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  • How Valuable Is a Watch When It Happens to Be Smart

    This post is about about smartwatches. Well let’s face it, it’s a post about the new watch Apple showed off the other day. For a year or so now people have wondered whether smartwatches would be the next big consumer electronic device. Now that the Apple Watch is about to be released into consumers hands that question might soon have an answer.

    It’s of course too early to say for sure but the more I think about it the more I feel that smartwatches won’t be anything close to the market movers that smartphones and tablets have been. I do think they will become ubiquitous, but they are going reach that ubiquity by becoming cheap and limited in scope. Expensive smartwatches will still exist, but I’m not really sure what how much reach they will have.

    Now almost as soon as I type these words I can hear the obvious counter argument. There were people who were skeptical about both the iPhone and the iPad and they were quite famously proven wrong. For what it’s worth I wasn’t personally doubtful either device (a lot of people weren’t) though I certainly didn’t predict quite how successful they would become (I was one of those weirdos who checked email and browsed the internet on his old flip phone but I felt like a bit of an outlier). However I think there are very understandable reasons why these two devices were so successful…reasons that don’t seem to apply to any current smartwatch. There are also one other very Apple specific reason why the success of the iPhone might not be mirrored by the Apple Watch.

    The thing that made the iPhone and other smartphones revolutionary is pretty straightforward. I’ve written about this earlier but there is a great deal of value of being able to bring the powers of the PC and the internet wherever you are:

    It’s worth thinking about why the smartphone revolution happened. Smartphones are less powerful than traditional computers, but their advantage is that they allow you to bring the capabilities of a computer wherever you go. This of course means that you can do many tasks traditionally done on computers while out and about, but it also opens up opportunities to do things which wouldn’t make sense to do on a PC or laptop (think about apps like Uber, Foursquare or Instagram for instance). Most importantly of all though, it changed the way we use many existing applications because it allows us near constant access to the internet. Going online isn’t something you do every so often any more but is semi-continuous state, and this has changed the nature of how we interact with computers in general. Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter, Yelp etc aren’t occasionally referred to references but constant companions. Having a computer in your pocket means you also have the internet in your pocket, and that changed everything.

    As for the iPad, it’s biggest criticism, that it was just a large iPhone, was in fact it’s biggest strength. iOS was already a proven and well supported platform and the larger screen meant that it was able to do many tasks better (sometimes much much better) than smaller screened phones could.

    Taking all this into consideration, what is the value add that comes from a smartwatch? Unlike the leap of bringing the power of the connected computer from your house to your pocket, it’s taking a much smaller step of bringing it from your pocket to your wrist. There certainly is value in the ability to check your notifications and perform a some other actions without needing to reach for your phone. But since it only takes a couple of seconds to pull your phone out of your pocket that value seems somewhat limited.

    It’s also worth noting that while smartwatches will allow you to keep your phone tucked away some of the time, you’ll still need to take it out often. As screens get smaller the types of interactions you can do become more limited (the inverse of this is part of the reason why the iPad was as successful as it was and why smartphone with large screens are so popular now). There are still many tasks that are far more easily done on a smartphone screen than will be on a smartwatch. Both Google and Apple are designing ways to compensate (such with voice recognition) but it’s worth remembering that they are working at a deficit to get to where smartphones already are. And it’s hard to see how a smartwatch will ever be as good as smartphones for something like reading.

    My main point is that at any given moment the biggest competitor to any smartwatch is actually the phone it’s tethered to. For any action you might take, the advantage of being able to keep your phone in your pocket needs to be weighed against the disadvantage of using such a small screen. In many cases the tradeoff will be worth it (notifications, fitness tracking etc) but in a lot of situations the answer isn’t so clear. Any interaction you do on a watch face would need to be pretty painless in order to be preferable to the relatively minor hassle of pulling your phone out.

    As an aside it’s worth noting that as far as UI goes, unlike the iPad the Apple watch is definitely not a smaller version of the iPhone, nor is Android Wear a smaller version of a Nexus. They both bring entirely new UI paradigms to the table, ones that have barely if ever been tested on the public. It will interesting to see who’s interface comes out as the better one (the answer is probably Apple’s but…well I’ll get there in a bit).

