I just found an amazing article by Alexis Madrigal where he compares the “cloud” (facebook, twitter, google +, etc) with living with your parents and having them pick up your room each time.
I think that, aside from hilarious, his point of view is greatly accurate and is definitely worth a look at. So why don’t you?
~R
Stumbled into this very interesting (and fun) post with tips for industry novices at tenpoundhammer.com
Definitely, a must read for most people in our fields…
You can find it by clicking here.
One last piece of advice?
Be humble. But never look down at your own work, be proud of it.
And never think you can’t learn of someone. Everyone has something great to give, even if it’s not obvious. You just have to be patient.
-R
Early today I stumbled upon, what I think is, a very useful post about job hunting for hackers written by Steve Buckley.
Being one to roam through several advice blogs on CV construction and interview preparation, I’ve found Buckley mentions some of the most sincere recommendations for the hiring process. Even though his article focuses on those fetching a career in coding and other computer expertise fields, I recommend this reading for everyone who is looking for a job in today’s competitive hunt.
However, if you are going to take my advice and invest your time to read his article… Please, please invest a bit more of your time to research at least some of the tools he mentions, understand why he talks about GitHub, LaTeX formatted CV’s, LinkedIn, etc. And think of a way this advice can be applied to your own field. Common sense is a very useful and quickly growing unused tool I’m sure you have access too.
To read the article I’m talking about, just click here.
-R
Recently, I’ve been looking at the Foursquare API and noticed that there isn’t enough documentation on how to authenticate with Foursquare in order to start making calls to the API. During my research I stumbled into joesiewert’s blog, who has this great article called “How To Use The Foursquare API With OAuth And PHP”. It is a great article that goes through every step in order to authenticate with Foursquare using OAuth authentication and PHP. However, his article was written in Apr 2010, which means it refers to the now deprecated version 1 of the Foursquare API. I can’t probably explain how useful was his article to help me understand how to start using the Foursquare API v2 at it’s full potential in such a short time.
After reading the comments on his blog, from people who have been having trouble understanding how to migrate from Foursquare API v1 to API v2, using the foursquare-async library provided by jmathai @ github, I decided to make this small tutorial of my own. This article is based off joe’s article, I consider it only a revised version to refer to the Foursquare API v2.
Before diving into the code, you should know that for this article we use:
In order to use this article’s intel, you should be familiar with basic PHP usage. Small piece of advice, if you have problems copying and pasting this codes into your own php files, READ THEM. The code used in this articles is pretty easy to understand, and most of the errors you may catch are easy to detect if you just try to read the code. Use your common sense, please.
Lets get started.
We will be creating two files to manage the authentication process:
And we will need to upload the files from foursquare-async library:
So far so good? Great! Now please make sure you make the calls to the right place in your server AKA:
require_once(‘EpiCurl.php’);
Is not the same than:
require_once(‘Scripts/EpiCurl.php’);
Direct quote from Joe’s:
Note: Depending on your server configuration you may need to manually enable cURL support. I did this example using XAMPP and needed to turn it on. In the php.ini file (C:\xampp\php\php.ini) uncomment the line “extension=php_curl.dll” and then restart Apache. If you get an error like this later in the tutorial it might indicate you need to enable cURL.
Possible cURL error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_multi_init() in C:\xampp\htdocs\test\EpiCurl.php on line 24
There are really two ways to connect to Foursquare’s API. However, one of them (the simple one) is not really secure and requires the user to give you their credentials. Since we live in a beautiful time where scammers live in every site and each time less users are willing to give up such information… Then we will not see this method in this article, but if you want to take a closer look, click here to read about basic access authentication.
The more recommendable and secure option is through OAuth authentication, and it is the option we’ll see in this article. quoting from Joe…
OAuth does a better job of protecting the user’s credentials and also gives the user greater control over what applications have access to their account. For example, instead of giving a random application your Foursquare credentials, you instead click on a link within the application that sends you to Foursquare to provide your credentials. Then Foursquare sends you back to the application with appropriate access keys for the application to use. Authenticating this way means that your credentials stay between you and Foursquare. The application you are giving access to only gets the OAuth access keys and doesn’t see or store your actual Foursquare credentials. It sounds complicated, but hopefully this tutorial will clear it up a little. OAuth is becoming more of a standard and as an end user you are probably already authenticating with different applications and web services this way.
