RSS and Advertising

July 8, 2008 – 6:44 am

Yesterday I decided to go through and make sure my RSS feeds in my reader were up to date.  I ended up dropping a couple where they haven’t posted anything in a while (a year), and decided that while I was doing it I’d try to see if feeds were available for some websites that I visit frequently.

Out of all the web comics that I added to the feed reader, only one (xkcd) actually had the comic in the feed.  The rest, at best, gave you a feed item letting you know that a new comic had been posted and you needed to visit the site to see it.

Now, I am not stupid.  I know exactly why they do this… advertising.  See, most of these sites, in order to offset the cost of hosting the comic (bandwidth and all that), have advertisements.  And as is the trend of ads on the web these days, most sites don’t manage their own advertising directly, they sign up with a banner providing site and then throw snippets of code on their site that will request an ad from the ad provider.  They do have some control over the ads, usually the ability to block ads they don’t wish to support, and overall I suppose they do a good job of keeping the ads “on message” with the rest of the site.

My problem is… well, why can’t the code snippets live in the RSS parser as well and tack on an ad at the bottom of a feed item.  Same banner image (though not the Flash “punch a monkey”/”you’ve just won two free ipod nano” ads), a line of text and a link/url to follow.  The capability exists.  WordPress has a plugin that does exactly that by putting a footer on RSS items.  Of course, not all web comics are using WordPress, but if it exists for one system it has to be possible for other systems.

Anyway, the result is, after adding a bunch of comics to my feed reader, I then removed all of them except xkcd.  For all the ones I removed, I’ll go back to visiting them when I remember to, which is usually once a month.  Just think, if they put the comic and an ad in their feed, they’d make me a daily reader of both their comics and their ads…

By jason | Posted in Random Thoughts | Comments (0)

The Rock-afire Explosion

July 7, 2008 – 7:09 am

If you are anything like me and grew up in the 80’s, you probably went to Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz Pizza for someone’s birthday or some other special occasion, or maybe you just went for the fun on it.  Both places had, in their dining hall, animatronic bands that would play songs while you ate.  I haven’t been to one lately, so I can’t say if they still have them, or if the shows are any good, but I do recall the last time I went (on a first date when I was 17 back in 1992… I wonder if she remembers that date, heh) the dining hall remained well lit while the band performed, which was kind of a let down.

Anyway, it seems that the band from Showbiz, The Rock-afire Explosion, is experiencing a resurgence.  A guy, a car salesman, bought himself one of the animatronic bands and with the help of the original designers is making music videos for more current songs.  They made a documentary about it.  You can see videos of several performances by searching for “Rock-afire Explosion” on YouTube.

I just wasted an hour watching this stuff, and I am bound to do it again.  I want to go to a Showbiz now, although I figure it won’t be as cool as these videos, and I would love to see those old pizza party places make a comeback, old-school, with the darkened dining hall, music and light show.  If I have kids one day, I want to take them there, or some place like it.

Thanks to Cyanbane for the heads up…

By jason | Posted in Random Thoughts | Comments (0)

The Problem With User Rankings

July 3, 2008 – 7:03 am

Not too long ago, on the Conquer Club website, they implemented a new system for player ratings.  Previously it had been based on an eBay style positive/neutral/negative scale with a comment.  You simply voted weather your experience playing them was positive, negative, or neither and then said something like “played all his turns in a timely manner” or “excellent team mate, worked well together” or “stupid dumbass only attacked his own team”.  Anyway, they switch over to a 4 stat 5 star rating system.  If you don’t care to follow the link, the short version is that after you play someone you can leave them a rating which is a rating from 0 (no rating given) to 5 (excellent) stars in 4 categories: Fair Play, Attendance, Attitude, Teamwork.  And the rating isn’t revealed until the game goes into the archive (no more ratings can be made on that game).

Going back to the eBay style ratings system, I hated it on eBay, largely because it was heavily retaliatory.  I once bought my wife a cello on eBay.  I didn’t buy the best model out there, I just wanted to get her a practice cello so she could start playing again (seriously, I’m not going to spend five grand on anything for anyone if there is a chance its just going to sit in the corner collecting dust).  The one I bought arrived and the bridge was not set up, which I expected.  What I did not expect was to wind up driving around to about two dozen music stores in an attempt to get someone to set up the bridge and have none of them willing to work on it because it was an “off brand” they didn’t sell or support.  I ended up setting it up myself, and did a very poor job of it, and after I gave it to my wife we finally found a music shop where someone relented and set up the bridge and tuned it.  So, I went to eBay and left a review of my purchase experience.  I was limited by the number of characters, but I said, “sale and shipment fine, but cello was ‘off brand’ and most music stores would not set up bridge or tune it.” and I gave him a neutral review.  To which, he replied by giving me a negative review that said “clueless user, DO NOT SELL TO HIM AND DO NOT BUY FROM HIM, liar and cheat!”  Now, because this was the only review I had, I ended up over the next 6 months unable to buy anything.  All my bids were refused.  The entire time, I was talking to the cello guy trying to get him to change his review.  I had been totally honest and had not given him a negative review, I just felt that anyone who purchased his items might want to know about difficulty getting service on those items.  Finally he relented and changed the review to neutral saying, “inexperienced eBay user, expects to get more than he pays for”.  After having a few more bids of my dropped, I just stopped using eBay.

