Chaotek Thoughts

I just wanted to give a shout out to Josh Clayton at Spiffy Life for an easy to use utility which saved me time and effort. I needed to look inside some “encrypted” content in a theme for a friend’s site because the theme was behaving poorly and this page made it very easy. Thanks a lot!

By the way, sure it was mildly difficult to get the data decrypted, but what was the point. You want to protect a couple spam links on the bottom of the theme to “pay for the theme.” For one, it wasn’t really tough to break, and two its part of the license of using the free theme. If you really wanted cash, you’d spend more effort on finding people who broke your license than trying to maintain some spam links.

China bans any mention of Tiananmen Square, shutting down access to journalists and a huge swath of the Internet on the anniversary of the massacre.

I think that corporations and governments are too concerned with offending China to stand up and do the right thing. Either they need Chinese products, consumers, investments, etc. there just seems to be too much catering to what amounts to an Evil Empire. Tyranny should always be opposed, and while those within China may not have the ability to do so, the rest of the world does and should.

In Popular Mechanics there is an article debunking claims that UFOs are seen in released NASA Shuttle videos. The comments on the article are great, because there are so many comments that NASA and the US Government are trying to cover up obvious alien spaceships caught on tape. That makes a lot of sense, since you’re seeing the UFOs (actually ice and other space debris) on NASA’s video–if they were trying to hide something, why give out the proof?

Here’s the thing that the UFO true-believers don’t understand: real UFO’s would be awesome. These UFO believers who claim that the skeptics and scientists don’t want to believe are just wrong, I think that skeptics and scientists would be super excited to find alien life (even if it’s just bacteria). Sure, the government might be afraid of alien life becoming public. But if the government’s grand conspiracy were so powerful and omnipotent, why would they be stupid enough to release the “key evidence” over, and over, and over in NASA videos.

The people who really don’t want proof of alien life are the religious true-believers, as it would fly in the face of every doctrine that says that man is a special and unique creation. Virtually any real scientist or skeptic would be excited to find proof of extraterrestrial life. But also it would prove a basic rule of science–we’re not special. Life is a natural process, and finding life, not-of-Earth, would prove that.

I was reading an article about a male advocacy student group that formed at the University of Chicago. What struck me was how hypocritical some of the opponents of the group were. For example, a woman who heads a group called “Women in Business” explained how she didn’t understand why there needed to be a male based business student group because there were 5-6 gender-neutral business student groups. Read that again, slowly (I’ll wait)… There are plenty of other commentators who oppose the formation of the group, but this comment was perhaps the most ironic seeing as how the speaker is the president of a gender-specific business student group. The article also notes that there are 9 female advocacy support groups, and this would be the first.

Sure, the president of “Men in Power” explained why a male-targeted group should be allowed, but why should he have to. It’s kind of like how its okay to form women-only gyms, banks, social clubs, etc; but it’s evil to do the same thing for men? Maybe I suffer from the male perspective, but I thought I understood that the goal these types of groups was equal rights…

I don’t know why it is, but it seems like all small-town people hate the source of their existence. What I mean is that small town locals seem to be bitter or angry towards the people or things that without which the town would likely dry-up. An example is a tourist town, where the locals complain about the tourists in front of tourists. … or a college town where the locals seem to hate the college students. … or a factory town where everyone complains about the primary employer. … or the suburb which complains about the city where all of the suburban-ites work. … or a military base town where the locals complain about the soldiers stationed there.

Now this isn’t to say that this is a universal sentiment, as those in the service and retail industries tend to be very polite and professional as their occupations require as much. However it’s the locals generally caught outside of work, who seem to be exceptionally bitter towards the source of income for the town.

I just don’t notice this same effect in larger cities. In fact quite the opposite, large cities seem to take more pride in their local attractions. For example local sports teams, even when they are quite bad, enjoy a great deal of local support. Major businesses are more catered to, as are destination locations like theme parks. Sure, there is always going to be a person who doesn’t like the local major employer or attraction, however it doesn’t come across to me as a majority opinion. When you compare large cities with small towns, you would expect the ratio of vocal ungrateful people to grateful people to be roughly the same, but I don’t get the same impression as an outsider in large cities like I do in small towns.

It has been reported in the last month that Macs have been attacked with a Trojan virus from pirated software. From what I understand is that the virus intends to create a Mac-based botnet for denial of service and other zombie style attacks. It’s notable that this isn’t the first Mac virus or botnet, just perhaps the first popularized one.

I don’t think it’s a good thing that a virus is getting out there. But I am pleased that the self-righteous Mac people might be taken down a few levels. It has been proven that Mac people are snobs. There is an unending arrogance that radiates from the Mac community that Macs are inherently more secure and generally better, or that Mac users are more sophisticated than other computer users.

