Brainbox Labs

I mean’t to send a link to a Co-Worker today and accidentally sent it to someone else on my buddy list. That someone else was someone that I don’t know (or at least, previously knew for some reason but haven’t IM’d in 10 years and probably did so under another screen name that was merged by Trillian). Combine the fact the opening message was a link to an article titled “French nurse with fear of doctors admits smothering babies”, and only hilarity can ensue.

The conversation went a little like this:

The conversation was less hilarious from there so I’m leaving it out. But Oh Man…

On June 30th, 2010, the US has lost a few more tech jobs to foreign nations. Today, the US seized several domain names from websites that host or link to tv shows and movies.

To understand how this affects you and I, it’s important to understand the ecosystem of online “piracy”.  Large companies like Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Brothers (among others) find the internet problematic. It presents an easy way to obtain content that was previously difficult to acquire. Before the internet, you had to walk or drive to a store or theater, pay for DVD rental or screening, and only have a short amount of time to view your purchase.  These large companies had full control over where physical copies of their content went. They could make as many or as few (artificial shortage) copies as they wanted. Rather than find a way to make movies and TV easier to get online, these companies ignored the internet because it’s a lot of work coming up with a new business model. When you’re a big lumbering company like Disney, it’s difficult to take your company in a new direction and regardless of how many good ideas or smart people you have. To the short sighted executives (and on the consultation of their lawyers), they try to sue piracy away. Lawsuits, which are great for lawyers, are an awful way of dealing with piracy. It’s like trying to rid the world of plants using a single magnifying glass. Not only do the ants multiply faster than you can burn them, but you make them angry and occasionally kill something else by accident.

So if you can’t sue piracy out of existence, legislating against it should work, right? Wrong. Imagine playing telephone tag with people’s rights or having a blind person teach another blind person how to work the computer at the nuclear missile silo. What ends up happening is that older executives who don’t know how to check their email hire lobbyists who naturally do their best to persuade senators who can’t work a cellphone (let alone figure out what in the sam-hill a peer to peer is) that the entire world will explode and the terrorists will win if we let this rampant piracy that is corrupting our youth to continue. So the senate and the house pass bills that greatly increase the power of the big companies who can’t adapt (legislation like the DMCA). These new laws are tough to enforce and only cover piracy in the US. So what next? Put bags of money and pressure in the right place to get agencies to act on their own citizens on the behalf of companies that can’t figure out how to work this internet thing.

“But the internet is global! They can’t take down those Russian sites!”

You’re right, Timmy. They can’t take down those websites because they’re not here and they can’t raid those houses because they’re not in the jurisdiction. Besides, piracy is a game of whack-a-mole and if you take down one website, three pop up to fill the gap.

So by now, you’ve either stopped reading because you think I’m a lunatic or you’re starting to get a picture of what’s going on. So here’s another piece of the puzzle – the amount of money these websites make in advertising is huge. It puts people to work across the globe. It’s not just about the websites that host the links, it’s the companies that serve the ads, the companies that host the servers, the companies that charge people for their internet (which in most countries outside the US is tiered – the more you use, the more it costs) , the people curate the content, the designers that design the websites, etc. Shutting down piracy in the US means that citizens here have to access sites in other countries because people aren’t just going to stop downloading – ever.

That’s what happened today. Today the US raided houses, shut down domain names, and put a huge dent in our own tech industry. Did it help the big media companies? No. They’re going to continue bleeding just as much money because they fail to adapt.

So tonight I raise a glass to TVShack.net, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net – American anti-heroes that will never have plaques dedicated to them after being taken down in a rain of friendly fire. A list of lost jobs that will undoubtedly have a negative effect now that we’ll be paying for several people’s three square meals while they’re wrongfully imprisoned.

Do I think that piracy is right? No. Do I think that piracy is wrong? No. Piracy just is. If you think I’m wrong about that, go ahead and email me: Nick@BrokenWallFilms.com. Also, while you’re at it, go read up on Samuel Slater – another American hero.

