As grist for his mill, I wanted to share one micro-experience I just had, as relates to gamers and community and how negative we can be, and how that negativity influences (some) people around you.

I got into the Firefall beta yesterday morning. While I was at work I had the client download, so as soon as I got home I jumped in and played a few missions and really enjoyed myself. But I only got 10-15 minutes before the dog needed walking, dinner needed eating and so on. During this downtime I was pondering the game and everything I didn’t know about it, so the next time I had a moment I jumped on the forums to learn what I could.

Sadly they were typical game forums. Some people trying to give honest feedback and other people shouting them down, calling them inferior gamers, telling them to learn to play and so on. And that was in one thread (the guy had voiced his opinion that the first missions are a bit too hard since he’d died several times).

I quit my browser and got ready for a scheduled Guild Wars gaming session. That session got cut short after about an hour so I fired Firefall back up.

And I didn’t really like it. I played for all of 5 minutes and then quit to play TERA.

So, I play the game and enjoy it. 5 hours later I play the game and don’t enjoy it. What changed? The game obviously didn’t change. I did. And what changed in me?

Suddenly I was seeing the people around me as “those assholes from the forums” instead of as other gamers having fun, and now I didn’t want to have anything to do with them, so I was playing the game like a single player game. Instead of banding together with other players and helping them burn down enemies I was avoiding people and looking for empty spaces to play in.

Just to be clear, the Firefall forums aren’t any worse than the forums of any other online game; I’ve yet to find an ‘official forum’ that wasn’t absolutely vile. And also just to be clear, I’m not a fan of trolls. I do, however, know a troll. There’s a kid I work with who finds trolling endlessly amusing. He legitimately enjoys getting people aggravated and upset and sees absolutely nothing wrong with it, and in fact finds it hilarious. He can’t understand why I don’t also find it hilarious.

In all other aspects, this kid (who is also a gamer) is a really nice guy. In spite of being a troll, he’s always willing to lend a helping hand and get things done. He’s the kind of guy who always lets everyone know when he’s running out to get lunch or whatever, and asks if we want him to pick up anything while he’s out. He’s generally well-liked in the office. I even like him…when he’s not trolling.

But I digress. The point is, if you’re a troll you probably think it’s really stupid that I let what goes on in a forum influence the way I play the game associated with that forum. And I even know, intellectually, that it’s stupid, but this is an emotional thing. I try to deny it but the fact is, I now think all Firefall players are asshats and I’m going to treat them accordingly. Which of course is just going to detract from the in-game community in some small way.

The worst part about gaming forums is that 80% of the population can be friendly and helpful, but the 20% who are trolls are going to make the entire place feel like a cesspit. When you ask “What key do I use to take a screenshot?” you won’t remember the person that simply replies “Print Screen” but you will remember the person who replies:

“First, search the forums before you ask your dumbass question. There are a 100 threads asking how to take screenshots. Second, how the hell did you get into this beta if you’ve never played an online game before? You must not have ever played a game if you don’t know how to take a screenshot because every game uses the same damn key. Maybe do a little research before you open your mouth and prove to the world what a dumbass you are. I swear I miss alpha when these forums weren’t filled with stupid noobs filling up the place with stupid threads like this one.”

So how do we fix this? I don’t think we can. I think this is a symptom of a greater disease. Until we culturally start thinking more about the impact we have on people around us, any anonymous gathering of gamers is going to be vile because there’s always going to be a few trolls who are determined to make it vile.

The only hope I have for the future of Gamers is PAX. When all these people gather in person, the 80% tend to overwhelm the 20% and the overall vibe is really positive. Why? Well first, some percentage of trolls moderate their behavior when they’re in danger of getting a fist in the face. But aside from that, how is it that the gamer bullies are overwhelmed by the friendly gamers dressed like Pikachu? I think it’s because everyone is 100% devoted to being there at PAX. I think on forums, a lot of us are there to get info and get out, while the trolls are just hanging out in there all day trying to piss people off for laughs. Because of this, although they may be 20% of the population they’re generating 60% of the posts. [making numbers up here]

Aside from better moderation (which is a minefield for the moderators) I’m not sure what the answers are. I just think it’s a shame that so many communities are undermined by people like my troll co-worker (scariest part? he’s a psychology major. Or maybe psychiatry… I forget which) who take delight in making others miserable.

