Ayacon, a convention with which I was involved for many years, is probably going to run next Summer for the first time in three years. I made the announcement of this at Amecon - apparently despite having 14 committee members, none of them can actually speak, so I was chosen to go on stage despite having left the committee a couple of years ago. The last Ayacon, in 2005, remains to my mind pretty much the best attempt at embracing and expanding upon the subcultures and interest groups who have flocked to anime conventions in recent years (Amecon, for all that it’s a great event, has generally stuck to a more traditional line). I don’t know how (or even if) the present organisers plan to continue that evolution, but it’ll be really interesting to watch.

I also took the rather heavy-hearted decision this week to hang up my Paladin’s shield and quit World of Warcraft. The basic, underlying problem here is that the destination - the fabled “end-game” - simply isn’t as much fun as the journey, the narrative driven quest to reach level 70. More specifically, I essentially played from level 1 to 70 as a single-player game - and it was great, probably one of the best singleplayer RPGs I’ve played. At level 70, however, you don’t have any choice but to play with other people, so I joined a couple of guilds - first a relatively hardcore guild who wanted to burn through content and do really well, and second an ostensibly more friendly, unfocused guild.

My problem with “other people” in WoW stems from a basic, horrific failure of social skills and interaction in many of its players. Even those who are friendly and helpful can display shocking social immaturity when push comes to shove. In a virtual world where the consequences of your actions aren’t right in your face, and where authority often rests with the first person to click a button rather than being conferred by effort or merit, people feel free to act in a manner which they’d be terrified to assume in their day to day lives.

For me, the final straw came when a close friend was booted out of our guild for no good reason, other than that he’d rubbed someone up the wrong way. With no willingness to make a sincere apology or change things to prevent something like that happening again, I left - for fairly obvious reasons. Ironically, accusations were thrown pretty swiftly of “taking the game too seriously”; I say ironically, because to me, my placing of my real-life friendship ahead of the game in importance seems to suggest quite the opposite. I don’t care about WoW enough to have it impact on a real-world relationship in that manner, and after a couple of shit guild experiences, it’s become apparent to me that I don’t care about the game’s population enough to bother with it at all.

(Frankly, it was probably in danger of turning me into an anti-social git anyway, although it’s admittedly been bloody nice to have something to distract me from a litany of toothaches and chest infections for the past few weeks.)

All of which leaves me with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, but which more than anything, makes me fascinated to know what research has been done into the difference into how people react to things in a virtual world compared to the real world. I know there was an odd experiment a while back in which someone viewed the world through a screen displaying an image from a camera mounted above and behind their head - effectively giving them a third person perspective on the real world - and it was found that they lost many basic social inhibitions, being more willing to invade people’s personal space, for example.

If such a simple change makes us ruder to one another, it’s no surprise that a consequence-free virtual world changes our interactions in ways that are not entirely positive - although one does wonder whether the next generation, who grow up with virtual worlds as simply another social tool, will end up developing their own social rules that encompass virtual worlds more thoroughly than our own conventions do.

In other news, my dentist did the most painful thing a dentist can possibly do to me today - she gave me an outline of the costs for the rest of my treatment. It’s going to be running close to £5000 by the end of the whole thing; needless to say, I’m not exactly happy, but what can you do?

Technorati Tags: Amecon, anime, Ayacon, dentist, MMORPG, anime conventions, videogames, World of Warcraft

I’ve got another piece appearing in tomorrow’s Times, so they must have liked the first one.

Also on the topic of Blizzard, I wrote an editorial this week for Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz which explored how the company’s unique “confessional” approach to talking to its audience has played a major role in making them into such a successful developer. Pop over and have a read if you like: Blizzard’s Perfect Storm.

(Sorry, this blog has gone all work-related again. I’m sure I’ll have another political opinion to hold forth upon soon enough - especially as the by-election in Howden & Haltemprice approaches…)

Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, gaming, journalism, MMORPG, The Times, videogames, workblog, World of Warcraft

It’s also, of course, an excuse for The Times to run lots of pictures of cosplayers, but the article text at least presents them in a positive way rather than “christ, look at the freaks”.

I don’t know how regularly The Times will be commissioning work from me - after all, if they hate this piece they might never commission anything again! - but if all goes well I’d hope to get pieces in there every month or so, if not more often. There’s a real enthusiasm at the paper for getting their coverage of videogames up to scratch with the rest of their (excellent) arts and culture coverage, which will mark a welcome departure from the lazy “what are these evil modern things doing to our kids!” scare stories which much of the British press falls back on for games coverage.