So basically, we go through five steps to work with OAuth
Now, register with Foursquare and get your key and secret.
Go to http://foursquare.com/oauth/register, login and fill the required information.
- Application Name: OAuth Test
- Give your application a name (My Foursquare App)
- Application Web Site: http://localhost/
- Provide the site where you will host your application (www.mysite.com/my-foursquare-app)
- Callback URL: http://localhost/test/callback.php
- This is the URL that Foursquare will send the user to after authenticating (www.mysite.com/my-foursquare-app/callback.php)
Click Register Application and you’ll get a new key and secret key, save them!
Note: If later on you are having a php error calling a “‘grant_type’ => ‘authorization_code’ not valid” or ANYTHING along those lines. Don’t break your head against a brick wall, it’s an OAuth problem and all you need to do is RESET to get a new key and secret (Don’t forget to change them in your files too!).
So far so good?
Create a index.php and open it in your text/php editor of choice. And lets go through the code you need…
<?php
//Declare your key, secret key and callback URL variables (Without these, the api wont work at all)
$clientId = “DROLX3YP0MWNTVYD2CQPAKZWEGPE3NQHAB0FWJQPKTTNW5XC”;
$clientSecret = “OZSAFCGO0VVQJHYHEOS35QPR1W2NFJTZHAPJ0C5MZCCBHIYW”;
$redirectUrl=”http://www.yoursite.com/oAuth_test/callback.php”;//Include the foursquare-async library: (Remember, check your paths!)
require_once(‘EpiCurl.php’);
require_once(‘EpiSequence.php’);
require_once(‘EpiFoursquare.php’);//And some code!
session_start();
try{
$foursquareObj = new EpiFoursquare($clientId, $clientSecret);
$results = $foursquareObj->getAuthorizeUrl($redirectUrl);
echo “<a href=\”$results\”>Click here to make foursquare login</a>”;} catch (Execption $e) {
//If there is a problem throw an exception
}?>
So what we did here, after starting the session, is basically creating a new object for the EpiFoursquare class (That’s how we use this library in particular, to read more head to the github project) And send it our clientId and clientSecret vars.
Then we make a call to getAuthorizeUrl; in that class, which requires us to send the path of callback.php, hence the $RedirectUrl.
And finally, we make a quick link that will generate an URL that will lead our user to the Foursquare authorization page.
Foursquare will recognize our link GET variables and ask the user to authorize our application. When the user clicks on the link, he will be redirected to their site and see something like this:
Once your user allows the application, he/she won’t need to do it ever again. But they can also revoke your access at any time through their profile, so be careful not to piss them off.
Otherwise, the user won’t have anywhere to come back to and we won’t know if this worked or not. So make sure to add this callback.php BEFORE you go on and try to click on the link of your index.php.
<?php
//Put in the key and secret for YOUR Foursquare app, callback URL and receive the _GET code.
$clientId = “DROLX3YP0MWNTVYD2CQPAKZWEGPE3NQHAB0FWJQPKTTNW5XC”;
$clientSecret = “OZSAFCGO0VVQJHYHEOS35QPR1W2NFJTZHAPJ0C5MZCCBHIYW”;
$redirectUrl=”http://www.yoursite.com/callback.php”;
$settoken=$_GET['code'];//Includes the foursquare-async library files
require_once(‘EpiCurl.php’);
require_once(‘EpiSequence.php’);
require_once(‘EpiFoursquare.php’);//Start session and make some magic…
session_start();
$foursquareObj = new EpiFoursquare($clientId, $clientSecret);
$token = $foursquareObj->getAccessToken($settoken, $redirectUrl);
$foursquareObj->setAccessToken($token["access_token"]);//You should save the $token in your $_SESSION and in your database for further use, but we don’t need it right now. You will need to setAccessToken($token["access_token"]); the first time you want to make a call in a certain page.
That works enough to make sure we’re connected to the Foursquare API. Congrats! You are now able to make calls to the API!
So lets try that out… add this below the last piece of code in callback.php
try {
//Lets test it making a check in at Mt Rushmore…
$params["venueId"]=”3000225″; //We get this number from foursquare, its the id for each registered place.
$params["shout"]=”Im really at Mt Rushmore!”; //And we make a shout, just for fun
$params["broadcast"]=”public”; //Who can see the post?