A final word: This post focused on the negative side of community but of course there are many positive sides as well. I’m not denying that. Though I’d argue that most positive communities are smaller and somewhat exclusive.

So far, I’m really enjoying the Iconia. Is it a “better” tablet than the iPad? No, I don’t think so. iOS is more refined than Honeycomb (the version of Android made for tablets), more stable (the Iconia locks up probably once a day) and there’re a lot more apps available for iOS. Also keep in mind my experience is with an iPad 1.

And yet these days when I reach for a tablet, I generally grab the Iconia. Weird, no? Part of it is the ‘new’ factor, but after naval gazing for a while I’ve come to realize it’s mostly about a “killer app.” In this context, a killer app is that one program that just sings to you, personally. It might not be the best or the most popular, but it just fits for you.

In my case, the killer app is Feedly for Honeycomb. Feedly pulls in my Google Reader feeds and presents them in a nice browsable format. There are a ton of apps that do this, and in fact Feedly is available for the iPad too. But I like Feedly on the Iconia. It just feels right.

Feedly only runs in portrait mode, and the Iconia is narrower and longer than the iPad when held in a portrait orientation. That makes Feedly feel like I’m reading a magazine. Each page has a list of new stories. I can tap one to drill down into full content, and from there (if needed) I can choose to open the story in a web browser (I use Dolphin HD on Android). Generally I only need to do this if there’s embedded video. Feedly’s built-in browser doesn’t handle video.

If there’s nothing on a page that I want to read, I just swipe to go to the next page, and Feedly marks all the stories read (you can disable this if you like). If I want to save something for later, Feedly supports Instapaper, which is a tool I lean on heavily.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a Feedly review. But it’s just odd to me that this one free app is what makes the Iconia my preferred tablet these days (unless I want to play games…the iPad is still better for that just due to the number of titles available). Well, the Feedly app and the different proportions of the Iconia tablet.

I never would have discovered this combination by playing around with a tablet in the store, and now I just love it. I also prefer the Dolphin browser to iOS Safari (or Android’s built-in browser) for general surfing, too. I find myself laying in bed at night, reading my feeds just like they’re a magazine, now. It’s killing my book reading, though! (Although that reminds me, I like reading Kindle books on the Iconia more than on the iPad, too…again because its narrower and longer. Shorter lines but, I’m guessing, the same number of page turns.) I’ve moved from Evernote to Springpad because of their Honeycomb client, too.

Huh, so Feedly got my foot in the door but I guess I’m really gravitating to more and more Android apps. I didn’t realize that, really, until I started writing this.

Anyway I was wondering if I’m just weird, or if other people have gadgets that they love just due to a specific feature?

I still might trade in the Iconia for the Galaxy Tab when it comes out next month, but I want to see what the proportions are. I’m a little leery of switching at this point, to be honest.

There’re already several digital comics sellers who’ve set up house on the iPad so it might be a tough nut for Sony to crack, but I’d love to be able to buy a digital comic and read it on my PSP or my iPad, depending on what was handy.

Again, this was just a survey so there’s no telling how seriously they’re considering the idea. I just found it interesting that they’d even think about jumping to Apple hardware.

We had an appointment window of 8 am – noon today. At about 11 we got a call saying the tech was running late and he’d be here by 1. He got here about 1:20. Installation took until just about 5 pm. The tech was friendly and pretty helpful. In fact he was a little too helpful in some ways.

We still have Comcast service active and stuff on our Comcast DVR we wanted to watch. The FIOS tech disconnected the Comcast set-top box and tucked the Comcast cables inside the wall. This makes sense, really, but I wish he’d let me know he was going to do it. When the Comcast set-top box loses power for a length of time it sort of resets. When I hooked it back up, it didn’t have a signal back to the Comcast mothership and so couldn’t re-initialize the DVR features. So we lost all the stuff we had on the DVR (unless I want to remove the wall plate and fish around in there for the Comcast cable and drag it out). That was a bummer.

Anyway I’ll take all the stuff back to Comcast’s offices tomorrow and have them shut down my service immediately, I guess.

On the internet side, the FIOS Actiontec router replaced the Comcast cable modem and my LinkSys router. The technician dutifully transferred all the ethernet cables to the FIOS router, including an uplink to a hub I have. He pulled out all the now-superfluous equipment, leaving things neater than when he arrived.

