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About Me
It's only a model...
Uncommon, some wear on the edges.
First game: TI Invaders (Space Invaders knock-off) for the TI-99 "home computer". Either that or the Pac-Man built into the glass-top tables at Mr. Gatti's Pizza.
First console: NES
First world-altering game secret: JUSTIN BAILEY
First Arcade: Aladdin's Palace
First "mature" game: Leisure Suit Larry
First PC: 386SX 16 mHz w/40 MB HDD, Win 3.0, & 640x480 VGA baby!
First FPS: Wolfenstein 3D
First game mastered: Street Fighter II Turbo - Hyper Fighting (SNES)
First LAN deathmatch: Duke Nukem 3D
Great Game Reawakening: Living in an apartment with all sixth generation consoles and 3 gaming rigs.
New Systems: Wii, DS.
Somehow now owns: PS3
Randomly owns: SEGA Nomad, Game Gear, Genesis II, Sega CD
Cannot afford but is thinking about intercepting return RROD coffin: Xbox 360.
Currently playing: Rock Band, Zack & Wiki, Unreal Tournament III
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Following (69)
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I'd like to have something like last.fm [link] for games. I'm not the first person to suggest something like this, but I haven't seen it yet.
See, I can't always describe why I prefer one game to another. I enjoyed Animal Crossing (stop your manly chortling!!) but have no interest in MySims, The Sims, Harvest Moon, or most other games with a similar style. Phantasy Star Online has claimed many an hour, despite the fact that it's difficult to take online, and the combat could be charitably described as "broken". Gauntlet: Dark Legacy was a fun multiplayer game, yet it's shallow with bad graphics and slowdown. Some Zelda games are fun, some aren't. I could go on all day. You get the point. There are games that you like, but you cannot explain why objectively, and you wouldn't even necessarily recommend those games to other people. Reviews can be hit-or-miss. So instead, you just put all the games you like into a group, without explaining why. So does everyone else. Then computers (using the RAM and possibly "processors") make recommendations based on other games that people with similar tastes enjoy. Some online stores try to do this, but they tend to only recommend games in the same genre. Or they list bestselling games. Neither is really a good approach. [edit] It occurred to me that "this person also bought" tells you nothing about whether or not they liked it. Since many people neither rent nor play before buying, the purchasing decision is likely based on the old methods of classifying -- genre, review score, personal recommendation.[/edit] Pipe dream? No. It can be done. Psycho Mantis could do it. How did he know???
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Destructoid aka ModernMethod is an independently-run company forged by our childhood love of video games and adulthood hatred mainstream video game press.
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
I'll look into this!
You can handle software, I'll handle legal, and we'll be gillionaires.
Anyways, Dear Sugar:
Dibs on P.R., or at least on front desk and phone or office tours. You know I can put on a friendly face. Or I'll be your legal minion, secretary, paralegal, or (worse!) associate. But if you're a gillionaire, I expect at least a living wage and basic health coverage. Not like last time, Mr. I'll-Pay-You-Your-Weight-In-Fruit-Harvested-In-Animal-Crossing. I had virtual diarrhea for a month!
I don't think it will be that long until Google makes your friends for you.
But I always wonder how it will be possible to develop interests in a world in which your preferences are tracked from birth and immediately marketed and fed to you. Perhaps they'll eventually add a temporal dimension. Product X appeals to people who liked product Z up to age 4.5, product A2b from 4.5 to 8, and were gaga for Product CcC at 13.5, though they thought CcD was just infuriatingly phony. That way they'll also be able to anticipate what you will want a few years before you even know you do! Hmm, based on his preferential behaviors and development, while he appears quite well-adjusted now, CyberDuby will in two years be interested in Doki Doki Majo Shinpan XIV. And, if we cross-reference this with a statistical analysis of his medical records, it looks like we should try to bundle the game with a prescription for Viagra and a discount on baby oil.
While I'll have more access to content I enjoy, I will miss the days when I developed a personal relationship with my interests by discovering them through my own efforts and on my own initiative, or through friends whose recommendations will forever call to mind our relationship.
All of that targeted advertising, marketing, and recommending sounds like a Recipe for the Underground Man, though I suppose even he can be tracked and targeted.
Would you rather live in a world where marketers constantly bombard us with messages that are of absolutely no interest, hoping that some might stick? A world like... Earth?!?