    Of course there is the possibility that smartwatches will be able to do some tasks better than smartphones. However at the risk of making a foolish prediction I’m actually a very doubtful about this. The main issue is that almost any piece of technology you could fit in a smartwatch you can already fit in a smartphone, generally with better specs. This means that most applications that can be done on a smartwatch can also be done on a smartphone as well (and often done better). The one exception I can think of might be fitness tracking…or specifically certain types of fitness tracking that allow for constant monitoring of vital signs like heart rates (as the Apple Watch would presumably allow you to do). Theoretically you could put a heart rate monitor on a phone but you couldn’t get a constant reading off it. Perhaps there are a slew of potential applications that might make use of this capability but it honestly seems like a pretty niche thing to hang the popularity of a device on. Smartphones let us bring large number of internet connected devices with us at all times (cameras, GPS, audio playback etc). The additional reach provided by the sensors on smartwatches seems very limited in comparison.

    Of course you might point out that we aren’t just talking about any smartwatch, we’re talking about a smartwatch made by Apple. And Apple has been very good at figuring out how to make gadgets that only tech nerds could love into easily usable and highly popular devices that have changed the way we live. They didn’t just bring us the iPhone and iPad, but the iPod, Macbooks and even the personal computer. Given all that it seems a little foolish to bet against them. And I would say that this is true…kind of. This going to be a bit gauche of me to say, but I think it’s worth asking whether it was Apple that was responsible for the successes, or whether it was Steve Jobs.

    Something that I haven’t really seen talked about much in the tech press is that the Apple Watch is their first completely new product released in the post Steve Jobs era. Of course it’s impossible to really know how important Steve Job was to the success of Apple and the design of it’s products, or to say how much of one man’s personal and intellectual DNA can be kept intact in a company after he departs. But if Jobs was as important as most of us think, then it’s not unreasonable to expect to see the effects of his passing slowly show up in Apples products over time.

    This is part of the reason I’m a little cautious when I hear people say that the Apple Watch will jump start the smartwatch industry like the iPhone did with smartphones. For one thing Apple isn’t creating a new product or disrupting an existing industry in the way that it did with either the iPhone or iPad. Smartwatches aren’t an established market, but a number of companies are already making products of their own (some of them aren’t half bad). Smartwatches are the hot topic among tech enthusiasts right now and Apple…Apple is actually just moving along with the direction of the industry. Now of course they may well have moved in this direction no matter what the rest of the industry did, but my main point is that they aren’t ahead of the rest of it’s competitors this time as they were with the iPhone, the iPad and the Macbook Air, to cite a few examples. It’s possible that Apple isn’t quite as able to see into the future the way it used to seem to be able to do.

    Also while I haven’t played with it myself of course, some people are saying that the UI of the Apple Watch isn’t quite as simple or easy to learn as that of the iPhone. Of course this might be just a simple matter of taking the time to learn the new device but it has me a little concerned. Jobs with famously obsessive with how Apple devices worked, felt and looked and I can’t help but wonder if the new watch could have used his touch. The design problems posed by a smartwatch…making the functionality of a smartphone work on such a small screen (and perhaps more importantly deciding which bits of functionality to leave out), are pretty difficult ones to deal with. It might be even Apple will need some time to figure all this out.

    So here’s the bottom line. I believe that in the long run most the price people will pay for technology products are a function of the utility it provides to the user. The iPhone and other smarphones cost a decent amount (after you include phone contracts) precisely because they provide a lot of utility. On the other hand it’s hard to see how much utility a smartwatch provides which isn’t already provided by a smartphone. It isn’t to say smartwatches are useless, just that they will be used for less. So it’s hard for me to see them catching on in a big way unless they get a lot cheaper than they currently tend to retail for (other than the Pebble watches). And it’s quite possible that Apple (and other manufacturers) may eventually go down this route. We tend to think that Apple only makes high end products, but don’t forget that back in the iPod heyday they did make a number of budget oriented models (the Shuffle and the Nano) to cater to people who didn’t want to buy a full iPod or iPod touch.

