A día de hoy existen un porrón de desarrolladoras y distribuidoras en esto de los videojuegos tras varias décadas de auge en el sector donde resultaba tentador subirse al carro aunque complicado hacerse un hueco en la industria, pero si existe una compañía pionera en estos menesteres es sin duda Activision, que celebra este año nada menos que su trigésimo aniversario. Poco queda ya de aquel humilde estudio fundado por el visionario David Crane y otros pioneros en el arte de la programación lúdica en el 79 para desarrollar  y distribuir por su cuenta juegos de Atari VCS y modelos posteriores como el 2600, pero desde luego, si a día de hoy es tercera compañía desarrolladora software que mueve más pasta es porque han sabido montárselo fetén y amoldarse a las exigencias de cada época.

Fuga de cerebros:

Y es que al principio de los tiempos era la cosa mucho más jodida que ahora. Atari VCS fue sin duda la primera consola mainstream que dio un dineral a sus creadores. Hasta entonces el desarrollo de juegos corría a cargo de empleados internos cuya mención era prácticamente nula a la hora de poner a la venta el producto original, siendo lo peor del asunto que el salario de cada uno era totalmente independiente de los beneficios por su creación. Esta política fue fruto de algunos cambios en la dirección de la compañía por mandamases con muchas aptitudes empresariales pero poco conocimiento del funcionamiento interno de una desarrolladora de videojuegos, donde tan solo primaban los beneficios netos maltratando a la cadena de desarrollo como si de una primigenia Opel se tratase.

Esto le tocó las narices a unos cuantos programadores de la compañía, que decidieron salir por patas ante el descontento generalizado, aunque muchos acabaron volviendo al poco tiempo como subcontratas de la propia Atari pero cobrando bastante más que antes. Cuatro de ellos le echaron pelotas al asunto y fundaron su propia desarrolladora con autonomía para poder distribuir sus productos y hacer lo que les diera la gana. David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller y Bob Whitehead se buscaron a alguien para que ejerciera de Director ejecutivo (el productor musical Jim Levy) y pusiera la pasta… et voilá! La “band of four” se salió con la suya.

Lo que queda de la “band of four” recibiendo un premio en 2003

La nueva política de empresa tenía unos estándares de calidad más altos que lo que se solía estilar por aquel entonces, prestando bastante atención además en la presentación de la caja, añadiendo capturas del juego en la contraportada que aclararan desde un primer momento lo que estábamos comprando. Y es que ya se sabe, muchos recordaréis el mal endémico de las portadas de Azpiri que nos hacía comprar un título por el dibujazo de portada. Pues ya sucedía eso años antes.

Los juegos que fueron apareciendo tuvieron un considerable éxito: Cheekers, Boxing, Skiing, Kaboom!, Stampide o Ice Hockey eran vendidos con el nombre de su autor antepuesto al título, pero sin duda, el título más identificativos de la compañía y que más repercusión tuvo en la industria por aquellos años fue Pitfall. Crane, casi sin saberlo, creó con su juego un nuevo género, el de las plataformas, que ahí es nada. Y es que había que tener mucho arte para innovar dadas las limitaciones del hardware de Atari, pero se las apañaron para ir realizando innovaciones en el código de sus juegos que ni los propios programadores internos de la empresa matriarcal conocían. Y ahí radicaba su éxito y el despunte de lo que publicaban, llegando a lanzar más de medio centenar de títulos al mercado en los primeros años de la década de los 80.

Sobreviviendo a la crisis:

Por un tiempo fueron los reyes del mambo. Hasta el 83 se estuvo produciendo un crecimiento exponencial en la empresa, multiplicándose el número de títulos en la calle, los empleados en plantilla (más de medio centenar) y por supuesto los beneficios. Pero como hemos visto ya varias veces en la industria durante los últimos años, cuando un producto tiene calidad y genera ingresos, tiende a ser copiado y clonado hasta la saturación, y eso es lo que pasó con la famosa crisis del software de mediados de los 80.

Todo el mundo vio un filón en el tema de la creación de videojuegos, y de golpe y porrazo empezaron a aparecer juegos de compañías recién fundadas con una calidad que dejaba mucho que desear. Eran producciones de bajo coste que veían reflejado el valor de producción en el precio final, por lo que las tiendas se vieron atestadas de juegos chungos y baratejos que aun así no se vendían ni a la de tres. La cadena siguió, y al no haber ventas, los inversores se asustaron y dejaron a la industria un poco de lado, las compañías más grandes vieron como sus ingresos descendían estrepitosamente al estar sus productos diluidos entre tanta mierda. Y eso a Activision le afectó tanto o más que al resto, con más desazón si cabe por el hecho de que aún en el 84 seguían lanzando juegos de envergadura, como la segunda parte de Pitfall o el basado en la película de Los Cazafantasmas, cuya licencia les había costado un huevo y parte del otro.

“Así se me pone cuando juego a Los Cazafantasmas”

En un movimiento desesperado, Activision decidió desarrollar para otras plataformas como PC, Commodore 64 o Colecovision, pero las ventas no levantaron cabeza, y la marcha de Jim Levy como director ejecutivo fue el detonante para que los miembros fundadores se quitaran de en medio, con una terrible sensación de deja vú encima, todo sea dicho.

