Sunday 12 June 2011

My favourite game


Minecraft is a type of sandbox building game on the PC compared to form of survival lego building game where the gameworld is 8 times bigger than the real world so there is an awful lot available to do. Created in May 17th 2009 by indie developer Markus "notch" Persson and written in java minecraft os now in its beta phase and under the company Mojang with the proceeds going to game development in the beggining Minecraft has now made millions and is becoming a popular game fast without being actually released on retail yet.


Minecraft is most well known for the creative structures made using its blocky graphics. Most notably groups have created full 1 to 1 scale replicas of landmarks using it. This has lead to many youtube videos and images of epic builds.






Aswell as the landmarks the minecraft community create brand new imaginative builds like football stadiums in there own design to castles and even in some cases whole cities!.





Minecraft is a game I feel everyone should give a try even with the free alpha version it lets the creative side come out in you. And if you like it you can buy the upgrade to beta for 13 pounds and offers free future updates. Aswell as this minecraft has just been announced that it will appear on the Xbox 360 kinect at the end of this year.

Some source material for this post was took from the minecraft wiki page.

Monday 6 June 2011

History of gaming



Gaming believe it or not has existed since the late 1940s but just not available commercially. Commonly used for missile defense programs during the start of the cold war on primitive cathode ray tubes. More simple games from these missile defense programs were adapted into new simple games in the early 1950s for large mainframe computers that became more advanced during time. Many credit the creation of the video game as we know it to William Higinbotham in 1958, with his game tennis for two on a ocilloscope for the entertainment of visitors to his lab. Tennis for two is a simplified tennis court from the side perspective with a ball controlled by gravity that had to be hit over a net. The vast majority of early games ran on university mainframe computers for example games like tic tac toe, a mouse maze game, and hax a changable graphical display type game. In 1961 what people credit the first widely available game was created by Steve Russell and a group of students from MIT, this game was titled Spacewar!. Created on the DEC PDP-1 a new computer just out near that time it was more practical than the mainframe computers that it followed. The emphasis of this game had two players both controlling a spacecraft fought against each other with missles, it should also be noted that the center of the screen had a large hazard in the shape of a star that players had to avoid. The game shipped with new DEC computers and could be traded on the early and primitive version of the internet.



  In September 1971 the first coin operated video game was installed at a student union at Stanford University, this game was called Galaxy Game. Based on the previous mentioned title Spacewar!, only one was built using a DEC PDP-1 and vector display terminals. In 1971 also another game based on Spacewar! but an arcade version was created, the game was called Computer Space, this was also coin operated like Galaxy Game that came before it. Computer Space was bought by a company called Nutting Associates, 1500 of these machines were manufactured and became the first mass produced video game, and the first available for commercial sale. The game wasn't very successful though due to a steep learning curve.



  The creators of Computer Space felt as though Nutting Associates didn't do there game enough justice, so created a company called Atari in 1972. They then created the most widely known early video game that most people think of as the first video game called Pong. This was the first arcade game that had a widespread success selling over 19000 Pong machines. Pong had a simple premise and was based on table tennis, a simple ball and a paddle at either side of the screen the aim of the game was to keep the ball from going out with the use of the moving paddles, this was shown in a top down view. With the creation of Pong many imitators followed suit.



  The video game market suffered a crash in 1977 with many selling off there obsolete Pong consoles and systems at a loss. the only two video game companies to continue marketing were Atari and Magnavox even though these companies both suffered losses. The cause of this crash was due to the abundance of Pong clone home systems and arcade market. This came to an end with the introduction of Space Invaders in 1978 by Taito this created a surge in the video game market and created what people refer to as the "golden age of video games". Space invaders sold over 360 000 Arcade Cabinets worldwide and it was not a rare occurance to see one in every shopping mall, restaurant, and convenience store across the globe. And by 1981 generate over a billion dollars from 4 billion quarters. Many games followed suit with the creation of Namco's galaxian in 1979, and Ataris Asteroids in the same year.



  Pac Man arrived on the scene in 1980 and was one of the first colour video games released on the market which would go on to sell 350 000 cabinets and generate like its predecessor Space invaders over one billion dollars in quarters.



  Due to the vast amounts of money that was to be made in the game market home computer systems or consoles took off. Atari and Pong console dominated this market for years but with the introduction of systems like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 this all changed.  With a vast array of games to choose from compared to the early Pong models these home computers were popular. But it wasnt till 1985 when Nintendo who created a game and watch handheld electronic series created the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and shipped it with Super Mario Bros, featuring there game and watch line mascot Mario. This was an instant success and dominated the home console market for nearly the whole of the 80s.



