An interesting game tech workshop in Wales

No comment in conference, future, games, metaverse, technical, unity3d, vr by

Last week I took a day out from some rather intense Unity3d development to head off to North Wales to Bangor. My fellow BCS Animation and Games Dev colleague Dr Robert Gittins invited me to keynote at a New Computer Technologies Wales event on Animation and Games 🙂
It is becoming an annual trip to similar events and it was good to catch up with David Burden of Daden Ltd again as we always both seem to be there.
As I figured that many of the people there were going to be into lots of games tech already I did not do my usual type of presentation, well not all the way through anyway. I decided to help people understand the difference between development in a hosted virtual world like Second Life and developing from scratch with Unity3d. This made sense as we had Unity3d on the agenda and there were also projects from Wales that were SL related so I though it a good overall intro.
I have written about the difference before back here in 2010 but I thought I could add a bit extra in explaining it in person and drawing on the current project(s) without sharing too much of things that are customer confidential.

Why SL development is not Unity3d development from Ian Hughes

I did of course start with a bit about Cool Stuff Collective and how we got Unity3d on kids TV back on the haloween 2010 edition. This was the show that moved us from CITV to ITV prime saturday morning.
I added a big slide of things to consider in development that many non game developers and IT architects will recognise. Game tech development differs in content to a standard application, the infrastructure is very similar. The complication is in the “do something here” boxes of game play and the specifics of real time network interaction between clients. Which is different to many client server type applications (like the web)

After that I flipped back from tech to things like Forza 5 and in game creation of content, Kinect and Choi Kwang Do, Project Spark and of course the Oculus Rift. I was glad I popped that in as it became a theme throughout the pitches and most people mentioned it in some way shape of form 🙂

It was great to see all the other presentations too. They covered a lot of diverse ground.

Panagiotis Ritsos from Bangor University gave some more updates on the challenges of teaching and rehearsing language interpretation in virtual environments with EVIVA/IVY, the Second Life projects and now the investigations into Unity3d.

Llyr ap Cenydd from Bangor University shared his research on procedural animation and definitely won the prize for the best visuals as he showed his original procedural spider and then his amazing Oculus Rift deep sea experience with procedural generated animations of Dolphins.
Just to help in case this seems like gobbledegook. very often animations have been “recorded” either by someone or something being filmed in a special way that takes their movements and makes them available digitally as a whole. Procedural generation uses a sense and respond to the environment and the construction of the thing being animated. Things are not recorded but happen in real time because they have to. An object can be given an push or an impulse to do something, the rest is discovered but he collection of bits that make up the animated object. It is very cool stuff!

Just before the lunch break we had Joe Robins from Unity3d, the community evangelist and long term member of the Unity team show us some of the new things in Unity 5 and have a general chat about Unity. He also did a session later that afternoon as a Q&A session. It was very useful as there is always more to learn or figure out.
We all did a bit of a panel, quite a lot of talk about education of kids in tech and how to just let them get on with it with the teachers, not wait for teachers to have to become experienced programmers.
After lunch it was Pikachu time, or Pecha Kucha whatever it is called 🙂 http://www.pechakucha.org 20 slides each of 20 seconds in a fast fire format. It is really good, covers lots of grounds raises lots of questions.

David Burden of Daden Ltd went first. VR the Second Coming of Virtual Worlds exploring the sudden rise of VR and where it fits in the social adoption and tech adoption curves. A big subject, and of course VR is getting a lot of press as virtual worlds did. It is all the same, but different affordances of how to interact. They co-exist.

Andy Fawkes of Bohemia Interactive talked about the Virtual Battlespace – From Computer Game to Simulation. His company has the Arma engine that was originally used for Operation Flashpoint, and now has a spin of with the cult classic Day Z. He talked about the sort of simulations in the military space that are already heavily used and how that is only going to increase. An interesting question was realised about the impact of increasingly real simulations, his opinion was that no matter what we do currently we all still do know the difference and that the real effects of war are drastically different. The training is about the procedures to get you through that effectively. There has been concern that drone pilots, who are in effect doing real things via a simulation are to detached from the impact they have. Head to the office, fly a drone, go home to dinner. A serious but interesting point.