However, in initializing the router he had to use my computer, and while doing so he installed some Verizon software without telling me what he was doing. I later had to reboot and had a EULA for this software pop-up when my system started. I declined to accept the EULA and removed the Verizon software. So far that doesn’t seem to have hurt anything.

I asked for the admin password for the router. The Tech was willing to give it to me, but we couldn’t get it to work. He called FIOS HQ and even with their help, the ‘correct’ password wouldn’t work. In the end he did a hard reset of the router and we logged in with the default admin password of password1 (in case you have a FIOS router, that’s how you get in… do a hard reset and use admin/password1).

I started asking him about changing the SSID and going from WEP to WPA and he pretty much admitted I was now talking over his head. He left me to “knock myself out” in setting up the router the way I wished, and headed to his next job. Yeah, he was going off to start a new install at 5 pm!

The ActionTec router has a clunky UI. I changed the password, switched the security to WPA, changed the SSID and started adding MAC address filters. Every time I added a new MAC address to the filters, it seemed to turn off security. Happily I noticed this and could turn it back on but had I not, I would’ve left the wireless network totally open.

The FIOS TV Guide/DVR is a horror show. I really hate it. Everything feels like it’s 5 menu options deep. The search kind of sucks and they overload you with information. When I’m looking for a show, I just want to know when it’s on and what channel, I don’t need a link to search on everyone who is a cast member.

But what really puzzles me is that the tv guide seems to be showing me information from last week. So the episodes of Eureka and Haven that are on tomorrow night have the descriptions from the episodes that were on last week over on Comcast! Maybe the guide just needs time to update.

With the Comcast DVR now dead and nothing on the FIOS DVR yet, I fired up the Roku…but it wasn’t getting an internet connection. Hmm. Tried the PS3 and again got an error. Oddly it was getting an IP address but having DNS issues. After some fiddling around I just ran through the network connection wizards on both devices, essentially setting them up like they were new. That seemed to clear up the problem on both of them. But it was weird.

In the end we turned to Hulu Plus on the PS3 for some dinner TV watching. The first attempt, the Hulu+ feed started jerky and then just slowed down until we were getting an update about every 5 seconds. I exited the application, re-entered it and had better luck. I never saw this problem with Comcast, FWIW.

After dinner I decided to fire up OnLive to see how well that worked with my supposed 25/25 FIOS internet service. OnLive ended up giving me a warning that my network connection was dropping frequently and my experience might be sub-par. I went ahead anyway, started playing. Gameplay was jerkier and laggier than I’ve ever seen it while using Comcast, and eventually OnLive just gave up. It told me my internet connection wasn’t good enough to support OnLive and dumped to desktop.

I rebooted my PC (which was when I saw that EULA and subsequently removed the Verizon software) and tried OnLive again. It was better, but still didn’t feel as solid as it did on Comcast.

That’s how far I’ve gotten. Compared to Comcast, FIOS has an uglier user guide and less reliable internet, at least so far. InternetFrog says I’m getting 22 Mbps down and 8 Mbps up as I type this at 10 pm. So sheer download bandwidth seems fine but it seems like packets are dropping somewhere when using Hulu+ and OnLive. And 8 Mbps up? When I’m paying for 25? That’s pretty bad.

I probably won’t be truly happy with FIOS until I get the first bill and save money over Comcast. Right now it just feels like we’ve undergone a lot of headache for no real benefit. So far, I’m not a fan of FIOS. I’m hoping that changes.

Anyway, after reading that piece, it seemed like a good time for another (mostly) pro-iPad post.

The other day Apple released a minor upgrade to the iPad’s OS. It was supposed to address wireless connectivity problems a few people were having, as well as some other minor fixes. Thursday night I decided to install the update.

Here’s the non-pro-iPad part of the post. My iPad can take *forever* to backup. Some google-research indicates that this is a semi-common problem for Windows 64-bit users and depends on what apps you have on your iPad. In my case I suspect it’s Wired’s app with its 800 megs of data. I’m not sure why this is but it might have to do with the number of files. My iPad backup directories take up about 1 gig of space but contain 18,000 files… no sub-directories. That’s 18,000 files in a single directory. That can’t be efficient.

