Motivating Lazio players is NP-hard - 18:18 CST, 1/26/12 (Sniper)

It makes me laugh and smile to hear a game described as "NP-hard". What a neat idea!

Also, Reja needs to go-- nothing against him personally, but unless you've got huge amounts of funds and an Alex Ferguson, you pretty much need to switch managers every two or three years, just to keep things fresh. And it's clearly that time with Reja-- we've looked positively stale now for several games in a row, inluding today's loss to Milan's B (or C) side. Kind of embarrassing really.

On a positive note, we might have Honda and Krasic in the side in the next few days! I can't help but feel that Lotito is still just throwing darts at the wall when constructing a team, but at least he's going after quality players.

And in other football-related news, a new editorial of mine just went live on IMS, check it out!

Big profile agreement - 20:20 CST, 1/19/12 (Sniper)

It's worth noting that Hideo Kojima agrees with me about the death of creativity in gaming.

'Wharf scoring change - 20:24 CST, 1/18/12 (Sniper)

I made a significant change to the 'Wharf today-- all views on the site now display my review scores on a five-star scale, as opposed to out of ten like before.

I got sick of people saying how much they hate game review scoring out of scales of ten, or one hundred, and how strongly people dislike seeing scores for different game segments, such as graphics, sound, etc. I realized yesterday that I could change how my scores were presented to people by simply modifying the views, and leaving the database and the rest of the site's code alone. It turned out rather spiffy I think.

The only caveat is that it makes my score inflation more noticable. I partially countered that by multiplying below average scores by the site's average-- that way, games that I truly thought were bad will never sneak into the rounding with four stars, for instance.

The real solution to that problem would be for me to play and review games that I suspect are total junk-- as it is, I tend to only play, and thus review, games that I predict will be good, and that I will like. I just don't have the time or energy to review "bad" games, unless it's by accident.

More on reviews versus critique - 19:08 CST, 1/17/12 (Sniper)

I couldn't agree with this more. In fact, when I set out to review a game, the very first thing I do is identify what the game is setting out to do. Then, I rate the game according to how close it was to achieving that goal.

I will occasionally bring up a deficiency if the title suffers from it disproportionately compared to other titles in its genre, and even if that deficiency is a staple of the genre. But I keep that kind of analysis to a minimum in my reviews.

Lazio 2 Atalanta 0 - 07:36 CST, 1/15/12 (Sniper)

Great battling win today, if we'd had this attitude we'd have beaten Siena. We desperately need more creativity in midfield however; Jonathan Wilson points out that if you shut down the single playmaker in a 4-3-1-2, you shut down the system-- without Mauri we lack a secondary threat to Hernanes.

Balancing act of capitalism - 12:44 CST, 1/13/12 (Sniper)

This article's author brings up an interesting point: is it possible that we can return to a form of capitalism that is not purely shareholder-centric, and that has an eye towards the bigger picture, such as the firm's responsibility towards society as a whole? And if so, should we?

I recognized another negative outcome of totally shareholder-centric attitudes back when I wrote this editorial, but didn't have the space to weave it in-- capitalism of the past thirty or so years tends not to create "great art", because with the sole focus on ROI, the business sense is in not taking very many risks, which leads to endless derivatives and clones of things that came before.

As pathetic as it was to watch sixty thousand government-employed North Koreans perform choreography for (virtually) the sole benefit of tourist Shane Smith in the "Vice Guide to North Korea", part of me appreciated what an amazing spectacle that was, and observed how the capitalism of today would never create something like that because the ROI was negative.

Those that read my political views know that I am borderline libertarian when it comes to economic views. But I do think it would be fantastic if a sort of groundswell movement among capitalists formed, whereby they would look just a little less at the bottom line, and a little more towards progressing humanity, costs be damned. Maybe the "invisible hand" is guiding us a bit astray?

Less is more - 18:44 CST, 1/12/12 (Sniper)

For all their supposed focus on developer productivity, I was reminded twice in the last two weeks that super complex frameworks like Java and .Net are often worse in that regard than more simple solutions, like PHP or Python.

