Terminally Incoherent

In the past I argued that PC Gaming is far from being dead but the more I think about it the more I start believing that I was wrong. I don’t want PC gaming to be dead - I have been a PC gamer most of my life, and all my favorite games are PC titles.

1. Upgrade Treadmill - It is getting progressively harder to keep up with the new hardware. Few years I was shopping around for a new video card and a I was looking up specs online, comparing prices on neweg and doing all kinds of research and I could not figure out what to buy. I ended up asking a friend who builds and sells tricked out gaming rigs (you know, water cooling, binged out cases and the works) for advice/ And I consider myself a knowledgeable computer professional. A Shamus wrote about this some time ago and it is getting progressively worse. At this point for example my brother doesn’t even bother reading the system requirements on the box because he knows he won’t understand them. He just asks me to investigate whether or not a given title will run on his machine before he buys it. Average customer won’t “upgrade” his video card - he will wait and buy a new computer when the time comes and hope that it will expect it to come with a video card that is able to play the newest games out there. Unfortunately this is not the case. A computer illiterate friend of mine bought a brand new, very expensive Dell which was advertised as a top of the line gaming machine. Few months later he bought Crisis and was disappointed and outraged that his brand spanking new gaming rig could barely run that game on medium settings. This is the sad reality which causes people to jump ship and buy a console. When you buy an xbox360 game you are guaranteed it is going to run on your xbox360.
2. DirectX 10 - in addition to upgrading hardware, you are also forced to upgrade your OS. As far as I can tell, no one wants to run Vista these days. All my coworkers who recently bought new computers absolutely hate it, and keep telling me how happy they are our company is not migrating to that infernal system. But guess what? If you want the new shiny game to run on your PC, you may just have to switch to the big V and take the 80% performance penalty that comes with it.
3. Stable Development Environment - I’m going to link to Shamus once again because he explains it better than I ever could. Console developers can rely on a stable environment that never changes. They can optimize their code, polish their engines to perfection and squeeze every last bit of juice out of the hardware. PC game developers on the other hand tend to be stuck in a runt, always chasing the latest and greatest rendering/shading/mapping technology. Consoles simply offer friendlier developer environment and one where you can accurately test the game play experience you are delivering to the player. No wonder many development studios shift their focus towards consoles more and more
4. Price - a $600 buys you a PS3, including software, a blue ray player, controllers and etc - in other words a complete gaming system. Or if you are a PC gamer you can spend that $600 on a new video card alone. I don’t like this, but you can do the math and see where this is going.
5. DRM - most PC games these days ship with a draconian DRM, online activation, installation limits and hidden rootkits. Not only do you have to jump through hoops to get them installed and activated - they can also damage your CD/DVD drives, or make your system unstable and vulnerable to attacks. Console games have none of the above.
6. Fewer and Fewer Exclusive PC Titles - at the moment, the only games that actually require you to own a computer are the popular MMO’s. Almost everything else gets released on at least one of the nex gen consoles almost simultaneously with the PC title or soon afterwards. Interestingly enough many of the MMO’s are not exclusive to the Windows platform. For example WoW will happily run on a Mac.
7. More and More Exclusive Console Titles - this trend started long ago, and is becoming more and more prominent. A lot of popular games never get a PC version.
8. Console to PC ports done as an afterthought - those console games that do get a PC release, often get a poorly done direct port, complete with a cobbled interface designed for a controller rather than a mouse, and wonky controls and many artifacts of the console-centric design. In most cases you are better off playing the original rather than torture yourself with the PC version.
9. Demographic Shift towards Consoles - most people around my age and younger these days own a next get console. Some own both the xbox360 and PS3. Most people own a Wii in addition to their primary gaming console. Conversely few of these people actually own an up to date PC gaming rig. Some do, but most either have an older machine that won’t play newest titles anymore, or a lightweight laptop that has enough powa to run WoW but not much else. Younger people seem to eschew desktops altogether, and shop for computers that are most battery efficient, and have good ratio of size/weight and comfortable keyboard layout rather than checking the specs on the video card. You can see this trend when you go to a local Wallmart (or other high volume retail chain) for example. One close to me has a single wire rack in the corner of the gaming isle where you can find PC games. And you’ll be lucky to find anything other than WoW and it’s expansions there. Occasionally there are few boxes of new hot releases but most of the time it’s mostly the same old MMO’s, 1 or 2 WW2 shooters, and few RTS games which have “Age of” in the name. Each console on the other hand has it’s own isle full of games. Consoles are the mainstream market now.

