Diablo III and "Always On" DRM

[Article first published as Diablo III and "Always On" DRM on Blogcritics.]

Over time, publishers have resorted to multiple methods of enforcing digital rights management (DRM) on many forms of media, but it started with games.  Of course this had its humble beginnings in software keys, but some games had some fun with it.  The very old Monty Python’s Flying Circus game for example (yeah, it existed) was DRM equipped way back in 1990, where to begin my quest I had to correctly identify a brick of cheese based on a list provided with the game.  LucasArts had a similar system with the Monkey Island series of games in the 1990’s, having the user match up three sections of the included “dial-a-pirate” and enter the corresponding code  (earlier titles also featured DRM).  But of course soon a bunch of companies dropped the gamification of DRM methods (for lack of a better term) and started going the more straightforward route.  More recently Ubisoft led the charge with their hated “always on” DRM system – meaning that even if you wanted to play one of their single player games, the game still had to check in with Ubisoft servers to make sure your copy was legit.  Internet not working?  Well that sucks for you, Chuckles, because neither is your game.

The reason I bring this up is due to the number of users having always on issues with the still-fresh-out-of-the-oven release of Diablo III – including myself.  Last night I joined a game with a few friends and we started chugging along the first questline for the Skeleton King.  As we were just getting to the final dungeon for that quest, my friends started dropping out of the game one by one, until, while exploring the dungeons, enemies stopped chasing me and I realized something was wrong before I got the boot.  Trying to log in several times after this I was greeted with multiple errors that all pointed to the Diablo servers being down, from authentication issues to being unable to connect to the servers to a message that flat out told me the server was unavailable.  So now what?  With the servers being down, logic would dictate that I could no longer play a group game with my friends.  Sure, makes sense.  But the real issue to me was that I couldn’t even play alone.  Without being able to connect to Blizzard servers, I couldn’t even see my character list.  This happens in Blizzard’s MMO World of Warcraft as well when I can’t connect, but I have no problem with that.  The point of an MMO is that the game is based online.  So what the hell is this MMO feature doing in my single-player game?

 This was never an issue with Diablo II.  My copy was registered to me and if anyone else that wasn’t me tried to get onto battle.net they simply wouldn’t be allowed.  I had the freedom to play the single player campaign which gave me randomly generated maps every time through, let me pause the game if I had to step away from the computer, and most importantly, play it whenever the hell I wanted.  And if I had the desire to play with friends, which I did frequently, we would simply start a LAN game or get on open battle.net and go to town.  Or play my separate battle.net characters.  So why on earth would they change stuff up now?

Last August, Blizzard’s VP of Online Technologies Robert Bridenbecker sat down with MTV to discuss the always on issue and said the following: "Internally I don't think [DRM] ever actually came up when we talked about how we want connections to operate. Things that came up were always around the feature-set, the sanctity of the actual game systems like your characters. You're guaranteeing that there are no hacks, no dupes. All of these things were points of discussion, but the whole copy protection, piracy thing, that's not really entering into why we want to do it. I'm a huge purveyor of online sites and from my standpoint, I don't look at DRM solutions and go, 'Wow, those are awesome.' I look at those and say, 'Wow, those kind of suck.' But if there's a compelling reason for you to have that online connectivity that enhances the gameplay, that doesn't suck. That's awesome."

Diablo III Senior Producer Alex Mayberry also cited World of Warcraft as evidence of this being the direction gaming is going, but as I mentioned I don’t see how comparing a game with single player component to an MMO that has no single player components is valid.  I still think the shortcomings outweigh the benefits.  Sure, I understand that in Diablo II, since the characters were stored on my computer, I could lose my character in a computer crash or alter and create characters and equipment out of game.  But I could still play whenever the hell I wanted.  And Diablo III now has a battletag system for communication and stores characters safe and sound on their servers.  But I still can’t play whenever the hell I want.  Worthless account-wide achievements so players can show off?  Sweet!  But I still can’t play whenever the hell I want.

You sensing a theme yet?

In addition to that glaring shortcoming, what happens to “hardcore” mode characters?  When a disconnect happens or you log off or even if you join someone else’s game, you still take 10 seconds worth of damage from anything you happen to be around.  In regular mode that may not be too big of an issue but if your internet drops in hardcore mode, you could in theory be waving bye bye to that character forever.

Even if, as Mr. Bridenbecker says, that the always connected systems were built around features and not with DRM in mind, I’m sure other publishers who are watching this topic will be taking it the other direction.  They’ll look at Diablo III, which is still going to be wildly successful and sell nothing less than a ridiculous amount of copies, and more importantly how they did it all with an always on DRM methodology.  It’s what makes publishers drool dollar signs and lawyers thankful that they’re on retainer.  It may inspire other publishers to make this the standard, locking out single player modes and ultimately turn gaming into a type of enterprise-grade software as a service that my colleagues and I have to deal with in IT.  This in turn would act as a deterrent to piracy, sure, but could also end up actively working against consumers.  Some people travel a lot.  Some people don't have access to super high speed internet connections.  And with rumored methods of blocking used games in next-gen consoles, I shudder to think what the combination of both would be, as well as the eventual spread to other forms of media like movies and television.  It could set a horrifying anti-consumer precedent.

Bottom line – with the exception of MMOs, players shouldn’t be locked out of single-player content.  Period.  Ever.  It is sad because Diablo III is otherwise a very well put-together game with far more polished mechanics than its predecessors.  But unfortunately, its “always on” methodology strikes me something ill, and it’s still a single player game I can’t play whenever the hell I want.

Microsoft's New Mobile Phone-Style Xbox Live Contracts no Longer a Rumor

[Article first published as Microsoft's New Mobile Phone-Style Xbox Live Contracts no Longer a Rumor on Blogcritics.]