Se hunde el barco:

Bruce Davis fue el elegido como el nuevo CEO de la compañía, quien no hizo muchas migas con el resto de socios fundadores al tratar el desarrollo de juegos como un producto manipulable y prescindible consistente tan solo en hacer dinero. Viendo el percal y dadas las experiencias anteriores con gente así, tanto Crane como el resto de cabezas visibles abandonaron Activision en pos de un futuro mejor. Así, Crane co-fundó en 1986 Absolute Entertainment donde su único título digno de mención fue A Boy and his Blob para Nes, que pocos recordarán a estas alturas.

Antes de esto, Allan Miller y Bob Whitehead fundaron Accolade en el 84, con una carrera bastante reconocida hasta su absorción por parte de Infogrames en el 99, a su vez casualmente comprada por la actual Atari. ¿Qué de vueltas da la vida, no? Otros trabajadores de la compañía tambien resultaron ser la semilla de compañías de renombre como Electronic Arts o Acclaim. Desde luego, con una cantera así no le haría falta al Madrid fichar al chusma portugués este.

Poco antes de la entrada de su marcha, Levy compró la legendaria desarrolladora de aventuras conversacionales Infocom. El nuevo Director ejecutivo no estaba de acuerdo con dicha maniobra, así que durante años posteriores, las relaciones del CEO con la compañía resultaron cuanto menos, tirantes, forzando en el 89 la disolución de esta. Para ser sinceros, dicha compra no resultó muy acertada, ya que los tiempos del tipo de juegos que trataban empezaba a quedar desfasada de cara a nuevos géneros como las aventuras gráficas, y su adaptación a los nuevos tiempos no tuvo buenos resultados.

“Bienvenidos al mundo del mañana! (ejem)”

Junto al anterior, otro de los factores que desembocaron en el batacazo definitivo fue la apertura de Activision al desarrollo de aplicaciones software. Para englobar todas las vertientes creativas en un solo contexto, se cambió el nombre de la compañía por Mediagenic, aunque no se dejó de lado el sector del videojuego, encargándose de distribuir juegos para consolas de 8 y 16 bits, pero esta nueva inversión para abrir horizontes no resultó para nada productiva, y en el 92 Mediagenic caía en bancarrota. Vamos, que se jodió la marrana.

El resurgimiento:

En 1992, Mediagenic fue comprado por un grupo inversor liderado por Robert Kotick, quien decidió orientar de nuevo a la compañía exclusivamente en la distribución de videojuegos y la compra estratégica de compañías punteras, volviendo a llamar a la empresa  por el nombre que nunca debió abandonar, Activision. Una serie de acertados movimientos hicieron recuperar a la compañía gran parte las inversiones pasadas y cubrir deudas fruto de una mala administración por parte del anterior CEO. Uno de los principales motores de la recuperación fue el uso de la licencia Mechwarrior para el desarrollo de videojuegos basados en el conocido juego de rol de batallas entre mechas. Este, junto a otros juegos que aprovechaban el mismo motor gráfico como Interestate 76 o Battlezone fueron los últimos juegos desarrollados por el propio estudio interno de la compañía.

Si es que estas cosas se venden solas

Por otra parte, aprovechando viejas adquisiciones, se lanzaron dos packs recopilatorios con juegos de la vieja Infocom, cuyo valor para los nostálgicos reportó también buenos beneficios durante el primer año de la nueva etapa de la compañía, aunque a estas alturas tampoco sé yo a quien podía seguir gustándole jugar al Zork o alguno de esos.

A partir del 97, Activision tenía suficientes fondos como para aventurarse en la compra masiva y anexión de estudios. Algunos de esos movimientos fueron la compra de Raven Software en el 97, Pandemic Studios en el 98, Neversoft en el 99, Treyarch en el 2001 o Infinity Ward en el 2002. Igualmente, se encargó de hacerse con licencias interesantes para sus estudios, como el todavía vigente contrato para el desarrollo de videojuegos de personajes de Marvel Comics, el acuerdo con Lucasarts para las secuelas del Jedi Knight o el realizado con ID Software para las venideras secuelas de las franquicias Quake o Doom.

Todo este entresijo corporativo no hizo sino aumentar con el paso de los años, uniéndose a la fiesta otros grandes como Vicarious Visions, Redoctane o Bizarre Creations. La última gran maniobra de la compañía tuvo lugar en 2007, anunciándose un acuerdo con una de las subdivisiones de Vivendi Games, nada menos que Blizzard Entertainment, haciéndose llamar la fusión a partir de entonces Activision Blizzard, cuyo nombre eriza más los pelos que el de un transformer poderoso, como Fortress Maximus o algo así. De todas formas, la fusión fue a nivel corporativo nada más, y el estudio que parió ese destrozavidas que es el World of Warcraft sigue trabajando como un estudio totalmente independiente.

Bobby Kotick in da haus

Treinta años dando trechas en el sector y ahí están dando guerra todavía. Robert Kotick, quien sacó a la compañía de la bancarrota sigue, como máximo responsable de la misma.7000 empleados, oficinas independientes en una docena de países, incluido España, y unos beneficios netos de 5000 millones de dólares en el 2009. Lo que yo os diga, esta gente han sabido montárselo muy bien. Así que ya sabéis, antes de acostaros dadle las gracias a David Crane por haber hecho del desarrollo y distribución de videojuegos lo que es hoy en día. Joder, y por haber hecho el Pitfall!

