What has prompted me to write this is that over the last week I have received a few emails telling me that someone has reset my Battlenet account, and these folks have kindly provided a link for me to click on and get more information.
Of course, if I do click on a link like this, there’s little doubt my computer will quickly be infected by some sort of keylogger waiting to collect my account information and send it off to scheming piece of sh*t that devised this fraud.
The big problem with these emails is that they look kosher. I had to look fairly carefully at it to see the flaws, as the return and link addresses looked quite plausible. But as they say, the devil is in the details, and there were some tell tale signs.
The problem most people face is that the signs often shift around a bit. Often the emails will become more sophisticated as more is learned.
So here’s what you do… actually what you don’t do.
Don’t click on a link in an email. Always manually enter the address of the support site into your browsers address bar, even if you know that the email is legit. Even though you miss out on the automation, it’s just a good habit. Links are designed to help the lazy, wonderful things that they are, unfortunately they’ve been exploited.
Don’t use Internet Explorer, or have it set as your standard click-and-go browser, I recommend Chrome. It still has a low adoption, meaning that exploits probably aren’t around for it yet, and it has a nice feature of detecting malicious sites. Firefox is getting more common now, that alone makes it a hackers target.
BTW, the same applies to other accounts, especially your financial ones. If you receive an email from Paypal or your bank, for the sake of your bank account and your sanity (it can be a nightmare to get your money back and repair your financial details) enter the details manually using a secure browser.
So if you do get an email from Blizzard, please check it before clicking the link, and then type it in manually anyway.
Just reading over at Biobreak a post about a post by Mark Jacobs, one of the bright lights behind Warhammer Online, is returning to work, although he didn’t say what on.
The thing that caught my eye was the bit about being held by his employment contract to not being able to work in his chosen area for the last year. This isn’t new news of course, there’s a long tradition of US companies that are so scared of the slightest competition forcing their employees to not work for a period of time, or to change career.
So here’s my invitation to you, game developer person. Come to Australia where the employment laws make it illegal for Australian companies to include such clauses in their employment contracts. And if they do, those clauses cannot actually be enforced. Our employers cannot sack someone on a whim either, meaning that you don’t have to fear leaving crunch time to attend your childs birthday party or attend a sick relative — or even just to go home and get some sleep. (We work smarter, not harder.)
We have a great climate, but of course you know that already. What you might not know is that we do have a fairly reasonable cost of living and living standards, depending on the city you choose to live in. In fact the two game development hubs in Oz, Brisbane and Melbourne aren’t the most expensive places to live (although Melbourne does come close. It’s second to Sydney.) Unfortunately, Adelaide (my home town) while one of the low cost of living, great family lifestyle places, isn’t really a hub of game development activity.
You probably also don’t realise that Aussies are pretty smart people. Every year, tremendous scientific and medical breakthroughs are made here.
We’re also a friendly bunch.
Mark, if you’re reading this, consider relocating here. You’ll be able to build great games with good people, and not worry about those pesky employment contracts again.
So it looks like Richard Garriott has come up trumps in his lawsuit with NCSoft… at least for now, I saw somewhere that they’ll keep fighting.
Good on him. Garriott was treated abominately by NCSoft who sacked him and tried to weasel out of their obligations by pretending that he resigned voluntarily, as determined by the jury at least.
Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. In reading the comments made on other boards, I’ve seen a couple of commenters complain that Garriott deserved this fate because he chose to go into space to satisfy a childhood dream shortly after the launch of Tabula Rasa, the ‘failure’ of which caused his sacking. The inference in these comments is that Garriott abandoned the players and the game to satisfy a selfish whim.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen these comments. A lot of people were miffed about it, even before the launch of Tabula Rasa. (Personally I think they were just jealous.)
My question to these commentors is, “Huh? If you were offered a once in a lifetime chance to go into space, spend time on a space station, and view this big blue marble we live on from orbit, wouldn’t you take that opportunity?”
