A few weeks ago, while browsing a website I ran across an ad for a new game. Curious, I went to the website and checked it out. Astounded by what I could find on it, and wanting to sample it before I bought it, I decided to apply for an Open Beta position. A week later, I had the unmitigated fortune to be accepted into Exclusive Beta. Unfortunately, as I found out, this was both good luck, and a curse, because now I was privy to all the wonders of this game, but couldn't tell anyone! Now I can, as Open Beta starts this week, and the NDA is lifted.
Even though the NDA has been lifted, I still the find the quickest way tell people what it's like, is to give them my first impression... Tribes 2 on steriods.
In truth, Planetside, is not a Tribes 2 sequel in any shape or form, primarily because Planetside is being produced by Sony. Secondly, where Tribes 2 focused on specific team vs team combat, Planetside focuses on army vs army combat. Yes, both take place in the future. Yes both involve suits of armor, ground and air vehicles, and bases, but there the similarity stops.
For starters, Planetside is also and RPG game, with a persistent universe where you have a character that gains experience, and obtains certifications to qualify them to use equipment and weapons. Planetside's "maps" are also continent spanning, with a dozens of bases scattered across a globe. Movement is seamless transition from one base to another, although movement between continents is limited by warp gates, or HART transport. Bases are also more complex, with each giving special functions and capabilities to the faction that controls them.
Literally, there are hundreds of differences between the two games, with just enough similarity to attract almost all Tribes 2 fans. Although to mention it, this game has enough similarites to wet the appetite of Unreal, Quake, Battlefield 1942, Mechwarrior, and even some RPG fans as well. So it's less a Tribes 2 game on steriods, then a Bride of Frankstein genre merger, designed to crack barriers and be an instant favorite to a wide audience. And after playing it, even with the occasional Beta problems, I can saftely say it will be a success, and a genre killer.
Because of Planetside's emmense cross genre popularity, many a game will pale in comparison for some time to come. Not to say that not all gaming fans will flock to it, and its safe to assume that many multiplayer games will thrive in the coming years. However, Planetside will be a dominant force on the gaming market, with its First Person Action, on a massive world bending scale.
Or as Doc Brown says at the end of Back to the Future I, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Monday, April 14, 2003
[TB] Creativity in Action
Creating something out of nothing, is the virtual basis for humaity. Making new life, putting up a skyscraper, designing an aqueduct, playing music, writing a story, telling a story, are all part of the creative process enjoyed by people. For many people, this process is keyed by the imagination, in order to invoate, or invent that which hasn't been done. Since humanity has been around a long time however, this process often also occurs because someone was inspired by someone else's previous work. The problem becomes though, where does the fine line lie between actual inovation, and downright theft of an idea?
While creativity itself is a broad category, as evident by the act of destruction that in itself is unique for every event, the act we will focus on today, is the design of popular art, speficially fanfiction and fanart. The reason why this is our focus, lies in the inspiration of the author. First though, what is fanfiction (fanfic for short)? Fanfic is the art of taking popularized media, such as a favorite tv show, movie, story, or other artwork, and creating something new inside its universe. Usually such creation is a short story set in that magical universe, or a piece of art on the characters or things of said exsistence.
Fanfic itself, has been around for a long time, although the term and the genre as we know it, really came into itself just in the 60's and 70's at the height of liberalism and creationism. Prior to that, fanfic was mostly the retelling of popular stories from a parent to a child, where they change the story ever so slightly. Lifewise today's "fanfic" is still often a more personal form of creation, where one inserts themselves into the story. Thus many such pieces are never viewed beyond the artist's own hands.
However, starting in the 60's and especially in the 70's, fanfic began to rear its head into the daylight of society. Largely due to the popularity of expression, artists began to come together and promote magazines called Zines. Home made magazines, Zines were largely sold around conventions of fans. At the time, and even now, these conventions were also because of the popularity of science fiction.
These days with the advent of the internet, and cable tv, fanfic has literally expanded at light speed across the world. More and more people have learned how to become self-published, and in the process released their creative spark upon a world that might have shunned them from being to individualistic before. Herein lies the problem.
Prior to the advent of zines, and especially the internet, such fanfic was largely ignorant of other fanfic. People might write a story similar to another, all beacause they didn't know of each other. Now though that others know and often see each others works, the problem of orginality falls into a murky water of ethics and morality.
