Blizzard’s Real ID system

So there’s a huge controversy going down in computer gaming community at the moment. Blizzard has decided to introduce Real ID into its web forums. This is basically a policy to force everyone to use their real names when posting. Blizzard’s main rationale is to prevent trolling.

For a company which has had an enviable track record with releasing blockbuster games, Blizzard appears to have misstepped and the PR backlash has been considerable. The original announcement made in Blizzard’s forums has spawned over 1500 pages of replies (and counting). The news has been reported by the gaming media, as well as mainstream media.

Gamers have used aliases since forever. It’s simply a part of the culture – no one ever really plays games online with their real names. Even when a bunch of friends sit in a room and play LAN games with each other, they still use aliases in game. Stripping this anonymity is something that goes against the grain of the culture.

Concerns have also been raised about online safety – some gamers are not the most balanced of individuals, and the emotions that can crop up in a game can spill over into the real world. There are periodic accounts of gamers who felt they were wronged in a game, take their grievances into the real world and end up finding and stabbing their opponent.

Women also have concerns for their safety, and a poster on 4chan unwittingly demonstrated the point.

I wonder if Blizzard will reconsider? I mean, all this just to prevent trolling?

  7:50pm  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Korean APM rates in Starcraft

So in Korea, you probably know that they have professional Starcraft gaming leagues. It’s pretty much a national sport, and the best athletes there make a fairly lucrative living. Yes, after watching this video, you will see some justification behind calling them athletes. APM, or “Actions per Minute” is one metric of gaming skill and it indicates how quickly you can press buttons.

During the Starcraft 2 beta, after 30-40 games, I averaged about 30-35 APM, maxing out at 50-60 during bursts of activity. The best Korean professionals can sustain average rates in the low 300s. Watch the video, it’s insane.

  7:23pm  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  • 

Ninja, wat?

  9:31pm  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Limbo legend

Watch this guy limbo under a bar that’s as high as a beer bottle:

  9:31pm  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

You are what you can say

It’s known that language shapes the way people think, but the development of a new form of sign language in Nicaragua has allowed scientists to examine this in a more controlled way. They gave two groups of signers a spatial test. The first group were older, and had learned a less evolved version of the sign language when they were growing up which lacked some spatially-related concepts which developed in the language later on.

Pyers explains, “The first-cohort signers find these tasks challenging because they do not have the language to encode the relevant aspects of the environment that would help them solve the spatial problem.” She added, “[They] did not have a consistent linguistic means to encode ‘left of’.”

This is a fascinating result, especially since the first group of adults were older and had been signing for a longer time. It’s clear evidence that our spatial reasoning skills depend, to an extent, on consistent spatial language. If we lack the right words, our mental abilities are limited in a way that extra life experience can’t fully compensate for. Even 30 years of navigating through the world won’t do the trick. And they may never catch up, even though the language they invented has advanced – after all, some studies with American Sign Language suggest that people who learn spatial terms later on in life never master them.

  10:35am  •  Science & Technology  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Dr. Lawyer, Esq.

Someone has started a Facebook group to try and get lawyers addressed as doctors (because a JD stands for Juris Doctor, in the same way MD stands for Medicinæ Doctor). Here’s a tip: if you’re a lawyer and you insist on people addressing you as “Dr.” even the dentists (who have been trying to get the same appellation for years) will think you’re a tosser… unless you actually have a “real” doctorate like 99% of German lawyers seem to have. If you use “esq.” people will also think you’re a tosser. So don’t.

Interestingly, the ABA is fine with this:

Less than a year later, however, the ethics committee reversed course in light of the newly adopted ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility. Disciplinary Rule 2-102 permitted a J.D. or LL.M. (master of law[s]) recipient to use doctor with his or her name, the committee concluded in ABA Informal Opinion 1152 (1970).

  7:45pm  •  Law  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  •