$myvar=$foursquareObj->post(‘/checkins/add’,$params); //We make the call to the foursquareObj and send our params.
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo “Error: “.$e;
}
Upload your files, once again make sure the 5 needed files are uploaded. And open index.php You should see a link that directs you to the authorization site and as soon as you allow it you will be redirected and check in at Mr Rushmore.
Now, you should try a few more API calls to get used to this. For this, you should go through the API documentation and put special attention on how I chose the ‘/checkins/add’ parameter from the API documentation and applied it into our example.
Now, I’ll quote Joe in his nice description of the API’s methods:
As you look through the API documentation you will notice the different methods described like this:
URL: http://api.foursquare.com/v1/venue
Formats: XML, JSON
HTTP Method(s): GET
Requires Authentication: No, but recommended
Parameters:
- vid – the ID for the venue for which you want information
To call the venue details method above in our example we just need to change a couple things. We know this method takes in the single parameter vid and we can grab a venue’s ID from its Foursquare URL. 22242 in my example corresponds to the venue Town Talk Diner. On the next line, combine the HTTP method (GET) with the method name from the URL (venue) to form get_venue.
//Making a call to the API$params=array("vid"=>22242);$foursquareTest=$foursquareObj->get_venue($params);print_r($foursquareTest->response)
You should think about saving the OAuth information of your users in a database so that they don’t have to authenticate each time, this is done easily if you already use users in your site with a simple call to your database. But extending in that field is not the point of this article.
For now, I hope that you are able to make successful calls to the Foursquare API. To see what else the foursquare-async library has to offer, you should check their wikipage. It’s awesome.
So finally, thanks to joesiwert for his article, which is largely the base of this one. And I hope many of you find this article useful. If you have any comments or questions, or anything remains unclear, please post it below and I’ll be happy to reply as I can.
Happy coding.
~Ryoku W. (w45p)
Ok, this was far sooner than I expected, but this news is certainly worth it.
Microsoft and Google are showing us exactly how childish they are by presenting a beautiful and absolutely laughable act of “He hit me first, mommy”
In this post http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/bing-google-fight/ MG Siegler was kind enough to compile the best hits so far! Got to keep a close eye on this enterprises’ Tweets!
Here, I will copy and paste the Tweets MG Siegler selected, they are absolutely HILARIOUS.
AGAIN, the following is TAKEN from MG Siegler’s post, link found above.
@fxshaw@fxshaw@fxshawGoogle’s Matt Cutts fired back on Twitter:
@mattcuttsabout 3 hours ago via webRetweetReply
Google then decided to escalate things further by using their official blog to very directly call Microsoft out with a post titled: Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it. I mean, just think about that for a second.
Then, about an hour ago, there was this great exchange on Twitter in response to Dave Winer posting a link to the original story:
@davewinerabout 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply
@davewinerabout 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply
Bang!
Zing!
Pow!
@akovacsabout 2 hours ago via webRetweetReply
The last five months have been quite a blast, many new and exciting projects; included and certainly not limited to finishing my university community service, which in my country basically means I can get my degree now! Living the life out-side of school for the last few moths. And now I’m taking a look around certain colleges where I hope I’ll be accepted so I can continue learning to do some really kickass stuff!
I already have plans for the next few posts, which will be a little bit more erratic and FAR more frequent. Along those topics you will find some critique to the 4mat system, if anyone has heard of it already, and some insight to social media and the way it has evolved during the last few years. No matter how much you want to deny it, facebook is going down! And most of us wonder what is going to be up next!
This is it for now, I hope to see you around soon! Stay tuned.
-R-
I was not sure when to post about this. But today seems perfect, with the Nobel night and stuff.
So… Some time ago I heard a rumor and just had to check it out, since it just seemed like something too fairytale-ish.
What I found out really surprised me, specially because there was a viral marketing campaign going on about it. Up to today I don’t understand the logic behind this…
What am I talking about? A few months ago, a group of people proposed that the internet should be awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. [link]
Seriously, at first I thought this was some kind of joke. But then, the viral campaign came in, with (very well done) motion graph videos inviting everyone to speak up for why the internet should win said award.