Over the years, especially in electronics, we’ve all seen changes in how companies charge users.  Fading are the days when a customer would by hard and tangible “things” and what’s showing up to take that's place is the sale of services, either in replacement of or addition to these things we think we own.  Sure you paid for your smartphone, but how much convenience does it add to your life if you’re not paying per month for voice and data?  How many people do you know who don’t buy DVDs or Blu-rays anymore because of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu?  Do you still see high numbers of physical servers and hardware in your IT department’s closets or are they starting to move towards cloud-based SaaS subscriptions?  And after work you’re not taking your Xbox 360 out for a spin to play with your friends until you pony up for a LIVE subscription.  You see kids?  Subscriptions and contracts.  That’s how things roll these days.

In some ways it makes sense.  There are certain situations where there’s a lot of cost savings involved for both the supplier and the consumer with subscriptions for services.  For those in the gaming world I’m sure you’re extremely familiar with this system – Xbox LIVE memberships, subscription payments for World of Warcraft and a couple of other MMO games.  The upside is that there’s no contract that locks you in – so if someone wanted to cancel their World of Warcraft account for example, they could do it tomorrow and not pay a single red cent after their last payment went through.  Cell phones carriers are the other end of the spectrum – selling phones at a huge discount but locking you in for a two year contract, with an early termination fee ranging from $200 to $350 for a cancellation.  So why is this relevant?

There have been rumors floating around that Microsoft was going to adopt a similar model to the cell phone one for Xbox 360 units and LIVE gold subscriptions – selling a subsidized 4GB model then locking the customer in for two years on contract.  And those rumors have been solidified, complete with early termination fees.  Sure the fee isn’t as harsh as mobile carriers, but they are in the same spirit of a mobile contract.  The difference is, there’s pretty much a guarantee that I’ll be using cellular service for 2 years.  Xbox LIVE?  Maybe.

The contract is laid out like this – Microsoft will sell you an Xbox 360 4GB with a Kinect sensor unit for $99.  OK, so far so good.  The $99 price is contingent on the aforementioned two year contract of $14.99 per month.  Sounds reasonable on its face until you do the math.  Let’s have a look see.  Suppose I go out and buy a retail Xbox 360 4GB unit with a Kinect sensor.  That would cost me $299.  Then I buy a retail Xbox LIVE gold membership for two years.  12-month cards are $59.99 each, putting my 2 years of membership at retail cost at about $120.  My final price, after two years, is about $420.  Now let’s look at the subsidized bundle.  I pay $99 for the Xbox 360 unit.  I then pay $14.99 for 24 months.  My final price for my two year contract is $458.76, which is over $30 on top of retail. After crunching these numbers, there’s really no incentive.  And I’m not even counting sales on sites like Amazon and NewEgg, where I’ve seen 12-month gold cards go as low as $40.  I’ve done a little additional math of my own factoring in early termination fees and the users’ total cost for cancelling every month for each of the 24 months.  Simply put, there isn’t any short game play that would benefit the user financially to bring their total cost below the straight retail route.

I understand that this plan is structured for the “gotta have it now but don’t have the scratch” crowd.  It’s the exact same thing with smartphone users who wouldn’t be able to afford buying a smartphone flat out, or extending the number of years on a car loan to make smaller payments.  You’ll have the product now, but you’ll pay more in the long run.  If you watch the sales and scour the interwebs, you can find cheap subscription cards and like-new used or refurbished units and spend less than $400 now, saving yourself more than 50 bucks in the long run.

Plus, two years?  What happens if the Xbox 720 comes out and you’re still in year two of your contract?

More Patent Wars - Motorola's Unenforceable Injunction against Microsoft

[Article first published as Useless Patent Wars - Motorola Awarded Unenforceable Injunction against Microsoft on Blogcritics.]

Every day I peruse the tech news on the interwebs to keep up with what’s going on.  There are usually a few interesting stories on some sort of technology development or new games coming out, but what I’ve found over the last year is that those types of stories have been dwarfed in number by news on the business side of technology.  Now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing – I’m both a nerd and a business guy so that intersection of topics definitely interests me.  But it’s the stories that accompany the ones about tech business dealings that make my head hurt.  And all of those stories are on tech patents and lawsuits.

There’s a certain extent to which a defense of patents and intellectual property is reasonable.  That’s the point of the patent system as it was designed – to defend inventors from someone else taking the idea and running with it for profit, protecting them from being victims of corporate theft and economies of scale.  And that works for the most part when it comes to tangible goods or the processes to manufacture said goods.  But trying to apply that same system to technology, namely software, unfortunately can become nothing short of a series of legal quagmires.  Patents can be awarded to very broad solutions and nebulous ideas that there’s no present method to develop, or that could possibly have multiple methods of execution.  Put those patents in the hands of patent trolls and watch them kick back, send their legal attack dogs, and either kill a dream for kicks or pick up royalties.  And in my personal, non-lawyer opinion, I can see how that could stifle and suppress innovation in startups and small firms, who simply can’t afford a potential patent lawsuit from a larger company with deeper pockets.  Something has to change.

It’s nothing new.  I know, as you all do, that this type of thing has been going on more and more as the mobile space has grown.  But that doesn’t preclude me from reading the news and cringing a little bit when i see some of the fallout.  Today was such a day with such stories that irked my nerdy ire.  Motorola Mobility, the broken-off mobile piece of the once whole Motorola, and who i will be referring to as “MoMo” for the rest of this, won an injunction against Microsoft in Germany.  The injunction is in the form of a sales ban covering Xbox 360 game consoles, the Windows 7 line of operating systems, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Germany.  That means every Xbox 360 and every copy of Windows 7 would have to be taken off the shelves.  The reason? H.264 video.  For those not in the know, H.264 is a video codec that covers many aspects of HD video.  One of its claims to fame comes thanks to Blu-Ray players, which all have to be able to decode H.264 video streams.  Online video content delivery through Flash and sites like YouTube use H.264 to get it done too.

