Brian Crecente received a response from Microsoft saying that, “A conflict mineral free supply chain is a priority for us in our supply chain management policies and practices.”

Nintendo responded to earlier pressure from another group, Raise Hope for Congo, and completely dodged the issue saying, “Nintendo does not purchase any metals as raw materials. As a remote purchaser that buys finished components made from many materials, Nintendo requires its suppliers to comply with its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Procurement Guidelines, which stipulate suppliers comply with applicable laws, have respect for human rights and conduct their business in an appropriate and fair manner.”

The problem is that while these statements sound mostly nice and hopeful, they are bullshit. Why? Because the problem is not a conflict over the minerals but a conflict between the laws that set forth the financial responsibilities of corporations and their social responsibilities towards people and the earth.

In the US, by law it is illegal for corporations to do anything that would hurt their ability to maximize profits. Shareholders can sue the company if they think the company is spending too much money on being socially responsible and thus cutting into profits. Corporations often have “social campaigns” to green their products or give funds to cancer, etc. But that is just a distraction to the real atrocities they commit by employing slave labor or funding wars.

Their goal is to extract human and earth resources for as cheap as possible and they are required by law to do so. You can read or see The Corporation for more info. If you don’t have time to watch the 2.5hr film, watch the extra features radio interview with the Majority Report. That segment does a great job of summarizing how the market forces work to compel corporations to act in ways that abuse both people and planet.

If we want to stop corporations from using minerals extracted from conflict zones which funds the perpetuation of violence and killings, then those laws that compel them to behave in such ways must be changed.

That’s how the system works and if being a game designer has taught me anything it’s that any system can be changed.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Information

Mockup of Heavy Rain with full closed captioning. from Reid Kimball on Vimeo.

I found a video someone recorded of them playing Heavy Rain. I downloaded it and brought it into Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 and added text overlays for all of the closed captions. I then tweaked font colors, fades, timing and positioning.

I am a hard of hearing video game designer. In 2004, my team and I released Doom 3[CC], a mod for id Software’s Doom 3 that added full closed captioning.

My goal is to work with other game developers to help them implement full closed captioning that enhances the accessibility of their games to reach a broader audience.

Please notice:

1. The text is larger, therefore easier to see. Many video games that have subtitles (dialog only, no sound effects) use very small text that is hard to read on SD TVs, which I have.

2. Text uses a bright color with a black outline. This ensures it is readable on many different backgrounds. Bright yellow is not a common color used the environment of video games, while bright white is more likely.

3. Limited stacking of multiple lines (2 max shown) leaves the rest of the screen uncluttered.

Depending on the game, closed captioning can merely increase the awareness of game atmosphere for the hard of hearing and deaf or it can provide essential feedback they miss out that comes from the audio. As an example, in Doom 3[CC], closed captions help deaf players know enemies are approaching or attacking off screen when they can’t be heard. In Heavy Rain, the player can walk up to an apartment door and hear a woman inside screaming as she is attacked. However, these screams are not captioned and hard of hearing or deaf players are likely to miss out on a key sequence of gameplay.

Let me know if you’d like to talk with me about figuring out closed captioning solutions for your game.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Before I got my Crohn’s in remission through natural diet and supplements, my poop looked nasty. Very loose, pale brown and floating along with globs of what looked like mucous, but later I learned it was fat deposits that weren’t being absorbed by my gut. This was the sight of my stool for so long that I began to accept it as “normal” and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

But when I switched to a new diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, within 24hrs I had my first solid stool in years. Even so, it was years before I really researched and taught myself what healthy stool looks like. It’s rather simple. First, here’s what unhealthy stool looks like,

• Loose, no formed solids
• Pale color
• Floating
• Additional deposits (blood, mucous, fat)
• Bad smell

In contrast, here’s what healthy poop looks like

• Solid, smooth and log like
• Nice chocolate brown color
• Sinks to the bottom of the toilet bowl
• Nothing else, no blood, mucous or fat
• No smell

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Stool_Scale

When you have an inflammatory bowel disease, you need to constantly monitor your bowels for signs of health. You could have colonoscopies, CT scans and other very expensive and harmful tests, and those are OK every few years or in an emergency. But in between, looking at your own stool for the signs above is your best option.

If you see that your stool is unhealthy, it means you are eating the wrong kinds of food. Forget about drugs. They are not the answer, in fact they tend to cause more problems than solve.

The kinds of food you should try eating are like those recommended by the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Starting with their chicken soup recipe is safe because after making the soup with carrots, celery, chicken (w/skin and bones), parsley and onions, you only drink the broth and pureed carrots. The rest is thrown out because when you are starting the diet your gut is not strong enough to digest them. But keep up with it, and soon, it will.

