Sean's Blog

FML is in trouble...

I'm a big fan of Football Manager Live - it is the only MMO that I've really every played and gotten into.  The game has had its ups and downs which was to be expected considering the scale of what Sports Interactive and Sega were trying to achieve.  We're now at the one year mark, user participation is falling, paid subscriptions are dropping and there is a sense of malaise among the community.  I'm sure this was never envisioned.

Marc Duffy from SI announced a series of fairly radical changes coming to FML.  Gareth Millward, of GameworldOne does a really good job of summarising the changes here.  Basically, SI are calling for a "do over".  They will be totally resetting the gameworlds, cutting back on the number of GWs and making some changes to the structure of the GWs to better suit a variety of players.  I'm more or less in favour of the reset, but it does have its flaws and the worrying part for me is that SI ALREADY appear to be missing the customer feedback.

That's a critical point as well.  Millie says in his post that SI won't get another shot at this and he's dead right.  The problem is, SI have been fairly arrogant and somewhat ignorant of the community on the crux of this issue for a very long time now - too many gameworlds.  Go back eight months ago in SI's own forums and there were a plethora of people saying that SI were opening too many gameworlds, too quickly and that eventually the old worlds would die.  They didn't listen and now here we are.

The second thing I've noticed from glancing over the forums is the sheer outrage at people losing their skills.  If I were SI, this would be a MASSIVE warning bell for me - people are complaining SOOOO bitterly about losing their skills because acquiring them ISN'T FUN!!! Skilling up falls entirely out of the gameplay and is just a necessary evil.  Rather than apologising for resetting the skills and talking about GW balance, they should be realising that skill acquisition is a massive weakness in the game and the players see it as nothing more than a laborious chore. 

I just re-subscribed last week for another 3 months.  That totally annoys me.  Basically for the full duration of this three month subscription, I'm going to be on "the green mile" so to speak.  I don't care what anyone says about trying to qualify for a "Professional" or "Hard Core" GW, alot of people are just going to pack it in.  The reset should be coming in January or whenever 1.4 is ready, not in March. 

Many people are demanding refunds and are complaining about being paying beta testers.  I don't care about the refunds or whatever, but there is something to be said about this paying beta testers.  I'm not sure if SI can fix it, but there is a bit of that as a bad taste in the mouth and two months for free isn't going to rinse it clean.  I'll get over it, but they are certainly going to lose plenty of subscribers on principle.

Despite all of that, I think they've made the only sensible decision they could have made.  I think the game is broken and to fix it they need to do something drastic.  A full reset is drastic.  I am slightly concerned that again, the community is in an uproar (largely over skills) and there doesn't seem to be a "positive" reaction.  I would have thought the best response would have been, "Wow!  This has hightlighted just how crap our skills system is, we'll work on that."  Maybe come out with a system whereby you earn skills for achieving things and they are acquired over time - I dunno, something.  However, saying, "Sorry, that's the way it is going to be" just sort of smells of the same position SI took with opening new GWs and we all now know how that turned out.

Chrome OS

I get it... Many people I know are scratching their heads trying to figure out what the point of this Chrome OS thing that Google is doing.  I don't have that problem, I understand the concept.  I just think it is an entirely pointless idea.

Netbooks are an interesting niche market.  By all accounts they are set to take over the world.  Yet last week in LA at PDC09, I was struck by the fact that there were so few netbooks in attendance.  Now, I know that's a "Professional Developer's Conference" and most devs have better machines than that, but a netbook, in theory is perfect for an event like PDC.  You rock up, pull out your netbook, hook into the free wifi, take some session notes on the device, check your email over the internet and basically get all the "goodness" of the small form factor with no loss of capability.  That's the theory.  The reality was that there were TONNES more Macbooks running OS X at PDC than there were netbooks - BOATLOADS MORE!

Then during PDC, Microsoft trots out a new multi-touch tablet with (king of the netbooks) Acer and gives everyone in attendance (except government employees and Microsoft staff) a freebie.  This device is a bit bigger than a netbook, but a fair bit smaller than a mid-size notebook, it has 3G, wifi and every other connectivity imaginable, plenty of RAM and a good sized HDD.  I can flip it over and write on it to take notes.  The next day, PLENTY of people were using them for just that.  Oh and did I mention, it had Office 2010 installed on it, so I had a full productivity suite.

