Category: play-and-games

Best review of Color.com

Color Review

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You can read the whole thing on mike3k’s posterous profile. But others have joined the game of describe the color app.

Evan Moran said…

…And all through it all you are left wondering. Are those screams you hear in the background? 40 million screams each crying out “play play”, “give give”, “stay stay”. As you tap tap, progressing further the game these sounds continue, louder louder. They become more distinct, more fervent. Rattle rattle. A counter point to real progress, an anti-sound. A sound of unknowing. Sizzle sizzle. Of misunderstanding. Fizzle fizzle. Perhaps you are playing it wrong. Tittle tittle. Perhaps it is you who is wrong. Tattle tattle.
Then you realize that the screams are what brought you here. Not to the room with the clock, but the game itself. Scratch scratch. The screams are coming from outside of the game, instead of from in. Thump thump. Luring you within. Bash, bash. You thought this was only a simple MMPRLMG game, but now it is invading your LIFE. Crash crash. The screams are getting closer closer. Will this be a real life monster? A colossal IPO beast made flesh? Its large marketing arm will reach reach, its terrible eyes will glower glower. Do you have the requisite levels of willpower? There is only one thing to do: RUN. Faster Faster. How did all of this become such a disaster?

Yesterday the review was removed from the Apple App Store – I assume the developers were upset the review got more attention than the color app?

Kinect the fast growing, all down to the hackers

Sony’s War on Makers, Hackers, and Innovators

Microsoft announced today that it has sold 10 million Kinect sensors since the Xbox 360 accessory launched in November. In addition, Microsoft reported that over 10 million Kinect games have been sold. The global sales figures, according to a company spokeswoman, were tallied through the end of February.

Since its launch, Kinect–which allows gamers to control on-screen action with only the movement of their bodies rather than a controller–has surpassed expectations. Microsoft initially expected to sell 5 million Kinect units through 2010. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, however, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that the company actually sold 8 million units through the end of the year.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20041213-17.html

Although I’m really happy the Microsoft Kinect has outsold even the Apple iPad, The Nintendo Wiimote, Halo, etc. One thing no one seems to be mentioning is the fact Microsoft made that massive U Turn on people hacking the Kinect.

There is no doubt in my mind that being hacker friendly made all the difference. In actual fact if there was a graph of sales, I bet after the first rush to get a kinect, things were steady before sales went a little crazy once someone hacked the kinect. After Microsoft did the whole U turn, sales must have gone through the roof.

I look forward to seeing the increase sales once the SDK comes out. Microsoft are on a roll, now if only Sony, Apple, etc would see the benefits of working with the hacker community.

The ambassadors of cool

Facebook Like Button

Revision3 has started this scheme to find amabassadors for each of there programmes.

You’re a die hard Revision3 viewer who never misses your favorite show and makes a point of telling your friends to tune in too. We appreciate your loyalty and passion so now we’re giving you the chance to make it official and become part our Internet television revolution. Help us spread the word about show launches, live events, products, apps and other news. Join the Official (and by "official", we mean unpaid) Street Team and become a Revision3 Ambassador!

Its a interesting concept but I do wonder if we could take the whole thing forward in other areas.

Combine the current Like fascination with your lifestream and you got your real Ambassadors. No sign up needed… Hey and to be fair it would be honest and a great way to reward your real fans.

Larkin about with Stranger on the 11th Floor

At the ARG start outside the nexus art cafe on Twitpic

I was invited by Tim Dobson via Facebook to a Manchester ARG (alernative reality game) called Stranger on the 11th Floor setup by a organisation called Larkin about. Never ever heard of them before but I was intrigued and thought i’d give it a shot.

Now I want to be sure people understand that all the comments I have, I did say to them on the day and I think they would admit most of the points I make are fair.

So we started off at the Nexus Art Cafe (somewhere I’ve never actually heard or been before) and we were explained the basic premise of the game, split into 4 different teams, given a map of the northern quarter and some numbers of people in-case things go wrong. Then we were given a clue and location to start. Ours was a phone box in Stevenson Square.

My team pretty much pelted out of the Nexus Cafe and zoomed to the phone box. Later catching up with them, just in time to see one of the girls on the phone. She was given the clue and quickly told a few people around her and before you know it they were treking down the road towards Piccadilly. That was pretty much the last time I saw the team. What a joke…!

I refer to slide 26 and 27 of Dan Hon’s Everything we know transmedia wrong for the rest of the critique.

No more… Waiting, Solving stupid puzzles, Not telling me what to do, Lazy calls to action, Treasure hunts, Jumping through fucking hoops. Bad storytelling is just bad storytelling.

Stranger on the 11th floor turned into a massive treasure hunt with lazy call to actions, annoying hoops to jump through and frankly bad story telling. Once again no offensive to the Larkin’ about crew. They did everything correct and pulling off a open source ARG in the middle of Manchester on a busy Saturday night must have been one heck of a job.

So its time to put up or shutup… I’m thinking about adapting the ARG we tried to run in Edinburgh "We Dream the City" to a ARG in Manchester. This will be one heck of a challenge and will take a long while to get going but in the meantime, I think larkin about is a great place to run the next Manchester werewolf chapter, so keep your eyes peeled for that…

Banned from the Sony network? Head to Xlink Kai

Sony is kicking Playstation3 Users off the PlayStation network if they have any kind of hacked firmware is what I heard on Technews today yesterday.