A few months ago, I made the soup and ate everything, chicken (without the skin), carrot, onion, parsley and broth. It was like eating spinach, I felt superhuman amounts of energy. The nutritional concentration was fantastic. When cooled in the refrigerator the broth turned into a solid gelatin substance. I even ate it cold and it was damn good. Just like a cold pizza. In fact, this chicken soup recipe is the SCD version of pizza because it has a lot of healthy ingredients packed into one meal and can be eaten either hot or cold.

In my own experience, following the diet from “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” stopped the inflammation in my gut and returned my stool to a solid, healthy form. I highly recommend people with Crohn’s or Colitis take a long, serious look at the diet because I believe it can help keep Crohn’s in remission, but it does take a lot of hard work, patience and discipline.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

In December of 2004 I started a whole food, all natural diet called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to help manage my Crohn’s disease flares. Within 24 hours I saw the first solid stool I had seen since winter of 1997, when it all began.

I was convinced this diet was the answer to regaining control of my health and my life. By 2007, I was medication free and in remission, confirmed with a colonoscopy. Not long after, I started having bowel obstructions so bad that I felt nauseous. I felt pain in my gut, like a 500lbs weight was concentrated on a pin-head point below my belly button. It kept me rolling in my bed for hours in the early mornings, 3 – 5am or longer on occasion.

I figured out that it was because of strawberries. The seeds of the strawberries I guessed were getting stuck in my intestines, causing blockages and a lot of pain. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing!

What it meant was that Crohn’s was definitely in remission. When Crohn’s is in remission, there is no inflammation of the intestinal walls. Once inflammation stops, the once inflamed tissue becomes scar tissue, which narrows the passages of the intestines. Stopping the inflammation is key as it stops diarrhea and as long as future inflammation is prevented, no more strictures and therefore narrowing of the intestines should occur, or so I thought. At that point in 2007 or early 2008, I decided to stop eating strawberries and to never try them ever again.

With Crohn’s, there can be long periods, many months of no issues and then suddenly it all comes crashing down. In 2009, unfortunately, I was getting more bowel obstruction pain, this time from foods like pepper and carrots.

I told my doctor, this time a naturopath that I was becoming concerned that the strictures were limiting the range of foods I could eat without having bowel obstructions. I was worried that eventually, I would need surgery. That’s the last thing I wanted to do.

My naturopath recommended I start taking a supplement called Glutamine (aka L-Glutamine). She told me in plain English that Glutamine is the main fuel for the cells of the intestine’s walls and it promoted healthy cell growth. In other words, it may help repair damaged intestinal walls.

I gave the Glutamine a shot, had no adverse side effects, which is common and kept up with it for I’m guessing 6 months before I started adding food back in. I added carrots and found I had no gut pain! I never tried the pepper again but will soon. Instead, a few nights ago I decided to try having one single strawberry before dinner. If I had any problems, I figured I would know within 24hrs.

To my surprise, I felt completely normal. No gut pains at all and also had several solid bowel movements. I gave my gut a break the next night and on the third night I decided to have two strawberries. I woke up this morning, ecstatic because I realized I did not have any gut pain. No bowel obstructions. I also have had several solid bowel movements since waking, telling me that my bowels are moving fine through my intestines.

I believe this is evidence that Glutamine has REVERSED any narrowing of my intestines due to strictures. That is without a doubt, wicked awesome!

I know how horrible living with an IBD can be. I’ve got an intensive regimen that has kept me in remission and healing. I recommend that anyone with a Crohn’s or Colitis switch to a diet like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet or similar and Glutamine.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

I’ve played some of the games on AddictingGames.com and it’s a mixed bag of trash and gold. They don’t seem to discriminate which kinds of games are accessible through their website.

This is a problem, because Nickelodean is a company devoted to entertaining children, and yet AddictingGames.com is in the business of entertaining anyone. By having Nickelodean link to AddictingGames.com, there is no way to ensure that children do not play violent or sexualized and otherwise inappropriate games. There is no way currently to filter out the adult games if the visitor came from a children focused website.

Steve Youngwood, Executive Vice President, Digital, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group is being targeted (rightfully so) by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to remove AddictingGames.com from their links page of games for children.

The only issue I had with this, was the original letter they wrote for people to sign and send to Mr. Youngwood, which I have copied below.

OLD

Dear Mr. Youngwood,

I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com.  AddictingGames.com features violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children.  I am shocked that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Perry the Sneak.  Linking to games like these from websites for young children is one reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.

I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children.

End of letter.

The problem I have with it is that it sort of distorts the truth. It implies that AddictingGames.com only has violent and sexualized games, but in fact, it has a wide variety, some of which are fine for children, such as Bloons.

I reworded the letter to say the following, which I think conveys more truth and offers a solution for all parties involved.

