Strange Bundle

Notch, of Minecraft Fame, recently wrote a sober blog entry about the reality of digital piracy. In it he reminded us that piracy can act as a form of advertisement, either directly, when the person who took the software decides to support the copyright owner, or indirectly, when more honest people hear about the benefits of the software through the person that took it, and buy copies of their own. The full blog entry is here.

He also states that he would, of course, prefer people to buy his work and support it, because the more money he gets the more likely he will be able to develop more software, but at the same time, the reality of digital copying is such that direct copyright enforcement takes a lot of resources, more than a little company like his could handle.

A potential solution to this popped into my mind. I'll call it a Single Release Bidder Auction, for lack of a better term.

Let me know how it sounds:

The developer of a digital product says that on a certain date, they will release their product if they receive a significant amount of pre-orders. These pre-orders are held in state until the product is released, and is otherwise refunded should the release date not be met. The product is released when the developer decides it will be released, and they use a system similar to eBay to make it work.

In eBay, there is a minimum bid setting which allows the seller to wait until they get a bid that suits them. They can at any time pull the product from the market, even if this minimum bid is met, to their own detriment in reputation and sales. They also need not state the minimum bid amount, if I recall correctly, and this system could be used for my copyright protection idea, only instead of being an amount of money, it would be an amount of bidders.

This private or public number of bidders would be set by the developer, the sale would be announced, marketing would be up to the developer. They could market a lesser version first, to test the market's interest, using this version as a gateway to the full version which will then be announced. This version, whether or not given license to be copied, WILL be copied if it's an interesting product. In a way, this acts as a form of viral advertising, where it lives or dies by the interest of the consumers who got it, legitimately or not.

Should this be the only release though, the developer still has the ability to alter the required bidder number up or down, so that they can push for a higher amount of bidders before they finally release the product.

Once the product is released, that's it. People who missed out may complain, and that will give the developer a chance to set up another pre-order, should they feel enough interest is there. Since setting these pre-orders wouldn't cost anything more than the encrypted service involved in distributing the software, the only risks are in not marketing enough, or not producing an interesting enough product in the first place.

Thus you will have a situation where you refuse to release a product that won't give you enough of a profit. The distribution model can then be changed, including allowing piecemeal purchases, should you want.

The logic behind all of this is to get as many people who want the product on board at once to help the creator to get the money they deserve and the incentive to make more games. If too many people assume they will pirate or legally copy the product and the product is not released, they might rethink their position should the product not be released.

The weaknesses I see in my idea are:

It is heavily dependent upon marketing, whatever form of marketing is used. The consumer community has to know about the benefits of the product and the quality of the developer's work beforehand. This likely has to be done through reputation-enhancing free products showing how well the developer performs, having a strong social network presence, and using digital media outlets to help get the word out.

A related issue is the natural human tendency to want to see the product in action before the decision is made to buy. In traditional piecemeal purchases, some of the more impulsive or faithful buyers will have the product first, and be able to give their evaluation of it. Reviewers, too, will often be given free copies to play and reflect upon. The latter need not be curtailed, though the potential for pirated copies is still there. There may be some apprehension against the product's developer, that they may be trying to release a poor-quality product without the chance for a proper review. Other than review copies, which the developer must guarantee is reasonably the same as the release copy, there could be tiers of releases, allowing those who are willing to pay the chance to use an earlier version of the product, with later products being promised.

The date of release has to be simultaneous, probably by emailing purchasers a key which they can use to get access to a download center. Bandwidth issues aside, this means that getting a pre-order in before the date is paramount. The developer must position the date in a reasonable, memorable way in order to get the maximum amount of response.

Finally, there's always the potential that the developer will under-shoot their product's popularity, with many people copying the original and using it after the initial release. Part of the remedy to this is by still offering a piecemeal sales program AFTER the initial pre-order release date, to help scoop up those folks who will pay for the product. The other is to enhance the current product and release it in a future Single Release Bidder Auction.

Naturally, I welcome any feedback on this idea.

