Dear Dave

  When computer games go bad

Dear Dave,

The kids are all finally back at school. Hurrah! That only took a week. Doubtless one of them will come down with something else in a couple of days but, in the meantime, it makes a nice change not having anyone in the house lying around under a blanket, sighing deeply. Being stuck inside for so long as been a little much on occasion. At last there's no more bickering over whose turn it is to play the Wii and I can open a window and do something about the smell of stale children in the lounge.

Phew.

Anyway, it's been a long week full of grumpiness, illness and TV involving annoying puppets. My patience is running low. I've also had to witness the kids play quite a number of computer games. Some of them have been good and some of them have been bad but the children have been too under the weather to care.

I haven't.

It's set me to pondering where bad games come from. Obviously, at a basic level, making a bad computer game is incredibly easy. You hire the cheapest team you can find, set them to work on an interactive version of an upcoming animated family movie and then insist they have it finished by a fortnight on Thursday. This technique never fails. That said, it's also a bit like creating a TV movie about three blokes digging a hole. The chances of it being anything but awful are so slim, no one will go near it. They might give it a quick shot if they're lying around under a blanket, sighing deeply on a weekday afternoon, but they'll soon switch over to something else.

Far worse are games that are good enough to want to finish but that contain easily fixed issues which cause the player to swear in frustration on a regular basis. Where do these games come from? It's stupefying. I so frequently play games with major flaws that could have been corrected with minimal effort, I can only assume that designers introduce the problems on purpose. Perhaps it's a clever trick to give them some straightforward improvements for the sequel.

In case you ever get the urge to design a bad computer game yourself, here's a list of stuff to include:

• A final boss that's ten times harder than the rest of the game - Game too short? You could add extra levels, different game modes and some additional side challenges. Or you could just triple the length of the final enemy's life bar and force the player to do the last half hour of the game over and over again until they finally get lucky and kill the thing...
  
  ...only to discover it's not really dead and they have to fight it again. In the dark. Armed with only a carrot.
  
  Hey, if they get totally stuck, they can always go watch the ending on YouTube.


• The whole game again... but backwards! - Not content with merely making the final boss too hard? Make the player traipse back through the entire game to find it.


• And then forwards again - Even better, leave the boss at the end but put a door in the way. Make the player have to traipse back to find the key.
  
  Players will really love the extra value for money they're receiving. They may even like the idea so much that the next time they go to the cinema, they'll insist on watching the middle of the film three times before they get to see the last ten minutes.


• An unhelpful save system - This is perhaps the simplest way to make a great game almost unplayable for normal people. Just don't put save points in the middle of long levels. That way, if there's a power cut or they have to stop (because a child is vomiting, for instance), it's right back to the start. To really rub it in, include mid-level checkpoints but no way to save them.
  
  For an extra element of surprise, make save points twenty minutes apart, except for a few that have an hour in between them. This will regularly catch out players attempting to sneak in a quick section before bed.


• Excessive darkness - Make the game full of shadows and coal mines so players spend the whole time leaning forward and squinting at the screen to locate all the important small, black objects they need to find...


• Excessive brightness - ...but then throw in the occasional jaunt to the surface of the sun so they're spending more time fighting with the brightness menu on their TV than playing.


• Fiddly motion control - Why let players press a button to open a door when you can force them to reach out with the controller, turn it and pull it back? That's far more immersive. Particularly since it's uncomfortable when sitting down and doesn't work half the time.
  
  Making a quick shake in one direction perform a reload while also having a quick shake in a very similar direction perform a 180 degree turn is always good for a laugh.
  
  This is option is currently restricted to Wii but it's coming to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2010. Start coding now!


• Meaningless difficulty selection - Designing something that's too easy or too hard is a slightly lazy way of creating a bad game. Add a touch of style by making it the player's fault. Let them choose a difficulty level from at least five options but without giving them any clue as to what difference the choice makes. Only allow them to choose before the game starts and don't let them change their mind without starting a new game. They're bound to get halfway through and wish they'd made a different choice.
  
  Of course, you could make the game do exactly the same thing whichever option they choose. But that would be evil...


• A complicated, but dull, back story - So, you have a bald space marine who has to run through endless corridors fighting horrific creatures? That's kind of generic. Better make your game stand out by having it all to do with a war between the Volban and Arg'jan over the future of Hascan supplies left behind by the GRR/kan, as retold by fffffffFxxx units scattered throughout Losdan by the advance Saswan team consisting of the marine's ex-wife and best friends. Add some incomprehensible flashbacks and a touch of betrayal.
  
  Sigh.


• No plot recap - For best results, briefly mention several vital plot details at about half an hour into the game. Don't refer to them again for the next fifteen levels until they turn the whole story on its head. At this point, assume the player recalls the information perfectly. So what if it's been six weeks since they played that bit? They should have been paying attention.
  
  Bonus points if the info is in the original game but the big reveal isn't until the sequel...


• A dodgy translation - Nothing makes a hackneyed plot and complicated back story more enjoyable than a stack of non sequiturs and some garbled grammar (apart from maybe plenty of atrocious voice acting and characters who spakest in pretendye Medieval parlance, forsoothe!).
  
