It’s been a while since my last blog post.  That fact is due, in no small part, to the significant amount of time that I spent in the frozen tundra of northern Alberta in the last few months (3 trips and a total of about 3 weeks in the last 3 months).  In specific, I was in a town called Grande Prairie: population approximately 50,000. 

In case your Canadian geography is a little rusty, this is where Grande Prairie is located:

View Larger Map

(The states just off the bottom of the map would be Washington, the Northern tip of Idaho,  and Montana).  Here are a few interesting factoids about Grande Prairie:

• Upon my first arrival to Grande Prairie, my host described the city as “the Northernmost edge of civilization.”
• With a little luck, you can see the Northern Lights when standing outdoors at night. (I was not lucky).
• Grande Prairie can be quite pretty:



The building in this photo is the most prominent landmark in the area.  At 14 stories it towers above everything else in the city and is, as I’m told, the tallest building in Alberta north of Edmonton.

• Grande Prairie also has some extremely nice, albeit somewhat quirky, people:

(In defense of Grande Prairie, the chap on the right is from Newfoundland, I believe).

• Due to Grande Prairie’s latitude, the days are very short at this time of year.  This image was taken at about 10:30am, on my way into the office:

• At this point you’re probably asking, “so, why does one go to Grande Prairie?”

Well, the most common answer to that question is: “for money.”  Apparently, Northern Alberta is swimming in crude oil and Grande Prairie represents the staging-point for a tremendous amount of oil drilling activity in the area.  The province is booming, with a multi-billion dollar budget surplus and a staggering manpower shortage. Eighteen year-old high school graduates moving to the area regularly earn more than $100,000 a year working in the oil fields.  Workers are so hard to come by that service industry companies also pay astronomical wages (as much as $17/hour for a job at Starbucks, I’m told).  The unfortunate byproduct of this wealth in an otherwise inhospitable land is are depressingly high rates of methamphetamine addiction, prostitution, and gambling.

I, however, did not venture to Grande Prairie to seek my fortune as a leatherneck and while-away the cold nights with drugs and loose women.  I was drawn to this desolate land by the potent combination of classic 70’s disco music and modern technology, in the form of an iPhone game called:

Saturday Night Fever: Dance was developed by a small team based in Grande Prairie by the name of Evolv3r Inc. and published under my direction by Paramount Digital Entertainment.  I am very excited to announce that, as of today, this game is now available for download from the iTunes App store (for the bargain price of $4.99).  I’m very proud of this project.  While the core gameplay mechanic is pretty heavily “inspired” by Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS, I think that we made some subtle but significant improvements and produced an extremely polished and full-featured iPhone application in a very short amount of time. 

The music lineup is fantastic, including Master recordings of YMCA (Village People), Shake Your Groove Thing (Peaches & Herb), Carwash (Rose Royce), and Love Machine (The Miracles).  I really didn’t have much of an appreciation for disco music before working on this project, but after seeing the film (which I highly recommend…it’s really not what you expect) and working on this game, I think I’m something of a fan.

So, if you’ve got an iPhone or an iPod Touch, or you know anyone who does, I definitely encourage you to give the game a try.  I have very high hopes for it.  If you enjoy it, please help spread the word. 

I was tremendously amused by Simon Parkin’s Gamasutra article “Fallout 3 – I Kill Children” and the ensuing discussion. In the article, Parkin asserted that the decision by the team at Bethesda to restrict the killing of children “admitted video games’ ineffectiveness in providing meaningful disincentives and negative repercussions for in-game atrocities.” Several others chimed-in with comments complaining that “allowing people to kill adults but not children implies that there is something more wrong about killing children.”

It is worth noting, for those unfamiliar with the game, that Fallout 3 is a Mature-rated game intended for adults that is graphically violent.  Recently released, it has been met with strong early sales and generally excellent reviews.  When characters are killed they are often shown up-close in high detail as limbs are severed and blood flies in slow motion.

Presumably, Mr. Parkin is advocating that players should have been allowed to kill children in the same way.

