About Cheating
I’m not ashamed of it. I publicise it. Like recreational drugs, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it as long as you don’t hurt anyone else or destroy your internal organs. Every time I think of cheating, I remember a point when I was still in high school and my big brother’s friend’s mom managed our high school’s computer classes so we could pretty much have free reign there during the weekends. So, we went there and played Diablo from dusk until dawn. And even then I had my hands in it deep and I knew exactly how to break the game’s economy in the player’s favour (the item dupe cheat still worked wonderfully). And one weekend, while we were playing, one of my brother’s friends called me over and asked me to explain to him how I cheated. He explained his philosophy on that. He said, that he finished the game, through and through, the way it was intended and now he was interested in doing it another way. And that’s completely ok. And there are also other reasons. Right now, I cheat in games for two reasons: the main one is that I don’t have a lot of time. I’m a working man (or as one might put it, a workaholic) and I have a wife and so my gaming time is usually limited to maybe an hour before bed, an hour or two in the morning and a bit more during the weekends. I can no Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Philosophy, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
The Creative Things We Do
גייב, מהצוות של ‘פני ארקייד’, כתב לאחרונה רשומה מאוד מעניינת בבלוג שלהם. בקצרה: אחד הדברים האחרונים בקומיקס היה סיפור קצר על עולם בו אבות המשפחה אחראים על הגנת הבית כי כל המפלצות מתחת למיטה וכל הפחדרונים שבארונות אמיתיים וצריך להיפטר מהן והסיפור עוסק בילדה קטנה שצריכה להתמודד עם זה כשאמא שלה חולה ואבא שלה כבר לא מסוגל להתמודד עם המטלה הזאת. הרשומה עוסקת באבא של גייב. הוא מספר על איך אבא שלו בא איתו פעם אחת למשחק גולף של הצוות והקשיב להם כשהם דיברו, בשיא הרצינות, על הרקע של העולם של הסיפור, על מה מקור המפלצות, על סוגי הנסיבות שיכולות לצוץ סביב הצורך להגן על הבית, על עיצוב המפלצות והדמויות בסיפור. הוא ישב והקשיב על איך הם מדברים על “דמיון ו-make believe” בצורה רצינית לחלוטין. ובתור בן אדם שעבד בתאגיד כל חייו, היה לו קשה להבין מה הבן שלו עושה. אני מציע לקרוא את כל הרשומה למרות שהיא ארוכה כי היא מאוד מעניינת, בעיקר לטיפוסים יצירתיים שעוסקים בהמצאות מוחלטות. הוא מדבר הרבה על איך זה להסביר את העבודה שלנו, את היצירה שלנו, את מה שאנחנו משקיעים בו את החיים שלנו, ל… מחוסר מילה טובה יותר, מוגלגים – אנשים שלצערי אני חושב שפשוט יש להם דמיון פחות מפותח. ואולי המשפחה שלנו תתמוך בנו בכל מה שנרצה לעשות אבל אלא אם כן יש להם את הנטייה לזה בעצמם, הם כנראה שאף פעם באמת יבינו איך זה, יבינו את התהום בינינו לבין שאר האנושות או את הסיבה למה אנחנו עושים את כל זה. ולכל אחד יש את הסיבות שלו. גייב עושה את זה Continue Reading →
Posted in Art, Gaming, Geekdom, Humanity, Me, No Category, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
How NOT to Give Everyone a Fair Salary
Company Testing Standardized Salaries Is Struggling I think what they did there was just plain wrong. The way to equalize salary considerations is not to give everyone, from the newest hires to the CEO, the same salary. That is a sure fire way of causing discontent. What they need is to give the newest, lowest ranking hires a fair base salary and then, from there, calculate everyone’s salary based on veterancy, responsibility and, most importantly, merit. And I think it’s ok for people to know their co-workers salary. There’s no reason I can think of to hide salaries that is for the employee’s benefit. If there’s a difference between my salary and someone else’s, I want to know that, if I have a higher one, there’s a good reason for it. And if there isn’t, maybe I shouldn’t get one. And, if it’s lower, I want to know what that other person did to ingratiate themselves upon the management so I can do it too and get paid better for it. For example, if someone is getting paid more than me because they have a year of company time on me, I think that’s fair. If they get paid more because they are very reliable and help whenever asked, I want to do that too. If they get paid more because they handle 3 times more responsibilities then me… well, there’s not a lot I can do about it but that’s fair.
Posted in High-Tech, IT, No Category, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.
עייפות גוף, מוח ומחשבה
אתמול עבדתי עד מאוחר. כמה מאוחר? יצאתי מהמשרד בערך בחצות. רכבתי הביתה. הגעתי תוך חצי שעה. התמזגנתי קצת, דיברתי עם מעין, הוצאתי כלבלב, התרחצתי קצת ואז הלכנו לישון, איפה שהוא באזור 2:30. בבוקר, קמתי ב-6:30. התאפסתי על עצמי, שיחקתי קצת כדי באמת להתעורר, הוצאתי כלבלב, התארגנתי ויצאתי לעבודה. הגעתי בערך ב-9:00, נחתי והתחלתי לעבוד. עבר פחות זמן מאז שיצאתי אתמול ועד שהגעתי היום מכמה שבדרך כלל עובר בין תחילת יום העבודה שלי לסיומו. ומכיוון שכנראה לא העליתי את הנושא בעבר, הנה מחשבותיי על עייפות. אני מחלק עייפות לשלוש אפשריות: עייפות גוף, עייפות מוח ועייפות מחשבה. עייפות גוף מגיעה אחרי הרבה מאמץ. אפשר לזהות אותה על ידי שרירים כואבים, חוסר טווח תנועה והמצב בו אחרי שיושבים או נשכבים על משהו נוח אז לקום מתחיל להיראות כמו משימה מסובכת. בקיצור, הגוף שלך אומר לך שעבדת קשה מדי וכדאי ללכת לנוח. עייפות מוח מגיעה מהמחזורים הטבעיים של הגוף, הסירקדים כנראה, ואפשר לזהות אותה על ידי פיהוקים, עיניים שמאיימות להיסגר והרגשה כללית של צמר גפן בראש. זה המוח שלך אומר לך שהוא עבד קשה מדי והגיע הזמן לנוח ואולי כדאי לך לקרוא כמה ספרים על מחזורי שינה אם לא הבנת את זה עדיין. אבל אפשר להיות עם שרירים כואבים ומוח שמאיים להפסיק אבל עדיין להיות עם חשיבה חדה. עייפות מחשבה מגיעה כשעברת כבר את כל המחסומים ואת כל הגבולות ולא רק שהחומרה כבר לא מסוגלת, גם התוכנה מתחילה לקרוס. היא מאופיינת על ידי חוסר יכולת מעקב ותשומת לב, חישובים פשוטים שהופכים לאיטיים ומסובכים, איבוד ריכוז וכל שאר הדברים הכיפיים. וכשהשלב הזה מגיע, זה גם Continue Reading →
Posted in Humanity, No Category, Thinking Out Loud, Work by Eran with 2 comments.
From Stretching to Grind
It is a common practice in game design to try to stretch out the length of a game by padding out the content. This could be done by insidiously layering out difficult, repeating levels or by simply varying out the already introduced elements into new configurations. I’ve recently thought about this after seeing a few new puzzle games. I have quite a low tolerance for those unless they introduce something really interesting (i.e. Ronin) and even then, they should probably be short enough to not over stay their welcome. And so, when looking at those puzzle games, I played two or three levels, understood what they’re doing with it, and decided it wasn’t interesting enough to invest time in. The problem is, again, a conflict of expectations, exacerbated by the sheer quantity of quality games out there. Meaning, if I’m playing a game that I’m not enjoying as much as I thought I would and I know I have other games that will be at least as enjoyable if not more, why should I keep playing? I’ll take a look at it using three examples I think, at least in my case, symbolise different levels of padding/grind vs my innate interest in those genres of play: The role of grand strategy game will be played by Civilization: Beyond Earth. The role of the endless runner will be played by Relic Run. And the role of the Action RPG will be played by Path of Exile. Grand Strategy /Â Civilization: Beyond Earth Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 1 comment.