Gaz Thomas of The Game HomePage than gave a sparky talk on How to entrain 100 million people from your home office. Gaz is a budding new game developer. He has made lots of quick fire games, not trained as a programmer he wanted to do something on the web, set up a website but then started building games as ways to bring people to his site. This led to some very popular games, but he found he was cloned very quickly and now tries to get the mobile and web versions released at the same time. It was very inspirational and great to see such enthusiasm and get up and go.

Ralph Ferneyhough of newly formed Quantum Soup Studios talked about The New AAA of Development – Agile, Artistic, Autonomous. This was a talk about how being small and willing to try newer things is much more possible and needed that the constant churn in the games industry of the sequel to the sequel of the sequel. The sums of money involved and sizes of projects leads to stagnation. It was great to hear from someone who has been in the industry for a while branching out from corporate life. A fellow escapee, though from a different industry vertical.

Chris Payne of Games Dev North Wales gave the final talk on Hollywood vs VR:The Challenge Ahead. Chris works in the games industry and for several years has been a virtual camera expert. If you have tried to make cameras work in games, or played one where it was not quite right you will appreciate this is a very intricate skill. He also makes films and pop videos. It was interesting to hear about the challenges that attempting to do 360 VR films is going to have for what is a framed 2d medium. Chris showed a multi camera picture of a sphere with lenses poking out all around it, rather like the star wars training drone on the Millennium Falcon that Luke tries his light sabre with. This new camera shoots in all directions. Chris explain though that it was not possible to build one that was stereoscopic. The type of parallax and offsets that are needed can only really be done post filming. So a lot has to be done to make this giant 360 thing able to be interacted with in a headset like the rift. However that is just the start of the problems. As he pointed out, the language of cinema, the tricks of the trade just don’t work when you can look anywhere and see anything. Sets can’t have crew behind the camera as there is no behind the camera. Story tellers have to consider if you are in the scene and hence acknowledged or a floating observer, focus pulls to gain attention don’t work. Instead game techniques to attract you to the key story elements are needed. Chris proposed that as rendering gets better it is more likely that the VR movies are going to be all realtime CGI in order to be able to get around the physical problems of filming. It is a fascinating subject!

So it was well worth the 4am start to drive the 600 miles round trip and back by 10pm 🙂

Game mechanics are not …

No comment in future, games by

I often get involved in conversations and projects about how to engage people with technology. This is, of course, often using game technology to connect people, to collect and show information or just to hang out and chat or meet. It covers nearly every project I do. It is as applicable to a TV show like the Cool Stuff Collective as it was to corporate life’s use of virtual worlds. There is always a line of confusion though. It is around what enables the technology and what you actually do with it.

“A pack of cards is not a game”

Building with any technology, whether it is pieces of paper with pictures on or with virtual environments across a network does not mean something is a game yet.
The best reference for all this is of course Raph Koster’s Theory of Game Design which I suggest everyone read 🙂