This news item from GameSetWatch excites me. Not that someone is making sexy hi-res photographs inspired by Infocom games… by that Rick Thornquist is writing a book about Infocom, and plans to interview a number of Infocom people for the book. I don’t know who Rick is, but he’s my new game history hero.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Infocom games. They were some of the first ever video games I played on a PC and their ingenious packaging matched their more than ingenious games. I am still trying to remember what to do when you first get on the Vogon ship in the classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (designed, in part, by Steve Meretsky). I can’t wait to get my hands on this book. Sadly, Amazon doesn’t yet have a product page for it, but when they do, you can be sure that I will pre-order it!

Here’s some good Infocom-related links for you to peruse and enjoy:

• Wikipedia
• A brilliant white paper on the history of Infocom
• The classic Infocom unofficial home page
• Play Infocom games online
• GSW article on Steve
• Infocom collection torrent

‘Appy Monday Interaction Fiction fans!  For those who don’t know, Interactive Fiction (IF) games, a.k.a. text adventures, were popular back in the 70’s and 80’s, when games weren’t defined by the quantity of their pixels.  From Colossal Cave Adventure (which I played on the mainframe when my dad would take me to his work) through the Infocom era, text-based games used gamer’s imaginations to supplement detailed and often humorous plots.  Back in the day, games like Zork were household names.  Frotz taps into the power of the iPhone / iPod Touch to … well, to run these games in all their non-graphical splendor.

Premise

Interactive fiction games are run via a standardized virtual machine known as a z-machine.  Games formatted in the z-code format will play on z-machine interpreters.  Frotz is a popular z-machine interpreter created in 1995, and has been available over the years for a variety of platforms.  Frotz for iPhone / iPod Touch is a port of the Frotz application allows you to play a number of pre-loaded IF games on your iPhone / iPod Touch, as well as load your own.

Presentation

IF games are pretty no-frills, and the Frotz app is no different.  When you run the app for the first time, it will load to a list of pre-loaded IF games.  Select one and the game loads up the introduction and leaves you at the cursor for input.  (Subsequent runs will default right into your current story.)  The text looks sharp and readable (unlike my low-rez images here), and you can customize the background color and text font, color and size.

IF stories require text input in the form of instructions in the game such as “west” or “drop all except lantern” or “take analgesic”.  Text input is also used for commands such as “save” or “restore” or “quit.”  The iPhone / iPod Touch keyboard works very naturally for this.

Interface

The interface is simple, but serves the purpose.  If none of the pre-loaded games appeal to you, you can browse the Interactive Fiction Database website, and download public domain games straight into Frotz with little advanced knowledge.  For more technically-minded, there is also a File Transfer option, that will let you load your own files into Frotz via an FTP connection.  Given the issues that the C64 emulator had with Apple (who would not let the developers include a function to load your own games into it), I’m surprised that Frotz is allowed that function.  But I used it pretty extensively and it was easy to set up and worked fine.

Freshness

Frotz is not a new program, but it’s probably the best for running IF stories. The iPhone / iPod Touch version is very solid.  The ability to download stories from IFDB website (to date there are 289 stories and growing) and load your own files through FTP really open up worlds of stories that extend the app’s usefulness far beyond other iPhone / iPod Touch game apps.  There are adventures, mysteries, comedies, fantasies… tons of stories to choose from.

Value

Interactive Fiction games are easy to grasp, and sometimes hard to master.  It really depends on how well each individual author wrote the story.  They really require you to think and puzzle out what to do, and are definitely not for the twitch game crowd.  As it says in the App store “Playing Frotz involves reading, thinking, and typing.  If you just want to blow stuff up, this is not the app for you.”  The app is free.  The stories are free.  Give it a try and see what the glory days of computer gaming were like.  Just be careful not to get eaten by a grue.

Summary

Premise:  Great
Presentation:  Good
Interface:  Above Average
Freshness:  Good
Value:  Excellent
Overall:  Superlative App

The main theme of this year’s Austin Game Developer’s Conference, which happened to be the first that I’ve ever attended, was social networking games. I attended several panels regarding SRPGs, including one conducted by Playdom’s Steve Meretsky (a childhood game design hero of mine, specifically his amazing work with Infocom, the best game company ever) and the final keynote, conducted by PlayFish’s Sebastien de Halleux. It’s not that I was actively attempting to attend SRPG stuff; SRPGs are not part of my work in the Industry. It simply could not be avoided.

At the same time, I’ve had an interest in casual gaming. I’ve been playing them since Bejeweled first hit the Web. And, according to the IGDA, I’m totally within the targeted range of this type of game product: female, at home, late 30’s… except I’m a hardcore gamer. Casual games, and SRPGs, tend to target those who may not be gamers or consider themselves to be. SRPGs have the added twist of being, well, social. If a friend of yours on a social networking site is playing the game and they invite you to play, it will be likely that you will start playing the game as well.