Google Scribe of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research for more news and information about the company or individual to complete your purchase within the law and the exemption for fair use of copyright material in the manner specified by the author or licensor of the software and hardware is required for the formation of the first and second ends of the earth and the sun is shining and the sky is completly gray and white mat Glazed wit a mission to find the best deals and bargains anywhere from Australian online stores that deliver to Sydney and Regional New South Wales Government Site of Broome County Office Building Auditorium beginning at 7 p.m. at the funeral home to verify time and location of the property of the respective owners of the domain name you entered is not in the same way as the first step to doing all this and more on Facebook in the album named after the famous TV show in the next few years ago...



OK, I had to give up at this point. Note that it misspelled "completely." Just went to Google Scribe, wrote ["This tool is absurd. ] Google Scribe["], then let it autocomplete the rest with the first suggestion it gave me. May have made a mistake or two in there, because I was too busy laughing to pay full attention after a while.

I love how it gets poetic there for a bit with its talk of sun and sky, before sinking back into business gibberish.

Forgotten Bookmarks is an excellent found-object website specializing in strange artifacts found nestled in old books procured by used bookstore in New York. Recently they asked if there were any contributors willing to put a story to one of these objects for a new feature. I responded, and my story was the first to be shown. Read it here:

http://www.forgottenbookmarks.com/2010/07/as-ever.html

In Othernews, I've discovered Crowdspring, a home for freelancers. Hoping to make that my byline link in the future. Here's my bare-bones page so far:

http://www.crowdspring.com/user/Strange_Bundle/

People who are bothered by the revelations in behavioral science seem to think it's a war against the ideals they believe in. If we choose not to ignore the influx of knowledge that science gives us, while still being as skeptical as science demands, we find that the sacred can easily be cast down into the dirt as anachronistic.

Yet science is very unskilled at providing the big picture, as much as we want it to guide us in everything. We've been trying to come up with big pictures since we tried much of anything, and while some theories have fallen away, it's no use assuming they all will. Take love, for example.

Behavioral studies suggest that we may have developed our behaviors, from as simple as hugging to as complex as mating rituals, to help solidify our relationships, especially with the person that will help us propagate. We make families, or at least mate, to strengthen our bond and make more people similar to us, whom we identify with and ideally want to protect and foster growth in.

It all sounds pretty dry, but these are the roots. If you're holding someone you love, that's the sum of it, the entire rosebush, with its pleasantness, hope, warmth, and time-stands-still-against-decay feelings that do not go away just because discoveries tell us WHY these feelings are there.

You don't trim all the roses off a rosebush, or plow it into the ground, just because it doesn't look right. You trim off the edges that don't fit anymore, sure, but the entire structure --our concepts of love and companionship if you like-- are only diminished if we MAKE them diminished.

Love is the sum of our genetics, instincts, beliefs, and cultural influences. While we may find some day that it has mundane roots, we have to remember that everything comes from small, simpler components. Knowing about atoms, for example, doesn't ruin our enjoyment of an ice cream sandwich or a mountain vista. To me it only can enhance beauty if you know that, from plain beginnings, so much complexity and diversity can emerge.

Roger Ebert's latest post here. My personal response, below:


I don't think I've read anyone else who writes on the web who has been any more gracious than you have, or generous with the variety of topics you've raised, projected more earnestness when discussing them. This post is just another example and I'm really glad I followed you here back when you started this blog.

I took the position in this debate, at least internally, that it difficult to defend your supposition as an all-time truth, and here you come right out and say it, yourself.

To me there's malleability in any artform. I find myself reacting differently to books I'd read before-- that I choose, in a sense, to feel about a passage differently, or my life had driven me to different conclusions based on the path I had lead. Some of the fine art I've enjoyed the most has been when the artist has included hidden, little things that someone just walking by would never have noticed. Like Icarus plummeting to Earth in the far background in Renaissance paintings, or a local artist placing at the center of a great paper cylinder the image of a person staring back up at you, but you only notice him if you take the time to actually look straight down into the sculpture.

So to me a work that tries for inevitable conclusion is only one type of art, even though many games are criticized for being too "linear," that is, driving the player in a single direction. Yet games with great stories wind up emulating the fields of human expression that preceded them, especially movies.

