Another facelift
iNove Wordpress Theme. Gone but not forgotten
Wordpress, how I love thee!
The iNove theme I’ve been running this site with for a considerable amount of time has done a fantastic job. It’s been a decent balance of swishy graphics and open space for lengthy, ranty content. The time has come, however, for a change.
I’d been looking out for something rather spacious and generous with how it presents text. So many sites seem to use teeny-tiny text in cramped spaces. I can understand that you need to keep a lot of supplemental content on major sites, your “Follow me on Twitter” icon, your adverts and so forth.
As for me, I have none of that concern. Just a nice spacious bachelor-pad of a website to lounge around in and do as I wish. Hey, it’s not like anyone ever visits this place directly anyway, right?
The issue I face is that many of the typography-centric Wordpress themes were a little too spartan in their design and, more often than not, completely monochromatic. Yes, I could play with the CSS and tweak another’s theme to suit my own ends but I’m not sure I have the energy and I tend to find that if you ever upgrade your modified theme with a new release of the original you have to take care to re-apply your edits. It rather dents the convenience of snap-on, snap-off themes. Even more so given the convenience with which Wordpress lets you install, preview and apply them.
So, if you’re reading this in your RSS reader go and have a quick visit to the actual koffdrop.com site. See? I even linked it for you just now. Aren’t I nice? It’s graphics-lite so will load reasonably quickly and I’m sure it’ll add a momentary splash of colour to your day.
And if you’re wondering why anyone should give a hoot about typography then there’s hundreds of designers that’d like to talk to you. But, perhaps a more immediate example will give you an idea of the impact it can wield:
The Perfect Gaming News Website
I’ve expressed on more than one occaision my utter disdain at the state of the games media today.
A lot of this stems from watching all these hack ‘journalists’ letting their egos and bias get in the way of what’s most important – the information. Reading some new article presented as a 800 word fictional short-story depicting two people talking in a pub about a piece of information is 95% ego. If you want to write fiction then you’re in the wrong career. If you want a break from copy and pasting PR statements then, by all means, get another job. Don’t think your effort at ‘proper writing’ in the completely wrong context is what anyone actually wants to read. It’s like watching some no-hoper audition in X-factor claiming ruining an iconic song, crashing, burning, looking like an idiot and then claiming they sing their way instead of the proper way because “I make the song my own”.
There’s the point.
There’s you.
And there’s about 50 miles between the two.
I even read a recent article on one of those “gotta post everything” games blogs asking its readers if games were being spoiled by having too much information about them made available too early. At no point did the author ever consider that the gaming websites such as their own play a fundamental part in the oversaturation of information. No – it was everyone else’s fault but theirs.
Lack of accountability. What a cushy number that is. “But I’m just the messenger, I’m not to blame”. Bullshit and you know it.
…and breathe…
So, out of nowhere comes a gaming news website that has no ego and no bias. Hell, there’s not even a flock of so called gaming intelligensia to argue over each other’s misinformed guesswork after every post.
It’s just a picture, a statement and absolutely nothing else. Draw your own conclusions. Think for yourself. What a lovely change from the rest!
http://www.allgamesbeta.info
That I should live to see this day..
That's one small tweet for a man, a giant tweet for mankind. ENLARGE YOUR PENIS NOW!
Space. Endless void. The remote inky darkness of a cold vacuum. Now with the added thrill of some nobody telling you what he just bought for lunch in Starbucks.
Nostradamus, it seems, has nothing on Douglas Adams.
Given the way technology has evolved since the dawn of time with discoveries like the wheel, fire and the astounding feat of visiting other planets, I can’t help but feel this is very much a step back towards the primordial soup.
Day of the Cat
I’ve always been a cat person, a trait I possibly inherited from my parents. There’s always been pet cats around me – since growing up, moving out, visiting family. They’re everywhere. It’s just as well I’m rather fond of them.
In fact, it seemed that we were pretty much the only people we knew in the area that didn’t a pet cat. Not that this was a factor in Dexter’s arrival into our first-floor flat last week. Dexter’s found his way into our home courtesy of a rescue centre as the poor fellah had a rough start in life. Fortunately he was found, looked after and is in good health today. He’s a handsome devil too.
Although Dexter is still wary of big clumsy humans and unfamiliar environments it hasn’t stopped either of us putting on silly high-pitched voices and coo-ing at him and making encouraging sounds at almost anything we see him do.
Pathetic isn’t it? 
Yet another bout of inactivity
There’s not been too much action at koffdrop.com in 2010.
I recently started a new job and there’s a lot to learn in the role. I don’t mind admitting that I’m rather brain-drained at the moment and not really up to doing anything cerebral in my free time – even something as undemanding as writing a blog post.
I am, as always, checking my RSS subscriptions and cherry-picking the stuff that catches my eye. You’ll see those reflected in the “Newsbites” area of the side-column. If you like, you can subscribe to the Newsbites as an RSS feed too.