This book sets out a lot of the principles of what makes something interesting to do, to play. How and when repetition and skill gets trumped by boredom and familiarity.
I don’t want to get embroiled in the discussion of what “Gamification”is (too late) but very often it focuses on producing the equivalent of pack of cards. The mechanics of a potential game. This needs to happen but at it’s heart the question should be what are people going to do with the pack of cards.
Cards are a good example as most people have seen or played cards at some point. They are an easy form of technology to understand. There is a mathematical order to them, there is a visual design component. A real pack of cards also has a tactile element. Yet that pack of cards can be used for thousands of different types of game. It is the game mechanic that defines the game and the cards are just a small (but essential) component in the mix. I am sure many people have sat down with their family on holiday with a pack of cards and said “right what do we play then?”. The cards don’t tell you, they are just a medium in which to operate. So you can’t always expect a freeform environment to get people to play in. Some will of course, some people find enjoyment or mischief in any environment which leads to types of gameplay.
Card games very often feature chance. Luck places a big part however so can skill and experience. If you think of high stakes Poker games millions of pounds/dollars change hands on the turn of a card. However it is the ability to read people, to bluff and double bluff as much as the ability to calculate odds that apply. Yet the same cards can be used to play a simple game of snap. A reaction game, visual matches, fast reactions maybe a little sleight of hand as the cards are turned over.
Cards also have emergent game play. I know as a kid I used cards to layout race tracks for matchbox cars. People attempt balancing games making houses of cards and of course there are magic tricks.
So approaching a game of any sort we need to not just ask how the technology will work but find a few seeds of an idea of who is interacting with what and why. Is there jeopardy? is there luck? is there teamwork? However we should also not restrict ourselves to tightly defining rules. Allowing gameplay to be discovered.
Discovery though only really comes with familiarity or the need to break the rules. So any game needs some rules, some structure and an idea or most people (not all) are going to drop out or be less bothered. Something has to matter. There are lots of triggers to make things matter, but they don’t just happen. Someone has to make something, relate it to something.
Having been a gamer for many years I still find I play games both as a player and as a developer, I also realise I look at them as a game designer too. Why did that make me feel I needed to continues, what was so cool about that.
We all played games as kids, made up games, set rules and parameters, then found ways around them in a spirit of fun. Tapping into that as adults is much harder. People are less willing to think about why. So like many skills we all have it, its a question of unwrapping the gift of play and exploring it 🙂

Is Statue?

No comment in games by

I had a all to rare go on Call Of Duty on the Xbox One yesterday. I downloaded the latest map pack and I was intrigued as I ran around an Aztec ruin against bots that I heard one of them shout “enemy over by the statue”. I had not really noticed specific voice prompts of that nature before. However after a bit of exploring, and obviously getting fragged a lot I found the statue and I was pleasantly surprised to see this.

I haven’t explored the other levels too much yet but I am as always intrigued by the level design and the spirit and atmosphere these design elements create.
Checking the other add-ons it I also noticed that COD has gone all Sat-Nav on us. There are additional voice packs for the game commentary and in particular you can have the dulcet tones of Snoop Dog keeping you up to date on the game. (‘big fan am I’ of the Yoda voice on my Iphone TomTom Sat-Nav app).
Whilst on the subject of persona, Kinect Sports Rivals arrived a few weeks ago. It has a number of sports to try some of which differ from the usual motion sports. There is go course tennis and ten pin bowling, but without the controller so no risk of launching one into the TV. There is Jet Bike riding across waves, football(soccer), shooting, and the intriguing rock climbing too. What I found even more interesting was the kinect being used to scan me and make an avatar. Often the web cam style face camera pastes textures on a standard rig. This however creates a cartoon character of you. So clearly there are a set of noses, eyes etc and it picks ones close to the parameters. It starts by scanning your body shape then asks you to get close in to look at your face. I ran this a couple of times as I was intrigued when it asked me to remove my glasses (which I thought was a generic message) but then put glasses on my avatar. When I took the glasses off before I started it did not ask me to remove them and I had a specs free avatar. You can of course customise the avatar once this scan has been done but it seemed to work very well.

As I mentioned its caricature 🙂

It’s got the lot – metaverse development

2 comments in code, technical, unity3d by

My current project has kept me pretty busy with good old fashioned hands on development. However, sometimes it is good to step back and see just how many things a project covers. I can’t go into too much detail about what it is for but can share the sort of development coverage.