The gist of his argument is that because the game is set in a harsh, morally-ambiguous future, where such actions might actually happen, the decision to prevent the killing of children in this way represents self-censorship and compromises the game’s artistic integrity because it implies that the developers were unable to design appropriate consequences that would have disincentivized and “punished” this kind of behavior.  Ironically, there would likely have been little, if any, actual consequences for this type of behavior in the bleak future that the game envisions.

The reality is that society absolutely thinks that there is something more wrong about killing children than adults. This is so obvious that it I am surprised that people were even asking the question. Generally speaking, the younger the victim, the more horrific the crime seems; the more outraged the public reaction. The most surprising thing to me is that there are people who were surprised that killing children was restricted in the game, considering the countless other video games in which you can kill adults but not kill children. Even film, a medium that is allowed a much wider degree of artistic freedom than games, rarely tackles the subject of child murder and, when it does, it is universally done in a way that is less “in your face” than some of the people on this comment thread seem to be advocating.  Can anyone point to a commercially successful film that showed graphic, realistic, murder, including gushing blood and dismemberment, of a child? The fact that Mr. Parkin’s article, as well as some of the comments, actually seem to be advocating this for a video game in our current political climate borders on the comical to me.

We can argue all we want about the artistic compromise that this decision may have been for the game, but that conversation is ultimately irrelevant. I was not privy to the actual conversation on this topic, but I’d bet just about anything that Bethesda made this decision for very legitimate business/financial reasons. Had they allowed players to graphically execute innocent children, resulting in their dismemberment and enormous spouts of blood, the game would almost certainly have gotten them an Adults-Only (AO) rating, effectively killing the game’s retail potential. Even if it had not, it would probably have quickly become the biggest games industry PR nightmare since Hot Coffee, with unknown but very likely negative impacts on sales as conservative retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart rushed to pull the game from store shelves in the face of a public outcry.

Video game development, at least the kind that Bethesda is engaged in, is a business. People should be neither surprised nor upset when companies such as Bethesda make decisions that are in the best interest of their business. Sure, they could have allowed the graphic killing of children, but in so doing they would have created a massive risk of seriously hurting their product’s sales. Games of the scope and ambition of Fallout 3 cost a lot of money ($20 million and more) to make. If games can’t recoup their costs (and then some) they don’t get made. Is that what Mr. Parkin and those who agree with him really want, just so that they can applaud the game’s “internal consistency” of allowing players to murder children in horrific and gory ways?

It is the failure to acknowledge the out-of-game consequences of what he suggests that I think most undermines Mr. Parkin’s argument. As he AND his “eloquent” detractors have pointed out, there were certainly ways Bethesda could have made the consequences for this atrocity severe enough to disincentivize most players. I seriously doubt, however, that being able to say “afterwards, you are haunted by the child’s ghost and your character has a hard time sleeping,” would have done much to quell the outcry of millions of disgusted and offended parents. Ultimately, the decision to omit child killing in the game is far less of a concession to Bethesda’s abilities as game designers than it is to society’s sensitiblities.  So, in other words, we have only ourselves to blame (or thank).

So, I was really very disappointed when I realized that the agreement that this article refers to seems to be in reference to a completely new game developed by Harmonix and will not make any Beatles songs playable in Rock Band.  This decision seems to me that it was probably dictacted by some business/financial factors, as Harmonix has done an excellent job of promoting the concept of Rock Band as a “platform,” and the Beatles seem like a perfect fit for that platform.

Obviously, I don’t know what the two companies have in mind that would make a stand-along Beatles game make more sense, but I’m willing to wait and find out before passing judgment.  I just hope that it doesn’t turn out to be some sort of shameless cash-in opportunity that would have been better if it were just part of Rock Band.

Hey everyone,

Just thought I’d take a moment to mention that I’m going to be participating in the LA AIDS Walk this Sunday morning.  If you’re willing/able to make a donation in support, it would be much appreciated.  You can find my personal fundraising page here.  Thanks, in advance, for your help!

My new brother-in-law (man, that’s still a little weird to say), Tyler Velten, was recently the subject of a very cool article in the New York Times.  Ty is in his second year as an architecture student at Yale.  He’s a great guy and I’m thrilled to have him in the family.   If you read the article be sure you check out all the photos.

(I contemplated posting a much more amusing photo of Ty from his Bachelor’s Party that I think does a better job of capturing his personality, but ultimately decided that this one from the wedding would be less likely to get me in trouble with my sister….)

Neat!  GameDaily.com just decided to republish my previous post on “movie mode.”  Feel free to check it out in its slightly edited form here.

I’ve read several articles lately that have described the Obama campaign as “flailing about,” or “in a tail-spin,” or “a state of disarray,” and from where I sit as a staunch Obama supporter, I think that there is some truth to this.  A series of recent events (the uninspiring Biden pick combined with the fascinating Palin nomination to be specific) seem to have really shifted the tone of both campaigns in a way that seems to be favoring the Republicans.  In response, the Obama campaign has vowed to roll up their sleeves and “come out swinging.” 

Honestly, however, I have seen little evidence that they are doing this, or that it is being terribly  effective.  It’s as if the campaign has lost its way; forgotten what it was that inspired so many of us.  I think that engaging with the Republicans in a “hard fought” campaign is terribly unwise.  Not only are they better at it than we are (because they’re generally willing to fight dirtier), but it also smacks of “politics as usual,” which Obama needs desperately to avoid if he is to retain what has been so exciting about himself from the get-go.

So, here’s a quick thought that I’ve been kicking around in my head.  I’m pretty sure that Robi is going to tell me that this is moronic and that, to say the least, it’s risky.  Nonetheless, I think it has some potential and the Obama campaign has shown a willingness to try things that are pretty unorthodox.  So, here goes.

Basically, I think that the 30-second television political ad is the poison that is killing our political system.  The very idea that you could convey any meaningful amount of information in 30 seconds is somewhat ludicrous.  By their very nature, these ads lack substance and focus on style and sensationalism.  They are notoriously easy to use to distort the truth and equally difficult to refute or fact-check (for the average American, anyway).  In other words, I think that we would be far better off without them.

Obviously, it is impossible to legislate them away as they are protected as Free Speech.  But, I think it could be possible to get rid of them, by simply stigmatizing them.  I think that the Obama campaign, which has roughly $65 million in cash, in the bank and he’s raising more every day, is in a unique position to do so.  Imagine what would happen if he just said, “That’s enough.  As of this day, I have decided not to engage in this destructive, manipulative, counter-productive form of propaganda any more.  It is hurting America and there are better ways that the generous donations of my supporters can be put to use.”

Just think of what the Obama campaign could do with $65+ million if they didn’t spend ANY of it on TV ads!  Think of the ways that they could put it to use organizing actual events to connect with voters while contributing to the very social goals that they advocate.  Instead of throwing that money away by giving it to television networks in order to run sleazy anti-McCain ads or sappy self-promos, think of the number of Campaign Rallies / Community Events he could organize.  Neighborhood clean-ups.  Tree-plantings.  Food drives. Immunization drives. Voter Registration events.  These things are far less expensive that TV ads and far more meaningful, I believe.

It wouldn’t all have to be community-service-related, either.  He could use it to subsidize concerts or festivals that people would pay admission to attend…the grass-roots equivalent of $300/plate fundraising dinners.  And think of the media attention that he would get for such a bold decision.  It’s the kind of move that would show that he really IS about change while completely taking the wind out of McCain’s sails.  Every additional TV ad that the Republican campaign would run would seem that much more manipulative, mean-spirited, and deceptive. 

It’s the kind of move that I would expect from the Obama that I’ve been a fan of all along.  Instead of fighting the Republican way, rise above it; disengage from the dirty politics and lead by example.  Additional donations would come pouring in as people realized that they would not only be supporting a great candidate, but that their dollars would be put to better uses than paying for advertisements.  I realize it may be crazy, but I think it could work.  Does anyone REALLY believe those things anymore anyway?

