No, sadly not Newsnight - the game (but did you threaten to frag him?).
Arts minister Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries) is on tonight, explaining why the British games industry is.... well.... fucked.
TingleFan117 is dead.
Some stuff about Egypt at the moment. WAIT FOR IT.
Interesting in a massively boring way. I would watch but i doubt he will get a fair turn.
I can picture every fair and rational point being counter argued with a clip from manhunt or Columbine, totally ignoring titles such as Foldit (which recently jumped a hurdle in the cure for AIDs in case anyone missed it) or any hard figures.
I recommend changing the title thread to a more universal "politics and gaming" kind of thing, keep the thread going and start up another main stay type thread like the old place.
YES they started with the "10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don't" joke.
Oh ffs.
Ian Livingstone moaning about how bad ICT in schools is.
Eric Schmidt (inevitable).
Ooh, some old BBC Micro footage.
Ah, David Braben, That's better.
Quite interesting, but still, FAR too many references to "geeks" and "boffins".
Terms like this are part of the problem.
No-one has mentioned tax-breaks, but still (stupid geek references apart), a good feature.
LINKS:
Extended trailer, here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9612063.stm
Full thing will be on iplayer soon.
Braben's flogging a cheap GNU/Linux box:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
Did he mention Kinectimals and Disneyland Adventures?
Ed Vaizey needs to be badgered about Ofcom's leniency with BT over third-party cabling rents. I'm not saying the Government should pour money into optics, but I expect our Minister for Communications to be very vocal about the importance of a 1 Gb near future.
Some of us have to go back and live in that crappy country y'know.
Don't get me started on BT's fibre bullshit
I happen to live in Milton Keynes, BT's fibre test subject.
It essentially means you can get super fast Broadband then two houses down your on less than 2MB because BT can't be bothered to update to the sort of standard 10MB. They are also blocking Virgin and other competitors to the point of legal disputes.
If BT was a head, and it was on a curb i would stamp on BT until my leg broke. (thats not even including those god awful adverts)
Unfortunately your leg is out of range for our Stomp service. We can offer Tickle on a 3-year rolling contract with finger-shaping.
Fujitsu have offered to serve a few million homes with gigabit lines if BT are forced to offer a fair deal on rents, but if they're made to do that they'll go out of business because they can't compete in a free market.
If Vaizey made more noise about this then Joe Public's demand would grow. He won't do that; orders from above doubtless preclude him. It's up to journalists to hammer it out of him.
Not on iPlayer yet, interesting preview though.
more interested in the raspberry pi personally.
I saw the start of the show, and they said something about he was there to explain why our education system means we are no longer top games producers, and I couldn't be bothered to watch because if they think that's the issue then there is no point.
I'm falling apart to songs about hips and hearts...
Live Gamertag - Upper Echilon
PSN - UpperEchelon
The issue is that the talent is leaving the country, right?
Yeah, there is no incentive for them to stay here, unlike say Canada which actively encourages developers to go there.
I'm falling apart to songs about hips and hearts...
Live Gamertag - Upper Echilon
PSN - UpperEchelon
Well, the tories have kinda fucked the Art and Culture lot over this term. They axed the Film Council so I don't see what chance Gaming has. I just don't see it on the Tory agenda. Whatever that agenda is.
Exactly. I don't think you can blame the schools if there isn't an industry there to support them when they leave.
I'm falling apart to songs about hips and hearts...
Live Gamertag - Upper Echilon
PSN - UpperEchelon
There is an industry, it's just not here. I'd have thought that would be a huge selling point.
Did Livingstone expand on his efforts to grow and protect the UK industry by selling out to the Japs?
Comments on the main site is a great feature. There's all kinds of fresh meat over there that hasn't learnt what a stubborn cunt I am.
Learnt how wrong you are though. That was simple enough.
Let's not teach our kids things - good going Mod!
*Gets popcorn*
I think the thread's so long on the main page that it's broken - but the general gist of it is.
The world (Braben, Livingstone, the Government, Eric Schmidt) thinks that the UK IT curriculum is bollocks.
Everyone in the thread seems to agree.
Mod74 disagrees, with such great arguments such as "Formulas in Excel is more than enough programming concepts for most kids." That the UK needs to produce more people who "understand the difference between writing a story for the page and a story for a game", rather than "programmers [that] can go and work for Facebook".
But it's OK, because Mod74 "has worked in IT for twelve years and get a salary 4 times what a junior C++ programmer would." Puts Eric Schmidt's comments at the McTaggart lecture to shame doesn't it?
Whereas hahnchen is another typical business focused Tory minority interest loudmouth that thinks UK schools should be producing children to satisfy the tiny corner of the UK economy he needs to fill posts in.
Sod a rounded education, there's code that needs debugging.
The UK games industry is in a bad shape and look to government for help. Their response is to have the schools magically sort it out by changing IT courses, probably back to where they were 20 years ago. I'm amazed that people are buying this, but politicians do get votes.
Live / PSN : bigiain_______ Team Awesome
I think that's the difference. You think that software is a "tiny corner of the UK economy". And it might be, but only because we've totally neglected it.
Amazon is the world's greatest shop, it's only possible with the one of the greatest cloud infrastructures behind it. What Amazon web services offers is incredible - but we don't teach our kids about this, or how we can use that to launch our own platforms. We teach them about Microsoft Excel.
Everything is going tech, it's irreversible, and it's inevitable. Britain has some of the biggest banks in the world (we probably fucking own them now as well), but the future isn't for the bankers. The future is in companies like Square and Paypal - whose innovation isn't some pinstriped old boy entitlement banker douchebaggery, but in secure software and scale. Industries that don't have anything to do with software are going to have everything to do with them.
Mod74's idea of a rounded education, is one that ignores this.
I don't think it's taking it back to where it was 20 years ago. Take a look at Eric Schmidt's MacTaggart lecture - some of it is summarised at http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/26/eric-schmidt-chairman-google-education
Google isn't begging Britain for tax breaks (it does pretty well out of ridiculous Irish ones). James Dyson isn't scrambling for government intervention.
I couldn't give a crap about the games industry. I do care about education. Our IT curriculum is not keeping up.
I'm not ignoring this at all. I'm simply saying there are many many interests that think their interest should be being taught at school.
I'm saying that (genuine) programming is a highly specialised activity and isn't a career that's open to anyone just because they've been taught it. Just like art, just like football, just like ANY subject.
I'd advocate a basic grounding in something relevant. That might be games making in a simple editor or writing Excel macros or some Javascript. For some kids it will take, for most it won't. The more interesting the project the better.
It's very narrow minded to say the only way to make a career in IT is to be a programmer. The GCSE needs to cover many related and dependent technologies. The clue is in the name.
*picks up comically oversized fizzy drink*
*slurp*