T=Machine

There’s a conference in Brighton this week, and one of the industry media – GamesIndustry.biz – has a base here, so they’ve been cropping up a lot in the reporting. In passing, I noticed some glaring howlers in their web-design. The 1990′s called, they want their web-design templates back…

Three glaring errors I noticed in particular. One of these they’re in good company – it’s the same thing Rupert Murdoch has done, along with sticking his fingers in his ears and screaming “NA, NA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! GO AWAY AND TAKE YOUR STUPID INTERNET-THINGY WITH YOU, YOU FREELOADING BASTARDS!” (not a literal quote, of course). Although a lot of people seem to think that’s a weak strategy even for the mighty news empire…

1. Sell a large number of Flash ads, and put them ALL in the same place. At the same time

What do you see when you view a page on this site?

If you have a laptop, and you surf their site, does the battery last noticeably less than normal? (hint: yes, it should – I’ve seen this happen on a wide variety of PC and Mac laptops)

Why?

Because they put not 1, not 2, not even 5 … not even TEN … but up to FIFTEEN SEPARATE FLASH ADS all animated SIMULTANEOUSLY on every page.

Flash wasn’t designed for this – the flash runtime can overhwelm a modern computer with just 1 rogue flash app; 15 is begging for trouble.

I suspect (because some of my former employers used to purchase them, regularly) that these “mini-ads” are a decent source of revenue for GI.biz. It’s a pity then that they’re mostly Flash, because that means an awful lot of people in the target audience (game developers), see something like this:

Incidentally, I offer a tip-of-the-hat to Relentless, whose animated-GIF has so many frames of animation that it smoothly animates some stuff that looks straight out of a Flash ad. Smart move on their behalf – they DIDN’T use a Flash movie.

OMGWTFBBQ! That must take TONNES of animating frames! Why, yes – it uses an *unholy* 50 kilobytes, just to display one ickle GIF. Shocking. And yet … in 2010 … such a tiny tiny file in the scheme of things that it suffers nothing for not being Flash. (Flash was originally needed because internet bandwidth was poor; it only gradually grew into the all-singing, all-dancing beast we love today)

2. Hide all your content. Keep your news … secret

Try viewing any article on the site.

Follow any link that a friend sends you via email

Click on a link in any blog post or forum post.

Actually … you’ll have some trouble there. Lots of blogs and forums no longer link to GI.biz. Why?

Because anyone who follows the link only gets to see ONE SENTENCE of the article:

Hmm.

3. Block anyone who uses Gmail

If you try to sign-up on their site for an account using Gmail, the site refuses to “allow” you to create an account. It seems they have hard-coded a list of email domains that they consider “unacceptable” for game-developers to use.

Funny. I’ve been using gmail for my professional email for many years now. It seems a fairly common practice. Google’s … well … Google is a pretty well-known company these days. Their products are … well … kind-of popular. No?

I tried emailing the site admins to ask if there was a way I could create my account anyway – it’s fairly easy to check that my gmail account is bona fide. A funny thing happened.

Their website has no email addresses. Instead, it has a javascript that creates email-addresses on the fly. It’s a neat little javascript, and used differently would be pretty cool. But the way they chose to use it has two obvious effects:

1. It is impossible to use a web-mail client to email anyone at GamesIndustry.biz direct from the site (the right-click, “copy email address” won’t work because of the javascript)
2. Spammers have to look at the source-code to find the email address, and be a very very little creative with their bots (well within their capabilities these days)

Internet: 0, Newspaper/Web newsite: 1

O RLLY?

No, not really. I’ve got nothing against the news-site, and I’m well aware that this is only an echo of a bigger, louder noise: mainstream newspapers are in their dieing throes, lashing out at anyone and everyone in their panic.

But I’m suprised that a tech-industry focussed site chooses to fight so hard against the medium that so much of its own industry relies upon and worships. The first and third items above I would normally attribute to ignorance and just spending too little money for their web design team. But the middle one reflects an active decision to block the internet at large – even though the workaround is to create a “free” account, it’s an artificial barrier entirely of their own making.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year working with or around mainstream journalists, magazine staff, and authors. I’ve noticed a lot of this stuff going on. This is just a personal opinion, but … I humbly suggest that whenever ANY news/journalism site acts as though it’s at war with the very medium that the world + dog uses for spreading said news … that whatever else happens, it’s probably not going to end well.

