I Took the Bing It On Challenge ... AND LIVED!!!!

Since you are currently on the World Wide Internet, as it is called, you are probably able to use what is called a Searching Engine to find the things you want, be they My Little Pony jpgs, or Gangnam Style parodies, or ... well, I don't know. Erotica? Anyway, since you are using a Search Engine, I can say, with some confidence, that that engine is named Google.

However, you may not be aware that Google is not the only Searching Engine (or search engine, as the technocrats call it). There are actually several of them. For example, Microsoft spent more money than an unaided human brain can comprehend to create one called Bing. However, its market share is still only around 15%, as it is not Google.

To increase Bing's user base, Microsoft created the Bing It On Challenge. This 21st century techno-version of the Pepsi Challenge has you use a computer to enter five search terms. Then it shows you the Bing and Google search results, side by side, and rearranged slightly so you can't instantly tell which is which. You pick which of the search results is better. Then the thing tells you if you preferred Google or Bing. And, if you preferred Bing, WHY WERE YOU USING GOOGLE ALL THIS TIME, YOU DUMB IDIOT!?!?

Here is a commercial for the Bing It On Challenge. Watch it, if you dare.

(A quick aside about this commercial. I find it fascinating. I am amazed at how abrasive and arrogant the Bing guy is. I want to never, ever, ever use Bing, just to make that guy sad. In the very unlikely event that a Microsoft marketing person reads this, a little unsolicited advice: When you are trying to sell things to technical people, remember that this is a demographic that responds very poorly to bullies.)

Well, I can never resist a good challenge, so I took it myself, and Google won. Not by a huge amount, but by enough. And the reason why was pretty interesting, which is why I am writing this. It doesn't mean Bing is a worse search engine than Google, or bad in some Universal Sense, but I think it says a lot about how search engines work and why making a good one is so difficult.

The thing about a challenge like this is that when you buttonhole someone and say, "Search for five things! Now!" this on-the-spot person will probably just grab five well-known proper nouns. Justin Bieber. My Little Pony. Muffin recipes. Stuff that is easy work for search engines. Every single one is going to be able to handle that stuff. But that is not how I (and, I suspect, many others) use Google.

The reason Google became so popular in the first place is because of its almost supernatural ability to guess what the user is thinking. A search engine must take a random clump of nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and so on, and then tease from those words the specific thing the user's brain desires. In other words, it's an artificial intelligence problem, and a very deep one.

The reason Google took over the world is that it knew you were thinking of Justin Bieber even when you didn't type in Justin Bieber. If you put in "annoying teen singer", the words "Justin Bieber" will appear somewhere on the results page. (And it does, on both Google and Bing.) Google isn't as good as it used to be, but it's still pretty darn good.

(By the way, all search results described are as of 5:30 PM, Pacific Time, Sunday, September 15, 2012, Seattle, U.S.A., Third Planet From Sol.)

The search results below are for me using a search engine the way I, personally, use a search engine. Which engine, Google vs. Bing, is best written to match my aging, dumb brain?

Let's find out!

1. For a first test, I picked a real life thing. A friend once told me that I had to check out this Penny Arcade webcomic. Next time I was at a computer, I tried to, but I couldn't remember the strip's name. I went to Google and searched for something much like this:

the cartoon about video games

I think most people would reasonably agree that, if you put this term into a search engine, Penny Arcade should show up on the first page.

Google - First hit is the Wikipedia page "List of television programs based on video games". Fourth hit is Penny Arcade. Pretty good.

Bing - The first two hits are, oddly, general pages for the Cartoon Network. Lots of cartoons, but none specifically about video games. Penny Arcade doesn't show up in the first five pages.

The Winner - Google.

2. I'm still in a nerdy mood, so I pick something a geek might want to hunt for: Classic 80s SF movie Blade Runner. What would you look for if someone told you about its awesomeness but you could only remember the rough description:

the movie where the hguy hunts androids in the future

I mistyped "guy", but I left it that way. Let's see how well the engines handle that.

Google - Wikipedia page for Blade Runner is entry five. As a bonus, the sixth entry is the Wiki page for "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which is the story Blade Runner is based on. Nice work.

Bing - Blade Runner wasn't in the first five pages, but  "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is at least on page 3.

The Winner - Google.