Welcome to the final installment of my Olympic Medal Count Analysis series of posts.  With the Olympics now a good 2 weeks behind us, and the NFL season underway, this post feels as if it has lost its timeliness.  Nonetheless, I saved what I thought was the most interesting question for last.

If you’re not up to speed on the previous posts in this series, I suggest you review them.  In the first post I laid-out a scoring system for comparing each country’s performance (3 points for a Gold, 2 points for Silver, 1 point for a Bronze) and I addressed the question of whether China or the USA “won” the medal race.  In the second post I discussed the first of 3 myths (or at least pre-conceptions that I brought into the games) that were contradicted by the actual medal count data.  The third post addressed which country fared better in in Team events, versus Individual and Pairs events.

Today we will be focusing on…

Myth #3: “Despite China’s strong showing, it was the USA that brought the more well-rounded team to the Olympics.”

Reality: At first blush, this myth seems to be particularly likely to be true.  China made no secret of their “Project 119,” an effort to focus on winning the 119 Gold Medals available in Track & Field and Swimming events.  Moreover, we already know that the USA accumulated more medals than the Chinese did AND that the USA’s medals spread much more evenly across Gold/Silver/Bronze, a form of well-roundedness in-and-of itself.  Neither of these metrics, however, precludes the possibility that the USA won all or most of its medals in a narrow set of events.

Unfortunately, the IOC doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned with helping me answer this sort of question.  Instead of sorting the Olympic events into convenient categories, they have created a large number of events (somewhere between 28 and 39, depending on how you count).  Some events (such as baseball, soccer, softball, BMX Cycling) offer only 1-2 medals.  Others (such as swimming and track & field offer dozens).  The sheer number of events, combined with the disparity in possible medals, makes statistically significant comparisons very difficult.

So, the first thing that I did was sort the events into 7 Categories, as follows:

• Accuracy (Archery & Shooting)
• Acrobatics (Artistic & Rhythmic Gymnastics, Diving, Trampoline, & Synchronized Swimming)
• Athletics (Field Events including Decathlon/Pentathlon/Triathlon, & Weightlifting)
• Fighting (Boxing, Fencing, Wrestling, Judo, and Taekwondo)
• Net Sports (Beach & Indoor Volleyball, Tennis, Table Tennis, Hand Ball, & Badminton)
• Racing (Track Events, Cycling Events, Canoeing/Kayaking, Rowing, and Sailing Events)
• Team Spots (aka “Contact Sports” such as Soccer, Basketball, Water Polo, Hockey, Baseball & Softball)
• NOTE: The only sport that proved difficult to categorize was Equestrian.  Coincidentally, it is the only sport that involves another creature than the athletes.  Fortunately, between China and the USA there was only one Equestrian medal (a Silver, for the USA).  I counted it as a Racing medal.

Once the events have been grouped in this way we can easily apply our now-familiar scoring system and calculate what percentage of each country’s total score was derived from each event Category:

Interesting!  Not only does it become clear that the USA literally accumulated not just a plurality, but a true majority of its points in a single Category (Racing), but that China out-performed the United States in 5 out of 7 Categories!  This is certainly a strong argument against our assertion that the USA was the more well-balanced team.

Before we call this case closed, however, let’s take a closer look at the data.  After all, as we mentioned above, the total number of Olympic medals available in any given event varies rather wildly and, apparently, arbitrarily.  Thus, one could argue that if there are more medals available in a given event Category, then a well-rounded country should win more medals in that Category, and fewer medals in Categories where fewer medals are available. If we add a third set of columns, representing the % of the total medals/points available in each category, our chart looks like this:

From this new perspective the USA’s significant bias towards Racing events seems much less surprising.  After all, with fully 42% of the available points being awarded in these events, it makes sense that this is where the USA would earn the largest portion of its medals/points.  In fact, the percentage of points derived from any individual Category by the USA is closer to the overall distribution than China’s is, in 4 of the 7 Categories.

By this standard, it is fair to say that a country has “over-achieved” in an event Category if the % of its total score is greater than the % of the overall available points in that Category.  In other words, the USA “over-achieved” in Racing because Racing accounts for only 42% of the available Olympic points, yet represented 57% of USA’s total points.  Conversely, the USA “under-achieved” in Athletics and Fighting events.