Filed under : amusing, web 2.0

2 Comments »

…and Amazon’s intelligent recommendation engine leaps into action:

(if you don’t know who Tim Langdell is, and you work in the games industry, just Google him.

Filed under : amusing, computer games, games industry, web 2.0

0 Comment »

(where normaly people might “Be original, then Apologize if you fail”)

Just a minor piece of recent DRAMA! DRAMA!, something to cheer up the week…

This excellent piece of Advertising / Fun / Augmented Reality / Creativity was – like most big-budget ideas – based on someone else’s idea, someone who had the basic idea (and proved it non-commercially) first.

So far, so good.

This is the 21st Century. People notice when you clone ideas, and they comment. A lot of comments are brief and reflect the emotional reaction rather than a considered opinion. Especially if you disingenuously claim to have invented the idea, and put out press releases to that effect … when there’s plenty of evidence suggesting otherwise.

Still, that’s how life goes; you try something, you veer too close to “copying”, and you get some minor pillorying on a public website. You re-adjust; next time, you’ll try to add a bit more novel to an idea – or you’ll work harder to give credit where it’s due.

OR … or, one of your team can always just go for the all-out nuclear option, and insult everyone and everything in sight. In the world-readable comments thread. For bonus points, you can then delete your comments a day later when you realise what a douchebag you appear, and how damaging it’s become to your future career:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsumo/4752204508/sizes/o/

(I love how Nicholaus is naive enough / bad enough at his own career to imagine that simply deleting or editing a comment makes all evidence of it vanish :))

Filed under : amusing, community, social networking, web 2.0

0 Comment »

Some people are telling me I should just let it go, but honestly I just can’t do that. I’d rather quit.

(As they say: It’s funny, becaus it’s true. If you develop for Apple platforms, that eloquently sums up how Apple (currently) appears to everyone they partner with: a childish, passive-aggressive approach to everything)

Filed under : amusing, bitching

2 Comments »

Beautiful, and disturbingly accurate.

Filed under : amusing, programming

0 Comment »

Interesting search result for “O2 Facebook”:

…IIRC that started off as a service for MySpace, then MySpace/Facebook. Apparently now it’s all about Facebook (only). The only mention of MySpace is a navbar link to something about broadband – seemingly unrelated.

PS: Entity System post coming soon, for those that look for such things. I’ve just written one for Android. I just have to take the time to write the damn thing up!

Filed under : amusing, social networking

1 Comment »

So neatly done, I find it hard to believe it’s not real…

“3D gaming? What if the game characters saw the GAMER in 3D instead of the other way around? Is it really only myself that thinks like this?”

(along with other greats such as: “A good game can be played on a 12″ black and white TV. Fact.” … and “What do all games require? The answer is someone to play them. What if a game went against that very concept?”)

Filed under : amusing, games design

0 Comment »

Things are getting interesting in Recruitment land again…

Received today:

Adam, greetings from the Visual Computing Group at Intel Corporation. We received your contact information from the Siggraph Job Fair.

Please let me know how much discrete or integrated graphics driver development, media software, or debug experience you have and what you are interested in doing. Also let me know about your video codec and debug experience.

Please complete this pre-screen document and return it to me along with your current resume. You can also create a career profile at http://www.intel.com/jobs .

Intel is changing the way the world sees 3D graphics, visualization and games. Our Larrabee architecture will deliver teraflops of performance for high-throughput applications, including scientific computing, gaming and visualization. In addition, our Software and Solutions Group is working to enhance all levels of software that executes on Intel based platforms.

We invite you to consider opportunities with Intel by completing and returning the attached Graphics pre-screen as soon as possible which will let us know if you are available, your area of expertise, where you want to work and salary expectations. As soon as we receive this information, we will be reviewing with the hiring managers. If there is interest, the next contact will be from the hiring manager to conduct a phone screen Additionally, I have attached a copy of a flyer on the work this group is doing and information about Intel.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,
Larry Gonzales
Sr. Recruiting Consultant
Intel Corporation/VCG

My reply:

Hi, Larry!