  Watch out, though. Mess up and poor translation can become a bonus feature. I was playing a game the other day in which I kept having to open lots of 'difficult chests'. These were impressive and gaudy but, strangely, they all opened really easily. I only figured out what was going on when I was opening one of the plain, ordinary, 'simple chests' that were also lying around. I laughed quite hard.


• Lots of alarms - If someone is breaking out of a prison or breaking into an alien stronghold or just plain breaking stuff almost anywhere, they should expect that some alarms are going to go off eventually. It's even a good indicator that they've been detected and it's time to run away. Alarms are great... in moderation.
  
  When a fire alarm goes off in real life, it should keep blaring until the fire brigade arrives or the building burns down. It's only sensible. In a game, however, ten seconds is plenty long enough to blast out a noise which is designed to be grating. This being the case, you should consider having the thing wail for at least fifteen minutes.
  
  For added irritation, make the section after the alarms go off really difficult so the player has to repeat it many times. Also throw in plenty of dialogue and verbal instructions so they can't turn the sound down.

And there we have it. A few suggestions to get you going. How they normally get past QA is a mystery, though. Many of these issues could be fixed in an afternoon. Maybe they're such a fundamental part of gaming culture that everyone simply puts up with them. No one thinks, 'Hey, it doesn't have to be this way...'

...

Hmmm... Maybe this sort of thing doesn't just happen with games. Perhaps I should go ask the kids what I do all the time that really drives them up the wall. You never know, I might be able to improve their customer experience without much effort.

First, however, I think I'll go test the batteries in the smoke alarms...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: computer games, PS3, sickness, Wii, Xbox 360

 
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10:15 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  PEGI peril

Dear Dave,

That's an interesting question. There really are plenty of factors to be taken into consideration. You have to reflect on any number of emotional, moral, philosophical and logistical issues. Even then, the answer is by no means clear cut and the ramifications of your decision could still be affecting your dealings with your children when they're teenagers. It's tricky. I mean, seriously, good luck. Great men and women have pondered this one for decades and still not found a definitive response. Perhaps there isn't one. Perhaps every parent must find their own way...

Yes, I'm afraid you're going to have to decide for yourself. Is Scooby Doo! suitable for a nearly two-year-old? I couldn't tell you. Is Scooby-Doo! suitable for your nearly two-year-old? Well, that's up to you.

If it's any help, the live-action version was Lewis' favourite movie at that age and we saw it every meal time for a month. Marie, meanwhile, still shrieks and hides under the table while viewing the cartoon. That doesn't stop her wanting to watch it but it's pretty annoying if I'm trying to have a quiet lunch and makes me less inclined to put the show on. She's nearly five.

Of course, I never had these problems when Fraser was small. Without older children around to work a remote, I was able to keep him blissfully unaware for years of any programmes other than Teletubbies and Balamory. If anything, I was concerned he was living in a sheltered world of cute, fluffy creatures and twee aphorisms well past an age where he should have been learning from a gluttonous dog how to spot con-artists in rubber masks. It was actually a relief when he graduated to trashy cartoons and started watching animated cats and mice beat seven shades of slapstick out of each other.

For the last couple of years, though, it's been a struggle to maintain an appropriate viewing schedule that keeps all three children mostly happy most of the time while still providing an adequate number of fluffy aphorisms to morally educate the youngest and a sufficient supply of villains and comic peril to entertain the other two. I've messed up on occasion - the Dr Who spin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures, is still way too scary for Marie, for example - but generally it's gone OK. Thanks to my prior knowledge of many of the shows available and to the usually sensible broadcasting policies of kids' TV channels, I can effectively evaluate what's on and judiciously censor what my children see. Sorted.

Life is even easier with computer games. They have handy age ratings on the box to let me know whether they contain material unsuitable for my assorted offspring.

At least they used to...

Someone somewhere is clearly trying to make my life harder. Games used to have the possibility of two age ratings on them, one from Pan European Game Information (PEGI) and the other from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). All games had a PEGI rating of 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+ or 18+ and those given a 12+ or higher were also examined by the BBFC to see whether they needed a legally enforceable* 12, 15 or 18 rating. The BBFC ratings were the important ones since they were based on the same criteria as for films and had the same logos. Any parent paying the slightest bit of attention could spot a BBFC rating and know what kind of thing to expect, no matter whether they played games themselves or not.

Unfortunately, having two rating systems was confusing. Last year, the Byron Report into the risks faced by children from the internet and video games noted that many people mistook the PEGI rating as an indicator of difficulty rather than of mature content. Tanya Byron recommended stream-lining the system and concentrating on the BBFC ratings because everyone knows what they mean.

I'm guessing some European politics and a lack of resources at the BBFC got in the way of that. The government opted to go solely for the PEGI ratings and they're now legally enforceable.

The problem is, PEGI ratings make no sense.

Really. I can't tell from a PEGI rating whether a game is suitable for my kids or not. I play games - goodness knows what it's like for parents who don't.

For a start, PEGI has to cater to the sensibilities of every member country. If the Portuguese happen to find the mere image of a banana sexually suggestive or the Danes have a problem with boomerangs or the Swiss find rabbits terrifying, then it affects the rating in a way that's incomprehensible to a UK audience.

