Government Yard

Cancelling my EA Account Part 4: The Hackening

2012-02-14T15:30:00.001Z

My last update was on January 19th. In the interim I've been distracted by various encounters with the NHS, the upshot of which is that I've got what looks like a subdermally implanted golfball in my knee and my local Primary Care Trust's solution is that I, and I quote... "Live with it", "don't run" "don't kneel" and "don't stand". I knew the NHS was being slowly privatised but didn't realise EA customer services has the contract for this region.

Anyway, with the credit card registered to my XBox account lapsing a few days after my last email from Kapil, I had to triage the matter down my list of things to do. Mistake. At about 2am this Sunday, I was off to bed. Setting the alarm on my phone, I noticed my most recently played game was Fifa 2012. Only I haven't got Fifa 2012.

Rebooting my PC I looked at my Live account - 1600-odd Microsoft Points had been spent on 'Gold Packs' and I'd got 2 achievements for Fifa. My XBox hadn't been touched for 2 days. I rang Microsoft to report this fraud. They were shut. I went to bed.

Upon waking I phone Microsoft, launch an investigation, get my account revoked for 'up to thirty days' and resolve to play some games on my Wii for a change while this happens. The nice lady at Microsoft explains that a lot of callers with this problem have had trouble cancelling EA accounts and gives me an 0870 number to call to speak to them about it.

0870 numbers, as we know, cost a fair bit and frequently the company you are calling gets a cut of the profits. I'm not comfortable with paying a company for the privilege of complaining to them, so through http://www.saynoto0870.com/ I get the number 01483 463000 and make a note of it for later use.

Yesterday evening, Microsoft contact me to confirm I've been hacked through this EA security hole, refund my points and give me a month's extra gold subs for my trouble. To remove any card information from my account, even an expired card, they have to cancel my gold and credit me with codes for the months cancelled. Strange given that I've paid for the gold subs and they've got my money already, but there you go. Point being Microsoft were quick, friendly, efficient and compensated me for my trouble.

EA also contacted me in this period, to thank me for playing Fifa 12... and start 'earning points' for the football team I support in real life. Creepy.

Today my intention was to give EA a ring and discuss the matter. I've just received another email from EA, this time about posts reported on their Fifa forums, relating to email addresses I've never seen. The message states it has been sent to moderators or admins with rights to see report posts.

I phone the number, select support and get a recorded message telling me to dial the more expensive number. I Try for the operator a couple of times and am cut off on both occasions. The 0870 number puts you in a queue for an indeterminate period. Another one of these forum emails arrives as I type this.

I find my last email from Kapil and respond verifying my gamertag as he suggested on 19/01/12 despite me having provided him and two of his colleagues with it already. I eagerly await his response.

Since this began another couple of my friends have come forward regarding their XBox accounts being compromised through EA. The trend seems to be that Microsoft are adopting a similar approach to their Red Ring of death - namely they've costed prevention up and come to the conclusion that cure is cheaper, probably due to the terms of their arrangement with EA, who have an exclusive deal with Microsoft allowing them to use their own servers even though XBox customers are paying for the privilege of a unified online gaming platform. I suppose when you're the biggest games company on the planet and therefore in the known universe, you can tell Microsoft what to do, to some extent. When a company has all the sports licences, you don't want them boycotting your console.

Depending on the outcome here, I've got some PR contacts for EA and will be asking them what they reckon.

Cancelling my EA account, part 3.

2012-01-19T19:39:00.001Z

Kapil's working late.

I've just had another reply. It again COMPLETELY IGNORES almost the entirety of my previous mail. Then it contradicts what has already been said. Then it asks me for information I have already provided.

Hello again Governmentyard,
Thank you for Contacting Electronic Arts.
If you want then we can disable your account but you have to verify the gamer tag linked to it so please provide us the name of the gamertag associated with it. Then we will disable your account manually from our end.
NOTE: We can not delete the account permanently but we can disable it.
Should you have any further questions, please take a moment to review our Knowledge Base site at http://help.ea.com or do let us know.
Sincerely,
Kapil
Electronic Arts – World Wide Customer Experience

I'm looking for replies to this one - in my position, would you

A: Tell them my gamertag. Again. Let them 'disable' the account and hope that that guards me from fraud and removes me from any obligation towards their Terms of Service, or...

B: Find some other means of contacting people within EA.

Please explain your reasoning in the comments section below. My brain doesn't work anymore.

Cancelling my EA account, part 2

2012-01-19T18:41:00.003Z

I have received a reply within a couple of hours this time. Sadly, it makes no sense whatsoever and the standard of English has slipped somewhat.

Hello Governmentyard,
Thank you for Contacting Electronic Arts.
I am sorry but as the date of birth is still not matched, So we are unable to delete your account without verify the account.[sic] If you still wish to delete your account permanently then in this case I only suggest you to please contact privacy_policy@ea.com for further assistance.
Hope this information help you to resolve your issue.[sic]
Should you have any further questions, please take a moment to review our Knowledge Base site at http://help.ea.com or do let us know.
Sincerely,
Kapil
Electronic Arts – World Wide Customer Experience.

The interesting thing here is that privacy_policy@ea.com is the address I was asked to write to some three messages ago. The response I got last time I contacted that address was from.... guess who? I'm, now convinced that Kapil is a fairly shady character, certainly not the sort of person I've ever kept working for me for long when employing people with access to personal data. As such I have penned the following response:

Kapil,

I am becoming increasingly irritated with your evasive responses to my reasonable requests. You are asking me to contact privacy_policy@ea.com but this is the email address I was asked to contct originally. I did so and the response I got, together with all responses since have been from you, Kapil. From this I can conclude only two things... either you are trying to wash your hands of my case, or you are not in fact working wherever the email address privacy_policy@ea.com is supposed to go and have somehow intercepted my correspondence. I shall assume the former is the more likely of the two, despite EA's poor record for data security in recent times.

I must insist, Kapil, that you now attend to the following points, which I will number to ensure you can methodically work your way through them as you have demonstrated yourself to be either incompetent or unwilling to reply to the whole of an email, ignoring at each turn some significant part of my correspondence, presumably in the hope that it will become someone else's problem.

1: EA have inaccurate information stored about me, as you have confirmed. This is a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998. This must be corrected by EA as a matter of legal obligation. As the person within your organization notified in regard to this matter, you must take steps to ensure the correct information has been recorded. This may involve finding out who is in charge of such matters and forwarding the correct information to them. You could tell me how to do this once you've found out, however it would take the same amount of time to do this without bothering me further so I suggest that is the course of action you take. It does not involve ignoring the issue, just so we're clear on that.

2: Does EA acknowledge that I do not agree with the Terms of service as detailed on your website and as such should not be forced to continue in a relationship with EA, particularly given that I am not a customer, have formally requested that you cease providing any service to me and have no intention of using your companies products again.

3: I require the contact details for your head of department, specifically their telephone number, postal and email addresses. I do not expect to be fobbed off with a generic phone number, physical address or email address.

I look forward to your prompt, complete and legally compliant response to these points.

Governmentyard

I think we can safely assume that this is probably going to end up with me making a subject access request under the DPA, can't we?

Are you or anyone you know employed by EA? Are you or they a reasonable person, and able to help me get this sorted somehow? I just want to cancel my account and protect myself from fraud. I am unemployed and can't afford to be the victim of financial crime, even if monies are returned to me in the end. I would even be satisfied with unlinking my XBox account from me EA account. Of course, there's no option to do this either.

Finally, would you say this situation was more Faustian or Kafkaesque? I really can't decide.

Cancelling my EA account

2012-01-19T16:50:00.002Z

I am trying to cancel my EA 'account' which serves as a profile for various online gubbins. It is not proving easy. In recent times they have altered their terms and conditions so that one can seemingly only use their games in any kind of online capacity if one agrees never to take part in a class action lawsuit against the company. This comes as no surprise.

I bought Battlefield 3 last year on the basis of the promise it held. Battlefield's online multiplayer is by reputation second to none, indeed I was able to get a good few weeks entertainment out of it before the multitude of annoyances, bugs and poor performance by EA servers led me to sell this title and reconsider my involvement with the company.

Having sold Battlefield 3, I went to the 'Battlelog' website to delete my profile, as I like to keep a tidy internet presence and not have any details logged with any organisation whose services I do not use. I quite like my privacy and despair of how much these companies feel they need to know about me before they'll let me use their service. For example, they always want to know my date of birth. I, like half the internet, give them 1/1/19somepointintimethatmakesmeblatantlyanadult on the date of birth selection form. We'll come back to this point in a paragraph or two. Needless to say, they don't need to know my precise birthday because it's not relevant in any way shape or form so I don't tell them it. I get birthday emails all year from various websites. It's vaguely amusing, for spam.