So, I’ve decided to try an experiment in social RPGs. I’m not interested specifically in the microtransaction portion of their design (which will be the future of gaming as we know it, IMO), but more about how SRPGs spread virally, their common or uncommon traits, etc. I’ve created a second Facebook account for this purpose, and signed up for one SRPG, the very popular Mafia Wars. I won’t be adding games unless invited by friends… in fact, I won’t be adding my existing friends at all. I want to see if a complete stranger with absolutely no ties to anyone can proliferate in this genre, as well as the viral spread of these games. Let’s see how it goes.

Posted by Corey Doctorow at BoingBoing:

Phil sez, “Errol and Pifie, two members of the 50 Songs in 90 Days songwriting challenge (known as 50/90) have created a nerd-core masterpiece. A rockin’ walkthrough to the original ZORK text adventure game.”

Walkthrough, MP3 download (Thanks, Phil!)

NORTH, WEST, GET MP3, LISTEN TO MP3

For your next MBA case study:

Greece is a small market. Greece is ranked 2 globally when it comes to mobile growth.

The greek market is an oligopoly insofar as mobile communication is concerned; cosmote/t-mobil, vodafone,wind in terms of market share.

Wind has been suffering for some time a cash crunch (due to debt payments) and is desperately seeking refinancing from new investors.

Vodafone smells blood and announces major price cuts and new attractive – according to vodafone -bundled offers/ packages. Vodafone issues a press release saying that it wants to gain market share at all cost, and that it wants to become number one in this market. 

Since we’re dealing with an oligopoly such actions are soon followed by the rest of the players. Cosmote will easily meet vodafone’s challenge and perhaps raise the stakes. Wind will….well….whose market share do you think vodafone’s after?

On the other side of things analog tv is slowly being phased out in Greece by command of her majesty the EU, and by 2012 the last analog transmitter will be decomissioned.

Jason Scott posted a set of scanned Infocom ads from the 1980 on his blog, ASCII, today.

Those of us old enough will probably remember at least a few of the ads he has posted.

Those not old enough might not know who Infocom was.

Infocom, if you didn’t bother to go to the link up in the first sentence, made a series of text-only adventure games in the 1980s starting with Zork, a game I purchased in the college bookstore for my Apple II in… the early 80s.

The games were a bit of an acquired taste.  You either liked them or you didn’t, but they were popular enough both by virtue of their cleverness and the fact that their simplicity allowed the games to be ported to a wide variety of operating environments.  Look at the list of supported computers in the lower right of that ad.  This was what we faced in the early 80s, back when Microsoft was mostly known for its BASIC compiler and its Flight Simulator.

I owned a pile of Infocom games over that decade, though the one I enjoyed the most was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Getting the Babel Fish was an event at least as memorable to me as killing Archaedas in Uldaman was.

So a big “Thank You!” goes out to Jason Scott for his ongoing effort to find and archieve things like these ads.

Infocom

That name alone should spark a lot of fond memories to many people. Infocom was the company that really tuned my young mind into the notion that stories don’t have to necessarily be a passive experience. Infocom was responsible for some of the best interactive fiction (text adventures) available. Most are familiar with Zork, Planetfall, Wishbringer, and Suspended. But not many have heard about the Infocomics line.

Infocomics were comic books for the computer. In my case, the Commodore 64.  The difference between these digital books versus their paper brethren was the ability to choose how you read the story. Each book had various story arcs that when the panel was clicked, the reader would be able to follow that particular story arc through that particular character’s point of view.

Never again were you left wondering what happened when the resident bad guy left the room, or what the repercussions of certain events had on a secondary character. This was a similar trait to the old Choose You Own Adventure books.  Both of these storytelling ideas left me satisfied as a child. I felt that I had received the whole story by not just reading, but exploring the story. During my week of sensory blackout, I had an idea of an alternating persepective storytelling scheme.

The story would be handled by a narrator, similar to a dungeon-master (DM) in a table-top role playing game. Each character in the story, be it a main role or brief walk-on, would be written by a real person. One format would be to use Twitter. A main account would be for those just wanting to follow the main storylines, with the reading of the narrative and the characters entering and leaving the stage. But if someone were interested in following what happens after a character left the stage, they could click on that character’s splinter site and see what went on.

Granted there would have to be some sort of professionalism among the players so that they don’t abuse the lack of supervision off-scene, but if a basic outline was written out by the narrator and character profiles by each player, it may work and not suffer from utter anarchy.  Thoughts?

 Προσφορά της :

Projectors are getting more advanced now days. Such like that Epson has introduced its latest and new projector called PowerLite Z8000WUNL. It is one of the most significant projectors since it is able to bring brightest output. It has the features as follow:

Click to know about Canon’s latest projector

•It has 6,000 ANSI Lumens.
•It brings LAN connectivity.
•The resolution of the projector is WUXGA 1,920 x 1,200.
•The contrast ration of the projector is 5,000 : 1
•It features 10,000 hour air filter.
•It features closed captioning decoder.
It is expected to be available this September, price and exact release details of this device have not yet been announced.

