Idle Lumber Empire – Thoughts

Idle Lumber Empire – Thoughts

Byrichard

Many weeks ago I was encouraged to download Idle Lumber, but for weeks I didn’t bother to play the game. I don’t like new games, because I’m old, and I liked games where we bought the game, and then we could play for hours, with no instructions, unless we read the fabulous manual. With modern games they force you to RTFM rather than play and experiment.

Luckily this game isn’t awful, in this respect, so I have played it for two or three days and upgraded to new factories several times. I think the game play is good. It has just the right amount of actions to render it addictive. Until you take an overnight break and find that you need to tell the lumber trucks to go and pick up lumber every few minutes, and then you see that it’s a pay to win game.

You have a set number of actions you can do, and then you need to do boring, repetitive tasks, over and over, for hours. That’s why the game feels unhealthy, and addictive, rather than an actual game. I want games that allow you to do new things, to progress, and not to need to pay a few francs here, and a few more there. I want games where you play, without having to pay to progress.

Pay and It Plays for 10 Hours

There is an option where you can pay 10 CHF and it will play for ten hours, so you’re not stuck staring at a screen for hours in a row. In theory the game autoplays for two hours. If you log in every two hours the game requires less of your attention to be played.

The Premise of the Game

The concept of the game is simple. You cut down trees, and plant new ones. You debark the trees you cut down and then you buy machines to cut them into rough logs, then bigger blocks, before turning them into planks and sanding them. As you progress you upgrade each machine but at some point you need specific “staff members” to be able to upgrade that machine, and that’s where another aspect of the pay to win game comes in. Clash of Clans makers SuperCell made millions taking advantage of business men with money to blow on such games.

Defeating Themselves

We have all given in to the desire to pay, to win, and then found that by paying, we saved a few minutes or a few hours. Within seconds of game play we hit another wall. It’s that wall that makes it easy to resist paying for pay to win games. Get burned once, and you’ll never be careless loading the oven of pay to win games. (I might be comparing pay to win games to oven cooked food).

And Finally

If you have watched Big Timber, or are going to watch Big Timber then I recommend playing both at the same time. One easily complements the other. It’s a fun game, despite becoming repetitive after being played for too many hours in a row. In effect that’s a feature, because it makes it easy to stop playing for countless hours in a row, too often.

Yesterday evening at the Apple Store

Byrichard

Yesterday after work I was meant to meet a friend in Geneva but after a phone call changed my mind. I decided instead to walk to the apple store. What I saw in the apple store was quite interesting. As you walk in, where you used to have iphones and macbooks on display you now have ipads. Walk into the main hall and you have at least three more tables dedicated to the ipad. There were many more ipads than there were people interested in playing with the devices.

The geniuses were standing around, with nothing to do. Does that mean that everyone who wanted to get an ipad got one, that everyone was tired from work or does that mean I went at the right time to play with a few devices.

Of course I didn’t. I’ve had my own for about a week now so it doesn’t matter. There’s no need to go to the apple store to play with the device as I have mine with me most of the time.

What is interesting is Apple’s current move away from laptops and even more so with desktops. When the macbook air came out everyone said that it was a piece of crap in relation to specifications and they were right.

Steve Jobs and Apple have taken the netbook concep and skipped it. Instead they provide the Ipad, a device which you expect to have limited capabilities but great potential. What other manufacturers have been able to sell a display without a keyboard after all.

You have over two million units sold for over a billion US dollars in spent currency. That’s two million units without a keyboard. That’s a theoretical two million people that are discovering that life without a keyboard works just as well. There’s just one set back ladies. You’ll have to cut your nails if you don’t want the clackety clack as your nails touch the screen.

I love the iPad. I love that it’s light, that it’s versatile and that it’s so flexible. Imagine editorial meetings where you have an iPad and the content you’re discussing is in h.264. Drop into the meeting, say the item is interesting and show the editor in chief.

There is no need to go to the edit suite, there is no need to go to the computer. There is no need for power cords, adaptors and dedicated bags. We’ve come to what I would call the iPad age. This is going to change the way we discuss and share content.

Now what interests me is to see what happens with Apple laptops. Will the touch screen now come as standard and will they release dual screen laptops without a physical keyboards or will they come out with touch screen displays on the screen portion and a keyboard and mouse on the bottom part?

Apple have effectively demonstrated how well touch screens can cope with our current demands. The question is how far will this progress? Will we see applications that are specifically designed for a touch screen interface. If so then we are going to a virtual interface that resembles the paper and scissors of our childhood. The computer itself is becoming transparent. What we do with it is changing.

What we do with it is no longer local, no longer requiring the same type of data storage and sharing. We are no longer working on one machine. We have decentralised everything. Look at what the android platform can do. Look at Mobileme can do.