(*update 11/6/14 Just adding this picture from a later post that describes this environment)
It is a unity3d multi-user environment with point and click. It works on the web so it needs a socket server to broker the network communications. So it has a Photon Server. That Photon Server is not on their cloud but on a separately hosted box with a major provider. So that needs my attention sys-admin wise configuring and keeping it up to date.
The unity3d system needs to be logged into and to record things that have happened in the environment. So I had to build a separate set of web pages and php to act as the login and the API for the unity3d web plugin to talk to. This has to live on the server of course. As soon as you have login and data, users etc you need a set of admin screens and code to support that to.
The unity3d system also needs voice communication as well as text chat. So that’s through Photon too.
The actual unity3d environment has both regular users and an admin user in charge. So there are lots of things flowing back and forth to keep in sync across the session and to pass to the database. All my code is in c# though sometimes a bit of js will slip in. WE have things like animations using the animation controller and other unity goodies like Navmesh in place too.
I am working with a 3d designer so this is a multi person project. So I have had to set up mercurial repositories and hosting the repo on bitbucket. We sync code and builds using Atlassian SourceTree which is really great. I also have an error tracking system with Atlassian so we have a JIRA. It means when I check code in and push the repository I can specify the JIRA reference number for the issue and it appears logged on the issue log. That combined with all the handy notifications to all concerned.
As I have a separate server component running I had to set up another repository to enable me to protect and synchronise any server changes, the server has its own repository ID so it can pull the unity3d builds to the server too.
There are complications in doing a database communication as Unity will only talk to the server that is is served from using the www classes. So it makes local testing of multiuser a little tricky. The unity dev environment is able to emulate the server name but the built versions can’t so there is a lot of testing bypass code needed.
Oh I forgot to mention, this is all in Arabic too. There is nothing wrong with that except I don’t know the language. Also Arabic is a right to left language so things have to be put in place to ensure that text, chat etc all flows correctly.
A few little problems arose with this. Unity has an excellent Arabic component that allows you to apply right to left to any output text, however it does not work on input fields. That is a bit tricky when you need text chat, typing in questions and responses etc. So I have ended up writing a sort of new input field, I use a text label but capture the keys pass it to the Arabic fixer component which then returns the right to left version that is displayed in the label. I do of course loose things like cursor and focus as the label is an output device but needs must.
In order to support Arabic in html and in the database I had to ensure that the text encoding of everything is UTF-8, there is also a directive tag dir=rtl that helps browsers know what to do with things. However I have found that this works with HTML input fields but seems to not work with password fields. My password field will not let me type Arabic into it. The keyboard language chooser on the mac reverts to uk and Arabic is greyed out. This cause me a lot of confusion on logging in.
There is also the confusion of what to type, it is relatively easy to cut and paste translated Arabic labels into strings, but when testing a chat system or user names I needed to know what english keystrokes generated what Arabic phrase (that’s not a translation thats a how do I type something meaningful in Arabic and see it come up on the screen).
Luckily my good friend Rob Smart came to my aid with “wfhp hgodn” which equates to صباح الخير which is a variant of good morning. It helped me see where and when I was getting the correct orientation. Again this is not obvious when you start this sort of thing 🙂
Anyway its back to layering and continuos improvement. Fixing bugs, adding function. It is pretty simply on paper but the number of components and systems, languages and platforms that this crosses is quite full on.
The project is a 3 person one, Project manager/producer, graphic designer and me. We all provide input to the project.
So if you need any help or work doing with unity3d, c#, photon,html, php, MySQL, rtl languages, cloud servers, bitbucket, mercurial, sourcetree, JIRA then I am more than slightly levelled up though there is always more to learn.
Phew!

Real life avatar

No comment in choikwangdo, ckd by

Over the years I have got very used to digital representations of physical things and have often paid attention and talked and written about the impact those avatars have on our interactions with one another. A few days ago my new Choi Kwang Do training partner arrived, a Century BOB XL.