These trends are scaring me. I don’t want PC gaming to die, but the facts above do not suggest a rosy future for the PC as a game platform. Unless something changes, consoles will take over and the number of original PC releases will dwindle. It made me think though - the imminent death of PC gaming may mean hard times for Windows monopoly.

Let’s face it, gamers make up a very large chunk of Windows user base. The biggest source of income for Microsoft is naturally the business sector. I don’t see them being pushed out of there any time soon. The home desktop market however is huge chunk of change for them, and loosing it could mean trouble for the high and mighty MS. Home market consists of three types of people:

1. Clueless users who don’t know any better
2. Gamers who elect to run Windows as a gaming platform
3. People who would love to switch but are locked in
4. People who simply prefer windows

Group #4 consists of MS fanboys, Visual Basic developers, or simply loyal customers who might have tried other alternatives but prefer to use windows for some reason. These people are stuck in their ways and will likely use Windows until the day they die.

Group #3 includes people who are locked into the OS because the software they use for their hobby/creative work is not available on other platforms and there are no good alternatives. Many of them might be open to an alternative OS if they can figure out a way to take their favorite software with them or find an alternative. Since projects such as Wine and Cedega are continuously getting better, and emulation is getting easier, and open source community is rolling out new projects to replace proprietary software every day the number of the people in this group is bound to fluctuate and fall over time.

Group #1 is the most flexible one. A clueless user is usually bound to windows because that’s the OS which came with their computer. They generally rely on relatives, friends or co-workers for tech support and generally don’t know how to use anything other than a browser. They’d be equally confused using Windows, Apple or Ubuntu so you can swap their OS at any time. I mean, if your user doesn’t know the most basing stuff like navigating the file system, copying files or changing basic display settings will it really be a big shock to move them to another platform? They still won’t know how to do these basic things, no? So what is the difference?

As long as they can still get to MySpace and Facebook they will be fine. In fact, a lot of members of this group actually buy Apple laptops these days and use them without realizing they use a different OS. In fact, I recently talked to someone who was convinced that everything looked so different on his new MacBook because it shipped with Vista. This is a market that can dwindle down to zero provided that there is enough computer savvy people out there willing to switch their clueless friends and relatives to a non-windows platform.

Then there are gamers, whose primary reason for using Windows is that it is currently a major gaming platform. What happens to this group when the PC Game market fades away into oblivion? There will be some reshuffling. Some gamers will decide to stick with windows and move to group #4. Others won’t know any better and will move to group #1. Some will remain stuck and will end up in group #3. The rest may jump ship.

Note that each gamer jumping ship may potentially pull several friends and relatives from group #1 with him. Why? Many gamers are computer savvy enough to provide free tech support to their close ones when needed. Enough gamers switching away from windows may whisk away a huge chunk of group #1 sales from Microsoft. This in turn may create a critical mass of Apple and Linux users forcing major software and hardware companies to acknowledge these platforms and make their products available for them. Thus members of group #3 may after a while find themselves unstuck. Perhaps the death of PC Gaming will be a first step towards a better world - one in which no software company has almost complete market monopoly.

Again, this is wishful thinking - sort of best case scenario if you will. Still, being a gaming platform is a major selling point for Windows. Apple marketing has already cornered the “all fun and no fuss, entertainment platform” market. Windows is already viewed as a primary work related OS by many people. If the PC games go away Apple may actually have a chance to crave out a nice chunk the household computer market for themselves. And where Macs go, Linux will follow since both OS’s are of the Unix’y kind.

Installation wizards have their place. For example, when you are installing and configuring an operating system a wizard is your best friend. The design of the wizard is paramount as it is often the very first thing your user sees. First impressions are crucial, and if your install procedure sucks, then it puts your whole application in a bad light. That said, sometimes wizards - no matter how pretty, and helpful are just unnecessary overhead.