PEGI is also much stricter than the BBFC system. Almost any violence involving humans brings a minimum rating of 12+. I recently played G.I. Joe on the Wii and was truly amazed to find it has a 16+ certificate. It involves lots of shooting but it's about as realistic and immersive as Space Invaders. Enemies in the game are faceless, bloodless and gormless - paint them silver and they'd be robots. The whole thing is totally what you'd expect from a game based around action figure soldiers for under-10s and contains less questionable material than the old black-and-white war films I used to watch as a kid on weekday afternoons on BBC2. Nonetheless, a fifteen-year-old can't buy it. To put this in perspective, a twelve-year-old can pick up a copy of Quantum of Solace on DVD without a problem.

As a bonus, there's no obvious consistency to the PEGI ratings. Ratchet & Clank involves a similar gameplay style and level of shooting as G.I. Joe but that's a 7+. (Remember children, it's wrong to shoot people. It's absolutely fine to go nuclear on any aliens you happen to meet, though...) Trials HD features motorcycle assault courses where your realistically-modelled rider comes to life-threatening grief every few seconds with a splatter of blood and the snap of bone. I'm all for my children associating motorbikes with horrifying injury, but 3+? I'm not convinced. Obscure 2 has mutilated corpses, shooting, chainsaws, drug use, extensive sexual references, gore and evil monsters which leap out of the undergrowth. It's understandably a 16+ but this makes the rating of G.I. Joe yet more bizarre. The two games are on the same shelf but in different leagues.

To add to the confusion, PEGI seems to have made its ratings harsher at some point. Take the Super Smash Brothers series, for instance. Super Smash Brothers Melee on the GameCube is a 3+ but Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii is a 12+ despite being nearly identical in terms of gameplay and graphics. In both, Nintendo characters attempt to knock each other off the screen using Popeye levels of violence. I would struggle to tell them apart and yet the age ratings are radically different. One is allegedly fine for a passing toddler to watch while the other should be kept away from anyone who isn't at least at secondary school.

After a quick glance through my kids' game collection, I suspect this change in criteria happened in the last year or two, meaning there'll be a good mix of games graded differently still in stores. Great.

The upshot of all this is that in spite of having a keen interest in monitoring my childrens' viewing choices, I'm reasonably happy to ignore the PEGI rating on a game. The things are simply unreliable. Worse, they're almost certain to make me look like a totalitarian idiot if I try to enforce them:

12-year-old: I want to play G.I. Joe.
Parent: You can't. It's a 16+.
12-year-old: I saw Dan playing it at his house. It's just like Ratchet & Clank and you let me play that.
Parent: That's a 7+.
12-year-old: But they're the same. One's just got action figures instead of aliens.
Parent: Yeah, I know.
12-year-old: So I can play it?
Parent: No.
12-year-old: Why not?
Parent: Because it says on the box.
12-year-old: But why?
Parent: I dunno. Maybe it has boomerangs and bananas.
12-year-old: What?
Parent: Er...
12-year-old: So can I play it or not?
Parent: Well... I... Erm... Look here's a DVD. Leave me alone and go watch James Bond graphically kill some people in cold-blooded revenge, will you?

The PEGI system might be legally enforceable at point of sale now but it would be an idiotic struggle for parents to comprehensively police it at home. If some 12+ games seem acceptable for a pre-schooler and some 16+ releases appear vastly more suitable for a seven-year-old than the average episode of Emmerdale, the ratings are bound to be disregarded sometimes. This makes them counter-productive. Every game purchase is open to becoming a pester-power nightmare as kids whine at length that a title isn't any more mature than something else they've already played. Without a reliable rating scheme, parents are left to discern suitability from the publisher's blurb on the back of the box. More than that, there's a huge risk that parents and children alike will assume that all the ratings handed out are overly restrictive. If one 16+ has no discernible dubious content, then maybe the others are all fine too. Thus the chance of children playing unsuitable games is actually increased.

Don't get me wrong. I'm heavily in favour of a strong, consistent rating system where, when my children demand an inappropriate game, I can point to an age on the box and end the argument. I'm just a little upset that we don't have that anymore.

I took the kids to GAME recently to blow the last of the vouchers we had lying around from Christmas. Thanks to a convenient sale, we collected an impressively high tower of merchandise and headed for the till. The haul included a primate-exploitation simulator, a recreation of post-Apocalyptic survival, a replica plumber-eating monster and a game about heroically saving the world from extra-terrestrial invasion. The assistant scanned Super Monkey Ball, Wall-E: The Game and the fluffy Goomba without a second glance and then raised an eyebrow as he held up a box with a stark picture of an alien skull on the front. "Is this for you, sir?"

"Uh-huh," I nodded, resisting the urge to make a smart comment about how the cuddly toy was for me but my four-year-old was really looking forward to turning E.T. into entrails.

"We have to check. Sometimes parents don't notice the age ratings. We can't sell to adults if they're getting the game for a child."