At the end of the day, Macs are just as secure as PCs. It’s just that it’s not worth the time to write malicious code against these systems. If you’re going to do the work, I’d think you want the most bang for your buck and PCs dominate the market. Finally, the irony that the virus came from pirated software is so precious that I giggle at the thought of Mac snobs looking down their noses at the rest of us from behind their cloud of smug. It’s not that I don’t like Macs–I just don’t like Mac users.

The Supreme Court just banned the death penalty for child rape cases, on a 5 to 4 vote. I can’t disagree more with this decision. Perhaps the questionable circumstances of this case had some influence, as I admit that the victim’s testimony in this case is questionable as it took 20 months for the victim to identify the convict even though he was arrested within weeks of the event. However I don’t think that this should remove the possibility of the death penalty entirely. In fact, I would support expanding the death penalty to more non-homicide crimes.

For example, bank robbery has historically had a very steep penalty compared to similar robbery charges because in the past robbing a bank could destroy the lives of thousands. Since banks are insured by the Federal bank, this isn’t the case anymore, but the punishment is just as severe. I would go as far as to say that others who ruin many lives or destroy the life of someone without killing them should be eligible for execution. Consider cases in Africa where a man throws battery acid on the face of a woman, or in Europe where a person was held as a sex slave for years. These sound like cases where a person’s life is ruined even if they are still alive. Or consider a case where the attempted murder resulted in paralysis, blindness, or even severe emotional damage. In some ways, isn’t that a fate worse than death?

Considering the circumstances, I think I would not have supported the death penalty in this case, and perhaps even would have voted not-guilty if I was on the jury since the eye witness testimony allows for some doubt. I don’t like the death penalty in cases where the only evidence is eyewitness testimony, especially that of a child, given how unreliable it is. However that shouldn’t destroy the ability to sentence the death penalty in non-homicide cases.

I’m in San Francisco on business and I found out that at the base of the building I am at, was going the end point of the Torch Relay. Great, I thought–something cool to do at lunch. So we took a late lunch and the group headed down to the Embarcadero right in front of the Ferry Building. There were pro-Tibet protestors, pro-China supporters, anarchists, and general spectators like myself. It was actually pretty entertaining. The anarchists were funny, all dressed in black with bandanas covering their faces. Some were quite prepared, even wetting the bandanas in preparation for tear gas. They shouted a lot about the corrupt military industrial complex, evils of McDonalds, faked moon landings, and the war on terror/Iraq–all with little conviction or education The pro-Tibet protestors generally seemed to fall into two categories: peaceful demonstrators and complete idiots. The peaceful demonstrators, especially Team Tibet, were very organized and orderly. Idiot protestors were just chaos incarnate. My favorite was a sign stating that the US would have boycotted Nazi Olympics, so why would we cater to the Chinese? Uh, didn’t the US attend the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Anyways, the relay was supposed to start at 1pm. At the beginning, the police were pretty strict about keeping people behind barricades. But as the minutes passed, the police force just seemed to evaporate. People started marching up and down the street. Before too long, it was pretty obvious that the relay wasn’t going to come this route–there was no order. On the news, the Mayor and police explained that they “spontaneously” decided to change the relay route because of the crowds. They said that there were too many protestors, and that the crowd was too large at the beginning of the route rather than spread evenly along the route. What a crock of shit! For one, they had previously decided that there would be no protest permits necessary, so the protesters could be anywhere they wanted. Also, the route had previously been cut repeatedly, and just that morning it was announced that the route would be cut in half again. Duh, the people are going to want to be near the beginning because it might get cut down even more. Before 1pm, for the most part the crowds were reasonable and kept behind the fences except when they were crossing the street in crosswalks. It wasn’t until the police had abandoned the task of controlling the crowd, because they knew that the relay wasn’t coming this route anyways, did the streets get taken over. By then, the decision had long since been made. And you can’t tell me that they didn’t have at least 5 alternate routes for the relay, despite the claim that the route and decision was spontaneous.

The final result: the torch relay was a regular Communist China exhibition, secretive and dodging free speech. The protesters felt somewhat victorious, they got a lot of publicity anyways. The Chinese got a mostly Tibet-less Torch Relay, as if the trick will make people forget their human rights record. Thousands of Olympic supporters, Chinese nationals, tourists and spectators got screwed out of a chance to see and photograph the Olympic torch. Oh, and free speech got a kick to the nuts–though the Patriot Act mostly killed the First Amendment anyways. And now the IOC is suggesting that the International Torch Relay may be cut for future Olympics…

So I was reading an article which interviewed one of the founders of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), who published a report in late 2007 about the Xbox 360 achievements system. They found that sales of Xbox titles are directly related to the quantity and quality of the achievements within the game. This got me thinking about what I think are good and bad achievement designs. I’ll start off by stating that Xbox achievements are a brilliant marketing direction by Microsoft, and while I don’t consider myself an achievement whore (yet) I sure do enjoy getting them. But as achievements are determined by the game developer, there is a lot of variance in implementations of them.

