Rants

I bet the guy who made this video really does hate getting compared to Yahtzee but you have to admit there are some comparisons. Except maybe this guy doesn’t just combine two swearwords into one word and draw obvious similes that people who are none English find funny. At least he admits it’s a blatant rip off (and if you can put up with the stupid voice he maybe makes a few good points)

Anyway, Daniel Floyds main argument hinges on the following.

“There aren’t many girls involved with playing/making video games….”

And this is where it falls down

“naturally, we [males] want to solve this…”

Erm. Naturally? – No, actually, I’ve never once sat there and gone “Hmmm, How to make Call of Duty appeal to more women” – I don’t care about market size and market share, I don’t give two hoots, the people sat around me actually making the games don’t sit around and discuss at length how we can make it appeal to women who.. (and this may come as a shock to some readers) – really don’t give a fuck about video games.

The problem as to why there aren’t as many female video gamers stems from deeply entrenched psychological and physiological training from aeons of development. Look at the army, there aren’t as many females in the army as males. Why is this?

When you’re a baby, if you’re a boy, your room is painted blue and you have army toys. You play soldiers, and if you ever do get a mixed group and play cowboys and Indians you are always a cowboy. You’re told that crying is something girls do, and you’re constantly pressured into a way of thinking, acting and behaving. Some of it is nature, (males have an instinct to hunt and fight that simply goes beyond our experiences) – but an awful lot of it is nurture.

When you’re a baby, if you’re a girl, your room is painted pink and you have dolls. Ken and Barby are your best mates and you’re psychologically programmed to seek a mate. Ken and Barby are representative of the male and female partnership in life, You’re bought things that are feminine, baking ovens (however overtly sexist this is for me to be saying) – you’re interested in shopping, shoes, horses, fashion, feelings, make up, animals, caring for people, children, and all the other wonderful things women like.

Girls reach maturity earlier, they begin to perceive the childish pursuits of males (such as running around with their pointy finger extended and shoutin “ger-ger-ger – got you!”) as immature. This natural perception is entrenched in females brains for the rest of their existence. They view males with a perception that their pursuits, things they simply have no understanding of, as childish and immature. (come on, admit it, guys, who reading this wants to play scalextric right now? Who’d quite like to fly a model airplane or go paintballing?, girls, admit it, who thinks that if they saw a group of males doing any of those things, you’d think “sad, immature, typical, males”)

I’m not saying this is a weakness on either’s behalf, I’m saying this is nature and nurture.

Now, before everyone pipes up in my comments section saying “I’m a girl and I like video games” – congratulations, you’re the exception rather than the rule. Believe it or not, I think I’d be capable of finding a male who doesn’t like video games for every girl you can find that does.

Sure, there are girls making video games, and some who direct, produce and market them. But for everyone of those those, I can name a male fashion designer who makes clothes for women.

I think Daniels most worthy point though is the “boy’s club exclusion” mentality. I don’t openly exclude girls from playing games, if you want to play games and enjoy halo or whatnot, then fine, it doesn’t really bother me one bit. What bothers me more is the “female saddo perception” – and that’s what’s openly wrong about this whole argument. They most likely formulate this opinion due to the popular media and advertising schmucks and their portrayal of females in video games. (making the market seem overtly “during puberty”)

Women don’t need enticing to play video games, that’s step two. Step one is to help them understand that playing video games is no more sad than watching coronation street (something that I find plebeian) it’s more engaging than reading a book, more mentally taxing than watching television, more rewarding than most modern films, and infinitely, infinitely more fun than stripping wallpaper.

In fact, being a gamer, I’m hard pushed to think of anything that I’d rather spend my spare time doing. (apart from the all time number 1)

Joke for the Red Dwarf fans there…

Fair play to some some girls who are occasionally dipping their toes into “casual” games, (I really hate that word) – they play peggle and boggle and facebook shit, and hey, they may even enjoy them and step onto more interesting games (from my perspective) such as the sims, or world of warcraft. One or two might even extend all the way to what we males deem as ‘maturity’ in the video game market and move onto the Bioshocks and Portals. But the key thing here is that girls haven’t been pre-programmed like males have to understand the satisfaction of shooting Germans, or causing mayhem by driving like a dickhead. They simply don’t have that psychological programming. And guess what? Males do,

And Males make video games, and whether they like it or not, they make them with all their psychological make up shinning through, their games are intrinsically affected by their background. Intrinsically making them not appeal to girls. Until this cycle changes, and more girls and more understanding males make video games (and the whole industry bullshit of “one man making the decisions” at the top of the tree suddenly changing his mind) – then this will never change. Sure Nintendo might overtly target females and say “I’m going to make a pony simulator” – but this game lacks universal appeal. Nintendo viewing a need to “target” the market indicates that the market hasn’t reached maturity. (Which it definitely hasn’t)

Maybe it’s just me, but I went to a 21st birthday Party at the weekend where I didn’t really know anyone, and after exchanging small talk with the “adults” of the group (whom I consider myself not to be) – I still found myself having the most stimulating conversation of the night with a 15 year old about Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, it was like a club that no one but he and I knew about and whilst we discussed the pro’s and cons of the FAMAS vs the FAL – we might as well have been speaking French to anyone listening.

