The future of Gaming

I predict that SONY will enter our workplaces in the near future with software that turns our work chores into fun. It stands to reason, right? These days we can work from home with an adsl connection and our PC and PS3 are connected and form a media hub. So work and gaming has got closer.

Here's where it gets closer still. Why use software to send a letter, an email, a pdf document or an Excel file and waste all that good gaming time? So SONY execs are bound to devise a game portal that enables you to do all that 'Work' nonsense, whilst your fingers are also strafing enemies with gunfire, playing Scrabble and holding virtual meetings with work colleagues in a SIM office?

Tell me that is NOT gonna happen and I'd be more surprised.

You can call me Penny 'Arthur C. Clarke' Clark, if you will, but I am telling you today (June 18th 2010)that this is the future of gaming.

All our worlds are colliding. The ones that capture our imagination and vitality the best will survive. Sure we have to earn a living, but we can do that with part of our brains while the other part is drinking coffee, staying up late to watch movies, and fighting virtual wars with fingertip controls. It may not be the most productive way to do business but it is increasingly more common to see people interacting with the PC keyboard, eating, drinking, conversing AND doing work chores. So someone is gonna make a helluvalot of money when they work out how best to fuse all that.

Geek power is not going away. Our homes will only become more interconnected to cyberspace as fridges tell us what we're out of stock of, and baths run themselves to suitable temperatures. That mundane daily stuff is going further away. We will inevitably fill out time with multiple activities that suit the whole family - and learning, communicating and stimulating through entertainment i.e. GAMING is where we're headed.

You know it. Let's get ready.

Next Posting: You know you've lived with a gamer too long when you....

The decline of teenage life

Remember free-wheeling down the hill on your bike to buy groceries for your mum? Like conkers, hula-hoops and Enid Blyton books, certain concepts of childhood and adolescence are obsolete. There are high tech replacements for sure – who doesn’t secretly crave a go on a Wii, dodging and diving in front of your TV screen while the kids howl for their turn. But those symbols of a time of innocence and freedom – ‘sevensies’ against the wall of your house, blackberry picking, making Airfix models and hanging them above your bed – are all gone and it’s no use whining about the good old days. Or is it?

I live in a tiny village in rural Spain, that values it’s teens as the tax-paying citizens they will grow up to be. Children are doted on, cuddled and kissed in the street, bought exorbitant presents like motorbikes and sent on school ski-ing trips, when some families only earn minimum wage in a local supermarket. This is not seen as ‘spoiled child syndrome’ in the media however, but pride and rewards for your offspring. The yearly school Nativity play is a riot of obvious parental pride, flashing cameras and camcorders recording every star turn, and a local grandpa or ‘abuelo’ roped in to play Santa at the end and dish out prizes to every child in the village.

Every August, the town holds the fiesta of its patron saint (Lorenzo) and that year’s eighteen year olds and six year olds are feted and adored in street processions. Whole families return to their roots in Parcent and thousands of euros are spent – houses of the ‘festeros’ are re-painted and the front doors decorated with palm fronds and paper flowers, while a mural is painted on the street with the child’s name and year. Hairdressers and dressmakers are fully booked for weeks, for the lavish dresses and tuxedos that the teens will wear and the ten days of partying, fireworks and parades begins. The teenagers organise the events themselves and spend long nights at the Town Hall discussing fund-raising, selling T-shirts and lottery tickets, devising carnival costumes, booking bands and pyrotechnicians. Even the shyest ones blossom by the end of the fiesta, having received universal praise and applause for their hard work.

You could accuse me of having a blinkered view from our rural idyll. We left East London in 2001 when gunshots could sometimes be heard outside our windows at night. A homeless man began preying on our first child’s nursery school, and police were too busy dealing with larger issues to eject him from the school gardens. The area suffered such bad overcrowding that the local GP refused to use an appointments system, and instead you queued each day on the street in the hope of being seen. When we last returned to the UK for a holiday, we avoided the area in favour of visiting friends and family in rural Hertfordshire and Essex. Notwithstanding the development Stratford has seen in preparation for the Olympics, it felt to us unsafe, undesirable and symptomatic of the price we all pay for city life.

Now we read from afar about escalating knife crime, and monitor the grim tally of London teenagers killed this year. The school-post code lottery, private corporations taking over public institutions, banning drink on the Underground, ‘mosquitos’ in city centres, suggest that fear is the overriding factor in decision making. Every day on the radio there is another announcement about the ways that Boris or David/Nick will tackle London’s problems, or how the UK will legislate its way out of trouble.

