My 4 year old daughter and I finally beat Portal this weekend.  Its one of the best games I’ve ever played, especially since I was able to get such a young mind engaged in a relatively complicated game.  We also beat all the advanced maps as well.  The nice thing about this game for kids is that it illustrates properties only explored theoretically in physics, such as dimensionality beyond the 3rd dimension, and using physics and conservation of motion to perform seemingly impossible feats.  I have to say, falling through the portals at terminal velocity is kinda exciting!

My daughter noticed, where I had not, that the main character is a female.  She insisted that it was her, and who am I to tell her otherwise?  But I have to say that in several instances where I failed to see the answer, she would point me in the right direction saying, “You have to jump on the elevator, daddy.”  It was priceless.

Despite the mild violence in the game, such as the remorseful and playful turret robots, she was able to assimilate them with little fear or anxiety.  Of course, every time I’d knock over the turret it would say, “I don’t hate you!", which she giggled over each and every time.  But the game became a quest to the end, to get our cake.  Despite the numerous deterrents, such as graffiti proclaiming the “the cake is a lie”,  we continued further and further down the rabbit hole, trying to get what we deserved after hours of play.  Of course, the weighted cube companion demise was a bit much, considering she’d become attached to it as we went through level 9.  We had to have a long discussion incinerating the cube at the end of the level, but she finally submitted for the good of the quest, and the promise of chocolate cake.

In the end, I won’t spoil it for you for those who have not had a chance to play it, but we found something more than what the game offered us, despite tantalizing us with sweet confections.  When we finally beat the game, the look on my daughter’s face was priceless.  I’ve never seen that much joy and excitement upon completing a game, but anyone I’ve ever known.  And now, we can play the game over and over again, laying on the couch, side by side, trying to find that elusive cake.

Well done, Valve.

Earlier I blogged about my feelings on games such as Grand Theft Auto and how that sort of unnecessarily violet games causes mixed signals in today’s youth.  My hypothesis is that this is merely a sign of our times.  Our society and culture, for the last 10 years, has been increasingly centered around a very “cold” world, the Internet.  Computer software development is at an all time high production rate, from business software to games.  Games are taking in serious dollars, such as Grand Theft Auto IV which took in $500 million dollars its first week, which is just under 100 million copies sold.  With gas prices soaring, its cheaper for today’s entertainment consumer to purchase a gaming system with Internet connectivity and a host of multiplayer type games, rather than going on to bars and clubs on the weekends.  Being a serious gamer, and having done the club scene for many years, I can get the same exhilaration playing a full party Halo 3 match sitting in my living room, as being sweaty and tired after a night of clubbing.

I have seen more and more people I know invest in home entertainment to combat the rising costs of traveling anywhere.  But, this means that people are spending less time face to face. What will this mean for our social structure?  I have met many people in the past few years that have, what I call, “Poison Fingers”.  A person with poison fingers is usually someone who is very mild-mannered in a face to face situation, usually accommodating and rarely raises issue in a meeting or group setting, until they get back to their computer and unleash a torrent of vile rhetoric in an email CC’ d to the entire free world.  Its like a digital form of passive aggressiveness.  But the point is that they probably would not have said anything unless it could be faceless.

So when we talk about empathy & apathy, we’re talking about the internal struggle within each of us.  Some have the ability to more overcome the logic of apathy and embrace the sensitivity of empathy.  Women are more readily able to be empathic where men tend to be more apathetic, by nature.  Though, that has changed dramatically over the millennia where men now have the “luxury” of being more sensitive, unfettered by the classical perceptions of hunter/gatherer.  We as a whole people have the same luxury, yet by and large we do not exercise it and when we do we’re not very earnest.  These are the hard truths we must tell ourselves.

