England the new Germany?

I read this article and couldn't help but think that, assuming this isn't the usual case of media misrepresentation, Capello has started to become delusional. In short, after playing several youngsters and only managing a draw against an admittedly impressive Ghana, Capello is in a good mood about the future of England.

To be fair, this is probably an accurate assessment if you were only looking at recent games as England have done well recently. However, Capello goes on to say that he hopes that people will talk about Engalnd the same way that they were talking about Germany after the recent World Cup.

Que? Is this for real?

For starters, this impressive performance by England was in an international friendly. In case you forgot, England generally do well in friendlies and in qualifying competitions. Where England traditionally screw up is when they start playing in big tournaments at which point the players immediately fold and put in awful performances before being knocked out of the competition. By now, this is a pattern which is all too horribly familiar for any England football fan.

Now, lets look at Germany. With a squad of young players, they were able to play attractive attacking football in a major tournament and, although they didn't win the World Cup, they managed to get third place (after being knocked out by the eventual winners).

Is there any surprise that Germany were heaped with praise? There simply is no comparison and to suggest otherwise is insulting to Germany's achievement at the World Cup.

Little Zangief

The latest viral craze to sweep the interwebz is the story of Casey Heynes. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this article.

In brief, a boy, who has been bullied for many years, finally snaps and delivers onto his tormentor a piledriver into the concrete. The whole thing was caught on video (by his would be tormentors) and uploaded onto multiple video sites. I won't link to the video itself as some of the sites are actively taking down the video but if you do a search on google for Little Zangief, you should be able to find it quite easily.

As a result of the fight, Casey was suspended from school for 4 days while Richard Gale, the bully who got smashed into the ground, was suspended for 21 days (I believe the school upped the suspension after initially giving a 4 day suspension).

Now, I don't want to give the impression that violence is the right solution but really? If you watch the video, its obvious that Casey isn't looking for a fight. In fact, you can see that the bully gets in several punches before Casey finally snaps and hits back. From the evidence in the video, what kind of message are you sending out by suspending him for retaliating?

Bear in mind, the bully is continually punching him. This isn't a case of verbal abuse. This is a case of actual physical violence. Furthermore, the fact that this is being filmed pretty much tells you that the bullies had planned this in advance which means that they have probably done this before. In a situation like this, are we seriously expecting the kid to just stand there and act like a punching bag?

One last comment on Tina Gale, the mother of the bully. One of the myths around bullying is that bullies are caused by bad parenting. I'm calling it a myth on the basis that I don't know if this has been proved and not because I think its false. In this case, I can believe its true.

After seeing the video, she actually has the gall to demand that Casey apologise to her son (and did I mention that Richard Gale has apparently refused to apologise to Casey for punching him without provocation?) while claiming that she teaches her kids to walk away from fights. Teaching kids is about more than just what you say. They also learn from how you act. Its patently clear from watching her reaction to this that she has been teaching her kids all the wrong lessons.

The fact that she is trying to act like the victim is laughable.

Reputation

This is going to be a long post today but the concept of reputation is something which has been on my mind lately as a result of a rare personal convergence of TV shows and the gaming industry and I really wanted to get my thoughts on this down before I forgot them.


Recently, I've been watching the first season of Glee which, although the concept is a bit hypocritical, is a really entertaining show. One of the concepts explored in one of the episodes is around how a good reputation can take a lifetime to build but only a moment to destroy. Although the show was focused on the reputation of an individual, the concept also applies, to a certain extent, to companies as well.


Which brings me onto BioWare and Dragon Age II.


Who is BioWare
BioWare is a Canadian company which develops video games. Although founded in 1995, with its first game released in 1996, it wasn't until the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998 before I was made aware of this company. If you are aware of your video game history, then you would know that BioWare arguably brought about a renaissance in computer role playing games with the release of Baldur's Gate. They further cemented their reputation with the release of Baldur's Gate 2 in 2000 which many people, myself included, consider the finest cRPG to be released on any platform.