2009/8/18 Gonzales, Larry Z :
>
> Adam, greetings from the Visual Computing Group at Intel Corporation. We
> received your contact information from the Siggraph Job Fair.

No. You didn’t. You really didn’t. I wasn’t at Siggraph this year.

I’m a serial CTO of online games and MMO companies. My last job involved leading internal PS3 and PC MMO development, and founding a new internal studio, for one of the world’s largest online games publishers.

> Please complete this pre-screen document and return it to me along with your
> current resume. You can also create a career profile at
> http://www.intel.com/jobs .

If you want me to apply to a position, feel free to send me the details.

> We invite you to consider opportunities with Intel by completing and
> returning the attached Graphics pre-screen as soon as possible which will
> let us know if you are available, your area of expertise, where you want to
> work and salary expectations. As soon as we receive this information, we

I’m not interested in anything less than [ommitted] USD per annum (which is slightly below the last round of job offers I turned down).

Apart from that requirement, I’m happy to consider anything you send me.

Regards,
Adam Martin

(working at Intel could be interesting. But I certainly don’t feel in the mood to do all the work of a “pre-screen document”, and to make apologies for the lack of “your video codec and debug experience” for a job I know nothing about, never asked for, and which – a moment’s glance at my public LinkedIn profile would show – I am hopelessly inappropriately qualified for :))

Filed under : amusing, recruiting

2 Comments »

I saw an article recently that described this attitude nicely: certain weak marketing executives believe that the purpose of a “conversation” is for them to have more ways of telling the customer what to do; they are seemingly incapable of understanding the idea that a “conversation” involves listening to the other person.

To them, email is a “one-way broadcast medium for us to tell the customer what to buy”, rather than “a two-way communication medium that allows us to listen and respond to our customers”.

Today, I received a great example. Here’s an email I received one month ago, from Apple:

“Thank you for renewing your iPhone Developer Program membership. New Expiration Date: 10 Aug 2010″

And here’s the email I received today, from Apple:

“your iPhone Developer Program has expired” (sent from address: “noreply-iphonedev@apple.com” )

A triple-whammy on appalling customer support there:

1. Erroneously (I hope) claiming that they are NOT providing a service they have committed to providing
2. Taking money from a bank account in return for a service that they then don’t provide (that bit’s illegal)
3. …and:
4. Sending all correspondence from an email address that they mark “noreply”; i.e. “if we (Apple) screwed up, we don’t want to hear from you. We don’t want to fix it. Go away”

I especially like the way they put this all together, so you get the implication that:

Apple would prefer me to sue them (Apple), or file a claim against them for fraud, than to let me send them a simple email and spare them the fallout of their stupid mistake.

Using a two-way media to deliberately ignore your customers? That’s Web 0.1.

Filed under : Web 0.1, amusing, community, social networking

0 Comment »

I’m trying to download the 3.0 OS update for iPhone…and being denied by Apple’s own software – that cannot even download a single file from a website (!)

It’s a 1GB download that you “must” download via iTunes, because … well … because … um … Apple hates web browsers? I don’t know. Hard to see why it is downloaded via iT at all, really. It is rather strange.

(EDIT: it has now dropped to being a 230 MB download; I have no idea why – it was only a hundred meg or so into the alleged 1 GB download when it crashed, and when I retried it became 230 MB. Odd…)

And yes – it really *is* downloading a website file (that’s all it’s doing):

GET /content.info.apple.com/iPhone/stuff.stuff/iPhone1,2_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw HTTP/1.1
Host: appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net
User-Agent: iTunes/8.2 (Macintosh; N; Intel)
Connection: close

That’s missing a key line. The line that resumes the download from where it left off. Apple apparently decided to write a “crap” web-browser, and embed it inside iTunes. Why? Why, when they have one of the world’s best web-browsers, do they insist on writing an extra one – and missing out fundamental basic features (like resumable downloads)?

There are occasional latency spikes on my net connection. iTunes is such a terrible “web browser” that when this happens, it arbitrarily (note: no other web browser would do this!) decides to cancel the download. There is no “resume” option and no “retry” option.

Congratulations, Apple! Having 2 copies of the same “core” software, one which works and one which doesn’t, and not allowing the user to use the “good” one when they need to? You’re well on your way to becoming Microsoft :).

