Non-Driver

May 31, 2018 / Roger Edwards

As a carer I have to take both of my disabled parents to various clinics, appointments and sundry trips out. Today, it was a visit to the hairdresser with my Mother and then a journey to the audiologist, to collect and be fitted with her new hearing aid. There was then a journey for shopping and a final visit to the pharmacist, before returning home. Luckily, both my parents qualify for the London Taxicard Scheme. The Black Cab are a disabled friendly vehicle and the yearly quota of subsidised journeys are an absolute godsend. However, there is another reason why I find this service invaluable. I do not, nor have I ever held a driving license. To date I have never driven a car and considering my age, the cost of ownership and insurance, along with my personal mindset on the subject, it’s highly unlikely that I ever will.

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categories / Editorial, Social Commentary, Non-Driver

Gaming and Outrage Culture

May 29, 2018 / Roger Edwards

I've written a thousand or so gaming related posts since I started blogging in 2008. I mention this to indicate that I have more than a passing interest in this particular leisure activity. However, that interest has waned somewhat over recent years. As I get older and allegedly wiser, I find that the two things that I like the most about gaming culture IE the actual games and the community, are becoming slowly yet inexorably less appealing. Commercial factors are turning games development into a mirror of the movie and music industry, driven by focus groups and metrics. The broadening of gaming’s mainstream appeal has also led to an angry backlash from alleged "core" fans. The net results are a stagnation of innovation within games development and a slavish adherence to proven formula, as well as an increase in tiresome bickering from specific groups of gamers. Both groups seem to fear change and tend to look backwards rather than forwards.

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categories / Outrage Culture, Gaming

Season Passes

May 27, 2018 / Roger Edwards

Desktop Screenshot 2018.05.22 - 02.25.14.67 (2).jpg

If you are a gamer over a certain age, your interest will have spanned several decades of industry change. By the time I moved from console gaming to the PC, during the mid-nineties, there was already a precedence for expansions to single player games. For example, I was bought Star Trek: Starfleet Academy back in 1998, a few months after its initial release. The game had an adequate amount of content that justified its retail price. A year later publisher Interplay released an expansion pack called Chekov's Lost Missions, featured seven new missions, two new multiplayer games, and various improvements to the game interface. If memory serves this cost half the price of the full game and by the standards of the time was broadly deemed an acceptable. Despite the title of the expansion, this was not content culled from the original game and was purely an optional extra. That was the nature of expansions at the time. They provided new material to enhance a game at a reasonable cost.

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categories / Gaming, Season Passes

Losing Interest in Mainstream Cinema

May 25, 2018 / Roger Edwards

Before I begin, allow me to clarify the title of this post. I am still very passionate about movies and the film industry per se. And it’s not as if I’m going to run out of content to watch over night. There’s a wealth of older material to watch and the film industry still produces a broad spectrum of new films each year. However, for several years now I have found myself increasingly disinterested in the majority of mainstream films showcased at my local cinema. In 2014 I went to Cineworld in Bexleyheath over a dozen times. The following year that number had halved, and this pattern has continued to the present. In 2017, I went to the cinema just three times. I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Dunkirk and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Yet I watched over 150 movies at home the same year. For me the problem lies with the dominance of specific movie franchises and the way they monopolise the major cinema chains.

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categories / Movies, Losing Interest in, Mainstream Cinema

Improving My Work and Gaming Environment

May 23, 2018 / Roger Edwards

Back in September 2015 when I was living in a flat, I wrote a blog post about my personal work space. I touched upon the subject again in June 2016, as part of the Newbie Blogger Initiative, in a further post about the importance of a good writing environment. The reason I mention this is because today, I finally got around to replacing my old “fun size” desk with a newer, larger model. It’s nothing special, just something I saw on Amazon, that suited my requirements and more importantly budget. However, it provides a wider work surface, allowing me to write free hand (I still make notes in this way) as well as type via the keyboard. The desk also came with a matching monitor stand which raises my screen to a more suitable height, as well as a handy file shelf which allows me to stow pens, my phone and pending correspondence. It also provides a home for Pliny (the Raven). Not bad for £47.99 including delivery.