On Labour’s benches, this much is perfectly obvious from the fact that the party has abandoned any concept of social liberalism. Stop and search powers, 90- and then 42-day detention without charge, increasingly harsh immigration laws and prison sentences, ASBOs, the reclassification of cannabis in the face of all scientific and social evidence… All things which fly in the face of what should have been the whole ethos of the Labour movement, but which have been convenient for a government keen to win headlines for being “tough”.

Earlier this week, perhaps the most utterly unpleasant Home Secretary the Labour administration has produced - yes, even more unpleasant than the arrogant, delusional and self-justifying David Blunkett - managed to come out with what is, to me, the single lowest ebb of everything this government has done from a liberal, progressive or even simply moral standpoint.

Do you see the picture on the right? That’s an image that was spread around the world in 2005, depicting two teenage boys moments before their execution in Iran. Their crime? They were convicted of being homosexual - the Iranians protested that they were “rapists”, by which they meant that the two boys had simultaneously “raped” each other. They were blindfolded, placed on the back of a truck, had nooses hung around their necks from above - and then the truck drove off. There are later pictures from this series, which I have not put here as they are, understandably, incredibly distressing.

Now here’s what Jacqui Smith, our delightful Home Secretary, had to say this week on the question of deporting homosexual asylum seekers back to Iran. “With particular regard to Iran… the evidence does not show a real risk of discovery of, or adverse action against gay and lesbian people who are discreet about their sexual orientation.”

Stonewall, a gay campaign group, reckons that 4,000 people have been executed in Iran since the 1970s for being homosexual. Jacqui Smith disputes that figure - but there’s little dispute over another figure which shows 140 people being executed under the current regime alone for homosexuality. Regardless, Ms Smith’s view is essentially that gay people in Iran are fine as long as they’re “discreet” - shut up, don’t talk about it, and hope every day that nobody with a grudge against you discovers your secret.

Of course, you may have spotted the essential logical flaw in her entire argument. Completely aside from being a disgusting thing for a public servant in a civilised nation to say, the whole statement misses the fact that by coming to the UK and seeking asylum on the grounds of sexuality, refugees from Iran have already given up the option of living “discreetly”. Besides which, if they could, they would - gay people all over the world choose to hide their sexuality in the face of repression because it’s more important to them to be with their family and friends. Those who run from Iran and other countries like it do so at great personal cost and risk, and only do so because they have been found out, or because the strain is no longer bearable - and in both cases, if they don’t face capital punishment for their sexual orientation before they leave, they certainly will upon their return.

Still - who cares about that, when there are headlines to be won in the Daily Mail and the Sun? Figures for the processing of asylum seekers make vital news in this era of focused xenophobia, when much of the population seems to make no distinction between economic migrants and those fleeing persecution. If the cost of making the Home Office - and by extension, this failing, morally bankrupt Labour government - look good is the lives of innocent people whose only crime is their sexual orientation, then so be it. They’re only Iranians anyway, the tabloids will probably assume they were gay terrorists.

By the way, the case that kicked this all off was that of a chap called Mehdi Kazemi, a young gay man from Iran who moved to Brighton to study English in 2005. In 2006, his boyfriend back in Iran (a nation in which Jacqui Smith maintains there is no “real risk of discovery or adverse action” against gay people) was executed for his sexuality - but not before naming Kazemi as his partner during interrogation (for which read “torture”). The Home Office’s reaction was to try to deport Kazemi back to Iran, and only an extensive public campaign on his behalf, as well as multiple legal appeals, made them reverse this decision.

Now Jacqui Smith wants to draw a line in the sand and prevent any more Iranians from escaping through the “loophole” which saved Mehdi Kazemi’s life from a brutal execution. The loophole which she wishes to close is that Britain has traditionally been a compassionate and thoroughly decent nation of people - and having destroyed much of that trust and decency within the nation itself, the next objective seems to be to snatch away any compassion in our dealings with the persecuted, vulnerable people who throw themselves upon our mercy at our borders.

Technorati Tags: asylum, Daily Mail, immigration, Jacqui Smith, Labour, Mehdi Kazemi, politics, The Sun

Rather, the aftermath of George W Bush’s visit to London, from whence he departed today. Did you know he was here? Or rather, did you know that he was coming? Today’s press conference - and yesterday’s dinner at No.10 - were fairly high profile events, but compared to the incredible level of hype and pomp over the visit of French president Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this year, Bush’s arrival was preceded by a deathly silence.

Today, the only sign that the “Leader of the Free World” has been in London is a mess of metal barricades, police tape and left-over traffic diversions. Whitehall is covered in barricades that have yet to be collected, and the whole area around the U.S. Embassy at Grosvenor Square is a disaster of traffic diversions, heavy-handed police cordons and yet more metal barricades.