What MoMo sued for wasn’t actually for H.264 itself, but two patents that they hold for the delivery of H.264 video.  Their claim is that Microsoft never properly licensed said technologies, and have convinced a Mannheim Court in Germany of that as well.  But it’s not that simple. A United States court has banned MoMo from enforcing that injunction until they review the matter next week.  And in the meantime, Microsoft has gone ahead and moved their European software distribution center from Germany to the Netherlands to mitigate the action.  You see, earlier on Microsoft previously accused MoMo of abusing its FRAND obligations – providing licensing under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms to licensors as a standard setting entity.  According to Microsoft, those licensing fees from MoMo would come with a price tag in the neighborhood of $4 billion.  So in addition to the German court and US court, the European Commission could also look into this, as they’re already carrying out a probe on MoMo’s supposed “abuse of a dominant market position.”  This is the first step in what is sure to be a long and hugely drawn out process.

On another level, trying to ban Windows 7?  You're telling me MoMo is 100% Mac and Linux in their enterprise setup?

But that wasn’t all for today.  Another report featured Nokia’s new patent assault against HTC, RIM and Viewsonic for infringement on 45 patents in their portfolio.  They’ve already been successful once in suing Apple into a licensing deal for the iPhone, but details on which 45 patents have yet to be released at the time of my writing this.  Now this one I can sort of understand.  It looks like they’re trying to mitigate some financial hits with some additional revenue streams until the Lumia becomes more widely popular.  So while this one didn’t strike a nerve as badly, it still made me shake my head a little.

It just seems to me that the undeniable amount of effort (not to mention cash money) funneled into patent assaults could be redirected into more product development.  There’s a lot of really basic things the mobile world has yet to figure out, like coming up with technologies for things like more efficient batteries.  Put more effort into putting quality products into the hands of the consumers, not quality money into the hands of your lawyers.  Think about the good of the game.

Science and Technology Descend Upon the City of Brotherly Love

Well my friends, spring is here in Philadelphia and that means other things aside from those pesky April showers.  That’s right kids, as it was this time last year, Philly Tech Week is upon us.  Kicking off with startup weekend and the Philly Women in Tech Symposium this past weekend, the city of brotherly love is in full swing with technology events through this Saturday.  Most of these events are free, and give anyone in the area from tech experts and professionals to even the mildly tech inclined a number of cool and educational things to do around the city.

So what is Philly Tech Week?  It’s a celebration of technology and innovation in our fair city, with the goal of making Philadelphia better through technology.  Organized by the fine folks over at Technically Philly, the events span multiple topics related to technology.  Regardless of your interests, you’ll probably be able to find something for you.  Folks with a business lean can check out the entrepreneurial events.  Artists and tinkerers?  There are art galleries and other creative works being shown.  Even if your area of interest is Philadelphia government, there are events for you.  There are “tracks” set up for those topics, including entrepreneurship/investments, media/transparency, design/development, art/creative and access/policy.  You can follow along on one of these tracks, or if you’re like me, check stuff out a la carte when your work schedule allows it.  And don’t forget about the social aspect of these events either – you’re sure to meet some new people at the happy hours spread throughout the week and the signature event on Friday.

But what if instead of chips and code you’re more of a chemistry or bio person?  Well Philly Tech Week isn’t all that April brings in the city.  Running parallel to Philly Tech Week is the Philadelphia Science Festival that packs a whole other roster of events in Philly through April 29^th.  Providing opportunities for all Philadelphians to positively engage with and build a community around STEM disciplines, the Science Festival showcases the role they play in our area.  Peppered in with open labs, neighborhood science and science cafés are events at Franklin Institute and a science film festival.  From the science of us to the science of food (not to mention the science of beer) there are also family events for you and your little ones.

This is a great time in the city for not only science and tech people to nerd out on their topics of expertise, but for people in the Philadelphia are that have maybe not had a great deal of exposure to science and tech throughout their life and academic career to get that exposure, learn, an understand why science and tech is not only important to Philadelphia, but the world at large.

Check out Philly Tech Week and the Philadelphia Science Festival’s schedules with the links below to see what events might be up your alley, and make sure to follow @PhillyTechWeek and @PHLScienceFest on Twitter for updates throughout the week.

Philly Tech Week Schedule: http://www.phillytechweek.com/events

Philadelphia Science Festival Schedule: http://www.philasciencefestival.org/calendar

Capcom Producer Admonishes Street Fighter x Tekken Players for Hacking On-Disc DLC

[Article first published as Capcom Producer Admonishes Street Fighter x Tekken Players for Hacking On-Disc DLC on Blogcritics.]

I remember that there once existed a time when gamers had to accomplish a feat to unlock additional content for a game.  This was especially true in fighters, where you had to either win with a certain character or some other set condition to unlock more characters, stages, and sometimes character costumes.  It added another type of fun factor to the game, long before Xbox Live achievements and PSN trophies came along.  It was a very simple formula: player + win = content reward.

In current-gen gaming that formula has been augmented a bit, given the number of games that can be played online and consoles that come with built-in network access for communication and downloads.  Sure there’s still unlockable content that you can get by achieving certain win conditions, but some of that has been separated from the game, giving a worthless achievement for feats of skill and publishing the reward as downloadable content – what gamers affectionately (or not) refer to as DLC.  Instead of getting new content through play time or accomplishments, you download them from the publisher.  And no, it’s usually not free.  On top of the sometimes $60+ you could spend on the game itself and additional fees for online subscriptions, you’ll be forced to spend even more on certain downloadable goodies.

This is nothing new – on consoles it’s been going on since the release of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  It’s another revenue stream that publishers can squeeze out of us, but we pay anyway (me included) because having certain downloadable vanity items is kind of fun.  But the reason I bring this up now is that a specific game has run into some DLC controversy recently, not over simple vanity items but characters – the Capcom / Namco joint-property crossover Street Fighter x Tekken.  Their plans for the game was that it would start with a limited number of characters, with 12 additional characters being available through DLC – for an additional $20 (at the current rate 1600 Microsoft points on Xbox Live).  But they managed it in a very interesting way.  The 12 DLC characters already physically come on the on the disc for anyone that purchased it.  The DLC is more of an unlock code that allows you to access that data.

