innovation

But What If It Wasn’t Worth It?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, a friend once said she didn’t think any tech “innovation” in the last 15 years was worth it overall. Admittedly considering some of the innovations are supermassive web frameworks and electric vehicles that inadvertently catch fire, I sorta get that. But this brings up a larger question.

What is it we’re used to today that actually isn’t worth it?

This makes me think of my interest in Chinese history and philosophy. Watching Taoists and Confucians discuss good government, it was in context of feudalism, so it was “what if we feudalismed right?” Like maybe feudalism was part of the problem, even if some Taoists had a kind of “Anarcho-feudalism” in mind.

So how much of what we have today we think of is perfectly fine and normal is a bad idea we’ll need to get over? And I’m not talking the usual critiques of things like AI (which is easy), but other technologies and policies and the like.

Focusing America on the automobile is one that I think is a big mistake, even if I like having one. It’s led to racist zoning, sprawling suburbs, loss of public transportation, pollution, and the like. I’m not saying automobiles are bad, but man did we overdo it for various reasons.

Try to imagine if that hadn’t happened.

I’ve also wondered about the impact of parts of pop culture. Things I loved in my youth have become sprawling, money-sucking mega-franchises. Was it large company consolidation that we needed to avoid? Something else? Why is it now when I hear of anything Star Wars, Star Trek, or Marvel I just assume I won’t like it?

What was missed because we made another Star Trek?

In another case I definitely felt that too much of our world got driven by graphics. Systems get bigger, cards get larger, all so we can watch web pages that look like movies and play games that don’t look like games. A few years ago I found Team Fortress 2 (a fave of mine for ages) still runs off of CPUs and looks fine in its stylized way.

How many resources got poured into pretty? Maybe we just didn’t need as much photorealism?

I’ve also questioned office software. I mean I self-publish out of LibreOffice, which is basically Microsoft Word ten years ago. I’ve worked with tools that store enormous amounts of data no one cares about. Look I’m fine with graphics software getting more powerful (albeit again, needing the hardware) but otherwise? Not sure.

I’d like something that does its job with options, not has something that does so much more than anyone needs. Or maybe some software can be more modular.

Try asking what we’re used to now that kind of has flaws is something we didn’t need or needed less of?

Steven Savage

Channeling Innovation

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I came across this fascinating paper that suggests innovation is the result of collective interaction (shared knowledge, exchange of ideas, etc.). Think of it this way – we’ve got all this stored knowledge, cultural interactions, kind of a shared brain, that leads to innovation. People may carry it out, but it doesn’t come from them – a bit like channeling or “being ridden” in spiritual terminology.

Having worked in everything from medical research to tech to writing, I find the paper compelling not just for its citations, but how it fits my own experiences. I’ve watched creatives – including myself – “come up” with ideas that are the results of inputs and experiences, evolving into something. I’ve seen tech changed over the years, watching interaction across time and space result in great – and stupid – things that can’t be really traced to a single “cause.” The ideas may appear in people, but it doesn’t arise from anyone, but the time itself.

I’ve often been skeptical of people who think they’re some kind of linchpin of history. I know what goes on in my own head when I get inspired, and so much “isn’t me.” I know many people get where they are due to wealth, luck, the time, and so on. I know where my own luck and privilege has benefited me.

We may be the carriers of innovation, or where it finally manifests, but we’re not its owners – nor its masters as many a person possessed by an idea knows.

With this idea in mind (ha!), I’d like to take a look at something I’ve oft complained about – the lack of innovation and anything interesting in the tech industry in, well, the last ten or fifteen years.

Consider what happens if we believe that some Great Innovators are the source or all good things. We will seek these Great Innovators, pay attention to them, and then rely on them even if they aren’t producing good ideas. Because we seek them, anyone who fits the idea in their head is someone we listen to and assume they know what they’re doing. This of course leaves room for plenty of liars and grifters – maybe most of them.

Do that long enough and you not only lack innovation, you have a kind of anti-innovation. People with fame and money are not innovating, but now have the fame, money, and regard to propagate non-innovative ideas. The non-innovators can buy technology and access and even crush places where innovation originates.

Meanwhile, we’re not working on a culture and a world that increases innovation. We’re too busy looking for the Big Heroic Idea Person as opposed to a society where innovation can be realized. Everything becomes about finding heroes – which don’t exist – and things get less innovative and interesting.

It seems awful familiar, doesn’t it?

Steven Savage

Fear Of Mediocre Games

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Recently two articles on Kotaku came together in my head.  It may surprise you to learn this involved neither hit-gathering controversy, industry in-depthness, weird digressions or any of the other things it’s known for.  It involved two odd games.

The first was an MMO based on Painted Skin 2 (), called Painted Skin2: The Resurrection.  Pretty much it seems someone chunked out a fast-developed standard MMO.

Then I heard with a mixture of admiration and horror about a kind of Borderlands ripoff on the iPad, the amazingly generically named Star Warfare: Black Dawn.  It’s a Borderlands for iPad with an all female cast.  Frankly it sounds . . . half decent.

This got me thinking about other times I’ve talked to people in the industry.  The easy to adapt game engines you can license.  The way to reuse resources.  The fact that code reuse becomes easier and easier with tools, with retained technology, with easier sharing.

It’s pretty easy to make a game.

It’s pretty easy to recycle game elements.

It’s pretty easy to take pre-existing stuff and rush out a knockoff or adaption.

This, one may think, means more bad games.  I’m certain it does.  But here’s the thing I wonder about – if we should be concerned not about bad games, but about mediocre ones.

With good technology and engines, you can pretty much make a game with expected mechanics, decent physics, and acceptable graphics.  The artists and writing may be a bit of a push, but I’m sure anyone can find decent talent and modeling tools speed up the process admirably.  Some decent spit and polish and you have a playable, even enjoyable, but unremarkable game.

(OK, or ripoff).

You know the kind of game.  The kind you may play awhile, even do a few micro transactions for.  The kind that a reasonable price may seem a bargain – or you don’t care when you get bored with it.  The kind that is “good enough.”

I can conceive of a time where the game market’s problem is not endless bad games (I think in fact we’re getting out of a phase of lousy-mobile-game crazy).  The problem would be that we get a lot of mediocrity and ripoffs that are good enough to be distractions – and may even have some virtues despite their flaws.

That has my concerned.  I see this as a distinct possibility, and this would mean:

  • More confusing dilution of the market.
  • A “mediocrity effect” where it becomes hard to differentiate games and their virtues.
  • Reduction of effort by some developers.
  • High-speed “bandwagoning” that can in fact be technocratically managed to get things to market fast.
  • Certain companies adopting mediocrity as a strategy.

I’d rather not see mediocrity come to dominate/flood the game market, but I am concerned about it.  It’s not that I expect games to be “bad-mediocre”, or that I don’t fully accept starting from mediocre is good if companies keep evolving.  It’s more I can see achieving a kind of odd good-enoughness in gaming like that which has plagued other media, like . . . well at one time or another, everything.

Oddly, that concerns me more than a load of bad games.