I go onto the Battlelog website, which collates and presents all the stats about how crap I am at online FPS games and puts them in a pretty pie charts and so on, looking for the 'my account' section. You know the drill, log on, go into settings, find the 'delete profile' or equivalent option, click it, get the 'are you sure?' dialogue warning that if you delete your account, it'll not be there anymore, click yes, get taken to a page explaining why having an account is super awesome, scroll down, consider the benefits very carefully, click 'Yes, definitely delete my account', read the next 'are you sure?' dialogue, click yes, receive confirmation email regarding account deletion, make tea, get on with life. It's a dance to which we all know the steps.

There's no option to delete my account.

I go onto the Origin site, the EA store from which I've never bought anything. There is no option to delete my account.

I go onto the EA website. There is no option to delete my account.

I look in the EA terms of service and am told:

10. Cancellation of your Account

You have the right to cancel your Account or a particular subscription to an EA Service at any time. If you do not agree to the terms in this Terms of Service, your sole remedy is to not use EA Services and to cancel your Account or applicable subscriptions. You understand and agree that the cancellation of your Account or a particular subscription is your sole right and remedy with respect to any dispute with EA, including any dispute related to, or arising out of: (1) any term of this Terms of Service or EA's enforcement or application of this Terms of Service; (2) the Content and Entitlements available through EA Services or any change in Content or Entitlements provided through EA Services; (3) your ability to access and/or use EA Services and/or any Content or Entitlements thereon; or (4) the amount or type of fees, surcharges, applicable taxes, billing methods, or any change to the fees, applicable taxes, surcharges or billing methods for EA Services and/or any Content or Entitlements thereon.

Contact EA's Customer Service Department at help.ea.com, support.popcap.com (for PopCap products) or swtor.com/support (for Star Wars™: The Old Republic) to cancel your Account. EA reserves the right to collect fees, surcharges or costs incurred before you cancel your Account or a subscription to an EA Service. You are also responsible for any amounts owed to third-party vendors or content providers before your cancellation. Any delinquent or unpaid fees and other unresolved issues with EA Services must be settled before you establish a new Account.

So off I pop to help.ea.com. There's no clear instructions for cancellation that I am able to find. Maybe I'm just thick, but that doesn't preclude my right, as stated there in section 10 of EA's ToS that if I don't agree with their terms of service, which I most certainly don't, I am to stop using the service and cancel my account. Fuck knows, I've tried. I eventually end up raising a query through their support system about Battlefield 3. In it, I put the following:

I no longer own Battlefield 3 and am informing you that I do not want an origin or battlelog account. I can find no option to delete these accounts on either the origin or battlelog website. In your terms of service I am referred to help.ea.com and cannot find any such option on this site either, nor am I able to find an email address by which to instruct you to remove all my personal details from your systems.

Please now cancel my accounts on both sites and notify me that this has been done within the stated 24 hour period.
Many thanks,

Governmentyard

So far, fair enough, yes? No. I get this back:

Hello Governmentyard,
As it turns out, the issue you contacted us related to our EA games. I’ve created a case for you with our Customer Experience department, case number <*******> and you should be receiving assistance from one of our game advisors shortly. You can also check out our FAQs, chat live or contact us by phone by going to help.ea.com.
Sincerely,
Carol
Electronic Arts – World Wide Customer Experience

Awesome. I can't wait for my confirmation that my unwanted account with the terms of service to which i d not agree has been cancelled. But wait! Whats this? Oh, tits...

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.
I apologize for any inconvenience. We do not delete any EA account. We can only disable the account after verification. If you want to permanently delete the EA account please contact at "privacy_policy@ea.com". Please be informed you won't be able to access any game/codes/persona linked to that account after account deletion/disabling.
If you agree and want to continue disabling your account, please verify us the following info:
EA account e-mail:
Date of birth listed on above EA account:
EA ID/Persona (Xbox or PS3) listed on EA account:
If you have any additional questions please let us know.
Regards,
Sandeep
Electronic Arts – World Wide Customer Experience

At this point I go into my www.ea.com/profile and look at my information to see what date of birth they have written down. They haven't got one there, at all. Ho hum, must be something they started asking for after I signed up. Not to worry, here's my reply:

Sir,

Following an email from 'Sandeep' (no other name supplied) from your 'Worldwide Customer Experience' department, I hereby formally request full deletion of my account and removal of all my details from your systems. As directed by Sandeep, I enclose the following information to support you in the swift completion of this task:

EA account e-mail: *******
Date of birth listed on above EA account: There is no date of birth listed on the above account so far as I can see from the 'About Me' page.
EA ID/Persona (Xbox or PS3) listed on EA account: ******

I have now fulfilled your stated criteria for account deletion and expect this to be completed promptly.Please notify me at the above email address when this task is complete.

Yours faithfully,

Governmentyard

And then it begins...

Hello Governmentyard,
Thank you for Contacting Electronic Arts.
First, please accept my sincere apologies for any delay in responding to your query but please know that due to high volume of contacts we were unable to provide our level best to get back to you as fast as possible. I believe you would accept my humble apology for the same.
Please note that verification is required to make any changes into the account so if you want to delete your account then you need to provide the date of birth listed on it so that I can help you further in this matter.
We look forward to your reply.
Should you have any further questions, please take a moment to review our Knowledge Base site at http://help.ea.com or do let us know.
Sincerely,
Kapil
Electronic Arts – World Wide Customer Experience.

Not happy. My response:

Dear Kapil,

As per my original email, looking into my EA account profile at https://www.ea.com/profile there is no date of birth listed, so how am I able to tell you what date of birth you hold for this account? Naturally I enter a date of birth that reflects my adult status, as most websites require one to do but I am very unlikely to share my actual date of birth for such purposes, specifically because I do not wish to hand such personal information to organizations that deliberately obfuscate the removal of my personal data from their systems, as appears to be the case with Electronic Arts.

As this is now the second email that I have sent regarding the absence of any date of birth information being listed on my profile, I suspect that I am communicating with a first-line customer service department and as such will receive stock replies to whatever correspondence I send your way. I now require direction on how to escalate this problem within your organization should I fail to be satisfied with my response to this email.

Let me be clear on what will be a satisfactory response - cancellation of my account, including a removal of any link to my XBox Live user profile 'GovernmentYard' and confirmation that I am no longer party to your terms and conditions, to which I do not agree.

Yours faithfully,

Governmentyard

And today, I get this back:




Thank you for Contacting Electronic Arts.



lease note that when ever you create an account with EA then you need to put the Date of birth on your profile so I request you to provide that date of birth which you have entered while creating this account. 


If you are unable to provide the date of birth then its not possible to assist you further in this matter. Please accept our apology for the same.

Hope you understand the situation and our support boundaries.


http://help.ea.com or do let us know.


Should you have any further questions, please take a moment to review our Knowledge Base site at
 

Sincerely,

Kapil

Electronic Arts – World Wide Customer Experience.

Effectively, here's what's happened. I've bought a game. In order to use all the bits of that game I've paid for, I need to enter details online, so I give them the minimum, because I just want to play the game I've paid for. This first game (Mass Effect 2) won't even let you start playing once booted until it has phoned home to EA and checked to see if there is anything new I might want to buy from them. EA have altered their Terms of Service to ones I do not agree with. I have been directed to cancel my account, but they don't tell you anywhere how to do this beyond the first step. Having now complied with their procedure to the best of my abilities I am being told there is no way I can cancel my account and therefore no way I can be removed from my agreement to these terms of service. That's it. The end. If further EA accounts linked to XBox accounts are hacked and mine's one of them, that's tough shit. I don't have a full friends list, I've about 75 and at least two of these people have had money stolen from them vie their EA and then in turn XBox accounts. Here's one. So, I am left with no choice but to provide my correct date of birth to EA on the off-chance that that's the one I provided at the time. Then it occurred to me... if they are storing incorrect information, they are obliged to store correct information if notified. If they accept the date I pulled out of my arse, they must equally accept the correct one and once they have that one, I'm able to tell them what they already know and cancel my account....

Dear Kapil,

As I have already explained twice I cannot say what information I provided two years ago. I cannot see what you recorded as this does not appear in my account. My correct date of birth is ******** however. If this is what you have on file, can you please now after a ridiculous amount of my time wasted cancel this account, the new terms and conditions of which I DO NOT AGREE WITH.

You are required under the Data Protection Act 1988 to hold correct, up-to-date information about me and my correct date of birth, detailed above, can be accepted by EA without evidence given that EA has already proven willing to do so and would again were I to set up another account tomorrow. As such please ensure that you are compliant with the Data Protection Act 1988. I shall be submitting a Subject Access Request as per the terms of the Data Protection Act 1988 in due course if I am unsatisfied that EA is fulfilling its legal obligations in this regard.

I note that you have ignored my request in my previous email of 18/01/2012 for details of how to escalate my problem within your organisation. Why have you failed to provide me with this information?

Governmentyard.

Let's see what comes back, shall we? Regardless of whether it was appropriate for me to fudge my date of birth in the first place, I defy you to find a single human being in the world who doesn't do this, nor a single company who doesn't realise that fact. To bind an unwilling customer in perpetuity to an account they don't want on that technicality is bloody disgraceful.

