What Would Matt Do

Not that it’s any huge surprise that Ritual Entertainment is now owned by some company I’ve never heard of (that makes casual games). It is kinda surprising that someone bought them out.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Ritual fan for a long time. They may actually be the inventor of the sticky grenade. That was some awesome shit the first time around. And they made Sin…which was well…both boring and cool. And was pretty buggy and slow when first released. It did have some pretty fun stuff at times though. Heck, I could turn my pistol sideways and spray and pray. Can’t ask for a lot more than that. Well, good gameplay all the way through, but lets not nitpick here. And their latest venture, Sin Episode One…not so good. I admit, I played it all the way through, but I felt pretty jipped by the end. The game just didn’t deliver the fun. The AI wasn’t horrible though (see, I’m finding nice things to say too…back at ya mom).

On to the now though…a casual game company called Mumbo Jumbo buys out Ritual, a maker of fine (mediocre) FPS games. Why? Do we think the talent at Ritual is going to want work on what we not in the industry call grandma games now instead of working on the HL2 engine? I could almost bet not. So is Mumbo Jumbo getting into the FPS industry? I can only hope not with Ritual.

“The disciplined structure of high end game development requires an in depth understanding of sophisticated tools and design techniques,” said Robert Atkins of Ritual Entertainment™. “Ritual’s™ expertise in these areas complements MumboJumbo’s™ mass market approach to casual game development and gives us a true competitive advantage.”

Does he really know what Ritual does? *shrugs*

Really though, I’m glad to see the company isn’t just shutting it’s doors and hopefully people that want to stay will still have jobs… but an odder coupling I haven’t seen since Sammy bought Sega. I still have nightmares about that.

What Would Matt Do: I’d make Sin: Grandma Style. Now with less guns and more puzzles! But keep the porn style bad guys. Even Grandma’s like pr0n.

They apparently know money markets and trading in them at the very least. With that in mind, here’s what they say about Second Life:

What you’re left with is lots of people putting USD in, and a small group taking those USD out, leaving the rest with no financial claims on anything - just an imaginatively sexy avatar.

Now that kinda jumps right to the conclusion of the article, but even with all their knowledge and so on, they could have just asked me and I would have told them the deal up front. No one is making money in Second Life. It’s a trick and scam. Well, if you’re looking to make money. If you’re just looking to spend money, it’s awesome.

They do give more details though:

It turns out that inside the game, counterparty risk is tremendous. In fact, entire banks will suddenly disappear. Or banks will simply renege on obligations without recourse. Worse yet, the very people who provide the source of nearly all demand-liquidity within Second Life, those guys at the top of the virtual playpen pyramid, are the same ones who effectively set the SLL/USD exchange rate.

So if you’re trying to make money in SL, you’re not only not has happy as one of those puppies with two peters, you’re also funding a very few people at the top of the “pyramid”. So I was wrong with my no one is making any money in SL statement above, apparently a few fat cats are. That’s great.

So they decide it’s a pyramid scheme and if you’re looking to make money, Second Life is not that place. No matter what Linden Labs would have you believe.

What Would Matt Do: Laugh and point? Yeah, that seems about right.

I find this pretty interesting and think it could be applied to not just the class they are talking about here, but to many more. Make education fun and you won't have to force kids to do it. Not only that, they will learn from each other. Make it a game and they will share secrets (i.e. - math formula's, history answers, etc).

Computer science teachers at West Nottinghamshire College were struggling to get their teenage students into literacy and numeracy classes.

So they took apart Atari's popular computer game Neverwinter Nights and rebuilt it with educational challenges the player must meet to progress.

Success rates in key skills at the Mansfield college has trebled to 94%.

Yeah, those numbers sound great, but how did they do it?

"We ripped the game apart and rebuilt it to deliver educational content," he added.

Players are invited to pick a character and go on a quest in which they have to make decisions about what to take and how to progress using mathematics and their literacy skills.

Mr Oldman explained: "For example, before they set off in their galleon they have to fill it with the things they are going to need. This requires them to work out the area of the ship and how much they can manage to bring.

"Some students managed it, others sank on the way and never progressed to the next level.

"They would come knocking on the staff room door and wouldn't let us go until we had taught them how to calculate area."

By getting kids interested. Novel idea there.

Now listen, I don't mean to get off on a rant here (I love stealing Mr. Miller's bit), but damn me if this isn't possible. Would it require our (US) school system to be overhauled? Of course. Is that a good thing? Oh yes. It needs to be ripped apart, just like NWN was. Take it down to the ground and start with one big idea. School needs to be fun. Then, the next idea? It needs to be educational. The third idea? It needs to be equally available for all kids at all ages (i.e. - from grade school through college). If you really want to change our society, fix it as it were, think about the kids. No, no just from the angle of won't someone think about the kids, but also from the angle of, won't someone thing about the US as a whole. We all know what happens to kids that don't get educated. Percentages say they'll be a drag on society in way or another. They'll end on welfare, on drugs, on the street or in jail. None of those are great options and all of them cost us and ignore them.

Want to make it better? Do this. Fucking start caring. That's the one rule. Whatever your reason is, whether it be I don't to pay for people in their later years when they are stuck in welfare or the jail system or be it because you genuinely care about people or because you want our society to flourish, show it by fixing how are kids are raised.