This sounds like a profitless spiral. All the social studies suggest that self-esteem is the key factor in whether children do well; whether teens go on to university or successful careers. But this does not just mean we should give delinquent kids a holiday, where they can see how the other half live. In a country as over-populated as the UK, how can individual kids feel valued, appreciated or loved? Is it just a parental responsibility?

That adage about it taking a village to raise a child has never been more relevant. A village, not an overcrowded capital. Sweeping measures designed to protect the population from dangerous young men are failing to stop them from carrying weapons and behaving in antisocial ways, because they are unanimously reviled wherever they go – for wearing hoodies, or shutting off their ears with iPods, or hanging out in gangs who understand one another.

Overcrowding at home and school, unemployment, lack of prospects and peer pressure combine to leave teens feeling depressed, which manifests in two common ways. Boys act out, and girls self-harm. Boys grow increasingly anti-social in public to impress their peers, while girls form gangs, bully the weaker ones, get into shoplifting for kicks or remain isolated from friends and prone to depression.

It will take much more than a change of government or some ASBO’s to make an impact on a whole generation of teenagers. The media attitude that demonises all teens because of a statistically small number of offenders must change, and large towns and cities need to look at providing community ‘barrio’ projects that inspire neighbourhood pride and offer apprentice schemes for teens living within the post code.

Schools and communities must work together to support the most isolated teens and capitalise on the immense and often hidden talents of this generation of 18 to 25 year olds. Training schemes that simply provide businesses with cheap labour must be replaced by those that value young people’s input, and provide incentives and reward schemes especially during a recession when companies need the competitive edge provided by their fresh ideas and enthusiasm. When Facebook campaigns can influence a nation’s voting habits, the older generation really needs to listen to some of the media-savvy kids who know how to work Twitter and launch marketing campaigns from their bedrooms. The media should get behind some of the successful stories of the day that will inspire younger teens to stay out of trouble and go on to succeed.

When neighbourhoods begin to rally round their local teens and set them suitable graded benchmarks for success in the long term, we might see a return to the good ole days when teenage life was about having fun and letting off steam before you knuckle down to a career. Letting the youthful pressure cooker atmosphere burst in a flurry of artistic and sporting activity will surely result in teens more inclined to grow up gracefully, rather than be rushed into making career choices at 11 and obsessing over weight, looks and skills before they’ve had a chance to get to know themselves or their capabilities. So stop giving kids a hard time and let them have their ‘teenage kicks’ now. We’ll grow a new generation of planet-conscious, hard-working taxpayers soon enough.

Help us Mr Olmos!

My eleven year old daughter got to page 600-odd of The Host (by Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame) and read a scene that she found so sad and moving she couldn't read anymore. So, of course, I realised belatedly that I should have pre-read the book.

I've just finished it and I'm surprised it hasn't garnered more interest. It analyses a number of interesting propositions. What makes us human? What is the sociological benefit of our race's capacity for violence? What makes us love more than hate?

And now I have a personal plea, for Mr Edward James Olmos. QUICK! SIR! Step in now and get involved in the movie production of The Host before the essential sci-fi heart of this book is pulped into some mass-market fodder!

Just as Battlestar composed human drama around a futuristic theme, The Host manages to press all the right buttons for us SF geeks. Alien races - galore. Life and death struggle for survival. Love stories, jealous rivalry, impossible dilemmas resolved. And from an actor/director's point of view some unique challenges. How will they bring multiple personalities inside one host effectively to the screen?

I sincerely hope that whoever has been engaged to direct avoids Buffy-ising this.

Athiests R Us

Welcome, readers browsing here from Facebook. All sorts of debate occurs on Singular Cake and only some of it is about Athiesm - but much of it is about social behaviours and taking personal responsibility. I figure if we all keep our own house in order, we are improving the planet a person at a time...starting with myself. So I often muse here about pernickety issues of the day. Feel free to pass comment.

Abrazos a todos. x

Talk about it!

Talking to children can be baffling. We’ve all heard the adage that you should never work with children or animals, generally because they are brutally honest, unintentionally funny and downright unpredictable. But the key to communicating with anyone, be they 5 or 50, goat or goalkeeper, is the same. You can try to explain your message clearly, but unless you know someone’s mindset, cultural background, needs and obsessions, it’s possible that your communication may go astray.

Let’s start with some basics. A good communicator exchanges their ideas, feelings, and values in appropriate language, tone, pitch, and volume. He or she gives relevant information and uses non-verbal signals to emphasize and support the message. After allowing enough time for the message to sink in, he clarifies or repeats key points. Really good communicators then solicit feedback, listen, respond and react to convey their understanding. Sounds easy? Let’s take this process apart to see where the pitfalls are.

