Sekrits

Did you know that World Without Oil in its originally planned form was called World Without Doilies, designed to document 32 weeks of global crisis resulting from the poor display of teacakes? If you could see the original planning documents you'd realise that The Dark Knight was never intended to have an associated ARG, and if it wasn't for a scheduling error Why So Serious? would have been promoting Mamma Mia (that must have taken some fancy footwork on the part of the puppetmasters).

I should also mention the The Lionel Blair Project (much scarier than the final release), The Breast and Perspex City. Of course, I wouldn't know this if I didn't have special access to the sekrit archive of ARG design documents. On pain of being forced to moderate Cloverfield 2: TINAG (there is not a game) I can't reveal much more.

In the spirit of Christmas though, here is the brief (via drop.io) that Law37 submitted to the Let's Change the Game competition. You can see exactly what we'd said we'd do and compare it with what we actually managed to make, hopefully that's useful to anyone who wants to make an ARG and never has. Juliette has released her slides from the Let's Change the Game Conference (as have the other speakers), which includes some stats concerning the game and we've conducted our own post mortem that we hope will also be available in the future. We're certainly no experts and the entire production was a learning experience, by releasing these documents hopefully others can learn from our mistakes. My favourite section is the budget, we didn't really have one. I can remember pricing up rubber ducks though; it's surprisingly hard to find duck wholesalers in the UK.

Futility

The UK RAE 2008 results were released on the 18th. The R, A and E stand for Research, Assessment and Exercise respectively and (according to their website) it is "the principal means by which institutions assure themselves of the quality of the research undertaken in the HE [Higher Education] sector."

Except it isn't.

It's a great big pain in the arse. A white elephant. It's a white elephant in the arse. And that's a lot of pain.

Though I do like the inclusion of the words "assure themselves" in that statement. It's like admitting that universities are neurotic narcissists and noone else cares.

It happens like this: the research funding councils (HEFCE, SFC, HEFCW and DEL - I'd link, but their sites aren't very exciting) ask the universities to submit details of their research staff, how many papers they've produced and where they're published, how much research money they've generated and other bits and pieces (see here for the thrilling details). The universities go to their departments and say "Oi, make us look good or else we cut your budget for leather elbow patches and comfy chairs". The heads of departments lean on the academics to produce reams of output (neglecting their research and teaching activities in the meantime) and then HEFCE and their friends get to tot up all the information by subject area and tell the university how good they are by department.

My favourite part of the results is the following quote from news section of the website.

The results demonstrate that 54% of the research conducted by 52,400 staff submitted by 159 universities and colleges is either 'world-leading' (17 per cent in the highest grade) - or 'internationally excellent' (37 per cent in the second highest grade).

Taking the top three grades together (the third grade represents work of internationally recognised quality), 87% of the research activity is of international quality. Of the remaining research submitted, nearly all is of recognised national quality in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Of course 87 % is of international quality! They funded it. They're not going to say, 'sorry fellas, we thought that it was a bit poo this time, try harder'! The remaining 13 % is a bit worrying though isn't it? Especially considering universities don't have to submit all their staff and can keep the rubbish ones locked away in broom cupboards until after the submission date.

Other fun effects of the RAE include not being able to get a job. Before the submission date universities strategically hire people with lots of nice papers in good journals. After the submission date you can't get a job for love nor money as they're bloated with staff and no one wants to hire until after the results are out. This is because the RAE determines how much money the university, and hence department, actually gets. If the score should be bad it can lead to closures of whole departments. I timed the end of my last post doc with this wonderful doldrums, which lasts for many months until the results are actually out.

This could get me onto a rant about post doccing in general (we don't count for the RAE), scientific publishing and all sorts of lovely, blood-boiling subjects. But I shall resist and end with the best explanation of the RAE procedure that I could find. Via MicrobiologyBytes.

Stroking (Egoes and Guitars)

Operation: Sleeper Cell got picked by the frankly delicious Aleks Krotoski as one of her five highlights of the game year on the Guardian Games Blog, alongside such eclectic wonders as Braid, PMOG and Little Big Planet (and two other things that I haven't heard of, but will now investigate). Happy Christmas Law37! The money raised by our, also delicious (and probably custard cream flavoured) players is more than enough compensation for the sweat and tears (I'm fairly sure there wasn't any blood, I would have fainted), but this is nice too.

You can do more than just watch our egoes be stroked though, you can actively stroke someone else's. The Shorty Awards are for the year's top Twitter users, Madame Zee by Andrea Phillips and Good Captain by Jay Bushman are nominated and deserve more. To nominate either or (go on, be a devil, it's Christmas) both click these links: Madame Zee, Good Captain.

Enough of egoes and on to guitars, here are Angus and Julia Stone with tiny elephants and a grandiose gallimaufry of circussy thesps. He's got fireworks in his eyes. In his EYES?! Thanks for the tip Helen ;)

You Crawled out of the Sea

Laura Marling inveigles her way into my head and I find myself humming her. Particularly the following the part of Cross your Fingers that goes "jump into your grave and dieeeee" and the part of the interlude that follows with "you crawled out of the sea, straight into my arms", which always brings to mind a cuttlefish heaving itself out of the ocean and making a doomed bid for the girl it's just fallen in love with on the beach. Cuttlefish have blue blood you know (haemocyanin rather than haemoglobin). And three hearts. <3 <3 <3