Actually, you could even go beyond that and say that fanfic itself is an immoral thing as it is artwork base off of someone else's creation, and largely done without their permission. However, in most cases the orginial creator sees this form of expression as a tribute to the popularity and acceptance of their own work. Frequently they also then ignore such fanfic, so as to not become inspired from the grey copyright complications that might arise from the fanfic. Unfortunately when they do pay attention, sometimes unforseen problems, such as disagreements, general dis-like, or the fanfic artists attempts to capitilize on the work, can cause said same legal issues to arise, but usually in reverse.
Either way, fanfic and fanart are a largely tolerated being, pandering more to the unseen consumer artist then the creator artist(s). Thus, ethically, unless the creator blantantly challenges the use of their material, and as long as no money is made off of the fanfic, ethically the fanartist is fine to do with the universe as he likes. Often this either means putting the characters into sexual situations for adult purposes, or the "Mary-Sue" style of sticking oneself into the storyline just for the purposes of playing the hero and or villain.
The real problem is, once you've accepted fanfic as imitation art off a popular art, whats to stop some imitating the imitation? And is it ehtical or moral for the 2nd party to feel wronged by the 3rd party?
Lets take an example, and why I brought this up today. Star Trek, a very popular sci-fi series, has spawned its own culture and huge volumes of fanart and fanfiction. Personally I have tried my hand at writing a new fan-series inside the large universe. As part of the process I invented my own ship, and crew, but attempted to keep myself within certain boundaries that I saw and accepted. Make the ship look real, don't override the accepted cannon of the universe, don't use any previous characters, and make it good enough that people might question why keeping it offscreen. So far, I'm 3 out 4, though the last will probably take me awhile as this writer block is hindering finishing not only one epsiode, but more to the series.
Anyways, as part of the process that lead to this fanseries, I designed a new ship, never before used in the universe. I designed based off three known designs, and one therotical design, thus making the ship possible within the universe I had envisioned. Since I like designing starships, and such I felt a little pride in what I had done within the boundaries that I had set. Such pride that I submitted the design to a fan run website www.shipschematics.net about such designs. I considered my design to be better then 90% of the other designs there, and it made me feel good. Unfortunately, the site dropped offline not long afterwards and it dropped from my mind. A year and half later and I was doing some searching and found that the site had returned once more. At this time I was more actively considering writing the series to go along with the ship and did a search to check my spelling of the submitted craft.
Eventually I found the design, albeit slightly mispelled. Nothing major to worry about there, no need to even correct it. However I did find something that did worry me. Apparently someone else had seen the design, liked it, pulled it off the website, and then proceded to edit the design. I was shocked, not because it had been edited, but because when they did, they had just slapped a wierd pair of half nacelles (something not even inside the accepted universe), didn't even bother really matching it with the line, such that it looks out of place, and submitted it with their name attached.
Initially my first thoughts were, "How dare they!", however as I thought about it, and the whole morality of fanfic to begin with, I calmed down, and started to wonder, why my design? The first part of this was to determine how and when this had taken place, it was then I got my second shock. The person in question hadn't just done this with my design, they had done this with a couple of dozen designs. They had blantantly added some pieces of psuedo Star Trek stuff to each ship, sometimes the same items, sometimes something different, hadn't bothered to match the designs, the flow, or even the tech, and had submitted each and every design with their name attached. Thus they were now in the ship database where someone would almost invariably see their name, somewhere.
Unfortunately with no way to contact this artist, I can only begin to speculate why he did this. Most likely he is minor variant on what is called a "Troll", someone who does what they do, in order to get attention, usually by angering a 3rd party. Some consider themselves artists in how they go about doing this, others not as such. In this gentlemen's case though, I still feel a little wronged by what he has done to my design.
The final question though is; In this wierd, grey area of art, imitating art, imitating art, what is the ethical and moral right that I have, or anyone has, to a 3rd party changing my work, without my permission. Should I be allowed to feel angered, or sad, or should I just not care?
While creativity itself is a broad category, as evident by the act of destruction that in itself is unique for every event, the act we will focus on today, is the design of popular art, speficially fanfiction and fanart. The reason why this is our focus, lies in the inspiration of the author. First though, what is fanfiction (fanfic for short)? Fanfic is the art of taking popularized media, such as a favorite tv show, movie, story, or other artwork, and creating something new inside its universe. Usually such creation is a short story set in that magical universe, or a piece of art on the characters or things of said exsistence.
