Squaresphere » Neon

Star Wars Jedi Guardian Build

Neon — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 17:10:55 +0000

Having been playing the game for a while now, I’ve cranked up to lv31. Thinking it might be time to respec my character to help with more damage, now that I’ve broken 7k hp.

Check it out, My New Build

City of Heroes Freedom

Neon — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:24:33 +0000

So now that City of Heroes Freedom is open and free to play, I’ve started a new character to take advantage of the fact that all the powersets, requirements and other bits and bobs have changed. Hell there’s even trees in Atlas Park!

I’ve decided on a Kinetic/Electric Defender this time around, figuring that the Endurance drain from the Electric will couple well with the enhanced recharge of Syphon Speed. It’s quite shocking that now you get a travel power at lv4, and you get all the fitness powers for free at lv2!

My character build is shaping up like this so far, nearly every power!

The battle for control of the mobile computing market rages on

Neon — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:02:51 +0000

I’m sure you’ve got a mobile phone; I’d be willing to be it’s a smartphone too. It’s one of the most popular modern day gadgets, ranked 13 in Stephen Fry’s Top 100 Greatest Gadgets. It’s in every pocket and the first thing people get out when they get together. With the depth of penetration of these mini ‘computer-in-your-pocket’ devices it’s no wonder that the big technology corporations are locked in a struggle to the death for control of the market.

The two key players in this scene are Apple and Samsung, who until recently were playing nicely and making money from each other quite happily. Apple’s recent spate of legal attacks on its competitors such as Google, HTC, Samsung and Nokia , to name a few of the many (estimated to be 46 as of March 2011) have sparked some support from Apples ever loyal fanbase, cries of outrage from those looking for open technology platforms and more importantly a raft of counter suits against them.

So why is Apple so keen to shut down the competition? Could it be they feel threatened by Android and Googles ever steady march on their market share? I think so. If you discount the iPod and iPad which are mobile, but aren’t phones, then Android accounts for 43% of the market. This is a skewed view I know, what with the boom in the tablet computing market, but the prevalence of smartphones over tablets, for me at least, gives this statistic weight. I think you’d be hard pushed to find a company who doesn’t want to be in everyone’s pocket, next to their wallet or purse no doubt.

With this realisation we arrive at the crux of the matter. If your competitor is putting its software on a device which people are buying, it’s going to be much easier to shut down the device than it would be to shut down the software. So this is where Apple is attacking, the soft underbelly of Google, its phone manufacturers. Thus the lawsuits against companies like Samsung and HTC, to tackle the manufacture of the device and thus blocking Google from being able to ship Android.

Samsung have recently announced that they are looking to block the sale of the iPhone 5 in South Korea and Europe, just as Apple have done with the Samsung Galaxy Tab in Europe. These pre-release lawsuits are part of Samsungs new stance against Apple’s continued aggressive protection of its technology. For me, as a fan of open technologies, I think this is all much of a muchness as they are all using the same base technologies in order to create the devices that the consumer wants to buy. Wouldn’t it be better to have an open standard for these technologies which could be shared amongst manufacturers and thus enable a collaborative enhancement of the technology rather than a childish playground antics we see at the moment? Well, yes, it would be marvellous but unfortunately the large technology companies spend millions of dollars developing these specific tweaks and features in order to try and edge out the competition and thus are not willing to share anything with anyone. If you thought you owned your phone, I’d be willing to be you’d be wrong. You’ve probably got a license to use the technology from the manufacturer.

So why is this hugely expensive and petty legal chess game now so popular? It’s certainly popular enough for companies to buy whole companies just for the patents. This summer saw Google lose out to a consortium of Apple, Microsoft, RIM, EMC, Ericsson and Sony for the company Nortel, and more importantly its portfolio of 6000 patents worth $4.5b, a little too rich for Google’s top bid of $4b. So you can see why Apple don’t have many or any, that I can find, lawsuits against its consortium buddies, and has thus focused its Sauron-esque gaze upon Google. Google’s time did come in August, when they announced the purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5b and with it a patent portfolio of 17,000 patents with which to battle its legal challenges.

Another team to consider is Microsoft and Nokia who brokered a deal in February to work collaboratively to drive the Microsoft mobile operating system forward with Nokia manufacturing the phones and Microsoft providing the software support. We’ve yet to see anything from this partnership other than a handful of Nokia Windows devices, and some information about Windows 8, and its tablet capabilities.

The speed at which this new mobile computing market is moving is truly staggering and it shows no signs of slowing down. It certainly seems that if you don’t already have the money to compete you’ll either get bought, shut down, or end up in court on patent infringement. Let’s hope the market does open up and we can see some unhindered innovation.

Written in memory of Palm WebOS.

Ref:

WeBuyAnyCat.com!

Neon — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:56:39 +0000

Although I have to admit, that he’s worth a lot more to me!

webuyanycat.com has valued my cat at £6.73.

Would you pay for something you’ve never used?

Neon — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:02:32 +0000

You know, I’m not sure I would. I didn’t buy my car before taking it out for a test drive, and I didn’t sign the contract on my flat without first taking a look around the place. So why are we now paying for computer games which we’ve not played? Sure you can look at the flashy trailers and advertising, but when you are selling interactive entertainment you’re selling an experience.
Something which has been a gripe of mine recently and also of Alec Meer at RockPaperShotgun.com is the demise of the game demo. What has happened to this tantalising taster of things to come? Where is the rush home to snag the demo on release day to play the next eagerly anticipated title? The answer I think is that there aren’t any. It’s gone. The day of the demo has passed. Granted, I’m exaggerating the issue here slightly for effect, but it’s can’t have escaped peoples notice that there is a distinct lack of game demos around before games are released these days.