I already have large punch bag but there is something very interesting that seems to happen when faced with a face, an avatar representing a human form. I had noticed this before training on BOB at the West End Dojang and various other places.
Bags and shields provide a good target to practice technique. We also practice target punching and kicking and defence drills with our fellow students. However in Choi we do not spar it is not a martial art to try and get hurt doing.
BOB on the other hand presents you with an interesting mental challenge. Whilst it is a monochrome coloured lump of rubber it does have human features. It makes you think whether or not you really could defend yourself against a real person and use the sort of strength of attacks we learn and practice. It also allows you to desensitise yourself to the human in front of you, to practice tuning them out. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I need to use Choi techniques to defend me or someone. However I do want to be as mentally prepared as possible.

Like all things though this can be over analysed, and it is just good fun to use the various techniques to target the right pieces of the body, the irregular shape of a human form versus the symmetry of bag provides another level of practice.
So now my Choi self, an avatar in its own right as I switch modes can interact and have a conversation with the BOB avatar. Of course this is also for the rest of the family as we are all practitioners in the art. I know the predlets really like BOB and as the mini Dojang gets a little better organised (new garage door to maximise the room there) then we shall all get to play a bit more.

I hope I can put some tech instrumentation in too to add to the fun. A proper place to put the power meter/arduino contraption and who knows the Xbox Kinect too (though still need that dev kit form Microsoft!)
For more on Choi Kwang Do check out basingstokeckd.co.uk

Flush 12 – Secret Agent! on whose side?

No comment in technical by

It’s time to share another article in the excellent Flush magazine. As usual my collection of words and ideas have been massively enhanced by great layout and bing in the company of other fantastic articles and features, thankyou @tweetthefashion. This issue I decided to explore the world of hacking, surveillance and counter measures, encryption and t-shirts. The title “Secret Agent, on whose side?” will be familiar to many people but particularly a few old collegues where it became a bit of a mantra at work. It applied to most situations where things went wrong, usually when some sales or management over commitment made us wonder whose side they were on as we cleaned up the mess 🙂
The recent revelations about the mass government data collection may seem a shock to many but the battle for information and the counter measures around it in recent modern technology show us the trajectory this was on. This includes fictional spies like James Bond of course 🙂
I was trying to strike a balance of information, historical information that may be of interest and moderate outrage at the escalation.
The article is on page 108 thru 115.
The direct link is here which should take you right to the page.
The embedded issue on issuu is below.


Check out the entire magazine though including the fantastic front cover. I will let you discover that 🙂

Got back home to some amazing news. Oculus to Facebook :)

No comment in choikwangdo, ckd, metaverse by

I am just about coming around from a superb trip to the US with my Choi Kwang Do family. We took a flight to Orlando, then drove 500 miles in 2 cars up to Atlanta, Georgia. The HQ of CKD. Whilst there several of the group graded for belts, a black belt and 2 coloured belts. Also the founders of the Hampshire group of schools Mr Derek Bicknell and his son Mr Liam Bicknell graded (for 2 days ) with Grand Master Choi and achieved their 4th Degree blackbelt in CKD. A very fine achievement.
Most of the time I spent at HQ, training and helping out. It is a great time to just concentrate on the art not worry about the outside world.

I did take a trip with some of our group to the aquarium and I also spent some time with an old friend from Atlanta who very kindly took me skeet and target shooting out on the wilds near Alabama for the full redneck experience. Including firing a very loud M1 rifle.

Once the training was done we then drove 500 miles back to Tampa where we attended the 27th anniversary of Choi Kwang Do at a seminar.

So I was almost completely immersed in CKD and less in tech. However… I did speak to some people about the kinect and how that could help training and I also explored making videos on the fly. I had made some using the iMovie trailer wizard before but I attempted a couple of live ones. The first was when I took a break from driving and made this.

The second was attempting to document the aquarium experience. Atlanta aquarium provides very fast wifi which make a lot of sense so we can all share things as we are doing them. This was the result.

The wifi at the seminar let me capture and publish straight to youtube too, such as Miss Cullen’s shield attack which she gained a great 3rd place and a handshake from Grand Master Choi.

