Lots of people mocked Rumsfeld for his classic ‘known unknowns’ and ‘things we don’t know we don’t know’ speech. It was an easy target, but it’s also an interesting topic. Although in theory, the older I get, the more I know, in fact I think the older I get, the more I know I don’t know.

My politics changed a lot between ages 18-30. When I was 18, like most 18 year olds, I could put the world to rights and know I was definitely correct. I was totally wrong, and I just didn’t know it. Now, I have different political views, but I know enough to know I’m not sure I’m right.

It’s not different with my job. Ok, I rant about me knowing more about customer interaction than big companies, and I’m pretty confident there, especially after this, but that whole episode just went to show that what I thought I knew about piracy (all pirates are cheapskates) was just wrong. It is very very difficult to change your views on a topic you feel strongly about. The chances are, everyone reading this has some views that are not based on their objective evaluation of the situation, but views they got from their parents, their friends, from TV, religion,  from an experience as a child, from irrational fear or emotion.

I used to be very anti-fox hunting. I was bought up that way, as a city dwelling son of trade unionists, and never questioned it. I knew nothing about fox hunting, or the countryside, it was just the de-facto position for me. I became less and less fussed about it over the years (It’s now banned in the UK, at least the fox-killing aspect is). Very shortly after moving to the country, I actually saw (for the first time ever)  a bunch of people on a hunt (I think they just go through the motions now), and it is quite a spectacle. I can see why people feel its part of their culture, community and history. It gave me a different perspective, and one I really lacked. I’m not neccesarily pro-hunting now, but I am at least aware that my teenage views on it were colored by my surroundings and not the facts. I now know what I don’t know. Experience has actually made me less certain.

Here is a scary admission. When I started working at Elixir, I didn’t know how to use a debugger. I’d heard of them, but never known how they worked. I was gobsmacked that you could step through code and look at variables. Holy crap that looked really cool. And I had already shipped 4 games at that point (yes, they were damned hard to make). I was suffering from that classic problem of unknown unknowns. It’s not that I didn’t know how to step through code, I didn’t even know it was an option.

I’m still learning how to code, learning how to run a business, how to design games , how to balance games. I always will be. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s what keeps life interesting. Try to find out what it is you don’t know you don’t know

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How much TV do you watch? If you are like me, you are watching less and less. It seems to get less appealing every month, let alone each year. I’m sure eventually my TV will be used for DVDs, and maybe the news.

One of the TV progs in the UK that is supposedly for grown up, intelligent people who want to know what’s going on in the world is Newsnight. It’s a lateish-night politics and current affairs program. The last time I saw it, they were doing an item on the upcoming voting reform referendum, and whether or not it would cause a split in our governing coalition. How did they present this serious and deep issue?

By an animated cartoon showing the two leaders as john travolta and olivia newton john, and playing the music from grease. Oh, granted, there may have been a few minor nuggets of actual commentary about the topic, using short words and visual aids, but I still felt like it was aimed at the 4-8 year old market, who should definitely be in bed at that time.

British TV is increasingly embracing it’s role as ‘the idiot box’. Not only are a lot of the subjects covered by TV purely for bored idiots, but even the stuff that you would think was serious, or needed in depth coverage is treated as some sort of lame comedy routine. Maybe some clever TV analysts have discovered that everyone with college education or higher just doesn’t watch it anymore, so they just cater to the lowest common denominator? Silly visual gimmicks seem to assume that the entire audience has attention defecit disorder.

Maybe I’m weird, but I can cope with watching someone sitting still, talking to camera for ten minutes in a normal voice about something that is really interesting. When I read a book, the book doesn’t have little animations, or cartoons, or wave its arms about wildly every sentence to keep my attention. Books can’t do that, so they compete merely by having good content. It really doesn’t matter how much you wiggle your head and wave your arms as you talk, if you have nothing to say, nobody cares. We get closer to this mitchell and webb parody every day…

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I hate the x-factor and american idol and similar programs for many, many reasons. One of them, is that you constantly hear people who are awful at singing or dancing saying they have ‘done their best’. This is clearly bullshit 99% of the time.

We seem to have developed an entire culture based around low expectations and under-achievement. Mediocrity is the new celebrity. Putting effort in is so last year. The reason we all love ‘reality tv stars’ is that they perpetuate this bullshit that you can have the trappings of success and fame without doing any work. No need to do your best any more…

There is a great scene in an episode of Star Trek: DS9, where worf fails to help his brother die in a ritualistic suicide because they are interrupted by some humans. Worfs brother confronts him over his failure to help him, and worf protests that they were interrupted by two (weaker) humans. His brothers response:

“Did you fight them? Did you threaten to kill them both if they interfered? And are you here now with a mevak dagger to slit my throat and bring me the death I deserve?”

