Educational

learning what works and what doesn't.

School is largely considered boring. That's the answer most schoolkids will give you if you ask them. And think back to your own schooling, no, not with rose-tinted glasses on, properly think back to how often you sat in a lesson bored out of your mind learning how to add the seven continents to the six wives of henry the eighth. It was dull wasn't it?

So when you got some free time as a kid, the last thing you wanted to do was learn. Sure, learning is important, you do need to know stuff to get on in life, even the stupidest of people needs to know the basics of life, the universe, and something at the very least. The last thing you want to do is learn more, hence why your homework was always left until the last possible minute and sometimes it was a miracle it was done at all.

Thus the last thing you ever wanted to do was learn in your spare time. So learning things need to be camouflaged as something fun. When you were very little you probably had stacking blocks with letters on, they were educational, and to a baby, fun. As you got older, learning toys got more sophisticated, but there was always some sneaky toy that was meant to teach you.

However, this almost never seems to transfer to videogames. Almost all of them are unbelievably patronising. If it's not an image of a cat with the caption "C _ T" underneath, it'll be simple mathamatics or other such things. Almost always pre-school stuff. It's like once you hit primary school, that's it, videogames are purely for fun.

Because everyone knows you can't make a fun challenge out of learning. It's not that if you're learning you're not having fun, but just that all videogames have some degree of challenge to them, and after a certain point the challenge in learning is greater than the fun you can make it in gaming. Or is it?

Enter Scribblenauts.

Scribblenauts is a game, developed by 5th Cell, the people who made the highly creative Drawn to life. It's central aim requires you to utilize tools in order to get hold of the games collectable objects, the Starbrites. To do this, you must pick which tools are best for the job. It so far sounds like a conventional game right? Well, I haven't yet mentioned what the tools are yet and, assuming you've avoided all commentary about this game, this is the part the internet has gone batshit insane over. Your tools are anything you can think to summon.

The game apparently has over 10,000 items that can be used. Hence why the internet is currently going crazy for it. The creative appeal is enormous. People are wraking there brains for words that will stump this game, looking for words within there extended vocabulary for words to beat the game. They're trying to learn new words that outsmart the game. Yes, they want to learn.

So this game challenges you by making you extend your vocabulary, and rewards you for your efforts. Isn't that the very definition of learning? This game is being hyped as a fun and clever game, for it's gameplay, almost nobody realises that this has potential as a learning tool.

It's not just useful for English either. Put the game into another language setting, and the game will challenge that too. Making it useful for learning to think of things in a foreign language. Okay, it can't teach someone whose never speaking a word of Spanish how to learn it fluently, but to someone who has some experience, but isn't yet perfect, there's the added challenge of learning to extend the vocabulary of your second language.

So this game is educational. But is it fun? Well, we'll find out when we get to play it, but if top gaming magazines are hailing it as great, then I doubt it'll be any different between now and then, bar some tweaks and bug checks. So perhaps Scribblenauts will be the first fun educational game?

If nothing else, it's something to use in defence of games the next time somebody kicks up the age old "all games are evil murder sims". A game about creating things, that rewards intelligent thinking, and encourages you to try everything.

Even if that means you'll spend a lot of time blowing everything up.

Good Riddance

Will be glad to see the back of these.

In a few days I'm moving. After years of dreaming and hoping I've finally managed to work things out where I can actually move out of my parents house. Unlike many though, I'm going further than another part of town, I'm moving to another county. Moving up north a fair whack, at least a hundred miles.

And naturally I'm going to get homesick. There's going to be things that I'm going to pine for, things that I'll wish I could do again. I accept that, and am doing this as a counter. This is the list of things I just know I won't miss about where I am now.

My family:

• My brother's ability to sneeze at volumes that would be considered harmful to your hearing.
• My brother's temper tantrums and anger issues related to how much he sucks at computer games.
• My brother's habit of shaking the bunk bed as a way of getting me to stop snoring.
• My sister. Just generally my sister.
• Her boyfriend.
• My mother's yelling at TV shows and sports when she's too involved with the end result.
• My dad asking me at every available opportunity as to whether or not I'd like to be woken, even when he already knows the answer.
• My dad's bizarre obsession with messing around with the internet connection access defaults.
• My mothers foot tapping habit (even though I do it).
• My dad's inability to cover his nose as he sneezes.
• General bodily smells from all my family.
• All the arguments about money that have happened in the past.
• Being woken up by my brother to watch the rubbish he likes to watch.
• Having to go downstairs at 10PM most nights because my brother needs to go to sleep to get up early.

Other Home stuff:

• How all the carpets in this house need a good vacuum.
• How the heating goes off at 10PM and doesn't go on until 7AM in the winter.
• How nobody opens windows in here in the summer
• The fact that people don't move much, so the body heat just builds up in the house making every room hot and humid.
• How nobody ever knocks when entering my room.
• How I can never get a moments alone time when I want one.
• The fact that I get blamed for stuff that's not my fault like how my brother shoves loads of rubbish under my bed.

