• 16Nov 07

  Non Oportet

  Standards of education in Australia are ridiculously lax. As I have now braved my six years of primary school, and six years of secondary school, I can, with some authority and no exaggeration say that I have wasted twelve years I could have spent being educated. This however is not my chief concern. That the education of the average person is lacking seems to be a given, however that we are supposed to bear this silently, without protest is mind-boggling. We may as well be back in the dark ages.

  The system is broken; the few people at a young age who actually want to learn and understand are held back by their peers as their 'classmates' really could not give a flying **** about the needs of others. The same goes for teenagers. Of course some of them mature and realise that the rest of their lives are in fact at stake and give their education due respect, but even when those do realise this, the teachers are mostly so bad that it would be better if most of them had their mouths sutured shut. To my understanding, the requirement for aspiring teachers for any subject they choose is an arts degree. My understanding on the topic of employment may not be entirely correct, but what I do know is that if a non-English-speaking teacher is allowed to teach year twelve English, then something is definitely wrong. When I say the teacher cannot speak English, I mean it literally; it is easy to tell if anything they read is punctuated with "what this word", no joke.

  The quality of the teachers not withstanding, the method is just as bad: How many people enjoy being spoken at rather than taught? Because that is, in fact, what happens. Very little actual teaching goes on; "open your books to page ... good now listen to me talk for the rest of the lesson while I don't put the information in context or try to make it interesting." Every so often, if the teacher cannot be bothered, they have someone else read; not particularly fun. Every so often, to interrupt this monodirectional cascade of nothing in particular, the teacher in question will write something on the board, at which point in time, because said teacher has stopped talking, half the class attempt to leave, as the teachers shutting their collective traps is the usual signal for a finished lesson.

  If there is any reason why not everyone completely fails at school, I put the credit on either the parents or whoever has been tutoring the children, and sometimes both. However, I must admit, I have had a few excellent teachers in my time at school, but then the problem is that they are few and far between. So when a good teacher comes along, they have to spend their time teaching what should already be known rather than expanding on the knowledge that their students have.

  There is a saying that comes to mind that sums up what I think of the education system and that is; "if you can do; do, and if you can't; teach others." This applies because a majority of the time, only complete failures become teachers. This is because teachers are not paid enough to give people the incentive. Furthermore, they are not given enough respect as people seem to believe it is easy to teach children what they consider is boring and or useless. Have you ever been in a room with twenty to thirty bored teenagers and tried to impart some knowledge on them? Holidays are not for students, they are for teachers, but unfortunately the current teachers do not exactly deserve those holidays either.

  • Posted Nov 16, 2007 5:12 pm GMT
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• 3Nov 07

  Trashesque?

  The way I see it is that sometimes, games are pure gold, but mostly developers seem to throw junk at us and hope we say "OOO, it's lights, a blinky blinky, I take ten" and that we do not have any standards. I just do not understand what is wrong with them, it is as if they do not understand that good games make money while bad ones do not. For the average developer, here is a simple mathematical formula for reference:

  Good Game = Happy People = Lots of Money

  Now, let me simplify this past where I have already, here is the blindingly obvious translation; the better the game, the more money you make.

  Of course it is not quite that simple in real life so in the hope that someone pays some attention to this, I have to give a rundown on the requirements for good games. It boils down to a few simple things that I am going to order by the first to last things people will experience in a game:

  1) Graphics

  If a game looks terrible, that pretty much guarantees that nobody will pick it up in the first place; people actually look at screenshots and the box. I equate graphics to a gingerbread house; if Hansel and Gretel come up to a house made of manure, then they are going to run in the opposite direction, and maybe even throw up first. Now, games should be many things, but vomit inducing is not one of them.

  Something you have to understand is that if the game is good and fun, people will care less about the graphics, but, sticking with the sugar metaphor, it is the icing on the cake; required to make everything just right.

  2) Interface

  This includes labeling, people. If you label a game's four or five CDs or two DVDs 'crummy', 'jumbles', 'ricardo' or 'dynomite!' people are not going to laugh and say "it's funny I forgive them for naming the discs so moronically that I have to shove more plastic downstairs than a five dollar hooker", no, they are going to get angry. However, this is not so much of an issue nowadays.

