Monday Chat #6 – Ideas for the original Codex of Aegis blog

This post will be a lot shorter, mostly due to the fact that I’m still trying to get used to this whole college thing, but I think it’s pretty important nonetheless.

For awhile now I’ve thought about going through the old stories that I have on the Codex of Aegis blogspot (http://codexofaegis.blogspot.com)  and deleting ones that I don’t think are good anymore. My standards for my writing are way higher than they were when the blog started around 2013, and I feel like it’s time for the content up on there to reflect that.

Of course, I don’t want to outright remove them from existence. I know that there’s probably some people who like ones that I don’t like, and besides that I find it fun to look at old stories even if I don’t think they’re good. In that case, I’ll probably bring back something similar to the Astuka Looks Back series – a series, this time having its own separate blog entirely, that deals with looking at some of my older, less good stories in a more critical lense. This way people will still have access to them, I will be able to learn from them individually, and the whole process will be much sweeter.

I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to start this process, but hopefully it will be sometime soon. I will start by actually removing the stories, then go back and begin on the new critical series. Anyway, I’m short pressed on time now like I mentioned before, but I still wanted to release a Monday Chat, and this is what I’ve come up with.

Currently reading: I’ve decided to drop all my previous reads, mostly because each of them I either didn’t have time for or just wasn’t interested in continuing. I’ve now begun a book I have been meaning to read for quite awhile now, that being The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. So far I’m only 30 pages in, so I’ll update as time goes along.

Currently playing: Nothing! No really, nothing. The laptop I’ve brought to university is pretty bad, and it can only play the SNES/N64 roms I’ve downloaded onto it (that being literally every single SNES and N64 game in existence). But besides that, I just haven’t really been motivated to play much recently. I was meaning to play Overwatch again when I visited home, but I was too busy doing unrelated stuff that I didn’t really have time to fit in.

Currently watching: Also nothing! Though this one is a bit more concrete – I did catch up on Twin Peaks, a series I had kind of lost track of for a bit due to university stuff and everything, but now I’m back in. I’ve also successfully dropped Game of Thrones seeing that I now fortunately don’t have the time to keep up with it and that has helped me stay away from that burning dumpster fire. Unlike with games, I do have some plans to see some movies – Michael Haneke has been brought up recently, and speaking that I haven’t seen any of his movies and nearly his entire filmography has been on my watchlist for years (the only other director to have that honor is Kurosawa), he’s definitely in my sights now.

Currently listening: Recently discovered Brockhampton, and have been listening to Saturation Parts I and II almost constantly this week.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #5 – Video Games: A Constant Cycle of Rehashed Ideas?

So today’s topic originates from this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/6slno9/cartoon_network_stole_my_game/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit

Basically what happened is that the creator of the flash game A Dance of Fire and Ice found that their was a Cartoon Network flash game strangely similar in concept released on their website…

Now, to be fair, A Dance of Fire and Ice is one of the top rated (and most played) Kongregate rhythm games whereas Cartoon Network tends to throw out their flash games every month or so to make way for content more relevant to the current programming; so overall, this specific instance isn’t that big of a deal. But what about the concept in general? After all, this has happened plenty of times – Bejeweled and Candy Crush, Crush the Castle and Angry Birds, and Pandemic and Plague Inc (just to name a few). So is there something inherently and morally wrong with the concept of “Great artists steal”, or is there some justification in it after all?

Now in order to really get a case on what a true “rip off” is, we need to focus on two things: style and substance. Let’s take an example with the CN debacle. A Dance of Fire and Ice and the CN game both have the same core gameplay element – rhythm based timing game based on two constantly rotating sprites that one has to time correctly to keep on the path. However, in style, both games differ – Dance has more of a concrete, minimalist style that models after the two elements which the game is named after, whereas the CN game… just has a bunch of shitty Gumball sprites. Secondly, there’s the substance – there’s the fact that its clear the CN game doesn’t run on Dance’s stolen code, cause the game runs like shit. That means that there’s only on real similarity between the two – the gameplay. But is gameplay copyright-able?

As you’ve probably been able to tell, of course not. There’s plenty of turn based RPGs, or first person shooters, or 3D collectathon platformers. Once one person makes a subgenre, its free for people to refine and edit themselves – as long as they make their own source code. After all, we don’t see people paying royalties to the creator of Wolfenstein, do we?

Another thing though, and perhaps a bit bigger of a deal, is with the size of the business. Bigger businesses can market better than individuals, and thus the mainstream appeal of two very similar games can go to a later game rather than an earlier one. Rovio probably had a much bigger budget to advertise Angry Birds than Armor Games had for Crush the Castle, and Armor Games had a bigger budget than all the other small developers doing similar games way before that! There’s also the choice of distribution. Crush the Castle was originally flash exclusive, which only has the audience of the every diminishing minority of those who play flash games. Rovio, however, took a chance with the ever expanding mobile app market and it ended up paying off big time. So, although people might not like it, business sense does play some part in it.

