Halo 3 and game immersion

Microsoft gets game immersion (technically I should say Bungie gets it). Around this time last year, I was obsessed with how Microsoft could/would extend the Halo franchise. I also wanted to know what path the Halo 3 storyline would take (we'd known for a while that it'd be the last game in the series). I have to say that the Halo nation is justified in its impatient wait for the final game in the series this fall.

You see, there are two kinds of gaming immersions. There's the one that Virtual Reality games try to achieve where the gamer gets transplanted into the gaming environment playing as if he were within the game itself. Virtual Reality is the best case scenario here. Virtually all games have elements of this immersion in them, even the Halo franchise. Second life is one step ahead of these games approaching the realm of Virtual Reality by giving gamers (umm residents) tremendous control over their avatars in real life situations.

The other kind of immersion is the one that connects us to the gaming world. We don't have to play the game to be immersed in its plot. This is common with other media forms. Movies strive for us to relate to its characters. Music makes us believe that there's more to the lyrics than is apparent. We're all in a fanatsy world rendered by the artist. I guess it's just more potent with video games (because unlike movies and music we can have several iterations of the game to keep us immersed for a longer period of time). Besides, Halo is already much movie like in its production: orchestral soundtrack, graphics and the fact that you can go from start to finish with almost no menu interruptions (if you can sit through the whole campaign mode that is). I believe Halo 3 will provide this type of immersion. Ask Halo fans anywhere and they'll tell you how the E3 2006 advertisement gave them chills as if the fate of humanity was really in their hands. Btw check out the ad anyway:

When I thought about the future of the Halo franchise, I thought as much. I wanted Microsoft to create an aura of desperation; something that unites gamers all over the world in a single quest to really "Finish The Fight". With hints of a darker Cortana to a visibly battle fatigued Chief, we want to know more and we crave for much more. You look at all this and the Halo 3 advertising campaign starts to make sense. Check out the next ad in the series that was telecast in December of 2006:

Classic example of the second kind of immersion. By the way, I'm not suggesting that Halo 3 is the only game to provide such experiences. Not only does immersion depend on the game + developer + publisher + etc, but also on personal perspectives. Diversity ensures that we find meaning in things that may or may not be influenced by others. All in all, Bungie's got a lot of pressure piling up. They've made their own fanbase in the Microsoft camp after transitioning from the Apple ecosystem. Can you imagine: this game was originally scheduled for the Mac!

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Attention analysis of Jobs and Gates

InsideMicrosoft asks: why doesn't Bill Gates command the same attention Steve Jobs does. Hmmm, actually I'm asking the question; they stated it as a fact. While this may appear to be true, reality is relative. Which circles are we looking at? Are we looking at general consumers or industry analysts, bloggers and technophiles? The reaction should be considerably different across these groups.

Some general thoughts first. It's been long surmised that the reason Jobs (and subsequently Apple) gets so much attention from traditional media is because of Apple's strong presence in the media and publishing businesses. The theory goes that you wouldn't find many journalists ignoring or criticizing a company they've been long affiliated with. And Mac users are known to be ardent enthusiasts. Outside of this technology industry, Apple hardly has any presence at all. Now, Microsoft is a different case altogether. A market size that literally dwarfs Apple's, they are the computing industry's "The Man" (in the IBM of the 1980s way). It doesn't help that they've given up sizable market share to Apple in key areas: education, media and publishing. And because they don't provide an end-to-end computing experience, their users are a fickle bunch. Outside of the technology industry, Microsoft has tremendous presence: from policy making at Capitol Hill to Gates' philanthropic efforts all over the world. Microsoft (and subsequently Gates) enjoys its free ride from the thousands of businesses and developers all over that depend on a platform that not only defined our IT industry, but also formed the metaphorical base for all other existing industries.

Note to Macheads: In the paragraph above, I'm not discounting Jobs as a true visionary or insinuating that Apple is a purveyor of fanaticism and bias. Being a tech. enthusiast myself, I can't imagine a computing industry without Jobs and Apple. This is an analysis based on certain observations that should be largely understood.

