Finding of the week #150

A small virtual racing community

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about internet based communities and present some insights on the amount of data that is being generated by a small community.

Internet based communities are not a new phenomenon. Since the early days of the internet, users started to form communities and dicussion groups in order to share information with others. Naturally, communities also evolved around computer games as players like to share their experiences and results with others, ask for help or discuss certain elements of a game.

Furthermore, some computer games allow players to form communities directly in the virtual worlds as players can join others via the internet in order to play the game cooperatively or competitively. In addition, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft allow players to join guilds and thus become a permanent part of a community that mainly exists within the boundaries of the game itself.

Finally, the emergence of YouTube created another special form of community as users can upload videos and share them with the whole world. Interested viewers can discuss the videos, become a subscriber and ultimately form a small community around the content creator.

DiRT Rally

DiRT Rally

Recently, I became a part of a small community–The Conelanders League–consisting of YouTubers and their fans who enjoy playing the racing simulation DiRT Rally. DiRT Rally provides users with the option to create own leagues and to invite friends in order to competitively race against others. The Conelanders League was initiated by ConeDodger240 in order to allow fans of KurtJMac and himself to come together and experience an exciting community event.

However, rallying takes place in form of a staged race on public or private roads. The participants consecutively race on those stages and try to complete them as fast as possible. In this case, players do not need to come together at a certain date in order to participate in a DiRT Rally league. Instead, the game just provides them with the stages they have to complete and subsequently uploads the results to a database so that the players can compare their runs.

This approach takes away the chance to see the runs of others, however. Hence, participants started to record their runs and upload them to YouTube. In addition, a small database was created to keep track of the overall standings. Personally, I am mostly impressed by the size of the community and the amount of data that has been generated so far. Moreover, the Conelanders League has also united different YouTubers and players who began to support each other.

By now, at the end of the fourth event (one event had the length of a week and consisted of 3 to 4 stages) of the Conelanders League, YouTube found „about 1800“ videos that are related to „Conelanders“ of which „about 1000“ have a length of more than 20 minutes. In addition, the standings database lists 82 participants coming from 20 different nations.

In the end, I really enjoy being part of this small community that connects the world. Moreover, it is fantastic to watch the runs of others as it resembles following a real world sports event.

Finding of the week #149

Another wake-up call

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the result that 2015 was the warmest year on record.

Last week, we finally had some beautiful winter days in Germany with a good amount of snow and temperatures below freezing. Unfortunately, the cold snap lasted only for a week, as the weather forecast predicts temperatures way above freezing for the next days. Some years ago, the temperatures remained below freezing for several weeks during the winter, but due to global warming, these times seem to be over.

A beautiful winter day.

A beautiful winter day.

This observation also aligns with the recently published results that the year 2015 was the warmest year on record. The globally-averaged temperatures in 2015 were 0.13°C higher than the temperatures in 2014. In addition, the average global surface temperature has risen by 1.0°C since the beginning of the modern record keeping in 1880. Moreover, the record year 2015 continues a long-term warming trend of the last decade. This phenomenon is mostly caused by the increased amount of carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions in the atmosphere. [1][2][3]

Last year’s record temperatures should be seen as another warning that we must act on climate change now. Global warming is the greatest challenge mankind is facing today as it will affect every person on Earth. Also, global warming will drastically change certain regions of the Earth, thus threatening many species. Especially species living in the polar regions are in danger as the melting ice caps are their habitats. Additionally, the large ice caps and glaciers help to keep the global temperature of the Earth constant as they reflect the sunlight back into space. Open water, rock, and soil, however, heat up in the sunlight and even increase the rate of melting. Furthermore, significant amounts of methane are frozen in the permafrost regions of our Pale Blue Dot. Once those regions start to melt, the frozen greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

Lastly, as I am a cold lover and I do not feel very well when the temperatures are higher than 20°C, I really hope that we can find a solution before it is too late.

Finding of the week #148

Guilty until proven innocent

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about YouTube’s Content ID system that should protect owners of copyright-protected material, but causes several issues on the side of the content creators.

In 2007, the video sharing platform YouTube implemented the Content Identification (Contend ID) algorithm to protect owners of copyright-protected material. Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. For this purpose, the Content ID system provides owners of copyright-protected material with a tool to upload a sample of their work. Subsequently, the algorithm automatically scans uploaded videos for matching content and issues Content ID claims, if matching content has been found. If a video has a Content ID claim on it, then it is up to the owner to decide whether or not the user can reuse the material. In most of the cases, the owner allows the reuse of the material in exchange for putting ads on the video. However, the owner can also mute or even block the video in order to prohibit the reuse of it. In the end, the Content ID system ensures that owners of copyright-protected material get paid for their work.

Unfortunately, the Content ID system is flawed as it frequently misidentifies videos, issues false Content ID claims and works under a “guilty until proven innocent” system. This is especially problematic, as a Content ID claim is not just a simple warning. Instead, it automatically diverts ad revenue from the content creator to whoever has uploaded the sample to the Content ID database. In case of a false Content ID claim, the user can dispute it which starts a lengthy process as the copyright owner has 30 days to respond. During this time, the user can not monetize the video and thus gets no revenue from the ads running on it.

The flawed Content ID algorithm is, however, not the only problem. Once a company has access to the Content ID system, it can upload samples of material they do not own. This led to the problem, that some companies started to exploit the sytem by uploading false samples in order to claim content they do not own.