Anyway, for whatever the reason it can take hours for me to backup the iPad. My solution has been just to not back it up. That sounds crazy but it isn’t. I don’t back it up but I do sync it (which takes just a few minutes). So I have all my apps and music and data synced to my computer. Backing up seems redundant to me. If my iPad crashes and gets wiped during a repair then yes, I’ll have to redo all my settings by hand, but then I can just sync all the apps, music, ebooks, data and everything else back over from the PC.

Except part of installing this new update was a mandatory backup first. Bleh. I started it at 7:30 pm and when I went to bed that night around midnight, it was still backing up. So Thursday night I couldn’t use my iPad.

And I was *lost* without it!! I really hadn’t realized how often I pick up my iPad in a typical evening until I didn’t have it available. Sure my books and stuff were on it so when I went to bed I couldn’t read, but even before then. When I’m playing on the Xbox or PS3 I have the iPad handy to check gamefaqs or just to look up random things that pop into my head, or to check in on twitter. When I’m sitting at the PC and waiting for something to complete, I flip on the iPad to poke at a game or something. When we’re in the kitchen cooking something new, the iPad is there with a recipe on it (though that wasn’t a problem Thursday evening).

The point is, the iPad has become a natural part of my lifestyle and one I use constantly. I use it first thing in the morning when I get up, and normally the last thing I do before going to sleep is read on it. I use it at lunchtime at the office. I use it during meetings at the office. I use it while preparing meals, while watching TV, while playing games. It is a constant companion and I find I carry it from room to room with me.

I wanted a tablet for a long, long time and now I finally have one and it really is everything I’d hoped it would be and more. And this isn’t Apple fanboyism… I bought an iPad because it was the first good tablet that hit the market. I’m still very excited about the possibility of a good Android tablet hitting the market, since I enjoy the more open environment of Android (which is why I have a Droid, not an iPhone…I had a choice when it came to phones).

That TechCrunch author missed the point when he bought an iPad as a laptop replacement. That’s not where the device shines. The iPad (or, presumably any tablet) as a computing device fits into the cracks and crevices of your life. As an entertainment device, it’s kind of its own thing. A super-sized iPod Touch? That’s not entirely inaccurate, but don’t downplay the super-sized. Would you rather watch a 13″ TV or a 52″ home theater? Bigger is better. I tried to read on my Droid Thursday night and while I could do it, the experience was significantly less pleasant than reading on the iPad. Of course you can get a Kindle or a Nook for reading, but then you lose out on all the other things the iPad can do.

I won’t be putting my iPad on Craigslist (at least not until after I get another tablet) and if mine was stolen or destroyed today I’d be at the store tomorrow trying to replace it. It’s as vital a part of my lifestyle now as my TV and PC are. Sure I could live without it, but I’d very much prefer not to have to.

[Edits for Meghan and Petter... *grumbles*]

But the geek in me had to try it. Not every browser is supported, but if yours is, you’re looking at ‘Molengo’ for the body of posts, and ‘Vollkorn’ for the titles. When you load the page, your browser is loading the font off of Google’s api servers. On a slow connection you might see an annoying flash as the font loads in…sorry about that. There’s a more sophisticated way to use them but I’m just screwing around, so…

There’re 18 fonts available initially, and you can see the list here. And Google has a nice primer up on how to implement them; it’s dead easy.

So without further ado.

We used to see Share on Facebook buttons on various sites. These were pretty straightforward. You’d click them and it’d stick a link on your Facebook “Wall” so your friends could see that you liked that link and potentially follow it.

Now we have the Facebook Like button. On the surface, it does the same thing. But behind the scenes it’s doing more. It sends not only the link to your wall, but certain meta data that the content producer has tagged the page with. You can, of course, view the source of the page and see what this meta data is, but many people won’t think to do that.

Let me give an example of why this could be problematic. Say you love Guild Wars, but you always play it alone or with one particular friend. You don’t think of it as an MMO, and you don’t like MMOs. In fact you hate WOW and EQ2 and LOTRO and all the other MMOs. They just aren’t your thing.

But Guild Wars you love, so you’re on a page about Guild Wars and you click the LIKE button.

But the site owner considers Guild Wars an MMO, and there’s meta data tagging this page as ‘MMO’ so when you click that LIKE button, you’re telling Facebook that you like Guild Wars and that you like MMOs. That data goes into your account.

The next week you go over to Steam to see what good deals there are. Steam queries Facebook and sees that, according to the data stored with your account, you like MMOs. So it shows you all the great sales on MMOs, and doesn’t show you the sales on single player RPGs, which is exactly what you’re in the mood to buy.