Fanfic itself, has been around for a long time, although the term and the genre as we know it, really came into itself just in the 60's and 70's at the height of liberalism and creationism. Prior to that, fanfic was mostly the retelling of popular stories from a parent to a child, where they change the story ever so slightly. Lifewise today's "fanfic" is still often a more personal form of creation, where one inserts themselves into the story. Thus many such pieces are never viewed beyond the artist's own hands.
However, starting in the 60's and especially in the 70's, fanfic began to rear its head into the daylight of society. Largely due to the popularity of expression, artists began to come together and promote magazines called Zines. Home made magazines, Zines were largely sold around conventions of fans. At the time, and even now, these conventions were also because of the popularity of science fiction.
These days with the advent of the internet, and cable tv, fanfic has literally expanded at light speed across the world. More and more people have learned how to become self-published, and in the process released their creative spark upon a world that might have shunned them from being to individualistic before. Herein lies the problem.
Prior to the advent of zines, and especially the internet, such fanfic was largely ignorant of other fanfic. People might write a story similar to another, all beacause they didn't know of each other. Now though that others know and often see each others works, the problem of orginality falls into a murky water of ethics and morality.
Actually, you could even go beyond that and say that fanfic itself is an immoral thing as it is artwork base off of someone else's creation, and largely done without their permission. However, in most cases the orginial creator sees this form of expression as a tribute to the popularity and acceptance of their own work. Frequently they also then ignore such fanfic, so as to not become inspired from the grey copyright complications that might arise from the fanfic. Unfortunately when they do pay attention, sometimes unforseen problems, such as disagreements, general dis-like, or the fanfic artists attempts to capitilize on the work, can cause said same legal issues to arise, but usually in reverse.
Either way, fanfic and fanart are a largely tolerated being, pandering more to the unseen consumer artist then the creator artist(s). Thus, ethically, unless the creator blantantly challenges the use of their material, and as long as no money is made off of the fanfic, ethically the fanartist is fine to do with the universe as he likes. Often this either means putting the characters into sexual situations for adult purposes, or the "Mary-Sue" style of sticking oneself into the storyline just for the purposes of playing the hero and or villain.
The real problem is, once you've accepted fanfic as imitation art off a popular art, whats to stop some imitating the imitation? And is it ehtical or moral for the 2nd party to feel wronged by the 3rd party?
Lets take an example, and why I brought this up today. Star Trek, a very popular sci-fi series, has spawned its own culture and huge volumes of fanart and fanfiction. Personally I have tried my hand at writing a new fan-series inside the large universe. As part of the process I invented my own ship, and crew, but attempted to keep myself within certain boundaries that I saw and accepted. Make the ship look real, don't override the accepted cannon of the universe, don't use any previous characters, and make it good enough that people might question why keeping it offscreen. So far, I'm 3 out 4, though the last will probably take me awhile as this writer block is hindering finishing not only one epsiode, but more to the series.
Anyways, as part of the process that lead to this fanseries, I designed a new ship, never before used in the universe. I designed based off three known designs, and one therotical design, thus making the ship possible within the universe I had envisioned. Since I like designing starships, and such I felt a little pride in what I had done within the boundaries that I had set. Such pride that I submitted the design to a fan run website www.shipschematics.net about such designs. I considered my design to be better then 90% of the other designs there, and it made me feel good. Unfortunately, the site dropped offline not long afterwards and it dropped from my mind. A year and half later and I was doing some searching and found that the site had returned once more. At this time I was more actively considering writing the series to go along with the ship and did a search to check my spelling of the submitted craft.
Eventually I found the design, albeit slightly mispelled. Nothing major to worry about there, no need to even correct it. However I did find something that did worry me. Apparently someone else had seen the design, liked it, pulled it off the website, and then proceded to edit the design. I was shocked, not because it had been edited, but because when they did, they had just slapped a wierd pair of half nacelles (something not even inside the accepted universe), didn't even bother really matching it with the line, such that it looks out of place, and submitted it with their name attached.