And that’s maybe more the reason why it’s a boys club. Because, genuinely boys growing into young males want nothing much more than to, a) piss off their parents by dis-communicating them and b) they desperately want to fit in. Not knowing about football and Call of Duty at that age is tantamount to being gay. They sure as hell aren’t going to share this information with women who, at that age, are the enemy.

The same is true of girls, but they just have different specialist subjects.

One thing that really fucking annoys me is people using HTML tags in places where it really doesn’t apply. Like in an E-mail, or a forum comment.

It’s such a smarmy twat way to say you’re a dick. “Oh, I know a few tags in HTML so therefore I can go around using ‘clever’ invented ones that I made up to show just how fucking L33t I am”

<Repeat after me>YOUR HTML SKILLS SUKETH</Repeat after me>

The problem – however, is that the HTML tags you’re using don’t actually exist. I’ve scoured all over w3schools and cannot find a single reference to <Rant>

Sure, you can define custom HTML tags, if you are a big twat, fine, go for it. But again, all you’re demonstrating is that you’re not very good at keeping up to date.

If you want to show how fucking ace you are, go learn brainfuck, (although, to be fair, I am extremely tempted to learn LOLCode)

Those kinds of <GEEK> T-shirts annoy me too. I consider this annoyance a general, all round, honest to goodness, awesomely umbrella annoyance.

Edit: to almost completely rip the space/time/irony paradox a new arsehole, the funky new html tags in this very post fucked up. Fucking wordpress.

I wrote a post a while ago about how to improve Pro Evolution Soccer. (Although it does go on a bit randomly about being red wizard from the gauntlet games too)

Anyway, it’s good to see Seabass isn’t listening to me one bit and has made PES 2009 essentially the same game as the old one, and no doubt I’ll buy it and post exactly the same “suggested improvements”…

So in an effort to double my chances of video game producers actually listening to me, here’s a list of improvements that Tiger woods 2009 should implement.

- If you’re going to release the game so obviously timed with the ryder cup, why not, I dunno, include the ryder cup?
- Let me introduce a new phrase to you guys at EA. It’s called “Server migration” and it has been in use for approximately twenty billion years. When the server quits out of the game, don’t just quit the game how about, I dunno, making one of the OTHER xbox’s the server. I mean, they can easily be the server anyway after a bit of setting up. How fucking easy is it to do it on a GOLF game.
- For god sake sort out some sort of method for hitting the ball 30-50 yards predictably, the punch shot doesn’t work anywhere like predictable, and no club can be tuned to that range.
- Where are the divets in the ground? Do you not watch real golf? I’m not being funny or owt, but seriously, comparing TW09 to real golf shouldn’t have such a huge difference. It’s not like you’re chucking around a billion particle effects now are ya?
- Particle Effects – Funny, when I watch the raging sea, it doesn’t just intersect with cliffs.
- That howling wind noise is wank and the loop is far too small. It makes me want to eat my own face in anger thinking that someone was paid for that.
- There simply isn’t any weather, yes, wind, but no rain… Come on… When I’m playing in fucking January in Scotland, What the fuck am I doing wearing a T-shirt? – I’d be dead by hole 3.
- Where is the caddie? How about your golf cart that you can customise with pimped out wheels and things? How about your golf bag. The caddie could do cool things like, hand you your club, or pick up some grass and drop it, say how he banged twelve bitches last night.
- Not during tournament play, how come you’re the only one on the course, why are there not people playing in front of you.
- You call that a crowd? It’s wank.
- Anti Aliasing is your friend. I’m sure there’s a #define somewhere that you’ve commented out that says something like “Enable Anti Aliasing”
- The commentary is WANK – And I do mean wank, you’re wanker than Pro Evolution Soccer, tell me, why can’t the commentators actually behave like commentators, making little jokes and chatting between themselves about your play. For reference, go and play the EA NFL games.
- See above, the commentary is wank, I mean, “That is a master right there” every single time I sink a birdie is pissing me off.
- Make the game a tinsy winsy bit more difficult, Sure I can go to “tour pro mode” but I don’t want to lose the features that make it fun, like the ball spin and things. Just make it so your stats don’t go from 0 to 12 in four swings of the bat, or whatever it’s called.
- Go and download a Gametrailers video of the crysis editor. Why on fucking gods earth can we not make our own courses? It’s simple. Here is the source code:-