A couple of weeks ago, after six weeks of down-time and thirty or more hours of effort from three different people, we finally managed to successfully re-deploy a component that hadn't otherwise been deployed in a couple of years. One of the key pieces of that solution? At some point, Microsoft decided that "key container" references should be in the web.config instead of the project definition files. It was one of the strangest, most bizarre and obscure things I'd ever seen. And it prevented us from getting our job done! I thought it couldn't get worse.

But then today I was trying to get this Javascript and CSS compression framework-- "Cassette"-- to work in an old web project I inherited. After hours of fumbling around with why their goofy HTTP handler wasn't working, I stumbled on the solution: I needed to add this bizarro XML snippet to the project's web.config that would set this "runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests" variable to true. What the hell does that variable even do, and why would it suddenly cause this HTTP handler to work? Hell, I don't even know what "managed modules" are, and why I would want them all to run for every request as the variable name implies, and I've been writing .Net code for seven years. But it fixed the issue.

.Net and Java marketing material make it sound like even idiots can write computer code using their frameworks. But I think it's just the opposite-- you have to have an eidetic memory to memorize all of their truly strange and obscure idiosyncrasies!

Languages and frameworks like Perl, Ruby, Python, and PHP may not always have the fanciest tools and IDEs, but at least when I write code in them I spend 100% of my time solving actual problems. Versus Java and .Net, where every half an hour of gained productivity due to superior tools is offset by hours of hand-wringing trying to solve problems like the above.

Political views, version 2.0 - 14:21 CST, 1/07/12 (Sniper)

In spite of the facts that I've always acknowledged the political landscape as something important to follow, and that I've assumed it was a topic I would find interesting, I had not put in the effort to learn much about politics until the summer of 2011.

A few months after my new-found interest in the American political scene, I decided to put in writing some of my viewpoints on various issues. I have been revising, and will continue to revise, these views as I learn more over time.

General culture: I tend to favor systems that provide a minimal amount of structure, and then step back to let things happen organically. I believe America at its best should be a country where anyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve greatness, through hard work and ingenuity. I believe that we're pretty much there right now, which is great. Further, America should be about equal opportunity, not equality. Government should trust people to make sound decisions and try to stay out of their hair as much as possible.

State versus Federal power: When things are equal, the default bias should always be towards local government, and away from centralized government.

Fiscal policy: Pass a balanced budget ammendment, but allow for an override via a vast, bi-partisan majority in both the house and the senate, in the event of a total emergency. Follow Benjamin Franklin's message: "The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest." Pass legislation that enforces audits of the Federal Reserve. Form a commitee to investigate how to safely privatize or re-privatize all government-sponsored enterprises, such as Freddie Mac. Certain things like owning a home should be a privilege, not a right-- trying to artificially influence the markets creates bubbles.

Foreign policy: Retract Cold War containment policies. Plan for responsible withdrawl of troops from all around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Follow Thomas Jefferson's advice: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none." Close our military bases all over the world except where they are needed. Continue to be proactive in protecting our interests, but let economics drive foreign policy, and only pursue highest priorities directly with military force; depend on subterfuge and clever diplomacy to handle the vast majority of issues.

Energy policy: Pursue established forms of energy-- oil and natural gas-- in equal measure with "alternative" energy through subsidies. Subsidies are a terrible idea generally because they circumvent the market and create bubbles, but in this case the market is not going to react quickly enough to the environmental duress our scientists have proven we're placing on the planet.

Technology policy: Keep the internet free-as-in-speech and open as much as possible, even if cultural evolution suffers; we've opened the can of worms and there is no way back now. This means that net neutrality is a must, and legislation like SOPA is a catastrophically bad idea.

Tax reform: Flatten the tax and broaden the base; introduce a flat tax and eliminate all deductions and loopholes. It's the only approach that is simple, consistent, and fair.

Copyright and patent law reform: Reduce copyright protection to twenty years, period, no exceptions. Reduce patent protection to ten years, period, no exceptions. Force the US Patent Office to check for obviousness as well as prior art. Develop very strict guidelines as to what a patentable invention really is. Instruct Patent Office to not be afraid of backlog; do not grant patents just because the workload is too high. Develop affiliation rules, and only allow for one hundred patent applications from affiliated parties per year. Use the freed up time and money to do audits to enforce the affiliation rules. Have US Patent Office enter all granted patents into an outsourced, open database so inventors can know if they are infringing on a patent; that problem will also be lessened because of the lower volume of granted patents due to the new policies.