Initially my first thoughts were, "How dare they!", however as I thought about it, and the whole morality of fanfic to begin with, I calmed down, and started to wonder, why my design? The first part of this was to determine how and when this had taken place, it was then I got my second shock. The person in question hadn't just done this with my design, they had done this with a couple of dozen designs. They had blantantly added some pieces of psuedo Star Trek stuff to each ship, sometimes the same items, sometimes something different, hadn't bothered to match the designs, the flow, or even the tech, and had submitted each and every design with their name attached. Thus they were now in the ship database where someone would almost invariably see their name, somewhere.
Unfortunately with no way to contact this artist, I can only begin to speculate why he did this. Most likely he is minor variant on what is called a "Troll", someone who does what they do, in order to get attention, usually by angering a 3rd party. Some consider themselves artists in how they go about doing this, others not as such. In this gentlemen's case though, I still feel a little wronged by what he has done to my design.
The final question though is; In this wierd, grey area of art, imitating art, imitating art, what is the ethical and moral right that I have, or anyone has, to a 3rd party changing my work, without my permission. Should I be allowed to feel angered, or sad, or should I just not care?
Thursday, April 10, 2003
[TB] Day 2 Blues
So its day two, and allready I'm feeling the pinch. This morning I got up, brimming with ideas for articles, wondering if I could keep myself from burning out to soon from writing. However now its the afternoon, and all those same ideas have fled. In this case though, I blame work. No, really, I blame work. Still don't believe me, allright how about I blame having worked on the webpage a lot more then I had intended today? Satisfied, then let's continue.
At this point I freely admit, that drained me of all creativity was the work on the webpage. Coupled to the fact that I'm a wee bit tired from having stayed up to late and this blog has just become a liability. However, I made a deal with myself, and a deal is a deal. So here I sit, writing something for today.
Hmmm, what should I write about then? The War going on over in Iraq? The game I'm in Beta testing with right now, that I really want to talk about, but can't cause of the NDA (such are the hassels of being in an Exclusive Beta. Luckily Open Beta will begin shortly.) How about my Big Fat Greek Life? Course, I'm neither Big, Fat, or Greek, but this is a column on life, and the general quirks, so I guess it'll do.
As Forrest Gump would say, "Life is like a box of chocolates."
Aaaannnnngggg.... Wrong Forrest, life isn't like a box chocolates, but tell him what he wins as a consolation prize Johnny? Well Chris, how about a meaningful life, full of surprises, sadness and happiness.
On the other hand, life trully is a strange thing, and a lot of times, you never know whats going to happen next. Whether you get a rich cholocate piece that puts a smile on your face, a carmel filled drop core, that sticks to the roof of your mouth like a bad aftertaste. And like a box, you have to take the good with the bad, till all is done with.
The silver linning in all this, is that over time you learn to appreciate the good with the bad, and the good becomes just that much sweeter to grab hold of. For example, right now...
Right now, it's cold and it's raining outside. It has been raining for four days and I'm starting to feel like I need to go out and found two of each animal, and get them on to the nearest boat. I'm tired, I'm cranky, I spent to much time awake last night, I forgot my checkbook, I'm just one straw short of breaking that camel's back. But then I take a step back metaphorically and look at what's really going on around me. I take measure and my optimistic streak kicks in and I smile.
Why? Cause I'm writing. I'm bloody, balls to the wall writing. I sat down at this computer with nothing to say, and yet now I've written out an editorial. Admittedly it may not be my best, and it may tend to repeat itself, but I have written several paragraphs worth of semi-meaningful stuff. I've actually accomplished another day's worth of creativity and in the process kept my outlook going on this life.
Even more then that, I feel good about myself.
At this point I freely admit, that drained me of all creativity was the work on the webpage. Coupled to the fact that I'm a wee bit tired from having stayed up to late and this blog has just become a liability. However, I made a deal with myself, and a deal is a deal. So here I sit, writing something for today.
Hmmm, what should I write about then? The War going on over in Iraq? The game I'm in Beta testing with right now, that I really want to talk about, but can't cause of the NDA (such are the hassels of being in an Exclusive Beta. Luckily Open Beta will begin shortly.) How about my Big Fat Greek Life? Course, I'm neither Big, Fat, or Greek, but this is a column on life, and the general quirks, so I guess it'll do.
As Forrest Gump would say, "Life is like a box of chocolates."
Aaaannnnngggg.... Wrong Forrest, life isn't like a box chocolates, but tell him what he wins as a consolation prize Johnny? Well Chris, how about a meaningful life, full of surprises, sadness and happiness.