I had videos all the demo teams too, I was about to upload them when I realised that they are all performed to music that probably would get flagged by the google bot and get takedown orders on them. So that requires a bit more editing not on the iPhone 🙂
On getting back and feeling enthused by jet lagged I was pleasantly surprised to find that Facebook was buying Oculus Rift the VR headset. Now I understand the notion that a big company has just bought out something slightly cool because it was not mainstream but as a metaverse evangelist and as part of this industry I think it is very good news. That combined with Sony’s Morpheus headset and the potential combination of Google Glass and Google Tango means we have a resurgence in the very thing that people keep asking if its dead. Virtual worlds. Headsets provide another way to interact with 3d content. It may not be to everyone’s taste, there is a barrier to entry. However big tech firms showing an interest again will push things forward back up the good side of the hype curve.
Issues of identity, of immersive design, integration with existing data. New ways to explore how we communicate as humans all get brought to the fore. It will give another generation a chance to push things forward. I am of course happy to help anyone get to grips with the changes this will bring. I have been in this virtual space quite a while now, though there are other pioneers that were there before too.
So bring it on 🙂 It would be amazing to be up close and personal with digital renditions of all the wonderful Choi Kwang Do experts in an immersive 3d environment too. There are of course slight practical issues of wiring getting in the way, but it would be possible to get a complete perspective of the art from the view of a grandmaster captured digitally. Not to replace the real physical thing, but it would be great to feel that peace and excitement of the Atlanta HQ from here 🙂

Proper parcel tracking – interlink and tep

2 comments in ckd by

With my impending US road trip with my fellow Choi Kwang Do students and teachers I thought I best ensure I had internet connectivity on the road.

Whilst lots of hotels etc have wireless I wanted a roaming device for the long car journey. Recently my backup global roaming data service (aboradband) ceased to operate.
Instead I decided to rent a Tep Wireless device. This gives a data plan and a wireless/cellular device with a variety of tariffs.
You can pick these up at the airport if you are flying from Heathrow, but I am going from Gatwick. So instead I needed to order a home delivery.
Now home delivery is getting better, but usually we only get to know roughly the day something will arrive. Tep said that it would be 2-3 days before travel. I had not heard anything this morning (I fly thursday). I checked my spam filter and sure enough there was a very cool link to the tracking service. (I am not blaming Tep for my spam filter 🙂 )
The email said that I could track the parcel but also gave me a 1 hour window for the delivery. This is fantastic. Right at the moment the van is just down the road and the parcel is on its way.
SafariScreenSnapz033
I will post a review of the service once the trip is over, or whilst on the trip. However this is a very good start. Well done interlink for having proper tracking on parcels. Now I wonder if my baggage will get the same service 🙂

Google Project Tango

No comment in future by

If you have aver looked at anything in the emerging technology world you may not have spotted how Google have gathered some of the best minds in the business to create this fantastic project.
A phone, a handheld object that has a complete sense of the environment it is in. Seeing the depth and the 3d nature of the world, not just GPS which only tells you where you are.
It is going to be fascinating to see what else can be done with this. I am really blown away by how cool this is, and the people involved are names that I have a great deal of respect for too which makes me even more excited. Johnny Lee did some fantastic work with the wiimote a few years back (2008!)

Anyway check out Project Tango and ponder the blended reality future this gives us.