I'm gratified that you've played Chronicles of Kyoto, and glad you enjoyed it. I'd say that a lot of the older games tended to have a much greater potential for the sorts of revelations in Kyoto because they were still experimenting with how to tell stories and how to interact with the player.

Now, there are many patterns that games often fall into to be salable, and much of what's popular out there is based on testing one's dexterity. Shadow of the Colossus, for all its beauty and its crushing emotional content, getting far in SoC has a lot to do with how dexterous the player is.

Movie-going has an advantage in this sense, that the requirements for entry are much lower than they are for most games, but you are still rewarded for bringing insight and interest in a way many games do not. Familiarity with the language of cinema enriches a movie-going experience, but familiarity with the language of gaming, and the conventions of using controls, are the difference between experiencing the game and being completely left behind.

I guess that's why, when I wrote a personal letter to you many years ago (as apparently many did) suggesting games, I picked things that didn't require understanding of these admittedly niche gaming conventions, like Adam Cadre's short work Phototopia, a text-based game that, despite what games are famous for, leads you toward a conclusion. Perhaps it wouldn't even qualify as a game for some people (some suggest the term Interactive Entertainment for things like this, but to me most entertainment is somehow interactive for the viewer).

Another I discovered later, and would have recommended to you had it existed at the time, would have been Sam Barlow's Aisle, which is sort of the conceptual antithesis of Photopia, encouraging experimentation and showing all the potential of a moment.

Jason Rohrer's Passage, though it requires movement and a certain understanding of the language of video games, combines exploration with inevitability in a beautiful and painful way.

Brenda Brathwaite's Train isn't even electronic, but its involvement of the players in its mechanisms has peers.

All of these games are engaging, but don't require one to have the strange dexterity that many gamers take for granted. The fiddly control demands of many games bar a lot of people from getting very far without spending a long time studying how to do it and training their muscles and nerves to respond in new ways.

Many of us, including myself, have been playing games since we were barely able to talk. It's hard for many of us to imagine having any trouble with this sign language of sorts, but when Shadow of the Colossus is not merely presented as an example of the wonder that video games can cause, but also as an entryway for those who admit they haven't played many games, I think people seriously need to analyze what message they're trying to convey.

(Personally, I never played the game, but instead watched Shadow of the Colossus be played by someone else, in its entirety, and I feel it lost very little impact from it being watched instead of played. It wasn't so much a movie, then, as it was performance art. That often is what games seem to approach, in a sense, if you've ever seen videos online of people proud of their ability to run through an entire game without their character being hurt. It still requires, though, a level of understanding of the language of games to know what's going on, unlike watching dancers or hearing a symphony perform).

To be honest, despite the passions these sorts of debates raise in me, I'm saddened to read the exhaustion in your words, and hope that this experience hasn't been too overwhelming. I'd rather hear you give an opinion I didn't agree with than to see you give up.

The part of this tumult you saw was a wave of comments portraying users' love of the medium, but what you didn't see, what I've had a glimpse of, is that you also inspired many people to meet the challenge your statements with actual works made specifically to address the concerns you and others bring up about games. In having inspired many people in this industry to re-assess their work and to make it grow beyond the boundaries of the acceptable, you may have given the next generation of designers a huge boon.

Perhaps the medium doesn't yet truly reach that goal, but I believe it might some day. Whether or not it does, it's discussions like these that help keep people testing their theories and moving forward toward greater understanding of their own medium and of art as a whole. I hope this provides you with some measure of satisfaction.

Thank you.

I was reminded recently of the latest string of boycotts that had rippled through video game consumers in reaction to video game producers doing questionable things or allying themselves with questionable people. Folks decided not to buy Shadow Complex because the author behind the multimedia push for that game is an demagogue, others didn't like that Modern Warfare 2 was breaking precedent by going with a specific, dedicated server system rather than allowing users to create their own hubs, others regarded a sequel of the zombie shooter Left 4 Dead came too early and was heralding the end of promised support for a game that had only been around a year, and the recent revelations about poor working conditions for the team behind the upcoming Western game Red Dead Redemption had some ready to withhold their bucks for that already beleaguered game.

