Well it’s another Sunday, and if you live in the United States of America, it’s the start of another football season. Perhaps we’ll be treated to another season of YouTube’s Breaking Madden.
This week we’ll be looking at the rise of the socially acceptable female gamer, and how it’s ok for her to develop games too. Speaking of developing games, maybe she can develop a new interactive viewing experience that blurs the lines between playing a game and watching a game. Games that you can play and watch on the new Sony phones, which support remote play with controller adapters and allow you to do so from inside your Uber robot driven car.
Ah, everything has fallen into place. As always, here’s to another good week. Cheers!
The Big Four
Women Now Make Up Almost Half of Gamers
“Many women who previously only gamed with their families are now embracing gaming as an individual leisure activity as well.”
It’s great that this statement is true, that women of all ages can now play games and be accepted for it. There have been many ups and downs on this progression over the years, but really female gamers and developers have always been there, they just haven’t been as visible as they are now. Computer software – and hardware – development had always been traditionally considered a role for basement-dwelling male geeks in culture.
No longer.
Simply put, young girls were not encouraged to go into math and programming at a young age, and this has created a noticeable technological gender gap. Luckily that gap was noticed early on and it is starting to close, possibly faster than other cultural gender gaps. This change has also pushed more and more girls into gaming as a hobby, and let’s face it videogames are just a hobby, just as going to the cinema regularly is a hobby, or collecting things. A hobby that everyone can and should enjoy on a variety of devices and in different ways. A game is a concept that doesn’t need to be limited by skill, jumping, interactivity, or even depth, and we shouldn’t limit the barrier to entry into the culture based on people’s race, sexuality or gender.
Remember, this is supposed to be about interactive fun, and we’ve only scratched the surface of how games could be a larger cultural phenomenon that may even surpass television.
As we are look down the barrel of a computer-heavy future, it is imperative that everyone becomes as familiar as they can with the inner workings of a computer. Honestly though, how many of your friends do you know that still can’t troubleshoot the smallest of computer problems? I mean, Geeksquad is a thing when it shouldn’t be and “Oh I don’t know about any of that tech stuff, can you just come do it for me” is a common response when trying to explain how to fix a simple problem. This is not just women, despite what many might say; many men would rather stay ignorant than know about how their computers actually work. Geek culture may have won out, but there is still a prevailing social notion that its uncool to be a geek.
Was Twitch Plays Pokemon an Anomaly, or the Way of the Future?
“It (Twitch Plays Pokemon) got everyone talking not just about interactive viewing experiences, but a notion of crowdplay, where the audience can become the player.”
As previously mentioned, interactive entertainment has a lot of untapped potential, and we’ve only yet to scratch the surface of what it means to interact with your entertainment. By its nature, television is passive, you sit and you watch that’s it. Sure you are observing the images and story, but for the most part your only agency is the volume and channel buttons. Books are more interactive than television as those pages won’t turn themselves, but they’ve always been seen as harder to get into than passive mediums.
Enter the world of videogames, which takes the passive watching and injects a steroid shot of interactivity into the experience. Games won’t happen unless you make them happen; your character will most likely stand there and repeat the same idol animations over and over until you move. This is why the horror genre is both popular and underplayed, as you personally have to turn that corner hallway in P.T to progress. In a movie you can close your eyes and let the scene play out, calmly letting the horrible scary bits pass by. But not games, nope you’ve got to buck up and do it.
However, something new has started to take form, and that is crowdplay and interactive viewing experiences. Twitch Plays Pokemon is but one example, but many developers are starting to design games around the idea that they will be watched by others online. Their goal is to give those people something to do, and change the way in which we play and watch videogames. There is the potential here to create a fluid gaming experience that will change as the crowd interacts with the player.
Multiplayer games are popular because you are playing against other humans, and it is a noticeably different experience than when playing against computers. Now put those people in control the enemies in your single player experience, giving them the power to shape the events of the game. The new Fable game is a group experience with one player controlling the scenario in a dungeon master type role while the others overcome the obstacles thrown at them. Crawl features a similar design as a hack’n’slash game with the other players controlling the monster and one controlling the hero.