Filed under : Web 0.1, amusing, bitching, iphone

4 Comments »

Clearly stated on every single page on the Apple store (it’s the page footer):

Prices are inclusive of VAT (15%) but exclusive of delivery charges unless otherwise indicated.

In the Apple Store, Apple therefore appears to (maybe…actually does, considering they *clearly state* the above?) over-charge you for VAT. But there’s more to this (obviously – it would be horrifically stupid if that were all: defrauding via VAT makes governments very unhappy indeed).
(more…)

Filed under : amusing, iphone

1 Comment »

Every now and then I scan through my auto-spam folder and see what’s in there. Sometimes the subject lines are hilarious. Other times they teach you about new kinds of phishing attack that are being attempted.

Mostly, they just say depressing things about what it is to be a human in the 21st century.

All the following were yanked from spams I received in the last few weeks (I just did a subject line sort for what was left since the last mass-deletion). I have to say … the depressing, “makes you want to kill yourself if this is the kind of email you receive and respond to” ones have mostly disappeared, which is good. But the ones about MEGADICK that used to make me LOL have sadly faded away :(.

Lost in translation? (aka “WTF?”)

Be a bedroom business master!
Make your hose’s radius great
Fertilize your male tree
From now you don’t need a crane to lift your instrument up!
Come now, pay less!

Sounds painful…

Your manhood will come back to you like a boomerang
Load into her like a geyser!
With a bigger tool you can break not only hearts but splits
Hammer your pile in her
Pills of lion stamina
Make her your rod’s slave
Best doping for night monster
Replace your pant snake with python!

Someone call the cops?

Your drawbolt will go deeper in
Pound her, more and more
Make your love gun active and effective!
Good shells for your love gun
Find how to drill her better

There goes my self esteem

Your instrument is so tiny she barely finds it in bed?
You have no stamina any more to satisfy your loved one
Greatness is measured by the size of your manhood
This watch will add some elegance to your taste
Losing your popularity as a man?
Get a diploma for your career!
Masters degree with no efforts
Show your girlfriend that there can still be a lot of flame in your bed
Feeling unneeded in bed?
What does a frog want with you?
With a monster device you will feel like a man
From now you will be able to satisfy every size – queen!

Telling it like it is, man

Man empties gun at car, victim survives
Why lie? I need money
Bacterial infections are stopped by Amoxicillin

“Optimism” (aka “O, RLY?”)

We cure anything from headache to cancer
Worldwide delivery instantly to your home
Go here for guaranteed boner
If you can’t beat CEOs … join them

Kindness

Free money
Wanna beer?
Sexually aroused
I can help you
We go to cinema tonight

… and threats

Fucking fill this form
I wanna worry you
Universal decision for men who want to stay men
We will not let your manhood die … call us
You are disqualified!
Get a degree
Suck it
List of conditions
Get your nice hair returned to you
Your friend in trouble
Click or cats gonna die

The men from UNCLE

Erase message after reading
We’ve found your car
Don’t settle for less than 15x power!
Respond, please
Medications that you need

Bad day

We canceled the exam
We canceled the conferences
Forgot keys, forgot phone

Story time

What’s this?
Shocking! Rihanna was cursed
A giant outside
Sitting by the well playing

To Much Information

That shit made my day
Celebrate independence day with a hard boner

Filed under : amusing, security

4 Comments »

I’m very tempted to make this:

http://gizmodo.com/5172615/iphone-os-30-will-turn-your-phone-into-a-revolutionary-sex-toy?skyline=true&s=x

…with particular emphasis on the social / avatar / chat / networking features.

Filed under : amusing, computer games, design, games design, iphone

0 Comment »

European Online Game Operators infamous for being overly secretive announce new association:

“The founding members have set three major goals for PEOGA:

* Networking. PEOGA is the meeting point for European companies from the online game publishing industry.
* Improvement of the Public opinion. PEOGA shall improve the image of online games by providing realistic information to the public.
* Self Regulation of the Online Game Industry. The online game industry has responsibilities towards their users. PEOGA will assist to set general rules and regulations for the industry.”

