Back in 1977 there was a Royal Silver Jubilee. I was 9 going on 10 and I do remember it as quite an event. Though 1977 was a good year for lots of other things too. Punk and Star Wars as an example. I remember all the flags being out, street parties and lots of pomp and circumstance. This weekend is likely just the same. A 4 day weekend in the UK to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
The predlets school is having a red white and blue day, combined with some parades and a re-enactment of the coronation. We have some parties to go to and everywhere you look there are union flags. I popped to London on wednesday and it was obviously fully decked up.

What was interesting though was that I don’t remember any good graffiti in 1977. It was just tagging and general vandalism but London had some great graffiti celebrating the Queen’s reign. Which seems a little odd and mainstream, yet still is part of a counter culture.

All this got me thinking to what it was like for tech and life in general when I was 9. It was even before the Atari VCS console. We had amusement arcades but we were just on the cusp of the video game age and the arrival of Space Invaders.
The technology I was being influenced by, that shaped my future was Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and Star Trek on the TV and in comics it was the start of the mighty 2000 AD – Judge Dredd, Harlem Heros and Flesh. These were all things lots of us liked, played out, talked about and things that connected us kids. They, like punk, separated us from the older generations who thought this was all stuff and nonsense.
I can’t help thinking that all the tech and maker culture around kids today is naturally going to lead to an explosion of ideas and creativity that will leave many people behind just as these other popular culture revolutions did. In many ways the backlash against social media in some quarters is a “turn down that noisy racket” parental response. It is good there is that to rebel against, to rebel against spoon feeding of brands and products and allowing creativity to thrive around them.
So we are way past 2000AD in 2012, but I think we have ended up with an even more exciting future, sure we are not all in space and flying cars around but the tech we have at our finger tips would have been just as amazing in 1977 to us 9 year old would be geeks and gamers as anything that we read or saw on TV.
The future is a cool place isn’t it? 🙂

This weekend I finally managed to to my St George impersonation and slay the final Dragon in Skyrim. I have by no means finished the game though, there are many more adventures and places to explore in the game environment. Skyrim is a virtual environment, a huge one. Mountains, rivers, dungeons, castles, towns, heaven and hell. It is populated by all sorts of races and creeds. As a player you really do choose your path, hitting things with swords, axes, or standing back and casting all sorts of spells. All of which level you up as a character. It was a huge undertaking to build this game, its depth and the 100+ hours of interaction make it an epic quest. It becomes what you put into it. Obviously it’s storyline and the experience fits with the medieval sword and sorcery genre. It is Lord of the Rings (In no way associated with the Olympic Rings in case the LCOG brand police are reading this), it is Game of Thrones. (That’s Game, not Games as in Olympic Games etc. ) In case you wonder why I said that read this in the Guardian
Anyway, it has been a deep and enjoyable experience. Very varied within it’s context. Hugely time consuming. That is were I felt I had to bring in the notion of variety. Yes it is just a game, like other forms of entertainment are just books, or just films. It requires a lot to get into and continue it, and unlike many networked games it is a single player experience (generally though that is changing, and the PC version has a Mod kit to build your own pieces).
Just as I was finishing this behemoth of gaming the follow up to Trials HD, called Trials Evolution arrived on Xbox Live. This game cost about £10 as a download, rather than the £45+ of Skyrim. It is “just a motorbike game” Anyone who has played Trials HD, or knows of the old Kickstart game will know it is a fantastic flexible physics puzzler at it’s heart. You control a motorbike, in a side scrolling left to right environment. You balance throttle, brake and leaning forward and backward to try and traverse the terrain as fast as possible. The original was fantastic, infuriating and rewarding in equal measures. This evolution has the same attributes and also some extra variety carried over from the previous game with odd sports challenges. It also has a course constructor. On top of all that it also has head to head online super cross racing. The online experience has a great asynchronous version too. Whilst racing any track you fastest friends times are represented by little social dots (rather than full on ghosts) showing how far behind you are. So playing alone you feel connected.
Where the real surprise is though is that this “it’s just a motorbike game” which stands well enough as it is has an incredibly varied editor. It is not a simple course constructor to just place the odd ramp. No, the things people are creating are 2D top down shooters, FPS games, Table Football(Foosball) and who knows what else will appear. All of these creations are appearing online as part of the games youtube like connection lobby.
In the official trailer you can see some of these pop in, check about 50 seconds in here, almost as a throw away statement!

Giving people tools with which to create, where they can completely turn the original game on its head is very exciting. As with Little Big Planet, Minecraft and alike we are going to see an explosion in ideas. This gets people exploring how to integrate assets, respond to events etc, it is a form of programming and problem solving. It is very exciting!
Makers of the world Go Abberate 🙂