I considered mentioning that although the kids would never see me slaughtering aliens, my four-year-old was quite likely to witness her brothers rolling cartoon monkeys around a maze (which apparently rates a 7+). On reflection, however, I concluded that this might not be such a wise conversational gambit. Instead, I muttered, "Yeah, I know," and then handed over the vouchers and made a hasty retreat, pausing in my escape only long enough to subject the poor bloke to a five minute rant on the shortcomings of the PEGI system...

So, yeah, ultimately only you can decide about Scooby-Doo!. Think of it as practice for when Sam and Daisy are older. This censorship issue only gets harder and, frankly, as far as games go, we're on our own.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

*STOP PRESS: Would you believe it? Someone in Margaret Thatcher's government forgot to phone the European Commission twenty-five years ago and so it turns out that none of the age restrictions on pre-recorded material have been legally binding in the UK since then. Shhhh! Nobody tell any teenagers for a few months until the current regime has rushed through some emergency legislation...

UPDATE: I emailed PEGI about Trials HD because I simply couldn't believe the 3+ rating and thought it was a mistake. They were very nice but gave the following explanation:

"We have examined the game Trials HD before the rating licence was issued and we did not encounter any violence in this game. The biker can fall of his bike, but then he becomes a ragged doll. We did not encounter any clear depictions of injuries.

"The difference between this game and a game like Super Smash Brothers, is that in Super Smash Brothers, you can find depictions of violence. You can actively beat someone up, this is the whole purpose of the game. Trials HD is in essence a bike-game and does not show any violent acts."

I'm a little bemused. Personally, when it comes to my four-year-old daughter watching her brothers play computer games, I'm OK with the Tom & Jerry style violence of Super Smash Brothers Brawl but I'm much less certain about a guy endlessly breaking his neck in a warehouse full of shadows and flame. Just call me old-fashioned...

Oh, and I was apparently right about them having drastically changed their criteria. Fantastic.

Labels: computer games, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360

 
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9:15 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Wanting it now

Dear Dave,

Where the heck is Barking?

My Xbox is stuck in a sorting office in Barking. I keep refreshing the parcel tracking web page every few minutes but it's still there. Wherever there is...

For crying out loud, it only took a week for the thing to get to Germany and be fixed. It's taken nearly as long just to get back again...

Click.

Still in Barking...

And this is after spending a night in Frankfurt for no obvious reason. Gah! Don't these people realise that there's an empty space in my 'safe place' that's missing an Xbox? The little corner of the house I go to in order to hide and get peace and quiet is incomplete. I want it returned to normal. I feel like a secret agent without an escape route. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be fine, but there's a constant gnawing sensation at the back of my mind that in the event of an emergency, there will be no way out. Even a minor setback this week could leave me unable to cope. I want my Xbox. And I want it NOW! (Before I get captured by a bald guy with a cat and suspended over a pit of ravenous toddlers.)

Click.

Drat. Still in Barking...

This would actually be easier to deal with if I had no idea where my console was. If it weren't for email alerts and internet updates, I wouldn't even be expecting the thing before the end of next week. Its early arrival in a couple of days would have been a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, modern technology has revealed that only a minor touch of efficiency and a small dab of luck would have had it here yesterday. Despite the whole process taking less than a fortnight, I'm disappointed already.

And, to think, I was complimented on my patience the other day. Not my current levels of patience, obviously, but my ability to remain calm when the kids were small despite having had very little sleep. I suppose back then I always knew I'd get to collapse on the sofa with a beer at the end of the day and I was under no delusion that that moment would come early. There was every chance it would arrive late, in fact. I simply pressed on.

Now the kids have set schedules tied to school and clubs, I feel more impatient than I used to. If I tell them to do something, they have to get on with it or we're going to be late. Constantly goading them gets quickly wearying. Since they have definite bedtimes, it's easier to count the minutes until there's peace and more frustrating if lights-out is delayed.

Sadly, it's actually the kids' lack of patience that most often tries my own. If they ask me for something and I'm busy and I tell them 'later', they simply won't leave me alone. They keep pestering me. It's really hard to finish a task when you're constantly being asked if you're finished. Sigh...

We ordered some books online at the weekend and they haven't arrived yet. The children are demanding I go on the computer and tell the postman to hurry up. They want to know where the books are, why they haven't arrived yet and when they're going to show up. Unfortunately, that parcel isn't being tracked, so there's nothing to do but wait. They're not too happy about this. I've had to drown out the whining with stories of the olden days a couple of times:

Back when we were kids, mail order took weeks. When they said, 'Allow 28 days for delivery', they really meant it. Three days for the order to reach them, two days for caterpillars to eat their way into the envelope, another two days for someone to take the cheque to the bank, a week for the cheque to clear, another week for anyone to notice, several hours for a troll to find the ordered item in the warehouse, two days for the item to travel along a conveyor belt of snails to the packaging department, another day to find a box the right size and then three more days in the post.

Sometimes I didn't even get what I ordered. If the thing was out of stock, I got something 'similar'. Being able to purchase an item over the internet and have it arrive within 48 hours still feels like magic.

Not that my children see it like that. They want the books NOW!