I think you're bringing baggage from our IP workshop RFID article (and perhaps a recent viewing of Minority Report) to the table here. The great thing about comparing unarranged groups of things like game preferences is that nobody is targeting anything. You are just gaining access to a summary of vast amounts of data that currently exists in a useless state.
What I think worries you is how to monetize the thing. Let's say that Microsoft discovers a huge overlap between people who love Halo 3 and people who love Barbie Horse Adventures. So they pay me to place a side-banner ad for Halo 3 every time someone searches for Barbie Horse Adventures. What's the harm? You get banner ads anyway. Wouldn't you rather get ones for games that other people with your tastes like than have some ad agency aim a shotgun in the vicinity of a target audience (or its target beverage) and open fire? That's money spent on marketing that could be kept within the publishing and development cycle. Gmail already reads your email for keywords. That seems worse to me.
Also, nobody is stopping you from getting recommendations from your friends. The real world will not be destroyed to make way for psychomant.is. However, perhaps the program could also connect you with similar users, or let you know which users "sent" (read: resulted in) your recommendation. If you want to spread the word about an awesome game, rate it high, and people like you will find out. Then they can pass it on to others, and so on.
The only losers will be people who are possessive of their discoveries, and hate it when other ignorant people discover things that they like.
Basically, I think serendipity is a little more possible in the gaming world than in the music and film world for most people. Games combine aesthetics and mechanics, whereas music and movies are primarily aesthetic. If you don't like artsy films where things stay unexploded, you probably won't like most films of that type. Genres do matter. But perhaps you don't enjoy the aesthetic of life simulator games, but you really enjoy the play mechanic of a particular one. You never would have known if you avoided the genre altogether.
To cap the longest reply in recorded history outside of a sacred text, there is a lizard part of my brain that knows nothing other than like or dislike. Super Mario Brothers and Tetris are examples of things that just feel right. They can't be explained, they must simply be experienced by the unevolved, unthinking lizard brain. Game reviews always spend paragraphs trying to analyze the game, and then give it the score that, from the time you knew which publication it was in, you already knew to the tenth decimal place. The cerebrum is a lousy critic; when are we going to start delegating things back to the cerebellum?
Read The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki for an example of why thinking too much doesn't always get you the best answer.
As usual, it is impossible to disagree with your insightful observations and tempered arguments. I think your point about serendipity in gaming is particularly spot on. I had deleted a section in my initial comment on the same issue, though taking a different approach. My thought was that professional music and literature tends to have mechanics down. If you can't sing or play your instrument in tune, chances are, no matter the genre, nobody will want to listen. (exception: you're in Chicago--check out The Birdnames, a local band of Grinnell grads). Film is a little more forgiving--I think we can handle more visual noise than aural noise. So for those media, we really only have to worry about the aesthetic. But the game industry hasn't gotten to that point yet, and that's a good thing. There's still too much potential for innovation in interactivity. I don't remember what my point was, and so I think I probably deleted that bit because I never came to a point.
In any case, sometimes I actually prefer a fantasy world in which marketers bombard us with completely irrelevant, untargeted messages just because, damn it, they want to get their message out anywhere to anyone. So what if I'm not at all interested in the product? I will become aware of its existence, and it will expand my knowledge and understanding of the world. I don't want to be caught treading water, spinning in filthy stagnant circles of my own insular urges and interests, like pale, floating stool making its way from the top of my toilet water to the plumbing below.
Google's targeting is probably the next best thing: I can write you an e-mail that says "The Inupiaq word for toilet is anagvIk, and gmail will provide a link to http://www.cleanbutt.com. And so we're constantly sent by little eddies to unexpected and unrelated shores.
But perhaps I am just bringing existential baggage into this discussion. Sometimes I think figuring out what I want is difficult enough without some algorithm conveniently informing me that all signs indicate that I should like X, Y, or Z. But we're talking about gaming here (STFUJPG), and there's no question that I would appreciate the sort of service you're describing. If lovers of C&C: Red Alert 2 and Elite Beat Agents tend to really enjoy something, well, then I'm already curious.
As for doomsday RFID tagging, you're absolutely right. Like most workshop commenters, in order to have anything to say, I have to artificially work myself up about something. But if I am ever going to get my Chinese homework done, I need to make internet distractions a scapegoat, so I say to heckfire with your online interest-aggregation networks!
I actually think I'd be more interested in what the program recommended for other people than what it recommended for me. I'd want to step in your shoes and see what games make MaxVest tick.
Wo mei-you ta pi-gu. Wo you xiao pi-gu.