3. No more nerdiness. Let's pick a factoid from history. Something juicy. I think we can all agree that there's only one particularly well-known answer for:

the girl who killed people with an axe

Google - Wow. There are a lot of female axe killers out there. The Wikipedia page for Lizzie Borden is down at hit 8.

Bing - First entry is a Yahoo Answers page where someone answers the question. The second hit is the Wikipedia page for Lizzie Borden.

The Winner - Bing, narrowly.

4. Now I'm going to pick something serious. Something real. Something I bet a million worried teenagers search for every day:

how do you get aids

Google - First hit is a basically accurate kidshealth.org article titled "How do you get AIDS?" Second hit is a similar article from aids.gov.

Bing - Top three hits are the same as for Google.

The Winner - Tie. Thank goodness. It'd be worrying if either one messed this one up. If some shenanigans caused the first hit to be some bad information (such as that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, which some people actually believe), it could cost real, non-hypothetical lives.

5. For the fifth one, I decide to engage in a bit of whimsy. I wanted to know just how willing these search engines are to sacrifice their own interests in order to help me:

what is the best search engine

Google - First hit is an about.com article called "The 10 Best Search Engines of 2012," that describes the pros and cons of ten search engines. Google and Bing are in there, of course.

Bing - The first official hit is the same. But it's right below an ad link for, you guessed it, the Bing It On challenge. Because of how the page is laid out, the ads look an awful lot like real links. It's kind of shifty, and Google does a much better job of making ads look distinct from results. But hey, if I'm just evaluating quality of search results ...

The Winner - Tie.

What Have We Learned?

Not too much, really. I know that Google AI’s approximation of human thought matches the way my brain works better than Bing's. But who cares? Someone else might use the exact same search terms to fish for entirely different answers. And maybe Bing is better at predicting those.

Microsoft isn't trying to prove that Bing is the be all and end all of search engines. They're trying to get people to give it a shot and they’re hoping that a portion of them will stick with it.

It's a tough job, though. If someone is used to using Google, Bing merely being as good or a little bit better won't get anyone to switch. To get people to actually break a habit requires a big improvement. Very difficult. If that's your goal then getting your targets to actually try the new thing is an absolutely necessary first step. Hey, I gave Bing a try. Didn't work for me, but at least I looked at it. So, victory!

Pity about that commercial, though. MAN, but that guy is a jerk.

A Little Bit of Genius at PAX

There were things I saw at Penny Arcade Expothat I wanted to go on about. Something besides Microsoft trying to push us into our exciting Windows 8/Internet Explorer 9 future by providing the world middling adaptions of ancient Atari games for some reason.

There was one game at the Indie Megabooth that deserves special attention from all humans. Not only was it funny, but it has perhaps the best elevator pitch in the history of the human race:

OK. You're a guy living in the suburbs. You have a wife, two kids, and a secret: You're actually an octopus in disguise.

Obvious jokes aside, how can you not want to try that game? Especially when you know it's called Octodad: The Dadliest Catch.

Octodad!

This game is the purest epitome of the Indie spirit. (How's that for a pull quote?) It's unique, intriguing, utterly bananas, and no major publisher will ever do anything like it.

Sadly, the gameplay is focused on maneuvering the octopus, which means struggling to do normally simple tasks with an odd control scheme. I am a little skeptical about how much this particular style of gameplay can catch on. On the bright side, if it's priced cheaply enough, it can make a ton of sales based on the "Oh God. I have to try this out." factor.

My unsolicited advice for the developers: If the game turns out to not be that fun, sell it for five bucks. You'll move a lot of copies based on morbid curiosity alone.

Edit: Oh, yeah. You can support Octodad at Steam Greenlight here. I voted for it. KEEP INDIE GAMES WEIRD!

How Indie Games Can Be Cheap and Awesome

I got to go to PAX over the weekend and be on a panel and see cool gaming stuff and meet lots of cool people and fans of my games. One of the things I learned is that a lot of people actually read my blog. This is very gratifying. Although it terrifies me that anyone thinks my opinion is in any way significant.

PAX is great, of course. Though it is in the unenviable position of being permanently unable to satisfy the massive demand for tickets.