NEW

Dear Mr. Youngwood,

I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com.  (note: I forgot to edit the “outrage”, because that is too strong a word to represent my view.)

AddictingGames.com features many games, some are fine for children, while others have violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children.  I am surprised that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Naughty Park.  For this reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.

I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children. Something should be done to ensure that future links from Nickelodean websites only go to gaming websites that have child safe content. Or websites that have a wide range of content only display age appropriate content if the visitor arrives from a Nickelodean website.

Sincerely,

-Reid Kimball

I kind of rushed in that solution towards the end there, but the idea is that if someone is on a Nickelodean website and they click on a link to go to any outside gaming website, like AddictingGames.com, they are directed to a special section of the website that only features games for children.

I realize that there are ways to get around that, any kid could re-type the URL to get full access to AddictingGames.com. Another idea is that parents of children could register a “parental” account that will email them a list of games that are being played, at what times and for how long. This way, they might be able to discover that at 3:30pm, just after school, but while they were at work, their child went to AddictingGames.com and played an inappropriate game.

What do you think? Something ought to be done I think, because there is no ESRB for online games and in years to come, more and more games will be accessible online.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Show me and I may remember.

Involve me and I will understand.”

A Chinese proverb that I think speaks to the potential power of social issue games.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

We dump dead diseased animals into rivers. The rotting flesh, organs full of parasites and bacteria ooze into the water.

Thirsty, we drink.

Dirty, we clean.

We consume useless products we don’t need, to impress the people we don’t like, only to throw them out or lose them within months. They leach toxic chemicals into the earth and rot for hundreds of years.

We abuse our soil, which lacks nutrients for the food we grow. The food, stunted, lacks ability to fight pests.

We spray pesticides.

We eat pesticides.

We are pests.

Corporations bound by law to profit exploit and cut corners in order to keep shareholders happy, while they spew pollution into our waters, our air and our land.

Hungry, we consume.

Blind, we demand more.

We cannot continue this any longer. To do so is bringing a slow, but certain total destruction to all life.

Enter Exhibit A: It began centuries ago, one example being the poor treatment of cows. Their raw milk turned deadly, leading to an epidemic of Tuberculosis. This led to pasteurization and ultra-pasteurization, which can cause further disease and allergies. This disrespect for nature continues today. We harm our planet and it harms us.

Enter Exhibit B: The disastrous BP owned Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The air, which is 100 times more toxic than normal due to oil dispersant chemicals is making the people of Louisiana cough, gag and unable to sleep. Symptoms just like those who lived near previous oil spills.

Government and local authorities at this time of writing have yet to provide health services. If the toxic dust after the Twin Towers fell in NYC is any indication, it will be years before the people of Louisiana see any relief, if they live long enough.

Enter Exhibit C: The Red River in Winnipeg, Canada, an area known to have the highest incidence of Crohn’s disease, a devastating inflammatory bowel disease. In 1997 I was diagnosed with it.

That’s me, having the time of my life tubing and wakeboarding on the Red River up in Winnipeg, Canada. I’m the one showing off to the camera, unknowingly ingesting bacteria that would work over my gut for the next 6 months. Then symptoms of diarrhea and gut pain were frequent. My friend warned me not to drink the water, which I didn’t think I had. It wasn’t until years later that I learned from her and a UK doctor that farmers liberally use the river as dumping grounds for waste and dead animals.

Don’t you see? The system is out of whack, out of sync, on the verge of collapse. What the planet needs, what WE need, is to unplug from Western society. Forgo consumption in place of contribution. Skip the rat race towards piles of monopoly money that only exist on Wall Street computers. Rediscover the value of things that cannot be valued; relationships and community.

When this disrespect of all things living ends, no longer will we have increasing rates of disease and decreasing rates of longevity.

UPDATE #1: Huffington Post has an article that is along the same lines as the above, posted on May 19th, but I didn’t see it until today, May 23rd.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Subtitling

Being hard of hearing, subtitles and preferably full closed captioning are very important to me. Right off the bat I knew something wasn’t right when the opening cinematic is not even subtitled, despite my having turned on the subtitle option from the main menu. Unfortunately, this is kind of common in video games, but it’s even more disappointing and surprising this time because Ubisoft has publicly pledged to subtitle ALL their games in house. This initiative was announced well before Assassin’s Creed 2 was released.

Consider me unimpressed and very disappointed. My trust in Ubisoft making their games for the hard of hearing and deaf is non-existent right now. Only way I will play another of their games is if someone else, preferably the fine folks at DeafGamers.com can confirm an Ubisoft is properly subtitled.

The other faults of the game are numerous.

Who, Where, Why, When and What the Fuck is Going On Here?