Work:

• How one of the tills always becomes unconfigured.
• The sheer amount of people who just don't know how to tie up knots.
• Having tonnes of bundles to make of newspaper returns.
• How it's often the case when I have to do that, most everyone else is wandering around with nothing to do.
• One of the Duty Manager's irrational temper tantrums, and abilities to make mountains out of molehills.
• The Manager's memory problems.
• The Manager's random giving of tasks that are entirely unrelated to who is supposed to work in a given department.
• The Barney ride, and the song it plays.
• Just exactly how pointless facing up is when it will only get ruined within an hour of doing it perfectly.

General Customers:

• Being stopped by random people asking inane questions.
• People who protest what the till says based purely on there own inability to read.
• People who you ask "anything else?" to that say "no", and then after you've sub-totaled ask for something else.
• People who when asked "either X or Y?" will say "yes" in reply assuming you know which they're saying yes to.
  
• People who change there minds about things ages after you've dealt with it.
• People who bring two baskets to the kiosk.
• People who want to do two or more bills from one basket.
• People who get in a stress about having/not having a receipt.
• People who think you're personally to blame for issues they have.
• People who start having a go about the age related sales policy
• How everyone always floods in at the last minute for lottery even though you get a week to buy a ticket.
• How everyone comes in last minute on a Sunday.

Specific customers:

• Wheels; the creepy pervert whose banned from half the stores in the area and makes you do everything for him. Has been known to say lewd things to female staff and customers.
  
• The guy who stalked one of my colleagues. His voice grates, his hair is ridiculous, and his dog needs to be trained to not have such separation anxiety.
• The Chinese lady who constantly has to repeat the details of her trivial stories. Constantly. Repeating every part. Over and over. Repeating the same banality constantly, over and over.
• The old lady who always asks "Where do I know you from?" It's working where I work. That's where you know me, you only see me in there.
• The drunk lady with the blue mobility scooter. You're just lazy. You could easily do all the stuff you ask the staff to do, but you don't want to.
• The guy who runs the local Indian takeaway. I don't care about you, I don't know why you think I'm so funny, cos I find you irritating, and don't like you. You wind me up chronically.
• The guy who insisted he be called "Herbert Einstein". You're a twat. You're trying to be cool, and you're really not. Can't stand still to save his life either.

General stuff:

• The scooter/quad bike/motorbike gang that drives around with ridiculously loud engines doing wheelies.
• The cars with the excessively loud car stereos.
• The sheer number of people who recognise me when I'm out and about and talk to me like I should know who they are.
• That kid who spent over a year saying "Peaches" every time he saw me, and insisted I replied.

Add your own pet peeves about where you live in the replies.

All Star Eh?

Z list celebrities then...

Sonic and Sega All Star Racing. The newest game to carry the increasingly flustered looking face of one proud gaming mascot Sonic the Hedgehog. Unveiled recently at E3, the game is basically being hyped as using the Outrun engine, and being a cartoony kart racer. Sonic fans are already filled with dread for three reasons. Firstly, it seems like it's trying to be a cut and paste Mario Kart Clone, and as they learnt from other games, such ideas seldom work well. Secondly, despite Sonic's nature, there is yet to be a decent Sonic racing game, and thirdly, because all new Sonic games are generally bad anyway, and there's nothing to suggest this one won't be any better.

If the name sounds familiar to you, it's because not too long ago we had Sega SuperStar Tennis. This had lead many people to (perhaps correctly) believe Sega is trying to create a "Sega All Star" brand. Now anyone who's played Super Smash Bro's (or it's two sequels) know that the idea of mixing your franchises an be highly successful, when done correctly.

Which is exactly why many are panicking. Sega doesn't have a track record for doing things correctly. They don't even have a track record for adequacy. Heck, if you consider the last few years, you have to wonder how they actually were ever a serious contender to Nintendo in the console wars of the early ninties.

Truth be told, there were two things that gave Sega the upper hand, one was realising that games weren't things for kids, and allowing the violence, but the second, and more obvious reason, is there mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic was a total cash cow in the early ninties, you put his blue face on anything, and it would sell. In all of videogaming history, the only thing to sell more non-gaming merchandise than Sonic, was Pokémon.

And Sonic still sells to this day. Maybe not in the numbers he used to, but Sonic still sells. Parents might still not be entirely clued up on gaming, but even my mother knows who Sonic the Hedgehog is, and she doesn't know how to put a cartridge in a Mega Drive, let alone actually want to play a game.

So maybe that's why this game is called "Sonic And Sega All Star Racing". To serve as a highlight to the uninformed, that this product contains hedgehogs. But who else will be in this game? Confirmed so far, we have Sonic's sidekick Tails, his arch nemesis Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik (who will probably only be called "Eggman" in game), his rival Shadow, his stalker with a crush Amy, as well as Big, AiAi, and Amigo.