    As for higher end smartwatches, it’s hard to predict how important a part they will play. They will probably have a market catering to tech enthusiasts (people who buy new phones and computers every year). But outside of that group it will depend on how well they can sell themselves as a luxury item. And that’s something that most tech companies (including Apple) don’t actually have a lot of experience in. Buying a smartphone every few years is fine for most people considering how dependant we are on them, but a smartwatch feels like a new proposition entirely. My sense is that to the average consumer for something to be worth several hundred dollars, it should either provide a lot of utility or it should last a long time. If I’m right about the utility of smartwatches then they will do neither of these things. If that’s the case manufacturers will need both business model and a general product design less like smartphones and more like traditional watches.

    Will Apple sell a lot of watches? In the first year probably yes. I mean it is Apple and they have a pull on the popular imagination like no other company (not to mention a legion of highly devoted fans). But the real question is what will people do a year or so from now. Will they buy new smartwatches (Apple or otherwise) every couple of years like they do with smartphones? Will the wider populace decide that a smartwatch is worth the $400 and up manufacturers are asking them to spend? I think that is much less certain.

    Of course all this depends on my assumption about the eventual utility of smartwatchs. And of course I could be dead wrong. Perhaps smartwatches will spawn a whole host of new applications and uses that we’ve never thought of before. Maybe fitness tracking is posed to takeoff and become deeply embedded in everyone’s lives. Or perhaps someone will develop an extraordinarily fun and addicting game which requires quick movements (so that you would want your device firmly strapped to you). Technically any of these and more is possible. Being a gadget geek no one will be happier than I would if there truly was another really cool and innovative piece of tech out in the world. If that does indeed become the case I will dutifully eat my share of humble pie before snapping up whatever shiny new smartwatch is hot in the future. But for the time being I remain pretty skeptical.

  • Random thoughts on the fact the Ello doesn’t let you “like” anything

    I wonder whether the lack of a “like/favorite” button in Ello might be a good thing. It kinds of forces you to actually say something if you want to interact with someone, instead of just passively registering that you enjoyed or agreed with them.

    On the other hand perhaps it will mainly cause people to interact less. If the level of interest you have with a post is not enough to justify thinking of a response, your reaction to it will simply go unregistered. So the “like” button does provide at least some utility.

    I was thinking about what it would be like if real life social interactions had something similar to the “like” button. What if we could simply click a like button next to our friends’ head when they said something you that you found agreeable. How would that change the way we communicated?

    Then I realized we do have something like that. It’s called a smile.

    By the way, if (for some odd reason) you want to follow me on Ello you can find me at here.

    https://ello.co/michaellockwood

  • Ferguson and Anonymity

    1. In regard to the events in Ferguson I trust the local police forces and Anonymous to the same degree, which is to say not at all.

    2. Sometimes I think the mythos of the masked superhero is too engrained in our popular culture. Both the police and Anonymous both see and portray themselves as heroes, but the lack of accountability makes them dangerous.

    3. On the other hand I think the people on the ground informing us of the situation (both professional reporters and citizen journalists) are the true heroes. Information is the best weapon.

  • Why I’m Lukewarm About the Television Revolution

    One of the announcements at Google I/O last wednesday was Android TV, the company’s latest attempt to create a product built for the TV. At the same time Google also announced a number of new features for the Chromecast, their media streaming stick revealed the year before. A few months before this Amazon announced the Amazon Fire TV, their new entrant into this field. In the meantime Microsoft has doubled down on it’s previous living room media ventures buy building the Xbox One to be a media provider as much as a game console, not only with access to media streaming services but also with the ability to use the machine to control your cable box directly. And of course looming over the horizon there are the endless rumors that Apple will soon announce a new type of TV product of their own. Devices to make your television smart appear to all the rage right now.

    To be sure, this isn’t an entirely new thing. Products like Roku, the (current) Apple TV and smart TV’s in general have been around for several years now. The original idea is pretty simple, bring streaming services developed for the PC (like Netflix) to the TVs in peoples living rooms. And while usage of such products haven’t become mainstream yet, there appears does to be a strong market for these devices.

