I have an iPad, as of about a week ago. I have now had the chance to try it out on a trip, as well as general home use, and I think this sort of form factor is probably the future of computing for most folks. It’s clearly early days still for slates like this, but you can see the path from here, and it is an interesting one, with variations depending on who needs to use the tablet. In the meantime, with some trickery, it can do most of what I would need to replace a laptop. Basically, I am now carrying it everywhere, and on my trip I booted up my laptop exactly once, and it was to create and display a presentation — I didn’t have a VGA adapter yet, so I couldn’t project from the iPad.

I have already spent over $100 on apps for it, and thought I would share some of my thoughts. I tend to favor free and cheap apps, actually, so the below is me trying to be a skinflint and failing!

It’s a decent art platform, for example, except for the lack of a stylus and pressure sensitivity. The drawing tablet capabilities of my old Toshiba M400 destroy it. But there’s laptops out there now with screens that work as either capacitive finger multi-touch or stylus devices… so I can see that niche getting filled. In the meantime, Sketchbook Pro ($7.99) makes for a decent drawing app, though the fact that you have to adjust a slider constantly to affect opacity or line width is annoying. For more natural sketching, you can try out Wondershare iDraft (free!), which varies line width based on speed, but lacks most everything else. Both go better when paired with a Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus. Still a long way from a proper Wacom pen, but better than nothing. I had real trouble fingerpainting…

A stylus is also pretty much a must if you plan to write anything in handwriting. They asked me to sign the credit card on an iPhone when I bought the iPad, and I laughed at how bad the signature was… you just don’t write with fingers with that sort of precision, sorry! The iPad also lacks handwriting recognition support, and the selection of apps for note-taking are very keyboard-centric. What I was looking for was something that felt like a pad of paper, and instead, I mostly found text editors. I mix diagrams and text liberally in notes, so the fact that most notes apps don’t let you do this seems like an obvious oversight.

Among those that do, I preferred Notes Plus ($4.99), which translates all your strokes into vectors, for the simple reason that you can write in a zoom window, so your text is actually handwriting-sized instead of poster-sized like in most apps; smartNote ($0.99) offered similar features, but the zoom window wasn’t there. I do miss having an erase tool that isn’t based on shape selection, though. Both apps let you type or sketch, and neither offer handwriting recognition — for that you would have to go with WritePad, which is again, just a text editor so I didn’t try it. The industry leader in notetaking, Evernote, doesn’t do ink yet in its iPad version, and I haven’t tried Penultimate because you can’t type into it.

A pleasant surprise was the way the musician community embraced the iPad. There’s a pile of pro-grade apps for music creation. I won’t try covering the kajillion instruments, but two pleasant surprises were AC-7 Pro ($9.99), which turns your iPad into a wireless Mackie control surface — I can control my digital recording software through it, with sliders and knobs on screen! — and MultiTrack DAW ($9.99), which is what it says — even including loop-based tools. And I should mention that Voice Band which is an iPhone app, is really neat — it generates MIDI data off your voice. I look forward to getting a Camera Connection kit (Wednesday, I hope) and hooking in a good USB mic into this setup, and seeing what happens, when recording jam sessions and the like. I have my eye on a Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone, which is reasonably priced for the quality mic it is.

For web purposes beyond browsing, I found that the Wordpress app (free) was a universal app, and while I kept around the old version of this app on the phone, on the iPad I use the newer one with no issues. The best cheap RSS reader I found was ZeFeed (free!), which beat out xFeed (also free) mostly because of its organizational structure and interface. ZeFeed is a bit slow to launch, and marking everything as read is obscure (tap the ribbon, the listing will flip to a mark read button). none of these offer OPML import, unfortunately. And I use Twitteriffic (free) for Twitter, which is nice because it’s what I use on the phone too. I also use the official Facebook app (free), and man, it is terrible. I hear there are alternatives…

Accessing my files on my webserver and even editing files up there was easy with FTPOnTheGo Pro ($9.99). You need the pro version because the non-pro is just for iPhone/iPod. It lets you edit files remotely, FTP up and down, etc. Of course, the fact that iOS does not have a filesystem is an issue that causes every app to include attempts at parsing every file format known to man — this one will attempt to display JPG, PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT… it crashed on some of my more complex PPTs, but so did every other app.

In fact, the single biggest letdown with the iPad is in fact the ridiculous hoops that lack of filesystem makes you jump through. None of the slideshow apps seem to let you see the slide both on the iPad and on the projector at once, Apple’s own Keynote ($9.99) included, which for me is a huge problem when giving presentations. You have to use iTunes to transfer files in and out, which basically locks you out of working easily on the road. To add insult to injury, Keynote choked on almost every PPT I gave it.

So I bought Quickoffice ($14.99), which let me mount the iPad as just a network drive on my PC, which was awesome. But it doesn’t let you edit Powerpoint files, though you can try to view them (editing is a promised feature). It did better at at least showing the slides, but then you can’t project them! (Projecting things on iPad is app by app, which is stupid and no doubt some crazy Apple restriction). So I tried Goodreader ($0.99), which does support VGA out as well as displaying darn near anything… but isn’t an editor of any sort. And getting files between the two, well, you email them to yourself. Ugh.