Initially, a person tells the world about him or herself by the way they dress, stand, speak and act. So first impressions count, and you can put off your audience at the outset if you haven’t taken this into consideration. I am NOT expecting a burlesque dancer to be attempting to speak to a group of habit-wearing nuns, but don’t make lazy assumptions about your audience when you prepare to communicate effectively.

Assuming you are dressed appropriately and either familiar with the receiver of the message, or from the same social group and background, you should have enough common ground for confidence. Now the delivery method you choose should match the circumstances and needs of the receiver. Don’t use flipcharts and pointers where an informal circle of chairs would be better. If holding a sales pitch, consider whether to invite the audience by phone, email or a personal visit. In Latino countries, for instance, no-one does business unless they are face-to-face. Internet communications are not the first-choice, and therefore your message will die before its inception.

Before you communicate make sure you are aware of the group norms or the team dynamics. Nothing spoils a message more than pitching it at the wrong level. Don’t address the janitor if you need the CEO’s approval. Sounds obvious, but the subtle variation on this is pitching a message that misses the key needs of the company or individual. Do your homework, and make sure that the content of the message will resonate and connect, on some level, with the already-held beliefs of the receiver.
Remember, messages aren't communicated exactly. They depend on the shared knowledge of the two communicators; a shared vocabulary, experience, and world view. And your environment can derail even the clearest of messages. Barriers exist between the sender and the receiver such as cultural differences – a common one being talking in abstract terms, when the receiver is more comfortable calling a spade a spade. Local conditions may also create barriers; if the room has poor acoustics, there are others talking, or outside noises and distractions. Take away the chance of this and you’ve removed some of the filters through which your message will pass.

Your style of language may be very idiosyncratic. For instance, do you understand this sentence: Estimation is challenging since the likelihood function is not globally concave and the data becomes uninformative about learning once equilibrium is achieved. This is taken from an academic paper aimed at professors (The Journal of Applied Econometrics) and may make sense to certain groups but would exclude a huge proportion of the populace. Equally, talking too crudely can demean your message. Study your audience and pick up pointers about what style of delivery will put them at their ease.

‘Listen’ with your eyes for non-verbal communication cues – as the impact of a performance is determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication. When we talk with people in person, they constantly reassure us of their attention and understanding, by nodding their heads, touching our arm, making encouraging sounds, or even asking questions. If you spot someone taking a step back, or inclining away from you, you may need to adjust your tone or deliberately try to include them. If they ask intimidating questions, avoid giving a quick defensive response, and take your time to couch the answer in comfortable language. All this conveys the idea that the sender can trust your message, and his company will benefit from a closer association with yours.

Even negative feedback can be turned around by a skilled communicator. Conflict often leads us to the heart of the matter and it is here that we can achieve the most dynamic success. If you have chosen an appropriate delivery method it should suit you as well as the receiver. Use your skill in the communication medium to express the particular need your product will satisfy or the intuitive way your company works.

As the receiver, you may filter what the speaker is saying because it seems unimportant to your current needs or too difficult in the short term. By observing facial clues of discontent, a speaker can bring an entire audience back on board with a reinforcement of the most salient point of the message. Mentioning the point that everyone agrees on reminds us we have common ground, defuses conflict and brings the mob mentality to bear on a group decision.

We can take a few tips from social media communication too. Facebook works by keying into our primeval need to join in. The power of gossip is that it can spread a message quicker and further than any other method – from the water cooler to the global markets. Conversely, Twitter or text speak excludes the older generation and promotes the ‘cool’ factor by using urban slang. Email communication has been observed to cause ‘flaming’ where the receiver of the message becomes incensed by a perceived slight. This is caused when we have no verbal nuances, facial cues or non-verbal signs to observe that communicate a person’s good intent. Check your message for these sending and receiving tips and pitfalls, to deliberately exclude or include certain groups. Use new media to open up communications globally and broadcast your message further and faster.

Follow-up work to ascertain how your message has been received is invaluable. Teachers know that it is the learner who controls the actual amount of learning going on, and similarly it is the receiver who filters the message that is actually received. Knowing that the message worked and conveyed your point after the event tells you that your method was successful, but the reason why your method failed is even more important as it gives you clues to refine it for the next opportunity. Getting that feedback will make all the difference.

Communicating with either type of 'kids' therefore – the human or animal ones – will involve you getting down in the farmyard dirt or sandpit to establish your common ground. Whatever type of message you are trying to convey, you can't beat the direct eye-level approach. After all, most of us can spot a 'kidder' whose gaze is evasive...can't we?