    But how strong will it be exactly? There has been a lot of speculation that one of these companies (most people seem to be betting on Apple) will be able to create a disruptive product that will bring major innovations to way we watch TV, much in the same way that the iPhone has done to the world of mobile. And it’s hard to argue that a shakeup wouldn’t be desirable. Traditional cable companies charge a pretty hefty price in order to for you to have access to a huge bundle of programs, most of which you probably don’t want and would prefer not to pay for. Wouldn’t it be easier to just pay a smaller amount for individual channels like ESPN, HBO or Comedy Central? Or better yet, pay a tiny amount for individual shows. And wouldn’t it be great to have those shows streamed to you whenever you want. Or hell, forget all that and just bring the overall price down.

    Of course traditional media companies don’t want any change to the status quo. They make a great deal of money with the current setup and have every incentive to keep things the way they are. But could one or more of the large tech companies be able to force them to change? Again, it seems to have worked in the mobile industry. Carriers have much less control over what services their users have access to ever since main gateway for those services became Apple and Google app stores. Could a similar product built for the TV be able to gain a similar amount of control away from traditional media companies? Well…maybe but I don’t think it’s a sure thing.

    It’s worth thinking about why the smartphone revolution happened. Smartphones are less powerful than traditional computers, but their advantage is that they allow you to bring the capabilities of a computer wherever you go. This of course means that you can do many tasks traditionally done on computers while out and about, but it also opens up opportunities to do things which wouldn’t make sense to do on a PC or laptop (think about apps like Uber, Foursquare or Instagram for instance). Most importantly of all though, it changed the way we use many existing applications because it allows us near constant access to the internet. Going online isn’t something you do every so often any more but is semi-continuous state, and this has changed the nature of how we interact with computers in general. Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter, Yelp etc aren’t occasionally referred to references but constant companions. Having a computer in your pocket means you also have the internet in your pocket, and that changed everything.

    Most of these media boxes bring the power that computing power to the TV, but strips out the mobility. And its not clear to me that there is much advantage to be gained by doing this. There is some gain as they bring applications designed originally for the PC to the living room (specifically media streaming of course). But I wouldn’t expect to see the same explosion of innovation that we’ve seen in the mobile landscape because any sort of smart TV setup is in principle just a computer with a really large screen. And since there is already a large (abet shrinking) and established market for traditional computers you would expect for most of that innovation to already be happening.

    This is important because if these new types of devices can’t bring anything new to the table that excites consumers and brings in huge sales, then Apple, Google, Amazon or whoever will be in a much weaker position to push the traditional media companies to change the way that media is distributed. The old players won’t have an incentive to change the distribution models for their IPs until the tech upstarts can prove that they can already succeed without them.

    This is not to say that streaming media boxes won’t remain a viable and growing market, especially with really good user interface and a large amount of advertising. But for me it’s hard to see them making anything like the same sort of impact that smartphones and tablets have had. I think any improvements in this area will come at best at a steady crawl because they will depend more on companies like Netflix creating popular new IPs (which they can distribute however they want) than on the introduction of new media hardware. The mobile operating systems that most of these new boxes are based on are great because they are…well, mobile. Take that away and they lose much of their power.

  • My 2013 Twitter year in review

    I decided to go through all my tweets from 2013. It’s an interesting exercise, turning my Twitter account into a kind of a streaming time capsule of my interests, concerns and thoughts from the previous year. Admittedly it was an incomplete picture as I generally don’t share details of my personal life on any of my social networks (though currents of that life may have rippled the surface of my posts and tweets occasionally). What I was presented with though was a record of my reactions to the larger events of the world around me.

    The first thing I noticed is that I am apparently much more active on Twitter than ever before. I know this because in early February I had an update where I noted that I had just reached my 2000th tweet. Currently the count is at 3391. This means that about 40 percent of all my tweets have been made in the last 11 months, and I’ve been on Twitter since at least 2009. I’m not sure why this happened. Perhaps one of those personal events that I don’t post about changed my propensity to tweet, or maybe this something I’ve just become more and more comfortable with (or addicted to) over time. I’ve actually made a request or for my Twitter archive (which can take a few days to be send out) because I’m curious what a more detailed look at the data might show, but for now this is a mystery to me.