Ironically, a firm timetable or a progress bar would help them be patient. Knowing their books were stuck in Barking and wouldn't turn up until the day after tomorrow would allow them to put the thought to one side. It's like if I tell them that I'll be with them in a bit - they keep asking until I actually go. If I tell them I'll be with them in eleven and a half minutes, there's a good chance they'll go away and I'll have ten minutes or so before they return to stare at me expectantly.

Meanwhile, here I am, clicking every couple of minutes to check where my package has got to, hoping it might get here tomorrow after all but wishing I didn't have a clue so I could just forget about it. Click... Ooh, it's at Tamworth now.

I don't know where Tamworth is either.

If they're going to do this, they should do it properly. The next step is full GPS tracking. I want to be able to follow my package on Google Maps. I want to know if it's stuck at roadworks near Newcastle or going round a roundabout in Watford. I should be able to tell if the driver has stopped for a cigarette in Jedburgh. I need infrared satellite imagery of him sitting in a Little Chef in Doncaster and I need to be able to text chat with everyone else stalking the same delivery. That way, when he has a refill, we can all moan together that he'll need to stop for yet another comfort break just past Durham...

At least it would give me something to do while I'm waiting (other than tell the kids to get a move on, that is).

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.5), Xbox 360

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The missing moo

Dear Dave,

Rob came round the other evening. I was somewhat preoccupied, so Sarah let him into the house and sent him through to me.

"Are you really dusting behind that radiator?" he asked as he entered the kitchen.

"No," I muttered and then cursed as I cut my finger.

"Oh..." he said, finding a beer and taking a seat. "It looks like you're dusting behind that radiator."

This was true. I was crouched in the corner of the room, shoving a duster (which resembled bright blue candy-floss on a stick) down behind a radiator. Beside me was a narrow table piled high with craft materials. It was at right-angles to the radiator and overlapped it slightly.

"I was tidying up and knocked a glitter-glue pen off the table and down the back," I said, tracing the item's disastrous trajectory in the air with my bleeding finger. "It's got jammed in a gap between the skirting board and the wall and there's some other stuff down here stopping me getting to it from below. I'm trying to knock something loose with the duster."

"Need help?"

"I'm not sure there's space." I was surrounded by bags, boxes and a couple of spare dining chairs which had been stacked up to keep them out of the way. I'd had to move them all to get to the radiator.

"Too bad..." He helped himself to some crisps while I gave up on the duster and scrabbled around underneath the radiator with my hands.

"How are things?" I asked.

"Great. Everyone's nervous at work again, Luke still wakes up for a cry three times most nights and half the flat is packed into boxes ready for next week. Couldn't be better."

"Ach, well, another year and things will have settled down. Luke will have a proper bedtime and you'll have the new house mostly sorted. Chances are, you'll only have a couple of the boxes left to unpack by then. Got to look at the long-term. Maybe you should get cracking on a second child so you don't have it too easy at Christmas."

"Don't," he said, shivering. "Kate's already talking about it and it's giving me a nervous tick. I want to get this move over and done before I start thinking about people carriers."

"Fair enough," I mumbled, my head lost amongst my knees as I attempted to get my hand a little further into the dusty darkness behind the radiator. I was almost there... "Just don't talk to me about potential down-sizing at LBO. I get enough of that from Sarah."

"Deal."

"Good... Oh, hang on, something's coming free." I gave a final tug on a lump of plastic and it jerked out from beneath the radiator. The sudden release made me begin to topple over and I put my hand out to steady myself against the table holding Marie's stash of art supplies. It rocked wildly, a bowl bounced off my head and then small, sparkly beads rained down everywhere. "Flip."

Rob grinned and gulped some beer. "Going well?"

"Not really." Beads continued to skitter across the laminate floor to every last nook and cranny of the kitchen as I examined my find. It was a bright green water pistol that I'd never seen before in my life. It must have been behind the radiator a long time. Putting it aside, I had a feel around for other treasure. With the water pistol gone, there was more room to manoeuvre. I pulled out the wheel from a toy car, a small, fluffy fish and an object made of white plastic that was about the size and shape of a box of matches. I knew instantly what it was.

"It's the missing moo!"

"You what?"

"The missing moo!" I squeezed the box and it made a series of electronic noises which roughly approximated the noise of a cow (or maybe a slightly ill sheep). "I've been wondering where this went to for about five years. It's from a squishy cube with pictures of farmyard animals on. I took the moo out to wash the cube, left it on a shelf and never saw it again." I waved the box around gleefully and set it off once more. "I searched high and low for this. We used to have the playpen here. Fraser must have got the moo off the shelf and given it to Lewis in the cage and then he posted down behind the radiator. It would have fallen straight through if it weren't for the water pistol. It all makes sense."

Rob didn't like the manic gleam in my eye. "You know when you say that being a housedad hasn't driven you crazy...?"

I cut him off. "But this finally proves I'm not mad. I didn't eat it or throw it away or put it at the back of a cupboard in a fondue set. It went missing through a simple mixture of children and circumstance."

"Kind of like the last eight years of your life?"

"Not exactly." I rooted around for the glitter-glue. "If I find my lost youth down the back here, I'm going to be very surprised." I finally managed to prise the pen free and return it to the rest of the set. It was the pink one. Marie would have been distraught if it had gone missing.