10 Generate Height Map
20 Provide player with some height map manipulation tools. Copy these from PlanetSourceCode
30 Allow the player to paint on bunkers, greens, fairway.
40 Allow player to spray down trees and other items.
50 goto 10

You’re just being lazy.
- Look at real golfers. They do not have nicknames like “Princess” and they do not dance after every fucking birdie – UNLESS they are American, when they just behave like 4 year old cunts.
- Please, for the love of god, get rid of the “post shot” animations after EVERY. FUCKING. SHOT.
- Artists. Take a look at real grass, and real rough. What the fuck are you looking at for reference? Grass isn’t one single colour.
- Do we *really* need a load every single bloody hole? Honestly? Really? – Do we though? – I mean, why not asynchronously load during game play? Amazingly, what you could do is drip feed the data from the disk whilst the player is watching the repetitive as shit animations… Now that’d be fucking cool wouldn’t it?

And here are some new USP back of the box things:-

- Have the players model talk when they talk. Have the other players spectating each shot if you spin the camera around (it’ll still work in simultaneous play, honest)
- Time of day.. Funnily, Golf takes a long time to play… Amazing eh?
- A clubhouse that stores 3d representation of your winners trophies, captains tournaments, playing joe public, let the player buy an S-Type jaguar, (that was a joke) – let the player get a little bit pissed on whiskey one day and chat up the 40 year old barmaid that isn’t really that fit but is the only female within two hundred miles, so you probably would.
- “I don’t want to play any Yanks” tick box for the servers. That’d be ace too. Screaming little shites.

Along with “hit the jump” used on hyperlinks. Another internet phrase that is annoying me greatly is the following:-

“Video not working? Upgrade your Flash”

“Not streaming? Upgrade your Flash version. Videos auto-playing? Fix it.”

that is akin to saying

“Car not started this morning? Learn mechanics, go to the shop, buy spark plugs, insert them, turn on your fucking car again, it’s not my fucking problem, even though I made the fucking car”

It really is annoying me now that the internet is allowed to get away with none-backwards compatibility because they can blame it all on flash, JUST because they want to use a new function call in Flash 08 – which probably does nothing better than Flash 0.1.

I suggest these new phrases should be implemented immediately…

“Video not working? Oh Fuck, funny that cos YouTube works, so therefore our videos obviously aren’t following standards correctly, so therefore, please feel free to e-mail us and call us cunts”

“Flash out of date? Who are you? What the fuck are you Doing on the internet? JESUS don’t you keep Flash updated daily?!? I mean, who wouldn’t want to be on the bleeding edge of the shittest internet farce since google invented it”

“I’m a big teutonic twat”

I favour three

Dear Sir/Madam,

I thought it necessary to write to you to point out how fundamentally useless your website is. Whomever you are paying for technical assistance in making your website, you should immediately fire, as they are currently skiving off work and have, instead of fixing the numerous problems, decided to put the catch-all error of “Our technicians are aware of this problem and are currently looking into it”

With no word of over-exaggeration, this error message has been persistently appearing for me since 2006. Either your technicians are slower than the M1 at 5:30pm or someone has seriously gone amiss.

I find that your website is covered in useful features and handy little areas of info, Unfortunately, I also find that actually clicking on any of these areas or features displays this catch-all error message. This gives me the impression that your website is actually a complete joke. Aimed to purely frustrate the user at every turn.

I also note that the “billing and payments” area of the website works perfectly, which is interesting, because thats the bit that actually makes Orange PLC its money isn’t it? Is it just coincidence that the “upgrade your phone” area does not work? And why would a cynical person such as myself suggest that this “upgrading” of your phone also costs Orange PLC money?

Let us both be honest with each other here, it’s in your interests to keep your customers “contract expiry date” as cloaked as possible isn’t it? You don’t want them knowing an exact day as this would prompt a quick upgrade request. No, much better to give them vague dates whenever asked and say “well, it was 18 months since you last renewed, which could have been 19 months ago before you remembered and decided to phone customer services”

I only wanted to have a look at the new handsets using your website. Unfortunately for both of us, I couldn’t. I’d love to dangle the carrot of claiming “I’m leaving orange the next opportunity I can” but to be frank, I probably won’t because I’m fundamentally lazy. Like your webmaster. We both know I’ll keep paying and that’s probably fine.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this letter to waste someones time, call it revenge for wasting my time whilst using your website. Thanks for reading.