So of course many enterprising folks went ahead and made some modifications that allowed them access to those characters without paying the $20 for the DLC unlock.  And I really don’t blame them one bit.  They paid for the disc, the disc has the characters on it, so in my opinion they already paid for the characters.  Of course this gets into a whole other discussion on software ownership and licensing that I’m sure I’ll get into at some point in the near future.

 Now the twist – Tomoaki Ayano, the SFxT producer recently talked about the on-disc DLC issue and expressed his great disappointment at players hacking the game to play the characters in an interview with GameSpot.  “Personally, I was really surprised when I heard the news that the characters had been hacked, basically.   So I was pretty disappointed by that. I was really surprised at how skillful the hackers were, basically. But I was really kind of disappointed that it created this kind of environment where a bunch of players were playing the characters but a bunch were unable to play with them.”

What strikes me as interesting, and to be honest relieved, is that Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada doesn’t agree with that philosophy.  “Tekken has never had DLC before and charged for it,” he told Edge during Namco Bandai’s Global Gamer Day event.  “This isn’t really directed at Capcom, I have always said this, but I see the characters and their move sets as chess pieces - they are essential items necessary in the game and we would never sell any of those individually.”  As Capcom’s running the show on this one, he fell in line with Capcom in his official sentiment.  He explained that every player needs to have all the characters on-disc so people who don’t buy the DLC can play against people who did without eating up hard drive space.  But it still looks to me that while he’s supporting Capcom in the decision, he’s simultaneously distancing the Tekken series from this issue.  And I sure don’t blame him with Tekken Tag Tournament 2 just around the corner for North America, which will give access to pretty much every character in Tekken history.

While I can understand Capcom’s logic in adding the DLC content on the source disc, it still seems wrong on some level to charge people to use what they’ve technically already purchased.  Especially when that content is 12 distinct characters including Sakura, Guy, Christie, and Lei Wulong.  Sakura and Lei, more so than others with their franchise history, should never be paid DLC.  With this one I’m definitely with Harada.

And to Ayano, after we hear you simultaneously admonish and praise those who hacked the disc, I pose a fundamental question – how did you not see this coming?

Instagram Saga Part II: Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion, More Users Revert to Grade School Shenanigans

[Article first published as Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion, More Users Re-live Grade School on Blogcritics.]

What a week in social media!  Just last week we took a look at Instagram, who had just recently released an app for the Android platform, waking up the sleeping iPhone fanboys and fangirls in the twitterverse to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.  Venom was spit, the flames had somewhat subsided, and we all kind of thought that that was that.  Well kids, we were all wrong.  I mean just as far from correct as humanly possible.

On the heels of the Android release of Instagram, we were treated to another news bomb this morning brought to us by Kara Swisher at All Things D.  You see, not one to be left out when anything happens in the world of social media, Facebook today announced that they would be acquiring Instagram and adding it to their suite of online offerings.  So how much does a mobile photo app that doesn't charge for downloads go for these days?  $1.1 billion.  That's right, I said one billion.  Enough money to last you almost 3 years if you spent $1,000 a day, every day.  Instagram actually went through a round of venture capital funding for $50 million, bringing their valuation to $500 million just last week.  As for other $500 million Facebook added on top?  The only reasoning I can come up with is the pure value Facebook believes the photo sharing service will add to their portfolio, as Instagram doesn't have advertisments, and charges their customers nothing for use.  13 employees, zero revenue, and an astronomical valuation through a CEO-to-CEO deal.

In today's press release, Facebook stated - "We've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests."  And that makes sense really.  What's more interesting is that Facebook won't be completely integrating it into their existing UI - they'll be actively working on building the Instagram brand and working with their team (yep, all 13 of them) to develop the service and corresponding apps independently.

Talk about an impressive story.  You look at any startup shilling for shekels from venture capitalists and you have to imagine that a common unspoken exit strategy in their business plans has to be "We want to be bought by _____" (Enter Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. as applicable). And while I downloaded the app just for test purposes, I really think that there's definitely some value and potential there.  

But what about user reactions?  As mentioned before, the iPhone community exploded at the release of Instagram for Android.  So how do they feel about their coveted little club being exposed further?  The sentiment again seems to primarily expressed through the twitterverse, with users sharing methods for exporting their photos off of  Instagram's services to outright deleting their Facebook accounts rather than dealing with the heartache and watching their frail little lives crumble.  TechCrunch has a good compilation of some of these tweets, which illustrate a portrait of a community that is no doubt dominated by whiny children.

My message to the iPhone blind irate is this:  You spoiled little jackasses.  Are you kidding me?  Does this mean this much to you?  You should be sending the Instagram folks in San Francisco a heartfelt thank you note for giving the free program, free community sites, running servers on their own dime without so much as forcing you to look at a single advertisement or going for monetization.  Heaven forbid that they make some money and try to improve their game.  What a wonderful bunch of never-content ingrates.  In addition to making me question the sanity of the masses even more than usual, reading these tweets makes me hope someone makes an Instagram for grammar, adding a filter to your tweets telling you which version of "know / no" to use.  I won't name the user who posted that she would "know doubt have to delete" her app for her own good.

The TechCrunch article mentions some big names making an exodus from Facebook as well, like Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin.  But she's quitting because she has legitimate concerns with Facebook security and their constant gaffes, not because she feels the country club's being invaded.  Totally fair.  As I always say, I have no issues with people making these decisions with logic and reasoning.  It's the blind rage quits that makes me cringe.

This has been a fortnight of overreaction from the hipster mavens of social media, and you know what?  Their tantrums are almost as entertaining as they are infuriating.

But that's ok.  I still sleep fine.

