Category Archives: Video

Video player for Creators

by | Cool Stuff, Video
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Here’s an interesting idea. It’s a video-player with a built in paypal-based payment service. Small-time video or movie creators can then put their works on the internet and charge a fee to viewers. It side-steps the whole theater / movie-rental store / Netflix distribution system. Creators end up with 70% of the revenue from each viewing. Prices range from $0.99 to $11.99 (whatever the creator wants to charge), and movies are made available for as many viewings as a person wants, ranging from six hours to seven days (based on what the creator sets).

Video: Jesse Schell, Design Outside the Box

by | Game Development, Video
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Carnegie Mellon University Professor and game developer, Jesse Schell, talks about game development. He has some interesting ideas. My comments below the video.

I have to admit that I’ve been somewhat mystified by some of the things that have become popular in the past few years. For example, if I’d heard the idea for Chat Roulette, I would’ve just thought, “Well, video conferencing with random match-ups. I don’t know that it will go anywhere. It might languish in obscurity.” But, it was huge.

Recently, I went and looked up some of the highest-subscribed video channels on YouTube, just to see if I could find some interesting stuff. I was shocked by the low-level of talent and entertainment value. I’m still mystified by it. My only guess is that those video channels are heavily followed by kids in the twelve to fifteen year-old range, and it’s just not something that I’m going to understand. (Case in point: Ray William Johnson, who has the fourth highest number of channel views this month, and routinely gets over two million views per video.) Again, I’m just mystified.

One thing I’ve noticed about inventors and businesses over the past few years is that lots attempted ideas that never go anywhere. Even people who have become very successful end up with lots and lots of failed ideas – both before and after their one or two successful ideas. Sometimes it seems like a crapshoot, and even the experts can’t predict what ideas are going to be successful. They just try one idea after another, picking themselves up after each failure, until they stumble on something that gets popular.

One of the things I was thinking about recently was the concept of “fail quickly”. It’s a phrase that entrepreneurs use to describe trying something, seeing if it works, and if it isn’t going to work, then you want to fail quickly and get on to the next thing. I can understand the logic behind that – given the fact that most ideas will end up failing.

In the second part of his talk (beginning around 18:30), he discusses the idea of getting points for doing different things in life. This idea just seems horrible. Fortunately, I don’t think it would catch-on (but, as I mentioned earlier, I could be wrong). Not only would it allow companies to create a kind of virtual carrot in front of us to drive our behavior, but the sheer amount of thought that would go into capturing these points would deprive us of an existence deeper than simple consumerism. What he’s describing is a situation where people’s minds are preoccupied with reaching corporate-constructed goals.

Playstation Move

by | Cool Stuff, Video
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This is a pretty clever commercial.

I was trying to figure out how they were determining your body-position from two controllers. From the videos I’ve seen, they do a pretty good job of it.

I can understand how they could figure out the controller’s position in 3d space, based on a 2d-camera image and the size of each of those balls from the camera’s perspective (which gives them a distance to the camera). I can also understand that they can use inverse kinematics to figure out a person’s arm position. But, as far as I can tell, if you hold the controller to your chest and take a step forward, the computer should perceive that your body is in it’s original location and you have your arms outstretched. Unless I’m missing something, they aren’t tracking the location of your body. Interesting stuff nevertheless. Also, I’m glad the system doesn’t suffer from the same cheats that you can do with the Wii motion controller.

Penny Arcade TV?

by | Cool Stuff, Video
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I stumbled on this while reading Penny Arcade: they’re doing a video-blog/Reality Show*, but only for a limited time. Click the image below to see the videos.

* They’re calling it a “reality show”, but I don’t see any physical challenges, infighting, or any disgusting “eat this live snail/spider/scorpion” contests, so I think it’s more similar to a ‘day in the life’ documentary.

Modern Warfare 2 on Fox and Friends

by | Games, Society, Video
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“You bring a game into a house, nothing to stop an eight year-old kid from becoming a terrorist and shooting people.”

Obviously, John Christensen could’ve done a better job with the interview, although he probably isn’t put into too many television debates, so I can forgive him for that. It also looked to me like they might’ve been doing the interview early in the morning, and Christensen was not entirely awake. The other people were obviously better prepared for the attack. The “let’s have a fair and balanced debate” by the host was rather farcical. It seemed more like “let’s both beat up this novice and unprepared public speaker, and the fact that we give him a chance to speak will make us look like we’re providing balance”.

According to Ripten.com:

Fox contacted [Christensen] that same day with just a few hours notice. In addition to Jon never having been on television before, the segment was filmed at 3:30 AM his time, which meant he wasn’t exactly “well rested” before going on air.

Ultimately, though, game-companies are at a disadvantage because the media looks for things to talk about, wants to push people’s buttons, talk about controversy, and get credit for talking about it first. They will come after game companies because they want to drive-up viewer numbers. Playing on people’s preconceived notions is the easiest way to do it. At best, the only thing interviewees can do is hold them at bay – by providing a cogent defense of the industry. They’ll always be back, though.

Stephen Totilo, of Kotaku, does a better job of handling the press: