Disqus - Latest Comments for jeremyvernon

Re: The Guardian Compares GW Models to Heroin

jeremyvernon — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 19:47:11 -0000

This above post is, generously, a radical misread of the Guardian article's tone and intent. The piece was hardly a screed, it was a thought piece identifying and celebrating the success of GW. I would suggest in future actually responding to something rationally and coherently attached to the intent rather than getting huffy because of a tongue-in-cheek analogy, made, it must be pointed out, about what the hobby was and not is.

Writing articles responding to headlines is a fool's errand.

Re: Cool Ghosts and E3: No

jeremyvernon — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:04:31 -0000

My response to that would be to observe that such a meaningful cleft between the marketing and the product is not be had. When you've got products themselves serving as marketing and marketing vehicles built to frame how one approaches the titles in question - you can't disentangle them in any sense that doesn't remove the product from its institutional footing.

Re: Cool Ghosts and E3: No

jeremyvernon — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:48:40 -0000

Let me first say that I totally respect the position you've taken, it's considered and reasonable. I also am a big fan of yours, even if this is my first comment here, I've been following you for the better part of three years. I've enjoyed your videos, podcasts, and articles immensely. Disclaimer over, here's some pushback.

First, just as puffed-up video game trailers featuring macho morons toting guns is trite and clichéd, rejecting AAA games as being all that or even primarily about that is trite and clichéd. Moreover, there's a reason those games sell extremely well, and it's not simply because everyone who buys and likes them is a mouth-breathing sociopathic teenager - this is a lazy reductive hand-wave enabling liberal progressives to not think very hard. Refusing to intelligently and empathetically investigate the nature and causes of their success, especially among people not typically associated with hoorah jingoism, is to simply refuse to cover one of the most important aspects of the industry.

Second, snarky commentary on tone-deaf corporate shills pushing their product is the very definition of low-hanging comedic fruit, it's obvious and unnecessary - so I do think it a good choice not to repeat E3 Abridged of yesteryears; you're demonstrably more capable at better journalism and better comedy. If it were a choice between repeating that or not cover it all, I suppose you chose well.

Third, as for the Orlando shooting - different presentations handled this differently, just like people. Ultimately, it is an entirely defensible position to refuse to capitulate to the fear and grief that terrorists violently attempt impose on society. As other comments have pointed out, I think it better for them to stay silent, keep calm and carry on, than to attempt some polished PR scripted vigil or other nonsense. Aisha Tyler, on the other hand, offered thoughtful commentary. I for one believe we should never need permission to be happy or excited. Moreover, even if your criticism sticks, and I don't think it does, the marketing of shooters would hardly be the problem - the making of them would be.

Fourth, opting out capitulates the ground to the voices you want to contest. You speak of the macho bullshit that suffuses Triple-A titles. I recall in a podcast you discussing MRA-types and you observed, "they don't have a microphone, they've lost" or something to that effect. That only remains true to the extent people like you sustain the counterpoint to their exceedingly vocal hordes. Instead, you leave it in the hands of those who choose to cover E3, and it's exceedingly unlikely that industry press will cover it with any sort of nuance or humanity.

I've already blathered too much - so I'll end it here. But let me just say that I think your voice is needed, and it needs to be engaged.

Re: Shut Up & Sit Down | Review: Isle of Skye

jeremyvernon — Sun, 15 May 2016 00:55:53 -0000

I'll join the adulation chorus here and simply say that Paul's videos since his move here to Greater Canadon have had something of a bittersweet, even forlorn quality. I hope that is simply a dramatic device, and not reflective of any sense of isolation on his part. Vancouver is beautiful, but it can be harrowing in its alienation.

Re: How Penny Arcade manages PAX ticket sales — and why your crazy idea to fix them won’t work

jeremyvernon — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 23:08:46 -0000

There's also the simpler issue of that particular solution being illegal - Penny Arcade can't "fine" anyone - they can void tickets, and that's it.

Re: Review: Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

jeremyvernon — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 16:08:20 -0000

Do people want to play a game about neolithic tribes? The successful Stone Age series indicates, yes, that is an appealing theme, as do many other games.