The first five are Sonic characters, as is one of the last three. I'll give you a bit of time to guess which is a Sonic character, and just who the other two are.

Did you get it?

Yep, that's right, the correct answer was "Big the Cat", first shown in Sonic Adventure. The other two are AiAi, from Super Monkey Ball (who was also in Sonic Riders), and Amigo, from Samba De Amigo.

Which leads me quite nicely to one of the problems I have with the idea of "Sega All Stars". Just who are the half these characters? Sega has a handful of instantly recognisable characters, of which all belong to the Sonic series. Now think about the main game that probably inspired the idea of the Sega All Stars, Super Smash Bro's. Far more of those are very recognisable, and have there own series of games. You've got Pikachu from Pokémon, link from Zelda, Samus from Metroid Prime, Kirby from, well Kirby (duh), and a few others all immediately recognisable, even to people who've never played there games.

Whereas Sega has Sonic, and uh... well that's it in terms of recognition. Sure, some of the die hards will know who everyone is, but most of them are unknowns to many. Which is the main problem. And it's annoying, as certain characters keep getting touted out, as if we're supposed to know who they are. AiAi has actually been in more non-SuperMonkeyBall games, than he has Super Monkey Ball games. Same with Amigo, same with Ulala (from Space Channel Five), same with NiGHTS (from NiGHTS), same with more than half the so called stars which Sega like to use to remind us they can do more than make Sonic games.

But the fans are crying out for these franchises. The die hard Sega fans want a new Ristar, they'd love a new Billy Hatcher, and they'd probably kill there own grandmothers for Shenmue 3. If these games from which Sega is derriving it's so called "Stars" from are so popular, where are there sequals? Sure, it might take three years or more to bring out a new Zelda, but there always working on a new one, and link is always somewhere near the public eye. Compare that to last tie you heard of news about a new Samba De Amigo.

However, before you agree with me, consider the recent Wii sequal NiGHTS Journey Into Dreams. It was largely panned as aweful. So maybe Sega are doing the right thing here, keeping certain characters in the spotlight, by tying them, albeit indirectly to a game where there implaccable mascot Sonic will absorb most the blame if it's terrible. Since Sonic games are still selling like crazy, what's another aweful one under his belt? And if this is a success, maybe people will ask about AiAi and his amigos [pun intentional ~ Pots].

If videogames were celebrities, then Mario would be a classical music star. Old fashioned, and not doing anything exciting, but still going, still as popular as ever, and reliable to make money. Meanwhile Pikachu would be a former child actor turned adult star. He had a few shakey years, where he made the transition from something that was insanely popular, to something that wasn't, but he survived, and kept his career intact.

Sonic meanwhile is a washed up rock star. He made tonnes of money earlier in his career, and can still sell out an arena playing his greatest hits, but only the die hard fans love the new stuff, with most agreeing it's terrible. He's had a few moments, but the last few albums weren't great. The "All Stars" though, are Z list celebrities, who were famous years ago for something insignificant, and now spend there whole lives being seen naked, or around more important celebs. There entire career is all about being seen, and while people know who they are, nobody really cares for them, or even has any interest in them.

That is the main problem, nobody knows who these people are, what games they're from, and in all honestly, they're not going to care. This game is going to be targeted to young Sonic fans, the people who brought Sonic Unleashed, and enjoyed it. The ones who weren't even alive when Sonic Adventure came out. Which means the All Stars will continue to exist merely as a lower than low tier of Sonic characters, bellow the scrapped ones like Ray, Nack, and Bean. While Marth and Ness attracted western interest to there respective games, there's not been any talk of more Space Channel Five, even though Ulala has been in loads of games recently.

If this game had the same level of nostalgia factor that Smash Bro's had, and was marketed as a nostalgia piece, then maybe the older gamers would look at it, and interest would pike. This is what worked with Fire Emblem, Smash Bro's gave it interest, because it sold to people who were old enough to buy there own games, and who cared about the characters in it. Sonic and Sega All Star Racing is looking somewhat like a nostalgia piece, but it's being marketed to the wrong audience, and the All Stars are being overshadowed by Sonic.

Meaning we won't see another game with AiAi in. 'Til the next Sonic And Sega All Stars game anyway.

laugh? occasionally...

and cry a lot less often thankfully.

I once wrote a list of what I thought was the funniest things on TV. Family Guy came third in that list. However, I must admit lately I've grown weary of it. Since I wrote that list, there's been several more seasons, and each one has taken us further and further from what was originally so good about the show.

When it first started, Family Guy was unique. Sure, the set up was pretty similar to that of long running and award winning show The Simpson's, in that you had an idiotic overweight father, a smarter, more well rounded mother, with three kids, one of which was a baby. There's also a dog in both shows, but Santa's little Helper plays a much less significant roll in The Simpson's, than Brian does in Family Guy.