Using these definitions, we can re-plot the same data to more clearly show in which Category each country over/under-achieved, and by how much:

Now, the argument in favor of the USA as the more well-rounded team becomes even stronger.  By definition, each country’s over/under achievements will balance each other out in a zero-sum game. Interestingly, the USA’s apparently single-minded focus on Racing events represents only a relatively modest over-achievement in this Category.  China, on the other hand, clearly compensates for a dramatic under-achievement in this largest of event Categories with very-strong performances in both Acrobatics and Net Spots.

It is the Absolute Value of these deviations, however, that is most telling.  Whereas USA’s performance in the various event Categories varies from the overall Olympic medal distribution by a total of 39 percentage points, China’s variance is fully twice as much, at 77 percentage points.  By this definition of well-roundedness, USA is the clear winner, with China proving to be extremely strong in some areas and equally weak in others.

Does China’s overwhelming dependence on some event Categories and it’s “no show” in others mean that our third and final Myth is not such a myth after all?  Or does the fact that China out-performed the USA in more Categories while also medaling in more events (25 to 22), make it the more well-rounded competitor?  Ultimately, it is the uncertainty of the answer to these questions that is most telling.

There are certainly countless more interesting questions that can be asked and analyzed based on the data that I have accumulated, but I suspect that my audience’s interest is waning even more than my own.  So, I shall bring my discussion of these most recent and most captivating Olympic games to an end.  If you are so inclined, however, please feel free to download my Excel workbook and use it as you see fit.  If you find errors (as I have no doubt that they exist) please let me know so that I can update my version and see if any of my conclusions are affected by them.

Last week I posted the first 2 parts in a 4-part series analyzing the medal results from the recent 2008 Beijing Olympics.  In the first post I laid-out a scoring system for comparing each country’s performance (3 points for a Gold, 2 points for Silver, 1 point for a Bronze) and I addressed the question of whether China or the USA “won” the medal race.  In the second post I discussed the first of 3 myths (or at least pre-conceptions that I brought into the games) that were contradicted by the actual medal count data.

In this, the 3rd installment in the series, I will be discussing…

Myth #2: The United States is a country that tends to glamorize strong, independent, and innovative, individuals over the group/collective.  China, a Communist country, prioritizes self-sacrifice, group discipline, and group organization/coordination over the individual.  Consequently, in the Olympics, one would expect American individuals to perform better than Chinese individuals and Chinese teams to perform better than American teams.

Reality:

In order to asses this assertion I grouped each Olympic event into three categories based on the number of participants involved:

• Individual - Events in which a single athlete competes on their own behalf. The vast majority of Olympic events fall into this category.
• Pairs - Events in which two athletes compete co-operatively.  Events in this category include: Synchronized Diving; Pairs Rowing; Doubles Tennis, Table Tennis, and Badminton; and Beach Volleyball.
• Teams - Events in which more than two athletes compete co-operatively.  Events in this category include some Rowing events, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, Indoor Volleyball, Water Polo, Softball, Track & Swimming Relay Races, Synchronized Swimming, and Team Gymnastics.

Again, the data is quite counter-intuitive:

American individualism seems to be worth relatively little, at least when compared to China’s performance, in Individual events, where both countries performed quite comparably.  Meanwhile, contrary to the idea that the Chinese would excel in group activities, the United States dominated Team events.  Equally inexplicably, however, China showed a clear command of Pairs events.

I considered several possible explanations for the USA’s strong performance in Team Sports:

• Economics - Perhaps China doesn’t have the financial resources to develop the number of athletes that are necessary for large teams and instead has chosen to focus its efforts on events with fewer competitors.  This assertion seems easily dismissed given the scope of the resources spent  by China in preparation for the 2008 Olympics.
• Cultural Bias - Perhaps the USA benefits from high-profile, world-class leagues that have not had time to develop in countries such as China.  While this may be true of a few sports (Basketball, Baseball) it fails to explain USA’s strong performance in Water Polo, Volleyball, and Softball.
• Size & Strength - Since most of the Team sports are also contact sports, perhaps the American athletes are simply advantaged because they tend to be bigger and stronger.  This explanation is contradicted, however, by China’s strong performance in Weightlifting and many individual contact sports such as Boxing, Judo, etc.

