the death of the arcade

A fun little blog post on the reasons behind the disappearance of the penny arcade. The thesis:

It all came down to the quarter [video game expert Mark] Cerny said. Arcade games had to squeeze enough money out of people to be worthwhile for arcade owners and game makers. But they also had to deliver enough play time to make it worth while for gamers to drop in their money. ... What remains today, Cerny says, is Japan as the single shelter for arcade gaming. And that boils down to their 100 Yen coin.

Of course, not everyone agrees, pointing to consoles, the internet, the existence of the coin loony in Canada (and yet, no more arcades), and LAN parties.

I was a huge video game fanatic from the late Atari through the early N64 years, and I have my own theory to add to the mix: console/pc technology eventually allowed home games to do things you can't do in the arcade model, and those new, irreplicable functionalities became ubiquitous in video games.

Consider, for instance, the first Nintendo. When it released with Super Mario Bros., there was also an arcade version of that game with slightly better graphics, as had happened with Galaga and Pac Man on the Atari. Same thing with ExciteBike and other sports games. I suspect this was an intentional arrangement so video game makers could keep both revenue streams going, and it was the model for a long time.

Then Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. These games were distinct from their predecessors in that they used methods of saving and recalling progress to allow a player to navigate a huge map incrementally over time. These two games felt bigger and more immersive than anything else that had yet come out, and they became two of the biggest selling, most popular franchises in the history of video games.

And the arcade was utterly locked out.

You may remember, then, that the arcade adapted, focusing on the things it could offer, specifically having lots of people in one place and having the space and equipment to house elaborate setups. Thus, arcades around the country stocked up on competitive fighting games (Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat), 4 person cooperative short adventure games (The Simpsons, X-Men), and simulators (Cruisin' USA). Meanwhile, they ceded the market for long-form adventure games and the nascent roleplaying (Final Fantasy) genre to consoles and the strategy genre (Command and Conquer) to pcs. It looked from my perspective like arcades had survived and were doing fine.

Then 64-bit systems started coming out, and it became apparent that the gap in graphics quality between arcade games and home games disappeared, and may even have inverted. Gran Tourismo was probably a more beautiful game than any arcade racing game. Golden Eye could match any arcade shooter.

Then came the advent of internet gaming. People could log into sites like Blizzard's battle.net on their computers, and then even on consoles, to play with or against other people. This new model meant that not only could people play 4 players splitting one screen like at the arcade, but one could play with any number of other players online, all having their own full screen. Competitive gamers found they could get more satisfaction from online first person shooters like Halo than from Tekken-style combat games, and the people who like 4 player cooperative play really liked the new Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs like World of Warcraft, which supports 5, 10, 25, and even 40 person cooperative play.

Thus gamers, the kind of the people who would go somewhere to blow $10 in a sitting over a couple of hours on video games, got hooked on game styles you can't replicate in an arcade setting. Look at the games people are playing now, Wow and Rifts and Call of Duty: Black Ops and Kill Zone and Dragon Age 2 and Just Dance 2. Only the last one could be feasibly rendered in an arcade setting, and you'd have to use a mat rather than the Wii controller. Also, you'd have to dance in public.

Alternatively, one could point to Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies, but you can buy those games for less than $5 on your smart phone. Who would pay to play them in an arcade?

we make great pets

An interesting pair of studies out recently on pets. In one via Discovery News, cats are found to be surprisingly good at reading, and manipulating, their owners:

The study is the first to show in detail that the dynamics underlying cat-human relationships are nearly identical to human-only bonds, with cats sometimes even becoming a furry "child" in nurturing homes.

"Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant," co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. "Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!"

For the study, led by Kurt Kotrschal of the Konrad Lorenz Research Station and the University of Vienna, the researchers videotaped and later analyzed interactions between 41 cats and their owners over lengthy four-part periods. Each and every behavior of both the cat and owner was noted. Owner and cat personalities were also assessed in a separate test. For the cat assessment, the authors placed a stuffed owl toy with large glass eyes on a floor so the feline would encounter it by surprise.

The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other's behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.

Then, in a separate study, researchers found that drug-sniffing dogs are not nearly as effective as believed. Often what the dogs are actually responding to is the subtle social cues of their masters. In fact, according to the study, dogs are more likely to get a false positive because of the owner's hunch even than because of the scent of sausage furtively left on a mark!