In other words, this is the klingon way of saying “So? is that the best you could have done?”
I like that. I see it so often, in others, and also in myself. I don’t think I’ve “given it 100%” or “done my very best” very often in my life. I rowed like a maniac once in a thames river race, but despite being knackered at the race end, I didn’t actually collapse and need to be taken to hospital. I didn’t burst a blood vessel with effort. If the life of myself and the people closest to me had been at stake, I could have rowed much much harder.
Gratuitous Space Battles is a game I worked very very hard on, But I didn’t work 100 hours a week on it. I didn’t skip TV entirely for a year to do it, or sell everything I owned to invest it in the artwork. I didn’t scrap the entire game and re-do it and the slightest hint of dissastisfaction. I didn’t do my best.

One of the best things about knowing, accepting and really understanding what it means to do your best, and to know you have not done so, is it means you can definitely, 100% no doubt about it, do better next time. People who go through life saying “I gave it my best shot” are just scared of admitting that in all likelihood, they didn’t, and have themselves to blame.
Of course, it might not be worth it to you to go to the extreme, insane lengths of actually doing your very best in everything you do, but I think its a good policy to know the tradeofs you make, as you make them.

Yup, I’m in motivational speaking mood

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Ignore this post, it’s here purely for google, unless you know the answer.

When I was a kid, I lived in Barnes, London. I remember that near Beverly Brook there was a  piece of wasteland, not far from station road. Eventually they built a housing estate there. I’m sure I remember there being a WW2 pillbox and some factory gates there, during the early seventies. Am I imagining it? Is it true there was a factory there, maybe a munitions factory that got bombed? If so, what do you know about it? Just curious…

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Democracy 2 is half price today. People who aren’t in the UK may not be sure why, but it’s the UK general election today and we are all pretty excited about it. Here is a very simple digest for anyone outside the UK.

Our current Prime Minister is Gordon Brown, leader of the left of center ‘Labour’ party. he was chancellor for years under that party (the current party has been in power 13 years) and then suceeded the last leader virtually unopposed. he was never won a general election as leader and was not elected to his current position. He recently got caught with his microphone on insulting  a voter.

Generally speaking, we have a two party system pitching Labour (left) vs Conservative (right). The specifics of our first-past-the-post electoral system have kept it a two horse race for decades. This is the first election in my lifetime where a third party is a major contender.

The third party (Liberal Democrats) have suddenly rushed to high popularity due to two factors. Firstly, there was a major scandal about MP’s expenses which affected the two main parties worse than any other. Secondly, the relatively weak PM was forced into accepting live TV debates for the first time in UK history, and the leader of the libdems (nick clegg) got equal billing in those debates.

Because the way our elections work, the liberal democrats have always been under-represented in parliament, relative to their popularity, as have all the other smaller parties. For a long time, the Liberal party and later the merged lib-dems would insist on electoral reform being the ‘price’ of their support in any electoral coalition.

For the first time in aggggessssss it looks like no party will win an overall majority, so a coalition may be needed. The Labour and Conservative parties will likely *not* work together, making the libdem leader ‘kingmaker’. It’s likely he will extract electoral reform as the price of co-operation.

Finally, this happens against a backdrop of severe economic problems in the UK. If an election had not been looming, our credit rating may already have fallen, and pretty rapid action will be needed. Simply put, we spend more than we earn, and big tax rises or public spending cuts are needed. Regardless of makeup, the next government may be unpopular.

Nevertheless, this is all historic. We have no idea which party will form a government tomorrow, or even next week. And this may be the last time in our history that we have a screwed up electoral system. I’m 40 years old and my vote has never counted, as I’ve only ever lived in safe seats. It would be great to see that change.

Finally, if only the current government (and previous ones) had taken me up on my offer for free copies of Democracy 2 (50% off today!), they would have seen that a public spending deficit has to be fixed in the medium term to avoid long term disaster. Why oh why won’t our politicians learn the lessons of games?

For american readers, two facts that may make you grind your teeth:

1) We don’t use voting machines. Its all done on paper, the old fashioned (and harder to cheat or hack) way.

2) There are never any queues at UK polling stations. It takes under a minute to vote.

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I got thinking on this topic whilst watching voyager recently. Here is my list.

1. The Borg

The idea: A group of cybernetic beings that have shared thoughts and one collective mind. They have no leaders, no command structure, no need to consult each other or communicate as they act as a cohesive, unified deadly enemy. Turns the idea of a typical sci-fi bad guy around by doing away with the concept of individuality entirely.

The Mistake: The borg queen destroyed the entire concept on which the borg was based. Then came Hugh, Then Seven of nine. Then borg children, then “we’ll always have uni-matrix zero’. It’s easy to forget that the borg were supposed to be a collective at all. And The borg ship design became less cube-obsessed, and more like a kids set of building blocks. Bah.

2. The Ewoks:

The Idea: A group of primitive, tribal aliens who do not use modern technology can, despite this disadvantage, bring a technologically superior foe to it’s knees using ingenuity and determination. A long-cherised idea of George Lucas’s, based on his love of anthropology and his feelings about the Vietnam War. Originally planned as wookies at the end of Star Wars Epiosde IV, later shelved.

The Mistake: Making them look like cuddly toys.