The Kill With Skill Debate
Or “Why Wolfenstein – The New Order is better than Bulletstorm in making players do things a bit differently (Except, maybe, driving a dinosaur into combat)”. What’s the deal with that headline? One of the tag lines for the 2011 Bulletstorm was “Kill with Skill”. It was a core mechanic of the game. It’s something that garnered a lot of praise for the game. And it was one of the things that annoyed me the most about it. No, I meant, what the hell does it mean? Oh. In Bulletstorm, you get points for killing fashionably. When you shoot a guy in the face, that’s a couple of points. If you pull him towards you, kick him back, blast him in half with the shotgun and then shoot the pieces with the rocket launcher. That’s a heck of a lot of points. And these points are your currency in the game. Ok… What’s the problem with that? It sounds cool. It sounds cool. And that’s about where it ends. In Bulletstorm, ammo and health drops are scarce. You get most of your boosts from some sort of recharge station you find all around and they only accept those points. Otherwise, you can’t get ammo. And that’s annoying. So, what’s the big problem? Just kill the stuff the way the game says. It gets tedious. Extremely tedious, extremely fast. You know how when everything is special, nothing is? Well, when every kill needs to be fancy, then no kill is. And some Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 4 comments.
Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space
That is, a solar station in space that converts the energy to microwave or laser and beams it to Earth. There are ways to mitigate the danger but let me remind you… “Microwave Receiver Dish is very efficient, clean and reliable. Launch a satellite to collect solar power, then beam it down to Earth. Unfortunately, the effects of a mis-targeted beam are, as yet, unknown.” — SimCity 2000 Manual (pg. 35)
Posted in Gaming, High-Tech, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
The Definition of Hard Core
I got this idea from an article I just read. How Hardcore a game is determined by how Hardcore the average/median player is. Meaning, if you pick a random or average gamer who plays said game, how serious he is about that game? How often do they play and how badly will they take it if the game changes or someone make light of playing it? So, in my opinion, if you take an average Candy Crush, Angry Birds or maybe even Clash of Clans player and ask them those questions, you’ll probably get a player who plays once or twice a day for a few minutes while they have time to kill and if you change their game or break it they’ll probably shrug their shoulders and move onto the next one. Of course, there are outliers who take the game very seriously but they are the minority. Then, if you take a game like League of Legends, Counterstrike, StarCraft or even Hearhstone, the average player is more likely to take their game very seriously, play for many hours every week and they take every change to the rules very seriously. They are rabid fans. So we call these games hardcore. I know, not all people would consider Hearhstone hardcore and I actually think it might be split down the middle, which is what makes it more interesting.
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, Philosophy, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 4 comments.
Steam Complete
I recently did, what I call, “The Steam Exploration Challenge”. The point of which was to use the front page carousel of Steam and it’s Explore section everyday, perhaps several times a day, to go through and mark down every game and piece of software on Steam. With the addition of the Discovery Queue and the “Not Interested” button, I could make it so an app page appeared to me only once and never showed up again. Currently I have 4,500 apps under my belt. Which is but a fraction of the 8000+ games, software and DLCs on Steam but I do think I covered more than 90% of the Games + Software section. This gave me three distinct things: (1) A great sense of accomplishment, (2) A very clean Steam frontpage; and (3) an almost immediate knowledge of games that are added to Steam. Now, let’s discuss the 3rd thing I mentioned. Since I have a clean Steam frontpage, every new thing that is added or unblocked, I notice almost immediately. So, why not use my powers for good and share in the bounty that I see, as long as it’s interesting and not a fan servicy boob simulator (The link is just for reference. Please, do not click it). Let’s start with some backlog.
Posted in Gaming, Geekdom, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.