Family Guy is an adult comedy. That's what makes it different from The Simpson's. It wasn't the first adult orientated cartoon (South Park was out a few years before it, and I doubt highly that that was the first), but what made it unique was it's cutaways. The cutaways were simple non-sequitter's that had almost nothing to do with the main plot, like the time I went off on a pointless tangent within this blog.

They weren't the source of all the jokes, but a lot of the humour did come from those moments. And this hasn't changed. No matter what series you see an episode from, you'll see a cutaway. likewise there are still jokes that are designed to push the censors buttons, another staple of the series. But I can't help but wonder if maybe the writers are relying too heavily on these sort of jokes for shock value. There's a scene in one episode that involves newborn babies singing in an alley behind a school, swinging there umbilical chords like the walking sticks of singers in the thirties/forties, for instance.

But somewhere down the line Family Guy lost it's way. The characters slowly became flatter, one dimensional, and the jokes just became tired, and almost all predictable. Take for instance Peter. When the series started he was just a somewhat stupid, but caring father. Now he's just a retarded (literally) moron whose only interest is himself, and will do stupid things for a giggle regardless what the situation is. Sure, there's the odd episode where the old Peter appears briefly as a caring father and husband, how he used to be, but for the most part, he's a jerkass who does things just because they're funny to an audience.

A good example of this change is an episode where he opens his own restaurant, which quickly becomes a hangout for his friend Joe, and Joe's paraplegic friends. Now Peter has known Joe since the first series, and bar when they first meet (where Peter assumed because of some trophies that Joe would be good at baseball, then assumed that because Joe's in a wheelchair, he wouldn't be after Peter had promised his boss a star player), the handicapped status of Joe's has almost never been an issue. Compare that to the episode in question, and Peter gets really annoyed with all the paraplegics, tells Joe that he thinks it's "a poor lifestyle choice", and bars them from the restaurant just for being in a wheelchair.

Now that in itself shows how much the characters have changed, but the next thing shows just how much the very show itself has changed. In retaliation to this Joe and his wheelchair friends form "Crippletron" a gigantic human pyramid that for all intents and purposes works like a robot and even fires some of the paraplegics as explosives. I wish I was making that up.

This isn't a cutaway by the way. That is what actually happens. Please remember that some of the first few series' generally kept everyday life of Quahog realistic bar in cutaways, and whenever Stewie and Brian were involved. Sure, it wasn't real life realism, there were some things done for the sake of plot convenience or comedy (anyone here met Death for one?), but as a rule there was a consistent logic to everything. I know that the longer a show runs, the more likely it is that plots become less realistic (after all, The Simpson's have reached a point now where they've had the entire town encased in a bubble), but Family Guy has devolved so quickly.

The trouble, as far as I can see it with Family Guy is that they rely far too heavily on running jokes. The prime example is the Chicken fight, which usually happens once a season. It started in there Y2K episode, where Peter received a bad coupon, and then goes into an extended fight scene. The scene itself is a visual treat generally for anyone who'se fond of big budget fight scenes, but when it comes to comedy, it's several minutes of dead air, and filler material. Usually it's commented on at the end, with Peter trying to return to the scene that was interrupted, but that was only funny the first time. The Chicken is a one a season problem, but it's so well loved by Family Guy's fanbase, that it keeps coming back, even though it stopped being funny a long while ago, and there are better ways to fill the time.

But it's not just that that keeps coming back. The creepy paedophile Herbert for one is such an one joke, one dimensional character that just won't go away. His only joke is that he's trying to seduce young kids (particularly Chris), and on more than one occasion it's just not funny.

This is one of the things that The Simpson's does well that Family Guy just doesn't. The supporting cast of Family Guy is too full of one dimensional joke characters who keep being shoehorned into situations where a new character would be better. Sure, there are some support characters who get plots, such as the doctor, the Pewterschmidt family, Peter's friends Joe, Cleaveland, Quagmire, Mayor Adam West, and the cast of Channel Five news (sans Ollie Williams who is one dimensional again), but the rest either exist as crowd fillers, or are there to make the same joke they made last time.

Cutaways tend to be more predicatable now too. Originally the cutaways would give you an expectation with the line that introduced them, and then show an entirely different chain of events. The subversive nature of them was what made them so funny. Nowadays though, and I'm not sure if it's because the audience is expecting a subversion, or just a case of a lack of ideas, but the cutaways are becoming more predictable, and more expected.

Family Guy has become a mere copy of what was originally great about it. It used to be an excellently subversive show, taking the standard comedy plots, and making fun of them, and has instead become this bizarre mismatch of running jokes, unfunny toilet humour, and stories that only exist as a way to tie one absurd scene to another.