Do people want to work on a tech tree that's mostly static? Most games with tech trees indicate, yes, they do.

As for tuber digging - Caverna, Agricola...actually there are a lot of games involving potatoes as a central feature. The innovations present in Through the Ages include many mundane entries, including, yes improved methods of tuber production.

"The whole point of most games is the conflict" is a decidedly false statement. Party games are a thing, as are cooperative titles, not to mention the historical premise of "Euro" games is the removal of the kind of conflict you're evoking as indispensible.

If what you want is high-brow and intellectually vexing version of Victorian-era tin soldiers on the floor - there is an entire genre of games out there for you, but most of these are scrupulously informed by history, something that, based on the tone of your remarks, you might find off-putting.

Re: Review: Brass » Shut Up & Sit Down

jeremyvernon — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 20:49:01 -0000

Shut up and take my money.

Re: Review: Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

jeremyvernon — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 12:00:58 -0000

I'm disappointed that nearly all these "story of civilization" games implement a strict subset of existing and historical innovations, Through the Ages, especially. It always results in the "history" you're telling being a partial (often non-sensically scrambled) fragment of the bigger arc of real history, rather than a parallel revision.

You are are never offered "new" history, only the opportunity to shuffle around the leavings once the obligatory redaction is finished.

Re: Review: Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

jeremyvernon — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 11:53:58 -0000

Through the Ages falls prey to what I call Meieritis. That is, an face-palm inducing sophomoric conception of history.

It's as if someone read the wikipedia entries for "technological determinism", "ethnocentrism", "Whiggish history", "triumphalism" and, "great man theory". Then feverishly, yet reverently, reframed them as rules of play; rendering the substrate for a meticulously crafted, yet totally blinkered, board game - with the corresponding heft and absence of irony.

Re: Games News! 04/04/16

jeremyvernon — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 21:49:57 -0000

The project of building recognition that violence and discrimination are endemic to all social activities is a noble one. Full stop.

What Squint, Prawl, Marp and Brendan have seize upon, in this piece and elsewhere, is the pitch-black irony that in an arena dedicated to avowedly apolitical fun, where the stakes for incumbents are so low, we see some of the most vicious red-eye atavism this side of Jim Crow.

If it weren't so viscerally tragic for some, it might be hilarious.

Re: Games News! 04/04/16

jeremyvernon — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 21:45:00 -0000

There are a number of troubling aspects of this comment, which seems a context-free fragment of something more involved.

Namely, I'm unsure what role you think games journalists have in adjudicating "reports of serious crimes" but I wager a reasonable one, given their expertise in the criminal law, evidence, procedure and the weft of socio-political history, would be found between "none" and "member of the public." The SUSD is peerless in their progressive insight and, dare I say it, activism for inclusivity in gaming but they are not, nor do they aspire to be the Meeples Court.

Re: Wow, or from the When-Apple-Became-the-Borg Department

jeremyvernon — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:08:18 -0000

Obviously it's problematic that Apple is deleting emails useful to its customers.

However, is this at all surprising from a corporation whose main value proposition, a tight proprietary control of their platform, is predicated on a form of censorship?

Re: University of Toronto Says “No” to Grass

jeremyvernon — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:12:41 -0000

I played with my dog on a daily basis on that field, as did many others - astro-turf would ruin it for him and me (not to mention give us heat stroke in the summer). Rugby, ultimate and even amateur informal games of catch, hacky-sack or footie sprung up regularly throughout the year.

Moreover, the allegation that is not being used does not imply that it should be converted to plastic - it implies that it should be improved to be used by as diverse an audience as possible; and that clearly implies a natural turf, not some munged up nylon on neoprene and gravel.

Also, I've played rugby, soccer and ultimate on artifical turf, it's like playing on shag carpet - it's awful.

Re: Match Report: Twilight Imperium

jeremyvernon — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:39:28 -0000

Brilliant work! You captured exactly the right sort of exhausted quasi-post-coital joy one feels after an arduous but enthralling game session. Your friends are hilarious and a joy to see in action.