In the current case where we're trying to compare attention metrics for Jobs' essay on the music industry and Gates' essay on security in a connected world, we're looking at a completely different circle of people. Jobs' missive is targeted at a more generic crowd which includes technology enthusiasts/industry watchers/the big 4 music companies/content publishers/content consumers etc. Gates' missive is targeted to a more technical crowd about a subject that is largely a black-box mechanism from a general consumer's point of view. So, while a different target audience might hint at attention differences, are there other factors that influence their varying coverage. Consider presentation and the like:

1. Jobs is notorious for being tight-lipped and any trickle of information from his lips is eaten up by the press in general. Gates speaks at several public venues throughout the year and has been increasingly talking about security for some time now.
2. Jobs' essay is much much more simpler to understand. Every point is pertinent to the topic at hand and there are far fewer keywords or generics as compared to Gates's essay. e.g. Gates says: "At Microsoft, Trustworthy Computing provides the foundation for the work we do to create trusted computing experiences." Now, this makes sense in the context of his arguments but unless you're willing to spend some time dissecting his essay, it would very easily come across as circular logic.
3. Gates deals with a topic that is rather expansive and will be in a state of transition for the next decade or so. Jobs' essay deals with an issue that's poised to radically change within this year. It's more immediate in nature.

Now there are other points of interest to note here but if you've been through the two essays, you already know what I'm talking about. I won't beat that drum over and over. Instead, if you're an astute reader, you'll notice that in the second paragraph I related Apple to Jobs and later Gates to Microsoft. The order of association is important. Microsoft and Apple are both companies blessed with founders of incredible stature. While one has been successful in building a brand value outside of its co-founder, the other has become increasingly reliant on its own. You know what I'm talking about though in Apple's defence it's a much much harder task to create a company brand value outside of a founder who's not only as charismatic as Jobs but someone who's saved the company from going into oblivion countless times. Whatever the case, the next couple of years will write the final chapters in the stories of both these legends with their respective companies.

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Customer service woes

Seth Godin's got a nice piece on why people are upset with the state of customer service these days. I wanted to write about my own harrowing customer service experience of late concerning one of the more well-known car-rental agencies in the world. Going through their standard booking process, I can't seem to confirm my rental for a trip that starts in about less than a week. Through so many calls, the representatives have been unwilling to check up my booking status on their system for one reason or another. The message in the last call was simple: their overseas rep. was on leave and apparently no one else could confirm a booking by doing a simple lookup in the system.

I'll give these guys the benefit of the doubt on two counts. First, this is the first time I'm "trying to be their customer" so it's possible that I've stumbled upon a rough patch. For all I know they could be outstanding in general. Second, Chinese New Year is usually an overloaded season for any business in South East Asia. It could just be a seasonal issue, really! Although these are not real reasons to slump on customer service, well, whatever (I'm not mentioning their name).

Connecting the dots and coming back to Seth's piece, I'd like to point out another reason consumers are pissed with the customer service of such companies. Despite all the inconvenience we have to put up with, we're constantly reminded of their "passion/dedication/etc" to serve us through their "marketing slogans/mission statements/etc" whenever we read up about them or visit their websites. Like Seth notes, I'd actually be glad if one of these companies could proudly proclaim on their website:

In order to keep prices low and traffic moving, we're unable to discuss our policies with you. We're very sorry if this inconveniences you.

At the very least, I'll appreciate their honesty.

Update: Finally have the confirmation. I guess emails work better than phone calls.

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Significance of an original IP

Looks like Gears of War cleans up house at the AIAS awards. Ever since its launch the game has been doing two things consistently: selling like hotcakes and accumulating almost every known award in the industry. Check out the teaser from last year:

This weekend, I went to Sim Lim square (Singapore's main electronics hub) with a friend. At an Xbox 360 kiosk (one of the very very few ones here), I watched two kids play Gears in co-op surrounded by onlookers amazed at the graphics and gameplay. It's clear to me that in an apparently impenetrable market, Microsoft is making strides with original IPs. It's going to take a lot of dedication on their part and some wrongs need to be corrected (more on that later) but as long as Xbox 360 games provide us with unique gameplay elements and 'ahem' amazing graphics, I think they've got a really good chance in Asia.

(via Kotaku)

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The superheroes of our IT world

This comic landed in my mailbox a couple of months back.

Adventure of Action Item

Funny thing is, you'd think it's an exaggeration! Someone's gotta do this for other professions.

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Hope for the future

Where it's fundamental to remember our past sins, it's important to look forward to a better future at the grassroots level. Let's ask a question: How do we accomplish radical changes in the way we develop the world?

Consider intelligence. Or for brevity let's just consider the intellect that's required to sustain oneself. What abilities would you use to define this intellect? Effective communication of thoughts? Reasoning? Collaboration? Breadth and depth in knowledge? Maybe, the ability to use these and other skills to actively "solve" real-world problems. After all, the market defines its demands for our skills based on the sum total of our abilities to solve problems more effectively and cheaply than others. Our base question then becomes:

How do we as technologists, adept at supplying market demands for new skillsets, help others along the same path? Well, we try new things, in new places, with new people. Like this guy:

Hole in the Wall

While it's debatable how much measurable good can come out of Dr. Mitra's experiment, what's clear is that it's a step forward. It's about bringing online a whole new generation of young people.