I think the netbook market will continue to flourish and good luck to Google in tackling that space.  Personally, I would have rather seen Google throw their weight behind someone like Ubuntu and have a Linux variant go after the netbook market.  Alas, Google's plans for global domination (without being evil) necessitate them enter the OS market.  Good luck with that - fighting Microsoft on their home turf is brave or stupid, depending on how you look at it.  I just don't think the average person, and let's face it, that's who's buying these things, not the hardcore geeks, can't live in the cloud yet, totally connected to the internet.

The other thing that worries me is the closed nature of this thing.  One of the criticisms Microsoft has always faced is the proprietary nature of their products.  However, they've always openly embraced the developer community.  Google seem to be placing alot of restrictions on this thing.  Can I run Firefox on Chrome OS?  I doubt it.  What about Opera?  Are Opera and the EU going to go after Google? 

The final thing I'd like to know more about is, how are Google going to monetise this.  Let's face the facts, Google are an advertising space wholesaler which drives traffic through search results.  Are they going to do anything special with this technology to make their ads more ubiquitous?  Am I going to have to see Google Ads on my "desktop"?  If not, and they are giving the OS away, then at some point doesn't someone owe the Google shareholders an explanation as to why they continue to waste money on "competitor" products to Microsoft and others without a monetisation strategy beyond "driving more traffic to google.com"? 

The whole thing just seems like vanity, ego and software engineering bravado.  How about rather than spending all of this time and effort on something so fruitless as Chrome OS, why not do some more R&D on the image search as Chris Dixon (@cdixon) pointed out on Twitter today.

PDC09 Day 1 - Data Programming and Modelling for .Net Devs

This was a relatively introductory session by the very funny duo of Don Box and Chris Anderson.  The session talked a fair bit about using Entity Framework and working with databases via object models.  One interesting thing that they showed was that the tools now can enforce pluralisation and singularisation of the various parts of your model.  Of course, Don and Chris went right to those tricky ones like Goose (which pluralised to Geese) and Sheep (which stayed as Sheep for plural).

One thing they showed which was cool was that in VS2010 you can do straight T-SQL right in the IDE - that created a round of applause. 

Don also had a bit of stab at Sharepoint people.  He referred to them as being "top of the tree" and developers being merely "below the leaf cover" dwellers.  He also had a great throwaway line about Lenovo having a new Sharepoint appliance, a laptop.

It was a very straightforward session and at the end they showed a bit of "M".  I get "M", but I don't necessarily see the point.  A couple of the Incite devs at the session were also split about the usefulness.  I'm not sure if "M" will ever take off.

There's a session on Entity Framework later in the day which might be worth catching to see where the new version is headed in .Net 4.0.

PDC09 - Keynote Day 1

The room was packed this morning... I heard someone on stage talking about 5,000 people at the conference.  It certainly was a full house.

It was interesting to listen to Ray Ozzie present about Software & Services and where cloud computing is going.  Microsoft Azure has certainly come along over the past year and is now just about production ready.  The launch date was announced as January 1, 2010 and the first billing will happen in February.  Bob Muglia filled in much of the detail around product and "on-site vs cloud" and how Microsoft will marry the two up.  In particular, they announced Project Sydney which allows you to synchronise data between your own SQL Servers and SQL Azure through IPSec and IPv6.  I think this type of thing should be a game changer for Enterprise IT and Disaster Recovery - you can run your core systems either in the cloud or on-site, but keep your core databases on-site and nightly replicate them to SQL Azure for backup.

Being PDC, this is largely about developers and the Keynote certainly didn't disappoint.  Visual Studio 2010 looks to be a typical Microsoft "increment of three" version.  The tool has been re-written in WPF and it is much more responsive, even in Beta.  The work done in the background with Oslo modelling of applications is starting to pay dividends because now in VS2010 you can drag and drop your VS solutions onto application models and the model interprets the properties of the solutions.  This lets you make changes to the application roles (like the number of instances you want to run) in the model.  Very powerful stuff.  It has also been greatly complimented by new deployment and packagin capabilities.  The VS team have done alot of work to simplify and integrate the MS Deploy tool right into the IDE.  Now, you can do one-click web deployment very, very easily to the web or to Azure.

Microsoft look like they are closing in very rapidly on their "cloud" vision and typically it targets all of their competitors.  I'm still not sold on SQL Azure, but things like the new AppFabric and the modelling tools are certainly very compelling.  The gaps that existed in the Microsoft roadmap has now been filled in, but some products (Azure AppFabric for example) are still some time off.  It will be interesting to see where they are in sixth months.

Blogging at PDC 09

Myself and some of the Incite folks have come over to Microsoft's PDC09 conference.  I'm going to spend some time talking a bit about the sessions I attend.  Hopefully some people will find this interesting and feel free to ask any questions.

