Sunday, January 31, 2010

Strategy games, good for the brain

Strategy games are games that involve well strategy. They help you get your brain going because they often involve good decisions.

A strategy game is a game (e.g. computer, video or board game) in which the players' decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Many games include this element to a greater or lesser degree, making demarcation difficult. It is therefore more accurate to describe a particular game as having a certain degree of strategic elements, as in being mainly based around strategic principles. The crucial factor that separates this type of game from all others is that there is relatively little chance involved. All players have equal degree of knowledge of the elements of the game. There is no physical skill required other than that necessary to interact with the game pieces. Examples are English draughts, Chess, Chinese checkers, Stratego, Go, Shogi, Nine Men's Morris, Mastermind.

There is one big thing that you always need in strategy games, and that is luck. Most often times in strategy games things are hit and miss. Strategy (and tactics) are usually contrasted with luck, the outcome of luck-based games relying on probability. Games exist on a continuum from pure skill to pure chance, with strategic games usually towards the skill end of the spectrum. The word "strategy" is borrowed from a military jargon. It originally refers to planning at a very high level and often strategy games deal rather with planning on a smaller scale for which the word "tactics" is used in a military context. As you can see to be a good strategist it is more about knowing what your enemy is up to, instead of just going in and getting killed.

To conclude, strategy games are important because they teach you good decision-making skills which are very important later in life.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

The Discovery Channel, the world is just awesome.

The Discovery channel is a channel that shows people shows about science, advanced technologies, and the history. Few people in our school like, many don't. Too many, in fact. Oh well, can't change their minds.

The Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable TV channel that is similar to that of the National Geographic Channel and History. It was founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It provides documentary programming focused primarily on popular science, technology, and history as said above. In the U.S., the programming for the main Discovery network is primarily focused on reality-based television themes, such as speculative investigation (with shows such as MythBusters, Unsolved History, and Best Evidence), automobiles, and occupations (Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch); it also features documentaries specifically aimed at families and younger audiences. A popular annual feature is Shark Week.

On June 17, 1985, Discovery Channel was launched with $5 million in start-up capital from the BBC, the American investment firm Allen and Company, Venture America and several other investors. In the beginning it was available to 156,000 households and would broadcast for 12 hours between 3 p.m. and 3 a.m. with about 75 percent of the content new to American viewers John Hendricks is credited with founding of the channel and its parent company, then known as Cable Educational Network Inc, in 1982. Within five years, the channel's reach had extended to over 50 million households. It is still odd how things change so fast isn't it. In 2007 the top series of the Discovery Channel was Dirty Jobs, and Emmy-award winning Planet Earth, Mythbusters (best show ever), and Deadliest Catch. See it won awards.

To conclude, Discovery Channel is currently the most widely distributed cable network in the United States, reaching more than 92 million households, part of its global audience of 431 million homes in 170 countries and territories. Versions of the channel are seen in Latin America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, India, Malaysia and other countries. As you all well see Discovery Channel may end up as the most popular Channel on the planet, if it is I will laugh at the people at school.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Video games, how fun

Yes, yes, I know what you are now all thinking, addicted much. Don't worry I'm not going to write about Halo or Call of Duty 6. What I'm really going to talk about is how video games were made and how they were marketed. There, happy. Hopefully yes.

A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game is traditionally referred to a raster display device, but let's keep that a secret. To put in simple terms it is a disc with lots of pixels of pictures generated by the game developers. They also have lots of information in computer codes that not too many people except Tristan may understand. If you don't understand the even simpler terms I will force to put your head down in shame. I know you are, or maybe not... BUT DO IT ANYWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not going to dumbify it anymore.

Now on to marketing which is one of the most important steps for any game. Does the crowd, the people like said game. Well I usually can't predetermine that, but if a game has that trait it will be a successful video game. The three largest producers of and markets for computer and video games (in order) are North America (US and Canada), Japan and the United Kingdom. Honorable mentions are going to Australia, Spain, Germany, South Korea, Mexico, France and Italy. Both India and China are considered emerging markets in the video game industry and sales are expected to rise significantly in the coming years. It also depends on local preferences. If you're in Japan most likely you would prefer Nintendo games, like Pokemon and Mario the best. If you are in Korea you like Starcraft and other strategy games the best. If you live in North America you most likely love shooting, sport, and strategy games the best. As you can see each country loves a variety of games.

To conclude, video games have come a long way since the earliest games. Like that game where have two things and you hit a ball back and forth trying to score a point, and tic tac toe. To games that have many things that look so real. Now I wonder what effects will be implemented in the future? Will there be a Call of Duty 7 most likely yes, but I don't know. Hopefully there will be.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Statistics where would we be without them

Statistics show the world how much a percent of something there is, or the amount of certain things, to put into shorter terms something to do with numbers. Seeing the "Did You Know?" video defiantly did prove some things. First, during the course of the presentation the near 700000 songs that are illegally downloaded in five minutes which how long the video is. Second, which was what really amazed me is that India has more honor kids then the Americans have kids. Third, the amount of information that we send out on the Internet is mind-blowing: 4 exabytes to put that as a number, simply think of it as a 4 with a small platoon of zeroes (4.0*10 times itself 19 times). Lastly, Japan known for doing some amazing things with technology, but this is going over the limit. What they did was they created a fibre optic cable, with each strand able to send 14 trillion bits of information per second. That's sending about 175 gigs per second times 60 is 10500 gigs per minute which I think is amazing. These were in my opinion my favourite statistics of this video.

To answer the video's question of what all these statistics mean is quite simple. It means that we are making advances in technology. People of course always have a tendency to say, "Hey let's make this technology to make people feel better by make this faster and improving stuff." What is extremely dumb is even with these helpful advances in technology,most of them are useless. Like paint on most windows computers, and the social adaptations. You know that's all useless, all people really need in a computer is to do work. The only reason they add other stuff is because they either don't have it or they want the technological advancements in computers to seem like they're the better computer.

In conclusion, we have made many advances in technology even though some of our advances are kind of useless, but still companies still think they do have some sort of use. When will they learn you ask. They won't.