So what has lead to this change in the way that computer games are marketed to consumers? Could it be the meteoric rise of the industry from its indie roots in ‘70s to an industry in modern society worth an estimated USD $105 billion worldwide. Personally I think so; being a gamer myself I can only feel that more and more companies want to make sure that they get a finger into that pie before they are left behind. I guess that’s capitalism for you.

The way that these companies are changing their business models means that as a consumer we are being sold on a dream, on a magical trailer, or a snippet of advertising about the game rather than the experience that we need to better judge it. Thus the pre-order was born, the saving golden thread of publishers everywhere, a way for them to generate revenue from the consumer without the consumer ever having played the game. Brilliant. No more agonising management of the backlash against poor marketing or design decisions such as the uproar caused by the Spore DRM, Bioshock DRM, or the catalogue of others.

So this golden bullet to the piracy issue, amongst others – the pre-order – means huge expenditure on marketing. Now all of a sudden consumers have to make a choice about a game based on the marketing, the adverts, the Facebook pages and the blog posts. This has spurred on huge investments in the marketing of computer games and why not with such potentially rich rewards to be had. I recently went to the cinema and was presented with trailers for two computer games alongside the regular movie trailers.
I would assume that most people have heard of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, but would it surprise you to know that these are both owned by the same company, Activision Blizzard, which in Q3 of 2011 has so far reported net revenue of USD $650 million. They have actually axed projects in order to focus on these popular franchises, in order to ensure that there is absolutely no milk left in the udders of that poor cash cow. Electronic Arts are also guilty of this, but I digress into darker waters. This investment in marketing and pre-orders has lead to the huge queues that are now popular at computer game release events. Yes, I just wrote ‘computer game release events’ – fanfares, celebrities, music and interviews with the first customer through the door – all things which are akin to the red carpet. It’s not hard to see how video game stores are eclipsing the movie theatre.

Although there are pitfalls with pre-orders, I recently placed a pre-order with Steam for Dungeon Siege 3, having been a huge fan of the last two instalments. I was excited and eagerly awaiting the release of the game, watching the counter on the Steam store page. Then disaster! Ironically, a demo of the game was released about a week before the official release date, I downloaded it and got playing. Oh dear, words cannot describe the horror. All of the core mechanics were gone, the visuals were dire, and the control method was just wrong. Needless to say the first thing I did was cancel my pre-order and get a refund. Phew! A close shave. Had there been no demo of the game then I would have just lost out on my £30, rather like I lost £18 on Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, which turned out to be diabolical, but I digress, again.

The example that I wanted to highlight was the launch of Aion, an MMORPG released by NCSoft in 2009. This game got a huge number of pre-orders, about 400k to be precise. Then launch day arrived and the game went live and that 400k people logged into the game to what turned out to be a queue, but not a queue like in the pub on a Thursday, but like a Post Office queue on car tax day. Waits of up to 5 hours were reported by gamers before they could even play the game, and that was after having downloaded the latest patch. To summarise, it was a disaster. Someone had completely underestimated the effectiveness of the marketing and sheer volume of players who would login. The result was anger amongst people who had already paid a pre-order for a game they could now no longer play. The game then started shedding players, hundreds and thousands of people left. Even now if you mention Aion to anyone who had a pre-order you’ll see their face drop or they’ll spout derisive comments about the game.

Will this model change any time soon? Personally I don’t think it will. With the current crop of CEO’s of major publishing companies still marketing to demographics which don’t exist with products which are subpar, we’ll be forever be stuck being bombarded with marketing to buy products which we know very little about and haven’t even played. It is my fond hope that companies recognise the USD $2 million made by the Humble Bundle team for their crop of indie games for which you can pay what you want and you then own them. Sounds simple? It is. No licenses, no DRM, install where you want as many times as you want, if it’s meeting customer demands to the tune of $2m then why not?

Dave

The Hip-Hop Omnicron

Neon — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:48:30 +0000

Okay, so I caved in and spent the last two hours finding and adding as many of my favourite hip-hop tracks as I could on Spotify into a single huge playlist, an omnicron if you will. A place of all things.

Please do check it out, and let me know what you think of if I’ve missed an iconic tune.

http://sharemyplaylists.com/the-hip-hop-omnicron

Going climbing tonight!

Neon — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 07:40:51 +0000

Today was a good day.

Neon — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:12:53 +0000

Car photography

Neon — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:33:04 +0000

Thought that as I had some time on my hands that I would take a few shots of my car to see if I could nail down a good HDR, and some nice angle shots.

Guild Wars Legendary Cartographer

Neon — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:19 +0000

So yeah man, I’ve cracked it. Big thanks to my guildies for offering help to get me there. Turns out there are two really big glitches, as there are in Tyria which net you quite a bit of extra map. I ended up asking a question on the most excellent Gaming Stackexchange which got a reply of checking the Wiki, which I had just not thought of doing! D’oh!

So after doing the few hacks listed in the wiki I cracked it with ease. So that’s got me my ‘Elonian Grandmaster Cartographer’ along with completing my ‘Legendary Cartographer’. Those two titles pushed my ‘Kind of a big deal’ title to 6 netting me the first title ‘Kind of a big deal’.

The real upshot of this fantastic moment is that it net’s me one Hall of Monuments point. Which is ace, hopefully I can see them on the site soon

Here is the glorious moment.

From Guild Wars