But then, I guess that's what it's audience loves it for. As good as the first series of Family Guy was, it was cancelled. Then it was re-aired, re-commissioned, and cancelled again. So perhaps this is just a case of a show doing what it has to to stay on the air. The first few series' of Family might've been cleverer, deeper, and altogether funnier than what the show has become, but the show is more popular than ever, and as the old adage goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Which means Family Guy probably won't change. As this low-brow, crude show which, in my opinion, relies too heavily on it's own in jokes and nostalgia, is most popular like this, then I can't foresee any changes in the near future.

But there is still hope. Sure, Family Guy might now be set in it's ways, and stuck as doing the same thing over and over, but it's unofficial sister show American Dad, is actually considered to be getting better at what it does, and the spin off staring Cleaveland can't realistically return to these jokes set up in another show for fear of alienating it's audience. So perhaps we can get some of intelligent, and subversive humour that was what made the original Family Guy brilliant, and is sorely lacking in more recent seasons.

Or maybe we'll just get half a season of fresh material, and then start noticing the repetition.

Addiction

You spend every waking hour with it...

Ever since I was a young girl, I've been an addict. To Pokémon. Now, don't laugh, there's a few of you out there who love other games and continuously play them, so don't judge.

I've recently been clean the last two years, since I played up to 50 hours on Diamond. I got back to it last Friday, as I had been invited to a special event with some friends, where we could get a Pokémon transferred to our games for free. In this case, Shaymin, cute little thing.

By the time I left there on Sunday, I'd gotten my gaming hours up to 65, and had been involved with group trading and breeding on a mass scale with two friends. I had also bought an import from Forbidden Planet, of Platinum, and started it on Monday. I'm now at 25 hours, with 3 gym badges, and several evolved Pokémon in my team.

It's no secret that I love these games, even if I can't explain why fully... I admit though, the first 151 designs for the first games, great. I could remember all their names, who evolved into whom, and so on. Now there are around 493 of the creatures. I can't remember many of their names, even the ones I'm training up right now. And don't even ask me to remember which of them came from which generation of game...

Yet, here I am, 19 years old, playing through something that I've seen people a decade younger than me play. I've even been asked by my nan to give my Pokémon toys and comics to my cousin, who lives down the road from me. But no, this is something that is staying. I may not have caught every single creature, or completed any of the games fully, but I don't care.

Even if quite a lot of the designs of the newer generations of Pokémon are a bit...well...odd, there are still a few classics that have survived a test of time, and some which still stand out as being cute. I'm not too badly addicted, I only have one level 100 creature in my Silver game, an Espeon called VeeVee. I don't know why I named it that, but it works.

I'll probably be playing Platinum and Diamond all summer now, trying to make a living Pokédex (every single creature in the PC boxes, maybe in order, damn you Pete for putting that idea into my head...) and completing the games basically.

Should probably transfer all my Pokémon from the older GameBoy Colour games as well, those batteries won't last forever, and I know several people who have lost their saves already...

Edit: I forgot I'd written this, so this part is written two weeks later. On the above Pokémon Platinum, I am now at level 52, defeated all 8 gyms, and now training for the Elite 4. I'm obsessed, but still drawing and 3d modelling.

And playing Pokémon. Always playing Pokémon...

Another note. In the Elite 4 battles, you actually battle 6 people. Huge naming mistake there or clever misleading?

When will I ever learn?

I need to shut up.

The last time I wrote a reply to a reply, it promptly blew up in my face, and made things worse. But yet again, someone's annonymously enraged me over an old entry, and I feel compelled to answer them.

It concerns this entry, where I was trying to defend the so-called easy university courses, by proving that they can be as challenging, but in an entirely different way, to other courses. More specifically I used an example of a course called Game Art Design, which my girlfriend, and fellow Disjointed Thinking contributor, Calisto, studies.

I really do loathe when people decide it's a good idea to reply to things I wrote ages ago, as it usually means I have to hunt through other posts to find exactly what I'm on about. For instance, the post in question (first one here), makes mention of how I'm working in a Co-op. Which suggests either this person vaguely knows who I am, or has read other blogs. Considering that the two following posts where made by people I've met, I'm going to assume the former.

Anyway, to reply:

"Congratulations, you single yourself out, not only as being Dickhead, rather articulate, I'll hand you that, But also a selfish whiny child. Why did you not go to university? Maybe because you flunked out of school, and decided to day an 18 year old, hoping she wouldn't notice your receding hairline and pedophile grin"

First things second, the comments about my hairline and smile are such cheap shots I'm not going to respond. likewise, I don't need to explain why I'm dating someone I love, that should be self explanatory.

As for why I didn't go to university? I honestly don't have a proper answer. At the time I thought I'd never afford it, I'd never looked into student loans, and just assumed (incorrectly), that I could get through life with A levels (which came out worse than I expected anyway). Nowadays I genuinely have no idea what I'd even study, even if I had the money to go to university. The subjects I studied at school were essentially what I was told I'd be good at, and not really things I can wholeheartedly say I cared for.

You mention that you 'didn't go to university', fine, you chose not to be in debt, but don't say it so proudly, when you work in co-op.