I sure as hell would. Even if I was two weeks from release of my game, I’d delay the launch until I had launched and come back… hopefully. Man, if I got the call up on the day before, I’d be there.
Selfish?
Maybe.
The one thing I know, is that we are still a ways off widespread access to space. I’m not counting the suborbital flights that are just on the horizon, as marvellous as they are. Even low Earth orbit tourism is at least 10 to 20 years away, and with high launch costs, well outside affordability for the average millionaire. By the time LEO tourism becomes even marginally affordable, I suspect that even those of us in our 20′s and 30′s will be too old to go up. Those of us in our 40′s will likely be pushing up the daisies. Unless of course there is a Technological Singularity in the next couple of decades, then all bets are off.
So why shouldn’t Garriott, or anyone else for that matter, if they are given the opportunity to do something like that, do it?
I had forgotten that I set up a Facebook account for this blog a while back, in fact it was quite a long time ago that I did set it up. I think at the time I had seen how a Facebook profile could provide a better rounded experience for blog readers. Instead I ended up focussing on Twitter for the whole social networking thing.
But just recently I’ve received a few eMails from Facebook telling me that I have a few friend requests pending. So I hopped in a little while ago and approved the requests.
Of course nothing is ever as simple as that, and I spent a little while setting things up properly, for instance adding the profile picture, likes, and some info about me (my gaming persona) and the blog. I also have an unpublished fan page for Stropp’s World, but I need to work on that a little more before I do publish it.
I was even lucky enough to get the vanity URL, http://www.facebook.com/stropp which I expected to be taken. If you’d like to friend me on Facebook, that’s the link to click on as it will take you straight to my profile. I’ll try and accept your requests as soon as I can.
I was reading a little about how one of these copyright groups in the US was suing tens of thousands of unnamed individuals who downloaded the Hurt Locker and Uwe Boll’s Far Cry amongst others and a single thought occurred to me.
Someone downloaded a Uwe Boll movie? Inconcievable!
I finally saw Zombieland on pay per view. I wasn’t able to catch it when it was at the cinema, none of the pieces really came together at the time and it just slipped away.
Anyway, ninety minutes of zombie slashing goodness while eating dinner. Thank goodness goreishness doesn’t intefere with my appetite.
Overall, I quite enjoyed it. Zombieland wasn’t as uproarishly funny as I expected from the trailers. In fact I think the trailers raised my expectations a bit too much. Most of the sight gags in the trailers were presented fairly early on in the film and actually weren’t the features I thought they’d be. No matter it was worth the $6.95 cost of a PPV viewing.
Downsides, perhaps a bit short at 90 minutes. The Bill Murray cameo, while good, was entirely predictable from the first wiggle of his fingers.
And the source of the zombie virus this time? Forget the evil corporations testing man-made virii. Whatever you do, don’t eat the burgers at roadside diners. You don’t know where they’ve been.
From WoW-Europe: As part of the upcoming Cataclysm expansion, Blizzard is adding a new Battleground to World of Warcraft called Twin Peaks.
It’s a Warsong Gulch, capture the flag style area for 10×10 players. I’m not sure what level we’re talking about, but given the area is the Twilight Highlands, players will probably need to be a higher level before Twin Peaks kicks in.
Given Blizzards penchant for peppering World of Warcraft with pop culture references there’s bound to be a few referencing the 1980′s TV show of the same name. At some point we’ll simply have to hear, “She’s dead… wrapped in plastic.” Will there be a diner that sells great coffee and cherry pie, or a wierd red velvet room with a dancing backwards talking dwarf?
I’ve got that series on DVD. I might have to have another look.
Okay, I’m not really that much of an Apple fan. I honestly don’t see much of a difference between Apple and Microsoft, Jobs and Gates, but if there is one thing Apple is good at, it’s coming up with some coolish tech. The iPhone is no exception.