The meat and potatoes of any game is the basic story, generally called the single-player campaign. These achievements include completing levels/zones, finishing the story, and doing so on different difficulties. It is the simplest way to implement achievements. All told, I think that completing the single-player game on the hardest difficulty should net about half of the achievement points possible (500). This should include completing the story as well achievements which represent normal behavior within the game. The achievement values for level completion should be progressive, starting low and increasing as the game progresses, to reward dedication and follow-through. The endgame achievement for finishing the story should be a substantial value, such as 100 points, to represent the importance of finishing the story. Games with low endgame achievements like Perfect Dark Zero, which awards 15 points for finishing the story, are pretty anti-climatic.

Most games these days have 2-4 difficulty levels, averaging 3 in most games I’ve seen. Games like Halo 3 and Gears of War implemented a good strategy for awarding the difficulty level achievements. If you first complete a difficulty related achievement at a higher level then it back credits you the achievements for the lower difficulties. Requiring players to play a game on easy, then medium, then hard to get all of the achievements is an asshole thing to do. Whether the difficulty achievements are only seen at the endgame like Halo 3, or at every chapter like Gears of War (either strategy is valid in my mind), the achievements related to difficulty should always back credit you if you first complete it at a higher level.

Secret achievements are a tricky ground. According to the EEDAR, games with secret achievements as less profitable than those where all achievements are visible. While I think the statement is generic, I would agree that a game with ALL secret achievements is going to be unpopular. A lot of a game’s success, much like feature movies, is the initial success of sales. Initially popular games will sell better because word of mouth, as would be the opposite. While you can go online and lookup the secret achievements of games which have been out for 6 month or more, a brand new game with many/all secret achievements is certainly discouraging. Without that initial success, it can be difficult for a game to continue to sell over its lifetime. My recommendation when it comes to secret achievements is to keep them as a minority of the total possible achievements, with passing the achievement virtually guaranteed. An example is Bioshock, most of the secret achievements are the basic story achievements which are guaranteed to be accomplished if you finish the game. They are not listed up-front as they include spoilers of the plot. But there are ways to get around this, as you can try to title the achievement in a way that it doesn’t give away the plot elements. I can see that having a secret achievement that is nigh-impossible to accomplish in normal play is just evil and can discourage players from trying to figure out what it is. Sure, there’s a geek out there who will try anything to solve the puzzle, but a successful game is one that appeals to the average gamer.

Many games include achievements for side-quests, in other words optional activities which may enhance the story but are not necessary to complete the game. Example side quests include mini-games with the game, collecting stuff, and side-quests in role playing games. I think these side quests are a great system for awarding achievements, as its all very possible within the game, but represents an extra level of dedication. I’d like to point out that I really like the collection achievements in Gears of War, as you are progressively rewarded as you complete the collection. So even if you happen to miss 1 tag in the game, you still get at least something for the effort. Whereas in Bioshock, there is no reward for collecting 121 tape recorders scattered, and sometimes well-hidden, throughout the entire game. You have to get the 122nd recorder for it to pay off. All the while you have no idea how far along you are or if you missed one which will make it impossible to ever get the achievement. Whereas also in Bioshock they did have progressive accomplishments for collecting plasmids, weapons, tonics, inventions, etc. Side quest achievements should almost never be secret achievements, as it is possible that people will not be able to figure out how to get them and it is very discouraging.

A fun group of achievements are what I call play-style achievements. Similar to side-quest achievements, play-style achievements are not required to play and enjoy the game. These achievements often require more than one pass at the game, but are there as a challenge to the player to try to play the game in different ways. I think these types of achievements are great as they enhance the replay-ability of the game. Examples of play-style achievements are character choices. An example might be a fork in the story, however minor, where the player has a choice between multiple options. I read about a pair of achievements in the Orange Box game Half-life 2 where you can choose to be submissive or defiant when given a stupid order from a commander. Either choice, you get an achievement, but you’ll have to play the game again to get the other one. In Bioshock, you get an achievement for deciding to rescue rather than harvest Little Sisters, but there is no achievement for choosing to harvest them. I like the idea of being given a choice, but I’d prefer if you got an achievement for either choice, as otherwise it seems like it removes your choice. Other playing style achievements I’ve seen include perfect (no deaths), score based, and abnormal behavior. An example of an abnormal behavior might be to complete a first person shooter level/game without shooting (melee attacks only). Its tough, but not impossible.