Yours not at all sincerely,

Chris Jones
http://www.screwyouhippy.com

Top Gear then, right from the very off, let me make it hugely clear, I’m a big fan. Honestly. So before I go off ranting I just want to clear that up. I have nearly all of Clarksons books, (and quite a few of the others) – and apart from trying to stand in the crowd on the show (looks at Sharky) – I religiously tune in.

My biggest ranting point however, is this new “six show” format they have. It’s winding me up, Surely they didn’t always just do six shows a series and then have a massive twenty week break before coming back?

I know that the production values have obviously gone through the roof (I can’t imagine flying to Japan, filming a couple of cars, then jumping into spitfires and flying to Germany can be cheap) – but come on. Six shows?

I think because it’s so obviously gone big budget, they now feel that each part of the show has to be either, Dramatic, Comedy, or one of those races / car comparisons. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a stick in the mud where they have to review “normal” cars, (I absolutely hate that argument – I’m seriously not interested in watching a Lexus being driven around a track).

But the one thing they really need to start looking at is the following predictability.

Clarkson will always win, be the last doing anything important and will always get the final word. Fair do’s, it’s his show, but it makes the other two presenters come across as a bit weaker than they did years ago, (where there was a real sense of being on an even keel)

James May will always be in the slow car, fair enough, but Richard Hammond will ALWAYS crash into him pretending that his “brakes have failed” – yes, it was funny the first time in the classic super cars but since then, it’s like brake failure happens in every single car ever made, it’s not funny now. We now expect it whenever they park up.

The set-up jokes are wearing off. I know they have to be set up because that’s what entertainment is, but a few “none-jokes” wouldn’t go amiss either. I mean, I have cobbles near me, and not once has my door fallen off. (And seriously, I’ve driven across them in some cars where I expected it).

Last nights final episode they took on the Germans, surprise surprise, they won in the final race. Yes, it makes for interesting television, but we really wouldn’t have minded if you hadn’t.

I think the biggest sign that the format has changed is that my girlfriend has stopped watching it as keenly as she did. (Which is a pity because it was pretty much the only thing we could agree to watch that didn’t end in “street” or “ers”)

My biggest worry however, is that I don’t know what to suggest to make things better.. Perhaps apart from dropping the six show format and going for, I dunno, Eight? And spacing out the obviously set up jokes a bit more? (That being said, the trips across Africa, the North Pole and America are certainly the funniest ones ever – and I think that’s because it was genuinely funny, as in, not set up.)

Oh and another thing: If Simon Cowell is reading this, I think Jay Kay cheated to get to the number one spot. Since when have they been allowed 9 laps and then the fastest time picked from it? That’s bollocks, isn’t it supposed to be, 8 Practice laps and then a final hot lap? I only mention this because every time they start their fast lap, people in the past have said stuff like “come on, this is it” and “here we go”.

Here’s a WikiPedia article to reinforce my shit.

My love for Jeff Minter is well documented but sometimes I do honestly wonder if he’s just fucking with us.

For those not “with it”, here’s the gambit in an easy to digest blockquote…

Jeff Minter is a pseudo game developer from the early 80’s and arguably 90’s – His games have three main attributes in common. 1. They usually involve goats, llamas or other such animals, 2. They usually have graphics that have been drawn by a hippy blind man on acid, and 3. They are all fucking wank. (I’d love to argue the toss and say that there is a brilliant exception, but there just isn’t)

Anyway, not long back, Jeff released a game called “Space Giraffe” and simultaniously achieved two things, firstly, he won the Chris Jones award for THE shittest name of a game in history and secondly, the game was (correctly) universally slammed as a piece of dog turd, and it sales showed that Jeff has completely and utterly missed the point of Xbox Live arcade.

In defence of his game, he then went on to comment that games such as Frogger (which I agree IS shitty death), and PAC-MAN were nothing new and didn’t deserve the astronmical sales they achieved. Arguing that trying to do something “new” with XBLA in Space Giraffe hurt sales, even though the game is basically exactly the same as his past “efforts”

Now I see that he’s releasing another game Gridrunner +++ on the service he so happily slagged. So why? Why would a person who cosmically failed previously bother to try again?

Is it perhaps that Jeff knows he’s a dinosaur from a by-gone era where he was only semi-famous for making shit stoner games and in the modern world of “indie gaming” *spit spit* he’s a nobody with antiquated ideas of what makes a decent game?

I hope this one gets slammed to shit, and personally, I hope it’s a fucking amazing game. Cos that’ll Really piss him off.