It is amazing how well we have molded cats and dogs for human companionship. On the other hand, it may be even more interesting how they have molded us. Take this article, for example:

Dogs, cats, cows and other domesticated animals played a key role in human evolution, according to a theory being published by paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman of Penn State University.

The uniquely human habit of taking in and employing animals -- even competitors like wolves -- spurred on human tool-making and language, which have both driven humanity's success, Shipman says.
...
Dogs, for instance, might have have been selectively taken in by humans who shared genes for more compassion. Those humans then prospered -- a.k.a. reproduced -- with the dogs' help in hunting and securing their homes.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to researchers yet, dogs and cats also reduce their humans' blood pressure, and do so even more effectively than blood pressure medication.

NFL lockout

A very nice writeup here of some helpful facts about the lockout, such as what the sticking points are and what will happen to the players, the draft, etc. if the lockout happens.

Charlie Sheen's a winner. Also, a hitter.

I don't know if Sheen's televised meltdown is the product of a bender or just an act. I don't know if he means the things he's saying. I don't know if this means he's through with TV, or TV's through with him, or if he'll be bigger than ever this time next year.

What I do know, and what's been lost in all the hubbub, and what we all need to remember before we become half-ironic fans of Charlie Sheen, is that he's a serial abuser of women:

In 1990, he accidentally shot his fiancée at the time, the actress Kelly Preston, in the arm. (The engagement ended soon after.) In 1994 he was sued by a college student who alleged that he struck her in the head after she declined to have sex with him. (The case was settled out of court.) Two years later, a sex film actress, Brittany Ashland, said she had been thrown to the floor of Mr. Sheen’s Los Angeles house during a fight. (He pleaded no contest and paid a fine.)

In 2006, his wife at the time, the actress Denise Richards, filed a restraining order against him, saying Mr. Sheen had shoved and threatened to kill her. In December 2009, Mr. Sheen’s third wife, Brooke Mueller, a real-estate executive, called 911 after Mr. Sheen held a knife to her throat. (He pleaded guilty and was placed on probation.) Last October, another actress in sex films, Capri Anderson, locked herself in a Plaza Hotel bathroom after Mr. Sheen went on a rampage. (Ms. Anderson filed a criminal complaint but no arrest was made.) And on Tuesday, Ms. Mueller requested a temporary restraining order against her former husband, alleging that he had threatened to cut her head off, “put it in a box and send it to your mom.” (The order was granted, and the couple’s twin sons were quickly removed from his home.)

So no, I won't be putting him on my Twitter feed, thanks.

McDonald's oatmeal

A surprisingly lively internet discussion has arisen from NYT food columnist (and author of the virtually comprehensive reference book How to Cook Everything) Mark Bittman's latest article on McDonald's new offering of oatmeal. Bittman, whose column is called "The Minimalist," is unimpressed:

The oatmeal and McDonald’s story broke late last year, when Mickey D’s, in its ongoing effort to tell us that it’s offering “a selection of balanced choices” (and to keep in step with arch-rival Starbucks) began to sell the cereal. Yet in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice.
...
The aspect one cannot argue is nutrition: Incredibly, the McDonald’s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. (Even without the brown sugar it has more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.)

Several people from my side of the aisle have surprisingly taken aim at Bittman's characterization of the nutritional issue, most notably Adam Serwer, who points out that at 290 calories McDonald's oatmeal isn't actually that bad on its own.

Here's McDonald's nutritional information chart. I'll point out that the oatmeal also has 5g of fiber. It would cost 5 points on the old Weight Watchers system, for those of you familiar with it. I find it useful because it considers calories, fat content, and fiber. 5 points for breakfast isn't bad. It's less than the whole wheat English muffin, egg, and tablespoon or 2 of cheese I normally have for breakfast (6.5 points).

Of course, the real nutritional threat of McDonald's oatmeal isn't what's in the oatmeal, but rather what's on the rest of the menu. Bittman is pretty close to the mark: in order to get the oatmeal, you have to get in line at McDonald's and then stare at a menu covered in salty, sugary, fatty decadence while listening to a parade of people ordering said decadence, at which point many people will succumb to the temptation of sausage gravy biscuits and fried hash brown disks and hammy eggs Benedict muffins and egg-filled, cheesy, bacon pancakewiches and whatever else they offer.