“Sometimes the urge to do bad is almost overwhelming"" - Benjamin Horne Twin Peaks

I know that it is very hard to have true feelings for disasters half-way around the world.  We mumble words of regret for such tragedies, but do we really mean it or say it with true compassion. I'm sure some do and some just say it because its proper or socially acceptable.  So the observation is that the further away one is from an incident, the less they care, which is purely a logical reaction.  The illogical, yet more powerful reaction, is to have true empathy for the loss of life, no matter where it is.  We should have empathy for one another as much as we have for our own selves.  In the end we cannot survive as lone individuals.  Our continued existence, by necessity, requires our interactions, if only to procreate.  We need contact with others of our kind if only for a reality check. 

Of course, I love gaming as much as anyone, as my current Rockband addition demonstrates.  The paradigm shift we as a whole are facing warrants further attention by each of us, to ensure that we don't become some race of emotionless keyboard jockeys.  We've hosted a few Rockband gatherings are our house, and though you can play online, there's nothing like having a full band in your living room jammin' to More than a Feeling by Boston. 

I am a huge fan of Microsoft and I am not ashamed to say it.  I have successfully dodge and eluded the hive mentality of slamming on Microsoft on their world domination tour.   I am an avid C# coder.  I have been using the language since it first came out many years go.  I have no intentions of going back.  For a coder like myself, I am very excited about all the features of Vista and how tightly machines can be integrated if they are all on that platform.   I am also very excited about the new graphical features of the Windows Presentation Foundation that really allows for some beautiful graphics, especially coupled with Vista.

So what are all these crappy Mac commercials saying Vista has problems?  Well, I have to say I've been using Vista daily since RC2 and 90% of my problems have not at all been related to the operating system, per se.  The most significant problems I've had with my system have been due to poor support by the hardware industry, especially companies like NVidia who took forever to viable video drivers out for Vista and still will not support the NForce 3 chipset [shame on you, NVidia].  Everything else I had was working right out of the box when I installed Vista for the first time.  The experience was magical for me.

There are so many little features of Vista that no one has really focused on.  For the gamer and home theatre aficionado, there are numerous improvements to connectivity with media devices and a good amount of control over how you run games in the OS.  So here are a few features of Vista that I really like:

• Xbox 360 Integration: For everyone who is sick of moving stuff back and forth between media devices, the integration of Xbox and your PC music library is a must have for any geek.  Windows Media Center, a good wireless connection, and Xbox is a winning match!
• Ultimate: The ultimate version of Vista, though slow in coming, has some really nice add-ons.  Especially the Dreamscene. 
• Searching: The search engine in Vista is much better than anything I've seen to date for the desktop. I've never noticed a performance decrease by having this feature, and it is very nice to be able to save frequent searches as a link.
• Sidebar: I've used many flavors of Linux, and I always liked this feature for gadgety things.  I like to know how hot my CPU is, being an over-clocker.  Sidebar is even nicer because you can create your own gadgets and share them with friends.
• Task Scheduler: The new task scheduling feature is leaps and bounds over the old task schedulers included with Windows.  If you are a tweak freak and like to keep your computer running the way you want, you should definitely check this feature out.
• Tagging: One of the really unpublicized features of Vista is the ability to tag files and search on tags.  Again, this is tied to the search feature, but it warrants its own point since Tagging is the new metadata.
• User Interface:  The user interface itself is much more intuitive, once you get used to it.  It is certainly a far cry from the classic Windows interface, but it is easy to pick up if you spend the time with it.

I could go on, but its something you need to experience for yourself.  The underlying technology of Vista is far superior to previous architectures, in my opinion.  While Vista does have some bugs, like any new piece of software these days, it is certainly not something you should ignore.  I am running all of my games under Vista with some performance improvement over my XP system.  Games such as Oblivion and FEAR are running much smoother in Vista. 

The caveat to all of this is that for the most part, you need to configure your system.  You cannot expect Vista to tweak itself to your needs immediately.  I did spend a few weeks doing some clean up and finding the correct drivers for older hardware, but it was a small price to pay.  Now, I hardly have to do anything to my system to keep it running smoothly.

So before you believe the propaganda from Apple, give Vista  chance.  You won't be disappointed.