  Home consoles from then on improved dramactically over the decades, with the introduction of the 16 bit era during the early 90s with the Sega Mega Drive and the Super Nintendo, the successor to the extremely popular NES. What followed was the 32 bit era during the late 90s with the Sega Saturn and the more popular Sony Playstation with Nintendo following there after with a 64 bit Nintendo 64. Thereafter the latest two generations of video games consoles Playstation 2 and Microsofts first dip into the console market with the Xbox. Both these companies made follow up consoles which is the latest genreration with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and Nintendo making there next genration console the Wii.



  Games are now moving into a more sociable market due to the online capabilities of today, Especially with the introduction of MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online). These games allows more interactivity with other people over the internet in a whole new world, be it World of Warcraft a fantasy setting MMO which allows players to level up by doing quests with other players on a massive scale world, or Second Life a virtual world where a digital representation of yourself (an avatar) goes about about socialising with other peoples avatars. Second Life has lead to a whole new way of gaming where there is no clear objective and the main aim of the game is socialising in the comfort of your home. It should also be noted that avatars are a common usage in most digital applications nowadays with all home consoles using them on there networks.

Monday 9 May 2011

FourSquare


After reading the article on FourSquare I have came to the conclusion that the reader this article was targeted at tech savvy business individuals who live fast lifestyles and are involved in the computer industry. Evidence to provide towards this outcome is in abundance; first and foremost the article is located in the technology section of the guardian website and the use of tech jargon by the author for the article. For example “Privacy advocates fear that Foursquare, along with other geolocation apps such as Gowalla and Google Latitude, are vulnerable to "data scraping"” this is a direct quote from the article if you are not proficient in tech jargon this is double Dutch. To a lesser extent this article plays to the paranoia crowd fuelling their obsessions with fear mongering.

FourSquare is a new form of social networking developed for Smartphone through the use of an app store. Its main purpose is as a tracking program using GPS from the Smartphone the app allows friends and family to follow the users movements, what they are up to, and takes into consideration these factors and builds up a portfolio on the user to display to other people what they are “in to”. FourSquare has many other features it gives recommendations on what to eat when visiting a restaurant or if a place is visited enough times benefits such as “freebies” or discounts are given.

“Life as a game” computing refers to the merger between the real world and the game world through apps like FourSquare with the use of “points scoring” by visiting places and receiving “medals” also. This means everyone who uses this app is in competition with each other over receiving benefits such as “free cups of coffee” from Starbucks and other reward benefits from companies involved in this app scheme. Because of this, things as simple as visiting a store can be a game and combines games with everyday lifestyle tasks.

Data scraping refers to building up a vast database of personal information on a user for either criminal use, be it finding out users routines on when they leave the house so it can be burgled, or even for a stalker finding out these routines so easily can lead to more criminal intent. Companies can also gather personal information through these social networking apps to target the user more effectively with product advertising.

The first paragraph sets out exactly what the articles main point was by describing a person’s interests, where she had been what she looked like, and where she is at present. This details what the program is capable of and what people are capable of finding out about a complete stranger.

The article conveys the message it is trying to send well it gets its info, facts, and points across well. The actual point the article is trying to achieve is that technology is now eliminating the last few bastions of private life people have left without them even knowing it. Fear mongering is the articles main attribute by fuelling people’s paranoia it succeeds in its message of technology is developing the western world into a sort of “police state” where everything is monitored and there is nowhere private. I would say this is the articles main strength area but the articles main weakness is the length of the article and the lack of outside opinions from an expert in the communication field to accompany his own view. As for the length of the article to some people it’s rather long to a person with short attention span. But the article is designed in a broadsheet format, not much pictures but filled to the brim with information.And being that the guardian newspaper is a broadsheet the article will be more aimed at middle class technology experts and business readers, instead of the tabloid readers who go for shock value big pictures and big titles which the article mostly lacks.

Twitter


Twitter is a microblogging service which more or less means you are restricted to a small amount of characters per post, to keep them direct and short. Many celebs use twitter as a means of promoting their work or just for general post for their followers. It was created in march 2006 by Jack Dorsey and now gets 65 million tweets a day and over 200 million users overall. Twitter is also a great service for getting info around the world fast for example the killing of Osama Bin Laden was broadcast by a Pakistani IT specialist while the raid was happening next door to his house.

FourSquare

yo