In the end, the automated Content ID system is needed to protect owners of copyright-protected material as hundreds of hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube. However, the “guilty until proven innocent” system and the method to automatically divert ad revenue to a third party based on a single sample in a database is not a good way to treat the content creators who made YouTube to what it is today. Unfortunately, as long as YouTube has no strong competitor, content creators can not do much to fight this system.

Finding of the week #147

Attention to detail

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the way how RimWorld simulates a vivid world without overwhelming the player with too many options.

Over the course of the last weeks, I played a lot the computer game RimWorld. RimWorld describes itself as a colony simulator that tells the story of a few people who survived the explosion of their spaceship and stranded on a distant planet. The goal of the game is to build some infrastructure, gather resources, craft gear, defend the colony and research technologies in order to finally construct a new spaceship to leave the planet.

A RimWorld colony.

A RimWorld colony.

The player controls the game from an aerial perspective and can give indirect orders to manage the colony. For instance, the player can build a new house by placing a blueprint of the walls and the door. Subsequently, the colonists will gather the required resources and start constructing the building. However, the player can also give some direct orders to the colonists in order to press ahead with a certain task. Furthermore, being able to give direct orders is important in order to defeat some aggressors that occasionally attack the player’s colony. During a battle, the player can draft colonists and control them the same way as in a real-time strategy game in order to defend the colony.

However, the game’s most interesting element is the attention to detail that creates a realistic world without overwhelming the player with too many options. For instance, the temperatures change throughout a year and can drop below freezing during the winter. The temperatures have an effect on the growth rate of crops a player can grow in order to produce food for the colonists. The plants will decay once the temperature drops below freezing, thus requiring the player to fill their storage rooms in advance or build greenhouses to grow crops during the winter time.

Even more impressive is the simulation of a colonist who is represented by four main categories: gear, character, needs and health. The gear section allows the player to equip the colonists with weapons and apparel that protects them against the elements and during a fight. A colonist’s character provides the player with a short backstory about the colonist and an overview over the colonist’s capabilities expressed in twelve different skills. Furthermore, a colonist has needs, such as food, rest and joy, that affect the general mood. When the mood is too low, the colonist can suffer under a mental breakdown. Finally, a colonist is represented by its health which is expressed in twelve different values such as consciousness, sight, manipulation and metabolism. In addition, a colonist can have injuries in different body parts that will negatively affect some of the general health values and sometimes even the performance in executing a particular task.

A colonist in RimWorld.

A colonist in RimWorld.

In the end, this attention to detail results in a very realistic and complex simulation of the life in a colony. Despite the complexity of the world, the general gameplay is not too complex and does not overwhelm the players as their main goal is to manage the colony by expanding the infrastructure or improving the defenses, and, as a result of this, the game can successfully be played without getting lost in the micromanagement of each colonist. However, vested players can also spend a lot of time managing every element of the game.

In conclusion, RimWorld successfully demonstrates how a complex world can be simulated without overwhelming the player. The key is to implement fitting variables that contribute to the concept of the game without making them too powerful. By doing so, the game receives a higher substantiality without requiring the player to take care of every single option. Nevertheless, vested players can start to care about every single value and achieve a better performance in their gameplay.

Finding of the week #146

2015

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about a few of the highlights of the year 2015.

The year 2015 is over and so it is time to take a look back at a few highlights and events of the last year. In general, 2015 was unusually warm and another indication that global warming is real. Extreme weather phenomena, shrinking glaciers and a rising sea level are results of the climate change and a first insight into our near future. In December, the UNFCCC adopted the Paris Agreement–an agreement to address the climate change by reducing emissions–and showed the whole world that we have to act now [1]. Hopefully, the 55 countries that account for at least 55% of global emissions will sign the agreement during the year 2016 so that it enters into force.

My personal highlight of 2015 was my second journey to Iceland [2]. It was absolutely amazing to explore the unique nature of Iceland and to experience geothermal activities, huge waterfalls, as well as the impressive highlands. Standing in the middle of this spectacular environment and being exposed to the elements rewarded me with an overwhelming feeling of freedom. It always amazes me how certain landscapes and environments can provide me with a feeling that is similar to the feeling of being at home.

The year 2015 had also some highlights in terms of computer games. For instance, I finally got my hands on a force feedback racing wheel which greatly increases the immersion of racing games [3]. Driving a virtual race car using this steering wheel feels almost as if I would be sitting in a real car. Furthermore, I really enjoyed being able to selectively control the arms of B.U.D. in Grow Home [4] and to learn new facts about the Iñupiat people by playing Never Alone [5]. In general, I was able to observe and discuss many motivational and educational effects of computer games throughout the year 2015.

Lastly, I made some good progress towards my Ph.D. as I did an important survey to examine the educational effects of game mechanics that encode a particular knowledge in a serious game. In addition, I was working on the improvement of the serious game to enhance its educational effects during the second half of the year. The improved version of it could have the potential to generate a lot of more data that can provide insights into the method of encoding knowledge in a computer game and show the positive effects of using computer games as educational enviroments.

Despite those amazing highlights, the year 2015 also had a lot of downsides and bad events. In the end, 2015 was ‚ok‘ on my side, but it was not really a great year. Luckily, the new year has begun and so there is a new chance to experience a great year.

Fireworks!

Happy New Year!

I wish all of you a great 2016!