On the other hand, life trully is a strange thing, and a lot of times, you never know whats going to happen next. Whether you get a rich cholocate piece that puts a smile on your face, a carmel filled drop core, that sticks to the roof of your mouth like a bad aftertaste. And like a box, you have to take the good with the bad, till all is done with.
The silver linning in all this, is that over time you learn to appreciate the good with the bad, and the good becomes just that much sweeter to grab hold of. For example, right now...
Right now, it's cold and it's raining outside. It has been raining for four days and I'm starting to feel like I need to go out and found two of each animal, and get them on to the nearest boat. I'm tired, I'm cranky, I spent to much time awake last night, I forgot my checkbook, I'm just one straw short of breaking that camel's back. But then I take a step back metaphorically and look at what's really going on around me. I take measure and my optimistic streak kicks in and I smile.
Why? Cause I'm writing. I'm bloody, balls to the wall writing. I sat down at this computer with nothing to say, and yet now I've written out an editorial. Admittedly it may not be my best, and it may tend to repeat itself, but I have written several paragraphs worth of semi-meaningful stuff. I've actually accomplished another day's worth of creativity and in the process kept my outlook going on this life.
Even more then that, I feel good about myself.
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
[TB] Why Can I Never Leave Well Enough Alone?
As you may have noticed or not, this page has been updated. Ahem, as I said, as you may or may not have noticed, this page has been UPDATED. Spooky, ain't it?
So Two years, 8 months, and something like 25 days later, I finally get back to update my personal webpage. You'd think I was lazy or something? Au Contraie monfeit, not lazy, just nothing to really update. In its previous life, all the webpage had been, was a kind of world bookmark. Now some of the subpages could and should have been updated, but a very busy work like, plus an up and down social life, lead to a such a gigantic case of writer's block that, well, you get the idea. Hmmm, maybe I should watch those run-on's, ney? Sidetrack time boys and girls!
So Two years, 8 months, and something like 25 days later, I finally get back to update my personal webpage. You'd think I was lazy or something? Au Contraie monfeit, not lazy, just nothing to really update. In its previous life, all the webpage had been, was a kind of world bookmark. Now some of the subpages could and should have been updated, but a very busy work like, plus an up and down social life, lead to a such a gigantic case of writer's block that, well, you get the idea. Hmmm, maybe I should watch those run-on's, ney? Sidetrack time boys and girls!
As Robin Williams once said, "F*** It!"
I'll give you a warning, as part of this mega web update that is going on, I'm also forcing myself to write once more. Since this is part carthesis, part training myself again, a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes will appear in what I write. Thats not to say this will continue on forever, just while I working myself into this, expect some odd sentences, gramartizations, and plain bad spelling. 'Cause the whole point of this, is not to be a perfect writer, but to write. To write anything, every day, at any hour, and force this voodo block out of my fingertips. Also, eventually I will want to pride myself on a good story, and thus will get myself a spell checker to help out. As for today, "F*** It".
Alas, don't be surprised to see a few four letter words in these columns. As rants are primarily based on emotions, cuss words are sometimes the only thing to properly expound the emotion. And frankly, even I need to cuss every now and then.
Anyways, getting back to the thing at hand. A few days ago I was reminded that I started a webjournal a year ago, and never followed through on it. I'm not quite sure why, but I never did. Lately, I've also begun to read a few, very well written and interesting blogs. Thus on the way to work today, mulling over a possible columnist position with a website, I was struck dumb by an idea (Yes, yes, not far to go for me to be dumb). Why not update my personal page, updating and indexing the subpages I have and want to build, put up a place to archive my columns, and even further my personal blog. Hey, you doing the raspberry, pipe down!
As I said, this was an idea, and one I particularly like. And as stated above, it also produced a goal I had really, really, been wanting to obtain for most of my life, that is to finally become a "Writer". Not a hack, not an amatuer, but a real honest to god writer. So here we are.
Each day I'll be back to write something, anything at all. And just to be fair, the four major subjects will also be indexed seperately to provide a little spice (that and another simultaneous goal of learning a new html programming feature). As I move along, I might also adjust this main page to reflect the different columns. However, right now, I'll just use it as the springboard, and archive the rants/editorials/columns in there sub-sections.
For now, Pip-pip and all that jazz!
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