It's what comes out of my ears...

2011-12-17T15:01:00.003Z

Bloody Steam.

I was forced to install this in order to play a game I buy every release - Football Manager. Sports Interactive will always find some way of diminishing my enjoyment of their excellent title every year, usually connected to DRM somehow*. This year, their game Football Manager 2012 had to have Steam (a sort of games shop by Half Life creators Valve, which behaves in some very strange ways indeed) even if you bought the boxed version, or you can't play Football Manager this year at all. Unless you download it for nothing off Pirate Bay.

My assumption was that it was only one game for one year and that I could always get rid of steam in 12 months time, or at worst get a pirate copy of the game once a decent one is available and uninstall Steam that way, but to date I've complied and installed one piece of software so that I can install another, which is nonsense.

The first problems came along very quickly. I play FM with an editor and a scout, have done for years, never with any bother. Scouts are programs that take the save file and show me information about players in it the way I tell it to, as opposed to the way the game shows them to me. It gives me control of my data. Editors come in handy when you play Garath McCleary down the wing and notice they've made him white, however these manipulate your data while it is in memory. Again, compatibility with the game version and save version is paramount.

Steam auto-updates games, and I would fire up my game once a week to find it had been patched again, unbeknownst to me, which would then involve me having to download new versions of scout and editor each time. Laborious and unhelpful, particularly if I'm only on for a quick go. Eventually, I came to learn that even though I want to be prompted to install any update for any game on Steam, I did not have that choice, it was nowhere in the menus. Instead I have to go through game by game specifying it like Floella Benjamin trying each shaped window on Playschool. Awesome.

In any case, I long since told Steam to leave my Football Manager game alone. This has reduced the interference of Steam to a simple minute-long delay when I click the FM icon on my desktop before it begins loading. I have no idea what Steam does during this pointless period but in a very great number of years of PC gaming (My first were HHGTTG by Infocom and Starglider) I've never known a game need to sit there doing sod all for sixty seconds before showing me so much as a splash screen. So well done on that. What has caused me to pen this sarcy little post is that today I've tried in vain to fire up FM2012 and have a couple of matches while I wait for the Forest vs. Bristol City match to begin, but apparently I can fuck off, because a big update is downloading for Football Manager. Just like I told it not to.

Even better, the desktop icon for FM now doesn't lead anywhere. Thanks, SI! Thanks, Steam!

I've been buying Football Manager since it was called Championship Manager on the Atari ST, sixteen or seventeen years ago. I'm looking for a compelling reason not to just help myself to it in future.

* Everything from throwing a shit-fit when I dare to try to play a CD in my CD drive to throwing a strop at what other software I've got installed (clue: none of your fucking business, whoever you are) to simply not allowing me to play until I connect to a server that isn't there. That was a great day I took off work, sat reading the pirates on the forums go on about how good the game was while the box sat forlornly on my desk like an impotent porn star.

**UPDATE** - The update was enormous and it will be a few days before they update the scout, which means that I can't progress with my game as I'm at a point where scouting is vital to what I'm trying to achieve. Even though after half an hour it has condescended to let me play my game, I still can't.

WINK Yes, of course we're Christian...

2011-12-17T11:37:00.002Z

Lovely David Cameron, handsome boy that he is, has commemorated the KJB 400th anniversary with a speech at Oxford where he's said the Nation is a Christian nation. Presently, a nation going apeshit about it on social networks. There's really no need.

What people don't seem to acknowledge is that not only is he factually, statistically and historically correct, but that it's a good thing. We've got a head of church and state whom we don't choose, who is immovable and who represents us as a Nation to the world. We've got Church of England Bishops unelected in the House of Lords, voting down policies our elected representatives have placed before them and I bloody love it.

I love it because I've met fundamentalists, I've met the radical atheist left and I've had a bloody good look around the world at how religion is done elsewhere. I've also met a lot of Church of Englanders, priests and flock, and they're almost entirely harmless. Our situation at the moment is perfect. We've taken the most moderate, inoffensive, callow religion we can find and threaded it through the bedrock of our society in such a way as to prevent any other getting in there instead. Frothing Islamist Prime Minister gets elected? No worries, he's still just working for The (Church of England) Crown. And we know how many of the 72% Christians in this country ever go to church, or ever proselytise at us, compared to the evangelicals, who seem to be growing at a rate which makes me shudder.

There are a hundred wicked, cruel and divisive religions in the UK who do a much better job of harming the world we all share than the C of E. Ideally, I'd want to see a world based upon reason, where superstition holds no power (note, I didn't say has no place). In lieu of this impossible aspiration, I'll take what we've got in the UK - a wishy-washy state faith which serves as a relatively harmless umbrella for the ostensible good moral fibre the average Briton tends to espouse, whatever their mojo.

The alternative, I'm quite certain, is an empty chair that ultimately people will fight to occupy. And that's where we'd start to really have something to complain about. Tweeters can rant about Cameron's speech all they want, but calling out a Conservative Prime Minister for saying he's moderately C of E and quoting some facts about Christianity and the Bible at an event for said things is stupid when there's evangelicals out there fronting charities to help the vulnerable when their only real goal is to fill their churches and pockets, islamists who deny their own children basic human rights, Jehovah's Witnesses who send young girls out into the world on their own at seventeen with literally no understanding of how sex works... I needn't go on, need I?

If you want an example of intelligent design, I say one could go a long way and not find a better case of something which could have been set up by a very cunning secularist than the British Church, State and Monarchy.

God save the Queen. Because if he doesn't, I'm not sure who will be there to save the rest of us, nor what from.

Tweetdeck - Some questions about the 'improvements'

2011-12-08T23:13:00.001Z

A couple of pre-comment acknowledgements here, before anyone jumps in...

1: I know these things are all provided to me free of charge.

2: I know I can always 'make my own' if I'm really that arsed. The twitter API is there to be used.

3: I'm still allowed to mouth off about what I think, hence this blog, so feel free to simulate me keeping my whining to myself by reading a different entry, or a different blog.

4: Your Mum.

Right then, to business...

I loved Tweetdeck. On phone or on Chrome, it was my special beautiful naughty friend who kept me on top of everything in the most graceful and easy manner possible. This evening, I was feeling frustrated by my wife's lack of animated interest in things like galactic clouds and cosmic rays and wanted to tweet about it. I went into my studio, sat at the mainbox and went looking for my tweetdeck app icon in chrome. My eyes couldn't find it. Instead, amidst all the other, equally and uniformly light blue icons there was one of the twitter bird, with Tweetdeck written below it.

Oh no.

Back in May, Twitter bought Tweetdeck which is the sort of move you can feel in your balls probably isn't going to end well. I didn't fear, as many did, the integration of ads into the app but I did fear a uniformity of design being 'rolled out' across all the Twitter-owned stuff in future. The icon says it all really - Tweetdeck's little yellow bird always stood out for me, a beacon promising gibberish from my friends and others, shining out from a cluttered array of icons to welcome me into a five-minute skive over a fag or coffee when I need it most. Now, it's just the Twitter icon. Same as Twitter, which isn't the app I was using. No, I was using Tweetdeck. A different app. Not the same. Do you see?

Different people use different things because they are different. That's the point. Here's my eight questions for the Tweetdeck crew...

1: Tweetdeck has always been a unique, individual front-end for Twitter. It had that rare commodity in modern software - a bit of what can only be described as charisma. The Yellow in this, to me, is as important to the feel of the software as the Swoosh to Nike. How far is the sprint towards homogenity going to carry you?

2: I used to love my text entry box that bestrode the screen, now I've to click an icon and do it in a popup, like some dirty boy who spends his time cruising badly designed shopping websites. Why was this change made?

3: It is admirable that one of the features that seems to have been added as opposed to brutally gutted from the Chrome app is the ability to have usernames or real names. Why though have you made it so that userbnames now have the @ next to them? I understand they are above the rest of the message text, but given your other bizarre formatting decisions there's a part of my brain that sees each tweet as being a reply to the person who in fact posted it, and I cant shake this off after a couple of hour's use. Was the assumption made that the 'power users' of which Tweetdeck has always been so proud are too stupid to remember they have names set to 'user' and not 'real'? - also, so many @s are a waste of space, whiuch leads me nicely into...

4: Column wise, I have three I always want to see all of, and a fourth which didn't quite all fit on my screen. No matter, so long as I can see who the latest posts in it are from, that's space well used. Why have you prevented me from doing this now, replacing the 99.9% visible column with a completely blank space save for an arrow which, when clicked, shows me that column I could see almost all of anyway, but at the expense of the other three?

There is no rational explanation for a design choice like this. I could try and suppose it's part of a deliberate drive to dumb down the experience but I'll never attribute to shenanigans anything I can just as easily put down to stupidity. I don't want to be rude to the developers of something I've admired and enjoyed for so long but WHAT THE SHUDDERING FUCK IS THAT ALL ABOUT? Did you even realise that'd piss away nearly a quarter of the screen space for some users?