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categories / Your Writing Environment, Blogging, New Desk

"Adequate"

May 21, 2018 / Roger Edwards

“Why re-release a game that’s perfectly adequate but doesn’t do anything particularly noteworthy or special?” Rogue Trooper Redux review by Tom McShea. Here we have in a nutshell the ill-conceived attitude that plagues contemporary gaming reviews, although it is also applicable to other mediums. Too often these days, I find myself reading critiques of games, movies and TV shows where the author feels that the product has failed because it is not exceptional. Such reviews will frequently cite numerous positive factors or attributes and reference how the product has been competently assembled. Yet in the final summation, the author will then full back upon the stock criticism that in spite of all this, the game does not “re-invent the wheel” or set a new “benchmark”. It is just “adequate”. However, I believe that this is a much misunderstood and frequently misused word. And that its reoccurring use stems from a culture of unrealistic expectations.

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categories / Gaming, Adequate, Game criticism, Semantics

Open World Games

May 19, 2018 / Roger Edwards

The Virtual Bolivia that Ubisoft have created for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is truly stunning. This massive open world is approximately 576 square kilometres (222.4 square miles) and features 21 regions and 11 distinct ecosystems. Furthermore, the world is seamless without any loading screens or phasing. You can travel from one end of the map to the other without any immersion breaking transitions. The main story missions and the regional counterparts can be tackled in any order, affording players the freedom to explore and play through content however they want. The game can be played cop-operatively via PUGS or through bespoke custom teams. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands takes the textbook concept of the “open world” and augments it sufficiently to hang a narrative on. But beyond the overall task of dismantling a sprawling national drugs cartel, the player is given a superbly crafted sandbox and is left to determine their own agenda and play style.

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categories / Gaming, Open World Games, MMORPG, Ghost Recon Wildlands

Looking For a New Game (Yet Again)

May 17, 2018 / Roger Edwards

I’m between games at the moment, having just cancelled a couple of MMO subscriptions (ESO and LOTRO) and just finished Desolation of Mordor DLC for Middle-earth: Shadow of War. There’s a new expansion, Victory is Life, coming up in June for STO but there’s no reason to rush straight into that on launch. I may keep that as my summer gaming project. So, I have about three to four weeks to fill at present and I’ve been scratching my head as to what will best suit this gaming gap. I’ve started The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, but I’m not committed to it in the same way as Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It is a far more contained and “on rails” experience. I’m mainly playing it for the narrative and to fill in the gaps in the lore. To facilitate this, I’m playing through on the easiest difficulty setting and the linear story lends itself to targeted, time specific sessions of about an hour or so at a time. However, I’m still looking for something else to scratch my current gaming itch. Something “different” by my own personal tastes and standards. At least once a year, I like to tackle a game that falls outside of my usual comfort zone.

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categories / Gaming, Looking For a New Game

"Grinding"

May 15, 2018 / Roger Edwards

According to Wikipedia, “grinding” is defined as “performing repetitive tasks for gameplay advantage. In MMORPG, for instance, it can be advantageous to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over and over again to advance one's character level and to unlock content. Grinding may be required by some games to unlock additional features such as level progression or additional items”. Although I broadly agree with this summation, I feel that “grinding” is one of those terms that can also be very subjective. Repetitious content has a specific purpose in video games, especially the MMO genre. Not all of it is tedious or egregious. Therefore, it is a question of degrees. Killing 25 mobs of a specific species may be a tolerable number. A challenge but not a task that out stays its welcome. However, double that amount a suddenly a line has been crossed. The entire undertaking now feels like it has been inflated simply to slow player progress down, which is more than likely the exact purpose of the task.

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categories / Gaming, MMORPG, Grinding

Eurovision 2018

May 13, 2018 / Roger Edwards

I have watched the Eurovision Song Contest regularly throughout my life. As a very young child I enjoyed it purely as an opportunity to stay up late. In my teens I loathed it as it appeared to be the antithesis of my own musical tastes at the time. So I watched it purely to mock and deride. It is only in recent years that I have learned to love it for what it is and have finally understood its purpose. Sadly, the UK has a somewhat skewed outlook on many things, due to it’s history and island mentality. We’re often too blinded by our national achievements as well as burdened with a sense of pride and “self-importance by proxy”. As a nation our accomplishments our prodigious, so subsequently we have a tendency to over think matters. With regard to Eurovision we seem to focus on a “killer song”, rather than embrace the spirit of the competition. And that spirit is camp, kitsch and frivolous. Eurovision is theatrical. It’s about tapping into your countries heritage and expressing it as a light hearted, theatrical vocal meme.