There's a reason every diet begins with cleaning out your kitchen and every "stop smoking" strategy involves no longer hanging out with your smoking friends. Willpower is not an infinite resource, and if you're faced with the choice your brain is hard-wired to prefer over and over again, you will not make the right decision 100% of the time. And of course, every bad choice makes it much more likely that you'll make that choice again.

from first responders to welfare queens

Ohio police and firefighters are learning a hard lesson this week about the loyalty of the Republican party toward its non-upper-crust supporters.

There's a reason your union predecessors sided with the Democrats, guys. The Republicans may love getting your votes, but there's no room for you at their table. It's the bosses' party, the party of the powerful and no one else. They've never made a secret of it, and you won't get any table scraps because you were their useful idiot.

What, you think your union is different to them? You think they give a shit about you because you protect their homes?

It's interesting how race has warped so many electoral dynamics in this country. Minorities and police, in particular, consider themselves at odds politically. And yet, viewed through an economic lens, it's clear that the Republican party is almost as implacably hostile to public, unionized employees like police as they are to black people and immigrants.

EDIT: Having slept on it, I don't actually think that last paragraph is true.

Mitch Daniels on drugs

Paul Waldman nails Mitch Daniels for his breathtaking hypocrisy on drug laws. It's certainly eye-opening to learn that as an undergraduate at Princeton Daniels was popped for possession of enough pot to fill two shoeboxes, along with LSD and prescription drugs.

Daniels got off with a $350 fine, which as Waldman notes is impossibly merciful by today's standards. If someone else were to do the same thing in Indiana, according to the Clark County prosecutor's website they would be charged with a class D felony, a crime punishable by 1/2 to 3 years incarceration and up to a $10,000 fine. That's just for the weed; we haven't even touched upon the acid or the pills.

We've talked about empathy before on this site. There's another side to empathy, though, there's what happens when you turn that empathetic eye back toward oneself; we might call it "awareness of privilege." Daniels recognizes that he made a bad decision and that it could have profoundly curtailed his future career prospects, but he doesn't seem to understand why he didn't have it worse. There's no consideration here of the role of his race, background, and port of call (i.e, Princeton University) in the incredible leniency with which he was treated, not to mention the privilege of having sown his wild oats before the days of mandatory minimums and enhanced drug penalties that his own party ushered in.

But, of course, Daniels enjoys all manner of privilege in other ways as well. He never had to worry about his career plans being derailed by pregnancy. He never had to attend a struggling inner city school or live in a neighborhood reduced to chaos by the drug trade. His parents could afford one of the finest universities in the country. Nobody assumes that he got into Princeton because of Affirmative Action, or that Eli Lilly was just filling a racial/gender quota.

Former Texas governor Ann Richards once quipped that George Bush "was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." The quote was so devastating in part because it's widely applicable to his entire party.

fun with numbers: Wisconsin edition

This guy does the honors for me:


I will add one small contribution to this conversation, though. In general, income taxes are withheld from each paycheck so no one has to pay it all at once. That means every adult's contribution wouldn't actually be $32 in one fell swoop; it would actually be $2.66 per month.

calling out kids

When I was a teenager, I was very religious. I also came from a place that held a very high regard for "chivalry." Partially because of these things, I held views and made decisions I would not hold or make today.

I don't like that Salon published this story. I read Salon, but I'm always aware that their articles are generally intended as grist for the liberal mill. They're intended to incite liberals and point out conservative idiocy/hypocrisy.

Not that I'm striking some faux-centrist "above it all" pose. I'm liberal. I read Salon because I like those stories!

In this case, though, the person whose words are put under the microscope for scrutiny and, ultimately, ridicule is a 16 year old boy of Pentecostal upbringing having to deal with a situation none of his peers in the state have ever had to deal with before (and, we should mention, with his pastor elbowing his way into the story with his medieval views about touching women in "familiar ways"). Sure, he made a decision I would not make, and made it based on moral/religious premises with which I strongly disagree. Nevertheless, he's 16 years old. He's just a kid. Does he deserve to be strung up by a nationally read magazine for failing to completely re-examine his beliefs and those of his parents, his home, and his church, with his pastor and Lord knows who else whispering nonsense about women in his ear the whole time, all before his 17th birthday? How many of us are ok with being held to account for our teenage beliefs and choices?

