Entries Tagged 'Humour' ↓

In 2002 Sony brought us the Eyetoy peripheral but failed to capitalise on its potential. At the 2005 Tokyo Game Show Nintendo revealed their Wii gesture interface that was probably the biggest ever single step change in video gaming. Now Microsoft, after a long gestation, have taken both these ideas and developed them several steps further for the Xbox 360, adding voice control whilst they were at it.

If this works as well as portrayed in the video above then it will be little short of revolutionary, the imagination of game designers can take flight in limitless ways. Removing all control input limitations means gaming can go places we would never have dreamed of.

From a hardware point of view the change in abilities that this brings the Xbox 360 are so great that it is almost like they had launched a new console. But the upcoming Xbox 720 will still be on schedule, Moore’s Law and competitive pressure will make this inevitable.

And competitively, if Natal works as advertised, the Wii will be in severe trouble with its main party trick trumped. And the Playstation 3 is looking distinctly old generation with no gesture interface. All this could change over the next 48 hours as Nintendo and Sony make their E3 announcements. We live in interesting times.

Social Networking: How To Behave On An Internet Forum

This amused me because they have got videogame fanboys spot on.

***Contains bad language***

A brief history of one man’s gaming life from the early 90s to the present day.

The first person to successfully list of all the game titles in this video will win a CD copy of Dan Bull’s debut album Safe. Send your answers as a video response.

Buy or download Dan Bull’s debut album Safe from www.myspace.com/danbull

-Generation Gaming-
Lyrics and vocals: Dan Bull
Instrumental: Devastator Sounds
Video editing: Dan Bull
Video sources: You lot

According to Wikipedia a Pikey is a pejorative slang term used primarily in England, originally referring to travellers, sometimes known as gypsies. In recent years, the definition has become even looser and is sometimes used to refer to a wide section of the (generally urban) underclass of the country, or merely a person of any social class who “lives on the cheap”. This seems to be the meaning intended by Stephen Fry in an episode of QI, grouping together “hoodies, pikeys and chavs”, and intimating that these people are of a sort who “go out on the town, beating people up and drinking Bacardi Breezers”.

So it is hardly any surprise that when Martin Brundle, the ex F1 driver, used the term on live television whilst reporting the Canadian Grand Prix he got into trouble. His exact words were ”There are some pikeys out there putting down new tarmac at Turn 10. Are they out of the way yet?” and seven people reported him to Ofcom, the broadcast regulator. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, the racial equality watchdog, condemned the phrasing, saying ”This word has been used on television in the past and is highly derogatory. They have caused much offence in the past.” Last December, a Sussex gardener, Lee Coleman, is believed to have made legal history when he was convicted of racially aggravated harassment for using the word.

Against this background you may be suprised to find out that one of the Colin McRae video games, played by many millions of people, contained the pejorative word Pikey. The license plate of one of the in game cars was P 1 KEY. And nobody reported it to anyone.

One of the most amusing features of this industry is the fanboys. On every forum they strut their stuff as the world experts on everything. Yet in reality they know very little, just what they glean secondhand from the internet. And they all want to grow up to be game designers, yet they have no idea just how few game designers there are in the world and how much dedication and sheer hard work it takes to get there. They don’t even know what a game designer actually does.

A feature of the fanboy is their irrational love for a brand of game console. An unconditional love that will suffer no criticism, no matter how fair and how slight. A blinding love that prevents them seeing any virtue in any other brand, no matter how much it is deserved. A part of this love comes from their emotional and financial investment in their console and the games for it. This represents the bulk of their income and the bulk of their leisure hours. Another part of this love comes from the fact that they haven’t discovered girls yet. When they do, and this can happen as late as their 20s or even 30s, they desert their console overnight for a new love that is even more demanding and even more expensive.

Another feature of fanboys is that they are keyboard warriors with unbounded aggression and disdain. This is all down to hormones and adolescence. Their bodies are telling them that they are men yet society tells them that they are still children. So they strut their stuff online, where they can’t be seen, like they are on some tribal rites of passage. Not realising how ridiculous they appear to those who are older and wiser.

There is much fun to be had from fanboy baiting. When the slightest insinuation will start a flame war imagine what a deliberate, well placed insult will do. They take the bait hook, line and sinker. In fact it is so much fun that I am sure that a good percentage of what appear to be fanboys aren’t fanboys at all. Just wind up merchants having some good sport.

But these fanboys serve an important function. They spend every penny they can on this industry. They are also the self appointed schoolyard experts who inspire many of their peers also to invest in gaming. And they are the people who create the online buzz that is so exciting and which helps to make this industry so dynamic. So don’t mock them too much.

It is inevitable really. The Wii gesture controller can involve far more athleticism in gameplay than the joypads of non gesture interface gaming platforms. Add to that the addictive quality of games that sometimes has people playing for longer than they ought. Then the competitive nature of gaming. Then older and less fit players not wanting to be shown up by younger generations. And you have a recipe for problems.

Of course people will learn as this becomes more of a part of popular culture. But in the meantime it is giving the popular press a field day for articles and has even led to the creation of websites  cataloguing people’s Wii stupidity. Imagine what is going to happen when there are a few million balance boards out there.

All this is good for the gaming industry. It has the real world talking about us. And the only negativity is people’s own stupidity. Which is a universal factor of life anyway.