What It’s Like To Be An Asian Gamer – Part 1
Interesting developments, My 2 cents worth March 26th, 2009
So, I’ve recently started writing for DarkZero, a site about video games that covers news, reviews as well as articles. I stumbled upon it through N4G and really liked the setup, so after emailing them, I (surprisingly) got into the team over there. Really excited to be part of the staff. 
Anyway, as my first piece over there, I decided to rant about how annoying gaming can get when you’re located in Asia. I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time, but never really wanted to do so on a personal blog of mine since very few people would read it anyway. However, hopefully by writing about it over at DarkZero, it’ll gain a little more exposure.
Of course, the annoyances of being Asian in the online world hardly stops at gaming, there are a whole ton of other annoying things I’ve encountered throughout the years. But that’s a story for another time, for now, here’s a short excerpt from my post as well as a link to it.
Read more @ http://darkzero.co.uk/blog/what-its-like-to-be-an-asian-gamer-part-1/
Problems Playing Online
The biggest example? Game servers. Every single time I refresh my server browser in practically any game, I’ll see dozens, if not hundreds, of USA servers available. Of course, living on the opposite side of the world means it’s impossible for me to play on those servers, seeing as how I’ll definitely have a ridiculously high ping. Of course, the same applies to UK servers as well, though there are probably slightly fewer servers available, but it’s still a substantial amount.
In contrast to Singapore, it’s a pain to search for game servers that give me a reasonable enough ping. And it’s not just small games that have insufficient Asian servers, I’m talking about the major, so called Triple-A titles that don’t have enough Asian servers as well. When Left 4 Dead was first released last year, I almost always had to host games locally just so that I could play without any latency. But then again, my computer itself then proceeds to lag because I’m hosting the game. It wasn’t until roughly a month later that a group of Singaporeans managed to sponsor a couple of servers for us to play properly. However, the demand for local servers was so high that they were almost always full as well and I had a hard time trying to play online.
For Team Fortress 2, I can count the number of servers available on 2 hands. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare? I can count the number of servers available on just 1 hand.
This problem isn’t just present in Singapore. For example if you went over to Game Tracker and searched for Call Of Duty: World at War servers:
Country
Population
Number of Servers
USA 303 million 1375 UK 60 million 505 In comparison:
Country
Population
Number of Servers
China 1.3 BILLION 8 Japan 127 million 5 Korea 47 million 4 Malaysia 25 million 1 Not to mention Japan and Korea are probably the two Asian countries with the most active gaming communities. Oh and at the time of this writing, only 1 out of the 8 Chinese servers have 29/38 people playing, the other 7 are completely empty.
Thus, you can see how frustrating it is for us to come online and see people discussing about how great the multiplayer aspect of a certain game is, yet we’re simply unable to enjoy them in the same way.
The Power of Social News Sites
My 2 cents worth March 20th, 2009
Like any other blogger, I’ve always been searching for ways to drive more traffic to my blog, be it through SEO or whatnot. However, in almost every article I’ve seen providing tips on how to drive more traffic to your blog, almost all of them suggest using social bookmarking websites, whereby you submit your stories to a site such as Digg or Reddit and hope it reaches the front page by sheer popularity. Very few articles will eventually reach the front page, and it’s not easy to get there. But if you do, the rewards are pretty substantial.
Luckily for me, I got lucky a few weeks ago and my post on “Why Quake Live Will Be the Best FPS Ever” got to the front page of N4G, a social news site for gamers. You have no idea how excited I was as I watched my view count shoot to more than a thousand on that day. Previously, I was averaging 5 to 10 posts a day at best. I was elated no doubt, but afterwards, in retrospect, there are a few lessons to learn from this about such sites.
- Sensationalism – I never noticed it when first submitting the post, but a sensational and outrageous title was definitely the primary reason why my story managed to reach the front page. Some people probably couldn’t wait to read the article so that they could argue with me about how Killzone 2 was tons better. Others on the other hand were glad someone shared their taste.
- Don’t expect to get loyal readers – My view count only shot up for that day to more than a thousand, the next day it was a few hundred, by the third day my stats were back to previous levels, only slightly higher. And they’ve been like that all the way. I’m doing a little better now, averaging 10+ views a day, but nowhere near good yet.
- Most people don’t bother reading the entire article – I know this because I actually wanted to test if people bother to click on those “For more information, read this post” links. So when I realised my story had hit the front page, I hurriedly wrote up another short post and linked to it at the end of my main story. In the end, I had 1250 views for the main story and only 70 views for that short post at the end of the day. Sure, some of them probably saw the link but didn’t bother clicking it, but the fact that only 5.6% of the original readers bothered to read on for more information shows how people don’t really bother much.