Now, all these games discussed so far have been fairly different in style and substance, but there is a possibility of blatant rip offs succeeding over the originals. Such is the case often within the mobile market. For a specific example, back in 2014 the app Bad Apples, a blatant stolen version of Cards Against Humanity, reached the top of the app store, causing it to overshadow Cards by over tenfold. Fortunately, due to some clever marketing by Cards Against Humanity – and the poor development upkeep by the Bad Apples creators – Cards was able to regain its spot in popular culture as the original adult party game. Still, one might consider poor moderation of the App Store like this proven case to lead to many other undiscovered rip offs that succeed the original in popularity by many times.

Now, to go back to the main question – is the original always the best? After all, is it really that much of a shame that the content rich and well maintained Plague Inc is more popular than the fairly barebones Pandemic series? Honestly, I think that as long as there are not blatant rip offs of a game, it’s fine to have a sub genre generate and to enjoy better, later games that come out of it. It’s always good to remember the roots, but it’s not mandatory to love them. So while the developer behind A Dance of Fire and Ice isn’t exactly justified in his worry, I think he’s in pretty safe hands.

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Just a quick heads up – there will be no new Monday Chat next week. I’m moving into university, and then on that weekend am going to a related camping trip, sparing me no time to write. But hopefully after that I’ll be able to make room for continuing to make new posts in my schedule.

Currently reading: I finished Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in a single night, and damn was it darker than I expected – a great read, and worth spending a couple of hours on. Still, I’ve decided I’m going to chill on the digital library for now, seeing that my physical book collection is pretty sparse and I can probably run through them fairly fast. I’ll probably make this my main backlog goal going into university.

Currently watching: As I mentioned before, I saw Dunkirk in theaters. While I really enjoyed the movie, I still don’t understand Christopher Nolan’s insistence on adding some level of non-linearity to his stories, even if they don’t make any sense. In this movie its particularly blatant – each story takes place a certain amount of time from each other, a la one week, one day, and one hour. But the stories all end up lining up in the end… so what’s the point? It seems like Nolan just added this in since people know him as “the weird mindfuck story guy” and kind of as an afterthought. I feel like the movie would’ve been a bit more cleaner and more coherent without this in place. Still, despite this – I mean, it’s a Nolan movie, right? – it’s still damn good. 8/10.

Currently playing: Mostly Skyrim and Mount and Blade Warband mods… though I DID start running a new NCAA Footbal 09 dynasty game (you know, what all the cool kids are doing right now) with the plan of making a long game that would use the import feature for Madden 09’s franchise mode (pretty basic stuff, everyone knows this), but then I remembered I was going into college and probably didn’t have time to do all this. Whoops.

Currently listening: Been picking up on a few new tracks. INOJ’s Time After Time cover has some pretty bumpin’ aesthetic. My Dead Girlfriend’s Danke is a solid banger. Other than that, I’ve been listening to some miscellaneous KPM tracks.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #4 – Response to “Google’s Ideological Echo”

Originally this was going to be about some of my older writing on the blog, but my friend just happened to tell me about some drama going on in Google that I think fits pretty well with stuff I’ve talked about in my past (2014) articles, so I figured it would be better for a Monday Chat.

Just yesterday (August 5^th as of writing) a pastebin was leaked from apparently an anonymous engineer working at Google, decrying their overarching corporate goal of diversity due to its effect of silencing certain ideas for solely “moral reasons” and forcing a completely equal corporate society where one doesn’t have to exist. As always, many have already thrown the essay off as inherently sexist – however, word from inside says that many of the engineers, no matter their background, agree with what it says. So, I figured I might as well take a neutral look to see whether or not this really does have some merit.

The essay starts with the writer defining some of his language, just as left and right political bias, psychological safety, as well as Google’s own biases (I won’t go into detail his precise definitions, as they’re extensive and also pretty much how they’re used in the everyday. If you’d like to see them yourself you can read the pastebin for itself. I’ve included a link below my thoughts). He describes that Google tends to have an extremely left wing bias, which is where its extensive diversity mantra comes for, and that it is generally bad for any business to have an extreme political stance (which is true). After this then comes the more controversial part of this so-called manifesto.

The writer decides to explain some of the biological differences between male and female, and how that might explain why not as many females go into the software engineering side of the workforce. His first point is spot on – the concept between empathizing versus systematizing. This concept explains that women tend to be more attached to people than to things (and men vice versa) which causes them to pick jobs that follow this logic, such as teachers, psychologists, and doctors, just to name a few. And this makes sense – these jobs have a much greater percentage of females working in them than men, while men work in more technical jobs such as software engineering. And really, there’s nothing wrong with this – a teacher is easily as economically valuable as an engineer (for if there are no teachers, where come the engineers?). These social jobs were once primarily suited toward men, due to an actual case of gender discrimination. Now, that’s not to say that their can’t be female engineers – biology and genetics aren’t end alls, especially when it comes to humans, and so there should definitely be a sizable group of girls wanting to become engineers and scientists, and they should have all the right to hold those jobs. But you can’t force a girl who doesn’t want to be an engineer to be an engineer – just like you can’t force a boy who doesn’t want to be a teacher to be a teacher.