Well, I’m not exactly here to tell you why the internet should have the nobel peace prize…
I’m here to tell you why the internet should NOT win any kind of peace award. And basically, why I think this kind of ideas are the ones that make this world as shitty as it is in terms of VIOLENCE, intolerance and ignorance.
So tell me, what did exactly the internet DO by itself to help the world peace?
Internet is a tool. Not a person, not a thought, not a self-conscious being. The internet doesn’t bring peace, people bring peace, with or without the internet.
Sort of the same that happens with guns. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If you take out the guns they’ll beat each other to death, guns have nothing to do with it.
Internet is a tool, that can be used for violence and peace. Not a peacemaker and certainly it doesn’t deserve a price for that.
Gandhi didn’t have internet.
Interest Links:
Mashable
BBC
Nobel Peace Prize
Just what we need after Obama’s Nobel prize for not being George W Butch…
Are we really that lame that there is nobody concerned enough for peace that we have to put our hope in a TOOL?
I hope not.
-R-
That’s the question, don’t you think?
Everyone wants and needs new ideas. But where do your ideas come from?
I encountered this video by Steven Johnson, with which I completely agree. And of course, I want to share it with all of you.
Ku out.
-R-
Thanks to Marianne Giesemann for pointing me out to the video.
So a few years ago I was browsing around different design portfolios. Why? because I like to do that kind of stuff in my free time. Once a geek, always a geek. While I kept browsing, I stumbled upon a very interesting article from Brenda Brathwaite.
Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer, who at the moment worked as a teacher at SCAD. She is a very experienced and interesting game designer, and her blog “Applied Game Design” is one of the few I’ve continued to read for many years.
I want this post to point everyone to a very interesting post (one of many) from her. “Design Portfolios – Is there such a thing?” holds some of the best advice I’ve heard about building a design portfolio. The tips she talks about are the kind you constantly hear from the most experienced designers and employers, but that are never written down anywhere.
I’d strongly advice to take a look around this post and her blog in general. For more information about B.B. (click here). You can also find her on facebook and twitter, where she also constantly uploads useful and very interesting content.
As a bottom-line, I just want to add that BB is one of the most inspiring designers out there and definitely someone you’d like to know about.
~Bytes!
So I was going to talk about M. Night Shyamalan’s last movie… But I think I’ll reserve the critique to his Avatar; The Last Airbender for next time, if at all.
So, what’s today topic? Well, if you had read the tittle you would now! Duh.
Socialmedia, to many the future of, not only marketing, but human interaction.
First off, I want to share a couple of videos with you, and afterward I’ll just remark a couple of facts shown in the videos.
The first video is about the progression of information technology researched by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod; Globalization & The Information Age. It was adapted by Sony BMG at an executive meeting held in Rome in 2008.
And the last video is a re-make of the first one Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.
Now, some must have seen this videos before. The first video is the original one and the second is one of the MANY re-makes, and I chose it because it’s the one I like the best in a very personal opinion.
So… Let’s highlight some of the facts of the videos, no special remark to which nor to the order of them. I just think it is some data worth paying attention to.
The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.
The US Department of Labor estimates today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.
1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met online.
It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years… For students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
NTT Japan has successfully tested a fiber optic cable that pushes 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fiber. (For which I think. A few years ago, we thought 4 gigabytes where impossible to fill with information in a USB)
Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Web.
80% of companies use social media for recruitment, 95% of these using LinkedIn.
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
What happens in Las Vegas stays in… Facebook, Twitter, RenRen, Kohtakte, Flickr, Youtube…
Wikipedia has over 15 million articles. Studies show it’s as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
People care more about how their social graph ranges products and services than how Google ranges them.
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. While only 14% trust advertisements.
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
90% of people skip ads via TiVo/DVR.
24 of the 25 Largest Newspapers ARE Experiencing Record Declines in Circulation.
The ROI of Social Media is, your business will still exist in 5 years.
So what does it all mean?
There are many ideas that can and will born out of this information. So if you have some spare time, please do share: What’s on your mind?
So something that you’ll probably find here constantly are different examples of video productions, mainly (jet not restricted to) animations.
A week ago I was involved in a hit and run accident, where another car appeared out of nowhere at 3 in the morning and I was barely able to dodge most of the hit. The other car ran away from the spot with an practically destroyed door. And I’m only left to think how close could that accident have turned into if I hadn’t been able to respond on time, as I think about it I remember some of the incredible Driving Consciousness adds I’ve seen around, and two of them come to my mind.
