Some­where out in space there are oth­ers. Intel­li­gent life-forms. Beings from another planet. I’m con­viced of it. Con­sid­er­ing that our galaxy con­tains roughly 200 to 400 bil­lion stars and that there is an esti­mated amount of galax­ies equal to the amount of stars in our Milky Way – well, there must be aliens out there. It’s unthink­able that we’re the only ones in this vast uni­verse. More­over, think­ing this way shows an arro­gance and igno­rance that is sim­ply unimaginable.

I don’t think aliens have to look like us. They can, but they don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to. It’s obvi­ous that given the same con­di­tions we have on Earth they may look like us but in the end, that doesn’t really mat­ter. Even a slight aber­ra­tion in our evo­lu­tion could change their shapes result­ing in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent form. What really mat­ters is that we’re able to com­mu­ni­cate with each other. Every intel­li­gent life-form will even­tu­ally come to develop ways of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on a larger scale. Radio sig­nals it is I’m talk­ing about.

Earth is like a giant bea­con in our galaxy, send­ing sig­nals to outta space since the inven­tion – or shall we call it the dis­cov­ery – of radio sig­nals and our using them. Every pos­si­bly exist­ing civ­i­liza­tion a few light years away could receive parts of these sig­nals enabling them to draw con­clu­sions on us humans. Of course, they should be able to decode our “mes­sages” to do so. How­ever, math is the way to talk to aliens because it’s uni­ver­sal. I’m sure, pos­si­ble vis­i­tors won’t speak any lan­guage we know on Earth. If they still speak at all.

A great philoso­pher once said that “there is no greater illu­sion than the notion that lan­guage is a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between humans.” and I’m inclined to think so too. Just remem­ber how many times you wanted to express some­thing absolutely clear to you but your con­ver­sa­tional part­ner still shakes his head after the third expla­na­tion. Or when you say some­thing that is under­stood quite dif­fer­ently than was intended. Every­thing depends on inter­pre­ta­tion and con­text. Besides, lan­guages change with time. Sci­en­tific for­mu­las are revised from time to time but uni­ver­sal laws of physics, dis­cov­ered by obser­va­tion, stay the same.

Well, I won­der if I live to see humankind suc­cess­fully estab­lish­ing con­tact with extrater­res­trial life-forms. I’d really like to see if that kind of expe­ri­ence will change the way humans per­ceive each other. A rev­e­la­tion on this scale could change every­thing, cre­at­ing the world we see in Star Trek. Even if I can’t pos­si­bly imag­ine such a thing to hap­pen it is still nice to think of it. This would be an utopia I’d love to live in …

The folks over at Shack­news have pub­lished an inter­est­ing arti­cle on dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion. I tried myself on its mer­its here. They begin by focus­ing on the per­ils of this type of dis­tri­b­u­tion. Refer­ring to a recent exam­ple they show that par­tic­u­lar ser­vices may cease to exist. Indeed, that poses quite a prob­lem if it hap­pens quickly and unex­pect­edly. Frankly, I was in a rush writ­ing about its ben­e­fits lest I for­get some­thing, thus, I didn’t even think on that. Can’t be helped now, the rem­edy is over at Shacknews.

How­ever, they con­tinue with the Steam ser­vice which has become quite pop­u­lar ever since it has been estab­lished as a means of dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion. Now, even big pub­lish­ers like Activi­sion are going to come on board which clearly shows a con­tin­u­ally grow­ing sup­port for Steam. I don’t think Steam will pre­vail, though, at least it can’t in it’s cur­rent shape. There should be oth­ers pro­vid­ing such ser­vices rather than the devel­oper itself. As always, com­pe­ti­tion is healthy and helps shap­ing the mar­ket. Obvi­ously, con­sumers do have lotta ben­e­fits result­ing from a strong competition.

Yah, back again. I even learned some new things, thus, I’m all the wiser now. You have to know that I’m not exactly the kinda guy who’s deep into fam­ily things. I appre­ci­ate my fam­ily and with some mem­bers – besides my par­ents and my sis­ter – I do have some kind of spe­cial bond. And that’s it. A huge part of my fam­ily I don’t know and nei­ther do I want to get them to know. You see, every­thing was quite fine until my grandpa died and every­body went crazy.

He left a con­sid­er­able amount of money as well as a nice flat. And that’s exactly where the whole story became damn ugly. One of his daugh­ters (there are three daugh­ters and one son – my mother being the eldest of all the sib­lings) who hap­pens to be my god­fa­ther and her hus­band became greedy and it ended in much anger on all sides. I won’t go into details but suf­fice to say that it’s been a hard time for my fam­ily (on my mother’s side only). How­ever, from that moment on noth­ing has ever been the same.

I don’t know my aunts any more. They have changed way too much. Or is it me? I don’t know but I don’t believe the lat­ter. Of course I’ve changed. Change is the only con­stant in life. I don’t seem to know them at all. My uncle’s sum­mon­ing this week­end only proved that I can still talk to them but most are strangers to me. Actu­ally, I’m glad I moved from home to a city far away. They’re totally immersed in their small coun­try life and they don’t care about other things all that much. Sure, they talk about pol­i­tics and other mat­ters of pub­lic inter­est but in the end noth­ing mat­ters greatly to them. They fol­low the cus­toms as usual and they pre­tend to be good peo­ple by doing what the pub­lic expects them to do.

I don’t fit into such a life. I ques­tion and crit­i­cize, I’m skep­tic and I don’t take every­thing as it is. I’m not sat­is­fied with an exis­tence like that. Life has so many things in store for every­one of us I just can’t be sat­is­fied liv­ing in a small vil­lage pre­tend­ing there’s no other place I’d like to know. I won’t give up my dreams for noth­ing. I’ve got huge expec­ta­tions I’d like to live up to. I think, that atti­tude has widened the gap that has always existed between me and the rest of them.

