Posts Tagged ‘gaming’

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My Google Glasses Rules

In Digital,Lessons,Life,Media,Social Media,Technology,Work on February 28, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

When I woke this morning my feed was full of chatter about Google Glasses. Google’s big man Sergey Brin while talking at TED said that smartphones are emasculating and forcing us all to look down – as a man I look down occasionally in a needed way which got me thinking about what would happen when you wear the glasses and the rules that will need to be enforced.

1. Don’t wear your Google Glasses at dinner/lunch/breakfast if you are sitting with other people. If you think people checking their phone is annoying just wait till people simply stare up to read their latest text.

2. Bathroom etiquette is going to be massive with this one. Don’t wear them at the urinal if you are a bloke. That could end up in fights if people think you are filming their cocks. And for everyone it’s gonna be rude to just record any and all bathroom chatter.

3. No google glasses in the cinema. I don’t want to see little lights in the top corner lighting up around me. SWITCH THEM OFF.

4. I realise that being a citizen journalist is gonna be awesome with these things but I also want you to think about what you upload. Don’t use them for evil.

5. Sex. No. Unless you feel like being kinky and watching that stuff later on…but let’s be honest what if your partner wears them and she puts the video on and all you see is yourself having sex. That’s gonna be weird right? Nobody wants to see the faces they make during sex.

6. In meetings at work. May seem like a good idea but no one will say anything because everyone will be paranoid it will come bite them in the ass.

7. Shower rooms. Hopefully the glasses are waterproof. This does not mean it’s ok to wear them in the gym shower room.

8. Surgeons. Leave my insides inside not outside on the web.

9. Don’t watch porn on them on the way to work. That’s freakin’ weird.

That’s pretty much the main ones for now but I have a feeling I’ll be adding a lot more to the list as time goes on.

Do you have any suggestions where you shouldn’t wear your Google Glasses?

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Articles

LA Noire

In Digital,Friends,Video Games on May 31, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Disclaimer: My friend Craig worked on this game and I know some people at Rockstar Games.

Disclaimer two: I love the bite sized mission chunks in this game.

Disclaimer three: As much as I love my XBox I suggest you play this on the PS3 because it uses a blu-ray disc rather than 3 DVDs.

If we travel back, way back, to the time of my youth there was a game that fascinated me. This was pre-world-wide-web and completing a game meant that you had to use every part of your brain and if that failed you may have to wait months for a magazine to come out that would help you out with the bit you were stuck at.

I was stuck at a section in Police Quest (made by Sierra who also made the amazing Kings Quest and Space Quest) for months. I’ll never forget the game for as long as I live.

I was a rookie cop trying to make my way in the police world and I was involved in an incident with a perp and I had to arrest him. Police Quest was a text based game where you moved the character around with a mouse. Point and click adventures we called them back in our day.

“Arrest him” – didn’t work

“Cuff him” – didn’t work.

Months went by until a friend told me he had cracked it by hearing from a friend about something called the Miranda Rights. You know the old ‘you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney etc etc’. But I was young and not from the US. I’d never heard of these Miranda Rights.

“Use Miranda Rights” – worked. The game moved on.I finally completed it a lot later and also the follow-up games.

LA Noire makes me think of Police Quest but with some CSI and GTA thrown in for good measure. You play as a detective in a world not too dis-similar to LA Confidential. You start as a street cop and have to work your way through different cases solving crimes…fraud cases, robbery all the way to vice and homicide.

What makes this game different though is the character modeling has been done using an amazing new technique. The technology is so good that this is the first game that my deaf friend Jono has been able to actually really the lips of the game characters. You have to question characters and watch their expressions, try to read their body launguage and aim to trip them up in your questioning.

This is the next evolution in gaming in my eyes.

It has sub-missions you can do as you drive around the city. You can ask for help through using intuition points and although the main character is a tad bi-polar it’s a great game that you can drop in and out of when you feel like taxing your brain.

It’s not a first-person shooter. That’s a game where you switch your brain off. It’s a thinking game that will have you watching people’s expressions and trying to suss out whodunnit.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I’ll take this one with two sugars and a dash of milk please!

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Video Gaming

In Digital,Life,Video Games on April 4, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

Had a very interesting night tonight on Twitter. I noticed a woman say she had bought her kids Bulletstorm (a really fun but uber-violent First-Person Shooter).

I asked what age her children were and she said 10 and 13 years old. This made me take a step back. I was actually stunned. A 10-year old playing Bulletstorm!! Madness. I have a massive list of games that I wouldn’t let a 10 year old play and that is one of them…there is a blurry line as to what age I would let kids play that game but 10 just seems to be a tad too young.

I’m not judging the mother here. Maybe she believes that her kids are sensible and stable and can handle playing that kind of game. She probably knows them better than anyone and she even said she knows her kids ‘know it’s only a game’ but what happens when they go to school and tell their friends.

Those other kids will want to play it. They will want to get their hands on it. Or they will want to head to their mates house to play it.

And this is where i have the problem I guess. We have ratings for a reason. Many of us in Australia have been fighting for an R18 rating to ensure that certain games are seen by certain audiences. It’s for a reason. Across the globe there are a lot of games that have an 18 rating because the content is deemed unacceptable to 10 year olds in the eyes of most gamers.

I have grown up playing games. I play Pong back in the 70s and I have played every single GTA game. I played Modern Warfare for hours and hours (not Black Ops though that was a bit shit). Hell I even played Leisure Suit Larry when I was 16 and was baffled as to what a profalactic was but I believe that we have rating systems for a reason.

Yes they are a guideline

Yes they are an option.

But if a storeowner sells a 10 year a copy of an 18 game in Britain or an NC-17 game in the US (I think that’s the rating) then they can be fined a damn lot of money because it is illegal.

In Australia there are some people who don’t believe an R18 should be introduced and who are doing their damned best to stop it ever happening.

I could go on but the amazingly talented writer Mark Serrels who writes for Kotaku in Australia says it so much better than I:

R18+: Rationality Is Dead

Ultimately it is the choice of a parent to choose what film their kids watch, what content they see on the internet and what games they play.

I have no doubt the mother I spoke to is a good woman who knows her kids and I hope she sits with them while they play. But for the handful of fantastic mothers and fathers out there there are also a whole bunch who just want their kids out of their hair and will buy them any game just to keep them away…and that’s where the problems arise.

We need games ratings in this country.

We need parents to adhere to the ratings to ensure that those trying to stop the R18 don’t get any more fodder for their battle against us.

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