Is it just me, or is the gaming industry a bit of a hot mess right now.

So over the last couple of years there have been a number of large and not so large studios that have wound up folding or having large budget games completely bomb, and honestly I'm almost surprised that it's taken this long to happen.

The most recent example of this is Concord, a game developed by a studio owned by Sony that was released and the pulled from market after about two weeks after it's release. 

There's lots of chatter about why this failed, but my personal thought is that the game didn't hit well because there are already many other games just like it floating around that are free to play. Overwatch, Valorant, Apex Legends, Fortnite, all have modes that sound like the same thing that Concord was offering. Without some interesting hook or gameplay mechanic that would make the game unique I'm not shocked to hear that it flopped.

Looking at a bunch of games that were huge in their day many of the sequels are just re-hashes of the same game over and over again. 

If you look at what's been going on this year it's painting a interesting photo;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_video_game_industry_layoffs

It's not just one game being canceled this year, that link has a list of multiple game studios that have been closed, and paints a rough picture of the layoffs that have happened this year. And honestly my thought is there are just too many games that are being positioned as AAA games that are rehashes of the same dammed thing over and over again and I think that people are starting to notice and are getting less and less interested. 

I've been around long enough to remember the video game crash in the early 80's that happened. And I'm feeling that we are looking at something similar. I don't think that we will see the industry completely collapse and burn, but I would not be shocked to see more larger studios collapsing and taking smaller ones with it as they go. And honestly while I can sympathize with the folks caught in this I also think that might not be a bad thing. My hope would be that the process would carve room for some new developers to come up with something that's not a rehash of existing games and stories. 

And here we go...

Ok, if you haven't been keeping up on what's going on with VMWare, you should probably look into that and then read the link below;

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/att-sues-broadcom-for-refusing-to-renew-perpetual-license-support/

It looks like somebody who's big enough to be able to afford the lawyers is taking objection to the new licensing terms that Broadcom is forcing on people. In a lot of cases companies and people just don't have the money to go to court on things like this, so it's going to be interesting to watch this play out. 

I'm thinking that there will b a settlement at some point, so likely a quiet boring outcome, but still interesting to see the shots fired.

Uni-taskers vs. Multitaskers - round 2

So, last round I was singing the praise of the Kindle, a purpose built book reader. Now I'm going to talk about the other side of the coin and another device that I have in my bag. 

Yep, a Leatherman Wave. 

While it's not the best single tool that I own it's one that I continually have on me and make use of more than a lot of the other tools that I have kicking around. And the entire reason for that I just because it's so dammed convenient. 

The tools on the Leatherman aren't the "best" version of a given tool that I own. I have better pliers, knives, screwdrivers, and scissors sitting around but I can't carry all of those in my backpack without having a lot of extra weight to carry around. Nevermind the looks that I would get if I pulled a four inch hunting knife out of my backpack to cut a rope or open a box at work. 

VMWare, Proxmox, and other fun things (if you work in IT).

 So, a while back VMWare was purchased by Broadcom. 

If you work in IT you already know where this is going. If you don't there are a couple of things that you should know. 

VMWare makes a number of products, one that I have worked with quite a bit is called ESXi, it's effectively a platform that lets you run virtual machines so that you can run multiple things of of a single piece of hardware. It's a huge thing if you work in IT or like to pretend that you do. One of the big reasons that it was popular was because VMWare basically let you use ESXi for free and you would have to pay for some of the more advanced features.

While those advanced features were freaking cool you could still get a lot done with the free version of the platform, with a little more running around and manually poking at things. 

When Broadcom bought VMWare a lot of people started to worry about what Broadcom was planning since they have a bit of a reputation as to how they handle companies they purchase. Sure enough earlier this year they killed off the free version of ESXi and then started putting the screws to people who are using their software with price increases.

Strangely enough they have released VMWare Workstation and VMWare Fusion, the desktop versions of their hypervisor, as free for personal use. 

Regardless seeing the writing on the wall I was already looking into other options for running virtual machines and in the end Proxmox became the platform that I decided to put into production in places where I needed something. And when the time came to put other projects underway VMWare was basically ignored as a potential platform just because of the pricing and uncertainty regarding what was going to happen.

I'm very glad that the FOSS options managed to get caught up to VMWare - at least as far as I needed it to get for my workloads. 

Uni-taskers vs. Multitaskers

Generally speaking I like having technology that's flexible enough that it works really well no matter what I need to do. Generally a multitasking device is something that I keep around a lot longer than something that I purchase for a single purpose. 

However, there's a piece of hardware that I have had for years that only does a single thing, and dos it so very well that I have continued to replace them as I've worn them out.

Yep, an Amazon Kindle. 

I bought into these things back when the second generation of them came out with the embedded keyboard that I never actually used. I managed to use that for years, eventually having the device replaced multiple times as buttons failed and cases cracked. 

I think that I'm on my fifth or sixth one, and while that might not seem like a impressive statement I read a lot and the failures are all things that are just wear on the device. To put it simply I just wore the buttons out on the ones with physical switches, and the ones that are touch based I used them so much that the batteries eventually just gave up the ghost. 