NHL Expansion

Previously I've written about the need for NHL Contraction.  Today however, I'm very excited by a comment made by Larry Quinn, part owner of the Buffalo Sabres.  In an article, Quinn makes the comment, "Obviously, Toronto is the centre of the hockey universe, so draw your own conclusions about a second team (being a success)," Quinn said yesterday.  "I've said the same thing, whether it pertains to a team in Toronto, Hamilton or Australia.  If the league has a plan, we'll listen." 

Well, let me be the first to put my hand up and lobby for a team in Sydney, Australia!  I will buy two season tickets right now, 50% deposit.  Nevermind Toronto or Hamilton, focus on the untapped demand here in Sydney. 

Stevie Y

Growing up a Leafs fan in the 80's was tough.  The Norris division generally came down to who was worse in a given season, Toronto or Detroit.  The one thing that always gutted you as a Leafs fan was that we had players like Clark and Vaive, but the Red Wings had Steve Yzerman.  When Gretzky and Lemieux were beginning their assault on the scoring records, there was Yzerman, racking up 120 points for a terrible team.  There were seasons he was 50 or 60 points better than anyone else on the Wings. 

As his career progressed and the Red Wings became a better club, Yzerman became one of the best all-round players ever to play the game.  Watching him and Brett Hull (a fellow inductee and big-time offensive machine in the 80's/90's) kill penalties in the Stanley Cup final was unbelievable when you think about it and a credit to the calibre of these players.

Yzerman has been heaped with accolades this week and there's nothing I can add about his prowess as a player or a leader that hasn't been said by someone more eloquently than I ever could.  I will say this though, Yzerman has always carried himself like a true gentleman and a class act.  My personal memory of him is when I was young after a game at Maple Leaf Gardens, waiting around the side of the "Cashbox on Carlton" for an autograph.  Yzerman was heavily iced on the shoulder and the knee as he walked out to the bus.  He stopped and signed autographs for every single kid waiting, probably forty or fifty.

In his acceptance speech, he makes reference to the great Bryan Trottier - a play I also admired when he was with the Islanders and later the Penguins.  Yzerman says he wore #19 because of Trottier and hoped he did so with honour.  I know there are a generation of children wearing #19 today because of Yzerman (and Joe Sakic). 

Possibly the highest honour you can attribute someone is to say that if your son grew up and carried themselves with the class and dignity of Stevie Y, you'd be a very proud parent.

That Hit!

I've watched the Michael Liambis hit on Ben Fanelli about a half dozen times.  I'm not sick or perverse, I'm just trying to find something wrong with the hit.  Certainly the end result, a fractured skull and numerous other injuries to a 16 year-old boy is grotesque, but the actual hit itself, I'm not so sure.  Smarter people than me, like Steve Simmons and Damien Cox have all more or less deemed it a clean hit as well.  Liambis, didn't leave his feet, he was finishing his check, it wasn't late and it was shoulder on shoulder.  It was extremely violent, but hockey is a tough game.

Much discussion is being had about whether or not the removal of obstruction, an effort to open the game up and show off the speed had a hand in this.  I think there's a bit of that, but overall, the game is better off without the obstruction that existed pre-NHL lockout.

Another vein that I've seen some discussion in was around whether players respect one another.  I don't think Michael Liambis disrespected Ben Fanelli - he just finished his check.  I think hard checking is a sign of respect, it says that, "if I don't try and put some doubt in your mind, I think you're a good enough player who's passes will hurt my team." 

I think the biggest problem with this hit comes from bad coaching and weak administration of the game at the amateur level.  That's a big statement I know, but here's my argument.

Ben Fanelli turned his back to an on coming, rushing forechecker.  Twenty years ago, when I was Ben Fanelli's age, playing the same game he plays, same position (not nearly with as much skill sadly), I knew and had been taught that you NEVER turn your back to an on coming player and put yourself in a position to be hit from behind.  I'm not saying Ben Fanelli caused his own injuries, but, I am saying he didn't make a safe play.  If you watch the replay again, he also had his head down when he picked up the puck.  He certainly knew Liambis was coming, that's why he reversed the play, BUT turning your back like that is not smart, you are placing your safety totally in the hands of the other guy.

I think this fatal mistake is a result of poor coaching of kids and an amateur administration that hasn't dealt with hitting from behind properly.  When I was playing in novice, checking started at minor bantam, so teenagers.  The administrators in Ontario decided to drop the age to minor Pee Wee - they didn't grandfather it in or anything, just brought it in one year.  Luckily, I was only Atom age and at the end of that season our coaching staff worked with us in practice on how to take a hit (especially along the boards) and how to check effectively.  This was also the time when "hitting from behind" formally became a penalty.