Over the weekend, Londoners were not only denied access to one of the city’s major thoroughfares (Whitehall, which is an artery for many extremely heavily used bus routes), but were also treated to a constant barrage of noise pollution thanks to the helicopters that circled over the centre of the city. Worse, however, is the fact that Londoners were also denied, once again, the basic right to protest and be heard.

Ostensibly, the blocking off of vast sections of the city was for security purposes; and certainly, one can see why putting Bush within bomb-blast radius of the crowds wouldn’t be a great idea (although I’d be more worried about the security of the innocents in the crowd than I would be about the man himself, a security concern I rather suspect the authorities don’t share). This, however, does not justify placing the man and his excessive entourage not only out of reach, but also out of sight and out of earshot. This was not security, it was a PR exercise - an attempt either to shield Bush from the proof of his deep unpopularity with the British people, or perhaps more likely, to prevent the world’s press from having a chance to point their cameras at a juxtaposition of the reviled leader’s “Farewell Tour”, and the crowds for whom his farewell can’t come soon enough.

Never mind the deep inconvenience that this trip caused for the people of London (especially compared to the visits of other national leaders, which are usually a cause for celebration and a festive atmosphere in the city centre) - the way in which the whole trip was handled by the police and security forces smacked of the American idea of “Free Speech Zones”, one of the most appalling additions to the lexicon of the neo-conservative movement in recent years. The right to peaceful protest is, I believe, absolute - it can be restricted for extremely clear and well-elucidated reasons of security, but to restrict that right simply for the purposes of PR and image-control is a shocking abuse of the powers this Government has gathered to itself.

Sorry - another shocking abuse. I suppose we should be getting used to them by now.

Technorati Tags: Bush, George W Bush, London, politics, policing, security

At this juncture, it’s worth saying a few basic things. Firstly, the Eurosceptics are right. Secondly, they’re right for the wrong reasons. Finally, the proponents of the European ideal have, on this occasion, debased themselves with a shoddy campaign and a shoddier piece of legislation which skirts dangerously close to justifying the xenophobic, insular viewpoints espoused by the Eurosceptic lobby.

Why are the Eurosceptics right? They’re right because, inevitably, this treaty would have been defeated if it had gone to a referendum in the UK. They’re also right because the Government quite clearly chose not to have a referendum purely because it knew that the treaty would have been defeated. On many other issues, Labour is desperately out of touch with its electorate - on this one, however, it’s perfectly in touch with them, and choosing to ignore and bypass them because of it.

So why are they right for the wrong reasons, then? All you need to do is look at how the “No” campaign in Ireland was conducted - and the manner in which it won the vote - to realise that there was never going to be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, even if the government had called such a referendum. Of those who voted “No” to the treaty in Ireland, most were not voting on the content of the treaty - they were voting based on mis-information, manipulated fears and false beliefs.

A few issues dominated the No vote in Ireland, all pushed forward by relatively fringe political groups (the extremist Catholic movement, Sinn Fein and various others). Fearmongering from these groups convinced parts of the electorate that the Lisbon Treaty would introduce abortion to Ireland “through the back door”, along with legal prostitution and a relaxation of the drug laws. More insidiously, the Lisbon “No” campaign preyed on the ugly side of the Irish national character which has emerged in recent years - the extraordinary xenophobia and blatant racism which has confronted people from the new EU states who have moved to Ireland to work.

If you thought our right-wing press were doing a good job of treating Polish immigrants like shit in the UK, you’ve seen nothing yet. Ireland, lacking the UK’s background of immigration (although that’s no excuse for a country which was itself one of the world’s most prolific sources of immigrant labour for centuries), has reacted ferociously and disgustingly to the people who have entered the country to work. Much of the Irish “No” vote was a vote against immigration and against “foreigners” - the fury of small-minded people being cleverly directed by political campaigners morally corrupt enough to turn racism to their own ends.

In fact, I’ve only heard one honest, genuine and informed reason for voting “No” in the referendum thus far - from voters who simply did not understand the treaty, having made the effort to do so, and chose to vote No rather than accept a constitution-altering document whose small print they could not fathom. I’ll come back to this in a second.