A lot of this may seem like gibberish to the uninitiated, but I guess the point isn't so much that this is about video games, I just happened to be paying attention that, but about the idea of the boycott in general.

A lot of people get irritated at the very idea, as if these people were otherwise required to buy these products. I'm betting a significant proportion of boycotters were already looking for an excuse not to buy, and this just clinched it, while people who were buying it anyway, or had already pre-ordered it, were prepared with justifications even if they agreed with the reasons behind a given boycott. That's human nature.

What I don't like is that we assume that the boycott in itself is wrong, or that boycotting for a certain reason is wrong, as if we have a moral imperative to buy things. We don't. Money is ours to do with as we like, at least according to some capitalism theory. In a sense, money is the new vote, because if you support a product or service, it's much more likely to flourish. I would say that even if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, when you boycott you are sending a signal to the producers of that product that they've lost your dollar. This is something that companies listen to far better than flaming some poor customer service rep. with an all-caps email.

There are a bunch of different triggers for boycotts, too, and while I don't believe in moral equivalency, I do think some have better founding than others. I won't say, though, that because some reasons are better than others that the poor reasons are somehow invalid just because they're weak. They're invalid if they're invalid.

Case by case:

1. The author behind the book that is part of the multimedia push for Shadow Complex is outspoken in his condemnation of the tolerance of a certain minority group. The people who actually made the game, for the most part, are silent about the controversy and their own views on the subject. The target of a boycott here is indirect, and since the game is generally regarded as a success, there are going to be a lot of people who will buy the game despite the controversy, ignorant of it, or even buying it because of the controversy (although that last one's a bit silly).

If you withhold the dollars you were going to spend, you reduce the developer's gross revenue, an undisclosed part of that going to the author, maybe, for licensing or whatever.

If you buy it, you support that company, whose game does not, as far as I know, profess any of the opinions the author has stated, either personally or in connection to the fiction he has written in conjunction with the game.

A better target might be not buying his books, since that's the author himself, but you have a right to spend your money how you like (within reason, of course), and no one is ordering you to buy the game, critically acclaimed or not.

2. The creators Modern Warfare 2, in a bid to increase reliability and decrease cheating, is chopping off what is apparently a small industry in private server hosting. They also have been fairly obvious in their attempts to grab headlines, not that they needed it. Modern Warfare 2 has been a huge hit, despite boycotts for both reasons.

If you withhold the dollars you were going to spend, you won't make enough of a dent to bring them down, whether you're targeting their server policy or their tasteless publicity grabs.

If you buy it, you support the ad policy (unfortunately ads are always a bit blurry when it comes to their affect on consumer behavior) as well as their choice for server setups. You also get what is, by many accounts, a good FPS with tons of players to play against.

A better target might be building up an competitor FPS. The more competition the game series has, the more they're going to have to woo you the next time around. Again, you have the right to spend your money how you want, and submitting to the bullying on either side of this strangely animated debate just shows you should spend more time realizing how powerful that 60 dollars could be in other contexts.

3. Left 4 Dead 2, the partnership-focused zombie shooter came only a year after its predecessor from Valve, a company notorious for taking a long time crafting its games. This quick turnaround alone had many people protesting, people who wanted Valve to continue its long-running Half Life franchise instead. Others didn't like the idea that the first Left 4 Dead was barely out of the gates, and that this new release promised to overshadow the old so quickly that the content that was promised as part of the original would be ignored in a drive to support its sequel.

If you withhold the dollars you were going to spend, the company that was willing to up its production cycle to meet the high demand for its game will have to scale back its speed. Maybe they'll get your message about not supporting Half Life, or maybe not. Likewise, they may not get the message that they're not supporting the first game. They may even think that the reason sales weren't as good as expected was because it was a bit too soon for another zombie game, no matter how good (please, god, let this be the reason).

If you buy it, they may very well skip over the old game if it succeeds well, or they may even have enough money to justify creating a new branch dedicated to concentrating on legacy properties while having others focused on the new stuff. Wild success sometimes, but not always, breeds enthusiasm on the part of the developers.