Since then, BioWare have continued to release a plethora of highly successful and critically acclaimed role playing games across multiple platforms. It is fair to say that BioWare are one of the premier, if not the premier, western developer of story based role playing games. And over this 16 year history (with 18 games/expansion packs), BioWare has deservedly built up an almost rabid fanbase. This is noticeable as, despite having some very valid criticisms labeled against the "formula" which BioWare uses in their games, their games have continued to enjoy critical as well as commercial success.


Which makes it fascinating, from a reputation point of view, to see the public reaction to the launch of Dragon Age II - BioWare's newest game. In brief, there has been a massive public backlash against DAII from some of BioWare's fans. A backlash which is probably unprecedented for BioWare. And a part of me wonders if this is due to the drop in reputation which they have suffered in recent years.


EA Effect
Looking back, the acquisition of BioWare by EA in 2007 was probably when some fans started to question their faith in BioWare. In fact, I mentioned on my gaming blog at the time that the forums were already ablaze in hate mail. Although I don't have the same level of hate for EA that other fans appear to have, I do have to admit that EA's history with purchasing developers did make me worried.


EA is a company which, despite starting with noble intentions and building an impressive reputation not long after it first launched in 1982, is now a company which is hated with a passion by many hardcore gamers (a hatred which has been acknowledged by EA as John Riccitiello, their CEO, has made excellent progress in repairing some of the bridges which EA had burned under previous ownership). In EA's defence, some of that hate is definitely misdirected. For example, EA acquired BioWare just prior to the release of Mass Effect and certainly at too late a stage to have any impact on the development of Mass Effect. Despite this, there were many claims by fans that EA had already ruined BioWare as was evidenced by the direction which BioWare had taken with Mass Effect.


Nonetheless, the impact of EAs negative reputation amongst hardcore gamers was clearly seen in the criticisms leveled against BioWare.


Dragon Age: Origins
Although the Mass Effect series of games was a radical departure in style for BioWare, it was an undisputed success for BioWare. It brought in a whole new group of fans who were less interested in the hardcore mechanics of ye olde cRPGs. Meanwhile, BioWare's older fans, some of whom were not fans of the new direction which BioWare were taking with Mass Effect, were comforted by the knowledge that they would still get some love with the release of Dragon Age: Origins - a more hardcore cRPG which was billed as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.


And in fact, the release of DAO seemed to placate many fans. The game was another critical and commercial success. It garnered a metacritic rating of over 90% and picked up numerous awards. In addition, although I don't have any actual sales figures for this game, reports indicate that by February 2010, the game had shipped over 3.2 million units.


Which finally brings us to Dragon Age II.


Dragon Age II
From an older, hardcore fan point of view, problems with Dragon Age II showed straight from the start. Some of the changes being planned for the sequel had been announced in previews and the forums had been set alight with complaints about the direction which BioWare were taking. In essence, some fans were afraid that BioWare were turning the Dragon Age franchise into an action RPG.


And then the game itself was released.


Despite receiving critical acclaim, the game was disappointing to many fans who stormed onto the user reviews section of metacritic to pan the game (BioWares extremely clever response to this was to blame 4chan and to get their employees to post positive user reviews - there is so much wrong with that but I will have to skip for now as this post is already too long!). In essence, a lot of fans were disappointed that Dragon Age II had departed from the hardcore cRPG style of the original Dragon Age and was geared more towards the "console" crowd who liked Mass Effect.


But what is wrong with Mass Effect "style"?
The answer, of course, is that there is nothing wrong with the Mass Effect "style". I suspect the reason that fans are so up in arms is twofold.


Firstly, the Mass Effect franchise was always developed more as an action RPG. So when BioWare released ME2 with an even greater focus on the action elements, the fans generally accepted this as it was a refinement of the style of game they were always making (although its worth mentioning that there were also a lot of fans who weren't happy).