I know many will appreciate the opportunity to enjoy these epic games vicariously through such artfully captured video. There exists a vast, nascent civilization of gamers amongst non-gamers, pin-prick stars in the mundane black (to channel your idiom) who have neither the funds nor the friends to play things like this. Such a service you give!

Obviously my thoughts go to Advanced Civilization as perhaps the next epic to relay in all its splendour and drama.

Re: Vote and share

jeremyvernon — Tue, 03 May 2011 09:03:51 -0000

I think the disanalogy here is gridlock can occur in the US capitol irrespective of party distribution whereas, as you know, a majority in parliament/senate can pass more or less whatever it wants - short of a supreme court ruling.

The only consequence will be at the next election. So the cycle will lack the "gridlock" component if, as we had last night, a party can win a majority.

Re: Today in the Globe: A Click Heard Across the Public Service

jeremyvernon — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:59:17 -0000

I think the article confuses the significance indicated by the GCPEDIA page-entry and the significance of the event in and of itself, or could lead the naive reader to blend the two.

I think it's dangerous to overload such acts with fanfare and gravitas. Early efforts of this sort are likely to fail, pumping-up expectations could lead to abandonment of the endeavour due to poor ROI (which should really be ROE (return on expectation)).

A laudable effort to be sure - I remain cautiously optimistic.

Re: 21st Century Olympics

jeremyvernon — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:43:04 -0000

The transformation of the Olympics (both of itself and within the minds of many), in many ways, mimics the transformation of the Walt Disney Corporation.

Disney constructed an entire ideal reality for the United States, and through the US's cultural hegemony, the world. This ideal gave rise to a media franchise, merchandise, theme parks etc - just like the Olympics; especially if you think of the games as a travelling theme park. When you buy Disney products, you're buying access to this fantasy-land construct. Pixar got better at it than Disney, so Disney bought it.

The dark side of Disney mimics the dark side of the Olympics - the virulent brand-paranoia, insidious abrogation of human rights despite a cheery exterior.

Disney is now a chariacture of itself - like 50's-style diners with kitzchy Warhol decorations. It's lost most (if not all) of its authenticity because the need for business forced them to drop the Oz-curtain too many times.

The Olympics is fast becoming this way too - it is rooted in an authentic history (just as Disney's ideal was authentically inspired) but it has become inauthentic and people are sensing it.

Unlike Disney however, you don't self-select your cost-burden - everyone pays for the Olympics, like it or not.

Re: Some Thoughts on the Walrus Response

jeremyvernon — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:46:30 -0000

To reiterate what David H was getting at:

This is still a technical problem. It shouldn't take ANY resources (aside from a handful of clock cycles and a quick read-over) to remove mark-up (links included) from the text of articles, it should be a push-button operation. What software is powering the Walrus' editorial process? I hope it's not just Outlook, Office, WordPress and InDesign.

Moreover, link addition/approval can and should be handed over to the freelance writers. A simple solution akin to GooseGrade (used on this blog) could provide an avenue for robust user-driven "linkification", without trodding on the toes of writers or using up interns and/or editors' time.

Generating related links is also something that can be automated (yet curated) - have a look at Reuters' Calais or similar services.

Finally, comments in the comment section should include blog articles written in response - pingbacks are built-in with WordPress.

Re: MuniForge: Creating municipalities that work like the web

jeremyvernon — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:14:34 -0000

From an tech-engineering perspective, this is a non-problem.

The observation about municipalities over-estimation of their idiosyncratic nature touches on a potential problem - the solutions, versatile or not, would likely be documented or structured in a fashion unpalatable to all but their specific clients (many open sourced projects are like this). Not a deal-breaker, but certainly something that needs to be considered in the framing of the system.

An important distinction not often made is between customization and configuration. Too much software is built with customization in mind - that is, the changes are made at the code-level and this is facilitated through clever engineering of the code-base and dependencies. Customization is expensive, configuration is cheap.