Facebook has misrepresented you. Or rather, you’ve misrepresented yourself because you don’t agree with the meta data on a site you clicked a LIKE button on.

Clearly this example is pretty trivial. But there are other situations where it could matter more. Worse, meta data could be set up to be deliberately misleading. There’s the potential for some pretty ugly shenanigans going on behind the scenes. Think of a political candidate’s page that’s been tampered with so that it has meta data saying you like the opposing party.

If this Like business takes off and lots of sites start polling your Facebook data, this could become a problem.

So I urge you, until we learn more about this system, to avoid using any “Like” buttons you encounter. Maybe Facebook has checks in place to prevent bad things from happening, but maybe not. And it still isn’t clear to me who can, and can’t, query the data associated with your account.

BTW, I put a LIKE button on Dragonchasers last night to see how it worked. I just want to be clear that I put no meta-data behind it, and I thank the folks who helped me test it.

And one last time, this is my understanding of the system as of right now. I could have some or all of this wrong. But just in case I’m right, I wanted to get people thinking about these issues.

I wrote more generally about Facebook’s new features at ITWorld this morning. You might find that post interesting as well.

[TEST REMOVED]

Be careful with those Facebook “LIKE” buttons. I’ll post more on this later.

That sentence didn’t register until this morning when I was proofreading. Click on the arrows. Clicking, on a video game system. That’s new. Now granted, there’ve been torturous control systems in console games before where you’d move a cursor via analog stick and then press a controller button to ‘click’ on an on-screen button, but the experience has always been pretty awful. And plenty of Wii games (my favorite Wii games, in fact) use a point and click interface. But doing a non-gaming task on the Wii really made me aware that I was doing something different.

On a computer, of course, we click constantly; the entire modern computer interface is built around moving a cursor and clicking mouse buttons. But the Wii is the first console that’s successfully brought that metaphor onto game systems. Presumably Playstation Move will do this as well. But not Natal (see below).

And then there’s the iPad, which takes its UI from smartphones. On the iPad there’s no concept of a cursor. You can still ‘click’ things but the feeling is different from doing so with the mouse where you see the cursor. You can’t roll-over interface items to get helper pop-up texts or anything along those lines [no, I haven't used an iPad, I'm extrapolating from using smartphones]. On the Android platform, at least, there’s even a change in outcome depending on how long you click. There’s clicking and then there’s “long press” that will generate different results from the same icon/link/on-screen item.

And then there’s multitouch, of course. The pinch to zoom function still feels awkward to me, but it feels like just the start of what’s possible. I have one app on the Android that does interesting things via tap-patterns. For example, if you tap-press (ie, a double tap where you ‘hold’ the second tap) you can then slide your finger left and right to zoom in and out. Really the possibilities are endless, though we’ll need some standards to evolve in order to be efficient (awkward though pinch to zoom is, it’s become a defacto standard that everyone understands).

I’m guessing the Natal experience will be closer to the iPad than to a PC. With the whole “body as controller” I can’t imagine MS putting a cursor on-screen, though maybe they will. (In some cases they may have to.) I think the strength of Natal will be more in ‘gesture controls’ rather than on-screen buttons to be pressed.

I don’t have a real point to this post, I’m just pondering… as game consoles become more generalized devices, they’re borrowing from other devices and/or evolving their UI. At the same time the iPad (and the Android tablets that are soon to come) are establishing a completely different paradigm.

So what does the future look like? Will the “mouse & pointer” combo become some quaint idea of yesteryear? Probably not. Touch interfaces are wonderful for devices that you hold in your lap or that lay flat on a low table, but as soon as you have a vertical service it’s been shown that fatigue sets in pretty quickly with touch interfaces. Any time you have to manipulate a device above heart level it becomes an issue over time. For a fast transaction like using an ATM machine you’d never notice this, but in an hour long touch-gaming session where you have to hold your arms up to manipulate the game, you’d definitely feel it. Lowering the screen, of course, leads to neck strain and back problems.

It’s an exciting time and I feel like computing/gaming/human-machine interfacing is poised on the cusp of a major upheaval; one which will lead to improvements in the way we manipulate these devices that we’re so enamored with.

Thanks to GraceMcDunnough for tweeting this!