5: I've always liked the space in Tweetdeck. I could have sworn this was due to an adjustable text size function in the old version. Now I can't tell whether the default font is larger or the avatars too big or what it is, that's causing each tweet to appear cluttered, cramped and unappealing to view. Which is it?

6: Direct Messages now only show the first line of themselves, they fail to wrap onto the next line in that message's slice of the DM column. Is this a design choice or is it broken? Why do all the changes seem to involve either leaving acres of empty useless space or cramming as much as possible into too small a space?

7: The @me column seems frightfully choosy about whether it tells me I've been retweeted or not. Can I go ahead and assume this is just a bug?

8: I used to dance from column to column like a bewilderingly handsome geek Nijinsky using the tilt function of my mouse scroll wheel. It's a posh mouse I spent loads of money on, for just this sort of thing. Now I forlornly tilt it in a futile muscle-memory spasm of pain, regret and wistful longing for a fondly remembered better day. Is that what you wanted?

My response to this has been swift and measured. I'm not quitting yet but I'm sizing up my exits and putting contingencies in place. I need to track down an .apk of the Android version I'm currently using, because I must assume the next update will turn my driody Tweetdeck as pointlessly function-bereft and similar to Twitter as the Chrome one. I'm also running a couple of other clients alongside Tweetdeck just to see if they'll cut the mustard in future.

I'm seeking a plugin for G+ that will put my Twitter streams into there somehow, and I'm looking for another web app that will do the same job as Tweetdeck. This will give the Tweetdeck boys and girls time to read angry blogs like this and consider refinements to their 'update'. I'm a patient man with anything that has proven its quality and Tweetdeck can maintain its once - untouchable status. They've got a couple of months to reintroduce the killer features.

Credit where it is due, the one place old (or proper!) Tweetdeck fell down was when I tried to bring up info on another user. This is now much improved with a popup of rare quality and useability from the little I've poked at it. Also, unlike the rest of my experience of nu-Tweetdeck, this bit runs faster than before.

Bluffer's guide to Nottingham Forest, Part 2

2011-11-02T04:56:00.001Z

Current and recent players of note

Earnie - Robert Earnshaw. Tiny Welsh striker who scored goals for fun at every club he played for except Derby County because he hates them, Earnie is a legend in his native Cardiff and very nearly one on Trentside as well. Celebrates his goals with a forward somersault and really really likes basketball. Left in the summer to finish his career at Cardiff City where he started it, a move not begrudged by Forest supporters, some of whom think we'd seen the best of him already in any case.

Chambo - Luke Chambers, current captain and partner of Wes Morgan in central defence, Chambo was brought to the club by Calderwood from both men's former employers, inconsequential Northampton Town. On form he is a steady player, good at the thing she can do and smart enough to avoid the things he can't. Off form, a crushing liability and possesses a strange allergy to the presence of Steve McClaren, the man who made him captain. Scores a lot of good headers from set pieces. You might want to make a decision about whether he is any good at right back, as that old conversational chestnut is currently en vogue once more.

Tys - Nathan Tyson, the fastest footballer on two legs recently moved to local rivals Derby with the best wishes of half the fans and cries of 'traitor' from the other half, though they're just being silly. Tys 'added pace' to a fairly immobile squad of players however this was negated by his having no peripheral vision with which to see fellow players in better goalscoring position. Was hypnotised at a young age into thinking the goal is actually in 'row z' of the stands at any given football ground. Became a legend for a while when he waved a Forest-emblemed corner flag near some Derby fans after we beat them, sparking a riot.

Lily - Robbie Savage, buck-toothed, gay-haired, self-regarding shagwit and former Derby player, current BBC pundit and celebrity ballroom dancing arse. A very able midfielder who undermined his own career by being dirtier than that redhead I went out with at college many years ago, Savage's employment by the BBC typifies their ongoing commitment to employing controversial people with nothing to say in order to generate lots of audience participation in phone-ins and web debates. No-one is impressed. It should be pointed out that he has never been a Forest player and joins this list purely by dint of his frequent mention online by Forest fans.

Non-league Nigel - Nigel Clough, son of Brain, played under his father as a striker and excelled for a number of years, becoming one of our top goalscorers of all time. Managed tiny local club Burton for ages and became Derby manager when Billy Davies took over at Forest. Has fallen out of favour with Forest fans not so much because of his job at Derby but more around his dour persona and disingenuous comments regarding a club that once adored him and would still like to, given half a chance. Doing OK at Derby these days.

Campy - Lee Camp, talismanic goalkeeper and saviour of the club many times under Billy Davies, now returning to form, he also keeps goal for Northern Ireland. If he has a bad day, the whole club has a bad day. If he has a good one, we get three points and BBC commentator Colin Fray ruptures another vocal cord.

Raddy - Radoslav Majewski - skilful Polish midfield player, scorer of occasional wondergoals. In and out of the side due to competition for a place in attacking midfield with Lewis McGugan, a skillful midfield player who scores occasional wondergoals. Feel free to join the debate over which should play... there's no right answer.

Gugs/Google/Lewis - Lewis McGugan - Radoslav Majevski with an occasional weight/workrate problem. When he scores, it is usually an 'unstoppable' shot, frequently from free kicks. Every few matches, one hears the commentator say his name after seventy minutes and you suddenly realise he's been on the pitch since kick-off.

Reidy - Andy Reid - with the build and potential of John Robertson, Reid left the club a young man and achieved little, returning this summer with a paycheck almost as big as his arse. We know he can 'do it' for us with his fancy left foot but the jury is as out as Elton John over whether he ever will.

Cohen - Chris Cohen, hardworking, talented midfielder who gets played all over the pitch, much to his detriment but needs must, sometimes. Currently out for the season with a knackered leg, he is greatly missed.

Robbie Findley - You tell us!

McGoaldrought - David McGoldrick. Striker bought at some expense by Billy Davies. Either he's got a footballing brain too quick for his team-mates to keep up with (there is some evidence for this) or he's a bit less good that Billy thought he was. Jury out. Fingers crossed.

Freeman, Bamford, Lascelles - Defender, striker, defender from the reserve/youth teams, widely considered to be utterly brilliant and the source of much debate regarding their non-inclusion in the main team even when all the senior players are being awful.

Dex - Dexter Blackstock - Striker who 'likes to attack the goal' - a popular figure with fans if not a prolific scorer, we lack another player with his repertoire of moves, which is to our detriment as he's been out for a season. Back soon though.

Moose - French midfield rhinoceros on rollerblades and/or brick wall with hammers for feet. When you hear a long 'booo' on the radio, that's the fans shouting 'Mooooooooose'. Unless it's full time, in which case we've lost and didn't try hard enough/didn't sign a left back/didn't make the right substitutions/whatever. Regarded as the only semi-fit player in the squad capable of breaking up opposition attacks before they reach the defence, he will be imperious one game and a confusing, bandy-legged mess the next. Often injured but never disliked.

Bluffer's guide to Nottingham Forest, Part 1.

2011-11-02T03:53:00.000Z

Twitter users who follow the #nffc hashtag will be aware of Big Wes, the US-based namesake of Forest mainstay Wes Morgan, who became a Forest supporter himself just this week when hundreds of semi-IT-literate fans confused their # with their @ and turned the amiable Yank into a living meme and brother to us all.

For his sake, and for anyone else who is arsed to read it, I dedicate the next half hour or so of this nightshift to compiling an incomplete and factually inaccurate lexicon of Forest terms, jargon and soforth. In no particular order.

The City Ground - Home of Nottingham Forest, the City ground is so named due to Nottingham gaining city status around the time it became our home. It is not in the city of Nottingham, however - it lies on the opposite side of the River Trent in West Bridgeford. In an era where most clubs are moving into identikit flatpack stadia of little character, the fabric of the stadium is unique in looks and location, causing most fans to wail and gnash teeth at the prospect of moving to some nondescript new place on the edge of town. The walk over Trent Bridge to the ground is, without any bias, one of the most memorable walks one can take to a sporting venue.

Red Dogs - Disparaging name bestowed upon Forest supporters by sworn rivals Derby County. Forest fans think it's a great name. They used to call us Florist. Again, not particularly offensive - what's wrong with florists?

Mull Of Kintyre - Played at the beginning of each game and at half time, fans replace the lyrics with "City ground, oh mist rolling in from the Trent" etc. It is customary to sing these out of tune and at the wrong speed.

Stan - Stanley Victor Collymore, played two seasons for Forest in the Nineties and, with the gait and cadence of Alice the Goon off Popeye, scored ten or fifteen of the goals that'll be in the top 100 Forest goals of all time, come judgement day. Left for bigger clubs but never quite had the stratospheric rise to utter supremacy his skills mandated, due to a long and public battle with depression. Now a host on sports radio, Stan is a flag-bearer for the equal parts common-sense and misty-eyed idealism model of Forest support.