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categories / Eurovision 2018, TV

Caring for the Elderly: Part 3

May 11, 2018 / Roger Edwards

A stylised depiction of old age and caring, far removed from the reality.

I have written in the past about caring for the elderly. I have approached the subject from a personal perspective, as a carer with two disabled octogenarian parents, as well as considering the broader needs of a society with an ageing population. As it has been two years since I formally became a carer to both my parents, I thought I’d share my experiences on the many challenges that my family has faced over the last twenty-four months. I find doing so beneficial and maybe my anecdotes may be of value to others in a similar situation. As I’ve said in my original post, caring for a loved one is something we all potentially face at some point in our lives, and with an ageing population it becomes statistically more likely each year.

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categories / Personal, Editorial, Caring for the Elderly, Part 3

The “Psychology” of an MMO Player

May 10, 2018 / Roger Edwards

Before we start I’d like to make it clear that I do not have any formal qualifications in psychology. If you want specific details of research into MMO player psychology, the I would urge you to look to more academic source. For the sake of this post, I shall be using the term “psychology” figuratively. As people do in everyday parlance. In this case it is meant to refer to the motivations and foibles of the MMO gamer. Okay, that's the legal disclaimer out of the way. Let us continue with a finely-honed dissection of the topic in hand, bolstered by that impeachable source of verification, namely anecdotal evidence.

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categories / Gaming, MMORPG, Gaming Psychology

Desolation of Mordor and the Blade of Galadriel

May 08, 2018 / Roger Edwards

Today the latest story DLC unlocked for Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The Desolation of Mordor allows you to play as Captain Baranor, who we now find adventuring in the deserts wastes of Lithlad in Eastern Mordor. Unlike Talion and Eltariel, Baranor does not have any Wraith Powers or the innate gifts and talents of the first born. He is merely a mortal man which subsequently adds an interesting dynamic to the game play. However, Baranor quickly meets up with Dwarven Hunter Torvin, who provides him with a several usefully Numenorean artefacts which fill his “skills gap”. These include a Gauntlet that expands to become a buckler. It also houses a crossbow that fires a variety bolts as well as a grappling hook, thus aiding Baranor with climbing. The other artefact is a kite that is stowed in a back pack. This acts as a parachute and can also be used via the hot thermal vents that litter the landscape, to ascend to vertical vantage points.

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categories / Gaming, Middle-earth, Shadow of War, The Blade of Galadriel, Desolation of Mordor

Throne of Blood (1957)

May 07, 2018 / Roger Edwards

When I first saw Throne of Blood as a teenager I was ill in bed with a fever. I found the brooding atmosphere and the use of fog, very hypnotic and was never quite sure if this ethereal quality was down to my state of health or the way the film had been crafted. Subsequent viewings have established that the dream like aspect of the film is indeed due to the creative talents of it's great director. Akira Kurosawa remains the best-known Japanese director to Western audiences, while other luminaries, such as Mikio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, are known mainly to aficionados and scholars of cinema. Kurosawa’s work maintains a critical consensus, although he was at one point rejected in his native country for being too entrenched in obsolete traditions and themes. On a technical level his film making credentials remain unparalleled and in many ways, Throne of Blood is a text book example of his style and technique.

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categories / Movies, Throne of Blood, Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurosawa, Classic Movies

“Geek Culture” and the Media

May 06, 2018 / Roger Edwards

During my lifetime, I have seen many niche market hobbies and pastimes become mainstream activities. Much of what is now generically known as “geek culture” use to be the exclusive and esoteric province of hardcore fans back in the seventies. Comic collecting, conventions commemorating obscure TV shows and even gaming were activities that were mainly conducted under the mainstream radar, in minor conventions centres, church halls and out-of-the-way bespoke stores. Forty plus years later and all of the above are now big business, generating staggering sums of money. For example, let’s take a moment to reflect upon Avengers: Infinity War which has so far earned $1,164,106,540 at the box office since its release on April 27th. The notion of a film company investing so heavily in such a genre franchise was virtually unheard during my youth. Sure, that changed with Star Wars but if you’ve read anything about the making of that movie, you’ll know it was both a battle and gamble to get it to the big screen.