    The second thing I noticed is that I more or less use Twitter as a channel for two different types of communication…links to articles that I felt were worth reading and my own random often silly thoughts. While not a hard and fast rule the former tended to be on subjects that were were serious in nature while the latter were generally meant to pieces of humor. Part of the issue is that I think it’s almost impossible to write well about a complex subject in 140 characters or less. I haven’t gotten into the habit of writing longer pieces regularly (though perhaps that will change) so I tend to outsource my opinions to other better writers. On the other hand 140 characters is often perfect for witty (I hope) quips so I find Twitter easy to to use for this purpose.

    The third thing that jumped out at me was how ephemeral our concerns often are. Many events that raged like storms on our social consciousness seem so distant now. From The Boston bombings, the choosing of the Pope Francis, Wendy Davis filibustering the Texas legislature, the government shutdown, the use WMD’s in Syria to less serious events like the birth of Kanye’s baby, the royal birth and the revelations about @Horse_ebooks…re-reading tweets about these events felt like going through a mental closet of old and dusty memories. Sometimes this is unfortunate since the events in question are still ongoing (as in the case of Syria where the dismantling of it’s WMD stockpile is still ongoing, as is the ghastly civil war), but we have the sad tendency to discard events that don’t affect us directly.

    On the other hand there were subjects that did have a long shelf life, some lasting throughout the year. Sometimes this was because they were on subjects that are of particular interest to me, and so I always have them on my mind. Examples include the future of digital rights management in triple A games, the continued development of the indie game scene, the moves of and changes in the Federal Reserve, the debate over the correct model to map the macro-economy and the discussion about the utility of bitcoin. I believe other subjects had bigger audiences though. The continued resurgence of the woman’s rights movement, the constant drip of revelations about the NSA and the implications of being in a surveillance state, the ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act and the continued predominance of the issue of income inequality were all subjects I think which maintained a wide salience to many people throughout the year. A decade from now will these be the events that continue to poke through the fog of our collective memory? It’s really interesting to think about which things continue to have a hold on us and why.

    Then again I am probably speaking too grandiosely…and out of turn. Can I really tell which subjects maintained a wide public interest and which ones were only the province of a niche group of people…or even how to define how to draw the distinction between these two states? After all it’s my Twitter feed here, a collection of my take on the world as it went by. Of course Twitter and other forms of social media allow me to have a glimpse of what others think as well, but I’ve only seen the tiniest slice of the whole pie and my observations would obviously reflect this. I wonder what others see.

    For some reason I decided to end this by going full navel-gaze and collect some what I thought were my better tweets from the year. They tend to be representative of the sillier side of my tweetage (since I usually expressed my serious thoughts through links to others) but not all of them do. Read on only if it appeals to you.

    April 1st…

    It’s hard to tell, especially out of context, but the following four tweets were responding to the Boston bombing and the manhunt which followed.

    Regarding the royal birth…

    These two were supposed to be a joke on the popularity of Snapchat. It wasn’t that good but I apparently found a way to amuse myself way to much with the concept…

    The next two were in response to the revelation that @Horse_ebooks was being run by a Buzzfeed writer.

  • Initial thoughts on Saints Row IV: a game that doesn’t forget that games are supposed to be fun (minor spoilers)

    I started playing Saints Row IV a few days ago and am happy to say that I’m finding it really entertaining so far. I will say that unlike the previous iteration of the series, SR IV takes a little bit of time to really get into gear. I found the first couple of levels kind of meh, but soon they introduce game mechanics that are really fun to use, and the humor of the game really begins to fall into place.

    To those who aren’t familiar, the Saints Row series started it’s life as a more light hearted version of GTA (I should put my cards on the table and say that I haven’t played the original game but I have played SR2 & 3). Over time the game has gone farther and farther from it’s source material, so that while SR2 was satirical take on the GTA-esq open world crime game, SR3 had developed into an almost action, sci-fi comedy open world game (to take an example, one of the opposing “gangs” in SR3 is a group of goth hackers who carry around giant anime style swords). Saints Row IV keeps a lot of the mechanics from the previous game, but the story basically escapes from the crime genre altogether, as the titular Saints have over the series built them up from a small street gang to a popular corporate brand (complete with it’s own energy drink, Saints Flow) to a world saving organization. In the beginning of SR IV the main character has become the President of the United States. Then aliens attack. Then you get super powers.