Mobile Tech. Fanaticism. Instagram. Reality.

[Article first published as Mobile Tech, Fanaticism, Instagram, Reality. on Blogcritics]

Given all the tech I’ve played with over the years, I’d be comfortable calling myself a Windows/Android guy with some earthy tones of Linux and the occasional smooth draws of Mac.  I like to keep up to date and current on what’s going on in commercial tech platforms for two (and a half) reasons. The first is personal – i’m a tech geek, and being more informed and knowing different platforms makes my purchasing decisions more well informed and in line with what I need. The second is professional – my career is primarily one of being the IT and technology alpha nerd, and I’d call geeking out part of my job description. That last “and a half?”  The more platforms, operating systems and “sides” I know, the more credibility I have talking tech, and the less I have to deal with folks associating my opinions with being a pure fanboy of any given platform.

Because fanboyism and fangirlism irk me.  Ohhh kids it irks me something improper. I like what I like because I’ve tested a lot of things, and through that testing formulated my own opinion based on a wide array of experiences.  I like PCs running Windows 7.  I prefer Android-powered devices.  It’s just how I roll.  That doesn’t mean I hate all things Apple – on the contrary I feel the vast majority of their products are really a solid set of devices.  And they back that up with sales, as well as a fiercely loyal fan base that in my opinion has supported the "Cult of Mac" moniker that it has come to be known as over the last decade, rivaling the following of some organized religions.  But when the iPhone was still pretty much on its own in the touchscreen smartphone game, it was all about “cool.”  With the rise of Android, the sentiment of “cool” was somehow converted into one of elitism.

You see kids, the iPhone isn’t iAlone anymore (see what I did there?).  It has competition now.  What the rise of Android has done is one very major thing sociologically, namely the creation of two completely polarized groups of users:  the "I won't touch anything non-Apple" camp and the "Apple is for the computer illiterate, sheep and hipsters locked in groupthink" faction.  Adding competition naturally drove the poles of these groups to consider each other the enemy, instead of just two kinds of tech that accomplish similar goals.  Hell I’ve never seen anything this heated in consumer tech before, including Intel vs. AMD.  That fierce brand loyalty Apple has built does come off as elitist fanaticism sometimes, but at the same time Android side is no less guilty of elitism.

Don’t get me wrong.  Like I said, I’m not a fanboy, and acknowledge the guilt of both “sides” when it comes to this sort of fanaticism.  My problem is with users.  Multiple people I'm friends with and work with run all Mac at their homes, and brag about how their new iPhones are "10x times better" than Android devices – in every iteration of course –  3, 3gs, 4 4s, because they've bought them all.  The problem is, they've never touched, much less used an Android device.  So how could they possibly know?  "But why is it better?" I ask.  No joke, most answers dance around "because Apple/Steve Jobs would never make a bad product."

Ok, that may support why it's a good product, but not why it's "100 times better." How was that purchase fueled by anything other than blind brand loyalty?  I know people on the other end of the spectrum too, who have purchased top-of-the-line Android smartphones and touted their superiority over iAnything while at the same time having never even held any sort of iPhone in their hands.  I have no respect for these kinds of opinions on either side, because they're not based in any kind of logic or fact.  And while I see this on both platforms, I do get it more from Apple users than Android users.  There is still the minority of users that have actually played with both and have a logical preference one way or the other.  THAT I can get on board with.  I've used both and I prefer Android.  Other colleagues have used both and prefer Apple.  Some are warming up to WIndows phones.  Fair enough.  I can't argue that because they’ve done the research to actually know.

With this so called battle raging on for years, why do I decide to bring this up now?  One word, kids: Instagram.  That’s right, the photo app loved and adored by scores of iPhone users is no longer Apple exclusive, and as of yesterday was free to download for Android users.  Now I never truly realized the wonder of this product – in my eyes it was a photo editing app that allowed a user to put a limited number of effects on a picture, providing one-click sharing to social media.  And after I downloaded it myself, my opinion didn’t really change.  It’s still nothing more than a handful of post-processing options that allows me to share to social media from within the app.  As such my personal reaction, and the reaction of most Android users I know, wasn’t too much more than a collective “Meh” for the day.  I just don’t feel the need to make my pictures look like they came from 1977, like one of the named filters the app can do.  And I’m perfectly capable of instantly sharing pictures from my phone to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ with the touch of a button.  So even having Instagram now, the chances of me regularly using it are fairly slim.

Now for the Apple side.  iPhone Instagram fans flooded Twitter upon release of Instagram for Android to not only express their surprise, but their disdain and outright disgust at the mere thought of sharing their precious app with filthy Android users.  Go ahead and look up the #instagram hashtag.  While some Android users are displaying their pleasure and joy at having this app, and the rest of us really don’t care, tweets from iPhoners are overwhelmingly negative.  Check the compilations of hate tweets put together by Android Community and BuzzFeed.  Responses ranged from do not follow requests to Android users to feelings of “eww” and “gross” and “fail” to suggestions to perform lewd acts upon and/or kill ourselves.   Reading these and actually going through the hashtag search actually made me angry.  Not angry because I’m an Android user, but at the pure venom that poured forth from the iPhone community.  Apparently android users are “ghetto” and my access to Instagram now makes it “the projects.” Really? We pay $300-$400 for our devices with 2 year contracts, so I hardly see how we’re the poorhouse alternative to the Apple country club. After the anger came jealousy – because this is clearly the most important thing these people have to address all day.  Following the jealousy however, was a complete 180 into intense laughter.  Why?  Because all I had to do to ruin the lives of a million elitist jerks was download a free app to my Droid Razr Maxx that I'll probably never use.  So on some level, thanks guys, you made me feel all iPowerful today, and sad for you that this is really all it takes for your world to crumble.  I understand it's not ALL iPhone users, but man does that community come off like a bunch of whiny children.