I sat down in the sea of beads and took a deep breath to recover from my exertion. Then I squeezed the moo again for old time's sake.

"Right," said Rob, shaking his head sadly. "Put that back in its toy and let's go fire up the Wii."

"We gave the cube to a charity shop ages ago," I replied. Nonetheless, I was still smiling broadly.

Rob was confused. "But...?"

"It doesn't matter. I've cut my finger, I need to hoover and the room's turned upside down but I've kept my daughter happy, gained a water pistol and solved a mystery at the same time." I let off some more moos. "Even if I'm years late, that's still a result."

Rob didn't know what to say. There was a pause punctuated by bovine noises. A bead fell out of my hair and bounded away with a plink.... plink... plink.. plink. plink.plinkplinkplinkinkinknkk. Rob looked at me and then at his beer. "Is this really what being a parent does to you?"

I pulled myself upright. "Oh, yes. You're stuffed." Then I threw the electronic cow at him. "Whoever's holding it when the mooing stops has to collect up the beads."

Rob caught the moo instinctively but it was a moment before his brain grasped what I'd said. "Hey! No fair!"

"Course it's fair," I cried and made a break for the door.

Rob squeezed the moo, resetting it to the beginning, and chucked it at me.

"Hey! That's cheating!" I said, catching it and sending it straight back.

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is."

"You just did it yourself!" said Rob, so busy pointing that he almost forgot to throw the moo to me.

"Only 'cos you did it," I replied, doing it again and hurling it at him. My aim wasn't so good, though.

"Watch my beer!"

"It's my beer actually."

"I'm drinking it. Catch!"

"Ow! I bought it..."

This went on for a couple of minutes, the moo continuing to fly backwards and forwards. At that point, Fraser came downstairs and complained that he couldn't get to sleep because we were being too loud.

Seeing as he was awake, I got him to help pick up the beads...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Rob and I had to play on the Wii because my 360 has died again. It started crashing every so often last week in exactly the same way as before but without flashing up the three red lights which translate as, 'This console is seriously unwell but Microsoft will fix it for free if it's under three years old because they know they messed up big time.'

Since it's going to be the third anniversary of my initial purchase tomorrow, I was somewhat nervous. I kept playing it and every hour or so it would seize up, with the screen going green and jaggy. Still no red lights. Then the seizures became every few minutes. The machine didn't always switch on.

Still no red lights.

When it went belly up previously, Microsoft replaced it rather than repairing it. I seriously started to suspect that instead of fixing the design flaw in the newer version, they'd merely removed the red lights.

The warranty date drew closer.

Then, finally, I switched it on, the screen remained blank and those beautiful ruby LEDs lit up and flashed their message of doom. I was on the phone to Microsoft within minutes, arranging a pick up.

I'm probably the only Xbox 360 owner ever delighted to see the Red Ring of Death.

Labels: blokesnight, Xbox 360

 
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9:20 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Trousers are more important than Grand Theft Auto

Dear Dave,

Famously, the last time I went into the city to buy trousers, I came back with an Xbox 360 instead. It was a couple of years ago and I made the mistake of going into GAME at the start of my trip. I was so surprised to find the consoles in stock, I bought one immediately. I hadn't counted on how much they weigh. I was an aching, sweaty mess within minutes. I half-heartedly glanced round the menswear department of John Lewis and headed home.

Bearing in mind that my second-best pair of trousers had a hole in the knee so large that it kept catching on furniture as I walked by, I should have dumped the Xbox in our hall and headed straight back to the shops. I hate clothes shopping, though. Psyching myself up to go twice in one day was beyond me. (Not to mention that I had a new games console to play with.) The following Saturday seemed soon enough to buy trousers.

Unfortunately, it was another three months before I bought any. We were staying with my parents in rural Norfolk and I ended up going to the nearest small town to buy some. The situation was desperate by that stage. Even my best pair of trousers had developed excess ventilation. There was only one shop in the town that sold clothes that I might wear and that were in my price range. It was a case of buying anything which fitted. I did that.

The results looked fine and I had no more clothing worries until a six weeks ago, when I discovered my current second-best pair of trousers had a gaping hole. It wasn't in the knee this time. I got by for a while by coordinating my underwear with the trousers but it wasn't really a long-term solution. I had to return to central Edinburgh and brave the horrors of Princes Street in search of something to keep me decent.

A few years back, a couple of menswear retailers weren't doing so well and I saw an interview with a director of one of the companies on Working Lunch. He basically blamed us for his woes. With a touch of irritation, he noted that men in an age range between twenty-five and forty-five don't buy clothes.

This isn't entirely true. We do buy socks and underpants when our partners insist. We also need two sets of work clothes (one to wear, one to wash). Housedads even need five sets of work clothes (one to wear, three to wash, one to beat with a stick until it stays still long enough to be incinerated). Then there's a few t-shirts for sunny weekends, a new pair of pyjamas every decade or so and, erm... er... ...

Yeah, anyway, we do buy clothes. What the guy was really saying was that we only buy what we need to keep us warm and to prevent us getting arrested. This is true. My mission objective as I boarded the bus was purely to find sufficient apparel to stave off hypothermia and custody. Avoiding looking ridiculous was desirable but not essential.