[ More ]

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about a new project. In fact I’m a compulsive thinker of new ideas. Even whilst I was trying to bring Hoth Strike to a tidy close I was off in cuckoo land dreaming of a fantasy universe with fancy map and character editors. I still love the idea of having this super rich world with different races living side by side each with their own geo-political issues. I love the idea of different races, communities and individuals having their own particular agenda and I absolutely love the idea of dropping the player right in to the middle of it all. I even started to code a framework to put some flesh on the bones of the idea.

But mid way through something dawned on me. I hadn’t even considered the application for the game. I had no idea how the game would be played and no consideration for the visual appearance / appeal of the game.
I am essentially an arcade gamer. I love the ability to dip in to a game, wreak havoc, obtain a score (high or otherwise) and then just leave it all behind until next time. The games I play are pretty much this sort of game. For some reason I have just harboured this love of computer fantasy role playing and always thought it would be an interesting challenge.

Growing up with a love for Infocom’s Zork probably didn’t help this much. In my youth I wrote all manner of linear adventure games in BASIC. You know the sort, YOU ARE IN A ROOM. DO YOU GO LEFT OR RIGHT. > YOU WENT RIGHT. YOU HAVE FALLEN DOWN A PIT. END. Hmm. Should have gone left.
Those kind of games were littered with GOTO statements and were pretty dreadful to be honest. All the fun was in the creation.

A step beyond all that is the Fighting Fantasy style. These were huge in my youth. I particularly remember Citadel of Chaos for it’s rich definitions and grotesque characters.

I got a pen and paper out and sketched out my own idea for a game earlier today. It came out something like the map above. What struck me as fascinating about this was just how easily it translates in to a coding structure. Using JavaScript to create this sort of thing would be a breeze with every location an instance of a Node class of some kind populated individually with specific attributes to prompt the player in to having decisions to make.

So I set about coding a simple structure for this kind of game.

Using JSON I defined the following type of structure:
var locations = [
{
id : 0,
title : "The Entrance Chamber",
description : "You are standing in a tall but rather narrow chamber. Paintings from a long forgotten time adorn the walls and portray past members of the household. They appear to watch your every move. Quietly you turn to face the open door behind you. It creaks in the wind then SLAMS shut. Darkness falls and you are suddenley met with a shiver.",
prompt : "A staircase leads up away from the chamber. A dusty old chest sits in a dark corner.",
actions : [
{
text : "Climb the stairs",
nextlocation : 1
},
{
text : "Open the chest",
nextlocation : 2
}
]
},
.
.
As you can see that array definition could easily go on for several megabytes more. And indeed it will.
Locations 1 and 2 are naturally going to hold information relative to the Staircase and Chest.
I could expand on the location definition to include attributes for light level, HP damage (e.g.poison), gold, inventory items, monsters and so forth. All the game code would be concerned with is picking the details out for that element and presenting the player with a number of choices. As with the map diagram above all roads would ultimately lead you back to the central “spine” of the game until ultimately you reached your goal.

There are two reasons why I particularly like this approach to a game.

Firstly, it’s 100% flexible and easy to replicate. By administering a data source you could rip out a data.js file and bang a new one in there that is a completely different game ! This appeals since I could probably think of countless adventure scenarios.

Secondly, it’s playable on the move. I could simply render text and providing my handset supports JavaScript, CSS and HTML I get a reasonable game experience.

But for the game to really capture my interest it would need a separate combat element. A means of accumulating enough strength, experience, dexterity, intelligence etc to actually do some damage in battle. Further in to the story / game you would then come up against some tough adversaries.

This loosly linear approach to a game also gives me the chance to flex my atrophic literary muscles. I love the idea of being able to go to town describing a location and situation. Better still I could crank up photoshop and sketch out the location with a simple JPG. Where an image exists I simply present it above the text.

There are a great many creative positives to a side project like this. I could have a serious amount of fun just pencilling out the map for the adventure and coming up with a ton of tricky scenarios in which to plant the adventurer.

Check out my extremely roughly coded example here: http://rebelideas.co.uk/proto/adventure1/

Take a look at the data.js file for the structure. You will see that only a couple of locations are coded. But it’s an interesting starting point.

Meanwhile…. I am preparing some graphics for my next graphical arcade game. I’ve already done my own takes on Space Invaders and Defender. Next up I hope to apply a similar spin on Robotron. Somewhere in between Robotron and Gauntlet you will hopefully find my next game, set in a very familiar and extremely popular universe. More soon.

Video communicaton through fixed online applications has become very, very popular (ex: video skype). Video communication through telecommunication broadband systems has not become very popular (whether fixed or mobile).

Ok, now let’s correct the hickup in the previous statement: Video communication has become popular over telecom networks since skype and a host of other such application software do indeed rely on the telecommunication network.

The question is how did skype and all the other peer to peer applications manage to catch a market in say five years, a market that the traditional telecom companies have been addressing for the last 40 years (remember ISDN video tv? and of course we now have 3G (and later LTE) video call capabilities) without much success.

Premise : Video communication does exist as a succesful service, but through advertising based peer to peer applications that are independent from the telecom providers service offering and billing system!

Why?