Under these circumstances, can you see what would happen if the UK had a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty? There’s no way in hell we’d actually get a vote - or even a debate - on the merits of the treaty. Instead, we’d have months of scaremongering, with the usual suspects sprinkling fear, uncertainty and doubt into the minds of voters not over the treaty, but over Europe itself. The Sun, the News of the World, the Daily Mail and the Express would have a field day, stirring up every bit of xenophobic, anti-Europe sentiment they could muster, repeating tired lies over European legislation (they still haven’t got over the “bendy bananas” and “metric martyr” stories, both of which have been conclusively debunked) and muttering darkly about foreign influence taking our sovereignty away. The delicious irony, of course, is the arguably the most powerful man in UK politics is, er, Rupert Murdoch - a foreign national who wields his power, and disseminates his dislike of the EU, in this country through his tools of foreign intervention, the Sun, the NOTW and Sky News…

A referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the UK would be defeated, not because of any problem with the treaty, but because of the emotive, manipulative and dishonest campaign which would be waged by the Eurosceptic lobby. That’s why we’re not getting a referendum, frankly - and it’s a terrible shame and a massive democratic failure, because frankly, there are tons of problems in the treaty which should be aired, which should be the topic of a national debate and which should, ultimately, be put to a vote.

This is where Europe is failing its citizens. Even as a huge believer in the ideal of an open, co-operating and unified Europe, I have misgivings about the Lisbon Treaty - but more than that, I am appalled by the manner in which the treaty has been created, presented and pushed through ratification.

The reason why debate in Ireland was dominated by scaremongering, and part of the reason why the same thing would happen in the UK, is because the Yes campaign simply didn’t have any ammunition to throw back. The treaty, as a piece of legislation, is utter rubbish. It is vastly over-complicated and completely unreadable to anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the negotiation of the document. It is an appallingly bad piece of law, a testament to the horrific belief that all law must be obfuscated by unnecessary verbiage and constant references to external sources and documents.

In other words, there’s nothing there for people to relate to - nothing that governments can point at and say “look, read it for yourself - this is the structure of the new Europe we’re proposing”. Instead, we’re asked to take lawyers, politicians and civil servants at their word when they tell us that some very clever people have drafted this document, and here’s what it does, and to ignore all the people who say it’ll do anything else…

Law doesn’t have to be this way. Look at the constitution of the United States of America - or better again, and closer to home, look at the constitution of the Republic of Ireland. These are simple, plain-English documents which define and rule over every piece of law ever passed in those nations, but they’re so simple that they can be taught to primary school children. In Ireland, in fact, the constitution IS taught to primary school children - I recall it bring printed on the inside cover of one of our textbooks, and having to learn passages from it for homework.

What the EU has done here is to take a fundamental document defining the future of Europe, obfuscate it so that nobody can read it, then shove it through national parliaments without public consent. This is shoddy, non-democratic and frankly insulting to the electorates whom these people serve. Here in Britain, it’s typical of our present batch of politicians, who seem to think that fearmongering or simply doing things behind people’s backs are a better way to proceed than standing up for the principles of the actions they’re taking. Take the Human Rights Act - a piece of legislation which is a fundamental protection of our freedoms and rights, but which our politicians seem happy to watch being eviscerated by the howling right-wing press, too afraid, apparently, to take a stand in the defence of such an important piece of law.

I believe in Europe - and as such, I don’t want to see Europe progress through hidden channels, back-room deals and treaties signed into law by politicians without consulting their people. I want a vigorous debate on Europe, a chance for the Eurosceptic lobby to be shown up for the frauds, xenophobes and liars they really are, and for the principles of European co-operation and the value it has brought to the lives of British people to be brought into the light for all to see.

That’s not what we’re getting, and it disgusts me - and for that reason, as painful as it may be to stand on the same side of the fence as the Eurosceptics, I sincerely hope that the Irish “No” vote sends this whole sorry shambles back to the drawing board.

Technorati Tags: Daily Mail, EU, Europe, Eurosceptics, Lisbon Treaty, politics, The Sun, racism, referendum, Rupert Murdoch

Yes, the arcade-perfect Guitar Freaks controller I’ve been ruminating over since I got back from Japan last week is on its way, courtesy of a stack of credit I had with Play-Asia (long story) and a quiet month that’s been easy on my pocket. Guitar Hero has never really grabbed me, but Guitar Freaks sucked away countless 100 yen coins in Japanese arcades on this trip out. Maybe by next time I go, I’ll even be able to play without attracting pitying glances from Japanese guys nodding sagely at the genetically impaired gaming skills of the unfortunate gaijin. Maybe.

Perrin is still talking about buying a good drum kit to hook up via an adaptor to DrumMania, too, which would give us the UK’s most ludicrously overblown (but fantastic) rhythm gaming setup. Eat that, Rock Band.