Brian Rice- an able player in Brian Clough's Second Great Forest team, it was once remarked by The Great Man that he'd have put out eleven Brian Rices if he could. This caused the singing of "We all live in a world of Brian Rice" to the popular Beatles tune. It is considered good form to have 'Rice' as the name on one's shirt.

Square Peg - That which does not fit into a round hole. Manager parlance for playing players out of position, which in the modern era is a prerequisite given that Forest never, ever have enough players to effectively cover each position in the side over the course of a season.

Marthur - Mark Arthur, Forest's unpopular Chief Executive. Widely regarded as a bullshitter of fans and a piss-taker in the transfer market, Arthur is the subject of innumerable urban myths surrounding Forest's non-acquisition of potentially vital signings on spurious grounds, such as last minute changes to salary, etc. Instigated the infamous "We're serious about promotion - are you?" (they weren't) sales campaign a few seasons ago when the club was on its sporting and financial arse. At present the only way Arthur could redeem himself in the eyes of Forest supporters would be to become Chief Executive of Derby County.

The Garibaldi - Simply, the red Forest 'home' shirt. So named because19th century Forest sportsmen played with red shirt and caps which resembled those worn by Guiseppe Garibaldi's famed military division. Usually prefixed with "not fit to wear the..." when a player is noted to have made a less than satisfactory effort on matchday.

Local Rivals - Every team within an hour and a half's drive of Nottingham, except Leicester City.

Psycho - Talismanic defensive player for Forest and England, Stuart Pearce. During the nineties era where idiots like now film 'star' Vinnie Jones were celebrated as 'hard men' and played up to that with thuggish behaviour, Psycho didn't get his name due to thuggery, rather a resemblance to Norman Bates from the Hitchcock classic. A straight talking, hard-tackling gentleman of a player, he set the bar so high for conduct and ability and passion that no-one ever stands a chance of matching him ever again. In recent times Forest haven't even bothered employing anyone to play in his regular left-back position, a move which has cost us promotion to the top flight of English football two seasons running. Typical behaviour for Pearce would be driving to training, getting involved in a motorway pile-up in which he needed to be cut from his vehicle, going home, borrowing his wife's car and setting off once more for training. Also, once broke his leg in the first half of a match and sat there in the dressing room at half time with his boots on, expecting to go out and play in the second.

Notts - an abbreviation of Nottinghamshire, the county in which Forest, and the city of Nottingham reside. Also the shortened name of our neighbours and rivals whose full name is Notts County. Thus, Notts should only be used to refer to Notts County and is disrespectful to both clubs when used to say 'Notts Forest'. nevertheless people still do it. We don't talk to them unless we have to.

Pies - Either scalding 'meat' snacks available on match day or local rivals Notts County (nicknamed the magpies because of their black and white kits). Notts are the oldest league football club and like reminding people about this. Interestingly, Notts and Forest have grounds directly opposite one another on the banks of the Trent, with the team named after the county being in the city and the team whose home is called the City Ground being in the county.

Brian - Brian Clough, a striker of rare talent whose career was cut short by injury, took Derby County up into the top league, won it almost immediately, did well in Europe, fell out with his chairman, quit, failed to achieve a coup to get his job back, went to the biggest club in the land, lasted 44 days before the players got him kicked out then came to Forest, taking a team no higher up than we are now, existing players and all - and getting promoted, winning the top division straightaway then going into Europe and winning what is now the Champions League two years running. Managed Forest for 18 years until his career was cut short by alcoholism exacerbated by a blood feud with (and death of) former best mate and assistant manager Peter Taylor. Clough's story and achievements would not make a very believable book, nor would many have called his character a realistic one if he were fictional. But he lived.... and we are bewilderingly lucky to have had him.

Robbo - fat attacking 'winger' John Robertson, found by Brian Clough in the reserve team with a fag in his mouth and hair over his eyes - turned into the most gifted player to play in the garibaldi when Clough told him to stand up straight and that he was a very talented player.

"You'll never beat Des Walker" - With Stuart Pearce at the club it was arguable whether any further great talents were needed in the defensive line. Still, Des Walker played in the heart of the same defence and was never beaten, hence the song. Now sung about Wes Morgan, because "You'll occasionally beat Wes Morgan, but then again he'll occasionally go charging forward, terrify your defence and score a bizarre goal himself doesn't scan well to the same tune. To balance out his great talent, Des walker scored 'own goals' which contributed to us losing the 1991 FA cup final and the Championship play-off semi finals in 2003 or so. But we don't mention that.

"Spurs in the cup" - A meme where, prior to the draw for a cup competition, fans speculate that we'll get Spurs. Started when we did well against Spurs during a period when we were generally complete shit.

Frank Clark - Geordie left back from pre Stuart Pearce days who took over as manager when Brian Clough retired. Got the freshly relegated Forest straight back into the top league with a hastily rebuilt squad that had no right being as wildly entertaining as it was and narrowly missed out on the top European competition, finishing third on goal difference behind giants Manchester United and big spending champions Blackburn Rovers. Forest failed to make the signings necessary to maintain momentum and this moustachioed, guitar strumming fan favourite left his post when things started to go downhill. Recently returned to the club as Chairman when outgoing chairman and owner Nigel Doughty realised that Forest needed someone in the big chair who the fans would trust. Hasn't got a moustache anymore, but fans are indeed taking bad news better when it comes from his mouth.

Platt - Unremarkable but steady player who once scored a flashy goal for England. Was manager of Forest for two years about a decade ago and spent millions of pounds on dud players, leaving the club two years later exactly where he found it, only completely skint. A figure of universal hatred amongst Forest supporters, I have never read a single word about him that could be repeated in polite company. Now sits, bloated and smug, alongside Roberto Mancini in the dugout at arab-owned Manchester City, where his lack of nous is disguised by the club owner's policy of buying the best players in the world to play in each position, at any cost. It's working out for him, to be fair.

Colin 'Smoulderwood' Calderwood - Mahogany Scotsman who managed Forest a few years ago, getting us promoted back into a respectable league at the second time of asking. Brought in many good players and left when things did not go well in the Championship, he is fondly remembered for being a nice chap and 'getting us up', if not having tactical smarts. Snappy dresser.

'King' Billy - William Mackintosh Davies - another Scot, took over from Calderwood and turned Forest into a force to be reckoned with in the two and a half seasons that followed, with his crack backroom staff and propensity for speaking in the third person. If you are familiar with the series Game of Thrones, imagine Tyrion Lannister in a grey cardigan and red tie, endlessly repeating the same three very salient points about the future progression of the club over and over, while achieving very favourable results on the pitch, until he was given the heave-ho this summer, much to the chagrin of fans and critics alike who very soon realised that he was the best thing to happen to the club in a very very long time indeed, despite his faults.

'Schteve' McClaren - Famed for his coaching at Manchester Utd during their golden era and a heavily subsidised Middlesborough team, hapless McClaren went on to manage an England team which failed, a Dutch team which won their league and a German team who sacked him after half a season. Arrived at Forest this summer, handed large contracts to players who have yet to show their worth, made all the same complaints about the club that Billy Davies did but somehow alienated the players in so doing, followed that up with some shocking tactical decisions, complained some more, threatened to resign, came back, threatened to resign, came back, lost some more games, vowed to sort things out, then quit. Above all else a confusing man, you could probably replicate his time at the club next year by allowing Al Gore to be president from July to September.

There's probably more, but for now there's a few terms you'll be familiar with when you come across them online. Cheers.

Comprehensive list of things I miss about Facebook, 1 month on...

2011-10-27T11:22:00.001+01:00

Looking up photos of attractive girls I've just met in case there's any 'beachwear' ones.

What's in a name? Extraneous crap, that's what.

2011-10-21T02:43:00.001+01:00

As a professional internet rage sufferer of some sixteen years pedigree, you'd think I'd be over this one by now. I'm not. Still the fire burns on, lighting my righteous path of belm-hate and keeping me stabby-mooded about the issues that MATTER. Yes.

It's website names, basically. They're doing my stove in. More specifically, when you come to bookmark one, there's all that shit you have to delete first. Let's take for example the Guardian... how this works is that you navigate to the frontpage and click your yellow star or whatever to bookmark the site. So far, so normal. What happens then is wronger than catching David Platt in bed with Lena Olin.

A bookmark contains two main elements, at the front end. Firstly and most importantly, the URL of the site in question, without which the bookmark would be entirely useless. It's also the bit that has to be precisely correct, lest fail rear its ugly head. Secondly we have the name of the website. This is, in bookmark terms, the title that appears in your tab or, in the case of IE, along the blue bar that sits atop the window of your shitty stupid browser. This usually contains the name of the site, such as Facebook. Frequently some tossmuncher decides they need to have the full Facebook.com or suchlike on there. I can only assume Daddy won't buy these no-marks a new Warcraft gaming keyboard until they wear out their ten quid Microsoft cooking keyboard, as the suffix isn't necessary in the vast majority of these cases. The real crime occurs when some awful person takes the concept further, filling this space with a special précis of the site for any morons who might happen to be reading. For example if you try bookmarking cheese.com (and why wouldn't you? You can never be too well-read a cheese connoisseur in this postmodern dairy culture) the name box in the bookmarking pop-up will read "Cheese.com - all about cheese!" Is it? Is it really? Thanks for that.

