So.. I finally made it to gamescom this year. Last times this event took place I was buried under tons of university work. This time I could shake myself loose. Not only for fun reasons as some of you might think, but because I want to become a game developer (yes I’m positive and yes I AM crazy). GameStar was hosting a career booth for all the crazy people to get some insight into game development. So this was the place I spend the most of my time. But I get ahead of myself. The first thing I did of course was looking around a bit to see what the industry has to offer this year. I was dismayed to say the least. Basically there are 4 genres which you can buy games from at the moment: Browser Games (boring), MMOG (even more boring), Casual Games (boring like hell) or the 1924739th continuation of the “new” whatsoever. There wasn’t a SINGLE NEW idea on that damn exhibition. OK OK maybe I missed something.. after all I wasn’t there to buy games.. I wanted to get into the Industry. So back to the GameStar booth. There I was.. sitting in the audience of one talk after another and trying to hold back on my tears. One Browser Game Company after another came forward to show how NICE and SPLENDID their games (which all looked and DID the same) where and why we should work for them. Excuse me? Where are the GAME COMPANY’S? I mean the ones that MATTER!?! That made the gaming industry the way it is today!? Guess what? They either make browser games now or are finished! To make it short: The gaming industry is nearly dead. Nothing new.. only titles which where successful in the last 21239 years are continued and the rest is just a pile of browser and mmog stuff. What have we come to :-(. Don’t get me wrong.. I understand the standpoint of the industry in this matter.. making browser and mmo games is much saver that spending millions on new stuff which might not work out. The problem is with the gamers! We have gone gaga! We let the industry feed us with ever the same content and still keep on using and buying this stuff! After this shock I was looking forward to the EA talk (imagine that). But guess what? This one gave me the death blow. De facto they told all people sitting in the audience that you can only work in the gaming industry if you work in the gaming industry.. a coterie! I always knew they would go mad some day! Now they have! That I’m disappointed is an understatement. Disenchanted is more like it. What have we come to?
August, 2010Archive for
Gamescom or Why the gaming industry is bleeding out
Monday, August 30th, 2010To trust or not to trust
Friday, August 13th, 2010One of the major problems society is facing in the age of connectivity is TRUST.
Whom do you trust? Would you trust me with your life? Certainly not. What about your computer and all the Data on it? I doubt it. Would you trust me with your music player? You may be surprised to hear that but to a small part some of you already do 😛 (I’m coding for Amarok).Now a Question to all of you Amarok users: whom of you did read ALL the source code and search for bad or dangerous parts someone put in there? I certainly didn’t (and I’ve already read a lot of Amarok’s source code). So in the end even here all comes down to TRUST.
So why am I writing about this anyway? As you may (or may not) have noticed the little “s” behind behind my “http” is vanished. I did this because some of my readers complained because their browser complained because their browser doesn’t TRUST me and my self signed root certificate. So there we are again.. now back to TRUST.
Back in medieval times man would trust other man by their word. But not every man.. just the ones who where rich like hell (or at least a little rich :-P). Poor peoples word meant nothing. Lets go ab bit forward in time. Say 20. century. you’d think humanity has evolved into a species of understanding and equal rights? You’d be disappointed. There is still a system of classes and still we trust people with money (gentleman) more or less by their word and those who are poor are not trustworthy. So what about today? Equal rights for all? Trust for the poor. I’ll have to disappoint you again. Today (at least certificate and IT wise which is the area my blog is about) we trust those who are buying (for quite some money, and thus are “rich”) a certificate from companys who do not much else then SELLING TRUST for money (And thus degrading certificates to a “certificate of having enough money to be trustworthy”).
So where does that leave us today? Back in medieval times I guess.
Are we there yet?
Thursday, August 12th, 2010What I hear a lot from users lately if I’m talking about my current projects for Amarok: “Are we there yet?”. I’m mainly working on three things at the moment: A spectrum analyzer applet, a visualization applet and song fingerprinting. Today I’m happy I can say to at least one of this projects (and maybe even a second one) the answer is: “YES we are!”. I’ve just pushed my last changes to my spectrum analyzer applet. Sadly it won’t go into trunk as of now because bugs in then xine and vlc backend are preventing it from working correctly. If you want to try it out anyhow have a look at my gitorious repository (Be warned! The applet currently only shows data if you are using the xine backend and with that you WILL get crashes as soon as you stop or end the current song in any way!). The second project I might give a positive report about is my fingerprinting code. It works. Suffers from the same problems as the analyzer though (use of xine backend will crash, use of vlc will give no data). If you’re feeling adventurous you can also find this code in my repository. If you find any bugs or stuff that bother you (or just want to say how you like it) don’t hesitate to contact me. As a little appetizer I’ve made some nice pictures of the analyzer (this time with real music input):
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- Bar without decor
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- Bars with peaks
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- Bars with peaks and wave
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- Wave
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- 3D Waves
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- Waterfall
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