Education reform: Dramatically scale back the scope of the department of education. The department's new duties should only include the analysis of mandatory, standardized testing, with penalties to states with poor test scores. Pass legislation that gradually phases out the public school system and replaces it with state-wide systems that pool property taxes and distribute them in the form of vouchers that parents can use towards any private school of their choosing. Include a clause that allows for states to opt out of this mandate and pursue their own education program if they so choose. Take some of the money saved via the reduction of the education department and offer it in the form of grants to encourage the formation of new private and charter schools. Repeal the "No child left behind" act; those laws do nothing but attempt to artificially simulate, at great cost, what the market would do much more swiftly and efficiently on its own.

Health care reform: Do exactly the opposite of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"; talk to health insurance providers and issue legislation that would lower their costs, not introduce beaurocracy that would increase their costs. Do everything possible to broaden the base of health care provider options for consumers in order to introduce price competition among providers. To further help people afford health insurance, issue tax credits such as described in the H.R. 3400 legislation.

Social security reform: Offer all citizens under the age of 35 the option to place their money into personal retirement accounts. Raise the retirement age and cut benefits until program is economically self-sufficient. Put a rule in place that bars politicians from robbing from the trust fund.

Military reform: Create a lean, efficient military that focuses on surveillance and counter-terrorism; the days of superpowers fighting massive ground campaigns with gigantic, ground-based armies are over.

Shrinking middle class: This is a real problem, but I have not yet heard of a fair solution from Republicans or Democrats, so we'll stay the course. Markets set the wages of everyone, from truck drivers to commodity traders to CEOs, no one is paid "too much" or "too little". And people who propose singling out the "rich" with extra tax burdens would be the first to cry foul if the same logic was applied to them.

Gay marriage: This is a decision best left up to the states. Since homosexuality is genetic, I favor renaming "marriage" to "civil union" at the state level. Allow any two human beings to obtain a union.

Abortion: Life begins at conception. As such, create a Federal mandate to make abortion illegal, except in cases of rape or danger to the mother's life.

Siena 4 Lazio 0 - 13:08 CST, 1/07/12 (Sniper)

I know every team has their bad patches-- believe me, I've seen more than my fair share of clunker Lazio games over the years. But this was in the top three worst performances I've ever seen the club put in; we looked every bit as out of sorts as Ballardini's teams of a few years ago.

Yes, we were missing five starters in Marchetti, Dias, Konko, Hernanes, and Mauri; in a sport where one player can completely transform a side, missing five players can be catastrophic-- especially when three of the reserves in the forms of Stankevicius, Biava, and Scaloni were solely responsible for all four goals conceded, plus our going a man down.

At the same time however, Reja didn't do us any favors by switching systems to the 4-4-2, and he also did not have his team in the proper mindset-- the only player that didn't look like he was still on vacation was Klose. And when it comes down to it, he's the only player in the entire 36-man squad that's truly a great player, the rest of our team is sort of mid-table material, maybe a little better in some cases, such as Hernanes.

But it's not worth rehashing for the millionth time Lotito's inability to build a truly balanced squad. Time to push on and see if we can right the ship against Atalanta next week.

Walk the walk - 18:51 CST, 1/02/12 (Sniper)

"This is why you should support Android (not Google, but Android), even if you prefer the iPhone. This is why you should support Linux, even if you use Windows. This is why you should support Apache, even if you run IIS. There's going to be a point where being Free/open is no longer a fun perk, but a necessity (Source)."

Already done-- except that I am also using the aforementioned technologies, and have been for years-- I walk the walk.

Missed chance for public domain - 11:46 CST, 1/01/12 (Sniper)

What a pity. And explain to me how someone is supposed to commercially exploit an artistic work after they're dead? Our current copyright law makes no sense.

If big media companies want legislation like SOPA, I would counter with this: "Fine, you can have a modified version of SOPA-- but in exchange, copyright law will be changed so that works are 'protected' for a maximum of 20 years; no exceptions, and no renewals."