Times like these make you think: Isn't the Internet really what the developed world was supposed to be.

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Remembering the past

I remember the day when in 1998 Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test in response to India's earlier that week. There was great national coverage. A mountain in Chaghi literally turned ashen white from the controlled detonation inside it. We were all elated, not really sure why. The reason: Xenophobia, perhaps. Fear of complete annihilation of the people of Pakistan in an uncertain world where the government across the border would think: hmmm, it's time to get new neighbours.

In such times, down at the general public's level do we really think about political strategies. Do we think about the balance of power or mutual nuclear deterrence? The word "deterrence" was used so many times over by both countries that we thought we're seeing the inevitable. That someday every single nation-state on the planet would have its own nuclear stockpile to protect its ideological principles. After all, it's deterrence! And all nations including Guam and Luxembourg should have the right to deterrence.

What we do think about is pride. In a social climate where everyone's afraid of the future, we're willing to celebrate the birth of armaments that could potentially destroy millions of innocent lives in a second. Xenophobia, again. If only all who celebrated knew that the same armaments could someday be the bane of their existence. That there might come a day, like the one for the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when we'll be eviscerated in the blink of an eye. Our shadows permanently stamped on the pavements which we walked. Decades and centuries of deformed foetuses asking us why we made the choices that we did. In this moment, time would literally stand still. In any case, we woudn't really have much time to think.

If you're still one of those who claim that there is some meaning to the word "mutual nuclear deterrence", please take a gander at possibly the most gruesome pictures out of the bombing of Japan in 1945...

Hiroshima, the pictures they didn't want us to see

...and explain to me in what world it would make sense for any nation to wish this upon even their greatest enemies. After all, what differences do we have. Ideological? Religious? What differences would justify the cleansing of an opposing viewpoint in such a horrific manner?

David Krieger puts it best in his article Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki:

To rely upon nuclear weapons for security is to put the future of our species and most of life at risk of annihilation. Humanity is faced with a choice: Eliminate nuclear weapons or continue to run the risk of them eliminating us. Unless we recognize this choice and act upon it, we face the possibility of a global Hiroshima.

There are no ifs and buts about it. We ALL need to disarm.

(via BrownianEmotion)

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Apple vs the world

CrunchGear is profiling the present and future of Apple Inc. through their Apple vs. The World feature. While not an extensive review of everything Apple, there are some interesting issues covered. If you're reading this blog AND you're still completely oblivious of that "other" computer company, I guess I'd recommend you to give the series of posts a shot. The Patents review along with the Vista vs OSX comparision are the only highlights of the feature, yet. I gotta say I'm a little disappointed with this coverage (given the expansive title). The parent site at TechCrunch is one of my favorite blogs out there. I guess I've been spoiled by Engadget and Gizmodo.

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The Web is Us

This must've taken a lot of time and effort to make. Amazingly well produced.



The message is clear and poignant.

(via John Battelle's SearchBlog)

Update: Seth Godin makes a good point: why aren't more academics publishing this way. John Battelle's got a short interview with the guy who produced this video, Michael Wesch.

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Steve Jobs on DRM

Check out the following link for Steve Jobs' thoughts on the evolving music industry and Digital Rights Management (DRM):

Thoughts on Music

Some of "my" thoughts on this essay:

1. Notice the language used. Jobs is a master of simplifying complexity and one of the reasons he's got such a tremendous following is because of his unique ability to talk about technology in a clear and non-verbose manner.
2. If all goes as planned, expect next year's Macworld to be a hoot. Jobs would whole-heartedly market Apple's pioneering non-DRM'd music downloads as an industry-changing, paradigm-busting event. I can see an iTunes ad with the silhoutte dudes breaking away chains and dancing in the rain to the beat of a widescreen touch-sensitive Video iPod. I like Apple a lot but sometimes their marketing spins are too much to swallow.
3. It should be clear to even the novice industry watcher that this is in preparation for the potential antitrust lawsuits Apple faces for the iPod-iTunes lock-in. Europe has been rumbling legal ramifications for quite some time now. This is Jobs' way of parrying the complete responsibility from his company to the "big four".

Additionally, this is the first time I've seen Jobs proclaim:

This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.