The motherload comes on sites like the Graun, though. Here's the thing in full...

"Latest news, sport and comment from the Guardian | The Guardian"

When is anyone, ever, going to be needing that full spiel in their bookmarks? Why would the guardian website need to explain that it is the latest news, sport or comment available, as opposed to, say, that of a couple of months ago?

The Graun website name should say "Guardian". Cheese.com should simply say "Cheese.com" and so on. Util there's long/short name variables available to suite coders, keep it pure, keep it uncluttered, keep your uretha free from my white-hot skewers of righteous punishment. Deal?

Sod Team GB, but I'll be backing the UK Olympic Football Team

2011-06-22T18:08:00.002+01:00

Auntie is currently running a story about the 'historic' (surely time will be the judge of that?) agreement for there to be a UK Olympic football team. As is entirely necessary when you've got a website to fill with what you hope will be contentious issues, they've gone to some effort to expose the throbbing underbelly of dissent regarding the agreement. And by expose the throbbing underbelly, I mean 'phone Neville Southall'. So what, then, are the issues and more importantly what's my sensible, balanced and easy solution? Join me readers as we systematically downgrade these bloated hillocks to molehill status.

The Name:

For starters, 'Team GB' is abhorrent. 'Team' is not a prefix, a pronoun or a good idea. If it were, we'd already have 'Team Arsenal' and so on. All we are hearing when someone says it is the cynical parp of a marketing consultant's bum noise made vocal. I also suspect it might be a slightly American thing and this being the internet, I am compelled by my status as a subject of Her Majesty to say so in a mildly derogatory fashion. Assuming there's going to be players from all four home nations (N.I. and Forest's Lee Camp as one of the over 23's, anyone?) The UK is a perfectly decent name, as that's who we are.

'Identity':

Hulabaloo! How are people to identify with this new sporting entity? Well, it's new. Identify with the shiny new thing. Don't look for reference points. How did I, as a right thinking Forest supporter, sit next to an Oldham and a Liverpool fan watching Hoddle's last stand, ably assisted in cheering by a Scot happy to get behind a 'home nations' side because theirs was not good enough to make the tournament a few years back? How do England fans manage to always support Ireland unless they are playing England? How do the Irish fans support their own team when it is full of Englishmen? Let's be frank, there's no issue here, is there? Anymore than there's be a problem cheering on a European team against, say, Africa if Rooney was being supplied passes by Fabregas. In fact that'd be better, as Gerrard probably wouldn't get a look-in.

Kit:

Red, White Blue or Green? Well, I'm not adverse to the Union Flag as an away kit but let's have a kit as green as the lands we all live in, so darker than Northern Ireland's strip, with maybe a badge of the flag, or trim in the colours of the individual nations. Oh, and Neville, the Union Jack isn't your flag unless you are at sea. If you are on dry land, the Union Flag is yours, like it or not. Y Ddraig Goch might be as well, but that just means you've got 2. Besides, Wales aren't competing, the UK are, which includes some Welshmen.

Songs:

If there are no 'proper' football fans going, there probably won't be any singing. It'll be like the Brian Clough stand on a wet Tuesday evening with Port bloody Vale in attendance. Or Old Trafford during any game where rail links to London have been shut all day. If the hardcore do make it along though, they'll come up with whatever is appropriate at the time. Football songs are spontaneous, memes that start in the pubs and terraces, not the internet for once.

Overall, I'm just looking forward to having a sport at the Olympics I give a toss about that the UK are competing in. Until single-seater motor racing gets accepted by the IOC, it'll remain the only one.

It's a shame about Game.

2011-01-13T13:17:00.001Z

According to this article Game Group suffered a 9.7% sales decline in 2010. Ignoring the fact that we've been buying XBox 360 games for half a decade now and have shelves full of perfectly good games we'll never get finished, various factors are being looked at regarding this such as recession, weather and need to deliver operational cost savings. I'd like to help. The group has two shops, Game and Gamestation plus online versions of each. Here's my handy hints for a prosperous new year...

'Game' shops:

1: Cut the disingenuous greetings - "Are you alright there mate?" because I'm not your mate and the implication that I don't look alright here is slightly insulting. Not least of all because I've been gaming since before you were born. Say hello if you want, ask me what I'm looking for in particular if you must (I hate this too but it's a fair question I suppose) but don't leave me feeling as if I'm perceived as a confused, lost looking granny whose been asked by little Jack or Kyle or Jayden for CoDBlOps and is wondering if a 'preowned' Elder Scrolls title will do.

2: When I go into a clothes shop or a (proper) record shop the staff tend to give me the impression they are into clothes or records to some extent. In Game, it is possible to overhear staff (as often as not in such a position of authority as one could be said to have in a provincial video games shop) talking about games as if they'd never held a joypad in their lives. I'm talking about you, short lady in Cardiff St' David's branch. I suspect this is because they've never held a joypad in their lives and since working in the store have come to loathe the games buyer stereotypes of pack-teenagers, argumentative chavs wanting a tenner trade-in value for their Fifa 2006 and (bless 'em) ungainly, squeaky, awkward, hairy yet effeminate men who look any and all ages between sixteen and thirty five who wear t-shirts from the wrong bands and can remember every achievement on Blue Dragon or Dynasty Warriors and want to chat to someone with a vagina about +10 armour enhancers in the middle of the Saturday rush. Also, Game are (or were, it's not happened to me for a while) notorious for pushing shit games at awful prices onto ignorant buyers. Atari would never have buried ET if they'd been selling it through Game, judging by some of the film tie-in crap I've been hawked while looking for Earth Defence Force 2017.

So, ditch the non-game fans on your staff, they're making an awful impression and I'm sure they're a noticeable minority. Stop forcing your good staff to bullshit customers about crap games if you haven't already done so and start allowing people to feel unmanipulated by the store.

3: Game radio is bollocks, improve it or ditch it.

4: Don't then let your employees play just what they want. If they were good with music for others they'd be in an independent record store, not a homogeneous games chain.

5: Maybe the ambient sounds people want to hear in a video games store are video game sounds?

6: Not a great look is it? You look like a PC World's snot-encrusted little brother. I'm a very classy guy*, if you want to offer me an alternative to the Kerrang! chic of Gamestation, do it properly.

7: I want to buy a game. It costs me time and money to get into town. I look at the online prices at Amazon, play, etc. I then look at the shops and can see how much the game will be in CEX both shop bought and online - and whether they have it in my local shop. Not possible with Game and Gamestation. So, thanks for that.

8: Prices. If I see games like Fallout New Vegas hitting the 20 quid mark within a couple of months, I'll stop buying games in the first three months completely, unless it's an event game like Halo: Reach which I JUST NEED and then I'll get it from Sainsbury's a tenner cheaper than you can do it. Give me a fair, solid price point for titles that I can assume won't be totally usurped elsewhere and won't be halved by yourselves next week when I come back in.

And stick your thirty quid HDMI cables up your arse. That's just dishonest.

9: They are used games and maybe even second hand games. They are not pre-owned. Stop molesting our language. There is also no such thing as pre-ordering. An order is an order, whether the item is out yet or not. Not being a virgin doesn't make me pre-fucked and if I'm on the dole I'm not pre-employed.

If I come to your store at half five in the morning and the lights are off and the doors locked, are you shut or are you pre-open? For fuck's sake.

10: Anything else you can do to help me shake the feeling that a very select, narrow band of modern gaming is being presented to me at the expense of a lot of interesting stuff and then drowned in own-brand accessories of dubious quality would be welcome.

Gamestation:

1: I'll get this out of the way - you can never be forgiven for destroying the retro stock. I didn't buy that Vectrex because it was £100 and I thought £40-50 would have been fairer seeing as you'd had it taking up room in that case for two years already. So you put it in landfill. British games retail industry destroys physical heritage of whole sector. Your karma is fucked even if your sales aren't.

2: From the game criticisms above, the following apply - 4, 7, 8 to a lesser extent, the HDMI bit definitely, 9 and, at Xmas, sometimes 1.

3: Some stores don't do price-matching. This is stupid, as matching is the thing that usually sees me buy from Gamestation and not CEX. Not so much because of the quid difference but because it saves me legwork and makes me feel more like a valued customer than all the elite cards and other stuff I've not been fussed about over the years combined.

4: In your video game shops I can always buy a case for my phone or a 1-up mushroom shirt and keyring, but I often can't buy a joystick for my computer.

5: I want a maximum of one little plastic card with my store credit and reward points on it, please. I have a tendency to answer no when asked if I've got an X card for Y shop. Even if I'm halfway certain that there's one in the wallet I've just taken my debit card out of. If you want me to make savings and shop loyally sell your games a little cheaper.