…launch website…

http://www.peoga.eu/

…and add an idiotic javascript hack that tries to disable the right-mouse-button + context menu in your web browser…

The page at http://www.peoga.eu/ says:

Copyright – Pan-European-Online Games Association PEOGA

So, let’s get this straight:

1. None of the developers of the top 10 online games in Europe are in your org
2. None of the publishers of the top 10 online games in Europe are in your org
3. You have a President. But in case he gets lost on the way to meetings, fortunately you have someone else who is the “also President”. Nice.
4. You can’t even make a website

Guys, I have to say: this isn’t looking great so far. Let’s hope this was just an unlucky start (BTW: you might want to get GOA on board – they know all about rocky starts, they’re probably the most experienced company in the *world* when it comes to bungling a launch).

PS: OMG I HAXX0RED UR SEKURITY – look, I “stole” the URL to your image – HHAHAHHAA111!!!!11!11
(please. It’s not 1996 any more. Get rid of the childish javascript hacks. It’s … embarassing. For all of us)

Jeans. In Europe, everyone wears jeans. From the same supplier.

Filed under : Web 0.1, amusing, games industry, massively multiplayer

2 Comments »

I mean this in the nicest possible way:

I suggest you save us both some time: have a look at my LinkedIn profile, and see what I’ve done – http://www.linkedin.com/in/adammartin – it’s shorter and clearer than a CV/Resume, too.

If you find that you have something that would interest me, personally, then feel free to email me and explain why.

If not, I suggest you don’t contact me again.

I’m sorry, but if you don’t have a specific position, with salary range, or you cannot send info in advance, or can’t answer some question I’ve already emailed you … then I’m not interested in talking further. I don’t want to speak to you on the phone. I don’t want to meet you. I don’t want to email you info about my previous work history. This may seem extreme to you, but I’m guessing you have no idea how many blind job offers I receive every single week? Enough that I don’t have time to reply to every single one of them with the same info over and over again, I’m sorry.

(Note to readers: Sorry if this turns up in your RSS; I’m now actively forwarding this link to recruitment agencies, as I’ve received several enquiries in the past week where they didn’t visit my blog, and I had to copy/paste sections from my rather less forgiving / tongue-in-cheek Open Letter to Recruitment Agencies)

(Note to recruiters: Feel free to follow the above link. Try not to take too much offense if you do, and please try to recognize that many of your fellow recruiters are an awesome waste of time for those of us who actually work in the industry)

Filed under : amusing, games industry, recruiting

0 Comment »

Ironically enough, from the LotRO forums:

“You know the only analogue I can come up for this is to imagine a WWII FPS where the opening cinematic tells you that the Nazis have destroyed Great Britain with a giant laser and you’re one of the few English to escape via a magic portal to Russia at Stone Henge which was planted by ancient mystics from China. However the rest of the game takes place in relatively normal WWII FPS style while the Nazis throw paltry attacks into the steppes, and yet most of the people you meet are also British and no one seems to care that Jolly Ol’ England is smouldering black glass. Occasionally you stumble across more ancient Stone Henges to learn Mandarin to gain super powers. The Nazi country-destorying laser is never brought up.”

ROFLMAO. And … excellent plot-summary there.

(remembering that I did actually *like* TR. But the OP has a point)

Filed under : amusing, computer games, design, games design

1 Comment »

Hi!

My name is “Adam” (first name) “Martin” (surname); you might need to check the spelling. You might want to check which is the first name, which the surname – funny how many recruiters get it wrong!

You’ve probably cold-emailed me because you got my email address somewhere – maybe as much as 10 years ago – and yet, bizarrely, I haven’t been coming to you looking for jobs. You’re probably really hoping I’ll write back with a CV/Resume that you can send out.

Instead, I suggest you save us both some time: have a look at my LinkedIn profile, and see what I’ve done – http://www.linkedin.com/in/adammartin – it’s shorter and clearer than a CV/Resume, too.

Hey, if you’ve got a few minutes, why not have a look right now? Take your time – I’ll wait! You can learn a bit about me, find out what I might be interested in (hint: it’s there, in several paragraphs of text, right at the top of the page).