Nothing says 'successful entrepreneur who chose not to go to university' than working in Co-Op. You could have at least chosen a non socialistic pansy supermarket like Morrisons or Tesco. - Oh wait, sorry I forgot, you didn't have a choice because you're retarded.

I didn't say it proudly. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't go to university. In retrospect anyway. University would've done me a lot more good than three years of supermarket work. But if I had gone to uni, chances are I would've done something I didn't care for, and would've flunked out, making it a waste of money. I'm not as clever as some people, I admit that, and I know I'm not self motivated enough to complete a university course.

As for why a Co-op? Believe me, if internal beliefs had anything to do with it, I'd've been working for a weapons manufacturing facility. As it stands I needed a part time job while at six form, Co-op were hiring, and I got the job. I never specifically said "You know what, I want to earn minimum wage to be yelled at by drunks and work for an ethical company whose own policies I don't personally agree with", it just happened, as I was stupid enough to agree with the move to full time, and didn't do anything afterwards out of laziness.

Then tell me why on earth you are in our video classes every Wednesday? Can't you afford to rent fucking DVD's? Or buy them god forbid?

I've been to a whole two classes. Both times with the tutors permission to sit in. Every other time you've seen me, it's been because I've been on a three hour train ride to leicester from Reading to spend my two days off with my girlfriend. Which also answers your question of why I follow her everywhere, because I don't know the city too well, and I can't stay locked up in her flat while she's in lessons.

... and the rest of that reply is indeed perceivable as being slanderous and derogatory, hence warrents no further deconstruction.

But then there's another reply, from someone actually kind enough to leave there name.

I couldnt believe you posted this when I read it... and from what hear, is been heavily ammended, im just sorry i missed the first blog to see what you really thought of us, who u hardly know a hasten to add... Thanks for being so false! Does 'Calisto' know what u've put here? Knowing that she's on this course too? How F*****g rude...

The "heavy ammendment" was merely the removal of one website address, at request. Absolutely nothing else got edited, bar maybe some spelling errors. Otherwise, that is the original post.

AND to know that you don't even attend Uni... Don't get me started...

I thought we'd made it pretty clear from the word go that I never went to uni. Why would you have thought I did to begin with?

One thing I seem to notice a lot about the type of replies I tend to get to this blog is that people don't think I research, something I often admit to. This is, nor has ever been researched opinion unless otherwise stated. I almost never claim to be an absolute authority on anything, and yet because I don't have some form of relevant research, or official credentials I'm not allowed to share my opinion no matter how grossly misinformed it is.

Can anyone who reads this honestly say they've never had an uninformed opinion? Sure, maybe not everyone is willing to air them so openly, but it's something an awful lot of people do.

But then, lets not turn this into another rant that just becomes a case of "la la, not listening". Now I've answered the questions directly, but maybe there's a bigger issue here. Perhaps I should ask myself a few questions, such as why do I keep nitpicking these flamebait replies? Also what makes me appear so condescending and self righteous? Why do people seem to think I take great pride in the things I openly decry as terrible? Just what am I still doing at something that was a part time job after all this time, and what am I going to do with my life?

The answer to the last one, I don't know, but apparently people aren't going to accept my opinions as valid until I stop being "just another ten-a-penny cashier". Because naturally nothing till workers do matters, as they're clearly morons who can't even form a sentence properly and never did anything with there lives.

That bothers me. I'm not going to give you the "till staff are people too" speech ... again. It just bugs me that just because I never found out what it was I actually want to do for a living, I'm stupid. For what it's worth I ploughed nearly three grand into a home learning accounts course that I found myself increasingly de-motivated from, and eventually abandoned for how frustrating, boring, and annoying it had become to me.

I am sorry y'know, I mean I never meant to be clever, and believe me if I'd known I was going to end up stood at a kiosk for what might be my entire life I would've paid less attention at school. I'm sorry I managed to remember trivia, and learn the logic behind certain things within mathamatics and science, when only the basics of counting would've sufficed at the kiosk.

likewise I apologise for never actively focusing on a career I wanted. I spent so long so sure that accountancy was the job that I wanted, based entirely on what others said I'd be good at, that I never even looked in to what it actually was. By the time it actually came to working full time, I'd finally realised school had passed me by, and I've got no way of knowing what I actually want in life let alone how to get it.

Yet who cares about my tragic sob story as to why I'm such a failure anyway? I'm clearly not worth the time of those who actually did do the research, did decide what they wanted, and are actively pursuing it. I'm clearly just a lazy and workshy nothing who can't do the hard work, or get the grades.

All in all I'm just bitter here. Go ahead and call me a spoilt little emo brat. I'm well aware I'm sounding like one.

Or maybe you could actually learn something from this and count your blessings. Sure, some people got lucky, others never got the chances, and sometimes there are people like me who had all the chances in the world, and didn't even realise he was blowing them until he woke up one morning, twenty two years old, and working full time in the same part time job he took on four years ago that was "only going to last until [he] gets something proper after [his] A levels are over".