That's a significant admission! I mean wasn't the iPod + iTunes combo so many leagues ahead of the competition that there was no other device/software combo that could satisfy the general consumers? From the available crop of mp3 players, Apple's devices certainly rule. Just that I've never seen Jobs vehemently admit that innovation and choice exist outside of the Apple ecosystem.

Anyway, this was a much needed step from a person of Jobs' stature. The music industry should recognize that DRM is a broken solution to their problems. Incidentally, whenever the real solution is found, it would be based on open standards that allow the proliferation of the creative assets of artists rather than restriction through increasinginly complex algorithms.

Finally, check out this article from the New York Times on Europe's reaction to Jobs' essay.

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Vista UAC and Apple

Even if not entirely representative of Vista's User Account Control (UAC), crazy hilarious:

I'm a MAC/I'm a PC

Definitely, my favorite so far.

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Best Mac tirade ever!

The best tirade againt Macs that I've read in a while:

I Hate Macs

The author is commenting in response to the slew of "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads that Apple has been running for about half a year now. If you're a PC user, you'll identify with a lot of the points raised. If you're a Mac user, well uhhh you're probably busy bringing down the Guardian server through vicious commenting. Choice quote:

Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands.

On a serious note, I'm especially interested with this part:

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.

I've wanted to talk about this from a Microsoft vs Apple perspective for a while now. I'll leave that for a future post (again!) but this is something that I believe provides the ideological difference between the two companies and also explains how Microsoft is not doing Vista justice by positioning it to a large extent as a "cool" successor to XP.

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Paint.NET 3.0 released

Paint.NET version 3.0 is out. I love this application and have used it extensively in my designs at work. If only my personal computer had the specs to run it :(

(via lifehacker)

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Marketing Vista in China

Neat marketing gimmick!

Windows Vista on Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai

But do they really think they can sell more copies of Vista in China this way? On a personal note, I love Vista. I got access to the beta versions in office and even in that state I thought it was a well deserved successor to XP. Once you've tried it on the Aero interface with the new navigation model (including search), you'll see why it's so hard to go back to XP.

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Map results in Google Search

This is the first time I've noticed map results shown with Google searches. I fired up Google today to search for SABIS (my nephew's new school is a SABIS member school). Notice the search results:


I think people have been posting about this since the start of this year. I've probably not done a lot of searches on locations or things that will trigger a location response. I love the way they've made it non intrusive by default. Click on the "+" icon and you get the expanded map image for a particular address.

One suggestion, what if this was a map widget instead? I'm betting, most search results would not yield exact locations or addresses. If I could move around the image tiles and see nearby addresses it would be useful as well. I could click on the little balloons and the address right next to it would change dynamically. This way, I wouldn't really need to fire up the relevant Google Maps page for it; that, if you know, is not ideal in many situations. Anyway, I haven't really thought this through (e.g. the effect on usability and performance). Certainly more cool stuff that can be done with this.

You can see how important the Google.com real estate is to Google. We can see the integration of their other services with the main page in a careful and methodical manner. Sometimes the changes are so sublte that they're hardly ever noticed, both in terms of the speed in which the results are returned and the visual layout of the page. Then again, most of the times Google only tests these unique features on a small sample of users.

There's a lesson in this for every company that's vying to be more competitive with Google. I loved Microsoft's Live.com implementation. But performance got in the way as more visual and functional tweaks were made to the page. Faster results win over UI tweaks, always. More on how Windows Live and Yahoo! can better compete with Google in the search space in the near future. Stay tuned!

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Presently, suitable for the futurely?

I'd hate to see the hysteria around Web 2.0 apps turn everything into a gimmick. I'm sure you've heard of Google's plans to webify pretty much all software 'stuck' on the client side. Their current obsession might just be with a presentation maker to add to their web-based productivity apps list.

My slightly negative stance on this stems from the apprehension that 'Presently' might turn out to be little more than a powerpoint clone. Ofcourse, you'll be able to create and store presentations online but you'd do so with largely the same usability and design metaphors of a client-side application. They might play it safe and create something that users would recognize and try to manipulate in the same way that they would Powerpoint. The right direction should be to surprise us. Think not that Presently should replace the need for Powerpoint. Think that Presently should supplant Powerpoint usage (and other needs) in a manner that not only makes complete sense to the user but also becomes an inextricable part of their daily usage.

Why would I think like this when we're not even sure if there's an actual product out there? Because I've used Writely (now Google Docs) and Google Spreadsheets. Yes, it was fun. Maybe a 'little' cool (I'd used Zoho and others before). But I could never see it as part of my daily usage. Atleast not for office work! Think of other scenarios and plz don't come to me with "we'd like you to do the same stuff you do offline, now online". I'm satisfied doing a majority of things on the client-side.