I often need to pull up webpages on a projector too. For that you can use Expedition VGA ($0.99), which apparently is intended to grow into more of a presentation tool than a browser. Of course, getting files into it… well. I tried AirSharing HD ($9.99) but had trouble getting it to mount as a network drive on XP. It basically attempts to give you a filesystem. In the end, I may frequently resort to LogMeIn Ignition (a whopping $29.99) which gives me remote desktop access.

Other work-type stuff I have not messed with enough to form an opinion: ToDo and Dragon Dictation. But overall, I’d say that the iPad serves better as an office tool for non-traditional jobs, like art or music, than it does for pushing paper or giving presentations. Which is interesting, and odd.

I am using Stanza (free) for eBook reading. It does a bunch of ebook formats (though not LIT, alas, I have a bunch of those). It does well with PDFs which were useless to me on the iPhone, but are great and exactly book-sized here. I was able to bring in my song circle fakebook, which is 500 pages of PDF, and it worked. It also reads CBRs, which I haven’t tried yet, but basically gives you access to comics. And it does connect to both a pile of exisiting eBookstores, and to arbitrary URLs as well.

The idea of transcoding video content to the iPad made me shudder, so I was very happy to find yxPlayer ($4.99), which is basically yxFlash for the iPad, and handles playing a variety of movie formats. Alas, no VGA support.

Lastly, it is a very good game machine, but more importantly a game machine that enforces incredibly simple UIs. It is no surprise that the games I have liked the most are ones where the touch screen is embraced, like the arty games Osmos, Auditorium, Spider (newly in HD as of yesterday) & Trundle; puzzle stuff like Drop7, CrossFingers, Colorbind; super casual things like BirdStrike, Tiki Premium, and everything in the Chop Chop series (Ninja, Runner, and Tennis). Also, I was happy to find classics, like Frotz (basically, the entire IF archive at your fingertips!), Troika (think Set), Blokus HD, and that the pixel-doubled Archon for the iPhone holds up very well. I scarf up probably a game a day, often via free promotions, so this list is very very far from exhaustive.

What am I missing, and what rocks?

Newsweek has an article on the fact that “CQ” is falling for American students. CQ is a measure developed by E. P. Torrance that seems to be a pretty good predictor for creative success in basically any field. In other words, since around 1990, American kids have been getting measurably less creative.

Alas, early in the article, we see games getting blamed:

It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children. [emphasis mine]

Is this in fact the case? After all, the rest of the article (and the rest of the research in the field) seems to suggest that handing students problems and obliging them to think about possible solutions, is a much better way to go than rote memorization. And that is what the best games do.

But it is also definitely true that many games these days “come with the answers” — there’s only one way to solve the puzzles they present — a “through line” that was created by the designers. Could games like this, as opposed to ones that provide truly emergent answers, be an issue in terms of creative development?

One interesting point that is mentioned in the article is that the creation of paracosms during childhood; apparently the creation of detailed imaginary worlds when you’re 10 has a  high correlation with eventually winning a MacArthur “Genius” grant! This of course is a common activity for anyone who got into roleplaying at that age. But does immersing yourself in someone else’s paracosm provide the same, or lesser, or no benefits in terms of developing your own creative juices? Should I be less concerned with my daughter’s seemingly endless sessions of what she terms “LARPing” with her friends (not really formal LARPing as such, more like collaborative unstructured roleplay sessions), and more concerned with my son’s total immersion in the Pokemon universe?

Personally, I have always found creativity to be all about juxtaposing concepts and ideas from different fields and places, making unexpected connections. But many of the markers that are described in the article certainly fit my childhood. I also played a lot of games — and I used them as an outlet for creativity. Games have changed a lot since then, though.

It does seem like it behooves us as game developers to at least attempt to make games that encourage creative thinking, if not out of some sense of civic or moral obligation, then as a way of “paying it forward” — something made us creative enough to make the games in the first place, so we shouldn’t hog all the fun.

Here’s the official press release:

Playdom Announces Acquisition of Metaplace — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 8 /PRNewswire/ –.

Coverage also popping up in a few more places, like TechCrunch and Games.com.

This is going to be a lot of fun.

Do you agree that games deserve First Amendment protection, that they qualify for freedom of speech protection?

If you do, and you are an American gamer, I urge you to visit the ECA website and sign The Gamer Petition.

We, the undersigned American video game consumers, purchase, rent and play video games the way we do other entertainment content such as movies and music. We respectfully request that you hold that video games are indeed free speech, protected under the First Amendment, like other entertainment media.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Schwarzenegger v EMA, which is a lawsuit about the latest in a long string of  state-level legislation against videogame regulation. Every time this has come up, courts have struck down the laws as unconstitutional. This time, the appeals have made it to the Supreme Court, and if they decide against games and in favor of the law, it would have huge negative implications for the industry — and for gamers.

The petition will be attached to the amicus brief that the ECA is submitting to the court.