I know I've had my opportunities, I know I've wasted a lot of time in pursuit of pipe dreams, and have squandered an awful lot of potential based on the belief that potential would eventually become something worthwhile, and I know I've made a lot of mistakes in the past that I would erase if only I could.

So to the next person who wants to tell me where I've gone wrong, take a look at your own life and ask yourself what gives you the authority to assume you're doing better than me? Sure, I might have my issues, I might have my problems, I might've had drama's in my past, and I might've made costly mistakes, but do you really think you're much better? Sure, you might be in a better place fiscally, or you might have an IQ that's more than double mine, or maybe you've even gone through uni, got the degree that proves your committed to, and competent at something, but I very much doubt any of that gives you the right to turn to me and call me stupid just because of who I am and what I do.

And without wanting to make this sound like a live journal entry, if you've got a problem with me being in your uni some of the time when I'm not a student, and am not actually learning anything that's to my benefit (ever seen me in anything other than the movie screenings?), actually come talk to me and tell me why it's such an issue for you. God knows I'm more likely to work towards solving the grievances of someone who's being genuinely sincere than the one whose taking an opportunity to call me "a retarded, scraggily toothed, balding, paedophille" [paraphrased].

With that I'm off, I assume I'll get more insulting replies that bring me no closer to resolution, and will regret this post within three days.

Custom made.

Make what you want of this

Back as recently as the early nineties, most games wouldn't let you make your own things. It just wasn't done because the technology just wasn't there. Very few games contained the ability to save, and most of those did it in such a basic format, using some form of number coding to make all the necessary data, in a space that was too small for anything more due to technological limitations.

Oh sure, it was possible to play within games. After all, people were coding there own games for the Commodore 64, and skilled programmers could make whatever they wanted, or at least what they wanted within the capabilities of the technology available. This, however, was purely the realm of the coder geeks, and most people got very lost when asked to code things. They didn't necessarily want to make a game, just make something that looked pretty.

And as the people who tried and failed to make a good game on the consoles of the early eighties will tell you, that's easier said than done. Changing the look, or ability is one thing, changing the very physics engine which holds a game together is another thing entirely. You can't make a custom option for a FPS and suddenly have a Tetris clone.

It's kind of like Lego. You give a a child a box of Lego and he'll probably be able to make something from it. Give him several lumps of plastic, and ask him to make the blocks of Lego from that, and there's a good chance that he'll either give you a funny look, or, should he try it, he'll most likely give up because it's too hard.

Because this is what customisation still is to an extent. It's just a toy box. You've got lots of things you can make, and ways to make it, but you're still stuck within guidelines. However these guidelines are forever expanding, with each new generation of consoles helping to push customisation further and further. And with the advancement of the internet, sharing all these newly made versions of familiar toys is becoming easier and easier.

Once console games stopped being made in bedrooms, and actually began to have serious investment, customisation soon started to come into it. This of course didn't stop the PC gamers hacking away at games, and making mods, but as far as legal game customisation went, creating characters was usually the first step. At first it was just custom characters, and in a threadbare version, that was basically a giant dress up doll. Soon enough though, you began to get the same with custom levels, I recall the level editor from Tony Hawk's 2, and it was a lot like putting specific lego pieces on a piece of flat land.

Sturgeon's revelation dictates that 90% of everything is crap. This is especially true of custom made things with regards to games. lord knows that over the years of making Skatepark's in Tony Hawk's games that I've made some aweful ones. And so has everyone, because it takes a while to learn the difference between good looking and good playing. The game doesn't make it clear what will and won't work, merely lets you try it yourself to see.

Yet, for all the good levels you could make, you'd find more than your fair share of awful ones. Some of these are clearly joke levels, or designed for a specific multiplayer mode, but most are just plain bad. Not for lack of trying, but just because people haven't learnt the full load of tricks to make a decent level.

But the level editor in a Tony Hawk's game evolved with time. With the advancement of the consoles came more specialised pieces to use, and more unique pieces that varied the place up. THUG however introduced us to the rail tool, perhaps the single most important feature in the editor, as it allowed you to put a grind rail anywhere, at any height, with any depth of angle or twistiness, within the three dimensions of your park. This wasn't sticking Lego blocks together any more, this was sculpting together your own Lego pieces to put in your park.

Characters too have come a long way. WWF Attitude featured a rather in-depth character editor for it's time, allowing you to pick from a wealth of options, and make quite a variety of fighters. When the licence was sold to THQ, the create a wrestler feature was listed as a severe fault in an otherwise good game. This was because really all you did was pick a head, a torso, and a pair of legs, which reall reduced creativity, especially when most of these were already existant in game characters.