A better strategy might be how you deal with Valve from now on. If it turns out to be true that they don't plan on updating the original game, that they really are abandoning it for the sake of the new kid, you have pretty good grounds to tell them to fuck off. But remember that the cool stuff, the Half Lifes and the Portals in Valve, may get hit alongside the Left 4 Dead franchise.

4. Read Dead Revolver, the upcoming open-world Western shooter was revealed to have some taskmasters you'd expect from a stereotyped report on the conditions a salariman has to deal with. False production goals, mandatory overtime, and other questionable decisions. Some have suggested boycotting the game to send a message to the management that their poor treatment of their workers shouldn't be tolerated.

If you withhold the dollars you were going to spend, all the work those poor assholes DID put into the game will be ignored in a genre game that already won't appeal to a lot of people. Even their particular branch of Rockstar seems to have projected poor returns on a game that has already overrun the budget. The managers are much less likely to suffer than the workers, too, by a lack in revenue, unless someone more benevolent than its current head makes some serious changes.

If you buy it, you may be getting a revolutionary game that blows away open-world conventions, and your money MAY be perceived as exactly what the potential boycotters feared: a justification for their behavior. Although let's be honest for a second: the software world has very often been shit as far as overwork and unsung efforts. This goes all the way back to Atari's beginnings, and helped bring about the smaller developers that have managed to crush bigger companies, whether or not the bigger companies were nicer than their predecessors.

A better target might be this same group of people if they don't make a public attempt to change their policies, because getting those poor blokes their money on a project that even the bosses don't think will break even is the least you can do. Beyond that, boycott them if you don't like what they're doing.

--

I think boycotting is great, even if there was a bit of sarcasm in some of the above, because it's better than what I've seen a lot of in the past. People threatening to kill the developers of Heroes of Might and Magic because they tried to inject some science fiction into their strategy game (even though M&M was built on that sort of thing) need to be institutionalized if they're serious, and need to seriously rethink their sense of entitlement regardless.

This isn't the state making these games; these are companies. We don't pay taxes to them, we voluntarily give them money so they can entertain us. If we don't like what they're doing, no matter how dumb our reasons are, we speak clearest when we spend or money elsewhere (or save it-- that's something people keep forgetting to do). If we expect them to entertain us before we've paid, and get angry when they don't obey our wishes, in this age of comment boards we can voice our complaints and hope they hear us, but if we're bitches about it, if we threaten them, we'll get nowhere in the long run, even if they capitulate to our demands.

Because this is entertainment. The amount of energy we spent on trying to Save Farscape or spend voting in the next American Idol was spent on shit that mattered COULD go elsewhere, but it doesn't. Entertainment is obviously very important to us as a species. We need it. But it's still just entertainment, and in a way should be afforded the leeway that qualifier suggests.

We should also remember to afford boycotters that same respect. If they're being civil then they're doing the minimum that entertainment protesting deserves, no matter how dumb the reasons are. The debates are better when people point out where the flaws are, but beyond that, it's up to them to spend their money, and you most likely will NEVER KNOW what these internet people actually do. Just don't make the mistake in assuming anyone has to buy any damn thing. Again, this is entertainment. We're throwing bucks at these people so they'll dance for us, not making the world a better place. So if people want to hold off, for whatever reason, it's not the end of the damned world.

Ultimately, though, remember that companies, like individuals, also have a right to do pretty much what they want with the money they earn from their games. Don't pretend they're going to build an orphanage with parts of the proceeds, or support other games in their franchises, or get the message about their dumb ads or their petulant co-designers if you withhold the dough. Even if it is a vote, it's just about as mute as a political vote can be.

As in, explanation; I have no regrets.

Getting started on the Tromsø International Film Festival a bit late this year. Saw two movies today, the first of which is already up for you to read about.

Roads were slick in town, and the people a bit antsy, but the lines were by far some of the best I've seen. Maybe I've just been lucky because it's a weekday.

If you're curious about it, go to TIFF.NO for more information!

Reading Alastair Reynolds' blog, I saw the section for appearances. Since I admire his work, my imagination immediately thought "oh, what if I could make it all the way to Helsinki for his appearance there, and show up and..." What, exactly? What would I do? I've read 1 and a half of his books, and although I like them a lot, what would I say? How would I connect with the guy?