For example, let’s compare the way a Windows user and an Ubuntu user perform a typical installation. The windows user will start by downloading the package form the internet or popping in the CD into the drive. From there he will have to typically go through following steps:

1. Look at some generic “This installer will guide you through the process…” screen
2. Agree to an EULA
3. Pick program components to be installed
4. Confirm he wants to install the application in C:\Program Files\The Application
5. Decide if he wants shortcuts to be added to Start Menu and Quick Launch
6. Review the summary of chosen settings
7. Stare at the progress bar
8. Confirm that he wants to run the application and/or read the README file
9. Start using the application

Note that I omitted the common steps of entering the product key and online activation to keep things fair. Let’s assume the windows user was installing a multi-platform open source application - something like Firefox or something similarly popular and ubiquitous. To install the same application a typical Ubuntu user would just open Synaptic and find it on the package list (equivalent of finding and downloading the package from the web) and then:

1. Click on the Install button
2. Stare at the progress bar/scrolling text
3. Run and start using the application

What is the difference here? I mean other than one system uses a repository and other downloadable packages - that bit is actually inessential here. The major difference is that in Ubuntu the application is silently installed in the background without asking the user any stupid questions. And believe it or not, this is much more user friendly way of handling installation than a pretty looking wizard.

The average user wants the default components to be installed in the default directory with the default set of options and shortcuts. Think back on recent windows applications which you have installed - how often do you change the default installer options to something else? I typically just leave the default settings unless the app ships with annoying add-ons like toolbars or other adware and let’s you opt out of them by un-checking a box or two in the installer. Other than that, I typically just click next.

Tons of applications these days provide a silent install option that can be invoked by passing a special command line parameter to the installer binary (typically something like /S, /Q or –silent). This performs the whole installation in the background choosing all the default settings in a way simillar to that used by apt and Synaptic on Ubuntu. But the default installer makes us jump through multiple hoops instead. Why is that? Why can’t the silent install be the default option and the detailed wizard be invoked by some command line switch?

Usually people who would want to take advantage of the customization options in the installer are power users who could easily figure out how to trigger this hidden mode. The rest of us would simply hit a button, wait few seconds and then simply enjoy the application.

It seems that folks in Linux and Apple camps always knew this. Ubuntu for example only uses wizards for configuring complex pieces of software - like the OS itself. In the windows world however, the installation wizard is the king for apps big and small. It is sometimes quite ridiculous - for example, it is not uncommon to see a 2-3 MB application composed of a single executable requiring 6 or 7 step installation process. I know because I created such installers myself. Most of us are so used to them we hardly even notice them, but if you sit a complete novice in front of the computer and tell him/her to install some software every extra step they have to take is another occasion for doubt and panic.

And no - I’m not making this up. I’ve been actually asked by coworkers to stand there and watch them install this or that application. They would click the installer, hit the first question and look back at me. I would nod and they would proceed to the next one. Most of them would then apologize for taking my time and explain they were simply afraid they would mess something up if they answered one of the questions wrong. They just didn’t realize all they had to do was to click next repeatedly.

Adobe already figured this out. When you go to install their PDF Reader app these days all you need to do is to clikc on the Install button on their page. Then an ActiveX or XUL window pops up and displays a progress bar. There are no questions asked, no configuration options to be chosen. The reader is just installed and then the progress bar disappears letting the user know his application is ready for use. It’s clear to me that these guys got it. They did the usability research and they noticed that most people just click next all the time. And if overwhelming majority picks the default settings, then why even ask? Just install the app with most common configuration and provide mechanism for power users to circumvent it.

You might have noticed that I stopped using the hreview format, and the 5 star scoring system for my reviews. I don’t know if you miss that part, but I decided to drop them. Why? Well, part of the reason is something that Shamus said in his blog really struck a chord with me. I can’t find the exact link at the moment, but he basically said that putting scores on reviews is completely meaningless and futile exercise which doesn’t really add any value to the review itself. I agree with that. To me, a review should be more of a more or less an objective in-depth discussion of the product in question, rather than arbitrary “awesome” or “lame” score.

In fact, the score is usually the most subjective part of the review - that’s the part where you make a judgment without any quantitative support. Or rather, the review should be a support for the score, but it is not always the case. I noticed that my personal scoring system had really no structure or guidelines. I would award stars based on how I felt that day, not based on how good was the object I reviewed. I went back to the archives and I noticed many discrepancies. For example I gave “End of Evangelion” a score of 4 because at the time I thought it was awesome and deserved a high score but I didn’t think it was absolutely perfect. So a 4 seemed right. Then at some other time I was reviewing some silly comedy and gave it a 3.5 because I thought it was a bit above the average. According to my scoring system the difference between an excellent, thought provoking anime that made my head spin for days and a forgettable average comedy was exactly half a star. WTF?