Things I didn’t do in 2009
- Win X-Factor
- Use Twitter
- See my mother or sister
- Discover a cure for cancer
- Buy a videogame
- Be employed
2010 will be somewhat different.
10 New Years Resolutions for the Games Media
As 2009 draws to a close a cliched but ever-popular piece of editorial schtick is to present a list of resolutions. If you’re arrogant enough you’ll make resolutions on behalf of others. What better way to show off how you could do someone else’s job far better than them by suggesting how they should improve themselves?
Here we go!
1. Stop trying to inject your personality into factual information
You may believe that the time of the superstar journalist is upon us but only you and your industry mates feel that way. Everyone else in the world will only care who you are when they disagree with something you’ve written and want a name to attack. If you were as entertaining as your ego suggests then you’d be an entertainer and not tied to a keyboard instead.
2. Decide whether you’re an amateur or a professional. You can’t be both
Don’t badger a corporation with the journalistic mantra that “the people need to know the truth” if you’re not going to uphold that standard. I don’t want to see you adopting the mantle of a freedom fighter pensmith on Monday if you’re going to dismiss criticism of your work on Tuesday with claims that you’re “just a blogger”. Show some fucking backbone and be accountable for what you say and do.
3. Reduce the amount of double-standards you exhibit
If you’re going to expose Fox News or The Mirror for over-sensationalising games and misinforming their readers with poorly researched information or half-truths then it’d be nice if you practiced less of that sort of thing yourself. I’ve read many an article this year that’s originated from a small detail and has since been embellished and distorted by the journalist to a ridiculous degree and their audience, not knowing any better, have simply accepted the guesswork as fact. Stop it.
4. Stop complaining about having to do your job
Nobody is making you post a news article about a teaser site with a countdown clock on it. Just because you and your kin feel obliged to report every piece of minutia that occurs in order to feed your ad revenue, your commission and avoid the risk of one of your equally OCD competitors running a story that you overlooked (oh no!) it doesn’t mean it’s anybody else’s problem but yours. If you don’t want to report it then don’t report it. If you have to report it because that’s the nature of your work then don’t complain about the content of what you’re reporting. Do your job – just like the rest of the world. Just because you’ve an audience you can manipulate as part of the process in order to spin yourself some sympathy or conjure up some criticism doesn’t mean you should whenever it suits you to.
5. Spend less time in Photoshop or on Google Image Search and more time in your word processor
Whilst we’re at it let’s also stop rotating every header image to a jaunty 30 degree angle. It’s about as welcome as lens-flare in games was by the end of the ’90s. On the off-chance that your header image is directly representative of the content of your article then your rotation of it isn’t only unnecessary but counter-productive.
6. Stop removing context
When you run a sensationalist story based on four lines of a five page interview you’re removing context. Plonking a link to the source material at the end of the article is not good enough – you’ve already done the damage and you know it. People don’t suddenly blurt things out all the time, they usually respond to questions from people. Often those people are journalists. But when you carefully remove the question, selectively quote and sensationalise part of an answer in order to make it seem spontaneous and incendiary then you’re just a worthless hack favouring misinformation over information. Don’t fob this off as some sort of necessity – it’s not like you’re not limited to article length online We see evidence of this when you copy-and-paste a large press release and announce it as news. Special mention goes to hack-journalists that actually edit out words from sentences so as to alter context.
7. Have the courtesy to allow your readers to think for themselves
To some it’s a daunting thought that their people may start thinking for themselves but it ought to be encouraged. I don’t want to see an article that’s actually just a game trailer with your opinion that it’s awesome stated in the headline. If it interests me then I’ll view it and determine my own opinion. I don’t need your attempts to colour it being broadcast at me. Likewise, your guesswork about a forthcoming game and whether you think it’ll be good or not is not factual and is just opinion. People often confuse the two and its not surprising given the number of news articles that, more often than not are not news.
8. Proof-read your work
This goes double if you’re even thinking about adopting a stance of being classified as a professional. Yes, people make spelling and grammatical errors when writing on the internet. Often this is in casual communication. If you’re an author of anything that is intended for mass readership then learn to spell or, at the very least, learn how to spell check. There’s no excuse for this sort of crap, it’s not like you’re debugging tens of thousands of lines of someone else’s code is it?
9. Get and check your facts before publishing them
If any news article gets edited after publication with an “UPDATE” getting inserted into it and corrections having to be edited in then you should never have published the original article in the first place. If the facts weren’t available then don’t publish it. If the facts are actually just a bit of bias, guesswork and a tip-off from someone you can blame as an ‘anonymous source’ then, again, it wasn’t ready to publish.