I suspect the other key reason is that the Dragon Age franchise was originally billed as a more hardcore cRPG style game. The switch to an almost, but not quite, arcade RPG style with DAII meant that a lot of the original fans of DAO felt they were being left high and dry. And with no other hardcore cRPG in the works by BioWare, it really does feel as if BioWare have moved away from this particular niche of fans. Is it any surprise that the older hardcore fans are pissed?


The upshot of all this is that a lot of the reputation and goodwill which BioWare has built up over the years has been eroded. And this lessened reputation is having an interesting knock-on effect.


How many people believe what EA and BioWare say?
The biggest recent uproar surrounding Dragon Age 2 is to do with the EA account which your BioWare games are tied to. In brief, a forum ban for a user lead to him being locked out of the game he legally purchased although EA very quickly apologised and said that this was a mistake. You can get some more details around the controversy here.

What I find interesting here is that EA and BioWare aren't being given the benefit of the doubt by many people. In fact, there are a large number of people who have already decided that the only reason EA backed down was simply due to the amount of bad press they had been getting. Looking at it another way, if EA and BioWare had a better reputation - would people be so cynical?

Long term impact
At the end of the day, I have no idea what long term impact, if any, there will be from this. In fact, I can't even tell you whether a good reputation is important to a company selling video games. After all, the only people who pay attention to the issues outlined above are hardcore gamers which only make up a small portion of the market.

One thing I do know though. Now that BioWare has lost their halo - it will be extremely difficult for them to get it back.

Gerry and the hotpot

One of the good things about the school which Gerry currently goes to is that the teachers also take a fair amount of pictures of Gerry in class. Recently, during the cold, cold month of January, they had a hotpot in the classroom where each of the children took one food item into class.


Some vegetables, sausages and noodles. Overall, a decent selection of food.


Gerry finally gets his chance to grab some grub


At home, Gerry won't eat sweetcorn unless we cut if off the cob.


Cueing up for seconds :)


I can't actually tell what he is eating in this picture - looks like he is enjoying it though!

Tablets

The Tablet market is something which I have been watching with keen interest. As you know, I have no interest in the iPad and to date, there really hasn't been a serious alternative. Of course, that has recently changed as a slew of Tablets are about to hit the market - the most prominent of which is probably the Motorola Xoom which is running the new Honeycomb OS.

However, despite my interest in the market, the truth is that I don't really see how I would benefit from having a Tablet. Or rather, I don't see the benefit in having a Tablet outweighing the cost of me having to cart it around with me on a daily basis.

Currently, the only gadgets that I carry around with me are my iPod Nano and my phone. The phone goes on my belt and the iPod Nano is so small that it easily fits in my pocket. This is a great setup as it means that I don't need to carry a bag when I leave the home. If I buy a Tablet, this would mean a significant change as I would have to start carrying a bag even if the Tablet was all I was carrying (and I know I would hate this from my past experience with carting a PDA around).

All of which meant that I was actually pretty excited to hear about the HTC Flyer. The Flyer is a 7" Tablet to be released by HTC and, with all the excitement focused on Xoom, the Flyer really didn't get much press.

What really makes the Flyer stand out for me is the pen. One of the pens functions is to sync up what you write with audio that you are recording. In effect, the Flyer, in addition to being a normal Tablet, also doubles up as a digital pen ala the Livescribe. Of course, the major bonus of the Flyer is that you no longer need the specialised paper that Livescribe requires.

This is a major selling point for me as it immediately pushes the Flyer beyond the normal media consumption device which most Tablets are and into the realm of productivity boosting tech. This is something which I could easily justify carting around on a daily basis. The only problem is that it only has an estimated 4 hours of battery life when watching video which is pathetic when you compare it to the 10 hours which the iPad gets or even the 8+ hours which the Xoom gets.

le sigh. I guess I just need to keep an eye on the market a little bit longer.