Now, maybe you think you’ve got a perfect job for me. But hold on, my friend! Don’t hit that “Send” button yet! There’s some things you should know before you email me a second time…

You see, each time you email me, blind, cold-calling, un-solicited … it’s not just you. All your competitors are doing it. Even some of your colleagues (it’s funny how many agencies accidentally compete with themselves). And a whole bunch of your clients, the companies you recruit for, are doing it too. And each one of those emails takes me time to read.

My time is precious, I’ve got a lot to give, and I usually go well beyond what’s asked; if it weren’t, there’d be fewer companies that wanted to hire me, and willing to pay the salaries I’ve been paid. And hence willing to give YOU that big, fat, commission you’re hoping for…

“What’s there to lose?”, you may be thinking to yourself, “if you don’t like it, we’re cool, I’m friendly, we’ve got a bit of a relationship going here – I emailed you, you emailed me, it could be the start of a great partnership, propelling your future career gradually up the corporate ladder!”

Well, here’s the thing: I’m a technology guy. I have a degree in Computer Science from one of the world’s top Universities. I’ve been trained and employed as a SysAdmin. I’ve been an entrepreneur, and built my company’s computers myself, to save money. Although I don’t program for money any more, I’m still fluent in many programming languages. And, you know what, I’m a bit of an expert at all that “mailserver stuff”.

So … if you piss me off; if you waste my time with meaningless, unsolicited drivel; if you nag me with “this is an amazing opportunity you will love” when we both know it isn’t vaguely true … I’m going to nuke your ass (figuratively speaking): I will never see an email from you again, they’ll die before they reach me.

And when I say “you”, I don’t just mean “you, at the company you currently work for”. Nope. You really piss me off, and I won’t be seeing an email from you no matter which agency you move on to. I hope you grok the seriousness of that? (this may suprise you, but those of us in the industry DO actually notice when you guys change roles, change agencies, etc)

I simply do not have time for time-wasting muppets who are too damn lazy to bother even doing a simple LinkedIn/Google/Gamasutra/etc search on their “targets” to find out who and what these people are.

Oh, and by the way – I’ve done recruitment, many times, myself. I’ve had to get creative with reaching people, trying to tempt them out of their jobs and into working for my own employers. So I know how hard the hard stuff can be. But I also know how little – how VERY little – time it takes to do the easy stuff. And when you DON’T do even that, it tells me a lot about you. It tells me a lot about the crap you’re sending to your clients. It tells me a lot about how (un)impressed they’re going to be with the drivel you send them. Above all, it tells me that if I *do*, somehow, find the role interesting, then it’s worth my time using my own contacts to get a direct invitation from the company, and bilking you out of your commission.

Actually, I could bilk you anyway, whoever it is. The industry is *that* incestuous that everyone above Junior level “knows someone” (who knows someone, who knows someone else … until you hit the Hiring Manager). So, your whole business is based on the assumption that you make it so much easier for me to work with you that I don’t bother to test my extended network. You’re living on borrowed time from the moment your email hits my inbox. Humour me.

But on the other hand, if you take a genuine interest, and make the effort to find stuff that would actually interest me, you could save me a lot of time and hassle. And then I’d love to work with you on finding and evaluating roles. And (modulo all the above) I’m a pretty forgiving guy, if you give me just a little bit of mutual respect. So you CAN send me random crap that you think might tickle my interest, and I won’t hate you for screwing up. You can even get it wrong every time – so long as it’s clear you are, in fact, *trying*.

So, you know … take the time. It’s for your own good. Really.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

Filed under : amusing, bitching, games industry, recruiting

8 Comments »

(“embarrassing, empty, yet still really dirty”)

Courtesy of The Register.

(and some real information here)

Filed under : amusing

1 Comment »

…was my first thought on hearing that the Iceland economy was running out of money:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081009/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_iceland_meltdown

If you conveniently ignore that the figures are about 100 times too big, it’s a nice thought to imagine CCP might step in to bail out the banks, or at least offer to prop them up using ISK. It’s legal tender over much of the known universe, after all.

And it would give the world’s press something to REALLY say about “virtual worlds, virtual countries, and vritual economies” :).

Filed under : amusing, computer games, games design

1 Comment »

Allegedly.

Hmm. Maybe not.

Filed under : amusing, games industry

1 Comment »