’s easier to kill someone on a vehicle without destroying the vehicle itself. Had this happen while on the ghost on snowbound.
speaking of snowbound: I must have played three games on this map, and no-one used the inside part of the level. I was waiting down there to play with the shield walls (or whatever they’re called) but it got pretty lonely. Shame, as other than that, there’s not much of interest on that map.
I really like the other two maps.
The changes to the HUD are all good. The shield meter is much easier to read now.
articles by and for hardcore Halo players; generally focused on what minor gameplay changes have been made since Halo 2. Sample prose: “All of the ‘nades explosive diameters have been reduced, so you’ll have to be more accurate. The nail grenades do stick to walls, but don’t have a huge blast radius.”
articles by the more mainstream press for a mass audience, such as this Reuters one, which tend to emphasize graphics, and tend to qualify them as disappointing. Sample: “Gamers at the invitation-only preview gave mixed reviews.“The graphics can use some work … They’re not much different than the previous Halo.”“
The latter sort of article triggers crowing by fanboys of other platforms, the internet weeps, and pretty soon a fairly innovative marketing idea transforms into a lost battle in the console war.
It’s pretty logical, really. What will the non-halo-fanatic journalist write about other than the graphics? Joe Sixpack cares not about the tracking ability of the plasma pistol. (Actually, I have some ideas for what they should write about instead, but I’ll leave them aside for now.) In general, the non-gamer journalist writes about the graphics because, well, all they are doing is looking at people play. Concepts of gameplay or game flow elude them; like the Windows user seeing fancy Mac OS X visuals for the first time, all they see is the pretty surface.
Yet, just as a Mac OS X user couldn’t give a rat fuck about how dashboard widgets ripple and splash when they’re just trying to get shit done, gamers actually playing the game think very little about the graphics. And what they do think about graphics tends to be utilitarian: are they immersive? realistic? can I see things clearly?
Imagine if all coverage of film concentrated as exclusively on cinematography. Would people be disappointed when The Return of the King did not have better cinematography than the previous two films? But no, unless the cinematography is terrible and thus distracts from the story, or expresses something about the story in a particularly notable way, we tend not to mention it.
Now, there is some justification for considering graphics in games moreso than that. Because of the relentless march of Moore’s Law, there are revolutions in visual quality in games every few years. There is no such correlative in film. Or, in fact, there is: computer-generated imagery, which (obviously) follows the same law of the Moore as do games. But no-one but the most ADDed male teen will try and convince you that better CGI leads to better films. It may make more immersive fantasy environments and more realistic dinosaurs, but these do not save terribly written, acted or directed films. Nor should they make or break a game in the eyes of the public.
In the case of the Halo 3 beta, there is no story to concern ourselves with since this is only three levels of multiplayer play. What the prospective player wants to know, then, is how good is multiplayer going to be? Those who have played Halo 1 and 2 multiplayer will want to know what has changed, and whether those changes are for the better. And yes, since the multiplayer for the previous games was largely well-received, they don’t want revolutions in gameplay – they want small tweaks. Minutiae like less long-range tracking on the plasma pistol (since this makes gameplay more balanced). It’s the equivalent of reporting on proposed rule changes to a sport, like when the NHL decided to allow two-line passes and clamped down on obstruction. In other words, it’s of little interest to those who don’t play or follow hockey.
Which brings us to the very nature of the public beta. Why is it a press event at all? Why do we need articles from Reuters on the topic? The cynic might answer that the beta’s sole purpose is to add to the steady stream of hype coming out of Redmond with regards to its game console. Prevailing wisdom is that advertising is on the way out, and PR is ascendant. Thus while Microsoft could flood the airwaves with TV spots firing out Halo 3’s release date – and I’m sure they will – it would be more effective to generate hype via news coverage. And another bulletpoint yet-to-be-released game doesn’t merit a press release, but a playable beta does. So the celebs are purchased and the press passes given out.
Unfortunately, in this case, it seems to have backfired.
This article about a pillowfight event at Nathan Phillips Square notes the huge numbers of cameras present: “there were so many lenses that when, as the number of participants started dwindling after about an hour, those with cameras actually started to outnumber those with pillows.”
It would be remiss, when talking of technologies that spread like the zombie plague, to not mention photography. At a recent show at a small venue, we couldn’t help but notice just how often camera flashes were going off. Nothing spectacular was happening – it wasn’t anyone’s wedding and no-one was on the red carpet, it was just people taking pictures of their friends – but when ten out of forty are taking pictures at any given moment, it starts to seem like the inevitable future is upon us: people taking pictures of people taking pictures.
There are advantages to the outsourcing of memory. But the proliferation of image capture causes many problems, summed up by the Borges character who can remember everything and remarks, “my mind is like a garbage heap”. You know that feeling when you’ve taken a ton of pics on your digicam and you can’t be bothered to sort through them for hours finding the good ones? So you import them and then don’t even look at them? There are two paradoxes at play: in the pillowfight instance, the urge to capture the event destroys the actual event; and with the Borges example, the ability to remember everything prevents you from remembering any one thing.
When I think of possible solutions, I come up with the idea of a “crowdsourced” version of the roller-coaster picture setup where you purchase your photo on the ride afterwards. If I could easily grab someone else’s photo of a given event, perhaps I wouldn’t feel the need to take a photo myself. But despite the possibility this could happen what with geotagged photos and whatnot, I doubt it will take off, since we all view our memories as personal. We don’t want to admit that a collective memory-image of an event will do just fine. This memory/photo is my own. Despite the fact that it looks like everyone else’s.
Wow. I just went and bought a used Godfather (there’s an image for ya) to keep me busy gaming-wise, and now not only is Double Dragon on the Live Arcade, but Crackdown gets a hefty downloadable update. Never mind that the Halo 3 beta starts next week. So much for extorting the merchants of Little Italy.
The list of added features for Crackdown is pretty remarkable. Some of it costs “points”, but considering what you get – and in comparison, say, to the GRAW 2 map pack which was four repurposed multiplayer maps for the same price – I’d say it’s worth it.
A bunch of indie labels want to pull out of eMusic because the price per track is too low. eMusic’s CEOresponds. Both are worth reading.
I’m an eMusic subscriber. I love it and it’s my main way of getting music, so I tend to agree with the eMusic side. My plan, which I guess is no longer available, is $20 US for 90 songs a month. If we estimate 12 songs per album, that’s under $3 an album. Keep in mind that these are non-DRMed mp3s that you get to keep. Not a bad deal.
What’s music worth? Who knows. I’d definitely pay more than $3 for an album, but at the same time labels need to realize they̵#8217;re not competing with iTunes, they’re competing with free. In some ways it’s a miracle that a nerd like me will spend any money on music at all, let alone $240/year. I guess I’m still happy that the days of the $25 CD are over.
Update: good post on the topic at CDM, and more at hypebot plus apparently a few in-depth posts to follow tomorrow.