What SAP, MSFT and IBM all do is sell configuration AS customization - frequently however, it's a matter of clicking some tick-boxes and changing some variables in a config.ini file and voila fully "custom" software.

Figuring out a way to build easily configurable software and guide municipal representatives through a) identifying available options b) identifying the desirable and relevant options c) connecting the dots between the default configuration and the desirable configuration. Will be, I think, the killer-feature.

Re: Torturing Afghan Prisoners: Blind and Dangerous

jeremyvernon — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:28:43 -0000

It's obvious that many in Ottawa were totally blind-sided by this (note the comments by Abbot) and resorted to the traditional Tory tactic of cramming their heads in the sand. I think ethical outrage implies overmuch competence and deliberation of and by the politicians - far more likely, I think, they are panicking and saying stupid things to the media.

As for torture, the amoral rational calculus argument against torture (over and above the ethical) is almost as old as von Neumann. The cost of torturing grows exponentially while the benefit decays exponentially, if it has any benefit at all (e.g. life-saving intel) .

I am immensely curious to know the circumstances under which a Canadian soldier would knowingly hand-over detainees for torture - is it another Abu-Ghraib prison situation (cf. Philip Zimbardo)? were there perverse incentives? or is it some sort abhorrent out-sourcing?

Re: Emergent Systems in Government: Let’s put the horse before the cart

jeremyvernon — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:03:19 -0000

Two remarks -

The struggle you're alluding to in software design is one of the longest religious debates in software engineering (along with Vi vs. emacs, or tabs vs. spaces). Agile methods vs. Big Design Up Front (BDUF) and the struggle between them fills bookshelves and software engineering degree programs. So government isn't the only place where this expresses itself.

Also, an interesting point made by Clay Shirky is poignant here - he was describing the role of the cell-phone. The most critical alteration it made was that it replaced planning with adaptability. He pointed out how nobody needs to plan social events with any specificity ahead of time, "I'll call you when I'm leaving" instead of "I'll meet you there at 6".

Leadership, in the mind of McDowall and old-school KMers is about planning. Planning is the mechanism for coordination.

To get metaphysical - what's going on in management is a shift away from Newton's mechanical cause to Aristotle's formal cause. A shift from "making things happen" to "making things possible".

Re: How bloggers can keep the internet healthy

jeremyvernon — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:12:56 -0000

Two things. First, anyone in command of the facts on the security of browsers could not in good conscience maintain the use of IE 6 in any workplace - the threat it poses to employee security is not worth whatever cost there is to change. I work in a cyber-threat research lab and a vast majority of the threats we investigate are premised on IE 6 vulnerabilities.

Second, for those stuck using IE 6 (or any closed browser) by fiat - there is the Google Chrome frame. http://code.google.com/chro... it's experimental at the moment, but it points toward a possible solution to the rendering engine issues.

Re: The Day my Universe Changed

jeremyvernon — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:29:46 -0000

I watched Connections as much as possible as a child - that show was mind blowing to me as a kid. It taught me that non-linear thinking, seeing the semantic joins between things, was a valid way of thinking (despite what my education was teaching me - that lateral thinking was irrelevant and wrong).

His shows are brilliant pedagogical lessons that should be viewed by educators, advocates and activists across the country.

Re: Eat the Young!

jeremyvernon — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:43:24 -0000

All above is true - it also entirely irrelevant to the particular area we are discussing.

Netscape could've also invented six-hundred other technologies that utterly subverted the natural order of things - it would STILL be a mostly conventional organization with mostly conventional practices.

It still sought to change the environment in which it operated through entirely conventional means, which was my original point and why I think it is mistaken to say there was nothing conventional about Netscape.

They did some amazing things - I'm not arguing that, that point is patently obvious. Accusing me of ignorance for not belabouring the genius of their technology is unseemly and unhelpful.

Re: Eat the Young!

jeremyvernon — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:34:42 -0000

I make a redaction to the above - Netscape was not a plaintiff in the DoJ anti-trust, which I recognize might be inferred by my wording. It did however furnish significant quantities of evidence to the case, notably the Bad Attitude debacle.