Naturally I went back and adjusted the scores so the End of Evangelion reviews are now at 5 stars, but this whole exercise made me realize how completely arbitrary this system was. And it’s not just me - I was flipping through the PC Gamer the other day and I noticed exactly the same issue in their reviewing system. What exactly is the difference between the score of 89% and 91%? You’d think that on a 100% spread this would be a completely insignificant minor difference, making the games almost equivalent in quality. But if you read the reviews the 89% is essentially a “great idea, very poor execution” review while the 91% is a “best game evar, but has few tiny bugs you can fix with a patch” one. You hardly ever see reviews that hand out scores below 50% anyway - the game must be incredibly bad for that. And yet you would think that statistically most of the games should score in the average 20-80 bracket with only few exceptional pieces lading in the top and bottom 20%. But if you look back through the issues, you will notice a completely different distribution - most games score above 80. Horrible games score just below 60. No one ever gets the score of 0% despite the fact that someone out there surely deserves it.

So it is a conceptual problem - review scores do not work. Shamus was right, and I was using a faulty model all this time. Hell, I can’t believe it took me so long to figure this out. Needless to say, I’m not going to use these arbitrary scoring methods anymore. If you liked them, let me know in the comments, but I doubt that I will bring them back.

Speaking of PC Gamer and video game reviews (and this is something that Shamus touched upon several times in his blog) I noticed that most of magazines on the market hardly do them anymore. If you flip open a random video game magazine these days, most of the volume is taken up by 4 page “exclusive previews” of new games which are usually nothing more than just thinly veiled press releases handed down from the distributors. Actual reviews are crammed in the back of the magazine, usually accompanied by as single thumbnail screenshot and score box, and spliced in a “4 reviews per page” grid.

I really feel it should be the opposite way - a review of a game should be 4 page long, with in-depth discussion of the gameplay, storyline and screenshots taken by the reviewers themselves depicting actual gameplay, menus and amusing graphical bugs and glitches they were able to find. Sadly, the only people who do this sort of thing these days are independent bloggers who get no money out of the whole thing. It seems that anyone making money out of game reviews (and this includes popular blogs) becomes a “previewer” concerned more with generating hype for a given game, than actually writing critical reviews. Sigh…

There are two fundamental schools of thought when it comes to web design. You can talk about different design methods, technologies, paradigms and etc but there is one very simple, binary choice that you have to make when deciding on the color scheme will have a huge impact on just about every other design aspect of your site. You have to choose to use:

1. Dark text on light background (like this site for example)
2. Light text on dark background

Everything else, kindoff ties into this choice - and there is not much in between. You can’t really pick the middle ground because you want to have fair amount of contrast between your text and your background. And both choices require slightly different design approaches - same layout or graphic may look great in one, but crappy in the other.

I always considered #1 to be the more professional looking, and reader friendly choice. For me, the stark contrast between light colored letters on dark background puts much more strain on the eyes, especially when reading long paragraphs of text.

Sometimes of course it might be appropriate. For example if you are making a page that is supposed to convey some dark, scary or melancholic mood. But even then you have to tinker with the color scheme a bit to avoid that jarring effect on white text on black background. Most terminals don’t even use that, opting for more subdued grayish hue to spare you the eye-hurt.

So I always assumed that dark text is the superior choice - this is, after all, how we print most books, magazines and etc. It seems easier on the eyes, and more accessible to people with visual impairments. And I’m not pulling this last thing out of my ass. Check out this article on web design from Whichita University - it actually quotes an actual research that tested this hypothesis by working with the elderly. Here is the relevant quote:

Studied examining the reading performance of older adults have found that colored text on a colored background typically reduces their reading performance compared to reading black text on a white background (Charness & Bosman, 1990). Moreover, research has shown that dark text on light backgrounds is generally superior to light text on dark backgrounds (Tobas, 1987). However, older adults do have an increased sensitivity to glare. Thus, it is recommended that backgrounds not be pure white, but some form of off-white color.

Lately though I’ve been hearing many people saying that if done well #2 works well, and does not really impair readability. I heard this from both web designers, and accessibility experts which really surprised me. So I did a little bit of searching and it seems that opinion on which design scheme is better is deeply divided. To contrast the research mentioned above I can easily quote an article by Lighthouse International organization (which specializes in accessibility issues) which openly advocates the light on dark scheme:

There is good evidence that for many readers who are older or partially sighted, light (white or light yellow) letters on a dark (black) background are more readable than dark letters on a light background.