If you can't commercially exploit something in twenty years, it should go into the public domain, end of story.

Vita shows us the way, inadvertantly? - 16:50 CST, 12/30/11 (Sniper)

While it's silly to call the Vita a flop seeing as how it's only been on the market for two weeks, and only in one region-- Japan-- at that, I do think this article sounds an alarm bell of the same magnitude that Sony should be ringing in their headquarters.

I wouldn't be surprised if, after six months, it will be clear that the market has declared that the device and its games are too expensive.

I hate to sound like a broken record having made points similar to these over and over throughout the past few years, but it would be nice to see someone try to follow these principles, they may just work:

1. The focus should be less about the hardware: video game systems just need to get the basics right. Make sure the device has a physical dpad and buttons, and that they work -- hello Microsoft; and if it's a handheld, it still has to have physical buttons, plus a basic touch screen with reasonable pixel density. Anything more will just raise the price of the hardware too much.


2. The focus should be more about the software: people will buy a system if it has good games. Game development teams need to be ten people, not one or two hundred. This will prevent the kinds of "design by committee" problems that cause current game projects to lack in creativity-- see the "why crowdsourcing could never make the iPad" arguments if you don't understand this dilemma.


3. Future consoles and handhelds should be no more than 150 or 200 USD: if the system just sticks to the basics and doesn't get too fancy, 150 USD should be an achievable price point.


4. Game budgets need to be 300 thousand USD, not 60 million USD. The logic then follows that game prices should be 20 USD, not 1 USD or 50 USD. Too cheap and the games lack production value-- see Android and iOS games-- while too expensive means people will only buy games in established franchises; why risk 50 USD of my hard-earned money on a game I'm not sure I'll like?


5. Studios need to ignore the internet-- Gamerankings and Metacritic especially. They need to think up fresh, truly novel and innovative game ideas, in as much isolation as they can garner-- see my previous article for more explanation. Smaller development budgets mean that studios can take risks without betting the farm.

The Old Republic - 09:03 CST, 12/21/11 (Sniper)

I can't get over how good The Old Republic is. While 95% of the game's core mechanics are straight from WoW, the other 5% makes a big difference-- the fact that anyone can revive party members at any time, the fact that everyone has a sort of out-of-combat quick-healing ability, not to mention the party-based quest chat system, with holo-conference capabilities...

I would not say that this game is the jump over WoW that WoW was over Everquest, but at times it feels that way.

"No-sleep study" - 05:41 CST, 12/19/11 (Sniper)

Went in for an expensive "sleep study" procedure last night in an attempt to finally address my ongoing depression and fatigue problems-- and it was an unmitigated disaster; I slept a grand total of zero minutes the entire night, and finally just gave up and left.

They slop your body with goop and attach about five hundred wires to you. They then shove a not-so-aromatic chunk of plastic up your nose to monitor your breathing. Meanwhile, you're chained to the bed and can barely move at all much less get up to go to the bathroom-- a procedure which, by the way, requires the assistance of the "technician" on duty to unrig you from all of the straps, harnesses, and cabling, by which point you're completely woken up.

The worst experiences of my life-- being interrogated for three hours for a crime a family member committed but for which I was accused, my solitary attempt at autocross, every religious "retreat" I was forced to attend throughout elementary school-- all have one thing in common: they made me feel like a prisoner. And now I can add this event to my list.

As someone who can only fall asleep on his stomach, struggles to breath through his nose without any extra inhibitors, who gets up to use the bathroom multiple times a night, and who already is a total insomniac when there is pressure to fall asleep, the aforementioned attributes of the night, accompanied by the otherworldly levels of surveillance, meant that this is one procedure that was just not for me.

I don't so much mind the lost night, but my out-of-pocket expense will be over 300 USD. That's a lot of money for me, and I just took a match to it. Why I thought this "sleep study" would be a good idea in the first place is beyond the reconciliation of my hind-sight.

Lazio 2 Udinese 2 - 15:44 CST, 12/18/11 (Sniper)

Great performance today-- shame Kozak couldn't have gotten his leg out a second sooner at the very end!