First, I want to share this video which, from my point of view, has an awesome visual realization.
And finally, I’d like to give special attention to this PSA add. It is the trailer of a larger video talking about texting while driving. The first time I saw this video I was marveled at it’s production and each time I see it I find it even more compelling.
PSA Texting while Driving U.K. Ad [HD]. Enjoy.
This is all for today, hope you enjoy the vids =3
-R
In this post I’ll talk about the research and design process used while developing Kueponi, and the 3 other projects done by our school, from which only one was chosen to expose at Microsoft Design Expo 2010.
The process behind Kueponi was quite an extensive research, I think I can outline it in a few steps, each of which took a variable period of time, from one week to a month or more.
During the whole process we had constant feedback from our teachers and Microsoft’s liaisons.
1.- Introduction dive to the social context of the participants. Each student developed 3 scenarios and a description, in which he should picture how our country would be in 2015, 2025 and 2050. This scenarios were then shared with everyone to learn and understand the different types of views we had.
2.- We were divided in 3 random teams to develop a small documentary about one of the social problems we thought to be important in our country. My topic was the lack of communication regarding sexual education in the families and it’s consequences. This videos were presented and commented on by all the group.
3.- After this introduction thinking exercises we came with our first brainstorm about all the problems that grow in our society. Then each one was discussed and we broke up in teams of 3 and 4 students to select 3 different topics from our personal brainstorming to research further about.
4.- Those teams became our final teams and out of those 3 topics, we chose one to do a one week dive to research as much information as we could about the problem and it’s possible solution.
–> At this point, our project was focused on the lack of interest in art and museums in the mexican population and at this point it evolved into student drop out cases. We thought that the main reasons for this was the need of children to start working. And after the one week dive we found out that the most important factor was lack of motivation, which was caused by several other factors like drug addiction, early pregnancy and family issues. Little we knew that there was much more into this issue than what we found out.
5.- We continued our research in the subject, this research was done in various ways: interviews, surveys, focus groups, site visiting, observation, bibliographical studying between others. And it was through this research that we came to understand the real needs of the students who are forced to drop out because of lack of government support.
6.- Thanks to the research we were able to start designing a solution to this problem. And because of the way we made our research, this solution came easily to us. So to speak.
7.- Once we had the concept of the solution, we began working with more research to understand the possibilities of our idea, and to design the visual concept.
8.- Once we had everything settled and specified in several maps that outlined our research, process, needs, solution and details, we began working on building the solution’s web application and writing our thesis on the subject.
9.- Finally, we had to create a successful presentation for our graduate exam. After which, only one of the projects would be chosen.
This was basically the steps that we followed in the creation of our project, of course there was still much more to be done after this. Which will be explained in the next posts, along with the topics of the other projects.
-R-
Q: What do you do?
R: Well, I’m an Interactive Designer.
Q: Ok, that’s cool. But WHAT do you do?
That’s the real question. For those who know me or have worked with me, you usually know what ‘technical’ or ‘artistic’ skills does a digital designer have by watching their portfolio. But there’s much more there than what the eye can see. What can your mind do?
A lot of people have been talking lately about ‘Strategic Design’ and the way it helps companies, but no one really answers the question “What exactly is Strategic Design” right?
Continuum, a global innovation and design consultancy, answers this question through a very interesting video. Which I think answers best what exactly is Strategic Design.
Design is not only about the manufacture of a product or service at the end of the process line. On the contrary, it is a thinking strategy which must be involved since the beginning of the development. We designers are trained to understand clients/users with a different view, providing useful inputs at any point during the creation of a new service or product.
Trust us, we are here to help. And we will succeed where others got stuck.
-R-
Change. That’s what matters in life, right? You can easily tell when you get stuck with anything, let be a certain goal or a job… or your life plan. And that is when you realize it doesn’t change at all.
Thankfully, just as having fun, changing is embedded in my veins. And due to a recent re-arrange in my own life, I’ll be changing the post days for Relentless Creations.
Yup, that’s why there’s been a shortage of posts the last week. Now everything will go back to normal… Well, the new normal.
New weekdays for posts are Monday and Thursdays with no specific time, either during the day or the night before the next day.
Cheers!