Is Tuesday The End of Days?

Is Tuesday the End of Days? According to WHDH Weather, Tuesday might very well be the end of days.

The following is the rambling of my tired mind -

Styles, fads, trends, genres, and fashions – they all change with time.

Code depreciates, programming languages evolve, poly counts increase, texture sizes grow – all are expected.

What doesn’t change is whether a game is well designed. For the most part, a game that was fun in 1987 (twenty three years ago) like Super Mario Bros. is the same joyful experience it was then. I’ve heard the argument that nostalgia covers up the flaws but how is it that I enjoy Super Mario Bros. 3 as much as Mass Effect 2 when I was only four years old when it came out?

That’s the question I answer with “Game Design”. Strangely enough, the idea hasn’t really changed over time – make it balanced, make it challenging, and make it fun. It’s the same game of numbers now that it was back in 1993 when Sonic CD (my favorite of the Sonic The Hedgehog games) was released. It all comes down to careful attention:  if the enemy moves too slow then it will be too easy but if the enemy moves too fast, it will be too hard. Finding balance, the art of great design, is the same as it always was.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to my new website, Brainbox Labs. I’ve had to move my blog since NicholasAllain.com got eaten up by my professional content. I hope everyone enjoys the new web site. I plan on doing a little bit of the following:

- Product Reviews

- Tech Blogging

- Entertainment Blogging

- Movie / TV Talk

- Editorial (Potentially dipping into politics)

I hope everyone sticks around! That’s all for now.

I’ve recently had many conversations with friends about communication in games. I’m going to try and boil it down as best as I can and provide my own conclusions.

As an aside, I’d invite anyone to check out the blog entry at Ryan Shwayder’s Nerfbat.com about VO in MMO’s since it inspired me to finally write this article up: http://www.nerfbat.com/2009/03/30/mmo-vo/#more-1001

First we had text based games. The game developer sought communicate a world directly to the player. This novelistic approach continues to be the basis for our storytelling. We’ve tried to replace text with audio in some games but we have generally failed to provide gamers with anything close to organic feeling communication with the machine. One could argue that it would take an AI that passes the Turing Test to produce those results but I think it’s actually much more simple than that.

I’d argue that it’s not the quality of a voice over that takes a player “out of the game” but rather the mixing of inorganic communication platforms like menu-driven communication with voice-overs that makes the experience so awkward. It seems acceptable to say that the answer is to use voice recognition with NPC’s. If you’re asking yourself “Is the technology good enough?” then you may want to think about how many commands we really need to carry a small meaningful conversation. As an example, think about a squad based shooting game. Is it really necessary to ask a squad member to “please check the room to the left” or could that be shortened to “check left”? Would adding this voice command remove the need for a dialog? It’s all about removing or making the layers between the player and the NPC invisible.

I may sound like I’m proposing a solution to something that isn’t broken but consider this: World of Warcraft players are known to use online voice chat during raids and have developed their own shortened lingo. When they want to communicate with an NPC, they must read from a dialog. Not only is the player forced to stop what they are doing to communicate, but they must also go through an extra visual process to gather the information. It’s going to take someone very bold to break the current convention of conveying information like “passing notes in class” but if games are going to continue to push role playing immersion, the days of “the silent hero” are going to have to end.

I can’t help but blog about this story. When I play games, I try to understand how I am reacting and why I am reacting. It’s important in game design to give players clues whether it’s auditory, visual, or physical feedback. Shooters typically use audio/visual cues to alert the player to an approaching target. It can be as simple as an enemy passing behind a hole in a wall or in front of a light.

I have been known to play a lot of first person shooters and have noticed myself looking for very specific and small visual alerts in my day to day gaming. In Counterstrike: Source for example, I may zoom in with a sniper rifle looking for a terrorist. One of the terrorist player models is wearing a green jacket and the wall where he will probably emerge from is often a very similar color. If I don’t pick up on his specific shade fast enough (my advantage may be as little as 5-10 milliseconds) then I could be as good as dead.