    Basically what happens is that the aliens capture the most important people on earth (which includes you and your homies) and places them in virtual simulations of the world as a form of storage. Most of the plot involves you breaking the simulations programming (this is where the super powers comes in) in order to allow you and your comrades to escape. All this is presented with a glib self aware attitude that actually makes this entire scenario work. In addition to super powers you are granted access to outlandish weapons like the dubstep gun, which creates a crescendo of electronic sound as it charges up, then unleashes a lethal wave of dubstep forward, damaging your enemies and causing others in the area to dance rhythmically.

    One thing I have noticed is that a lot of people (both people who have played the game and prospective players) seemed to be turned off by the silliness of the two most recent iterations of the game. For those who haven’t played the game I would like to say that while the most juvenile aspects of the game are usually the ones that are most talked about (dildo bats etc), a lot of the humor is actually much smarter and self aware than is generally appreciated. Furthermore, while the tone of the game is meant to be silly, it’s not as if it plays out as a video game version of an onion article. It actually does have a cohesive plot and a surprisingly memorable cast of characters.

    I kind of think that at least in the world of AAA games, many gamers are too obsessed with games being “serious” (I remember reading on a forum about the experience of one player who’s friends were no longer interested in the Halo franchise because the game “was for kids”, basically castigating it for not being as “serious” as series like Call of Duty).  And because of this when you go to the store you see row after row of gritty military shooters or sci-fi military shooters. Many of them are actually very good but I still feel like the market is over saturated with these types of games, and there aren’t enough titles (in the AAA market at least) that are whimsical or creative or just plain fun. The truth of the matter is the plots of pretty much all AAA games are pretty silly when you really think about them, and it’d be nice to see more games actually embrace that fact. Saints Row IV does that to a T, and that is one of the games great charms.

  • Yes many gamers don’t consider Gone Home a game, but the interesting question is why.

    As was easily predicted, many gamers have accused Gone Home of not really being a game (it’s one of the most common opening complaints in the Metacritic user reviews of the game for instance).

    I personally consider myself firmly in “yes it is a game” camp, but I’ve also seen a lot of responses that are similar to the following tweet:

    and I kind of think some of the defenders of the game are missing something important as well. The argument is that the reason many gamers don’t consider Gone Home a real game is that it is not the typical violent AAA game one normally associates with first person games. But is this really the case? 

    Take Fez as a counter example. Like Gone Home it is a game with no violence in which the player navigates and interacts with an environment, in this case to collect a number of items and solve logical puzzles. Yet, if you look at the the Metacritic user reviews for Fez, while you will find people who think the game is boring, nobody really seems to be arguing that the title doesn’t qualify as a game.

    What accounts for this difference? Let me play devils advocate for a moment and point out that when I jotted down my initial reaction to Gone Home, I noted that traditionally video games have a skill or problem solving based component as a major aspect of the game design. More specifically games have traditionally been designed with the goal of providing some sort of challenge to the player.  The challenge can be be skill/reflexed based, problem solving based, or even simply based on a system of resource management, but in almost all video games some sort of challenge that is designed to be overcome. I would argue it is this lack of challenge that many gamers are reacting to, not the lack of guns or violence.

    Now, I did say above that I do think Gone Home should be considered a game. Without going too deep into the complex argument about what is and isn’t a video game, let me briefly describe why I believe this. First, I think many people get too tied up trying to bind the definition of video game with the root word of game, noting that non-video games pretty much always have a goals and rule sets and stipulating that video games need to have these as well. But I would argue that when you study languages deeply you find that definitions change over time, and the term “video game” has had an independent existence from the root word of “game” for long enough that it’s no longer clear it’s bound by the definition of the later any more than the definition “Secretary General” is determined by the definition of “secretary” or “meter maid” defined by the definition of the world “maid”. Specifically, video games pretty much always (I can’t think of any counter examples) involve the creation of simulated environments, and the forms of these environments generally have a much stronger impact on how we categorize a video game than anything else. This is why we consider both Halo and Portal first person games, while Super Meat Boy and Fez are considered 2D platformers, even though the types of challenges they present to the player (action games vs puzzle games) are very different. 