Author has a sense of humor...? - 16:36 CST, 12/12/11 (Sniper)

As someone who follows Calcio so closely, I find that this article does a lot of misrepresentation, and in general paints a different picture than what is actually going on.

First off... Ass Roma, "lifelong obsession"? How nauseating! Tacopina needs a history lesson.

Along those lines, in the paragraph about trailing Juve by 12 points, the author should have appended to the end, "...and [trailing] Rome's first and best club, S.S. Lazio, by 11 points." Make that 10 points now-- the Romanistas wound up drawing 1-1 with Juve (Totti missed a second-half penalty :D ).

Seriously, the author's only mention of Lazio is calling them "another team" that Roma happens to share the stadium with? What a joke!

He should have woven Lazio into the article-- it's kind of an arms race right now between Roma's naive American owners and Lazio's-- admittedly-- jack ass president, Claudio Lotito, to see who can get their stadium first. Rome's mayor is a huge Lazio fan and apparently is trying to force through the approvals for Lotito's planned shopping center/stadium combo-- but Lotito blows so much hot air, it's difficult to know what to believe.

I don't have a crystal ball-- maybe in the long run the American franchise approach will work somehow in Italy. But at the moment? DiBenedetto has been a laughing stock in Italy. His first move? "We want to play like Barcelona", so he goes and hires Barcelona's youth coach-- and it's been a disaster. To people who follow Calcio, Roma's new owners seem so naive and clueless. It's got shades of the Jurgen Klinsmann USSF move actually, but even worse because Italian media and culture is so brutal, especially towards foreigners.

I have to admit, it's been delightful :)

The author also didn't mention that the only reason Italy fell below Germany in the UEFA rankings is because the coefficient is absurdly biased towards Platini's pet project, the "Europa" league-- a joke of a tournament. I saw numbers where a German club-- Wolfsburg a couple of seasons ago maybe?-- got almost as many coefficient points from the Europa League group stages as Barcelona did for winning the entire Champions League. I should see if I can dig that article up again.

If you look at the Champions League, Italian teams have done many, many times better than German clubs. What UEFA needs is two coefficients-- one for the Champions League, and one for the Europa League.

And the author should have taken bit more realistic tone-- maybe read some of the journalism in Italy to get some perspective?

Same problem, different area of media - 09:48 CST, 12/12/11 (Sniper)

Here is another article backing up my theory that we produce the same junk over and over these days, except in this case, the argument is applied to television and radio. From the article:

"The only response... is to take fewer risks with the content that you produce--thus producing what feels like more and more of the same old stuff."

Sound familiar?

Laughable amounts of evidence - 19:42 CST, 12/10/11 (Sniper)

Every day there are like thirty pieces of evidence to support my "we only make polished clones" game argument. Here's one from today: rather than trying to take skateboarding video games to the next level like the original Tony Hawk title did, let's just repackage all of the old Tony Hawk games instead!

Lecce 2 Lazio 3 - 13:32 CST, 12/10/11 (Sniper)

Forza Lazio, what a confidence-building game today's was! We played absolutely awful and still came away with three points! It just shows what kind of quality and depth we've been building, what with half the team out injured, and what with just a few moments of brilliance giving us the spoils.

It was even a rare great tactical showcase by Reja today! He cut off the serpent's head at half-time by having Cana man-mark Oliveira, and Lulic drop back to keep Oddo's crosses from coming in, all the while recognizing that the sacrifice of a defender would be an acceptable risk. And it worked!

Individually, as good as Klose and Cana wound up being, what in god's name was wrong with Ledesma today? He and Gonzalez turned the ball over every time they touched it.

Gaming in the doldrums (Part II) - 19:02 CST, 12/09/11 (Sniper)

In September, I wrote part I of this piece, describing the dearth of creativity that has been plauging the video game industry for at least the past decade, and perhaps even longer. While that article is a useful tool for acknowledging and providing evidence of the problem, it does not attempt to determine the cause of the plight.

When endeavoring to identify the root determinant of a problem, it is frequently helpful to look for analogous problems in related fields. In this case, one need look no further than the music industry for a useful parallel.