As this relates to Conquer Club… well, I played a game with some people and I rated most of them 3 out 5 in most categories, except attendance in which case missing zero turns got people a 5, the occasional missed turn got a 4 or 3, and every player who dead beat (missed three turns in a row and was kicked from the game) got a 1.  Once the games got locked down and ratings were revealed, I got a flood of private messages from people complaining about getting a 3.  But looking at the rating scale:

0 means No Rating.  Or in other words, I don’t feel like I can judge you on this.

1 means Bad.  A rating of 1 means you sucked at whatever it was.

2 means Below Average.  This means you performed worse than I would expect.

3 means Average.  Meaning you performed as expected.

4 means Above Average.  You exceeded my expectations.

5 means Excellent.  You are awesome.

In most cases, people are Average.  To get Above Average in Attitude, for example, you just need to be gracious when you lose… or win.  To get Excellent, you need to also chat and be a good natured guy.  If you are silent the entire game, I cannot give you anything other than Average because there is nothing to base it on.  The ratings are from Bad to Excellent, not from I Want To Kill Them to Didn’t Piss Me Off.  There is a phrase where they call something “going above and beyond” and this is what they mean, you have to go Above and Beyond the Average to get better than an Average rating.

The problem is, people don’t see it that way.  3 out of 5 is a 50%, its halfway, and 50% is failing.  Most user based rating systems end up being all but useless for the same reason.  People being rated expect to be given the highest score possible unless there is a problem, and even then most of them want to still get the highest score possible after explaining or fixing the problem through other channels.  People rating others get pulled into the retaliation loop where they are giving higher ratings than they should because they don’t want to be rated poorly themselves.  And then most importantly, the site/game/whatever that is using the rating system, if they allow comments, usually have the length limited to the point where meaningful comments are not allowed.

I don’t know if there is any solution… you want to have the ratings to assist you in avoiding problem users, but the ratings can be, and are being, gamed so you don’t even know if a problem user is really a problem user.

By jason | Posted in Gaming, Random Thoughts | Comments (1)

Hancock

July 1, 2008 – 12:42 pm

10 out of 13 nots.
for heroes with problems and problems with heroes

If you loved Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk and want to see another super-powered thrill ride, Hancock is not the movie for you.  While previews and commercials may have made this movie seem like a funny action film about an alcoholic superhero, the truth is that this is a more somber tale about a lost superhero being helped find himself and recover from the mistakes he has made.

Closer in tone to Unbreakable than the more recent superhero fare, Peter Berg has crafted an interesting tale of a superhero who feels the need to save people but isn’t sure why and doesn’t take care in how he does it.  The movie has a few twists and turns, some of which can be seen coming if you pay attention, that veer the story away from being just another action flick.  I really enjoyed it, but I can easily see how others would not.  Dramatic and “slow” in places, it still has good action sequences and moments of comedy.  That said, I was never really at the edge of my seat.

So, enter with an open mind and you may enjoy the film like me, but if you go in looking for Iron Man, I think you are going to be let down.

By jason | Posted in Reviews | Comments (0)

Blogging Is Not Just For Pontificating Anymore

July 1, 2008 – 7:26 am

Admit it… I mean, I know I do… most blogs are there for people to hear themselves talk.  But a co-worker of mine had a medical emergency a couple of weeks ago.  He complained of a headache before bed, and later his wife couldn’t wake him up.  After getting rushed to the hospital, the doctors determined he had a bleed in his brain.  They went in, relieved the pressure, found it was not bleeding anymore (it had clotted and stopped on its own), and now he’s doing much better.

During all this, his family was given a profile at CarePages.  This allowed them to notify friends and family and send out an email with a link to the page.  People can log in and see updates (done by the family) on how he is doing.  They can leave messages.  See photos uploaded by the family or patient.  Give virtual gifts and get contact information.  You can even sign up for notifications so that you get contacted every time the family or patient updates the page.

It has actually been quite nice for us, the people on the outside, to be able to get news when its available and not have to wait until the phone chain trickles down to us.  And it has to be pretty nice for the family, knowing they can go to one place, make an update and have it automatically sent out to everyone.  Nice for the patient too, when he or she can read all the well wishes from all the people in their life.

Anyway, its just something that I thought from a pretty good idea and decided to share it.