(Sure, its success will probably invite others to copy it with their own gaming cons, but those dopplegangers won't be the same without the presence of all the big companies showing off their stuff. And big companies won't go to a lot of cons, as they need to set aside at least a little time to make games. So, from now on, if you manage to score a PAX badge, just cherish it, knowing that your attendance the following year is unlikely. Just think of PAX as a hot but extremely unstable boy/girlfriend.)

I had a lot of little epiphanies while looking at the many, many highly promising indie games on display at PAX. (The PAX 10 looked cool as always, but the much flashier Indie Megabooth next door seemed to be sucking up its oxygen.) And here is the biggest one:

16-bit graphics are an awesome thing, and more indies should use them.

If you don't know what 16-bit graphics are, think early Nintendo/Super Nintendo. If that still doesn't ring a bell, look here. Or here. Or here. Or especially here.

If you are a small game developer, you have a big problem. You want your game to look great. But graphics can be expensive. Or very expensive. 16-bit graphics solve the great mystery of writing a game with a small team and no budget: making decent production values cheaply in a short amount of time.

Here is what 16-bit Nintendo-style graphics have going for them:

1. They work. Heck, people wrote awesome games using them for years.

2. They look good. It's amazing how evocative an icon you can make with a few well-chosen pixels.

3. They're cheap and quick to make. One talented artist can produce a game's worth in an entirely reasonable amount of time.

4. You have the power of nostalgia working for you. To a whole generation of gamers, those icons are as warm and comforting as a Snuggie.

5. Because of #4, anyone who takes cheap shots at your graphics looks like a jerk.

6. Versatility. With care, they can blend with much more detailed and 3-D effects. Fez is a fantastic example of this. You don't have to be pure when you use this style.

Right now, this style of graphics is seen as a pure nostalgia play, a way of saying, "Look! We look like a Nintendo game! We're silly! Tee hee!" But I think 16-bit graphics are better than that. They've been used in a million great games, and they can be used in a million more. The more people use them, the more they will be seen as an entirely legitimate art style, which in turn will make them available to more generations of poor, promising designers.

Indie devs, don't be afraid to be cheap! It is your sacred right and responsibility as an Indie!

Watch Me Talk About Something!

Casual Connect is an annual convention in Seattle dedicated to the discussion of casual computer games, the design and marketing of same, and how to write games that milk every last penny from your aunt by getting her to bug you on Facebook for cow clicks or Smurfberries or whatever.

Anyway, they were kind enough to ask me to speak about storytelling in computer games for their Indie track. I gave my talk, and they filmed it. My talk is online here. Please enjoy my sultry voice, questionable game design principles, and unique posture. 

Or not. The talk is 20 minutes long. You could probably more profitably spend your time doing, say, ANYTHING ELSE.

(Technical note: My slides are a .pdf. I know. I suck and am unclassy. But my main life goal is to reach death without ever learning how to use Powerpoint, and I'm sticking with it.)

The most interesting thing about Casual Connect? How weird anyone who sells software in the old school way is made to feel. Here's what I do: I write a game. I give it to you in return for a set number of dollars. Then we part ways, and you never have to look at my pale, beardy face again.

This model is so incredibly retro now! Pay money for a game? Nonsense! Everyone real makes their money with microtransactions and advertising and nickle and diming you for packs of 100 Dragon Bux you can use to make your zombie ninja pirate dragon grow faster. And if you make money any other way, people in suits will act very nervous and not make eye contact with you anymore.

If you end up at Casual Connect and talking to actual grown-up business people, I suggest you do what I did: Have a firm, manly handshake. Make eye contact. Say "monetize" and "ARPU" as much as possible. And then pee yourself.

A Couple of Cheap Shots at Big Movies. Because I'm So Smart.

I just went to see the new Batman movie, which was so long that I am still watching it. It's about a guy named Bane with a weird accent and a bunch of issues, who is only defeated when the good guys finally manage to figure out his secret weakness. (Spoiler: It's bullets.)

Since it's a Big Hollywood Movie, it was preceded by trailers for all the other upcoming Big Hollywood Movies. Two of them attracted my notice ...

Jack Reacher (Trailer here. It is worth watching, as this movie will be genuinely terrible.)

This is about a violent gun guy who goes on adventures and beats people up and "doesn't care about proof, doesn't care about the law. He only cares about what's right." Which all sounds great until you find out he's Tom Cruise.

