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April 17, 2005
My personal Math Gems 1
Scott recommended that I start putting up my personal research here... since I've spent a ton of time restudying my math, I've decided to start posting some of the stuff that I've made as notes to myself that are cluttering up my desktop. If these pictures are useful/good enough, then I may consider starting up some online tutorials. The other cool thing about me posting this here is that I can always look it up again, even if I lose the file 8-).
Anyhow, here's my first image.
Tan(t) = slope of the ray.
Secondly, I may have finally figured out the how's and why's of left and right handed Coordinate spaces. Dear god... I've bruised my brain on this ever since I started studying 3D (and of course it makes me feel nice and dumb every time). I'll try and get an image ready, because it'll keep me from having to go into a really verbose explaination that nobody will understand anyhow 8-).
Upcoming - Understanding Matrices & the Evils of Right and Left handed Coordinates!
Posted by efn at 10:39 PM | Comments (1)
April 16, 2005
Advertising in Games
I have to admit, recently I've been baffled by the sudden interest in advertising in games (I've also marveled at the irony of the game industry advertising in games instead of advertising better for games). I mean, obviously, wherever there's a potential revenue stream, there's going to be hordes of suits following it, but I hadn't given any real thought to putting commercials inside games.
This afternoon while procrastinating from working on other projects, I decided to read the responses to a couple of articles on gamedev.net about a conference on Advertising in Games and IGN starting its service. Reading some of the plans made me grimace... I mean, I guess it's pretty standard fare to hate marketing. Topics include "Product Placement, Dynamic Campaigns, online POS, Campaign Tracking, ROI (Return on Investment, I think), etc"
The hardcore audiences are a pretty picky bunch. I'm guessing they probably won't tolerate any invasive advertising in their games. I'm also wagering that companies like Blizzard and Nintendo will try to abstain from it. Sega littered Super Monkey Ball with advertising for DOLE. Most of the game playing community saw it as a big joke, I think, which is probably what Sega intended.
My first gut reaction to the idea of advertising in games is disgust. I mean, the thought of being spammed in the middle of my games is just greasy. I mean, most people hate being marketed to. One of the nicer things about games is that they don't feature commercials every ten minutes, and they aren't preceded by 20 minutes of movie trailers and pokes to get up and get a Coke. (Man, even some DVD's are starting to have trailers at the front, ugh). "Interactive"
advertising (by which I mean pop-up ads on the internet) seem to be the most annoying type. Man, I really hope that it doesn't come to that in my games....
It's worthwhile to note (although it's probably pretty obvious) that many game developers have an active hatred for this discussion of adding advertisements to their games. There's plenty of mockery on the message boards. But some of the more mature responses are equally interesting (and surprsing) -
"Maybe they can reduce the cost of the current software if they are getting advertising dollars from 'sponsors'.This is no difference from any major sporting event where banners, logos and flash advertising is everywhere. You don't see people not going to these events. It all relates back to the average people tends to ignore it just like commercials on TV. All the average viewer does is change the channel temporarily."
Could this be a way for independent game makers to finance their projects? Would it really be that bad? I'm not sure... I wouldn't feel too comfortable doing it myself. But I suppose it's a similar economy to a popular webpage having a banner ad. When I visit these pages, I just ignore the ads. They don't bother me too much, but I admit that it kind of taints the experience to know that some business is really trying to separate me from my money while I'm reading. On the other hand, it's a really nice thing for the people who work to put the content up. I can't begrudge a group of guys who work over a website trying to get a buck out of it at the end of the day, especially considering it's not costing me a cent.
If Indie game developers could start up a self-sustaining series with something like this, I guess I wouldn't begrudge them. But I certainly would try everything else first, I guess. Advertising in games is nothing new, (old arcade games had it back in the day) but if it's advertisers are actually starting to put up serious dough for this, then it's probably something worth watching.
Eh, anyhow, just my two cents worth.
Here's another interesting note - After writing the stuff above I decided to check out Slashdot games to see what the slashdotters were thinking about this kinda stuff. I was expecting them to be pretty much up in arms, spitting fire, etc. Turns out I was wrong.
These guys actually don't seem to mind too much, as long as the ads are appropriate. There's a lot of talk about how Advertising for real products in a fictional game world like GTA makes sense, and actually makes the world seem more "real." However, it's not apporpriate for games like World of Warcraft to feature ads for Pepsi or Nike.
Interesting... Here's my question. If advertisers catch wind of this, will this lower game publisher's incentive to create games where the advertising is less appropriate? Are we going to see game makers turn to cyberpunk MMORPG's from Medieval because they can get away with advertising?
Guess we'll have to wait and see.
Posted by efn at 12:45 AM | Comments (3)
April 11, 2005
Always Relevant
There was a post on Kotaku earlier this week which discussed something we've touched on ad infinitum in our classes as of late. I thought it would be pertinent to link to it here.
I would have to say that the best feature of this particular article is the absolutely rich variety of links that it'll take you to. Get ready for a hefty read if you wanna get everything out of this one...
Posted by efn at 01:17 AM | Comments (0)