Jaron Lanier articulates the death of creativity in music

In his book "You Are Not a Gadget", computer scientist and musician Jaron Lanier discusses the difference between first-order and second-order expression. First-order expression is a "work that integrates its own worldview and aesthetic. It is something genuinely new in the world." He explains how in the history of recorded music, every decade up until the 1990s has seen a complete transformation of how music sounds; for example, 1940 to 1950 took us from "big band" to Elvis Presley. These new styles of music-- blues, jazz, and rock among them-- were all first-order expression when they were conceived; truly new to the world.

Second-order expression, explains Lanier, is made of "fragmentary reactions to first-order expression." He goes on to explain that since the formation of hip-hop and rap in the 1980s there has been, for the first time since the late 1800s, no new genre of music created. Further, contemporary music does nothing but remix and mash up concepts from prior decades; to prove this to oneself, simply pick a piece of music and try to guess if it was made in 1998 or 2008-- you'll find that it's impossible to tell. Whereas if you pick any other two decades, the difference in styles is astounding.

This exposition sounds jarringly like my description of the state of video games-- everything created today is second-order expression! To use a baseball analogy, nothing ever seems to "come out of left field" like it routinely did in the industry's earlier days. But there is more!

As an avid musician, Lanier offers a simple explanation for the plight of music: the internet has brought about a sort of collective unity that the world has not seen before; while that benefits some aspects of human culture, innovation is not among the beneficiaries; innovation, says Lanier, does not happen via the "crowd"-- rather, it occurs in small pockets of isolation. In fact, all the "collective" can do is create, in his words, "polished copies" of things that came before-- it is unable to create anything truly new.

History vindicates this vantage point over and over; one need only look at the fact that contemporary internet-based society's largest cultural accomplishments have been to re-write Unix, a now-fifty year-old operating system, and to create an encyclopedia. Internet-based society could never invent something truly first-order like the iPhone-- the iPhone was created by Apple in an isolated bubble, shrouded from the rest of the world.

As before, Lanier's language-- right down to his choice of words such as "polished copies"-- again echoes my own previous sentiments regarding the video game industry. Could video games, likewise, be suffering in creativity due to the advent of the internet?

The timing seems right-- the internet's rise in popularity in the mid-1990s coincides perfectly with gaming's decline in first-order expression. But exactly how could the internet have caused such a decline?


Video games and evolution

One of the cornerstones of evolutionary theory is a concept known as "speciation". As the theory describes, when species become geographically isolated, they no longer exchange genetic data because they are no longer mating and producing offspring-- as such, the two groups develop their own methods of survival, leading eventually to the creation of a new species. It is this facet of evolutionary theory that helps explains the incredible variety of life found on Earth.

Even if evolutionary theory as a whole is incorrect, this "speciation" aspect of it is irresistable; two sets of organisms living on separate landmasses-- pockets of reclusion from one another-- subjected to alternate conditions for survival will of course develop differently. Multiply the factor by the number of species on the planet, and it is easy to see a web of thousands or millions of evolutionary paths-- some interconnected, some not. The only possible outcome of such a system is tremendous variation, or to use another word: creativity.

Before the internet, video game developers largely worked in a state of detachment from the rest of the industry-- each studio was seeking its own path towards survival by attempting to devise successful game formulas. As someone who lived through this time, I can say with authority that it was quite difficult to wrap one's arms around all of the games being made across the world-- even trade shows and magazines tended to be narrow in focus, and highly regionalized. In Japan in the 1980s, for example, the average Japanese gamer was barely aware that games were being made in America at all.

In evolutionary terms, video game developers were like species evolving in isolation from one another-- there were hundreds, or thousands, of almost completely independent evolutionary paths happening simultaneously, each one with a separate evolutionary outcome. There were of course moments of interconnectedness-- the establishment of genres-- but as it was with the propogation of new species in the world, a culture consisting largely of detached pockets of game development led to the spectacular variety and level of creativity that the video game industry experienced in the 1980s and early 1990s.

With the advent of the internet however, it suddenly became a trivial matter to see every single game released during every single year, along with corresponding and amazingly complete sales data, reader reviews, and critical commentary.