One possible answer is that   skype (and all the other skypes) offered it for free. The other answer is that they offered it for free to the users that could not afford to pay for the service anyway, the youth segment (well most could but you know..). Another factor that comes to play is that most of these peers understood that this segment relied on the “socializing factor”. Skype (and later applications such as facebook, gmail, msn etc.. ) built in a”gossipy virality” into the actual applications, allowing people to communicate, share, coordinate, incorporate and generally get involved; The key advantage with all these applications is the “social butterfly” aspect of the application. Another advantage is that the users got something in return for actually promoting the application to their friends, family and peers. In other words the application contained a built in viral component.

So while the previous strategy focussed on interconnecting customers (an older generation that really had no time, or care to watch itself on a screen) through video, or mobile video, as is done through voice, the peer to peer applications focussed on using voice, video , text and anything else that was/is at their disposal as enblers to allow people to group into “tribes”. This satisfied an individual’s need to socialize and be part of a group, and simultaneously nurtured their personality’s self actualization factor.

(to be fair to the pervasive telecom network, technological limitations were indeed an obstruction since SS7 and ATM based ISDN network let much to be desired regarding general interconnectivity, something that is crucial in setting up a online “tribe”. Also, the initial “party lines” were a step in the right direction, they were indeed free (either on purpose or by accident) but the revenue models in existence at the time could not capitalize on such trends. This of course is an oversimplification of the situation, but will be corrected in the future as this journal will dwelve in detail as to how things panned out, and why).

Sometimes people ask me why I want to study Media in Japan, and the answer is U-Japan. Dr. Katja Valaskivi reports about Media research institutions on the Mapping Media and Communication Research: Japan

Considering the vastness of the media industry in Japan, or even the amount of research done in private organizations, the volume of academic research is quite modest, as is the number of doctoral degrees in the field. There are only a few departments of journalism, media studies or communication in universities in the entire country, and they are mainly in private universities.  In many cases faculty members interested in the media work at departments of sociology, political studies, economics, psychology, informatics, anthropology, literature or philosophy, rather than having a department focusing exclusively on media and communication.

Research in media and communication outside the academic community is abundant and rich. Most television companies, newspapers and advertising agencies have their own research units or subsidiaries, which most commonly focus on audience and/or marketing research aimed at developing the business of the companies.

Here are some of the Media research institutes presented in the same report mentioned above.

Japan Society for Studies in Journalism and Mass Communication (Nihon Masu Komyunikeishon Gakkai) was founded in 1951 as the Nihon Shimbun Gakkai, Association of Newspaper Research. Currently it has about 1400 members. There are about 30 companies supporting the association, which publishes an annual journal Masu komyunikeishon kenkyu. The journal publishes theoretically based research on varied subjects written by academic researchers. The association was originally run at the University of Tokyo, but now participating universities take turns in the administration of the ssociation. Currently the office is at the Tokyo Keizai University.

Japan Academy of Advertising (Nihon Kokoku Gakkai) was founded already in 1966. It has currently 622 members and 34 supporting companies. The aim of the association is to do theoretical and empirical research of advertisements and act as a lobbying organization. The supporting organizations include Asahi Shimbun and other newspapers, several advertising agencies and
television companies. The association is coordinated at Waseda University,  marketing Department. It publishes the annual journal Kokoku kagaku (Journal of Advertising Science).

Gendai Fuzoku Kenkyukai does not have an official name in English, but the name can be loosely translated as “Research Association of Contemporary Culture”. The association functions within the framework of sociology and cultural studies and was founded in 1975, inspired by professor emeritus Takeo Kuwabara at Kyoto University. The association focuses on research of contemporary culture, including popular culture, everyday life and media usage and publishes the journal Gendai Fuzoku.

The Japan Society of Information and Communication Research/ JSICR (Joho Tsushin Gakkai) is a foundation. It was founded in 1983 to commemorate The UN World Communication Year. Currently JSICR has 937 individual members and 54 organizational members. The association was founded to encourage and do research on telecommunication from humanistic, social, cultural and political viewpoints. Prior to the establishment of the association, telecommunication was mostly considered just from a technological point of view. In the 1980’s, when faxes and data communication spread into everyday usage, it became necessary to bring social sciences into the analysis. Currently the society focuses on social, political, cultural and economical problems of the information society and globalization of information flow.

The society has seven thematic study areas with respective study groups:
- legal issues in information and telecommunication
- economic issues in information and telecommunication
- information society
- international information
- information culture
- multimedia
- information behavior

The society also holds internal lecture meetings, symposiums and presentations of individual research projects, but also an “International Communication Forum”, with international guests. The association has an independent office in Toranomon, Tokyo. Currently the president of the association is Professor Youichi Ito from Keio University MediaCom. In addition to the annual report Joho tsushin nenpou, the association publishes an academic journal three times a year. The journal is called Joho tsushin gakkai shi.

Japan Association of Social Informatics (JASI) (Nihon Shakai Joho Gakkai) was founded in 1991. It aims at a desirable development of society in the age of information technology, wishing to establish a theoretical approach where the social system is perceived from the point of view of information. It focuses on the relationship between the new information and communication system and the social systems. The themes of interest include:

- the basic theory of social information informatics
- information, economics and the city
- information society, law and security
- media and culture
- communication and social relationships
- local citizens, their activities and ICT
- information systems and social applications
- game, simulation and network analysis

RITE, Research Institute of Telecommunication and Economics (Kokusai Keizai Tsushin Kenkyusho) is maintained by the Foundation for Multimedia Communications. Members of the
foundation include e.g. the Ministry of Communications (MIC), NHK, all major ICT-companies in Japan and several cities and prefectures.
RITE is a semi-public organization and it collects funding from both public and private sources.
The research at RITE focuses on e.g. international comparison of telecommunication and broadcasting laws, social structure and communication technology, new business opportunities and technological innovations in ICT and convergence of multimedia, communication and broadcasting.