By jason | Posted in Random Thoughts, Stuff on the Net | Comments (0)

Evolution versus Revolution

June 30, 2008 – 6:16 am

The first thing to note when talking about Evolution versus Revolution in games is passion.  If a player is passionate about the game he plays, he will strive to make everything about a new game sound as if it is only “more of the same” with some Evolution thrown in.  If a player is passionate about the forthcoming game, he will strive to make everything sound as if it is all Revolution over the old games and that nothing is “more of the same”.

I’ve read a number of posts claiming that Public Quests in the upcoming Warhammer game are a Revolution.  But it all depends on how you look at it.  On one hand, I can see the Revolution aspect because it is encouraging random social behavior in a PvE environment, which most games actually tend to discourage through spawn locking and quests being individualized.  (Its good to note here that while in World of Warcraft, only the quest holder gains the rewards of a quest completed, from the beginning, City of Heroes has always rewarded group members for assisting in completing another person’s quest by giving them a chunk of exp as well as many times giving them badges and/or enhancement rewards.)  But, on the other hand, the Public Quest system, to me, looks like someone took Alterac Valley from World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds, made one side entirely NPCs and tweaked the mini-quests in the zone.  In fact, WoW could easily implement Public Quests that way, by taking Battleground style content and making in PvE, assigning rewards based on participation, similar to what they do now in their PvP versions.  Whether you see the item as Evolution or Revolution, in my opinion, seems to be dependent entirely on how hard you are chomping and the bit to play Warhammer.

And Warhammer isn’t alone here.  World of Warcraft wasn’t Revolutionary either, except in its broader market appeal, which could be considered just an Evolution of the trend seen in games that came prior: UO, EQ, etc.  But plenty of people do consider WoW to be Revolutionary, either for that reason or because it was finally a fantasy MMO “done right” or some other basis.

The real question, rather than if something is Evoltionary or Revolutionary, is “Is it fun?”  Looking at Public Quests, it addresses the one thing I have found a problem with in games since EverQuest: encourages people to be social.  WoW has its raids, but outside that, you and four friends can do pretty much everything in the game.  In fact, you can play the entire game from level 1 to level 70 without ever talking to or grouping with another person.  In my experience, WoW is the most “silent” game I have ever played.  People don’t talk, people don’t do pick up groups… most of the social activity is based in and around guild raids and battlegrounds, both of which in many cases are a minority of the players yelling at the majority of the players to do things.  So, I probably will pick up Warhammer, but I’m not expecting it to be some huge revolution in gaming… just an evolution backwards toward players actually playing with each other more.

By jason | Posted in Gaming | Comments (0)

WALL-E

June 27, 2008 – 6:41 am

12 out of 13 nots.
for making me care about a lonely robot… and maybe the planet too.

Every time I see a Pixar movie, I find myself saying, “They have done it again.”  I am almost waiting for them to release a film that isn’t great… but don’t get me wrong, I love the great.

WALL-E is the story of a robot (the title is his name/model), possibly the last of his kind, left on Earth to clean up the mess while humanity took off into space for a vacation while the hard work got done.  Its that ‘last of his kind’ thing that hits home, and as usual the Pixar people manage to bring life to the non-living.  WALL-E goes to work cleaning up the mess (compressing junk into cubes and stacking the cubes as high as skyscrapers) and comes home each night to watch an old musical and dream of something more than what he has.  Then EVE arrives.  Another robot, EVE is searching for something on Earth, and WALL-E is stricken with her.  When she finds what she came for and a spacecraft returns to take her away, WALL-E hitches a ride into space to be with her.

From there, the story takes some nice turns and into some crazy chases and situations.  I really enjoyed it, and so did all the kids in the theater.  Its as good as all the other Pixar films.

Oh… and don’t be late to the film.  In Pixar tradition, there is a short film before WALL-E called Presto, and it is hilarious!

By jason | Posted in Reviews | Comments (0)

An MMO You Could Take To The Bank

June 26, 2008 – 9:03 am

This all begins over on Raph Koster’s blog, with his post about the RPG Piggy Bank.  Then David McDonough ran with it.  Now here are my thoughts which began over on Nerfbat…

I think someone really needs to do this.  It could be a revolution on two levels.  First, it could actually interest more people into saving money.  Second, it would finally put a game with a huge real world impact out there and “people” couldn’t just say that games are for kids or are just for entertainment anymore.

I would start with two different games.  The first would be kid focused.  Build an MMO with puzzles and educational things, while also including an adventurous “hack and slash” type game.  Some times you would go out and fight monsters and save the world, and some times you’d stay in and play mini-games for various reasons.  And not just the Tetris-style mini-games from Puzzle Pirates, but steal games from Brain Age, games that might actually help with learning while also still being (for the most part) fun.  The money invested into the game, either by monthly fee or by a microtransactions model (one where you buy items, game cash or points for real dollars), goes into a trust fund style account for the child.  The trust would be set up so that nothing can be spent until the kid gets out of High School, and that drafts from the trust after that would have to be approved, mostly to ensure the money is going to a college or other educational program, and perhaps have a monthly stipend paid out to a checking account for the kid (college expenses and what not).  When the kid turns 25, the remainder of the trust is turned over to the kid.  (And of course, if something happened to the child, the trust would be released to the family.)