With the transparency that the internet suddenly provided, almost overnight the hundreds of evolutionary branches of video game development collapsed into one-- with a single set of evolutionary outcomes. The next leap of logic is easy to make: such a vast and absolute consolidation of creative potential would lead to a crushingly slow pace of innovation. And that, of course, is exactly what we have seen in the video game industry for the past decade or longer.


Too much transparency means too little risk-taking

How plausible is this theory that the evolution of music and video games has been slowed to a snail's pace by the prevalence of the internet? So plausible that famous writer Neal Stephenson had this to say about contemporary decision-making in the business realm:

"In the pre-net era, managers were forced to make decisions based on what they knew to be limited information. Today, by contrast, data flows to managers in real time from countless sources that could not even be imagined a couple of generations ago... in a world where decision-makers are so close to being omniscient, it's easy to see risk as a quaint artifact of a primitive and dangerous past (Source)."

Replace "managers" in the above passage with "video game developers", and it's clear to see why today's video game industry is unable to create first-order expression.

The truth behind why game designs no longer appear to "come out of left field" is because there is no "left field" remaining!

Tail light blues - 21:22 CST, 12/07/11 (Sniper)

One of the Z's tail lights burned out a couple of weeks ago. I got the bulbs in the mail today, and after getting Henri in bed, Ellyn and I spent an hour and a half out in the freezing cold garage trying to replace it-- we finally gave up, I'm going to just drive the car to a dealership tomorrow and have them do it.

After an hour and fifteen minutes of first figuring out how to, and then trying to, get the tail light assembly out, a feat we finally managed by snapping some small clip at the base of the assembly-- oops-- we finally got to the bulb itself, only to be unable to figure out how the hell to get it out.

It's not like a normal light bulb that screws in and out of a lamp, for instance; it has goofy, microscopic-sized clips you'd need to somehow pinch to pull the little bulb assembly out. But even if we'd managed that, it wasn't apparent to us how to get the bulb out of the little assembly without snapping the pint-sized pieces of plastic.

This is exactly why I limit my hands-on car work to refilling washer fluid and putting air in my tires-- I've never even changed a spare tire, and I hope I can keep it that way, I hate this kind of stuff.

Miyamoto to start making games again - 21:16 CST, 12/07/11 (Sniper)

I've been bemoaning the fact for years that our truly great game designers don't even make games anymore-- rather, they're like "supervisory directors" with zero hands-on contributions to the projects.

Well I was thrilled when I saw that Miyamoto is actually going to change roles. What a novel idea-- history's best game designer designing games! He also says he wants to get away from long development cycles; maybe we can steer our way back towards the glory of the early 90s one day? Maybe he'll actually make an original game again, versus a fiftieth Mario title?

Developonomics and design lock-in - 16:23 CST, 12/06/11 (Sniper)

Interesting article on Forbes. He misses an important example to support his argument on page four, where he discusses the repercussions of "bad" engineering.

Now systems are tinkering with peoples' very ways of living and communicating. As Jaron Lanier points out in his book "You Are Not a Gadget", the design decisions that get locked in today by companies like Facebook will have repercussions far greater than the decisions that created the Y2K situation.

Good article, but misses some arguments - 18:35 CST, 12/05/11 (Sniper)

This is a nice article defending .Net. He misses my two biggest criticisms however: 1) It's not libre, and 2) it's heavily patent-encumbered. And I don't count Mono-- ask anyone who has used it and they'll tell you it's not really compatible with Microsoft's implementation. Incidentally, there are a number of comments to this exact article making that point.

Of course, I level both of those criticisms at Java too-- and like .Net, Java has libre pseudo-implementations, like Harmony, but compatibility is a big problem. Plus, isn't Java always the platform people rip on? I never really hear people criticize .Net.

For personal projects, I always stick to platforms that do meet those two criteria from their very foundation, such as PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.

Shining Force III review - 12:30 CST, 12/04/11 (Sniper)

A new review is up at the 'Wharf, check it out!

How to go about business the exact wrong way - 22:03 CST, 12/03/11 (Sniper)

A few weeks ago, I started writing an opinion piece titled "What the NASL can learn from Europe". It started like this:

What a great premise for an article, I thought to myself! And as someone who has followed the European game for a long time, I have a lot to warn the fledgling NASL about!