There are plenty other Media research institutes and this is not the place to show all of them but to the end this article I have to talk about two of the most interesting research institutes. One founded by NHK and the other by NTT.

NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute (NHK Bunken) (NHK Hoso Bunka Kenkyujo) was founded in 1946 as a comprehensive research establishment of NHK. Bunken conducts
research on audiences, research and development for program-making and programming purposes and research on media-related issues in broadcasting and digital media.
Japan’s Broadcasting Law stipulates that the public broadcaster must conduct research activities along with broadcasting television programs. NHK researches program contents, investigates both Japanese and foreign broadcasting cultures and makes surveys on audience attitudes. The research acts as background information in basic policy-making of the public broadcaster. Bunken makes most of its research results available for the public and publishes several journals.
Bunken also conducts research that refers to media and media usage only indirectly. Every five years NHK conducts “The Survey on Value Orientations of the Japanese”, surveying 5000 people to grasp changes in the people’s attitudes and values. The survey has so far been conducted seven times, and the latest issue is from 2004. Bunken also conducts time budget surveys every five years.
One of the large research areas at Bunken is the research of media language. There is virtually no research on this field done outside Bunken, which means that research on language used in commercial broadcaster’s programs is virtually nonexistent.
Another strong research area at Bunken is media education. It also focuses on international comparisons of different media phenomena, from contents to industrial issues.
Obviously, Bunken also conducts research on the role of public service broadcasting in Japan and in the international setting.
Currently Bunken has about 80 employees, including part-timers. This makes the institute the largest among the traditional mass media company research units and much larger than any university research unit. However, the number of the researchers has been decreasing, as has the number of employees at NHK in general. Most of the employees come to work at Bunken as part of their circulation within NHK, and only a few have academic degrees beyond the usual bachelor level.
However, there are also some researchers who have moved to NHK from universities and some have doctoral degrees.
The publication volume of Bunken is vast. Some of the regular publications include the English journal NHK Broadcasting Studies (previously Studies on Broadcasting), and several journals in Japanese: monthly research report Hoso Kenkyu to Chosa (Research and Surveys on Broadcasting), Hoso Media Kenkyu (Studies of Broadcasting and Media), which publishes critical essays, and NHK Detabukku,Sekai no Hoso (Databook of NHK, Broadcasting in the World).

InfoCom Research Inc. (Kabushiki Kaisha Joho Tsushin Sogo Kenkyusho) was founded by NTT in 1985. It currently has about 95 full time employees, of which 75 are researchers. With this size, InfoCom is the largest think tank in the telecom research area. It does commissioned work for NTT and its different subsidiaries, as well as for different governmental organizations.

InfoCom conducts research on the global development and situation of information and communication industries and does research and analysis on e-commerce and other ICT related markets. It also takes on commissioned work from e.g. local governments for consulting, proposals and formulation of regional ICT plans and conducts consulting of management strategies and information system development. InfoCom has websites and email newsletters, in Japanese, on ICT sector news for registered subscribers. Most of its commissioned work is naturally confidential, but some reports are published on its website. InfoCom publishes the annual data book Information and communication in Japan in English.

And to close this article a picture of the CGM  (Consumer Generated Media) Night conducted by Danny Choo and other Jbloggers and web developers. This meeting of Media Generators has a strenght to become (someday in the future) an important Media Research Institute.

Jolt Online Gaming braved the April Fool’s Day madness to actually do something real, like launching their new game!  Legends of Zork is a free-to-play, causal web-based RPG, inspired by the great Infocom Zork games.  Explore and fight your way through the Great Underground Empire!  How does Jolt make money?  Ah, well… the catch is that you only get 30 “action points” to use per day in the game.  You can get more by participating in marketing surveys and trials, which will earn you coconuts that you can use to purchase more action points.  Or you can do what I plan to do, and just play for a few minutes each day until I use my allotted points.

So far it’s pretty interesting.  I’ve never really played a web-based game like this, and of course the Zork connection makes it a lot more interesting to me than some generic game.  You can check it out for free at legendsofzork.com.

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Bila komputer Anda digunakan beramai-ramai oleh banyak orang, Anda harus melindungi aplikasi yang tidak boleh dipakai oleh semua orang. Nah, ada cara sederhana agar orang lain tidak dapat menggunakan aplikasi Word seenaknya.

1. Buka aplikasi Microsoft Word Anda, kemudian pilih tab [View].

2. Pada pita di bawahnya, klik tombol [Macros].

3. Setelah muncul jendela “Macros”, isi “Macro name” dengan nama “AutoNew”. Perlu diperhatikan, nama makro harus disimpan dengan nama “AutoNew”.