That being said, it sucks for the girl that she's not being allowed to prove herself and participate in the tournament she qualified for fair and square. You want to write that story? Cool, but make it about her.

party like it's 1955

Karen finds some examples of lessons from actual abstinence-only sex ed lectures. They're eye-opening.




I expected to hear misrepresentations of data on condom effectiveness, and claims that abortion makes you crazy. I did not expect to hear stories about how making suggestions to boys makes girls unattractive, or an explanation of how boys carry their books so as not to look gay. I think one of the less discussed problems with these programs is the stuff that's not directly related to sex, but rather to gender roles and aptitudes. Girls can't analyze things without their emotions getting in the way? It's boys who seek accomplishment and adulation, while girls really only care about relationships? What does that even have to do with abstinence?

The Choosing the Best course series, from which the knight story was pulled, claims to have already been taught to over 3 million kids. Speaking of, I looked around a bit for some confirmation that these came from actual curricula as opposed to some puritanical teacher speaking off the cuff, and I found the knight story referenced both in the company website's list of revisions, and also in the Waxman Report on abstinence education. The Waxman Report is very skimmable and similarly damning. I recommend a read.

don't become a teacher

That's the lesson from this article in the South Bend Tribune today. Take a look at it. It's a marvelous case study in choosing facts to make your audience jump to conclusions.

I guess it's always important to remember that journalists call their pieces "stories," as in narratives that conform to literary structure and tropes.

What the "story" is just begging us to take away from it, of course, is that Carol Wallace is an overpaid buffoon who doesn't give a hoot about the well-being of her students. No need for nuance when we're talking about the Tea Party's welfare queens!

Am I seriously supposed to believe that a 35 year veteran of the South Bend School Corporation with no prior suspensions actually tried to make two of her students fight, and then up and pimp slapped one of them for apparently no reason? The story is patently ludicrous.

I'll tell you what really struck me about this article, though: it mentioned her salary. I've never seen that before in a "teacher gone bad" story, and it's never been my impression that newspapers routinely report the salaries of their subjects. It also happens to be completely irrelevant, not to mention a breach of Ms. Wallace's privacy!

Anything to get more clicks from the teabaggers, I guess.

Of course, her salary is notable, though not for the reasons Kim Kilbride apparently believes. Carol Wallace makes $61k/year. She has a master's degree, has been with the same employer for 35 years, and works long hours while still bringing lots of work home with her. Her work is not only physically taxing, as she probably stands most of the day between 8am and 3pm, but dangerous seeing as she works in one of South Bend's "troubled" high schools dealing, as we see here, with belligerent adolescents.

Is there any other job requiring that much education, demanding that much of the worker, and compensating so little? She has about as much schooling as an attorney, the workload of a business executive, and a job similar in danger and environment to a prison guard. And after 35 years she makes $61k. The only comparable job I can think of, interestingly, is that of a public defender, a profession similarly -- though not equally -- reviled.

indirect language and relationships

Love these.

what happens when you let the internet vote

An amusing turn of events in Fort Wayne:

"you can't explain that"

And a hilarious new meme is born.

Forget You

I lost interest in the Grammys a few years ago when our resident pop culture-immersed friends skipped town, but this is admittedly pretty cool:

Cee Lo Green, Gwyneth Paltrow- Fck You (Live Grammy Awards)
Uploaded by wonderful-life1989. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Clearly, without question the best song I heard last year.

Super Bowl notes

Great game. Lots of great Super Bowls lately, in fact. It's nice to see the old Midwestern guard of the NFL in the big game, a couple of the teams we've seen so many pictures of from the '40's and '50's, grinding out rugby-style football in the snow.

Adding to some of the conversations around the TV:

*One sports writer apparently tweeted that the first fumble of Super Bowl XLV came from Christina Aguilera. Heh.

*Before coming to Green Bay in 2006, Charles Woodson played for the Raiders. He was even part of the team that played Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl.

*Woodson's injury was more than a dislocated shoulder. He broke his collarbone.

*We weren't the only ones noticing the uncanny resemblance.