I can say that in several years of full-contact hockey at many levels (House League, Rep, A, AA, High School, etc) I was never once hit from behind into the boards.  I also have no memory of any game I was ever involved in where someone got hammered into the boards from behind.  We were all taught to take the hits front and side on.

A few years ago, I went to watch some kids play.  They had "STOP" signs sewn onto the back of their shirts between the shoulder blades.  In that single game and the game after, I must have seen a half dozen, questionable hits and two or three squarely from behind into the boards.  More horrifying, at GTHL AA level, I saw a 13 year old boy go into the corner in his own end, face first to the boards, fishing the puck out with his stick.  He got hammered from behind and speared himself with his own stick.  The kid who hit him was tossed from the game.  I'd never seen anything like it in all the years that I played. 

To me, it was clear that the kid who was hit could have had a flashing neon sign on his back and the boards lined with airbags, but he hadn't been properly coached enough to protect himself.  It was sickening.  These kids could pass at speed, shoot like pros and stickhandle like crazy, but in two games, I saw several kids turn their back to the play along the boards.  Newsflash - a stitched on "STOP" sign won't protect you!  It is a small sample admittedly, but these kids need to be taught to play contact hockey properly.

As for the administrators, I would suggest you make it mandatory for all coaches to teach their kids self-preservation.  Hockey is fast and violent, contact is legal, being a beautiful skater with silky slick stickhandling won't help you if you have your head down.  Let' get back to teaching kids to protect themselves and not rely on the good sense of others - teach them to take matters into their own hands!

Finally, to David Branch who has suspended Michael Liambis for the rest of the season.  Perhaps part of the problem is that you had a 16 year old child, playing against a 20 year old young man.  This is the same David Branch who's argued for "special" 15 year olds to play junior.  I think it is a bad idea for boys to play against men.  Rather than blame a kid for a clean hit, perhaps we should figure out a way to deliver high quality hockey to 15 - 16 year olds, but not dump them in with 17 - 20 year olds.  I think the overage junior rule should be banished - no 20 year olds.  I think we should consider a "Minor Junior" league of 15 - 16 year olds who can "graduate" to the full Junior A squad for 17 -19 year olds.  Branch should address the real issues here, not play around the edges.

For those of you think I'm crazy, I'm going to attach the video of the hit on Ben Fanelli.  I hear Ben has been released from hosptial, which is awesome - I wish him the best of luck.  I also hope Michael Liambis recovers, clearly he was emotionally distraught from the outcome of his hit.  Goog luck in the future to both young men!

Things are looking up...

Whew!!! It has been a very busy six weeks, whenever I wasn't at work, I tried to avoid computers, so unfortunately blogging fell off the table.  I'll see if I can be a bit more regular.

One thing I have been able to do is catch a few Leaf games on the excellent, NHL Game Center service.  For the most part, they were hopeless, but the last couple of weeks they have been pretty good.  Obviously some of their new blue liners have been formally introduced to one another and have worked out they are on the same team.  Sadly, Luke Schenn seems to have gone backwards and his time has gone backwards whereas Ian White's has increased.  White is a guy who has worked hard and learned his craft, perhaps Schenn is going to have to go through a bit of that as well - oh yeah, he's going to need to work on his foot speed, he gets beat wide too easily.

The other thing that has happened is that Jonas Gustavsson has gotten healthy and Phil Kessel has recovered.  The hit he took in his first game was MASSIVE and he shook it off, so that's a good thing.  Good goaltending and a quick, talented forward sure can make your team defense look much better.  The difference in the NHL between the good and the bad teams is very small and in some ways, these two players returning to the Leafs demonstrates just how small the margin is.

With Vesa Toskala, he lets in one rubbish goal a game.  Conversely, Gustavsson seems to save one sure-fire goal a game.  Phil Kessel took ten shots in his opening game and his first goal, showed the kind of poacher he is, it may have gone in off Blake's shot but Kessel stuffed it in the net to make sure.  Bulging the twine is better than going to the video replay to see if the puck crossed the line.  Most importantly, a guy like Kessel playing 23 minutes a game is probably accountable for one or two minutes a night that you're playing in the other team's end, suddenly you're getting better defensively.

By no means are the Leafs a top ten team right now, but they are probably middle of the pack.  So those two guys coming back from injury is enough to go from the basement in the NHL to the middle of the pack.  Considering how the season started, I think Burke and Wilson will take middle of the pack!