I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while now, kinda umming and ahhing between buying one and saving my money for a bit longer.
But what clinched it, was that I was talking to someone at a networking event, that I was at for my business, who strongly hinted that if I were to look into iPhone App development that I might find myself with some work. Well, with that kind of encouragement to a techead teetering on the edge of a buying decision, there’s not much arm-twisting necessary. That, and the fact that I needed to upgrade my phone plan to an unlimited (calls not data) plan anyway which had the additional benefit of a free iPhone. Sold!
The thing that impressed me was the ease-of-use factor. All the apps are pretty much intuitive to use, although I did do some to-and-froing trying to work a couple of things out, but not much.
There are a couple of things that don’t work all that well. I was able to initially connect the eMail client to my eMail server and download my eMail, but that’s now stopped working. It also appears that the iPhone will shut down and require a hard reset if I use the eMail client. That’s not all the time, but it hasn’t happened if I haven’t used eMail beforehand.
The App Store is cool. I’m not a big spender though, I’ve downloaded Seesmic, a Twitter client that is free, and Bejeweled 2 which cost a couple of dollars.
I know, I probably should hand in my MMO card for admitting to playing Bejeweled, but hey I like it. It seems to have that just-one-more-go quality that makes the hours fly. On the first night I bought it I actually got to Level 17, my highest ever score. I’ve never got over 9 in the past.
One thing that I’ll be looking into, other than the boring business apps you don’t want to hear about here, is the apps that are being put out for MMORPGs. The Fallen Earth guys have announced their App recently; there are a couple for WoW, as well as an App for Eve if I’m not mistaken. I’m wondering if anyone (SOE perhaps) are going to do an App for Everquest 2, or EQ1 for that matter.
I think one of the biggest things that I love about the iPhone in particular, and smartphones in general, is that they are taking human interaction to a whole new level. I recently finished reading Halting State by Charles Stross, which depicted a near future technological society and what could be one of the directions that phone technology could go. I’ll do a quick review soon since it’s not only SciFi, but also hands down depicts massive online gaming more accurately than I’ve seen in a story before.
I’m still not an Apple fanboi, I won’t be getting the iPad anytime soon unless there’s a business reason to do so; I’ll be waiting a few generations I think; but I do so love my new iPhone.
Ooh. It looks like Legendary Pictures have picked up the movie rights to Mass Effect according to Ten Ton Hammer.
This is one game IP that I reckon could make quite a decent movie, there’s certainly enough of a story to drive a movie. Not only that, in some ways, the Mass Effect games feel a lot like a movie in themselves. They’ve got that cinematic quality to them.
And Legendary Pictures aren’t a bad outfit either. So here’s hoping that Hollywood gets this one right.
This is something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while now, even before the latest commentary on Roger Ebert’s widely publicised notions a few weeks ago that games are not art.
It’s a topic that keeps popping up from time to time, and is it always seems to come from quarters of the entertainment industry that are deeply entrenched in the old ways of doing things. Ebert for instance is a movie critic and consequently sees movies, and probably to a lesser extent, television as art. He’s involved in that industry and knows the processes and participants intimately and regards what they do as art.
On the other hand, Ebert doesn’t know much about the game industry. He displays his ignorance by making the blanket statement that games aren’t art. He doesn’t know the participants in the game industry, or the artistic processes (or procedural processes) that go into making a game. His pronunciation has no more meaning than a English literature professor claiming that Shakespear is art while comic books aren’t.
However, there’s one very good way to determine what if games, or anything else for that matter, is art.
Is it produced primarily through creative means?
By that I mean, is there a creative process involved. Movies have writers, artists, set makers, costumers, cinematographers — dozens of individuals who apply the creative process to the movie. Thus, a movie is art.
Games have writers, artists (2D and 3D), set designers (3D modellers), cinematographers (game designers) — dozens of individuals who apply the creative process to the game.
Thus, by the very same criteria that we consider a movie as art, a game is art.