The second game would be aimed at adults.  And I don’t mean that in a “blood and boobs” sort of way, but just that the game would need to appeal to more than just kids.  Only this time, instead of money invested going into a trust fund for college, the money goes into a retirement 401k or some other similar plan, the kind that begins payouts at 65.  Think of it as Social Security by way of an MMO.

If you really wanted to get crazy, you could allow people to set up any kind of saving fund they wanted and pay into it through game play.  Say you want to buy a new car and you need a minimum of a $3,000 down payment.  Set up a savings goal with the bank of $3,000, then direct your gaming account to desposit all funds into that savings goal.  Then a few months (or whatever) later while you are playing… “DING! Car Down Payment Achieved!”  What?  Oh!  Sweet!!  You could even set up multiple goals and split your payments into different funds, you want 30% to go into the new car fun, 30% to go into the vacation fund, 20% to go into the big screen TV fund, 10% to go into the house down payment fund and 10% into the retirement fund.

Of course, you’d need some way to fund the game… which could be done by advertisement partnerships and things like that, or even just shaving a tiny percentage off money deposited through the game as a service charge.  But seriously, I think this idea has merit.  I wonder what it would take to pull something like this off… hmm… where did I put those example business proposals? …

By jason | Posted in Gaming | Comments (0)

Company Policy

June 24, 2008 – 9:19 am

I have stumbled across this on the Internet a few times now, and I decided that I would post it to share with my readers, whoever you may be, and perhaps someone out there can point me toward the origin of this brilliant piece of work, because I can not find it.

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.

Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

And that, my friends, is how a company policy begins.

I have found this to be true.

By jason | Posted in Random Thoughts | Comments (3)

Programmers Are People Too

June 23, 2008 – 2:46 pm

Have you ever had five or six things that you needed to do in your life?  Like perhaps you are in need of (1) Getting a Job, (2) Cleaning Your Garage, (3) Alphabetizing your CD collection, (4) Doing the Laundry, and (5) Calling your parents.  Arguably, of that list, getting a job is probably the most important (although, calling your parents might be at the top of that list depending on how long it has been… so, have you called your parents lately?  No?  I’ll wait…  okay, let’s continue), however, getting a job can be a big process which can be broken down into smaller tasks, and is least likely to be over with quickly.  You might, if this were your list, spend an hour circling ads in the paper, making a few calls and maybe emailing off a couple of resumes, and while the task of getting a job is not complete, you’d likely move on to something else.  Especially if this is not the first day you’ve spent looking for a job.  You might, given these tasks, go sort the CDs for a while, then throw a load of clothes in the wash, piddle around in the garage and come back to the job search later.  Sound about right?

As long as all the tasks were getting worked on at some level, you wouldn’t fault yourself for not spending all your time on the number one top task, nor would you fault anyone else for doing it either… unless it was their job.

It is very common in my daily work that I have a half dozen tasks on my plate.  The most important one might be to build an entire new application, followed by some bug fixes, maybe a new report over there, another field added to this screen, etc.  Just like any other person in their normal lives, when I work, sometimes, if the task is very large, banging my head against it, even if I am making good progress, gets depressing because it is not getting finished.  So, throughout any given work day, I am liable to stop working on the big task and go polish off a smaller one.  It makes me feel good, and makes working on the large lumbering task more bearable.  However, none of the people I’m doing this work for like it.  The people who want the entire new application are upset that I’ve released code with bug fixes, a new report and some screen changes, but no new application.

Being as this is in the Gaming category, how does it relate?  Ever read a patch message to your favorite MMO and found yourself thinking (or saying, because every now and then we all talk to ourselves out loud, and its okay), “Why did they fix all this piddly crap when X feature/class/mechanic is so utterly broken?!?”  The answer is in the preceding paragraph.  No matter how broken something is and how important that feature may be, sometimes a programmer just needs to take a few minutes to fix something easy just to get a victory under his belt for the day.

And believe me, you WANT him to have that victory, because a programmer who gets buried under huge high priority tasks with no end in sight is an unhappy programmer who is looking for another job… and when he finds one, he’ll be replaced with a temporarily happy programmer who doesn’t know the code as well as his predecessor (and he’ll be unhappy and looking for a job soon enough).  Those little victories are what keep the programmers believing that they can and will tackle the larger problems that exist.

By jason | Posted in Gaming, Random Thoughts | Comments (2)