It looks like Sony’s making good on a promise to ban PS3 users who’ve hacked or elected to run unauthorized software on their consoles. Members of hacking site PS3Hax claim Sony’s already wielding its banhammer against "jailbroken" PS3s, knocking the consoles off the company’s PlayStation Network permanently.

I instantly thought… Well if I was in that position I would simply use the Xlink Kai network

XLink Kai: Evolution VII lets you connect with other console users around the world, and play online games for free. XLink Kai: Evo VII tricks your console into thinking that the other users it is connecting to over the Internet, are actually part of a Local Area Network. This is the basis of system-link gaming, where friends would gather around in the same house and play over 2 or more consoles. With XLink Kai: Evo VII, you now have the option to test your skills out with anybody in the world. As for the technical aspects of tunnelling network packets, we won’t bore you with that…

Fascinating project with some real interesting technology, ok its more hassle that simply logging on to xbox live or what ever but its free and you can people on different consoles.

Hacking the Pacemaker (progress)

Pacemaker Manager

At last a break through, someone (musicinstinct2) has cracked the way the pacemaker adds and removes music to the SQLlite database.

My initial experiments involved using the sqlite database browser to open up music.db and enter track information. Then manually copy the tracks over to the device, making up random hash values (as I couldn’t work out how Tonium were creating these hashes). It works! The device doesn’t rely on any particular naming convention, whatever is in the filename field in the database (music.db) is used by the device to load the track.

Fantastic…! Now this is cracked and Musicinstinct2 is working on a open source client to manage tracks. The next stage is to crack and understand the XML file which is attached to every single track uploaded on the device. The bulk of the data in stuck in a XML element called realBeatLocations.

I expect it won’t take long before we have the whole thing pretty much cracked. What would make things move along quicker is if Tonium would publish the source as it was created under the GPL.

What is a Alternative Reality Game?

What is a ARG?

View more presentations from cubicgarden.

I gave this presentation at Social Media Cafe Manchester back in November and Salford University in December. Its a nice easy to follow over view of what a ARG is and leads nicely on to transmedia. It seems a lot of people don’t have a clue about Alternative reality games and get them confused with Argumentative gaming.

Inception on youtube

Imran showed me a video about inception (massive spoiler alert, do not watch before you seen the film) over twitter and I started to check out the related videos, theres some really funny stuff out there.

Everything you know about transmedia storytelling is wrong

Everything we know transmedia wrong by Dan Hon

View more presentations from PICNIC Festival.

I’m glad Dan Hon created this and the follow up presentation, unfortunately I can’t believe it took me 2 years to see this presentation. I totally agree with the points made in the presentation. Transmedia storytelling to date has been pretty lazy affairs. I’m wondering where the blockage is… beyond the notion that people don’t get it. Its a whole new world and personally I feel there no frameworks to support this new kind of storytelling. Someone should do something about that…

Manchester Werewolf chapter – Wednesday 1st December

Werewolf Manchester Chapter

Werewolf: A simple game of strategy and deception, played by a large group of people. The game is all about making accusations, lying, bluffing, second-guessing, and social engineering.

What is there not to like?

For the last time this year, the chapter will be getting together to play the much enjoyed game of werewolf. This time the venue is changed to the place for digital people, Madlab in the northern quarter.

If you’ve never played before, I swear you will enjoy it. Its not one of those boring card or board games, werewolf is like poker but the cards and chips were eaten by a werewolf.

This will also be a great place to get some practice in before BarCampManchester4 which is that Saturday.

There will also be a surprise announcement on the night from myself, as I’ve been developing something which might be of interest to werewolf players across the nation.

The chapter will be back in the new year with more events… best way to stay tuned is signing up to the official facebook group for the Manchester Werewolf chapter.

Manchester Werewolf Chapter: PlayEverything special – 15th May

Lady with Candle next to face

Been looking forward to doing this for a long time. Imagine playing werewolf but instead of playing it in the well lit area of a bar. Imagine playing it out doors within a circle of small candles which flicker in the slow moving wind. Well dream no more, its going to happen on 15th May as one of the FutureEverything events at the Contact Theatre. Spaces are limited to 35 maximum so if you are interested please add yourself to the Werewolf group and signup for the attached event.

Should you play money poker with friends?

I say no. I think there’s too many things which can go wrong in a game especially when money in involved.

Victoria Coren seems to disagree but considers that social rules should be considered up front.

First, you have to decide whether you and your friend are happy to play fully against each other: trap-checking, check-raising, punchy value bets, the lot. If so, don’t be surprised if your friendship turns a little tense for a while. But there is no need to tell everyone your life story. Plenty of casino cohorts know each other and, if you’re playing straight, there’s nothing to announce.

If you are not prepared to treat your friend as any other opponent, you shouldn’t play on the same table. I am still stuck in an ancient tradition with my old mucker The Sweep: if we are heads-up in a casino pot, we check it down. That kind of thing must be announced, but should be avoided. Luckily, The Sweep is a total rock. If he so much as breathes on a pot, I fold everything but aces anyway.

Its getting a little like this when playing Werewolf with friends too.

Forget Scalextrics its all about the K’nex Roller Coasters

When I was a young boy I tried to create a roller coaster system from technical lego by turning the points upside down and slowly changing the angles of the pieces over a long piece of track. Its not obvious how it works but don’t worry it didn’t work so its not actually worth going into more detail about. So I was suprised to see K’nex launched a range of roller coasters tracks. I can’t express how cool I think this is, if I had the time and money, I would certainly get some and get it setup in a room. Instead I get to watch the endless youtube videos and wish instead.