4. Klik [Create] untuk mulai membuat makro.

5. Selanjutnya, akan muncul jendela Microsoft Visual Basic editor. Pada jendela tersebut, ketikkan skrip di bawah ini.

pass = InputBox(“Masukkan password Anda.”)
If pass = “rahasia” Then
End
Else
MsgBox (“Password yang Anda masukkan salah.”)
ActiveDocument.Close
End If

Pada skrip di atas, Anda dapat mengganti “rahasia” dengan password yang akan Anda inginkan.Simpan makro Anda kemudian tutup aplikasi Microsoft Word.

Sekarang, buatlah shortcut Microsoft Word baru dengan cara mengklik kanan mouse pada desktop dan pilih menu [New] > [Shortcut]. Isi “Type the location of the item” dengan “C:-Program Files-Microsoft Office-Office12-WINWORD.EXE” /n, kemudian klik [Next].

Isikan “Type a name for this Shortcut” dengan nama “Microsoft Office Word 2007”. Hapus shortcut yang ada di menu start, kemudian pindahkan shortcut yang baru saja Anda buat ke menu Start, menggantikan shortcut yang asli.

Setelah itu tutup aplikasi Microsoft word. Mulai sekarang bila seseorang ingin menggunakan Microsoft Word dan membuat dokumen baru, muncullah kotak yang meminta password [PCplus]

Oh, Bubsy, where do we start.

Bubsy was designed by Michael Berlyn, writer/designer at text adventure powerhouse Infocom. I invite you in this instance to take the term powerhouse relatively because not that many people were making text adventures/interactive fiction.

Now text adventures are badass. Among the first attempts to make games that are strictly narrative, they also paved the way for games and fiction to merge, allowing players to navigate a text like never before and basically play all sorts of tricks you can’t with books.

Also you usually die a lot.

Now some short months before my birth, Michael Berlyn created a game called suspended, wherein the player is in a suspended animation/coma type thing serving as a human computer for controlling traffic and stuff. You kind of wake up and there was an earthquake and about a jillion error messages in your head saying that everything has gone terribly wrong. Because you are frozen and a computer, you actually can’t do anything about this yourself, but instead must employ a whole bunch of robots to repair the systems and convince the populace that you haven’t gone insane and tried to kill them all by overfoaming their lattes or causing car accidents or something so you can get out before some city worker cuts your cable and replaces you with another popsicle.

The score was tracked by how many of your robots died and Infocom gave this game a difficulty rating of Expert.

This is an example of the mind at work behind Bubsy.

The last reference an SNES owning child will 'get'.

Exposing a child to this game is giving them a lesson in failure unlike any any Soccer practice or Spelling Bee. It is abuse by slow degrees and I am not being funny with you. One hit means death, every death blessed with its own unique animations, only 9 lives will insulate you from the cold abyss and then only just barely. To punctuate the meaninglessness of this journey, the sole purpose is collection. Get as many balls of yarn as you can, don’t die. These two directives build the framework of a desolate life spent indoors with a vaporizer and antibacterial cleaning fluids, involuntary finger twitches stilled only by the scrubbing of hands.

Add a post-sonic running/rolling/sliding mechanic with certain death at every corner and even the most adderall-calmed little toothgrinder will beg for a time out.

A strange game. The only way of winning is not to play.

“What could pothibly go wrong”

Drowning

Spikes

And don't come back

MOTION DE LA CPN INFORMATION-COMMUNICATION ET SERVICES ET RESEAUX DE COMMUNICATION

La CPN Information-Communication / Services et Réseaux de Communication a examiné la situation des IUT dans le cadre induit par la loi LRU.
La CPN souligne son rôle dans la définition de programmes pédagogiques nationaux, garants de la qualité du diplôme. La CPN insiste fortement pour que soient maintenus les moyens permettant la mise en œuvre effective de ces programmes dans l’ensemble des Instituts Universitaires de Technologie.
En effet, depuis 40 ans, les IUT ont développé une politique pédagogique très fortement articulée avec le monde professionnel, et définie par des Conseils d’IUT présidés par des professionnels. Cette politique a conduit la CPN à faire évoluer régulièrement les contenus de formation, de manière à délivrer constamment une formation et un diplôme en adéquation avec le monde du travail.
La CPN souligne le coût spécifique des études technologiques, qui ne pourra être en aucun cas aligné sur celui de formations universitaires généralistes.
En conséquence, la CPN demande que soit maintenue et garantie l’identification des moyens dévolus aux IUT par le Ministère à travers le budget global des Universités, moyens qui leur sont indispensables pour remplir leurs missions dans le cadre de la loi LRU.
La motion approuvée à l’unanimité par les membres de la CPN InfoCom – SRC.

El origen de Activision lo tenemos que buscar el 1 de Octubre de 1979, cuando el productor musical Jim Levy y los programadores de Atari David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, la fundaron. Activision nacería como el primer desarrollador independiente de videojuegos ya que, hasta entonces, los videojuegos eran desarrollado por las mismas compañías que realizaban el hardware. De esta manera, Activision comenzaría su actividad con el desarrollo de videojuegos de Atari 2600, los cuales hasta ese momentos eran desarrollados por Atari de forma exclusiva. Sus primeros lanzamientos serían Checkers, Skiing, Dragster y Boxing.

Para seguir leyendo pulsa aquí.