Truth is, I couldn't. And it feels like the closer in physical space I could get to the man, the further away I'd be. For all my lamenting digital journalism combining with everyone's sense of entitlement to form the requisite comments section, I find myself glad that in some way it seems that creators are more accessible than they used to be. I feel like I could probably make better contact with the man through email than I could in person, and I've actually contacted people I've admired for decades through electronic means, Gary Gygax, Bob Pepper, and Roger Ebert among them.

But, again, how much of a connection do I make? It tends to feel incomplete to me, and it's a blip in the day of the person I'm contacting, so it feels a bit weird to even do it. Maybe some of this feeling of weirdness comes from one of my first author signings. Through a coup (which was a story in itself), a former girlfriend and I managed to slip into the Ritz Carlton in Montreal for a book signing by post-modern Canadian author Timothy Findley. I'd read The Wars and all during my reading of it, I came up with all sorts of questions I wanted to ask the guy. But standing in front of him, all I could muster was what must have sounded like a caveman speaking, something like "Me think you write good."

Worthless. At least my girlfriend managed to say something more sensible.

Some years later in my hometown, after that girlfriend was in my past, independent comics writer Harvey Pekar showed up to promote some new releases. I listened to his speech, and was really happy to see him in person. This time I managed to ask a few well-formed questions, including asking why he wasn't updating his movie-related blog anymore (answer: if they started paying him to update it again, he would). I had already bought one of the books he was promoting, so instead I asked him to sign my journal. I don't think he was too happy with that.

Both he and Findley years before gave me a similar look, or at least my memory plays it out that way. A sort of rolling of the eyes to look up at me, as if I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't really, and I still don't get what the ritual is supposed to be. I don't understand the protocol, I suppose.

They're there to promote their books, and maybe gauge reactions on things they're writing. We're there to get closer to a dude or dudette who is otherwise a disembodied collection of thoughts on paper. Who are we to them, really? Who are they, really, to us?

Not too many years ago I managed to brave another signing, this time of comic book artist and writer Lise Myhre, creator of Nemi. I learned a bit about her past, and managed to get her book signed for my wife. I guess my timidity had increased by then, probably because my wife was standing next to me as I got it signed.

It felt easier than it had been before, and I think part of it was because I wasn't a huge fan of her work. I was doing it for someone else, so all the pressure of getting to the top of the mountain and asking the guru three questions wasn't there. I got what I wanted, a specialized gift for my wife (who, yes, was standing right there), and Myhre got what she wanted, another book sale. Commerce, and all that.

I was better at the protocol, but it felt like a cold, cynical exchange. Not much of an alternative to the prior encounters' embarrassment or awkwardness.

I imagine there are people who get a great thrill seeing someone they admire in person, and maybe there are few writers, at least early in a tour, who enjoy the admiration. I can't help but think, though, that this is the exception, that most writers trudge through it, and most fans feel disappointment.

I guess the perfect moment of interaction, the one that really mattered, happened a long time ago, when the writer was long done with the work that the reader is now reading. To the reader it feels like a connection in that moment, but the author is unaware, and by the time the reader can put the feeling into words, the spark has already faded a bit. They cup their hands around the spark, blowing on it, sheltering it long enough to keep it burning so they can show it to the author some day, late at night in an over-lit bookstore, one person in a line of hundreds, each of them eager to finally say hello.

When growing up, I was given the impression that figuring out a math problem meant that you understood how the machinery of an equation worked. Once you understood the machinery you could apply it anywhere and its results were always true for the given number set. I was given the impression that charting things out and figuring out the problem by hand meant that you didn't understand the nature of the problem, and thus you were doing it wrong.

When trying to work out the probabilities for the combination of two dice, I lacked the equation. I searched in vain for the proper expression which would allow me to simply plug in numbers and make the dice combinations make sense as I wanted them to.

