Category: Culture

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Culture

Is Wil Wheaton’s Table Top just a reality show for board game geeks?

Yesterday Wil Wheaton wrote a blog post (and corresponding reddit post) in which he apologized for “completely screwing up the rules” in at least half (10 out of 21) of the episode of Table Top Season 3. IMHO his apology is a text book example of how not to apologize. He spends the majority of the post singling out and publicly shaming a specific producer on the show – the “rules guy.” The way he’s handling this has made me lose a lot of respect for the guy, but Reddit thread covers that ground pretty well, that’s not what this blog post is about…

By placing so much blame on this producer and taking very little responsibility himself, he has revealed a lot about how the show works and I’m beginning to think it’s more reality show than documentary.

Ostensibly, Table Top is a show were Wil Wheaton plays his favourite board games with his friends. He presents each and every game with such passion, knowledge and excitement that it is not a much of a logical leap to assume that he’s played the game a few time and is at least familiar with the basic rules. In fact, he’ll often throw in a pro-tip, a specific strategy that he likes to employ during a certain point in the game or a funny antidote.

I no longer believe this to be the case. In light of his blog post, I now feel like Table Top is more like a reality show where Wil Wheaton the actor, plays the character of Wil Wheaton the board game geek.

If Table Top was authentic, if Wheaton was actually into the games, if he knew the rules; then he wouldn’t be blaming a producer so heavily. Sure the gamers might make little mistakes here and there, but anyone familiar with the rules should be able to catch the bigger mistakes. If not on the first or second round, then maybe a few rounds in and definitely when reviewing the episode.

The fact that they employee an expert to review the rules really demonstrates the “show-ness” of the show. I don’t think someone outside of the Hollywood film & television industry would even think to hire someone like this. They would rely on the combined expertise of the team.

Not only that, but throughout the series Wheaton really strongly presents himself as the expert. If this was actually the case, having another expert on the team should be completely redundant. But the huge amounts of blame levelled on this one producer implies an opposite and equally huge amount of distance between Wheaton, the games and the production process.

I would not be surprised if the games instruction consisted of hand-holding Wil and friends through game between takes. “Roll the dice, then draw a card and … action.”

Phewf.

That said, I think the show is still a great introduction to the world of modern gaming. It’s certainly much more accessible than something like The Dice Tower or Shut Up & Sit Down. But I don’t think I’ll be watching the series again…

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Culture

The Matrix Turns 15 Today

Happy Birthday. Everything is a remix.

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Culture

The Nintendo WiiUnderated

For Christmas this year we bought Santa brought the kids a Nintendo WiiU for Christmas. I’ve been holding back this post until I played a few different game types on the system. As usual, Nintendo has done a great job of designing and prompting really fun gameplay. As has been the case with their last few consoles releases, the gaming press seems to be mostly ignoring the WiiU. As they’ve done over their entire history, Nintendo has continued to serve their target market – families – really well. They’ve gotten a lot of things right this time around. The WiiU is in full 1080p – infact, it’s our household’s only 1080p Netflix machine. Backwards compatibility with original Wii games and controllers is amazingly important to families, who’re often budget constrained and tied to old games the kids grew up with.

Above everything else though, Nintendo continues to innovate in ways that Sony and Microsoft doesn’t seem to “get” (see: Playstation Move). The WiiU GamePad is highly, highly underrated. The ability to play games on the GamePad while the TV does something else is brilliant! Not only is it brilliant, it actually works! I was able to use the GamePad in bed, a good 10m and several walls away from the console. The GamePad’s universal remote feature makes switching from WiiU to Housewives of Lamecounty totally seamless.

Also, the GamePad unlocks completely new gameplay. Having a game’s mini-map and inventory system available on a touch screen is such a natural user interface. The gamepad is also position aware, which means you can use it to control ingame cameras: ZombieU uses it as a zombiescanner/camera, Wonderful 101 uses it as a camera for building interiors – so you can look around inside a building – while the main gameplay is going outside the building on your TV. I’m sure there are all kinds of interesting gameplay ideas that could make good use of this system.

Sure the system is underpowered and the graphics in Assassin’s creed look a little uncanny valley. But at the end of the day that doesn’t really matter.

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Culture

Vote With Your Wallet, Buy Nothing Day

Today was Buy Nothing Day, Ad Busters’ annual day of anti-consumerist outreach. Despite my liberal hippie leanings, I generally have a visceral reaction against campaigns such as these.  That’s a post for another day…

In the spirit of Buy Nothing Day, I’d like to take a moment to ask for your input on a closely related anti-corporate concept, the idea of voting with your wallet. That is the general idea that every dollar you spend is a vote for one company and a vote against another (wikipedia).

The analogy is usually presented as a negative proposition, “don’t shop at Walmart, they murder rabbits.” I had a bit of a revelation this week when I realized that the voting analogy completely  breaks down when you use it advocate for a personal boycott. Do the math, a huge multi-national like Walmart has orders of magnitude more customers than your local electoral district. Even a large national or regional chain likely has more customers then your federal riding. Your individual vote is so insignificant that the dollar voting analogy is laughable. Sure if you scream loud enough you may get some sort term media coverage, but our collective goldfish brain will forget about it the next week. Huge companies make choices based on huge market forces. McDonalds only “brings back” the McRib when pork prices are at their lowest, then pulls it once the increased demand created by their own sales of McRibs prices causes prices to rise too high (caveat: I don’t know if this is true).

The voting analogy only  makes sense if you’re using it to advocate locally made goods. The potential customer base of a local small business  is much more analogous to the constituent base of an actual election. Your dollars have much more impactful to the local shop owner.

Boycott mega marts if that makes you feel better about yourself.

Buy local.
If you actually want to
change the world.

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Culture

Posting Salary is Table Stakes

Today Marco Arment wrote about how frustrating it can be when employers don’t post salaries.

If you see a job listing that doesn’t specify a salary range, assume it’s so low that they’re embarrassed to include it, they don’t respect you enough to tell you, or their heads are so far up their asses that they think you should just be dying to work there at any salary, none of which bode well for employment there.

I had assumed this phenomena was localized to Winnipeg, with our terrible developer job market. It’s reassuring to read him venting about this.