I’m alone in this world. I don’t pre­tend. I accept things they don’t. They know most things I do but they pre­fer to deceive them­selves. Every crea­ture on this earth dies alone. I know because I’ve seen it hap­pen many times and I almost expe­ri­enced it myself. I’d rather face real­ity than make a farce of it for the sake of feel­ing bet­ter this way. It doesn’t hurt any­more like it did a decade ago. I’ve grown used to this soli­tude. Ah, enough of that. Every mus­cle hurts and I don’t wanna write anymore.

Yes­ter­day, I updated my blog and went beta. Today, I changed some details to fit into the greater pic­ture. I’m quite sat­is­fied with its new look but there are still some parts I’m not yet done with. How­ever, I don’t wanna bother right now.

Tomor­row I’ll visit my par­ents who’re liv­ing in a small vil­lage roughly 310 miles from my loca­tion. I haven’t seem ‘em for a while, almost half a year. How could I for­get – my uncle’s birth­day is to cel­e­brate so I hope it turns out to be a pleas­ant week­end after all. So long, guys.

Nowa­days, I’m a casual gamer. I’m way too busy to spend lots of hours on gam­ing as I did just some years before. No more spend­ing a whole week­end play­ing games on my PS2 or my PC. I don’t even feel this burn­ing need for enter­tain­ment just like I did when I was younger. Back then I used to play for about 18 hours every day. Ah, those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end …

Well, I have to admit that I’m not com­pletely with­out hope. Some games still have to be played, even if it means ignor­ing my imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment. Games like the Sands of Time tril­ogy, the lat­est install­ments of the Prince of Per­sia fran­chise. Games like Heroes of Might and Magic V, Deus Ex, and the upcom­ing BioShock. Being as it is, I’m still inter­ested in these vir­tual worlds who offer enjoy­ment and relaxation.

There has been talk about some­thing called episodic gam­ing for some time now. If you often watch TV series you should be famil­iar with the con­cept. There are n episodes fol­low­ing one giant story arc. Of course, you can’t sim­ply leave one episode out. They’re all heav­ily inter­con­nected, push­ing the big story on and on. This con­cept isn’t exactly new in the gam­ing sec­tor but I didn’t want to talk about its his­tory anyway.

Instead, I’d like to focus on pos­si­ble ben­e­fits result­ing from this type of games as opposed to tra­di­tional full-length games. So, what’s to expect from episodic games? There are already some titles out there which fol­low this approach – just think of Half-Life or SiN. First of all, the story can be told in a new way. A seri­al­ized nar­ra­tive does have some great ben­e­fits like major cliffhang­ers, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment through­out many dif­fer­ent scenes, and lots of twists and turns. Per­son­ally, I like sub­plots very much. They make things more real and give more depth to sto­ries if not exaggerated.

Apart from new sto­ry­telling tech­niques, there’s a tech­no­log­i­cal advan­tage too – devel­op­ers can tweak graph­ics and game­play. This approach seems way bet­ter than wait­ing for years to present the new inno­va­tions after hav­ing changed the graph­ics engine two times just to stay state-of-the-art. Episodic games can deliver a bet­ter over­all impres­sion with every new episode released. More­over, devel­op­ers can react to cus­tomer feed­back much faster and bet­ter and you can actu­ally see improve­ments. That level of flex­i­bil­ity isn’t pos­si­ble when devel­op­ing a full-length game.

Then, there’s a finan­cial aspect we’ve got to take into con­sid­er­a­tion. This kinda games aren’t only faster to develop, they cost much less too and they’re quicker on the mar­ket. Pub­lish­ing costs are cut down because the pub­lish­ers can save on man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing. Every­body with broad­band access can down­load the episodes when­ever they choose to. Con­se­quently, a cheaper price leads to a lower risk for con­sumers and increased uptake. (A whole series would be more expen­sive than a sin­gle game for about 60 bucks, though.)

Now, let’s get to my favorite point: Such a model will lead to oppor­tu­ni­ties for smaller enter­prises and, thus, strengthen com­pe­ti­tion. Big name titles take years to make and they often have bud­gets of sev­eral mil­lion dol­lars. So we usu­ally get long delays and more often than not these block­buster titles lack the amount of meaty gam­ing we would expect.

The way it looks now, episodic con­tent is the future. Dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion meth­ods are becom­ing increas­ingly mature which will allow us to down­load most of our games. New tech­niques allow game devel­oper to cre­ate smaller titles. This is only the dawn of episodic gam­ing and things are evolv­ing fast. Yeah, it’s a fast-paced world we live in …

I caught a cold over the last cou­ple of days. Pretty remark­able feat, that one. My throat hurts and I have to cough most of the time. It’s already get­ting bet­ter, though, even with­out tak­ing med­ica­tion. Well, it can’t be helped so I won’t com­plain about it.

Instead, I’d like to focus on movies. Today I had some spare time and I went over to the Apple site tak­ing a good look on what movies to expect in the near future. There are some movies that stand out from the crowd.

Renais­sance (out­stand­ing ani­ma­tion, I like the look of it)
Home of the Brave (even though I don’t like Jes­sica Biel)
The Foun­tain (I love Dar­ren Aronof­sky)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles (I loved them when I was a child)
Chil­dren of Men (sadly, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched)
The Pres­tige (Bale and Nolan make a good team)
Eragon (I absolutely love fan­tasy)
Trans­form­ers (who would’ve ever thought they’d do it?)
The Illu­sion­ist (Edwart Nor­ton rocks)
Fac­to­tum (you know Bukowski?)