You can tell which store I prefer. I suppose though if one can remember the days of standing in Boots programming and playing on computers in 1985 anything of the scale, lovelessness and cynicism of Game group's flagship brand is bound to disappoint, even if their more recently acquired cousin is a decent high-street option in most cases. The bottom line is gamers love gaming and they don't feel like Game do. At all. Changing that could see me, and others, chuck a few more quid their way each year.

*I'm not.

This is not an Anti-BBC blog!

2011-01-08T11:13:00.000Z

Honestly, it isn't. But just look at this bollocks...

Electronic Basts

2010-11-20T12:50:00.001Z

The extent to which I want a Nintendo 3DS will depend entirely upon how online it is. The less the better, as this will mean that when I buy an Electronic Arts (or is it EA, like BP and KFC now just an acronym, the original meaning to be lost in time like tears... in rain?) game, it can't have me jumping through hoops before I get to play. If I wanted to spend my afternoon jumping through hoops I'd buy Kinect.

It was Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit I was after. Criterion made the Burnout series, Burnout 2 being the best racer of the sixth console generation. Sadly the current gen means everything has to be open world and sandboxy where possible and where not, menus have to swoosh in and out, game-relevant data must be sparse and rendered atop shiny panels as opposed to the screen full of text we used to get. In NFS: Hot Pants, I can see three or four of the scores around mine and scroll the list with a little stick. This is on a few hundred quid's worth of high-def Samsung display. Such wilfully ignorant use of technology saddens me, it's like getting a Zune HD and filling it with Justin Bieber live bootlegs.

I'll admit the first thing that annoyed me about this game was the install and that was my fault. You pop the disc in, press yellow and select 'install' to get the thing onto HD and I'm now in the habit of doing this irrespective of whether I've got a memory stick in the USB slot, so I tend to return to the 360 ten minutes later expecting an installed game and find a dialogue box asking me where I want it. Rather than making the edges of my menus pointy, I'd have appreciated Microsoft allowing me to set a default for this. Still, raaaage.

This rant is all about how shitty EA are though, so to business - the first thing you're faced with is an invitation to input a code. At length. Using the 360 text entry punishment which has not evolved at all since the NES asked us to name Link a quarter of a century ago. FUN! This facilitates the downloading of a little packet of data that allows me to access two cars in a game that's already got more cars in it than I'm ever going to drive. FUN! And the best bit, this data is tiny, downloads in a second or two, because the cars are already on the fucking disc. This is part of EA's misguided plan to reduce the resale value of games, the bottom of this slippery slope for us will involve paying out for the first half of a game, followed by some free and some paid DLC to get all the levels/cars/shiny things. The bottom of the slippery slope for EA, however, is that you and I will be buying fewer games in the first place. FUN!

Step two in EA's campaign against gamer happiness comes immediately thereafter. You know when you decide you want to watch a film, so you go into town, buy the DVD, come home, unwrap it, find a bin for the advert that sits in the left of the case where you used to get a nice list of chapters/info/shiny things, then once the food is arranged in front of you, the beer in your hand and the feet on the cushions, you hit play... and an unskippable moralsing advert for not pirating comes on? On the film you didn't pirate? EA have brought this unskippable joy to the world of video gaming. An advert for the next Need For Speed - Shift 2- is your reward for buying the 40 quid game and feeding in the code to get the cars you've already paid for. It's not even a very good advert. FUN!

Once you've got control of your game back, relief kicks in that the menus are moderately less self-consciously trendy than Burnout Paradise, Criterion's last effort though this is short lived as the game hands you achievements, cars and kit like a nonce hands out sweets in the park. I've no problem with rewards but with these ones come more unskippable guff - swooshy, scrolly text, over and over - NEW CAR UNLOCKED which feels like it lasts forever, followed by a nice thunky segue into a look at your new car. Exciting the first two times but at my current rate of progress I'm unlocking more cars than I'm running races, sometimes the race is shorter than the unskippables to follow. FUN!

Of course, I wouldn't be bothering to write about this game if it were shit. No, the act of racing more than compensates, it's a game that succeeds in spite of everything, a man in lead boots who successfully swims for the surface, an astonishingly well rounded gameplay in an age of faff, bluster, swooshyness and all-round compromise. The details of NFS: Hot Pants once you get to play the bloody thing will be adequately covered elsewhere but while my whinging has been entirely proportionate to the amount of bullshit this game has been saddled with, the stupendous, gargantuan upside can be equally well addressed with a single word, free of sarcasm for once - FUN!

Just buy with caution, because it seems that EA are set to reclaim their crown of most annoyingly, cartoonishly evil publisher from Craptivision. It's a dirty shame, then, that such manoeuvres come just when we can safely say they're one of the top software houses for quality games again, something i've been unable to say about them since the mid-Nineties.

/Edit Playing Trials HD again really brings home the ballaching ineptitude of whoever made the decision to have the unskippables. The appeal of having friend's times and scores woven through everything one does in-game is that you just keep hammering away over and over and bloody over until you have beaten them. Trials got it right - your instant restart a button press away when you fuck up. I'm not expecting the same from a more advanced piece of software like Hot Pants but at the very least don't rob us of our retry button to play us a seen-it-all-before trailer for a car we don't want to use yet.

As with most people who play racing games, I don't give two shits what make a car is, I know a few of the supercars as I watch Top Gear like everyone else but so long as it is fast and doesn't look completely mup, it'll do for the game. Gran Tourismo 5 is out soon for car nerds, they can piss off and play that.

Austere? Us, dear...

2010-11-03T13:21:00.000Z

Three months ago I jacked in a job that was paying me four grand more to hand out flyers and swap complimentary biros than I was on in my previous role of clearing away dirty needles, coaxing intoxicated cripples to hospital and never having a moment's peace, even when I'd moved to Hobbiton and unplugged myself from the social whirl. I did this mainly because I didn't enjoy the job, which could be stated differently, as 'money can't buy you happiness'.

I'm sad because I'm a lying shitbag

Since then I've taken my own advice to others and had an overdue break from the trade altogether, a planned month and a bit of time off (with an unplanned month and a bit of extension), settling back into The North (where quite frankly I belong) and steadily whittling away at my final pay packet. As if not having to get up in the morning isn't reason enough to be smug, the knock-on effect has seen me get the jump on David, George and Nick (hereafter known as the 'Three Bastards') in that my own austerity measures have been self-imposed before they could have their go. Plus I've no job for them to tax and no entitlement to benefits for them to cut. Find another victim elsewhere, Three Bastards because as Eminem says "You better get rid of that nine it ain't gonna help -What good's it gonna do against a man that strangles himself?".

Goodbye :(

What have these measures been then, sir? I'm glad you asked. Well, where I used to spend a fiver a day on lunch in Sainsbury's (fruit, sandwich, little bottle of drink, maybe some Monster Munch if I'm feeling depressed) my wife and I are now spending twenty quid a week on all food, for the both of us. Zany!

Vegetables are affected by heating in water in a pan, blended and frozen for frequent soupy experiences, alongside home-made bread. Suppers are slow cooked stews that last for days. I have rediscovered cheese on toast (plus habanero Tabasco), bottled real ale at £2 a pop have been replaced by own-brand pop at 60p for a week's supply. Video Games are being properly finished or traded according to whether I like them at all or not, efforts have been made to find new things on telly to watch (I say telly, I mean torrents obviously) and Aldiko bookreader on Android has been a lifesaver with a lovely library of copyright-free awesomeness and bollocks to Waterstones as a result.

Hello!

I'm bringing all this up because I was discussing food with my wife this morning and suddenly realised I am finding it more fun to budget, plan and economise than I did not having to worry about how much anything cost. I wouldn't dream of being flippant about the economic changes facing so many people in the UK now that the Three Bastards (hereafter known as TB, because they are a disease) have power, but the fact remains that every living creature on this planet has, or should have, the following questions to answer for itself daily: "what do I need?" and "how am I going to get it?" That is not to say that being impoverished is character forming, simply that anything that returns us to a basic appreciation of the essentials in our lives can't be unhealthy. When we start earning again, we hope not to lose this new-found appreciation, it's brought us more happiness than three months of takeaways would have, even in the fast food heaven that is Hull.

And for those reading who are in a similar boat to us, but are faring much worse - at least you don't live in the US, apparently the mentals are now in control of the House of Representatives. I'd take the Bullingdon Boys over rapture-ready Republicans any day.

Honour amongst Cheats

2010-10-12T15:57:00.001+01:00

Those with an eye on the video games industry might have noticed that Blizzard, the company behind addictive multiplayer online elf simulator World of Warcraft, have swung their banhammer in the direction of many of their paying customers this week. Starcraft 2, a strategy game enjoyed worldwide and as popular in South Korea as football is in the UK being the game in question.

Blizzard do this, as reported here, by banning people from their online service Battlenet. Just as Bungie ban Halo cheaters on the XBox and modified Microsoft consoles are ineligible for the online service XBox Live, those deliberately gaining an unfair advantage over their online competitors don't get to play. As in the real world, so in gaming. Seems fair enough to me. If they'd taken the punishment no further I would wholeheartedly support their actions.