Each year Microsoft celebrates Microsoft’s Faculty Summit, during which takes place an event called “Microsoft Design Expo MsDx”.
During MsDx, several design schools from around the globe are invited to develop a strategic design project with their senior level undergrads (and some times a few grads). For 3 years Universidad Iberoamericana has taken part of this project.
The process began in November 2009, when seniors from the four design careers were invited to participate in said project, out of over 300 senior students only 13 were chosen to participate, I was included in this first team.
We were divided in 4 teams, mine was of 3 students. And during the last semester we worked on research and development of this project.
At the end of the semester we all participated against each other during our professional exam, one of us was picked up to gain exposition space at Microsoft Design Expo in Redmond, Wa.
In the next post I’ll talk about the research project which we developed and the written thesis.
In order to graduate from a Mexican college, it is compulsory by law to fulfill social service, which must be between 6 months and 2 years long. This social service is usually done in your field of expertise, according to your degree. This is the only thing I’m missing to be a college grad.
My social service project, is elaborating a database for an association that helps children in risk of living in the streets by offering them a shelter, food, counseling and psychological and medical attendance for a representative sum of money from their parent. They help around 40 children each semester, some stay and some are only there for a little while.
Until today, they do not have files to proof the help they do to the children, which is why they must create a database in order to not get shut down by the mexican government and gain their sponsorship instead.
Thus, the objective of this project is to create a database that fulfills their need of information organization and sharing between their different departments, creating a file per student that will not only help the administrative department to track the record of the children, but will also ease the communication between each department.
Now that last paragraph seems pretty clear. When I arrived to the association, they didn’t know what they needed, all they would say was “Hi, nice to meet you. By the way, we need a database”
I don’t think I need to say that is not enough information to start working…
I’d like to use this experience to empathize in the need of research prior to starting to work. They had a mock database someone else did for them the year before, I could have gone with their same database and keep it in, falling in the same mistakes it had and just making it easier to use. But that’s the difference between doing your job, and doing a great job.
In order to start working in the database, the first thing I had to do, and which lasted for a few months was research. Having interviews with each different department to understand their needs and design a database that no only meets their needs but also offers tools that will be useful but they hadn’t thought about.
Today, with all the research done, the database design came out in a blink, it was approved with no changes and thanks to the research I now know what I should do to build a successful interface, it will all come quicker than it could be if I had relied on their “brief”.
Bottomline: Always research.
=D
Just as promised, this is the first post of a new era in Relentless Creations, starting with the proud presentation of my new portfolio site design:
This post is also to tell you that this blog is going to be updated twice a week. On Sundays and on Thursdays, with no specific hour.
After a long period of loneliness, Relentless Creations will come back to life with periodical entries concerning the animation, design and game industry, as well as some of my own sketches and work, both personal and professional.
Yes, almost all the previous posts are gone now, and we’re starting a brand new blog!
Relentless creations will come back with a new post and more news on Monday 26 of July.
So if you thought I didn’t mention about this video’s effect on games because I forgot, you where wrong. I wanted to make this a new post so I could separate the comments, if I get any.
It’s not the first time that this kind of one-sided news and “documentaries” are shown in channels like Fox and MTV. And sadly they are shown in some of the most viewed channels, and as everyone who has anything to do with any kind of Media related industry (Design, Fashion, Game Development, TV, Radio, Films, etc…) knows, most TV watchers believe everything they see. Making a great manipulation weapon out of this media.
Not only as Game Developers, but as Modern Artists, Designers of any kind and else, we need to be aware of this messages our audience is constantly receiving. If we are to work for the masses, for any specific audience, we must always analyze the information they are mostly receiving from the media.
Even when I’m always one of the first in line to raise up my voice against non-reasonable taboos and old rules of the same kind, I think we need to pay attention to this kind of comments. Even when we think it’s a small percentage of the population who thinks like that, we must remember this debate (for example) was so big that it came to my hands. And I’m Mexican.
I’m not saying we must summit under what TV wants us to think and do. But in order to have better chances on succeeding, we must know what they are saying, and what they are going to say about our project, whatever it is about. We need to be one or two steps above their movements, I don’t think just ignoring this comments will do any good. At least not if we want to evolve and make people wake up to this evolving world.