- Quality doesn’t matter – Seriously, when it comes to getting traffic from social news sites, the quality of your post itself doesn’t matter. People have no idea what to expect from your post except from your title. No matter how good your post is, it is highly unlikely that people are going to add your site to their RSS reader just because they liked your one post. So, you’re going to get traffic regardless of whether you can spell simple words.
- People can get A-N-A-L – So, after I found out how useful social news sites could be to gain traffic, I submitted another one of my posts, which in my opinion is much more informative and interesting, and is a post which I really want people to read. However, it got rejected by someone because “article is a month old”. Here’s the thing, my post on Quake Live was almost equally old, yet no one bothered to report it. Yet for some strange reason they decided to do so with this post, and I have no idea why, nor do I have any control over what they want to do.
In conclusion…
Are social news sites the best way to gain traffic? Definitely not. You have no control over how your story does, and even if you are successful, you’re not going to gain any loyal RSS subscribers from that. However, it definitely does help with your SEO in my opinion, because after that day, more people have reached my blog from random search terms than before. And I’ve definitely seen more people visit my blog on a daily basis, though it’s still pretty inconsistent, and I have a very small reader base. Most of them probably reached via search engines and only bothered to read that one post.
In conclusion: trying to drive traffic to your blog can be a pain in the ****.
Tags: blog, digg, frontpage, reddit, seo, social news sites, tips, traffic
My Obsession With Card Tricks
Random Musings March 18th, 2009
So I’ve got a one week break from school now, and thus far the majority of my time has been spent with cards in my hand. Just regular old playing cards, but I’ve been practising like mad to try and make them do interesting magical stuff. It sure isn’t easy, and you really gain inspiration from those masters of card magic on Youtube. In fact, if anyone knows of a great close-up card magician whose performances are widely available on Youtube, please leave their name in the comments, I’ve personally only been watching Bill Malone.
Now, my obsession with magics starts with and ends with playing cards. They’re really the only form of tricks I’d bother learning and practising. They might not be the most effective form of magic, but they’re still the most believable. Most other close up magic requires gimmicks that won’t hold up to inspection, but cards are more or less the only thing with which you can make wonders occur but yet make them seem like completely oridinary cards.
That being said, it sure is hard work (as with everything else) to be able to do any trick well. It will reach a point where your hands will even start to hurt from handling the cards too much. Alas, I have no choice but to keep practising. Thank goodness I’m only doing it for this week.
I’ve even gone to great lengths to purchase new decks for the fun of it. I really think collecting playing cards could become a hobby of some sort, what with all the cool styles ellusionist keeps churning out. From transparent ones, to black ones, to plastic ones, etc.
Enough typing for now, time to go back to practising.
Tags: card tricks
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, STUPID Apple (iPod Shuffle)
Interesting developments, My 2 cents worth March 12th, 2009
So my exams are finally over, (hurrah) but I come back to find Apple introducing a new iPod shuffle.
To me, this is Apple’s stupidest/dumbest/lousiest/crappiest/most idiotic product in its 32 years of existence.
No controls = only Apple’s earbuds
This, to me, is the epitome of stupidity. You don’t allow your consumers to use their own preferred earphones because you decide to take away ALL THE CONTROLS, COMPLETELY.
The very fact that the iPod Shuffle is lacking this “feature” makes it completely inferior to every single other MP3 player on the market, both past and present.
Do they really think customers will be attracted to buying something which has no controls and which you can only use with Apple’s earbuds? For people like me whose ears just won’t earbuds to stick to them without falling out every 5 seconds, it’s impossible for me to use the new iPod shuffle. The fact that they’re probably going to release an adapter that adds a remote doesn’t help things because
- I hate using remotes, they’re just clumsy and gimmicky
- I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT
Think about it, I have to pay to be able to control my MP3 player, and not to mention in a way which I detest.
It’s smaller… WTF?
Seriously, did they think the previous iPod Shuffle was not small enough? To me the previous iPod Shuffle was pretty darn good, it was just the right size, felt solid enough, and had a clip. All you could ask for was more capacity, which Apple could add over time.
But come on, was there really a need to make it smaller? What’s the point, are people really going to get all excited over it because it’s like 1 or 2 cm smaller? I certainly don’t need it.
I don’t want someone talking in my ear
Basically, Apple came up with this “brilliant” idea that a robotic voice would read to you the title of your song. I used to own a shuffle and l-o-v-e-d it, and it never had this feature, because it’s completely unnecessary. The original tagline for the iPod Shuffle was “Life is Random”, which was perfect. The whole point was that you didn’t know/bother about what the title of the song was, you just enjoyed whatever music that started randomly playing.
There was never the thought going through my head that “damn, I wish I knew what this song was”, more often than not I already did because the songs I put in my Shuffle were all my top-rated songs which I listened to constantly.