In the article, I went on to discuss how the NASL needs to convince the MLS to establish promotion and relegation in order to make the NASL relevant, how the NASL needs to establish a salary cap to prevent the competitive imbalances that would inevitably form in the league, and how the league desparately needs a television deal to boost the revenue of its clubs; hell, even the USL has a television deal-- with Fox Soccer Channel-- and the USL is America's third division for Pete's sake!

I sent a draft of the article to friend and proprietor of Inside Minnesota Soccer, Brian Quarstad, for his take. I then went to fetch some coffee and a newspaper.

I came back to a reply from Brian that basically went like this: "Uh, I like the opening but none of your arguments are relevant; the USL pays big bucks for their television deal for instance."

Upon reading that sentence, I nearly spit the coffee out my nose.

The USL is paying for their games to be on television?! And that was the moment when I stopped denying just how futile the NASL's-- and USL's for that matter-- approach to the game is.

I've been following Minnesota Stars since their inception, and Thunder before them. My hopes and dreams of a division two league were filled with boundless optimism, and my moods rose and fell like a galleon on the ocean when half the league's clubs split with the USL, formed their own league, went through the rollercoaster of USSF sancationing last year, and took to the pitch this year. But through all of those emotions and attempted positivism, deep down I was never a true believer that the NASL would succeed where the USL failed.

My heart of hearts tells me there is no way in hell the MLS will-- probably ever-- try to reconcile their franchise business model with the grass roots strategy that worked everywhere else in the world. MLS isn't trying to make an English Premier League-- they're trying to make an NFL. And from the top down. Promotion and relegation will not happen in this country, at least not with the MLS involved.

And my warnings to the NASL about runaway rich clubs winning the cup every year like happens in Europe? Most the clubs can't even stay in business much less achieve dominance.

Business 101 states that the key to establishing anything-- a movie theater, a fast food restaurant, a drug trafficking ring, or a professional football league-- is to recognize a need, then fill the void. Business 101 also teaches that the goal of a business is to make money.

It feels to me like the NASL and USL have been trying to open a beauty salon in a city full of men, and then desparately trying to convince all the men that they need to come in for perms and manicures. It's going about business completely backwards.

Last time I checked, 75% of the "division two" clubs in this country since 1995 have gone bankrupt. 75%. And attendance is abysmal-- the Minnesota Stars drew 1521 fans to their home games. I bet there are the football-equivalent of little league games that draw more people than that.

And perhaps that's the point? Beneath the lofty, shining lights of MLS, maybe the amateur PDL is the only form of football that has any sort of market in this country? Because from what I've seen, the two cornerstones of business-- demand for a product or service, and a viable way to make money-- simply don't exist for football at the level the NASL and the USL have been trying to peddle.

Speed - 09:20 CST, 11/27/11 (Sniper)

I can't believe Gary Speed is dead...! Total shock. Left behind a wife and two kids too, what a shame, I feel bad for them.

In unrelated news, this is exactly the kind of car we need more of-- rear-wheel drive, decent power-to-weight ratio (if the earlier rumors of a sub-2800 lbs curb weight hold true), excellent balance and, hopefully, cheap. Real sports cars (er, 2+2s) for the masses!

Boil down the GOP field - 21:06 CST, 11/22/11 (Sniper)

I wish I could toss everyone off of the stage except for: Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and, as a voice of wisdom, Ron Paul. I wish I could focus the debates exclusively on those four, with the most time spent on Huntsman and Gingrich; I really think the nomination needs to boil down to them, based especially on their qualifications versus the rest of the field.

Lanier is right - 20:30 CST, 11/21/11 (Sniper)

Was reading an article in a magazine at the doctor's office today (Popular Science I think?) that was focused on the "power of the cloud", giant databases, and "web 2.0".

The main article's example of the power of "crowd-sourcing" was this: some guy has people creating hand-drawn frames of an old Johnny Cash music video.

This is exactly the kind of thing Jaron Lanier's "You Are Not a Gadget" talks about-- all our current "creative" climate is good at doing is remixing old things, not creating anything new or original.

Skyrim review - 17:04 CST, 11/21/11 (Sniper)

I've posted a new review on the 'Wharf, feel free to check it out.