    Following from my last point, it should be noted that reflex based action games and problem solving based puzzle games are actually very different types of activities, and both of these are very different than the activity of resource management found in games such as Sim City. It seems a little strange that such a wide breadth of activity can fall under the same classification of video game while a strictly narrative work somehow does not. After all, there is something that does tie all these different types of works together and it is that they all require a some sort of computing device to be experienced. To say that all of the ones designed with some sort (apparently any sort) of challenge is considered a video games but simulations that are designed to primarily focus on a narrative falls into some sort of undefined other category seems a bit bizarre to me.

    Finally there is the practical issue of where you want interactive narratives to go if they are not considered video games (and perhaps more importantly, are not sold by video game realtors or discussed in video game focused media). Because like I noted above, these games (and I am going to refer to them as games hereon-in) require some sort of computer to function. Perhaps more importantly they require the same infrastructure that other video games do in order to be distributed to any sort of audience. It’s easy to try to lump them categorically with other forms of narrative media (movies and books etc) but the means for distributing those forms can’t support interactive narrative games, so saying they are not games (and implicitly trying to remove them from the video game space) is basically relegating them non existence.

    So in short, yes I think Gone Home (and things like it) should be considered video games. But then why am I taking issue with the reactions like the tweet above? It’s because a lot of supporters of such games are taking the too easy route of accusing mainstream gamers of simply being closed minded about any game that doesn’t involve shooting or stabbing something. But the truth of the matter is that a lot of gamers are actually simply disliking the lack of a challenge component in the game, and are interpreting this dislike by seeing the game as failing to be a game. I think they are wrong in this interpretation but I also think it’s important to see it for what it is if we are going to make any headway in making more space of games like Gone Home to find a home in the video game space.

  • Some initial very random thoughts on Gone Home (no plot spoilers)

    First, it is very good. I’m not quite sure I think it’s quite as great of a game as much of the twitter-verse is making it out to be but I do think it’s very much worth your time.

    Second, most non-gamers should find it pretty accessible as this is an exploration game, with no combat or other dexterity requiring game mechanic that one needs mastery of (though it should be noted that it is a first person game, and in my experience some non-gamers have extreme difficulty navigating a first person environment). Also the story is one that should appeal to a wide audience, though I do wonder if it will be able to find that wider audience given it’s medium and distribution methods. It should be noted however that some machines with integrated graphics may not be able to run the game well (my 2011 MacBook Air became extremely hot very quickly and then stopped performing well, and so I needed to switch to my PC to play the game).

    Third, Gone Home is an example of a type of game that has recently seen a lot of critical acclaim and examination, one which might be described as an interactive narrative (other recent examples include Kentucky Route Zero and The Walking Dead). I actually wonder if all the acclaim Gone Home has received will reawaken the debate over what is and isn’t a game, since it (and titles like it) feel very different than most other video games. Specifically most games have a skill or problem solving component which is supposed to provide the challenge to the player and are in some ways seen as the point to the game. In titles like Gone Home however, there is few or no such components, and the mechanics that are there are used to drive the narrative along instead. This generates a remarkably different experience for the player when compared to more traditional games. On the one hand this allows for a whole new world to be opened up for narrative fiction, as there are things you can accomplish with video games that you can’t capture quite as well in other media (for instance, I would argue that interactive spaces can capture a sense of place better than either the written word or motion pictures). On the other hand, the lack of any skill or puzzle solving component can potentially alienate traditional gamers who are currently the target audience for these kinds of games (though perhaps this will change in the future). Some games try to combine both a deep thoughtful narrative along with traditional gameplay mechanics (the Bioshock series is a good example of this) but in my opinion when game designers try to do this these to elements often clash with each other (I’m not evoking the whole ludonarrative dissonance debate here, I actually think narrative and skill based play are two completely different things and when both are extremely engaging they compete against each other for your minds attention). Because of this I’m really interested in seeing how well narrative only (or at least primary) games carve a niche for themselves in the marketplace.