I'm sorry, but is there one single person here on God's Green Earth (besides Tom Cruise) who thinks it's a good idea to give Tom Cruise arbitrary power over anything bigger than a Hot Dog On a Stick franchise?

"Remember, you wanted this."

NO! I REALLY DIDN'T!

The Hobbit (Trailer here. Watch it before they split it into three parts.)

I can't say much about the upcoming Hobbit movies, though I hear the the novelization of the film by J.R.R.R. Tolkineinin is above average. I know that the world created in the prequels by Peter Jackson is an interesting one, though overly dependent on tired fantasy tropes.

I do, however, have some qualms with the decision to split the book up into three (THREE!) movies. I'm sorry, but you cannot do this with any book whose big, dramatic high point is a RIDDLE CONTEST.

Seriously, when I was a kid, they could wrap this crap up in 77 minutes, and that version even found time to put in Tom Bombadil.

I was really looking forward to it until I saw this trailer, with its wacky dwarves, interminable pacing, and refreshing lack of action or incident. Three movies? Dear God. This adaption will be so long that I'm already watching it.

OH GOD MY FACE MY HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FACE

There was one more thing I wanted to say about Mass Effect (to accompany my earlier articles on the title). After heavy play of the second and third games in the series, I want to propose a rule to all game designers from now until forever ...

It is OK to make the player's character look ugly and twisted, as long as it is in a cute, cartoonish way. It is not OK to make the main character actively horrifying and painful to look at.

I think this is a reasonable rule of thumb. If you're going to expect someone to spend 40 hours in your fantasy world, you don't want them going "GAHHHH!!!" every time they look at the screen.

Why do I bring it up?

Well, in Mass Effect, the main spectrum for your character's moral choices is between Paragon (nice, lawful good, goody-two-shoes) and Renegade (harsh, Bad Cop, Patton-type). Note that this is not Good vs. Evil! You're always good. It's just whether you are nice-good or cranky-good.

But there is a key difference between the two paths. If you are a Paragon, you stick with the nice, normal face you made in character creation. However, if you choose the Renegade dialogue options, your face will look like this ...

AHHHH! GHHAHHHH! WTF!?!?!?

That's right. When playing Mass Effect, you better be as polite to as many people as you can, if you don't want to look like a hideous mutant leperzombie whose face is peeling off in glowing sheets.

(Note that, in both Mass Effect 2 and 3, you can spend resources to remove the leperface effect. While BioWare likes to pretend it treats both moral choices equally, this sort of gives the game away. They are actively punishing you for being rude. If you doubt this, remember: A Paragon player can't spend resources to get the zombie look. It only works the other way 'round.)

Mass Effect is known for its in-game romances. Halfway through Mass Effect 3, for example, your hot, easy secretary comes to your quarters to use your shower and totally tries to bang you. (Warning: The previous sentence contained a spoiler!) Bioware, please please please, in future games make it so I don't feel sorry for anyone trying to sleep with my character. When she makes her move, I, as a player, don't want be saying:

"What are you DOING? Haven't you looked at me? Haven't you seen my FACE? Sure, I have a working shower! Now run! RUN! I'M A MONSTERRRRR!"

Look. These things are basically adolescent wish fulfillment. I don't need to have a really gross face in my fantasy world. I've had enough of that in my actual physical adolescent life, thanks.

Mass Effect 3 Review: The Ending, Before and After!

The ending of the Mass Effect series has been discussed a lot. A LOT. It's kind of an unprecedented situation. 

BioWare, a company known for awesome video game storytelling, creates a trilogy of games in one of the most well-realized imaginary worlds ever created in the medium. People love this world. Passionately. Then BioWare fails to stick the landing. Deafening rage and butthurt echo across the Internets, who have nothing more important to worry about. So BioWare, at what I'm sure was considerable expense, makes a free patch to expand the ending. It makes things kind of better. Life, somehow, continues.

(By the way, this whole sorry incident is excellent proof that their IS such a thing as bad publicity. BioWare's reputation for good storytelling is invaluable. They saw it threatened. They reacted appropriately. But I don't think anyone working there is happy this happened.)

What the ending screams to me is that the developers didn't have the time and budget to do the ending they wanted to do. ME3 is SO ambitious and covers SO much ground that they didn't have time to give the Reaper issue the attention it needed. But this isn't the end of the world. The Reapers were never very multi-dimensional. The Krogan and Geth and even Cerberus were far more interesting.