His second point here is a bit more questionable. He states that women are more agreeable over assertive, and therefore have a harder time negotiation for salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. I’ve found that this concept is pretty universal among all human beings, not just women. Many people will go for the easy but small win rather than the hard but big one just because they’re too afraid to speak for themselves, and I’ve never really seen this connected to women specifically outside of typical discriminatory portrayals. I feel that there is a large amount of weak, agreeable people in this world and a small amount of strong, assertive ones and that this is not dependent on gender, nor any other case – especially not biologically.

Same general feeling with his third claim – that women tend to be higher in neuroticism. I’d actually argue the exact opposite for this – in highly stressed environments, women tend to react more solemnly, whereas men deal with their situation with high anxiety. It’s also more common for higher intelligent males to pick up the trait of neuroticism than it is for higher intelligent females to. After this, he makes a few smaller claims which I all disagree with – such as “men have a higher drive for status” and “women are on average more cooperative” – but I’ll save talking about those and instead come back to his main point.

Where I completely agree with him is the fact that companies – and in fact, people in general – should not moralize ideas in order for them to be bulletproof. The concept of “diversity” shouldn’t be invincible from argument because its, well, “diversity” – in fact the only concepts that should be invincible from argument is fact and truth itself. But diversity is not in its entirety fact and truth – there is parts of diversity that is derived from facts and truth, but the concept itself is not completely impenetrable. And, of course, there is business fact that taking such a far left ideological stance not only hurts your employee’s opinion of you (such is the matter of this pastebin) but also might ward off potential workers as well. So I do believe all of the writer’s suggestions are sound. As for the people throwing this off as blatant and inherent sexism – well, I know it’s a long read, but I feel like making generic defamation articles without actually reading the work seems pretty silly, no?

But really, overall this is probably one of the more poorly construed calls for action that I’ve seen. A lot of it does get muddled in the core of the piece – making multiple assumptions on the opposite gender always seems like a pretty bad idea, as human beings and our naturally contradictory nature don’t tend to follow the stereotypes all that often (which is why I’d say take my own assumptions with a grain of salt). But, as for the idea of Google moralizing certain parts of their policy so that others cannot argue against it, it’s clearly a bad idea that doesn’t exactly work in the companies favor. In sum: If someone wants to be an engineer, let them be an engineer. If they don’t, then don’t. If someone wants to speak up against a policy, let them do so and then argue for or against it formally and logically. No topic is too holy to be argued – what one should do is show with facts and truth why diversity is as good as it is, don’t completely dismiss arguments against it in calling in “belligerently sexist”. I have seen some articles that have in fact taken this stance, taking what the pastebin says and making the arguments of why it is completely wrong. And while I am more in the gray area in terms of how I feel about it, I can find myself appreciating those who argue for or against it without just saying “its completely sexist so you shouldn’t even read it” or “google is an authoritarian SJW engine trying to destroy us with its liberal propaganda”. And that’s the conclusion I find myself writing at the end of all of these, but people still seem to not get it, and so I have to repeat myself every time. Oh well!

Link to the pastebin: https://pastebin.com/nJwfKjZc

Currently reading: I’ve begun to focus solely on House of Leaves and the Military Battles book, as I’m the farthest in both and am honestly just ready to finish them. I’ve also started back up my e-library after my last one with 5,000+ books was destroyed in a terrible accident (Library of Alexandria 2.0). I’ve decided that this time I’m not going to bulk download and instead just add a few at a time and read them. I’ve added a couple of science and mathematics papers as well as a few literature classics like Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick. I’ll get around to them… eventually.

Currently playing: My attempts last week of organizing what I play have gone horribly awry, and I’m now at the point where I have to hold off what I play because I straight up don’t have enough space on my computer to handle it. I’ve started playing, among others: Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, Age of Empires 2 (I think I included this last time?), and Mount of Blade Warband (which includes a bunch of mods I installed, which is why it makes up the bulk of my playtime). Something’s got to go here.

Currently watching: Much more fruitful have been my attempts to organize what I watch. I’ve decided to go down the infamous “1001 films you must see before you die” list, speaking that I’ve already got 60 of them down I figure I might as well tackle the beast. Right now I’m on Les Vampires, a crime series from 1915 which is considered to be the first miniseries ever made. And to be honest, for being completely silent and in black and white this thing is pretty damn entertaining – though the fact that it’s 6 hours long in total has me worried. As for TV, I had actually planned to drop Game of Thrones this week but Showtime changed the show time (!) of Twin Peaks to one hour earlier without telling anybody so I was forced to watch Game of Thrones yet again while I waited for the Twin Peaks rerun. On a much better note because of this I ended up staying for a playing of the newest two episodes of Rick and Morty which were actually surprisingly great. I’ve always had a grudge for this show based on its obnoxious marketing schemes (this newest one was particularly bad) so I had never watched the show until now. But… at least the show’s good I guess? Also planning on seeing Dunkirk in theaters tomorrow (or today as of writing).

Currently listening: Not much new. Some Scum Fuck Flower Boy and some of the Dunkirk soundtrack. That’s about all for new music!

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.