    Finally I’m kind of curious how people will react to the pricing of this game (which costs $19.99, though it’s currently on sale for $17.99). It’s an interesting exercise to think of the “correct” price for a game (or any piece of intellectual property for that matter). $20 is a normal price for a mid-level game, though the duration of Gone Home it is a bit short as far as games go. One could argue that as a narrative piece that can be completed in 3 hours, it would make sense to make the price closer to that of a movie. Of course from an economic point of view the price is really just a function of supply and demand, and since the supply for a digital product is whatever the creators need it to be, the real question is how much demand there is and perhaps more importantly how much will a change in price change the quantity purchased given the level of demand. And honestly I don’t really know the answer to either of those questions. I suspect though that a lower price will fetch a much higher volume for the reasons I mentioned above.

  • Why are journalists so obsessed with Einstein being “proved wrong”?

    The NY times recently did a piece about an interesting paradox that physicists have discovered. It’s pretty fascinating if you are interested in the subject but at several points the article frames the issue as something which shows that “This time…Einstein might really be wrong”. Additionally a couple of other news pieces I’ve seen or heard referencing the piece also framed things in this way.

    I have a couple of problems with this. First off, while the general theory of relativity has held up very well, physicists have already come to the agreement that it isn’t a complete picture of how gravity works. Specifically, Einstein believed that any eventual grand unified theory (which would include gravity) would work in the same deterministic way that general relativity did, while other physicists felt that quantum mechanics (with it’s random elements which Einstein disliked) really showed the way to such a theory. The consensus has since come down that Einstein was wrong on this issue, though Einstein never conceded and even worked until his death trying to come up with a deterministic grand unified theory. So saying Einstein may be wrong!!!!! is kind of strange way of framing things because we already know he was wrong about some things. The real question should be, is there something wrong with our understanding of general relativity. I know we generally pair relativity with Einstein because he did come up with the theory by himself but it’s actually a mistake to conflate the theory with the man.

    Furthermore, the significance of this paradox isn’t just that it may show there is a problem with relativity. The significance is that it seems to show there is some problem with at least one of the major models that physicist use to understand the universe. If we found that the problem is in our understanding of quantum theory it would be just as significant as it would be if the problem was in our understanding of relativity. The way the article frames the issue makes general relativity seem to be the most important theory ever, where it is more accurate to describe it as an important part in our body of knowledge.

    FInally, it’s worth pointing out that while Einstein has become our icon for the science genius, part of this is really just a celebrity effect. Not to say that he wasn’t one of the brightest stars of the scientific world, but there are other scientists who’s stars do shine as bright as his. It’s a mistake to think he stands above all other scientists in intellectual prowess (the majority other scientists yes, but not all of them). I don’t know if it was his iconoclastic nature or his awesome hair, but he has obtained the kind of status in many peoples minds that, while not undeserved as an individual, I would say is undeserved at the exclusion of a number of other scientific greats. I guess what I’m saying is that, it’s not quite so big a deal that physicists may have found that Einstein might have been wrong about something that this should be the first line of an article on the topic.

  • WaPo vs Netflix

    A couple separate but somewhat relates observations:

    1. A digital subscription to the Washington Post is $14.99/mo. Netfix is $7.99 (WaPo also has $9.99 price point but it isn’t comparable with their phone/tablet apps). Considering that I would say most people spend more time consuming entertainment than reading news, this price difference strikes me as odd (though not irreconcilable).

    2. It is true that the business models of the two companies are different (one creates all it’s own content while the other purchases content and bundles it for the end user), but in my mind this seems to point out another problem of the traditional newspaper model, that in the former any subscriber only gets (additional) access to content from one source, while the in the latter they get content from many sources.

    3. It used to be that for efficient distribution, articles needed to be bundled together on a physical medium (like paper), but that is no longer the case. So it doesn’t seem clear that delivery of articles should be based on the source of production any more. This is possibly why sites like the Huffington Post, which depends on aggregation, have gotten so popular.

    4. Still, ad based models have their own problems (though they do have their place). I wonder if it’s feasible to have a subscription based aggregation model. I would actually be willing to pay a monthly fee to have full access to say certain number of articles from high quality sources (The Financial Times, The Economist, The NY Times etc). But paying a subscription for each individual publication is prohibitive for me (and I’m guessing most other people).