What was I supposed to do, then, lacking as I did the proper terms that would allow a web search to give me the tools I needed? Should I have begged a math expert for help? Is that what we're supposed to do if we don't understand, if we weren't of the mindset to absorb things in math class back when we had the chance (assuming they even talked about the thing you want to solve)?

I decided to chart it out. I made lines, made a simple, mundane matrix, and plotted the thing out by hand. The results were finite, so it wasn't like I was trying to solve for all dice, just the two I was interested in. It took time, and I made many mistakes, but as I made mistakes I began to understand the NATURE of the problem. Every time I checked and rechecked, looking for the patterns that I knew would pop up in such a regular system, I felt like I was feeling around in a darkened room and learning its dimensions. As I spent time, on the ground, feeling my way through the problem I came to have a SENSE for the problem.

By the time I was finished I had a nice graph that listed all the results for the dice as I wanted them displayed. It was way more work than what an equation would have given me, but without that crucial step I HAD to do something to solve the problem. And I did. I just dove in and I did it.

Some of us don't have the mindset to learn math the way it is commonly taught. Some of us need to know why, and some of us need to see the machinery inside, to feel our way around to understand it like we would when studying anything. Rather than being handed down the tools and just memorizing them, we feel the need to get our hands dirty, and if we're ready for it, if we're not told that what we're doing is wrong, we learn best when we make mistakes. Mistake is another way to say the overstepping of a boundary. We need to break the machine in order to fix it, to tear it apart to understand how it's assembled.

I now understand the ins and outs of this probability matrix, and I think I can slowly expand it to encompass number ranges and amounts of any size. This is how the first mathematicians figured things out, before there was Algebra and before other techniques that made mathematics accessible to others. In a sense, that same curiosity is now adrift, cut off by the professed need for rote repetition.

I like to hope that some day there will be at least two ways to learn math, and that they will be held with equal esteem. There are many of us out there who love to solve problems, but find being handed a list of tools to memorize to be incompatible with our thinking. We are not incapable of solving the problems; we are just incapable of speaking that particular language.

Just like we don't expect someone who grew up speaking English to understand Chinese right away, we need to provide those with a different mindset the chance to bridge the gap. Not only will we be helping expand math competence across the board, but we may well also be introducing the field of mathematics to an entire outlook that may help cause an explosion of new thought and explorations into the field.

All you have to do is have the patience to give those of us who are not wired to repeat by rote the chance to catch up.

Just posted the below as a response to an interesting essay about the demographics of game players and the state of the entertainment media industries.

Depending on who you’d talk to (yes, I play games, though I think I’m below the average demographic on all three of those data points), gaming has already achieved some measure of “renaissance.” I know Bob’s not big on games but it seems like he’s addressing the design side of the industry as it has been for a few years now.

Independent titles seem to be making more headway into mainstream markets with digital downloads allowing game makers to sidestep production cycles and add to existing games, sometimes greatly improving the value of a single game purchase. Games like Fallout 3 seem to lead the way in digitally-downloaded add-ons in this regard, although I don’t know how tenable it can be for less dedicated game makers who don’t have the staff to spare.

What’s remarkable, though, is that the design philosophies seem to be more and more risky. You see much more adventurous ideas than you would ever have imagined happening during the last generation of consoles, and they are being noticed by game media and users alike. This doesn’t translate into higher sales given the numbers Bob quotes, but when you combine the nearly palpable increase in excitement over the design choices behind some games, combined with the market penetration that the Wii has managed, video games stand to see a real upsurge both in quality and in sales.

But the tentative first steps that the game design houses and smaller developers have already taken are what will help fuel this. They’ve been targeting this hidden demographic in small ways; and as the success of certain adventurous titles, the notoriously skittish producers that survive the economic downturn may continue to reward developers who make waves through novel design. Christmas sales are purposefully being dispersed this year by a lot of developers afraid of the next slew of big releases, by the way, so don’t look at the classic holiday sales numbers for the signs of video game industry recovery. 2010 will be the make-or-break year for many.

The renaissance part isn’t news; it helps to be familiar with how things have changed in this short span of time. That, or maybe your definition is different than mine.

What, Bob, do you think would qualify as a true gaming renaissance for you? I thought you didn’t care for games at all :)