But still, why the hate people?  It's not that earth shattering of an app.  And I really hate to break it to you folks, but Android didn’t crash your party, we were invited.  Instead of being happy that the number of users and photos being available now increasing my a few million and the ability to follow and be followed by Android using friends, hell even instead of being indifferent, iPhone users are clearly filling the stereotypical role of the hipster, complaining that their exclusive underground club’s gone mainstream.  It's like the sound of a million fixed gear bicycles grinding to a halt.

Deal with it.  This has, if any at all, a marginal effect on your lives.  And technology is for everyone.  My apologies on behalf of the entirety of the Android community that you’re no longer the only ones that can add simple-minded single-touch “retro” post-processing to camera phone pictures in an exclusive community.  On behalf of the OG’s of nerd culture on the other hand, I have demands, not apologies.  Give us back cloud computing that made your iCloud possible.  Touchscreen tech in general.  Video games.  Advanced web tools.  The stuff my guys had to manually code that you do with a finger tap.  Alllll the stuff we nerds had exclusively before they went mainstream to the masses only so you could complain about trivial garbage now.

The bottom line is that everyone wants to be one of the cool kids.  Everyone wants to belong to some exclusive club that they can lord over others, as trivial as it may be, when the real truth is that Android devices and iProducts do the SAME. DAMN. STUFF.  When someone says "I love Apple and Android is for the dirty" or "Android is awesome, Apple is the evil empire," 95% of the time what they're REALLY saying is "I love mobile technology, and haven't the first damn clue what the real differences between the tech and platforms are."

Because to the 5% of those of us that know - those of us who actually care to know about and understand this tech that rules our very lives instead of form over function, it’s mathematically impossible for us to care less.

Congressmen Propose Violence Warnings on Almost Every Game out There

[Article first published as Congressmen Propose Violence Warnings on Almost Every Game out There on Blogcritics.]

It’s always a good thing to see when Congress works hard to tackle the tough issues.  You know, economic health, unemployment, foreign relations – important things.  Then you see bills introduced that make you wonder why we pay them.  Rep. Joe Baca (D – CA) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R – VA) have just recently sponsored H.R. 4204, “The Video Game Health Labeling Act of 2012,” which is akin to its past iteration in 2009.  The passing of the bill would mean that all games rated E and above (that’s right, “E” for “Everyone”) by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board would have to carry with it a warning on the label, regardless of content.  The warning would read “WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior” according to the language (see the bill here).

For those unfamiliar with the current Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rating system, allow me to give you a primer – games are classified into ratings by the intended audience, much how the MPAA uses their (broken) system of G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.  ESRB’s ratings are eC (early childhood), E (everyone), E10 (everyone 10+), T (teen), M (mature 17+) and AO (adults only 18+).  So they’ve actually broken games down into much narrower bands than the MPAA has with movies.  And of course, these ratings are accompanied with reasoning (you can look games up on esrb.org for ratings and rationale).  In my opinion, the classifications are, for the most part, dead on accurate.

So now that you’ve had your ESRB primer, let’s take a look at what this bill passing would mean.  Let’s take a nice, fun, family friendly all-ages game like Brain Age for the Nintendo DS.  If you’re unfamiliar with this game, it’s a series of puzzles based on numbers, like Sudoku, and math problems to find and enhance your “brain age,” the primary goal being to exercise your brain.  Passing the described bill above would mean that Brain Age, with its “E” rating, would carry the aforementioned warning on its labeling.

Because we all know mathematics is all about CRAZY levels of violence.  I’m surprised calculus students aren’t at each other’s throats as we speak, trying to bend each other into shapes defined by 3D integrals in cylindrical space.

Now that’s an extreme example, but Reps. Baca and Wolf are really just offering a SOPA-style solution to lump every game together into one large child corrupting cesspool, assuming that if one’s bad, all must be.  This kind of thinking would put the same warning on snowboarding series SSX, Family Game Night by Hasbro, and music games like Rock Band.  And none of these games hold a candle in terms of violent and adult themes that M and AO games carry.  How do I know this?  Because of their ratings.

Let’s make one thing clear – I am fully in favor of the ESRB rating system.  It provides a clear and concise way of warning parents or others purchasing games for young people what kind of content will come up when they start playing.  It’s how you should know not to buy your six-year-old the rated “M” God of War, and on the flipside how you know your 17 year old son may not enjoy “eC” rated Franklin the Turtle as much as you think.  Yes, admittedly many M and AO rated games do feature violence and adult themes, but that’s why they’re rated M and AO.  The rating itself serves as an efficient warning label, as a study conducted by the FTC shows.  The system works, and it’s not so easy for kids to get their hands on M rated games.  Hell, even at 30, in a shirt and tie coming from the office, I still occasionally get carded for an M rated game.

What I am not for is a system that labels every game with a warning that it will turn your child into a deviant.  In my personal experience, while I’m game shopping there’s a 50/50 chance that a total stranger will ask me whether or not a particular game would be good for a child of a certain age, at which point I explain the ESRB system and they go off on their merry, as well as educated, way.  As I find in most things, all it takes is a little digital education and problems, as well as the accompanying confusion, seem to disappear.

As for the Representatives’ claims that numerous studies link games to aggressive behavior, there are an equal number of studies that say the opposite.  One example is this report done by the Pew Research Center, stating that playing age appropriate games actually yield some benefits for young people.  While the scientific community is divided on the issue, our legal system doesn’t have any answers either.  Brown v. EMA showed that United States Supreme Court couldn’t find conclusive proof either way that such a link exists.  The thing is kids, science experiments only work when there’s a conclusion.  That conclusion can be turned into fact, but until then it’s just guesses – especially when it comes to the mind and behavior.

I agree with the Entertainment Consumers Association that this bill will be harmful to not only the industry, but parents and consumers due to misinformation and its undermining the ESRB.  Keep going with a system that works, and understand that anything in excess can have side effects.  Christopher Ferguson, a psychologist at Texas A&M put it best in an interview with Reuters when the American Psychological Association first released a warning in 2000: "Violent video games are like peanut butter.  They are harmless for the vast majority of kids but are harmful to a small minority with pre-existing personality or mental health problems."