  The real issue is that if a game's controls are unintuitive. People do not like picking up a controller or sit down in front of their keyboard and have everything seem to go haywire. There is a simple test that shows whether your controls are intuitive; preprogram three sets of default keys (work of ten minutes), bring a child in, stick a controller in their hands or a keyboard on a table and say "have at it, kid". Foolproof, trust me, that kid will know whether controls are intuitive far better than the dude that wrote the default keys.

  3) Gameplay

  Crucial guys, crucial. This area is summed up by:

  Bad Gameplay = Bad Game

  It is simply not possible to make a game with bad gameplay good. An example? If you play a shooter with gore and you shoot a guy in the leg, you want his leg to be blown off, not his head to explode. Although admittedly, this will be a novel experience the first few times, after that however, it would get real old, real fast. Again, to find whether your gameplay is good, use the child test; plonk 'em in front of yon screen and say "let 'er rip", maybe stand in the next room. Squeals of delight = good, crying = bad.

  4) Level Design

  This has been separated out because it is important to understand that if you are creating an RTS, resources are required; if you are making a tactical shooter, the game cannot be linear; an RPG, you need a role; a squad-based-shooter, you need a squad. Everything from the actual environment to the NPCs need to be placed with some foresight so as not to be crap.

  5) Sound

  I believe that this is discounted quite often as a bonus rather than a requirement, and I am here to say that anyone who believes that is WRONG, REALLY WRONG. Sound is important because that is what immerses players in the game. You do not want people sitting there, extremely aware that they are parked in front of a bunch of blinking lights. If you go to an opera, you do not want a teenager with a bulldog-worthy sinus problem and whose voice just broke to be up on stage with a bunch of stoners playing whatever instruments they found in a pawn shop.

  I have to say, every so often, an excellent game just passes everyone by and that is a real shame because so few great or even good games are released these days. It just makes me sick to see so many games with so much potential squandered because the developer said "it's good enough, people will like it".

  • Posted Nov 3, 2007 6:09 am GMT
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• 22Jun 06

  Recent Study into Fanboyism

  Fanboyism, is not by itself a detrimental disease, and a majority of people have it, but its more extreme form; Cretinous Fanboyism, can have abhorrent consequences. But, unlike many of its fellow diseases, Fanboyism is aptly named for its symptoms. Though when examined one-by-one and separately, those symptoms can appear non-problematic, maybe even beneficial.

  These symptoms are:

  1) Increased brain activity in the anal area. Though to some this may seem impossible, scientists have found that when a person contracts this disease, the anal cavity produces a range of brainwaves from Alpha to Delta, depending on what the person happens to be reading, or talking about.

  2) Stem cell production in the anal area. Also may not seem harmful to the individual, and those around them. But in fact can lead to the production of unwanted glands in the anal area.

  These symptoms, working together cause a second brain, called the 'brainal gland' to form in the anal cavity, which effectively takes over from the afflicted's original brain when the individual is faced by a complicated decision of one thing against another, and disallows any meaningful thought into comparison of actual properties of both objects in question, to see which one may, for whatever reason, be superior.

  Here is a diagram of the Brain and Brainal Gland:

  

  A further study by Dr. kriptonzz has found that a fanboy's anatomy differs from a normal human being in even more ways than we previously assumed, and has released this diagram of the fanboy anatomy for the good of the general public.

  

  There is a cure to Fanboyism, which some people may call ironic, but has been scientifically proven and leads, a majority of the time, towards the complete cure and most of the time, vaccination of the infected person, and the peace of mind of everyone who has immediate contact with the individual for any period of time.

  What must be done for everyone’s benefit is; the diseased entity must be bent over, and someone must run up and kick them solidly in the buttocks as hard as possible. This, when performed properly, destroys the brainal gland, which is what creates the stem cells, and takes over from the proper brain, and also destroys some of the anal tissue, which the remaining stem cells then move off to replicate and heal instead of beginning to form a new brainal gland, and the brainal gland is then excreted by the victim over a period of the next few days. The anal brainwave has, is the meanwhile been reduced to a barely noticeable state, and can be easily ignored by the person, and if this cure has worked extremely well, the brainwave should be reduced to an incapacitated state, so it is basically in a coma, and doesn't ail the person any more.

  ~ This has been your Dr. whathaxya.

  • Posted Jun 22, 2006 3:32 pm GMT
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