I keep coming back to them for a couple of reasons;

First - battery life.  When I'm on a reading binge I will rip through a book a day in some cases. Granted we aren't talking larger novels but a good Reacher novel will last me a day if I really tear into it. My last camping trip had me read through the first three books of a six book series without really trying too hard. Having a device that can allow me to do that without having to constantly recharge in the middle of a given book is a requirement, and that's not something that you can do on a iPad or a Laptop.

Second - weight. With a Kindle I can walk around with a entire library in my bag, where with a paper book I'm stuck with whatever I can comfortably carry in the bag. That usually works out to one or two books at most, and even a single paperback weights more than my Kindle does.

Third - the screen. This is huge, and if you haven't looked at a e-ink screen you really should. A modern LCD is basically like looking into a light, and while it's fine if you are writing something or watching a movie it's does cause eyestrain, but the e-ink display doesn't put out any light, it's basically a piece of paper that can be programmed. Some of the new ones do have backlights but that can be turned completely off if you don't want it or aren't reading in the dark. 

On a iPad or other device I can only read for a few hours at a shot, however a e-ink display can be read for a entire day without getting any headaches or other eyestrain. 

The last thing that keeps me coming back is the price, the base device usually runs around 120$ CAD, and I generally get several years out of one before the batteries give up the ghost. The ones with the physical buttons tended to fail quicker, but the touchscreen ones take care of that quite nicely. As long as i'm getting a couple of years from the device it's well worth the 120$ to keep the weight in my bag down.

Old Hardware

Last weekend I had a bit of a discussion with a younger family member who is very much into technology and all the bits a pieces that come with it - specifically he's into older "vintage" tech. However for him "vintage" is stuff that I worked on earlier in my career, or spent my childhood cutting my teeth on.

Anyhow he managed to get his hands on a 2000's era laptop computer - specifically a Centrino based device that would have been considered resonable before Intel kicked off the release of the dual and quad core CPU's that would then become the default for the next decade. The problem with this device - it wouldn't boot properly. Initially it looked like the device had a dead disk, but after digging into it a bit it looks like the problem may be that the power supply he's got to run the thing just doesn't have the juice needed to get the device up and running. 

He was disappointed because he was specifically looking forward to playing some older games on this thing. 

Now there are some really good vintage games that are definitely worth playing, some of these are things that I would consider classic masterpieces and there are others that have not aged as well. 

This is something that he's brought up before, at point point I know he was really wanting to get hands on a SNES and a copy of Earthbound to play on the "original" hardware. Now, given the cost of a "original" copy of Earthbound;

And the cost of a working "original" SENES I really have to question if playing the game on original hardware is worth it any more. 

The only thing that I can agree with is that you should probably be using a SNES controller - or a good reproduction like the ones that you get from 8bitdo and others. Even a cheap one would probably work since the original ones, while good, were not that much better built than the USB knockoffs that you can get these days from Amazon. Having something that feels the same in the hand is something that makes the experience of playing the game complete. 

And the thing is that Nintendo knows that people still play this game - it's on the SNES library on the Nintendo Switch as a game that you can play so there's no need to resort to piracy to play the game. Nintendo also convienently sells a set of SNES controllers for the Switch, and even though they aren't cheap they are still cheaper than a copy of Earthbound.

Between DosBOX, PCEM, RetroArch, and other tools that exist in the world there are really few, if any, games that you can't play on a modern computer. And, now that USB versions of most of the popular controllers in the world exist it becomes hard to suggest pursuing original hardware to play these games on. Emulation avoids all the hassles that the vintage hardware brings with it - problems with bad capacitors, problems with broken cables, and brittle plastic that breaks as soon as you look at it. 

As much as I have nostalgia for the now vintage hardware that I sued to work with I don't miss having to manually set jumpers and other configuration options to make a sound card work. 

After talking to the family member about if they should spend another 50-100$ on a laptop that should have been in a recycling bin a decade ago I suggested that if they are only looking for a way to play old games that virtualization should be the way that they approach the problem. Hopefully they will go through the process of learning that and pick some skills that can be used in other places aside from just playing games. 

Telegram may be in some trouble...

Well, this is a interesting development. 

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-816149

TLDR. The guy who founded Telegram, a secure messaging service, has been arrested in France for not cooperating with law enforcement. He's also being charged for terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, and money laundering. 

Telegram is one of many messaging services that claim that they don't provide details to law enforcement regarding your conversations due to the way that they are encrypted, and the platform has little to no moderation on what you can discuss there. That's likely where most of the charges are coming from, but until more information comes to light it's going to be hard to know exactly what's going on here. 

This may however be related to some legislation that is being pushed in Europe that would implement governmental control over chat services like Telegram; 

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/

The logic here is that the government, specifically law enforcement, require this level of control over messaging services to allow them to combat CSAM and other criminal activities. I suppose having the entirety of all chat services laid open would make that process simpler but that's giving law enforcement a huge pile of data to go through and I have concerns. 

Obviously the first one is who's getting access to this data and how is that being policed to make sure that nobody is doing something they shouldn't be? Since you know law enforcement never does anything that might call their integrity into question.