Online game play achievements are sticky point for me. EEDAR determined that games with online game play achievements average 50% better sales than those without, however G4TV pointed out that this might be flawed logic. Online games may be more popular in general, regardless of whether there are online achievements or not. The issue that I have with online achievements comes mostly from a lack of players. Games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, have no shortage of online players. But older games, or games that were never as popular, make online achievements near impossible to get. In many cases, it seems like the only way to get the online achievements is the cheat, where several people get together with the sole purpose of getting the achievements. This might be a requirement that you play 1000 games, so the players setup 1 minute games and don’t even try to play. Or if the achievement is to kill X people is X seconds without dying, then the players just group up all let one kill the group to get the achievement before doing so again with another player. This is cheap, and some call it cheating, but if there is hardly anyone playing the game anymore, it would be impossible to get the achievements any other way. I think that viral achievements, like the Assassin achievement in G.R.A.W. is pretty cool, but once again it can be near impossible to accomplish if the game has a low online user base.

The group of achievements which I think should be avoided entirely are the achievements which force you to play for an excessive amount of time. For example, Timeshift has an achievement where you have to turn your Xbox into a dedicated server for 48 hours (and you can’t play anything while you are a dedicated server), or the G.R.A.W. achievement for playing a multiplayer game for 8 hours straight. Kill 10,000 people online, host 5,000 multiplayer games, etc. Each of these types of achievements is a way to simply force players to waste massive amounts of time to get the achievements. This just seems like an asshole thing to do; if your game was good enough people would play that much just because they enjoy it–not to meet your insane achievement requirement. Games like Final Fantasy XI, which the EEDAR founder rated as “masochistic”, only give you 30 points for getting to level 75 (roughly 3 months of work)—now you have do it again and again for each of the 14 or so classes to get 30 point achievement for each. Why would you be that much of an asshole as to require that much time to get so few points.

On the other hand, don’t make the achievements too easy to get. Games like Avatar and King Kong are notorious for allowing players to get 1000 points in one sitting (mere minutes on Avatar). Achievements should reflect at least a certain amount of effort, at a minimum I think it should take at least 20 hours to get 1000 points.

My final thoughts on achievements: I think that roughly half of achievements should be attainable through normal game play at the highest difficulty. I think that a quarter of achievements should be for online achievements, which are possible to attain even after the player base has moved on to newer games. The last quarter (or last half is there is no online component) should be for side-quests and play-style achievements to reward players for the extra effort. Don’t make achievements which are near impossible to accomplish, or which strongly encourage players to cheat to get them. Avoid secret achievements unless it reveals the plot and can’t be obfuscated with a generic name. Achievements tied to difficulty should always be retroactive. Achievements should be designed to supplement the game, not hinder it. They should make the game more fun to play, more exciting. Achievements should reward dedication, not require enslavement. Reward hard work, don’t reward people for turning the game on.

After all of this, I still think that achievements are a brilliant marketing strategy for Microsoft as it allows users to go back to the days where you competed for the high score on an arcade game. It’s fun, but not required. If someone doesn’t care about achievements, then it doesn’t matter. They can still play and enjoy the game. But if you enjoy the satisfaction of getting achievements, or the bragging rights of a high gamerscore, then the achievements should represent an accomplishment (not mindless enslavement or stupidly easy accomplishment of inserting a disk) for the hard work of the player.

For many years, I have identified myself as a liberal or Democrat when asked about my political beliefs. This is because I believed that welfare, and unions are necessary and that global warming is real. I opposed Republicans because I saw them as greedy, blind, heartless bigots and I can’t stand the idea of legislating morality. However in the coming presidential election, I find myself considering voting Republican on a major election for the first time. Why? It all comes down to entitlement…

What I mean is that there are people out there who believe that they are entitled to my tax dollars. I’m getting very tired of lazy people abusing the system. I’m disgusted by the idea that the government owes you anything; what happened to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” I’m sick of a system which rewards poor behavior and choices with cash, yet punishes those who try to improve their lot in life. I’ve angry at a system which returns more tax dollars than were paid in, just because you are poor and busted out a bunch of kids. I’m tired of a person who tests below the minimum requirements getting a job over a person who had a perfect score, just because of their race or sex. I believe that people should be rewarded on merit, not because of the color their skin or because of their reproductive plumbing. I’m irritated by the idea of punishing those who saved money for retirement and rewarding those who squandered it.

I still believe that welfare is necessary, but broken. I think that unions are a good idea, yet often corrupt. I still believe that global warming is real, and that the Republicans need to step up and review the facts. I still believe that religious beliefs have no place in Congress and that legislating morality is wrong. Do I believe that I should get tax cuts, yes and no. I don’t need it back if it’s going to be spent well, but I want it back if Democrats want to spend it like the candidates have proposed.

Republicans are not perfect, but neither are Democrats. We’ll see, maybe I’ll flip back in the next four years.