5 of the best Indie Early Access Titles – Grab It Magazine

Video published with Grab It Magazine, August 2014

http://www.grabitmagazine.com/blog/post/grab-its-top-5-steam-early-access-indie-games/

The true power of real world tech-wizards

Nathanael Peacock – 07/14

Following the release of Watch_Dogs, the internet has been buzzing with people wanting to learn the ins and outs of hacking. To the point that a google search today of ‘how to’ autocompleted to ‘how to hack wifi’. But the truth is that real life computer hacking isn’t as simple as Aiden Pierce makes it look. Sorry, but an Iphone cannot cut the power to a city block or disrupt a low flying helicopter. But there are real world hackers and they do have almost Watch_Dogs level power over computer systems around the world.

Chicago is currently one of the most surveyed cities in the world. It is of course this fact that lead to Ubisoft centering its game world around that particular American city. A 2011 report from the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the expansion of Chicago’s surveillance systems stating that the“Chicago’s camera network invades the freedom to be anonymous in public places”¹. The same report suggested that the police department has 1,260 cameras at their disposal, but has access to thousands more on trains, buses, ATM’s and in businesses. With more being installed daily. After spending the last few weeks with Watch_Dogs, my writing brain is buzzing with ways that entrepreneurial hackers could use this system to their advantage.

But what is the true power of the modern day hacker? Well most gamers will remember the April 2011 Sony Network Outage, where hackers broke into the Sony network and accessed account information of thousands upon thousands of subscribers. This instance was due to a security leak in Sony’s systems and was quickly fixed. This is par for the cause with modern computer systems, where leaks are found and patched. It is even rumoured that banks and government agencies hire hackers to break into their systems to test their strength.

However, in the real world, hackers have also shown their prowess. In August 2006, two transportation workers in Los Angeles tampered with the transportation network, altering the lights at 4 major intersections by a matter of seconds. The results were gridlock that lasted days. Also in 2006 a man in Virginia, US, reprogrammed an ATM to give out $20 when it thought it was giving $5. Of course one of the most famous hackers in modern memory is Julian Assange and his work with WikiLeaks, exposing vital intelligence from the US war effort in Iraq.

However, the key to the power of the Watch_Dogs universe is CtOS, the system that links all of the cameras, ATM’s and even traffic lights. But is there a real world equivalent? The Issue faced by these modern tech-wizards is that in the real world, although there are important systems such as police surveillance or traffic control systems, they are not centralised. A good hacker could break into a bank account, or the traffic systems, but because they are different networks, one person could not easily jump from one to another. I should preface that last sentence by saying that this isn’t possible, YET.

The monumental increase in national security concerns in the last decade since 9/11, the Bali bombings and the London underground bombings, could lead to city or national security systems like CtOS. The simple matter of fact is that the difference between the smart phone in your pocket and the beefy gaming rig on your desk is all a matter of capacity. Anything running Android can easily be loaded with custom operating systems, and once inside a network (be it by wifi or hard wired) someone with network knowledge could easily access different systems of control.

So there isn’t quite a real world Aiden Pearce running around, but with the steady progression of systems both owned by groups and individuals, a techno-vigilante may not be too far off. Who knows what Watch_Dogs could inspire?

1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/08/aclu-chicago-cameras-are-_n_820130.html

Female Characters in games – an article

Nathanael Peacock – 07/14

A lot of new information and excitement came out of this years E3. But few things have sparked as much controversy as the Ubisoft conference. Ubi haven’t had the best track record in communicating with their consumers in recent years, with DRM and game issues with their pc ports, to the historical shoe-horn that was Assassins Creed 3. But this years press conference relit an old flame that has been burning beneath the gaming industry for some time now.

Female characters.

Ubi’s biggest blunders from this conference have all come in the form of community interaction. Their presentation would have gone fine, players were excited for the innovations in AC: Unity and the prospect of playing co-op. But some player just happened to notice the lack of female assassins in the game. Ubisoft had a few options when faced with this question, they could have said that they didn’t believe female assassins would work in the new setting, or I believe they should have held to the fact that they have a male protagonist and that was the reason. Instead they took a holier than thou approach and told players that the cost and effort to add feminine counterparts would be too great on the production. This leaves players with two possible views, either Ubisoft thinks its players are too simple to understand the true cost of adding female characters (not to mention that there have been female assassins since AC: Brotherhood, and a female lead in Liberation. Don’t tell me they aren’t reusing some animations or rigging from Connor or Edward.) Or their development is so mismanaged that recreating female characters would cripple their production. Either way, other developers have since stood up and said that Ubisoft is back-peddling, Jonathan Cooper (AC3 Animation Director) said on twitter that creating those characters would take a matter of days, and be relatively simple. Avid fans have since taken to Twitter to call out Ubisoft with #womenaretoohardtoanimate.

However, the Freudian slips did not stop there. Ubisoft’s director of Farcry 3 said that they were inches away from adding female characters as co-op partners. But pulled back because of the effort. And in speaking with Rock, Paper, Shotgun Technical Artist Oliver Couture said that they used a female hostage in the demo for Rainbow Six: Siege because they wanted the player to feel empathy for the woman and feel that “they wanted to protect her”. How astonishingly patriarchal.

But this is not the first instance of female characters and female gamers being relegated to the background. Ubisoft isn’t the only perpetrator here. Why just last year the cover for Bioshock: Infinite was released to raucous disappointment from fans. From a game with a stunningly deep female character, intriguing subplots and a floating city, the cover is another generic, grizzled white guy with a gun. Ken Levine stated that he wanted “The uninformed… to pick up the box and say Oh this looks cool” so we’re at the point where we’re designing games for non-gamers? What is worse is that they relegated Elizabeth to the back cover and put her in a position of needing to be saved.

Just another princess in another castle.

The issue is simple, the issue is clear. Game developers and publishers are still aiming games at the dark ages.

According to the 2014 Essential Facts of the Video Game Industry, collated by the Entertainment Software association; The average age of gamers is now 31. But more interesting than that is that the split is an almost even 48% female, 52%male. But still we get games and art geared towards the underage adrenaline junkies, the 12 year old male gamers who just want to blow stuff up.

So I am calling for support from readers and gamers alike, we need more honesty from our developers, more strong female characters, more depth in our leads. More Sarah Connors and less Princess Peach, more Ripley and less helpless little girls needing a knight in shining armour. I understand that those stories and those tropes have their place, but they should not stand in the way of our growing industry. I for one will not support the alienation of the growing culture of female gamers. I urge you to do the same.