It’s a great new genre, and chaos will reign.
Sony’s Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact will be the first smartphones with PS4 Remote Play
Well, there you have it, the grand design for the next generation of consoles. One that is compact, powerful, and more importantly mobile. As it stands this may seem rather far off, but the industry is hailing a smaller device as the future of videogames. This may only be a first step in that direction, but it is a fascinating step forward as it helps frame a clear picture (and actual picture) for consumers. This is also coming off the heels of several AAA games being ported over to mobile games to showcase the power of some of the newer phones.
Unfortunately, the touch screen has yet to live up to an actual controller and you’ll have to carry one around with you to attach to your device, but this is a minor issue as PlayStation 4 controllers are durable enough to make the trip. I suspect that Sony’s PlayStation Now will tie into this at some point as remote play still needs to link to your PlayStation 4.
It is an interesting time in the gaming industry with the three big console companies all seemingly going in different tech development directions. Microsoft has already seemed to back away from its digital online gaming box, but the PlayStation 4 is quickly turning into that vision. Will Microsoft have to back track again should Sony hit it out of the park with streaming digital games? Steam has already done so and they’re now entering the home console market as well. What will the responses be to the Steam Machine?
So what do you think about using your phone to remote play? Does this have the potential to devalue the need for owning a PS Vita? And would you consider making a phone purchase around PS4 remote play support?
When Uber is cheaper than Owning a Car
Car rental services are slowly becoming the rage here in several large cities in the United States and Uber is leading the front with its push to bring down its fees for services. It may seem like a tall order to ask people to give up owning a car, after all Americans have a prideful national identity about the motor vehicle. But that is not always necessarily the case as cities are overcrowded and traffic is abysmal at best, leaving many to take public transportation.
Furthermore, as we’ve discussed previously, the cost of owning cars should begin to climb back up after their prices have essentially stagnated over the last twenty years. There has been an increase at the higher end, but the average car has maintained its price points while also maintaining their simplicity in features. But that could all change with the onset of self-driving cars and the potential for this technology being made mandatory by our laws, as was the case with seat belts, turn signals, gas regulations, and many more safety features that we take for granted today.
Safety is the key word there as most assuredly robots driving cars will dramatically reduce the amount of personal injury and monetary damages that mount up every year. Uber and other car services could get ahead of many consumers by offering self-driving cars with their service before their cost come down enough for the average person to own. The bricks are carefully being laid, not by any design but by a natural progression of our choices.
It is almost an unsettling thought about how the Enlightenment and the capitalist/democratic revolutions of the West were largely about the ownership of private property (for the rich), and many of our current trends suggest we are moving away from this. Netflix, Spotify, PlayStation Now (when it is working in a few years) and so many more streaming based “rental” services are popular because they bring down individual cost by spreading it to the community at large.
Imagine a world where robots drive your car, and that car is owned by the corporation you work for. Cheers.
Visual Stimulation
American Beauty
A Conversation with Samurai Cop star Matt Hannon
Civilization IV Theme Cover
Extra Study Material
P.T has come and gone, but while it was here it took the internet by storm, and many are still trying to puzzle out what makes it tick. Brendan Keogh gives us his notes on what happens when a large AAA studio takes on a smaller and less restrictive title in “Notes on P.T”
This game developers guide has been making the rounds for a few years now, and it has become a revolutionary force in quick game design for students and those looking to prototype a game. Read and Learn, “How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days”
Google has so much money that they are now investing in quite a bit of future tech. It broke last year that they have been working on civilian drones and now they’re trying to tackle death, “Google’s project to ‘cure death,’ Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center.”
A new study shows that the amount of energy needed to play always online digital games outweighs the amount of energy needed for a traditional physical copy of a game. This is along the lines of the Prius and it’s environmentally damming batteries. “Digital games are more environmentally damaging than physical games”
Brian Kale
@brianwkale
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