Having not played the first Assassin’s Creed, I was thoroughly confused with the beginning and was not a fan of that feeling. I could not connect with the main character, Desmond, who was also confused, but had more knowledge about the world and events than I did. Let Heavy Rain be a great recent example of situating the player in the world and introducing who all the characters are without putting the player under duress.

Quality

The production quality in the graphics, animation and art style was really lacking and at times jarringly poor. The way Desmond would turn his upper body stiffly, waist to head along with arms, to face the woman snapped me right out of the game. The home base where I jacked into the chair was really uninspired. Looked like some hipster’s NY loft rather than an underground operation doing… whatever it was they were doing. What was it?

UI Made Me Ask Questions More Than Answer Them

I spent the first mission mashing buttons without ever really feeling like I knew what I was doing and why. First, the game asks if I want to accept the missions, but, I can only choose to accept them. Why even bother asking me? It tried to explain certain combat moves to me, but 1) the text was extremely small on my standard def TV. BTW: Why the fuck won’t game developers make UI and text look proper on SD TVs? It really fucking pisses me off. The subtitle text is also ridiculously small. At least it had a tinted black background. 2) there were so many enemies on screen that when I tried to look at the UI to learn how to different moves, an AI enemy would attack me and I have to go back to attacking.

Combat

While attacking, I got absolutely no kinetic feeling of intensity or flow. It was lackluster. Transitioning from enemy to enemy to chain attacks was slow and clunky looking. The same animation would repeat over and over. I would punch someone in front of me, and see someone behind me was attacking and would attempt to turn to punch them, but the response was sluggish. I was often hit in the back of the head before my character would turn. Not fun.

First Free Running Race Mission

I don’t think I need to talk about this. It is universally reviled as a horrible mission for very good reason. Right after that I had to climb another building. One side of it is unclimbable so I would push my stick to the left to climb to the other side, but every time I did that my character would jump for unknown reasons and fall to its death.

Fight the Good Fight

A friend on twitter replied to my comments on the game, “Aaah! Don’t give up! One of the best game’s of the year.” Unfortunately, the first 45 minutes tell me it’s definitely not worth my time and there’s absolutely no reason why I should continue to give it a shot. That’s what the first 45 minutes are for.

I know the guys and gals that work on the game put a lot of effort into it, but this reeks of rushed development under very tight deadlines with a lot of overtime without proper rest. It screams of, “Fuck it, just ship it.” All of these problems are things developers can see early on in development and they need to fight for them to get fixed.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

1. How stupid is the US government for thinking there wouldn’t be any retaliation? The US has had some famous individuals who have caused massive damage, like Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber). A single person who wants to retaliate against government actions is entirely capable of doing so. The article uses the analogy of stirring up a hornets nest and thinking the US won’t get stung. 9/11 was the biggest sting we got from previous transgressions and all these wars and Predator drone attacks are just begging for more stings.
2. In this current system of government, there are NO anti-war presidents. There may be anti-war candidates, like Dennis Kucinich, but Obama was never an anti-war candidate either. To all the liberals who thought they were electing an anti-war president, try watching the debates next time. President Obama clearly said he’d continue fighting terrorism militarily.
3. The article states, “Figuring out cause-and-effect when it comes to the motivations of Islamic militants is always tricky.” Huh? These are not aliens from another planet, as much as the mass media seems to indicate, they are people who simply don’t like it when a much more powerful, resourceful and rich country humiliates their entire culture for generations and to top it off kills many innocents with reckless abandon and doesn’t show any regret. The US military frequently SAYS they regret the killing of innocents, but they never SHOW it. A good place to start might be to stop dropping them in the first place.

If you want to play an interactive version of my thoughts on this subject, you can play, “What Goes Around”. It’s not a proper game, but more an experimental game that communicates my thoughts on this.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

In summary, there’s a ton of small bits of plastic debris floating in the ocean that comes from the plastic bags and other trash we throw away. It’s so small that fish mistake it for plankton, their food. It ends up killing many of them. If not, it could wind up poisoning them and us if we end up eating the fish.

Here’s a video from KQED’s Quest about this growing problem.

The email which linked to the Environment Oregon page calls attention to encourage our local representatives to ban all plastic bags, mostly found in food stores. When I lived in SF, they did this and I didn’t noticed it one bit. That’s because since 2004 I’ve been using a large tote bag from LL Bean.

I always have my huge LL Bean tote bag when food shopping. I freaking love that thing! It’s HUGE. I’ve been using it since 2004 and it’s super sturdy. I can’t tell you how many times people have stopped to ask me about the bag or just to comment on how huge it is.

I also have another, smaller bag, the kind you see sold next to the checkout lines in the food stores.

Just to be clear, I don’t have any stake in LL Bean. I mention their bag because I love it and I think whether or not our governments can act to save the oceans, we don’t have to wait for them. We can act now by using reusable bags instead of plastic.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.