Social Networking and Silliness

Very Silly Games is kind of picking up speed, and you can buy my book in the UK and in the US (although Amazon UK seem to have sold out).

So when Craig suggested that I set up a Facebook group for Very Silly Games I thought I'd have a go. Not being a particularly sociable person, I'm not sure how this social networking actually works, but if it gets people writing silly games then I'm all for it.

If you want to be socially silly with XNA, you can sign up here. You stil have a chance to win a copy of the book with your best Gamepad racer video.

Having a Ripping Time

When I was abroad I picked up a pair of Ultimate Ears headphones which sound amazing. Andy put me on to them, and he was dead right about how good they are. Whilst they don't have a huge amount of bass they produce the clearest sound I've ever heard. I'm actually listening to tracks and hearing instruments that I've not noticed before.  They are a bit pricey, but I do listen to music via headphones rather a lot, and so I reckon they were worth it. Unfortunately they also show up shortcomings in badly recorded or highly compressed music, and so I'm now having to get better copies of all my tunes. I'm putting them onto my new Zune, which has a nice big 80Gb disk and puts out really nice quality.

I really hope that Microsoft bring out the Zune in the UK. I'd love to be able to use their music service as well.

Only 5% Evil

One of the sessions at GDC last week (it seems ages ago) was given by Peter Molyneaux, who is a fascinating character with a great gaming history, being pretty much the creator of the "God" game genre. He was at GDC to talk about Fable 2 which looks really good. Sort of like Oblivion but more so. And you get a dog. And your friends can join you on quests.

At one point he mentioned that the best games force you to make choices and then live with the consequences of your decisions. In Fable 2 the nastier you are the nastier you appear in the game. Which seems a bit unfair on ugly people who are actually nice folks, but there you go. Perhaps I am over simplifying again.

Anyhoo, in the course of the discussion he mentioned that according to research, only around 5% of players choose to take "the dark side" in games like this. Most players prefer to reach their goals using wholesome means. Peter saw this as something of a wasted opportunity for gamers, in that the game maker still has to create all the scenarios and dialogue for the naughty actions and so you are not playing the game to the full until you have experienced it as a villain.

I saw this as quite a hopeful sign, in that, perhaps humanity has a natural tendency to be nice when given the choice. Or perhaps it only applies to video game players (or at least 19 out of 20 of them).

How to Cheer Yourself Up

What do you do if you have had a rotten day, where pretty much nothing has gone right?

You give two lectures in quick succession at the end of the afternoon, to the .NET Post-Grads about class design and the First Year "Friday Afternoon Club" about inheritance in C#. Wonderful stuff. Special mention to the First Years, who were great fun and quite mad. I think teaching someone something is a great way to cheer yourself up.  And Tom had a copy of my book to show me, first time I've ever actually seen one. Perfect. I'm going home for Fish and Chips now.

Good News, Bad News, Worse News

Oh well, best laid plans and all that.

The good news is that my book is now available from Amazon.com. The bad news is that it has already attracted two unfavourable reviews. The worse news is that nobody has actually read it yet.

The problems started when it was decided to not include CD-ROMS with the book itself. This is actually quite sensible in a way. Since you need a network connection to actually use XNA on an Xbox 360 it seemed reasonable to drop the content and make it available on-line. And at least that way we could ensure that the content was up to date.

But not before the Amazon blurb (and Barnes and Noble too) had gone out with the promise of shiny disks. Not surprisingly the early adopters (the ones whose opinions are most important) have heartily slammed the book for not delivering on the promise. I can understand where they are coming from too. If I'd bought something which was mis-described like this I'd be angry too.

I think this is really a failure of process. Microsoft Press and Amazon (et all) should have a proper mechanism whereby when the description of an item changes all the existing purchasers of the item are informed of the change and given the option to back out of the purchase. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to have been caught like this. But it still hurts.