Here's the thing though: To play Starcraft 2 by yourself, in the single player mode, at home, on your own computer, you still need to log into Battlenet. As such, anyone who buys their game, installs it, plays it by themselves and uses some sort of cheat will no longer be able to play their game by themselves unless they go out and buy a new copy. One insightful chap likened this to buying a Ford and them being able to render it inoperable because you decided to install your own choice of radio.

Luddite readers might feel that that's fair enough too, but let's look at the problem in context, shall we? Since gaming began, players have cheated. The word itself can mean a wide variety of things, from editing the data in a saved game file to typing in a code or combination of joypad movements to use a feature hidden in the game by a programmer. It can mean quitting halfway through a losing match in Football Manager and reloading for another go, or effecting some change in your character's gun or the physics in game to make it fun to play in a different way. Comparable to a group of footballers deciding to play in winklepickers, or without goalkeepers, or with a beach ball. The FA might not want you doing that in an official game, but there isn't and should not be anything to stop it happening if people want it to and it hurts no-one. The only thing that appears to carry over from offline singleplayer to online multiplayer in Starcraft is a rating more easily achieved by cheating, but it has no effect in the multiplayer experience.

Cheating in games played solo is no more real than videogame guns, cars, breasts or money.

I've always enjoyed the presence of cheats, even if I didn't use them. Games where my adolescent self had spent his last pound on a title he was stuck on suddenly became fun and interesting again once I'd cheated my way past the stuck part. I can't honestly say that gaming would have held my interest without cheats. Too much money on too little fun would have seen me look elsewhere for entertainment. If some people's perceived problem with cheating is that the player should be able to complete the game on his own, figuring things out for himself, then let's have a go at Gamefaqs and Prima strategy guides first, shall we?

The main danger in this is not so much five thousand people buying a game they can't play anymore, it's Blizzard's hypocritical bellowing from the moral high ground. This is a one versus many relationship, software house and millions of gamers. Blizzard is the only individual in the spotlight and here they are making a huge error. Starcraft, you see, is a one-off purchase. You pay and it's yours, until Blizzard ban you for having the kind of fun you want with the game you've paid for. If you cheat in World of Warcraft, they'll ban you, but not necessarily forever. I'll leave it up to readers to decide whether this is because World of Warcraft requires a monthly subscription.

If Blizzard want to indicate by their behaviour that morality is flexible relative to financial considerations, some would say that implies a mandate to pirate games. I'll always maintain that a good game is worth paying for and bought games always mean more to the person playing them, but with shenanigans like this afoot, the concept of a game bought is becoming a little less robust.

Disputewatch

2010-10-11T15:46:00.001+01:00

Regrettably, the internet isn't all boobs and kittens. Nor is it all arguments in 'have your say' and comment sections on news sites. Sometimes, the web is merely one aspect of a wider shit-fit, sometimes catalyst and sometimes vehicle for an IRL spat of comedically epic proportions.

As an unemployed layabout, I find that after a few hours my hands form rictus claws if I play too much Halo. It's times like these where I retreat to my PC and monitor the latest iterations of insanity in the season's choicest dust-ups. Here are a couple of my favourites:

1: Tim Langdell vs. the video games industry

The unthinking man's Bruce Everiss trademark trolls a bunch of indie game developers, then industry behemoth Electronic Arts intervenes FOR GREAT JUSTICE when he decides to take on said megacorp and October 15th this year will be very interesting indeed (pdf download). Basically Mr. Langdell has to swear in court to everything he's been up to over the years, which might invite a little comeback from some of those who've crossed his path in the past.

2: Nadine Dorries vs. them wot fink diffrunt

I won't argue that most Tories aren't born Tory, but some become so as a matter of political preference and some because they once read the Daily Mail, awakening a long-dormant hate gene which triggered massive release of andrenaline, dopamine and pigshit-thickamine into the addled mind of the unfortunate reader. All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with Conservative MP Nadine Dorries.

Nadine is a right charmer, who won't let rational thought interfere with her concern for the disabled or, well, anyone who might make any kind of noise she finds unpleasant.

I urge readers to do their own reading up, draw their own conclusions in the above cases, I include the links I do purely because of their potential to generate interest. When you're done with that, stick your own drama finds in the comments.

***STOP PRESS!!!*** Langdell in Eurogamer, today.

The New Politics can't stand by itself

2010-09-28T23:03:00.000+01:00

I'm already slowly evolving this blog into a means of BBC bashing. I don't mean to as I love the BBC more than all the other media outlets put together, but as an organisation who seem to have a grasp of journalistic principles I find things like this blog by Nick Robinson turn me off from the debate, stop me thinking about the policies and more simply, tire me out.

The unsubstantiated rift noises by Robinson here are becoming typical of his style. There's a debate to be had over the AV election of Ed Miliband, and fair play to anyone who wants to speculate on a future Shadow Cabinet role for David or perhaps what he might do once he's walked, but I didn't see an angry demand from David Miliband until Robinson told me to look for one on the replays. I love this quote:

Tonight his angry muttered remarks to Harriet Harman - caught on camera - have made sure that even on the day of Ed's speech David is making the news.

No Nick, you've made sure it made the news. And not just the news, the headline. Talk to me about Ed's past record and experience, how the New Generation in Labour might look once a shadow cabinet is voted in. How the dynamic will change in the coalition when Miliband's Labour arrive because if David stays, there never was a story and if he goes, it'll be an irrelevance very quickly once the business of opposition begins in earnest.

I think part of the problem is that Ed is on a career arc which he needs to keep moving upwards for another half-decade if he's to do his job and return the Labour party to power. You don't start off too strongly, you hold something back and you keep the upward momentum going steadily as best you can. He's got two years longer than Blair had before the next election, unless the coalition disintegrates. Gently does it, and today was 'Hi, I'm Ed' day, he did all the thing I wanted him to do - criticised Iraq, stood up to the militant left in the Unions and generally said all the things the huge and often silent majority of Labour voters (or non-voters this year) have been saying for ages. You can't fault him for any of that and the hitting of the metaphorical reset button is genuinely all he needs to do here today.

It could be more juicy, so we get opinion pieces like Nick Robinson's. But when I read

He, and many others, deeply resent the way in which Ed...

It gives me no certainty or insight of anything regarding the opinions of anyone in Labour's top brass, serving only to reinforce the personality cult around Robinson. He's the new Robert Peston and I'm thoroughly bored of them both. My insight does give me one certainty though, when Miliband talks about needing a New Politics and a move away from gossip and name calling, we're going to need a New Journalism first.

Missing The Point

2010-09-28T00:10:00.000+01:00

I'll freely admit there are few things in life more annoying than being told you are doing it wrong by someone less well versed in a given profession than oneself, but BBC News, I AM DISAPPOINT. There's a story here and it's gone so far over Auntie's head I can only hope the excuse is that they were busy in the basement making the fartgob behind this Halo Reach review atone for their facile squandering of the licence fee by sucking a tapeworm from an angry cat's anus.

The issue I've got with the reporting here is that while the DDoS is occurring in bedrooms up and down the country on a scale that would make Daily Mail mums weep into their bibles, the (mostly) illegal vigilante actions of Anonymous have not only taken down ACS:Law's site but the amount of dosh that's been flying around has been revealed, alongside the fact that despite being quite a bit of money (six hundred thousand English Quid) chubby-necked fool Andrew Crossley still felt the need to bullshit about his profits some months ago.

I'm grateful to him though, he's clearly demonstrated (as they always do, these salivating fruit-machine-eyed gonks) that the ongoing Copyright War is actually about creaming cash for the middleman. You can find decent investigative reportage on this and most other related subject here, here and here whilst ill-informed point avoiding fluff from the people you are paying a hundred and fourty quid a year to here in addition to the original linked article.

It's all too funny, if you are a smallish organisation and you want to mount a DDoS you need to hire people, train them and pay them to go through with it. Meanwhile your tangible opposite number are spread across the world, of sufficient number to never have failed as far as I can tell when sufficiently directed (organised is the wrong term, it'd be like herding cats) and really get off on learning to do it and are happy to give freely of their time for what they believe to be the greater good. It's as if the net was designed for this to be possible explicitly as a failsafe against monetisation taking things over.

It's not as if they don't have a simple, co-ordinating website. The BBC even show the irc server for campaign chat on their website. Bunch of bloody lefties, the BBC. Still, at least you need to be a l33t H@xX0r to get a DDoS up and running, don't you? It's not as if you can just download a comedy app called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, type in the number they give you and press go, is it?

WARNING: YOU AREN'T ALLOWED AND IT'S NAUGHTY

DDoS ATTACKS ARE ILLEGAL IN THE UK
AND A BUNCH OF OTHER COUNTRIES.

IF YOU USE THEM YOU'LL GO TO PRISON
AND A BIG MAN WILL SEX IN YOUR BOTTOM.