Any experienced player would know that their tendency to get better at that very problem gets better with time but incredibly, a study by Nature Neuroscience found that these kind of video games actually increase a person’s visual acuity – making them better at discerning different shades of gray and potentially even better night-time drivers.

It’s an incredible study and I’d urge anyone to check out The Article at Nature Neuroscience.

This site is not only a portfolio, but a reflection of myself. While this isn’t specifically game related, I feel like I’d be doing myself a disservice for leaving it off.

My film, Something Remote, has been showing at local colleges and at a local theater. It has generated a bit of press so in addition to the preview Telegram & Gazette article that I posted earlier, here are a few other stories that have run on the movie.

Joy Richard, New Leader Staff Writer, recently attended a screening of Something Remote. She wrote about the movie Friday’s edition of the New Leader.

This movie is full of popular culture references, along with jokes that tie into other
films.
“Our movie caters to an audience that is in the know when it comes to pop culture and random references. It is a movie for the fans by fans,” said Laferriere, the director. Laferriere is from Dudley and went to Shepherd Hill Regional High School, as did Allain, who lives in Charlton. They met while working on Shepherd Hill’s morning television program, “The A.M. Show.”

The rest of the article can be read on page 2:
www.blackstonevalleytribune.com/pdf/SPE.2009.03.13.pdf

WPI Athletics has a new feature called “Inside the Game” where they take a close look at the success stories of the folks involved in the program. This article was Alex Laferriere, director of Something Remote, and his experience with WPI football and Broken Wall Films. It’s a fantastic read for anyone who would like check it out:

Laferriere, an Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) major, had developed an interest in film a long time ago, while a student under Sean Cusick at Shepherd Hill Regional High School in his native Dudley, MA. His work as an IMGD major cemented this interest, which he began to pursue full-bore as his WPI career continued. Following his junior year, Alex spent a month in South Africa on a film internship that would drastically change his senior year at WPI. While in South Africa, Alex was inspired by both his internship and his life at WPI, and began work on a screenplay that would depict his experiences and life while residing in a WPI off-campus residence. The 115-page screenplay entitled Something Remote, would become his focus for the next year, thanks to some help from the WPI community.

Read the rest over at WPI Athletics.

Finally, there was a great article in this month’s Pulse Magazine about Broken Wall Films. Here’s a snippet:

Their baby, Something Remote, is certainly the standout, but each item in their body of work speaks of a talent and enthusiasm that will continue to mature and entertain for a good long time to come. In other words, more standouts are sure to be coming our way.

Click Here to read more.

I’ve had my new pair of Grado SR-80 Headphones for two days now. I’ve never spent this much on headphones before. The last I pair I owned (Sony MDR-NC6) were $60 when I purchased them. The Grado SR-80′s retail for $99 but I found them for $80 online.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was the headphone cord. It’s the same thickness as most of the CAT-5e ethernet cables that I own but more flexible. The 3.55mm headphone connector at the end isn’t messing around either. It looks silly poking out the side of my mp3 player.

The sound quality so far is very good. They are very soft on the bass but I’m thinking that will loosen up a bit as I break them in. These headphones don’t mess around – a headphone amp is nearly a necessity. Even with the volume cranked on my Archos 604, the headphones aren’t unbearably loud.

The Sony MDR-NC6 headphones that I owned previously have nothing on these. The Sony headphones had an annoying hiss and felt like wearing bricks on your ears. People say about the Grados are uncomfortable but I think that’s blown way out of proportion. These are much more comfortable than many pairs of headphones that I’ve owned, sound great, and don’t make my ears sweat. Great value.

Our local newspaper, Worcester Telegram and Gazette, has written a story about our film company. They cover where we’ve come from and where we’re going:

… four friends who traveled separate paths after graduating in 2005 reunited on the set of “Something Remote,” an independent film written and directed by Alex Laferriere, from Dudley, and produced by Nick Allain of Charlton.

The feature-length film premiered Jan. 9 to an audience of about 200…

Read the rest here.