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of some of the excesses of industry content. But I also believe that the way for games to mature as a medium is for them to grow their way to it. That will be made much harder if we end up laboring under arbitrary or pointless restrictions the way comics did for so long. Or if the stigma of regulation means that publishers become averse to games that tackle adult topics with adult sophistication. Or if we have to make builds that vary state to state (a scenario envisioned by the CEO of EA).

So I was happy to sign the petition. I want games to be treated like books, because I want them to aspire to the historical level of impact and quality that books have had.

You may know Jim Rossignol from his writings on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. He also wrote a really wonderful book about gaming culture called This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities — and it looks like it is now available to read free online.

It is totally worth your time. Have at! You can also buy the physical book of course!

At this point, my interpreter, the amiable Mr. Yang, leaned forward. “To my brother he is a great hero. My brother can’t get enough of this. He has been to see him play many times.” “So this guy has a lot of fans?” I said, knowing the answer but nevertheless incredulous. “Hundreds of thousands in his fan club,” replied Yang. “Impossible to track the number of people who watch him play.” This was impossible in part because the man on the stage was on Korean television almost every day. He was about to sit down and play what is close to becoming Korea’s national sport: StarCraft. The man’s name was Lee Yunyeol, or, in game, [RED]NaDa Terran. He was The Champion. In 2004 his reported earnings were around $200,000. He played the then six-year-old real-time strategy game for fame and fortune, and to many Koreans, he and his colleagues are idols.

Gamasutra has published an opinion piece by a Christian pop culture critic that is perceptive and cogent. In it, Richard Clark argues that games that place storytelling in a privileged position in the game design need to be judged by the same sort of critical and moral standards as we judge storytelling in any other medium.

I agree, of course as those who have read the book and blog know; that said, Clark seems to give a pass to games whose experience is more centered on mechanics:

Not all games call for these kinds of questions. Games like Tetris, Peggle, Torchlight, and Doodle Jump make a deliberate attempt to place gameplay first. The story and characters truly are intended to be containers for game play elements.

I think there are implicit lessons to be derived from mechanics too. So I am not inclined to give any games a pass on serious critical thought, regardless of whether they are heavy on story or not!

Is Loved less to be analyzed because it lacks cutscenes or detailed characters? Check out the comments on the review over at Casual Gameplay and see what you think (and if you haven’t played the game — be sure to play it with the sound on). Note how the game mechanics and content alter as you play based on mechanical choices. And notice how the fundamental questions the games raises are based on a mechanic: the choice to obey or not.

Times have definitely changed though — the comment thread on the Gamasutra piece is running heavily in favor of the article, which I don’t think would have been the case five years ago. Hopefully, we see the sophistication level of game critiques — and game content! — continue to increase as we think more about what we do.

Inside Social Games has an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. There are a couple of things there that discuss their games strategy. A few sample quotes specific to games are below, but the whole thing is worth reading.

On viral versus retention (“viral strength… optimizes for apps that are very viral instead of apps that are high quality and that people want to reengage”):

…we intentionally weakened the viral channels recently, and intentionally strengthened reengagement with emails, so that there will be better apps.

On small companies succeeding:

One of our goals that we have is to make it so that you have just as good of a chance to build a good game if you’re a standalone game shop as if you’re a part of a bigger conglomerate… A lot of what we’re working on is can a small company succeed in the space.

On expecting games on FB:

I was surprised about games… I think people build platforms for utilitarian purposes and then get surprised that games are a killer app, so I don’t think it’s uncommon.

On Credits and levelling the playing field:

It makes sense that there should be one currency. If I go play a CrowdStar game right now and get Credits there, I can’t go use those Credits in a Zynga game, so that kind of sucks.

…if Zynga or any one player can allow cross payments within their games, but that doesn’t extend to other games, then that ends up being a big barrier to entry for other startups. Making it so that there is one currency that people can take everywhere levels the playing field a bit

…we’re planning on pouring all the money that we make on Credits back into things like different offers or cards that people can buy in stores, to lubricate the economy so people will buy more stuff in apps…

Freedom Bridge, by Necessary Games. It’s a small “notgame” (read: art game) about Freedom Bridge, in Korea.

As those of you who follow the blog closely know, I listen to (and play) a lot of singer-songwriter music. One of my favorites is Ellis Paul, whom I’ve been listening to since I first heard him on a Kerrville stage in the early 90’s. Every once in a while I mention one of his songs or comment on one of his concerts here…

Well, today an email showed up… seems like his manager noticed. I don’t usually put up marketing stuff on here, but as a fan, I’m going to anyway even though this is more of a gaming blog than a folk music blog!

Ellis’ new album was completely funded by the fans, and he is giving the lead single track “Annalee” away for free. Go check it out! You don’t need to give an email, sign up, register, or anything. Just download it — and share it. Share the link with as many people as you want. And if you like what you hear, buy the album (buy all of them, they are all really good) and support a truly indie and truly fantastic singer-songwriter.

On Metaplace there was a puzzle game I designed called Wheelwright. One of our users, known as Obo there but as oscan on Kongregate, just released a game called Trinhex on Kongregate that is inspired by that one. Given that it is hexes, it of course plays very differently, adding triangle swaps and bonus objectives. Check it out!