It’s an interesting time. The computer is the simplest it’s ever been. This means that more and more people, from all ages are able to intuitively interact with the device in front of them. Configuring is as simple as a username and password these days. Everyone understands this method of configuration. It’s a democratisation feature. That’s why two year old children can use the devices as easily as 70 year olds.

When you ask the revolutionary and evolutionary question in relation to technology I would go so far as to say this is a revolutionary device. It’s doing away with the keyboard, the mouse, the idea that things have to be configured. It’s the simplest interface yet. I don’t think everyone can justify getting one but it goes one step further in helping people always be connected, never be offline. It helps make facebook, twitter and e-mail be more pervasive in the way we live our daily lives.

An Ipad awaits

Byrichard

After the 28th of May I will have an Ipad. I have decided to get an Ipad for a number of reasons.

The first of these reasons is activity within the social part of the world wide web. I use it as a conversational and informational tool. I share my location when I’m out, I express my opinions and in general I am at ease with online social activities.

I also like being social face to face whilst being online. By that I mean that the age of the desktop and the laptop are coming to a fork. I would say end but laptops and desktops have a way to go. Photography and video editing are just two reasons for bigger machines.

At the same time look at how mobile phones have become more competent tools for most of what some of us do in the social media. We share images, we share pictures, videos and even our location on a 24hr basis. For the latter you need to earn the sharer’s trust.

Netbooks were an interesting proposition. They’re small, batteries last a long time and they’re practical. The problem is that the software they run is not optimised for a small screen. When you get an error message window where you cannot click ok you have a problem. When you attempt to play flash videos and the system hangs you’ve got another problem. When you visit the twitter site and the netbook struggles you’re just going to be frustrated.

That’s where the Ipad comes in. The operating system and applications are all optimised for a smaller screen, for a mono tasking machine. Blogging applications amongst others will be practical on such devices. Any time you’re out of the home you fit it into the bag, pull it out and start writing. You’re online anyway so things are instantly synced with the cloud. No need to worry about being tired after a day at a conference or as a traveller when you prefer not to leave your gadgets unattended.

I look forward to having an iPad, that glorified photo frame that can play video and communicate with the world.

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About the Ipad, which I will refer to as the Itablet in this post.

Byrichard

Designers must understand that user interface as well as ease of use are the two most important features of any electronics device. The more intuitive the device the more likely people are to keep using it. As a first generation Ipod touch user and an iphone 3gs owner I see the value of simple, intuitive confident design.

Looking at the itablet (ipad) what I see in this design are three key qualities, ergonimcs, ease of use and versatility. All of these combined make this device one of the most interesting on the market at the moment.

The smooth, slick design reminds us of the macbook air but without the keyboard.  As it is a laptop we will expect less from it but get more out. The macbook air is running the same OS as the Macbook Pro therefore we expect it to do the same things but when it cannot then we say it underperfoms. The tablet doesn’t have that problem. It’s sold as a slate that has a touch screen that can serve as a multimedia device.

Ease of use is another key feature. When you’re using a netbook, an N97 or many other devices you need some understanding of how things work. You need to understand how to configure an exchange server, you need to type the right character to complete the word and if you want to transfer files you need specific software. Of course the tablet has the same thing, you need itunes to do this. That’s an advantage and a dissadvantage. The advantage is that whenever you connect to any laptop (With the right library key) you can update podcasts and other content intuitively.

The second advantage is that the app store is so much easier to use on the mac than other platforms. We are used to buying apps and music on that device. Who hasn’t downloaded 10-15 apps for their iphone or ipod touch already? Imagine the facebook app on the tablet, or the flickr app.

In fact think about the day after a party. Hundreds of pictures were taken and you want to show them to friends, and have a good laugh. With the computer you can do this but you’re stuck at the desk, or you’re sitting down to be more comfortable. With the Ipad you hold it comfortably and a few people can stand around to see these images. Of course it’s less intimate than showing them on an iphone ;-). It’s also a way of demonstrating your picture portfolio or your multimedia showreel.  

Versatility is the last point of interest for this device.  If you want to use it for picture viewing then it could double as a photo frame, if you want to use it as a calendar and e-mail client then you can. If you want to play games then the larger screen means that all the games you already have for the iphone and ipod touch can be used.

Finally you can dock a keyboard to the screen and it becomes a 750 gram laptop. The advantage of this device’s keyboard, bought seperately is that you now have a laptop. You’re free to tweet, blog, sort through pictures and edit documents if iworks works well on the device.

Now the question you’re wondering, would I buy one? Not until July 2010 after the summer keynote. I want to see how they implement these new features into their line of futre laptops. Will they give us a dual screened laptop where the keyboard and mouse are replaced by a second touch screen or will we get the conventional keyboard and monitor where the screen is now touch based? That’s the point at which we can decide whether the tablet or a new laptop make more sense.