So please Congressmen, let’s focus on something more pressing shall we?

Why I was Done with Soul Calibur V in a Month

[Article first published as Why I Was Done with Soul Calibur V in a Month on Blogcritics.]

I was seriously looking forward to Soul Calibur V before its release last month.  I’ve been a huge fan of the Soul series since their first entry (not counting Soul Edge), and have a ton of fun memories playing with my friends in a number of “loser passes the controller” sessions, starting with Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast.  So in this iteration there were promises of better combat and gameplay, amped graphics, better character customization, and finally a decent guest character in Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio Auditore.  All pluses in my mind.  I went so far as to order the collector’s edition with a gift card I had so I could get the art book and soundtrack (as I love me some game art books).  I should have noticed, however, that while listing all the great new features, a great story was not mentioned.  

So I cracked it open and the loaded up the story mode.  It opened with a gorgeous cinematic, which was great for one main reason –  and that was that the majority of what followed as “story” was not much more than sketched stills in sepia tones instead of full motion video between fights.  It follows the current story of Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, walking you through it as Patrokolos — Sophitia’s son, Pyrrha’s brother, and the new series protagonist.  You switch characters every few rounds.  This gave me some hope that maybe they finally did story mode right, forcing the player to get a taste of playing with every character, but sadly I was wrong.  After the culmination of story mode in episode 20, I had only played with Patrokolos, Pyrrha, (and their variants) and Z.W.E.I..  Sigfried and Nightmare acted as fightable NPC’s along with a slew of generic “custom” created characters.  The story is mainly driven by Tira, with cameos were made some of the other characters in one or two of the still shots and that is it.

 The 20 episodes of story mode can be done in well under a day after purchase.  Then you’re done.  No more story.  No more character explanations.  No more character at all, really.  What you are left with after story mode is a roster with absolutely zero back story and zero personality.  Which means you have a list of marginalized characters who don’t plug into the story ever.   Let’s take a look.  All we know about Natsu is that she’s Taki’s student, and fights kind of like her.  All we know about Leixia is that she’s Xianghua’s daughter, and fights kind of like her.  What about Z.W.E.I.?  He can summon a werewolf to fight for him.  What?  And Xiba is like a half monkey / half human version of Kilik.  Oh and he’s always hungry.  I guess that’s cool?  What’s going on?  Who are these characters?  Is Viola actually Amy?  What’s with the orb?  Where did they come from?  How did Ezio enter the picture? Just what in the infinite hells is going on here?

That’s how I felt.  Confused and cheated.  Story mode left me with hundreds of questions the game clearly had absolutely no intention of answering.  I have a big problem with that.  In my opinion, in a game that’s a continuation of a lore as rich and deep as it is in the Soul Calibur universe, it's owed to the player to provide a fleshed out story for all of the main characters.  Without back story and personality, the characters simply become empty.  There’s no depth or mythology to buy into.  That means the player's not going to care.  This isn’t an FPS where the player is just a guy on the team, or a sniper or medic — the Soul Calibur series has always gone into not only the characters, but the relationships between them.  This is a shame really, because with the amazingly fluid gameplay and combat this could have been a magnificent game.

I think part of what makes a game good, especially with franchise games such as this, is the world they’re set in and the mythology that they provide.  And a lot of what allows the player to buy into that is character development.  It’s the reason I became so entrenched in RPGs like the Final Fantasy and Xenosaga series.  But this trait isn’t reserved just for RPGs — series like Devil May Cry and God of War got it done in the action/adventure genre, and Namco themselves did it quite well in Soul Calibur III.

So what am I left with?  A game built for nothing more than online or versus play.  You can make your character, assign a fighting style to it (oh right, you’re restricted to only the main characters’ styles and less options than SCIV), then hit Xbox Live or the PSN.  I’ll call it the console fighter version of Unreal Tournament.  Now don’t get me wrong, that definitely carries some value on its own, being able to play with friends online or in your living room is part of what makes gaming fun.  In college my friend and I would play Edge Master vs. Edge Master to see who could win 99 rounds first.  We had a ton of fun (and as a fun and true side story: we once tied 98-98 with a double KO in the next round).

It’s still fun, but without the media gallery or single player story modes or really much of anything to unlock, the game is sadly a shadow of what it could actually be. 

FBI Arrests Hackers with Help of Former LulzSec "Leader"

[Article first published as FBI Arrests LulzSec Hackers with Help of Former "Leader" on Blogcritics.]

Just one time.

After being cautious about covering his tracks, all it took was just took one time logging into IRC without masking his IP address for the FBI to find where Hector Xavier Monsegur was.  Monsegur, also known as Anonymous and LulzSec member Sabu, had been stalked by Federal agents with no success since the public emergence of LulzSec last spring.  After a cliché good cop/ bad cop routine like we're all used to seeing on television crime drama, Monsegur finally gave in, leaving under the custody of Federal agents.  That was last summer, after a month long hack-a-thon that brought down a number of organizations in the financial sector, entertainment companies like Fox and Sony, as well as Federal Government agencies including the CIA.  Eventually in August Monsegur plead guilty to 12 counts of computer hacking and conspiracy, as well as charges filed in connection with the hacks at HBGary Federal, Fox Broadcasting, Infragard Members Alliance and PBS.  The guilty pleas of not only Monsegur but five other hackers was released today in a press release by the FBI, citing over 1 million victims and additional hacks against Stratfor and International Law Enforcement.