All in all, I really don’t see the point in this new “VoiceOver” feature.
Imagine this conversation…
Customer: Oh this is interesting, what’s this?
Apple guy: This is our new iPod Shuffle!
Customer: Oh I see… wait there aren’t any buttons?
Apple guy: Yup, that’s right!
Customer: So it has a touch screen or something?
Apple guy: Nope!
Customer: Then how do you control it?
Apple guy: Using Apple’s earphones!
Customer: Oh, then what if I want to use it with my own headphones? How do I control it then?
Apple guy: You can’t!
Customer: You’re joking right?
Apple guy: No! What’s wrong?! Look! It’s SMALLER!
All in all…
Apple’s going down the drain if they continue to produce products like this. Honestly, when I first saw the story about how the new iPod Shuffle has no buttons, I thought it was an Onion article.
Oh the horror when I found out it wasn’t…
Tags: apple, fanboys, ipod shuffle, sucks
Taking A Break
Off the Beaten Track March 8th, 2009
Unfortunately, this entire week will be full of exams for me, so I won’t have time to update this blog.
Fret not though, I plan to make a pretty massive post about social news sites like Digg and N4G, which will definitely be useful to anyone who wants to drive traffic to their blog, so watch out for that.
For now though, off to go study.
Stupid Firefox
Random Musings March 7th, 2009
So I booted up my computer today, tried to launch Firefox and was greeted by the Update window. Without thinking twice, I hit update and even skipped past the part where they told me some of my plugins would no longer work. I never really bothered to check that list because most of the plugins I have are disabled and the ones I actually use are the ones that are always updated because they’re used by everyone.
Unfortunately, I had completely forgotten about one of the plugins I use everyday called keyconfig. What it basically allows you to do is quickly change the keyboard shortcuts used within Firefox. There’s been a long standing bug with Firefox on the Mac whereby it doesn’t allow you to change any keyboard shortcuts from withihe System Preferences as every other program does.
For some strange reason, the moment I restarted Firefox with 3.0.7 installed, my keyboard shortcuts were acting weird, and it suddenly hit me that keyconfig no longer worked, which I found really strange. Why would a plugin not work after a simple 0.0.1 update? Turns out there was more to that tiny update than a usual minor update. So here’s a warning to anyone:
DO NOT UPDATE FIREFOX TO 3.0.7 IF YOU’RE ON A MAC AND USE THE PLUGIN “KEYCONFIG” AS IT WILL NOT WORK AFTERWARDS.
For those of you thinking “it’s no big deal”, ask around and you’ll find out how crucial keyboard shortcuts are to some of us. It really speeds things up even for the simplest tasks.
All in all, I have no idea why Firefox 3.0.7 causes this to happen on Macs, but Mozilla really has to fix this soon 
Apple’s Obsession with Coverflow
My 2 cents worth, Random Musings March 2nd, 2009
Let’s face it, Apple has always been obsessed with being as sleek as possible when it comes to their hardware and providing as much eyecandy as possible when it comes to their software. They have a knack for introducing products that will Wow the public while making Mac lovers drool over the most recently overpriced product they released.
Thus, it was hardly surprising when Apple purchased Coverflow from an independent artist back in 2006. Coverflow was originally an additional plugin to iTunes, which did exactly the same thing it does today: showcase your album art in a very stylish and sleek form, precisely what Apple loves. When Apple first bought it, all they initially did was make it a default feature in iTunes, but as time went by, they tried to introduce Coverflow to anything and everything.
Everytime I watched Steve Jobs introduce a new product or iPod at keynotes in recent years, he’d always reach the part where he shows off Coverflow for the umpteenth time. Everytime he tries to wow everyone with it, I’m busy cringing in front of my computer screen going, “Not this stupid thing again…”
The truth of the matter is that Coverflow is nothing more than a gimmick. I use it for like 5 seconds now and then just to scroll through all my album art really really fast, because it really does seem cool! For literally 5 seconds that is, after which I imeediately switch back to the much more functional list view.
And now, with the latest beta version of Safari, Apple’s default web browser for the Mac, they’ve done the unthinkable: shoehorning Coverflow into a web browser.
This really is the last straw.
Does Apple REALLY expect people to use it to browse through the history of the sites they’ve browsed? Personally, I almost never look at my history, except when I need to go back to a site whose URL I forgot on the rare occasion, I’ll do a quick search and be done with it.
What does Apple expect us to do? Get bored with web surfing and so we turn to surfing through our history for the fun of it?
Get real. Practically no one uses Coverflow on their iPods or iTunes, where we actually get to see some pretty cool album art fly by. But honestly? Watching snapshots of websites fly by? Nu-uh, not for me.
Tags: coverflow, safari beta
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