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categories / Gaming, Social Commentary, Geek Culture, Media

Motion Control Gaming

May 04, 2018 / Roger Edwards

I was reminiscing with a friend the other day about time we spent playing Wii Sports in summer 2007. Golf and bowling were our favourites out of the five games available. Over the period of a year we squandered numerous hours breaking ornaments, frightening the cat and having immense fun, while separating our respective shoulders. Yet, motion control gaming never quite became the phenomenon it was touted to be. It took three years before Microsoft entered the fray with the Kinect and Sony with the PlayStation Move. Once all three platforms had the necessary technology there was much posturing and conjecturing about retrofitting existing franchises and marketing of new bespoke games that would capitalise on the “novelty” of motion control. The addition of physical exercise to a leisure activity traditionally associated with sloth, was going to revolutionise the health of an entire generation. Motion control gaming was also to have a major impact of sports training and medical physiotherapy. Yet none of these “dreams” came true and today it’s merely a curious postscript on the history of gaming.

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categories / Gaming, Motion Control Gaming

Thoughts on the 2018 Local Elections

May 03, 2018 / Roger Edwards

There are numerous local elections taking place in England today (not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). 150 councils are electing new councillors, and there are six mayoral contests. They include all the seats in all 32 London boroughs, as well as every seat in the metropolitan districts of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. Specific seats are also being contested in areas such as Liverpool, Sheffield, Sunderland and Wigan. All the major UK political parties are fielding candidates with an aim of gaining the majority of seats in a specific area and thus controlling the local councils. These local authorities then subsequently control and administer the borough budget for services such as policing, local schools, refuse collection and such like. The budget is raised through a borough council tax, which is based upon property banding.

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categories / Editorial, Politics, Local Elections

The Iniquities of Mobile Gaming

May 02, 2018 / Roger Edwards

The original title for this post was to be “the unfathomable iniquities of mobile gaming”, but when you pause to think about it, it’s hardly unfathomable from the publisher’s point of view. Mobile games are primarily designed to be money syphons, swathed in a superficial veneer of interactive entertainment. If you want a contemporary example, then look no further to the newly released Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. The game capitalises on a popular franchise and quickly introduces a pay wall which hobbles those players who elect not to spend money. What I find “unfathomable” are those who do not consider this an egregious business model and are happy to sink substantial amounts of cash into this pitiful caricature of a game. Sadly, the core demographic for this and many other mobile titles, are the youth market, who therefore may not even be picking up the tab for the game. As a result, irrespective of my and other gamers disdain and subsequent boycott of mobile gaming, these sorts of products continue to be financially lucrative.

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categories / Gaming, Mobile Gaming, Iniquities

Classic Movie Themes: Thunderbird 6

April 29, 2018 / Roger Edwards

Despite the popularity of the TV show in 1965, the two spinoff Thunderbirds feature films were both box offices failures. This has often been attributed to the indifferently written screenplays that seem to have completely missed the sense of suspense that the fifty-minute episodes achieved. Both feature films feel rather slow and like extended episodes rather than big budget extravaganzas. They fail to do anything different with established characters and apart from showcasing more extensive miniature effects in a widescreen format, don’t really have much more to offer. It’s curious that the winning, character driven formula that worked on television was overlooked for these big screen outings.

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categories / Classic Themes, Movies, Gerry Anderson, Barry Gray, Thunderbird 6

Policing Out-of-Game Toxicity

April 28, 2018 / Roger Edwards

“A game company has no rights or responsibility to police Discord, Reddit, et al. The company should not ban in game someone because they are bad (misogyny, racism, homophobia) about OOG people in OOG public forums. But what about people who are obviously ‘bad’ about in-game people/groups? I get the not wanting to police the world and certainly resist the nanny state more than most. But what if someone says something offensive about players/employees on a very public Reddit or Discord? It’s not a free speech issue; in the US you can say most anything. But the game company certainly can determine who can play its game. Do they make more money by letting these people play? I guess at the end of the day, CCP is correct, but it does not feel quite right.” Sally Bowls MOP Reader.

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categories / Gaming, Policing out-of-game, Toxicity