10. Don’t you dare dictate to others what they should or shouldn’t be saying
What’s that? You’ve read something on a developer’s personal blog and have decided to quote it, sensationalise it then add your opinion to the bottom of it suggesting that this sort of stuff is a bit pre-emptive or fuelled by personal views and shouldn’t have its profile raised. Well maybe if you’d decided not to raise its profile and publicise it only so you can damn it you’d have a point. And, either way, your point should be in the comments section of the developers personal blog – that’s what they’re for. Except you’re abusing your status and exploiting your audience by doing what you did. If you then do some sort of round up of “people who should keep their mouths shut” based on things you yourself chose to publicise then you’re manipulative, hypocritical and insular. That’s before we even consider who the fuck you think you are to govern the freedom of speech of others.
Many instances of the above occurred in the sites I viewed in 2009. Certain sites exhibiting such behaviour practically on a daily basis.
Plenty of scope for improvement in the new year and beyond eh?
Image of the day – December 16th 2009
I’m no architect but that looks structurally unsound.
Pixelated Sandboxing
Going through some old bookmarks I paid a visit to some semi-forgotten websites. One of those websites covers 8-bit home computers and the games found on them. As I was piecing together an image for an earlier article I found myself pondering the origin of the popularity of sandbox or open-ended games.
Certainly there had been many open games presented on BBS in the 80s but their textual nature and often expensive cost of entry always tended to place them on the fringes of gaming.
Like many, Manic Miner was one of my earliest home game experiences but I suppose its successor is the one I’m more interested in at the moment. Jet Set Willy saw you wandering around a multi-screen mansion collecting items placed in each room. Rather than being a single-screen platform game where progression to the next screen was only permitted once the current screen had been cleared Jet Set Willy let the player wander about and explore.
Although primitive by today’s standards the freedom to deviate from the game’s core goals and just tour the game content was quite a big deal at the time.
I recall playing the game – often in turns with my sister – and making a snap decision on whether to see if I could make it to a new area of the mansion or diligently collect everything in one screen before moving on to the next. On reflection, this is possibly the earliest instance of choice-to-explore gameplay I can remember in a mainstream game.
Jet Set Willy and Skool Daze
A little later on another title appeared which extended the player’s freedom of choice in a popular mainstream game. Skool Daze saw your character, Eric, attempting to crack the school safe and swipe his end-of-term report before its incriminating contents could be seen by his parents. Unlike Jet Set Willy the game boasted a number of identifiable characters: a headmaster, an assortment of teachers, a school bully and a school boffin. For Eric to achieve his goal he had to fire his catapult at school shields without being caught by teachers. He also had to trip up teachers in order for them to reveal a letter of a code. The school blackboards could be used to try out codes and write messages. These exploits all took course during a regular school day so lessons would take place which Eric could attend or skip.
Once again, the choice to focus on the game’s core objectives or mess about was available to the player but, this time, in a far richer environment and one that a lot of ZX Spectrum players could probably relate to very well.
It’s rather surprising that about twenty years passed until another game portrayed school and school life so vividly (subject to technological constraints) in Rockstar’s Bully.
Rockstar, of course, are inarguably the champions of the popular open-world game with the juggernaut franchise that is Grand Theft Auto. Even so, the seeds of the mighty GTA oak can be seen laid in some older titles.
Skips were (are still?) prawn-cocktail flavour crisps that look like little flowers. For a period of time their makers saw fit to promote their product with a cartoon character called Clumsy Colin – an imbecilic, Hell’s Angel type character perched on a Harley Davidson style motorcycle. Somehow a deal was done that saw budget-priced game publishers Mastertronic produce a computer game featuring Colin. Action Biker was the result.
The wrap-around world of Action Biker
The Commodore 64 version of Action Biker was surprisingly good and saw Colin placed in (what seemed at the time) a large world that wrapped around itself. In this world were the obligatory tokens that had to be collected in order to gain entry to the race at the climax of the game. The game-world, had enough driving challenges and points of interest to easily distract the player from the relatively mundane tast of driving over flashing tokens. Particular points of interest were a roller-coaster, a building site, a race strip and a seemingly unreachable isle in a lake. Sometimes it was just a thrill to pelt down the main road at top speed watching the world whizz by!
The second GTA-like title that springs to mind is Turbo Esprit. Considered by many to be far ahead of it’s time, Turbo Esprit placed the player in the aforementioned car and in the role of a drug-busting hero. A car carrying drugs would be heading to a rendez-vous and the player was required to use the city map and their driving and navigational skills to intercept the criminals and save the day.
Turbo Esprit - in-game (left) and city map (right)
The game was presented in 3D, featured a basic traffic system that saw the need to obey traffic lights at junctions and to observe the indicator lights of other vehicles. Whilst there’s not characterisation or plot to speak of any game that allows a player to drive around a city as they wish cannot help but find itself compared against GTA. Some cite Turbo Esprit as an influence on GTA but I think that’s just over-active retrospective assumptions. Having said that, both games were conceived in the UK so.. who knows?
Without wishing to take anything away from the standards and achievements of games today, I think it’s interesting to see these glimpses from past and how they may have played a role in forming the digital playgrounds we enjoy today.
Image of the day – December 9th 2009
Looks like another game that’ll get a ban in Australia!