Ultimately, I am at a loss and unable to come up with a solid explanation for why China, a country that demonstrated its ability to coordinate groups of people to stunning effect in the Beijing Opening Ceremonies was so roundly outperformed in Team Sports by a nation that worships individualism.  I am even more baffled by China’s strong performance (and the USA’s pathetic one) in Pairs events.  If you feel that you have a good explanation for either of these observations, please post a comment.

Otherwise, stay tuned for the 4th and final installment in this series, later this week…

A few days ago I allowed myself to indulge in a little bit of compulsive competitiveness as I proposed a metric for determining which country (China or the USA) “won” the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  In that post I laid-out a scoring system by which one can interpret each country’s performance, by assigning a “score” to each type of medal (3 points for a Gold, 2 points for Silver, 1 point for a Bronze).  (It is recommended that you read that post before proceeding.)

The initial analysis was quick and easy, based on each country’s total number of each medal (China won by a tiny 3-point margin, 223 to 220).  Unsatisfied with this conclusion (for obvious reasons), I decided to delve deeper, in search of some piece of data to help me feel better about being on the wrong side of that particular equation.  Armed with a slew of pro-American biases and prejudices I began thinking about the data from a number of perspectives.  What I found, however, proved most interesting because of the way in which it debunked many of those pre-conceptions.  In particular, I found that 3 assumptions that I had formed while watching the Games and had expected (hoped?) to validate with the data, were in fact, myths.

In order to minimize the chance of boring my readers to sleep with a single enormous post on this subject, I have decided to break this information into 3 separate posts; one for each Myth.  Tonight, we begin with…

Myth #1: The Chinese may be better than the US at events where the athletes are only competing against themselves, but Americans tend to do better in head-to-head events.

Reality:

In order to assess the validity of this statement, I assigned each event to one of three event “types”

• Asynchronous Events - Events in which the athletes perform completely separately from each other.  In other words, they take turns, with one athlete performing, followed by another.  Events that fit into this category include: Gymnastics, Diving, Field events, Weightlifting, Archery, Shooting, etc.
• Synchronous Events - Events in which the athletes perform at the same time, but are not supposed to be directly interacting with each other.  Events that fit into this category include: Swimming, Rowing, Track Events, etc.  Note: In reality, there is some minimal (but not necessarily insignificant) interaction between the athletes in these events, both in terms of strategy, as well as factors such as false starts, riding another swimmer’s wave (or getting caught in their wake), boxing another runner in, etc.
• Head-to-Head Events - Events in which the athletes directly oppose each other.  For one athlete to score, win, or succeed their opponent must lose or fail.  Events that fit into this category include: Basketball, Soccer, Volleyball, Water Polo, Tennis, Table Tennis, Badminton, Baseball, Softball, Beach Volleyball, etc.

The results of this analysis are quite interesting:

China clearly dominates Asynchronous events, whereas the United States succeeds in Synchronous events by an even greater margin.  Most interestingly, however, and counter to what many Americans would probably like to believe, the Chinese actually also control a clear margin of victory in Head-to-Head events.

This surprising fact is likely because most Americans tend to think of Head-to-Head events in terms of those sports that are most popular here in the US (men’s and women’s basketball, softball, baseball, indoor and beach volleyball, water polo, women’s soccer, etc.).  And, to be fair, the US performed overwhelmingly well in these events.  Unfortunately, however, they account for a very small number of medals.  At the same time, the Chinese were able to accumulate a significant number of medals in Head-to-Head events that are more culturally relevant (and popular) in China, while being largely overlooked by American audiences (badminton, table tennis, judo, taekwondo, fencing, boxing, and wrestling).

Stay tuned for Myth #2, coming soon…