Technorati Tags: DrumMania, gaming???????? ????? ????????, GuitarFreaks, Rock Band, videogames

During the London mayoral election, I had two main fears. The first, obviously, was that Boris was going to win. For weeks I repeatedly voiced that fear to everyone I met - to no avail as it turned out. But the second fear, the one I kept tucked away somewhere near the back of my head, was far more sinister. It was this: what if Boris won - and then turned out to be really good at his job? That might force me to question my cherished anti-Tory prejudice, which is so ingrained and instinctive it feels like something hand-stamped on my DNA.

This leapt out at me because it describes exactly why I have such difficulty in debating politics with, or even having a friendly discussion with, anyone who unswervingly devotes themselves to a political party. There’s a basic illogic to it - it comes with baggage which prevents you from recognising the benefits on the other side of the fence, and you end up twisting your world-view to suit your support of the party, rather than moving your political affiliations as your world-view changes. It’s deeply unhealthy to hitch yourself to a monolithic, bureaucratic body whose sole aim, ultimately, is to gain power - the contrast being those who support individual policies, ideals, or even politicians, of course, all of which are healthy parts of the political system. The parties themselves are merely parasites within that system which, sadly, are necessary for the functioning of our type of democracy.

Anyway, that’s why the phrase - with its perfect summing up of the closed-mindedness engendered by party politics - struck a chord with me. It came back to mind earlier today, however, because Boris’ actions as Mayor came back to the fore. Frankly, I don’t think Charlie has much to worry about regarding Boris turning out to be really good - not if th evidence thus far is anything to go on.

What has Boris Johnson done so far as Mayor of London? Two things. Firstly, he brought in a new rule which banned consuming alcohol on buses, tubes and trams in the city. While this doesn’t actually affect me in any way, and won’t affect most people, it’s clear that it’s the worst kind of gesture politics. People who drink on the tube aren’t the problem where anti-social behaviour is concerned; in fact, your average tube journey is so short that even if you downed half a bottle of wine at the beginning, you’d be off the tube at the other end before it started having any major effect. The problem is people who get onto the tube incredibly drunk and proceed to act in an anti-social way - banning drink on the tube won’t fix that in any way.

The ban also didn’t actually come with any additional budget for enforcing it, so fuck knows who’s meant to do that. In other words, it’s a tiny, largely unimportant freedom that’s been removed from us not for any practical reason, but because a politician wished to make a statement. That’s not a good way to set the scene for the rest of Boris’ tenure as Mayor, is it?

Well, if that’s worrying news, consider his next move - details of which were shuffled out of the Mayor’s office on the Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend. Boris (or rather, Boris’ Tory Party minders - I doubt sincerely that he’s making these kind of decisions for himself) has elected to end London’s deal with Venezuela, which saw the city’s transport network being fuelled with cheap Venezuelan oil in return for a fairly significant return of expertise and knowledge back to the developing South American economy.

The deal was controversial, largely because some saw it as exploitation of a poor South American country by a wealthy European city - and, of course, because the US media and their cohorts deeply dislike Hugo Chavez himself. (One oft-ignored fact is that by cutting out oil companies and middlemen, another aspect of the deal which enraged parts of the media, London ended up paying Venezuela directly and the country didn’t do all that badly out of the deal, even before considering the value they got from the imported expertise we returned to them.)

However, what the deal did on the ground was simple - it provided half-price transport for Londoners living on Income Support. That covers a wide range of people, including a large number of those with disabilities - a great many of whom aren’t eligible for the Freedom Pass scheme, so this deal made a fairly significant impact for them.

In canceling the scheme, Boris has removed that half-price travel. The last half-price passes, which are valid for six months, will be issued in August - after which those on Income Support, including the disabled, will essentially see their transport fares double.

The Mayor’s office says that its concern here is for the poor of Venezuela - although how exactly this is going to help them, or when exactly Boris Johnson and his aides became so concerned for them, is not explained in any way. The reality is that the Conservative party in the UK has major problems with Chavez’ regime, and rather than acting in the interests of the people of London - especially the most vulnerable people in the city - Boris has just toed the line and done exactly what he’s told by his party and his advisors.

So there we have it. Two moves from the new Mayor - one removes a part of our freedoms in order to make an empty gesture, the second directly hurts the city’s most vulnerable people in order to toe the party line (and make an equally empty gesture). Further government intrusion, illiberal policies and snatching money from the hands of the poor and the disabled - is Cameron’s idea of making the Conservatives seem “compassionate”? I think Charlie Brooker need not worry; four more years of this and nobody will doubt who was in the right at the last Mayoral election.

Technorati Tags: Boris Johnson, Charlie Brooker, Hugo Chavez, politics, London, Venezuela