So, if this is the case, piling onto the ending seems a little mean. Making a video game requires doing much with limited resources. You can't afford to do everything.

But, then again, after three games of this size, we have an expectation that the writers will end it well. I want to talk about my two problems with the ending- one which the patch fixes, one it doesn't. I aim to discuss game storytelling in general and what does and doesn't work.

(Please be assured that the following has no spoilers for Mass Effect 3 whatsoever!!!! If, for some reason, you don't believe me, leave immediately!)

What Is NOT a Problem

Some criticized the ending for creating some plot inconsistencies with things learned in the DLC for Mass Effect 2. (Namely, that blowing up a mass relay destroyed the solar system before and now it doesn't.) The horrors.

DOES ANYONE REALLY ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THIS!?!? IF SO, RAISE YOUR HAND.

(Pause.)

I didn't think so.

Also, some put a lot of time into proving Shepherd was actually under Reaper control and the last game was a dream or something. (The famed Indoctrination Theory.) Of course this wasn't true. This was a AAA mega-million dollar game series that had always approached everything in a reasonably sane manner. They weren't going to end it with goofy Sixth Sense trickery.

And many thought that you didn't find out enough about what happened to your friends and to all the races you helped. I can buy this as a complaint, but it's a judgment call. I honestly felt I'd learned enough about what was going on and where things were heading to have closure. Bloody, unrelentingly gruesome closure.

So what are the problems?

Problem 1 - The Incredible Grimness

The unpatched ending of Mass Effect 3, unless you do a ton of side-quest farming and multiplayer, is awe-inspiringly grim. Everyone dies. Shepherd dies. The mass relays are destroyed. The Normandy is a wreck. The Earth is a cinder, surrounded by fleets of aliens stranded far from home. (Including the notoriously peaceful and easy-going krogan.) Space travel is over for, well, a very long time, if not forever.

Dude. And I thought the ending to The Sopranos was a poke in the eye.

But here's the thing. This aspect of the ending is legit. People don't generally like unhappy endings, but this is a subjective judgment. Unhappy endings are legal. They are allowed. It's not where I would go as the default ending for a series of this magnitude, and it is a HUGE change in tone from what came before it. But it is not technically wrong.

And, just between you, me, and these four walls? I admire their balls for going so dark. I wish more developers did it. Unless you believe things can go really wrong, there is no real sense of achievement or relief when they go right. One of the reasons Law & Order was such a compelling show is that the bad guys frequently won.

But the patch changed this. It's less bleak. Gives more hopeful details of the future. I can live with it either way.

But what really bugs me is the main element of the ending.

Problem 2 - The Star Child. Or Whatever.

My biggest disappointment in the ending of Mass Effect is this: It was a cheap deus ex machina. I didn't get to make the WIN for the team.

Look. The galaxy was invaded by the horde of horrible bug creatures. I wanted to FIGHT them. I wanted to figure out their weaknesses. I wanted to use the cunning and resources of the peoples of the galaxy to figure out how to kill them, and DO THAT. I wanted the ending of the story to be a celebration of courage and general badassery.

What did I get? You take some weird spaceship and stick it into some other spaceship. And then baby SpaceJesus (tm) appears from somewhere and uses StarMagic (tm) in the way you tell him, and this makes everything different forever.

Now, let's set aside the ookyness of having the fate of the whole galaxy be decided on a whim by one bloodthirsty gun guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time. I think the ending was perfunctory, non-sensical, and a true wasted opportunity.

At the end, you push a button to choose the fate of the galaxy. It did not provide a fraction of the joy I would have felt at actually finding a way for humanity to take down those stupid Reaper ships ourselves. The ending, as written, was the space opera equivalent of giving the last place soccer team a trophy for Trying Very Hard.

Whew. I Should Take a Pill.

I generally love BioWare games and write nice things about them, so much so that I have been accused of sucking up to them to try to get a job. (I have a job, thanks. And, believe me, if BioWare wanted me, they'd have said something to me by now. They know I exist.)

It's a great series, full of fond memories. My wife and I spent an enormous amount of time in their world, and I don't regret it. I still recommend it, especially ME1 and ME2. And then ME3 with the patched ending.

So. Any news about Dragon Age 3 yet?