So it seems that it’s a tossup - both from aesthetic and from accessibility point of view. Which one do you prefer? Let’s do a vote:

Personally I like dark on light because it lends itself to cleaner and more professional looking designs.

I’m wondering how long will it take until the legions of low skilled Weekend Web Designers will start using the Microsoft ClearType Fonts en masse. I’m guessing it’s popularity will be largely dependent on proliferation of the 2007 edition of Front Page which doubtlessly use Calibri as the default font for the WYSIWYG editor. What does it mean for people without Office 2007 or Vista on our machines?

Probably not much. But we can probably expect tons of websites with layouts that don’t quite look right due to the subtle difference in a way browsers render Calibri and your default fallback sans-serif font. Is this a big problem? No, it’s not. But then again, some stuff might be font sensitive. For example our little chess game was based on font shapes present in Microsoft’s True Type font package that usually ships with office. Again - this is bad web design practice, inconsiderate for non-windows users, and etc. But chances are that at one point or another you will have some semi-legitimate need for one of the MS specific fonts. With the True Type set this was relatively easy - linux users could just download an appropriate package for their system - like the msttcorefonts package for Ubuntu. This is possible because the original EULA for the True Type fonts did not prohibit their repackaging and use on non-windows system.

Microsoft since then has revised their position, when it stopped distributing these fonts online back in 2005. They seem to be much more stingy with the new Clear Type fonts - they are not distributed online, and only shipped with software bundles. Windows users can still get them for free with a copy of the Powerpoint Viewer. But the fonts come with a nasty licensing restriction:

You may use the fonts that accompany the PowerPoint Viewer only to display and print content from a device running a Microsoft Windows operating system. Additionally, you may do the following:

• Embed fonts in content as permitted by the embedding restrictions in the fonts
• When printing content, temporarily download the fonts to a printer or other output device

You may not copy, install or use the fonts on other devices.

In other words, the use of these fonts on Mac and Linux is explicitly forbidden. You are not even allowed to run PowerPoint Viewer in Wine! This of course does not mean it is not laughingly easy to extract these fonts from the Powerpoint Viewer binary using cabextract tool and a simple bash script by Aristotle Pagaltzis. Still, it’s a breach of EULA - using them on a non-windows system is illegal, and you could be liable if caught. Sure, you are probably safe to have them on your home machine. But, if you install them on your Linux machine at work for the sake of testing layouts, and your company gets audited you could get in trouble.

If you want to go the legal route and get the ClearType fonts on a non-windows machine you will have to buy them from Ascender the hefty price of $299 for the whole bundle, or $35 per individual font. This does not include redistribution though - and the company does not disclose their licensing fees instead providing an online contact form for requesting a personalized proposal.

What I’m saying here is this: Microsoft is poising Calibri to replace Times New Roman by making it the default Office font. As such it is bound to become ubiquitous font for Word documents within the next few years. You’d think that one would want to widely distribute this font across platforms for the sake of integration, compatibility and building a broad user base. Especially with a set of fonts optimized for screen reading - and and by this virtue really sort-of destined to become dominant on the web.

But this is not the case - MS prohibits non-windows operating systems from legally obtaining this font without a hefty fee by restrictive EULA. So I ask you - isn’t that playing a little bit dirty? Doesn’t that seem a bit problematic?

The other obvious concern about these C-Fonts (have you noticed that all of them start with C? Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas and etc..) is that they trade off screen readability for print readability. Ask professional typesetters what do they think about printing text in the new sans-serif fonts. I can bet that most of them will probably agree that Calibri is marginally better than printing in Arial but nowhere near as readable in print as the good old Times. Serif fonts just look better on paper - that’s just how it is. Go and check your bookshelf - pull out any paperback or a textbook. 9 out of 10 of the books you pull out will be using Serif fonts.

And yet, in a strange twist most Office 2007 documents will probably print in Calibri - because let’s face it, if it looks pretty on their monitor a lot of people won’t bother changing it the way they changed Times to the more screen friendly Arial or Verdana. I could understand making this screen-font the default for, say Outlook as you don’t usually print all your emails. Most Word documents on the other hand will eventually get printed in one way or another. Thus, Sans-Serif fonts will become more and more widespread in paper publications inducing eye-strains all across the globe, and making my LaTex generated documents look beautiful and very professional by comparison.