Since it was last Tuesday, everywhere was plastered with adverts for Grand Theft Auto IV. I ignored them. I had to concentrate on buying trousers. I had to not think about it being release day for one of the greatest computer games ever made.

Trousers.

Must buy trousers...

It was harder than I expected. I don't mean steering clear of GTA. That was easy - every shop selling it was too full of people wanting their copy for me to be able to get inside. I'm talking about finding trousers I liked enough to cough up the asking price. As it's a while since I regularly went clothes shopping, my expectations were out of kilter with reality. I was looking for trousers that had fallen through a worm-hole from 1995, complete with a 1995 price. Worse yet, there were shops I used to patronise that I walked into and felt almost too old for. I can probably carry off wearing faded jeans at the moment but in a year or three? I doubt it. Considering how infrequently I buy clothes, this was an issue. I didn't know what to do.

My feet took charge and carried me into Gamestation on autopilot. After fighting my way past all the people buying Grand Theft Auto IV, I discovered that Wii Fit was in stock. (The emergency team digging Nintendo's minions out of a mountain of cash must have hurried the job along so they were ready for a call-out from Rockstar.) I had games to trade and some vouchers to spend and, well, one thing led to another and I found myself without new trousers but carrying a heavy piece of interactive hardware. This felt spookily familiar.

I considered going home with my prize but I knew I'd never live it down. Perspiring slightly, I continued my quest.

Luckily, the Wii Fit balance board isn't quite as cumbersome as a 360. It is close, though. I resolved to find some suitable clothing as quickly as I could, before my arm fell off.

Things didn't improve. Everywhere I went, there were more bizarre clothes that would have needed to be half the price for me to take a chance on them. I thought one pair of trousers was OK until I realised the legs zipped off to turn them into shorts. I'm sure that's a feature my kids would love to experiment with endlessly but I wasn't so keen.

It was all a succession of baggy sacks with too many pockets, odd jackets and pink shirts with blue stripes and matching purple ties. I was tempted to flaunt some of my rips and get arrested, just so I'd be able to wear some decent coveralls.

Then I walked past British Home Stores. I stopped and walked back. I didn't feel quite old enough to shop there but I decided I'd better have a look, for the sake of completeness. Sagging from despair, weariness and the knowledge I'd turned into my dad, I went inside and took the escalator up to the first floor.

I was greeted by row upon row of chinos in unremarkable colours. They were even in the sale.

I had come home.

Despite it being lunchtime, there weren't many other shoppers around. I can only assume they were off buying Grand Theft Auto IV somewhere. The couple of blokes I did see hunting through the racks were fifteen to twenty years older than me. This was disturbing. I'd apparently moved up an age bracket in my consumer preferences. Who knew what I was going to start feeling the urge to purchase? Slip-on shoes? A cloth cap? A newspaper that didn't come free on the bus?

I found myself called towards the tartan slippers.

Trousers...

Must buy trousers...

I concentrated on the task in hand. I was surrounded by suitable trousers and I needed four pairs. Which ones to buy? First choice was black. I'm not keen on brown. It lacks the style of black. White was out of the question. It needs washed more often than other colours (like black, for instance). Beige (or biscuit or light brown or whatever it is) was nice but almost as impractical as white - I need something which doesn't show grass-stains and dirt. You know, like black. I considered getting a grey pair but, although I'd wear them, I'd be wishing they were... well... black.

Basically, I was thinking black.

I couldn't quite bring myself to buy four pairs of identical black trousers, however. I opted for two black pairs and two dark blue pairs. I'll probably only wear the blue ones in emergencies but, hey, I tried...

I bought some plain, white t-shirts as well and checked to see if they had any shirts in my colour (light burgundy). They didn't but the three I have already will last a while yet - they're only threadbare, not full of holes. Who cares that one has paint on and the cuffs are frayed on another? At least they still have most of their buttons.

I cut my losses, went home and collapsed. Mission accomplished. More than that, Wii Fit had given me its first work-out and I hadn't taken it out of the box.

Why is it so hard to buy clothes? I like to think it's because I don't care what I wear and so it takes me ages to get round to it. The truth is more that I'm incredibly fussy about what I wear and I know that it's going to be a real effort finding the things I want. These things are smart-casual, trousers (preferably black), plain t-shirts (white or black) and collared shirts doomed to a life of unbuttoned crumpledness (burgundy) i.e. what I always get. I should simply walk into shops, point to myself and go, 'Do you have this, except without the holes and stains?'

I could change my look but it's not worth it. When I got contact lenses as a teenager, one of my friends said, 'Why do you have those? You looked better with glasses.' Six months later, when I couldn't wear the lenses for a few days, the same guy said, 'Why have you gone back to glasses? You looked better without them.' Since then, I've never been much bothered by fashion.

I like the way I look and other people have either got used to it or just don't care. Why mess with that?

I'm going to regret not buying more of those black chinos...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: stuff, Wii, Xbox 360

 
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11:20 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The bread bin strikes back!

Dear Dave,

Happy PlayStation 3 price cut in the UK day!