Feeding Edge – Five years

No comment in future by

It is getting quite exciting now to see that five whole years have passed since I started Feeding Edge Ltd. Soon I will have to say Feeding Edge Est. 2009 in everything. I was looking at what the anniversary gift is for five years and it appears to be wooden things. That was quite funny as really it was the whole Second Life experience that precipitated the formation of this company and stepping out of corporate life. The social implications of being able to communicate and share and work globally clashed with more rigid old fashioned corporate structures. Some were less able to see the benefit of this evolution than others. I experienced some very strange a actions by people worried about their power base across the company. I am constantly amazed by how many of the core of the movement we had back then left the old company in various ways too. The first thing you create in Second Life, BTW, is usually is wooden box. So in a way I pre-empted this 5th anniversary celebration some time ago!
Predicting the future is of course very tricky. The past 5 years have been so diverse and interesting that I can only hope the next 5 are anywhere near that. I also wouldn’t change what happened in the lead up to Feeding Edge. 2006-2009 will remain an amazingly vibrant and overall positive experience.
We just got back from a very exciting snowboarding and skiing holiday as a family. The first time the predlets have experienced that much snow and height. I sing the praises of virtual, of game experiences etc but not at the expense of physical experiences too. It is hard not to come away with a positive outlook on the future when you spend the week in places like this.

The thrill of learning or mastering a new skill, of seeing things in a different way, a mix of adrenalin and gravity all add to the mix. Next time we go I may have to take more hi tech things with me like GPS goggles. Just need the phone companies to stop charging mad rates for data ! 15Mb for £1.99, I turned that on my iPhone for about 2 minutes and it was used up!

I have of course not been just doing one job or thing all these years. Just to reflect (for my own sense of worth and 5 yearly appraisal….)
32+ speaking engagements
39 TV show recordings of Cool Stuff Collective
9 game reviews on Gamepeople
10 articles in Flush magazine
1 academic paper Virtual worlds, augmented reality, blended reality.
Helped form and chair the BCS animation and games development group.
Became a STEMnet ambassador and helped my fellow ambassadors.
Plus a lot of unity3d and second life work including the ongoing virtual hospital to keep my coding eye in.

My office has moved too as has the family home. Change being the only constant in this industry. Something that we all have to roll with.
As a family we have also taken up Choi Kwang Do, now well over 2 years into that journey. I am learning how to be a coach and instructor and hopefully applying some of the peaceful attitudes we live in the art to work and life.
Looking back 5 years the massive explosion in accessible technology has been the most exciting thing. Many of the things that I have been an early adopter of are now part of everyday life for many people. Sharing experiences online being the greatest change I have witnessed. We still have a way to go to help people evolve and learn how to share, or not. Of course I hope that the next wave will help people explore richer environments on top of the text and photos/videos that exist now.
I am also very happy that nearly everyone who connects online is becoming a gamer. Whilst many attitudes to games are still rooted in 3d shooters, we now have the social gamers who see different styles of games and engage. They are not all the best games in the world, we do of course have the downside of being rinsed for money in pay to play. However again the etiquette and acceptable side of the business will settle.
It is not all good news put there though. We still have vast inequality in the world. Huge poverty problems even in so called developed countries. The richest are still gathering more and more of the planets resources and wealth. In part that is driven by technology. The ability for digitally transfer assets, trade and make deals. Many hidden away in systems we have no access too. We have the spying scandals, mass surveillance of the public, because it is so easy to do as we are so connected.
Amongst all this though I am optimistic we will achieve some equality through the sheer abundance of technology and it blending with the human spirit. As we have seen with open source movements people can work together on things that they care about regardless of location on the planet. If that is the case then just as the bad guys, criminals and corrupt can leverage it, so can the forces of good.
Knowing what is out there, what is interesting to experience to use and sharing it with people who may find an even more positive use for it is my mission. Taking a bite out of technology so you don’t have to is the company tag line. Looking, feeling, sharing and understanding the implications and the possibilities is my job. I don’t see any sign of running out of any of these things just yet!
I also hope that the predlets continue to be as inspired and amazed by it all too. They have an exciting future ahead of them


The biggest thanks for the support over the past 5 years goes to my wife. She to changed jobs from our old firm too, a few years after me. The move was to a much more rewarding yet much more responsible and higher level position. She commutes everyday to London and is the financial stability the family needs amongst the constant churn of my small company life.

So, future, I see you hiding there. Let’s get on with it shall we?