Another point to note: is it really necessary to knock at Microsoft's productivity suite one leg at a time. Why not just buy out one of the little guys in the online office productivity space and go from there? I'm only referring to this as a get-it-out-of-the-way philosophy. There are much important usage scenarios online that need to be addressed than bringing all of information management online (by that I mean within a browser). You'll get there eventually, trust me! But for now, I know that I'll be much better off having other unique things in your existing products. Things that would make your competitors think: duh! how did we miss that...

Anyway, enough ranting for now. More thoughts to follow soon.

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Resolution of the Kashmir issue imminent?

It warms my heart to read such stories:

The ‘five privy’ to Kashmir plan

I'd think all's forgiven if Pres. Musharraf can finally bring a peaceful end to this issue from the Pakistani side. The advantages to both sides are so obvious that I needn't even comment on them.

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Horn OK Please

Amazing production this:

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Entrepreneurial Night at Google HQ

Saw this on Techcrunch:

Next Generation Entrepreneurs Compete At Google HQ

Choice excerpt:

Worth noting is the fact that the girls are all taught to develop profitable and philanthropic businesses. In May, they liquidate the businesses, return capital (and more) to investors, and each donate 5-20% of profits to charities like Greenpeace, SPCA, CARE and the school library!

Given the investments that the government of Singapore is making towards fostering entrepreneurship in the country, I haven't seen many school/polytechnic/university level
programmes like the one that culminated at the Google HQ. This is a great simulation exercise, if only for the value of providing kids with practical experience before they graduate from university (in general, I believe it's all downhill from there :) ). I'll be writing about some concrete ways in which things can be improved down here; have a lot of template fixing to do before that.

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Windows Vista is literally "cool"

Perhaps a lack of interesting advertising campaigns (like such) led to Vista's "cold" reception on the launch date.



Gotta say this though: I don't think operatings systems belong in the mass market consumer software products category. As such, it really shouldn't matter if Vista had a lackluster launch. What really matters is how well it does in driving the adoption of Vista loaded PCs in the coming months and years.

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Template updates and additions

I will be updating the blogspot template of this site in the coming weeks (maybe months). There will also be some additions e.g. an rss feed through feedburner, random blog descriptions, advertising(!!!), and some cool stuff I have in mind. So, stay tuned.

Labels: Site Updates

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The Pilot

Procrastination's a bitch, isn't it? The question that's bothered me for the past 5 weeks is when to write my first blog post and what it should be about. I wanted to write the first of all posts on a special day, like an anniversary or a birthday. The problem is, every year we add atleast one more special day to our calendar. I wouldn't mind the concatenation of a few of these so some days could just be about...ummm...a special event and yet-another-special-event. And here I am with the pilot post, introducing myself without a perfect "previously celebrated" event or a thought in mind. Could this day be special in itself? I guess...considering that today I had:

1. ...officially worked on a Saturday for the first time (not that there's anything wrong with that). I came to realize how much productive weekends can be. I've spent the last gazillion weekends sleeping (as you'll notice over the course of our time together, I'm actually quite lazy), blowing off steam (when none could be generated over the course of the week), and general grazing.
2. ...the realization that some friends are a precious resource...they can move away at a moment's notice and then you wonder how fast 7 years speed by.
3. ...the realization that other friends (flawed word reference) could be pretentious fools and are hmmm incidentally insignificant...in any case, only lessons that hurt teach anything real and subsequently useful.
4. ...further insight into why I chose a career in technology giving up a "career" in medicine by watching endless re-runs of House. More on that later.
5. ...a sudden urge to comment on so many things that I love to talk about but was running out of people to talk about with. I'm losing inspiration by the day and assimilation into the machine is not an option. No "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" here.

So, on we go...two questions, two answers:

Why the name Punchfire?

Isn't it cool :) Nah, I didn't want an outlandish name that I'd regret a couple of years from now. I used to do did this little bar-trick where I'd make a hollow fist, fill it up with gas from a lighter and fire it up...umm punchfire (or hollow fist fire). That was the base idea. What it represents, I'll leave for another day.

What's this blog gonna be about?

Everything, really. Plus, you'll find out eventually and make up your own mind. I'd hate to pigeonhole myself right at the start (or eventually).

Procrastination is the first word reference. Why? The day referred to above was the 3rd of February 2007.

cout << "Hello World!";

Labels: first post

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