Want to be a parent? You have to take parenting classes. Yeah yeah, government getting involved in such issues has always been a no no, but damn if that's been working. So throw that government doesn't get involved idea out the window. The government needs to watch out for it's people. That includes educating them at all stages.

On to schools. What's wrong with the American school system? What's not wrong. Teachers are underpaid, underfunded and uncared for. Children are forced into environments that bore them silly and supposed to learn there. Their lunches consist of whatever schlock the lowest bidder can provide. And no school has enough funding. Oh, and if you live in the inner city? Your child gets half the funding to go to school. That's a literal statement. Half. That doesn't bother people? Really? Oh,and the curriculum? It's a joke. The history class is full of half truths and out right lies, the social studies the same. The English class doesn't allow kids to read classics because they have been banned and music and art classes? They've been removed in lots of places do to a lack of funding. It's outrageous.

Then take that fixed schooling system and carry it on to Colleges. Want to go to College? Great. Done. That's it, plain and simple. The government wants people to go to college. Why? They are better workers, they fit into society better and they will be less of a drag on society. I can't say I agree with all of those reasons, but from a purely practical standpoint, it's fucking insane to deny people the right to be educated. At any age. 

So yeah, Neverwinter Nights type education mentioned above can help a lot, but how is it going to help if kids don't have computers to run NWN on? How is it going to help if they don't have books? Reasonable class sizes? Teachers that want to be there are paid well because of the job they are doing for society overall. It can't.

What Would Matt Do: Damn, I didn't think I was going there with it when I started. But damn if it isn't all true. 

Interested in Second Life, wonder what all of the hype is about? Me too. Well, I am in a, "I wonder why I didn't have that much fun playing." sort of way. I played a Second Life awhile back and the fun part? Well, I didn't find it. It felt like an annoying UI tacked on a virtual chatroom. Now, to be fair, I like my games to have some structure and SL is anything but structured. So I wrote it off. Didn't look back.

That is until it started to get so many interesting articles on so many blogs. James Wagner Au (crazy!) actually goes in as an embedded reporter. At least once a week or so my favorite MMO designer / former MMO critic (Lum!) covers it, even though it's often to say, why are people in the mass media talking about second life. And we get horribly interesting accounts like this from Au:

The first night I arrived at the protest against the Second Life headquarters of Front National, the far right French political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute.  By the second night I came (this was late last week), the conflict had become more literal, for many Residents had armed themselves.  Multi-colored explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine, a shopping island which FN had inexplicably picked for the site of their virtual world HQ, in December.

That makes the game sound pretty interesting and maybe something I want to get involved in. But then I read something like this on Broken Toys and I remember why it's not so much fun:

Au is, to be fair, forthcoming that he is deeply enmeshed in every conflict of interest possible with SL/Linden Labs. He also notes, correctly, that many of the critics of SL may simply not be able to operate the freakin’ thing. I personally needed a native guide just to instruct me how to WALK and LOOK AROUND. And I think it’s safe to say that I have a passing familiarity with computer games and user interfaces. The “I have a box on my head” icon I use for SL (now new and improved!) is not coincidental. The default action for an object container is to wear it. Which results in you having, well, a box on your head. This makes little sense in terms of user interface conventions, but it was unfixed for so long (edit: finally patched in August of this year) that it’s become a running gag among SL users.

And I remember the UI was horrible and the "game" wasn't really a game. So I go back to wondering if maybe I should play. Maybe it's more fun than it was, maybe I can create my own spiffy content, maybe it'll be different than I imagine it is (virtual IRC). But probably not.

See, that's my problem Second Life. There isn't really a game there. It really is a something completely different from any existing MMO. It allows players to create whatever stupid crap they feel is good at the time and then share that with others. Or maybe I'd get involved in some protest about some right wing group and try to crash the their server. That sounds horribly fun. But what do I do when I'm done with that? Is there a virtual directory that doesn't involve porn? Not that I'm against porn, but virtual porn and I? We ain't close.

So, where's the fun again? Can I complete quests? Is there a dragon to slay? Did I miss something when I played before about how cool SL is? Because I really like reading about the various exploits in SL. I like hearing about protests and virtual pimps and even the occasional virus that's hard to contain. It just doesn't seem at all appealing to play.

Oh, and Mass Media? Please cover Second Life realistically. Oh wait, you don't know about not sensationalizing things. Ok, my bad.

What Would Matt Do: Keep reading. Resist the urge to play. 

I so can't wait for this. Not only does it sound like they brought in some interesting people.

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin's bestselling fantasy series "A Song of Fire and Ice" into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

"Fire" is the first TV project for Benioff ("Troy") and Weiss ("Halo") and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.

Not only that, but the too brief article makes it sound like R.R. Martin might still have some say and control over the show since he'll be writing at least one episode. That can only be a good thing as he used to write TV and has created an incredibly, morbid world that is going to take some real work translate correctly over to TV. Even HBO.

That being said, I'm horribly excited. HBO does quality TV and I couldn't have asked for a better place for that series to land. 

What Would Matt Do: Well, if I ended up in the world of Fire and Ice, I'd first make sure I wasn't a good guy. They don't do well there.