Monsegur's cooperation led to the arrests of the other hackers named in the FBI press release - hackers known as Topiary, Kayla, Pwnsauce, Palladim, lolspoon and Anarchaos were also charged.  After over a year of chasing their tails, this arrest was a tremendous victory for the FBI, who were under a great deal of pressure to find the perpetrators, themselves still nursing a black eye from multiple hacking operations.  According to Fox News, they had already subpoenaed his Facebook account, found stolen credit card numbers, and had enough to charge him with aggravated identity theft, carrying a 2 year sentence if convicted.  The FBI saw more value in him as an informant with his ties to LulzSec, so they dug in.  "They did a heck of a job in hunting down the ringleader and turning him around so they could go deeper into the stack," said Rich Mogull, an analyst at Securoris. "This is classic law enforcement."

While these hackers are mentioned as leadership in the hacking group Anonymous, Sabu himself being referred to as the leader of LulzSec, Anonymous maintains what they have always claimed - that they are an ad-hoc, leaderless organization that will survive and remain at full strength.  Taking to the twitterverse, @YourAnonNews and @AnonOps both had the following statement via tweet: #Anonymous Is an idea, not a group. There is no leader, there is no head. It will survive, before, during, and after this time.

There's no telling how many more hackers or associates of LulzSec and Anonymous will be arrested thanks to Monsegur's help.  As such Barrett Brown, more or less the public face for Anonymous, branded him a traitor for cooperating with Federal agents.  In his words: "My apartment was raided this morning by the FBI. Feds also came to another residence where I actually was. Sabu is a traitor. #Anonymous."  On a pseudo-related comedic note, he did get so deep into his role as an FBI informant that he tried to pass himself off as an FBI agent to police.  On top of everything else, he picked up a second degree impersonation charge.

I don't believe for a second that this is going to be the end of Anonymous.  Even if their claims of being a leaderless organization are false, and Sabu did in fact hold some sort of leadership role, the contacts Sabu turned over to the FBI will only get them so far.  While the perpetrators of past crimes may end up being behind bars, that's no guarantee that future perpetrators can be caught before something else goes off.  Anonymous and other related hacking groups have a near-infinite pool of young bored technologists and disgruntled nerds with a great deal of skill.  So far this looks like just a black eye in return served by the Feds.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Awarded "Best Video Game Ending" World Record, "Shenanigans" Called Worldwide

[Article first published as Call of Duty: Black Ops Awarded "Best Video Game Ending" World Record, "Shenanigans" Called Worldwide on Blogcritics.]

I found some interesting information the other day.  Unbeknownst to me, Guinness (the record book people, not the beer people) have been releasing a “Gamer’s Edition” of their book for the last few years.  That I did not, in fact, know about it should tell you something about the worth of said tome.  Many companies have discovered gamers as a new target market over the last few years and it sure seems that everyone wants a piece of the group.  We spend all that money on consoles and building gaming rigs and buying games right?  We must have disposable income we’re willing to spend on anything, including the most inane crap that manufacturers can come up with, right?  There’s Mountain Dew “game fuel” that has tie-ins with Modern Warfare and World of Warcraft.  There exists a thing called “Gamer Grub Performance Snacks” so you can “think fast and win more.”  Hell, why do you think they put pretty people on G4?  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being pandered to.  And if there’s another, it’s people eating it up.  And that’s one of the two reasons Guinness has insulted me this week.

The second is one of the latest “records” to be set in the 2012 edition of this worthless journal of so-called achievement.  They have given a record for “Best Video Game Ending” to Call of Duty: Black Ops.  Let that sink in for a bit as you think about all of the world records you’ve seen.  The world’s tallest man.  Most one-armed pushups done in one hour.  The longest Moto X dirt-to-dirt backflip.  They all have one thing in common.  They’re 100% quantifiable, regardless of the level of ridiculousness they bring.  For example, the loudest purr by a domestic cat is set by a furball named Smokey in the United Kingdom.  Ridiculous?  Absolutely.  But measured on record at 67.7 dB (86.3 dB LC_pk) by a Class 1 sound level meter NA-28 by RION at a distance of one meter in the presence of a veterinarian.  That’s an irrefutable hard measurement.  There's evidence that it's the loudest damn purr on record.  Measured.  With science.  So what kind of similar measurement can be used for judging the best ending of a game?

The fine folks at Guinness, who fail to recognize the large overlap between “nerd” and “gamer” and couldn’t possibly foresee irking the ire of myself and my math-loving ilk, did it the most accurate way they knew how: by surveying 13,000 people.  I can’t even guess how many immeasurable qualitative variables are involved with asking just a single person their favorite game ending.  Did I think Black Ops had the best ending?  No.  I thought it was unoriginal and reminded me of Fight Club.  In my opinion, the “best ending ever” should have at least some unique qualities.  But then again I’m biased — I prefer action and RPG’s to first person shooters.  I grew tired of the war FPS genre in college, years ago.  I’m just flat out better at other types of games.  All three of these points, whether I think they do or not, could cloud my opinion on this topic.   Or any topic I’m surveyed on for that matter.  So while this would make a great project for a middle school math class, I don't see the value in the damn Guinness Book of World Records.

I also question the type of players they surveyed.  The “Top 50” which you can see over at GamePolitics included four Call of Duty titles and three Halo titles, with the top 2 being Black Ops and Halo: Reach.

… Pardon?  That’s like saying the ending to The Fast and the Furious is better and deeper than the ending of Seven.

There are definitely games on there that deserve to be there, but it looks like their “representative sample” are primarily Xbox Live bro-gamers and kids nervous about their SAT’s who don’t know much beyond Halo and Call of Duty, because the number of games that didn’t make this list is amazing (we are talking of all time here).  Well I guess some people did say Super Mario Brothers, but based on the rest of the list, they were probably “retro” picks so they could sound like they knew what they were talking about.

So the final tally...  Pandering to gamers?  Check.  Bad math?  Check.  Bad statistics?  Check.  Please allow me to provide a little parting wisdom to our friends at Guinness: if you don’t have enough material to fill this book, don’t publish it.  It is embarrassing on a number of levels, a number of levels that may just qualify you for technical fowl's book of world records.