*Aaron Rodgers' stats: 24 of 39, 304 yards, 3 TD, 0 Int, and that's considering 4 of those incomplete passes were beautiful throws dropped by receivers. How stupid good are those stats? Stupid enough, apparently, to give him the highest playoff passer rating in NFL history. The previous record holder? Former Green Bay QB Bart Starr.

People are talking about "the torch has been passed" now that Rodgers has his ring. Rather than Rodgers getting a monkey off his back, I think this was bigger for the legacy of Brett Favre. Now Packer Nation can safely say It Was All For The Best and maybe start the process of forgiving Favre for going over to the Dark Side.

*The Chrysler commercial: we heard it again this morning as NPR was discussing it. I've decided now that I didn't like it. I think it was effective in the sense that people are talking about it and still remember what it was advertising. I admit that. I also liked a lot about what they were selling. I liked the hard-scrabble city fighting to pull itself up thing. I liked the contrasts of gritty/refined, Eminem driving a luxury car and ice dancers in parks with smokestacks in the background.

Still, at the end of the day the commercial made the same mistake as previous Detroit ad campaigns: the message was "buy our cars because it's your patriotic duty" rather than "buy our cars because they're awesome."

*The meme. The picture:

American actors not "manly" enough for superhero roles?

So says this article, echoing sentiments I've heard elsewhere lately. What garbage.

First of all, since when have superhero movies relied on "manly men" for their stars? Was Christopher Reeve oozing with machismo? Michael Keaton? And while we're at it, would anyone describe Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Garfield as "manly?" Though comic books themselves tend to "roid up" everyone in them, superheroes aren't necessarily "manly" types. See Spiderman, for example, who's a nerdy college student by day. Superman's alter ego has to pass for a mousy reporter, and Superman himself conforms to a World War II era vision of masculinity that's quite different from our own.

Meanwhile, two of the most "manly" superhero leads I can think of off the top of my head are Punisher and Hellboy. That's Thomas Jane (Baltimore, MD), and Ron Perlman (NYC). Perhaps one could add Wild West-style comic book hero Jonah Hex to the list, and thus Josh Brolin (Los Angeles, CA). Yes, Wolverine should be included as well, but there are plenty of Americans here holding their own against Hugh Jackman.

It's not like there aren't still a shitload of Yanks playing leading/manly superhero roles. Possibly the biggest superhero movies of the last 10 years this side of The Dark Knight was Iron Man. That's Robert Downey, Jr. (NYC). Then there's the last three Spiderman movies (Tobey Maguire -- Santa Monica, CA), Ghost Rider (Nicholas Cage -- Long Beach, CA), Kick Ass (Nick Cage again), Blade: Trinity (Wesley Snipes -- Orlando, FL), the Fantastic Four movies (Chris Evans -- Sudbury, MA, Michael Chiklis -- Lowell, MA, and Doug Jones -- Indianapolis, IN), and the list goes on.

One could perhaps make the case that Brits and Australians are still overrepresented in superhero movies, but that's because they are so in all movies. Remember all the talk about the Australian invasion of Hollywood a few years back with Eric Bana, Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Hugh Jackman, etc.? The British, meanwhile, have always done pretty well for themselves in Hollywood. Canadians, too.

best sign in Egypt

Heh. As I write this Mubarak's getting his walking papers from the Egyptian people.

It drives home a good point: this isn't about the US, what government we want, or what we should do about it. It's their protest, their government, their dictator. I hope for democracy for their sake, and I think they deserve a better, more accountable form of government, but it's up to Egypt to decide who will rule, and in what form.

getting white and angry in middle America

Because my Facebook wall is covered in idiocy again in light of today's meteorological event, I will break with tradition for a moment to posit an analogy:

Claiming that a snowstorm disproves climate change is like claiming the obituaries page disproves overpopulation.

Trust me, your snide comment about Al Gore doesn't make you look clever.

Tunis, Cairo, and beyond

I guess the most important thing to remember right now is that we don't know what government is going to emerge from the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Some are hopeful that this is some sort of Arab Enlightenment, the beginnings of new democracy in Muslim North Africa. Others are worried that militant Islamists will have an opening.

Maybe it's simplistic, but I tend to believe dictators are always worth overthrowing. The possibility of democracy is worth the risk of Islamist takeover.