Well, sort of...

You were thinking about whether to buy a next-generation console and I'm not sure the choice has got any easier. What are Sony doing? That exec has been at it again. I can only imagine the meeting went like this:

(Two men sit in a large, spacious office. The Sony Exec sits at his desk, frowning at some papers. A member of the marketing team sits opposite, squirming).

Sony Europe Exec: I don't like the look of these sales figures. We need to stir things up a bit. How about we knock the price down to £350.

Sony Marketing Bod: We can't knock seventy-five quid off the price just three months after launch. That sends all the wrong kinds of signals - like we have enormous warehouses full of stock that no one wants to buy.

Exec (looking shifty): Yes... I mean, no... I mean... Er, no we couldn't possibly have them thinking that... But we do need to sell a few more units.

Bod: True, but the videogame industry is driven by confidence. No one wants to buy a console that's failing. They want to back the winner to ensure a continuing supply of good games and thus protect their investment. They buy the console they think everyone else is buying. A price cut boosts sales in the short-term but may only bring in customers who were going to buy one anyway and were waiting for the cut. Others may just be made more nervous. They may wait longer to see who's going to win the console war.

Exec: We are going to win it, obviously.

Bod: Yes, I know - it's my job to say that.

Exec: Then why aren't you saying it?

Bod: Because this is a strategy meeting and we need to separate fact from propaganda. (Sighs). Besides, you're never going to buy one anyway, are you?

Exec: Of course not. I haven't tried one yet where the thing actually makes toast properly. (He motions over to a corner of the room where a number of dead PS3s are heaped. Some of them have slices of bread poking out of the disc-drive. One appears to be leaking the remains of a Pop-Tart). Let's keep that secret, though. Don't want to put off any consumers, do we?

Bod: Not a problem, I for one certainly haven't been talking-up the PS3's ability to warm bread products. (Notices two PS3s being used as bookends on a shelf). We do, however, need to figure out a way to sell more of them. Some way that doesn't involve an early, desperate price cut.

Sony Exec: Well we won't actually cut the price - we'll bundle lots of extra stuff with it. How about another controller and a couple of games?

Bod: So people think they're getting better value for money.

Exec: Exactly. We can claim it's a large price saving while keeping the price the same.

Bod: That might work. People like to think they're getting a bargain. It'll still cost £425 but with £115 off extra content. I can sell that.

Exec: And when we sell the console on its own in November for £350 we can claim we're so confident of success that we're actually putting the price up.

Bod (holding head against the pain): Because... the box will be £75 cheaper but contain £115 less stuff?

Exec: People will buy it because it's cheaper but be confident that demand is high because it's become more expensive. They'll rush into the shops just to make sure they get there before we slash prices even more.

Bod (Shifts himself uncomfortably in his seat. Realises it is made of PS3s): Maybe a simple price cut is the way forward after all. It's what Sony America have done.

Exec (going over to a drinks cabinet): They've reduced the model with the 60Gb hard-drive by a hundred dollars and introduced the 80Gb model at the old price. I've had a word with them, though, and they're going to discontinue the old model as soon as they've sold all the ones they already have.

Bod: That may take a while.

Exec: It's possible. (He opens the cabinet. There is a bottle of whisky inside, a handful of glasses and a rip in the fabric of space and time. Through the tear can be seen a mountainside on which stands a monumental stack of PS3s. At the base of the monolith two apes are fighting. They are whacking each other over the head with consoles). Drink?

Bod (in shock): No thanks.

Exec (closing the cabinet and returning to his seat): Technically, it's not a price cut, it's a specification upgrade coupled to a stock clearance.

Bod: I... I... I'll go see about bundling those games and that extra controller. (He hurries away).

Exec (calling after him): Good lad. Let me know how it goes. (He opens a drawer of his desk. Inside is a PS3. Molten cheese is oozing out of it from every port and socket). Damn, there goes another one.

I'm still not buying one and you might be worth holding onto your old PS2 for a while yet - things aren't going much better for the competition, either:

Bill Gates contemplated buying Norway to hide all the faulty Xbox 360s that have been returned displaying the three red lights of death. It turned out in the end to be (fractionally) cheaper to admit the problem and extend the manufacturer's warranty in those cases to three years.

Nintendo have sold so many Wiis that their president, Satoru Iwata, is now too busy counting cash to actually authorise the production of any new games worth playing. They're drafting him some help but it's going to take them a while to clear the backlog. (And that's before Pokemon Diamond and Pearl go on sale in Europe).

This console war is still wide open. The PS3 is good value if you have an HDTV and want an HD movie player. The Xbox 360 is cheaper to start with but you have to pay extra for HD movie playback, wi-fi and online gaming (a lot extra). The 360 has a much wider choice of games at the moment, though. The Wii has a handful of fun games but nothing to really keep you playing for long. The graphics aren't much better than a GameCube either.

My advice - buy a second-hand Xbox or GameCube and hoover up some dirt cheap pre-owned bargains from your local GAME or Gamestation. That should keep you busy long enough for the future to become a bit clearer (and less expensive).

Happy gaming!

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: computer games, corporate madness, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360

 
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11:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post