3. The Daleks:

The Idea: race of highly mutated aliens who can only exist within their metallic cases, after a long running nuclear and biological war which left their ‘parent’ race destroyed and their homeworld an irradiated wasteland. Genetically designed to consider pity and compassion as weaknesses, so as to be the ultimate weapon.

The Mistake: They Can’t climb stairs. Universal conquest ends here

4. Star Trek: Enterprise:

The idea: Go back to pre-kirk days to discover the early years of starfleet. Throw away all the conventions of later trek series and put humans and the federation on the back foot. Bridge the gap between the present day and the original series of star trek to tell the story of how it all started.

The Mistake: Basically ditching the idea within minutes. There is little to distinguish Enterprise from TOS or Next Gen. Ships have phasers, artificial gravity, and familiarity with tons of aliens. Did nothing to show a weak, technologically early federation. Suspiciously sexy vulcan strips off in very first episode. Sad….

5. The Matrix:

The Idea: The world as we know it is a simulation. A war rages between machines that mankind created and the last few free humans alive. These human freedom fighters jump between the real and virtual world battling against virtual opponents with awesome powers.

The Mistake: The sequels. Some bullshit about keys. Endless car chases. Inability to realise the mistakes made when doing a sequel to Highlander. (Don’t).

What’s on your list?

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If you are aged 35-42ish (rough guess) and from the UK, and a geek, you may well have just yelled Gronda Gronda Rangdo, or made a spluttering sound with your bottom lip and fingers, which of course is how the Grand Rangdo of arg would communicate.

For people who think I’m on drugs, I’m referring to The Adventure Game, a BBC2 TV series broadcast in the early 1980s. In theory, this was for kids, but it was a show you wouldn’t get for kids any more, because it made the kids think.

In simple form, TAG was a puzzle gameshow with celebrities, but unlike current fare, it wasn’t about making the celebs look stupid or them suffering, or about encouraging them to sleep with each other or shout abuse at each other. In TAG, the celebrities were given logic puzzles, and had to co-operate to solve them.

They were given logic puzzles and had to co-operate to solve them.

Imagine that now? It sounds very quaint doesn’t it? but the Adventure Game wasn’t the only TV show of my youth seemed designed to make me think. There was, of course stuff like Think Of A Number, all about science and maths and so-on. Then there was How! explaining how things work or get made. Then we had shows like The Great Egg Race and Now Get Out Of That.

The TV of my youth was great (it was doogy yrev!). It trained me to think logically, to embrace stuff like science and maths, and to be creative and critical. TV today seems to be designed to make you buy lip gloss and laugh at peoples suffering. I’m hazarding that the former is better for society than the latter.

What went wrong?

Or am I remembering it too fondly? Dismissing too easily stuff like Bang Goes the Theory, and forgetting mindless stuff from the same era, entertaining though it was.

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Do you? (others)

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It was an april fools joke clearly. Annoyingly I don’t have the trek license

As compensation, here is a video of a robot folding a towel. This is how it starts, with folding towells. It ends with laser-armed mechs as our masters and humanity their slaves…

Robot towel folding

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Yes, so Ubisoft put very tough, over-the-top DRM on Silent Hunter V. Its not exactly news. And some people say it’s cracked (I suspect not fully) and other disagree. Yada yada.

I don’t know whether the DRM was a mistake or not. And frankly, neither do you. There is only one person in the world who knows, and that’s ubisofts accountant. They used DRM because they thought doing so would make them more money. My own investigations suggest that it won’t, but their audience is not my audience. their budget is not my budget, and only they can see their figures. It may well make sense for them. Sure, a lot of ANGRY INTERNET MEN will post in 400+ comment threads about how they were ‘ass-raped by the stalinist scumbags’ at ubisoft, but 400 people are a drop in the ocean when it comes to the market size for AAA games.
Anyway…
The reason they did this is because piracy on the PC is a big problem. For EVERYONE. Gamers and developers alike. Just before posting this, I typed ‘gratuitous space battles’ into google, and saw two of the most popular searches are for ‘torrent’ and ‘rapidshare’. Thanks guys, you are the reason DRM exists. May I recommend the free demo?
Pirating COD 4 makes more sense than pirating a submarine sim. How many other sub sims are there if ubisoft throw their hands in the air and kill the franchise?

Anyway…
I may not know if the DRM was a mistake, but I’m pretty sure they made another one. A big one.

I am 40 years old. I am a hardcore gamer. I have some disposable income. I’ve read about the silent hunter games for years but not bought one yet. I’ve watched a youtube video that makes the game look cool. I am a world war II nut, who recently read churchills account of the war in the atlantic…

I AM DEFINITELY IN THE TARGET MARKET FOR SILENT HUNTER.

And yet I haven’t bought the game yet. Why?
Not the DRM, I’m online all the time, don’t resell my games as a rule, and don’t get too annoyed by it. Why then?
There is no demo

How the fuck do ubisoft think I’m going to know if I’ll like the game when…
1) All discussion of the game online is polluted by arguments about DRM and
2) There is no way to demo the game.

*Sigh*.

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