THQ decided to fix this for the sequal WWF Smackdown 2: Know Your Role. Here the character creator was given a massive overhaul, and for the first time I'd seen you could not only change the look, but also physically alter the shape of the polygons. This wasn't a dress up doll anymore, it had become a fully fledged 3D character designer. Subsequent Smackdown games have upped the character creation to ridiculous levels, and now, provided you can use it well enough, make it possible to create absolutely anyone you feel like making.

Other games have added even more options in customisation. Creating a character is commonplace, but other games have gone further to allow the entire thing to be personalised. Smackdown's create a wrestler went as far as making your own entrances, taunts, move lists, to the point where the patient man could update his copy of the game, rather than buy the yearly release. some of the PES' series does the same, allowing you to update kits, and rosters of even the in game teams. THUG even went as far as allowing you to create your own special trick, as well as goals to play in the levels.

On top of that, there are games like Fable which have organic(ish) customisation. You don't necessarily get to control how fat, for instance, your character is, but if you eat a lot of pies in the game, your character gains weight. This isn't too far removed from stat enhancing in RPG's, in that you need to perform actions to grant the customisation and improvements, however organic growth isn't so instantaneous.

But is there a limit to just how much you can customise? For a game to be beaten, you need it to be winnable, yet there also has to be a challenge. You can't let the player control every aspect of it, as then he will more than likely just keep tweaking it until he wins, rather than actively trying to improve his skills to beat the challenge you made for him. But yet, people like there customisation. People want to play as themselves, or as their author inserted fantasy persona's.

Drawn To life has the players actively customising the level's they're playing in. Okay, so all changes are purely cosmetic (draw a shorter than suggest ledge, and the rest is simply invisible), but you can fully draw the platforms within the level that you'll be standing on. For instance, when told to create a stormy cloud as a moving platform, I made a metal ledge with rocket boosters. There was no reason to design that, but I have a bit more control over the environment I'm playing in, and get to make the world the way I want it.

I think this is part of why customisation appeals. It allows you to make what you want, and design what you want, and be a player in your own little world, living out your fantasies, not just interacting with someone else's. In essence, you can take your life, and make it into a game, and do the things you normally couldn't, allowing you to blur the line between fiction and real life just a little bit more.

If games are an interactive form of storytelling then customisation is a way to make the player even more a part of the story, by not only allowing him to put himself in the story, but also give him his own skills that are required, and by allowing him to adjust the setting as he pleases.

Even then this encroaches on the narrative of the story. You can't be a medieval knight and have a jet pack, so you're still stuck to only some customisation, you can never fully create your own reality and play things as you want if you want the true interactive story, some sacrifices need to be made. Sure, you can wear whatever sort of armour you want, but you can't cheat the rules of the game by having a gun in a sword fight.

But where can you go from here? Games like Little Big Planet continue to push the boundaries of what you can make in game, with many of the custom levels being like for like replica's of old school games. If you can already customise the skills and looks of your character, the looks of the world he inhabits, and even the goals he has to do to win the game, all that's left is to change the physics of the world he inhabits.

Yet that's a long time off, we simply don't yet have consoles with that power. You can't turn GTA into Call of Duty. Even if in real life you might be able to amass so much money and power you could hypothetically start a war, in the game the in game engine of GTA just won't let you, because it can only create what is programed into it, and you can't adjust that programing as there's not enough power, memory, or ability.

Until someone comes along with a games editing software for a console that's as intuitive as all the other "create-a-whatever" modes that come along, we're stuck with limitless choices for only a limited set of options to change about a game. You can change what your character looks like, how he fights, what sort of skateboard he uses, whether he can cast fire or water spells, the engine specifications of his car, and even what he sounds like, but no matter what, he still has to beat the enemies, save the princess, stop the end of the world and become the best racing driver to enter a skateboarding tournament. The game can't be won if you can't do those things after all.

Perhaps then it's a good thing that we're still only dealing with the optionals, and not the essentials. After all, would you really want to get two thirds of a way through a game with a character without knowing that you actually needed a snowboard medal? It would make the game un-winnable, and that's no fun.

Changing core mechanics is perhaps a step too far in terms of game customisation. After all, you buy a game for it's core engine structure. Sure, sometimes there's a moment where you think "I'm carrying a rocket launcher, why do I need to hunt for the key to this wooden shack?" but for the most part, you wanted to play as a midget running around a dinosaur infested town, so why change everything just so you can go go-karting?

You're simply not ever going to be able to adjust a game to that degree. Sure, little Big Planet is rather damn customisable, as are several other games, but they're still games with pre-set challenges, and you still have to beat them to beat the game. Otherwise what was the point? If half the fun of gaming is in the challenge, you simply can't give the player the option to make the game so easy he removes all the challenge in an instant, so at best, all customisation is always going to be either cosmetic, or progressive.

Or with flat out cheating. As my high score in Sonic 1 with debug proves. putting loads of enemies in a level, it was easy... what do you mean it doesn't count? I got the highest score possible with game engine customisation...