As a conclusion I’d like to re-state that this is not an invitation to obey what mass media says. But to doubt it, research, think and come up with our own thoughts, and imprint them in whatever we do. That’s what this is all about, from my perspective.
Resist, Exist, Imagine, Create, Attack and Survive.
First of all, before reading this, please watch this video. (Click the link below)
While I was translating the last post some guy send this video to me, I didn’t have time to watch it a few hours ago. Now that I did I must accept I’m pretty surprised. Not pissed off, not annoyed, just surprised. For some reason I had almost completely forgotten about this society sector who’s thoughts where stuck in between 1980′s-1990′s.
First of all, a few disclaimer lines: Even when most of my ideas are, in many ways, liberal; I’m not any kind of hippie that browses the web looking for this kind of stuff and flam it all over. This video came to my hands randomly and I just couldn’t stop myself from posting it here along with my comments about it.
Ok, I’ve played Mass Effect, most of my friends have. And if we ever want to look out for some porn there are millions of sites and magazines young people would look at before taking a leap into a new rpg and have sexual fantasies coming true while playing.
Let’s be serious, NOT only video games, but all types of information is flowing at an unimaginable speed all around the globe! A lawyer is able to learn about design, a doctor will read economics reviews, and a young 13 yr old guy will not only be able to get tons of porn out of “nowhere” but will also be able to learn several programming languages, 2D and 3D software before graduating. I’ve seen this happen, I’ve lived this as it happens all around me. And I don’t think anyone interested in reading this blog can say different.
You want to set up parent control devices, get your kid to watch Sponge Bob Squarepants, sit in front of the TV and think about what a good parent you are, because you “care” about your son or daughter?
For starters, parents: If you want to get your son/daughter grow up in a “healthy” way. Turn off your TV, go with your kid and ask about what he/she really likes, you’ll probably be surprised. If you are truly aware of the way you speak to your child about mature stuff may be you’ll realize there is much more than just a “Don’t you dare playing that!”. If you take a look to today’s world’s evolution you might understand you need to communicate to your kid, and let him/her evolve without having one hundred and fifty million taboos running around his young mind.
I’m no one to critique one’s life style, but when a 34 years old woman who has been married with a man for 12 years and won’t sleep in the same bed with him because her father told her it was wrong and punished by God (RL case). You intuit there’s something wrong there.
Anyway, this is not about parents but about game censorship.
It’s amazing how people critique Mass Effect for a two minutes long scene when there are games like “The Sims” rated T, where guys and girls can get plenty of this scenes in a much more self-involved role.
“Kids have access to this things” Mhm, and to many others you won’t be able to imagine if you do not do your homework before complaining about it. I’ve seen it happen, 19-23 guys and girls growling at Second Life with fake arguments they herd from a conductist psychology teacher a year ago, saying people would only play with Second Life and this type of games because they want to pursue something they can’t have RL. And that everyone who plays with it WILL get banned from society and WILL enclosure himself in a digital world.
“Who’s playing VG? Adolescent boys, nor their dads?” and “This is where woman are seen as /objects/ of desire” This woman didn’t do her homework either, let’s see some quotes from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Link and Link
“Thirty-eight percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game playing population (31%) than boys age 17 or younger (20%).”
“The Average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.”
“Thirty six percent of American parents say they play computer and video games. Further, 80 percent of gamer parents say they play video games with their kids. Sixty-six percent feel that playing games has brought their families closer together.”
There we go.
“It’s not, it’s just not good.” Good argument. <<U
“Makes me wonder, what happened to Atari, Pinball and Packman?” May be this guys are right, and we should stop evolving, stop researching and stop getting better. This attitude is exactly what I DO protest about. Human race is in constant evolution, in each and every point of view, you can either sit down and watch us evolve while you miss the past, or you can join us in learning from our past and our present to create a better future.
“Being a parent is now a much harder work” When was it easy? If you have a child you Have to look after him/her and guide him/her in their OWN growth and life experience.
“Theres many ways to access it, even in your phone” Nicely done homework, once again. I’d like to see you try and play Mass Effect, God of War or even a N64 game in your cellphone.
Click Here to Watch Mass Effect Trailer.
“May be we should ban “The Fifth Element” as pornographic because of the final scene.”
Note: If you’re going to comment over this post, please do it about the Debate itself, a new post referring more specifically to the game industry will be posted later.
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